geordief

Apparently it was Voltaire who first said "Dans ses écrits, un sage Italien Dit que le mieux est l'ennemi du bien"

@studiot Don't want to derail the thread but we can calculate the weather on our planet over any period if we don't mind inaccurate results. As an aside I was actually kind of amazed to hear on a BBC science documentary recently ,(forgotten the title) that a particular theory could be plugged into BB and give an accurate representation of the universe we are living in That was some forecast!

Trying to flesh out/ fill in gaps in my understanding (using you guys to help me in that) So ,would you have any examples of a "local"Cauchy surface ,defined by causal boundaries and structures that would model a real life system of objects? Could it be a snapshot(time-slice of the 4d manifold) of the Solar system ? Or is that too big a system to be "local"? I am not sure I understood exactly what you were describing by "local surfaces".Did you mean local as in " simultaneous"? (it feels to me that a slice of the manifold where t=constant could be described as "local" in the same way as a unique location in space ,but moving in time would also be "local") Hope my question was coherent.

Would it be possible to make a spacetime model of the complete (ish) Solar system?(say from 2000 to 2010) Would it be visible in the round or would it be in mathematical form only?

Would I be right to say the the curvature of spacetime is an entirely local effect and it would be wrong to make a global picture of spacetime which would hold all the sources of energy-momentum at all the different "events" in the global set? Does one have to calculate the curvature at each event and somehow knit them together in an approximative fashion in order to draw a picture of the spacetime curvature of a system as a whole?

Isn't there a disclaimer signed ahead of any such medical intervention? If the child is under age would this be signed by his legal guardians (his parents)?

Does the problem lie with the expectations and unkind judgements of society moreso than with the individual who is presented with the choice of gender reassignment or not? It feels rather like the situation of "half-casts" who can find themselves not accepted into either one of the cultures they were born into. Is it a weakness to give into the need for social approbation or is it just a realism so that we say we have to give ourselves the best chance in life if we are served with a "bad" hand of cards? Can we pursue both outcomes on parallel tracks and attempt to educate the public why difference is good as also can be "non determinacy" whilst allowing for escape ramps for those who cannot wait for society to catch up with who they think they are? I wonder how we will look back at this question in 50 or 100 years from now and if we can tell ourselves rhen that we have learned anything along the way.

You could start a thread on that in philosophy.

Yes she does.She certainly gets your attention,whereas the chair drains it I feel

Are there any cultures that have no concept (or approximate concept) of god as we might loosely understand it? It might be relevant either way. If the "concept" was everywhere in every culture it would mean it was part of our shared psychological inheritance. If not then that might tell us something very different Does anyone know the answer?

Maybe I am misremembering but didn't I also (iAlso?) have a similar conversation with @iNow in the fairly recent past? Might even have been about effect vs affect.

I got a Covid nose swab last week.Not into my brain ,I think

They might mistake us for God and be worshipping us from afar. the Prince Philip syndrome. Maybe a high quality simulation could have predicted us

Our experience is based on such an infinitesimal section of our own evolutionary development that even that apparent roadblock needs to pass the test of possibly millennia of further development before it can pass its "Sigma test." Agreed it seems likely we will never encounter intelligent alien species in the flesh. If they had themselves survived long enough to discover us they might be well advised to keep their social distance based on present and past evidence.

First this,then I said I will finish up with this thread I started Back to school for me?

Reported for jocular plagiarism.🤔

No I don't like the dead string sound but I don't like the brand new string sound either. I have had a guitar for over 50 years without understanding the basics of what strings you could use or even what woods might sound better or different. This new guitar was a shock as it is at least twice as light as what I have been using all my life. I would rather it was heavier but I got the next (000) size down as that was all there was in my specs and it turns out fortuitously that it fits my little fingers a lot better and so it is much easier to actually play.

I wood upvote but then I wood have to downvote. Ah feck it I will then.

My name is my (now dead) dog's.I just bought a brand new Fender paramount acoustic and wonder if I need to change the strings.I normally do that when they break or get too rusty but this is a new instrument and I am curious as to how it could sound. Mind you they say it may take a few years for the wood to mature so maybe just wait😀

So pleased you could renew your subscription with the Delphic Oracle.

I agree with your premise that it is dangerous and misguided to disassociate ourselves from the environment we are part of but I don't suspect we have left any golden age in the past generations. I hope that the prison walls we have gathered around our world view are gossamer thin and that the existential fight we now have on our hands will blow them away for many of us. We will ,nevertheless very likely revert to new paths of delusion if or when the dust settles because that is what we are by nature ,flawed. So no ,previous generations, while with equal potential for admirable qualities as we do ,surely had their own Achilles heels. We all have our own hurdles to cross in our own time here and the hurdles do not have to resemble one another down the ages.

Since I am the OP ,perhaps I have the permission to drift in an out with a basic question or two that may or may not contribute to the ongoing state of the thread. So ,that being said do the qualities of being alive and that of being conscious overlap ? Overlap 100%,or are there important distinctions between the two ? Or have I perhaps veered into the muddy terrain of definitions vs what those definitions "point to"? If I am going off topic (even as the OP) please let me know.

Think I agree Interpretation may be overrated. It always ends up needing amending? Kind of meaningless(oxymoron?)We can only talk about the "universe" as it affects us directly The parts are the only things we can talk about confidently. Some parts seem to exhibits forms of consciousness and others don't but as a "gathered" whole we can't say ,can we?

There are no real distinct demarcation lines between conscious and unconscious thought processes ,are there?Don't they blend into each other? You can't have unconscious processes without some kind of a conscious process in the background (and vice versa),can you? At the very least,they must "talk to each other" don't they? Unless I am quite likely talking rubbish.

I think so I think the mind ,on a deep level just cannot accept that anything is not unexplainable and so instinctively creates a "placeholder" so as to move on to to the next activity. Not a matter of convenience but a biological necessity. "God of the Gaps?" (I wonder could that behaviour even be observed in other animals.It might require some evidence of a long cogitation process bridged by a gap in the middle with the shape of the gap somehow being retained for later use) Do animals react to the unknown with fear?That fear factor seems prevalent in religious behaviour.(the Greek gods weren't your luvvy duvvy types as I have heard) I