Clearsky

Earle Sanborn wrote:
There has been never been a transition from one specie to any other.

“Not to intrude”? There is so much presented here to argue with, my experience has shown that the large number of statements made in one post can elicite dozens of responses. Perhaps an explosion of responses and counter-responses and counter-counter…[Read more]

Unseen wrote:
If I tried to tickle my cat, she’d probably cut me to ribbons. However, she does kind of chortle or chuckle when she knows I’m dishing up some cat food.

Yeah, funny about cats, how most seem to object to tummy rubs. Thinking about it makes me wonder if the more predatory animals object to that kind of intimacy in a such a phy…[Read more]

Unseen wrote:
We seem to be stuck with dubious arguments from analogy. Hence, my prior post about feeding my cat.

Not so dubious for me, because I’m certain that some feelings like pain, touch (including caressing), protective mothering, play (especially among the young) have to have many (if not most) neurological correlates in common. Neuronal…[Read more]

That’s a very interesting topic that runs deep down into any creature with a brain. Even cockroaches scurry for cover when necessary. I intend to include this kind of discussion in my consciousness group, because I believe it starts in lower animals at low levels. We’re just at the high end of a spectrum.

I really like Jaak Pansepp‘s research in…[Read more]

…and so much of Central and South America, Mexico, and black America are total slaves to Catholicism, thanks to those wise white westerners who wanted so badly to spread the Jesus Love. What would the world look like without a bit of that benevolent, foreign intervention?

+1 #ILikeThatPost, Reg; #ILikeThatVideo (and its comments)

One day AI-Atheism will feature that post. Just thinking ahead, here. #CallMeAProphet

tom sarbeck wrote:
Men talk too much and say too little.

Hear hear!

No, wait…

LOL, just like the big bang, and we’d have to start all over again. Gives me more time to think about responding to @TomS. 🙂

Thanks Reg. I remember those stories when they came out. It seems in this story Bell’s Inequality wasn’t explained correctly, but it doesn’t matter because I still lack what it takes to understand it in detail.

It made me think of another question, having to do with pilot wave testing: I have no clue, and I’m wondering if bending the path of…[Read more]

jakelafort wrote:
Strega, i still think it is weird for atheists to say the universe does not care.

I think “the universe” is roughly analogous to “God”, as they’re the largest hosts atheists and theists can think of. The deeper point is still that there is no caring or empathy for us (from anything in the universe, from micro to macro).

Except…[Read more]

@jakelafort saying the universe doesn’t care, is another way of saying it is unaffected, unmoved, and oblivious to the thing being referred to.

It’s like claiming inches would exist even if there were no human.  Yes, distances of what we call an inch would exist, but not in any unique way.  We invented mechanisms (maths, physics, etc) to quantify and understand stuff.  Because ‘stuff’ is determinable, that doesn’t give our mechanisms of determination any objective status, outside of hum…[Read more]

Photons are just electro-magnetic wave energy, no different from radio waves except in frequency. Unlike particles, waves pass through each other. Imagine what the universe would look like if photons were particles that could collide. Star clusters would look pretty blurry, moreso than from how their dust blurs them.

But waves can still interact…[Read more]

The laws of physics and the functions of mathematics are like grids that we overlay on the universe so we can use grid references to talk about specific parts.  The universe itself doesn’t care.

Davis wrote:
There is no math inside the fabric of the universe.

I think that’s an oversimplification. It’s true that the symbology is man-made, but in the list of examples you gave to support the idea that there’s no “math” in them, I’d reword it: Mathematical relationships exist in the universe. Like in the video Unseen linked us too, there is…[Read more]

Unseen wrote:
I did set up the addition to be easy for mere mortals in decimal, but I don’t find the same problem easy for ME in binary or hex (or octal). But I don’t work with them much (at all).

Two keys here, one is that it does depend on what you’ve learned, but on the other hand binary would be a pain just for the number of characters one…[Read more]