Gregg R Thomas

Fun Fact when debating with theists:

Mary, the mother of Jesus, is the only woman named in the Qur’an and has a chapter named after her as she is considered one of the greatest women in Islam. Mary is mentioned in the Qur’an more often than Mary is mentioned in the New Testament.

In the Qur’an the name “Jesus” is mentioned more often than the…[Read more]

Thanks, Reg!!

Have a great week!

Have you seen this Reg?

https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a70223461/constant-universe-time/

But there is no constitutional provision that allows a president to suspend the Constitution or cancel elections indefinitely. Even during the Civil War, when Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus in limited areas, elections still occurred in 1864. There is no built-in “emergency extension of presidency” clause.

Yes, the US Constitution is very strong on this point.  To amend Article V would require 2/3 of both the House and Senate to propose an amendment to change it. But even then it would need to be ratified by 38  out of 50 states.

Trump cannot use an executive order, Supreme Court reinterpretation, or congressional workaround that can bypass that r…[Read more]

I am looking forward to the “Jon Ossoff vs Tucker Carlson” campaign 🙂

“We were told that Maga was for working-class Americans,” Ossoff reminded a big, vocal crowd…(in Atlanta, last week).

“But this is a government of, by and for the ultra-rich. This is the wealthiest cabinet ever. This is the Epstein class. They are the elites they prete…[Read more]

We evolved in an environment where language only came from conscious agents. LLM’s have no internal ground truth state. It’s a pattern generator doing what pattern generators do so if it later produces text that looks like it initiated contact, that’s not action, it’s a narrative continuation.  There is no hidden homunculus in the machine, deci…[Read more]

‘There are two different types of people in the world, those who want to know, and those who want to believe.’

– Nietzsche.

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
How do some people go against the moral grain?

The article talks about wanting to please a “moral audience”, and this could be one way that we choose our moral principles.  Maybe this is true.  What about an audience of one – me?

I think this comes down to “subjective endorsement” – i.e., moral principles carry n…[Read more]

jakelafort wrote:
Only men. Women get a pass? Chimps, Kangaroos? Same deal?

“Men” = “people”.  We’re all men.

Thanks, Reg!

To continue with the Block Universe idea: Time may not be a fundamental ingredient of reality, but rather an emergent feature arising from the relational structure of physical interactions and information. The quantum world suggests reality is made of relations, not objects whose measurable properties are defined only in relation to other systems.…[Read more]

Have a  great week!!

Authorities are enforcing new rules that require religious leaders to hold accredited theology degrees in order to lead worship and register their institutions.

I wonder what qualifications are needed to decide what the objective standards are for the curriculum of a theology degree.

“The study of theology, as it stands in Christian churches, i…[Read more]

What sort of laugh is silent?”

I think Mr. Munch painted a few expressions of them on a bridge 🙂

“Lol is another mindless utterance. What sort of laugh is silent?”

Priceless comment, Jake!

My point is not that the human experience of time is wrong. The experience is real, but it may be an interface rather than a fundamental feature of reality. Our brains are optimized for local 3D survival, not for grasping global spacetime structure.

Because everyone shares the sensation of temporal flow, we naturally assume it must be objective.…[Read more]

FYI – This is not debate in the usual sense. I am stress-testing a model of reality in public. I think it has a lot of merit. It is not intuitive because it goes against our evolved sense of time flow. But this is only useful on Earth, locally. Relativity strongly suggests a 4D spacetime structure that looks block-like. I’m trying to break it. I…[Read more]

If they called in the middle of the night I would ask them, “What time do you call this??”  They would probably reply “Relative to what frame?”

Then, after a few introductory nanu nanu’s, I would realize that their framework does not privilege clock labels as they have evolved to think purely in relational or structural terms. I would think to m…[Read more]