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I've been ill the last 2 weeks, still not quite healthy. I would like to give just a short overview of different positions in the free will debate, independent of the whole contents of this thread, just in the hope to clarify a little. Conceptually, there are 2 main view points: compatibilism and incompatibilism. Incompatibilism states that determinism and free will do not go together, so one of them is, at least partially, false. Dependent on what is supposed to be false, there are 2 main positions: Determinism is false: this is mainly libertarian free will. What we choose or decide to do, i.e. how we act, is at least partially, independent on previous causes. The mind has some kind of independence from the physical world Free will does not exist at all, it is an illusion played on us by the brain. The extremes of both are dualism (the soul has causal influence on the physical world) in the first case, and what is sometimes called 'hard determinism' (we are 'slaves' of the causal processes in the brain) in the second. Compatibilism of course says that free will and determinism are compatible. It is important to see that compatibilism does not say that (a little bit of) free will is possible in a determined world. It is not some vague compromise between determinism and free will. I think that most compatibilists go even so far that they say that determinism is a necessary condition for free will (I belong to this 'camp'). If, e.g. it turns out that quantum processes play an essential role in brain process, this would be a disturbing factor in our expression of free will, not an opening for free will in an otherwise determined world. It is also necessary to say that these or not just positions, but that for all these positions arguments are given: they are reasoned, grounded positions. So here my first point: Somebody who says 'yes, we have free will!', or just the opposite, has still said nothing. She (or he) must say in which sense. Second point: Next to certain (scientific) facts that all camps must accept, it means that the discussion is about which interpretation is the best one. The question what means 'best' of course opens a complete new can of worms. Third point, not that easy: People come to very different practical conclusions based on their conception of free will, but the rational connections can be loose. Examples: None compatibilist determinists thinking that we should not punish criminals, but therapise them, because without free will they are not responsible None compatibilist determinists saying that for our daily life it makes no difference at all: in the end, society and its judges are just as determined as the criminal Libertarians defending that every individual is completely responsible for his life: if people are poor, then they made the wrong choices in their lives, no need to help them, independent of the country or culture they come from People who think their their lives have no meaning if they have no free will (eh.. which concept of free will?) Compatibilists taking as default position that people have free will, but there are people whose circumstances are so extreme that they cannot be held responsible; or they miss one of the necessary capabilities for free will, e.g. to rationally evaluate their options for actions (maybe Down syndrome as an example?) None compatibilist determinists who say that their position leads to more tolerance to others, and lift the heavy burden of absolute responsibility, like that concept of responsibility that can be found by especially the French existentialists. I have known people falling more or less in a depression because of those views. In the hope that this helps a little to get rid of the sharp tone of the debate in this thread.

Local relative motion in a static background would be limited to subluminal speeds in accordance with the usual laws of kinematic, so for redshift we’d find z<1 always, whereas with metric expansion there is no such limit. Furthermore, if there is only local motion in an otherwise static space, then some of these objects will recede from one another, whereas others approach each other, like molecules in a gas. We’d see a mix of both blue- and red-shift, unless you want to postulate that we are the Center of the universe, and everything moves radially away from us for some reason, which is not very plausible. But with metric expansion, it’s the space in between that “expands” (I don’t like this term, but it has become standard), so on the largest scales everything will appear to recede from everything else, and it will do so the same way no matter what direction you look at, and irrespective what’s in between here and there. Also - if the rate of apparent recession isn’t constant (which is what seems to be the case), then, if you were to deal with local motion, you would have to have either some mechanism of acceleration, or some explanation as to why everything falls away from us. Overall you’d end up with a model that’s actually much more complicated and much less plausible than metric expansion.

Don has died aged 92. Here is his story.

I do understand what you hoping to do so, as a mathematician, you should be able to understand my difficulty with finding such an analogy. Einstinian relativity depends upon finding an invariant such that it will be measured the same by all (inertial) observers. Other relationships are then mathematically adjusted to conform with this requirement. He then developed special relativity conformities on basis of the idea the speed of light in vacuo. is such an invariant. (Note this was not one of his original two axioms, which were simpler. He actually had to deduce this invariance from his original axioms) Right at the outset he states that he is taking into account the then up to date experiments to find an observable variation If you wish to use the speed of sound in an analogous way you need to go through the same process and declare and experimentally support your invariant. Unfortunately experiment is not with you on this, and I do not know of any such quantity that is observer invariant in the propagation of sound. So I ask you one more time. What is your invariant, please supply the necessary mathematical and experimental support ? So why is the paper entitled On the electrodynamics of moving bodies ? And why is page 1 of the paper all about Maxwell, electrodynamics and what the paper is going to do with them (which he subsequently does) ? And why is his concluding technical statement "These three relationships are a complete expression for the laws according to which, by the theory here advanced, the electron must move." ?

The ongoing speculation over Sam Altman’s dismissal has provoked a heated discussion of some quite outre theories as to how and why it happened. BBC Technology Editor Zoe Kleinman who says her phone ‘blew up’ on Friday when the news broke, points out that there were only 6 people on the board of OpenAI, so it was just 4 of them led by the Chief Scientific officer who dismissed both the President and the CEO of the company. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-67461363 Some have noted that Elon Musk’s company X (formerly Twitter) has recently released a new LLM chatbot called Grok, while others have drawn attention to a blog article published by Sam Altman on the OpenAI website on 24 February of this year titled “Planning For AGI and Beyond” https://openai.com/blog/planning-for-agi-and-beyond This article discusses his understanding of the nature of AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) which is widely seen as the Holy Grail and next step of AI development, and sets out the possible timeline and challenges involved. The final part of the article includes this paragraph which seems to have a certain resonannce in the light of what has just happened:

If we can ignore these pedestrian speeds, shouldn't we also ignore the blueshift of Andromeda? This blueshift is way too low for us to take it into account. All this drama of Andromeda hitting the milky way is just fake news, because the blueshift is just too low and is completely negligible.

Well, I guess that if the "pedestrian speeds" should be ignored, I think I can make a joke about ignoring the movements of Andromeda too, because we are moving much faster around the center of the galaxy than Andromeda is moving into our direction.

So can be measure the blue shift of Andromeda from an extragalactic point in space, not beeing on the Milky Way carousel? This means the movement of Andromeda on its own axis, not our movement around the center of the milky way (?) Andromeda has its own tangential movement, so we should see one half of Andromeda more redshifted than the other half. By the way, this red- or blueshift should even be much more intense in the center of the galaxies, where the movements are much faster. If the center of the Andromeda galaxy moves at a speed of 2000 km/s and our position is not in a 90 degree angle to the surface of the galactic disk, we should be able to observe this movement, especially with Andromeda, where we are definitely not in an angle of 90 degree (just check a picture of Andromeda). Now if you say that there is no detectable blueshift/redshift because of this movement, than the universe is also not expanding, because the cause of redshift would not be the movement of galaxies/light sources.

This is interesting. How would you define the difference between two points separating from each other because of their movements and two points separating from each other because of expansion? What exactly would be the difference? According to maths, there would be no difference at all, because it is just some Δx/t. Maths does not care where the Δx comes from. What I want to say is that before speculating with the movements of the furthest galaxies and expansion of the universe, we should first try to figure out what kind of redshift or blueshift we can find in those objects surrounding us, so we can define what the effects of different movements on redshift should be, before we can confirm if galaxies are indeed moving away from us or if their redshift has another cause (like gravity). Creating special rules for galaxies that are "not gravitationally bound" would only lead to false theories. By the way, how should a galaxy not be gravitationally bound if the force of gravity is infinite?

No it isn't.

In the context of this thread, I think it's very much the same; They're both an unquantifiable something that comes from within and makes us feel better.