Bender

recap of long thread: you are confusing randomness with free will. The determinism you refer to does not contradict free will.

The decision is made by you, even if you only become consciously aware of it later; where "later" is ill-defined due to the lack of absolute synchronisation in our brain.

The scientific paradigm helps us grow.

They would shift between red shifted and blue shifted. Or between more red shifted and less red shifted or between more blue shifted and less blue shifted, if their overall speed away from or towards us is larger than their circumferential speed.

If the discussion of human sense, options and future is the best of religion, why not throw out all the rest?

Let's assume you are reading a book with large 1 cm² letters, the paper reflects all of the sunlight and you are reading at noon near the equator (2000 W/m²), with your page directed orthogonal to the sun. The letters are small with respect to the whiteness around it, so the area with the letter reflects 0,2 W of light. A photon in the visible spectrum has an energy of about 10^-19 J, so this come down to about 10^18 photons each second. Let's assume that future person can track the page for about a minute (~100 s) before you go to the next page, so 10^20 photons total. I don't know how much photons are required to distinguish a letter, but let's say at least 100. The future person now has to catch at least 1 in 10^18 photons coming of the page. Finally, let's assume there is no atmosphere or dust clouds to block the light, and a perfectly diffuse reflection of the light on the page. At one meter, the surface of a hemisphere catching all the photons is 2 pi r² or 1,5 m². So with a 1,5 m² telescope, you can put it at 10^9 m (surface increases quadratic with distance) and still read the book somewhat, which is only 3 lightseconds away. In conclusion, you can only read the book a couple of seconds in the future in the best circumstances.

I agree

Depends: if they are in insufferable, endless pain and ask for it, killing them could be ethical.

Yet you claim some things are impossible based on your own lack of imagination, much like some people in the past lacked the imagination for a 747. example 1) an omnipotent creature obviously can switch off its omnipotence: - make large rock - switch off omnipotence - be unable to lift rock example 2) an immortal creature killing itself - commit suicide - rise from the dead example 3) invisible pink unicorn - I'm willing to bet money on someone genetically engineering a unicorn in the future, and while they are at it, why not make it pink (I'll throw in another 50$ for a bioluminescent horn)? No need for bubble universes - give it a cloaking device - send it back in time to ridicule those smug 21st century atheists Alternatively, if you're including magical alternate universes, an invisible unicorn might be able to switch off its invisibility, or some creatures might have the ability to see invisible creatures. Both scenario's would mean an invisible pink unicorn are, in fact, not impossible.

It is not random in the way that large, mobile animals are very likely to have both hard and soft tissue. There is no evolutionary advantage towards more homogeneous, and thus suboptimal, materials for different organs.

We already have a language that is more efficient (at least for some problems): mathematics.

Unless otherwise specified, I talk about the science in this universe.

Yet you think that we shouldn't assume they don't exist. I'm confused.

A lot of energy in higher frequencies would be correlated with a large arc length.

And they would have been right, because a Boeing 747 did not exist at the time.

There is a sarcophagus inside.

Interval training is changing the acceleration often, even if you don't stop completely. The average of the acceleration will have less impact on the arc length then the number of changes and the size of the change. I called it normalised because it only works if you don't vary the time or the distance between runs, which has the same effect as a normalisation. In retrospect, I was thinking about Root-mean-square deviation rather than regression, but neither works well. A frequency analysis might, or perhaps the rms of the jerk.

This is all related to some kind of variability. Not necessarily the acceleration itself, but the number of times it changes. In your particular example, it would mainly give a measure of the number of times you stopped and started again. It also only works because it is normalised in the way that the distance is always the same. Things that are correlated with the variability, could also be correlated with the arc length. edit: of course: you could just do some kind of regression analysis instead.

If you actually think there is a reasonable possibility that invisible pink unicorns exist, I misunderstood your position and have to retract my previous statement.

Fixed that for you.

Indeed, the motor itself needs to run smoothly, otherwise you loose too much energy moving the motor. The motor needs to be supported by a strong frame, otherwise it will deform the frame rather than move the car. Same holds true for animals: stiff muscles are too stiff to move themselves and weak bones cannot support the forces. Just look at squishy animals such as worms and snails: they are usually small and slow, both in water and on dry land.

You seem to put too much weight into the act of assuming. I think there is hardly any difference, if any, between my assuming invisible unicorns don't exist and your not know whether they exist.

There is no reason to admit we don't know. It is trivial, so why bother? You can safely assume that I admit to not know anything for which there is no evidence. It is perfectly possible to act under the assumption that something doesn't exist, yet hope the assumption is wrong at the same time. e.g. I assume the EM-drive will not work, but I hope it does.

It seems pretty pointless to list all the things we don't know: - we don't know whether invisible pink unicorns exist - we don't know whether invisible purple unicorns exist - we don't know whether invisible mauve unicorns exist - we don't know whether invisible magenta unicorns exist - we don't know whether invisible cyan unicorns exist - we don't know whether invisible yellow unicorns exist - we don't know whether souls exist - we don't know whether invisible maroon unicorns exist - we don't know whether invisible violet unicorns exist - we don't know whether invisible indigo unicorns exist - we don't know whether invisible grey unicorns exist - we don't know whether invisible white unicorns exist - we don't know whether invisible orange unicorns exist - ... Much easier to just assume they don't exist, or "operate under the assumption" that they don't exist, if you prefer that phrase. Of course you can hope whatever you want. It is even perfectly possible to hope for something while at the same time assuming it doesn't exit.

It is possible that such a correlation exists, if you take a normalised arclength. There are several ways to do that. When you don't normalise it. If you e.g. compare two arclengths of two graphs with different time intervals, you'll get nothing useful.