tar

Strange, Well not ok, because you are just saying that. We have 0 information about what is happening now. We can't go by that alone. Everything more than a moment away has already happened, and its different in the equation depending on whether it is a plank distance away or a meter or a mile or a million miles or a light minute or an hour. If the equation talks about an item, an N and does not include its distance from the observer and which clock you are going by, the equation is going to have some potential error built in. maybe this is why people say you can not tell both the position and the momentum of a particle. we can not get right there with a measurement that takes no time to make while my question has to do with very huge distances, the same reality exists when talking about two molecules on either corner of grain of salt that human beings are of a certain size, with certain brain cells and synapse that take some time to sense and record and playback and compare and such, allows a certain window to be called now, as opposed to before or after. Maybe that is what a moment is. A whole cycle of sense, store, compare. Tiny stuff happens way too fast and are done and on to the next, before the light and pulses reach the equipment. Huge stuff happens and you don't know for a million years. Regards, TAR

and actually it would be difficult for a formalism to take into account everything, because most of it is out of our reach...unless the formalism admits that most of it is out of our reach and thus not included in the calculation

strange, Good. regards, TAR Still doesn't answer the question of the OP. From which vantage point are we understanding that the Earth is among the first of many many Earths?

Strange, Perhaps that is it. I don't know if the formalism is taking into account what I want taken into account. For instance you say "No, it is two different events: the thing happening and the thing being perceived. (And, of course, if it perceived by N observers, then it is N+1 events.)" I don't for instance agree with that statement. The event is not finished happening until all photons and waves from it are absorbed to the point where nobody, anywhere can see it or feel it, in real time. There is not formalism for this thought, because nobody but me seems to be thinking it. Why would I be interested in a formalism that does not take everything into account? If people were taking it into account it would exist in the formalism. If it is not in the formalism, then it is either not there because it does not fit reality, or it is not there because it does not fit the formalism. The model, the formalism will change as required. The reality will always be true. Regards, TAR it is one event there is only one instance of a particular supernova, that has been, is being and will be witnessed by various N points there is, for instance most likely a supernova happening now, that when we look in that direction we do not see it does the formalism say that that super nova is true, or false? are Earthlike planets that exist but we have not seen them yet because the light and gravity from them has not reached us yet, considered past events or future events, in the formalism? if the rover falls into a hole it only does it once us seeing it does not mean it fell in again

Strange, The "leading" of an aircraft with your aim, in order to intersect its flight with your round does not address my issue. It is not a good example. In the firing of a gun you will see the bullet on its whole flight. And you will see the plane. You just aim where the plane is heading. My issue is that there are two real things going on, at vast distances that are true. One which is true by virtue of the photons and gravity and magnetic impulses from the event hitting you now, and false, by virtue of the event having have happened some time in the past, and the item under consideration has moved on to another position, or evolved or taken its next step in growth or decay, well out of our view and reach and happening, thusly only in our imagination, not in anyway that we can sense...til later when we can verify our figuring. When we are controlling the rover 14 minutes away, we have to know its doing something 14 minutes before the action is reported, and we have no way to know what this is, but in retrospect. Even if we had an observer sitting right there on Mars, her report would be 14 minutes delayed. In your lead the moving object example, what point do you aim at? The point a foot ahead of where you see the object, or a point a foot ahead of where the object is? The two are not the same and you keep telling me they are, based on the fact that close stuff is close enough so that the light travel time will not make that much difference, and it is the same for the distance between the bullet and the gun and the eye and the plane, so things work out pretty well. In the case of the mars rover, you have to write a program for the thing to act a certain way when it senses certain things without your involvement, because your command would come 28 minutes late. I am not saying we cannot think of these things. I am saying we don't think of the implications of the situation in terms of there being two instances of a thing which there is, in reality, only one instance of. Regards, TAR perhaps I am saying that an event, viewed at a great distance, is not happening in the past, but is happening now, and is just a really really big event​ and any point in space, such as an observer, is sitting at the intersection of all the streams of bullets every other position in the universe is firing what complicates that example is it is not enough to imagine a stream...you have to imagine that each position, sends out a stream in all directions at once...a wavefront in all directions

yeah there is no point my best examples pass with no acknowledgement I will have to work on a better example, where you are to point to the distant item you see, and point in the direction where the item currently is, and be pointing in two directions.

Strange, "You have nothing. (Except a "philosophy".)" I have the findings of all the explorers and scientists and thinkers and philosophers, that came before me, just like you have. I can read and I can watch videos and I can listen to lectures, same as anybody else. Regards, TAR From Wiki article on Lambda CDM model. "It emerged in the late 1990s as a concordance cosmology, after a period of time when disparate observed properties of the universe appeared mutually inconsistent, and there was no consensus on the makeup of the energy density of the universe.​" Do you figure, the model of the universe held by the brightest scientific minds in 1980 were better than or worse than the model held today? What would you predict would be the comparison of the model held in 2020 compared to the model held today?

Overtone, OK, I see your point. We did not do it right. And yes I feel we did something wrong in initially backing Saddam and then finding any excuse to bring him down, once we saw his stripes clearly after Kuwait. I do not in my memory see the time period between Kuwait in 1990 and the coalition's invasion of Iraq in 2003 as as long as it was. I see it as one motion, as if we followed him to Bagdad after we slaughtered his guard on the road out of Kuwait, tried him for his crimes, hung him and tore down his statues in about a week and a half. Sept.11th really changed my personal world. I fell easily and quickly into any thought that Saddam had ties with Bin Laden. I had read the Koran twice following Sept. 11th and debated much on websites, primarily Guardian Talk, against anti-Zionist propaganda. If children died because of the sanctions it was because Saddam would not send rations to areas in his own country that opposed him politically. The no fly zones protected his political enemies within his own country from air attack by his airforce. We did not kill those children. And we did not kill the civilians that died, except for the ones that were purposely put near targets to prevent us from hitting them. In most cases so we would look bad in the eyes of the world. I know that Halliburton stood to gain in oil and security contracts, but the purposes of our activities in the area were to prop up governments that would be in our interests to prop up, and to fight against governments that would be in our interests to fight against. It is generally understood that Britain and the U.S. were wrong to think that Saddam had designs to acquire nuclear weapons, and still had chemical weapons hidden from the inspectors. But at the time, considering his lies about everything else, such was certainly believable. But this far from makes him a good guy, and far from says that we should not have followed him right into Baghdad after Kuwait. Perhaps history will show that we should help Iran help Hezbollah against Israel. Perhaps history will show that there are still WMD hidden in the sands of Syria. All we can do, is all we can ever do, and debate what our next move should be. Who we should help, who we should hurt and how much blood and money should be lost in the effort. I have not, in any of our debates ever considered that you are wrong. Only that you throw out the baby with the bathwater, and forget that without the military industrial complex you would not have ANY say in how the world should behave. That is you could say what you wanted but would not have the power to actually accomplish anything. Paris shows us that Islamic Extremists have the power to hit us at home. Only the strong anti-terrorism efforts that are undertaken by our FBI and CIA and police forces and armed forces and vigilant populace stop the cells from acting at a mall near you. We already have enemies. Some of them are France's enemies as well. We should, and do, stand with them in any and all actions they need to take to put these enemies out of business. Regards, TAR

Ophiolite, Thank you, but on your number one, my basic lack of knowledge on the subject I have a philosophical objection. Nobody knows or can know what the universe is doing now. All we have is our best guess model. We CANNOT check it. Not me, not you, not the brightest minds we have. It is too darn big and too long lived and too "out of our reach". So we all suffer from a basic lack of knowledge on the subject. The subject being the current state of the universe. What I do suffer from by myself, is a lack of respect for the stance of anyone who feels their model is better and more complete than the place itself. And to this, in both religion and science, I say that my view of the place is based on my access to the place, which is exactly the same access as you, or a priest or a scientist has. If I don't have knowledge of, or do not agree with the model that is conventionally held or if I see an inconsistency in the model and speak to it, we are talking about the model, not the thing the model is of. You, are of the opinion that the proper course of action is to submit to the judgement of the experts because they have already thought these things through and know the answers. That I have no weight to fight with the big dogs. Perhaps. But I need my model of the world to be consistent and workable, same as everybody else has that need. I cannot hold someone else's model, that does not work. The universe will continue to work exactly as it is working whether we are among the first of many many Earths, or the only Earth, or the last to emerge among a million that have emerged around the universe. We are unlikely to know which is the case by the end of our lives. The models of the experts will not be exactly like the current model, by 2017. The universe will not have changed as much as the model of it will have changed by that time. Well actually the universe will have changed more than the model, since the universe is way more complex and way bigger than the model, but the idea is, what I know about the model and what I know about the place are two different thoughts. Regards, TAR that is, we have my model, your model, Strange's model, the standard model (which changes as new measurements and ideas are added and equations modified) and we have probably about as many interpretations of the standard model, as there are minds that dabble in it But we only have one instance of reality and to that we all have equal access not total access equal access what is probably the most crucial consideration to my point is that I have very little access to your model, and total access to my own this works the other way around as well and through convention we can have access to a common model, but that does not directly address the lack of access to someone else's model, nor the collective limitations to total access to the whole place that we ALL have

CharonY, Very nice post, I had forgotten a great deal of the shifts of allegiances and government changes and the timing and who was a puppet of who throughout the whole thing. The Israeli wars we helped Israel fight and the cold war and our proxy battles with the Soviet Union certainly played a part in who we were backing or who we were hoping would serve our interests in the area. And the CIA certainly operated on our behalf in clandestine ways as was their charter. And the power that the military industrial complex has and did have in our country is not a point of contention. That is part of what we are about. Whether we flex our muscle in ways that help the world or hurt the world is important to consider, and whether our foreign actions tend to help our friends or hurt them, or help our enemies or degrade them, is important to consider. And of course whether or not our actions allow us to put gas in our cars and drive to the mall to shop and go out to dinner and go to the movies, in peace and freedom, pursuing our way of life. In Mali for instance, somehow special forces of the U.S. helped end the hotel siege. Somehow our interests and our role as defender of law and order, peace and freedom, put us there. Surely there are reasons of trade and business and such attached, but that is who we are. We help each other live a good life, and we help our friends around the world live a good life and we generally stand for human rights and freedom. Seems the world keeps coming up with dictators that have some other idea. Regards, TAR and Russia and Iran and Saudi Arabia and Turkey have some power in the area as do others, the Middle East is not a mess that we as the U.S. made alone

OK, bad timing, But Overtone, you sound like the anti-Zionist propaganda machine that was dissing America during the Iraq war. I was very distressed at the self hating Americans of that time, and felt we had a right, no an obligation, to remove Saddam. I was happy when we did and thought that Iraq would appreciate being able to live out from under his rule. It did not work out that way and the divide between the Kurds and the Sunni and the Shiite was too wide to bridge. They needed to bridge it. And did not. It was not a lack of U.S. trying to give them an opportunity to bridge it. We broke the thing and didn't stick around long enough and strong enough to see it repaired. The fault was not in withdrawing our support from Saddam, once he invaded Kuwait, it was in withdrawing our troops and letting ISIS take the place back. It is interesting to me that you base the U.S. failure on the fact that we had gone into Iraq to keep Saddam from using weapons of mass destruction, that we did not find. While at the same time relating the historical fact that we had provided Saddam with chemical and biological weapons. It cannot be an historical fact that we had reason to believe Saddam had WMDs because we provided him with them, AND it be an historical fact that thinking Saddam had chemical weapons was an invalid excuse to invade a country. Regard, TAR perhaps if we had not backed Bin Laden in his fight against the Soviet Union he would not have been strong enough to hurt us later, but two things about that. One Afghanistan might have been conquered by the Soviets, if we had not supported Bin Laden and two, once Bin Laden brought down our towers he needed to die. And so we backed Saddam against Iran. He looked like a secular leader we could deal with. Iran looked like a power that would align against us and threaten Israel. If we had not backed Saddam we may have lost influence in the area. Once he went rouge though, with the powerful army he had, he could have conquered the whole region. So we did our duty and built a coalition to defeat him. And did defeat him. actually I don't think anyone in history has ever conquered Afghanistan and it will probably stay that way, so we probably did the Soviets a favor by helping to stop their war

I refer to one joke, that was told during the Iraq war and you say I am dissing the French. You diss the U.S. all the time. Why is my little diss dishonorable and your big neverending dis is honorable?

Strange, "Did they? Which galaxies?" ​ The local group, which I am told are gravitationally bound. These are the most recent observations we can possibly make. What the local group is doing is probably what every local group is doing. There is most likely no reason a Galaxy a couple million lys from here is not as gravitationally bound to a galaxy 4 million lyrs in that direction as it is to us. Since both us and the galaxy four million lyrs from here are 2 million lyrs from the galaxy 2 million lyrs from here. That is a galaxy in a chain of galaxies has just as much of a reason to be gravitationally bound to the next one in the chain to its left as the one in the chain to its right. And if the strings of galaxies are currently gravitationally bound to each other, and we see something different across the way through a void, it is not an indication that the void is growing in size and the strings are still stretching. The indication would be that the strings are now stable and gravitationally bound. Compared to a former time when they appeared to be receding from each other. Regards, TAR which actually would make sense in another way if the inflation of the universe happened at a very rapid pace at first, and later was just an expansion, it would make sense if it now had stabilized and gravity is taking over and pulling everything back together We wouldn't know however if the galaxy were getting smaller currently, because it still looks as big as it was 100,000 years ago. Similarly, the universe could have already expanded to its largest, already and is on its way back to a singularity, a massive black hole that will include all matter and the one growing at the Milky Way core, will merge with a nearby other black hole and so on, until there is only one. This would take a while, but we would not see it as happening as soon as it started. It takes light from far away extents of the universe many billions of years to get here.

Everybody is paying for U.S. folly as far as you are concerned Overtone. And not only that, but Republican folly. The real U.S. never made a mistake or backed a bad guy. Those of pure heart, who are not Republican, not bankers, not businessmen, not tied to oil or the military industrial complex, not CIA, not religious, not poor and stupid, not drug addicts, not gun owners, not policemen, not military, not reactionary, not bigoted, not foolish, not a child, not stupid enough to vote for Cheney, not afraid of refugees... which leaves about three Americans. You and two others. Hope you three have a plan to stop ISIL. 'cause I don't want to answer to a caliph.

Overtone, If you curse Allah in ISIL held towns now, you get whipped in the square. If you curse the Prophet, you get killed. http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/isis-wives-and-enforcers-in-syria-recount-collaboration-anguish-and-escape/ar-BBnhaPm?ocid=spartanntp People were killed last year in Paris for drawing and publishing a comic for heaven's sake. Don't tell me I have to be careful not to piss off a Muslim Fundementalist or I deserve the terror he inflicts. That is not reasonable or useful advice. Regards, TAR

is what we see expanding or is what we imagine expanding how do we figure the place is expanding at all now, if every local galaxy is gravitationally bound? By using the elegant notion, we should figure that the closer stuff would give a better idea of how fast galaxies are receding from each other, compared to how fast they seemed to be receding from each other when we look at galaxies at huge distances when things were different, a long while ago. A short while ago the galaxies seem to be gravitationally bound. If the universe is homogeneous and every observer, everywhere would look out and see their local galaxies gravitationally bound, then that is evidence that the universe is no longer expanding as rapidly as it used to be expanding. What we see, after all further away, is less what the universe is like now, than what we see closer.

Ophiolite, The specific example that bothers me the most is the statement "the universe is currently expanding at an accellerated pace". Perhaps you can explain to me, which sense of now that is referring to. Regards, TAR

Strange, Right. Not what you said in #24. Regards, TAR

Overtone, I quite strongly support the French. I feel like they understand now, how I felt watching the pillar of smoke coming from where the World Trade Center towers once stood. I told the violin to a deer hunt joke, because then the French were not reactionary. This week they are. Next week, or next month when we shut down a bunch of cells and take out some more leaders, and degrade ISIL some more, we both, me and France can get unreactionary again and try to be more reasonable. On the whole we treat our prisoners rather well, and give them Korans and clean clothes and food and such. We could have, after all just killed them on the battlefield for their crimes against us. Regards, TAR Let's say we expended American lives and American money to put perpetrators of crimes against humanity into prison in Iraq and ISIL came along and freed them and they organized a strike against some civilians at a concert in Paris. Lets just say such a thing would happen. You think this is because some American prison guards thought it was funny to disgrace these prisoners and take videos of it? You think such a causal relationship is a reasonable thing to figure? I think not. to release a criminal that has already declared war on society is asking to be hurt again by said criminal So, given a group that is largely released prisoners, released by other released prisoners, I would call the group a criminal group. Blaming the police for their crimes, is stupid unhelpful and unreasonable​.

? I thought we subsequently agreed that is was a good notion to look at the progression of galaxies of different ages to determine what the universe looks like now. It has nothing to do with what the universe will look like in the future. The best model would be to look at local stuff and figure it was something like that, everywhere, now. Looking at young galaxies just tells us how we got to this point. Does not say a thing about the future. We don't know how things are going to go. we have zero examples of 13.8002 billion year old galaxies. Those are yet to occur...anywhere.

Strange, In #24 of this thread you said, among other things indicating that you favor our view of the universe over our knowledge of how it must currently be, this... "Fairly obviously it is looking at the state of the universe now and comparing it with the state of the universe at some time in the future. As none else shares your warped view of how time works, you can be fairly certain that no one will be basing models on it." Regards, TAR There were only 5 or 6 thousand of these insignificant time periods of 200,000 years between the time the Earth formed 5,540,000,000 years ago and the time life started here 4,500,000,000 years ago. When talking about the presence of earthlike planets in a galaxy the time period our galaxy went from when it formed 10,000,000,000 years ago, and the time it was ready to form this Earth like planet was only 4,460,000,000 years. this is 22,300 times what you consider an insignificant time period, but ALL of time, that has happened so far is only 69,000 of these insignificant time periods. So 200,000 years is only insignificant on the scale of stars and galaxies if 8 hrs is insignificant on the scale of a human and her lifetime. A lot can happen in 8 hours and you can't tell much about what some 61 year old in Bulgaria is doing right now, by looking at my childhood photos. ​

how do you know this? have you ever watched an entire galaxy for 200,000 year and not noticed any significant changes? how about the rise of civilization on Earth?

how do you test your model of the galaxy against observation? The stuff you see is in some cases 100,000 year old news. And the far parts of your model will not be known for 100,000 years? The whole operation can be held in your brain, but that, by definition, is imaginary.

Thread, After the Paris attack it came out that some of the terrorists were related to a bar that was closed due to drug activity at the bar. Does anyone know how drugs are involved in the recruitment of soldiers for Da'ish? I am guessing that normal individuals cannot kill innocent women and unarmed civilians so easily, and kill themselves, if all the normal human equipment was functioning properly. If not drugs, then some form of hypnosis, or some threat against family, or something. But sober clear minded people just don't do that. Something is amiss. Regards, TAR

Strange, I don't remember your words. I asked which instance of the galaxy was true and you responded it was the instance that is seen by our equipment and logged in our catalogs of galaxies, and indicated I was silly to suggest any other instance of the galaxy was true. Ophiolite, I think it an elegant notion myself. But the two instances of each "1. The galaxies as we see them today. 2. The galaxies as we understand them to be today." are not always faithfully switched between in discussing the place. I am just asking that the two be openly referred to and not conflated. Regards TAR ​ Strange, I don't mean we don't have thoughts. I mean you can't point to the model in your head, and tell me it goes by the rules of the universe. It absolutely does not go by the rules of universe. You can see the whole model at once, and the universe absolutely does not work that way. Regards, TAR