tar

Seems the March 22- April 3 Delphi trip with the automated car went well. http://www.dailydot.com/technology/delphi-self-driving-car-trip-united-states/ The car was driven by people for 50 of the miles, when road conditions were too unpredictable (ie. unmarked roads, on/off ramps.)

actually the way they uploaded, it's Blue Green Red Yellow

Dimreeper, If there is to be an understanding between believers and non-believers in any cultural norms, one must find the realities behind the beliefs. The meanings behind the words. What is literal and what is figurative. My disagreement with PeterJ stems from his disregard for the self. I find this, not logical in exactly the ways I have expressed on this thread. I have offered a theory, as to why religions might find it useful to teach its followers to deny the self, for the the good of the group. I apply that insight to the religion I was brought up in as well as to those I have not been brought up in. It has nothing to do with my inability to see beyond my own culture. My viewpoint is from a position that would look at PeterJ's beliefs and Alan's beliefs, through the same glasses. And with the particular glasses I have on, I see us all as human beings, on an Earth that have evolved, in and of the place. Made of the same chemicals, under the power of the same Sun. We have plenty to love and belong to, in common. Stories of 3 souls and 7 spirits though, if they are referring to actual stuff, would have to be referring to the SAME actual stuff. The rules of life, the actual existence of one God, or 3 gods or 7 gods or 173 gods would not be different, depending on which side of the bed you got up from this morning, or what language you speak, or what time zone you are in. The only sensible way to parse other people's beliefs, is to do it in the same breath that you parse your own. With this background, my investigations into the meaning behind words and the thoughts of Pinker and Kant, and iNow's investigation into what cortical functions are hijacked by religion, and my understanding of Freudian Psychology, and my Presbyterian upbringing, and my living through the 60s as a young adult with "hippy" connections, and my many talks with people, about religion in the Army in Germany, and in Japan on business, and at work with people from India, and Taiwan, and China, and Latvia and Russia and Japan and other places, together with my reading and thinking about the Koran, after 9-11, to determine where such evil, as flying a plane full of people into a building full of people might come from, I have decided that religion must come from the imagination, and not from the world. Moses being told the law by God, and giving it to man on the carved tablets-could not have happened in my world. Not on this Earth. It has to be figurative in nature. It has to be man made stories, made by men and women, for men and woman. We are the only authors around. Regards, TAR I am an atheist with a very religious mom (departed) and a very unreligious dad. I have talked to and respected the beliefs of all sorts of religious folk, from all sorts of different cultures. I have studied the Dogon and the Mayans in school. I have been to the Yucatan and visited the temples. I have a Dogon drum downstairs that my Mom brought back from Africa. I have read a little about a lot. I have the ability to look past my own culture. I do it all the time. If I defend my way of life, its because its mine, and I think its good. And if I challenge PeterJ's beliefs, or Alan's, its because I think I have a good argument. Not because I am short sighted. Besides, the Ad hominums do not address the thread question. It does not matter if PeterJ is smarter than me, or if I am ignorant of the teachings of rebirth. The question on the floor is whether or not Karma and Reincarnation are logical and sensible ideas to hold. Do they fit the world, or do they fit the imagination only?

Lightmeow, Well perhaps this is not religion purely, nor philosophy purely, but brain chemistry. It struck me, in thinking about heaven, and the rainbow bridge, and being reincarnated as a rich beautiful/handsome powerful person as a reward for being good, or being rewarded by satin sheets and rivers of honey, or being admitted into the warm embrace of Jesus, rather than enduring boiling liquids and fire and pain and such for being bad, that we are more likely to behave in a manner that will bring us pleasure, than in a manner that will bring us pain. We would rather think we are doing good, feeling good, getting dopamine, then think we are doing harm, feeling bad, not getting dopamine, and getting pain and displeasure, for eternity. In terms of behavior modification, there is a thread, in all religions that I can think of, off hand, an idea that its OK to suffer a little while you are alive, to ensure the lasting rewards. I am Protestant by upbringing, and there is the Protestant work ethic that suggests "delayed gratification" is the way to go. Scrimp and save, work hard and then put the down payment down on your comfortable, pleasant, beautiful house. The teachings of Karma, and Rebirth, or reincarnation, and specifically the denouncing of the self and pleasure as ways to add to the pleasure your immortal soul will experience later are maybe not religion, or philosophy, but brain chemistry. You feel good thinking you are scrimping and saving, suffering and denying, for a future reward. You get dopamine released just knowing you are good according to the rules and morals and morays of your group. Regards, TAR

Thread, Here I have divided the cube, truncated octahedron, spherical rhombic dodecahedron, tetrahedron, octahedron and cuboctahedron into the 12 identical sections. I put 6 red, 6 yellow, 6 blue and 6 green toothpicks into the center of each section in each figure each in the pattern described with the red and yellow plane intersecting in section 1 and the blue and green intersecting in section 11...etc. Anyway, all seven figures have the same pairs of planes intersecting in the same manner. The figure in the middle is the spherical rhombic dodecahedron surrounded by the spherical framework of a cuboctahedron. The four pictures of the same collection are taken normal to the red, yellow, blue and green planes, respectively. Regards, TAR

This idea has little chemical/biochemical brain research behind it, and is more of a guess, and the patterns I see might be a result of confirmation bais, but consider this. Guess 1. There should be a mechanism that would cause an organism to "want to" survive and pass its pattern on to the next generation. Something that would reward the organism for "getting it right". Guess 2. Since smoking cigarettes, makes you feel good, for no particular reason, because Dopamine is released in your brain by the nicotine receptors, the release of dopamine for particular reasons may be associated with "getting it right" from a survival perspective. That is, feeling good about surviving, might be the reason that we do so much surviving. Guess 3. Not exclusively true, but many things that we label as good are also things that make us "feel good" and thus the release of dopamine, into our brains, as a result of certain actions and occurances, might make us feel good, because historically, or evolutionarily speaking, doing certain things, and putting yourself in certain situations that worked and promoted the survival of the species, would be more likely to occur if there was a reason to do these things. As this speculation goes, the more things you did right, the more you felt good, or were rewarded for doing the thing, the more likely it would be that you would do the thing. Thus reward chemicals for doing the right thing would be selected for. (Thus, fulfilling a need in Maslov's hierarch of needs, would, by the speculation, release dopamine, into the brain, and the human (or human precursor) would "feel good" because they did a good thing.) Guess 4. If survival of the species and dopamine release are related in the manner speculated here, there would also be a reason to feel good when others of the species felt good, and thus ways to tell if dopamine was being released in others might develop (smiles, giggles, laughter, song) and seeing someone else happy might cause dopamine to be released in a mirror nueron type of way. Guess 5. If the majority of the people on the planet believe in a set of moral laws, that specify what is good as opposed to what is bad, it would not be unreasonable to look for a physical mechanism that would aid a person in this distinction. A chemical reward for good behavior, would provide such a mechanism...and we do have dopamine which provides this very thing...feeling good. Regards, TAR

Alan, "go on to exist forever in ethereal planes, some lower than our earthly one and some higher" How is this, not belief in Karma? What, other than good Karma would put you in a higher plane? What other than bad Karma, would put you in a lower etherial plane? Regards, TAR Alan, Accept my apologies then for accusing you of spiteful neg repping. I will redirect my displeasure toward who ever neg repped me, without identifying, which aspect of my opinions were displeasing to them. Regards, TAR (and I rarely ever use the neg rep facility myself...other than spitefully giving PeterJ two days alotment in retribution for his ad hominums and their contribution to the heavy neg rep toll I've taken here.)

Alan, Forgive me for the "Disregards". I am concerned about the rep points, because for me, it is you guys and gals, who are objective reality, and it is you who I wish to please. Presenting my own "odd logic" is an attempt to derive a worldview, that anyone could subscribe to, because it is made up of stuff we can all relate to. You don't have to have a special key to join my club. Everybody is already in. Since I am not waiting for my rewards and punishment 'till an afterlife, or 'till my next life, its important to me, how I am judged, here and now. As a contributor, or a detractor, a creator or a destroyer, a helper or a hinderer. I accept the neg reps as indication that I have displeased someone, or stated falsehoods, or hurt someone's feelings, or shown stupidity or otherwise angered, frustrated or disturbed someone, but I like to know why and what I did, other than just disagreed with someone's opinion. If you just disagree with me, you can say that, this is a discussion board. I just take offense at seeing neg reps accrue to my posts, with no reason given. No opportunity given to stand up for myself. That is why I gave PeterJ random neg reps, and announced the fact, to prove the point that neg reps hurt, and they should be subtantial when given and not random or spiteful, nor given due to the lack of a constructive argument against a poster's points. I say stupid stuff in other threads as well, so I can not attribute a fall from 214 to 195 completely to this thread, but I don't think what I am saying here is foreign enough from sensible dialog to be consistently given neg reps like I was accruing...THAT is why the neg reps concern me. But, the "Disregards" directed at you, were because I had the feeling you may have given me some of the neg reps, and I was on this thread, in the first place, in your defense. You took a hit when you mentioned God as a fact, while discounting Karma. Is this sensible and logical? Regards, TAR

Lightmeow, Such logical deductions as PeterJ makes, such as all positive metaphysical claims are false or absurb, are merely self fulfilling circular arguments, constructed from premises already suspect, because the human senses and judgement are already concluded to be suspect, and incapable of correct judgment of the situation. I like to give human judgement the benefit of the doubt. There has to be something that we base truth and goodness on, that is recognizable to all, or we would not have courts and religions, and universities of science. The judgments of Kant are based on the two apriori intuitions of space and of time. From these premises the other judgements are synthesized. The basis is given. The basis is understood, and the other human judgements build upon this basis. That all selective conclusions about the world as a whole are undecideable is obvious since the world is too big and too long lived to pretend you can get outside of it, and understand it, as a whole. Yes, I have my own subjective take on things, but I try and build, and I try and express, a consistent picture of the world, that jives with other people's senses, and jives with other people's metaphysical take on things. I assume that human's have something in common, and if it is good to me, and good to you, that is close enough for government work...the thing can be called good. Even the humanists, devoid of religion, can make positive metaphysical claims, about what is good for humanity. Life after death is true, in the sense that after I die, others will still be alive. If Kant talks of life after death, it may not be a metaphysical claim he is making. Just a statement of fact. PeterJ, Perhaps I do not know what you mean by Karma, but I look at it this way. If it is something true about life and the world that we are talking about, then it is not required to make up the rules and learn the rules that someone else made up. You could just observe (sense) the thing. Regards, TAR

PeterJ, I was planning to not post any more to this thread, but your edit to 102, I was not aware of, when I wrote 103, and there you gave me something to respond to. The Buddist and Taoist things that I have read are repleat with the kind of thing you say is an answer to my question, when they instead indicate, and support my thinking about how I am right in questioning the logic of Buddist thinking, and right to parse Buddist thinking and all human thinking, into the model, the modeler and that which is being modeled. It is NOT logical in my mind for you to both preach nondualism, and that there is the conventional and the ultimate. And I don't believe you can say the individual is ever dismissed, when the individual is still present. And I do not believe you see how easy it is to parse things into things that are true in the waking world, and things that are true ONLY in the imagination. There is, in my philosophy, a requirement, that the individual is separate from the universe, inorder to witness the universe. That is, as I have said, before here, and in other threads, the sage, reaching Nirvana on the hilltop, does it by himself/herself. He/She does not take me along for the ride. The connection with the ultimate, is imaginary, and is not a true thing, is not manifest, unless you consider it already, automatically true, by the mere fact you are in and of the universe and have therefore total connection with all there is to have connection to already, or it is manifest, when you die, and your being, is returned to a non-individual state...what ever that may literally be...that is much as it was, before you were born. The whole excercise of "losing yourself" is a complete and utter misappropriation of funds, as far as I am concerned. The whole reality of being is encapsulated in your being, which in the case of everybody reading this, is in the body of a human being. That is the nature of my existence and is the nature of your existence. When you tell me the "answer" is to exist in both the conventional and the ultimate, I say fine, but I am already doing that, and not by dismissing existence as the "answer", but by embracing existence. That life is fleeting and fragile is true, but since its the only thing we have, it makes the most sense to me, to protect it, cherish it, foster it, and make it possible for others to do the same. When you say I am doing it wrong, I have to tell you why I think you are mistaken in that take. You have valued imaginary things more highly than actual things. You have imagined yourself in possession of some connection with the master soul that I could not possibly ever achieve, until I have read all the mystical nonsense that tells me how to do that, by being tired of being tired of being tired. And as I have said, I do not mind the thought of seeing my "Shady" girl again, playing in the field on the other side of the rainbow bridge...but that is a dream, there is no actual rainbow bridge. We are separated from the master soul, by time and space. Exactly because we are here and now. Lose here and now, and you have lost yourself. This is not advisable in my estimation, for if you were to lose yourself, you would be gone...unable to get even a little dopamine to make you feel good about the situation. So, if I am right, there is no such thing as reincarnation, if I am wrong, and there is such thing as rebirth, then it makes no sense to consider the self an expendable item. Rebirth of an individual soul would accentuate the importance of a self, not depreciate it. Promoting the disolution of the self puts you, PeterJ, in a logical predicament. The same logical predicament that belief in reincarnation puts the believer in reincarnation. And Karma, to be logically consistent would absolutely require that the self is immortal, and gets graded on its individual efforts and rewarded or punished depending on whether or not the self performs well. Regards, TAR

SwansonT, Understood. I am sort of a confirmation bias sort of guy. I look for the three things that confirm my idea and look right past the other 95 things that point to why my idea will not work. Thank you and studiot for your patient explanations. The two, momentum and KE are not the same animal and I shouldn't be confusing them. Regards, TAR

SwansonT, But it seems that inertia is also involved directly, and while body B loses its resting inertia and gains the inertia of straight line motion, body A loses its momentum and gains some resting inertia. The forces which A enacts on B are equal to the forces B enacts on A, and kinetic energy is traded for potential energy, and both types of inertia seem equally powerful. It is just as hard to stop a mass, as it is to get it moving. This one can easily feel and experience by attemping the rocking chair experiment and attempting to keep both hands locked in a radial position with respect to the chair. One ahead of up, and one behind up, so the acceration of gravity is aiding the muscles in one arm while resisting the muscles in the other. The mass of the hand and its tendencies to continue to move, and to stay stationary, are both felt and seen. Regards, TAR

PeterJ, Well me not knowing "enough about the topic" implies you know the sufficient amount. I don't believe your arguments are unassailable, nor that the body of knowledge you would have me investigate, is based on sound, logical thinking. I am not asking you to explain Taoism to me, I am challenging your logic in defending Eastern Philosophy over Western Philosphy, and I am challeging your grasp of reality. I am not making any mistakes, as per my own understanding of reality, and I have no interest in being your student on the subject. I have only the interest in matching your take against my take, and seeing which one makes the most, logical sense. Especially, in reference to the thread topic of Karma and Reincarnation. You act as if I am not your equal and should not be nipping at your heels. I have asked you direct, logical questions, raising objections to various of your conclusions, and you have answered a few, but for the most part, not answered by instead telling everybody I don't know enough to even be talking to you. What does that appoach have even a little to do with the topic of whether or not Karma or Reincarnation are topics concerning the waking world, or the dream world. Regards, TAR Alan, I am sorry you have had a less than 100% enjoyable life. That, however is not sufficient enough reason to dismiss reincaration, just because you would chose not to go another round. If your thread topic was posted as a complaint, and you have no interest in investigating the logic deficit in believing in Karma, if investigating the deficits in the logic of you believing in your god would concurrently be questioned...then indeed engaging in this discussion with you, is pointless. I just now understand, that I lost all those rep points in this thread, because you and PeterJ don't want to be wrong, about your beliefs. And would rather chase me out of the discussion, than face such a possible admission. So be it. I will leave you both to your delusions. Disregards, TAR

PeterJ, Well, still, you have not told me how the two ideas of loosing your identity, and cultivating your identity, are logically compatible. If a shaman reaches nirvana, is it his achievement, or not? It certainly has little to do with objective reality, as that all of existence, does not reach nirvana, with him. If you are telling us that rebirth is a better term than reincarnation, you still need to describe which parts of the rebirth are components of the waking world, that any and all could witness and study and share and examine, and which parts of the idea of rebirth are figurative, or imaginative in nature. Regards, TAR This is an expensive topic to discuss with you, rep wise. I wish you would at least attempt to answer my points, rather than talk about me in the third person.

PeterJ, I am thinking there is such a thing as an individual. Established by exactly the real components of blood and sinew, chemical signals and neurological patterns, sense and experience, DNA and cultural history that establishes an individual. The waking world is obviously different than the dream world. In the waking world, you must live with the reprecussions of your actions. In the dream world, you can establish any rules of cause and effect that you want. You have established that Buddism does not teach reincarnation, but rebirth. This does not make reincarnation sensible, or logical. Reincarnation would have the sense memories of an earlier life, inhabit the present life. There is no sense in this. No mechanism. No way to have the model of the world, that the new life builds, from their sensory experience, contain the results of the senses of some earlier experience, by some other body. We can put ourselves in other people's shoes, we can remember the sound of our dead mother's voice, we can imagine what it was like to be uncle Albert, we can even have his limp as we might share some genes that weakened a bone we both injured, but conversing with an unseen other, is not proof that the other person is hearing your words. And imagining you were the Queen of Sheba, does not make it so. But you have made metaphysical conclusions as to what must be illusion, and what must be reality, without consulting me. It is not that I am not aware of your conclusions, it is that I do not agree with them. Kant, working on what it is, that we can logically build understanding from, identified our understanding of time and space as the two apriori understandings, that have no other understandings from which they are constructed. And very reasonably Kant logically concludes that sensing the world and making judgments about the world does not prove you know the thing as it is, but does establish the thing as real, in that you can say something about it, which is the same set of somethings I can say about it. Somewhere in your thinking, you have taken Kant's thoughts, and concluded that he was proving that everything is an illusion. I do not agree with you, on this interpretation of Kant, and your take is also quite unsatisfactory in my eyes. This is where I accused you of a strawman argument, because you base your idea that Western philosophy and Kant's metaphysics, is a failure, on a critique that you have misinterpreted, in my estimation. This section of the Science Forum is for discussing the rational foundations of religion. There are many to discuss. Many things that tie us to the Moon and the Sun and the Earth and to each other. Many things, many considerations, like "forgiveness" that was mentioned earlier, that have rational, sensible, logical reasons to be built into our understanding of ourselves, our world, and each other. And of course there is the human desire not to die, to be immortal, that exists in most of us. We would, many of us, like to visit the fountain of youth, or isolate a regenerative subtance from a jelly fish, that would allow us not to die. It is thusly "satisfying" to consider your life line, unbroken. To be the light of a lamp even if doused and relit. And in some ways we are such, continuations of Lucy. The same patterns repeated in the structure of your brain and body as in the structure of mine. And relationship to goats and pigs as well. But as much as I like the idea of going across the rainbow bridge and seeing the dog I put to sleep, playing in a field, I hold the idea only as a dream. I do not consider it is part of the waking world. The bridge has no location, that you can navigate to. Except in your dreams. Regards, TAR

Studiot, A little confused about the physical meaning of a squared velocity and a little confused about why there is a v in the KE equation, but I guess I am happy with that. SwansonT, In the inelastic collision of the equal masses, the momentum is conserved, and the first mass gives up its momentum, and now the same momentum is a property of the second body. Can the situation be considered as one where the first body applies a force upon the second body? Regards, TAR

Alan, It was about PeterJ's nondualism. I do not believe that effortless effort and no divisions, make any sense, and I was attempted to show the illogic of PeterJ's position. And as well, giving my opinion as to what does make sense. PeterJ, earlier had indicated that he agreed that reincarnation did not work, and that rebirth was more along the lines of what was sensible, and that if one read his blog and delved into the research that backed up his thinking and Taoist thinking and nondualism, that one could then understand the subtleties required to grasp what Karma is all about. He also described Western Philosophy as a failure, and my philosophy as not worth being called philosophy, and told me to look into Wu Wei. I googled a few things, found them to be ideas I had already read or thought about, and had opinions on. So I expressed those opinions to indicate that not only were reincarnation and karma suspect in the ways PeterJ initially allowed, but were questionable as well, according to his particular philosophy or way of thinking. That a basis in logic and sensibility is not to be found, in a "wider theory" that speaks specifically of the individual's attainment of this and loss of that, while pretended there is no such thing as an individual. Regards, TAR

Studiot, The speed of the ball was not altered? Perhaps, but was there no time period where it decellerated from it's incoming speed, to zero, and another period of time where it accelerated from 0 to it's outgoing speed in the other direction? Regards. TAR Studiot, "There is no reason for mwater to be the same as mball." Can't you think of a stream of water being a bunch of tiny BBs? A bunch of balls. Wouldn't the physics of each of the bunch be the physics assigned to one ball? Regards, TAR

SwansonT and Studiot, OK, I will try and drop the "carry the force" idea, because it is so opposite the definition of force to begin with, as a force is an outside thing that acts upon a mass, to accelerate (decelerate, change direction of) it. And I will try and keep KE as a scalar consideration, just a speed, just a quantity, with no direction. But in the garden hose stream, hitting the wall, some force is absorbed by the wall, there is a push on the wall, not enough to move it, so maybe its not a force, but there is an energy that it absorbs, and some of the momentum of the water molecules is imparted onto the wall. 2m worth. If the wall was made of styrofoam peanuts (loose and unattached to each other), the 2m transfer would not be so clean and obvious. The peanuts would take on a momentum, they would be accelerated in the direction the water molecules were traveling, they (the peanuts) would have an outside force applied to them, by the moving water molecules. A power washer might even take the mortar out from between the bricks of our solid wall and send the peices flying. In my rocking recliner experiment, with my two arms above my head, one behind and one infront of up, I had elements of gravity, and circular motion combined, along with change in direction. 80 changes a minute. Considering just a hand as a mass, there were forces that needed to be applied by my muscles, to keep the hand locked in its radial position, with respect to the chair. The inertia of my hand could be felt, and observed, wanting to continue to move in the former direction, when the chair's direction changed, and then again, when the direction changed again. The mass itself had the inertia, that was resisting the change in direction. This might not be garden variety physics, but it is at least "armchair" physics. Regards, TAR

PeterJ, Thanks for your reasonable reply. However, I think you overestimate the sublety required to understand "the wider theory". That is, I think you are wrong to think that you "get it" and TAR has no clue. Think about it for a minute. If there is no difference between Atman and Brahman, no difference between subject and object, no differences between anything, then I gave myself 3 neg reps yesterday when I randomly assigned neg reps to three of your posts in this thread. There is, in reality, a PeterJ and a TAR. We are on many of the same teams. We are on many competing teams. We are both in and of the universe, and in this can find no difference, nor any other universe to be in and of. Is the universe capable of consciousness? Well yes. Here we are, conscious of ourselves, each other, and that which would be objective reality to the both of us. I already, in this thread, suggested that I knew the difference between the modeler, that which is being modeled, and the model. Socrates in the cave, with the shadows on the wall taught me this. Kant, with "what we can say about a thing" being different from the thing in itself, taught me this. I have already gone to Sunday school, I have already read books with Eastern and Western thought behind them. I have already empirically experienced life and mused about how life grabbed form and structure, from a universe otherwise tending toward entropy, and passed it on to the next generation. I already get the subtleties, I don't have to read your blog. The thread question, is does "the wider theory" have any body of knowledge, upon which it is based, that any of us can inspect for ourselves and find it reasonable to believe in reincarnation, or Karma. Directly asking if there is a real something, that lived in the body of A, that was different and unique, separate from all the rest of the universe, enough to be considered by all observers, as As soul, that then transferrred, by some mechanism in its entirety, into the body of B? That is reincarnation. Karma's existence as a real fact, would be an extension of reincarnation, in that, in addition to there being an objectively real soul of A, there is also an objectively real bank account associated with each soul, that tracks its progression through an objectively real course, leading from, and back to, the master soul. In this, nonduality would argue against Karma, as there is no distinction between Atman and Brahman, and no way to determine any difference between good and bad karma, nor any particular reason to leave the master soul, in the first place, just inorder to undergo an eternal process designed to return to it. Regards, TAR

Studiot, I appreciated the encouragement in #37 but did not understand your point 1 and 2, nor could I generate the examples, in my mind where those things would be true. I am stuck on a few things, and do not "get" why a mass can not "carry" a force. And I think I start to crack it, and put things in their proper place, definitionally, and then some inconsistency comes up that I don't know how to resolve. For instance I am told KE is a scalar, with no directional component, that it is a speed, not a velocity, and then SwansonT says: "The KE depends on the distance through which it was imparted, and at what angle the force was relative to the displacement." My current misconception, the one that I got RobbityBob1 all engaged in, is that a mass can "carry a force". Definitionally there is this thing about inertia, that a mass has it, and can not lose it. The relationship of force to acceration depends on the mass staying exactly the same, throughout the exercise. But since the mass might be moving in relation to another mass, and the two masses might contact each other, and exchange, something, and both retain exactly their mass, then the thing that they exchange, must be something they are carrying, and can off load, or gain more of. It is this "force" I am struggling with, this impetus, or action, relative to other stuff around, that is being "carried" by a moving thing, from point A to point B, that the mass is merely a carrier of, and does not stay with the mass. This energy seems different to me than the inertia of the body, but related. I am asking in this thread, to understand why a mass cannot carry a force, when there seems so many examples in life, like thrown balls, and shot bullets, where the energy takes a ride on the mass, in a particular direction. Regards, TAR

PeterJ, I just randomly gave you my neg rep allowance. You say its pointless to engage, yet you don't engage. I came on this thread to back up Alan's thesis, you agreed, and then the both of you, turned on me, as I demanded logic and sensibility from you, and gave my opinion as to how to answer questions of existence and belonging and to tell the difference between reality and illusion. You say I know nothing about the subject, and do not answer my objections. You make no comment on my opinions, and make no defense of your beliefs. Just call me ignorant, and give me neg reps. Yes it is rather pointless to attempt to engage with you, when the result is loosing a dozen reputation points, for the effort. The thread question is, "Does Karma and Reincarnation, make any logical sense." It seems, on a discussion board, and a science discussion board, at that, that one should look to identify those things that are common to all people and are passed from generation to generation, both literally and figuratively. What mechanisms, physical and mental are used to accomplish this? If your beliefs are indefensible, it is not my doing. Don't give me neg reps for pointing out the flimsy nature of the ground you so proudly are standing on. Effortless effort? Really? That is the key? Regards, TAR

Studiot, No, I have not cracked it. I have the general understanding that I am barking up the wrong tree. But I am not convinced yet that the tree has no occupant. My wondering is based on a video in the centrifugal thread where the host "gets the ball going" inside a ring, and then lifts the ring and the ball goes off tangentially. Watching the thing over and over, I kept seeing the host apply a tangential force on the ball and then coax that motion into a circular path with the ring. I am "stuck" on this "getting the ball going" and I am seeing this force "carried" by the ball, constrained by the ring, and then released by the ring, back into the straight line motion, that was intially imparted onto or into the ball. This inertia was given to the ball and nothing is said about it. Its important to me that the ball is carrying that force, and just because it is redirected, and other forces are applied to it, does not erase the initial force. The ball still has it, when the ring is lifted. I do not know which part of the force the ball is carrying is momentum and which part is KE. Regards, TAR

PeterJ, I am not completely devoid of experience in Tao teachings. I experienced the 70's and "third eye" teachings and aster fibers and reading about American Indian Shaman using peyote and the like to get in touch with the spirits. You can talk about Hun and Po, Yin and Yang, 3 souls and 7 spirits, as if it is literal fact, whereas I can take it all and parse it into its "real" components, according to me and my 61 years of experience, and parse it all through my own understanding of what about the world is that which is modeled, and what about the world is the model, and what about the world is the modeler. Freud discussed the Id, the ego and the super ego. Not completely foreign to the three Hun souls of Buddism. Walt Disney discussed the seven dwarfs, not completely foriegn from the seven deadly sins, or the seven po spirits. Hun and Po, not unrelated to the moon and the sun. Christians have the Son and the Father. I am sure the Sun and the Moon were around from the moment we rose from the primodial sludge, until now. Wu Wei, effortless action, is not something unappreciated by the West, or by me. Quite logically invalid, but understood. It is not up to you to decide I know nothing of these things. I am just as related to the Earth and the Sun and the Moon, and to Lucy, as you are. And making an effort to be effortless would be rather pointless. I have a general disregard, for religions that call for special knowledge and understanding, that can be accessed only by the initiated. My common understanding is that truth is available to all, free to all, and obvious to all. If you think the philosophy of the West fails to answer the main question, tell me then, in your own words, but in words I can understand without being a Taoist, what the main question, is, and what the answer, valuable to both you, and to me, and to the world, is. This thread is about the logic and sensibility related to Karma and Reincarnation. Which of the notions related to Karma and Reincarnation, do you figure are real, and which do you figure are made up? Regards, TAR

SwansonT, This morning, I was rocking back and forth in my recliner, thinking about how best to post my findings that my college physics book described centrifugal forces (the lack thereof) in exactly the way you have been telling us. I was rocking about 40 cycles a minute, exerting an upward force with my right toe, and letting the chair/me combo come back down for another tangential thrust. The motion back and forth was interesting to think about and witness. In particular, among the many observations I made about direction and extent of motion in this back and forth, along the arc of circle, I noticed that holding my two hands up radially, one infront of up and one behind up, was difficult, as the momentum of the one hand, in respect to gravity, was different than the momentum of the other. In one case, inertia was working with gravity and then against, while the other hand was undergoing the opposite inertia and working against gravity, and then with. Consistent with this finding was the fact that when I pushed up with my toe, my left hand went down, and my right hand went up, even though they at all times were traveling in tandem relative to the arc of the circle (either clockwise or counterclockwise looking at the chair from the side.) I found the right hand and left hand did not keep the same distance from each other, as the motor signals and feelings in the two hands were conflicting, until I imagined holding a saw, at which point, my predictive motor simulator could send the right signals to keep my two hands at the same distance from each other, along their respective radials. Point here, is that momentum and inertia is a two way street. There is as much a consideration for the body wanting to stay motionless, as there is for the body to want to continue moving in a straight line. And the kenetic energy present in the straight line motion, or the potential energy building up trades places, and hence direction, simultaneously with the momentum and inertia. The KE seems married to the momentum, in this regard. Regards, TAR