Sisyphus

Because they're part of the same object? What kind of connection are you looking for?

Right. Of all the ways graves are marked, two sticks nailed together is the easiest. However, the military headstones in that picture are not two sticks nailed together, and presumably more expensive than something simpler. I realize now that those aren't necessarily typical, though. Here is Arlington National Cemetery: Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedHehe, cross-posted!

Just as an aside, most grave stones aren't in the shape of crosses or other religious symbols. They're mostly slabs, usually with a rounded top. Sometimes obelisks. That's why the fact that military graveyards are ALL religious symbols is pretty strange. My guess for why is just momentum of tradition carried on from pragmatic practice: if you have to bury a lot of people at once, not all of whom will even be identified, nailing two sticks together is an easy way to mark a grave.

I say "moving" with deliberate scare quotes. There is motion: change in spatial coordinates with respect to time coordinate. Just like you can have a change in X coordinate with respect to Y coordinate in a static curve. Since the idea of 4D objects in a 4D coordinate system has already been established, I'd rather not have to worry about minor language issues. When I say "motion" or "change" I just mean one variable is not constant with respect to another variable. A mathematical description. Ok? When I say "flow" I just mean the worldline is continuous between the two points: they are related, and connected by the world line. Now that said, I don't know what you mean by "disconnected." Are opposite faces of a 3D cube not connected? Of course they are. I bring up causality just as an example of connection. What we call causality is the way changes in the universe are governed with respect to changes in the T coordinate. Much like the equation Y=X^2 describes how Y changes with respect to X.

I can't resist. I can't possibly explain every anecdote, or every supposed picture. The above is part of why I don't feel like I need to.

Sorry I missed this earlier. If you're talking about the relativity of simultaneity, then I don't think that changes anything. A different frame of reference changes the angles of world lines, but it doesn't change their topology. The lines still intersect in all the same ways, it's just a distorted picture, and that doesn't bother me. The universe would still be 4D, just not Euclidian, and there wouldn't be a single preferred 4D Euclidian representation of it. I would also stress that order of events does not have unlimited flexibility. The rule of thumb is that if light has time to travel between two events, then their order is fixed (though the amount of time between them depends on reference frame). This preserves world lines - line AB between events A and B exists in every reference frame, though its length and angle is not constant between them. I suppose, sure. Though there isn't any "outside view," and the 4D universe is not necessarily a deterministic one. "Non-deterministic" would simply be defined as 3D slices in the future direction having traits that cannot be extrapolated from all the information in a past slice. I think I answered this above, unless I misunderstand you. Time slices are not "disconnected" any more or less than they are in spatial dimensions. Information flows in worldlines, also. Slices do not so much "relay" information between them as they are already connected.

Information "moving" would be just the same as objects "moving." In other words, information would also consist of 4D world lines, though more abstract ones. So information would "flow from the past to the present" in the sense that the world lines connect the two points. Causality could be described as the shape a system of world lines in the future direction being dependent on its shape in the past direction.

Pretty much all of these types of fake proofs just involve dividing by zero at some point and hoping you won't notice.

Also, a fixed amount of savings doesn't tell you much. $10k in savings would be a lot for a 20 year old (many of whom have never worked a full time job), but nothing for a 50 year old who should have been saving for decades. Similarly, $10k in savings is a lot if you make $20k a year, and pathetic if you make $500k, etc. There's also "in debt" but still far from living paycheck to paycheck, i.e. most people who have mortgages, make the necessary payments, and still steadily increase savings. I don't know what would be a better single metric. How about: ratio of net worth increase to income? So, if you spend every penny of your paycheck, the ratio is 0, if you spend half each paycheck and save/invest the rest, it's 1/2, if you're sliding further into debt, the ratio is negative, and if you somehow manage not to spend anything, the ratio is 1, etc.

1 pound of force (weight) is equal to 1 pound of mass times standard gravity (~32ft/s^2). So basically, a 1 pound mass will weigh very close to 1 pound on the Earth's surface. The fact that "pound" is a measure of both mass and weight is one of the many reasons SI units are more practical than English units. "Pound-force" is sometimes used to specify weight rather than mass.

It would make sense to favor males over females only if the application didn't contain any directly relevant information. "Male" is not directly beneficial, but it increases the likelihood of the beneficial attribute. If the attribute is in fact directly listed, gender becomes irrelevant again.

Even simpler example. A random man is far more likely than a random woman to beat me at arm wrestling. If I then arm wrestle a woman and she beats me, can I say that I actually deserved to win, because men have more upper body strength than women?

It just depends on how you're keeping score. If the score is in apples and corn, then it's zero sum. If it's in the utility or benefits gained by apples and corn, then there is a net gain across the board.

It is a 3 dimensional object, not a dimensionless point. So no, I don't agree.

I said don't invoke time. You can't have it at two different locations. All you have is length, width, and height. How about this, to make it even more specific. You have a 3D coordinate system. In that system is a cube, 1 unit on a side, with 1 vertex at (0,0,0) and the opposite vertex at (1,1,1). What part of it is "empty?" Now have it exist in time. You have a "hypercube" with 1 unit each of length, width, depth, and duration. One vertex is at (0,0,0,0), the other at (1,1,1,1). What part of it is "empty?"

I think you misunderstand me. If you're really going to treat time as a dimension, then every statement you make about time you should be able to make about spatial dimensions, without invoking time at all. And please note that "traveling through space" IS invoking time. So, explain the "leaving empty" concept again, only using the three spatial dimensions. You have a 3D pyramid. What is empty?

I can't say that I really recommend it. I just mention her because your tongue in cheek modest proposal reminded me of her dead serious utopian ideals. Fair enough. As I in fact explained 2 posts above the one you quote, I get that. You don't make voluntary deals if you don't want what you get more than what you're parting with, by definition. And as I said, it's not a zero sum game. Both you and Home Depot benefit. And in all deals, there is at least the perception of benefit on both sides, which is definitely not the same thing as benefit, but "freedom to make mistakes, bla bla bla." I do disagree about "feeling good"/"feeling bad" though. Just because it's better than the alternative doesn't mean I feel good about it. If you were dying of thirst in the desert and I showed up and offered you a gallon of water for $50000, you'd almost certainly take it, because your life is worth more than $50000, and you're probably delusional with thirst by then anyway. You do benefit, and I haven't forced you to do anything, but you probably wouldn't be happy with me. As for the government, I don't feel bad about all my interactions with them, even if it isn't voluntary, though it might seem that way since there tends to be more separation between cause and effect. And if it was voluntary, I'd still make that choice, if the alternative was anarchy, as would almost everyone. (Though to many, it may seem like paying $50000 for a gallon of water in the desert.)

You are the one making an assertion: "creator being" is equivalent to "survival instinct." Unless that is demonstrated, saying "those are not necessarily equivalent" (the only assertion I've made) is literally just a statement of fact. Further, it is pretty easy to imagine them as separable, so I would even say that "they are not equivalent" isn't a particularly bold statement. Suppose there was a conscious being that created our universe. Suppose that being is dead. You see? Note that none of these statements are the same: "Creator being is not necessarily equivalent to survival instinct." "Creator being is not equivalent to survival instinct." "A creator being cannot also be a survival instinct." "The creator being is not also the survival instinct." The first is all I'm really willing to say, since neither "creator being" nor "survival instinct" have been coherently defined in this discussion, IMO. You can define each in terms of the other, but then you may as well just say "flargaloo" is defined as "poppinsmoot" and vice versa.

I know this is tongue in cheek, but it should be clarified that killing the poor is just as goofy. You can't have rich people without poor people, no matter what Ayn Rand insists. It might not be a zero-sum, but getting a good deal vs. a bad deal is still a big part of the difference between rich and poor.

I can just say that the free marketer response to that would be that buying a house is doing the same thing your employer does. The house is worth more to you than the money you used to pay for it, otherwise you wouldn't have bought it. So if in your value system, house is worth more than money (the wealth you "created"), so you've accumulated more wealth than you've created, and you're doing the same thing as your employer. In fact, literally every transaction is equivalent to this on both sides, and it all depends on the fact that goods and services have no inherent fixed value, but rather different value for each person dependent on perceived utility. In theory, the Microsoft shareholders value their employees' labor more than the salaries they pay them. That much is straightforward - they use it to gain more profit than they spent on it. The other half is that it is the reverse for the Microsoft employees - they value their salaries more than the labor they expend in exchange, otherwise they wouldn't get jobs there. They too are receiving more wealth than they created, inasmuch as they receive more perceived value than they put in. This is an seductively tidy, almost mathematical explanation, and an all-purpose answer, which means it is often an excuse for not thinking about our untidy and irrational reality.

What assertions? Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged A more apt analogy would be defining "God" as the creator being or as the being made of green cheese, and pretending the definitions are equivalent. Incidentally, "the creator being made of green cheese" is a coherent definition. Though in order to satisfy it, merely being a creator being or being made of green cheese would not be sufficient.

Let me put it this way. There could be such a thing as a creator being, without there being a universal "survival instinct," and vice versa. There can be aspects of the universe that do not change with time without there being either of those things. Is "soda exists, but pop does not" a coherent statement?

Those things are all synonyms. Do you think "survival instinct" and "creator being" are synonyms in the same way "soda" and "pop" are?

Ferris wheels are vertically aligned. Surely this would be horizontally aligned.

Eh? I don't think it's really circular reasoning. It's just taking the notion of a spatial dimension, and then treating time in exactly the same way. To the same extent that there is no pyramid, but rather a shrinking square moving upwards.