cladking

If you had a machine capable of infinite speed you could go to London and back in a moment. You could go anywhere in a moment including the ends of the universe. "Infinity" is a mathematical construct that can't exist in reality. For all practical purposes the exceedly complex nature of reality is far greater than infinity anyway. A butterfly flaps its wings in China and causes galaxies to collide. We can't predict the outcome of a single atomic collision yet a virtually infinite number of such collisions take place on a virtually infintesimal time scale which in aggregate determine not only our reality but the reality of colliding galaxies in the far future.

There will never be such a thing as AI because there is no such thing as "intelligence". Eventually we will invent a machine intelligence. I doubt it will be further out than 20 years and is the greatest single threat to the human species.

No. It's not "infinitely complex" because there is no such thing as "infinity" in the real world. It's far more complex than "infinitely complex" anyway. The odds of any given event occuring are effectively less than the reciprocal of infinity. If you ever think they are greater than you're looking at too large a scale or too short a time frame. Maybe I'll just log back out again for a few months now.

Science is a process dependent on metaphysics with it's own language that is nondeconstructable. Philosophy is dependent on words that mean a little something different to each person. Psychology is far worse because all knowledge is dependent on arcane and poorly defined or understood terms. Human progress is solely the result of language and its ability to allow individuals to build on the work of the past. It's impossible to build on the work of the past if you don't understand it the way it was intended. It's impossible to study the id or superego if there's no such thing as the subconscious.

Thanks again. I'm very sorry but I was confused and it was actually a beetle rather than a cricket. Wiki suggests some beetles actually cultivate fungus.

There are no laws of nature. If there were then you couldn't break them. Nature does what it does through cause and effect. But the effect can only be guessed at because the cause can never be defined completely and the means by which it operates is poorly understood.

Thank you. Very appreciated. Is it plausible that they might survive on microbes and very small organisms eating wood? I really should have noticed this inconsisteny immediately but somehow did not. The western boat pit at the base of the Great Pyramid had nothing in it but a disassembled boat so far as I know. When a camera and lights were lowered through an airtight opening recently a cricket came up to investigate it. This is a tightly sealed hole with almost no water and a boat that has apparently sat here mostly undisturbed for about 4700 years. The boat does exhibit some decomposition. The CO2 level in the pit is double normal with about half of it being ancient carbon (released from the stone?). There are some modern contaminants sugesting an incomplete seal. It is widely believed that the water was introduced by condensation from an ice cream truck that was parked over this location in the early '50's. This area is quite large and approximately 60' by 12' by 15' deep. For some reason the incongruity of a cricket in here escaped my notice initially. Any further thoughts would be very appreciated.

I'm sure they can thrive in an enviroment of rotting wood but can they actually eat the wood? If you have an enviroment of dry and rotting pine, cyprus, acacia, and dry grasses (hafagrass) made into rope is it natural to have crickets? No other insect life is actually reported.

Such things already exist and are known. If a butterfly flaps its wings in China a hurricane results a week later. There's a perception that we understand the basic elemental forces pretty well but, of course, our ability to control chaos is non existent and always will be. Contolling it would be the stuff of magic. This one will require some great writing.

Thank you. Very interesting and just the kind of information I seek. I'm actually a little more interested in the pruning itself. The TV show suggested it is very extensive in humans; that large percentages of all the connections are "pruned". I wonder if the percentages in other mammals are significantly higher or lower. It would seem likely this has some role in "play" or, at least, that play has some role in pruning. I believe babies play even before two years of age though it is simple play. Thanks.

I only see what I expect to see just like everyone else. It is slightly different for me because unlike almost everyone else I try to expunge beliefs so I'm at least a little less likely to see my beliefs (I believe ). You see evidence contradicting them because you are extrapolating and interpolating scientific knowledge so you don't see that my "beliefs" don't fly in the face of experiment, they merely fly in the face of interpolation. Even more to the point you don't see that our primary difference isn't so much science as it is perspective. Ideas like one plus one equals two have no referent in reality you find repugnant because from your perspective you know nothing if you are required to apply your knowledge to a reality. Welcome to the club. "Reality" isn't even defined by modern science except as the result of experiment. Modern experimental science doesn't need anything to progress except the possibility of making new observation and the capability of designing new experiment to test hypothesis. I believe progress is so dreadfully slow because we see what we expect and see the world in terms of our beliefs. This makes observation of anomalies and things we don't understand far more difficult. There are ways to mitigate all these problems but until we admit there is a problem they can't be addressed at all.

Science by definition has limitations and these limitations are two fold; they are metaphysics and the nature of scientists. I'm suggesting that both of these limitations make the study of some things virtually impossible at this time.

One last try here. The CO2 would be dissolved first and under extremely high pressure around 54 degrees F. Assume ample quantities of gypsum and calcium carbonate for saturation. I don't need exact numbers so much as a ballpark estimate of the proportions.

I saw a TV show the other day that children starting at age two began forming billions of connections between brain cells but most of these connections failed through disuse as the child ages. I'm curious if this same phenomenon occurs in baby animals. I'm especially curious if the connections suffer the same fate to the same degree.

There is some similarity in definition. Both apply everywhere and all the time. But natural logic wasn't handed down from on high and it is no constraint on nature. It is a property of nature and component of reality. Natural logic is nearly more a means for coming to understand reality, while discovering "natural law" is more the objective of experimental science. I could go on but I know we are each different and each have our own definitions of terms and a unique understanding so will leave it at this. There's no contradiction. We each have different beliefs and see what we expect so we each see something different. An electrician and a lawyer can watch a minor car accident and report just about the same thing if they each had a similar vantage but their assessments and meaning will vary greatly. The electrician worries about a spark setting off the gas and the lawyer worries both parties aren't insured. But if they are looking at something more mundane like the courthouse then the electrician sees how it's connected to the grid and the lawyer sees a place that justice is dispensed. The electrician sees marriage licences and the lawyer sees divorces. Even individuals change over time so what we see changes over time. We see what we believe and over many years will become our beliefs. The best advice for kids is to be careful what they believe. I certainly don't understand this perspective. I don't know what argument from incredulity you believe I made. I'm simply stating there are concepts that don't fall under the perspective of most people; that the universe is dependent on natural law or that it was created and overseen by a diety. It seems to me that telepathy (etc) can very often be thought of to be in this twilight zone. Just because God and natural law can be discerned anywhere at all doesn't bring it into the light. I love science but when I look at it as a tool and look at the results gleened to date by giants I see something very different than you see because my perspective is so very different. Yes, we are gaining and have gained an excellent format for understanding all of reality. The outline we have could even be mostly correct and we just need to fill in a little more of it and then start working on the details. I find it very impressive that we've gotten as far as we have. But from my perspective I see our knowledge as being far less than .001% of everything there is to know. When I say we know nothing I'm simply rounding it off. I am not suggesting that what we know is "wrong" and I'm not suggesting that what we know is not useful. But I am saying flat out that we are a long way from understanding the nature of the human mind and that we are mostly barking up the wrong tree at this time. The experimental stuff is important and fundamental but it's highly primitive now and the psychological stuff will not be incorporated into the format directly when we know a great deal more.

By definition all reality is determined by experiment in modern science. The problem is that experiment can only reveal a small spectra of reality. Indeed, this is how experiment is designed; to exclude everything except the little bit of reality we expect to see. The bigger problem is that we extrapolate and interpolate experimental results as the be all end all of reality. We are merely uncovering bits of natural logic rather than all of reality. We mistake our interpolations as all of reality. OK, then., Data are interpreted in terms of scientific theory. ...And religious people see the Virgin Mother in potato chips. I'm a very good experiment designer so my guess is no one thought of it. Tomato, tomatoe. And you must believe that one plus one equals two and that the Nile River was there yesterday as well because most of what you believe is dependent on such consistencies. Then we may be more in agreement than not. I'm simply of the opinion that we know such a tiny percentage of all of reality that I have far less reason to disbelieve. Science was invented after the Greeks. Science is not static but always progressing. We are always refining how we understand "natural law"; how we interpret reality. I'm simply saying that there's no such thing as "natural law". There is no referent for the term. There is only reality and it is composed of cause and effect and natural logic. What we believe is natural law is actually just extrapolation and interpolation of experiment. This is what we see; something that doesn't even exist!

Certainly, yes. Data are interpreted in terms of current theory. Even observation and what we see is dependent on theory and training. Two different people always see two very different things. But you seem to be assuming that all possible hypotheses are always being considered and that someone will see the importance of any that have value. Nothing could be further from the truth because people all share perspective on many things. Virtually everyone will agree that the cosmos was created by natural law or a Diety but where is it written? Virtually everyone will agree that one apple plus one apple equals two apples (or even one cosmos plus one cosmos equals two cosmos ). But such things aren't real. They are mere semantics. There's no compelling reason to believe reality is beholden to laws or dieties. Everything in the cosmos (including the cosmos ) is unique and hence can't be counted or manipulated in reality. So where does this leave observation and hypothesis that is outside of scientific theory? How can people even formulate an hypothesis that is outside of both religion and science? The big difference here is I'm not prone to discount people's experience just because it appears to lie outside of anything known. Of course there's a lot of chicanery and quackery about but I see no value in discounting observation in any case and this goes many times over from my perspective. From my perspective we know nothing about anything and far far far less about how the brain functions and the mind works. Of course there is huge progress being made here but until it's possible to predict a beautiful sunset and how each observer will percieve it then we really don't know much of anything. When science can say whether you should marry Martha or Caroline then we'll be able to say that we know a lot about reality. In the meantime it simply isn't legitimate to say something doesn't exist just because it hasn't been experimentally defined and measured.

Of course it's crackpottery and it will remain so until the day I'm proven correct. Speaking of which, I wager they haven't released the results of any of this recent testing because it is all indicative that I am correct. When they get into the pyramid there is a high probability they will find the missing second Sphinx and it will be surrounded by writing which they'll initially misinterpret as tomb writing in a tomb. In the spring they'll find all sorts of cold anomalies and I predict they won't even have a press conference for these. How embarrassing would it be for them to release the fact that there is a thermal anomaly at ground level 90' west of the NE corner? Orthodox beliefs can't incorporate these facts but my theory predicts them. It makes all sorts of predictions and they seem to be coming to light. There are several ways they could just cut to the chase but until people demand results they may not be forthcoming. They promised data by the end of the month but it looks like it's not coming. When I'm proven correct it will take mere months before people start saying it was obvious all the time. The evidence of your own eyes shows that Egyptological theory is vacuous and they "mustta used counterweights to build the pyramids". In the meantime my theory will continue to make accurate predictions (prophesy) because that's what all "good" science does. This is hardly a prediction (mebbe a postdiction) but if Egyptology had been using science all along this would have been solved no later than about 1995 (long before I got involved).

You did say "almost a tautology" so perhaps you can come to see my point. Reality exists independently of science and observation. It simply doesn't matter if a scientist asks the right question or even performs the right experiment. Reality always exerts itself whether that reality is seen in experimental results or is behind locked doors to the observer. Most all reality is hidden to the observer. Ancient Greeks believed an objects needed "impeti" to propel them through the air and they saw their entire world in these terms. They understood everything but only in terms of their own science and philosophy and nothing has changed today. We see the world in terms of our beliefs exactly the same way. We see what we expect. Our perception is based on our knowledge and things outside of our knowledge are invisible. We knows something falls because of gravity but we don't see that the nature of this gravity isn't really understood but is rather described and quantified by its effects. It would be almost impossible to process seeing an apple fall sideways from a tree so most couldn't describe what they had seen. In order to design an experiment to show something like "telepathy" one must first have some sort of knowledge of it. Perhaps it's real and some "rock, paper, scissors" expert will be able to design an experimrent to show it. I can even see a vague outline of the experiment which would use statistics and multiple contestents (3) at a time. Obviously, even if positive results were achieved by such an experiment we couldn't be certain exactly what phenomenon was being brought to light. We don't understand the brain well enough or communication with only the eye to ascertain the the results weren't "psychological" or "adeptness at subtle signals". Great poker players not only know when to bluff but they also know how to read other people and their hands. This is usually combined with a keen sense of statistics and calculation of odds. You can't cause the next card to be a jack of diamonds by wishing but you can calculate the odds. But reality still exists and it exists outside of scientific models. Surgeons believed it was a waste of precious time to wash their hands between patients in the 1860's and then the patients paid ultimate price through infections. In their world, in their eyes, it was far more important to stabilize the patient than to keep things clean. Surgeons weren't stupid but they couldn't see what they didn't understand. It required some individual to make an observation that was independent of the knowledge set. The difference today is people are even more confident than ever that they knpow everything and it blinds us to reality. "Science" on its current trajectory is many centuries away from being able to study such things. I'm a metaphysician more than a scientist by your definitions. I'm strictly a scientist by mine. Reality is always the same and always the result of the same forces. Of course no two events are repeatable and you can't step into the same river twice.

I should wait a few days but time isn't going to change anything because nobody cares. I tried for years to embarrass Egyptology into doing scientific testing on the great pyramids because I was and am convinced that real science rather than the bone divination they've practiced for two centuries would answer the basic questions about how they were built whether that means was ramps or levitation. I was sure my theory would be well supported and among the many predictions of my theory is that there would be a large thermal anomaly a multiple of 81' 3" south of the NE corner. Low and behold they finally bring science to the Giza Plateau after more than a quarter century of parsing the Pyramid Texts and the first thing they find is a thermal anomaly 163' from the NE corner (I attribute the 6" discrepancy to stone thicknesses). We were told there would be updates and information but the reality is that almost all the data that I have at this time was inadvertantly released. There was an "update" several days ago right on scedule but there was no new data. No data necessary to understand the anomaly. I'm not even going to link the update since it's poorly done and all it says is the testing will be continued several extra months and two more anomalies have been discovered on the north side. Yes, I probably know what these are but they didn't even bother to list the location (90' west of the NE corner et al). So here we are in limbo. They finally find the courage for a little science but not the courage to release the results. I tried to get this information. I'm not sure what went wrong but there was apparently failed communication. I've watched for the report and haven't seen it. It appears they didn't try to measure the heights of the so called "pavement" except in the centers of the pyramid. The R Squared on stones close to the center would probably be too poor to be meaningful. These are exceedingly well installed so this data would still be of extreme value to me.

I'm not throwing blame and it's not "they" it's "we". We see what we expect. We can't see what we don't know. We see a vacuum of evidence because we see what we know. Until an experiment shows it we don't see it. One person knows there's a God and another knows there isn't. Yet everyone agrees that you can add one apple and one apple and will always get two apples. There is an invisible fundamental structural error in perception and meanwhile those who know telekinesis is real and those who know it isn't are talking right past one another. No, of course you aren't required to consider anything in a vacuum of evidence but the reality is that if your perception were different this vacuum would evaporate. So long as we view "reality" from the perspective of what we know we'll see what we know preferentially to the reality. I'm sure that as a scientist some things require a higher level of evidence to be worthy of investigation than other. Things that don't fit theory or fly in the face of theory are necessarily going to take a back seat to things that can be investigated with current knowledge. I had to chuckle when Strange suggested; A great deal of the "science" now days has absolutely nothing at all to do with science yet everyone eats it up like they were starving. Every day that goes by it gets a little worse and no one notices and fewer care. All you have to do is attach "ologist" to a title and suddenly everything anyone says is holy gospel. Butlet someone point out that there areflaws in our perspective or understanding and he's a scientific heretic and will be "excommunicated". How appropriate that such a word is actually in usage already. I'd have had to make that one up.

I don't know they exist. As I said, they can't even be defined. But there are many things that can't be defined that most agree exist. Beauty, for instance, is percieved by most individuals yet every attempt at definition falls short from some perspectives. I believe beauty exists and I know intuition exists. This certainly doesn't mean that beauty can be measured or quantified any more than other such concepts like "intelligence" or "foreknowledge". Magic is defined and controlled. "Coincidence" is universal and ongoing. It is not controlled or predictable (by definition). Of course science can be done linearly and of course those who have better knowledge and observational skills are more likely to invent viable hypotheses or relevant experiment. Such individuals often worked harder to get where they are. There's never anything at all wrong with knowledge and hard work unless it blinds you to reality. The topic is whether some of these things that go bump in the night are real. It is my contention that they apparently are in some manner but there's no room in many people's knowledge or belief sets to even entertain the possibilities. Some people are more willing to admit such things than others. If I couldn't "sleep on things" I'd be years behind where I believe I am. Since a very young age I've programmed a question every night. Yes, I claim otherwise, but that isn't relevant to the thread. What is relevant is that we don't know how the mind/ brain/ body works so ascribing any characteristics at all to "mind" is wholly speculative. If you go back and read what I said again you'd see I said "hunches and predictions". How are our minds supposed to be able to predict something so ephemeral as a ghost in a beautiful sunset? How do we predict a cloud that looks like a 1950's era computer or a 2050's era rocket engine? It's OK to see the world in terms of the concrete but one should remember that reality is always oozing out the sides of our comprehension. Experiment is insufficient to explain all of reality and this will always be true to a greater or lesser extent. Understanding that stones fall is insufficient for understanding the entire nature of a mountain or the entire reality of what a mountain is. Even if you add understanding of tectonics, bouyancy, and inertia you still aren't even scratching the surface of what a mountain is. Reality is far too complex even if "mountain" could be defined or there were two identical mountains or even one mountain that didn't change in even the briefest time period. Everyone wants to speculate about what's real and what's not but science doesn't work this way and we forget because extrapolate scientific knowledge far outside of its metaphysics.

Magic is merely sleight of hand; it is the art of getting the "victim" to attend to the least important parts of what you are doing. Magic is well understood by the magician. The magician knows the trick and how to keep you from seeing it. Not even the things that go bump in the night are understood by the perciever. Some can probably become quite adept at predicting or interpreting them but their nature simply isn't understood or truly under anyone's control. I find no psychics to be convincing but I don't discount anyone's hunches or predictions whether they themselves believe or not. Obviously acting on every guess is a waste of time, resources, and effort. Scientists formulate hypotheses through hunches and intuition. Few would admit it but hypothesis and experiment even come to people in their sleep or through some other sort of "vision". You can say this is related to the actions of the mind but without evidence and experiment this is mere speculation.

Even if you can see a little snippet of the future it doesn't mean you can see it in context or that your hunch/ intuition involves the capacity to turn your head in the future and look at a clock or calender. There are powerful forces in reality that can not be measured, defined, or understood scientifically at this time. One can simply consider these phenomena "coincidence" or "happenstance" but then one will see only the models generated by scientific experiment. One can dismiss the unknown but at the cost of believing everything is already known.

Now days most indiviuduals would be prone to b) or even c). Then he better watch out for the dogs on the way back to his ship. The human race would do "d)". The irony is that the alien would be essentially correct and with a high tech spacecraft has an actual chance to convince people. It's even possible that the distances between stars preclude travel without "alien" knowledge. But the alien had better be in position to defend himself or he'll find he no longer has any technology at all and that he's about to be vivisected. Nobody would simply accept he's right. Nobody would even entertain the possibility he's right.