cladking

Of course there's no evidence. From the current perspective, the perspective generated by the brain's operating system call language, only our consciousness is set in stone and even it can't be clearly defined, measured, or understood (except when considering itself). It's little better from the perspective where reality is taken as a given however things fit together differently and some things are more easily seen. People want answers to the big questions but the reality is we can't have these answers at the current time so all we can do is better understand the questions. To each his own?

Well, if love means never having to say your sorry then naturally modern times is hard on men. We not only are expected to apologize endlessly but our leaders even take it upon themselves to apologize for us. On a little more serious note the food supply now is so adulterated that it might have any number of effects. Overweight, sluggish, and drugged people will probably all have lower levels. It's really tough to say. This is the first generation of men who are expected to be "sensitive" so who knows? There are likely other factors as well. I apologize if you're too young to catch the references.

Indeed. The important thing in calculation is to maintain the same frame of reference. The important thing for Wile E Coyote is to not know there's no longer a cliff under him since there's no acceleration until he does. Fortunately for Acme it requires only a frame or two for even fatal injuries to completely heal.

First thing in the whole thread I disagree with!!! Don't get me wrong, certainly scientific "fact" is a socially derived thing just as all "fact" has a social component. However "fact" certainly does exist independently of language and experimental science that springs fdrom it. We can never be actuall;y certain of any fact and there's a tendency for individual to more likely be wrong the more certain they are. Sometimes even expert opinion is more likely to be wrong than common sense or the flip of a coin. I call "facts" to be things I'm 99.9% confident. I'm typing on a computer that employs digital software to communicate with other entities who are all humans. This is a "fact". I'm 99.9% confident that it's true. The same applies to the thermometer. I'm 99.9% confident that warmer bodies will register higher temperatures and their warmth is directly proportional to the reading. The scale and numbers are irrelevancies unless I need to communicate temperature (average heat) to another individual. Again, I'm 99.9% confident this is all true. Of course this isn't the way most people think. Very interesting thread thus far. 3 x 4 = 12 isn't a measurement but a quantification of reality itself. We simply lose sight of the meanings of the terms and how we process concepts. But none of these terms "3", "4", "x", or "12" are real. Indeed, even "=" doesn't exist in the same sense as three piles of four apples makes twelve apples to the degree that each term is properly applied; that is applied in a way that is consistent with the meaning of each term and the word "apple(s)". Certainly there is a great deal of harmony and balance to twelve being equivalent to three piles of four. What we have here isn't a failure of science, math, or application but rather a failure to communicate. Unless you see that the words are mere constructs and everything is dependent not only on metaphysics and the language we use to establish definitions and understand reality then you will misapprehend the meanings of terms and the nature of the reality no one can directly perceive. We make sense of sensory input by arranging our brain to conform to it but we still use language as the operating system. Modern language is not the only possible operating system for humans.

I've been trying very hard to show this evidence for a long time now but it requires a completely different way of thinking apparently. It requires a whole new perspective at the very least. From the prerspective of the way we think we see what we know and we know that four is more than two. If I ask whether you want two big piles of something you desire or four tiny piles you'll take the two big ones and then claim the question was some sort of trick instead of a representation of the reality that no two of anything actually exists so that numbers are a construct. What makes the person choose the two big piles is simple logic; he can see that two is greater than four in this instance. By the same token there are many ways to skin a cat and any system that works will be repeatable. If you apply logic to a system and define the terms such as math it will simply be repeatable. If we strip nature down to something that works in the lab then this too will be repeatable. Every time we slide a weight down an inclined plane it will never accelerate at 32' per sec ^ 2. It will always be dependent on the specific angle and friction. But this doesn't mean we've invented gravity but merely that we've identified a force that always acts the same and that can be quantified. Yes, everything is in perfect balance and this was called "maat" in ancient science. It is the balance of logic and nature which gives rise to it. We didn't invent it but merely quantified it. We typically don't see this balance and we don't see the reality directly but rather we see the models that derive from experiment and definition. We see the world as an extension of our knowledge, we see the world in terms of our knowledge never realizing the nature of knowledge is distinct from reality because of definitions and perspectives. Our understanding is derived from the effect of reality on experiment.

Math isn't "real" nor are numbers or the way math is applied. But logic is real and any system founded on a logical framework will yield consistent answers. While brains operate on a logical system modern language does not. Instead we operate on constructs with which we create paradigms and models. Since math is at the heart of many of these models they will always appear to be true to the observer. The closer you look at natural forces stripped to their basics as in the lab then observation will almost always match models perfectly. When they don't a new model is invented based on new experiment.

I'm afraid the survey of the pyramid base didn't pan out for falsifying my theory. Unfortunately all the known points were too close to the centers of the sides to show much difference in elevation. I suspect they didn't measure the elevations anyway so talking about r ^ 2 is irrelevant. On a much brighter note they have done some of the infrared scanning and early results show anomalies that are consistent with my theory. Indeed, they show what is apparently the entrance to the Mafdet Lynx which is subsumed under the NE corner of the pyramid according to my understanding of the PT and physical evidence. Since this statue is low in the structure and surrounded by walls it seems to have heated up significantly this last summer and is now radiating this heat through the narrow doorway and being seen by the infrared transducers. This is under the light area that shows the location on the gravimetric scan; http://hdbui.blogspot.com/ Since the Mafdet Lynx faces slightly north of ENE itis llikely that this passage leads to the area behind her right foreleg. This is in keeping with ancient thinking since the statue was to "protect" the pyramid and the "temple" at the grotto. You can even see the path leading to it that was very ancient when the pyramid was built around 2700 BC. I suspect this door still works properly and can be opened by merely removing the wooden pin through the upside down dark T shaped stone to the left. This entrance is about 163' south of the NE corner. Things should start moving pretty fast now. There are many more anomalies that will prove my theory but this one they already found is the most important because that path leads straight to the Book of Thot which was their equivalent to the Handbook of Chemistry and Physics".

Of course I don't know any of that. I don't know you're real or that some consciousness isn't intentionally trying to make me mispercieve reality. I don't even know that the communicative "property of math (ab=ba) applies in every single case. Maybe it only applies when I check it and that consciousness makes it that way. Maybe sometime I'll check it when He's not looking and find out it's all a fraud. Science may never be able to answer the questions. In 500 years so far we still don't know even the tiniest fraction of 1% of everything that is. If there were such a thing as infinity, our knowledge hardly adds up to its reciprocle. In the meantime I will posit that reality is exactly what it appears to be. I will make a conscious effort to see that reality rather than the models created by science. This is much like ancirent science except that it is augmented by modern science and modern math.

Again, I'm going to have a tough time disagreeing with you because we are in general agreement. However there is only one universe, one possible universe, and a single reality that applies everywhere. In this reality there is a 3: 4: 5 triangle and these proportions can be described mathematically or by other means. The beauty of using math is that physical displacements or distances can be easily and "precisely" communicated. But the triangle doesn't conform or bend to math but rather they both answer to the exact same logic and this logic is everywhere a part of reality. This logic guides a bird's flight and every planet. Nature doesn't perform infinite calculations to keep the stars in orbit but rather the universe can be described by logic.

Indeed. Government can waste more in a second than a village can waste in a lifetime. But the system is unsustainable and the nature of its collapse can not be predicted with any kind of math so it can not be controlled.

This just isn't true. I believe it seems true because of two fundamental misunderstandings. First is the nature of math and second is the nature of reality. We have simply defined nature through experimental results and these seem to be mathematical because math is logical and reality is logical. Math is quantified logic so it's a quantification of reality. In a sense you're exactly right probably because eventually we just might know the equation of reality itself but for now all we have are bits and pieces of math that can be used to solve problems when they are applied properly to the real world. I don't know that all knowledge will ever be simplified to an equation or a mathematical construct so for now all that's left is to examine the hardware and the "owner's manual" (metaphysics). I believe a great deal of math is being misapplied and this gets more apparent every day as the world wastes ever more resources and human talent and human life. We're doing ever more work to waste ever more of everything. Need I even mention this is unsustainable? When people start worrying about all the consumption they want to decrease efficiency even more to combat it. We close efficient (relatively) factories in the US and open inefficient ones with even lower quality in China and ship the products from the other side of the world. Products that once lasted for decades now last for weeks or months. So they just shrink the package, pump it up with water, and put it on sale for double what it used to cost. We even ship all this garbage great distances to put it back into the earth. Math is not the solution to our problems nor to understanding reality. Math is a tool and a very useful one at that. But, it must be appropriate for each of its uses and it obviously is not. This is simply the nature of math as quantified logic and the nature of man to use creative accounting, double billing and double books, lying figures, and cheating prosperous. It can occur even in real science (of which less and less seems to exist every year).

I'm a hardware guy.

I don't so much disagree as I see it from another perspective. Math is quantified logic and reality is most probably completely logical. But it's not math we need to come to understand, it's reality.

I don't know if there is any water to be released, that it ever was, or that it was reabsorbed. However, I believe a relatively long term very slow release or a very short term large release could both give rise to the flood stories.

If the mantle really has a lot of water in it as has been suggested its sudden release could inundate the planet to more than 5,000'.

I merely meant that if the mantle were slowly releasing water there would not necessarily be any damage to speak of. Most of the damage from such a protracted event would be when it started (before humans?) and when changes occurred. The biggest change might have been its cessation and the story (of that cessation) was confused as the time of the flood.

Not really. However one can hypothesize that the water in the earths mantle could be triggered to release and water poured up from the depths. Of course water in the earth's mantle isn't established scientific fact but there are some who believe it could contain as much as .05%. Perhaps it's chiefly to try to legitimize the Bible story which says the water sprang from the earth as it rained. For what it's worth I sometimes toy with the idea that there actually was such a release of water but that it was very slow and had relatively little effect on sea level in the short term. After the last ice age it began subsiding and completely ended by about 2750 BC. The flood story is merely a confusion of the ancient belief that the earth had once had water coming up out of the ground. There wouldn't necessarily be any damage whatsoever. Just as the hydraulic cycle and gravity assure all water runs to the sea the water from these springs would simply form the headwater of rivers. If they had been flowing for a protracted time then people would simply live along these waterways and then been displaced when they stopped. Naturtal forces like collapses and sinkholes could also stop the water flow locally and the water might arise in other places and create a new river. Anyone in its course would have to move. Some could be killed because of the nature of water to pool until it's deep enough to breakthrough. The ancient Egyptians said the Nile arose from two springs but this is widely discounted today.

Extrapolating reality from models is equivalent to a poet learning poetry from his own poem. It's even more ridiculous since a human being can exceed his potential, his totality, and a model can't because a model must adhere to the reality expressed through experiment. . The improvement of models over time is through interpolation and cross referencing with other models with experiment as its guide. But no model that lies outside the metaphysics, the rules of model building, will serve to strenghten understanding or the ability to predict. Theory becomes a frankenstein's monster of unrelated bits and parts that seem to fit together but bear little relationship to reality and fail at the basic goal of science; prediction. Just as with language there is no certainty we'd even notice when communication between models and reality fails.

Interesting. I disagree in a few key areas and believe the presentation is incomplete but he appears to be a good metaphysician. There's a lot of overlooked common sense in it. I've always tried to maintain a future perspective to help remember we're all always wrong and this will forever be true.

I personally don't believe anyone can see reality directly. Even people who look through the lens of religion or voodoo will catch glimpses of it once in a while just as do those of us who try to see it thrpough science or logic. We can't know what we've seen but when it agrees with experience and knowledge we can be reasonably confident we've caught a little peek at it. But seeing it laid bare is everyone's objective though no opne seems to know that and far worse almost everyone thinks their estimation of reality; their models or religious beliefs, is all that exists of reality. Nature is so fantastically complex we might never get a good look at her. But in time it should forever improve. While progress has probably not been at all straight line it still exists and we're still allinterested in the big picture which is reality or nature.

And science doesn't even have the existence of reality as a given! How can any sort of "truth" exist outside reality? Science isn't about truth at all in any of its definitions. Science is about learning about reality through the effects of reality on experiment. People choose to act as though there's only one truth, one language, and one science while scientists are building models of experiment and calling it "theory". We always only see our beliefs whether these beliefs involve God or models. Add in the simple fact that models are becoming increasingly reflections of math rather than experiment and you can see that science is losing its ties to reality, especially on the cutting edge.

In a nutshell it is what the world looks like from a scientific perspective without the models. This will prove quite difficult for most individuals because most people don't know what they know. For some a first step might be reading "The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science". There are others but they might be considered off topic here and I'm considering starting a more apt thread; "Metascience".

It's the same thing I spoke of earlier. If you stand on the track in front of a speeding freight train your life is in extreme danger. It doesn't matter if the exact outcome is predictable or not to the individual standing on the track. Of course if the train is still a mile away then perhaps it will be switched to another track or will derail before it gets to you. If it hasn't even left the Omaha station yet then many things might prevent it from killing you. This same thing applies to the ISS. In twenty seconds it would be impossible to notice any deviation from its computed location and speed. But how about tomorrow or next year. This is one of the things that can be plotted in exquisite detail since it is large scale and brief duration but extend the time frame and no one knows. The forces that will affect it aren't even known yet and the events that will shape its future and its future trajectory aren't yet known. If it were simply abandoned and its orbit allowed to decay we couldn't begin to predict where it would crash or the shape of the debris. This would be affected by more subtle things like weather patterns and the myriad situations where the variables can't be identified and quantified. If you open a pair of pliers you can predict exactly how much the handle must be opened to grip a three quarter inch bolt but you can't predict how much it must be opened to to grip a cherry that only exists in the form of a blossom. Of course we apply math to nature all the time. But our understanding and our models are highly incomplete so math is of necessity always misapplied to a greater or lesser extent. With the ISS it's about 99.99999% properly applied in the short term. But even here if the people in the ISS all were to suddenly start off in the same direction the numbers would be thrown off. Obviously, in docking and maneuvering operation the orbit would change. In the real world there are always unknowns. I think people are missing my points here. I'm hardly calling for an abandonment of math, science, and the ISS. Indeed, I'm not really asking anything here except that people try to see a different perspective. From this perspective the world looks far different than it does from the models. From this perspective the things that can be seen are just as real and some might be more important than even the models themselves.

It's not in a philosophical sense but in reality. Obviously models are tied to reality but the tie is indirect. Reality affects experiment and the models reflect experiment. The problem is that people are mistaking the model for the reality. There is no such thing as an "electron" but rather there are extensive experiments of many types which all say something similar to our "electron" must exist. This is no fine distinction when fundamental knowledge about the nature of electrons is lacking. Our understanding of models fools us into thinking we understand the reason so many experimnents say "electrons" exist. Yes. This is the nature of language. Words represent concepts rather than the thing itself. Essentially true but not quite what I'm trying to convey. Words represent concepts because there is no ideal for "chair" or "table" and there are many definitions and connotations for both words. We see what we know and when we have a model for everything we tend to believe we know everything when in point of fact our ignorance is virtually complete. I'm using the definition of "metaphysics" as "the axioms and definitions upon which a science is founded". I never use another definition of this word. Perhaps it's the belief that rules exist that is confounding things and holding up progress. Nature behaves in predictable ways only in the short term and the large scale. In the long term and on the tiny scale nature is notoriously unpredictable. Man is part of nature yet in the affairs of man the future is also notoriously unpredictable. Indeed, nature is quite unpredictable all the time when all the variables can't be identified and quantified and this is almost all the time. For instance it's nearly impossible to predict what will happen in a power failure. Sure you can use statistics to estimate the number of fatalities but you certainly can't identify any of the victims before the fact. No, nature has numerous characteristics and processes that are repeatable. You can compute how far a rock will move if you know the forces applied to it with great accuracy. This does not mean the rock is behaving laws nor that nature does. It merely means that we can identify gross and subtle ways that nature operates. It doesn't mean we know all the rules nor that nature must operate in some given way. If you find the models confusing, that is your problem. It doesn't stop them being useful. . I know nothing about the other thread. But science is merely the scientifiuc process, its results, and its axioms and definitions. Nature is reality and until we understand nature there are only scientific models which will become ever more encompassing unless this tool is already played out. Need I remind you we've been stuck on the unified field theory for nearly a century. And it probably can never be proved to be infinite and this assumes that cartesian geometry has any meaning in reality. A real number can dwarf infinity. Numbers extend to infinity in two directions and if you can add more dimensions. How much is infinity squared? etc etc. How many billions of vigintillion atoms exist? A few million? Each one of these may affect every other so in every collision there are a virtually infinite number of possible outcomes yet there are countless such collisions in even the briefest lenght of time. These collisions always determine the course of events yet the number of possible outcomes is staggering. If you convert these possibilities to ones ands zeros and the entire known universe with them (ones and zeros) you can still hold all this information for only the tiniest lenght of time. Infinity is child's play in comparison to the actual complexity of reality. If the butterfly in China causes a hurricane here next week will the first water molecule that was exhaled by Ghengis Khan be the one that causes a leaf to fall that plugs a drain and floods a home? This comnplexity is boundless but we can't see it because we see our models and the understanding they generate. We are blind to what we don't understand. Thanks. People are so set in their beliefs they can only see a single perspective most of the time so they run out in front of a semi never seeing the car hidden behind it before they are hit. They check to make sure there's no car coming never realizing that if you don't look at the entire lane there might be a motorcycle in it. Despite the fact that riding a motorcycle is tantamount to suicide they won't put light extending away from the machine so it can be seen. People live in a narrow world created not by human nature but by language. It builds models of experiment. Observation merely drives experiment (and about everything else in science). If you add one penny plus one penny you get two pennies and it doesn't matter if one is shiny and the other is corroded. Of course if a baby swallows the corroded one it might dissolve and be fatal and there's nothing you can buy for 2c any longer. It's painfully obvious as I've stated several times that we usually get away with applying math to the real world and this is because we recognize the limitations of math and the complexity of reality. We simply don't compute how much gas we'll need to drive to Hawaii. But we do compute how long it will take to get home and whether we need to stop for gas even though we later learn the bridge is out or the car gets a flat. We can count our rabbits but if they share cages we can grossly underestimate the cost of rabbit food because 1 + 1 = 2 never applies perfectly to the real world. Nature doesn't hold still for our math and it doesn't do what we tell it to or does it obey laws.

This statement looks absurd tome but that's just because we don't share the same perspective. You care about modelling the laws of nature and I don't believe there are any laws of nature and that models are confusing. You think metaphysics is magic and I think it's the rules of both ancient and modern science. Reality is the object of all science because understanding reality is how predictions are made. Infinity is a mathematical construct just like the number "2". Neither exist though "2" does have real world referents. "Infinity" does not. Imagine a rocket that can accelerate to infinite speed. The pilot can withstand only a couple g's on a cointinuing basis so trying to reach the ends of the universe and report back is going to take a long time. Replace the pilot with instrumentation that can withstand 100 g's but again if the universe is immense there's no way of predicting how long is required to return with the data. Now imagine the rocket can by some means accelerate to infinite speed instantaneously. If it instantaneously returns with data from the edge of the universe then you know that the universe is finite. If it doesn't return immediately then what have you learned? Are we to believe its still traveling at infinite speed seeking the edge but just can't find it? How can infinite distance trump infinte speed. By definition it must go "all the way" immediately. I repeat, for all real world applications there is no such thing as infinity. Reality creates staggeringly large numbers that dwarf "infinity" for all practical purposes anyway. Mathematics is a construct that works only because it reflects the logic of nature. You may not have noticed, but there are more than two things out there. (Apart from the fact that your claim is bogus.) But there may be no two identical things. Even if there were two identical thing time exists to keep them from occupying the same place and hence they can't be completely identical.