cladking

This is 1940's thinking. I don't necessarily disagree and sometimes I almost feel watched by millions of future generations but our future is hardly certain. The number of ways to go wrong is large and I expect tests in the next century especially. The biggest threats now all relate directly or indirectly to our propensity to believe and act as though we know everything. Certainly the human race has never before had the tremendous opportunities and challenges that face us now. We will prevail but only after a lot of hard work and reversing many of the current trends.

I believe it is everyone's duty to leave the world a better place. One's happiness should to at least some extent derive from leaving the world better than he found it. This isn't to say one must work or have a career but he should generally leave things better than he found it. The only problem with idleness is that it can degenerate into hedonism which will leave one empty and unhappy given enough time. It requires very little work now days for a person to earn enough to cover what the world loses in supporting him. There's no rational reason people need to put in the long hours most do. But they desire to always have more. Suit yourself but never forget your primary duties or things you consider your duty such as family.

I'd have been very happy to read the whole thing but stopped here. The source of most knowledge (other than aunt Edna's birthday) is language. Mebbe I'll go back and read it but I will have very little agreement with it. Edited to add that I short changed the post. It's interesting. I may get back to some of these ideas.

Indeed! "Efficiency" is now defined as the ability to make ever more ever more inferior products at lower cost despite the impact on consumers or the enviroment. We make a million belts at the same cost as we once made 100,000 but belts that once lasted 30 years now won't last six weeks. The CEO gets a huge bonus as people scurry from store to store to buy more belts. If they really were afraid of global warming they'd reinstate taxes on the CEO's and taxes on products to discourage waste. They'd pass laws against selling junk and enforce existing law against pumped up food products. They'd encourage new construction up away from the oceans. Instead they continue their war on coal and blow a lot of hot air. They kill jobs and relocate them to China.

I've been opposed to public policy in the US since 1959 since it was first observed that demand for oil would outstrip US supply in 30 years or less (it was only 11). I've been opposed to waste and inefficiency since the mid-'60's since it was shown conclusively that man was increasing the CO2 content in the atmosphere. Up until the early 1980's I believed the height of insanity is to perform an uncontrolled experiment on the only planet we have. But now I know that was nowhere near the height of insanity. The true height of insanity is rewarding CEO's for increasing waste and inefficiency by eliminating taxes on them. Now everything we do is geared toward worsening the problem. We shut down highly efficient plants in the US and send the jobs to China which results in greatly increased emissions and far lower efficiency and then ship products around the world at huge expense. We make gasahol that reduces mileage and actually requires more energy to produce than is released. Meanwhile our food products are pumped up with water and Washington DC has gone from the poorest city in the country to the wealthiest in a decade. A building boom exists because business needs infrastructure to run government. This is the same business that brought us the military industrial complex anmd pumped up chickens. It's the same business that is blind to everything past the next quarter. Meanwhile people sit in fear of global warming that seems to exist only in the minds of computers and the words of politicians. We make things even worse to combat this fear. Rather than increasing efficiency that rewards everyone we destroy the planet and enrich the few.

Perhaps big bangs and big crunches are local events. This would imply a far older and far larger universe than normally assumed.

This can't be a legitimate problem since Congress recently approved the tax payer continuing to pay for damages to private and public enterprises in coastal areas. If they really believed the oceans would rise then they'd have encouraged new infrastructure to be built at higher elevations by allowing the free market to force the issue. If Congress doesn't believe in global warming than why should the average man? What do they know that we don't. Temporary ports can be built very quickly.

Apparently you aren't the only one to think so. i mentioned this thread to a friend and he said he saw no such evidence on the sites he frequents. Popcorn Sutton may have a point about people here being different because of a scientific interest. But all the sites I frequent have calmed down quite a lot in the last decade. They used to be like the wild west where it was shoot first and ask questions later. You had to swagger into the sites or everyoine would walk all over you. If you did swagger in the personalities at the top of the pecking order would be gunning for you. Trolls oozed out of the woodwork and people engaged them. Real world threats were not uncommon. I can't help but think some of these kids who behave so poorly might have to pay a high price someday. There's so much storage capacity and it seems every year there is wider access.

I believe this is primarily just culture. People used to take every post they read as a personal insult and now we are more apt to just try to understand the words. God knows it's usually a herculean task. Trolls were mostly created by misunderstanding just like war.

I believe we are far too dependent on machines and technology for this to be a problem. We have more to fear from sabotage of the machines. We have most to fear from the widespread belief that people aren't responsible for their actions. Death and destruction are no longer the result of peoples' actions and inactions. They are simply unavoidable because no one tried to cause mayhem. The incompetent are promoted because their intentions are good. The route to hell is paved in gold. m ,

Government always destroys far more than it creates. A government with unlimited power will express that power through unlimited destruction. All systems derive their power from the people and the people can withdraw their support at will. Oppressors can remain in power only so long as they have this general support.

The driver has always been the exact same thing but we've lost sight of it in the last 4000 years. We've lost sight because of confusion and the propensity of individuals to jump in front of the crowds and pretend to lead while often lead- ing to wars and catastrophy. It is the average Joe who weilds the real power and can always take it back at will. It manifests as demand and must be fullfilled by the system in place. This demand becomes virtually an entity that drives events through its own expression and blind chance. The real economic and political power lies almost solely in the common people who are usually content to allow the "powers that be" to do the grunt work. When their work gets too shoddy or justice is forgotten there will be a new order.

Both parts of the statement are true but the ability touse cognition productively is also associated with cognition so doesn't well separate it from wisdom. Obviously experience is more associated with the ability to use cognition productively than is intelligence. A wise man might not point out so fine a distinction but we otherwise seem to be in close agreement.

Intelligence is the ability to quickly deduce the best solution. Wisdom is knowing the solution or the ability to pick the probable best of all solutions.

You have some interesting perspectives here. It's going to require a lot more thought. Perhaps math is a quality of space and logic is a quality of time. This does seem somewhat poetic. Maybe ARU and a universe where time is the primary component are even related subjects.

Logic is as inate to nature as is math. It is confused by language. You can't perform basic logical steps with bad definitions or "grammar". Your ARU observation could be a step toward better recognizing logic using our language but there are quite probably more direct means used by animals or savants (and/ or generalists).

Indeed. ...Perhaps also "neither" and "it's far more complicated than that". In very real ways the human brain is a computer that processes information just like an electronic computer. The biggest difference is that the human brain is hardwired to process information that is important to humans just as a rabbit's brain processes information unique to rabbits. The language used by the brain is flexible and ever changing and is the format in which the brain operates. The number of possible language systems is likely infinite (or must be thought of this way). The way an individual uses any language system is unique. The sort of "math" to which the brain "aspires" is not the analytical math of computers (the math that allows their operation), but is geared to achieving best results by human standards and individual standards. Much of what comprises an individul human from the standpoint of beliefs and actions is determined by accumulated knowledge and beliefs which are far more related to experience, education, and superstitions than to rapid and accurate thought. Modern language obscures such things but is highly flexible and well suited to science and the communication of scientific results.

They had writing. You arew making an assumption that the arch or the wheel would have made building the pyramid easier but this is unsubstantiated. We don't even know how they built the pyramid so we don't know where an arch or wheel would have helped. The wheel was actually invented 1000 years before the Great Pyramid was built so if they needed it then I'm very confident they would have used it.

People have lost sight of how defining time and place is. The exact same words uttered at one time and place can have a distinctly different meaning than when said elsewhere or when. The perspective of the listener and speaker also affect meaning. Everything is perspective.

I believe most royal blood lines for a long time now are simply exclusionary and designed to keep out commoner blood so it doesn't dilute the blueblood. While some royals are fairly intelligent there is no attempt to prevent the slower ones from reproducing or even from assuming the crown. Women have usually sought mates more intelligent than themselves but I'm not confident that this would necessarily lead to a general increase in the population for several reasons. The long gestation period would make any breeding program difficult for the proto-humans to execute and the lack of complex language would impair their ability to maintain it. There are the interesting consistencies though like the difficulty of childbirth being virtually unique to humans due to the large brain. Perhaps it was some simpler process like the tendency to simply evict those who caused trouble or failure. When food was plenty there would be little loss in the eviction of adults because they could be easily replaced. Most evictees would probably never reproduce again. Maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree.

Before the advent of complex language which gave rise to humanity the late proto-humans must have realized that some members of the tribe were less "intelligent" than others. Some individuals tended to understand and succeed and some tended to cause confusion and fail. Humans are (and were) a little more clever than most animals and could notice that this ability to succeed tended to run in families and breed true. Perhaps they attempted to breed humans for intelligence but their only parameters for measuring intelligence were closely related to the ability to communicate with nature and one another. The rise of the human speech center might not have been mutation but genetic experimentation by our animal forebearers. Proto-humans, humans, and hybrids without complex language would very very quickly fall by the wayside because they were at such a strong evolutionary disadvantage. This same thing was impossible when the language changed about 2000 BC probably because there are natural limitations to the ability of a brain to process information. There are limits to biological intelligence and language had become so complex that even breeding would (or did) fail to keep up with the increasing complexity. The "nephilim" might have been the descendents of the attempt to preserve the language intact by artificial (or natural) means. There were also practical real world impossibilities to continued "evolution" to preserve the ancient language. The economies of the time had become suffiently complex as to require a large population. The rest of history is simply the result of (confused) language. Obviously if animals can invent dams (beavers) and air conditioned cities (termites) there is no reason they couldn't invent "animal husbandry" and apply it to themselves. The simple fact is that within only 30,000 years humans had gained enough knowledge to begin breeding animals and plants. Another 5,000 years and they invented writin which led to an explosion of knowledge and the collapse of the language. There is as much logic to nature as there is to math. Our current view of our ancestors as sun addled bumpkins is nearly as laughably illogical as the concept that we are intelligent. Both of these non sequiturs arose from confused language.

From your link; "...inertia originates in a kind of interaction between bodies..." I think you may be on the right track. Perhaps it's inertia which is inate, related to time, and that causes gravity. Why does time exist in the relationship between matter and energy? Is the speed of light held back by the weight of the photon? I suppose I'm rambling...

I trust you'll have a lot of difficulty showing this experimentally. How can you determine that your mass has inertia if it's the only thing in the universe? How can inertia even be defined if its state, position, and speed can't be determined? In a vacuum wouldn't a molecule revolve around it's center of gravity? If there were a universe with a single spinning mass would it revolve around its center of gravity? Since we don't know the nature of gravity then how can we say that the outside of a subatomic particle isn't attracted to the inside? Perhaps we don't know the nature of gravity and electo-magnetic forces because we misunderstand some basic concept. Maybe it's just me.

You're making numerous assumptions here. Perhaps the easiest way to show it is to simply ask if the outside of the mass you are postulating to exist is being attracted by the inside through gravity.

I believe the problem with the way the medie handle science is not directly caused by the failure of education. Obviously as reporters are dumbed down so too will their handling of science stories suffer but it goes beyond this since not all reporters are less well informed and this has always been the case. It's more a reflection of edit- orial policy that includes anything of "reader interest" whether it's really science or not. It's about selling advertising rather than the truth or the facts. While reporters on the whole have much poorer scientific background the reporting of such things has suf- fered far more. It's not being addressed because it is so pervasive. We don't teach the basis; the na- ture of science (people don't even recognize the word for this) so even well educated people often don't understand the nature of science. People in the soft "sciences" are often unfamilar with even basic concepts of science. This is in no way about my theory. The fact that my theory has broad implications is irrelevant. It doesn't matter how I know that the media doesn't care about facts, what matters is that they don't and that Ancient Aliens is just another sympton of this. The dumbing down is affecting everything. Some of the "mechanical" failures can be laid at the feet of computers and the internet which has caused people to devalue knowledge since it can be looked up, but critical thinking is falling by the way- side at the same time and this is another cause of Ancient Aliens. There is no science being applied to archaeology as it concerns these subjects. Many people know intuitively or through other means that our beliefs are wrong and this is what has given rise to numerous ideas like Atlantis, aliens, levitation, and all manner of ideas that can explain the evidence. Why wouldn't the entertainment industry pick up this ball and run with it? They care primarily about advertising and they don't know any more about it than you or I so they produce this tripe and make money. So long as science is under attack from within and without this will get worse and not better. Complaining about the quality of Ancient Aliens is more like free advertising for the producers than anything. If science is going to win any of these battles then we need SCIENCE. This means we need to do the science to show that there were aliens or no aliens. We need to do the SCIENCE that will show us what the reality is rather than to just continue the cur- rent practices which don't involve even simple measurements. So long as people are willing to support beliefs it might as well be the 12th century. I can't divorce what I believe from what I say any more than anyone else can. I believe what I'm saying is on topic and very to relevant Ancient Aliens. I believe that if all of science including the soft sciences simply started taking the high road that most of this nonsense would come to be seen for what it is. I believe that if we worked harder on teaching kids what science is that there would be less of a market and less of a need for Ancient Aliens. I believe the cause of most of this nonsense can be seen when we look in a mirror. If scientists can't bear the torch and take the high road then there's no real chance the His- tory Channel is going to do it.