Gees

Maybe. I have driven all over the United States, in Europe, on the right side of the road and on the other side, in cars, trucks, rental vehicles, and on motorcycles. I have towed cars, trailers, boats, and campers, but I do not wear seatbelts and have not for most of my life. Yet, I am not dead. It is possible that statistically speaking, seatbelts are not good for me. 😁 Yes it is a statistical argument, and statistics are made up of facts -- not truths. The reality is that facts, therefore statistics, are easy to cherry pick, manipulate, and cause an invalid perception. Just look at what comes out of Washington if you want evidence of that truth. I have a lot of issues with statistics and don't trust them. In the first place, I worked as a temp in many offices in different capacities for years, and watched clerical workers gathering information (statistics) for bosses, insurance purposes, government agencies, etc. Most workers did not give two sh*ts about the information and saw it as an added, unpaid, responsibility. Would some/many of them fudge the information if it made the job easier? Absolutely. In this age of computers, anyone who can access information can gather statistics and thinks they are as good as an actuary -- they are not. Then you have to look at the motivations for the gathering of the statistics. A statistical argument has the same flaws as science, in that they can both lose truth to confirmation bias. Yes, details matter. In the OP, I believe that AI was supposed to be used to ensure the safety of people in vehicles. So does that mean that once the problems are identified, AI would make recommendations? Maybe suggest drivers training to individuals? Point out dangerous activities? Give advice to the drivers/passengers? Ha Ha! I was laughing so hard, I fell off my chair. Or maybe the government agency is going to fine the drivers -- after all, they need to get their money back for purchasing AI. Yep, that is what they are going to do. It's a win win situation. The government will make money on the fines and save money because they don't have to clean up so many bodies. As for the people, yes, it may save some lives, but it will also cost them. How will that cost affect them? We don't know and I don't see anyone gathering statistics to find out. Motivation is very much a part of gathering statistics and selecting what is gathered -- which is part of why I don't trust statistics. As to other responses, some posters thought that a person would be necessary to oversee the infractions and regulate what was fined and what was not. That would be short lived, IMO, as AI would not be cost efficient if it had to be overseen, so it would eventually be on its own, or it would be discarded. Another poster thought that the evidence gathered by AI would be sent to the driver with the ticket, so that he could see what the problem was. This is also not likely. That evidence belongs to the prosecution/plaintiff and would not be sent to the defendant by the Court. That evidence could be solicited by the defendant though a Discovery Motion in an attempt to discover what plaintiff's evidence is, so that a defense/rebuttal could be made -- IF discovery is allowed in the case. Sometimes Discovery is not allowed between a city and a defendant. You just have to go to Court and find out what the evidence is. This is all a matter of Civil Procedures and is regulated by local laws. For example, while working in a law office in Wayne County (Detroit, Michigan) I talked to a New York attorney, who was having problems getting a child support case on the Wayne County Court docket. He had been working on it for six months and getting nowhere, so I asked him what he had Filed. After listening, I explained that we can not put a child support case on a Judge's Court docket, a Referee does that, so he needed to resend all of his information, and send second copies of everything to the Friend of the Court Referee, and be sure to include a yellow Praecipe, because without a yellow Praecipe, it would never get on the Friend of the Court docket. It would just sit in a pile of papers till the end of time. So I faxed him all the information and a month later I got an "I love New York" coffee cup in the mail. Gee

I am sorry swansont. If you had asked for a citation twenty-some years ago, I could have accommodated you, you know, before MS stole so many of my abilities including the ability to work, where I would have had access to a law library -- the kind with books -- but all I have now is the internet and have no idea of how to look things up. I tried, really I did. I was surprised to find that there are still a lot of cases regarding seat belts right up to 2025, but I don't know how to narrow the search. The original case that I had mentioned was not about whether or not we should use seat belts -- it was already law that we were required to use them -- it was about advertising the seat belts. Stating that "seat belts save lives" was inaccurate, a lie, because seat belts sometimes saved lives, sometimes killed people, and sometimes damaged people unnecessarily. A friend of mine, who had moved down south, had a son (in his twenties) who drove down to see his mother around the time of this court case and had a bad accident. He was driving on a two lane divided highway in a seriously dense fog when a semi truck hit him head on. Apparently the driver of the semi was new and in an unfamiliar area and thought that the road was a regular highway, not a divided one way. He didn't see the car until the last minute. He swerved, but still hit my friend's son's car and totaled it, destroying the passenger's side. The police told my friend's son that he was locked into place by his seat belt, which saved his life and prevented him being thrown into the damaged side of the car, but they also stated that his passenger and friend was saved because he was not wearing a seat belt. If he had been locked into the passenger's side, he would probably be dead. As you can imagine, this event caused a lot of debate about luck, fate, and guardian angels, which is why I remembered it. I did find the following in Google, which reinforces the idea that seat belts were not the end all solution and were sometimes dangerous. "Seat belts became mandatory with the first federal law taking effect on January 1, 1968, requiring all new cars to be equipped with seat belts. However, it wasn't until the 1980s that the use of seat belts became widely mandated and enforced, with New York being the first state to require vehicle occupants to wear them in 1984. Additionally, the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act passed in 1966 laid the groundwork for these regulations." "Airbags were first introduced in the US in 1970 but became a standard safety device in cars in 1998. The first car to include factory-installed airbags was the 1973 Oldsmobile Toronado. The U.S. government mandated airbags in all new passenger vehicles by 1990, emphasizing their critical role in reducing crash-related injuries and fatalities." Less than ten years after mandating and enforcing the use of seat belts, we were looking for better ways to reduce crash-related injuries and fatalities. Airbags mitigated some of the damage caused by seat belts. Gee

AI does not actually lie, but neither does it tell the truth. We tend to associate intelligence with being smart, honest, truthful, etc., but it is not. Measured intelligence is simply a speed test in something's/someone's ability to assimilate information. So AI (artificial intelligence) is all about statistics and has nothing to do with smart, honest, or truthful. Courts, on the other hand, are all about truth, so what happens when you mix these two ideas -- intelligence and truth? Consider that forty or so years ago, the State of Michigan (USA) was all about trying to convince it's people to use seat belts, so there were signs everywhere stating, "Seat Belts Save Lives". It was on commercials on television, on radio, on billboard signs, everywhere -- then it stopped. I was surprised that the campaign stopped until I learned that the Michigan Supreme Court heard a case regarding seat belts and concluded that they did not in truth save lives and sometimes they killed people. In light of this new information, I expected the seat belt law to be retracted -- it was not. We still have to wear seatbelts. What I did not know, but learned later, was that seatbelts do not save lives, but they do save money. As far as injuries go, it progresses from minor injury, to major injury, to death, but as far as expense goes, it progresses from minor injury, to death, to major injury. Apparently a major injury is much more expensive than a death, and seatbelts prevent major injury -- wearing a seatbelt will protect you from major injury, or it will kill you. Much less expensive -- truth. Something to think about. Gee

Last weekend I was home doing nothing in particular when my phone rang, so I answered it, and became immediately furious. I couldn't believe that another a**hole robocaller was actually harassing me on a Sunday. Normally I get up to 25 phone calls a day from those jerks and have a land line which makes blocking calls difficult, so I don't answer unless I know the number. But not on Sundays -- never on Sundays. When I finally got a live person on the phone, I asked him if he had no manners at all -- calling on a Sunday. He denied that it was Sunday. I didn't believe him. After I cooled down, I considered that it may not have been a Sunday where he was, because he could have been anywhere around the world. He did not deny that calling on a Sunday was quite rude. Then I wondered if a right for privacy on Sunday is a global idea -- it is certainly a private and personal idea. Would this be considered "far reaching", because it certainly did not come from science. Gee

dimreepr; What are you talking about? And what do you think that someone is imagining? I didn't know what a "quantum reality" is, so I looked it up, but still don't understand your association. Gee sethoflagos; Equilibrium? Every time I read the word "homeostatic" it refers to the body or some other internal balancing system. Yet you seem to understand that it relates to "external influences". What are you trying to say? It sounds like you are agreeing with me, but you said, "No." Why is that? The only thing "anthropomorphic" is the language and the arrogance of mankind in the assumption that feelings and emotions belong solely to humans, and maybe animals, if they have a brain. You will have to forgive me for using human language, as I don't know any other way to describe these ideas. Instead of thinking of emotion/feeling as what we interpret them to be, i.e., love, hate, envy, joy, etc., consider what emotion and feelings actually are. They are forces that cause a want, much like a magnet they attract (love, joy, happiness) and/or repel (fear, anger, pain). All emotion and feelings either pull things together or push them apart. Then consider that all survival instincts, ALL of them, are activated by emotion/feeling as a result of attraction or repulsion. And all life, ALL of it, has survival instincts (this includes plants). This means that all life has access to the unconscious aspect of mind, so the unconscious is not in your head, it is not in your brain, logically it has to be part of reality. If it were not part of reality, then how would ecosystems exist? I would like to suggest that without what we call the unconscious (feeling/emotion) there would be no evolution. Gee Studiot; Again it looks like you are talking more about science than philosophy. My interpretation is that philosophy tries to discover what is real and true, but science tries to do something with the information--manipulate it. Yes? Gee

When I first read your post, I thought it was about science because of the "feedback and feedforward" terminology, but you asked about philosophy. I am not a trained philosopher, so there is a great deal that I do not know, and not being a science person, I was not sure what you were asking regarding feedback/feedforward. Are you actually asking how philosophy addresses time and how some kinds of time displacement can affect logic and cause and effect? If so, I would say that there are philosophers who seem to think that physical reality is illusion, or not real, and therefore not always bound by the physical rules. Although I don't totally agree with that, I can see why some might think so. My thought is that physical reality is foundational and real, but I also see a layer of motion that physical reality evolves from, so the base foundation is actually motion and is also real. This reminds me of the mind's conscious/unconscious relationship and could explain the problems with logic. I study consciousness and noted that the similarities between the rational mind vs the unconscious aspect of mind -- and the similarities between physical reality vs base motion are very comparable. Both physical reality and the rational mind evolve from forces (motion/emotion). A lot of people seem to think that this means that one or the other is not real, that it is illusion, but I don't think so. I think that both are just as real, and that physical reality and thought are interpretations of motion/emotion. The conscious rational aspect of mind is much like physical reality in that it works with logic, cause and effect, works specifically within, uses digital thought, recognizes time, and is directed by us -- much like houses in physical reality are built by us. Or I could say that we can control it. The unconscious aspect of mind is nothing like that and is ruled by emotion. It is not rational, is not logical, works externally between things, is analogue, often changes and often ignores time; and therefore, ignores cause and effect. It is mostly emotion rather than thought, and is reactive rather than directed. We have little control over the unconscious and often do not even know that it reacted until we see the results -- as it is with instincts. So I can see where cause and effect, or even logic, may not always be relevant in some levels of mind and some levels of reality. When I read the "chicken and egg" thing, I was pretty sure that you were talking about philosophy. Consider that when we delve deeply into the unconscious, we find that the chicken/egg issue resolves itself because they are recognized by the unconscious as being the same -- time becomes irrelevant. The deeper levels of the unconscious categorizes things in sets, so the chicken is the egg and the egg is the chicken (as far as I can understand it). Blanco calls this bi-logic and explains this stating that in the deepest levels, if Mary is Jane's mother, then Jane is Mary's mother -- the relationship (mother) is relevant to this understanding, time is not. Maybe this is why emotion responds to bonding rather than logic, because without time, logic is unworkable. To understand this idea better, you can look up Blanco's work in Wiki. It is a one page read that explains this concept much better than I can. Apparently, Matt Blanco used math to break down the unconscious into five levels, then very successfully applied those levels to the study of consciousness and patients in psychiatry/psychology. I have no idea how he did it as my math skills are almost mediocre, but I can understand the results of his work. Does the motion, that physical reality evolves from, work much like the emotion in the unconscious aspect of mind, that the conscious rational mind evolves from? Which, if so, would make biogenesis a nonissue. If there is no time at that level, then cause and effect is a nonissue. Is this where Plato got the idea of forms? Was he actually talking about sets? I have no idea, but I know that Plato understood the unconscious and I know he was a genius, and way too far above my mental abilities. I should have started studying him 50 years ago, when I might have had some hope of understanding him. You can learn more about Blanco's understandings here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignacio_Matte_Blanco Or a plant that produces flowers and seed at the right time of year to produce offspring. Grass/weed that will flatten itself in order to protect its roots from too much sun/heat, or stretch/warp itself to get more sun? A tree that grows too close to a fast moving river, where the river erodes some of the roots will actually grow extra branches on the land side to keep it's balance and prevent it from falling in the river. I don't see how anyone can call all these things inborn reflexes, but they clearly are survival instincts, and all survival instincts work through feeling/emotion and the unconscious. The unconscious can ignore cause and effect and logic. I am beginning to suspect that the 'motion' that exists in all reality is much like the unconscious in life. Gee

npts2020; +1 Even though your statement is a little too true, thanks for the laugh. There is no such thing as a secular religion. Marxism is an ideology. Are you sure that Christianity was not used as a template? Kind of like what Trump is trying to do? Gee

Good questions, but I am not sure I have answers because I don't actually study religions -- I study emotion. I suppose that most people would study the religions, then after a while would realize that each of these different religions serve the same purposes, then identify those purposes and recognize that emotion is at the heart of religion. I came at the idea backward because I study consciousness. It was decades ago when I realized that when science talks about consciousness, they are talking about the brain; when philosophy talks about consciousness, they are talking about thought and/or will; no one really studies emotion which is a major part, maybe the most important part of consciousness because emotion is self activating. That is why I turned to religion for information, as they do the most in-depth study of emotion. So what are the methodologies? Religions gather or group people regularly (like Sunday meetings). They use music, art, and sometimes dance, to promote feelings/emotions to enhance ideals. They designate moral codes and incorporate histories that hope to cause peace and comfort within a group -- which would be why religion has been referred to as "the glue that holds a society together". They will often provide methods to promote forgiveness or absolution from sin/bad behavior. They interpret "Gods". They instruct people on what to expect after death, but you know all this. The actually methodologies are created by interpretations and compliment the various cultures. None of this works through science as far as I can see, but it all helps to bond people. Of course you know what science can do, you studied philosophy of science. As a philosopher, you also know the value of a valid premise, and know that an invalid premise corrupts all the work that follows. By looking at your above statements/questions, it is clear to me that you have no idea of what religion actually gives us -- its value. Don't feel bad as most people don't recognize what the core of religion actually is. Even religious people, who promote religions see spirit as the main idea, and don't really know why religion is so important. Do you have a valid premise? Do you know what the value of religion actually is? Bonding, Eise! Religions study emotion and promote bonding and balance. Without emotion and bonding, all life would cease, not just human life, but ALL life. I think that is kind of important and worthy of a little study. "Rollover"? Are you talking about reincarnation? I was referring to the information Joigus provided. It is, yes, but it is also about much more than that. One thing that it is about is repairing the damage. Karma is not a Christian concept where we get a one-way ticket to hell if we damage ourselves. Karma is also about repairing the damage, it is about redemption, it is about balance. It is also about more than an individual's soul, as it is also about cultures, societies, species, ecosystems -- the balance in everything. Exactly. I have stated repeatedly in this thread that science does not understand religion, so scientific minds do not understand religions well enough to analyze them. No. Most science people that I know of have either a high average intellect, or a very high above average intellect. But this does not make them all knowing. Science people tend to attribute all things to a physical cause, which flies in the face of what religion teaches. This thinking creates a bias that few science people can get past. No thank you. As I stated earlier, I study emotion, not religion. Karma is an example of how emotion can work. Fine, but there is a point to the "cause and effect" and that point is balance. I suspect that the "masters" know this. Gee My apologies to Eise, Dimreepr, and Joigus for being so late with this response. If you respond to this post, do not expect an immediate answer from me. I am getting slower.

I never stated that Karma was/is a scientific concept. Please try to consider what I state, rather than what you think I mean. What I stated is that science people interpret karma as a kind of cause and effect concept, because that is as close as they can get to understanding it. They see Karma as being either cause and effect, or maybe mysticism/magic. Question: If you can carry karma from previous lives, how do you think "cause and effect" makes that happen? What causes the effect? How does that work? If there is no causation, then how can it be called cause and effect? My apologies. I thought you wanted answers. I didn't realize you just wanted to argue. If you want a link, you need go no further than this thread. If you look at, what I believe is, the first sentence in the original post, it states that the author "respects" religion, but wishes to "debate" the "beliefs". Did you not read the first post, or did you just skim it and miss those words? Gee

I have often read posts in the science forums that state a member "respects" some religion, but wants to "debate" the "beliefs" of said religion. This makes no sense to me. If a person respects the religion, then why would they wish to challenge and possibly damage the religious person's belief? Belief is a major component of religion. It would be like saying I respect your family, even though I know they are all lowlifes. What? Actually, the "germ theory" argument is just one small example and does not really explain the problem. The problem with a science person debating a religious idea is that religion and science study entirely different subjects, so they need to use entirely different methodologies. Science studies changes in the "now" and how this affects the physical, but religion studies the constant and the always of the spiritual. You can not use science to understand and answer questions in religion, any more than you can use religion to answer questions in science. I wouldn't even try. But then, I am not a science person. I like science. I like religion. I respect both and often learn from each of them, but it is my nature to be a philosopher. You know that science studies the physical, and the methodology that science uses supports that study. Most people do not know that religion actually studies emotion; spirit is just one interpretation of emotion. Using science's methodology to study emotion/spirit would be beyond ridiculous and a little foolhardy. People tend to see the superficial aspects of religion as the subject matter of religion, so they think that spirituality is the subject matter -- it is not. The base subject matter is emotion, which means that religion studies the unconscious aspect of mind. This is where the "metaphysical" and "supernatural" ideas come in to play -- as these ideas are interpretations, and often not physical. Consider that emotion does not work the same way as physical studies, so religion's methodology needs to support the study of emotion. I believe that the branch of science that can give the most information about religion would be psychology, as psychology studies the unconscious and emotion. Jung had some interesting ideas about "Gods" and whatnot. I think you are mostly right, but it is not about making "errors", it is about change. Science not only can, but it must, accept change in order to be accurate and to progress. Emotion, however, does not readily accept change and can be destructive if too much change is forced upon it. Remember that emotion causes bonding; a married couple that changes partners each day, or a child that is traded off every day, or a plant that is uprooted and replanted over and over will all be damaged, stunted, or even killed because of the lack of consistency and their bonds forfeit -- caused by too much change. Religion is very slow to change for these reasons. Beliefs must also be slow to change, or belief can be lost. Any knowledge that is not backed by emotion is not believed, so it becomes worthless. I bolded the above sentence, as you made a very good point and that is what I want to address. When people start thinking that "science is all there is" as to knowledge, they start endangering science. This can be a problem because if science is "all there is" to learning, then science is the beginning and end of knowledge. Or something can not actually be known unless it has been tested by science. It can be considered, hypothesized, guessed, speculated, etc., but it can not be known. Eventually this thinking will lead to beliefs in scientific revelations and as noted above, belief does not like to change. I have read posts in this forum where members complained that the "old guard" would not accept new ideas even when there is sufficient evidence to support those ideas. So practically, we can believe in science as a discipline, we can believe that the methodology is valid, but we can not believe that what science has uncovered is all there is, because that would make science an unchanging belief like religion -- which would limit science's ability to advance and endanger science's growth. I would not call the caste system right, but I would call it honest. I live in the US, and we don't have a "caste system". We don't even have the aristocracy and commoners, but we do have social divisions and we do have racism, and elitism, and misogynism, and perpetual immigrants because the paperwork is never ending making them second-class citizens, and we have the homeless and the poor and the disenfranchised -- BUT WE DO NOT LOCK PEOPLE INTO A CASTE SYSTEM. We just recognize that they are there and if people can not lift themselves up, it is because they are lazy/stupid -- or so say the liars. If you want to see the results of religion's adaptions to new knowledge, you are going to have to go back hundreds and thousands of years to see many of the changes. I always thought that George Carlin was a little brilliant, but he was a comedian and there is a difference between philosophy/theocracy and jokes. Gee Karma is NOT a word for cause and effect. Science people always misinterpret karma. Karma is about balance, not cause and effect. Is there a difference? Yes, and it is a huge difference. Balance affects everything. That would be because they are facts like gravity. Karma is about balance. What does not use balance? When I stated that people tend to see the "superficial" aspects of religion, this is what I was talking about. You are taking morality, probably ethics, justice, and cause/effect, and mixing these ideas with religion/emotion/spirituality. You can mix these ideas if you want, but you will never get anywhere in your debate regarding religion because you don't know what you are talking about. Your point has nothing to do with balance. Whether you are talking about Ancient Rome, or the Deep South in the United States a hundred and fifty years ago, killing a runaway slave was perfectly correct and moral. While reading arguments that supported slavery, I found one where a psychiatrist noted that a Negro, who would run away into the forest, rather than stay on the plantation where he had food, shelter, and work, was obviously mentally deranged and should be put down. You should read some of those arguments. They are mind blowing, but make it clear that people can justify anything. We are not talking cause and effect; we are talking about balance. What would you like to see? Gee

A great-grandmother is a mother. Gee

It has long been noted that science is a child of philosophy. Philosophy studies knowledge and science uses a methodology that helps us to acquire that knowledge. But what is the Mother of Science? Well, that would be curiosity. We can not assign credit to any particular discipline or even to any specific culture or time in history. The reality is that you can watch a two year old sitting in his high-chair, while he drops pieces of his food over the edge of his tray, then carefully watches them fall to the floor -- and he will do this again and again and again -- because he is studying gravity. One of his first science experiments. Gee

I don't think so. Your description of a "technique/genetics" procedure seems to be more like creating a breed, rather than tagging or branding any specific animal. If breeding and genetics were associated with ownership, then whoever bred the first dalmatian or poodle would own all of the dalmatians and poodles. Right? Gee

I was looking at an article a few days ago wherein Michael Johnson of the House of Representatives actually stated that he would like to see the separation of church and state dissolved. I know that he displays himself as a very religious person, but I did not take his comments seriously. I just read an article where it stated that Trump would like to create policy that would support a "Religious Liberty Commission", which would essentially limit or dissolve the separation of church and state. This sounds like a very bad idea to me. Has anyone else heard about this? What do you think? Gee

Are you sure you are not projecting? What was it that was so horrible that you needed to learn humility? I only ask because you have mentioned it twice now, and it appears you want to discuss it. I apologize as I did not mean harm; although, I don't see why you should be devalued because of my actions/thoughts. I looked up Zeno. He was a smart guy, but was overly fond of paradoxes and thought experiments. I like thought experiments, but when they lead to paradoxes, I doubt them. I don't like paradoxes as they seem to be an indication of something missing or misunderstood in the thought experiment. I found the following explanation in Google: So these guys were arguing about the foundations of reality. Is it all one thing? Does it change? Is it continuous? What about space and time? Lots of questions and many of them contradicting others. I have thought of these concepts just as many others have. My thoughts are simple. Balance is evident in each and every aspect of reality from our bodies, to ecosystems, and from atoms to solar systems. Balance is real, so what does balance require? Well it requires more than one thing in order to have something to balance with and it requires a wholeness that the balance takes place within. Like a child's teeter totter, it needs two ends that move up and down, but also a connection that it balances from. What can explain all of these concepts? Water. Earlier I stated that I saw motion as the foundation of reality, but what I was talking about was the motion that is obvious in the properties of water. Think of an ocean. It is one thing, but is also constantly in motion and constantly changing. Waves keep it in motion, and the water evaporates, becomes clouds and rain, falls back to earth maybe freezes into snow and ice, maybe sits in place for decades, then melts and returns to the ocean. Water is constant motion within a wholeness and emotion shares those properties. So when I saw Federico's video, and he stated that consciousness (emotion) is outside of us and outside of time, it interested me. So it looks to me as if Zeno and Parmenides were both correct. But I am really tired now and am falling asleep on my desk. Happy St. Patty's day. Gee