GENIUS FORUMS

. . . otherwise it leaves no room for disagreements, and the world would be a rather "happy" but undoubtedly a boring place. If everyone were equally rational then everyone would eventually arrive at the same conclusions, after hearing all the arguments. However this still leaves room for...

Determinism holds that all events are necessitated by prior events. That basically means IF all information about event A is known, then, all information about event B can be predicted[known before it occurs]. Certainly. But it is not possible to know all information about any event. Indeterminism ...

If free will does not exist in reality, as DQ asserts, then reality is completely deterministic, and in principle, completely predictable. Determinism is about things being caused. It doesn't say that we can predict things. Even simple things like the weather, or the throwing of a dice can't be pre...

Have a read of the "Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics" post half way down the following page:

viewtopic.php?t=568

This indeterminism is itself a fundamental property OF existence. Indeterminism (in physics) doesn't say anything about whether things are caused or not. It is concerned with predictability. Things are caused without being predictable. No physical event is really predictable (ie, with certainty), s...

If you're on holidays and want to visit the forum, just type:

genius.theabsolute.net (without the www)

into your web browser, and it will take you to this forum.

prince wrote:Brunner is a know nothing dickwad, and so are you.

I think Brunner knows more than most. When you compare him to the society he lives in, he seems quite intelligent and sensible.

Philosophaster wrote: The possibility of faulty memories may make it impossible to distinguish good arguments from bad ones: "Faulty memory" really means no memory. Take the case of a person who has no memory. They would not even be able to identify anything (A=A), so they would in fact be...

David wrote: I still can't distinguish him from an ordinary Christian. Can you, Kevin? He does seem more mystical in his approach, and slightly more rational than the average Christian. But all that stuff about Jesus being perfect and other sages like the Buddha being lesser, I find very ordinary. I...

Brunner provides an extensive comparison of Christ and Buddha Ok, Brunner says: "The legend of Buddha is beautiful and profound, but Christ and his story are true." :-) Very funny. around Buddha, by contrast, everything has an Indian rigidity and lifelessness. I would only say it has an I...

Brunner uses the word perfect in the same sense as Spinoza: "By reality and perfection I understand the same thing." (Spinoza, Ethics , Pt. 2, Def. VI) Using that meaning, everyone is perfect, since everyone is reality. Thus the words of Christ are for both Brunner and Spinoza the most co...

The above passage by Brunner is not bad, but the bit where he says "He was the perfect mystical-spiritual prophet" is problematic to say the least, and reeks a little of the dogma he wants to overturn. How can we, or Brunner, know that Jesus was in fact "perfect"? Firstly, we wou...

analog57 wrote:A thing can only be itself. A thing does not have the freedom to be anything else.

Yes, there can be no argument about this. It is a fact of Nature that a thing cannot be other than what it is.

I'm not really thinking of it as backwards causality, going off what I know about it. I'm thinking more of the iron blockish nature of a wholly determined system. Things could not be any other way than they are, things will not be any other way than they will be, and things could not have been any ...

Like you say, virtually all the energy is removed from a bunch of squashed together atoms by cooling them to almost absolute zero. Because we can now know the energy state (and therefore the momentum) of all these atoms very precisely, we can no longer know their position (the conjugate variable of...

The Uncertainty principle is for 'real'. It describes a physical actuality, not a limitation of perception. For example, were this not the case, Bose-Einstein condensation would be impossible. I've just read up about Bose-Einstein condensation, but it doesn't seem to prove that the uncertainties of...

According to your above reasoning, the second A on the right of the equals sign is not really the first A on the left. Those are actually two separate things. Only separate things can be added. Whoever wrote "A+A = 2A" thinks so, yes. In "A=A" (the law of identity) the two "...

Diebert van Rhijn wrote:A=A is not mathematics!

A=A is philosophy.

So why are you talking about mathematics, and infinite sets, etc?

LooF wrote:infinity = infinity is false

could nothing equal nothing?

to be equal, there first must be something.

If you think infinity is nothing then you won't mind me not replying to your post, since you obviously believe your own post is nothing.

analog57 wrote:

DavidQuinn000 wrote:
Infinity is not finite. Why? Because infinity = infinity. That is to say, A=A.

You can't see this?

A+A = 2A

This formula is invalid, since you can't add a thing to itself.

"How are we to understand Christ, how can we envisage him, this man of Truth, stolen by the men of superstition?" Constantin Brunner

I think it looks interesting. I'll have a browse of your site.

Identity is the concept that refers to this aspect of existence; the aspect of existing as something in particular, with specific characteristics. An entity without an identity cannot exist because it would be nothing. To exist is to exist as something, and that means to exist with a particular ide...

The script often contradicts itself from one sentence to the next. For example, one moment they are saying "Quantum physics is all about possibilities", and the very next moment they have someone saying that certain things really can be at several different places at the same time. I don'...

This reminds me of David Gilmour from Pink Floyd who recently sold his collection of Ferraris and donated a million dollars to a new accommodation center in London for 400 homeless people. He said that having the Ferraris meant you needed to pay people to look after them, buildings to keep them in,...

There is also the question of why a sage would want to bifuricate into two positions in the first place. Does he want to join the circus or something? - And why stop at being in two places at the same time. If you can do that, you should be able to spawn an infinite number of selves all over the Un...