Groups | Search | Server Info | Keyboard shortcuts | Login | Register [http] [https] [nntp] [nntps]
Groups > comp.misc > #26457 > unrolled thread
| Started by | Retrograde <fungus@amongus.com.invalid> |
|---|---|
| First post | 2025-02-16 16:55 +0000 |
| Last post | 2025-02-26 21:21 -0300 |
| Articles | 20 on this page of 290 — 23 participants |
Back to article view | Back to comp.misc
Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Retrograde <fungus@amongus.com.invalid> - 2025-02-16 16:55 +0000
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-16 21:23 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-16 23:55 -0300
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-17 11:40 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Dave Yeo <dave.r.yeo@gmail.com> - 2025-02-17 09:26 -0800
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-17 22:42 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2025-02-17 22:23 +0000
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-18 10:20 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) - 2025-02-19 07:32 +1000
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Eli the Bearded <*@eli.users.panix.com> - 2025-02-18 23:47 +0000
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-19 09:42 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.netREMOVE.invalid> - 2025-03-06 07:10 +0000
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-03-07 20:44 -0300
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-03-08 23:44 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) - 2025-02-20 08:23 +1000
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-19 22:22 -0300
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-20 15:55 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-20 17:59 -0300
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-20 18:01 -0300
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-20 22:51 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-20 22:01 -0300
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-21 10:29 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-23 22:55 -0300
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2025-02-24 05:19 +0000
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-24 13:28 -0300
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-24 10:55 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-24 13:34 -0300
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-24 23:15 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2025-02-24 23:06 +0000
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-25 11:10 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-25 10:08 -0300
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-25 23:12 +0100
OT: walking and exercising (Was: Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy) Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-26 21:31 -0300
Re: OT: walking and exercising (Was: Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy) D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-27 14:52 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy candycanearter07 <candycanearter07@candycanearter07.nomail.afraid> - 2025-02-27 21:40 +0000
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-03-01 11:48 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy candycanearter07 <candycanearter07@candycanearter07.nomail.afraid> - 2025-03-05 06:40 +0000
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-03-05 13:39 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy candycanearter07 <candycanearter07@candycanearter07.nomail.afraid> - 2025-03-05 20:00 +0000
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-03-05 22:12 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2025-02-24 17:54 +0000
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-24 23:41 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2025-02-24 23:19 +0000
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-25 11:16 +0100
education Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.netREMOVE.invalid> - 2025-03-06 07:55 +0000
Re: education Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-03-07 22:00 -0300
Re: education Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2025-03-08 03:47 +0000
Re: education Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-03-08 18:27 -0300
Re: education Eli the Bearded <*@eli.users.panix.com> - 2025-03-09 02:08 +0000
Re: education Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-03-10 02:58 -0300
Re: education Eli the Bearded <*@eli.users.panix.com> - 2025-03-10 18:38 +0000
Re: education cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2025-03-10 19:13 +0000
Re: education Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.netREMOVE.invalid> - 2025-03-11 13:30 +0000
Re: education Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-03-14 11:17 -0300
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2025-02-25 19:12 -0500
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2025-02-26 02:08 +0000
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D Finnigan <dog_cow@macgui.com> - 2025-02-26 09:06 -0600
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> - 2025-02-26 18:09 -0400
the command line is language (Was: Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy) Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-26 21:46 -0300
Re: the command line is language (Was: Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy) Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> - 2025-02-27 03:31 -0400
Re: the command line is language Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-27 08:10 -0300
Re: the command line is language D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-27 15:41 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-27 14:47 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-26 13:15 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2025-02-26 16:34 -0500
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2025-02-26 16:38 -0500
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2025-02-26 22:34 +0000
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2025-02-26 18:50 -0500
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2025-02-27 03:11 +0000
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-27 08:18 -0300
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2025-02-27 17:04 +0000
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2025-02-27 18:53 -0500
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2025-02-28 21:41 +0000
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-26 22:03 -0300
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2025-02-27 03:29 +0000
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-27 15:16 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-27 12:36 -0300
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-26 21:55 -0300
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-27 14:43 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2025-02-27 17:07 +0000
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2025-02-27 19:05 -0500
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2025-03-01 15:06 +0000
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-03-01 11:47 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2025-03-01 16:31 +0000
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-26 21:52 -0300
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-27 15:15 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2025-03-01 16:51 +0000
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> - 2025-03-01 17:15 -0400
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-03-02 12:34 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Richmond <dnomhcir@gmx.com> - 2025-02-26 12:29 +0000
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2025-02-26 16:34 -0500
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-26 22:04 -0300
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy candycanearter07 <candycanearter07@candycanearter07.nomail.afraid> - 2025-03-05 20:00 +0000
more on broken schools (Was: Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy) Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-26 21:38 -0300
Re: more on broken schools (Was: Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy) kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2025-02-26 19:47 -0500
Re: more on broken schools Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-27 08:55 -0300
Re: more on broken schools kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2025-02-27 19:00 -0500
OT: a personal note to Stefan Ram (Was: Re: more on broken schools) Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-27 09:31 -0300
Re: more on broken schools (Was: Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy) D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-27 15:03 +0100
Re: more on broken schools Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-03-07 20:30 -0300
Re: more on broken schools D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-03-08 23:43 +0100
Re: more on broken schools Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-03-08 21:33 -0300
Re: more on broken schools D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-03-09 13:30 +0100
Re: more on broken schools Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-03-10 03:00 -0300
Re: more on broken schools D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-03-10 10:50 +0100
Re: more on broken schools Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-03-10 08:46 -0300
Re: more on broken schools D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-03-11 23:05 +0100
Re: more on broken schools Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-03-14 11:31 -0300
Re: more on broken schools D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-03-14 23:46 +0100
Re: more on broken schools Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-03-16 22:43 -0300
Re: more on broken schools D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-03-17 23:44 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-20 22:50 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-20 22:21 -0300
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-21 17:06 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-23 23:28 -0300
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-24 11:12 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-24 14:08 -0300
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-24 23:32 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-24 22:22 -0300
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-25 11:34 +0100
fdm, paredit and systemd (Was: Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy) Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-25 13:18 -0300
Re: fdm, paredit and systemd (Was: Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy) D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-26 13:53 +0100
Re: fdm, paredit and systemd Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-27 06:23 -0300
Re: fdm, paredit and systemd D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-27 15:31 +0100
Re: fdm, paredit and systemd Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-03-07 21:10 -0300
Re: fdm, paredit and systemd D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-03-09 00:09 +0100
Re: fdm, paredit and systemd Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-03-08 21:41 -0300
Re: fdm, paredit and systemd D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-03-09 13:32 +0100
UNIX systems (Was: Re: fdm, paredit and systemd) Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-03-10 03:10 -0300
Re: UNIX systems (Was: Re: fdm, paredit and systemd) D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-03-10 10:54 +0100
Re: UNIX systems Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-03-10 09:08 -0300
Re: UNIX systems D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-03-11 23:09 +0100
Re: UNIX systems Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-03-13 18:17 -0300
Re: UNIX systems D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-03-16 00:03 +0100
Re: UNIX systems Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-03-16 22:41 -0300
Re: UNIX systems D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-03-18 10:50 +0100
Re: UNIX systems Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-03-21 16:26 -0300
Re: UNIX systems Matto Fransen <mattof@sdf.org> - 2025-03-21 19:53 +0000
Re: UNIX systems Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-03-24 00:11 -0300
Re: UNIX systems D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-03-21 23:37 +0100
Re: UNIX systems Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-03-24 00:34 -0300
Re: UNIX systems D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-03-25 21:49 +0100
Re: UNIX systems Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-03-26 23:24 -0300
Re: UNIX systems D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-03-29 22:31 +0100
Re: UNIX systems Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-03-29 20:40 -0300
Re: UNIX systems Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-03-22 10:11 -0300
Re: UNIX systems kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2025-03-25 17:40 -0400
Re: UNIX systems D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-03-25 23:04 +0100
Re: UNIX systems Charles Dagny <1800@DEV.NULL> - 2025-03-28 21:41 -0300
Re: UNIX systems onion@anon.invalid (Mr Ön!on) - 2025-03-10 15:06 +0000
Re: UNIX systems Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-03-11 11:58 -0300
Re: UNIX systems yeti <yeti@tilde.institute> - 2025-03-11 15:49 +0042
Re: UNIX systems cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2025-03-11 15:25 +0000
Re: UNIX systems onion@anon.invalid (Mr Ön!on) - 2025-03-11 16:24 +0000
Re: UNIX systems cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2025-03-11 17:30 +0000
Re: UNIX systems candycanearter07 <candycanearter07@candycanearter07.nomail.afraid> - 2025-03-12 22:30 +0000
Re: UNIX systems yeti <yeti@tilde.institute> - 2025-03-12 23:23 +0042
Re: UNIX systems candycanearter07 <candycanearter07@candycanearter07.nomail.afraid> - 2025-03-13 20:40 +0000
Re: UNIX systems Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-03-13 18:04 -0300
Re: UNIX systems cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2025-03-13 21:26 +0000
Re: UNIX systems Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-03-14 12:23 -0300
Re: UNIX systems cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2025-03-13 01:24 +0000
Re: UNIX systems Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> - 2025-03-12 01:38 -0300
Re: UNIX systems snipeco.2@gmail.com (Sn!pe) - 2025-03-12 14:03 +0000
Re: UNIX systems D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-03-12 22:19 +0100
Re: UNIX systems kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2025-03-11 19:09 -0400
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Eli the Bearded <*@eli.users.panix.com> - 2025-03-04 02:44 +0000
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us (Scott Alfter) - 2025-03-04 17:50 +0000
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-19 09:40 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) - 2025-02-20 08:29 +1000
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-20 15:56 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-19 21:45 -0300
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-20 16:01 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-20 18:22 -0300
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-20 23:02 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-20 22:44 -0300
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-21 10:43 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-23 23:04 -0300
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-24 11:01 +0100
broken schools (Was: Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy) Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-24 13:46 -0300
Re: broken schools (Was: Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy) D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-24 23:18 +0100
Re: broken schools Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-24 22:34 -0300
Re: broken schools D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-25 11:38 +0100
Re: broken schools Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-25 15:45 -0300
Re: broken schools D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-26 14:05 +0100
Re: broken schools Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2025-02-26 13:15 +0000
Re: broken schools D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-26 23:10 +0100
Re: broken schools Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-27 06:49 -0300
Re: broken schools Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-27 07:41 -0300
Re: broken schools D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-27 19:52 +0100
Re: broken schools Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-03-07 21:41 -0300
Re: broken schools yeti <yeti@tilde.institute> - 2025-03-08 02:59 +0042
Re: broken schools D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-03-09 00:14 +0100
Re: broken schools Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-03-08 22:26 -0300
Re: broken schools D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-03-09 22:52 +0100
Re: broken schools Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-03-10 08:39 -0300
Re: broken schools D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-03-11 22:59 +0100
Re: broken schools Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-03-14 12:10 -0300
Re: broken schools D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-03-15 23:58 +0100
Re: broken schools Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-03-17 00:02 -0300
Re: broken schools Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2025-03-18 03:00 +0000
Re: broken schools Eva Lu <evalu@tor.soy> - 2025-03-18 21:20 -0300
Re: broken schools D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-03-18 11:17 +0100
OT: totally off-topic (Was: Re: broken schools) Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-03-19 13:51 -0300
Re: OT: totally off-topic (Was: Re: broken schools) D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-03-19 23:20 +0100
Re: OT: totally off-topic Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-03-21 11:52 -0300
Re: OT: totally off-topic D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-03-23 00:31 +0100
Re: OT: totally off-topic Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-03-29 20:50 -0300
Re: OT: totally off-topic D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-04-01 16:43 +0200
Re: OT: totally off-topic Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-04-04 11:20 -0300
Re: OT: totally off-topic D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-04-06 23:17 +0200
Re: OT: totally off-topic Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-04-10 15:19 -0300
Re: OT: totally off-topic D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-04-12 21:05 +0200
Re: OT: totally off-topic Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-04-13 13:10 -0300
lifestyles Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.netREMOVE.invalid> - 2025-03-11 20:20 +0000
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-19 21:40 -0300
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-20 15:57 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Adrian <bulleid@ku.gro.lioff> - 2025-02-17 18:30 +0000
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-17 22:44 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Adrian <bulleid@ku.gro.lioff> - 2025-02-18 00:08 +0000
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy snipeco.2@gmail.com (Sn!pe) - 2025-02-18 00:30 +0000
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-18 10:23 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-19 21:52 -0300
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy snipeco.2@gmail.com (Sn!pe) - 2025-02-20 01:09 +0000
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-19 22:27 -0300
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2025-02-20 21:51 +0000
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-20 23:22 -0300
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-21 10:23 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-20 16:07 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-20 18:35 -0300
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-20 23:31 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-20 23:06 -0300
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-21 11:01 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Adrian <bulleid@ku.gro.lioff> - 2025-02-18 13:48 +0000
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-19 21:56 -0300
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-18 10:22 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Adrian <bulleid@ku.gro.lioff> - 2025-02-18 14:05 +0000
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-19 22:03 -0300
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-20 16:14 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-20 18:47 -0300
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy snipeco.2@gmail.com (Sn!pe) - 2025-02-20 22:12 +0000
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-20 23:15 -0300
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-21 11:04 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-21 10:21 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-23 22:46 -0300
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-24 10:43 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Anton Shepelev <anton.txt@gmail.moc> - 2025-02-25 14:20 +0300
small communities, nntp server (Was: Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy) Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-25 15:20 -0300
Re: small communities, nntp server (Was: Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy) D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-26 13:57 +0100
Re: small communities, nntp server Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-26 21:20 -0300
Re: small communities, nntp server D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-27 14:49 +0100
Re: small communities, nntp server yeti <yeti@tilde.institute> - 2025-02-26 13:50 +0042
Re: small communities, nntp server D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-26 23:08 +0100
Re: small communities, nntp server D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-26 23:08 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-19 21:59 -0300
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-20 16:13 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-20 18:41 -0300
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-20 23:33 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-20 23:12 -0300
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-21 11:03 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-19 21:51 -0300
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2025-02-20 21:49 +0000
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-20 23:21 -0300
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-21 10:22 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) - 2025-02-22 17:09 +0000
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-23 00:23 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-19 21:49 -0300
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-20 16:05 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-20 18:24 -0300
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-20 23:05 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-20 22:56 -0300
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-21 10:51 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-23 23:21 -0300
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-24 11:10 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-24 14:04 -0300
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-24 23:28 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-24 21:58 -0300
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-25 11:26 +0100
OT: personal stories (Was: Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy) Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-25 11:58 -0300
Re: OT: personal stories (Was: Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy) D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-26 13:21 +0100
Re: OT: personal stories Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-27 06:04 -0300
Re: OT: personal stories D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-02-27 15:21 +0100
Re: OT: personal stories Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-03-07 20:49 -0300
Re: OT: personal stories yeti <yeti@tilde.institute> - 2025-03-08 00:43 +0042
Re: OT: personal stories D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-03-08 23:46 +0100
Re: OT: personal stories D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-03-08 23:45 +0100
Re: OT: personal stories Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-03-08 21:37 -0300
Re: OT: personal stories D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-03-09 13:30 +0100
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy D Finnigan <dog_cow@macgui.com> - 2025-02-25 13:17 -0600
Re: Schneier, Data and Goliath: no hope for privacy Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-02-26 21:21 -0300
Page 11 of 15 — ← Prev page 1 … 9 10 [11] 12 13 … 15 Next page →
| From | Rich <rich@example.invalid> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2025-03-18 03:00 +0000 |
| Subject | Re: broken schools |
| Message-ID | <vranku$1ganp$1@dont-email.me> |
| In reply to | #26924 |
Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> wrote: > D <nospam@example.net> writes: > >> On Fri, 14 Mar 2025, Salvador Mirzo wrote: >> >>>>> Ketchup effect? Wow. I had never heard of that. I get it. The whole >>>>> thing comes down at once. :) >>>> >>>> Exactly! >>> >>> I'm gonna smile when I get an opportunity to use that expression. :) >> >> The latest expression I learned was "keeping up with the Joneses". > > Why "Joneses"? Because that was the name of "the other family" from the 1910's comic strip that created the idiom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeping_up_with_the_joneses
[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]
| From | Eva Lu <evalu@tor.soy> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2025-03-18 21:20 -0300 |
| Subject | Re: broken schools |
| Message-ID | <877c4l6fcy.fsf@tor.soy> |
| In reply to | #26934 |
Rich <rich@example.invalid> writes: > Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> wrote: >> D <nospam@example.net> writes: >> >>> On Fri, 14 Mar 2025, Salvador Mirzo wrote: >>> >>>>>> Ketchup effect? Wow. I had never heard of that. I get it. The whole >>>>>> thing comes down at once. :) >>>>> >>>>> Exactly! >>>> >>>> I'm gonna smile when I get an opportunity to use that expression. :) >>> >>> The latest expression I learned was "keeping up with the Joneses". >> >> Why "Joneses"? > > Because that was the name of "the other family" from the 1910's comic > strip that created the idiom: > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeping_up_with_the_joneses Cool. :)
[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]
| From | D <nospam@example.net> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2025-03-18 11:17 +0100 |
| Subject | Re: broken schools |
| Message-ID | <68c1199e-a859-7ebf-1099-2a601eb0fc80@example.net> |
| In reply to | #26924 |
On Mon, 17 Mar 2025, Salvador Mirzo wrote: >> You learn a lot of odd stuff of usenet and mailinglists! ;) > > Indeed. I often recommend it to people who study a foreign language. > Writing it each day is a very efficient way to get the language into > your memory. With the tools we have now, it's even pure joy. But, you > know, so far, I've never seen *anybody* following my advice in this > matter. (I've been making this recommendation for some two decades.) It's a good point! I never thought of it like that, but now that you mention it, the fact that a big part of my working life has always been english written text, I am certain it has helped improve my english. >> order to increase the number of consumers, and the government happily >> agreed in order to be able to tax the other half of the population! > > I wouldn't quite say the rich *created* feminism. But, surely, like > every agent would do, when they see something (that they didn't create) > can help them in their quest, they use it. Obviously. Rulers often > look into philosophy, say, as an accomplice. This is the truth! > What is your USENET client or text editors? Look above---your client or > text editor almost does what's called ``embarrassing line wrap''. It's > quite it because it doesn't mess up quote attribution, but it doesn't > know how to fill the paragraph properly. Perhaps your client could > invoke the GNU EMACS so that you can handle this with the GNU EMACS (or > vim). But your client must leave the message alone after you're done. For short messages it is pine. For long messages it's vim. > I think you use alpine, right? Can it do a better job? > > (I often fix your quotes, but I won't fix it this time to let you see it > clearly.) Hmm, I never thought about it. For me, all quotes look alright. Could you send me an exact copy and mark where the error is? Maybe I've gotten so used to it I don't notice it? >> Could very well be. The problem with the privacy of the mind, type of arguments >> is that it is difficult to prove anything. > > Proving anything is quite useless for regular people. Proving is useful > in math, less in science and that's just about it, I think. (By the > way, when I see people saying things like ``scientifically proven'', > they have no idea what they're talking about.) Well, let's make the distinction of proof (math) and evidence (science). Maybe that makes it more clear? As for scientifically proven, it is one of my internal jokes. ;) >>> Of course you're right. But I also think we've historically a problem >>> there, which I'm calling a ``war'' here. And the reason I consider it >>> pretty bad it's because it's an inner war. When men and women don't get >>> along, that's because they're not getting along with themselves. >> >> Interesting. Could you give an example? > > Can we begin with women in some Arab cultures? Some don't even let them > drive. Doesn't this suggest a certain battle between the sexes? Battle for me is something intentional, and intentional conflict between two groups. Even though it is not good, I don't know if I would categorize it as a "battle" between the sexes. Just a backwards, retarded culture and religion, that will hopefully go away in a generation or two. =/ > But let's look at our own culture. Here's a true story. I have a > friend who is considered very sweet and polite by everyone who meets > him. He tells me about all of his dates and girlfriends and whatever. > I never told him because I don't even think he would understand it, but > he objectifies women quite clearly (to me). For instance, he was > chatting with a girl on an app some time ago and they were talking about > meeting up. The girl was a bit unstable with the commitment to meeting > in person and he was losing a bit of patience; another girl came up and > agreed to meet him. As he was telling me the story, he made remarks > such to the effect of---whatever; I get the problem solved. > > In other words, he is looking for services; if one company doesn't > satisfy him; he goes with another and that's it. What looks like > someone's impatience with people's complications might actually be > hiding a certain outlook on life, which I call materialism. He can't > see that he's getting involved with people. His outlook is not that of > someone who sees oneself intertwined with everybody else. He seems > himself quite separate from everybody else. Well, from one point of view, he is. He is an individual, and I would say that as long as he is open with only looking for certain services, and a woman is looking to provide services, that's good! If he is not open with it, then it can be seen as lying and potentially exploitation. That is very bad. =( > While people often remark how polite and sweet he is---and I like him > too---, I actually say that he has a health problem that makes him quite > insensitive. Who is suffering the most? Himself. His insensibility, > for example, blinds him even to his own nutrition. He's losing his > health slowly year after year. That is sad. =( > What about women? Same thing. People are very insensitive because > their sensors are all turned off or broken. (And the mystery goes away > when watch them closely: nearly everyone is drugging themselves daily > with coffee, processed foods, medicine and all the rest of it.) > > And that's the case with the most of the world. > > Oh, here's an example from today. Today I woke up with my neighbor > having a little party in his house early morning---that means it > probably started a night out. He lives in his house with his wife. His > wife was not in this party. It was actually a two-couple party. > Believe it or not, my bedroom faces his pool directly. (Not much > privacy for sure.) I got up, saw what was going on and did not even > open my window to give him a bit of privacy in his little party. > Chatting went on for a while and then suddenly silence. So I looked and > then his friend was likely inside the house and he was having sex in the > pool. Wow! Brazil, here I come! ;) Hmm, I never think I ever experienced anything like it in the far, far north. People are way too reserved for anything like that to happen, at least where I have been living, oh, and of course there's never been any swimming pools close by as well. ;) > And that's the second time I spot something. The first was months ago > in a similar situation. Night out followed by coming home with some new > friends. This time the girl was actually cute and perhaps didn't sleep > with him, but he seemed to enjoy kissing her. > > I figure he thinks he's enjoying life, but I actually think he doesn't > like his wife at all. So why are they together? There are no paradoxes If all are in on it, who am I to judge? Our dear lord teaches us to "judge not...". On the other hand, if his wife is not in on it, it is very sad and immoral. > in this world. There's some business going on; there is a contract > there. His wife must be getting something from the deal and he's > getting something else. > > That's not affection. Difficult to say without knowing them better. But it certainly does sound unorthodox to me. > Where does this come from? I don't know the beginning of it all, but > surely this goes back to thousands of years. Recently, I learned that > archaeologists discovered human civilizations in the tropical forests > 150,000 years ago. Was men and women at war back then? I don't know, > but I would easily guess so. I think the problem goes way back. I think lumping society into two groups, and thinking abotu conflict in terms of those two groups, risks obscuring the real issues. I am certain there are many harmonious couples out there. I try to judge based on individual situations and behaviours, instead of making blanket statements. >>> I don't really separate men and women. I think of them as two sides of >>> the same coin. >> >> I think of them as individuals. > > I know. But we are not individuals. Even evolutionary biologists are > getting there already [1]. How come we are not individuals? If not individuals, what then? >> The logical end point of "woke" when they realise that all groups >> eventually boil down to unique individuals. Welcome to libertarianism! >> =D > > You lost me there. Woke is about finding or creating ever smaller groups, and competing to see who is most hurt, and who gets the most privilege. In the left, this woke movement has created more and more sub-groups, and they are all competing for a limited resource (political power) and the more groups there are, the more fighting will go on between them, and eventually all common ground is lost and it will disintegrate. The only logical way out of this dilemma, is to continue to shrink the groups until they consist of groups with one member, the individual, and then they can reach the conclusion that we are all individuals, and the only way to sustainably create a society is if all individuals are respected. > Today I read for the first time the essay called ``Politics and the > English Language''. I thought I was reading a blog post from last year > or something. At the end of the essay, I saw the author's name and the > date of 1946. I was so amazed! :) I felt so current, so relevant. That > author was George Orwell. Oh yes... democracy is losing ground, and the world is becoming more authoritarian. I think it moves in cycles. The only goal must be to make the authoritarian cycles smaller each revolution. >> True. This is a common culprit. When I say happy, I tend to mean long >> term contentment. When most people hear me, they tend to hear >> hedonism. > > When you say that happiness is long term contentment, I wonder what long > term contentment is. :) (But surely you don't have to answer that.) Sadly no. This is something each individual has to work out for himself. This question can, however, be informed by the field of positive psychology which studies happiness. So some factors which tend to be more common around happy people are: * Belonging to a community. * Good diet, sleep and exercise. * Having a reason for existence (such as a doctor who lives for saving lives). * Having a good and loving family. * Being thankful for what you have. * Engaging in some kind of spirituality. * Regularly spending time in nature. * Living in a nice climate (not too cold or too hot). Those are some of the things which correlate with perceived happiness. Note that it is of course correlation and not causation, but if you are not happy, an easy self-experiment is to go through the list above, and see if you can implement some of it, and then track your subjective happiness over 6 to 9 months, to see if your happiness improves. >> Complicate? How come? To me it is one of the most liberating realizations of my >> life. =) For me it is I guess an honest life, a life where you think through >> your values and goals, and then strive to realize them and maximize the amount >> of long term happiness you can get. > > An expert could likely complicate your life by trying to show that it's > either false or meaningless. (Don't ask me to do it---I'm just the > student.) They could attack ``reason for one's existence'' as > meaningless and they could certainly attack ``subjective'' by claiming > that the vast majority of the world is quite objective. Hah... I'll take the challenge! ;) I agree, objectively speaking, that there is no reason. But since for me, it is moved into the subjective realm, it is safe from any attack from "experts" since science, being descriptive, is not able to "crack" the subjective level. >> Oh, this might get complicated. Lived life, as in my subjective experience, I >> would argue, can never become objectively analyzed, since it is impossible for >> descriptive science to "get" what it's like to be the subjective me. > > To your content perhaps, but people can infer what's in you by looking > from the outside. The inner /is/ the outer. You're a human being. > Everybody else knows what's like to be a human being. > > You can deny it all 'til the end of times. You can infer based on behaviour, but you can never "know". My subjectivity and how I experience things, are "locked" into the processing of my brain, as my cosciousness collides with reality. So yes, you are right, we can infer, but that is not certain knowledge, and in some cases, such as quantum physics, not even knowledge. >> Life, descriptive, external, life, as understood by science, can definitely be >> categorized and analyzed. In terms of happiness, you can go so far as positive >> psychology and statistically analyze "happy" people and draw conclusions about >> what life factors tend to contribute to their happiness. > > Freud observed himself and made conclusions that apply to everyone else. > Like everyone else, he perhaps made mistakes in the fine details of > things, but he also made huge contributions---from a unitary sample > space. True, but freud these days is disproven. As you say, he did lay a good foundation for psychology however, and it has progress from him. >> As you said above... our definitions probably differ, which would lead us to >> talking in circles. What are your values and goals in life? Why don't you strive >> for happiness? Tell me! =) > > In my notebook, if you ``strive'', you've already lost a bit of your > health---meaning you're not happy. > > Happiness is what I value the most because health is what I value the > most. My happiness has increased considerably because (over the years) > I've recovered a lot of health I had been losing year after year. I've > spent countless nights awake having ``fun'', for example. Good to hear! =) > In my notebook, I have no values and no goals, which is all very > liberating. I've had lots of them. They were no good. If you have no goals, how do you determine your actions? Surely they are not just random acts? > What I do each day is the right thing. What's to do the right thing? > Impossible to tell because I don't have a method to say what it is. I > know only what the right thing is when the moment of doing it arrives > and I see only a single possible thing to do---the adequate one. Well, it seems you do have a goal! Maybe you apply the via negativa? Do not do the wrong thing, and then pursue, at random or based on preference, the actions that remain after the obviously wrong ones (based on your values) are eliminated? > People often ask me---what would you do in that situation? The answer > is always---I don't know. I might know *then*, but certainly not now. > ``Oh, come on; please answer it.'' I could give you an answer, even a > serious one; but the fact is that I really only know what I'm going to > really do at the moment I'm doing. (Humorously, if you want to play > around with fiction, I can come up with lots of answers for you.) It seems, like me, you are not always comfortable with counterfactuals. I can understand that, and to a certain extent, I agree with you here. > This is also very liberating. I make no choices anymore. I only need > to wait, but the wait is not a passive sitting around; the wait is work, > but it's a work with no striving; it's a work in attention, which is not > concentration. This way I have never been happier. That's good! =) >> And why is the natural good? Isn't that a value statement that we >> cannot answer by science? > > Oh, I think that's easy. The natural is good because bad, by > definition, is anything that lost equilibrium. Why does sugar taste > good? Because it is actually good. You developed your taste through > zillions of years: it was made to feel good when the thing is good for > you. If you have too much of it, it will feel bad and the bad feeling > will push you to come back to equilibrium. > > Nature is the current stability of things. Interfere with that > stability and you're off of the natural course of things. If the > interference is small, things naturally come back to their equilibrium > (as the system is ``designed'' [if I may] to do that---you can remove > the word ``designed'' but it is a fact that the behavior is to come back > to the equilibrium); if the interference is big and the equilibrium > isn't restored quickly enough, things break. > > So the smart thing is to look closely and see what is the equilibrium so > that you can let it be restored when you lose it. > > Watch yourself at work: you'll get tired and you're tired you then work > a little more---losing the equilibrium. It's a little bit, so it's > quite unnoticeable until decades later. (And you do this little bit of > this sin against nature precisely because you're already a bit sick. > Your sickness makes you more sick. A natural thing is all quite > balanced: tired, rest; rested, move.) > >>>>>> I remember when I was young, >>>>> >>>>> You're still young. :) >>>> >>>> Really? ;) >>> >>> Really. :) That's what I meant with the Linus Torvalds story above. >> >> Ahh... got it! > > And you can get younger. Physiological age goes both ways---forward and > backward. > > (*) Footnotes > > [1] A Radical New Proposal For How Mind Emerges From Matter > https://www.noemamag.com/a-radical-new-proposal-for-how-mind-emerges-from-matter/ >
[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]
| From | Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2025-03-19 13:51 -0300 |
| Subject | OT: totally off-topic (Was: Re: broken schools) |
| Message-ID | <877c4lvu9j.fsf@antartida.xyz> |
| In reply to | #26941 |
D <nospam@example.net> writes: > On Mon, 17 Mar 2025, Salvador Mirzo wrote: > >>> You learn a lot of odd stuff of usenet and mailinglists! ;) >> >> Indeed. I often recommend it to people who study a foreign language. >> Writing it each day is a very efficient way to get the language into >> your memory. With the tools we have now, it's even pure joy. But, you >> know, so far, I've never seen *anybody* following my advice in this >> matter. (I've been making this recommendation for some two decades.) > > It's a good point! I never thought of it like that, but now that you mention it, > the fact that a big part of my working life has always been english written > text, I am certain it has helped improve my english. > >>> order to increase the number of consumers, and the government happily >>> agreed in order to be able to tax the other half of the population! >> >> I wouldn't quite say the rich *created* feminism. But, surely, like >> every agent would do, when they see something (that they didn't create) >> can help them in their quest, they use it. Obviously. Rulers often >> look into philosophy, say, as an accomplice. > > This is the truth! > >> What is your USENET client or text editors? Look above---your client or >> text editor almost does what's called ``embarrassing line wrap''. It's >> quite it because it doesn't mess up quote attribution, but it doesn't >> know how to fill the paragraph properly. Perhaps your client could >> invoke the GNU EMACS so that you can handle this with the GNU EMACS (or >> vim). But your client must leave the message alone after you're done. > > For short messages it is pine. For long messages it's vim. > >> I think you use alpine, right? Can it do a better job? >> >> (I often fix your quotes, but I won't fix it this time to let you see it >> clearly.) > > Hmm, I never thought about it. For me, all quotes look alright. Could you send > me an exact copy and mark where the error is? Maybe I've gotten so used to it I > don't notice it? Omg, it turns out it's *my* fault! Sorry about that. I mean---not my fault exactly, but Gnus'. Gnus is messing up my quotes when I M-RET at points to reply---it messes up quotes above and sometimes quotes below. Incredible. I must report this. (It sometimes does and I don't see it, so it goes broken up.) This is Gnus v5.13 running on GNU Emacs 29.4 (build 1, x86_64-unknown-openbsd, GTK+ Version 3.24.43, cairo version 1.18.2) of 2024-09-28. >>> Could very well be. The problem with the privacy of the mind, type >>> of arguments is that it is difficult to prove anything. >> >> Proving anything is quite useless for regular people. Proving is useful >> in math, less in science and that's just about it, I think. (By the >> way, when I see people saying things like ``scientifically proven'', >> they have no idea what they're talking about.) > > Well, let's make the distinction of proof (math) and evidence > (science). Maybe that makes it more clear? By ``proving anything'' I had in mind any kind of good argument. It's of no use to a lot of people. People are not making very rational decisions. I mean---they make rational decisions in a certain level, but it's not very deep reason. That's why society is full of apparent paradoxes. >>>> Of course you're right. But I also think we've historically a problem >>>> there, which I'm calling a ``war'' here. And the reason I consider it >>>> pretty bad it's because it's an inner war. When men and women don't get >>>> along, that's because they're not getting along with themselves. >>> >>> Interesting. Could you give an example? >> >> Can we begin with women in some Arab cultures? Some don't even let them >> drive. Doesn't this suggest a certain battle between the sexes? > > Battle for me is something intentional, and intentional conflict between two > groups. Even though it is not good, I don't know if I would categorize it as a > "battle" between the sexes. Just a backwards, retarded culture and religion, > that will hopefully go away in a generation or two. =/ It's okay---I don't care for the words. If not war or battle, something else. We're both seeing what's hapenning. I call it one thing and you call it another. I might find it disturbing and you might call me too sensitive. That's what we're dealing with every day. Similarly, some people might find it's all beautiful and they could be on drugs, say. :) We need to deal with this. That's a pretty big part of communication. That's why I appreciate some of the art of listening. I appreciate thoughts like those of David Bohm that one would find in ``On Dialogue''. By the way, whatever changes you're seeing, I say it's all on the surface. >> But let's look at our own culture. Here's a true story. I have a >> friend who is considered very sweet and polite by everyone who meets >> him. He tells me about all of his dates and girlfriends and whatever. >> I never told him because I don't even think he would understand it, but >> he objectifies women quite clearly (to me). For instance, he was >> chatting with a girl on an app some time ago and they were talking about >> meeting up. The girl was a bit unstable with the commitment to meeting >> in person and he was losing a bit of patience; another girl came up and >> agreed to meet him. As he was telling me the story, he made remarks >> such to the effect of---whatever; I get the problem solved. >> >> In other words, he is looking for services; if one company doesn't >> satisfy him; he goes with another and that's it. What looks like >> someone's impatience with people's complications might actually be >> hiding a certain outlook on life, which I call materialism. He can't >> see that he's getting involved with people. His outlook is not that of >> someone who sees oneself intertwined with everybody else. He seems >> himself quite separate from everybody else. > > Well, from one point of view, he is. He is an individual, and I would say that > as long as he is open with only looking for certain services, and a woman is > looking to provide services, that's good! Your ``that's good'' here is likely materialist. You might be saying ``if they're happy, what's the problem?'' That's essentially saying---it's not my problem. People can often claim to be happy and even appear happy, when in reality... That's parents worry so much about their children (and often others beyond than theirs). >> While people often remark how polite and sweet he is---and I like him >> too---, I actually say that he has a health problem that makes him quite >> insensitive. Who is suffering the most? Himself. His insensibility, >> for example, blinds him even to his own nutrition. He's losing his >> health slowly year after year. > > That is sad. =( Such is life. It's difficult. You can tell people of their symptons, but they don't see it---they don't believe it. When people can't tune themselves to intelligence, it becomes quite difficult to do anything intelligent. >> What about women? Same thing. People are very insensitive because >> their sensors are all turned off or broken. (And the mystery goes away >> when watch them closely: nearly everyone is drugging themselves daily >> with coffee, processed foods, medicine and all the rest of it.) >> >> And that's the case with the most of the world. >> >> Oh, here's an example from today. Today I woke up with my neighbor >> having a little party in his house early morning---that means it >> probably started a night out. He lives in his house with his wife. His >> wife was not in this party. It was actually a two-couple party. >> Believe it or not, my bedroom faces his pool directly. (Not much >> privacy for sure.) I got up, saw what was going on and did not even >> open my window to give him a bit of privacy in his little party. >> Chatting went on for a while and then suddenly silence. So I looked and >> then his friend was likely inside the house and he was having sex in the >> pool. > > Wow! Brazil, here I come! ;) Lol. You could be getting the wrong impression. :) But the real remark to be made here, in a more serious tone, is that this is no good. For instance, when I saw them in the swimming pool, the first thing I thought was---omg, what a place for that. And he was in own home---he likely left the most comfortable place for his friend. Of course, people might love this kind of stuff. It's not shameful or obscene or whatever---I couldn't care less about any of that. I'm saying it's just a someone trying to get some relief, without much of a clue of what's going on. By the way, if I were mildly inclined to the same, I could likely be there myself. When they moved in, they threw various parties and invited me to them all. I had lots of chances to blend in, but I couldn't, really: I don't drink; I don't stay up all the night; what I eat is the nearly the bare minimum and from a very picky selection. It's a totally different life style. And, hey, don't get me wrong: I actually like them. I like both of them. One of the first things I do when I wake up is open up my window. I love natural light. I only opened my window by midday that day---that's when they had already left home (likely to some more fun). I also spotted my neighbor's friend with his head down on a table trying to rest a bit. In all probability, they spent the night out, arrived in the morning with the two girls and didn't sleep for a minute. Of course, with whisky, Red Bulls, beers and that kind of nonsense. That's one of the things I eventually noticed. The first thing to do to put your life in order is to quit all drugs---bad food included. To enjoy a whole night without sleep, you gotta be on something. The body loves to sleep if it's well regulated. > Hmm, I never think I ever experienced anything like it in the far, far > north. People are way too reserved for anything like that to happen, > at least where I have been living, oh, and of course there's never > been any swimming pools close by as well. ;) I do believe Brazilians are on average less reserved. There's a lot of poor people here. People who live in the slums, for example. I have never been too close, but they're everywhere so I often observe them. One problem I've spent some hours (that is, almost nothing) on is why do poor people talk so loud. My hypothesis is that they grow up in space-deprived environments, neighbors are too close by, no privacy and so on. It becomes the normal thing, so they might not feel being exposed at all to whoever is around. >> And that's the second time I spot something. The first was months ago >> in a similar situation. Night out followed by coming home with some new >> friends. This time the girl was actually cute and perhaps didn't sleep >> with him, but he seemed to enjoy kissing her. >> >> I figure he thinks he's enjoying life, but I actually think he doesn't >> like his wife at all. So why are they together? There are no paradoxes > > If all are in on it, who am I to judge? Our dear lord teaches us to "judge > not...". On the other hand, if his wife is not in on it, it is very sad and > immoral. I claim she is in on it, not consciously in on it though. But she's in on it in a deeper level. For instance, I classify her as an alcoholic. I don't think her husband is an alcoholic in the same level as she is, but technically I do include him in the alcoholism classification, too. He surely needs alcohol, for example, to have the kind of night we described earlier. So many people do. >> in this world. There's some business going on; there is a contract >> there. His wife must be getting something from the deal and he's >> getting something else. >> >> That's not affection. > > Difficult to say without knowing them better. But it certainly does sound > unorthodox to me. Yeah---this is not a serious analysis. It's all guess based on statistics. >> Where does this come from? I don't know the beginning of it all, but >> surely this goes back to thousands of years. Recently, I learned that >> archaeologists discovered human civilizations in the tropical forests >> 150,000 years ago. Was men and women at war back then? I don't know, >> but I would easily guess so. I think the problem goes way back. > > I think lumping society into two groups, and thinking abotu conflict in terms of > those two groups, risks obscuring the real issues. I am certain there are many > harmonious couples out there. I try to judge based on individual situations and > behaviours, instead of making blanket statements. Agreed! >>>> I don't really separate men and women. I think of them as two sides of >>>> the same coin. >>> >>> I think of them as individuals. >> >> I know. But we are not individuals. Even evolutionary biologists are >> getting there already [1]. > > How come we are not individuals? If not individuals, what then? That's too difficult of a conversation. We're in comp.misc. Let's call it a thread and end this. If you're curious, you could look at two perspectives: one, which is the evolutionary biology one---there's the article I linked in a previous post. Another perspective, more difficult to parse, is that of someone such as Jiddu Krishnamurti---very interesting perspective there. >>> The logical end point of "woke" when they realise that all groups >>> eventually boil down to unique individuals. Welcome to libertarianism! >>> =D >> >> You lost me there. > > Woke is about finding or creating ever smaller groups, and competing to see who > is most hurt, and who gets the most privilege. In the left, this woke movement > has created more and more sub-groups, and they are all competing for a limited > resource (political power) and the more groups there are, the more fighting will > go on between them, and eventually all common ground is lost and it will > disintegrate. > > The only logical way out of this dilemma, is to continue to shrink the groups > until they consist of groups with one member, the individual, and then they can > reach the conclusion that we are all individuals, and the only way to > sustainably create a society is if all individuals are respected. Of course. This stuff is all complete nonsense. Not even worth a discussion. I don't even use the word you began your paragraph---I never said it out loud and never wrote it. Let's keep it that way. :) >>> Complicate? How come? To me it is one of the most liberating >>> realizations of my life. =) For me it is I guess an honest life, a >>> life where you think through your values and goals, and then strive >>> to realize them and maximize the amount of long term happiness you >>> can get. >> >> An expert could likely complicate your life by trying to show that it's >> either false or meaningless. (Don't ask me to do it---I'm just the >> student.) They could attack ``reason for one's existence'' as >> meaningless and they could certainly attack ``subjective'' by claiming >> that the vast majority of the world is quite objective. > > Hah... I'll take the challenge! ;) I agree, objectively speaking, that there is > no reason. No reason? I think there is reason. :) > But since for me, it is moved into the subjective realm, it is safe > from any attack from "experts" since science, being descriptive, is > not able to "crack" the subjective level. I've seen this before. It's typical. You're putting too much precision into things. For instance, you said (likely below) that we can't know for sure; we can infer. Sure---knowing for sure is too difficult. We can infer and that's good. We all look and the see the Moon out there. We're sure it's there. End of the story. :) It's not subjective. That's what I mean. But, sure, I read Descartes's ``Discourse on the Method''. I loved seeing him doubting everything and starting from scratch. I think that book has a serious educational philosophy because it gives us the example of an independent mind (in pretty ordinary steps) organizing itself and preparing itself for more work. But I also think (in retrospective) it's a bit childish, too. I don't need to doubt so much. I see the intellect being too precious, being considered more than it really is. For instance, I just sit and feel myself. Here I am---therefore I am. End of story. :) It's not subjective. We all have seen the same stuff. Of course, from where you look is different from where I look. But we're seeing the same things---evidently. It's what nearly all of the evidence shows. >>> Oh, this might get complicated. Lived life, as in my subjective >>> experience, I would argue, can never become objectively analyzed, >>> since it is impossible for descriptive science to "get" what it's >>> like to be the subjective me. >> >> To your content perhaps, but people can infer what's in you by looking >> from the outside. The inner /is/ the outer. You're a human being. >> Everybody else knows what's like to be a human being. >> >> You can deny it all 'til the end of times. > > You can infer based on behaviour, but you can never "know". My subjectivity and > how I experience things, are "locked" into the processing of my brain, as my > cosciousness collides with reality. > > So yes, you are right, we can infer, but that is not certain knowledge, and in > some cases, such as quantum physics, not even knowledge. You're correct, of course, but see above. >>> Life, descriptive, external, life, as understood by science, can >>> definitely be categorized and analyzed. In terms of happiness, you >>> can go so far as positive psychology and statistically analyze >>> "happy" people and draw conclusions about what life factors tend to >>> contribute to their happiness. >> >> Freud observed himself and made conclusions that apply to everyone else. >> Like everyone else, he perhaps made mistakes in the fine details of >> things, but he also made huge contributions---from a unitary sample >> space. > > True, but freud these days is disproven. As you say, he did lay a good > foundation for psychology however, and it has progress from him. I don't think he's disproven at all. :) Look, it doesn't matter if a mathematician got a conjecture wrong---he did a lot of useful work in his life. Same with Freud---just his independence from public opinion makes him a type of Socrates. >> In my notebook, I have no values and no goals, which is all very >> liberating. I've had lots of them. They were no good. > > If you have no goals, how do you determine your actions? Surely they are not > just random acts? They're surely not random. I actually try not to determine. I listen closely on a daily basis. Then I see something I need to do, then I do it. >> What I do each day is the right thing. What's to do the right thing? >> Impossible to tell because I don't have a method to say what it is. I >> know only what the right thing is when the moment of doing it arrives >> and I see only a single possible thing to do---the adequate one. > > Well, it seems you do have a goal! Maybe you apply the via negativa? > Do not do the wrong thing, and then pursue, at random or based on > preference, the actions that remain after the obviously wrong ones > (based on your values) are eliminated? I think you can put it either way. My agreeing with your words or disagreeing won't quite do much of anything to you. But you can count on my honesty here. I don't mind saying I have a goal, say. But I think the best choice of words is to say I don't. Because I really don't. Remember I said I really wanna have kids? You can call it a goal. :) But that would be too simplistic to the point of being false. It's not quite true that I want to have kids. What I want is a healthy life and I think a healthy life would evolve towards that too. But you can likely bet that I wouldn't do anything out of the ordinary to make that happen. If all I can see in my life is a disease and death, say, I think I would go down with it. Let me put it in terms of chess---lol. If all I can see is no way out out of the check mate strategy of my opponent, I make all the moves that I can until he check mates me. No desperation. I think that living life as it is is quite a victory---to use words that are siblings of ``goal''. >> People often ask me---what would you do in that situation? The answer >> is always---I don't know. I might know *then*, but certainly not now. >> ``Oh, come on; please answer it.'' I could give you an answer, even a >> serious one; but the fact is that I really only know what I'm going to >> really do at the moment I'm doing. (Humorously, if you want to play >> around with fiction, I can come up with lots of answers for you.) > > It seems, like me, you are not always comfortable with > counterfactuals. A beg your pardon? I'm not sure what you mean, but I think I agree. A counterfactual is something that goes against the facts. Surely. I could never deny that 1 + 1 = 2, say. I can't even ignore evidence. I don't mind leaving questions open at all. Every now and then it's a good idea to hang a question mark on all those things we've long taken for granted. (Is that Bertrand Russell again?)
[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]
| From | D <nospam@example.net> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2025-03-19 23:20 +0100 |
| Subject | Re: OT: totally off-topic (Was: Re: broken schools) |
| Message-ID | <a95f723c-de3f-1d5d-38f5-3917a9c18b34@example.net> |
| In reply to | #26963 |
On Wed, 19 Mar 2025, Salvador Mirzo wrote: >> Hmm, I never thought about it. For me, all quotes look alright. Could you send >> me an exact copy and mark where the error is? Maybe I've gotten so used to it I >> don't notice it? > > Omg, it turns out it's *my* fault! Sorry about that. I mean---not my > fault exactly, but Gnus'. Gnus is messing up my quotes when I M-RET at > points to reply---it messes up quotes above and sometimes quotes below. > Incredible. I must report this. (It sometimes does and I don't see it, > so it goes broken up.) Oh, glad you found the solution! =) >>> Proving anything is quite useless for regular people. Proving is useful >>> in math, less in science and that's just about it, I think. (By the >>> way, when I see people saying things like ``scientifically proven'', >>> they have no idea what they're talking about.) >> >> Well, let's make the distinction of proof (math) and evidence >> (science). Maybe that makes it more clear? > > By ``proving anything'' I had in mind any kind of good argument. It's > of no use to a lot of people. People are not making very rational > decisions. I mean---they make rational decisions in a certain level, > but it's not very deep reason. That's why society is full of apparent > paradoxes. Ahh... got it! Yes, I agree with that. It is very fun with the war in Ukraine, when talking with russians who are only exposed to russian propaganda. It is very difficult to reason, since there is no baseline for truth. >> Battle for me is something intentional, and intentional conflict between two >> groups. Even though it is not good, I don't know if I would categorize it as a >> "battle" between the sexes. Just a backwards, retarded culture and religion, >> that will hopefully go away in a generation or two. =/ > > It's okay---I don't care for the words. If not war or battle, something > else. We're both seeing what's hapenning. I call it one thing and you > call it another. I might find it disturbing and you might call me too > sensitive. That's what we're dealing with every day. Similarly, some > people might find it's all beautiful and they could be on drugs, say. :) Haha... true. But I try to be optimistic about the world. Sometimes it is not easy, but in general I find it a much more productive attitude than other options. Yes, my drug is caffeine. ;) > We need to deal with this. That's a pretty big part of communication. > That's why I appreciate some of the art of listening. I appreciate > thoughts like those of David Bohm that one would find in ``On > Dialogue''. By the way, whatever changes you're seeing, I say it's all > on the surface. What is this about? Maybe I should make a note of that text. >> Well, from one point of view, he is. He is an individual, and I would say that >> as long as he is open with only looking for certain services, and a woman is >> looking to provide services, that's good! > > Your ``that's good'' here is likely materialist. You might be saying > ``if they're happy, what's the problem?'' That's essentially > saying---it's not my problem. People can often claim to be happy and > even appear happy, when in reality... That's parents worry so much > about their children (and often others beyond than theirs). This is true. But they are adults, and beyond pointing out something, at the end of the day, I have no legal right or any right for that matter, to control their lives. It is perfectly true, what you are saying, and you could be right, and it would be a tragedy, but I prefer to assume things are alright, until proven otherwise. When it comes to parents and children, there is a different set of expectations, both cultural and legal, so I don't think it would carry over. There is a fine line between wanting to help, when it is justified, and being labeled a "Karen". >>> too---, I actually say that he has a health problem that makes him quite >>> insensitive. Who is suffering the most? Himself. His insensibility, >>> for example, blinds him even to his own nutrition. He's losing his >>> health slowly year after year. >> >> That is sad. =( > > Such is life. It's difficult. You can tell people of their symptons, > but they don't see it---they don't believe it. When people can't tune > themselves to intelligence, it becomes quite difficult to do anything > intelligent. This is the truth! But I think you have done what you can do, and you shouldn't feel bad about it. At the end of the day, he is an adult and responsible for his own life. >>> open my window to give him a bit of privacy in his little party. >>> Chatting went on for a while and then suddenly silence. So I looked and >>> then his friend was likely inside the house and he was having sex in the >>> pool. >> >> Wow! Brazil, here I come! ;) > > Lol. You could be getting the wrong impression. :) But the real remark > to be made here, in a more serious tone, is that this is no good. For > instance, when I saw them in the swimming pool, the first thing I > thought was---omg, what a place for that. And he was in own home---he > likely left the most comfortable place for his friend. Of course, > people might love this kind of stuff. It's not shameful or obscene or > whatever---I couldn't care less about any of that. I'm saying it's just > a someone trying to get some relief, without much of a clue of what's > going on. True. Could be a good example of pleasure now, at the expense of pain later. > By the way, if I were mildly inclined to the same, I could likely be > there myself. When they moved in, they threw various parties and > invited me to them all. I had lots of chances to blend in, but I > couldn't, really: I don't drink; I don't stay up all the night; what I Haha, well, sounds like you probably did yourself a favour. I am fascinated! In sweden, it would be exceptionally rare that any neighbour would be invited. > eat is the nearly the bare minimum and from a very picky selection. > It's a totally different life style. And, hey, don't get me wrong: I > actually like them. I like both of them. One of the first things I do > when I wake up is open up my window. I love natural light. I only > opened my window by midday that day---that's when they had already left > home (likely to some more fun). I also spotted my neighbor's friend > with his head down on a table trying to rest a bit. In all probability, > they spent the night out, arrived in the morning with the two girls and > didn't sleep for a minute. Of course, with whisky, Red Bulls, beers and > that kind of nonsense. Haha... wow! I don't think I could do that in my 30s even. ;) Brazilians are very well trained! ;) > That's one of the things I eventually noticed. The first thing to do to > put your life in order is to quit all drugs---bad food included. To > enjoy a whole night without sleep, you gotta be on something. The body > loves to sleep if it's well regulated. I probably shouldn't tell your this, but I looooove Mc Donalds hamburgers! ;) My wife forbids me from eating them too often, so I'm probably at about 9 per year or so. ;) >> Hmm, I never think I ever experienced anything like it in the far, far >> north. People are way too reserved for anything like that to happen, >> at least where I have been living, oh, and of course there's never >> been any swimming pools close by as well. ;) > > I do believe Brazilians are on average less reserved. There's a lot of > poor people here. People who live in the slums, for example. I have > never been too close, but they're everywhere so I often observe them. > One problem I've spent some hours (that is, almost nothing) on is why do > poor people talk so loud. My hypothesis is that they grow up in > space-deprived environments, neighbors are too close by, no privacy and > so on. It becomes the normal thing, so they might not feel being > exposed at all to whoever is around. Loud? Southern europeans are loud by my standard, so if they are loud by your standards, then they must be _really_ loud! I once had a brazilian colleague from Sao Paolo for 2 months, and he was a really nice guy. But once he had some fellow brazilians over and the volume did increase. =) I suspect he came from a wealthy family because when he went back to Brazil, his luggage was full of play stations and electronics that he said he could easily sell at twice the price. There must have been some very high tariffs at that time. >> If all are in on it, who am I to judge? Our dear lord teaches us to "judge >> not...". On the other hand, if his wife is not in on it, it is very sad and >> immoral. > > I claim she is in on it, not consciously in on it though. But she's in > on it in a deeper level. For instance, I classify her as an alcoholic. > I don't think her husband is an alcoholic in the same level as she is, > but technically I do include him in the alcoholism classification, too. > He surely needs alcohol, for example, to have the kind of night we > described earlier. So many people do. He sounds like he would be right at home in northern europe. No fun there unless alcohol is in involved. >>> I know. But we are not individuals. Even evolutionary biologists are >>> getting there already [1]. >> >> How come we are not individuals? If not individuals, what then? > > That's too difficult of a conversation. We're in comp.misc. Let's call > it a thread and end this. If you're curious, you could look at two > perspectives: one, which is the evolutionary biology one---there's the > article I linked in a previous post. Another perspective, more > difficult to parse, is that of someone such as Jiddu Krishnamurti---very > interesting perspective there. Yes, sounds reasonable. Thank you for the pointers, I'll have a look! >> The only logical way out of this dilemma, is to continue to shrink the groups >> until they consist of groups with one member, the individual, and then they can >> reach the conclusion that we are all individuals, and the only way to >> sustainably create a society is if all individuals are respected. > > Of course. > > This stuff is all complete nonsense. Not even worth a discussion. I > don't even use the word you began your paragraph---I never said it out > loud and never wrote it. Let's keep it that way. :) You are a philosopher king! >>> An expert could likely complicate your life by trying to show that it's >>> either false or meaningless. (Don't ask me to do it---I'm just the >>> student.) They could attack ``reason for one's existence'' as >>> meaningless and they could certainly attack ``subjective'' by claiming >>> that the vast majority of the world is quite objective. >> >> Hah... I'll take the challenge! ;) I agree, objectively speaking, that there is >> no reason. > > No reason? I think there is reason. :) But can you prove it, objectively? If you can, I think you'll have solved 2500 years of ethical philosophizing. Or, another out, is the way of definition. Depending on your definitions, it could of course be "made" objective. The question is then if I accept the definitions or not. =) >> But since for me, it is moved into the subjective realm, it is safe >> from any attack from "experts" since science, being descriptive, is >> not able to "crack" the subjective level. > > I've seen this before. It's typical. You're putting too much precision > into things. For instance, you said (likely below) that we can't know > for sure; we can infer. Sure---knowing for sure is too difficult. We > can infer and that's good. We all look and the see the Moon out there. > We're sure it's there. End of the story. :) It's not subjective. > That's what I mean. True. When it comes to our senses and using them as "proof" of the external world, I'm all for it! =) > But, sure, I read Descartes's ``Discourse on the Method''. I loved > seeing him doubting everything and starting from scratch. I think that > book has a serious educational philosophy because it gives us the > example of an independent mind (in pretty ordinary steps) organizing > itself and preparing itself for more work. > > But I also think (in retrospective) it's a bit childish, too. I don't > need to doubt so much. I see the intellect being too precious, being > considered more than it really is. For instance, I just sit and feel > myself. Here I am---therefore I am. End of story. :) Amen! I have an idea where some things, like "the world" don't need proof, since it happens to you regardless of it you want it or not. It "happens" to you. Same with time. But it is ill defined. It either clicks with people instantly, or it doesn't. > It's not subjective. We all have seen the same stuff. Of course, from > where you look is different from where I look. But we're seeing the > same things---evidently. It's what nearly all of the evidence shows. Agreed! But boy have I had endless email discussions with people who reject the proof of their senses. >> You can infer based on behaviour, but you can never "know". My subjectivity and >> how I experience things, are "locked" into the processing of my brain, as my >> cosciousness collides with reality. >> >> So yes, you are right, we can infer, but that is not certain knowledge, and in >> some cases, such as quantum physics, not even knowledge. > > You're correct, of course, but see above. Agreed! >>> Freud observed himself and made conclusions that apply to everyone else. >>> Like everyone else, he perhaps made mistakes in the fine details of >>> things, but he also made huge contributions---from a unitary sample >>> space. >> >> True, but freud these days is disproven. As you say, he did lay a good >> foundation for psychology however, and it has progress from him. > > I don't think he's disproven at all. :) Look, it doesn't matter if a > mathematician got a conjecture wrong---he did a lot of useful work in > his life. Same with Freud---just his independence from public opinion > makes him a type of Socrates. I did a lot of good, of course, but his theories about dream interpretation and the psyche I think are no longer relevant. On the other hand, I am not a psychologist, so who am I to say? =) >>> In my notebook, I have no values and no goals, which is all very >>> liberating. I've had lots of them. They were no good. >> >> If you have no goals, how do you determine your actions? Surely they are not >> just random acts? > > They're surely not random. I actually try not to determine. I listen > closely on a daily basis. Then I see something I need to do, then I do > it. Sounds very daoist, very intuitional. >> Well, it seems you do have a goal! Maybe you apply the via negativa? >> Do not do the wrong thing, and then pursue, at random or based on >> preference, the actions that remain after the obviously wrong ones >> (based on your values) are eliminated? > > I think you can put it either way. My agreeing with your words or > disagreeing won't quite do much of anything to you. But you can count > on my honesty here. > > I don't mind saying I have a goal, say. But I think the best choice of > words is to say I don't. Because I really don't. Remember I said I > really wanna have kids? You can call it a goal. :) But that would be > too simplistic to the point of being false. It's not quite true that I > want to have kids. What I want is a healthy life and I think a healthy > life would evolve towards that too. But you can likely bet that I > wouldn't do anything out of the ordinary to make that happen. If all I > can see in my life is a disease and death, say, I think I would go down > with it. Let me put it in terms of chess---lol. If all I can see is no > way out out of the check mate strategy of my opponent, I make all the > moves that I can until he check mates me. No desperation. I think that > living life as it is is quite a victory---to use words that are siblings > of ``goal''. Hmm, I think you make sense to me. >>> People often ask me---what would you do in that situation? The answer >>> is always---I don't know. I might know *then*, but certainly not now. >>> ``Oh, come on; please answer it.'' I could give you an answer, even a >>> serious one; but the fact is that I really only know what I'm going to >>> really do at the moment I'm doing. (Humorously, if you want to play >>> around with fiction, I can come up with lots of answers for you.) >> >> It seems, like me, you are not always comfortable with >> counterfactuals. > > A beg your pardon? I'm not sure what you mean, but I think I agree. A > counterfactual is something that goes against the facts. Surely. I > could never deny that 1 + 1 = 2, say. I can't even ignore evidence. I > don't mind leaving questions open at all. Every now and then it's a > good idea to hang a question mark on all those things we've long taken > for granted. (Is that Bertrand Russell again?) Not quite. Counterfactuals are questions such as... "imagine you ate an apple this morning, would that mean that later in the day you would have a stomach ache". So when those types of thought experiments are not made with the intention of high lighting something tangible or empirically provable, I find them to be useless idle speculation. That's what I was trying to get at.
[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]
| From | Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2025-03-21 11:52 -0300 |
| Subject | Re: OT: totally off-topic |
| Message-ID | <87iko2mo53.fsf@DEV.NULL> |
| In reply to | #26966 |
D <nospam@example.net> writes: >> We need to deal with this. That's a pretty big part of >> communication. That's why I appreciate some of the art of listening. >> I appreciate thoughts like those of David Bohm that one would find in >> ``On Dialogue''. By the way, whatever changes you're seeing, I say >> it's all on the surface. > > What is this about? Maybe I should make a note of that text. That's a conversation David Bohm held with an audience (in California, if I recall correctly). The book is a transcription of the conversation. In those dialogs, David Bohm tries to convey what he means by a ``dialogue''. While an intellectual discussion is typically a subtle fight, as Jiddu Krishnamurti (David Bohm's friend) would describe, Bohm's dialogue is a certain construction among two or more people in which /listening/ (in the Krishamurti's sense) is key. I believe it was in an interview that David Bohm gave to Professor Wilkins---which was an interview meant to write a biography of David Bohm, which I believe never happened---that David Bohm remarked and pretty much nobody had ever understood his notion of dialogue, and that made it even more interesting because it suggests that it has a certain subtleness that could be escaping people---and then I wonder if it escaped me too. >>> Well, from one point of view, he is. He is an individual, and I >>> would say that as long as he is open with only looking for certain >>> services, and a woman is looking to provide services, that's good! >> >> Your ``that's good'' here is likely materialist. You might be saying >> ``if they're happy, what's the problem?'' That's essentially >> saying---it's not my problem. People can often claim to be happy and >> even appear happy, when in reality... That's parents worry so much >> about their children (and often others beyond than theirs). > > This is true. But they are adults, and beyond pointing out something, > at the end of the day, I have no legal right or any right for that > matter, to control their lives. Sure, there's no control intended. If I'm controlling anything, I should stop this conversation right now and go put my life in order. :) The controller is the controlled. -- Jiddu Krishnamurti > It is perfectly true, what you are saying, and you could be right, and > it would be a tragedy, but I prefer to assume things are alright, > until proven otherwise. I prefer to assume things are alright if they feel alright. Not if they /look/ alright, but it /feels/ alright. I use a differnt verb to try to capture the subtleness of things. My neighbors, for example. If you just look, they seem alright, but if you look more carefully... It's not that they are suffering more than everybody else; everybody else seems to be suffering just about the same. And people don't complain much about that. They complain about the weather, prices, public opinion and so on, but they don't really complain about how their ``rights'' (if I may use that word) are being denied by living a life full of stimulants, boring work, lack of affection, meaningful friendship and so on. > When it comes to parents and children, there is a different set of > expectations, both cultural and legal, so I don't think it would carry > over. The comparison with parents and children was not to be taken much farther. My fault. > There is a fine line between wanting to help, when it is justified, > and being labeled a "Karen". Lol. I hadn't heard about ``Karen'' before. Fun. All in all, I'm just observing, not judging people or anything. All I'm saying about my neighbors doesn't make them anything wrong in any way at all. They're surely trying to get things right and so am I. And I wouldn't mind anyone saying that I'm the wrong one because I don't even care at all about who's right or wrong. I may be wrong, but at the end of the day I need to carry myself in life as my eyes see it; if I see that 1 + 1 = 3 and people tell me that it's 2, who can I do? Should I believe my brain or their brains? Now, of course, if they can somehow make my brain not make the mistake, then I'll get 1 + 1 = 2, too, and then it will my brain once again tell me what the facts are. >>>> too---, I actually say that he has a health problem that makes him quite >>>> insensitive. Who is suffering the most? Himself. His insensibility, >>>> for example, blinds him even to his own nutrition. He's losing his >>>> health slowly year after year. >>> >>> That is sad. =( >> >> Such is life. It's difficult. You can tell people of their symptons, >> but they don't see it---they don't believe it. When people can't tune >> themselves to intelligence, it becomes quite difficult to do anything >> intelligent. > > This is the truth! But I think you have done what you can do, and you > shouldn't feel bad about it. At the end of the day, he is an adult and > responsible for his own life. Quite right. It's what I said before at some point---respect people. If they want to throw themselves under a train, you have to respect them. I don't mean it literally, of course. Like Noam Chomsky, I do think we can exercise authority over people if we can easily justify it. So, yeah, I would stop you from throwing yourself under a train. Nevertheless, not forever: I couldn't follow you around each day to see if you're going near the tracks. It is absurd to me not to concede that people do have the right to carry their lives however they want. So when people question my arguments, say, I don't really bother too much with some kind of over-explaining. If you need to over-explain, it's likely because we're in an intellectual conversation---a subtle fight. There's no point. I am nearly nothing. I'm like the wind that blows. I can blow on someone's face, but what they'll after the wind is gone is completely on them. >>>> open my window to give him a bit of privacy in his little party. >>>> Chatting went on for a while and then suddenly silence. So I >>>> looked and then his friend was likely inside the house and he was >>>> having sex in the pool. >>> >>> Wow! Brazil, here I come! ;) >> >> Lol. You could be getting the wrong impression. :) But the real remark >> to be made here, in a more serious tone, is that this is no good. For >> instance, when I saw them in the swimming pool, the first thing I >> thought was---omg, what a place for that. And he was in own home---he >> likely left the most comfortable place for his friend. Of course, >> people might love this kind of stuff. It's not shameful or obscene or >> whatever---I couldn't care less about any of that. I'm saying it's just >> a someone trying to get some relief, without much of a clue of what's >> going on. > > True. Could be a good example of pleasure now, at the expense of pain later. Right. >> By the way, if I were mildly inclined to the same, I could likely be >> there myself. When they moved in, they threw various parties and >> invited me to them all. I had lots of chances to blend in, but I >> couldn't, really: I don't drink; I don't stay up all the night; what I > > Haha, well, sounds like you probably did yourself a favour. I am > fascinated! In sweden, it would be exceptionally rare that any > neighbour would be invited. I see a lot of neighbors here that don't get along. I am probably a very respectful person and perhaps also extroverted and perhaps also usually happy because people do seem to like to see me. I greet people whenever I see them. I tend to think that whenever I see a human being I should greet that person. Of course, we can't do it in a crowded place, but we can surely do it on our street, at work, the places we usually go and so on. I do it. First a greet, then another and another and... Last Saturday of Carnival I was having ice cream with a neighbor of mine who is a lady likely in her 80s. I also met her son who is likely a bit older than I am. And there's more of their family in the street too, but I haven't met them yet. Another habit of mine is that I pretty much ask no questions and answer anyone that comes at me with a brave honesty and kindness. This could be improperly seen as small talk, but given that I can be pretty honest with a no-nonsense attitude, people would lose the wrong impression if they come a bit closer. >> eat is the nearly the bare minimum and from a very picky selection. >> It's a totally different life style. And, hey, don't get me wrong: I >> actually like them. I like both of them. One of the first things I do >> when I wake up is open up my window. I love natural light. I only >> opened my window by midday that day---that's when they had already left >> home (likely to some more fun). I also spotted my neighbor's friend >> with his head down on a table trying to rest a bit. In all probability, >> they spent the night out, arrived in the morning with the two girls and >> didn't sleep for a minute. Of course, with whisky, Red Bulls, beers and >> that kind of nonsense. > > Haha... wow! I don't think I could do that in my 30s even. ;) > Brazilians are very well trained! ;) I could never really do that myself. In my teens and 20s, I could stay up all night, but I never ever liked to go to bed after the Sun was up. I had to sleep before it was morning; it never felt good otherwise. I think the morning light (and being exceptionally tired) didn't let my body rest too much. Sometimes I think that by falling asleep with the body tense, say, kinda keeps it tense throughout the night. But that's just a wild thought. >> That's one of the things I eventually noticed. The first thing to do to >> put your life in order is to quit all drugs---bad food included. To >> enjoy a whole night without sleep, you gotta be on something. The body >> loves to sleep if it's well regulated. > > I probably shouldn't tell your this, but I looooove Mc Donalds > hamburgers! ;) My wife forbids me from eating them too often, so I'm > probably at about 9 per year or so. ;) Lol! Here's a sermon made specially for... Lol. Just kidding. To tell you the truth, I kinda like it a lot, too. Now, one thing is true---it tastes better if don't eat it every day, say. I've had weeks in which I indulged in it perhaps eating McDonald's every day, along with ice cream, coffee and other terrible ideas. Thank God I'm got out of that alive. These days, gluten hits me pretty bad. It still tastes good, but it doesn't after the food starts taking its effect. I didn't feel like that in my teens, but after I started quitting all of this bad stuff, I can't seem to go back to it at all. But I know how good it feels. I'm fairly convinced, though, that the real best stuff is---like you're doing---to take things in moderation. Nine McDonald's per year (so long as they're uniformly distributed in the year) is pretty alright, I think. It's roughly one per month. I think that's enough time for the body to handle it quite well. Why do I think that? Observation. >>> Hmm, I never think I ever experienced anything like it in the far, far >>> north. People are way too reserved for anything like that to happen, >>> at least where I have been living, oh, and of course there's never >>> been any swimming pools close by as well. ;) >> >> I do believe Brazilians are on average less reserved. There's a lot of >> poor people here. People who live in the slums, for example. I have >> never been too close, but they're everywhere so I often observe them. >> One problem I've spent some hours (that is, almost nothing) on is why do >> poor people talk so loud. My hypothesis is that they grow up in >> space-deprived environments, neighbors are too close by, no privacy and >> so on. It becomes the normal thing, so they might not feel being >> exposed at all to whoever is around. > > Loud? Southern europeans are loud by my standard, so if they are loud > by your standards, then they must be _really_ loud! I once had a > brazilian colleague from Sao Paolo for 2 months, and he was a really > nice guy. But once he had some fellow brazilians over and the volume > did increase. =) Lol. Sorry about that! :) > I suspect he came from a wealthy family because when he went back to > Brazil, his luggage was full of play stations and electronics that he > said he could easily sell at twice the price. There must have been > some very high tariffs at that time. That doesn't sound like someone very wealthy. >>> If all are in on it, who am I to judge? Our dear lord teaches us to >>> "judge not...". On the other hand, if his wife is not in on it, it >>> is very sad and immoral. >> >> I claim she is in on it, not consciously in on it though. But she's in >> on it in a deeper level. For instance, I classify her as an alcoholic. >> I don't think her husband is an alcoholic in the same level as she is, >> but technically I do include him in the alcoholism classification, too. >> He surely needs alcohol, for example, to have the kind of night we >> described earlier. So many people do. > > He sounds like he would be right at home in northern europe. No fun > there unless alcohol is in involved. Yeah---I suppose there might be cultures out there that drink a lot more than Brazilians. I don't think Brazilians do too bad, but it's been getting worse. There's an Americanization of the food industry here. Brazilians are going in on it. I remember over 10 years ago seeing on TV that over 52% of Brazil is overweight. That was unthinkable in the 70s or the 80s, say. >>> The only logical way out of this dilemma, is to continue to shrink >>> the groups until they consist of groups with one member, the >>> individual, and then they can reach the conclusion that we are all >>> individuals, and the only way to sustainably create a society is if >>> all individuals are respected. >> >> Of course. >> >> This stuff is all complete nonsense. Not even worth a discussion. I >> don't even use the word you began your paragraph [with]---I never >> said it out loud and never wrote it. Let's keep it that way. :) > > You are a philosopher king! Lol! >>>> An expert could likely complicate your life by trying to show that it's >>>> either false or meaningless. (Don't ask me to do it---I'm just the >>>> student.) They could attack ``reason for one's existence'' as >>>> meaningless and they could certainly attack ``subjective'' by claiming >>>> that the vast majority of the world is quite objective. >>> >>> Hah... I'll take the challenge! ;) I agree, objectively speaking, >>> that there is no reason. >> >> No reason? I think there is reason. :) > > But can you prove it, objectively? Objectively? You mean kinda like a proof that the whole world with stand in awe, like beautiful math proofs like Godel's Theorems? I believe I can't and likely wouldn't work on trying. Why should I do something that's looking pretty difficult? Because it's important? I kinda doubt it's important. I think proofs are just constructions. In math, for example, their role is quite clear. I don't even know what it would mean to prove that there is reason. I think there's reason because we seem to be doing some stuff here that we decide to call reason and then, evidently, it exists in the sense that we conclude it does and move on. > If you can, I think you'll have solved 2500 years of ethical > philosophizing. I doubt I could do something that would classify as that. > Or, another out, is the way of definition. Depending on your > definitions, it could of course be "made" objective. The question is > then if I accept the definitions or not. =) So you seem to think that a proof is something like too hard to resist---like a math proof. I believe I don't think like that. A proof to me is a joint work between a writer and a reader. If the reader that catch the spirit, there is no proof. For a proof to have meaning, it needs to be shared and recognized by another person. If you were completely alone in the universe (a counterfactual and ridiculous proposition), you would have to read you proof a few times in order to simulate a second or third person sharing and recognizing your proof. In other words, thinking is a collective phenomenon. When we do it alone, we actually simulate someone else that's listening and talking back. (Pretty strong evidence, I find.) If someone /rejects/ an axiom I came up with or a definition I wrote, then there's likely little friendship there. Friendship exists when people go along with you without judgment. Rejecting /or accepting/ anything is judgment, which is not friendship. When someone proposes me anything, I look at it without accepting it or rejecting it. (Unless I'm a really bad mood!) >> It's not subjective. We all have seen the same stuff. Of course, from >> where you look is different from where I look. But we're seeing the >> same things---evidently. It's what nearly all of the evidence shows. > > Agreed! But boy have I had endless email discussions with people who > reject the proof of their senses. Excessive refinement in thinking? They want a kind of super assured certainty? I think that's a waste of time. It's not a waste of time to care for your math proofs, say, or removing bugs from your programs and so on. But rejecting the senses as in I don't know if really exist or I'm being fooled by an evil genius? I think that's excessive thinking. That's when thought escapes from the leash. >>>> Freud observed himself and made conclusions that apply to everyone else. >>>> Like everyone else, he perhaps made mistakes in the fine details of >>>> things, but he also made huge contributions---from a unitary sample >>>> space. >>> >>> True, but freud these days is disproven. As you say, he did lay a good >>> foundation for psychology however, and it has progress from him. >> >> I don't think he's disproven at all. :) Look, it doesn't matter if a >> mathematician got a conjecture wrong---he did a lot of useful work in >> his life. Same with Freud---just his independence from public opinion >> makes him a type of Socrates. > > I did a lot of good, of course, but his theories about dream > interpretation and the psyche I think are no longer relevant. On the > other hand, I am not a psychologist, so who am I to say? =) Most psychologist are so full of nonsense that being one wouldn't help you here. :) I haven't read The Interpretation of Dreams, but I really would like to do it. The book could be wildly wrong, but notice that nobody seems to have made any advances since then anyhow. >>> It seems, like me, you are not always comfortable with >>> counterfactuals. >> >> A beg your pardon? I'm not sure what you mean, but I think I agree. A >> counterfactual is something that goes against the facts. Surely. I >> could never deny that 1 + 1 = 2, say. I can't even ignore evidence. I >> don't mind leaving questions open at all. Every now and then it's a >> good idea to hang a question mark on all those things we've long taken >> for granted. (Is that Bertrand Russell again?) > > Not quite. Counterfactuals are questions such as... "imagine you ate an apple > this morning, would that mean that later in the day you would have a stomach > ache". So when those types of thought experiments are not made with the > intention of high lighting something tangible or empirically provable, I find > them to be useless idle speculation. That's what I was trying to get at. Oh, I see. We're in total agreement. I think counterfactual propositions are useless distractions.
[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]
| From | D <nospam@example.net> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2025-03-23 00:31 +0100 |
| Subject | Re: OT: totally off-topic |
| Message-ID | <c8f483ad-5c4d-b768-9e0b-2622906ef638@example.net> |
| In reply to | #26998 |
[Multipart message — attachments visible in raw view] — view raw
On Fri, 21 Mar 2025, Salvador Mirzo wrote: >> What is this about? Maybe I should make a note of that text. > > That's a conversation David Bohm held with an audience (in California, > if I recall correctly). The book is a transcription of the > conversation. In those dialogs, David Bohm tries to convey what he > means by a ``dialogue''. While an intellectual discussion is typically > a subtle fight, as Jiddu Krishnamurti (David Bohm's friend) would > describe, Bohm's dialogue is a certain construction among two or more > people in which /listening/ (in the Krishamurti's sense) is key. > > I believe it was in an interview that David Bohm gave to Professor > Wilkins---which was an interview meant to write a biography of David > Bohm, which I believe never happened---that David Bohm remarked and > pretty much nobody had ever understood his notion of dialogue, and that > made it even more interesting because it suggests that it has a certain > subtleness that could be escaping people---and then I wonder if it > escaped me too. Sounds a bit like Jürgen Habermas and his ideal dialogues. >> There is a fine line between wanting to help, when it is justified, >> and being labeled a "Karen". > > Lol. I hadn't heard about ``Karen'' before. Fun. Enjoy! ;) >>> By the way, if I were mildly inclined to the same, I could likely be >>> there myself. When they moved in, they threw various parties and >>> invited me to them all. I had lots of chances to blend in, but I >>> couldn't, really: I don't drink; I don't stay up all the night; what I >> >> Haha, well, sounds like you probably did yourself a favour. I am >> fascinated! In sweden, it would be exceptionally rare that any >> neighbour would be invited. > > I see a lot of neighbors here that don't get along. I am probably a Ahh... sounds more normal! ;) In my current apartment, the community is either non-existent or nuts. I don't like them, and therefore I am selling the apartment. In the other 2 places I have apartments, I do like the community! 66% goodness! ;) >> I probably shouldn't tell your this, but I looooove Mc Donalds >> hamburgers! ;) My wife forbids me from eating them too often, so I'm >> probably at about 9 per year or so. ;) > > Lol! Here's a sermon made specially for... Lol. Just kidding. To tell > you the truth, I kinda like it a lot, too. Now, one thing is true---it I mean, come on... who doesn't? ;) > tastes better if don't eat it every day, say. I've had weeks in which I This is the truth! I enjoy it more since I don't have it that often. > indulged in it perhaps eating McDonald's every day, along with ice > cream, coffee and other terrible ideas. Thank God I'm got out of that > alive. These days, gluten hits me pretty bad. It still tastes good, > but it doesn't after the food starts taking its effect. I didn't feel > like that in my teens, but after I started quitting all of this bad > stuff, I can't seem to go back to it at all. Interesting. I have also noted more weird feelings in my stomach as I've gotten older. I wonder, is it age? When I was young I could eat and drink anything and never get a weird feeling in my stomach. >> Loud? Southern europeans are loud by my standard, so if they are loud >> by your standards, then they must be _really_ loud! I once had a >> brazilian colleague from Sao Paolo for 2 months, and he was a really >> nice guy. But once he had some fellow brazilians over and the volume >> did increase. =) > > Lol. Sorry about that! :) No worries... it is very interesting to note these differences between cultures. =) >> He sounds like he would be right at home in northern europe. No fun >> there unless alcohol is in involved. > > Yeah---I suppose there might be cultures out there that drink a lot more > than Brazilians. I don't think Brazilians do too bad, but it's been > getting worse. There's an Americanization of the food industry here. > Brazilians are going in on it. I remember over 10 years ago seeing on > TV that over 52% of Brazil is overweight. That was unthinkable in the > 70s or the 80s, say. That's horrible! =( But I think it is a global phenomenon. I think our increasingly sedentary lifestyles are to blame as well as the mindset of instant gratification which makes people want to achieve things with the minimum amount of energy necessary. I also think this ties in with the fertility crisis we spoke of before. I am lucky! I do not like to exercise, but my wife forces me to. ;) >>>> Hah... I'll take the challenge! ;) I agree, objectively speaking, >>>> that there is no reason. >>> >>> No reason? I think there is reason. :) >> >> But can you prove it, objectively? > > Objectively? You mean kinda like a proof that the whole world with > stand in awe, like beautiful math proofs like Godel's Theorems? I > believe I can't and likely wouldn't work on trying. Why should I do What a shame! =( > I think proofs are just constructions. In math, for example, their role > is quite clear. I don't even know what it would mean to prove that > there is reason. I think there's reason because we seem to be doing > some stuff here that we decide to call reason and then, evidently, it > exists in the sense that we conclude it does and move on. You do sound like a philosopher to me! ;) >> Or, another out, is the way of definition. Depending on your >> definitions, it could of course be "made" objective. The question is >> then if I accept the definitions or not. =) > > So you seem to think that a proof is something like too hard to > resist---like a math proof. I believe I don't think like that. A proof > to me is a joint work between a writer and a reader. If the reader that > catch the spirit, there is no proof. Based on a recent conversation, there can be proof, as in math, and evidence, as in empirical science. Since philosophy is not about empiricism, I'd say proof is probably it. There is of course a new branch of philosophy called practical philosophy, but to me, it seems more like a closet branch of sociology or psychology. > For a proof to have meaning, it needs to be shared and recognized by Amen! > another person. If you were completely alone in the universe (a > counterfactual and ridiculous proposition), you would have to read you Amen, again! ;) > proof a few times in order to simulate a second or third person sharing > and recognizing your proof. In other words, thinking is a collective > phenomenon. When we do it alone, we actually simulate someone else > that's listening and talking back. (Pretty strong evidence, I find.) > > If someone /rejects/ an axiom I came up with or a definition I wrote, > then there's likely little friendship there. Friendship exists when > people go along with you without judgment. Rejecting /or accepting/ > anything is judgment, which is not friendship. When someone proposes me > anything, I look at it without accepting it or rejecting it. (Unless > I'm a really bad mood!) There is a theory of truth called the consensus theory of truth. Sounds as if that might be what you are thinking about? >> Agreed! But boy have I had endless email discussions with people who >> reject the proof of their senses. > > Excessive refinement in thinking? They want a kind of super assured > certainty? I think that's a waste of time. It's not a waste of time to So do I. In 2500 years no such thing has been found, so I am quite happy and content to accept what my senses tell me. ;) > care for your math proofs, say, or removing bugs from your programs and > so on. But rejecting the senses as in I don't know if really exist or > I'm being fooled by an evil genius? I think that's excessive thinking. > That's when thought escapes from the leash. Agreed! That is why I do not care much for interpretations of quantum theory as well. Plenty of thoughts escaping from the leash there, and plenty of useless (in my opinion) speculation. >> I did a lot of good, of course, but his theories about dream >> interpretation and the psyche I think are no longer relevant. On the >> other hand, I am not a psychologist, so who am I to say? =) > > Most psychologist are so full of nonsense that being one wouldn't help > you here. :) I haven't read The Interpretation of Dreams, but I really > would like to do it. The book could be wildly wrong, but notice that > nobody seems to have made any advances since then anyhow. I find the Dodo effect quite facsinating. It says that it is not the school of psychology that makes a difference in therapy, but only the person. >>> A beg your pardon? I'm not sure what you mean, but I think I agree. A >>> counterfactual is something that goes against the facts. Surely. I >>> could never deny that 1 + 1 = 2, say. I can't even ignore evidence. I >>> don't mind leaving questions open at all. Every now and then it's a >>> good idea to hang a question mark on all those things we've long taken >>> for granted. (Is that Bertrand Russell again?) >> >> Not quite. Counterfactuals are questions such as... "imagine you ate an apple >> this morning, would that mean that later in the day you would have a stomach >> ache". So when those types of thought experiments are not made with the >> intention of high lighting something tangible or empirically provable, I find >> them to be useless idle speculation. That's what I was trying to get at. > > Oh, I see. We're in total agreement. I think counterfactual > propositions are useless distractions. Excellent! There has been a meeting of minds! ;)
[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]
| From | Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2025-03-29 20:50 -0300 |
| Subject | Re: OT: totally off-topic |
| Message-ID | <87h63bmm6a.fsf@antartida.xyz> |
| In reply to | #27011 |
D <nospam@example.net> writes: > On Fri, 21 Mar 2025, Salvador Mirzo wrote: > >>> What is this about? Maybe I should make a note of that text. >> >> That's a conversation David Bohm held with an audience (in California, >> if I recall correctly). The book is a transcription of the >> conversation. In those dialogs, David Bohm tries to convey what he >> means by a ``dialogue''. While an intellectual discussion is typically >> a subtle fight, as Jiddu Krishnamurti (David Bohm's friend) would >> describe, Bohm's dialogue is a certain construction among two or more >> people in which /listening/ (in the Krishamurti's sense) is key. >> >> I believe it was in an interview that David Bohm gave to Professor >> Wilkins---which was an interview meant to write a biography of David >> Bohm, which I believe never happened---that David Bohm remarked and >> pretty much nobody had ever understood his notion of dialogue, and that >> made it even more interesting because it suggests that it has a certain >> subtleness that could be escaping people---and then I wonder if it >> escaped me too. > > Sounds a bit like Jürgen Habermas and his ideal dialogues. I need to look this guy up. I hope I remember to do it before I send this article. I'm began my offline mode. So now I can't look stuff up and can't lose myself in a web of tangents. Do you know what type of people gets off on tangents most easily? Schizophrenics (of a certain kind). (I believe they would be the paranoid schizophrenics.) So, the more you get off on tangents, the closer you are to the diagnostic. :P Embrace offline mode and keep your sanity. >>>> By the way, if I were mildly inclined to the same, I could likely be >>>> there myself. When they moved in, they threw various parties and >>>> invited me to them all. I had lots of chances to blend in, but I >>>> couldn't, really: I don't drink; I don't stay up all the night; what I >>> >>> Haha, well, sounds like you probably did yourself a favour. I am >>> fascinated! In sweden, it would be exceptionally rare that any >>> neighbour would be invited. >> >> I see a lot of neighbors here that don't get along. I am probably a > > Ahh... sounds more normal! ;) In my current apartment, the community > is either non-existent or nuts. I don't like them, and therefore I am > selling the apartment. Not an unwise decision. But the wises decision is to buy a house. An apartment is like living together with strange people, except that you have a very nice room (that comes with a kitchen inside) that gives you a good sense of privacy. (But you have none.) > In the other 2 places I have apartments, I do like the community! 66% > goodness! ;) Dude, 66% is no good. :) >>> I probably shouldn't tell your this, but I looooove Mc Donalds >>> hamburgers! ;) My wife forbids me from eating them too often, so I'm >>> probably at about 9 per year or so. ;) >> >> Lol! Here's a sermon made specially for... Lol. Just kidding. To tell >> you the truth, I kinda like it a lot, too. Now, one thing is true---it > > I mean, come on... who doesn't? ;) Lol. Those who were not raised eating it. Cheddar McMelt is my favorite. The most beautiful girl I ever dated was hungry one day and she wanted to stop by McDonalds. We did it. It was lunch time but I wasn't hungry---because I didn't think I had enough money for McDonalds (and I would still get home for lunch). She bought a Cheddar McMelt. She asked me if I wanted some. I said no. She reserved a bite for me that she called the best part. I still refused. :( I think I was 15. Not having enough money put me in a tough position there. I couldn't admit it. I had never eaten a Cheddar McMelt 'til then. I never thought I would like it. Many years later I tried it out. It's all I eat now when I go there---once every 5 years? >> indulged in it perhaps eating McDonald's every day, along with ice >> cream, coffee and other terrible ideas. Thank God I'm got out of that >> alive. These days, gluten hits me pretty bad. It still tastes good, >> but it doesn't after the food starts taking its effect. I didn't feel >> like that in my teens, but after I started quitting all of this bad >> stuff, I can't seem to go back to it at all. > > Interesting. I have also noted more weird feelings in my stomach as > I've gotten older. I wonder, is it age? When I was young I could eat > and drink anything and never get a weird feeling in my stomach. I think ``age'' just means ``lost some health''. There's some evidence that the body has a certain tolerance for things. You lose that tolerance when you abuse it. If you stop the abuse, that tolerance is built again (as much as possible?). This is the good tolerance. People use the word tolerance for a bad kind---such as being alcohol tolerant the more you drink. Perhaps the body finds a way to throwing alcohol away when the volume is high? If I drank a lot of coffee and noticed that after some point, more caffeine almost seems like doing nothing---perhaps just keeping the level at the highest? >>> Loud? Southern europeans are loud by my standard, so if they are loud >>> by your standards, then they must be _really_ loud! I once had a >>> brazilian colleague from Sao Paolo for 2 months, and he was a really >>> nice guy. But once he had some fellow brazilians over and the volume >>> did increase. =) >> >> Lol. Sorry about that! :) > > No worries... it is very interesting to note these differences between > cultures. =) It was more like a joke---I'm apologizing on behalf of my countrymen. Surely it's not my responsibility that my countrymen are not very polite. :) (Except that it is because they're all humans.) It turns out I identify myself very little with Brazilians. But I think the problem is not Brazil. I think I just identify myself with a type of people that could be called intelligent. Not intellectuals; not mathematicians, say; not academics. I don't think I have any connection with these people. But some are really intelligent and I do seem to admire them. I identify myself with many poor people with no instruction. Some can be very intelligent and very compassionate. Above all, I identify myself with people with vigor, passion and energy. >>> He sounds like he would be right at home in northern europe. No fun >>> there unless alcohol is in involved. >> >> Yeah---I suppose there might be cultures out there that drink a lot more >> than Brazilians. I don't think Brazilians do too bad, but it's been >> getting worse. There's an Americanization of the food industry here. >> Brazilians are going in on it. I remember over 10 years ago seeing on >> TV that over 52% of Brazil is overweight. That was unthinkable in the >> 70s or the 80s, say. > > That's horrible! =( > > But I think it is a global phenomenon. I agree. > I think our increasingly sedentary lifestyles are to blame as well as > the mindset of instant gratification which makes people want to > achieve things with the minimum amount of energy necessary. > > I also think this ties in with the fertility crisis we spoke of > before. Yeah---the experts always include nutrition in their hypotheses. > I am lucky! I do not like to exercise, but my wife forces me to. ;) Doesn't sound like fun. If you take a half hour walk each day, you should probably be good. I've reached a routine I've been looking for for a long time. I wanted to bike to the beach, walk and swim. I was swimming in a gym pool. It's not very good for me: the chlorine water doesn't feel right at all. Sea water, on the other hand, is ideal. I live in a part of the town that's elevated. When I bike to the beach, I must go down. Coming back is not easy. >>>>> Hah... I'll take the challenge! ;) I agree, objectively speaking, >>>>> that there is no reason. >>>> >>>> No reason? I think there is reason. :) >>> >>> But can you prove it, objectively? >> >> Objectively? You mean kinda like a proof that the whole world with >> stand in awe, like beautiful math proofs like Godel's Theorems? I >> believe I can't and likely wouldn't work on trying. Why should I do > > What a shame! =( I think it's a relief. :) >> I think proofs are just constructions. In math, for example, their role >> is quite clear. I don't even know what it would mean to prove that >> there is reason. I think there's reason because we seem to be doing >> some stuff here that we decide to call reason and then, evidently, it >> exists in the sense that we conclude it does and move on. > > You do sound like a philosopher to me! ;) Lol. I should probably take that as a compliment. On a more serious tone, I'd ask what is a philosopher to you. >>> Or, another out, is the way of definition. Depending on your >>> definitions, it could of course be "made" objective. The question is >>> then if I accept the definitions or not. =) >> >> So you seem to think that a proof is something like too hard to >> resist---like a math proof. I believe I don't think like that. A proof >> to me is a joint work between a writer and a reader. If the reader that >> catch the spirit, there is no proof. > > Based on a recent conversation, there can be proof, as in math, and > evidence, as in empirical science. Since philosophy is not about > empiricism, I'd say proof is probably it. There is of course a new > branch of philosophy called practical philosophy, but to me, it seems > more like a closet branch of sociology or psychology. I had never heard of practical philosophy. >> If someone /rejects/ an axiom I came up with or a definition I wrote, >> then there's likely little friendship there. Friendship exists when >> people go along with you without judgment. Rejecting /or accepting/ >> anything is judgment, which is not friendship. When someone proposes me >> anything, I look at it without accepting it or rejecting it. (Unless >> I'm a really bad mood!) > > There is a theory of truth called the consensus theory of > truth. Sounds as if that might be what you are thinking about? No. Certainly not. I have nothing to do with consensus. Truth should have nothing to do with consensus. We can easily imagine an outrageous group denying obvious facts. I'm quite okay with the keeping ``truth'' undefined. I may have some idea in my mind that I think it's totally true. Perhaps I can't get you to assert the same. So what? Does that keep in doubt? So? I can't see any problem with living life with a little doubt. Every now and then it's a good idea to hang a question mark on those things we've taken for granted. (Have you located where Russell said this? I can't even be sure it was him.) >>> Agreed! But boy have I had endless email discussions with people who >>> reject the proof of their senses. >> >> Excessive refinement in thinking? They want a kind of super assured >> certainty? I think that's a waste of time. It's not a waste of time to > > So do I. In 2500 years no such thing has been found, so I am quite > happy and content to accept what my senses tell me. ;) Our senses also do make mistakes. And some things can't come directly from the senses---what we see in a microscope, for example. Even ``senses'' is a complicated word. I met someone at the beach last Saturday. It's a person who lives very far from the beach---another town. For about a year and half, I've been thinking about (as I walk on the beach as I always do) that I could someday meet that person by chance on that beach. But, of course, this is just fantasy because it nearly makes no sense. So, after my Saturday surprise, I was thinking to myself---omg, how weird! Do the things I imagine come true or is this imagination a kind of premonition? (Or just coincidence?) This is not the first time this happens. But many of the other past coincidences (such as this one), I have been able to explain in a special way, which I have been calling long-range planning. I can spend years imagining a certain situation (a little bit every now and then) and then I end up putting myself in a position where I can live that imagined situation. I could then claim to have materialized that situation or that somehow my imagination was having a glimpse of the future. But I actually call that long-range planning. But the beach event of last Saturday seems very much outside of my control. The most I could do is to always go to beach, which in fact I have been doing lately... Still... It still feels totally outside my control. >> care for your math proofs, say, or removing bugs from your programs and >> so on. But rejecting the senses as in I don't know if really exist or >> I'm being fooled by an evil genius? I think that's excessive thinking. >> That's when thought escapes from the leash. > > Agreed! That is why I do not care much for interpretations of quantum > theory as well. Plenty of thoughts escaping from the leash there, and > plenty of useless (in my opinion) speculation. The case of quantum mechanics is a necessary one, though. Yeah, surely there's a lot of imagination there, but I think that's part of science. Quantum mechanics is giving us great philosophical problems. It's a very hard read, but to see them all you could skim a quantum theory book by descant. Interpretation of quantum mechanics force us to make up our minds about how we want to see the world. The fun thing is no matter which perspective we take, they're all problematic. >>> I did a lot of good, of course, but his theories about dream >>> interpretation and the psyche I think are no longer relevant. On the >>> other hand, I am not a psychologist, so who am I to say? =) >> >> Most psychologist are so full of nonsense that being one wouldn't help >> you here. :) I haven't read The Interpretation of Dreams, but I really >> would like to do it. The book could be wildly wrong, but notice that >> nobody seems to have made any advances since then anyhow. > > I find the Dodo effect quite facsinating. It says that it is not the > school of psychology that makes a difference in therapy, but only the > person. I had never heard of it and I can't look up anything right now, but it makes perfect sense to me. The inner is the outer. What a person lives in the outside is a reflection of you'd find on the inside. A therapist, like any intelligent person, can be of help, but you can't put your life in order if you are not able to find order where you should be looking. >>>> A beg your pardon? I'm not sure what you mean, but I think I agree. A >>>> counterfactual is something that goes against the facts. Surely. I >>>> could never deny that 1 + 1 = 2, say. I can't even ignore evidence. I >>>> don't mind leaving questions open at all. Every now and then it's a >>>> good idea to hang a question mark on all those things we've long taken >>>> for granted. (Is that Bertrand Russell again?) >>> >>> Not quite. Counterfactuals are questions such as... "imagine you ate >>> an apple this morning, would that mean that later in the day you >>> would have a stomach ache". So when those types of thought >>> experiments are not made with the intention of high lighting >>> something tangible or empirically provable, I find them to be >>> useless idle speculation. That's what I was trying to get at. >> >> Oh, I see. We're in total agreement. I think counterfactual >> propositions are useless distractions. > > Excellent! There has been a meeting of minds! ;) This is the USENET. We could be yelling at each other for an entire year. Instead, we do something completely different. We're weird. And we don't even use our real names. Our friendship can't leave the USENET.
[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]
| From | D <nospam@example.net> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2025-04-01 16:43 +0200 |
| Subject | Re: OT: totally off-topic |
| Message-ID | <74e878fd-52f5-d1bc-5236-3485e57cc48c@example.net> |
| In reply to | #27109 |
On Sat, 29 Mar 2025, Salvador Mirzo wrote: >>> I see a lot of neighbors here that don't get along. I am probably a >> >> Ahh... sounds more normal! ;) In my current apartment, the community >> is either non-existent or nuts. I don't like them, and therefore I am >> selling the apartment. > > Not an unwise decision. But the wises decision is to buy a house. An True. But a house means higher cost, more maintenance, more time lost doing things I do not enjoy. So there is no perfect solution. But I have actually thought about getting a house. So let's see what the future holds! =) > apartment is like living together with strange people, except that you > have a very nice room (that comes with a kitchen inside) that gives you > a good sense of privacy. (But you have none.) True. It is a little bit better in northern europe where people do not want to socialize. Most of the time you meet no one. Another solution could be to buy a nice pent house apartment, making sure you share the floor with no one, and ideally, a private elevator! =D >> In the other 2 places I have apartments, I do like the community! 66% >> goodness! ;) > > Dude, 66% is no good. :) It's better than 0%! ;) > admit it. I had never eaten a Cheddar McMelt 'til then. I never > thought I would like it. Many years later I tried it out. It's all I > eat now when I go there---once every 5 years? Interesting, I have never seen this burger in europe! How does it differ from regular cheese burgers? >> No worries... it is very interesting to note these differences between >> cultures. =) > > It was more like a joke---I'm apologizing on behalf of my countrymen. > Surely it's not my responsibility that my countrymen are not very > polite. :) (Except that it is because they're all humans.) Ah, got it! =) > Above all, I identify myself with people with vigor, passion and energy. Sounds like a nice group of people to identify with if you can find them. =) I've always been a loner from that point of view, so I tend to not identify with others much at all. >> I think our increasingly sedentary lifestyles are to blame as well as >> the mindset of instant gratification which makes people want to >> achieve things with the minimum amount of energy necessary. >> >> I also think this ties in with the fertility crisis we spoke of >> before. > > Yeah---the experts always include nutrition in their hypotheses. The question is... how can we, you and me, change the trend? ;) >> I am lucky! I do not like to exercise, but my wife forces me to. ;) > > Doesn't sound like fun. If you take a half hour walk each day, you > should probably be good. I do walk, voluntarily, but the wife judges that not to be enough. I am thankful that she makes me train, since it is healthy. Without her, I would be a lot less healthy and eating a lot more junk food. So yes, it is one of those things that are annoying in the short term, but good in the long term! =) > I've reached a routine I've been looking for for a long time. I wanted > to bike to the beach, walk and swim. I was swimming in a gym pool. > It's not very good for me: the chlorine water doesn't feel right at all. > Sea water, on the other hand, is ideal. I live in a part of the town > that's elevated. When I bike to the beach, I must go down. Coming back > is not easy. Why not try an electric bike? ;) >>> I think proofs are just constructions. In math, for example, their role >>> is quite clear. I don't even know what it would mean to prove that >>> there is reason. I think there's reason because we seem to be doing >>> some stuff here that we decide to call reason and then, evidently, it >>> exists in the sense that we conclude it does and move on. >> >> You do sound like a philosopher to me! ;) > > Lol. I should probably take that as a compliment. On a more serious > tone, I'd ask what is a philosopher to you. This could definitely be the start of an eternal conversation. 2500 years has not been able to pin down the definition. ;) A wise man, someone who is full of wonder, someone who likes to ask questions? Many ways to define a philosopher. >> Based on a recent conversation, there can be proof, as in math, and >> evidence, as in empirical science. Since philosophy is not about >> empiricism, I'd say proof is probably it. There is of course a new >> branch of philosophy called practical philosophy, but to me, it seems >> more like a closet branch of sociology or psychology. > > I had never heard of practical philosophy. It is a fairly new branch of philosophy, about 100 years old or so, depending on how you define it. >>> If someone /rejects/ an axiom I came up with or a definition I wrote, >>> then there's likely little friendship there. Friendship exists when >>> people go along with you without judgment. Rejecting /or accepting/ >>> anything is judgment, which is not friendship. When someone proposes me >>> anything, I look at it without accepting it or rejecting it. (Unless >>> I'm a really bad mood!) >> >> There is a theory of truth called the consensus theory of >> truth. Sounds as if that might be what you are thinking about? > > No. Certainly not. I have nothing to do with consensus. Truth should > have nothing to do with consensus. We can easily imagine an outrageous > group denying obvious facts. There are facts, and then there are "facts". Is it true that blue is the best color? Good luck answering that objectively. ;) Is it true that there is a coffee mug on my right on a table, yes! And if you were here with me, I am 100% certain that we would agree. > I'm quite okay with the keeping ``truth'' undefined. I may have some Even if your life depends on it? > idea in my mind that I think it's totally true. Perhaps I can't get you > to assert the same. So what? Does that keep in doubt? So? I can't > see any problem with living life with a little doubt. Every now and > then it's a good idea to hang a question mark on those things we've > taken for granted. (Have you located where Russell said this? I can't > even be sure it was him.) >>> Excessive refinement in thinking? They want a kind of super assured >>> certainty? I think that's a waste of time. It's not a waste of time to >> >> So do I. In 2500 years no such thing has been found, so I am quite >> happy and content to accept what my senses tell me. ;) > > Our senses also do make mistakes. And some things can't come directly > from the senses---what we see in a microscope, for example. True, but just because we sometimes make mistakes I do not think is enough of an argument to refute completely the idea that what we can confirm with our senses is not the truth. When it comes to the microscope, it is true, but at the end of the day, we do use our senses to look into the microscope. > Even ``senses'' is a complicated word. I met someone at the beach last > Saturday. It's a person who lives very far from the beach---another > town. For about a year and half, I've been thinking about (as I walk on > the beach as I always do) that I could someday meet that person by > chance on that beach. But, of course, this is just fantasy because it > nearly makes no sense. So, after my Saturday surprise, I was thinking > to myself---omg, how weird! Do the things I imagine come true or is > this imagination a kind of premonition? (Or just coincidence?) My theory, conincidence, selective memory, and priming your psychological filter. 1. Yes, sometimes it is just conincidence. 2. You think a lot of things, and forget a lot as well. If you think about an event x, and x never happens, you would have forgotten about it. If you envounter event x, after first thinking about x, you'll say to yourself, Oh, I did think about x, how strange that I know encountered x. 3. When thinking about a thing deeply, you are in a way telling your subconscious mind to be on the lookout for that. So when you filter your 1000s of daily sense impressions, your usbconscious mind has been programmed to "trigger" based on what you thought about. Those are my 3 theories around why that happens. > This is not the first time this happens. But many of the other past > coincidences (such as this one), I have been able to explain in a > special way, which I have been calling long-range planning. I can spend > years imagining a certain situation (a little bit every now and then) > and then I end up putting myself in a position where I can live that > imagined situation. I could then claim to have materialized that > situation or that somehow my imagination was having a glimpse of the > future. But I actually call that long-range planning. True! No hocus pocus at all! =) > But the beach event of last Saturday seems very much outside of my > control. The most I could do is to always go to beach, which in fact I > have been doing lately... Still... It still feels totally outside my > control. >>> care for your math proofs, say, or removing bugs from your programs and >>> so on. But rejecting the senses as in I don't know if really exist or >>> I'm being fooled by an evil genius? I think that's excessive thinking. >>> That's when thought escapes from the leash. >> >> Agreed! That is why I do not care much for interpretations of quantum >> theory as well. Plenty of thoughts escaping from the leash there, and >> plenty of useless (in my opinion) speculation. > > The case of quantum mechanics is a necessary one, though. Yeah, surely > there's a lot of imagination there, but I think that's part of science. Oh yes... I am not against imagination and speculation, if that serves to motivate a person, or inspire him, or help him advance theories. My main beef is when people confuse speculation and theorizing, with what we can or cannot prove. Mistaking the map for the real world so to say. > Quantum mechanics is giving us great philosophical problems. It's a Yes! > very hard read, but to see them all you could skim a quantum theory book > by descant. Interpretation of quantum mechanics force us to make up > our minds about how we want to see the world. The fun thing is no I think we are never forced to make up our minds. I am happily agnostic about the interpretations of QM and I live my life just fine. I am just content to note that some interpretations are absurd, some impossible (in my opinion) some meaningless, and some I do not understand. So I wait for more evidence, and for science to march along, and that is about it. > matter which perspective we take, they're all problematic. > >>> Most psychologist are so full of nonsense that being one wouldn't help >>> you here. :) I haven't read The Interpretation of Dreams, but I really >>> would like to do it. The book could be wildly wrong, but notice that >>> nobody seems to have made any advances since then anyhow. >> >> I find the Dodo effect quite facsinating. It says that it is not the >> school of psychology that makes a difference in therapy, but only the >> person. > > I had never heard of it and I can't look up anything right now, but it > makes perfect sense to me. The inner is the outer. What a person lives > in the outside is a reflection of you'd find on the inside. A > therapist, like any intelligent person, can be of help, but you can't > put your life in order if you are not able to find order where you > should be looking. Like the buddha said somewhere... he cannot do the work for you. You have to do the work (meditate, live a good life) yourself if you want peace. Buddha can facilitate, point in the right direction, but you have to do the work to experience the result. >>>> Not quite. Counterfactuals are questions such as... "imagine you ate >>>> an apple this morning, would that mean that later in the day you >>>> would have a stomach ache". So when those types of thought >>>> experiments are not made with the intention of high lighting >>>> something tangible or empirically provable, I find them to be >>>> useless idle speculation. That's what I was trying to get at. >>> >>> Oh, I see. We're in total agreement. I think counterfactual >>> propositions are useless distractions. >> >> Excellent! There has been a meeting of minds! ;) > > This is the USENET. We could be yelling at each other for an entire > year. Instead, we do something completely different. We're weird. And > we don't even use our real names. Our friendship can't leave the > USENET. Haha... true. I find that usenet has great power, due to its simplicity!
[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]
| From | Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2025-04-04 11:20 -0300 |
| Subject | Re: OT: totally off-topic |
| Message-ID | <87iknkatzl.fsf@somewhere.edu> |
| In reply to | #27144 |
D <nospam@example.net> writes: > On Sat, 29 Mar 2025, Salvador Mirzo wrote: > >>>> I see a lot of neighbors here that don't get along. I am probably a >>> >>> Ahh... sounds more normal! ;) In my current apartment, the community >>> is either non-existent or nuts. I don't like them, and therefore I am >>> selling the apartment. >> >> Not an unwise decision. But the wises decision is to buy a house. An > > True. But a house means higher cost, more maintenance, more time lost doing > things I do not enjoy. So there is no perfect solution. But I have actually > thought about getting a house. So let's see what the future holds! =) I hope you get one. It's all true about the work, but I also think that's good work. A lot less USENET, a lot more house work is a good idea. We can start with offlining the USENET. If there's little work to do, increase the uniform distribution of times you connect to exchange articles. If there's more work, decrease it. >> apartment is like living together with strange people, except that you >> have a very nice room (that comes with a kitchen inside) that gives you >> a good sense of privacy. (But you have none.) > > True. It is a little bit better in northern europe where people do not > want to socialize. Most of the time you meet no one. Another solution > could be to buy a nice pent house apartment, making sure you share the > floor with no one, and ideally, a private elevator! =D Living in an apartment never feels like the right thing. One almost doesn't own the place. If you decide to do something to it, you get to approval of the condominium. The same would apply if you live in a house in a condominium. Of course, the same thing applies to any house in any country. But the less the better (while holding other important variables constant). >>> In the other 2 places I have apartments, I do like the community! 66% >>> goodness! ;) >> >> Dude, 66% is no good. :) > > It's better than 0%! ;) Better doesn't imply good. :) >> admit it. I had never eaten a Cheddar McMelt 'til then. I never >> thought I would like it. Many years later I tried it out. It's all I >> eat now when I go there---once every 5 years? > > Interesting, I have never seen this burger in europe! How does it > differ from regular cheese burgers? I think a regular cheese burger would not be a Cheddar cheese burger. But I agree any Cheddar is a cheese burger. Over here now they have two options: you get the traditional Cheddar McMelt or you can order the double one. The double one comes with three burgers, IIRC. Besides the melted Cheddar, it also comes with chopped onions mixed in the Cheddar. I think that's it. And a cheese burger is a burger with some slices of cheese. I'm not the right person to ask about such things because I go there once in a few years, always planning never to come back. :) >> Above all, I identify myself with people with vigor, passion and energy. > > Sounds like a nice group of people to identify with if you can find > them. =) I've always been a loner from that point of view, so I tend > to not identify with others much at all. Oh, if you're a loner, you can identify yourself with pretty much everyone. :) In a way I'm a loner as well. >>> I think our increasingly sedentary lifestyles are to blame as well as >>> the mindset of instant gratification which makes people want to >>> achieve things with the minimum amount of energy necessary. >>> >>> I also think this ties in with the fertility crisis we spoke of >>> before. >> >> Yeah---the experts always include nutrition in their hypotheses. > > The question is... how can we, you and me, change the trend? ;) I don't think we can. That would mean that a point can change the uniform average. We could do something if we go from a uniform average to a weighted one and we somehow acquire the huge weight. Nah. I don't think there's true change that way. I don't think we can change the world. I don't think we should change the world. Let nature follow its own course. Should a 4-leaf clover try to make every other a 4-leaf one? Hey, there are 7 helicopters going round and round around a certain region where my house is. They're all gray in color. One follows the other. They're really going around a circumference. Any idea what this is? I'd guess it's military exercise. They're boringly going round. Not in high speeds. They're not high in the sky; probably between 100--200 meters from the ground. Probably 50 meters from the top of a hill around which they seem to flying. >>> I am lucky! I do not like to exercise, but my wife forces me to. ;) >> >> Doesn't sound like fun. If you take a half hour walk each day, you >> should probably be good. > > I do walk, voluntarily, but the wife judges that not to be enough. I > am thankful that she makes me train, since it is healthy. Without her, > I would be a lot less healthy and eating a lot more junk food. So yes, > it is one of those things that are annoying in the short term, but > good in the long term! =) Here's a programmer with a strong connection to his wife: Lex Friedman interviews Primeagen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNZnLkRBYA8 >> I've reached a routine I've been looking for for a long time. I wanted >> to bike to the beach, walk and swim. I was swimming in a gym pool. >> It's not very good for me: the chlorine water doesn't feel right at all. >> Sea water, on the other hand, is ideal. I live in a part of the town >> that's elevated. When I bike to the beach, I must go down. Coming back >> is not easy. > > Why not try an electric bike? ;) I don't use it primarily as a vehicle. I would prefer to go by car if my objective is to go from A to B. It's for the thrill of moving the muscles. >>>> I think proofs are just constructions. In math, for example, their role >>>> is quite clear. I don't even know what it would mean to prove that >>>> there is reason. I think there's reason because we seem to be doing >>>> some stuff here that we decide to call reason and then, evidently, it >>>> exists in the sense that we conclude it does and move on. >>> >>> You do sound like a philosopher to me! ;) >> >> Lol. I should probably take that as a compliment. On a more serious >> tone, I'd ask what is a philosopher to you. > > This could definitely be the start of an eternal conversation. 2500 > years has not been able to pin down the definition. ;) > > A wise man, someone who is full of wonder, someone who likes to ask > questions? Many ways to define a philosopher. Yeah---lover of something around these referents of these words. >>> Based on a recent conversation, there can be proof, as in math, and >>> evidence, as in empirical science. Since philosophy is not about >>> empiricism, I'd say proof is probably it. There is of course a new >>> branch of philosophy called practical philosophy, but to me, it seems >>> more like a closet branch of sociology or psychology. >> >> I had never heard of practical philosophy. > > It is a fairly new branch of philosophy, about 100 years old or so, depending on > how you define it. Kinda funny to me. Philosophy is totally practical. The impractical philosophy is that which is nonsense---you can't make sense of. I think it's the most practical of them all because it applies to what happens most of the day---for those who don't ignore the stimuli. >>>> If someone /rejects/ an axiom I came up with or a definition I wrote, >>>> then there's likely little friendship there. Friendship exists when >>>> people go along with you without judgment. Rejecting /or accepting/ >>>> anything is judgment, which is not friendship. When someone proposes me >>>> anything, I look at it without accepting it or rejecting it. (Unless >>>> I'm a really bad mood!) >>> >>> There is a theory of truth called the consensus theory of >>> truth. Sounds as if that might be what you are thinking about? >> >> No. Certainly not. I have nothing to do with consensus. Truth should >> have nothing to do with consensus. We can easily imagine an outrageous >> group denying obvious facts. > > There are facts, and then there are "facts". Is it true that blue is > the best color? Good luck answering that objectively. ;) There are meaningless sentences and questions. Chomsky constructs the famous one---colorless green ideas sleep furiously. Good luck trying to picture that in any way. Truth (and philosophy) is not about nonsense. It's about honestly making sense of things. Sometimes people take language to great abstractions, which should come with lots of examples and simplicity. If people fail do that, it is not a bad idea to ignore it. For instance, Kant is recognized for having made the distinction between synthetic truths and analytic ones. Have you ever understood? I don't think it too unwise to ignore all that. But I don't mean it's bad work. > Is it true that there is a coffee mug on my right on a table, yes! And > if you were here with me, I am 100% certain that we would agree. Of course. There's no point in even questioning that for too long. We have so many other important questions to work on. For instance, is there anything bothering any bit of your days? How could we give you a better life? >> I'm quite okay with the keeping ``truth'' undefined. I may have some > > Even if your life depends on it? My life would never depend on such intellectual matters. Life depends on food, shelter and relationships. We could easily argue here that you're likely valuing the intellect more than you should. The intellect has to be kept on the leash. >> idea in my mind that I think it's totally true. Perhaps I can't get you >> to assert the same. So what? Does that keep in doubt? So? I can't >> see any problem with living life with a little doubt. Every now and >> then it's a good idea to hang a question mark on those things we've >> taken for granted. (Have you located where Russell said this? I can't >> even be sure it was him.) > >>>> Excessive refinement in thinking? They want a kind of super assured >>>> certainty? I think that's a waste of time. It's not a waste of time to >>> >>> So do I. In 2500 years no such thing has been found, so I am quite >>> happy and content to accept what my senses tell me. ;) >> >> Our senses also do make mistakes. And some things can't come directly >> from the senses---what we see in a microscope, for example. > > True, but just because we sometimes make mistakes I do not think is > enough of an argument to refute completely the idea that what we can > confirm with our senses is not the truth. > > When it comes to the microscope, it is true, but at the end of the > day, we do use our senses to look into the microscope. Totally right. When it comes to information, it has to come through the senses at least indirectly. >> Even ``senses'' is a complicated word. I met someone at the beach last >> Saturday. It's a person who lives very far from the beach---another >> town. For about a year and half, I've been thinking about (as I walk on >> the beach as I always do) that I could someday meet that person by >> chance on that beach. But, of course, this is just fantasy because it >> nearly makes no sense. So, after my Saturday surprise, I was thinking >> to myself---omg, how weird! Do the things I imagine come true or is >> this imagination a kind of premonition? (Or just coincidence?) > > My theory, conincidence, selective memory, and priming your psychological > filter. > > 1. Yes, sometimes it is just conincidence. > > 2. You think a lot of things, and forget a lot as well. If you think about an > event x, and x never happens, you would have forgotten about it. If you > envounter event x, after first thinking about x, you'll say to yourself, Oh, I > did think about x, how strange that I know encountered x. > > 3. When thinking about a thing deeply, you are in a way telling your > subconscious mind to be on the lookout for that. So when you filter your 1000s > of daily sense impressions, your usbconscious mind has been programmed to > "trigger" based on what you thought about. > > Those are my 3 theories around why that happens. My theory is that it's not that much of an improbable thing. The reason I imagine this specific person is likely because she's a pretty likely one, in fact. My imagination is never quite towards fantasy---it's always towards making sense of things and making things reasonable. I probably choose to imagine the person that actually had some reasonable probability of coming over. But what I find very funny is that I guess I was right. And it didn't take very long for it to happen. Now, I certainly maximized the occurrence of the event because I'm always at the beach. Nevertheless, though, it could be that somehow that's not the whole story. >> This is not the first time this happens. But many of the other past >> coincidences (such as this one), I have been able to explain in a >> special way, which I have been calling long-range planning. I can spend >> years imagining a certain situation (a little bit every now and then) >> and then I end up putting myself in a position where I can live that >> imagined situation. I could then claim to have materialized that >> situation or that somehow my imagination was having a glimpse of the >> future. But I actually call that long-range planning. > > True! No hocus pocus at all! =) You see, we have this preference for destroying mystery. Other people prefer the mystic. We are more warranted in our preference than the others are in theirs, but we should do it very carefully because otherwise we're doing the same silly thing other people do. >> But the beach event of last Saturday seems very much outside of my >> control. The most I could do is to always go to beach, which in fact I >> have been doing lately... Still... It still feels totally outside my >> control. > >>>> care for your math proofs, say, or removing bugs from your programs and >>>> so on. But rejecting the senses as in I don't know if really exist or >>>> I'm being fooled by an evil genius? I think that's excessive thinking. >>>> That's when thought escapes from the leash. >>> >>> Agreed! That is why I do not care much for interpretations of quantum >>> theory as well. Plenty of thoughts escaping from the leash there, and >>> plenty of useless (in my opinion) speculation. >> >> The case of quantum mechanics is a necessary one, though. Yeah, surely >> there's a lot of imagination there, but I think that's part of science. > > Oh yes... I am not against imagination and speculation, if that serves > to motivate a person, or inspire him, or help him advance theories. My > main beef is when people confuse speculation and theorizing, with what > we can or cannot prove. Mistaking the map for the real world so to > say. Most people hardly have an education. They don't know what a theory is and what speculation is very well. Unfortunately. >> Quantum mechanics is giving us great philosophical problems. It's a > > Yes! > >> very hard read, but to see them all you could skim a quantum theory book >> by descant. Lol---what?! By descant? Lol. That's a spurious end of sentence. I was totally offline, unable to look anything up, but I wanted to make a reference to the book ``On Physics and Philosophy'', Bernard d'Espagnat Princeton University Press, 2013, ISBN 978-0-691-15806-8 Not recommended reading. It's very difficult. >> Interpretation of quantum mechanics force us to make up our minds >> about how we want to see the world. The fun thing is no > > I think we are never forced to make up our minds. I am happily > agnostic about the interpretations of QM and I live my life just > fine. I am just content to note that some interpretations are absurd, > some impossible (in my opinion) some meaningless, and some I do not > understand. It's a real puzzle. It's not about choosing axioms one would prefer. Any choice is problematic. That's the fun. Reading d'Espagnat would clarify how puzzling it is, but reading it would also be a problem in itself. >>>> Most psychologist are so full of nonsense that being one wouldn't help >>>> you here. :) I haven't read The Interpretation of Dreams, but I really >>>> would like to do it. The book could be wildly wrong, but notice that >>>> nobody seems to have made any advances since then anyhow. >>> >>> I find the Dodo effect quite facsinating. It says that it is not the >>> school of psychology that makes a difference in therapy, but only the >>> person. >> >> I had never heard of it and I can't look up anything right now, but it >> makes perfect sense to me. The inner is the outer. What a person lives >> in the outside is a reflection of you'd find on the inside. A >> therapist, like any intelligent person, can be of help, but you can't >> put your life in order if you are not able to find order where you >> should be looking. > > Like the buddha said somewhere... he cannot do the work for you. You > have to do the work (meditate, live a good life) yourself if you want > peace. Buddha can facilitate, point in the right direction, but you > have to do the work to experience the result. Yeah. No royal road---a beautiful law of nature.
[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]
| From | D <nospam@example.net> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2025-04-06 23:17 +0200 |
| Subject | Re: OT: totally off-topic |
| Message-ID | <2a772970-c934-b9bf-2e63-b65a8569785b@example.net> |
| In reply to | #27178 |
On Fri, 4 Apr 2025, Salvador Mirzo wrote: >>> Not an unwise decision. But the wises decision is to buy a house. An >> >> True. But a house means higher cost, more maintenance, more time lost doing >> things I do not enjoy. So there is no perfect solution. But I have actually >> thought about getting a house. So let's see what the future holds! =) > > I hope you get one. It's all true about the work, but I also think > that's good work. A lot less USENET, a lot more house work is a good Haha, well, my wife would agree with you there! > idea. We can start with offlining the USENET. If there's little work > to do, increase the uniform distribution of times you connect to > exchange articles. If there's more work, decrease it. True. My usenet/mailinglist debt is starting to grow. I have become involved in way too detailed and deep interesting conversations, and they are starting to take their toll. =( >> True. It is a little bit better in northern europe where people do not >> want to socialize. Most of the time you meet no one. Another solution >> could be to buy a nice pent house apartment, making sure you share the >> floor with no one, and ideally, a private elevator! =D > > Living in an apartment never feels like the right thing. One almost > doesn't own the place. If you decide to do something to it, you get to > approval of the condominium. The same would apply if you live in a > house in a condominium. Of course, the same thing applies to any house > in any country. But the less the better (while holding other important > variables constant). True. I have heard someone describing apartment associations like "Karen-factories". One community in my apartment in sweden is quite alright though. I'm starting to feel that that is pretty rare! >>> Dude, 66% is no good. :) >> >> It's better than 0%! ;) > > Better doesn't imply good. :) Depends on the starting point. ;) >> Interesting, I have never seen this burger in europe! How does it >> differ from regular cheese burgers? > > I think a regular cheese burger would not be a Cheddar cheese burger. > But I agree any Cheddar is a cheese burger. Over here now they have two > options: you get the traditional Cheddar McMelt or you can order the > double one. The double one comes with three burgers, IIRC. Besides the > melted Cheddar, it also comes with chopped onions mixed in the Cheddar. > I think that's it. And a cheese burger is a burger with some slices of > cheese. I'm not the right person to ask about such things because I go > there once in a few years, always planning never to come back. :) This is making me hungry! =D >> Sounds like a nice group of people to identify with if you can find >> them. =) I've always been a loner from that point of view, so I tend >> to not identify with others much at all. > > Oh, if you're a loner, you can identify yourself with pretty much > everyone. :) In a way I'm a loner as well. Yes same here. But periodically I do feel a need for some company, but a pub quiz or two quickly cures me of that. While fun, I don't really feel the need for it more than 2-3 times per year or so. =) >>> Yeah---the experts always include nutrition in their hypotheses. >> >> The question is... how can we, you and me, change the trend? ;) > > I don't think we can. That would mean that a point can change the > uniform average. We could do something if we go from a uniform average > to a weighted one and we somehow acquire the huge weight. Nah. I don't > think there's true change that way. I don't think we can change the > world. I don't think we should change the world. Let nature follow its > own course. What if it is in my nature to change the world? Then that would be nature following its own course. ;) The biggest change can start with the smallest idea! > Should a 4-leaf clover try to make every other a 4-leaf one? Yes! > Hey, there are 7 helicopters going round and round around a certain > region where my house is. They're all gray in color. One follows the > other. They're really going around a circumference. Any idea what this > is? I'd guess it's military exercise. They're boringly going round. > Not in high speeds. They're not high in the sky; probably between > 100--200 meters from the ground. Probably 50 meters from the top of a > hill around which they seem to flying. Sounds scary! Be safe! =( In stockholm, due to the excessive uncontrolled crime recently, police drones and helicopters are becoming more and more common. I hate the surveillance society that sweden has been turned into and do not want to live in it. As we discussed above, I think a house in the country side, deep inside the forest would be the ideal place for me! >>> I had never heard of practical philosophy. >> >> It is a fairly new branch of philosophy, about 100 years old or so, depending on >> how you define it. > > Kinda funny to me. Philosophy is totally practical. The impractical > philosophy is that which is nonsense---you can't make sense of. Ah, you mean modern analytical philosophy? ;) Pick up a book on metaphysics and marvel at the nonsense! ;) > I think it's the most practical of them all because it applies to what > happens most of the day---for those who don't ignore the stimuli. I'm not a buddhist but I admire the mans practicality and empiricism! I have a feeling that all buddhist deities and 1000s and 1000s of pages of text and buddhist philosophy would make the original rotate in his grave. ;) >>> No. Certainly not. I have nothing to do with consensus. Truth should >>> have nothing to do with consensus. We can easily imagine an outrageous >>> group denying obvious facts. >> >> There are facts, and then there are "facts". Is it true that blue is >> the best color? Good luck answering that objectively. ;) > > There are meaningless sentences and questions. Chomsky constructs the > famous one---colorless green ideas sleep furiously. Good luck trying to > picture that in any way. Truth (and philosophy) is not about nonsense. > It's about honestly making sense of things. Sometimes I think that is lost in a lot of modern philosophy. > Sometimes people take language to great abstractions, which should come > with lots of examples and simplicity. If people fail do that, it is not > a bad idea to ignore it. For instance, Kant is recognized for having > made the distinction between synthetic truths and analytic ones. Have > you ever understood? I don't think it too unwise to ignore all that. > But I don't mean it's bad work. Well, for me, Kants biggest insight, is that we can never get to the metaphysical through the physical. But then he adds a lot of stuff onto that, and I don't quite agree with where he goes. >> Is it true that there is a coffee mug on my right on a table, yes! And >> if you were here with me, I am 100% certain that we would agree. > > Of course. There's no point in even questioning that for too long. We > have so many other important questions to work on. For instance, is > there anything bothering any bit of your days? How could we give you a > better life? Amen! A very important question that should be asked from time to time. I am tomorrow leaving for a 2 month vacation. First 1 month in spain, then a weekend in Lyon, and then a month in sweden. I am already looking forward to a lot of good food in spain and 20+ C weather! I am not looking forward to travel. Modern travel I find dehumanizing. It is all built around controlling the masses, and treating them as badly as possible, while still taking their money. If I had infinite amounts of money, I would travel by private jet. If I had an infinitely compassionate wife I would not travel at all. I would be perfectly content to spend the rest of my life in my house, deep in the forest, fishing. I feel I have done enough for the world. I feel like I can retire to fishing with a perfectly clear conscience. =D >>> I'm quite okay with the keeping ``truth'' undefined. I may have some >> >> Even if your life depends on it? > > My life would never depend on such intellectual matters. Life depends > on food, shelter and relationships. We could easily argue here that > you're likely valuing the intellect more than you should. The intellect > has to be kept on the leash. What ever we make into an obsession, tends to control our lives. I prefer to be in control, so it's always good not to get too focused and one sided about things. >>> Our senses also do make mistakes. And some things can't come directly >>> from the senses---what we see in a microscope, for example. >> >> True, but just because we sometimes make mistakes I do not think is >> enough of an argument to refute completely the idea that what we can >> confirm with our senses is not the truth. >> >> When it comes to the microscope, it is true, but at the end of the >> day, we do use our senses to look into the microscope. > > Totally right. When it comes to information, it has to come through the > senses at least indirectly. Amen! >> My theory, conincidence, selective memory, and priming your psychological >> filter. >> >> 1. Yes, sometimes it is just conincidence. >> >> 2. You think a lot of things, and forget a lot as well. If you think about an >> event x, and x never happens, you would have forgotten about it. If you >> envounter event x, after first thinking about x, you'll say to yourself, Oh, I >> did think about x, how strange that I know encountered x. >> >> 3. When thinking about a thing deeply, you are in a way telling your >> subconscious mind to be on the lookout for that. So when you filter your 1000s >> of daily sense impressions, your usbconscious mind has been programmed to >> "trigger" based on what you thought about. >> >> Those are my 3 theories around why that happens. > > My theory is that it's not that much of an improbable thing. The reason > I imagine this specific person is likely because she's a pretty likely > one, in fact. My imagination is never quite towards fantasy---it's > always towards making sense of things and making things reasonable. I > probably choose to imagine the person that actually had some reasonable > probability of coming over. But what I find very funny is that I guess > I was right. And it didn't take very long for it to happen. That's nice. =) > Now, I certainly maximized the occurrence of the event because I'm > always at the beach. Nevertheless, though, it could be that somehow > that's not the whole story. Let's see tomorrow! >> True! No hocus pocus at all! =) > > You see, we have this preference for destroying mystery. Other people > prefer the mystic. We are more warranted in our preference than the > others are in theirs, but we should do it very carefully because > otherwise we're doing the same silly thing other people do. It is dangerous to argue against peoples beliefs. That wakes up the worst in people. >> Oh yes... I am not against imagination and speculation, if that serves >> to motivate a person, or inspire him, or help him advance theories. My >> main beef is when people confuse speculation and theorizing, with what >> we can or cannot prove. Mistaking the map for the real world so to >> say. > > Most people hardly have an education. They don't know what a theory is > and what speculation is very well. Unfortunately. Well, from that point of view, we are lucky to have had a good education! I just look at the students I have today, and get depressed. =( Last friday I had a meeting with the management of the school, and they forbade me to have dead lines for assignments out of fear that fewer students will pass the courses. That's complete b.s. And I told them that they are prioritizing profit over quality of education. They smiled and said that no, they would like both profit _and_ education. I said that that is unrealistic especially if they remove all demands, and want courses to be easier. Then I asked them to imagine how their children would be if they said yes to their every wish. Would that be how they raise their children or do they teach them to respect dead lines, boundaries and work hard? They said, well, you do have a point. But we are your customer, and we pay, so we decide the rules. And I had to agree with that, sadly. But at least I told them what will happen, so now they cannot blame me when the credibility of their students degrees drop in the market! At least I won a small victory. Apparently they could possibly consider a dead line in _one_ course, if the task is changed from lab to project. But probably only in one course. Very sad state of affairs. If this is a global trend, we are getting closer to the end of civilization! =( >>> very hard read, but to see them all you could skim a quantum theory book >>> by descant. > > Lol---what?! By descant? Lol. That's a spurious end of sentence. I > was totally offline, unable to look anything up, but I wanted to make a > reference to the book Hmm, sorry, I must have slipped on the keyboard. I actually have no idea what I meant to say! =/ >> I think we are never forced to make up our minds. I am happily >> agnostic about the interpretations of QM and I live my life just >> fine. I am just content to note that some interpretations are absurd, >> some impossible (in my opinion) some meaningless, and some I do not >> understand. > > It's a real puzzle. It's not about choosing axioms one would prefer. > Any choice is problematic. That's the fun. Reading d'Espagnat would > clarify how puzzling it is, but reading it would also be a problem in > itself. I feel perfectly content keeping the QM models separate from the interpretations. If the models work for generating testable predictions, that's fine by me. I feel no need for half baked interpretations. =) A simple way to go through life and to avoid a lot of useless metaphysical speculation! =D >> Like the buddha said somewhere... he cannot do the work for you. You >> have to do the work (meditate, live a good life) yourself if you want >> peace. Buddha can facilitate, point in the right direction, but you >> have to do the work to experience the result. > > Yeah. No royal road---a beautiful law of nature. Very much true!
[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]
| From | Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2025-04-10 15:19 -0300 |
| Subject | Re: OT: totally off-topic |
| Message-ID | <875xjb7uca.fsf@somewhere.edu> |
| In reply to | #27193 |
D <nospam@example.net> writes: >> idea. We can start with offlining the USENET. If there's little work >> to do, increase the uniform distribution of times you connect to >> exchange articles. If there's more work, decrease it. > > True. My usenet/mailinglist debt is starting to grow. I have become > involved in way too detailed and deep interesting conversations, and > they are starting to take their toll. =( I think I saw some of your chats on rec.food.cooking. You gotta get outta there. That group is crazy and the volume, insane. >>> Interesting, I have never seen this burger in europe! How does it >>> differ from regular cheese burgers? >> >> I think a regular cheese burger would not be a Cheddar cheese burger. >> But I agree any Cheddar is a cheese burger. Over here now they have two >> options: you get the traditional Cheddar McMelt or you can order the >> double one. The double one comes with three burgers, IIRC. Besides the >> melted Cheddar, it also comes with chopped onions mixed in the Cheddar. >> I think that's it. And a cheese burger is a burger with some slices of >> cheese. I'm not the right person to ask about such things because I go >> there once in a few years, always planning never to come back. :) > > This is making me hungry! =D Lol. >>>> Yeah---the experts always include nutrition in their hypotheses. >>> >>> The question is... how can we, you and me, change the trend? ;) >> >> I don't think we can. That would mean that a point can change the >> uniform average. We could do something if we go from a uniform average >> to a weighted one and we somehow acquire the huge weight. Nah. I don't >> think there's true change that way. I don't think we can change the >> world. I don't think we should change the world. Let nature follow its >> own course. > > What if it is in my nature to change the world? Then that would be nature > following its own course. ;) > > The biggest change can start with the smallest idea! Today I watched the documentary series called The Century of the Self It's a good illustration of people mean by ``change'' in the world. :) >> Should a 4-leaf clover try to make every other a 4-leaf one? > > Yes! Lol. Speechless. :) >> Hey, there are 7 helicopters going round and round around a certain >> region where my house is. They're all gray in color. One follows the >> other. They're really going around a circumference. Any idea what this >> is? I'd guess it's military exercise. They're boringly going round. >> Not in high speeds. They're not high in the sky; probably between >> 100--200 meters from the ground. Probably 50 meters from the top of a >> hill around which they seem to flying. > > Sounds scary! Be safe! =( In stockholm, due to the excessive > uncontrolled crime recently, police drones and helicopters are > becoming more and more common. I hate the surveillance society that > sweden has been turned into and do not want to live in it. I should have recorded it, uploaded with the comment---AI piloted. :) > As we discussed above, I think a house in the country side, deep > inside the forest would be the ideal place for me! Sounds very interesting. >>>> I had never heard of practical philosophy. >>> >>> It is a fairly new branch of philosophy, about 100 years old or so, >>> depending on >>> how you define it. >> >> Kinda funny to me. Philosophy is totally practical. The impractical >> philosophy is that which is nonsense---you can't make sense of. > > Ah, you mean modern analytical philosophy? ;) Pick up a book on > metaphysics and marvel at the nonsense! ;) Specially if it's contemporary writing. >>>> No. Certainly not. I have nothing to do with consensus. Truth should >>>> have nothing to do with consensus. We can easily imagine an outrageous >>>> group denying obvious facts. >>> >>> There are facts, and then there are "facts". Is it true that blue is >>> the best color? Good luck answering that objectively. ;) >> >> There are meaningless sentences and questions. Chomsky constructs the >> famous one---colorless green ideas sleep furiously. Good luck trying to >> picture that in any way. Truth (and philosophy) is not about nonsense. >> It's about honestly making sense of things. > > Sometimes I think that is lost in a lot of modern philosophy. By ``modern'' do you mean contemporary philosophy? ``Modern'' philosophy is that of Descartes, for example. >> Sometimes people take language to great abstractions, which should come >> with lots of examples and simplicity. If people fail do that, it is not >> a bad idea to ignore it. For instance, Kant is recognized for having >> made the distinction between synthetic truths and analytic ones. Have >> you ever understood? I don't think it too unwise to ignore all that. >> But I don't mean it's bad work. > > Well, for me, Kants biggest insight, is that we can never get to the > metaphysical through the physical. But then he adds a lot of stuff > onto that, and I don't quite agree with where he goes. I'm not sure what exactly you're talking about here. I'm not a Kant reader. Are you talking about the Critique of Pure Reason? I did read Prolegomena do Any Methaphysics (that will be able to come forward as a science) and that's a pretty understandable book. This book is a good introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason, but I think I don't really recommend you get into any of this stuff. There's a lot more interesting things in life. >>> Is it true that there is a coffee mug on my right on a table, yes! And >>> if you were here with me, I am 100% certain that we would agree. >> >> Of course. There's no point in even questioning that for too long. We >> have so many other important questions to work on. For instance, is >> there anything bothering any bit of your days? How could we give you a >> better life? > > Amen! A very important question that should be asked from time to > time. I am tomorrow leaving for a 2 month vacation. First 1 month in > spain, then a weekend in Lyon, and then a month in sweden. I am > already looking forward to a lot of good food in spain and 20+ C > weather! Nice. Enjoy! > I am not looking forward to travel. Modern travel I find > dehumanizing. It is all built around controlling the masses, and > treating them as badly as possible, while still taking their money. Oh, that's quite right. I see the same. The best way to travel in the end is by your own means such as by car, but then there's how good the roads are, how far you go... Staying in hotels used to be a great experience, but it's not quite anymore. We have a complete deterioration of everything. > If I had infinite amounts of money, I would travel by private jet. If > I had an infinitely compassionate wife I would not travel at all. I > would be perfectly content to spend the rest of my life in my house, > deep in the forest, fishing. Yeah---gotta question a bit the need for traveling and tourism. What's that all about? I like to travel to see people, not places. I honestly care very little to see culture and places. It's different if you are my friend and you're interesting---then Sweden becomes interesting, too. So I'm usually interested where my family and friends are. > I feel I have done enough for the world. I feel like I can retire to > fishing with a perfectly clear conscience. =D Sounds like wisdom to me. >>>> I'm quite okay with the keeping ``truth'' undefined. I may have some >>> >>> Even if your life depends on it? >> >> My life would never depend on such intellectual matters. Life depends >> on food, shelter and relationships. We could easily argue here that >> you're likely valuing the intellect more than you should. The intellect >> has to be kept on the leash. > > What ever we make into an obsession, tends to control our lives. I > prefer to be in control, so it's always good not to get too focused > and one sided about things. Sounds like wisdom to me. >> Now, I certainly maximized the occurrence of the event because I'm >> always at the beach. Nevertheless, though, it could be that somehow >> that's not the whole story. > > Let's see tomorrow! Lol. My mind is in next events. But I don't expect seeing that person around here any time soon or ever. >>> True! No hocus pocus at all! =) >> >> You see, we have this preference for destroying mystery. Other people >> prefer the mystic. We are more warranted in our preference than the >> others are in theirs, but we should do it very carefully because >> otherwise we're doing the same silly thing other people do. > > It is dangerous to argue against peoples beliefs. That wakes up the > worst in people. So true. My observation is that people's behavior really comes from deep within, not from the surface, so working on the surface is a complete waste of time. (And the intellect is on the surface.) That's why people behave ``irrationally'', meaning that's why we can't understand them at all. >>> Oh yes... I am not against imagination and speculation, if that serves >>> to motivate a person, or inspire him, or help him advance theories. My >>> main beef is when people confuse speculation and theorizing, with what >>> we can or cannot prove. Mistaking the map for the real world so to >>> say. >> >> Most people hardly have an education. They don't know what a theory is >> and what speculation is very well. Unfortunately. > > Well, from that point of view, we are lucky to have had a good > education! I just look at the students I have today, and get > depressed. =( Same here, but it's not clear what you mean by education. In a sense I don't think it's our education, really, because I think education is on the surface. > Last friday I had a meeting with the management of the school, and > they forbade me to have dead lines for assignments out of fear that > fewer students will pass the courses. > > That's complete b.s. And I told them that they are prioritizing profit > over quality of education. > > They smiled and said that no, they would like both profit _and_ > education. Lol! _And_. I do agree that it's obviously a lie. Those lies that nearly everyone accepts and even repeats themselves. > I said that that is unrealistic You're so delicate. :) > [...] especially if they remove all demands, and want courses to be > easier. Then I asked them to imagine how their children would be if > they said yes to their every wish. Would that be how they raise their > children or do they teach them to respect dead lines, boundaries and > work hard? > > They said, well, you do have a point. But we are your customer, and we > pay, so we decide the rules. > > And I had to agree with that, sadly. But at least I told them what > will happen, so now they cannot blame me when the credibility of their > students degrees drop in the market! At least they're minimally honest. I'm okay with that. > At least I won a small victory. Apparently they could possibly > consider a dead line in _one_ course, if the task is changed from lab > to project. But probably only in one course. I'd say don't push it hard. Let them do what they want. You've already shared your view. Let nature follow its own course. You don't have to influence them any further after sharing your view: they are also equally in the position to direct their lives. Let nature follow its course. > Very sad state of affairs. If this is a global trend, we are getting > closer to the end of civilization! =( It is a global trend. And I think we have worse problems---fertility, chronic diseases, work and the general quality of life people have been living. We're not at the bottom yet. I think things are gonna down a lot more still. >>>> very hard read, but to see them all you could skim a quantum theory book >>>> by descant. >> >> Lol---what?! By descant? Lol. That's a spurious end of sentence. I >> was totally offline, unable to look anything up, but I wanted to make a >> reference to the book > > Hmm, sorry, I must have slipped on the keyboard. I actually have no > idea what I meant to say! =/ It was I who said it. :) I wanted to remember the author's name and I couldn't. I forgot to look it up (later) and ended up posting the message. That's a down side of being offline. Sometimes you can't fill up the blank that you could if you were online. I was literally offline that day. I have the printed book, but it's boxed in the basement and I surely didn't feel like digging it up. Hey, are you getting USENET access during your vacation? I wanna give you my e-mail address. Take care!
[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]
| From | D <nospam@example.net> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2025-04-12 21:05 +0200 |
| Subject | Re: OT: totally off-topic |
| Message-ID | <03c810ff-1f5d-bfad-af59-38b5eb72bd68@example.net> |
| In reply to | #27201 |
On Thu, 10 Apr 2025, Salvador Mirzo wrote: >> True. My usenet/mailinglist debt is starting to grow. I have become >> involved in way too detailed and deep interesting conversations, and >> they are starting to take their toll. =( > > I think I saw some of your chats on rec.food.cooking. You gotta get > outta there. That group is crazy and the volume, insane. Oh yes, it takes great skill and loads of time to keep up with the flow there. Perhaps too much time. =( At the same time, some in that group elevate trolling to a very sublime art form! I've had close to spiritual experiences reading some of that beautiful trolling there. =D But yes, I am currently on vacation, so I think once I get back into it, probably the best course of action is just to delete everything and start from scratch. >>> I don't think we can. That would mean that a point can change the >>> uniform average. We could do something if we go from a uniform average >>> to a weighted one and we somehow acquire the huge weight. Nah. I don't >>> think there's true change that way. I don't think we can change the >>> world. I don't think we should change the world. Let nature follow its >>> own course. >> >> What if it is in my nature to change the world? Then that would be nature >> following its own course. ;) >> >> The biggest change can start with the smallest idea! > > Today I watched the documentary series called > > The Century of the Self > > It's a good illustration of people mean by ``change'' in the world. :) Excellent documentary! Maybe I should re-watch it. It's been a couple of years since I last saw it. >>> Should a 4-leaf clover try to make every other a 4-leaf one? >> >> Yes! > > Lol. Speechless. :) ;) >> As we discussed above, I think a house in the country side, deep >> inside the forest would be the ideal place for me! > > Sounds very interesting. Yes! But let's see. It needs to be far away. The trick is convincing the wife who does need culture and things to do. ;) >> Ah, you mean modern analytical philosophy? ;) Pick up a book on >> metaphysics and marvel at the nonsense! ;) > > Specially if it's contemporary writing. Amen! >>>> There are facts, and then there are "facts". Is it true that blue is >>>> the best color? Good luck answering that objectively. ;) >>> >>> There are meaningless sentences and questions. Chomsky constructs the >>> famous one---colorless green ideas sleep furiously. Good luck trying to >>> picture that in any way. Truth (and philosophy) is not about nonsense. >>> It's about honestly making sense of things. >> >> Sometimes I think that is lost in a lot of modern philosophy. > > By ``modern'' do you mean contemporary philosophy? ``Modern'' > philosophy is that of Descartes, for example. Contemporary. >> Well, for me, Kants biggest insight, is that we can never get to the >> metaphysical through the physical. But then he adds a lot of stuff >> onto that, and I don't quite agree with where he goes. > > I'm not sure what exactly you're talking about here. I'm not a Kant > reader. Are you talking about the Critique of Pure Reason? I did read > > Prolegomena do Any Methaphysics > (that will be able to come forward as a science) > > and that's a pretty understandable book. This book is a good > introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason, but I think I don't really > recommend you get into any of this stuff. There's a lot more > interesting things in life. Agreed! Yes, I was talking about critique of pure reason. I also agree that there is very little point in reading Kant unless you are interested in it for its own sake. =) >> Amen! A very important question that should be asked from time to >> time. I am tomorrow leaving for a 2 month vacation. First 1 month in >> spain, then a weekend in Lyon, and then a month in sweden. I am >> already looking forward to a lot of good food in spain and 20+ C >> weather! > > Nice. Enjoy! I'm doing my best! I did have a little relapse now onto the Usenet and I am almost regretting it. ;) >> I am not looking forward to travel. Modern travel I find >> dehumanizing. It is all built around controlling the masses, and >> treating them as badly as possible, while still taking their money. > > Oh, that's quite right. I see the same. The best way to travel in the > end is by your own means such as by car, but then there's how good the I've never been much into cars and I do not like to drive, _but_, I often thought if driving could become more relaxing and less of a chore (and I'm talking driving between countries, which would be 8-36 hours of driving to get where I want to get) if I bought an older luxury car? Small, modern cars are painfully loud and unstable on the highway. I do not enjoy driving those. > roads are, how far you go... Staying in hotels used to be a great > experience, but it's not quite anymore. We have a complete > deterioration of everything. This is the truth! Hotels nowadays, is just one big surveillance center. I prefer staying in my own house, a small B&B or airbnb if possible. >> If I had infinite amounts of money, I would travel by private jet. If >> I had an infinitely compassionate wife I would not travel at all. I >> would be perfectly content to spend the rest of my life in my house, >> deep in the forest, fishing. > > Yeah---gotta question a bit the need for traveling and tourism. What's > that all about? I like to travel to see people, not places. I honestly > care very little to see culture and places. It's different if you are > my friend and you're interesting---then Sweden becomes interesting, too. > So I'm usually interested where my family and friends are. You are a philosopher king! My parents dragged me all around the glove several times over by the time I was 16. After that, due to my job, I had to travel several times more around the globe. I am so sick and tired of travelling, and the fact that my wife loves travelling is one of my great pains and sorrows. People all around the planet are the same, and I can watch all the monuments and pyramids I like online or on TV in the privacy of my home, without sweating with 1000s of other tourists. If I travel, it is to live in a place, preferably at least 6-12 months or more. Travelling over the weekend is just my version of hell. >> I feel I have done enough for the world. I feel like I can retire to >> fishing with a perfectly clear conscience. =D > > Sounds like wisdom to me. Thank you! I will tell my wife, that now it's not just me, but 2 people arguing in favour of that! =D >>>> True! No hocus pocus at all! =) >>> >>> You see, we have this preference for destroying mystery. Other people >>> prefer the mystic. We are more warranted in our preference than the >>> others are in theirs, but we should do it very carefully because >>> otherwise we're doing the same silly thing other people do. >> >> It is dangerous to argue against peoples beliefs. That wakes up the >> worst in people. > > So true. My observation is that people's behavior really comes from > deep within, not from the surface, so working on the surface is a > complete waste of time. (And the intellect is on the surface.) That's > why people behave ``irrationally'', meaning that's why we can't > understand them at all. True. That is why intellectual arguments very seldom persuade anyone. Only when an argument "connects" with the ego, does it take. That is why emotional arguments, bypassing the intellect, are so effective! >> Well, from that point of view, we are lucky to have had a good >> education! I just look at the students I have today, and get >> depressed. =( > > Same here, but it's not clear what you mean by education. In a sense I > don't think it's our education, really, because I think education is on > the surface. I don't know. Maybe it is an attitude towards learning and developing ones self? I mean after university, I continue to read, study, experiment for the joy of learning. Maybe that is the key? >> Last friday I had a meeting with the management of the school, and >> they forbade me to have dead lines for assignments out of fear that >> fewer students will pass the courses. >> >> That's complete b.s. And I told them that they are prioritizing profit >> over quality of education. >> >> They smiled and said that no, they would like both profit _and_ >> education. > > Lol! _And_. I do agree that it's obviously a lie. Those lies that > nearly everyone accepts and even repeats themselves. Sigh yes... >> I said that that is unrealistic > > You're so delicate. :) I do my best. ;) >> [...] especially if they remove all demands, and want courses to be >> easier. Then I asked them to imagine how their children would be if >> they said yes to their every wish. Would that be how they raise their >> children or do they teach them to respect dead lines, boundaries and >> work hard? >> >> They said, well, you do have a point. But we are your customer, and we >> pay, so we decide the rules. >> >> And I had to agree with that, sadly. But at least I told them what >> will happen, so now they cannot blame me when the credibility of their >> students degrees drop in the market! > > At least they're minimally honest. I'm okay with that. Well, after sleeping on it, I decided I'll try a "top down" approach as well. So I managed to reach a somewhat famous journalist at a national newspaper who was interested in my story. So upon condition of anonymity, I told him the whole story. He also happens to be a childhood friend of the director of the government department that controls the schools, so he would pass my story on to him as well. Hooray! ;) Do I have any illusions about things happening? Not in the least. But it was great therapy, and I give it a 1% chance of it actually becoming a newspaper story! If that happens, I give it another 1% chance of the government actually doing anything about it. ;) So 1% of 1% not bad!! ;) >> At least I won a small victory. Apparently they could possibly >> consider a dead line in _one_ course, if the task is changed from lab >> to project. But probably only in one course. > > I'd say don't push it hard. Let them do what they want. You've already > shared your view. Let nature follow its own course. You don't have to > influence them any further after sharing your view: they are also > equally in the position to direct their lives. Let nature follow its > course. Yes... probably the wisest choice. See above! =D >> Very sad state of affairs. If this is a global trend, we are getting >> closer to the end of civilization! =( > > It is a global trend. And I think we have worse problems---fertility, > chronic diseases, work and the general quality of life people have been > living. We're not at the bottom yet. I think things are gonna down a > lot more still. Let's see. But I'm a long term optimist. Sure, in the short term, the next 5-20 years, things might not look good, but if we look 50 or 100 years ahead, I'm 100% certain things will be better! =) >>> Lol---what?! By descant? Lol. That's a spurious end of sentence. I >>> was totally offline, unable to look anything up, but I wanted to make a >>> reference to the book >> >> Hmm, sorry, I must have slipped on the keyboard. I actually have no >> idea what I meant to say! =/ > > It was I who said it. :) I wanted to remember the author's name and I > couldn't. I forgot to look it up (later) and ended up posting the > message. That's a down side of being offline. Sometimes you can't fill > up the blank that you could if you were online. I was literally offline > that day. I have the printed book, but it's boxed in the basement and I > surely didn't feel like digging it up. > > Hey, are you getting USENET access during your vacation? I wanna give > you my e-mail address. Take care! I do get usenet access! Please let me know your email, and I'll send you mine. Email I never miss. Usenet messages I do miss from time to time, especially now when I'm on vacation and do not check it every day.
[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]
| From | Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2025-04-13 13:10 -0300 |
| Subject | Re: OT: totally off-topic |
| Message-ID | <87zfgkxcsc.fsf@somewhere.edu> |
| In reply to | #27209 |
D <nospam@example.net> writes: >> Hey, are you getting USENET access during your vacation? I wanna give >> you my e-mail address. Take care! > > I do get usenet access! Please let me know your email, and I'll send > you mine. Email I never miss. Usenet messages I do miss from time to > time, especially now when I'm on vacation and do not check it every > day. Here you go: 4l9r46gv6@mozmail.com. Thanks!
[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]
| From | Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.netREMOVE.invalid> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2025-03-11 20:20 +0000 |
| Subject | lifestyles |
| Message-ID | <yg_hjShvaCrV17yH@violet.siamics.net> |
| In reply to | #26752 |
I’ve been meaning to suggest that the discussions with little (if any) relation to computing and computers be moved elsewhere, but I see yeti did it already. As such, I’m tentatively cross-posting to news:soc.misc (that seems currently unused) and setting Followup-To: there. I do not intend to comment on the topic at hand any further in news:comp.misc, but I’m open to suggestions as to where else it should be moved. Feel free to disregard the Followup-To: newsgroup and instead add a more suitable one to Newsgroups: /and/ point Followup-To: there. TYC. >>>>> On 2025-02-27, Salvador Mirzo wrote: > But I consider coffee—no matter how good quality if might be—a drug > to be totally kept on a leash. I don’t think we should make regular > use of any stimulants—of any drug at all. > I am probably a naturalist. If coffee “accelerates your physiology”, > then we can say that such “speed” is not the natural way of your body. > If you do it every day, you’re totally not respecting the natural way > of the system. Not a religious thing at all—recall that perspective > I had on tattoos. So this is another illustration of why I find myself > more religious than the vast number of very religious people I’ve ever > met. How do you define ‘being religious’? (And, FTM, ‘religion’?) Human beings can be said to be made to the same broad plan, but so far as we know, no two humans are entirely identical. What, then, would be the reason to believe that a given lifestyle, however well it works for an individual or group, would at all work for any other individual or group? Seems to me much like saying that a particular software (Systemd, D-bus, Wayland, OpenOffice.org, Android, Linux, GNU Emacs, – whatever) ‘works for everyone.’ Think of it: there’re over 40 recognized human blood group systems. Assuming that every group allows for two distinct blood types, there’re already over 1e12 possible combinations. Compare that to less than 1e10 humans currently living on Earth, and the conjecture expressed by Karl Landsteiner in his Nobel lecture [Landsteiner] doesn’t seem at all far-fetched: KL> These findings justify the assertion that very numerous individual KL> blood differences exist in man, too, and that there are certainly KL> other differences which could not yet be detected. Whether each KL> individual blood really has a character of its own, or how often KL> there is complete correspondence, we cannot yet say. (I. e., I choose to read that “each individual blood really has a character of its own” as a conjecture. In my defense, I’m not the only one to read it this way.) [Landsteiner] http://nobelprize.org/uploads/2018/06/landsteiner-lecture.pdf Some would say it’s all in the DNA, but the thing is: DNA replication isn’t perfect, and so every single cell has /its own/ DNA. These copies are /mostly/ the same, and with the amount of redundancy observed, a few errors here and there tend to be of no consequence. Still, a mutation happening at an early development stage might result in, say, an individual who has one healthy lung, while the other is affected by some genetic disorder; a condition known as mosaicism. As such, even identical twins, or clones, aren’t actually identical. Moreover, individuals with chimerism have cells descendant of more than one zygote, with even more difference between the respective DNAs of the cells of different lineages. Consider that, for example, people with type 1 diabetes lack the ability to produce enough insulin on their own and require taking synthetic insulin as a drug instead. Pernicious anemia is characterized by the inability of the body to extract vitamin B12 from natural sources, and thus requires said vitamin to be either taken directly as a drug, or added to their food. Failure to take drugs regularly with these and many other such health conditions could be fatal. Which is to say, for some people, the “natural way of [their] body” is to die, whereas drugs allow them to “unnaturally” survive. As to stimulants. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/?curid=601284#Personality relates the Paul Erdős’s interaction with drugs as follows: PE> His colleague Alfréd Rényi said, “A mathematician is a machine for PE> turning coffee into theorems”, and Erdős drank copious quantities; PE> this quotation is often attributed incorrectly to Erdős, but Erdős PE> himself ascribed it to Rényi. After his mother’s death in 1971 he PE> started taking antidepressants and amphetamines, despite the concern PE> of his friends, one of whom (Ron Graham) bet him $500 that he could PE> not stop taking them for a month. Erdős won the bet but complained PE> that it impacted his performance: “You’ve showed me I’m not an PE> addict. But I didn’t get any work done. I’d get up in the morning PE> and stare at a blank piece of paper. I’d have no ideas, just like PE> an ordinary person. You’ve set mathematics back a month.” After he PE> won the bet, he promptly resumed his use of Ritalin and Benzedrine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemmy#Personal_life quotes “Motorhead Videobiography” thus: L> I first got into speed because it was a utilitarian drug and kept you L> awake when you needed to be awake when otherwise you’d just be flat L> out on your back. If you drive to Glasgow for nine hours in the back L> of a sweaty truck you don’t really feel like going onstage feeling L> all bright and breezy. […] It’s the only drug I’ve found that I can L> get on with, and I’ve tried them all – except smack [heroin] and L> morphine: I’ve never “fixed” [injected] anything. In either case, the individual involved sees their stimulants as means to an end: doing math in the Paul Erdős’s case, and doing heavy metal in Lemmy’s. To me, it’s mostly about free software. If I need methylxanthines for that, then I will take them. Not unlike Erdős, I at one point stopped taking them for an entire year. It, too, sucked. Currently I take at least one 36 hour long break from anything containing caffeine or theobromine every week so not to develop tolerance. It’s worked fairly well for me so far. I can respect one’s choice of a ‘drug-free’ lifestyle as a goal in its own right; and I can as well, perhaps to a lesser degree, respect one’s choice to take drugs as a goal in its own right. I don’t see either choice working for me, however. Similarly for tattoos: I don’t see much point in them and would try my best to never get one, sure. (Even though I acknowledge that the society on occasion /does/ force us to do things with our own bodies regardless of our thoughts on the matter.) That said, I don’t see much point in, say, ballet, and would try my best to never get involved with it, in any shape or form, either. Then, however, I understand that I’m not God to be able to foresee every possible chain of cause and effect. A person might die because of the disease contracted while getting a tattoo. Another might survive after a severe blood loss because of having their blood type tattooed somewhere on their body. (If anything, I have my blood type recorded in my photo ID, but I don’t have it with me at all times.) Every decision and every field of endeavor have their own risks. Getting a tattoo is risky, but so is participating in ballet. You risk trauma by doing mountain-climbing, and you risk falling into a sedentary lifestyle (with its own share of health risks) by doing computer programming. Case in point: I, too, appreciate long walks, especially in the countryside. Last year, that ended with me staying for a week at a hospital (the first hospital stay for me since pre-school): I took a walk in the woods, and got bitten by a tick. And with regards to, so to say, conventional religions, the way I read St. Paul’s [Epistle to Galatians] is this: do not obsess over body, for sooner or later, it /will/ fail. Though perhaps it’s to be taken with a grain of salt, given that one of the core Christian beliefs is that death is transitory, while life is eternal. [Epistle to Galatians] E. g., http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/?curid=1065 .
[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]
| From | Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2025-02-19 21:40 -0300 |
| Message-ID | <87o6yxmosb.fsf@example.com> |
| In reply to | #26488 |
not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) writes: [...] > Quite mysteriously, all sorts of otherwise respectable open-source > software developers are happy to use GitHub even though it's owned > by M$. So even having ditched their software long ago, M$ are now > very hard to avoid online if, ironically, you want to use, and > especially work on, open-source software. I find that truely > unfathomable, but others barely seem to see my problem with it. That's well pointed out. And there are alternatives such as hosting your own Forgejo. Moving a git repository is easy. And you can even put a link on your old git repository saying---we're here now. tallman has been saying it for decades: people prefer convenience.
[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]
| From | D <nospam@example.net> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2025-02-20 15:57 +0100 |
| Message-ID | <7ef65927-3217-8e1e-6f7e-45f91e88cec6@example.net> |
| In reply to | #26500 |
On Wed, 19 Feb 2025, Salvador Mirzo wrote: > not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) writes: > > [...] > >> Quite mysteriously, all sorts of otherwise respectable open-source >> software developers are happy to use GitHub even though it's owned >> by M$. So even having ditched their software long ago, M$ are now >> very hard to avoid online if, ironically, you want to use, and >> especially work on, open-source software. I find that truely >> unfathomable, but others barely seem to see my problem with it. > > That's well pointed out. And there are alternatives such as hosting > your own Forgejo. Moving a git repository is easy. And you can even > put a link on your old git repository saying---we're here now. > > tallman has been saying it for decades: people prefer convenience. This is the truth! It is a sad truth.
[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]
| From | Adrian <bulleid@ku.gro.lioff> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2025-02-17 18:30 +0000 |
| Message-ID | <I9TYHjJCB4snFwkN@ku.gro.lloiff> |
| In reply to | #26465 |
In message <0310a638-3153-f886-5206-9bc8453c1f8e@example.net>, D <nospam@example.net> writes >I'm more scared about the government than the industry. With industry I >always have the choice of not using it, and they depend on customers, >so in the end, that protects me. > Depending on what you mean by choosing not to use it. I don't use any of the Meta products, but they still know about me as "friends" have uploaded pictures of me to facebook, or their contacts lists to whatsapp. Adrian -- To Reply : replace "bulleid" with "adrian" - all mail to bulleid is rejected Sorry for the rigmarole, If I want spam, I'll go to the shops Every time someone says "I don't believe in trolls", another one dies.
[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]
| From | D <nospam@example.net> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2025-02-17 22:44 +0100 |
| Message-ID | <e7169dec-9cdd-624f-f9e7-fd0548c99d5d@example.net> |
| In reply to | #26468 |
On Mon, 17 Feb 2025, Adrian wrote: > In message <0310a638-3153-f886-5206-9bc8453c1f8e@example.net>, D > <nospam@example.net> writes >> I'm more scared about the government than the industry. With industry I >> always have the choice of not using it, and they depend on customers, so in >> the end, that protects me. >> > > Depending on what you mean by choosing not to use it. > > I don't use any of the Meta products, but they still know about me as > "friends" have uploaded pictures of me to facebook, or their contacts lists > to whatsapp. > > Adrian Why would they do that? It does not sound like friends to me, since they do not respect your wishes, nor your privacy. I ask my friends not to tag me or upload information about me, and they respect that. I do give you this though, there probably are indirect traces of me in their systems, but at least that is in clear violation of GDPR, so even though it doesn't amount to much, it is better than nothing. I also believe that second hand exposure is less than first hand exposure. A small comfort as well.
[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]
| From | Adrian <bulleid@ku.gro.lioff> |
|---|---|
| Date | 2025-02-18 00:08 +0000 |
| Message-ID | <64$EGYNy98snFwjO@ku.gro.lloiff> |
| In reply to | #26472 |
In message <e7169dec-9cdd-624f-f9e7-fd0548c99d5d@example.net>, D <nospam@example.net> writes > > >On Mon, 17 Feb 2025, Adrian wrote: > >> In message <0310a638-3153-f886-5206-9bc8453c1f8e@example.net>, D >><nospam@example.net> writes >>> I'm more scared about the government than the industry. With >>>industry I always have the choice of not using it, and they depend >>>on customers, so in the end, that protects me. >>> >> >> Depending on what you mean by choosing not to use it. >> >> I don't use any of the Meta products, but they still know about me as >>"friends" have uploaded pictures of me to facebook, or their contacts >>lists to whatsapp. >> >> Adrian > >Why would they do that? It does not sound like friends to me, since >they do not respect your wishes, nor your privacy. > Note my use of "friends" not friends. When I asked why I was told that what I don't know can't hurt me. As for whatsapp, as I understand it, it is all or nothing thing about what it uploads, and some of them are people that I work with, so we need each others phone numbers whilst working. They think I'm odd for not using it. Adrian -- To Reply : replace "bulleid" with "adrian" - all mail to bulleid is rejected Sorry for the rigmarole, If I want spam, I'll go to the shops Every time someone says "I don't believe in trolls", another one dies.
[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]
Page 11 of 15 — ← Prev page 1 … 9 10 [11] 12 13 … 15 Next page →
Back to top | Article view | comp.misc
csiph-web