frank

It popped right up when I clicked on it.

That's so cool. I'm sick as crap at the moment and that cheered me up. I agree that by the time we understand whale, there is no multiplicity of conce...

:up: Like Newfoundland.

The British isles will freeze over. It's speculated that the Younger Dryas, a massive swing in temperatures from warm to freezing and back again was t...

Well, that makes no sense.

And the other 33 felonies?

He was convicted of 34 felonies tho. Nobody cares, they elected him anyway.

Yea. But a famous physicist speculates that time has to do with the way our consciousness is configured. Thus the famous cosmologist publishes an arti...

Are you guys slightly off topic?

I agree with him as well. He didn't use any physics though.

He wrote an essay on determinism. It won a prize. It shows how that determinism is common sense just as much as free will is. I'm not going to repeat ...

Yes. I get that. I was basically handing you Schopenhauer.

The Thursday angle do much for the logic which says that if you'd done differently, the whole universe would have to be different from this one. Or yo...

So your view is primarily founded on common sense, right? The free will thesis reflects the way we commonly think and speak. I agree that it does. Alt...

Do you think your view needs justification? If so, would you share it? If not, could you say why not?

I think I do.

This is cool: Andrew Jaffe talks about Carlo Rovelli The article is called "The Illusion of Time."

I'm having witty quip overload. Must return to cave.

It's true. But quantum computers are God!

I'm sure all of that is part of the picture. Embracing rule of law takes a lot of trust in society and government. Where that trust has eroded, it's n...

I guess I was looking for clarification about where the OP wanted to go with the question. That's why I asked him what his thoughts were. What are you...

So?

That would mean 30-40% of Republicans plus a mass of independent voters don't care about rule of law. I think it's actually higher than that.

But since he was re-elected after what he pulled in Jan 6, it appears that large swaths of Americans don't care about rule of law either.

In a year or two probably. One of the main manufacturers of EV's runs the US government.

Computers are gigo.

Well, I'm saying the person who didn't become a criminal, couldn't have become a criminal. It's more than a tautology, although I'll grant, not much m...

:grin: Yes, I'm aware that I'm giving voice to the problem that rigid designation was supposed to solve. Your identity is your history. If you'd had a...

He's right. If you look at the universe as a monolith where everything is interrelated, determinism is the outcome.

Oh! From one point of view, if I had become a criminal, the resulting person wouldn't be me. My identity is made up of bits of my history. If I'd had ...

You're saying free will and determinism both come down to the way we think rather than metaphysics? I agree.

It's all fixable.

Why not look at all the possible answers?

l Yes. I think it's part of having Asperger's that I notice all the ways a question can be looked at.

Yea.

I don't think modal logic has any metaphysical import though. It's just about the way we think.

That can be answered with yes or no, depending on how you look at it. What's your answer?

Oh. I thought they stopped almost all foreign aid. They didn't?

That's true. But Americans are still giant do-gooders, so the flow of private aid will continue.

I disagree with this. We're all adults here. Let's learn to roll with the punches.

I've been thinking lately about how Stalin took over. He started by quietly making lists of people to target. But where the comparison ends (for now) ...

Do you believe in God?

:up:

However it was established, the CIA was part of the executive branch and under the authority of the president. I guess if there's something unconstitu...

Different in what way? I didn't say anything about efficiency. It's the effectiveness of monarchy that caused every ancient democracy to transition in...

Ok. Eisenhower told the CIA to fight communism and don't tell him anything about their actions. People associated with the issue warned Eisenhower tha...

Yea. Sometimes leaders openly take responsibility for the disasters caused by their subordinates, but it always sounds like some sort of formality to ...

You may be right. I think Musk is working under Trump's authority, so there isn't any official plurality.

The American democracy exists because of this fascinating guy: Thomas Jefferson: https://www.hillsdale.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Official_Preside...

Hamilton was a monarchist. I think the quote you posted is an argument for monarchy. I'm not quite getting your point.