There has been persecution. Last week's arrest was such. The IMF gave Ecuador $4 billion the week earlier. Just a coincidence I'm sure. https://www.re...
I'm not raving. I object to that characterization. It's @Frank Apisa who said that his standard for judging this affair is that Assange will (in theor...
I'll state Greenwald's observations in my own words so that if you are so inclined, you can discuss them here. Assange is charged with helping Manning...
Isn't that what you high-toned philosophers call an ad hominem? If you chose to, you could read what Greenwald wrote and challenge his substantive poi...
Yes. I say that. Please read what Glenn Greenwald has to say. He breaks it down in detail. The "computer hacking" charge is a blatant lie. https://the...
It's a question science can't answer. Current science, anyway. The Planck scale means there's a length and a time interval below which we can't sensib...
The idea of a fair trial and the rule of law do not apply here. Assange revealed horrible US war crimes. For that he must be punished. As we speak, he...
Oh I see. Once you get past the bit about the infinite number of you's, the question is really about the transporter problem A Star Trek-like transpor...
Are you confusing the idea of the multiverse with the idea of a spatially and/or temporally infinite universe? In any event there's only one reality, ...
But that's not true. The sequence 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ... is infinite, but 3 only occurs once and never again. A more sophisticated version of the argument...
One argument against the right to die is that it will inevitably become a duty to die. Old and sick? Your "loving" heirs will say, Hey Dad, how about ...
Perhaps even the staunchest libertarian can recognize that we live in a complex, interdependent society in which there is much inequality of opportuni...
No actually you haven't done that. I just happened to run across the juxtaposition of those two articles in the NYT and I wanted to make the general p...
I just happened to run across the exact kind of double-bind thinking that certain people exhibit on the subject of gender characteristics. I was perus...
The wider distribution of "lots of awful, lots of great" among men than among women is unsubstantiated claptrap? It's obvious to anyone who looks, and...
I haven't read this thread, just want to express an opinion which is factually true, yet politically in some disrepute. From the fact that both the pr...
Ah, thank you. Surely nothing I said could have given the impression I'm unclear on that distinction. After all I did give the example of confiscating...
@Bitter Crank has your last disposible nickel in his sights. He (and others sharing his opinion) claim he'll only soak the rich. But there aren't enou...
I would just like to see someone show me some numbers. So many dollars from this many people with such and so net worth and/or income. The game is to ...
Which part of my arithmetic do you dispute? If you take a billion dollars from every billionaire in the country you can run the government for six wee...
Wow. No. Not even close. It's fun to do some back-of-the envelope calculations. The US currently has 11 million millionaires according to this article...
I made perfectly sensible points that were different from what I said earlier. I'm making an earnest effort to understand your point of view. I'm disa...
Not in the least. The sole arbiter is the issuing authority of the lottery, whether a country or a state or a church group. No number of non-arbiters,...
Someone a few posts back already noted that a perfect simulation of the universe would suffer from infinite regress. If I have a box on my desk that p...
Ok well that's a start. I'll read the rest of this tomorrow. The computable universe hypothesis is in the air, put forth by people smarter than me. I ...
Ok. So we agree on that after all. Ok. Just tell me what you think the post was about. The point is simply that as soon as one talks about computers, ...
References to computers and programs. Virtual worlds refer to digital computer simulations. Computers. AI. Universally understood to refer to digital ...
Some people can dish it out but can't take it. The OP specifically referenced the idea of a computable universe. If you have a different definition of...
Of course. But that is not what the OP claims. The OP claims that the world IS a computer. That claim is false for any number of reasons which I'm hap...
You could read the links I gave if you chose to. Claiming ignorance isn't much of an argument. Surely you can understand that an approximation to a hi...
I can't make sense of that claim at all. Consider the three levels of discourse here. Level 0: Ultimate reality, the true nature of the world. Such a ...
Looks circular. Suppose I program a computer to simulate gravity. Does the computer attract nearby bowling balls? No. A simulation is not reality. But...
Since we're not programs, the question is moot. Most of the phenomena of the universe are noncomputable. An interesting example is determining if a re...
Boomer here. I have personally seen, with my own eyes, a Whites Only sign on a restroom in Florida in the 1960's. People have no idea what the world w...
No this is simply false. As usual, consider the order type of the integers: ..., -4, -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, ... Suppose each integer stands for a ...
Ok. And yet ... \pi is forced on us. A crude measurement of the ripple circles will give us a couple of decimal places. Archimedes calculated \pi to t...
Ah. Ok! But those aren't circles. There aren't any idealized circles in nature. Mathematical abstractions are idealized versions of things in nature. ...
That's your heartfelt defense of mathematical Platonism? I've seen better. Try these for a start. https://www.iep.utm.edu/mathplat/ https://plato.stan...
Where did it exist? And what else might exist in the same realm? The baby Jesus? The Flying Spaghetti Monster? Captain Ahab? I have trouble with Plato...
Yes indeed. In fact planets don't revolve in circles, which is what Copernicus believed. He gets way too much credit for getting heliocentrism right b...
No, that does not correspond to physics. A pencil point is made of chunky particles of graphite, which WIkipedia says is, "... a gray crystalline allo...
I didn't read any of this thread yet but if I had to prove that 1 + 1 = 2 I'd start from the Peano axioms and define n + 1 \overset{\text{def}}{\equiv...
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