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SophistiCat

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Heh. The normally reserved New York Times has dropped all pretense of impartiality: I browse NYT regularly (usually just morning briefing Europe), and...
November 06, 2020 at 17:26
My early prediction (from before the pandemic) was that Trump would win reelection with a bigger margin (winning the popular vote as well). The sad th...
November 04, 2020 at 18:30
Yeah, we don't even know all that much about how animal eyes work - color resolution, etc. We have some idea, but there is considerable uncertainty th...
November 03, 2020 at 22:23
See The World Through The Eyes Of A Cat https://www.popsci.com/resizer/S94l-1o7fA_bab1Bsi6wYJcXjj8=/1002x420/arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-bonnier.s3.amazo...
November 03, 2020 at 20:14
Yes, we are well aware of that. Even ordinary photo-video media (film, digital sensors) don't have the same light sensitivities as the human eye, and ...
November 03, 2020 at 18:54
I am not sure. The motivation for the Wheeler-Feynman absorber theory is to have a time-symmetric formulation of classical electrodynamics, right? Bot...
November 02, 2020 at 11:41
I wonder why he thinks that Type II emission is equally possible as Type I. Type I is an interpretation of a well-studied phenomenon (emission/absorpt...
November 02, 2020 at 07:59
Well, Sam put a good deal of work into his posts, and he actually made philosophical points, not just jee-whiz, isn't it special. He was a crackpot an...
October 28, 2020 at 07:13
In TI the electron is still essentially its wavefunction, right until its inglorious end. So it will go through both slits, interact with itself, etc....
October 28, 2020 at 07:03
He mentions a "relativistic Schrodinger equation," which has has a (P2 + m2)1/2 term. Does the incoming electron always scatter on another electron? I...
October 27, 2020 at 20:46
I was hedging because in his 1980 Phys. Rev. D paper Cramer writes that for particles with spin other than 1/2, e.g. bosons, there are a number of alt...
October 27, 2020 at 08:13
So I went back to Cramer's papers from 1980s onward in an attempt to gain a better understanding of the transactional interpretation. I think I manage...
October 26, 2020 at 06:54
Hey, just to let you know, I want to think on this some more, don't want to reply just for the sake of saying something.
October 18, 2020 at 16:30
All I can see from your quotes is that Mary Midgley is dissing someone you don't like. If that is what turns you agush... meh. May as well listen to a...
October 17, 2020 at 09:02
https://sketch.io/render/sk-4dfd88faa4cae8574b37473f378d433d.jpeg But this only gives the "real paths" of the electron once the "boundary condition" o...
October 15, 2020 at 18:10
As I read your reply I realized that I didn't really understand the OP :confused: So let me try another question to see if that helps a bit: How does ...
October 15, 2020 at 07:51
You are overthinking it. I haven't looked at the video, but the wiki on Penrose tiling explains the sense in which the pattern doesn't repeat: it just...
October 14, 2020 at 06:40
Collin's so-called prime principle of confirmation notoriously provides spurious support. Collins tries to repair it with an injunction against ad hoc...
October 13, 2020 at 09:03
That was a nice presentation and an interesting discussion. Thanks for putting in the effort! I was thinking about what you said about the asymmetry o...
October 13, 2020 at 08:27
We get attached to our beliefs - that's the main reason we hang on to them in the first place, regardless of their epistemic virtues or lack thereof. ...
October 12, 2020 at 07:17
@"Baden" I concur with the crackpot.
October 12, 2020 at 06:15
Key Findings
October 11, 2020 at 13:25
Orbitals are distributions, charge density clouds. They are smeared across the entire universe, but their density peaks in the vicinity of the nucleus...
October 11, 2020 at 08:45
Here is one representative (I think - I am no kind of expert) example, with some thoughts on x-phi: Joshua Shepherd, The Folk Psychological Roots of F...
October 10, 2020 at 06:38
It is relevant to the extent that the starting point for Strawson's thesis is the old debate on the compatibility of personal responsibility/free will...
October 08, 2020 at 17:28
It depends on what one expects the result of such an inquiry to look like. Moral philosophers traditionally tend to look for simple, universal princip...
October 08, 2020 at 16:48
I was going to respond, but I see that this thread has since been taken over by an argument that spilled over from elsewhere. An object lesson of a fa...
October 08, 2020 at 08:02
This guy already joined this forum and posted his video a little while back. But I agree, such appeals are pointless and have never had any actual imp...
October 07, 2020 at 15:12
I wasn't so much complaining about a derail. It just seems that you (or maybe just Olivier) are itching to have this discussion - so why not have a de...
October 07, 2020 at 15:07
Can one of you guys start a thread on determinism/indeterminism, instead of hijacking other threads? (I have the damnedest time making OPs, but I migh...
October 07, 2020 at 07:49
I was thinking of folk theories, as in folk physics or folk theory of mind - intuitive or conditioned but unschooled understanding of how some aspect ...
October 07, 2020 at 06:31
You could just put a link to your blog in your profile, as others do, instead of billboarding it on your user name.
October 06, 2020 at 10:31
Sometimes you may want to conclude that what we've been talking about all this time is not what we thought it was, or that it's just not a well-formed...
October 04, 2020 at 14:39
This went right over his head, I am afraid.
October 04, 2020 at 09:26
LOL Radin. I knew that he was a crackpot, but that was more from the way reasoned more than anything else. Makes sense though.
October 03, 2020 at 17:50
It's a common knowledge that Newton's predominant interests throughout his life (judging by the expenditure of time and ink) were esoteric religious s...
October 03, 2020 at 11:06
Another apriorist giving this dead horse yet another beating.
October 03, 2020 at 09:00
It's the biggest FRAUD in history!!!
October 03, 2020 at 07:37
Making truly random choices is notoriously difficult - ask a poker player. There are common situations in poker where random choices are considered to...
October 03, 2020 at 07:12
https://i-6uf0utvje8gy-cdn.plushcontent.com/uploads/resized/files/xl/y24yz0qaxsirbbrq.jpg Life imitates outdoes The Onion. Same day:
October 02, 2020 at 19:51
Yeah, he doesn't actually define responsibility, except in a negative way, so this was a bit of extrapolation on my part. I suppose if Strawson was a ...
October 02, 2020 at 15:20
There is something that Strawson is saying with his argument. He apparently believes that the only thing that can bear the "ultimate" responsibility i...
October 02, 2020 at 07:32
This is because for him the buck doesn't stop at the self. He doesn't actually give an account of personal identity, because it is irrelevant to his c...
October 01, 2020 at 19:01
Sure, but can this technology scale up many orders of magnitude to simulate human brain? And just as importantly, is such a neural net simulation full...
October 01, 2020 at 18:51
I wonder if functionalism with respect to the mind in general might fail for a similarly banal reason? Might we be overly optimistic in assuming that ...
October 01, 2020 at 07:09
Trump's taxes and business ventures: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/29/podcasts/the-daily/donald-trump-taxes-investigation.html
September 30, 2020 at 17:13
In a way, Strawson's argument is the opposite of the Gem: instead of "My will is my will, therefore..." it is "My will is not my will, therefore I am ...
September 30, 2020 at 14:34
There is something analogous here, but I wouldn't say it's the same thing. Strawson capitalizes on the so-called sourcehood criterion of free will: fo...
September 29, 2020 at 20:41
For my part, I am not really paying attention to this pompous ass, but there is not reason why we can't discuss analytical philosophy or the value of ...
September 29, 2020 at 08:22