Pfhorrest

What would a "change in temporal position" even be, unless you're invoking some kind of meta-time? (In which case exactly the same problem can be rais...

Here's another "proof" (illustration) for why 0.999... = 1. To write the difference between 0.999... and 1, write a zero, a decimal point, and then in...

I think you are all misunderstanding the importance of being in the center of the diagram. Nothing’s position signifies importance or unimportance, on...

Your description of what the job of philosophy is sounds more or less accurate to me, and my placement of philosophy at the center of that diagram isn...

This is false soon as the number of terms is greater than or equal to x, after which point the bottom sum is greater than 1 and the top sum is still l...

That’s where you’re wrong. Just flat wrong. You tried to show that true and I showed it false in just three terms. The same positive quantity added to...

The point of a limit is that the sum never exceeds it. No matter how many terms you add to that convergent series, it will never exceed 1. Why then wo...

This becomes false as soon as k = x. 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 = 0.875 1/3 + 1/3 + 1/3 = 1

Only in the special case you describe of adding the same thing to itself forever. Diminishing quantities act differently. Otherwise Achilles could nev...

It would, if lots of single mothers were evolutionary advantageous. And if, as you said, larger population sizes don’t create a cost themselves.

Population growth is limited by females one way or another. Males reproducing more doesn’t make population grow faster, it just makes more of the resu...

You know you can edit your posts?

Burn cop cars, smash racist statues, do symbolic violence against symbols of violence, yes. But wanton violence against random places that just happen...

It is not the absence of strict central control, but the strict enforcement of things like rent and interest (never mind property itself, but I’m not ...

Personally, I find it encouraging when people respond with positive approval as well, instead of saying nothing when they agree and only speaking up t...

It’s not that genes that allow for some doomed offspring get eliminated, it’s that genes that don’t allow for some non-doomed offspring get eliminated...

I wonder if MU believes in negative numbers either, or just the naturals. Does zero count to him?

I believe the question is confused.

I gave an account of the perception of time earlier in this thread, with a building. I suggest you go back and read that. Moving Spotlight is nonsense...

That I see it happen, and nobody's presented a good reason to doubt that. I remember things being different at earlier times than they are now. That's...

I am saying that if you think eternalism precludes change or motion, you are misunderstanding eternalism, because I am an eternalist, I've read the vi...

Having mental health problems doesn’t entail that everything you say is false. It is quite easy for someone to have functional enough cognitive facult...

Sure, it doesn’t matter if one of us thinks it’s weird so long as we understand each other. I was shorter as a child than I am now. That child and the...

I’d like input from others on this forum about that, because I just asked the other people around me in person and they all think it’s a perfectly nor...

Would you not say that a cone is smaller at the point than at the open end? A mountain is cone-shaped, roughly, with the pointy end up. So it’s smalle...

Actual mathematicians do.

Or I can quote the preceding few sentences too if you're not going to bother clicking:

They're talking about infinite series, and saying that the limit is the sum of that series. I didn't quote the whole article, just the relevant part. ...

The word "Wikipedia" at the bottom of the quote is a clickable link to the article in question.

The limit of the series of partial sums. By definition.

I'm only talking about finite sums and limits. The limit of the series of finite sums represented by 1/1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 ... is 2. You do agree that...

A limit is by definition something that will not be exceeded. We can be absolutely sure that 1/1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 ... will never add up to infinity, ...

Is the question of whether there are meaningful non-scientific questions a scientific questions?

Then it wouldn't be representable by a repeating decimal. Only series that converge (not diverge to infinity) can be represented by repeating decimals...

We ordinarily talk quite readily of motion or change with respect to a dimension other than time as we usually experience it. Hence the mountain that ...

I've been following. I told you earlier, your depiction of eternalism is a straw man. You're arguing against something that nobody is defending. Etern...

Moves with respect to what? Time is one of the four dimensions. If you're looking at a 4D object, where one of the four dimensions is time, then you'r...

They are not the same part, any more than the top of a mountain is the same part of the mountain as the bottom. But they are nevertheless still parts ...

If that’s what you think eternalism is, then you’re arguing against a strawman that nobody else is arguing for.

I said an unobserved particle doesn't have a classical state. It's in a superposition, which you can decompose as you just did into a distribution of ...

That is a superposition, not a classical state.

Try this instead then: You have a line drawn on a grid with axes labelled x and y. The y-position of the line changes with respect to the x-position. ...

It does though. It defines the sum of an infinite series as the limit that the partial sums approach.

I think it would be nice if it were possible to rank the quality of a post or thread, and then people could sort or filter by quality and look as low ...

I understand what superposition is, thanks. You’re still not getting the point I’m making. If someone asks about the hair status of the king of France...

Yes, but a classical state of the atom does not. Superposition is not a logically indeterminate answer to the question of what classical state is true...

What I’m getting at is that the latitude and longitude of the same one single pipe changes with altitude, the pipe moves east the lower down the mount...

You missed the whole point of that post. Kings are classical objects. Yet “the present king of France is bald” and “the present king of France is non-...

It may help to imagine a pipe going down the mountainside. The answer to where the pipe is on the 2D surface of the Earth depends on which altitude yo...

That is more a case of asking whether the present king if France is bald or not. It looks like that must violate the principle of the excluded middle,...