Wayfarer

Good sub-editors.

Well, one thing it provided me was the ability to explore the question on my own terms. That should never be taken lightly. However, it took me a lot ...

Well, if the Big Bang happened once.....

'You can be my bodyguard, I can be your long-lost friend'. That was what sprang to mind when someone volunteered to chaperone TGW so he could keep pos...

I have had the subversive thought, that the whole aim of liberal democracy is to make the world a safe place for the ignorant. (I mean 'ignorant' in t...

Years ago I volunteered to give talks on Introduction to Buddhism at a Community College. Same thing happened there. One bloke, I remember, end of the...

Although, I am getting a bit sick of the 'drive by shooters' who register and create one-sentence posts - What is the meaning of life after all? What ...

You know, TGW was banned at the last forum too, and someone - I can't recall who, although it's right on the tip of my tongue - volunteered to chapero...

It's still sci fi.

Unless it collapses back into another singularity, and then expands again. Guess we'll have to wait and see ;-)

He, like myself, can't accept the idea of 'parallel universes', but the point I'm trying to make is that it is an inevitable consequence of Everett's ...

I'm only going on the jacket blurb of the first book by the guy that invented quantum computing: Reading through the reader reviews of that title, it ...

What would you say if someone were to assert that quantum computers rely on the actual reality of many worlds in order to operate?

Whatever the self is, there is no 'it', as it's never the object of perception. I think this was the basis of the Buddha's rejection of ?tman - it was...

My take would certainly not be that it's ALL in the mind of the observer, but that (1) the mind makes a contribution without which we would perceive n...

what do you make of the Everett-many worlds hypothesis? Oh, and I'm sure there is an 'epistemic cut'.

Things happen for reasons, but there is also serendipity, chance or hazard. There is an element of spontaneity involved. 'A scientist is just an atom'...

The point is that democratic systems allow for principled opposition. The electorate gets a say in who will govern, but those who don't agree get a sa...

You mean Elvis? What did he know about road building?

Well, no, I don't. It has a means of enabling it. Because that is what democracy is. Many people used to die of curable diseases before middle age. Yo...

when Avatar was released, one of Sydney's right-wing columnists penned an outraged OP saying the movie was blatant Green Left propaganda. That kind of...

And the fact that when, asked for alternatives, you can only offer either The Roman Empire, which famously collapsed around 2,000 years ago (and which...

No, I perfectly sympathise with Tolkein's aversion to modernity. I read The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings, last year, and most enjoye...

The other ones were, how shall we say, portentous. This is the character from Avatar, which, apart from being the best sci-fi, is also a symbol of res...

Such as? Hart says 'one can at least sympathise' - hardly a ringing endorsement.

so long as everyone here realizes we have a fascist in our midst then at least all our exchanges won't have been the complete waste of time they other...

well if you accept that the universe is not causally closed, the whole problem goes away. But apparently that is too high a price.

now you're showing your true colors.

What a mass of contradictions you are, Agustino. The one politician who most egregiously exploits all the flaws you see in democracy, is the same one ...

Fair enough. Could you just unpack a bit more what the problem is that you're trying to solve? Why is the role of 'probability' such that it requires ...

Only that it perhaps ought to have been posted on Physics Forum.

So in a non-democratic system of government, how to people get involved in social change or policy development or whatever? How do you 'take responsib...

Sure is comprehensive! I haven't read that much of it yet, but it is gratifying to see that the issue in the OP is indeed recognised by science: Inter...

That's not far from Plato's conception of 'philosopher kings' - sages beyond self-interest, who possess the wisdom and skills to steer the populace in...

So that explains why you go into bat for The Donald. Strange, I thought the Soviet Union had fallen.

Perhaps! But the giganticism of the sauropods seems on a different order to anything observed since.

Well, look again. I suspect I'm the only poster in this thread who responded to the specific question you're asking.

Gee thanks. I thought I provided one - but, no response.

I'm not seeing anyone suggesting that AI ought to govern, I think that idea is science fiction. But certainly democracy is under threat, it's even ope...

All well and good, but what is puzzling me is the biomechanics. After all by far and away the biggest things on Earth today are whales, but they're wa...

It's not a contradiction. 'Democracy' is a way of choosing various forms of government. You can have democracies that operate along completely differe...

republic r??p?bl?k/Submit noun a state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives, and which has an elected or nom...

I did, and they don't appear to offer any. It's still not known.

There is no 'ideal government'. As Churchill observed after WWII, democracy is the least worst option, because at least the citizenry have some say ov...

Thankyou! X-) I think that's correct, although I don't know about 'in principle'. Recall Antony Flew, the well-known British philosopher who argued th...

...and as we all well know, the Roman Empire continues to thrive to this day.

No, democracy is needed to accomodate differences of opinion. If you say that differences of opinion don't count, or that only your own opinion is cor...

I love some Woody Allen films, but he's a schmuck philosopher (although some of his lines are terrific: '"What if everything is an illusion and nothin...

Fair enough!

If someone were to claim they can 'prove' the existence of God - what could that mean? That they could show me God? I don't think that 'God' is real i...