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magritte

['Member']Joined: September 06, 2020 at 15:53Last active: February 25, 2026 at 21:541 discussions595 comments
Location: irreality

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Plato, Protagoras, Heraclitus

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I'm not sure that any possibility is likely. The initial conditions and their evolution into their present state were not necessary, they just happene...
February 16, 2026 at 15:19
Just to make it simpler, a point is simpler than a line, so how does a triangle emerge from a point? How about the other way around?
February 16, 2026 at 02:04
Taking my truth to mean 'in my experience' totally demystifies usage if it is taken as a common phrase rather than one issuing from a philosopher. Per...
February 08, 2026 at 20:59
Palo Alto Networks and Cisco regularly voice warnings of the dangers of advancing AI applications that might invade and corrupt corporate networks. Th...
February 04, 2026 at 01:08
Cyber security companies are in the news being quite concerned with the growing capabilities of AGI's that can potentially infiltrate and corrupt corp...
February 02, 2026 at 19:45
Natural unplanned evolution is not necessarily our ally if we are dreaming of survival as a species. Naturally, the only foreseeable trend is extincti...
January 29, 2026 at 02:56
Those are two of the ideas that you claim to be related. That is your thesis. To do that you, not I, need to understand both your key words and the id...
January 27, 2026 at 15:42
By classic education do you mean a classical curriculum that teaches ancient and modern languages, philosophy, literature and history, or one of the m...
January 27, 2026 at 00:00
Then how would you make that a balanced reciprocal relationship?
January 26, 2026 at 23:51
Your perspective on AI has been obsolete for years now. The type of AI I dreamed of long ago was hand programmed to do specific tasks for just the rig...
January 25, 2026 at 20:36
It is odd from an everyday ordinary language (an other 'orthogonal') perspective to say that I don't know what you mean by cold. Actually I do underst...
January 25, 2026 at 14:58
No, we don't understand either one. There are two distinct notions 'orthogonal' to each other plus a scale measure to create a rough translation from ...
January 25, 2026 at 09:20
A doctor will attempt to relate "I'm cold" to their Wittgensteinian meaning by asking "on a scale of 1 to 10 how cold do you feel?" That number is onl...
January 25, 2026 at 09:07
It isn't? Can anyone other say how cold the feverish person is?
January 25, 2026 at 08:55
This challenging discussion gave me impetus to check the progress of AI on whatever to me available documentaries. They are now talking AGI, self-teac...
January 25, 2026 at 00:55
Could well be. The Dems cut the program because it was expensive and pointless. The prestige value is still there if one is willing to foot the bill.
January 17, 2026 at 17:30
Everything. I doubt that there is any scientific or technological priority of any sort that can be addressed by actually sending live people into orbi...
January 17, 2026 at 14:48
Beautiful and challenging post. If I let it be general lack of progress in philosophy and in the arts then I am not obliged to demonstrate the missing...
January 15, 2026 at 01:51
He was invaluable because back then next to nothing was known of the Moon's geology. The one and only scientist ever to be sent?
January 14, 2026 at 22:38
That's the difference between technological and scientific projects. Technology makes constant advances on top of existent technology in an ever faste...
January 14, 2026 at 22:34
This has been an effective rationale for public funds and to raise individual contributions toward the 'sciences'. The argument makes a great deal of ...
January 14, 2026 at 17:10
My take of some relevant ancient history. The strongest logical statement in philosophy comes from Parmenides. To paraphrase, Everything is, period. T...
January 04, 2026 at 22:54
In the case of the sparrows I find their behavior abhorrent, nature doesn't. Because of that and other practical reasons I will not allow them on my b...
December 22, 2025 at 21:00
The idea of distinguishing artificial man-made from what is natural is useful in many ways. As example, many large spherical rocks seen in a valley co...
December 21, 2025 at 22:07
Natural is just anything that happens without human, artificial intervention. Man-made systems are unnatural. What is common is only what we as people...
December 19, 2025 at 17:38
That is a very powerful way of stating the crux of normalcy. A dart is a material object with size that pokes out a disk shaped hole in a material pla...
December 19, 2025 at 15:00
It's abnormal to be normal
December 18, 2025 at 16:51
Geologically we are speaking in million-year or even billion-year time frames. Civilization only goes back thousands of years which on this time scale...
November 02, 2025 at 13:05
Recently I've tried a new approach to crack the Parmenides. If the Parmenides character is made to expand his world into Plato's Formal pluralism, wha...
November 01, 2025 at 23:34
That pretty much characterizes the US markets. There is a high level of fear that flips the market trend almost daily. Smart people are gradually with...
March 11, 2025 at 08:48
The free speech claim is just a smoke screen by his supporters. It's his other activities that got him notice. He will have his day in court, and then...
March 11, 2025 at 01:00
I like the two well-chosen Plato quotes there from the Timaeus. I complained before about the necessity of bringing a point of view to reading Plato. ...
March 05, 2025 at 09:19
The quantum universe is just another description of the physical universe but at the smallest quantum level. Consequent observable that change at huma...
March 01, 2025 at 02:43
The quantum universe is proposed to be whole, and an intelligent agent in a Platonic sense. It is supposed to be acting instantaneously beyond our 3-D...
February 28, 2025 at 17:45
Yes. Quite different from an empty infinite space or a container of sorts. Interestingly there is a modern quantum version of the World Soul. The idea...
February 27, 2025 at 03:13
Do you mean his explanation for the exclusion of Forms from the Theaetetus? Cornford was a unitarian with respect to Plato's underlying metaphysics an...
February 27, 2025 at 02:51
A definition might be too strict for something that mostly does not exist to be defined, it is an extended boundless dynamic field of inter-penetratin...
February 25, 2025 at 20:51
If they did they would lose an objective common ground of communication. The lexicon has its own biases as well but where would we be without it? Plat...
February 25, 2025 at 20:40
You make many cogent points in those posts that I have to think about as I write. Describing chora as a place or as an extension is un-Platonic primar...
February 25, 2025 at 02:42
A few years back I had to invade the library of a local seminary in search of an expensive Plato commentary. When I asked for help the young librarian...
February 24, 2025 at 14:32
Which is why it is only possible to misread Plato in one direction or another to a lesser or greater extent. Scholars' translations and readings are s...
February 24, 2025 at 11:23
You're giving my calculator a headache
February 20, 2025 at 21:21
It would make sense for the DOGE to use AI to sift through administrative records of government contracts for suspected waste and corruption. Younger ...
February 20, 2025 at 02:20
Maybe they do, but perhaps they only need to create sufficient confusion and division to paralyze disjointed multinational leadership. MAGA is a natio...
February 20, 2025 at 01:12
Is this normal in tone and content coming from an ally? Sounds to me as another attempt to destabilize the European democracies, just as Musk is tryin...
February 19, 2025 at 23:52
Plato lived in a mathematically rudimentary and physically primitive age, but his mode of thought was akin to today's physical theorists. He was quite...
December 20, 2024 at 22:11
Plato suggested momentary collapse.
December 19, 2024 at 09:55
Yes. Isolationism has been a goal of the US conservatives for a long time now. We're tired of transplanting our ideals of democracy to ungrateful fore...
February 03, 2024 at 21:16
But it isn't just bombing. The Hamas terrorists made it as personal and offensive as they could, exactly to provoke an oversized uncontrolled retaliat...
February 03, 2024 at 16:51
Thank you. The problem I have is the same mentioned by . Darwin tried to sell natural selection by pointing out that selective breeding of animals and...
November 03, 2023 at 09:42