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Count Timothy von Icarus

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I've seen a few main approaches: 1. Propositions are abstract entities like universals. They are mind independent in the same way that spheres and squ...
July 01, 2022 at 19:11
Full Absolute Idealism! Not only is the Law of Non-Contradiction violated, it is these very violations that result in the world of becoming we experie...
July 01, 2022 at 16:03
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this only hold if you take as a premise that "all truths are knowable." The issue is the existence of an unknown ...
July 01, 2022 at 15:50
Probably not. I've only worked managing school districts as part of cities I've managed or districts I've consulted for, so I don't know much about th...
July 01, 2022 at 15:30
Well that of course depends on your attitudes towards mathematical Platonism and the Quine-Putnam Indispensability Argument. Is math something we disc...
July 01, 2022 at 12:47
A setting. Most of the interesting "emergent," stuff we see, far from equilibrium systems (life, etc.) result from the interactions of discrete amount...
July 01, 2022 at 03:29
In order to get this paradox you do have to think of truth as something that can be taken as universal, not something contingent on a perspective. If ...
June 30, 2022 at 19:13
By the way, this is an area where I think formalism might be making things less clear because you're not creating a definition for what a set of all t...
June 30, 2022 at 17:01
I'm not sure if I get your meaning. Indexicals could certainly preform the function of a timestamp by fixing a proposition's referent as well. Why is ...
June 30, 2022 at 16:34
The problem, which has been proposed since Boltzmann's time, is that time and entropy are not necessarily correlated. They are contingently so. This i...
June 30, 2022 at 12:49
I think this or a form of it is the obvious solution. If I imagine a database of all possible propositions, with a truth value column, I can just as w...
June 29, 2022 at 00:19
Sorry, I took that to mean "as of the observations of 1905," not as "only things published before 1905." The attempt to do physics without math was dr...
June 28, 2022 at 16:48
There is a Borges story, "On Exactitude in Science," about map makers who were so accurate that they would make 1:1 scale maps the same size of the te...
June 28, 2022 at 16:44
There might be issues with point 4. There have been attempts to redefine physics fully in terms of relationships so as to avoid the necessity of numbe...
June 28, 2022 at 16:36
Or to make my point much simpler, the "brute facts of physics," the speed of light, the relative strengths and values of the fundemental forces, etc. ...
June 28, 2022 at 15:29
I don't see how this applies to most forms of idealism I am familiar with. In terms of the multiplication of entities, I think you are mostly right. H...
June 28, 2022 at 15:08
Perhaps I am missing something, but isn't this problem resolved by declaring that propositions are fixed implicitly in the time of their utterance (un...
June 28, 2022 at 14:32
They really amped up the Bond villain vibes with the state news network showing graphics of their nuclear powered super submarine drone detonating a 1...
May 03, 2022 at 17:52
Siberia was mostly uninhabited, not the same for Bukhara, Khiva, Poland, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kishi, the...
May 02, 2022 at 23:34
No, but you could certainly compare Russia invading and occupying most of the kingdoms of Central Asia, Poland, Finland, the Baltics, the Caucuses, an...
May 02, 2022 at 14:27
Predatory relationships between large multinationals and countries with poor labor rights/protections, poor enviornmental regulations, weak rule of la...
May 02, 2022 at 14:15
Speaking of historical knowledge, Napoleon invaded Russia in "The War of the Sixth Coalition." I wonder what the other five wars were before that and ...
May 01, 2022 at 15:02
I assume you're referring to Page and Gilen's work, since that is the big piece claims like that tend to come from? It's great research. It is also, a...
April 30, 2022 at 19:08
Naive would be thinking politics is actually just window dressing to distract from a giant manichean struggle between well organized elites, who agree...
April 30, 2022 at 17:04
Agreed. I never said it was the only possible analysis. It is possible that, had NATO explicitly told Ukraine it would do nothing to help them, they m...
April 30, 2022 at 15:47
What is your counterfactual? What do you think would happen if additional aid shipments didn't reach Ukraine? Without NATO whispering in Ukrainians ea...
April 29, 2022 at 15:21
Yeah, yeah, the West controls everything, people elsewhere lack all agency. But by your logic, isn't it Iran's fault that Palestine is getting bombed?...
April 29, 2022 at 00:54
It's $20 billion in security assistance, not $20 billion in weapons. $5 billion of it is just a spending authorization. The funding doesn't necissaril...
April 29, 2022 at 00:10
How exactly do you escalate from throwing all the troops you can muster (as evidenced from the fact that no fresh units are rotating into the theater)...
April 28, 2022 at 23:51
Right, because if Ukrainians end up having to defend themselves with old Kalashnikovs and improvised explosives, less of them will die. In general, as...
April 28, 2022 at 21:40
Yeah, unfortunately it's about average for some work sites I've been to as well, including a US National Guard company I worked with. On the upside, s...
April 28, 2022 at 12:20
I find it increasingly incomprehensible how Russia boosters can claim continuing this war is a good strategic choice for Russia. Even if you take a to...
April 27, 2022 at 18:34
lol, reminds me of the Reddit "covens" organizing to support the ANA. I have to assume at least half the posts were made in jest though, at least I ho...
April 23, 2022 at 21:59
A friend who worked with them extensively told me it could be really quickly, two weeks of drills or even a bit less if they are working with experien...
April 23, 2022 at 13:05
I'm just not seeing how that's a coherent argument. You need to invade a country because there is a neo-Nazi force there that can field 900 soldiers, ...
April 22, 2022 at 23:46
Yeah, that's the big question. Sometimes wars lead to greater unity. A citizenry that has defended its self goes on to demand greater economic equalit...
April 22, 2022 at 23:31
Well that too. The supposed existential threat of the Azov group is consists of a bit over one BTG worth of fighters and lacks adequate equipment to e...
April 21, 2022 at 22:07
What happened to the bioweapons that were an existential threat justifying the invasion? Surely, the Slav targeting super virus and killer bird flocks...
April 21, 2022 at 03:08
Or: C. Able to distinguish nuance. Maybe it isn't about a specific number of Nazis, but what they are doing. Are they massacuring civilians and gearin...
April 19, 2022 at 19:58
Got no takers on the "is this the end of the main battle tank era?" question I see, but I'm starting to think the bigger lesson learned will be the re...
April 19, 2022 at 18:37
You seem to have a serious problem with black and white thinking. "Morale is sometimes the most important issue in a conflict," is not equivalent to "...
April 19, 2022 at 16:18
It's from 2013, although they also have assurances for Ukraine dating to the 1990s, these were more explicit, and recall US "nuclear umbrella," langua...
April 18, 2022 at 23:02
Right, and this is why low yield nukes; artillery shells dialed to a few hundred tons, man portable rockets capable of replicating the explosive power...
April 17, 2022 at 18:08
I don't think it's that simple. The US use of nuclear weapons took place when they were new and an unknown factor in warfare. They were used before MA...
April 17, 2022 at 17:31
I should have also noted that, unlike the USSR, Russia doesn't have a policy of "no first use" for nuclear weapons. Since 2010, they have also had an ...
April 16, 2022 at 21:47
Just a guess, but I think the target audience might be members of Congress who are calling for high end aid to go to Ukraine. The CIA doesn't want the...
April 16, 2022 at 16:27
It would be a total cluster fuck. China has also made nuclear security assurances to Ukraine. China, the EU, the US, India, etc. all have a very large...
April 16, 2022 at 15:54
Right. Russian troops didn't just go to Ukraine in 2022. They went into Kazakhstan for "peace keeping" after nationwide riots against the Ex-Soviet Bo...
April 16, 2022 at 15:33
NATO stepping up rhetoric vis-á-vis Ukraine's desire to join it was a predictable outcome of the Russian decision to invade Ukraine in 2014. "NATO wil...
April 16, 2022 at 12:26
Comparably huge for the Black Sea fleet I guess. That or journalists not knowing what they are talking about most of the time. A ship with a 500 man c...
April 15, 2022 at 18:06