D <nospam@example.net> writes:

On Mon, 17 Mar 2025, Salvador Mirzo wrote:

You learn a lot of odd stuff of usenet and mailinglists! ;)

Indeed. I often recommend it to people who study a foreign language.
Writing it each day is a very efficient way to get the language into
your memory. With the tools we have now, it's even pure joy. But, you
know, so far, I've never seen *anybody* following my advice in this
matter. (I've been making this recommendation for some two decades.)

It's a good point! I never thought of it like that, but now that you mention it,
the fact that a big part of my working life has always been english written text, I am certain it has helped improve my english.

order to increase the number of consumers, and the government happily
agreed in order to be able to tax the other half of the population!

I wouldn't quite say the rich *created* feminism. But, surely, like
every agent would do, when they see something (that they didn't create)
can help them in their quest, they use it. Obviously. Rulers often
look into philosophy, say, as an accomplice.

This is the truth!

What is your USENET client or text editors? Look above---your client or
text editor almost does what's called ``embarrassing line wrap''. It's
quite it because it doesn't mess up quote attribution, but it doesn't
know how to fill the paragraph properly. Perhaps your client could
invoke the GNU EMACS so that you can handle this with the GNU EMACS (or
vim). But your client must leave the message alone after you're done.

For short messages it is pine. For long messages it's vim.

I think you use alpine, right? Can it do a better job?

(I often fix your quotes, but I won't fix it this time to let you see it
clearly.)

Hmm, I never thought about it. For me, all quotes look alright. Could you send
me an exact copy and mark where the error is? Maybe I've gotten so used to it I
don't notice it?

Omg, it turns out it's *my* fault! Sorry about that. I mean---not my
fault exactly, but Gnus'. Gnus is messing up my quotes when I M-RET at
points to reply---it messes up quotes above and sometimes quotes below. Incredible. I must report this. (It sometimes does and I don't see it,
so it goes broken up.)

This is Gnus v5.13 running on GNU Emacs 29.4 (build 1,
x86_64-unknown-openbsd, GTK+ Version 3.24.43, cairo version 1.18.2) of 2024-09-28.

Could very well be. The problem with the privacy of the mind, type
of arguments is that it is difficult to prove anything.

Proving anything is quite useless for regular people. Proving is useful
in math, less in science and that's just about it, I think. (By the
way, when I see people saying things like ``scientifically proven'',
they have no idea what they're talking about.)

Well, let's make the distinction of proof (math) and evidence
(science). Maybe that makes it more clear?

By ``proving anything'' I had in mind any kind of good argument. It's
of no use to a lot of people. People are not making very rational
decisions. I mean---they make rational decisions in a certain level,
but it's not very deep reason. That's why society is full of apparent paradoxes.

Of course you're right. But I also think we've historically a problem >>>> there, which I'm calling a ``war'' here. And the reason I consider it >>>> pretty bad it's because it's an inner war. When men and women don't get >>>> along, that's because they're not getting along with themselves.

Interesting. Could you give an example?

Can we begin with women in some Arab cultures? Some don't even let them
drive. Doesn't this suggest a certain battle between the sexes?

Battle for me is something intentional, and intentional conflict between two groups. Even though it is not good, I don't know if I would categorize it as a
"battle" between the sexes. Just a backwards, retarded culture and religion, that will hopefully go away in a generation or two. =/

It's okay---I don't care for the words. If not war or battle, something
else. We're both seeing what's hapenning. I call it one thing and you
call it another. I might find it disturbing and you might call me too sensitive. That's what we're dealing with every day. Similarly, some
people might find it's all beautiful and they could be on drugs, say. :)
We need to deal with this. That's a pretty big part of communication.
That's why I appreciate some of the art of listening. I appreciate
thoughts like those of David Bohm that one would find in ``On
Dialogue''. By the way, whatever changes you're seeing, I say it's all
on the surface.

But let's look at our own culture. Here's a true story. I have a
friend who is considered very sweet and polite by everyone who meets
him. He tells me about all of his dates and girlfriends and whatever.
I never told him because I don't even think he would understand it, but
he objectifies women quite clearly (to me). For instance, he was
chatting with a girl on an app some time ago and they were talking about
meeting up. The girl was a bit unstable with the commitment to meeting
in person and he was losing a bit of patience; another girl came up and
agreed to meet him. As he was telling me the story, he made remarks
such to the effect of---whatever; I get the problem solved.

In other words, he is looking for services; if one company doesn't
satisfy him; he goes with another and that's it. What looks like
someone's impatience with people's complications might actually be
hiding a certain outlook on life, which I call materialism. He can't
see that he's getting involved with people. His outlook is not that of
someone who sees oneself intertwined with everybody else. He seems
himself quite separate from everybody else.

Well, from one point of view, he is. He is an individual, and I would say that
as long as he is open with only looking for certain services, and a woman is looking to provide services, that's good!

Your ``that's good'' here is likely materialist. You might be saying
``if they're happy, what's the problem?'' That's essentially
saying---it's not my problem. People can often claim to be happy and
even appear happy, when in reality... That's parents worry so much
about their children (and often others beyond than theirs).

While people often remark how polite and sweet he is---and I like him
too---, I actually say that he has a health problem that makes him quite
insensitive. Who is suffering the most? Himself. His insensibility,
for example, blinds him even to his own nutrition. He's losing his
health slowly year after year.

That is sad. =(

Such is life. It's difficult. You can tell people of their symptons,
but they don't see it---they don't believe it. When people can't tune themselves to intelligence, it becomes quite difficult to do anything intelligent.

What about women? Same thing. People are very insensitive because
their sensors are all turned off or broken. (And the mystery goes away
when watch them closely: nearly everyone is drugging themselves daily
with coffee, processed foods, medicine and all the rest of it.)

And that's the case with the most of the world.

Oh, here's an example from today. Today I woke up with my neighbor
having a little party in his house early morning---that means it
probably started a night out. He lives in his house with his wife. His
wife was not in this party. It was actually a two-couple party.
Believe it or not, my bedroom faces his pool directly. (Not much
privacy for sure.) I got up, saw what was going on and did not even
open my window to give him a bit of privacy in his little party.
Chatting went on for a while and then suddenly silence. So I looked and
then his friend was likely inside the house and he was having sex in the
pool.

Wow! Brazil, here I come! ;)

Lol. You could be getting the wrong impression. :) But the real remark
to be made here, in a more serious tone, is that this is no good. For instance, when I saw them in the swimming pool, the first thing I
thought was---omg, what a place for that. And he was in own home---he
likely left the most comfortable place for his friend. Of course,
people might love this kind of stuff. It's not shameful or obscene or whatever---I couldn't care less about any of that. I'm saying it's just
a someone trying to get some relief, without much of a clue of what's
going on.

By the way, if I were mildly inclined to the same, I could likely be
there myself. When they moved in, they threw various parties and
invited me to them all. I had lots of chances to blend in, but I
couldn't, really: I don't drink; I don't stay up all the night; what I
eat is the nearly the bare minimum and from a very picky selection.
It's a totally different life style. And, hey, don't get me wrong: I
actually like them. I like both of them. One of the first things I do
when I wake up is open up my window. I love natural light. I only
opened my window by midday that day---that's when they had already left
home (likely to some more fun). I also spotted my neighbor's friend
with his head down on a table trying to rest a bit. In all probability,
they spent the night out, arrived in the morning with the two girls and
didn't sleep for a minute. Of course, with whisky, Red Bulls, beers and
that kind of nonsense.

That's one of the things I eventually noticed. The first thing to do to
put your life in order is to quit all drugs---bad food included. To
enjoy a whole night without sleep, you gotta be on something. The body
loves to sleep if it's well regulated.

Hmm, I never think I ever experienced anything like it in the far, far
north. People are way too reserved for anything like that to happen,
at least where I have been living, oh, and of course there's never
been any swimming pools close by as well. ;)

I do believe Brazilians are on average less reserved. There's a lot of
poor people here. People who live in the slums, for example. I have
never been too close, but they're everywhere so I often observe them.
One problem I've spent some hours (that is, almost nothing) on is why do
poor people talk so loud. My hypothesis is that they grow up in
space-deprived environments, neighbors are too close by, no privacy and
so on. It becomes the normal thing, so they might not feel being
exposed at all to whoever is around.

And that's the second time I spot something. The first was months ago
in a similar situation. Night out followed by coming home with some new
friends. This time the girl was actually cute and perhaps didn't sleep
with him, but he seemed to enjoy kissing her.

I figure he thinks he's enjoying life, but I actually think he doesn't
like his wife at all. So why are they together? There are no paradoxes

If all are in on it, who am I to judge? Our dear lord teaches us to "judge not...". On the other hand, if his wife is not in on it, it is very sad and immoral.

I claim she is in on it, not consciously in on it though. But she's in
on it in a deeper level. For instance, I classify her as an alcoholic.
I don't think her husband is an alcoholic in the same level as she is,
but technically I do include him in the alcoholism classification, too.
He surely needs alcohol, for example, to have the kind of night we
described earlier. So many people do.

in this world. There's some business going on; there is a contract
there. His wife must be getting something from the deal and he's
getting something else.

That's not affection.

Difficult to say without knowing them better. But it certainly does sound unorthodox to me.

Yeah---this is not a serious analysis. It's all guess based on
statistics.

Where does this come from? I don't know the beginning of it all, but
surely this goes back to thousands of years. Recently, I learned that
archaeologists discovered human civilizations in the tropical forests
150,000 years ago. Was men and women at war back then? I don't know,
but I would easily guess so. I think the problem goes way back.

I think lumping society into two groups, and thinking abotu conflict in terms of
those two groups, risks obscuring the real issues. I am certain there are many
harmonious couples out there. I try to judge based on individual situations and
behaviours, instead of making blanket statements.

Agreed!

I don't really separate men and women. I think of them as two sides of >>>> the same coin.

I think of them as individuals.

I know. But we are not individuals. Even evolutionary biologists are
getting there already [1].

How come we are not individuals? If not individuals, what then?

That's too difficult of a conversation. We're in comp.misc. Let's call
it a thread and end this. If you're curious, you could look at two perspectives: one, which is the evolutionary biology one---there's the
article I linked in a previous post. Another perspective, more
difficult to parse, is that of someone such as Jiddu Krishnamurti---very interesting perspective there.

The logical end point of "woke" when they realise that all groups
eventually boil down to unique individuals. Welcome to libertarianism!
=D

You lost me there.

Woke is about finding or creating ever smaller groups, and competing to see who
is most hurt, and who gets the most privilege. In the left, this woke movement
has created more and more sub-groups, and they are all competing for a limited
resource (political power) and the more groups there are, the more fighting will
go on between them, and eventually all common ground is lost and it will disintegrate.

The only logical way out of this dilemma, is to continue to shrink the groups until they consist of groups with one member, the individual, and then they can
reach the conclusion that we are all individuals, and the only way to sustainably create a society is if all individuals are respected.

Of course.

This stuff is all complete nonsense. Not even worth a discussion. I
don't even use the word you began your paragraph---I never said it out
loud and never wrote it. Let's keep it that way. :)

Complicate? How come? To me it is one of the most liberating
realizations of my life. =) For me it is I guess an honest life, a
life where you think through your values and goals, and then strive
to realize them and maximize the amount of long term happiness you
can get.

An expert could likely complicate your life by trying to show that it's
either false or meaningless. (Don't ask me to do it---I'm just the
student.) They could attack ``reason for one's existence'' as
meaningless and they could certainly attack ``subjective'' by claiming
that the vast majority of the world is quite objective.

Hah... I'll take the challenge! ;) I agree, objectively speaking, that there is
no reason.

No reason? I think there is reason. :)

But since for me, it is moved into the subjective realm, it is safe
from any attack from "experts" since science, being descriptive, is
not able to "crack" the subjective level.

I've seen this before. It's typical. You're putting too much precision
into things. For instance, you said (likely below) that we can't know
for sure; we can infer. Sure---knowing for sure is too difficult. We
can infer and that's good. We all look and the see the Moon out there.
We're sure it's there. End of the story. :) It's not subjective.
That's what I mean.

But, sure, I read Descartes's ``Discourse on the Method''. I loved
seeing him doubting everything and starting from scratch. I think that
book has a serious educational philosophy because it gives us the
example of an independent mind (in pretty ordinary steps) organizing
itself and preparing itself for more work.

But I also think (in retrospective) it's a bit childish, too. I don't
need to doubt so much. I see the intellect being too precious, being considered more than it really is. For instance, I just sit and feel
myself. Here I am---therefore I am. End of story. :)

It's not subjective. We all have seen the same stuff. Of course, from
where you look is different from where I look. But we're seeing the
same things---evidently. It's what nearly all of the evidence shows.

Oh, this might get complicated. Lived life, as in my subjective
experience, I would argue, can never become objectively analyzed,
since it is impossible for descriptive science to "get" what it's
like to be the subjective me.

To your content perhaps, but people can infer what's in you by looking
from the outside. The inner /is/ the outer. You're a human being.
Everybody else knows what's like to be a human being.

You can deny it all 'til the end of times.

You can infer based on behaviour, but you can never "know". My subjectivity and
how I experience things, are "locked" into the processing of my brain, as my cosciousness collides with reality.

So yes, you are right, we can infer, but that is not certain knowledge, and in
some cases, such as quantum physics, not even knowledge.

You're correct, of course, but see above.

Life, descriptive, external, life, as understood by science, can
definitely be categorized and analyzed. In terms of happiness, you
can go so far as positive psychology and statistically analyze
"happy" people and draw conclusions about what life factors tend to
contribute to their happiness.

Freud observed himself and made conclusions that apply to everyone else.
Like everyone else, he perhaps made mistakes in the fine details of
things, but he also made huge contributions---from a unitary sample
space.

True, but freud these days is disproven. As you say, he did lay a good foundation for psychology however, and it has progress from him.

I don't think he's disproven at all. :) Look, it doesn't matter if a mathematician got a conjecture wrong---he did a lot of useful work in
his life. Same with Freud---just his independence from public opinion
makes him a type of Socrates.

In my notebook, I have no values and no goals, which is all very
liberating. I've had lots of them. They were no good.

If you have no goals, how do you determine your actions? Surely they are not just random acts?

They're surely not random. I actually try not to determine. I listen
closely on a daily basis. Then I see something I need to do, then I do
it.

What I do each day is the right thing. What's to do the right thing?
Impossible to tell because I don't have a method to say what it is. I
know only what the right thing is when the moment of doing it arrives
and I see only a single possible thing to do---the adequate one.

Well, it seems you do have a goal! Maybe you apply the via negativa?
Do not do the wrong thing, and then pursue, at random or based on
preference, the actions that remain after the obviously wrong ones
(based on your values) are eliminated?

I think you can put it either way. My agreeing with your words or
disagreeing won't quite do much of anything to you. But you can count
on my honesty here.

I don't mind saying I have a goal, say. But I think the best choice of
words is to say I don't. Because I really don't. Remember I said I
really wanna have kids? You can call it a goal. :) But that would be
too simplistic to the point of being false. It's not quite true that I
want to have kids. What I want is a healthy life and I think a healthy
life would evolve towards that too. But you can likely bet that I
wouldn't do anything out of the ordinary to make that happen. If all I
can see in my life is a disease and death, say, I think I would go down
with it. Let me put it in terms of chess---lol. If all I can see is no
way out out of the check mate strategy of my opponent, I make all the
moves that I can until he check mates me. No desperation. I think that
living life as it is is quite a victory---to use words that are siblings
of ``goal''.

People often ask me---what would you do in that situation? The answer
is always---I don't know. I might know *then*, but certainly not now.
``Oh, come on; please answer it.'' I could give you an answer, even a
serious one; but the fact is that I really only know what I'm going to
really do at the moment I'm doing. (Humorously, if you want to play
around with fiction, I can come up with lots of answers for you.)

It seems, like me, you are not always comfortable with
counterfactuals.

A beg your pardon? I'm not sure what you mean, but I think I agree. A counterfactual is something that goes against the facts. Surely. I
could never deny that 1 + 1 = 2, say. I can't even ignore evidence. I
don't mind leaving questions open at all. Every now and then it's a
good idea to hang a question mark on all those things we've long taken
for granted. (Is that Bertrand Russell again?)

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Wed, 19 Mar 2025, Salvador Mirzo wrote:

Hmm, I never thought about it. For me, all quotes look alright. Could you send
me an exact copy and mark where the error is? Maybe I've gotten so used to it I
don't notice it?

Omg, it turns out it's *my* fault! Sorry about that. I mean---not my
fault exactly, but Gnus'. Gnus is messing up my quotes when I M-RET at points to reply---it messes up quotes above and sometimes quotes below. Incredible. I must report this. (It sometimes does and I don't see it,
so it goes broken up.)

Oh, glad you found the solution! =)

Proving anything is quite useless for regular people. Proving is useful >>> in math, less in science and that's just about it, I think. (By the
way, when I see people saying things like ``scientifically proven'',
they have no idea what they're talking about.)

Well, let's make the distinction of proof (math) and evidence
(science). Maybe that makes it more clear?

By ``proving anything'' I had in mind any kind of good argument. It's
of no use to a lot of people. People are not making very rational
decisions. I mean---they make rational decisions in a certain level,
but it's not very deep reason. That's why society is full of apparent paradoxes.

Ahh... got it! Yes, I agree with that. It is very fun with the war in Ukraine, when talking with russians who are only exposed to russian propaganda. It is very difficult to reason, since there is no baseline for truth.

Battle for me is something intentional, and intentional conflict between two >> groups. Even though it is not good, I don't know if I would categorize it as a
"battle" between the sexes. Just a backwards, retarded culture and religion, >> that will hopefully go away in a generation or two. =/

It's okay---I don't care for the words. If not war or battle, something else. We're both seeing what's hapenning. I call it one thing and you
call it another. I might find it disturbing and you might call me too sensitive. That's what we're dealing with every day. Similarly, some
people might find it's all beautiful and they could be on drugs, say. :)

Haha... true. But I try to be optimistic about the world. Sometimes it is not easy, but in general I find it a much more productive attitude than other options.

Yes, my drug is caffeine. ;)

We need to deal with this. That's a pretty big part of communication.
That's why I appreciate some of the art of listening. I appreciate
thoughts like those of David Bohm that one would find in ``On
Dialogue''. By the way, whatever changes you're seeing, I say it's all
on the surface.

What is this about? Maybe I should make a note of that text.

Well, from one point of view, he is. He is an individual, and I would say that
as long as he is open with only looking for certain services, and a woman is >> looking to provide services, that's good!

Your ``that's good'' here is likely materialist. You might be saying
``if they're happy, what's the problem?'' That's essentially
saying---it's not my problem. People can often claim to be happy and
even appear happy, when in reality... That's parents worry so much
about their children (and often others beyond than theirs).

This is true. But they are adults, and beyond pointing out something, at the end
of the day, I have no legal right or any right for that matter, to control their
lives.

It is perfectly true, what you are saying, and you could be right, and it would be a tragedy, but I prefer to assume things are alright, until proven otherwise.
When it comes to parents and children, there is a different set of expectations,
both cultural and legal, so I don't think it would carry over.

There is a fine line between wanting to help, when it is justified, and being labeled a "Karen".

too---, I actually say that he has a health problem that makes him quite >>> insensitive. Who is suffering the most? Himself. His insensibility,
for example, blinds him even to his own nutrition. He's losing his
health slowly year after year.

That is sad. =(

Such is life. It's difficult. You can tell people of their symptons,
but they don't see it---they don't believe it. When people can't tune themselves to intelligence, it becomes quite difficult to do anything intelligent.

This is the truth! But I think you have done what you can do, and you shouldn't feel bad about it. At the end of the day, he is an adult and responsible for his
own life.

open my window to give him a bit of privacy in his little party.
Chatting went on for a while and then suddenly silence. So I looked and >>> then his friend was likely inside the house and he was having sex in the >>> pool.

Wow! Brazil, here I come! ;)

Lol. You could be getting the wrong impression. :) But the real remark
to be made here, in a more serious tone, is that this is no good. For instance, when I saw them in the swimming pool, the first thing I
thought was---omg, what a place for that. And he was in own home---he
likely left the most comfortable place for his friend. Of course,
people might love this kind of stuff. It's not shameful or obscene or whatever---I couldn't care less about any of that. I'm saying it's just
a someone trying to get some relief, without much of a clue of what's
going on.

True. Could be a good example of pleasure now, at the expense of pain later.

By the way, if I were mildly inclined to the same, I could likely be
there myself. When they moved in, they threw various parties and
invited me to them all. I had lots of chances to blend in, but I
couldn't, really: I don't drink; I don't stay up all the night; what I

Haha, well, sounds like you probably did yourself a favour. I am fascinated! In sweden, it would be exceptionally rare that any neighbour would be invited.

eat is the nearly the bare minimum and from a very picky selection.
It's a totally different life style. And, hey, don't get me wrong: I actually like them. I like both of them. One of the first things I do
when I wake up is open up my window. I love natural light. I only
opened my window by midday that day---that's when they had already left
home (likely to some more fun). I also spotted my neighbor's friend
with his head down on a table trying to rest a bit. In all probability,
they spent the night out, arrived in the morning with the two girls and didn't sleep for a minute. Of course, with whisky, Red Bulls, beers and
that kind of nonsense.

Haha... wow! I don't think I could do that in my 30s even. ;) Brazilians are very well trained! ;)

That's one of the things I eventually noticed. The first thing to do to
put your life in order is to quit all drugs---bad food included. To
enjoy a whole night without sleep, you gotta be on something. The body
loves to sleep if it's well regulated.

I probably shouldn't tell your this, but I looooove Mc Donalds hamburgers! ;) My
wife forbids me from eating them too often, so I'm probably at about 9 per year or so. ;)

Hmm, I never think I ever experienced anything like it in the far, far
north. People are way too reserved for anything like that to happen,
at least where I have been living, oh, and of course there's never
been any swimming pools close by as well. ;)

I do believe Brazilians are on average less reserved. There's a lot of
poor people here. People who live in the slums, for example. I have
never been too close, but they're everywhere so I often observe them.
One problem I've spent some hours (that is, almost nothing) on is why do
poor people talk so loud. My hypothesis is that they grow up in space-deprived environments, neighbors are too close by, no privacy and
so on. It becomes the normal thing, so they might not feel being
exposed at all to whoever is around.

Loud? Southern europeans are loud by my standard, so if they are loud by your standards, then they must be _really_ loud! I once had a brazilian colleague from Sao Paolo for 2 months, and he was a really nice guy. But once he had some fellow brazilians over and the volume did increase. =)

I suspect he came from a wealthy family because when he went back to Brazil, his
luggage was full of play stations and electronics that he said he could easily sell at twice the price. There must have been some very high tariffs at that time.

If all are in on it, who am I to judge? Our dear lord teaches us to "judge >> not...". On the other hand, if his wife is not in on it, it is very sad and >> immoral.

I claim she is in on it, not consciously in on it though. But she's in
on it in a deeper level. For instance, I classify her as an alcoholic.
I don't think her husband is an alcoholic in the same level as she is,
but technically I do include him in the alcoholism classification, too.
He surely needs alcohol, for example, to have the kind of night we
described earlier. So many people do.

He sounds like he would be right at home in northern europe. No fun there unless
alcohol is in involved.

I know. But we are not individuals. Even evolutionary biologists are
getting there already [1].

How come we are not individuals? If not individuals, what then?

That's too difficult of a conversation. We're in comp.misc. Let's call
it a thread and end this. If you're curious, you could look at two perspectives: one, which is the evolutionary biology one---there's the article I linked in a previous post. Another perspective, more
difficult to parse, is that of someone such as Jiddu Krishnamurti---very interesting perspective there.

Yes, sounds reasonable. Thank you for the pointers, I'll have a look!

The only logical way out of this dilemma, is to continue to shrink the groups
until they consist of groups with one member, the individual, and then they can
reach the conclusion that we are all individuals, and the only way to
sustainably create a society is if all individuals are respected.

Of course.

This stuff is all complete nonsense. Not even worth a discussion. I
don't even use the word you began your paragraph---I never said it out
loud and never wrote it. Let's keep it that way. :)

You are a philosopher king!

An expert could likely complicate your life by trying to show that it's
either false or meaningless. (Don't ask me to do it---I'm just the
student.) They could attack ``reason for one's existence'' as
meaningless and they could certainly attack ``subjective'' by claiming
that the vast majority of the world is quite objective.

Hah... I'll take the challenge! ;) I agree, objectively speaking, that there is
no reason.

No reason? I think there is reason. :)

But can you prove it, objectively? If you can, I think you'll have solved 2500 years of ethical philosophizing. Or, another out, is the way of definition. Depending on your definitions, it could of course be "made" objective. The question is then if I accept the definitions or not. =)

But since for me, it is moved into the subjective realm, it is safe
from any attack from "experts" since science, being descriptive, is
not able to "crack" the subjective level.

I've seen this before. It's typical. You're putting too much precision
into things. For instance, you said (likely below) that we can't know
for sure; we can infer. Sure---knowing for sure is too difficult. We
can infer and that's good. We all look and the see the Moon out there.
We're sure it's there. End of the story. :) It's not subjective.
That's what I mean.

True. When it comes to our senses and using them as "proof" of the external world, I'm all for it! =)

But, sure, I read Descartes's ``Discourse on the Method''. I loved
seeing him doubting everything and starting from scratch. I think that
book has a serious educational philosophy because it gives us the
example of an independent mind (in pretty ordinary steps) organizing
itself and preparing itself for more work.

But I also think (in retrospective) it's a bit childish, too. I don't
need to doubt so much. I see the intellect being too precious, being considered more than it really is. For instance, I just sit and feel
myself. Here I am---therefore I am. End of story. :)

Amen! I have an idea where some things, like "the world" don't need proof, since
it happens to you regardless of it you want it or not. It "happens" to you. Same
with time. But it is ill defined. It either clicks with people instantly, or it doesn't.

It's not subjective. We all have seen the same stuff. Of course, from
where you look is different from where I look. But we're seeing the
same things---evidently. It's what nearly all of the evidence shows.

Agreed! But boy have I had endless email discussions with people who reject the proof of their senses.

You can infer based on behaviour, but you can never "know". My subjectivity and
how I experience things, are "locked" into the processing of my brain, as my >> cosciousness collides with reality.

So yes, you are right, we can infer, but that is not certain knowledge, and in
some cases, such as quantum physics, not even knowledge.

You're correct, of course, but see above.

Agreed!

Freud observed himself and made conclusions that apply to everyone else. >>> Like everyone else, he perhaps made mistakes in the fine details of
things, but he also made huge contributions---from a unitary sample
space.

True, but freud these days is disproven. As you say, he did lay a good
foundation for psychology however, and it has progress from him.

I don't think he's disproven at all. :) Look, it doesn't matter if a mathematician got a conjecture wrong---he did a lot of useful work in
his life. Same with Freud---just his independence from public opinion
makes him a type of Socrates.

I did a lot of good, of course, but his theories about dream interpretation and the psyche I think are no longer relevant. On the other hand, I am not a psychologist, so who am I to say? =)

In my notebook, I have no values and no goals, which is all very
liberating. I've had lots of them. They were no good.

If you have no goals, how do you determine your actions? Surely they are not >> just random acts?

They're surely not random. I actually try not to determine. I listen closely on a daily basis. Then I see something I need to do, then I do
it.

Sounds very daoist, very intuitional.

Well, it seems you do have a goal! Maybe you apply the via negativa?
Do not do the wrong thing, and then pursue, at random or based on
preference, the actions that remain after the obviously wrong ones
(based on your values) are eliminated?

I think you can put it either way. My agreeing with your words or disagreeing won't quite do much of anything to you. But you can count
on my honesty here.

I don't mind saying I have a goal, say. But I think the best choice of
words is to say I don't. Because I really don't. Remember I said I
really wanna have kids? You can call it a goal. :) But that would be
too simplistic to the point of being false. It's not quite true that I
want to have kids. What I want is a healthy life and I think a healthy
life would evolve towards that too. But you can likely bet that I
wouldn't do anything out of the ordinary to make that happen. If all I
can see in my life is a disease and death, say, I think I would go down
with it. Let me put it in terms of chess---lol. If all I can see is no
way out out of the check mate strategy of my opponent, I make all the
moves that I can until he check mates me. No desperation. I think that living life as it is is quite a victory---to use words that are siblings
of ``goal''.

Hmm, I think you make sense to me.

People often ask me---what would you do in that situation? The answer
is always---I don't know. I might know *then*, but certainly not now.
``Oh, come on; please answer it.'' I could give you an answer, even a
serious one; but the fact is that I really only know what I'm going to
really do at the moment I'm doing. (Humorously, if you want to play
around with fiction, I can come up with lots of answers for you.)

It seems, like me, you are not always comfortable with
counterfactuals.

A beg your pardon? I'm not sure what you mean, but I think I agree. A counterfactual is something that goes against the facts. Surely. I
could never deny that 1 + 1 = 2, say. I can't even ignore evidence. I
don't mind leaving questions open at all. Every now and then it's a
good idea to hang a question mark on all those things we've long taken
for granted. (Is that Bertrand Russell again?)

Not quite. Counterfactuals are questions such as... "imagine you ate an apple this morning, would that mean that later in the day you would have a stomach ache". So when those types of thought experiments are not made with the intention of high lighting something tangible or empirically provable, I find them to be useless idle speculation. That's what I was trying to get at.

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D <nospam@example.net> writes:

We need to deal with this. That's a pretty big part of
communication. That's why I appreciate some of the art of listening.
I appreciate thoughts like those of David Bohm that one would find in
``On Dialogue''. By the way, whatever changes you're seeing, I say
it's all on the surface.

What is this about? Maybe I should make a note of that text.

That's a conversation David Bohm held with an audience (in California,
if I recall correctly). The book is a transcription of the
conversation. In those dialogs, David Bohm tries to convey what he
means by a ``dialogue''. While an intellectual discussion is typically
a subtle fight, as Jiddu Krishnamurti (David Bohm's friend) would
describe, Bohm's dialogue is a certain construction among two or more
people in which /listening/ (in the Krishamurti's sense) is key.

I believe it was in an interview that David Bohm gave to Professor Wilkins---which was an interview meant to write a biography of David
Bohm, which I believe never happened---that David Bohm remarked and
pretty much nobody had ever understood his notion of dialogue, and that
made it even more interesting because it suggests that it has a certain subtleness that could be escaping people---and then I wonder if it
escaped me too.

Well, from one point of view, he is. He is an individual, and I
would say that as long as he is open with only looking for certain
services, and a woman is looking to provide services, that's good!

Your ``that's good'' here is likely materialist. You might be saying
``if they're happy, what's the problem?'' That's essentially
saying---it's not my problem. People can often claim to be happy and
even appear happy, when in reality... That's parents worry so much
about their children (and often others beyond than theirs).

This is true. But they are adults, and beyond pointing out something,
at the end of the day, I have no legal right or any right for that
matter, to control their lives.

Sure, there's no control intended. If I'm controlling anything, I
should stop this conversation right now and go put my life in order. :)

The controller is the controlled. -- Jiddu Krishnamurti

It is perfectly true, what you are saying, and you could be right, and
it would be a tragedy, but I prefer to assume things are alright,
until proven otherwise.

I prefer to assume things are alright if they feel alright. Not if they
/look/ alright, but it /feels/ alright. I use a differnt verb to try to capture the subtleness of things. My neighbors, for example. If you
just look, they seem alright, but if you look more carefully... It's not
that they are suffering more than everybody else; everybody else seems
to be suffering just about the same. And people don't complain much
about that. They complain about the weather, prices, public opinion and
so on, but they don't really complain about how their ``rights'' (if I
may use that word) are being denied by living a life full of stimulants,
boring work, lack of affection, meaningful friendship and so on.

When it comes to parents and children, there is a different set of expectations, both cultural and legal, so I don't think it would carry
over.

The comparison with parents and children was not to be taken much
farther. My fault.

There is a fine line between wanting to help, when it is justified,
and being labeled a "Karen".

Lol. I hadn't heard about ``Karen'' before. Fun.

All in all, I'm just observing, not judging people or anything. All I'm
saying about my neighbors doesn't make them anything wrong in any way at
all. They're surely trying to get things right and so am I. And I
wouldn't mind anyone saying that I'm the wrong one because I don't even
care at all about who's right or wrong. I may be wrong, but at the end
of the day I need to carry myself in life as my eyes see it; if I see
that 1 + 1 = 3 and people tell me that it's 2, who can I do? Should I
believe my brain or their brains? Now, of course, if they can somehow
make my brain not make the mistake, then I'll get 1 + 1 = 2, too, and
then it will my brain once again tell me what the facts are.

too---, I actually say that he has a health problem that makes him quite >>>> insensitive. Who is suffering the most? Himself. His insensibility, >>>> for example, blinds him even to his own nutrition. He's losing his
health slowly year after year.

That is sad. =(

Such is life. It's difficult. You can tell people of their symptons,
but they don't see it---they don't believe it. When people can't tune
themselves to intelligence, it becomes quite difficult to do anything
intelligent.

This is the truth! But I think you have done what you can do, and you shouldn't feel bad about it. At the end of the day, he is an adult and responsible for his own life.

Quite right. It's what I said before at some point---respect people.
If they want to throw themselves under a train, you have to respect
them. I don't mean it literally, of course. Like Noam Chomsky, I do
think we can exercise authority over people if we can easily justify it.
So, yeah, I would stop you from throwing yourself under a train.
Nevertheless, not forever: I couldn't follow you around each day to see
if you're going near the tracks. It is absurd to me not to concede that
people do have the right to carry their lives however they want.

So when people question my arguments, say, I don't really bother too
much with some kind of over-explaining. If you need to over-explain,
it's likely because we're in an intellectual conversation---a subtle
fight. There's no point. I am nearly nothing. I'm like the wind that
blows. I can blow on someone's face, but what they'll after the wind is
gone is completely on them.

open my window to give him a bit of privacy in his little party.
Chatting went on for a while and then suddenly silence. So I
looked and then his friend was likely inside the house and he was
having sex in the pool.

Wow! Brazil, here I come! ;)

Lol. You could be getting the wrong impression. :) But the real remark
to be made here, in a more serious tone, is that this is no good. For
instance, when I saw them in the swimming pool, the first thing I
thought was---omg, what a place for that. And he was in own home---he
likely left the most comfortable place for his friend. Of course,
people might love this kind of stuff. It's not shameful or obscene or
whatever---I couldn't care less about any of that. I'm saying it's just
a someone trying to get some relief, without much of a clue of what's
going on.

True. Could be a good example of pleasure now, at the expense of pain later.

Right.

By the way, if I were mildly inclined to the same, I could likely be
there myself. When they moved in, they threw various parties and
invited me to them all. I had lots of chances to blend in, but I
couldn't, really: I don't drink; I don't stay up all the night; what I

Haha, well, sounds like you probably did yourself a favour. I am
fascinated! In sweden, it would be exceptionally rare that any
neighbour would be invited.

I see a lot of neighbors here that don't get along. I am probably a
very respectful person and perhaps also extroverted and perhaps also
usually happy because people do seem to like to see me. I greet people whenever I see them. I tend to think that whenever I see a human being
I should greet that person. Of course, we can't do it in a crowded
place, but we can surely do it on our street, at work, the places we
usually go and so on. I do it. First a greet, then another and another
and... Last Saturday of Carnival I was having ice cream with a neighbor
of mine who is a lady likely in her 80s. I also met her son who is
likely a bit older than I am. And there's more of their family in the
street too, but I haven't met them yet. Another habit of mine is that I
pretty much ask no questions and answer anyone that comes at me with a
brave honesty and kindness. This could be improperly seen as small
talk, but given that I can be pretty honest with a no-nonsense attitude,
people would lose the wrong impression if they come a bit closer.

eat is the nearly the bare minimum and from a very picky selection.
It's a totally different life style. And, hey, don't get me wrong: I
actually like them. I like both of them. One of the first things I do
when I wake up is open up my window. I love natural light. I only
opened my window by midday that day---that's when they had already left
home (likely to some more fun). I also spotted my neighbor's friend
with his head down on a table trying to rest a bit. In all probability,
they spent the night out, arrived in the morning with the two girls and
didn't sleep for a minute. Of course, with whisky, Red Bulls, beers and
that kind of nonsense.

Haha... wow! I don't think I could do that in my 30s even. ;)
Brazilians are very well trained! ;)

I could never really do that myself. In my teens and 20s, I could stay
up all night, but I never ever liked to go to bed after the Sun was up.
I had to sleep before it was morning; it never felt good otherwise. I
think the morning light (and being exceptionally tired) didn't let my
body rest too much. Sometimes I think that by falling asleep with the
body tense, say, kinda keeps it tense throughout the night. But that's
just a wild thought.

That's one of the things I eventually noticed. The first thing to do to
put your life in order is to quit all drugs---bad food included. To
enjoy a whole night without sleep, you gotta be on something. The body
loves to sleep if it's well regulated.

I probably shouldn't tell your this, but I looooove Mc Donalds
hamburgers! ;) My wife forbids me from eating them too often, so I'm
probably at about 9 per year or so. ;)

Lol! Here's a sermon made specially for... Lol. Just kidding. To tell
you the truth, I kinda like it a lot, too. Now, one thing is true---it
tastes better if don't eat it every day, say. I've had weeks in which I indulged in it perhaps eating McDonald's every day, along with ice
cream, coffee and other terrible ideas. Thank God I'm got out of that
alive. These days, gluten hits me pretty bad. It still tastes good,
but it doesn't after the food starts taking its effect. I didn't feel
like that in my teens, but after I started quitting all of this bad
stuff, I can't seem to go back to it at all.

But I know how good it feels.

I'm fairly convinced, though, that the real best stuff is---like you're doing---to take things in moderation. Nine McDonald's per year (so long
as they're uniformly distributed in the year) is pretty alright, I
think. It's roughly one per month. I think that's enough time for the
body to handle it quite well. Why do I think that? Observation.

Hmm, I never think I ever experienced anything like it in the far, far
north. People are way too reserved for anything like that to happen,
at least where I have been living, oh, and of course there's never
been any swimming pools close by as well. ;)

I do believe Brazilians are on average less reserved. There's a lot of
poor people here. People who live in the slums, for example. I have
never been too close, but they're everywhere so I often observe them.
One problem I've spent some hours (that is, almost nothing) on is why do
poor people talk so loud. My hypothesis is that they grow up in
space-deprived environments, neighbors are too close by, no privacy and
so on. It becomes the normal thing, so they might not feel being
exposed at all to whoever is around.

Loud? Southern europeans are loud by my standard, so if they are loud
by your standards, then they must be _really_ loud! I once had a
brazilian colleague from Sao Paolo for 2 months, and he was a really
nice guy. But once he had some fellow brazilians over and the volume
did increase. =)

Lol. Sorry about that! :)

I suspect he came from a wealthy family because when he went back to
Brazil, his luggage was full of play stations and electronics that he
said he could easily sell at twice the price. There must have been
some very high tariffs at that time.

That doesn't sound like someone very wealthy.

If all are in on it, who am I to judge? Our dear lord teaches us to
"judge not...". On the other hand, if his wife is not in on it, it
is very sad and immoral.

I claim she is in on it, not consciously in on it though. But she's in
on it in a deeper level. For instance, I classify her as an alcoholic.
I don't think her husband is an alcoholic in the same level as she is,
but technically I do include him in the alcoholism classification, too.
He surely needs alcohol, for example, to have the kind of night we
described earlier. So many people do.

He sounds like he would be right at home in northern europe. No fun
there unless alcohol is in involved.

Yeah---I suppose there might be cultures out there that drink a lot more
than Brazilians. I don't think Brazilians do too bad, but it's been
getting worse. There's an Americanization of the food industry here. Brazilians are going in on it. I remember over 10 years ago seeing on
TV that over 52% of Brazil is overweight. That was unthinkable in the
70s or the 80s, say.

The only logical way out of this dilemma, is to continue to shrink
the groups until they consist of groups with one member, the
individual, and then they can reach the conclusion that we are all
individuals, and the only way to sustainably create a society is if
all individuals are respected.

Of course.

This stuff is all complete nonsense. Not even worth a discussion. I
don't even use the word you began your paragraph [with]---I never
said it out loud and never wrote it. Let's keep it that way. :)

You are a philosopher king!

Lol!

An expert could likely complicate your life by trying to show that it's >>>> either false or meaningless. (Don't ask me to do it---I'm just the
student.) They could attack ``reason for one's existence'' as
meaningless and they could certainly attack ``subjective'' by claiming >>>> that the vast majority of the world is quite objective.

Hah... I'll take the challenge! ;) I agree, objectively speaking,
that there is no reason.

No reason? I think there is reason. :)

But can you prove it, objectively?

Objectively? You mean kinda like a proof that the whole world with
stand in awe, like beautiful math proofs like Godel's Theorems? I
believe I can't and likely wouldn't work on trying. Why should I do
something that's looking pretty difficult? Because it's important? I
kinda doubt it's important.

I think proofs are just constructions. In math, for example, their role
is quite clear. I don't even know what it would mean to prove that
there is reason. I think there's reason because we seem to be doing
some stuff here that we decide to call reason and then, evidently, it
exists in the sense that we conclude it does and move on.

If you can, I think you'll have solved 2500 years of ethical
philosophizing.

I doubt I could do something that would classify as that.

Or, another out, is the way of definition. Depending on your
definitions, it could of course be "made" objective. The question is
then if I accept the definitions or not. =)

So you seem to think that a proof is something like too hard to
resist---like a math proof. I believe I don't think like that. A proof
to me is a joint work between a writer and a reader. If the reader that
catch the spirit, there is no proof.

For a proof to have meaning, it needs to be shared and recognized by
another person. If you were completely alone in the universe (a
counterfactual and ridiculous proposition), you would have to read you
proof a few times in order to simulate a second or third person sharing
and recognizing your proof. In other words, thinking is a collective phenomenon. When we do it alone, we actually simulate someone else
that's listening and talking back. (Pretty strong evidence, I find.)

If someone /rejects/ an axiom I came up with or a definition I wrote,
then there's likely little friendship there. Friendship exists when
people go along with you without judgment. Rejecting /or accepting/
anything is judgment, which is not friendship. When someone proposes me anything, I look at it without accepting it or rejecting it. (Unless
I'm a really bad mood!)

It's not subjective. We all have seen the same stuff. Of course, from
where you look is different from where I look. But we're seeing the
same things---evidently. It's what nearly all of the evidence shows.

Agreed! But boy have I had endless email discussions with people who
reject the proof of their senses.

Excessive refinement in thinking? They want a kind of super assured
certainty? I think that's a waste of time. It's not a waste of time to
care for your math proofs, say, or removing bugs from your programs and
so on. But rejecting the senses as in I don't know if really exist or
I'm being fooled by an evil genius? I think that's excessive thinking.
That's when thought escapes from the leash.

Freud observed himself and made conclusions that apply to everyone else. >>>> Like everyone else, he perhaps made mistakes in the fine details of
things, but he also made huge contributions---from a unitary sample
space.

True, but freud these days is disproven. As you say, he did lay a good
foundation for psychology however, and it has progress from him.

I don't think he's disproven at all. :) Look, it doesn't matter if a
mathematician got a conjecture wrong---he did a lot of useful work in
his life. Same with Freud---just his independence from public opinion
makes him a type of Socrates.

I did a lot of good, of course, but his theories about dream
interpretation and the psyche I think are no longer relevant. On the
other hand, I am not a psychologist, so who am I to say? =)

Most psychologist are so full of nonsense that being one wouldn't help
you here. :) I haven't read The Interpretation of Dreams, but I really
would like to do it. The book could be wildly wrong, but notice that
nobody seems to have made any advances since then anyhow.

It seems, like me, you are not always comfortable with
counterfactuals.

A beg your pardon? I'm not sure what you mean, but I think I agree. A
counterfactual is something that goes against the facts. Surely. I
could never deny that 1 + 1 = 2, say. I can't even ignore evidence. I
don't mind leaving questions open at all. Every now and then it's a
good idea to hang a question mark on all those things we've long taken
for granted. (Is that Bertrand Russell again?)

Not quite. Counterfactuals are questions such as... "imagine you ate an apple this morning, would that mean that later in the day you would have a stomach ache". So when those types of thought experiments are not made with the intention of high lighting something tangible or empirically provable, I find them to be useless idle speculation. That's what I was trying to get at.

Oh, I see. We're in total agreement. I think counterfactual
propositions are useless distractions.

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On Fri, 21 Mar 2025, Salvador Mirzo wrote:

What is this about? Maybe I should make a note of that text.

That's a conversation David Bohm held with an audience (in California,
if I recall correctly). The book is a transcription of the
conversation. In those dialogs, David Bohm tries to convey what he
means by a ``dialogue''. While an intellectual discussion is typically
a subtle fight, as Jiddu Krishnamurti (David Bohm's friend) would
describe, Bohm's dialogue is a certain construction among two or more
people in which /listening/ (in the Krishamurti's sense) is key.

I believe it was in an interview that David Bohm gave to Professor Wilkins---which was an interview meant to write a biography of David
Bohm, which I believe never happened---that David Bohm remarked and
pretty much nobody had ever understood his notion of dialogue, and that
made it even more interesting because it suggests that it has a certain subtleness that could be escaping people---and then I wonder if it
escaped me too.

Sounds a bit like Jürgen Habermas and his ideal dialogues.

There is a fine line between wanting to help, when it is justified,
and being labeled a "Karen".

Lol. I hadn't heard about ``Karen'' before. Fun.

Enjoy! ;)

By the way, if I were mildly inclined to the same, I could likely be
there myself. When they moved in, they threw various parties and
invited me to them all. I had lots of chances to blend in, but I
couldn't, really: I don't drink; I don't stay up all the night; what I

Haha, well, sounds like you probably did yourself a favour. I am
fascinated! In sweden, it would be exceptionally rare that any
neighbour would be invited.

I see a lot of neighbors here that don't get along. I am probably a

Ahh... sounds more normal! ;) In my current apartment, the community is either non-existent or nuts. I don't like them, and therefore I am selling the apartment.

In the other 2 places I have apartments, I do like the community! 66% goodness! ;)

I probably shouldn't tell your this, but I looooove Mc Donalds
hamburgers! ;) My wife forbids me from eating them too often, so I'm
probably at about 9 per year or so. ;)

Lol! Here's a sermon made specially for... Lol. Just kidding. To tell
you the truth, I kinda like it a lot, too. Now, one thing is true---it

I mean, come on... who doesn't? ;)

tastes better if don't eat it every day, say. I've had weeks in which I

This is the truth! I enjoy it more since I don't have it that often.

indulged in it perhaps eating McDonald's every day, along with ice
cream, coffee and other terrible ideas. Thank God I'm got out of that
alive. These days, gluten hits me pretty bad. It still tastes good,
but it doesn't after the food starts taking its effect. I didn't feel
like that in my teens, but after I started quitting all of this bad
stuff, I can't seem to go back to it at all.

Interesting. I have also noted more weird feelings in my stomach as I've gotten older. I wonder, is it age? When I was young I could eat and drink anything and never get a weird feeling in my stomach.

Loud? Southern europeans are loud by my standard, so if they are loud
by your standards, then they must be _really_ loud! I once had a
brazilian colleague from Sao Paolo for 2 months, and he was a really
nice guy. But once he had some fellow brazilians over and the volume
did increase. =)

Lol. Sorry about that! :)

No worries... it is very interesting to note these differences between cultures.
=)

He sounds like he would be right at home in northern europe. No fun
there unless alcohol is in involved.

Yeah---I suppose there might be cultures out there that drink a lot more
than Brazilians. I don't think Brazilians do too bad, but it's been
getting worse. There's an Americanization of the food industry here. Brazilians are going in on it. I remember over 10 years ago seeing on
TV that over 52% of Brazil is overweight. That was unthinkable in the
70s or the 80s, say.

That's horrible! =(

But I think it is a global phenomenon. I think our increasingly sedentary lifestyles are to blame as well as the mindset of instant gratification which makes people want to achieve things with the minimum amount of energy necessary.

I also think this ties in with the fertility crisis we spoke of before. I am lucky! I do not like to exercise, but my wife forces me to. ;)

Hah... I'll take the challenge! ;) I agree, objectively speaking,
that there is no reason.

No reason? I think there is reason. :)

But can you prove it, objectively?

Objectively? You mean kinda like a proof that the whole world with
stand in awe, like beautiful math proofs like Godel's Theorems? I
believe I can't and likely wouldn't work on trying. Why should I do

What a shame! =(

I think proofs are just constructions. In math, for example, their role
is quite clear. I don't even know what it would mean to prove that
there is reason. I think there's reason because we seem to be doing
some stuff here that we decide to call reason and then, evidently, it
exists in the sense that we conclude it does and move on.

You do sound like a philosopher to me! ;)

Or, another out, is the way of definition. Depending on your
definitions, it could of course be "made" objective. The question is
then if I accept the definitions or not. =)

So you seem to think that a proof is something like too hard to
resist---like a math proof. I believe I don't think like that. A proof
to me is a joint work between a writer and a reader. If the reader that catch the spirit, there is no proof.

Based on a recent conversation, there can be proof, as in math, and evidence, as
in empirical science. Since philosophy is not about empiricism, I'd say proof is
probably it. There is of course a new branch of philosophy called practical philosophy, but to me, it seems more like a closet branch of sociology or psychology.

For a proof to have meaning, it needs to be shared and recognized by

Amen!

another person. If you were completely alone in the universe (a counterfactual and ridiculous proposition), you would have to read you

Amen, again! ;)

proof a few times in order to simulate a second or third person sharing
and recognizing your proof. In other words, thinking is a collective phenomenon. When we do it alone, we actually simulate someone else
that's listening and talking back. (Pretty strong evidence, I find.)

If someone /rejects/ an axiom I came up with or a definition I wrote,
then there's likely little friendship there. Friendship exists when
people go along with you without judgment. Rejecting /or accepting/
anything is judgment, which is not friendship. When someone proposes me anything, I look at it without accepting it or rejecting it. (Unless
I'm a really bad mood!)

There is a theory of truth called the consensus theory of truth. Sounds as if that might be what you are thinking about?

Agreed! But boy have I had endless email discussions with people who
reject the proof of their senses.

Excessive refinement in thinking? They want a kind of super assured certainty? I think that's a waste of time. It's not a waste of time to

So do I. In 2500 years no such thing has been found, so I am quite happy and content to accept what my senses tell me. ;)

care for your math proofs, say, or removing bugs from your programs and
so on. But rejecting the senses as in I don't know if really exist or
I'm being fooled by an evil genius? I think that's excessive thinking. That's when thought escapes from the leash.

Agreed! That is why I do not care much for interpretations of quantum theory as well. Plenty of thoughts escaping from the leash there, and plenty of useless (in my opinion) speculation.

I did a lot of good, of course, but his theories about dream
interpretation and the psyche I think are no longer relevant. On the
other hand, I am not a psychologist, so who am I to say? =)

Most psychologist are so full of nonsense that being one wouldn't help
you here. :) I haven't read The Interpretation of Dreams, but I really
would like to do it. The book could be wildly wrong, but notice that
nobody seems to have made any advances since then anyhow.

I find the Dodo effect quite facsinating. It says that it is not the school of psychology that makes a difference in therapy, but only the person.

A beg your pardon? I'm not sure what you mean, but I think I agree. A
counterfactual is something that goes against the facts. Surely. I
could never deny that 1 + 1 = 2, say. I can't even ignore evidence. I
don't mind leaving questions open at all. Every now and then it's a
good idea to hang a question mark on all those things we've long taken
for granted. (Is that Bertrand Russell again?)

Not quite. Counterfactuals are questions such as... "imagine you ate an apple
this morning, would that mean that later in the day you would have a stomach >> ache". So when those types of thought experiments are not made with the
intention of high lighting something tangible or empirically provable, I find
them to be useless idle speculation. That's what I was trying to get at.

Oh, I see. We're in total agreement. I think counterfactual
propositions are useless distractions.

Excellent! There has been a meeting of minds! ;)

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

D <nospam@example.net> writes:

On Fri, 21 Mar 2025, Salvador Mirzo wrote:

What is this about? Maybe I should make a note of that text.

That's a conversation David Bohm held with an audience (in California,
if I recall correctly). The book is a transcription of the
conversation. In those dialogs, David Bohm tries to convey what he
means by a ``dialogue''. While an intellectual discussion is typically
a subtle fight, as Jiddu Krishnamurti (David Bohm's friend) would
describe, Bohm's dialogue is a certain construction among two or more
people in which /listening/ (in the Krishamurti's sense) is key.

I believe it was in an interview that David Bohm gave to Professor
Wilkins---which was an interview meant to write a biography of David
Bohm, which I believe never happened---that David Bohm remarked and
pretty much nobody had ever understood his notion of dialogue, and that
made it even more interesting because it suggests that it has a certain
subtleness that could be escaping people---and then I wonder if it
escaped me too.

Sounds a bit like Jürgen Habermas and his ideal dialogues.

I need to look this guy up. I hope I remember to do it before I send
this article. I'm began my offline mode. So now I can't look stuff up
and can't lose myself in a web of tangents.

Do you know what type of people gets off on tangents most easily? Schizophrenics (of a certain kind). (I believe they would be the
paranoid schizophrenics.) So, the more you get off on tangents, the
closer you are to the diagnostic. :P Embrace offline mode and keep your
sanity.

By the way, if I were mildly inclined to the same, I could likely be
there myself. When they moved in, they threw various parties and
invited me to them all. I had lots of chances to blend in, but I
couldn't, really: I don't drink; I don't stay up all the night; what I

Haha, well, sounds like you probably did yourself a favour. I am
fascinated! In sweden, it would be exceptionally rare that any
neighbour would be invited.

I see a lot of neighbors here that don't get along. I am probably a

Ahh... sounds more normal! ;) In my current apartment, the community
is either non-existent or nuts. I don't like them, and therefore I am
selling the apartment.

Not an unwise decision. But the wises decision is to buy a house. An apartment is like living together with strange people, except that you
have a very nice room (that comes with a kitchen inside) that gives you
a good sense of privacy. (But you have none.)

In the other 2 places I have apartments, I do like the community! 66% goodness! ;)

Dude, 66% is no good. :)

I probably shouldn't tell your this, but I looooove Mc Donalds
hamburgers! ;) My wife forbids me from eating them too often, so I'm
probably at about 9 per year or so. ;)

Lol! Here's a sermon made specially for... Lol. Just kidding. To tell
you the truth, I kinda like it a lot, too. Now, one thing is true---it

I mean, come on... who doesn't? ;)

Lol. Those who were not raised eating it. Cheddar McMelt is my
favorite. The most beautiful girl I ever dated was hungry one day and
she wanted to stop by McDonalds. We did it. It was lunch time but I
wasn't hungry---because I didn't think I had enough money for McDonalds
(and I would still get home for lunch). She bought a Cheddar McMelt.
She asked me if I wanted some. I said no. She reserved a bite for me
that she called the best part. I still refused. :( I think I was 15.
Not having enough money put me in a tough position there. I couldn't
admit it. I had never eaten a Cheddar McMelt 'til then. I never
thought I would like it. Many years later I tried it out. It's all I
eat now when I go there---once every 5 years?

indulged in it perhaps eating McDonald's every day, along with ice
cream, coffee and other terrible ideas. Thank God I'm got out of that
alive. These days, gluten hits me pretty bad. It still tastes good,
but it doesn't after the food starts taking its effect. I didn't feel
like that in my teens, but after I started quitting all of this bad
stuff, I can't seem to go back to it at all.

Interesting. I have also noted more weird feelings in my stomach as
I've gotten older. I wonder, is it age? When I was young I could eat
and drink anything and never get a weird feeling in my stomach.

I think ``age'' just means ``lost some health''. There's some evidence
that the body has a certain tolerance for things. You lose that
tolerance when you abuse it. If you stop the abuse, that tolerance is
built again (as much as possible?).

This is the good tolerance. People use the word tolerance for a bad kind---such as being alcohol tolerant the more you drink. Perhaps the
body finds a way to throwing alcohol away when the volume is high? If I
drank a lot of coffee and noticed that after some point, more caffeine
almost seems like doing nothing---perhaps just keeping the level at the highest?

Loud? Southern europeans are loud by my standard, so if they are loud
by your standards, then they must be _really_ loud! I once had a
brazilian colleague from Sao Paolo for 2 months, and he was a really
nice guy. But once he had some fellow brazilians over and the volume
did increase. =)

Lol. Sorry about that! :)

No worries... it is very interesting to note these differences between cultures. =)

It was more like a joke---I'm apologizing on behalf of my countrymen.
Surely it's not my responsibility that my countrymen are not very
polite. :) (Except that it is because they're all humans.)

It turns out I identify myself very little with Brazilians. But I think
the problem is not Brazil. I think I just identify myself with a type
of people that could be called intelligent. Not intellectuals; not mathematicians, say; not academics. I don't think I have any connection
with these people. But some are really intelligent and I do seem to
admire them. I identify myself with many poor people with no
instruction. Some can be very intelligent and very compassionate.
Above all, I identify myself with people with vigor, passion and energy.

He sounds like he would be right at home in northern europe. No fun
there unless alcohol is in involved.

Yeah---I suppose there might be cultures out there that drink a lot more
than Brazilians. I don't think Brazilians do too bad, but it's been
getting worse. There's an Americanization of the food industry here.
Brazilians are going in on it. I remember over 10 years ago seeing on
TV that over 52% of Brazil is overweight. That was unthinkable in the
70s or the 80s, say.

That's horrible! =(

But I think it is a global phenomenon.

I agree.

I think our increasingly sedentary lifestyles are to blame as well as
the mindset of instant gratification which makes people want to
achieve things with the minimum amount of energy necessary.

I also think this ties in with the fertility crisis we spoke of
before.

Yeah---the experts always include nutrition in their hypotheses.

I am lucky! I do not like to exercise, but my wife forces me to. ;)

Doesn't sound like fun. If you take a half hour walk each day, you
should probably be good.

I've reached a routine I've been looking for for a long time. I wanted
to bike to the beach, walk and swim. I was swimming in a gym pool.
It's not very good for me: the chlorine water doesn't feel right at all.
Sea water, on the other hand, is ideal. I live in a part of the town
that's elevated. When I bike to the beach, I must go down. Coming back
is not easy.

Hah... I'll take the challenge! ;) I agree, objectively speaking,
that there is no reason.

No reason? I think there is reason. :)

But can you prove it, objectively?

Objectively? You mean kinda like a proof that the whole world with
stand in awe, like beautiful math proofs like Godel's Theorems? I
believe I can't and likely wouldn't work on trying. Why should I do

What a shame! =(

I think it's a relief. :)

I think proofs are just constructions. In math, for example, their role
is quite clear. I don't even know what it would mean to prove that
there is reason. I think there's reason because we seem to be doing
some stuff here that we decide to call reason and then, evidently, it
exists in the sense that we conclude it does and move on.

You do sound like a philosopher to me! ;)

Lol. I should probably take that as a compliment. On a more serious
tone, I'd ask what is a philosopher to you.

Or, another out, is the way of definition. Depending on your
definitions, it could of course be "made" objective. The question is
then if I accept the definitions or not. =)

So you seem to think that a proof is something like too hard to
resist---like a math proof. I believe I don't think like that. A proof
to me is a joint work between a writer and a reader. If the reader that
catch the spirit, there is no proof.

Based on a recent conversation, there can be proof, as in math, and
evidence, as in empirical science. Since philosophy is not about
empiricism, I'd say proof is probably it. There is of course a new
branch of philosophy called practical philosophy, but to me, it seems
more like a closet branch of sociology or psychology.

I had never heard of practical philosophy.

If someone /rejects/ an axiom I came up with or a definition I wrote,
then there's likely little friendship there. Friendship exists when
people go along with you without judgment. Rejecting /or accepting/
anything is judgment, which is not friendship. When someone proposes me
anything, I look at it without accepting it or rejecting it. (Unless
I'm a really bad mood!)

There is a theory of truth called the consensus theory of
truth. Sounds as if that might be what you are thinking about?

No. Certainly not. I have nothing to do with consensus. Truth should
have nothing to do with consensus. We can easily imagine an outrageous
group denying obvious facts.

I'm quite okay with the keeping ``truth'' undefined. I may have some
idea in my mind that I think it's totally true. Perhaps I can't get you
to assert the same. So what? Does that keep in doubt? So? I can't
see any problem with living life with a little doubt. Every now and
then it's a good idea to hang a question mark on those things we've
taken for granted. (Have you located where Russell said this? I can't
even be sure it was him.)

Agreed! But boy have I had endless email discussions with people who
reject the proof of their senses.

Excessive refinement in thinking? They want a kind of super assured
certainty? I think that's a waste of time. It's not a waste of time to

So do I. In 2500 years no such thing has been found, so I am quite
happy and content to accept what my senses tell me. ;)

Our senses also do make mistakes. And some things can't come directly
from the senses---what we see in a microscope, for example.

Even ``senses'' is a complicated word. I met someone at the beach last Saturday. It's a person who lives very far from the beach---another
town. For about a year and half, I've been thinking about (as I walk on
the beach as I always do) that I could someday meet that person by
chance on that beach. But, of course, this is just fantasy because it
nearly makes no sense. So, after my Saturday surprise, I was thinking
to myself---omg, how weird! Do the things I imagine come true or is
this imagination a kind of premonition? (Or just coincidence?)

This is not the first time this happens. But many of the other past coincidences (such as this one), I have been able to explain in a
special way, which I have been calling long-range planning. I can spend
years imagining a certain situation (a little bit every now and then)
and then I end up putting myself in a position where I can live that
imagined situation. I could then claim to have materialized that
situation or that somehow my imagination was having a glimpse of the
future. But I actually call that long-range planning.

But the beach event of last Saturday seems very much outside of my
control. The most I could do is to always go to beach, which in fact I
have been doing lately... Still... It still feels totally outside my
control.

care for your math proofs, say, or removing bugs from your programs and
so on. But rejecting the senses as in I don't know if really exist or
I'm being fooled by an evil genius? I think that's excessive thinking.
That's when thought escapes from the leash.

Agreed! That is why I do not care much for interpretations of quantum
theory as well. Plenty of thoughts escaping from the leash there, and
plenty of useless (in my opinion) speculation.

The case of quantum mechanics is a necessary one, though. Yeah, surely
there's a lot of imagination there, but I think that's part of science.
Quantum mechanics is giving us great philosophical problems. It's a
very hard read, but to see them all you could skim a quantum theory book
by descant. Interpretation of quantum mechanics force us to make up
our minds about how we want to see the world. The fun thing is no
matter which perspective we take, they're all problematic.

I did a lot of good, of course, but his theories about dream
interpretation and the psyche I think are no longer relevant. On the
other hand, I am not a psychologist, so who am I to say? =)

Most psychologist are so full of nonsense that being one wouldn't help
you here. :) I haven't read The Interpretation of Dreams, but I really
would like to do it. The book could be wildly wrong, but notice that
nobody seems to have made any advances since then anyhow.

I find the Dodo effect quite facsinating. It says that it is not the
school of psychology that makes a difference in therapy, but only the
person.

I had never heard of it and I can't look up anything right now, but it
makes perfect sense to me. The inner is the outer. What a person lives
in the outside is a reflection of you'd find on the inside. A
therapist, like any intelligent person, can be of help, but you can't
put your life in order if you are not able to find order where you
should be looking.

A beg your pardon? I'm not sure what you mean, but I think I agree. A >>>> counterfactual is something that goes against the facts. Surely. I
could never deny that 1 + 1 = 2, say. I can't even ignore evidence. I >>>> don't mind leaving questions open at all. Every now and then it's a
good idea to hang a question mark on all those things we've long taken >>>> for granted. (Is that Bertrand Russell again?)

Not quite. Counterfactuals are questions such as... "imagine you ate
an apple this morning, would that mean that later in the day you
would have a stomach ache". So when those types of thought
experiments are not made with the intention of high lighting
something tangible or empirically provable, I find them to be
useless idle speculation. That's what I was trying to get at.

Oh, I see. We're in total agreement. I think counterfactual
propositions are useless distractions.

Excellent! There has been a meeting of minds! ;)

This is the USENET. We could be yelling at each other for an entire
year. Instead, we do something completely different. We're weird. And
we don't even use our real names. Our friendship can't leave the
USENET.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

D <nospam@example.net> writes:

On Sat, 29 Mar 2025, Salvador Mirzo wrote:

I see a lot of neighbors here that don't get along. I am probably a

Ahh... sounds more normal! ;) In my current apartment, the community
is either non-existent or nuts. I don't like them, and therefore I am
selling the apartment.

Not an unwise decision. But the wises decision is to buy a house. An

True. But a house means higher cost, more maintenance, more time lost doing things I do not enjoy. So there is no perfect solution. But I have actually thought about getting a house. So let's see what the future holds! =)

I hope you get one. It's all true about the work, but I also think
that's good work. A lot less USENET, a lot more house work is a good
idea. We can start with offlining the USENET. If there's little work
to do, increase the uniform distribution of times you connect to
exchange articles. If there's more work, decrease it.

apartment is like living together with strange people, except that you
have a very nice room (that comes with a kitchen inside) that gives you
a good sense of privacy. (But you have none.)

True. It is a little bit better in northern europe where people do not
want to socialize. Most of the time you meet no one. Another solution
could be to buy a nice pent house apartment, making sure you share the
floor with no one, and ideally, a private elevator! =D

Living in an apartment never feels like the right thing. One almost
doesn't own the place. If you decide to do something to it, you get to approval of the condominium. The same would apply if you live in a
house in a condominium. Of course, the same thing applies to any house
in any country. But the less the better (while holding other important variables constant).

In the other 2 places I have apartments, I do like the community! 66%
goodness! ;)

Dude, 66% is no good. :)

It's better than 0%! ;)

Better doesn't imply good. :)

admit it. I had never eaten a Cheddar McMelt 'til then. I never
thought I would like it. Many years later I tried it out. It's all I
eat now when I go there---once every 5 years?

Interesting, I have never seen this burger in europe! How does it
differ from regular cheese burgers?

I think a regular cheese burger would not be a Cheddar cheese burger.
But I agree any Cheddar is a cheese burger. Over here now they have two options: you get the traditional Cheddar McMelt or you can order the
double one. The double one comes with three burgers, IIRC. Besides the
melted Cheddar, it also comes with chopped onions mixed in the Cheddar.
I think that's it. And a cheese burger is a burger with some slices of
cheese. I'm not the right person to ask about such things because I go
there once in a few years, always planning never to come back. :)

Above all, I identify myself with people with vigor, passion and energy.

Sounds like a nice group of people to identify with if you can find
them. =) I've always been a loner from that point of view, so I tend
to not identify with others much at all.

Oh, if you're a loner, you can identify yourself with pretty much
everyone. :) In a way I'm a loner as well.

I think our increasingly sedentary lifestyles are to blame as well as
the mindset of instant gratification which makes people want to
achieve things with the minimum amount of energy necessary.

I also think this ties in with the fertility crisis we spoke of
before.

Yeah---the experts always include nutrition in their hypotheses.

The question is... how can we, you and me, change the trend? ;)

I don't think we can. That would mean that a point can change the
uniform average. We could do something if we go from a uniform average
to a weighted one and we somehow acquire the huge weight. Nah. I don't
think there's true change that way. I don't think we can change the
world. I don't think we should change the world. Let nature follow its
own course.

Should a 4-leaf clover try to make every other a 4-leaf one?

Hey, there are 7 helicopters going round and round around a certain
region where my house is. They're all gray in color. One follows the
other. They're really going around a circumference. Any idea what this
is? I'd guess it's military exercise. They're boringly going round.
Not in high speeds. They're not high in the sky; probably between
100--200 meters from the ground. Probably 50 meters from the top of a
hill around which they seem to flying.

I am lucky! I do not like to exercise, but my wife forces me to. ;)

Doesn't sound like fun. If you take a half hour walk each day, you
should probably be good.

I do walk, voluntarily, but the wife judges that not to be enough. I
am thankful that she makes me train, since it is healthy. Without her,
I would be a lot less healthy and eating a lot more junk food. So yes,
it is one of those things that are annoying in the short term, but
good in the long term! =)

Here's a programmer with a strong connection to his wife:

Lex Friedman interviews Primeagen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNZnLkRBYA8

I've reached a routine I've been looking for for a long time. I wanted
to bike to the beach, walk and swim. I was swimming in a gym pool.
It's not very good for me: the chlorine water doesn't feel right at all.
Sea water, on the other hand, is ideal. I live in a part of the town
that's elevated. When I bike to the beach, I must go down. Coming back
is not easy.

Why not try an electric bike? ;)

I don't use it primarily as a vehicle. I would prefer to go by car if
my objective is to go from A to B. It's for the thrill of moving the
muscles.

I think proofs are just constructions. In math, for example, their role >>>> is quite clear. I don't even know what it would mean to prove that
there is reason. I think there's reason because we seem to be doing
some stuff here that we decide to call reason and then, evidently, it
exists in the sense that we conclude it does and move on.

You do sound like a philosopher to me! ;)

Lol. I should probably take that as a compliment. On a more serious
tone, I'd ask what is a philosopher to you.

This could definitely be the start of an eternal conversation. 2500
years has not been able to pin down the definition. ;)

A wise man, someone who is full of wonder, someone who likes to ask questions? Many ways to define a philosopher.

Yeah---lover of something around these referents of these words.

Based on a recent conversation, there can be proof, as in math, and
evidence, as in empirical science. Since philosophy is not about
empiricism, I'd say proof is probably it. There is of course a new
branch of philosophy called practical philosophy, but to me, it seems
more like a closet branch of sociology or psychology.

I had never heard of practical philosophy.

It is a fairly new branch of philosophy, about 100 years old or so, depending on
how you define it.

Kinda funny to me. Philosophy is totally practical. The impractical philosophy is that which is nonsense---you can't make sense of.

I think it's the most practical of them all because it applies to what
happens most of the day---for those who don't ignore the stimuli.

If someone /rejects/ an axiom I came up with or a definition I wrote,
then there's likely little friendship there. Friendship exists when
people go along with you without judgment. Rejecting /or accepting/
anything is judgment, which is not friendship. When someone proposes me >>>> anything, I look at it without accepting it or rejecting it. (Unless
I'm a really bad mood!)

There is a theory of truth called the consensus theory of
truth. Sounds as if that might be what you are thinking about?

No. Certainly not. I have nothing to do with consensus. Truth should
have nothing to do with consensus. We can easily imagine an outrageous
group denying obvious facts.

There are facts, and then there are "facts". Is it true that blue is
the best color? Good luck answering that objectively. ;)

There are meaningless sentences and questions. Chomsky constructs the
famous one---colorless green ideas sleep furiously. Good luck trying to picture that in any way. Truth (and philosophy) is not about nonsense.
It's about honestly making sense of things.

Sometimes people take language to great abstractions, which should come
with lots of examples and simplicity. If people fail do that, it is not
a bad idea to ignore it. For instance, Kant is recognized for having
made the distinction between synthetic truths and analytic ones. Have
you ever understood? I don't think it too unwise to ignore all that.
But I don't mean it's bad work.

Is it true that there is a coffee mug on my right on a table, yes! And
if you were here with me, I am 100% certain that we would agree.

Of course. There's no point in even questioning that for too long. We
have so many other important questions to work on. For instance, is
there anything bothering any bit of your days? How could we give you a
better life?

I'm quite okay with the keeping ``truth'' undefined. I may have some

Even if your life depends on it?

My life would never depend on such intellectual matters. Life depends
on food, shelter and relationships. We could easily argue here that
you're likely valuing the intellect more than you should. The intellect
has to be kept on the leash.

idea in my mind that I think it's totally true. Perhaps I can't get you
to assert the same. So what? Does that keep in doubt? So? I can't
see any problem with living life with a little doubt. Every now and
then it's a good idea to hang a question mark on those things we've
taken for granted. (Have you located where Russell said this? I can't
even be sure it was him.)

Excessive refinement in thinking? They want a kind of super assured
certainty? I think that's a waste of time. It's not a waste of time to >>>

So do I. In 2500 years no such thing has been found, so I am quite
happy and content to accept what my senses tell me. ;)

Our senses also do make mistakes. And some things can't come directly
from the senses---what we see in a microscope, for example.

True, but just because we sometimes make mistakes I do not think is
enough of an argument to refute completely the idea that what we can
confirm with our senses is not the truth.

When it comes to the microscope, it is true, but at the end of the
day, we do use our senses to look into the microscope.

Totally right. When it comes to information, it has to come through the
senses at least indirectly.

Even ``senses'' is a complicated word. I met someone at the beach last
Saturday. It's a person who lives very far from the beach---another
town. For about a year and half, I've been thinking about (as I walk on
the beach as I always do) that I could someday meet that person by
chance on that beach. But, of course, this is just fantasy because it
nearly makes no sense. So, after my Saturday surprise, I was thinking
to myself---omg, how weird! Do the things I imagine come true or is
this imagination a kind of premonition? (Or just coincidence?)

My theory, conincidence, selective memory, and priming your psychological filter.

1. Yes, sometimes it is just conincidence.

2. You think a lot of things, and forget a lot as well. If you think about an event x, and x never happens, you would have forgotten about it. If you envounter event x, after first thinking about x, you'll say to yourself, Oh, I
did think about x, how strange that I know encountered x.

3. When thinking about a thing deeply, you are in a way telling your subconscious mind to be on the lookout for that. So when you filter your 1000s
of daily sense impressions, your usbconscious mind has been programmed to "trigger" based on what you thought about.

Those are my 3 theories around why that happens.

My theory is that it's not that much of an improbable thing. The reason
I imagine this specific person is likely because she's a pretty likely
one, in fact. My imagination is never quite towards fantasy---it's
always towards making sense of things and making things reasonable. I
probably choose to imagine the person that actually had some reasonable probability of coming over. But what I find very funny is that I guess
I was right. And it didn't take very long for it to happen.

Now, I certainly maximized the occurrence of the event because I'm
always at the beach. Nevertheless, though, it could be that somehow
that's not the whole story.

This is not the first time this happens. But many of the other past
coincidences (such as this one), I have been able to explain in a
special way, which I have been calling long-range planning. I can spend
years imagining a certain situation (a little bit every now and then)
and then I end up putting myself in a position where I can live that
imagined situation. I could then claim to have materialized that
situation or that somehow my imagination was having a glimpse of the
future. But I actually call that long-range planning.

True! No hocus pocus at all! =)

You see, we have this preference for destroying mystery. Other people
prefer the mystic. We are more warranted in our preference than the
others are in theirs, but we should do it very carefully because
otherwise we're doing the same silly thing other people do.

But the beach event of last Saturday seems very much outside of my
control. The most I could do is to always go to beach, which in fact I
have been doing lately... Still... It still feels totally outside my
control.

care for your math proofs, say, or removing bugs from your programs and >>>> so on. But rejecting the senses as in I don't know if really exist or >>>> I'm being fooled by an evil genius? I think that's excessive thinking. >>>> That's when thought escapes from the leash.

Agreed! That is why I do not care much for interpretations of quantum
theory as well. Plenty of thoughts escaping from the leash there, and
plenty of useless (in my opinion) speculation.

The case of quantum mechanics is a necessary one, though. Yeah, surely
there's a lot of imagination there, but I think that's part of science.

Oh yes... I am not against imagination and speculation, if that serves
to motivate a person, or inspire him, or help him advance theories. My
main beef is when people confuse speculation and theorizing, with what
we can or cannot prove. Mistaking the map for the real world so to
say.

Most people hardly have an education. They don't know what a theory is
and what speculation is very well. Unfortunately.

Quantum mechanics is giving us great philosophical problems. It's a

Yes!

very hard read, but to see them all you could skim a quantum theory book
by descant.

Lol---what?! By descant? Lol. That's a spurious end of sentence. I
was totally offline, unable to look anything up, but I wanted to make a reference to the book

``On Physics and Philosophy'', Bernard d'Espagnat
Princeton University Press, 2013, ISBN 978-0-691-15806-8

Not recommended reading. It's very difficult.

Interpretation of quantum mechanics force us to make up our minds
about how we want to see the world. The fun thing is no

I think we are never forced to make up our minds. I am happily
agnostic about the interpretations of QM and I live my life just
fine. I am just content to note that some interpretations are absurd,
some impossible (in my opinion) some meaningless, and some I do not understand.

It's a real puzzle. It's not about choosing axioms one would prefer.
Any choice is problematic. That's the fun. Reading d'Espagnat would
clarify how puzzling it is, but reading it would also be a problem in
itself.

Most psychologist are so full of nonsense that being one wouldn't help >>>> you here. :) I haven't read The Interpretation of Dreams, but I really >>>> would like to do it. The book could be wildly wrong, but notice that
nobody seems to have made any advances since then anyhow.

I find the Dodo effect quite facsinating. It says that it is not the
school of psychology that makes a difference in therapy, but only the
person.

I had never heard of it and I can't look up anything right now, but it
makes perfect sense to me. The inner is the outer. What a person lives
in the outside is a reflection of you'd find on the inside. A
therapist, like any intelligent person, can be of help, but you can't
put your life in order if you are not able to find order where you
should be looking.

Like the buddha said somewhere... he cannot do the work for you. You
have to do the work (meditate, live a good life) yourself if you want
peace. Buddha can facilitate, point in the right direction, but you
have to do the work to experience the result.

Yeah. No royal road---a beautiful law of nature.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Fri, 4 Apr 2025, Salvador Mirzo wrote:

Not an unwise decision. But the wises decision is to buy a house. An

True. But a house means higher cost, more maintenance, more time lost doing >> things I do not enjoy. So there is no perfect solution. But I have actually >> thought about getting a house. So let's see what the future holds! =)

I hope you get one. It's all true about the work, but I also think
that's good work. A lot less USENET, a lot more house work is a good

Haha, well, my wife would agree with you there!

idea. We can start with offlining the USENET. If there's little work
to do, increase the uniform distribution of times you connect to
exchange articles. If there's more work, decrease it.

True. My usenet/mailinglist debt is starting to grow. I have become involved in way too detailed and deep interesting conversations, and they are starting to take their toll. =(

True. It is a little bit better in northern europe where people do not
want to socialize. Most of the time you meet no one. Another solution
could be to buy a nice pent house apartment, making sure you share the
floor with no one, and ideally, a private elevator! =D

Living in an apartment never feels like the right thing. One almost
doesn't own the place. If you decide to do something to it, you get to approval of the condominium. The same would apply if you live in a
house in a condominium. Of course, the same thing applies to any house
in any country. But the less the better (while holding other important variables constant).

True. I have heard someone describing apartment associations like "Karen-factories". One community in my apartment in sweden is quite alright though. I'm starting to feel that that is pretty rare!

Dude, 66% is no good. :)

It's better than 0%! ;)

Better doesn't imply good. :)

Depends on the starting point. ;)

Interesting, I have never seen this burger in europe! How does it
differ from regular cheese burgers?

I think a regular cheese burger would not be a Cheddar cheese burger.
But I agree any Cheddar is a cheese burger. Over here now they have two options: you get the traditional Cheddar McMelt or you can order the
double one. The double one comes with three burgers, IIRC. Besides the melted Cheddar, it also comes with chopped onions mixed in the Cheddar.
I think that's it. And a cheese burger is a burger with some slices of cheese. I'm not the right person to ask about such things because I go
there once in a few years, always planning never to come back. :)

This is making me hungry! =D

Sounds like a nice group of people to identify with if you can find
them. =) I've always been a loner from that point of view, so I tend
to not identify with others much at all.

Oh, if you're a loner, you can identify yourself with pretty much
everyone. :) In a way I'm a loner as well.

Yes same here. But periodically I do feel a need for some company, but a pub quiz or two quickly cures me of that. While fun, I don't really feel the need for it more than 2-3 times per year or so. =)

Yeah---the experts always include nutrition in their hypotheses.

The question is... how can we, you and me, change the trend? ;)

I don't think we can. That would mean that a point can change the
uniform average. We could do something if we go from a uniform average
to a weighted one and we somehow acquire the huge weight. Nah. I don't think there's true change that way. I don't think we can change the
world. I don't think we should change the world. Let nature follow its
own course.

What if it is in my nature to change the world? Then that would be nature following its own course. ;)

The biggest change can start with the smallest idea!

Should a 4-leaf clover try to make every other a 4-leaf one?

Yes!

Hey, there are 7 helicopters going round and round around a certain
region where my house is. They're all gray in color. One follows the
other. They're really going around a circumference. Any idea what this
is? I'd guess it's military exercise. They're boringly going round.
Not in high speeds. They're not high in the sky; probably between
100--200 meters from the ground. Probably 50 meters from the top of a
hill around which they seem to flying.

Sounds scary! Be safe! =( In stockholm, due to the excessive uncontrolled crime recently, police drones and helicopters are becoming more and more common. I hate the surveillance society that sweden has been turned into and do not want to live in it.

As we discussed above, I think a house in the country side, deep inside the forest would be the ideal place for me!

I had never heard of practical philosophy.

It is a fairly new branch of philosophy, about 100 years old or so, depending on
how you define it.

Kinda funny to me. Philosophy is totally practical. The impractical philosophy is that which is nonsense---you can't make sense of.

Ah, you mean modern analytical philosophy? ;) Pick up a book on metaphysics and marvel at the nonsense! ;)

I think it's the most practical of them all because it applies to what happens most of the day---for those who don't ignore the stimuli.

I'm not a buddhist but I admire the mans practicality and empiricism! I have a feeling that all buddhist deities and 1000s and 1000s of pages of text and buddhist philosophy would make the original rotate in his grave. ;)

No. Certainly not. I have nothing to do with consensus. Truth should
have nothing to do with consensus. We can easily imagine an outrageous
group denying obvious facts.

There are facts, and then there are "facts". Is it true that blue is
the best color? Good luck answering that objectively. ;)

There are meaningless sentences and questions. Chomsky constructs the
famous one---colorless green ideas sleep furiously. Good luck trying to picture that in any way. Truth (and philosophy) is not about nonsense.
It's about honestly making sense of things.

Sometimes I think that is lost in a lot of modern philosophy.

Sometimes people take language to great abstractions, which should come
with lots of examples and simplicity. If people fail do that, it is not
a bad idea to ignore it. For instance, Kant is recognized for having
made the distinction between synthetic truths and analytic ones. Have
you ever understood? I don't think it too unwise to ignore all that.
But I don't mean it's bad work.

Well, for me, Kants biggest insight, is that we can never get to the metaphysical through the physical. But then he adds a lot of stuff onto that, and I don't quite agree with where he goes.

Is it true that there is a coffee mug on my right on a table, yes! And
if you were here with me, I am 100% certain that we would agree.

Of course. There's no point in even questioning that for too long. We
have so many other important questions to work on. For instance, is
there anything bothering any bit of your days? How could we give you a better life?

Amen! A very important question that should be asked from time to time. I am tomorrow leaving for a 2 month vacation. First 1 month in spain, then a weekend in Lyon, and then a month in sweden. I am already looking forward to a lot of good food in spain and 20+ C weather!

I am not looking forward to travel. Modern travel I find dehumanizing. It is all
built around controlling the masses, and treating them as badly as possible, while still taking their money.

If I had infinite amounts of money, I would travel by private jet. If I had an infinitely compassionate wife I would not travel at all. I would be perfectly content to spend the rest of my life in my house, deep in the forest, fishing.

I feel I have done enough for the world. I feel like I can retire to fishing with a perfectly clear conscience. =D

I'm quite okay with the keeping ``truth'' undefined. I may have some

Even if your life depends on it?

My life would never depend on such intellectual matters. Life depends
on food, shelter and relationships. We could easily argue here that
you're likely valuing the intellect more than you should. The intellect
has to be kept on the leash.

What ever we make into an obsession, tends to control our lives. I prefer to be in control, so it's always good not to get too focused and one sided about things.

Our senses also do make mistakes. And some things can't come directly
from the senses---what we see in a microscope, for example.

True, but just because we sometimes make mistakes I do not think is
enough of an argument to refute completely the idea that what we can
confirm with our senses is not the truth.

When it comes to the microscope, it is true, but at the end of the
day, we do use our senses to look into the microscope.

Totally right. When it comes to information, it has to come through the senses at least indirectly.

Amen!

My theory, conincidence, selective memory, and priming your psychological
filter.

1. Yes, sometimes it is just conincidence.

2. You think a lot of things, and forget a lot as well. If you think about an
event x, and x never happens, you would have forgotten about it. If you
envounter event x, after first thinking about x, you'll say to yourself, Oh, I
did think about x, how strange that I know encountered x.

3. When thinking about a thing deeply, you are in a way telling your
subconscious mind to be on the lookout for that. So when you filter your 1000s
of daily sense impressions, your usbconscious mind has been programmed to
"trigger" based on what you thought about.

Those are my 3 theories around why that happens.

My theory is that it's not that much of an improbable thing. The reason
I imagine this specific person is likely because she's a pretty likely
one, in fact. My imagination is never quite towards fantasy---it's
always towards making sense of things and making things reasonable. I probably choose to imagine the person that actually had some reasonable probability of coming over. But what I find very funny is that I guess
I was right. And it didn't take very long for it to happen.

That's nice. =)

Now, I certainly maximized the occurrence of the event because I'm
always at the beach. Nevertheless, though, it could be that somehow
that's not the whole story.

Let's see tomorrow!

True! No hocus pocus at all! =)

You see, we have this preference for destroying mystery. Other people
prefer the mystic. We are more warranted in our preference than the
others are in theirs, but we should do it very carefully because
otherwise we're doing the same silly thing other people do.

It is dangerous to argue against peoples beliefs. That wakes up the worst in people.

Oh yes... I am not against imagination and speculation, if that serves
to motivate a person, or inspire him, or help him advance theories. My
main beef is when people confuse speculation and theorizing, with what
we can or cannot prove. Mistaking the map for the real world so to
say.

Most people hardly have an education. They don't know what a theory is
and what speculation is very well. Unfortunately.

Well, from that point of view, we are lucky to have had a good education! I just
look at the students I have today, and get depressed. =(

Last friday I had a meeting with the management of the school, and they forbade me to have dead lines for assignments out of fear that fewer students will pass the courses.

That's complete b.s. And I told them that they are prioritizing profit over quality of education.

They smiled and said that no, they would like both profit _and_ education.

I said that that is unrealistic especially if they remove all demands, and want courses to be easier. Then I asked them to imagine how their children would be if they said yes to their every wish. Would that be how they raise their children or do they teach them to respect dead lines, boundaries and work hard?

They said, well, you do have a point. But we are your customer, and we pay, so we decide the rules.

And I had to agree with that, sadly. But at least I told them what will happen, so now they cannot blame me when the credibility of their students degrees drop in the market!

At least I won a small victory. Apparently they could possibly consider a dead line in _one_ course, if the task is changed from lab to project. But probably only in one course.

Very sad state of affairs. If this is a global trend, we are getting closer to the end of civilization! =(

very hard read, but to see them all you could skim a quantum theory book >>> by descant.

Lol---what?! By descant? Lol. That's a spurious end of sentence. I
was totally offline, unable to look anything up, but I wanted to make a reference to the book

Hmm, sorry, I must have slipped on the keyboard. I actually have no idea what I meant to say! =/

I think we are never forced to make up our minds. I am happily
agnostic about the interpretations of QM and I live my life just
fine. I am just content to note that some interpretations are absurd,
some impossible (in my opinion) some meaningless, and some I do not
understand.

It's a real puzzle. It's not about choosing axioms one would prefer.
Any choice is problematic. That's the fun. Reading d'Espagnat would
clarify how puzzling it is, but reading it would also be a problem in
itself.

I feel perfectly content keeping the QM models separate from the interpretations. If the models work for generating testable predictions, that's fine by me. I feel no need for half baked interpretations. =) A simple way to go
through life and to avoid a lot of useless metaphysical speculation! =D

Like the buddha said somewhere... he cannot do the work for you. You
have to do the work (meditate, live a good life) yourself if you want
peace. Buddha can facilitate, point in the right direction, but you
have to do the work to experience the result.

Yeah. No royal road---a beautiful law of nature.

Very much true!

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

D <nospam@example.net> writes:

idea. We can start with offlining the USENET. If there's little work
to do, increase the uniform distribution of times you connect to
exchange articles. If there's more work, decrease it.

True. My usenet/mailinglist debt is starting to grow. I have become
involved in way too detailed and deep interesting conversations, and
they are starting to take their toll. =(

I think I saw some of your chats on rec.food.cooking. You gotta get
outta there. That group is crazy and the volume, insane.

Interesting, I have never seen this burger in europe! How does it
differ from regular cheese burgers?

I think a regular cheese burger would not be a Cheddar cheese burger.
But I agree any Cheddar is a cheese burger. Over here now they have two
options: you get the traditional Cheddar McMelt or you can order the
double one. The double one comes with three burgers, IIRC. Besides the
melted Cheddar, it also comes with chopped onions mixed in the Cheddar.
I think that's it. And a cheese burger is a burger with some slices of
cheese. I'm not the right person to ask about such things because I go
there once in a few years, always planning never to come back. :)

This is making me hungry! =D

Lol.

Yeah---the experts always include nutrition in their hypotheses.

The question is... how can we, you and me, change the trend? ;)

I don't think we can. That would mean that a point can change the
uniform average. We could do something if we go from a uniform average
to a weighted one and we somehow acquire the huge weight. Nah. I don't
think there's true change that way. I don't think we can change the
world. I don't think we should change the world. Let nature follow its
own course.

What if it is in my nature to change the world? Then that would be nature following its own course. ;)

The biggest change can start with the smallest idea!

Today I watched the documentary series called

The Century of the Self

It's a good illustration of people mean by ``change'' in the world. :)

Should a 4-leaf clover try to make every other a 4-leaf one?

Yes!

Lol. Speechless. :)

Hey, there are 7 helicopters going round and round around a certain
region where my house is. They're all gray in color. One follows the
other. They're really going around a circumference. Any idea what this
is? I'd guess it's military exercise. They're boringly going round.
Not in high speeds. They're not high in the sky; probably between
100--200 meters from the ground. Probably 50 meters from the top of a
hill around which they seem to flying.

Sounds scary! Be safe! =( In stockholm, due to the excessive
uncontrolled crime recently, police drones and helicopters are
becoming more and more common. I hate the surveillance society that
sweden has been turned into and do not want to live in it.

I should have recorded it, uploaded with the comment---AI piloted. :)

As we discussed above, I think a house in the country side, deep
inside the forest would be the ideal place for me!

Sounds very interesting.

I had never heard of practical philosophy.

It is a fairly new branch of philosophy, about 100 years old or so,
depending on
how you define it.

Kinda funny to me. Philosophy is totally practical. The impractical
philosophy is that which is nonsense---you can't make sense of.

Ah, you mean modern analytical philosophy? ;) Pick up a book on
metaphysics and marvel at the nonsense! ;)

Specially if it's contemporary writing.

No. Certainly not. I have nothing to do with consensus. Truth should >>>> have nothing to do with consensus. We can easily imagine an outrageous >>>> group denying obvious facts.

There are facts, and then there are "facts". Is it true that blue is
the best color? Good luck answering that objectively. ;)

There are meaningless sentences and questions. Chomsky constructs the
famous one---colorless green ideas sleep furiously. Good luck trying to
picture that in any way. Truth (and philosophy) is not about nonsense.
It's about honestly making sense of things.

Sometimes I think that is lost in a lot of modern philosophy.

By ``modern'' do you mean contemporary philosophy? ``Modern''
philosophy is that of Descartes, for example.

Sometimes people take language to great abstractions, which should come
with lots of examples and simplicity. If people fail do that, it is not
a bad idea to ignore it. For instance, Kant is recognized for having
made the distinction between synthetic truths and analytic ones. Have
you ever understood? I don't think it too unwise to ignore all that.
But I don't mean it's bad work.

Well, for me, Kants biggest insight, is that we can never get to the metaphysical through the physical. But then he adds a lot of stuff
onto that, and I don't quite agree with where he goes.

I'm not sure what exactly you're talking about here. I'm not a Kant
reader. Are you talking about the Critique of Pure Reason? I did read

Prolegomena do Any Methaphysics
(that will be able to come forward as a science)

and that's a pretty understandable book. This book is a good
introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason, but I think I don't really recommend you get into any of this stuff. There's a lot more
interesting things in life.

Is it true that there is a coffee mug on my right on a table, yes! And
if you were here with me, I am 100% certain that we would agree.

Of course. There's no point in even questioning that for too long. We
have so many other important questions to work on. For instance, is
there anything bothering any bit of your days? How could we give you a
better life?

Amen! A very important question that should be asked from time to
time. I am tomorrow leaving for a 2 month vacation. First 1 month in
spain, then a weekend in Lyon, and then a month in sweden. I am
already looking forward to a lot of good food in spain and 20+ C
weather!

Nice. Enjoy!

I am not looking forward to travel. Modern travel I find
dehumanizing. It is all built around controlling the masses, and
treating them as badly as possible, while still taking their money.

Oh, that's quite right. I see the same. The best way to travel in the
end is by your own means such as by car, but then there's how good the
roads are, how far you go... Staying in hotels used to be a great
experience, but it's not quite anymore. We have a complete
deterioration of everything.

If I had infinite amounts of money, I would travel by private jet. If
I had an infinitely compassionate wife I would not travel at all. I
would be perfectly content to spend the rest of my life in my house,
deep in the forest, fishing.

Yeah---gotta question a bit the need for traveling and tourism. What's
that all about? I like to travel to see people, not places. I honestly
care very little to see culture and places. It's different if you are
my friend and you're interesting---then Sweden becomes interesting, too.
So I'm usually interested where my family and friends are.

I feel I have done enough for the world. I feel like I can retire to
fishing with a perfectly clear conscience. =D

Sounds like wisdom to me.

I'm quite okay with the keeping ``truth'' undefined. I may have some

Even if your life depends on it?

My life would never depend on such intellectual matters. Life depends
on food, shelter and relationships. We could easily argue here that
you're likely valuing the intellect more than you should. The intellect
has to be kept on the leash.

What ever we make into an obsession, tends to control our lives. I
prefer to be in control, so it's always good not to get too focused
and one sided about things.

Sounds like wisdom to me.

Now, I certainly maximized the occurrence of the event because I'm
always at the beach. Nevertheless, though, it could be that somehow
that's not the whole story.

Let's see tomorrow!

Lol. My mind is in next events. But I don't expect seeing that person
around here any time soon or ever.

True! No hocus pocus at all! =)

You see, we have this preference for destroying mystery. Other people
prefer the mystic. We are more warranted in our preference than the
others are in theirs, but we should do it very carefully because
otherwise we're doing the same silly thing other people do.

It is dangerous to argue against peoples beliefs. That wakes up the
worst in people.

So true. My observation is that people's behavior really comes from
deep within, not from the surface, so working on the surface is a
complete waste of time. (And the intellect is on the surface.) That's
why people behave ``irrationally'', meaning that's why we can't
understand them at all.

Oh yes... I am not against imagination and speculation, if that serves
to motivate a person, or inspire him, or help him advance theories. My
main beef is when people confuse speculation and theorizing, with what
we can or cannot prove. Mistaking the map for the real world so to
say.

Most people hardly have an education. They don't know what a theory is
and what speculation is very well. Unfortunately.

Well, from that point of view, we are lucky to have had a good
education! I just look at the students I have today, and get
depressed. =(

Same here, but it's not clear what you mean by education. In a sense I
don't think it's our education, really, because I think education is on
the surface.

Last friday I had a meeting with the management of the school, and
they forbade me to have dead lines for assignments out of fear that
fewer students will pass the courses.

That's complete b.s. And I told them that they are prioritizing profit
over quality of education.

They smiled and said that no, they would like both profit _and_
education.

Lol! _And_. I do agree that it's obviously a lie. Those lies that
nearly everyone accepts and even repeats themselves.

I said that that is unrealistic

You're so delicate. :)

[...] especially if they remove all demands, and want courses to be
easier. Then I asked them to imagine how their children would be if
they said yes to their every wish. Would that be how they raise their children or do they teach them to respect dead lines, boundaries and
work hard?

They said, well, you do have a point. But we are your customer, and we
pay, so we decide the rules.

And I had to agree with that, sadly. But at least I told them what
will happen, so now they cannot blame me when the credibility of their students degrees drop in the market!

At least they're minimally honest. I'm okay with that.

At least I won a small victory. Apparently they could possibly
consider a dead line in _one_ course, if the task is changed from lab
to project. But probably only in one course.

I'd say don't push it hard. Let them do what they want. You've already
shared your view. Let nature follow its own course. You don't have to influence them any further after sharing your view: they are also
equally in the position to direct their lives. Let nature follow its
course.

Very sad state of affairs. If this is a global trend, we are getting
closer to the end of civilization! =(

It is a global trend. And I think we have worse problems---fertility,
chronic diseases, work and the general quality of life people have been
living. We're not at the bottom yet. I think things are gonna down a
lot more still.

very hard read, but to see them all you could skim a quantum theory book >>>> by descant.

Lol---what?! By descant? Lol. That's a spurious end of sentence. I
was totally offline, unable to look anything up, but I wanted to make a
reference to the book

Hmm, sorry, I must have slipped on the keyboard. I actually have no
idea what I meant to say! =/

It was I who said it. :) I wanted to remember the author's name and I
couldn't. I forgot to look it up (later) and ended up posting the
message. That's a down side of being offline. Sometimes you can't fill
up the blank that you could if you were online. I was literally offline
that day. I have the printed book, but it's boxed in the basement and I
surely didn't feel like digging it up.

Hey, are you getting USENET access during your vacation? I wanna give
you my e-mail address. Take care!

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Thu, 10 Apr 2025, Salvador Mirzo wrote:

True. My usenet/mailinglist debt is starting to grow. I have become
involved in way too detailed and deep interesting conversations, and
they are starting to take their toll. =(

I think I saw some of your chats on rec.food.cooking. You gotta get
outta there. That group is crazy and the volume, insane.

Oh yes, it takes great skill and loads of time to keep up with the flow there. Perhaps too much time. =(

At the same time, some in that group elevate trolling to a very sublime art form! I've had close to spiritual experiences reading some of that beautiful trolling there. =D

But yes, I am currently on vacation, so I think once I get back into it, probably the best course of action is just to delete everything and start from scratch.

I don't think we can. That would mean that a point can change the
uniform average. We could do something if we go from a uniform average
to a weighted one and we somehow acquire the huge weight. Nah. I don't >>> think there's true change that way. I don't think we can change the
world. I don't think we should change the world. Let nature follow its >>> own course.

What if it is in my nature to change the world? Then that would be nature
following its own course. ;)

The biggest change can start with the smallest idea!

Today I watched the documentary series called

The Century of the Self

It's a good illustration of people mean by ``change'' in the world. :)

Excellent documentary! Maybe I should re-watch it. It's been a couple of years since I last saw it.

Should a 4-leaf clover try to make every other a 4-leaf one?

Yes!

Lol. Speechless. :)

;)

As we discussed above, I think a house in the country side, deep
inside the forest would be the ideal place for me!

Sounds very interesting.

Yes! But let's see. It needs to be far away. The trick is convincing the wife who does need culture and things to do. ;)

Ah, you mean modern analytical philosophy? ;) Pick up a book on
metaphysics and marvel at the nonsense! ;)

Specially if it's contemporary writing.

Amen!

There are facts, and then there are "facts". Is it true that blue is
the best color? Good luck answering that objectively. ;)

There are meaningless sentences and questions. Chomsky constructs the
famous one---colorless green ideas sleep furiously. Good luck trying to >>> picture that in any way. Truth (and philosophy) is not about nonsense.
It's about honestly making sense of things.

Sometimes I think that is lost in a lot of modern philosophy.

By ``modern'' do you mean contemporary philosophy? ``Modern''
philosophy is that of Descartes, for example.

Contemporary.

Well, for me, Kants biggest insight, is that we can never get to the
metaphysical through the physical. But then he adds a lot of stuff
onto that, and I don't quite agree with where he goes.

I'm not sure what exactly you're talking about here. I'm not a Kant
reader. Are you talking about the Critique of Pure Reason? I did read

Prolegomena do Any Methaphysics
(that will be able to come forward as a science)

and that's a pretty understandable book. This book is a good
introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason, but I think I don't really recommend you get into any of this stuff. There's a lot more
interesting things in life.

Agreed! Yes, I was talking about critique of pure reason. I also agree that there is very little point in reading Kant unless you are interested in it for its own sake. =)

Amen! A very important question that should be asked from time to
time. I am tomorrow leaving for a 2 month vacation. First 1 month in
spain, then a weekend in Lyon, and then a month in sweden. I am
already looking forward to a lot of good food in spain and 20+ C
weather!

Nice. Enjoy!

I'm doing my best! I did have a little relapse now onto the Usenet and I am almost regretting it. ;)

I am not looking forward to travel. Modern travel I find
dehumanizing. It is all built around controlling the masses, and
treating them as badly as possible, while still taking their money.

Oh, that's quite right. I see the same. The best way to travel in the
end is by your own means such as by car, but then there's how good the

I've never been much into cars and I do not like to drive, _but_, I often thought if driving could become more relaxing and less of a chore (and I'm talking driving between countries, which would be 8-36 hours of driving to get where I want to get) if I bought an older luxury car?

Small, modern cars are painfully loud and unstable on the highway. I do not enjoy driving those.

roads are, how far you go... Staying in hotels used to be a great experience, but it's not quite anymore. We have a complete
deterioration of everything.

This is the truth! Hotels nowadays, is just one big surveillance center. I prefer staying in my own house, a small B&B or airbnb if possible.

If I had infinite amounts of money, I would travel by private jet. If
I had an infinitely compassionate wife I would not travel at all. I
would be perfectly content to spend the rest of my life in my house,
deep in the forest, fishing.

Yeah---gotta question a bit the need for traveling and tourism. What's
that all about? I like to travel to see people, not places. I honestly
care very little to see culture and places. It's different if you are
my friend and you're interesting---then Sweden becomes interesting, too.
So I'm usually interested where my family and friends are.

You are a philosopher king! My parents dragged me all around the glove several times over by the time I was 16. After that, due to my job, I had to travel several times more around the globe. I am so sick and tired of travelling, and the fact that my wife loves travelling is one of my great pains and sorrows.

People all around the planet are the same, and I can watch all the monuments and
pyramids I like online or on TV in the privacy of my home, without sweating with
1000s of other tourists.

If I travel, it is to live in a place, preferably at least 6-12 months or more. Travelling over the weekend is just my version of hell.

I feel I have done enough for the world. I feel like I can retire to
fishing with a perfectly clear conscience. =D

Sounds like wisdom to me.

Thank you! I will tell my wife, that now it's not just me, but 2 people arguing in favour of that! =D

True! No hocus pocus at all! =)

You see, we have this preference for destroying mystery. Other people
prefer the mystic. We are more warranted in our preference than the
others are in theirs, but we should do it very carefully because
otherwise we're doing the same silly thing other people do.

It is dangerous to argue against peoples beliefs. That wakes up the
worst in people.

So true. My observation is that people's behavior really comes from
deep within, not from the surface, so working on the surface is a
complete waste of time. (And the intellect is on the surface.) That's
why people behave ``irrationally'', meaning that's why we can't
understand them at all.

True. That is why intellectual arguments very seldom persuade anyone. Only when an argument "connects" with the ego, does it take. That is why emotional arguments, bypassing the intellect, are so effective!

Well, from that point of view, we are lucky to have had a good
education! I just look at the students I have today, and get
depressed. =(

Same here, but it's not clear what you mean by education. In a sense I
don't think it's our education, really, because I think education is on
the surface.

I don't know. Maybe it is an attitude towards learning and developing ones self?
I mean after university, I continue to read, study, experiment for the joy of learning.

Maybe that is the key?

Last friday I had a meeting with the management of the school, and
they forbade me to have dead lines for assignments out of fear that
fewer students will pass the courses.

That's complete b.s. And I told them that they are prioritizing profit
over quality of education.

They smiled and said that no, they would like both profit _and_
education.

Lol! _And_. I do agree that it's obviously a lie. Those lies that
nearly everyone accepts and even repeats themselves.

Sigh yes...

I said that that is unrealistic

You're so delicate. :)

I do my best. ;)

[...] especially if they remove all demands, and want courses to be
easier. Then I asked them to imagine how their children would be if
they said yes to their every wish. Would that be how they raise their
children or do they teach them to respect dead lines, boundaries and
work hard?

They said, well, you do have a point. But we are your customer, and we
pay, so we decide the rules.

And I had to agree with that, sadly. But at least I told them what
will happen, so now they cannot blame me when the credibility of their
students degrees drop in the market!

At least they're minimally honest. I'm okay with that.

Well, after sleeping on it, I decided I'll try a "top down" approach as well. So
I managed to reach a somewhat famous journalist at a national newspaper who was interested in my story. So upon condition of anonymity, I told him the whole story. He also happens to be a childhood friend of the director of the government department that controls the schools, so he would pass my story on to
him as well.

Hooray! ;)

Do I have any illusions about things happening? Not in the least. But it was great therapy, and I give it a 1% chance of it actually becoming a newspaper story!

If that happens, I give it another 1% chance of the government actually doing anything about it. ;)

So 1% of 1% not bad!! ;)

At least I won a small victory. Apparently they could possibly
consider a dead line in _one_ course, if the task is changed from lab
to project. But probably only in one course.

I'd say don't push it hard. Let them do what they want. You've already shared your view. Let nature follow its own course. You don't have to influence them any further after sharing your view: they are also
equally in the position to direct their lives. Let nature follow its
course.

Yes... probably the wisest choice. See above! =D

Very sad state of affairs. If this is a global trend, we are getting
closer to the end of civilization! =(

It is a global trend. And I think we have worse problems---fertility, chronic diseases, work and the general quality of life people have been living. We're not at the bottom yet. I think things are gonna down a
lot more still.

Let's see. But I'm a long term optimist. Sure, in the short term, the next 5-20 years, things might not look good, but if we look 50 or 100 years ahead, I'm 100% certain things will be better! =)

Lol---what?! By descant? Lol. That's a spurious end of sentence. I
was totally offline, unable to look anything up, but I wanted to make a
reference to the book

Hmm, sorry, I must have slipped on the keyboard. I actually have no
idea what I meant to say! =/

It was I who said it. :) I wanted to remember the author's name and I couldn't. I forgot to look it up (later) and ended up posting the
message. That's a down side of being offline. Sometimes you can't fill
up the blank that you could if you were online. I was literally offline
that day. I have the printed book, but it's boxed in the basement and I surely didn't feel like digging it up.

Hey, are you getting USENET access during your vacation? I wanna give
you my e-mail address. Take care!

I do get usenet access! Please let me know your email, and I'll send you mine. Email I never miss. Usenet messages I do miss from time to time, especially now when I'm on vacation and do not check it every day.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

D <nospam@example.net> writes:

Hey, are you getting USENET access during your vacation? I wanna give
you my e-mail address. Take care!

I do get usenet access! Please let me know your email, and I'll send
you mine. Email I never miss. Usenet messages I do miss from time to
time, especially now when I'm on vacation and do not check it every
day.

Here you go: 4l9r46gv6@mozmail.com. Thanks!

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)