Thursday, March 26, 2015

in all seriousness

1) dogs have very sensitive noses. some of that stuff - like the taco - was pretty heavy. it's like getting kicked in the groin.
2) i'd be worried about the dog choking on a few of the smaller items. i've seen dogs that can barely eat out of a bowl without coughing.
3) your dog sucks. i've never had to teach a dog - especially not a golden - how to catch. it's innate.

 
regarding the carbs...

dogs are not obligate carnivores like most cats are. wild canids actually tend to eat a lot of fruit. you can pretty much follow the same rules as you'd follow for people - keep the refined sugars down.

rachele.ls
You took it too far, it's not that serious. It's food, not bricks so his nose is probably fine.

deathtokoalas
no, i think you're underestimating how sensitive the nose is. that taco would have really stung, if she didn't move out of the way.
if you've seen those videos of lava flows moving at a crawl towards villages and everybody just standing around shrugging, it does bring up the question of trying to do something to stop it. of course, the problem is that just about anything you could think of putting in the way is just going to melt, so it seems pointless. and you'd imagine that the amount of ice necessary to even slow it down a little is going to create flooding issues as bad as the lava flow (once the bulk of it transfers to the atmosphere).

i guess this is maybe useful as something exploratory, to get a better understanding of it. but i wouldn't count on seeing helicopters dropping piles of ice on moving lava flows any time soon...

he's logically correct, but it's pulling a negative proof trick. it's not a fallacy, it's more of a refuge. it's like a theist pointing out that you can't disprove the existence of god. fair enough, but it doesn't really help. there really isn't any way to disprove free will, either. but i think the balance of evidence leads to a skeptical position.

i mean, it's pretty convincing, this idea that we're in control. and it may seem trivial to suggest that we're bound to trivial debates. but, it's not really an argument.

every human out there has their intellectual crutches. there's really good reasons why chomsky, as an individual, is going to fight against the rejection of free will. but he's really just twisting the question around.


dj cavi
+deathtokoalas free will does not need to be disproved. it is a meaningless term. our will directs our decisions. man that is not in a prison is free... from being in prison, and that is it

deathtokoalas 
+dj cavi  i think you're misunderstanding the concept of free will - it refers to whether we're in control of our decisions. you claim our will directs our decisions. but, that's exactly the question to be pondered - does it really, or are we in some way controlled by outside forces? not market forces, or biological forces. that's more the question of a hobson's choice. but a hobson's choice is only a false choice in the sense that taking the other option leads to negative consequences. in that sense we're not and probably never can be truly free. but we can always choose (or seem to choose) to starve ourselves, or get beaten or be homeless or whatever other thing comes from not taking the "only" choice. i mean, i don't want to come off as a randian or something, but if you're approaching the issue strictly logically, you can't just ignore this. we are seemingly free to do stupid things that will harm us in the short or long term.

that's not really getting at the issue of free will, though. that asks a question more subtle: if we seem to choose to starve or be beaten or be homeless, did we really make that decision?

personally, i'm somewhat of a verificationist. and, in that sense i do agree that the question is rather meaningless. but, i'd take a position of agnosticism on issues of the sort. i think that's the correctly rational perspective: the evidence may lean towards skepticism, but i'm not about to take a hard position either way. i couldn't imagine a theory on free will that could be falsifiable.

but, the "nice story" i like is sort of leaning towards a fatalist conception of the universe. this huge explosion happened some time in the distant past, and the entire universe is a complicated consequence of it - inalterable, and entirely determined. that actually abolishes free will. you choose to starve because of the big bang. modern physics would argue "but there's so many random things!". well, that's not entirely clear. we know there are some things we don't seem to be able to alter. that's as easily an argument for fatalism as it is for chaos - we lack the ability to affect outcomes, and have no concept of how we conceivably might, meaning, as far as we can tell, there's only one way it can conceivably happen. and, we simply can't argue we have "controlled conditions" when we don't understand the factors that could possibly alter the outcome, so the basis of the argument for "different outcomes from controlled experiments" collapses on the point of the experiment possibly not being controlled.

but, that's not falsifiable and is likely never going to be.
Wizardry
Time is modeled as a line. A line is formed of ∞ points. Points are zero-dimensional; i.e., they do not have volume, area, length, or any other higher-dimensional analogue. Is the line, used to represent time, so different from time itself? Or may the line represent time more accurately than you are presently aware? Only time will tell. Welcome to the Mysterium Tremendum. Please excuse the self-possessed numinosity and have a wonderful new day, my Shpongled friends!

ImprovisedSurvival
Not so sure. Even a period on a paper has a third dimension. From a far enough distance, the Earth will appear as a single point/ zero dimensional, as do the stars in space, or the cells in your body, or the galaxy above, or the grain of sand below, or the atom inside, or the solar system outside, the nucleus, the electron, the photon... universe.  

All is perspective

Wizardry
The period on a paper though, is not the same as a point as defined by Euclidean geometry:  "The description of a point, 'that which has no part,' indicates that Euclid will be treating a point as having no width, length, or breadth, but as an indivisible location."

That being said, I think you may have been making reference to the fractal nature of the universe (As above, so below) in which case I partially agree with your sentiment.

ImprovisedSurvival
Euclid is dead, the only thing that has no width, length and breadth is the space in between the lights

enleuk
A line is not made of points if a line has length but a point does not. Instead it becomes a line as soon as it is something more than a mere point, as soon as it has a length, however minuscule, i.e. even an infinitesimal line is a line and not a point as long as it retains any length at all. In other words, a line is not a row of non-dimensional dots, but a distance between two non-dimensional positions. In reality, there are neither straight lines nor points.

Time is motion, motion is a change in any direction, we can call this direction length. It's not a straight line though. If we assume that the Big Bang was the start of time, at least the start of motion in our universe, our bubble, regardless if other bubbles exist, then obviously time and motion is rather chaotic, spreading outwards from the centre and also clumping together and moving in fairly unpredictable directions at any given local point.

Wizardry
Theoretical science seems to have a way with creating something from nothing for no reason.  Lines arise from nothings in big fancy bangs and bring forth talking monkeys after aeons of "chaos."  I guess that's not as far fetched as an omnipotent creator designing a world intentionally...or is it?  I guess the big explosion at the start with all the chaos makes it more edgy and entertaining for the youth.

enleuk
Excuse me for explaining the errors of your description of Euclidian geometry, I'll never do it again.

deathtokoalas
euclidean geometry is either incomplete or inconsistent. i think that hilbert's approach of undefined terms is preferable. what is a point? what is a line? we can't express these things in language, but we know them when we see them.

that said, it's not really all that bad to think of an infinite number of points in a line segment. any continuous subset of the real line is uncountable.

time is often modeled as a line, but you're oversimplifying it. if you'd like to understand how time and space are connected, i would suggest investing some time into the theory of relativity. which, fwiw, requires very non-euclidean geometry.

yeah. i think he's a cia agent, basically.

i think it's actually occam's razor. the idea that he's really that brainwashed and self-righteous is hard to believe. and he really doesn't seem to be trolling.

it's just a step beyond apologism. it's active support. i know he denies it, but it's purely cognitive dissonance. he's gotta be working this...

give him another 5-10 years, and he'll miraculously "see the light" and starting writing books about "spirituality". that's the end game: hook then co-opt. wait for it....