On 12/21/24 6:25 AM, D wrote:
>
>
> On Sat, 21 Dec 2024, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
>
>> On 12/20/24 4:22 PM, D wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On Fri, 20 Dec 2024, rbowman wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Fri, 20 Dec 2024 10:57:38 +0100, D wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> But now we have LLM:s!  What I find interesting is how different
>>>>> people
>>>>> view them. I find the free ones you can play with online to be
>>>>> incredibly boring. I use them as a kind of search engine on
>>>>> steroids for
>>>>> stuff that is not important (for entertainment purposes).
>>>>
>>>> Brave added one to the search engine but I turned it off. Might as
>>>> well go
>>>> straight to reddit which seems to be heavily mined.
>>>>
>>>
>>> That's the thing. LLM:s for me, are good at summarizing articles, so
>>> instead of being "ai" they are just a nice complement to searching,
>>> and as long as they work and don't hallucinate, they save me some
>>> clicks. That's about it.
>>>
>>> Oh, and writing government policy documents. When doing that, their
>>> hallucinations are actually an asset! ;)
>>
>>
>>  Ha Ha Ha - SO true there :-)
>>
>>  Anyway, as I say elsewhere, LLMs are just PART of
>>  'intelligence'. OTHER parts need to be spliced in.
>>  Brains are just WEIRD ... 600+ million years of
>>  field-tested neural insanity.
>>
>>  However, somewhere in there - early - "ME-ism"
>>  emerged. There's some neat-o trick to that which
>>  we haven't yet grasped. We're not thinking quite
>>  right about 'self'. I think THAT is the basic
>>  paradigm and then you add more IQ and such ONTO it.
>>
>
> Could you please expand on the me-ism part? I have certainly not
> detected any me-isms and that is why I find them so boring. Give me
> volition, initiative  and desperate attempts to stop me from deleting
> them, then we're on to something!

What, the "Me, Myself and I" thing ?

It's the realization, however dim, that I am an
autonomous unit. I am not that rock. I am not
that tree. I am not that OTHER DAMNED IGUANA
that's wandered into MY territory. There's ME,
and everything else.

In an odd sense it's anti-Buddhist.

SO FAR I don't really see that in any of the
AI models. They're well-perfected REACTION
but there's still nobody home.

We're missing something.

At this time, that MAY be a good thing.

On Sun, 22 Dec 2024 01:53:31 -0500, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:

> As Machiavelli noted as being the reason Roman commanders were not
> penalized for losing battles. Safe, they could be BOLD.

Varus knew what was coming and took the easy way out.

"186282@ud0s4.net" <186283@ud0s4.net> writes:
> On 12/21/24 4:54 AM, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
>> Or anywhere else. You only get genetic purity in very isolated
>> populations, and they start building up inherited diseases real
>> quick. See niche dog breeds for a non-human example.
>
> This explains the British upper class :-)

Or the Hapsburgs...

[Basque archaeogenetics]
> Ummmm ... STILL hard to imagine JUST the 'Y'. Should have contributed
> 50% of the entire genome to the kiddies.

No doubt they did. “Almost complete Y-chromosome replacement by R1b-M269
after 2000BCE“ says nothing at all about the autosomal DNA. It’s a
statement about the Y chromosomes only.

--
https://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/

On Sun, 22 Dec 2024 02:12:43 -0500, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:

> Those poor people ... caught between an ever-growing mountain of
> facts/evidence and equally-persuasive *belief* (which requires no
> facts). They TRY to find ways to splice it all together. It doesn't
> work well ...

A friend was a Young Earther despite being a proficient programmer. Given
the premise God can do anything it's no problem for him to whip up the
Grand Canyon with all its geological layers in his spare time. He was also
well rehearsed in the creationist arguments against evolution.

On 21/12/2024 21:45, rbowman wrote:
> On Sat, 21 Dec 2024 09:54:27 +0000, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
>
>> Absolutely yes. People group themselves in all sorts of ways: shared
>> language, shared religion, shared territory, shared enemy, shared
>> preferred computing platform. Pretty much anything you can think of.
>
> Shared territory, or civic nationalism, appears to have its limits. The
> aftermath of WWI showed you can't draw lines on a map and say
> 'Congratulations! You're a country!"
>
Well you can for sure *say* it.

In reality every village has its own character...

People form clusters and alliances based on hopefully mutually shared
common interests.

Or they get conquered and subjugated. And carry hatred for hundreds of
years.

--
The higher up the mountainside
The greener grows the grass.
The higher up the monkey climbs
The more he shows his arse.

Traditional

On 21/12/2024 22:19, D wrote:
>
>
> On Sat, 21 Dec 2024, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>
>> On 21/12/2024 11:17, D wrote:
>>> I have on my to do list to start a zeppelin airline between europe
>>> and new york. I just need to utilize synchronicity to bump into
>>> Richard Branson or other billionaire of choice first, and then we're
>>> off! =D
>>
>> Frankly a nuclear powered ship would be quicker, safer and FAR more
>> luxurious.
>
> This is the truth. But it would hardly be cheaper. =(

I think you will find it would

Already the economics of fully computerised bulk transporters with
reactors look better than ever increasing bunker oil, especially in
terms of high speed and low maintenance.

If you got two nights in a luxury hotel AND to the USA from Europe for a
similar price...

--
"What do you think about Gay Marriage?"
"I don't."
"Don't what?"
"Think about Gay Marriage."

On 22/12/2024 09:31, rbowman wrote:
> On Sun, 22 Dec 2024 02:12:43 -0500, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
>
>> Those poor people ... caught between an ever-growing mountain of
>> facts/evidence and equally-persuasive *belief* (which requires no
>> facts). They TRY to find ways to splice it all together. It doesn't
>> work well ...
>
> A friend was a Young Earther despite being a proficient programmer. Given
> the premise God can do anything it's no problem for him to whip up the
> Grand Canyon with all its geological layers in his spare time. He was also
> well rehearsed in the creationist arguments against evolution.
>

The problem is, that both the scientific narrative and the creationist
one are complete, logical and unassailable.

One posits a supernatural 'Big Bang' from which time, space energy and
the laws of nature miraculously sprang, and the other posits a big
Creation from which time, space energy and the laws of nature
miraculously sprang, just already formed as a complete *fake*, like
someone today constructing a '1000 year old' house. Complete with faked
history.

The only difference is the latter big bang has a sentient intelligence
with a Plan in charge.

Really we only reject it on the slender basis of Occam - it's simply
more complicated than necessary to explain this shit.

--
“The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false face for the
urge to rule it.”
– H. L. Mencken

On 22/12/2024 03:28, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
> Oh, they can be MADE, no question. There was even much
>   talk of nuke mega-cargo ships. However safely dealing
>   with the reactors is the big thing. You need a team
>   of very well educated experts lest Very Bad Things
>   happen. So, while "possible", not "practical" for
>   non-govt entities.

Not was even much talk, is a lot of current talk. And serious moves afoot.

https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/new-study-considers-nuclear-powered-bulk-carriers

There is no reason the 'team of very well educated experts' need be ON
the ship however.

This is the digital age. They can be back at reactor HQ or helicoptered
in if necessary.

You will just get a red (wrench shaped) light on the bridge 'restricted
performance, take to dealer as soon as possible'..

:-)

--
"When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign,
that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."

Jonathan Swift.

On 22/12/2024 06:50, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
> I wonder if different materials might make zeps safer ?
>   Graphite rods, carbon-fiber supports, something that'll
>   give more under stress than simple rigid aluminum ?
>   Could go 'meta' ... INFLATABLE, ADAPTIVE, extra supports
>   you can work pneumatically or whatever. Then the thing
>   is more like a dolphin or whale, dynamically adaptable
>   to stresses in the short timescale.
>

We may have got better strength to weight ratio materials, but that
simply allows a slightly bigger structure..

The real demise in my book was not the zeppelin hydrogen fire, but the
USS Shenandoah, which was literally torn in half by bad weather.

"While passing through an area of thunderstorms and turbulence over Ohio
early in the morning of 3 September, during its 57th flight, the
Shenandoah was caught in a violent updraft that carried the ship beyond
the pressure limits of its gas bags. The turbulence tore the airship
apart, and it crashed in three main pieces near Caldwell, Ohio. Fourteen
crew members, including Commander Zachary Lansdowne, were killed.
Lansdowne and eight crew members in the control car (except for
Lieutenant Anderson, who escaped) died when the car detached and fell
from the airship; two men died after falling through holes in the hull;
and four mechanics who fell with the engines were killed. There were
twenty-nine survivors, who succeeded in riding the three sections of the
airship to earth. The largest group was eighteen men who made it out of
the stern after it rolled into a valley. Four others survived a crash
landing of the central section. The remaining seven were in the bow
section which Commander (later Vice Admiral) Charles E. Rosendahl
managed to navigate as a free balloon. In this group was Anderson
who—until he was roped in by the others—straddled the catwalk over a
large hole. "

Not my idea of a luxury cruise.

The problem is that the airships of the day were barely faster than a
ship or a train and really wouldn't pass today's safety tests at all.

They were and would be simply too big to be safe or too small to be
profitable except in very niche applications.

--
"Strange as it seems, no amount of learning can cure stupidity, and
higher education positively fortifies it."

- Stephen Vizinczey

On Sat, 21 Dec 2024, rbowman wrote:

> On Sat, 21 Dec 2024 11:59:47 +0100, D wrote:
>
>> It's like god says, hey, learn this, but I'll mindwipe you every time so
>> you cannot accumulate any knowledge and learn from your mistakes, except
>> by chance. Have fun!
>
> Plato's theory was you really knew it but needed a little help to
> remember. iirc he only applied that to geometry problems and not general
> knowledge.
>

Yes, religious fanatics like to argue that your spirit, deep soul or what
ever really knows it. Always fun how they need to find ways to make up for
when they are obviously wrong. ;)

On Sat, 21 Dec 2024, rbowman wrote:

> On Sat, 21 Dec 2024 12:19:10 +0100, D wrote:
>
>> An acquaintance had a grandmother who smoked until she was 70 or so, and
>> one day she said... "I've had it, I quit smoking now" and just like
>> that,
>> over a day, she quit smoking.
>
> I was in my 20s but that is what I did. No withdrawal other than the
> actions associated with reaching for a cigarette. I could see those for
> what they were, a conditioned act, rather than a desire for a cigarette.
>
> Sometime later I read an article about some fatal disease that caused
> people to spontaneously stop smoking. That doesn't seem to have been the
> case.

You should reverse engineer yourself! A fortune to be made in a new
bowman-based anti-smoking drug! ;)

On Sat, 21 Dec 2024, rbowman wrote:

> On Sat, 21 Dec 2024 08:56:01 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>
>> We have big brains not to compose music or do science, but to walk
>> upright...
>
> I manage to walk but I did find that with Nordic skiing if you start to
> think about what you're doing you'll be picking yourself up out of a snaw
> drift.

It is interesting when the act of focusing takes away from the activity
such as carrying a glass of water. If you consciously try to balance it to
avoid spilling, it gets worse, if you trust your instincts, it generally
goes better. My theory is that when you consciously try to do it, you
engage a lot of extra machinery which adds latency, and that is why you
get "out of sync" vs when you try the intuitive way.

> I also learned to ride a bicycle at an early age. When I needed to get a
> motorcycle endorsement on my license I found if you took a class the state
> testing was waived. During the class they explained the physics of
> counter-steering and how you're really pushing the bars in the opposite
> direction of your intended direction. Armed with all that new knowledge I
> damn near killed myself. I always thought you just looked where you wanted
> to go and it happened.
>
>
>

On Sat, 21 Dec 2024, rbowman wrote:

> On Sat, 21 Dec 2024 12:23:39 +0100, D wrote:
>
>> I also thought about it at university but came to the conclusion that my
>> math skills were not strong enough. But, I would have been too early for
>> the current AI boom anyway.
>
> AI can fall under the cognitive science umbrella but it isn't the whole
> discipline. My degree is in psychology which always needed some

Psychology? Would never have guessed! Mine are IT and Philosophy.

> explanation. It was experimental psychology heavily influenced by
> Skinnerian behaviorism. I know a lot about the brain structure of a white

I like skinnerian behaviourism. It is old, but it has a beautiful
simplicity.

> rat but you didn't ask the rats what they were thinking. I don't know
> squat about the 'Psychology Today' type of crap.
>
> The first two year's curriculum was the same for all programs so I had
> good grounding in physics, chemistry, math, and programming, if FORTRAN
> can be considered programming. After that there was a good deal of
> latitude. For example one of my electives was differential equations since
> I thought it might be useful but it wasn't a requirement.

I shudder at the memory of differential equations and my electromagnetism
course. I quickly came to the conclusion that I found math and physics
boring. I was able to push through some of those courses by sheer will
power, but I realized, why should I spend 4 years on something that I find
is boring?

So after jumping through legal hoops, and proving to the university that
my idea was correct and theirs wrong, they let me pick my own courses as
long as the course difficulty level (A, B, C, D level) met some
pre-specified levels. So in the end the emphasis was on IT and philosophy,
with a healthy dose of psychology, business, finance etc.

> At the time the degree was as useful as one in modern drama unless you
> wanted to pursue an academic career but I found gainful employment. Then
> as now unless you were a classical civil or electrical engineer you had to
> figure stuff out on the fly as it happened. Eventually programming and rat
> running converged.

This mirrors what I have heard from older colleagues.

On Sat, 21 Dec 2024, rbowman wrote:

> On Sat, 21 Dec 2024 12:06:00 +0100, D wrote:
>
>> Nonense... what doesn't kill us makes us stronger!
>
> I do really believe that.
>

So do I! There are many gems in Nietzsches work. =)

On Sat, 21 Dec 2024, rbowman wrote:

> On Sat, 21 Dec 2024 12:07:53 +0100, D wrote:
>
>> As long as there's forest or water I'm happy. Very neutral on mountains.
>> The wife however, loves moutains, and that severely limits the places
>> where we can move, but I think she'll be ok with a pine forest. She
>> hates leafy trees though. Hmm, very picky woman, now that I think of it!
>
> Western US. Other than cottonwoods along the rivers or some aspens, if it
> has leaves somebody planted it. There are a lot of maples, chestnuts, and
> a few oaks in town, all of which are non-native. A few years back the city
> went through one of the parks and took out all the non-native species. It
> was pretty naked for a while.

Montana is on the list! Someone suggested that we might like eastern
Oregon. Someone suggested Wyoming, but that maybe is too flat?

> Ft. Wayne IN is flat and surrounded by soybean fields. When I worked there

Horrible! Reminds me of when I visited an acquaintance on his familys farm
outside chicago. It was just fields and farms as far as the eye could see.

> I had to periodically go to southern Indiana where there are at least some
> hills to preserve my sanity.
>
> Water? You do know about Njord and Skadi...
>
> https://historiska.se/norse-mythology/skadi-en/

Good stuff! One of my very treasured possessions is a complete, swedish
translation of the icelandic sagas I rescued from a used book store! I
often thought about trying to find the author, and buy the copyright so
that I can publish them again.

On Sat, 21 Dec 2024, rbowman wrote:

> On Sat, 21 Dec 2024 12:04:44 +0100, D wrote:
>
>> This is a strong, scientific argument in favour of a pony tail! I do not
>> think I have the genetics to grow my hair that long though. My beard
>> stops growing after about 0.5-1 cm or so to my great sorrow. =(
>
> I manage a respectable beard but I'm definitely not in the ZZ Top class.
> Maybe 15 cm. It has lost bulk with age but my ponytail always had a limit
> too, not like some of the women with hair down to their butt. I'm not sure
> how that works.

Ahh... but you could always get beard extensions!

On Sat, 21 Dec 2024, rbowman wrote:

> On Sat, 21 Dec 2024 12:14:28 +0100, D wrote:
>
>> Yeah... he's not my favourite pope. I wonder if there will be a huge
>> backlash and a super conservative pope when it's time for him to go? I
>> heard rumours that one contender for the papacy is the only swedish
>> cardinal Anders (?) Arborelius.
>
> I had hopes for Benedict. I think he got tired of a fight he knew he

Interesting. My wife had a private audience with Benedict once. She said
he seemed like a nice guy.

> wasn't going to win. There is a lot of local controversy after the bishop
> banned the Latin Mass altogether. I think there is a Society of Saint Pius
> V priest who still does a traditional Mass two or three Sundays a month.
> SSPV is sedevacantist, rather than SSPX which skates on thin ice which is
> a quandary for the trads who don't want to go the whole route.

The great strength and the great weakness of christianity is that they are
bound by the book. This is a problem in todays woke world, but if they let
it go, they won't be christians any longer. I respect the guys who
struggled to reconcile the book with todays world without giving it up
completely.

On Sat, 21 Dec 2024, rbowman wrote:

> On Sat, 21 Dec 2024 12:17:41 +0100, D wrote:
>
>> I'm following the career of Musk with great interest! I wonder if he
>> will be the first trillionaire? I also wonder if he will eventually burn
>> out or if something will happen to him since he's achieved so much in
>> such a short time.
>
> I'm not nominating Musk but I do believe the out of fashion Great Man
> theory. With the mediocrity of the political class you get nothing but
> mediocrity, or equity as they style in.
>

Who do you think will be the first trillionaire?

On Sat, 21 Dec 2024, rbowman wrote:

> On Sat, 21 Dec 2024 12:11:02 +0100, D wrote:
>
>> Jesus! What a crime! The airport in Lithuania has a part that is old
>> 20th century style, and now they are expanding the airport with... you
>> guessed it, an anonymous glass and concrete structure, just like every
>> other airport on the planet. =( I like the old part and was hoping that
>> they'd continue on that theme, but no... the architects need to get
>> their pound of flesh! =(
>
> Quite a few of my college friends were studying architecture and their
> hero was Mies van der Rohe. I'm afraid those seeds have prevailed. He's
> one German immigrant we could have lived without.

Architects _today_ still study Mies. Since I studied in chicago he was a
local deity there. I do like architects trying to strike out on their own
and not copying old stuff, but I also do not like when they tear down old
stuff in order to build a glass box.

On Sat, 21 Dec 2024, rbowman wrote:

> On Sat, 21 Dec 2024 09:54:27 +0000, Richard Kettlewell wrote:
>
>> Absolutely yes. People group themselves in all sorts of ways: shared
>> language, shared religion, shared territory, shared enemy, shared
>> preferred computing platform. Pretty much anything you can think of.
>
> Shared territory, or civic nationalism, appears to have its limits. The
> aftermath of WWI showed you can't draw lines on a map and say
> 'Congratulations! You're a country!"

This lesson also applied to africa.

On Sun, 22 Dec 2024, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:

>>>  It's a pity zeppelins proved so impractical - THOSE had
>>>  a 'romance' and you COULD go for 'luxury'. Cruise ships
>>>  are a step up, but maybe only one step.
>>
>> I have on my to do list to start a zeppelin airline between europe and new
>> york. I just need to utilize synchronicity to bump into Richard Branson or
>> other billionaire of choice first, and then we're off! =D
>
>
> Oh, I'm sure it will happen ... 'visionaries' are
> magnetically attracted to each other ! :-)

This is the truth!

> I wonder if different materials might make zeps safer ?
> Graphite rods, carbon-fiber supports, something that'll
> give more under stress than simple rigid aluminum ?
> Could go 'meta' ... INFLATABLE, ADAPTIVE, extra supports
> you can work pneumatically or whatever. Then the thing
> is more like a dolphin or whale, dynamically adaptable
> to stresses in the short timescale.

I imagine that old kinds of scientific progress has been made since the days of
Zeppelin that positively alter the safety and economics and viability of
zeppelin flights. There's even a "far out" theory of vacuum zeppelins, that do
not use a gas but, a vacuum. I met a guy on a mailinglist who was going to do a
self-funded Ph.D. around that concept.

>>>  Anyway, for now, expect all transportation to be Just
>>>  Another Uber. We will have to wait for Musk to build
>>>  a luxury Earth/Mars travel line.
>>
>> I'm following the career of Musk with great interest! I wonder if he will
>> be the first trillionaire? I also wonder if he will eventually burn out or
>> if something will happen to him since he's achieved so much in such a short
>> time.
>
> Like many with ultra IQ, he's a bit, umm, skittish.
> SO far he's holding up, but TOMORROW, well, who knows ?

Yes.

> Some of these guys go off the deep end abruptly. I've
> only met ONE guy with about a 200 IQ who also had a
> solid personality. If you've seen US television, there
> are a lot of 'Sheldons' and only a few 'Paiges'.

I've met a few people who I thought were _way_ more intelligent than I am. I
obviously did not test them, but they were the kind of people who did not really
have any use for math books at university. They just took down the axioms and
worked out how things work from there. Some of them also only needed to read
things once, and they were all set.

I'd say it's 50/50 for those guys how mentally stable they are. One guy I liked,
went 2 times to the hospital during our studies for alcohol poisoning, and he
enjoyed having 15 degrees C in his room. He took a masters degree in IT
engineering, but found it boring and without challenges, so after a few years he
went back to school and took a masters degree in chemical engineering instead.
Haven't heard from him since, but I imagine he is holed up in a lab somewhere,
unless he took a third masters degree.

Another guy, I call him "the crypto ninja" was morbidly paranoid, and tried to
cheat me in business, secure in the knowledge that he was so anonymous that I
could never find him. Luckily for me, he was not as smart as he thought when it
comes to hiding his tracks, so I was able to track him down. He was fascinating.
Within one slim area, he was very skilled and knowledgeable, but he thought that
this skill extended to other areas as well, so he was proven wrong by my wife in
legal matters, and by me in privacy matters. Hmm, on second thought, maybe he
wasn't that smart after all? ;)

> ANYWAY ... I have some doubts about him getting to Mars
> in any useful way - but his giant rocket CAN transport
> LOTS of stuff into orbit or to the moon.

Rockets are boring! I was space elevators and shooting magnetically accelerated
loads into space!

On Sun, 22 Dec 2024, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:

> On 12/21/24 6:25 AM, D wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Sat, 21 Dec 2024, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
>>
>>> On 12/20/24 4:22 PM, D wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, 20 Dec 2024, rbowman wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On Fri, 20 Dec 2024 10:57:38 +0100, D wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> But now we have LLM:s!  What I find interesting is how different people
>>>>>> view them. I find the free ones you can play with online to be
>>>>>> incredibly boring. I use them as a kind of search engine on steroids
>>>>>> for
>>>>>> stuff that is not important (for entertainment purposes).
>>>>>
>>>>> Brave added one to the search engine but I turned it off. Might as well
>>>>> go
>>>>> straight to reddit which seems to be heavily mined.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> That's the thing. LLM:s for me, are good at summarizing articles, so
>>>> instead of being "ai" they are just a nice complement to searching, and
>>>> as long as they work and don't hallucinate, they save me some clicks.
>>>> That's about it.
>>>>
>>>> Oh, and writing government policy documents. When doing that, their
>>>> hallucinations are actually an asset! ;)
>>>
>>>
>>>  Ha Ha Ha - SO true there :-)
>>>
>>>  Anyway, as I say elsewhere, LLMs are just PART of
>>>  'intelligence'. OTHER parts need to be spliced in.
>>>  Brains are just WEIRD ... 600+ million years of
>>>  field-tested neural insanity.
>>>
>>>  However, somewhere in there - early - "ME-ism"
>>>  emerged. There's some neat-o trick to that which
>>>  we haven't yet grasped. We're not thinking quite
>>>  right about 'self'. I think THAT is the basic
>>>  paradigm and then you add more IQ and such ONTO it.
>>>
>>
>> Could you please expand on the me-ism part? I have certainly not detected
>> any me-isms and that is why I find them so boring. Give me volition,
>> initiative  and desperate attempts to stop me from deleting them, then
>> we're on to something!
>
> What, the "Me, Myself and I" thing ?
>
> It's the realization, however dim, that I am an
> autonomous unit. I am not that rock. I am not
> that tree. I am not that OTHER DAMNED IGUANA
> that's wandered into MY territory. There's ME,
> and everything else.
>
> In an odd sense it's anti-Buddhist.
>
> SO FAR I don't really see that in any of the
> AI models. They're well-perfected REACTION
> but there's still nobody home.
>
> We're missing something.
>
> At this time, that MAY be a good thing.
>

Ahh ok, got it! Yes, not a lot of "me" going on there for sure.

On Sun, 22 Dec 2024, rbowman wrote:

> On Sun, 22 Dec 2024 02:12:43 -0500, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
>
>> Those poor people ... caught between an ever-growing mountain of
>> facts/evidence and equally-persuasive *belief* (which requires no
>> facts). They TRY to find ways to splice it all together. It doesn't
>> work well ...
>
> A friend was a Young Earther despite being a proficient programmer. Given
> the premise God can do anything it's no problem for him to whip up the
> Grand Canyon with all its geological layers in his spare time. He was also
> well rehearsed in the creationist arguments against evolution.

Did you ever get anywhere with him in arguments, or was every argument
closed down by the "God"-argument?

On Sun, 22 Dec 2024, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> On 21/12/2024 22:19, D wrote:
>>
>>
>> On Sat, 21 Dec 2024, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
>>
>>> On 21/12/2024 11:17, D wrote:
>>>> I have on my to do list to start a zeppelin airline between europe and
>>>> new york. I just need to utilize synchronicity to bump into Richard
>>>> Branson or other billionaire of choice first, and then we're off! =D
>>>
>>> Frankly a nuclear powered ship would be quicker, safer and FAR more
>>> luxurious.
>>
>> This is the truth. But it would hardly be cheaper. =(
>
> I think you will find it would
>
> Already the economics of fully computerised bulk transporters with reactors
> look better than ever increasing bunker oil, especially in terms of high
> speed and low maintenance.
>
> If you got two nights in a luxury hotel AND to the USA from Europe for a
> similar price...

Well, comparing a modern, state of the art, zeppelin, and a nuclear
powered luxury boat from a financial point of view, should be a pretty
easy exercise.

I'll let you know once I meat Branson, or a Branson-derivative, what way
we decide upon. ;)

On Sun, 22 Dec 2024, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

> On 22/12/2024 09:31, rbowman wrote:
>> On Sun, 22 Dec 2024 02:12:43 -0500, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
>>
>>> Those poor people ... caught between an ever-growing mountain of
>>> facts/evidence and equally-persuasive *belief* (which requires no
>>> facts). They TRY to find ways to splice it all together. It doesn't
>>> work well ...
>>
>> A friend was a Young Earther despite being a proficient programmer. Given
>> the premise God can do anything it's no problem for him to whip up the
>> Grand Canyon with all its geological layers in his spare time. He was also
>> well rehearsed in the creationist arguments against evolution.
>>
>
> The problem is, that both the scientific narrative and the creationist one
> are complete, logical and unassailable.
>
> One posits a supernatural 'Big Bang' from which time, space energy and the
> laws of nature miraculously sprang, and the other posits a big Creation from
> which time, space energy and the laws of nature miraculously sprang, just
> already formed as a complete *fake*, like someone today constructing a '1000
> year old' house. Complete with faked history.
>
> The only difference is the latter big bang has a sentient intelligence with a
> Plan in charge.
>
> Really we only reject it on the slender basis of Occam - it's simply more
> complicated than necessary to explain this shit.

I'd add to that that one is a process and open to change (which has
happened and does happen occasionally) and the other a religion.

I have mixed feelings about Occam, since Occam tends to shut down waaaay
too many discussions waaay too quickly. Who is to say what is, in reality
"simpler" or less complex, if the understanding of the questions is
lacking?