Easy to say when you have a foundation that holds all your wealth and you only pay marginal income taxes. That's pure marketing. Anarcho-capitalism is a better idea.
234 karma · joined May 4, 2013
And I don't think it's that far off from our universe: we are likely something akin to a thought in a Mind. Anyways good chat - I think there's a big gap between our understanding of what is possible and what is, and how it can be given it is what we observe.
I can imagine a world (maybe not ours) where there are no atoms, just ideas, in God's mind, and the ideas are interacting and are formed by something completely different than atoms. Like our dreams. Are there atoms in dreams? What about a dream of a person that turns into a bird and flies through the emptiness of space and disappears into a mist that starts dreaming of a person.......
So the question still remains and it is still open to discussion even if you insist that any universe must follow a rule-based system. Moreover, that would imply the existence of these rules in a kind of platonic sense. How would they give rise to a universe? This is not as simple as you make it to be, at all.
I think you're mistaken about philosophy; maybe early 20th century philosophy. Right now it seems like there's lots of interesting debates going on. But I'm just an observer.
Wigner clearly delineates the problem on his famous paper about the applicability of mathematics. It's still a topic in philosophy to this day. I'm sure you appreciate that if it was a simple solution it wouldn't be a big deal.
The scientific method is a method for testing of hypotheses, yes, but that is simply one way of discovering what is true. Logic, testimony, written accounts and records, mathematical proofs, and so on are all other ways of discovering truth.
For instance, you cannot prove who was the Emperor of Rome at a particular date in the past with experiments. You must use historical record to do so. Unless you call your experiment opening a book - but that's not a controlled experiment. And even if all books said that Marcus Aurelius was the Emperor of Rome on March 16, 180 you still wouldn't be able to prove it mathematically or using logic. You're using inference to the best explanation in a form of Bayesian probabilities.
Even though it is a matter of fact that either he was or wasn't, there's no experiment you can run on that hypothesis that could tell you the truth.
On your point 2, "X=>Y" indeed means X implies Y, so given X is true, Y is true as well. It could mean causality, but it could also mean necessity. So saying "X is true means Y is true" can be applied to numerous different contexts, including one of causality. I let go of the apple, and the apple falls. This last statement being equivalent to every body that is not subject to forces follows the geodesic created by the spacetime manifold. Which can be put in a logical form X=>Y.
And on your first point: the natural world is clearly following mathematical truths, and that is the entire point of the conversation. The ask of "Why is nature consistent" implies something much much deeper about the nature of reality than what scientific experiments can show. It is a metaphysical question, not a scientific question.
Yet it appears like all physical effects are following such laws and rules. I.e, there appears to be something that breathes fire into our equations.
Why do apples fall from trees? Gravity. Why does gravity exist? Because matter bends space. Why does matter bend space? We don't know yet.
Ultimately, any X is either caused or uncaused. Not "X=Y", but either "Y=>X" or "X exists" - the latter being uncaused.
This is pretty basic philosophy.
It's clearly a much deeper question, given even Wigner wrote a paper about it. He called it a miracle.
Look, ultimately, mathematics is abstract and the physical world is material. The fact that an abstract condition is able to affect material conditions is literally a miracle that can only be explained metaphysically.
Placing an arbitrary barrier on the questions that can be asked is called dogma.
Example: Noether's Theorems explain why there are conservation laws. There are conservation laws because the universe observes certain symmetries.
Ultimately it's the only plausible explanation as to why mathematics applies to the physical world.
Notice that even the universe follows that structure.
Please.
I work in finance (investment strategy; ensemble trading models) and I trust my algorithms more than I'd trust 99% of the portfolio managers out there. And these PMs are incredibly capable at coming up with bullshit explanations for market moves on short notice.
Tell me, how should I react to an article that could be used as an argument against my rights being the same as yours?
Tell me, how does an article like this improve the actual problem at hand at all? It doesn't, and by doing so, it shifts the conversation from what should be illegal to a conversation that is totally irrelevant.
I'm bringing it back to the core of the issue.
Prohibition is bad. It doesn't work. We fund drug cartels because of it. We fund drug dealers. And ultimately, it is up to the individual to make his own choices over what he should or should not do with his body.
Hence why domestic abuse and drunk driving are illegal and should be.
Of course drunk driving should be illegal, you're putting others at risk.
Think of Kantian logic applied to the body. As long as I am only affecting my body when doing something, it is irrelevant whether it is safe or not.
Breathing is not safe either. Living on earth as well; small rocks from outerspace have created mass extinctions over and over.
The universe isn't safe and I don't want to be safe; I want to be happy. You know what doesn't make me happy? The possibility of going to jail over something that hurts nobody.
So take your safe space and put it in that spot in your mind that is labeled "wishful thinking".
Edit: Note that anyone that is trying to argue the point of the article with me is missing out the point: it doesn't matter if it is safe or not, it is my choice to do it. Just like it would be my choice to take my own life away. Or to get an abortion (if I was a woman). It is not up to you, government, or society to tell me what I can or cannot do with my own body and whether I should feel bad about it or not.
So yeah, while you can argue whether it is safe or not, it doesn't really matter. Going to jail is definitely less safe than smoking pot.
If it is physically feasible, which it is given we have immune cells and they are just evolution-created versions of these nanobots, then it is just an engineering problem and we humans are pretty good at engineering things.
Things will keep moving forward; macro approaches such as your suggestions will work insofar as we can find the cells. In the end it will probably be a mixture of re-engineering our immune cells to better identify and protect against cancer, macro approaches such as the ones you mentioned, and more.
It is a hard problem, of course, otherwise we'd have it solved by now, but we've solved hard problems before. And with AI it will be easier and easier to do so.
So it's not like 16 hours of reading and trying to understand the material, more like 16 hours of school work.