On Oct 4, 4:27 pm, Andrzej Rosa
yahoo.com> wrote:>
>
> Not likely. Actually I believe the other way around. I stopped smoking
> once for 1.5 year, and I consistently couldn't think so hard and for as
> long as when I was a smoker. It went back to "normal", when I started
> smoking again. It seems to me, that smoking is a bit like taking
> amphetamine, which was mildly popular (and undoubtedly effective)
> performance enhancing drug among students during my time in college.
It could be a case of chemical dependency, rather than enhancement of
cognitive faculties. A lot musicians have claimed that being stoned
makes them more creative...but it could just be the other way around:
that their brains have changed in response to those chemicals, and
wind up needing those chemicals in order to do what were previously
ordinary tasks....
> Oppenheimer was a sailor, Bohr used to climb, I don't know anything
> about Einstein besides him being supposedly gifted dancer. Turing was
> an endurance weenie, iirc.
And I'm sure they all played golf and tended their gardens, too -- but
of course, there's a difference between training for physical fitness
and taking up sports. For one thing, physical training is about
"exhausting" yourself, whereas in sports, you really try to conserve
energy if possible....
> Why spin-doctor irrelevant results of a shabby science? To spread
> FUD, or something?
I don't know that the science is shabby. But I'm certainly glad they
banned smoking indoors.
> Especially oxygen.
Depends on the context. Whereas carcinogens are always bad. That's
the difference.
> Sure, throw a grenade into a bar. There are only idiots deserving to be
> shot inside, because they all went there to (_literally_) poison
> themselves.
I don't understand that either. What barbarism. I wouldn't shoot
people with chemical dependencies outright -- I'd put them through
Nazi medical experiments first, pump 'em full of chemicals and see
what happens. I mean, since they're obviously into that kind of stuff
anyway, why not?
> BTW - if you want to live longer, you should castrate yourself
> immediately. The sooner, the better. Both your chances for
> developing cancer and your life expectancy will be affected
> stronger by castration than if you started smoking. Smoking on
> average costs about 7 years of life, eunuchs on average live about
> 15 years longer than normal men.
There's a difference between correlation and causation, man, and there
are probably hidden variables at play. But I don't care about living
longer so much as living better.
> Yes. Besides, I doubt anybody could show, that the amount of toxins we
> get while driving a car is actually harmful. You can't say that if big
> amount of toxins is undoubtedly harmful, also a small amount will be.
> Our bodies do not work that way. If so, moderate training wouldn't be
> healthy.
Well, since you're nicely sealed up in a car, okay, sure, driving in
traffic would be healthier than cycling in traffic.
> Axioms let you define triangles. The only "real" triangles. And there
> are exactly 0 instances of "real life" triangles.
Again, what are "real" triangles? Unless you're a Platonist talking
about the ideal Platonic Form of a Triangle.
> You mean, that they wouldn't know about that, or that they would know
> differently? They could not know, if they were "elves". If they knew
> "differently" they would be wrong. That simple.
No, not wrong. If this alien species were colorblind and you show
them a red apple, they would not be wrong in calling it gray,
according to their visual apparatus. I really don't know what you
don't understand here.
> Do not overcomplicate things without dire need (Occam's pledge ;-).
Oh fuck Occam and Goodwin and Darwin and Hitler and all that other
tripe that always gets brought into an usenet discussion
eventually....
> Colors are the same as triangles, especially in that regard, that you
> can say whatever you want about them, as long as you don't mind being
> wrong.
???
I don't even know what the hell you're talking about WRT triangles and
real triangles, so there's no way I can parse your analogy comparing
them to colors....
> That discussion goes way too far.
No, it's quite a propos of our present chat.
> Why not? They were challenged many times, and a lot of good math was
> build upon various sets of axioms.
I meant that I would not have the intellectual wherewithal to mount a
half-way credible challenge -- but I am glad you reveal yourself, once
again, to be in agreement with me, after all, because I do leave open
the theoretical possibility that others may do so successfully...like
an alien intelligence such as I've proposed....
> You can have various axioms and the math will still work. They aren't
> "beliefs", they are assumptions.
Oh my God, that is just so silly. "Belief" is for all practical
intents and purposes a synonym for "assumption." It's like you want
to quibble that 2+3 and 4+1 are really different.
> We don't know if e=mc^2 is universally true.
We don't know that it isn't -- and insofar as it still works, we
believe it true, while leaving a bit of room in the back of our minds
that it may not be, or may only be partially true...or, as I say, true
only for human brains, and not alien ones. Again, 1+1=2 makes sense
to us the way colors make sense to people with normal vision; but the
congenitally blind would have no understanding of colors, and an alien
species with a radically different brain would likely have no
understanding of our mathematics.
> Before we discovered this
> equations, we thought that energy and mass is constant in all processes.
> Now we think, that only energy and mass taken together remain constant,
> but maybe they don't? (and there are very accurate theories, which allow
> for this equation to be violated)
So your point is?
> I haven't seen any of those movies, but they aren't supposedly very
> good, so book first.
Okay...but if it puts me to sleep....
> You would still need a code of sorts.
No, unless you mean "code" in the sense of biological processes like
DNA codes and signals -- but that's not what we're talking about here.
> First, you couldn't freely
> exchange all information between two individuals, because you'd flood
> them with irrelevant info.
You are simply stuck in your human-centric way of thinking about
things, aren't you??
"Irrelevant" is a human concept...it is born of the sequential way of
looking at things we have...our brains naturally -- perhaps
inevitably, even -- thinks in terms of division, of numbers, of past-
present-future...but that's just our brains...though we cannot imagine
it, it's entirely possible that an intelligence "thinks" (or, to use a
better term for the context of my remarks here, "is aware") in ways
not sequentially-based...for remember, many physicists suspect that
time itself is an illusion -- and certainly all the mystics in history
have claimed thus...a creature which sees past the illusion of times
would likely not engage in sequence-based cognition...and thus issues
like "relevancy" would be, ironically to us, irrelevant to them....
God is all-knowing...does that mean He is flooded with irrelevant
information?? I'm not trying to be cute here: think about it. (And I
remind you again that I'm an atheist, so please don't go off into a
tangent on how God doesn't exist....)
> You have to select things you are going to
> "tell" to someone.
Think about what you are saying!
You would only need to "tell" "something" to "someone" because you are
not telepathic.
A truly, wholly telepathic race would not need to "tell" "anything" to
"anyone"...it is simply "known," as we would say...I told you that a
truly, totally telepathic race (as opposed to common facile
conceptions of telepathy as some cocktail party salon parlour magic
trick such as what you get from comic book sci-fic) would not need
language...not needing language, things would not be broken up into
discrete data packets -- things -- which need telling....
> Once you start selecting, you create a channel of
> communication, which demands some sort of coding. Like a CB radio or
> ethernet, for example. All units can't talk to all units at the same
> time, because then information becomes noise.
>
> In this regard telepathy is just another way to talking, you just don't
> need to move your lips.
Indeed, you are thinking of telepathy in its simplest, comic book
form. I'm talking about what I'd call "true" telepathy, which isn't a
matter of discrete units trading information by non-physical means....
> Yes, easily. Everybody talks at the same time in a crowded room.
And yet, it's all understood -- instantaneously. As a matter of fact,
under this conception of such a telepathy, "understood" is not even
quite the best word, as it implies a previous state of not
understanding...under such a telepathy, things would simply be
"known" (which could imply a previous state of not knowing, yes, so
you see, our very language fails us here, insofar as I'm trying to
describe a state which our human linguistic faculties cannot
describe)....
> I know my abilities from experience. You can't build sophisticated
> technology relying solely on experience.
My God, think about what you're saying!
Of course you rely on "experience." All our technology was the result
of "experience" -- which is why you need to know about oil processing
before you can have plastics, etc. As a matter of fact, part of why
classical Chinese civilization, despite its great technological
achievements as detailed in the still-unfinished eleven-volume
"Science and Civilization in Ancient China" from Cambridge University
Press, "lost" to the West may be that they did not build upon their
technological "experiences" like the West did....
> You don't need direct experience to understand something.
An old philosophical debate, to be sure, but something like color, or
sex...yes, I'd have to say that you need first-hand experience to
"understand" or really "know" it.
> Actually most
> of our knowledge isn't based on direct experiences, and that's my point.
Paltry point, considering that the discussion doesn't pivot on how our
knowledge is acquired, but rather that an alien species might have it
by other means.
> Another limitation wouldn't matter. We would know what sound is and how
> Doppler effect works even if we were deaf.
Um, no.
Mathematic equations would not substitute. This is why we have all
kinds of calculations about higher-dimensional spaces and yet still
cannot quite fathom them.
I really don't know what else to say to you if you think, as I pointed
out, that understanding calculations about higher-dimensional spaces
is the same as understanding through "first-hand physical sensation"
those spaces (analogous to your claim about the [congenitally] deaf
understanding the Doppler Effect).
> What "understand"? It's not poetry we are talking about, so you don't
> need to "understand" anything.
"Understand" or, more prosaically then, "know." A congenitally blind
person doesn't know colors, and therefore cannot "understand" them --
especially if used in poetry! Likewise a congenitally deaf person
cannot "know" or "understand" the Doppler Effect, just as we poor
three-dimensional creatures cannot seem to ever truly perceive higher-
dimensional spaces, except only haltingly through the second-hand
report of our own mathematics....
> You need to be able to predict what
> studied thing will do in various circumstances. "Understanding" has
> nothing to do about it.
Semantics. It is a poor debater who would argue on such grounds.
> See? Nothing in the world we evolved in prepared us to such a shock,
> like Aussies living the life of bats, but somehow we manage anyway. We
> weren't crippled in our ability to comprehend it.
Dude, we made that up. That's why we can comprehend it -- directions
are human inventions. Just like mathematics.
It's actually silly to suppose that an alien life form is going to
have the same notions we do. This is why the vast majority of science
fiction is actually pretty stupid -- not to mention, as I first
mentioned, poorly written in terms of "language arts."
> The same thing.
?!
No it's not the same thing. Just because something works for human
beings doesn't mean it will work for aliens, or God.
And how many angels can fit on the head of a pin, anyway?
> Even if their brains are different and they would have
> trouble with "understanding" colors, but not Aussies, it changes very
> little.
They wouldn't have "trouble" understanding colors the same way us guys
don't have any "trouble" understanding women and their monthly
periods: we just don't, that's all. What we think we understand are
actually just dry facts about the phenomenon. But you never know,
never understand, unless it happens to you.
Tree falling in the forest and all that, like.
> --
> Andrzej Rosa 1127R
