There is no god

[G_burnett]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6trH...eature=related

oh what the heck .. enjoy

[SteveA]

Steve!

Gasp.
Triple dog gasp.

Steve, if you met a beautiful woman, and you just instaneously fell in love ... ( let us say you had the ability to control her ) ... would you rather her love you ... genuinely ... or would you rather "make her" love you, according to your will, and not her own? Against her will in fact.

We're talking about free will and an ability to be able to choose some condition and have that condition be true.

If that condition may not be true and depends upon something other than myself, then such a conditional thing is not free will.

In your example, free will would regard all these things, including whether or not to be instantly in love as well as whether or not you could "control" her etc.

What would you choose? Give it some thought. I think you'll find that you'd likely choose circumstances similar to how they are.

For example, you were encouraging legislation requiring people to have health insurance and it appears you were granted your wish in that respect (as I predicted you would be, because it's once again something else that takes freedom away from people).

So now, I won't be able to use cash for medical services anymore. I'd have to pay more for services. The medical industry will become further monopolized by the government/corporate monopoly and they will have even less reason to keep customers happy with the service and doctors will apparently be required to use more electronic means of collecting payment. So we're likely moving in the direction of having government simply allocate people their livelihoods via. electronic decree.

It's similar with the global warming scam. It will encourage Bush et. al. to basically invade any oil producing country and control their resources as well. This has already been going on for quite a few decades in many industries. The pattern is very simple and it has a bad outcome.

As an analogy, I might assume you'd encourage a law passed to assure every gets equal lovin' and hence the police would make sure you had the lady love you.

But of course we all have choices. I don't have to follow along with these either. Others could try to threaten or coerce me etc. into complying ... there are always decisions. In the end, though actually anyone can call the bluff if they realize it. The only power a tyrant has in the end is just a belief by people that they do have it.

I suppose that is the pro/con of free-will. Some will embrace freedom, and some will embrace force.

Ok, here's something to consider - you can rule the world down to every last detail. Do you want to?

If you want to rent a video, well who had to make the movie? Everyone was waiting for you to tell them what to do. If you tell them to be creative ... well you'd have to explain that. If you didn't want to know the storyline, then you'd have to give people some free reign etc.

(Actually, nature and time already have this problem figured out and tyrants don't last - force is self destructive. The problem is that this is not immediately obvious to most people and so there's always a bit of confusion when people are free ... the alternatives are worse)

Melanie can only imagine nothing, she can't make it so.

I think she has some very good insights into some things and is working hard to point these out to others. I'm glad she pointed out a new direction for me. Though I think it's best to see it as another pathway.

On the other hand, there could be some entirely logical/deterministic though effectively infinite perspective in which everything was predetermined and fit in perfectly and every pathway of growth was predetermined and choices or free will arise from ones own finite limits, and the growth of these is experienced as change in time (that's my view of it at least).

That's a view that's very possible and could exist. It's the view that at least some subset of this, science is likely following, but still there's actually little I can feel very confident about, even the stuff that seems solid as a rock because I can also see how I could be completely wrong about most anything and ironically, even in an entirely logical manner as well, and that's something else that Melanie's comments helped emphasize.

I think it's best to at least see the possibilities and that way if things change (as time never quite gives you the same thing twice), that's ok, because you had some plans ready in that event as well.

There is no sun. It's actually "the light" on an electron microscope and what you think is the earth is actually a slide. Space and everything we think we know about it is actually an elaborate quark nano-bot illusion put on by the giants that are looking through the glass. They get freaked out when you know they are looking. I can imagine it, but I can't make it so.

Well consider that if you think things to be a choatic mix of unpredictable things, then yes, it will be that.

For example, if I tried to create a mathematical system where 1+1=2, but also can be 1+1=3, then without something else to decide which answer is which, nothing at all determines the answer.

We could have a system where 1+1=3, and that could have many interesting properties as well, but the point is simply that if you don't work by a consistent set of rules, then those rules don't exist. A freedom to make "random" choices, means that the results are similarly random.

Now what are those rules? Well you need something to build upon. A solid fact that can be relied upon. If it conflicts with things that already exist, then either you have to redo things from scratch (which in some ways is impossible if you relied upon getting to this moment to make the decision as changing the past would no longer allow you to get to this moment - though if you had multiple versions of things multiplexed and made choices between those, then that could work, but recognize that those choices are simply limiting as they restrict other alternatives, hence the magnitude of influence of those choices depends upon the diversity of options to choose from, which must come as the first decision - in other words, keep your options open, explore around, leave a trail of breadcrumbs and be ready to go back and rewrite something different from the start, but ultimately the past never disappears - of course you need a lot of space to store all that, and in a sense, there really was never a decision made, the decisions are really ones of choosing to forget (for now) - the only other possibility appears to be a complete random, or I like the word Austin used "uncaused" (not even unknown - in my personal definition and unknown is still a deterministic/logical thing that that's connected in a precisely predetermined manner to everything else but is simply not visible in the present), and I don't even think event horizons or life and death etc. fall into that category - then again, that could just be me rambling ... I'm just saying how things make the most sense to me, from my experiences in life and ideas that others have as well, and how I think things can fit together, but things beyond that would obviously make no sense to me and I couldn't even really give an opinion - because I don't know any properties that could lie beyond that, though there are qualities of experience that are inexplicable and appear to be the foundations upon which everything else is built - for example, why does green look like it does? I don't think there's any way this could be logically explained, but there are some things we can still do with logic along these lines - consider that we have various letters in our alphabet (and I see these qualities similar to symbols showing such lowest levels of conscious information) and though we might see the capital letters H and I as being something entirely arbitrarily selected, well despite this, they still have some rules they must follow in how they're related - for example, if we rotate either one 90 degrees and stretch it or compress it, then they are interchangeable, hence we could then determine that they arise from a single thing being viewed in different ways and then we can tie the properties of these two to spacial rotation and dimensional rescaling and consider one, as a rough analogy, to be similar to the number 1 and the other a 2 and the process of adding 1 would then be to rotate and rescale space. That's just a rough example, but I think there is evidence that conscious perceptions are similar - for example, an object can appear to be a different shade, depending upon the contexts of other colors that surround it in time or space (I say that because the eyes adjust sensitivities over time and hence time/memory is a component as well as contrasts across an image).

[SteveA]

I saw something today, I am sure there is some sort explanation for it but, I do not know it. I was left only to my imagination as what exactly it was I saw, or thought I saw. I was on the porch. In my perephial vision, I saw a flash from lightening, and when I turned to look ... I saw something I have never seen before. Now, what I thought I saw ... well it looked like a white-hot point. I suppose you could say star like. It was still very much "daylight" out. The only "dark-ening" was from the coulds. There was also what appeared to be a glow around this white-hot point, which faded out before it did. After the 1-3 seconds this took place, I had a "burn-spot" in my vison for a bit. Now, I am fairly confident I actually saw "something." But I suppose, it's possible there could be something strange going on inside my head (there often is), and I actually saw "nothing." Either way, it was something.

Yes, I do agree. It was something and part of it was unknown. The unknowns are things still being discovered and I'm rather certain some of them science, as a social institution, won't be able to measure or prove with certainty that they exist.

I think learning all the tools of science is great, but this is really just a reference, like a compass. There's "terrain" out there that no one else can discover for you or prove exists. I think how solid it, or how far it can reach depends upon how solid your construction of it is and how many tools you can reliably work with.

It's been interesting for me to see how this terrain appears to share so many features in common with things others have described as well, though I think some things are just too difficult to try to translate and also there are a lot of possible translations. It's one of those things where really someone has to just decide how things should be and explore it (or other possibilities, if those exist) for themself.

The other option appears to be to just take a step at a time and not have any idea what the purpose is nor where they're going (in some cases this can work fine as well - it all fits in, and that's a beautiful realization ).

[SteveA]

Perhaps 'Nothing' is the default that our brain arrives at, when the evidence of our senses finds no existing framework to fit within.

What to do with these bits of information as they accrue?

They may be of import at some later juncture, so best not to discard them.....

Hmmmm.....hard to catalog items without a reference.

Perhaps just a file titled 'Nothing', with these anomalies filed in chronological order, further broken out as visual, auditory, tactile, scent, flavor or combined?

Now where to actually store the file?

Should be fairly nearby, for quick access.......

Okay. That's it. Place it under 'Senses'. Call it 'The Sixth Sense'. Crazy, but rather logical in it's own way. Over time, all of these 'nothings' will most probably sort themselves out........

Probably.....

Just another 'Nothing'. Quite a number of them these days.....

Now, what were we doing before the current 'Nothing' interrupted us?

I tend to think that's a great way to do it.

Hang on to them - they're hard to acquire and easy to lose. I say that in the figurative sense that everything is part of experience - tossing out or ignoring things or writing them off as impossible or useless etc. ends up proving those assumptions true and leaves one knowing nothing other than the assumptions they began with (and only those assumptions that remain intact after that "ordeal" LOL).

If you'd like to see a big picture, then you're going to need a lot of colors to paint with ... and the ones that you can't make by just combining the preexisting ones together are definitely not things to toss away. No, those are worth figuring out a way to figuratively squeeze a little more room onto ones palette, IMO.

In a sense, I'm referring explicitly to nothing specific and only that. (I know it sounds funky and nonsensical, but that's actually where growth arises - it's all the things you didn't expect and couldn't have explained beforehand. In a sense, keeping a record of these, and yes, hopefully even the times, circumstances and the possible relationships to other things that may have existed etc. is really how things previously assumed impossible become discovered, though I personally do enjoy 'hard science" and believe that, in the end, things actually have quite "normal" and logical relationships, though at the time of something existing this may not be initially recognized and it can seem, from that perspective to have been extraordinary - well reality remains exactly as one perceives and believes it to be - the experiences are real, the thoughts are real, the lack of them can be real at times as well, etc. and there can also be or not be a reason and purpose behind them, though I'd say it's rather certain that if one is not looking for anything in this respect, then they will find nothing - it's all true, the question is how is it all true, and we can look beyond that as well ... it's quite an interesting place to explore ).

[SteveA]

Melanie is a dreamcharacter. An appearance in the dream. The dreamer and dream are inseparable.
When it is the role of the dreamcharacter that it can use a thought (who am I?) to remove another thought (me) it will be so and what remains then is what never left and never will leave.
Liberation/Enlightenment (for no one).

In Reality nothing ever happened.

Maybe so, but we're still quite interesting nothings and I love the twists and turns (hard to resist a little curvature in space! LOL)

Also, though it can be a single thing, that does not mean that the known or seen etc. are all of this, and hence that one thing can also be diversity and this diversity can be infinite and it can be solid etc.

Though I do admit it can be easy to get caught up in details and lose track of that, which causes a paradox and a figurative spiraling into a closed path.

I do think that one thing that can't be done is to both be single minded and have it infinite and this is reflected in the properties of nature - if it's infinite, then it can't stop at some point and if it's a point, then it can't be infinite (though the diversity of paradoxes that results in can go on forever and hence it remains infinite in that respect and time goes on, trying to stop time is futile practically by definition).

Hmmm... well, it appears I've found at least one potentially infinite pathway and that's the number of rambling posts that can be made on the subject!

[Meem]

We're talking about free will and an ability to be able to choose some condition and have that condition be true.

I wasn't under the impression that free-will makes it a given that a choice/condtion had to be true. Good or evil, make your choice? Bob wants girl-x to love him, of her own free will. Girl-z, wants Bob to think she loves him of her own free will, because she knows that is what he wants. All she really wants is Bob's money. Bob has also met girl-y. Gril-y is far to submissive for Bob, she is controllable, and Bob is pretty certain he could make her do his will, even if it were against her own.

Now Bob has a set of choices, to choose from 'free-willy' and all. No matter what choice Bob makes, he will have done so freely and truthfully. Bob is unaware of Girl-Z's intentions. What condtion would there be in any of the choices that Bob could not chose freely?

If Girl-Z was not allowed to decive Bob, would she be free?

It seems you like the idea of choice and truth, judging your further words in the reply. Which is why I gasp, and dont understand why you would say, "though free will inherently has no value." It seems to very much clash with your reply, in my opinion.
In my opinion, free-will is very much about choice, truth, and value.

As for my wishes about healthcare, those are far from being realized. But, I would consider just about any movement in the previous stage of stagnation a better situation. I'm not worried about money. I won't need it when I'm dead. However, as things would go, it seems I "need" it while living. Oh, the good life, at such a cost.

[SteveA]

I wasn't under the impression that free-will makes it a given that a choice/condtion had to be true.

So you think that free-will is conditional?

Well, what if a slave wants to be free, but it's conditional upon what the master decides.

Is that free-will? I don't think so. It can't be a conditional thing that may or may not be true depending upon some whimsical thing to decide it. There's already plenty of complexity to things when you're free to do anything you want.

Good or evil, make your choice? Bob wants girl-x to love him, of her own free will. Girl-z, wants Bob to think she loves him of her own free will, because she knows that is what he wants. All she really wants is Bob's money. Bob has also met girl-y. Gril-y is far to submissive for Bob, she is controllable, and Bob is pretty certain he could make her do his will, even if it were against her own.

Now Bob has a set of choices, to choose from 'free-willy' and all. No matter what choice Bob makes, he will have done so freely and truthfully. Bob is unaware of Girl-Z's intentions. What condtion would there be in any of the choices that Bob could not chose freely?

If Girl-Z was not allowed to decive Bob, would she be free?

Let's simplify it, did these people get to choose who and what they would become in life or did something else force them into these circumstances?

[Meem]

No, I do not think free will is conditional, do you?

Originally Posted by SteveA
We're talking about free will and an ability to be able to choose some condition and have that condition be true.

The instances I supplied are not conditional, they are conditions. I could make an eternity more choices and options for the example, if you wish. The only choice we are perring at through the looking glass here, is/are Bob's, ideally. Girl-Z, is not intended to be a hick-up, just to highlight something in your above quote.

[SteveA]

No, I do not think free will is conditional, do you?

It wouldn't be free will if it was otherwise. The question is whether or not it exists. I believe it does as things would probably end up looking a lot like they do right now if I had to go through and try to figure out what an ideal might be (then again, I do admit there are quite a few times when it's hard to believe and there could also be a circumstancial bias as my imagination could be limited in what other possibilities could exist, so I may not be seeing all the options ... though that doesn't appear worth spending a lot of time thinking about).

The instances I supplied are not conditional, they are conditions.

I think it's important to consider what things led to the specific circumstances. For example, if I stole things from my neighbors and was convicted of this and hauled off to jail, then does this deny that I had free will to be who I was?

I don't think so. If I want to have neighbors around, I couldn't then expect to also abuse them and have them stay. Similarly, I wouldn't want the job of having to rebuild everything that was broken etc.

So though we might say that it wasn't conditional at the time, going to jail, it was still a circumstance that was, at a minimum, influenced by the individual (if not entirely determined by that person, which is quite possible)

I could make an eternity more choices and options for the example, if you wish.

I'm certain you could, but would you choose to? (I think it's doubtful )

The only choice we are perring at through the looking glass here, is/are Bob's, ideally. Girl-Z, is not intended to be a hick-up, just to highlight something in your above quote.

I don't know what you mean by "hick-up", but how about this - if you were in Bob's shoes, how would you want things?

It's easy to pick something specific, isolate its interactions from everything else and say that that specific thing should be different in some aspect, but consider that if you have free will and can change it, then you can change many things, but all these things have relationships and some of those are tied to things you may not want to change.

As a quick example, in you scenario, we can assume Bob loves Girl-z. Well, Bob has no idea what intentions Girl-z may have. Now ask yourself the same thing - if you happened to run into some you were helplessly in love with, would you want to potentially ruin that and know all her thoughts etc.? If it's good the way it is and you couldn't have made it better yourself, then there's no reason to change anything.

And if you look at this more generally, would you like to have permanent X-Ray vision to see through everything? Well then you'd just see space. If you want to be able to control where you look, well you already have that. If you want to be able to select optional boundaries, then there really are no boundaries and you're back to seeing space or an unimportant chaos of things.

No, I'm rather free will exists and there are reasons why things are as they are, though that doesn't mean they can't be changed, but I think it takes understanding them first and in a sense, that understanding is how the changes occur.

Consider what would be needed in order that all things exist in a single space. No matter what property/motion/direction something had, it would need to fit into that structure with everything else. A pathway would have to be available for everything (though the pathways may not interact in time the way they're generally assumed to ... time is still quite an interesting subject)

That's the only way I can see that everything fits together.

[G_burnett]

The word of next week, the word of the week indeed Steve might just be time ... kind regards graham

hmm no that won't work ... relativity demand we have to add position too ..