Moderation Questions
The last iteration of the moderation discussion thread was a complete disaster. Numerous attempts to keep it on topic fa
Makes QM trivial. Bells inequalities etc. All in SMP from manh years ago.
All at a logic level. Doesn’t require that we are in a simulation. Just that it's simulatable. Also nice that gods can now become ordinary.
Indeed. And why rabbit hunting doesn't mean you would have got that card.
Also tackled the silly argument about whetehr randomness meant something about free will
Loads of details to be filled but really just leave consciousness (the problem of pain as I call it) and 'why is nothing something' as 'magic'.
What you are ignoring is that there was only slightly over three minutes left in the game. If there was five or more minutes left then knowing what you need to do makes more sense. You are correct, the Eagles knew what they had to do after failing the conversion. They had to go for an onside kick which has a 5% chance of success. The Eagles quickly found out they were gonna los
This argument boils down to saying they should give themselves 0% chance of winning the game if they fail the 2 point attempt on a second TD vs giving themselves the very small chance of winning by getting an extra possession with the onside kick if they fail the 2 point attempt on the first TD. You using the idea that kicking the extra point on the first TD keeps it a "one possession" game as an argument in favour of doing that is what people were arguing with you about and the argument was centred around the "one possession" term because it's a totally meaningless phrase when it comes to working out the actual likelihood of winning the game in that situation.
Simulation theory does at least offer an explanation for the problem of spooky action at a distance.
Well, science tend to be light on explanation and solid on solutions. For calculating when a rock hits the ground, physics will give you a nice answer with two dotted lines under it. For discussing why the rock hits the ground, physics will just lead you to another question, which will lead you to another question - rinse and repeat. Explanations are more for the metaphysics of it all.
The "problem" of quantum entanglement seems to my mind to have more to do with how describing a system with classical physics is different from describing it with quantum physics. With math this isn't all that confusing, because we expect differences when we swap out the models, numbers, units and equations. However, with words, especially colloquial usage, we use many of the same words for both instances, and then things get very confusing very quickly.
As far as simulation hypotheses go, pretty much any scientific model is going to look like information, because as a model that is what it is.
This argument boils down to saying they should give themselves 0% chance of winning the game if they fail the 2 point attempt on a second TD vs giving themselves the very small chance of winning by getting an extra possession with the onside kick if they fail the 2 point attempt on the first TD. You using the idea that kicking the extra point on the first TD keeps it a "one pos
I can’t think of any situation that I would rather kick the extra point early and then only be able to tie the game and go to OT except for when I have a team that always will win the battle over time (like the OSU Buckeyes vs. 90% of the NCAAF). Otherwise, going for two tells you exactly what you need to do to win, as early as possible.
The Eagles certainly are not that team this year nor is the NFL as unbalanced as NCAAF.
I can’t think of any situation that I would rather kick the extra point early and then only be able to tie the game and go to OT except for when I have a team that always will win the battle over time (like the OSU Buckeyes vs. 90% of the NCAAF). Otherwise, going for two tells you exactly what you need to do to win, as early as possible. The Eagles certainly are not that team
Slight counterpoint -- it also provides the opposing team with the same information.
Well the point of fine tuning arguments is that physicists think that if they were just slightly different by relatively minuscule amounts that nothing “interesting” would happen (meaning the universe would just fizzle out within a few moments of the initial conditions).
Well there's always the anthropic argument - if they weren't that, then we wouldn't be around to ask these questions. There is a theory that there is an infinite loop of expanding and contracting universes with different initial conditions, for example, so it's an inevitability that some of them will have values conducive to producing some sort of intelligent life forms. I cert
Unlike other ideas about this stuff, this actually has made one successful prediction, though not without controversy. Quantum Field Theory predicts values of the cosmological constant that are way too high for galaxies to form so some sort of delicate cancellation is going on. Most people like Witten hoped that it would be exactly 0 based on super gravity or super symmetry breaking details we don't understand yet. Weinberg in the 80s said if the cc was just random and maybe different in different parts of the universe, we'd be in a region where it was low enough to allow galaxies but not much lower than that ie no more fine tuning than is required. It was measured accurately a decade later and sorta close to that range.
Slight counterpoint — Onside kicks are generally not won or lost because the opposing times knows it’s being attempted.
I think the information is generally more valuable for the trailing team so going for two is better but this spot where you score a TD to go down 9 is one where there isn't a huge change in win probability between the two choices - unlike when scoring a TD to go down 8, where going for two is objectively correct late in the game but teams still sometimes get wrong.
Slight counterpoint — Onside kicks are generally not won or lost because the opposing times knows it’s being attempted.
I am not talking about onside kicks. I am talking about the winning team knowing how to balance the competing objectives of getting first downs and burning clock.
I agree. That's why I framed it as a "slight" counterpoint.
Unlike other ideas about this stuff, this actually has made one successful prediction, though not without controversy. Quantum Field Theory predicts values of the cosmological constant that are way too high for galaxies to form so some sort of delicate cancellation is going on. Most people like Witten hoped that it would be exactly 0 based on super gravity or super symmetry b
Was my statement about being able to derive most or all the fundamental constants from the speed of light and the fine structure constant correct? I wasn't sure. I suppose the strength of gravity/big G is probably needed too? Planck constant?
Logic is not the right tool for determining facts from fiction. But the story presented in Luke that Jesus was born in Bethlehem because of a Roman census is clearly ridiculous and many christians even will say it didn't happen. That Luke and Mathew contradict each other on why they ended up in Nazareth, where they went from Bethlehem after Jesus was born etc don't really h
A snippet:
New Testament scholar Dr. Harold W. Hoehner has summarized some of the top challenges faced by those who hold to the historical accuracy of Luke’s account.
He writes:
“[Emil] Schurer states that Luke cannot be historically accurate because: (1) nothing is known in history of a general census during the time of Augustus; (2) in a Roman census Joseph would have not had to travel to Bethlehem but would have registered in the principle town of his residence, and Mary would not have had to register at all; (3) no Roman census would have been made in Palestine during Herod’s reign; (4) Josephus records nothing of a Roman census in Palestine in the time of Herod – rather the census of A.D. 6-7 was something new among the Jews; and (5) a census held under Quirinius could not have occurred during Herod’s reign for Quirinius was not governor until after Herod’s death.”[2]
At first glance, these objections to the Roman census during the reigns of emperor [Imperator] Caesar Augustus (Octavius) and governor [legatus] Quirinus may seem insurmountable and quite difficult to answer, but an honest appraisal of the historical and archaeological evidence suggests that they are not.
The objections we will answer here are 1 and 2 – (1) the claim that nothing is known in the history of a general census during the time of Augustus, and (2) that in a Roman census Mary & Joseph would not have had to travel to Bethlehem to register.
Was There Census During the Reign of Augustus in the Roman World?
It is a commonly held assumption that the decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world was to be taxed, was a single census [a single event] in the entire Roman empire. The question is, is this how Luke understood it, or intended it to be understood? Very likely, not.
According to Hoehner, “What is meant is that censuses were taken at different times in different provinces – Augustus being the first one in history to order a census or tax assessment of the whole provincial empire. This is further substantiated by the fact that Luke uses the present tense indicating that Augustus ordered censuses to be taken regularly, rather than only one time.”[3]
New Testament historian Jack Finegan says, “As to the taking of such an enrollment in general, it is known from discoveries among the Egyptian papyri that a Roman census was taken in Egypt, and therefore perhaps also throughout the empire regularly, every fourteen years. Many actual census returns have been found, and they use the very same word (ἀπογράφω😉 which Luke 2:2 uses for the “enrollment.”[4]
The specific census which Luke mentions (Lk. 2:2), is that it “first took place while Quirinius was governing Syria.”
Apart from Luke, we have two other historical sources concerning Quirinius – the Roman historian, Tacitus (Annals 3.48) and the Jewish/Roman historian, Flavius Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews 18.1-2).
According to Tacitus (Annals 3.48), P. Sulpicius Quirinius died in A.D. 21.
Josephus’s reference to Quirinius in Antiquities of the Jews (18, I,1.) poses somewhat of a problem, because he informs us that the “taxings conducted by Quirinius while governing Syria were made in the thirty-seventh year of Caesar’s victory over [Marc] Anthony at Actium in 31 B.C. This would place the census in about A.D. 6/7, a date which is too late to be brought into alignment with the birth of Christ which was likely in the winter 5/4 B.C.[5]
In Luke’s account in Luke 2:2, he speaks of a census which “first” took place when Quirinius was governing Syria, so it is not out of the question that the census to which Josephus is referring was the second one, while Luke mentions the “first” one [i.e the earlier one].
Gleason Archer also notes that Luke, “was therefore well aware of the second census, taken by Quirinius in A.D. 7, which Josephus alludes to… We know this because Luke (who lived much closer to the time that Josephus did) also quotes Gamaliel as alluding to the insurrection of Judas of Galilee “in the days of census taking” (Acts 5:37).[6]
Additional evidence also seems to suggest that Quirinius served as governor twice which would then put him in an official position over Syria to enact the census of Luke 2:2. In 1784, a Latin inscription was discovered near Tivoli, located about twenty miles east of Rome. It is known as the Lapis Tiburtinus inscription, and according to Jack Finegan it, “…contains the statement of a high Roman official that when he became governor of Syria he entered the office for the second time (Latin, iterum). It has even been thought that this personage might have been Quirinius…”[7]
Whatever the identity is of the Roman official mentioned in the inscription, at minimum shows that it was not uncommon for Roman procurators to have served twice, and maximally it may eventually reveal that it was Quirinius himself, through further research.
That bolded wall of text seals the deal for me. This is easilly the worst thread (however active) on the entire site.
That bolded wall of text seals the deal for me. This is easilly the worst thread (however active) on the entire site.
Na, not even close
Anyone who accepts simulation theory has a casual relationship with justice and meaning.
Is having a casual relationship with justice and meaning appropriate?
