Karl

It's fun to ruminate using PI as an example of an undefined concept though. Kind of microcosm of what passes for thought these days. Using words and puns is great fun.

Laissez Faire capitalism requires and warrants no regulation. That's why it's called Laissez Faire. It's the freedom for people to trade as they like without external interference other than the law preventing the initiation of force. Bees and Ants are automatic entities, humans are not. It is not our nature. Our survival is dependent on us holding life as a value by choice. We must use reason as the tool of our survival. Anything which promotes life is good and anything that destroys life is evil. You should turn away from socialised health and education if you are rational and hold life as a clear value. Socialism can't work. Man is not a bee. He must think long term and rationally, he must hold life as the primary value. Socialism denies all three. If mans mind is the key to his survival and happiness, then denying a man physical freedom denies him his mind. Socialism is a collectivist movement. It denies identity, hence it denies existence. Those that wish to indulge their whims and live as bees and ants, I say good luck to them. Fuck off somewhere and build a nest of twigs and spit, but leave men alone to be men.

You can eat a constant but it remains a constant. Voids can't have aspects.

That's how we got the current state of affairs. Capitalism with heavy Government regulation eventually becomes regulatory capture and then crony capitalism. Socialism then turns into serfdom. There are no ways around it. Socialism does not conform with reality. It's evil because it is anti-life. Any attempt to yoke capitalism to socialist aims inevitably creates the conditions for facism to flourish-which is just another kind of collectivism. You can't take 'just a bit of deadly poison' or introduce 'just a bit of cancer'. Damage is damage. Anything that promotes the value of life is good, anything that doesn't is bad. I could work through the philosophical reasons why socialism is anti-life because it isn't immediately obvious how I reached that conclusion-other than the obvious historical truths. We are simply better never to introduce socialism in any form, no matter how well we think we might minimise it's effect. Eventually it will mestastisize into one of the two most destructive forms. We should never trade with any socialist, or fascist countries. One reason the USSR lasted so long was the Wests inability to withhold trade.

PI is a constant.

Are you playing devils advocate ? Cuba received huge subsidies from the USSR and was still a country of extreme poverty. Since ending of the subsidies it began opening up its markets by allowing a small amount of laissez faire freedom, but it has been insufficient to cover the loss of subsidy.

It would lead towards it. You say you despise authoritarian principles and the violence which inevitably arises from their application. Yet, you cannot see the hypocrisy in your ideology which requires an authoritarian regime. You don't advocate freedom but oppression. You believe 'might makes right' and man must be made to conform to your ideology by force if they will not volunteer it.

Existence exists, A is A and a thing is a thing. We percieve things the same, but, as you are demonstrating quite ably, we don't necessarily conceptualise and integrate them the same way. That we employ reason does not make us omniscient, we are eminently capable of error as well as accuracy. Yet, it remains, that existence exists, A is A and a thing is a thing, regardless of our conceptions. The only way we make sense of it and survive is by reason. The more accurately we reason the better the outcome. Irrationality leads to error. Error leads to failure. Until we accept that this is so, then we will be worshippers of one mystic whim after another leading to failure. I cannot impose any standard, that would be the antithesis of objectivism, all I can ask is that you attempt to correct your conceptual errors and see if what I'm saying is true. I don't subscribe to a perfect kind of regime, economics, or the possibility of an error free existence. I'm saying that we must try to root our thoughts and actions in reality to the best of our ability. We must begin to recognise that this, and only this, will guide our ethics and the attainment of values-however imperfectly. It gives us, personally and individually, a code and a set of principles to follow. This is why I no longer subscribe to being a libertarian, I recognise the same error exists as it does in communism, fascism and religion. They all deprive man of the power and freedom to reason by instituting a code which comes from an authority with no basis in reality. Just another kind of whim worship, however well meaning, it is doomed to exactly the same failure as any other forced code. We are going to have to agree not to trample on each other, steal or kill each other, not to compromise our ethics and to accept an objective and just law which is limited to upholding freedom and property rights. We are on our own and we had better realise that no man made regime, or God is going to save us. We will conform to reality or we will perish. There are no other options left on the field and reality is a harsh master.

A rationalist believes reality is purely a concept derived from the mind. Your argument is a non sequitur. Reality is what is, that which exists and by which the senses provide precepts which are conceptualised and integrated. We have to conform with it or perish, it's as simple as that. Laissez Faire Capitalism conforms to reality and ethics guide our holding and obtaining values.

existence is identity;consciousness is identification. If you want it in plain economic terms it is laissez faire capitalism with strong law and justice protecting men's liberty and property. Not because this is some utopian, ideal political/economic system, but because it is the only one which complies with reality.

I'm afraid they haven't done as well as you might have believed and despite socialism not because of it. That debt will now be paid in full, just as Greece discovered, burning all your furniture to heat your house doesn't come free. American capitalism ended in 1900 and the new deal was socialistic.

Unfortunately their idea of a cure is worse than the disease. Government cannot provide a solution for social or economic problems, they have a big stick to beat people and that's all they have. People will have to look for themselves for change and stop believing that politicians can provide anything good. The Government are limited to robbery with menace, or menace with incarceration, or kidnap and murder. It doesn't matter if that's Bernie, Trump or anybody else. I think the people are beginning to suspect that what they are being told is a far cry from the truth and are lining up to give the establishment a kicking. Of course, just like Star Wars, you can't expect that the empire will not strike back. They will use everything they have-and they have almost everything-to maintain the status quo. All they really need is for the people to believe the people are getting what they want in order to continue business as usual. Free stuff, protectionism, walls, tariffs, security are all very attractive to the mass men.

People will wear any kind of ridiculous thing for free stuff. Socialism promises free stuff. It's never succeeded in doing anything but creating misery, poverty and death, but that hasn't ever stopped the fools believing the claims of the snake oil salesmen.

I have that, pictures at an exhibition, trilogy, tarkus, brain salad surgery all on vinyl.

Came as something of a shock. ELP were one of the groups that that made up my formative years. Always wanted to be the next Carl Palmer. Never saw them live as I was too young, but eventually saw Palmer a few years ago and he played a large chunk of their work.

Ive never found it easy, quite possibly due to teaching methods that have caused me to have a kind of number blindness. I winged it through school and managed to pass the maths exam despite being unable to do trigonometry-then passed my college exams without being able to do it (pretty difficult as it was electrical engineering). Finally, at degree level, I was taught where all those trigonometric expressions came from and at last I grasped it-trouble was I was then running to stand still at higher maths, but I made lots of errors in the workings (I think it was the tendency for schools to accept the workings, over the accuracy which meant I never fully integrated numbers ).

If only you took that approach to philosophy. ;-) Are you telling me that you can compute near light speed navigation for a planet in a distant universe to arrive at a certain point in time ? If you can I'm mightily impressed.

Excited particle.

Time doesn't shorten for the traveller Michael. Space stays the same length. It's the time in relation to the observer that changes. For the observer more time passes than for the traveller. Hence the traveller is younger than the observer after a journey. I think time is relational as a measure but only directional (forward) else wise.

Relatively of course. For the traveller time remains a constant. I'm surprised to find I'm somewhat in agreement with Kant on this subject- which automatically makes me doubt my judgement on the matter.

Agreed, but we still only need distance and angle in a 3 dimensional universe. Time isn't even linear in respect of speed over distance. We get into all kinds of trouble when we reach speeds approaching that of light. Time passes differently for the observer than for the traveller. Trying to compute the actual time of landing on a journey of several light years, at even fractional light speed becomes a serious obstacle for calculation. You could over shoot you meeting time by several decades by travelling too fast, the faster you go, the later you get there. It's outside my theoretical field of knowledge. Brian probably knows all this stuff, he likes hard sums.

so was John Lennon. I don't mind you holding space time as a fourth dimension I'm pretty relaxed about it. My point is that you can describe a cube in terms of three dimensions, certainly no architect or engineer includes time on an orthographic projection. We get all kinds of material specification and surface finishes, but never once does it suggest one side must be 5 hours 3 minutes time plus or minus a tolerance. If it isn't needed for something simple like a cube, then why call it a necessary dimension ? Time, it seems to me, is related to distance as a measurement, but in and of itself it is largely just an arrow pointing forward in which we live-I imagine this is why Brian posted the CS vid. Go on, convince me, I'm easily at the possible stage of thought regarding it so pretty open to a good argument that would sway me. It doesn't upset my objectivist, or economic philosophies in any profound way. My guess, such that it is, that time isn't a thing at all except for its direction towards entropy for materials. That, at the boundaries of a finite universe it is unfolding along with space. In other words, where it isn't, it isn't, because there is no IS.

Crap.

Yes we do know how it will work out. Economics has specific laws much like geometry, we don't need to experiment to discover what the result of printing money will be. All that is required is a supply demand and price curve. The more money, the greater the demand, the higher the price. If an Angel gave everyone a million pounds tomorrow then the price of goods would be bid up until the equilibrium point is reached. Those who got the first flush of money would do considerably better than later recipients because they would buy the goods at a lower price. Productivity kicked up in the USA prior to the 1930s crash and has done so recently in China. Always and everywhere the result is the same. Sudden investment in capital goods, followed by a boom and then a massive crash. The problem is the boom is mal invested. The market is not determining get allocation of scarce resource and so effort is wasted. An example is the Chinese ghost towns-enormous productive effort in producing goods which no one buys. The model is the same one it always was. Time deferred consumption (saving) in order to accumulate sufficient capital to raise productivity through capital investment. The market decides what the value of the production is in relation to other forms of production. Money is just a cloakroom ticket for an uncollected coat. If you counterfeit lots more coat tickets than coats the result is a lot of people getting cold and very annoyed. You can fit Henry Hazlitts book into a days reading. It's better than spouting Government propaganda without having a clue about its economic efficacy. They told you QE would work-it didn't. https://mises.org/system/tdf/Henry%20Hazlitt%20Economics%20in%20One%20Lesson.pdf?file=1&type=document

I wouldn't call it a dimension. An object can be defined without specifying time.