Do you think that the Kantian ideal for the Kingdom of Ends is possible without mankind making a leap in reason until we all achieve a hive mind?
Due to my distaste for Kant's philosophy, I have only a tenuous grasp on the concept of the kingdom of ends. I do believe it is possible without a hive mind, but I'm not certain it is wholely desirable.
Zurreco wrote:
Do you believe that religion, both in the theological sense and moral applicability sense, lead to factioning throughout a society, no matter how ideal or unideal that society would be? Would you determine that we have factioning here? Do you think that this is a good or a bad thing, and should we actively attempt to abolish "technical" factions (as in, official bonds, rather than simple friendships)? Would you conclude that this makes us an ideal or unideal community?
I do believe that religion does lead to factioning throughout a society, in both senses -- so long as more than one religion exists which applies to each sense. And yes, there is factioning within TASvideos (though I don't believe it is attributable to religion). I would rather there weren't factions here in TASvideos, because I would prefer we could all agree on its purpose. I have no idea what you mean by "official bonds", though. I don't think that TASvideos is my ideal of a community, either, but for communities that are real it ranks fairly highly.
Blublu wrote:
Dear trendwhore,
What have you done?
I've created a monster.
Blublu wrote:
Dear trendwhore,
Will this madness ever end?
Yes.
andrewg wrote:
How many "ask" threads do you think will be in existence on this forum in the next month?
I'm going to be an alarmist and predict at least 9000.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
Any ideas what caused this horrific fire that is affecting the atmosphere in most of the Bay Area, if not all of Northern California? I gotta admit, the sunrises are pretty spectacular, filtering through all this smoke. Maybe I'll take a picture, if I can get up early enough.
Joined: 8/1/2004
Posts: 2687
Location: Seattle, WA
DK64_MASTER wrote:
Any ideas what caused this horrific fire that is affecting the atmosphere in most of the Bay Area, if not all of Northern California? I gotta admit, the sunrises are pretty spectacular, filtering through all this smoke. Maybe I'll take a picture, if I can get up early enough.
Smug.
You guys missed the rad fires that we had back in the end of 2003, I guess. Since we had so many thousand square acres burning at once, and for so long, there was enough smoke and ash to change the weather patterns. Also, the sun was blotted out with ash for about a week, and it gave the most beautiful blood red sunrises I'd ever seen. Since I lived like 15 miles from one part of the fire, there was this calm glow through the mountainsides near my parents' house over in North County.
Take pictures when you can, because you probably won't be lucky enough to have another huge fire come and destroy a hunk of your area for a few more years. Keep the dream alive!
Why are you being a trendwhore, and not working on Gens? J/K. Kind of.
Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.
Why are you being a trendwhore, and not working on Gens? J/K. Kind of.
Because I am having difficulty coding the feature I am at work on, and tend to work better on these sorts of problems if I can take breaks and come back at them with fresh perspectives.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
Can you explain, in simple terms, the ramifications of the Poincaré conjecture?
I'll help you out again, Warp. Suppose you have a flexible sheet of rubber or some such. The edges of the sheet are tacky and will stick to each other if pressed together. What sort of things can we do with this sheet? We could join two edges into a cylinder and then join the edges of the cylinder into a torus:
We can make a sphere by folding the four corners together in the center and joining the edges wherever they touch:
Of course we would have to inflate that to make it seem like a sphere, but that's why we are using a flexible rubber sheet! In both of those examples we got rid of the edges by gluing them to each other. There are lots of different shapes without edges we can make, but since our rubber is so flexible, it turns out some shapes that may initially look different are actually the same. Inflate a little here, deflate a little there ... voila!
Of course, the sphere and the torus can never be made to look the same no matter how much you might push and pull on the rubber. The torus has a hole in it, while the sphere does not, and that makes them fundamentally different in ways that can be described rigorously using mathematical concepts. It turns out, though, that any shape you make that 1) has no edges, 2) has no holes, 3) doesn't pass the sheet through itself (which would be impossible if you were manipulating a sheet of rubber in the real world) is actually equivalent to the sphere. That is, there is no edgeless, holeless, 2-dimensional surface embedded in 3-dimensional space that is not deformable into the sphere.
The Poincare conjecture asks if this is true for a 3-dimensional sheet in 4-dimensional space. As far as I know, there aren't any practical applications of this knowledge, and there may well never be. As I mentioned before, intellectual exploration of this nature is an end unto itself. Perhaps this book will help you to understand the significance, beauty, and artistry of "useless" mathematical exploration.
Ok, how about this: What is the axiom of choice and why is it such a controversial axiom?
Are you genuinely interested in having me supply lay interpretations of various math concepts? Almost anything you could ask about is already explained in places like mathworld or wikipedia, but if you truly find their articles too detailed or jargony, I am willing to explicate and simplify as best as I am able.
Ok, how about this: What is the axiom of choice and why is it such a controversial axiom?
Are you genuinely interested in having me supply lay interpretations of various math concepts? Almost anything you could ask about is already explained in places like mathworld or wikipedia, but if you truly find their articles too detailed or jargony, I am willing to explicate and simplify as best as I am able.
Well, my original question about the Riemann hypothesis started as a joke. That doesn't mean I understand the Riemann hypothesis. It just means that I didn't expect an answer.
I asked about the Poincaré conjecture only half-seriously, although somewhat interested in seeing a simple explanation. As for the axiom of choice, I know what it says, but I don't understand why it's such a complicated and controversial thing. The wikipedia article about the subject is not the clearest possible.
I just thought about it and realized one inherent flaw with "Ask ______" kind of topics: the reason they spawn so many secondary topics (essentially, a trend) is that they're concentrated around a single person; as such, any polycentric conversation would result in derailing, and eventually, after the most interesting questions get asked, the topic goes downhill. Asking the same questions in multiple threads isn't good, either, as it bloats the amount of text needlessly.
Something like "Ask anyone" would be a solution, although it presents a bit different problem: such topic is prone to become crowded and expanding beyond control in case hot discussion arises.
Any thoughts?
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
I thought about making a topic called "Ask X" in order to stop the copycats, but there is that problem you mentioned (assuming people would actually stop making individual topics).
I thought about making a topic called "Ask X" in order to stop the copycats, but there is that problem you mentioned (assuming people would actually stop making individual topics).
So you'd be copying Upthorn's thread sentence by sentence then?
We can make a sphere by folding the four corners together in the center and joining the edges wherever they touch:
Of course we would have to inflate that to make it seem like a sphere, but that's why we are using a flexible rubber sheet! In both of those examples we got rid of the edges by gluing them to each other. There are lots of different shapes without edges we can make, but since our rubber is so flexible, it turns out some shapes that may initially look different are actually the same. Inflate a little here, deflate a little there ... voila!
Of course, the sphere and the torus can never be made to look the same no matter how much you might push and pull on the rubber. The torus has a hole in it, while the sphere does not, and that makes them fundamentally different in ways that can be described rigorously using mathematical concepts. It turns out, though, that any shape you make that 1) has no edges, 2) has no holes, 3) doesn't pass the sheet through itself (which would be impossible if you were manipulating a sheet of rubber in the real world) is actually equivalent to the sphere. That is, there is no edgeless, holeless, 2-dimensional surface embedded in 3-dimensional space that is not deformable into the sphere.
The Poincare conjecture asks if this is true for a 3-dimensional sheet in 4-dimensional space. As far as I know, there aren't any practical applications of this knowledge, and there may well never be. As I mentioned before, intellectual exploration of this nature is an end unto itself. Perhaps this book will help you to understand the significance, beauty, and artistry of "useless" mathematical exploration.
