Quote from: Cat the Bounty Smuggler on March 01, 2022, 01:00:37 PM

Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on March 01, 2022, 10:22:47 AM

Quote from: Cat the Bounty Smuggler on February 28, 2022, 10:24:50 PM

Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on February 28, 2022, 10:06:34 PM

Quote from: S'mon on February 27, 2022, 02:47:35 PM

Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on February 26, 2022, 06:15:31 PM
It's not clear that civilizations don't need Ultimate Meaning to exist indefinitely. One could view history as littered with civilizations that lacked the moral fitness to survive and, so, were extinguished.

It's not clear that civilisations can exist indefinitely. Seems pretty unlikely to me.
Of course civilisations tend to wrongly conflate their own extinction with universal/species extinction. Rome falls, but life goes on. We don't reach the stars; we don't all die off either.

There's no discovered principle indicating that they can't.

The second law of thermodynamics seems pretty clear on the subject! 

ETA: Actually, that's not just a throwaway line. The implications of the 2nd law for the fate of the cosmos shook the intellectual world back in the day. In some sense Lovecraft is one of the reverberations of that quake.

Newton said that the necessity for a divine clockwinder was an absurdity resulting from his choice of mathematics. I wouldn't put the second law down as anything other than a description of how ideal gasses interact in a closed system. It may be that the universe is controlled by a principle of creativity or negentropy that overcomes that of entropy, making the latter a hoax. After all, where did the low-entropy state of the hypothesized beginning of the universe come from?

I mean, there could be, but note that you countered S'mon by saying "there's no discovered principle" that says civilizations can't last indefinitely, I pointed out that "well, ackshually, there is," and now you're appealing to a principle that might exist but that have we haven't discovered yet!

The so-called Second Law of Thermodynamics doesn't necessarily apply to civilizations, which are not closed systems. There is always more energy to be had, as far as we know, up to the limit of how much Helium-3 we can extract from Jupiter, say.

Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on March 01, 2022, 02:30:23 PM

Quote from: Cat the Bounty Smuggler on March 01, 2022, 01:00:37 PM

Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on March 01, 2022, 10:22:47 AM

Quote from: Cat the Bounty Smuggler on February 28, 2022, 10:24:50 PM

Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on February 28, 2022, 10:06:34 PM

Quote from: S'mon on February 27, 2022, 02:47:35 PM

Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on February 26, 2022, 06:15:31 PM
It's not clear that civilizations don't need Ultimate Meaning to exist indefinitely. One could view history as littered with civilizations that lacked the moral fitness to survive and, so, were extinguished.

It's not clear that civilisations can exist indefinitely. Seems pretty unlikely to me.
Of course civilisations tend to wrongly conflate their own extinction with universal/species extinction. Rome falls, but life goes on. We don't reach the stars; we don't all die off either.

There's no discovered principle indicating that they can't.

The second law of thermodynamics seems pretty clear on the subject! 

ETA: Actually, that's not just a throwaway line. The implications of the 2nd law for the fate of the cosmos shook the intellectual world back in the day. In some sense Lovecraft is one of the reverberations of that quake.

Newton said that the necessity for a divine clockwinder was an absurdity resulting from his choice of mathematics. I wouldn't put the second law down as anything other than a description of how ideal gasses interact in a closed system. It may be that the universe is controlled by a principle of creativity or negentropy that overcomes that of entropy, making the latter a hoax. After all, where did the low-entropy state of the hypothesized beginning of the universe come from?

I mean, there could be, but note that you countered S'mon by saying "there's no discovered principle" that says civilizations can't last indefinitely, I pointed out that "well, ackshually, there is," and now you're appealing to a principle that might exist but that have we haven't discovered yet!

The so-called Second Law of Thermodynamics doesn't necessarily apply to civilizations, which are not closed systems. There is always more energy to be had, as far as we know, up to the limit of how much Helium-3 we can extract from Jupiter, say.

"So-called?" Err...

As for "always more energy," let me quote some Asimov to you, from "The Last Question", since he says it better than I can:

Quote
You're thinking we'll switch to an- other sun when ours is done, aren't you?"

"I'm not thinking."

"Sure you are. You're weak on logic; that's the trouble with you. You're like the guy in the story who was caught in a sudden shower, and who ran to a grove of trees and got under one. He wasn't worried. You see, he figured that when one tree got wet through, he would just get under another one."

"I get it," said Adell. "Don't shout. When the sun is done, the other stars will be gone, too."

"Darn right they will," muttered Lupov. "It all had a beginning in the original cosmic explosion, whatever that was; and it'll all have an end when all the stars run down. Some run down faster than others. Hell, the giants won't last a hundred million years. The sun will last twenty billion years, and maybe the dwarfs will last a hundred billion for all the good they are. But just give us a trillion years and everything will be dark. Entropy has to increase to maximum, that's all."

Quote from: Cat the Bounty Smuggler on March 01, 2022, 03:06:06 PM

Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on March 01, 2022, 02:30:23 PM
The so-called Second Law of Thermodynamics doesn't necessarily apply to civilizations, which are not closed systems. There is always more energy to be had, as far as we know, up to the limit of how much Helium-3 we can extract from Jupiter, say.

"So-called?" Err...

As for "always more energy," let me quote some Asimov to you, from "The Last Question", since he says it better than I can:

Quote
You're thinking we'll switch to an- other sun when ours is done, aren't you?"

"I'm not thinking."

"Sure you are. You're weak on logic; that's the trouble with you. You're like the guy in the story who was caught in a sudden shower, and who ran to a grove of trees and got under one. He wasn't worried. You see, he figured that when one tree got wet through, he would just get under another one."

"I get it," said Adell. "Don't shout. When the sun is done, the other stars will be gone, too."

"Darn right they will," muttered Lupov. "It all had a beginning in the original cosmic explosion, whatever that was; and it'll all have an end when all the stars run down. Some run down faster than others. Hell, the giants won't last a hundred million years. The sun will last twenty billion years, and maybe the dwarfs will last a hundred billion for all the good they are. But just give us a trillion years and everything will be dark. Entropy has to increase to maximum, that's all."

Human civilization has lasted less than 10,000 years, and you're talking about 1,000,000,000,000 years. You're technically correct about the ultimate fate of the universe, but a civilization lasting even 100,000 years would qualify as lasting "indefinitely" based on all current and past examples.

Quote from: Pat on March 01, 2022, 05:31:45 PM

Quote from: Cat the Bounty Smuggler on March 01, 2022, 03:06:06 PM

Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on March 01, 2022, 02:30:23 PM
The so-called Second Law of Thermodynamics doesn't necessarily apply to civilizations, which are not closed systems. There is always more energy to be had, as far as we know, up to the limit of how much Helium-3 we can extract from Jupiter, say.

"So-called?" Err...

As for "always more energy," let me quote some Asimov to you, from "The Last Question", since he says it better than I can:

Quote
You're thinking we'll switch to an- other sun when ours is done, aren't you?"

"I'm not thinking."

"Sure you are. You're weak on logic; that's the trouble with you. You're like the guy in the story who was caught in a sudden shower, and who ran to a grove of trees and got under one. He wasn't worried. You see, he figured that when one tree got wet through, he would just get under another one."

"I get it," said Adell. "Don't shout. When the sun is done, the other stars will be gone, too."

"Darn right they will," muttered Lupov. "It all had a beginning in the original cosmic explosion, whatever that was; and it'll all have an end when all the stars run down. Some run down faster than others. Hell, the giants won't last a hundred million years. The sun will last twenty billion years, and maybe the dwarfs will last a hundred billion for all the good they are. But just give us a trillion years and everything will be dark. Entropy has to increase to maximum, that's all."

Human civilization has lasted less than 10,000 years, and you're talking about 1,000,000,000,000 years. You're technically correct about the ultimate fate of the universe, but a civilization lasting even 100,000 years would qualify as lasting "indefinitely" based on all current and past examples.

Oh, sure, and that was the response I was expecting. Hence the smiley in my post on the subject. It's just that Neoplatonist1 responded by challenging the scope of 2nd law itself and contradicted themselves in the process, so I decided to have a little fun with them.

Quote from: Pat on March 01, 2022, 05:31:45 PM

Quote from: Cat the Bounty Smuggler on March 01, 2022, 03:06:06 PM

Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on March 01, 2022, 02:30:23 PM
The so-called Second Law of Thermodynamics doesn't necessarily apply to civilizations, which are not closed systems. There is always more energy to be had, as far as we know, up to the limit of how much Helium-3 we can extract from Jupiter, say.

"So-called?" Err...

As for "always more energy," let me quote some Asimov to you, from "The Last Question", since he says it better than I can:

Quote
You're thinking we'll switch to an- other sun when ours is done, aren't you?"

"I'm not thinking."

"Sure you are. You're weak on logic; that's the trouble with you. You're like the guy in the story who was caught in a sudden shower, and who ran to a grove of trees and got under one. He wasn't worried. You see, he figured that when one tree got wet through, he would just get under another one."

"I get it," said Adell. "Don't shout. When the sun is done, the other stars will be gone, too."

"Darn right they will," muttered Lupov. "It all had a beginning in the original cosmic explosion, whatever that was; and it'll all have an end when all the stars run down. Some run down faster than others. Hell, the giants won't last a hundred million years. The sun will last twenty billion years, and maybe the dwarfs will last a hundred billion for all the good they are. But just give us a trillion years and everything will be dark. Entropy has to increase to maximum, that's all."

Human civilization has lasted less than 10,000 years, and you're talking about 1,000,000,000,000 years. You're technically correct about the ultimate fate of the universe, but a civilization lasting even 100,000 years would qualify as lasting "indefinitely" based on all current and past examples.

This. If there is a principle limiting civilizations' lifespan, it has nothing to do with the intrinsic nature of civilizations, instead requiring people introduce heroic spans of universal time, based on an assumption that the universe is a closed entropic system, in order to delimit them.

Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 24, 2022, 02:45:34 AM

Well IRL belief in God does shield you from falling into the SJW cult.

If only that were true.

QuoteThis. If there is a principle limiting civilizations' lifespan, it has nothing to do with the intrinsic nature of civilizations, instead requiring people introduce heroic spans of universal time, based on an assumption that the universe is a closed entropic system, in order to delimit them.

Intrisic nature of civilisations is physical - they are emergent social structures of biological organisms. Therefore ultimately they are INTRINSICALLY dependent of physics underlying whole biology. They hold no independent nature removed from human nature. Therefore they are dependent of human survival. No human, no cry... I mean no civilisation.

Quote"Fiat lux" and even within cause and effect you eventually run into an unmoved mover or first cause that set everything in motion. How did we get that massive point of energy that exploded into our universe? If it was just a massive vacuum fluctuation in the quantum field (with the negative energy component exploding out in the opposite direction in spacetime accounting for its relative absence in our universe) then where did the quantum field come from? Et cetera.

The Mythos actually makes more sense Pre-Einstein when it was believed our universe was a steady-state that had always existed and always would. The Big Bang made Fiat Lux a far more plausible answer for the meaning behind the universe than the random happenstance of an unthinking universe (for those who don't know, the scientist who first proposed The Big Bang, Georges Lemaitre, was also a Catholic priest).

I'd argue it ultimately does not matter because Time is not some absolute metaphysical constant the universe flow within but internal physical dimension twisting and turning, crushed by gravity and speed. So ultimately shape of this dimension within Universe watched from BEYOND tells us nothing... It does not solve pantheism - theism dispute like at all. External Creator can easily created infinite static time dimension, while Autothelic Universe-God can still has limited dimension within his BEING (because it's autothelic and therefore there are literally no rules to it's existence).

Quote from: Wrath of God on March 27, 2022, 05:43:47 PM

QuoteThis. If there is a principle limiting civilizations' lifespan, it has nothing to do with the intrinsic nature of civilizations, instead requiring people introduce heroic spans of universal time, based on an assumption that the universe is a closed entropic system, in order to delimit them.

Intrisic nature of civilisations is physical - they are emergent social structures of biological organisms. Therefore ultimately they are INTRINSICALLY dependent of physics underlying whole biology. They hold no independent nature removed from human nature. Therefore they are dependent of human survival. No human, no cry... I mean no civilisation.

Quote"Fiat lux" and even within cause and effect you eventually run into an unmoved mover or first cause that set everything in motion. How did we get that massive point of energy that exploded into our universe? If it was just a massive vacuum fluctuation in the quantum field (with the negative energy component exploding out in the opposite direction in spacetime accounting for its relative absence in our universe) then where did the quantum field come from? Et cetera.

The Mythos actually makes more sense Pre-Einstein when it was believed our universe was a steady-state that had always existed and always would. The Big Bang made Fiat Lux a far more plausible answer for the meaning behind the universe than the random happenstance of an unthinking universe (for those who don't know, the scientist who first proposed The Big Bang, Georges Lemaitre, was also a Catholic priest).

I'd argue it ultimately does not matter because Time is not some absolute metaphysical constant the universe flow within but internal physical dimension twisting and turning, crushed by gravity and speed. So ultimately shape of this dimension within Universe watched from BEYOND tells us nothing... It does not solve pantheism - theism dispute like at all. External Creator can easily created infinite static time dimension, while Autothelic Universe-God can still has limited dimension within his BEING (because it's autothelic and therefore there are literally no rules to it's existence).

So you're saying that Doctor Who was right and that it's a timey-wimey ball?

Quote from: Wrath of God on March 27, 2022, 05:43:47 PM

QuoteThis. If there is a principle limiting civilizations' lifespan, it has nothing to do with the intrinsic nature of civilizations, instead requiring people introduce heroic spans of universal time, based on an assumption that the universe is a closed entropic system, in order to delimit them.

Intrisic nature of civilisations is physical - they are emergent social structures of biological organisms. Therefore ultimately they are INTRINSICALLY dependent of physics underlying whole biology. They hold no independent nature removed from human nature. Therefore they are dependent of human survival. No human, no cry... I mean no civilisation.

Quote"Fiat lux" and even within cause and effect you eventually run into an unmoved mover or first cause that set everything in motion. How did we get that massive point of energy that exploded into our universe? If it was just a massive vacuum fluctuation in the quantum field (with the negative energy component exploding out in the opposite direction in spacetime accounting for its relative absence in our universe) then where did the quantum field come from? Et cetera.

The Mythos actually makes more sense Pre-Einstein when it was believed our universe was a steady-state that had always existed and always would. The Big Bang made Fiat Lux a far more plausible answer for the meaning behind the universe than the random happenstance of an unthinking universe (for those who don't know, the scientist who first proposed The Big Bang, Georges Lemaitre, was also a Catholic priest).

I'd argue it ultimately does not matter because Time is not some absolute metaphysical constant the universe flow within but internal physical dimension twisting and turning, crushed by gravity and speed. So ultimately shape of this dimension within Universe watched from BEYOND tells us nothing... It does not solve pantheism - theism dispute like at all. External Creator can easily created infinite static time dimension, while Autothelic Universe-God can still has limited dimension within his BEING (because it's autothelic and therefore there are literally no rules to it's existence).

Gravity doesn't exist, it's a function of mass. Speed is a function of distance/time therefore wich one is the fundamental one?

Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 24, 2022, 02:45:34 AM
Well IRL belief in God does shield you from falling into the SJW cult.

I know devout christians who are totally SJW. It might make it less likely for you to embrace it, but it's no sure protection against it.

Quote from: Neoplatonist1 on February 23, 2022, 11:46:43 PM
The following quote by Jordan Peterson on the nature of evil and evil acts struck me queer:

QuoteJordan Peterson:
And you have to think about it from an aesthetic perspective, in a sense, because it's a celebration of horror, and it's a conscious attempt to violate the conditions that make life itself tolerable, and it's aimed at dehumanization, destruction of the ideal and, at an even deeper level, revenge against the conditions of existence itself. I'm trying to understand the developmental pathway that leads to acts like that.

This sounds a lot like what the Cthulhu Mythos are, and what a game revolving around them is doing, and what Lovecraftian weird fiction in general is doing.

Call of Cthulhu is fantasy. It's not horrific or scary at all. Some filmmakers have tried their best to make HPL-like monsters look terrifying on the big screen. Mostly, it just frightens small children though. And may gross out some older adults. ALIEN was best at such creepiness. But that movie went nowhere near what slasher movies were doing at the time. Go after stories like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, if you're looking for issues Peterson has.

Quote from: migo on March 28, 2022, 02:15:33 PM

Quote from: GeekyBugle on February 24, 2022, 02:45:34 AM
Well IRL belief in God does shield you from falling into the SJW cult.

I know devout christians who are totally SJW. It might make it less likely for you to embrace it, but it's no sure protection against it.

You're a riot. Hitler was Catholic. So therefore...

What nonsense. Anyway, you're either Christian or you're not. You can't be raging xenophobe and be Christian. Pick only one.

There's nothing about being Christian that precludes being a huge asshole. You don't get to change the definition of Christian each time a Christian does something bad any more than Muslims get to change the definition of Muslim each time one of them does anything bad.

Quote from: migo on March 28, 2022, 03:12:18 PM
There's nothing about being Christian that precludes being a huge asshole. You don't get to change the definition of Christian each time a Christian does something bad any more than Muslims get to change the definition of Muslim each time one of them does anything bad.

I would say it depends on whether you try to use Christianity to justify your xenophobia, in which case it's at minimum a heresy. But Hitler in particular was neither a Christian nor an atheist. He something like a deist or a pantheist. Sources: 1, 2

   Church is for sinners, not for saints. 

Quote from: Cat the Bounty Smuggler on March 28, 2022, 04:15:05 PM

Quote from: migo on March 28, 2022, 03:12:18 PM
There's nothing about being Christian that precludes being a huge asshole. You don't get to change the definition of Christian each time a Christian does something bad any more than Muslims get to change the definition of Muslim each time one of them does anything bad.

I would say it depends on whether you try to use Christianity to justify your xenophobia, in which case it's at minimum a heresy. But Hitler in particular was neither a Christian nor an atheist. He something like a deist or a pantheist. Sources: 1, 2

Hitler was Catholic on paper, and Catholics were similar to Muslims in doing sneaky conversions - baptising a Jewish kid to make him Catholic, and they believed the baptism is what counts. So Hitler was baptised, he was a Catholic. Catholics don't get to change the rules on that. As for his actions, he was far more Lutheran than anything else, and appeared to be directly inspired by Martin Luther with his hatred of Jews. Luther's anti-Jewish sentiment was also directly based in scripture, and wasn't something that was unheard of in Christianity before him. Technically being anti-semitic isn't necessarily being xenophobic, but I'm assuming you meant to justify bigotry, and there's certainly plenty of precedent from mainline Christian bigotry.

But Hitler wasn't the only bad Christian (nor was Luther) - the more you study history, the more of them you find (Ulrich Zwingli just off the top of my head). So a discussion about him in particular is a red herring. Christians can be assholes - very much so - and SJWs are assholes, so Christians can be SJWs. An honest belief in God doesn't prevent you from being an asshole, so an honest belief in God doesn't prevent you from being an SJW.

This can be expanded even further. It's a simple concept: Being X doesn't mean you can't be a bad person. There's no group of people, no identity, under which you won't find some bad people. A white-supremacist SJW? A fascist anti-fascist? It's more likely than you think. You can have a rationally thinking atheist who unquestioningly follows dogma, and you can have brilliant idiots (Neil deGrasse Tyson and Elon Musk as examples).