test no topic

[Bao]

How did the Alien bring in a slimy giant egg into the council? Was he allowed to do that?
I don't get it...

[Steve James]

I feel badly for Obi wan.

[Bao]

How did the Alien bring in a slimy giant egg into the council? Was he allowed to do that?
I don't get it...

And why don't the other Members use the Force to take the "hand" away?

And if the Alien brought in the egg, why didn't Obi Wan/ Anakin or who ever that is or someone else of the Members feel that something was wrong? A threat?

How did the Alien sign the membership anyway? Can he read and write?

There are more and more questions the more you think about it. There's no logic to it, it's not funny, it's just strange.

[Dr.Rob]

[jimmy]

[jimmy]

this one's for Mit'ka...

[Dr.Rob]

[Dmitri]

this one's for Mit'ka...

"There's not a lot of room left for freedom" indeed.

Found the transcript:

In a way, in our contemporary world view, it's easy to think that science has come to take the place of God. But some philosophical problems remain as troubling as ever. Take the problem of free will. This problem has been around for a long time, since before Aristotle in 350 B.C. St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, these guys all worried about how we can be free if God already knows in advance everything you're gonna do. Nowadays we know that the world operates according to some fundamental physical laws, and these laws govern the behavior of every object in the world. Now, these laws, because they're so trustworthy, they enable incredible technological achievements. But look at yourself. We're just physical systems too, right? We're just complex arrangements of carbon molecules. We're mostly water, and our behavior isn't gonna be an exception to these basic physical laws. So it starts to look like whether its God setting things up in advance and knowing everything you're gonna do or whether it's these basic physical laws governing everything, there's not a lot of room left for freedom.

So now you might be tempted to just ignore the question, ignore the mystery of free will. Say "Oh, well, it's just an historical anecdote. It's sophomoric. It's a question with no answer. Just forget about it." But the question keeps staring you right in the face. You think about individuality for example, who you are. Who you are is mostly a matter of the free choices that you make. Or take responsibility. You can only be held responsible, you can only be found guilty, or you can only be admired or respected for things you did of your own free will. So the question keeps coming back, and we don't really have a solution to it. It starts to look like all our decisions are really just a charade.

Think about how it happens. There's some electrical activity in your brain. Your neurons fire. They send a signal down into your nervous system. It passes along down into your muscle fibers. They twitch. You might, say, reach out your arm. It looks like it's a free action on your part, but every one of those - every part of that process is actually governed by physical law, chemical laws, electrical laws, and so on.

So now it just looks like the big bang set up the initial conditions, and the whole rest of human history, and even before, is really just the playing out of subatomic particles according to these basic fundamental physical laws. We think we're special. We think we have some kind of special dignity, but that now comes under threat. I mean, that's really challenged by this picture.

So you might be saying, "Well, wait a minute. What about quantum mechanics? I know enough contemporary physical theory to know it's not really like that. It's really a probabilistic theory. There's room. It's loose. It's not deterministic." And that's going to enable us to understand free will. But if you look at the details, it's not really going to help because what happens is you have some very small quantum particles, and their behavior is apparently a bit random. They swerve. Their behavior is absurd in the sense that its unpredictable and we can't understand it based on anything that came before. It just does something out of the blue, according to a probabilistic framework. But is that going to help with freedom? I mean, should our freedom be just a matter of probabilities, just some random swerving in a chaotic system? That starts to seem like it's worse. I'd rather be a gear in a big deterministic physical machine than just some random swerving.

So we can't just ignore the problem. We have to find room in our contemporary world view for persons with all that that entails; not just bodies, but persons. And that means trying to solve the problem of freedom, finding room for choice and responsibility, and trying to understand individuality.

[Steve James]

So we can't just ignore the problem. We have to find room in our contemporary world view for persons with all that that entails; not just bodies, but persons. And that means trying to solve the problem of freedom, finding room for choice and responsibility, and trying to understand individuality.

We don't have to find room for choice That's the essential problem (I think) he wants to raise: i.e., do we have the ability to choose, or are our wills determined? Well, ok, if our wills were determined, then we'd all have the answer. At least, we'd have an answer; so, there'd be no choices. The problem is that one reaches forks in the road. Responsibility "is" a choice, but shivering in the cold isn't. That implies that "we" as persons are not simply the products of our wills, but we are inevitably forced to make choices, even about deciding whether we have the ability not to choose.

[David Boxen]

Even the illusion of free will is an illusion - if you sit still long enough it disappears.

I'd recommend:

http://www.samharris.org/free-will

[Dabbler]

[Steve James]

if you sit still long enough

If you sit still long enough, eventually you'll either get up or die. That's for sure. Anyway, all concepts are nothing more than ideas that people put names on. So, "free will" does not exist; but, "determinism" is just another concept. Imo, they are nice concepts; however, it'd help to use concrete examples. In terms of the human ability to make decisions, I think that in order to survive, it has always been necessary to adapt because conditions always change.

[Strange]

meanwhile,in the little island of singapore...

[Dmitri]

The ingredients look more like it's a penile implant than a real cock. Ouch.

[Strange]