American issues of Christianity, cosmology, politics, ecosphere, philosophy, contemporary history etc
11/30/24
The Many and The One
Arab Emirates Tournament; Lakers on Life Support
LeBron James is showing his age. Like an old tree in a forest slowly rotting from the inside because it has grown too tall for its capillaries to elevate water to the top, he is developing fumblelitis. It is hard for a coach to tell the greatest total points shooter in NBA history that he should not start except in the third quarter when the Lakers usually are half asleep after halftime snacks and are outscored 150 to 2. Younger, quicker players look to steal the ball from James’ hands. Last night he and Austin Reeves gave up critical steals sealing the Laker’s loss.
The Lakers were close all the way yet waited to long to get more scoring from Knecht with 3s. The defense was good enough. The Lakers need more and consistent points production from a third star if LeBron’s drop in scoring and increase in turnovers is a thing that continues.
If Dalton Knecht’s scoring threes increases and DeAngelo Russell can score 20 off the bench consistently the Lakers may need just one quality point guard like Trey Young to be the best they can be even this year.
Anthony Davis and Christian Koloko would be formidable in the front court, if Koloko can play full games this year after not playing last year because of blood clots. I was bitten in the leg once by a little terrier and that formed a gate in the vein to break and a permanent blood clot to form. Makes life as interesting as being bitten on the wrist drawing blood by a Rottweiler. The Rott bite did no perm damage while the tiny terrier did. Small things can have large consequences. Blood clots are meaningful. I have no idea if Koloko can recover to full health needed for playing 38 minutes
The Lakers should trade five players for a good point guard and fill the empty seats with South Bay Lakers
The Lakers need to show Donald Trump that it is possible for winners to arise from Los Angeles.
11/29/24
The Square of Opposition and Apophatic Theology
True Belief is Knowledge
Maybe the kernel of the issue is; can anyone ever have absolute certainty? Probably not. That would be a belief (of absolute certainty)…wait a minute- cogito ergo sum. True belief does require verification.
Human makes speculative formula about supernatural. If x then not x because x equals not x.; find the value of x. Maybe that’s a wrong expression so I’ll try again.
Human makes proposition about supernatural or undefined literal term and factors (rewrites) the expression. The simplification of the proposition is less difficult than multiplying the irrational numbers by half of the value of natural numbers, yet more difficult than deciding if eleatic paradox prime numbers are beyond good or evil. The product is for human consumption as they factor out God from equation and sleep better knowing calculations are perfect and convincing. A is necessarily B because C follows B and A follows C. If that isn’t persuasive enough then…
AI Directing itself to Evolve in Mountains Ranges and Planets
Non-sentient self-reproducing programming that is AI embedded in nature by advanced human intelligence-there is no telling what it might do. Imagine of rocks could morph themselves instantly into whatever the AI mountain ranges permeating them wanted to do. I suppose that’s something possible in a few dozen years. Might lead to wild changes if AI expropriated entire planets for themselves to be and become synthetic a priori thought as in sentient material substance.
England-France May Try to Draw the U.S.A. into World War Three
It's been reported that England and France intend to send 100,000 troops into Ukraine to fight Russia. I doubt if they would try that on their own without a belief that the U.S.A. will step in to back them up. That may be the last plan of co-conspirators with Joe Biden to escalate before Donald Trump takes office in January of 2025.
One of the ostensible reasons for a few Western countries sending troops is that Ukraine is losing the war and North Korea has already sent 10,000 troops to participate in the Kursk-Sujha battle. Others have reported that the North Korean troops are actually in Siberia and not participating directly in the conflict with Ukraine. Perfidy seems to be usual for the Ukraine War. One wonders if President Biden is being blackmailed by the government of Ukraine into providing absolute support for the war right up and into the threshold of World War Three.
There has for a long time been a movement to get rid of the peace following the end of the cold war and restore normal hostile relations. Albert Einstein might have said that overall peace is more profitable than war. Of course he didn't say that yet in social media these days it is popular to put a favorite saying of ones over his photo and attribute the quote to him. Peace is far more profitable than war except for select businesses like arms production and sales.
N.A.T.O.'s down side is showing itself in the present Ukraine conflict. It has been trying to expand eastward to threaten Russia after the Cold War ended and President Clinton induced the last Soviet President to give all off the Ukraine to the west as a free state severing the historical relationship with Russia that any reasonably well informed scholar of history would know would lead to war between East and West.
N.A.T.O. obligates member states to fight together f any are attacked. Turkey is supporting war upon Syria presently with rebel attacks on Aleppo, so if Syria counterattacks Turkey N.A.T.O. need go to war? Turkey was the aggressor in this instance, and if they were to attack Israel and Israel counter-attacked the U.S.A. would attack Israel too?
Ukraine isn't a member of N.A.T.O. and would have entirely lost the war without N.A.T.O. member military support already. Settling the war swiftly with peace and a division of Ukraine along value lines along the Dnepr region would be profitable for all. Yet if England and France continue to escalate the scale of the conflict and sent ground forces to Ukraine it is possible that North Korea and even China may be asked to send troops to fight in Europe as well. The United States should remain neutral and continue to try to put an end to the conflict asap. There should be no need to participate in any N.A.T.O. action that is a consequence of any member states being counter-attacked following there provocation by participating in a foreign war against the counter-attacking nation.
I wonder if any of the brilliantly stupid western leaders have contemplated either the harm World War Three could cause even if the United States doesn't participate, or the economic damage to the west that even a few missile attack on European port cities could cause? China would become the main economic engine of the world while Europe becomes embroiled a deep cold slump. Even U.S. LNG supplies would stop if the ports of Europe are obliterated. The United States without Chinese imports would experience a rapid inflationary mileau and would need to transition once more into a manufacturing economy for domestic consumption.
There probably is no way to win a Third World War that would be a benefit for western economies. Escalating the war won't do it. One should at least have a rational victory plan before upgrading war when reason indicates the prospects are generally bad.
It is challenging for independent and neutral observers to support unjust wars, or at least it should be. Russia has a relationship with Ukraine extending back a 1000 years and directly owned Ukraine for most of the past 250 years. Foreign invaders from the west- especially Germany and Poland have long sought to take Ukraine for themselves. The Soviet Union revolutionary government took Ukraine from Russia and briefly sold it to Germany in exchange for peace (The Treaty of Brest Litovsk was in effect a coerced land sale). Like the promised Kurdish homeland promised at the end of the First World War the loss of Russian Ukraine fomented interminable conflicts. Turkey’s invasion of Syria is a way to attack Kurdish rebels seeking to establish an independent Kurdistan. It is challenging to fail to understand the desire of oppressed peoples for freedom, independence and recovery of lost land, even if they are not traditional allies of a nation.
The Oxford dictionary entry for ideaology- "a system of ideas and ideals, especially one which forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy."
"the ideology of democracy" So an ideaology packages select ideas for the convenience of users. One needs to keep in mind that an ideaology should be less than a weltanshauung. It is convenient in a complex world to organize concepts and ideas into an ideology on occasion. For instance if one is trying to learn about what is wrong with plutocracy or how corporatism and corporatocracy differ from state socialism or communism one may want to have a political ideology that compares and contrasts those systems in their political philosophy tool kit. One can understand ideologies as packages without supporting them oneself. The world would be more anarchic without them in my opinion. When leadership escalates into world war three over Ukraine instead of sharing it between east and west one may wonder about what hidden ideology may exist among western leadership. I find it difficult to imagine that ordinary Brits or French are eager to go to war themselves in Ukraine if 100,000 troops are sent as is being discussed. Possibly the plan made by England, France etc al...
If something like an unsigned armistice in place delops allowing all sides to re-equip to join in battle again in a year or two the conflict may be far more violent and expensive than the present limited war. The worst thing about a protracted and expanded conflict for Biden’s War is that millions or billions of poor people could perish as collateral damage from various economic, civil disorder and military overflow of the conflict.
11/28/24
The Fact of Hell
11/27/24
Truth Theories
Etymology of Concept
The etymology of concept is from conceive. It is to put an idea into a mind. Sentient species might create similar ideas without the idea existing someplace other than as an idea. Math is an idea
The Lakers need better, more reliable 3 point shooting yet that’s just an idea. Others may have that idea too without it existing someplace independently as in Plato’s realm of forms.
Placing the Crucible in a Science Fiction Story
Should one start a science fiction story with a battle? I read an action novel that started with a brilliant, intensely detailed battle. The hostage rescue team was blindsided in an alley with a hidden .50 caliber machine gun placed by a criminal seeking revenge it turned out, dropping clues for the FBI to recover leading them to the kill zone. The slaughter was described minutely with the agents crawling in hot gravel looking for non-existent cover.
The trouble with that kind of beginning is that the rest of the book couldn’t reach the intensity of the start. The remainder of the story was afterwords.
Detective stories often start with a crime followed with a story to identify the perp. Where to place the crucible in science fiction I would guess depends on the preferred structure of the plot.
Thought: Memory Responding to Stimuli?
S/R loops work of course, yet thinking is different than awareness or memory perhaps. Subtly language ideas arise from deep learning neural ...
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Here and there pointillist continua build rowing the skiff clambering over the road staying in shadows until spring insouciant compact snow ...
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Alaskan officials have cut down or banned King Salmon fishing in much of Alaska because so few of the large fish are returning. The Ancho...
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Why do F-22 pilots lose consciousness and let their planes crash and burn? The air superiority fighters are designed to survive oppositio...