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A Single Country in the World


House Balstroko

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17 hours ago, House Balstroko said:

Humans have always been pigs. It hasn't stopped us from discovering and settling America and Australia to name a few places. There are plenty of decent people in the world as well.

What part of it freaks you out? is it the long journeys? The sense of emptiness. Of course it will be a long and hard journey, but then again so were the journeys conducted by the first conquistadors.

America and Australia are exactly the examples I feel prove my point. :P The European expansionist ways already ruined civilisations there, no need to carry this mentality and its consequences out into space.

I think it is mostly sense of emptiness, that there is no air up there that we can breathe, so many things that can go wrong, and I simply feel uncomfortable with the idea. I cannot really rationally explain way. :dunno:

(Also please stop putting your text into other people's quotes, it makes it hard to reply to you.)

17 hours ago, House Balstroko said:

The reason there is a lot of racial and ethnic tension is due to a lack of tolerance. Of course if we have a world where there are nearly 200 countries and countless dependencies, it is expected that local groups within those superstructure will push for independence. However if you create a one world government with a policy of tolerance then you are reducing the need for independence since all societies will be equally represented. 

My ideas regarding the implementation are a general framework. I explained why i think English is the best choice. It's most definitely not driven by nationalism although a lot of people will see it that way. However, if people want a different global language then they are free to do so. The same applies to the capital, it is based off popular vote.

You are contradicting yourself here. All people can never be equally represented if you do not allow their languages in public discourse. Choice of language is a powerful symbol of representation in public.

16 hours ago, TrueMetis said:

Unless your assuming that any other civilization wouldn't "ruin" its planet I don't see how this argument makes sense. We'll change shit, and that's terrible because some hypothetical future entity might be negatively affected. Might as well not do anything by that logic. We should kill ourselves because we might be stopping fucking raccoons from developing sentience.

I know it probably does not, I admit that it is mostly irrational and based on my feelings. :dunno: The difference is that Earth is our home, and other planets are not.

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Even if there were to be a vote on what language should be used in public discourse, as you are saying would be most democratic - which language do you think would win? The one with the most speakers of it as their first language. The sheer number would win over any rational thought. And all the other languages would be disadvantaged.

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14 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

What is Popper's view of Godel and a priori nature of things like Godel's incompleteness theorem?

Interesting question. I am pretty familiar with both, so I should know. But I don’t.

Popper was part of the Vienna circle, so he certainly knew about Gödel’s results, and must have had an opinion. There may be something in Logik der Forschung (which I never read). I simply don’t know.

My hunch is that Popper’s epistemology has nothing to say about maths. Popper’s a critical rationalist, while Gödel killed the logical positivist movement. Popper doesn’t care about logical positivism, I think.

I’ll try to read up on this.

ETA: There is nothing on Gödel in Logik der Forschung.

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HE,

Popper seems focused on empiricism in Science.  The a priori nature of many aspects of mathematics may have been outside the scope of his writtings.  I simply wonder, given the "Positivist" drive in Physics what his take on the ability of Phyisicists to achieve a "final" unification of physics would be?  I'll have to google a bit today and see if I can find out, given that he was part of the Vienna Circle, whether he ever made comment about the dispute between Godel and Wittgenstein.

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HB,

You are missing my point.  The issue is not the ability of given areas to secede from your "World State" but what the reaction of the World State will be when a region or regions decide to no longer recognize the WS's authority?

Will the WS coerce to maintain power?  If it does how is it any different from other empires hat have existed throughout human history?

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Yes, my own assessment would be that Gödel is “merely” a confirmation of Popper’s position (that maths and truth and positivism are intellectual abortions), and that furthermore Gödel’s confirmation of Popper’s position is epistemologically invalid (because it uses highly formal maths, which Popper finds irrelevant.)   

Note: the above is very much my interpretation of Popper’s position. What would be interesting is something from Popper’s own mouth about this. My hunch is that this exists, and I feel bad about not being an expert on this. I’ll put it on my list of stuff to obsess about.

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Philosophers discussing mathematics is like monks discussing sex. If you can't do it,  any talk about it comes across as irrelevant.  Godel's theorem holds not just holds for mathematics but for any logical system complex enough to contain addition.  

Mathematics is the art of using as few a priori statements as possible and using those to create new statements. A major reason for me to stop learning philosophy was the realization that finding absolute truth was not doable unless you learned mathematics. And even then Godel came along.

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HE,

29 minutes ago, Happy Ent said:

Yes, my own assessment would be that Gödel is “merely” a confirmation of Popper’s position (that maths and truth and positivism are intellectual abortions), and that furthermore Gödel’s confirmation of Popper’s position is epistemologically invalid (because it uses highly formal maths, which Popper finds irrelevant.)   

Note: the above is very much my interpretation of Popper’s position. What would be interesting is something from Popper’s own mouth about this. My hunch is that this exists, and I feel bad about not being an expert on this. I’ll put it on my list of stuff to obsess about.

What is interesting to me about that is Wittgenstein hated the Incompleteness Theorem.  He thought it couldn't stand for what it clearly stands for.  And the way it points to an a priori  nature for Mathematics that will always be beyond us to fully describe or understand puts the lie to his idea that mathematics has no external existence to the human mind.

But the way it supports falsification as the only genuine way to properly pursue science make me wonder at Wittgenstein's dislike.

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6 hours ago, Buckwheat said:

I know it probably does not, I admit that it is mostly irrational and based on my feelings. :dunno: The difference is that Earth is our home, and other planets are not.

You can argue just as easily that the Solar System and Galaxy are our home as well. Just like how originally Earth was not our home, just Africa.

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6 hours ago, Buckwheat said:

 

(Also please stop putting your text into other people's quotes, it makes it hard to reply to you.)

 

The reason i'm putting my text into other people's quotes is because sometimes i want to discuss each point they make. It's easier to do it on the text because then i can type my response right under their paragraph. I never delete their text in those circumstances, i just bold mine, so that it becomes clear that this is my response.

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2 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

HB,

You are missing my point.  The issue is not the ability of given areas to secede from your "World State" but what the reaction of the World State will be when a region or regions decide to no longer recognize the WS's authority?

Will the WS coerce to maintain power?  If it does how is it any different from other empires hat have existed throughout human history?

i understand your point quite well. You are still relying on traditional borders in your equation. Once a state joins the WS it ceases to exist as an autonomous body. Since the fabric of the WS relies on global integration, each one of those previous areas essentially becomes identical, which i believe reduces the likelihood of this happening. 

If anyone wishes to secede they may do so, however it will be up to people to work out a deal to convince them that remaining would be to everyone's best interest. Even today, it remains the reason why many autonomous regions have not seceded from their respective countries. 

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32 minutes ago, House Balstroko said:

The reason i'm putting my text into other people's quotes is because sometimes i want to discuss each point they make. It's easier to do it on the text because then i can type my response right under their paragraph. I never delete their text in those circumstances, i just bold mine, so that it becomes clear that this is my response.

You can highlight and individually quote separate sections. Highlight the bit you want to quote and your cursor will change and a little "quote this" button should appear. Click it and you'll have an individual quote box with just the highlighted passage in it.

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2 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

And the way it points to an a priori  nature for Mathematics that will always be beyond us to fully describe or understand[…]

I think I disagree here.

Because you say “beyond us” (emphasis mine). 

See, Scot, I have you down as a Platonist. You worry a lot about Truth, what’s really Out There, what is the Ultimate, Innate, Ideal, True Form. This is pure Platonism. It is very well aligned with the view of Reality that many, many mathematicians have. They are logical positivists, and some of them ask Deep Questions about the Nature of Infinity, and Truth, and Whether The Integers Exist and the reals are just man-made, and so on. Not only do these deep-sounding questions hold the attention of a nontrivial fraction of professional mathematicians (say, Hilbert), they also attract the fascination of many amateurs (say, A Ellison). 

I mean this in the kindest way—there is a certain branch of physics that is able to attract the attention of the masses (say, me), to do with Quantum Shit, and I think maths is just like that—some questions sound as if they resonate with Deep Questions that the curious, idle mind will have thought about anyway, and science presents some more-or-less well-defined hooks to hang that folk intuition on. I have fuck-all to say (or even think about) solid state physics, but Quantum Shit really gets me interested.

But science is not about truth. There is no Platonic world of ideals that we try to catch glimpses of. In particular, there is no Holy world of Mathematical Truth from which we are forever separated, nor was that proved by Gödel. Gödel just hammers home that inference (logical positivism) or induction are provably incomplete modes of reasoning, so the already-rejected idea that deduction is science is merely established yet-again using the deductionists’ own main weapon. As if that were necessary. Gödel convinces nobody interesting, he merely makes the stubborn Hilbert/Plato/deduction/logic crowd look even more absurd because he takes their only weapon and establishes Popper’s point in their own frame of reference.

To sum up:

Scientists: “Our quest is not the quest for Truth. Therefore, no confirmation.” (And Popper put this best.)

(most of the audience goes home now. The film is over. Only two groups are left: the postmodernists who completely misunderstand this message. And the logicians.)
Hilbert et al.: “But wait! Truth exists! We have all this fantastic machinery called math, and …”

Gödel steps in, takes in the machinery out of Hilbert’s hands and makes Hilbert look foolish. The remaining people in the audience (von Neumann) also goes home.

Caveat: Professionally, I’m a logical positivist, so Popper’s position is very far from what I’m paid to defend. (I’m a bit like a priest who lost Faith.)

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9 hours ago, Altherion said:

At a minimum, to be autonomous, a human being requires food, water and shelter. Given that all of the land and water on the planet has been claimed and allocated by states a long time ago, it is not practical to achieve even this very limited measure of autonomy without dealing with a state. If you want something closer to a normal existence, then even if 3D printing were to ever evolve what it is in real life today to what it is in science fiction, you would still require even more resources and services (e.g. electricity, networking, medicine, etc.) which can only be had with a state's approval.

Autonomy does not mean free from burdens or needs.

The question is, what resources does a state need to impose autonomy over individuals?

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1 hour ago, House Balstroko said:

i understand your point quite well. You are still relying on traditional borders in your equation. Once a state joins the WS it ceases to exist as an autonomous body. Since the fabric of the WS relies on global integration, each one of those previous areas essentially becomes identical, which i believe reduces the likelihood of this happening. 

If anyone wishes to secede they may do so, however it will be up to people to work out a deal to convince them that remaining would be to everyone's best interest. Even today, it remains the reason why many autonomous regions have not seceded from their respective countries. 

You're still ignoring my question:

If Quebec decides to stay francophone and not to recognize the WS, its officials, refuses to pay WS taxes, and organizes its own government seperate from the WS what does the WS do?

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1 hour ago, House Balstroko said:

 Since the fabric of the WS relies on global integration, each one of those previous areas essentially becomes identical,


I'm curious about the mechanics of this. Forcible repopulation and redistribution of wealth? Perhaps a bit of extreme terraforming thrown in?

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