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June 15, 2017

Pigs, piano, and bamboo poles

Jo.edwards
Dear Norman,
My understanding is that nothing ever distorts space. Indeed it would be an oxymoron for space to be distorted since distortion is defined by space.

The metaphorical ‘distortion’ of spacetime talked about means that if one could think in four spatial dimensions (which we cannot) and pretend that the fourth one is time then tracing the trajectory of an object subject to no force, but in a gravitational field, from one space block to another through time would give a ‘curve’. However, since time is not a spatial dimension there is in fact no ‘curve’, just the mathematical equivalent of one. 

If space was curved by gravity bamboo poles would be bent and all balls fired from a cannon would follow the same path whatever speed they went at. That is simply not the case.

The force in a centrifuge is generated by the elastic electrical forces in the rotor arms induced by distraction of the material consequent on heavy material in the buckets tending to follow straight trajectories in space and failing because of those forces.

Jo
On 26 May 2017
Jo.edwards
Dear Whit,
I have thought about this at considerable length and think it is probably tangential to what we want.

I suspect an actual experience and a remembered image make use of the same pathways, so there would not be an option to compare. (You cannot compare two identical tunes being played simultaneously on the same piano.) 

I think there is a functional relevance to this. I use Leibniz’s definition of truth as matching - a predicate is matched with a subject, and the result proposition true,  if it is entailed in the concept of the subject. On that basis the truth 'red cars are red cars' is not really of interest but 'Lamborghinis are red cars' is. To be useful the brain wants to match data that are consonant despite being in different formats. That is where the real puzzle starts - what does it mean for two dynamic influences to be consonant or matching in some fundamental way while being structurally different? 

It might be that your suggestion is right and that the thick qualia of actual experience and the thin qualia of mental imagery give us different formats worth matching, but that rather goes against the ...
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Serge Patlavskiy
May 18, 2017 

First. What we see around us is that every living organism, to stay alive, must be expediently evolved. It seems that every living organism is satisfied with what it is now and it (me including) shows no interest to "evolve" into other species.

Second. Our (human) biology tells us that, anatomically, we are the closest relatives with pigs. But, this notwithstanding, I want to congratulate you on that the apes are your personal predecessors. May I know which apes in particular? What about Darwinian idea that the humans and apes could have had a common ancestry? As I see, you disagree with this idea? I have used the modal word "could" because there are still no ancient fossils found. 

When the coelacanth was found alive and kicking, many evolutionists must have gone out of their mind at that very moment. Instead, there are a lot of fossilized remnants of gigantic humans found all over the globe. These remnants are being stubbornly ignored by academic community.
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nyikos
In answer to your last question, Dr. Shanta:

The basics of evolution are that there has been a tremendous number of profound changes in  the bodies of animals (also other living things, but let's focus on animals), especially over the last 500 million years, including the successful invasion of land by descendants of animals who had no capability of even walking on land. 

It is unquestioned by competent biologists that evolution as described is a phenomenon that involves changes between parents and offspring accumulating over the eons, and that this genealogy is like the family trees we draw for us humans, except on a vaster scale and involving "single parenting" of one species giving rise to one or more others.

We can argue about the causes of these changes, and the extent to which spiritual influences were involved, but I think it is best to view evolution in this way to minimize confusion about what it is we are talking about.

Peter Nyikos
May 22, 2017
Professor, Dept. of Mathematics        
University of South Carolina 

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