Certain people can't ever get it right

[Chap]

If you imagine your behavior in this thread demonstrates humility, well...

In the sense that I recognize my inability to verbalize completely the reasons for the faith that is me to the satisfaction of one who requires physical proofs exclusively.

Regards,
MG

What's this 'physical proofs exclusively' stuff? Since a lot of this conversation has been about topics such as 'Does your deity have a record of being comfortable with slavery, according to what your sacred texts say about him?' and 'Would people today act ethically if they did not come from a historical tradition grounded in Judaeo-Christian religion?', only an idiotic person could possibly demand physical proofs. And I don't think anyone has so demanded.

This looks like a straw man to me.

[mentalgymnast]

Yeah, I do that. Questions are the key/path to understanding. And I can learn from those more intelligent than I. I’ve repeatedly learned things from physics guy that I haven’t known.

Often.

Regards,
MG

Ok, let's test this. Word of honor, without referencing back to a post or old thread, explain something you learned from Physics Guy and how it refined your understanding of a topic. By that I mean, don't just say something about how he helped you better understand (subject). Show what you learned from him.

I’m reading a book right now called “The Last Days of John Lennon”. I’ve been reading it off and on along with a few other books. In addition I try to get to the newspaper and read the news along with the comic section almost everyday, depending on what else is going on. If you were to ask me what I learned in the news last week or even three days ago, I would be hard pressed to come up with anything. Even more so with any detail from the comics I read. In regards to the Lennon book, I was reading it just yesterday. Can I actually verbalize particulars of what I read? Not really. What I can say is that I’m enjoying the book. Do I remember the particular food items that were part of our dinner menu six days ago? Not a clue. But I can pretty much guess that I enjoyed it at the time. I’ll read something and at some random time something will trigger a thought and I’ll remember a morsel of something I’ve read somewhere. So I’ll take away a feeling or thought from what I’ve read that may not be articulated or retrieved until it’s regurgitated through a trigger.

So, can I go back and name some particulars of what I’ve read in regards to physics guy’s writings? No. But I have takeaways from what I’ve read that pop up out of the blue. Recently a takeaway was that with all the detailed knowledge that folks in his field have as it pertains to the workings of this world, there is still so much that is unknown. Did he say those words? No. But that was my takeaway. As you know, the learning that occurs as we communicate and interact with others isn’t always ‘words’, it’s feelings and impressions. As I’m reading anything, be it the books I’m currently reading, the news that I read, or posts that I might read on certain logs, etc., I probably remember very little verbatim. But I have feelings, thoughts, and impressions while I’m reading and I know that I’ve either feasted or received very little nourishment.

I read something that physics guy writes. I read something that Lemming or Doc writes. Where do you think I receive the most nourishment and future possibility of finding those thoughts having integrated with my own?

Not a difficult question to answer.

Another thing. To be honest, I find that I am becoming less and less able to remember the details of much of what I read anymore. Let alone where I put my glasses five minutes ago. You young whipper snappers still have most, if not all, of your brain cylinders firing at optimum level. Enjoy it while you have it.

One of the reasons I’ll pop in and out of this board is to read something different than the norm and also practice my writing skills which also need exercise, or they get flabby. Use it or lose it, right?

Regards,
MG

[honorentheos]

Can you articulate why the Sorites Paradox simply does not apply to a discussion on infitities?

[Doctor Steuss]

Morley's binary, Lem's binary, IHAQ's binary, Chap's binary, Doc's binary!
And.... Gadiantion's binary, honor's binary, did I miss anyone?? Hm.... let me think..... No. That's everyone.

If only you all could just transcend your binary thinking, you'd be able to have faith in God, who is incapable of being evil.

[Chap]

Another thing. To be honest, I find that I am becoming less and less able to remember the details of much of what I read anymore. Let alone where I put my glasses five minutes ago. You young whipper snappers still have most, if not all, of your brain cylinders firing at optimum level. Enjoy it while you have it.

One of the reasons I’ll pop in and out of this board is to read something different than the norm and also practice my writing skills which also need exercise, or they get flabby. Use it or lose it, right?

May I suggest that you do not use age as an excuse to subject readers of this board to rambling incoherence? You are giving seniors a bad name with this self-indulgent stuff.

Dr Anthony Fauci was born in 1940. He is just one example amongst many of people of advanced years who daily face up to tasks that demand the expenditure of large amounts of intellectual energy. And he is by no means alone in this ...

[mentalgymnast]

Another thing. To be honest, I find that I am becoming less and less able to remember the details of much of what I read anymore. Let alone where I put my glasses five minutes ago. You young whipper snappers still have most, if not all, of your brain cylinders firing at optimum level. Enjoy it while you have it.

One of the reasons I’ll pop in and out of this board is to read something different than the norm and also practice my writing skills which also need exercise, or they get flabby. Use it or lose it, right?

May I suggest that you do not use age as an excuse to subject readers of this board to rambling incoherence? You are giving seniors a bad name with this self-indulgent stuff.

Dr Anthony Fauci was born in 1940. He is just one example amongst many of people of advanced years who daily face up to tasks that demand the expenditure of large amounts of intellectual energy. And he is by no means alone in this ...

Point taken. Although it is true that I seem to remember less of what I read nowadays. It’s a bit frustrating. I wouldn’t have mentioned it except for the fact that I was having a hard time remembering anything in particular this morning having to do with physics guy’s writing. I suppose I shouldn’t have admitted that.

We all age differently and have individual struggles.

Regards,
MG

[mentalgymnast]

Can you articulate why the Sorites Paradox simply does not apply to a discussion on infitities?

I don’t know for sure, but I would think it might be due to what is seen as vagueness and subjectivity that seems to be part and parcel of what’s going on with the Sorites Paradox. Infinity deals more with absolutes and objective reality. Although with Sorites there is the thing of grains being something and nothing at the same time. Fuzzy logic. Whether that applies to infinities, I don’t know.

I just came across this paradox in a book I’ve been reading. I’d never heard of it before.

Your thoughts?

Regards,
MG

[honorentheos]

Can you articulate why the Sorites Paradox simply does not apply to a discussion on infitities?

I don’t know for sure, but I would think it might be due to what is seen as vagueness and subjectivity that seems to be part and parcel of what’s going on with the Sorites Paradox. Infinity deals more with absolutes and objective reality. Although with Sorites there is the thing of grains being something and nothing at the same time. Fuzzy logic. Whether that applies to infinities, I don’t know.

I just came across this paradox in a book I’ve been reading. I’d never heard of it before.

Your thoughts?

Regards,
MG

I also don't see any real connection between the so-called heap paradox and infinity. Infinities are weird but they are not ill-defined the way heaps are.

Maybe that's a connection in a way, though. From ample experience with language problems like the heap paradox, mathematics has learned never to rely on vague intuitive notions like "heap" but to insist on careful formal definitions. In so doing it has deliberately moved the concept of definition itself away from trying to say what anything means—because what does that even mean?—to saying only how and when you are allowed to say whatever it is.

As is said as prelude to PG's comment above:

I hope Physics Guy comes back to this to clarify.

I guess my understanding is the way many of us use the term infinity casually is not what is being discussed...or, perhaps, is why the OP was written in the first place. The Sorites Paradox hangs on the lack of definition for something like a pile. Unlike, say, a mole of some element or a given weight of sand, a pile isn't defined. So one is making a qualitative judgement as to whether or not a pile of sand is in deed a pile. Or someone is overstating the case regarding how much sand is involved.

An infinity isn't like the pile even if it is uncountable. If I were to refer to the set of natural numbers as an infinity, that has meaning not subject to interpretation. One doesn't take from or add to this infinity, certainly not in the way one could remove or add sand particles to a "pile". There have already been posts on this in the thread. So the Sorites Paradox doesn't apply.

Sorites Paradox only exists because a heap is a subjective term. Like a pile. Which grain of sand being removed shifts a pile into something less than a pile? It doesn't matter because one doesn't deal with piles of sand at the granular level. We intuit that it means something regarding the form and amount of sand involved but no one is mixing concrete using a ratio of piles of sand to parts cement. Home Depot doesn't sell sandbox sand to homeowners by the pile. Its usage is limited to situations where vague language can be tolerated.

In the same way, when you speak of God's infinite wisdom or infinite love, the usage of infinite is more poetic than quantitative. Infinite, boundless, limitless, eternal, godly...they don't have meaning that corresponds with infinity as it is being used from the OP. You can't replace "godly" or "boundless" for infinity when discussing, say, the set of all natural numbers.

Bringing up the paradox is categorically misunderstanding the discussion regarding infinity.

[Lem]

I'm not buying mg's 'aw shucks' routine. He has the same intent he has always had, to disrupt the conversations of those who don't follow the Mormon path. Even before the great troll jubilee, instituted by our illustrious leader Shades on our previous board, I had in interest in the academic research on trolling, and one of the best articles on internet trolling I have ever read could have been a case study on mg. Here are some excerpts that are exceptionally relevant to this thread:

Trolls do not initiate discourse but respond to it for the simple reason that they do not care about any particular semantic focus. They are not interested in what they write about; they are interested in the cognitive, emotional, and pragmatic reactions that they can obtain….

Trolling parasitically constructs its position, so that it results not only in contrary, but also mirror-like contradictory to the opinion that is voiced by the interlocutor.

One of the socially disquieting aspects of trolling is, indeed, that the troll does not have a mind, but builds it in relation to that of [those he trolls]; the troll, moreover, does not pursue the objective of expressing a radically different opinion and convincing the interlocutor and/or the audience of it, but rather seeks to provoke.

His discursive practice therefore consists in measuring out the outrageousness of arguments, so that initial contradictory semantic positions do not immediately disclose the real nature of the game [but] spiral, in which progressively more and more intolerable arguments are used without giving out, for that reason, the fictitiousness of their pragmatics.

Trolling, however, is not only characterized by a specific pragmatics and a particular semantics; its syntactic logic too contributes to the overall semiotic effect of this discursive genre.

... the counterpart of choosing and endorsing opposite arguments is necessary but not sufficient.... In order to achieve its sadistic goal, trolling must be full of non sequitur, repetitions, petitions of principle, arguments ad personam, and so on, skillfully displaying an array of logical fallacies that constitute a sort of counter manual of rhetoric....

That describes our troll perfectly.

[Gadianton]

Wow, this thread sure has gone for a trip through the woods.

Honor, your attempts are noted. I would reiterate some of what Honor was trying to tell you; the way I'd put it is that you should try reading for comprehension, and not to glorify your church leaders, who lets face it, kind of suck.

Back to the Sorites Paradox. The evidentiary grains of sand that one by one I lay next to each other gradually result in a heap large enough that I subjectively view it as God’s Truth. But when a secularist, such as yourself, asks me to take one grain of sand away at a time and look at it in isolation from the rest of the heap and demand evidence that this grain is ‘God’s Truth’ and the ‘proof’ which proves God’s existence, that becomes rather difficult. But when these grains are all together in a heap they, for many folks, not only appear subjectively to appear as God’s truth but also objectively as a result of what seems to be cumulative evidence.

A condescending smile crawled upon my face as I read this, MG. On the one hand, I have to say, it's not the worst attempt at an analogy that you've ever made, although I think an "web of evidence" is more to the point. If we were to map out everything we can think of that establishes Relativity as established physics, which experiments, papers, or whatever could we remove and still say Relativity is established?

But the way you're setting this up, MG; all you're really doing is assuming you are right; you are assuming that the totality of things you've learned about the church work together in a fascinating way such that, by definition, you can't be wrong.

If each topic such as the Book of Mormon is but a grain of sand, it would take us all year to analyze twenty grains of sand and you've apparently got a billion. So see, what you're trying to say is that you win by default, since there is no feasible way to debunk any topic that is represented by a "heap" a grain at a time. If the flat earth is a heap, then it's impossible to disprove. If evolution is a heap, then it's possible to disprove. Wouldn't you agree that this is pretty disingenuous of you, or should we say, fraudulent? Wouldn't you agree that you've rightfully earned yourself a big round of scorn for this insight?

According to the Church, the Book of Mormon is the keystone of the religion. There is no web, there is no heap. There is a colossal structure pressing down on a single point of failure.