William Goldman — Tom Storm

He wrote “the Princess Bride,” both the movie and the book. I like both very much. He also wrote a lot of other famous screenplays. the movie is wonderful, but it’s so is the book.

You’re not paying any attention to what I said. We’ve taken this far enough. I am all done.

I see your point, but haven't heard a reason why a range around the mean is superior to the mode. Especially in cases of a bimodal distribution. — LuckyR

In a normal distribution, the mode, mean, and the median are all the same. For characteristics with a non-normal distribution, it probably doesn’t make sense to talk about normality at all. That certainly is true of a bimodal distribution.

I’ll say it again, my definition is a reasonable one, but it’s not the only reasonable one.

Actually, as I think about it, my definition would work for your situation also. The arithmetic mean of the number of fingers on a human hand would be very close to 10, so that my identification of normal as within one standard deviation of the mean would still be reasonable.

I disagree. If the question is: having how many fingers is normal? The average or mean (less than 10) isn't "normal", neither is the median, nor your range. The correct answer is the mode, that is: 10. — LuckyR

In the post I just submitted, I was talking about human body temperature, not number of fingers. Number of fingers is not normally distributed, although most characteristics, including body temperature, are.

So, what’s the normal human body temperature. 98.6°F. What does that mean? I assume that’s the arithmetic mean of values measured in many humans. If you plot a graph of specific temperature ranges versus frequency of occurrence in the sample population, it’s likely the graph will show a bell shaped curve, i.e. a normal distribution. As I understand it, for body temperature the amount of variability around that mean will be small.

Temperatures significantly above or below that value are dangerous to health. It’s reasonable for me to say a temperature of 104° or 93° is abnormal.

:point: :point:
It’s within one standard deviation of the mean
— T Clark — NotAristotle

Keeping in mind this is a definition, not the definition.

that's natural. — Copernicus

It’s called a normal distribution.

Can you define normal? — Copernicus

Sure. It’s within one standard deviation of the mean.

They are the largest surplus resource we have. They are not special. — AmadeusD

I’m shocked to find we disagree on this.

Did you want to design bridges? — NotAristotle

No.

Yeah, it was Chatgpt, the machine that is built to say smart things, that's probably who messed up in this situation. — NotAristotle

There is no doubt in my mind that it’s not ChatGPT’s fault. I’m sure I set the problem up wrong. That’s why they wouldn’t let me design bridges.

I have to agree that he seems a bit pessimistic about the whole alien contact situation.↪ — NotAristotle

I don’t know what you’re complaining about, I was only off by six orders of magnitude. That being said, if there were 100 million star systems with intelligent life evenly distributed throughout the observable universe, the average distance between them would be roughly 125 million light-years.

Keeping in mind that that might be six orders of magnitude off also.

Wait, what happens after 1 million years? — NotAristotle

It’s just an assumption for the purposes of discussion. Strikes me as wildly optimistic. I doubt we’ll be around that long. Make it 10 million years and it doesn’t really change the situation much.

I had ChatGPT do the calculations for me. If one in 1 billion star systems has life and if one in 1 billion planets with life have intelligent life then there would be 40 civilizations in the observable universe. My intuition is that life is much more likely than that. As for the evolution of intelligent life, I have little to offer. Since it took 2 1/2 billion years for multicellular life to evolve from single cell organisms, it’s hard to know if my number is reasonable.

Assuming every intelligent civilization lasts for 1 million years, what is the likelihood that there would be any time overlap in the civilizations? Even if there were 40 civilizations all at the same time, with the distances between them, it seems unlikely there would be any possible contact.

It is possible for objectivity and subjectivity to be both complementary and mutually contradictory. — Pantagruel

If you mean it’s possible for me to experience something as true when it isn’t really, of course you’re right. It’s also possible for me to choose which point of view I take. But then again that choice is based on my subjective understanding.

Objectivity eliminates every contradiction as soon as it incorporates it inside the bigger frame of objectivity. When you say that there is no contradiction, to me it means that, to write that sentence, you have adopted the point of view of objectivity, — Angelo Cannata

As I noted in my previous post, I think it’s just the other way around. All my concepts, thoughts, feelings, understandings, perceptions, and all those other ways of addressing reality are subjective. It’s not wrong to say that so-called objective reality only exists because of those.

In the conflict between subjectivity and objectivity, the logical outcome for subjectivity is to succumb, because success itself, any kind of success, is by its very nature metaphysical, belonging to the realm of objectivity. — Angelo Cannata

I will grant the existence of an objective reality for the purposes of this discussion. The only way we can know that reality is through our own perceptual and mental processes, our subjectivity. What that means to me is that everything you said about objectivity is actually true about subjectivity. You have it exactly backwards.

Now, in reality, neither what you say nor what I say is right. Objectivity and subjectivity are complementary. Neither exists without the other. The world is half human. There is no contradiction.

I appreciate the offer, but I’m already pretty much a skeptic. That’s not exactly right, it’s more like I don’t see the use of modal logic. Which isn’t to say I don’t think it might not have value for others.

Thank you

Thanks

I’ve always had a hard time understanding the value of the possible worlds way of thinking about things. I read the first section of the SEP article and a little bit of the second section.

I am a self-avowed pragmatist. Can somebody explain how I might use model logic to solve problems or clarify concepts.

Why turning to base trolling and name calling I would expect on other forums? — unimportant

I don’t consider expressing my distaste for the OP as trolling and there was no name calling. I didn’t say anything about you, I only commented on the OP.

I am not saying the OP has the highest intellectual vigour and was rightly placed in The Lounge but there is no need for guttural replies as there it was an honest observation and don't see what is 'creepy' about it. — unimportant

I found it disgusting and I expressed that feeling. That seems reasonable to me.

Best thread on TPF in years, OP. — Outlander

It doesn’t surprise me that’s your opinion.

I have some of the same thoughts the OP has. But I don't think babies are all that special. — RogueAI

There is a difference between having thoughts and making them public. And babies are very special. The most special things.

This is the saddest, creepiest OP I’ve ever seen on the forum. It’s worse than even Hanover’s true stories.

I have an idea—why don’t we close out this thread for now. It’s getting sort of personal.

I have had different times when I broke off from the discussion for different reasons. I miss some of those who have wandered off. — Paine

Yes. I feel the same way.

Too bad. I kind of liked them, even though we did bark at each other once or twice.

OK, I will take your suggestion and go elsewhere.

No it was addressed towards everyone. I think it would be better, if one of you were to conclude that i'm beyond "getting it", to either leave or try explaining again rather than insulting me, don't you? — ProtagoranSocratist

What did I say to you that was insulting? I only said I thought what you wrote was wrong and then I explained my reasons. I don’t understand.

"When I think in language, there aren’t ‘meanings’ going through my mind in addition to the verbal expressions: the language is itself the vehicle of thought." — PI §329 — Hanover

This of course is the problem. Assuming all thought is verbal is clearly not right.

As I noted elsewhere, the answers to your questions are not philosophy, they’re science. I doubt anyone likely to participate in this discussion knows enough to have a credible opinion about this subject.

Nuff said.

Keep in mind you can leave the conversation anytime you want if i seem too obtuse or stupid, but i do think remembering a word does have to do with the specifications i've layed out here. — ProtagoranSocratist

I’m not sure, is this addressed to me? Are you saying if I don’t agree with something you write, I should go away?

because so far, nobody has been able to give a clear and distinct definition to the term: — ProtagoranSocratist

I don’t think this is true. I gave a clear and distinct definition that you and most others don’t like. The confusion can only be resolved by consensus, which is unlikely, as evidenced by this and past discussions here on the forum. There will be another one just like it within a month and the same arguments will be regurgitated over and over.

we could say that my innate ability to recognise space and time is a priori, where a priori is being used in a temporal sense.

However, as I understand it, this is not how Kant uses the term a priori. — RussellA

We have reached the end of what I’m willing to say about what Kant described. You certainly know more about that than I do. I haven’t read the Lorenz article in several years, so I think I’ll go back and reread it.

Hey Clarky — javi2541997

Thank you for looking out for my cultural education.

Reason must have content, As Kant said "thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind”. Reason must be about something. Pure — RussellA

I’m taking a shot at this, but as I noted, Kant's work is not something I have deep insight into.

I come to this question through the back door–through my interest in psychology and cognitive science. It is my understanding--and there is evidence to support it--that human nervous systems, sense organs, and minds are structured in such a way that we exhibit the mental processes we observe and experience. Example–studies by Karen Wynn show that children only a few months old exhibit behaviors that show a capacity for simple moral and mathematical thinking. Another example–Stephen Pinker and others have described innate language acquisition. It's not that they have innate knowledge, what you call content, it's that they have the capacity to gather and process that content–to think in structured and organized ways. To be fair, these claims are not without controversy.

The thing that jumped out to me when I read about the critique of pure reason was that Kant identified space and time as being known a priori. These strike me as exactly the kind of structured principles I described above. Time and space are not what you call "content," they are principles that allow us to organize and process content provided by our senses. Is this the same thing you meant when you wrote what I've quoted below? I don't know.

As I wrote before: “Kant did not propose that we have knowledge prior to our sensibilities, which we then apply to our sensibilities. Kant proposed in Transcendental Idealism that a priori knowledge is that knowledge derived from our sensibilities that is necessary to make sense of these very same sensibilities.” — RussellA

The question is, did Kant mean by “a priori” what today is meant by “a prioiri”? — RussellA

Well, Lorenz certainly thought so and he was a pretty smart guy. He was also much more familiar with Kant’s philosophy than I am. I suggest you read the article.

Although I am very far from a Kant scholar, I’ll go back and take a look and see if I can answer your question myself later today.

Do you have access to a clean copy of the article. From the Internet Archive, the “full text” comes out as: — RussellA

If you go to the linked page and scroll down, you’ll find options to provide the document in various formats. Push on PDF with text then download to your files. What you get is a fairly bad scan of the article, but it’s searchable and you can copy text out of it.

However, if we are talking about Kant, this is not what Kant meant by “a priori”. In this different context, the term “a priori” as used by Kant has a different meaning — RussellA

In case you’re interested, here’s a link to an article by Lorenz—“Kant's Doctrine Of The A Priori In The Light Of Contemporary Biology.”

https://archive.org/details/KantsDoctrineOfTheAPrioriInTheLightOfContemporaryBiologyKonradLorenz