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I realize our debate on altruism and ethics is a bit dead, and pointless but I saw this on a another list and it seems pretty relevant to our discussions so I'm forwarding it. Mak…
01 Apr 2005, 18:12
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Whoa, whoa! I had thought, that in ( I believe) The Citadel of the Autarch, Melito's story pretty conclusively said that the Hierogrammates definitely did /not/ have the confidenc…
01 Apr 2005, 16:59
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Are you so sure? Certainly Urth seems unreal through Severian's eyes, but considering the actual events he narrates, I'd call it dreamlike & unreal no matter who narrates them. W…
23 Mar 2005, 05:57
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I do not know the answer to the other questions, but for those, remember, we are talking distant aeons into the future, and they are in the southern hemisphere anyway, so we wouldn…
23 Mar 2005, 05:51
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'And ye shall know them by their fruit'? Well, I'm visiting England tomorrow. I'll pick up some papers and see if I can. Too bad; the idea that one should suffer infinitely for …
22 Mar 2005, 18:54
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Allow me to draw a parallel with WK; does it not seem to you that Urth, dying Urth, is more than a little uncanny and bizaare? What logic is there to it, what substanial reality?…
22 Mar 2005, 18:21
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Of course it can be wondered where they get the right to do so; revenge hardly seems a good reason to. I'd read Typhon's downfall as due to his attempted usurpation- he starts too…
22 Mar 2005, 18:05
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maru: If I were a bigger Simmons fan, I'd know that already. Oh well. /maru agrees with the last paragraph, but is about to die from laughing at the first one. If they can't even …
22 Mar 2005, 17:55
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Yes, but if you are using an objective system, you can fight back easily; science strives for objectivity, and generally bows to who has better data and explanations, not who is …
22 Mar 2005, 17:22
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Because it is the only feedback that seems reliably correlated with 'the good', is universal and unambigous, and is also objectively measurable? ~Maru…
22 Mar 2005, 16:48
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I'd call it didactic. I'm not that fond of books that work on proof-by-contradiction, (but Dune is so great in other ways I usually overlook it, and try to see it as part of a ser…
22 Mar 2005, 16:42
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Another Hyperion fan! Excellent... Simmons answer is rather ingenious, but also still flawed. I mean, suppose he had tested Yaweh, and Yaweh turned out to naught but another flase…
22 Mar 2005, 16:34
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Welcome. But you are in good company when you talk about power fantasies; David Brin has expounded at length on just that thesis. My personal take is that we always uncounscious…
22 Mar 2005, 15:57
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Yep. There's pretty much a complete consensus about that, from Herbert, O"Reilly and beyond. You *are* likening it to one of the most notorious, evil political ideologies that …
22 Mar 2005, 15:37
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Meh- I am not certain how much of that is fascist and how much simply xenophobic paranoid superstitious tribal characteristics, nor do I really see any identification of 'national …
21 Mar 2005, 20:02
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Or a pagan mode. I cannot help but be reminded everytime I hear 'New Sun' that that is a title that could very well have been used by the Roman soldiers in their solar cults, or po…
21 Mar 2005, 19:24
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Monsters wrestle with you? Alright, I find that not a little insulting and downright wrong. First off, what the hell do you expect? The whole power system in the Duniverse is feu…
21 Mar 2005, 17:15
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Yeah... Sorry about that. Sometimes it takes me a while to work up the will to reply. I haven't crossed the line there- notice I justified the imperative as a heuristic, a rule …
20 Mar 2005, 08:49
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Not that much. Just as humans largely disagree on what is beautiful, yet repeatedly show agreements and correlations of ~.8, even when from entirely different cultures and ethnic…
20 Mar 2005, 08:16
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Have you ever heard of a replicating von Neumann machine? I mention them because they at first sight to suffer the same reflectivity problem as LaPlace's demon. But the soluti…
19 Mar 2005, 23:45
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I think the proofs for the n-body and 3-body orbital mechanics problems actually stated that you'd need infinite processing power to solve them exactly. Which we can postulate a c…
19 Mar 2005, 23:30
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My own brand of utilitarianism would say that following the categorical imperative will increase happiness at large, and eventually result i large gains for myself in addition. '…
19 Mar 2005, 23:22
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You wish an objective goal? Very well, I can supply one. Consider that happiness has a very strong correlation to the concentrations of certain chemicals in the human species brai…
19 Mar 2005, 23:14
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Sounds like Raynor would like to chat wi' you : ) But seriously, if Agilus was a cacogen, and one that was opposed to the New Sun, wouldn't he be associated with Typhon and the m…
19 Mar 2005, 20:57
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~Maru & did you mean EOF…
14 Mar 2005, 16:50
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What makes you think Erebus/Abaia are aliens (cacogens)? Is it just because Baldanders seems to be like them, and non-human (which would explain why the cacogens take such trouble …
14 Mar 2005, 14:40
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Oh. Never mind then. ~Maru /has never actually checked the archives…
11 Mar 2005, 16:38
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As far as I can tell, it has just been quiet. But if you really want to know, you shoulda just checked the archives. ~Maru…
11 Mar 2005, 14:39
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I'll take the 'Unbeliever' route out: Mythgarthr is both. As for the Valfather and co. (Are they Overcyns? The Knight implies so, but I don't know what The Wizard sez.) since th…
28 Feb 2005, 12:47
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I'm afraid I'm simply not following you here: what do you mean by 'careless'?…
20 Feb 2005, 21:05
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That is interesting; I remember you bringing up virtue ethics earlier, in a more alien context. It seems to fit; ) I can't say I really like that philosphy: it seems to boil down …
20 Feb 2005, 21:05
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Ah! Finally, someone wonders whether I was playing word-games. The answer is: I don't think so. It is circular to define happiness as sating of desires, and desires as things whos…
20 Feb 2005, 21:05
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Looks like I'm in for another multi-week wait... Thanx for not spoiling anything, anyway. ~Maru…
19 Feb 2005, 10:37
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So, I finally bullied my library into buying a copy of the Knight, since I'm a cheap bastard. Half-way through, I find myself wondering, why on earth is a talking cat named after …
19 Feb 2005, 10:05
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I'd dispute the bit about boredom: if you are really messing with the past, then you are changing your future drastically (I will assume here that we are dealing with multi-verse…
18 Feb 2005, 11:15
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Maybe only if you were a descendant of Siona? ~Maru I dumped too much cinnamon on my morning toast! Now I will be locked by prescient vision into one universe fore'er!…
18 Feb 2005, 10:25
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Hmm. I'd think there would be some plans that would be correct irregardless of who knew it. What about someone (hypothetically speaking) who didn't mind being predicted, and the …
17 Feb 2005, 20:29
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Seems fairly foolish: such a document could save you tremendous amounts of trouble. Instance: what if you read that you were going to spend 30 years bouncing around as a penniless…
17 Feb 2005, 20:29
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Not at all. I've long been convinced that my (and everyones really. They might not go about it very competently, but it seems universal to me) chief desire was to be happy, and…
15 Feb 2005, 19:13
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The way I see it, he is outside your effective universe. Your effective universe + Laplace's Demon & his abode = Real Universe Now, the Demon can predict the effective universe, be…
15 Feb 2005, 15:26
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What are you doing writing such trash? But seriously, when I was younger, I was very much into Star Wars, (having never got the appeal of Star Trek, nor was I exposed to D & D. So…
15 Feb 2005, 12:50
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That is entirely your perogative. Myself, I see people desiring to be happy. So, they act good so others do not harm them, so they can get things they want that less-devious man…
14 Feb 2005, 19:09
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Well, that's assuming quite a number of givens or axioms e g. ' no one else coulda got in' 'people cannot commit suicide or help each other murder a person' 'stab wounds cannot ma…
14 Feb 2005, 17:32
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Laplace's demon is truly omniscience no? Then he knows you are going to tell me, and has factored that in. He will also know that you will ask for an updated prediction. That too w…
14 Feb 2005, 17:32
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We cannot desire to be good, virtous people, with all the concomitant restrictions that imposes? ~Maru 'That shalt have no desires above Virtue' to mangle a quote.…
14 Feb 2005, 17:32
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Sounds like he's thinking of Orson Scott Card there. Or at least, that's the only prominent Mormon writer who brings his religion into discussion that i can think of, anyway. But …
13 Feb 2005, 08:57
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Could you give some context there Adam? I'm not quite sure how to take that comment: does it mean he regrets even a little not making it glaringly obvious the religious content, an…
11 Feb 2005, 17:27
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Glad to see you like it too. : ) But what you say is probably true. All I can really say in my defense is that it is far more heavily imbued with a certain mood and philosophy. I g…
08 Feb 2005, 13:23
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Well, if 4-d things really interest you (and you run a *nix), the guy who maintains www.urticator.net wrote a 4,3,2,1 -d maze, which you can explore from a First Person perspecti…
08 Feb 2005, 13:18
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You've got Storeys? My suggestion: flip to 'Solar Labyrinth'. It is, IMHO, his best short story, and very applicable to his works. It also lacks the theology that is sometimes ann…
07 Feb 2005, 19:30
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