How is gravity even possible? How can one body of matter draw another body of matter, separated by a void, toward itself with no apparent material or mechanical connection between the two bodies? If I reel in a fish toward me, the fishing line is the material connection between me and the fish I'm drawing toward myself. There are no apparent strings attached between the moon or the earth but the moon somehow exerts some invisble pulling force upon our oceans to create tides. When an apple falls to the ground from a tree branch, how is the planet earth somehow "reeling in" the apple toward it ..read more

I have been looking at how to define a system for the longest time and wanted to share it with you all. "A system is a grouping representation of a practical pattern and/or process in which can be used to form new knowledge and fact that can further be actualized into tools and technologies ..read more

To Quote Micheal Stevens: "How do you rethink- Everything? Who gets to direct the costs and tradeoffs. How do you get collaboration between every local and national government, when what works in one place wont work everywhere. When decisions affect jobs in one place and food in another. When not just things have to be rethought but habits, and traditions, and values. How do you achieve consensus when the solution isn't obvious to the senses, is far away in space and time, requires solutions that affect people in different ways, and as a product of science always carries some uncertainty " &nb ..read more

Are they distinct  or do they bleed into one another? The thought occurred to me as I was finishing my meal and my plate was almost ,but not quite empty. I have the habit of nearly always finishing what is on the plate  and yet ,in this case I had had enough but still did not want to leave the plate unfinished.  So ,I plucked up the remaining half of a baked potato and continued remorselessly to put it into my mouth  and chew it even  though I took no physical pleasure  from the action. I could feel with every swallow that I was increasing my over satiety. What,I ..read more

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2024/04/19/daniel-dennett-philosopher-atheist-darwinist/   Daniel Dennett, the American philosopher, who has died aged 82, was, with Richard Dawkins, a leading proponent of Darwinism and one of the most virulent controversialists on the academic circuit. Dennett argued that everything has to be understood in terms of natural processes, and that terms such as “intelligence”, “free will”, “consciousness” “justice”, the “soul” or the “self” describe phenomena which can be explained in terms of physical processes and not the exercise of some disembodied ..read more

What are the pros and cons of this reproductive set up?  I ask because my mother once remarked that this world would be a better place without male and female.  She said this in response to my remark that male and female is a beautiful thing of nature.  As times progress onward, the differences between male and female seem to becoming more and more confused. There are certain societal and political biases that seem to put one or the other sex at a disadvantage. Men are often given harsher sentences for the same types of crimes because judges view men as naturally more menacing t ..read more

 The brain is nothing more than an electronic device. So, every electronic device with a lot of interconnected wires should be conscious too while switched on. We can use a bunch of steel wool and run electricity through it and we should have recreated a small artificial brain.  The question is: how do you ask questions to it ..read more

  What follows is what I believe to be a simple logical mathematical reasoning that explains why time cannot exist in the 'outside world', but that the experience of time is a property of a consciousness interacting with this 'timeless' outside world. The assumption is that if duration actually existed 'out there', you would have to go back infinitely to get to the beginning. Possibly involving multiverses and so on. You would have an infinite past. Because even if there was nothing in the universe, there would still be a duration. That is my assumption. When you do x "minus infinity", y ..read more

My students still reckon Lande’s 2 motivations for ‘unless’ = ‘if not’ (below) too abstract, formalistic! Thus I need a 3rd simpler, motivation with merely etymology. But I never studied linguistics! How do I 1. use these etymology quotations, to motivate ‘unless’ = ‘if not’? 2. teach why “less than” means 'if not'? We turn now to unless. The construction developed toward the end of the Middle English period, in the early fifteenth century. At this stage it is a comparative, lesse than, or in/on/of lesse than. Traugott E.C. (1987) “UNLESS and BUT conditionals: a historical perspective.” In ..read more

Are we better off having invented the printing press? I don't want to block the rabbit hole, so I'll leave it there for know and flesh thing's out as and when ..read more