Messages

I think I see maybe logic on the horizon...

touche.


My point was, of course, that to believe that things balance themselves out is a comfort when times are bad, but a discomfort when times are good.

Yup.

From what I've experienced, when it hits you hard, you don't have much of a choice.

You can't be objective when your own brain becomes a traitor.



These days, when my brother talks about the break, he realizes that if he could have seen himself, he would have known something was wrong, but he simply couldn't see it from the inside; he had absolutely no control over his own brain, and even refused to believe his wife or myself when we told him what we were seeing him do.


In his case, the door to his Black Iron Prison was locked.

I didn't mean to say that Goedel based his proof on that numbers were abstract, I mean that since numbers are abstract, paradoxes can be generated within their game rules.

Although I see where you're going...


[semantics]

to "observe" tends to negate the optimisim or pessimism of a thing, seeing as how optimism and pessimism are subjective.

[/semantics]


However, to answer you directly, I think it depends on what side of the pendulum you're on.

For the example, the story about the king who wanted to be cheered up whenever he was in a bad mood, and received a ring that was inscribed, "and this, too, shall pass," could also be told about a king who wanted to get bummed out every time he was happy.

I knew it.




Those fuckers.  You just can't trust 'em.

I think we're drawing a line between, "I hope that if I sit here and do nothing, that something will change for the better," and "I hope that this thing I'm doing to change my situation for the better will actually work..."


In both cases, hope seems to be acting not as an instigator of action, but an optimistic predictor of the future.


So, maybe I replied too hastily.  Hope seems to have little to do with change, but is more a function of optimism.

So, we should be looking at what is the difference between an optimist who thinks that things might change if they do nothing (not "mu/wu-wei" nothing), and the optimist who thinks what they do will change somthing.

[I]

I know I am...





...Really, LHX, you should know better to try and refute an argument by introducing triviality...

TLU, a word of caution:  my brother is bi-polar, and for a while, he enjoyed his pendulum swings, as well.

Then he went into a black, black depression, and didn't leave his apartment for a year..

Then he went totally manic, and had a complete psychotic break, and had to be hospitalized.



Then he became a Scientologist.



So, all I can say is: watch out.

Why are they trying to change shit, if they have no hope that it will be changed?

hope is one of the driving forces of change.

is it?

or does it provide an excuse not to do anything?

Is is.


If one does not have the hope that one's actions can actually change anything, then nothing gets done.


Why did we attempt PD06?

Because we hoped that at least someone would read it, and think something new.

what happens to the sage
revisitting the people
that he left
to correct
to find they love their ills and ails?

That's my favorite.

I think you're mocking me.

LMNO
-common paranoid.

Cause =Effect.  Isn't that a law of physics or something?

I don't place much stock in physics. It has a tendency to keep being very wrong. Examples of ideas that flew in the face of old physics/mathematics: Non-Euclidean geometry, Theory of Relativity, Theory of Gravity, fractal dimensions, 4th dimensional theories, Quantum theory, the idea of atoms not being solid, and so on.

I adamantly stand that cause and effect relationships are as fictional as the Reagan administration and the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Physics is a science, and therefore a self-correcting mechanism.  The same cannot be said for most non-scientific systems.

Of course not. I just don't like physics because it's much less fun than unscientific things.

You obviously haven't really understood physics, then.  That shit is weirder (and more fun) than most.

And Goedel's proof obviously stems for the fact that numbers (and, by extension, math) is an abstract concept and is therefore open to manipulation and paradox.