Einstein actually acknowledged that the metric or spacetime continium of gr does in fact take the place of Newtons idea of an absolute. So he knew about the weakness, and thought about how to represent points without a space or ether-like existence. This is when most people thought that he lost his way in old age and went senile.
I almost think that gravity has to be put aside for the moment in sciences. Another, more adequate description will fall into place for it in the gr sense of gravitation.

There are things that line up too well for chance, but I'm doubtful that they mean any Higher Causes. Sometimes I think two whales jump out of the sea and spin just because it is the polite thing to do. They ultimately turn below the surface of the sea again, and who knows if or what they say to eachother then.

I heard that the problem can sometimes be viewed as a mental time problem. I guess people with schizophrenia have a different sense of timing, which could be why they often claim that they weren't the ones involved in some act. In their mind, the timing they experience doesn't line up with the events that the other people are telling them about themselves. I think that this plays a normal role in most people, like when they get pumped for a weekend or trip next year and then it gets canceled. They were already feeling the joy that would come at that time, and that the time will not arrive irrates the sense of continuality that they set up mentally.

On other notes, I often think that the phrase, "it's all in the timing," has more physical sense than is apparent. With this mental illness, perhaps the normal is characterised by people getting the timing right. When talking about genes, it was one of the great discoveries that birds with different shaped beaks did, indeed, have the same genes for that beak. The difference between the two types of birds was the time that the beak was programmed to grow. Or take the human fetus, it goes through a succession of periods where it resembles a fish or other animals, and seems to do 4.4 billion years in a nine-month jiffy. If a fetus was birthed early or somehow apparent at any of these intermediate stages in time, a monster would be born, as I think must be how people before genitics knowledge would have interpreted it.

Going into more modern times, people are still sometimes born with tails and the like, and a study of cancer by a physicist brought this striking conclusion, namely that it is an uncurable disease that is simply when the genes of a human try to revert to how they functioned early in evolution. It's simply progress working backwards. So genes could be tied to a time function moreso than we currently know. I often wonder if the laws of nature act like this, that such and such a body is heavier or not becasue it represents so much time, or more or less of a tug. Maybe medicine is the way to go if they really get genes pinned down, but I'd hate to see more unseen consequences from drugs. Still, the diagnostics tools will be quite helpful for many people, and that is an advance.

The more I hear about food, and what is done to it during shipping and to keep it on the shelf for longer peroids of time, a farm or at least a small garden is bumped up higher on my list for the future. It seems like nature is telling us this is not how food works, cut down the need.

Nano medicine would be cool. I think it would live out many peoples dreams in the past of having a better medical force in society. It's fascinating to think about the possibilities.

If I could manipulate my genes, it would be simple. Two things.

Have plaque reduced in veins to increase blood flow to brain.

And increase the amount of nutrients captured during digestion so I wouldn't have to garble down so much food.

That is as high as my aim goes, and this could maybe be done with new technology, if I was more on the path of a yoggi. Let's face it, the human body is still the most awesome machine on the planet. Everything technology wise that we have is just some very small generalization of what the human body already does, and though we have brain farts, our mind still outdoes computers in data processing rates. If only we could utilize that some how. So I don't think that new biological info on genes alone that will be the clutch at first, but rather technology that mimics what the human body, and brain-mind system does, and enhances this natural intelligence. Either way, science is getting pretty damn close to breaking the riddle of organisms.

I think that that is the way to look at an after life. I don't think of one with me in it, but I do occupy some energy, and whatever that small inner force is, it has to follow energy rules.

I think that smart people are more likely to influence their gene expressions by turning them on or off. So perhaps they are wierd, or holding views that are not practical, which seems to be the other sense of weird here, simply because they can mold themselves certain ways. I mean it's like looking at a bunch of play-doh. A kid picks up a slab with more bumbs and irregularities and says out loud to a supervisor "this one is weird." Well, if you pardon the simple example and remember your inner kid, perhaps it is just that more intelligent people tend to be more apt to develop forms. Sometimes they develop views that are odd, but on closer inspection, and after some time, actually do contain a kernel of truth. At other times, perhaps it is best to say that they just took it a little too far.

I kind of like where this was going. With the whole when humans deny their responsibilty, they make up some life force or an idea of a personal God. I mean the idea of God really does arise when it is evident that the world view that the human mind is given, in childhood, doesn't match up with what we thjink a good description of the world view should be. So it makes sense to add a condition of superior creative ability and all, so qyuick fix for the abscence of a good explanation. So if the human really is way more responsible than is generally regarded, then perhaps there is an explanationary power in each individual that is just untapped.

If one thinks about what we as a species know, it is mostly handed down from out parents and whatnot, and there most often is just about the same as you'd find from another. It gets worse later on in life, it seems. Then one is really capable of being aware that everyone doesn't know anything, not to say that little kids atren't able to think such thoughts. It is kind of like how Leibniz viewed the run of the mill views of a given time. Talk to a guy and he'll give you the common spin, ask him further to explain his views and you'll get nothing original out of him. Most people just take it for granted that what is said really has been thought out by someone who knows it better than them, or is more apt. But if everyone is responsible, this is not as pardonable, and they have to succumb to higher powers, I guess. I think it is a terrible part of the world that not everyone will reach their potential in life. I didn't really awnser any of these questions, but the idea of responsibilty had room for an offshoot.

The next thing to happen that will really let science thrive is a new religious since, one attached to the facts of nature and the cosmos. I think there will soon be ideas that question the eternal truths, timeless laws and predictive determination that generally characterize solid science. If people got freaked out over the shift of perspective regarding the sun moving into it's correct dominance in the solar system, imagine what the idea that there are no strict laws in nature and that novelty exist will do. Can you think of what moralists might do with such inspired whims? It makes me want to puke already. But science is at a stalemate right now, and I really do have to pin it to a religious epidemic. There is a need in science to feel connected agian, to be guided by a spirit of physics and to imagine in a new thought environment, one where inspiration leads to correspondence with reality. Love of nature should come first, and science follows. When one wants to explain the sense of moreness and have it as their own understanding, that's when the cold wind starts to blow...

Why is it not taught? I think it's because the kids are in a school. If parents knew, they'd surely pass it on to their little ones. I mean it is cool, right?


I think it's pretty easy to understand a multi-stringed slinky or a spiral noodle shape or to have kids make a small cirle and move their elbow. I am going to tell my nephews about this when I write them.

No, it's actually the exact opposite. That's Why they are old...

As far as I can see it, the dating of any old space matter, like rocks and the like, so material things, there isn't a good way to date it. On the earth ordinarily, there is no good way to date rocks, besides erosion tendencies or other geological happenings. But these types of dating do not have to do with the material, as is, but more so with the rates of processes, like the wear and tear of a site or certain stratification. Just looking at a rock won't tell you enough about how old it is, at least with current understanding. I would imagine that the way we know the age of light matter, like particles coming from a star, the initial conditions are known, like stars so massive or energetic produce light with such a frequency, and then as it travels through space, the frequency decreases. In the same way, light can get 'older' when it escapes from a gravity field and experiences redshift. But to deal with matter exclusively, that is right now a different question. There would have to be new methods of knowing a materials age.

But the question seems to concern all enties, and be a logical question dealing with unequal time passages/rates. So can one thing have two ages, and if so, which is right? It is clear that both must be, if anything proposed is to make sense. I was thinking this question with light the other day. Say that a large source gives out rays from behind a big gravitational source. It is such that one beam goes very close to the gravity well, and the next a little further out. Both hitting an observer after ther travels, one would have less energy, and the other slightly more, which seems odd if they came from uniform source. What is the difference to be attributed to, except to the mass of the middle body? Still, one could say that one ray was older, and the other more recently emitted, if it wasn't known that the source was the same. Perhaps this can shed some light on the space rocks question, when thinking in terms of energy and what would be 'different' between two observers when witnessing the 'same' rock, given that the have some reason to disagree.

Knowing that both must view the rock equivalently to some logical scheme, the differences according to a reference frame on the rock, the other two people have different motions, and times on their clocks, or rates of ticking, that is, some discrepencies that allow us to say that one is in relativistic motion. And about the only way I see out of this is to say the 'rate of aging' of rock is the same thing as it's respective energy, and that that changes from either's point of view.

I think the main problem here is that special relativity there is equivalency of uniform refference systems, but not of a whole, like for accelerating ones. General goes a little further, saying that gravity is mathematically equivalent motion wise to acc. and that this leads to solutions when gravity or acc. problems are given. So they both have their limitations. Sr is to uiniform motion, and gr to nice gravity. The main problem is that they don't apply to the whole universe at once. That's where I see the crux of the question, that one expects there to be one age for a given body, when relativity is telling us that there are two that are equivalent and both good for describing terms like age or rates. One would have to view the whole universe, and no theory does this right now. Such paradoxes don't discredit previous theories in anyway, they just tell us that there must be some solution which does away with such problems.

It was a good question, and I'm really not sure that I anwsered it satisfactory. However, I think that thee has to be some anwser to find out!

Put it in a favorable light to any disproof. I see not a single reason why laws and how matter interacts cannot evolve over time with selction methods or other principles. Nor do I see it as having anything to do with Creationsim.

All of my mountain climbing experiences have seemed like Sisyphus and his boulder. I almost feel like mountains shouldn't be looked for or avoided. Not to say that people don't enter mountain climbing mode without making one first. I'm just trying to take whatever is thrown at me, without packing climbing gear or buying wine to sip. I'm too broke for that, even if wine is cheap in Sweden at a government store!

Maybe you're just more pure than me, but sexual pleasure of a peculiar type is often present in three to four year old, and even younger, people. It is nice to think that one reaches a point of personal development and inner enlightenment were sex dissapears and only wonderful people emerge around one. But to some extent I think that the mind is constantly analysing it's position in this regard. Maybe as one gets older the position is that of not caring aobut gender, or as a professional instructor. In isolated peoples or aristocracies, like Hawaii for example, interbreeding was performed to keep a line going, and I doubt that it made them less the relative type than that of the quality of realtionships in the ordinary lot of man. The only thing which stricks me wrong about it is that socially it unerrs order. If you like a firend, their is not a harm in it, but it may make you more apt to engage in creating a future where your whims can be carried out, and such behavoir may tap into other areas of life. One could think that if they got this person, that they could create situations for profit or other rubish were creative endeavors are spent for personal aims.

Being sensitive to see that the fine line is adjustable is not a bad thing. It just means that one is capable of forming new events and situations, and has a creative element involved. Whether this skill is applied to things of professional interest, like ones work or scientific interest, or others is where the crux of the responsibilty lies.

There are many types of love, but I think they are just gradients. Love for food, shelter, and what provides. Love for companions, friends, and social situations. Love for a hobby, a thing, or learning. Love for humanity, the good, because onw has stakes. Love for earth, existence, as it is realized to benefit all without superficial seperations. I think that the most pure is love without any reasons for doing so, a type of love not concerned with death or beginings or endings of any type. This last doesn't manifest in gain or one individual, but applies to all.

A middle ground might be before the neocortex involved in iconically human tasks develops in a fetus.



nq00- "I know this might be a strange standpoint, but if my mother had aborted me, she might have had another child at a less stressful time. That child might have been able to spend more time with her parents, might have been taught more things by her father, what have you. In short, perhaps it would have been better if my mother had aborted. Am I crazy to admit that? No, nor do I see that as a self-hating statement. I'm a realist and I try to do the best with what I've got. ;-) And I don't have such a big pride to admit that someone else might have had a better life than me had they been born in my place, but 4 years later."

I see this as a very well thought out response. I feel the same, but my parents were old enough, I think in their young thirties. Only I was one of four, and often feel as you do, without the four years later part. I doubt my views will change much later on.

Population crisis is one topic that about half the world, even semi-well off young people in the U.S. seem ignorant of. I think that if you as a young man hold such reasonable views, it will benefit the whole someday, in however a small or large way. I for myself have decided to try and limit reproduction to one, but really I lean towards no kids.

Nice list, and I think that the statement about the last being the only real science has been duely remarked on. I would like to add one before the first point though. You can call it .5 if you share the ancient Greek fear of zero. It is not that matter and space forms first, as they do so in some manner, don't they? It is not just willy nilly here is some hunks and there is the possibility to put matter in (space), and it goes through time. That is saying that the behavior of bodies is known already, like an equation written in subtitles to #1 saying what must take place from atoms to the greater cosmos. I'm not doubting that if God wrote math that he'd be a champ at it, but rather that it seems less arbitrary to have something lead to this first step in our common scientific scheme, which is still highly influenced by Newton's method today. This raises the objection to laws that act as givens, and places instead a state of development of these characteristics of physical laws that are familiar. Some understanding of what is prefered in a law is required.

I think that there is a right way to do things in the world. Perhaps it's tough to see. But there are many wrong ways to do things, like have a kid. Have you ever seen pictures of birth defects from drug use in pregnacy? It is evident that the human body is made to be in a certain environment, to have such a function. There is a wrong way to have a kid and nuture. In much the same way, the world works a certain way, the planents orbit as they do, the sun shines it's fusion excesses and all else is maintained as it is needed for the Earth to work. As far as one cannot be isolated from the entirety of the universe, as there is known one, all seems to be in check in that regard. So any action that aligns with what works is right, in my opinion.

I wouldn't take anybody's advice, but if it is given, adapt it to your needs, or disregard it.

I'm devasted, not the least because it seems so stagnant lately that I have serious doubts that the future of spacefaring peoples is in the hands of the government. I hope instead for a private avenue to open up and really be the way into the heavens. I think that every result that NASA has attained is remarkable, but there is not enough in my opinion. The public is hungry for more of a natural sense of place in the cosmos, and politics trys to dab into this, but it is not lasting enough. There would really have to be motivation for long term action, or quick booting from some private source of funds. If you want to really feel like this century is begining quite slowly as regards human space involvement, read Carl Sagans "Contact, a Novel." It is likely in a library or selling used real cheap online somewhere. I think the reason that my dissapointment arises is not so much the missing thrill of an outgoing to the outlands, but rather a missing sense of interantional community that would spring up when humans collaborate reagardless of country on a project. I used to dream of the constructive powers that could be had if but a tiny amount of a national defense budget is spent on things that benefit all of humanity, and not just this region or that. So it bares in my mind a failure that is as much the common man's responsibilty as it is of an official program. Space or no space, society could feel more at home in the universe if any transnational actions were pursued, even lawful business.

I hold that time is real. This hold on my views is mostly dominated by the sense that what are absolute laws cannot be maintained as such. This stems primarily from the notion that the sciences are running into quite a mess when it comes to a unification theory. Either stipulations which seem ad hoc are used, or the ideas embark on a complexity that makes one agree with (excuse the faulty qoute memory) a spanish king who when presented with a Platonists epicircle plan of the solar system said that it seemed to work, though if he were the creator he would have made it simpler. I think that if laws are alowed to develop, if time is the origin of the things that we call laws, then it would decrease the baggage around all of the currently held majority views in the scientific community. Time would be something of a fount, and there would not be a master key to understanding relity, no purely deterministic equation that applies at all times. I would go as far to say that a sensible approach might be to try to give time some physical significane, and then go from there. As far as I am concerned, the idea of a timeless universe is a product of the philosophy of a block universe mindset, started in the twenties, and that has yet to shift into a new view. It was a way to respond to completely the revolution in relitivity and quantum mechanics. It has been tried, in those domains, and in sufficient thoroughnesss in more modern developments, and the fact that all kinds of genuises have gotten not very more near a adequate unified theory is another clue that a different approach should be taken problems. And as far as voting goes, I have to go in the manner of Jeanette Rankin about being at least on to oppose a majority vote on war that she had long convictions about "I felt the first time the first woman had a chance to say no to war she should say it."