Lessons on Causality

A circle has infinite sides, and so Pi represents a derivative function of infinity, hence why it cannot be calculated.

Define sides here and not your typical side.

You don’t know what a side is? Do you know what a triangle is?

Google it or ask your Kindergarten teacher.

Anything times an infinite is INFINITE, not “infinity”. Infinity is not a number, quantity, or place. Infinity is merely a vague idea of something unimaginably large.

And “random” means “lacking any predictable pattern”. So Pi, being predictable, is not random.

A side is where two points meet but a circle does not have any points

An infinite is not a number or quantity or place either but also just something unimaginably large

Just when you think the level of conversation cannot drop any lower…

“Infinite” merely means “ENDLESS”

If you multiply an endless thing by anything, you still get an endless thing. It does NOT mean that they are the SAME thing, but rather that they merely have the same quality of being endless, not equal.

It can also be unimaginably small (infinitesimal).

This is true as long as the number in question is greater than one
You multiply an endless thing by only zero then you will get zero

Okay, so tell me, oh wise one, when it comes to circles, where does each side begin and end?
At what point would you perceive a side?

Is perceiving the side of a circle as simple as that of a square or triangle or rectangle or trapezoid or pentagon, hexagon, octagon, ad continuum?

If a circle stands for infinity, how can it relate to the above shapes? Not speaking geometrically.

What if someone did not know how many degrees were in a circle and how to measure them? Where would the sides be to them?

All standard closed two dimensional shapes are 360 degrees regardless of their shape so it would not be necessary to measure them
Squares and rectangles and triangles and parallelograms and rhombuses all have the same number and so logically circles would too
So the fact that a circle has no sides would not be a problem if one could calculate the number of degrees by that simple deduction

"surreptitious75

That is basically what I was saying. lol

But I was originally speaking of perception.

Back to elementary school, children?

This is a hexagon with 6-sides:

This is a decagon with 10-sides:

Guess what happens as shape increases its sides, or hypothetically to infinity, what shape does it become?

A star to whomever gets this question correct.

What “in this sense” means is “in this meaningful sense”.

Here’s Russell’s paper for anyone interested:
hist-analytic.com/Russellcause.pdf

It’s free and it’s only 21 pages long.

This is what Russell says right at the start of the paper:

It’s obvious. I don’t have to provide evidence for something that is obvious.

I know this. This is called apparent randomness. What you don’t understand is that not all randomness is apparent.

Yes, they do.

No, it’s not an end, and no, you are not right.

I am talking about information theory. What I am telling you is that there are bit strings, i.e. sequence of 1’s and 0’s, that cannot be compressed. No amount of intelligence can help you compress them. You are the one who is not listening.

Whatever you say must be true. That’s an indesputable fact.

That must be the case.

I say it is neither.

In fact, I understand it far better than you do.

That’s not what I am saying.

There is no other way to “define existence”. That’s what you do not understand. You have an unrealistic understanding of intelligence. When we say “God does not exist” we do so because we do not see him. That’s how it works. That’s not solipsism. That’s simply how intelligence works.

I do not deny that there is such a thing as apparent randomness. What I deny is that all randomness is merely apparent. In other words, I am denying the denial of real randomness.

There are two types of apparent (a.k.a. subjective, epistemic) randomness.

The more superficial type of apparent randomness is due to lack of intelligence. The information that is being processed by the brain is not random. However, the brain processing it lacks the intelligence necessary in order to see this. The problem can be solved, in theory at least, by making the brain more intelligent.

The less superficial type of apparent randomness is due to lack of information. The information that is being processed by the brain is now truly random. No amount of intelligence can help you reveal the underlying order because there is no underlying order. The problem can only be solved by taking whatever steps have to be taken in order to find the missing piece of information. The number of steps that have to be taken – it must be noted – must be finite. Otherwise, if the number of steps is infinite, the claim that randomness, in this particular case, is merely due to lack of information can never be proven wrong. In other words, it becomes unquestionable – dogmatic.

When these two explanations are ruled out, what we’re left with is real (a.k.a. objective, ontic, true) randomness.

Unless you want to be a dogmatist. If you want to be a dogmatist, all you have to do is make a claim and then claim that that claim requires no evidence – that it is beyond evidence. Just declare that “all is order” and never ever bother with evidence.

How much time do we have to spend searching for the evidence of God before we can stop and judge whether He exists or not?
I am pretty sure many will say “keep searching until you find the evidence of God”.
But isn’t that a textbook example of dogmatism?
The claim that God exists can thereby never be proven wrong.
No amount of evidence can prove that God does not exist.
I am pretty sure that many will claim “just because you didn’t see God in thoses place where you looked for Him does not mean He is not located at one of those places in the universe that you did not check”.
Now we enter the territory of extreme skepticism: the future is under no obligation to mimic the past, so no number of observations can tell you what’s going to happen in the future.
Knowledge is impossible. Induction is a problem.
We need a solution or we have to stop making conclusions (which really means we need to stop thinking.)
It does not occur to these people that they are failing to understand what intelligence is.
That they have an idealistic understanding of it.
If we are bold enough to simply judge based on what evidence we have, which in pretty much all cases, I am sure, means concluding that God does not exist, then we risk facing the charge of solipsism.
How we DARE to make a claim as to what exists and what does not when there still remains a possibility that we are wrong!?
I admit. Just because I say “God does not exist” does not mean that at some point in the future I will, in response to new evidence, change my position to “God exists”.
I don’t deny this. But as it is, I have no choice but to say “God does not exist”.
With that, any charge of dogmatism goes out of the window. For my conclusions are not independent from evidence – they are strictly dependent on evidence.
It is EVIDENCE that determines what I am going to think.
You can take the above and modify it so that the word “God” is replaced by word “cause”.
It will still be correct.

Most people have no trouble understanding what a “headless monster” is. Even though none of us ever physically interacted with one. But once you mention a concept such as “uncaused event” people are immediately confused. Even though these two concepts have quite a bit in common. Headless monster is a monster without a head. It’s a monster that has no head and this means that we do not see its head – we do not see a head associated with this monster. That’s how we KNOW that any particular monster has no head – by not seeing it. Our resident smartass would scream “SOLIPSISM!” He will tell us that just because we do not see something does not mean that that something does not exist. In this particular case, he will tell us that just because we do not see a head does not mean that there is no head. How can we be ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that this particular organism, this monster, has no head? For example, its head might simply be too small to be visible to the naked eye. We need to zoom in. Okay, we decide to give him a chance, so we use whatever means we have to get a closer look in order to test his claim. We do the experiment and we get a negative result: there is no head. Our smartass, however, is not willing to give up. He insists that the head might be even smaller than what we assumed so we need to zoom in further. Just to be sure. Okay, we give him another chance, we zoom in further, and once again, we get a negative result: there is no head. But the smartass won’t give up. He wants to keep zooming in. He’s never certain. He’s clearly afraid of being wrong. Like a paranoid person, or a hypochondriac, he is constantly worried about something – in his case, about being wrong. This is a paralyzing condition because without imposing a time-limit on your research (i.e. without establishing how long you’ll keep looking for evidence) you can never do anything else in your life other than do research. The effect is you spend more and more of your time doing research and less and less time taking action. All because you’re afraid of being a “solipsist”. As if there is such a thing as “absolute certainty”. It’s interesting that our smartass understands what a headless monster is but has trouble understanding what an uncaused event is. An uncaused event is simply some event A for which there is no some other event B which is causally related to it. In plain terms, it’s an event for which we see no cause. Words “cause” and “effect” are simply attributes we assign to those events that are in a specific relation (i.e. that have certain set of similarities and differences that represent what we call “causal relation”.) Our smartass thinks that the universe cannot function without such relations. Apparently, in his own little world, the universe is some kind of organism that must act in a certain way lest it die and disappear out of existence together with existence itself. Whatever that means. I am sure he “understands” what that means. If he thinks or feels he understands it, he must be understanding it.

Do I have to say that “uncaused event” is not the same as “self-caused event” or what is otherwise known as causa sui? The class of concepts that have the form self-[verb] are very tricky to deal with. On one hand, relations can exist only between two different things. A thing cannot be in relation with itself. It’s meaningless. On the other hand, self-relations, if not treated literally, can refer to relations between two different events that belong to the same category. For example, suicide is a form of self-relation – a self-destruction – that refers to one event from the category “self” destroying another event from the category “self” e.g. one’s brain destroying one’s body. I have no idea what self-causation can possibly mean. Either way, when I say “uncaused event” I mean any event that is literally not caused by any other event including itself (if that were somehow meaningful.) There is a breed of morons who think that if an event is not caused by some other event that it is caused by itself. This is just plain stupid. It betrays that they have no clue what casual relations are. And that they think that behind every event must be a cause. And that if there is no other event that is the cause of some event X that the event X is caused by itself.

Underlying order means that a pattern, phenomenon, natural law, like gravity, predates your human perspective.

The universe was around before you were born, and will be after you die, despite your infantile urges to believe that the universe begins and ends with you. It doesn’t. And despite your childish tantrums where you claim that you must see something before it can exist.

Underlying order means discovering and re-discovering all the laws of nature which precede human consciousness.

I’m still right. You’re still wrong.

Magnus, do you believe that you can get something from nothing?