Robofox42

This is indiegogo, the money is not refunded if they fail to reach the goal (Kickstarter does that). I am guessing they will run with the money after this. I am surprised they raised this much. It looks like an obvious scam. EDIT oops, they have it set to fixed funding instead of flexible so they have to reach the goal to get the funds. nevermind.

From wikipedia Sequoioideae (redwoods) is an ancient taxon. The first Sequoioideae, Sequoia jeholensis, was discovered in Jurassic deposits.[8] The fossil record shows a massive expansion of range in the Cretaceous and dominance of the Arcto-Tertiary flora, especially in northern latitudes. Genera of Sequoioideae were found in the Arctic Circle, Europe, North America, and throughout Asia and Japan.[9] A general cooling trend beginning in the late Eocene and Oligocene reduced the northern ranges of the Sequoioideae, as did subsequent ice ages.[10] Evolutionary adaptations to ancient environments persist in all three species despite changing climate, distribution, and associated flora. Especially the specific demands of their reproduction ecology ultimately forced each of the species into refugial ranges where they could survive, but still only in a vulnerable state. So let's see, jurassic ancestors which were about 150 - 200 million years ago. To be conservative, 150 million years ago. Now currently, they tend to live about 500 to 2000 year old. Let's be conservative and assume that lifespan is 2000 years and that all their ancestors lived 2000 years as well. Also assume that they only reproduce at the end of their lifecycle which is a rather absurd assumption. That still allows for 150 million / 2000 = 75 thousand generations. 75,000 generations seems like plenty of time for things to evolve. People tend to underestimate how long of timespans we are talking about. 1000 year old tree is only 20 times longer than the lifespan of humans and many animals. I don't see how this is evidence against evolution. Going through creationist arguments is exhausting. Like the redwood tree example above, almost all of them are geared toward scientifically uninformed audiences. Arguments that have been refuted many times are still used over and over again because the audiences of creationist arguments rarely bother to go looking for the refutation. It is exhausting because it takes time to explain the fundamentals of evolution to people in order to counter the arguments and most creationists are not interested in learning about evolution. They just want an easy way to dismiss it. Combine this with the Dunning-Kruger effect and it gets very frustrating.

Sorry for the long delay in posting, I have been extremely busy. I think I am too much of a coward to call in. I came to a realization that really helped me as I have thought about it over the week. I realized that like the state, teh church doesn't exist. I have been struggling with hating everything that has anything to do with the church, but realized that it is all just people. There are the people I hate such as Joseph Smith and many of the church leaders. Also, many of my local leaders growing up. I also detest my parent's use of scriptures to justify horrendous parenting. However, there are a lot of members who are just blind or can't handle the cost of seeing the truth. These members I can see differently now because they aren't the ones that have created the doctrine. Many of the people I know from the church are trying to be good. It is like the state. Not everyone who works for the state is evil. The church trains you to see the world as black and white. Us vs them. I was under a false dichotomy. This show has really helped me to be able to deal with my trauma with teh church.

When I watched FDR2927, I was very bothered. This alone isn't an argument, I understand, but I wanted to figure out what is going on for me. I would like to put forward some arguments that Stef doens't know what the Mormon community is like and he made bad assumptions assuming they were like benign Christan churches. Stefan talks about the niceness of the community he would be leaving. However, in Stef's podcast 476, he points out this is camoflauge. I have been in many callings in my mormon past and when they are being nice to outsiders, 9 times out of ten, it is because of some meeting. I have been in those meetings. We are specifically handing out assignments to be friends and figuring out how to "build a relationship of trust." The goal is always fellowship to bring about conversion. I served a mission and I am very aware of the process. There are local leaders that will act charitably for the sake of being kind, but after being in many wards on my mission and in my adult life, this is generally the exception, and not the rule. Visinting exmormon reddit, I have found many who have expressed the same observation. This isn't proof, but I think these samplings taken together make a strong confidence interval. Even the caller knew the true nature of his community. He knew they weren't kind because he knew they would reject him and cast him out if he voiced his concerns. Also, Mormons don't care for philosophy or philosophical discussion. I have even heard religious instructors (not the lay audience, but seminary and institute professionals) point out how useless philosophy is because we already have the answers. Mormons like to talk about deep topics, but only in terms of Mormon doctrine which can get very complicated. Early church leaders loved to pontificate on everything and trying to make sense of the mess of contradictory statements they have made hundreds (the number I have met) of members waste lots of time trying to make sense of it. Anything that church leaders ALWAYS trumps anything else and so I have had many hundreds of these discussions with members and very rarely hear any perspective that isn't a past church leader. Mormons don't use hell-fire for methods of control. They use shaming, guilt, and social pressure. I was taught that any sexual thoughts were evil and would lead to my eternal damnation. Damnation means your progression is damned or stopped. In mormonism, this means that you are separated to the third kingdom where you are separated from your family and are left to live with all the bad people. Mormons focus on eternal families not to strengthen families but as a system of control. You are taught that only if you obey everything and do everything the church says including paying 10% tithing, only then can you be with your family. Otherwise you will be split up, forced to live forever in separate kingdoms. They might be able to visit sometimes, but you won't be together forever. This is the main evil of mormonism in my opinion, they use the family as blackmail for obedience. It is very effective. Obey us or you will lose your family forever. This is child abuse. I also think the caller might be lying to himself about his wife's love. I thought my wife loved me, but the moment I pointed out I was having doubts, She immediately threatened with divorce. I might be projecting, but I think the caller is splitting. HIs wife is wonderful and loves him, but on the other hand, he thinks his wife would leave him for not believing. I think after going through all I think teh best advice would be to not split up your family, but to also face the reality of how empty the love people have for you in your life really are. This is one of the worst aspects of Mormonism. It forcibly pushes away all reality and real connection so there is no room left. Other Christain religions don't nearly ocupy as much of your life as mormonism does. I think it does a huge disservice to rationality to say that the Mormon church got things right. The reality is that Mormonism started with a horrible man who used his religious authority to force dozens of young women into his brides that were more like concubines. He introduced a very perverted polygamy that warped the early mormon family. It wasn't until society threatened the mormon church with extinction that the church slowly left its perverted ways. There are still flds grouds out there with thousands of members thar are still perverted cults even worse than mainstream mormonism. the FLDS church is much more like early mormonism. Mormonism now just changes slowly to the pressure of societal values. The mormon church still practiced racial segregation as late as 1978. I think Stef's apoplogy was misplaced going toward the Mormon church.

A few months ago, I did my first ever movie analysis on the movie "Frozen." https://board.freedomainradio.com/topic/39347-analysis-of-movie-frozen/ Well, I have decided to try it again with the movie "Brave." Please let me know what you think. I hope this review isn't too long, but I wanted to go over this movie in detail. This review is pretty critical of the movie so if you liked it be warned. *** Spoiler alert *** I am going to be going through the whole plot in detail so don't read if you want to watch the movie. Brave is a movie that shows the transformation of Merida to a false self due to her lying to herself about her mother. The realization that made this movie click for me is to realize that Mordue is actually Elinor, Merida's mother. Before going into the plot, I wanted to present some of the evidence that Mordue is actually Merida's mom. Every time we see Mordue, it is when Merida is with her mom. Also, in each case, right before Mordue appears, Merida sees the will of the wisps. This is a marker of when Merida is entering fantasy and lying to herself about what is actually occuring. Elinor becomes a bear and twice almost attacks Merida. Also, as a clue, at one point the father thinks that Elinor (as a bear) is Mordue. So on to the plot... At the very beginning, Merida and her mother are playing hide and seek. They are having a bonding moment and Merida gets a bow and shoots an arrow into the woods. She wanders off searching for her arrow. She is led by the will of the wisps back to protect her from Mordue who is implied to be watching her. I think what actually happens is that she gets lost in the woods and when she returns, she meets the rage of her mom. Remember that every time she is seeing the will of the wisps, she is entering fantasy and creating a different narrative for what events are actually occuring. So Mordue attacks and she remembers it as her mom running her to protection and her father facing Mordue. One thing that is interesting is that at other times in the movie, Merida goes to her father for protection from her mom. Each time this happens, the father fails to protect her. The father has lost his leg from Mordue and to me this represents that he has lost a part of himself especially his self-respect due to being submissive to Elinor. Multiple times throughout the movie, Elinor humiliates her husband and he just submits. So after the Mordue beginning scene, Merida talks about fate and talks about how many believe that fate can't be changed. She implies that fate can be changed and ends with "there are some who are led." This is interesting because this is completely contradictory. A person who is led is not changing their fate, but is arguably actually following their fate. In other words, she is lying to herself that she actually changed her fate. This becomes clear by the end of the movie. So Merida starts talking about how her whole life is controlled by her mother. Her true self is rightly angered by this and seeks freedom. On special days, she gets to be herself and she rides shooting arrows and drinks of the fire falls. She comes home and the father is telling the story of his leg, while the mother is completely ignoring him. Merida tells him that she drank of the fire falls, and the father is impressed and says "they say that only the ancient kings were brave enough to drink the fire." I think this means that only in ancient times were people brave enough to be their true selves. Elinor gets the news of the betrothal. Fergus tries to tell Merida and the mother gets impatient and takes over humiliating Fergus. Merida gets upset and seeks her father's help but he doesn't give it to her. Merida is justly angry because her mother is about to force her to get married which is really just institutional rape. The mother is completely out of touch with her own pain she experienced as a child and is normalizing it by inflicting it on Merida. She acts bewildered on why Merida isn't happy with the news which shows how much she has repressed her own childhood memories and how much she is ignoring Merida. She comes to Merida's room and tells her of an ancient kingdom. This story is actually the story of her own history. The story of Brave is the cycle of the false self is repeated onto the next generation. Elinor's story is a legend because the mom can't remember what actually happened for real. What is particularly outrageous is that she equates the prince trying to take over the other brother's kingdoms as "following his own path." She is using an example of going to war to conquer and his fault was following his own path. She has clearly failed to understand the morality of her own history and is now going to inflict the same injustice on her daughter. The mother talks to the father about her frustration. She roleplays and says they are giving her all the things they never had, asks "What do you expect us to do", "Are you willing to pay the price for your freedom", and "We can't run away from who we are." These are clearly the same things that she was told as a child and she now believes them even though they are obviously not true. She is asking her daughter to listen, but she isn't listening to the daughter. What is interesting is that the daughter has in fact listened to her. The daughter does know her arguments and has countered them. So the daughter was listening, and the mother wasn't. There is a false idea that floats around a lot in family movies that the only real problem with family relationships is listening. The reality is that those who are oppressed have to listen and be hyper-attentive to those in power for self-protection. Those who oppress are choosing not to listen because they want to lie to themselves on what is actually occuring. Listening won't solve anything because it is a symptom, not the root cause. Now the day comes where the clans arrive and Merida is wearing a tight outfit which is representative of the tight control she is being submitted to in order to be someone her mom wants her to be. The mom has a moment of connection with the daughter where she is about to have empathy because it is reminding her of her own past. The mom can't handle it and reverts back to her false self and tells Merida to smile. The clans arrive and the clans really represent extended family. The father is trying to address the clans and struggles and the mom humiliates Fergus by taking over again. The clans are all about false image and pretending their sons are better than they really are. The clans get into a fight and it is clear that the clans have pretty violent relationships. The mother ends the fighting because she in fact has the real power and is in charge. They have the archery contest and Merida rips her dress to fire the arrows and this represents she is refusing to conform to her mom's tight restrictions. She defeats the suitors arrows and is met with rage by her mom. The mom doesn't care about her daughter as much as she cares about her own embarrassment ("YOU EMBARRASED THEM AND YOU EMBARRASED ME!"). She demands that Merida listen to her. Merida protests and says that "you were never there for me." This line is important because it comes up later several times. In her true self anger, Merida sees that her mom doesn't care about her. Merida rips the tapestry with her sword. The mom cares more about the tapestry then about what she is about to do to her daughter. The mom then burns her bow and realizes in a moment of anguish the corruption of her false self. Note that she doesn't use this moment to change because when Merida gets back, she still wants to appease the clans. Merida runs away. She reaches the circle of stones and falls off her horse. The stones represent the cycle of abuse from generation to generation. First, the stones are in a circle and are ancient which means ancient cycle. They have a strong connection to "fate" in the story. The stones also have an ominous feel to them. Almost every time the stones enter the story, there is something violent that has happened or is about to happen. The first time they are encountered is when Merida fell off her horse. She sees the will of the wisps and follows them representing again going into fantasy. This time, she is creating a fantasy that she can change her mom. She meets the witch and she is a wood carver of bears. I think the choice of bears is interesting for the film. Bears have two natures to them. On the one hand, bears are nice, cuddly, and fuzzy (think teddy bears). On the other hand, they are strong predators that can be very violent and dangerous. This represents the splitting that is about to happen in Merida's mind about her mom's nature. This dual nature also applies to the witch herself. She is a wood-carver but also with a snap of her fingers, her home changes and has a brewing cauldron. She acts nice at first, but then becomes very threatening with the floating knives, then changes again to being nice when offered Merida's medallion. She also acts nice but is very violent with her crow. I am not entirely sure what she represents, but it has something to do with the dual nature. Even the cake is dual natured and pretends to be a cake when it really isn't. When Merida gets the cake and turns around, the witch's cottage is not there which further confirms that this was all fantasy. Merida returns and the mom acts concerned about her being lost, and acts as if nothing had happened before. She is concerned that Merida might of got hurt, but is oblivious to the tremendous harm she is about to put her daughter through to appease the Clans. The mother is completely suppressing the moment of realization she had before and needs to pretend that nothing is wrong to avoid her realization. Merida gives her the cake and she eats it and turns into a bear. They have to escape the castle. Notice that only the boys and Merida see the bear. Fergus smells the bear, but no one believes him. Corrupt people are very good at putting a front to hide their nature from others. They get to the stones and Merida can't see the wisps. Now what happens next doesn't make sense in terms of the story plot but does in terms of the meaning behind the film. The mother starts to walk and she in fact knows the way to the witch's cottage. This tells us that she has been here before. The story of the ancient kingdom is in fact her story and she knows about the fantasy of the cottage. They get to the cottage, and no one is there, but a message was left. "Fate be changed, look inside, mend the bond, torn by pride." This is the illusion of the false self. To change your fate, you must look inside yourself and create a fantasy so that you can mend the bond with corrupt people by believing it is your fault (your pride). Next Merida throws in all the bottles and the witch's cottage is destroyed. The cottage being empty when there are no wisps and it later being destroyed are clues that this is fantasy. When the mom is despairing, she has a flashback where Merida was scared by lightning, and Elinor remembers promising that "I will always be there for you." This promise she obviously has not kept and it is in her moment of despair that the true self is showing the truth to her. The next morning, the mom is trying to make breakfast and later the mom and Merida have a bonding moment catching fish. Interestingly, the mom leaves her crown. The mom stops being her false self for a while and that is why she is able to bond with Merida. However, the mom can't handle being her true self and becomes a wild bear (begins to become like Mordue). Right as this is happening, Merida again goes into fantasy because another will of the wisp appears. They travel to the ancient kingdom. Notice that Elinor leaves her crown. This I believe can have two possible meanings. The first meaning is from the crown representing her status as Queen. The mom has to leave the crown in order to bond with Merida and stop being a bear. However, I think another meaning that I agree more with is is forshadowing. The crown is not just a symbol of her being Queen but also a symbol of her marriage with Fergus. She has left the crown and this is forshadowing that becomes more clear later in the story. So Elinor and Merida travel to the ancient kingdom (remember that this is all fantasy that is created right as Elinor is about to attack Merida as a bear). They travel to the kingdom and there is a wasteland that has lots of pillars that look very similar to the circle of stones. This ancient kingdom is the destruction of Elinor's childhood. Merida comes across "the strength of ten men and fate be changed." The false self is created because it convinces the person that it can have much more strength to fight corruption, this is the meaning of strength of ten. Also the false self lies and says that it can control destiny (fate be changed). Mordue attacks Merida and again while in fantasy, Merida believes the mom as the good bear is protecting her from Mordue. They escape and reach the circle of stones. They return to the castle and the clans are fighting. Merida acts just like her mother and gets the clans to stop fighting. She then tells them she was selfish (remember, she is selfish for not willing to sacrifice herself to the clans). She tells them of the ancient kingdom and unites the clans. At this point she is becoming dominated by her false self and making herself a sacrifice for others. The mom is now happy she has become like her and now lets her decide who she gets to marry and tell the clans this through sign language of sorts. I think basically this means that when a child becomes the false self, it is a form of protection from parental harm. A parent is less dominating and when a child has become the false self, they loosen their dominating force. This is why a child becomes the false self to avoid harm. So Merida and Elinor go up to the tapestry and again Elinor becomes wild. Fergus believes that Mordue has killed Elinor and attacks Elinor. Elinor easily knocks out Fergus. Notice that Fergus is never really a match for Mordue or for his wife Elinor and not just when Elinor is a bear. Elinor runs away and is chased by the clans. Fergus locks up Merida and Merida believes it is her fault that Fergus is after Elinor. This part of the story confused me for a while until I realized that at this point, Elinor has revealed herself to be a bear to Fergus and to the clans. What I believe is actually going on is that Fergus and Elinor are going through a divorce. The father and the clans are going after Elinor because she is Mordue. I think it is very likely that whoever was mainly in charge of the story has gone either through a divorce themself or seen their parents divorce as a child. I think this is possible the meaning of the forshadowing of the Queen losing her crown. Notice that Fergus says to Merida, " I am not willing to risk losing you too." Also, Elinor did actually hurt Merida. Merida is unable to see that it is not her fault what is going on and believes that Fergus is divorcing Merida because of her. This metaphor emotionally captures the feelings of a child watching their parents divorce. The boys help Merida escape and she rides to the stones with the guidance of the will of the wisps. Again, she is going into fantasy. She is sewing the tapestry which she believes will fix everything. Elinor is trapped at the circle of stones, and Merida believes that she rescues her mother. Then Mordue appears. When Mordue appears, the clans and Fergus are no match. Mordue almost kills Merida and Elinor breaks free and fights Mordue. I think this actually has two meanings. First, Merida is believing that her mom is fighting Mordue and protecting her which is a repeated fantasy. Also, I couldn't help getting the feeling watching the two bears fighting thta this is what it is like for children to witness their parents fighting. Everyone is cowering in fear watching two goliaths in combat. Merida believes that her mom kills Mordue and this is done by breaking the circle of stones or breaking the cycle of violence. The prince appears as a will of the wisp again showing that this is fantasy. Merida throws the tapestry over her mom and everyone is sad that the mom is still a bear. Notice that the boys are bears too which is showing that the cycle will continue with them as well. I think what is really happening is that everyone is crying over watching the marriage dissolving. At the end, Merida says that it is all her fault, and "you were always there for me." This is a child who is so desparate to believe that she can fix her mom and fix everthing by taking responsibility for her mom's corruption. Elinor changes back and everything is a happy ending, however, as the mom and Merida are riding on their horses, you see another will of the wisp signifying that this is a fantasy. At the end she says again says that there are those who say fate can't be changed, but she knows better, that to change fate you just need to be "brave enough to see it." Basically, she believes her fate has changed because she is willing to believe a delusion.

I don't understand. You have fire protection. He doesn't. So you will be compensated for the burning down of your home. He loses the value of his home. I don't understand the problem. He made a stupid decision and will suffer financially. Where is the problem exactly? Edit: Oh, I see you are talking about fire protection instead of fire insurance. So if he doesn't buy fire protection, his fire insurance rates would go way up and it would be very expensive. If he doesn't buy fire insurance, he is risking the value of his home by accident. Of course, the best course of action is preventative. A community would probably have in their contract that if homes in close proximity to other homes would need fire protection. If such a contract can't be arranged due to him already being there, then whoever builds their home next to his is taking the risk. If the society becomes free, and the homes are both already next to each other, and he continues to take big risks with fire, there is the possibility of filing a complaint with your DRO which will contact his DRO. If his DRO finds him to be negligent and endangering others, then it will significantly raise his rates unless he alters his behavior. If he refuses DRO protection, then he will have economic ostracization which probably won't take long before he will alter his behavior for his own self-interest. One common misconception about a free society is due to people inherently believing that the only way a community can organize or cooperate is with the state. This is due to parents having to force and control relationships children have with each other. So people grow up thinking that without the state (parents) they are left to fend completely for themselves without anyone else's help. This is teh root emotional argument people are making because of their childhoods.

Alright, so I have re-read some parts of UPB. I completely missed the part about Universally preferable behavior only makes sense for a given goal. I did indeed make the monumental error of assuming that everyone should have the same goals. This of course is not possible because you can't get a "should" from an "is." Also, I now understand that given that UPB requires goals and the possibility of rationality, animals such as rats can't use UPB, because they are not able to create valid moral theories to achieve their goals. Noesis, I appreciate you pointing out these errors. I apologize for any arrogance I displayed because indeed you did understand better than I did. So, Noesis, you say that morality doesn't exist. I can see two interpretations for this, and I am curious which one you take. 1 - There is no set of goals that everyone should have. Therefore, there is no common set of moral ethics that people should apply because people will have different goals. There is no way to prove that people should have the same goals. Not having a common set of goals makes it impossible for people to believe in a common set of ethics. 2 - For a given set of goals, there is no universally preferable way for achieving them. Which methodology or set of ethics you use is entirely subjective and determined by the society. If I understand your arguments, you appear to be arguing for #1, but I am not sure. The moral nihilists I have read and talked to in teh past were arguing #2. I incorrectly assumed you were arguing #2. I believe that UPB is an effective argument to #2, but I don't have any real argument against #1 except to say that people with different goals than me, I don't want to be around or have in my life.

Reading your quote of Stefan Molyneux and thinking about it, I now believe that there is a disconnect with Molyneux's argument and my own. I will need to revisit his arguments and see where the disconnect is. It is painful for me to say it, but thank you Noesis for pointing out my confusion of thinking.

Your appeal to your own ethos on interpretation is not an argument. Using the word monumental doesn't improve your argument. Claiming that I am wrong because you disagree with me is not an argument. Once again you put goals where no goals are needed. It is entirely empirical to state what universally preferable behavior is for rats. No need to talk about goals. I never stated that life is the highest goal. I said that life is a universally preferred behavior along with other preferred behaviors. You are purposely confusing empiricism with goals. Pyromaniacs, assasins, and all of those other examples are people who are choosing to avoid emotional trauma using temporary pleasure. The fact that they have pleasure is not solely a basis for their behavior being universally preferable behavior. A floating balloon doesn't refute gravity. "So I do not have to choose your goals. Your ethics are based on your goals. I reject them. I am therefore not subject to their requirements. The end." Of course you don't. You are entirely free to use whatever methodology you prefer. Just like a person can pray for the explanation of a physics problem instead of use science. But if you want to be logical and empirical, you "ought" to use UPB. It is your choice.

Universally preferable behavior can be be objectively determined. If I observe rats, I can easily observe that they have universally preferred behaviors. They want to eat, they want to avoid pain, they try to stay alive, etc. It is entirely possible to objectively determine the preferred behavior of the rats. With humans, it isn't different. Now sometimes it is more complicated. For example, humans sometimes want to die to avoid emotional pain. These behaviors are completely empirical. We can observe rats and figure out their universally preferred behaviors. We can do so with humans too. This is why the field of biology can exist. If all the rats eat poisoned food, then they all die. This is objective. The rats eating poison is not a universally preferable behavior of the rats. Rats drinking water to survive is universally preferable behavior. This is all empirical. Science is where the "ought" comes into play. The moment a scientist tries to describe reality, then they "ought" to create theories that are consistent that make accurate predictions. They also "ought" to update their theories to reflect the evidence. This is entirely optional. They don't have to. They are still free to create mystical contradictory theories. There is no difference between science that describes physical reality, and morality that describes universally preferable behavior. Morality like science is entirely optional. Morality "ought" to be logically consistent and empirical if it wants to successfully describe universally preferable behavior. Morality is a lot harder because for most of our history, there was no equivalent scientific method. It took a long time for science to chosen over the alternatives. I really hope it doesn't take as long for UPB to be chosen over moral relativism. A theory of morality that says rats "should eat poison" is completely incorrect once you accept that theories of morality need to be objective and empirical. This prescription is entirely inconsistent of the rats preferable behavior. We can do this "if" we want to have logical consistent, and accurate theories of morality. This is where the "should" comes in. All communists countries to date have had massive genocide.When she says that fail is a subjective term, she is really saying that we can't know genocide is failing. This is nonsense. There is nothing subjective about this. Based on universally preferable behavior of humans, this is not preferred. There is no "should" involved, just empirical facts. We can know that all the rats dying is not universally preferable behavior of the rats. This is the field of biology. This arguing that biology predictions are different based on the whims or goals of the organisms involved. This entirely misses the point. Of course the animals involved have different goals and have different beliefs about how to reach their goals. This doesn't change the reality of what actually happens to them. That universally preferable behaviors exists is entirely empirical and is not subjective at all. All you have to do is watch the rats. Theories of morality that are consistent and accurately predict universally preferable behavior in people are correct theories of morality. This is entirely objective and measurable. Yes, once you create a theory of morality, then "ought" gets involved. But this is no different than the moment you create a theory of physics, the "ought" gets involved. Theories of morality that are consistent and accurate explain universally preferable behavior the same way theories of physics that are consistent and accurately predict the effects of gravity. Talking to academic philosophers about morality feels like talking to mystics about science. Mystics argue that reality is subjective (miracles can overturn reality at any time. We need to know the goals of God to predict what will physically happen, etc). This is what it feels like for me talking to people that argue moral relativism. Just replace "God" with "society" with and the arguments become very similar.

"You can create subjective moral rules such as "don't eat" but you will fail to achieve the universally preferable behavior. This is what is meant by morality is optional." oops, lost portion of my explanation. I meant that moral rules such as don't eat will fail to achieve universally preferable behavior, just like wrong physics laws will produce a bridge that collapses. This doesn't change that there are real rules to achieve universally preferable behavior. That we don't know what they are doesn't mean they don't exist. Just like not knowing the laws of physics doesn't mean they don't exist. We can follow these laws of morality or not, this is what is meant by morality is optional.

I just wanted to make an attempt at this. It seems that no one is addressing the core of her argument - whether morality exists. She seems to be a nihilist that thinks that morality is just a set of rules people decide on to reach their goals. Everyone is trying to make the case that morality says that property rights based on UPB which of course won't matter to Noesis because she doesn't agree with the premise of morality. She is correct in that you can't get an "ought" from an "is." However, what she misses is that morality can still be objective. Reality exists. Reality has rules for how things behave. Mathematics doesn't exist except as an idea, however when math is used to describe reality, it becomes entirely objective and becomes a "should." Math ought to say that 2 + 2 = 4. It is entirely possible to create a set of rules for mathematics where 2 + 2 = 5. When such a system is created, it is entirely based on the whims and preferences of people creating the rules. To her morality is such a system that is entirely based on whims. However, the moment you make claims on reality using mathematics, you no longer get to use 2 + 2 = 5. To make logical claims on reality, you "should" use axioms of math that produce the result of 2 + 2 = 4. This is where it all get so confusing. People say 2 + 2 "is" 4. But they have forgotten that lots of axioms of mathematics were created to make mathematics conform to reality. The production of those axioms by mathematicians is where the "is/ought" connection is made. With morality, you can demonstrate evidence that universally preferable behavior exists. Just like a physicist can demonstrate that laws of physics exists. Now the "is" is of course that matter behaves in these ways. The "ought" is the scientific method that produces laws of physics that are consistent. Humans will behave in certain ways given moral rules that they believe in. This is the "is." The way reality is, the way humans act and operate, this is entirely objective. The "ought" is creating moral rules that conform to reality that actually produce universally preferable behavior. You can create subjective moral rules such as "don't eat" but you will fail to achieve the universally preferable behavior. This is what is meant by morality is optional. Morality exists the same way the axioms of mathematics exist. You don't need to use axioms that produce 2 + 2 = 4, but if you want to conform to reality, then you "ought" to. The laws of physics ought to predict matter and energy. Stefan's arguments ought to be logical, etc. She is claiming there is no morality or universally preferable behavior, but yet argues that Stef should use logic and proof for his argument. This is hypocritical. Property rights have lots of evidence and stef's theory on how property rights are created is a theory that explains a law of morality. The proof isn't absolute proof as even Stef admits this is impossible. The evidence that societies with property rights flourish and societies without them fail is demonstrating that the theory or property rights accurately describes human behavior in reality.

@JoelSorry for the long delay in response.I have thought a lot about the interpretation of things since watching Stefan's reviews of movies. However, this is my first actually written review. It's the first that I felt my ideas came together enough and fit well enough for me to feel confident to write a review to share. For this movie, my family recently went on a long road trip. About a week earlier, someone shared the "Let it go" song on facebook and my kids really liked it. They really wanted to see the film. We figured it would it would be a good film to help the kids handle the trip. So I saw the film and heard the audio of the film about 5-6 times. Thinking about the film was a great way to keep focus and not fall asleep on the road. I went through multiple interpretations but none of them seemed to be cohesive with the entire movie. I finally came to the realization that the two characters are the same person, and that is when it all came together.I can't really give advice since I feel like I got lucky and I don't feel confident I could replicate it. The only thing I could say is watch the film multiple times (I am not like Stef and it takes me many many times to pick up as much as he does in watching it the first time).I have some other opinions on this topic, but I don't have confidence that they are completely correct. The rest of this post is my view of interpretations and they are just my opinion and I don't feel confident that I have enough evidence for them to be proven. They are just my thoughts...I have come to see two different kinds of interpretations that are out there. The vast majority of interpretations are where the viewer is saying their emotional reaction to the movie. You can usually tell these because they talk only about a small portion of the content of the movie. Also, the interpretation often isn't consistent with the rest of the movie. Don't get me wrong, I think this is a valid approach as long as the person acknowledges that it is their own reaction to the movie. Otherwise, the person is projecting.On the other hand, the other type of interpretation is to try to come to understand the author/creator's emotional worldview. It takes a lot of effort for an author to create a movie. They are inevitably going to be pulled toward the emotions and ideas that resonate the most with them. The author's emotions, the messages of their subconscious, the lies they tell themselves, this will all make its way into the ideas in the film. These messages are very deep in the film because they have to rewrite it many times to fit to the cultural appetites of the audience. Like the false self, the surface layer of a film is the author's attempt to write the story to appeal to an audience. Like the the true self, the author can't fully erase the deep ideas and feelings they feel and so they are still present on a deeper layer.The author's experience in the creation of the movie is much harder to unravel, but I believe that when it is, the movie begins to make much more cohesive sense. Sometimes the messages can be completely contradictory, but that is because the author is lying to themselves on things they know deep down are true. The movie still can make cohesive sense because you can understand the state of the confusion of the author. The author's state of mind may be confused, but it can be understood. The interpretation can be cohesive even if the message is not.When a movie plot is created by multiple people, then it becomes a lot harder. In my opinion, the interpretation is not destroyed, just made deeper. Most of the people working on it stay focused on the surface layer of making it appeal to culture. However, I think that the person who is still in charge still leaves their feelings in, but it is on a deeper level. This is my theory to explain why readers hate movie adaptions of their books. The director of the movie creates their interpretation which is not the same as the interpretation of teh original book. Because of this, the reader feels the movie does not capture the spirit of the book. Their subconscious reaction is very different from the book. Even if the director tries hard to stay true to the story, they inevitably have to make so many decisions that their interpretation is woven into their product. Recreating the book interpretation is very difficult. It isn't just staying true to the story plotline.For me, I think the biggest clues to deeper meaning is when the plot either doesn't make sense, or events aren't necessary for the surface layer. My guess is when the plot doesn't make sense, it is because the author "needed" something to happen emotionally but couldn't find a way to do it. Another way it doesn't make sense is that the author is lying to themselves and doesn't see their own contradiction. This is usually the case when a movie is conforming to culture which usually doesn't make much sense but is taken for granted.For the movie "Frozen", my wife and I discussed the movie afterwards, and a lot of it didn't make any sense. - Christoff's personality doesn't make sense. His personality would be shaped by being alone a lot an d also by being raised by the trolls. His personality and mannerisms aren't like this at all. I think the more cohesive explanation is that he needed to be a person that was separate from the world so that he could help Anna find Elsa. He also wasn't like the trolls because he has somewhat successfully escaped their influence.- Anna's personality doesn't make sense. She has been alone for her childhood interacting with paintings as if they are real. Yet she is very social and warm and care-free. She also would have given up trying to have a relationship with her sister long before coronation day. She would have felt very hurt, angry, and resentful of being rejected much more than in the movie. However, her personality makes sense as a false self, and we always yearn to get back to our true self deep down. Her growing up alone isn't so much actually true as much as a metaphor.- Prince Hans has no bad vibes or forshadowing of who he is. I think this was because the false self is completely blind to corruption. The movie is not so much reality but experiencing the worldview of Anna in metaphor. There are several more, but this post is already pretty long.One last note. I think the author is still struggling with the false self. I believe they are still under the delusion that when they finally do come in harmony with their true self, then summer will come again and almost everyone will love them for who they are. I think the melting of all the ice and the welcoming of almost everyone to Elsa at the end is a sign that the author doesn't understand that they will still be rejected by almost everyone. If the author weren't under this delusion, it would make much more sense for Elsa and Anna to leave and bring winter somewhere else and summer would come back in their absence to the city. They would be happy away from everyone else that still lives in summer. Remember, the author could have chosen almost anything for the ending and this is the ending they chose. These are my thoughts and I hope they are helpful. I don't have a lot of successful experience interpreting movies so these are mainly my theories.

I wanted to put some of the evidence that they are indeed the same person. First off, their childhood is very close to the same. They are sisters that are very close yet they have grown up in isolation. This is a big clue. Another clue is that as Anna is getting frozen, she is learning teh truth about Hans and Christoff. Anna is becoming ice. Another clue is that Olaf is the guide to Anna finding Elsa. He seems to be the connection between the two sisters. Another clue is that Elsa's permission is necessary for Anna to marry Hans. It seemed strange that Elsa had the power to say they weren't getting married. Another clue is that Hans is going through Anna to get to Elsa The main clue for me is that the two sisters are so close in a lot of ways but they must be kept apart from each other. Elsa is very dangerous to Anna, and the story seems to revolve around the two sisters being able to successfully reunite after being pulled apart in their childhood. The story ends with them being in harmony instead of the traditional ending of Anna getting married. This was my interpretation of the deeper meaning that made the most sense to me.

I recently watched the movie frozen, and struck me emotionally. I felt there was something deeper going on, and I thought about it and I think I have a good idea of one possible interpretation of the movie.*** SPOILER ALERT ***I will be going through the plot in detail and so don't read this review until after you have watched the movie.The main cue to deeper meaning is the ice. The ice stands for the truth and integrity. Ice is a manifestation of the true self. The entire movie is about the struggle of the true self against the false self. To start with, the main thing that made the deeper meaning click for me is to realize that Anna and Elsa are in fact the same person. Elsa is the true self. I was very confused at first because I thought that Anna was the false self, but it didn't make sense with the rest of the movie. I then realized that Anna is the manifestation of the personality. When they are children, Elsa and Anna are in harmony as children are with their true self.However, Anna gets struck with ice to the head and this creates a panic. I think this implicitly means that Anna is attacked for being her true self as a child. She is rushed to the troll healer. The troll healer I think means well, but he is actually corrupt. His advice is to erase Elsa's memories which is basically telling Anna to self-erase her true self. He also warns her about fear, but all his advice is terrible because it greatly escalates fear in Elsa. Elsa must suppress her ice and cut herself off from Anna. Elsa is also cut off from the rest of the world. Notice that the troll healer can't heal the heart. This makes sense because corrupt parents can't heal the hearts of their children. Elsa's ability is considered a curse and she is told to control it by not feeling.Later on, it is pretty apparent that Anna is now completely isolated from Elsa. She is very lonely as people are when they suppress their true self. Elsa is completely isolated in her room which tells me that the true self is completely suppressed. Elsa can't really control her power because the true self can't really stop existing and conform to corrupt people. The true self can never fully self-erase and so the depression is manifested in Anna and Elsa.When coronation day arrives, Anna is now completely the false self. She is very care-free and instantly falls in love with the very corrupt Prince Hans. This is one of the ways we know that Anna is the false self. She is completely blind to the corruptness of people around her. I thought it was very fitting that Elsa has to suppress herself the very most in order to become Queen. At the dance later, Elsa is very quiet and refuses to dance. She knows that if she revealed her ice, the people there would be afraid of her. Anna on the other hand dances with the Duke and Prince Hans who are both very corrupt. She decides to get engaged to Hans, but Elsa refuses. This also tells me that Elsa is the true self because she is able to recognize the danger of marrying Hans. Anna is angry and wants to know why Elsa cuts her out. The false self wants to know why it can't be happy and is angry at the true self. Elsa loses control and reveals her power and this incites anger in the Duke and fear in the crowd. To me the Duke represents corrupt authority that seeks to exploit. The crowd represents people who obey authority and being your true self creates fear in them. Elsa runs away. Her running away creates a winter. Basically revealing your true self creates fear, panic, and anger (Duke) to those around you. Anna must leave after Elsa in order to try to restore things the way they were. Anna is still the false self and is trying to stop the waves of cold that are inevitably released when Elsa's powers are revealed. Elsa sings the "Let it go" song which is quite powerful. This is how we know for certain that Elsa is the true self and the ice is truth and integrity. This song moved me a lot and I think it moves a lot of people because it reaches down through their unconscious and their true selves crave the freedom. In the song she is expressing how she won't hold it back and she doesn't care about what others think and that the cold doesn't bother her.Anna is seeking after her sister to restore things to teh way they were before. She can't handle the cold very well and wishes her sister had powers that were powers of summer instead of ice. She comes across Christoff. He enters covered in snow and his job is hauling ice. These cues of ice let us know that Christoff is actually a very good person. Anna recognizes that only with his help can she go and find Elsa which is rather telling. It often takes a very good person and friend to help us on our path back to our true self. Anna is still the false self and she is easily offended by Christoff. Christoff is also able to see the danger in Anna's engagement and tries to warn her but she is defensive. At this moment, they are attacked by wolves, or more accurately, Christoff is attacked by wolves. The wolves represent Anna's false self emotionally attacking Christoff when he tries to tell her the truth about the corruption of Hans.Christoff still follows her even though he was just attacked by wolves which was really her attack. This tells us that he still does care about her, but he is feeling reluctant to help her when she doesn't seem to want his help and will attack him when he does. But he grudgingly recognizes that she really does need him. She is completely unaware of how lost she is and needs Christoff to even know which way to go. They then meet Olaf the snowman who becomes their guide. Olaf is the innocent child that was abandoned/destroyed when the original accident happened. We know this because he was destroyed in their childhood and is only restored when Elsa becomes free. He is also completely unaware of the danger of heat like a child is unaware of the danger of corrupt people. The fact that he becomes the guide tells us that Anna must visit her childhood memories in order to meet Elsa again. She wants to climb the wall and really can't. Olaf shows her how to find the staircase. Olaf is also very confused on why Anna can't just knock and talk to Elsa.Anna meets Elsa, and that they must meet alone with only Olaf is the clue that they were actually the same person. Anna is trying to convince Elsa to bring back summer, but Elsa can't. Anna is unaware of how Elsa is feeling and is trying to convince her to come back. She is unaware that once the true self is let free, she can't go back to the way things were before. Anna is struck with ice in the heart. To me this means that full exposure to teh true self is fatal to the false self. Elsa refuses to allow Anna to corrupt her into going back and sends the huge snow creature to drive them out. Anna is starting to become cold and Christoff takes her to see his family. Now as they are going to visit the troll family, notice the heat vents and the complete removal of all snow and ice. This is a cue that the family is actually a corrupt manipulative influence. This is verified by them wanting to manipulate Christoff and Anna to get married on the spot. This is the very danger that Christoff warned Anna about earlier. Anna is still the false self at this point and in love with Prince Hans. They are very shallow and judge her to be a good match looking at only her looks. They are basically trying to setup Christoff with a person that is still dominated by the false self. He is constantly trying to ward off their manipulation, but not being very successful. They quit trying when the coldness of Anna manifests which is interesting. The troll healer comes and says he can't do anything to help her heart. They then send Anna and Christoff to Prince Hans which is sending them in the completely wrong direction. Meanwhile, the corrupt Duke and Hans come to attack Elsa and bring back summer. The Duke through hostility, and Hans through manipulation. The ice monster tries to protect Elsa but fails. She is imprisoned again, but she can't bring back summer which is saying she can't go back to the way she was before. Anna is getting colder. The ice in her heart reveals to her the true nature of Hans. Hans only loved her false self that he could manipulate. Hans was just using her before to get to the throne of Elsa's. The ice in Anna's heart is beginning to reveal to her the corruption around her that she couldn't see. She realizes she doesn't know what love is and how shallow the false self really is. Olaf who is the childhood guide begins to teach her. Elsa uses ice to escape her captors and a storm begins. I take the storm to mean the emotional turbalence Elsa and Anna are going through. The path from the false self to the true self is very painful and turbulent. The storm is also a great sifter that reveals the real nature of the world around her. Only Christoff is willing to go through the storm and try to save Anna. Anna is wandering to find Christoff because she has learned that he is the one that actually cares about her. As Anna is becoming more aware of the truth she is getting colder and colder. The ice in her heart is killing her false self. Anna then is willing to die or let her false self completely die in order to save Elsa from the corruption of Hans. When she does, Han's sword is destroyed and Anna is fully ice. Once Anna becomes fully ice, she then melts because she now loves Elsa who is her true self. I take the love will thaw as the ending of the storm of turbulence that comes from emerging with Anna loving Elsa and they are in harmony again. Elsa has found the oasis where she can be happy and no longer has feel fear because she has removed the corrupt people out of her life. She cuts off relations with the Duke of Weselton and sends back Hans. She is surrounded by people that enjoy her ice and she now can create a perpetual winter in her castle. Olaf is now permanently protected from melting. She is leaving the door open which means she will not hide herself any longer.I like how it ends with a shot of the castle being in winter in isolation. She has created an oasis where the people that value her for who she is can gather away from summer which is the rest of the world outside.

My understanding was that the blob was a single point. Having a blob that is finite size is no longer single point and can be thought of as a collections of particles or infinite distribution of matter. Once you have that, you have as many points as you want for both the measurement of space and time. Now in classical physics, the only way to have time variance was to have a changing system. If the blob was always the same and parts of it never moved in relation to each other, then time is not measurable. However, this is modeling the system as time and space independent. In reality, you can't measure space perfectly without information about time. In relativity, you need 4 coordinates for measurements to makes sense. This is because with only 3 coordinates, if you use a moving reference frame, then the spatial dimensions are altered. Every non-accelerating reference frame is equally valid so the length of the blob has infinitely many values that are all equally valid. So the length of the blob is meaningless without time because it is completely dependent on the reference frame you are using. This is because movement through space is equivalent of movement through time. The only measurement of length that is valid in all reference frames uses 4 coordinates (dx^2 + dy^2 + dz^2 - dt^2). This is the distance between two events (such as traditional length by measuring the length of the blob with two events happening simultaneously at both ends). This measurement of two events in space-time is always the same. In other reference frames, the distance of the blob is different, but the events are no longer simultaneous. What you are saying about space and time does make a lot of sense and is correct in classical physics, but it breaks down in relativity.

That does make sense. I like to think of spacetime as the mechanism through which all interacting takes place. The idea you demonstrated applies more than you think. If there was only one blob, then no measurement of anything could exist. That argument for time also could apply to space as well. That could also apply to temperature, charge, etc. Basically you can't measure anything without the concept of variance. You can't know that temperature exists without hot and cold. If there was only one value of a property, there is no way to even know of the existence of that property. Having only one blob, you couldn't measure space either. Internal spin can only makes sense if objects have a non-zero size. However, time can be measured with two blobs without spin by using the time it takes for one to pass across the other with one having size. Or without size, you could use three blobs, and time is measured by one passing both of them. There might be other ways to measure time without spin that are more fundamental, but I just wanted to illustrate that time doesn't require a cycle or spin to be measurable. We are used to time being reliably constant, but reality doesn't require that. According to relativity, the moment you are able to measure space, you are also able to measure time. They are interconnected and the way our universe works, you can't have one without the other. Moving through space is also moving through time. Cartesian coordinates with time independent of space is a mathematical model that is only an approximation to reality. There are different mathematical models of geometry, but they don't all apply to reality. Now I think what you are asking is does something exist when there is no way to measure it. Measurement requires variance. With one blob (and no possible variance), basically nothing is measurable. Does the universe still exist? I think that is more of a abstract philosophical question and I don't think I can give a satisfactory answer.

I guess it is from all my physics classes, but that sentence replacement does make complete sense to me. I do need to explain that better though. So to start with, we say that objects have position as a property. If you define a Cartesian coordinate system, you can say that a particle has position (x,y,z). For example, it is at (1,2,3) meaning the position is at 1 in x-direction, 2 away from origin in y direction, and 3 away from origin in z-direction. This is a property of an object. Now unlike some other properties, position is a shared property between all objects. What do I mean by that. Let's take the property of temperature. If an object is at temperature 100 degrees Celsius, then we know that about that single object. There could be a million other objects at that same temperature. With position however, there is only one particle at that position. Define a set of coordinates, and all objects in the universe are defined in that coordinate system. So you can see that position is a shared property in that all objects interact through the relationships they have in that shared coordinate space. This universal sharing of coordinates means that space makes sense on its own. Temperature doesn't make sense without an object having that property. A position in space still makes sense even if no object has that property. I am not saying space is an ether. I am saying that space as a concept doesn't need an object at all points in order for a point in space to have a meaning. If another particle has close enough of the same position as the original particle, they overlap and will interact. All particles share the same position space and all relate through that same position space. According to modern physics, all objects interact strictly through overlap. Fields have been discovered to be interactions through messenger particles or photons. What this means is that the only way to interact in physics is to overlap in position and time. So space-time is the system that all things interact through. All matter objects are moving through time. Now what does this mean. Well, all I can say is that the way we experience reality is a constant rate of the passage of time in units of seconds, hours, days, years, etc. Well in physics, all this really means that is objects are 4 dimensional. An object has a position at a given time or (x,y,z,t). Physics equations are designed to be able to figure out the probability of a system being in a state at time_future given enough knowledge of all the properties of a system in time_present. When I am talking about traveling through time, I was not being precise. Traveling through time is not a velocity. I was talking more about the passage of time. We don't really think about it because it is constant. However, objects that are traveling really fast compared to us experience time slower. If you saw the clock of a spaceship going near the speed of light, its clock would be moving really slowly. Now when you think about it, we experience the dimensions of space differently than time. We experience positional space in fulness, but time only at one point at a time. If we experienced x the way we experience time, then we would experience x as a scan of snapshots, not as seeing all of the objects in the x dimension at once. If we experienced time the way we experience space, we would see a person as a snake because we would see their position over the course of their entire life which is a lot of motion. Tangent. Before quantum mechanics, it was believed that with enough knowledge we could eventually define a function for every particle such that we know the function (x,y,z,t). In other words the function says the position of the particle for all time, or we are able to predict the complete future of the particle. Quantum mechanics killed determinism in physics so we now know that isn't possible for future time. In fact, we aren't even able to know a single x,y,z,t. That is the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and it would be too complicated to go over right now. Just understand that it is impossible to know the precise location of anything. I hope this helps. That is a good way to put it. One thing I would like to add is that when you think about it, we never travel 95% of the speed of light. What I mean is that we are always stationary in our frame of reference. This being stationary makes us travel completely through time. That is why we experience time at a constant rate. That is also why the speed of light is constant. There is no way for us to be an observer that is not in a stationary reference frame. The movement of parts of our body compared to our brain and nervous system never move fast enough to be that much different from stationary compared to the speed of light. So our reference frame is always still and light is moving at light speed. This is what is meant by relativity. It is valid way to think of us moving as we are still and all everything else is moving toward us, rather than us moving toward other objects. There is no global reference frame like there is in Galilean physics. Another object that we observe moving 95% of the speed of light has slower time. But an observer moving along with it would see us as moving 95% of the speed of light, and we are running slow and they are normal and stopped. Interesting question I like to ask people. If you were able to stop time and still could move, how fast would you be going. Most people would say infinitely fast. The correct answer is the speed of light. We don't intuitively see that traveling through space inherently travels through time. Going infinitely fast is the speed of light. You could travel from point A to point B in no time to you. However the rest of the universe would experience the amount of time it took light to get there. I like to imagine a thought experience that intrigues me. What if there were some organism that was galactic sized and had its brain and nervous system stretched out and parts of its nervous system were moving at different speeds comparable to the speed of light. I believe such a creature would not have its brain all in one non-accelerating reference frame. Such a creature would not experience time at a constant rate. It would also not observe the speed of light as constant. Just a hypothetical that I find fascinating to think about. This isn't a violation of relativity because the speed of light is always constant in a non-accelerating reference frame.

Alright, I give you credit

Explaining energy, matter, space, and time is essentially asking me to explain all of physics. I will take a crack at it. First off, when we say there is energy, matter, etc, what do we mean by that. We say something (or a system) has matter when it exhibits certain properties. Basically we define matter as exhibiting properties of momentum, gravity, etc. Saying matter is a shorthand for saying that something has certain properties. If there were no properties of a concept such as matter, than the term becomes meaningless and useless. We can only usefully use a concept in physics as long as there are detectable interactions that can be predicted in a systematic way. When someone creates a model that successfully predicts these interactions, then a new concept goes into Physics. Sometimes things can have properties even when they are not directly detectable. We can detect they exist indirectly. These are things like ether, dark matter, dark energy. Ether was postulated to exist because to our understanding energy waves required a medium to travel through for it to exhibit that property. Light was discovered to travel as a wave, so we called the medium ether. It wasn't detectable, but it exhibited the property of light traveling like a wave through it. It was later discovered that the ether wasn't needed for that property so the concept was abandoned. Dark matter is postulated because galaxies exhibit more gravity than the visible matter that they contain. Dark energy is postulated because the universe is expanding at a rate inconsistent with our models of what the rate of expansion should be. My point is that even things that are undetectable are postulated to exist in physics because of observable properties that scientists observe and try to logically predict the source. We say that energy, matter, space, and time are separate things because they have separate properties. Matter and energy do indeed have separate properties and so they are separate. What is interesting is that in recent times, we have discovered that some properties that we thought only matter or energy have, the other have as well, but in a different form. For example, energy does indeed have momentum, but its momentum acts differently than the momentum of mass. There are still properties that differentiate them. Energy such as in light can't change its velocity. Matter turns out to have the property of traveling in quantum waves of probability, and waves were traditionally a energy only feature. Even though they both travel in waves, and both have momentum, they still exhibit their properties differently. What makes matter and energy even more interesting is that they can convert to each other. Now there are several constraints on how they convert. The conversion has to preserve momentum, and it also has to obey the quantization of matter, has to keep the total energy of the system constant (including rest mass), charge has to be conserved, etc. The idea of E = mc^2 is really that matter can convert to energy. The rest energy of mass is basically the conversion rate. Now the fact that these two can convert to each other leads many scientists including me to conclude that there is a more fundamental thing or set of properties and that thing changes state and in different states it exhibits different properties, but there are a set of properties that are universal. Finding the complete set of universal properties is the quest of combining quantum mechanics and relativity. Now space and time are completely different set of properties. Space and time are position and time of interactions in a system. It is more of a description of what happens than what is in a system. However, time and space indeed have properties as well. These properties are more of restrictions on what something can do. Now for a very long time, space and time were considered separate. This changed with relativity. When you think about the x, and y dimensions, you realize that they are convertible. Forward and backwards and side to side are really interchangeable. All you have to do is rotate your head. This rotation is what makes us realize that they are convertible and that the idea of x, y, z really depends on how you define them. They are relative to the observers position and rotation. What Einstein demonstrated was that this same relationship also happens between x and time. Instead of rotating your head, you need to start moving. The same event happen at different places, or at different times depending on your velocity, just like rotating your head makes something that happens in front of you happen to the side of you. Now there are restrictions on these conversions. You can't rotate your head and make two things that were touching not touch. Likewise you can't travel at a velocity that breaks causality. This is why traveling faster than the speed of light is impossible. It is like saying you can rotate your head fast enough so that two touching objects are no longer touching. We intuitively understand rotating our head won't make that happen, but we don't intuitively see that trying to go faster has fundamental limits, because we don't experience relatively in our daily environment. We are all traveling through space-time at a constant rate. When we are stationary, we are traveling through time at the fastest rate and other objects which are traveling faster than us in our frame of reference are experiencing time slower. What I find interesting to think about is that if you travel the speed of light, then in essence you have fully converted time to traveling in space. What this means is that time doesn't pass at all in the frame of reference of a photon of light. Also it experiences the entire universe as a point in space. Light travels at the speed of propagation of space-time, and this makes the speed of photon of light the same in all reference frames. I hope this helps, but it probably just made things even more confusing.

Don't forget that the 50% odds only comes if the probability of there being an after-life as depicted is 50%. If it is only 1%, then the nothing happens becomes 99%, and the other two outcomes split a percent. Also the nothing happens is glossing over the fact that most religions require sacrifice. Basically using the logic of Pascal's Wager, you should also buy a bunker for protection from an apocalyptic meteorite.

I have a masters degree in Physics and I just wanted to add my 2 cents "In 1967, scientists built an “Atomic Clock.” It uses Cesium 133 atoms because they oscillate (vibrate) at the rate of 9,192,631,770 times per second. This produces accuracy within one second every 30 million years! Wouldn’t you love a watch that accurate? Cesium 133 atoms never vary a single vibration. They are steady—constant—reliable—and cannot be an accident of nature that just “happens” to always turn out exactly the same. God had to design the complexity and reliability of these atoms. No honest mind can believe otherwise. Men merely learned how to capture what God designed, for use in time measurement. Again, the story continues." Actually, he is wrong. Notice that the reliability is not perfect else we wouldn't have the error bar of 30 million years. Electronic transitions are based on quantum mechanics which is all about probabilities. The probabilities are very close to harmonic but do indeed have variations. In fact these variations in electronic transitions can be caused by different energy levels of atoms such as having different levels of kinetic energy. These variations are actually how we can detect that some stars have planets. The planets cause the stars to wobble ever so slightly which allows us to detect teh variance in teh emission frequencies. Electronic transitions are not always exactly teh same. He is using classical physics and that has been replaced with the not so perfectly predictable world of quantum mechanics. Now to my knowledge the speed of light is constant but that is only in a "perfect" vacuum (which doesn't exist). The speed of light is always varying due to the variance of the medium through which it travels. This is why there is an error bar on the optical clock. On whether light has constant speed in a theoretical vacuum, I am not as knowledgeable. The problem with those types of questions are they are much harder to measure, and when you go near the speed of light, quantum theory starts to run into relativity and they contradict each other. Particle physicists right now are trying to come up with a theory that works for both and can be demonstrated with evidence. In science, evidence is very important to believing a theory to be more than just an idea. "The First Law of Thermodynamics is stated as follows: Matter and energy can be neither created nor destroyed. There are no natural processes that can alter either matter or energy in this way. This means that there is no new matter or energy coming into existence and there is no new matter or energy passing out of existence. All who state that the universe came into existence from nothing violate the first law of thermodynamics, which was established by the very scientific community who now seem willing to ignore it. In summary, this law plainly demonstrates that the universe, and all matter and energy within it, must have had a divine origin—a specific moment in which it was created by someone who was all-powerful." Actually he is wrong again. Physicists who study the beginning of the universe pretty much say this: Before a plank time (~ 10^-44 sec), we really don't know. We don't have a unified theory that works at that time scale. Physicists "speculate", but we don't have the arrogance to say we know what we don't. Some of the current speculation is that the universe is closed in a repeated cycle. There are also theories of other dimensions of giving birth to our space-time (space and time can't be separated) and that is where you get the phrase multi-verse. What he also fails to understand is that the big bang is time and space itself. The big bang is now. The big bang is all past. The big bang is all future. The big bang is all time and everywhere. To say before the big bang is to say before time and space itself. The way he explains it, he doesn't understand the concept of the big bang at all. "What are we saying? There was a point in time when the uranium could not have existed, because it always breaks down in a highly systematic, controlled way. It is not stable like lead or other elements. It breaks down. This means there was a specific moment in time when all radioactive elements came into existence. Remember, all of them—uranium, radium, thorium, radon, polonium, francium, protactinium and others—have not existed forever. This represents absolute proof that matter came into existence or, in other words, matter has not always existed!" This argument is very stupid. All those elements came in to existence from supernovas. As a star dies and explodes, it becomes hot enough to create those elements. There are speculated to be other elements that can exist, but supernovas aren't hot enough to create them. Scientists are trying to find ways to produce new elements and they have (notice the really large atomic numbers in the periodic table), but they don't last more than very short periods of time. Saying that elements not always existing therefore matter hasn't always existed is like saying because your body didn't always exist, the matter in it was created from nothing. Very non-sequitur. "Even evolutionists admit that the theory of evolution and the second law of thermodynamics are completely incompatible with each other. Consider: “Regarding the second law of thermodynamics (universally accepted scientific law which states that all things left to themselves will tend to run down) or the law of entropy, it is observed, ‘It would hardly be possible to conceive of two more completely opposite principles than this principle of entropy increase and the principle of evolution. Each is precisely the converse of the other. As (Aldous) Huxley defined it, evolution involves a continual increase of order, of organization, of size, of complexity. It seems axiomatic that both cannot possibly be true. But there is no question whatever that the second law of thermodynamics is true" No scientist that understands evolution and entropy thinks they are incompatible. You can have a system that goes toward order without violating entropy. It does so by creating more entropy somewhere else. You can use what I like to call "ordered" energy to do this. Basically a fridge can lower the entropy of food put inside of it, but it does so by emitting heat elsewhere (this is why opening a fridge in your house is not a good idea for AC). The fridge uses electricity as a ordered source of energy for this process. Life can create order, but only by getting energy from the sun. Without the source of energy from the sun, the order of life would be impossible. The 2nd law only demands that the total disorder of an isolated system not increase, not that every part of a system decrease in order. The sun is what makes life possible and this is in complete harmony with the 2nd law. More knowledgeable creationists will argue that since the 2nd law is one directional, that means that the order has to come from somewhere. This is one of the much better creationist arguments. However, we don't understand the physics before the planck time, and so it is very possible that the 2nd law can be broken in the first plank time of the big bang. The 2nd law is an empirical observation based on probabilities. It is not an absolute, but there is no way to eliminate probability from a system so that is why the 2nd law has always held in any observed system. I imagine when the universe is so close together and heated in teh first planck time, it might collapse the probability space of different possibilities sufficiently to violate teh 2nd law, but that is just my own personal speculation. "Perhaps the biggest reason that so many theories within the overall theory of evolution collapse is because they contain terrible logic requiring great leaps in faith to believe. Here is one example of a “debunked” theory: “Many evolutionists have tried to argue that humans are 99% similar chemically to apes and blood precipitation tests do indicate that the chimpanzee is people’s closest relative. Yet regarding this we must observe the following: ‘Milk chemistry indicates that the donkey is man’s closest relative.’ ‘Cholesterol level tests indicate that the garter snake is man’s closest relative.’ ‘Tear enzyme chemistry indicates that the chicken is man’s closest relative.’ ‘On the basis of another type of blood chemistry test, the butter bean is man’s closest relative." I am not a biology expert, but his examples show he doesn't understand evolution is in terms of genes. He also assumes that apes are our ancestors. They are not. We have a common ancestor with them. Apes have evolved from that common ancestor as much as we have. It is easy to pick genes where apes genes changed and ours didn't so that we are more in common with other ancestors than apes. "Everyone has witnessed explosions. Have you ever seen one that was orderly? Or one that created a watch or a clock? Or one that produced a single thing of exquisite design—instead of the certain result of chaos and destruction? If you threw a million hand grenades, you would see them produce chaos and destruction a million times! There would never be an exception." Think of all that random processes that happen so orderly, like the oscillations of Cessium 133 atoms. Oh wait... "the probability of life originating from accident is comparable to the unabridged dictionary resulting from an explosion in a printing shop” (Origins?, p. 15). And this only speaks to the likelihood of any life at all, rather than the most highly complex forms such as large animals or human beings—let alone all the different kinds of life that exist today." False comparison. One event does not produce complexity. It requires a feedback loop. The feedback loop eliminates the bad, and reinforces the good. If you think of all the genetic reproduction of biological chemical process we are talking quadrillions (or more?) of reinforcement loops to produce the complexity of life.