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BrickHorn

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Posts posted by BrickHorn

  1. On 5/18/2018 at 9:13 AM, texasdago said:

    If I can provide you with any advice, focus on a club that emphasis player and technical development and not a club that focuses on exclusively winning.  Those clubs often have a couple of stars who don't pass and just run up and down the field and try to score every time. Find a team that focuses on ball possession, passing, player development... eventually, winning will come.  Those teams ultimately are the ones that end up putting more players in soccer academies and on college teams.

    This is excellent advice, and it’s why we’re jumping to select.  Our son’s rec team has won a lot of games (including an undefeated season), primarily on the back of one outstanding player and a couple of good strikers.  I like the coaches and appreciate their willingness to volunteer their time, but the development of team play has been stunted.  I’ve been really frustrated by two policies in particular: (1) the defenders are not allowed to go beyond the midfield line EVER, regardless of situation; and (2) forwards and midfielders are told never to pass backward unless it’s an absolute emergency.  That’s just terrible soccer.    My kid’s a good athlete and hard worker, so he’ll be fine.  But we should have moved him to a good program 2 years ago.  Kid came off the field after a club practice recently, just beaming because he was able to push up and contribute to the offense while his midfielder covered for him.

    My daughter’s team, by contrast, was lousy for years.  But the coaches are excellent and worked on space, shape, and passing. This past year, the same group of girls that never won just two seasons ago was suddenly at the top of their league and opponent parents were openly praising their level of play.  Now, select programs are recruiting the top players on her team. Their development has been really fun to watch.  

  2. On 4/27/2018 at 7:46 PM, jimmyjazz said:

    I didn't mean to imply that Rangers were better than the top Lonestar clubs, but rather that there are fewer Rangers teams and their talent cutoff on the low end is better.

    This is accurate.  At my son’s age level, Rangers will have only one team.  They’ll play at one of the higher competition levels. 

    At the same age group, Lonestars will have maybe 10-12 teams spanning across various levels.  The Rangers team would fall somewhere in the upper third of that group.  

    I’m actually impressed with the Lonestars culture I’ve seen at practices.  I didn’t expect that whe we first started down this path.  

  3. On 5/27/2018 at 8:25 PM, Bozo_Casanova said:

    As illogical as arguing against the existence of an omniscient supernatural being on the basis of reason? Lolz.

    The word “supernatural” is not some kind of logic-defeating safe word, you fucking dolt.  

  4. RL+Burnside+RL.jpg

    I would retire now if I could.  I figure a daily routine of exercise, guitar, reading / learning new shit, and hanging out with the wife would be more than enough to fill up my days.  Couple that with travel and visiting family, and retirement sounds pretty fucking busy.  

    It would be awesome not to view every holiday weekend as an opportunity to work from home for three days.

    • Like 1
  5. We were all set for a return to Kauai this summer, but the floods put an end to that.  It’s not worth it if we can’t hit up Tunnels.  Maybe next year.

  6. 2 hours ago, Bozo_Casanova said:


    But this is a very silly argument. You are trying to dispute the existent of an omniscient supernatural being the way you might argue the existence of an apple, or your mom.


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

    I’m not the one that believes in either free will or an omniscient god.  But plenty of people believe in both, and THEY make claims about what those things are.  Claims that implicate logic. 

    Once someone claims something exists and has certain properties, those claims are subject to logical analysis.  

    Aleph won’t dispute that.  What he does, instead, is redefine God in a way that both cheats the question and foresakes basic precepts of most theistic religions.  Specifically, he relegates god to a hypothesized realm from which He can have no interaction with our universe.  

    He also gets wrapped up in red herrings, like the prime number example.  To the extent a mathematical fact “causes” a number to fulfill a mathematical definition, that “cause” is of a completely different sort than the kind of cause required for free will.  Free will only exists if one kind of physical event (a choice) results in a specific outcome that was not determined until the first physical event occurred.  That is a very specific type of causality, and the math analogy is a complete red herring.  

    Aleph knows that.  But like I’ve said before, he’s not interested in following logic to the right conclusion.  He’s more interested in concocting clever and complex, but ultimately flawed, arguments that might distract others into agreeing with him.  Not sure what the satisfaction is in that, but maybe that’s why I left the Church when I figured out religion is just silly superstition and illogic.    

  7. On 5/23/2018 at 10:11 PM, Aphelion said:

    Do you view causation as necessarily dependent on temporal ordering of causes and effects?  I think this is a primary point we disagree on which leads to our opposing views on the matter.  Also, you have to view the problem from specific temporal perspectives.  It makes no sense to say before and after in a general applicable manner.  You have to specify before or after from an specific perspective - either the perspective of a given agent in our universe or from the perspective of Ω.  Actually, you have to specify temporal perspectives even when solely discussing physical entities in our universe, as their is no absolute time.  

    Also, which premise did I ignore/write out?  Not sure which you are referring to.

    Causation and an order of events from cause to effect is necessary for the concept of free will.  Free will cannot exist unless a present choice causes a future event.  And it cannot exist if the future is determined at point of the decision. Essentially, free will requires an arrow of time, and it requires an asymmetry in time such that the future is not determined. 

    That is fundamentally why the conundrum cannot be resolved by placing God “outside of time.”  It ignores the nature of time required to support the notion of free will.  

    You are also ignoring the chronology of the claim we are seeking to prove true or false, which is that free will and omniscience both exist at the same time.  A God outside of time cannot be said to exist at a given time.  Thus, it is nonsensical to claim that free will can exist at the same time as a God outside of time.  That claim simply does not respond to the question.

    Like I said, the God-outside-time approach is a cheat.  

  8. 1 hour ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

    I hate to say this but Obama does need to take some responsibility for the political climate that gave us Trump.  America obviously had a serious problem that was being neglected by the Obama administration.  

    “That Dumbass Shit I Just Saw on Surly.”

  9. 10 minutes ago, GSU&UT said:

    There's no question, in my mind, that we're an evil nation right now. That ICE stuff I posted earlier really depressed me more than usual when I read the news these days.

    America isn’t being fucked over by myopic, selfish, foolish people.  Trump and the GOP are pied pipers, playing various songs about low taxes, border walls, and blue collar jobs, and so many greedy motherfuckers are willing to dance along while stomping on what this country used to stand for.  And all those things they’re being promised?  Lies, of course.  It’s really depressing.

    • Like 1
  10. 30 minutes ago, JohnRedHorn said:

    Did you click the link or read Hugo's tweet? Our government is separating children from their mothers then just losing track of them to be harmed or done with whatever anyone wants. That's on a strong path towards Holocaust activity because it's treating humans as non human. Our government is that evil and we are shamed into supporting it with political propaganda. 

    Humans?  I was told these people were animals.

    • Like 1
  11. If you place the omniscient being “outside of time,” then the premise “an omniscient being and free will coexist” is meaningless.  

    The outside of time premise is logically equivalent to allowing omniscience to come about after free will is done.  No one doubts that free will in one timeframe is compatible with omniscience in another timeframe.  What cannot be true is that exercise free will while, at the time I am exercising free will, a being is omniscient of my future.  

    Claiming to solve that problem by explicitly divorcing the timeframe in which you claim free will exists and omniscience exists is a cheat.  You haven’t resolved the conundrum.  You’ve just ignored a fundamental premise or, in the case of your latest attempt, explicitly written an assumption out of the premise.  

  12. 5 hours ago, JBJ said:

    You are scient about the DVD.  You could say omniscient if only you and the DVD exist in this universe.

    The DVD has free will.  It determined it's own plot.

    No, the DVD did not determine its own plot.  It is a recording of events, captured in a pattern of 0s and 1s that was printed on it before you ever acquired it.  That pattern was determined.  It could not change, which is why you are capable of knowing what will happen before viewing it.

    The DVD analogy is an old one, and folks tend to get tripped up by it.  The problem is mixing up two different times.  The claim that free will and omniscience can not coexist applies only at a given time.  The two concepts are not logically incompatible at different times.  

    In your example, it is possible that the actors depicted on the DVD had free will at the time of filming.  Maybe they ad libbed.  But if that were the case, then no one could know during filming what the next line would be.  Only after the movie is filmed and the adlibbing has run its course can someone come to know the movie perfectly.  

    So in your example, omniscience can only begin once free will ends.  The two never coexist.

  13. 5 minutes ago, JBJ said:

    But the DVD is self-determinant and not scient. You are scient and not determinant.  It shows that the two concepts can be exclusive.

    In your analogy, who are you proposing is omniscient and who are you proposing has free will?

  14. 14 minutes ago, JBJ said:

    Omniscience doesn't reduce the sets, it knows the choices. 

    The outcome is known from a set of potential outcomes.

    Let's say a DVD just springs into existence on it's own accord.  You watch it.  You watch it again, knowing how it ends.  Are you controlling the plot?

    It doesn’t matter.  The plot wont change, and that’s the only way I can know what it will be.  Which means the characters in the film cannot choose to do otherwise - even though I am not making any choices for them.

    So, it’s a nice analogy.  But it proves my point.

  15. 1 hour ago, David Dennison said:

    Is free will compatible with the laws of nature?

    If those laws are deterministic, no.  If those laws are stochastic, also no.  If there’s some other option between those two, maybe.  Although I’ve come around to the idea that free will is fundamentally an oxymoron.

    To be free, a decision must be uncaused.  But to be an act of will, the outcome must be desired.  A willful choice is thus caused by the chooser’s desires, meaning it is not a free choice. 

    The possibility of free will therefore moves to the choice of the desire that caused the original choice.  But the choice of one’s desire is itself a choice, which can only be an exercise of free will if it is not caused by a predecessor desire that was not chosen freely.  It’s an infinite recursion, and the only point at which free will could possibly exist is at an hypothetical first choice made before you possess any desires that cause your choice.  But that first choice cannot be an act of will, by definition, because it is not the fulfillment of a desire. 

    That is why I think free will, even as a purely logical concept, is impossible.  

    • Like 1
  16. 27 minutes ago, JBJ said:

    We define free will differently.

    If free will is the ability to be an original cause (be a cause without being originally effected), then I agree with you.

    If free will is the ability to choose from a set, then I disagree.

    This is all assuming there's a single universe with a single timeline of course.

    We do not disagree on the definition of free will.  You’re just losing sight of the impact of omniscience on the ability to choose from a set.  

    If omniscience exists (or is even possible), then the set of possible outcomes must be unitary.  Like Connor MacLeod, there can be only one.

    I believe the mistake you are making is to assume that one has the power to choose unless someone or something else has already made the choice.  Thus, the logic goes, it doesn’t matter if God knows the future; so long as He did not choose the future, you still can.  

    That is flawed logic.  Omniscience alone reduces the set of possible outcomes to a single member.  No one need decide what that member is.  So long as an omniscient being can know, without room for error, what the outcome will be, no other outcome is possible.  And thus, free will cannot exist.

  17. 4 minutes ago, JBJ said:

    In effect it is the same.  But the process is different.

    Going back to my example, knowing he is going to choose to tackle me is not quite the same as willing him to tackle me.

    Can the tackler tell the difference?  Probably not.

    Whether an omniscient being wills outcomes or not is irrelevant.  The only question is whether it is omniscient of the future or not.  If yes, there can be no free will.

  18. 30 minutes ago, Fozzz said:

    I'm a big fan of Dana's fascist NRA videos.  

     

    Holy.  Fucking.  Shit.  The only way to protect freedom is for cops to violently shut down protests?  Orwell was a prophet.    

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