10-12-2020, 02:14 PM
(10-12-2020, 01:59 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: It is difficult for me to decide whether solipsism is stupidity or madness. We do not get to decide on our own what the truth is except on things that we can somehow influence or do ourselves. Maybe I can decide what dinner is tonight, but I cannot decide on my own that Donald Trump is no longer President. I cannot decide that global warming will stop. I cannot get a recording of Mozart's 28th concerto for piano and orchestra or watch a movie in which both John Wayne and Clint Eastwood star. I cannot turn the cat on my lap into a dog. I cannot make π or e into rational or algebraic numbers or make a real number for which x^2 = -1. (There is such a number i for which i^2 = -1, but it is not on the real number line. I have made plenty of jokes about that number, as in "Donald Trump can expect to get 10i electoral votes from Maryland this year").
I did hear a story where the state of Mississippi by law declared that within the state boundaries Pi was equal to three. It did make calculation easier, but driving on hexagonal tires was kind of bumpy.
That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.