Debate about Gun Control

[Eric the Green]

(06-07-2017, 02:07 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(06-07-2017, 11:03 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: But we can force public safety on a group that does not appear to be concerned about it, if we choose as a society to do so. No doubt, if this is done, elements in Red America may violently resist. I am aware of that. I am aware that they are in the wrong about that too. But I have given up on the idea of forcing them to get rid of their guns entirely. Forcing non-force is not workable; I have already agreed with that. But needed laws and regulations can be imposed. Red America needs to leave US alone and stop forcing their views on the poor people of the cities dying from rampant gun violence.

But there is no lack of concern about personal, family and community safety in the red community.  Both sides want safer communities, and see the other faction as making their world unsafe.  There is just a disagreement on how to achieve protection.  As I perceive it, population density is a large factor in how to achieve public safety.  Depending on the government for defense works better if there are cops nearer by.  Both cultures have identified the best approach to public safety in their environment and regions, with many trying to force their approach on others in very different environments.  

One size does not fit all.  To me, what you are trying to is force the system which sorta works well in your local region on everybody.  In order to do this, you ignore or impugn what others have seen and done in other parts of the world.

Nope.

No-one needs military weapons of any kind, unless we are in the throes of revolution.

Quote:

(06-07-2017, 11:03 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: My view is that the Copenhagen interpretation accounts better for possible futures than the Many Worlds interpretation, which is an attempt to preserve the old paradigm by evading the role of the observer. But only if consciousness and the observer are seen to be real, can any choice in possible futures exist. The way I have heard MWs explained to me doesn't have much to do with the future, but with parallel worlds. But you're welcome to add your views if you think I am incorrect on it. I am not an expert quantum scientist, so my opinions about it can't be set in stone (as you might assume).

I prefer many worlds as it explains observable data the Copenhagen can't account for.  As I've never been able to get you to read and understand the data, and not for lack of trying, I don't really anticipate your accepting or understanding where I'm coming from.

Probably, since I don't think the Copenhagen is lacking in explanations, and frankly accepts uncertainty, which is not only wise, but from what I can tell, is inherent in the mathematics of quantum theory itself. Quantum Theory/Mechanics is a breakthrough precisely because it admits the significance of the observer to the experiment. Interpretations that attempt to explain the data without the observer, or consciousness, reverse that breakthrough and send us back into a Newtonian world of pure cause/effect mechanics. That is the issue, and it can't be skirted. Nothing exists except within a mind, and within all minds.

You can refer to emotion as some kind of causative factor. But then your concept needs to be defined to see if you are skirting the issue or not. If emotion is a physical reaction of some kind, you're back to Newton (just like Freud was). If it's a kind of consciousness, then you're in the realm of the new paradigm.

Quote:On a more broad intuitive comfort level, I'd prefer many worlds for other reasons.  The universe worked just fine before there were observers, and the rules of physics seem not to have changed when observers finally came into being.  Thus, at gut level, the need and role of observers that exists in some variants of the Copenhagen perspective makes me uncomfortable.  The universe ran just fine without observers.

Actually, it did not. There are two answers to that, if not more. 1) the universe is conscious on some level, even within the inanimate. 2) the universe comes into being like an electric current. If the end is not connected to the beginning, the current doesn't flow. So, human consciousness and beyond is embedded in the universe even when there aren't human or animal observers around, just as you can't see a cherry in the bark or seed of a tree, but it's implied.

Quote:To me, neither psi nor every day life has people selecting what is going to happen.  In my personal experience, events that generate higher emotion, thus a higher metabolism, thus a greater number of quantum collapse events, become ever so slightly more probable.  Of course, I haven't been able to truly convince anyone, either physicist or parapsychologist, that I'm onto something.  You are hardly the only person to reject my scheme.  In this respect, you are part of that class of beings best described as everyone but me.

I have heard the research that says that in our personal lives, events that generate negative emotion tend to be the most memorable.

The voluntary and the involuntary are interconnected; so choice is something that happens, and vice-versa.

Quote:Still, in my youth, the Great Problem was whether science or spiritualism/religion ought to be the primary dominant world view.  Where should I hang my hat?  Many people seemed able to keep the science half or their way of looking at things separate from their religion.  I couldn't.  I felt a need to keep digging at things.

It came down to the question of whether, when and how the mind could directly effect matter.  Could prayer or psi experiments demonstrate some power of the mind over the material world?  I saw considerable circumstantial evidence of strange coincidences in the born again Christian movement, and in occult circles.  Still, the emotions involved and invoked in creating these minor miracles, these so called 'Christian coincidences', was not consistent with the motives and ethics of the spiritual beings that were hypothesized by the religious and occult leaders, groups and traditions I associated with.

The probability shifts were associated with very emotional people creating very emotional situations.  No ultra wisdom.  No wise or powerful being somehow perpetually just out of sight.  Just random highly emotional weirdness.  Thus, when I gave up on religion and the occult and turned to scientific parapsychology as a way of examining mind over matter, the notion that the more emotional future was slightly more probable clicked in.

Of course, being scientists, embracing data rather than feeling, the parapsychology folk didn't get significant probability shift.  Emotion was considered a bias, an affront to objectivity.  It was judged as a prejudice to be eliminated rather than a big part of what they were trying to study.  The probability shifts the scientists generated under tight scientific protocol seemed tiny when compared to what I saw in the wild of various religious and occult cults.

Still, that's where my interest in the scientific view of the universe trumped my interest in religion and the occult.  I became more the engineer, less the believer from then on.  I feel safe to say that this is a significant difference between us that isn't apt to change.  To me, occult and religious people tend to be emotional and effected by emotional pseudo random events.  The mind does effect matter, but the universe is not particularly wise nor beneficial.  It is random and tends towards emotion.

That's a very different perspective.

Yes, I would tend to think the universe is not random, and tends toward wisdom. But no doubt, there's lots of behavior by humans and other living things that cast a shadow on those ideas. Lots of folks tend to reject the paranormal today, especially among millennials interested in science. I've seen the evidence which they refuse to consider, and so I am not convinced to go back to the old paradigms, before this saeculum's Awakening that brought the new ones into the mainstream for a while.

And philosophy remains relevant in my mind to knowledge of reality, along with science, art and mysticism.