Todd Bonzalez

@atty2chgo @AliceFromQueens It might not be for you, but his fans still enjoy it. He was always a bit fey. He outlived a lot of his peers and still gives his audience a chance to see him perform live. Win-win in my estimation.

@AliceFromQueens He could start by not looking like a British Richard Simmons sashaying on the stage. Buddy Guy and Eric Clapton are in their 80's too. They don't look like a caricature of themselves. But if you want to spend hundreds of dollars to watch Rod sing Maggie May...

Thing about musicians is they love to perform music. So why shouldn't the old ones keep doing it? What would you advise them to do with their days instead?

@AllanRicharz @AliceFromQueens He’s still selling tickets. Rod Stewart is one of the good and the greats. I bet most of the attendees of his shows are happy with their purchases.

@AliceFromQueens I think the problem is that the musicians still want to put on a show like they did 40-50 years ago, even if physically/vocally they're nowhere near that level They don't want to scale it back and be a *gasp* "lounge act", even though they could get much better mileage that way

@HydroFoundry @DaveofDunstonV2 @_OKJ__ I think that the problem of ontological first cause is currently unsolved. I don’t think that positing gods or other types of universe generation machines solves the question in a satisfactory way.

@SelectivePress @DaveofDunstonV2 @_OKJ__ You believe that a universe can come into existence without cause. Science has no explanation for how that could happen. It is not testable or measurable. That takes faith.

This reminds me of a fascinating story I read,of when in the 1970s Daniel Everett,a linguist and Christian went to the Amazon jungle to convert a tribe called the piraha people to Christianity and completely failed for one crazy reason 😂😂 When Daniel Everett arrived with his wife and kids at the remote Pirahã village in the Amazon, His mission was clear…learn their language,translate the New Testament,and convert this isolated hunter gatherer group to Christianity. What he encountered instead was one of the most radical cultural and linguistic worldviews ever documented 😂. From his experience,Everett eventually formalized what he called the “Immediacy of Experience Principle”. What this means in essence is the Pirahã culture and grammar strongly constrain what can be meaningfully discussed or believed…to them,knowledge must be anchored in direct,personal observation or at most in the recent testimony of living people you know. Things that happened long ago,that no one alive has seen,or that exist only in abstract or supernatural realms fall into the category of what they called xibipío (“gone out of experience”). They don’t deny it outrightly.. to them, such things simply carry no weight and are not worth serious talk. This principle shapes everything for them… and is why they have No creation myths or origin storis , No numbers beyond rough quantities like “a few” or “many.” , No recursive embedding in grammar (you can’t easily say “kelvin’s brother’s house” … you say two separate sentences). Their Stories and discourse stay tethered to the here and now. Now Christian theology, by contrast, is built on precisely the kind of claims the Pirahã worldview filters out…A distant creation,Miracles and events from thousands of years ago, A savior no living person has met, Salvation and afterlife described in ancient texts. Everett tried …He told them the story of Jesus..his birth,teachings,death,and resurrection. The Pirahã listened politely,then asked the questions their language and culture demanded… “Have you met this man?” “Did you see him?” “Did your father see him?” When Everett admitted he had not , that these events happened 2,000 years earlier and were known only through a book,the conversation effectively ended 😂. “That’s interesting,” some of them would say, treating the Gospel the same way they treated any other distant tale…as something outside lived experience, therefore irrelevant to how they live and what they believe. Notice It wasn’t hostile rejection(like the one you’d get from the people of the sentinel islands in India). It was epistemological incompatibility. The theology couldn’t even gain traction because their entire system of knowledge validation rejected second hand ancient testimony. Everett kept trying for years. He failed to produce a usable Bible translation. Meanwhile, living among people who were profoundly content, generous, and empirically grounded …with no concept of sin, eternal punishment, or a distant deity. By 1982 he himself started havinv serious doubts about his beliefs and by 1985 he had quietly become an atheist. The man who had come to convert the Pirahã had instead been “converted” by their way of seeing reality.😅 As Everett later wrote and said in interviews, the deepest challenge wasn’t an argument against Christianity. It was living inside a culture where the very criteria for what counts as real knowledge made supernatural historical claims feel as weightless as yesterday’s dream. The Pirahã didn’t need to debate theology. Their language and worldview simply had no slot for it and, in the process, they helped a missionary lose his faith without ever raising their voices.😂 Makes you wonder, what would a Christian say the fate of these people is? Eternal torment? We can all see how that would be problematic. Would they somehow make heaven and get judged by how they live their lives? But That would make the whole Christian message irrelevant. 🙂

@HydroFoundry @DaveofDunstonV2 @_OKJ__ What truth do I have that’s beyond the ken of scientists?

@SelectivePress @DaveofDunstonV2 @_OKJ__ You have a certain faith in a truth about the universe that science cannot answer.

@HydroFoundry @Falkenby @DaveofDunstonV2 @_OKJ__ I don’t know what existed before our universe did, but I don’t have any reason to believe that it was a group of beings that had any interest in humans. I don’t know how many universes are older than ours and how many universe generation engines exist or existed.

@HydroFoundry @Falkenby @DaveofDunstonV2 @_OKJ__ Intelligent or not, there are obviously things that decay. Whether or not the things that are older than our universe should be labelled as ‘physical,’ ‘intelligent,’ or ‘impervious to decay’ is another matter.

@HydroFoundry @Falkenby @DaveofDunstonV2 @_OKJ__ I’m not well informed on that topic. My point remains. Your decay and physical/non-physical red herrings don’t solve the problem of infinite regression.

@SelectivePress @Falkenby @DaveofDunstonV2 @_OKJ__ What can science tell us about your claim of the existence of universe generators?

I’m not sure if I understand the relationship between ‘if’ and ‘then’ in that statement. The problem of first cause deals with what happened before the creation of this universe, not with how long it takes gods, supergods, and universes to decay. The question of whether or not universe generators can decay is separate from the question of whether or not universe generators always existed.  Whether or not the stuff that preceded the creation of our universe should be classified as ‘physical’ or ‘non-physical’ is a variable that’s independent from the decay and infinite regression variables.  Which of the following scenarios do you find most logically compelling? Scenario 1: one or more universe generators has always existed and at least one from that set has decayed.  Scenario 2: one or more universe generators has always existed and no universe generator has decayed yet. Scenario 3: no known universe generator has a creation date of infinity*(-1) and at least one universe generator has decayed. Scenario 3: no known universe generator has a creation date of infinity*(-1) and no universe generator has decayed yet. I think it’s a mistake to conflate decay capabilities, finite/infinite regression, physical/non-physical, and origin date questions.

@SelectivePress @Falkenby @DaveofDunstonV2 @_OKJ__ If all matter decays, then it must have an origin. It cannot be infinitely old.

@HydroFoundry @Falkenby @DaveofDunstonV2 @_OKJ__ I’m trying to follow your argument. You’re the one who brought up decay. What does a physical (or non-physical) object’s susceptibility to decay tell us about its origin?

@SelectivePress @Falkenby @DaveofDunstonV2 @_OKJ__ Science tells us that all matter decays. You are postulating an object that doesn't exist to make a claim. Can you point to any such object?

@Falkenby @DaveofDunstonV2 @HydroFoundry @_OKJ__ I don’t think you read the essay on Semantic Stopsigns linked in my previous posts. It addresses your issue. lesswrong.com/posts/FWMfQKG3… The age-old first cause philosophical debate naturally leads to the question of why universes require creators when gods don’t require creators.

@SelectivePress @DaveofDunstonV2 @HydroFoundry @_OKJ__ If you were to apply the definition of god onto something else then that thing would be god but just with a different name. I highly suggest you watch this short clip youtu.be/go6m-KNUmG4?is…

@HydroFoundry @Falkenby @DaveofDunstonV2 @_OKJ__ A forward vector to infinity doesn’t require a backward vector to infinity.

@HydroFoundry @Falkenby @DaveofDunstonV2 @_OKJ__ Even if I could, I don’t see how that’s relevant to ontology.

@HydroFoundry @Falkenby @DaveofDunstonV2 @_OKJ__ Suppose we encounter something that doesn’t decay. That doesn’t mean that the non-decaying object always existed.

@SelectivePress @Falkenby @DaveofDunstonV2 @_OKJ__ You agree that concepts that are non-physical exist. Everything we know says that anything made of matter degrades over time and eventually goes to nothing. A physical universe cannot have an eternal past. We do not know how or why it came to exist from nothing. A great mystery

If you’re using the term ‘non-physical’ to refer to things that are merely conceptual, then I’m not sure where we disagree. I believe that concepts exist. Personally, I wouldn’t call a number (even a negative number) ‘non-physical’ because of the supernatural connotations of the term ‘non-physical’ in the context of philosophy. Please feel free to use ‘physical’ and ‘non-physical’ however you like. I don’t think the label provides an adequate solution to the problem of first cause, though.

@SelectivePress @Falkenby @DaveofDunstonV2 @_OKJ__ Todd your credit card example is pointing to an abstract idea. You can't hand someone negative real dollars. We all agree with the use of negatives as an abstract representation. You stated that numbers have a "physical substrate". Numbers can exist without a physical substrate

@HydroFoundry @DaveofDunstonV2 @_OKJ__ If it was the first and only pen that I encountered, my speculations about how it was manufactured would be low-quality. If it looked like other man-made objects, then I would bet that it was made by humans instead of being made by one of the gods.

@SelectivePress @DaveofDunstonV2 @_OKJ__ Do you have to show the factory to assert it did not sprout out of the ground by natural causes?

@HydroFoundry @DaveofDunstonV2 @_OKJ__ I could show you a pen factory a lot more easily than I could show you a universe factory. If I hand you a pen, would you assume that it was created by a single agent or by multiple agents?

@DaveofDunstonV2 @_OKJ__ If I hand you a pen and ask whether you believe it popped into existence without cause or someone created it, do you have to prove the origin of its originator to know it was created?

@HydroFoundry @Falkenby @DaveofDunstonV2 @_OKJ__ I understand that numbers exist. They still don’t solve the first cause problem. Nor does invoking the category of ‘abstract concept.’  (I’m going to call my credit card company to tell them that negative numbers have no physical representation. Wish me luck!)

@SelectivePress @Falkenby @DaveofDunstonV2 @_OKJ__ Numbers are non-physical, abstract ideas independent of space, time and human thought. There is no physical representation of an irrational number or a negative number.

I wouldn’t say that it’s completely independent. If you’re using ‘non-physical’ to mean ‘abstract’ or ‘conformation of a physical thing,’ then I agree that abstractions exist and can have utility if they have substrates in the real world. The referent of ‘non-physical’ in the context of physicalist philosophy seems like the definition more relevant to the subject of universe ontology. Neither type of ‘non-physical’ solves the first cause problem in a satisfactory way. You can label a phenomenon ‘physical’ or ‘non-physical’ if it makes you happy. The label doesn’t change how the phenomenon actually works.

@SelectivePress @Falkenby @DaveofDunstonV2 @_OKJ__ A number is an abstract concept independent of a physical thing.

@HydroFoundry @Falkenby @DaveofDunstonV2 @_OKJ__ A number still has a physical substrate, so it isn’t strictly non-physical in the supernatural sense of the term. Positing non-physical universe generators doesn’t solve the ontological first cause problem. It merely adds an unnecessary step before the semantic stop sign.

@SelectivePress @Falkenby @DaveofDunstonV2 @_OKJ__ No I stated that physical things that exist now need an origin. That is a specific category. Ideas such as 2+2=4 are a non-physical thing.

You created a category without explaining why some things need a creator and other things don’t. The category ‘non-physical’ is just semantic spackle that you can use to explain any gaps while providing no rigorous explanatory value. Terms like ‘magic,’ ‘gods,’ and ‘supernatural forces’ are essentially plot MacGuffins. They serve as semantic stop signs. You merely assigned a label to something instead of actually explaining how the phenomenon works. lesswrong.com/posts/FWMfQKG3…

@SelectivePress @Falkenby @DaveofDunstonV2 @_OKJ__ Physical things break down and decay over time. The scientific evidence says our universe is not infinitely old.