# 17

[Don Stockbauer]

Here we go yet again.

[Don Stockbauer]

How many optional choices are there ? if this is not a pipe ,list everything else that it's not.

[Don Stockbauer]

The general rule concerning human relationships is once you throw somebody away you don't go picking through the trash to get them back.

[Don Stockbauer]

Seems like our civilization is a lot better at tracking down someone who has committed a crime after the fact than preventing the crime from happening in the first place . Perhaps someday we'll become super advanced and lock people up before they commit the crime.

[Don Stockbauer]

Perhaps our only hope for the future will be when people realize their purpose in life is not to hoard money but to help one another.

[Don Stockbauer]

I had a dream, similar to Bertrand Russell's, where many years in the future a housekeeper finds my copy of Godel, Escher, Bach and sees that it's all in sections and tattered and all marked up with notes and due to its condition throws it away.

[Don Stockbauer]

Want to show our lobotomized civilization that you totally don't fit in?

Display anger.

[Don Stockbauer]

Do you think we'll ever achieve a world where there's no lying?

[Don Stockbauer]

Could it be that our civilization is getting mellower as time goes on, the same way a hot object cools off?

[Don Stockbauer]

The most impossible task on Earth is to get someone to communicate with you who doesn't want to.

[Don Stockbauer]

Can any one person understand the global brain fully? Probably not. The analogy is can a single neuron in a brain of billions of neurons understand the mind it helps form?

[Don Stockbauer]

Will 2020 be the year Human Folly III gets kicked off?

[Don Stockbauer]

All these handheld electronic devices. They appear to be more addicting than heroin. But it's a good addiction,
isn't it, considering what they're ushering in?

[Don Stockbauer]

I'd like to wish all my good friends here in alt.fan.hofstadter a very prosperous 2020.

[Don Stockbauer]

Texting causes cancer.

[Don Stockbauer]

You want to know if a business is open on a holiday and their hours, so you go to google , you look it up and google says "hours on holidays may vary." So google is useless to find out information on businesses on holidays.

[Don Stockbauer]

My mother: "Doctor, my boy Don here can't make any friends. He's antisocial ,no one will talk to him ,is there anything that can be done for him?"

The doctor said, "Buy him a boomerang."

[Don Stockbauer]

And the time will come when you see we're all one, and Life flows on within you and without you.

[Don Stockbauer]

You know that chick that used to dance a lot
Every night she'd be on the floor, shakin' what she got
When I say she was cool she was red hot
I mean, she was steamin'
************
What's wrong with these lyrics?

[Don Stockbauer]

There was an old quiz show titled "It's not what you say, it's what you don't say."

[Don Stockbauer]

A tool is an object used to extend the ability of an individual to modify features of the surrounding environment. - Wiki.

So, intellect, consciousness, free will: are these tools?

The definition mentions individuals: can groups use tools?

It also mentions "surrounding environment". Can't tools be used to modify features far from you?

[Don Stockbauer]

actually the title was just "You Don't Say".

[Don Stockbauer]

She came out of the sun in a silk dress running like a watercolor in the rain.

[Don Stockbauer]

If I had a box just for wishes and dreams which had never come true. the box would be empty except for the memory of how they were answered by you.

[Don Stockbauer]

When there's no one left to leave you,
even you don't quite believe you,
that's with nothing can deceive you.

[Don Stockbauer]

Never reveal any information to anyone; it may be held against you in the court of life.

[Don Stockbauer]

"I do a hair toss, check my nails,
I do a hair toss, check my nails,
I do a hair toss, check my nails"

Could there be anything more irritating than a song where the same irritating lyric is repeated several thousand times?

[Don Stockbauer]

You can see the Belt of Venus directly above the shadow wedge. Is it a chastity belt? Probably not, Venus got around pretty much,
didn't she?

[Don Stockbauer]

The scientific method is easy to use , so anyone can be a scientist , right?

[Don Stockbauer]

Is the entire human race actually insignificant? I don't know . There are 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in the universe.

There are 25,000,000,000,000,000 possible pairs of humans on the Earth.

[Don Stockbauer]

Is the Global Brain a tool? A tool with 7 billion operators?

[Don Stockbauer]

Do we currently have the technology given forest fires around the world to predict how much that will raise global warming a.k.a. climate change . what if I burn 10 pounds of paper , is that so incredibly small the calculation can't be made?

Could it be that we're still seeing cold temperatures because climate change is not a monotonic increase with time , instead you have noise at the beginning , we still have some cold but eventually that noise turns into a monotonic increase.

[Don Stockbauer]

Or jumping up another level , wouldn't it be nice if you could kill everyone remotely via a Human Folly III type action? I mean ,why think small?

"Wouldn't it be nice" is the title of a Beach boys song.

How do we know if human folly three is even possible anymore ?perhaps people got together and disarmed the means for it ? How would we know ? It's top secret. Ultra top-secret. I guess such paradoxes are just indicators of our complex times. May you live in complex times. You'll never get bored.

[Don Stockbauer]

Sorry to all those who come here expecting a discussion on Hofstadter. everybody but me has dropped out , so it's me talking to myself.

[Don Stockbauer]

Doesn't it seem like the more you expect an answer from somebody the less chance you'll actually get it.

[Don Stockbauer]

Any relationship can be destroyed if you pound on it hard enough.

[Don Stockbauer]

There is a bird on the bull's back.

[Don Stockbauer]

We've got a bottle here in the house , it's inscribed with
"Dr. JH McLeans Tar Wine Lung Balm. St. Louis MO.

Doesn't that sound like a wonderful thing to take?

[Don Stockbauer]

Just something I saw while walking along our road; kind a like there's a bird on the reef with a broken back.

[Don Stockbauer]

The United States contains 5% of the world's population.

[Don Stockbauer]

If someone observes the moon, could you call them
Moonwatcher?

[Don Stockbauer]

Did you know that in Aldous Huxley's novel "Brave, New World" the world government is called the World System?

[Don Stockbauer]

If someone absolutely refuses to talk to you no matter what you say over how much time begging and pleading it seems to me to be almost inhuman.

[Don Stockbauer]

Hey, let's go on a sightseeing plane trip over Iran. It's no problem, they say riding in a plane is safer than riding in a car.

[Don Stockbauer]

Disruption . Can keep a system from stagnating, and it can also destroy a system ; need to seek the happy medium.

[Don Stockbauer]

Never try to talk to anyone anymore ; they're probably wearing earbuds and can't hear you anyway.

[Don Stockbauer]

There is no small doubt that there are many mediums at large.

[Don Stockbauer]

if somebody jumped off a tower and someone was at the bottom with a 12 gauge shotgun and blew their head off when they were 10 feet from the ground could they get me for murder?

Neglecting the fact that they would have a huge velocity and would be very hard to hit.

[Don Stockbauer]

Well, I thought I had taken out all the references to me and made them generic but I didn't catch that one at the end . my college roommate used to go around asking people that question , they kind of looked at him and backed away and made an excuse to leave.
hi Nelson.

[Don Stockbauer]

Gus Richter used to say "Tipperary" instead of "temporary", as in "donnn, this is going to be a Tipperary fix."

[Don Stockbauer]

Isn't it odd that if you have a relationship that goes bad that your efforts to patch it up via communication are often useless because the other person refuses to say one word to you?

[Don Stockbauer]

There were two archaeologists out digging up Native American arrowheads . One of them dug up a particularly nice arrowhead , or point as it is referred to in the trade. He said to the other one "This is a really nice arrowhead."

The other guy said "Yes, I agree , it's really nice."

The first guy said "Yes, but I want you to really appreciate what a nice arrowhead it is."

The other guy said "Yes, I can see that it is one of the best arrowheads I've ever seen in my life."

The first guy said "But I am really wishing you would praise my my point better . It's not enough that you just say that it's well-made , I want you to lavish praise on it to the degree that you have never lavished praise upon an arrowhead before"

and the other guy said "Yes, yes , I agree with you: YOUR POINT IS WELL MADE!!!!!"

[Don Stockbauer]

You know someone has really made it when everything they write and transmit via the Internet is intercepted at a higher level and analyzed.

[Don Stockbauer]

I've had people ask me , some models of the universe say that it's finite so what's on the other side , it's kind of a naïve question , I actually asked Harlan Smith, I don't even remember what he said , I think something about that the universe might not be old enough for that situation to happen.
i'm always fascinated by the cosmological event horizon and what's on the other side . I saw one article , the guy said if you look at the flatness the cosmic ray background the flatter it is the more space you should have past the cosmological event horizon and that article claimed that by measurements the universe goes 20 times further than the cosmological event horizon . I've never seen one word of discussion on it since I've read that article.
what if someone gave you everything in the universe, where would you put it ? you just need to leave it in place. I've been misunderstanding the multi-verse .I thought it was merely if you have a universe and if you spin off another universe the other one that's the multi-verse , that you could have many multi-verses but you're right it makes more sense to call the whole group of all universes the multi-verse (= the Uberverse). I agree with that certainly.
To explain some things you've got to go beyond physics to systems theory and cybernetics. Physics can never explain to you why an acorn becomes a giant oak tree . you need the science of living systems . well your body is made out of basic building blocks ,the living cell . Trillions of cells form you and you are at a much higher level than the cells which form you. The process of cells combining to form your body is called a metasystem transition . The metasystem (You) is at a much higher level than its building blocks (cells). another simple example of a MST are bricks forming a wall : the wall has properties beyond the individual bricks like being able to keep people out. also you have what are called emergent properties , properties of the metasystem which you could never predict from the properties of the building blocks . a good example is a water molecule ; you'll never be able to tell from it alone that it combines with others to form a substance which has waves. like waves breaking on onto a shore. the universes are building blocks and you have a bunch of these building blocks that form into the multi-verse . so this multiverse should have properties far above any single universe.
Just gets to be unimaginable because we humans can really not even start to understand the entire earth which is immensely above us . now we're talking about universes forming the multi-verse which makes a single universal insignificant . it's possible the entire earth is a living being ; people would be analogous to neurons and our global communication links would be analogous to synapses .all living creatures are composed of smaller living creatures , like your living cells form you . the earth has an immense number of living creatures which we could consider to all combine into a living earth. Even David Attenborough knew about it , his program is called The Living Earth.
I'm getting the sense that it's all just a perception thing , it's basically spin and it's not electron spell , it's PR type spin , some claim many worlds is right , some claim Copenhagen is right, two different spins on the central reality , the central reality doesn't care how you look at it. if you look at the moon you spin it around you get completely different face when you do that, same moon though.
maybe it's something like this : two scientists are seated at a table, one is on one side of the table facing the other one on the other side, there's an object spinning between them , the axis of rotation goes through the two observers and one scientist says it's spinning clockwise , the other says it's spinning counterclockwise , and they're both right. One says the many worlds interpretation is right, the other says Copenhagen is right , and they're both right . Like Orville and Wilbur Wright having a discussion , and one says I'm Wright and the other says no I'm Wright. You said the only thing that matters is you can use the quantum cookbook to create atom bombs and kill all of us unless somebody comes along and defuses the whole system , which we wouldn't even know about because it's top secret . Hoist by your own petard. What fools these morons be.

[Don Stockbauer]

I've always had this thing where if I clean my right ear with a Q-tip everything is fine but if I clean my left ear with a Q-tip I always cough.

[Don Stockbauer]

Do thoughts combine by metasystem transition to higher and higher level thoughts , apparently with no ceiling?

[Don Stockbauer]

I get a paper Edmunds scientific company catalog . big, thick. I never order anything from it . so I went to their website to delete receiving it, they want more information to get off their mailing list than you could possibly imagine. I'm surprised they don't ask for your Social Security number . so what will I do ? continue to receive their catalog. there's always recycling, recycling is more efficient than not receiving it.

[Don Stockbauer]

Conversation is a game.

You make moves ; that is, you send messages to your conversational opponent.

You take turns.

You win by proving that you're smarter than the other person.