gehringer_2

One more shot to get on the same wavelength here. Tell me how your *decision* to wait to eat changed the chemistry in your brain such that you didn't walk to the refrigerator. That is the missing link. For a *thought* to change what your body does, the mental process has to generate a *cause* in the physical world - i.e. it has to change a reaction in your brain chemistry. We have zero understanding of how that happens. We can see it after the fact - that you make a decision to do something and then neuronal activity appears in your brain, but how a thought causes those neurons to fire? Missing link. You hold two competing options in your mind - depending on which you pick, different neurons are going to fire, but according to the laws of physics, in the moment before you make the *decision*, your brain chemistry has only one possible path - the one determined by its present state and the rules of chemistry. Yet you changed it, or at least you believed you changed it (that is unless conscious choice is the delusion) - how?

Manning is basically a 4 seam fastball pitcher. He doesn't have the velo a Verlander had but it's that kind of pitcher profile. So just for perspective I'd note that JV threw over 500 MLB innings before he reached a one K/IP K rate. Manning is at ~225. He has enough stuff if stays healthy and learns how to use it - never any guarantees with pitchers but I would understand if the Tiger are willing to give him more time to develop before moving him.

but you have just defined a machine that reacts in a programmed way. That model excludes the possibility of true volition. The next chemical state of your brain is *fully* determined by its current state, the laws of 'physics', plus the sum of the additional external stimuli that act on it. There is no place in that model for a consciousness, whatever we think that is, to affect that. The aspect of 'volition' that defines it as volition and not simple stimulus response is that it can originate separately from the simple sum of the external inputs - otherwise it is not volition - in which case we should stop putting people in jail for doing things they actually have no real control over because all a person's *will* is is the sum of their environmental experience and genetic programming. Again - I wouldn't say categorically that this may not be the true, I certainly can't prove it isn't, and 'science' would argue that it is true, but if it is, all of civilization is then based on the lie that people are responsible for what they do when they aren't.

It it could be arranged, it might actually be sorta fun to have a crack at expropriating some tech from China in an area where they are a world leader. Having them experience being the aggrieved party in some tech theft might be just the thing to help bring around their thinking....

Yes - this is pretty much just the 'what's outside' the universe paradox in different guise. If the universe needed a first mover, what moved it, etc. You can add a layer to the depth of the recursion but you still end up in the same paradox.

What does a Chinese LiFePO4 battery plant allow them to steal from us when they are miles ahead of us in that tech? Seems the the bigger potential for knowledge transfer is the other way.

When I hear the name 'Pat Caputo', the immediate word association that comes to mind is "shell of his former self.'

I have very mixed feelings about guys in a room deciding who the best teams are based on their subjective projections of what they think they will do based player availability. (BTW - in case any one wonders, I'm still bitter over Wayne Duke telling MI they could skip a Rose Bowl because Denny Franklin was injured ). It would be one thing if FSU had actually lost a game after Travis went down, but they haven't. UM hasn't looked all that great for the last three weeks either, and we still have our star QB. But maybe the committee should decide we've taken more O-line injuries than they think appropriate and bump us out? There is a reason you play the games and the winners are the winners and the losers are the losers. If there is a problem with records being suspect because of scheduling abuse - then put an end to scheduling abuse, but please don't let old dudes in a room establish a precedent for overruling the results on the field.

He'd prolly walk across the lake to find a little peace and quiet.

Mine is a different question. You are talking about the framework around which you hang the construction of self-identity. One of the hats I have worn is more or less as a chemist and what I'm talking about is how a thought in your mind turns into an action in physical/temporal space. How does a process in what we call conciousness - which cannot be located in the physical domain, create the chemical event in the physical domain that cascades into the creation of causation in the physical world? Sure we know how an axon works, but not how you make an axon fire by 'making a decision'. We think we know that mind affects matter, we believe volition exists nearly universally, but we cannot locate mind in matter and whatever the interface is eludes our understanding.

I know athletes are not exactly interchangeable, but when you have that much talent on one side of the ball and so little on the other, you'd think there would be a couple of guys you could move to the other side get more balance.

I wonder if Klatt is gonna get flack from the conference office for going along with Harbaugh having the trophy presented to Zinter. The bureaucrats won't like him colluding with a subversive act.

LOL - I knew Harbaugh would not take the trophy from Petiti

this game is like Bo vs Woody circa 1972, except that no-one would be going for it on 4th down.

that's all fine but there is no mechanism for conscious volition in any of that. Your arguments here are basically that our sense of ourselves is basically a fallacy - that consciousness is a self-delusion. Which is perfectly possible - I only raise the point to argue that there are some pretty fundamental things about our immediate existence that we do a lot of glossing for.

How you square your ability to make decisions of your own everyday when every chemical process in your brain is completely determined by the laws of physics completely independently of whatever "you" believe your existence to be? As far as your brain chemistry goes - there is no "you". "You" as a physical entity able to 'make a decision' simply don't exist.

weird game. Wings really didn't deserve it based on the lacksidaisical play in the second half of the game, but Larkin didn't let them lose.

4 goals in the 1st period, one a shorty by the Wings. 3-1 going into the 2nd.

I would say your view of what both Science and range of beliefs about God/Deism are narrow. There is no fundamental contradiction between any finding of Science and the possibility that there are higher order existences. The scientific rejection of supernatural intervention in human affairs does not speak to any number of more fundamental questions. Metaphysical propositions such as teleology, the origin and nature of will/volition, are not subjects that Science has been able to speak to. The latter question is one we may be getting closer to, but the fundamental paradox between the determinism of chemistry and physics vs the fact that no human being alive believes they have no will of the their own so far remains.

During a period break in the last game Yzerman made it sound like it would be a couple of games but that it would be up to Kane to tell them when he thought he was ready.

Georgia should have started playing no-huddle after the 1st drive.

There is no such thing as 'Science' in that sense - there are only individual Scientists and like any other group you will find a variety of views. In my experience of the scientific community you may not find many fans of organized dogmas, but a lot of agnosticism about transcendental questions.

What kind of PCR would one expect? To see tiny Angels dancing on the Western Blot?

Guilty as charged. My wife will pursue satisfaction to the ends of the earth - I'm much too prone to just taking the write off and moving on,

You'd like the be able to say a counter example proves the negative, but the logic doesn't actually work. There are a ton of bad investments out there being hawked as good ones, doesn't prove that good ones don't exist.