🥳The number 23

1 + 23 = 4 × (5 – 6 + 7)
1 = 23 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7

Furthermore, 23 is two less than 25 (which is a square number)
and in two years time it will be 2025 (another square number).

Interestingly, 2025 = (20 + 25) × (20 + 25)

What is it like to be a bat?

You know what it is like to be a bat. To be a bat is to be a mammal like no other. You spend half the day dozing in caves, and then you all leave together. You flap about, in order to get anywhere. You find out where you are by seeing how the sounds you make come back to you. You are where all the others are. Each of you is there because everyone else is there. Everyone else is a bit batty. You know what it is like to be a bat.

Happy St Edmund's Day ;-)

20 November 869 AD was the day King Edmund of East Anglia was killed by Danish invaders. He became the patron saint of England.

Ironically, St Edmund was replaced by St George in the fourteenth century, mainly because Edward III wanted to be more involved with Europe (two centuries earlier, Richard I had been one of many Europeans uniting around St George as they defended Europe).

That is ironic because modern English nationalists are rather fond of the flag of St George (this is the Irony Age).

Sisyphusian Musings

Once upon a time, there was a woman called "Sisyphusia". There was nothing else, just this woman. "If only there was something else," she thought.

"If there was a sad little kitten, I could give it a bowl of milk, if there was also a bowl, and a cow, and some grass for the cow." Upon reflection, though, she changed her mind about the kitten. It did not seem right, to her, that there should be a sad little kitten just so that she could feel better.

Still, she was very, very bored. Being aware of Sisyphusia's feelings, the creative force behind her decided to create another thing, just for her. She now had a big stone. "Hmm," thought Sisyphusia. "If only there was also a table cloth and some cups and saucers, and some tea and a cow and some grass; and if the stone had a flat top, to lay the table cloth over, and I had some friends."

Irritated by the stone's inadequacy, she kicked it. She kicked it again, but that only made her feet hurt, so she gave it a big shove. The stone rocked backwards, wobbled slightly and then rolled back towards her. She jumped out of its way, and it continued rolling, past her and away. Down the inclining ground it rolled, and then up another incline, until it came to rest a fair way away. Sisyphusia let out her breath, which she realized she had been holding. "Gosh," she said.

To cut a long story short, she got into a routine of pushing the stone up one incline only to watch it roll down the other side and continue on, rolling up the next hill a short way before rolling back down and coming to rest in the shallow valley. She repeated the process, endlessly. Sometimes it got a bit boring, but then she just stopped for a while, and she was soon filled with the urge to shove the stone about. It is not as though there was anything else to do.

Sisyphusia got stronger and stronger, with all that pushing. So she did not notice the stone getting lighter and lighter, as it very slowly wore away. But eventually she did notice, because eventually she had only a pebble, which she could hardly roll around, not without giving herself sore knees. She threw it about for a bit, though. She would throw it away, then close her eyes and spin round and around until she was dizzy, and then search for the pebble with her eyes tightly closed. There was not much sport if her eyes were open, as there were no other pebbles, or anything else.

Eventually there was just a grain of sand that blew away in the wind. Did I mention that there was wind? There was not much wind, but it was only a grain of sand. So, Sisyphusia was alone again. The stone had sometimes seemed like a millstone, but now that it was gone, she missed it. There was nothing to do but think about the stone, about all the fun that she had had with it: rolling it around, and then throwing it about. Still, eventually she did not think about it all the time. And then she would suddenly remember it, and sit quite still, gazing into nothingness, thinking about it, and then about other things.

Eventually even the memory of the stone faded away, and then there was only nothingness again, tinged with a sense that the nothingness was lacking in something, although she had no idea what, having completely forgotten about the stone. She was no longer bored, just sad. And she stayed that way forever. The creative force behind this creation wanted to give her something, so that she would not be sad; but what? Another stone? A ball to play with? A bowl of milk?

"If only I had given her a stone that never wore out, one that she could have rolled forever," the creative force said to itself. The irony is that rolling a stone up a hill, only to watch it roll back down again, and repeating that forever, was the terrible punishment endured by Sisyphus, in hell. And another irony is that hell is Other People, although that is another story.

How to Turn Matter into Antimatter

1) Turn matter into electricity, using a nuclear power station.

2) Turn that electricity into light of a particular frequency.

3) Those photons decay into particle/antiparticle pairs.

Mrs Fox's feelings

Basking in the warmth of Heaven, she floats weightless and naked, far far above the factory chimneys and church spires of the world, in the upper reaches of a sultry sky. It's an intoxicatingly fragrant atmosphere, surging and eddying with huge gentle waves of wind and pillowy clouds – nothing like the motionless, transparent oblivion she'd always imagined Paradise would be. It's more like a breathable ocean, and she treads the heavy air, narrowing the distance between her body and that of her man who's flying beside her. When she's close enough, she spreads her thighs, wraps her arms and legs around him, and opens her lips to receive the incarnation of his love.

Michel Faber, The Crimson Petal and the White, 671

The Trouble with Transporters

In Star Trek, people are beamed from place to place using transporters; their molecules are converted into energy, which is then beamed to another place, where it is turned back into the original people. The problem with that is their being converted into energy: as though they were set on fire, or vaporized by a laser beam, or ionized, and then some. [Chaospet Cartoon]

As for that energy turning back into the original people, why should an exact copy of someone be that person? To see why it would not, recall how when people eat they replace some of their atoms with new atoms from food, crapping out some of their old atoms along with some of the unused food. Imagine all of their atoms being replaced with new ones, somehow, with all of the old ones being crapped out. Were that crap collected, and its atoms rearranged into exact copies of those people, surely those copies would be just that: copies. Suppose now that those people do not get new atoms; all that happens now is that the original people are turned into crap, which goes down some tubes, and is then rearranged back into the original forms: much as happens on Star Trek when people are beamed somewhere.

Isserley's Feeling For Snow

The sensation of fresh snow crunching underfoot was deeply satisfying to Isserley. Just the idea of all that water vapour solidifying by the cloudful and fluttering to earth was miraculous. She couldn't quite believe it, even after all these years. It was a phenomenon of stupendous and unjustifiably useless extravagance. Yet here it lay, soft and powdery, edibly pure. Isserley scooped a handful off the ground and ate some. It was delicious.

Michel Faber, Under the Skin, 56

"Him Who Has Understanding"

222111 is the number of The Royal Mint,
and it equals 1 + 2 + 3 + ... + 666, where
666 = 1 + 2 + 3 + ... + 36 is The Number
Of The Beast (note that love of money is
the root of all evil, 36 = 1 + 2 + 3 + ... + 8
and 8 = 2 x 2 x 2 x 1 x 1 x 1) and so forth

120 = 360/3

which is interesting because not only does {1, 2, 0} = 3,

      12 = 3 × 4
      56 = 7 × 8
      90 = 360/4

0 + 12 = 3 × 4
5 + 67 = 8 × 9
            = 360/5

All Men Are Men

Suppose that you are thinking of having a child:
......Your child will be like you, to some extent, and will to the same extent be like his or her father, just as half of your genes come from your father and half from your mother. So, your child's genes will be 50% your man's, 25% your father's, and 25% your mother's. And of course, what goes for you goes for your mother, and for hers, etc. So:
......Your child's genes will be 50% your man's, 25% your father's, 12.5% your maternal grandfather's, 6.25% your maternal grandmother's father's, 3.125% your maternal grandmother's maternal grandfather's, etc.; i.e. they will be 50% male genes + 25% male genes + 12.5% male genes + 6.25% male genes + 3.125% male genes + ... = 100% male genes.
......Everyone has a biological father and mother, and so we have a mathematical and, to some extent, empirical (and of course fallacious) argument that all men are men.

Being nearly there

The summer holidays being here, consider Zeno taking his family on a trip. One of his kids asks ‘Are we nearly there?’ Suppose the answer is ‘No’, as it will be for most of their journey. Typically, the question is repeated a short time later. Since they will not have moved very far in that short time, how could they be nearly there? A bit further on from any place that was not nearly there would still not be nearly there. The Sorites paradox is that it follows logically that they will never be nearly there. But as Zeno knows, children are impossible.

Duck Soup

Glassy plumes fly up, collapsing
back to a flatness that mirrors
nothing. A ponderous pause

and up springs a duckling,
fluffy but with butt bedraggled,
sipping duck-poo soup
and snatching flies from the bottom of the sky;
splurging with his siblings: like golden spiderlings, 
as busy as bees in the water-lilies. They emerge

from their submergings like broadsides
beside a lardy male evoking long-ships
with his draconian head
as he waddles by on lobstrous feet. Flustered,
he flaps his wings, and peacock-blue rhombuses blink
and fling off oddly fluttering splodges of soggy leaf-litter.
Weary of malarkey
he fans out his butt like a pack of cards
and onto a flagstone flops. Wary of malady
he gingerly stretches out his white-collared neck
for sumptuous croutons, a little presumptuously.

Unhinging winds fringe maroon-fingered moon,
like a waiter with a supernatural soup-spoon;
a crater of rubble like a burst bubble serving
as a seat of tranquillity for a duck quacking up
a soporific melody of sounds pacific: "Talk about a duck
floating on a lake, looking like a wooden decoy does;
talk about a drake ducking wooden ducks,
making all the ducklings he can make."

Philosophers' Carnivals: Now & Next

Philosophers' Carnivals "showcase the best philosophical posts from a wide range of weblogs," as it says on the carnival's homepage. From today, carnival #120 is at nicomachus.net. And carnival #121 will be here in 3 weeks time, so if you find yourself reading something nicely philosophical, posted between now and then, please consider submitting it, via the online submission form, even if you wrote it yourself: "Don't be shy, we want to hear from you, that's the whole point of this project! Your post doesn't need to be anything earth-shattering - it just needs to be something that other philosophically-minded people might enjoy reading."
......As for what you can submit, there are No Rules, except: "No self-help, mysticism, marketing spam, etc." Of course, marketing spammers are unlikely to have bothered reading as far as this, so telling them not to bother submitting seems pointless. And I wouldn't rule out what some academic philosophers like to call 'mysticism', e.g. Mathematical Platonism, Substance Dualism, Open Theism and so forth (since such is just realistic metaphysics). Nor shall I reject whatever formalized craziness such academics work on instead, of course (since I should be unbiased in my hosting). Indeed, since the number of the carnival will be 121 (which sounds like "one-to-one") there's even some hope for self-helpers (and Continental Philosophers) whose positive thinking has carried them thus far, because insofar as their posts describe how the ideal of the Socratic Dialogue relates to their brand of self-help (or Derrida) I shall look upon them kindly.
......Here's a cautionary tale about rule-following: Many years ago, a port on the east coast was industrializing. To its north and south were two large estates, the country houses of two progressive squires, who built factories and docks in the port, and cheap housing for their workers there. Peasants to the west of the port flocked there, to earn more and to be free from their old-fashioned and relatively oppressive squire. As his peasants deserted his lands, that squire soon found himself with cashflow problems, and eventually he was reduced to opening his mansion to the public. He even built an inhumane zoo in its overgrown grounds; but things got no better. He got more and more depressed. One day he became quite deranged, and smashed up his zoo. Then he climbed onto the back of a huge hippopotamus and rode it towards the port. Now, the two rich squires heard of him crashing through their workers' slums, but they were unable to stop him because he had the law on his side, the law which states that the squire on the hippopotamus is evil to the slums of the squires on the other two sides.

Chairs Exist

The basic contrast is with imaginary objects: Pixies don’t exist, electrons do; epicycles don’t exist, bicycles do. We learn the meaning of ‘exist’ in a world of tables and chairs, trees and cars, and so when we say that electrons exist we mean that they exist like chairs do. We can spray them onto surfaces, for example, much as we might throw chairs into a van. We can catch chairs and electrons, but not pixies.
......If we doubted that chairs exist, what could we mean by ‘exist’ if we said that electrons exist? That they are in our best theory of reality? But the thing about epicycles is not only that they aren’t fundamental objects, in our best theory. It is that they don’t exist, to be further analysed, and therefore shouldn’t have been in our best theory. Of course, pixies exist within fictions, so they exist fictionally, but that is also to say that they don’t really exist.
......Some philosophers think that chairs are imaginary, that only the atoms that make them up exist, but how could that be right? A chair made of Lego bricks would still be a chair. It would still exist, wholly composed of Lego bricks. Had it been made one brick at a time, with one brick not being a chair, and with no addition of one brick making a chair out of a non-chair, it would exist. Consider how, even though orange fades smoothly into yellow and red, with no sharp boundary, that doesn’t mean that carrots are not orange.

Do Chairs Exist?

Yes they do:

A physicist will tell me that this armchair is made of vibrations and that
it’s not really here at all. But when Samuel Johnson was asked to prove
the material existence of reality, he just went up to a big stone and kicked
it. I’m with him.

......David Attenborough

No they don't:

Like many philosophers, I don't believe that tables and chairs are fundamental
objects. Like a much smaller number of philosophers, I like to say that I don't
think tables and chairs exist. I have good reasons for my denial. For instance,
it does not appear that there is an exact moment at which a table comes into
existence.

......Alexander Pruss

What Rainbows Cannot Be

Rainbows are clearly not ordinary objects, being more like mirages than oases. But they are just as clearly not fictional objects. One’s conception of a rainbow may well contain false presuppositions, but in that way rainbows do resemble ordinary objects. Consider a red apple. Perhaps what is really there is a 10-dimensional collection of particle-strings within a 4-dimensional block universe, with the red and the spheroid existing only in the minds of certain kinds of potential perceivers of that collection. (That modern scientific hypothesis is not a million miles away from theistic idealism, of course.) Anyway, suppose some fictional meteorologists defined ‘rainbow’ to be a specific sort of event. They might do so because such a technical convention suited their scientific needs better than the rather vague ordinary meaning. And of course, an event is a kind of object (especially in a 4-Dimensionalist world). Now, some relatively arbitrary choices may well have been made as they specified their referent of ‘rainbow’. But that does not mean that rainbows cannot be objects. They are, after all, intentional objects, over which we might quantify. And of course, our intuitions that rainbows are not objects all derive from the fact that they are not ordinary objects. I mention this because it strikes me as similar to Benacerraf’s famous argument about what numbers cannot be.

Not-So-Free Thinking

Enlightened critics of religion like to point to a history of intolerance of criticism in religion. So it is nice to see Terry Eagleton and Karen Armstrong in fifth place in the New Humanist's 2009 Bad Faith awards, with about six-and-a-half percent of the votes. The New Humanist's article points out "that both have written books this year criticising the New Atheists and mounting what some might call a more sophisticated defence of religion." Quite generally it seems that whenever people talk about important things, there will be those who find good criticism most irritating; and the more popular the philosophy, the more politics there will be.

Two "proofs" that 2 + 2 = 5

The rationalist proof:

Starting with the concept of a bean, adding two beans and another two beans makes five beans because the concept of a bean is an ideal platonic bean.

The empiricist proof:

Add together two lines of length 2.36 of our minimal units, to make a line of length 4.72 and round those lengths to the nearest whole number of units.

Unretiring enigMan

Hi; tired of being retiring, I stretch my fingers with intermittent posts (on-going) and, as our droughtless summer (of many Painted Ladies) draws slowly to a close, I think its cultural highlights were: a sci-fi film of the good old 'new wave' kind, Precinct 9; and, more spook story than sci-fi, Iain Bank's Transition; and 60's nostalgiac Inherent Vice; and 90's nostalgiac Menage.