User talk:BlueNight

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Hello BlueNight and welcome to Wikipedia! Hope you like it here, and stick around.

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Hi, welcome again. I'm not sure if there's a meetup being planned; I think the best place to ask something like that would be Wikipedia:Village pump. Hope to see you around, [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 00:26, 2004 Aug 11 (UTC)

P.S. Please sign your posts!

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[edit] Linking room

Actually the theme is fairly frequent both in the literature of Fantasy and the literature of Science fiction. In addition to the examples I wrote down, I remember dozens of short stories and novels around the theme, and even more which have such rooms in the "background". Harry Harrison published an anthology filled with SF stories around this (it is in one of the moving boxes which I have not yet opened) and Lloyd Biggle JR also had several SF stories (in his Jan Darzek series mostly) with rooms full of matter transmitter portals. AlainV 08:06, 16 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Transformation plot devices

I just added some notes to Talk:Transformation Stories Archive - let me know what you think. --Jim Henry 21:05, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Hello, I see that you are interested in transformation. If you want, could you help the article Transformation fiction? Bye for now, --ShaunMacPherson 13:09, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Furry lifestyler

Thanks for the species dysmorphia paragraph; it's frankly a relief to see someone adding some sensible content for a change... I've toned your comments down just a little bit, since (for example) "Species Dysmorphic Disorder" has no Google hits at all (and I've never personally seen that precise term used), but nevertheless it was a useful contribution. =:) Loganberry | Talk 02:08, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Logic

hey! You answered a question I had under the Logic talk page and we both were told to take the conversation elsewhere... I figured this would do: I think we both agree that Logic can't be proven or disproven with itself. Any other system used to justify it would be illogical by definition (hehe), but also, any other system would suffer from the same epistemic circularity that logic does. So (assuming that circularity diffuses any statement), no statements of logic, or any other induction/justifaction system, can be used credibly. i.e. we can't know anything. I'm sorry to pester you, but I haven't found any discussion of this issue anywhere else...

I've got a cousin attending University of New Mexico down by you! How do you like it? --Heyitspeter 22:52, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

UNM is a nice place. I enjoy the neighborhood.
As to logic: Yeah, that wasn't quite the place to discuss it.
I firmly believe that logic is one of three fundamentals of the universe, the other two being causality and existence, and everything that we know is a mixture of these. See my blog on the topic, Triessentialism. Logic is irreducible; the word "prove" described a concept peculiar to logic (and fields which rely upon it, such as math and law). It is as ludicrous to talk about proving something without logic as it is to talk about color in the dark.
However, you made an interesting statement: "assuming that circularity diffuses any statement"
Circularity doesn't diffuse anything, it just doesn't imply anything. For example, if I said "1+1=2, therefore 2=1+1", I haven't proven anything, ie, I haven't derived another statement that is substantively different from the first. However, "1+1=2, therefore 1+1+1=1+2" is not circular, it is derivative.
Here's another twist of circularity. You said that because using logic to prove logic is circular, we cannot know anything. Did you use logic to come up with that?
One more for the road: "We cannot know anything." To assume that this sentence is true implies that you know this sentence, and therefore you know something, and therefore this statement is false. However, you can say what Descartes said: "I doubt, therefore I think. I think, therefore I am."

--BlueNight 04:50, 6 January 2007 (UTC)


The circularity of 'proving' and 'disproving' (i.e. justifying, falsifying, etc.) logic using logic is what makes logic useless. I just meant that logic can't be proven or disproven within itself (and, it seems to me, without itself), and this makes it an untestable hypothesis. So every logic statement has the assumption of it's own functionality, and that functionality premise will always be an assumption, because logic statements cannot be made without it.
I admit it's rediculous to say "we can't know anything", and I don't mean to give that statement a special standing, but to give logical statements a special priority seems just as crazy, you know?
Let me know if you'd rather not talk about this, or if you'd rather not talk on this page, okay? Maybe on your blog?
p.s. How do I indent so it looks like I'm responding to you?--Heyitspeter 22:08, 6 January 2007 (UTC)


Use a colon before each paragraph, like I have done here. I took the liberty of adding two colons (double-indent) to your response so it's clear you were responding to my response. Also, I'm okay with discussing this here. I enjoy discussions like this.
You're a perceptive person, and you've caught on to one of the central paradoxes of philosophy: namely, is philosophy itself valid?
What is logic useless for? (Any time you say useful or useless, a 'for something' is implied, unless you refer to the negative emotional identity "useless" as in broken, hopeless, or failed.) (Feel free to comment on my blog posts.)
If you mean useless in general, useless for anything, that is patently false. The very existence of logic circuits, computer programming, and the Internet shows that logic can be used for some things. Unless you are willing to doubt the recognition of your ability to observe (which is something few philosophers are willing to do as a way of life), the functionality is obvious.
If you mean that logic is useless for self-verification, then I agree. It is untestable from the outside. It is only testable from within. However, since it is functional in conjunction with the physical world, it is as real as the physical world.
In physics, people run into a similar situation. We can only observe things that in some way affect other things physically. Light particles (photons) physically hit our optic receptors, causing a chemical / nervous reaction in our brain, causing us to see. The nerves in our skin respond to the pressure of electromagnetic fields of the atoms that make up objects, giving us a sense of touch. We cannot directly perceive (without physical senses) the everyday world of material objects, of matter and energy, because we are made of the same stuff. Our tools are made of the same stuff. Our measuring sticks are made of the same stuff.
We can't "get outside" of matter and energy to perceive directly, any more than we can "get outside" of logic to verify directly. Thus, it is as much a fallacy to say "thus we cannot know anything" as it is to say "thus nothing is real." If a positive "we can know" is impossible, so is a negative "we cannot know." We can only say that we know nothing outside of what we know, and cannot observe what cannot be observed.
As for giving logic and rationality a special priority: since there is no substitute for true and false, when people want the truth, logic (no matter how disguised by layers of emotions, manners of speech, or poor phrasing) is the only way to get it. Even if it is crazy, its the only thing we have.
What it comes down to for me is that logic is the structure and interaction of items within a context. Without a context within which to work, logic can't do anything, and is indeed useless. The two words context and consistency are the keys to logic.
There is an analogous situation with emotions, and value judgements, but I won't get into it here. --BlueNight 05:23, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
I meant useless in the "broken, hopeless, failed sense", and the "self-verification" sense (it seems to me that if you can't verify something then you can't rely on it). As for the latter, logic is definitely untestable from the outside, but from within it seems to be untestable as well, since any verification or dismissal of logic within itself is circular, and so doesn't imply anything. Of course that doesn't mean the conclusions of those arguments are true or false, but any conclusion wouldn't be supported logically. As for the useless in the "for something" sense, that wasn't what I was thinking at the time; but it does seems that if logic can't be deemed worthwhile/beneficial/effective within or without itself, then at the very least we don't know if it can be used "for something". True, it's worked for computers. Could that just be luck? This is stuff I have to think a about.
The "within context" thing is troublesome because that makes logic by definition subjective. That definitely doesn't make it worthless, but it makes the 'truth' thing harder to buy. If some set is true subjectively then it's essentially just a bunch of premises that you can either accept or reject, but your reasons for doing so are probably arbitrary, or at least can't be conveyed effectively to another subjective consciousness. I'm not really getting at everything in what you've said and I still have troublesome questions and such, but for now I'm really really really tired and I need to sleep. I'm having a lot of trouble holding together coherent thoughts. I hope I've been clear at all so far... :/--Heyitspeter 11:00, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Hey so I've slept and now I'm going to try again a little! I thought about the logic-computers thing. That's all fine, and it helps computers do tasks and such. But would it help a computer gain some transcendant knowledge? I would argue no. When you say logic works "within context", I think what you mean is, "when a set of premises are treated as givens" (i.e. when the basis of the logic system is assumptions). If there are two different logic systems, and both are operating entirely off of assumptions, then neither one has priority over the other, and neither one's conclusions can be expected to be 'true' in any sense.
The most credit I can give logic might be that it helps make a system of beliefs more noncontradictory, and maybe helps carry out your assumptions to their logical conclusions. But as for "shedding light" or "reaching truth", I don't see how that could happen...
Thoughts?--Heyitspeter 01:04, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
There really is nothing else to say. Logic is all about rationality and truth, but logic itself carries no meaning. Meaning is an emotion-thing, not a logic-thing. Significance cannot be found inherently in logic, just as it cannot be found in physical objects. The three, emotional, logical, and physical, are separate items, though they co-exist in the same objects. Structure (logic) and significance (emotion) are as different as water and quadratic equations. I hope you find a better answer regarding significance. --BlueNight (talk) 07:32, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] HPV vaccine

BlueNight, I'd be interested in your comments/answer to [this question. Thanks! NCdave 14:24, 29 June 2007 (UTC)