Posts by feralharbor2

I was thinking maybe we could open up a new subforum under the politics section, something called "News" or whatever. It would be a spot where people can just drop links and maybe some quick summaries of interesting news stories or articles they find online, whether they're from US outlets or international ones.

I'm basically looking at the Newslinks & Articles subforum over on Stormfront as a model, since that's pretty much their most popular one.

It took me a minute to really wrap my head around what this thread is actually getting at, mostly because I kept having these weird, subliminal flashes of certain images I've been seeing all over the American news cycle...

Honestly, I don't really care about the specific country where some random guy and girl end up as finalists on some brainless reality show. My issue is much bigger than that. It’s more about what kind of world—what kind of society—we live in if shows like that actually pull in massive ratings...

go2slip said:I mean, there isn't a single sane animal or human being on this planet who could actually stand listening to that so-called singing.

Honestly, dogs, chickens, even rabbits... they really shouldn't be projecting their own traits onto people.

Adam Gomez2 said:just get yourself a top-tier deterrent, even the birds and dogs stay clear of those things

What about rabbits?

Jalnuški Diletant said:So, I spent the day ripping the first six Elvis Presley albums onto my computer, and now I’m sitting here wondering...

Am I losing my mind???

Well, now that you've finally mastered the art of burning CDs, maybe you could mail them to me? I could tie them to the fig trees in my backyard to scare off the birds.

hotnix said:Does our perception adjust itself to fit the objects we see, or is it more like the objects themselves align with our understanding? I guess it's one of those things.

What?

feralharbor2 said:I mean, I know it's healthy, but I don't really know how you actually do it... and by the way, it's Sprouts, not Sproots.😉

Yeah, exactly. Just a slip of the tongue, I guess. 😉

Anyway, I was reading in some health guide that it isn't just grain sprouts that are good, but legumes too, I think.

I'm currently digging around online for a bit.
The keywords I've been using are "sprouter," "sprouting," and "sprouts"—honestly, there's way more stuff popping up on Google with those than if I searched for "germs" or "germinator."

Does anyone happen to know where I could pick up a sprouter around here? (I'm specifically looking for somewhere near Cleveland).

Anyone here actually have experience messing around with grain sprouts?

So, I was flipping through some recent issues of "Popular Mechanics," and they had these pretty interesting deep dives into grains and legumes. They mentioned how sprouting them makes them way more nutrient-dense—like, much higher vitamin content compared to just eating regular unsprouted grain.

I guess I'm wondering... what’s the best way to build or set up a decent sprouting setup?

If you actually pull it off, shoot me a DM so I don't miss the thread.

Eric Bennett79 said:So, there's my supposed lack of logic. Look, maybe you have to talk nonsense sometimes just so someone who actually knows what they're talking about can tear your argument apart. That's how you spot an error and learn how to avoid making it next time. I get it, newbies aren't exactly welcome on this forum, but whatever, everyone has to start somewhere, I guess. 😬
Just so we're clear, you don't need to reply to this post (and I know you won't even if I didn't say that, but I'll feel better knowing I told you, because then I can tell myself you ignored it specifically because I asked you to. But still... 🙂 ) 🙂

I didn't actually correct any mistake of yours. There was a tiny slip-up in how you used the word "contradiction," sure, but I didn't realize you were basing your whole analogy on a paradox rather than on the initial invalidity of the statement itself—which is the crucial part here (and it's right).
What I was actually doing was correcting mistyfox812, who was claiming your analogy was garbage. It works fine, provided you look at the core issue regarding the initial statement and its semantic validity.

mistyfox812 said:I laid out my mathematical model for self-reference for you, and I’m sticking to my guns—it’s totally analogous to yours. Functions don't really have an initial "value" either; they just describe a specific logical structure. It's a program, much like your sentence. Except one runs on a processor, and the other runs on your brain.
Variables are part of the syntax here, so they aren't even relevant.

Besides, recursive functions can be expressed linearly, and I only used Pi as an example for a more recognizable algorithm. Just because it "goes somewhere" doesn't mean it isn't looping. Complex loops are still loops.

It’s not analogous. Or rather, it is, but only on a surface level that doesn't matter here.
A recursive function only looks self-referential because of the mathematical syntax used to describe it, but that isn't a problem since everyone implicitly understands how it works.

It DOES NOT act ON ITSELF!!! It acts on the previous step, the preceding operation. So even if the symbols are identical, everyone knows it represents an action—an operation performed not on itself, but on the prior result.

The fact that a function doesn't have an initial value as such, but instead represents a quantitative relationship or an operation, is irrelevant because you always have to "inject" some value into a function for it to start processing anything.
Syntax only matters if its meaning, or semantic content, is clear. Mathematical syntax is sometimes, strictly speaking, ambiguous, but that’s not an issue because everyone knows what it means. With recursion, there is no "looping in circles," just the repetition of an operation on a previous result.

It might seem the same to you because the logical progression of the sentence "this sentence is false" always operates on the previous result, BUT you failed to notice that the self-reference of that sentence isn't in that repetition, but in the initial statement itself.
This probably seems similar to a recursive function to you because the syntax appears self-referential, but it isn't. It’s just an illusion created to save time, and everyone knows how it works even if the syntax is ambiguous.

A recursive function never processes itself. It’s a process; it processes a number, then takes that result and does it again, and again...
A function is a description of an operation, so the fact that it looks like it exists on both sides of the equals sign in mathematical notation isn't a sign of self-reference; it’s understood that this is just the previous phase of an iterative process.

With the sentence "this sentence is false," the initial statement is flawed because the "operation"—if we want to call it that—which is inherently a process of determining truth by matching the statement's content to something external to it, cannot function. The truth of the statement fails to connect to anything outside the statement right from the start.
So, the initial CONDITION for the "truth operation" to be possible 😉 isn't met and the "function" this sentence represents is just pure nonsense.

It’s probably like when you write a function in math that means nothing—no meaningful operation at all—just an error that makes a mathematical expression nonsensical.
I'm no mathematician, but I'm pretty sure mathematicians can come up with stuff like that.

But LOOK, the further logical development of that initial statement keeps going because it is an operation that isn't contained within the initial statement, which already contains a broken "truth-determining" operation. The process spins in circles because it uses a logical procedure that is "outside" the initial statement, trying over and over to manufacture some sense out of a sentence that was nonsensical to begin with. So it's no wonder it never succeeds.

A valid logical statement has to be nothing more than an accurate description of something existing outside the statement itself. That’s the CONDITION, the AXIOM, if you want to call it that—it’s something you have to respect right from the jump. If you don't start there, then any further iterations aren't actually the result of some properly functioning recursive function. It’s just nonsense. You end up with a logical process that keeps trying and trying to fix things, but it can't, because it's fundamentally broken...

You really have to realize that the iteration of a logical process isn't built into the initial statement, unlike a recursive function where it’s implied. In this case, it's just the consequence of spinning your wheels in circles. It's just what happens when you have an error or some absurdity, which leads to this infinite loop of trying to correct that mistake. But logically speaking, it's just impossible.

mistyfox812 said:The statement "the truth is three fives" is just plain false. There isn't some deep paradox hiding in there.
A paradox actually shows up when you say something like "this sentence is false," and that happens specifically because of self-reference.
Comparing those two statements doesn't really work.

I guess the analogy still holds, just maybe not on the level of the paradox itself, but rather regarding how flawed the initial premise is.
The whole idea of "this sentence is false" isn't broken because of the paradox—the paradox is just what happens later once you follow the logic of the initial nonsense. It’s already fundamentally flawed from the start because its self-reference makes it totally hollow.

Honestly, your post just proves my point about what happens when you stop looking at the actual meaning behind things—you know, the semantics—and just start thinking like some kind of machine. It’s easy to fall into that trap, I guess.

I think maybe you're also getting a bit mixed up about what semantics actually means.

I’m worried that the recursion you’re talking about and the self-reference I brought up don't actually have much to do with each other.
Look, I’m no mathematician, but it seems to me that with recursion, you're just taking the result of a previous function and running it through that same function again.
It’s like taking a piece of wood, sawing it in half, then sawing that half in half, then half again... that doesn't really connect to what I was getting at.
With recursion, you have a specific process being applied to something.
But with self-reference—like saying "this sentence is false"—there isn't any actual meaning there. It means nothing, because truth itself relies on how a description corresponds to something outside of itself.

I think you've lumped these two things together just because they both feel somewhat cyclical on the surface.
Take the digits of Pi. You have a repeating function, sure, but it isn't "looping" in a circle; it's moving forward, reaching toward more precision. That repetition has nothing to do with semantic self-reference or the emptiness of a paradoxical sentence. We use repetition to refine a single relationship (Pi is just the quantitative ratio between a circle's radius and its circumference). That relationship is the substance. So, semantic content exists there, unlike in that self-referential sentence.
Maybe your confusion comes from the semantic gaps and the occasional ambiguity of the language used during mathematical operations. For instance, sometimes a "function" refers to the resulting number, and other times it refers to the operation itself. That linguistic sloppiness is pretty irritating for semantic purists like me, but whatever, I guess you can't fight a tradition that treats it as a way to save time.

Alright, I was just messing around earlier about why some people take Minos so seriously... but since maybe that went over some heads, I figured it might be worth actually clearing up what a Paradox really is.

A Paradox basically happens when you have a claim that ends up meaning the exact opposite of what it originally intended to say. So, I guess you could call its meaning "paradoxical" at that point.

So, if we say the Truth is that there is no such thing as truth, then logically, even that statement isn't true. Which means... it's not actually true that there's no truth. I guess you end up with this Paradox where the original claim ends up being the exact opposite of what it was supposed to mean. It's messy.

How is it even possible for a single statement to end up meaning the exact opposite of what it seemed to mean in the first place?
The answer is pretty obvious, really. That whole claim was self-contradictory from the get-go.
So, it was already fundamentally flawed from the jump—like, it basically baked in this glitch where the Truth and its opposite were treated as the exact same thing. I guess that’s just how it was built.
It’s like saying black is white. Honestly, the only real difference here is that the mutual exclusivity between black and white isn't as semantically automatic as it is when you're talking about the implicit exclusion between Truth and its opposite. I guess there's a nuance there, maybe, but the logic holds.

There are these seemingly "unsolvable" Paradoxes out there. Like that one sentence: "this sentence isn't the Truth."
If it wasn't the Truth, then saying it’s false would actually be false... which would mean it’s true. And if it’s false that it's false, then we're right back to it being the Truth. I guess it just loops forever.
It’s pretty obvious what’s happening here. They're just spinning in circles because they're obsessed with chasing something that isn't even there—the actual meaning of the sentence.
I mean, if you look at it closely, that sentence actually contains two separate elements that end up creating a Paradox.
The first part of this whole thing is basically just an assertion being passed off as the Truth. You've got this sentence that's trying to claim it's the absolute Truth, while simultaneously implying that it isn't actually true. It’s a bit of a mess, I guess.
So, it’s like before—we're looking at a contradiction right in the premise itself. I guess that makes it no surprise that the conclusion ends up meaning something completely different than what was intended. It just doesn't add up.
But here’s the thing—that first example actually had some semantic weight to it. It was talking about "something" that existed outside the claim itself. It was pointing toward the Truth as a standalone concept, like it was sitting "out there" somewhere beyond the statement. In this case? That just isn't happening. There's nothing there.
If you say, "this sentence is untrue," you aren't just dealing with a basic contradiction. You’ve got that whole self-referential thing going on, which basically makes the entire statement semantically empty. I mean, the claim just starts out spinning in circles on its own, right? So, even when you try to actually develop it logically, it just keeps looping back into itself forever.

It seems like we can draw one conclusion here: if the initial premise is flawed, everything built on top of it is going to be just as broken. It’s like... you can't build a solid house on a shaky foundation, right? If the starting point is off, the whole logical flow is basically doomed from the jump. I guess that's just how it works.
If the initial premise is contradictory from the jump, then any logical reasoning you try to build on top of it is just going to trip over itself. Eventually, that contradiction is going to surface as a Paradox, basically revealing that the whole thing meant the exact opposite of what it seemed to mean at first. And if the statement is self-referential—you know, like it’s just spinning in circles without actually pointing to anything outside of itself—then the entire logical flow is doomed. It'll just keep looping back on itself because the whole process is just a reflection of that original, self-contained mess. It’s an infinite loop of contradictions, I guess.

So, I guess these so-called Paradoxes don't actually tell us much about reality itself. It feels more like they just show us that you can construct a statement that contradicts its own existence, and then once you start following the logic to its natural conclusion, that contradiction just... pops out at you. That's pretty much it, I suppose.
You can actually construct a claim that doesn't mean anything at all. It’s just self-referential, totally devoid of any actual substance regarding whether something is true or false. I mean, truth or falsehood only really matters when an assertion corresponds—or fails to correspond—to some reality outside of itself. If you don't have that external anchor, you're stuck. You end up with this logical loop where the implications just spin in circles, much like the claim itself. It’s basically just an endless cycle of the concepts of truth and falsehood canceling each other out because they were already baked into the initial contradiction. I guess it's just a closed circuit.

So, what’s the actual takeaway here? I guess it means the whole issue with logical paradoxes isn't even a logical breakdown to begin with—it's just a semantic mess. Maybe that's the point.
Look, if we start off with a premise that’s already tripping over its own feet—like saying black is white or the Truth is actually a lie—then we haven't really looked at what the statement actually means. We've just ignored the inherent contradiction sitting right there in the middle of it. And honestly, if we go a step further and design a claim that has zero actual substance? Just some empty, self-referential syntax that doesn't mean anything at all? Well, then I guess we shouldn't be surprised when logic just takes that initial semantic screw-up and runs with it, amplifying the whole mess.

It’s not really a flaw in logic itself. The real issue is failing to connect that logic to semantics. When you use statements that have contradictory, nonsensical, or just plain non-existent meanings, you're basically letting that initial error bleed into everything else in the logical process.

So, I guess you could say Paradoxes are just signals—they act like detectors for a semantic mistake that was made right at the start.

The whole logical process just mechanically expands on whatever semantic content is already there. Logic is essentially just mechanical semantics, which only works properly as long as it doesn't lose sight of its fundamental semantic nature.

For logic to actually function, the first prerequisite is getting the semantic definitions of Truth and falsehood right. And honestly, the only way to define them correctly is through whether the semantic content of a statement corresponds—or doesn't correspond—to the actual reality outside of that statement that it's supposed to be describing.

mistyfox812 said:Yeah, that Paradox is basically there to show that even logic has its limits. People act like it’s this universal absolute truth, so I guess it’s pretty interesting to see exactly where it starts to break down.

The thing is, the original Liar Paradox had actual semantic weight, but the goal was the same. It went something like, "All Cretans are liars"—said by a Cretan (you know, someone from Crete).

I mean, you could argue that paradoxes in formal logic just act like detectors for when a statement is semantically nonsensical, empty, incomplete, or just plain poorly phrased.

As for that Epimenides/Minos "paradox," you can actually solve it through semantics. The claim that they "lie" is just semantically vague when it comes to the frequency of that lying.

Like, what does it even mean to say "Cretans lie"? Does that mean they always lie, or just sometimes?

If it means they "always" lie, then it goes like this: Epimenides/Minos says all Cretans always lie. Well, Epimenides/Minos is a Cretan. So, he would be lying too if his claim were true—though I don't really see why his claim matters here anyway—but if they truly *always* lie, then it turns out Cretans don't lie "always," they just lie sometimes...

But honestly, even if you couldn't fix it with this easy semantic workaround, you have to wonder why anyone would take some guy named Minos seriously enough to build an entire paradox out of his claims.

Anyway, since it is solvable through semantics, it seems pretty clear the main issue here is just the semantic vagueness of saying people "lie" or are "liars."

nobody and nothing said:Is the statement "this sentence is false" true or false? If it’s true, then it's false.
If you look at it as a double negative, maybe it's an affirmation, so it's true if it's false.
A paradox.

But, honestly, it's pretty obvious that this and all those other paradoxes are just total nonsense. It's because a sentence like "this sentence is true" doesn't actually have any semantic content.
The truth is supposed to be how a statement corresponds to something outside of itself—otherwise, talking about correspondence doesn't even make sense. So, logic here is just trying to draw conclusions from statements that don't mean anything, which makes the whole process pointless. I guess there isn't a real paradox here, except for the fact that so few people realize how senseless it is to mechanically apply formal logic without considering the actual content, or the semantics.

DJ Khaled said:My bad, I honestly thought we were hanging out in some philosophy forum here... BUT LET'S ASSUME we are. The whole point isn't even about what's actually true, it's more about the paradox created by the specific example we're looking at. 😉

There’s no paradox here. If you claim there’s no truth, then you’ve just stated a truth, which means it's not true that there's no truth. That's pretty much it.

DJ_Beli12 said:if it’s true that there is no truth, then does truth exist or not?

It isn't true that there is no truth.