Causing Problems

I’m going to do a couple of postings about causality, because it seems to me that how humans experience causality is of paramount importance to a lot of ideas such as “free will”, responsibility, and knowledge.
Presenting a philosophical framework in which to defend these ideas, however, is beyond me – so I’m going to approach the discussion casually, and I’ll be less rigorous about terminology than I’d have to be if I were going to try to defend my thoughts against a full-on skeptical enquiry.

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Turkeys

Since some of my comrades here on FTB seem to be posting pictures of birds, I thought I’d offer some footage from my bedroom window a few years ago. It started when the Turkey Committee chair convened the meeting, and rapidly got out of hand. I was on a conference call for about an hour and a half, and the turkeys kept up this level of activity the whole time.

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Space WTF

“Aiming to open up access to space technology, protect Earth from cosmic threats and foster peace, proposals for a new space nation have been unveiled”

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The Intelligence Catch-22

Let me introduce you to the “intelligence Catch-22.” In case you’re not familiar with Heller’s Catch-22, from the brilliant book by that name, it goes like this:

You cannot possibly get a medical discharge from the military based on insanity, because only insane people want to be in the military; therefore if you want to be discharged from the military you are sane and therefore your discharge is denied.

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