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tommy Eternal Order Devil's Island 16543 Posts 
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Ah Astral Plane - ning
 I recall that comming out in some book back in the 60s or early 70s. A pal of mine had the book and he was going on about it. So the following day I told him I had tried it and been down the bookies on the Astral Plane and seen a horse that would win todays 3.o'clock race. He thought I was kidding, but when I went and put all the money I had on it and it won at 25/1 he couldn't believe it really works! In reality I had sat up all night stuying the form and I just thought it had good chance.
If there is a single truth about Magic, it is that nothing on earth so efficiently evades it.
Tommy |
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LobowolfXXX Inner circle La Famiglia 1196 Posts
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Quote:
On 2014-01-03 17:47, landmark wrote: I used to write newspaper articles under pseudonyms that were anagrams of my real name.
"Torture doesn't work" lol
Guess they forgot to tell Bill Buckley. "...as we reason and love, we are able to hope. And hope enables us to resist those things that would enslave us." |
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tommy Eternal Order Devil's Island 16543 Posts
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Your real name is Blow Fool xxx?
If there is a single truth about Magic, it is that nothing on earth so efficiently evades it.
Tommy |
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landmark Inner circle within a triangle 5194 Posts
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Say "Your house is on fire" to a billiard ball and nothing happens. Say the same to me, and I move, but not according to the Newtonian laws of mechanics. Say the same to me in Norwegian and I am like the billiard ball again.
Click here to get Gerald Deutsch's Perverse Magic: The First Sixteen Years
All proceeds to Open Heart Magic charity. |
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tommy Eternal Order Devil's Island 16543 Posts
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I am sure I have seen his business card in a telephone kiosk somewhere.
If there is a single truth about Magic, it is that nothing on earth so efficiently evades it.
Tommy |
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MobilityBundle Regular user Las Vegas/Boston 120 Posts
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Quote:
On 2014-01-03 22:24, landmark wrote: I'm not sure what the rhetorical point of this observation is. If one flows fluorine gas through powdered cesium, there's a super-violent chemical reaction. But flow neon gas through powdered cesium, and nothing [noteworthy] will happen. That doesn't make cesium, fluorine, or neon any less "real," it just means they react differently to each other. Similarly, all your observation seems to suggest is that humans and billiard balls react differently to sounds/words, or that you react different to English sounds than you do to Norwegian sounds. It doesn't seem to shed light on whether these sounds (or the words they embody) are any more or less real than billiard balls or humans. |
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MobilityBundle Regular user Las Vegas/Boston 120 Posts
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There's this idea in mathematics called an "equivalence class." You define some notion of equality among different things, and then all the things that are mutually "equal" under your notion are collectively referred to as an equivalence class. Often, one can treat entire equivalence classes as if they were single objects. For example, most people are familiar with the arithmetic of odd/even numbers: odd+odd=even, even+even=even, etc. One can consider "oddness" and "evenness" as equivalence relations: two numbers are "equal" if they are both odd or both even. Then the rules amount to arithmetic with entire equivalence classes.
The small point is, equivalence classes are abstractions... at least with respect to the things that comprise the class. The large point is, words are equivalence classes. The corresponding equivalence relation is a little harder to define explicitly, and there are potentially a lot of different layers of equivalence relations to chose from. For example, take *just* written (not spoken) words, in a single language. The equivalence relation there is pretty easy to describe. You essentially just ignore fonts. So "dog" and "dog" represent the same word in this equivalence relation, even though one is expressed in an italic font. If I scrawled "dog" in ten foot high letters across a billboard, same thing goes. It's harder to describe explicitly when spoken language is thrown in, but it's the same idea: some collections of sounds are all mutually equivalent, and they represent a single word, but (importantly) with respect to a broader equivalence relation. You can even through in other languages for yet an even broader equivalence relation. This equivalence relation is even harder to describe in all cases, because of translation difficulties noted above. So, back to the original question: are words "real" or are they abstract? It's a false dichotomy. There are several layers of abstraction between the particular collection of pixels on your particular screen that light up when I type "dog," and some purely abstract Platonic form of a true "word" corresponding to dogness. (Which, to be sure, is different than the purely abstract Platonic form of true "dogness.") Where you draw the line between real and abstract is up to you, at least IMO. |
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landmark Inner circle within a triangle 5194 Posts
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Quote:
On 2014-01-04 05:53, MobilityBundle wrote: I wasn't declaring the reality or non-reality of anything. I was pointing out the difference between billiard balls and human beings. And what moves each. I think it's an important distinction to keep in mind and, believe it or not, is often forgotten, ignored, or disputed. To my way of thinking it's the cause of much of the ills in today's world, including war.
Click here to get Gerald Deutsch's Perverse Magic: The First Sixteen Years
All proceeds to Open Heart Magic charity. |
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landmark Inner circle within a triangle 5194 Posts
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Quote:
The large point is, words are equivalence classes. The corresponding equivalence relation is a little harder to define explicitly, and there are potentially a lot of different layers of equivalence relations to chose from. For example, take *just* written (not spoken) words, in a single language. The equivalence relation there is pretty easy to describe. You essentially just ignore fonts. So "dog" and "dog" represent the same word in this equivalence relation, even though one is expressed in an italic font. If I scrawled "dog" in ten foot high letters across a billboard, same thing goes. To look at the symbol without relationship to the receiver is meaningless. "Dog" to me is not the same as "dog" to you or to a non-English speaker or to a dog. There are words and then there are words. Agreed, real or abstract is not the relevant question or even meaningful. I'll be provocative and put it this way: what's real is the relationship. IIRC the Gregory Bateson formulation was something like this: "News is a difference that makes a difference."
Click here to get Gerald Deutsch's Perverse Magic: The First Sixteen Years
All proceeds to Open Heart Magic charity. |
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tommy Eternal Order Devil's Island 16543 Posts
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If there is a single truth about Magic, it is that nothing on earth so efficiently evades it.
Tommy |
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MobilityBundle Regular user Las Vegas/Boston 120 Posts
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Quote:
On 2014-01-04 08:35, landmark wrote: Maybe I'm being a little thick-headed about it, but my comments were intended to address the title of the thread: "is a word real?" You appear to have moved on to a different question -- one involving differences between human beings and billiard balls -- but I'm not sure what it is. |
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Jonathan Townsend Eternal Order Ossining, NY 27300 Posts
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Quote:
On 2014-01-02 20:05, Pakar Ilusi wrote: I miss that TV show with Mollie Sugden as Mrs. Slocombe. Getting back to the topic - consider Cockney slang and it's near relation of Chinese customs as regards words that sound alike. Where's the meaning in a sound if not the context and the context if not within a common and agreed upon word/sound/thing environment ?? As an oversimplification by way of cartoon type thought experiment - consider the meaning of "cat" to a dog in comparison to its meaning to a mouse.
...to all the coins I've dropped here
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critter Inner circle Spokane, WA 2653 Posts
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"The fool is one who doesn't know what you have just found out."
~Will Rogers |
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tommy Eternal Order Devil's Island 16543 Posts
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AWFUL
In the 1300s it originally meant “inspiring wonder” and was a short version of “full of awe”. But now the word has purely negative connotations. NICE Derived from the Latin nescius meaning “ignorant”, the word began life in the 14th century as a term for “foolish” or “silly”. It soon embraced bad qualities, such as wantonness, extravagance, cowardice and sloth. In the Middle Ages it took on the more neutral attributes of shyness and reserve. Society’s admiration of such qualities in the 18th century brought on the more positively charged meanings of “nice” we know today. Change http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezkx07HYylo
If there is a single truth about Magic, it is that nothing on earth so efficiently evades it.
Tommy |
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landmark Inner circle within a triangle 5194 Posts
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Quote:
On 2014-01-04 09:27, MobilityBundle wrote: Perhaps I've gone off course, but maybe not as much as it seems. We are discussing whether words are real. What do we mean by saying something is "real"? If we find no "actual" gravitrons, is gravity real? Or is it "spooky action at a distance"? Do we need to find "communicons" before we will admit the "spooky action at a distance" of communication? I say your house is on fire and your *ss is moving! And those communicons might even have "charm" and "spin" as well. Push me around, will I move in the same way as a billiard ball? Bomb a people, will their ideas explode in the same way as a crash dummy? Physics, Biology, and Information & Communication Theory are all ways of attempting to describe aspects of what we perceive as reality, and each have their uses. Many errors arise in our functioning when we operate under the wrong metaphor.
Click here to get Gerald Deutsch's Perverse Magic: The First Sixteen Years
All proceeds to Open Heart Magic charity. |
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tommy Eternal Order Devil's Island 16543 Posts
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Sentence once meant "way of thinking; opinion" or "sense, meaning." Thus when one receives a prison sentence what does it mean but one has been given time to get ones mind right Luke.
If there is a single truth about Magic, it is that nothing on earth so efficiently evades it.
Tommy |
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Posted: Jan 4, 2014 12:43 am 
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