even if that's true, it's so undesirable that it makes no sense to believe it, because then life is pointless, depressing, and i should lay down and die

but im happy, more precisely i live a satisfying although hard at times just like everyone elses life, i just dont have the mental clutter of things like regret, or guilt, etc

What about the Kochen-Specker theorem? And the Conway-Kochen theorem?

no idea what those are

if it has theorem in it, ive never heard of it before

besides pythagorean

Well, they are results in mathematical physics that say: determinism is an illusion (at least on the microscopic level).

of course, when someone tries to argue against determinism they always use the technology which can't be interpreted very well, they ignore the mountain of evidence for determinism, they go down to the very small or very large scales, which again, are distorted to us because we are not familiar with them

I am not sure how seriously one should take the Conway-Kochen theorem, although it does bear on free will. The Kochen-Specker theorem is well founded, though.

the problem is the idea of free will can be defeated with basic logic (to me, logic takes precedence over everything)

for example

if free will exists - then anything can happen and there are no rules, restrictions, or ways to monitor the behavior of it.

if free will exists only on the microscopic level, then there is SOMETHING controlling or restricting it or making it behave , to an extent

the problem of course, is that you cant make free will behave to an extent, it's free will

logically, that is fundamentally impossible

Quantum mechanics is fundamentally probabilistic and has been tested experimentally to exquisite precision. Unless you can recast all the results of QM in terms of a deterministic theory (and the Kochen-Specker theorem says: you can't), then... well, you struggle to explain physical reality.

correct, in the frontiers of science, we will always understand things with guesstimates. that is nothing new. the technology isn't there yet to understand all the variables and show it to be deterministic. this has been a pattern throughout history for everything..

let me put it this way

That's a fallacy. This argument has nothing to do with measurement errors.

everything that we have discovered more about, and defined to a greater extent, has always, without fail even a single time, shown free will either doesnt exist, or doesn't exist on that plane

measurment erros no

errors*

not having all the variables to measure, yes

again, it all falls back to logic, it doesn't matter if i can't prove determinism, i can show that free will is impossible..

the alternative is determinism

No. The Kochen-Specker theorem says: there can be no more variables. The real state of the system is completely specified by the quantum mechanical observables.

haha well I don't know about that theorem or what it's based on, but saying there are no more variables is ridiculous. it's a clever way of shutting out opposition though, kind of like how religion says you must have faith and there is nothing but god

as far i know

they have never stopped time, stopped the movement of earth, gone to a complete standstill, been independent of all gravity, etc and tested things

to me, that represents variables

Okay. Well, I'm not saying you have to accept the argument. All I'm saying is that I have heard nothing better in favor of determinism.

heard? no, but it's all around you in physical reality

think about it this way

at the microscopic scale they are getting differing results and confusing results

the entire planet is moving through space, a huge mass, we are huge mass to these particles

is it really so hard to understand that with all of that movement and change, that things are not going to repeat on the small scale

again, logically free will is impossible, there is so much obvious evidence (baseball trajectory) for determinism it's mind boggling, AND humans want to believe in free will

you have a classic set up for getting fooled right there

These issues are well understood. The results are repeatable. They just happen to be probabilistic, not deterministic. (BTW, a good number of people here are working physicists... not sure whether I consider myself a physicist or not but I can certainly measure the natural width of a spectral line and observe Heisenberg uncertainty in action.)

heisenberg has come up for me before

what i learned last time is that it doesnt support free will

it's just a common misconception that it does

Support free Willy

lol

anyway

Yes, I am not saying that it does. You can have a deterministic object in a nondeterministic reality (all macroscopic objects). But it does show that the underlying reality is not deterministic.

if you want to get really mind boggled - assume determinism does exist for one moment

At least, so far as we can understand the nature of reality (QM is not perfect obviously).

that means that what you end up believing, is already determined even though it hasnt happened yet and no one determined it for you

I have no problem with the idea that human beings are just robots acting deterministically. I think it's unlikely, but the idea is not problematic in itself.

Okay. So what do we draw from this? Is it a predictive theory?

wait, where is the logic in that deterministic objects can exist in a nondeterministic reality? we have never ever EVER encountered something to be proven nondeterministic before, so first of all there is no reason to believe this, second of all, if it did exist, it's nondeterministic which means it has no rules or boundries, if it did, then it would be determined by the rules and boundaries! a ruleless and boundaryless chaotic reality would not allow for deterministic objects..

again it doesnt make sense standing up to logic, and at the core of all our sciences there is only logic. it doesnt matter what the results of an experiment say if it doesn't synchronize logistically with the previous 1 trillion experiments.. the likelhihood that it's a breakthrough and the other 1 trillion are wrong is so small that it doesnt make sense to believe it, only to PONDER it and investigate

I think your argument is confused. The flip of a fair coin is nondeterministic. But it can only ever come up heads or tails (or land on the edge). It can't change into a crocodile and bite your head off. So nondeterminism absolutely does not mean there are no applicable rules.

absolutely not! it's deterministic IF you knew all the variables - the wind, the force of your thumb in a scientific force number, etc

the initial position or angle..

you get the idea

in a vacuum i could get it to land on tails by using a robotic flipper every single time

by eliminating enough variables

Well, if you believe that, pick another example. Just pick anything whose result depends on probability alone. The principle is the same.

there is no example that depends on probability alone!

there is only things we only have probabilities for SO FAR

Not even in principle?

It seems you guys are having a nice conversation.

Gonna read it.

no how can something that is nonexistent exist, it's a realistic fallacy - like saying there is a god, yes you can ponder it in principle, but it conflicts with logic in that, who created god, who created who created god, you merely offset the inevitable question that a creator is a middleman - at some point, there has to be 'no creator'

humans since time immemorial have always wanted a fairy tale answer for the answers they dont have yet, the hard thing to do is admit that we dont know what the hell is the origin of the universe etc, but nobody wants to live in a type of fear like that, nobody wants to believe they are robots

and i think the most important point of all

is that, in the end, what idea is the most beneficial to believe

people will argue free will because they have nostalgia for it, but no other efficient system believes this idea, our cells dont, and look how efficient they are

I learned how to "program" intuitively. - Then I have no idea on what programming styles I am using (If it's OOP, Functional, etc). Can you guys suggest me some book to help me on this?

@LukeAllen do the numbers "exist"? It depends on what you consider "existence". You deny god, but you want to invoke hidden variables. Why one and not the other? The creation argument is also a fallacy; god doesn't have to have a creator. (Let me be clear, I am an atheist. But your argument is not convincing.)

no, numbers do not exist in reality. you will not find something that is a number, only things humans designated a number..

just like you wont find the edge of the sun

we created an artificial definition for where the sun starts and stops

in reality it's spread out over all the universe by now

its inside you, too

and the weirder thing is

you came from stardust originally so you are no different than it, just at a different point in spacetime..

our definitions are not based on reality

they are based on allowing us to interpret and function in the world

Okay. So you say only things that "exist" are real. But the argument for hidden variables is itself an existential fallacy!

and to be able to do things like make food, build buildings, write code, etc

communicate..

hidden, or undiscovered, is a different concept than 'made up symbols or ideas to draw lines and boundaries around things'

The point is that you suppose that they exist, even though they are not required to explain anything.

they are required to explain the logical impossibility that is free will, because while there are proven example of determinism, there are none of free will, and it's a logical fallacy itself!

Why? You've stated that several times but you didn't give any argument yet.

why what

to what part i listed 3 things

Sorry. I mean, why is free will (or just nondeterministic phenomena) a logical impossibility.

@OleksandrR. If there was free will, you'd have gotten back to working on your your thesis 2 hrs ago... ;)

@R.M hahaha yes! But: proof by example. :)

because free will cannot be constrained. when you constrain anything, no matter how broad the constraints, it immediately becomes predictable. for example - a random number generator for computers, some will NEVER be able to be guessed by the human mind or human software, BUT it's based on a seed number, or some logic, at some point, and therefore, if you had that variable, you would see that the 'randomness' of this generator is NOT random, just unseen variables you dont have

Affirming the consequent! What about a quantum phenomenon like Johnson noise or the decay of a radionuclide?

quantum phenomenons are ideas based on nonexistent things just like a god - they are middlemen which are invented for no reason or cause

Why?

because when people dont like not having an answer, they will create an infinite triangle to explain their rear end

it boils down to human psychology

we behave that way based on our brains chemicals and motivations and desires

I'm not talking about why people do this or that. I mean, why is a nondeterministic phenomenon a logical impossibility, other than that if you allow for nondeterminism you lose your hidden variables which you don't like because something about free will

usually a deep seated, traditionally installed belief that power and uniqueness are the soul of a person

oh, because of the mountain of evidence absolutely everywhere which supports determinism - obvious example would be, mt. everest doesn't spontaneously combust, we have shown

materials to act predictably etc. scientists often ignore the obvious and already discovered data and focus on the fringe science, totally forgetting to weigh the logic. so in essence if you are going against the previous science, you need to have some idea that explains things better. removing rules and thinking up your own system of infinite chaos isn't an explanation, it's a fallacy to get out of explaining something.

also, again

having free will contradicts itself,

free will would be too chaotic and random for things to behave predictable on any scale

if not, then free will is being controlled

this is another impossibility, because it cant be controlle

if it was controlled, its no longer free

just like the random number generator

Quantum mechanics is exquisitely well tested. It is one of the best theories of reality we have. And yet, it is fundamentally nondeterministic. Everything that looks deterministic to us is completely understandable in terms of scale and collective phenomena which simply are vanishingly unlikely.

that's the main argument i keep hearing. that something is well tested, and/or a lot of smart people believe in it. that isn't supporting evidence..

and btw, the reason it can be understandable in terms of scale, is beause scale is simple a fuzzy determinism

but again, you cant have fuzzy determinism, because nondeterminism doesn't behave, not even fuzzily

@LukeAllen go to a lab, and measure an atomic emission line yourself. See its natural width. Find a line with a different width. Then tell me both are actually sharp lines with no width, lifetime effects are unimportant, and Heisenberg uncertainty does not exist!

using technology which cannot see the entire picture to prove a point that the picture must be random is ridiculous.. obviously , even if the lines have no boundaries and are hologrammically fading to the edges of the universe and folding back on themselves in some weird science phenomenon, there are still rules and some kind of logic dictating whats going on, how can anyone argue otherwise, if there wasnt, if there really was pure free will on any level, everything would be exactly the same

Actually, a rotational line will be easier to measure with a microwave spectrometer. Do that, instead.

as in

instead of one collection of mass in this area

and one denser mass in this area at this point in time

a pure free will entity wouldnt be able to distinguish that, it would happen all at once in every possible way

free will is not only incompatible with our reality

it's incompatible with itself

if you really think about it, free will is the definition of 'nothing'

you have a romanticized idea of what it would be or is

based on childhood notions, and you are using very smart arguments to protect it

I think what is really incompatible with itself is your argument. :) (Sorry, I don't mean that rudely, but I am very much unconvinced and we keep going around in circles.)

there has never been nor will there ever be a way to convince every person or any individual of anything to a point of certainty they are happy with because they can simply interpret, or filter, the information in any fashion they like. yours appears to be science journals etc, which you have associated to have a 'believability factor' of 100 and logic a believability factor of 1 or something, which comes back to my original point since

there is no way to prove to you one way or the other

which way, is more productive to believe in

regardless of the truth

No, I am very receptive to logic. But your arguments contain almost nothing but fallacies, I'm sorry to say.

that's easy to say, but again, it depends on how you filter and define the information

I do understand where you're coming from, but I don't agree with the conclusion.

for example if you say the sun will come up tomorrow

that's a fallacy, because it wont, up doesnt make sense, it's a cliche, and the sun is not in one spot, it's everywhere, the suns rays are just as much the sun and there is no clear point where the sun rays become this % dense and so the sun stops

everything is your own filter and model of reality..

trying to get these hardcoded ideas of 100% certain this is right, will never work

we dont have that kind of hardware

you have to use logic

Well, it probably will. But 1 equals 1; there is no possible argument over that. I am asking for logical arguments to be grounded in solid logic, not appeals to free will and human nature.

1 equals 1 because we all agree on that system, just like everybody agreed the sun would come up. if someone believed that 1 equals 2, then 2 equals 3, that would be another symbolic language to interpret the world

So you are saying that reality is a social construct?

again, there is no getting around the truth that a human brain is an analyzer of reality and everybodies is different, you cant have a nice neat reality model that everyone agrees on

yes

what matters is which construct is the most efficient

every supereffecient evolved system i know of, such as human cells, work by deterministic natures

the reason humans dont is because it's unpleasurable to them

on the surface

plus we evolved to compete

rather than cooperate in groups

large groups*

Photosynthesis is superefficient. And energy transfer in the pigments is completely quantum!

lol what?

pnas.org/content/108/52/20908.abstract

when i use ideas to explain things such as human cells behaving in a way that sacrificing one cell for the greater good etc i think is pretty common sense among average people, but if you use totally incomprehensible ideas to support your argument without explanation you're talking to yourself

again, lol

incomprehensible

Cells are not sentient; they have no society. The analogy fails.

how much more data would you find for deterministic natures of things if they did scientific studies on everything rather than the 'weird and interesting phenomena'

it's like a binoculars view, a skewed reality, you are proposing

"They" (we) did those studies hundreds of years ago. Science moved on.

sentient? wtf is sentient

again you are introducing free will to explain it

the only thing humans have over computers is a better ability to interact with the environment - that leads to adaptation

So you actually are not saying that reality is a social construct but rather that you take a relativist view?

if you had computers that could react to light, react to temperature, etc you'd have adapting computers

no reality is defined by the individuals brain. the individuals brain does not see reality for what it really is, nor does the scientific tools the brains use to figure out reality. we are always seeing a partial picture, and will never therefore, with the current brains we have, share a completely common idea or model of reality, unless we figure out a way to interlink our brains like the green men in toy story..

One can easily write adaptive (evolutionary) algorithms. It does not require free will at all, I agree. The question is over whether you are saying differences in viewpoint are down to human nature, or different available information, which makes a big difference.

oh, im saying different causal chains happening to their brains. for example, brain A (person A) is born in a muslim community over in the East, and is raised with numerous ideas and cultural beliefs very different from someone in area B, they therefore will always be different in the same way identical twins will be different because one occupied the left side of the womb first or w/e

they are subjected to tiny different temps, maybe they got tiny diff nutrients from mom

etc, setting their chain reaction off in different directions

even if it's only very slight in the beginning

similarly if you were to hit a baseball, on the microscopic scale every path would be different just like on the quantum scale

it doesnt mean that its free will going on, just means that the entire universe is constantly shifting energy all over the place

nothing is static and nothing can be tested with 100% accuracy

I agree with you that we can never fully know whether we have the full picture of reality, because it is impossible to know whether there may exist a layer of complexity just under the surface of what we currently know about. But that doesn't mean that currently known results are essentially meaningless just because there could be a completely different explanation that coincidentally works in the same way. If a model fits observations, I say use it. If it doesn't, don't. Yes, I am a positivist.

I think it's important though that you realize how you got to that conclusion - based on human emotion rather than weighing the raw data like a computer would.

Well, I would agree to that and usually would bring up Goedel's theorems as a justification, except there has been some question recently over whether there may be a mistake in Goedel's proofs...

Essentially you have to pick your axioms somehow. That I agree with.

it's a mess i agree, and i don't pretend to have a definite answer. i just know that my life is much simpler without the burden that is attached to free will, such as if i make a mistake - it was fate and i learn from it, not beat myself up. if someone murders my wife, then their fate made them do it and even though i will have human emotion and want to kill them or actually do it, i will have solace in the idea that i couldnt have prevented it from happening

the point is, i also am just like you and choose the path of least resistance for pleasure, i arrived at this conclusion out of curiosity of challenging my christian dogma and if this had been a depressing reality for me, i also wouldnt have chose it, im not free of human psychology either

Isn't that effectively the same as believing in an impersonal god?

what part i dont understand

fate?

Yes, exactly.

by fate i dont mean a fate that was designed for me by a man with a beard, i mean that events in the past will determinically (for me) decide how things turn out, even if it's impossible to know the results before they happen

so i equate life to a rollercoaster ride in pitch blackness

it's fixed

it's fun

and i cant see the future very far

If god needs to be created (which as I said I don't agree with but you suggested it), doesn't the initial condition from which a given outcome arises similarly have to be determined somehow?

rephrase please?

what initial condition

Well, determinism, like god, only goes back so far. There is a first cause, by this line of argument.

the answer determinism states is we don't know if there is a beginning, or what started things, if something started things, or what is going on, the answer is no answer.. as it should be for things which we really dont have an answer for but only speculate on, rather than inventing answers like a god

Or do you think the origin of the (putative) determinism is not important, but only the outcome?

no the origin decides the outcome so it's important to trace causal history to get functional data to interpret the world

See, the problem is, if there was a first cause that set initial conditions as they were, why shouldn't there be subsequent situations in which the deterministic course of events doesn't hold?

we dont know if there was a first cause or not, or if that even makes sense, again the answer is 'we dont know' for determinists

personally

i think it's a case of a 2d poker card laying on the desk trying to comprehend mathematica across the room

it's just outside of our dimensional understanding right now

So how do you know that subsequent events are deterministic? Why not have new "first causes" happening all the time, such that new information gets added to reality and the whole thing is not completely predictable? There has to be some argument for why this can't happen, is my perspective.

because all we have ever known is subsequent events, if there were first causes they would not follow the order of the events behind them, but they do, therefore they arent unique in any way

How can you say, without complete information? Maybe the perturbation was only very small and led to consequences only very much later?

because that is introducing chaos or randomness which in a deterministic viewpoint is illogical. there is no 'reason' these would only select very small manifestations

basically you are saying a randomness factor, decided to do things only one way

that doesnt make sense

I am asking: why is that illogical. Not just because it doesn't agree with the premises, but why shouldn't it be permitted in principle?

why is it illogical that first causes would only manifest in very small ways and lead to consequences a lot later?

If by your own argument knowledge of physical reality is limited by the ability to measure it, how can you know that a very small and undetectable amount of nondeterminism might not creep in somehow?

Or the argument is just that you choose this interpretation because you find it aesthetically pleasing or comforting to exclude nondeterminism?

we don't know! we are saying there is no reason at all to think that this is true, it's equally as unlikely as every other theory besides determinism to us because the only evidence is either: determinism, or: an idea which escapes determinism by having infinite possibilities which is totally useless to the human mind construct, because infinite possibilities cannot be understand, ever, at all. and if these existed, they would not act in any way we can understand, including doing things in a

nice neat way that explains everything

yes, it's pleasing in that it doesn't cause endless mind boggling and infinity loops of impossibleness..

Okay. But I think you can see where I'm coming from: determinism and nondeterminism are not readily distinguishable from each other within a relativist framework.

And if they are not distinguishable, then doesn't the same argument go on: well, neither really exists then? It is neither deterministic nor nondeterministic?

i dont have any clue what you're getting at. to me a deterministic nature cant possibly coexist with a nondeterministic nature because that's a logical flaw. a nondeterministic nature also can't exist by itself because it contradicts itself and would manifest as 'nothingness' since everything possible would happen all at once, no variability. and a deterministic model is what we see, even if we have no way to figure out how it came to be

so using that logical data, all the data i have, i arrive at my conclusion

I see.

unfortunately i have to force myself to sleep. i enjoyed the conversation you are obviously smarter than me so forgive me for my basic lingo and explanations. remember, a determinist can never win - he's a slave to his fate and has no achievements or losses. i also see your point of view and i think it's solely responsible for humans being different than other animals - their ability to conceive of what i consider impossible

and

even believing in determinism myself

i wake up everyday

I don't like to presume I'm smarter than anyone; I think I just have better tools. :) I do understand your argument, even if I don't agree with it, and I'm not going to try to convince you otherwise. And I should sleep too... it's 7:30 AM here. :) Thanks for a good conversation!

and believe in free will 99.9999% of the time

to remain sane

i dont think its possible to live life with a deterministic view, i use it only when its practical

i tell myself that i would like to choose this coffee, or that coffee

if i didnt, i would feel like im in a prison

But that feeling would be predetermined, so what can you do? ;)

but at the end of the day when something bad happens, i like to sit back and think of the universe as being an interconnected web of events that is not seperated by 'freedom'

It's a nice idea, I agree with that.

Okay. I'm going to go now. Have to get some sleep. Take care!

and i think there will be surprises in the future that will totally shatter everyones current viewpoint on what reality is

but i truly believe we will only get that far if we leave our moral baggage behind - politics, good and bad, punish billy, reward sally, etc

all of that is based on the notion that kids or adults have control over their reality

and it renders bad apples

cya!

I am getting an error in my notebook, I must have hit some key and it inserted some hidden character. I get the RED bar to the right side. Any tool to find this hidden character? No error messages in the console or any where. I can put a link to the notebook if someone can help. Thanks

Ok, found the hidden character.

What's the best way of generating a random seed but saving it for later use?

@jVincent What's the application?

@jVincent I presume you know about BlockRandom[]?

Yes, but that blocks off the code, it doens't let me get back to the sequence.

What do you mean by "get back"? You want to be able to repeat a certain sequence of random numbers?

Yes, I'd like to go back and say: "What would be the 42'nd random number seeded with 3423 " or similar

@jVincent Ah, let me check my old notebooks...

Huh, I thought I had something... anyway, couldn't you just do the whole definition of your RandomNumberSequence[] within BlockRandom[]?

That works if you precalculate all the numbers, which I'm not really interested in. What I'm doing now is developing in time a system with a random evolution. I don't want to store each time step, but I do want to be able and "fill-in", but that means if I skip 1000 steps, and go back, the random evolution used to simulate step 1001 will not be the same I get when going back. Since I don't have a finite time period, I can't just generate all the numbers initially and index them.

@jVincent Hmm, it doesn't seem that Mathematica natively provided for that use, which is a bit of a surprise, because if memory serves, a few other computing environments do have that capability...

I think it used to. I at least think I could get this working if $RandomState still worked.

I can see $RandomState is still in version eight, but I'm fuzzy with how it interacts with a change of Method...

It's there, but it doesn't seem to work, at least resetting it to the same thing doesn't provide the same random numbers

You can use Block[{$RandomState},expr] to localize the value of $RandomState during the evaluation of expr.

from the help

I'm not sure if I'm misunderstanding, but it seems RandomState doesn't guide the random number generation any more.

@jVincent Seems so, yes

Now if I only knew how to use Random`SetRandomState[]...

At least Random`GetRandomState[] shows you the guts, if you can interpret it...

RandomState works with Legacy

Nice. Thx.

:)

@J.M. You here?

See Sjoerd's suggestion

@Verde Yes, I upvoted three of my favorites, including that one...

Still, I'm not sure why the title isn't "optimal".

@J.M. No no, I mean Sjoerd's suggestion for the new question title

@Verde Yes, I anticipated you'd ask that, too...

Jin asked for titles with specific "questions" ... What ... Where ... Who ...

Who is in the first base?

@Verde Well, Who's on first, yes...

yes yes, Who. What about the title?

@Verde I'm thinking, if I see at least four upvotes on Sjoerd's comment, I'll switch to his suggestion...

... creating three sockpuppets ... wait

@Verde ...you are going to be a most interesting moderator, assuming you can gyp people into voting you in... ;P

@J.M. I'd rather prefer insults. Makes life more interesting

Reminds me of this fellow I once knew: "If I was ever given the chance to choose the color of my pee, I'd be torn choosing between having it colored black and having it rainbow-colored."

@Verde I presume you know all the ways to hide your nefarious schemes from prying eyes...

@J.M. If I hide my evilness, how on earth would the world worship me?

@Verde Well, as an example, you do not kick ponies in the cojones in front of impressionable children, for instance...

@J.M. Of course not. You should teach the ponies to kick the children. Or the other way around, whatever gives you the minimum in the objective function.

@Verde Bah, I keep missing routes to global optima...

It is like happiness. When you think you are there, you realize you're married.

"Are you happy, or married?"

Speaking of... we haven't seen the lucky groom in quite a while.

yeah, I guess he is still locked in the torture chamber

painting a house, making laundry

learning to cook

... realizing

"I hate my husband. He keeps using these terrible four-letter words like 'dust', 'cook', 'iron'..."

Me too

@jVincent Are you around?

read the options for ExtendedCA in tutorial/RandomNumberGeneration. Seems that you may keep trace of the start cell and rerun your random sequence from there

but not sure yet

mmm nope ... I can't tweak it

@verde If v9 comes out, I get my wife's home use version. That's a happy marriage!

@SjoerdC.deVries Lucky you!

@verde Perhaps I can make my employer buy a premier license for me, but at the moment mma is hardly used there. It's a hard sell.

@SjoerdC.deVries Well, I'll continue with v8 for a long time, I guess

@verde You'll be the mr.wizard of v9

You must claim an operator for yourself

@SjoerdC.deVries I will have to switch to infix, yes

Did you order your tee-shirt already?

hi @acl

@SjoerdC.deVries How?

hi @sjoerd, @verde

@Verde Didn't get an email?

@acl Hi suspended!

@Verde you can be the postfix guy

@Verde suspend THIS (rude gesture)

@SjoerdC.deVries I haven't read email today

@Verde ah yes to avoid wasting time and concentrate on work :)

@acl I feel I'm missing something essential here

@acl I'm not reading you, since you're suspended. This message is an illusion.

What's this suspension talk? Are you trying to repeat Szabolcs move?

@SjoerdC.deVries Who are you talking to?

Both of you?

You and me are the only ones here

Quiet, there's the toad

OMG

@SjoerdC.deVries he thinks he suspended me yesterday

@acl how come?

@Verde like the garbage strike last year in amsterdam and utrecht. there was a pile of garbage under a tree, next to which someone wrote "this is not a garbage dump!". next to that, someone added "matisse"

bashing toad

The right-hand one looks the most familiar

@acl matisse or Margritte?

or was that irony?

@SjoerdC.deVries the ceci n'est pas une pipe guy (I am not a big art person to say the least)

margritte, yes

oh well there goes the joke

@R.M Which one is the stealer of Intersection[] answers?

@Verde That's you and Rojo fighting over who lost first

@R.M I was not fighting. It's useless unless you have a thinking adversary

Know this one?

no, I don't remember it

@Verde Wouldn't be probable. It's hanging on my wall ;-)

:)

We bought quite a few paintings

Magrittes?

@Verde Unfortunately, we can't afford those. So, we bought a few from artists that we hope will become the new Margritte (and whose work we like anyway).

This is the largest one we have (180x150)

wesselhuisman.com

very nice

The other one is the Dutch painter Joop Polder (a more Dutch name is almost unconceivable)

jooppolder.net/portfolio.html

The guy has an old tram fetish, or so it seems. I like magical surrealism

@SjoerdC.deVries Is "Polder" common or very uniquely Dutch? First time I'm hearing it

@r.m. A polder is a piece of land obtained by building dikes around some piece of sea and pumping it empty

@SjoerdC.deVries My kid is a tram fan. But there are no more trams here. I've to go to the tram museum from time to time :)

@SjoerdC.deVries ah, I see. Cannot be anything other than Dutch then :)

@SjoerdC.deVries Imperialist sea stealer!

@Verde You should have been building dikes to Las Malvinas

@SjoerdC.deVries it is a bit too far ...

@Verde Well, then you shouldn't want to own it. If you can't dike, just leave it...

Darn, I just now noticed about the elections. Reading...

@R.M other people would just invade their neighbours and be done with it. but no, the dutch pumped the sea out