Once Again

Read this once you'll never read it again. Why is that? Because it's hardly worth reading once never mind ever again.
But then again you mightn't enjoy being dictated to like this, or if not quite dictated to then taken for granted, and so instead of this never reading it again, accepting that is of course the reading of it the first time, you go ahead, in spite of its worthlessness, and read if it not just twice maybe even many more times again.

Another Man, Another Box, Schrodinger Again

"We put this man into a box . . . "
"A man in a box, what are you on about?"
"Wait there now, give me a chance. We put this fella into a box but once he's in the box we can't see him, the box is closed, do you get me?"
"Did he do something wrong?"
"No, nothing."
"So why do we put him in the box?"
"Just hold on and you'll see. So he's in the box and we can't see him."
"How do we know he's still in there if we can't see him?"
"Because there's no way out."
"There might be a trapdoor under the box."
"There's no trapdoor."
"How do you know? It might be like them magician things, you think he's there and instead he's somewhere else."
"Look, just accept that he's in the box. We put him in there, and there he is."
"He's very docile is he?"
"Docile?"
"To just accept being put into a box - there's not many would accept that."
"All right so, he's docile. So anyway, there he is, in the box, but what we also have in the box, the sealed box . . . "
"Sealed!? Why the hell is it sealed!?"
"Just listen will you. So also in the box, along with the man, is a flask containing a poisonous gas and a radioactive source - "
"Have you gone mad?! What are you going to do to the poor man?"
"Would you hear me out for God sake! So we have the man and the flask now in the box, and there's this Geiger counter and when it detects the radiation the flask shatters and the poisonous gas escapes killing the man. . . . "
"God almighty!"
"Except . . . "
"Except what?"
"Here's the good bit. Is he really dead?"
"Oh you mean you just want to scare him with all this gas stuff. It's like some kind of mock execution?"
""No, no, there's no scaring. Logically he must be dead, mustn't he?"
"I don't know, sure we can't see what's going on in the bloody box. Maybe the poison wasn't enough to kill him."
"No, it's enough all right."
"How do you now?"
"Because it's deadly stuff."
"But how do you know it was even in the flask in the first place?"
"Of course we know, it's clearly labeled."
"Where would we be without labels. And what about that Geiger counter stuff, how do we know that stuff is working right? Where did you get it all from?"
"A man from a laboratory said it was all A1."
"And what did this man do again to deserve all this?"
"Look, as I said already he did nothing wrong. I've nothing against him personally. This is all just a kind of experiment."
"I'd hate to see what you do to someone who did do something wrong."
" But anyway as said the poison is in the flask, the flask breaks, out comes the poison and your man dies - that's what must happen you'd think, isn't it?"
"Well maybe the flask doesn't break. And anyway how do we know any of this convoluted stuff is happening inside this box we can't see inside. And even if he is dead when we open the box, how do we know he didn't have a weak heart and being in the box with all this stuff was enough to do him in before any gas released?"
"We'd do an autopsy to establish cause of death."
"And what if he produces a gas-mask while in the box? . . . "


All this springing initially from a humorous spark but beyond the humour it relates directly and seriously to the earlier post on Schrodinger's Cat , within which I wrote that my coin in a drawer notion, relating to the same field of intellectual inquiry, was "a much better and simpler case than the needlessly complex cat notion". In the dialogue above, though with man substituting cat, is shown how unsatisfactory Schrodinger's thought-piece actually is as a vehicle for intellectual knowledge. This also illustrates what I wrote of science and language here: "Science, in all its manifestations, is not an autonomous or 'pure' discipline, but is encompassed within, or a branch of, Language. What science , or true science, consists of is true language statements, and so the first principle of science is the innate and intrinsic meaningfulness of correct language, and science in all its applications also demonstrably shows the intrinsic truth and power of correct language, while also emphasising the absolute necessity of the language's correctness and precision." And so here, unlike his box, as an intellectual phenomenon Schrodinger's idea is a system far from sealed.

Specific

"There was this person . . . "
- "Be more specific."
"There was this particular person . . . "
"Proceed."

chard

Ascending or Descending

A ladder was descending from above . . . or it would probably be truer to say it was ascending from below . . . but anyway what difference does it make, ascending or descending, it's all the same. Or maybe there's a world of difference . . .  but anyway, a ladder, you could go up it or you could go down it, you could even have one person going up it and at the same time someone else coming down it, the fellow below going up to the top of the ladder, the one above coming down to the bottom, or beyond rather the bottom, off somewhere else. But what would they do when they met each other? It would want to be a very wide ladder for them to pass each other, amicably one would hope, and everyone knows intimacy breeds amicability, and what could be more intimate than passing someone on a ladder.
"Intimacy breeds amicability" - I should try and remember that, it's the kind of thing that could get you noticed, you'd just have to choose the right moment . . .

But anyway the two people - men say, it would be more likely to be men -  passing each other on the ladder . . .  but in all probability, as I was saying, or beginning to say, they wouldn't be passing each other as how many ladders are wide enough to be condusive to passing? Instead you'd have an impasse, the two of them stuck, looking at each other, and after a while of this looking probably some kind of exchange:

"Could you get out of my way?"
"How can I?"
"You could move aside."
"You can see yourself I can't. There's no room."
"Hmm."

The man from above coming down could agree to start to retreat upwards but it wouldn't take long to see the problem there: the man below could still never get past, the man above always remaining above. So intead it's the lower man who'd have to retreat, retreat in an absolute sense, that is down to the ground and off to the side, out ofthe way, and then the other fellow could descend fully also, all the way down, and now with him gone if he still felt like ascending, the formerly lower man that is, could now unimpeded go up all the way to the top, at least unimpeded that is as long as there isn't someone else now also coming down, blocking his way, a someone who was all along behind, or rather above, or beyond the earler high up fellow who in the meantime came down. In which case of course the lower man going up would have to retreat again if he really wanted to persist in trying to get all the way up to the top.

 It would be a bit much if after that came another unexpected descending man, but anyway, that's something about a ladder and maybe going up or down it and what might happen if there's a conflict of practical interests in the going up or the down.

wrenaysaunce