My documentaries, the documentaries that I recommend

I will end this extended series on the Portuguese Discovery age and the consolidation on the oldest lasting Empire in Europe that finished in 1999 with the delivery of Macau to China with the History of the main branch of my own family. The other branch is from Germany a story best left for another occasion!

Portugal hasn't had a great tradition in conqueror's, exception is made to the father of the nation Afonso Henriques, some other Kings in the reconquista from Muslim invasions and much later on by Afonso de Albuquerque, second Viceroy of India, first Duke of Goa, and perhaps the greatest military mind the country has ever had. Afonso de Albuquerque "Lion of the Seas" many times referred by international Historians as the Alexander Magno of the West was Loyal to the Portuguese crow till its death.

Undisputable controversial Historical figure on the light of modern perception of History Afonso de Albuquerque left nonetheless an indelible mark in World History for better and for worse that shaped what was to be the initial act of the Globalization process and the model for all the Western colonial process followed by the Dutch and the British later on. His rule in India was firm and strong harmed, which is explained in due context by the Portuguese aspirations to the Spice market, the almost infinite inferiority of troop numbers which would require a firm grasp on power and naturally the memory of what the Moors, the Arabs had done to the Iberian Peninsula when the country was founded. Trying to separate the time and the men is a disservice to History and to understanding Human Nature at large!

Indeterminism is not compatible with Eternalism! One thing is to claim epistemic indeterminism to justify compatibility and quite another to absolutely posit the world can be undetermined and at the same time assume all Reality is finished and complete which includes all the future state of affairs. We are talking here about fundamental indeterminacy not epistemic indeterminacy which totally different!

The Multiverse hypothesis doesn't change the picture at all!
The fact that you don't know on which future Universe you will end up being when you are about to make a choice and haven't made up your mind yet is an Epistemic problem.

A Multiverse where all possible state of affairs, all possible Universes exist is Deterministic period! If you don't like cause and effect in an Eternalist set use perfect correlation instead!

I have used this coinage here on A2K for a decade now, and probably most people never had any idea on what I was on about...look this episode that Sean Carol brought about with a modern Metaphysician makes it crystal clear!

PS - Just to make things clear because some idiots around will surely misunderstand it, I am NOT advocating Multiverse is true or false. Rather I am making a claim that IF true then it follows it must be "deterministic"...the correct wording should be complete!

Epistemic indeterminacy is not fundamental indeterminism...so something got to give...either you get rid of the entirety of the scientific project and embrace irrationality and shrug your shoulders or you go back to Bell and to the standard model and look for flaws! At this point in time we need all the help we can get from all fields, from Metaphysicians at the conceptual level, Philosophers of Science cleaning up ideas and experimental Physicists willing to dig down deeper on what can be observed and how we should questioning nature!

This educational video gets interesting towards the end so give it a go...at the beginning is mostly just boring common knowledge without the mathematical baggage.

Much talk about Philosophy at the World Science Festival...

The final take on this debate, which is first and foremost as it usually is about tribal wars, should be not so much about Rationalism vs Religion vis a vis but about making the perineal distinction on the difference of actually being stupid from acting stupid. Acting stupid IMO is more prevalent in recurrent Mythology apologists which doesn't mean people that opt to act stupid must be necessarily stupid by definition.

In all fairness if one devotes a bit of time making auto analysis one fairly quickly concludes we all act stupid for the most part of our waking hours...nonetheless and fairly beyond the specificity of debating Religion in particular there is plenty of Mythology around on which we spread our enacting of stupidity, be it the traditional Nationalist kind, the apology of big brands in corporate world now in fashion, or the cult of the super genius in Sciences that grants better financing to this or that departement of investigation...

The whole human enterprise is made of narratives and Myths, story telling to be precise, and for that my problem is not so much with conjuring out this ancestral need we have to confabulate group narratives, which by the way was the fatal mistake that the whole New Atheist movement fell for much in the vein of XIX century positivist movement, done without understanding one yota about Sociology, as no one has won an argument with we are better then you kind of debate...again my problem is instead with the Aesthetics of what kind of Mythology I rather indulge myself in...I prefer some level of sophistication rather then having some raw meet and blood for consumption. Traditional Religion if it is to survive will have to learn to talk mythology in distinct aesthetic styles for distinct audiences!

As is it traditional Religious narratives don't cut it any more, it doesn't matter how much some religious people try to sell the idea there is some sort of a religious new brewing in the making...just look at the ever dwindling number of priests in churches or the number of people that actively attend the mass. It is patently false to say there is a comeback in the making in any way shape or form. It is nonetheless true there is a vacuum which is dangerous as the fall of some narratives will inevitably be replaced by new narratives...the danger of new narratives being of course the lack of Historical revision on the right recipe to adapt to social ecosystems without bringing in great harm while experimenting with novelty.

More on Physics, Metaphysics, Philosophy, and Cosmology at the foundations...the video compares the probabilistic view vs the Deterministic view at the base of Reality as we can perceive it:
(on a personal note this video is of particular importance to me as in one of its accounts it vindicates with clarity an old claim I've made at the foundations regarding a fractal cyclic Reality via Penrose Conformal Cyclic Cosmology (CCC), moreover it tries also to address and tackle the ever abhorrent concept of an existing "nothingness" which in the past 100 years has been a misappropriation made by Physicists on the true meaning of the word)

My 02 cents just from pure intuition:
The "dog" might refer to a sexually inexperienced brut man who not knowing anything but blind obedience and violence needs to "open a flower" to finally have access to the true pleasures of Life. It seems, precisely because he is a blind "dog", the joke punch line implies he cannot charm women and has to take by force or money, the idea of having a good time. Additionally one deduces also he is unable to chose the best "flower" around because he is uneducated and thus utterly oblivious to the nuances of feminine charm, so he picks randomly...

A small world...

Lost children...