The Problem with Overunity. A different approach.

[nightlife]

Hans, "We must change our way of thinking about OU or we will still be pissing around with Smots in a hundred years from now."

I couldn't agree more and that is one of the reasons I have posted what I did. I feel that we should all start thinking of over unity as being something created at no physical cost to us. I have stated that I believe true over unity is impossible but I do feel that over unity based on our physical cost can be achieved,

I for one would like to see the contest here changed to imply that the winner must show over unity of human physical cost and not just over unity. When I say physical cost, I mean labor as well as cost and not just our own but anyone else?s as well. For example:

We can build fox hole types of radio receivers that can be used to produce power but we are not actually producing power because of the physical power used to produce the radio wave the radio transmitter is receiving. This can not be thought of as achieving human physical cost over unity.

But if we were to extract energy from the earth like earth battery's do, then we could say that yes, we have achieved human physical cost over unity provided the amount of energy extracted is more then what the energy was used to produce the substances used to extract the energy that has been extracted. Meaning that it takes a certain amount of physical costing energy to produce what we have and for us to claim physical cost over unity, we would have to extract more total energy then the total energy used to produce what is being used to extract the energy. So as long as the products used last long enough to extract enough energy to cover the physical costing energy used and still last longer, then I could agree that human physical costing over unity has been achieved.

[Haliburton]

Hans,

What you have brought up is impossible to answer, why?.  Well because you cannot look into the future but you can look at the present or past.  you have to be able to have something, solid or not, to be able to name it.  If we had a Dictionary that had all the words possible for everything in the universe it would be impractical and very confusing.  Just like your chair idea.  What came first the chair or the name chair or the idea that the word chair exists. Its hard to believe that someone thought of the word chair exits rather  the idea of a chair itself.  Of course everyone in the forum is going around and around in circles, thats because there is no possible end until you can see the end of the future.  Remember you can only see the present and the past.  never the future.

[Haliburton]

Oh and also.

OK NOW TAKE THE WORD CHAIR OUT WHEN READING.

A chair is a kind of furniture for sitting, consisting of a back, and sometimes arm rests, commonly for use by one person. Chairs also often have four legs to support the seat raised above the floor.

OK now did that because even if the word chair does not exits you can still build or think of a CHAIR.

The term chair only speeds up the process of explaining what your sentence consists of

EXAMPLE:  mom, mother

once you have the word chair conceived you can build upon it

Example: nice chair

nice  (ns)
adj. nic?er, nic?est
1. Pleasing and agreeable in nature: had a nice time.
2. Having a pleasant or attractive appearance: a nice dress; a nice face.
3. Exhibiting courtesy and politeness: a nice gesture.
4. Of good character and reputation; respectable.
5. Overdelicate or fastidious; fussy.
6. Showing or requiring great precision or sensitive discernment; subtle: a nice distinction; a nice sense of style.
7. Done with delicacy and skill: a nice bit of craft.

NICE CHAIR......... the final conclusion

[exxcomm0n]

Hello all,

I've just thought of a different wrinkle to this.

Is it true or not that the observation of a phenomenon's activities significantly alter the activities?

We're using the same medium (english language) that we are observing/debating.

Maybe this is why a picture is worth 1000 words, and written language evolved from pictograms (heiroglyphics). Perhaps  the evolution of the pictogram to the (word) letter is flawed?

That evolution of words, from my vague and flawed recollecting(and I could be wrong, I haven't studied this), was from the pictograph meaning 1 object/action, and then being shortened to representing the idea of the pictogram, and then being shortened again to be a symbol in it's own right.

From Wikipedia:
The earliest uses of pictograms were made in Mesopotamia and predated the famous Sumerian cuneiforms (the oldest of which date to around 3400 BC). As early as 9000 BC tokens marked with simple pictures began to be used to label basic farm produce, and around 6000 BC, with the rise of cities and spread of basic craftmanship, more complex pictographic tokens were devised to label manufactured goods. Eventually the tokens were replaced by clay tablets on which symbols were drawn with a blunt reed called a stylus. The impressions left by the stylus were wedge shaped, thus giving rise to the name cuneiform; wedge-writing.

(and in writing this this way, I have invoked a different (action) language html tagging.)

So if I look @ the letter A and find it comes from aleph, so I go to Wikipedia for it's "definition" I get:

ʾĀlep is the reconstructed name of the first letter of the Proto-Canaanite alphabet, continued in descended Semitic alphabets as Phoenician Aleph , Syriac 'Ālaph ܐ, Hebrew Aleph א, and Arabic ʾAlif ﺍ.
Aleph originally represented the glottal stop (IPA /Ê"/), usually transliterated as ʾ (U+02BE) "modifier letter right half ring", a character of the Unicode Spacing Modifier Letters range, based on the Greek spiritus lenis ʼ. For example in the transliteration of the letter name itself, ʾāleph.
The Phoenician letter gave rise to the Greek Alpha (Î'), being re-interpreted to express not the glottal consonant but the accompanying vowel, and hence the Latin A and Cyrillic А.
Origon:
Aleph is thought to be derived from the West Semitic word for "ox", and the shape of the letter derives from a Proto-Sinaitic glyph based on a hieroglyph depicting an ox's head,
In modern Hebrew, "meulaf", derived from the Hebrew root Ê"-l-f (alef-lamed-pe) is the passive participle of the verb "le'alef", and means trained (when referring to pets) or tamed (when referring to wild animals); the IDF rank of Aluf, taken from an Edomite title of nobility, is also cognate. In modern Arabic, "aleef" literally means "domesticated".

That's supposedly where it came from, but the ox is far from what I 1st think of when I think of "A".

In fact, the literal translation in modern arabic is the direct opposite of what I think when someone uses the term "type A".

Just another way I see the ambiguity of language.

For modern examples think of the latest word crafting due to political, fiscal, and even scientific manipulations.

acceptable losses
military intelligence
reverse growth
homeland security
marginal gains
low interest
orbital attraction
etc.

[Pirate88179]

@ Haliburton:

I have to slightly disagree with one of your statements: " Remember you can only see the present and the past.  never the future."

You can only observe the present.  The past has already occurred and we depend on memory (God help us) if we experienced the event or, (even worse) reports from other people's memory who did witness the event. The future, like you said, has not happened yet, so that's out too.  In my humble opinion, (for what it may or may not be worth) we are stuck with the present and the present goes by in an instant.  Very small window there.

@ Hans:

Damn!  All of this thinking is giving me a headache.  I think one needs to slowly sip a pint or two while contemplating ideas such as this.

Bill