My Canoe Challenge

[LifeToTheFullest!]

Hey... I always thought wisdom came with age. Here I am 14 billion years of and still almost as dumb as a rock! What gives?

Actually, you're (we all) are only 13.72 billion years old, and the legal cosmological age is 14 billion.

 

[sandwiches]

No he isn't. He's also demanding simplicity far beyond the answers and subsequent thread derailments that he gives to other people's questions.

Yea, it is very weird because he's also prone to adding and removing things to his challenges ad hoc when people answer in different ways than he wants them to. It's as though he's trying very hard for people to reach a specific answer he already knows is right... but that couldn't be it, right?

 

[JustMeSee]

This is one of the worst challenges I have seen from AV. It seems to have constructed an answer before formulating the question.

 

[Freodin]

This is one of the worst challenges I have seen from AV. It seems to have constructed an answer before formulating the question.

Oh, there´s nothing wrong with that method. It is valid to ask a question that you already have the answer to, in order to get the recipent of the question to look and find the answer for himself.

This method only has two potential problems:

1) Your initial answer is wrong
2) the person you asked refused to answer

In this case, AV´s challenge fails on both counts.

1) The distinction he is aiming at between "existential" and "physical" age is a false one.
2) He refuses to explain these terms... but that would be the way for him to see that the distinction is wrong.

 

[AV1611VET]

Well no... even if I were to accept this idea that it has two ages, which I don't,
the canoe would be "now", and physically 14 billion years old (or however old you accept the universe to be) as that's how old the constituent parts are. Choosing the age of one specific configuration of those atoms is arbitrary.

Could we leave the universe out of this, please?

(Besides, since you hollowed it out, most of the 1000 year old wood is gone. The rest is varying ages less than 1000 years.)

Now here, you might have a point; but I'll consider this thread as having served its purpose if you can see how an object can have both and existential age and a physical age.

 

[AV1611VET]

Ever think that might be why you have such a hard time learning anything?

I know why I choose to learn what I choose to learn; and it happens to be the same reason you do.

As far as 'having a hard time learning anything', the irony meter is off the scale and needs more calibration.

 

[LifeToTheFullest!]

I know why I choose to learn what I choose to learn; and it happens to be the same reason you do.

As far as 'having a hard time learning anything', the irony meter is off the scale and needs more calibration.

Nope. Not the same reasons at all. You have religious reasons for squaring out your circle, when the rest of us accept a circle as a circle. Got it? Good.

 

[Lillen]

To defend AVET. Are we ignorant just because we don't agree with you?

 

[AV1611VET]

Is there a point to this other than measuring how much spare time people have?

-- You guys come up with some good ones, sometimes.

 

[AV1611VET]

One can safely assume by looking at the weathering, the sawmarks, the type of paint of that the canoe has been built recently. Maybe if you look closely you will discover an accidental drop of blood from the guy who made it and tell that it has been deposited recently. You can also look at the wood and determine aproximatly the age of the tree and assume that it came from a seed about 1000 years ago.

The tree stop being a tree at the moment you call it a canoe.

I have to agree totally with this.

Perhaps a better question in my OP would be:

How old is this object?

 

[LifeToTheFullest!]

-- You guys come up with some good ones, sometimes.

You do seem to spend a lot of time on CF. Do you have a day job?

 

[AV1611VET]

You do seem to spend a lot of time on CF. Do you have a day job?

No

 

[sandwiches]

You do seem to spend a lot of time on CF. Do you have a day job?

I can't say much on that... I troll the forums a lot during the day since I work for myself. =P

 

[Lillen]

When at work you WORK!

Atleast i and AVVET have an excuse to be here...

 

[AV1611VET]

When at work you WORK!

Atleast i and AVVET have an excuse to be here...

It's a bummer being out of work, isn't it?

 

[sandwiches]

It's a bummer being out of work, isn't it?

I figured you might be retired or something.

 

[JustMeSee]

What does existential age mean?
I am not familiar with that term.

 

[LifeToTheFullest!]

I figured you might be retired or something.

Retired?! Yikes, he's only 56!

 

[Nabobalis]

The main issue I have, is that for embedded age, there was never the 14 billion years in the first place to make an object look old and yet be young.

In the example there is the 1000 years for the tree and at least 1 day for the canoe.

 

[AV1611VET]

What does existential age mean?

As I use it, it means: time in existence -- the amount of time something has been around.