Troy

3 hours ago, aka Contrarian said:

what seems to be pre-determined would differ from world to world.

of course, but it is debatable if one can shift between those different realities, or if different versions of you exist and that can never interact.

Sorry to hear about your. It could be in a different universe we don’t have knees, or we don’t stop at grocery stores. Maybe we don’t even experience pain.

Of course, we don’t experience those realities. Just this one, and this one has made better by the presence of the poster formerly known as Cynique

Wars  have objectives.  If the number of mass school shootings , executed by lone gunman, increase what’s the point? 
 

When Hamas killed all those people at that concert, that was not war. When the Israelis retaliated by leveling Gaza, and killing everyone in sight, that was war. The goal being destroying Hamas regardless of the collateral damage.

So basically rioting.

1 hour ago, Pioneer1 said:

"pre determined"...they couldn't help but to follow the script, right?

punishing them is following the script.

1 hour ago, Pioneer1 said:

But the soul can and does travel outside of this Realm.

i’m not gonna try to extend the argument to the Soul, as I don’t no what you think it is, whether it adheres to the laws of physics. 
 

1 hour ago, Pioneer1 said:

The fact that you started TRYING different foods as you got older is just a minor testimony to your free will.

You’re stuck on the idea that our perception of choice is proof of a nondeterministic state. 
 

1 hour ago, Pioneer1 said:

You do so everytime you dream.

That is one way to view a dream.

@Delano we have the ability to see some of the patterns. maybe that is why some people believe if you know the initial conditions of one’s birth, like their relative place in the cosmos, you can predict a lot about their lives.

OK what the heck does “multivided” mean?

12 hours ago, ProfD said:

We'll get the monthly mass shootings.

 As sad as this sounds, that sounds more plausible. The question remains who do you think would be doing all these mass shootings and who would they be shooting ? Would this mayhem be orchestrated? 
 

i’ll grant you that it will probably be angry white people doing the shooting as they are the ones most likely to engage in this activity. I know they like to shoot up churches, schools, outdoor concerts, gay clubs, movie theaters, essentially wherever people congregate and are not likely to be armed and on alert.

Do you think it would just be a lot more of this type of carnage?
 

If so, to what end? The civil war had a goal to maintain the institution of slavery. What could possibly be achieved by more frequent mass shootings?

Based upon that definition, the Civil War never ended. It just morphed. Instead of Chancellorsville, you have Charlottesville.

I dunno what are the felonies if they were 6 murders a day I would not feel safe. Are they 6 violence assaults, maimings, rapes?

but I agree the media exaggerates things. And without knowing the nature of the felonies, my gut tells me Adams is right but he can’t control what the media covers if they are telling the truth albeit in a  biased manner.  
 

He can launch a counter narrative and attempt to help people understand how relatively safe the subways, and indeed the city is today.
 

Are Latino immigrants committing a disproportionate number of crimes? I hope he’s not scapegoating them, as a black man, he should know better.

I think Tavis owns the station, but I could be wrong

2 hours ago, Pioneer1 said:

"evil" should be punished if the deed was already pre-determined to occur; and according to that logic...does "evil" really exist?

of course, evil should be discouraged and when excessive punished.

As corporeal beings, bound by the constraints of the passage of time we exist in the world with the known and fixed past, and unknown but equally fixed future. We are, necessarily, content with the illusion of free will— otherwise, what meaning with life have?
 

If there are multiple past and multiple futures, as some speculate, one can argue they’re all predetermined as well. 
 

And much the same way. We are unable to see the predetermined future. We are also unable to experience different realities within the Multiverse.

Yeah, they got a lot of guns but who are the poor whites gonna go after and this so-called Civil War, the rich, Black people, immigrants, Democrats, the LGBTQAI2X+, who?

I can tell y’all did not watch fortune video about Dr. West, if you had all the speculation and pondering would be unnecessary.

I don’t know whether Travis is gay or not. I’ve never seen him with a woman but that doesn’t mean anything because I’ve never seen West with a woman and he’s been married five times!

The following is a video it’s about 17 years old I guess during the launch of Smileybooks Tavis, Smiley’s publishing imprint. As Tavis mentions the wrong really was full of some very talented Black Book professionals.

It is the first time I looked at the video in a long while, and I have a slideshow of photos which really brings back some memories. Some of the people I’m still very close to and work with including Paul Coates, Vanesse Lloyd-Sgambati, Regina Brooks, Clarence Reynolds et al.
 

Cheryl Woodruff, who actually did the work as Smileybooks is an iconic figure and Publishing.

Sure, @ProfD I can see a bigger version of the January 6th insurrection being attempted.  Sure, individual group of Americans may be nuts but collectively we are not and another January 6th would be squashed -- assuming if it was even able to get started.

The divisions in America exist, but they are not nearly as profound and extreme as the media likes to emphasize. I'd argue that the media, social media in particular instigates, exacerbates, and even initiates divisions.

Who is the Civil War supposed to be against the north v the south, The rich versus the poor, black versus white, Democrats versus Republicans, who is fighting who here?

There is not gonna be a Civil War. Rich people already have everything; why would they jeopardize it with the war here?

Thanks for sharing information about your book in such a detailed and professional manner. I often wonder why more authors don’t do this.
 

This seems like a no-brainer to me. It’s easy to do and free.  
 

Your other books on the site too.

2 hours ago, Pioneer1 said:

The Omniscient Being knows the DIFFERENT futures/outcomes of all the DIFFERENT directions they could go but they still can go in any direction they choose. 

Think that through for second… 

at any rate, what difference does it make? The notion of a choice or free will is an illusion, a function of our being constrained in time.

The omniscient being you are referring to can move through time the way you or I walk up and down the street. The concept of the passage of time is nonsensical. They could observe something that “happened” 2000 years ago or 2000 years in the “future” it’s all the same. 

I bet you have no problem accepting that you can’t change the past, the future is no different.

LOL!  You think I'd be messin' 'round wit y'all knee grows if I was rollin' with the Boule?  

More gossipy stuff at the top of my YouTube Feed.  I clicked because curiosity got the best of me, and the sources was Forbes.  

Cornel West is brilliant intellectual, but a regular man like the rest of us.  I'm glad Forbes is not poking around my finances it would be embarrassing.  Getting divorced is a great way to destroy wealth and he has been divorced 5 times. 

@richardmurray when I was younger I was not a fan of musical either especially those on film.  That is perhaps the main reason I have zero interested in seeing The latest iteration of the color purple.  Now I did see it on Broadway and it was entertaining enough, but again not enough for me to pay to go see it on the big screen.

I have little interesting in seeing Hamilton for the same reason. People rave about it, but a musical about Alexander Hamilton, nah I pass. 

I have seen musicals I thoroughly enjoyed, Avenue Q, The Book of Mormon, The Lion Kings, etc, etc  But given the choice I will usually pick a drama over a musical.

As a Trekkie, I watched an episode that was effectively a musical.  I tolerated and appreciated the whimsy and creativeness of the episode, but one was definitely enough and they better not do it again  

A predetermined opening of doorway to another predetermined reality.

Pioneers we should punish evil but not mistake those actions for ones have not been predetermined. 

As websites wane in effectiveness, email will become more important again. However, AI threats both.

I think videos (not games) can be an effective substitute.  However, sources matter.

It is possible we will be see a world where much of what we consume is generated by AI from a handful of companies whose only motivation is increasing profits.

Z: this seems like a video game of beat an insufficient substitute for reading a book.

5: I can’t think of any off the top of my head. Although given the technology available to the characters in Star Trek, I have no idea why people still grow old and die.

#: these are very different protocols, created to do very different things. what function are you looking to address?

Richard I don’t understand your poll or the questions.  Can you rely by just posting the questions more concisely?

21 hours ago, Pioneer1 said:

It's some Colored folks on!   
Colored folks is on the TV!"

I remember this very well. I can remember when the Jackson 5 came on the Ed Sullivan show it was just so surprising and I was so excited I ran through the house telling everybody. That was 1969. The show Julia was on by then, but Black people were still largely under represented.

Again the period of time I’m talking about is the 70s through the 90s in New York City
 

When my mother said when she moved into the housing project it was beautiful. There were flowers growing on the lawns, and the whole property was well-maintained back then I believe it was only opened to married people, and someone had to have a job. I believe these rules changed, and as a result, the class of people changed.
 

NYCHA also failed to maintain the properties very well. I read recently that the projects were in such a state of this repair that the city could no longer afford to maintain them, and are now looking at options to allow private ownership.

many who lived in the projects, believe that this was always a plan to private the apartments kick the poor people out, the gentrifiers would love nothing more than the happen, or to have to build and completely torn down 

As an adult, I lived in Harlem for 17 years and it was far better than it was when I was a kid, so I’m not talking about Harlem in the after the turn of century. 

New York City in the late 20th century had more than 2,000 murders a year the city was about to default financially and crime and filth and graffiti was everywhere and all of this was worse in  poor communities. 
 

By the time I was raising kids in Harlem, the crime rate was down significantly the murder rate was down by a By the time I was raising kids in Harlem, the crime rate was down significantly the murder rate was down by an order of magnitude the subways Were bar cleaner and safer
 

When I was a kid, prostitution and drugs, Rained supreme in Times Square, the movie houses played triple X movies today. It is family friendly more like Disney.

look, I don’t doubt that some people lived very well in New York City in the 1970s 80s and 90s but they had to have some serious paper. If you grew up in an impoverished neighborhood During that time, I do find it hard to believe that one would have no complaints unless they’re entirely delusional or in incomplete denial.

To answer the main question of the post however, when I was a kid, the police were more harmful than helpful. Indeed, we didn’t even like the police. Giving them more money. Would not have made things better.

I don’t think the police need more money. They just need to be better at their jobs. I also wonder how much of the budget for the police department go to paying into their very generous pensions, which allows them to retire in their early 40s.