There is no real way in logic to separate ‘simulation’ from ‘reality’. So the question has no real meaning at the same time as being a really good one!

As Hampden pointed out, everything we perceive is a construct built from sensory inputs. A virtual model, in our heads.

If someone is feeding that model its still a simulation, and its still as real as it gets. If no-one is feeding it and this is all there is, its still a simulation, and still as real as it gets..

There are interesting associated philosophical questions of free-will. As we are ‘riding’ on the functions of our brains, with our perception of our own thoughts actually running several microseconds behind the chemical processes that cause them, this may well be an illusion too, but another one that in effect might as well not be.

There are fascinating associated mathematical (set theory) and physical (quantum theory/uncertainty principle) proofs of this – read ‘The Emperor’s New Brain’ by Roger Penrose for a lot of this good stuff.

Oh, and.. 42.

Just had a couple of pints in the Eagle, Cambridge, with a few Whirlwind conspiritors. Pleased to say the staff where wearing authentic RAF uniform in honour of the day!

One more thing to add. I don’t know Paul’s record – but I have been shot at only once in my life, and it’s not pleasant. It was by FARC ‘soldiers’ in Colombia – who were at the time being trained by members of the IRA (as well as former PLO operatives). I also met one of the (retired) Irish co-ordinators of this training, in a bar in Cali where he was running a language school with an Englishman. He had no personal dislike of the English whatsoever, but had seen the ‘Struggle’ as a war precipitated by the British state sending troops.

Paul, I was a child in the 1970’s and fortunately did not have any conception of what you and the British military were doing in Northern Ireland at the time. For example, the British army killed 61 children (Marie Smyth – http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/issues/violence/cts/smyth1.htm) – and that would have scared me.

History has been pretty damning since (even though lobbying of the Attorney General meant only four of your colleagues were ever tried for murder).

The army, as you will know because you were there, was working in a permanent state of moral compromise. Whatever the rights and wrongs of this quite how giving a bigot in Ulster an SLR in those circumstances protected me and my ‘miserable’ five-year-old skin in Somerset is probably beyond your powers of explanation. Unless you believe, despite ‘being there’, that troops in the street don’t fuel the disaffection of those raised to believe they are the enemy’s army – whether Vietnam, Iraq or Ireland. So stop kidding yourself.

I know it was an intensely complex situation. And I know that most people were trying to do the ‘right’ thing most of the time, and a lot of it required personal courage and integrity. But you weren’t protecting me by being a part of it. Sorry, but you were not.

I am not politically against Nothern Ireland remaining part of the United Kingdom. But don’t try to claim the moral high ground with me on that score, please. Unlike many of your BNP allies, I can read.

Paul. Please read: http://www.nhsemployers.org/search-results?q=ethnicity
– first result. Comparison between NHS ethnic breakdown and that of the public that use it.

In another thread you mention inability to speak your nation’s language.

It’s ‘fewer’, not ‘less’. I suspect most ‘immigrant doctors’ would know that.

Al Murray: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Murray

After coming out with palpably ill-informed and self-contradicting xenophobic or homophobic nonsense his catchphrase used to be “I’m not confused”.

Perhaps I should explain he is taking the p*ss out of people with your small newspaper view, not agreeing!

This tells me that documentary photography has incalculable value. For all the lies the Soviet state fed the children of that city for generations, the truth prevailed – through those images.

Maybe this thread should be called ‘Truth, lies and reality’ instead.

Thanks Snafu.

Sneering? How so? Taking the p*ss, maybe. Predictable that those not in the thrall of this particular extreme ism – namely over-the-top nationalism – will ask ‘WTF’. John, get a grandchild to translate.

.

While I agree about the difference between cultural influence – which can enrich – and imposition, which can only divide, I am not so sure about this bit:

Your head is firmly ‘in the sand’. There has been no discernible benefit arising from the influence of four or five decades of Western liberal thought on the cultural, religeous and social values brought into this country by immigrants from the Near, Middle and Far East. Nor will there be – ever. They are immune to our culture and values, despising what they see and experience.

I’m aware of the only educational statistic that matters to me. This nation is currently about number 25 on the international OECD list of nations skilled in numeracy and literacy. Which if you can’t interpret that means that we are nearer to the bottom than the top of developed nations in terms of those academic subjects.

You are not even close to the solution of the massive problems facing this nation due to unrestricted immigration. You, and others like you, are part of the problem.

I had a very close colleague who was Iranian, and who came over in the 1970’s. He is the most civilised, cultured and now ‘Anglicised’ Gentleman you’d ever hope to meet, while also retaining his ‘Iranian-ness’. He wouldn’t recognise the ‘Immune, Despising’ description at all. I use Ed as the first example that sprung to mind. I guess I am saying no more than the usual ‘Please don’t tar with the same brush’.

The link to educational standards is confusing. It is not immigrants from the East who are underperforming in our schools – the situation is quite the opposite, as I am sure you know really
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/gcse-and-equivalent-attainment…

SFR_06, pp8