Sigi_BC84

I don't know where your anti-religious ressentiments come from, but to me it looks like they are impairing your ability to make objective observations in this regard. Where is religion allowed to dominate? People are saying that the US is more and more dominated by christian fanatics and that the spread of Islam is a problem and there is this huge clash of Christianity vs. Islam and so on. To be honest, I don't think that this is the root of the problem. The main problem in my eyes is an unjust distribution of wealth, leading to growing groups of highly frustrated people, many of which happen to live in islamic nations. This makes them highly susceptible to propaganda. Subtract the religion and the propaganda remains, it would just look different. Saddam Hussein did not lead his wars in the name of Islam. North Korea is not threatening the rest of the world in the name of any religion. Also, you should stop throwing all religions into the same bucket. A large part of the world's population is religious without adhering to the idea of a divine creator. The point you've raised about the lack of education has a lot more merit. Our leaders are not really interested in providing the best of education to everybody, because it would make it a lot harder to install puppets and spread propaganda. Also, the tiny part of the population that is actually in power (namely the people owning the majority of the wealth) has no strong interest either in the masses discovering what is really going on. If you run a multi-national corporation, what do you care about religious groups? Be clever and they, too, will buy from you. --Sigi

I have just read up on it ([wikipedia] Hilbert's Grand Hotel and [wikipedia] Cosmological argument) and you are stating something for a fact that cannot be simply taken for granted. Especially Hilbert's Hotel is not necessarily a valid model for the real universe, or a proof of the impossibility that it could be infinite. ok... can i call model 2) "eternity?" and can i say that model 2) is God's residence, and can i say that model 1) is his creation? because if i can, i do Now you are shooting yourself into the foot: When mentioning "eternity" you are acknowledging the possibility of infinite time. no, you can't get to now from then... that's the problem with any model that postulates an infinite universe... because between each googol of time quanta you quantify lies another infinite googol of time quanta, etc, etc, etc (ad, pardon me, infinitum) Reread the passage you have quoted: The discrete timeline consists of infinitely many, but countable time quanta, and therefore you cannot squeeze additional quanta in ad infinitum. What you described was an uncountable set. But you keep mixing up arguments against "continuous time" and against "infinite time". Again you are mixing up two different things: I'm saying that one could assume that time can be quantified. You could then take an arbitrary time span and give the corresponding number of time quanta. Let's take the amount of time that passed from the moment that I submitted this posting to the very moment that you are reading this. Let's call this number "Q". So by tracing Q time quanta I arrive from then to now. The total number of (countable) time quanta that have passed so far is infinity, so is the total number of time quanta yet to happen. Where's the problem here? The point I was trying to make about "yesterday" is something different: I'm saying that "yesterday" or "tomorrow" both do not exist. All that exists, exists now, and "yesterday" is merely a pattern visible in the current state of the universe. --Sigi

Well, as I said, it would be a nice bonus, not really necessary. Actually it's even possible to upload hands into the team matches, but its an awkward process and will lead to a lot of trouble in practice. Maybe I should not have called it "predup". What I actually want is the ability to synchronize the boards between different tables. Maybe we'll get that one day, until then I'm fine with taking what we have for running leagues. --Sigi

The timezone leagues would make it much easier to schedule dates for the matches. Of course you would be free to play in another timezone if that suits you better (e.g. if you like to play at night). Keep in mind that we're talking about teams of people here, that is you have to schedule EIGHT people, not two or four. Edit: just think about the typical working hours. If you have a few people in each team working a 9-5 job, that pretty much kills the idea of matching teams up across the pond (unless they are all ready to play on weekends, which quite often is family time). --Sigi

The main reason why I'd like to have preduplicated boards (or equivalent support directly within BBO) is the following: Especially if the matches are short, you want all teams participating in the league to play the same boards, simultaneously, against their respective opponent for the given round of the league. Otherwise, you add some unnecessary randomness to the league, because there might be more swinging boards in one match than in another, for the same round of the league. Of course one can argue that this doesn't matter much or evens out over time. Also I find it very appealing to be able to compare your own results with those from other matches in the same league round. The third advantage is the ability to rank all pairs (in addition to the teams) for each given round using Butler scoring or Cross-IMPs. Some minor advantages are increased security that the boards are truly random (if you're really serious) and that it's easier to integrate them with your web site for the league (you don't have to extract the lin files from the web first). The biggest disadvantage is that you have to have the teams playing simultaneously or you have to be able to rely on the fairness of all teams not to look at existing results. I admit that it's all not strictly necessary and that the current features are enough to get a league running, but I think it would be much nicer to use predup boards (if you can coordinate the teams). --Sigi

I think we are quite interested, Hue. Thanks for the offer, I'm just looking at your site, it looks really great. Some dedicated league support would be good (should not be too hard to implement). Probably it would be best to start with a league for each of the major timezone (Americas and Europe, maybe Asia too). --Sigi

The effort to open a blog is minimal (hardly higher than to write an article here). It has been suggested to Claus and to Bob several times that they rather post somewhere else. They prefered to not post at all (Claus) or spend their time defending their position why it is right to try to reserve a thread here (Jilly). I can only assume that it must be fun for them. Laziness or lack of time is hardly an excuse, given that opening a blog is a five minute exercise for a community college class learning to use the world wide web. --Sigi P.S.: http://myfourtytwocents.blogspot.com/ (took me 3 minutes)

well certainly that's possible... it's also possible that you (or i) are actually the only living entities existing... however, one must start somewhere, and since using illusion as a starting place would of necessity make it an ending place, it's probably better to not use it "Illusion" relates to the observer, not to the facts (the absolute). You are making certain claims based on the assumption that "time" is real. Especially you are assuming that time is continuous and therefore can't be infinite (see below). What do you assume: That time is continouus and infinite by nature, discrete by nature, discrete and finite by nature? Let's say that time is discrete (that is, reality happens in tiny steps, each following another), maybe this has been even proved by now, I don't know. Then what's the problem in making the timeline infinitely long? You will still be able to get from then to now by counting up a googol of time quanta. If one accepts that time is a law of nature that simply happens (like gravity simply exists), where is the problem with assuming that it is a continuous phenomenon? i have thought about it, and i confess i don't see it... yesterday happened, it wasn't an illusion.. can i prove that? well no, i can't.. but this opens another whole realm of debate on knowledge and the nature of a 'functioning brain' I fully acknowledge that "yesterday" happened, but "yesterday" does not exist. "Now" exists, nothing else. Maybe you can quote somebody or give a pointer to a book, or just support this in more detail. I simply do not understand what you exactly mean by "infinite" (but also see above). --Sigi BTW: feel free to move this to another thread if you want to continue the discussion, I certainly do.

This is ridiculous. For the record: This is an open forum and you are allowed to post in any thread you'd like to. If you post controversial articles, be prepared to get some flak. Expecting that putting a note under each article will stop people from replying is very naive. If a thread gets "sabotaged" (in my eyes a much too dramatic term for what actually happened), please stop whining about that. Maybe start disliking the person who did it but don't make a fuss about it here. To Bob (this has been suggested before, and rightly so): if this so called sabotage pisses you off, go start a blog or a website or whatever and post your notes there. Turn off comments in the blog and live a peaceful live. You can put a pointer to your blog in your signature here (like Justin and Gerben) and give your students the link. It will work. --Sigi P.S.: As I said before I like Bob's articles and appreciate the effort he's making, therefore I think it was not very courteous to post in that one thread he tried to reserve for himself. That was bound to happen however, one should face this reality and not start mindless flame wars here.

I'm completely unable to see your point here. First of all, one should be very careful with assumptions about the nature of "time". Especially one should not equal time to the physical notion of time. In physics, time is used to measure the rate at which changes occur. To be able to handle it mathematically, time is quantified (by observing nature and creating a reference point that way). Now, the physicist's notion of time as a "line" where you can mark events (which undoubtely makes a lot of sense) or as a fourth dimension (which ostensibly makes a lot of sense as well, although I don't have an intuitive grasp of that concept) has become so deeply ingrained in us that we believe that this actually is time. Just to offer one alternative: maybe everything has already happened and what we perceive as "time" or "change" is not real in an absolute way. Maybe it is just an illusion which we are prone to. Maybe the people who claim to be clairvoyants have found a way to see more in the pattern of things-that-have-already-happened than the ordinary person. This is very speculative and only used here to illustrate my point that taking the concept of "time line" for granted and deriving statements about the impossibility of an infininite existence from it is shortsighted, in my eyes (no offense, Luke). Apart from that I also don't get why, even if the timeline is real in an absolute sense, it could not be infinite in both directions. The set of real numbers is infinite (not even enumerable) and still you can easily compare two given real numbers in size. Likewise you can compare two given points in time to eachother, no matter where they are on the timeline. "This particular point in time" always exists, actually it is the only thing that we can absolutely sure of. Past and future are illusions created by our mind (this is easy enough to see if you think about it). --Sigi

It would certainly be funny to have a totally innocent hand discussed in the Expert forum and after collecting three pages of clever answers come forward with the solution which would be "lead 4th best of the unbid major, wtp?" OK, maybe not that funny... --Sigi

If you could elaborate further on that I would be interested. To me infinity is absolute (and absolutely inconceivable). --Sigi

We've certainly found a way to do that by now (well, it depends on your definition of "immaculate" I admit)... :-) --Sigi

BBO is currently lacking the necessary features to comfortably set up a team league. I have suggested this in some other thread, and we are all patiently awaiting developments. The main problem is that predealing hands in team events is a pain in the neck, and I think that would be necessary to run a fair league. Having a league, or multiple leagues for teams on BBO would be AWESOME. --Sigi

Who (or what) created the Big Bang, then? This is a question with which one could be concerned as well, and it's not incompatible with trying to explain everything since the Big Bang. I like the approach that Buddhism takes in this regard, saying that there is no beginning, only an endless chain of cause and effect stretching into eternity in both directions. This is very logical, matches our observations and does not need a supernatural being. --Sigi

from "greek and norse gods never existed in the first place" we can't get "therefore no God exists" Another two of my cents on this one. For the Greeks, Vikings, Mayans etc., their gods did exist. What do we know, maybe they really existed and died when people stopped worshipping them (yeah, I know I start to sound like a nutcase now). The Tibetans, arguably the spiritually most advanced culture on Earth, take the existence of gods for granted. Only, for them they are not essentially different from humans or any sentient being, just living on a different plane, and even mortal. Now, being raised and educated in a materialistic culture adhering to the scientific method, of course we have to rebut such ideas. The "spiritual method" is incompatible with the scientific method (as of yet). For me, modern physics has long since turned into an esoteric discipline. Nuclear physics tells you that everything is composed to 99,999% of nothing. Quantum physics proposes theories that are not more against all intuition than believing in God against the intuition of atheists. I don't see physicists proclaiming that the smallest particle has been found and that search is over -- while being totally incomprehensible to almost anyone they still come up with more and more theories which get more bizarre every day. I don't see why anybody should be ashamed for believing in supernatural beings in such a world. I'm hoping you get my point. --Sigi

This is what I meant by "spiritual". Believing in god (or a plurality of gods, that does not matter here) means that you assume the existence of a supernatural being, a person, a separate entity. Being authentically religious does not require such a belief. --Sigi

I also disagree with those who say religion is an invention. I'd like to add that one should not confuse religion, theism and spirituality. Also, too often the term "religion" is used when actually some church or organization is meant. As far as I can see, spirituality is deeply rooted within humans. You also do not have to believe in God (or in anything, for that matter) in order to be genuinely spiritual. Atheism and spirituality are not opposed to each other. Furthermore, intelligence and reason does not collide with spirituality in any way (you can see them as orthogonal if you will). Some of the posters here seem to have brushed religion/spirituality aside at some point because it might have interfered with their idea of rationality or being mature. I don't think this is necessary. Somebody I know (who is a total nerd but quite smart) once said that "an intelligent person cannot be religious". This is, in fact, complete nonsense. --Sigi (For what its worth, I don't believe in God but neither in Materialism.)

Claus, do you sometimes actually read the postings you are replying to? --Sigi

This is actually very easy. WBF policy on HUM systems: As you can see, a 9-14 HCP opening does not turn a system into a HUM system. Furthermore, the Moscito "pass" call is not systemically stronger than a one level opening. Of course there are passes which are stronger than, for example, certain distributional openings, but that goes for almost any system (e.g. SAYC doesn't open 11 HCP balanced but for sure you may open 10 HCP distributional if the hand is good). Therefore, Moscito is not a HUM. Apart from that I second what Richard posted above (if the TD rules otherwise, get a written record and appeal). --Sigi

I have come across an interview with Eric Rodwell, in which he talks quite a bit about notrump ranges: http://www.bridgematters.com/rodwell.htm --Sigi

Certainly the right move :-). I fully agree when you say that the inclusion of certain other features is a lot more important than improving FD (at this moment). Actually the two examples you have given (messaging and team games) occupy the two top slots on my BBO wishlist. This does not keep me from posting ideas on how FD should be improved (since I have already posted that I want more team features and a different chat GUI). Now that we have that out of the way let me say this: In my eyes, the current incarnation of FD is not much more than a proof of concept (both technically and also -- to a lesser extent -- functionality-wise). The GUI can be seen as a bad joke (sorry, Fred) and many ambitious users interested in making FD cards fail due to that. Consequently I think that based on the idea presently embodied by what we have with FD, something much bigger, better and mightier needs to be developed, possibly outside of BBO for the priority reasons already mentioned. To do that, one needs a published and documented API. Now please nobody start the Open Source discussion once again. All I'm saying is that unless there is an API into the appropriate parts of BBO, not much will happen on this front according to my evaluation of the situation. Now Fred might answer "forget it, pal", which is fine, but I think in that case we won't see a disclosure revolution happen too soon in the future. You make it sound as if scripting support was an "add-on" to the static datafile functionality we have at the moment. Actually my ideas stretch a lot further, in that I'd like to replace static files completely by some kind of specification language, of which static trees would be a subset. A very good idea that you (rightly) have proposed several times already. I think this would naturally be a part of the specification language I have in mind. I understand what you have in mind. In my eyes, the FD GUI needs to change radically anyway (into the direction of Bridge2Symmetric's), and what you are suggesting would probably be provided by System Construction Wizards or special purpose plugins for the system editor. This would also be part of a well designed system specification language. Maybe one would have a special property for "standard bids" or some kind of reference system (to be defined by the table) against which the systems that are actually played are compared. The challenge is to come up with a flexible language to specify bridge bidding systems. This would be a special purpose computer language with some computational abilities and what else you'd need. I am not an expert in this area but given the time (i.e. not at the moment ;-) I would be interested in tackling this, and also implement a system. --Sigi

Easier but eventually not powerful enough. Well, in theory it will be as powerful as a completely dynamic approach but your bidding trees will grow huge given a sufficiently complex system. Add in conditional logic: now you will possibly have many of these already complex sequences several times. As a simple example take a defense to 1NT, where the sequences might be generated by a script but ultimately differ in (possibly only a few) spots depending on the strength of the opening which is defended. There is already a fuss being made about slow login times and that the profile shouldn't become larger because that will make it even slower yada yada. I don't want to know what people will think if half of BBO starts transfering 500kB convention cards (these will eventually having to be received by every opposing pair in a tournament). Compression might help a lot here, however. Probably Fred indeed should spend his developing time with other issues than this one. I would, however, like to see an API to Full Disclosure so one could maybe write a plugin that will allow scripting -- let's call it the dynamic convention card API. NB the file format for Full Disclosure is documented already (it's fairly trivial for that matter). --Sigi

1♠ opener is a total misdescription of your hand, especially since you know that you will be able to reverse later on. Since 2♠ (after the double) describes your hand well in your opinion, why (misguidedly) open 1♠ in the first place? --Sigi

An application like FD, which is providing auto-alerts, needs to be programmable. The current approach is completely static, so that only sequences that are defined explicitly are documented (and documentable). Scriptability would not only help in contested auctions, but for defining uncontested sequences as well. You could, for example, define an entire relay system that way or specify rules when a double is support/negative/penalty/you name it (OK, this is competitive again, but you get the point). This would need further symbolization of the bidding, along the lines of Richard's suggestion towards semantic tagging of bids (e.g. 1NT is tagged as "strong balanced" or 1♣ is tagged as "strong club"). Of course programming of systems in such a way would be restricted to experts and additional tools would be needed for non-technical users to create system descriptions (of course one could always combine it with a static approach like the one we got at the moment). --Sigi