Would you endure an insurmountable amount of pain and suffering if you knew it was the path to true enlightenment?

One question, since everyone else is gone. I'm just asking for fun...

If what you said is true... how likely is it that the NSA would be able to have some kind of backdoor or intentional weakness in SHA-2? For example, if I used that instead of whirlpool, would it be significantly easier to recover data from my hard drives? I'm extremely paranoid that the US government will kick down my door any day now. I have shit I'm not supposed to have.

I don't think it's terribly likely, although they do hire the majority of mathematicians in the country, so who knows? You can rest easy, though, because even if the NSA does have it, the FBI doesn't, and it would be a serious breach of the law for the NSA to be knocking down your door unless what you have is treasonous.

There's actually not much that differentiates logic from any other kind of math. You could even make a case that logic is more philosophical in nature than algebra or any of the calculi - but not by much.

But, I agree - perspective does play a huge role in how problems get solved.

Ha! You got me there.

Just a hypothetical lol.

Sure. :-) If you knew that you could achieve knowledge of and connection to, everything in this world and beyond by going through suffering the likes of which you have never experienced, would you do it? (sorry for the run on sentence :-P )

no. what will be, will be.