Quote:
Originally Posted by sir_pudding
The requirement is that you must generate enough lift to counteract gravity. It seems to me that gravity is definitely an external force that prevents you from flying if you can't generate enough lift.
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On the other hand, it's just as true to say that it's my inability to generate enough lift that's the issue, or that it's my mass that's the issue.
The real point is that my body has weight because it has mass, and mass responds to a gravitational field by experiencing a force. It's not that there is some angel, or some line of code in a cosmic computer program, or an invisible and intangible weight chained to my back, or some other external entity that imposes that force on me. Nor is it as if my body being subject to weight could be turned off, and my body could become free to accelerate in any direction at any rate. My body has weight because it has mass, and it has mass because that's part of being the kind of entity it is.
Bill Stoddard