If anything, rather than a Paradox, I think this nicely showcases the validity of the Four Noble Truths. — Hermeticus

How can that be? The Buddha thinks maya is the source of our dukkha; dismantle the illusion and we see the truth...nirvana.

The beautician, on the other hand, claims the truth is dukkha's point of origin; create maya to hide the truth...anti-nirvana.

It's not exactly maya that induces dukkha, rather than the attachment to that illusion. Maya can be a hindrance to truth and to renouncement of desire - but it doesn't have to be. The illusion is neither good nor bad, it's what you make of it. Some are bound by it, while others find truth precisely through - or because of - that illusion. — Hermeticus

According to the Buddha maya is the well-spring of our dukkha; no maya, meaning we know the truth, no dukkha. Attachment is part of maya; it's induced in us by maya.

So where’s the paradox? — khaled

See above.

I thought Socrates' antipathy towards democracy was no secret. If memory serves, he was more in favor of wise kings. The so-called Philosopher King was a notion he invented and his student Plato developed further.
— TheMadFool

In Plato’s Gorgias, Callicles suggests that society should be ruled by intelligent and courageous men irrespective of other virtues like self-control and righteousness, and invites Socrates to join his group.

Socrates replies by inviting Callicles to join him in his belief in righteousness and divine judgement in the afterlife:

And I invite all other men likewise, to the best of my power, and you particularly I invite in return, to this life and this contest, which I say is worth all other contests on this earth; and I make it a reproach to you, that you will not be able to deliver yourself when your trial comes and the judgement of which I told you just now (Gorg. 526e).

The concept of philosopher-king has been much misunderstood. I think the idea was to train philosophers to rule wisely. This is what it really boils down to, wise and just rule, in accordance with the established standards of ethical conduct based on the four virtues (self-control, courage, prudence, and righteousness), etc., and a proper legal system.

But you are right, it may be described as a utopian vision and it is doubtful that Socrates and Plato intended to implement everything exactly as discussed in the Republic. Still, Greek rulers tended to be more democratic that those of Persia or Egypt, for example. — Apollodorus

I suppose Socrates examined the pros and cons of different forms of government very closely. His analysis may have looked something like:

1. King: Power concentrated in one indiviudal but may not know how to govern. (risk of tyranny)

2. Democracy: Power distributed but may not know how to govern (risk of failed state)

3. Philosopher: No power but knows how to govern (pointless)

There are two options available:

4. Make all citizens philosophers (power distributed and knows how to govern)

OR

5. Philosopher-King (power concentrated and knows how to govern)

I can't fathom why he chose 5 over 4. Any ideas?

Speaking for myself, there's the practical issue of making every citizen a philosopher vs making only one person, the king, a philosopher. The latter is doable but the former is a pipe dream.

Problem for natalists: Rising suicide rates.
Problem for antinatalists: The ongoing population explosion.

underplay — Jack Cummins

downplay?

I don't mean to contradict you but, for me, poetry is more about language itself (the medium) rather than what is conveyed (the message). True that if both could be had i.e. an important message poeticized, it would be the stuff of dreams but, the emphasis on linguistic elements - rhyme, meter, whatnot - rather than meaning or, more accurately, that rhyme, meter, etc. are a must for a piece of written work to qualify as poetry suggests to me that language is the, in a sense, be all and end all of poems.

For no rhyme or reason... :chin:

Update

There are two ways we conceive of things:

1. Imagination: Past experience plays a role only to the extent it provides some basic material e.g. one has experience of a horn and a horse and these together we imagine a unicorn. We should be able to conceive of nonexistence/death; after all, imagination is, essentially, a tool that extends beyond the realm of the known. Read below and come back to this after that.

2. Memory: Past experience is of significant value. One has experienced a dog and thus one can conceive of a dog. Now, there are times when someone informs you of a shared experience but you doesn't recall it but that's the same as you never having had that experience. Insofar as you failing to conceive of that experience with respect to your inability to recall it is concerned, you could consider yourself as nonexistent. In other words, you not having any memory of event X = you being nonexistent in re event X. They're the same thing.

Thus, to forget is equivalent to nonexistence. In that sense, every time our memory fails, we come face to face with nonexistence or, in more familiar terms, death.

Great quotes. Particularly love the reference to Russell, he's correct — Manuel

I'm glad you connected with Russell.

I think that poetry, or poesis, is a different way of viewing the world — Jack Cummins

:fire:

painting In words — Jack Cummins

:up:

touch and grasp higher, 'truths' as well — Jack Cummins

:ok:

seeing their ideas as objective is questionable — Jack Cummins

:chin:

In poetry, words come alive; words are the medium for a specific message, yes, but unlike prose where we're simply interested in the message, in poesis, as you put it, the medium itself, the words themselves, play a vital role.

Poetry, in a sense, is just a form of rhetoric - sometimes empty and sometimes dripping with wisdom. That's a clear sign that the medium (words) has broken free of the message (information): before poetry, words had to make sense; after poetry, words could be nonsense. Many, even poets, don't realize this simple truth.

He took
She look
They forsook
It was by the book
At the bottom of a brook
All the deed of an unscrupulous crook
Said the rather sheepish looking duke
All eyes were on the cook
The cooks eyes were on the rook
The wee babe hiding in the nook
Oh, the Jedi Master Luke
Was a disguised gook
Zook
Pook
Jook
Wook
Yook
.
.
.

To put it differently, why do almost all think that Einstein (inherent determinism) was wrong and Bohr (inherent probability) was right? — Prishon

My hunch is Einstein was saying something that the math in QM didn't support while Bohr's position was true to the math of QM.

What I find most intriguing is how the math in QM could, in a sense, utter/say something that doesn't make logical sense? It basically means math and logic diverge at the quantum level of reality - what's mathematically cogent is illogical and what's logical is mathematically unsound. The puzzling bit is math is the embodiment of logic. :chin:

"how can the universe have experienced infinity, that's what's implied, to get to this point (the here and now)"

I get your point. If you roll time backwards (which is the same as reversing all velocities of the particles in it though you might counter that this doesnt reverse expansion) it all comes together again. In the future it all matter ends up accelerating away from each other to infinity. Cant there be processes like this following up one another? BB- to infinity-BB-to infinity, etc. No bound in time or space. — DeScheleSchilder

If you really think about it, when we consider the notion of cyclical time, what we're actually saying/claiming is that matter & energy, their innumerable configurations that create the universe, is cyclical. The cyclical model is a model of matter-energy and not of time. Think of it like a wheel rolling on a flat surface - the flat surface is linear time but matter-energy is the wheel, cycling through all the various permutations possible, that being finite, the process ultimately repeating.

If NDE are, on the whole, similar then that implies there's a standard exit protocol suggestive of a well-organized system in place for all the dying.

On the other hand, if NDE are random, exhibiting no common theme in them, dying is a haphazard process insofar as the brain is concerned.

Evolutionarily speaking, NDE would've been selected for because those who experience them come from a lineage of individuals who had close encounters with death but managed to survive, indicating either physical resilience/robustness or loads of luck or both, essential ingredients in the game of life. I'm not sure about this.

If NDE trait confers a survival advantage, we should see some patterns, not all are equal.

A poet is a beautician - enhances beauty and conceals ugliness.
— TheMadFool

You've been reading the wrong poets, mate. — Janus

Why? Show me a right poet and a wrong poet and maybe there's something worth discussing.

How does pattern recognition happen?
— unenlightened

Perception & Memory

1. Perceive A, parts & whole. Record in memory

2. Perceive B, parts & whole. Cross-check perception of A with memory of A. Match! Pattern. No match! No pattern.
— TheMadFool

But you left out the rest of the question.

How does the immune system recognise the breakdown products of cell death? How does a computer learn to play Go, and come up with a strategy that had not been known to humans?
— unenlightened

Are you saying that computers and enzymes have perceptions and memories? — unenlightened

I was referring to human pattern recognition by what I said and yes, the immune system and computers could be treated as functioning analogously but not necessarily identically.

The immune system and computers have their own version of memory and perception but, mind you, it doesn't look like they're thinking like human brains do.

Then why there is a problem backwards, in the past? — DeScheleSchilder

I wish I knew but I did say,

Infinity backwards into the past, however, boggles the mind; how can the universe have experienced infinity, that's what's implied, to get to this point (the here and now)? — TheMadFool

What do you think?

Poetry is to thought as makeup is to a woman. A poet is a beautician - enhances beauty and conceals ugliness. The metaphysics of beauty is simply our dissatisfaction (dukkha) with reality and thus our obsession with illusion (maya). Turns Buddhism which believes maya is dukkha on its head.

There seems to be a link between infinity and time, perhaps it's better to describe it as infinity is, paradoxically, constrained by time.

Infinity, forwards in time, into the future, is not a problem; in a sense, we have all the time in the world.

Infinity backwards into the past, however, boggles the mind; how can the universe have experienced infinity, that's what's implied, to get to this point (the here and now)?

Thus, for that reason, we're always thinking about beginnings. In short, all this talk of beginnings are symptomatic of our inability to comprehend infinity with respect to the past. Can the past be infinite? This is the question that "in the beginning..." actually seeks an answer to. So, can the past be infinite? Yes/No, Why?

I am not quite so dismissive. Banno, for instance, knows what rhetorical devices are and he isn’t naively employing them. And the bashing of religion to the glory of science isn’t confined to one generation or another, but dignified restraint is certainly on the wane. — Ennui Elucidator

To be philosophical about it, bashing is precisely what's in order, it's the essence of philosophy. The truth is impossible to establish, might as well devote our efforts in discovering whether a claim/system of beliefs is false. Falsifiability.

It looks like science is both the disease and the cure, thr former confirmed but the latter pending.
— TheMadFool
And in the mean time we have vaccination, air conditioning, interweb stuff, pain relief, surgery, vehicles. And fewer intestinal parasites.

I don't mind a bit of science. — Banno

I didn't imply science didn't have benefits but it comes at a cost, something we should've realized a long time ago given that we all seem quite familiar with the fact that there's no such thing as a free lunch.

It doesn't help that the cost I referred to above are in forms so subtle and yet so profound that we fail to make the connection between science and them. Having to breathe toxic air for driving a car is not something a normal person would count as part of a car's price. This is where our economic theories fail - they're too shallow, too limited, too simplistic for the way nature works.

And yet when we try to talk of religion we hear how science gives us keyboards and religion gives us the Taliban. Being aware that everything has its good and bad doesn’t mean that otherwise intelligent people won’t dramaticize in order to make it clear that they don’t like something. — Ennui Elucidator

Good point. There are people who are oblivious to the downsides of science or, for various reasons, ignore them. They're like little children in a toy store, completely mesmerized by the shiny, colorful and brand new playthings, unaware that all that comes at a cost, a cost that their generation will have to bear in many unpleasant ways.

DO you think we would be able to get out of this mess without science? One can't jump of the rollercoaster after it starts. — Banno

Had it not been for science (industrial revolution) we wouldn't have been in this mess. True!

Had it not been for science (climatology/ecology) we wouldn't have found out we're in a mess. True!

Had it not been for science (green technology) we wouldn't have gotten out of this mess. True/false, only time will tell.

It looks like science is both the disease and the cure, thr former confirmed but the latter pending results.

For what it's worth, here's what I think.

To try and bring to light the flaws/downsides/disadvantages of science is not something worthwhile in any sense of that word. Why? EVERYTHING has pros and cons, even children seem to know this. So there really is no point in telling people what they already know or are aware of.

It's tedious. — Banno

Somehow that might make sense to you, but...? — Banno

:lol: Carry on...

Blaming science for climate change is ridiculous. — Banno

Knives, guns, machetes, should all be imprisoned.

A bad workman blames his tools.

You could be right. However, if we are to judge Athenian democracy by the way they conducted their trials, with juries bought by the likes of Anytus, etc., then maybe Socrates had a point.

But I’m not sure Socrates was quite as “undemocratic” as he might seem. My impression is that what he and Plato really attempted to do was to bring some order to the confused society and culture they lived in, and this implied some religious and political reforms. How undemocratic these were is of course debatable. — Apollodorus

I thought Socrates' antipathy towards democracy was no secret. If memory serves, he was more in favor of wise kings. The so-called Philosopher King was a notion he invented and his student Plato developed further.

The idea looks nice on paper but is a Philosopher King a coherent concept? Could it be that what we're trying to conceive of is an impossible object, a square circle? To use a simple labor logic, if 10 people can't lift a slab of granite, how can we expect 1 person (the king) to do so? It seems like Socrates was under the impression that making a philosopher out of a king is to give the king superhuman powers, making said king able to perform feats that all the people combined (democracy) can't.

Frankly, Socrates seems to have formulated his political theory on the proverb, too many cooks spoil the broth but in doing so he's ignored the wisdom of the other adage, two heads are better than one.

As a side note, it seems probable that Socrates was also a monotheist; it squares with his political views of philosopher kings.

Little wonder Athenians wanted him dead.

It needs to be borne in mind that the meaning of "democracy" has probably changed over time since the Athenian experiment and what Socrates was writing/speaking against may not be what democracy is in the present day.

But then, no one alive has ever been dead. How do you know it, without ever having been dead? — Corvus

Good question but pay attention to the analogy - how would you conceive of a "dead" pen? What happens to a pen that has reached its end-of-life? It no longer exists, no? That can't be drawn and thus the blank page.

Wittgenstein would've said, "It's not that there is no such thing as value, it's just that "value" means different things to different people"

Axiology is about the referent of "value" and Wittgensteinianism is about the word "value". :joke:

Answered my own question! :lol:

Infinitesimals are funny things. What about velocity, dx/dt (is there mathJax here?)? You think its a real physical quantity? — Prishon

I have no idea; all I know is infinitesimals are like near death experiences: deadish but not quite dead, if you know what I mean.

My suggestion to climatologists is simple. Yes, thermometers are the gold standard, the best current science and technology can offer but they need to corroborate the alleged global warming using natural thermometers - plants, insects, molluscs, birds, animals, microbes even, that are temperature sensitive. Are there any reports of disturbances in the natural rhythm of thermosensitive creatures? Are there any disruptions in the life-cycles of such organisms? I'm just too sick and tired of watching graphs of thermometer readings even if they're state-of-the-art equipment. Something doesn't add up.

How, then, could the information be physical? — Wayfarer

All that the claim "information is physical" means is that it's either matter or energy or both, in and of themselves, or changes in them. So, either information is matter (has mass & occupies space) or energy (can do work) or are changes in mass/volume/energy.

It's unlikely that information has mass or occupies space - what they're stored on might but not the information itself. We could, for instance, record & transmit the exact same information online, via radio, or TV, or print - the mass and volume equivalent of a given piece of information varies from 0 to some finite amount. This generates a contradiction and so, information can't be matter ergo, impossible too that changes in matter can account for it.

Is information energy? Well, can we convert information into heat or other forms of energy or can we do work with it? "O" can be understood as both the number zero and the letter "O" with the same shape. Since the same amount of energy is being used to display the letter "O" or the number O but the information differs, information can't be energy. If information can't be energy, how can change in energy be information.

In conclusion, information isn't physical!

Sorry couldn't quite make link between the pen drawing its own end, and a living being conceiving its' own death. :) — Corvus

There's nothing to it. A pen can be used to draw itself when its whole and in fine condition - it can, in a sense, form a picture of itself "alive". What's death to a pen? When it's broken, no longer able to write, leaking, in pieces. That too a pen can draw i.e. again, only in a sense, a pen can picture itself dead. To push this ability of a pen to its zenith, we take the pen, place its nib on a blank sheet of paper, and...do nothing. There's nothing to draw and that's why we can't conceive of our individual extinction, there's literally nothing that can be meditated upon.

Christianity = Buddhism + God
Buddhism = Christianity - God

The paradox: Christianity has, on its side, an omniscient being (God) but Buddhism seems vastly wiser.

The term minimalism is also used to describe a trend in design and architecture, wherein the subject is reduced to its necessary elements. — Wikipedia

Dr. Johnston, the patient's condition is deteriorating rapidly. Fae's language abilities have taken a turn for the worse and I fear fae's losing fae's sense of self.

Tell me what I don't know Dr. Samuel, not what I already know.

:lol:

Prishon likey likey this! Prishon glad to hear! Prishon WTF? Shut up now! I think you are right. I haven't read the guy but I dont think he manages to tickle me. Whats in a name? Everything: Wit like stone...Prishon say me li... Prishon shut the fuck up! — Prishon

Prishon! Don't go planet of the apes on us!

My bad for the misunderstanding apparent. Religion, insofar as what I said earlier matters, stands for what seems to be missing in non-religious worldviews - that yearning to be part of something bigger as some like to put it. The closest such concepts free of religious baggage I can find are ecological movements and Niel deGrasse Tyson's Comsic Perspective.
— TheMadFool

Yearning to be part of something bigger? Dunno bout them but Prishon donot wanna be part of bigger thing. Prishon wonders how all to be came!

Neil deGrasse free of religious bagage? His whole being IS the bagage he must carry everyday like a burden... like Jesus had to carry that Godd":$#d cross of his!

Sorry for noticing a spelling mistake, but is deGrasse comsic? Sick about his own com? — Prishon

Niel deGrasse Tyson, in one interview, admits that the universe could be a simulation but then he takes utmost care to distances himself from religion. If God exists, isn't the universe a simulation?

...and we were so close... — Banno

I don't know what it is but my gut instincts tell me that Wittgenstein's wrong. I know you idolize him (I read your profile) and I hope we can discusss Wittgenstein's theories once I have a good handle on his ideas. Until then, kindly excuse my comments on Wittgenstein as more funny than serious. Thanks. Good day.

And your point is –? — 180 Proof

The image in the mirror, a good mirror, is perfect - every scar, every beauty spot, every thing, is exactly where it's supposed to be - and yet one, humans, recognizes it as self and one, monkeys, see it as an other.

Reminds me of reincarnation. If you've had another face, another body, in another life, the image you see in the mirror won't match the image of yourself you have in your head. You will then fail to identify with your own reflection. Do animals reincarnate? A viable hypothesis for failing the mirror test and its analogs. The person in the mirror is a stranger and yet...not!

:chin: Hmmmmm.

:lol: I'll now stop my speculations on Wittgenstein, download his books, and read them.

Read Witty's PI, Fool (at least the first half of it). — 180 Proof

:ok:

"Strangers"? I'm not following you. — 180 Proof

A rhesus monkey looks at a perfect hi-fi image of itself when it looks into a mirror but for the monkey, the image is another rhesus monkey, a stranger.

Don't mistake silence for absence. The secular world if full of nods and winks towards what we might call the numinous. The difference is not making claims to knowledge.

Puts me in mind of the Dave Allan joke:
The Pope and an atheist are having a discussion...

and it slowly gets more and more heated until eventually the Pope can't take it anymore and he says to the atheist - "You are like a man who is blindfolded, in a dark room who is looking for a black cat that isn't there."

The atheist laughs and says - "With all due respect, we sound awfully similar. You are like a man who is blindfolded, in a dark room who is looking for a black cat that isn't there but the difference is you think you've found it. — Banno

Wise words! The numinous, yes, that's the apposite word.

Read the opening of PI where he explicitly rejects "the more widely held" (Adamic / Augustinian) "essence of words" and thereby investigates 'usage-meaning' instead. "Use" is the broad alternative to the very narrow scope of "essence" and is not "auxiliary" as far as Witty is concerned. — 180 Proof

Then that's Wittgenstein's problem, no? To have multiple referents doesn't imply that there are no referents - the arbitrary nature of how we assign meaning to words doesn't imply no essence was/is implied.

My hunch is Wittgenstein conflates the abscence of a single referent for a word with no referent for that word. That's like saying "John" could refer to any of 3 Johns in a room and so "John" doesn't refer to anyone. It doesn't make sense to me at all.