You don't have access to Wikipedia? — Banno

:lol: On a more serious note, Wikipedia, according to many, is unreliable.

pedophilia, rape, infanticide and murder — Pallab Behari Chaklanabis

All these allegedly severe moral transgressions occur, are commonplace, in non-human animal communities. Draw your own conclusions.

suffering — Jack Cummins

The idea is to fit our minds into the way the world is and not to try making the world fit into our minds. Many have suffered not knowing that difference, including myself. Everyone it seems has an idea about the world, specifically as concerns how it should be. Granted even that such a mindset has been the driving force of what we call progress and yet, true or not, this seems only a brief lull in the storm for even greater challenges may be just around the corner assuming of course that we're not mistaken about progress and that it is truly what people think it is - progress.

Actually, the whole experience of suffering is the starting point for searching in many ways. — Jack Cummins

You're right about that. Both western and eastern philosophy began from a sense of general dissatisfaction/discontentment with life, the way people were living, thinking, and interacting among themselves and with the world. What were the specifics of this dissatisfaction/discontentment? Beginning with bad reasoning and the fantastical ideas about the world and ourselves it spawns, there were a whole lot of reasons for philosophers to be dissatisfied with. As it seems to me, suffering - its causes, what perpetuates it - is in part, if not entirely so, due to warped, false, and harmful weltanschauungs generated by irrationality and its loyal henchman ignorance. To early philosophers then, the solution to suffering was to be found in rationality and knowledge thus gained. The idea, it seems, was/is to discover truths about the world and ourselves in order to either put to service those that were in our favor and to accept with stoicism those that weren't. The objective in doing this being to effectively deal with anxiety, angst, pain (suffering) that to philosphers arise from mistaken views of the world and ourselves. Thus, Gnōthi Seauton - if we're unhappy, sad, suffering, the fault lies in us for it seems we have unrealistic expectations of the world and ourselves, expectations that bespeak minds that are out of touch with reality. Definitely not a good thing!

What is terrible is easy to endure — Jack Cummins

I had my doubts about that one but why split hairs. Obviously, Diogenes Laërtius hadn't seen it all. To be fair though, ceteris paribus, this, the fourth remedy covers ordinary people's lives, no? For example, doesn't it apply to you?

Well, if the machine were random, it could display anything from 0000000000 to 9999999999 at the designated date every year. The possibility space includes the number 5555555555 and it being the first number displayed doesn't, in any way, aid us in deciding whether the machine is a true random number generator or not. We would need a sample of numbers over a very long time to come to that conclusion because only from comparing the frequency of each digit to theoretical probability calculations can we make an inference of this sort.

Perhaps what threw you off and made you ask this question was that all the ten numbers are 5, perhaps reminding you of slot machines whose jackpot win sequence is usually a series of identical digits. This creates an illusion that from, say, a list of numbers from 000 to 999, to get numbers like 111, 222, 333, 444, you get the idea, are rarer or special or require skill or for the laws of chance to be violated i.e. we believe, erroneously, that we can't get numbers like these by chance. Wrong! getting 5555555555 or 6666666666 or 1111111111 or similar repeating digits is as likely as getting numbers like 9478321564 with non-repeating digits. The bottom line - there's nothing fishy going on with 5555555555.

:ok:

There was a social phenomena during the mid 20th century, called ‘the sexual revolution’. As I’m born in the fifties, I’m aware of it, but many born in the 70’s and afterwards aren’t aware of it, because it’s become the new normal. But at the time, the sexual revolution was seen as a complete upheaval and overthrowing of prior mores regarding sexuality, marriage, procreation, family, and so on. One of the major factors was the introduction of contraceptives, of course, which severed the link between sexual intercourse and procreation. Another was sexual liberation, which basically declared that sexual pleasure and sexual identity were fundamental human rights, on par with ethnicity or religion.

Among the antecedents, I think Freud’s theories were a major factor. He introduced the notion that libido is the basic drive of all life, and that to repress it or deny it was the cause of neuroses and other ills. I think everyone now believes that. Even though much of Freud has now been forgotten, that element became well and truly embedded in the collective culture. Other elements were the Alfred Kinsey and Masters & Johnson studies of ‘sexology’. Conservatives say that Kinsey was an advocate of deviant sexuality saying that, for instance, he documented what it took to induce orgasms in children and observing the sexual activities of co-workers and peers.

Nowadays, most of the media regard the new normal as, well, normal. The only people who really talk about the sexual revolution in other-than-approving terms tend to be religious or social conservatives who are easily depicted as oppressors and enemies of freedom.

Remember how Alduous Huxley depicted sexuality in Brave New World. Women were ‘pneumatic’ and sex a form of recreational activity with no implied moral bond or parental obligation. Well, we’re living the brave, new dream. Internet porn is an aspect of it, and an incubator for it. — Wayfarer

Interesting.

I've skimmed through the Wikipedia entries on Sigmund Freud, Alfred Kinsey, and sexology. Informative but only to extent that it held my attention which, oddly, wasn't for too long. I suppose when you make sex into a science as sexology attempts to it puts some distance between our sex drive and sex itself, making sexology not in the least bit arousing for the nether regions; nevertheless sexology is a subject in its own right - complete with doctoral degrees and serious research - and should, hopefully, provide us not only tips and tricks on how to get the best out of coitus but also vital information on sex within a much broader context such as society, disease (STD, infertility, impotence, rape, etc.), economy, family, age groups, and in religion. I'm sure sexologist researchers have done all of that but I'm going out on a limb here and say they forgot to investigate the religion angle. This is surprising since religions, at least the ones I have some idea of, make what goes on in our bedrooms their sacred business.

How does pronography fit into all of that? Well, for my money, I'd say that all that's happened is the previous opaque walls that enclosed our sexual appetites have now been replaced with transparent, see-through glass. In other words, there's nothing that wasn't already there before; it's just that with the sexual revolution, it can all be seen now. This applies to pornography too; pornography is, all said and done, fantasizing and there's no doubt at all that people could fantasize, have pornographic thoughts, well before the advent of film. This throws a spanner in the works of researchers who want to study the effect of pornography because sexual fantasizing (cheap pornography) was already on the scene much before what now passes as porn. There's no way there can be any difference that can be described in terms of before porn and after porn because the distinction doesn't exist.

My life-long aspiration :point: gnóthi seautón ... panta rhei ... pan metron ariston ... tetrapharmakos —> aponia, ataraxia (i.e. eudaimonia) ... apatheia ... — 180 Proof

Gnōthi seauton: Know thyself. I never quite understood what it means.

Is it a call to understand one's strengths and weaknesses and chart one's course through life based on that knowledge? All to do with eudaimonia? That's sound advice if you ask me.

Does it prod us to self-reflection that involves going beyond the merely practical aspects of living (above) and diving deeper into the mind to discover what the mind itself is, the mind's relationship with the body, and how the person (mind & body) interacts or should interact with other persons and the world at large? Does it assume, for instance, that the mind is a reflection of the universe and to understand it, is to understand the universe itself?

Panta rhei: Everything flows

Change is the only constant — Heraclitus

Change is an illusion — Parmenides

:chin:

Don't forget Zeno and his paradoxes.


Pan metron ariston: In all things, moderation is best

:up: :100:

Easy to say, hard to do.

Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives — Shakespeare

Do as I say, not as I do — God

Tetrapharmakos: Four-part remedy

1. Don't fear god.

2. Don't worry about death

3. What is good is easy to get

4. What is terrible is easy to endure

:up: Pearls of wisdom!

Aponia: Absence of pain (as the greatest pleasure). I really like this for it measures pleasure with pain and thus it avoids the problem of infinite pleasure as the greatest pleasure. It's like defining sweetness in terms of bitterness and the sweetest substance would simply be the absence of bitterness and we don't have to go through the trouble of looking for a sweet sweetest substance. You get the idea.

Ataraxia: A state of equanimity/tranquility achieved, in my humble opinion, by appreciating the good and coming to terms with the bad. It quite possibly refers to being happy about all that's favorable and learning to accept all that's inevitable.

Eudaimonia: Flourishing/prosperity. Analogous to flowers in a garden. Under the right conditions, the seeds planted reach their full potential; for instance, a rose seed becoming an ideal or the perfect rose.

Apatheia: Undisturbed by the passions. Perhaps this refusal to be swayed by emotions, good or bad, is grounded in the fact that emotions, whether pleasant or unplesant, tend to cloud one's judgment. A glance at a list of informal fallacies should suffice to prove this point.


Wonderful. I feel rejuvenated and inspired after reading all this. Thanks

I remember reading one of those psychiatry handbooks my friend, who's a doctor, used for exam preparations. Being a handbook the letters were really tiny but not unreadable. On the whole its format was familiar except for one feature - short accounts of real mental patients. One such story was about a lady whose house was near an airport. She suffered from delusions of grandeur and believed herself to be royalty. She had built her whole life around that delusion ignoring minor and major incidents that would've contradicted it. Sometime later she saw a very good shrink who managed to successfully treated her delusion - she realized that she wasn't royalty after all. Fastforward a couple of months and she promptly killed herself.

Interesting story, no? This woman was living a lie and the lie was keeping her alive. After she discovered the truth, life became unbearable enough to make her commit suicide. The falsehood/lie/delusion was what sustained her will to live. This ain't empowerment in any sense of that word but it sure does make your thesis - believe what empowers you - relatable.

That is sadly the case today. — Thinking

Lies must dress up as truths, if not, lies are worthless.

I have seen people play rugby of their own free will — unenlightened

I've seen rugby players wearing helmets :lol:

Conversely, if masochists have anything to say about it, not all painful things are bad. — NOS4A2

Not really, I have this sneaking suspicion that masochism is a myth.

Just needed to get this off my chest. It's too funny to resist.

Socrates aka the father of western philosophy was Greek, ugly(take a look at his bust) and also a self-avowed gadfly, annoying everybody with his deep nevertheless embarassing questions.

Thus, in a sense, a real philosopher is any hideous and annoyinng Greek you happen to cross paths with.

No comment.

What feels good to you might not feel good to someone else — TaySan

This sentiment is precisely what I wanted to express earlier. The issue of pornography - how the demand for it sustains a large-scale industry and how, simultaneously, there are many are against it - brings to the fore a very intriguing facet to hedonism-based morality which is, if you haven't guessed already, that not all pleasurable things are good. The puzzle of pornography - how well it runs and how bad we feel because of that - is just one of the many ways in which the marriage between hedonism and morality falls apart.

What's your take on how eerily similar fantasy and virtual reality is? If fantasies are good in that they're legitimate modes of experience then shouldn't we all jack into The Matrix and live our lives in a simulation that's to our tastes? What ramifications, if any, for Robert Nozick's Experience Machine

people are too damn lazy. — synthesis

You might be confusing efficiency with laziness. If a person can do more than another person in the same time, you might mistake the more efficient one as a lazy bum.

We've already collapsed, friend; like a beheaded corpse, 'global civilization' is only still twitching ... Read e.g. Jared Diamond, Bill McGribbin, Alan Weisman, et al. — 180 Proof

:up: :clap: :lol:

The earth is in its death throes. How long until that sinks in?

Are choices already in your head, do you actually contribute anything to them,
Are you just observing choices that are already made? — Huh

Choices can be purely mental/internal as when I have concepts/hypotheses/beliefs to choose from and exclusively worldly/external as when I'm asked to choose among physical objects put before me.

no good reasons for believing — Pantagruel

Doesn't mean that there are good reasons for disbelieving either.

I'm agnostic.

@Wayfarer

What would be good reasons to believe in god? The way atheists oppose belief in the divine, ignoring multiple arguments from the theist camp, I'm left with the impression that nothing less than an one-to-one meeting with god, complete with physical contact and maybe an exchange of words, will suffice as proof of god. This kind of "close encounter of the third kind" proof I call direct evidence of the divine.

Yet, these same atheists who demand a "close encounter of the third kind" vis-à-vis god happily accept and publicly profess a lot of scientific claims, claims that contradict scripture, based on indirect evidence i.e. evidence that rely on deducing the past from the present.

This is like a person who says aliens exist because fae saw a UFO but demands that others who have the same belief have evidence of an actual encounter with aliens in flesh and blood or whatever passes for those in alien biology.

Well you might leave everything worldly behind, but if you don't voice your ideas it will die with you. — FlaccidDoor

What if all the ideas that I have were already known by those who came before me and what if they expressed it better?

What exactly is free will? — Huh

According to Britannica: Free will, in humans, the power or capacity to choose among alternatives or to act in certain situations independently of natural, social, or divine restraints.

I guess you were asking for the concept. — javi2541997

What exactly is choosing? — Huh

Given, say, two mutually exclusive choices, A and B.

To want one of A and B is what choosing is.

Probability is uncertainty.

If x + 1 = 1, then I'm absolutely certain, I have no doubts whatsoever, that x = 0. Probability has no role here.

On the other hand, if 5 < x + 1 < 10 where x is an integer, x could be 5 or 6 or 7 or 8. I'm uncertain of x's value. Probability enters the picture and without any further information, the probability that x = 5 is 1/4 = 25%. The probability that x >= 6 is 2/4 = 1/2 = 50%.

Hehe. I did not think of it that way, but I guess that's what that is. — god must be atheist

It was a well-crafted sentence with a meaning of deep significance to me. Given any proposition and that's what our weltanschauungs are made of, right?, we have only "three" choices: 1. assert its truth or 2. deny its truth or 3. ambivalence. Your opinion, in brackets, is: assert its truth (wrong!), deny its truth (wrong again!), and ambivalence (how silly!). Thus, for any proposition the actual choices are 1. to be wrong or 2. to be silly. That's a profound insight for the simple reason that these two - the first, failing to discover truth/falsity and the second, spewing silly nonsense - are the stuff of philosophers' nightmares.

Because things that feel good short-term can cause damage long-term. — TaySan

Truth be told, sex can be viewed as a very strategic move by nature to keep the game alive so to speak. Nature must keep the torch of life burning against nigh impossible odds.

This reminds me of a Richard Feynman video on how AI tackles problems. The story goes that there's a naval battle video game and the choices offered to players are an assortment of ships, small, medium, big, each with its own strengths and weaknesses. Human players tended to build navies that had a mix of ship types and whoever had the best combinations of warships won the PVP battles.

An AI was given the opportunity to play with the specific command to win as many games as possible. What did the AI do? It simply created a navy with thousands upon thousands of tiny gunboats and, as directed, it won all the games against even the best human players.

Nature, much like the AI in the story above, has come up with a similar approach. Obstacles to life are innumerable and also unpredictable. How does nature ensure a win in a battle between life and everything that wants to end it? Sheer numbers and that can only be had through sex, sex, and more sex.

Basically, sex is a very simple but highly effective long-term strategem to ensure life can overcome obstacles in its path with overwhelming numbers.

Am I off-topic?

This is one of those times when I wish I could think better. I suppose the first order of business is to understand the problem. What in god's name is overpopulation? The simplest answer seems to be that there's now more people on earth than the earth can support or, more accurately, the global population is fast approaching the carrying capacity of our planet. The reason why that should worry us is that the consequences are severe - famines, wars, and disease, and I haven't even started on global ecological environment.

So, we have a major issue on our hands - the earth won't be able to sustain humanity if it continues to grow in numbers at the rate it is. We need to act ASAP if we're to postpone, preferably cancel, our appointment with tragedy on such a scale that all the trials humans have endured up until now will be seem childishly trivial.

There's no reason to doubt that we've all come to the same conclusion - the alarming rate at which the size of the human population is growing begs our immediate attention and demands urgent action. At this point I feel a sense of satisfaction but then I quickly realize though I know we have to do something quickly, I know not what exactly what that something is.

Do we take the soft approach, initiate a global awareness campaign on overpopulation and hope that people will make the right choices whatever that may look like or do we take a hardline approach that may involve anything from policies styled along China's one-child rule to mass sterilization? I guess it would depend on how immediate our perception of the dangers of overpopulation is.

Perhaps, as some might believe, there's no need for any imtervention at all. Nature might offer its own solution to the specter of overpopulation by, for instance, reducing fertility rates in future generations or by inducing a natural form of infertility. Of the former I have no hard data but of the latter, I refer the reader to the thoroughly studied phenomenon of lactational amenorrhea. Google for details.

Last but not the least, technology, the crown jewel of humanity, might be able to offer a way out of this quagmire e.g. terraforming Mars can ease the burden that, as of now, is planet earth's.

:smile: I'm serious!

As if one has a choice! — unenlightened

:up:

Death is a choice...for some at least but only when it comes to when and...quite possibly there are some among us for whom it's an if question too.

I don't think you need help with that one.
I see you'll soon be celebrating TPF membership of 5yrs.
Congrats — Amity

Three-quarters of that time was spent in an oppressive haze of confusion. Believe me, I need all the help I can get. Thanks though and felicitations to you too :party:

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts — Amity

Funny, I don't see the relevance but that's probably just me.

Further careful thought and reflection required. — Amity

How might I do that? Any ideas?

Did you really think that I required proof of the existence of paradoxes in the TTC ? — Amity

No. Why?

Thanks for a valuable contribution. — Amity

Anytime although I don't see myself as that.

That's a greedy one. How would that look? would it be like an autobiography? — FlaccidDoor

But by E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-NG I didn't mean to leave everything to someone or some group. I meant it in the sense that when I die, I must/have to/for certain leave E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G to....

Thank you. It appears that either I'm a very bad referee/judge - ever ready to look the other way when rules are being violated or I'm criminally oriented - I don't mind bending/breaking the rules.

Nevertheless, I feel math can be applied to philosophy and all it takes is to quantify many of the underlying principles of philosophy and I'm fairly certain such is possible. Take for instance the notions of compatibility/incompatibility of ideas/systems of beliefs. Even as a non-mathematician I can imagine a scale starting from 0 to 2, with 0 being incompatible, 2 being compatible and 1 being somewhat compatible. You get the idea, right.

Plus, now is a good time I suppose to pull out the big guns: utilitarianism and the felicific calculus (Google will take you to the relevant sources). This is just a sample by the way, there maybe a lot more areas in philosophy that may have been mathematized. Which reminds me, science, a fully mathematized subject, began as natural philosophy.

So what would you leave behind if anything and why? — FlaccidDoor

A complementary set of books on critical thinking.

expert — synthesis

The words, "expert" and "experience" share the same word root which is "experiri" whose meaning is "TRY". By that token, anyone who tries even for the very first time is an experienced expert :lol:

Jokes aside, experts must have 1) knowledge at the level of principles governing the objects and phenomena that make up their domain and 2) hands-on experience, a good track record insofar as handling real-life situations that involve their area of expertise.

In short, an expert is a knowledgeable and experienced person. The problem is that our youth is spent absorbing knowledge and our dotage is spent gaining experience and so, quite naturally, we're all dead by the time the word "expert" is applicable to us.

Looking for an expert? Ask for directions to the nearest (to save time) mortuary.

So what would you leave behind if anything and why? — FlaccidDoor

E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G!

With a world full of disinformation — Thinking

You forget that lies must mimic truths for them to be a force we must reckon with.

What constitutes truth anyway?
— Jesting Pilate

It's what they crucify you for speaking. — unenlightened

Keep it coming! :up:

What do you think. Is porn bad for us? — TaySan

If it's good, why is there an outcry against it? If it's bad how did it become a multi-billion dollar franchise?

Ambivalence is silly, denial or assertion is wrong. — god must be atheist

So, no matter what we do, we lose. Wicked! I like it. This will go into my favorite quotes collection. Thanks

What to think ? But I wonder if you really meant what to think about — Jack Cummins

They mean the same thing to me. Maybe not but then you'll have to edify me on the difference.