Prove P via Reductio Ad Absurdum.

(1) $\neg P$ [assume]
.
.
.
( n ) $\bot$
(n + 1). $\neg P \to \bot$[1 to n, CP]
(n + 2). $\neg\neg P \lor \bot$ [(n + 1) Imp]
(n + 3). $P \lor \bot$ [(n + 2) DN]
(n + 4). $\neg \bot$ [LNC]
(n + 5). $P$ [(n + 3), (n + 4), DS]

The DIY craze (80s-90s) had something to do with post-apocalyptic survival strategies people were thinking up during the US-Soviet nuclear standoff. It was no longer enough to be just able to use machines, it was vital that we know how they work and how to repair/maintain/build them. Machines had to be demystified, their intricate design and mechanisms hadta be, well, declassified in order to ensure a large pool of autodidactic experts who could take up the mantle of deceased doyens if and when necessary. :snicker:

The lion (the electric chair) or the hyenas (the firing squad)? How do you wanna die? A no-win situation. :chin: :snicker:

:up: My point was we shouldn't take the moral high ground because luck/chance has a significant role in our ethical lives.

Yep, I agree, too much to know and not enough personal brain space to store it nor time to assimilate it.
Maybe that's part of the problem, we have so much getting thrown at us that it's tough to even know where the real threats are coming from. — universeness

Aye! Like I once said, true/not, we're, each one of us, the best we can be given our circumstances. So if someone doesn't give a flyin' f**k about the truth or reason or ethics then we shouldn't hold that against that someone. He can't help but be the way he is; nature and nurture conspired to make him like that. Am I being too kind, too soft, too Dr. Pangloss when I adop this attitude?

Keeping oneself well-informed isn't easy at all.

If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you do, you're misinformed. — Mark Twain

Well, it is what it is, oui mon ami? Do you know the student syndrome? Assignments are postponed until the 11^th hour! It's part of our psychology it seems to not act until a situation becomes critical.

Good point. So determinism & unpredictable and therefore empirical testing is not going to help us settle the matter.

However, the dice & balls scenario is actually predictable if we get our hands on all the relevant info, oui monsieur? That means free will can be experimentally tested for - it should manifest as random chaos or something like that in my humble opinion. Kinda like no hidden variables in QM.

Philosophical brinkmanship happens, in my humble opinion, when someone commits to a creed and becomes its strong proponent, willing to fight to the death to win supporters.

While I mentioned philosophical martyrs in my previous post, the kind of people who I mention im the previous paragraph aren't exactly them. A philosophical shaheed is one who sacrifices himself for truth/reason while a philosophical fanatic is simply someone who has consecrated his life to a system of philosophical beliefs whether it's true or reasonable.

As for might is right, this is an unfortunate state of affairs we have to simply put up with at the moment. Philosophical martyrs will, at one point or another, tackle it effectively.

Brand loyalty is one way to combat cartels - the members would havta compete then, to win over customers i.e. offer the best at reasonable prices. I dunno!

Philosophical brinkmanship! Sounds dangerous and being rational, being a truthseeker, comes with risks to life and limb. How many people have laid down their lives for logos (reason) and veritas (truth)? More than you can count surely! Remember Socrates, the father of Western philosophy, was executed! Aristotle fled Athens saying he wouldn't allow Athens to sin twice against philosophy (by being put to death as well).

Atheism, a philosophical movement grounded in logic and skepticism has its own list of martyrs, comparable to religion's own.

No one is hated more than he who speaks the truth. — Plato

The free will-determinism issue is well beyond my ken. I asked around but to my surprise very few are willing to share their findings on the topic; either that or no one knows what it's all about.

Free will vs. determinism

1. Why isn't there even an attempt to prove free will?

2. Can free will be tested for i.e. is it an empirical claim?

3. Is free will unprovable in principle or is it just a case of INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER?

4. Left to the reader as an exercise.

If I see an egoist, it relieves me - one less person to worry about, he can take care of himself.

If I see an altruist, it comforts me - someone's watching my back, someone who'll come to my aid in my darkest hour.

My take on psychiatry: It's a question not of kind but of degree. For instance, grief (maybe intense and lasts a few months after which it's business as usual) is normal but depression (intense + lasts for years) is not. The long and short of it - time & intensity of mental & emotional states separates the well from the unwell i.e. we're all mad, but for different durations.

Off topic?

A thousand apologies. — Ranjeet

Syād ...
:up: Marxism suffers from the same malady that Christianity & Islam does - the belief, conviction rather, that it is absolutely correct, it is the truth with a capital T. Any opposition then instantly amounts to (political) heresy, to be be dealt with an iron hand. This zero tolerance, hardline, attitude then becomes the spawining ground for dictators.

I don't understand this. It's not the French part I have trouble with. It is the English text that I can't make heads or tails out of.

For instance, I've never encountered an "incredulity fallacy". I am unfamiliar with that concept. Please explain and give a typical, educational example.

How can you commit something from something? You commit things TO, not FROM.

Don't let's? Let's not use unconventional grammar. — god must be atheist

Argument from incredulity/Divine Fallacy

As for bad grammar, mea culpa. It sounded right to me; perchance it's a dialectical variant of "let's not". I dunno.

There is a world in which predestination is true & determinism is false, oui? Don't let's commit the argument from incredulity fallacy, oui mes amies?

I couldn't have explained it better! — javi2541997

:smile:

Gracias for the kind words. According to Pyrrhonists, skepticism is supposed to lead to inner peace (ataraxia), but speaking from experience, I'd havta go with Augustine who said doubt can't be a pleasant state of mind.

Syat ... a paradox then. The system that puts people first leads to despotism of the worst kind. Have you heard of Gödel's loophole? Maybe something similar is going on with socialism & communism - there's a bug in it.

Interesting terminology! — javi2541997

I'm a big fan of skepticism. :grin:

Is Marxism hijackable? That, my friend, is the right question. If it is then something's wrong with it, oui mes amies? Using simple logic here.

Syād/Syat = Maybe/Perchance/Perhaps.

Visit anekantavada (non-one-sidedness) page, Wikipedia, for more.

From one naya, profanity, from another, liberty. C'est la vie, mon ami! We either embrace freedom in every possible manner and at the same time desecrate or we curb our enthusiasm, in doing so show some respect for the sacred. Tough call, oui mes amies?

One person, a woman, once reprimanded me, rather obliquely, that, basically, there's eating and there's dining - two very different things! No points for guessing whether I was eating or dining at the table.

Syād ...

Syād ... The Matrix hypothesis is when skepticism becomes fun.

As long we h. sapiens, like every other metabolically complex organism, must live by consuming corpses, "ahisma" will remain just another mirage in the desert of the real. Rather, mi amigo, conatus :point: amor fati! — 180 Proof

Syād, true! Allow/permit evolution, sensu latissimo, to do its thing.

Syat ...

What was taken for real (out there, distinct and separate from us) is being questioned; it could all be a hallucination (in our heads). As for considering the world tentatively/provisionally real, I'm all for it, but note, the damage is already done.

Syat, I quite like the idea of evolutionary humanism. Despite the fact that Yuval Noah Harari (Israeli historian who penned the sutra titled Sapiens) calls humans the most prolific serial killer the world has ever seen (probably referring to the human-induced Holocene extinction), humans are also the only animal with a moral compass, a sense of right and wrong. We will continue to murder no doubt, but we've now reached the stage where we want to do it gently (Forrester's paradox, humane killing) and the endpoint of this if we stay on course is ahimsa.

Syat, subjective opinions tend to cancel each other out while objective facts tend to last, quite literally forever. Dialectics is the setting in which issues are purged of subjectivity and what's left is objectivity.

You’re overusing this. FYI. — Xtrix

Syat ... true!

Syād ...

Corporations trump the state (business lobbies).
The state trumps the church (separation of church & state).
The church trumps corporations (ethics & commerce).

Rock-paper-scissors!

Syād, if governments can play around with taxes to win votes, it means taxes have no logic to them. I would recommend that taxes be well-reasoned to, eliminating a powerful bargaining chip from the politicians' arsenal.

Taxes, they say, are required to run the government, for upkeep of basic services, to finance (new) projects that benefit the community, you get the idea.

Syād, if people are grumbling about taxes it means the government hasn't quite explained the rationale behind taxes. If income tax is say x%, the powers that be have to provide an exegesis on why x% and not y% or z%. If taxes vary with income, this too has to be thoroughly worked out and made public. If this isn't done, you'll never see the end of complaints about taxes. :snicker:

Syād, post-Agrippa('s trilemma) life has been tough for dogmatists. The quest to find a firm foundation for knowledge, the epistemic bedrock as it were, is an ongoing enterprise and the 3 approaches (infinitism, foundationalism, coherentism) still don't qualify as safe harbor. Instead of solving the problem, they merely ignore it. It's kinda like a patient who visits a doctor complaining of a headache, and the doctor, instead of prescribing medication, tells the fellow that, despite the pulsating waves of pain, there's no headache! :snicker:

It would have to be a pretty lousy simulation if the people in it were constantly pointing out they were in a simulation. — Cheshire

:rofl: Syād, on point! Nevertheless, we're unable to distinguish real vs. unreal which is, to the coder/programmer behind the sim, a compliment, oui mon ami?

Syād, on point! My view on the matter was based on anecdotal evidence, valid for only one individual, viz. the experiencer. I guess one's experiences are customizable to some extent and therein lies the rub, oui mon ami?

A Zen koan is basically an input the brain can't handle - am I correct? If so overthinking is Koanesque because one usually overthinks when the problem is too complex to process or one is too dumb to handle what could very well be quite simple to analyze.

As the apocryphal narrative goes, Isaac Newton made two separate doors, one for momma cat and one for her kittens. We should, nay, we havta, do that, oui me amies? Syād, goes without saying.

Syād, both groups of people might wanna leave due to, as weird as this sounds, ennui.

Syād ...

Foreknowledge, how does that work? Does it necessarily imply determinism i.e. negate free will? Can I predict what a person x will do in a given situation based on what kind of person x is? Does a person have any say on that score i.e. does x have a choice? Even if x can choose, x's character is knowable to some extent and for that reason x is predictable proportionately.