I feel that technology is killing us more then it is helping but I can't see this world giving up it's beloved technology any time soon — MAYAEL

I hear ya, man. As someone who took a hiatus from city life, I had half an acre to myself to live in the bare minimum. I slept well and woke up with mental brightness and lots of energy to do plantings, build things, and fucking..cook..real food! I was also reading books, writing, and couldn't care less about the rest of the world. My hearing got sensitive -- I could hear sounds a lot louder. I didn't allow noise to invade my abode and my existence.

Then I went back to civilization. First thing that bothered me were sounds of loud TV, the mower, and house alarms.

You’re a fortunate man if you’ve never had to encounter something that you detest. I wish I was that lucky. — Average

Encounter is the wrong word. Try imagine. We could have a notion of perfection. Imagine something perfect. Although, I want to take back what I said that I detest perfection. There are a few things in life that are perfect, whose qualities I do not detest:

Eggs -- are perfect. The shape, size, and nutritional value.

Small birds are perfect, like hummingbirds.

The moon looks perfect.

Some pine trees are perfect.

Some bells sound perfect -- like the big church bells.

Some rock formations are perfect. The outcroppings of boulders are perfect to me.

I don't know what to make of your post because all the examples you gave are abuse of the moral senses. Before we could talk about that, let's talk about what had already been considered moral judgments.

Is it possible to live a life that is flawless or are we destined to live lives that are less than ideal? — Average

I detest perfection -- whatever that means since I don't think I have encountered perfection ever. And I'm not even sure what a flawless life is. It's weird to use it in this context since we know we can't control everything in our life to make it work the way we envision.
That said, I have no attraction to perfection. I am drawn to "flawed" people, whose flaws make them interesting. I am also fascinated by those whose bad decisions in life didn't deter them from continuing the path they've chosen and overcoming it.
People who try to live a perfect life is boring to me.

Is it really philosophically correct to take for granted that the party who feels wronged is automatically the arbiter of morality? — baker

You do know what I mean. Are you saying that rape is justified sometimes? lol.
No one could say, yes I raped her as a self-defense.

How about we think before we take the neutral position or the it-depends position.

What this discussion is lacking is an acknowledgment of the role of the power differential in moral judgments.

The one who can punish is in the position of power.
If punishment is justified, as a matter of principle, then might makes right. Do you want to go in that direction? — baker

First of all, I don't understand your post. Power differential in moral judgments -- what's that? Say we have a court functioning with integrity. Is it really that hard to discern fault here?

Why? I expect no such thing from anyone, least ways family members, as those are the most arbitrary relationships in one's entire life. I never did understand this. — Garrett Travers

Liar! Or you're a school of fish! Gratitude is a common knowledge. :smirk:

Like hell you don’t care. There’s a lot of anger and resentment in your choice of words here. — Possibility

That's what I get, too, from his post.

Time to say something about this:

Hey guys! When you sound bitter, but you're not aware in your tone of voice that you sound bitter, then that means your natural emotion is showing. Often we don't smell our own fear. But others can.

Not to beat a dead horse or parse words, but I think reciprocity would be included as a way to show gratitude. That's just the way I think I guess. — Tex

You're mistaking necessity for sufficiency in reasoning. Reciprocity is sufficient to show gratitude, but showing gratitude does not necessarily contain reciprocity. I'll give you an example: We show gratitude to our parents for raising us. But this gratitude is never a reciprocity in the sense that we do perform an act in exchange to make it a mutual benefit. A true reciprocity is between friends extending a favor and returning a favor. Another example is a business deal.

but I can't shake the feeling that, now that this person has the means, that reciprocity would at least enter the person's mind and then act on it. How could it not, is the question I ask myself. — Tex

It's a family member, so there's a whole different mindset. The reciprocity bias was never there to begin with. Gratitude is what one expects from a family member. Not reciprocity. That person didn't have gratitude. Very common occurrence. But, let's talk about you. Are you feeling this way because it is actually about the money but you're in denial? Let's say he never got the windfall, but he also never thanked you, and never showed up for your birthday, your most important occasion, or for your funeral. How do you feel now? Would you be as bitter?

Explain this.... How so? Asshole? He asked for money, it was given to him. Do you think that purchased a part of him to be owned and an expectation to behave in a certain way towards the giver of the largesse? — Garrett Travers

No, the person was an asshole even before I started giving money, is what I meant. I also said I don't feel anything when helping that person. So, there's that lack of expectation on my part.

I've always given and not asked/implied for anything and have never brought it up ever again. Just gave and that's that. — Tex

Herein lies the problem. If you must give, give wisely. Ask questions. I don't know what's your relationship with this person, but if they're family members, then there's your answer -- lack of reciprocity bias because either they feel entitled to your money, or to their mind you just have too much money.

Let's assume though that this person is not a family member:

If you had been doing this for years to the same person, you made it clear to that person that it never hurt you to help him, so his reciprocity bias had become neutral -- he never developed the need to reciprocate. Nor did he try to think, he couldn't possibly repay you so he must stop asking.

No matter how genuine his needs were, you were the enabler of such behavior.

Ethics wise -- nothing to be said. But etiquette, yes he violated this cultural norm.

Just tell yourself -- that money you gave him was made based purely on your own volition. You were not forced to part ways with the money. The windfall he got, that's never your money, so there was never a loss there either.

Do this. Stop seeing or talking to that person. It could be years or never that he might want to contact you. That would be fun times.

As someone who has been helping another person myself -- I'll tell you that that person is an asshole, yet I do not feel anything when parting with my money and sending over electronically, and paying the wire fee. I get a text, and I just do it. When I'm not in good mood, and I get a text for money help, I ignore it. Then the next time I get a text, I just send it. I really feel numbed about this person. I don't tell this to anyone in my family as this is as stupid as it gets. My ex broke up with me citing stupidity on my part as one reason for the break-up. Like a violent feeling of "You're fucking stupid!!" God yes, now that I think about it, that's why I don't date anymore. Because they might find out about this stupid thing I do. I don't even talk to this person. Okay, there's one dark reason -- which I'm going to divulge here. This person almost died by suicide. But this person is still an asshole!

1. Those who do not know that science was created by philosophy — Garrett Travers

"Necessity is the mother of invention" originated from Plato:

“Come, then, let us create a city from the beginning, in our theory. Its real creator, as it appears, will be our needs.” “Obviously.” [369d] “Now the first and chief of our needs is the provision of food for existence and life.”4“Assuredly.” “The second is housing and the third is raiment and that sort of thing.” “That is so.” “Tell me, then,” said I, “how our city will suffice for the provision of all these things. Will there not be a farmer for one, and a builder, and then again a weaver? And shall we add thereto a cobbler and some other purveyor for the needs of body?” “Certainly.” “The indispensable minimum of a city, then, would consist of four or [369e] five men.”

and that my economic status was not suitable for an inventor.
This realization somehow dampened my mood. Reflecting once more, I reassured myself. Shortly afterwards I came up with a quote.

Philosophy is the poor man's Science and Science is the rich man's Philosophy... in the context of creativity. — Nagel

Fear not. Watching too much netflix and youtube will make you feel that way.
Here, let me help you sort it out. Many philosophers came from wealth. Some denounced it. Seneca, Aristotle, Plato, and Pythagoras were all wealthy while philosophers. Contemporary ones include Wittgenstein. If I am reading you incorrectly, then let me know.

But I'm pretty sure our great philosophers did not consult youtube or netflix to decide whether to become a scientist or a philosopher.

Can you find a way to defend blame in a way that 'redeems' the notion for Joshs? — Tom Storm

Getting rid of blame is not logically sound. Why? How do we even start to define harm? Someone caused it, but he couldn't be blamed for it because there's no free will? How do we hold people accountable then? A no-blame morality is untenable and unsustainable because it is a one-sided premise whose burden is on the person harmed.

The desert proponents once argued that punishment is a way for us to acknowledge the humanity of a person. Denying him a punishment is denying his accountability for his actions. And denying his accountability is denying his moral agency. So personhood has this component of culpability. You take away this culpability, then we treat him like we treat innocent animals.

The blame here is the culpability of the person who caused the harm. Josh's argument is, if we get rid of the notion of blame, then we get rid of the root cause of anger.

But moving past this, is it really philosophically correct to not assign blame for the wrong done?

Tom, please do not inject another element into the argument. Josh and I and, I believe, Cuthbert, too, know what's at stake here.

So, let's assume that Josh's view has assurance that the removal of blame is not because it is bound to be abused by "convenient flare up" and "righteousness". Josh, you know this. We are precluding righteousness here.

The blame definition is pure.

Good call on Strawson's quote.

But as you can see above, Joshs's view is this: why don't we stop looking at is as free-will so that we could also stop the blame-desert corollary.

And I reject this view. First of all, I don't use free-will philosophically to argue about why guilt, blame, and punishment is a just view. Humans are psychologically predisposed to recognize these 3 elements. So, I use the psychological framework to make a statement about moral agency.

But you haven’t articulated this decision-making in terms
of how it differs from a morally ‘correct’ decision-making. — Joshs

I just said, they're found to be able to discern right from wrong. In short, they're not mentally ill. So yes, they are aware of what's morally correct.

But mental illness understood as a pathology is another name for randomness. The cause is arbitrary. — Joshs

I think we need to sit down and sort this thing you call randomness. To me, when an individual is born with mental illness, that's not random. That's their being. And for that, our society provides a treatment.

Why are some self-centered and self-absorbed but not others? Is it a certain randomness or arbitrariness that lurks within each of us? — Joshs

This you might call arbitrariness (God I don't know what country you're in, but no offense, I find these terms not the kind I would use when discussing morality, but well okay.) Because it is a vice they want. And to support this vice, they would rationalize their behavior (while knowing right from wrong) -- this rationalization is their support, in a manner of speaking, to go ahead and act on their vice.

Have you taken information systems, btw? Have you heard of "internal controls" -- it would be a perfect framework for your topic because it involves human behavior but in technology setting. The computers against wayward humans.

What I would like to know is how you articulate the nature of wrong-doing and evil in terms of the capriciousness of straying from the path of righteousness. Tell me more about what makes such straying possible. Is it a kind of randomness? — Joshs

The straying, as you also name it, has various causes. There are certainly people born with mental illness whose propensity to harm people is well documented. So, this one is not capricious or random -- it has a root cause.

One cause is the development of a vice. There's a joke that mocks the petty crimes, double life, and white lies as something that could not progress to heinous crimes. Well they do. We know this is true. Self-centered and self-absorbed people can discern right from wrong. That's a fact. But when they make a decision, this decision involves rationalization (in another sense of the word) to make this decision palatable and justifiable. So there's a deliberate attempt at plotting the perfect crime.

You know police investigations would show that rapists make a decision to go out and hunt, depending on the weather. If the weather is not conducive to prowling, they postpone it. So, the weather factors in to their decision to commit a crime. They don't aimlessly wander around separated from their minds and decision-making.

But what if this simply reflects a failure of insight on our part? What if ‘evil-doers’ believe they are just, and their failure isn’t one of moral intent but of insight? — Joshs

Sorry. But I take a harder stance on moral claims -- those that involve suffering of the psychic and physical harm. I won't compromise on this. (Heck, that's why I made a thread here Enforcement of Morality)

The "what-if" failure of insight on our part, as you proposed, has been studied for ages and ages -- backed by scholarly and medical studies. We aren't wrong in limiting the freedom of those who cause us harms. There's no more excuse that we might be short-sighted and not seeing the forest because of the trees.

Think of preparatory acts, like buying the murder weapon, lying in wait, etc. — Benkei

You mean premeditation.

So does your view apply to every moral harm? Rapists? Murderers who murdered an entire family? Torturers of children?
And sins, I didn't know that you were going in that direction -- what if one is an atheist? How does an atheist forgive?

You know that forgiveness does not deter transgressions against people by evil people. The law does. People who commit heinous crimes and crimes of opportunity don't have conscience, and there are plenty of them around. If you remove the punishment by law here, then heaven help us all.

Is this discussion a one-sided argument against a person who is injured one way or another by another person? i.e. the person who suffered harm could go past the blame phase and see why the harm was done to him?

I'm trying to clarify the completeness of the argument here, because in any moral assessment of a situation, there are always two sides -- the person causing harm and the person who suffered the harm. I've heard of people who forgave their attackers -- that is, they've come to terms with their anger and found closure by talking to their attackers directly and forgiving them (in court or prison of course).

But there's another component of this moral event -- what to do with the attacker. The society has something in place: appropriate punishment. It is this component here that seems to be missing. @Joshs, are you saying that aside from skipping anger, should we also skip punishment or desert to the person who caused harm?

Okay, thanks for the input.
So why didn't he just correct it? He said 10 people had solved it. And "there's no correct answer" but follow the logic. So he lied.

I don't understand people. Why get embarrassed about posting stupid logic puzzle with the title "Very Hard Logic Puzzle"? Some people take a picture of their dick and text it to other people. They should be embarrassed by that behavior -- it's a like taking picture of a secret pet and showing it to people. What do you feed it? And they're not even interesting to look at.

My advice -- puzzles should only be posted by people who know what they're doing. If it's not published yet, and you decide to publish it to get paid for it, then don't show it on public forums then later retract it.

You could also respond by typing:

thefirst8t

Okay. But he still owes us an answer.

There simply needs to be some logic that implies what that first and last character is. — Philosophim

Re-read the questions. There are 3 questions, in order of appearance:

What is the third character (number, letter, or symbol) you will type to solve this?

How many different characters will you type to solve this?

What is the first character you will type to solve this?

But why delete the OP.

So what's the answer to the puzzle? Is @DavidJohnson still around?

This is my answer:

thefirstcharacter10t

We came to a gate that required knowing a code to open the gate and I was stopped, sure I could not get out of the gate without the code. Mind you I have a college education so I am smart, right? :lol: My retard friend didn't think twice before putting his hand through the bars in the fence and opening the gate from the outside handle. — Athena

:grin: Intelligence in action.

Another possibility: Intelligence isn't decreasing, in fact it's rising, but this is offset by problems getting harder to solve. The entire calculation for IQ, appropriately adjusted, then registers as a decline. — Agent Smith

I like where you're going with this, but this doesn't even factor in to the explanation as to why, if intelligence is declining, it is so. The modern problems aren't harder. The logistics of living in the ancient times required acuity of the mind. Remember that without them pushing the civilizations forward with their primitive thinking, we wouldn't be here.

I don't think knowing how and being good in fighting and hunting makes man -- has made him, in any period of this history-- more intelligent. Are bullies, barbarians, belligerents, primitive tribes intelligent than civilized people? — Alkis Piskas

Yes, you have a point. That's why I think the studies do not refer to mere brute force as factor in intelligence. Rather, environmental pressure (this is their description) is the one area they're looking at.

So, going back to the issue of evolution/mutation, another passage citing measurements the researchers performed:

The brain’s plumbing

The blood flow to the cognitive part of the brain, the cerebrum, comes through two internal carotid arteries, one on the right and one on the left. The size of these arteries is related to the rate of blood flow through them.
Just as a plumber would install larger water pipes to accommodate a higher flow rate to a larger building, the blood circulatory system continually adjusts the sizes of blood vessels to match the rate of blood flow inside them. This in turn is related to the oxygen demand of the organ.
If we can measure the size of the large arteries that supply an organ such as the brain, we can calculate the average rate of blood flow with some accuracy.
This principle has been known for a century and its beauty lies in its simplicity.
...
We found that the size of the carotid canals increased much faster than expected from brain size in 12 species of our human ancestors over a period of 3 million years.
While brain size was increasing 3.5 times, blood flow rate surprisingly increased sixfold, from about 1.2ml per second to 7ml per second.

And again, while the above passage does not address the supposed decline, I pasted it here to show what they're focusing on.

@Josh Alfred, @Banno, @Schootz1, @Count Timothy von Icarus

I think we can all agree that the Flynn effect's scope are the changes in IQ that happened in the 20th century. That's environmental, since a study like that cannot possibly address evolutionary/mutation with only a century's worth of observation. What I have been referring to are studies that cover civilizations worth of data. Well, the smithsonian article cited a study talking about 1.5 million years ago. But there's also the Crabtree study which goes back only to 6000 to 2000 BC.
But both deal with the changes in the brain structure. For example, this passage from the link I provided earlier in this thread:

2. Cortical networks for speech and tool use

Speech and tool use are both goal-directed motor acts. Like other motor actions, their execution and comprehension rely on neural circuits integrating sensory perception and motor control (figure 1). An obvious difference between speech and tool use is that the former typically occurs in an auditory and vocal modality, whereas the latter is predominantly visuospatial, somatosensory and manual. Nevertheless, there are important similarities in the way speech and tool-use networks are organized, including strong evidence of functional–anatomical overlap in IFG and, less decisively, in inferior parietal and posterior temporal cortex (PTC).

So while the above does not address the hypothesis of decline in intelligence, I pasted it here to show that the studies focus on the evolution of the brain as influenced by the motor actions.

The beautiful bouquet of flowers :flower: on a gravestone hide the decomposing form beneath :death: . — Agent Smith

I take offense with this. Spirit lives on in infinite slumber. Somehow, flowers is one of those that we use to connect with them. And I always wonder about this. Cause there are fruits to be given, too. There are some really beautiful fruits and they last longer than flowers on a headstone. Plus you don't need to put them in a vase with water.

Still life paintings didn't come about for no reason.(Sorry for the pun)

Examining this is kind of the point of my question. Why do you think that is? Maybe because castigating them serves no utility for either party — Cobra

Incorrect. The reason is because we have a common understanding that while liars want to avoid that which is more harmful in relationships. Would you tell your boss she's fat if she asked you if she's fat? Truth is, no matter how nice a husband tells his wife the truth about her elephantile derriere, that cellulitic comment is never gonna enter her floppy ears like a philharmonic orchestral music.

And no, women should stop asking their SO to comment about their body parts. They should pay a psychologist to provide a critique, that way, it comes out as a professional consultation, and nothing personal.

Why?????? — god must be atheist

For the record, I provided some passages of the articles about the studies conducted by the researchers whose names I also provided. So stop being dramatic. If you have a habit of skipping pages of threads so that you only get the middle or end or incoherent posts , it's not my problem.

What one article mentioned regarding what those researchers refer to as intelligence are spatial and task-driven abilities, which the early people possessed due to pressure from their environment. So, they're not measuring academic abilities, they're not measuring intelligence enhanced by culture, nor enhanced by proper nutrition. They're measuring what I think was brute intelligence -- intelligence necessitated by motivation to survive a harsh environment unlike what we have now -- you know, cities, suburbs, countryside.

The most obvious case is when I look at my children's school books where there can be a question to use the internet to answer some question. Do you know how difficult it would have been to answer those question without using search engines conveniently at your fingertips with one's smartphone or the laptop they gave from school? It would many times taken hours first to go to a library, find then a book where the information might be. — ssu

Right. So, are you actually agreeing with me or trying to make a point? How does the many hours of work to get some information affect the acuity of the brain? Did you know that the ancient Greek historians or writers had no laptop to record what they heard inside the courtroom? They were not allowed to bring the stylus or any writing or recording instruments inside a courtroom to record the case word for word. So what they did was listen and commit to memory the words they heard, then run back outside and start retrieving the information while writing them down.

I think that the other planets are known to be fundamentally uninhabitable, any colonization would be within an artificial structure, just like the space station. You appear to be dreaming about something which will never happen. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, I actually was thinking of something similar to Earth habitat. But yes, artificial structure would be more realistic. Nonetheless, if that's the case, there is a possibility of creating one since ISS has already established that long term stay is possible in such structure. It's just a matter of time. So, obviously not in the near future. But still my question about the political consequences of such arrangement. We're not going to escape the political and economic domination as we are experiencing on Earth. There's not going to be a utopia.

My buddy calls falling for someone this way, getting struck by a thunderbolt. I've never been struck by a thunderbolt. — dazed

Not like a thunderbolt, but yeah. I had it, too. Deep fondness. It's crazy.

There's something you're not telling us. — Agent Smith

It's okay to beat around the bush.

Germany has scraped nuclear energy which is most certainly a backwards step in terms of efficiency and general pollution. There are political games at play and society at large seem — I like sushi

Yes. Why do we have a hard time accepting nuclear energy? Is it due to ignorance? Lack of education? Cultural?

Lots of doom and gloom that will likely amount to nothing much other than a flash in the pan. — I like sushi

Until the dinosaurs died, in short burst of time.

Or, another theme in science fiction: we travel for a very long time in space and never find anyone else. — Bitter Crank

Please read the above post. Thanks.

The ISS is a scientific lab. Like Antarctica. Not a settlement or habitat. Wait until a planet is habitable. Then you get the same attitude as on Earth.

Here's a passage from nasa.gov/centers on Space Colonization:

Once the exclusive province of science fiction stories and films, the subject of space colonization has rapidly moved several steps closer to becoming a reality thanks to major advances in rocket propulsion and design, astronautics and astrophysics, robotics and medicine. The urgency to establish humanity as a multi-planet species has been re-validated by the emergence of a worldwide pandemic, one of several reasons including both natural and man-made catastrophes long espoused in the pro-colonization rhetoric.

The long-term habitation of the International Space Station by rotating teams of astronauts, scientists and medical professionals has provided us with a wealth of data to establish parameters for keeping humans alive and healthy for long periods in the harsh environment of space. Here on earth there have been several ambitious projects attempting to duplicate as close as possible the conditions of off-world habitation to test the limits of human endurance.

I think Antarctica might a good model for how it could work in space. — T Clark

No, because Antarctica was never earmarked for settlement, only scientific exploration. Second, only those who have the means to go to the chosen planet could lead the international treaty. (If settlement is already a possibility),

If there is nothing to be gained in space other than knowledge, I don't see why anyone will care what happens there. If there is no economical way of bringing resources available in space back here to earth, the only value of space will be military. — T Clark

I said, if a planet could be inhabited. Which implies that it is fit for human habitat. Could you guys try to envision this scenario?

It wasn't an answer. — T Clark

What was it then? You said it would be first come first served -- we already know which countries have the means to go. In reality.

Or, another theme in science fiction: we travel for a very long time in space and never find anyone else. — Bitter Crank

Humor me.

The new melting pot: Mars. — Metaphysician Undercover

You think so, but no.

Antarctica. — T Clark

Antarctica is a continent on a planet that's already organically occupied by humans. When I said "entity" I meant a separate body of a planet. Sorry for this neglect.

I'm not sure what this means. Meaningful galactic ambition depends on the ability to travel faster than light. Current science says that's not possible. — T Clark

Space exploration, to put it bluntly.

Questions -

Is there anything in space worth going after. Probably. Raw materials. Scientific knowledge.
If yes, where is it? Is it on a large celestial object - planet or moon - or on a smaller one - asteroid?
Is it economical to go after the materials?
Is the best way of getting the materials by using fixed bases? — T Clark

That's why this thread is a thought experiment but not without basis -- like I said, there's already been a treaty made back in 1979 in hopes that if someday we could harvest the resources there, we already have governance in place. No treaty for settlement yet -- this is wishful thinking.

2) First come/best military first served. Method 2 is how it worked on Earth. — T Clark

Okay, so this is your answer.

If we could have, we probably would have already. — T Clark

Peace is part of the Moon Treaty. And why we couldn't have the same on Earth is obvious. But, I think that settlement on another planet would be just like on Earth -- or would it be a big lab like Antarctica? I believe, though, with increasing intelligence, as I have already been told in this forum by other forum members, humans will try to figure out a way to carve out another settlement somewhere. If Antarctica melts, and as big as it is -- much bigger than the US size, that could be a possibility. But guess what, 7 nations already claimed territories on Antarctica.