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.

There is an unwritten rule about white lies, yes. For those, we have a common understanding not to castigate someone telling white lies.

Hahaha! :grin:

Is what determines the point of truth a matter of utility? — Cobra

No. The collective truth has a power beyond utility and boring. This is not the whole-greater-than-sum-of-its-parts case. Rather, when it comes to truth-telling, the parts are as important as the whole collective of truth tellers. If you could pick and choose only those with clear utilities and only then you would tell the truth, then you are violating the principle of fidelity of the whole community of truth tellers. Your system of ethics and morality would quickly crash and burn.

What lessons might we draw from this report, particularly in the current political environment with its ongoing assault on the critical intelligentsia? First of all, it should be a cogent reminder that if some presume that intellectuals are powerless, and that our political orientations do not matter, the organization that has been one of the most potent power brokers in contemporary world politics does not agree. The Central Intelligence Agency, as its name ironically suggests, believes in the power of intelligence and theory, and we should take this very seriously. In falsely presuming that intellectual work has little or no traction in the “real world,” we not only misrepresent the practical implications of theoretical labor, but we also run the risk of dangerously turning a blind eye to the political projects for which we can easily become the unwitting cultural ambassadors. Although it is certainly the case that the French nation-state and cultural apparatus provide a much more significant public platform for intellectuals than is to be found in many other countries, the CIA’s preoccupation with mapping and manipulating theoretical and cultural production elsewhere should serve as a wake-up call to us all. — Olivier5

While I never doubted the power of the intelligentsia -- philosophy, sociology, politics, and economics -- in world politics, I think most of the world do. Especially now that we have the short-attention span generation saturated with social media and visual-centric societies. If some government had stopped in their vigilance in tracking the trajectory of the intellectual movements, that government is plain stupid.

Search for a Naturalistic World View - Shimony

What you have posed is a possibility but we can argue the opposite too. How can we measure this realistically? I don't think we can as there are far to many factors involved and many cognitive abilities are not exactly well understood by any means. — I like sushi

Okay, I can agree that we're not sure about realistic measurement. But could we at least look at the big picture of the results of our mindset. For example, how is it that the more our intelligence increases, the more our environment is being destroyed by us. Let us at least think about that. With all the advancement in technology, there are issues that just don't seem to benefit from out increased intelligence -- overpopulation, environmental pollution, etc.

For the sake of arguing against I could suggest that agriculture allowed us to free up our time and work together in groups more easily (specialisation). Of course there are counter argument to this too as there is reasonable evidence to suggest that human collaborated on a pretty large communal scale prior to the full blown advent of sedentary living and/or agriculture. — I like sushi

Agriculture had made our activities money-centric or commercial-centric.

The point is, whatever changes in hardware (I.Q), either for better or worse, may have occurred over the past 5,000 in humanity as a whole, or between individuals, would have to be seen as utterly insignificant in their effects as compared to the powers of cultural transmission , our ‘software updates’. — Joshs

Good analogy. The updates -- cultural updates -- could be the culprit, not necessarily the brain.
Shuntarō Itō, a historian of science and civilization, predicts the coming of Environmental Revolution as the next turning point in human history. This is a very culture-centered view of civilization.

And that's supposed to be a sign of intelligence? Why not call that stupidity? — Dijkgraf

No, I just couldn't outright argue as to the comparison to the mind-capacity of the prehistoric humans. And I'm not even sure if you're being sarcastic. So, if you don't mind elaborating on what you mean.

I am on the camp of future-value computation of cognitive currency of the past compared to now. Similar to the question, what is the value of discovering iron as the material that had catapulted humanity into a whole new civilization in today's currency?

Priceless.

Even if we have smaller brains now that doesn't make us less intelligent. This is a common misconception. — I like sushi

I said in my OP it has nothing to do with the size of the brains -- at least not this time.

Besides, advance language and written text has expanded vastly our abilities to communicate and solve problems. Just think about, look at the threads in this forum. Now what would it look like to people let's say in the 19th Century? They would awe how much the members (who all aren't academic professionals) know about literature or the data about a subject. Of course, they should be explained that we can use search engines and "google" things. — ssu

While this is not the subject of the studies I mentioned on this thread, are you forgetting the masterpieces created in the 17th, 18th, 19th centuries? Literature, fine arts, music?

As someone else notes there is a difference between IQ and being intelligent I think? At least in general parse. — I like sushi

I agree. I used "IQ" because that's what everybody here wants to use.

Is your argument like this? Intelligence produced luxury. Luxury produced laziness. And laziness reduced intelligence. — Metaphysician Undercover

It's more like this:

Yes, there is evidence to suggest that hunter-gatherers were much more well-rounded and capable than modern domesticated humans (the same can be said about domesticated farm animals). Much of this has to do with the specialization of work that comes with sedentary agricultural life. Cities are like tool boxes, with each person being a tool that performs a specific function but is only really useful when part of an assembly of other tools. A hunter-gatherer, on the other hand, is like a Swiss army knife, capable of doing lots of different tasks on its own (viz self-sufficiency), or at least with assistance from a small group of other multi-purpose tools (of which the collaboration is voluntary). — _db

While I could not produce concrete evidence -- as what our forum friends have been asking -- I could only cite studies by researchers whose findings tend to show that intelligence is not the IQ we are used to attribute to intelligence. IQ is culturally influenced. What I want to talk about is intelligence that could be measured without the benefits of modern culture we have now. The researchers have identified one -- reaction time. It could mean reaction time to threats, which requires quick thinking, which requires quick decision making. We no longer live in life and death situation where our adrenaline could be tasked regularly. Because we have all the tools and technology now to do all that for us. Of course, you could argue that we created these technologies, so we must be awesome compared to the prehistoric humans. And for that, I do not have an argument.

So in light of the prevailing attitude here that I should produce concrete evidence, instead of extrapolating from the findings of research and trying to gain insight from those findings, let me say that they are still in the process of research.

Seems like what's being argued actually relates to a specific and limited set of cognitive skills rather than intelligence in general or intelligence as it's generally understood. And there's not even a clearly articulated alternative theory of what intelligence should be. It could be an interesting subject but it deserves a much more nuanced approach. E.g. Recent evolutionary studies pose questions for how we measure intelligence, or X cognitive skills are on the decline in modern humans (+this is bad because...) — Baden

I like your approach. Thanks.
Yes, this could be true. And yes, "intelligence" has been taken for granted and meaning seems to have been accepted without argument and counter argument. So, maybe we should start there. What is intelligence?

The researchers seem to have been zeroing in on that question. "Reaction time" seems to be important to their findings. A lot of what we have now were not re-invented. We certainly relied on pioneers or the early humans and built our ideas from their ideas. This goes back to the question of the learning curve theory. Someone who was trying to discover fire would have a different mind acuity than someone trying to use fire for various purposes.

Okay, I'm sorry I called you obnoxious. I just wish you had responded more amiably when people quite reasonably asked for evidence. Carry on. — jamalrob

Thank you, @jamalrob.

I dead-ass believed I had pissed you off permanently.