• Climate change denial
    Unfortunately the crazy ones have convinced young people that there is no future for them.Agree-to-Disagree

    Eh, the world is always ending. We endure.
  • Climate change denial
    A claim nobody ever has made.Benkei

    Certainly no one who was particularly well informed.
  • Climate change denial
    Even under the worst-case scenarios, human-caused warming will not push the Earth beyond the bounds of habitability.Agree-to-Disagree

    True. It's crazy that anyone ever believed that the earth would cease to be habitable due to anthropogenic climate change.

    We still need to switch to fusion though.
  • If you were God, what would you do?
    The nickname seems to be contradictory with the real goodness nature of Shiva.javi2541997

    Apparently there is a sect where Shiva is the supreme being, but otherwise, he/she is the destructive side of the Hindu trinity. Destruction isn't necessarily a bad thing. Consider:

    Once upon a time, there was a successful slave revolt in St Domingue, which had been a major funding source for the French. A Spanish army, nearby, thought they would drop in take St Domingue, but the slaves fought valiantly, and preserved their freedom. A British army, observing the situation, decided they would drop in a take over St Domingue, but the slaves drove them off, again with great bravery.

    Then Napolean sent his soldiers to take back St Domingue. They say the former slaves, watching the approach of the French fleet, thought everyone in France had come. But the slaves fought back, and then summer set in. Yellow fever started to take out the French soldiers and their mood turned sour. They began to entertain themselves by throwing captured prisoners into a ring of bloodthirsty dogs to watch them be torn apart. And then the French caught the leader of the slave revolt. They took the general to the bay and drove stakes into his shoulders as he watched his wife and son drown in the bay in front of him.

    But with regard to these French soldiers, who created the air they breathed? Who created the ground they stood on as they lost their humanity? It was the god of creation. In this case, the god of destruction is the good one. He/she takes the French away and reduces them to molecules in the dust. He takes all the pain of the people we now call the Haitians, and lets it crumble away in the breeze. He lets them have a new birth of freedom. Shiva does the same for you everyday.
  • What is ownership?
    So theft results in the thief owning what has been stolen.

    And folk hereabouts think this a good argument?
    Banno

    There might be a society where you "keep what you kill" so to speak, proving that it's relative to culture and time period, right?
  • If you were God, what would you do?
    A destructive God? Interesting, because most deities are basically otherwise.javi2541997

    Shiva!

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  • Empiricism, potentiality, and the infinite
    Such flows generate infinite processes that often produce observable data on each iteration, so there is also empirical meaning with regards to the execution of an infinite process.sime

    But all of that data is finite, isn't it? I guess I'm thinking of finitism. If we set a spaceship (that somehow has an odometer) in one direction and it goes eternally, the reading on the odometer will always be finite. I think this is what Aristotle was thinking. Infinity can only be in potential. When we use the infinity symbol in engineering, we always mean that the variable is infinite for all practical purposes. In reality, it's just really big.
  • If you were God, what would you do?
    . An obvious follow up question in this respect is where does the "Hero" fall in this arrangement between victim and villain. As most understand a hero to neither be a victim nor a villain. Furthermore most of those faith-inclined idealise God as a Hero.Benj96

    That's a good question. I've only ever thought about the Hero in connection with possibility. Like, when the die is cast, there are six possibilities, but the one that appears at the end is the man (or woman) of destiny: the hero. What do you think of the Hero?

    However depending on who you ask, God can also be a villain - an omniscient, omnipotent entity that doesn't answer your begging or rectify your suffering. For others God is the perfect victim - wherever unjust persecution and sacrifice appears in writings on the topic.Benj96

    Yes. In the book of Job, his wife tells him to curse God and die. Boethius was an influential philosopher in the middle ages who taught that we're all bound to the wheel of fortune. If you're doing well, enjoy it, because the wheel can turn down and you can lose it all. If you're at the bottom of the wheel, don't fear, because the wheel keeps turning and there's something amazing in your future.
  • If you were God, what would you do?
    Interesting. What I gather from this is you would have some sort of duality in your existence. On one side you would be a singular thing (human) and on the other end of the scale you would be everything (secretly).Benj96

    Exactly!

    How would you sustain this secrecy, this pseudo-separation? Would it be in the paradoxes, contradictions and delineations between things or selves.Benj96

    Yes!

    Is it the free will of others and diversity of opinions, the non-accordnace of individuals that masks your double nature?Benj96

    Yes. Villain-victim, parent-child, husband-wife, rich-poor, etc. But I think the biggest is villain-victim. There's soooo much emotion fueling that relationship.
  • If you were God, what would you do?
    So you'd be a personified God/in human form? Why did you choose to be human or "human-seeming" in this scenario?Benj96

    It's fun being human. Don't you think so?

    Would you have no qualities beyond human ones? And if so, what in your understanding qualifies the title of a God? What would the distinction be from just a regular person? What sets you apart or would your "God" concept be literally "just a person" and thus apply to everyone equally.Benj96

    I would secretly be everything.
  • If you were God, what would you do?
    Probably sit around reading a book.
  • Exploring the artificially intelligent mind of GPT4

    Do you think it's more intelligent than any human?
  • Perception

    That's nuts.
  • A Thought Experiment Question for Christians
    Consider reading your bible again but this time pretend that you're a Jew.BitconnectCarlos

    I'll say it again. You don't know what you're talking about.
  • A Thought Experiment Question for Christians
    You're like the fish who asks: "water? what water?"BitconnectCarlos

    I don't think you know what you're talking about.
  • An Analysis of "On Certainty"
    It's not reasonable or unreasonable it just is the framework we have to work with.Sam26

    I think it's more like a leap in the dark.
  • A Thought Experiment Question for Christians
    Yes, the anti-Judaism in the gospels is something all Christians must wrestle with.BitconnectCarlos

    Anti Judaism? Where?
  • An Analysis of "On Certainty"
    They form the bedrock of how epistemic language gets off the ground in the first place.Sam26

    And maybe life itself leaps forward with unreasonable confidence.
  • An Analysis of "On Certainty"
    Lumeria and Atlantis are probably the common denominator.Count Timothy von Icarus

    No doubt. :cool:
  • Empiricism, potentiality, and the infinite
    What is your favorite?wonderer1

    Another way is to say that we never have infinite resistance. There are always electrons bouncing around the terminals, so the resistance can be really large, practically infinite. But I think the best answer is that infinite resistance is a way of saying that no event is possible. If the resistance is infinite, there is no voltage, or potential.

    What I really think is that potential, resistance, and kinetic are the results of pulling an event apart so that we better understand it. The three don't exist separately in the wild.
  • Empiricism, potentiality, and the infinite
    Perhaps better to think of it as "Ohm's rule of thumb". It is not a fundamental physical law, but more of a useful way of looking at emergent properties in some cases.wonderer1

    That's one way to address the problem. There are others.
  • An Analysis of "On Certainty"
    How is this to the point re the environment or the physics of subatomic particles as culture or normativity?Count Timothy von Icarus

    Well, it doesn't help with that point. :grin:
  • Empiricism, potentiality, and the infinite

    Say you have a 12V battery with infinite resistance across the terminals. What's the current? If you say zero, then Ohms Law (which relates potential to kinetic) will tell you that you've multiplied zero times infinity and ended up with 12.
  • An Analysis of "On Certainty"
    Yes, that's a good point. This is why dispensing with final causality in biology is so difficult. But final causality also goes off the rails when we decide that what constitutes "a being" is arbitrary. Then we end up with attempts to explain the telos of rocks, which have no organic unity and are more bundles of external causes (obviously, they do act in the way all mobile being acts, but not in the way animals do).Count Timothy von Icarus

    True. Final cause is built into the meaning of life. I think people who want to look at the whole scene more holistically are experimenting philosophically. As you say, at the borders it starts to become confusing.

    I think some of the more successful attempts to explain culture have followed on the doctrine of signs/semiotics, and the distinction between the umwelt and the human species-specific lebenswelt.Count Timothy von Icarus

    Culture is fascinating to me. I came across a book by a structuralist once (can't remember the name now). But he was talking about German religion specialists who discovered that Native Americans have symbolism that echoes what we call gnosticism. So they concluded that the origin of these images must be back more than 10,000 years. The structuralist point was that if you're going to push it that far back, just admit that you don't know where it's coming from, and that it could be arising independently due to structure.

    To Josh's point, the eye has evolved independently around 50 times. Maybe a thing that life keeps doing in response to light is somehow structural? By the way, are you German?
  • An Analysis of "On Certainty"

    I would add that environment-organism isn't a master-slave relationship. Living things have been altering their environments since life started. A successful biosphere bends its surroundings to its needs. What humans have done to the land surface of the planet is a drastic case of something that's pretty typical for living things.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Why do you think I'm mad?BitconnectCarlos

    I can tell.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    In targeting Hamas, civilians may die. Hamas operates from within civilian areas.

    Gaza Ministry of Health makes zero distinction between civilians and Hamas. All we have is a number.
    BitconnectCarlos

    You see, the German government also believed that killing Jews was necessary for their survival. All the long list of governments who targeted Jews thought they had good reasons. I think one day you'll understand this. You're just too angry right now.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    It is wrong to intentionally kill civilians.BitconnectCarlos

    Israel has intentionally killed civilians. You know that.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    It is estimated 250,000 German children died in the Second World War. What's your excuse for that? How can you stomach that?BitconnectCarlos

    Killing civilians is wrong.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    A bullet is a bullet whether it is fired by a 16 year old or a 30 year old.BitconnectCarlos

    Is that supposed to be an excuse for killing 14,000 children?
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    How many of those are Hamas?BitconnectCarlos

    Is that supposed to be an excuse for killing 14,000 children?
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Hamas uses child soldiersBitconnectCarlos

    Is that supposed to be an excuse for killing 14,000 children?
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Probably both. It's the Zionist agenda causing this, which is a Jewish thing.Benkei

    It's just that Judaism is this ancient living thing, made up of generations and generations of mothers and fathers who loved their own children, of grandmothers and grandfathers who blessed life. This is a religion that says this about God:

    Your love, Lord, reaches to the heavens,
    your faithfulness to the skies.
    Your righteousness is like the highest mountains,
    your justice like the great deep.
    — Psalms 36:5

    It's hard to see how the behavior of Israel expresses the truth about Judaism.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank


    Israel massacred 14000 children. Is this a permanent stain on the soul of Israel? Or Judaism?

    Probably Israel.
  • An Analysis of "On Certainty"

    I think Hume was the first to point out that there are things we're really confident about, but there's no empirical or logical justifications for it. Just sayin. :blush: