Centralized governments? You mean like China, India, Russia, United States, Japan, etc.? — Tzeentch

A global government would be necessary to thwart the effects of economic competition.

:up:

Why do you ask? — unenlightened

Because I thought you were concerned about the environment. Centralized government is likely the only road to effective action.

Well, I suppose that arguing, instead of Occam's razor per se, that one should present a hypothesis or theory in the simplest available manner is better than presenting such information in a convoluted or inflated way. — Manuel

I don't know, Schopenhauer said Kant intentionally obscured some of his writing to avoid criticism from the church. And was it Derrida who supposedly said that the only way to make it as a French philosopher is to convolute your writing?

When experts say that the chance for nuclear weapons use is non-trivial, that's saying something. — Tzeentch

Seems unlikely at this point.

To Europe's great credit, there has not; — unenlightened

Why do you see this as a good thing?

:grin:

KISS?

Yep

To know something is to know how it behaves as a compound thing, as well as to understand the relationships between its individual components. If you dismantle a car and then put it back together, you're likely to "know what a car is" better than someone who has just driven a lot of them. — Benj96

Occam disagreed, sort of. He believed that there are no "compound things.". He would say the "car" only exists as an idea that humans use to group things for their purposes. There is no car out there in the world, only isolated, individual things. He was a kind of atomist, or proto-nominalist.

This is the basis of his belief that explanations must be as simple as possible. If you start explaining things in complex terms, using compound objects, you're really just off in the realm of imagination, not describing the world as it is.

Do you agree with that?

Very true

We might add that it is worth noting that the choice of hypothesis is not final; we can modify that choice based on further data. So if a prettier flower comes along, we can drop the old one and pick the new one. Parsimony is one part of a method that involves ongoing interaction with each other and with the world, not the final determinate. — Banno

I think I've seen it used as a reason to discard a thesis. I think you agree that it doesn't provide a justification for that. It's a bad idea to play favorites prior to getting experimental results. If you can't experiment, you have to be satisfied with not knowing.

In essence they deconstructed blood pressure into its individual parts so they could build the full picture of how it works in its entirety. — Benj96

Is that the approach to things that works best for you? Breaking things down to simple parts?

The cardiovascular system needs to looked at as a whole because it's self regulating, as if each part is performing a duty to the whole. If you get lost in the details, you could miss the awesomeness of the whole thing. Maybe that's my aesthetic preference?

Never thought of it that way.

Why not appeal of Occam's razor? Pick the pretty flower, pick the short hypothesis. — Banno

I guess as long as that's the spirit in which people embrace Occam's razor, it's ok. Like: eeny meeny miny moe, pick the theory whose complexity is low.

Indeed. It is a preference, and dependent on circumstance. — Banno

So why the appeal of Occam's razor? What's the draw?

The truth on the other hand is easy. It's natural and it sticks to basic straightforward path. It's not creative. It's factual. — Benj96

If you look at the way your body maintains your blood pressure, it's pretty complex.



Are you saying that because this answer is complex, it must be wrong?

Preferring something for aesthetic reasons is a justification... — Banno

But simplicity and complexity are equally appealing. One can be just as beautiful as the other. There's no accounting for taste.

This is Islamic:



Scandinavian:

I'd question McKitrick's take on the matter, hence asking — jorndoe

His statements are in line with the mainstream view. There's a delayed effect with CO2 emissions. Some of the warming from the CO2 put out in the 22nd Century won't be felt till later.

The forecast for this century is increased weather volatility. Nothing drastic.

Not quite sure what to make of this... — jorndoe

Not much change by 2100. :up:

Nothing much stand on the choice of "thought". Narrative, dialogue, discussion, beliefs, would also do. — Banno

You still don't have a vantage point on thought however you chose to define it.

If thoughts are a shared construction, they are not ineffable. — Banno

You don't have a vantage point on thought itself. Therefore, your theory amounts to language on holiday.

Doesn't mean you can't continue to speculate. Just don't try to go further than that.

Because "about" means concerning or referencing, but doesn't mean conveying, which would mean transferring actual content. — Hanover

:up:

have the Pixel 5. I just got it for 5G connectivity. I don't care for a 30 MP camera on a phone. Go figure. — Shawn

If you're selling junk on eBay, it's worth it, especially the portrait mode on the pixel 6. It kicks butt.

I have a pixel 6 pro. I won't be upgrading for a couple of years unless the battery goes to crap.

The regulations against hate speech result from media outlets refusing to publish it because publication will damage the publisher's profitability. — Hanover

I think you're taking the present social climate for granted. We just happen to live at a time when it's not ok to talk crap about Jews. This in turn produces the regulation you're talking about.

If, for instance, it came to light that the social sphere was being manipulated to the detriment of the health of the country, it would be reasonable for the government to intervene. Mistakes could be made there, but it would still make sense to try.

Therefore, how can I achieve satisfaction is through maintaining myself just as I am. — Shawn

That's your business, not ours.

Why lie about who we are? Why become something we are not? — Shawn

Because it's so hard to face the ways you've failed to be the person you wanted to be. This is the topic of Sickness unto Death, by Kierkegaard.

A little delusion goes a long way.

Sounds like a good time Frank. Send pics of the beautiful ice sculptures haha. Perhaps you could do all those things simultaneously? — Benj96

You have to maintain limits so you still have pleasure and pain. You have to do stuff that's annoying every now and then to keep the old psyche from blurring into oblivion. I'll probably get a job at Starbucks to keep myself on my toes.

Russia's response to Ukraine joining NATO has been to invade Ukraine and annex parts of land. — Tzeentch

And the West's response to that invasion was to help defend Ukraine. :up:

I would fly down into Mauna Loa, the world's biggest volcano. Then hang out at the north pole building ice sculptures. Then fly away and explore the rest of the universe.

Harry Houdini was Jewish. Does that help?

Quine's stuff on reference is not dissimilar to Wittgenstein's stuff on silence. — Banno

I think it's fairly dissimilar unless you take all of Witt's ideas and dump them into a blender with some Tequila.

That, indeed, seems to be what ↪Janus is claiming... or reporting. He is trying to tell us of something of which he cannot tell us. And like the beetle it must drop out of the conversation. — Banno

I was talking about Quine. I'm afraid there's a field of incomprehensibility surrounding him. You've been deflected by it and stumbled into Janus. :sad:

Now that's not so far from Wittgenstein, except that the phenomenologists seem to insist on continuing the impossible conversation were Wittgenstein would be silent, choosing instead to enact, and perhaps show by enacting. — Banno

Witt did say that Heidegger was trying to do the impossible, but that had nothing to do with enacting anything. That's your bugaboo resulting from your immense laziness. Probably.

Really? I had no idea. Perhaps he wasn't a philosopher, then. — Ciceronianus

I think you'd like his Wisdom of the West. Lots of laughs, although the purpose of the book is serious.

Bertrand Russell was hilarious.

It occurs to me that if reference is inscrutable, and one takes all of meaning to be referential, then Quine pretty much renders language inscrutable.

I'd been taking Quine as a criticism of the referential theory of meaning. But if one supposes that meaning just is reference, then he shows that language can't work.

Is that what you are suggesting? — Banno

I think he means that it's just a folk theory that language refers. It's a theory that ignores the limits of knowledge vis-a-vis beetles in boxes.

I don't know what you're thinking about. All I know is the way you behave. So Quine is arguing against meaning internalism, and for some sort of behaviorism.

In a behaviorist context, ineffability doesn't mean much. There is no aboutness to language in the first place. To cling to ineffability is to cling to some kind of internalism.

What this whole discussion misses is the interplay between the words and the world; it's not that the tacit knowledge is off by itself somewhere, but is there in the "a bit more gain, and a little reverb", said or done. — Banno

I think Quine's point was that there's nothing in your knob twiddling that stands as evidence that what you mean by 'gain' coincides with what the engineer who designed the amp meant by it.

It's not a matter of imprecision. It's that everything is actually ineffable. Speech with a lack of clear reference is never about anything in particular.

I've spent a few days trying to get the lick for Mannish Boy right. I'm after something like the the Johnny Winter sound, but have a Gretch semi rather than a Fender. Playing with the gain I can get a satisfactory sound, but it's missing something, which I think is an overdub of a bass run. Or it might be keys. — Banno

Don't hurt me, don't hurt me now.

It just seems like if one acknowledges that meaning is use, one would want to downplay the aboutness of language. Why even care about reference if it's just action that matters?

Actually, what makes the Hebrew Bible unusual is that argument with God is acceptable and even shown to be effective. — Hanover

Proto civil rights