There's an analysis here.

Rituals are often meaningless, like shaking hands or throwing a sword into a field to declare war. Is there a ritual that isn't meaningless on its own?

The other day they showed Ukrainian soldiers taking a bunch of Russian soldiers as prisoners. I was a little horrified that the Ukrainians were going to execute them on the spot on reddit, but they didn't.

whew!

Much growth is attributable to religious indoctrination and expectations-- like Christian countries used to be, now the Muslim world is propagandizing, very successfully, the idea that a man is only a man if he has more children than his neighbour. Or some other spiritual incentive, I don't know the Koran. — god must be atheist

Losing ground in terms of population is stressful. A labor shortage appears. The labor that does exist can make bigger demands.

However, Russia-Chinese relationship is far more equal than Western media presents. — boethius

This is not true. China is an economic powerhouse ascending to superpower status. Russia has now lost its status as regional power and its economy is medieval. Any dream of equality with China is gone now.

The Western media presents the war as Ukraine standing up to the "mighty Russia", — boethius

No, it doesn't, at least not the news sources I see. It's just a little conflict in Eastern Europe. You can see parts of it live on reddit. That's about it.

Obviously things can swing back and forth. — boethius

I suppose they could engineer some sort of Hundred Years War, but their main ally, quickly becoming their master, is China. It will be Xi's call whether they can wage on indefinitely or not.

Russia could also use tactical nuclear weapons, — boethius

And that would be Putin's final act as leader of Russia. I'm sure he knows that.

How is this in anyway clear? — boethius

Well, they're losing previously taken positions, they're running out of troops, they've lost face with their allies. I mean, it looks like they're losing to me. Not to you?

2.1. Population size can't be reduced without drastic measures.
2.2. Drastic measures are opposed by democratic, humanitarian societies. — god must be atheist

A lot of countries have close to zero population growth. It turns out that when women have the option to get educated and have careers, the growth rate plummets.

Plus I think climate change will put a dent in the human population.

All is not lost.

It's pretty clear that Russia is losing this war. Exit strategy is what they should be thinking about. This was a disaster for Russia.

If the world's population was 10,000 people in total, then the emission problem would not be there, regardless what currently used lifestyle those 10,000 people pursued. — god must be atheist

Population definitely amplifies the problem.

This is why I insist that it is the overpopulation that is the root cause of many, many problems and the major cause of problems we face today as a species. — god must be atheist

Ok, but so what? How does that impact the way we address the issue?

She doesn't say how she feels about it though. — Benkei

Why are they doing an emotion inquisition? And why was she given orders to do it? Isn't she the commander in chief?

I agreed with some of that and disagreed with other parts, but overall: :up:

post-truth and all the political errors that ensue. — Banno

Politicians exploit a longing for truth. If everyone was a postmodern philosopher, people like Trump would be screwed because everyone would start with the assumption that he's peddling myths of former greatness now gone down the toilet because we're stupid.

As it is, the people love the drama of being 'in the know' in a world of deluded followers of mainstream news.

Imagine an infinitely large line of people or a line of people that goes all the way around earth. Every person in each scenario has a person in front and another person behind them; in addition, each person is in front and behind two other people. Imagine you are the leftmost in a group of three people from one of these lines. How would you explain that the person in front of you is the person in front of you when that person is in the "behind" of someone else? In fact, how would you explain your existence when you are someone else's behind? — Daniel

Yes, we can't delete "behind" from the English language. Our philosophy super powers aren't that strong. :groan:

You do have logical proof though and to a lesser extent empirical. — Darkneos

What's the logical argument?

It’s not overpopulation. When 7% of the global population are responsible for 50% of carbon emissions— I don’t think “overpopulation” is the problem. — Xtrix

You're right. There's a certain kind of lifestyle that's putting out CO2 way out of proportion to other forms.

Yet the difference between lifestyles on the earth today comes down to scale for the most part. Americans are adapted to a high emissions lifestyle. For many, it's all they know. They aren't being particularly greedy.

We aren't being punished for our sins, in other words. There's reason to believe we've been altering the climate for thousands of years. The true cause goes deeper than any particular economic system.

(1) Tensed language centered on our notional now (most common);
(2) Untensed language with "timestamps" or times as parameters (common among scientists and not too uncommon among philosophers);
(3) Tensed language centered on some other time than our notional now (pretty uncommon except for the historical present -- the option you asked about). — Srap Tasmaner

#1 gives us an image of time as something digital, or pulsing. Existence only applies to the present. The past is gone and future is imaginary.

#2 if scientific, time is affected by gravity, or maybe it's an aspect of gravity. There is no universal Now. The content of now, in terms of events, is relative to the observer. I think I have that right.

#3 is a complex use of language where we enter into a faux world.

Yet you have neither empirical nor logical proof. That's the interesting part.

sometimes it makes me question why even bother asking such questions. — Darkneos

Well, there you have it.

There is one now in the sense that there is one north. But just like north points in different directions at different points, different moments of time are christened "now". — hypericin

Is it a matter of christening? Could I christen yesterday at 10:30 pm "now"?

More like reality, no amount of philosophical musing will change that. — Darkneos

Especially if you don't do any philosophical musing.

How do you know? You just do — Darkneos

Sure. You know there's "stuff" behind you. That's a model.

Of course. Just not simultaneously. — hypericin

That's a word game. There's only one now.

Einstein seems to answer that the past and future exist as much as the present. If we grant this, then there is nothing mysterious about a specialness to "now" that cannot be explained by science. It is simply an illusion. After all, every single "now" has this apparent specialness. — hypericin

Every single 'now'? Have you ever experienced more than one?

Yes, I got that. After a slow start. My answer is to ask a friend to look and check for me. — Cuthbert

You can't do that continuously though.

As I mentioned, the knowledge that there is space behind you is probably a priori because you can't doubt it. If you tried to imagine no space, that would conflict with the idea of 'behind '

So you know there is space a priori. How do you know there are predictable objects behind you? I think that's part of a dynamic model that's coming from you. In other words, it's a hypothesis. You don't know what's behind you until you do ask a friend, or turn around.

I suppose if there is no world out there (the doubt is coherent and the hypothesis happens to be true), — Cuthbert

The question isn't about whether there's a world. It's about whether there's anything behind you.

Is it possible coherently to doubt it? — Cuthbert

I don't think it's possible to doubt that there is space behind me. I apparently know that there is space a priori.

But as for objects occupying that space, I can imagine that a void follows me around, so I can doubt the objects. That means if I have knowledge of them, it's a posteriori.

If it's true, all statements about the past are false. — Cuthbert

Could you explain why?

Here's an interesting quote from Carnap:

"Einstein said the problem of the Now worried him seriously. He explained that the experience of the Now means something special for man, something essentially different from the past and the future, but that this important difference does not and cannot occur within physics. That this experience cannot be grasped by science seemed to him a matter of painful but inevitable resignation. So he concluded 'that there is something essential about the Now which is just outside the realm of science.' "

It's some sort of alien technology meant to promote intelligence.

You've demonstrated that it's possible to doubt it. That shows that the knowledge most be a posteriori. Yet, if you haven't seen it, what experience do you base the knowledge on?

It may seem a bit childish to gloat like that, but in politics optics matter, and this is an apt illustration of the point made in the article. — SophistiCat

The term "paper tiger" has appeared in a number of articles. It seems Putin has screwed up, probably irreversibly.

I think the US has helped China fill the power vacuum, though.

@Joshs

Good. So we agree to moving away from a computational, representational approach to neural networking. — Joshs

Can you explain the difference?

With this one war, Putin has undermined Russia's position as a regional power. China is in the process of taking the role Russia once had. Al Jazeera

By the way, women shortage (some members are mentioning here) must be a phenomenon of the 20th century related to birth/gender controls (China, communist countries and Middle East) and massive emigration of male workers to Europe and US.

When the institution of marriage was invented I'm quite sure that there was big shortage of males, not of females. — Eros1982

Missing women, this by Michelle Kohler, :smile:

I understand. Thanks!

by scientific you just mean descriptive of human behavi — Moliere

By "scientific", I meant according to the way biologists use the word.

then human beings are simply not monogamous. There's nothing to explain because this is a false statement. — Moliere

Nevertheless, it's held up as an ideal on a large portion of the earth. The question was: why?

So, "historically speaking", monogomous relationships count insofar that the penis-haver is the one who holds the power of the wallet within the household. — Moliere

The definition of monogamy I've been using is scientific: it's a bonded pair.

This balance of power has changed in parts of the world, but that tradition is still alive and well -- and I'd say that even if we choose to re-interpret monogamy in some other way, that this is where the ideal "comes from", so to speak — Moliere

Historically patriarchs had multiple wives, so why do you say this is the source of monogamy? How did monogamy evolve out of polygamy?

Perhaps we could say that, given the profound changeability of human cultural behavior over the course of mere centuries , we have thrown off the weight of those millions of years of unchanging behavior. — Joshs

I think it's apparent that we have done that to some extent. The question I got hooked on was: why? Why monogamy?

But you touched on some else I thought about. Humans are more flexible psychologically than other species. What if we end up being monomorphic psychologically? That is: what if males and females end up being almost interchangeable in terms of behavior? So the monogamy isn't really off course biologically unless we overlook the extent to which psyche is what we are, moreso than biology.

I don't know if I put that in a way that makes sense.

Would engaging in a deep conversation dishonour their profession? — Banno

We could ask them if it's like being Sisyphus: all that effort to cut it, only to have it grow right back.