consequence of hot wings, — Hanover

Wow, you are reckless! :lol:

Welcome.

Philosophy is not so much about the amount of books you have read or the number of lectures you have attended nor the amount of their content that you retain.

Philosophy is more a way of thinking than anything else.

Lots of people think of themselves as philosophers because they have read and understood the writings of the greatest minds but, in my humble opinion, being a philosopher means that you are in some way adding to those ideas.
People that cannot find an argument either for or against a commonly accepted idea do not deserve to don the title philosopher.

Do not try to retain the all of the ideas and thoughts of the great philosophers, think of ways ways to apply their ideas to your life or reasons for not doing so. Finding those reasons will help you to retain the important stuff. Analysis creates more and better memory than reading or listening.

Honduras Central America

Also known as the devil's asshole. But it it really a nice place.

My password hasn't turned-up yet, but I now have no trouble logging on. — John Barnes

If you cannot log in, how can you post? :wink:

Oh, and welcome.

No harm, no foul. — Hanover

We cannot even go out when we want here. There is a law that says only people with the last number of their national ID can go out on one day of the week. Starting at 1 on the first Monday of the month until 5 on Friday. The next week Monday starts with six and ends Friday with 0. No one goes out at weekend.

My number is 7, Tuesday. I have classes all day and there is no way to go out.

They are allowing home delivery services for food and medical stuff everyday, but the people all have to be registered. The have even put a stop to the selling of booze.
Anyone caught out in the streets with a permission gets fined and has to do social work.

There are lots of complaints about the system, mostly because there are not so many deaths. But the hospitals are all over run and understaffed. If they cannot keep the number of infected down there will be a big shitty mess here.

LOL I copy-pasted that from a mod responding to a different thread. I guess my jokes blend in with my ernest posts; my own fault. — Noble Dust

And I guess my jokes blend in with mine as well. But I really cannot tell the difference between sarcasm and humor sometimes. :smirk:

How are you holding up my friend? — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Hey Tiff.
I am not at all happy about this freaking lockup or lockdown, whatever you want to call it. I have left the house only once in these last 3 months. :groan:
And the worst is yet to come. I will be working from home until the end of the year. :groan: :cry:

If I am not mistaken, the purpose of the original thread was to discuss why we thought that we had the last word on any particular thread. There were several possible reasons mentioned if I remember right.
1. the last poster had the written the most profound answer answer to the question
2. the last poster had come to a dead end and no one else after that could think of anything else to say
3. the OP had not bothered to answer any more questions
4. the last poster had said something so bloody stupid that no one wanted to continue.

From there on it continued into a competition to see who could get in the last word on that thread.
But maybe I am thinking of a different thread. :worry:

One flaw from this being the plan forward from the medical crisis....I am me! — ArguingWAristotleTiff

And you had better stay that way lady. :wink:

This thread does not meet the quality standards of the forum. — Noble Dust

Is that some sort of problem? It has not bothered anyone so far. Everyone has managed to contribute some kind of bullshit, so I doubt anyone else is worried about quality.
And I doubt that any of the mods are going to pay attention to your ploy, not original by the way, to close the thread without leaving their last word.

Does anyone remember the original purpose of this thread in the old PF?

I've also taken online IQ tests and struggled with them. — Wheatley

I did a few of those a few years ago. On one I got over 140, another gave me high 80's and everything in between.

Maybe the people that made them were not high IQ.

Too many people come here, act stupid then bitch about the moderators. not fair.

They do at least warn you if you are going in the wrong direction and try to make things better for everyone. If you are having problems, it is probably because you do not consider yourself as part of "everyone" here.

Damn, I have been banned from posting in a few places for expressing ideas that are normal and acceptable here. I have even been banned from posting on yahoo news and several newspaper page comments section for my statements.

Compared to other places, this is one of the best there is.

No I am not sucking up to the mods either.

Just in case the spelling police are here, I made a couple of mistakes and dropped a comma or two. :victory:

Keep on rocking lady. I am beginning to wonder if hell might be better. Last week it was almost a hundred, temperature and humidity. You could not breath without sweating.

Screaming is a reflex and it is totally related to calling for help. I could agree it could have other functions as well, like scaring the animal or provoking mercy, I don't know, but it is definitely related to the instinct of calling for help. — Eugen

Some evidence of this would be nice, and something more concrete than what you think.

the body reactions are in fact fabricated by the brain. — Eugen

Is that not what I just said? So you imagine her and get a hard on.

This is so ridiculous, sorry to tell you that. People imagined traveling to parallel worlds long before inventing the boat, and this is a scientific fact, not an assumption. — Eugen

So now you believe me, they imagined going to places. That was what made them desire to go there. Them they started imaging how they were going to get there, thus came invention.
Please provide some sort of link to this scientific fact, I am always interested in this stuff.

So in your case, the invention of a super space ship comes first, and then you imagine and wish to travel to different universes? It makes no sense. — Eugen

Where on earth did you get that idea? And you totally missed the point, or have no answer for it.

How could you explain wanting(desiring) to visit far away places as instinct? — Sir2u

Same as for the boat - they wanted to get from point A to point B, it is exactly the same principle as going from a universe to another. — Eugen

So you say that wanting to go from A to B is a desire, something instinctual? Again, I cannot imagine how you are going to explain that.

As for those who didn't travel, they did so because of other factors, not because they couldn't desire or imagine doing so. — Eugen

So now you have to explain how it is possible that all those millions and millions of people throughout time over came this instinct and just stayed at home.

The boat is a tool, a space ship is a tool, they are nothing more than means to satisfy one desire and that is to travel from A to B. Simple. As for those who didn't travel, they did so because of other factors, not because they couldn't desire or imagine doing so. — Eugen

So man desired to go from A to B and built a boat? Would it not be more sensible to say that he saw a log floating in the river and imagine how he could use it to get to the other side and see what was over there? Without seeing the principle of flotation at work I doubt that all of his desires would get him far.

Again, name me ONE technology that serves directly or indirectly to a desire that wasn't there already. — Eugen

A plastic bag. Which of the humans' desires led to that being invented.

Now you answer the question I asked.

Tell us what part of our instinct=desire made it possible to discover electricity. — Sir2u

So the issue I have raised in the first place was that after we satisfy all possible desires/ideas on the list that I've mentioned above, what will happen? Will our brain invent others or we will simply stop there? — Eugen

I am sure that he will imagine something that will awaken new desires in human. By the way, do you think that vanity is an instinct?

Luck is nothing more than the coincidence of circumstances and time.

Circumstances are about you, your physical condition, education, age, the effects of the environment upon you. the place you are occupying in the universe, etc, etc.
Time is about, well time obviously.

Bad lucky is when there is no coincidence. You are going for a job interview and it is raining, there are no taxis, the train station is 10 blocks from the office you are going to. You get there late and miss out on the job. If your education had been different you might left home an hour earlier and got it.

Good luck is when you see the $20 bill on the ground when there are 30 other people that might have seen it but were to busy looking at a busker playing music you hate.

It all boils down into Murphy's Law in the end.

Keep the people happy and dancing.
Instead of burning the streets-



No, they are just burning any old mother down.

Well... the desire of surviving the cheetah attack. I believe the survival instinct obviously comes first, so in my example the desire comes first, not the imagination. Therefore, it's exactly vice-versa the way you said. — Eugen

The instinct to survive and the idea to call someone from far away are two separate things. Instinct would say fight or run, or maybe scream. The scream is not a call for help, but a reaction to the situation, one does not think that just by screaming help would come. Then the third option is imagined, call for help. It would not be a big step to then imagine calling to someone far away.

But even if you were right, that wouldn't change much the fact that the ideas that lie at the base of absolutely 100% of today's technologies are old as hell. — Eugen

Who said they were not? I don't think that this has even been part of the discussion.

No man, it isn't. When I was a kid I have a sexual desire for a girl in my class in the form of erection, but I had no idea what sex was and how it was supposed to be made. — Eugen

So as soon as this poor young lady appeared you got a hard on and you had no idea why? Of course your body has its own reactions to situations in which it finds itself, in this case a reaction to pheromones in the air. But that was your body reacting , not you. Unless of course you want to admit that you are nothing more that a zombie reacting to the environment without the capability to think. Along the same lines do you desire to sweat when you get hot? No right it just happens.
Now if you start to think about how well her blouse is filled and get a hard on, then it is the imagination that is fueling the desire.

Sorry to give you this maybe inappropriate example, but it is obvious that in the case of biological creatures like humans, instincts come first and in many cases, instinct = desire. — Eugen

No idea why the mention a perfectly normal function of the human body would be inappropriate , but whatever. But i really do disagree with you that instinct and desire are always the same thing.

How could you explain wanting(desiring) to visit far away places as instinct? Until less than a couple of hundred years ago few people had traveled more that a few miles from their places of birth, and those that had been motivated to travel afar were mostly considered eccentrics or worse.
The possibility of easy travel has made people imagine going to those places thus creating desire. And no, someone inventing a boat was not a desire to float on water, it was a way to get a job done easier. The desire to work less did not create boats, imaging a way to do that did. And then they imagined what else could be done with a boat, like visiting places that were over river.

The desire of human being to have his door/gate opened without the effort of the owner is OLD AS HECK!!! Come on dude, really? Of course King Richard didn't imagine a remote control, but the desire of having his gate opened was there.
Desire - ...... - Invention — Eugen

Do you really think that King Richard would have put the bloody gate there in the first place if there had not been a way to open it? Do you really think that he would have not put it there if he had not first imagined a way to protect himself from the enemy?
Alright, protecting himself is instinct, but he had to imagine a way to do it or he would not have had the wall to put his bloody get in. The desire to protect himself did not protect him, his imagination created the wall. Where in anyone's instinct is there a wall and gate reaction to being attacked by large groups of enemies?

Again, name me ONE technology that serves directly or indirectly to a desire that wasn't there already. — Eugen

As soon as you give me one that is. But we started talking about desire creating things and now we have moved to direct or indirect responsibility for creating them.

We can say that artificial vaginas that are connected to your computer and from there through the internet to a woman's artificial penis connected to her computer that are used to stimulate sexually both participants are instinctual in the sense that they are born from the human instinct to procreate.
But that would be a bullshit answer. Firstly because there is no procreation involved, secondly because it is based in the instinct to feel pleasure.
How then did anyone get from the instinctive desire(if you insist on calling it that) to feel pleasure to inventing a fake dick and pussy?
Even being motivated by desire to pleasure one's self, there had to be a lot of imagination involved.

But none of this would have been possible if someone had not first come up with the idea to harness and use electricity, so please just explain how desire did that.

Tell us what part of our instinct=desire made it possible to discover electricity.

People are not in the habit of justifying their lives to one another. That is what life is for. My life speaks for itself, as do my words. If I say I live by my philosophy and that has positive benefits in my life then that is true. — Pantagruel

Please don't bother answering anything I say here, because it is obvious that you have nothing to say.

You stated quite clearly that you endorsed meliorism and that it was obvious that I did not.
I asked you to give some evidence that there was a way to make the world a better place, which you did not do.
I then asked for you to at least give me an idea of the way you practice meliorism, what you do to make the world a better place.
You have failed on all counts to show that meliorism has any more value as a way of life that stroking cats.
Thank you for your time.

Unless of course you are seeing what you desire and there is no need to imagine it. — Nils Loc

So then either it is a part of nature and not part of the discussion on the evolution of technology or someone as already imagined it and invented it.

There must be some animals that still desire despite a complete lack of imagination. — Nils Loc

My cats have lots of desires, but I seriously doubt that any of them have imagined having a remote control door to get into the house. Thus, unless I give them one they will never invent it.

I rather suspect that the machinations of democratic politics would be better effected if parliaments, congress etc were conducted in the nude.
Would you agree? — A Seagull

Now that would be one of the few things I would like to see televised. Those, what would be a polite way to say shitheads, would be moving things so fast the parliaments, congresses of the world would only need to convene for a couple of weeks a year. Look at all the money that could be saved.
Best idea I have heard in a long time.

The Quottle. I can't imagine it but desire it. — Nils Loc

Hang around long enough.

https://www.owler.com/company/quottle
https://github.com/RubenKuilder/quottle

There you go.

Usually when unknown things are part of your imagination they are nameless. Is it really possible to put a name on something you do not know. If you already have a name for something, must that object already exist in some form. If it exists only in your imagination then you should be capable of describing it to us. could you try doing that please. What does it look like, what is its purpose, what is it used for, how do you use it, is there a reason for its existence?
What motivates you to desire it, are you hungry, randy, do you think that it will fulfill any of your other basic needs? Will it calm you anxiety or temper your spirit for a battle forthcoming?

If it is desired then there has to be a motivation for desiring it, even if it is so that you can be one up on your neighbor, but them you would have to explain why your neighbor had or wanted one.

It is impossible to desire something without being able to imagine it.

Who are you to pronounce truths about my life? — Pantagruel

Let me go back a bit.

You have absolutely no grounds for saying I am doing nothing to make the world a better place and are essentially offering me personal insult. That does not say much for your own philosophy. — Pantagruel

I did not even try to pronounce anything about your life. All I did was to say that you have not presented anything to make me think that you practice what you preach.And that is the truth to which I refer.

I have absolutely no grounds for thinking that you are doing something for the world either.
A simple explanation of the effort you are making to make the world a better place would be sufficient.

That is black letter ad hominem and I am offended. It is certainly a commentary on you. — Pantagruel

Oh dear, I had no idea that there were levels to that.

ad hominem: Appealing to personal considerations (rather than to fact or reason)

I had no idea I was appealing to anything, I thought that I was simply stating the fact that you have failed to present any evidence of your belief in meliorism.

The human species is as much a part of the world (universe) as everything else, and so deserves the benefit of melioration. Unless you are an anti-meliorist. — Pantagruel

I have decided that you insulted me here and taken it upon yourself to judge the truths of my life without even knowing me.

Last chance, why is the human deserving of the benefits of melioration? How do you reason this out?
If there is no answer then I could quite easily come to the conclusion that the rest is just melodramatics to cover that fact.

:lol: I hate farcehook but there are times when it has its use.
https://www.facebook.com/MetroPR/videos/386605718891355/

:rofl:
Imagination, desire, invention. In that order.

I think attempting to live by a set of universalizable rules is the most practical way to make the world a better place, expressing itself in one's every action.

You have absolutely no grounds for saying I am doing nothing to make the world a better place and are essentially offering me personal insult. That does not say much for your own philosophy. — Pantagruel

If the truth hurts, you have three options
Take an aspirin
Grin and bear it
Change the truth

There is no insult intend. The questioning of beliefs is something that is commonly done here.

You know nothing of my philosophy, except that I ask a lot of questions, I have made no mention of my beliefs and your assumption that I believe in anything could be mistaken for an insult.

Yo were the one that brought up the topic of meliorism, the belief that the world can be made better by human effort, and your belief in its virtues. But you have failed to defend your opinion in any way at all. The burden is on you to provide evidence of the benefits of that belief to convince others that you are correct.

In fact, I truly believe they are simply instinctive. — Eugen

Ask some old people if they ever imagined being able to talk to someone across the other side of the world from a tiny box in their pocket. I am only in my mid 60's, but as a kid I never even gave it a thought never mind desiring it.

They might have dreamed about being able to talk to someone that lived a long way from them, but I doubt that desire played much of a part of their dreams until after they had already imagined doing it.

Let's take the need of communication because you've mention it. Imagine a woman in a cave being attacked by a cheetah while her male partner is hunting far away. Of course she would wish not only to communicate instantly and ask for help, but also for his husband to be there instantly (teleportation). — Eugen

You even say so here yourself, the person imagines the act and then desires it.

Please name one thing that you can desire without imagining it first.

I don't see it that way. The cell-phone was just a step ahead towards pre-existing goal: to communicate with others from distance wherever you are. Nothing new in this. — Eugen

For something to have been a desire, you would first have to imagined it to be possible. I doubt that stone age people even gave it a thought, so it cannot have been an ancient desire.

I'm conforming to my own system, thank you very much. And the standard to which I hold that conformance is the currency of my own happiness and the happiness of those around me. And I very much feel I am living up to my personal philosophy every day. I stand by my philosophy and I make every effort to live by it every day, as anyone who knows me personally will vouchsafe I am sure. — Pantagruel

So apart from following your own philosophy and trying to live a happy life you are doing nothing to make the world a better place.
Endorsing meliorism and practicing it are apparently two very distinct things then. Much better to not endorse something if you cannot practice it.

Yeah, mother nature, Gaia, plenty of them around that have similar ideas.

There’s nothing better than heaven. But a ham sandwich is better than nothing. Therefore a ham sandwich is better than heaven? — Pfhorrest

I put that up in the school cafeteria once, they made me take it down because they thought it would cause unfair competition with the chapel next door. :lol:

Also, I’m not sure if Syamsu believes this, but if I were building a system like this, I would draw an analogy between the relationship between God and the material world, and between the human soul and body: God is the world-soul, and as human bodies are parts of the material world, human souls are part of God’s soul. — Pfhorrest

That seems familiar somehow, where did I hear it before? :chin:

Let's take the example of instantaneous distant communication, the old desire since the world:
Maximum goal: telepathic communication, maybe even at the level of senses and emotions. — Eugen

With the amount of research into quantum entanglement going on there is a possibility of this happening one day. But I doubt that many of us will be around to enjoy it. But them again our grandfathers never even imagined that they could have a little box in their pocket that would let them talk to anyone around the world. And quite a few of them are going just that.

Will technological evolution make us have new desires that our current brain cannot imagine? — Eugen

When you got a wireless phone for your house did you not wish for a phone that you could walk around anywhere with, when you got a cell did you not want to talk to it to instead of typing on those little keys, and then one that you could see the other person on. That is how innovation works.

For every boundary that humankind crosses the will be new ones further ahead. That means there will be need for new technology. Everywhere humans go they will make discoveries that will set in motion new ways of thinking thus leading to new inventions.

Well, my efforts at understanding have culminated in the discovery and embrace of a lot of highly "social" philosophies (like Mead, Marx, Habermas) which are oriented primarily around the notion of a communal good and a communal mind. And I am endeavouring to live my life according to principles conformant with those philosophies. And I feel that this is working, in my own life and in what I am able to give back to my community. — Pantagruel

Side stepping the question does not help. I asked what EFFORT you are making to improve the world, not which books you are reading.
Conforming to the principles of long dead philosophers, or even many living ones for that matter, is not going to make the world any better.
Thinking like or thinking about everyone else in the hood is not necessarily a good thing. Conformists are usually a bad thing in the end.

In the way that you just rejected meliorism, which I endorse. I think that is pretty straightforward. — Pantagruel

So yu doing that is going to improve the world. Endorsing meliorism is all fine and dandy, but saying that makes no difference to the world at all.

What effort are you going to make to improve the world?

I think that I can make a positive contribution, you think you cannot. — Pantagruel

In what way?

It's just the difference between optimism and pessimism really, isn't it? — Pantagruel

No actually it is a valid question. Do you have an answer?

"Forget" is a strong word; that implies not remembering something said. — InPitzotl

Sorry about that, definitely badly worded. I have been busy in classes all day and just skipped a few minute to drop in here at lunch. Let me rewrite that part.

But one thing that most people don't seem to realize when talking about the theoretical P zombie is that it is not written anywhere that it has to be a physical object, only that it has to be able to convince real people that it is a real person. A hologram would probably be able to do that.

Is that the only problem?

Speaking personally, I feel that global recognition of this fact is the key to a brighter future. — Pantagruel

And there is the key question. A brighter future for whom or what?

"You imply disparity where none exists" — Pantagruel

How so?

What is a wrong answer is to say that there would be a fact of what emotions were in his heart, which made the decision turn out the way it did. — Syamsu

So where are is emotions, more importantly what are emotions?

I think you're missing the point. Yes, the TT involves having a conversation; but the conversation is limited only to a text terminal... that is, you're exchanging symbols that comprise the language. But the TT involves being indistinguishable from a human to a (qualified) judge. — InPitzotl

The original game was to try to distinguish between a man and a women using only written text answers to questions, obviously speaking would have made it too easy.
I think that you missed the point of exactly what he said. Look it up.
Turing did not set any limit to how the test would be carried out with a computer, his vision of a computer that was capable of fooling a human was 50 years from his time. I doubt that he thought that computers would just stay as text terminals, even though they did not exist in his time. His statement was futuristic.

Mmm.... it's a little more complex than this. Fall back to the TT's inspiration... the imitation game. Your goal is to fool a qualified judge. So sure, if it takes you 10 minutes to figure out that a banana is a good response to an oblong yellow fruit, that's suspicious. If it takes you 10 seconds? Not so much. But if it takes you 5 seconds to tell me what sqrt(pi^(e/phi)) is to 80 decimal places, that, too, is suspicious. You're not necessarily going for speed here... you're going for faking a human. Speed where it's important, delay where it's important. — InPitzotl

You can program response time and delays into a computer quite easily, an AI would have a basic set of rules to follow for most of its operations. Just as it would need rules to follow when picking something up.

Technically, yes, but that's a vast oversimplification. It's analogous to describing the art of programming as pushing buttons (keys on a keyboard) in the correct sequence. Yeah, programming is pushing buttons in the right sequence, technically... but the entire problem is about how you push the buttons in what sequence to achieve what goal. — InPitzotl

So an AI would need trillions of lines of code instead of millions, which brings us back to the part of processing power. Sequences using IF/THEN/ELSE would decide which buttons were pressed and when, again trillions of them.

Think of this as skillsets. — InPitzotl

Computer learning has come a long way in the last few years. Some of them can and do recognize objects. Some of them can and do pick them up and manipulate them, with great competence. Put the two together and there is your machine.

While accomplishing this has not happened in the 50 years Turing predicted it is getting closer everyday.

But one thing that most people seem to forget about when talking about the theoretical P zombie is that it is not written anywhere that it has to be a physical object, only that it has to be able to convince real people that it is a real person. A hologram would probably be able to do that.
If someone throw a banana at you, would you try to catch it or dodge it. Fear of contact from a physical object would be just as convincing as actually catching it.

So a judge might ask something like, what's a good example of an oblong yellow shaped fruit? And if the response is "A banana", that's something a human could have said. Call that "level 1". — InPitzotl

I think that Turing meant that you could have a conversation as opposed to a question/answer session with it. It would be have to access vast amounts of data quickly and come up with the correct sentences, phrases to be able convince anyone that it was a human.

But here's the problem. If we take a "level 1" program and just shove it into a robot, what do you suppose we'd get? It'd be silly to presume you'd get anything other than this... a (hopefully) non-moving robot, — InPitzotl

I don't remember ever reading anything he wrote or that was written about him that could indicate that he thought AI would be judged by its use in robots. The test was actually based on a game.

when asked to pick out the banana from the bowl of fruit, that the robot would just reach out and either touch the banana or pick it up. So let's say it does that... then what more is it doing than level 1? Well, it's not just processing string data... now it's observing the environment, associating requests with an action, identifying the proper thing to do when asked to show me which is the banana, and being capable of moving its robot arm towards the banana based on its perception. — InPitzotl

The observation creates more strings of data for it to process, and make decisions about. Any artificial sense would produce data to be processed. A true AI would have to have a lot of processing power just for that. But for a robot to be able to move you need very little processing power. The two things are not equivalents, AI is not a robot and robots do not have to be AI

That's a bit more involved than just passing a Turing Test... the two aren't equivalent. — InPitzotl

If I just want to talk to the little black box on my desk because I am lonely, the test works fine. The test does not say that AI has to convince someone by being there in PERSON and convincing them that it is human. That would involve more that just AI, things like appearance, smell, body movement and lots of other human quirks.

As I said, the human race is as much a part of the universe as anything else, so your premise, or rather, your objection to my premise, is flawed. — Pantagruel

Yes we are a part of the universe, but if our atoms where rearranged into stones we would still be here but in a different form.

meliorism - The belief that the world can be made better by human effort

Mother Nature will take care of fixing herself, like she is doing now while the humans are locked up.
No matter how much effort humans make they cannot repair the damage that they have done.
The easiest way to make the world better would be to remove the humans.

Not counting try to repair damage, exactly what about the world could we actually improve?

The best we could do would be to make conditions better for humans, making the world more to our liking would be an improvement. But how much more damage would be done to others because of out efforts?