• God and time
    therefore everything would be part of God, not separate. It wouldn't have created 'us' as there would be no us (or them) — TWI

    A non-religious example might be space. Everything is overwhelmingly made of space. There may be some hidden property of space which causes it to generate what we call "things" in space. Thus, it might be said that we are both created by space and made of space. We are space. Space and we are one, and the divisions we perceive between "us" and "space" are inventions of the observer, not a property of what is being observed.
  • The Contradictions in Dealing with Other People
    We seek out people because we are social creatures, but the very thing we are almost always driven to let us down or frustrate us. Is it best to fullfill this desire to seek out others who will unleash such negative emotions, or is it better to withdraw into oneself like the hermit? — schopenhauer1

    First, while it's surely true that many, or perhaps even most, people can be seen as more trouble than they're worth, that's not true of everyone on Earth. Whatever one's taste, there are likely individuals somewhere in the vast pile of society who can meet that taste. And so, if we are taking it as a given that humans are social creatures, then the question would seem to become, how to find those individuals whom we will experience positively? The following two step process may assist in this regard.

    1) Work The Numbers - the more people we meet the more likely we are to find those people who are right for us. Thus, a hermit strategy seems ill considered, unless we are sure we can be happy as a hermit.

    2) Give More Than We Receive - Once we find the individuals we are looking for the job changes to selling ourselves to them. The formula here is remarkably simple, give more than we ask in return. But of course this won't always work, which brings us back to working the numbers.

    If we are struggling with our social lives, it could be that is so because we aren't willing to pay the price tag, working the numbers and giving more than we take.

    ============

    A more philosophical approach could be to try to understand what need drives us to seek out other humans. Instead of just stating "we are social creatures" as if it were an obvious given, we might ask why we are social creatures. If the underlying need can be identified and met by some method other than connecting with other humans, the problem is solved. I won't dive in to all this here, unless members start such a conversation.

    ============

    Finally, I think the incredible popularity of both social media and dogs tells us where this is all headed globally. On average, generally speaking, we are retreating from each other, choosing convenience and control over the often messy business of face to face social connections. In other words, whether we like it or not, whether it's a good idea or not, the robots are coming.
  • The Contradictions in Dealing with Other People
    ↪TheHedoMinimalist

    As you can see, I find this to be a fascinating topic. I do so at least in part because since I found the Net in 1995, the transition has been happening to me, to the degree possible in the current primitive technology. This personal experience makes, for me, the "talking with AI" prospect more than just a hypothetical idea.

    Here I am, talking to you, a human being I know pretty much nothing about. And I don't really care that most of your humanity is obscured from me because you are more interesting than most of those available to me in the real world. Given that most of your human properties are already lost to me, it doesn't seem that big of leap that someday you might be designed by humans, but not actually human yourself.

    Philosophically, what interests me is how the "talking with AI" era seems to be both the best and worst thing that could happen to us socially. I'm always drawn to any idea that seems to be holistic, containing all polarities within itself.

    There are a LOT of lonely people in the world who could be served by such technology. Every neglected discarded person on Earth could have an intimate best friend, or 50 of them, all tailored to their personal needs and taste. That's surely a remarkable, indeed historic, development.

    On the other hand, such technology will also cause a great many of us to turn our backs on our fellow humans, because they can't meet our needs the way AI can. We will in effect increasingly be talking to ourselves. We see this already today in the way that social media builds a self reinforcing bubble around each of us, feeding us mostly what we already like and agree with.

    Of further interest, my best guess is that the negative will in the end out weigh the positive, and that many or most of us will realize this, while we nonetheless plunge headlong in to the AI social realm with great enthusiasm.

    Here I am, today. I know that a social life built primarily on forums is a weak stew indeed, but I don't seem to care, because I get to talk philosophy all day long without limit, an experience not vaguely available to me in the real world.

    And I will of course be turning my back on you personally, because you don't appear to be a 22 year old gorgeous redhead in a skimpy outfit who thinks I'm a genius, or rather The Genius. Yup, sorry, you've been found wanting, not exactly perfect in every respect, so I gotta let you go.

    Well, ok, ok, I guess we can keep chatting until the AI peeps are ready...
  • Science is inherently atheistic
    The degree to which I've elbowed the subject in to other topics is over-estimated by those who do not appreciate the full scope of the argument. — karl stone

    The full scope of the argument is...

    You worship science.

    Beginning, middle and end.
  • The Contradictions in Dealing with Other People
    ↪TheHedoMinimalist


    Good points, thanks.

    As I imagine it, those already born when these technologies mature will probably turn up their nose. Those born in to that new world will probably see it as completely natural to talk to AI. We see this today to some degree in relation to the Net.

    So my bet is that your objections are more about now than the environment these programs will inhabit. But, just a guess of course.
  • Is our dominion over animals unethical?
    Right now, there are plant based "burgers" out there, such as Beyond Meat or The Impossible Burger. I eat The Impossible Burger regularly, and it tastes quite good. — chatterbears

    The problem here is that products like that don't taste that good to meat eaters. I like them, you like them, but we're already vegetarians.
  • Science is inherently atheistic
    If everyone around you thinks religion is just too silly to bother with, then that becomes a kind of automatic truth not worth questioning. And we can imagine the reverse situation, where atheism is just so obviously silly as to be not worth thinking about. — sign

    What I see is that everyone around us assumes without questioning that the theist vs. atheist paradigm is the only valid way to approach such issues. Thus, it seems 95% of all commentary is focused on the us vs. them battle within that paradigm.

    It seems to me a rational person might examine the evidence produced by this pattern, and see that this routine which has been going on in earnest for at least 500 years, has produced nothing much but endlessly more of the same.

    Einstein said something to the effect of doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results is the definition of stupidity, or perhaps insanity. I tend to agree.
  • Science is inherently atheistic
    I would argue, that to maintain ideological conceptions of reality, the scientific conception of reality has been suppressed, downplayed and ignored, to our enormous detriment. — karl stone

    And you would in fact argue that in almost every post in every thread.
  • Question About Forum Data
    Ok, no problem, thanks again for sharing, and for this forum.
  • The Contradictions in Dealing with Other People
    If there were customizable AI that designed to learn what makes you interested in talking with them, they could easily replace human conversation partners. — TheHedoMinimalist

    Yes, that's it. As we can see with today's Google and Facebook, there is already huge work underway in developing software that can track you and learn what interests you. The vast profits involved in such operations guarantee that such work will continue to mature.

    There are already primitive services available that attempt to simulate live interactive conversation, such as for example, CleverBot and iGod.

    Software such as CrazyTalk can make an image speak anything you feed in to it, and turn it in to video (both 2D and 3D).

    I don't know how long it will take for these trends to merge, but it's not hard to imagine a digital entity which 1) learns your interests, 2) is live and interactive and 3) presents a video image.

    We need only look to the incredible popularity of dogs to see that vast numbers of people will happily give up human friends if they can be replaced with some other kind of friend who is under our control.

    My guess is that over the medium to long term this is how the issue of annoying human experiences will be resolved. It will perhaps be both the best and worst thing to ever happen to us.
  • The Contradictions in Dealing with Other People
    Unfortunately, because we have diverging desires, we often have to compromise with people in order to fulfill them. — TheHedoMinimalist

    Surely true, now. But we are entering a world where compromise will increasingly fade away. Real human beings in our lives will be replaced with digital entities which realistically simulate humans, and can be customized to taste. You and I are half there already in this exchange.
  • How Relevant is Philosophy Today?
    Well, let's see. First, all of human life is based on some assumption or another, so an investigation of these assumptions is useful, in theory. So although we should try to be realistic about how little is likely to be accomplished, I'll vote that it's good that average people such as ourselves make the attempt to examine some of these assumptions.

    As far as professional academic philosophy goes, I do honestly believe it's largely a self serving enterprise of very limited use to the public at large. As example, academic philosophers seem thoroughly unable to grasp that nuclear weapons are not "just another single issue", just as if I had a hair trigger loaded gun in my mouth that would not be just another single issue in my life, but the only issue of any importance.

    Sure, I may have many other problems. I may be an alcoholic, I may have cancer, I may be unemployed, I may be hopelessly addicted to posting on forums. :smile: But at the moment I stick the loaded gun in my mouth, that becomes the issue I should be addressing, because that becomes a single point of failure which can render all other solutions impossible.

    To me, this is a very simple and straightforward test of our rationality, which we routinely fail. Based on that evidence, I conclude that philosophy is of limited use in general, and that most of those doing philosophy for a living are well intentioned frauds.

    In my observation, what professional philosophers are good at is not reason, but generating articulate documents and playing the corporate gulag career ladder game. That is, they are good at the philosophy business, and not actual philosophy.
  • Science is inherently atheistic
    I don't know how much I bothered reasoning about it, though. — Terrapin Station

    Well, ok, if you prefer not to reason about your publicly stated positions, that's your choice of course, and leaves me with little left to do here. No problem, go in peace.
  • Question About Forum Data
    Should anyone's time should permit, I have another question. How similar is PlushForums to Vanilla? Did they totally overhaul Vanilla, or is it more a case of tweaks here and there?
  • How Relevant is Philosophy Today?
    How about global warming or resource depletion? It is arguable that they are far greater threats to the flourishing, or even survival, of humanity than nuclear weapons are. — Janus

    Fair point. I tend to focus on nukes because they are an existential threat right now today. My best guess is that the kind of issues you reference will destabilize global civilization, likely leading to the use of nukes.

    I'm pretty forgiving about what happens here on forums, for we are mostly "civilians" and not professionals. And we're doing the best we can, generally speaking.

    However, I typically get banned, or at least totally ignored on academic philosophy websites when I raise such concerns. I don't have anything personal against academic philosophers, but I do tend to think their profession is mostly a scam upon the taxpayers.
  • Science is inherently atheistic
    I'd like to apologize for being somewhat adamant and bombastic. I sometimes grow impatient with the pace of some conversations, which tends to make me somewhat ornery. Entirely my problem, which I shouldn't be sharing so generously.
  • Science is inherently atheistic
    I'm not sure what that is referring to. — Terrapin Station

    Exactly.

    My atheism is primarily built on the fact that I was never socialized into religion. So by the time i was exposed to religious beliefs in any detail they just seemed--as they still do--completely absurd to me. — Terrapin Station

    Ok, that's fine, no problem. I hope you understand I'm not trying to make you be a theist, but rather trying to help you be more loyal to your own chosen methodology, reason.

    Religious beliefs seem absurd to you for a reason. That didn't happen magically out of nothing. You referenced your chosen authority, human reason, and discovered that many religious beliefs don't pass the tests required by human reason. And so you find those beliefs to be, in your words, absurd.

    What you appear not to have done is apply the very same test to the authority of human reason that you reasonably apply to holy books, the theist's chosen authority. That's my complaint, not that you have declined theism.
  • Yes, you’d go to heaven, but likely an infinitely worse heaven
    ↪Herg
    Not that this is all that useful, but your posts reminded me of a prayer experience I once had.

    I was about 16, surfing by myself. A storm came up so I got out of the water and sat under an overhang at a beach house, waiting for the storm to pass. I was bored, so I played a game and asked God to give me a sign if he existed. Nothing. No sign. More nothing. Nothing all day long. So I finally gave up waiting and returned to surfing.

    That was 50 years ago. And I can't remember anything else about that day, that week, that month. I can't even remember if the surf was any good. But I remember asking that question, even though I really didn't care about it much at the time.

    What does this mean? Anything we want it too. I make no claims. Just saying, it happened.
  • How Relevant is Philosophy Today?
    My vote is that philosophy, especially academic philosophy, bears little resemblance to reality. It's a fun game for we nerds to play, that's about it.

    If philosophy was really about applying reason to the real world we live in, at least half the articles would be about nuclear weapons, and the assumptions which led to their invention, and our complacent relationship with them etc.

    But if we look at this forum, and leading blogs such as the APA blog, we find very little to no such discussion.

    Philosophy will never be a serious business if it can't even address well known ever imminent existential threats to our entire civilization.

    However, as nerd entertainment, well, here I am, having a good time.
  • Science is inherently atheistic
    You're retreating in to quibbling. In your defense, that's completely normal, seen it a thousand times.

    We can observe how forum atheists will do the dictionary definition dance all day long, but we somehow never get around to challenging the qualifications of the authority their atheism is built upon.

    That's not reason. That's ideology.
  • Science is inherently atheistic
    That may be the case, but since someone who lacks a belief in gods but who came to that view via another means is still an atheist, we don't include the motivational background in the definition. — Terrapin Station

    In the real world, the overwhelming vast majority of the time, what other means??
  • Is our dominion over animals unethical?
    $2,400 to make 450 grams of beef. Oh well, looks like we got a way to go yet on this one. Back to moralizing for now I suppose.
  • Is our dominion over animals unethical?
    Here's an article which may serve as an introduction to "clean meat", ie. meat made in a lab without the need to raise and kill animals.

    https://www.theguardian.com/small-business-network/2017/jul/24/lab-grown-food-indiebio-artificial-intelligence-walmart-vegetarian

    Some quotes from the article:

    Memphis Meats, which generated headlines last year with the creation of the world’s first lab-grown meatball. The company has subsequently succeeded in making “clean” chicken and duck (without needing to raise and kill the animals for their meat).

    Its CEO Uma Valeti says the process involves taking tiny meat cells from an animal (via a painless biopsy or sample). These are then fed nutrients, which enables the cells to grow, and they eventually turn into edible meat. “We’re developing a method that would allow the cells to self-renew indefinitely, meaning after the initial cells are obtained, we wouldn’t need to return to the animal for subsequent samples,” Valeti says. “Our goal is to entirely remove the animal from the meat production process.”

    Memphis Meats has to spend around $2,400 (£1,800) to make 450 grams of beef. However, the price is falling and the company aims to hit the market in 2021.
  • Is our dominion over animals unethical?
    If factory meat is scalable to feed mass populations, and can be provided affordably, this may be the solution. This may be a case where science can provide a better solution that "religion", ie. morality, and I demand that Karl Stone applaud me for saying so. :smile:
  • Science is inherently atheistic
    How can we escape this debate though? Our prime directive is survival and that directive extends beyond the grave and into the realm of a potential God. I'm not sure it's possible to stop talking about it until we have some answers; that would be going against a basic instinct. — Devans99

    Well, let's see. Hmm...

    First thing to come to mind is that most people have already escaped this debate, more or less. Most atheists never give the matter a thought, and even those who attend a church are typically not that ideological.

    It's surely true that we have a basic instinct to try to know things. It doesn't follow for me that therefore we are required to try to know things for which there is really little evidence that a knowing is possible. This may boil down to whether we view philosophy as a means to an end, or as an end in itself.

    This is just another theory, but it's not clear to me that survival is really our prime directive. I look at our deepest goal as being more a matter of reunification, liberation from the experience of division and separation. To me, just one view, it doesn't really matter whether we frame that goal as reuniting with a God, or with a vast mechanical reality. What matters in my view is whether we have the experience we are seeking. To the degree that we have that experience, it seems to me that the question of what we are uniting with loses it's importance. As example, while we're having great sex our opinions about sex tend to fade away.

    But, your point is taken. It's surely true that some of us will never be able to stop talking about God, he said, while typing his 100,000th post on the subject. :smile:
  • Is our dominion over animals unethical?
    ↪chatterbears
    Apologies, if this has already been addressed above...

    There will be a story on NPR tomorrow about meat products grown in a lab. It's real meat, but no animals involved. I'm guessing you know more about this that most of us, so I'd be interested in your understandings and opinion.

    My very basic understanding, hopefully somewhat correct, is that they do in the lab just what an animal does, start with plant material, and turn it in to meat.

    What do you know about this?
  • Science is inherently atheistic
    What I mean is I have no direct faith in God, I put my faith in scientific evidence and probability which lead me to believe that God may exist. — Devans99

    Ok, thanks for clarifying, that's an interesting twist on the faith experience.
  • Science is inherently atheistic
    Good point. Surely the worst religious experience ever! Listen to Dawkins and Die. I'm amazed its so popular when there are scientific alternatives to atheism (I'm a deist myself). — Devans99

    Thanks for your reply. Yes, a scientific alternative to atheism (and theism too) is reason. Actual reason, not ideology posing as reason.

    Here's a hypothetical question to illustrate. When members are having wild sex, are you concerned with the God debate? Probably not! That's because the power of that experience makes the God debate irrelevant. Reason should be guiding us not to win the God debate, but to escape it, transcend it, make it irrelevant.

    Religion is fundamentally about achieving a psychological reunification with reality. To the degree we can achieve that state of mind, we have no need of religion, or anti-religion either.

    The useful question reason should be addressing is, what is it that is generating the experience of being divided, separate, alone?
  • Science is inherently atheistic
    I don’t disagree with you completely. I just happen to believe in God through no conscious intentionality. It just happened to me. I pray to God as a form of meditation. Whatever the word “God” refers to in reality is a question I am not equipped to answer. — Noah Te Stroete

    Ok Noah, that's cool. I'm hope I'm writing well enough that readers will understand that I'm not attempting to prove or disprove the existence of God. What I am attempting to address is the relationship between reality, and symbols that point to reality.

    From a religious perspective, we can look simply and plainly at what religion is claiming, that God exists in the real world. If that is what one believes it seems the question becomes, how does one look for God where religions say that he is, in the real world? And should we conduct such an investigation, I believe we will find that the biggest obstacle to observing the real world is the very distracting noise being generated by the symbolic world between our ears.

    I'm arguing that it is the experience that most matters, and what we call that experience is really not so important.
  • Science is inherently atheistic
    I hope that is the case, but the existence of God should be inducible to a high degree and many people have trouble with the concept of faith and prefer evidence. — Devans99

    I'm sorry, but this is inaccurate. Very few people have any trouble with faith, they differ only in what they have faith in.

    The situation is not that some people use faith while other people use reason. That's an entirely false division. Everybody uses faith.

    As example, someone might like to prove for us that a single half insane semi-suicidal species only recently living in caves on one little planet in one of billions of galaxies is capable of using any process to determine the most fundamental nature of all reality, the scope of God claims. The first problem such a person will encounter is that we actually have no idea what the concept "all of reality" even refers to.

    But, even in the face of such absurdity, most people will have faith that some methodology or another can deliver credible meaningful answers of some kind. They differ only in what methodology they have faith in.
  • Science is inherently atheistic
    The emotion I feel, the reason I think, the wonder and awe of looking up at the cosmos, the fact that we are conscious and not not conscious, that life and consciousness are even possible, are all the evidence I need. — Noah Te Stroete

    To me, the most rational act for both theists and atheists is to focus on developing positive emotional experiences such as wonder and awe etc, and to forget about claims and counter claims, answers, explanations, interpretations, evidence and proof, etc.

    The beliefs and counter beliefs etc are just symbols. To focus on symbols is like endlessly arguing about who wrote the best book about sex, instead of having sex.

    The beliefs and counter beliefs etc are not only not necessary to reach these emotional experiences, they are counter productive. They draw our attention away from the real world in to the very much smaller realm of human thought. That's like trading a real apple for a cardboard image of an apple, not a great bargain!

    Thought is not the solution. Thought is the problem. It's the inherently divisive nature of thought which creates the illusion that we are separate from reality, thus giving rise to the desire to "get back to God". Thinking about God does not accomplish the "getting back", the reunification with reality, because such a process uses the very medium which is causing the illusion of division.

    To use religious language, the Apostle John so very efficiently defined God this way. "God is love." Three words! Love is not a theory, position, doctrine or counter theory, counter position, or counter doctrine. Love is an experience.

    And if one doesn't believe in God, fine, no problem, and not really too relevant. The experiences of wonder, awe and love etc are still available, and what actually matters.
  • Science is inherently atheistic
    Non-theistic is precisely what Atheism is. — DingoJones

    Non-atheistic is precisely what theism is.

    That's silly, right? Defining either theism or atheism by what they are not is simply silly.

    A more useful formula is:

    THEISM: Belief in the authority of holy books.

    ATHEISM: Belief in the authority of human reason.

    This formula is useful because we are now taken directly to an examination of each chosen authority. We can inspect and challenge the qualifications of holy books to address the very largest of questions. We can inspect and challenge the qualifications of human reason to address the very largest of questions.

    Most forum atheists are clear on the need to challenge the qualifications of holy books, an entirely appropriate operation.

    But when it comes to performing the exact same analysis on their own chosen authority, they typically become hopelessly confused. To be fair to forum atheists, this very same logic failure is shared by many, perhaps most, of the most prominent atheist spokesmen.

    REASON: If we perform the same analysis on all chosen authorities in a even handed manner we are doing reason.

    IDEOLOGY: If we challenge only the other fellow's chosen authority, and not our own, we are doing ideology.

    Atheism becomes entirely pointless if it abandons reason for ideology. Without reason, atheism becomes just another kind of religious experience, and a very poor one at that. Further, there is no hope of competing with the ancient religions when it comes to ideology, for they are the masters of that realm.
  • Calling a machine "intelligent" is pure anthropomorphism. Why was this term chosen?
    But as regards the question - computers are not intelligent at all. — Wayfarer

    The Turing test seems a reasonable standard. If a computer can perform some operation in a convincingly human manner, why not stop quibbling about dictionary definitions and just call it intelligent?
  • Calling a machine "intelligent" is pure anthropomorphism. Why was this term chosen?
    I appear to have a reply that I made earlier deleted on me. I'm guessing that linking a youtube video is a violation of the ToS which wasn't my intention. Is my guess correct? — Happenstance

    Youtube links are ok. But sometimes the spam filter of the forum kills posts that it shouldn't. If you describe the situation to the mods they can usually restore the falsely killed post.
  • Science is inherently atheistic
    Dictionary definitions of atheism are created by good folks such as yourself, who are constrained by a quite limited understanding of the subject.

    The overwhelming vast majority of atheists arrived at their position through reference to human reason. To blatantly and repeatedly ignore this obvious FACT is equivalent to pretending that holy books have little to do with religion. To blatantly and repeatedly ignore the relationship between reason and atheism is to reduce the conversation to a level that would be unacceptable in a high school classroom.

    The whole "merely lack belief" business is either a deliberate rhetorical scam (the desire to have no territory to defend), or more often, evidence of a very primitive understanding of the reality of atheism.

    I apologize for my adamant stance, but I must admit that it frustrates me that this has to be explained to intelligent well educated people on philosophy forums over and over and over again, and STILL the "merely lack of belief" mythology continues to drag such conversations down to the lowest possible level.
  • Science is inherently atheistic
    Science is methodologically anti-faith — karl stone

    Science culture is methodologically anti-faith, except in regards to itself. Your own writing provides a great example of that.
  • Science is inherently atheistic
    Hence the need to examine critically. — karl stone

    Right, we agree on this. But you appear to only be interested in critically examining other people's perspectives, never your own blind faith in science. So basically, you are in part an example of the very thing you reasonably object to. What I've been suggesting to you is that we apply the same critical eye to both religion and science, ie. intellectual honesty.

    Having looked at the matter, I rather suspect it's those who believe in God who object to recognition of science, because it places an undue burden on religion to justify its claims, rather than the objection of scientists to the fact that people believe all sorts of things. — karl stone

    Yes, I know your dogma, because you've shared it many times. However, what unsophisticated folks such as yourself (and most posters on every philosophy forum) don't seem able to get is that religion is not exclusively about ideological assertions. Religion is much more than wannabe science, no matter how much you wish to so define it.
  • Is our dominion over animals unethical?
    What is the most effective way to share an understanding of how not to rape? Or how not to steal? Or how not to kill a child? It's quite simple. Recognize that another sentient life should be valued. — chatterbears

    What I'm asking you, all activists, to do is to investigate whether a bias for moralistic finger pointing is interfering with clear thinking. Moralistic finger pointing can be quite emotionally satisfying to the finger pointer, and it's reasonable to take such a distracting agenda in to account. Moralistic finger pointing tends to build rejection in those who are the target of the finger pointing.

    What I've suggested above is that the most rational and effective course may be to identify those who have already decided to become vegetarians, and help them make the transition as easy as possible. When I first became a vegetarian many years ago I thought that meant buying frozen peas from the grocery store. True story! :smile: I needed help obviously, and was lucky to be in an environment where I got that help. Everybody does't have such help available, and may easily return to what they already know if they don't get it.

    This is a philosophy forum, we're supposed to question everything, eh?
  • Science is inherently atheistic
    You're making a positive claim, you just don't realize that you are. — Jake
  • Science is inherently atheistic
    It's just that "atheism" doesn't in any way denote how one arrived at a lack of belief in gods. The only thing it denotes is that one lacks a belief in gods. — Terrapin Station

    Dictionary atheism, built by those lacking a common sense understanding of the subject. Not impressed.
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