If it speeds up to 80 mph, you have to speed up with it. If you ignore traffic conditions, you are likely to be in accident. — Bitter Crank

Meaning no disrespect to you personally, I utterly reject such blame shifting operations. These kind of rationalization systems are exactly why so many accidents happen, not people obeying the law.

It's just when you have 1000 drivers in a limited space all going the same direction, they can't exercise individual choice any more, even if they want to. — Bitter Crank

Right. So they should stop exercising individual choice. They should submit themselves to the law, which has presumably been thought through by traffic safety engineers who know a lot more about it than they do.

Please note, I'm not talking about going 20mph in a 50mph zone. I'm talking about going the maximum speed allowed by the law, and no more.

...and the consensus seems to be that life would not have meaning if it were devoid of suffering. — Posty McPostface

Suffering and meaning are two sides of the same coin. Meaning is a story that we like, and suffering is a story that we don't like.

I would agree that some amount of suffering is inevitable, given that suffering arises out of the nature of thought, and we have to think to survive. But we are not required to think every minute of our lives.

Many or most of us spend our lives wrestling with the good story vs. the bad story. But there is another option. Turn the story machine off, or at least turn the volume down.

Wrestling with the good story vs. bad story can be a bottomless pit of endless complication. On the other hand, turning down the volume of the story making machine is a fairly straightforward mechanical matter.

Which option is more logical?

I'm serious too. You're turning to discussion of me personally because you realize you've lost the argument. No offense taken, no grudges held, and I look forward to more conversation with you on other topics.

I just don't believe that everybody, including the police, should make up their own traffic laws as they go along on a case by case basis, that's all. Nothing too radical really.

I would say that it isn't the act of thinking that's responsible for this suffering, but the belief that you can't change how things are, that you can't get what you want, and I would argue that's a false belief. — leo

Ok, fair enough, but....

About an hour after I get what I want...

I'll start wanting something more. A new basis for comparison will be created, but the same old process will remain in tact.

When I encounter people like this online, I'd love to meet them in person, because I just can't imagine how you must come across in person. — Terrapin Station

I accept your surrender. Better luck next time.

I'm ready to stop giving people advice that they don't actually want and didn't actually ask for.

Except for one little thing. I'm not actually ready.

Any advice?

(learning from the master here)

I didn't say editing our beliefs was an easy process, it isn't precisely because beliefs determine how we think, what we do and how we feel. — leo

Agreed.

You're saying suffering stems from the nature of thought itself, — leo

Yes.

I would say that yes the act of thinking is responsible in itself for a lot of suffering, but I don't see it as the underlying cause, on the contrary through thinking you can come to make some sufferings disappear. — leo

Through thinking, I discovered that I am very happy on a sunny day in the woods, which is great, but...

Now I use those awesome beautiful peaceful days in the woods filled with glorious silence as a basis of comparison in evaluating my experience of the suburban neighborhood where I live, which I'm finding increasingly problematic.

We are the richest people ever to walk the Earth, thanks to thinking. And we're dissatisfied because we're comparing that to something even better, thanks to thinking. We have everything, and nothing, thanks to thinking.

On the other hand, mass-traffic is no longer an individual matter; it's much more like a fluid in a pipe. If the mass of traffic on given highway is moving at 40, 60, or 80 mph, (never mind the posted speed) — Bitter Crank

No, no, no and no my friend. "Never minding" the posted speed is why people who are willing to obey the law have to contend with those who aren't.

In my bombastic blowharding opinion, this topic appears to be a classic case of philosophical overthinking. You guys want to make this complicated, sophisticated. But it's not. The law was determined by a democratic process. The speed limit law is simple, easily understood, clearly stated, and readily available to all drivers.

1) We choose to obey the law, or...
2) We choose to defy it.

That's all there is to it.

No fancy philosophy required. Fancy philosophy gets in the way of clarity in such cases.

The problem that highway patrols have is that their policing territories are too large for the number of cars and officers to be able to ticket individual drivers on secondary roads, let alone ticket individuals on freeways. — Bitter Crank

Yes, true for sure. However, I can solve this if anyone would like to be further outraged. :smile:

On such topics as good and evil there are a lot of people whose reasoning is hopelessly hypocritical. — Tzeentch

Yes, agreed. What I'm attempting to here is apply the principle of challenge to my own desire to puncture such hypocrisy. Is such a process valid if it will serve only to get everybody upset and nothing meaningful will change as a result?

I'll find myself playing the devil's advocate often, not to defend the evildoer, but to expose their faulty reasoning. — Tzeentch

That's one of my questions. Should the evil doer (as defined by the group consensus) receive a skilled one sided defense in court? We probably agree he should.

It gets trickier when we move from the realm of law to the realm of philosophy. If a philosopher who is handy with words and ideas feels he/she can make an effective case for the actions of say, Manson, should they do so? Or, if such a case is so far outside of the group consensus that the most likely result will be little more than hysteria and conflict is such a philosophical exercise not actually logical after all?

If a person feels they can make case XYZ, does it automatically follow that they should? Or is that taking philosophy too seriously?

Thank you for engaging.

There's already too much philosophical talk that doesn't express the speaker's actual position. — Michael Ossipoff

When it comes to philosophy, why is the speaker's personal opinion a matter of importance?

Why should there be a limit on questioning a widely-held potentially-incorrect assumption (...that you don't agree with)? — Michael Ossipoff

Well, some perspectives are highly offensive to some people. As example, the victims of Charles Manson probably don't want to hear his side of the story, even if some person who is clever with words and ideas could make such a case.

It's a fact confirmed by many police I know. — Terrapin Station

Then the police you know should be fired. It's not their job to make the law. It's their job to enforce the law as it currently exists to the best of their ability, whatever their opinion of that law might be.

If the police feel a particular speed limit is inappropriate and want to express that opinion through the proper channels, ok, fine. I wouldn't object to that and would be happy to consider their opinion.

Here's an experiment you can use to confirm what I'm discussing for yourself. Get out on the Interstate and set your cruise control at the posted speed limit. Now have your kids in the back seat count how many cars you pass, and how many pass you, a fun game to keep them happy.

The vast majority of other drivers will pass you, because they don't care what the law says, but only with what they think they can get away with.

That's the mindset which forms the foundation of an immoral society. Everything is all about me.

To refine and focus my question a bit...

It seems philosophers can serve a useful function by exploring the boundaries of the group consensus, because what is widely assumed to be true is not always so, and correcting such mistakes seems constructive where possible.

What are the limits of such a process? When should a potentially incorrect widely shared assumption be challenged, and when should it be left alone?

If no one is pulled over for driving over the speed limit in that area, then it's effectively not illegal. — Terrapin Station

They get pulled over and ticketed all the time. But everybody assumes it won't be them, so the speeding continues.

In your scheme, where everyone is supposed to do whatever they see somebody else doing....

What's the point of posting speed limits?

What's the point in having traffic regulations?

What's the point in having traffic engineers?

What's the point in having traffic police?

Why even have the law at all?

So it would just matter whether tickets are normally given out in that area. — Terrapin Station

No, that does not matter one little bit. The police don't make the law, they just enforce it as best they can within limited budgets. The law on this particular road is clearly and repeatedly stated, 40mph is the maximum speed allowed. Period.

Rationalizing bullshit as invented by each supposedly clever little person who comes along doesn't have anything at all to do with it. If everybody can make up their own law, we have no law at all.

If they aren't, you're effectively being a jerk and causing problems, or at least increasing risk, by not going with the flow of traffic. — Terrapin Station

Hey, you could shove this pathetic rationalization up your ass if you'd like, I won't complain.

Why don't you just drive with the flow of traffic? — Terrapin Station

It's illegal. I'm happy going the speed limit. I trust highway engineers to know more about traffic safety than I do.

I was responding to this....

Jordan Peterson has argued that the individuals immorality is what accumulates to make society immoral — Andrew4Handel

... using a real world example. The example illustrates that the group consensus doesn't really believe in rule of law all that much.

It's so nice to meet an incurable optimist. — Pattern-chaser

Well, I am an optimist on this matter, in that I feel the God debate could potentially serve a useful purpose. I am an optimist in that I feel the God debate has delivered useful information.

I would admit that I'm a bit of a pessimist in that there's not a lot of evidence many people are all that interested in that information. But, this lack of interest tends to deliver even more useful information, so....

This just came to mind...

Many of your posts seem to somehow reference a social disability of sorts, if that's an appropriate way to put it. But then many, or perhaps even most, of your threads explicitly request advice from members, which seems a skilled social strategy.

The easy cop-out is to say that it is human nature to suffer and to kill. — leo

It is human nature to be divided within oneself, which sets the stage for conflict within ourselves, which is then mirrored out in to the world.

I have pondered about this extensively, and I have come to the conclusion that most suffering stems from fear and false beliefs. — leo

Fear and false beliefs are a symptom of the underlying condition, the divisive nature of thought. If suffering could be remedied by editing our beliefs we would have long ago stumbled upon the correct beliefs and would now be living in a utopia.

The human condition arises out of the nature of what we're made of psychologically, thought, and everything else is a symptom.

Well, I'm ready as can be; but, I don't want to rush the decision. — Posty McPostface

Assuming you avoid student loans, what's to decide? Just saying, you won't be in your twenties much longer, time's a wastin. The window where you will fit in socially on a campus is closing.

Why not just go ahead and try moving to the college town and meeting some other philosophical folks etc. If it doesn't work out, mom's house is still there, right? The worst that can happen is that you will learn what doesn't work so that you can direct your attention at some other plan.

Plus, student loans suck. — Posty McPostface

Yea, student loans for a philosophy degree. Not a great plan.

How about this? You seem perfectly capable of studying philosophy on your own, and with others over the Net, for free. And, you can also go to the university, meet people on campus, start a face to face philosophy club etc, also all for free.

Unless you have some specific well thought out plan for turning a philosophy degree in to a job, why bother with a degree?

I'm hardly an expert on academic philosophy, but what I saw in my explorations was that once you have a job at a university you become a prisoner of the politically correct group consensus. Your reputation is everything, and thus you can't really rock the boat, but only pretend to be a rebel etc. Not such a great position for a sincere philosopher to be in.

Jordan Peterson has argued that the individuals immorality is what accumulates to make society immoral and hence it is not just the immorality of a few corrupt leaders making a corrupt or toxic society. — Andrew4Handel

I cast my vote for this.

As example, I drive a particular 4 mile stretch of road a lot. It's scenic highway on the border between city and country. The speed limit is 40mph, clearly posted.

I set my cruise control on 40mph, which makes me the slowest car on the road. Every time I see a car appear way behind me I know that within a few minutes it will be on my back bumper. Almost every time I drive this road (a 7 minute drive) I have to pull over to let some impatient tailgater go around. If I don't they stay 3 feet behind me. Sometimes they blink their lights or honk their honk to admonish me for my rudeness of obeying the law.

And yes, I've checked my speedometer, as they often have one of those speed recording signs up which uses radar to track and report your speed.

Politicians don't lead the society, they reflect the society. We feed them bullshit (give me more services and lower my taxes etc) and they mirror the bullshit back to us. We are the problem, the politicians are just a symptom.

A closed minded doom monger - who's underlying message is don't hope and don't try. — karl stone

My message is that we can adapt to the revolutionary new era which the success of science has created if we try. But as your posts illustrate, a great many people instead invest all of their intelligence and effort in to trying to cling to the past.

Look. You're shooting the messenger here. It's not my fault that the long era of knowledge scarcity has become a new era characterized by a knowledge explosion. It's not my fault that, just as your words constantly remind us, we have to adapt to reality if we want to survive. I didn't create these situations, I'm just reporting on them.

You have good intentions. You just don't understand that an era of knowledge explosion is an environment very different than an era of knowledge scarcity, requiring a different adaptive response. The "more is better" response which was entirely appropriate in an era of knowledge scarcity can not be automagically transferred to a knowledge explosion era just because it's a routine that we're comfortable with.

Your ideas would have fit nicely in the 19th century. But we're not in that century any more, a reality I had nothing to do with.

Thanks for your opinion, but you haven't really come clean, have you? I've asked about your motives for relentlessly banging your doom drum, and you've been less than forthcoming. — karl stone

It always makes me smile when people yell at me for not typing enough. :smile:

Why am I relentlessly addressing the subject of our relationship with knowledge? Because the future of human civilization will be determined by that relationship.

If I understand where you are trying to go here...

On one view of philosophical method, we are concerned with words rather than things, whether we realize it or not. — Welkin Rogue

Yes, philosophy seems an attempt to arrange the symbols in our mind to represent reality as accurately as possible. If/when we shift the focus from arranging the symbols to reality itself, that's the end of philosophy, a prospect which may understandably be unpopular with many philosophers.

As example, to observe an apple to the greatest degree possible we have to set aside all distractions, such as for instance, our ideas about apples. Observing an apple, and observing symbols which point to the apple, two different things.

Am I on the subject you wish to address here?

So, given the collective irrationality argument - yes, we're handling it so far. — karl stone

So if I were to walk around all day every day with a loaded gun in my mouth you would consider that a successful management of my handgun, given that the gun hasn't gone off.

See? It's not possible to have a rational discussion with true believers of any stripe.

Yes, we can handle it. — karl stone

We have thousands of nukes aimed down our own throats. Are we handling it?

If we know what's true, and do what's right in terms of what's true - if we value the sustainability of our existence, by those principles alone, we can handle everything technology has to offer. — karl stone

Except that there is no plan to take us to this level of sanity, and vague dreamy utopian visions have proven incapable of taking us there.

No offense Karl, but I give up, you are too willing to blatantly ignore reality to take your theories seriously. I'm glad you're on the forum though.

Hmmm, interesting. Tell us more about the operation. — Bitter Crank

My wife and I are nature nuts. I'm an avid hiker, and she is focused on wildlife. She always has a number of birds and squirrels under her care while she nurses them back to health or is helping them grow up. We have cages of various kinds all around the place housing the newest arrivals. I help out, but it's really her show, and she invests many hours a day in to it every day.

Maybe you would get rehab services if, for instance, you were a lame duck? — Bitter Crank

Yes! Exactly. That's what I keep telling her, I'm lame, and an odd duck. And still I have to stand in line!

By we I meant the mods. I'm unsure why you think talking about the effects of racist politics is anything like supporting white nationalism. Regardless, if anyone's a racist they'll be banned. — fdrake

Why are American Indians and blacks less wealthy than white Americans?

1) Our ancestors ruthlessly stole from Indians and blacks for centuries and today we whites decline to return the stolen property.

2) Indians and blacks are inherently inferior and thus can't successfully compete in the marketplace.

If we decline answer #2 as we should then we are stuck with answer #1, which means we share some traits with Nazis, and thus perhaps shouldn't avoid talking about them.

Given that God's [non-]existence cannot be proven, it seems unlikely. — Pattern-chaser

But the children's merry-go-round to nowhere nature of the debate can be proven, yes?

I believe we operate from the position that we've already seen through white nationalism and judge it accordingly. — fdrake

Um, except that, apologies, this is not true.

As example, here in America those of us of European heritage are still sitting on the stolen property our ancestors ripped from the native peoples with ruthless force, and there's no talk of giving any of it back. We're also still benefiting from the centuries of free labor our ancestors stole from blacks, and there's little to no talk of reparations.

Both American Indians and American blacks still suffer from the crimes of the past right now today (both populations are poorer than whites) and we whites could fix that right now today simply by giving them money which would raise them economically to the same level enjoyed by whites. But we decline to do so, we choose to keep the stolen property instead, thus making ourselves party to the crime.

Have we really seen through white nationalism if we still enjoy the fruits of it without apology or redress?

Again, I'm not interested in selling Nazism, nor am I defending any banned posters. Nor am I attempting to get banned. :smile:

I'm interested in exploring those things which the group consensus assumes without questioning to be true. It's called "philosophy". I sense the mods are not ready to do this kind of philosophy, so I'm testing the waters to see how far I can explore without becoming a subject of this thread.

Your wife is raising squirrels? Literally? — Bitter Crank

Yes. She's an avid wildlife rehabber. I live in a wildlife hospital, but nobody seems able to rehab me. :smile:

But, can anyone give me legitimate reasons why they would want to move to Mars? — Posty McPostface

It seems foolishness to me, at least at this point in history. Maybe some where far down the road it would make sense. My take is that the Mars mission is much like a Moon landing, a publicity stunt designed to build public interest and NASA funding. We might note that we haven't been back to the Moon in decades, probably because it was never worth visiting in the first place.

Most people are nice (an attitude that I've been struggling with in thinking otherwise). Most people like other people. Most people are trustworthy, and so on. — Posty McPostface

We don't really need to concern ourselves with "most people" too much because all most of us really need is a very small number of folks we can be close to. But, if we're talking most people I would argue what most of us are is pretty darn boring. It's nobody's fault, just the human condition, but honestly, the squirrels my wife is raising down the hall are often far more interesting.

Why are we here on this forum? Probably because the majority of folks we meet in the real world are almost entirely focused on a wandering random review of the mechanics of every day life, a discussion which has been assigned 97% of all conversational air time.

I'm sure this has happened to most members here. Something in a conversation inspires a philosophical thought, which you foolishly begin to share. Your friends and family smile (there he goes again), roll their eyes, and after 30 seconds you are given the "stop hogging the conversation" signal so that the chat may return to 7 more hours of wandering random review of the mechanics of every day life.

But at least I'm not bitter about it. :smile:

So some causal/cultural/socioeconomic account of the rise of Naziism is fine, but defending a racist, genocidal worldview is not. — fdrake

I'm totally agreeable that someone has to make the call of where the boundaries are, and that the mods are assigned agents for that task. So, I'm not arguing against such a policy on the forum. I hope that's clear.

Speaking purely philosophically, it seems somewhat questionable that, as philosophers, we should accept the utter wrongness of Nazism as a matter of faith without making any attempt to see all sides of the question. I'm less interested in Naziism specifically than I am in the fact that assumptions we take to be obviously true are not always so. That's what interests me about Naziism, it is almost universally assumed to be wrong, bad etc, which tends to raise philosophical suspicions.

As example, key opponents of the Nazis such as the Americans, British, and Russians all built their own empires using methods that really differed little from the Nazis. In America we were still lynching blacks as the Nazis came to power, and an oppressive Jim Crow regime was being enforced by the government in part of the country. We'd only just finished exterminating many millions of native peoples a generation or so before the Nazis came to power.

And yet the WWII allies are assumed to be the good guys, and the Nazis are assigned the black hat. Such widely shared beliefs seem ripe for philosophical challenge, a process quite different than the selling of Nazism.

I like your way of reasoning, but I don't see why we should aspire to end the debate. — Tzeentch

The God debate could be useful if we faced the evidence it has produced, which is, the investigation in it's current form is going nowhere. That is actually quite useful information.

As example, imagine that I'm trying to repair my car. I have a solution theory and put it in to action. But my plan doesn't work. So I try again. Still not working. I try twelve more times. Same result as before, nothing. After some amount of consistent failure I'm going to stop working my plan, stand back from the job, and look for a faulty unexamined assumption that my plan is built upon. Right?

If we were willing to do this with the God debate, it could be useful to continue the investigation.

But if we're not willing to face the evidence provided by a consistent pattern of failure, if we're determined to continue endlessly repeating the same old arguments to no effect, then the best that can be said of the God debate is that it provides ego entertainment for extremely nerdy typoholics such as ourselves.

If the God debate is to serve any constructive purpose beyond inflating our egos, the next step would be to identify the assumptions the debate is built upon, and try to find one or assumptions which are false.

Here's one example.

There seems to be almost universal agreement among theists and atheists that a God either exists, or not, one or the other. We might be suspicious of the fact that this widely shared assumption appears to be taken as an obvious given which requires no examination.

If we were to examine reality without the burden of this blind assumption, we might see that the vast majority of reality from the smallest to largest scales, space, does not fit neatly in to a tidy simplistic dualistic "exists or not" paradigm.

Thus, it's at least possible that the simplistic "exists or not" paradigm the God debate is built upon may not accurately represent reality, which if true, tends to turn the entire God debate in to a big pile of pointless rubbish.

Upon seeing this, some people may wash their hands of the God debate and turn their attention to other matters. This seems a reasonable choice. Other people may choose to dump the questionable "exists or not" assumption and then continue a God investigation on that basis. This seems a reasonable choice too.

Most people will ignore all of the above because they've memorized a collection of beliefs and arguments which they use to publicly inflate their ego, and they don't want this fun game spoiled by some party pooper. Ok, I suppose this is reasonable too, but perhaps not all that interesting.

The "exists or not" paradigm is just one example of a foundational assumption of the God debate which is typically taken to be an obvious given, but which may not be true.

There are other such questionable but unexamined assumptions underneath the God debate. Perhaps you can find them?

I have no plan. Do you imagine I need one? I rather think I don't. — karl stone

You're not obligated to have a plan for human transformation of course. But the "more is better" philosophy your technological suggestions are built upon depend upon such a transformation, for the simple reason that in our current state of maturity we can't handle more power.

If you, or anyone, had a credible plan for how a critical mass of the human population might come to accept "science as truth", that enhanced human maturity might make it safe for us to continue to acquire new powers, including your technological suggestions. Your "science as truth" idea has value in that is shows that you realize that human transformation is necessary, but so far it's just another utopian theory.

You're intent on aligning yourself with reality, which is good, and so I'm attempting to show you that at the current time the reality is that human beings show every sign of being significantly insane (nukes etc) and thus proposals which aim to give us even more power are irrational. If you, or anyone, had a credible plan for how to cure the insanity at the scale necessary, then that would obviously create a new situation where more things are possible.

Reality: Nuclear weapons exist, and nobody's utopian dream prevented that from happening, nor seems capable of fixing the problem. — Jake

Karl, please read the quoted sentence again.

1) Nuclear weapons exist. FACT!
2) Nobody's utopian dream prevented that from happening. FACT!
3) Nobody seems capable of fixing the problem. FACT!

It is in to this factual reality that you wish to introduce even more power with your technological proposals.

Could we maybe agree that if we recognized the fact that science is a true description of reality, we'd have no good reason to build nuclear weapons? That indeed, the fundamental motive for building nuclear weapons is ideological disagreement? — karl stone

What is your plan to remove such ideological irrationality from the equation?

Ok, we need to accept "science as truth". But how? Unless you have some kind of specific credible plan for human transformation to share with us, then your "science as truth" religion is really little different than "the world will be saved when we all become good Christians". That is, so far it appears to be little more than just another vague utopian dream with little chance of ever occurring to the degree necessary.

You keep saying that we need to align ourselves with reality, which is a valid concept in theory, but then you decline to align your theories with the reality of the human condition.

Reality: Nuclear weapons exist, and nobody's utopian dream prevented that from happening, nor seems capable of fixing the problem. Real world fact Karl.

If you are proposing that your utopian dream can accomplish what none other in history has succeeded in doing, ok, make that argument in some detail.

But, after all the world is the totality of facts, not things. — Posty McPostface

Claiming no expertise here, but will bumble forward anyway...

Facts seem a very small business. Electro-chemical patterns in the minds of a single species on one planet in one of billions of galaxies. I'm not sure why we would call the world the "totality of facts", but it's quite likely I don't understand what's being discussed.

If I understand, and I probably don't, there seems to be some general agreement that things are an illusion created by the human mind. Given that, by this theory, separate things don't actually exist anywhere but in our minds, again seems a very small business, and not "the world".

I'm not sure what is meant by "the world" but, to me, there is a single unified reality and all apparent divisions contained within are a property of the observer and not what is being observed.

What you're unwilling to admit is that you can't force a cultural reformation by restricting a valuable resource like knowledge. — praxis

Actually I have admitted this, though the admission may understandably become lost in the walls of typoholic text. I agree that I personally can't force a cultural revolution, and that it's likely that nobody else can either.

But the cultural revolution will indeed come, and pain will be our teacher.

Please reference my many mentions of the European wars example. That's what we're looking at. We're waiting for sufficient pain to arrive.

Because if it is - let me assure you, Jake isn't nearly as pissed off at what I said to him — karl stone

Correct. I am not pissed off at anybody. Overly enthusiastic more often than necessary for sure, but not pissed off. Speaking only for myself, I don't object to jibes, taunts, poking in the ribs, and the occasional hysterical outburst. I agree with Karl, we're human, and all of this comes with the territory. The Nanny Mods will spank us where necessary, let the party continue.

To be fair, the doom part isn’t nonsensical. The alleged cause and hint of a solution (“some governing mechanism”) is. — praxis

Because poster Jake Blowhard on some tiny net forum has not immediately provided the solution of a governing mechanism, you take this as evidence that such a solution is impossible and can never be found by any group of human beings who might apply themselves to the challenge.

Your assumption is quite flattering, and I thank you for the complement, even though the assumption is um, you know, pretty silly.