I think you are confusing liberty with individual liberty -- as if this were the only thing under consideration. It's important to anarcho-communism, or libertarian communism, but not the whole story. — Moliere

You have the authoritarian-liberal scale and the collective-individualism scale on there.
What other scale of liberty are you referring to? You are either totally free or you are free in a community-form.

Kropotkin is a pretty typical thinker when it comes to understanding anarcho-communism. — Moliere

But he is essentially describing anarchy. I think there are lots of people who miss that anarchy isn't "Mad Max", it's just a society in which everyone exists as a collective without authority given to anyone specific.

With Anarchy as an aim and as a means, Communism becomes possible. Without it, it necessarily becomes slavery and cannot exist.

And if people want freedom on such an individual level that no state exists, you end up down in objectivism and Ayn Rand.

But at the same time, individualistic freedom is at the bottom right. That's where organized individualistic freedom is positioned, the form where businesses have the power to create their own laws and rules within their bubble. The collective anarchy (regular) is bottom left, totalitarian state communism is top left. Are we placing anarcho-communism at the mid-left then? Even though some branches of it are individualistic?

But there was communist anarchy. — TheMadFool

Can't have communism without a state. I know the general Marxist idea is that the state disappears, but without a state that could organize the common ownership, there would be no communist society. Anarcho-communism is essentially anarchy and in some forms, it seems to move over to individual liberty which isn't really in the realm of the collectivism that communism is supposed to work under, so not only does the state absolve, the entire point of common ownership is absolved. Anarcho-communism is, in my view, for those who confuse their political views, who want capitalistic individualism but common ownership and absolvement of the state, try putting that on the above map.

If they arrested those who hired illegal immigrants, there wouldn't be any. — Hanover

Extremely simplified concept without basis in reality.

The wall is pretty much stupid, but I prefer it to another war. To those who think that's a false choice, like maybe we could choose something other than war or a wall, I say you're wrong. — Hanover

What war?

Why do you say that? Why is it more interesting? — TheMadFool

Because if the crime was committed before the copying, both are guilty since both have the same identity, memory of the murder, motivation etc. so it's essentially a coin toss who gets jail or both get it.

Let's say "B" gets murdered.

If A is copied into A1 and they both get separated for a day, A or A1 murders B that day, but the other didn't.

Essentially they both had the same psychology, motivation and thought process up until this point, but small variations between their experience during that day changed their line of thinking and act, having one of them kill B, while the other didn't.

Maybe A even had the idea to murder B before copying, but during the day after, either A or A1 murdered B and the other couldn't because he was already murdered. Who is guilty then? If they both had the same motivation and will to act?

Could God be a man-made concept? There is no definitive proof that god exists and different cultures portray gods differently, yet most people believe in some form of higher power. Could this be an idea created by people to give them a sense of purpose or is there really a higher power that we have just yet to fully discover? — Franklin

It's man-made. Study anthropology, history, psychology and sociology and it will show a very common pattern of human behavior. Until proven, we can't even be sure there is something outside of our reality that is a God but who don't interact or knows about us, which puts us in the John Wisdom gardener analogy. The commonalities among those who believe and rationalize that belief is that they don't have enough knowledge of how our brain process reality around us and therefore do not pay attention to when they fall victim of such behaviors and thoughts that would be considered delusional in any study of them and their psychology.

Any rational standpoint would at least start at this conclusion and work from there. Any other position results in a fallacy or bias-based line of arguments since any other conclusion relies on assumptions and belief itself.

I was just providing some detail to the question the TC asked, "Could it really prevent immigration?" The answer is "no," for the reasons I gave. — Terrapin Station

And I agreed with my kinda ironic description of why it is as you say.

It's already well-known that most illegal aliens don't enter the country illegally. They don't sneak across the border.

Even for those who do want to sneak in, are we forgetting about the huge bodies of water that aren't going to have any wall?--the Pacific Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean? — Terrapin Station

You assume that common people and politicians trying to get votes from common people have enough knowledge to understand this. I always assume most people to be initially stupid and uneducated until proven otherwise, but that's just the nihilistic part of me :sweat:

I wasn't addressing the "overall point" of the thread. Just the one small bit that I quoted from your post (in relation to beliefs that are common among theists). — Terrapin Station

In that case, I would regard the points on what people believe outside causality arguments to be unethical, per my other thread.

People who believe these things DO believe that there are signs of interacting with God. It changes their lives in their view, changes their mental/emotional states, their relationships with others, etc. — Terrapin Station

Wasn't the point of this to evaluate what's the point if there was a God? And if there was a God, based on the common arguments that only points to a God that is so detached from us and our world, it becomes absurd to rely on that God or think we see causation where there is no correlation?

And as a side-note, I would argue that those people invite disaster, per my irrational belief argument in another thread. It breaks epistemic responsibility and is in my opinion unethical to apply to the world, since it only benefits the self, which, by almost all moral teaching equals immoral behavior. And even if God existed it would still be so, since it opens the door for murder in Gods name because of such irrational belief. Perhaps this thread may give me some thoughts on how to improve that argument since it actually is detached from any causality argument for God.

* We do interact with God regularly during our worldly lives; just not in ways that are detectable scientifically (and they believe that that is on purpose, because faith is important)

* Our faith in God enriches our lives in many different ways

* We interact with God after death

* How we interact with God after death depends on what our beliefs were during our Earthly life. — Terrapin Station

There are no signs at all of interacting with God, a cake enrich my life and it wasn't made by God, you cannot confirm that you will interact with God after death and how we interact is also not confirmed because of the first unconfirmed.

And, because of all that, John Wisdom's gardener-analogy applies, because Correlation does not equal causation - a common fallacy and one that believers make every day.

If we accept God as real, there are no signs of God, so the most logical conclusion is that if God existed, he's the gardener in the analogy. The only reason many people believe those things is because they were taught so, not by observing it. And if observing something they couldn't explain, they would get answers from religion based on other observations in history that also didn't get a rational explanation.

The only rational conclusion, if we were to accept God as existing, would be that God doesn't interfere or involve with us at all, which of course then leads us back to the gardener-analogy.

The world, especially the workplace, does not wait for your comfort, your convenience, punctuality is a pretty basic expectation. Tediousness and awkwardness?; welcome to life, and deadlines; someone’s paying you to do something in a timeframe. That’s what you’re paid for. — Brett

Absolutely, but we have to realize that a lot of the higher educations focus on jobs that as of now change their entire business strategy to make room for different personality types and the psychology of the employees. A lot of the old ways have been proven to work against the productivity of the companies today, so all of what you say depends entirely on what type of workplace that the education is actually aiming for.

deadlines; someone’s paying you to do something in a timeframe. That’s what you’re paid for. — Brett

Deadlines are deadlines, doesn't matter how you do the work, you deliver before the deadline. I'm working within this system and I plan out my days according to the needs, but always deliver before the deadline. Productivity is not the same as filling out the hours. You can't punch the clock, especially if the job focuses on high creativity activities, which will become far more common as we move into an age of high automation industries.

They do more than go through pedagogy classes. It takes more than charisma to teach. The problem is that we’re never sure what purpose education should serve. — Brett

I know that they do more, but what I'm referring to is the rapport towards the students, that has nothing to do with what is being taught or the purpose of the education after it ends, it has to do with opening the student's minds to actual learning instead of force-feeding information that never sticks.

Most people who went through education forget almost everything. The only thing they know after a few years of work is the actual work that they do and only hints, bits and pieces are left of what they learned during education. The only educations that need crucial focus on the information are educations similar to surgeon/medical educations with extreme esoteric terminology and high risk. Which is why these educations last far longer than everything else.

My point is still that actually getting someone to learn something that sticks requires good ability to establish rapport with the students, which is a very rare quality. Many students I've talked to always refer to a favorite teacher and every bit of information that they remember perfectly comes from those teachers classes, while the rest exists in a blur.

The knowledge about learning, the psychology of learning is rarely understood in many schools and higher education and this is a great problem.

The big question here is, what is most important? To learn the information you are there to learn or to learn how to be punctual? If many industries and workplaces, as of now, are moving into strategies more in line with how psychology maps the best performance in people and it's changing from the "punchclock"-way we've been doing it since the industrial revolution; and blue collar jobs start to disappear because of automation, what is the purpose of keeping a strict form of education to conform students to something that will probably not be true in the future?

To conform to a business way of doing their business, like being punctual and keeping a schedule, is something that is different between all types of industries and a new employee need to conform to those specific industries when they start working there. Do you really think that a person won't be able to conform to that because their education was more suited for learning instead of strict scheduling rules? If I ran a company, I'd rather have someone who might be 20 minutes late but really knows what they are doing. Who gets most done during a day? Someone who is competent with the knowledge or someone who just gets there in time and keeps the schedule. Especially in creative jobs it's irrelevant to be on time if you cannot use your mind.

And then when you graduate you go out into a world that is absolutely nothing like that. What you have is a formula for failure. — Brett

And regular classes and education forms are like the rest of the world? There's nothing in education that is like the real world so there's no form to actually shape them for it. This is why math is a failure for most nations since no one in the real world use math like you're taught in school. Only physics, high-level economy etc. use math in similar ways but if you choose a high education for those, then it's specific to that education.

The biggest problem with education is that schools don't know how kids actually learn or how anyone learns anything. They try to force-feed information to people and very little of it sticks. Those who are genuinely interested in the topic being taught will learn it. So the key is to find out how to create interest in the things taught. Primarily, very few teachers are actually good at teaching. They might have gone through pedagogy classes before becoming teachers but teaching has a lot to do with you as a human being, your personality. - If you cannot find rapport with your students, find a place where they listen with their mind and not just their ears, then you can teach.

I think that teachers should be paid A LOT more, but that the demands on them should be higher. Just like with surgeons and other high paid professions, a teacher needs a lot more than just force-feeding information.

If you look at online videos from some teachers who put their lectures online, what is different between those with low views and those with high views. Those with high views tend to have a teacher that is charismatic, who moves around, who jokes and talks in different rhythms. It's like a performance because that's how we communicate regularly.

If you want free education, move to Sweden, there are no compromises to the education form, but it's free. Except when it comes to material like books etc. However, there are many online classes as well.

I really don't understand why so few nations have free education. If politicians and the people had just a tiny bit of logical thinking and understanding of the causality involved with giving every citizen a high-quality education, they would not hesitate to make it free.

The problem, as I see it, is that regular people and politicians really don't understand long term consequences and opportunities of their decisions, they can only think short term.

A has experienced non-existence one might say. But what we've done to A and A1 seems very similar to sleep. — TheMadFool

It will only feel like sleep for the person you copied if you copied everything exactly. The person who died, died.

When we sleep we cease to exist mentally — TheMadFool

No we don't, our minds are very active during sleep, but I get your point.

So we could in fact say that a person dies in his sleep only to wake up as another. — TheMadFool

How can this be if you don't move the actual brain from A to A1? The mind isn't external to the neurons and nerve structure of A, so copying A to A1 would only make A1 feel like having slept from the point of being copied. The person who dies, dies and will not wake up.

The only thing that seems to ground our identity is memory - we remember what happened before we slept. Of course our physical appearance too doesn't change. — TheMadFool

Yes, there's nothing to suggest that our identity is more than our memories. However, personality relies on other things in our brain structure and body. You can even transplant gut bacteria from one person to another and that person might change some personality traits, like being angrier and eating more because the person those gut bacterias came from had those traits.

The identity is a mix of memories and physical/genetical programming that tune how we react and act out of those memories. It's why in psychology we've concluded the debate over nature or nurture to be over, it's both. Body and mind, genetics/physical (nature) and memories (nurture).

Therefore, it seems, based on the analysis above, that A1 is A (A has been cured of his fatal disease) and we can rightly call A1 as A. — TheMadFool

A1 is A if it's a perfect copy. If A were still alive, both A and A1 is A.
But after that point, both will have different experiences and will become two new identity-versions. A and A1 will have their own memories that will shape their future self.

A1, by analysis above, is A since he has the memory of the crime and is an exact copy of A. Yet, it seems intuitively wrong to punish A1 for A's crime. It's just that A1 has A's memories. He didn't actually commit the crime. — TheMadFool

We punish people who ordered crimes right? They don't do the crimes but their mind was part of it. The physical body doesn't matter, the intention does. If A1 is a perfect copy in every way, it will remember and react like A would have when charged with the crime.

It would be different if A1 committed a crime AFTER the copying. Would A also be guilty if A thought of doing the crime and A1 carried it out, but not A? That's a much more interesting thought experiment in my opinion.

Here we are. One point of view suggests A is A1 and another that suggests the opposite. — TheMadFool

I actually don't think it's overly complicated. An exact copy is a copy, it's the same person times two.

You might want to see the movie "The Prestige"
And if you really wanna fry your brain, play the game SOMA.

in this thread, God's existence is granted, being supposed herein to be at the least not any less real than Samuel Johnson's stone (that he kicked) - or for that matter any degree of real beyond that you care to make Him. — tim wood

As I might very well be the most atheist on this forum (at least from what I've read), looking at it as given that God exists, it reminded me of John Wisdom's Gardener tale, here modified by Antony Flew:

Once upon a time two explorers came upon a clearing in the jungle. In the clearing were growing many flowers and many weeds. One explorer says, "Some gardener must tend this plot." The other disagrees, "There is no gardener." So they pitch their tents and set a watch. No gardener is ever seen. "But perhaps he is an invisible gardener." So they set up a barbed-wire fence. They electrify it. They patrol with bloodhounds. (For they remember how H. G. Well's The Invisible Man could be both smelt and touched though he could not be seen.) But no shrieks ever suggest that some intruder has received a shock. No movements of the wire ever betray an invisible climber. The bloodhounds never give cry. Yet still the Believer is not convinced. "But there is a gardener, invisible, intangible, insensible, to electric shocks, a gardener who has no scent and makes no sound, a gardener who comes secretly to look after the garden which he loves. At last the Skeptic despairs, "But what remains of your original assertion? Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all? — John Wisdom

To the question:

But so what? — tim wood

I would answer, it is irrelevant. If God were proven to be, but not here, not able to interact with us and the world just follows the same physic rules as ever, having us through science and technology tame this nature and universe, without any interaction from that God, then who cares if God is real?

For me, it becomes a stone in the forest. You believe it's there, its form, you can describe it: it is pale, not black, it doesn't look like any stone and you know, in your deepest, that it is there. You one day go into the forest and you find the stone... now what?

I think it has to do with purity. We have a disgust center in our brain, the anterior insula which regulates emotional feedback on disgust. People range between a wide range of disgust and it's also part of why we have political left and right leanings. Being politically right might have some influences in higher disgust feedback while the left is more open to things outside of those parameters. There are hypotheses on how society works best by a pendulum between right and left politics; the left embracing progressive ideas, new ideas, creative ideas etc. while the right embrace stability, security, and order. Neither would lead to a functioning society, but the two together form an alliance that moves society forward with each step; one for progress and one for taking the new and form stability around it.

But everyone has feelings of disgust and it forces us to balance that feeling out with purity. If we see imperfections we want to correct them. Disgust is also about sex and relationships, we embrace purity, not just in virginity, but with how we look. We embrace symmetry. There is research that shows that we find symmetric faces more attractive for example. Foul smells and weird skin complexion makes us unsure of the partner's health and purity.

All of this affects how we view art and form. It's why we find some forms soothing and balanced, why most symmetrical forms feel calmer than those that aren't. If a Ming vase is imperfect, it's purity is tainted and the hunt for perfection in life gets replicated in the price drop of those Ming vases. It's like finding the perfect partner in love and sex who is absolutely pure in every conceivable aspect. It's like cooking the most well-balanced taste for a meal, that absolutely nails the purity of the tastes. We search for perfection every chance we get and a small crack in a Ming vase means that it is tainted, it's no longer perfection and we feel disgusted.

What if personalities are like that? — TheMadFool

Psychology primarily use the system 1 and system 2 for how we process and think about the world, and then the five-factor model for personality. If you want to include science, that's the models to use together with general IQ measurements.

That means, at some point in time, when all combinations of personality or even body types have actualized, repetitions will occur. A person exactly like Isaac Newton, Hitler, Buddha, Jesus, Mohammad, even you, will be born. — TheMadFool

That will never happen. You first have to factor in the possible variations of the above, then add genetical variations that will never be the same because of evolution, which in turn influence behavior, then add cultural nurture that forms the individual, environmental influences etc.

Is this reincarnation? — TheMadFool

So, no. Variations get far beyond just personality.

Even quantitative features — Moliere

Yes, but for this graph, it's more about the political coordination of political systems in relation to the people. Quantitative features have more to do with defining "the health" within the coordination on this graph.

One form I have in mind is the individual strength within this graph. Right now it only shows where you are if you place yourself somewhere, but not the strength of it. You might be a total supporter of dictatorship, a servent of that ruler, or you are someone at the outskirts of society, but still in support of that ruler. Which means the less you support something, the more centralized you get, but also less positioned. So that the 3D form of the graph is that of a pyramid, with the graph at the bottom and the point at zero interest or knowledge.

But this is a work in progress, nothing that I have thought through in its entirety yet.

I've been trying to complement that map, thinking about if there are other parameters.
Right now it's pretty solid in showing the collective, the individual ruler and their levels of having a state. But can we go in another direction? Just like a square becomes a cube with more dimensions, is there room for other variants of a political system that no one is really thinking about and do not fit the coordinates present at this time?

As per the map above.

While biological sex and gender identity are the same for most people, this isn't the case for everyone. For example, some people may have the anatomy of a man, but identify themselves as a woman, while others may not feel they're definitively either male or female. — NHS

I'm a bit confused by how this isn't obvious for everyone. Gender identity science is a real thing, there are tons to read about it, but I think people just ignore it because of their emotional response to the science. In essence; even at a philosophical forum people can't seem to separate their preprogrammed culture and lash out with every bias and fallacy there is.

What I find more interesting, as I don't see how the definitions can be disputed really, is why? Why does some children go through this? Is it nature or nurture? Is it a combination, like most things in psychology? More importantly, how does gender stereotypes in society and also, the active force against those stereotypes play into the nurture of kids? Where is the balance between upholding differences between genders and fighting stereotypes that influence destructive behavior on both the sense of identity and social interactions later in life?

There was already a tunnel under a segment of the wall. I think that says it all. It's a waste of money and resources.

And in what way would it help the situation? Prevent what? If people move over the border and won't get proper help to integrate into society, they will feed the socioeconomic problems with poverty etc.

What if the cost of the wall would be put on better relations with neighboring countries, with better help of integration for immigrants coming into the country? Problems by immigrated people do not come from them being "different", that is in essence racism. The problems come out of their socioeconomic situation and the lack of integration. It raises tribalism, segregation and hate within society and the consequences can be felt for decades after.

Name one country that has increased long term stability with force and locking borders in the past?
Name one country that has increased instability because of force and locking borders?

Communism has failed because of corruption both of the state and the ideas, it's not about scale.
Anarchy, however, cannot work because how we humans act in groups. Groups larger than 12 starts to break apart based on the nature of how our psychology works. We need structure to follow in order for larger groups to work.

You can also have anarchy under rules, close to the ideals of Ayn Rand. That we have rules and systems invented to be followed by lesser people and those who have the ability to control and prosper do so at their own will. This is pretty much the foundation of Cyberpunk dystopias in which corporations have taken over society and they control the rules and laws applied.

Essentially we have four corners of extreme political ideas on the


Meaning we have communism in the upper left, and upper right we have an autocracy, single ruler (dictatorship) both with low freedom because of the totalitarian rule. In the lower corners are total freedom, but based on community or individualism. So the normal view on Anarchy is still that you work together as a community, but you do not have rulers, the problem arises through tribalistic behavior between groups. And the bottom right is individual rule, in which you can become your own ruler if you have the power to do so.

Is anyone "better" than anyone?

If a person strives for the well-being of others and the self, combined; While holding knowledge and the pursuit for truth higher than the sum of their social projections and interactions - I would call that person better than those who do not strive for this.

To be better than someone else in a specific topic, a contest etc. is irrelevant, superficial and an illusion. To "win", or be "better than someone else" at something can lead to master/slave-situations where the better one get comfortable within their own confidence and the one who lost, grows by overcoming weaknesses and learn to combine new knowledge with a confidence that is more balanced and nuanced. There are no winners and losers in the end, no one is better than anyone else because identity and performance always flow and change.

To be better needs to be based on axioms of the human condition. What defines us, like: knowledge, emotions, communication. We can make people feel better, we can do it while at the same time maximizing that positivity within ourselves as well. We can strive to know more, gain knowledge in order to understand the complexities of life, we can value truth over what is comforting for our ego. It's hard to position the axis of these things under more complexity than good or bad about the human condition; Knowledge or no knowledge? There's no positive value in no knowledge. Truth or no truth? There's no positive value in no truth. Well-being or harm? There's no positive value in harm.

If we combine the axioms into a map over the human condition, we can more easily see what is good and bad within being human and striving for good, which in turn shows which someone is better than someone else. The key here is not to "be good", because that's undefinable and relies on a causality measurement that is far too complex for anyone to calculate in their day to day life for every choice they make. But striving for these axioms is pretty much guaranteed to make you a better person, ignoring them pretty much guarantees you to be a worse person.

no GA says entanglement can not happen, and it does, GA is wrong on this issue.

but no worries carry on — Rank Amateur

If you knew why they don't work together you would have already created a unification theory. Both have been proven to work, it's bridging between them into an over-arching theory that hasn't been solved. I suggest you read more about them. That one of them says the other is wrong is the problem, not the nature of the physics.

ok - how about Quantum entanglement which is in direct conflict with GR. Quantum entanglement is real, has been predicted, and experimentally verified. Quantum entanglement is in direct conflict with GR. When it comes to Quantum entanglement - GR is wrong. — Rank Amateur

Both are real, it's why they are trying to reach a unification theory, not a replacement theory.

Which was one of my points...

there might be some theories from before Russel's falsification times that was named scientific theories but didn't really go through the correct procedures, but most done from the enlightenment period and forward has been very strictly tested out and named according to the terminology. — Christoffer

Copernican heliocentrism was published in 1543. Since we now have a system that strictly governs scientific work, the methodology cannot break scientific theories.

think you are missing the point. Not making a disparaging statement about science. Just making the point that much of what any particular generation believes to be a scientific truth, is often shown to be false or incomplete by future generations. Newton gives way to Eisenstein who gives way to Planck who will give way to somebody else at some point. — Rank Amateur

But neither of them disproves previous scientific truths as being false, this is a misunderstanding of what a scientific theory is compared to a "normal" theory. They might be incomplete, but they build on top of them without changing the facts established. You cannot prove Einstein wrong, you can only add to the theory.

If you prove a scientific theory wrong, it would mean that you falsified it and that happens way before it gets to be called a scientific theory. A scientific theory is the highest form within science, it means it's proved and predicts the behavior of future tests.

String theory, for example, is badly named theory, when it's rather a hypothesis. Higgs boson and Higgs field were also hypotheses which became a scientific theory after LHC verified the particle. You cannot disprove the particle and behavior of a Higgs particle, because it's established fact that it exists and behaves as it does. You can only provide further theories that prove these particles into a new theory which does not erase the existence of the particle or its behavior. The scientific process through this also focuses other fields, so now that the Higgs properties of quantum physics is proved, it means that scientists need to include Higgs in current hypotheses like with the work of a possible unification theory.

Scientific theories have never been proven false or changed because of new theories. Hypotheses do, because those are educated guesses based on established facts but has no truth in them until proven. If you disprove a scientific theory it means a serious screw up by the scientific community on all levels through peer reviews to verification, falsifications and duplication tests.

Sure, there might be some theories from before Russel's falsification times that was named scientific theories but didn't really go through the correct procedures, but most done from the enlightenment period and forward has been very strictly tested out and named according to the terminology.

This is why I think there is so much confusion on this forum because people treat scientific theories as "just theories" which they are never in the scientific world.

Are you essentially saying that when getting rid of "God" in the terminology, there is nothing that could be called artificial, since each artificial result is the result of what is essentially natural?

That a car is essentially natural since it was made by machines, which were made by man, which designed the car, using computer simulations designed and invented by man.

But can we distinguish things as artificial and natural by the initial state as "active thought"? That a car cannot be evolved as a natural thing in nature and might possibly never be without the active thought of making something like a car? So by thinking, we create something that isn't part of natures automatic causality, but controlled? Like I described "controlled evolution" above.

In that sense, artificial can be negative to natural in order to have a terminology outside of concepts like God.

However, the only attribute that seems achievable is omniscience and, thereof, omnipotence. — TheMadFool

Of course, I think that we become more "godlike" than by defining ourselves as Gods by the normal definition we use for "God". We also become a pantheon if we are a civilization, but we might also merge every mind into a collective, so it might be a singularity of knowledge that is hard to comprehend by us today.

What about ommibenevolence? Will omniscience lead to ommibenevolence? Knowledge does seem to make us better people. Many tough moral problems would dissolve into crystal clarity and we could achieve it it seems. — TheMadFool

Which is an interesting sub-question. If knowing all makes us understand all the consequences of every action, how can we ever make a choice that is bad? And if all make choices based on knowing everything, everyone would know if someone makes a choice that is bad and can, therefore, correct it.

I think the movie Interstellar makes a good example of my argument.

In what other way can we make sense of N? — TheMadFool

N is in concepts outside of math, the equivalent of zero.

In terms of space; if you add four walls, one floor, and one ceiling you get previously defined objects stacked on top of each other. You need to add N to these six objects in order for it to be defined as a room. The space, N, between them all is the added property for the concept of a room. Just like you add a zero to a one in order for it to be ten.

And in math, there are many definitions and calculations around infinity and just like infinity can be calculated in many ways, so could N, which is the opposite of infinity.

Then we could add how we would define the heat death of the universe. When all energy has reached its conclusion, it can no longer be defined through either M or P, it is neither of them and therefore N. It could then be used to describe the end of P and M. However, the twist to this is that the heat death is true because energy reached infinitely low values. So N is both the opposite of infinity and is infinity in this case.

I reject existence of artificial processes, that are somehow separate from natural processes. — Hrvoje

How do you define controlled evolution then? It is not supernatural and not programmed by any other, but ourselves. Controlled evolution is going to be a thing moving forward. Both in genetics and in cybernetics, so that would apply "artificial" to the terminology of "selection".

The explanandum of a cosmological argument is not the sum of the physical features of the first cause. — SophistiCat

At this point I recommend that you actually take a closer look at these arguments, because I get an impression that you have a very vague idea of what they are saying. — SophistiCat

The explanandum of the argument just refers to the first cause...

I don't know which examples of cosmological arguments you have in mind, but the ones I am familiar with mainly trade on the one feature of the first cause that cannot be denied (short of denying the existence of the first cause): it's being first, uncaused cause. This is what's supposed to make it metaphysically special, elevating it above any natural cause that we know or can hypothesize. Everything else that is said about that first cause more-or-less flows from that. — SophistiCat

...and the explanans of those arguments aren't deductive or even inductive, they are merely wishful thinking by those using the argument to prove the existence of God.

The first cause cannot be addressed as God by the common definitions of God. It can only be what it is by the argument. It is also impossible to conclude that it will never be observed or explained within a scientific theory, that is an assumption about science that requires future knowledge of what science can and cannot explain.

Defining science by our understanding of science today is limiting when predicting possibilities of what science can explain and do in the future. This is what my argument is about, that if we try and view the progress of scientific understanding in a logical way, there is a logical possibility of the progress reaching a form of a singularity of understanding.

But such a resolution could hardly be expected from science. Science tells us what is (the brute fact), not what must be. Only logic or metaphysics can claim to do the latter. — SophistiCat

That is actually not true (you can also see the video above). A scientific theory has predictions to be tested and verified. Those predictions predict what must be. When Einstein did his general relativity theory, it predicted bending light around the gravity of the sun. The theory predicted it because the theory is a scientific theory, not "just a theory" to reference the video.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipse_of_May_29,_1919

the actual history of science is a very long line of succeeding theories - each proving the last one false, incomplete or seriously flawed. — Rank Amateur

Only theories that didn't face proper verification and falsification (even before the term was invented) were able to be considered false. Generally, scientific theories do not really end up considered "false". A theory is a proven fact about something, even if the theory appears false by new evidence, the theory has still been proven and observations are true. When new theories come up, they are applied in synthesis with other theories.

Here's a good video on the matter:

All the knowledge that "is" has always been ours, hasn't it? Who else possessed knowledge? Even when we thought that the world was made of fire, water, earth, and air, and that we were the center of the cosmos, all that knowledge was all ours. Our knowledge is much greater now than it was 2500 years ago. It is greater than it was 25 years ago. — Bitter Crank

How do we know there aren't other sentient beings in the universe that possess other knowledge? And isn't this a bit semantic? "All knowledge" is referring to knowledge of all things. Maybe need to rephrase in the argument, but that's the pragmatic meaning.

It seems like we have already evolved into a 'new kind of being'. We have been 'homo sapiens' for what... 2, 3, 400,000 years, but our evolution either took a turn, or maybe it just finally paid off, somewhere around 10,000 to 30,000 years ago. (It depends on what one uses as a sign of major advance -- cave paintings or agriculture or writing.) The last 300 years (Age of Enlightenment) is perhaps another turning point. — Bitter Crank

I'm speaking of the self-controlled evolution through the consequence of knowing all things. If we know everything, we would likely be able to control everything and that is what would make us godlike.

Godhood is generally a true diagnostic test for first-class hubris. We have quite a ways to go before we will be all-knowing, everywhere present, and omnipotent. — Bitter Crank

I'm not referring to the usual omnipotent omnipresent omniscient omnibenevolent type of God, but godlike. And I am speaking of the consequence of the evolution of our species into the future, not who we are right now or what our potential today is. The argument is about the logical development of humanity if not stopped by things like mass-extinction events.

My personal view -- and it is neither original nor mine alone -- is that we invented the gods. — Bitter Crank

Mine too, I'm not arguing for the existence of God with some convoluted logic, I'm talking about humanity become "godlike" if we reach the level of evolution or controlled evolution when we know all about the universe.

Gods in our culture right now, are very much invented. There are enough anthropological, historical and psychological results to back that claim up.

What has this to do with what we are discussing? Nothing! — Dfpolis

It has everything to do with this. It has been pretty clear that we've been discussing proving God's existence and to do that you need to apply scientific facts and theories. If there are none, you can't prove anything with a logic that then has assumptions slapped on top of the conclusions.

You continue to wander in the wilderness of self-imposed confusion. My meta-law argument is based on the laws of nature studied by physics, but you do not realize that because you are not open enough to even read a proof.

I am tied of wasting my time on someone who refuses to make any effort to inform themselves. — Dfpolis

I'm unable to see your proof within published scientific papers. Can you link to publications in which your "proof" has been peer reviewed?

At the moment you are doing an appeal to authority fallacy, with the authority being yourself. And as I said, if you base your argument on physics, your proof need to have gone through a peer review, verification and falsification process before it can be considered proof for anything.

It's easy to write a book and refer to it as proof, it's an entirely different beast to have actual proof that can survive verification and falsification through peer reviews. You need to step down from that high horse and realize this fact. But if you have links to your scientific publications, go ahead and link them, please.

Or else you are just doing pseudoscience and that's it.

No, no, and no. Before you object, consider the form of your questions. — tim wood

I don't think those questions are asked in any problematic way, those were questions to you, not an argument. By saying "no", you are actually disagreeing with psychology, how people influence behavior and others intentionally and unintentionally. So saying no is a bit irrelevant, since the premise which this connects to has support and isn't up for an opinion on the matter. This is why I think some criticism doesn't really work since many seem to disagree out of opinion and not the actual premise.

"I would characterize." Indeed you would, and you did. Without finding out what it was you were characterizing. — tim wood

According to whom? I said I have a clear and unassailable understanding of God, which just might be of interest to some people, but you just blew right by it. — tim wood

Really? However I define God? — tim wood

An exercise for you. What could God be, that in it's being is unassailable as being. That is, my claim counters yours. Either I'm a complete wackdoodle, or you have some thinking to do. — tim wood

The problem with all of this is that people invent personal interpretations of the term "God" and use that to counter any type of use of the term "God" within an argument. So to propose that no one can use standard definitions of the term, the definitions that are common within language, you can claim truth to any argument and distort the actual communication that is established. Like using the ontological argument to reach the first cause of causality, in which people claim the first cause to be God by using a distorted definition of the term as it is used commonly.

It's like me saying that a table is not a table for me, I define a table as a fire extinguisher so if someone is trying to convince me that a regular table as everyone else defines it is a normal table I will dispute that it isn't because of my own interpretation of language.

This would mean that any defined things in language cannot be used in arguments since people can dispute them by redefining words as they seem fit.

"God" as defined in common language, refers to a sentient entity, spiritual or similar, which is responsible for the creation of the universe.

That is the common definition in our language. If you define God as say a teapot, it doesn't matter for the premise. Because if, within the ontological argument, the first cause is an inter-dimensional rock of a specific material that caused the Big Bang it's not God, it's an inter-dimensional rock of a specific material. So, if we, through science, solve what was before Big Bang and it turns out that it is just an inter-dimensional rock that caused everything, no one would call that rock "God", even if everyone before it, who agreed with the ontological argument proving God's existence, called it that. All those people would then change their focus onto something else where there is no evidence at the time, and call that "mystery", God.

What I mean by this is that it becomes irrational to have such a wide definition of God since you would change what it is based on the situation. When the inter-dimensional rock is proved, the first cause is no longer "God for all those who wanted to prove the existence of God through those arguments.

So in the premise, to use "God" is through the standard definition. If you have the opinion that "God" is a fire extinguisher in order to dispute the premise, that is a bit absurd.

I also find your strict definition of how a premise should be written in an inductive argument to be not only limiting but not really correct either. Not every premise in every argument needs to be formulated like a modus ponens. I might need to rephrase them to better make their points, but as with the questions I asked above, which you answered "no" on, the truth of them doesn't come out of opinion, but out of truth in psychology research, so the premise of behavior influencing others is based on scientific logic, so if disputed you need to dispute the results in psychology. The premise is true.

Consider these definitions:
https://www.iep.utm.edu/ded-ind/

Inductive arguments can take very wide-ranging forms. Some have the form of making a claim about a population or set based only on information from a sample of that population, a subset. Other inductive arguments draw conclusions by appeal to evidence, or authority, or causal relationships. There are other forms.

So the problem you have with the argument seems to be that you have your own definition of the term "God" and that the first premise doesn't apply to your own definition?

This is a little out of control - maybe more than a little. — tim wood

See past that, I relate to the argument I made as I ended that segment with that it's not an attack.

1) a premise in an argument is or should be a simple statement of the form all/some/no P is/is not Q. It may take work to get it into this form, but good arguments are work - any other kind of argument is a waste of time. — tim wood

Yes, it's work and that is what I'm doing, therefore I've modified it since the first post was written, according to the objections. This is part of a larger moral ethics piece I'm working on.

But as most arguments aren't really deductive, isn't this an inductive argument? Isn't "all/some/no P is/is not Q" strictly for deductive forms? Even if it is, also used in inductive arguments?

2) "personal belief is an illusion of keeping belief to yourself": apparently you have a problem with personal belief. Um, your problem, that's a personal belief, yes? — tim wood

• Do you agree that personal belief is unable to be contained as it influences both how you communicate and how you behave?
• Do you agree that eventually, your personal belief will influence others around you and/or even be communicated as an idea to others?
• Do you agree that it doesn't matter if a belief is rational or irrational, it still follows the above two points?

What is your conclusion on personal belief based on these three points?

I made a claim about my idea of God. Without having even a remote idea of what I mean, you projected your own critical notions on it. — tim wood

I would categorize a belief in God to be irrational, type A, since it does not have rational or evidential support, i.e unsupported belief. Since God hasn't been able to be proven, no one can claim it to be proven. If personal belief is that God is proven through a personal logic that cannot be applied outside your subjective reasoning, it is not supported belief, it is an irrational belief.

How is this a personal opinion on it? Personal logic doesn't apply to outside logic. The logic is, God hasn't been proven to exist, personal belief in God and any personal reasoning about it is strictly subjective and therefore is personal belief unsupported by external rationality and evidence.

This isn't about proving Gods existence, it's about defining personal belief that is either unsupported or supported, rational or irrational.

And this is a great problem with discussions about God: that people do not know what they themselves are thinking when they talk about God , but they suppose they do, and they add to that, that they suppose they know what someone else is talking about or thinking when that other is talking about God. Both make the same set of mistakes. The only outcome of a discussion between two such people is nonsense. — tim wood

I agree and I think I need to revise the first premise in some way to include a better definition, I'm of course working on this. But is God a teapot? Is it an ocaen beach? Is it my neighbor? The purest definition of God in language is, of course, neither of these but a sentient entity that is responsible for creating the universe, the world, and man. We can of course use dictionary definitions as well, which doesn't really change my argument: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/god

However you define "God" it is still based on an unsupported, irrational personal belief about something not proven to exist. If your personal definition of God is your neighbor and that you rationalize like this: My neighbor is God, My neighbor can be observed to exist, therefore my neighbor exist and since my neighbor is God, God exists. However, this isn't how language defines "God". Using the possibly infinite, personal interpretations of words as a defense against the first premise seems, therefore, like a form of circular counter-argument, because if anything can be defined as anything, then we cannot form any communication or understanding of anything when changing definitions always alter everything, even arguing that definitions alter arguments.

The only outcome of a discussion between two such people is nonsense. — tim wood

How do you define God? (not proving, but how do you define God)

So far, to my way of thinking, you're expressing some opinions and trying to make an argument from them - but it cannot be a good argument until you can write your first good premise. — tim wood

I think the problem with the premise is that it rubs religious people the wrong way and forming all sorts of defense mechanisms against the God-premises. The argument is about belief, any sort, religious and otherwise and the conclusion is not about proving Gods existence or not, which some seem to believe. However, there's no evidence for a God, if there was, why hasn't society accepted it? Because some doesn't accept the evidence? What evidence? In order to actually counter argue that first premise, you need to show that it is false, i.e that God exists and therefore it is false. If the premise is false because of interpretations of God is almost infinite, then how can anyone prove the existence of God when no one can define a definition of God in language? It seems to me that the first premise is true because for it to be false, the existence must be proved first and if proven only by personal logic and not external, it doesn't make the premise invalid.

Maybe it's formulated wrong, but the point of the premise isn't really false.

Clear enough: you apparently define "God" in way that serves your argument. Now it's up to you to offer some rigorous definition. In particular, I believe in God, and it (my belief) is well supported by both evidence and rational deduction; beyond that, my belief is unassailable by either doubt or rational argument. To be sure, though, there are lots of people who prefer the supernatural God supported by irrational beliefs. Do you begin to see your problem? — tim wood

In case of premise 1, I might need to add the definition of the classical concept of God through Christian theology or theology in general. Maybe even add a new premise to generalize irrational belief.

The point is that there isn't a conclusion that can be supported by any evidence or rational argument. I've seen many trying on this forum and throughout history, but they do not apply with real-world science in mind and they always jump from their logical conclusion to an assumption instead of ending at the actual conclusion. I.e God is the unmoved mover, which is an assumption about the unmoved mover, which could just be a very high dimensional rock since we don't know anything about events before Big Bang.

You see what I mean here? The argument is about irrational belief which distorts reality for the self and others, intentionally or unintentionally since personal belief is an illusion of keeping belief to yourself. Your writing now is an example of this, in which you point to a personal belief and in writing it out you are projecting this personal belief into the mind of others. If someone reads what you write and this influence their concept of reality you have unintentionally pushed a belief that has no support in evidence or rational arguments (a personal concept of evidence or rationality is not valid in proving God).

This is in no way critique against you, just to be clear. I'm just making an example.

To be sure, though, there are lots of people who prefer the supernatural God supported by irrational beliefs. — tim wood

And this is the problem that I found unethical in the world because it distorts people's reality. Irrational belief is not a healthy foundation in society and because personal belief is an illusion, we cannot just accept that some are able to divide their personal belief from their rational ideas since the personal belief will eventually be expressed vocally or through behavior and choices.

This is why I argue for epistemic responsibility or the form of it in which people need to move away from defending their irrational belief and accept it as irrational while keep questioning ideas and never accept what doesn't have good support in evidence or rationality. The argument shows how irrational belief is dangerous and how rational belief (type B and C) should be held up higher than type A. There is no priority in the world today, which might be why people confuse personal belief with rational belief and proven truth so much, even on this forum.