I wish I could have back the two minutes of my life that I lost reading that. — Hanover

Many people find the idea of ethics and values altogether worthless in our modern material world.

Yes yes it's the thought police that is behind this!! The global capitalist interests have orchestrated this! >:O — Agustino

You mean its the Three Stooges arguing over the definition of stupid and who is the better example, because they are so dysfunctional their co-dependent relationship is the only way they can thrive. Academia and religion have only thrived when they have been allowed to exist together with both atheist communism and religious totalitarianism now largely relegated to the third world. Only in places like the US with strong separation of church and state have they managed to thrive by pitting atheists against believers. By pitting the wealthy and powerful establishment against one another and promoting dysfunctional behavior as the only way forward.

I'm referring to multiple poems that were simply deleted by the moderators. In many of these threads I would rather post my opinion using poetry which expresses more than the stilted words of academics infamous for having an extremely poor and dry sense of humor and promoting western viewpoints by suppressing all others.

Your poems were deleted because they're poems, not philosophy, and this is a philosophy forum, not a poetry forum.

And in what way does this promote the agenda of the wealthy and powerful? What is their agenda, and how does deleting your poetry promote it? — Michael

My poetry is all extrapolated from the Tao Te Ching which is widely recognized as the deepest philosophical text on the planet and the third most published book of all time. It combines Socratic and Taoist wisdom which are both famous for being anti-establishment.

There's a "Get Creative" thread where you can put poems. — Mongrel

They walled in another ghetto today, to keep inquiring minds out, to make controlling their population easier, and to raise the local real estate values. Declaring it was the will of the people! Those who insist there is nothing funny about the truth and their world must always be composed of good verses evil.

Could it be pragmatic to stop associating free will with action and associate it with knowledge?
In my view this would be like: "The best / most intimate knowledge we have of what is causing our physical behaviour at a given time". We're able to know why we raise our hand, why we take avoiding actions, why we choose low fat over regular, etc. Moral competence then comes from interacting with other agents who are also capable of such understanding and expect you to have the same understanding. If we see "morally incompetent" behaviour we tend to look for the underlying reasons, if we then conclude there is a lack of understanding we generally do not hold such people responsible but do take away (a degree) of their rights to exercise free will. Conversely, if the understanding is there but there is a physical lack of control (some forms of epilepsy, Gehrig's disease, Tourette syndrome) we try to physically aid such persons so that they are able to exercise their free will. The judicial system is for when we have reason to believe the understanding is there, but there is a lack of competence to act on this understanding.

I feel that it is unfounded to use (the limits of) our conscious action capacity as a means to gain a supposed "understanding" of our behaviour on the whole which supersedes the individual understanding which suffices enough for us to deem ourselves morally competent. Priming individuals with the understanding of our behaviour on the whole (= free will does not exist) has an influence on their behaviour and that in itself shows to me that, when talking about free will, it matters more what we understand then the degree in which we deem actions volitional. — Gooseone

Thanks to yin-yang dynamics demonstrably ruling reality as we know it pattern matching rules the universe including the human brain and applies to whatever we may wish to call free will indicating that without faith in our free will we have none just as without faith in our own knowledge and awareness we can have none. Recently it was revealed that epilepsy is related to the absence of a protein responsible for contextual memory in the hypothalmus implying there is ultimately no way for us to distinguish between memory and awareness and explaining such things as why the human brain has over a petabyte of data storage capacity, yet, human memory is notoriously fallible. While that might sound speculative to skeptics, it means very soon modern science will be able to follow Alice into Wonderland in the human mind and brain and provide all the empirical evidence anyone could ask for.

I've had multiple poems deleted because academic philosophy doesn't value the written word unless it promotes the agenda of the wealthy and powerful and this is a commercial website.

Reality without dreams is just somebody's nightmare, while dreams without reality are someone else's fantasy. Stay awake long enough and you will hallucinate, while reality always catches up to us in our dreams because one without the other is a demonstrable contradiction. Someone without dreams is a statistic of one which is just flat out impossible and even suicides have turned out to be much more common among those with a history of making poor decisions and having poor impulse control. Without both reality and dreams, memories and awareness, there's simply nothing to discuss and nothing to be done about it.

If one supposes the possibility of "teaching without words", then that would seem to point to a "learning without words". Can one listen to Silence? (Capitalized for contrast to the usual meaning, ie. the absence of sound). Can one learn from Silence, and if so what can be learned? Is Silence completely empty? Or is it simply out of the range of the range of hearing (or perhaps comprehension) in some way? Teachings such as the Tao te Ching use words, of course. It is in harmony with silence though, and makes the important disclaimer that it is merely a pale reflection of that which cannot be spoken. The author, one could say, seems to have listened to and been transformed by this Silence and encourages us to do likewise. — 0 thru 9

How is any of this philosophy? — Hanover

Teaching without words is merely how we express the self-evident truth that the greater context of the truth only asserts itself within the silent void. Either you have personal integrity and you can express poetry in motion or you don't and fall on your butt and you can learn how to do this in any number of disciplines such as martial arts, dancing, or writing poetry as I do. My Rainbow Poetry expresses the silences between the notes and pauses in our more heartfelt conversations because, paradoxically, treating every word as a variable with no intrinsic meaning or value lends them collectively all that much more meaning and value because the greater context of the truth decides the value of everything and the more we surrender to our words the more they can express.

Beautiful words are honest words which can defy unbalanced gravity itself and change the world as it we know it for the better only because they come from the heart and the spark within which can never die. If you have no personal truth philosophy is just another word spouted by con-artists and wannabe comedians. This is what Socrates taught, that philosophy is about ethics and personal integrity. Humorously, it can also be expressed as the principle of, "As others have taught, so must I, great behinds stink alike anonymously." Often I tell people, "When the student is poorly prepared, the master is rudely awakened" for we are all our own worst student and the master within us is rudely awakened when already believe we know all the answers.

But I think that the role of philosophy is intended to subvert that order, or at least the very least call it into question. — Wayfarer

The role of philosophy in academia is to promote the interests of the wealthy and powerful establishment, while the role of philosophy outside of academia is promote the interests of humanity, but the two can overlap at times as happened to Socrates.

It seems that solipsism proposes a theory of reality exponentially more complicated than realism without providing an explanatory structure. Solipsism is forced to admit that the reality that it creates is exactly like physical reality, as surprising as physical reality, and precisely as difficult to understand as physical reality but on top of that it is created by a mind to be that way for no reason. — tom

Nah, you can argue that reality and any other concept is ultimately nebulous because its impossible to know your own mind just like its impossible to see the back of your own head without a mirror.

The dogmatic realist believes realism is true, and will attempt to justify it when pressed. But at the end of the day he admits that no metaphysical system can be proven to certainty. If someone doesn’t want to be a realist, then they’ll inevitably find some reason not to be. The dogmatic realist thinks that if the consequences of idealism aren’t reason enough to reject it, then nothing is. — Aaron R

You mean, by definition, a dogmatic realist expresses an irrational belief in reality because they can only take the existence of reality on faith.

Yeah, but Lao Tzu wrote it down despite saying that the Tao that can be spoken of is not the eternal Tao and teaching without words is the more profound truth. Using beautiful words is no different than anything else whenever we no longer make distinctions between who we are and what we are doing.

The fact of the matter is that the second law of thermodynamics is a law that we have more proof for than possibly any other law in physics, including the whole of QM and Relativity. If the second law turned out to be false, then there really will be a very big problem to explain why the world has behaved according to it for pretty much its entire history, and why it keeps behaving that way. Again, physics sets very strong limitations on what is possible. It's good that you are widely read, and you do have some important and great ideas, but I think it only takes away from your insights that you seek to peddle unscientific ideas as facts, merely because they'd help support a view of reality you like. The truth is that the world isn't as malleable as any of us would want. — Agustino

Quantum mechanics and Relativity are accurate to over 14 decimal places and modern Standard Theory is the foundation of any measurements made today including those in thermodynamics. You might as well claim we have more proof of Newtonian mechanics than quantum mechanics and Relativity combined which is just absurd nonsense. Hows that for your "scientific facts"? Thermodynamics is an ad hoc collection of theories that have yet to be reconciled with the very theories used today to measure heat and was, until recently, the last hold-out for those insisting the fundamental equations of physics must conform to the arrow of time.

Sometimes the brightest lights are left on when nobody is home and nowhere is this more apparent than in physics. Einstein and all the greats were very philosophical and understood many of the implications of their work however, in my experience working with them, most physicists are trained monkeys merely making measurements and designing things like better weapons without a clue as to the deeper implications of their work. So long as they get paid well they really couldn't care less and denying that anything is acausal is how they make their bread and butter.

A 3D printer is not making a material substance out of energy. You load the printer with plastic, powdered metal, or a slurry of cells and spray it, layer after layer, until you get the designed object. Sort of like papier-mâché.

A replicator [somehow--doesn't matter how because it doesn't exist] turns raw energy into a volume of Earl Grey tea at 160ºF in a ceramic cup for Captain Picard. Apparently the replicator and the transporter share basic technology. The transporter somehow [doesn't matter how because it doesn't exist] disassembles the person or object down to the sub-atomic particles and then reassembles them someplace else. It's a very data-dense procedure.

A 3D printer is to a replicator as meiosis is to Mercury--in other words, no relationship at all. — Bitter Crank

Nor do we have 4 dimensional dilithium crystals, but the essential idea remains the same that we can use a machine to replicate things in our own homes if we want. Getting nit picky about details doesn't change the underlying essential reality of the situation that Star Trek has inspired countless inventions including practically every hospital in the world now using wall mounted monitors to display information on patients lying in beds.

Replying to your ninja edit.

Up is a direction orientated to my physical location (or whatever point you choose). Natural and unnatural is just an subjective view, which varies from person to person. But up will always be up, as long as you are orientated the same way I am, and that does not change if you call it down, left, right or chicken. However, the meaning of natural and unnatural varies from person to person, and there is no objective measurement for it. — Jeremiah

The objective measure is that the concepts are context dependent. If I say, "She's hot!" I could be talking about anything from a good looking woman to an overheating car engine. The more explicit the context the more explicit the meaning of the words become, while calling everything natural is about as meaningless as calling every direction up.

The dictionary makes the distinction between natural and synthetic, or natural and man-made. We make babies, but they're supposedly made by God or nature and we just get to help. Not that I draw strict lines in the sand myself, but without at least being able to express what synthetic means you are talking in circles and the word becomes meaningless. Along the lines of saying every direction is up.

There is nothing in this world that is not naturally occurring to this world. I'll even go one further, and say there is nothing in this world that is truly unnatural, as only things which can naturally occur in this world, occur. Humans building cites, making money, driving cars and typing on computers is every bit as natural as a river flowing down the mountain. — Jeremiah

That's known as a category mistake and is basic logic 101. When you can no longer identify that you have identified nothing you have personal bullshit to deal with.

So? That doesn't mean thermodynamics contradicts R or QM. It simply means it's describing a complementary aspect of reality that isn't described by either of the other two theories. Nothing in thermodynamics contradicts predictions of R or QM. — Agustino

It means that both thermodynamics and Relativity have to be adapted to quantum mechanics. Thermodynamics, like I said, is an ad hoc collection of different theories, while Relativity contains a glaring paradox. The way around the issue is to formulate them along with quantum mechanics as a systems logic where the law of identity can vanish down the rabbit hole in a progressive fashion. Relativity contains the Equivalency Principle which is how they can be reconciled by expanding equivalences into a more dynamic systems logic that vanishes into indeterminacy. An analogy is an optical illusion where first you see it, then you don't. The context determines what meaning any measurements have and whether anything is considered noise or information, causal or acausal.

This is the same as linguistic philosophy were words can only have demonstrable meaning according to their specific context. An electron or bit of information only has meaning in specific contexts and metaphysics don't apply in the overall scheme of things making the laws of physics merely pragmatic.

In what way is thermodynamics contradicting relativity or quantum mechanics? If you look at it you will see that there is no contradiction. The contradiction is between relativity and quantum mech. — Agustino

The second law of thermodynamics is the last hold out for the arrow of time, while the mathematics of quantum mechanics show no preference for the arrow of time. Similarly, although Relativity is every bit as accurate as quantum mechanics are precise, it contains the glaring Simultaneity Paradox that two observers can witness the same event at different times. Again, energy is causal, information is not. That's your "spooky" action-at-a-distance is that the past and future form a self-organizing system that ensures we have both the causal and acausal, random and orderly.

Bullshit, the second law of thermodynamics is the only holdout ever for causality with all of the rest of the known fundamental equations showing no preference whatsoever for the arrow of time. Thermodynamics is an odd hoc collection of theories that has yet to be reconciled with either relativity or quantum mechanics.

If you want a replicator you can buy the first home commercial 3D printers. Its just a start, but there are already a dozen different 3D printers that will print an entire house in a matter of hours, some complete with all the wiring and plumbing. A ten million dollar prize awaits the first star trek tricorder and only a fool argues that star trek never inspired any real technology. Reality might be more complex than TV, but eventually it often catches up.

There is no "statistical" explanation or any other for time flowing backwards. That the energy can't be used for productive purposes merely means that energy is causal, but information is not which means we can literally watch Humpty Dumpty put himself back together again. Finnish researchers established the same when they produced the first autonomous version of Maxwell's Demon that sorted electrons according to their charges without expending any energy in the process. Its as if they waved a magic wand over an otherwise quite plain copper transistor empowering it to convince electrons to work out their differences and become more productive but, instead of violating causality, what it shows is that information itself is now bound by causality and entropy can decrease because information can be transformed into energy just as mass can be transformed into energy.

What it means is we can possibly learn a great deal including what the immediate future may hold without violating causality in any way whatsoever. The more critical issue than size, in my opinion, is how humble any contents are relative to the observer and the context. It means the HUP needs to be rewritten to produce a theory of everything and thermodynamics can be better expressed as a systems logic that can reconcile quantum mechanics and relativity.

The second law of thermodynamics has been violated in the laboratory using a micron sized silica bead. You can't use the energy for any useful purpose, but you can watch Humpty Dumpty put himself back together again. Time is not what you think it is because going down the rabbit hole its a recursion in the law of identity. What is organic and technology becomes a matter of perspective with biologists merely using a list of pragmatic criteria for making the distinction. That life just keeps getting interesting is just a taste of what is to come because yin-yang dynamics means everything is metaphorical which is a completely different animal. Sort of Star Trek meets Star Wars with a lot of existentialist humor thrown in including what I like to call "adult potty humor" because mother nature's sense of humor is that of a mindless infant.

Hence, the Chinese blessing and curse of, "May you live in interesting times". Among other things people are now investigating the possibly of creating energy in one location and teleporting to another as information and converting it back again so your refridgerator doesn't need an electrical cord or power supply. That's just the beginning because soon enough the truth that time is malleable and a self-organizing system will come out.

Like Socratic wisdom, Taoism merely made the crossover between ancient tribal wisdom and modern civilization. The interesting part is that what many have dismissed as outdated and merely against progress is now coming under renewed intense scrutiny. Civilization is taking its own long way home, but Childhoods End is upon us once again and, this time, the world will never be the same again.

I don't disagree with this, but the fact is that most are in fact greedy scumbags and lazy bums. The only question is can we help educate them to be different, better human beings, and most importantly how. — Agustino

People are idiots and in groups their insanity can know-no bounds, but that doesn't mean we cannot learn more about both our individual and collective behavior and take appropriate steps. In this century psychology and sociology and other fields have been as much art forms as sciences, but all that is about to change. The human mind is not nearly as mysterious and complex as many would have us believe. Its just the knowledge and technology has not yet been developed and, soon enough, people will become transparent in front of the whole world watching on camera with computers explaining whether they are lying, telling the truth, joking, or just flat out insane.

You can run, but you cannot hide from your own truth and technology is rapidly catching up.

Probably in the US, where kids are used to such devices. If you come to my country, if a school was to give such devices to children, the parents would be outraged! How can kids have access to such devices at a young age! That's bad for them... and so forth. The kids themselves would most likely be unwilling to collaborate. The truth is that the world is much more broken up. We don't have only one world, as I said, but rather multiple, different worlds, living side by side. — Agustino

In Africa they've already done experiments with teaching kids how to program. They were successful, but the kids had no real use for the knowledge with the question becoming how to put skills they can be taught to productive use. Jimmy Carter had a mildly controversial program where he sent basketball equipment to Masai tribesmen. It was one of those cheap investments because if just one of them was really good they could play professionally and support an entire village which, it turns out, is exactly what they did. The internet is now used extensively to provide micro-loans where people can check out the individual themselves and decide if they want to loan them money for a goat or whatever.

I know its hard to believe all of humanity are not just greedy scumbags and lazy bums, but its true.

The first study of the use of tablets by school children has established that they can be used to teach mathematics in particular. They use a collaborative, yet, competitive format where the kids can compete in groups for the solution to a problem and switch to collaborating on the fly. Its all new technology and so powerful that nobody has figured out all the productive uses it can be put to, but that's just a question of time. Like American culture, everyone is becoming more materialistic, but that's just how you get your foot in the door to figure out how to help people help themselves. There are problems similar to the Cargo Cults of New Zealand as well that have to be addressed, but people are complex. Once we have the systems logic it will make their collective behavior all that much more predictable and already there a few popular websites such as Google that have been organized specifically to explore the systems logic and people's interactions. What's coming next is the AI to bring all the pieces together.

It is rapidly expanding in the developed world. But go to Africa and see what things are like over there :P Give it 100 years, and still African people are going to be living very differently in Africa than the Americans will be living in the US. What I've been learning more and more is that we don't live in ONE world - rather there are multiple worlds co-existing side by side and on the same planet. — Agustino

The internet is expanding in parts of Africa with Nigerian scammers becoming infamous. Progress there isn't as fast, but progress it is. Solar powered drones that provide internet are becoming a reality and cellphones are spreading even in the third world at a phenomenal rate. Some third world countries we no longer even think of as third world, like China, where progress has spread new services to a huge percentage of the world. Some of the new third world technology coming out include cheap solar cells, printers that print an entire house in hours complete with all the plumbing and wiring, and even genetically engineered plants that provide vitamins and medicines. A ten million dollar prize awaits whoever can devise the first Star Trek Tricorder for medical uses in the third world.

Its a real mishmash at this point and, for example, people have figured out how to make cheap electricity using fresh water rivers and the oceans they dump into as a battery, but we're still waiting for the technology to mature before building more than pilot plants. This century will see an end to destitute poverty which is the goal of Gramene Bank and so many others with the capital to make it happen. War, pollution, and exploitation are next on the agenda. In fact, war is still responsible for most of the starvation left in the world.

Maybe but you forget that it's only very small parts of the world where this is happening. Most of the world lives and will continue to live very differently from an information age for many hundreds of years. — Agustino

No, it is rapidly expanding and showing no signs of stopping. Like I said, starvation has been cut in half the number of people dedicated to changing the world forever has rapidly grown within the last century. Google has even installed free wi-fi in places like New Zealand where the system pays for itself through advertising. NYC is installing two wi-fi systems, one is for free public access and the other for paying customers. Theoretically, using next generation terahertz technology you can flood an entire city with infrared that will penetrate walls and provide terabits per second which is enough to run a Star Trek holodeck.

Progress is always two steps forward and one back and the ecology itself is collapsing as we speak but, other than the current crisis in making the transition, things have never looked better. Its the ancient Chinese blessing and curse of "May you live in interesting times" and a Theory of Everything that ushers in the next scientific revolution could be exactly what we need to survive as a species and rise above our problems. Its what Rainbow Warriors often call "Childhood's End" or the end of civilized puberty and transition into adulthood, which is always rough and sometimes you have to wonder how teens survive.

The economy is already full tilt towards an information economy where resources are being distributed more according to need and money is slowly giving way to information as the currency of the day. Think of it like all the TV and internet advertisements and data mining, but what is coming is more of an economy of systems logic where its impossible not to participate. In the meantime, flat out starving to death has been cut in half and there are concerted efforts to improve all the basic services around the world including internet access which now reaches half the population.

So do you take it that organised society, both today and 2000 years ago is "bad", and we should be living and working in communes? — Agustino

No, not communes per se, but that what is coming is more like Star Trek where if you want something you just walk up to the nearest replicator and ask for it. What even communes lack is the systems logic to organize more effectively and that is about to invade every commercial electronic device on the market. For example, you can already buy a cellphone that doubles as a lie detector and, soon enough, they'll have the intelligence and social capacity of a God. The computer on Star Trek had no real mind, but think more of Mr Data with true compassion and wisdom or Yoda from Star Wars. It can become whatever you need it to be in order to grow as a human being.

The subject has too much literature to mention here. My own belief is our existence is paradoxically both united and divided, one and legion. Electrons have provided some of the evidence for this with their particle like aspect being considered indivisible, yet, their wave-like is infinitely divisible.

It's kind of like asking if Jesus can microwave a burrito hotter than he can eat. What would it mean for God to lift a rock? Is the rock supposed to be immovable? — Marchesk

No, the idea is that we are mere mortals and such things can only be taken on faith because they remain indemonstrable. A black hole has an event horizon because, otherwise, without yin-yang dynamics we could create a rock bigger than God can lift.

Its modern pragmatism as well as ancient tribal wisdom. It supports agnosticism and the idea that, if there is a God, they seem to want to remain anonymous.

Sure but you're not answering in any clear terms. That to me is the equivalent of this being a faith based commitment. You hope reality will turn out to be completely amenable to mathematical description. I'm not so sure. — Agustino

Its modern Contextualism or Functionalism which asserts that knowledge without faith is a contradiction in terms. Its the Socratic school of thought that we must all have faith in our own awareness in order to possess any which, of course, includes having faith in our own knowledge. Either you have a personal truth or, all I can say is, good luck with that.

Yes correct, what we perceive as funny is what is unlikely and unexpected and thus low in entropy. But you're going from an example of something being converted to mathematical language - humor, to saying that everything will be or can be so converted. And I'm asking how do you know that this is the case? — Agustino

Its metaphorical or analog logic where what's real and imaginary isn't the issue because its both. They say the first thing you learn about systems logic is that half the planet doesn't know such a thing is possible, which, includes the English speaking half. Donald Hoffman is a Game theorist who discovered, according to all the evidence, if the human mind and brain had ever resembled anything remotely like reality we would have become extinct as a species.

But that's not really what you mean. You don't really mean that every word has no intrinsic meaning or value. All that you mean is that the intrinsic meaning or value of the word is given always from the outside (in other words is transcendent) - from the context in which it is employed. The whole (or God) gives shape and being to the part.

I take it from this that you believe that everything is, at its foundations, mathematics. Is this true? And if it is, why do you think this is so? — Agustino

The first quantifiable theory of humor has already established its validity with empirical evidence by describing what is observable. That's what quantifiable means, either the numbers add up or they don't and they made their discovery studying Dr Seuss. Anything low in entropy can be considered funny, which is polite technobabble for humor revolves around bullshit or what's missing from this picture. Already two computer systems have been built that can produce funnier than average jokes and the academic slapstick is just getting started with the federal government admitting they have classified a few jokes as "Vital to the National Defense" because of the analog systems logic they contain.

And I do mean every word can be treated as a variable with no intrinsic meaning or value, what others refer to as "Oneness" mysticism can also be interpreted as humor or any number of things because every word is treated as a variable. Some have said the Tao Te Ching is the deepest philosophical well on the planet, but its also the deepest pile of crap imaginable.

Okay but that's not an answer to the question is it? You haven't explained how it actually happens that a non-numerical answer of this kind could be provided by numerical means. — Agustino

My own view is we are staring into the abyss and logic actually revolves around what is missing from this picture or, bullshit if you prefer. Hence, our Rainbow poetry and the Tao Te Ching can describe life, the universe, and everything as a systems logic by merely treating every word as a variable with no intrinsic meaning or value. Once you have the complete 430 poems it should be easy enough to translate into the metaphoric emotional-logic of Intuitionistic mathematics. They're about four times as complex as those of classical mathematics. It means logic and jokes, beauty and humor, are two ends of the same spectrum explaining why mathematicians are suddenly showing intense interest in humor and have already created the first quantifiable theory of humor. Its an expression of particle-wave duality.

But certainly a first move has to be made right? How does systems logic help us choose that first move, that every journey must begin with? — Agustino

There are people around the world assembling all the pieces as fast as they can with scientists having long ago divided themselves into four groups that are each searching for specific fractal recursions in nature. Commercial companies as well have joined in the action with Microsoft announcing they are now building a topological quantum computer. If my own theory is right, they will require four distinctive topological computers in order to predict roughly half of just about anything humanly imaginable. AI research and a Theory of Everything are one and the same thing.