I have not heard whether sardines are individually unique, but researchers have found that honey bees can differ slightly. Some individual bees that forage (look for flowers) are better at it than other forager bees. Individual birds, which are more easily observed than bees, differ individually in various ways -- song, mating success, etc. New Caledonia crows, which have been observed quite a bit, not only exhibit individual differences, but appear to differ in tool making from one part of New Caledonia to another.

My guess is that most creatures differ. Does one C. elegans nematode differ from another? Don't know. One snail from another? Don't know. C. elegans only has 900+ cells in its whole body, so... not much to work with. Bees have far more cells than that in their brains.

In all animals, including our esteemed selves, there is an interplay in the ways we are all alike and the ways we are all different. Humans exhibit a remarkable degree of sameness from person to person, which is appropriate since we are a species, not de novo creatures.

More positively, the Amish are preserving a "green" way of life we might need to emulate, one of these days. They don't consume excessively; the successfully use pre-chemical industry methods of agriculture; they live fairly well without electricity.

The way the Amish live is, after all, the way pretty much everybody lived 170 years ago, before electricity, before telephones, before autos, airplanes, and all that. We won't live like we do now, if we emulate the Amish; I like telephones, electricity, television, computers, cars--all that stuff. It's just that once we exhaust oil, and once we really cut back on CO2 emissions (along with methane and other greenhouse gases) we won't have much of a choice. It will be back to reading books, playing board games, riding a horse if you are rich enough to afford one (they were expensive), working much harder than we do now just to live, never mind employment.

Am I looking forward to doing laundry by hand? Absolutely Not! Am I looking forward to tending a big garden? Not at my age, I'm not. Am I looking forward to heating with wood, if I had to? No indeed--more hard work. Am I looking forward to hauling water, using an outhouse, etc? I have, I could. Not looking forward to it.

Can we feed 340 million Americans with horsepower? No. 8 billion on earth? Clearly not. What will happen to all these people we can't feed? Let's talk about something else.

They were always in power — Grre

The NRA hasn't always been powerful. At some point, less than 70 years ago, they decided to pursue a strong political program to insure that "gun rights" (something that had previously been a minor issue, if an issue at all) would be promoted/protected as a constitutional right. They collected allies, donations, and sympathetic congressmen (suckers all) to do their bidding. Their propaganda was effective. Here we are with gun rights being more important than massacres.

May God damn the NRA to the depths of hell.

It's interesting: I have no idea whether your historical claim about the State being a critical development in wrenching us up out of a state of nature is true. But I do know that Chomsky would take serious issue with it. I believe he locked horns with Pinker on just this issue. — Virgo Avalytikh

Pinker's claim is certainly debatable. He based it not on crime stats, but on archeological evidence of the number of found skulls that showed signs of a violent death (crushed skull bones, for instance) and the number of found skulls that were intact. Pinker's contemporaneous evidence indicates that where the state is weakest, and where the citizens disrespect the state, pursue justice themselves, and subscribe to an 'honor system' the rate of violence is highest. One of the places where these conditions apply is the American South. Violent death at the hands of one's fellow citizens is much, much higher there than in places like New England or the Upper Midwest. In New England and the Upper Midwest citizens tend to have a strong civil culture which respects civil institutions, the states are well funded to carry out their functions, DIY justice is anathema, and the prickly personal honor system is mostly absent.

Some how one has to account for one area of the country having one of the highest rates of violence, and another area -- with a different cultural heritage -- having a very low rate, about the same as Scandinavia.

I would submit that pro-state New England or the upper Midwest is a better place for libertarian politics to develop than the much more anti-state south would be, because the latter are just "crazier" than the former. Crazy libertarians will just kill each other off before the year is out.

What you’ll observe elementally is a return to the distant past. They drive horses and buggies, wear modest attire and live in farms or plain houses. They like to live off the land. They are a type of cloistered sect (with exceptions), as indifferent to modernity, technology and social media as is possible. — Reshuffle

I admire the Amish lifestyle, though I'd probably choke on their theology. But Lord have mercy, they are not hearkening back to a long distant past. My father grew up with horses and buggies among ordinary Iowa farmers, and he died only 13 years ago (granted, he was pretty old when he died). They do live off the land, (they're farmers), they resist modernity, technology, up to a point, and social media probably entirely. But, you know, they consume modern health care services, and they finance health care as a community responsibility. They like to travel--by train, since that fits into their idea of acceptable technology, to their extended connections among the Amish who have spread out across the northern Middle America States. I've chatted with a number of Amish on the train over the years, and they're pretty down to earth people. It's not like talking to someone who just crawled out from under a rock.

Is a system of private ownership and non-aggression flawed? Yes, but not uniquely so. Whatever problems a libertarian world might face will also plague the non-libertarian alternative — Virgo Avalytikh

Your trimmed statement, as I quoted it, summarizes the human situation. The human species has difficulty living together when many share close quarters. The reason our distant ancestors (Homo sapiens, just like us) were able to live on the land for many millennia is that they were generally few and far enough between, and they maintained a very modest level of material aspiration. Hunter/Gatherers lived in some sort of equilibrium with the natural world. Were they saints? Of course not -- they probably killed each other quite a bit more frequently than we do because there were no over-arching state bodies to mediate.

Indeed, it was the creation of the state that seems to have been the critical cultural development that reduced violence among people (US -- not Homo Erectus et al. See The Better Angels of our Nature by Steven Pinker.

You probably have Idealist tendencies. That's not a criticism. The problem with us idealists--I'm counting myself in this group--is that we tend to privilege theory over the actual practice of the people. Thinking idealistically isn't a fatal flaw, as long as we touch base with reality regularly.

Consider the so-called ‘tragedy of the commons’. There is common land, ownership of which is shared by the community as a whole. Because nobody is individually responsible for its upkeep, it goes to ruin. — Virgo Avalytikh

England experienced a 'tragedy of the commons' in the form of the common agricultural land being enclosed and made private. The commons had been maintained by the community for a long time. Neglect wasn't the tragedy. The tragedy was the loss of the commons, not its neglect.

The management of common agricultural land was (is) well within the operational capabilities of ordinary people. Our distant ancestors lived "in the commons for maybe 200,000 years without ruining it. In more recent times, in England, it wasn't ruin, but a land grab, that was the tragedy.

Chancy events, like one’s phone battery finding itself empty at the most inopportune time, can lead one to nihilism. Life begins with a chancy, quite often inopportune event, and the unfolding events that follow may lead those without a firm catechism of some sort to conclude that life sucks, the universe is meaningless (it is), and that, therefore one one should sit about whining, bitching, and carping instead of boldly imposing a shovel full of meaning on the face of the abyss.

Logos. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Another take on words.

We are but some of us less badly programmed than others.

Conservatives spend plenty, and all they have to do is divert a few billion from weapons systems to Central American Reconstruction (or some such moniker.

And what do you know; at the end of the previous sentence my laptop once again died. Screen went dark and it won’t reboot. So I am using a tablet now, which sucks. That’s twice since May. Perhaps it is time for the old computer to receive its last rites.

“The identity that matters most is one's identity as a human-being-becoming-a-person. We can be grouped into pairs, families, clans, tribes, interest groups, nations, and so forth.” BC quoted by JP


JP, I was probably unclear in my post. The identity that most matters to individuals is their human becoming a person identity. This isn’t the identity that matters most collectively. It seems to me that some individuals are demanding collective consideration for their individual features, even those “features” conjured out of thin air, like the various freshly minted genders.

One of the little collectivities I left-out was support group which some people clearly need. They then begin to confuse their support group’s approval for broader social acceptance.

“I´m 40 years old (probably older than all of you), and what I perceive is that we humans, both individually and socially, are getting much more sensitivity to differences. And also overreacting to their existence” JP said.

Yes, that is what I was getting at — especially the over reaction.

By the way I’m 73, and not the oldest.

“I don't want to debate about whether there was or wasnt a Big Bang. Instead I'd like to ask you all to talk about, before the Big Bang“ RK

There can’t be much of a conversation if you rule out of bounds the POV most will have.

It sounds like you would prefer Hoyle’s Steady State universe which some followed until the more compelling BB theory was proposed. You might even prefer an earlier view —

In the 13th century, Siger of Brabant authored the thesis The Eternity of the World, which argued that there was no first man, and no first specimen of any particular: the physical universe is thus without any first beginning, and therefore eternal. Siger's views were condemned by the Pope in 1277.

Whether I am anti-state, pro-state, indifferent or deferential depends very much on the state.

Just a personal tick, but I am beginning to wish people would just shut-the-fuck-up about all their alleged differences.

Yes, it is true we all have differences, and are kind of wedded to our many delightful uniquenesses. To the quip that "It takes all kinds of people to make a world." Winston Churchill drily remarked, "It doesn't take all kinds of people, there just are."

It is also true that human beings are fundamentally more alike than we are different. We are, after all, a specific species, and like all the other species on earth, we are identifiable by a mass of features which are common across the population. One of our common features is the capacity to come up with absurd ideas which verge on or slop over into the territory of the downright stupid.

One such absurd idea is that a man can become a woman, or a woman can become a man, and that once this has been declared, everybody should fall into line in acknowledging this miracle which occurs with singular rarity in the animal and plant kingdoms. Mammals. as it happens, can not change their sex. Period. You can slice things off and reconstruct, but sex can not be changed.

We can be grouped into pairs, families, clans, tribes, interest groups, nations, and so forth. But more than the details of clan, tribe, interest group, and so on we remain human beings, Homo sapiens, with so much more in common than that which differentiates us. We are, of course, individuals. Most animals, rats on up to the Pope, are individually unique. The identity that matters most is one's identity as a human-being-becoming-a-person. Because becoming a person is something everyone in our species tends toward.

Proud to be a member of the anti-Boris tribe.

It wasn't as if Europe had a lot of choice. The refugees from the Syrian state disaster just "arrived". Hungary was excoriated (or praised) in the press for putting up a fence, and channeling refugees THROUGH, but not TO Hungary.

Arrivals by the ones and twos ask to come in, because before 1 or 2 at a time, the door is easily kept closed. Hundreds of thousands of refugees, economic migrants, opportunity seekers, people fleeing disaster don't generally ask if they can come in, because they are more like a fluid mass who push the door open. Short of setting up banks of machine guns on their shores and borders, how was Greece to resist the arrival of so many? They, being civilized people, did their best to care for the arrivals before they moved on. Once in Greece, the refugees had arrived in Europe.

One of the lessons here is: If you don't want near by countries to collapse into shit holes, then help them. This idea certainly applies to Central America. We could stem, even reverse, the flow of migrants from Central America by a comprehensive development program which could do for the area what the Marshal Plan did for Europe. And we should, since we have been fucking this region over for what, a century at least, and longer.

In my opinion, the very first question is rather: do corporations even make sense any longer?

We do not need taxi companies any longer, because we have Grab, Lyft, and Uber. We do not need hotels any longer, because we have Airbnb and similar networks. — alcontali

What are Grab, Lyft, Uber, Airbnb, et al if not corporations listed on stock exchanges?

The first food chain stores disrupted the locally owned food stores. Sears and Wards disrupted retail trade across the country. The auto disrupted the horse business, and we are still talking about events a century past. What Amazon or Airbnb calls "disruption" or "innovation" is the old capitalist principle of "creative destruction". The "destruction" isn't "creative". The purpose of destruction is to get rid of a competitor in order to create new business. We didn't need CDs; the music companies needed a way of destroying the old vinyl record business so they could sell it all again. CDs have since been "disrupted".

The entire system works like that. Lots of women say that they do not need a man (as a provider). Why? Because the government will provide them with money and free services. And where does the government get the money for that? From the men, of course. — alcontali

Speaking of something steaming, This is unadulterated bullshit.

When a person becomes a person is a matter of convention. Some thoughts: — T Clark

I had intended to say that very thing, but didn't. Quite so: For various purposes we can define a person as an object, and we do. From the POV of the person as subject, personhood develops over time, with a gradual awareness of personhood. This gradual appreciation of ones own personhood continues to develop throughout life. All persons pursue their self realization within the constraints of their individual reality, which can range from impoverished to rich (in various ways).

Let me drag in another contentious issue: the movement of humans across borders, and the term "Illegals".

There is nothing at all inappropriate about defining an unauthorized entrant into a country as an "illegal"--illegal alien, illegal immigrant, illegal whatever, because this definition is limited to whether they are here or there with authorization from the state, or not. It doesn't affect or apply to their existential personhood.

Immigration activists, it seems to me, behave as if the term "illegal" applied to the person's existential quality. It does not.

Nations are fully entitled to differentiate between legal and illegal entrants into the country, in order to protect the interests of the citizens who make up the nation. Both authorized and unauthorized border crossers are full persons with the usual human mix of laudable and lamentable motivations and characteristics, but they are also "legal" or "illegal".

States and citizens had better sort out this very difficult problem, because more and more people are going to wish to be somewhere else as life on the planet becomes more difficult. On the one hand, we feel for the suffering of persons; on the other hand, we want to protect--we should protect--our own interests.

There will not be enough room in the coolest, richest, most pleasant geography for the populations of the hottest, poorest, least pleasant places on the heating, overcrowded map, especially if the most pleasant places have a chance of remaining pleasant. I don't know what the solution should be -- I don't know how we are even going to attempt a conclusion on the matter.

It isn't even a question of race. People in Scotland won't want all the southern English people fleeing heat and flooding. People in Northern France won't want everyone from the hot parts of France and Spain to move there. People in Northwestern European countries certainly won't be happy if all the hot, thirsty, hungry people from France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, Rumania, et all decide to move into Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway, and NW Russia. 4 million lily white Minnesotans don't want 30 million lily white southerners arriving on their doorstep.

Very true. If you are criticizing the New York Times, it makes sense to criticize not only authors, but editors and owners. Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. (publisher) is fair game. Institutions, of course, do not have "agency". What they have are human actors with agency who do things under the umbrella of the institution.

I haven't heard Chomsky speak recently, but as I recollect, he didn't shy away from targeting specific human actors. The thing is, though, the NYT has many writers, reporters, editors, and managers. Criticizing "The New York Times" is easier than naming every person who wrote something that adds up to the NYT presentation of Iraq, Vietnam, Trump, Obama, et al.

You think keeping up a sharp critique of the status quo, analyzing the way thinking is warped and/or controlled by major institutions (government, press, corporations, etc.) and doing this for decades on end is trivial? Cheap? And what have you done that entitles you to be so demanding?

Chomsky isn't God, of course. But I think you might cut him some slack if he doesn't happen to meet your criticism needs at some particular moment.

Chomsky's contributions are immense. If he had wished to lay out a political program, reflecting his political philosophy, he would have. I have found his refusal frustrating, but we can't hold it against him. He has done his part -- describing and criticizing the existing political world.

It is someone else's part--my part, your part, anyone's part--to decide what kind of political action to take.

Read Chomsky, listen to his speeches. But what, Virgo Avalytikh, do you want to do?

When do we begin to have personhood?

Somewhere between zygote and the grave, I suppose. I view "personhood" as a continuum.

All that a zygote 'has' is the DNA of its parents, and a temporary location. With luck, the zygote will move through the stages of development and become a human baby in about 9 months, and then be thrust out into the world. A cigar, but no person. Another much longer period of time is required before the young human can begin to apprehend "self" and begin to direct its self-development. All this time DNA, parents, siblings, playmates, caregivers, teachers, climate, diet, the biome--the terroir (think of what gives a wine a particular flavor) is shaping this person. Personhood is beginning to emerge. We can see the sculpture emerging from the stone

By adulthood, the human is closing in on personhood. Perhaps we have 'built out' 50% to 99.9% of the personhood we might ultimately have. For the next 15 minutes on to 80 years, we progress, but we are always on the way to the final act of becoming. We never arrive at Full Personhood. So, personhood may become richer and deeper and wider and higher. It may plateau early on. It may begin to shrink--by disease, for instance (Alzheimers) or by a slow flagging of will, of interest, of vitality.

A 'more fulfilled personhood' is possible and I wish it for any and all. Alas, not all will progress the same way.

Dying is the person's final experience and death is the end.

Sorry for the personal nature of this post. However, where does a philosopher go for therapy? As if the psychologist or psychiatrist could be prepared to deal with the kind of existential depression that comes hand in hand with increasing ones understanding of the nature of reality, or the clear ethical conflicts of duty that arise when our personal lives are rocked by tragedy and we have to consider the world we bring our children into or whether we even should bring any into it? — Mark Dennis

For some problems, you may have to heal yourself. There ain't no cure for the global warming blues Terrifying? Indeed it is. Difficult choices? Absolutely.

IF you need a therapist, I think you will find that there are psychologists and psychiatrists who are familiar with existential despair. Finding a good practitioner is always tricky. Good luck.

It makes a difference what kind of war we are talking about.

There are a lot of wars around the world (quite a few long-running wars in various shit holes that have not risen to First World significance) where no one has set up any rules of engagement and where anything goes. It can be difficult to sort out soldier from civilian; beneficiary from benefactor; good from bad; perpetrator from victim.

We have had Total War characterized by WWI & WWII--war as a great slaughter house. The enemies were great and evil enough to justify virtually any strategy, any weapon, any method--on all sides. So poison gas, fire bombing of cities, death squads, genocide, Total War, etc.

Are Soldiers, of whom fuel the scope of war, responsible for immoral actions that occur without the central guidance of the law? — SethRy

Maybe wars in third world countries, those long low-grade conflicts, are driven by soldiers. But big wars conducted by First World nations are not driven by soldiers--certainly not conscripted ones. In the First World, war is diplomacy, economics, politics, foreign relations, and so forth conducted by alternative methods, and the driving forces in First World countries are the civilian, military, and industrial leaders. (See Eisenhower on the military-industrial complex.).

Boris's Boy Sajid Javid bears a remarkable resemblance to Fester, one of the ghastly Addams Family.

Boris's Boy Sajid Javid bears a remarkable resemblance to Fester, one of the ghastly Addams Family.

I think that if potential students and their parents are aware of the problem and make clear that they will not apply to schools with a high percentage of adjuncts things may begin to change. — Fooloso4

I'm not sure, but my guess is that avoiding adjuncts would require one to attend very expensive private schools.

An excellent PhD adjunct instructor in Classics at the U of Minnesota said back in the early 1980s that college teaching was turning into 'migrant labor' because one could never put together enough jobs at one institution. One would end up running all over town.

The funding problem in state universities (like the U of MN or anywhere else in the country) is that legislatures started to reduce the state's share of higher education around the middle of the 1970s. Up until the early 1970s, state-owned high education operated with full time staff, except in emergencies like the death of a professor in the middle of the term.

I'm not entirely sure what the motivation was for cutbacks in state support. I assume that it was a conservative push to reduce government expenditures. Or it could have been a way to cut down on the anticipated over-supply of college graduates. Or it could have been a way of abandoning commitment to high quality higher education for middle class which was gradually becoming more prole-llike. Or maybe it was born out of a basic hatred of college professors. Like I said, I'm not entirely sure.

Grad students teaching courses is another problem — Fooloso4

This is another long-standing complaint. Teaching low level science or engineering classes may be good for future scientists or engineers, but the grad students don't seem to think so -- outside of the opportunity to earn money against tuition. What they want to do is research and pursue their own studies.

Basically, TAs are just one more way for the college to stretch budgets. If they could get away with it, they'd have them cleaning the buildings too.

Oi, the Union of Assassins -- I had overlooked their student loan repayment needs.

Well, alright -- needles between the toes, accidental attack by a dozen rare Australian spiders (in Central Park in the winter), decapitation by a weirdly malfunctioning Cuisinart food processor, or exsanguination at the opera.

The bible just plainly says to put away the things of children. The supernatural and literal reading of myths. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

I'm all in favor of NOT taking myths literally. Corinthians 13:11... When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.

I'm also all in favor of people growing up and being 'men' (responsible adult humans).

I haven't read much about gnosticism -- probably because of the Calvin / Luther dominance on my earlier Protestant thinking. I probably won't become a gnostic in the few years I have left. One can only think about so many things in a day.

No reading comprehension. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

Yeah yeah, I'm just one more too-stupid-for-words brain dead slouch. But really, taking on the title of a god is kind of hubristic.

Modern Gnostic Christians name our god "I am", and yes, we do mean ourselves. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

Hubris Alert clang clang clang clang clang

Remember the tobacco industries frauds. Watch the documentary --- What the Health--- and see fraud taken to the point, again, to where the government is knowingly killing it's people. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

You are fixated on "the government". The government wasn't growing tobacco, making it into cigarettes, cigars, snuff, or chewing tobacco. They weren't promoting it by using every trick in the book. Who was doing that? R. J. Reynolds, Phillip Morris, British American Tobacco, Lorillard, et al were doing all that. Who was profiting from tobacco sales? The stockholders of the tobacco companies.

I used to smoke--I pretty much liked smoking--(Marlboro) and was the government putting a gun to my head to do that? No. I decided I wanted to smoke (as an adult, yet -- two years out of college, fully aware of the surgeon general's report. Did the government make me quit (25 years ago)? No. I chose to quit.

There is a lot of ragging on the masses of "stupid people" going on here. Who here is not part of the masses?

My focus here is the immorality of the governments, the oligarch's lackeys, as you seem to know, so I reject your labels. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

You can reject whatever labels you want. But... if you focus on the evils of "the government" to the exclusion of all else, that puts you in the camp of the libertarians. Or the camp of "everyone is too stupid to see how right I am" or the terminal conspiratorialist camp. Take your pick.

You seem to be peeved that there are no people, organizations, governments, corporations, or anything else with sterling moral credentials. Why would there be? We all have feet of clay. We are not gods.

expect now a knock on my door now, and before I know it, I'll be given a lethal injection between two toes, and the coroner's report will say "Cardiac arrest". — god must be atheist

They don't need to hide behind needles between the toes. A bullet through the head (faster, cheaper, better) and the coroner's report will still say, as you said, "cardiac arrest", or maybe if they are in a comic mood, "failure to thrive".

We have all accepted to be slaves. Shame on us all.
We do not live in a Democracy. We live in a Hypocrisy.
We can easily rid ourselves of poverty.
Should we?
Morality says yes.
Will we do the right thing?
Not till hell freezes over. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

We live in a kleptocracy, or a plutocracy, or an oligarchy masquerading as a democracy. We (the western industrialized countries) can rid ourselves of poverty. Yes, we should. But we almost certainly will not.

Your anarchist or libertarian focus, whatever it is, causes you to focus on The Government as the chief author of all that is bad. The government, Marx said, is a committee to organize the affairs of the wealthy. The bourgeoisie (wealthy people) have been in possession of the U. S. Government since the Mayflower Compact of 1620 (exaggeration for effect). The government has assisted the bourgeoisie in getting and keeping as much wealth as possible, except for a few fairly brief periods of time when the wealthy had to hand over more, but never so much that they weren't very rich any more.

The business of America is run by the businesses of America. Business is not run by the government. The businesses decide how much to pay people, and as a rule pay them the lowest possible wage that the market will bear. That doesn't mean that everybody is getting minimum wages, but it does mean that a lot of people (big portions of the working population) are getting a lot less than they could be getting.

All legislation begins with a person pushing the idea. That is all I or you can do. — Gnostic Christian Bishop

Sort of. But much more effective is organizing very large numbers of people to push ideas, and take concrete action if their pushing is ignored. What sort of concrete action? Well, the minimum is voting the recalcitrant sons of bitches out of office. Then there is union organizing on a massive scale; there is civil disobedience; there are mass demonstrations, boycotts, work stoppages -- let your imagination go!

That means we need the positive emotions, and we should avoid the negative emotions, as well as apathy. — TranscendedRealms

We need both. Screaming fear is what gets our asses in gear when a clearly visible existential threat appears -- the big crocodile about to eliminate us from our gene pool. Obviously walking around with fear and dread all the time is not a good thing. Similarly, walking around in the haze of warm fuzzy gauzy joy isn't a good thing either--except for the hungry croc.

Things can go haywire in a brain; there are lots of problems people have that originate in brain function. Many of these 'features' or 'flaws' in brain function are not a choice. Nobody wants to be bi-polar, chronically depressed, or psychotic -- it just isn't much fun. I feel much happier, more positive, and so forth now than I did 15 years ago. Why? I don't know, exactly. Things changed. I didn't choose it.

Without these feelings, we can't experience any of those things. — TranscendedRealms

The history of brains is quite long -- about 5 hundred million years. Animals (like us) rely on emotions to provide the impetus to act, to give the 'feeling' of reality to experience. We wouldn't FEEL love without neurotransmitters provided by the limbic system of the brain -- and neither would creatures with brain plans much older than ours -- birds.

The neurons that figure out how to replace a light bulb aren't the same ones that provide the sense of urgency in getting the damn thing changed. We need both.

you can get incredibly upset and smash the toilet seat down angrily if you break a shoe-lace — god must be atheist

Congratulations! You are the first person in the history of Philosophy to connect smashing toilet seats with broken shoe laces. How was this crucial connection overlooked for so long?

1. what are the basic things that u need to know in order to become an idea machine?
3. how to compound interest your intellect and make quantum leaps from things you already know?
4. what do I need to add to my knowledge so I can compound interest it efficiently and effortlessly, and naturally, what are the basic building blocks to becoming a genius?
6. what are the mistakes that makes your mind less
efficient in processing data and learning? how to process data faster?
how to recognize patterns faster?
how to think ? how to make your mind really clear? (methods of
thinking)
8. how to develop photographic memory?
9. what can open my mind and expand my consciousness to gain access to infinite possibilities?
(sharpening the senses and becoming sensitive, how to intentionally connect the two hemispheres of the mind? connecting to other minds maybe?) — regel

1. The typical human is already an idea machine, but people make only a few "quantum leaps". Most of the time we make little leaps. If you are lucky, your little leaps will add up to a big leap. On the other hand, your little leaps may lead you to fall flat on your face. Hey, that's life for you.

3-4. Read widely; take risks (I'm not talking about sky diving; take intellectual and emotional risks). Try different ideas on for size. Mix with a variety of people-types. Leave your comfort zone every now and then. Allow 'down time' for your mind to roam. Sleep well. The brain consolidates learning at night, while you sleep, more efficiently than when you are awake all night.

6. Habits of life get in the way. People who are sleep deprived, drink and drug too much, are driving themselves crazy; are undisciplined all the time; don't get organized (in the ordinary sense of the word)--all this sort of the thing impedes clear thinking.

7. You either are born with an 'eidetic" or photographic memory or you are not. In any case, walking around with a million photographs in your head that you haven't processed isn't going to help you. Your memory is good enough as it is. But... one can learn how to improve memory.

9. Surprise! Mother Nature, who designed your brain's hemi-spheres, didn't forget to connect the two halves. The hemispheres of your brain are connected by the corpus callosum. What you need is already there.

Want to do a Vulcan mind meld with somebody? sit down and talk to them honestly, listen attentively.

There are amazing things to discover about how the brain works, but that isn't going to help you. By the time you are old enough to write a post on The Philosophy Forum, the Jello of your brain has pretty much set. Yes, there is such a thing as brain plasticity, but that's under the control of your DNA. Keep your brain busy with good work and it will serve you well.

We all have limitations. We might want to think like the young Einstein, but that kind of genius isn't handed out freely. As you move through your life, accept who you are becoming, even as you maintain reasonable aspirations (in other words, don't get carried away with absurd goals). Much of who you are going to be has already been determined. That's true for all of us. We aren't blank slates; we don't get to be whatever we want to be.

Take the difference between the famous New Caledonia Crows and African Grey Parrots. They're both very smart birds. The crows are workaholics. Give them toys and opportunities to "play" and they turn the toys into tools. Parrots, on the other hand, also demonstrate intelligence AND they like to play.

Neither the crow nor the parrot had a choice. In a sense, neither do we. We are at least somewhat programmed by DNA and very early environment and experiences. If you are a crow, make the most of it -- just as if you happen to be a parrot.

Johnson is purely a mop-topped heat-seeking missile for power — Baden

A bomb? Yes, in so many ways; a heat-seeking missile... Donald and Boris are both too much the lard ass to soar. They roll and crush.

In America, each new bad president makes the last bad president look better in retrospect. Do you think Boris will improve May or Cameron?

I sometimes think my goal is just to keep you interested and sharing for as long as possible — ZhouBoTong

Fish will bite if you've got good bait, and that is definitely attractive.

So, on the coinage issue:

The revival of 'In God We Trust' The 1950s, however, witnessed a dramatic resurgence of religious language in government and politics.

The phrase "in god we trust" on money was first proposed by northerners during the Civil War. There was also an attempt at that time to add "god language" to the preamble of the U. S, Constitution. It didn't fly at that time, and in the years that followed.

On the P of A issue:

The Pledge of Allegiance was written in August 1892 by the socialist minister Francis Bellamy (1855-1931). It was originally published in The Youth's Companion on September 8, 1892. Bellamy had hoped that the pledge would be used by citizens in any country.

In its original form it read:

"I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
In 1923, the words, "the Flag of the United States of America" were added.

Ah, news to me. So, that a socialist wrote the pledge explains the original absence of any named country, since socialists (officially) are in favor of doing away with borders.

While I was there (in the 1950s) I was too young to be making cogent observations. But one of the clearly memorable themes of the 1950s -- at least in the small town midwest where I lived -- was a very strong anticommunism. This ran parallel with other strong themes. It was all very conspiratorial: The atheistic communists are infiltrating the nation [like termites, they might have said, gnawing away at the beams, pillars, and floorboards of democracy]. Their goal is to conquer America, and turn it into a part of the international communist world. (Well, that was at least somewhat true). We have since discovered that there really weren't all that many communists in the United States. Their numbers were largest during the Great Depression. And the Communist Party USA was on the right side of the civil rights movement--they contributed manpower and funds to help the movement from early on.

I had never considered this connection, nor ever read anything like that. It seems obviously correct once you mention it though. — ZhouBoTong

Yeah, there is a difference between religious language about God and political language about god. We expect believers to trust in God. That's sort of their thing. But politicians don't characteristically rely on miraculous beings to win. They rely on a jaded electorates, smoky back rooms, money changing hands, lies, untruths, distortions, etc.

WHAT people believed about communism and communists was pretty heavily flavored by government agencies, business groups, and the police in the person of rabid anti-communist, anti-homosexual (and probably homosexual himself) J. Edgar Hoover, the long-time head of the FBI.

You probably haven't heard of it, but the FBI ran a program called COINTELPRO -- COunter INTELligence PROgram. It ran from 1956 to 1971, but people didn't know about it until the 1970s. It was a major effort to surveil, infiltrate, disrupt, and discredit domestic political groups of which the FBI disapproved. That included civil rights groups, leftists (not communists), Communists, women's liberation groups, anti-Vietnam War groups, campus activist groups, etc. They didn't plant bombs or assassinate people, but they interfered in ways that made political activist work less successful, because the various organizations were dealing with organizational problems that COINTELPRO caused.

COINTELPRO was closed down after the story came out, but rest assured, the government didn't give up on surveillance and infiltration of domestic political activists.

no sound on this computer — ZhouBoTong

So much for the digital revolution. I've had problems sharing files with other people and they with me. Quite often the video won't play, or it will play without sound. Too many variables to track down. Sorry you couldn't hear it. You can always go on YouTube (where I got it) and search for the piece. I'm beginning to find that YouTube's collection of music is as complete, if not more so, than iTunes. And, so far, one can listen for free.

I also can't see him lasting long. And I hope I'm right. He's for tax cuts for the rich, he has a record of gross incompetence, he has made comments suggestive of racism, sexism, homophobia, and islamophobia, he has a bad character, he deliberately evades giving straight and honest answers to questions, he's shallow and out for himself... — S

Right. Well, many of us truthfully said the same thing about one Donald Trump, and it seems quite possible that he could get re-elected. No one every went broke underestimating the intelligence of the electorate. If you can fool enough of the people enough of the time, you can get elected and re-elected.

Well... Here we go again. Another raving bloody loony in an office they have no business being in. — Mark Dennis

Exactly.

As a true Scotsman, what do you think are the chances of Scotland severing it's union with England?