I think Pinker gives us good evidence to believe that more recent centuries were not in fact the bloodiest of all time. — m-theory

Yeah sure, Hitler killing 6 million Jews! Not a big deal! Stalin murdering around 21 million! Eh, just another statistic! Nothing to fret about! Mao Zedong murdering 40 million! Not that bloody, it's just fucking 40 million no?

Yeah, give me a break. After the bloodiest century in all of history, we notice a reduction in violence. Yeah no doubt, if violence spiralled out of control even more than that, we may not have been around to notice anything... (and I have no doubt that sooner or later violence will be back with a vengeance - in addition to this, many people are living in the world worse than they have EVER lived before in the entire history of mankind - some folks can't even drink water because it's not potable anymore. Some folks live with the threat of bombs over their heads. And so forth. These "consume me" type of authors like Steven Pinker and so forth don't say anything great. They say something new, because the new sells. Forget what the truth is, it's more important that the truth is new than that it is the truth!

The wrong direction clearly. The biggest problems we face are that we have to come to terms with several impossibilities:

(1) The impossibility of globalisation
(2) The impossibility of a unified multicultural society
(3) The impossibility of an economic system based on and fuelled by the idea of infinite growth
(4) The impossibility of sustaining social order in a society driven by consumerism

We have to return to local, family/culture driven societies, where economics takes a minor role in people's lives, where local cultures grow, are respected and develop, and where the main function of people is something other than to consume. We need virtue back - the virtue of the olden days of Plato and Aristotle. Our problems arise out of people - post-modernists, progressives, globalists, socialists, capitalists, etc. not accepting the facticity of the above four impossibilities and instead allowing ideology to drive them.

Ummm . . . skip — Terrapin Station

But if you're an atheist it doesn't follow you'd necessarily skip that. There are reasons other than religion for practicing celibacy.

It depends on who the professor is. Heidegger as a student, writing as he's famous for, when I was teaching Intro to Philosophy courses, wouldn't have passed. — Terrapin Station

Does that go to show that Heidegger is weak as a philosopher, or that you're weak as a teacher of philosophy? :P

Have you read some of Haidt's stuff? — Emptyheady

I've only watched a few videos of him with regards to morality.

I am fully willing to accept that gay couples can romantically love each other like heterosexual couples, but I am against same sex marriage. — Emptyheady

Well there's two different issues here. One is the morality of gay sex, which I view as immoral. The other thing is, what political attitude one should have towards that. And in that case I am for allowing homosexuals to enter into recognised civil unions similar to marriage, but which go by a different name and yet have all the legal implications of marriage. So I'm similar to you on this, broadly speaking.

I take no issue with casual sex — Emptyheady

That only means that you don't understand the potentialities of sex. "Casual sex". Is there any "casual prayer" too? Sex can never be "casual" - it plays too significant a role in life for it to be "casual". "Casual sex" is like "married bachelor" - nonsense. A lot of suffering in human life emerges out of or is related to sex. That's an observation. What follows from such an observation? That you need, at minimum, to be careful around sex. Being careful, or prudent, is antithetical to being "casual". When I casually play chess I don't really play for real - i'm not really concentrated to win. But sex just isn't the kind of activity that can be done casually (at least without high risks of injuring yourself or the other). And that's approaching it merely from the negative side. From the positive side, sex is too important to waste it, and engage in it "casually". It's too powerful and too significant for that. So at minimum - one will have no "casual" sex. One may have sex with a person they know for a long time, without being committed to them (given only the negative side) but certainly not casually (with say a stranger one just met). But if you take the positive side into account, then it seems that the only sufficient reason to have sex is if you're committed to the other person - if you love them. Otherwise (1) the risks are too high, and (2) you're just wasting your time, the rewards aren't great enough. So only people who (1) aren't aware of the dangers (and these aren't only physical dangers like pregnancy, STDs, etc. but also emotional dangers) or (2) don't respect sex enough can engage in casual sex.

I would legalise all drugs (and hypothetically abolish the FDA), iff we fully privatised healthcare. — Emptyheady

Hmmmmm... I would probably ban all of them :P I disagree on this one, because I don't think people are wise enough to be able to choose. They will just follow mass-culture, or what's cool to do. So there needs to be a force guiding them towards what's right.

Bohr, Schrodinger and Heisenberg were all highly educated and philosophically astute. — Wayfarer

And am I to take that for truth? Am I not to look at their writtings and confirm whether what you're telling me is the truth? And if so, then I have looked at Heisenberg's writing that you offered, and it doesn't sound philosophically astute at all. It's more like propaganda.

Anyway, instead of going off topic with all this, I think you should answer the question of the thread if you have a different opinion.

It seems to me that some of you are aptly characterised by Benedict de Spinoza:

Even if we did not know that our mind is eternal, we would still regard as of the first importance morality, religion, and absolutely all the things we have shown to be related to tenacity and nobility. The usual conviction of the multitude seems to be different. For most people apparently believe that they are free to the extent that they are permitted to yield to their lust, and that they give up their right to the extent that they are bound to live according to the rule of the divine law. Morality, then, and religion, and absolutely everything related to strength of character, they believe to be burdens, which they hope to put down after death, when they also hope to receive a reward for their bondage, that is, for their morality and religion. They are induced to live according to the rule of the divine law (as far as their weakness and lack of character allows) not only by this hope, but also, and especially, by the fear that they may be punished horribly after death. If men did not have this hope and fear, but believed instead that minds die with the body, and that the wretched, exhausted with the burden of morality, cannot look forward to a life to come, they would return to their natural disposition, and would prefer to govern all their actions according to lust, and to obey fortune rather than themselves. These opinions seem no less absurd to me than if someone, because he does not believe he can nourish his body with good food to eternity, should prefer to fill himself with poisons and other deadly things, or because he sees that the mind is not eternal, or immortal, should prefer to be mindless, and to live without reason. These are so absurd they are hardly worth mentioning

I think Plotinus (and other mystics) depicts worldly existence as a kind of illusory state (cf 'maya' or samsara) analogous to a fantasy realm or game kind of like Dungeons and Dragons, but with real blood. — Wayfarer

:-} Then why do they keep feeding their bodies, maintain hygiene and so forth? What happens in this phantasy realm is obviously of interest to them.

The former was a materialist who didn't believe in anything beyond material existence. — Wayfarer

What's there beyond material existence?

Plotinus wants to break out of the game altogether (like the scene in Mockingjay when Katniss breaks through the 'dome' and reveal the whole set-up as being a contrivance. There are many other analogies in science fiction films.) — Wayfarer

The thing is, it's impossible to break out of the game, and even if it was, it's not worth the effort.

What do you reckon Epicurus would make of that? — Wayfarer

Simple, he'd agree with it. The pleasures of the mind are always greater and more certain than the pleasures of the body.

Epicureanism is so utterly ridiculous that it's probably one of the few, maybe perhaps the only, "mainstream" philosophy that Plotinus simply ignores outright in his writings. — ThePhilosopherFromDixie

*facepalm* :s - yeah, when you can't disprove something, you throw up your hands and say it's ridiculous! Great attitude to have, I should start adopting it!

I honestly don't think Stenger would pass Philosophy 101, whereas Heidegger, apart from having helped devise quantum mechanics, is also philosophically astute. — Wayfarer

:-} I highly doubt Heisenberg would pass Philosophy 101. If his "philosophy" is like that essay he has no chance. As for Heidegger, he may pass Philosophy 101, but he would certain fail in Newtonian mechanics 101 (forget quantum mechanics 101).

In any case, a spherical object of any kind is not dimensionless because a sphere can only be defined in terms of the distance of the surface from the centre. — Wayfarer

So? How does this imply that indivisibility is inconceivable? How does this imply that if the atom has spatial properties it must be divisible?

There are many obvious conundrums with Lucretius atomism apparent even to the untrained. For instance, he claimed that 'heat atoms' flowed out from the sun and hit the earth. The obvious question is, what happens to all of them when they land? Why don't we have to clear the driveway of expended 'heat atoms' before driving out in the morning? — Wayfarer

There are solutions to those problems offered by Epicureans through the ages. The heat atoms get reflected or absorbed temporarily in the voids between other atoms.

For viewpoint of one who is more educated than either of us on this very question, have a geez at Heisenberg's essay The Debate Between Plato and Democritus. (Spoiler alert: comes out against Democritus.) — Wayfarer

:-} I did read it, and found that it is nothing but Heisenberg inserting his favorite biases without even arguing why. It's so silly. "Uhh fundamental reality is pure mathematics" - yeah sure, give me a break. But other than that, I'll reply to the appeal to authorities more educated than us with another authority:
Read God and the Atom by Victor J. Stenger (Spoiler alerts: Democritus wins)

As I said, Greek Materialism is a tenable position.

The notion of Democritus of 'atoms and the void' is stricly binary, atom=1, void=0, but the 'probability wave' and 'uncertainty principle' have torpedoed that — Wayfarer

Nah, it's basically the same, just more detailed. Democritus was basically right. The uncertainty principle and probability wave are the swerve. Inability to predict.

But if something was indivisible, how could it have top, bottom, left and right? Those are precisely 'divisions' or 'parts'. — Wayfarer

That makes absolutely no sense. What if it was round? Then there would be no "top", "bottom", etc. because these are relative to a frame of reference, and an objective frame of reference can only be provided by asymmetries in the shape of the particle. But spherical particles would have no asymmetries. They would have no parts - no top, no bottom, no distinctions.

if an atom was truly indivisible, then it couldn't have any sides — Wayfarer

Why not?

What you are describing understands God to be an existing actor. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Not in the sense that I am an actor when I hit a billiard ball and it moves a certain way.

The existing actor, all powerful and amazing, literally does the impossible, performs the action the world could never do itself. — TheWillowOfDarkness

As I said, God is a way of relating to the world. You put God as just some other thing standing besides the world.

God didn’t ruin the general. The world did. — TheWillowOfDarkness

You're not saying anything different - just using a different word for it. You're relating to it in a different way. Furthermore, by saying that, you're missing something. When the general says that, it's not his hubris that has defeated him. That's not what he's saying, I was too careless/arrogant and therefore I lost. He's saying I couldn't have done anything to win. Winning just wasn't in the cards. I did my best, but my best wasn't sufficient. I executed the best strategy I could, and I executed it in the best way I could. Still not enough.

Nietzsche only left God somewhat dead. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Nietzsche would have preferred that God wasn't dead. His whole secret ambition was always to revive God. The fact that God was dead was a problem for him - a problem to be solved, to be overcome.
And he was right.

While he identified separation, killing the idea of unity, he did not escape the expectation of unity. — TheWillowOfDarkness

I think he did. The idea of unity and expectation of unity (sub specie durationis) is anti-thetical to the idea of God.

The only question is whether one realises that or is still deluded into thinking the world can be unified. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Yes, those who seek to level down the world - they still think it can be unified within history. Those who seek to maintain the tensions of the world, understand, as Augustine did in his City of God for example, that the end of history isn't within history. Kant, and all the moderns misunderstood this. Especially Marx and Hegel.

The crisis of Nihilism is the failure to accept this, a pining for the predetermined world immune to destruction and change. — TheWillowOfDarkness

But you don't understand my point. My point is precisely this, that the world isn't immune to destruction and change, and can't be immune to them, and the more we seek to actualise those things in history, the farther we get from them. And Nietzsche understood this too. This is trying to bring the end of history - which is a SPIRITUAL happening - into empirical, physical history.

We might say the crisis of Nihilism is the belief and goal of the unified world. — TheWillowOfDarkness

I agree. And Nietzsche does too. And perhaps Plato has foreseen this waaaaay before anyone else ;)

So what? Even if that is so, it doesn't follow that metaphysics is a science? — John

No but it follows that if you're interested to talk about this, you should try to show why it isn't - or rather can't be - a science.

He considered his method to be an a priori method. If this is true then his conclusions would be self-evidently true to all unbiased rational minds. I say "if this is true" because it is by no means uncontroversial. Think of Quine's rejection between the a priori/ a posteriori distinction, for example. Quine was an arch empiricist, though, so i obviously would not agree with him. It is this very possibility of genuine rational disagreement between thinkers that ensures that metaphysics cannot be a science. — John

Bullshit, address the specifics:

Kant made a foundational assumption. That assumption is that the faculties participate in perception and give structure - or form - to the perceptions. We impose the forms on reality, not the other way around. Once that assumption is in place, of course everything runs smoothly. Just grant him that little (actually big) point. This was all of Kant's imaginative leap. Then he renders traditional metaphysics to result in antinomies - and no wonder! If we impose the forms on Reality, then we have access only to appearances and not to things-in-themselves. And hence when we try to reach things-in-themselves we reach the antinomies. Woah! What a grand discovery! >:O You put the rabbit in the hat, and you take the rabbit out. It's simple. The rest of Kant is the working out of the logical implications of his central thought. But has Kant ever asked himself, perhaps by chance, what happens if our faculties are not, in fact, the source of the forms of space, time, causality and the rest? What then? — Agustino

Kant was faced with a problem. How to explain the fact that mathematics models the world so well... well let's see, how to explain it? (he even asks, for example in the Prolegomena - How is science at all possible? >:O How is mathematics at all possible? >:O ) Simple! The structure of the world, which mathematics models, is created by our mind - it's the form of space and time. So something imposed by the mind, can of course be modelled and understood by the mind. That explains why mathematics is so powerful - except it doesn't. But Kant didn't know about non-Euclidean geometry. He tried to do metaphysics by starting from science and going the other way around. Bullshit - Aristotle illustrated why Metaphysics must always be first philosophy. And it is first philosophy for Kant too - he just doesn't realise it, and sneaks in a critical assumption to explain science, which is never, afterwards, metaphysically assessed and judged. If you attempt to do metaphysics not as first philosophy, but instead make its foundation in, say, science, then you fall or climb with science. But science isn't apodeictic - thus neither will your metaphysics be. Instead of heeding Kant's system as Kant requests them, anyone who henceforth wants to engage in Metaphysics would better heed Aristotle:

"Those who wish to succeed must ask the right preliminary questions"

I don't think metaphysics can be an exact science, because its 'truths' cannot be intersubjectively confirmed or disconfirmed by observation. — John

This is still a metaphysical question.

Only the kind of a priori analysis that Kant undertook may be confirmed by all as self-evident, but even here heaps of philosophers disagree. — John

Ehm... in what sense can Kant be confirmed by others as self-evident? And what does that have to do with his method?

Kant made a foundational assumption. That assumption is that the faculties participate in perception and give structure - or form - to the perceptions. We impose the forms on reality, not the other way around. Once that assumption is in place, of course everything runs smoothly. Just grant him that little (actually big) point. This was all of Kant's imaginative leap. Then he renders traditional metaphysics to result in antinomies - and no wonder! If we impose the forms on Reality, then we have access only to appearances and not to things-in-themselves. And hence when we try to reach things-in-themselves we reach the antinomies. Woah! What a grand discovery! >:O You put the rabbit in the hat, and you take the rabbit out. It's simple. The rest of Kant is the working out of the logical implications of his central thought. But has Kant ever asked himself, perhaps by chance, what happens if our faculties are not, in fact, the source of the forms of space, time, causality and the rest? What then?

If metaphysics is a science, then why do all the metaphysicians disagree with one another? — John

Because some of them are wrong? Because metaphysics has political ramifications, and thus certain truths can't be recognised without thereby recognising their political implications?

Are you saying that if metaphysicians think something is impossible then it is impossible? — John

No - because it's possible that the metaphysician is wrong, but this would have to be shown.

I am suggesting that what is possible for metaphysics does not reflect the totality of what is possible. — John

That is nonsense. Metaphysics is the science of Being/Existence itself. If something is metaphysically impossible, then it is impossible and full stop.

Yeah I should have qualified that I meant 'logically incoherent to us'. It's always logically possible that something might not seem logically coherent, but be possible nonetheless. — John

Then the onus is on you, or any other metaphysician, to prove how it might be possible. It's absurd to claim "Hurr Hurr it might be possible you know! >:) " without even being able to show how it might be possible. The proof is in the doing.

Yeah, but that would make them logically incoherent, not logically impossible. — John

If they are logically incoherent, then they are impossible.

Yeah, I don't know what the heck Willow was thinking on that one. — Terrapin Station

What Willow was thinking is simple. He (or she) believes that some things are not logically possible because, when one tries to work them out (work out their implications), one finds that it is impossible for them to be worked out. This is similar to how Spinoza proceeds to justify his moves in his Ethics.

Is that like walking the dog? Do they use a leash? >:) — John

I think, by analogy, whether a leash is used or not depends on where one is walking the dog to ;)

Does 'pedophile' refer to one who loves walking or to one who loves children? — John

I think it refers to one who loves walking children :B

That is exactly how the pedestrian mind levels everything out. — John

Is the pedestrian mind given to pederasty? :-O

You are really stupid — mosesquine

Don't worry mate, this guy only knows one way to deal with those who disagree with him >:O A real prick!

So your claim is that most people wouldn't read "anything and everything is possible" any differently than "all possible things are possible"? — Terrapin Station

I don't think they would, unless they're in some special philosophical mood such that they will even think about logical contradictions. When I tell someone "anything is possible", they think that any imaginable empirical event is possible - but any such event is always already constrained by the PNC.

Compared to Plato/Aristotle? No, I don't think so.

God doing the healing is how one relates to the world though. It's a description of one's relationship with the world. For example, someone who has an incurable disease, and whose disease goes into remission and thereby achieves a cure. Such an event is a break - a fracture, occurring in the world. It is like the discontinuity originating from blinking that links up two moments of visual perception. It is a direct connection with the eternal which breaks through in time and alters the predetermined course of history. This fracture is eternity breaking through the world - the eternity that has all along been a condition for the possibility of the world (for the eternal moment is always a presupposition of the differentiated, flowing time). It is effectively the world coming anew once again - a new birth, a new beginning of time.

It is like a general who has trapped his opponent and his army within a valley surrounded by flammable material, and thereby starts firing burning arrows at him. And when all matters finally look settled, and victory certain, a pouring rain commences which puts out the fire and thereby places him at a grand and unexpected disadvantage. From his point of view - God has ruined him, and saved his opponent. It's a way of relating with what happened. When God causes the rain, he doesn't cause it in the same way a billiard ball hitting another billiard ball causes it to move at such and such a speed in such and such a direction. It is rather a metaphysical event.

This isn't God used in a political sense. It's deeper than that, it's a way of relating with what happened, with the primal ground of existence. This isn't God used in the sense of "Uhh you're a woman, time to go to the kitchen where your God-given place is" - that is the incomprehensible (and incoherent/unethical) mysterianism that you criticise. There are roughly two different notions of God at play. The God of politics - which is used as a reason to enforce certain norms of behaviour upon people who aren't educated enough to otherwise understand and obey, and who is misused by some to enforce their tyrannical whims and fancies upon those close to them upon whom they wield direct power. And the God of the world - which is a description of the relationship of man with the eternal as it shines through in the fractures and breaks of history. This is also the logic of miracles.

In fact - if the world wasn't broken - if the world was, as per Hegel, an Absolute Spirit - then God wouldn't exist. It's only because the Absolute is broken and never absolute that God exists - or rather that God shines through the cracks in the sphere of the world. The world sub specie aeternitatis is the condition for the possibility of the world sub specie durationis, and shines through it.

And politically, this is what the socialists, POMO, etc. (and other such "last men" as per Nietzsche) don't understand. The world can't be made unbroken, can't be made whole, and in the very process of trying to make it whole we break it - God is dead and we have killed Him - the crisis of nihilism (and Nietzsche isn't merely describing the empirical loss of belief in the God of religion and its replacement with, say, the God of socialism - he's describing a metaphysical loss). Democracy, institution after institution - to what end? We go around sealing the cracks in the world. But this very sealing gives rise to its destruction - to Trump for example. The levelling down - the flattening of the earth that pomo attempts - reducing the virign to just the same as the slut - the eschatological attempt to bring the end of history within history - instead of realising that the end of history is the escape from history, and hence time, and thus it can never be an event in history. The democratic instinct par excellence gives birth to totalitarianism - to the loss of being. That's also one of the meanings of original sin. Another one is the paradise we experience outside of time, and the infinite loss we incur as we fall into time. Paradise -> Paradise lost is what we all experience. To be innocent is to live in Paradise unburdened by "it has been".

The regret of not being plants brings us closer to paradise than any religion. One is in paradise only as a plant. But we left that stage a long time ago: we would have to destroy so much to recover paradise! Sin is the impossibility of forgetfulness. The fall - the emblem of our human condition - is a nervous exacerbation of consciousness. Thus a human being can only be next to God, whereas plants sleep in him the sleep of eternal forgetfulness. The more awake we are, the greater the nostalgia that sends us in quest of paradise, the sharper the pangs of remorse that reunite us with the vegetable world — E.M. Cioran

Aquinas and Aristotle believed something of extreme importance. Evil exists only in-so-far as being is lacking. The criminal isn't evil in-so-far as his pure being is in question, he's evil only in-so-far as he lacks compassion, he lacks virtue, etc. The fall into time is sin because it chips away at being. Thus, being is always already beyond good and evil - beyond the class of distinctions, which becomes possible only under the flow of time - of becoming. To become is the very essence of time - it is to be directed towards what one is to become - and hence to have the distinctions of future (what I will be - the goal), present (what I am), and the past (what I have been).

Thanks Noble Dust, coincidentally I have just recently started it. As with other books of his it resonates with my thoughts, and I often feel like it is giving voice to my own half-formed intuitions. — John

I was about to order that, so after you get into it properly, let me know how good it is on a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is indispensable :P

You don't believe that someone could feel that Russell had far greater insights than Nietzsche? — Terrapin Station

Nope, because it's just a fact he didn't. You could value certain aspects of writing which are found in Russell over aspects of writing found in Nietzsche, but on the same criteria there is no room for disagreement, one of us has to be wrong.

Again, you realize that this is a matter of tastes/preferences, right? In my opinion, among philosophers, Russell easily gets the top slot as a writer. In your opinion, he's a far worse author than Nietzsche. We have different tastes. There are no correct answers for this sort of thing. — Terrapin Station

In terms of our tastes, we clearly have different tastes. But that comes merely because we value different things. So there is no question that for someone who values insights, Nietzsche is greater than Russell, and more worthy of being read. Whereas for someone who values methodology, Russell is a better read than Nietzsche.

"Here is one hand, and here is another, therefore there are at least two external objects, therefore an external world exists." — darthbarracuda

It's missing a premise :P

"a hand is an external object"

:D

Your first comment regarding Nietzsche:

Nietzsche was a horrible writer and he wasn't even a very good philosopher with respect to his methodological approach. — Terrapin Station

Seems to read like:

If there are among my readers any young men or women who aspire to become leaders of thought in their generation, I hope they will avoid certain errors into which I fell in youth for want of good advice. When I wished to form an opinion upon a subject, I used to study it, weigh the arguments on different sides, and attempt to reach a balanced conclusion. I have since discovered that this is not the way to do things. A man of genius knows it all without the need of study; his opinions are pontifical and depend for their persuasiveness upon literary style rather than argument. It is necessary to be one-sided, since this facilitates the vehemence that is considered a proof of strength. It is essential to appeal to prejudices and passions of which men have begun to feel ashamed and to do this in the name of some new ineffable ethic. It is well to decry the slow and pettifogging minds which require evidence in order to reach conclusions. Above all, whatever is most ancient should be dished up as the very latest thing.

There is no novelty in this recipe for genius; it was practised by Carlyle in the time of our grandfathers, and by Nietzsche in the time of our fathers, and it has been practised in our own time by D. H. Lawrence. Lawrence is considered by his disciples to have enunciated all sorts of new wisdom about the relations of men and women; in actual fact he has gone back to advocating the domination of the male which one associates with the cave dwellers. Woman exists, in his philosophy, only as something soft and fat to rest the hero when he returns from his labours. Civilised societies have been learning to see something more than this in women; Lawrence will have nothing of civilisation. He scours the world for what is ancient and dark and loves the traces of Aztec cruelty in Mexico. Young men, who had been learning to behave, naturally read him with delight and go round practising cave-man stuff so far as the usages of polite society will permit.

One of the most important elements of success in becoming a man of genius is to learn the art of denunciation. You must always denounce in such a way that your reader thinks that it is the other fellow who is being denounced and not himself; in that case he will be impressed by your noble scorn, whereas if he thinks that it is himself that you are denouncing, he will consider that you are guilty of ill-bred peevishness. Carlyle remarked: ``The population of England is twenty millions, mostly fools.'' Everybody who read this considered himself one of the exceptions, and therefore enjoyed the remark. You must not denounce well-defined classes, such as persons with more than a certain income, inhabitants of a certain area, or believers in some definite creed; for if you do this, some readers will know that your invective is directed against them. You must denounce persons whose emotions are atrophied, persons to whom only plodding study can reveal the truth, for we all know that these are other people, and we shall therefore view with sympathy your powerful diagnosis of the evils of the age.

Ignore fact and reason, live entirely in the world of your own fantastic and myth-producing passions; do this whole-heartedly and with conviction, and you will become one of the prophets of your age. — Bertrand Russell

It seems a very facile and uninvolved critique of Nietzsche. I mean Nietzsche wasn't like Bertie - Bertie wanted to be very thorough in everything and thus moved very slowly, and most of the time dealt with trivialities that aren't relevant to anyone (being thorough comes at a cost - you never get around to analyzing what truly matters, because you're always stuck in the intermediary steps, making sure your system is right). With regards to his progressivism and radicalism though, he was merely a pamphleteer and ideologue. Consider Principia Mathematica and the likes - countless and countless of pages to prove 1+1=2... I don't consider being stuck in trivialities to be good philosophy, regardless of how rigorously, this is done - regardless of the methodology used. Nietzsche knew which matters were of importance and always went straight to the heart of life itself - he wasn't interested in why 1+1=2 - he didn't care, there was no time to care about that. There was no time to offer arguments for all the little bits and pieces, that was a job that was left for someone else. That's precisely why Nietzsche's insights are more valuable than 1000 Russells - they deal with what truly matters, they are worthy of being contemplated and debated. That's why Nietzsche is very well known outside of philosophical circles - his insights are relevant to life. But Russell? Very few outside philosophers and academics themselves have even heard of him. So yes, a man like Nietzsche is different. In fact, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard are entirely unique in the history of philosophy - no one is like them.

And consider his insights. "God is dead - and WE have killed him"

That's not merely saying that God doesn't exist. That's not merely saying that God existed and died. But it's saying that God existed and he is dead because of us. We are his murderers. What does God stand for? Stands for the ultimate reason of the world, the totality of everything. Humanity's attempt to totalise the world is dead - reality is inherently fractured, and no attempt at systematising can get beyond it - in fact every attempt at systematising actually causes us to kill God (the very system we seek to create). We project our values onto the world, and then are left with the very values we have projected. Look how rich that simple phrase is - how relevant it is, to almost anyone breathing on this planet, be they theist or atheist (and in fact Nietzsche on a deep reading probably has nothing to do with atheism as such - I don't think Nietzsche was even interested in the debate does God exist?). But Russell - give me a break, I have to read hundreads of his pages before I get to any sort of small insight - much less a ground-breaking insight into the matter.

Happy New Year! (Y) But it's a bit early still for the US no? :P Patience haha!

First, making your research public isn't, in most cases, bad for startups in niche fields. It stimulates thinking, generates new ideas, and gets people interested in what you're doing - free publicity and may even link you with possible partners. No one can copy your idea, because your research in written form is never sufficient to execute it. There's a lot of hidden, unspoken knowledge that you gain from actually doing the research and that no one else has access to. They can't execute without you, and even if they try they will be much slower than you. On top of that, the pond you're aiming for is relatively small for the big fishes, so only smaller fishes like us can currently become interested by it. So you're quite secure in that regard.

Furthermore, it's a good choice that you don't want to patent it. Even if you wanted to make money from it I would advise against patenting. If you start to sell and become the established person to go to, others can't compete with you very quickly - you'd have a brand advantage. First one there always has an advantage. A patent can be broken in any case if what you're doing is really valuable to someone and you'd be spending quite a lot of time and money getting it.

To develop your idea into reality it must become self-funded. That means that it needs to generate whatever (little or big) income it needs to survive and finance itself, without you putting more money as time goes by into it. If you can succeed to do this, then your idea can thrive and grow. If you can't then your research will always depend on your ability to finance it, and it will pull you down by consuming both time and money (so that you need to work more in your job, or whatever to earn that).

So to do that you need to find a pragmatic value proposition. Find who would be interested and in what, propose your solution to them, convince them, and get them to buy. You need to be pragmatic - not growing plants on Mars (that's gonna happen in more than 10 years) but something that interests people today. You can still keep your ambition to grow plants on Mars and focus research towards that, but your earnings need to come from something that is viable and needed now. For example, Elon Musk wants to do space exploration/colonisation but currently all his rocket launches are used to fuel NASA satellites. This earns him money, which is used to fuel his larger ambitions. So he doesn't want to spend his time to fuel NASA satellites but does it because it's useful to expand his knowledge regarding space travel and understand the potential problems better all the while earning money to finance his projects.

What I find much stranger is why the work Nietzsche is listed with is "Will to Power"? Shouldn't it be "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" or "Beyond Good and Evil"?

I started it but couldn't bring myself to finish it. I find it very different to the PI. — Michael

But it's much easier to read, and a lot more concise. You can also ponder it for much longer. Tractatus is just dealing with the language of logic. PI attempts to deal with all language, not only in its logical function. The reason why Tractatus deals with the language of logic is because the logical atomists tried to reduce all language to the language of logic - they thought all its functions could be captured by logic. So Wittgenstein was correct - if all language could be reduced to logic, then the Tractatus was the end of philosophy and matters would have been settled. That's why Wittgenstein differentiated language by "meaning is use" in PI - there is a way language is used when folks engage in formal logic, which, for example, is different than the way language is used when they pray - and the latter can't be reduced to the former.

Tractatus is better - pick it! Philosophical Investigations is merely a continuation of the same mission started in the Tractatus. The genius was the Tractatus.