universe a sign of an vast intellect (god) or just mere luck. This is the idiot savant paradox. — TheMadFool

You mean... god is an idiot?

Idiot may not only mean stupid... it can mean "smart, but mentally ill".

I won't dispute this for three reasons:
1. I don't understand the relativity theory.
2. I don't understand what you are saying.
3. I have serious doubts beleiving that you, as well, understand either of the above.

an unexamined life is not worth living

I know that Aristotle said this. But is there any punch behind it that drives it home, other than the person's authority who penned this?

I mean, why would an unexamined life not be worth living? and even if it is better to have your life examined, is it necessary to be done by the subject himself or herself?

And what does Aristotle mean, "the unexamined life"? The unpondered life? the finding of differences or similarities with the norm or with the norm as perceived by the examiner? You can't compare yourself to yourself and find out anything about yourself that way, you need a benchmark other than yourself.

It think Aristotle meant to say with this, "you cretins, I say anything and you take it as gospel. Okay, if you want to play that game," continues Aristotle, "then verily I say unto you: the unexamined life is not worth living." And walks away laughing aloud, bending over from the vehemence of his laughter to his own joke.

So, what do I do? — Zeus

If I were you, I'd go to a psychologist, and get a battery of personality tests done. Then listen to the analysis by the psychologist.

I appreciate that this is not self-examination, but you just said that that is impossible. So the next best thing to self analysis, is an analysis by others and then hearing it from them what you are like. It's analysis, and whether you stick a "self-" before the term "analysis" or not, the outcome is the same.

You could also go to a soothsayer, or to a psychic advisor, or to horroscope charter, or to Thailand and have sex day in and day out. All boils down to self-learning, via others.

Do you understand the interpretation of Hume? I do. Do you understand the interpretation of QM? I don't. This is not a trivial difference that makes the analogy break down.

You actually doubted that I could understand Hume. You directly questioned if understanding via interpretation is possible. You gave the analogy that QM is interpreted and you still don't understand it. I said the analogy is faulty, because many things interpreted can be understood, and I insisted Hume's thoughts are one of those things.

Why do you say that the analogy is not faulty?

I understand that you maybe get Hume by directly reading his writings. If that is the case, you are my hero.

Never apologize. — David Mo

When you are married, and want to stay that way, then exceptions to this rule are allowed.

Glory follows virtue as if it were its shadow. — Cicero

Lenin was glorified for his virtues by millions. Then and now.

Lenin was hated for his vile, evil acts by milliions. Then and now.

Athena: who is the ultimate judge? Without invoking god.

There is ALWAYS two opposing solutions to every moral decision. Nobody can declare to be the ultimate judge, or name an ultimate judge.

Your fighting for morality and morally sound solutions to problems is making castles of sand on the seashore. A couple of waves, and they are washed away.

If you want to build relationships, morality is a nice word, but you must consider actual interests, needs, and wants, without any regard to morality, as morality is a mirage, a phantasm, a here-today-gone-tomorrow thing.

It's the same for me with quantum mechanics. I don't understand anything. But I don't blame quantum mechanics, but my lack of understanding. But I avoid deepening my ignorance by claiming that quantum mechanics is this or that. At most, I ask the one who understands and try to learn. Caution is the virtue of wise men. — David Mo

I don't understand quantum mechanics either. I accept its findings, on pure faith.

But I do understand and appreciate Hume's thoughts after interpretation.

The analogy is faulty in this aspect.

Genetics was alien to Nietzsche's thinking. I don't know how the chromosomes fit into this. — David Mo

Okay, thanks. I will leave this problem as unanswered.

You have given me much valuable insight. Thanks.

How do you know it's the style's fault if you haven't understood it? Maybe what Hume says is stupid. — David Mo

Others read it and interpreted it. Either all others lied, and made up a harmoniously uniform theory that Hume did not, or else they did not lie. I tend to believe the second explanation (they did not lie).

If I assumed all interpreters lied, I would not be able to rely on your interpretation of Nietzsche, either, would I. But I do, and therefore I believe Hume's theories and thoughts as I understand them ought not to be dismissed by you as worthless knowledge.

Indeed. Neoliberalism has been taken too far, and that is one result. — Echarmion

I heard from reliable sources that it was neoconservatism that has been taken too far, and the phenomenon was due to the larger impact of neoconservatism.

What I am trying to say is that it's not liberalism or conservatism at all that was responsible for taking the responsibility away from the banks; it was a stupid policy by the state, but a necessary one, because the system would really have collapsed if all responsible would have been pursued under the law. I mean, all bankers ought to have been put away, and the economy absolutely would have collapsed that way. The guilty walks free. Is that liberalism, or conservatism? I say it was in this instance the necessity of economism.

The sysem of money is a closed loop. — Antidote

Not quite. It is attached to material goods and services. A haircut may have gone up in price three times, while the price of a loaf of bread may have gone up only to double itself between the beginning and the end of the same period.

Also, there may have been one million loaves of bread when the American economy consisted one billion dollars totally in printed money or electronic dollars; but now that there is one quatrillion (I don't know the exact figure; let's say a hundred thousand billion) there are not one million loaves of bread, but a hundred million loaves of bread, putting the price of bread up not a hundred thouasand times, but only one thousand times.

These are math examples, and the important thing is to understand the math, it is not important here whether the actual figures I quoted are actually factual historically correct figures.

Thanks, David Mo.

Your explanation reveals to me more valuable insight into Nietzsche's thinking. Thank you.

I appreciate that he openly (or covertly?) denounced Darwin and sided with Lamarc. Thank you, important to know, but it does not brush on my real conondrum I seek to be solved.

What I ask to be explained: the element in his theory, "the mixing of the lords with the sheep" is still yet already jetzt noch immer nicht not fully explained to me in the shape of a conclusive description. From this latest post, the mixing is not genetic, but simply having a crowd, and in it there may be a significantly higher or lower rate of lords over sheep by counts of fully lordlike men and fully sheeplike men; in this scenario the individuals keep their lordlike and sheeplike qualities fully; or else is the picture better described as a genetic or genetic-like mixing within the individual's response system yielding differing magnitudes of lordlike qualities of behaviour as one measures it from individual to individual.

I accept any answer, of course, as long as it's certified to be true. After all, I am not after the real truth, but after what and how Nietzsche actually meant and made to work for his theory.

Hawking says time is an entity that turns into space — Gregory

I find that completely incomprehensible. Velocity disappears, work and energy disappears, capacity and performance disappears, efficiency disappears, any physics measurement and concept that depend on the relationship between distance or space and time disappear.

Maybe that is what Hawk was trying to say. But you can't say that time becomes space as you go backward in time. It is just expressing a conundrum, a seemingly impossible situation (i.e. no energy or capacity) by creating a seemingly impossible physical transformation.

In some ways, you got to hand it to them given what they had, they tried their best. — Antidote

This is why I like Hume. His ideas are as fresh in his time, and as true, as today. Hume is my fave thinker. Unfortunately his writings are impossible for the mere mortal to read. His style is not only irritating and incomprehensible, but it makes the knife open in your pocket, you get so angry due entirely to his style, not content.

What do you do with "God did it"? As a science, which aims to have predictive and explanatory power, where does it get you? How does a scientist spend 40 hours every week working on this theory, — Malice

By getting to know God, and psyching out what His next move will consist of.

For instance, you want to verify the relationship of measured qualities of gases under compression. You can figure out the equation (P1/(T1*V1))=(P2/(T2*V2)) two ways:
One way: doing meticulous experiments, and invoking the molecular theory to explain the phenomena you observed;
The other way: Psyching god out, either by learning through prayer where you hear god's answers how this thing actually works, or else by being smarter than him, and always knowing his next move before it happens.

I used to pass exams in Calculus in fifth semester college sheerly on the power of prayer as above.

Tim Morgan — Antidote

I think I used to know two people who knew Tim Morgan. His name often came up in conversation, as that of a person who figured things out -- he created masterful conspiracy theories, with well documented facts, such as explanation to some of the events of 9/11.

I think this financial solution thing Tim proposes is based on a mistaken paradigm. Money has imaginary value, it's true. But wealth is not money. We measure wealth in money, because its imaginary value is a convenient vehicle to 1. compare and 2. establish absolute value of potential purchasing power.

In the case of Cypros, they could have easily printed enough money to accommodate the rush on banks. This was the stupidest solution they did, by destroying bank balances. Printing money is so easy! Easier than saying one-two-three.

Finally: the rich will gripe about getting their billions erased, but the eradication of money will hit the poor harder than the rich.

Half the world is not going to die from the corona virus. — Gregory

I would venture 98% of the world will die not of the Covid-19 infections.

According to your estimate, Greg, 50% of all people alive today will never die.

Another circus act is trading illicit circus drugs and dancing girls. I have been out of that entertainment venue for too long to have any real knowledge of its operative and functioning diversity and dispensity. But I am now curious how they work under the circumstances.

In other words, (for the meeker in spirit) : do hooking and selling street drugs still continue under the new rules?

What I wrote in the previous post is pure psychology. In economic reality, the circus will come back to town the moment it gets a chance. Circuses, much like the movie industry and sports, are a particularly apt instrument to channel cash from the pockets of the everyday working stiff to the pockets of the rich and famous.

Circuses will be foregone and survival will continue by the population, as long as they realize that it is needed for survival. The moment the word gets out that the rich get access to more entertainment than they, all hell will break lose.

"Let them eat cake" will become "let them watch football" when "they" (the poor saps) are completely fed up by ceaselessly watching Little Rascals and Brady Bunch reruns in their free time. There will be no football to watch; revolution will break out.

I don't know how this theory holds up today, but I think that's how he saw it anyway. — ChatteringMonkey

Thanks for this, it gave me more insight into Nietzsche. The more summarization I read of his thoughts, the more coherent he sounds. He is not a nihilist, as many claim; he is more an organizer, an elitist, a classifier, and solution-searcher. Nietzsche's only problem is that he was born too early. Many new discoveries and insights into human psychology and anthropology escaped him by his not surviving to the modern ages when new information and knowledge have been revealed.

Priceless, now that explains why we never leave the desert anymore. — Antidote

:-)

I also never leave the dessert on the table any more. Explains my 235 lbs for a 5'4" body.

"The need for the hole capacity is growing bigger and bigger by the day. Some people abandoned the idea of whacking me for the sole reason they were too lazy to dig a hole deep and wide enough to properly hide my bodice."

Darwinian selection for survival. Get such a disgusting-looking outer self, that even soldiers of fortune will refuse to touch you, for fear of osmotic transfer of looks.

I don't even understand how Adam's act of eating from the tree of good and evil was evil if he didn't know what evil even was until he ate the apple. — Hanover

It was found to be a sin ad acta. After the fact. He was not sinning when he ated that apple. He was found guilty of eating the apple after eating the apple, at which point he had been imbued with the knowledge to tell evil from good. He was not found guilty of eating that apple before eating the apple.

For verily I say unto you: for Adam, to fully understand sinfulness, he had to have a sense of what's evil and what's not, so he had to eat the apple in order to appreciate that eating the apple was a sin.

Had he never ated the apple, he would not need to know the difference between evil and good. Obviously. No evil, no cry.

I am sorry. I did not know you were this incomprehensibly stupid. I apologize.

I had some vague memories from our days in Philosophy Now that you were from time to time totally whacky. But not all the time. I just caught you in a bad moment, I guess.

Again, I apologize.

It is a beautiful woven fabric of logic inconsistency and twisting words that leaves the reader in a continual state of uncertainty about what the hect he is really trying to get at. — Antidote

I never read Nietzsche, but I read Frantisek Kaffka, and the assessment above applies to him too.

This must be a sign of the German Hangdaruberschrecklichkeitsanfangunterminderschicklichkeitsgefuhl, which loosely translates to English as angst.

Then you take the guy out to the desert and wack him and bury him. — Antidote

That's outdated. Now you first bury the person, then defeat his arguments, then whack him, and finally dig a hole.

Does being in a good lot bring happiness and joy for life?

Why would the opposite not produce the opposite, which would be synonymous with stress? — Gnostic Christian Bishop

Stress is only ONE of the bad things. Not all bad things are stress.

This is another concept of set theory; that some of the bad things are stress, and some of the bad things are not stress. Being opposite to good is bad, but being opposite to good is not always stress, only some of the time.

the Nietzschean concept of instinct refers to individuals. It is more the triumph of the will of power than a biological mechanism. — David Mo

I am sorry, but 1. the first of these two positions is also Darwinian, or not mutually exclusinve with the Darwinian concept 2. earlier you said that the Nitzschean concept is that the Leaders and the Weaks have mixed; this is not per se straight Darwinian, but it does involve some sort of Gregor Mendel type gene mixture, otherwise it would be nonsensical. Therefore if the mixture is possible, like in Mendel's experiment, then the purification is also possible, like in Mendel's experiment.

What I don't know, and you may be the guiding beacon of knowledge here: does Nietzsche say or indicate, that though Leaders and Weak (ubermensch und untermensch, respectively, for my lack of a better knowledge of Nietzsche's nomenclature) are mixed, and therefore people are equally Weak and Leaderish, BUT in some the Leader will triumph in the individual's make-up, due to sheer will power? If he says that, then your squashing my corollary of a possibility of purifying the race back into two pure factions, is valild from a Nietzschean point of view; if he does not indicate positively to what I asked, then the purifying of races is possible.

Being in a bad lot is not stressful. Not psychologically. Stress comes from having to be in a state of readiness. To change behaviour with a new stimulus. If the stock market goes down, sell your stocks, if the lights go out, start up the generator, if the boss is not happy with your progress, you need to look for another job. You need to file your taxes and use an incomprehensible tax package; your kid breaks a tooth, you need to pay for orthodontic services. Your wife gets a gall bladder stone, you need to research hospitals which is the cheapest but still good enough. Your dog caughs up fur balls, and you need to look up the description of your dog, because you suspect that the pet store sold you a cat instead of a dog. ETC.

A serf had his life cut out for him, not much variation, nothing to look out for. Work hard, eat little. Get beaten, not have sex. Be screamed at, be humble. This was the road map to life for a serf. It is not pleasant for a peasant, but not stressful.

What gave him stress was the weather, the rodents, the thieves, the invading Huns. These were uncontrollable variables that he could only avoid by prayer, and prayer hadn't had a chance of a prayer to stave off losses much bigger than a prayer of a loss. And please notice that none of them were instigated by the overlord of the peasant serf.

Okay, I am still pre-shower, but I could not wait with this.

0. "I don't believe in god" is equivalent to "I believe not in god".
1. I believe (in god and not in god). <impossible.
2. I beleive not(not in god and not not in god). <negating the terms inside the bracket and outside the entire term, not changing thus truth value.
3. I believe not(not in god and in god). <cancelling "not not", thus not changing truht value.
4. I believe not (in god and not in god). <exchanging the terms inside the bracket, not changing truth value
5. (4) I believe not (in god and not in god) therefore has the same truth value as (1) I believe (in god and not in god).
6. Therefore, since (1) is necessarily false, and because we never changed its truth value in the proof, "I believe not (in god and not in god)" is also necessarily false.

Off to the shower.

B(not-G) is different from not-B(G). — Pfhorrest

You can believe in something not god, is different from not believing in god? It only means that in the first instance you make no claim about the existence of god. The claim and god don't intersect.

Proof I proposed mentions "beleiving in not god". I meant to say "not believing in god" is equivalent to "believing not in god." I will re-write my claim, because the way I wrote it, is not the way I meant it. You are right, and Proof180 is right. Right now I am naked, going into the shower, just having woken and gotten up from bed. Wait a few hours, please, for my response. I give you round 1.

It goes like this: if god is good and thus incapable of issuing a wrong command, and what he approves of is defined as good, what results is the meaningless statement that god approves of god. — Aleph Numbers

It is not meaningless if god is to approve of OTHERS' commands.

If you assume god is the entire creation, then you are right. But still, the result is not meaningless, but meaningless only if tautologies are meaningless. I don't think tautologies are meaningless, they are only obvious. And obvious obviously has a place in the world and in our thinking. If there was nothing obvious, then communication, for instance, could not happen. Communication needs both obvious and non-obvious elements.

Bonus question:
What is the meaning of life? — Pfhorrest

The bonus question only has bogus answers.


(The boogie man's main function is to get you. The boogie woman's main function is to dance all night long in her dancing shoes.)

In plain English, you can't believe both something and its contradiction, or believe both the negations of those two things, but you can not believe both things so long as you don't believe not either of them. — Pfhorrest

Check your proof again. It is not right.

1. You say you can't believe in both God and Not God.
2. You say you can beleive in not (both god and Not God.)
3. not changes the god to not god and the Not God into God, while cancelling out not.
4. This (3.) changes your claim to "it is possible to believe in not god and god both".
5. You claim 2 is possible. But it is not, since it claims the same as 1, which you declared true, and because it has been shown in (3) and (4) that (1) and (2) are equivalent. One can't claim the equivalent of itself and declare that one is possible and the other isn't.

Has anyone even bothered to simply ask an atheist what they believe? — SonOfAGun

I believe the following (not proven facts, but items of belief):
- supernatural forces don't exist, supernatural beings don't exist
- matter and energy can't be created or destroyed
- laws of nature can't be bridged or short-circuited or acted against
- humans (and all other living creatures as well) are the products of natural evolution
- life started naturally and arising on its own by natural forces, and is based on chemistry
- life forms (sentient, feeling beings) other than our carbon-based chemical lives are possible
- in the unassailability of the law of the excluded middle
- in the ability of reason to come to better conclusions than the ability of believing and obeying dogma

What I don't know and therefore refuse to speculate on, and refuse to accept claims by others on these things:

- if matter is infinite in amount in the entire universe (not just in the known universe)
- if god exists or not (I choose to believe he does not)
- if the soul survives the body and there is an afterlife or not (I believe it does not)
- if there is an afterlife, I don't have any clue what it's like for the soul (IFF souls live outside the body, before and after occupying a body, I believe it may be horrible, and therefore we, as souls in the non-physical world, strive to get into a living body, any body, and we fight tooth-and-nail with each other to do so)
- whether the world I experience is real, or else is how I perceive real, or else I live in a state of solipsism (But I choose to believe that it is how I perceive real)
- whether others around me have souls and feelings (but I choose to believe they do)

What I know for sure, and which knowledge items are in the realm of empirical knowledge:

- I exist
- space is infinite (3D space) and is here to stay, forever since infinite past

----------------------------

So far so good. Maybe I left out a few things, essential ones, too, but this should do for the time being.

(You could in principle believe neither, — Pfhorrest

I find the position IMPOSSIBLE to not beleive in both Strega-etcs exist in your room, and that they don't exist in your room. That is a huge logical error, because it contradicts the law of the excluded middle. That you beleive in neither, is impossible.

That was the entire point of my "agnosticism" thread that was shredded by the religious, for some reason or another.

Thank you for asking, Creativesoul.

I think what I meant is that it is of no consequence how MUCH your anti-moral act would change your life situation from the worse to the better, if your morals forbid an action that would make your life situation better, you still don't do it. No matter how much suffering by you could be avoided and how much pleasure could be attained.

For instance, if a religious person considers my position on faith in a god, he would say ""God must be atheist" would rather forego the pleasures and rapture offered by a heavenly life and choose eternal suffering in hell, by refusing to believe in the holy spirit and accepting the way of life and deity of Jesus, in order for him to obey his own spiritual morals, which forbid him to believe in supernatural beings."

Interesting that the chapter would be called "Beyond Good and Evil". According to this, morality is not an issue in history, in human lives; it is perhaps a creation of the weak race, according to Nietzsche, anyway, to serve and protect the weak, as an artificially created shield? Is it possible that for Nietzsche the good Samaritan and the charitable lord and the public institutions such as hospitals and schools, that essentially nurse the weak races, as defined by Nietzsche, are a mere by-product of the dominance of the so-called weak races over the natural-born leaders, and eventually these institutions and sentiments like "morality" and "charity" are doomed to be discarded, because the leaders, when natural selection creates a pure leader race, have no use for these institutions?

My criticism of this is that there are more ways to classify members of humanity than just the two that Nietzsche thought of. His view is as simplistic, and therefore as hard to work with, (or let's be honest, useless) as Hobbes'. If the social dynamic and historic causation and individual fates of people were dependent only on the facts that there are only two types of people, and their mix, in existence: the leaders who are strong, and the weak, who are followers, then we discard the poets, the engineers, the doctors, the scientists, the priests, the carpenters, the miners, the accountants, the draftsmen, the mothers, the amazons, the computer programmers, the beggars, the soldiers, the generals, etc. etc. who all strive to better their lives with occupation other than striving for dominance and for avoiding a position of submission.

Yes, madmen and madwomen (and madchildren, to a lesser degree) have a different slant on reality. The insight usually wanes with a major nervous breakdown, though, the person likely loses even his previously well-used survival skills. What I'd suggest is that some madwo/men (not all, in fact, the same proportion as in the normal population) are intelligent, and before their breakdown they produce their life work, if they do. After the breakdown, nothing comes of them. Nicolai Tesla, Gogol, and it looks like Nietzsche are prime examples. Hamlet went questionably mad too, but he was a character, as we all know, not a writer albeit very much a thinker.

And metaphors are like inverted amphoras of meth: the taste and the richness are on the outside, but the artful design is on the inside.