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  • Culture is critical
    When the structural elements are riddled with dry rot, I don't waste my time plastering the walls. — Vera Mont
    :up:
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    Hey, MAGA Morons ...

    The "Kraken Lady" has just flipped on your cult leader, Criminal Defendant-1, down in Fulton Co., Georgia. :lol: :up:

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/19/sidney-powell-guilty-plea-trump-georgia-elections

    That makes 2 out of 18 dominoes to fall so far. :clap:

    update:

  • Culture is critical
    ↪universeness
    Such as who? :roll:
  • Culture is critical
    ↪universeness
    Very improbable, not "immutable". Speculations derived from probabilities may be insightful (e.g. diagnostics, forecasting); however, derived from improbabilities, they are mere fantasies (i.e. wishful thinking). You seem to be stuck on fantasy (à la faith), universeness. :sparkle:
  • Dualism and Interactionism
    Blessed are those who do God's work. — Fooloso4
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/846860 Amen! :halo:
  • Infinite infinities
    ↪Banno
    :up:
  • Are you against the formation of a techno-optimistic religion?
    ↪Bret Bernhoft
    The second quote attempts to explain the first.
  • Infinite infinities
    ↪Banno
    :smirk:
  • Culture is critical
    ↪universeness
    Rhetoric (imagined pov of AGI). 'Them is us' humans.
  • Dualism and Interactionism
    ↪Fooloso4
    :up: Occasionally, that's my motivation as well.
  • Culture is critical
    ↪universeness
    What "mirror" ... :smirk:
  • Culture is critical
    At our best, I think humans ... — universeness
    ... but mostly, friend, they willingly live like
    dogs
    and sheep. :mask:

    ↪Vera Mont
    :100: I'm convinced @Athena is completely incorrigible on this topic, but I appreciate you also making the case to expose the deeper 'civilizational' rot driving Pax Americana's inexorable decline.
  • Currently Reading
    Apparently lacking the courage of a 'deliberate loser', I'd missed by calling ...

    https://psyche.co/ideas/learning-to-be-a-loser-a-philosophers-case-for-doing-nothing?utm_source=Psyche+Magazine&utm_campaign=78d8097442-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2023_06_23&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-a9a3bdf830-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D&fbclid=IwAR3cNftEpT4EMUxsrNGL5tokEGxsPY6vgQdmDvVzK-qJWTgnLLW7h9rEQv8

    :death: :flower:
  • Dualism and Interactionism
    ↪Wayfarer
    In philosophy, what distinguishes, or differentiates, a "higher truth" from a truth? I'm quite familiar with P. Hadot but please put it in your own words based on your own understanding, sir. Thanks.
  • Dualism and Interactionism
    @Janus @Fooloso4

    I applaud your dogged patience. :clap:
  • Culture is critical
    You are struggling as best you can, for the sake of all of us, yes?
    — universeness

    Hell, no! All of yous are on your own.

    Are you not still a secular democratic socialist?
    — universeness

    Nope. Cynical, burnt-out iconoclast
    — Vera Mont
    :smirk:
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    ↪EricH
    Your late friend was so right (as history shows), and I agree with you too. How can there be any lasting peace for dispossessors-occupiers-oppressors unless they effectively genocide the Palestinians (like Indigenous peoples in the Americas have been)?
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    ↪Tzeentch
    :up: :up:
  • Culture is critical
    if we all ... — universeness
    ... relinquished our divergent perspectives and interests. "We all" are always already entangled in at least as many or more win-lose / lose-lose than win-win games. "We few" micro-cooperators, perhaps many times over, is more like it – scarcity-exploiting partisans, sects, gangs, networks, tribes, etc. "We all", my friend, just doesn't effectively scale (re: global governance, the UN, international law enforcement (e.g. climate change, WMD proliferation, wealth laundering / tax-defrauding, etc) ... globalization ... communism ... "utopia", etc). AFAIK, wars & black markets are our most prevalent, recurring forms of macro-cooperation. Even the "Tower of Babel" myth is quite insightful about the inherent fractiousness of the human condition (ergo the unfortunate, historical utility of religio, religare). Don't forget, mate: at our best we're primates, not angels.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    Mr. Trump is a criminal defendant. He is facing four felony charges. He is under the supervision of the criminal justice system. He does not have the right to say and do exactly as he pleases. … No other criminal defendant would be allowed to do so and I am not going to permit it in this case. — Tonya Chutkan, US District Judge, Wash. DC, 16Oct23
    https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/16/judge-imposes-gag-order-on-donald-trump-in-d-c-trial-00121743

    Who's your daddy now, bitch?! :lol:
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    ↪Wayfarer
    Thank's for posting Harari's observations.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    ↪NOS4A2
    I guess one of you MAGA morons will have to murder a judge, prosecutor or prosecution witness in order to convince some court to revoke Seditionist-Traitor-Rapist-Loser1's bail and remand him to pre-trail detention like every other indicted thuggish lowlife. :mask:
  • Are you against the formation of a techno-optimistic religion?
    ↪Vera Mont
    :fire:
  • Culture is critical
    "The vast majority" of the house is not yet on fire. Where there's smoke, the house is on fire.
  • Are you against the formation of a techno-optimistic religion?
    ↪universeness
    :100:
  • Absolute nothingness is only impossible from the perspective of something
    ↪Ø implies everything
    Your assertion seems unwarranted to me.
  • Absolute nothingness is only impossible from the perspective of something
    [T]here may be no ultimate reason for existence; it may be that reality is a brute fact. — Ø implies everything
    This is entailed by "nothingness is impossible" (i.e. there cannot be not-something), no?
  • Culture is critical
    ↪Vera Mont
    :up: :up:

    ↪180 Proof Wow, I gave a lot of time to my explanation and you have not kept your promise to address democracy. — Athena
    Well, to begin with, I didn't understand your "explanation" (maybe because it doesn't directly address the objections I'd raised here
    ↪180 Proof
    ). Also, I believe I've expressed my position on "democracy" in a number of exchanges with you previously, such as earlier on this thread ...

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/807143

    Okay please list 10 characteristics of democracy and perhaps say something about how they relate to our ideas of right and wrong. — Athena
    Here's an excerpt from an old thread with the disingenuously polemical title Why Must You Be Governed?
    Democratize the economy as much as practically possible.

    Political democracy in the absence of economic democracy (aka "economic autocracy" (becomes neoliberal corporatocracy)) has always been a failing project. [ ... ] Read A. Smith closely. & Read P. Kropotkin closely. Read D. Schweickart & T. Picketty closely.
    — 180 Proof
    In other words, "our ideas of right and wrong", Athena, are symptoms of the neoliberal ideology (or there is no alternative (T-I-N-A) to the corporatist status quo). The American Republic was founded on economic autocracy (read Charles A. Beard, 1913) just as classical Athens – your "educated for democracy" ideal – was founded on economic autoocracy (read Orlando Patterson, 1991); and the manifest purpose of "US education before 1958" was the same as it has been ever since 1958 (except maybe in style): generation after generation, for students and their teachers to internalize unquestioning conformity to and support for economic autocracy (e.g. neoliberal corporatism) in order to reinforce being full-time consumers while, at most, being quadrennial citizens. For 'the demos', of course, this is (still) a failing project.
  • Are you against the formation of a techno-optimistic religion?
    ↪Bret Bernhoft
    "I have no idea" because what you describe, Bret, does not make any sense to me. Post-singularity ubiquitous smart nanotech seems more likely to transform planetary civilization into a Global Experience Machine^ (à la "The Matrix" or wireheading^^) than to enable hedonic beings to somehow "transcend" (or to religiously seek "transcendence from") being hedonic.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience_machine ^

    https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/wireheading ^^
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Iran has used Hamas to set the trap and Israel must take the bait in Gaza. The US-NATO hegemon will eventually extract Israel from the trap of razing Gaza while (maybe) deterring Iran et al from opening up secondary fronts (e.g. Hezbollah). NYC, Paris and/or London might become tertiary fronts (TBD).
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    ↪Manuel
    :up:
  • If only...
    ↪Vera Mont
    :cool:
  • Metaphysics as an Illegitimate Source of Knowledge
    ↪Bob Ross
    A truth-maker is a referent to which a truth-claim (i.e. truth-bearer) statement refers that makes the statement true; it's not the "agent" asserting or "making" the statement.

    https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truthmakers/
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Eliminate Hamas — 180 Proof
    and then ...
    Free Palestine
    — 180 Proof

    You mean free from Hamas and other terrorist organizations.
    — magritte
    Yes, including free from the post-1967, settler-apartheid strategems of the State of Israel.

    Evict Settlers.
    — 180 Proof

    Israel has actually evicted settlers.
    — ssu
    Evict settlers from ALL of the internationally recognized Occupied Palestinian Territories.

    https://www.btselem.org/publications/summaries/201007_by_hook_and_by_crook

    https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-205221/
  • If only...
    ↪Vera Mont
    :up:

    Lucid daydream/s of a (not-dystopian) post-singularity, posthuman f u t u r e is my "ideal place". My damn novel (series), however, just hasn't gotten – let itself be – written yet.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Eliminate Hamas :fire:
    Remove Likud.
    Evict All Settlers.

    Free Palestine :flower:
  • Culture is critical
    Unfortunately, I doubt that anyone understands the importance of what I am saying. — Athena
    :roll: :shade:
  • If only...
    ↪Vera Mont
    I've never heard of Islandia so thanks for that. I guess I liked Huxley's Island when I read it as a high school freshman. A few years later I read Ursula Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea trilogy, and though I was mad for Tolkien's "Middle Earth" back then (re: my fantasy roleplaying games days), the only fantasy world that was ever an "ideal place" for me was the archipelago-world of "Earthsea" – especially the islands of "Roke" & "Gont" – which became more real to me with each subsequent book.

    Btw, a sister of my best 'non-jock' friend in high school was a huge fan of both Anne McCafferty's Pern & Andre Norton's Witch World series, IIRC – I never got past the first volume of either series. Now that I think of it, my earliest "ideal place" during the '70s even before "Earthsea" was probably Clarke/Kubrick's alt-"Earth" in 2001: A Space Odyssey (though I was (still am) a '60s Star Trek obsessive too – "The Federation" was cool but not "science fiction-y" enough even for my grade school nerdiness :nerd: ).
  • If only...
    My "ideal place" is (still) the late anarchist and novelist Iain M. Banks' galaxy-spanning civilization The Culture developed and explored through nine space opera novels and one collection of short stories (start here).
  • Perverse Desire
    ↪Tom Storm
    :up:
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180 Proof

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