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What is real?You and I are using the word "faith" very differently. Given the context of my exchange with simplyG, Joshs, your response doesn't add anything relevant.
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"Why I don't believe in God" —Greta ChristinaI've no idea what you're talkimg about (possibly because you don't either).
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Culture is critical
:rofl:If the masses would just occupy the common ground between us all. — universeness
Mate, that proletarian ship has sailed (and sank) a long while ago. (vide T. Veblen et al). The carcass of :victory: :flower: was ripe by Spring '68 ... we've just been loitering in its shallow grave ever since (vide S. Beckett, J. Baldwin or T. Ligotti). What's that? "Doomster speak!" No, just one latter-day primate all-too-soberly gesticulating this old blues to another :monkey: -
"Why I don't believe in God" —Greta ChristinaScience does not "try to supplant God" because science itself is not an agent. You seem incorrigible on this point, Simpleg. Btw, knowledge does not "supplant" ignorance, just as logos does not "supplant" mythos. Proof: there are, and always have been, scientists who are also theists (or mystics). After all, it was a Catholic priest and physicist-astronomer who had counseled his Pope not to misconstrue the Big Bang as evidence, or proof, of the biblical "Let there be light".
The more persistent proxy or synonym for "magic" or "fantasy" or "the impossible" is that three-letter word for ego: "God" – because "God did it" doesn't explain anything just as "God said it" does not justify anything either. Science is a discipline for collaboratively striving to explain by best approximations which are more efficacious, publicly testable and reliably corroborable than (fact-free, faith-based) non-explanations such as "God". The results of natural sciences work regardless of what we believe or do not believe, and teaches its students and practicioners to say, and explore, I Do Not Know :fire: instead of infantilizing themselves as adults by sucking on cosmic lollipops. -
"Why I don't believe in God" —Greta Christina"Science did it" is meaningless since science is only 'a way of (toolkit-library of correctable algorithms for) naturalistic problem-solving' and not itself an "agent".
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Culture is criticalErgo, AGI–>ASI is needed to produce the post-scarcity civilization that we scarcity-addled hyperglandular primates apparently cannot produce for ourselves. :victory: :mask:
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Literary writing process
Yes – the late poet and critic (and friend in my bohemian 20s) Hayden Carruth had once described jazz that way. My daily habit of four-plus decades has also been, as @Vera Mont says, "my life-vest" despite drowning once or thrice.Discipline and letting go. — Amity
Did you listen to all five parts (video clips) of the interview? I've always admired her thinking and her essays but not so much her fiction even though Iris Murdoch was a fine novelist.The interview is fascinating. — Amity -
What is real?:roll:
Reality does not require "faith" ... insofar as whatever there is constrains – encompasses – "whatever else" we believe or do not believe "is the case". -
What is real?
Such as?something can be real to me but not real to someone else — A Realist
:up:... I think you must be confused. — unenlightened -
Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
As I wrote last year (click on my handle for context), another jackboot has dropped today:There's no question that Individual-1 committed tax fraud ... — 180 Proof
https://youtu.be/dOhxBCOMtWU?si=We7y3-pvOADosoh1 :clap: :grin:
@Benkei @NOS4A2 ... -
Culture is critical
:100: :up:What happened to US politics is not in any sense tribal. A political faction, a bunch of yahoos united by nothing more than license to oppress another group, a deluded minority of underachievers dreaming of reclaimed privilege, those with actual privilege too jealous to share - these are not tribes. — Vera Mont
Much respect. -
Is maths embedded in the universe ?
No.... And if so does it point to a creator? — simplyG
This question doesn't make sense.The question is what came before?
I think a subset of mathematics usefully describes subsets, or aspects, of reality and the rest (most) of mathematics does not. As suggested by Max Tegmark (David Deutsch, Seth Lloyd, Stephen Wolfram et al), the universe might be nothing more than a lower dimensional mathematical structure (i.e. a reality, n. naturata) imbedded in higher dimensional mathematical structures (i.e. the real,, n. naturans).... if maths can theoretically describe anything does that mean that reality is a subset of mathematics made manifest?
Not insofar as physical systems are (Quantun Turing) computable.Or is maths completely independent of the physical universe ...
I agree as I wrore above.... and it just so happens that some mathematics is good at describing some aspects of the physical universe ...
I don't understand what you mean here by "supercedes".... and in fact supersedes it?
:up: -
To be an atheist, but not a materialist, is completely reasonable
:100: e.g. atoms & void / natura naturata & natura naturans. :fire:... nature is order AND chaos, so if God is nature then God is both order and chaos. — praxis -
"Why I don't believe in God" —Greta Christina:lol: Wrong. Read the book (and the article closely).
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"Why I don't believe in God" —Greta Christina
Strawman. If not, then cite an atheist who is also a scientist (i.e. astrophysicist / cosmologist) who makes this claim.[T]he atheist says science did it (the big bang created the universe etc). — simplyG -
Culture is critical:up:
Okay, but back on Earth One, how will the well-organized/resourced "nefarious few" (most of whom are anonymous, even secretive) be "removed" – not replaced – by the hyper-divided-n-controlled, scarcity-wired, "many"? -
Culture is critical“It's easier to fool people than it is to convince them that they have been fooled.” ~Mark Twain
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” ~Upton Sinclair
"It's easier to imagine the end of ]the world than the end of capitalism." ~Mark Fisher
Short of total armageddon – in this scarcity-driven global civilization, my friend – how do you propose to get the "nefarious few" to relinquish "control over a divided and ill-informed global mass of people" who are, for the most part, "money tricked" (from Glasgow to Guangzhou, Brooklyn to Benin, Tel Aviv to Tazmania) by a 24/7 global, virtual menagerie of various hedonic treadmills schemes from cradle to grave? :chin:The removal of money as a means of exchange and the removal of the money trick and religion, as the main means by which a nefarious few, can gain control over a divided and ill-informed global mass of people. — universeness -
What is freedom?Freedom is optimal agency (i.e. antifragility) via solidarity against structural exploitation of stakeholders (them, many) by shareholders (us, few) that is policed by modes of systemic discrimination against (divide-n-control of) non-compliant stakeholders et al.
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Why is the Hard Problem of Consciousness so hard?
How is this explanation tested? Do any unique predicttions follow from this explanation? Please elaborate. Thanks.I;d say it [consciousness] has been explained. — FrancisRay -
Culture is critical
He was a candle who burned at both ends, lit by an older, fluttering flame ...He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool.
— Albert Camus
Sounds like a man who experienced a lot of self-contradiction. He probably died quite young in a car accident. — universeness
Oh, plenty of hope, an infinite amount of hope – but not for us. — Franz Kafka -
Does Entropy Exist?
:up: :up:I use the term spiritual, as referring to human breathing and movement and nothing of the transcendent or esoteric. — universeness -
What creates suffering if god created the world ?
IIRC, this idea (re: Bakker's Neuropath) goes back about two decades earlier (at least) to George Alec Effinger's notion of cybernetic augments (re: "daddies" & "moddies") in When Gravity Fails and Iain M. Bank's genengineered "drug glands" in his early Culture novels Consider Phlebas and The Player of Games. Decades earlier, adjusting oneself to suit or despite circumstances biochemically / physiologically also is explored, though differently, in both Ursula Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness (re: "changing sex back and forth") and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (re: "soma drug"). I think the "neuro app", however, is the most likely version of this idea to manifest as feasible tech. :nerd:R. Scott Bakker has a good short story he published in some philosophy journal about accomplishing this in the near future through neural implants. The idea is that you can just tweak your pleasure, mirth, contentment, aggression, etc. upwards, on demand using a neurally controlled app.
The rub is in how one's ability to control how they feel, almost regardless of circumstances ... — Count Timothy von Icarus -
What is freedom?Two apt quotes I came across this morning:
The function of freedom is to free someone else. — Toni MorrisonWe feel free because we lack the very language to articulate our unfreedom. — Slavoj Žižek -
Culture is critical:up:
@universeness
He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool. — Albert Camus -
Why is the Hard Problem of Consciousness so hard?
:100: :up:So when someone says "materialism can't explain consciousness", that's true, right now - right now materialism can't explain consciousness - but that's not some unique failing of materialism. Right now, NO ONE can explain consciousness - not with matter, and not with anything else either. Materialism can't explain it right now, non-materialism can't explain it right now, it's entirely (or just mostly?) unexplained right now. The explanation is yet to be found. — flannel jesus
The dogma "not yet means never will" (i.e. unknown = unknowable :roll:) has always been mysterian / idealist – pseudo-philosophical (i.e. religious / magical thinking) – nonsense. -
What is freedom?
Well I do.May I assume that we all distinguish positive and negative freedom - freedom to do something and freedom from restraint by another ? — Vera Mont
No. Free acts are necessarily constrained by consequences.Is it possible for anyone to have total freedom?
Liberty. Morality. Freethought. Agency Ecstacy.What kinds of freedom can a person have?
Individuals, not (sub)groups are free.What kinds of freedom can subgroups have within a greater society?
Yes.Are there natural, insurmountable limits to individual freedom?
No.Are socially imposed limits necessary?
This question doesn't make sense to me.Can and should all people have the same amount of personal freedom?
The latter limits – protects – the former (aka "liberty").How do we distinguish a freedom from a right? -
Does Entropy Exist?And you have proven me (us) wrong, sir, that you can reason cogently and honestly.
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"Why I don't believe in God" —Greta ChristinaI don't doubt that I have them (i.e. cognitive functions) but instead question what they are and how they work. Clearly, "thoughts" (or experiences) are not only what they seem to us subjectively to be.
180 Proof
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