:up:I also think you need therapy. One striking thing is lack of connection with others, which is an extremely important component to a happy life. — Mikie
:brow: ...Yeah, not sure if the Niki character is real, or it's just someone trying to bait folks — universeness
...
"Since the insignificance of all things is our lot, we should not bear it as an affliction but learn to enjoy it."
"'Why don't you ever use your strength on me?' she said.
'Because love means renouncing strength,' said Franz softly."
"The objection to shit is a metaphysical one. The daily defecation session is daily proof of the unacceptability of Creation… The aesthetic ideal of the categorical agreement with being is a world in which shit is denied and everyone acts as though it did not exist. This aesthetic ideal is called kitsch…"
"As you live out your desolation, you can be either unhappy or happy. Having that choice is what constitutes your freedom."
*
"A novel that does not uncover a hitherto unknown segment of existence is immoral. Knowledge is the novel's only morality."
~interview, 1984
"The stupidity of people comes from having an answer to everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything."
"These days, when sexuality is no longer taboo, mere description, mere sexual confession, has become noticeably boring. How dated Lawrence seems, or even Henry Miller, with his lyricism of obscenity!" — Milan Kundera, d. 2023
... committing the naturalistic fallacy (which is close to the is/ought fallacy). — Tom Storm
"Relevance for us" (i.e. a natural species.) :100: :up:I don't necessarily subscribe to the 'you cannot get an ought from an is' [ ... ] I believe that implicit within facts are values. From this paradigm, there is no gap between fact and value. We do not merely percieve a fact. Even in our most unlearned state, we filter that fact through biological and mental apparatus that we have inherited from millions of years of evolution, and that fact holds a relevance for us beyond it's mere 'is'ness - the two are inseparable. — Kaplan
:100: :fire:There is no wasted life - there is only unappreciated life. — Vera Mont
Stop being a selfish asshole. Help your father with his struggling business in any way you can – help your family, help your brother, contribute to your community. Whatever good you've experienced and benefitted from, sir, you owe them all – which is a debt none of us can repay but we can honor by taking care of others beginning with those closest to us.I’m also basically jobless/unemployed, and not interested at all to run his (my father’s) businesses ... — niki wonoto
Prayer is a sacrament for you, not for me. Obviously my will is always done on Earth as it is in Heaven. And I already know what you want and the answer is going to be "No." except when you happen to want what I will. But you like to assuage your feelings of helplessness and even pretend to get your Mother Mary to ask me for for you. But really, all you need to say is 'sorry', and 'thank you' and even that is for your own comfort, not for my benefit. The Creator needs nothing from his creation.
— God — unenlightened
Yep, that's @Wayfarer. As far as I'm concerned, this approach to discussion is a crutch used in lieu of admitting he isn't clear on, or hasn't thought through, the topic at issue well enough to reply cogently with his own thoughts.the "argument from the history of ideas". The general form is: Lots of people used to believe X, but then in modern times (glossed as appropriate, usually the Enlightenment or the 20th century) people mostly starting believing Y instead, and that's the current orthodoxy, but X has started making a comeback because look! A, B and C are contemporaries who believe X and they say Y is on the way out!" — Srap Tasmaner
I always do (until its clear nothing significant follows). :up:I used to always ignore these paragraphs ...
Maybe it's uncharitable (or impolite) of me to say so, but after a decade and a half of exchanges with Wayfarer I am convinced that his "appeal to the history of ideas" is used to indicate that he disagrees with me because he agrees with some historical figure/s rather than critically engaging my points and/or defeating my arguments. It's a rhetorical dodge, nothing more. Wayfarer is quite well read, no doubt, but, IME, he's much more skilled at arguing to a foregone conclusion (rationalizing) than validly arguing from clear, explicable premises (reasoning). Typical 'religious/idealist' mindset. No matter how interesting his citations are – often they are – they're just lengthy footnotes to 'the reasons' he fails to give. :eyes:So here's the question: what sort of point are you making when you post something like this?
And, of course, once again, you project by impugning my motives for requesting clarification in order to deflect from the conspicuous fact that you have no idea, Gnomon, what the hell you're gibber-jabbering about. :yawn:↪180 Proof in a post above, responded to my question : "Is human intelligence merely an accidental pattern of a hypothetical "universal cellular automaton"?", with : "Define 'human intelligence' ". Of course, he was not really interested in my opinion on the subject ... — Gnomon
:up:180 Proof, Carlin was a better theologian than some professional theologians. — Art48
:fire: :pray:In Ambrose Bierce’s “The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary,” we have: “Pray, v. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner, confessedly unworthy.” — Art48
So, I worship the sun. But, I don't pray to the sun. Know why? I wouldn't presume on our friendship. It's not polite.
I've often thought people treat God rather rudely, don't you? Asking trillions and trillions of prayers every day. Asking and pleading and begging for favors. Do this, gimme that, I need a new car, I want a better job. And most of this praying takes place on Sunday His day off. It's not nice. And it's no way to treat a friend.
But people do pray, and they pray for a lot of different things, you know, your sister needs an operation on her crotch, your brother was arrested for defecating in a mall. But most of all, you'd really like to fuck that hot little redhead down at the convenience store. You know, the one with the eyepatch and the clubfoot? Can you pray for that? I think you'd have to. And I say, fine. Pray for anything you want. Pray for anything, but what about the Divine Plan?
Remember that? The Divine Plan. Long time ago, God made a Divine Plan. Gave it a lot of thought, decided it was a good plan, put it into practice. And for billions and billions of years, the Divine Plan has been doing just fine. Now, you come along, and pray for something. Well suppose the thing you want isn't in God's Divine Plan? What do you want Him to do? Change His plan? Just for you? Doesn't it seem a little arrogant? It's a Divine Plan. What's the use of being God if every run-down shmuck with a two-dollar prayerbook can come along and fuck up Your Plan?
And here's something else, another problem you might have: Suppose your prayers aren't answered. What do you say? "Well, it's God's will." "Thy Will Be Done." Fine, but if it's God's will, and He's going to do what He wants to anyway, why the fuck bother praying in the first place? Seems like a big waste of time to me! Couldn't you just skip the praying part and go right to His Will? It's all very confusing.
So to get around a lot of this, I decided to worship the sun. But, as I said, I don't pray to the sun. — George Carlin
:smirk:A theory of “consciousness” is just the pursuit of a ghostly spirit stuff. Or can you frame the task in a way that is scientific rather than a search for immaterial being? — apokrisis
:100: :fire:I think Trump would be seen by Nietzsche as an exemplar of the last man. The uberman is first and foremost not a matter of dominance over others but of self-dominance, self-mastery, self-overcoming. The uberman is a higher man, a superior man, a man of a higher order. The creator of new higher values not someone who disregards values. — Fooloso4
:100:I don't think the so-called "hard problem" is the main, or even a significant, focus of neuroscience. It's mostly the philosophers who worry about it. — Janus
Yes and no.Would you (180) also accuse Fredkin ... of "hasty generalization" and "unparsimonious and the pseudo-speculative equivalent of (neo-Aristotlean / neo-Thomistic / neo-Hegelian) intelligent design"? — Gnomon
I'll drink to that. :up:Is his "law enforcement agent" a god-of-the-gaps posit to cover our ignorance of ultimate answers?
This "computer" metaphor amounts to an infinite regress – it's "enformers" all the way down. :lol:Is his "computer" a self-programmed natural intelligence, or an artificial intelligence created by an even more intelligent Programmer?
Define "human intelligence". :sparkle:Is human intelligence merely an accidental pattern of a hypothetical "universal cellular automaton"?
:up:And when it comes to taking literally the claim that “reality is a computer program”, you have to scratch your head at how it can in any sense run without material hardware or a handy power socket. — apokrisis
:up:Smart people are as capable of believing their own bullshit as anybody else is. — BC
Horizons "exist" as properties of facts (not things). They are both ever approachable and unreachable; encompassing, yet never encompassed. It doesnt makes sense to me to leap to the groundless supposition that 'more (faster) than everything else' and/or 'less (slower) than everything else' might not "exist".... because physical things cannot reach these limits, does that mean these limits don't exist? What is the nature of their existence? — Benj96
:cool: :up:A systems view speaks to the balance of flow states and habits that integrate selves and their worlds. — apokrisis
Maybe this: right conduct's unintended, or unforeseeable, consequences á la local ordering that increases global disorder.What is enthalpy's relationship to entropy? I am asking for a broader ethical point. — schopenhauer1
Obviously, because they can't make it for themselves before hand.So why make this choice for someone else? — schopenhauer1
I don't know what you mean, Benj. Cite an unchangeable – impossible to change, or necessary (i.e. unconditional) – extant state of affairs (i.e. fact). :chin:On the other end we have that which never changed in its entire existence. — Benj96
A parallax (or strange loop) e.g. mine or my corresponds to "self as subject" and yours or his/her corresponds to "self as object", no?... the 'self' as coexisting as subject and object? — Jack Cummins
"Self" is a confabulated, continuously sensory-updated, virtual model of this-body-moving-within-its-world.So, I am asking, how do you see the 'self' as coexisting as subject and object? — Jack Cummins