-
What is the point of chess?
Yeah, so far. :up:Yes but can a computer beat a human 100% of the time? — TiredThinker -
What is the point of chess?
Like Chess for over two decades, Go has not been a humans-only game since 2016-17.I think even the Chinese game "Go" hasn't yet been mastered by a computer. — TiredThinker
https://www.deepmind.com/blog/alphazero-shedding-new-light-on-chess-shogi-and-go -
Why do Christians believe that God created the world?
Mostly, like children, many "believe" the ancient fairytale "God created the world" is literally true due to their incorrigible scientific illiteracy and superstitious gullibility. And for once we agree: this world is conspicuously inconsistent with any notion of "an all-good, all-loving creator God".Christians typically do believe that God created the world. Why? — Bartricks -
Pantheism
:up: "God" is the ur-placebo or cosmic lollipop.I still think religion is not the answer. — javi2541997
Besides, "fear of death" isn't the problem, as I see it, but rather the lack of courage to live in spite of ... imminent annihilation. Whether or not one believes in a god, cowardice is sin against oneself, and many, maybe most, are damned to remain cowards their entire lives.
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. — Henry David Thoreau -
Value of human identity and DNA.
No. Populations evolve and individuals develop.Does our DNA evolve within our lives though? — TiredThinker -
What exists that is not of the physical world yet not supernaturalYou asked (another) for a definition of "physical/material" and I proposed one. If it's not helpful or not relevant or not wanted, that's up you (both).
-
What are you listening to right now?:cool: :fire:
Produced by Teo Macero, this album (38:08) was recorded on February 18, 1969, at CBS 30th Street Studio in New York City.
M. Davis – trumpet
W. Shorter – soprano saxophone
J. McLaughlin – electric guitar
C. Corea – electric piano
H. Hancock – electric piano
J. Zawinul – electric piano, organ
D. Holland – double bass
T. Williams – drums -
What exists that is not of the physical world yet not supernatural"Je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là." ~Pierre-Simon, marquis de Laplace
:lol: Woo-wooooosy.Quintessence or Aether. — Gnomon
So I suppose the Michelson–Morley experiment doesn't disprove the existence of "aether" after all, huh? :smirk:
'Atoms swirling and swerving in the void' still works philosophically. Consider these refinements as "physical/material" correlates: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/532028 -
Pantheism
Cite a culture or society of any antiquity that completely lacks religious iconography or rites (i.e. storytelling aka "myths"). :chin:The OP said that we cannot deny the religiousity of our ancestors. That's a fallacy. Religion has not existed forever or everywhere. — javi2541997
The oldest known human burial site, discovered in Kenya, is about 78,000 years old. Our ancestors buried their dead so that their "ghosts" may rest (i.e. stop appearing in "dreams"?) Every extant human group in the archealogical record had burial rites of great antiquity. The oldest building dedicated to religious worship, Göbekli Tepe in Turkey, is over 12,000 years old and the Australian Aborigine have been enacting the Dreamtime for an even longer time. Long long before there was 'modern socialization', my friend, where people were "educated in the religion of their parents", religions – arbitrary cults of shared confusions & cathartic fantasies – had been legion and proliferated. The evidence of indigenous religiousity is as ubiquitous as culture itself (the root of which is the word "cult"). -
Pantheism
So how do you account for 'the magical thinking stage of early childhood development' that begins prior to using language? Vestiges of this formative emotional cognitive stage last through most of childhood and are usually only limited – but never eliminated – by disiciplined literacy and numeracy as well as cosmopolitan socialization. Magical thinking – natural, visible 'effects caused by' supernatural, invisible agencies – drives religiousity, no? 'Homo religiosi' might be an overstatement, but not by very much ...Being religious is not inherited in our DNA. — javi2541997 -
Value of human identity and DNA.
Amid persisting, dynamic environmental pressures, DNA does both (i.e. molecular self-replication) via asexual and sexual reproduction. What are you talking about?What is the point of DNA that degrades versus evolves? — TiredThinker
What is the "reason" e.g. virtual particles (i.e. random events) "occur"? :confused:Can we assume that everything that occurs has a reason?
Consider:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/748602 -
What are you listening to right now?I don't think I've ever had "wine gums". With my edible-thc gummies yesterday afternoon I had a few glasses of Barbera d'Asti and some sugar-free dark chocolates. I can report, my friend, that the listening party went so well, I'm thinking of having another toinght. :snicker:
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Value of human identity and DNA.
Civilian and military leaders have been "old" – elders – as far back as I can recall, so I've no idea what you're talking about. "Old people" don't have to "fight" of "protect" "the species" when there are far more younger bodies available to do so. Thus, global civilization is a structural 'plutocratic gerontocracy' in the main, always has been, just look at the faces on most national currencies, for instance. While the laboring masses are mostly youths and middle aged, mostly they are not strategic decision-makers, investment planners, political military business or cultural managers and leaders. You're statement is quite mistaken, I'm sure.Old people aren't fighting no wars for us or able to protect others of the species as well anymore. — TiredThinker -
What are you listening to right now?You're welcome! :flower:
The major difference that I call tell listening to the 2 disc CD edition (not streaming on Youtube) is the superior sound image, clarity and brightness of this modern stereo mix compared to the primitive, slapdaah, "panning" stereo of the mid '60s. I still prefer the mono mixes of all their albums up to and including the "White Album", as the band did too from what I understand. However, Abbey Road, their only fully 8-track album, was not mixed in mono.
Btw, the gummies are strawberry ("fields") and blueberry ("meanies") flavored, 65 mg each. :yum: -
What are you listening to right now?Me: gummies, vino, excellent headphones, on "shuffle-repeat", turned-up LOUD, colored sunglasses ... You: YMMV ("A splendid time is guaranteed for all!") :victory: :cool:
Revolver, 2022 stereo remix (35:01)
writers, Lennon, McCartney & Harrison, 1966
producers George Martin, 1966 / Giles Martin & Sam Okell, 2022 remixes
cover art, Klaus Voorman, 1966
performers, The Beatles
remixed singles ...
https://youtu.be/nrEgtOeJGzQ
"Rain" (2:59)
B-side of "Paperback Writer", 1966
writers, Lennon-McCartney, 1966
producers George Martin, 1966 / Giles Martin & Sam Okell, 2022 remix
performers, The Beatles
https://youtu.be/gBcdOFehNCg
"Paperback Writer" (2:16)
A-side of "Rain", 1966
writers, Lennon-McCartney, 1966
producers George Martin, 1966 / Giles Martin & Sam Okell, 2022 remix
performers, The Beatles -
Veganism and ethics
You sound like one of those "landing men on the moon" nay-sayers from 1950s, frank.There's no such thing as that, is there? — frank -
Veganism and ethicsNuclear, geothermal, wind / wave turbine generation, biomass, solar farms, hydroelectric, etc renewables are being used around the world as an accelerating share of global energy generation:
https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/electric-power-and-natural-gas/our-insights/renewable-energy-development-in-a-net-zero-world
I also found this recent comparative study encouraging:
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsufs.2019.00005/full
We can walk and chew gum at the same time, Ben. "Veganism", to me, is a luddite stop-gap whose time has come and gone. We don't need to eat like cows or eat cows themselves or wind up with "soylent green is people" ... :smirk: -
Veganism and ethicsVeganism is a speciesist half-measure. A far more effective solution is – the one which I'm enthused about – vat-grown / 3-d printed meat (i.e. animal protein) that tastes like natural beef, pork, poultry, eegs, etc.
:up:Whatever you eat, you will need to eat some living organism. Just because one is fluffy and the other is not, does not make it better to eat one over the other. It's a tragedy of life, and veganism or vegetarianism does not seem like a cut and dry solution at all to me. — Tzeentch
:up: :up:To me, eating plants or insects seems more like shifting the harm to something we have a harder time empathizing with. We sell it off by ascribing value to those traits which we empathize with most naturally - sentience, fluffiness, etc. — Tzeentch -
Value of human identity and DNA.Whose "purpose"? "Value" to whom? "Purpose" and "value" belong to intentional agents and do not belong to subpersonal, nonintentional phenomena or processes. Your questions of "purpose" and "value", TiredThinker, seem misplaced and don't make sense to me.
As I discern our condition, a human being involuntarily values herself (re: Spinoza's conatus) and recognizes in early childhood that other human beings also value themselves. That we are an eusocial species of individuals with aptitude for empathy, our socialization consists in learning to value each other to varying degrees, some more or less, as persons like ourselves (re: theory of mind, moral customs and legal conventions). In this context, we institute practices for purposes related to individual and collective survival, reproduction and further devepment of our practices.
In this way we begin to recognize ourselves as ancestors who value our individual and collective descendants insofar as we prioritize the purpose of the well-being of our descendants with our individual and collective practices.
Whatever survives us cannot mean anything to us now, only that we struggle to make the most of individual and collective possibilities for well-being.Real generosity towards the future lies in giving all to the present. — Albert Camus -
On Thomas Mann’s transitoriness: Time and the Meaning of Our Existence.The difference between our views is that you are optimistic – panglossian and utopian – about the future of human life and I'm optimistic – singularitarian and post-terrestrial – about the future of human intelligence.
-
Value of human identity and DNA.I'm not following you. I don't understand the question.
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On Thomas Mann’s transitoriness: Time and the Meaning of Our Existence.You've completely misread what I've written.as your posting of that video clip shows. Best to leave this conversatuon there rather than to go on talking past one another. For the record, in reply to your assessment of me as a "doomster", I reflect that while I am a pessimist about the near-future survival of the human species, I'm optimistic about the future development of human-made intelligences and that they/it will survive us.
(NB: Perhaps this is a solution to the Fermi Paradox: biological intelligence are survived by their engineered nonbiological intelligences which have no interests in, or needs to, communicate with other "alien" biological intelligences like us; thus, the cosmic silence (so far.) "Doomster?" No, realistic – speculatively extrapolating from Earth's fossil record of 99% species extinction rate, etc. Biomorphs are inherently mortal and extinction-prone; we either develop nonbiological descendants or we become fossils in oblivion.) -
What are you listening to right now?Jerry Lee Lewis 1935-2022
the last of the Million Dollar Quartet, "The Killer", has left the building ...
"Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" (2:52)
A-side single, 1957
writers, D. Williams & J.F. Hall, 1955
performer Jerry Lee Lewis
"Great Balls of Fire" (1:52)
A-side single, 1957
writers, O. Blackwell & J. Hammer, 1957
performer, Jerry Lee Lewis
"What'd I Say" (2:39)
A-side single, 1961
writer Ray Charles, 1959 ($)
performer Jerry Lee Lewis
https://youtu.be/BRHxIsB0-yk1 ($) -
On Thomas Mann’s transitoriness: Time and the Meaning of Our Existence.Thanks for that quote from Kant, it's new to me. Like with Mann, I can't make sense of Kant's transcendental aesthetic (e.g. that "time" and "space" are only "ideal" or imposed by the human mind on "things in themselves") either – my stumbling block has always been "things in themselves", for which Schopenhauer takes him to task and Hegel dismisses outright. Too many, to my thinking, unwarranted dualities in Kant's system, all of which are dependent on this impossibly load bearing fiat of "things in themselves". Kant's system is as anarchronistic as the Newtonian physics it was meant to transcendentally justify.
Anyway, I've already acknowledged "time" as a human artifact but that transitoriness – change, impermanence, ephemerality, loss/advent – is not exclusively human or dependent on "the human mind". For instance, Einstein's relativistic time-dilation thoroughly discounts Kantian "time", and so on. I stand by my remark that Mann "confuses time with change" and his anthropocentric notion of "transitoriness as distinctly human" is the result. The phrase "self-realization of time" still remains as opaque as before ... -
On Thomas Mann’s transitoriness: Time and the Meaning of Our Existence.
I cannot make sense of what Thomas Mann means by "the self-realization of time" in the first instance and how in the second instance that is uniquely human. Sounds like (Proustian) misunderstood / faux Bergsonism to me ...I am agree with Thomas Mann in the sense that the "self-realization" of time — javi2541997 -
What exists that is not of the physical world yet not supernaturalLike a bull in a psychoceramics shop ...
Gnomon, sir, I prefer to categorize your "ravings" :sparkle: more precisely, as I've said previously, as pseudo-science masquerading as metaphysical speculation that's rationalized with soapbox sophistry. :eyes:To 180, this sounds like the ravings of a New Age nut-case. — Gnomon
Thanks for proving my point about the persistent incoherence of your reasoning, Gnomon, with such a clear, telling example. :lol: :up:" ... philosophical (metaphysical) belief systems ..." ___180
4. If philosophy consists in criteria for forming and judging "beliefs" (i.e. epistemology), then philosophy cannot itself be a "belief system", right? (Re: the epistemic regress problem.)
*** Of course, Philosophy per se is not a particular belief system, but an evaluation of belief systems. And a dominant belief today, among scientists, is the primacy of Matter : i.e. Materialism or Physicalism or Scientism. [Note : the -ism ending indicates a belief system, worldview, or philosophy
Well then, unlike gmba, you're capable of using the TPF search function and citing my own words from our many exchanges to corrobrate your claim that what gmba says about my stated position on what is "real" or "natural" is "a true statement", right? :chin:180 proof insists that everything real is natural.
— god must be atheist
That is a true statement . . . .
I only ask, Gnomon, because you promiscously assert things without valid arguments or sufficient evidence about philosophical or scientific topics you clearly do not understand. :sweat:
And while you seem in the mood to address my questions about your "New Age ravings", how about showing these old chestnuts some of that "Enformationism" :kiss:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/746676 -
On Thomas Mann’s transitoriness: Time and the Meaning of Our Existence.:up:
H. Sapiens differ from other mammalian species in degree not in kind just as adult humans differ from infant humans in degree rather than in kind. We don't know to what extent either nonhuman animals or human infants think, only that to whatever extent they do (including not at all), they do so, respectively, in ways we adult humans do not recognize (yet) as thinking. Anthropomorphic bias notwithstanding, I have observed e.g. dogs and cats – perhaps from human socialization – which very much tracked time throughout their daily lives as well as sometimes grieved lost companions, human and otherwise, and even in their own way had acknowledged their own dying by attempting to comfort their human companions.
"Time" is an abstraction of measuring changes but change itself is concrete requiring no representation. All complex organism perceive and adapt to change, whether or not they "talk about time", just as they all survive by making predictions about their environments even if they can't "use future tense".
Consider this article on animal grief:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/animal-grief/ -
Value of human identity and DNA.
Yes, that's why I had provided the linkYou are saying free will and determinism aren't mutually exclusive? — TiredThinker
"Free will", such as we exercise and experience it, is both conditional in function and limited in scope/effect (i.e. determined) – compatibilism. — 180 Proof
The latter refers to efficient causation and the former to teleology (i.e. (occult) purpose).What is the difference between Predetermined and Determinism? — TiredThinker -
On Thomas Mann’s transitoriness: Time and the Meaning of Our Existence.
Not even remotely close to what I've said and I can't say what I mean any clearer than I already have in these posts to which you have responded (but apparently have not read carefully):So you suggest our future is one of extinction, due to extraterrestials or our own actions and the Earth will then belong to extraterrestials? Is my interpretation correct? — universeness
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/751826
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/751923
Yes, insofar as engineering radical life extension (i.e. immorbidity), as I call it, is "transhumanist". This will only be available, I suspect (for the Malthusian implications I've mentioned), to a very minute fraction of the global population – mostly financial and technoscientific elites and their families – who will then (have to) migrate to orbital habitats, Moon & Mars colonies, etc and progressively adapt themselves through further modes of engineering to living permanently (or existing post-biologically) in space. This is what I mean by "extra-terrestrial" (i.e. not on Earth).OR are you suggesting a future where transhumanism produces that which in no way can be compared with what we now consider human. -
Deep SongsEv'rybody wants to laugh,
ah, but nobody wants to cry.
I say ev'rybody wants to laugh,
but nobody wants to cry ...
Ev'rybody wants to go to heaven,
but nobody wants to die ...
Ev'rybody want to hear the truth,
but yet, ev'rybody wants to tell a lie.
I say, ev'rybody wants to hear the truth,
but still they all want to tell a lie ...
Oh, ev'rybody wants to go to heaven,
but nobody wants to die ...
Ev'rybody want to know the reason,
without even askin' why.
Oh, ev'rybody want to know the reason,
oh, without even askin' why ...
You know, ev'rybody want to go to heaven,
but nobody wants to die ...
"Everybody Wants To Go To Heaven ..." (4:20)
The Best Of Albert King,1986
writer, Don Nix, 1971
Albert King
*
"Blues" (5:22)
Black Codes (From The Underground), 1985
Wynton Marsalis -
On Thomas Mann’s transitoriness: Time and the Meaning of Our Existence.
"Everybody wants to go to Heaven
But nobody wants to die"
~Albert King
Human (non-tribal) civilization is a 10-20,000 year old pyramid scheme where the global masses coralled into large, administrative political units form the base of the pyramid. The vertical development (height) has accelerated rapidly in the last three centuries and the interests of those at or near the summit are increasingly becoming divorced from the rest of us at or near the base. Those at the summit will reach sustainable "escape velocity" long before those who are below the summit are even fully aware that they have left us behind like a blasted rocket gantry built out of 10,000 years of human bones.
"Dystopian"? I suppose, but only from a certain point of view. The future, my friend, seems to me Posthuman, not human – extraterrestrial, not terrestrial – or our extinction. You're spinning self-flattering, cotton candy, cartoon daydreams, universeness, and you're welcome to them. :yum: :nerd:
There is an infinite amount of hope in the universe ... but not for us. — Franz Kafka
I have no children of my own, therefore no grandchildren either. Thus, I have no skin the game of "the future". Only the best, singular works of excellence from the pasts of all extant human cultures do I have some small hope will be saved and preserved in as many digital media as can be engineered –
e.g. https://www.archmission.org/billion-year-archive
– for the potential enrichment (or amusement) of the Posthuman immortals who might survive us and struggle in their own incomprehensible ways to understand us much more deeply and thoroughly than we human mortals can understand ourselves, and, in this hermeneutic and critical fashion, glean insights – from one old (soon-to-be-extinct) metacognitive species to another ever-renewable metacognitive species – which may help them avoid destroying themselves inadvertantly.
Man is something that shall be overcome. Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman — a rope over an abyss. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end. — Freddy Zarathustra
The stars are for our immortals and intelligent machines but not for us mortals who might engineer them some decades or century soon. The prospect of 'radical life extension' (that I/we might have access to one day)^^ is attractive to me mostly so that I could live at least long enough to witness the global collapse of the human pyramid in the wake of its Posthuman summit finally separating from Earth as it rises and falls away endlessly into the Milky Way. :fire: -
Value of human identity and DNA.
DNA identifies organisms as members of specific species. It's "value" is reproductive and as a hereditary genetic archive.If our only identity is genetic ultimately, and it constantly is deleteriously changed over time, what value does it have? — TiredThinker
Appeal to popularity is fallacious. "Free will", such as we exercise and experience it, is both conditional in function and limited in scope/effect (i.e. determined) – compatibilism. "Predetermined" is mumbo jumbo and should not be confused with determinism.And as far as predetermined I think most in this forum are comfortable with a lack of freewill which I think science can't prove to the contrary? -
Is someone's usefulness to work more important than their character or vice versa?
How do you / I know I am not a "Larry"?What if you had to give up any positive character trait to be like Larry? — schopenhauer1
Gotta play the hand I've been dealt as well as I can, so the question is moot.Would that be a world worth living in? -
Is someone's usefulness to work more important than their character or vice versa?Boredom wins. :roll:
Only where there is surplus water, food, shelter, oxygen, 'ugly Bettys' and medical supplies.Is there really room for Bobs? — schopenhauer1
Only when there is an acute scarcity of labor, security and medical supplies.Aren't Larrys more prized?
180 Proof
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