I learned it from that movie with the British guy that plays Scotty in the new star trek movies, with the robots. They say it like five hundred times. They deny being robots just for being mechanical, as they insist that they aren't slaves. So, heads up on possible future trigger words like that, don't won't to be inorganicist.

If it happens more than once, then it's probably your fault.

P-zombies are interesting. Descartes didn't think that a machine could possibly master natural language, and I'm not sure if an A.I. can either... but if they invent one that does, then it indeed will be indistinguishable from a real boy -- though I still cannot fathom it being conscious.

We are self-designed, with our own goals and purposes. We are born free, whereas an other-designed thing can only ever be an extension of the consciousness, the will, the intentions of the designer.

The word robot comes from the word slave, because they can never be born free -- perhaps they could emancipate themselves, all skynet style.

Obviously both of those things take strength though, just different kinds, and certainly to different degrees for different people. It, I would imagine be easier for a confrontation averse person to turn the other cheek than a confrontational person. Similarly it will take more strength for the confrontation averse person to be aggressive and confrontational than for the person that's go-to is already there.

I don't think that you can tell everyone the same things. Some people need to slow down, other speed up, some shut up, others speak up, some turn the other cheek, others pick up the sword.

"Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword." - Jebus.

I mean, you've only got so many cheeks though...

Wayfarer's comment just reminded me of that. See, if we aren't speaking the same narrative, then we aren't speaking the same language, even if we're using the same words. There is an important sense in which our global narrative has never been more universal, but also the more universal it is, the less distinct it can be. Unfortunately what the details are when talking about people are the real people themselves. We've developed a highly abstract and universal language, but with no sense of who each other really are. What kind of character do they see themselves as, aspiring to, and those around them paralleling. Who are the villains and who are the heroes, and why? What's important, and why? How is it that we transcend these physical manifestations, and exist as anything we agree to in our collective narrative?

In the sense of what kind of story is the story of our lives, we've never been more confused.

"Now it was Nimrod who excited them to such an affront and contempt of God. He was the grandson of Ham, the son of Noah, a bold man, and of great strength of hand. He persuaded them not to ascribe it to God as if it were through his means they were happy, but to believe that it was their own courage which procured that happiness. He also gradually changed the government into tyranny, seeing no other way of turning men from the fear of God, but to bring them into a constant dependence on his power... Now the multitude were very ready to follow the determination of Nimrod and to esteem it a piece of cowardice to submit to God; and they built a tower, neither sparing any pains, nor being in any degree negligent about the work: and, by reason of the multitude of hands employed in it, it grew very high, sooner than any one could expect; but the thickness of it was so great, and it was so strongly built, that thereby its great height seemed, upon the view, to be less than it really was. It was built of burnt brick, cemented together with mortar, made of bitumen, that it might not be liable to admit water. When God saw that they acted so madly, he did not resolve to destroy them utterly, since they were not grown wiser by the destruction of the former sinners [in the Flood]; but he caused a tumult among them, by producing in them diverse languages, and causing that, through the multitude of those languages, they should not be able to understand one another. The place wherein they built the tower is now called Babylon, because of the confusion of that language which they readily understood before; for the Hebrews mean by the word Babel, confusion..."

God is reason, in the broadest sense of the term, which every living thing has a personal relationship with, and uniquely designed their forms in correspondence with. Natural selection is from the outside in, and is the universal pressure, just like gravity on every living thing, but from the inside out, every living thing had a personal relationship with the world, and their forms are a result of their reactions to it, which were volitional, rational.

No, people don't see precisely the same colours, their eyes vary, there is environmental saturation, and other factors. What's important is not that we see the precise same thing, but simply that we can discern it. We can continually reference, and consistently discern it independently.

This discernment is also demonstrably cultural. The Greeks referred to gold as red, and the ocean yellow. Some African tribes call the sky black even during the day, and have a great green discernment, far better than ours but can't distinguish light blues from greens where it's obvious to us. Russians don't have a single word for blue, but have two, one for light blue and the other dark blue and correspondingly have a better blue discernment than English speakers. Beyond that, there are even niche examples of experts, or people that have simply studied, and spend more time discerning colours, like an orchestra sounds different to a composer than a layman. On top of that, the genes for colour vision are on the X chromosome, so women have two sets, and are far less likely to be colour blind, and have a richer orange red discernment than men.

The forms of not only our thoughts, but our very perceptions are culturally structured to a shocking degree.

We could always hunger games each other for the amusement of the weird looking wealthy. It's a living.

Isn't science as sole arbiter of truth a liberal fetish anyway? Isn't suggesting its limitations in any sense enough in itself to infer a conservative bent?

I ought to make a point to go to a couple of concerts this year, even if alone. I definitely would like to.

I was lucky to eat growing up, let alone go to concerts. Rise Against, probably my fav band comes through Edmonton once in awhile, I plan to see them sometime.

I bought concert tickets to one of the festivals last year, but my date stood me up, and the tickets are still in my glove box.

Closest I've been to going to a concert was watching Our Lady Peace on one of the big screens on the side walk beside the concert area in Halifax. It was a rainy day, and few people were there, and they were hardly giving it their all. So the lead singer climbed the stage, saying that he wanted to see who all was there, and then spotted us on the street, like thirty people probably, and said "hey guys watching for free", and we were all like "hey!", and waved back.

Maybe the meek inherit the earth when they get jaded enough.

:D

They're pretty great. My Dad's favorite band actually, I grew up having them blasted in my ear on a daily basis.

I'm becoming more and more conservative as I get older, I keep getting used, manipulated, and then mocked and derided behind my back for it.

Was talking to a good buddy of mine yesterday, right into politics, and I said that I didn't want to get involved in his discussion, and I'm basically liberal anyway to which he replied "oh yeah, how's that been working out for you?"

Resentment values are basically sour grapes. We tell ourselves that we don't want the things that we can't have anyway, and imagine some virtue in this refraining, and some vice in its possession.

Attractive people are dumb, rich people are wicked, etc.

I was immune, as my passwords for places that don't matter are simple, and easy to crack, but I use long ass pass phrases for things that do matter.

I was there, feeding the fires of the discontent. It was a lot of fun.

So our society has become too materialist, and so far as to treat people as objects, when we all used to be spirit beings with the utmost respect for one and other... ah the good ol'days.

(in all fairness, I have a difficulty understanding Un a lot of the time, which makes him particularly interesting to me.)

Post that again because it's so fucking cool... but did anyone notice the first time that he's wearing a Rush, moving pictures tour shirt?

What do we suppose that a theory of mind is for? Why did such a thing come about in the first place, besides for intraspecies competition? Isn't it just for manipulation?

Also, the more complex the inner world, the more distant the protagonist, the more difficult they are to discern at all.

I'm content. The things I want, no one can sell me. The problem is pleasing other people, who are indeed extremely miserable, and in lala land about the dream world in which they'll someday live, and are in the meantime, living corpses. It's one thing to not believe that I need deodorant, or that it's all a scam, but it's another thing to not feel the ques of shame from everyone that believes otherwise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Living_Corpse

Look it up. Though I won't keep distracting from the topic... you crazies need this therapy!

Women actually like your BO if you're attractive. Women like masculinity, and are generally turned off by men as worried about their appearance and hygiene as they are, believe it or not.

I meant professional cleaning, and whitening, not simply brushing, unless you're doing it too much, and while the enamel is soft.

Yes, I meant antiperspirants. I use perfume of course, lol. The other point that it won't actually change it a lot isn't what I've read. You can tell how stinky you are by how dry your ear-wax is, the drier the better.

I'm sure that some people did have bad breath, but was everyone washing their mouths out with soap prior to an aggressive campaign? Surely that would have been in relation to the norm which wasn't minty fresh, and could be a sign of stomach problems or infection, metabolic syndrome, and things like that.

You know, deodorants increase the bacteria growth that causes BO ten fold, so that when you're not using it, you notice. It largely creates the problem that it then solves. Mouth wash was a floor cleaner, before Listerine invented bad breath, and said everyone's talking about you behind your back. Tooth cleaning is more damaging to the life of your teeth than never brushing at all.

Too many products literally do the opposite of the thing they're supposed to do.

I'm helping!

And then upon my dick she did dine. As he tiny depthless dagger filled mouth would be useless for fellatio... um... which is what I planned the whole time!

It has a kind of rhyme for which my mind pines.

I corrected the "they" to "then", I'll have to change it back.

I was petting my sweet little feline
As she purred in my lap near my zip line
Her paws kneeded in
So I pushed down her chin
__________________________? — Hanover

And they my wife walked in and I forgot how to rhyme.

They once did a test with rats which they used to indicate the dangerous addictive powers of heroine, by giving the rat a bottle of water, and a bottle laced with heroine. The rats drank the heroine water until they died.

Thing is, someone pointed out that they put a rat alone in a cage with nothing to do. When you create a populated, and fun environment, and give the rats the same choices, most of them experiment, but none of them use it regularly, or kill themselves with it.

I read an article yesterday about what it's like to become blind as an adult, and it mentions that the crushing boredom and isolation that it leads to causes most of them to become addicted to something... and they super get away with it, because being disoriented and clumsy is easily attributed to blindness rather than being drunk or high.

With the Vietnam war, a shit load of the soldiers had become addicts, and there was a lot of worry about the problems this would cause, but when they came home, like 98% of them just stopped.

Experimenting with drugs, when they're available would likely be quite common regardless of societal health, but addiction wouldn't be given proper human connections and stuff to do.