According to Popper it doesn't count without a when and where, that's what makes it checkable. So "some mammals lay eggs, in eastern Australia in contemporary times" is falsifiable, but just "some mammals lay eggs" itself isn't, it isn't bounded enough, it could be in another solar system.

I did mean "same", same doesn't mean completely absolutely identical, nothing is even self-same under the notion of completely in every imaginable way identical, no one ever means that.

When someone tells you that they have the same shirt, it doesn't mean "hey, that's my shirt!"

I also said plainly that communication is unnecessary if I've already seen the types of thoughts, and know the circumstances in which they arise, and that's why you aren't alone in your own mind. Remember how I began with that?

Well... obviously snow flakes, nor people are literally identical, like superman and Clark Kent are. For them to be precisely identical, none of their attributes can vary, and nothing that can be said of one, cannot be said of the other, including temporal and spacial location. That doesn't mean that a clone isn't pretty much the same, without being literally identical, as they share many many attributes, with less difference than sameness.

Whole picture, and discrete details are two ways of looking at things, blurring the individual parts into a whole, or zeroing in on the discrete details, which themselves can be further broken up into discrete parts, that can be called a unity, at different levels of analysis. Calling one more true or real just demonstrates a lopsided, or one sided view of things, in my view.

Responding to me that there could be no communication either if we were literally identical, and literally the exact same person is not to actually respond to anything I've said. Saying that your thoughts are unique, and only individual to you, and no one else, and me asking you then how it is that communication is possible is to respond to what you've said. You can't have both, whereas I don't propose the position you espouse in your objection, you do propose the one I suggest in mine.

Maybe the battle against melancholy in yourself has wider implications than you realize. Telling someone to cheer up isn't nearly as powerful as being cheerful. A light onto the world, and all that.

Just to point out, unity of self isn't boxed off into conceptual parts like the right and left hand, but is a measure of motor unit recruitment, and the contralateral motor cortex also plays a big role in distinguishing self from other. There is no unity of self without unity of other.

https://academic.oup.com/cercor/article/22/12/2894/306843/Distinguishing-Self-and-Other-in-Joint-Action

Snow flakes aren't unique and original either, that's also a myth, just like people their formation is correlated to their physical circumstances.

http://thescienceexplorer.com/nature/snowflakes-are-not-unique-we-thought

If we can't be of one mind, and think the same thing, then how can we possibly communicate?

I'm glad to hear that you are better off, and continue improving, sorry about the condescending comment, lol.

Talking about this just makes me think about how much more I should be doing.

I'm not ideal, at least in my book. I'm definitely well above average shape, but those damn fitness models still lord their perfection over me. I make an effort, and continually have been for only like six years or something now, which isn't really all that long, and have made a lot of headway. Hoping to continue to improve for at least six more years.

Still many things I could change, can't say that I'm manic, but I'm usually in a good mood, baring circumstances. Most noticeably, and thankfully for me is the complete overcoming of a life long anxiety problem. Used to have panic attacks, and really high anxiety and pounding heart, and stress all the time, and pretty much all my life. At one point I couldn't even eat solid food, couldn't swallow, kept choking, and lived for like a year on soup myself.

The FBI gathered wiretaps and information about his infidelities and then sent him a letter threatening to release the information if he didn't "do what he needed to do", which he thought meant kill himself, but they maintain only meant resign. Whether he just liked conversing with a lot of women, and emotional infidelity is disputed, as the tapes never actually were released, gotta wait ten more years until they are to find out the juicy details.

Sounds like Mill's "Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing". You know that MLK was a big time plagiarist? He plagiarized, and took credit for a lot in university, and it wasn't even uncovered until 1991.

That Zapffe can turn a pretty good phrase, that was fairly engaging, though neither of them said that happiness was a sin.

That Schopenhauer guy, like one guy. Russell said that people that are depressed, like people that sleep badly are often proud of the fact, and given under ten percentage of people are actually majorly depressed, and I doubt all of them would characterize happiness as a sin, and depression as a virtue... that's like super liberally 5% of the population, super liberally. One guy that I know of on the forum, hardly common.

I'd be interested in pointing out like a known public figure, not just the one guy on the forum here. Even Shopenhaucer hardly held that happiness was a sin, unattainable, maybe, bad not a bad thing.

Can you point out a single person that holds those views?

Happiness is commonly understood to be a sin?

If that is an "extension of the self" and still a kind of selfishness, then what is selflessness? Aren't you just moving the goal post, and making everything conceivable a kind of selfishness in that case?

Loving someone doesn't always make you feel good. It doesn't have to be the opposite extreme, of either ultimately rewarding, or ultimately punishing. It can be both rewarding and punishing, circumstantially, without being relevant at all to the goal.

This is the way I would frame it. Are all of your thoughts and feelings unique and original to you (if they were they would be inexpressible)? Has no one else ever had those thoughts or feelings? Based in a beastly discernment, having been in that position, understanding the temperaments, feelings, and cultural artifacts that make up your thoughts, you don't think that it is possible for someone to have the experience and empathetic prowess to discern the contents of your mind? Private suggests that they are no where else to be seen, but if they have been seen in a different place before, could they not be recognized again?

There are various levels of experience, intelligence, discernment and self-awareness, as well as biology temperament, circumstance, education which implies that as long as the contents of your mind exist anywhere at all outside of your mind as well, sometimes occurring in different minds, in different places, and have anything to do with your physical circumstances, it is possible to correlate your thoughts to those circumstances.

i do actually think that it is impossible, at least for me, to be totally alone in my mind, or to deceive everyone. Some real monsters walk the earth, someone always sees.

I think that one should do good things, because they are good, and not because they are rewarding, ennobling, bring contentment, make one an uncommon jewel or something like that. I'm not like opposed to things that are good, and enjoyable for you, but they aren't necessarily related to the good in my view. You know, it is possible to be tortured horribly, and then crucified if you're good. Plato's notion of the truly just man is one that everyone believes is unjust, in order to set it up so that he isn't personally gaining in any way from it.

I think that there are both benefits and downsides to most everything, even doing the right things. There are also benefits to being wicked, otherwise no one would do it, or would only do it because they were ignorant of something important, but both the Buddha, and Jesus were tempted by the devil, and the temptation couldn't have been tempting unless it was beneficial to them personally and actually desirable things, as it doesn't set up the situations under the pretext that they are deluded, or deceived in any way.

I just can't be a cynic, and believe that everything ultimately reduces to prudence, or selfish benefits. Call me averse, but I can't. Goodness is genuinely selfless, and not ultimately in your own best interest. There is more at stake than just me, the world's bigger and older, and will carry on long after I'm gone, and I wish to discover a way that truly benefits it, and is really good, without it being ultimately about me.

Empathy makes contentment impossible, for as long as even a single feeling thing remains discontent. You can be content some of the time, but not all the time, as life involves personal and vicarious suffering.

"But to those of you who will listen, I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone takes your cloak, do not withhold your tunic as well. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what is yours, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you.

If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full.

But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them, expecting nothing in return. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for He is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful." - Jebus

The problem with morality, is that we're all big fat hypocrites, and we don't know how to change the world, by being the change we want to see in the world, by acting towards the wicked as we wish them to act, to embodying, rather than mouthing our virtues.

I am far from perfect, and I even go further than that and say that no one is even good, but this too is quoting Jesus: "Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good--except God alone."

Another way that truth telling facilitates the undermining of your own wickedness, is that if you don't pretend to be only helpful, only benevolent, only righteous and good, people then may guard against you as well.

I'm a big fan of the idea that you can know a lot about people based on their bodies, and there is some recent literature that links depression with inflammation. You really need to eat right and exercise. Also, appearing thin doesn't mean that you don't have dangerous levels of fat around your organs, or inflammation.

Lies are evil as fuck, but I always remember that deception is a double edged sword, and people just don't understand just how terrible they are.

Trust is of two kinds, the naive, unknowing, at the mercy of kind, and the position of strength, when you know perfectly well what people are like, and how dangerous it is, but do it anyway, and not out of wanting something, or needing something from the other, but for the purposes of facilitating the growth of what is within them which is worthy of trust. This in no way differentiates "good from bad" people, or imagines some wicked and harmful, and others harmless. The only harmless ones are simply incapable.

Same reason I've never met a leprechaun, I suppose.

I did, and do. People are only super humans in stories, I've never met one.

I'm sure that they were all horrifically, unrecoverably traumatized.

I don't know if it's true, and I don't know if that even makes him full of shit about anything he said, or stood for, but just wanted to point out that saints are either lame, cowardly and simply incapable, or abuse their power, position, and influence, if they can get away with it. People need to take some personal responsibility for not letting them get away with it, or have a good defense, like overwhelming force, or drugs or something for why they were able to do it at all, otherwise things get absurd. Particularly if it's basically stuff everyone experiences, and isn't a fringe behavior, otherwise we're operating on some fantasy about the way the would ought to be, rather than dealing with the way it actually is.

I've had my arms felt, like checking out my muscles, ass slapped a few times, been kissed when I wasn't interested, and had a co-worker try to get me drunk at her place, and really didn't want me to leave, and I'm pretty sure she had terrible plans, she had previously asked me to dinner, and I accepted thinking that she was talking about like our whole group of friends. When I found out that she hadn't asked anyone else, I declined, and she was married too, though it was during a separation, though she got back with him not long afterwords.

I voted, "not sure" on the poll, because what counts, and what is just normal circumstances almost everyone finds themselves in isn't clear to me.

The world I live in, men do the propositioning, and make the initial moves, that's just how it's done, and consent is never explicitly given. Trump said that he goes into the beauty contestant changing rooms, and feels them up because they let him do it.

You can say that they should just know better, and know when it is acceptable, and know when it isn't... but without consent or refusal ever really forthcoming, how are they supposed to?

We want a culture without sexual predators for sure, but there needs to be acknowledged some of their responsibility as well, otherwise it isn't even clear what is and isn't assaulting them. Other than some personal confidence that it isn't you, you're a good person, or getting expressed consent at every stage.

They aren't children, they're complicit to the extent that they do not protest, or tell them not to. Kristnamurti was doing his best bud's wife, whom also claims that he routinely humiliated, and emasculated, and kind of thought she was his reincarnated mother too.

Biology obviously does have something to do with it, unless there is some other difference between men and women that makes one act badly, and the other to be always entirely without personal responsibility.

Loius C.K. apparently forces female comics to watch him masturbate, the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer guy's ex-wife wrote that he wasn't behaving professionally with all them hot girls either. It is literally a cliche, I don't want to say that they're all doing it, but even all of my favorite rock stars are probably way way worse than them.

Even plenty of big philanthropists were weirdos, Ghandi used to give out tons of enemas, and propositioned women to sleep naked him with so as he could "test his restraint".

Jesus took Mary into the woods, pulled a woman out of his side, proceeded to have sex with her and then cum in his own mouth (if you believe some of the apocryphal gospels)... realize that all of the people that have power over others always abuse it, without exception. No one is good.

Not that I think therefore we should look the other way, but I think that there is a difference between propositions, and influencing people's greed and star filled eyes, and actually forcing them, or drugging them or something.

Not making ridiculous, unfair, dominating, or unreasonable requests of others usually just means that you're too busy fulfilling them.

Cosby though, I thought was actually drugging and raping women though... I thought that other guy was just making use of the casting couch, not literally a serial rapist, just trading roles and stuff for sex, I wouldn't consider those things remotely similar.

Well, I think that since something like this is becoming such a big deal, it is probably a sign of its decline anyway. If everyone was doing it, and it was the norm, no one would be saying anything, unless they planned to bring down all of hollywood, never work again, or were writing about it in their autobiographies after they were already has beens like people have already been doing for decades. Since people can be singled out, it implies that they are becoming rarer, or something of a bygone age.