? I don't get that...

Isn't the introduction of qualia meant to show that not all forms of information can be rendered in the third person, which is what would be required to give a complete scientific explanation of something. Qualia being a form of information is stipulated in the Mary the super scientist thought experiment, as she is said to learn something new upon first person experience, the quality of the thing, that she couldn't possibly learn second hand.

How information is produced, or emerges from the brain, or the perceptual experience or whatever, obviously cannot be rendered from the outside in, given simply that one accepts that the experience of red itself cannot be given second hand. Both that qualia is information, and that it cannot be reduced to third person information are stipulated in its introduction. Saying that one cannot conceive of how first person experience comes out of looking at a brain is no different than saying that one cannot see red by looking at anything other than a first person encounter.

I would go further and say that not even general, second hand information is really explained, or understood deeply...

Rousseau thought that The Prince was satirical. There's debate about it, but Machiavelli does say outright that republics are better in the Discourses on Livy. He was after all tortured, and had his republic dissolved by the Medici family.

Who knows though.

If the problem is relative equality, then consider that it simply isn't possible to elevate everyone to the top, the only thing that is possible is to carve off the top. Participation trophies, no such thing as better and worse, only wicked people attain mobility to to the top, etc. This is what attempts to solve the inequality equates to.

It is definitely a noble mission to feed the starving, and cloth the naked, as it were, but beyond those bare minimums, nothing that doesn't become terrible, and destructive is foreseeable to me. People cannot be made equal in any way that matters significantly.

It's not a socio-economic problem. Global poverty is at an all time low. Access to food, shelter, clean water and medical resources has never been as good.

People paint things as socio-economic because they think that they're poor if people have more than them. Homicides rates are extremely highly predicted by social inequality (not poverty). It isn't that people are poor, it's that some people have way too much, and that makes everyone feel like they don't have enough. This is a problem with status. Because we paint it as a money and stuff problem just shows how much we equate status with money and stuff. There are shit-ass wastes of space that are highly respected because they have so much stuff.

It wouldn't matter at all what it was that signified status, as long as it existed, and could be accumulated and displayed, there would be the haves and the have nots.

I don't see a solution, all I see in these discussions is Cain, plotting.

Don't be mean 'cause you can't respond bro, but fine, I'll bow out.

How is that at all relevant. It doesn't mean that you know them without having any experience of them at all, and the less time spent, and attention paid to them, the less you'd know them. Is that controversial to you?

knowl·edge
ˈnäləj/Submit
noun
1.
facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject.

It clearly is knowledge. That's just dismissive hand waving.

? So I saw you hit someone, but I don't know that you hit them? The perceptual evidence of an event isn't how we know things about it? Then how do we?

Seeing anything new is of course knowledge. You didn't know that they even existed before. It isn't like "seen one seen 'em all" or something... we're talking about human beings here...

No, the knowledge part is unrelated. Even "love at first sight" is conditional upon actually knowing that they exist at bare minimum. Though I think that is silly as well. If you think that you love someone the moment you meet them, or tell someone that you love them on the first date, I think that would be pretty red flag raising.

Just neurochemically, infatuation, a kind of obsession is what you feel immediately, which always fades. It can be kind of re-kindled by continually doing new and exciting things together forever. The novelty will drive it, as it will continue to reveal more and more things about them. Normally though, the bonding that takes place over years, which is what I would think is really the love, is both conceptually and biochemically distinct from the attraction, or infatuation.

I think that love requires knowledge. Can't love something that you don't know very well, let alone don't even know exists. So there has to be some kind of intimation.

People talk about loving their children unconditionally. But surely the fact that they're your biological children only matters conceptually, and not actually. As something like 12% of fathers are raising children that they only think are biologically theirs. Though studies show that step parents actually are crueler and more abusive, but I think that that has something to do with not having know them from the start. One of the things that aren't a condition, I would hope, would be that they're actually your biological progeny. Finding out that they aren't, 17 years into raising them hopefully wouldn't reduce your care for them, clearly it would be their mothers fault (lol) not theirs.

Well, we disagree, and it goes no further then.

We like positive emotions, and hopeful things. We're easily swayed by positivity, and things that feel good. That's why addiction is far more prevalent than skillful mastery. Like Spinoza said, everything excellent is as difficult as it is rare. The road to excellence is uphill.

I think that lack of motivation, like a depressed person experiences may make them more honest generally, and more accurate in some respects, but surely has blindspots and preferred illusions. I just think that positivity, and feeling good tends to be highly motivating, and thus highly conducive to self-deception, and compromise.

I prefer reasons. You're not giving any. Apparently it's simply miraculously counter to what I said...

How does it exist? How could it not give license? Your love is not to be earned, or maintained but expected. It isn't like a grace that you can freely give, as that suggests considerations and circumstances. Unconditional love means always that, so the complete opposite of freely given.

And loving people means teaching them how to be independent of you, and a threat to you. How to be strong, self-sufficient, and well adapted. Not how to be helpful, dependent, and harmless. Those are values of distrust, and misanthropy.

Of course. I prefer to live stupidly and dangerously. I'm a rebel like that.

Your view seems to be that there are two kinds of people, an evil charismatic cabal, and the ignorant masses taken in by them, and if only they were informed, they would all immediately agree with you. Presumably, if they didn't, they would also just be members of the evil cabal. Those are tribalistic, and vicious opinions.

I don't think that it is generally true that people follow people just because they're charismatic, irrespective of policies. I think that pays far too little respect to people. Hitler was charismatic, but he also had enticing policies. It's far far more complex than that. People are mostly afraid to stop obeying, not because leaders are murderous, or something generally, the overwhelming vast majority aren't, but because they're complicit both in rewards, status and material, as well as share a vision.

We're all to blame. The reason that the system continues, rather than blissful ignorance or bullying (though maybe some of the latter) is the same reason you haven't done anything, besides attempt to sell a book. Because they feel helpless about it, and don't know what to do, can't even really cogently identify a problem, but they know that they're there. The fact that so many people feel like there's a problem means that there has to be.

Personally, I just try to maintain as much sanity and contentment as I can. I don't have the solution either, and definitely not a final solution to all our problems. Usually they end up sucking worse than the disease.

Demanded kindness is called face, persona, facade. Demanded charity is called taxation. Demanded compassion is called community service. People want lots of stuff, but should we chuck out just moments ago espoused values, and ideals to the way side the moment they become an obstacle, or incongruent (red line under "incongruent"? my lexicon exceeds my browser's) with our aims, and desires? The higher moral ground was just a facade in that case, and it just becomes only about the change of power towards me, and the things I like.

"Power corrupts" is something everyone knows. It's dangerous to paint the world in terms of devious, purposeful villains, and innocent ignorant victims. The sheep and the wolves, with me as their knowing protector. In replacing the wolves, for these poor innocent fools, I'll not be preying and surviving on them, but protecting them!

I think that the reason, or aim matters more than the form. Someone kindly and warmly influencing you towards self-destruction, and nihilism is far worse than someone being angry with your lack of ambition, or evil intentions.

What about Hitler and the nazi regimes? Should they have been hugged into submission?

Kindness is a grace. Charity, kindness, compassion, all are graces, reserved for those in need. They are not entitlements. They are freely given, and are good things, good for everyone involved. Incentivizing them, or demanding them out of entitlement destroys them. Transforms them into something else entirely.

There is a negotiation of ideals. We don't agree about who deserves what, and we all wish the world to be organized around our ideals, but it isn't, and wishing to force it, or even persuade it to be usually turns deceptive and coercive itself pretty damn fast.

I personally don't think that anyone deserves anything, and I think that very very few are fair, or reasonable. Changing the world is a tall order, and few ever gain the influence to revolutionize it in even the smallest lasting degrees on the smallest of scales, and when they do it isn't obvious that anything at all has ever gotten better -- just different.

Unconditional love is a stupid and dangerous ideal, with no historical basis, coined by Erich Fromm in the 1950s.

It's a license to do whatever the fuck you want, and demand forgiveness or the other is deficient in some way. It's also impossible. You don't get to chose who or what you love, or why you love them. Forcing yourself because you think you ought to, and torturing yourself for not meeting an impossible ideal is fun and all, though.

Wouldn't want to pay the guy, and increase his power, or mobility, particularly beyond the global average. Even just reading it, I'd have to consider his influence equal to any opposition, so it wouldn't matter.

People disagree about what counts as fair, and equality is in opposition to fairness. Fairness means that people get what they deserve, not the same. If we're both hired to do a job, and I sit there on my phone the whole time while you do it all, and get equally paid, then clearly that isn't fair. People only get the same, all things already being equal. That's a difficult thing to establish, particularly in the general and abstract. You'd need to solve real cases.

There is no meat on those bones, they're just fluffy words. Need to get attention with some content, not simply fluffy words.

Sounds trite.

My definition for honesty is motivatelessness. The kind of thoughts that happen when you aren't trying to affect anything, or generate any kind of outcome. They are regardless of implication, desire, like or dislike. Regardless of whether they implicate you, or those around you. Elevate you or those around you. They are not reasoned out, and there is almost a sense in which you didn't even know yourself until you've said it.

We're always directed. Affected, and affecting, and for this reason I think that our normal mode of cognition, and speech is inherently deceptive, in that it is always aiming, and trying. Making the world, and ourselves out to be this way or that, because of what those things imply, and the stakes in them. I think that honesty has to always be entirely, one thousand percent, completely irrespective of that.

It's like a possession, where what comes from it is outside of all of the ideals, perceptions, and affecting modes of being, and is just what appears. What is genuinely felt, perceived, conceived.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMddEbMwsPM

Everyone needs some selfish bitch training. People are deeply mistaken about what is moral, in my view. Or to put it bluntly, their morality is ridiculously egocentric. You should be unthreatening, kind, and helpful. That's what's being moral. Bleed, bite your lip, and don't challenge me, or take care of yourself leaving useless fucking me high and dry!

You must give what it is possible for you to give, and there to be no mention of the means by which one acquires things to help with. So that as long as I am unthreatening, and full of shit kind all the time, I can be the most useless, leech about, and how I take care of myself, and by implication my entire community is never to be brought into question.

These views, vantage points on the issue are clearly seen only from certain real world positions. People that are helping are subject to the demands of kindness, tongue biting, and more and more help. Those being helped are subject of the demands to look at themselves, tell the truth, grow a thick skin, conform to the stereotypes they bemoan and hate because they don't already represent them, as if the people that gain from the social mobility of their possession put not effort in, and were just born that way...

Unfortunately, I don't even think that both sides have a point, I think that one side is just wrong, and harming everyone around them.

Generic insults aren't that good unless you get it a million times, then it begins to start to get annoying, or your at low energy or resolve. Insults shake resolve. They're meant to shake resolve. Make you do less well. It's a complex game. The ideal is to remain calm and clever, and not flip out, or say or do things that are unpleasant. Strong delivery, clever observations. Shake the other person until they lose composure or resolve.

Fighters do it, there are rap battles. Lots of scenes of snooty posh people sitting around a table calmly trading asides until the loser is triggered, or a group of people making someone below them feel stupid, and then there is that ideal scenario in which they think of just the greatest of retorts, and put all of those assholes in their place.

There are people though, that like were not properly socialized, and have an extremely low threshold for such games, and want everyone to be super nice, and stuff like mothers to infants all the time, because they can't deal, and they use pity to demonize everything that is fun, and exciting, mostly because they are edgy poo outcastes, and were never the head cheerleader, or captain of the football team, and now must take it out on the world until they die.

Get used to it, the noble are always a gross minority, and the weak turn their weakness into strength by making it virtuous, and moral to be weak, and wicked to be strong.

Like I said, I'm not the only one that thinks that childhood diagnoses, particularly when not completely clear and undeniable is highly controversial, and may do more damage than good.

Ultimately it was up to her to go or not though, and she didn't want to. Though I also didn't support, or couch my opinions and words about her various homosexual and trans identities either, as just phases. My position was that she indeed, did just have an extremely low self-esteem, and wanted to escape herself, and rebel against convention. So my goal indeed was to give her a lot of support and praise and space, but without any lying or lip biting.

It didn't work... lol. She was just too high maintenance for me, and I didn't feel like it was my responsibility to take all that on, so when she made up with mom, I made her go home. She got to my house with schemes anyway, and was constantly lying, and extremely rebellious, and only filled with resentful confidence, and felt others were dumber than her because she could fool them... just the things she learned from my mom, that I couldn't break... and all the work. Couldn't deal man. Not my problem.

I tried for a year.

Yeah, and I dismissed them all out of hand when my sister came to stay with me. I didn't want her to be tied down to them (they also were learning towards a schizophrenia diagnosis), on the off change that they aren't true at such a young age. I could have been wrong and damaging, but childhood diagnoses are highly controversial across the board, I think that you gotta start owning what you've become, regardless of cause or reason, when you get old enough though.

I'm don't think that categories are all motivated power games, or completely whimsically constructed, and even if they are, we still gotta live with others, so deal with it.

That ultimately doesn't matter to the logic of your suggestion without the entailment that low self-esteem is causal.

I don't fucking know, ask an expert. The topic is about that. My position is that I put my faith in the experts, and am open to new and alternative angles as long as they support their claims with hard data, and not insinuation, wishful thinking, personal investment, or motivated reasoning.

That would depend on the goal of the therapy, to think about it logically... if one is going to treat low self-esteem, then for sure, but if one is going to treat schizophrenia and psychosis, then unless they are caused by low self-esteem, then clearly no. Obviously no.

I give actual substantive points, and reasons, and have been receiving personal asides, and vacuous dismissals. It's frustrating.

Why have you become senselessly critical?

This is clearly only true if there is an imbalance between guilt and responsibility. I'd think that a narcissist, or megalomaniac needs to love and accept themselves less. As anyone that is wrong does.

I'm highly skeptical of the idea that it all comes down to self-esteem anyway. It probably does if the goal is just to feel good all the time. Mine though, is to be healthy, and right.

It may be interesting, but yeah, I have some faith in society to think that the standard is good, and any challenges to it need clear support. Not just claims that they don't offer the information to be able to verify, and no one can, even the local authorities on the subject.

The article I linked doesn't deny that it is interesting, and worthy of investigation, but just notes that the claims don't really seem true, and warrant further investigation. They have more information, like how many of their research subjects that required medication a year later were of the schizophrenic group. Just releasing that information would make all the difference. Otherwise, one can assume that since the subjects that had schizophrenia made up a minority of the total subjects, then the numbers may be less impressive than the standard treatments. It's implication alone that makes their claims seem extraordinary, not even explicit data.

But it's apparently I, who've bought it wholesale.

How do you know what's good unless you're getting feedback? Need others in order to send you sanity, and socializing feedback. Isn't that the very suggestion of open dialogue? That sanity arises out of intersubjectivity, and erodes in isolation?

Like, most people would agree that you aren't entitled to kill the neighbors... for instance...

I feel like I've said something you don't like, so communication is breaking down now.

I don't think that it's possible to love yourself without the support of others, unless it comes at the cost of resentment, and disregard of others. Their ultimate devaluation, as they have devalued you.

I meant to say that it is of utmost importance to be in agreement with those around you about what you aren't, and are not entitled to.

The one I outlined for myself? Or the one I criticized? The latter yes, the former clearly no.