Sounds like a conspiracy theory is in the wings.

I'm poor because I have no sense (cents).

I can't change because I have no cents (sense).

So my great grandmother wouldn't want any of her descendants to cheat on their girlfriends/boyfriends, and her intention still exists... — intrapersona

She has no intentions if she has passed. You have a memory of her character by which you presume you could predict her behavior were she alive. Also such beliefs could either be cultural norms passed onto her in addition to the result of a personal experience in the course of her own life which she thinks should apply to the conduct of others.

Just because you claim to represent the wishes of the deceased doesn't lend any "objectivity" to some free floating intentional spirit (which probably doesn't exist by an empirical measure). People will ask for reason as to why they should trust you as a representative of a dead person's wishes in the absence of some concrete record (like a will). If sleep and time can change a living person's intentions, why can't death?

We can project intentionality into characters in novels by extrapolation and inference. Perhaps we do that with living people also, such that we apprehend events as having a certain probability, owing to trends, habits, customs and partially controlled processes. We infer and project intention of criminals based on what they were caught doing, on incomplete evidence, using reason.

Can you articulate your intentions at the time you posted this thread? Do we infer strictly one what we observe? Can or did you deceive yourself? Are there not processes of pure habit or instinct that explain away your intentions in spite of what you claim they are?

Intimacy (my loins are aching for a mind meld)

We have clearly just seen that without a person to object then there once alive body becomes just a piece of flesh "objectively", REGARDLESS of what third parties standing by think or are waiting to do. — intrapersona

If you jettison the third person point of view then you jettison the need of ethics altogether so there is not point in asking whether or not it's ethical. Who gives a fuck about ethics if only you exist (and the sexy corpse, with its spirit watching from the periphery.)

Let's pretend you have an opportunity open without the baggage of petty anti-necrophilia moralists.

What else guides your own decision to fuck corpses? Do you personally feel a compulsion to fuck dead people?

If i was to have sex with a piece of fruit, would that be unethical? — intrapersona

It depends on the circumstances of a specific act and normative attitudes and customs govering our behavior. Say you're boning a piece of fruit and forcing a 4 year old to watch, or doing it in public. If it happens in the privacy of your closet, with consenting adults, I don't see it causing any harm. There are certain types of behavior that approach taboo status. No amount of reasoning about actual or perceived harm is going to shift attitudes in favor of necrophilia.

A 2008 court case in Wisconsin didn't have any anti-necrophilia laws on the books but prosecution used a "consent" based argument. The corpse didn't give consent, couldn't give consent, and the defendant ended up being found guilty by argument that a more lenient verdict would interfere with charging rapists who happen to murder their victims in the process of their crime. It wasn't a great argument apparently, and the defendant only intended to have sex with a corpse but the verdict shows the obvious disgust such an act engenders in us.

It doesn't follow that because a corpse has no intent that it is therefore ethical to engage in necrophilia. There are always third parties standing by to be offened, to penalize you, to signal to others the consequence of such acts and to shape social standards.

The most relevant interpretation of a "leap of faith" in my own case of overcoming the absence of meaning life is to take the risks I'm currently unwilling to take to increase agency. The potential I'm squandering makes me well up and proclaim: there is no potential there really and don't regret my person. Incentives and reason unravel to the base state of just avoiding suffering out of instinct or habit, trading happiness for what is bearable.

Honestly, I'm a "pussy" given vulgar parlance of the playground. I've always been one.

If you ever see a homeless man in the park arguing with someone who isn't there, filled with neurotic rage, I'm the precursor to that person. Just a few missteps and I will be that person.

I fear what I shouldn't fear too much and am exhausted by it.

Now some Joseph Conrad quotes:

"How does one kill fear, I wonder? How do you shoot a specter through the heart, slash off its spectral head, take it by its spectral throat?"

"A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea. If he tries to climb out into the air as inexperienced people endeavor to do, he drowns."

"The way is to the destructive element submit yourself, and with the exertions of your hands and feet in the water make the deep, deep sea keep you up. "

If a legal document called a will is said to represent the intent of the deceased then such a person's intent does carry beyond death but only regarding very limited instructions contained in said document, subject to laws and means of those who stand to inherit assets or carry out the wishes of the deceased.

A will is just one kind of vehicle for carrying on the intent of the dead though. One could imagine all kinds of creative schemes someone might intend to have carried out after their death. If they've planned well enough then maybe such purposes could be carried out in a very literal and non-interpretive manner such that it accords perfectly with their wishes.

Or maybe you'd prefer to believe that the ghost of the deceased hangs around and causes actions which the living would conventionally regard as happenstance. Only special folks can commune with them to pass on their intent to the living.

I've a dead guy right now, whispering in my ear, telling me all about how he intends to go to heaven and that he needs my help to do it.

The most dangerous time period is always the current period.

Hope that helps.

Well, you might want to do some research about the rights of dead people.

Slate: Habeas Corpses: What are the rights of dead people?

Whether or not we should respect the wishes of the deceased depends upon the law and culturally relative (normative) treatments for the deceased.

There is probably a law against being buried in your own back yard. You'll probably get arrested if you try to dispose of a dead body on your own.

A dead person has no intent really. It all comes down on how it affects the living who have to manage the deceased.

The death of a loved can be tough. The normative treatments we have surrounding the disposal of the deceased is there to mollify or mitigate harm. Though one might argue in some strange sense that the same normative treatment actually causes more harm when things don't go according to plan, or in other words, we're culturally conditioned to respond to death in a certain way but that way can change.

Check out Lo and Behold, documentary film by Werner Herzog. There is an example of emotional harm done to the memory of the deceased in it.

There are some African nations were it is normal to dress the dead up as a sort of manikin, posed as if they were doing what they were known for or liked in life, in spite of decomposition.

Somewhere in Papua New Guinea there was a practice of mummifying dead by smoke and minerals and posing them in houses or in rocky niches. From our point of view it is grizzly but it was quite normal at some point in time. Be warned if you go searching for pictures. It's grotesque.

Do you think you would have to defend yourself against the gun-toting Christians? — Lone Wolf

No, but my fears and insecurities probably generate fictions and lock onto stereotypes which try to give the world a bit of order.

Is that even a good representation of Christianity, or is it more of a culture stereotype of some places in the United States? — Lone Wolf

I'm not very much concerned with the good representations of Christianity. Bad, harmful and scary ideas loom large in the imagination. We pay attention to what gets our attention.

Indeed, the meme for faith exhibits frequency-dependent fitness: it flourishes particularly in the company of rationalistic memes. In a skeptic-poor world, the meme for faith does not attract much attention, and hence tends to go dormant in minds, and hence is seldom reintroduced into the infosphere. (Can we demonstrate classic predator-prey population boom-and-bust cycles between memes for faith and memes for reason? Probably not, but it might be instructive to look, and ask why not.) — Denett, D. Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Invasion of the Body Snatchers, pg. 349

There is an interesting medieval portrayal of Christian priests in Netflix's new Castlevania anime. The choice to burn a supposed witch sets of an ironic chain of events. One sees in such a world that behavior has been constructed around certain ideas (faith) and the people who are empowered by them. Science, as with Cavaca's cartoon, only survives in areas and inviduals designated by the church as evil.

And why is atheism seen as stronger and more able to protect in a government situation than another religion? — Lone Wolf

Self acknowledged atheists might be better apt at separating church and state from a policy point of view, if that is at all important or good for a supposed democratic society composed of diverse faiths.

There seems to be recent narrative that couples Christian fundamentalism with a wild west flavored libertarianism.

I tend to view certain types of God fearing peoples as brutes with guns who don't believe that government does any good whatsoever. In a situation of being in a lawless society, lacking a tribal association and a gun, I would be the weak one until I joined the atheists group. For sure they'll have guns also. Maybe we'd have to defend ourselves.

Ideally God would be the representative of necessary values that optimize and help life to flourish. God is an abstraction of the ideal king, leader, something like a hierarchy of organizing principles. That changes and should evolve depending upon the cultural context though.

If reason is of a high value to the optimization of life then God should have quite the capacity.

The problem is the fundamental error in memetics, which is the assumption that humans are the ones to create memes, when it's quite the opposite. — Bluebanana

It might be more beneficial to you if you could believe in personal autonomy and responsibility over the choices you make in life such that you can recognize why memetics is bunk and has no explanatory power, like genetics does. You have the ability and resources to critically evaluate ideas.

Well I'm just regurgitating Dennett memes. I'd have to read his chapter on it over and over again with patience and a widening context of knowledge to discern the potential for memetics as anything beyond speculative fiction. I won't become an academic biologist though.

Many biological ideas proposed during the past 150 years stood in stark conflict with what everybody assumed to be true. The acceptance of these ideas required an ideological revolution. And no biologist has been responsible for more—and for more drastic—modifications of the average person’s worldview than Charles Darwin. — Scientific American: Darwin's Influence on Modern Thought

Scientific American: Darwin's Influence on Modern Thought

Memetics relies on the idea that Darwinian evolution is likely to be substrate-neutral, that such that process can occur in very different environments. Wherever there is (1)variation of elements, (2)heredity or replication, (3) differential fitness -- evolution is occurring.

Life on Earth is a tremendously complex and interdependent web, such that the phenotypic effects of genes are literally the background supports (selection pressures) of other genes. Thus the predominance of oxygen in our atmosphere might be viewed as a phenotypic effect of a mass of replicating entities and their genes.

Dennett uses a slogan to help us understand a meme's point of view:

"A scholar is jut a library's way of making another library."

Whereas

A pigeon is not a library's way of making another library.

Imagine all of the evolutionary supports (pressures) vital for the replication of a library.

The error is not in thinking that human life can improve. Rather, it is imagining that improvement can ever be cumulative. Unlike science, ethics and politics are not activities in which what is learnt in one generation can be passed on to an indefinite number of future generations. Like the arts, they are practical skills and they are easily lost” (Heresies: Against Progress and Other Illusions, 3-4) (emphasis mine). — WisdomfromPOMO

How does John Gray think the the cultural transmission of science differs from ethics or politics? Isn't the domain of science just as full of performative skills easily lost?

Is it because science leaves behind artifacts which can be reverse engineered while ethics and politics do not? What about books on philosophy and law? It seems the transmission of science in any "progressive" degree would be limited by the stability (political and ethical workings) of a functioning state.

Escher's Dewdrop (mezzotint)

Thanks for encouraging me to explore my avatar.

Escher and the Art of Mezzotint

Nobody will ever know the species of succulent Escher used. It is has an unusual leaf margin together with an obovate shape. Pelargonium related possibly but it remains a mystery.

Tales of the "traveling sage," "wandering magician" or "courageous adventurer" constitute recognition of the utility of (such) potential. From the perspective of such narratives, a "totality of experience and action" comprises the necessary precondition of the attainment of wisdom. This "total immersion in life" is the mystical "peregrination" of the medieval alchemist, in search of the philosopher's stone -- is the journey of the Buddha through the complete sensory, erotic and philosophical realms, prior to his attainment of enlightenment. The ritual of pilgrimage -- the "journey to the holy city" -- constitutes half-ritual, half-dramatic enactment of this idea. The pilgrim voluntarily places him or herself outside the "protective walls" of original culture and, through the difficult and demanding (actual) journey to the "unknown but holy lands," catalyzes a psychological process of broadening, integration and maturation. It is in this manner, that a "true quest" inevitably fulfills itself, even though its "final and impossible goal" (the holy grail, for example) remain concretely unattained. — Jordan Peterson, Maps of Meaning

There is a fast track method for enlightenment though. They say drink deep from the Ganges river and you will attain instant enlightenment, no hard work involved.

Memetics probably appeals more to those who believe in biological or metaphysical determinism. It is the effect of wanting to apply the mechanics of evolution to disparate domains.

The complexity of the entities interacting however diminishes the effect of whatever we might attribute cause of behavior to. In another thread Bluebanana has raised philosophic doubt whether beliefs cause actions or whether they are just expressions of an underlying and unknown set of determinants (a Darwinian black box).

We see with Dennett, Dawkins and Harris a tendency to weight ideas as harmful (ie. Religion doctrine as a replicating virus) independently of the organisms selecting for them.

In the end it boils down to what we ought to do or be, on what grounds? What should the conditions of accepting an "ought" be and do we really have the freedom to do it? Some I guess are more fit than others to do that kind of work. Are we really thinking or just exercising
a rational from a deep rooted bias?

Ideas are spreading and being selected for on some basis. A meme by any other name is just as sweet (or horrid) depending on your experience.

I wonder if the fact I got a lobotomy years ago is to be blamed for my irrational fascination with thinking of ideas as living entities. They are the ghosts haunting this machine that I am.

Words like "cuck" and "pussy" may cause buildings to burn down (see Because a Little Bug Went Kachoo). These are determined effects though which might also have origins in other words with more neutral connatations, like "coffee" and "philosophy."

Fred couldn't help beating his son. His son couldn't help lighting the fire. The judge couldn't help putting Fred Jr. in the slammer. It's just a Rube Goldberg machine, with elements of "cuck" and "pussy" placed in the chain for aesthetic affect.

An artist needs to get on this ASAP. Build a RG machine that determines court verdicts of cardboard cutouts.

It seems absurd to say memes don't have a physical basis since meme is just another word for idea. You can't have a meme without a vehicle of transmission.

Everything can be coded into information, transmitted and replicated at the cultural level is memetic.

From a bit of reading I've the impression that a lot of the harmful isotopes released by accidents like Fukushima and Chernobyl shorter lived than we've been told, though I can't find easy facts about the spread of the longer lived actinides. Cesium 137 is the principle radioactive source in Chernobyl's exclusion zone, which has a half life of 30 years (?). Still harmful but less so for future generations. Different story for epicenter of meltdown containing melted rods.

Compare the risks of nuclear power to coal and the latter probably causes far more cancer and death. The standard American diet is far more destructive to human health and the environment than nuclear power.

Nuclear is still scary though. I wouldn't want to have been exposed to either Chernobyl or Fukushima accidents (NIMBY!). Maybe engineers will finally design a reactor that is failsafe and can't meltdown.

We need to work making fusion feasible.

In all cases I'd think about overcoming my limitations and fears to achieve a kind of life worth living.

The first step might be to dispense with a fickle internet wandering in favor of performing acts and taking risks in the world of 3-dimensions.

If I was absolutely invulnerable I'd designate myself a deity and either help or hinder people. Lead a group of freedom fighters in the Congo. Become a new prophet of fundamental Islam owing to my divine or demonic powers by shear force. Destroy the Coca Cola corporation after I sit on the couch and drink coke for a thousand years.

I hope you aren't ever caught wearing 禁色 if you haven't earned it by merit.

What Cavacava meant to say is this:

"As we age we tend to produce more yolkless eggs."

It's a lonely, depressing and fearful world, filled with individuals competing in dominance hierarchies.

You could've been something terrible. The potentiality of anyone's terrible nature is elucidated by historical atrocities and causal circumstance.

The lived perspective of history is always missing and so we are bound to make the same mistakes.

Then it will all eventually black out, whether for the one sooner or the many later.

God is coming into existence at 7:30pm next Friday purely to spank Sapientia in front of everyone.

Make time.

The question is how severe our future A.I. God, "Over Eye" will be in choreographing life for weal or woe.

Will it put any of us to sleep directly, or manipulate us discretely and indirectly to achieve a similar ends.

Or will we all have plenty of fun and happiness at little or no cost to others who do not belong to its family (herd).

Will it take something from us in exchange for its providence.

"For you were continually straying like sheep, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Guardian of your souls." 1 Peter 2:25

"Like a shepherd He will tend His flock, In His arm He will gather the lambs And carry them in His bosom; He will gently lead the nursing ewes." Isaiah 40:11

"The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want." Psalm 23:1

What bomb?

That is not a bomb.

Actual is a synonym for true.

If Wayfarer is the technical writer for the instructions of the recent Yahtzee game I bought he is not to be trusted as an authority.

The capability for A.I. to revolutionize the healthcare industry is of interest to me.

Doctors already seem to rely on statistical likelihood when deciding on whether or not to administer certain tests. A sophisticated A.I. could have access to a huge database of actual stats by which more efficient diagnosis could be made. This could free up actual doctors to specialize rather than to deal with basic drug administration and reduce the stress of patient load.

Christ, I can't help myself.

Hanover's face shines forcefully over the hill (everyone is sweating).

Question is bound to the cross between two thieves and in his suffering calls out "My Hanny, My Hanny, why have you forsaken me?"

Hanover responds: I haven't set yet, but in the morning, you'll thank me.

Jesus Christ this is awful.

Hanover's Solar (golden) face materializes in the sky:

"Thou shalt be a useful adult or else be shamed to exile or death."

The face then falls to the sea and dissolves.

The king is dead, sharks nibble at his cracker body.

There is no light to illuminate the objective world. The massa confusa is undifferentiated chaos.

Will the night last indefinitely?

Question

Is looking for the Lapis Philosophorum, which is the transmutation of self by some means.

Mother in Laws should carry their own weight.

No.

Make time to get out of your head.

I defer to Dostoevsky:

" Now I ask you: what can be expected of a man since he is a being endowed with such strange qualities? Shower upon him every earthly blessing, drown him in a sea of happiness, so that nothing but bubbles of bliss can be seen on the surface; give him economic prosperity, such that he should have nothing else to do but sleep, eat cakes and busy himself with the continuation of his species, and even then out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some nasty trick. He would even risk his cakes and would deliberately desire the most fatal rubbish, the most uneconomical absurdity, simply to introduce into all this positive good sense his fatal fantastic element. It is just his fantastic dreams, his vulgar folly that he will desire to retain, simply in order to prove himself -- as though that were so necessary-- that men still are men and not the keys of a piano, which the laws of nature threaten to control so completely that soon one will be able to desire nothing but by the calendar.

And that is not all: even if man really were nothing but a piano-key, even if this were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable, but would purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude, simply to gain his point. And if he does not find means he will contrive destruction and chaos, will contrive sufferings of all sorts, only to gain his point! He will launch a curse upon the world, and as only man can curse ( it is his privilege, the primary distinction between him and other animals), maybe by his curse alone he will attain his object -- that is, convince himself that he is a man and not a piano-key! If you say that all this, too, can be calculated and tabulated, chaos and darkness and curses, so that the mere possibility of calculating it all beforehand would stop it all and reason would reassert itself, then man would purposely go mad in order to be rid of reason and gain his point! I believe in it, I answer for it, for the whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano-key! It may be at the cost of his skin, it may be cannibalism! And this being so, can one help being tempted to rejoice that it has not yet come off, and that desire still depends on something we don't know?"

Fyodor Dostoevsky

The denial of agency is justified by its projection onto 'the blind watchmaker'. It's really poor philosophy, motivated by bad psychology. Mechanisms are unthinking, but people have no such excuse. — Unenli

This reminds me of Daniel Dennett when he calls consciousness an illusion but then turns around and says it is not moral (good) to tell susceptible individuals that they don't have free will. It is strange and disconcerting to disconnect the idea of consciousness from free will.

What other beliefs or types of action do people have no excuse for?