This AI art generation is terribly addictive. Though I feel bad for artist now, whose images are being referenced for generation just because they exist online. Apparently we're free to monetize these generated images.

Twas brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe. — T Clark

Are you implying what I said is just nonsense. Why not just say so explicitly.

The character or mode of thought of a bigot; obstinate and unreasonable attachment to a particular creed, opinion, practice, ritual, or party organization; excessive zeal or warmth in favor of a party, sect, or opinion; intolerance of the opinions of others. — T Clark

Sounds like all humans are naturally bigots by this definition. There are any number of non-harmful(?) ways of being which will elicit intolerance of others with appeal to what is (sub)culturally normal.

I like where you're going with this. — Agent Smith

Not sure where this is going. You've yet to elaborate.

Are you drawing a connection between what perceived social status confers on the value of a compliment? The saddest person might have then have extremely low status for you. So like a girl in the movie Mean Girls, you say on reception of said compliment from notoriously sad Megan: "Ewwww, Megan, go join the pigs in the cafeteria, and stop insulting me with your gross ass compliments. You'll never be our friend."

So they'd remain silent, because they know their compliment would be wrongly construed as an insult by their peers. But why? Because so and so said so, thinks so?

And in their silence they'd further suffer/indulge in their sadness for failing to try at all because they know what others think.

Or they'd land the compliment and the burden of their sadness would lift, but not so much more than the weight of a needle on a camel's back.

Maybe the saddest figure would not be able to speak anyway. The prospect of will and motion would be too sad... or so sad as transcend/dissolve any self recognition of sadness. The attribution would come from second and third parties and the internal state of the "sad" person might be ineffable.

"Look how sad that guy is?"

"That isn't a sad guy, that's a catatonic statue, lost in the bliss of oblivion."

"Sad from my point of view and from the Queen's. RIP. There is poo all over him and that's sad."

I suppose because faces are always front and center of a general portrait and hands/appendages are often hidden and more complex for 3D rotation, could explain why the AI messes up appendages more often than faces. I'd be impressed if one could generate what passes for an anatomically correct hand on this app.



Perfect Hand



Anatomically Correct Hand

Gothic Kabuki Theater



Japanese Print Autumn

There is much thanks to give for the luck of not suffering what we could've suffered by pure cosmic incident. There is much thanks to give that life is transitory also, that all will pass away. Death washes away intolerable/insufferable memory/circumstance.

A photon moving at light speed experiences no passage of time — jgill

The mathematics of Special Relativity tells us that as a reference frame moves at ever higher speeds, its space contracts ever smaller and its time becomes ever slower, relative to the stationary observer. In the limit that its speed approaches the speed of light in vacuum, its space shortens completely down to zero width and its time slows down to a dead stop. Some people interpret this mathematical limit to mean that light, which obviously moves at the speed of light, experiences no time because time is frozen. But this interpretation is wrong. This limiting behavior simply tells us that there is no valid reference frame at the speed of light. A reference frame that has exactly zero spatial width and exactly zero time elapsing is simply a reference frame that does not exist. If an entity is zero in every way we try to describe it, how can we possibly say that the entity exists in any meaningful way? We can't. — Dr. Christopher S. Baird

Why is time frozen from light's perspective?

I still don't understand how something that is moving relative to something else can't experience change. No light in the universe is moving.... because it is traveling at the speed of light... but it isn't traveling at the speed of light... because it isn't moving. WTF?

Light doesn't exist from its own reference frame?! Seems as preposterous as saying light doesn't doesn't experience change from it's own perspective.

The practice/occurrence of retributive justice is where empathy often may not align with one's purported morality.

Does the punishment fit the crime/injury? Our personal/collective empathy for the victim/perpetrator might override a more enlightened constraint in dealing out punishments.

Our sportslike fevor in the arena of seeing who is good versus evil gets in the way thinking about what our moral acts ought to be.

All occasions of empathy might be moral issue in a sense, if it is important to be morally aware of the consequences of that empathy.

Circular Time: It's all going to just happen again for the very first time (like a virgin).

you have no logical reason to stop me from hammering a toothpick under your fingernail. — Leftist

That might depend on what you project your future circumstances to be in relation to others. Do you foresee consequences to your actions of actually hammering a toothpick under someone's fingernail? Do you have any logical reason to give against hammering a nail into your own hand? Why doesn't the future concern whether such action is reasonable with regard to what you want the future to be like?

We're social animals, our welfare heavily dependent on complex social exchanges of quid pro quo moral conduct. We're not crocodiles (though you could pretend to be like one to your own probable ruin).

There may be no ultimate moral facts (sanctified/enforced by a monotheist philosopher God's favor/retribution ) but there are relative moral facts/claims of a consensus or majority.

And certainly the king shouldn't be nearly helpless. — TiredThinker

In your case you'd probably prefer that the game ends quicker, so a slow and helpless king can't elude death by running all over the board.

But what would the point be?

The kings are too fat
From much lamprey pie and ale
And sit all day long.

They strategize on
Giant war maps of the world
Defending the realm,

Trying not to die
By hand of bishop or knight
Pawn, queen or archer.

They'd rather leave on
Their own terms, playing chess and
Listening to jazz.

Jazz is perfectly fine. — TiredThinker

Are you sure about this? Jazz is strong supporting evidence against living for some antinatalists.

When the songs of creation are just Jazz, how can one sleep through the night?

More importantly, who is wrong about what and have they been sufficiently disabused by peer review/pressure. Can they get the cane? Or is humiliation of being called out as a wrong doer enough.

Is that pro re nata? Or are you trying to tell us you look at porn first thing in the morning.

SCANDALOUS!

Taking the/a piss?

It's that obvious, eh? Can you elaborate further or is this THE END? — Agent Smith

It's just a humble prescription. Sing to yourself, hypnotize yourself, to try and be at ease. One of many possibilities to start the morning with.

You have to start you day with either A) Music or B) Meditation or C) Musical Mediation, unless you're too hyped on coffee and cigs or have to do real work.

You just sit on your butt in the morning and start to hypnotize/self-soothe yourself with song/poetry. Yoga Mundra -- Ahhhhhhhhohhhhhhhhhhhhhmmmmmm with western melodic variation and hypnotic suggestion.

Until bam! one day you're liberated from the feeling that you have to always do what you never want to do. Then you'll get to do all the things that must be done while feeling joy.

Wind batters the peak
A leap of faith from its ledge
Downward rush, I fall

I've done this before
From bluff, tree and building tall
I've wings for a bird.

Surf the current up
Higher than that mountain's top
Into the sun's light.

________

Bam! Lightenment

As the sun lightens the dawn,

Bam! Lightenment.

:snicker:

Brew some tea or coffee.

Take out the guitar and exercise chord family progressions, learn some scales and practice a song or two.

Get on the philosophy forum first and ruminate about our terrible future.

______

“Music is a moral law. It gives a soul to the Universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness, gaiety and life to everything. It is the essence of order, and leads to all that is good and just and beautiful.” - Plato

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6837438/

According to this the side of stroke or aneurysm doesn't change prognosis that much. — TiredThinker

I'm just regurgitating what I've think I've heard from McGilchrist. Also I'm not sure that this study is comprehensive enough to establish the behavioral/psychological differences/problems between folks with substantial brain damage between hemispheres. It doesn't seem like behavior is a factor at all in this study and how it it is possibly linked to 'favorable outcomes'. I don't know the significance of what they are really measuring in this link.

Perhaps the State is all that holds them from returning to some state of nature, like beasts. This bothers me because if the State were to collapse tomorrow, it is those that need to be governed that the rest of us would have to watch out for. — NOS4A2

That is why you better start prepping NOS. Get a lot of guns and know how to use them. It's gonna be a major investment now but it will be worth it when you need to acquire/take resources in a world in which all proof of ownership is forfeit. You'll have to defend your property through violence (you'll be your own police/governor).

The world isn't fair with a functional state nor is it fair in its absence. The grass is not greener on the other side of the fence. It's soaked with blood.

It's not over until the fat lady sings, oui mon ami? — Agent Smith

Unless you've seen this opera before, we can't assume that there is only one fat lady singing. If I was librettist, my opera might be composed of only fat ladies, singing for hours and hours and hours (perhaps days).

They say statistically is far better to have an aneurysm in your left hemisphere than your right because of the right hemisphere's powers of global contextuality. The damaged brain is better at re-adapting/re-wiring with help from a healthy right hemisphere than the reversed.

One wonders how culture might preference/modify/evolve laterialized brain activity. This is all taken up by Iain McGilchrist's work but it is probably all highly speculative. You are permitted to dismiss it as bullshit if you like (you do you).

Mr. Leland was a bit addicted to oxycodone, by the happenstance of a past injury, and with his new found wealth he would easily enter into a downward spiral of further drug abuse and self-destruction. After his death his remaining family would become splintered and embittered over a long fight for the inheritance of what some called 'the cursed bullion of Leland'.

Mr. Dean meanwhile loved nothing more than the humble walkabout thrill of combing landscapes with his metal detector and little terrier dog, Boo.

The Earth is sometimes locally flat, yes.

But it is never perfectly flat! Is it? How do we measure flatness empirically?

Oh gawd! Maybe no thing is flat.

Process #1. — 180 Proof

:ok:

The question doesn't make sense to me. — Agent Smith

Why would you glue a glass back together instead of shaking it back together?

It might be a koan if you ponder a bit over technical constraints but to shake a box for gazillions of years would take up a lot of energy which would disperse a lot of thermal radiation compared to the other options. And there ain't no recouping that thermal radiation lost to do useful work, unless you've got a lot of super sensitive nano sterling engines or thermal radiation cells, shifting electrons along a chain, driving your mechanism to shake the box. Even then a fraction of the energy is lost/unavailable to do work.

Guess it's best to get gluing, Mr. Smith. Hopefully the glass owner won't notice all the fracture lines.

A simple example of entropy is a shattered wine glass. — Agent Smith

As punishment for breaking that expensive glass, you have a few options: 1) shake the glass pieces in a box until they reassemble into the wine glass 2) melt the glass back into a wine glass shape 3) glue the wine glass back.

Which process increases the most amount of entropy (wasted/dispersed energy)?

When Trump sells James Madison's crystal flute after the next American civil war, Lizzo's playing of the flute will have added to its selling value.

Maybe the heaven dome's populace is composed entirely of Sentinelese tribe members, except for one Christian missionary...

The scenario would be interesting if penetrating the domes meant death for everyone, like if they were under the sea.

Would those in the hell dome be less cautious with respect to getting out and what possible mechanisms would be available for them to infer the real risk of breaking the dome.

The parameters are not given. Just changing a few variables might demonstrate drastic differences between experiments. For example: What is it like outside of the dome? What if both domes have plenty of explosives laying around?

Sounds like a concept for a new edition of Sim City.

There is no correlation between reproductive organs/chromosomes/hormones and gender identity. — Susu

This sounds like the politically correct take perhaps but how do you justify/support it outside of that.

If hormones change facial characteristics and facial characteristics might determine whether others see you as a man or woman, don't hormones then influence gender identity. Why is personal gender identification sacrosanct when so many other aspects of myself are mediated externally by what other people believe. Why do people take hormones to transition (to gain the features associated with biological sex) if gender has nothing to do with hormones?

I'm confused.

What's the proof for premise 1? — Agent Smith

:up: I saw some good replies to your main thread about Agrippa's trilemma.

It's self-evident for Descartes. No proof needed. I still just don't see how the cogito serves as an epistemic foundation for Descartes when there so much more that needs to be taken at self-evident/axiomatic to even attempt to argue or philosophize. What else constrains Descartes doubting? To question/doubt on the basis of needing a proof already presumes were resting on/using functional axioms... but maybe he assumes we don't need to doubt those things either.

Just because Descartes can't doubt that he doubts (he cannot doubt the doubter, so there is a doubter), how does that serve as a certain foundation for anything, when there is everything else he could doubt or find self-evident before constructing his philosophy. It's seemingly not much to stand on compared to everything else he is already standing on (the assumed/unspoken laws thought/logic). But maybe he said as much.

His emphasis seemed to be on human DNA and less on sentients and the soul. — TiredThinker

What does DNA have to do with a pro-life stance? Was the priest trying to explain which scenarios make abortion permissible (if DNA abnormality shows soul won't stick to the fetus and the mother is at expected risk), or the threshold at which most abortion is impermissible (when chromosomes combine from germ cell fusion)?

I brought up the topic of beastiality and if a viable abomination should be kept alive. — TiredThinker

From standpoint of Catholics who believe in the literal miracles of God and the anti-miracles of Satan, it's possibly a relevant but impolite troll.

Are we not descendants of Cain, the envious murderer, inheritors of original sin, beastly in those aspects that deny everyone grace and dignity?

Why can't Satan cause virgin births, or induce holy bastards?

Who can discern what is true evil, if the entire Church is possibly the grip of Satans lie and we are tainted? What hope do we have if the God we've been exposed to by the artifice of men is the greatest of deceivers.

In that case, Catholics might really be unwitting Satanists. Who can know for sure...

Satan's pro-life stance is a kind or propaganda that belies his cunning pro-death drive. All the souls of those dead mothers and fetuses, denied life saving treatment due to terrible policy, will be made into cereal for the rich denizens of hell (or heaven or whatever).

contradiction of anatta & cogito ergo sum — Agent Smith

Maybe what Descartes meant was: thought arises and this cannot be denied (thought=thought). If no thought could arise, no selective ordering of recurring memories, on what basis could we construct/refer/reflect self?

Seems like he could easily fit in with the no self Buddhists, if he can refrain from his favorite foundationalist pastime. If no thought (or no unity/relations of thought), then no (illusory/abstract) self.

_______

Silly fiction...

Descartes awoke in a panic, hands pulling at the cuff of his nightgown. Am I mad. This elusive demon is tormenting me with doubt and how will I think and be from fear? What if I fall through the floor into a pit of pikes? What if the fleas around here have bubonic plague? What if those whores gave me syphilis? I think I'll just stay in bed until woken by a new absurdity. Descartes curled up under his heavy woolen blanket and closed his eyes. Mind, you must stop these sadistic fancies, tuned up by terror and paranoia. Why can't I doubt in moderation? Have I no free will?

"As Gregor Samsa (formerly Rene Descartes) awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect." ~Kafka (The Evil Demon as Author)

Can anyone please improve upon this scenario. — Agent Smith

Descartes walks into a pub, gets a beer and is kindly mocked by a fellow pubgoer: "I drink, therefore I am." (Bibo, ergo sum)

Soon thereafter Descartes found himself peeing on the wall outside, muttering to himself: "I take the piss, therefore I am."

Later that night Descartes dreamed of the Evil Demon, who looked a spitting image of Descartes except for the lurid glint in its eyes. "I'm sorry to feed you these doubts, my friend, but as a demon I know the truth of the matter. You must stop thinking or terrible things are going to happen to you." Evil Descartes took a gun from his pocket and waived it around. "You thought and therefore I might shoot... I see your fear. To kill is a thrill for me I must admit, second only to fomenting unreasonable doubts. The truth or... lie, is that this is a dream you're dreaming. Fortunately, for you at least, you dream therefore you are, Descartes."

Descartes woke up to find he had wet his bed.

My half-complete solution to Agrippa's trilemma follows. — Agent Smith

Why can't we just be fine with the dogmatic horn of the trilemma. Axioms (provisional laws of thought) are the foundation for inferential knowledge.

You have faith in axioms. :clap:

Nitrogen isn't toxic to drink? — TiredThinker

Considering it (the gas, triple bonded N2) makes up 78% of the air you breath by volume, I sure hope not.

Said the Buddha to a monk: "It is imperative that you realize that I haven't said anything that you don't already know."

The monk replied: "Is that because you haven't said anything?"

Buddha: "I've said plenty, have you not been listening? Do you feel unsatisfied with all that I've said to you?"

Monk: "Yes, I'm unsatisfied with your self-help. I found this new book called 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson and I feel that it tells me things I do not already know, all the things you've told me I already know, which I thought I didn't know once."

Buddha: "Ok, you do you. But if you come back I'll shut up and you can shut up and we'll both shut up together for a moment non-judgemental awareness Samadhi. Then for a moment at least we won't know that we know that we know nothing about what we don't remember because I haven't brought it up.... Have you been drinking? You stink like a keg..."

Monk: "My brother had his birthday yesterday. Yes, I've had a few."

Buddha: "Just remember what you already know about that and you should be ok."

Monk: "My dad and my grandpa are chronic alcoholics."

Buddha: "Tell them to come to my AA group."

Monk: "Yes, I know."