As for wisdom - most of the really wise I have known have not been big readers. They have tended to have a disposition that allows for accumulating wisdom directly through personal experience. — Tom Storm

Do you mean those people were confident?

Other people? This implies that the fetus is a person. — RogueAI

No. It's about the intention to kill. I've been talking about it all along.

And what if the mother's life is at stake or we're dealing with a rape victim?

These are statistical minorities.

The vast majority of abortions are simply advanced contraception measures. In old sex education books, abortion was actually listed in the chapter on contraceptives.

You would prohibit abortion in those cases too?

*sigh*
Abortion debates typically suffer from a lack of precision.

I see little problem with aborting pregnancies due to rape or concerns for the wellbeing of the prospective mother or child. Those are just unfortunate situations.

It's abortions that are simply advanced contraception measures that are morally problematic.

The other big problem is equating the two categories, as if aborting in a case of, for example, preeclampsia, were somehow no different than aborting in the case of failed contraception.

That's why I suggested we should treat existence as a political committee would,

putting a moratorium on it until we understand why we trudge forth,

but do this analysis unflinchingly, without the poetic cliches. — schopenhauer1

It's just that people usually die before they figure this out. The moratorium you speak of is indefinite.

The fact that we exist is something over which we have no control, it precedes us. As such, we have no say over its meaning. To try to figure out why we exist or why life is worth living and to make this a matter of decision is like trying to choose one's parents. That is, it's irrational, it cannot be done.

Let me ask you this- do you see ways of practically handling the situation that is not based on ideas of a spiritual nature (karma, dharma, etc.)? — schopenhauer1

The problem of "existential anxiety" only ever exists precisely in reference to religions and spiritualities, old and more recent.
It's inconceivable otherwise.

One cannot even suffer unless one has some beliefs about "how life and the world should be", and those beliefs are informed by religions and spiritualities, however vaguely and however (im)precisely delivered to an individual person via acculturation.

So for a modern mainstream psychologist, there is no such thing as "existential anxiety", only "chemical imbalances in the brain" and other "disorders" and "mental illnesses". For such psychologists, the solution is primarily medication, and then talk therapy, aimed toward basically seeing oneself as a biomechanical robot.

In order to solve the problem of suffering and existential anxiety, one first needs to figure out where one got the very concepts of "suffering" and "existential anxiety" to begin with and why one is taking them for granted.

Where in the world is there a place where people won’t kill other people? In the United States the federal death penalty applies in all 50 states and U.S. territories. There was around 20k murders in the U.S. last year. — praxis

So much for the social contract ...

Abortion erodes social trust, like I sketched out above.
As does adultery or any other crime.

But perhaps you want to go all Rand/Thatcher and declare there is no society and everyone is solely responsible for themselves?

Under the current state of geopolitical affairs, there's no conceivable reason why Europe and Russia should be thinking about war, — Tzeentch

Exactly.

so what on earth are our politicians doing?

Indulging in the results of many decades of Russophobia.

Pointing the finger at Russia (and China and South Korea) in order to detract attention from their own misdeeds. (Because, apparently, nothing makes one as innocent as casting the first stone.)

What are the implications? — praxis

Like I said right away in the post you're quoting:

"If someone is willing to kill even their own unborn children, then how can they be counted on that they won't kill other people?" — baker

I would say there's a fundamental difference between ending a clump of cell's life and an adult human's life. They are plainly not hte same thing. — AmadeusD

But the intention for doing either is the same: destroying someone, acting in a way so that someone would not exist.
When and how are just practical matters, whether it takes a gun, a rope, a scalpel, chemicals, etc.

The reason people have abortions is to prevent that "clump of cells" developing and being born a human person.
People don't have abortions merely to remove a "clump of cells". They remove that "clump of cells" precisely because it has the potential of becoming a person, and it's the person they want not to exist.

Who is blind? — tim wood

You said earlier:

the ignorant (which includes all of us) — tim wood

If all of us are ignorant, then who is going to teach us? The ignorant?

And authoritarian misses the mark. What I'm about is some minimum degree responsibility and accountability

Responsibility and accountability toward whom? The ignorant?

I say we should have them, and where folks deny them,

to impose them.

Ie. authoritarianism.

The way that I think we need to deal with the definition of "post-truth" is that it's not about the perpetrators of lies, manipulations, deception, disinformation or misinformation etc.

It is rather about the inability to decipher them as doing such. — Christoffer

Not at all. It's natural for people to take sides, it's a necessity of survival to do so, and survival takes precedence over everything else. But maladapted idealists don't see this.

There is no such thing as a ‘Post Truth’ era, except as a fabrication of the media based on partisan politics. Ideological combatants throughout history have accused each other of falsification. — Joshs

Agreed. And the polarization is due to economic pressures, not ideology.

I don't disagree, but what distinguishes the Post Truth era is which entities qualify as "what should be trusted". — LuckyR

That's a problem right there: trust cannot be a matter of "should".

Trust requires time and effort on both sides. But many people want to force it, expect it to be unilateral, even that it is someone's duty to trust a particular other.

Education for the ignorant (which includes all of us), and appropriate penalties for liars. "Appropriate" meaning penalties that will strongly disincentivize lying. — tim wood

The blind leading the blind, the blind judging the blind?

You don't see just how authoritarian you are.

Us ordinary citizens can't do a lot about that, of course, but the only antidote to lies is truth and the hope that others will heed it. — Wayfarer

Not at all. Vote with your wallet. The question is, whether you're willing to do that.

why they think banning abortion is the right thing to do. — Samlw

"If someone is willing to kill even their own unborn children, then how can they be counted on that they won't kill other people?"

This, as far as I can reconstruct, is the concern that is actually behind some of the disapproval of abortion, although I've never heard it directly voiced like this (which is not surprising, given the content).

This also explains why anti-abortionists generally don't have a problem with capital punishment -- it's killing innocents that ix wrong, but not criminals. And also why they are in favor of firearm possession -- it's for personal protection, as they fear for their lives, living among those who are casually willing to kill even their own, innocent children.

Most abortion debates get nowhere because they're focusing on the personhood status of the unborn or the lack of such status, rather than looking at the intention for abortion and the implications of such intention.

I'm evolving to a belief that as they try to subdue opposition in waves of lies,

we best return by insisting on truth and challenging the lies. — tim wood

To people who understand nothing that is less than lethal force?

amoeba aren’t aware that they’re aware. The burden of self awareness only begins to appear with much more highly developed organisms. — Wayfarer

The same type of reasoning has been used to justify discrimination against women, children, the poor, the sick, those of the wrong skin color, those "with too much dust in their eyes", those of the wrong religion, and then some.

You misinterpret me. — schopenhauer1

I didn't even interpret you.

First off, I am proposing an even more extreme version in the Schopenhauer brand of asceticism. I am claiming that in his version, even the Middle Way of the (Buddhist- Theravadans or otherwise), is not enough. Rather, that in his conception, whereby Will is extricabley tied up on physical existence, I see no way that the ascetic is physiologically still alive after their "grace" of salvation (spiritual redemption into non-being). It seems in his way, even the monk is not going to get there.

Schopenhauer didn't believe in rebirth and didn't see the problem with it, did he?



See here on the Buddhist idea of the cause of suffering and how to end it:
https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/AN/AN10_92.html

And here an excerpt of the relevant text from the above link with easier to read formatting:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/12050/page/p1

This isn't about reaching people, it's about dismantling an ideology or behavior /.../ — Christoffer

How do you propose to "/dismantle/ an ideology or behavior" without reaching people?

You can write a book where you "/dismantle/ an ideology or behavior" all you want, but if people don't read your book or don't heed it, how have you accomplished anything?

To be fair, the most common view for almost anything is "balance". I'm actually bucking that advise with what you may call "black-and-white" thinking. It's extreme and unsettling (when we usually think in terms of common advise terms like Golden Mean-type / Taoist koan "balance" or modern self-help stock strategies) for sure, not necessarily wrong. — schopenhauer1

The "middle way" is probably one of the most misunderstood terms when referring to Buddhism. For old-school Theravadans, the "middle way" actually means living a monk's life -- with eating only one meal a day, wearing only robes, not engaging in sex, and all the other rules of a monk's life.

For those Buddhists, death alone doesn't solve anything (regardless whether it's by starvation or gunshot wound). It's rebirth that needs to be ended, in order to end suffering.

Even the calculative aspect of selection you speak of already sets the stage prior to the engagement. — schopenhauer1

Only for someone with a too fragile ego.

The politically correct madness has reached the point where we aren't supposed to distinguish between a sociopath and a person with a strong character.

@Wayfarer
"Yeah! Hate wins! Lies, division and dishonesty carry the day. Don't it make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, Baker?"

It's not Trump's fault that you're a maladapted idealist.
Brouhaha!

That is to say, the best some might be able to do is limit engagements, not completely eliminate them. — schopenhauer1

But there is better than merely limiting engagements (while thinking eliminating engagements altogether would be best): to prioritize them according to one's values in life.

In modern politcally correct culture, it's not acceptable to be ruthlessly selective in whom one associates with and for what purpose. And yet anyone who has ever achieved anything great has been doing just that: being ruthlessly selective in whom one associates with and for what purpose.

That being said, I claim that the best course of action in almost all cases as a human to comport with the best life, is to live a life of withdrawal. — schopenhauer1

And yet it appears to be possible to come up with such a set of values and goals, and thus priorities, accompanied by sufficient pride, that the vicissitudes of life are a minimal problem or source of suffering. This way, one is still engaged with the world (and not minimally), and yet doesn't suffer. Pride and priorities.


It's telling that people generally prefer to think in black and white, all or nothing terms, rather than reconceptualizing the situation entirely.

So, at the moment, I'm thinking self transcendence is an ego-stroking mind game. — ucarr

Or a way to control the weak and gullible into submission and generosity.

"You should transcend yourself ang give me your hard earned money so that I can live comfortably" is basically the message of all those religious/spiritual people who teach that one should transcend oneself.

I think withdrawal being counterintuitive is similar to other counterintuitive things. You might not see on the surface that withdrawing leads to greater happiness.. You become content with yourself and you will see the tremendous amounts of strife in interactions. As with withdrawing from a drug, at first it seems to be quite the opposite, until one becomes simply content. — schopenhauer1

Sure, withdrawing is fine and "leads to greater happiness" as long as someone else is paying your bills (such as in the case of Buddhist monks), or at least as long as your job is comfortable enough and you can earn money with relative ease.

But if such is not the case, one has to stay in the rat race, and be a rat, or be defeated.

Let's see how long it will take for the gullible voters to realize that Trump doesn't give a shit about them. — Christoffer

I doubt many Trump voters actually count on Trump doing anything for them. Because the worldview of these people is typically rugged individualism. I surmise they see Trump as a role model, as a type of person they themselves aspire to be. They don't see him as a father figure or someone who will help them, they despise such figures.

That just erodes truth more into the post-truth environment that makes people unable to know what is true and facts. We've already seen what catering to populist rhetoric to counter populists is doing to society... giving birth to more populists.

Fighting fire with fire needs to stop. There has to be a movement that rejects post-truth ideologies. — Christoffer

Philosophers should know better than to try to reach people through arguments.

Most people respond to (perceived) status, not to arguments. Respect for power is paramount.

(This is true even in academia. Just imagine a student majoring in philosophy daring to disagree on a claim made by her professor in a lecture. This amounts to risking failing the exam.)

The majority respond to populist, easy answers. They're not going to understand or want to hear complicated proposals that aren't going to give them everything they want. So the side that gives them what they want is the side that is going to win. — Michael

I don't think this is what is actually going on, at least it's not the complete picture (although I find it highly pertinent to explore why some people think this way).

Rather, I find most people operate by the priciples of socioeconomic hierarchy. That is, they listen only to those they consider higher than themselves. Most people are not convinced by arguments, but by the other person's status (as they interpret it).

Saying, for example, "Who do you think you are that you think you're even allowed to talk to me, when I make ten times as much as you do??!!" sums up this principle very well.

It's a pragmatic cognitive heuristic that safeguards a person's internal consistency in terms of the thusly selected input from others that they allow into their lives.

I've been holding my breath for 4 years to tell you, I told you so!!!!

I would also take with the grain of salt the above graphs that I represented of what the actually tell us. — ssu

The actually relevant questions should be something like,
When people read, what are they actually reading?
Should reading a play by Shakespeare count the same as reading a modern Scandinavian thriller?

In the computer learning scenario you describe above, people read things mostly just once and have to work with that,
— baker
Why? Once you've downloaded something, it's available all the time. You can go back to it, or parts of it, as often as you need to. — Vera Mont

Like I said, I'm talking about the computer learning scenario described in the OP. Those electronic didactic texts are not permanently available. If they are of the question and answer type, you need to start the session all over if you want to reread something. Depending on the program, of course. The idea of digital learning is that a person is supposed to read a text once, answer questions based on it, thus learn what is required, and then never look at the text again.

The idea that has permeated the public school system for the last hundred years or so (depending on the country) was that all children should get the same basic education. Which meant that all children, regardless of their socioeconomic background, should read Homer and Shakespeare etc., study history in detail, mathematics to considerable intricacy etc., ie. the classical educational canon.
— baker
I haven't seen much of that. Usually, the complexity and sophistication of the material is graded: basic levels of every subject in the early grades; heavier subject matter and more choice in the later ones. It's actually okay for the plebes to read Shakespeare - that's the audience he was writing for.

Look at the part of my previous post you're quoting here that I bolded.

See, such are the effects of reading stuff from screens. People easily miss out on what is right in front of them.

From the perspective of a secure attachment to a religious view, nihilism will seem deplorable, but not experienced as any kind of direct or indirect threat to oneself.
— baker

Sure. But you can still be critical of it from a philosophical perspective. — Wayfarer

Said Tom Storm:

Most of my days are filled with joy despite my position that life is inherently without meaning. Perhaps it's because I've had practice? I've been a nihilist for close to 50 years. Of course, as meaning making creatures, we can't help but find or make meaning wherever we go. Those who can't do this probably have some survival deficits. — Tom Storm

How do you counter? Especially on his point on "survival deficit"?

Trouble is, you don't know what you will do next. That's the case, even if what you do is already determined.

So the question remains, what will you do?

Fatalism and nihilism are of no help here. — Banno

In certain contexts, they can have a psychologically soothing effect, releasing brain capacity, thus lending to action.



Katsumoto : You believe a man can change his destiny?
Algren : I think a man does what he can, until his destiny is revealed.

However, what is no longer attached to this usefulness is why Pythagoras cared about math. — schopenhauer1

Rather, a plebeian answer to it is taken for granted. As in, "He wanted to figure out the numbers so that he could control his surroundings."

It's like those facile plebeian explanations to the effect of, "Ancient peoples invented deities in order to explain the workings of the world and the things they feared".

I just want to quote this, because it fits right here as well:

There's an interesting article from a few years back, Quantum Mysticism - Gone but not Forgotten (and published in phys.org, not some new-age website) which points out that the pioneers of quantum mechanics - Heisenberg, Schrodinger, Bohr and Pauli, among others - were deeply cultured and philosophical thinkers (product of a classical European education, one might presume). But after the War, the research dollars and focus switched to the US, driven mainly by investments from the military-industrial complex, which is why the pragmatic approach of 'shut up and calculate' won out over 'I wonder what that means'. — Wayfarer

And my question here is the following: what are the longer term impact of people when we literally take the physical books out of the hands of students? — ssu

I think the scenario actually resembles oral culture the most.

In the computer learning scenario you describe above, people read things mostly just once and have to work with that, however much or however little they remember or misremember. Which is the same thing that happens in oral culture -- one has one chance to hear something and has to make the most of it.

Of course, the amount of study matter that can effectively be studied that way is not much, for most people. So the computer learning scenario enforces competition between people: those who can handle a lot of new information at once vs. those who can't. This competition has always existed, but the physically written word form has allowed many slower people to catch up and keep up. In an oral culture or a culture functionally the same as oral culture, these slower people will fall behind.

What happens to our society when we don't read as many books as we used to? — ssu

Society becomes less romantic.

Then when you don't have any necessity to read books, you simply won't read them. You will just read articles, newspapers, magazines. — ssu

Which isn't necessarily bad. This trend is a trend that counteracts the plebeification of education and culture.

The idea that has permeated the public school system for the last hundred years or so (depending on the country) was that all children should get the same basic education. Which meant that all children, regardless of their socioeconomic background, should read Homer and Shakespeare etc., study history in detail, mathematics to considerable intricacy etc., ie. the classical educational canon. This has led to the plebeification of education and culture 1. in that the classical canon has to be dumbed down in order to make it teachable even to students who have no basis for such learning in their socioeconomic background, and no prospect for using such learning ever in their lives either; and 2. in that the socioeconomic class of people who traditionally had no access to this canon (and who never contributed to it) now got it for free.

Computerization is reversing this. The upper classes who want their children to receive a classical education will make sure they do so. For the rest, it should remain the luxury it has always been.

Which actually segues back to the theme of nihilism. As far as we're concerned today, life begins at birth and ends at death. And considering the vastness of space and time, it is a mere blip. But that's all there is, and all there can be, as there is nothing on the other side of death, save decomposition, as everything material will always decompose. — Wayfarer

I think this isn't actually a problem. It can become a problem if one's default is a, let's call that "traumatic attachment to a religious view". Emphasis on "traumatic".

Because whether nihilism will seem depressing or not depends on one's vantage point. If one comes from the position of a tense, anxious, insecure attachment to a religious view, then nihilism will seem like a threat. From the perspective of a secure attachment to a religious view, nihilism will seem deplorable, but not experienced as any kind of direct or indirect threat to oneself.

If this means what I think it means, it seems awfully mean spirited. Are you mocking someone for dieing? — flannel jesus

Why? Whence this emotion?
He said he was a robot.

I worked for many years closely with people practicing in the Catholic Church. If you want an example of depressives, try there. Of all the folk I've known, these were amongst the most miserable I've ever seen. — Tom Storm

Sure. Roman Catholicism has one of the most, if not the most strict dogma with eternal, irrepairable consequences. Per said dogma, a person is capable of forsaking God even on their deathbed, with their last breath, even after a life of piety, and thus enter eternal damnation, eternal suffering. I've known people who converted from Roman Catholicism to some school of Protestantism because they found it too unbearable to constantly live in a state of not knowing whether they are/will be saved or not.
It's hard not to be miserable if one knowns Roman Catholic dogma. Supposedly this misery can be mitigated with sufficient humility ...

I think it you already tend to look at life negatively, this might be your conclusion. For me, as a nihilist, I find the idea that there is no transcendent meaning rather joyous and exciting and one full of possibilities. I am unencumbered by dogma and doctrine and need not concern myself with following any preordained path.

The question is how you have arrived at this nihilism.

Most of my days are filled with joy despite my position that life is inherently without meaning. Perhaps it's because I've had practice? I've been a nihilist for close to 50 years. Of course, as meaning making creatures, we can't help but find or make meaning wherever we go.

Those who can't do this probably have some survival deficits. — Tom Storm

Braggart.

Camus insists on seeing Sisyphus happy. Is this something approaching my position? Am I, perhaps, an absurdist too? — Tom Storm

So far, I don't see reason to think so. I think you were just really fortunate not to have had your spirit crushed early on. From what you've said so far, I surmise you can't take credit for being a happy nihilist.



Not to focus on you in particular, but we could use you as a case study in how happy nihilists come about.