The reality is that there is often immense pressure to not think about things. For many, thinking about common ideas that hold society together is dangerous. It is 'immoral' to think in the minds of many. — Philosophim

I've always thought that the reason why people don't think much (or at least don't seem to) is because they've already figured it all out, are beyond uncertainty and doubt.

In so far as 'thinking' helps one to thrive over above one's mere survival, I agree. — 180 Proof

Exactly.
There is such a thing as idle doubting.

I didn't mean to be offensive when I said earlier that you have a low treshold for what passes as theism.

Your ideas of theism seem to be quite innocent and benevolent. Obviously, they are quite different from what many other people are used to understand by "theism" where God is the ultimate threat and danger. It's easy to understand that people who grew up around Western Christianity and Islam are uncomfortable about thanking God because it feels like thanking a monster.

This is why I believe it is important to have someone or something to thank.

Gratitude by its nature seeks relationship; it wants to move outward, to acknowledge a giver.

Otherwise gratitude becomes diffuse.

Theism transforms gratitude from a mere mood into a relationship. — Colo Millz

Exactly.

However, quite a bit depends on the type of monotheism in question.

For example, what goes on in the mind of a Roman Catholic when they feel thankful to God for something, while being fully aware that their salvation is not guaranteed?

Things seem straightforward enough for, say, a Jew or a traditional Hindu, ie. religions where there is no notion of eternal damnation and where mistakes on one's part are not eternally fatal. Also those Protestants who believe that by one act of faith on their part, their eternal salvation is guaranteed seem to have it easy.

But in a religion like Roman Catholicism or Islam where one's life and one's eternal destiny are always precarious -- how do their members and prospective members cope with the precariousness of their situation?
It seems hard to thank God when this same God is someone who could make you suffer forever.

This is also relevant for anyone contemplating conversion to a religion, but also to someone trying to understand religious people.

It's not black and white overall because I agree that AIs can be used positively, and they've been very helpful to me, especially in long philosophical back and forths that aid in clarifying certain ideas etc. That has made me more productive — Baden

More productive?
What gets to me is that consulting online sources like LLMs takes so much time. Who has the time and the will to study thousands of words spat out by a machine? I'd rather think things through myself, even if this means spending the same amount of time, or even more. It will be time well spent, it will feel like quality time, a mind well used.

By that criteria, even philosophically, I'm not banning LLM's insofar that it fits that goal. And really I don't see what you've said as a harmful use --

i.e. checking your own arguments, etc. — Moliere

But this is what conversation is for. I think it's appealing to put oneself out there, understanding that one may have possible vulnerabilities, gaps, etc. That's when one can learn best.

namely the valuing of human interaction (and the definition of human interaction). — Leontiskos

Once, in the very distant and very romantic past, philosophy was about having conversations; it was about what each participant could bring to the discussion, on the spot. The proverbial Rhodus was everywhere, and a philosopher was expected to be able to jump far, right there and then.

When I was going to school, at all levels, there was at least one teacher each time who insisted that we must master (parts of) the subject matter so thoroughly that if someone were to wake us up at 2 AM and ask us about it, we'd needed to know it.

There was this focus on mastery and on being able to demonstrate it on the spot in a conversation. But lately, this doesn't seem to be the case anymore. Now it seems to be more about being able to produce a lengthy text, while a conversation seems to be primarily about how to beat down your opponent with any means available.

If we don't know why we want to engage in human-to-human communication, or if we don't know what the relevant difference is between humans and AI, then we will not have the capacity or endurance to withstand the pressures of AI. We need to understand these questions in order to understand how to approach rules, guidelines, and interaction with respect to AI. — Leontiskos

Absolutely.

Part of why it seems appealing to do philosophy via internet forums like this is because the people one is conversing with don't seem exactly real, or to matter all that much (one can, after all, just put other posters on ignore, and people also get banned altogether). In such an online setting, one can speak and behave in ways that one can't IRL. For one, since the communication is time-delayed, one has time to look up relevant facts etc. to strengthen one's arguments; or if things get inflamed, take a break for them to cool off. But also feels a bit freer to say things that might be too controversial to say IRL. And then there's, of course, the factor of indugling in bullshit. All this reflects the general trend of avoiding commitment. The things one can (or at least could) get away with on te internet would cost one one's job and friends IRL.

Sometimes, I think it's rather sad to talk philosophy on an internet forum. Perhaps the fact that, for whatever reason, one cannot do that IRL, then one, perhaps, should not try to talk philosophy at all, but instead attend to whatever are the pressing matters in one's life.

Then why did you ask earlier:

If someone gave their life to save you, would you think them less than yourself? — Prajna

in reply to my saying:

To begin with, it's hard to kill and eat a being, on a daily basis at that, or take their land or possessions unless one thinks of them as somehow significantly lesser than oneself. In order to evolve, one needs to survive to being with, and surviving requires taking -- taking lives, possessions, rights, status. — baker

*double post*

It's not idealism to know that the hierarchically powerful are not all powerful or godlike.

Maybe you can't assassinate a president and expect to get away with it, but i would suspect a president's cabinet members do hurt them sometimes, but in a much more minor way. I would argue that believing in the social infallibility of leaders is crazier than thinking it's impossible to harm them without getting away with it. — ProtagoranSocratist

They're not necessarily considered infallible, they're untouchable -- at least for those low enough in the hierarchy.

I was once talking to a Catholic priest. I gave a real-life example of one person causing great material damage to another person, namely, making the person homeless by destroying their home (and everything that comes along with experiencing that damage). Curiously to me, he replied, "We cannot understand evil."

So, to revisit:

What matters to me is how you personally are led to behave towards someone who you perceive as deliberately thoughtless, rude, careless, negligent, complacent, lazy, self-indulgent, malevolent, dishonest, narcissistic, malicious, culpable, perverse, inconsiderate, intentionally oppressive, repressive or unfair, disrespectful, gluttonous, wrathful, imprudent, anti-social, hypocritical, disgraceful or greedy. Do you not feel the impulse to knock some sense into them , give them a taste of their own medicine, get them to mend their ways? Do you not aim for their repentance, atonement and readiness to apologize? — Joshs

To which I replied that the socioeconomic status of myself and the other person respectively plays the determining role in how I would think about such a person's actions.

I still think it's naive and idealistic to think a person of low status could correctly measure or evaluate the words and actions of a person of high status. It's naive and idealistic to think that the same measurments apply to everyone, regardless of status. This doesn't mean that one must think of the higher-ups as infallible, but that one is not in a position to judge them. A quietism as summarized by the priest above seems to be a much more viable way to live, in contrast to wasting one's resources in a futile pursuit of "justice", or becoming cynical and jaded (and worse) upon realizing that one's sense of right and wrong cannot be acted on in cases that seem to need it most.

I was using my analysis to determine if it is Divinely Revealed in the first place. — Bob Ross

No, that would require a divine revelation of your own, ie. God revealing to you, personally, whether something you wondered whether it is a divine revelation or not, is in fact divine revelation.

Your approach lacks the fideist element so typical for traditional monotheistic religions.

The atomized utility maximizer of liberal economics is not an empirical fact,
but an interpretive lens. — Count Timothy von Icarus

What isn't an interpretive lens?

If someone gave their life to save you, would you think them less than yourself? — Prajna

So what is happening in slaughterhouses is that all those cows, pigs, goats, sheep, chicken, and whatever other species,
are in fact
giving
their lives
to save humans (from hunger)?

Where i will push toward religion is to say you are always of infinite moral worth — Hanover

Then why isn't everyone born into the Jewish religion?

And why do the Jews outkill them by a magnitude of 65 to 100?

This is a derailment, though. Personally, I am a Christian now; but none of the above is required in order to live a sufficiently good life.

Natural theology is sufficient. — Bob Ross

Thus you have a theism on *your* terms, *not* on God's terms. That's the problem with "natural theology".
Divine revelation, even if accepted merely as a concept, is necessary in order to overcome "natural theology". Because "natural theology" is self-centred with God merely as an object in it. Not only is in existing monotheisms theology structured top-down (God reveals himself to his underlings), it also logically follows that if one is to consider God properly (in his almighty creative and controlling power), then one's religiosity has to be on God's terms (ie. involving revelation), not on one's own.


This is also why you have a problem with "Old Testament evil": You're evaluating God on *your* terms, not on God's terms. If you accept that God is the Creator of the Universe, the Lawmaker, then you have to accept that he can do with it as he pleases, including killing infants.

There has to be a point where a monotheist says something along the lines of, "Surely God had a reason for doing what he did, and even though I don't understand it or personally approve of it, I still have faith in him and submit to his will."

If all one ever does is rely on one's own reasoning about God, one doesn't actually believe in God, or one's idea of God is god as an impotent and inconsequential being.

Why do many people belive the appeal to tradition is some inviolable trump card?[/quote]
Because for the foreseeable time, it is precisely that: an inviolable trump card.

I was going to say earlier that for me, gratitude feels like an indebtedness to a mystery for this fragile state of good fortune, which could disappear in a nanosecond.
— Tom Storm

Sorry, but I remain skeptical about your calling yourself an atheist. — Astorre

I think you have a very strange idea of what passes for "theism", such a low treshold that it seems meaningless.

Oh, I get my "best ideas" while cooking and washing the dishes and when working in the garden. Neverthelss, this seems mostly just like "the churning of the mind", production of thought for the sake of production of thought.


To say nothing of how dangerous it is to allow oneself to be distracted while out hiking.

Interesting that you raise this. I was going to say earlier that for me, gratitude feels like an indebtedness to a mystery for this fragile state of good fortune, which could disappear in a nanosecond. There is in fact a vulnerability built into it, and a deep sense of precariousness. But I guess my experience of gratitude doesn’t accord precisely with the classical use of the word; there’s also, built into it, an appreciation.

Do you feel gratitude? — Tom Storm

I often thank people.
But I don't feel grateful for life, or for good weather, or that I didn't get electrocuted nor fell from that tree. To whom should I be grateful for these things? To whom could I be grateful for these things?
For me, losing or nearly losing something doesn't lead to appreciating it, it just leads to a painful realization of vulnerability and fragility. Sometimes, it leads to becoming disenchanted with the entire life project altogether.

Why??
I mean, why not focus on one thing at a time?
It mars the hike to do something else while on the hike.

If the research necessary to ground a thesis is too "tedious," then the thesis is not something one can put forth with integrity. — Leontiskos

It all just goes to show once more how plebeified higher education has become.

I write most of my forum posts on an iphone while hiking. — Joshs

You hike a lot!

What is the telos of TPF? — Leontiskos

A pissing contest, combined with quasi-efforts at healing existential anxiety.

Even the serious folks here aren't all that serious, or at least the serious ones aren't serious enough about posting much.

There goes your use of AI! Heh.

Given the sense of your sentence, it should probably be "over" instead of "soccer".

Some of us might be in modes to reject some readings as out and out false. But if we do that, our search for the ‘true’ interpretation may incline us to shape our prompts away from variety of readings and toward tunnel vision.

Apart from our biases, our lack of exposure to certain influences on a philosopher can limit the range of prompts we can think of. — Joshs

Are students at schools nowadays, at any level, actually encouraged to have their own opinion about philosophers?
Are they encouraged to think in terms that there may be several valuable interpretations?

Back when I went to school, we weren't expected to have our own opinion about anything, and there was this belief that there was only one true way to understand something.

Most people I know, including Americans, think this way: there is only one true way to understand something. An "interpretation" is something that needs to be overcome. "I don't interpret, I don't take a perspective, I tell it like it is" goes the maxim.


I'm getting at a more fundamental issue here: If people generally think this way, their use of AI is only going to strengthen them in their single-mindedness.

But, of course, that means each of us will prefer certain reading soccer others. — Joshs

How did this come to be?
Are you using a voice-to-text app?

Hold on. Are you an AI?

Faith translates into Russian as "VERA."
And it's a very broad concept. It encompasses both a female name and the feeling and concept of a vast number of Russian philosophers and writers who have attempted to understand this word. There's no consensus on this. As a native speaker of Slavic languages, I think you're probably familiar with all of this.

I myself use this word to describe my sense of aspiration toward the transcendental, which is impossible to comprehend, know, or justify. — Astorre

It's an interesting discrepancy: Etymologically, Latin "fides" means 'trust', but Slavic "vera" (related to Latin "verus") means 'truth'.

It can indicate that adult converts are supposed to take something as truth what would/should otherwise be a matter of trust. They are expected to take something for granted, as true, despite the lack of trustworthiness.

You provide a very Kierkegaardian and therefore Christian view of faith. — Hanover

Not every Christian has a Kierkegaardian view of faith, though.

In particular, faith is not a lonely, individualistic venture necessarily, but Judaism sees it as communal.

Christianity is a religion of adult converts, and it teaches individual eternal salvation or individual eternal damnation. As such, it is necessarily a lonely, individualistic venture.

The idea that humans are born into sin in need of salvation could not be more foreign to this concept, but instead it speaks of a divine soul, nothing wretched about it. — Hanover

What is the Jewish explanation as to why are there people who are not Jews? How did those other people who are not Jews even come to exist?
Why are only Jews God's chosen people?

(Do you speak German? I remember a nice passage from Thomas Mann on this topic.)
— baker

No, I don't speak German, unfortunately. — Astorre

Earlier, I was referring to this passage by Mann, when I was talking about how things almost magically work out for some people:

Es gibt eine Art von Menschen, Lieblingskinder Gottes, wie es scheint, deren Glück das Genie und deren Genie das Glück ist, Lichtmenschen, die mit dem Widerspiel und Abglanz der Sonne in ihren Augen auf eine leichte, anmutige und liebenswürdige Weise durchs Leben tändeln, während alle Welt sie umringt, während alle Welt sie bewundert, belobt, beneidet und liebt, weil auch der Neid unfähig ist, sie zu hassen. Sie aber blicken darein wie die Kinder, spöttisch, verwöhnt, launisch, übermütig, mit einer sonnigen Freundlichkeit, sicher ihres Glückes und Genies, und als könne das alles durchaus nicht anders sein...

http://www.buecherlei.de/fab/split/thommy.htm

From: Thomas Mann: Der Bajazzo

Do you guys ever experience hypobaric hypoxia from being so high above everyone else? — Athena

Now what did I just say about cultivating good character for oneself?

I am frequently grateful: for clean water, heating, food, for living without earthquakes, fires, floods, for my (so far) robust physical health, and for any material comforts I have. — Tom Storm

To whom are you grateful for all these things?

Or do you merely appreciate them?

Expressing gratitude is quite popular these days (google "gratitude journal"), yet most often, what these people are talking about is appreciation, not actual gratitude.

Gratitude is painful, uncomfortable. To be grateful is to be grateful to someone, and this puts one into an inferior position. To be grateful means to acknowledge one's indebtedness. To acknowledge one's insufficiency, one's dependence. To be grateful means to acknowledge that one's position in the intricate web of dependecies is precarious.
With that, gratitude evokes a sobering emotion toward life, a disenchantment.




That has go to be a fake.

however, i think this would be too self-limiting, to think of this in absolute terms: it's rather easy to "punch up" in some circumstances, it doesn't even always get met with retaliation. There's also a big difference between criticizing what someone does/says (for example, i do it all the time on here, as i think it's necessary for philosophy), and criticizing them as a person, the latter often being counter-productive. — ProtagoranSocratist

It's not sustainable to ascribe to and abide by a moral system that disregards how the world really works. Idealism like that drives people crazy.

I think a discussion on revenge and punishment could be interesting, yet I'm not so interested in the technicalities of that due to the emotional affect of it, and the one who punishes tends to entrench themselves in their own justifications (i think as the Joshs post shows),

so it doesn't make for great discussion...

This strange idea that philosophy should be cut off from real life ...

Saint Francis, Laotze, and the Desert Fathers flourish in the wilderness with nothing. — Count Timothy von Icarus

If that's flourishing ...

Luckily, i do not have any anti-freeze (what would i use it for, and aren't there alternatives?) — ProtagoranSocratist

Where there are cars and other motorized vehicles and machines with internal combustion engines, there is antifreeze. Cats sneak into people's garages and sheds, and find all kinds of things there, some of them not safely stored. To say nothing of cars leaking antifreeze.

In a philosophy forum, though, caution makes sense. Most participants lack grounding in epistemology, logic, or linguistic analysis, so what passes for argument is often just speculation dressed up as insight. Honestly, you could gain more from interacting with a well-trained AI than from sifting through most of what appears here, it would at least give you arguments that hold together. — Sam26

Which is easily remedied by cultivating good character for oneself.

People of substance don't post much on internet forums.

I think, given the dangers of AI, and the ways in which prominent members of this site have used it to make themselves look smarter than they really are, that its use should be banned altogether on this site. — Janus

I say outsmarten the AIs and their faithful users. That doesn't necessarily mean stop using AIs altogether, but only using them sparsely and deliberately. Most of all, it means lowering or otherwise changing one's goals in life.

To me, using AIs, especially LLMs for everyday things or for work is like using drugs to get the energy and the focus necessary to do one's work. Occasionally, this can be a last resort, but is not sustainable in the long run. If one cannot do one's job on one's own, consistently, then one has a job that is too demanding and that will eventually get one into trouble in one way or another.

It's quite pointless to discuss the ethics of using AIs, because people will use them, just like they use drugs, and once it starts, it is impossible to rein it in. But what one can do is rethink whether one really wants to spend one's hard earned time with people who use AIs, or drugs, for that matter.

There are those, Hinton being one of them, who claim that the lesson to be learned from the LLMs is that we are also just "arranging words as if it were saying something", that is that we don't have subjective experience any more than they do. I remain skeptical, but I entertain the possibility that there might be something in that. — Janus

Yes ... reminds me of school, and later as well. Many teachers and the whole approach to education considered us to be basically things, automata, robots. And then later, in the early days of internet forums, there was this in-your-face atmosphere of, "You can't think for yourself, you're just parroting others, you can't produce anything original". That line, "Please, Blue Fairy, make me a real life boy (girl)" was oddly relatable. Come to think of it, it still is.

So when I now read criticism of AI/LLMs, I'm reminded that those were the exact things we were told.

Ai demonstrates that self-reflection isn't needed for a comptent peformance of philosophical reasoning, because all that is needed to be an outwardly competent philosopher is mastery of the statistics of natural language use, in spite of the fact that the subject of philosophy and the data of natural language use are largely products of self-reflection. So it is ironic that humans can be sufficiently bad at self-reflection, such that they can benefit from the AI reminding them of the workings of their own language. — sime

Thanks for this comment.

Yes, this is an important point that people fail to appreciate about our thinking machines. They understand the role of simple labor-saving devices, but when it comes to a.i., they think it’s a zero-sum game, as though whatever the a.i. does for us takes away some capacity we possessed.

What’s the difference between using a calculator and using a shortcut like long division? — Joshs

The difference is in knowing how much you can rely on yourself. (There are also practical aspects, like how do you calculate something when you don't have a calculator.)

AI/LLM's seems to be useful for some, mostly urban uses. Like computer programming or writing school papers. But beyond that?

What I’ve learned in comparing the forum with a.i. is that, unfortunately, the majority of participants here don’t have the background to engage in the kinds of discussions I have been able to have with a.i. concerning a range of philosophers dear to my heart, (such as Husserl, Heidegger, Derrida, Deleuze, Gendlin and Wittgenstein), especially when it comes to comparing and contrasting their positions. — Joshs

Then you're in the wrong place, no?

The level of discussion you're looking for is the domain of fancy university debate clubs. Why not attend those?

How can you account for the exponential progress humanity has made in the past few centuries compared to the first several thousand years of our existence. — Harry Hindu

The details and the superficialities have changed, sure, but the exploitative nature of relationships between humans has not changed.

I’m more interested in what you feel like doing, what you would do if allowed to, than in what you can or can’t get away with. — Joshs

It's absolutely vital to know one's place in society, and to actually internalize it. The criticism whispered quietly to the side with one's face down is a sign that one hasn't accepted one's place in society.
Those below have no business criticising those above.