• What are you chasing after with philosophy?
    It's called "smiling depression".
    — baker

    Smiling cynism seems more appropiate. I wonder if they know what a true depression feels like.     — Thunderballs

    No, I'm talking about "smiling depression":

    Usually, depression is associated with sadness, lethargy, and despair — someone who can’t make it out of bed. Though someone experiencing depression can undoubtedly feel these things, how depression presents itself can vary from person to person.

    “Smiling depression” is a term for someone living with depression on the inside while appearing perfectly happy or content on the outside. Their public life is usually one that’s “put together,” maybe even what some would call normal or perfect.

    https://www.healthline.com/health/smiling-depression

    By some accounts, this is the most dangerous type of depression and that it's such smilingly depressed people who are more likely to commit suicide.
  • what if the goal of a religion isn't to be factually correct?
    By "factually incorrect" you mean what?
    That there is no heaven, no eternal damnation, and no nibbana?
    — baker

    Pretty much. Also that Jesus probably didn't do any miracles, etc.

    And all religious teaching are scientifically unprovable.     — stoicHoneyBadger

    And whose problem is that?
  • Contradiction/Contrary (Sentential logic/Categorical logic)
    Not god, existence. — TheMadFool

    When you're talking about the existence of God, what I said applies.
  • Can Buddhism accomodate the discoveries of modern science?
    How is trying to get an idea of what it is that one's getting into "...the mark of a fool..."? — TheMadFool
    But you're not trying to get that idea.
    If you want to argue against Buddhist doctrine - fine. But for this, you first need to learn it.

    What I'm offering is a compromise of two opposing perspectives.
    To what end?
  • Free spirited or God's institutionalize slave?
    But how do we define 'the spirituality of the Celts'? — Apollodorus
    A hodge-podge of stuff an outsider can safely dabble in, flirt with, never committing to it.
  • Free spirited or God's institutionalize slave?
    Might you have any thoughts on this? — Athena
    Yes. The Celts, Native Americans, and others will rapidly kick out an impostor.
    Their spirituality might seem "more true", "more natural", but they will never accept you as an equal member unless you were born and raised by them. And even then there's no guarantee.
  • Contradiction/Contrary (Sentential logic/Categorical logic)
    ↪TheMadFool
    Do you want to talk about the God of actual religions, or the God of philosophers?

    If the former, then your analysis doesn't apply, because God is defined as the unique being, and as such, incomparable to any other being. God doesn't exist the way tables and chairs do, or as humans do, nor can he be known the way tables and chair can be known, or the way Tom and Jane can be known.

    If the latter -- then ask yourself why bother.
  • what if the goal of a religion isn't to be factually correct?
    And you get extremely inconclusive results.
    — baker

    Yup. Which is why attacking religion with a particular description of religion writ large is pointless. It doesn’t carry any weight with respect to what actual people believe or why they belong/self identify.     — Ennui Elucidator

    If you take that route, you end up in the Humpty-Dumpty land of my-religion-is-anything-I-want-it-to-be-and-I-can-call-it-whatever-I-want-and-everyone-needs-to-respect-that.
  • Against Stupidity
    People might act on reasons which they believe are in the best interests for their survival. But their beliefs may be based on reasons that are false. — Tom Storm
    Some examples, please.

    Are you referring to things such as "I need another fix, or I'll die. It's a matter of my survival that I get another fix, so it's only right that I look for it" ?
  • Can Buddhism accomodate the discoveries of modern science?
    How about meeting halfway. It's not that there's no luck, there is but it's part of karmic causality. — TheMadFool
    Like you say:
    Speculation does not give us knowledge, but only illusion. — TheMadFool
  • Can Buddhism accomodate the discoveries of modern science?
    Learning the Buddhist doctrine.
    — baker

    Speculation does not give us knowledge, but only illusion. Neither the Mādhyamika nor Kant has any doctrine or theory of their own.
    — T. R. V. Murti     — TheMadFool

    Insisting on discussing Buddhist doctrine, while at the same time refusing to learn said Buddhist doctrine is the mark of a fool.
  • Can Buddhism accomodate the discoveries of modern science?
    Where is there chance in the present moment?
    — baker

    There’s no saying what will happen.     — Wayfarer

    That's not chance. That's just lack of omniscience/prescience.
  • Can Buddhism accomodate the discoveries of modern science?
    First question: Are there militant Buddhist extremists who attack people in order to defend their cherished religion?

    If not, why not?     — ssu
    There are militant Buddhists -- like the persecution of the Rohingya by Buddhists or Sumedhananda Thero in Sri Lanka.

    Secondly, in traditionally Buddhist countries, there is a penalty, sometimes more than just a fine, for failing to show proper respect to Buddhist symbols.

    On the whole, I think that if Buddhists don't go out of their way to deal with the infidels, that has more to do with the snobism of the Buddhists rather than anything else.
  • Anti-Vaxxers, Creationists, 9/11 Truthers, Climate Deniers, Flat-Earthers
    As an aside: I just learned that the Janssen vaccine (which I recently took) is newly estimated to be only about 10% effective.

    Which leads to the bizarre situation: We must get vaccinated, but it doesn't matter how effective the vaccine is -- whether it's 80%, 60%, or 10% effective. They're all approved by EMA and the state and we get a covid passport all the same.

    How on earth is one supposed to take this seriously?!
  • Anti-Vaxxers, Creationists, 9/11 Truthers, Climate Deniers, Flat-Earthers
    If the variance is not caused by blunders (because we're past that) then how is cohort agreement predicting truth? — Isaac
    By creating said truth.

    This doesn't always work -- it doesn't work with things such as tables, chairs, the universe.

    But it does work, to a lesser or greater extent in socio-psychological matters or where volitional effort is needed to make something happen. "Believe it, and your belief will make it real", they say. It doesn't always happen, but it's a factor.
  • Anti-Vaxxers, Creationists, 9/11 Truthers, Climate Deniers, Flat-Earthers
    OK, so what's the alternative? Given our group of experts, the variance among whom we know is caused by a wide variety of factors, reasoning error being very low on that list (if present at all).

    How do we then talk about that variance in a non-lame way?     — Isaac

    By pointing out that the problem at hand is a complex problem and that solving it requires decisions that are based on priorities (which cannot be established scientifically).
    (Clearly, this is not a popular view to take.)

    Some believe that it is better to sacrifice some of the economy in order to preserve lives.
    Some others believe that it is better to sacrifice some lives in order to preserve the economy.
    Some believe that it is better to sacrifice some civil liberties in order to preserve lives and the economy.
    And so on. What these preferences have in common is that it is generally considered repugnant to voice them publicly. But if they aren't voiced, we don't understand how come experts disagree on how to solve a complex problem.

    Generally, people prefer simple solutions. They also generally prefer to think that there are ideal solutions to problems, with very little or even no costs and sacrifices. And that even after crisis events, it is possible to "go back to normal".
    Experts, who have a deeper insight into the complexity of the problem are less likely to think this way.
  • Anti-Vaxxers, Creationists, 9/11 Truthers, Climate Deniers, Flat-Earthers
    So experts fall down on which theories they prefer, find more intuitively compelling, find less risky to throw their weight behind... etc. — Isaac

    I remember an argument I got into with a guy on Fangraphs (a sabermetrics site): guy had a model that predicted the strikeout rate of pitchers and was highlighting pitchers he believed had been lucky so far that season (and were thus overvalued by fantasy players). I suggested that another explanation might be something that was not in his model and that was hard to measure, like sequencing or deception. His response floored me: it couldn't be that because if there were such an effect it would show up in the data. That's the wrong answer. Something is in the data; the question is whether it's stochastic and how we could know. (Hence the obsession on Fangraphs with sample size.)

    I'm getting to the point. There are statistical methods you know better than I that can give you an idea how much of the variation in opinion can be explained by your social roles and stories model. I assume that value is something less than 1. My question is, how do you know that what's left definitely isn't reasoning?     — Srap Tasmaner

    I think the salient point is that when it comes to dealing with a pandemic, this is a complex problem, and that priorities pertaining to solving complex problems are not universal nor can they be scientifically established. Instead, those priorities need to be decided upon, and action taken from that point on. At the same time, any course of action we take will further shape the factors of the complex problem.

    We all agree (except, perhaps, pharmaceutical companies) that we want the pandemic to be over.
    But we disagree on how to go about it and at what cost.
    It is not possible to scientifically decide what an allowable cost is. So it's up to the individual stakeholders to decide this.

    The matter is further complicated by the fact that we're dealing with a contagious disease that has a high transmission rate and a relatively low death rate, and whose symptoms vary from nothing to death and everything inbetween. If covid would be more like smallpox or polio, it would be easier to handle. But as it is, there are more issues to decide about. Again, _decide_ being the salient point.


    You mention the strikeout rate of pitchers -- ie. sports statistics. This is a very good example of what we're talking about: conceiving of performing a particular action in sport as a hard task or complex problem.

    In baseball, batting average (BA) is determined by dividing a player's hits by his total at-bats. It is usually rounded to three decimal places and read without the decimal: A player with a batting average of .300 is "batting three-hundred".
    /.../
    In modern times, a season batting average of .300 or higher is considered to be excellent, and an average higher than .400 a nearly unachievable goal.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batting_average_(baseball)
    Meaning that if a baseball player properly hits 30% of the balls properly aimed at him, he is deemed to have an excellent result. In other words, properly hitting the ball in baseball is a hard task, a difficult task. So hard that even good hitters don't properly hit around 70% of the balls.


    In the abstract, 30% compared to 100% seems dismal. But excellency is measured on the relative difficulty of the task. The more difficult the task, the lower the percentage of effectiveness that can be counted as good.

    In the case of covid, this line of reasoning means that we might need to shift our view and instead of expecting vaccines to be upwards of 80% safe and effective, satisfy ourselves with a much lower percentage. Or that even a 10% death rate is still a relatively low death rate. Or that a certain economic decline is inevitable.
  • Is there something like AS, artificial stupidity?
    ↪Thunderballs
    Well, if it's artificial stupidity, then it ain't real stupidity.
  • Can Buddhism accomodate the discoveries of modern science?
    What's the proposition that corresponds to the middle path? — TheMadFool

    Learning the Buddhist doctrine.
  • Against Stupidity
    ↪180 Proof
    List 3.
  • Can Buddhism accomodate the discoveries of modern science?
    ↪Wayfarer
    My question was specifically whether chance plays a part in the process of attaining nibbana.

    You still haven't provided a canonical reference that it does, given that you seem to argue that chance exists and plays a role (in the process of attaining nibbana as well?).


    I said that not everything is determined, and that chance is a factor. — Wayfarer

    Tell me: How is chance a factor??

    In the course of his Awakening, the Buddha discovered that the experience of the present moment consists of three factors: results from past actions, present actions, and the results of present actions. This means that kamma acts in feedback loops, with the present moment being shaped both by past and by present actions; while present actions shape not only the present but also the future. This constant opening for present input into the causal processes shaping one's life makes free will possible. In fact, will — or intention — forms the essence of action.

    https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/iti/iti.intro.than.html

    Where is there chance in the present moment?


    Sometimes, people confuse merit with good luck.

    Sometimes, they conflate will with chance. Those who come from the position of hard karmic determinism have no notion of will/volition, so they think it's luck or randomness when in fact it's will.

    We could say that luck, chance, randomness is what not knowing the exact workings of kamma _feels/seems_ like to a person. Because if you don't know how something works, it might, for all practical intents and purposes, just as well be luck, right? But according to Buddhist doctrine, it's not luck.
  • Against Stupidity
    And if he has to "tell me my place", then he's not the boss. A boss is a boss precisely because he doesn't have to say, directly or otherwise, "I'm the boss"; instead he's just an idiot expressing his insecurity. — 180 Proof
    None of which matters as long as you are the employee, a subordinate, dependent on the mercy of your boss.

    I agree though, "power hierarchy" (status) usually subordinates "truth" – that's social stupidity (a herd / prey species' cognitive defect).
    It's also an effective way to reign in and silence dissent and distraction, so that the group can focus on achieving its goal. From which the individual benefits as well.

    In contrast, deadlock is inevitable in a democratic society with sufficiently informed agents when the society is facing complex problems.
  • Against Stupidity
    The view I take is even less particularly personal than the one considered in the essay. In the sphere of production, the need to constrain the destructive capacity creates a dynamic where contempt for the stupid makes it more powerful on many levels. This factor is multiplied by having so many systems being dependent on wise responses in this regard. However that may be, I think the dynamic itself is as old as we are as a species. — Valentinus

    What you describe here as having to do with stupidity, I would describe as a matter of wanting people to focus on the task, rather than on the people involved in the task.

    Many people prefer to focus on people (themselves, or other people), rather than on the task. They care more about being treated in a way they want to be treated, and doing the task is secondary to them (even if they signed up for it and are payed for it).


    The task-relationship model is defined by Forsyth as "a descriptive model of leadership which maintains that most leadership behaviors can be classified as performance maintenance or relationship maintenances."[1] Task-oriented (or task-focused) leadership is a behavioral approach in which the leader focuses on the tasks that need to be performed in order to meet certain goals, or to achieve a certain performance standard. Relationship-oriented (or relationship-focused) leadership is a behavioral approach in which the leader focuses on the satisfaction, motivation and the general well-being of the team members.

    Task-oriented and relationship-oriented leadership are two models that are often compared, as they are known to produce varying outcomes under different circumstances.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Task-oriented_and_relationship-oriented_leadership


    In task-oriented cultures, the primary means of achieving one's goals is through skillfully managing tasks and time

    In relationship-oriented cultures the group to which a person belongs is a crucial part of that person's identity and goals are accomplished via relationships

    Which takes priority, individual accomplishment and responsibility, or maintaining human relationships?

    https://www.watershedassociates.com/learning-center-item/task-orientation-vs-relationship-orientation.html


    The worst results come about when you have people-oriented people working in task-oriented settings, and vice versa.
  • Against Stupidity
    D-K effect? — 180 Proof

    No, something more fundamental. In real life interactions with people, primacy goes to respect for the social power hierarchy, truth is often a distant second concern.

    If your boss tells you that 2 + 2 = 5, he's thereby probably not communicating to you that 2 + 2 = 5 or that he believes that 2 + 2 = 5, nor that you should believe that 2 + 2 = 5. But more likely, this method of saying things that are blatantly untrue or problematic is a socially acceptable way to tell you to know your place.

    And in order to remain sane in this mode of social interaction, one has to have a lot of confidence.
  • Against Stupidity
    And people may behave on reasons which are not sound but make sense in the context of survival. — Tom Storm

    What a strange thing to say.

    Surely the reasons that make sense in the context of survival are the most relevant ones!
  • What are you chasing after with philosophy?
    Have you ever noticed how sad so many happy people are? — Tom Storm
    It's called "smiling depression".
  • What is depth?
    ↪Srap Tasmaner
    It's a word that people tend to use when they want to discredit the person they're talking to. "This is too deep for you to understand". Or the politically correct version, "This is a very deep subject."

    Otherwise, terms like "complex", "fundamental", "crucial" etc. can be used, and they say more than "deep".
  • Against Stupidity
    ↪praxis
    Yeah, playing dumb is really constructive.
  • Anti-Vaxxers, Creationists, 9/11 Truthers, Climate Deniers, Flat-Earthers
    I haven't seen any evidence of this. — Xtrix
    It's part of how Astrazeneca got a bad reputation. I've heard it on the national news, and I'm sure they can fact-check better than I can.


    If it's true, then women who are taking hormonal contraceptives have to weigh what those chances are. — Xtrix
    Aww. And completely excuse the men. Because, hey, boys will be boys, right.
  • what if the goal of a religion isn't to be factually correct?
    When you ask “What Does X believe”, you don’t read a book, you ask the members of the religion. — Ennui Elucidator

    And you get extremely inconclusive results.
  • what if the goal of a religion isn't to be factually correct?
    I got the reference. Do I take this as a compliment or an insult? — Tom Storm
    220px-%C3%82m_d%C6%B0%C6%A1ng.jpg
  • what if the goal of a religion isn't to be factually correct?
    Dawkins focuses on the fact of Islam, or Christianity or any other religion being factually incorrect.
    But what if the goal of a religion is not to be factually correct, but to give people moral guidance, thumos and social cohesion?     — stoicHoneyBadger
    By "factually incorrect" you mean what?

    That there is no heaven, no eternal damnation, and no nibbana?
  • Against Stupidity
    ↪praxis
    So? They don't believe in "true nature", or "emptiness".
  • Anti-Vaxxers, Creationists, 9/11 Truthers, Climate Deniers, Flat-Earthers
    I sympathize with anyone who has concerns. It turns out this is completely untrue. — Xtrix

    Did you read the rest of what I said?
  • what if the goal of a religion isn't to be factually correct?
    How does Christianity survive without supernaturalism or the fact of Jesus (either as historical person or son of god)? How does it survive without a claim to exclusive access to heaven? Those are great questions for Christians and they seem to be working on them. If/when they move on and the Christian community follows them, will they in that instant stop being Christians? I doubt it. — Ennui Elucidator
    They'll probably still call themselves Christians, but they won't be able to promise salvation anymore.


    "Progressiveness" always comes with a cost: it works on the assumption that the original (or any previous version of the) religion is ineffective, impotent, that it cannot and does not deliver what it promises.

    Given this, the progressives have two options:
    One: they assume superiority over the original religion (or over whatever version came before theirs); as in "Those before us didn't get it right, but we do, and we can in fact deliver what is being promised".
    Two: They relativize the whole project of religious/spiritual attainment (such as by suggesting there "really", "ultimately" is no attainment, or that it is irrelevant).
  • Can Buddhism accomodate the discoveries of modern science?
    I said that not everything is determined, and that chance is a factor. — Wayfarer

    A factor in what? The process of attaining nibbana?
  • Does Buddhist teaching contain more wisdom than Christianity?
    Inform yourself better. They're actually perfectly ready to leave you behind.
    — baker

    A bodhisattva who leaves (samsara) is not a bodhisattva.     — TheMadFool
    A bodhisattva cannot leave samsara; a bodhisattva is a samsaric being. "Bodhisattva" literally means 'buddha to be', or 'future buddha'. Ie. not a buddha yet.

    no child left behind

    I fail to see the relevance.
    You keep talking about how religious people have the obligation to help others, e.g.
    If a certain group is under the impression that its belief system is the right one (orthodoxa = right belief), that group will also consider it a duty/responsibility to edify others of it. — TheMadFool

    I'm saying that in Early Buddhism, there is no such obligation.
  • Against Stupidity
    What do you mean? That the earth is sometimes flat, is always flat, is not flat, is flat if you "think" it is and not if you don't? It seems that according to you, whether the earth is flat depends on who is talking. Yes? No? — tim wood
    It means that you are unwilling to put yourself into another's shoes; moreover, you find it redundant to do so in the first place.

    By stupid I do not mean intellectually challenged but instead a person who without reason retreats from reason to some unreasonable position and maintains that position by recourse to irrationality against reason. . — tim wood
    And who is the arbiter of rationality in all this?

    After some thought, a modification. Some ignorance leads directly to stupidity because in a complex world there's an obligation to know at least some things. — tim wood
    Such as to aim first and shoot later.
  • Against Stupidity
    Also, how do you locate this continuum of rationality in the context of intersubjectivity and the potential shared interests of society/groups? — Tom Storm
    Take this example, from another thread:

    In some countries, a high-risk population that is reluctant to get vaccinated are young medical nurses, for fear that they will become infertile.

    Now, at first glance, and esp. when seen from a male perspective, this seems an unwarranted fear.

    But if I were in their shoes, my line of reasoning and concerns would be such: Taking hormonal contraceptives increases the risk of something going wrong when taking the vaccine. So in order to reduce those risks, stop taking hormonal contraceptives. But then it is almost certain that an unwanted pregnancy will occur (since men cannot be relied upon to use condoms or to wait), and this will need to be solved with an abortion. An abortion increases the risk of infertility. If a woman isn't able to have children this can result in the man abandoning her or otherwise reduce his affections for her.

    So what are those young women supposed to do?

    Statistically, it's probably safer to take their chances with covid than with a man.     — baker

    Why default to the belief that these young women are not being rational when they refuse to get vaccinated against covid?
  • Against Stupidity
    My second point is that many conflicts involving blame are like the above , where it is not a master of the other being irrational, but instead their being in the thrawl of a way of thinking that you have moved beyond , but don’t understand why they can’t see things your way. So you assume they are being stubborn, lazy, irrational. Instead, they simply haven’t made the ‘shift’ that you have. — Joshs

    This seems to assume that the blamers are objectively more advanced than the ones they blame.

    You can easily find cases where it's evident that the blamer has at no point in their past thought about things the way that the person they blame does. So the blamer hasn't necessarily moved beyond the way the other person thinks, it's also possible that they never thought about things the way the other person does to begin with.

    You can see this, for example, in the vaccination debate where there are vocal pro-vaccers who consider it blameworthy if a person doesn't show the same enthusiasm about vaccines as they do, and this goes to the point of accusing that person of being an anti-vaccer and feeling justified to go on a public crusade against them.

    A poster who evidently isn't all that enthusiastic about vaccines and masks, clearly said that he has taken the vaccine and uses a mask as obligated. And yet even _after_ he said that, several posters had a go at him for being an anti-vaccer. They ignored an important piece of information an indulged in their crusade.
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