But what would your answer be? — 0 thru 9
can current civilization be inspired by anything at all from tribal cultures?
— 0 thru 9
Child-rearing. — Pseudonym
Population control!
The bigger our population grows, the more stresses of scale are placed on the population. We're so dependent on steady food, energy, and materials that if something goes wrong before we're ready then we might just come to disaster after-all! — VagabondSpectre
Seriously though, if I say that reasons for infanticide are backwards, why would you conflate that with all HG peoples? — VagabondSpectre
If you would contend that of the 200k years or so of HG society, there are no examples that are more violent than contemporary western culture or prior to contact with agrarians, then you're rolling dice on some incredibly long odds, and the existing archeological evidence against you isn't as scant as you think. — VagabondSpectre
Here's a link (pg 76-103) to a very interesting and comprehensive analysis of historical trends in violence of the Chumash people using remains at burial sites spanning over 7000 years of continuous Chumash habitation (sedentary hunter-gatherers of central and coastal California). It looks at various forms of skeletal trauma and bone health to establish long term trends in relative violence, and compares that to known climate data in search of correlations with climate events that could cause resource stress. It does find correlations with worsening climate, and subsequent debate and inquiry into the Chumash and other indigenous groups has expanded and refined their results. — VagabondSpectre
This cross cultural study seeks to find factors which predict the frequency of war among 186 societies, and indeed finds a link between violence/war and fear of resource scarcity/disaster/other groups. Their multivariate analysis yielded the finding that fear of disaster and fear of other peoples/groups were the best predictors of a rise in violence. Chronic and predictable food shortage was not a predictor of rising violence, but unpredictable resource stresses (the difference being the unpredictable is psychologically more upsetting) was. Likewise, fear of other groups or at least proximity to newly arrived migrants was a strong predictive factor. The overall conclusion is that war is predominantly a preemptive action taken by groups largely out of fear. — VagabondSpectre
This article looks at the archeological evidence for warfare and violence among the natives of North-West coast of North America — VagabondSpectre
while it is not my position that hunter-gatherers are more violent than all other groups, it IS my position that the contemporary west is less violent than the average hunter-gather, or otherwise indigenous, historic or prehistoric, contacted or un-contacted, group. — VagabondSpectre
yes a specific way of life can be dependent on a stable environment. Egalitarian nomads are so often found in harsh environments because food sharing/altruism is highly adaptive in such environments, and because egalitarianism helps to avoid the mutually destructive possibility of large scale/extended violence and conflict. — VagabondSpectre
but it does not necessarily mean that the west is overall less happy than societies with fewer suicides — VagabondSpectre
Same reason why hunter-gatherers choose to live in the huts, wigwams, lean-to's and long-houses that they live in: it's the best they can do. — VagabondSpectre
I'd like to say in defense of the west that there are almost no slums in the contemporary western world. It is perhaps unfair to blame the existence of slums entirely on the western world. — VagabondSpectre
Granted the very poorest and down-trodden of the west, including, for its part, the many far flung victims, live worse lives than the average hunter-gatherer. — VagabondSpectre
I would also much rather be a single mother living in a ghetto /w government assistance than a Yanomami woman (or warrior for that matter). — VagabondSpectre
Um, because you said that Western civilisation was better than hunter-gatherers and you cited "backwards" reasons for infanticide as one of your reasons? Do you want to re-state your argument as "Western civilisation is better than some hunter-gatherers, but worse than others?"
You really need to get your argument straight. The question was whether Western civilisation has been a disaster. That would be proven if there were a civilisation better than ours which ours has replaced, or is replacing. In other words, things have gotten worse from some point, not better.
In order to counter this argument you need to demonstrate that conditions in western civilisation are better than those in all others, otherwise those other earlier civilisations are better then western civilisation and so things have got worse (ie a disaster).
So I'm either going to take your arguments as applying to all hunter-gatherers, or as being irrelevant to the topic. The question isn't "do some hunter-gatherers do some things we'd rather they didn't?". The question is whether Western civilisation replacing the civilisations which went before it (all of them) was a success.
Maybe you wish to make the argument that for some reason you can't have the good hunter-gatherer tribes without the bad ones. But even in that case, you'd have to show that the bad outweighed the food. Otherwise, I could just cite the slums outside of Rio and say that community represents Western civilisation. — Pseudonym
Again, why would "examples" be relevant here. The question is "are there better civilisations than our which we have replaced?". If there are/we're, then our replacing them had been a disaster, it has made people's lives worse than they would otherwise have been. To prove your point you need to argue that all hunter-gatherers are more violent than western civilisation, otherwise the ones which aren't are better than us and replacing them is a disaster. — Pseudonym
Also, here is a paper arguing precisely that the archaeological evidence is as scant as I think. It opens with "Interpersonal conflict may be one of those causes [trauma] but the skeletal evidence itself is rarely conclusive and must therefore be evaluated in its individual, populational, sociocultural, and physical context." Of course, for those 'wanting' to see violence, it's easy, for those with a little less prejudice, it rarley yields such conclusive results. — Pseudonym
The Cumash are a sedentary people, I specifically and repeatedly limited my claim to nomadic hunter-gatherers. Notwithstanding that, I don't dispute that the environment may have an effect on violence, I'm disputing your claim that it therefore follows that pre-contact tribes must therefore have been more violent that western societies, there is nothing preventing their entire range of violence from being below that we experience, when measured fairly. — Pseudonym
I'm not quite sure how your citing this article supports your thesis. It basically just re-iterates the point I made earlier, that chronic resource limits (of the type that might make food-sahring a wise strategy, are not strongly correlated with warlikeness, and that far stronger correlations are the exact same one we experience today and were massively inflated during colonisation. Fear of disaster (global warming), unpredictable resources stress (peak oil), and fear of other groups (colonisation). — Pseudonym
Again, in settled communities, not nomadic hunter-gatherers, but we'll push on. It still seems to point away from your idea that environmental factors alone predicate violence and instead point to a multitude of factors including very strong and cultural ones. — Pseudonym
As I've been asking, what is your evidence for this claim? — Pseudonym
Here's an article detailing what I'm saying about the stability of hunter=gatherer communities in the face of massive environmental change. — Pseudonym
So induction is fine when you want to use it, but not anyone else? If lots of people are killing themselves it's not such a wild speculation to assume that lots of people are unhappy. — Pseudonym
Look, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt here because even after all you've said, I don't believe you're really as right-wing as this sounds. The way you've phrased this (together with the fact that you're presenting it as a counter to my argument that the poor are not really 'free') sounds like you're saying it's all their fault, they're there because they cant do any better, as in the ones that could do better got out. I'm struggling to see how to interpret this charitably. I'd said that the poor are not really free because they too are constrained in their life choices and you answer with this? — Pseudonym
Are you implying that the trading policy of the western world does not have anything to do with the rapid urbanisation without infrastructure investment which is the root cause of slums? — Pseudonym
Right. How many people are in the position you admit is worse than the position of an average hunter-gatherer. Do you think its fair that the rest of society lives the life it does at the expense of these people? And please don't answer with more utopian bull about how how things are getting better for them, I'm talking about how things are now. — Pseudonym
So why is then that single mothers in ghettoes with government assistance are killing themselves in unprecedented numbers whilst Yanomami women are rejecting government settlement and risking their lives to fight to maintain their lifestyle? — Pseudonym
If you want a rigid formulation of my position, I am arguing that in the child-mortality/lifespan metric, the contemporary west (1st world) performs better than any other known group. I'm also arguing that the contemporary westerner is less likely to die from violence (this is something different than appraising violence in culture, and while there may be a few very specific examples of groups who suffered less from violence on average, the average fare even for hunter-gatherer societies includes an increased chance of death from violence compared the contemporary west). — VagabondSpectre
I realise I haven't addressed your post point by point, but I hope I've picked up on all the themes. — Pseudonym
If, on the other hand, we're going to accept the concept of sub-concious racism, then how can we ignore the impact of the glaringly obvious fact that all of the races involved in the development of "Western Civilisation" are white and all the races involved in alternative civilizations are non-white? — Pseudonym
The Greek and Romans who were two major players in the rise of Western Civilization. They were olive skinned and not white. They have been lumped as white, by a left wing racism scam. Christianity began in the middle east where Arab skin color was the norm. They were not white. — wellwisher
The Greek and Romans who were two major players in the rise of Western Civilization. They were olive skinned and not white. They have been lumped as white, by a left wing racism scam. — wellwisher
So, no matter how it's dressed up in poetic rhetoric, it's relatively simple maths. If each year (and if my prediction of each future year) is going to bring me a net happiness of 1, then a hundred such years are worth 100 to me. If, on the other hand, the best I can predict for the net happiness value of my future years is 0 (just exactly as much happiness as suffering), then a hundred such years are worth no more to me than one, a hundred times zero is still zero. If my years (and my predicted future years) bring me ultimately only sadness (a happiness value of minus 1) then a hundred years are just going to make me even less happy. The result of this calculation is the result that approximately one percent of the UK population reach at some point in their lives - extending their lives is going to cause them more sadness and so their best course of action is to end it now. — Pseudonym
None of this is to say, of course, that people perform this calculation correctly. People may have an overly optimistic value to their future years only to be consistently disappointed as to how entirely mundane they actually turn out to be. This then raises the slightly separate question of whether policy makers should act upon what people say they want, or on what can be demonstrated to actually make people happier despite what they they say. — Pseudonym
You seem to have raised a separate point about diversity within hunter-gather societies as opposed to Western ones, but again, like your earlier points, this seems to be nothing but speculation based on what you think hunter-gatherer societies are like rather than on the basis of any actual evidence. It's this sort of analysis that bores me. I have no doubt at all that if I demand evidence from you of the cultural homogeneity of hunter-gather tribes you will find some. A factor like cultural homogeneity is sufficiently vague that anyone who wanted to prove it could easily do so, and anyone who wanted to prove otherwise would have equally little trouble. The relevant issue for me is that you've arrived at this opinion first. If I ask you to back it up with evidence you will do so, but that doesn't alter the fact that your opinion arose from your prior prejudice, not from your years of anthropological research. You're writing at great length about things you 'reckon' are the case and then trawling through the internet to find evidence to support it when requested. We could do this forever and it would would become no less pointless. Even with something a coldly factual as physics or biology you can find 'evidence' on the internet to prove diametrically opposed theories. — Pseudonym
Your posts have been valuable to me in that I have been able to test my view of the world against them. Maybe my posts have been of equal use to you (maybe not), but let's not pretend that we're on some journey where together we'll find the 'truth' of the matter by this mythical dialectic where we each points out the incontrovertible flaw in the other's argument until we centre on the one 'true' way. Rather we could continue indefinitely providing argument and counter-argument because theoretical counter-arguments are infinitely possible to construct. It's been interesting and I didn't want to leave the discussion with the unexplained silence I had previously bequeathed it. You may, of course want to reply for whatever reason, but It's run it's course now for me. Thanks. — Pseudonym
We might still disagree, of course, but we would at least have gone away better informed. But that's not what has happened here. You have simply provided me with the largely uninformed opinion you already had, an opinion which is pretty much exactly in line with the commonly held view of hunter-gatherers that I'm already well aware of, having spoken to plenty of non-anthropologists already (their being the majority of the world). Then you've backed it up post hoc with evidence that I've already read. This doesn't mean that your opinion is wrong, it may well be absolutely spot on, but it means that I've heard it before, as have (more importantly) the experts I've spoken with and read, who nonetheless still disagree with it. — Pseudonym
"You have simply provided me with the largely uninformed opinion you already had...". This seems indisputable as your opinion came first and the only evidence you provided me with was a paper you found from searching Google Scholar, after you'd given your opinion. Unless I've missed something really important, these just seem to be irrefutable facts, not ad hominem attacks. Again, I'm not suggesting you did anything wrong in this regard, just that a less well informed opinion based on evidence I've already read isn't of much interest to me. — Pseudonym
"...you've backed it up post hoc with evidence that I've already read.". Again, unless I've missed some step on re-reading the posts here, you did indeed look up the evidence after I asked you for your sources, and that evidence does indeed consist of a paper I've already read. In fact I think it was my Google Scholar link which lead you to them. — Pseudonym
"one big silly ad hominem attack" — Pseudonym
If indeed I have, as you suggest, failed to comprehend and appreciate the full scope of your position and it's nuances, then I look forward to a fresh exposition of it in some future thread. There may be some level at which I feel it would be rational of me to take part, but It will unlikely be simply to try and convince you that you are wrong using argument and evidence. — Pseudonym
I provided you with evidence when you asked for it, and I can assure you that I've been "informed" by many sources prior to our discussion. — VagabondSpectre
The part where instead of addressing the positions, arguments and evidence you initially criticized as wrong, you just assume that I'm uninformed, prejudiced, biased, etc... — VagabondSpectre
If you aren't willing to engage in the actual discussion at hand (argument and evidence), and instead insist on having meta-discussions about the shortcomings of my education or character, why bother? — VagabondSpectre
nearly all humans want to go on living. — VagabondSpectre
survival is both the most ubiquitous of significant human preferences, and also the most fundamentally important in underpinning every other preferred human endeavor (at least to a point) . — VagabondSpectre
As direct measures of survival, mortality rate and lifespan are therefore intrinsically valuable for enabling access to all the other boons of life. Mortality rate and lifespan also partially represent the cumulative effects of many other possible metrics (medicine, affluence, violence, security, etc...), which does make them additionally useful in assessing the overall success of a civilization. — VagabondSpectre
Having a high chance of being dead on arrival or dead relatively shortly after arrival because of high mortality rates and shorter lifespans reduces an individual's chances of living a more successful life in all respects. — VagabondSpectre
Physical health beyond survival is another nearly universal human value (held by nearly all individuals) which must therefore be considered high on the list of important attributes of societal success. — VagabondSpectre
Access to wealth, security, and medicine play important roles in maintaining survival and physical health, and while different individuals and societies can have unique needs and desires with respect to these endeavors, these resources none the less make objectively valuable contributions to the success of a given society in terms of physical health and beyond. — VagabondSpectre
it could be very misleading to use overall suicide rates as a discrete metric. — VagabondSpectre
Physical and mental variations of all kinds may render some civilizations more or less appealing to individuals. — VagabondSpectre
Some environments can lead to convergence of adaptations (when selective pressures are stringent diversity between individuals shrinks overtime as naturally selected individual adaptations converge toward a singular adaptive strategy) and others can lead to divergence in adaptations (when selective pressures change, especially when a previously limiting environmental factor is removed, then a massive increase in possibly successful strategies is made available, and diversity between evolving and adapting elements can increase as natural deviations are no longer destroyed by rigid selection). — VagabondSpectre
Assessing the mental and spiritual well-being of any society seems too complex a task to satisfy. Aside from some very basic factors which contribute to mental health and happiness such as freedom from fear, it's unanimously unclear what all humans ought to do to be happy. — VagabondSpectre
There is however the noteworthy observation that a given environment and culture will tend to naturally select individuals who are well suited to being happy and mentally healthy in the adaptive niches which it offers, and so overtime a given population might come to be well suited to the arbitrary circumstances they happen to be in. — VagabondSpectre
Well that's very confusing behavior. If your opinion was informed by some reliable sources prior to my request for evidence why didn't you provide me with those sources in response to my request? That's really what I meant by asking for evidence - asking for the sources behind your opinion. I wasn't just asking for any sources, that would have been ridiculous (of course there are some negative anthropologists out there). I was asking for your sources. Why would you keep your sources a secret and provide me instead with one you looked up post hoc?
I apologise for presuming on the basis of your action here that you were relatively uninformed, but It seemed pretty conclusive behavior to me. So, perhaps you could answer my original request now. What are the actual sources you used to inform your opinion prior to this discussion, and more importantly (to me) why on earth didn't you quote them when I asked, or indeed at any other time in the whole discussion, rather than trawl the internet for some others? — Pseudonym
What you've provided no reasoning, nor evidence, for is the contention that these two positions are the only reasonable and well supported positions it is possible to hold, which seems to be what you're aiming at achieving. To do that it is not sufficient to simply find evidence to support your theory, nor experts who agree with you, it would be necessary to demonstrate a complete absence of evidence to support any alternate theory and a total lack of experts who support them. It is not sufficient to show how you have followed a reasonable, logical route from some agreed absolute presuppositions to arrive at your theory (as you have perfectly adequately done), it is necessary to show how that it is the only reasonable logical route from the agreed absolute presuppositions (which you have not even touched on). — Pseudonym
To be fair it is only my last post before your hiatus which focused specifically on this question. Lengthy as it was it was not a conclusive post. For most of our discussion I've simply been defending my original claims which amount to my presupposed metrics of a successful society. The fact that I have not reached a satisfactory conclusion for myself yet is why I'm considering a new thread, and there are several issues which I neglected to address.1) How should we measure success in society? We have both presented theories on that, I'm satisfied that mine has answered your critique, you appear well satisfied with yours, there's no more work to be done there unless someone else chimes in with a new critique of either. — Pseudonym
2.) How do we handle conflicting theories and evidence? This is the more interesting question to me as it crops up in almost every discussion, but I'm guessing it holds little interest for you as you've not engaged with it. — Pseudonym
This is simply an assertion. It may be the case, but it also may not. Those who find themselves in circumstances not conducive to going on living (very miserable with no prospects), clearly do not wish to go on living as evidenced by the fact that they kill themselves. This makes your assertion that humans all(or nearly all) want to go on living circumstantially proscribed, those circumstances being happiness. So you haven't avoided happiness being the primary metric, your secondary metric only applies in those circumstances where the human concerned is sufficiently happy to want to go on living. So the extent to which this is the case is the difference between our theories. You have presented a rational possibility (that the fact that most people want to go on living makes survival a good metric), but you have not shown that it is the only rational possibility (which would involve showing how it is definitely not sufficiently contingent on happiness to make happiness the primary metric). Without this second comparative measure, all you've shown is that a second viable theory exists and seeing as I don't disagree with that, I don't see the point in continuing to do so. — Pseudonym
No. Clearly, desire for sex, fame, children, adoration of peers, adrenaline rushes and objects of desire all frequently cause people to take actions which are huge risks to their survival. If the desire to survive was so ubiquitous and important as to trump all other desires, then why would anyone base jump, sky-dive, go to war, or even drive to work. Why would anyone do anything when one's survival chances are maximised by staying at home with an en-suite gym on a drip feed of antibiotics? The fact that a thing is necessary does not make it the most fundamental thing. You have to demonstrate that other things are not equally necessary. — Pseudonym
You've quite literally stated here that mortality is an intrinsically valuable, and useful metric. I have not argued that mortality is not either of those things, I've argued that it is not sufficiently valuable or useful to act as a measure of the success of a society on its own. To respond to that by simply pointing out that it is valuable and intrinsic is not a counter-argument. Imagine we were trying to establish who had most oranges. If you simply argue that you definitely have some oranges, and I argue that I too have some oranges, we have gotten nowhere. We must do one of two things, either quantify our batch of oranges by some comparable metric, or directly compare our batch of oranges. I am aware that mortality is a useful measure of a society's success, what I disagree on is how useful. — Pseudonym
I'm attempting to show why my positions are reasonable and likely, more likely than random alternative theories...This is simply statistically wrong as you are confusing a metric's necessity with the extent to which it is exhaustive. If a person has a 1:100 chance of being successful in any given year in one society, and a 1:1,000,000 chance in any given year in another, then a smaller number of years in the first society yields better odds of success than a larger number of years in the latter. It's just maths. Unless, as you do, you ignore other contributory factors. again, it's about comparison, so you must provide some quantitative metric, otherwise all you're doing is demonstrating that your theory is a viable possibility and I already agree with that. — Pseudonym
Again, you're simply presenting your case as if it were an argument. I don't disagree that physical health must be considered high on the list of important attributes, but in rejecting my theory you need to argue that it must be considered higher than metrics of happiness, not just high. — Pseudonym
Again, this is without comparison, demonstrating that these things are important is not the issue, no-one disagrees with that. Demonstrating that they are more important than happiness is the issue. There must be some quantitative or comparative measure, which you have not provided.
I won't quote directly from your section on mental well-being, but suffice to say you have again simply declared that something is the case which I do not disagree with - various factors influence mental well-being including fear and inequality. I fail to see how this has any bearing on it's use as a metric for the success of a society either necessarily or exhaustively. — Pseudonym
Yes, I don't disagree. Again, you have failed to carry out any comparative analysis. Is it more misleading than other metrics, if so why? — Pseudonym
Yes, they can. So you now need to demonstrate that hunter-gatherer societies experience mostly convergence whereas modern Western societies experience mostly divergence, and again, if you expect this debate to resolve it is not sufficient to show how that could be the case, by some metric you've chosen, but how it is the only conclusion from any rational metric. Otherwise, all you've shown is that your theory is a rational possibility, and I already don't disagree with that notion. You've presumed, for example, in your measure that diversity of job is correlated with diversity of personal expression. I don't see any evidence that this is the case. One could be a fire-fighter, or a bank clerk and basically have the same neuro-typical outlook on life. Equally one could conceive of two hunters who have diametrically opposite outlooks and understandings of the world, yet both have the same job — Pseudonym
And yet your argument relies heavily on the presumption that low mortality rates are definitely one of those things. If they're not, then why bother achieving them, if they are then it is clearly possible to arrive at some reasonably firm conclusions about what contributes to metal well-being. We've already explored some - freedom from fear, relative equality, freedom of expression, freedom to choose one's own path, food security, a supportive community, I don't really think any of these things are in much doubt. — Pseudonym
Right, so just how short a timescale do you think evolution acts on? Because this seems key to your argument. I don't see any evidence that evolution acts on the genome at anything other than very long timescales, which would mean, by your own analysis, we are broadly speaking adapted to be happy and mentally healthy in the hunter-gather cultural environment in which we evolved — Pseudonym
If you think evolution acts faster than that, then why is it do you think, that our biology still requires the levels of exercise a hunter-gatherer lifestyle provides and not that which a modern largely sedentary lifestyle does? — Pseudonym
Why does it still require the sort of nutrition provided by hunter-gather lifestyles and has not evolved to be more tolerant of the refined-carbohydrate-rich diet modern society provides? — Pseudonym
In other words, why would we have evolved to strongly desire things which were completely out of our reach for the first few million years? Do you not think that evolutionary pressure would have removed the stress that desiring something unobtainable causes, in favour of individuals who do not desire such things and so suffer less stress? — Pseudonym
You don't need a full history of the evidence I've been exposed to engage in this discussion, and the evidence (in the form of anthropological journals which you've requested) that I have presented should be sufficient (there are probably no academic studies which concisely capture the main thrust of my original post (that western civilization has been the opposite of a disaster)). I've gathered my understanding of human cultures over a long period of time and from many sources (such as history books and documentaries, which I reckon you would merely ridicule as undisciplined); I made a myriad of points in a cumulative argument, each of which I've been happy to provide evidence for, but providing all my original sources would be a herculean feat of memory. — VagabondSpectre
I'm never going to be able to prove that there is a 0% chance I am wrong, or that no expert in a vast field of study hold conflicting views. However, the more rational merit I can give to my own positions, the less likely alternative theories seem to be. — VagabondSpectre
We're more than capable of forming and informing evidence based opinions, even if originally they may have started as anecdotal or evolutionary preconceptions. In the spirit of philosophy and debate I think it always best to try and confront evidence and arguments directly (unless they're obviously absurd). — VagabondSpectre
If life is worth living, and I'm saying that it usually is to most people, then survival is intrinsically important as necessary to preserve the value life contains. — VagabondSpectre
...(the point is to get repeated doses, which requires you to go on living). I'm not saying that mortality rates are the one true and ultimate measure of societal success, but they are a necessary and major part of any broad and comprehensive assessment of societal success. — VagabondSpectre
If a given society is rife with such boons, then being alive longer within them would indeed be valuable/sucecssful — VagabondSpectre
It doesn't exactly matter that some societies offer better odds of leading successful lives: statistically, if you have a higher chance of dying, you have a lower chance of leading a successful life, whatever that may entail. — VagabondSpectre
By necessarily and exhaustively you seem to be supposing that an individual metric ought to occupy a universal and immovable place in a hierarchy of values that all humans agree with. I cannot tell you the exact point at which security becomes a greater concern than freedom, or precisely chart the many factors which influence individual human happiness. — VagabondSpectre
It's more misleading as ametric for societal happiness because as I understand it suicide often is the result of clinical depression, an affliction not necessarily caused by society itself. I've put forward and supported many good metrics, but I don't exactly feel the need to show why all other possible metrics, including suicide, are more misleading. Hell, maybe suicide is actually the closest proxy for societal happiness that we have, as you say it is, but until I get ahold of some reasons as to why this is the case (as opposed to not the case), I have no reason to assume its merit. — VagabondSpectre
I have to keep pointing out that inductive arguments which establish conclusions as likely rather than deductively necessary can be just as philosophical (better in fact). — VagabondSpectre
Are you essentially suggesting that we would be equally happy if we were all forced to do the same job? — VagabondSpectre
Being alive is definitely required to be mentally and spiritually healthy, therefore low mortality rates improves your odds of being mentally and spiritually healthy. It's not a presumption... — VagabondSpectre
From an evolutionary perspective, those who suffered too much due to their physiology/psychology will have tended to reproduce less, but it would also be true that evolving to be completely satisfied would also cause you to reproduce less successfully. Having insatiable desires keeps us motivated. — VagabondSpectre
I haven't asked for a full list. I'm merely defending my statement that your opinion was largely uninformed (in the academic sense), and supported post hoc with evidence you found by searching the internet in a concious attempt to support it. You seemed to take great offence at the suggestion, so I presumed it wasn't true. This would mean that your opinion was, in fact, supported by some academic information and that you searched the internet for new sources to support it for some reason other than your lack of previous sources. — Pseudonym
That's fine, showing that one theory has more rational merit than another is a reasonable way of comparing them (although I don't see any convincing ethical argument that we should then adopt the argument which shows most rational merit, but that's another debate entirely), but contrary to your later suggestion that we cannot discuss these ideas in the midst of a bias-laden debate, I really don't see how we can even have a debate (bias-laden or otherwise) unless we resolve what it is we're using as a measure of rational merit. You seem to believe in the (I think very much mistaken) notion that the ability to provide counter-arguments is just such a measure, but the history of ideas demonstrates with glaring empirical accuracy, that the ability to derive counter-arguments is almost infinite, limited only by the imagination. So then we're left with this unsatisfactorily subjective notion of 'compelling' counter-arguments. You don't find my arguments 'compelling', I don't find yours 'compelling' so where do we go from there? — Pseudonym
I agree entirely. The difference I'm trying to get at is that presenting your argument, together with the rational process and evidence by which you support it, is not sufficient on it's own to do anything more than offer someone an alternative (which they may then adopt or reject). If you want to go further, then this you'll need to do some comparative work. My criticism of your argument so far was mostly based on the fact that it is rarely more than a just-so story. It lays out how something could be the case, not how something must be the case, nor even how something is more likely to be the case than any alternative. Giving you the benefit of the doubt, I presumed at first that this was intentional, and you were simply laying out an alternative for me to consider (which I why I said that I wasn't interested in reading an alternative presented by someone who was largely uniformed, when I could read alternatives presented by experts). Now that you've made it clear that you're not simply laying out an alternative, but are attempting to argue it's relative merits, I'm focussing my criticism more on the fact that I don't see any such comparative arguments there. — Pseudonym
The most important point you're missing, which covers the first three of your responses, is a simple mathematical one. You're treating survival as a binomial factor when it is in fact variable. Hunter-gatherer tribes do not fail to survive (where modern societies achieve survival). Hunter-gatherers survive for less long than modern people's on average. This treatment of a variable as a binomial causes all sorts of problems for your argument... — Pseudonym
So here, 'survival', is not a binomial factor (one you either have or do not have), it is a variable (one you have a certain quantity of). The decision we're talking about is trading a certain quantity of this variable for an increase in the variable 'happiness', yet this argument here treats it as if the only choice were to either have 'survival' or not have it. Treat it as a variable and your last assertion "survival is intrinsically important as necessary to preserve the value life contains" ceases to be true. Only when the 'survival' variable is zero does the 'value life contains' variable become impossible to obtain. At all other values for the 'survival' variable, it is still possible to obtain any amount of the 'value life contains' variable depending entirely on how 'valuable' each moment of that life is. — Pseudonym
Again, same error. It does require you to "go on living" to get repeated doses of happiness, and lack of mortality is definitely necessary for a society to be successful. But both modern societies and hunter-gatherer societies have that. Hunter-gatherers do not instantly drop dead the moment they're born, so both possess this necessary quality 'being alive for some time'. The variable is the amount of time. The point I'm making with the sky-divers is that statistically they will be (as a population) reducing the amount of time they spend alive (sky-divers have a shorter lifespan on average than non-sky-divers). They trade this shortened average lifespan for the adrenaline rush their sport gives them. This is also true of absolutely any of the risks we take in life. We trade the shortened average lifespan of a group taking that risk for the benefits that risk gives us. This is no different to the argument I'm making about hunter-gatherers who choose to remain so. They're trading a shortened average lifespan for the benefits their lifestyle gives them. — Pseudonym
So why are you suggesting we judge the worth of a society in any way on the variable 'being alive longer' when we've just established that such a variable is only worth anything if such a society is 'rife with such boons'? The first job is to establish whether a society is rife with boons, before we've done that the variable 'being alive longer' is of no use to us as a metric, as you just stated. — Pseudonym
No, you've completely ignored the maths. You do not automatically have a lower chance of leading a successful life if you have a higher chance of dying. That's not the way probability works. With two variables the one is multiplied by the other. If you live in a society with an extremely low chance of achieving happiness, it doesn't matter how long you live for (presuming infinity is not an option), because your chances of happiness are so low that getting to roll those dice more often is not sufficient compensation. Imagine I have a ten-sided-die and a hundred-sided die, and my aim is to roll a one as often as I can (the size of the die represents how easy it is to achieve happiness in a given society, rolling a one represents happiness being achieved, the number of times you can roll a die represents your lifespan). I need to roll the hundred-sided die ten times more to have an equal chance of obtaining a one, than if I roll the ten sided die. So if someone said to me, would you be prepared to trade a loss in the number of times you get to roll the die for an opportunity to swap dice, you would be best taking that option.
This is what I'm suggesting makes hunter-gatherer societies compare favourably to Western ones despite their lower life expectancies. This is why sky-divers accept a lower life expectancy on average than non-sky-divers. This is why anyone does anything remotely risky. People are, and always have been, prepared to trade a loss in expected lifespan for an increase in the happiness of that lifespan. — Pseudonym
And yet that's exactly what you're doing because you're presenting the fact that Western societies have a higher life expectancy as a metric which is sufficient to outweigh any advantages hunter-gather societies may have in diet, child-rearing, equality, community, exercise, purpose, freedom etc. You have decided the place life expectancy has in the hierarchy of values. — Pseudonym
This seems to go back to the 'laying out an alternative' approach rather than any comparative work. I'm not asking you to assume the merit of suicide as a metric. As far as I'm concerned you can take it or leave it, but it was my understanding that you wanted to engage in arguing the relative merits of your theory, which would make it necessary for you to show how your metric compared relative to mine, how it improves on mine. So if we're talking about the property of a metric's clarity (it's failure to mislead), then a comparative argument would show how your metrics had less tendency to mislead than mine. Without that you're just back to saying that you have a reasonable theory and I already don't deny that. — Pseudonym
No you don't because I have at no point denied that is the case. I haven't at any point claimed that you do not have a valid philosophical theory. We're not arguing about validity, we're arguing about relative merit. Why are your conclusions more likely than mine? — Pseudonym
But you have not done any comparative work. Is it more likely that our genetic predisposition to causes of happiness has evolved quickly to take account of modern life? Because if not, then we simply have two equally valid alternatives. — Pseudonym
We really do not value additional years that highly. — Pseudonym
There's no rational point in characterizing me as uninformed and I would rather not waste time defending my education. In the context of our discussion, doing so amounts to an ad hominem attack because it fallaciously persuades that my position is incorrect by appealing to an aspect of me instead of an aspect of my argument/evidence/position. — VagabondSpectre
I'm not sure having a meta discussion about the epistemic or ontic nature of reason and evidence is going to get us anywhere... — VagabondSpectre
Firstly it seems that I'd mistaken your emphasis on longevity as being unsupported by an argument about hedonic value where you consider that argument to have been laid out already. We are in agreement then that longevity acts only as a multiplier of hedonic value (with the caveat that the number of future years one can expect to live may well have a hedonic value of its own)? That is to say that if a person gained 2 units of hedonic value from every year of life they could live half as long as someone gaining only 1 unit from each year and would have been objectively no more or less successful. — Pseudonym
Presuming that's right, our argument should really have been focussed on the various hedonic values of the socieites (the boons, as you call them) rather than being sidetracked into a discussion about mortality rate. Mortality rates are not that different between the two societies in a mathematical sense. A life expectancy of 45 is not quite half the average life expectancy in Western societies, so hunter-gatherer society would have to demonstrate just less than twice the hedonic value of Western societies to make up for its lower life expectancy, yes? I'm not suggesting we put numbers to this, just trying to find a way to shelve mortality (other than as a hedonic factor itself) for the time being until we've established that it is a factor at all. It is only a factor if hunter-gather societies are much less than twice as happy as average westerners, otherwise it is not relevant because its multiplying effects are outweighed by the increase in hedonic value of each year.
So the argument in this respect is - are hunter-gatherer societies enough happier to justify their lower life expectancies? You're arguing they're not, I'm suggesting they might be. — Pseudonym
The corollary of this, is that we're stuck with assessing happiness regardless of how slippery and difficult to measure a concept it might be because assessment of mortality is pointless without knowing the hedonic value of each year. We cannot simply presume that it is equal just because it's difficult to measure, that would be a fallacy. If we really cannot get a measure of it, then we must presume it is unknown, which means that the whole debate is undecidable. We've just agreed (I think) that longevity simply acts as a multiplier, not really a factor of its own. Any number multiplied by an unknown quantity just yields an unknown quantity. The only caveat I would accept to this is that at some point a society might yield such a massive improvement in life expectancy that it simply becomes extremely unlikely that any gain/loss in hedonic value enough to outweigh the multiplying effects will ever be possible. I don't think we're there, but I suppose it's possible you do. If so, then the discussion become one not too dissimilar to the Utility Monster. Would we be willing to admit that a life which had a million years of barely more than tolerable happiness was actually worth more than one which had only a hundred of moderate happiness, simply by multiplying factor alone? — Pseudonym
The next bit I'm a bit stuck on. You seem to have agreed that mortality is (mostly) only a multiplier for hedonic value. This, to me entails that you're having decided the two societies are of at least roughly equal hedonic value is absolutely crucial to your argument, without it you are comparing two unknown quantities. — Pseudonym
You then go on to make two seemingly contradictory statements - firstly that your argument is strong, has good predictive abilities and conforms to the evidence, and secondly that happiness (hedonic value) is so hard to measure as to be virtually useless as a metric. Given that your argument relies entirely on demonstrating that the two societies have at least equal hedonic values, how can you claim it to be so strong yet still claim that hedonic value is virtually impossible to measure? — Pseudonym
This seems to me to be the main sticking point, and where I keep misunderstanding your argument. You seem contradictory in your valuation of the measurement of happiness, on the one had agreeing that it is a vitally important measure (one half of the 'degree of happiness' x 'years of happiness' equation), but then on the other hand suggesting that we can't possibly measure happiness so we might as well not bother. — Pseudonym
Given that your argument relies entirely on demonstrating that the two societies have at least equal hedonic values, how can you claim it to be so strong yet still claim that hedonic value is virtually impossible to measure? — Pseudonym
It seems to me that there are four inextricable factors - longevity, happiness, justice and sustainability. At it's most trite, it seems sometimes your argument is "we can't measure the last three very well so lets just ignore them and say that western society has won on longevity alone" and that's just not good enough for me. If someone were to offer me an extra thirty years of average life expectancy, admitting that they might be bought at the expense of my overall happiness, the survival of future generations and the well-being of other societies and minority groups, but we can't be sure about how much, I don't think it would be moral for me to just take them unquestioningly. — Pseudonym
Longevity infers a modicum of comfort, medicine, security, — VagabondSpectre
from - here"Post-reproductive longevity is a robust feature of human life and not only a recent phenomenon caused by improvements in sanitation, public health, and medical advances. We argue for an adaptive life span of 68-78 years for modern Homo sapiens based on our analysis of mortality profiles obtained from small-scale hunter-gatherer and horticultural populations from around the world."
if you feel that wanting to kill one's self indicates that people are unhappy (and is representative of other individuals) then why can't I say not wanting to kill one's self (which actually is representative) means people are happy? — VagabondSpectre
Once you travel rivers by motor and have a durable long lasting knife, going back to poles, paddles, and flint knapping, is hell. So, almost paradoxically, an HG way of life can produce X average hedons per day, and by giving them technology which temporarily improves their hedonic circumstances, we can be doing negative hedonic damage in the long run. — VagabondSpectre
There are good reasons to believe that humans can psychologically and emotionally adapt to environments such that they're still motivated to flee discomfort and pain (but not consumed/hindered by it) and also motivated to chase pleasure (but not stalled by reaching it too easily).
Is there a maximum number of hedons any given individual can experience? Is the value of 1 additional hedon to someone already rich with hedons the same as the value of that hedon to the impoverished (diminished returns)? (same questions for anti-hedons). — VagabondSpectre
I think the magnitude in difference between the average happiness of the west and HG peoples is certainly not great enough to overcome a near doubling of days lived. — VagabondSpectre
If I can show that humans have the capacity to be generally/similarly happy across a wide range of environments, then it will stand to reason that a doubling of lifespan increases the average amount of happiness an individual will attain. — VagabondSpectre
if something is less sustainable or less just but has high returns on happiness, is that society more successful? — VagabondSpectre
While it's true scattered humans somewhere will always tend to find a way to survive, it comes at the cost of the death and obliteration of the many. Not only within groups as individuals die younger, but whole groups themselves that are for whatever reasons unlucky or maladapted have been wiped out and replaced by others (or by nobody at all in desolate regions). HG people are subject to the whims of nature to a greater degree than the west thanks to our technology and agriculture. — VagabondSpectre
You will surely be forecasting the demise of the human race brought about by western hubris (climate change, disease, end of oil, or nuclear war) to thus show it is unsustainable, but rather than offer preemptive rebukes I'll let you make your case. — VagabondSpectre
Acephalous groups have no wise leaders who can arbitrate disputes and actually make informed decisions about what is just (such as a modern judge might), instead altrustic punishment amounts to the often superstition informed whims of the mob. I've met some wise judges, but I've never met a wise mob. — VagabondSpectre
You will surely raise the objection that the west unjustly exploits the rest of the world and many of its own in order to sustain itself. While this may have been true throughout the west's colonial era, much of the rest of the world has freed itself from the grip of European colonial powers and are joining the ranks of growing economic powers. Global trade isn't the one way street it used to be, and even if one lane is still wider than the other, every nation engaging in international trade is still benefiting on average (six of the ten fastest growing economies this year are in Africa!) — VagabondSpectre
I did mention that we cannot completely remove longevity from an assessment of happiness as the prospect of a long life will itself produce happiness in the reasonably optimistic person.But it's important in this respect to recognise that this would not then be average lifespan. If we're talking about this effect of longevity increasing happiness (which is then multiplied by lifespan) then we cannot use average lifespan any more. This is something we haven't even gotten into yet because it's not yet been relevant, but it is very relevant to the discussion about the effect of predicted lifespan on happiness. The average lifespan of the hunter-gatherer past five is not radically different to that of the average westerner. — Pseudonym
The problem is that high infant mortality rates drag the average down hugely. The idea of a hunter-gather adult having to face the prospect of not making it past 40 is a complete myth. The average hunter-gatherer adult can look forward to just as long a life as the average westener, it's just that they have a lower chance of getting past five once born.
This lower chance matters a lot when measuring the success of society (no-one wants a high infant mortality rate) and it will affect happiness overall, so it's not been appropriate to use the average until now, but when we start talking about longevity as an indicator of other things, it's simply not true to say there's any difference to account for. Aside from infant mortality, the lifespan of hunter-gatherers is approximately the same as that of average westerners, so the extent to which it reflects metrics like security, comfort, and lack of (potentially unrecorded) suicide do not vary between the societies. — Pseudonym
Not wanting to kill oneself is still measuring suicides. The percentage of births which end in suicide represent that proportion of the population that want to kill themselves, the percentage of births which end in some other cause represents the proportion of the population that did not want to kill themselves (up to that point). — Pseudonym
You can't say that life expectancy is somehow a proxy for people not wanting to kill themselves, we already have that data, it's the inverse of the suicide rate. To use it as a proxy without the suicide rate you'd have to fabricate a large proportion of hunter-gatherers secretly committing suicide despite the complete absence of any record of such a practice in the enthnographies. This really would show the sort of bias I've been on-and-off suspecting. It's one thing to seek evidence deliberately to support a position. It's another thing entirely to try and support a position by claiming that a phenomenon exists for which there is no evidence at all. — Pseudonym
A society in which wealth and advantage are unevenly distributed is less happy than one in which they are evenly distributed. — Pseudonym
This is something almost universally acknowledged by psychologists. I can cite a dozen articles in support of this notion, but it sounds like you already subscribe to it. So the egalitarianism that you acknowledge marks out hunter-gatherers, becomes a key measurable component of happiness. — Pseudonym
But what we can say with almost absolute certainty, is that if one visible section of society is benefiting from some improvement, the section that is not will be significantly less happy no matter what their absolute level of comfort is.
But both these points seem to argue against your emphasis on longevity, not in favour of it. If there's a limit to the value of additional pleasures, then any which modern society can provide will produce a diminishing return. — Pseudonym
As I mentioned above. There is not a near doubling of days lived. There is a doubling of life expectancy. the two are completely different measures. I you want to talk about odds (as in exchanging happiness for odds of survival) over a whole society, then it's a useful metric as it is, but now you're starting to talk about the effect it has directly on the prospects of those experiencing the happiness, it's inappropriate. The average hunter-gatherer is not facing a halving of the number of days lived. The average hunter-gatherer is facing almost exactly the same number of days as the average westener, they simply have a lower chance of getting to be the average hunter-gatherer in their first five years of life. — Pseudonym
I'm still not getting this dual use of happiness as a metric, we have;
"The metric of happiness, which is not exactly central to my initial and overall argument, is something I criticize as hard to measure, along with the entire concept of rudimentary hedonic maths as misleading and presumptive."
and
"If I can show that humans have the capacity to be generally/similarly happy across a wide range of environments..."
These still seem completely contradictory to me. How do you propose to show, 'strongly' or otherwise, that humans have the capacity to be happy across a wide range of environments without being able to measure happiness? You could perhaps show that the mechanisms which cause happiness are not related to external factors, but I think you'd be onto a losing task there as they very clearly are. You could perhaps explore mechanisms to do with tolerance and it's effect on happiness, but, as we've explored, that relies on relative equality and using this as your metric certainly undermines your argument. I can't see how else you could avoid having to supply, as evidence in support of your theory, two human groups who were equally happy despite radically different environments. But this would rely entirely on your being able to measure happiness, which you say is not critical to your argument. — Pseudonym
You will need to support this assertion, as I simply disagree with it entirely. The idea that whole groups are wiped out to be replaced by others is not supported by any evidence I'm aware of. If you're arguing that a society is it's culture (such that you could say, for example, the Inca's were wiped out and replaced by the Aztecs) then you'd have to make the same judgement for western cultures. where are the Calvinists, where's feudalism, where's the Babylonian culture, where's state communism, where's the Shakers... Cultures get replaced by other cultures, this has nothing to do with sustainability. Sustainability (in ethical terms, which it how it is being used here) is about resource depletion. otherwise it's not an ethical matter and happiness could be obtained at it's expense without causing a problem. To be unsustainable in the ethical sense, a lifestyle has to be impossible to continue indefinitely by virtue of it choices, not by virtue of the vagaries of nature which are outside of it's control. We cannot become ethically obliged to control nature. There is a categorical difference between a society whose well-being is dependant on oil, and one whose well-being is dependant of clement weather. When oil runs out, that society will no longer benefit from that particular well-being - ever. During periods of inclement weather, the latter society may suffer, but when the weather returns to clemency, it will again thrive. These are two entirely different forms of sustainability, and have very different ethical connotations. — Pseudonym
Again this is mere supposition at the moment, I'd need to see the evidence you're basing this on to believe it's not simply prejudice. Where are the examples of hunter-gatherers being treated unjustly because of 'the mob' where their treatment would have been more just under a state judicial system? So far, all you've provided that is on this subject is the practice of ostracisation as a punishment for lack of sharing (with more severe punishment being present but rare). How would this be any different if non-sharing were illegal in a state justice system. The perpetrator would still be ostracised (imprisoned), and treated violently (either in prison, or in states which still have forms of capital punishment). I'm not seeing how the one is more just than the other. — Pseudonym
Did the Iraq war pass you by unnoticed? Did you miss the news broadcasts about Russia's invasion of the Ukraine? The invasion and control of weaker states fro their resources is still very much alive and well, it's just conducted differently now, less flag waiving and more tactical missiles — Pseudonym
You also seem to have slipped from focussing on justice to focussing on GDP. What has the fact that previously colonized countries, having been stripped of most of their natural resources, are now gaining in average GDP got to do with justice? Justice, in this sense, is about the extent to which the gains of one group are bought at the expense of another. The gains of modern western societies were definitely bought at the expense of the colonies, and the average GDP of the now former colonies completely masks the fact that the gains of the few (within those countries) are still being bought at the expense of the others. Income disparity is undeniably increasing and Tanzania, for example, which ranks in your top ten fastest growing economies, ranks nearly the bottom of the UN's World Happiness Report — Pseudonym
As I think we might have mentioned before, happiness is complicated but a necessary metric. As pointless as it is seeing longevity alone as a measure of total happiness, it is equally pointless seeing justice in terms of average GDP. — Pseudonym
Having a good diet, getting restful sleep every night, not overworking your body, etc, are all things which increase longevity and could also contribute to happiness. — VagabondSpectre
HereThe diets and nutrition of hunter-gatherers are discussed with the !Kung Bushmen (San) of the Dobe area, Botswana as the example. In general they show no qualitative deficiency of specific nutrients though they are thin and may be undernourished (by our standards) at some seasons. They show little or no obesity, dental caries, high blood pressure or coronary heart disease; their blood lipid concentrations are very low; and they can live to a good old age if they survive infections or accidents.
HereHuman populations in modern, westernized societies exhibit patterns of diet and physical activity that are associated with increased incidence of chronic and degenerative diseases, such as diabetes mellitus, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and certain cancers, among others.
Yes, if we shave off child mortality figures then longevity nearly equalizes, but why would we be shaving off child mortality figures? — VagabondSpectre
missing out on life is something we consider unsuccessful. — VagabondSpectre
You need to actually prove that suicide indicates or is representative of societal unhappiness. You're arguing that since people commit suicide when they forecast negative hedons, and since the west has higher apparent rates of suicide, the west must produce fewer average hedons per person, but you have yet to demonstrate to what degree people actually commit suicide because they forecast negative hedons — VagabondSpectre
Hetewe find a strikingly strong and consistent relationship in the determinants of SWB [subjective well-being] and suicide in individual-level, multivariate regressions.
- citations within text.It will not surprise anyone to learn that low SWB predicts mental problems and suicide. For instance, Bray and Gunnell (2006) found across 32 nations that happiness and life satisfaction were inversely associated with suicide rates. This is confirmed in studies of individuals, where SWB has been found to predict suicide (Koivumaa-Honkanen et al., 2001; Koivumaa-Honkanen, Honkanen, Koskenvuo, & Kaprio, 2003). In addition, SWB strongly and inversely predicts deaths due to nonintentional injuries (KoivumaaHonkanen et al., 2000).
and then you may also wish to show that individuals who commit suicide because they are unhappy are representative of the rest of the population. I.e: that the factors which cause individuals to commit suicide act upon all of us to the detriment of our average hedonic intake — VagabondSpectre
You can say that there will almost certainly be less happiness inequality when there is less wealth/burden inequality, but there are many egalitarian societies (many of them presently HG people) who despite being egalitarian are quite unhappy because of other circumstances (loss of territory, disease, etc...). — VagabondSpectre
the overall boons offered by a wealth stratified society might far outweigh the relative unhappiness caused by the relative wealth inequality or lower basic standards (e.g: having good schools, hospitals, and many career options in life, despite being relatively poor, might still directly contribute to a significant increase in total or mean happiness) — VagabondSpectre
Here's a study comapring happiness/life satisfaction inequality in western countries against wealth inequality and rising GDP. — VagabondSpectre
You've unambiguously contradicted yourself. If the "average hunter gather" who will live for approximately the same number of days as a westerner "has a lower chance of getting to be the average hunter-gatherer", then they are not the average hunter-gatherer, they're at best the mode hunter gatherer. — VagabondSpectre
My initial arguments rely on general well-being, not self reported or otherwise measured forms of happiness. — VagabondSpectre
To conclude on this point, HG way of life is very sustainable within the environments it has evolved to operate in, but it cannot easily adapt to environmental change or the presence of many other groups. This makes HG way of life less reliable in the context of inevitable change. — VagabondSpectre
As extreme examples, being ostracized for not wanting to undergo genital mutilation is one such superstitious norm that is not justifiable from any reasonable ethical perspective, and the killing of those suspected of witchcraft is another such norm which is not only unreasonably superstitious but also unreasonably unjust given its arbitrary application. — VagabondSpectre
If the west can cease exploiting other nations, won't that amount to ethical success? — VagabondSpectre
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.