@Wayfarer

Our lives

1. Remember what I mentioned earlier about how our desires seem to be naturally directed towards, in Buddhist terms, the mercurial.

2. Buddhism enters the arena and says what we should really strive for/desire is the changeless, nirvana being the apotheosis.

What I believe is happening

Two simple rules:

(i) Enjoy it while it lasts
(ii) Nothing lasts forever

I believe we're all buddhas but the problem is we've forgotten rule (ii) since we always seem to get attached in an non-buddhist way to the ephemeral but we do remember rule (i) and that's why we're naturally drawn to the impermanent.

It is very hard to have a discussion when the words are used in different ways. 'Being' and 'existence' are often used confused with each other. It has to do with the difference between the 'presence' or something as opposed to nothing which I call 'existence'. It is also known as necessary existence. Being is evolved and contingent. It is more than existence because it is evolved. Existence is the void, the no-thing. No-thing is no created thing as opposed to nothingness which is non existence. — EnPassant

Interesting! It makes sense...in a weird way. Your view is, let's just say, rather unconventional, counterintuitive, yes that's the right word. I lost count of the number of times our intuition was proven wrong. That reminds me...

Nirvana

1. Seeking it is like a a magnet's north approaching another magnet's north. As you move towards it, it moves away from you.

2. Not seeking it is to place a magnet's south next to a another magnet's north. You don't have to lift a finger, the north automatically moves towards and makes contact with the south. Once you stop seeking nirvana, that is nirvana.

Now, why do I feel like I'm an inept love guru?

:up: To be honest, what I said was either a half-truth or completely false. There's a good reason why Aristotle believed that understanding is the highest virtue - as much misery, if not more, follows misunderstanding as from ignorance/not knowing.

True, our natural desires seem attuned to the ever-changing - we love beauty, it doesn't last; we love life, it too doesn't last; and so on - and even though the Buddha warns us - anicca (impermanence) - that in itself doesn't imply that we should now stop being enamored of beauty or that we should reject life. All anicca is meant to convey is don't be shocked and don't mourn the passing of beauty and life when that happens and that will, ceteris paribus, happen. Anicca does, in a sense, devalue that which is transient but it definitely doesn't recommend that we can't/shouldn't, for instance, enjoy the blossoms in spring while they're still around and pretty as can be.

I guess it all boils down to two simple rules:

1. Enjoy it while it lasts
2. Nothing lasts forever

:chin:

To the OP's question, in a sense, "yes", the Buddha does make the fox's sour grapes move. Most of what is naturally pleasing, joyful, and desirable are ephemeral, in geologic time scales they're hardly even a blink of an eye. This simply means one and only one thing - if one's happiness is tied to that which changes so fast and so unpredictably, a world of misery awaits one. It simply can't go the way you want it to - th circumstances don't permit it.

What's the solution?

Prove to yourself, convince yourself that such objects are not worthwhile. The Buddha does this by defining true happiness is, as @Wayfarer put it, liberation - has a beginning but, get this, no end. Very foxy, won't you agree? Hounds, where are the hounds?

Definition of tantalize:

From Tantalus (Ancient Greek Τάνταλος (Tántalos)) in Greek mythology, who was condemned to Tartarus in the underworld. There, he had to stand for eternity in water that receded from him when he stooped to drink, beneath fruit trees whose branches were always out of reach.

1. (transitive) to tease (someone) by offering something desirable but keeping it out of reach(transitive)

2. to bait (someone) by showing something desirable but leaving them unsatisfied

Sisyphus

The Myth Of Sisyphus (Albert Camus)

:up: :fire:

You must have a photographic memory! You seem to know/remember what you said to whom and where! :100:

@schopenhauer1

The decision to have a child can be a costly decision. So are there any reasons to believe that economic considerations play a role in deciding to have children?

The figure below shows the relationship between fertility (more specifically, the total fertility rate) and gross domestic product (GDP) per capita (measured in 2010 U.S. dollars) across countries in 2000. The total fertility rate is the expected number of births a woman would have over the course of her life.

The decreasing relationship between the two variables demonstrates the connection between fertility choices and economic considerations. In general, poor countries tend to have higher levels of fertility than rich countries.

In particular, women tend to give birth to no fewer than three children in countries where GDP per capita is below $1,000 per year. In countries where GDP per capita is above $10,000 per year, women tend to give birth to no more than two children.

This decreasing relationship between fertility and income is well known to economists and demographers alike. In addition, it holds true over time: Rich countries, such as the U.S., have experienced a remarkable decline in their fertility rate as they became rich. Also, the relationship holds at the individual level, as rich families tend to have fewer children than poor families.

Why is fertility so much higher in poor countries? There are several possible reasons:

Time is relatively cheap in poor countries, so spending time away from work to take care of a child is not as costly as in a rich country. If this effect is strong enough, it can (and probably does) offset the fact that it is difficult to afford a child on a low income.


A child may require more education to be successful in a rich country. Thus, a child may be more costly there, so families may opt to have fewer, more educated children.


Infant mortality can play a role. More births might be needed to achieve a desired number of surviving children when infant mortality is high, as it tends to be in poor countries.

Children can take care of their parents when they are old. However, this is not necessary in rich countries with a well-developed social security system and functioning financial markets. — The Link Between Fertility And Income

A paradox, if you ask me? It's as if the more miserable one is (low income) the more children one wants and, on the flip side, happier (high income) you are, the smaller your family size.

Thanks :up:

Much obliged :up:

The Buddha, if it makes sense to say he "seeks" anything, seeks the cessation of "constants" (e.g. anicca, anatta, moksha). — 180 Proof

:up:

My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them—as steps—to climb beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.)

   He must transcend these propositions, and then he will see the world aright. — Wittgenstein ladder

@Wayfarer can you help me? I can't seem to find the Zen story of leaving the boat behind after having crossed the river/sea

Perhaps I am a little slow on the uptake, could you clarify how your post relates to my own? — boagie

THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER.

From an Anthony Kenny book on the history of Western philosophy:

What is being, with a small "b"? In my book, it's, very loosely speaking, properties: An apple is red; the apple, being red, is red.

What is Being, with an uppercase "B"? Being includes, in addition to being (properties) that which posseses said properties. The red apple is Being.

Parmenidean ontology, it seems, posits the existence of "something" that lacks any and all properties for Being and being are different notions. Apophatically then how does he (Parmenides) distinguish this "something" from nothing?

Now what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? — Carl Sagan (The Demon-Haunted World)

Food for thought:

I suffer from anxiety and for the last 10 or so hours I'm having an episode and what do you know?, I had an epiphany. Pain/suffering does, as I said, drive off sleep but then you can't think straight (no gamma wave activity possible) - am I really awake then?

If only for the sake of consistency, it seems we're faced with a rather tough choice: ugly truths or beautiful lies. We could, if we so wish, dwell in the region and time where truth and beauty overlap - get the best of both worlds as it were.

"Pain" itself does not indicate reality (e.g. nocebos, phanthom limb, angst, phobias, etc). That there is resistance to our efforts, resistances to acting and thinking, that the involuntary constrains and thereby enables 'the voluntary' (i.e. whatever we want, desire, prefer ...) discloses reality to (not merely "for") us. Whether or not "the world is a simulation", we belong to the world and therefore "we are simulations" too of that "world-simulation"; it's this "belonging to" that is involuntary, ineluctable, and constitutive of us/any entity being real. We equivocate the word reality by saying reality is otherwise, or, contra Occam, when we fiat (a) "reality beyond" – real-er than – reality" (ad nauseam ad absurdum) like ... "life after life". :pray:

NB: My formula – reality is that which encompasses reasoning that reasoning, therefore, necessarily cannot encompass, or exceed (just as no part is equal to or greater than the whole to which it belongs (à la a 'map =/= the territory' ... 'a pixel =/= the hologram' ... 'a set =/= the continuum' ...)) :fire: — 180 Proof

Since you brought up Occam's razor, the question that naturally follows is, can this reality, keeping our assumptions to a minimum, explain pain? We will refrain, for the moment at least, from hypothesizing a "reality beyond".

Yes, pain keeps death at bay by functioning as a warning sign but have you noticed how fire alarms and humble alarm clocks are acoustic doppelgangers. It's as if pain has the dual purpose of awakening us and also avoiding death. I'm sure I won't have to spell it out for you what that means. That's all for now. Good day.

What I find interesting and, at the same time, almost revelatory is the simple fact that the two most popular moral theories vying for top position viz. Kantian ethics and utilitarianism are based on either logic (Kantian ethics) or mathematics (utilitarianism). One could, I suppose, hold the view that ethics is mathematical logic in disguise. :lol:

@180 Proof

My take on desirability/appeal in descending order of preference:

Hedonic value

1. Joy [Best-case scenario]
2. Painless [Not bad]
3. Some pain, some joy [Manageable]
3. Painful [Worst-case scenario]

Realness value

1. Real [Want]
2. Illusion [Don't want]

Unfortunately, it's pain that, in a sense, keeps it real. Ergo, if we want not to lose touch with reality, we must not only accept pain but, oddly, even hope that we experience it. If we reject pain, there's a chance that we might be living in an illusion. — TheMadFool

On the same theme...

What do we want, what do we really, really want?

Happiness, right? Not just happiness but ecstatic bliss if that even makes sense.

What would we be willing to do for that?

Anything, of course. Among that is what you once equated transhumanist abolishment of suffering to viz. a 24 hr morphine drip.

Take it a little further and what we have is heaven, simulated.

Thus, if everything were perfect and it were all sunshine and rainbows, the odds are it's a simulated reality (an illusion or to the Indians, maya).

Pain, its existence, functions then as evidence/proof that the world then is real.

I might've missed a spot or two. Why can't a world that has pain as a feature not be a simulation? Nick Bostrom of simulation hypothesis fame seems not to share the sentiment as expressed in the following excerpt from Wikipedia:

Pains occupy a distinct and vital place in the philosophy of mind for several reasons.[17] One is that pains seem to collapse the appearance/reality distinction.[18] If an object appears to you to be red it might not be so in reality, but if you seem to yourself to be in pain you must be so: there can be no case here of seeming at all. — Private Language Argument

In other words, there's nothing that's realistic about pain, at least not to the extent and in the sense we think/believe. There's more that can be said.

I don't think it's got anything to do with experimental (read instrumental) precision. The difference between Newton and Einstein, their theories to be "precise", manifests as differences in the precision of the outputs of the respective formulae of Newtonian velocity addition and relativistic velocity addition. You'd miss it completely if you maintain that significant digits preclude higher precision in the output than in the inputs.

I wonder what Newton and Einstein have to do with happiness, my happiness to be precise. Curious but definitely worth exploring. Thanks.

It's true that understanding is, from the standpoint of someone intent on conveying (say) a point, restricted to that point. For instance, if I have a certain idea, call it x, that I want to share with you, I would only deem you to have understood when you too have, let's just say, an exact copy of x in your mind. In a sense, then, understanding boils down to minds xeroxing the contents of other minds. What are the ramifications of such an interpretation? Your guess is as good as mine.

However, I don't see why understanding should be limited/constrained in this way. The Buddha, it's said, once saw a pot of gold and exclaimed to his disciples "look, a snake!"

I offer only my own intuitions on the matter with help from you and others of course.

Will, I surmise, is also about direction; mathematically speaking, it's a vector minus the magnitude i.e. pure bearing.

"Putting Cruelty First" and "The Liberalism Of Fear".

Seems on point.

Check out the link with their names to an old post where I reply to you about "pain". — 180 Proof

:ok:

My take on desirability/appeal in descending order of preference:

Hedonic value

1. Joy [Best-case scenario]
2. Painless [Not bad]
3. Some pain, some joy [Manageable]
3. Painful [Worst-case scenario]

Realness value

1. Real [Want]
2. Illusion [Don't want]

Unfortunately, it's pain that, in a sense, keeps it real. Ergo, if we want not to lose touch with reality, we must not only accept pain but, oddly, even hope that we experience it. If we reject pain, there's a chance that we might be living in an illusion.

Remember (the minor gods) Thanatos & Hypnos are twins. :fire: — 180 Proof

Thanatos & Hypnos?

Where does Algos (god of pain) fit into the overall scheme?

The paradox: Pain (Algos) is a cardinal sign of disease and disease leads to death (Thanatos). However, when in pain, the last thing our minds is sleep (Hypnos) - pain (physical and mental) keeps us awake at night!

I like your style. It bears the mark of what computer scientists would, one day, refer to, if and when it happens, as an intuitive program (the Oracle).

Magnifique! Carry on!

:ok:

It's interesting though, right?, how people back then equated what is physiological life (brain + delta waves) with physiological death (brain - any waves)? Science has come a long way but the question is what is life?

Opinions seem divided.

1. If time travel is possible then, in effect, time and space become indistinguishable with respect to degrees of freedom - any "point" in time is accessible just like for space.

2. Martin Rees in his book Just Six Numbers claims, in the first few pages, that life would be impossible in higher dimensions. I haven't got to the chapter where he explains why? Note though that Rees isn't talking about the possibility/reality of higher dimensions; all he's saying is life would be impossible.

Why is it our best? It's quite basic to compare a sleeping person with a dead person merely because both are stationary. — The Opposite

What's better then?

No. But you and no other have evidence that death isn't 'a pre-birth state', heaven/hell, purgatory, a lingering spirit or any number of unimaginable afterlives. — The Opposite

If you're correct, we should have some sense of being as opposed to nonbeing, existence instead of nonexistence or, to put it simply, life and not death when in a dreamless sleep. Care to share your views on that?

Will

1. A desire, an intent. It was God's will that Jack go to San Francisco. By the way, where's @Jack Cummins?

2. A natural tendency. Water flows downhill. Entropy always increases.

Schopenhauer's will combines elements of both. Is there a difference between the two, does it even matter?

This is the part I disagree with. Why equate dreamless sleep with death? There's zero evidence connecting them — The Opposite

Good question! Consider it our best guess, a guesstimate if you will.

By the way, do you have any evidence that death isn't a dreamless sleep?

The brain exhibits delta waves when a person is alive.

Science has proved that death is not sleep. — The Opposite

:ok: I was merely referring to the perceived similarity between a brain with delta waves (dreamless sleep) and brain with no waves (death).

A simple equation to represent the above situation:

1. Brain + Delta waves (Dreamless sleep) = Death (not brain dead)

2. Brain - All waves = Death (brain dead)

@180 Proof

there
is
no godot
but
Death,
and
Sleep
is
her prophet. — 180 Proof

1. Insofar as perception matters, dreamless sleep = death.

2. There are two kinds of death viz. dreamless sleep & brain dead.

Thanks. Reality is hardly ever cooperative enough to fit neatly into our equations. There's always some wrinkles that we just have to ignore. Nevertheless. an approximation - something - is better than nothing.

I'd like you to go over the following:

Take the Parker Solar probe. It's speed = 111 km/s

1. Newtonian velocity addition: u = u' + v

If two Parker Solar probes were travelling towards each other, their relative velocity, R1 = 111 + 111 = 222 km/s

2. Relativistic velocity addition: $u = \frac{u' + v}{1 + \frac{u'v}{c^2}}$

Plugging in the numbers, their relative velocity, R2 = 221.9999696082 km/s

km/s

Salient points

(i) The relative velocity calculated in a Newtonian way and that calculated in a relativistic way differ but we could and do say that the ever so minute difference is negligible. That's the reason why Newton is still in the game in this scientific epoch of Einsteinian relativity. I'm sure you'll agree.

(ii) If significant digits matter, as you say they do, R2 should be rounded to 222 km/s (dropping the "false" precision of 0.9999696082) If we do that, relativistic velocity addition becomes, in a certain sense, meaningless. That, to me, doesn't add up. After all, Einstein's theory completely rests on that additional precision represented by 0.9999696082.

Conclusion

Your claim that an output of a physics formula can't be more precise than the inputs doesn't seem to hold water. As seen above, the precision in the output, higher though they may be compared to the inputs, makes a huge difference, requring an entirely different model/theory.

I know, I'm asking TheMadFool because he seems to think it has some sort of static moral value. — khaled

I have a feeling you're confusing epistemology with ontology. Try not to confuse knowledge with fact. :joke:

Food for thought:

Alice in Wonderland effect: When Alice takes a sip from the 'Drink Me' bottle, she shrinks but it feels like everything is enlarging.

Why can't it be both? :razz: — Tom Storm

C'mon, you can't expect me to do everything! :joke:

When I can't solve a puzzle, I can't tell whether the puzzle is difficult or I'm stupid!

The Buddha's problem: He was, I believe, in search of constants but the catch is change is the only constant. :lol:

But you think it's either good or bad correct? — khaled

:chin:

Is raising my arm good or bad?

Is running good or bad? — khaled

I dunno!

There are plenty of things that are neither good nor bad that we can do and others we can't do. — khaled

I'm beginning to doubt this claim.