:smile: Ok.

True that the existence/nonexistence of god doesn't entail belief/disbelief. However lack of belief, what does that mean? Neither do I believe god exists, nor do I believe god doesn't exist? That translatea as neither do I believe theism, nor do I believe atheism, a performative contradiction if spoken by an atheist.

Right. The lottery operetor must be sustained in a way so that they can offer you the thrill of hope.
(And take it back on the lottery draw day.) — Alkis Piskas

You're forced to take a risk, but a simple way of ensuring a greater than 50% chance of winning is to buy up > 50% of the tickets. I'm sure the lottery operators have a disincentive for that too: the jackpot < the total cost of half the tickets which means the profit in lotteries is 100%.

Oh, geesh. Atheism is a belief system that includes a lack of belief in god. The entire thing is a belief, but one element that theists believe is in the system (system: world view, weltanschauung) is believed to be not there in the system by atheists... the god concept.

It's not the entire worldview of atheists that is a lack of belief... only one element therein.

I hope this makes sense. — god must be atheist

That doesn't make sense (to me) and even if it does, does the atheist mean that "god doesn't exist" is not his position on god? If it is then the alternatives are a) god exists (theism) and b) god may exist (agnosticism) or c) he means something else entirely. Which is it then?

To take a step back from what I said above, a worldview that doesn't include god is Laplacian science (I had no need for that hypothesis) i.e. god is irrelevant/superfluous to science and by extension atheism. However, that doesn't mean science is a lack of belief in god.

I merely echoed the OP's own protest against atheism as a lack of belief and not the belief that god doesn't exist. Atheists, I've observed, dodge the request/demand to prove god doesn't exist by saying atheism is not a belief, it is the lack of one. In my view this is sophistry and the OP seems to intuit that fact.

I thinks it's misaligning expectations with reality that causes, or increases, suffering. 'Truth hurts' only ego and vanity ... — 180 Proof

That's correct, which is to say maya (illusion) is the cause of suffering, and out goes the window the first noble truth - life (reality) is suffering. Samsara is not suffering, a wrong/distorted view of it is. That is what distinguishes the Buddha from a non-Buddha is drishti (view), the right one and the countless other wrong ones. Nirvana then is not about exiting samsara, but about understanding what it is. I met the Buddha, we all have (there are more molecules in a cup of water than there are cups in all the waters of the world), we just didn't recognize him. :cool:

Aristotle's aurea mediocritas is notoriously difficult to achieve and as far as I can tell, it's exactly what's needed in this case (censorship) and so I propose a system of regulation that errs on the side of caution. By that I mean the system should have a low sensitivity for bad ideas (it should have a relaxed criterion). The false negative rate will be high (quite a number of bad ideas will slip through), but this is offset by true negatives (good ideas), more of which will be picked up by the system. After all 1 good idea = 100 bad ideas.

Most interesting — Ms. Marple

?

It is as I surmised - the cogntive singularity aka the technological singularity is beyond our event horizon i.e. we don't know what it is going to be (like).

A question: What exactly do we mean by technological singularity as in überintelligence?

Not really. Everyone has a concept of god. Much like everyone has a concept of Santa Claus. Some believe she exists, some believe she doesn't exist.

It's not that attributes don't stick in an atheist's world view. They stick, in his world view, too, very much. The atheist just does not believe that the unit actually exists. — god must be atheist

So what's the difference between lack of belief in god and the belief that god does not exist?

What you have described sounds to me more like ignosticism.

Per the wikipedia entry, there is an open debate whether ignosticism is a type of atheism or if it is a separate category unto itself. — EricH

Indeed, my description matches that of ignosticism. If so, atheism as a lack of belief must mean atheists don't believe in God which is just another way of saying god doesn't exist.

What is the 2020's (as a decade) zeitgeist?

if have a 1/1000000 chance to win a lottery and buy a lottery ticket 1000000 times --assuming that this is possible-- it is almost certain that I eventually win. — Alkis Piskas

That's why the prize money < the total cost of all the tickets.

Why is intelligence the yardstick for emergence? What is emergent is never to be found in the stuff it issues forth from e.g. chemistry is not sufficient to explain biology and the same should apply to posthumans. What comes out of humans is, so, unlikely to be (greater) intelligence, but something else entirely, which to my reckoning is, at present, beyond our event horizon.

Atheism as a lack of belief is legit if "god exists" (theism) is incoherent or meaningless, kinda like saying "$#&£!!??" The attributes don't stick (re Epicurean riddle: not all-good, not all-powerful, not all-knowing) i.e. God is an impossible object, like a married bachelor! :cool:

It all depends on the profit made, if it is made at all. I should've put R first. So, intriguingly, there's an order in which you must perform the operations.

P - R - B = C (Yes) is not the same as P - B - R (No) = C! :chin:

Most interesting. — Ms. Marple

Danke for the feedback. I'm zero in economics.

Dao is Logos. ~Heraclitus — 180 Proof

Heraclitus, the obscure. I believe he used to talk in riddles. A man of formidable wit, obviously.

Will keep an eye out for new posts.

I guess there could be Jedi kinghts and Sith lords - beings who could connect with The Force (bio-fields) and tap its power to perform miraculous feats.



Twin studies, if reports are to believed, have shown inexplicable, how shall I put it?, resonance, emotionally and cognitively.

It's doubtful if the adage once bitten twice shy is true. It seems to lie at the heart of the question. Many people have admonished me, saying "you never learn!" There's this concept which someone to whom I'm a bête noir taught me - institutional memory, no such thing except in extreme cases where the memory is reinforced vigorously e.g. holocaust memorials, exhibitions. Even then, as those who were directly affected pass on, the young invariably fail to connect with that which is being recalled and sooner or later, amnesia prevails, and we're ready to repeat the same mistake over and over again.

How to manage the profit (P)

1. Top up the decent salary of all employees (bonuses, B). How much is decided by the lowest wage and the bonus is a fixed amount.

2. Earmark a percentage of P - B for growth (R&D, call this R)

3. What's left, P - (B + R), can be divided unequally as per each person's contribution (C)

As is relevant, C = P - (B + R)

Problem: Murphy's Law

Solutions:

1. Ranging by which I mean unlike the universe which would be impossible if any of the physical constants were off the mark by a billionth, we should build systems that can function within a certain range of relevant values. The human body is known for homeostasis (self-balancing) and it tolerates deviations from the ideal mean.

2. Built-in alternative pathways: Our cells can generate ATP (energy currency) for short periods of time in anerobic (low/no oxygen) conditions, buying us time to correct the oxygen deficit.

3. Redundancies: Two kidneys, ya know what I mean.

4. Left to the reader as an exercise.

In short, Eros (life) is fully aware of the fact that les choses sont contre nous (things are against us), Murphy's law in French, and has taken appropriate measures which, from the looks of it, seem to doing a pretty good job of keepin' us alive.

Design?

I'm a driver, sir, not a mechanic. :cool: — 180 Proof

So you are mon ami, so you are.

I guess that depends on the particular physicalist — 180 Proof

:ok:

:up:

What do you make of philosophies like Daoism which seem to be taking a swipe at logic in every stanza?

You're taking issue with a strawman of your own making, much like theists do with "atheism" and idealists (antirealists) do with "naturalism". I'm not aware of any physicalist who actually uses the concept of physicalism the way you (wiki?) do define it. — 180 Proof

But then that means physicalists are ok with dualism and mathematical platonism, but they're not are they? Something doesn't add up, oui?

Gracias for identifying my fallacy. :up:

More like a Mercedes with a busted tranny ... :wink: — 180 Proof

:lol: Nothing a good mechanic like yourself can't fix! :grin:

What caught me eye is cancer - we're relatively fast evolving - from apes to humans in, what?, 2.5m years? One reason why that's possible is greater genetic instability (mutation rate in our species is higher, compared to other species) and that has the downside of increased risk of malignancy. Everything comes at a price, oui mes amies?

We had such a painful experience with European colonization and now in movies, I see Africans & Asians as part of colonization groups sent to other planets. What gives?

IME, a thinker's first duty – intellectual hygiene and metacognitive fitness exercise – consists in not asking idle questions or raising paper doubts (Peirce, Witty, Kant, et al) such as "first, last & ultimate" whatever. As for "ontological and existential" questions, the theoretical works of natural scientists presuppose such aporia which most do not explicitly explore or examine because that almost always falls outside of the remit of scientific inquiry. And pragmatists, which you allude to, whether or not they are doing science, raise such abstruse questions, as Dewey or Popper might say, only to facilitate transforming indeterminate problems into determinate problems which can be dis/solved. :chin:

However, your musings and notions, Gnomon, demonstrate a penchant for overdetermining pseudo-problems because, apparently, you lack the acumen of a rigorous, as you say, "amateur philosopher" to avoid these incorrigibly dogmatic traps. You're not here to learn from our motley community of 'thinkers', as your post history attests to, but rather, evidently, to preach a quixotic sermon that pseudo-scientistically rehashes perennialism (though your expansive, well-documented blog does bedazzle, sir :sparkle: :clap:). "Hoping to answer ...Ultimate ... questions" is the "job description" of false prophets, televangelists and other charlatans pimping snake-oil "worldviews" or "beliefs", which may be what "philosophy" looks like from the outside to many folks who're still squatting on splintered pews in their burnt-out old cathedrals. :pray: :sweat: — 180 Proof

:cool: Absit iniuria @Gnomon

I like Gnomon's mind even if what it thinks is philosophically suspect. A Mercedes Benz being used to transport manure. :grin:

There’s a reason evolution invented aging. — noAxioms

Allah rahim

Does Blackstone's ratio apply to the issue? Better that a 100 guilty people go free than that 1 innocent person be unjustly punished. Better that we deal with a 100 bad ideas than that 1 good idea be suppressed.

It seems large scale crimes need to be put in perspective. For example the holocaust registered at least 6,000,000 jewish lives (requiescat in pace), but then there were at least 2,000,000 Nazis i.e. a ratio of 3:1 (3 Jewish lives per Nazi).

Compare that to Elizabeth Báthory's (the blood countess) victim count: 280, 650 alleged. That's 280:1, that's a kill rate (victims per victimizer) 90 times as high as the Nazis. :chin:

If the Nazi kill rate was the same as Elizabeth Bàthory's, 560,000,000 (half a billion) Jews would've met their end in WW2! :scream:

A physicalist ontology I define as either the physical is all that exists/is real or that the physical is more real than the nonphysical. From such a standpoint, unicorns and numbers don't exist/are not real or are less real than horses. This, as you can see, captures the materialist/physicalist position on ontology. It has no basis and if it has one I'm not aware of it.

Ar you suggesting @litewave's sloshed and you would like to also get ... sloshed?

And your point? — 180 Proof

Why should one aspect of the tennis ball be more real than the other? Like you said there's no justification for a physicalist ontology, oui?

It's not complicated. There's broad consensus that religion and metaphysics are archaic, they haven't moved with the times, and are no longer relevant to life as it's lived now. By default, the only yardsticks we have are those provided by science. Of course there is an enormous variety of attitudes and views, but that is broadly true in secular cosmopolitan culture. Materialism as a philosophy arises mainly from attempt to apply scientific methods to philosophical problems, or to deny that there are philosophical problems that are not in scope for scientific method. — Wayfarer

A knife may kill but it can also save. There's no reason to say a knife is a weapon. I,'m a bit bewildered why physical (stones, bodies) is more real than the nonphysical (ideas).

A tennis ball may be green, but it is also round.

What I find intriguing is how a human - using reason - would achieve what the oysters did in that tank. My best guess is it's beyond the capabilities of one person or your average Joe - you'd at least need a mathematician, a geologist, an oceanographer, and a very powerful computer to do all the calculations.

Inanimate object 1, human 0. — BC

:lol:

It could be the other way round. Look at what we're doing - crushing, melting, banging, breaking, twisting, and the list goes on ... inanimate object 0, human 1. I guess there should be a Murphy's Law for inanimate objects too! Have you heard of The Pauli Effect? Apocryphal accounts circulated among laboratories that Pauli's mere presence could make machines stop working. Scientists even went so far as to cancel experiments when Pauli came a-visiting.

I know ... Cypher.

From a philosophical perspective, maya (illusion) causes suffering, the truth/reality does not.