Honestly, the thing that stands out in my perception is your name— which I like— and the fact that you usually write well and are fairly unassuming. I don’t know much else about you though… — Mikie

Thank you. No, that should stay that way. It's good to know less -- it's the thought that counts.

And of you, as well -- good to know you are one of the mods. That's all I need to say about you.

It sounds like you are saying they don’t exist in reality at all, and then noting that we cannot think them away. — Bob Ross

How is a whole paragraph of my answer not show at all that spacetime don't exist?

I understood your points and don't really disagree with them; but I am unsure as to whether you believe space and time are substances or not. What do you think? — Bob Ross

They are not substances. If you recall Aristotle, and others, have written about things like substance, form, essence, etc., all within the template of space-time, and never outside of it. We cannot separate space-time from the universe, therefore we cannot separate space-time from existence. It is a zone -- a multi-dimensional zone in which things exist. To speak of space-time as thing in itself is nonsensical. A thing in itself is anything that has its own properties and dimension existing within space-time. Tangible objects are things. Humans are things. But a universe is not a thing.

One thing that I find so peculiar (and for which I have gotten a lot of flak) is the almost complete lack of introspection, lack of self-reflection, and lack of applying the theme that is being discussed to oneself, on the spot. Esp. in Western philosophical discourse, any request for such is instantly dismissed as a fallacious ad hominem. I just don't understand this. — baker

I know. Caring is hard. Like loving is hard. :wink:

You need to outsmart them, Baker. Write it differently instead of using words that betray your undertone. If I come along and post in a thread in favor of paternalism, for example, and just blaarrgghh the basics, sans nuance and metaphor, like I have-no-reservation-so-take-it-or-leave-it, then guess what I'm gonna get in response?

It seems that way to me, also. But I suspect AI is crawling along the alleyway waiting to slip through a cracked door. This could be a plus . . . or not? :chin: — jgill

You'll know them by the essays they write. haha! :lol:
They write for themselves, and it's not a two-way communication -- they'll respond to you but not to you.

There’s a dozen or so people who are certainly above average. But there’s a lot of morons too. — Mikie

Well, in that case, I only read the dozen or so people.

What he is likely misremembering is the few times I stated that there are crazy people in this site. And we all know that there is. — Lionino

lol. :sweat:
I don't read most posts in this site. So, I must have missed the crazy ones.

I hope those few crazies did not leave a lasting impression here such that they now define this site.

And you like to throw around these blanket insults too: sometimes it's that most people on TPF are idiots, .... — Jamal

You simply misinterpret what I say — a joke — — Lionino

This here is something you don't get to say and be awarded the interpretation that it is joke. I avoid using this word when I'm joking. I only ever say this word if I mean it because it would always be received as meant, not banter.

That said, I actually find this place to be populated by above average intelligence. I do not always 'speak' softly and sweetly here, but imagine being out there in the general population and trying to talk about philosophy and other things not pop culture. This is a refuge, to me.

It seems like denying spatiotemporal relations sideswipes all of knowable reality and replaces it is with a giant question mark, and makes reality (which we can speak of) phantasms. — Bob Ross

Space-time is always a part of existence. I don't know if "property" is the correct word. We can't perceive anything unless it's space-time because our constitution and the mechanism of perception is designed to function in space-time, nowhere else.

I think, though, you might be thinking of the "temporal" definition such that something is perceived in a particular unit of time or sequentially. I always have a hard time trying to explain this, so I hope I am making sense. Human cognition is temporal, that is: sequentially; but a computer memory is not.

Here is an explanation:

An example is the human feeling of impatience or tiredness -- something took too long to finish or to arrive. A computer will not have an accompanying subjective feeling of tiredness for waiting, or boredom from waiting, or simply, giving up because something is taking too long to complete. Or a computer will not have the feeling of unfairness because a first-come-first-serve rule is violated.

Another attempt at explanation: If I am walking in a street and see a tall electric tower, I expect that tower to be there on my way back using the same route. I can even gauge at what time I'm going to see it again given the length and distance I've traveled so far.

PS: I am better at 'getting it', rather than explaining it.

I'm simply a tag away — Noble Dust

Someone with conviction!

I think the question should be -- how do you perceive a forum member. So, if I'm answering it this way, I'd say @Noble Dust will explain anything if you tag him and @Benkei can be a gasshole. lol.

@baker -- well, Baker can a benevolent prick.

Whatever you say, dude.

"What goes around comes around". This doesn't always happen. Some bad actions never got consequences.

Yes and yes. Do you think that's the full story? Do deficits and debt not matter? — Relativist

I didn't say that's the full story. I'm just stating the fact that no one opposed to it once it's in effect. So, everybody contributed to the deficits and debt.

What's your point? I simply answered your question. My point was that it's silly to just give credit or blame to a sitting President based on the status of the economy. — Relativist

My point is, you cited one example of his bill, and then you went on to criticize it. I responded by saying, that while the democrats did not vote for it, I asked you if they indeed partake in the lowering of their tax liabilities. It's in effect from 2018 to 2025. Do you understand that the 2017 TCJA is still in effect until 2025? You probably benefited from it when you filed your taxes.

I don't see that there should be a confusion in my response to your post.

No. It received no votes from Democrats. — Relativist

You have to think outside the box. They didn't have to vote yes, but they knew it was going to pass and become a law. Math works. They all benefited from it -- ask any democrat if they refused the tax credits and deductions to lower their taxes. None of them objected to it when it went into effect. All this without voting "yes" to the bill. So, not only they "preserved" their constituents faith during the process of passing it, they reaped the benefits of the TCJA aftwards.

A lot of fear that people refuse to address, refuse to introspect. — baker

Absolutely!

Heaven is impossible to create on Earth.
But hell is easy.

The economy was doing well, and the summers weren't as hot. A President doesn't control either the weather or the economy. — Relativist

Where in my post did I say that Trump controlled the economy that was doing well. I stated a platitude -- the economy was doing well. A great economy helps any sitting president.

I think from what I'm reading in this thread, there's a lot of psychological fear of the idea that Trump might be president again.

The Paul Ryan tax cuts passed under Trump, and tax cuts stimulate the economy. — Relativist

You mean the 2017 tax cuts and job acts. What were the votes? Did both parties vote for it?

In my view, it plays into the narrative of the MAGA/Trump mediaverse, which is investing a lot of hype and hot air into bringing about this outcome. And believing it means they're succeeding, so I refuse to believe it! — Wayfarer

I was reading how the economy was under his leadership and the economy was actually going well. When the pandemic hit, it was used against him like a perfect storm.

IMO, it's merely wishful thinking to believe that the eight year losing trend of 'suppressing minority voters, misogynist anti-choice, The Big Lie propagandizing' Republican candidates will not be reversed merely by Biden dropping out of the presidential race. Like 2020, most likely voters still oppose Insurrection/Criminal Defendent/Rapist-Defamer/Fraudster-1 rather than support President Biden. — 180 Proof

I don't follow the day to day american politics. I look at trends and studies. Trump seems to be the only one that is a "brash vulgarian" and a maverick, as @Tom Storm described earlier. Honestly, I'd like to see if Trump could win again. There is fear, for sure, in people because psychologically, Trump's impact is greater.

Why do you believe Biden will lose to a candidate he's already beaten once — 180 Proof

I reviewed my posts previously and I don't see where I said this. Please tell me where to find this thought?

But let's say, to answer your question -- if one believes the current president might not be president next time, things happen. Simple. He could suddenly keel over, for example.

I don't have a crystal ball.

Seems to me that many Trump supporters think that the system is utterly corrupt, so for them it takes a brash vulgarian, a maverick outsider like Trump to stick it to the system's gatekeepers. — Tom Storm

It looks like it is working. In 2017 or 2018, an independent (rather academic) study was conducted about the strength of Trump's candidacy. It was very strong. That was apparently very shocking to the American public.

Trump is an AI, complete with hologram form, created by the deep state, or the deep fake, or maybe the deep Putin, who knows?. — Metaphysician Undercover

Is it psychologically uncomfortable for you to ponder that soon Trump could be president again?

Well where do you think the electricity comes from? — LuckyR

Good point. Apparently, we would need an additional 30% increase in electricity production if all cars are EVs.

Although it seems obvious to anyone not inside the bubble that it's a con. — Wayfarer

The one person that can answer this is @Athena.

the nomination conference is not until July, and there are, shall we say, legal issues which might become apparent well before then. — Wayfarer

A thought which puzzles me. Why is it that there's not an all-out apparent in his personal and public lives? He's been hounded in all directions.

I think Trump is going to win the Republican caucus.

Only an AI could run against him.

Thoughts?

**this OP should be merged into the Trump thread** — Wayfarer

So I guess this is now the thread.

Driving less worked (works) for me. I lived about 20 minutes from work and we don't take car trip vacations. I don't have a problem with electric vehicles, especially when they nail the batteries (which they should by next generation, with solid state versions). But for me, electric would a less fun, expensive, inconvenient alternative with negligible carbon improvement. — LuckyR

I think, though, the carbon footprint is much less because of zero emissions. I guess we have to look at it this way-- we can't get rid of cars completely, but we can reduce the harmful effects of driving. I have not really looked at the studies as to whether the manufacturing of the vehicles, batteries, and storage units are not equally worse than manufacturing other products.

But certainly with less driving, collectively, that's also an improvement -- if you're using the ICE car.

I deplored spending such a huge chunk of my life in this building. It made me feel my life was being squandered. All the usual distractions there didn't help.
Working from home, I still feel my life is being squandered. — hypericin

:100:

Many Americans could drive less. I don't really expect people to walk 2 miles to a supermarket and then carry 30 pounds of groceries back home. They could bike, but biking requires a reasonably safe street, and there are a lot of places in the suburbs which are hard to get to while remaining safe on the street.

Many people do, however, live reasonably close to drugstores and supermarkets, and could get there on foot or bike with little risk. It is more work, sure. But the labor of shopping and schlepping one's stuff home saves a trip to the gym. — BC

Absolutely. I think the US has no history of bicycle usage as a mode of regular transportation, unlike the Netherlands and China. Planes, trains, and automobiles, these are what built its economy.

Here am I, on a Sunday afternoon, traveling 10 miles to downtown and my favorite gay bar. It took me 10 minutes to get to the bus stop, and the bus I was aiming for zoomed past when I was 1/2 block away. It will be 30 minutes before the next bus arrives -- and this won't get me downtown, It will get me to a transfer point where I will have to wait for another bus to finish the trip. Between 60 and 90 minutes later, I arrive. — BC

Time is the biggest objection against the public transit, I think. What could take a 15 minute drive, would take an hour or more on a bus. So, if you're taking the bus to work, you would need to add at least a couple of hours more to your time of the day. That's a lot of hours that you would need to add to your working life each day,

Internal Combustion Engine. I didn't get it either. — BC

Runs on fuel. A conventional car.

BUT I drive less than half of the average number of miles per year in my state. So my carbon footprint is probably on par with electric vehicles, with less risk of accidents, injuries etc. — LuckyR

So drive less, is what you're saying.

Whenever I set a goal, usually part of the very goal itself is to get it done within a certain time period. — HardWorker

This is true. To me part of accomplishing something is get it done by certain amount of time. I sometimes allow a bit of a grace period, but nonetheless, I know if I give a time limit, I get it done.

Consequently, you feel good...rewarded. Oh, and there are no REAL consequences to you getting virtually shot. No deterrence! Seems like a logical gateway to get multi-dimensional and include the body for some physical activity and, perhaps, increased stimulation and reward while perpetrating some actual carnage. — Steven P Clum

I can only find studies on children, young children on violent video games. How and when they act out this gaming in actuality is something I'm not sure about. But you made a great point below:

Whereas myself, (for example) who used to engage in full contact karate back before it was a thing, learned to avoid fighting outside of the ring because I knew first hand the ramifications of giving and receiving a can of whoop a_s. I was as much satiated and humbled from the matches that I lost as those that I won on account of I always reflected and learned from both experiences. Peace! — Steven P Clum

In the live sports of karate, with rules in place and guidance provided by the organizers, you are actually trained not just the actual physical contact but the rules surrounding the activity. There is something that serves as a safety gate.

On this thread, I'm not going to make a for-or-against decision on the violent video games and other forms of violent entertainment. But I want to point out that the OP did qualify its claim as

prolonged and disproportional enough to that of the multi-dimensional world, — Steven P Clum

.

So, at least on that thought alone, we should consider discussing it.

Violence aside, the marketing industry is half a billion a year revenue. Why there's so much money involved in marketing and advertisement? It's because it works. People can be manipulated by images, symbols, and persuasion to act and make decisions to purchase, use, idolize, believe in a certain product or person.

Now, you might argue that "well, food choices in advertisement and marketing are not like selling violence. People are aware that food is good. And people are aware that violence is bad. So, they're not going to make a stupid decision to act out the violence they've been fed through video games". Behavioral and psychological manipulation works equally on all behaviors. Not just the good ones. Conditioning does not discriminate.

In order to cut down on traffic and parking costs, and to keep from annoying citizens more than they already do, Mayo organized a transit system for its employees, collecting 1 or two bus loads of people each in small towns up to 50 miles out, and dropping them off at the buildings in which they work. In the evening the routes are traveled in the opposite direction. Several thousand workers get to work this way. — BC

Wow! That actually sounds doable. If employers in the cities provide a benefit like that, I think that is a happy medium between convenience, not having to drive, and relinquishing some freedom from driving yourself.

In other words, it doesn't have lines that go INTO the neighborhoods to allow for people to walk easily and not have to "park and ride", which I saw you discussed earlier. — schopenhauer1

Yeah, the rail is very limited when it comes to "customization" of travel. Commuters go to the rails, not the other way around. And this poses a problem still, because you have to have a car to go to the ride. That's why buses, as BC has been talking about, are the way to go because they can drop off the travelers to every corner of the roads.
(I'm saying this as if I'm the department of transportation, :lol: )

The thing with rail is physical limits. Things like curves and grades that don't work everywhere. — Mark Nyquist

Absolutely! And the rails don't come to the people also. It's where the planning commission could plant them.

Secondly, proposing mass transit over personal vehicles displays an urban bias. Rural folks are completely left out of the conversation.

Of course, a robust debate can be had on shifting a higher percentage of urban dwellers to mass transit and away from cars. But that is very different from declaring personal vehicles evil, as if they have no (inherently obvious to essentially everyone) huge positive impact to humans. — LuckyR

I think in the rural area mass transit is not practical. I think the OP meant the cities full of cars -- that's why the evil reference. But you are correct, there should be a two-tier proposals on the restrictions of vehicle use. I don't know. How are the Amish doing, btw? Do they use vehicles on the road now?

light rail. — Mark Nyquist

In Asia, it's monorail. I've ridden a monorail before -- built by the Japanese. It's high up from the streets, unlike subways. The streets below have the regular vehicular traffic.

The fact of the matter is that a large share of "mass transit" is largely transit for the poor and the disabled who have little choice but to use "shabby transit". — BC

The modern rail is open to everyone. Some have seats like an airplane cabin. Maybe the "bus" still bears the image of the uncouth crowd, but we should really change that now and make the bus ride as comfortable as the private car.

At other times mass transit must be available for the small volume of people who want to use it, and it must still be frequent enough to meet people's needs. This means that mass transit is underutilized but must still run to meet people's transport needs. So you get buses, trains, etc carrying only a few people. This is very inefficient. Cars don't have this problem. — Agree-to-Disagree

This is only true on paper. In actuality, one wonders why at any given day of the week and at any given time, there are so many people "not at the workplace", but going to shops, restaurants, the beach, and somewhere else. I witness this myself everyday.

As far as the public transit, there's park-and-ride, which is also nonsense as you still need to drive yourself to the location of the ride, park your car, ride, and come back to get your car and drive home. That's bullshit. Then there's the lame trolley as it is only available for short strip of the city, so it's like a joy-ride only, not a real serious shit that's gonna take you to work, home, school, and stores. Like it's a token ride so the politicians could point to "there's the trolley, if you don't own a car". Like, WTF!

Avoid getting any virus -- you may think that it's just like a common cold: everybody gets it and it goes away. Viruses are different. They actually have a long term after-effect in your brain years down the road.

Strenght training. Cooking my meals. Biking to places I need to go (under 10km). — Lionino

This is all you need to do.

I read something about when the Ford model T cars came out and a family went out for a ride at 25 miles per hours. They got into an accident and one of the daughters died. Not collision with another vehicle -- owners of model T were rare. They drove into a ditch.

Think. Usain Bolt could run at 27+ miles per hour.

I am not sure whether workers saved up for a car, bought it on time, or borrowed the money, My guess is more the former and less the latter. — BC

Some certainly did save up for it. But we're talking about the mass produced cars whose buyers didn't have the time to save up. 1919 was the first time auto loan was available to the general public.

This quote is attributed to Publilius Syrus:

The pain of the mind is worse than the pain of the body.

I wonder to what extent despair is a temperament or a philosophical perspective? Also, to what extent is it a chosen viewpoint or one arrived at through outer experience of suffering? — Jack Cummins

So, I am asking how do you see the idea of despair, and hope, as philosophical concepts in making sense of the navigation of life possibilities? How may ideas of despair be juggled effectively, to go beyond the deadend of pessimism and thinking? To what extent is nihilism a 'realistic' philosophy or a flawed one? — Jack Cummins

Despair is alive and well in philosophy.

I found out about Lev Shestov. This is his take on despair:

People who read much must always keep it in mind that life is one thing, literature another. Not that authors invariably lie. I declare that there are writers who rarely and most reluctantly lie. But one must know how to read, and that isn't easy. Out of a hundred bookreaders ninety-nine have no idea what they are reading about. It is a common belief, for example, that any writer who sings of suffering must be ready at all times to open his arms to the weary and heavy-laden.

This is what his readers feel when they read his books. Then when they approach him with their woes, and find that he runs away without looking back at them, they are filled with indignation and talk of the discrepancy between word and deed. Whereas the fact is, the singer has more than enough woes of his own, and he sings them because he can't get rid of them. L’uccello canta nella gabbia, non di gioia ma di rabbia, says the Italian proverb: "The bird sings in the cage, not from joy but from rage." It is impossible to love sufferers, particularly hopeless sufferers, and whoever says otherwise is a deliberate liar. "Come unto Me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

But you remember what the Jews said about Him: "He speaks as one having authority!" And if Jesus had been unable, or had not possessed the right, to answer this skeptical taunt, He would have had to renounce His words. We common mortals have neither divine powers nor divine rights, we can only love our neighbours whilst they still have hope, and any pretence of going beyond this is empty swagger. Ask him who sings of suffering for nothing but his songs. Rather think of alleviating his burden than of requiring alleviation from him. Surely not—for ever should we ask any poet to sob and look upon tears. I will end with another Italian saying: Non è un si triste cane che non meni la coda... "No dog so wretched that doesn't wag his tail sometimes.”
― Lev Shestov, All Things Are Possible and Penultimates Words and Other Essays

I do not have a better passage to provide here as I don't own a book he'd written.

It's an economic fight -- it would be hard to get rid of private vehicles in favor of public transport. But humans could get used to not having a garage and a vehicle. I know I can and I know people who would favor not having cars anymore.