wrote:
would hate to be in a position to look into the minds of many people and see what they are looking for. But I would venture to say, they are not looking for people beaten up, or raped, or robbed, or killed. They are looking for equality, solidarity, and all kinds of ~ity. But they know the road is long to achieve that, and many things must be laid down for the paving of that road: education, not just formal, but about the human nature. Eradicating illicit drug trade. Eradicating extreme exploitation (slavery). etc.

What I suggest for you to learn how a privileged lady in the upper echelons of society can be motivated to preach tolerance, is to read the book "Les Miserables" in your language, I am sure it's been translated into that from French. In it, a man gets out of prison; wonders down the road, and gets overnight stay in a wealthy man's home. He gets up at night, steals a silver candle-holder, and takes off. The cops get him, take him to the rich old man's house. The rich old man immediately sizes up the situation, and says, "My good man, you forgot to take the other silver candle-holder to go with the one I gifted you with!" And to the bufflement of the cops, they need to release him, and he wonders away now with two silver candle-holders.

Another suggestion for you, seeing your attitude has been established, and i can't change it any way I try, is for you to join the Hitlerjugend that has probably sprung up in your country and you find solace and understanding with your personal views shared by many there.

I answer
First of all, thank you for a reply I really do appreciate!
Second: the sad thing in my home country, I think you can guess which, the small nazi-like party that used to have very few followers now is almost the biggest party in my country. Stories about kids of refugees attacking totally unknown "white" kids, beating them, urinating on them even raping them along with a tremendous lot of shootings among criminal gangs of kids of immigrants have created a racism far greater than I experienced growing up during the later decades of the last millenia.
Our government is mainly social democrats and people there have had a very permissive attitude to immigration. They do get a tremendous lot of shit for the situation, but those guys have really tried to cope with being a country of empathy but at the same time get a decent assimilation.

The guys really not having any borders are eg a lot of my facebook friends, that i have due to my class journey, marriage and interest in humanities. People from wealthy academical homes that still say "we cannot wait for assimilation we have to let all suffering people come here"l. Like - do you have a brain??? - i do not of course answer that because of eg family friendship. But listen, If it gets total chaos here - It is really near that, even the big socialist newspapers admit it on their home pages, other western countries will hear about this. Will they be prone to receive refugees???

Maybe reading that book will make me understand how these people think. I cannot discuss it directly with them.

Third: May I guess that you grew up in a prosperous, academical background? Your initial post suggests that the empathy was the main reason to go left. What one as a guy from poorer backgrounds that really do not understand his new neighbourhood then asks is - Is is conceptually like the guys with empathy becomes left and the guys without become right? This is of course stupid, but can you - if you are from academic background - elaborate on the process of selecting view here?

To make things a little less abstract, if I may for a second, how do you look upon the question of admitting refugees from middle east conflicts to a western european country, and how is that based on your political beliefs? And in what social background did you get those political beliefs?
Facts are - a lot of the kids of the refugees becomes criminal and carries a deep hate for people living in the receiving country. But still, those people may escape from an early death in their home countries.

(I feel my English got a bit Scandinavian here but i hope i was reasonably clear...)

Cops having the best firepower and preferably the only firepower is kind of the shit here. Now, having middle east refugees in our country I can see that the police-only force was a late 1900’s european lullaby and people need to get armed. Sadly.

wrote
However, even the really good posters, you will have a great time agreeing with but will you ever actually add to their knowledge or change their opinions on something? It is exceedingly rare to see that happen (and be noted). I won't speculate as to why that is, all I can say is that if you come to forums like this hoping for that kind of thing, I would advise you that you're wasting your time.
I answer I dont really think that the success of a thread is individual posts or even posters. Its if, for instance, someone can kind of wrap up what has been said an made a kind of summary. That works pretty well in eg some political forums I sometimes visit.

How many actually READ a dialogue between two combattants as bystanders?

WroteI'm jealous, the early internet seemed like a pretty cool place. The pioneering days, before the digital suburbia popped up.

I answer Naah, guys sat on low speed links watching low resolution nude pics afraid that their bosses, like me, would come into the room... seriously, It was same, same but poorer equipment. Thing with the 90’s though was the positive derivata. Computing was a nerd thing from the 70’s into the 80’s until nerd Berners-Lee happened to do some stuff that made the PC usable for non-nerds. Cd rom making games attractive too. The hey days peaked with napster. Last 10 years nothing new has really happened. So thats boring. But activities are pretty mych same same. My son would argue highly for esport to be a plus for now and maybe thats correct.

i really dont think so! But I guess I am old enough maybe, and unless my fellow fatherormotherofsonanddaughterinuniveritys i do not whine about my brain getting moldy or anthing. I first came in serious contact with philosopy when I finally puked on the manager career, had some bad breaks in the IT Bubble crash, when I was finished rebuilding the house, settling in a nicer but poorly paid IT job and when the kids did mot need that much handling any longer. I read History of Ideas(really called something else in USGB supposedly) evening time after work, first time in life a subject really captured me and since then its been more than a decade of reading Sein und Zeits, Nozicks, Rawls and all kinds of philosophical magazines, reading great stuff people have contibute with on Wikipedia, youtube, IEP, SEP and harvard/yale even give you recordings of fantastic lecture series.

This is no tradgedy, this are the hey days of my life. I have been in bed with my IPad reading and writing for a couple lf hour. Off now to read, trying to find out why rich kids Sartre and Althusser REALLY became bollinger bolshies. This is no comedy or tradgedy, this is good stuff to do and I wont get up until after noon!

wrote:
Nearly every philosophical idea is going to be contentious in some way, if you post anything about religion, for example, anything at all, it will probably end up being a debate between atheists and believers. There is no way to avoid this kind of thing as far as I can tell.

I answer like this because my Ipad dont have that button popping up:
Thats kind of so but its kind of stupid in some ways. Its like we have come nowhere since the Dialogues. The idea that “my ism” is better than yours is running through the societies like never before. I does not have to be like that. You can leave your trenches, get up on the higher grounds where “this is simply a hard question” and try to find ways together. If an ism is to “win” you will never get anywhere or simply repeat arguments told dozens of time before probably only in this forum?

You guys who love to take part in a lenghty argument, what do you hope to 1. Gain for yourselves 2.contribute to other readers with from a factual and readable point of view?

Ive been in “forums” on and off since way before the WWW and well, try again here. I know it aint easy. But just because somethings are hard they do not have to be impossible.

One thing, why must these forum have these bloody pages. Forums are so much nicer than reddit to read in a way, but they have done away with that, you can just scroll. Gotta be some guys out there with brains better than mine that can evolve the forum concept. If you google up the first smiley thread from computer stone age not much has happened... its like I ask for a new Brin or Zuckerberg here... or preferrably a Linus Thorvalds... but one that do not talk nerdish and invents GIT.

Sounds great. Then you have found your way around. So, seeing a thread eg concerning a philosopher you are interested in, Althusser say, and 14 pages of stuff has already been written - what do you do?

The discussions on this forum seem to take on a life of their own. You are right that one should try not to derail a thread, but information is almost always introduced that inevitably leads to this conclusion. Even with the most intelligent people I have discoursed with on this forum this is the case.

You made the charge of "ego stroking," which is not an articulation I would use, but to each their own. In order for this to be the case, as I understand it, one must be driven, not by the desire to get at truth, but to prove something about themselves. I have consciously tried to strike out against this in my life as a thinker. One must not confuse vigor of dialogue for insecurity of ego.

"Whatever is started two hotshots take over the discussion." This is exceedingly generalized. You cannot mean that every time two people have repetition of conversation between themselves on a thread that this automatically proves they are doing something wrong? I am not sure what you mean by "take over?" I am open to being corrected if I am doing something wrong on a thread, but you will not simply be able to stick it to me through authority or your wounded feelings. I am not a moralist and don't much care for them.

These seem like cheap shot generalizations, poisoning of the well. If you disagree with something I say or am doing then confront me on it, not passive aggressive stuff like this. — JerseyFlight

I'm not saying right or wrong, I just want to get knowledge and pleasure from a forum thread.

One thing I sometimes do when I start a thread is to try to make an "abstract"(my english fails me here) in the OP of what has been said in the thread. That is a way to try to get the juicy parts out of it.
Maybe I should do it for this thread.

Probably AI can do good stuff in the future. But I would prefer new types of media that really enhances seeking of knowledge together.

I found a snapshot of philosophy sites in 1995...
https://humanum.arts.cuhk.edu.hk/LocalFile/PhiloServ.html — apokrisis

That was pretty good for 95. Everything isnt better now. At that time people took effort to present info in an organized manner. Try to get the most important news from eg a newspaper site now...

So it's not about empathy, at the root of it. Honestly speaking, it's about commitment to an idea or a principle. It's about solving an idea. Solving a problem. Lets leave empathy out of it. — BitconnectCarlos

Thats not what it seems to me, reading eg the FB posts from my friends in the academic left. Its more like just that "collective empaty". There is seldom a solution to a complex question. Refugees -"just let them come, no limitations, we have to open our hearts". CO2 emissions - "We have to find a new lifestyle". And this is from otherwise highly intelligent persons that for most other questions can acknowledge a problem as difficult and take part in a solution.

Yeah, see that button on my laptop now. Guess this forum was built before-smartphone...

what you descrbed above works on every other forum using ipad. The above is what I get when pressing that button running on Ipad. Probably not working for IOS.

I am from scandinavia. A very very large amount of refugees are admitted to my country. From middle east and Somalia. A very large number of those immigrants commit crimes. Rob and beat people. There are a lot of shootings between criminal gangs. Etnically scandinavian kids do get beaten in school. And still, wealthy, left-leaning ladys call for ”solidarity”. Is that what a upperclass person with left-leaning views are looking for? ( and how to include the text you want to reply to? The arrow just gives the tag above on my Ipad)

You asked what socialism. Example from my country : admitting a lot of refugees from trouble areas in countries such as Iraq and Somalia. (How do I include the actual text when replying? Using Ipad)

I dont want to handle stuff in my leisure time, I do that too much in my no-leisure time. I like friendly but deep discussions. iRL with a beer in front of me and an same minded person at the other end. Pretty difficult here on the web, online beer and chumminess is not easy to simulate.

Have you learned anything interesting about Heidegger here? I have read Sein und seit, knows a bit of his mentors and pupils and some about his Nazi years.

Sein und zeit was really complex to read but I got a rather agreeable picture of his view on what meaning of life is. The base in everyday life and then thoughts on the timeliness of the existence, the importance of death, the augenblick and the historicism. All good and well and not a trace of a guy that wants to stand in a flock and yell heil a few years later(ok, thats seemingly more his cup of tea than socialising with upper class gossiping but anyways)

So what to look for next?

Selfishness

From the OP:

- Is there a way to perceive the world, the Universe, from someone else's perspective? Honestly, is there a way to see the world through someone else's eyes?

Well those bloody mirror neurons help, and som got those working by birth and some not.

(Btw pretty new in this forum - how to inlude the text you want to reply to? Normally, forums do inlude that text automatically)

My definition kinda do include God but I can see guys, like Rawlsians totally exclude god and even mote neoliberalists and socialists. A creative God-fan could probably sneak in God into anything but I see people do totally without god

Are you guys absolutely sure you do not dodge the fact that some people are extrovert and some introvert?

You aint too introverted, right?

Being a "high performer" from very humble Scandinavian backgrounds, having with my degree and career made the "class journey" from lower middle class to the upper classes I read this thread with interest. I am not a fan of the hybris of the mediocre kids I have for neighbours. And I am probably pretty much like the father of the guy that played "Puck" in "Dead poets society".

I got absolutely mad when I married into a family of some prosperity, and found out that ALL do seek careers with money and usefulness as prio 23. "What do you want to do with your life" is the name of the game.

I've been living in this for a few decades now, but I cannot handle it. Philosophically and psychologically. What SHOULD really count as a Fair Race?. What I should want to do is to invent a truth detector really working and throw random people into it and find out if there is a thing as a true moral on this. Or if just everyone believes what is best for them in the throwness they are in.
My personal feeling - don't know if I'm true to even myself goes - OK one should not be a racist, but how about a Spiece-ist. Humanist in the true sense of the word? What makes a human valuable, as in worthy of goods like comfort, time to think, economic independence, and well Ferraris, yachts and stuff?
The thing that separates us from monkeys, parrots, trees and stones, that has given us a mean lifetime far longer than what is "natural" for us, as well as a comfortable life - is intelligence and stuff in that area. Things you get good grades for in school.

Privilege to me seems to be when people try to shortcut this and gets goods without the proper contribution to mean lifetime, if one pushes it a little. So parents (mothers) should avoid "trying to do the best for their kids" in ways that makes a mediocre getting hybris. Kids should enter a school that is the same for everyone and the ones inventing new energy sources and manages to cure cancers should drive the Ferraris....

Well, thats when I try to plug the lie detector into my brain but I probably lie to myself. But I think the concept of a lie detector would be an interesting ones to ge some answers to questions in this area.

Doesn't all these kind of discussions spin down to some guys having a lot of mirror neurons and some not?

Didnt see this thread until now. Gonna add som oneline answers when I get the time, hopefully during the weekend(daytime worker on lunch break...) but I'll start quickly with the last one.

The meaning of life is to live and let live. As comfortably as possible giving everyone else as much comfort as possible.

Reading On Certainty, i see an engineer who goes philosophizing. Even more that when reading Tractatus. I have NO difficulty at all seeing a slightly poorer Ludwig born 100 ys later developing web applications in Visual studio. Those guys philosophize in that manner at lunch or coffee breaks. I kind of like it.

A perfect circle exists mathematically.

Striving for perfection is something that might be benificial for some personality traits, supposedly.

Well, To comment on the thread start, software and mathematics maybe have some general differences. And some similarities. Both are kind of logic based activites, there isnt on the lower levels anything fuzzy about it, its not in the humanities. And both can be considered as tools to enhance life for people by solving problems. Computer guys are most often good at maths as well.

But the computer programs have a different kind of complexity, in that the problem really isnt the complexity of the problem to be solved, but in the communications. What is it we want done, how shall the different persons realizing the programming project work together, how shall the programming parts communicate with each other, how can we use already delivered program code.

Programming has, since I studied computer engineering in the 80´s exploded to be a massive activity, and all of us use the results of endless efforts all the time. So computer programming have more in common with house construction work or something like that than with maths.

One problem here is that I dont really know much about the philosophy of maths. What is that all about?

And maybe even more:
OK, you have explored language, logic and such. How things can be said or not. How to bring that out to people trying to argue for stuff in the real world? How to discuss things properly?

Being from a hockey, beer and supercharging car background then reading at university and ending up in an environment of humanists and teachers, I have friends spanning all the way from SJW to ANTI-SJW. In my home country, Sweden, there are two big questions that are at the focus of those two groups: Global warming and Refugee immigration from middle east. And the ones that are pro one of those questions are pro the other(which really is not especially logical) in the way you suspect.

And, even highly intelligent, people from one side of the ring refuses to listen to arguments from the other side. And since I cannot keep my mouth shut and really love the Socratian way of exploring questions, I do challenge my friends, especially on Facebook, to try to "lift them self up" to a level where you explore the questions instead of "taking sides" and only listen to arguments that match your "belief"

It's something like that I dream of coming from the philosophical institutions, apart from modal logic diagrams. Ways to transcend questions like this, and even more, transcent discussions even further - should people be SJW:s or not? Why are some people SJW and some Anti?.
Not to give "decisions" but to help decision makers and the general public to think correctly about questions like this.
How can we trust scientists giving unbiased statements about global warming? How can we judge the probability of different environmental schemes? What is the probablility that immigration leads to increase in crimes. What is the cost for immigration for tax payers? How can that be measured up against the decrease in suffering for people in bad places? What aid is logical to demand from a specific country?

For sure, like the Cold War adressed by Snow as above, these are really hard questions to answer, and in hindsight you might say that "who could have imagined this" about the outcomes. It's not easy.

How can I explain the importance of this matter? Which I firmly believe is at the heart of Philosophy itself and even transcends Philosophy. And is of uttermost importance. To the world. Now.

Reading Russells History of western philo, towards the final chapters you get the Idea why there is no way from the the academy to the public. Philosophy was stupid, having ideas about how the world was supposed to be understood, when it was SCIENCE that had the answers. Philosophy should be piecemeal. And not meddling with with the world as such. Thing is - i think - philosophers have really misunderstood the meaning of philosophy. Philosophy want to seek truth. People in common want that. An answer. Things thought to an end. When I read Timaios, what really bugged me is how Timaios talks. He takes those polygons of fire as something given. There is no probability that the theory of the element might be false described.

Socrates dont do that. When he talks about love, friendship, he maps the area. Investigates. In some dialogs he even comes to the conclusion that we cannot say. And that people might do later. Reading that sent shivers down my spine. Reading this from a guy dead since more than 2000 years ago.

Things-can-be-difficult. And people hate that. Bosses hates that. People commenting Trump, Brexit, global warming or immigration questions hate that. Fundamentalists hate that. People whining about the weather reports being inexact hate that. People going to the doctor wich unclear stomach problems hate that. But they are. Difficult. And that should be stated.

The advances in Natural Science have done good. Sure. And natural science seem to give answers. Nice little formulas So people want that all over the place. Also In the world of humans. And see, philosophy was stupid, those philosophers couldnt think up penicillin or say what diseases are. And here is the problem. Philosophy should be the first science. It should be in the vanguard of thinking. It should handle what is really unclear. The things that sciece yet cannot say anything about. And what science really cannot say anything at all about - yet - is the world of humans.

It’s all very well to write modal logic diagrams in Papers about if a dog is a dog in a parallel universe. But really, the First Science should be able to do better. The brain is a tremendously powerful tool, and how to think as good as possible about things should be topic of philosophy. And the world needs help. So, how can we bring the best of thoughts into the world? In the US, I have been told, people at least read philosophy in educations for people that are supposed to rule. Education for Priests include philosophy. But I would like more. Who should say how you REALLY should think about something like Global Warming, what to do about it? The only thing that seems clear is - it is difficult, beyond scientifical results. Socrates, help us out here! And he will not give us a nice little answer.

So here is the task for a Philosophical engineer. Take the best of thoughts from people thinking best about thinking out into the world. No less should the ambition for philosophy be.

Pardon my poor english btw.

My 25c : Wealth does not exactly create poverty. Power might do. But Greed IS good as a driving force, The possibility to explore and exploit other parts of the world was a driving force behind the technical revolution starting off in the 17th century norhern Europe.

And still, "risk capital" tries to go after things that seem fruitful, ideas from bright people.

And I am a Socialist. In the eyes of most US people at least. But I can see that the Communism created even more poverty than the US did in Latin America during the cold war days.

Karl Popper in his critique of Marx has the clue. The National States. That will moderate the more brutal capitalism with regulation and taxes. In my home country we actually had a revolution. But a slooow one. From 1917 up to the 60´s. Where the trade unions and the social democrats gradually gained more power. In good discussions with the big capitalist families (eg. the Wallenbergs). What we ended up with, Peaking in the 80's was a mixed economy where capitalism was ok, but you had high taxes on eg. inheritance and a lot of regulations. Universities are free of charge. So intelligent kids from humble backgrounds are allowed to rise.

THe situation has become more fuzzy now, with the introduction of Globalisation, with low salary countries coming into play, making the national states and the trade unions toothless. My guess is that this is what sent President Trump to power.

What one would like to arrive at, I think, is NOT a socialism of the equal-for-everyone type. But a TRUE social liberalist world whith something of the Fair Race that Rawls talks about, where people really do what Plato is dreaming of in The Republic, where silver children of gold parents sends those kids to silver lives while gold children of silver parents gets gold lives. And that for the whole world. But as long as people talks about the IQ of Sub-Sahara people, I am sceptical.
Actually, I am a father myself risen to the gold position. And I do not give my teenage kids gold lives for free. Since I am from a Silver background. They have to fight for it. I cannot understand parents that spoil their kids, making them omnipotent while observing that their kids are really mediocre.

Wealth does not give poverty, but richness for all reqiuires institutions stronger than the rich people. As with all questions regarding humans, a compromise is normally the best solution.

But of course, one dreams of a world where everyone does what he or she is most apt to do, and everyone works together. And produces the same results as capitalism. But maybe it is impossible.

But... it seems alive! Why does not anyone go back? This forum does not seem as full-fledged at least technically (no forum engine running it?) as the phpBB Philosophy Forums.

It's the 21st Century. Tim Berners-Lee has done his magic. Use it. Send mails to your Journalists and politicians. I do, I get responses. I have changed things. Most people dont do that kind of stuff, so the ones that just yaps does not get heard. Even more for you US guys compared to us Scandinavians. I have good friends in California who are politically interested without being politicians. They went up to their Congressman in Washington, was very politely treated, even invited to a session in the congress! But it's like anything else, to get results, you have to make an effort.

If I at least think I'm awake, safe and sound and see a tree, I find no problems with it being subjective or objective. I can use it, as "tree" in conversations with myself and others in a manner which does not make any problems. If I however think it's beautiful, I run into problem with the mental thing. So yeah, Pragmatism is the name of the game here. Of course, I might be dreaming it all up, but if I do not give a ... about that it flies for me. It's a tree.

I'm not overly fond of Neoliberalism, but a word like "infiltraded" seems a bit over the top. Isn't liberalism/capitalism more of a mechanism in a reasonably free society rather than a plan, a direction? In a society you gets as much liberalism as you can get, up to a limit regulated by the state? Of course, all the mechanisms are there, as indicated by Marx and criticised by Popper et al.