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.