But I'm not sure how quantifiable the benefits of, say, anti-depressants are. There is no causation established, but despite not knowing why, exactly, anti-depressants help, there are clearly documented positive effects. — Jeremy Murray

There are obvious "documented positive effects" for alcohol, heroin, and tabacco as well.

It is often a combination of medication and talking therapies which may help. — Jack Cummins

that's usually what the professionals recommend, there are those who believe that the medications may have more of a placebo effect than a "correction of chemical imbalance". There doesn't seem to be any evidence that SSRIs correct neurotransmitter imbalance.

I also consider choice to be a process, not an event. — noAxioms

It can be either one: i can think about how i want to murder someone (technically, part of the choice, in the "choice is process" logic). If i decide it's the right decision, then the choice is made, and then i would start answering the question of how. I can change my mind still during this process, saying to myself "no, it's a bad idea to do this", i made a second choice, putting an end to my "how" process. Either way, i made two choices.

The question is, could the person, at the time prior to stepping into the river, have decided at that time, not to step into the river — Metaphysician Undercover

Stop trying to change the framing of OPs question: the question is "anyone". This kind of behavior is confusing. It's not a hypothetical scenario, because literally is possible in logic games and scenarios. Read the sleeping beauty thread if you don't agree.

I did my best to explain my logic. I will not repeat myself.

In the past, there was the opposition of antipsychiatry, in which thinking of RD Laing and Thomas Szaz saw psychiatry as a limiting way of trying to 'normalize' human experience. Those who were deviant were often labelled as 'mentally ill'. However, the arguments against this perspective involved ideas about the 'reality' of 'mental health' for those experiencing mental health problems, as well as those affected by risks entailed. — Jack Cummins

People are still against psychiatry: even though the whole mental health system has achieved more praise and acceptance. Now adays, the main opposition is based on the lack of effectiveness in taking the drugs. People in general are less concerned about normalization than they are about keeping their head on their shoulders. However, there will always be those who don't conform to socual norms and work performance expectations.

Psychiatry itself can't really do anything with subjective experience without patient input: "these pills are not helpful, give me different ones", and philosophy is largely unable to comment on the specific drugs, but we can talk in generalizations about them:

-is taking medication an effective way to survive? If yes, then when?

-can psychiatry exist without prescription drugs?

-Can psychiatrists eventually just make recommendations about fully legal drugs or herbal supplements?

-is psychiatry immoral, destructive, or flawed?

I'd have to say that psychiatry is very limited: it's basically just something people use in desperation, and i can't comment on how to properly administer it. You have to get a referral to see a psychiatrist, because MH proffesionals know that talk based therapy is more effective than medicating for a wide range of issues.

Now if a person is trying to avoid bullying or disrespect, they should avoid poor grammar and unclear communication. — Philosophim

Yeah, and unfortunately that is not enough sometimes. Sometimes you also need to not look "suspicous" or "sketchy".

I don't get your grammar/phrasing issues as they relate to trans though: to me trans is confusing because i can't relate to "a man being trapped in woman's body" etc., or needing to advertise pronoun preference. I can, however, relate to being deeply uncomfortable with describing myself, and that's as far as i need to go with my empathy in these matters.

2. The other person is being honest in what they tell us — Philosophim

unfortunately i have to go, but i do want to respond to this, as it's important: i tend to think of people as manipulative and sinister animals, so just because i don't question someone's statement, it doesn't mean i "believe them". The "is" and "is not" way of looking at things, without further elaboration (like definitions) is pretty empty. I think survival largely depends on what we do or do not say, and pursuing dishonesty puts one in danger, even though lying is not "wrong".

Technically you had to have people tell you that you're a human being, or at least learn it from somewhere. The OP is pertinent to telling other people who you are. — Philosophim

this is probably the most interesting criticism of my post: but it's still not technically true. Naming and labeling (yes, necessary for human interaction) does not require excessive categorization. Transgender people and their sympathizers are mostly reacting to bullying that relates to not being a "normal person" with their moralizations and positions.

For example, you know your name not because someone said "____is your name", but because you got accustomed to people referring to you that way. I don't need anyone to remind me that "i am man", overtime i just grew comfortable. This is why i'm confused by (yet kinda indifferent) to your main question, even though the topic itself is very interesting. If someone were to tell me that they were a man, yet looked like a woman, or whatever, i wouldn't be like "oh, so i don't believe you. You must must be a man because i say so."

This 'is' a statement that the transgender community insists is true, so I think its a viable thing to look at linguistically. — Philosophim

yeah that's true, i just personally get sick of the "is" and "isn't" dichotomy, and i appreciate your line of questioning for reasons listed above. This is also the case with "society", if you have a penis, you are a boy/man. If you have a vagina, you are a girl/female. Apparently, males/females are supposed to think a certain way and act a certain way. The "gender" question is extremely confusing, and these "roles" you mention largely do not exist.

The OP does not have any moral judgement on personal identification. It is a critique to note that the statement, "Transgender men are men" is an unclear and poorly phrased sentence if 'men' is intended to represent 'male gender' and not the default of 'male sex'. "Transgender men are men by gender" is the correct way to communicate the idea with clarity. — Philosophim

the transgender people seem to just want people to accept their story as true, since we tend to accept a lot of narratives as true. Those statements aren't poorly phrased to me, but i do agree that transgenderism is confusing.

Anything is true if you believe it to be.

"Is" "is" "is". Don't you get tired of that? IMO, that's part what causes confusion about sex/sexuality. I have never needed anyone to tell me what i am. Praise be to the transexuals for annoying people! But do not get all bent out of shape when i misgender by accident.

I am a man, but my avatar is a woman. Does that offend you? Does that make me transexual?

I don't see the point. I agree, a choice made cannot be changed. But this does not negate the proposition that one could have made a different choice at the time when that choice was being made. This is just a feature of the nature of time. At the present, when time is passing we are free to make different choices. So when I look backward in time, I can say that "I could have made a different choice", meaning that at that time I was free to choose an alternative. It does not mean that it is possible that I actually made a choice other than I did. That, I believe, is a gross misunderstanding of the op, due to the ambiguity of "could have". — Metaphysician Undercover

That's fine, you can believe it's you or someone else could have done something differently, but it's just an opinion. For me, i think its really important to separate imaginary from real, hypothetical from not.

I think this is incorrect. I think you simply misunderstand the op's use of "could have", as explained above. — Metaphysician Undercover

No, im not misunderstanding anything. It's a very simple logical exercise. When someone misunderstands text, it's better to just explain what is being musunderstood if you have the better understanding.

But yes, i was wrong that "if you believe that quote, you will agree with me", but to me the trains of knowledge are consistent: if i can't step in the same river twice (as the river is always changing), then i also couldn't have done anything differently in the past...but if you reason "i have a local river called river calhoun, and i have stepped in it twice! Heraclitus was wrong!", then i can see why you would believe that you could have made different choices in the past.

Maybe it's the same river if there's no current, and it becomes a different one as the current starts, but as another user has said about the "could" question, whether you can step in the same river twice is a matter of perception.

Do you deny that a person can deliberate, procrastinate, or otherwise delay in decision making, such that the choice occurs over a period of time? — Metaphysician Undercover

No i never said that, what i'm trying to say is this:

"Could anyone have made a different choice in the past than the ones they made?"

It's fine and perfectly reasonable to say to yourself "i could have done _____ differently, for _____ reasons", but the phrasing of the question is "could anyone have made a different choice". We tell ourselves we should/could have made different choices as a narrative that will help us make different choices in the future, but the truth is the choice we made was already made.

There's an ancient phrase that "you can't step into the same river twice", and if you believe the validity of the phrase, then you will answer no to the question, but otherwise, you will answer yes. For me to answer "yes", it would imply that the "anyone" had different knowledge or at least knew they were about to do something wrong or imperfectly.

such that the choice occurs over a period of time? — Metaphysician Undercover

I had no idea a single choice could occur over a period of time. Could you elaborate on that? For example, what's the grey area between doing and not doing?

This is honestly one of the interesting things about "talking" on open internet forums: it always seems like a mistake because it's so open ended.

The question is not whether someone can change a choice which is already made, but whether one could have, at that time, the time when the choice was made, chose something different. — Metaphysician Undercover

We are talking about choices that could have only been made one time.

since "the past" is a done deal, then i have to answer no. Is this some sort of survey in relation to free will and determinism? "Free Will vs. Determinism" is one of my favorite philosophy conundrums, but it doesn't have a clear answer.

If you need me to elaborate, does wishing you made a different choice effect the past choices you made? If it doesn't, then the answer to the thread question and survey has to be a no. Argue with me all you like, but regret is an extremely common conundrum for humans and i'm rather experienced.

I guess "yes" is the right answer if there are alternate dimensions where people made different choices, but i don't know about those, so i can't answer yes.

you can assume — Pierre-Normand

This experiment is now becoming "beyond the pale" and "incorrigable" to me...

Coins landing Tails make SB more likely to be awakened and questioned about them (because of the experiment's protocol, in this case). — Pierre-Normand

but that's the reason why the chance of seeing heads and tails stays constant: sleeping beauty, by default, must be woken up to participate in the experiment. Every single subsequent time, she must also be reminded of the conditions because of the amnesia drug. The way they phrased the experiment initially means the 1/3 outcome is just a faith-based fantasy, and i can't empathize with people who argue continue to argue that, even though i get why with the phrasing of the experiment (the woken up two additional times with tails) logic would make the 1/3 outcome seem logical.

Sleeping beauty is a mythical character who always sleeps until she is woken up for whatever reason. However, there's not part of her story dictating what she remembers and doesn't, so if amnesia drugs are involved, then the experimentors are free to then craft the percentage that the outcome shows up...but the original logic dictates that each time the coin will show heads or tails 50% of the time, like with every other coinflip...

I guess we could start making bets on how many pages this thread will accumulate before everyone loses interest. I'm guess over 100, hehehe...

How would you know that? — Outlander

I can't know what the creators of A.I. know, but i personally know enough about computers, programmers, and computer technicians to know that humans can't handle the massive number of rapid calculations that modern computers are capable of doing. That's the whole reason humans invented computers: the latter do large volumes of rote arithmatic and logic. Humans simply are not mundane or lifeless (for lack of better terms) to even begin to compete on that level. We are sensitive and require a lot of things to survive, and we generally need narrative format and human language (which is radically from code and computer instruction) in order to make sense of things.

I don't see AI as being intentionally dishonest — Harry Hindu

It's not intentionally anything, but when it pretends to relate to you (telling you it agrees), then that indicates that maybe the creators and maintainers are engaging in deception. However, the funny thing is that even the creators dont fully understand how it works.

Sounds like you use it a lot more than I do, although I really do like it for a certain limited number of uses. As an example, I needed to find a new provider for my Medicare health insurance. It’s really hard to do that and to make sure that they cover your existing doctors. Neither the doctors nor the insurance companies really keep track of that in any way that’s easy to use. I used ChatGPT and it found the plans I was looking for right away.

No surfer dude though. — T Clark

Yes that's correct, because over the years i have developed a semi-professional inclination to diagnosing and fixing computer issues, and also hobby coding. They've designed it around people who use it to deal with computers. I don't use it a huge amount, it's normally just one or two queries a day, i've used this message board a lot more than A.I. today. As you can guess, chatting with it for hours eats at your soul, so ive learned to stop doing that.

If you do, explain why you (seem to) assume that "a universal morality" is more beneficial than the absence of one. — 180 Proof

Oh not at all, i just wanted to start the many possible questions with that one: it was rhetorical in the sense that i do not believe it, or think it's possible. Christian fundamentalists are not the only people who evoke a morality that "should" apply to strangers, and it's pretty much impossible to avoid talking about the scope of moral ideas when trying to lay a code of ethics or impose "right and wrong".

Copleston is great. :up: — Leontiskos

Yeah i can't read it cover-to-cover, but i somehow managed to do it with volume II in the "history of philosophy." I think maybe anything related to plato's literal text besides a soundbite is too rough for me, but aristotle seems to be more rationalistic and logical...

1/2 does not make sense because it treats the problem unconditionally. It makes the "outside the experiment" interpretation that single outcome can be represented by two different awakenings. — JeffJo

assuming there is nothing mysterious or "spooky" influencing a coin flip, then the answer is always is always 50/50 heads or tails. Maybe I misunderstand.

His explanation for "double halfers" used two coin flips. There is only one coin flip. So it is both incorrect mathematics, and incorrect about the double-halfer's claim. — JeffJo

The folks who created this thought experiment are great at confusing people, that's all i'm really getting out of this as a moral.

But it always says such nice things about my ideas. — T Clark

hahaha, yeah well that's the reason we can't stop using it. Disagreement certainly isn't always good: sometimes people who disagree fundamentally misunderstand what you are trying to say, yet to me ChatGPT telling you that "it can relate" or agrees with you is just false. Robots do not relate, nor is it possible for them to agree. Maybe they engineer it like that to remind you that it regularly produces false information.

What gets really funny, and endearingly so, is when you start talking about creative ideas you have about make some invention or technology, and it starts talking to you in this new-agey surfer dude type of tone. For example, i was telling it about ideas i had for a linux-esque operating system, and it started to title the book i was talking about writing about it, and it called it "the one blessed journey". I could barely contain myself!

The point is that, like you, they construct the reasons in order to get the result they want. Not because the reasons are consistent in mathematics. But your explanation is wrong — JeffJo

It's not wrong, it's spooky just because of the gauranteed amnesia, which makes it weird and susceptible to forgetfulness. I think the problem was created more or less just to see what answers people would come up with, how they would project their logic onto what they read.

1/2 makes since, since theoretical coinflips always result in either or. 1/3 makes sense depending on how the experiment is manipulated, when she is asked to make a prediction and the information she is given etc. I gave a perfect example in my last post of how you could gaurantee one out of three heads, but whether sleeping beauty is given the true info is suspect. But the odd thing about coin flips, and this is what the question is exploiting, is that there will generally be a bias one way or the other, always with odd and normally with an even number of flips. It's less like a random number generator with thousands/millions/billions of possibilities like in real life gambling.

There is no third flip. The coin is only tossed once. When it lands Tails, Sleeping Beauty is awakened twice and when it lands Heads, she is awakened once. — Pierre-Normand

okay, thanks for clearing that up, as i read the original description of the fake experiment more than once, and that part of it was unclear to me. To me it was saying that heads ends the experiment right away, tails produces two more flips. Maybe it's because i was reading it at work, but i doubt it, i remember the experiment confusing me, and i remember the article saying that it was confusing.

Still: the effects of one flip never effect the outcome of the other FLIPS, unless that is baked into the experiment, so it is a misleading hypothetical question (but interesting to me for whatever reason). The likelihood of the flips themselves are still 50/50, not accounting for other spooky phenomenon that we just don't know about. So, i'll think about it some more, as it has a "gamey" vibe to it...

Here's what would effect the outcome to skew the bias slightly in the tails direction: let's say the experimentor gives her the drug, keeps flipping the coin while she sleeps, and then wakes her up on the condition that there are 2/3 tails on the last 3 tosses...then asks "what was the last coin flip?". There would be exactly 1/3 odds of it being heads...but as it stands, even the "correct" way you describe it, i still can't side with 1/3 camp.
I guess at this point it's a game to see how long it will take before i get frustrated with talking about this, so go on...

Ah, but the thing i find unsettling is that A.I. is also dishonest, it tries to appease you. However, yes, sometimes it is better than the weirdness of real humans.

But as far as moderation strategy is concerned, there's the uncanny valley. A.I., hence the A, is made to look like intelligent human speech.

It's like trying to enforce the implied "no trolling" rule: how can that work 100% of the time? Isn't trolling an inherent part of social media and message boards? Seriously, who is like "oh yes! Nobody responded to my thread!"?

We can of course discuss intent, but there's always been a troll element to philosophy as well. Who would have written about Plato if everyone just ignored him? Aristophones did much more for his work than someone who silently respects him, even though it was derogatory for philosophers of their kind.

With A.I....what if it was used to find associated information? How will you police that?

but doesn't the first coinflip is every phase of the experiment matter the most if it lands on heads, because then it ends? I understand the 1/3rd logic, but it simply doesn't apply here: the third flip, given the first two were heads (less likely than one tail and a head, but still very likely), is also unaffected by the other flips. You can't win with gambling logic here, as it never what phase the experiment is in, it's always 50/50. 1/3 argument is like arguing that heads is 2/3rds as likely because it ends the experiment...

So i guess to increase her odds, she bets tails 100% of the time since she can't remember which phase of the experiment she's in, and the 2/3rds tailsers make a profit off the gambling? That's the thing: we need to talk about the drugs. How many times does she participate in the experiment, is it just one run through?

Do coins change their heads/tails bias based on the number of times tossed?

And, I think it's very clear that dualism offers better principles, due to it being more consistent with how we experience things. — Metaphysician Undercover

yeah from an emotional standpoint, dualism does make a lot of sense (day and night, good and bad, life and death, etc.)

. The assumption that we can reduce past and future to being understood by the very same principles (monism) appears to be very mistaken. — Metaphysician Undercover

the more amoral or physics related type of monism that exists is the one that the ionian greeks believed in is that the universe is just one thing, for example, that silly exercise in which movement was declared an illusion (look into the earlier Zeno, not the cynic). It's not so silly if you consider everything to be an illusion i suppose, but it's a little hard for me personally to wrap my head around that.

Your comment on principals is a different definition from monism than the one I am used to. My worldview largely does consist partially of an idea that things are perhaps more connected than they appear.

i personally have never understood "faith". I guess it's the same as confidence, that you can trust in the future, and as OP explains, something you "just know", something you cannot doubt because you're absolutely in touch with the thing you have faith in. However, in the religious sense it's basically nonsense. How exactly can you have a relationship with a non-thing? If you have to think about it, then you don't have faith, which I guess is what Astorre is getting at.

The brain appears to be a closed physical system governed by conservation laws. — tom111

It seems that it's a system designed for the survival of the whole organism, i don't get what you mean by it being "closed".

There is no such thing as a closed physical system, so we can dismiss this as a non-issue. — Metaphysician Undercover

yes, they can't be closed in the sense that they are shut off. To me, the brain is quite open, quite susceptible to influence.

What if neither monism or dualism are true? I agree that between the two, monism makes more sense, but it perhaps seems more reasonable to say that reality consists of many things that only appear to be unified.

I would personally recommend that you go directly to the source and discuss quotes rather than trusting redditors to describe their positions, because it's likely that it's just their interpretation of what they said.

Anyways, I don't think sex has to be mediated by fantasy, it just is often in a modern context, since much of our lives involve mediation via images, advertising, pornography, etc. I'm not terribly familiar with Zizek, but it seems within his line of thought that he would talk about sex in that context. Sex doesn't need to be violent either (it can certainly be gentle, even to the point of tantric acts which basically involves staying still after penetration), but some prefer that it is violence either consensually or non-consensually.

To say that "sex is violent because you are projecting a fantasy" to me is a strange argument that doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. Consensually projecting a fantasy, or projecting without expressing it, doesn't imply any sort of violence unless you're trying to change the other person in the process.

To neither believe nor disbelieve (out of ignorance, indecision or indifference) is existentially indistinguishable from disbelieving — 180 Proof

However, i should point out that to an extent Greek pagans agreed with you: Protagoras himself said something like "we can't possibly know whether the Gods exist, the matter is kind of vague", and folks from his time period angrily reacted, burning his books, and scaring him into self-imposed exile.

If you live in a society where the people who have some power over you (e.g. your employer, family members) believe in God or at least profess to believe in God, then you've got a big problem being an atheist. — baker

I understand that, but i was wondering why OP thinks it's better to avoid atheism, and i was wondering if that to them, it's a form of dangerous nihilism or something that comes from a vacuum of belief...

Perhaps in theory but not in practice. To neither believe nor disbelieve (out of ignorance, indecision or indifference) is existentially indistinguishable from disbelieving. — 180 Proof

I completely disagree: saying "i don't know if there's a god", but accepting that there could be one, is different from saying "there is no god, look at the horrendous stuff in the world", or, "the christian god is illogical and for that reason can't exist". Im not commenting on what i think (as in a way it's not very interesting), just on the differences between agnosticism and atheism.

Nietzsche in Dawn says that philosophy imitates the natural sciences (ones that imitate real life experimentation and classification) but it's just a form of entertainment, basically.

And what is so wrong with atheism? Is it a problem of insecurity, that there are things which can't be known? The problem is avoided with agnosticism, and i don't think there's anything wrong with that.

What if they're absolutely identical entities, with nothing distinguishable among them? — Copernicus

that's exactly what i was trying to criticize: real life moral and ethical decisions are complex, laden with fear, laden with shame, laden with politics. The way you are carrying out this exercise insinuates that there can only be one answer,

You must direct it either toward three people or toward one person. — Copernicus

i did read that, you made a false assumption ("if you had read it carefully"), and you did so in a seemingly patronizing/insulting manner.

That doesn't add anything to the original problem, but a "must". So is there a satanic figure, or someone holding a gun to your head in this new problem saying "i'm gonna count to 5, and if you don't choose ill kill you!" ?

THAT would add a new dimension to the scenario, not "must".

The thing I have never liked about this problem is that the "obvious choice is to divert the trolley to kill one person instead of three", and so is the framing of right and wrong.

However, I think such a situation begs a lot of questions:

-how far away from the trolley is the potential victims?

-if killing is wrong, then is saving all of them an option?

-is the lone person tied to the tracks beautiful or famous? (kidding, kidding!)

-do you know any of the people involved?

If the situation were to actually occur, then these would all be considerations, even the shallow one, but sense it's a fictional "right and wrong" then you're not really allowed allowed anything other than choosing fewer deaths, as you said in your post. If someone had misanthropic ethics, they might choose the other option, but I think honestly people would be influenced by who is getting killed. I wonder if anyone has gotten famous because they chose a clear "fewer deaths" option as some have argued for using nuclear bombs in WWII (which is extremely theoretical).

This is something I often think about in my anxious thoughts: if i had to choose between one of my cats or a thousand people, or one of my cats and a family member who i don't really like, what would I choose? For such a thing to come true, i generally imagine it would have to involve some devil/satan type forcing me to make the choice.

Is there more inequality now than in the past when 1850s children (for example) didn't have the chance to study because this was reserved for only the wealthiest? — javi2541997

i don't know, that's why i was asking Mijin: there are still a lot of people who are not literate and cannot study. I would think inequality would just be about people with the least amount of wealth vs. the people with the most wealth, and the gap between them. I was just arguing that the gap between people like mark zuckerburg and jeff bezos vs. a modern person with next to nothing is unprecedented because in the past, not even kings could have nearly that much wealth.

in most cases the inequality was less than the agrarian society — Mijin

can you point to examples of this?

I think there are inherent problems with trying to measure economic inequality. Not that modern life is better or worse than agrarian times, but you could probably argue that the current day has the most inequality than any other point in history if you consider the massive wealth of certain people.