The problem here stems from your evaluation, which is skewed by your peculiar standard of judgement. — Sapientia

The survival of modern civilization is a "peculiar standard of judgement"?

No, do your own research. I'm not your personal assistant. — Sapientia

You claimed to be interested in nuclear weapons. But you're not interested in researching the subject. You're only interested in these other agendas, such as butting heads with me. Again, you're making my point for me, because what you're doing well represents the culture at large, including intellectual elites.

We're interested in almost everything.

Except the loaded gun in our mouth.

Yes I am. — Sapientia

Show us the articles you've written on the subject of nuclear weapons please.

Why do you expect me to have written articles on the subject of nuclear weapons? Do you expect that of everyone you encounter? — Sapientia

I expect that of all philosophers and other intellectual elites I encounter. I expect that because reason should be guiding us to direct our attention to threats of the largest scale.

Please revisit the opening post. If I had a gun in mouth, would it not be rational for me to direct my attention to a situation which could quickly bring upon the end of all other situations? If I was bored by the gun, would you not label me irrational?

The issue I'm attempting to address is that reason and philosophy are not working, even though many of the people who've spent their lives studying these subjects are very intelligent and well educated.

Search resusts for "professional philosophers on nuclear disarmament" — Sapientia

You search for it.

Look, you're making my point for me. You're not interested in nuclear weapons either. You're interested in playing the role of the Great Debunker. Or you're interested in defending academics, or in defending philosophy in general. Ok, fine, you have every right to do this, but...

Please explain to us why these agendas are more important than the imminent collapse of everything built over the last 500 years. What is your reasoning for choosing to focus your time on these other agendas?

You're making my point for me. Just like the academics and other intellectual elite "experts" you're not capable of using reason to identify the most important life and death subjects. To debunk this, show us the articles YOU have written on nuclear weapons. There are none, right? That's not your personal failing alone, but rather the failing of Western culture at large.

And this is why I am asking if philosophy is really anything more than a parlor game. If even the most intelligent and educated people can not use philosophy to focus on the survival of human civilization, what good is it (other than entertainment)?

Sapientia, I assign you the job of finding blog articles by academic philosophers on the subject of nuclear weapons. If you find that task too hard, you can instead list the threads on this forum on that topic. Whatever you find, the question is whether that level of interest is appropriate to the risk presented by these weapons.

I've spent months trying to engage academic philosophers on this topic and have largely failed, thus this thread. As example, consider the APA blog. Do you know what the APA is? Do you know where to find their blog? Or are you just blowing a lot of silly smoke here?

When you find the APA blog, you'll see that they've been publishing daily for a couple years, and have posted only one article on nuclear weapons, and that only after endless badgering from me. If I understand correctly, the APA is the oldest and largest association of American academic philosophers, and as the evidence of their blog clearly shows, they have a very limited interest in nuclear weapons, close to none. As best I can tell from visiting a number of other similar blogs, their lack of interest generally represents the field as a whole.

But, please feel free to prove me wrong by posting hundreds of links to nuclear weapons articles by academic philosophers. Or feel free to sit down and be quiet, that would be fine too.

Interest from who? There are no doubt academics who are interested in the topic and have written about it. — Sapientia

Same post as before.

I'd be skeptical of the assumption, shared by theists and atheists alike, that things including gods can only exist or not exist, one or the other.

I'd be skeptical of the assumption that anybody on any side has any idea what they're talking about when it comes to issues the scale of gods.

I'd be skeptical of calling your friends morons in public. :smile:

Thank you. If you wish, you may call me His Flatuence Sri Baba Bozo, the founder of Bozoism, the next great world religion. Or, if that's a few too many words, I also answer to Bozo.

And no, I'm not going to comment on the kinds of intimate personal problems which can arise when somebody borrows a thumb and forgets to give it back.

In other words, is there an overarching unification of all that exists or, is there simply isolated events? — schopenhauer1

While not claiming to know the answer to such an infinite scale question, here's one way to look at it.

It can be argued that division (isolation, separation and things etc,) is an illusion created by the way that thought works.

To see the divisive nature of thought at work consider the noun, a building block of language, which is in turn a key product of thought. The purpose of a noun is to conceptually divide one part of reality from everything else.

To see how this division process may be useful, but illusory, conduct this experiment. As you drink a glass of water ask, when does this water become me? Where is the boundary line between the noun "water" and the noun "me"? You'll quickly see that you can reasonably draw that boundary at any number of places, which illustrates that the boundary is a convenient but arbitrary human invention.

Conceptually, there are hard lines between one "thing" and another "thing". But in the real world, everything is connected to and interacting with everything else, a single unified system.

What can make this very difficult to see is that all of us are using thought to ask these questions, thus if distortion is being introduced by thought, we'll all be experiencing that illusion, which creates a powerful group consensus in favor of division.

What makes it even more difficult is that not only are we using thought as a tool, the "me" using this tool is actually made of thought too. Thus, our entire experience of such questions occur entirely in the medium of thought, thus any distortion which may be introduced by thought will be profoundly compelling.

Consider the phrase "I am thinking XYZ". Our internal experience is that there is a division between the thinker and the thought. But really the entire operation is all thought. The division we experience between thinker and thought is conceptual, not real.

Imagine that all of us were wearing pink tinted sunglasses. Everything we see all our lives appears to be pink colored. But the pink isn't a property of reality, but rather of the tool we are using to observe reality.

I suspect it's like that with thought. Everywhere we look we see division, but that division is a property of the observer, not of the observed.

Thus, I cast my vote for unity. A single unified reality, divided conceptually by thought.

I think the problem isn't objectivism per se - though I myself am not keen on the subject - but rather your absolutist need to follow the philosophy. — TimeLine

I'd like to cast a vote for this suggestion.

It doesn't seem wise to get too wound up in any philosophy. It's perhaps helpful to recall that all philosophy, any philosophy, is just a pile of symbols which point to the real world, and not the real world itself. Consider the relationship between your name and you. The name is a useful convention, but because it is merely a symbol it will always be incurably limited in nature. So it is with all philosophies.

Except for this one, which is THE ONE TRUE WAY!!!! :smile:

It would be unreasonable to expect philosophy to guide us to a solution to the threat of nuclear catastrophe in and of itself. — Sapientia

Ok, fair enough, but I didn't ask for a solution, just interest.

The question is...

1) If philosophy can't guide us even to having a serious sustained interest in the most imminent threat to modern civilization...

2) If even the most highly educated professional philosophers don't display that level of interest...

3) Is philosophy really just a parlor game?

I'm not disputing the entertainment value of philosophy, that much value at least is proven by all the people engaging in such discussions. I'm asking if there is a value to philosophy beyond entertainment.

I've asked whether academic philosophy is a scam because the many millions of dollars spent on it seems to imply that philosophy is a serious enterprise. If that's not true, if it's just a parlor game for over educated nerds, then a lot of taxpayers would seem to be getting ripped off.

I'm getting these ideas through the processes of reason, and you have yet to show why an intellectual enterprise which can't sustain a focus on the most imminent threat to modern civilization should be taken seriously, other than as a form of entertainment.

Hi Crank,

Is this what you were really interested in all along? Fine by me if it was. — Bitter Crank

Academic philosophers are just an extreme example of the phenomena, given that they have advanced training in the use of reason, and that seems to make little difference, they still show little interest in nuclear weapons. Seeing that has me questioning whether there's really any point to philosophy beyond entertainment.

Were there no philosophy departments--even as elitist rackets--the knowledge of philosophy would eventually disappear. — Bitter Crank

Ok, seems reasonable, but so what? What good is philosophy if it doesn't guide us to focus on threats the scale of nuclear weapons?

Look at what happened over a few hundred years of the collapsing Roman Empire: piece by piece chunks of social knowledge were lost. — Bitter Crank

It looks like we are scheduled to repeat that pattern. What's remarkable is how entirely casual we are about it. That's what I was trying to get at with the hypothetical in the opening post. I was attempting to make the large reality clearer by bringing it down to the personal level. Whether that succeeded is debatable, but that was the goal.

I have a loaded gun in my mouth. And I'm bored by the situation.

Words like "stupid" and "insane" don't really seem sufficient, and I'm at a loss for what words might describe this situation adequately.

Thank you for the responses, quite entertaining.

As you surely guessed, there is a larger and more serious point here. My proposal is that collectively we are the person described in the opening post.

1) The hair trigger gun aimed down all of our throats is nuclear weapons.

2) We roll our eyes at a person's hysteria if they talk about those weapons more than a bit.

3) If the subject comes up at all, we routinely change the focus to a thousand other topics. Watch, this thread will die in a week or two.

This phenomena is near universal and exists at all levels of society, from the humblest crack addict to the most highly educated intellectual elites, including professional philosophers, supposed experts at reason.

What is the point of philosophy if it can't even guide us to focus on the "gun in our mouth" which could destroy everything in just a few minutes?

Is there any point to philosophy beyond casual nerd entertainment?

Is professional academic philosophy basically just a scam?

From the New Yorker article....

On June 3, 1980, at about two-thirty in the morning, computers at the National Military Command Center, beneath the Pentagon, at the headquarters of the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD), deep within Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, and at Site R, the Pentagon’s alternate command post center hidden inside Raven Rock Mountain, Pennsylvania, issued an urgent warning: the Soviet Union had just launched a nuclear attack on the United States. The Soviets had recently invaded Afghanistan, and the animosity between the two superpowers was greater than at any other time since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

U.S. Air Force ballistic-missile crews removed their launch keys from the safes, bomber crews ran to their planes, fighter planes took off to search the skies, and the Federal Aviation Administration prepared to order every airborne commercial airliner to land.

President Jimmy Carter’s national-security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, was asleep in Washington, D.C., when the phone rang. His military aide, General William Odom, was calling to inform him that two hundred and twenty missiles launched from Soviet submarines were heading toward the United States. Brzezinski told Odom to get confirmation of the attack. A retaliatory strike would have to be ordered quickly; Washington might be destroyed within minutes. Odom called back and offered a correction: twenty-two hundred Soviet missiles had been launched.

Brzezinski decided not to wake up his wife, preferring that she die in her sleep. As he prepared to call Carter and recommend an American counterattack, the phone rang for a third time. Odom apologized—it was a false alarm. An investigation later found that a defective computer chip in a communications device at NORAD headquarters had generated the erroneous warning. The chip cost forty-six cents. — The New Yorker

Only way out of the prisonner's dilemma would seem to be a supranational legal framework where all parties are obliged to disarm simultaniously. — ChatteringMonkey

Something like what you describe is in the works. Here's a couple of links to provide a quick overview.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Prohibition_of_Nuclear_Weapons

http://www.icanw.org/status-of-the-treaty-on-the-prohibition-of-nuclear-weapons/

It looks like everybody agrees to the treaty, except those states that have nuclear weapons. :smile: Still, it's movement in the right direction.

As you know, the policy of deterrence is called MAD, mutual assured destruction. What's not factored in to this equation is the possibility of unintended launches. Here's an article which describes some near misses.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/world-war-three-by-mistake

Nuclear weapons do have the benefit of teaching us a lot about ourselves. The truth is that we don't really care that much about all the work so many generations did to create modern civilization, nor do we care that much about whether future generations will get to enjoy what's been built. We have the goodies right now, and that's pretty much all that matters to us. Sobering, but instructive.

Why do we treat things differently when humans are involved. Because we attribute agency to them, the ability to freely make rational and moral decisions. I think that view is at best partly true. In fact, that view is often part of the hubris. — ChatteringMonkey

I can largely agree with this. In the spirit of thinking well, again the question would seem to be, do we want to hang on to modern civilization, or not, yes or no? If we answer yes, then having nukes and handing them over to people like Putin and Trump seems fairly defined as insane, in relation to the goal of maintaining the benefits of modern civilization.

When you look at the history of the two countries, and begin to understand the mechanics a bit more, it's isn't quite as insane. A 'strong man' like putin was needed to hold Russia together after the fall of the USSR. And Trump, well, he's the result of large parts of the population being ignored and not represented politically. — ChatteringMonkey

I prefer to describe Putin as the world's leading gangster, head of a criminal enterprise which is busy soaking the Russian people for every last dollar which can be skimmed off the top and exported to secret bank accounts out of the country.

But you make a good point. Russia has been invaded from the West a number of times, and the last invasion was a horror show beyond our imagination. For example, Russia lost 40 times as many lives as America lost in WWII, and the western part of the country was burned to the ground. And so the Russians rationally choose to be ruled by a very smart gangster over risking political chaos which might invite another invasion. All that said, none of this is going to matter once somebody screws up and the missiles start flying. And what are the chances that nobody in Russia, or here, will ever screw up?

As I see it, Trump is a symptom of what we're discussing in this thread. Modernity is moving too fast, some folks are being left behind, and others are worried they will be next. And so some of us turn to a hyper-confident leader who promises he can take us back to the past when we felt we knew what was going on.

Knowledge explosion => Globalization => Rapid Change => Fear => Trump

Life is unsatisfactory in many ways and sometimes one just doesn't need hourly updates on how unsatisfactory it is. — Bitter Crank

:smile:

That was once a comforting assumption; it's not quite so comforting at the present moment. — Bitter Crank

You doubt the maturity and judgment of President Dumpster?? You doubt the moral integrity of Vladimir Putin??? Where in the world do you get these wacko ideas Dr. Crank??

Seriously, isn't it amazing? Two of the world's biggest assholes hold the fate of humanity in their grimy little hands. And Dumpster was legally elected, and Putin has wide support among the Russian people.

We are insane beyond words....

In one respect, the group consensus is for a limitation of knowledge and power. — Bitter Crank

Good point. Yes, pretty much everyone seems to agree there should be fewer nuclear weapons, probably because that's a very dramatic threat which is easy to understand. A box that goes BOOM!, it can be explained to a child.

But as you say, we're not having a lot of luck with getting rid of nukes. To me, this illustrates the relative weakness of intellectual understandings. We all have a pretty detailed intellectual understanding of nukes, but that's not helping us much. What's missing is a sufficient emotional relationship with the threat. We have the data, but we're failing to experience the data as being real.

The best I can offer in terms of disarmament suggestions is that we focus more closely on the near miss mistakes which have in some cases brought us inadvertently close to the edge of war.

As example, in one case somebody mistakenly loaded a training tape in to the NORAD computer and for a few precious minutes the U.S. government thought it was witnessing an incoming Soviet first strike. In another example, the U.S. warned the Soviets they would be launching a research satellite off the coast of Norway, but somebody on the Soviet side forgot to pass the info up the chain of command. Soviet generals thought they were observing a U.S. first strike and raced the nuclear football to the usually drunk Yeltsin and told him he had to launch Russian missiles. Happily, Yeltsin ignored their advice and waited for confirmation.

The Mutually Assured Destruction doctrine doesn't protect us from such screw ups, so the only way for us to be safe is to get rid of the nukes. When I become Secretary Of State I will explain to the Russians that while we have no intention of attacking them on purpose but I can't rule out that we might do so by mistake.

It isn't clear to me how "we" would limit "us" from learning whatever "somebody among us" decides to learn, be it benign or malignant. I can decide what I will not learn, but I don't know of a way to prevent you from learning what you wish to learn. — Bitter Crank

I don't have a solution to this either, other than to hope some dramatic event will radically shift the group consensus making new opportunities possible. The question would seem to be, do we want modern civilization to continue, or not? Yes, or no?

If we answer yes then we would seem to have little choice but to tackle the challenge.

Somewhere, right now, somebody is openly engaging in legal research which will likely have quite negative consequences. They are pushing the envelope, maybe too far. What are "we" going to do about it? — Bitter Crank

We can prepare the ground. We can spread conversations like this as far as we can so when that researcher causes havoc that won't be the first time the group consensus has thought about these subjects.

Even though we in this forum thread are the most brilliant philosophers of all time :smile: we shouldn't assume that because we can't think of a solution to this off the top of our heads that automatically equals there not being a solution.

on purpose, I can't rule out that we might do so by mistake.

No see, it's not black or white. — ChatteringMonkey

Your dodging and weaving my friend. In your defense, you're in very good company.

ChatteringMonkey, setting concern for humanity aside for the moment, I hope you will find this issue as philosophically fascinating as I do.

What I see is an entire culture taking the "more is better" assumption to be an obvious given, even though that assumption can be undermined with simple common sense.

To me, this illustrates that generally speaking human beings don't typically reference reason, but authority. The main authority being the group consensus. If everyone is saying the emperor is wearing clothes, everyone assumes that he must be wearing clothes. High school kids, grandma at the bake sale, Nobel Prize winning intellectual elites, it seems to make no difference. I guess this is what Crank is trying to tell us.

I like the Amish people I have met. They are, of course, quite religious and of necessity rather conservative, but they aren't naive country bumpkins. — Bitter Crank

My best friend online is actually a former Amish who left that community as a teen. He's now a web coding expert about to publish his 1,000th ezine issue on those topics. He's a great guy, and we regularly joke about what the rear ends of horses look like as you're plowing the field etc. :smile:

My goal in this thread is improving upon the argument, and maybe helping you to be more effective along the way. — ChatteringMonkey

I do agree that my phrase "our relationship with knowledge" will be perceived as too abstract by many readers. I think that's a good point.

I'm just one person. My abilities are obviously limited too. The solution I suggest is that lots of people write on this topic from their own perspectives, using their own preferred language etc. That's my goal, to help stir up such conversations.

No, i'm not a politician or activist, I'm a philosopher. I'm interested in good arguments and thinking well, not in changing the world. — ChatteringMonkey

I'll rephrase then...

1) Should it be a goal of society to look for ways to limit the powers available to human beings?

2) Or, should we accept the group consensus which assumes we should learn as much as possible, thus giving ourselves as much power as possible?

I agree with your "thinking well" goal and am trying to facilitate that by focusing the question. In the end we are going to try to limit the knowledge and powers available to us, or we're not. Which do you prefer?

Yeah sure.... but again it's to vague to be informative. What limits is the question. — ChatteringMonkey

Why is that principle not considered too vague or simple etc when applied to humans under the age of 18?

I agree there are many details to be considered, but before we rush off in to that, let's see if we agree on where we're trying to go. Is the shared goal of this conversation to look for ways to limit the powers available to human beings?

IN OTHER WORDS... The human situation is tragic. We are very flawed heroes and our flaws have been, are, and will be the cause of our downfall. — Bitter Crank

I generally agree with this Crank. We are flawed, but not entirely flawed. There is an element of sanity and reason there too. So while our downfall is likely inevitable at some point, we aren't required to race towards it blindly at full speed.

I would return a bit of focus to the Amish. They have opted out of the knowledge explosion in a manner all of us would likely consider to be extreme, and yet there they still are, not experiencing any dramatic calamity. While this is not a perfect example, it does at least suggest that the idea of slowing down is not out of the question.

1) There are limits to human ability, thus...
2) There have to be limits to human power. — Jake

Do we agree on this, or not?

Jake, the problem with the theory is, as has been said a number of times, that its to general or on a too high level of abstraction, making it only partly true, and even if true, useless. — ChatteringMonkey

What is abstract about the fact that you won't give your children machine guns to play with? You see their ability is limited, so you restrict the powers available to them. This is all my thesis is, a recognition that our ability is limited, and thus the power we have must be too. Simple common sense, that's all.

You just keep ignoring these points. It's only partly true because, a) like i said our 'relation to knowledge' is at best only marginally driving 'the knowledge explosion' (it's more a story of economics and goverments...), and b) it's not generally the case for all knowledge. — ChatteringMonkey

I keep ignoring these points because they aren't relevant to the thesis. If you prefer to replace "relationship with knowledge" with "relationship with power" I don't object at all, as already stated, but that switch makes no difference, the problem remains.

And from a policy-point of view the idea that we should 'change our relation to knowledge', is useless, because what is one supposed to do with such a general claim? — ChatteringMonkey

Either disprove the thesis and then discard it, or accept that it is generally true, and then advance the inquiry on that basis.

What happens instead is, people try to disprove the thesis, and when they fail they wander off to some other discussion.

If you really want influence the world in some way here, you need identify individual research that is potentially dangerous, explain why etc etc... and then make concrete and realistic proposals of how to deal with that. And if you'd start that excercise, you'd probably find that a number of people are allready doing that. — ChatteringMonkey

Yes, many people are already doing that, agreed. And while that is good, it's not enough. Such a process assumes that we can navigate our way to having more and more power at faster and faster rates, and that simply isn't true.

As example, it seems to me that nuclear weapons are the most pressing threat. Let's imagine I had the perfect solution to that. That's great, but the knowledge explosion keeps rolling along, producing new and larger threats at an ever faster rate. Thus, if I limit my effort to this or that technology, I'm not really accomplishing anything other than delaying the inevitable crash. And of course, nobody has actually yet succeeded in getting rid of nukes, stopping or slowing genetic research, saying no to AI, or any of the things you seem to be suggesting.

At some point we're going to have to recognize that while we can manage X amount of power, we can't handle Y, and thus we have to say no to learning Y. The cultural consensus that you are expressing doesn't yet grasp that...

1) There are limits to human ability, thus...

2) There have to be limits to human power.

3) Simple!

Just exactly the same reasoning we routinely apply to children. It's the simplest thing, until someone suggests we apply this common sense to adults as well, and then everyone wants to make it as complicated as possible.

1) When it comes to children everyone immediately gets that their ability is limited and thus the power they have should be as well. 2) When it comes to adults we completely ignore our own limitations and instead insist, "we need as much power as possible, more is better!" — Jake

Why do even the most intelligent and best educated people find this so hard to grasp?

Hi again Crank,

Daniel Ellsberg [he Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner] documents how these planners had calculated damage on the basis of megatons of explosive power, but had not taken into account the resulting firestorms that the hot blasts would cause. — Bitter Crank

Here's the trailer to a video called Countdown To Zero which documents all kinds of screw ups and threats involved with nuclear weapons. (The 90 minute full documentary is available on youtube for $3.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWJN9cZcT64

What I'm trying to point to is that as the knowledge explosion proceeds there will be more existential threat situations of this nature. It won't matter if we successfully manage most of these threats most of the time because a single failure a single time with technologies of vast scale is sufficient to crash the system. That's what we should be learning from nuclear weapons.

So if we stick with the "more is better" relationship with knowledge paradigm we are headed for a crash, which makes much or most scientific research today largely pointless.

What's fascinating is that intellectual elites don't get this, and yet the concept is no more complicated than how we restrict powers available to children out of the recognition that their ability to manage power is limited.

1) When it comes to children everyone immediately gets that their ability is limited and thus the power they have should be as well.

2) When it comes to adults we completely ignore our own limitations and instead insist, "we need as much power as possible, more is better!"

The smartest best educated people in our culture, don't get this. I've spent at least a decade now trying to find scientists or philosophers who do get it. There are none. There are plenty who will claim they do, but when you actually look at their work, you find they haven't written the ideas being shared in this thread.

I've just come from spending months on a prominent group blog of many academic philosophers with PhDs. None of them are interested in any of this, and scientists are even worse.

The case for nursing school...


1) It's a field dominated by women.

2) More importantly, it's a field dominated by the right kind of women, generally speaking.

3) Nursing is never going to go out of style, and you don't have to worry about your job going overseas, being replaced by automation etc.

4) Flexible hours. Work double shifts on the weekend and then be free all week to surf, etc.

5) If one has that inclination, working with people in trouble can be a very philosophical experience, putting life in perspective etc.

6) You can work anywhere in the world, opening the door to travel.

7) If you decide to, you can work your way up the ladder and make pretty darn good money. I have a friend who makes 100 grand a year as a nurse (after years of experience).

8) If you bash your head on some rocks while surfing, you'll know what to do about it. :-)

I was prepared to prove that the world is meaningless, pointless, fleeting, temporary, and transient, but then you said there isn't any proof, so... there's probably not much point in posting the formula that would prove it. — Bitter Crank

Whatever formula anyone might offer would be based on human reason. So first please prove that the rules of human reason are binding on everything everywhere, and thus would be a credible methodology for coming to conclusions on the larger context our lives reside with.

Isn't that a rather sweeping generalization? How would you know they have no clue if you had no clue? — Bitter Crank

This is a good point! It's true, I don't know what the reality is, and thus have no way of knowing if anyone is right. I agree I am reporting my own situation, which is that I experience all these proclamations as mere theories. Interesting perhaps, but hardly conclusive, imho.

Interesting. Is that true? I'm gay, so I wouldn't know whether "serving" girls is the best strategy for a straight guy to get laid. — Bitter Crank

Imho, this principle has nothing to do with sexual preference. Straight or gay, "getting" is the wrong mindset. I don't mean morally wrong, but tactically wrong. The guy or gal focused on serving is going to be more popular than the guy or gal focused on getting.

What if what the straight guy wants is a "serving wench" rather than a girl to serve? — Bitter Crank

Ok, his choice, and the price tag for that is to be utterly ordinary.

Is the world meaningless, pointless, fleeting, temporary, and transient? Well... sure. — Bitter Crank

Well, um, so prove it. :-0

To address the philosophy the original poster is encountering...

There is no proof to any of the theories about the larger context our lives reside in. There is no proof that our life is a test which we must pass in order to live in eternity with Baby Jesus. There is no proof that our lives are just a random collision of mechanical forces which have no larger purpose or meaning. All of these ideas are just theories. So...

If you don't believe in Baby Jesus just because somebody told you that you should, then by the same logic you shouldn't believe that "life is fleeting and meaningless" just because somebody said that it is.

The truth is that nobody has a clue about the larger picture, but many people find that ignorance intolerable so they passionately commit themselves to some theory or another in order to create a fantasy knowing experience. Some of these people are very articulate. Some of them have a great deal of cultural authority. But the truth is that these people too are just like the rest of us in having no clue. The fact that they've persuaded themselves otherwise doesn't change the reality.

You've stated your goals as:

1) a simple life of happiness,
2) a life where i travel the world,
3) make lots of friends,
4) and get lots of girls.

These are reasonable, rational, realistic goals IF you are willing to pay the price. If you aren't willing to pay the price then such dreams will come to torture you over time. In other words, we all pay a price one way or another.

Goal #4 needs some work. If you want to "get" lots of girls, it would be wise to change your mindset to wanting to "serve" lots of girls. Don't think about what you will get from them, but what you will give to them.

A rational compromise....

Surrender two to four years in nursing school. Don't think about it, just do it. Now you have guaranteed employment for life.

Once those dues are paid, dedicate your life to surfing, a truly worthy pursuit for anyone wanting a "simple life of happiness".

Work only as much as is needed to eat. Here's a guy who did it, and raised nine kids at the same time!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorian_%22Doc%22_Paskowitz

Here's the movie (costs $3)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tn49N2QQ21w

http://www.magpictures.com/surfwise/

Here's you a few years from now.



Here's your girlfriend.



Two to four years in school, and it's all yours.

Yes, great post from BitterCrank. Agreed, if you're reading Schopenhauer, stop immediately.

i have lost all motivation to get into a good college, seek a career, etc.. Instead i feel more motivated and inclined to live a simple life of happiness, a life where i travel the world, make lots of friends and get lots of girls (lol). — Johnpveiga

Both of these could be reasonable choices, but like all choices, each would come with both benefits and a price tag.

The college/career route can deliver stability, security and comfort, but often involves becoming a slave in some corporate gulag.

The "simple life of happiness" can bring adventure and great memories, but often involves a lifetime of poverty, insecurity, and struggle. Unless you are already wealthy, you can forget about "lots of girls" with this choice once you pass about 30.

The college/career choice is kind of like being a domesticated house cat, safe and secure, confined and kinda boring. The other route is like being a wild animal, there's glorious freedom, at the price of a harder shorter life.

My suggestion is to forget about what you read in books, and instead closely study those who have made these choices. The corporate gulag types should be easy to find. The "simple life of happiness" types can probably found at age 45 working as a minimum wage cashier somewhere.

Does anything ever get destroyed in the world? — Johnpveiga

This is a great question, thanks. Here's yet another way to look at it...

You ask, "does any THING ever get destroyed?" The question presumes the existence of things, separate entities which are divided from all else.

It can be argued that things don't actually exist, but are instead an illusion created by thought, which operates by a process of dividing a single unified reality in to conceptual parts.

As example, when does the glass of water you're drinking become you? We can reasonably draw the dividing line between the water and you at a number of different places, which shows that the dividing line is arbitrary, a human invention.

Can the single unified reality be created or destroyed? If we define that as the observable universe, probably so, as the big bang would seem to illustrate. Is there a large context in which the observable universe exists? No one has a clue.

Hello Professor Cranky! Thanks for contributing.

Your antibiotic example would seem to illustrate the issue pretty clearly. It's one of million cases of what we might call a "self correction loop", which goes something like this.

1) Invent something
2) Things go great for awhile.
3) Abuse the something.
4) Enter a calamity.
5) Learn the lessons.
6) Try again, often with better results.

This pattern has been repeated endless times both in our personal lives and at the larger social level. So when we look to the future the group consensus says, "Sure, we'll have problems as we learn, but we'll fix the problems like we always have". What makes this assumption compelling is that it's long been true, and continues to be true for most situations today.

What's not being sufficiently taken in to account is that the self correction loop only works with powers of limited scale. What nuclear weapons teach us is that with powers of vast scale a single failure may crash the system, thus preventing the opportunity for learning and correction.

We human beings are simply not emotionally and cognitively configured to manage the consequences of having powerful knowledge over the long run. — Bitter Crank

I agree of course. What complicates this though, and makes it harder for folks to grasp, it that we will succeed in managing many large powers. So for instance people see that we haven't had a big nuclear war, and they take that as evidence that we can manage vast powers.

What they're not taking in to account is that 1) as time passes and 2) the number of vast powers increases, and 3) the scale of those powers grows, the odds are increasingly against us.

As example, it's one thing to manage nuclear weapons for 70 years, and another to manage them successfully every single day forever. It's one thing to manage one vast power, and another to manage 23 vast powers.

Thanks Doug, your link is quite relevant.

The description of that project concludes....

"This project aims to fill this gap by creating a transdisciplinary and multi-level theory of technological change and resistance in social systems, which will analyze the factors and societal forces that work against technology adoption, the consequences of this resistance, and the best mechanisms to overcome it."

If I understand correctly (I may not) the project assumes that resistance to uncontrolled technological progress is automatically invalid, and thus scholars should seek "the best mechanisms to overcome it". Do you see that assumption too? Or am experiencing my own bias here?

Here's an irony I find endlessly interesting.

The "more is better" relationship with knowledge is the status quo and has been for at least 500 years, right?

Those defending the existing status quo typically label themselves as progressive advocates for change, while those arguing the status quo should be replaced with something new are typically labeled as "clinging to the past".

As example, see this line in the CFP...

"Resistance to technological innovation and new business models is, however, not new. It has indeed a long history in the West: attacks on Gutenberg’s printing press in the late 15th century or the protests of horse carriage drivers against motorized cars at the beginning of the 20th century precede the current growing discontent with technological change."

So if you don't wish to blindly follow science as it marches confidently towards civilization collapse, you are like the ignorant mobs who attacked the first printing presses.

It seems to me that those arguing for the status quo are clinging to the past, and those arguing that the simplistic "more is better" status quo should be replaced with a more intelligent and sophisticated relationship with knowledge and power are the advocates for change.

Logic is a poorly developed ability of a single half insane semi-suicidal species on one little planet in one of billions of galaxies. A useful tool in a limited context, but not a god.

I see what you did there. Irony. — 0 thru 9

You dare accuse President Jake of irony??? To the gallows with you!!!