More nonsense. If the sun was called ‘rain’ it would not be called ‘sun’ so the ‘sun shining’ is meaningless.

It is precisely these kinds of mistakes that result in gibberish.

The statement is just as groundless as antinatalist position.

To have the value of ‘better’/‘worse’ existence is necessary. The only possible door in to this as a reasonable discussion is probably to examine questions that address ‘value’.

Comparing something with non-existence is fairly pointless.

Note: I did not say ‘nothing’ because that is a concept attached to absence.

Digging deeper the most common misconception I find around these terms is based in Kantian jargon. The noumenal is not something we can even refer to, so referring to it is only ever a demarcation of the ‘negative sense’ as a limiting factor in our understanding. The ‘positive sense’ is (ironically) also just a ‘negative sense’ because there is no way to address that which cannot be addressed (by definition).

Even reading back the above makes this sound far more complicated than it really is. You just have to understand that if there is something that cannot be talked about then whatever you are talking about necessarily cannot be the said thing you are trying to talk about. Understanding this contradiction is deadly important from my experience. Not understanding this leads many down roads of nonsense and understanding it only helps guard against going down such roads as often.

Recently on this forum there is a growing trend of ignoring the questions posed leaving them unexamined or poorly presented. Not all sentences with a ‘?’ at the end are worthy of the title ‘question’.

An example: If yellow was called blue then would it rain tomorrow?

The embedded claim within that question is that there is a correlation between the weather and how we use language to name certain concepts in day-to-day life.

So it is just a stupid and pointless pretend question. Fair enough. Bye

Can people be banned for trolling?

Entropy. This is not a physics forum is it?

I prefer sardines not herring ;)

Picking fights? :D

Bye bye silly person

So the entire thread is just another way for you to argue for antinatalism … my mistake. I took the OP at face value.

The state necessarily manages the economy. That is the job of the state or there is no state.

Thanks! I assumed it was the name of some philosopher or something :D Guess I may as well have googled it after all.

How would it be hard for Putin to explain away anything? That makes no sense whatsoever.

When it comes to direct conflict the UN acts as a mediator as best it can. Putting troop son the ground but not to fight in the Ukraine would solve what issues? Centralising power on a global scale would help how? If it would help in some ways (I am sure there are plenty of possible positives) then at what cost? Would the negatives outweigh the positives?

As for global warming the issue is not really in the hands of the government at all. Corporations and public interest rule while governments are generally there to ‘serve the people’. Expecting countries like India to step up on the climate change proposals is ridiculous because it would mean greater poverty in a country where abject poverty is a serious issue already.

The UN is not a nation, the idea of ‘nation’ is silly imo. Either way, I have no idea how you the UN can implement a ‘radical change’ or what that change would look like.

The UN tries to raise standards of living around the globe (has succeeded in many cases) and one important role they play is in educating young women (that will have a tremendous knock-on effect for climate change, the world economy and peace in general.

To radicalise the UN into a military force (which seems to be what is being hinted at here?) is utterly stupid and dangerous.

Never heard of Laissez-faire. Any chance of a quick summation?

That is not straw manning. That is disagreeing. I was not saying you were saying anything. I was saying something. There is a big difference.

The difference in opinion here seems to lie in the term ‘illusion’. He didn’t say what I said … true. I said it though. The fact remains that value is a property of the living not the dead. Value is actually the very measurement of ‘dissatisfaction’ as you put it. Agree? If not why not?

I am interested in why ‘dissatisfaction’ is ‘negative’ or ‘positive’. I do not see that it is necessarily Can be one or the other. If the ‘dissatisfaction’ is striving for something forever, and also a necessary facet of living, then living contains striving always. If there is a ‘better way to live’ then there is a ‘better way to live’.

Creating ‘more dissatisfaction’ is bad or good? Why or how is it or good or bad? These kinds of questions are where I see fault in what is being said. What Schopenhauer says (the actual one) is nothing because he is dead. He is no longer dissatisfied by anything because he no longer is. He has no negative nor positive take on anything for the same reason.

We are always striving/dissatisfied. Yes. What can we do about it? Nothing other than die if our wish is to cease living - which we will do anyway. Naturally I can understand the position ‘why live at all?’. Meaning is a strange thing we constantly seem to be clutching for even though we really know that it is unobtainable if not a complete lie.

When you accuse someone of straw manning when they have not even attempted to outline their view and merely asked for it then it is certainly about the ego. They are ready to take some of my views and paint them as an attempt to straw man what he is saying, when I do not know what he is saying.

A genuine attempt to look for clarity and some common discussion to be had cannot be framed as ‘straw manning’.

If I was to ask you a question and then share my thoughts on the matter is my sharing my thoughts ‘straw manning’ … no. What else I to conclude? The ego is out. The defence is up. Maybe I am wasting my time trying again.

I DO NOT UNDERSTAND. I have read Schopenhauer enough to know a fair bit about his views and I am curious as to why this person is fixated on him (not interested in antinatalism though because we have been there before and it was a brick wall). This whole dissatisfaction and boredom thing though is something that interests me because it is at the heart of existentialism.

So you obviously don't pay attention to what I am saying — schopenhauer1

You think I have been reading every post? No.

Stop what? Trying to find somewhere we can have a discussion … no I won’t. We do not have to agree on one point to have a discussion about something else.

I’ll skip over the rest of the weird snipes at me and put it down to … you can fill in the blanks with whatever.

Content in last paragraph …

We are lacking in something present that drives us to the goal/basic need. We lack a fulfillment, and what we relieve it with is temporary and unsustainable. And thus Schopenhauer's quote about if life was of positive value, we would want for nothing. We wouldn't have dissatisfaction. But of course it isn't like that. — schopenhauer1

Here is where I see the problem. Life as a ‘positive value’? What does that even mean. If we didn’t have ‘dissatisfaction’ we would not be living beings. So what? How does stating that if we didn’t have anything to do, nothing to work for, no need to try and survive, then we would be dead make any kind of sense as either a ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ value?

This literally makes no sense whatsoever to me. Life contains value. That is how we are able to attribute ‘value’ - by being alive. No life means no value whatsoever as there is no evaluation of anything by anything. The fact that we can value things means we attribute both positive and negative value to items. Not existing means absence of value NOT something either ‘positive’ or ‘negative’.

Lived experiencing viewed as negative or positive. Life itself is neither a negative nor a positive item but living is most certainly both of these.

I a not straw manning you here at all. I am presenting, as best I can, my thoughts on this matter. So PLEASE take them as they are and quiz/correct where you feel you need to. I am not hear to learn from you I am here to learn full stop so drop the ego … it is depressing and tiresome if all you give are barbs on barbs.

how can any radical change be effected when a member affected can veto it? — Tim3003

Who wants radical change? To benefit whom? It serves as a means of bridging gaps and has helped some situations. It is not a government nor an independent body with its own needs and wants.

It is a decent idea that does some good. At least nations can attempt to talk within the idea of a unified front.

It is not a complete failure or it would no longer exist. I just think too many people look in from outside expecting it to be something it is not.

I’m not going into the whole procreate business again. No point. We are not going to see eye-to-eye there not understand each other because the problem lies deeper in trying to understand each other at all. So …

I would ask though that if the idea is to ‘prevent further suffering’ then death is the only way UNLESS you believe that suffering can be lived with and/or reduced/dispersed during life.

I don’t see ‘suffering’ as necessarily a ‘harmful’ thing. Black comes with white and comes with black. I don’t see how one side exists without the other nor do I see doing away with both (or aiming at that) to be anything at all.

It is this underlying issue that seems entwined around buddhism and is why I am not exactly in favour of certain buddhist factions. It is too much like living can be viewed as living as a zombie or as if life itself is illusionary. The ‘illusionary’ part is okay to some degree because the life we perceive is mostly a human life not some intrinsic connection to ‘the things in themselves’ and we live in a culturally defined cooking pot … so even the Schopenhauer ideas are build upon the vast waste of nothingness … the pointlessness, but we never see the pointlessness directly or we wouldn’t move.

We ‘live’. Why? No one knows. I think ‘why?’ as a serious question about this is quite meaningless if anything it meaningless.

History.

If your model predicts something with a good degree of accuracy under various different test methods then there is likely something within it worth looking at.

Comparing Willy Wonker to the universe is kind of missing the mark. The universe does not appear to be moral. People don’t ask to come into existence - that would be contrary to suggest.

The context is people are here and more people will come. Eventually there will be no more people. None of this is ‘moral’.

We are alive. Life necessarily contains some degree of suffering/discomfort. To negate all suffering means to negate all life. I don’t view reality as ‘moral’ anymore than a view a rock as ‘moral’.

What does this have to do with ‘boredom’ anyway? We exist. You asked what we should do in the face of the existential crisis in the OP. What do you think we should do and why?

Precisely. I mentioned it, in passing, in response to what someone else said. I even said I didn’t think there was much to it - other than as a psychological item. It is most commonly attributed to Freud I believe.

In respect of the thread, it is a reasonable thing to consider ‘crying out’ as a babe as having some possible relation to prayer. Personally I find ‘prayer’ hard to categorise. Seems like a very loose concept.

Okay. Learn read it is then. Bye

I did not. Learn to read or stop trolling. Not sure which it is you need to attend to.

By who? What are you talking about?

And?

‘of’ instead of ‘as’. Point being is a view about which I was generally talking about. There are various other views I was not saying this is the general consensus at all.

Critical Theory is pretty nebulous, non-specific and based on little to no empirical evidence. It is a way of looking at things and asking questions, but not much more.

CRT is use of a pretty flimsy idea applied to a highly contentious subject matter.

It seems to me the whole math thing was initiated by right leaning people based on some absurd idea that mathematics is racist :D

CRT, and CT in general, should be taken too seriously at all. They are just proposals for ways of looking at social interactions and social structures. It is not a ‘theory’ in the sense that evolution is a theory … not even close!

Troll

But not Jainism? What is the difference here? They both say the same thing and Buddhism would not exist without the ascetic Jains.

According to whom/what?

I have/had no issue. Sometime people speak with gravitas and sometimes with glib humour. It just popped into my head and amused me so I posted it :)

How can you end suffering if all life is effectively framed as ‘suffering’ (albeit a weaker sort of ‘disgruntlement’ and/or ‘dissatisfaction’)?

- someone WHO is -

Brain fart when typing :)

I’ll let someone else point out the problems in that before I do.

Have fun chat later maybe.

Funny you say that. One of the last Culture novels Bainks wrote was about an artificial hell.

As for the internet. There are FAR greater shifts coming and you will start to see them bleeding into the public sphere over the next decade or two. CRISPR is real and will shake up everything.

Either way, making far flung predictions is just that. In the here and now ‘freedom’ comes at a price and nothing I can fathom will change that.

In perfect conditions practically ANY political system can be said to work ‘best’.

What do you think about the idea of democracy? Does democracy have a place in a free world or will democracy be outlawed? If there is democracy then necessarily some people will ‘lose out’ for the great good of the masses. Is this okay? To what extent?

Surely in a society that is democratic where people have maximal freedom they can choose not to vote on anything. Some people will vote though and impose their will on others (thus some freedom will be lost).

Then there is the other problem of ‘equality’. People are not equal. Some will have more ‘freedom’ than others. Is that something that can realistically be ‘solved’ - in reality or down some internet/AI rabbit hole? Are we talking Matrix movie level supplication to the machines rather than to our own free will and authorship over our lives?

Take any idea to the extremes and it will turn pretty bad pretty quickly

Too many Schopies :D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6Fuxkinhug

Not simplistic, but it is an unverified assumption that people will ‘dance, make art and make love’. I do not personally see this as the nature of everyone, nor a particularly large minority let alone majority.

Robots have taken jobs from people who want jobs … but if we fast forward to some hypothetical future where humankind can live a life of Riley … as above maybe?

I enjoyed reading The Culture series of books by Iain Bainks which basically set up human civilization in this guise. A far flung possibility, or maybe not so far flung?

When it comes to predicting the effects of certain technologies it is hard to say much at all. We have certainly been heading in a decent direct for a while in terms of global poverty, disease, famine and child mortality.

I think there is a lot to be said for communal work helping social ties and creating a more peaceful environment. Someone will have to programme the robots … that is a lot of power in the hands of a few. Then maybe we just let the robots rule us? Would the robots then revert to Asimov ‘protection’ of the human species?

Having complete freedom could amount to losing all freedom (see Orwell). Having no responsibility for our basic needs is reverting to a childlike state … is that okay?

Anything taken to an extreme end starts to get messy quickly in my experience.

Aestheticism is not entertainment.

Schopenhauer (THE Schopenhauer) refers to aestheticism as being that which turns away from our inner nature.

I would recommend reading 1984 by George Orwell.

Other than that I just want to point out that ‘absolute freedom’ means ‘absolute responsibility’. No one sane wants to even attempt to take on that burden.

‘Uniting’ people is often comes at great cost to those that refuse to ‘unite’ - often anarchist types. It is an unpleasant contradiction but it is all too human. Aiming for something better is obviously a nice idea … it gets bad when the ‘something better’ is different for everyone, which it usually is.

As for robots and AI you will many people here who would point out several things including the need for humans to feel useful, the fact that there are now billions more people on Earth now than compared to preindustrial times and that your view seems to frame ‘freedom’ as having more leisure time? You have surely heard of people who won the lottery returning to their ‘mundane’ jobs. People like people, and people like to work with people on something.

I do not see how releasing humans for activity and work would create any kind of ‘freedom’ people would want. An Eloi life of The Time Machine perhaps? Is that a freedom you want?

Either way I have no issue with trying to work towards something better. I am just moe conservative minded when it comes to shaking things up for the sake of shaking things up. Destruction is far easier than building something. Trying to build the impossible does seem to be a human occupation though and sometimes we do step beyond our perceived realms of ‘possible’.

Some kind of ‘transcendentalism’ is usually the answer to this.

Then there is the overt problem of sifting through the plethora of transcendental views to find one that seems ‘correct’.

For me life is neither bleak nor wondrous. Ponderous? Certainly seems that way more than anything.