Are there any subtopics I have neglected to cover? — Pfhorrest

All of them. I’d advise sticking to one in depth piece of writing rather than scattered pieces that try to cover everything - and essentially fail.

It feels like you’ve given me a collection of synopsis’s and want me to view it as a singular piece of writing.

Husserl

The US is the biggest polluter if you take into consideration the numbers on a person to person basis rather than pointing out that countries with over a billion people pump out waste.

Have you thrown everything with ‘made in China’ out? Chances are you probably can’t tell where the materials come from for the products you own.

Basically I don’t understand your rant. You’re upset with everyone who is middle-class and liberal because, y’know, they’re all alike ... surely you see how that kind of view doesn’t help anyone really.

Not all that surprising given that it’s a poorly written knock-off :D

:rofl:

Honestly, that is exactly how I think of humans. We’re confused gods of a sort (the odd sort!)

Imagine if only you could fully understand and predict this you’d truly be all-powerful! — kudos

I don’t think so. Like I said previously, our ... er ... ‘power of knowledge’ is what it is because it’s limited. Omnipotence wouldn’t feel like ‘living’ I expect because they’d be nothing unknown and maybe little to nothing that could even be doubted even slightly.

A bit like having all the money in the world - it’s worthless paper if you’re the only one who has it. Thankfully us humans appear to be quite stupid, delusional and foolish! Lots of life left in us yet! :D

I was talking about new drugs. Funding has pretty much stopped for research development for the kind of drugs I mentioned.

The issue is the brain is complex and what works for one person does the opposite for others. Psychotropics are certainly the way to imo, but the kind of substances that have a lot of potential have been illegal to research until recently - psilocybin, DMT and other substances are interesting avenues to explore.

One point is that I don't think this is true. — Coben

I’ve heard several people say the exact opposite recently regarding funding for such treatments - because it’s seriously unpredictable (essentially there is more profit elsewhere).

Note: ‘people’ being professionals in or related to the field - podcasts mainly.

The other part is that brains can surive a lack of external stimulus while continuing to experience. Sensory depirivation can even be experienced as stimulating over short periods of time. That was a bit of a tangent, but mainly I was responding to what seemed to be implicit that the brain's stimuli only come from outside the brain. — Coben

I said a brain with no input does very little. That is true. Deprived of any sensory input from birth the brain would die quite quickly. The comparison made in the video I was pointing out as ridiculous was the simplistic comparison of a brain to a cellphone.

Anyway, at best a brain in a vat deprived of sensory input would die quickly enough because most the neurons would be redundant. Remember we have the most neurons at birth. They die out if they are not used - simple efficiency.

In simpler terms you cannot imagine what something looks like if you’re born with no eyes.

What’s your point?

Maybe my words are too confusing.

Here, wiki away! :D

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_(arrow_of_time)

You’ve lost me. If you put an ice cube on the table you’ll entropy in action. Time can be subjective (if you’re bathed in red light your subjective appreciation of time will be different than if you’re bathed in blue light or simply the activity you’re doing will change your experience of time’s passage) but an atomic clock doesn’t care about your subjective experience of time. Radioactive decay is entropy increasing - our means of measuring this is with time.

Back to the pool of water that was once ice. As time passes it will evaporate - this is entropy increasing. Homeostatic entities (in this instance ‘life forms’) exist because they create a boundary between the environment and their inner functioning - yet they are never ever separate and although it seems like things ‘grow’ essentially everything - on the universal scale - is falling apart (entropic death).

Basically everything is trying to reach equilibrium (that is precisely what entropy is all about). Without balls rolling down hills or ice melting there would be no ‘time’. Our human appreciation of time is clearly due to our homeostatic state as a living organism - a rock doesn’t care about anything. We’re eating up the little eddies produced as entropy continually increases on a universal scale.

In short, of course time is encapsulated in the term Entropy? The fact that we’re alive is a blip. We cannot hold death at bay and defy Entropy. We merely sustain and balance our homeostatic states and slow the inevitable. This is all about entropy and efficient use of energy/information. Time does ‘happen’ entropy ‘is’ and change occurs due to entropy. The ‘randomness’ of an event is quantified by entropy. Higher entropy means more randomness and more randomness means so appreciable ‘different’ because there is no measurable means to predict what is pulled from the cosmic bag if every item pulled is unknowable - time doesn’t ‘exist’ in any sense we could appreciate. The same goes for a cosmic bag full of the same items. Every time we pull something from the bag it would be identical, there would be no discernible difference between absolute entropic states (zero or ‘random’ - true random!).

Perfect order means explosive potential for change. Perfect disorder means no potential for anything. In a bizarre way absolute ‘equilibrium‘ and absolute ’randomness’ are so different the are, to my mind, as good as the same for my poor little brain.

That time is just a form of entropy is interesting, you should explore this further. How are you coming to this conclusion? — kudos

I’m not saying it is a form of entropy. I am saying our experience of entropy is what we experientially refer to as ‘time’. No entropy means no change. Zero entropy is our closest ‘appreciation’ concept of ‘nothing’ (in more day-to-day talk).

Here’s something else considered to be one of, if not the, most important papers written in the 20th century (I hope to one day be able to fully appreciate it) :

http://people.math.harvard.edu/~ctm/home/text/others/shannon/entropy/entropy.pdf

In the video above the guy mentions the book Chaos by James Gleick - something I first heard about from watching Sapolsky’s lectures on youtube (highly recommend both!)

This will interest you I’m sure : https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ovJcsL7vyrk

If you take time out of the picture, which is not altogether nonsensical, or spacetime, this all starts to make a lot less sense. — kudos

How? I cannot imagine what I cannot imagine. Without experience of space or time I am non-existent - I cannot ‘think’!

Consider these cells, did they have a notion of time? — kudos

Cells are not conscious of time because they’re not conscious. There is literally zero evidence to suggest they are conscious. The concepts of ‘time’ and ‘space’ are only known to us because we’re conscious of change.

We do not talk about rock rolling down hills being conscious of ‘gravity’ because that is plainly a misuse of the term ‘conscious’. If you wish to argue that individual cells possess consciousness I’d say that’s ridiculous, but I do understand that ‘emergence’ is a tricky problem - mainly a linguistic one. We know water exists and what constitutes water on a atomic level, yet ‘wet’ is an emergent ‘experiential’ property of water and other liquid substances. When does a gathering become a crowd, etc.,?

We can talk to each other because we are conscious beings. I cannot discuss this with a rat though because rats are not ‘conscious’ in anything like the way I am. If you go down all the way to a singular cell, nope, there is nothing even remotely like a rat or human experience going on - ergo there is nothing that resembles ‘consciousness’ other than a rather desperate and analogous sense of the term.

Was time simply ‘there’ and they didn’t know of it until animal brains were highly constituted enough to appreciate it? — kudos

I’ve already pointed out that ‘time’ is our experience of entropy. What you are asking is like asking if gravity existed prior to human life - I find it hard to believe that gravity came into being parallel to human consciousness (the conception of the term ‘gravity’ did though). That is basically the question of a tree falling in the woods making a ‘sound’ (it depends entirely on what you define as ‘sound’ as some would argue that there is no ‘sound’ because sound is an experience, whereas others would refer to the sound wave existing and therefore ‘sound’ existing regardless of experience.

There seems to be a running theme here that I hope you can clarify. How are you delineating ’experience’ from ‘stuff’ if at all? If you’re not at all that could be a problem.

If so, what would be the need, when animals fighting for survival really only makes sense as an afterthought? — kudos

The ‘need’ of what? Consciousness? There is no ‘need’ in evolutionary terms only circumstantial use. What is of no use is useless and therefore redundant, but it may become of use in the future. ‘Consciousness’ - or just broader cognitive capacities - allows for better planning and navigation through space and time (aka the environment). Some people believe consciousness is merely ‘steam from an engine’ and does nothing at all (in the sense of agency). A lot of the varying views, yet again, depend on the application and use of terminology. Dennett makes perfect sense if you understand what exactly he means by ‘free will’ yet I, and many others, have tended to latch onto the surface detail of his statements rather than employ his use fo words.

Note: The free will issue likely ties into the issue of ‘random’ too. Life is a homeostatic phenomenon and is therefore bound by limits. This means that ‘random’ doesn’t mean anything can happen, only that over time certain things are almost certain and others almost impossible (such as the ‘sand castle’). This also plays out in a political sense too as many people say they want freedom, but they really mean they want just enough freedom as ‘complete’ (as absolutism) freedom means full responsibility for their actions and everyone else’s - that is a hard burden to carry akin to something like the religious conception of God! We may think we like the idea of godhood but the reality is likely far from pleasant. I honestly imagine a God would release themselves from the burden of knowledge and responsibility in order to ‘exist’ - Sisyphus was praised by the Greeks for continuing an apparently futile task. That is our lot. I like it well enough :)

So what about processes that are more or less random on a microscopic level but contribute to macroscopic effects. From this idea one might be tempted to believe that all things proceed in this way and that it is the origin of free will, destiny, etc. — kudos

What about it? You tell me.

Why would someone believe that? Tell me.

But reverting to the prior discussion of time, what exactly does a random process do outside of time? — kudos

I can only imagine you mean ‘abstracted from’ rather than ‘outside of’. If not that’s basically nonsense so I’ll assume you meant ‘abstracted’. Even if you did mean that I’m not entirely sure what you’re getting at? Chaotic systems are basically systems that we cannot infer the original step from. In an abstract (to be clear I mean a rigid mathematical model) setting we can set up a system that would produce chaotic motion. If we new the initial parameters we’d know EXACTLY what would happen within our enclosed system yet to the onlooker if they never knew the initial state they could only model as best they could the probable states of origin - and their modeling would generally improve over time as they accumulated more data, but they’d only ever get so close to estimating the original starting state (all entirely dependent upon the number of variables involved of course!).

How can something be the origin of time, presuming time perception is a strictly natural human faculty, when it is seen through time? — kudos

I believe I ever said such a thing? I said ‘time’ is our means of measuring change - we call this ENTROPY but we don’t pretend to know what/how/why ENTROPY ‘is’ anymore than we know gravity.

I’m talking about change. Change is utterly part of existence. No change - literally - isn’t anything to us at all other than a negative noumenal conception (in the Kantian parse). We cannot know beyond our limitations and we can only know anything because of our limitations. On the precipice of understanding we stretch ourselves, but we cannot stretch further than we can stretch. We can say things like ‘existence without time’ or ‘orange Monday under the carpet of made of paper tear dreams’ ... so what? Language itself has limitations AND that is precisely why it’s useful. A limitless ’language’ would leave everything known ‘absolutely’ and therefore redundant as nought would be open to investigation because we’d be wholly unable to doubt anything.

Note: All that said simply forming strange sentences and seemingly pointless questions can occasionally be useful as it frees up our assumptions and allows us to move beyond our perceived limits (but never our actual limits!).

One word. ENTROPY!

What is obvious, yet sublime, is that it is physical ‘possible’ for the winds to blow the sand around on a beach to produce a sandcastle. In reality it is a mathematical ‘impossibility’ because the chance is so insignificantly small - along the lines of it would take something like a billion to the power of a billion universes and then add up all the atoms in these universes to make that many more universes - repeat this a billion times - and then you might find a percentage chance of this happening that has less than trillions of decimal places prior to a figure above 0.

In more tangible terms objects are generally ‘made’ of mostly ‘empty’ space. Given this why is it we cannot walk through walls or see items fall through tables.

Chaos is also another extraordinarily fascinating topic to look into alongside this.

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

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

The concept of time is necessarily referential to change (hence ENTROPY). Time is the means of measuring ENTROPY, and because of the reasonable degree of ‘consistency’ herein sentient ‘experience’ - which is a ‘time-bound’ concept - is linear in form or we simply wouldn’t have ‘experience’.

Note: Please take into account that talking about ‘temporality’, with a language that exists because of temporality, unfortunately produces obtuse verbiage as above :l We don’t know what ENTROPY ‘is’ but I’m damn sure if there was a God of science scientists would be worshipping Entropy (the Greek equivalent would be the Fates; they were onto something there!)

The title ‘Ontological Hermeneutics’ may help guide you a little. As with many philosophical works Heidegger employ his own jargon to lay out his ideas (eg. The use of the suffix -ness in English translations, and terms like ‘ontic’).

In philosophical jargon the ‘Ontic’ is more or less framed as ‘physical being’, whereas the ‘Ontological’ is more or less about what constitutes ‘being’.

Tip: I found B&T easier to read through if you just read the last 2-3 paragraphs of each section - the rest you may find to be mostly ‘redundant’ (meaning if you’re like me you may find yourself frustrated after reading several pages only to find he was saying nothing more than what was said in the final paragraphs - I found I could’ve essentially removed at least 50% of the words and still have the complete ideas set out before me).

I think the gist of the point was we don’t have many alternatives. It’s pretty clear that the ‘liberal left’ and no doubt many ‘right leaning’ people do actively pressure the manufacturers and shine a light on their practices - that’s why we know about it.

I imagine the vast majority of people have more immediate worries, but that most would do what they could if they were shown how to.

Why don’t the non-liberal right boycott? Does political leaning really matter? If you think so how and why, and evidence do you have to back up your position?

Are you familiar with Damasio? I believe he differentiated between ‘feeling’ and ‘emotion’ in pretty much the same way you’ve briefly outlined.

Excuse my fumbling, I think it goes something like emotions are felt and feelings are experienced - I guess the ‘experienced’ would be akin to ‘conceptualised’.

Undoubtedly emotions are physiological, yet we may not be fully conscious of the emotion at the time - or confuse emotional states. Attending to and learning how and when emotions present is certainly a learned ‘skill’.

Why on earth are you on a philosophy forum?

You cannot ‘avoid’ ethical discussions. You make the ethical choice not to partake in them. It’s like you’ve just publicly announced “Look everyone!I’m going to bury my head in the sand!”

Very strange :D

Okay, I’ll put these ideas out there. Is it only the scientist that puts ethics aside in pursuit of their ‘art’? I think what is really under consideration here is the broader view of the obsessive specialist - by no means necessarily a scientist (just look at famous painters, rockstars, sportsmen or actors!).

I think there may be some weight in people ‘ignoring’, or rather sacrificing, more regular social habits in pursuit of their passions. Then the question is whether or not scientists are more prone to this or not and how this could possibly be discerned, if at all. Then there is the whole issue of lumping all the sciences together! Then there is the matter of the influence their work has. An obsessive painter may cut their ear off and cause distress to their immediate associates, maybe even instill a murderous intent in some if their work is powerful enough and those viewing it are ... well, ‘attuned’ to such severe reactions. An obsessive biochemical engineer may produce ‘ice-9’ (of Vonnegut fame) and bypass the effect of their work on the world because they are so absorbed with solving the puzzle.

If there is something too obsessive behavior causing people to ‘bypass’ their ethical norms then it is a matter of who is or isn’t in a field that is going to have a large effect on society at large.

Don’t be sorry! That’s the point of writing :)

We all make mistakes, ‘missword’/omit by accident. Just keep trying and keep expecting to fail.

The whole subject matter of science and ethics is a minefield strewn with corpses of religious know-it-alls and scientist know-it-alls. I don’t believe there is much more we can do - in regards to ethical disposition - other than ready ourselves for failure and to drive forward regardless.

You cannot ‘ignore’ ethics. You make a choice and act based on your ethical views as opposed to the moralistic landscape of society.

If someone believed cloning a human had the potential to cure several diseases maybe they’d deem the moralistic reaction against their position a burden they were willing to bear.

‘Science’ doesn’t care for humans. Scientists are another matter. Pointing the finger at science is a bit like blaming water for everyone who drowns. Neither water nor science care. Scientists do care, people do care (albeit to varying degrees).

That prouves that science have no limits and exceed the rules of ethics just to develop and share a new discovery even if it is useless. — Mathias

No it doesn’t. That is like saying a human killed a human once, therefore all humans are murderers! I’d have no serious argument against someone who says that all humans are capable of murder though.

What you’re saying lacks serious consideration. You cannot judge people based on the actions of someone else and expect them to match up 100%. Such thinking is incredibly myopic and potentially very dangerous.

You don’t appear to understand what ‘truth value’ means in terms of logical statements.

The ‘truth value’ of ‘he will attack me’ is either true or false. If he doesn’t it is false, if he does it is ‘true’. The fact that he ‘looks shifty’ is not important.

All logical statements are given ‘truth values’ of T or F. This has nothing to do with evidence.

Saying ‘he might attack me’ is an observation not a prediction. All predictions are necessarily true or false.

‘He attacked because it was raining’ is either true or false too. Proving that the rain instigated an attack in the real world is completely different - but we don’t tend extend ‘truth values’ beyond the logical statements they are used in.

Listened on a few more seconds ... he doesn’t know what ‘emergent’ means.

Ignore the fool, but explore the question as a ‘what if’ question.

So, what if the brain isn’t responsible for consciousness? What if the brain is merely a conduit for ‘consciousness’? How far can we stretch our imagination and what do we find of substance from doing so?

Basically his opening argument is ‘without stimuli there is no consciousness’. I agree. That is literally all there is to the comparison of the brain to a cellphone. A cellphone with no signal does very little. A human brain with no input does very little.

Cognitive Neuroscientists are the one’s on the forefront of this field not psychiatrists. Psychiatry is a discipline involved with treating brain disorders/illnesses with drugs - which most pharmaceutical companies have pretty much given up pursuing because they cannot make a profit from them due to the carpet bombing effect on the brain (depending on the person, or even some specific period of time for a person, the effects of drugs can be completely different).

If we lock someone in a room with minimal stimuli would they cease to be ‘conscious’ much like a cellphone in a tunnel? There are studies on sensory deprivation.

For those interested there is more information here:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-intuitionistic/

I understand that anarchism is the belief that all types of states are illegitimate. — Seri

In a sense yes. But if there was no ‘state’ the anarchic attitude would still exist as it is fundamentally about questioning authority rather than going along with the crowd - ironically in modern day terms the kind of people who call themselves anarchists, that you see wearing masks and throwing rocks, are merely going along with their own group insisting on their authority over others rather than simply questioning.

There are numerous positions on the political scale that are moderate yet still hold the term ‘anarchism’ to heart. As with all -isms there is no one true definition just a core gist surrounded by nebulous ideas and movements. Anyone who sides with anarchism in the sense that they oppose all societal structures of authority is essentially encouraging the death of millions because they believe they are ‘correct’. Naivety often goes hand in hand with extreme liberalist views, but that doesn’t make them useless either.

I am certainly someone who leans to ‘anarchism’ in the sense that I question authority where I can - within and without - rather than avoid rocking the boat. To grow as an individual a reasonably large helping of anarchism is essential as far as I can tell. Too much, like almost anything, is poisonous though.

Any political attitude used en masse is anti-anarchical. The true use of the anarchic attitude - as far as I care for it - comes from within. That is to oppose one’s own attitudes and beliefs with rigourous questioning.

Well, the world doesn’t care what you want. You can worry about the future or you can expect, and plan for, the worst.

I know you know this! Sometimes hearing it from a stranger helps though ;)

Either way GL, whatever the law dictates you and your boss can and can’t do. You sound like you’re in a fortunate position compared to many.

No idea. It makes sense to expect the worst and seek employment elsewhere. There are online opportunities to look into too so that can help tie you over if you start NOW. Generally the pay-off for freelance work online takes take to pick up, so better to start now and establish a foothold (just in case).

Note: I’ve looked into this myself a little. The competition isn’t exactly overwhelming when it comes to content writers for blogs and general editing (some of the attempts I’ve seen were poor to mediocre and received a decent payment!)

GL

That block of text reads more like a diary entry (not what I come here for). You seem distracted by other discussions so I’ll leave you to it.

Maybe a new thread with specific aims would encourage more focused discussion.

GL :)

Can you give page references please?

Rousseau was suspicious and ignorant, of the underlying ‘nature’ of humans. He rightly questioned the delineation between nature and nurture, but seemed to lean heavily away from ‘nature’,as a discernible ‘law’. Today we understand much better the interaction between innate and learned capacities - not to say we’ve neatly tied this off as ‘problem solved’ only that we’ve come to understand the nuances between genetic disposition and lived experience (our capacities are preset but certainly not predetermined - the environment is the thread of time we live, learn and change throughout our existence).

Rousseau was also a bit of a romantic. I think he is often misquoted as saying ‘noble savage’, but his view was somewhat inclined in that direction.

The question of ‘inequality’ in modern anthropology is a well argued point. Generally speaking ‘the birth of inequality’ is broadly defined as the point where property and ownership came into political play.

Sedentary living is thought to have solidified loose forms of societal status into more physically manifest symbolism - larger abodes and decorative possessions.

Interesting items of archeological note are those that are ‘useless’ - eg. jade axes (which are ‘useless’ as actual axes).

Africa : https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_6jUEmv0IB8

There doesn’t appear to be a significant rise in deaths from respiratory failure since January in the UK. Yet deaths have risen significantly - around 7000 above average in the last two weeks recorded:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/file?uri=%2fpeoplepopulationandcommunity%2fbirthsdeathsandmarriages%2fdeaths%2fdatasets%2fweeklyprovisionalfiguresondeathsregisteredinenglandandwales%2f2020/publishedweek152020.xlsx

Here’s one explanation why :

As the number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 surges past 2.2 million globally and deaths surpass 150,000, clinicians and pathologists are struggling to understand the damage wrought by the coronavirus as it tears through the body. They are realizing that although the lungs are ground zero, its reach can extend to many organs including the heart and blood vessels, kidneys, gut, and brain.

“[The disease] can attack almost anything in the body with devastating consequences,” says cardiologist Harlan Krumholz of Yale University and Yale-New Haven Hospital, who is leading multiple efforts to gather clinical data on COVID-19. “Its ferocity is breathtaking and humbling.”

...

How the virus attacks the heart and blood vessels is a mystery, but dozens of preprints and papers attest that such damage is common. A 25 March paper in JAMA Cardiology documented heart damage in nearly 20% of patients out of 416 hospitalized for COVID-19 in Wuhan, China. In another Wuhan study, 44% of 36 patients admitted to the ICU had arrhythmias.

...

According to one preprint, 27% of 85 hospitalized patients in Wuhan had kidney failure. Another reported that 59% of nearly 200 hospitalized COVID-19 patients in China’s Hubei and Sichuan provinces had protein in their urine, and 44% had blood; both suggest kidney damage. Those with acute kidney injury (AKI), were more than five times as likely to die as COVID-19 patients without it, the same Chinese preprint reported.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/04/how-does-coronavirus-kill-clinicians-trace-ferocious-rampage-through-body-brain-toes

The general view in the public sphere is that acute respiratory disease (ARDS) is the main cause of death. This appears to be somewhat misleading if a quarter are dying from kidney failure and other complications.

And if you can resist the impulse to show off your own erudition, maybe it's best. — tim wood

That’s an extremely good point for someone like me! I love prose, etymology, and words in general. If I’m talking to friends I don’t have to worry about sounding like a complete pretentious dick, whereas online my ‘voice’/‘style’/‘tone’ of writing is not exactly a decent reflection of what you’d get talking to me face-to-face. Sometimes we’re playful with words when others aren’t and vice versa.

I can certainly understand that some people would look at certain ways of writing as ‘showing off’ but I write because I enjoy writing. I cannot really change the way I write to suit everyone, but I’m aware of certain things grating on others just as the way others write can grate on me.

The simple truth is that occasionally people are just in the wrong mood and wish to have an ‘argument’ for the sake of having an ‘argument’. Often leaving the topic obscured in the dust why they seek to bludgeon someone repeatedly over some trivial point they couldn’t care less about. And sometimes it appears people do this when they are doing no more than pointing out a subtle flaw in your writing - which is beneficial - rather than setting out to agitate and cause ire.

All that aside, it doesn’t hurt to lack in humility or patience every now and again. We’re human, so it’s probably better if we can all at least attempt to read our words as if they were someone else’s. Really though, passivity is not something I find helpful in so-called ‘philosophical discourse’ (whatever that is?).

I answered ‘no’ to the last two.

Question 1: Asking is great. Demanding is naive/lazy. So I went with ‘yes’ because inquiry should always be encouraged.

Question 2: I took to mean ‘do your utmost’, and this may be a reasonable suggestion depending on the topic and intricacy involved. In general though I don’t expect to have to tutor people over and over again because they don’t possess a broad enough knowledge - I’d just point them in what I consider the appropriate direction and no more.

Question 3: I like to explore ideas rather than dismiss them. I often find it stimulating to squeeze sense out of arguments, propositions, positions, etc., that initially seem fruitless.

As usual ‘it depends’ pretty much suits all :D. Seriously, there is value in exploring naive assumptions because it can lead to new insights - the choice of which questions to blindly follow is down to each and every person’s particular level of curiosity in the moment. There are times when I will follow a thread that at other times I would just as quickly dismiss - often dependent upon what I happen to be reading/writing/thinking about at the time.

I’m waiting for number of registered deaths in next UK report (in a few days).

If there are still 50% more deaths a week than usual then I’m inclined to disagree - judging by the UK governments latest statements I imagine the rough estimates are that the number of deaths (covid or otherwise) hasn’t eased off at all.

The hysteria does bother me, but that’s just human nature. From what little I’ve managed to glean I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the figure is below 1%, but don’t think it’ll be any lower than 0.5% - which are both significantly worse than the flu. Maybe the professor deems that ‘in the ballpark’, but it’s highly suspicious to say that rather than put an actual figure to his estimate.

I didn’t say Athena ... that is your name. Either way many inventions are accredited to Athena.

What kind of knowledge? I would like to search for answers so do you have any mythologies in mind that I might read? I know often goddesses are said to be wise but wisdom and technology are separate things. — Athena

You asked for examples of technological inventions (knowledge) from goddesses and I gave you two; Athena is a third.

Who was or wasn’t mother is important why?

Artemis and Demeter spring to mind. Or you could just look at the hindu pantheon of gods/goddesses - they often switch forms from male to female so that pretty much covers everything.

Lynne Kelly was the name I couldn’t recall - ironic considering the point was about memory systems! Haha!

You appear to want me to be saying something you’re not saying to disagree with me and start a pointless argument. Find someone else to spit your dummy at because you’ve done this too many times to me already.

No more replies from me so go at it and get it off your chest (whatever it is?)