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  • Monty Hall Problem - random variation
    So there's a game on uk telly called 'Who wants to be a millionaire. A series of questions with 4 possible answers A, B, C, D. On one question, you can ask the computer to remove two wrong answers at random. So you take a guess in your mind - say 'A'. Then the computer takes away - say B and C, leaving A and D. Is there any reason to switch to D?
  • Monty Hall Problem - random variation
    My door. C______G_____G

    Monty's G_G___C_G___C_G

    Six permutations, but the combination G+G is eliminated by the exposure of the car, as indicated above by the invisible strikes. One game in three my door wins, one game in three Monty's door wins, and one game in three is abandoned. So it's even odds.

    In the original problem, the combination G+G is avoided by Monty's choice; no games are abandoned Monty's odds are doubled.
  • Monty Hall Problem - random variation
    The best way to make it intuitive is to add more doors. So - 100 doors, 99 goats, you choose a door, then Monty chooses 98. There's going to be a lot of abandoned games in this scenario. But eventually you arrive at the two doors one of which has the car. In effect you have chosen one and Monty the other from a position of equal ignorance. Monty is not more likely to be correct than you.

    Compare this with the same game where Monty knows where the car is: Monty always picks the door with the car to leave, except the 1 in 100 where you have picked it.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    There is nothing incompetent about firing employees, especially when they’re failing their duties. — NOS4A2

    No indeed. It's hiring four failures on the trot that is incompetent.
  • If Not Identity Politics, Then What?
    (or offended in unenlightened's case) — frank

    No Frank. I'm not offended, I'm on strike.
  • Neoliberalism, anyone?
    Racists often deny being racists, and fascists often deny being fascists.

    "I'm not fascist, but I believe that there should be no hindrance made to the strong by a coalition of the weak."

    Thus every fascism is in principle against every other fascism as being just such a coalition, unlike their own leader who has followers. :vomit:
  • Neoliberalism, anyone?
    Everyone becomes conservative once they get their own way.

    Even one promoting continuous revolution wants the revolution to - continue.
  • Pseudo-Intellectual collection of things that all fit together hopefully
    Silence appeals to me, maybe just because I can't stop talking, but if we use stereoscopic in the way you mean, then 'all the way down' could also mean conversation and relation all the way down. — csalisbury

    There is no incompatibility; in the relation that is a conversation, there is on both sides, or as many sides as there are, both talking and the silence of listening.

    I ought to say something profound here about John Cage 4'33
  • God and The Three Universe problem
    Whether we are part of a permanently fixture of not, we exist. — Anonymys

    Well that is not certain. Plato disagrees, for example. Many people call this world 'the world of appearances'. Now Descartes would agree with you, that even if it is mere appearance, that experience even of mere appearance guarantees existence (the cogito). Anyway, without giving the full history of philosophy course, suffice to say it is an open question.

    But even if God's mere consideration of us is enough for us to exist, it means that the middle ground of your three universes has disappeared, or merged with the third one. There are cosmologies where God can see our choices as a matter of fact while we still have free will - but you'll have to get someone else to explain them, they make little sense to me.
  • Sherlock Holmes, Science and Understanding
    The author of Sherlock Holmes believed in spiritualism, fairies, and the like. I think his fiction is not the best source for a philosophy of science.
  • Why is so much rambling theological verbiage given space on 'The Philosophy Forum' ?
    I sometimes wonder if people in other forums--like say antinatalist forums, or particular apologetics forums, don't tell each other to head over here and start threads about their pet topics. — Terrapin Station
    That happened for definite at the old forum at least once. I think we banned them for a mix of low quality and being broken records. It was a very silly sect though, to the extent that I cannot even remember what it was they espoused.
  • Why is so much rambling theological verbiage given space on 'The Philosophy Forum' ?
    as pointless as asking why the world is such an iniquitous place. There's simply no non-trivial and satisfactory answer to that. — SophistiCat

    I blame women. Eve and Pandora in particular. And that is non trivial and highly satisfactory to most men.
  • God and The Three Universe problem
    If these individuals break any of God's laws, then He never allows them to exist. — Anonymys

    This is where we live, in the mind of God. We call it existence and reality and we take ourselves oh so seriously, but no doubt God will think better than to allow us to actually exist, as permanent features of His being. Did you think our world was some kind of fixture?

    Or possibly not...

    Salvation: a cleansing fervently to be desired by anyone who is not entirely made of accretions of dirt.
  • Why is so much rambling theological verbiage given space on 'The Philosophy Forum' ?
    ↪fresco
    ↪Pattern-chaser


    Send not to ask at whom the unenlightened laugh, They laugh at us.

    Should I mention that knowledge is widely considered to be a species of belief?
  • Why is so much rambling theological verbiage given space on 'The Philosophy Forum' ?
    One reason that religion threads are often poor is that they are too often started by folks who find it safer and more comfortable to question other people's ideas than their own. This leads to the construction of many straw men that can be gleefully burned, but which produce more heat than light.

    For example, allow me to hold up for ridicule the belief that all belief is foolish. What kind of idiot would believe that? Ha ha, ha ha ha...
  • Is introspection a valid type of knowledge
    Two psychologists meet:
    How am I?
    You're fine, how am I?

    Some of us are so radical as not only to rely on our own introspection, but also on that of others.
  • Big or Small Government? An old debate between left and right
    Which Sci fi writer had a dept of sabotage to prevent governments becoming too efficient?
  • If Not Identity Politics, Then What?
    a state of Eden a la Un — StreetlightX

    I would like to point out that I have not posited any such state; I made a distinction.
  • Brexit
    ↪NOS4A2
    Yes, as i thought. Partial not impartial.
  • Brexit
    Bercow was being accused by Johnson of impartiality. — NOS4A2

    I think you mean the opposite. He's also been accused of a failure of political correctness towards women and a tendency to bullying. His popularity will soar with his resignation, which is clearly timed to ensure that the new speaker is elected by the current parliament and not a possible post election Johnson Government.
  • Brexit
    ↪boethius
    My understanding is that 2 things have happened to these people. The whip has been withdrawn, which means they are no longer part of the parliamentary party. This is informal and means you are no longer in on the tactics, considered for any positions, or consulted about anything.

    The other thing is the threat of deselection.

    So they are not actually kicked out of the party, they merely lose their jobs and become mere peasants in it.
  • Hume on why we use induction
    or induction, of course. — bongo fury

    Indeed, but giving it another name does not give it a justification. Do you think you have done that? Or that someone else has?
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    Is this really a thing? Who's better at weather forecasting, the president or the weather forecasters? And my dad could beat your dad at tiddlywinks! Even if your dad has a bigger moustache!
  • Hume on why we use induction
    36. This principle is Custom or Habit. - Hume. — Purple Pond

    Or as we call it these days "conditioning.' Pavlov's dog does not reason, but becomes accustomed habitually to expect food on hearing a bell. It is the foundation of learning, but has no logical basis.

    Hume's philosophy is a critique of reason, that can be summed up in two matching limits.

    You cannot derive an 'ought' from an 'is'.
    You cannot derive a 'will be' from a 'has been'.

    For some reason people who are happy to assent to the former often have difficulty with the latter.
  • Brexit
    You seem to have no clue what leaving the EU involves — Benkei

    Well never mind the trolls, never mind the great unwashed, I have very little idea what leaving with no deal means myself, and I am comparatively educated and have taken some small trouble to inform myself.

    But it's not great is it? Like, when we make all these new deals with other countries, they will want a quid pro quo same as the EU. The Sovereignty and independence will last s long as it takes to negotiate a trade deal with someone else. The whole independence thing is bullshit from the start. "It's our Amazon" says Belsonaro. As if the atmosphere respects borders. As if the whole thing is a diversionary tactic, and actually, we're all dead anyway.
  • Why general purposelessness equates to suffering through imposed output expectations
    I did mention entertainment. Soccer would fit under there. — schopenhauer1

    No it wouldn't.

    Someone said to me 'To you football is a matter of life or death!' and I said 'Listen, it's more important than that'. — Bill Shankley

    Entertainment is shit you don't give a shit about.
  • Why general purposelessness equates to suffering through imposed output expectations
    Generally there is no purpose to human existence. What does this mean? — schopenhauer1

    It means human existence - and existence in general - is unnecessary, merely decorative, an exuberant overflowing.

    We also tend to gravitate towards what is most comfortable. — schopenhauer1

    Some do, but others play soccer (the beautiful game). You know that the search for comfort is a purposeless purpose, yet you keep presenting it as the only possible one. And as it leads inevitably to greater discomfort, you end up with a negative view of life. Go for the burn instead; overcome the pain barrier; give blood - play rugby.

    If you want to have a purpose, don't make yourself comfortable, make yourself useful - make yourself beautiful.
  • If Not Identity Politics, Then What?
    Tell me where I was wrong. — StreetlightX

    No. life's too short and I withdraw my cooperation. work it out on your own, or not.
  • If Not Identity Politics, Then What?
    Views like that end up naturalizing existing power-relations under the guise of being 'power-free'. — StreetlightX

    Oh come on, man! That's a power play itself, comparing me to fucking Stalin. A power mad ideologue says that he holds a view, and behaves in a totally contradictory way. and that proves the view false. Start making sense and back off with the insults so much.
  • If Not Identity Politics, Then What?
    All societal action is power bound, and the attempt to say it isn't is just unreflective and unacknowledged wielding of power. — StreetlightX

    "No it isn't", he says naively in an unreflective wielding of power.

    There! That's changed everything by sheer puissance and pouvoir!

    Except I suspect it hasn't changed anything because it is not a wielding of power. But it is a social action.
    And it might therefore change something by means of a cooperative and mutual understanding. Philosophy is not politics, and when it is political it is corrupt. And I don't have to believe in an unfallen Eden or claim to be enlightened to notice corruption.
  • If Not Identity Politics, Then What?
    Loosely: any societal action (which might include setting up institutions!) made to maintain or effect a change in the distribution and effects of power in society. Anything that involves the question(s) of Who(?) does What(?) to Whom(?) for Whose benefit(?) at the social level. — StreetlightX


    Politics is about power. That's why every alien demands to be taken to your leader. One talks to the organ-grinder not the monkey. Power is the fundamental unit of identity. Are you someone, or are you a nobody?

    Politics therefore is a corruption of 'societal action', which without coercive power would be inescapably cooperative.
  • The birth of tragedy.
    ↪New2K2
    Nietzsche is probably close to the worst possible place to start philosophy. In the first place he is radically iconoclastic, but the icons he was clasticating have by now become so covered in ivy that you will not even recognise what he was ranting about unless you are familiar with the Christian tradition and the Greek mythology as well as ancient philosophy and the historical canon.

    And psychologically, I think you have him bang to rights, but I would hesitate to extrapolate to the whole of German philosophy or the whole German culture.
  • Really
    The whole issue with the "free" part is whether you really have different options or not. Whether you can really make a choice, including seemingly arbitrary choices. — Terrapin Station

    I chose to quote this here, but did I really choose?
  • Can an omnipotent being do anything?
    Wouldn’t any constraints on this being then be irrelevant to what is created? — Possibility

    Yes indeed, that is my point. From the POV of the game-world character, the fact that the programmer needs a comfort break. or occasionally cannot work out what will happen if he inserts this code, does not limit him, because he can always wind things back and do things over in another way until it goes just as he wants He sees that it is good. his potency over the game world is unconstrained even by the limits of the computer, because that will affect the speed the game runs globally but will be unnoticable to the game characters. Even the logic of the computer does not constrain the physics of the game.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    What is Trump doing "with" these Hurricanes? — Echarmion

    He's running rings round them.
  • Brexit
    ↪Baden
    That was a devilishly good deadpan joke/putdown.
  • Brexit
    In the face of all that reality, Trump continues to delude himself about his escalating trade war with China, telling reporters on Wednesday that “they want to make a deal”. But Donald’s assertions about Beijing’s desires are about as reliable as Boris’s claims about Brussels.

    Both leaders are demanding ransom payments by holding themselves hostage. Trump’s anti-China tariffs are actually paid by American consumers. As a tactic, this is as brilliant as Boris threatening Brussels with the prospect of economic collapse in Britain.
    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/06/boris-and-donald-two-leaders-afraid-to-do-the-hard-work-of-running-a-country?CMP=fb_gu&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR1tTJPvXGkZNjsWMTMwJVqCnS4kKOQ4qpD1Onrs-F84u5Ut1oGOUyyqUVA#Echobox=1567751422
  • Brexit
    ↪Punshhh
    I hope you are right.
  • Brexit
    ↪Michael
    Right. The legal opinion I saw must have been wrong or out of date. But there is still a conflict if the decision to leave must also be be decided following a democratic process in accordance with national constitutional requirements, and the leader illegally refuses to seek an extension... maybe - please?
  • Brexit
    It has backfired on him. — Amity

    Diversion, and taking some heat off the Boris Cummings faction. All that wasted effort. We are talking about it, and that is a win, because important suff passes by unnoticed.

    One of which is that either by breaking the Benn law or by simply not appointing a commissioner, No deal can still be possibly accomplished. Alas, the idiotic democrats refused the no-confidence motion and government of unity that could have taken control... might be too late now.
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