Of course, if you haven't been turned on, you wouldn't know, so no blame:

In both a racially diverse community-based study and a large nationally representative study, we observed that early life exposure to structural sexism negatively impacts late-life memory trajectories. For women, greater exposure to structural sexism was associated with faster rates of memory decline. The difference in the rate of memory decline between being born in the state with the highest structural sexism versus the state with the lowest structural sexism was equivalent to 9.1 to 9.6 years of cognitive aging. These findings are consistent with previous studies showing that unequal access to sociopolitical and economic resources has a detrimental impact on women's health outcomes.5, 6, 9, 10 This work adds to the literature by showing that these macro-level structural inequalities also influence late-life cognitive health outcomes.

Taking a lifecourse perspective, exposure to high levels of structural sexism in early life may have direct biological consequences that increase a woman's risk for cognitive decline later in life.24 This risk may remain despite exposure to lower levels of structural sexism throughout the rest of the lifecourse. It is also possible that the downstream consequences of structural sexism trigger a trajectory of social exposures (e.g., educational and occupational opportunities, income, etc.,) that alter risk for cognitive decline at later life stages.11 Future studies should test these specific pathways to identify the distinct contributions of policy exposures across the life course.

Structural sexism also had cognitive health consequences for men in both studies. While estimates for men were not significantly different from zero, associations between structural sexism and baseline memory performance were similar among men and women. These findings suggest a potential pattern of universal harm associated with exposure to structural sexism.5 Cross-national studies have demonstrated that gender equity is associated with greater economic growth, poverty reduction, and health improvements at the population level.

https://alz-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/alz.14410

Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Hesse at 12, wow. — Rob J Kennedy

Yeah, not normal I know. I was brought up with 4 older sisters and was reading fluently by 3. No telly in the house, but plenty of books, and I devoured them by the dozens (without understanding everything obviously). The kids around me at school were struggling with Enid Blyton. :groan: So I was a bit of a loner...

Philosophy has taught me more about life than anything I have studied, or experienced.
— Rob J Kennedy

That's an amazing thing to hear, and I say that as a professional philosopher. I can't believe that someone actually gets something that useful out of philosophy. — Arcane Sandwich

That surprised me too; but I'd guess you were learning all the time, even if you weren't being well educated, about people and life, so that you could recognise those principles as valuable.

↪unenlightened Do you recall the first time you encountered philosophy and what was it? — Rob J Kennedy

A hard question. When I was 12 ish, I was reading Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Hesse, and considering what I should do with my life. I put it in a juvenile poem as a choice between love and non-attachment. But I had no idea at the time that any of this had any relation to 'philosophy'; rather, it was an exploration forced on me by the awareness of the complete falseness and hypocrisy of the moral and social system of the all male boarding school I found myself condemned to.

So at least for me, I began to ask deep questions because of the inadequate answers that society was providing. But I didn't call that philosophical until I had been at university studying philosophy and psychology for a couple of years more or less by accident. :grin:

I often wonder, what makes a person interested in philosophy? What is it about them that draws them to read, study and discuss philosophy? — Rob J Kennedy

I generally like to think that it is philosophy that makes me interested in it, but there is no necessity that all philosophers have the same motivation. And there are grades of horseshit n'all. But if I had to speculate and generalise, I would invite philosophers to look for some circumstance that caused them to question their own identity; identity is the origin of world view, and it is when one cannot quite make sense of one's world view that one falls unwilling into philosophy. And because identity is entirely fabricated, there is no escape.

More for playing than for listening to; or you may dance.

Source: other people. Believe everything they say. — NOS4A2

You are an other person, and you are completely incredible.

Speaking of pants, and kicks... Source: The guy's parents, his uncle, his manifesto...

This doesn't belong here; It's political analysis. So start a new thread with it.

Try and ignore the bizarre subtitling.

I'll say some rather obvious things, that haven't been plainly said thus far.

War requires a broad consensus on both sides to the identity of the parties. Everyone, or at least most people involved, have to know which side they are on and who is the enemy. Without such agreement the best that can be managed is a free-for-all brawl.

In order for the separation of identities to occur, or another way of describing such a separation, the term 'polarisation' can be employed. The 'normal', ie 'stable' situation for any society is that folk's identities are not aligned, and as long as there is no great alignment conflict will tend to be internalised within the individuals, and social relations will be largely peaceful.

A classic case of polarisation leading to open conflict was the troubles in N. Ireland. The society became polarised such that religion, class, political party, political party, exact location of home, all became aligned, such that to know one vector was to be able to predict all the others with almost complete certainty. It is this alignment that allows the externalisation of the conflict and the absolute identification that leads to violence.

My source? You’re talking to him. I prefer my own conclusions to the conclusions of others, especially authorities. If I’m wrong I’m wrong, but if you’re wrong it’s because you’re credulous. — NOS4A2

You're my source too, but unlike you, I check my sources bit and confront them with contradictory sources. And when their response is to behave like big floppy dick and admit that they just spout whatever they like to imagine to be the case, I draw the appropriate conclusion.

And your impeccable, fair-minded, and honest sources are?

One cannot blame Trump because some of his followers are violently inclined and irrational; oh wait, actually one can and should, because that is exactly what his message advocates and encourages. It is not remotely surprising that the violence ends up turned against him, and it has already happened more than once. But yeah the FBI are making up these stories because deep state lizard pedophiles are trying to control our brains.

“The subject held no animosity towards the president-elect,” ..
... he had cast his vote for Trump in November's election.

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/tesla-cybertruck-driver-matthew-livelsberger-had-no-animosity-towards-trump-suffered-from-ptsd-fbi/articleshow/116933571.cms

Another broken anti-Trumper self-immolating upon his beliefs in an act of terrorism. — NOS4A2

Yeah, but no, but. Just edit out that "anti-".

Reasonable Insanity.

Latest progress and prognosis on AI and robotics. above my pay grade of course, but I like to keep my ignorance up to date.

Begin the exploration of identity with a process - of identification. A process of creating boundaries between self and not-self, and identifications of self and 'other-like-me'.

Obviously, there is a broadly informational fundamental reality in play here; a rock is what it is, but has no identity to itself true or false. I identify as a shit hot philosopher, and that can be true or false; either way it is a belief held by either a shit hot philosopher or a self-deluded being.

You may identify me as a shit hot philosopher, a self-deluded being, or a dangerous radical or whatever, and your analysis of my identity is obviously heavily dependent on your own self- identification, and the identification of you made and communicated to you by significant others.

Thus real and fake, true and false, public and private are all valid aspects of an identity formed through multiple interactions, and clearly there are strong aspects of 'reality' to even completely unrealistic self-identifications that people make of themselves and of others. I can think I'm a very stable genius and live in the world as if that is true, even if a more truthful assessment is that I am a narcissist fantasist living a fantasy life.

These ideals have only become more extreme with the advent of social media and the rise of influencers. — Benkei

Are you sure? My own memory is that gender stereotypes were much more rigid back in the fifties. My mother was forced to give up work (in a bank) on marriage as a 'natural' policy and custom. The hippie men growing their hair was seriously transgressive in the sixties.
Indeed gender stereotypes go back to Samson and Heracles, at least. It seems to me that these identities are being questioned and resisted by modernity rather than exaggerated.

Long and a bit vague. Just how like my paradigm shifts.

Found that quote: — Wayfarer

That is a case at best of two minds sharing the one thought. I have other read your man at all

How may the development of ideas about 'gods' or one God be understood in the history of religion and philosophy?. — Jack Cummins

To understand the development, one has to understand the intuitive rationality of animism, and the counterintuitive nature of the modern, dead world. One has to disabuse oneself of modernity.

Any sailor or fisherman can tell you that the sea is sometimes calm, and sometimes playful, and sometimes angry. Who could not take being struck by lightening personally? Who is not afraid that their local dormant volcano will one day wake up? Even the rocks grow hair; what kind of fool thinks they only are alive and the world is dead?

from this rational position, try and justify modernity.

Climate change causes inflation; inflation causes populations pain; pain produces populist governments. Populists deny problems or blame 'others'; globalised trade is threatened by both climate change and populism, and the reduction of trade leads to inflation.

This video could have been in the Grump thread, or one of the several other unrest threads, but I guess the connection between the political climate and the climate is a bit abstruse for the political mind to encompass.



I think we have reached psychosocial tipping point into a self-destructive politics, that will continue to worsen our prospects until the destruction of our infrastructure and governance becomes complete enough that local community is all that is left, and gardeners rule, ok.

Aliens As Soon As Theoretically Possible.

There is no evidence because the conspiracy covers everything up.
Therefore not believing the conspiracy is compliant with the conspiracy.
If the committee cannot get to any real evidence, it is either because the committee is being duped by the conspiracy, or because the committee is part of the cover up.
There can never be a resolution, because the absence of evidence is evidence of the conspiracy.

The intelligence industry is the natural home of the paranoid, just as philosophy is the home of the gullible. And yes there is an overlap. And just because I'm paranoid, that doesn't mean there's no conspiracy; on the contrary, the paranoid are always conspiring, so nothing to see here.

The question I have for the aliens, not knowing if they are benevolent or malevolent, is why they are cooperating with opposed and secretive governments to hide their presence from folks that would be willing to cooperate with anyone who wasn't the current government of whichever country? It makes them look weak; and surely they are not weak?

I remembered this song, reading this thread. The early days of LSD as recorded by the good old BBC. I am a baker too - the dough is in tins as i write, and I am waiting the hour to put it in the oven.




I'm cluttering up the thread with meaningless stuff, because everything is meaningless, and i am an idiot. Or as I would rather put it, making a performative affirmation.

"Hi there. Why do you imagine any of us gives a flying fuck whether you are kind or not?" He says, unkindly.

OK, you win, I'm an idiot. I'll just point out though that as long as you're judging it on whether or not it 'works', you're still only thinking about yourself and haven't tried it yet.

Suicide makes sense if there is no love, but only self. — unenlightened

Love isn't a reason it's just platitudinous nonsense, same with making meaning. I gave the case at the start why such reasons don't hold water. — Darkneos

Let me see if I can use other words that you can accept more. If one considers only oneself, and only from one's own point of view, then it is clear that satisfaction is only ever transitory, suffering and death are inevitable and the sooner life is over the better.

Therefore, if there is any reason to live, it is not to be found in oneself in any pleasure or satisfaction one might obtain from living.

Therefore, I posit (but offer no proof) a reason for living that is self-overcoming, or self- transcending. This is illustrated in the film Groundhog Day, in which suicide fails utterly to end life but results in a repeating life that goes nowhere. This repetition only ends when everything is put into the day to make it better for everyone.

As long as you think only of yourself, you will keep coming back to the same miserable thoughts again and again. I wish I could be more clear about this for you, but I cannot disprove the platitudinous nonsense of your "platitudinous nonsense". If you want to understand, you will begin to understand, but if you don't want to, then you will have make do with the thin satisfaction of winning the argument, and you will miss all the richness of life.

And here, a quick, small lesson in humility.

If it were just one, or just a few, perhaps you would be right, but it seems like the whole of humanity is bent on ending it all. I wonder if your attempt to shut down the discussion is because you have no answer but repression and oppression.

This is the first and last question that philosophy must answer - 'What's the point?' The answer is "love". If you wonder what love is, I can only tell you that it is what you lack, whenever you ask this question. Suicide makes sense if there is no love, but only self. We are not here to be satisfied, but to become satisfactory.

Poor you! :smile:

Those who have almost nothing are usually thankful for the little they have.
Those who have almost everything usually think they deserve better.

Here is a numbers guy for them as likes numbers. If you don't much like numbers, zip forward to right near the end where our man speaks personally about his priorities and in just a couple of sentences characterises the coming collapse of human society, which has already started, but is still ignorable.

So the lecture is not denying AGW.
— Agree-to-Disagree

Ok. — frank

So the question arises, however, 'Why is this warming period different and more concerning than all them other fluctuations?'

Good for you! Shame you missed the previous piece on the AMOC collapse.

Only in your dreams; Pigs might sooner fly! :rofl:

I am full of sadjoy reading this thread. The postmodern seems entirely appropriate to interiority, projected as superposition/subjectivity.

"I am nihilsum, you are nihilsum they are nihilsum as we are all together;
See how they fly like pigs in the sky See how they run."

To consciousness, whatever is projected as the world is negated as self. Nihilsum is the god of the godless, that always says "Thou shalt(not) ..." and always after the event, because before the event, how could one know? One is, like Winnie-the-Pooh, always being dragged up the hill of awareness by one leg, one's head going 'bump, bump, bump' up the stairs.

The best logic can do for us is to keep our talking and thinking in order. To imagine that this talking and thinking can thereby oblige or constrain the world in any way is to indulge in magic spells.

Sometimes folk can get confused between real and imaginary; an architect imagines a house, and draws plans and images of it. If he has followed the logic of his trade, then a builder can build according to his plans and the real building will not fall down. This is the only way the magic can work - when people think straight and do what they say.

I wish, I wish I wasn’t here
Forever stuck upon the stair
Unloved by neighbours in the hall
I wish i wasn’t here at all

They wake me up at two or three
With never an apology
They do not see me; I am small
And they are all so very tall
So they ignore me night and day,
Except to tell me ”Go away”.

And I have done what they all say,
I’ve gone away and am not there.
And yet they are not satisfied;
I think they wish that I had died.

I was once an observer in a room in which my friend having an intense and sustained conversation with an other who to my eyes and ears was not there. The Friend had taken datura and that becomes my 'objective' 'rational' understanding of a situation that otherwise has (at least) two conflicting subjective views of 'the same' room.

I found the experience disconcerting, my friend rather more so, but the guy who wasn't there for me but was there for my friend is the one I worry about. What was it like for him?

Creativity is the action of the unknown. It is that for which the recipe does not yet exist; it is the unprecedented; that about which nothing can be said, except in retrospect. It is the uniqueness of every moment.