Love is a traceable notion that supersedes time because it is nature. Love isn't an emotion, it's a biological commitment to mating for life. It might raise emotions within us, but it's based on something primal.

There is no such world as "virtually global". No one causes alienation and hate in a local population. Nationalism is not evil, neither has it come to power. Young people would build nonsense based on stupidity and a lack of experience, and globalism is just plain wrong. You can't "make" something the same as it is. No one is simply "a man from the planet earth" except fringe political fanatics who want everything solely on the grounds that they're intrinsically entitled to it, like Socrates.

Internet is not intrinsically dangerous. Actions of people who seek to harm other people are dangerous. Brainwashing requires willing participants, whatever is happening under harsh political authority, threat of physical violence or incarceration is not brainwashing.

Capitalists aren't usurping with the exception of money lenders, and even then there's a choice to go into debt or not, and there's a choice to purchase a product or not. Every time anything has gone seriously wrong in the modern world, it's been either communists, socialists or liberals at the forefront.

The internet has always been under military control and observation. You're out of your mind of you think that the CIA is incapable of removing owners of major corporations or dismantling them by other means without even receiving any brunt of the blame within 20-40 years.

The entire premise of education from the dawn of it until today has been a conspiracy, literally. The first educators promised to cure the social and political problems of the world by eradicating the poor and the commoner from any field requiring "higher knowledge". The purpose of education is to isolate the idiot masses and give them a sense of such vulnerability that they would comply with anything. We live under 3,000 year old tyranny, but it's not the tyranny fringe activists are pushing, they're actually the tyrants.

People with compassionate natures manipulate others continually. All consciousness leads toward manipulation. Again, globalism is not a good thing. Any tendency toward it is motivated by evil so far. Hitler was a globalist, let that sink in. America is not advancing in globalism, America is advancing in isolation from an undeveloped and politically contrary world.

No one abandons the identity of others for the sake of loving kindness.

Okay, now for once you're right. The world is changing. The world has been changing for 14 billion years. It's still changing, and this is no surprise.

There has only been one industrial revolution. The gap between rich and poor is skewed by matching the richest nations against those most impoverished. It is also skewed within nations by ignoring that the poor live in relatively wonderful conditions by comparison to years ago. It doesn't matter how many years ago, it's better now than it ever was in developed nations. I see homeless people with cell phones and people are living in abject poverty with a decent home and TV's and computers at their disposal. They don't have Lamborghinis, maybe that's the issue.

You're obviously not qualified to talk about Russia. It's far more complicated than you imagine. Russia is militarily weak and vulnerable. The only strength Russia has at present is an ability to influence stupid people into thinking that mass immigration and socialism are good. Russia has always excelled at cultural subversion and propaganda. They are presently inflicting this on the US. It is the source of much of the bullshit.

Poland has been waiting decades to talk back to Russia because Russia captured half of Poland while aligned with the Nazis during WW2.

Suddenly you sound as though you've sided with the Russia and Germany of the late 30's and early 40's. Interesting.

The reason Trump negotiates one on one is because doing anything else is a pussy move. Nations need to respect the US most crucially at present, when other allied nations are being pussies.

You've jumped in the deep end and forgotten anything you've ever known about swimming. And there it ends...

It's the dictionary definition. It's not vague, it's rather precise.

Because the idea that consciousness is exclusive to humans gratifies yearning and fear, in relation to the unknown, creating an illusion of intrinsic meaning and leading even to an unwarranted feeling of euphoria. It gratifies our egoism and supports our ancient concept of creationism, of which even the most steadfast skeptic doesn't want to let go.

I believe that if a machine is able to convince us that it's conscious, it's approximately the same as a human convincing us of their consciousness.

It also seems that we are comprised of so much inanimate material, and so many microorganisms, that we should query more thoroughly into their involvement in our "consciousness", or at least into the supportive biological system(s) we claim consciousness inhabits.

I was considering starting a new thread about free will and consciousness today, but not many respond to my threads, so here we are.

I've been wondering how we determine which species have consciousness and which species don't and how we feel we've securely established such egoistic claims concerning our importance in the grand scheme of things. How does my dog not have free will, or fish, or bacteria? Why have we drawn a line in the sand between ourselves and literally everything else we can observe and said to ourselves "we're the only thing of any intrinsic consequence"? It's a bit stupid, to say the least.

So why would you then say, given the dictionary definition in addition to the description you've provided, that the word "contradiction" shouldn't be used to represent "opposing factors" such as behaviours within a species? Why would you limit it to representing "opposing factors" such as concepts within a paragraph?

One contradiction is that, from the simplest to the most complex organism, all species are living and dying in simultaneous conflict against both life and death.

"Contradiction" has a few definitions, two of them being "opposing factor" and "logical incongruity". Yes, conflict represents contradiction--how can members of the same species kill each other with intent without representing a contradiction?

Uri Geller has been debunked on several occasions. No one can bend things with their mind, and there were no "strict lab conditions" except those of excluding skeptics and marketing the man as a "real psychic" using cheap parlour tricks to try to maintain his reputation under harsh scrutiny--let's return to the "real" world, shall we?

You want me to briefly summarize all organic life from the beginning of time? Life began as a contradiction, began at war with itself. There are two things that drive organic life--reproduction, which is a conflict against death, and conquest, which is a conflict against life.

I saw a photograph yesterday of a bunch of people looking at the sky, I guess I should convert to whatever religion they adhered to. There are 6.5 billion people who claim to adhere to the 5 most populous world religions, I guess I should join all 5 of them just to be on the safe side, except that I can't because they all vehemently disagree with each other on some fundamental details.

That people would attest to something as a collective doesn't make it objectively true. There are thousands of anecdotes of people witnessing "miracles" or converting based on "otherworldly" experiences. There are also anecdotes of brain tumours turning people into serial killers. Billions of people have believed in "luck" and mythological creatures, ghosts and faery tales, and thousands of widely varied names, faces and personalities have been ascribed to gods or a god--accepted en masse as incontrovertible Truths. People have been documented as having witnessed mass hallucinations, having lapsed into mass hysteria. It has been documented that sound waves can cause audio and visual hallucinations, as can exposure to certain substances. Confirmation bias is powerfully influential and can operate in many minds at once. It's easy to convince people of things they desperately want to believe. Are you trying to provide evidence that humans are psychologically vulnerable?

Several people have offered generous monetary rewards for evidence of the supernatural that can be documented in real time, yet no one has come to claim them. There have been hundreds of experiments involving alleged psychics and alleged paranormal phenomena that have all come up completely empty.

All major world religions are premised on personal experience and faith that such experiences can be attributed to a god or gods. This would indicate, based on your argument, that personal experience and faith are superior to objective evidence because more than 3/4 of the human religious experience exists in opposition of evidence. In a few major religions, it is clearly stated that a quest for evidence runs contrary to faith and is therefore sinful or counterintuitive. Yet somehow, when a mysterious event occurs, some people are eager to call it Proof.

You just told me that correlation doesn't equal causation, and now you're saying the opposite. I believe what you're attempting is the "I'm rubber, you're glue" argument.

That you're convinced of it doesn't make it evidence. Juries don't buy mysticism and they don't buy "I'm innocent" as a defense. Why are you talking about "magic" or that my brain is telling your brain something "magically"? You've lost me again, I didn't say anything about magic. You haven't presented reliable evidence drawn from a legitimate experiment.

You've presented the hocus pocus findings of religious fanatics.

I don't believe you're listening to the words I'm saying, or that you have any interest in discourse, or that you understand these incessant copy/paste excerpts. You're making reference over and over to a biased and discredited experiment by people who profess on faith that transcendental meditation is a gateway to pure knowledge.

Atheism isn't a denial that others believe in gods. It's an absence of the belief that gods exist--there's no other parameter.

I don't believe either claim is based on reality. I believe one is based on egoism and assertion of dominance and the other is based on compassion and denial of intrinsic authority, neither of which is real--all claims are compulsions and serve the utility of the claimant. I tend toward claims that are based on rationality or reliable demonstration because feelings and confirmation biases seem to me to be unreliable. People need to at least convincingly attempt objectivity.



Both. You can believe in a god from one religion while having no belief in a god from another. You can also have no belief in any god or a belief in all gods.

Regardless whether it's correlation or causation, it points to the result I'm referring to, that humans have no free will, no control over brain function. But to call something "correlation" whereby a specific reaction predictably occurs every time a specific action occurs is preposterous. There's no variation to consider. At a certain point it becomes scientifically demonstrable.

What you're basically saying is that one day I could walk into my kitchen, being of sound mind, and see Death Valley where once there was a hardwood floor and some appliances.

The only way to "put forth atheism" is to state that I don't believe in gods. There is nothing else attached to it.

And there's no need to copy paste a bunch of material you don't understand.

This reminds me of Sam Harris claiming, as a scientist, that transcendental meditation can reveal reliably things about the inner workings of the brain or of consciousness. You can't just label something any way you want based on doctored results or gut feelings and then expect to receive decent peer reviews. And if you do receive decent peer reviews based on such methods, it's likely that there's corruption involved.

Those experiments are demonstrably unreliable, and those who've conducted them under scrutiny from the scientific community. In addition to this, neuroscientists have demonstrated more reliably that brain function happens in an absence of will prior to thoughts occurring in the brain, which furthermore happens prior to thoughts occurring in what some would propose is a non-material consciousness. It has also been demonstrated that thoughts, including sensory perception and emotion and other such "events of consciousness", can be affected by physical interference in the brain. Even if something we call "psychic" was happening with such measurable consistency, it would be firstly beyond a person's control and secondly explicable in scientific terms. It would not be supernatural--it would be natural. So, I'm not sure why you feel it's relevant to establish that something is reported to have happened with regularity under conditions which don't meet scientific standards.

If you've read all of his work, then there's certainly no reason to subject yourself to it again.

Still drawing a blank here. What does my wanting anything to be or not be have to do with anything? Wanting to see a truck won't make one appear, and wanting not to see a truck won't make one disappear, so how would this be any different with a ghost, leprechaun or omnipresent deity except for the fact that they can't be detected by the senses?

You'll have to clarify your meaning because I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about or how it relates to anything I've said.

I'm not saying it affects the validity of his claims or conceals the annoyance of his contradictions. All I'm saying is that, much like the Bible, it's at least an interesting read. And the problem with putting something down due to contradiction is that 100% of existence is saturated with contradiction. In his case especially, he's trying to convey something that runs contrary to everything we know and feel, and for this reason many people scoff or express contempt even at the sound of his name without ever having read a word. Also, despite the tone of his work and the contradiction, it is very eloquently written for the most part.

People read Shakespeare and the Bible, ancient mythology in general and overtly false documentation of history, it seems strange to avoid something just on principle or a hunch. I'm not saying this is necessarily the case with you, but it seems to be common practice.

To clarify what I mean by false history, for one example Caligula, who's documented as a horrible wretch of a human being and historians take this at face value while fully aware that every written record about the emperor was composed by powerful men who had seething hatred and contempt for him. Or Jesus, another example, whose life was documented by religious fanatics who were willing to die, and perhaps to kill--as was documented concerning the Garden of Gethsemane--on behalf of the mention of his name.

Anyway, let me stop trying to convince anyone to read things.

What makes it a "rabbit hole", please explain that term for me. I have read and understand Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, but I don't see how it directly applies here. Nietzsche is one of the most influential voices in human history.

Why are you talking about a ball of rock as if it has a soul? And how is it "stupid" that a parasitic species would move on after destroying its host? It requires a host. If its present host is about to die, wouldn't it be "smart" to find a new one?

By the definition of existence, a concept doesn't "exist" because it has no "life or real being". Now I'm annoyed because while looking up the dictionary definition for "exist" I noticed they've included "spiritual existence" to appease religious folks. The definition is wrong. In order for something to "exist", it must have a presence that is detectable via the senses and discernible via mental processes, a reason for being called "existent", and this must be verifiable via objective demonstration. The only way to detect a concept is to touch, hear or see symbols or structures of some kind which represent it. Even symbols don't exist, they're just abstract arrangements forced into meaning for humans by prior humans' imaginations. I'm not talking past anyone.

Did you just use the grade school rubber glue counter on me? That's genius.

It does if you read the definition and evaluate it in context, in the way it's used by a vast majority of people to mean a specific thing.

I didn't assume that evolutionary biology "amounts to a total account of human nature".

That we're self-aware and use language makes us a bit easier to understand.

I believe several things for which the scientific community would chastise me. I'm not sure what you intend when you say "biological reductionism", but by the sound of it, it's likely the only way we're going to be able to understand ourselves.

I think you missed the part where your body belongs more to bacteria than to human cells.

See if you can attempt intellect without falling blindly into sarcasm and insinuation. See if you can string a sentence together without deprecating yourself.

You can experience genetics by observing their behaviour, and then you can have your findings peer reviewed by a number of critical experts who attempt to vilify your results in some way.

So what you're saying, in summary, is that you're a troll.

Are you attempting to introduce some vague problem you read about somewhere and likely don't understand--in an attempt to throw down my position--in a conversation on a completely unrelated topic? Please feel free to explain your unrelated topic in relation to things you don't understand and to people who didn't mention it because it has no bearing.

I don't need to read your conversation for context or insight into a separate conversation, but thanks for patting yourself on the back in front of me, for what accomplishment I'm not sure, I greatly appreciate it.

That someone isn't me because I've looked into the scientific, philosophical and social uses of the term in present day humanity. Imagine what I found.

Please share your brilliant thoughts on how genetics have no place in determining who we become.

You have so many empty words. What does that even mean, that you know you're wrong and you want to bring everyone down with you? I'm not sure what you're really saying. It seems like a contradiction.

Yet in excess they're detrimental, so they can't be inherently moral.

We are not born a blank slate though, obviously. We have billions of years of genetic coding inside us. Your grammar is terrible. If you believe that I deem science as the be all and end all, then you clearly misunderstood my statement that with science "some understanding" might be possible. You're taking words and rearranging them, I suppose.

You're seeing in words what you want to see and pressing square pegs through round holes with a sledgehammer.

Try thinking objectively. You're throwing the whole conversation out of context to fit your desire to be correct about something you doubt.

You are humiliating yourself.

Demonstrate to me where anyone has shown reliable empirical data in the form of a subjective assertion based solely on their senses with no peer review.

So where from that definition have you derived individual experience? Observation and experiment. "A former school". The natural sciences. Knowledge originates in experience, where does it say personal experience without external influence, individual perception, perspective?

I already quoted it, you might be blind, and for that I don't envy you.

I just said there is a dictionary definition. This is not about my definition, it is about objectively defining a word, and one of the few places to do so is the Merriam Webster because some dictionaries seem to have reestablished the meanings of words in alignment with their political principles.