Laying brain size aside, there are other factors which are likely to determine our estimation of how smart somebody is without any other indication of intelligence:

1. Diligence and success in schooling AND
2. The quality of the school experience
3. The ability to sustain a focus on a problem (a personality trait)
4. Rearing in a family of successful people (where successful behaviors are modeled and rewarded)
5. Stable personality (sturm and drang do not help us think clearly)
6, Possession of the accouterments that indicate success (which has nothing to do with intelligence, but a lot to do with our estimation of accomplishment)

In other words, a shiny, brightly colored apple that is only fairly good will outshine a truly delicious apple that has a dull color. rough skin, and an odd shape.

If there is a correlation on average between head size and IQ, and if there is an, on average, difference between the head size of men and women such that women's heads are, on average, smaller even taking into account relative body sizes, then the necessary conclusion would be that men, on average, have higher IQ's than women. It should be easy enough to find if all these three factors obtain, if you are interested enough; which I am not. — John

Stanford Neuroscience Graduate Student 'Kendra' says:

• Whales and elephants have much bigger brains than humans
• We have about the same brain-to-body mass ratio as mice.
• Since it would be against human nature to admit defeat... scientists have crafted a third measure of brain size called the encephalization quotient, which is the ratio of actual brain mass relative to the predicted brain mass for an animal’s size (based off the assumption that larger animals require slightly less brain matter relative to their size compared to very small animals). By this metric, at least, humans come out on top, with an EQ of 7.5 far surpassing the dolphin’s 5.3 and the mouse’s measly 0.5.
• There is some correlation between brain-size and intelligence--.3 to .4.
• Using microscopic study of the brain, we find neural complexity is what truly determines a brain’s computational capacity. This view is supported by findings that intelligence is more correlated with frontal lobe volume and volume of gray matter

I believe it goes beyond the field of thinking, because of the limits of thinking. Thinking is a movement that takes place in time. And what probably is Sacred, is beyond time and thought. — Benjamin Dovano

Your formulation "beyond the field of thinking, because of the limits of thinking ... takes place in time ... is beyond time and thought" leaves you (and us) nowhere.

The sacred doesn't have to be unknowable, even can not be unknowable if we are to experience it, let alone carry on a discourse about it. When the Lakota say the Black Hills are a sacred landscape, they have a definite idea why: To the Lakota, they are Paha Sapa, “the heart of everything that is.” The Black Hills are the high point of the surrounding plains. For any people living in close relationship to the landscape (where landscape and people are one) sacralizing the landscape is first nature. As civilization progressed (thousands of years ago, already) agriculture -- using the land rather than living with the land or in the land undermined the land-people relationship. There are vestiges of this in the Old Testament where the indigenous Baal worshipers sacralized high places--hill tops, mountain tops, and built worship centers there. The Baalists also carried out fertility rituals in the form of temple prostitution. The God of the Israelites instructed the Jews to do away with all such relationships to high places and fertility. The Israelites we promised land, and oddly enough, the land was desacralized from the perspective of the people who already lived there (the Philistines).

The general thrust of many civilizations has been to desacralize the land.

Consider Bear Lodge or Bear's Tipi. To me, it is natural that Bear's Tipi would be a sacred site. Visually, it connects earth and sky n a very dramatic and singular way. There are not a dozen other features like it in the landscape. It stands alone. It looks "made" in a way that a plain or a hill doesn't look made. (Technically, it's a hard volcanic plug from which the surrounding softer land forms were eroded away.) I think a structure like this would be deemed sacred just about anywhere on earth among pre-modern, unsecularized people.

Bear's Tipi, aka Devil's Tower

It is very unclear for me too right now, because I am experiencing some very strange emotions after some deeper research into meditation and thinking. I have not felt this emptiness in my entire life, and I am no stranger to psychological pain. — Benjamin Dovano

You're probably depressed and should be on antidepressants. [JOKE ALERT]

Feelings of emptiness and psychological pain go with the territory of being a human. People who always feel full and totally happy have something seriously wrong with them. .

I believe we are taking the " sacred " word to much into our materialistic world. For me personally Life itself seems sacred, however we are trashing it in the worst ways possible nowadays in our so called "society"- I can barely use this term because for me it has a majestic sound, a music, SOCIETY, it's something that in a different dimension actually means something and society lives morally. It sounds like something we should be proud of.. not like today. — Benjamin Dovano

We didn't ask to have the world secularized, but we've been on a secularization track for quite a few years, at least since the Enlightenment. The Industrial Revolution, science, capitalism, et al have been desacralizing the world very energetically. This pervasive cultural process has created an enduring crisis for everything that is or was considered sacred.

Billions of people feel the effects of secularization and the loss of the sacred. Of course, it isn't all bad; some of the lost sacred stuff was oppressive. But with the loss of the sacred comes a devaluation of life, culture, society, the individual, religion, the arts, and so on. Everything has been, is being, or will be commodified (see Marx).

Secularization is not going to shift into reverse any time soon, short of world-wide cultural and economic collapse--something nobody should hope for. But there is nothing preventing people from building humane values within a secular society or actively seeking and constructing new expressions of sacredness or goodness.

I don't care what you think about my own opinion, but I care what you think of the subject itself... I want to see other perspectives. If you don't understand it there is no need to answer in the first place. Confused, we are / clarity we need... So please don't make it personal calling me troublemaker and so on. — Benjamin Dovano

Oops, a failure to communicate on my part. Calling you a "troublemaker" was meant as a salute, not a criticism. I took your post quite seriously. And eventually I got around to addressing the question. I had to go through some preliminaries first, the way a dog has to spin around a few times before it can lie down.

Is there anything sacred in this life? — Benjamin Dovano

In a secular -- desacralized -- world, nothing is sacred. Not Mecca, not Jerusalem, not Eleusis, not the Black Hills in South Dakota, not the Bible or Quran, not the Mona Lisa, not the earth itself. Nothing.

Take Eleusis, site of the Eleusinian Mysteries and the birthplace of Aeschylus. It is also the site of the largest oil refinery in Greece. The sacred bit is an excavated ruins; not much to look at. It was sacred, once. Once sacred, always sacred?

What about the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier? Sacred? Hallowed ground, the ultimate sacrifice, all that? John F. Kennedy's grave with the "eternal" gas-fed flame? How long is that eternal flame going to burn? The World Trade Center was hard to ignore, and a lot of people did not think it was an especially attractive building. Thanks to it's spectacular demise, and the deaths of several thousand people -- especially firefighters and policemen, the ruins became sacralized.

Sacredness doesn't last. It's transitory. Sacredness is always a product of our mere minds [see Richard Feynman: "nothing is 'mere'"] and only through multi-generational efforts is the sacred maintained. Interrupt the maintenance for a few generations, and it is gone.

Out in South Dakota the Lakota people are resisting an oil pipeline being laid to serve refineries in Chicago. They say it's sacred land. Is it really? I wouldn't want a big fat pipeline carrying noxious liquid hydrocarbons running under my yard (and nobody else does either). I'd be happy to claim that my patch of ground was sacred, if that served as an adequate obstruction. (There is a thin little pipeline carrying gaseous hydrocarbons under my yard, but I like natural gas. It fuels the sacred eternal flames in my furnace, hot water heater, and kitchen stove.) Whether their claim of sacred ground works or not remains to be seen. My guess is that the sacred rite of Eminent Domain will trump tribal religion.

Maybe a better question than "Is nothing sacred?" would be "How much sacred are we willing to tolerate?" There are some forests, river valleys, rocky outcroppings, and such that I am very fond of that I would like to see protected from oil wells, pipelines, refineries, mines, clear cutting, damming, urban subdividing, freeway construction, et al. There have been some blocks in downtown Minneapolis that attained mixed use perfection, that I deeply regret being leveled for highly uninspired monolithic buildings. Are these places sacred? No -- but that doesn't mean they are not desired greatly, loved, or sources of pleasure, contentment, and satisfaction.

Is there anything sacred in this life? Of course we would have to define what sacred means for everyone first.
We created books, icons, statues, symbols, cathedrals, and other images that we worship and consider sacred which are only products of our own thinking and prejudices. Those things are not sacred but a mere manifestation of our limited mind. So what is sacred? — Benjamin Dovano

You are a troublemaker. Your question stirs up a lot of old debris and clouds of dust, but to what end?

We can dispense with your objection about mere manifestations of limited minds, since there are no other, unlimited, minds. We can also dispense with plea for a definition, since the word has a specific definition:

• connected with God (or the gods) or dedicated to a religious purpose and so deserving veneration: sacred rites | the site at Eleusis is sacred to Demeter.

You also dismiss books, icons, statues, symbols, cathedrals, and other images which are only products of our own thinking and prejudices, so we can dispense with that too.

There's nothing left but the question.

So what do you see as the motivations behind holding political views? — darthbarracuda

The first place to start is what comes to most people's minds first: What are my interests, what are the interests of my family, my closest friends? In a wider circle, there is my neighborhood, my community. Farther out there is the state or province, region, or nation in which everything that is important to us is situated. Then there are many other nations, and their interests. But what really concerns us is our immediate needs and wants (and those around us).

I'd start with pragmatism: What is going to work for us (me, my family and my friends) as we seek what we must have (food, shelter, clean water, fuel (in winter), etc) and what we very much desire to have (freedoms to live our lives in a way that is compatible with our community). I want the freedom to read what I want, see the kind of films that I like, hear the kind of music I prefer, talk about politics along the lines that make sense to me, and so on. I don't have to agree with everyone in the community, or they with me, but everyone's best bet is to live without interfering with each other too much.

I do not have a history of being political. — darthbarracuda

Then what you have needed and wanted must have been more or less yours for the taking. We can avoid "being political" when what we need and want IS available and entirely consistent with the community. You have a job with which you support yourself; housing, food, clothing, essential services, access to at least urgent medical care if needed, adequate transportation, and so on. These things exist because you are the beneficiary of earlier political efforts.

We generally "get political" because we have needs that are not being met. Lots of people who had no "political history" got political because they lacked basic civil rights, could not support themselves even though they were working, were considered sick and criminal on account of their homosexuality, could not get decent prices for their crops, had no access to public transit, were being forced out of their homes because property taxes were extremely high, couldn't find apartments, and so on and so forth.

My first "real" self-interest political activity was in the gay community. In 1971, being gay left one vulnerable to anti-gay discrimination: trouble renting an apartment, job seeking, arrest while seeking sexual partners [but not having sex] in public places, and so on. Vietnam had been a political cause, but it wasn't "personal" -- I was at no risk of being drafted (poor vision). It just seemed wrong.

In the early 1980s my political interest shifted to socialism, and it remains a personal political interest, because I don't like the way our economy works, especially on the micro level of jobs, wages, unemployment, really tedious work, and so on. Everybody says socialism is a waste-of-time dream, and not a very good dream at that, but they also have nothing better to suggest as they themselves struggle with life under capitalism.

You have Schopenhauer's argument that want and desire create suffering as this leads to strife in the challenges of life, strife in existential boredom, and strife in relationships to other people and our surroundings. However, people will simply deny they experience this. Whether they lie (to themselves or others) to make a point or not, they can at least publicly denounce that they feel any of this strife. — schopenhauer1

I have experienced a lot of sturm and drang in my life, lots of strife and conflict. I admit it. My main regret is that I was not more successful in directing sturm, drang, strife, and conflict to the self-satisfied sons of bitches with whom it belonged. Unfortunately, a lot of it ended up on my head, a la boomerang.

You have someone like a Hartmann, who predicts that we will eventually run out of optimistic ideas in science, progress, religion, society, etc. and then realize a sort of ennui of life and die out. But this is far in the future, in completely depresses most people to even think that this will happen. — schopenhauer1

The world will end with either a bang or a whimper. I guess ennui is the whimper. Plausible. I'm not sure of running out of optimism, but I think we will (at some point in the future) find ourselves at an impasse where our problems are met with no new, and successful scientific and social solutions. There is no guarantee that a fix for every problem will always be found.

So there you have it- the pessimists will just be called wimps and be recommended 1) positive psychological thinking (make meaning out of meaninglessness) 2) anti-depressants 3) keep it to yourself and just deal with it 4) suicide. — schopenhauer1

It is true that "depression" is over diagnosed by doctors and is the easiest description to apply to people who don't seem to be "perky" or "resilient" enough. "Well, he or she is depressed." "He got fired and had a bout of depression." "She had a baby and is depressed." "The canary died and now the cat is depressed." "Their mother died and the family is depressed." "The dog hasn't been on a walk for a week and is depressed." "He's broke and sick and is depressed." That people might be experiencing anger, grief, fear, dread, boredom, worries, physical sickness and pain, and so forth is most easily covered by rounding it all down to "depression". If one complains too much one is a whiner, a trouble maker, or is having a pity party. Suck it up. Etc.

But these aren't pessimists. Optimists and pessimists alike have experiences which leave them in extreme states of emotional upheaval, which they are expected (by themselves and/or others) to keep a lid on. We don't like it when people emote too much because it destabilizes the shaky social structure. If the shaky social structure should fall apart, then WE would have to deal with unpleasant realities, and wouldn't that be awful. People are afraid of change.

So, let me close with an annoyingly optimistic quip: Therapy means change, not adjustment.

If

Pessimism in Philosophy means a belief that this world is as bad as it could be or that evil will ultimately prevail over good.

and

Optimism in Philosophy means the doctrine, especially as set forth by Leibniz, that this world is the best of all possible worlds and the belief that good must ultimately prevail over evil in the universe.[

Then I find I have to place myself just to the left of center, and give a slight edge to pessimism, as defined here.

I don't think the Philosophical maps onto the Psychological too well because the philosophical definition is more severe than what I would call psychological optimism and pessimism. Those are more changeable, mixed, and moderate, and they are significantly affected by events in people's lives.

Optimism is default Darwinism. Those who have dispositions, willpower, social, physical, and mental preferences for what already exists, and likes the system survive and thrive. Those that don't die off, possibly complain a little, commit suicide and are drowned out. — schopenhauer1

It may be a big mistake on my part, but I would think that two philosophers evaluating the philosophical differences between the terms, pessimism and optimism, would have a moderately interesting, not terribly charged discussion. I would think it would be like discussing free will and determinism. It shouldn't involved fatalities. But then, perhaps philosophers aren't all that philosophical when doing philosophy.

When we talk about "dispositions, willpower, social, physical, and mental preferences" we are talking about psychological optimism and pessimism. Our preferences are spread out, depending on the topic, and how we operate our "dispositions, willpowers, social, physical, and mental preferences" is diced up and jumbled. Personal history, relationships, hormones, neurotransmitters, et al have variable influence. The optimist in X setting today might be the pessimist in Y setting tomorrow, and might change his mind about the whole thing after a good meal, a few drinks, and some sex.

Who "survives and thrives or dies off; who complains a lot or a little; who commits suicide or murder; and who is heard or drowned out etc."--- may not be philosophical at all. In many cases, it's group dynamics. Groups often draw together and squeeze out the dissenters. Or the group forces out those who aren't considered socially distinguished enough. Or the drinkers drive out the abstainers, the straights drive out the gays, and the vegetarians drive out the carnivores. Optimism and pessimism do not apply, just as they do not apply to willpower, physical capacity, or mental endowment.

Like I said, I'd give an edge to evil prevailing over good, and I don't think this is the best of all possible worlds. (It's just the world we have.) The world works the way it does (for better and for worse) by many unrelated mechanisms, Optimism and Pessimism notwithstanding.

I think, to sum up the difference between a pessimist and a non-pessimist would be the answer to the question of: Is it better to have lived/loved/etc and lost than to have never lived/loved/etc at all? The answer for me (as a pessimist), is, no, nobody wants to lose. — darthbarracuda

How deep is the dichotomy here? Not too deep.

The pessimist's view of the world is not more accurate than the optimist's. Take global warming: The pessimist and optimist both see the 400 ppm CO2 level which we are now in, the advance towards 2.0º+ centigrade temperature rise, hotter weather, more rain, more floods, more unpredictability, etc. The difference is in the way they respond. The optimist will assume that solutions will be found, or beneficial adaptations will occur; but some inconvenient truths will be overlooked by the optimist. The pessimist will assume that species will die before they adapt, and that solutions will not be fielded soon enough. The pessimist also overlooks a few inconvenient truths (just not the same ones).

If they live next to each other on the coast, they will both elevate their houses -- because they both have been flooded. The pessimist will raise his house maybe a foot higher than the optimist. The optimist is going to assume that the next big storm won't happen for maybe 10 years -- by then he'll probably be living in Idaho. The pessimist expects another big storm next year. Neither of them knows with certainty what will happen in the next 10 years. There may not be another big storm in 15 years, the next storm may kill them both, or something in between.

Clearly, it is better to have loved and won. That it is better to have loved and lost than not to have loved at all is the unhappy losing lover's compensation. Most of us both win and lose at love and much else. I'd say it is better to have had very interesting experiences that didn't always work out than not to have had interesting experiences at all.

Better to have had "interesting experiences" is not going to fly when one is 13 and has just been totally humiliated in front of one's friends and enemies. One might, at that point, think it better to kill one's self to prevent a repeat of such experiences. Fortunately, pain fades and we live to be humiliated again.

Presiding over our experiences--positive, negative, and neutral--is our Interior Narrator (IN) who provides the running commentary on what happens. Basic tendencies guide the IN. Are we risk-takers or risk aversive? Are we very responsible or are we kind of irresponsible? Are we prone to see the worst in outcomes, or the best? I don't think we choose these basic tendencies--they are given. In their extreme form, they can be crippling or fatal. For instance, very responsible, risk aversive, best outcome-types won't try an unfamiliar food. On the other hand, risk-tolerant, best-outcome, nobody to whom they are responsible (other than NASA) types are the type you want to send to Mars.

and others...

So, what do you expect to happen in your life (job, housing, cost of living, etc.) as a result of Brexit, assuming that the exit is negotiated with a middle-of-the-road outcome (neither the worst possible or best possible)?

Also, do you perceive the EU as a meddlesome presence in your own sphere?

I sometimes wonder how the EU manages to accomplish anything, (despite seeing obvious positive functioning) when a few Walloons can hold up the treaty between the EU and Canada.

Is it illegal — tom

Republicans in Congress tried very hard to nail Clinton for something illegal, and haven't been successful. Perhaps the lady is inconveniently innocent.

So you're saying that in politics people will not use all weapons they have against each other, including propaganda and unfair ones? — Agustino

Propaganda, I expect, but it shouldn't be presented as "fact". "Unfair" is a bit vague. What is fair and foul? What Nixon & company did was not merely "unfair", it was illegal. What was worse, is that he persisted in his illegality by attempting to cover up the crime.

You can't do business if people aren't honest. The economy, and most other institutions, are able to "do business" because most people are honest most of the time.

Politicians who are not honest undermine politics -- expressing the will of the people. One of the consequences of repeatedly failing to express the people's will is low-voter turnout. Why vote if the politicians are not being honest about what they are going to do once in office?

I don't think most politicians do "use all the weapons they have against each other" but it is very common for politicians to either not reveal their real plans for their term(s) in office, or to flatly misrepresent their plans. That is a bigger problem in some ways than dirty tricks, bugging your opponents phone, or stealing their mailing lists. Indeed, not revealing the truth about what is planned is pretty much de rigueur.

Yes, that's right. The party-political system is rigged, and the rigging covers both parties pretty much head to toe.

Not that it was an easy decision or one that I don't regret sometimes considering the outcome. — Paul

Don't regret too much. Old apple trees are best replaced by fresh stock, even if the varieties are excellent. TPF is a refreshed cutting of PF; the varieties are the same; you are freed of the burden. Pursue your reinvention, and good luck.

Someday TPF will be ready for a succession as well.

Change is the only constant.

You forget one thing: in politics anything goes. If I can make my opponent even worse than he/she actually is, why not do it? — Agustino

Ask the Committee to Reelect the President (CREEP) and Watergate-disgraced president Richard M. Nixon how well that approach worked.

a secularization movement against dogma and religious power as opposed to a legitimate philosophical movement. — darthbarracuda

Secularization has been sweeping the world like a seismic wave for... a century, more or less. I'm not sure it had an agenda of any sort. It isn't against dogma or religious power: those things are too immaterial for secularism to care about. It's like an earthquake. The earthquake isn't against brick buildings or water mains; the built world is just irrelevant to the earthquake.

The thinking religious community has been trying to come up with responses to secularism -- occasionally with success, often without. Religious language falls flat for a lot of people with whom religious people would like to engage. I don't know whether a new language that does connect can be invented.

What seems to work best, when it works at all, is offering to people experience--either benevolent services or the experience of a welcoming community that openly displays its range of faith. (Belief, like everything else, is distributed on a continuum.)

Religion is philosophy, theology, eschatology, soterieology, a social group, revelation, ritual, talk, devotion, music, imagination, dogma, and more.

What seems to make religion 'work' is experience. Experience of the ritual, the reading, the preaching, the sacraments, the singing, the prayers, and last but not least, the social group. Within the weekly reading and preaching (and in the hymns) are found instruction in faith,

Different religions (Buddhism vs. Christianity) utilize the elements of religion in different proportions, and the theology is often quite different. But there is still experience of whatever the religion offers.

Ordinary people with the richest, deepest religious experience work at it. They don't just pray in church. They don't think about their religion only for 1 hour, once a week. The reach out for more (through practice -- experience). They don't settle for the 3 year cycle of readings in the standard lectionary. They strive to experience more of [whatever chief treasures their religion offers]. They pray, they read, they engage in service labor, they give generously, and so on.

Of course, people being people, most of us coast through life. It isn't that we do nothing -- quite often we are very very busy -- but we are generally not assiduously pursuing any grand schemes. (I suppose successful professional middle class people are, but that's not in my experience.)

If accused, most believers could not be convicted of being religious. Some believers are almost not believers at all, and a lot of people are vaguely "spiritual" -- and nobody knows quite what that means.

Yes, it does relate to all that. Of course, if it only related to the paranoia of lunatic generals, it would still be a good movie, but not as socially relevant and resonant. Take for instance, fluoridation of water. There are still some people who think it's some sort of plot, but when the movie was made anti-fluoridation people were far more numerous and far more active (fluoridation being one of those ways in which our precious bodily fluids are "depurified"). I suspect that the original anti-fluoridation people are still around, but now focused on something else--the Federal Reserve, the gold standard, or GMO foods. The anti-fluoridation people were essentially anti-government, anti-public health.

Anti-communism was also quite virulent in the late 1960s, and remained so for quite a while. The anti-communists are still around too, but have moved on to other threats -- Islam, jihadi terrorists, Mexicans, whatever (not that these things are without consequence).

BRIGADIER GENERAL JACK D. RIPPER ON WAR AND THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNIST CONSPIRACY TO SAP AND IMPURIFY OUR PRECIOUS BODILY FLUIDS

War is hell and a cyber war would be hell too, though yes, fewer exploding shells and no mushroom-shaped clouds. But that should lead one to think that we will not notice the war in progress. I have no idea how vulnerable our infrastructure is -- I have read about it, but I don't know for a fact what the situation is. One should expect -

-disruption of electric power
-disruption of heavy duty control devices (pumps, valves, motors, etc.) in municipal power, water and sewage disposal systems
-disruption of financial services (like, the bank might shut down their computer systems, which would protect the system, but still might mean you couldn't access your cash)
-Market operations (from Wall Street to Walmart) would be disrupted
-Medical record systems, train operation, airports and air traffic control, etc. might be disrupted.
-Recreation drugs would probably become more readily available, and about the time everything shut down, a pleasant high might be exactly what you need.

We might just "run amok" rather than be blown up. We are very dependent on systems, needless to say, and recovering so many systems would be time-consuming and difficult, not to mention really, really expensive. Meanwhile, people would be decompensating all over the place.

Should you horde gold? Sure you should. Buy an ingot today. The problem will be determining what the value of gold is after CW #1 is over. Are you going to hand over 1/10th of an ounce for a 10 lb. bag of good potatoes? And if you can get 150 pounds for 1/10th of an ounce, will you be able to transport and store them so you and yours get to eat them? You pushing your big bag of potatoes through the streets full of hungry people... it won't end up well.

and, unlike the US, disenfranchisement ceases when the sentence is completed — andrewk

Well, in the US, in a majority of states--40 out of 50--disenfranchisement ceases when the sentence is completed too.

Just out of curiosity... where did this business of "dog whistle" start.

Yeah yeah, I know, dog whistles are very high pitched and supposedly only dogs can hear them. I don't remember hearing the expression "dog whistle" applied to provocative political speech until just recently -- like in the last 2 months.

"Kick the can down the road" was another one. "Kick the can" is a childhood hide and seek game, but all of a sudden, everybody was "kicking the can down the road" instead of putting action off until later. It arrived, became a noxious verbal weed, and then stopped abruptly.

WY, TN, NV, MS, KY, IA, FL, DE, AZ, and AL do or can permanently revoke voting rights. Maine and Vermont have no voting restrictions, and the rest of the states have varying restrictions, usually restoring voting privileges after the prison term and probation have been completed.

Even so, this is a long period of time during which a citizen cannot vote. Why shouldn't felons in prison vote? If they are citizens they should have that right, one might argue, if for no other reason to remind them that they are still part of the national community. After all, if they can vote while they are accumulating their debt to society; why not let them vote while they are paying it off.

I think this type of philosophical naturalism has transposed the Cosmos into the place formerly assigned to God, and assigns science the role previously assigned to religion. — Wayfarer

A few decades ago when I began to extricate myself from the Christian dye my virgin wool had been immersed in, I phrased it this way: "I want to live in a knowable world" -- basically replacing religion with science. I wanted to get rid of the magic god who mysteriously intervenes in this world to make things happen (all sorts of nano-managed events which many believers think happens).

Making the transition by no means eliminated headaches. Instead of being irritated by claims of the magic god's nano-managing, there is now the irritation of determinism vs free will. I'm still working on that problem. I guess I agree with "Carl Sagan's well-known saying 'cosmos is all there is, or ever will be'".

Even though billions sincerely believe in other worlds, I now have to know better them all of them, and conclude they are deluded, and must conclude that imagined other worlds are as substantial as the suggestive shapes of clouds. Fanciful cloud shapes are part of "this world".

In the world but not of the world...

2 things. One, even if the phrase isn't in the NT, the problem of navigating through this world to the world to come exercised Christians early on and ever since. It's especially complicated because in Jesus the world to come entered into this world, and presumably this mixing has never ceased.

Two, my impression of the OT is that this world is the only world there is. Even though I was dyed in the wool as a Christian, and despite the seductive attractions of a world to come, I came to prefer what I take to be the OT view -- this world is all there is of worlds. God doesn't exist in a "different world". God exists in this world--in the Cosmos.

↪Bitter Crank You're living in your own private Idaho. — Metaphysician Undercover

Too true, too true.

From the web site "Critical Theory": 9 INSANE STORIES FROM THE LIVES OF FAMOUS EXISTENTIALISTS

#1 Jean-Paul Sartre Was Literally Obsessed With Crabs. Also, Mescaline.
#2 Speaking of Mescaline, Sartre Was Essentially the Junkie Equivalent of an Ubermensch
#3 Soren Kierkegaard Employed an Array of Ridiculous Pseudonyms That Might as Well Have Been Pulled from the Pages of Harry Potter
#4 Albert Camus Really Liked the Central Park Zoo and Credits Soccer With Everything He Knew
#5 Franz Kafka Loved Weird Porno and Paying for Sex
#6 Nietzsche Went Crazy, Saved a Horse from Whipping, and Proceeded to Believe He Was Napoleon (who-- the horse or Nietzsche?)
#7 Simone de Beauvoir’s Work is Still Banned in the Vatican for Being Lesbian Propaganda
#8 Camus Essentially Predicted His Own Death
#9 Dostoyevsky Was Once Seconds Away From Being Executed

Camus a douche? According to Adam Gopnic of the New Yorker April 4, 2012 Camus was the Don Draper of existentialism.

The French novelist and philosopher Albert Camus was a terrifically good-looking guy whom women fell for helplessly—the Don Draper of existentialism. This may seem a trivial thing to harp on, except that it is almost always the first thing that comes up when people who knew Camus talk about what he was like. When Elizabeth Hawes, whose lovely 2009 book “Camus: A Romance” is essentially the rueful story of her own college-girl crush on his image, asked survivors of the Partisan Review crowd, who met Camus on his one trip to New York, in 1946, what he was like, they said that he reminded them of Bogart. “All I can tell you is that Camus was the most attractive man I have ever met,” William Phillips, the journal’s editor, said, while the thorny Lionel Abel not only compared him to Bogart but kept telling Hawes that Camus’s central trait was his “elegance.” ...

Sounds like quite the hunk. I was thinking that maybe the French picked up that look from the American beatniks, but now I see it was the other way around.

Suppose someone wrote this:

“I hope you don’t have friends who recommend Ayn Rand to you. The fiction of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get re fiction. I hope you picked it up off the floor of the subway and threw it in the nearest garbage pail. She makes Mickey Spillane look like Dostoevsky.” Flannery O'Connor

Would this be deletable? It is, after all, pretty disrespectful.

Should moderators root out posts in which unreasonable statements are made? Well... probably not. They don't have all day to read and reflect on the degree to which unreasonableness is present in each post. I am inclined to think unreasonable statements should be left alone. Perhaps a trigger warning could be posted. Participants in the thread will certainly thrash out how unreasonable unreasonable statements are.

Personal characteristics are part of the total package. I don't know whether "French intellectuals look like "douches"", nor do I know quite what is meant by a "douche". Something more than a shower, presumably. Perhaps an orifice irrigation device is what was meant. Well, that's odd but it isn't exactly a rare term, these days. Would just an ordinary "asshole" have been ok? I didn't read the post that said so-and-so was upset that [french intellectuals of some sort] smoke pipes. Perhaps the author of the comment thought it an unnecessary affectation. Perhaps? Or perhaps so-and-so is a public health fantastic who thinks pipe smoking is a very bad personal practice.

It sounds more flippant than anything else.

Hanover hadn't made a motion. It was just a point of information. Inform the chair that you wish to make a motion.

deliberately humorous — Thorongil

That's the problem, see. People trying to be funny. Didn't you read the guidelines? NO DELIBERATE HUMOR especially at the expense of any schools of thought known to be subject to all sorts of unfortunate and outrageous slings and arrows by privileged, white, male, Americans shites!!!. Who do you think you are, anyway? Why can't you understand the glaringly obvious TRUTH that post-modernism has immense liberatory value to oppressed people attempting to rebalance the power differentials inherent in Euro-technical oppressions exercised upon those afflicted by excessive melanin, estrogen, deficits, and haggis§?

You all can say what you want IF you have cleared it with us pontiffs. Otherwise, just stick to the gayly forward and narrow. And you specifically, just shut TFU about postmodernism already.

§A hideous concoction of low-value meat bits, noxious root vegetables, and horse meal boiled in goat guts. Beloved by the Scots, who else, even if they live in France and have paradis culinaire la porte à côté. (Probably too cheap to eat decent food.) Obviously a product of dour Presbyterian discipline from which they should have long since recovered in this post-modern age.

Bitter Crank,
I failed creative writing because I could not be creative. — curious

I doubt very much that you could not be creative, but "creative writing" isn't the same as "creativity". "Creative writing" is about turning out specific kinds of writing that follow certain forms -- the short story, poetry, drama. The student is expected to turn out writing that conforms to the teacher's expectations. I also took a creative writing class and found that I wasn't very good at it.

With general writing, I get by. I am thinking about just writing with a pen on paper. No editing no critiquing. — curious

Back in the 1980s, somebody (can't remember) wrote a book by the title of (can't remember) in which he argued that writing on a computer screen is quite different than using a typewriter (or using pen on paper) because it "costs nothing" to edit. He wasn't talking about literal cost, rather, psychological cost. When you use a typewriter, or pen on paper, there is no easy way of making mistakes disappear. You can cross them out, but you can still see where the error was. And it takes much more actual labor to make an error on a typewritten or ink-written page disappear. On a computer, selected text disappears effortlessly and completely. The writer is less committed to any particular phrasing on a computer screen, than he would otherwise be.

Spell and grammar checking, and automatic word substitution, wasn't readily available on the personal computers that the author would have been using, and they weren't as good then as they are now. It is still a good idea to think about what you are writing--spelling, grammar, punctuation, word choice, all that.

The editing on this forum is good; it by itself has told me much about writing. I just want to be understood. For a while I wrote by e-mail without grammar of any sort and which I called it rattling. To this day I still rattle which means no editing not critiquing, but the editor is right with my spelling. Curious. — curious

Well, lots of people rattle on.

I haven't read much of your writing, but what I have read so far would suggest that you don't have any problem producing perfectly intelligible texts. Here are some suggestions for practice.

1. Write more, much more. Writing well takes practice. Write a lot. Keep your originals for a while for comparison.
2. Use ordinary words and plain sentence structure (more or less what you are already doing in your posts here).
3. Write about whatever interests you.
4. If you can, find somebody who can give you useful feedback and can spot mechanical errors (we all make mechanical errors -- punctuation, spelling, typos, misplaced words, etc.).

By the way, you might be interested in Jack Kerouac's book, "On The Road"§ which he wrote in 1957. Kerouac was one of the original "beatniks". He wrote the book on a roll of teletype paper (teletypes have pretty much disappeared, but the rolls were about the size of a paper towel roll and were pretty cheap paper. One could put one end in one's typewriter and type for many hours without stopping, which is what he did. He didn't edit himself as he wrote. The publisher edited the text, of course. Kerouac didn't indicate page breaks, used real names (later changed) and such. He just 'rattled on'.

Here's an interesting little film (4 minutes or so) about Kerouac's manuscript.

§

When the book was originally released, The New York Times hailed it as "the most beautifully executed, the clearest and the most important utterance yet made by the generation Kerouac himself named years ago as 'beat,' and whose principal avatar he is."[1] In 1998, the Modern Library ranked On the Road 55th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. The novel was chosen by Time magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005. Wikipedia

... why, for instance, Mother Theresa won the prize: nothing she did helped to promote peace, as far as I can tell. — Arkady

Mother Theresa was an extremely insightful choice. The old bag tended to the dying on the streets of Calcutta and founded an order of nuns. Had she instead become a general, given her sandblasting personality, we would have had nothing but war, war, war, war, war.

Supposedly, the world needs a transcendental outlook to avoid an abundance of [various kinds of problems]. Unless we believe the transcendent, we are doomed.

This is not true. What matters is our actions and our ethics. We could put forward and enact a policy regarding a more harmonious use of resources without mentioning the transcendent at all. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Yes; I agree. All our experience and meaning is housed in this world, and there is no other world, transcendent or merely more of the same. What is, is; what is not, is not, and "transcendent" is not.

Other people are not having transcendent experiences whether they think so, or not. The may have been transported, transformed, transfixed, transplanted, and so on but they did not transcend. I hate to say that because two of my heroes, Flannery O'Connor and Dorothy Day, seemed to have transcendent experiences. But these two Roman Catholic ladies also had very dry, flinty views of the world; their feet were firmly planted in terra firma. Angels would have had to twist both their arms and necks to get them to let go of material reality.

Day's biography (A Harsh and Dreadful Love) is taken from a quote by Dostoyevsky, one of her favorite writers: “Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams.”

My writing is general because I only write about things I know. — curious

You could do worse; much worse.

Yes, well... nouns, verbs, and grammar are a problem, true.

Please tell me more about your writing.

Because they weren't capable of doing so. But now humans have entered the stage, and I'm arguing that it's time we put down the mirror of narcissism and start acting more productive and responsible.

In any case it is clear that non-human animals have not been taking care of one another. Look at predation, social rejection from disease/disability, and r-selection. — darthbarracuda

We didn't "enter the stage", we have always been on stage -- along with the rest of the evolving species. Around 40 million years ago, the Infraorder of Simiiformes, "Higher" primates (Simians): apes and monkeys started the evolutionary path that eventually produced the modern primates, including homo sapiens.

We, like all the other animals, must pursue our essential nature. We didn't intrude hugely on other species until we mastered tool making and became hunter gatherers. We were doing no more than meeting our basic survival needs, and being what our essential nature made possible. Granted: Once we got ourselves organized, around 12,000 years ago, we did start being a bigger problem to other species.

The worst things any of our species can say about us are only outcomes of our nature -- which we, mind you, were not in charge of forming, any more than geese were in charge of their evolution. Evolution has no long-term plan. It didn't intend us, any more than it intended a goose.

Here we are, victims of blind fate. Now we are a problem not only to ourselves, but the other species as well. Do we really have the wherewithal to see ourselves in context so clearly that we can shift gears from our forward superdrive into ecological neutral? I don't think so. Just about everyone here (a few excepted) recognizes that we have huge problems. That doesn't mean that we insightful ones are also able to climb off our technological bandwagon. This conversation requires the technological bandwagon to be in excellent working order.

We are screwed, the plant species are screwed, and our furry little friends that are not extinct yet are screwed too. Blame it on evolution's lack of foresight. Step by step a bigger brain seemed like such a good idea at the time--and it probably was. Fast forward a few million years, and you have a disaster resulting from overspecialization.

How do you all feel about whether we have uncovered (any) Hidden Psychological Causes of Political Correctness?