It isn't a question of remaining weak. It's a question of administrative interpretation. Undertaking college work is a good thing. An administrative judge over-seeing a review might interpret doing well in college as either a sign that the person was trying to better himself, or, was malingering and wasn't actually disabled.

There is no reason for a client to risk having benefits to which he is legitimately entitled taken away because of misinterpretation of the client's intent. I'm just suggesting that our client use some caution.

I am glad you received disability status. The benefit will help you either find yourself something more satisfactory, or if you don't, keep you from starving into your old age. However... bear in mind, that disability can be revoked. I'm not trying to scare you, but Social Security does periodic reviews to find out if you are still disabled. Most people who are disabled do legitimately stay that way, but they may get better, or the standards of disability may change.

I can't remember how old you are, but you haven't earned very high income in the past, right? So, your disability payment is probably not very large. Do apply for housing assistance. At least in this state, disabled and elderly are the first in line for public housing. But be realistic--how long is the waiting list? If it's 1 year long, not too bad. Ten years... a different story. But sign up anyway. In 10 years you will still need housing.

Do apply for food assistance (food stamps). It will help your disability payment go farther.

I assume that you qualified for disability with a doctor's support. Keep a relationship with your doctor, or some other doctor, because when your case is reviewed you will need to support your claim again. (Most people keep their disability status, because they really are disabled.)

Be sure that going to college doesn't undermine your claim to disability. Taking a full load or better and getting very good grades would kind of undermine your claim. (This would be relevant at the time of your review in several years.)

Yes, you can work and collect disability at the same time, but not work full time for years on end and still collect disability. There is a program for people who want to try returning to work. Your benefit level may sort of force you to work to make ends meet, at least part time, if your benefit level is at the minimum.

What is your medical insurance situation like at this point? Medicaid? (I'm assuming you are not qualified for Medicare yet.)

My partner was disabled for the last 15 years of his life. It greatly improved the quality of his life. Most people who are disabled do much better with disability than without it.

As always, good luck.

Please keep in mind that there is a line (rather fuzzy) between clinical depression and with it, suicide that accompanies it, and the sort of depression some people experience while allowing them to function to some degree. — Posty McPostface

Yes, this is a familiar line. Many depressed people function quite well.

How do you know they won't love and adore us? They may actually like us.

e won't live to see the devastating effects of climate change, combined with the runaway effect that could be entailed by methane release. In most likelihood, we will learn to adapt to the new state of affairs provided by climate change, at the cost of hundreds of billions if not trillions to adapt our cities and current infrastructure and agriculture. — Posty McPostface

Whether you live to see devastating effects of climate change depends on your age. I'm 70. I plan on being dead in a decade, so I'll be spared (I hope). If one is 50 and lives another 30 years, you'll be around to see worsening conditions, but not rock bottom. If one is 30, and might live another 60 years, you'll most likely have a view of some pretty bad conditions. If one is 10 or less, with a life expectancy of 90, hey -- you are IN LUCK -- you're going to get to see big time climate change problems.

As for adaptations, yes and no. Some places in the world can't adapt -- they'll be depopulated by death or migration.

Cities north of the 40th parallel and not on a low-lying shore, (like most of the Netherlands is) will not experience severe heat, severe water shortages, or severe and long-term flooding from ocean rise. A city like Boston has areas that were filled in harbor. Those areas will likely flood. Lower Manhattan will flood, but the rest of those two cities will be OK. Miami will be toast -- wet toast. New Orleans will be flushed down the drain. The Mississippi Delta comprises Mississippi, Louisiana, and south-eastern Texas. That land is too low to be stay above water.

The cost of adaptation will certainly be in the trillions--pounds, dollars, yens, or euros. But there are real limits. If the wheat, soy, and corn fields of the world are too hot and dry or too wet, there just won't be as much food as is needed. As for fruits, nuts, vegetables, and the like -- some areas will do OK, and some won't.

Regarding excess heat in South Asia:

We can quibble about how much methane will rise from the thawed and warmed tundra and will erupt from methane hydrate deposits on the ocean floor, and exactly how long it will last in the atmosphere. But every additional warming brings us closer to our species thermal limit.

Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas. Despite its short atmospheric half life of 12 years, methane has a global warming potential of 86 over 20 years and 34 over 100 years (IPCC, 2013). The sudden release of large amounts of natural gas from methane clathrate deposits has been hypothesized as a cause of past and possibly future climate changes. Events possibly linked in this way are the Permian-Triassic extinction event and the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. — Wikipedia

IPCC = International Panel on Climate Change
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/methane-hydrates-bigger-than-shale-gas-game-over-for-the-environment/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_clathrate

Some qestions i have for anyone with environmental and weather sciences knowladge is: — XanderTheGrey

Can the relase of methane cause widespread increase in forrest fires and how does it work?

By raising the average temperature of a climate area, the soils dry out (and with it, the trees eventually) and warmer winters allow insect vectors to survive. Greater insect infestation leads to more tree diseases, and more dead trees. Millions of acres of dead and/or dry trees are a forest fire hazard under any circumstances.

I don't know where you live, but Minnesota and surrounding states have had very poor quality air on some days from fires which are 1000 to 2000 miles away. In some cases the smoke was at ground level all day.

Can it cause an increase in hurricanes and or tornadoes and how does it work?

Oceans and land in a warmer climate have more thermal energy stored up in it, and thermal energy (along with other factors) drives cyclonic storms. So, yes.

Will it effect lightning? In what way, and how?

The more storms, the more lightning. Methane won't have a direct effect on lightning.

What temperature can a human being survive at individually?

There is the "wet bulb temperature" -- the lowest temperature that can be achieved by evaporation. So, if it is 100% relative humidity, and the temperature is 95º F, a person will not be able to cool down below 95º. As the temperature rises above 95º F, the individual's temperature will rise with it. If the temperature rises to 106º or 108º, with saturated humidity, the person will begin to over heat and will die at some not very distant point (oh... 15 to 60 minutes, depending).

Why aren't more people dying, if this is so? Two reasons: Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun. Just about everybody else stays in the shade. That's one. The other reason is that it isn't very often 100% humidity and 110º F. People can survive 135º F if the humidity is low -- because they can evaporate away heat.

Most places aren't going to experience these kinds of lethal "wet bulb temperature" levels. But the river valleys of southeast Asia will, and not in the far distant future. About 1.5 billion people live in these river valleys, and a lot of their food grows there. If people can't work the fields, they will die of heat stroke first, and if no agriculture, then starvation.

Other areas will have survival problems too. The SW U.S. won't experience web bulb temperatures like Bangladesh will, but even at 0% relative humidity and temperatures of 125 all day, everything is dead before too long. (Hot air and desiccation can kill things as well as saturated humidity and somewhat temperatures).

And if we only have 750,000 years left, that's plenty. Of course, it could be a lot less. There are plenty of large chunks of material "out there" that could be jostled loose by a passing star, for instance. The chunk might wander our way and crash into our planet. Sic transit gloria mundi. Literally.

Or, we may trigger enough global warming to cook our own goose. People can only stand to work in so much heat, and as the average temperature rises, more and more places will be too hot, too wet, or too dry for our plants or us animals.

Disease is always a possibility. Nuclear war can't be ruled out (not because of North Korea, but because of all the more familiar nuclear powers). And it may be that an Angry God may decide to let go of this sin-soaked celestial ball, suspended over the pits of Hell and do away with the lot of us.

Is it the case that depressive personalities take a greater delight in irreverence, satire, travesties upon the dominant class, sarcastic jokes, and so on?

I hope so.

is there any 'truth' to be found in feeling depressed about oneself in relation to the world? — Posty McPostface

There might be.

First, most people are properly functional. They feel OK, at least. Maybe they feel really great. Their mental skills are operating at par: memory, concentration, alertness, energy level, etc. They got to work, get along with their fellow workers almost all of the time. They commute, shop, clean, cook, go to the movies, play with their kids, visit the neighbors -- all sorts of perfectly normal activities. Life runs more or less smoothly for them. OF course, things happen every now and then that are very disruptive. But the difficulties are overcome.

Some people [the depressive group] are NOT properly functional. They don't feel great. They experience the world as much more abrasive and irritating than most people do. They quite often aim high and miss, which is bothersome to people who also tend to be perfectionists in small ways. The atmosphere they move in is thicker and resists them more. They are less patient than many people are.

The depressive group is more likely to see and feel the flaws in the world because their 'skin' is thinner and already more irritated than most people. Healthy happy people probably won't identify the overbearing nature of the hierarchy, because they are go-along, get-along personalities. The depressive will feel it much, much more acutely. Depressive people are more likely to see and feel lots of minor injustices that happier people gloss over.

If the world is an unsatisfactory place, the depressive will recognize that truth quicker than a happy person will. The depressive person is primed to feel the dead weight of futility, and if an activity is futile, they will zero in on that fact quicker than a happy person will.

The trouble with the truth-sensing ability of the depressive group is that the healthy, happy group doesn't sense the same thing, and thinks the depressive group are mis-perceiving the world. (Of course, sometimes the depressive group does mis-perceive the world, and so do the happy people.)

I thought that might be the case. I only know it by its title. You can judge a book by its cover if that's all you know about it. It's a great title, assuming that there were 7 particular habits of highly successful people.

This is my secound objective in asking the original qestion im sure you can see; "to look for patterns that seem to lead to success." — XanderTheGrey

There are people who have conducted research into the nature of success, what makes some people more successful than other people, and so on. People like Stephen R. Covey, Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, have delved into this. (DO NOT rush out and buy the book, please). Research has been done into how belief systems figure into successful behavior. Sure, there's a connection -- but it isn't an obvious straight forward connection.

People who have well organized belief systems seem to be happier, have better social relationships, and live longer than people who do not have well organized belief systems. But be careful: it may not be the content of the beliefs that make people happier. We don't really know, for sure.

If you are a young person (like, high school? In your twenties? You didn't say.) and anxious to get on with life, this all seems very urgent. I recommend a slow and steady approach. As you get older (not like in 50 years, more like 5 years) this will become clearer. It takes time.

IF you had been raised to believe in karma, or the compassionate Buddha, or Jesus -- or any other religious system or figure, THEN your belief might be a helpful organizing principle which would lead to "success" -- whatever you mean by that. Belief in karma, the kingdom of God, or any number of religious / magical (superstitious) beliefs isn't something that one can simply take on board as a strategy for success.

There are two reasons for this:

1. What leads to "success" is thinking organized around the goal of achieving "success" (whatever that is for you). The kind of thinking that leads to success establishes clear goals, sets priorities, lays out strategies, tests the results, revises, and moves on to an improved plan.

2. Belief in karma, the compassionate Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed (or any number of religious ideas) isn't like shopping for a new and better pair of running shoes, or a new suit, or some other object. Belief requires a conversion experience, and conversion experiences can't be forced, demanded, scheduled, or planned on.

Karma is part of a larger belief system -- it isn't like yoga or meditation that can be adopted by all sorts of people as a practice to stay limber or calm their minds. It's a piece of one of the world's major religions. It's not really a "removable component" -- at least I don't think it is.

Are you saying that realism free of superstitions is a superior formula component for personal success, and that adopting a superstitous belife would be a downgrade? Or are you saying that it has to do with me? That i may be a natural realist, and that a natural realist cannot hold sufficient stable faith in a superstition. — XanderTheGrey

I don't know enough about you. I have only what you have said here to go on. If you are "a natural realist", then realism is the way to go. Like I said, "adopting a superstition" or "a belief in karma" or a belief in something else, is not a workable strategy.

My opinion, for what it's worth (probably not a lot) is that adopting a superstition is a definite downgrade. It's a downgrade from first class to the baggage compartment of the airplane.

Good, and welcome to The Philosophy Forum.

Im a nihilist, if i could get away with anything, their is literally nothing i would not do. — XanderTheGrey

All to see if karma is a good thing to adopt into my beliefs and or superstitions. I will do whatever it takes to succeed in my own eyes, if adopting certin superstitions that i know are not true will even give me a psychological edge; then i will adopt them. — XanderTheGrey

Assimilation worked well for the Borg of Star Trek fame; I doubt if it would work for you. [You will be assimilated; resistance is futile. You will comply.] You seem a bit too ruthlessly realistic to benefit from adopted superstitions. Do you carry a rabbit's foot with you for good luck? Do you pray for success? Do you avoid inauspicious numbers? I bet not.

I love my sadism, i want to just embrace it, it feels like true freedom to be myself. I just know that it is not socially acceptable, that its a very merkey lake to swim in.
3 hours ago
XanderTheGrey
12
This is probably a topic for another thread. I think this question ive proposed about karma and success is an interesting one. — XanderTheGrey

It probably is a different thread topic. Why don't you start it? We haven't discussed the aesthetics, ethics, or erotics of S & M or B & D recently. If you do, bear in mind that your thread needs to pass the moderators smell test. Take the high road in your opening post. (Don't go into a lot of nitty gritty detail). You don't want to frighten the horses.

Now, there's sadism and then there's sadism. Are you referencing a sexual practice where the sadist whips the consenting and eager masochist (real whip, real pain, real blood) or beats him up as part of a sexual scene, or are you talking about torturing people for your satisfaction alone, whether they consented or not?

The karmic consequences would probably be unfavorable for your case if you just liked to beat people up for the literal hell of it.

There 's a couple of cultural pieces you might like to take in: A film, Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (Italian: Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma), titled Pasolini's 120 Days of Sodom on English-language prints[2] and commonly referred to as simply Salò (Italian: [saˈlɔ]), is a 1975 Italian-French horror art film directed by Pier Paolo Pasolini. It is based on the book The 120 Days of Sodom by the Marquis de Sade. I saw it in 1976 at the University Film Society in Minneapolis. Some conservative legislators threatened to defund the Film Society, punish the University of Minnesota, or burn the projectionist at the stake. The police threatened to seize the film as obscene. It could not have had better publicity for any price. The film quite effectively evoked disgust, actually, but nobody walked out. It had good production values. Quality trash.

Another item you might like is “Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward: Professor, Tattoo Artist, and Sexual Renegade” by Justin Spring recounts the life of Sam Steward, an English professor at a Chicago University (can't remember, sorry). He was fired when the university found out that Steward was running a tattoo parlor. They would have fired him a lot sooner had they known the whole story.

Steward was a classic masochist who needed a good beating every now and then, plus some humiliating (fulfilling) sex. And beaten up he was, sometimes ending up in the hospital. He appreciated that there were sadists who would oblige him (they were a rare commodity). “He paid the price for being himself,” Mr. Spring said, “but at least he got to be himself.”

Steward was a high flyer, including in his circle Thornton Wilder, Paul Cadmus, Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, Christopher Isherwood, Alfred Kinsey, the photographer George Platt Lynes, and various Chicago toughs. Great book!

I like it when things makes sense. — ddarko

It will probably help you to abandon the plank in your platform that "I don't believe in anything fully". It will help you if you at least believe in yourself, fully.

Science is the best bet we have for making sense of the world. "Science" is a big field, and you don't have to be a master of any of it. It helps a great deal if you can make use of scientific findings. You don't have to be a climatologist to understand that the climate is warming up, for instance.

I am concerned about defining myself — ddarko

As well you should be. It is one of the primary tasks of people.

I don't know anything about "self-hypnosis". Visualization--the repeated imagined performance of a specific skill--is thought to improve actual performance. Mental rehearsal isn't a replacement for actual rehearsal and practice, of course -- it's a supplement.

Time has said something about this; it will say more. In fact, time will tell.

On the other hand, I don't understand why you'd think that a transition from non-life to life is "outside of possibility." — T Clark

I do not think it is outside of possibility. I believe it is not only possible, I think it happened. What I was trying to say clearly is that "I don't know how it could happen". Maybe somebody else knows how, but I don't.

TED — Rich

One can definitely watch too many TED Talks.

all post 1950 philosophers are extremely narrow specialists and world and humanity interpreting theories have, as far as I know, gone extinct. — PiggyBoi228

What you are observing is not limited to philosophy. There are many particular fields of study that have been worked over so thoroughly that there are no nice, broad general topics left. Shakespearean studies, for example, have become terribly tedious and detailed.

The great increase in the size of universities and the number of people engaged in advanced study has had an effect, too. What field in philosophy has not already been plowed up, harrowed, planted, and harvested several times over? Most post-1950 philosophers are going to be a product of 'the system' and won't be publishing broad, general ideas.

But all this is a problem for advanced scholars. Compare Philosophy to Shakespearean Studies. There is nothing left about Shakespeare where a scholar can write a broad, general dissertation. There's nothing left except minutiae. BUT... Most people have not read many (or any) of Shakespeare's plays, let alone seen them performed; for these billions of people, Shakespeare is totally new. Same with philosophy. Most people have not read much of the field of philosophy, and for them the field is new.

I don't read philosophy, for the most part. As a field of study, it just doesn't interest me. 30, 40, 50 years ago I read Sartre and Camus with much more interest than I can summon now.

If you feel so bold, take your views to the public square instead of your courageous position behind your keyboard. — Hanover

Of course, we're all here behind our courage-granting keyboards. But yes, PHILOSOPHY FORUM is akin to the Mall of America or Lenox Square in one respect: it's private property and they do not allow demonstrations or organized airings of opinion not consistent with the rules of the property owners.

By the way, what the hell is this thing at the Mall of Georgia? Some sort of weird chiropractic appliance?

How about the grammatical "infinite comparison": "This is better."

The qualifying infinite may be used in various ways.

Give me something to drink.
Give me a chair to sit.
It was a sight to see.
This is a thing to admire.
2) to qualify a verb like an adverb

I came to see you.
We are going to play the match.
It is going to rain.
3) to qualify an adjective like an adverb

The book is nice to read.
This picture is beautiful to look at.
4) to qualify a sentence

To tell the truth, you are a fool.
To be frank, I don’t like him.

I think schopenhauer1 has the better argument. The things we do today that aren't aimed at survival or procreation, are simply to alleviate the discomfort of doing nothing — CasKev

There are two sides to schopenhauer1's coin of stasis: the side he likes to polish is the "doomed to the horror of boredom and generally unsatisfactory experiences`"; the other side is "seeking engagement with the environment" (whatever that happens to be).

I would agree, however, that much of what we do has nothing to do with survival or procreation. For one thing, most of the time the options available involve neither. Indeed, I don't think our genes are worried about survival either. We are organized to seek positive experiences (sex, eating, warmth, the better BBC Masterpiece Theater production, etc.). Survival happens by accident--at least most of the time. Once in a rare while (we hope) survival is at stake -- you find yourself tiring as you try to overcome the riptide that seems intent on drowning you, some thug is pointing a gun at you -- but most of the time it is just a question of whether or not we are going to be very bored.

Suppose we as a society think that black people are inferior to white to the extent that we treat them as property. — unenlightened

Is it possible that enslavement came first, and the stereotype followed? It seems like one would be required to think of one's slaves as inferior, especially if one consigned them to only physical labor. What else would cover the cognitive dissonance of enslaving one's fellow man? Did the Romans have a more complicated view of their slaves because they served as tutors and teachers as well as ditch diggers?

I just finished reading John LeCarré's novel, The Constant Gardiner which is about GiantPharma and corruption. There a new drug that cures TB, crudely conducted field trials in 3rd world countries (like Kenya, where much of the story takes place), dead victims of the new drug, and the efforts of some people to bring the matter to light.

It's fiction, of course; there is no new drug to cure TB and the company is non-existent. But the way things work in the story have an immensely probably and believable feel. You might like the book.

Barnes and Noble has the digital copy for $1.99, very good deal. You can download the Nook App.

I haven't read the articles you linked, but I am still not inclined to grant plants sentience. Plant to plant and plant to predator interaction is most remarkable, and I'm always happy to hear about it. Certain vines in the Amazon interact with certain ants in a complicated mutually beneficial relationship. I don't find either one - vines or ants - very sentient, but they've still managed to develop this relationship.

Maybe your articles explain how plants create and maintain sentience, but I will be surprised.

You won't get an argument from me about the evils of concentrated wealth. But on the subject of scientific research -- the amount of money flowing into basic research is not huge (which is a problem because basic research lays the groundwork for the heavy duty solutions to pressing problems). Into pharmacological research? Sure, if there is the chance of a new drug that millions of people will take for years on end. A life saving drug that they will take for 3 weeks, not so much. There is an extremely pressing need for basic research in antibiotics. So far, huge number of people are not dying from multi-drug-resistant infections (everything from multi-drug-resistant streptococcal and staphylococcal infections, tuberculosis, malaria, gonorrhea, et al, but the numbers of people succumbing and dying is rising, and there are no new antibiotics in the pipeline.

We already know how memories are in the brain — BlueBanana

More or less. But not really very clearly. Yet.

How about plants? — BlueBanana

I wouldn't go anywhere close to vegetarian sentience, but some plants, at least, can signal that they are under attack and near-by plants (same species) can receive those chemical signals and initiate defense (increase of alkaloids in their leaves, maybe).

Plants also have simple tropisms (sunflowers following the arc of the sun for instance.

Most of their time was devoted to developing marketing pitches for fundraising purposes. — Rich

There is a reason why scientists (and everybody else who does research in a university) spends so much time on fundraising: Over the last few decades legislatures have off-loaded the cost of running universities onto tuition. Tuition can't support teaching AND research, so the researchers have to work as much on finding grants to replace expiring grants. Without replacement and continuing grants, their lab work and research is pretty much closed down.

Labs can't stick up their nose at commercial entities that give grants, and they are usually interested in products. So, sometimes the tail wags the dog. But that has been true for a long time, not just recently, and not just in research.

then Minimalism is essentially a tool to rid yourself of life’s excess in favor of focusing on what’s important—so you can find happiness, fulfillment, and freedom. — Brian

Minimalism isn't a new idea: voluntary poverty, simple living, Walden Pond, ascetic religious practices... It is highly likely that the only people who will try it are the prosperous. The poor have had minimalism handed to them on a paper plate.

Don't get me wrong: Trying to provide meaning by surrounding one's self with just more cargo is a failing strategy. "Stuff" and "keeping busy" carries little meaning, and can becomes burdensome. A better strategy is to differentiate perceptively between the useful and the useless (which is idiosyncratic), keeping the latter and ridding one's self of the former.

I've made a lot of mistakes with the "stuff" part of the problem. I thought that acquiring certain things would result in a better life -- more satisfaction. Not always. Sometimes I was right, however. I really enjoyed certain pieces of clothing (nice shirt, attractive comfortable shoes, good looking sweater, etc.), most of the records I bought, the computers, the house, the bicycles, and books.

I replaced the ugly 20 year old plastic mini-venetian-type blinds with wide, real wood blinds. Kind of pricey; was it worth it? Yes, it was. I really like and enjoy them, damn it. Fuck minimalism.

By the way, I've tried minimalism too. There is something to say for it. Reducing one's consumption can yield more free time. One has to work less. But reduced consumption and part time work can become an unpleasant scramble too.

These mavens of minimalism both have too much hair.

Excellent quote job, there.

Megabytes of comments have been made here about political correctness; racial insults, sexual insults, and so on. Asshole--there's a book by that title, not very interesting, I didn't think--has been tossed around here quite a bit.

I've been called queer, fairy, faggot, homo, cocksucker, etc. Before I came out of the closet (50 years ago) these terms would have upset me. I would have taken them as hostile; a knife through a weak spot in my armor. In the same way, it has bothered me for a long time when people refer to my (thick) glasses as "thick as the bottom of coke bottles". Being called blind as a bat or handicapped would have cut to the quick.

From my perspective, the power of name-calling to hurt or anger me is proportionate to the confidence I have in myself. Not exactly self-esteem, but self-acceptance and confidence. These days I am not very sensitive. (I can still be gotten to on a couple of points, which I am not going to reveal here).

Is a white person being called a honky the same thing as a black person being called a nigger? Is being called a "Jew" an insult whether one is or is not? Why is "colored people" an insult and people of color isn't? Why is "illegal alien" an insult even if one is? Negroes call each other "nigger" all the time. Why is it OK in one mouth and not in another? Is "niggardly" an OK spoken term?

It seems to me that racial slurs, and name-calling in general, is only effective when the person being called a name has a negative view of themselves, or their race. Those with a higher self esteem are barely affected, if at all, by name-calling. — Harry Hindu

This sounds true, but some people who seem primed to go off at the first use of even prejudicial terms, let alone slurs quite often seem pretty proud of themselves and their group--race, sex, country of origin, belief system, bank account size, etc.

I'm so glad we have another thread from the Pessimists United School (PUS) of Oozing, Mississippi.

1. Trump is president in 2017.

In relation to this truth I can think of 3 lies:

2. Jane is the president in 2017
3. Sarah is the president in 2017
4. Vick is the president in 2017

So, assuming life is random, there's a 1/4 chance of truth and 3/4 chance of falsehood. — TheMadFool

This is just arbitrary nonsense.

In a nutshell, the number of ways one can be good are fewer than the number of ways one can be bad. To add, our moral compasses are incomplete and flawed. — TheMadFool

Evidence, please. Let's see the figures on possible ways to be good or bad.

People usually act in their own self interest (which they define as good), and only a few attempt to shoot themselves in the foot (which is bad). Therefore good occurs more often than bad. You don't like that? IT's no worse than your argument.

We don't know what you think is good and bad, which is an additional problem with your claim. Please list everything that is good, and bad in your opinion. What about the magnitude of acts? How many acts are largely consequential and how many are minutely consequential? Whose perspective are we using--the early bird feeding it's young or the worm?

There was an experiment back in the 60s where some clearly crazy people were divided up into 3 groups. One group received what was at the time standard group-therapy. A second group received behavioral therapy (sorry, don't remember the details--this was a long time ago). But the interesting part of the study was the third group who were turned over to some lay people for whatever therapy they thought they could provide for their patients.

None of the groups were worse off at the end of the experiment, but the group "treated" by the lay people felt better than the other two groups.

My guess is that the laypeople just talked to the patients, maybe went for walks with them on the hospital grounds, spent time with them. Maybe ate with them in the hospital cafeteria. They were 'nice' to the patients. If psychiatric hospital staff are not cruel to their patients, they are often not "nice" to them. They keep their clean crisp distance.

People who become psychotic by way of mania (bi-polar) or schizophrenia are likely to recover their sanity through medication and good psychiatric care (talk therapy)--and/or maybe by the passage of time.

I don't have any reason to doubt that the Finnish patients liked the interaction they had, and benefitted from it. But the kind of fast fix that an American insurance company would love, I'm not so sure.

natural selection does not select for 'the fittest', but for the 'fit enough'. That is, evolutionary pressure is always somewhat 'baggy' - within the constraints it imposes, it leaves a great deal of space for variation. — StreetlightX

Good points.

Are people confusing Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan, 1651) and Charles Darwin (Origin of the Species, 1859)? I wonder if people are thinking, "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" when the hear the phrase, "survival of the fittest".

"Survival of the fit enough" is carried out in very, very slow motion over long periods of time. It isn't carried out with the speed and violence of a no-man zone. "Nature is red in tooth and claw" was written by Tennyson in a verse memorial to a close poet-friend (In Memoriam, 1851). He was addressing the conflict between science and religion. Ideas about "evolution" had been percolating for a couple of decades, and he references the conflict in the poem.

"Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all"

is another famous phrase from the poem.

Nature is red in tooth and claw because some animals are meat eaters, and it tends to be what we think of as peace-loving benign vegetarians who are preyed upon.

There are a lot of small inventions we use all the time; they may not be live saving or life changing, exactly. Safety pins; staplers; photocopiers; vacuum cleaners; plastics; pressure cookers; automatic water heaters; Velcro; Zippers; rivets; etc. Some inventions are very over rated. Teflon pans, for instance. Not a great invention. A properly seasoned cast iron pan is better than Teflon. Conduction stove tops -- not great. The self-cleaning oven -- dubious. (Better, maybe, was the continuous cleaning oven coating that was popular in the 80s. I used one for 15 years; somehow the rough gray coating shed carbonized spatters (the bottom wasn't similarly coated, unfortunately.) The pneumatic milking machine was a life saver for farmers. Conveyor belts are quite important. Look how many difficult and unpleasant problems have been quickly eliminated by a 'plumber's devil'. Mechanical barn cleaners and manure spreaders are a good thing.

If not computers, then certainly the internet. — Agustino

The internet IS computers. The computer is a tremendous facilitator. Without content it has nothing to facilitate.

Back in the 1970s, people working in educational technology were groping towards something like the Internet. We pictured remotely accessible libraries, for instance. Or computer assisted instruction. Mainframe computers were available to us through VERY SLOW telephone connections. Computing students were also using teletype terminals and punch tape. Data flowed like an IV drip.

At the time I imagined a system which was a behemoth electro-mechanical monstrosity to do something of the miniaturized sort we now take as a birthright. (It was sort of modeled after the 1909 novella by E. M. Forester, The Machine Stops.) Forester was actually very prescient. The residents of his future society lived underground in 6-sided cells surrounded by mechanical servants. The Machine featured a world-wide communication system through which one could listen to music and lectures, or as he put it, "share ideas". The Machine was voice-operated. An automated subway system connected each cell. It's really a very good story.

The means were not yet available. The connecting infrastructure hadn't been built. I first signed on to AOL in 1990. I down-loaded some HyperCard stacks (a Macintosh application) and it took all night, just about. In the morning there they were -- text and some B&W illustrations. Not great, but a first step.

Ten years later content and speed was much better, but still not great, unless one spent some money on higher speed transmission. Animated full color banner ads slowed transmission of the desired content.

Transmission cables, faster desk and lap tops, and server farms made the Internet's library/audio-visual phantasmagoria into reality.

... bury our heads in the sand and consider it a done deal philosophically?

:)

OK, bitter. I get the desire to prohibit discussion on this. I'll for now obligingly bugger off. — javra

Very odd.

Even though I have long thought that life came about in some sort of sloppy environment -- hot smoky vent, warm mud hole, clay mush -- whatever -- there are some practical problems with this idea that I can't get around.

The simplest form of life would need several components which alone might happen by chance, but would have to link up in just the right way, also by chance, more or less all at once. A life form needs a template. Life on earth uses DNA and/or RNA. The life form needs machinery of some kind to build itself and carry out making a copy of the template, and cutting the copy off. In order to have all this machinery, it needs yet another piece of machinery -- it's exterior package.

I can sort of imagine chemistry getting more complicated, but for more complicated life-chemistry to form stuff that could snap together, stay together, and make something more or less alive, seems to be on the outside of possibility. It seems like the ur-life form would have to pop into existence, rather than crawl into existence.

On the other hand, I don't want to invoke an exterior agent -- God, for instance, or some sort of cosmic will.

Solutions?