Comments

  • On Antinatalism
    They exist - you made them exist. — Bartricks
    They don't exist and you forced them not to exist.

    You can't impose something on someone who does not exist. — Bartricks
    Then I can't impose either natalism or antinatalism.

    Keep running this hamster wheel over and over, your own statements are your bane.
  • On Antinatalism
    ↪Bartricks
    Then I'm not imposing and natalism isn't wrong; and we go full circle.
  • On Antinatalism
    it is wrong, other things being equal, to impose significant things on other people without their prior consent . — Bartricks
    If it's wrong, then don't impose antinatalism - as you have neither your unborn nor your newborn offering consent.
  • On Antinatalism
    The future is the only hope for the future. — Janus
    No children - no future; thus the children are the future and its hope rests with the them.

    In any case why is mankind in need of redemption? — Janus
    Look around you. How malicious human history has been and is continuing to be; bad news everyday.

    More often than not there's some snake with a toothache spitting from afar - is this what humanity should remain relegated to?
  • On Antinatalism
    This is the anti-natalist argument, one that I find contemptible. Full of anger and bitter hatred for the world and people in it. Nothing is more mean-spirited, graceless than this. It makes me feel sick to my stomach. — T Clark
    It's laden with hypocrisy and cowardice.

    Someone refuses to end their life prematurely but insists on denying a newborn life on behalf of an unborn.
    Biting the bullet would spare both the parent and their unborn child from this potentially wretched world, but how often does it go out like that?

    If the world is so blatantly dangerous and unwelcoming, running away from it isn't going to change that; but maybe fresh minds could solve the problem in a manner that current befuddled ones didn't come to - and offer a future where people don't have to be scared of potential harm.

    If having children is unethical, having this conversation is unethical - both on an anthropic and scientific basis; as we shouldn't have progressed this far for fear of what might be.

    Children are the hope of the future, and denying them is denying the chance for redemption; no two ways about it.
  • How Do You Do Science Without Free Will?
    ↪StreetlightX
    You can supply me with all the whiny rhetoric you wish, but it would be like arguing sharks don't exist just because you've never seen any.

    You're using unawareness as a bias, in the same way I do the opposite.
    The issue is that the odds don't favour you.
  • How Do You Do Science Without Free Will?
    ↪StreetlightX
    History shows plenty of examples otherwise.
    Rotten meat being bad for ingestion is a clear cut one.

    It is contentious; let's not fool ourselves.
  • How Do You Do Science Without Free Will?
    Funny how an 'innate understanding' had to be invented by theologians a couple of hundred years ago before which it was nowhere to be found. — StreetlightX
    That's an incorrect bias, as it firstly doesn't have to be invented, secondly it would be proposed, not invented, and lastly an innate understanding isn't something limited to the human species.

    If you want to be contentious, okay, but this rhetoric is just whining and moping.
  • How Do You Do Science Without Free Will?
    You've changed your tune. I thought that it was an "innate understanding", i.e. a funny feeling. — S
    I haven't. I told you, and you can quote me, it's an innate understanding with basis in observations that should be plainly obvious.

    To use the ship example - you observe ships hind and forth the horizon; and you either get what it means, or you don't.
    No amount of analysis is going to change that; which I also implied earlier on.
  • How Do You Do Science Without Free Will?
    ↪S
    It's not a funny feeling but a logical observation. Like how ships traveling behind the horizon and back would imply the world is rounded.
  • How Do You Do Science Without Free Will?
    ↪S
    A fully determined world is fully mechanical; it doesn't support will.
  • On Antinatalism
    Only having children can be either ethical or unethical; the opposite is void.

    The ethics of childbirth likewise do not fall down to conception, but discipline - the discipline of the parents and the discipline the child may inherit from the parents.

    Not having children is far more harmful to humanity than having children as it is entirely self destructive, whereas having children is progressive and offers benefits.
  • Can Consciousness be Simulated?
    Simulations of Consciousness - otherwise known as NPCs.
  • How Do You Do Science Without Free Will?
    No, I still think that that's just wordplay. — S
    That's fine.
  • How Do You Do Science Without Free Will?
    No he wouldn't, that's just wordplay. The puppet would have no free will over his actions at all. — S
    It's not that the puppet would possess free will, it's that the puppet is an extension of the puppeteer who possesses free will, and thus that free will would be relayed to the puppet; so the puppet by itself isn't autonomous, but autonomous in regard that it is being autonomously operated.

    To be concise - the puppet doesn't posess free will but is possessed by free will.
  • How Do You Do Science Without Free Will?
    ↪S
    Whether free will is a misnomer, I'm not sure; but at least I personally believe it isn't, as it is a compound of Freedom and Will, which should be fairly obvious to discern in the aforementioned context. Perhaps certain types of interpretation can induce the feeling of 'free will' as a misnomer or oxymoron; it wouldn't be surprising.

    How do know you that there's a lack of necessity? Is it anything more than a feeling that you have freedom of choosing between doing this or doing that? — S
    It is difficult to describe as anything but an innate understanding; but essentially, if flux permeates then that would allot for chaos which would subsequently allot for freedom in place of necessity.
    Obviously this does not wholly exclude necessity; as we've discussed, flux includes necessity in order to have freedom function.

    Regardless if our interaction is autonomous or scripted, flux is present and we are aware of it.
    If flux is somehow a falsity, then the question falls void - as nothing is actually happening.
    So if we trust our awareness, flux is indubitable and thus this would allow someone to know that there is free will, with its lack of necessity.
    Even if the person in question was puppeteered, he would share in the free will of his autonomous operator.
  • Alternatives to 'new atheism'
    ↪Pattern-chaser
    Quite the opposite. I'm saying that guesswork does have a basis in logic, as it is reasoning about something. Illogical guesswork would be more akin to moping.
  • Alternatives to 'new atheism'
    we're guessing, without basis in logic or fact — Pattern-chaser
    :ok:
  • Get Creative!
    LtlMFKi.png
  • How Do You Do Science Without Free Will?
    ↪S
    It was partly non-determined due to a lack of necessity.
    Until it happened, it was in the state prescribed to Schrödinger's cat - in that it equally could and could not happen.

    This lack of necessity in due allows for the action to be free - but as aforementioned, the rigidness of the happening or acting is what makes it partly determined. Earlier I likened this process, to moulding water through a vessel.

    If there is no rigidness, or this determined part - there can be no acting.
    Likewise, there needs to be some freedom to allot for this rigidness.

    All in all, you're quite right that free will is partly-free-and-partly-determined will.
    It is essentially a flux, that allows for free interaction - but interacting itself, obviously requires determinability.
  • How Do You Do Science Without Free Will?
    But I did so, and that was determined. So whence the supposed freedom? Isn't that just an assumption, and an assumption contradicted by the acknowledgement that my course of action was determined? — S
    It was determined - but partly, not fully.
    That's what I'm trying to get at.

    And this is not my assumption, but observation - though if my explanation isn't sufficiently thorough, perhaps Janus or someone else may offer a better one?

    Perhaps though, this isn't something to be analytically explained at all - and is more so something to be innately understood, as for instance - time?
  • Alternatives to 'new atheism'
    ↪Pattern-chaser
    I'm curious as to how one would go about denying the existence of something one is actively aware of.

    If it does not exist, where from and how does one acquire this awareness?

    If we level God with plenty of theories - it might just be that the average man isn't sufficiently advanced, technologically or otherwise, to observe God; as was the case with Black Holes until recently.
  • Adam Eve and the unjust punishment
    What's bad about good? — TheMadFool
    Too much good is no good.
  • Alternatives to 'new atheism'
    So we cannot even suggest that (for example) God's existence is vanishingly unlikely, because we have no basis on which to estimate any numerical value of probability. — Pattern-chaser
    One might say the scales tip slightly in favor of God, due to the minuscule amount of awareness there is of God - necessary for the disccusion.

    To discuss whether there is or isn't God - well, you would need God; and the same would apply for any object in place of God, correct?

    Yet there is the situation of people being and having been unaware of certain flora and fauna, that does exist and did exist prior to its discovery and being situated in to human awareness.

    If something that one is completely unaware of does exist - then how do you go about denying the existence of something you are aware of, if even mildly?
  • How Do You Do Science Without Free Will?
    ↪S
    But you don't have to turn on the light; you can, but it isn't necessary.

    That your decision may and is influenced does not negate the freedom of the act, but capitalises on it.
    The freedom in free will is what allows it to be influenced; if it was absolutely free, it would be no different from absolutey determined and equally unyielding to influence.

    I feel we see the same thing, but you're focusing moreso on how the two clash, whereas I, and perhaps Janus, focus on how freedom and determinability compliment each other.
  • Living Gas!
    ↪TheMadFool
    There's plenty of gaseous lifeforms, provided you look up.
  • Zeno and Immortality
    Perhaps there's a problem with the model we're using - the number line. — TheMadFool
    I don't see a problem with the model, moreso with its presentation.
    A lens can magnify or reduce the size of an object, so you can manipulate its relative size.

    If you zoom in, the length seems long - too long; but if you zoom out for instance, it'll look curiously short.
  • How Do You Do Science Without Free Will?
    ↪S
    In the sense that choices are autonomous, but not without consequence.
    It (free will) is free, not dictated, but not peeled off from the universe - so it may influence it, or be influenced by it.

    Free will, as you may discern, is a mixture of freedom and will.
    To offer an analogy it's half water and half vessel.
    Freedom deals with the water, which by itself is formless; whereas will deals with the vessel, which is rigid.

    So for free will to function, you would require will to mould freedom; which obviously allots for determinability.
  • Zeno and Immortality
    One of Zeno's most famous paradox has to do with Achilles never being able to catch a tortoise that's been given a head start in a race because of the impossibility of having to traverse an infinite number of points between the two.

    Using the same principle on a person x born 1976 and died 2019 can we say that x is immortal given that x had to experience an infinite number of time intervals?     — TheMadFool
    The amount of partitions does no matter, provided you take the inertia in to account - it still takes the same amount of time for Achilles to catch the tortoise and to reach 2019 from 1976.

    The trick is in the conflation of speed and distance.
  • Should hate speech be allowed ?
    Why? It's causing no physical damage — Isaac
    Cue the line: Everything is physical.
  • What is the difference between actual infinity and potential infinity?
    ↪TheMadFool
    The difference is presentation versus application; simulation versus stimulation.
  • Adam Eve and the unjust punishment
    ↪Gnostic Christian Bishop
    Egyptian accounts are irrelevant in the context of Genesis.

    You fail. Go to an actual museum, instead of loitering around the forum.
  • On Antinatalism
    In my defense, the other guy is also quite insufferable. Shamshir or whatever his name was. — khaled
    Can it, weenie.
  • Adam Eve and the unjust punishment
    Not when Satan or the talking serpent is there with a power that god gave her to deceive the whole world. — Gnostic Christian Bishop
    Irrelevant. A natural consequence of their blank state free will is that they could be deceived. No bias, no prejudice.

    So a coin toss as they knew not what they were choosing. — Gnostic Christian Bishop
    Coin toss or not - a choice is a choice.

    You indicated that Satan had no role. Did she or didn't she and if she did, what role? — Gnostic Christian Bishop
    As far as Edem is concerned, the title Satan is not present.

    Name the three origins of the Edem story, or stop spitting.
  • Adam Eve and the unjust punishment
    What free will could A & E have when they did not know anything of good and evil? — Gnostic Christian Bishop
    They started from a blank state - meaning no bias, meaning they were truly free.

    To make a free willed choice and not a coin flip, one must know what one is choosing from. Right? — Gnostic Christian Bishop
    Wrong. To make a free willed choice, one must merely choose.

    You cannot order lunch without knowing what is on the menu. Right? — Gnostic Christian Bishop
    You can - and you'll be informed whether it is or isn't available.

    A & E could not even desire to choose without knowledge of what they were choosing. — Gnostic Christian Bishop
    Then how were they tempted? Because they could.

    And that's the story.
  • Adam Eve and the unjust punishment
    If we bring omnipotence into the picture then additional problems arise because he could've easily pressed the reset button. — TheMadFool
    The problem is - that denies free will.
    Remember, they're not puppets; so the choice is accepted, and paired with appropriate consequences.
  • Adam Eve and the unjust punishment
    But you can’t give that kind of capacity to a couple of two-year olds and expect them to learn any kind of humility, let alone teach them to make right judgements when any judgement is just as effective in the short term. — Possibility
    And that's why you don't take candy from strangers.
  • How Do You Do Science Without Free Will?
    Isaac is entirely right that 'free will' is destructive of responsibility, and not in any sense an enabling condition — StreetlightX
    What is a puppet responsible for?
  • Rhetorical Questions aren't questions at all. How stupid is that?
    I have believed that every question deserves an answer. So how can I be right if rhetorical questions demand no answer? — Serving Zion
    Perhaps 2 Esdras 4 may help answer your question.

    For what is often interpreted as a question without need for an answer, is but a question of fitting.
    It is a certain question, with a certain form, that allots for a certain answer that fits.
    But all rhetoric falls prey to "I don't know", as it's not necessary to know and thus to fit.
  • On Antinatalism
    I'm getting close to calling you a moron and leaving it at that — khaled
    But you won't, for the same reasons you won't have kids - you can't commit.

    Poor self-inflicted little martyr~
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