Comments

  • Buxtabuddha...
    Eccentricities exist on a spectrum of deviating from some norm, no? So, what's the norm? — Posty McPostface
    By eccentricities I referred to actions which are peculiar to an individual (such as some swearing is to Buxta), but which are otherwise irrelevant - they don't cause any harm.
  • Buxtabuddha...
    So, what's the norm here if we're talking about eccentricities? — Posty McPostface
    There is no norm, they are eccentricities.
  • Buxtabuddha...
    Also you spelled "Buxtebuddha" wrong in your image. — Michael
    What about the title?
  • How to interpret the Constitution
    The Court has too much unchecked power, but I do take great comfort in knowing that we will have a long conservative era where now young children will be able to live out most of their formative years without being subjected to liberal jurisprudence. The Trump legacy is now indelibly marked on a generation. The Republican blockade of Obama's attempt to select a justice is now appearing all the more brilliant and all the more important. — Hanover
    :strong: :wink:
  • To See Everything Just As It Is
    but are you suggesting that Nietzsche unfairly caricatured Christianity? — Erik
    Yes, more or less, this is exactly what I think. Nietzsche painted a fair picture of the popular Christianity in his day and age, but certainly not a historically accurate picture, nor an accurate picture of what Christianity actually is (instead of what people THINK it is). Kierkegaard has much the same criticisms of Christianity that Nietzsche does, of course phrased somewhat differently. But it's true that the Christianity of the 19th century was fake, by and large, and no longer authentic.

    That genuine Christianity - as opposed to Nietzsche's straw man - doesn't posit another "true" world in the beyond which serves to falsify and condemn this one? — Erik
    Yes, I don't think it does. The world is essential to Christianity, human beings were created to be co-creators along with God. The purpose of man is to harmoniously guard and continue the creative process initiated by God. That cannot be world-denying as some forms of Buddhism are for example. (although, to be fair, no religion could exist without world-affirming elements).

    I think his evidence that it does is pretty compelling, with things like pride and the accumulation of power being seen as sins against God rather than as natural expressions of ascending life. I assumed the other world for Christians is one where the meek shall reign supreme and the proud shall be eternally punished. — Erik
    Okay, I see what you mean, but I think this is misinterpreting the Christian message. Pride in Christianity represents the sin committed by Lucifer and human beings in rebelling against the will of God, and putting their own selfish will above God's. This is seeking to dominate other beings and twist them to one's own will, instead of protecting them and contributing harmoniously to the creative unfolding of existence. In a way, pride is exactly what prevents one from being open to the call of Being, and leads one to remain caught up in the calculative, instrumental mode of thinking so characteristic of our world today.

    But, this kind of pride isn't the same thing as the self-confidence and self-mastery Nietzsche was talking about by using the word pride. Indeed, the Apostles themselves displayed this sort of self-confidence and self-mastery when they went to their death for their faith, unflinchingly. And most of the greatest Christian thinkers (such as Aquinas) have never concluded that the accumulation of power is an evil. They would say that power, just like everything else, comes from God, and he who is given a lot of power, has a lot of responsibility to use it to do God's will. So becoming powerful is a good thing, so long as this power is used for good.

    That Heaven and Earth will be ultimately be reconciled? — Erik
    This is the entire point of Christianity...


    But can Christians or Muslims, for instance, have knowledge of that transcendent world beyond vague hopes and descriptions? — Erik
    There is no transcendent world. Heaven is not separate from the world. Human beings lived on the Earth before the Fall, and that was Heaven. It was human beings who made it (this same world) not Heaven. And similarly, at one point this world will again be Heaven (that is God's promise).

    To repeat, Heaven in those religions is regarded as a "transcendent" world which the living are denied access to, right? That's like the sine qua non of these religions, the ultimate promise to the faithful. — Erik
    Were Adam & Eve before the Fall "living"? Will Heaven and Earth be united in the end? If so, then the living are not denied access to Heaven. In addition to that, the process of theosis (or divinization) occurs while someone is part of the world. Not to mention that Christianity talks of a bodily resurrection... So someone can be both divine and part of the world, again, suggesting that there is no conflict between the world and Heaven. There is also no devaluation of the body.

    I just don't think most religious believers would countenance this philosophical position of yours at all as it relates to their highest hopes. — Erik
    Most religious believers are not experts in their religion. Just like most people who listen to music aren't experts in music. Aquinas does discuss multiple levels of understanding of God, each one deeper than the previous one. There is the popular level understanding of God as a Father in the Sky, and then there are deeper levels, including that of the philosophers and that of the mystics.

    So to get back to the point, why should it be a concern for me that most religious believers would not agree with my position? Does not having majority agreement make me wrong? Should that even be relevant to deciding what Christianity actually teaches?
  • To See Everything Just As It Is
    More specifically, as contrasted with an other-worldly transcendence which slanders and devalues this world in favor of an imagined future one: a la traditional Christianity. — Erik
    But this "other-worldly" transcendence is actually no transcendence at all since it is in-truth conceptualized as another immanent possibility of the world. It is actually a devaluation of transcendence. For example, Heaven is not a different world than this one, it is actually this Earth, and this nature that will be healed and lifted up. The position that the world is entirely sick, beyond redemption, is a heresy in Christianity. And even if it wasn't - another world is still a world, and therefore not transcendent. Whatever can be brought into the world as a thing or state of affairs is not transcendent. So the "other-worldly" transcendence, located in a different world, is a contradiction in terms. Transcendence is not worldly - it is not a different world. Transcendence exists at every point in the world, and in every world. It is not another thing in the world. It is not something that can be immanentized - brought into the world, captured within your hands. If it was, then it would not be transcendent. It is much more of a pervading (creative, active) quality that can be tapped into anywhere and at any time. It is what Spinoza called natura naturans, or indeed "the will to power" or whatever you want to call the active force that drives natura naturata. The will to power is self-overcoming - it is transcendence itself that shines through the world, pervades it. It is like the air that pervades the lungs.

    But wouldn't Nietzsche say that values brought forth by the Ubermensch lie completely within himself, i.e. within his own being now understood as a manifestation of nature (synonymous with will to power)? — Erik
    What is the self-overcoming of the Ubermensch if not precisely this (self-)transcendence? Nietzsche merely subjectivises this transcendence but does not eliminate it. The values brought forth by the Ubermensch cannot lie completely within himself - if they did, there would be no self-overcoming, no creation of values.
  • To See Everything Just As It Is
    this-worldly) "spirituality" — Erik
    Is spirituality in its healthy form not always both "this-worldy" (immanent) and "other-worldly" (transcendent)? It seems that "this-worldly" action is always informed by "other-worldly" understanding. Even if you take Nietzsche who despised the transcendent - wasn't the value creation of the Ubermensch transcendent itself? Where did the value come from, if it wasn't in the world before the Ubermensch? It was the Ubermensch who revealed it, who made it present, and who thereby creatively changed and affirmed the fullness of the world. There is a tension here that must be maintained between the transcendent and the immanent. Plato would call it a metaxy.

    So the concept of "God" is irrelevant. You can drop the word (as Nietzsche did - "God is dead") but you cannot drop the content - it just gets re-attributed to another concept. The creative action of the Ubermensch has a transcendent source, the Ubermensch reaches out beyond himself to bring what did not exist immanently into existence. So this relationship that Dasein has with Being is a relationship with something that transcends Dasein - and it is only by remembering this relationship (ie, raising up the question of Being anew) that Dasein can be authentic in his immanent actions. The immanent actions are informed by this understanding of Being.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    That's a fair point. I didn't watch the stickman psychos video yet, but I soon will in order to understand everything about you. :joke: :fire: — Baden
    :lol:
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    Rationally Kim knows that unless he does something he will lose power sooner or later. He is squeezed to the very end at the moment, and his nukes aren't going to save him. Those nukes will not protect him from getting a bullet shot through his head by one of his guards, or someone from his regime, who simply cannot tolerate the dwindling access to resources that they have as NK gets squeezed out on the global stage. Dictators succeed because they reward exceedingly a plethora of key players under them. When they're no longer able to do so, they will be killed.

  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    Calculated concession?? :gasp: ;) — Baden
    Now you're learning :joke:

    Claiming that you shouldn't give anything away for free in a negotiation is not really the same as saying you should never consider making a calculated concession, which I agree with you could be a good idea given the right circumstances (even though it's always a risky strategy in proportion especially to the size of the concession). So, a calculated concession is not really giving something for free as it only succeeds when it's reciprocated, i.e. the concession reduces either to a surreptitious trade or it fails. So, here there's no evidence the military exercises concession was calculated to put pressure on NK, no evidence that they gave anything in return, and no evidence that it puts any pressure on them to do so. Further, Trump mentioned money when he spoke about it, which, if that is part of the motivation, is an absurd consideration at this point in the chess game. So, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck... — Baden
    The thing to consider is how negatively you will be affected if your concession is not reciprocated. In that case, in this situation, you just lose a little bit of face, but other than that, nothing is lost. NK is just too weak to be able to do anything - sure, they may deceive with the nuclear program for awhile, but that's it. The moment the U.S. gets angry, it will be over for them, and the concession will be taken back, at literarily no loss. Who cares that dictators around the world are happy? Feeling happy does not change their fate, nor does it make them stronger. It may impact our culture to one extent or another, but that's it. And the impact will be, imo, overall positive, since it's part of the deconstruction of the politically correct status quo which is much needed in order to allow free thinking to flourish and help the West escape from the impasse we find ourselves in.

    im, morally speaking, is hardly above Hitler, Stalin, or Saddam Hussein in terms of his brutality (if not the damage he's managed to exact with it). — Baden
    I agree. :eyes:

    But again, was this a calculated concession or a simple giveaway to him and every other tyrant the world over? I'd bet on the latter. It's simply that Trump respects, likes, and to a certain degree wishes to emulate strongmen. It's part of his political character. — Baden
    Sure, but in that case it's irrelevant. Kim doesn't actually become any stronger unless he will have Trump's continued support, and that will require that he play his part too. So what exactly is the giveaway from America's point of view? That tyrants around the world get a moment of joy? That's literarily nothing in the chess game.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    ↪John Doe
    It's normal for a real estate developer to have a lot of debt.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    This then allows him to maintain power while he pockets $300mil in a Rosneft deal with Russia, sells trade policy to China in exchange for $500mil loans to his company, and forces more and more rounds of diplomatic horse-trading that go through his hotel in D.C. — John Doe
    Come on man, that's pocket change at that level... Talk about a couple billion dollars, and I might believe you.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    (First rule of negotiation: Never give anything away for free). — Baden
    Not necessarily. Concessions are important to make, and a freely made concession will sometimes elicit a concession from the other side as well - or at least will put greater pressure for one... ie, I did this for you, now when I ask for a favor, you better do it for me.

    3) The excessive praise of Kim was unnecessary and will only embolden autocratic tyrants around the world (not to mention Kim himself). — Baden
    I think from a negotiation point of view that praise was great. It showed Kim that Trump is willing to accept him on the world stage if he obeys, which is exactly what the North Koreans have wanted for so long. That's why they got nukes in the first place, they wanted to sit down at the table with the big boys and play (that didn't work out very well).

    1) A commitment (if not a timetable, which at this stage would have been an unrealistic demand) to CVI (Complete, Verifiable, and Irreversible) denuclearisation from North Korea was expected to be and should have been a red line demand from the US coming into the summit. — Baden
    Agreed.
  • The Last Word
    From the bottom of my heart, I sincerely Thank you~ — ArguingWAristotleTiff
    No worries, glad I could have been of some help to you :)
  • Your take on/from college.
    An education helps improve a person as it increases one's ability to intellectually process what is going on around one — LD Saunders

    Would you take out $40,000 in loans to take a vacation for "personal enrichment?" — Pneumenon
    Another thing many people don't realise is that you can learn those subjects by yourself. Really, even in a technical subject like civil engineering (what I studied), you end up learning most of it by yourself. Many times what is in the lectures doesn't even come up on the exam - you have to study, research and read by yourself. So really, the university doesn't do anything except tell you what you need to study and provide a framework of easy access to books. You're still learning yourself.
  • Your take on/from college.
    ↪Coldlight
    I agree with a lot of this. The other disadvantage of working a job is that if you lose your job, you literarily have no way to earn your money - you need to go hunting for another job. But someone who has learned to produce or create anything valuable by themselves can always make money seemingly out of nothing. So in the long-run, the one who has a job, and has been trained, over many years, to do the same things, and to work within an already created mechanism, will not be able to fend for himself if he loses that job. In this sense, he is significantly less safe than even a mediocre producer.
  • Your take on/from college.
    But anyway, I don't think this college college college is good advice for young people.

    It's YOUR life, you have to decide how you want to live it. It's simply a fact that if only money is your concern, then you don't need a college degree - don't waste your time. Waste your time on starting a business and learning useful skills (you can do that through the internet pretty much for free today). If I were you Posty, I wouldn't waste a second studying economics at University - you can learn that on your own, better than the so-called experts. Start trading stocks, investing, etc. that's how you'll learn practical stuff that actually matters. If you want to go to university, I recommend at least studying something where you actually need a university degree to practice.

    If, however, your dream is to be a professor, lawyer, doctor, etc. then obviously you have to go to college... not because you'll learn anything useful there, but because you must have that piece of paper to be allowed to practice (what a crooked world - where the so-called experts want to monopolise the field only to themselves and others like them. This is one good thing I learned from a Professor at university - don't trust the experts, they want to pretend to know, in order to charge you - you be the expert. It's been golden advice).
  • Your take on/from college.
    I can tell you 100% that college was useless for me. Nobody ever asks me for a CV - nobody. Not even one person. Nobody knows what I studied in college, if I even went to college, etc. And nobody cares. They just care that I fix their problems.

    If you want to advertise your law practice on the internet, or re-do your website, will you care what degree Agustino holds? Or will you simply care whether or not Agustino can get the job done well for you? Clearly the latter, the former would be absolutely ridiculous :lol: - who does that? Maybe if you were a middle-level manager in a multinational corporation, and you had to justify yourself to your superiors for hiring Agustino - then you may care whether I have a degree, because if I screw up, you need to cover your tracks and say that you did your best (and of course, what better way to cover your tracks than hide behind the cultural prejudice that degree = more capable).
  • Your take on/from college.
    The vast majority of wealthy people have college degrees. www.google.com/amp/s/qz.com/969659/despite-the-myth-of-the-billionaire-college-dropout-most-wealthy-americans-have-a-degree/amp/ — Hanover
    Evidently. 30% of billionaires don't have a college degree.

    However, that 30% is very high, and shows that not having a degree is not a shortcoming to even making a fortune, much less to merely making a living. Think about it - if you were right, and having a PhD, etc. increased your earnings, then why are there fewer PhD billionaires and 4x more dropouts :rofl: ? It is almost a requirement to be a billionaire that you must be a dropout. Why such high preponderance of dropouts amongst the billionaires?

    It's not poor judgment. It's just the fact it's hard to land that first real job and during that difficult period one questions having gone to college. The point is that that education will eventually pay off and your drop out will get further left in the dust. — Hanover
    That is because college teaches you nothing useful for society. I've gone to college, and it's not about landing a job at all. I don't care about landing a job, I care about freedom, and I gained that through entrepreneurship and learning to solve actual problems and do things that help others. You don't need a college degree to do that.
  • Your take on/from college.
    There is no disadvantage in receiving an education — Hanover
    There are disadvantages. The main ones are:

    • Debt
    • Social Pressure
    • Wasted energy while young (education can be very long if you do PhD, etc.)

    despite the disagreement by those typically young people who simply have not given themselves adequate time to secure meaningful employment. — Hanover
    Why do you reckon being young is a disadvantage when it comes to judging? Perhaps the young have their minds freer than the old, who are already conditioned by society, and hence not free.
  • Your take on/from college.
    ↪Hanover
    By the way, are those median wages for US gross or net?
  • Your take on/from college.
    ↪Posty McPostface
    My personal take is, that if you are a smart, studious and cultured fella, and you don't want to become something like a doctor/lawyer/professor, then college is pretty much useless.

    ↪Hanover
    Hmm, shall I post stats about billionaires? :joke:

    From here:
    There are also more college dropouts than PhDs on the Forbes 400 billionaire list – 63 to 21.

    But yes, if you are an average person who lacks discipline, lacks direction, doesn't self-motivate, etc. then you're probably SAFER with a college degree (though not necessarily better off). As for unemployment rate... usually PhD graduates are too dumb to be unemployed. It takes a certain degree of intelligence to step out of the usual, traditional way of doing things, and by the time you complete your PhD, you are usually fully indoctrinated by society. You start thinking of yourself as superior to others, now you cannot afford to be unemployed, what will people say?! You, the PhD graduate unemployed? What a shame!
  • David Hume's Argument Against The Goodness Of The Whole
    But we need not be Epicureans if we are atheists, and in fact this Epicureanism is the same sort of thing that Hume is complaining about - it doesn't actually help in reality. — darthbarracuda
    LOL - then why did Hume think that death is nothing to be feared, and died in a very peaceful & calm manner, such that even his enemies were impressed? Clearly, Hume did not think the Epicurean position was anything abstract at all - at least not in practice.

    Epicurus' principle does not explain why people so desperately cling to life, nor does it help alleviate their suffering. It is just another mantra. — darthbarracuda
    It does - because people are irrational.

    Death may not harm us in any empirical sort of way, but it surely does still hurt us in the form of annihilation. — darthbarracuda
    An Epicurean would ask - what is there to annihilate? As would Hume.

    Losing one's identity, having one's projects foiled by the inevitable échec, our downfall, that is bad. — darthbarracuda
    That happens even within life.

    I could retort that the continuation of existence is atheistic in that the person does not have enough trust or faith in God to expect deliverance after death. God, predictably, has commanded everyone to live and breed, so maybe that criticism doesn't work. But you get the idea. — darthbarracuda
    That's not the only issue. Suicide is prohibited almost universally across the different religions. It is up to God to decide when to call someone back. As for why a theist would be sad upon death, it is merely because they will be temporarily separated from the people that they love who remain behind in the world.

    The failure of theodicy forms a key aspect of God's mysterious ways. — darthbarracuda
    What about the Book of Job?
  • David Hume's Argument Against The Goodness Of The Whole
    Can you spell this out? — darthbarracuda
    Someone gave me this awhile ago, and I've become a lot more sympathetic to it over time than I was at first.

    I am speculating is that theism is a form of psychological repression that has origins not only in the economic structure of society but also existential crises surrounding death and annihilation. — darthbarracuda
    But on the contrary, why would death be a bad thing on atheism? As Epicurus illustrated, if atheism is true, death is nothing to us. So why would there be any kind of existential crisis surrounding death whatsoever? I think that quite the contrary, death anxiety is a manifestation of theism - namely you are afraid of what comes after death, as Hamlet put it in his soliloquy.
  • David Hume's Argument Against The Goodness Of The Whole
    Dostoevsky's characters reflect a man with many contradictory perspectives. — darthbarracuda
    Dostoevsky was a believer in God, a firm believer in fact. He was very critical of the Ivan type of atheists.

    Sure, if the majority was unable to repress, the human race wouldn't exist. — darthbarracuda
    How is this a repression?

    Are you trying to pull an ontological argument here? — darthbarracuda
    No, this would be an argument from desire.
  • David Hume's Argument Against The Goodness Of The Whole
    Jean Amery, Dostoevsky, Levinas, to name three I am reading right now. — darthbarracuda
    What are you talking about? Dostoevsky was a religious man, he died with the Bible in his lap. And Levinas wasn't exactly an atheist either. Don't know about Jean Amery.

    Yet there are also many, many people who were believers, and who went through all sorts of awful experiences and came out stripped of their religious beliefs — darthbarracuda
    Just a minority though.

    This emptiness is mostly humans wanting God to be real when he is not. — darthbarracuda
    There would be no desire if there was nothing that could fulfil that desire...
  • Vegan Ethics
    You only live once. — Sapientia
    #YOLO! :rofl:

    What a joker :joke:
  • David Hume's Argument Against The Goodness Of The Whole
    Hume's point seems to be that talk of cosmic harmony and theistic benevolence only comforts those who aren't suffering. — darthbarracuda
    It depends what you mean by comfort. It doesn't take away the pain of those who are suffering, but it makes it easier to psychologically accept their situation, and in that sense, it does provide comfort. And this is undeniable, it's simply a matter of fact. Just look at the sheer number of people who have gone through tremendous suffering who are believers in God, and who have faith that God will redeem them.

    despite its implausibility from the perspective of those most acquainted with evil, must not truly understand what suffering or moral injustice is like. — darthbarracuda
    There is no implausibility there. Read, for example, Viktor Frankl's Man's Search For Meaning. Or read Solzhenitsyn. Or take your pick from the sufferers - you'll find more believers there than amongst those who never suffer.

    So Hume is simply factually wrong if he wants to claim that theodicy does not provide psychological comfort to those who are suffering. He is right merely if we restrict what he says to mean simply that theodicy does not take the pain of those who are suffering away.
  • David Hume's Argument Against The Goodness Of The Whole
    Hume's point was that were you to believe in God you would have to accept that He ought to be smart enough to figure out a world in which there was no gout at all. — charleton
    That is to suppose that we could get all the other good things without the bad ones. I don't grant that supposition, I see no reason for making it. The possibility for good seems to necessarily entail the possibility of evil. So nothing God can do about that.

    Yes, I do read what you write, and I also notice the posts you refuse to answer or acknowlege. — charleton
    Such as?
  • David Hume's Argument Against The Goodness Of The Whole
    So why don't you get it? — charleton
    LOL - do you even read what I write?! I said the POSSIBILITY of gout is necessitated by our biological structure. Not the actuality of it. So I don't have it right now, but it's always possible that I will get it.
  • David Hume's Argument Against The Goodness Of The Whole
    The world could quite easily exist without the pain of gout - that's the bloody point!! — charleton
    Nope. That makes utterly no sense. The possibility of gout is necessitated by our biological structure, and our biological structure had to evolve the way it did for us to be who we are today, and have these bodies that we do today, which in many ways are absolutely wonderful. So you have to accept the possibility of the mistakes, the bad things, etc. as part and parcel of what it takes for such bodies as ours to evolve and to exist.
  • David Hume's Argument Against The Goodness Of The Whole
    asinine! — charleton
    Do tell us why.
  • David Hume's Argument Against The Goodness Of The Whole
    "Those remote considerations" -- metaphysical theories that do not taken into considerations individual experiences. Individuals have sentiments, emotions, identity, and individual decisions. — Caldwell
    Sure, individuals have all that. How are they not taken into account? When I see that the possibility for useful pain, that helps me prevent a greater evil, requires the presence of useless pain - when I see this fact of nature in ALL my experiences - how is it possible to claim that my feelings, sentiments, emotions, identity, etc. aren't taken into account?
  • David Hume's Argument Against The Goodness Of The Whole
    He is observing that people in general do not find such Leibnizian "All's for the best in this best of all possible worlds" arguments helpful. — andrewk
    In what way helpful? It's not helpful in decreasing the pain you feel or making you recover from the pain faster. But it is helpful in the aid it provides to enable you to psychologically understand why you need to come to terms with the situation as it is.

    I think Hume has specifically in mind arguments where the good can only be speculatively assumed, not those where the good is well understood, such as a vaccination. To this end, note the following phrase in the second paragraph: 'such remote and uncertain speculations'.

    Expectation of immunity from polio after a vaccination is not a remote and uncertain speculation.     — andrewk
    This doesn't make much sense to me. You don't need to appeal to God / religion in a consciously aware sense, in order to realise that the possibility of good in life hinges on the possibility of bad, and if we eliminate bad, we also thereby eliminate good. Why do you think this insight requires "speculative and remote" considerations? I don't see anything remote about this - just seriously think about your own life, you will see that it is so. In fact, quite the contrary from being remote, it is one of those facts which is closest to you, perhaps that's why it is difficult for some to see it.
  • David Hume's Argument Against The Goodness Of The Whole
    That gets the silly post of the week award. I'm not talking about s stubbed toe or a paper cut. Gout is is pain beyond reason. That's why I made the comment. — charleton
    *facepalm*

    This is ridiculous... Yes, I am aware that gout is pain beyond reason. I don't need to experience gout to know what you mean by pain beyond reason, I've experienced GI tract infection that kept me in continuous acute pain - such pain that I couldn't even sleep, even though I was super tired, along with fever and other symptoms. I am fully aware of what pain beyond reason is.

    But the argument is valid, even if this is pain beyond reason. Such pain beyond reason must be possible for us to have evolved to what we are today, according to the theory of evolution. So if you want to have the good, you have to say yes to the evil as well, as Nietzsche would put it. This is why Hume's argument is a joke.

    Sure, it is pain beyond reason. But this doesn't mean that the metaphysical assertion that even evil is good for the whole in the end is false. For example, you can clearly understand from studying evolutionary biology, that without mistakes, pain, etc. we couldn't have developed in the first place. It's a clear fact - undeniable. It's simply undeniable, that regardless of how bad it feels, the possibility of such bad is necessary to have any good at all.

    There is no use to it and the pain of it is unreasonable since there is no evolutionary benefit to such extreme pain. — charleton
    True, however, the possibility of such useless pain as that of gout is required in order for other goods in the world to be possible (such as useful pain). You cannot have useful pain without also having the possibility for useless pain.
  • Lack Of Seriousness...
    In my assessment, both the problem and the solution are fundamentally about control, and my advice would be stoical in nature, as well as pragmatic. Put simply, take control. Focus less on your frustration, and focus more on doing what needs to be done. What good will bemoaning the situation do? You already know what needs to be done. Either do it, or learn to accept the less-than-ideal situation you find yourself in. — Sapientia
    This is good advice.
  • Lust for risk
    It's okay if you are celibate, or gay or whatever. This is the 21st C. You ought to be less sensitive and more honest - it might do you some good. — charleton
    I said that you're not serious, and you're merely proving my point, running away from real engagement and discussion. Come on - what are you afraid of? Until now you were very loud-mouthed and belligerent, why the changed attitude? :brow:
  • Lack Of Seriousness...
    ↪ArguingWAristotleTiff
    And inversely, people who have contributed very little to social security, and now enjoy a huge pension because... corruption :lol:
  • Lack Of Seriousness...
    USA — ArguingWAristotleTiff
    No, not in the USA.

    In hind sight, they should have taken the salaries and then loaned the money back to the company. — ArguingWAristotleTiff
    Well, it's not so simple. It depends how big the salary to be paid to themselves would be (relative to the other salaries) and also how big taxes on salaries are. Where I operate taxes on salaries are very high... ~35% or so. So you can imagine that it's not very good to pay a salary for yourself, then loan the company with that money, and then pay the salary to employees again - you effectively pay the tax 2 times that way. And anyway, the governments in Eastern Europe are very crooked - I know people who have contributed a lot to Social Security, etc. and are left with virtually nothing now. So not the smartest thing to do here.
  • Lust for risk
    ↪Count Radetzky von Radetz
    But now in all seriousness, I've addressed why the comment was so long in the comment itself - charle was the incarnation of a very pernicious & idiotic cultural attitude, which extends far beyond him. He was merely the pretext for me to fight my own cultural battle and unmask the attitude in question.
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