It is a different matter that free will is an illusion if you believe in determinism (that is, if you believe that every change and event is caused, and each cause has an effect). It is a different matter also if you believe that god is omnipotent. (Because then god knows the future precisely, and knows when you will sin and that is unavoidable since if you avoided sin that god pre-cognizes, then the pre-knowing would not work; but it works, since god knows everything, therefore you have no free will.)

According to Christian dogma, god gave free will to each person at the moment they are created. Thus, the onus or responsibility to behave morally rests upon the decision of the mortal.

This preempts the responsibility placed on the creator for the morality of the created one, no matter who created whom.

For the record, I am an atheist. But I don't like unreasonable arguments voiced against god's existence. There are so many that stick, that it is unnecessary to create false and arguable objections to dogma. Plus false and arguable claims hurt the credibility of atheism.

People everywhere enjoy believing things that they know are not true. It spares them the ordeal of thinking for themselves and taking responsibility for what they know.

-- forgot to record the source.

If you’d like to give me the unit of measurement behind this statement then we could work from there. — Brett

That's precisely my point. Nobody has such a measurement. Therefore it is futile to talk about measure of complexity.

Complexity is not a measurable quantity. Therefore you can't say this is more complex or that is more complex, as there is no standard to measure complexity with.

I really don't know how better to explain this to you.

If you pretend not to understand it, just say so and I shut up, as it is futile for me then to say anything more in this thread.

If you sincerely do not understand it, just say so and I shut up, as it is futile for me then to say anything more in this thread.

I, for one, really, but really support the idea of licencing reproduction.

This means if I don't get a licence, I am in a position to go out and have as much sex with consenting partners as possible, without ever being bogged down to raise children, which is, basically, a long, continuous headache.

They should have introduced this licencing thing a long time ago.

Are there any theories or papers who have addressed the issue/rise of 'peripheral' countries to become the new 'core'? — argadini

have you tried google? an impromptu search yielded the following results:

Semi-periphery countries - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Semi-periphery_countries
By the nineteenth century, Asia and Africa had also entered the world system as peripheral regions. This development of Africa and Asia as peripheral continents allowed for new cores like the United States and Germany to improve their core status, rising higher within the world system.
Semi-Peripheral Countries and the Contemporary World Crisis
https://www.jstor.org › stable
by I Wallerstein - ‎1976 - ‎Cited by 306 - ‎Related articles
the two periods was the relative bargaining power of lord and serf. The period .... semi-peripheral country rising to core status does so, not merely at the expense ...
Peripheral Country - an overview | ScienceDirect Topics
https://www.sciencedirect.com › topics › computer-science › peripheral-coun...
Olzak (2006) holds that integration of a world economic and political system has ... and increasing levels of economic inequality in peripheral countries, which .... political power wielded by local agents of capital, countries on the periphery of ...
China and global economic stratification in an interdependent ...
https://www.nature.com › palgrave communications › articles
by M Grell-Brisk - ‎2017 - ‎Cited by 5 - ‎Related articles
Sep 1, 2017 - Unlike earlier discourse on the rise of China that revolved around ... What happens when a country like China, which makes up close to 20% of the ... 2) that the world's economic power and influence lay in the core and with a ...
The Rise of Emerging Powers & China and the Enlargement ...
risingpowersproject.com › the-rise-of-emerging-powers-china-and-the-enl...
Sep 23, 2017 - The world system theory developed by Wallerstein (1974, 1979, ... to be relocated to semi-periphery or periphery countries according to their ...
[PDF]The concept of emerging power in international ... - SciELO
www.scielo.br › pdf › rep › 0101-3157-rep-36-01-00046
by PCD FONSECA - ‎2016 - ‎Cited by 18 - ‎Related articles
on the distribution of power among countries has been raised. ... International Monetary Fund, World Bank and other multilateral organizations, without a definitional ... The categories of middle powers, regional powers and semi-periphery.
Semi-peripheral countries and the invention of the 'Third World'
https://www.tandfonline.com › eprint › full
Jump to Regional politics and the rise of an economic vision - As a result, China could increase its textiles ... the period under discussion a power play was ...
Summary of Immanuel Wallerstein's World System Theory
https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu › mod › Wallerstein
A Summary of Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World System: Capitalist .... for manufactured goods from core countries such as England and France rather than ... By increasing the state power to collect taxes, the kings eventually increased ...
France becoming peripheral? Of course. It's called the ...
https://nationalpost.com › opinion › matt-gurney-france-becoming-periphera...
Oct 1, 2012 - In between are the semi-peripheral countries, that have some attributes ... unemployment is rising — the country could soon enter a downward spiral ... but eventually had to settle for great power status in a superpower world.
Searches related to peripheral countries rising to world power
periphery countries

semi periphery countries

what makes a country semi periphery

core countries

is kenya a periphery country

is china a core country

semi periphery nation mcat

why is nigeria a semi periphery country

Yes that is exactly what I said. Yes, our ability to control 'stuff' is very dependent on the complexity of its properties. It is far easier to control light than it is to control how a drug behaves in your body. Our ability to control light was the one of the first achievements of the Enlightenment. It was one of the easiest problems to solve so to speak. — ovdtogt

Please read the rest of my post. Responding to a small portion can make any response valid, but your response is not valid when you consider my whole post.

My post showed that there is no measuring stick to measure complexity. You ignored most of my post and concluded that you are right. That is only acceptable if we all agree to ignore each other's posts, at least partially, and make conclusions on partially read posts. I don't agree to that.

The degree to which you understand how a the engine of a motor vehicle works. That can be from knowing how to drive it to being able to repair it. They are all degrees of knowledge from the simple to the complex. — ovdtogt

This you said in relation to how complex a system IS.

How complex a given system IS, is a fixed state. It is stagnant, not dynamic.

But you now say that a system can be complex and more complex.

You are reducing your argument to a self-contradiction. According to what you said, a system is both complex, and more complex, at the same time. This is necessarily self-contradictory.

Unless you pull in that you did not say "and in the same respect." Yes, the complexity therefore is different as judged by different people; by one who knows how to operate it, and by another one who knows more, that is, to operate it and to repair it.

But then you find yourself at the original problem of measuring complexity. You did not differentiate between complex and complex; you differentiated between the measuring sticks, between "understanding by person A" and "understanding by person B", which does not have an objective, measurable indication of how complex the measured thing is.

(The same argument stands if you say that it is the one and same person who understands the engine to different degrees over time; first, knowing less, then, knowing more. Here the argument would satisfy "in the same respect" but not "at the same time".)

What I am arguing for is a MEASURING DEVICE that indicates objective differences in measurement, given in numerical values, according to differences in complexity. This device exist neither in reality, nor in conceptual form. Therefore those who state one thing (such as a human) is more or less complex than another thing (suc as a hydroelectric dam, or an economic system), can not make their claim stick, their claim is not solid and it is highly susceptible to subjective judgment.

And that was my original point.

Our knowledge evolves from the simple to the complex.

Simple is what you believe you understand. Complex is what you still do not understand.

We have more understanding over the properties of light than consciousness.

We have far more control over light than we have over consciousness. — ovdtogt

Okay. So I understand water, and I understand light. Which is less complex? Your standard of measurement is "I believe I understand it" and "I don't understand it." This is binary. There is no gradation. There is no metric, other the "complex" and "Not complex". You can't, by this metric, differentiate between complex and complex, and between simple and simple.

So... I don't understand consciousness... I don't understand economics... which is more complex? There is no way of telling by your way of measuring complexity, @ovdtogt.

@Brett, if you want to argue that one thing is more complex or less complex than another thing, then you must have a metric of complexity.

Much like 5 cm is longer than 3 cm, or 39 years is longer than 21 days, or speed of light is faster than 4 Km/h, you have to have a measure of complexity if you want to say with any certainty, "a human is more complex than a hydroelectric, damn."

Do you have such a measurement device and unit of complexity by which to establish the degree of complexity?

If yes, what is it?

If not, then you can't possibly argue scientifically that one thing is more complex than the other.

Sure you can say that anyone can tell a longer string by laying two strings side-by-side and NOT knowing how long they are. But you can't say that one star is moving faster or slower than the other, or else that one ball of yarn placed next to another ball of fluff is lighter or heavier than the other.

So I insist that you tell us what the unit measurement of complexity is, and how complex humans are in this measurement scale, and how complex are particular societies, football teams, and those damned hydroelectrics.

humans when engaged in creative acts can never produce something more complex than humans themselves? — TheMadFool

This what you stated and called as obvious, is actually a false sentence and a false proposition. Humans have created much more complex things than humans themselves are.

Examples: hydroelectric dams, car factories, space research tools, aviation systems.

Your first and foremost premise is false.

These might more accurately be described as anti-values. — Pantagruel

Bad values, maybe. If you want to judge someone else's values. Or useless, or negative values. But a value is a value is a value. An inherent worth or the lack of it of something can't be the opposite of value.

Methinks.

"A critic knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing. A cynic knows the price of truth, and the value of humour." -- Socrates, or Aristotle, and/or Plagiar.

Who is 'us'? — ovdtogt

The object / subject of the OP? "The entire population of the world" I think is meant by "US".

It is true that basic American values, core demonstrations of American heritage, and democratic self-realizations are trying to sweep the world -- such as manifested by the proliferation of McDonald's restaurants, Mickey-Mouse watches, and bombing of heavily populated cities -- the reason the world is still not blown up is much attributed to the old-world values of mutual respect, human decency, and fair trade practices. In particular, we owe much of world heritage to the British Royal Family, which carries the flagship of traditional European values: producing as much fornication as possible all over the place (this has virtually become non-existent in the post-AIDS reality of America), feudal railing on the subject by the sovereign, and chopping off heads (of carrots).

“Our essence of Mind is intrinsically pure. If we knew our Mind perfectly and realised what our Self-nature truly is, all of us would be enlightened.” (Bodhisattva Sila Sutra - ca 450 BC) — waechter418

Can you name at least 5 more different ways as per the fundamental brainchild-outsourcing by Socrates and/or Chin Gao Tum, and / or Hirohito, in which we can get enlightened? (Outsourcing brainchildren: the diaspora of the distended Socratic et al philosophy exercised by current methodologists.)

In the Orient this was apparently taken seriously, as – particularly in India, Tibet & China – it brought about a variety of teachings & schools as well as methods & approaches attending the different needs and temperaments of the aspirants of Selfrealisation. — waechter418

Can you name three such schools? Located in Delhi, Shanghai and Tibet City?

In the Orient this was apparently taken seriously, as – particularly in India, Tibet & China – it brought about a variety of teachings & schools as well as methods & approaches attending the different needs and temperaments of the aspirants of Selfrealisation. — waechter418

Would you say that in Burma, in Thailand, in Indonesia, in Malaisasia, in Japan, in Korea and in Naomi Bhruhat, much like in Kamchatka and the most of the Siberian snow-and-ice deserts, the aspirants of Selfrealization lacked methods and approaches and / or the different needs and temperaments attendant to the kernel of the topic?

One final question: how much do you think the change of seasons and the coldness of climate variation within the annum contribute to the aspiration of encompassing knowledge about the scope, domain and range of Selfrealization?

It depends on what the quality is. — Bartricks

Not at all.

For example, take the quality of self-approval — Bartricks

Self-approval is not a quality. It is a noun. Adjectives describe quality.

To be reasonable essentially involves caring what Reason says and believing things precisely because she says to believe them (so, it matters not just what you believe, but how you believe it). As such someone who does not care that much about what Reason has to say on a given matter - someone who, for instance, will not believe something Reason says if it conflicts with something they care about more - is not as reasonable as someone who cares more about what Reason says. So it does follow and you're wrong. — Bartricks

You realize that this second quote by you is bad fantasy, gibberish, nonsense.

Aside from your non-sequitur nonsense, you should know that Reason is not a female person. It is not a person. The reason you use female gender for reason is that in German the word "Vernunft", which is the German word for reason, is of feminine gender. It is also capitalized in German, as all nouns are capitalized in German. You simply copied and pasted some passages from the English translation of Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" too many times, and it mesmerized you to believe that the proper use of reason in English is to capitalize it and use it as a feminine-gender noun.

You are precisely as ridiculous as the translators of the works of Immanuel Kant, who translate by the letter, literally. If you read the instructions in the immanual for translators of Immanuel, then you must realize that the text of Immanuel is gibberish etc etc etc

Here's a question. [1]If this is not a balanced world, then why is a fundamental force of nature such as gravity always seem to be so constant and stable? [2] Have you experienced random zones of non-gravity on earth where the stable laws of nature break down? — DanielP

You asked two questions. I numbered them in the quote above. My replies are correspondingly numbered.
[1] I don't know.
[2] No I have not.

Are you trying to prove with these two answers that there is balance in nature as a guiding force? I would like to see the proof.

Something stably pervasive in existence does not mean it's a sign of balancedness.

You might as well try to prove that god exists with the fact that gravity is pervasive and consistent.

Currency is a treaty or an agreement, for sure. Stop believing in it, and it becomes worthless. Right now it's not, but if that were to happen, it would be a catastrophe, unless you're set up to be completely self-sufficient (which few of us are) — Wayfarer

That is true.

And it may be closer than it appears in our rear-view mirrors.

Not because of global warming; but because of the trade deficit to China.

China has been supplying goods to the USA and to the world for US dollars. Now China is sitting on top of a huge amount of US dollars in their possession. What can they do with it? They can't buy goods, because their domestic supply of manufactured goods is way cheaper than the prices they'd need to pay to other countries. Can they buy food, land, and energy? Sure, to a certain point. China has been buying up cheap real estate around the whole world: in Australia, in Africa. Maybe in America, and Europe, I suspect they would but I have no knowledge of that.

So after they bought up what they possibly could, what will be their American dollars worth? And let's face it, the world economy is hugely dependent on the stability of the US dollar.

Nuclear energy now provides about 10% of the world's electricity from about 450 power reactors

electricity is created in most of the western world by at least 50% nuclear fission energy.
— god must be atheist

Nuclear energy now provides about 10% of the world's electricity from about 450 power reactors.

~ World Nuclear Association. — Wayfarer

Thirty countries have power reactors. There are 195 countries.

I'm sorry to say, but I am afraid that your rebuttal does not make sense statistically. What you are doing is taking the total amount of nuclear power plants and devide their electricity production by 195 extant countries; thereby declaring 10% involvement in creating electrical energy. Whereas the nuclear power plants supply nuclear energy to only 30 countries.

I did not say that the world's electricity comes 50% from nuclear energy. That's a necessary inference (but false) to substantiate the argument you made.

Lif3r
202
↪god must be atheist (Lif3r's reply to god must be atheist): glaciers — Lif3r

Rather Laconic, Lif3r, but how I interpret your reply (may need to be adjusted, but your lazy one-word reply is too short to fine-tune my understanding of it) is that to survive global warming, you need to live on Greenland, because it has glaciers.

But that's precisely the point of global warming: glaciers are melting, and not re-forming.

If global warming continues, after a certain point there will be no glaciers.

No glaciers, no inland lakes, only fast-moving creeks and rivers on the steep slopes of the young mountain ridges. IF (that's a big if) there is rain to sustain the water supply of creeks and rivers.

Truth is the correspondence of perceived to actual.

Some statements can be true; but they don't need empirical verification. They don't reflect the truth; they are merely true, such as 1=1.

Anything that is claimed to be the truth needs empirical verification; but that, in its metaphysical sense, is not available to man. Man does have perceptions, but they are not verified to reflect the actual reality.

Information of what the truth is can be gained only via the physical senses, but these senses are unreliable... or reliable. We can't tell the difference. We have no amount of certainty on how reliable our senses reflect reality.

In other words, humans are not in a position to tell whether their senses are giving them a reliable account of reality, or not.

Therefore truth exists, but man's ability to tell it is hindered by our senses which can't be verified to be reliable.

Bartricks, you are up to your old bar tricks. I wish bar tricks would be barred, but barring that, a bar would be nice to have, that would bar your bar tricks from being seen by those who don't want to see your posts.

"I think we can answer that one decisively: all rational reflectors will be satisfied the question has been ansered when the answer is one that their faculties of reason represents to be true. That is, upon reflecting on it - upon applying their reason to it - they can see that if follows rationally from claims that are self-evident to reason. After all, it is precisley becasue the above theories do not seem to be like this that they are not universally accepted."
— Bartricks

There is one problem with this: Reason alone is not a determinant of facts. And truth depends on facts. Truth is actually the complete correspondence between events, facts, and things, and their descriptions and conceptualiziations in our minds.

You say reason is enough to establish this. No, reason is not enough. You need senses that properly translate reality to images of reality in our minds that can be further manipulated by our minds. But this translation is not proven, will never be proven, to be foolproof. All translations can all be false (except for "Cogito ergo sum" et al.)

Hence your definition of truth is not reliable. You did not account for perceptions being possibly false, and perceptions can't be proven to be either way (false or true).

So what is truth, then? Well, I think the best way to proceed is to ask a slightly different question - when would we (that is, highly reflective rational truth-seekers) be satisfied that a true theory of truth has been described to us? That is, what would it take for us all to be satisfied that our question - 'what is truth?' - has been answered? — Bartricks

This makes truth a subjective thing... you are asking if we believe a thing is the truth, is it really the truth?

And you answer this:

I think we can answer that one decisively: all rational reflectors will be satisfied the question has been ansered when the answer is one that their faculties of reason represents to be true. That is, upon reflecting on it - upon applying their reason to it - they can see that if follows rationally from claims that are self-evident to reason. After all, it is precisley becasue the above theories do not seem to be like this that they are not universally accepted. — Bartricks

Please forgive me if I am wrong, and do correct me then, but you seem to be saying that we will be satisfied that the question has been answered when the question has been answered. You connect no truth values to whether the answer is true, or truly describes the truth.

You instead say that reasonable fellers will take a reasonable statement as truth. If the reasonable statement of truth is given as true, then reasonable fellers will take that answer as the description of truth. That is not necessarily the real truth, though. And you know it too.

1.2k
↪Possibility
I don’t value ‘reason’ quite as highly as you do, by my estimates.
— Possibility

Then you are not as reasonable as I am. — Bartricks

Not necessarily true conclusion. Just because someone does not value a quality in himself, does not mean that he has no high amounts of that quality. Your conclusion, Bartricks, is false.

------------------------

↪creativesoul
Are you denying that true belief exists prior to language?
— creativesoul

Er, what? I'm talking about 'truth'. I have said nothing whatsoever about beliefs and language. Nothing. — Bartricks

Bartricks, Creative soul did not say "You've been denying the that true belief exists prior to language". He, instead, ASKS you, if you do deny it now. You did not answer the question. Which is your perogative, but then again, you have no reason to be surprised or act superior or indignant.

------------------

970

↪Brett
But the quest for the truth suggests that we are not content with things,
— Brett

I don't see the relevance. The question I am trying to answer is "what is truth?" Why truth is important is a distinct question. If you don't even know what truth is, how can you possibly hope to answer your question? My question is the more fundamental and so it must be answered first. — Bartricks

Actually, there is a relevance. Do we have a definition for god? For life? For love? No, we do not have objective definitions for these that are completely accepted by all. Yet we search for god (some of us), we search for life, even on different planets, and we search for love.

NO, it is not necessary to have a previously accepted or internalized definition of it which applies to all in all situations and conditions, if you want to search for a thing or an ideal or a concept.

I think the real crisis will manifest as economic collapse. Modern capitalism is intrinsically connected with (among other things) the discovery and exploitation of vast reserves of fossil fuel. And it's also based on the expectation of perpetual growth. So estimates of long-term returns on investments, forward values, and the like, are all based on the illusory idea that growth can continue forever; all the lines point upwards. When it really becomes undeniable that this is not the case, I think it will trigger a financial collapse, as everyone scambles to call in their debt and the whole house of cards comes down. It came close to happening on September 18th 2008 already. That will be end of capitalism as we know it. It might not be the end of the world but it might be the end of the world we know. — Wayfarer

Well, electricity is created in most of the western world by at least 50% nuclear fission energy. Transportation energy, you're right, is mainly fossil fuel, but battery-driven cars will rely increasingly on nuclear energy. Airplanes can't fly on batteries yet, they have too high a mass/energy output ratio.

The debt crisis is yet another thing. I don't think anyone ownes the debt. I have been thinking about this for a decade, and other than a faulty theory, I haven't come to a satisfactory explanation how that is possible. All debts, public and private, are supposed to have a debtor. But they all don't. The Gov (the fed in the USA) dish out oodles and tons of money annually to cover their deificit. They used to issue bonds and other instruments to lenders, to cover their debts, the Govs used to do that. But I fear the practice has been abandoned, since the USA went off the gold base, and now every country is into printing bills head over heals.

Money is only worth as much as everything else, in a sense: as much as someone else is willing to pay for it. If you are willing to give a litre of your refined gasoline for a dollar twenty Canadian, so be it. If you are willing to give up ownership of your house for a million Canadian dollars, in the Toronto area, so be it.

This system is not as volatile or fragile as one may want to think. People are gullible, and this time it's a GOOD thing that they are. Money is basically worthless, but nobody knows that. It is literally not worth the paper it is printed on. But we believe it is, and that sustains our economies.

Migration has a lot to do (and will have even more to do) with climate. People flee from lands that are stricken by severe droughts, floods, hurricanes, and other climate disruptions that result in pest infestations and crop failures. Local conflicts are also fueled by the same underlying conditions - which in turn produces more migration. — SophistiCat

This is true. It is also true that migration is not precipitated by climate change, but artificially overpopulating a land that is unable to support a huge amount of people that are now there.

Case in point: Islam demands what Christianity does: have kids, as many as you are able to produce. Christians turned their back on this tenet of their faiths, but Muslims (mostly) have not. So they get government subsidies to populate their countries... not tvs cars and monuments to live in, but enough flour and water to bake some bread-like substance that's enough to not starve to death.

Have you ever seen a movie about the Middle East? Not a Hollywood movie, but a movie made by the locals. These movies show grazing heards of goats. They drive the goats for miles in desert conditions to find a spot with grass on it, then they heard the goats back home for the night.

There is clearly not enough arable land to sustain the billion Arabs in the Middle East.

Of course, and naturally, their human drive will make them look for lands where they can survive. This is not a miracle and I can't blame them for it.

But the long-and-short of it is, that to the day I haven't heard of any land or region, except for one, which has been hit by climate change that made living impossible for all who live there and the people have to fight wars to survive.

The one such area is not Ethiopia of Eritrea, but Darfur.

Then again, I talked to an Indian feller here in Canada, and he said he had come from South India, which is desert now, but it used to sustain people very nicely when he was growing up.

I don't know, honestly, whether the desert in South India was formed by overfarming and overgrazing, caused by overpopulation, or it was caused by climate change.

Disclaimer: I don't know the number of Arabs / Muslims in the Middle East. I wrote a Billion as a personal estimate.

Disclaimer: I have no proof or evidence that the governments in the Middle East support their people to have kids and give them food to survive.

Disclaimer: I am not positive if the "goat pastures" situation applies to all, or most, of the Middle East, and I am not sure how much land there is actually capable of growing food.

Unlike the clowns and buffoons who currently occupy high office in Australia and the U.S. who have not the least notion of what is bearing down on us. — Wayfarer

A politician's meausre of success is getting elected. Another way to measure how successful he is would be the achievements he proposes and creates for the betterment of his constituents, but that metric is actually considered with disdain by many current politicians.

In retrospect, bad and good politicians are remembered, and the mediocre ones are not. Bad and Good are measured by the good they achieve for their people.

But nobody ought to expect a politician to act responsibly and smartly. He completely exhausts his brian cells with the running for office, which is a gruelling two months, after which he NEEDS to relax for four years in order to gain enough mental and emotional energy to sustain himself through the ensuing next upcoming election.

When you cast your ballot, you are not voting for the best man for the job, but you're voting for the best Marketing team. And you know what one of my favourite philosophers said about marketing (of modern times)? "Marketing is next to grand larceny."

All these were platitudes, of course, and I hadn't expected to say anything new that all of us hadn't already known. It just felt good to say this. It's out of my system now, I can breathe a bit lighter now.

Honestly the best place I can think of is probably inland of Greenland. — Lif3r

Be sure to do your research before you put a down payment on a lot in Greenland. There are no inland lakes to speak of. I saw once a National Geographic Society map from the 1960s and it showed the elevations and sea floor of the bottom of the ocean. I now forgot if it had been a map of the Arctic or of the Atlantic ocean.

At any rate, Greenland is mainly land, but lots of sea. From a rough estimate of my old memory, it is 60 percent land and 56 percent sea. (Rounding.) Just kidding. 40 percent sea. Its elevated land above sea level resembles a human's left ear, or a letter C in mirror image. The centre of Greenland is a huge bay, or it would be, if the ice melted. There are high mountains in the ridge of the C, and most likely lots of fast rivers. But there is not much standing water, at least not as much as one could expect of a complete landmass cover of the island that is under ice.

I actually like the old Greek model even better. I like the idea of research as a lifelong joint project and lifestyle — The Great Whatever

I want female students if I am to teach in the style of joint. If I am to teach in the style of the great classical Greek masters of philosophy. I much don't care for joint research and close proximity with male students.

This what you said, @The Great Whatever, makes sense, and I am not being merely facetious. Integrated learning means integrated lifestyles, and if it involves sex, so be it. But please forgive me, I don't want to sex with male people.

Everything is Vibration: A phenomenon whereby oscillations occur about an equilibrium point. People, society, beliefs, atoms, history, nature...Yin/Yang,
You have to find your equilibrium point in life. — ovdtogt

I would say everything could be viewed as a pocket-pussy, not as a vibrator. Everything is fair game to go after sexually, as long as it moves. This I think is a useful philosophy. The first of its kind!

Thank you, sister, @ovdtogt! You opened my eyes and philosophically paved the way to creating an ideology for my behaviour!

Consequently, balance is a perception, and human judgment thrown on the cosmos, like a straight-jacket. There is no balance; there is constant compensation for unfulfilled stoppage to move, there is always movement where there is no thing to stop the movement. You can call this a balanced act, but it's meaningless to come to this conclusion... at the same time, if it gives you pleasure, then why not, it's benign enough to make no difference in anything else.

If balance were the underpinning of our universe, then there would be as much evil as goodness, and people would accept that.

There would be an equal number of bridges that would collapse in rush our to the number of bridges that don't collapse.

There would be an equal number of starving children to the number of well-fed children.

There would be an equal number of people in prison as out.

There would be an equal number of volcanic actions to non-volcanic actions.

There would be an equal number of burnt cookies to well-baked cookies.

There would be an equal number of good Hollywood movies to the number of bad Hollywood movies.

There would be an equal number of bad judgments in criminal courts, that is, an equal number of innocent people would be incarcerated or electrocuted as the number of people who are actually guilty of crimes.

We can’t fight climate change. To fight it is to refuse to accept that climate changes - that it should change - as if it’s the change that threatens us, as if it’s us that’s most important. It’s the wrong focus. We need to be more aware of what is really happening without fearing it, to connect with what is happening, and to collaborate with it. All of it. A good start would be to stop referring to it as ‘climate change’ — Possibility

This is true, but try telling it to a human: "You gotta stop being, man. Your time is up, give way to cockroaches, bloodsuckers and tapeworms. Sit down, shut up, extinc** yourself."

But I am more concerned about the fear that the whole thing of climate change is sustaining. Rulers operate on mass control, and in many systems, it is fear. We feared the AIDS epidemic. Before that, we feared the Cold War. Before that we feared God. Before that whatever. There is always unnecessary fear, which is necessary for sustaining the status quo, which benefits the ruling class. So the oppression continues, because, basically, people are too stupid. I tried to tell people: "Don't fear climate change. It's a shmafu." They wanted to stone me. (It was on another philosophy forum.) I tried to tell street preachers: "Don't fear the Lord. He is shmafu." They wanted to stone me. (It happens on an ongoing basis in my hometown. I am the wrath of street preachers here.) I tried to tell people in my old country, Hungary, when it was communist: "Hey, don't fear that the Amys will drop the bomb. They ain't shtuppid." They did not try to stone me, because my father stopped me from saying this, with the wisdom of his words, "son, you don't want to spend the rest of your days in a psychiatric institution looking like something that the cat brought in."

** extinc == verb, backformation of "extinct" (adjective). Neologism.

I submit that if we were able to figure out how to enable 100,000 people to live on the moon or Mars (in the relative near future), then it is well within our operational capabilities to sharply reduce CO2/methane output on earth. — Bitter Crank

Right. To arrange life on a different orb, sustainable, continued life for humans, would take such a humongously huge human effort, that it's waaay easier to decimate the local population on Earth, delcare a moratorium on pregnancies, and carry on with business as usual.

Social change is impossible, much like overcoming insurmountable techinical difficulties. Of these man faces one on Earth, the other, in space. But Social Change has been achieved over and over again with brute force. Christianity changed the social landscape of Europe and then later much of the world, and Chrisitanity spread via the sword, let's face it. Communism turned 1/4 of the world's population into true atheists, and let's face it, Lenin et al did it with the sword. America eradicated legal slavery, and let's face it, with the sword.

I don't know what would precipitate an equal measure to social change in overcoming technical difficulties, such as complete lack of resources, such as oxygen and an atmosphere, or water, on the Moon or on Mars, or conquering the distance needed to travel to other solar systems' livable planets. Brute force won't cut the mustard. The only way out of this planet within our lifetime down to our grandchildren's life, inclusive, as far as I am concerned, would be 1. a soon upocoming invasion of Earth by a super-intelligent, benign and benevolent race from outer space, 2. Computer technology taking off in capability in both physical and mental like a rocket ship, surpassing all humanly intelligible and / or 3. A mutation in humans or in another species on Earth that would result in a much more intelligent, capable biological being.

I live in Canada. I like climate change. It's -49 degrees celsius on the shores of the biggest natural lake in Canada in the winter.

I know I am short-sighted and selfish. But if you think about it long and hard enough, you can't escape the realization that those who want to change climate change are also selfish and short-sighted.

Survivalists, pleasure seekers, breeders, sentimentalists, the unselfish, the long-range thinkers, and moralitarians are all short-sighted and selfish.

Ecce homo. Behold the man.

This entire argument is about the usefulness of yourself to society, and your purported value as a professional human being. You said somewhere that you have a Masters degree in Ethics. Maybe I am wrong, and please correct me if I am. You sit on several committees acting as an ethics expert.

To you it is of importance to defend the ideas that sturctures, progress, and value exist in the study of ethics. Therefore your arguments are not ethical totally; they are self-serving.

My objections to your points do not stem from a fear by me of losing my livelihood if you prove to me that the study of ethics is structured, and its findings are objective, solid findings.

Think about this.

You said good-bye to me. I accept your good-bye, but please know that I haven't said god-bye to you.

Evidently you know nothing about adaptive pragmatism or it's approach to ethics. — Mark Dennis

I know this was addressed not to me, but I am actually proud of my ignorance of adaptive pragmatism and its (and not "it's") approach to ethics.

I am proud, because it is but one of the ways Ph.D.s overcomplicate morality so it does not look anything like itself, and thus gives way to claims, such as that morality can be likened to the function of a black hole or neutron star.

Except consensus does exist? Easy to claim it doesn't exist when one is outside of it. — Mark Dennis

Outside of what? Morality? Beg your pardon.

Outside of Ph.D. group? Yes. The Ph.D.'s consensus is not the same consensus as the common man's. It has been shown to you. Then you replied that Ph.D.s only expand on the concept of morality. So they expanded so much, that consensus does not exist any more. Therefore I claim that some overcomplicate things because they can present their pet theories after and believe them after overcomplication, because the concepts have been changed materially. You agree to that by agreeing that consensus between Ph.D.s and common man do not exist as far as ethics / morality are concerned.