I don't agree that speech can actually cause violence. People deciding to be violent causes violence. — Terrapin Station

An anti-point in case is the Hungarian Revolution and War of Independence of 1848. The revolution started (ie. was triggered, not caused) by a poem by Sandor Petofi, who went out to the main square of Pest and recited his poem. It was so full of nationalistic encouragement, that people went home, grabbed their muskets and daggers and intercontinental nuclear missile launcher silos, and ousted the hapless Hapsburgh governor.

@Maureen, I often wonder how there are two different One and Only Gods, or three, at minimum. If you ask any truly believing Christian, Muslim or Jew, they will say: There is only 1 god, and my god is the one and only true god.

I could never get my head around this. If there is only one god, how can the one god be different from himself? Truly, the Christian god is not the same as the Jewish god, and the Muslim god is just yet different from the two. In fact, all three are different from each other, yet only one god exists, these followers insists.

BRRRZZ. (Shakes his head as if to get a buzzing bug out of his brain via the ear canal.)

I think it's easy to make money with philosophy. You just have to seek out those individuals who are willing to pay money for hearing your philosophizing, either in live speech or in written material.

Of course there are the naysayers, who insist there aren't enough people who would pay for such service, or that people get it free on the Internet, or that I must be an idiot to give this advice. My response to this is that seven billion people on Earth has not hit the minimum headcount that would make my advice work by way of creating a critical mass of willingly paying customers for philosophical insight.

There are other options as well. You could rob a bank and call it philosophy. I am sure if you did, you could write a best seller about the experience, including the seventeen years in penitentiary that would follow.

You could also become a CEO with a vision. Or a basement dweller with a television. The sky is the limit.

Where did God come into this question? I don't believe in God — Gregory

Thanks, Gregory, for your straight answer.

Gregory, I wish you would answer this with a simple yes or no:

"I, Gregory, am so dissatisfied with the Bible (or the Koran) being proven wrong over and over again by scientific truths, that I am willing to reject science as a whole, since I am a true believer in the Bible (or the Koran). Therefore what I perform on the pages of these forums is an effort to undermine the belief in the validity of science."

So please state "yes" or "no".

Your objections to scientific findings in my view are so childish and outlandishly insane, so to speak, that you only are being argued against because here people will argue at the drop of a hat. Any other platform people would ridicule you, but here, people cherish and hanker for an argument against which they can come out victorious. Yours is one of them. Therefore you are treated here with respect.

Is this a shrine, then? The number of perfection and everything? — Noble Dust

It's a cryin shaime and a crime that it's a shrine. But you can give a shiner to the enshrined- vote for Bernie this time, for shrining out loud.

Gnostic == knower, a knowing person. Greek word, Gnost is to know (or something).

In Greek, the beginning "a" negates the word's meaning. Like, pathetic (feeling) -- apathetic.(unfeeling). Gnostic (knowing) agnostic (not knowing).

Theist - believes in a god, a supernatural higher being.

Atheist - again, "a" being a negator, an atheist believes there is no God, no supernatural power.

Agnostic atheist -- someone who claims no knowledge over whether god exists or not, but believes there is no god.

Agnostic theist -- someone who claims no knowledge whether any gods exits or not, but believes in god(s) nevertheless.

The problem I have with your approach to value, in general, is that value is always value to somebody. There is no "object" involved here, no cosmic table of prices. It's not objective. — Echarmion

Mainly for @marzipanmaddox:

A critic knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing. — Aristotle

Price represents value, and because value is not uniformly distributed (it being a subjective quantity), the price may fluctuate.

Sure an iPhone or a granularity-based tv is $X and $Y, respectively, and that's what it is. But second hand,the iPhone will have lost less of its price (because it loses less of its value) than the granularity-based TV set.

A friend of mine, Victor I., used to say, "everything costs as much as someone else is willing to pay for it." And of where to hang out mostly in Toronto to pick up fares if you are a taxi driver, (Victor was), he'd say "The best spot to pick up fares is where the fares are."

Bertrand Russell demonstrates clear writing in his essays. No gobbledygook. One such essay:

link

Heidegger on the other hand... — petrichor

Russell's language rustles like freshly washed, starched and ironed ladies' summer dresses.

Heidegger's language holds high the dagger upon which your and my heads are spaked.

what is the most effective way to write possible? — Joseph Walsh

avoid sentence structures with more than one predicate, especially if some of them mean nonsense, such as "what is the most effective way to write possible?"

No worries. — Baden

Yet, I still keep on worrying.

Your problem starts when your common sense suggests different answers to you than mine does to me. Because you'd be wrong. — Michael

I think this would be more your problem than mine. Those who are wrong in an argument suffer, on the average, the same amount of pain stemming from unacceptance, than those who are right. Those who are right are frustrated by those who are wrong and can't see they are wrong. Those who are wrong and frustrated because they see themselves as right, and they go through the same dynamics of pain.

Basically, I don't think it matters who is right and who is wrong. As long as people are on different opinions, regardless which is right and which is wrong, both have a problem.

Q.E.D., I'm right and you are wrong.

ADDENDUM: This is a matter in philosophical discussions. If the matter was about what action to take to survive, and ineed one was right and the other was wrong, then the problem would only reside for the party that was indeed wrong.

They are cheap here too, but I am too scared. A friend had one done and it went wrong, did he ever suffer. — Sir2u

I guess I got lucky. I have had six implants and three bridges, and they feel natural, I don't even know they are there. Absolutely no pain other than a day's worth of minor aches and quickly subsiding pain on the days of the surgeries.

My sister-in-law had it done here, in Toronto, and she was in agony for two weeks or more.

LOL you guys. Yeah, you could say that Hugo was a republican, though not in the way you think. — SophistiCat

Okay. Socrates and Aristotle were republicans, too. Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, too. Knyaz Potemkin was a royalist. Alexndr Pushkin never pushed a kin of his, despite his name. And Rasputin had a rasp voice, and he put "it" in quite frequently all over the landscape dotted with attractive, white, blonde, aristocratic ladies and maidens of Moscow and St. Petersburgh.

Gee whiz.

LOL you guys. Yeah, you could say that Hugo was a republican, though not in the way you think. — SophistiCat

I hereby declare that my wish is not to be thought of as a republican or Republican.

I'm rather... a repelican. I repel good taste, helpfulness, and good will. Sex. Buckets of flowers and / or fish that feed hundreds. Chocolate cheese cake. Things fall up in my presence.

Sorry, orbital habitats are possible. I thought you were talking interplanetary rehabitation.

The resources of the solar system are already in range with today's technology, it's mostly a question of engineering and will. — Echarmion

By resources I took you meant minerals, oxygen, water, etc. Whereas you probably meant sun energy, etc. Because there is not much else in terms of resources available from space to orbital habitats.

Nobody knows the future. Maybe orbital habitats will be built at a faster rate than humans multiply, maybe they will be built at a slower rate. I don't know. I won't say it's probable or imporbable to make this realistic.

This thread is about how humanity can keep growing. The answer to this is obviously space. — Echarmion

It is my opinion, with all due respect, that you grossly, fatally underestimate the challenges that are presented to habiting space outside of Earth.

We can build habitable spaces. Not easily, obviously, but there are no physical reasons it cannot be done. — Echarmion

I must assert, with all due respect, that you don't understand the physics of transporting / sustaining human life outside of Earth.

It is prohibitively expensive not only in an economic, but on an ecological scale as well. That ought to have been obvious to you. If we can't afford enough machines to deal with our plastic waste crisis, then we can't afford to send a gram of material to Alpha Centaur. IN other words, it is a smidgen to engineer plastics decomposing machines including the collection of the waste plastics, compared to sending anything 6.7 light years into the great beyond. Not just in money value: in consuming gas, material, food, etc. etc. etc.

The resources of the cosmos are more or less inexhaustible. All we need to do is get off this rock. — Echarmion

easier said than done. There are no habitable spaces for humans in our solar system beside Earth. To get to the next solar system, with no guarantee of habitation, would cost you fifty-thousands billion trillion dollars. I ain't kidding.

The resources of the solar system are already in range with today's technology, — Echarmion

I don't quite agree with this. A man's pleasure ride in space cost him 25 million US dollars some ten years ago. If you are spending that much money (which is not even enough) to bring to earth 70 Kg of material, then it's prohibively expensive. You'd use more fuel, energy, materials, money, and everything else than to justify the return on investment.

so it wasn't a lie, but some crazy neurological thing.... — hillsofgold

Megalomania?

Whether Hugo was a Republicant or a mutant or a leftist, is not my concern. He had a heart. That's what impresses me.

Hillsofgold, I loved your initial post.

It was informed, smart, and logical.

In my private opinion -- not to coerce or convince anyone else -- Buddhism is just another gibbery-hogwash system of faith, full of holes that the knowledge gap has since filled, and the followers are too busy ignoring or trying to forget it's part of Buddhism.

Also, please note, that in court if the witness of a party is found to be lying, his testimony will affect the client's interest rather negatively. Now that Buddha got caught on lying, we may want to reconsider the "wisdom" in all his other insights.

Sinking boats and earthquakes support the idea of ecological collapse? What are you talking about? — fishfry

Same thing as the Armageddon described by the two Yehova's Witnesses to me the other day. They also named famine, war, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions as sure signs of something or other,. I forgot which. I was mesmerized by them... one was a sixty-something beautiful woman, wearing 45 lbs of make-up. She looked as sexy as Pamela Lee Anderson in her best years. I wanted her... could not have her. So I just listened to her until it was time for her to go home.

I'm still smarting for her. Armageddon... mmm... yummy.

We attempted this sort of technology back in the 1950s, early 1960s, at the Idaho Nuclear Laboratories. The project was abandoned as too risky. — Bitter Crank

The scientists who built and detonated the first nuclear bomb were in the same shoe. They had no clue what would happen if the bomb worked. Some opined it will destruct the entire Earth, and for sure its entire biosphere, as they opined that the nuclear chain reaction would increase and multiply, not subside and die off after the initial explosion.

they detonated the bomb nevertheless. The bastards.

Victor Hugo is mainly known in his own country as a poet. He poed poems. Internationally he gained fame with his novels. They were easier to translate.

What you saw in Hugo's works may have been his poetry. He uses incredibly strong allegories. He is also a left-wing writer, you know, bind up the broken, the sick, the downtrodden. A revolutionary, not in the literary sense, but in the real sense... supporter of the French revolution. (I don't actually know if he was a contemporary during those times.) I like that. He juxtaposes in his stories the characters' roles, so he creates an effect which would be comical, but he paints it painfully tragic.

Maybe that's it. The laugh track that becomes a crying track. Your heart wrenches, your throat squeezes, and you fight back tears as you read.

Characterization is also important. As well the ability to make the reader easily suspend his disbelief. F. Scott Fitzgerald was a ninnie in these aspects. He capitalized on describing the illustrious luxury of the times he writes about, but he is as empty as his characters are.

Slow day around here? — fishfry

Yeah...

I don't contest that it's possible. — god must be atheist

That I don't contest that fusion reactors are possible ought to have been obvious to you, since you replied to my post in which I brought them up.

Again, for the third time I spell it out: I only contest your ability to specifically predict they will be here in 20 years. Sorry.

You're acting like those people in 1995 who said the Internet was a fad. — fishfry

Wrong simile. The Internet WAS there. Fusion reaction that sustains itself and produces extra energy is NOT here. I don't contest that it's possible. I contest your ability to predict when it will happen. That's all.

If I said that AI and robotics will be important in the future would you make that same disingenuous remark? — fishfry

If you said "In 24 years and six months AI machines will produce enough food for 49 billion people" I would also call it silly.

You put a precise and exact 20 years to fusion reactor success. I contest your ability (if you haven't noticed that yet) that you can predict now what will happen in the ensuing 20 years.

Read the article I linked. — fishfry

I read the article you linked. I saw no date or time span predictions. Therefore as far as I can see, the 20-year prediction is yours.

How do you do it?

And of course I understand that you don't want to divulge such information as winning lottery numbers. If I knew them, I'd keep them to myself, too. No silliness is expected of you.

And "How do you do it" is something I expect you also won't answer. If I knew the secret to eternal life, I sure would keep it to myself, you can be certain of that.

Regular old fusion is on the 20 year horizon. — fishfry

How do people know the future? I have never been successful at it.

@Fishfry, what's the winning combination of Lotto 6/49 in five weeks? And who won the World Series in 2032?

The choice is theirs to a point, but beyond a point the choice is no longer theirs. — god must be atheist

I used that argument in the side issue of morality and only for that. I did not specifically meant to apply to this case.

While you may have meant your argument to specifically apply to the case of overpopulation, I did not get your drift. Maybe one of us ought to have specified the scope of our argument.

I paid the dentist up front so I have to go now or lose the money. :lol:
— Sir2u

Yeah, I should’ve gone a while back, too. I let it get to the point that I can feel my pulse in my tooth. :grimace: — Noah Te Stroete

Half my teef are falshe. I got implants in my old country, a one-time communist country. It's dirt cheap there, compared to the local prices where I reside.

I never fought in my life. In grade 1 a big boy wanted to push me over, and I stepped to the side, and left my foot there, and he fell. He got up, came at me from that direction now, I stepped to the side, left a foot there, and he fell. He never repeated. He was a fast learner, I figure now.

In grade 7 a small boy challenged me to fight him. I said I don't want to fight you. He talked me into going into an abandoned lot after school, to find a clearing to fight. No onlookers, just he and I. I felt really fucking bad. He came at me, and I pushed him over. He fell, he said, "You are supposed to kick me now, or something," and I shrugged my shoulders. He came up, and said, so you want peace, I said, yes, and we stopped the fight before it happened.

In grade 12 I was in a dormitory. Two big boys took a tiny little feller by the belt, and hung him on the door knob. The tiny feller was angry, kicking, and the two large boys did not even laugh. So next I know, maybe a couple of days later, the two big boys are all of a sudden on my two sides. They reached for my belt. I put my feet out to the side, held out my upper arms, hands on my waist, elbow out, and turned left, then right, and the two boys were on the ground. I don't know I did it. They never tried again on me or on the other boy. The other boy and I became lifelong friends.

These are the good news.

The bad news is that I always got roughed up by my best buddies back in the old country. A boy hit me when I was an asshole. He was my best buddy. Another boy, whom I knew through our fathers, hit me in the face so blood came out (he was immensely stronger than I) when I fouled up his piros ulti bid, and laughed at him, because I did it with a plank tener. Then another time, about a year after this incident, he mispoke his bid, and I demanded more points for his loss, but he insisted he had made a lower-value bid. I was adamant, so he stood up and kicked the shit out of me.

...and had to do a IQ test. It was 151 so IQ was not an issue (its really about 130 - the test was biased heavily towards logic ... ) — Bill Hobba

Well, I guess you're right... society does not value logic as a means of being reasonable. Reason and high IQ is commonly attributed to poise, charm, lots of dough, a flashy sports car, or good looks, and / or allegedly being fantastic in bed.

(... not to misconstrue, Bill Hobba, that you lack in the qualities listed... 130 still puts you in the top 2%.)

People subscribe to these teachings or they don't. The choice is theirs. — alcontali

The choice is theirs to a point, but beyond a point the choice is no longer theirs.

One of my acquaintances in the eighties suggested that the Toronto housing crisis could be solved overnight by exploding neutron bombs in the city. Neutron bombs kill people, but leave objects and stuff intact.

You don't hear much about neutron bombs any more. These days we're into the population growth of the British royal family. Now, there is a bunch that is rabbit-like in the aspect currently under our scrutiny.

All of Erlich's predictions were wrong. He lost all his resource price bets. I'd say the same will happen in the future. Human ingenuity will defeat doom and gloom as it has for thousands of years. — fishfry

With bumps on the road, yes. Remember the cold fusion project that was declared a success one day, and the next, debunked? Back in the eighties or nineties, I think.

Well, if someone creates cold fusion reactors, we've got it made. For another 100,000 years,then the same problems will rear their ugly rears.

With regard to the topic: the Bible and the Koran both advocate producing children in abandon, without any restrictions.

This has been for some mysterious (but thankfully thankful) reason totally abandoned by the North American fundamentalist circles. Thank god.

But in Muslim countries this practice is alive, and done with a vehemence. They can't be stopped from making children like there was no tomorrow. This is not because they are thirld-world countries. This practice is alive in those Muslim countries as well, that have far surpassed the West in making it possible for all its individuals to attain a luxurious lifestyle. This practice of maximalizing the number of children born in Muslim countries is independent of factors of education, income and asset levels, or size of penis. This is the norm created, maintained, and enforced by the Koran.