Comments

  • Is the blue pill the rational choice?
    I know this Buddhist monk who likes the occasional drink and he always makes it a point to say (paraphrasing) "drink, enjoy, but do realize, it is empty (sunyata)" :lol: — Agent Smith
    O empty glass – another round, barkeep. :pray: :sweat: :party:
  • Why do we make 'mistakes'?
    ↪Agent Smith
    :up:
  • Is the blue pill the rational choice?
    Desire is a cause of suffering. — Agent Smith
    Pardon my simplistic (Theravādin?) interpretation – I think Buddha teaches that attachment to impermanent 'relationships and things' as if they were not impermanent – e.g. trying to hold on to smoke (i.e. māyā) – causes dukkha (i.e. frustration, distress, anxiety). Yeah, 'attachment is desire', but it's how one attaches, or desires, that causes dukkha, and not just "desire" itself; thus, the Buddha teaches the Noble Eightfold Path as exercises, more or less, for sustaining habits of aligning expectarions with reality – to align letting-be with impermanence – such that ego-desire (craving) transforms into nonego-desire (renouncing) and then trannsforms further into eco-desire (à la wu-wei), or as you've pointed out, Smith: understanding samsara. :fire:
  • Deep Songs
    The greatest thing
    you ever can do now
    Is trade a smile
    with someone who's blue now


    "Friends" (3:55)
    Led Zeppelin III, 1970
    writers J. Page & R. Plant
    Led Zeppelin

    *

    Lover,
    can you talk
    to me?


    "Carry On" (4:26)
    Déjà Vu, 1970
    writer Stephen Stills
    CSNY
  • Golden Rule vs "Natural Rule"
    Like my old Sifu said while teaching martial arts:

    "if you are genuinely interested in self-defense, try not being such an asshole."     — Paine
    :fire:
  • What are you listening to right now?
    ↪Paine
    :up:
  • Emergence
    ↪universeness
    :smirk: :up: Sláinte!
  • Convergence of our species with aliens
    ↪Benj96
    Yeah, but why would "they" bother? The universe is so vast that millions, even billions, of civilizations could come into existence and go extinct without ever making contact with each other because the return on investment would be too low (and dangerous) to justify the extraordinary expense. The interstellar / intergalactic juice probably won't ever be worth the space-time-mass squeeze. If and when we make "contact", Benj, I suspect it will be in the form of detecting, maybe even, deciphering alien 'techno-signatures' from other star systems and that interstellar 'communications' will consist of 'reading' alien tech like hierogyphs 'written' thousands or millions of years ago from our perspective.

    My guess is that the intelligent machines developed by advanced species throughout the universe protect their biological makers from 'contamination' by keeping them separate and instead developing nano / femto technologies for maintaining 'pocket universes' (quantum computing simulators?) as one-way refuges out of this universe, so to speak, into which their makers can exist like "gods". Exo-singularity apotheosis (or extinctions) via lower energy (more efficient) exponential compression rather than higher energy (less efficient) linear expansion. This scenario, I think, dissolves the famed "Fermi Paradox" (and maybe also goes some way towards exorcizing our 'space opera' fantasies).
  • Emergence
    ↪universeness
    Sounds perfectly relaxing. :cool:
  • Emergence
    ↪Agent Smith
    :roll:
  • Atheism and Lack of belief
    ↪Agent Smith
    :roll:
  • Emergence
    ↪Agent Smith
    I don't see what that question has to do with AGI —> ASI ...

    ↪universeness
    :up:
  • Atheism and Lack of belief
    ... belief is moot. Why should I believe god exists when it hasn't been proven and why should I believe god doesn't exist when that too hasn't been proven? — Agent Smith
    Well, since the crux of the issue is theism's truth-value and not god's non/existence, your "moot point" is also moot, Smith. One can believe or disbelieve whatever one wants, but what I think is decisive is what we know / don't know and what we can know / can't know. We don't know / can't know g/G beyond the predicates we claim as (uniquely) g/G's, and yet we do know / can know whether or not our claims about g/G are true or not. Why? Because a g/G without discernible, or attributable, predicates is indiscernible from not being a g/G, so knowing the truth-value of claims about a g/G (assumed to exist) is inescapable.

    When scriptures (or testimonies, visions, legends, superstitions, etc) say "g/G did XYZ", this means that something (somewhere somewhen) has been changed in a way that only g/G could have changed it, and therefore, we can check it out in order to learn whether or not such a sui generis change – which could have been caused only by g/G – has happened. When you know any claim's truth-value (or that you can know it eventually), mi amigo, "belief" is irrelevant. :fire: :eyes:
  • Is goodness an illusion?
    What makes an action good? — TiredThinker
    In the abstract, it seems to me that a "good action" prevents or reduces net harm and reinforces itself as a habit in the actor as well as providing an example to others of "doing good".
  • Atheism and Lack of belief
    However lack of belief, what does that mean? — Agent Smith
    I have already addressed why "lack of belief" is useless:
    Every monotheism is "the absence of belief" in every god except "the one God" ... that's not saying much. — 180 Proof
  • Emergence
    A question: What exactly do we mean by technological singularity as in überintelligence? — Agent Smith
    Consider the following quote from one of the first technoscientists – after von Neumann but before Vinge or Kurzweil – to run through the gedankenexperiment later called (the) Technological Singularity (aka "rapture of nerds"):

    Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an 'intelligence explosion,' and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make. — I. J. Good, (Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine) Advances in Computers, vol. 6, 1965.


    ↪180 Proof
    :nerd: :up:
  • Atheism and Lack of belief
    ↪Agent Smith
    These semantic muddles are why I prefer the more probative question of Is theism true or not true? rather than merely "Does g/G exist?" If theism is not true (i.e. antitheism), then atheism (i.e. every theistic g/G is a fiction) follows; however, whether or not "g/G exists" does not entail either belief or disbelief in g/G
    .
    If antitheism, then atheism;
    antitheism, therefore atheism.

    Antitheism: theism (Type) is not
    true (i.e. empty).
    Atheism: therefore, theistic deities (Tokens of theism-Type) are fictions     — 180 Proof
  • Is the blue pill the rational choice?
    Nirvana then is not about exiting samsara, but about understanding what it is. I met the Buddha, we all have ... we just didn't recognize him. :cool: — Agent Smith
    :fire:
  • Top Ten Favorite Films
    A list of 25 (out of 100(?)) of my favorite films in chronological order (only Anglo-American productions, since 1963 'Year of the Rabbit'):

    2001: A Space Odyssey
    The Lion in Winter
    Five Easy Pieces
    Sleuth
    The Godfather I & II
    High Plains Drifter
    Blade Runner
    A Soldier's Story
    Barfly
    Crimes and Misdemeanors
    Glory
    The Field
    Glengarry Glen Ross
    Shindler's List
    Unforgiven
    The Edge
    Ray
    Doubt
    The Grey
    The Sunset Limited
    Lincoln
    12 Years a Slave
    Ex Machina
    Fury
    I Am Not Your Negro

    Happy Lunar New Year :sparkle: :party:
  • Top Ten Favorite Films
    ↪Mikie
    :cool: :up:
    (I'll check out Persona which I've never seen.)
  • Atheism and Lack of belief
    ↪Banno
    :up:
  • Atheism and Lack of belief
    ↪god must be atheist
    :up:
  • Is the blue pill the rational choice?
    ↪Agent Smith
    I thinks it's misaligning expectations with reality that causes, or increases, suffering. 'Truth hurts' only ego and vanity ...
  • Philosophical Pharma
    ↪introbert
    So maybe "the Matrix film" is the blue pill (just as "the Monolith" is the screen – wall of "Plato's Cave" – on which one watches 2001)?
  • Atheism and Lack of belief
    ↪Agent Smith
    Negation, or denial, of 'an absolute' is a contradiction; so insofar as 'G is absolute', to negate (i.e. deny) G is a contradiction; however, negation (i.e. denial) of 'absolute G' is possible, or not a contradiction, therefore, 'absolute G' is not absolute (i.e. is a fiction). QED, no? :smirk:

    G = subject of theism (or deism)
  • Emergence
    my Saturday night beer and single malt whisky — universeness
    :yum: Cheers.

    ↪Agent Smith
    :chin:
    Matter constrains life ...
    Life constrains intelligence ...
    Intelligence constrains transcension (formerly from 1938, "ephemeralization")?

    Instead of divine Creation, they may call it "instant Inflation". In place of animated Spirits, they call it Energy. Same thing, different terminology. — Gnomon
    :sweat: :lol: :rofl:

    Please refute ...
    postscript:
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/746676 Yeah, it's déjà vu all over again. :smirk:     — 180 Proof
    (link to post that loads slowly)
  • What is your ontology?
    ↪khaled
    Are you familiar with Alain Badiou's 'platonic materialism'? If not, check out The Concept of Model: An Introduction to the Materialist Epistemology of Mathematics ... anrd another short book In Praise of Mathematics.
  • Philosophical Pharma
    ↪Agent Smith
    :fire: Dao is Logos. ~Heraclitus
  • What is your ontology?
    ↪Agent Smith
    I guess that depends on the particular physicalist.
  • Emergence
    ↪Agent Smith
    I'm a driver, sir, not a mechanic. :cool:
  • Emergence
    ↪Agent Smith
    More like a Mercedes with a busted tranny ... :wink:
  • What is your ontology?
    ↪Agent Smith
    You're taking issue with a strawman of your own making, much like theists do with "atheism" and idealists (antirealists) do with "naturalism". I'm not aware of any physicalist who actually uses the concept of physicalism the way you (wiki?) do define it.
  • Emergence
    ↪Gnomon
    :yawn:
    postscript:
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/746676 Yeah, it's déjà vu all over again. :smirk:     — 180 Proof
  • What is your ontology?
    ↪Agent Smith
    There's no "justification" because, to my mind, there is no such animal as a "physicalist ontology". As for your "tennis ball", I rely on an old school epistemic distinction (re: primary & secondary qualities): "green" is only a dependent-variable.

    At heart my ontology is trivial: every possible concrete thing either has no parts (and thus has the structure of the empty set) or has parts (and thus has the structure of a non-empty set). These concrete things make up all possible worlds and all possible worlds are real worlds because there is no difference between possible and real. — litewave
    It's happy hour here (near Portland, Oregon) so I'll lustily drink to that! :yum: :up:
  • What is your ontology?
    ↪Agent Smith
    And your point?
  • Carlo Rovelli against Mathematical Platonism
    ↪Banno
    :fire:
  • Emergence
    ... if you are a philosopher, hoping to answer Ontological & Existential questions, considering First & Last & Ultimate Intent would be a part of your job description. — Gnomon
    IME, a thinker's first duty – intellectual hygiene and metacognitive fitness exercise – consists in not asking idle questions or raising paper doubts (Peirce, Witty, Kant, et al) such as "first, last & ultimate" whatever. As for "ontological and existential" questions, the theoretical works of natural scientists presuppose such aporia which most do not explicitly explore or examine because that almost always falls outside of the remit of scientific inquiry. And pragmatists, which you allude to, whether or not they are doing science, raise such abstruse questions, as Dewey or Popper might say, only to facilitate transforming indeterminate problems into determinate problems which can be dis/solved. :chin:

    However, your musings and notions, Gnomon, demonstrate a penchant for overdetermining pseudo-problems because, apparently, you lack the acumen of a rigorous, as you say, "amateur philosopher" to avoid these incorrigibly dogmatic traps. You're not here to learn from our motley community of 'thinkers', as your post history attests to, but rather, evidently, to preach a quixotic sermon that pseudo-scientistically rehashes perennialism (though your expansive, well-documented blog does bedazzle, sir :sparkle: :clap:). "Hoping to answer ...Ultimate ... questions" is the "job description" of false prophets, televangelists and other charlatans pimping snake-oil "worldviews" or "beliefs", which may be what "philosophy" looks like from the outside to many folks who're still squatting on splintered pews in their burnt-out old cathedrals. :pray: :sweat:

    postscript:
    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/746676 Yeah, it's déjà vu all over again. :smirk:
  • Carlo Rovelli against Mathematical Platonism
    ↪T Clark
    :up:
  • What is your ontology?
    What's the justification for a physicalist ontology? — Agent Smith
    None. Physicalism, in practice, is an epistemology (re: a paradigm used in natural science).

    Why is it that when talking about material stuff, nobody goes "is the chair I'm sitting on real?"
    The question lacks grounds for raising it (Witty, Peirce).

    ... while quite the opposite happens when we discuss apparently nonphysical stuff like numbers.
    Nominalists & pragmatists, naturalists & existentialists don't ask 'whether or not numbers are real'. Platonists & rationalists, for example, promiscuously misplaced concreteness like that. By "nonphysical stuff", by the way, you do mean abstract objects, not "angels", right? :smirk:
  • Golden Rule vs "Natural Rule"
    ↪Agent Smith
    :ok:
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