Comments

  • Trouble with Impositions
    Since life does not offer a personalized utopia, it is creating major impositions onto someone else, — schopenhauer1
    Like the old Academic Skeptic's canard "since knowledge is never certain, there cannot be knowledge", to wit: if existing is not painless, then existing should not be reproduced (or prolonged). Let the perfect be the enemy of the good, huh? That'll show 'em ... :sweat:
  • The ABC Framework of Personal Change
    [M]y heart sinks to read such stuff. Always more, always strife, always heading for a goal somewhere else, never content, forever becoming what one is not. It is a capitalist psychology par excellence and it is nothing new, but the same outdated paradigm that has brought us to the [edge] of destruction.

    I won't interrupt again, I just wanted to register my personal dissent.     — unenlightened
    Yeah, wtf?! :100: :clap:

    :death: (memento mori)
    :flower: (memento vivere)
  • Understanding the Law of Identity
    ↪Benkei
    :up:
  • Evidence of conscious existence after death.
    ↪TiredThinker
    Just living itself is always a near-death experience – "nearer to you than your jugular vein."

    Those who wish to live long, or for eternity, do not always prosper... — Amity
    True. To "wish" for an impossibility is not logical. :nerd:
  • Agnosticism, sensu amplo
    How can a simulation simulate itself? — Agent Smith
    In the context of my post (& links), what part of 'self-organizing quantum simulation' (à la autopoiesis) is confusing you? Consider: there are only fermions & bosons with which to simulate "fermions & bosons" (i.e. planck scale events simulating "planck scale events"), no? :chin:
  • Agnosticism, sensu amplo
    ↪Agent Smith
    Bostrom's argument has too many ad hoc assumptions for me (like e.g. "The Drake Equation").

    Very simply: if e.g. David Deutsch's work on the quantum turing maching (QTM) is correct, then there is no fundamental– informational – difference between simulations and non-simulations vis-a-vis quantum computing (D. Deutsch helped pioneer the field): physical reality itself is fundamentally a self-organizing quantum simulation and this current universe is just (the phase of) the self-organizing quantum simulation which happens to be (briefly) stable enough to generate and sustain complex, knowledge-making, metacognitive agents.

    Thus, perhaps "we are living in a simulation" that simulates itself – the universe (multiverse) – and not inside some "godling's" cosmic video game (pace Berkeley). No woo needed in order to explain any explicable which needs to be explained (Laplace / Spinoza ... remember the Presocratics and their naturalist contra-superstitious speculations?) :fire:

    As for 'the inexplicable'? Well, gaps in experience knowledge or understanding, which cannot be filled (like unreachable horizons / asymptotes), can only be denied with woo (of-the-gaps) and other nostalgic anachronisms. :pray: :roll:
  • Trouble with Impositions
    Anti-"antinatalism" does not entail pro-natalism. The "moral" arguments in favor of "antinatalism" proffered thus far have been neither valid nor persuasive.

    Is antinatalism murder? — Agent Smith
    Is exorcism murder? :halo:
    At the very least it is a kind of preemptive euthanasia.
    Like suicide is a kind of retroactive abortion ... :sweat:

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/722428 :eyes:
  • The unexplainable
    ↪Janus
    :up:

    ↪Tom Storm
    :smirk:
  • Agnosticism, sensu amplo
    ↪Agent Smith
    In other words: 'what there is is grounded in what I/we know', which amounts to nothiing but idealism (or solipsism) window-dressed in 'pseudo-(information) science. :sparkle: :roll:
    ↪180 Proof


    I have no formal training in those fields of philosophy. Enformationism is a sort of ... — Gnomon
    Yeah, man, it incorrigibly shows. :sweat:
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    :victory: :mask:
    ↪180 Proof


    Another domino falls ...
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/07/26/trump-justice-investigation-january-6/
  • Evidence of conscious existence after death.
    ↪Amity
    :up:
  • Evidence of conscious existence after death.
    Nope.

    https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/586454
  • Trouble with Impositions
    For example, once certain people decided that the way to end their suffering was to kill all the Jews. And for at least some time, it worked. Per your formula, that _wasn't_ maladaptive. — baker
    Of course it was, and still is, maladaptive. They were mistaken and consequently acted on that mistake. Short-term efficacy – scapegoating, genocide – at the expense of long-term sustainability (i.e. forming habits / institutions for 'othering' even their own because (some believe) "that is a way to end their suffering").
  • The unexplainable
    ↪Tate
    Maps of the territory (i.e. "intellect") cannot encompass the territory (i.e. "everything"), right? ... I can't think of any greater, more endemic, abuse of intelligence than using intelligence to deny its own limits – philosophy's bête noire.
  • Trouble with Impositions
    Do authors have a moral obligation to write only 'characters who cannot suffer'?

    Do video game (simulation) programmers have a moral obligation to code only 'programs which cannot suffer'?

    Did a creator-deity have a moral obligation to create only 'creatures which could not suffer'?
  • Agnosticism, sensu amplo
    For example, the novice philosopher Spinoza outraged his fellow Jews and Christians (including some veteran theologians) by introducing a new science-based concept of God-as-Natural-instead-of-Super-natural (deus sive natura). — Gnomon
    Okay, G. Put down the damn Spinoza for Dummies and actually read / study Spinoza's Ethics. :roll:

    ... an initial state of relatively high entropy and low information. — Gnomon quoting Bob Doyle, PhD
     
    "Relatively" to what? The initial state of the universe is a lower entropy state relative to the present entropy state of the universe; in fact, it will always be the lowest entropy state of the universe. :nerd:
  • Trouble with Impositions
    Yet the big leap is assuming that THESE sets of choices offered in THIS existence is something OTHERS should endure. That is the stance I am objecting to. — schopenhauer1
    Your objection has been noted, schop1, and it's still moot because (1) "inexistent others" is incoherent & (2) most human primates will never voluntarily fight c2 million years of hardwiring to stop procreating. :point:
    ↪180 Proof
    .
  • Beating the odds to exist.
    That does not make us any less significant to ourselves though. Our knowledge of our insiginificance of a universal scale is matched by our knowledge of our significance on a particular scale. — Tobias
    :fire:
  • A way to put existential ethics
    ↪Moliere
    Amen, brother. :smirk:
  • The unexplainable
    ↪Bartricks
    :smirk:
  • The unexplainable
    "The less you think, the more you believe."
    —Richard Dawkins
    — Christopher

    That's not true either     — Bartricks
    Your ignorance (feigned or not) is stunning, kid. :smirk:
    For I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand. For this also I believe – that unless I believe I shall not understand. — St. Anselm
  • Beating the odds to exist.
    ↪Agent Smith
    Bacteria & viruses inhabit us, we don't inhabit bacteria & viruses. :mask:
  • Trouble with Impositions
    ↪Agent Smith
    Nope – just as satellite images and red-shifting sunsets do not help flat-earthers discern that the Earth is not flat
  • Is refusing to vote a viable political position?
    ↪Xtrix
    :smirk:

    ↪Hanover
    Your refusal to waste your vote on the P-O-S who was 'highly favored' to win your state was as patriotic a statement as it was prudential. A greatful nation turns it's fat, dumb & lonely eyes to you, sir! :victory: :mask:
  • The unexplainable
    ↪Tate
    "Everything" is necessarily self-explanatory. It's the height of incoherence to ask for an "explanation of everything".
  • Gnosticism is a legitimate form of spirituality
    Gnosis and its significance [ ... ] because Shamanism is the root of all spirituality and religion. — Bret Bernhoft
    So are hearing voices, having visions and magical thinking :sparkle: :roll:
  • Agnosticism, sensu amplo
    ↪Agent Smith
    I am and I have. :sweat: :down:
  • Trouble with Impositions
    ↪Agent Smith
    The math may speak for itself but antinatalists are not obliged to listen while they are (fallaciously) moralizing on a moot point. Good luck with that, Señor Quixote. :smirk:
    ↪L'éléphant
  • Gateway-philosophies to Christianity
    ↪180 Proof
    I didn't say the sheep were lying. It's the Shepherd who is lying and using the Holy Lie to get "true believer" sheep to slaughter one another like wolves. Try responding to what I write, MU, instead of what you misread into what I write, and maybe we'll get somewhere.
  • Gateway-philosophies to Christianity
    ↪Metaphysician Undercover
    And I'm referring to those religious believers who murder each other for "spiritual", not material, gain. They're usually called "holy warriors" & "martyrs". No doubt, Popes, Patriarchs, Bishops, Imams, Ayotollahs, Mullahs, High Priests and other religious leaders who call for "holy war" (or "justify" state aggressions) are often / mostly motivated by material gain for their religious organizations but not the "true believer" foot soldiers – "the flock" whipped-up and driven to slaughter with consecrated fairytales about defeating the infernal conspiracies of Them "evil-doers" that's preached by their "Shepherds" – sheep converted into rabid wolves against "the hounds from hell". The "false believer materialists" who either lead or use a religion are one thing; my point here
    ↪180 Proof
    concerns religious true believers who have always willingly martyred each other and each other's children for their respective Holy Lies.
  • Trouble with Impositions
    ↪Agent Smith
    No. The debate is interminable as long there isn't consensus on the premises of the argument. And besides, the point is moot. We're a species organism and reproduction is a species drive that some individuals can be persuaded (or deluded) in to mitigating via sterilization, abstinence, etc but not the majority of the species unless we are coerced by some infertility contagion or climate change-induced famine or extinction-level World Wars / meteor strikes / supervolcanoes eruptions / torrent of CMEs, etc.
  • Gnosticism is a legitimate form of spirituality
    I would distinguish insight from knowledge thus;knowledge is the past projected into the future, whereas insight is immediate and present. One cannot share insight, but only relate it as experience from the past, so what one shares is knowledge. But knowledge can only be added to the illusion of those who lack insight - and that is the story of every religion, that the founder has spiritual insight and the followers convert it into knowledge that then becomes dogma. — unenlightened
    Well said, sir, even enlightening. :clap: :fire:

    ↪unenlightened
    :up:
  • Is refusing to vote a viable political position?
    By all means, don't vote. One less vote for fascism. — Xtrix
    ↪Xtrix
    :100:
  • Agnosticism, sensu amplo
    ↪Agent Smith
    :point:
    ↪Gnomon
    FYI: I've read enough of the books you have referenced in our exchanges to long since have confidently concluded that (1) you've flagrantly misinterpreted – pseudo-philosophically interpreted – the books you claim to have read and (2) you've not read or understood the books I've recommended to you. Our post history is my witness. :smirk:
  • Gateway-philosophies to Christianity
    ↪Christopher
    :up:

    ↪Metaphysician Undercover
    Even if that's true, given just a little thought, MU, the religious kill each other in the name of Holy Lies which command "thou shalt not kill" and "love each other" whereas the so-called "materialists" are not nearly as murderously – sacred-ends-justify-profane-means – hypocritical and dishonest about their motivations. Faith in (demonstable, hearsay) falsehoods facilitates vicious self-deceptions, as Voltaire points out
    Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.
    :fire:
  • Agnosticism, sensu amplo
    ↪Agent Smith
    Can you suss-out what Gnomon's onto and succintly clue me in? I've asked quite a few times, the last being this
    ↪180 Proof
    .
  • Gateway-philosophies to Christianity
    ↪Christopher
    Only one out of the thousands of mutually exclusive religions can be true whereas all of them can be false. The latter is the smart (sane) bet; yet the world's always been overrun by gullible suckers who are ready at moment's notice to get off their calloused knees just long enough to go murder or be murdered by each other's children in order to "defend" one Holy Lie "against" some other Holy Lie. :death: :pray: :eyes:
  • Beating the odds to exist.
    ↪TiredThinker
    It's at most an argument that "sentient life" is rare and that sapience is (maybe exponentially) even rarer still. What makes sapients (like us) significant, however, is that (we) can know this – that (we) can know the cosmos and that its fundamental constraints make knowing it possible.
  • A way to put existential ethics
    When an agent seeks to help her own welfare by helping, harming or ignoring the welfare of another, the agent does so by instrumental reasoning.

    Helping another is only a means to the end of helping oneself.
    "Flatter" me, @Merkwurdichliebe, and show me where this conception goes wrong

    When an agent seeks to help the welfare of another whether or not her own welfare is helped, the agent does so by moral reasoning.

    Helping another is the end in itself.
    Again, show me where this conception goes wrong
  • Agnosticism, sensu amplo
    ↪Agent Smith
    The image that comes to mind is of 'a dope rope-a-doping himself' which is kind of funny (ridiculous, not ha-ha). :smirk:
Home » 180 Proof