Comments

  • Defining Love [forking from another thread]
    Defining love as forking is pretty sophomoric and reductionist.
  • Down with the patriarchy and whiteness?
    ↪Qwex
    Unfortunately “majority” does seem to be used in sociology to mean something other than its literal meaning, such as when women are considered a minority group despite the fact that there are slightly more women than men. I prefer “advantaged” and “disadvantaged” instead, but nobody writing professionally cares what I think.
  • Down with the patriarchy and whiteness?
    Guaranteed that no one who is part of a diversity training program said this
    — Maw

    I didn't say they were, did I now? I said one person in the room said it. A white employee.     — Marchesk

    I also came away with the same impression as Maw and that was the source of my suspicion earlier. I’m glad to hear that wasn’t the official message of the meeting but just someone’s interpretation of it, and thank you for clarifying that.
  • Down with the patriarchy and whiteness?
    Anyone who assumes that and considers it a fact and a basis for a meeting is confused, about themselves, because the only thing a white person can do with that is feel permanent guilt and shame or end their existence. It is not a basis for improving things. — Coben

    This reminds me of the author of the webcomic Sinfest, who since 2011 has turned it into an author tract for his particular bizarre form of SWERF 'n' TERF radical feminism, one aspect of which appears to be the belief that there is no such thing as a male ally. Which then raises the question of what the author thinks he himself is? He seems to be riddled with shame and guilt, from what we've seen of his literal author avatar in the comic, so maybe he thinks that he really isn't a male ally, because as a male he cannot be, but he's nevertheless trying anyway? (And rather poorly, as he dismisses the views of women who disagree with him as just them being brainwashed by the patriarchy, rather than honestly listening to what they have to say about their own lived experience as the type of person he claims to be defending).
  • Ranking Philosophers
    As someone who thinks the best beard is no beard, I expect our rankings by this criteria will be incommensurable (and I say that as someone who named his philosophy Commensurablism).
  • Down with the patriarchy and whiteness?
    Why do you think I made that up? — Marchesk

    I don't think you made it up, but I'm suspicious that although that may have been the message you took away, it was not the one that was intended, or the only (or best) interpretation of whatever literal words the speakers used.

    At least I hope so.
  • British Racism and the royal family
    What is that and why is this perspective not sexist? — frank

    I know @fishfryalready left but I would like to second this question. A quick Google of the phrase doesn't turn up anything that seems unambiguously reliable a source for it.

    I also know next to nothing about the particulars of the royals so I'm not sure what it is Meghan is supposed to have done that fits that label.

    (Sorry for continuing this tangent in a thread that's supposed to be about racism, not sexism, though now a part of me wonders if sexism isn't a confounding factor here too).
  • Down with the patriarchy and whiteness?
    their existence as a white person was harmful to others — Marchesk

    Why do I doubt that this is what was actually said?
  • Defining Love [forking from another thread]
    I think there's some element of truth to that assertion, inasmuch as love is for things we find good in some way. I'd argue that all kinds of good ultimately boil down to moral goods. But the "judgement" part is maybe problematic, as that perhaps implies a level of cognition that might not be present. Certainly to love something is to feel like it's good, but are all feelings judgements?

    Something I've long found interesting to contemplate and never come to an adequate resolution on is the relationship of love to fear and hate. I traditionally thought of hate as the opposite of love, such that when I first heard fear juxtaposed as its opposite, back before I studied any philosophy, I thought that sounded really weird. But after studying some philosophy and learning the Greek roots "phobia" and "philia", fear seemed like a natural opposite to love; but so did hate, still. I wondered, does that make hate a kind of fear, or vice versa? Are they maybe opposite love on orthogonal axes?

    The conclusion I came to is that fear is a repulsive feeling (pushing away from something that seems bad) in relation to an object that is more powerful than yourself (so repelling it moves you away from it), while hate is the same kind of thing but in relation to an object that is less powerful than yourself (so repelling it moves it away from you).

    That made me think that there should be something that bears the same relationship to love. Love is an attractive feeling (pulling toward something that seems good), but in relation to an object that is more powerful than yourself, or less? And either way, what is the other? One thing is wanting to go to someone or something else, the other is wanting to bring that thing or person to you. Are those both "love"? Are there terms to differentiate them?
  • Mathematicist Genesis
    ↪fdrake
    This reminds me vaguely of a philosophical or logical problem I read about once, and can't remember the resolution to at the moment.

    The argument for the problem was that it seems like an inference like "P, if P then Q, therefore Q" depends on a hidden premise, "if (P and if P then Q) then Q", which in turn depends on yet another hidden nested conditional premise, and so on ad infinitum. Whenever you have some premises from which you think you can derive a conclusion, you're implicitly using a hidden premise that says you can derive that conclusion from those premises, but even once you've explicated that hidden premise you still have the same problem and need to add another hidden premise, on and on forever.

    This sounds like that problem in that, say, a theorem of arithmetic may be necessitated by ZFC, but ZFC is not necessitated by propositional logic, you can use other axiomatic systems that maybe don't necessitate that theorem; and even if ZFC were necessitated by propositional logic, that may not be necessitated by anything, as there are for example paraconsistent logics. You keep falling back on earlier and earlier sets of rules that say that you're allowed to use the rules you tried to use earlier, but who says you can use those earlier rules?

    This also reminds me of Kripkean relative modality, where something can be be necessary inasmuch as it is true in all worlds accessible from a reference world, even if it's not true in absolutely every world.

    I don't have much more well-sorted thoughts on the topic now besides those comparisons to other problems.
  • The "D" word
    ↪god must be atheist
    Only stupid arguments would lose their bite. But yes, that would be a good thing.
  • The "D" word
    ↪Coben
    I see the point you’re making, but it seems separate from the point I was making. I for instance don’t find “bullshit” offensive like the Million Moms find “damn”, but I still understand the emphasis it’s meant to convey. That, I think is good: no offense, but still emphasis.
  • The "D" word
    ↪Coben
    That would be a good thing.

    Imagine if everyone became bulletproof. Then guns would lose their bite. And that would be a good thing.
  • Mathematicist Genesis
    "If you interpret the the Peano axioms in the usual way, then..." — fdrake

    Yeah, this is what I really take the truth of mathematical or more generally logical statements to be about. “All bachelors are unmarried” isn’t really a necessary truth by itself, but “If bachelor means ‘unmarried man of marriageable age’ then all bachelors are unmarried” is. I take mathematical truths to be truths about the implications from axioms to theorems. None of the theorems are themselves necessarily true, but it’s necessarily true that they are implied by their axioms.

    So it is only necessarily true that some axioms imply the existence of the natural numbers with their usual properties including some natural number x such that x+1=2, but that is a conditional statement that is therefore equivalent to some “all A are B” statement that I don’t care to reconstruct right now, and is thus true even in an empty universe.
  • Mathematicist Genesis
    ↪fdrake
    That’s what I meant yeah, thanks! And also I’m totally on board with ambivalence about the “existence” of mathematical objects, ala:

    If there was an object with this structure, it would have these properties
    vs
    There is an object with the structure, so it has these properties.     — fdrake

    As I understand it, we’re really saying “all objects with this structure have these properties”, but that’s technically true whether or not there “really” are any objects with that structure at all. All bachelors are unmarried, even if there are no bachelors.
  • Mathematicist Genesis
    Hurray, we're finally just about up to what I initially thought of as the beginning!

    Would it be fair to say that thus far, we have only discussed the language by which we would reason about any kinds of objects, but (other than for examples) we have not yet formally introduced any objects about which to reason? And that's what we're about to start doing with sets?
  • Nothing, Something and Everything
    @fdrake Maybe you can take a stab at this? I’m getting tired of being called names by someone who clearly understands even less than me about this, and you clearly understand much more than me so maybe you could get through where I can’t.
  • Mathematicist Genesis
    Equivalently, consistency says "no model exists for this theory", and "its elements can't be jointly true together/satisfied". — fdrake

    I think maybe you meant to write “inconsistency” there?
  • On the nature of happiness, misery, and peace.
    ↪PoorAt99
    This all sounds very similar to Buddhism, which is all about how suffering stems from desire, so overcoming attachment is the way to peace.

    Stoicism also has a lot in common with that.
  • Why we don't live in a simulation
    ↪Benkei
    The argument that we're addressing here is the one that says that since we could in principle simulate our world, and that simulation of our world could in principle simulate itself, and so on and so on ad infinitum, it's mostly likely that we are in a simulation, of a world like ours, and not in the "real" world-like-this that we think we're in. That argument does assume that the "outside" reality, if there is one, has physical laws like our own. My (summary of the OP's) argument is a counterargument to that, and so accepts its own assumptions and shows how they defeat it.
  • Nothing, Something and Everything
    ↪creativesoul
    You miss the point of the analogy. Selective breeding works because of genetics, but we didn't need to know that in order to do it. We did it first, and later figured out why it works.

    Likewise, mathematics works for some reason or another, and that reason was in question for thousands of years, but we didn't need to know that in order to just add and stuff. We did that first, and only last century started coming up with strong rigorous explanations of why that stuff works, which explanations today universally rely on some kind of set theory.
  • Curry's Paradox
    ↪TheMadFool
    It doesn't prove every P2 simultaneously, so it's not a paradox as in it gives rise to a contradiction. It proves whatever you plug in for "P2" in the premise, but in a ridiculously trivial way. It's only half a step removed from being the argument "P2. Therefore P2", which can also prove anything you plug in for P2. It's literally "If this sentence is true then P2. Therefore P2", which only proves P2 from the assumption that that sentence is true. "Therefore" means "given the preceding is true, we can conclude the following", so "Given that 'If this sentence is true then P2' is true, we can conclude P2", which is valid but almost as trivial as "P2. Therefore P2", which is also a valid but useless argument, and not a paradox.
  • Mathematicist Genesis
    ↪DonEddy
    I picked up what little of this I knew from extracurricular reading in introductory places like Wikipedia after getting interested in the foundations of mathematics (which is the name of this broad part of mathematics) by way of philosophy and logic (after previously having given up on formal mathematical education when I dropped out of calculus).

    ↪fdrake
    Thanks for the continuing posts! Haven't found time to read them yet but I hope to soon.
  • Nothing, Something and Everything
    ↪creativesoul
    I said "grounded in". There have been long-standing questions about the foundations of mathematics, the current best answer to which is set theory. We often use higher-level things without knowing what lower-level things they're grounded in: we were breeding animals long before we know what genes were, for example.
  • Why we don't live in a simulation
    ↪fishfry
    I'm not trying to change your mind about whether or not the mind is algorithmic, I'm just commenting on the progression of technologies-people-think-the-mind-is-like that you mentioned.
  • Why we don't live in a simulation
    Right. You can SIMULATE a continuous system with a discrete one. But their fundamental nature is different. — fishfry

    That's not what I'm talking about. I'm saying that you can use a continuous flow to implement a discrete computer. Which was my original point, in response to your point about people's ideas of what reality is changing over time. Machines more generally to computers more specifically is a more obvious step, and the main thrust of my point ("everything is computation" is just an evolution of "everything is a machine", not really a replacement of the idea), but as a side point, "everything is a flow" generalizes into machines (which are fundamentally about transforming flows of energy from one form to another), of which computers are, again, a more specific type.
  • Nothing, Something and Everything
    ↪creativesoul
    It sounds to me like you have no familiarity with set theory at all. Everything in mathematics is grounded in set theory, starting with empty sets. The natural numbers, for example, are constructed starting with the empty set, and then a set containing only that set, and then a set containing only those sets, and then a set containing all of those preceding sets, and so on. For any set S, the successor to S is the union of S and a set containing S. Operations can be constructed from set operations that relate sets in that set of sets of sets to each other in the same way that addition and multiplication relate natural numbers to each other, so that set of sets of sets is considered to be the natural numbers: the empty set is the number zero, the set containing it is the number one, the set containing both of those is the number two, and so on.

    This is standard mathematics, and the "terminological use I'm advocating" is standard logic. I'm not putting forward anything of my own here, I'm just trying to help you understand the normal way professionals on this subject understand things.
  • Nothing, Something and Everything
    ↪creativesoul
    It maybe renders them useless in that particular case, but we don't usually talk about that particular case for exactly that reason: nobody cares to know how many of zero things anyone has. But if "everything" is taken to mean "there aren't any you don't have" and "nothing" is taken to mean "there aren't any you have", that accurately covers all the cases anybody does actually want to talk about, and it doesn't matter that it has this weird-seeming consequence in one case that nobody cares about anyway.

    You'll have to explain this supposed equivocation between "zero" and "nothing", because I'm not seeing what you're talking about. If it helps, I'm not saying that the number zero is itself nothing; I'm saying that zero is the number of things in a set that has no things in it.
  • Why we don't live in a simulation
    ↪fishfry
    Pneumatic digital computers are an actual thing. Voltage is continuous too, that doesn't stop us from using "high voltage" and "low voltage" as discrete states, switching between them, and making digital computers out of that. The same can be done with water, air, basically anything that flows.
  • Why we don't live in a simulation
    ↪fishfry
    Computers are a kind of machine. A kind of machine that can actually be implemented as flows of water, as can many kind of machines (flows or water can carry and transform flows of energy, which can in turn carry and transform information). So to me it looks like mere refinement of concepts over time, not replacement of them. Machines in general are abstractions of the specific kind of (pneumatic) mechanism the Romans were working with. Computation is a further abstraction of what machines do. What a surprise, as we understand the world better and better and build new things utilizing that refined knowledge, things that get more and more like ourselves, we figure that we ourselves must be some kind of whatever the newest kind of refinement is. And so far as I'm concerned we're right, we've always been right, we just keep getting more and more right.
  • Curry's Paradox
    To assume P1 as a premise is to assign P1 the truth value of "TRUE", and we can therefore substitute "TRUE" for P1 anywhere it occurs within P1 itself without changing the evaluation of the whole of P1.

    So P1: "If P1 then P2" evaluates to "If TRUE then P2". Necessarily TRUE (that's what it means), therefore P2.

    So yeah, you can use this to "prove" any P2, but that's just because you're transparently baking P2, whatever it is, into the single premise of the argument. This isn't a paradox, it's just a really useless trivially valid argument, the cogency and therefore soundness of which depends entirely upon the truth of P2, which is what's in question.

    A useful argument shows the answer to a controversial question follows from uncontroversial premises. The whole reason why question-begging or circular reasoning is problematic is because it puts a controversial position into the premises, and thus can't be used to convince anyone who doesn't already accept that. This is merely a very transparent case of doing exactly that.


    (Additionally, to assume P1 is false is to assign P1 the truth-value of "FALSE", which makes P1 evaluate to "if FALSE then P2" and the assumption of the falsehood of P1 equivalent to: "not(if FALSE then P2)", which is equivalent to "FALSE and not-P2".)
  • Why x=x ?
    ↪jgill
    The difference between senses of "is" actually is a philosophical matter that Clinton was referring to. There's the present-tense "is" and the tenseless "is", and the difference between those is what the claim Clinton referred to depended upon (as the Lewinsky affair was at the time of utterance no longer presently ongoing, but there was still an affair in the tenseless sense that somewhen in time an affair had happened).
  • Curry's Paradox
    ↪TheMadFool
    I don't think anyone is saying that the proof is invalid, just that it's conclusion is trivial. All conclusions of valid arguments are baked into their premises, that's how truth preservation works, but the conclusion of this argument is so transparently baked into the premise that it's not really surprising or a paradox that it can be proven. Or that "anything can be proven this way", because consider for comparison an argument that "From 'If TRUE then P' we can prove P, for any P". That's correct, but it's hardly surprising, because 'if TRUE then P" is pretty much just asserting P.
  • Why we don't live in a simulation
    For example say the simulation runs at 60fps. But in base reality each frame takes 1 second to calculate. So each minute in base reality corresponds to a second in the simulation. But trillions have years have passed in base reality, so it would be possible for our 14 billion year universe to be a simulation. — Devans99

    Yes, that is true. But then the base reality will have trillions of years worth of more history for more people to have lived, meaning that in all of reality (including the simulation of our universe and everything outside of it), most of the observers would have been out there in the base reality, and we would be really really (un?)lucky to have been some of the relative few in this simulation. That's the same thing as saying it's really unlikely that we are in a simulation.

    Each simulated universe could contain more simulated universes. So Faberge egg style nesting. Base reality contains say X individuals, each nested universe contains X smaller individuals. — Devans99

    Every individual takes a certain minimum amount of space. We can simulate very simplified large spaces inside of small computing boxes, but to simulate greater and greater detail requires a device capable of storing and processing greater and greater information, and information cannot be packed infinitely densely. To perfectly simulate X quadrillion fundamental particles will ultimately take >X billion fundamental particles to do. So sub-simulations have to either get smaller, or less detailed, in either case putting a limit on how many observers can be inside of them, requiring that there be fewer observers in simulations than in base reality, and so more likely that any random observer should find themselves in the base reality.
  • Understanding art
    Art is anything presented by the artist to evoke a reaction in an audience. It is "good art" to the extent that it is successful at provoking the intended reaction -- where the intent is subjective, and can differ between the artist and the audience, between different members of the audience, between any of them and society more generally, and between all of those and whatever (if anything) objectively ought to be provoked.

    I'd say the most foundational forms of art are rhetoric and design (as in industrial design or architectural design), in that they are both all about drawing attention toward and away from things regardless of their contents, emphasizing and de-emphasizing.
  • Why we don't live in a simulation
    3. If (like in Men in Black) the universe is much smaller than the owner of the simulation and his computer, then maybe something is possible
    4. The old standby, there is but one base reality and untold numbers of simulations, so we must be in the latter     — Devans99

    These two things are directly related to the OP.

    The OP addresses the point 4 by saying that the odds of being in one of the many simulations is reduced by the fact that time in said simulations has to run slower than time in the base reality, so simulations are necessarily younger and have fewer observers in them.

    Point 3 ends up with pretty much the same result: if simulated universes are necessarily smaller than the base reality, then fewer observers are likely to be in simulated universes.

    We should expect to find ourselves among the most common class of observers, so if there's a lot more observers in the base reality either way, we should expect to find ourselves in the base reality.
  • Negation across cultures
    The mind's ability to negate logic is like having the body having the ability to stop breathing and physiology says we can't do the latter. — TheMadFool

    We can actually hold our breath temporarily at least, which is a rare thing among animals.

    A lot of spiritual practices put special emphasis on breathing (in fact the word "spirit" means "breath" in its oldest usage), and I recall that I once had some interesting thoughts about some relation between the human ability to control our own breath and some other important characteristically human ability like reason, but I can't for the life of me remember what connection it was I saw however long ago it was that I had that thought. Maybe it had something to do with the ability to temporarily suspect automatic functions like breathing being like our ability to not simply react to things but to pause and consider our options before acting.
  • Negation across cultures
    I guess some might say I'm referring to radical/fanatical freedom. — TheMadFool
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  • Curry's Paradox
    Where is the contradiction? — TheMadFool

    "This sentence is false."

    If P1 is "not P1", assuming P1 assumes a contradiction.

    So if P1 is "not-P1 or P2", assuming P1 assumes either a contradiction or P2.

    And "If P1 then P2" is logically equivalent to "not-P1 or P2", so if P1 is "if P1 then P2", same situation.

    P1 is equivalent to “this sentence is false or P2”, so I think assuming P1 is to assume P2, not to prove it. — Michael

    :100:

    A loose more idiomatic way of phrasing P1 would be "If I'm right, P2" or "Unless I'm wrong, P2." That's basically just a way of asserting P2.
  • Curry's Paradox
    "If P1 then P2" translates to "P2 or not P1", so assuming P1 = "if P1 then P2" is just assuming that P2 (or else self-contradiction), and of course you can prove any P2 by starting from the assumption that either it is true or there is a contradiction (because even if there is a contradiction, that will let you prove anything too).

    Consider for example: "If this sentence is true then I am the Pope of Mars." That just means "I am the Pope of Mars or this sentence is false." If we believe that sentence, then we disregard "this sentence is false" and so conclude that I am the Pope of Mars. If we instead assume I am not the Pope of Mars (because there is no such thing and I'm not even Martian-Catholic anyway), we can conclude that "this sentence is false", from which we can conclude anything, including that I am the Pope of Mars anyway, and also that I am not the Pope of Mars, at the same time if we want. You're basically just baking in an ex falso quodlibet into the premise.
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