Do you know the balls in the jar challenge?

Ask 100 people how many balls there are in a jar and you will get give or take 80 different answers. If you want to know the most accurate answer, add these 100 answers and divide by 100.
Take all scientific opinions on a subject and find their common denominator and you will be pretty close to the truth.

Maybe we 'shouldn't' have a pragmatic idea of truth. — Coben

We should have a pragmatic idea of truth.
Anything that makes you feel you are 'better off' today than yesterday is truth. And once you believe things can't get any better you have arrived at you destination.

I think you are making it more complicated than it needs to be. The question is a moral one. Should you intervene or not? What are you responsibilities? The five were ordinary day laborers and the 1 was a famous doctor who can save many peoples lives. It wishes merely to illustrate that it is very difficult to make value judgments.

Again, to make it a paradox you would have to change it to: This statement is a lie. Because if it's true, it's a lie. But if it's a lie, it's not true. — 3017amen

All we can say about these sentences is that they contain no information.
This statement is false.
Everything I say is a lie.
'I am a liar'
Don't believe anything I say..... etc....
I am crazy
These all contain the same paradox.

Ever read Catch 22? That novel is all about being caught up in a paradoxical situation you can't escape from.

So, a being that has achieved everything it tried to achieve and therefore does not have anything that makes it behave with intent since everything is already the way it desires, doesn't have goals? That would mean achieving a goal is losing a goal. — Qmeri

Absolutely correct.

Eckhart Tolle > Quotes > Quotable Quote

“... there are two ways of being unhappy. Not getting what you want is one. Getting what you want is the other.”

A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

Everyone is both a socialist and a capitalist as every sexual being is both female and male. Females being more female than male and visa versa. To what extent you are more socialist than capitalist tends to be determined by your upbringing. If you have grown up in wealthy circumstances you tend to be more capitalistic and visa versa.

Both extremes are undesirable: Fascism and Communism have brought untold misery. As with most things, finding the right balance is desirable. This can usually be found in liberal democracies.

Einstein is compatible with GPSs, but GPSs don’t prove him right, — Pfhorrest

They do prove him right. His hypothesis/theory was that time sped up in a lower gravitational field. The fact that we have to compensate for that aberration shows his hypothesis was correct. He also predicted gravitational waves. This year we have detected them proving that his hypothesis was correct.

Because we know the earth is round does not make the flat earth theory obsolete. The flat earth theory is applied every day in construction.

"A plumb bob, or plummet, is a weight, usually with a pointed tip on the bottom, suspended from a string and used as a vertical reference line, or plumb-line. It is a precursor to the spirit level and used to establish a vertical or horizontal datum."

Do you have a good definition for a goal? — Qmeri

A goal is whatever makes you behave with intent.

To make it a paradox you would re-word to say: This statement is a lie. — 3017amen

'I am a liar.'

is already a paradox. Tell me if you know I am a liar or not?

I think what you might be alluding to is the Trolly problem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem

You see a runaway trolley moving toward five tied-up (or otherwise incapacitated) people lying on the main track. You are standing next to a lever that controls a switch. If you pull the lever, the trolley will be redirected onto a side track, and the five people on the main track will be saved. However, there is a single person lying on the side track. You have two options:

Do nothing and allow the trolley to kill the five people on the main track.
Pull the lever, diverting the trolley onto the side track where it will kill one person.
Which is the more ethical option? Or, more simply: What is the right thing to do?

"de facto" forced and "physically forced". — schopenhauer1

Humans are 'de facto' forced to stay alive for fear of death.

Even now we’re about to have the idea of Socialism sold to us — Brett

Socialism is not sold. Capitalism is sold. Socialism is solidarity. Capitalism is survival of the richest.

enrich one's life — Pantagruel

Is not a core value. That is an added bonus.

Do we have more than one "self"?

I can recommend listening to a podcast from 'Hidden Brain, 'the empathy gap'. Shows how we behave very different under different emotional states.

Logic without experience has no value. Experience without logic has no value. We should aim for the experiential logic.

You can replace logic with hypothesis and and experience with empiricism.

↪Brett They can get rid of me when they please. I've been here a long time, and it's getting worse by the day. — iolo

How solipsistic can you get?

Even now we’re about to have the idea of Socialism sold to us by the USA as if they invented it. — Brett

Who is 'us'?

the core values of life — Pantagruel

As far as I am concerned the only core value is survival.

Our linear logic got us to where we are now, but nonlinear eastern logic could pick up the ball and maybe leave us in the dust — Athena

I think there are 2 kinds of logic. Logic and ill-logic. You can't have 2 'truths' that are mutually exclusive.

"Unstable things try to be stable"

Without Instability nothing would exist.

'I am a liar'.

Is this sentence/statement true or false?

"This sentence is false" is utterly meaningless.

Without a frame of reference (context) most sentences are meaningless.

Practically every statement is referential.
That would be like a math formula without an =.

Yes 0 is neutrality. This is our optimal state. This is our rest state. The state of balance.
However all life hangs in a balance.

. I am saying time can not be known because we can not experience it.

I experience it every Time I am bored.

Listen to Jazz and tell me they don't experience time.

Ever heard of a biological clock?

. "Useless knowledge" Yes that is nonsense. That does not exist
Knowing what makes a person nervous is very usefull for me.

Knowledge doesn't 'do' anything.
It does a lot for us

if there are no persons in existence
Facts wouldn't exist because this is a human concept


facts are part of what make propositions true.
You can't have a true proposition with a false fact.

You propose a proposition which is either true or false depending on the verity of the facts.

For instance, if you are making a claim that happiness is an intrinsic human need, — 3017amen

In general I find it a lot easier to argue for absence of something negative.
I don't see happiness, joy or contentment as the result of gaining something positive but losing something negative. In mathematical terms going from -1 to 0 you achieve happiness. Not going from 0 to 1 because of the 'mean reversion' the revert to the average you will always end up in 0 again.
People should be content at zero but don't realize they are.

Can human beings have enough free will and rationality to make widespread self-control based on sizable commitment to reflective decision-making even conceivably attainable? — Enrique

I am of the opinion, if people didn't have something to struggle for we would lose the will to live. We have to have aspirations. I think one of the greatest challenges facing mankind would be boredom and loneliness and general nihilism.

The GPS does require knowledge of something else though: not from a scientist, but from a mathematician by the name of Descartes. — frank

I think you need quite a lot more than just a mathematician to get a satellite orbiting around the earth. It is not called rocket science for nothing.

I think education for technology has taken us down a fool's path with a greatly over-exaggerated opinion of ourselves. — Athena

Yes I agree. All these wonderful marvels science and engineering have brought us has left us with an ecological disaster (an extinction rate almost unprecedented in history) and global warming.

We don't need any info about relativity to make the GPS work. — frank

I didn't say that you need relativity to make GPS work. This is what I said.

The fact that your GPS works is thanks to Einsteins relativity theory being correct — ovdtogt

Exactly. In the frame of reference of aiming a cannon Newton's laws are true enough. For determining your GPS position, you need Einsteins relativity theory to understand that the passage of time in satellites is faster due to the effect of gravity.
I also use the analogy of building a house or a very long bridge. With a house you can consider the earth to be flat and for a bridge you have to take account of the curvature of the earth.
Absolute knowledge does not exist (for us). We always work with relative knowledge.

1 Knowledge should work all of the time, not some of the time.
2 Knowledge is useful.
3 Knowledge answers questions
4 Knowledge solves problems.
5 Knowledge is made of facts.
6 Facts are true
7 Facts are true because they are useful, answer questions, solve problems.

]Your GPS working proves that engineers kick ass. Science and engineering are good friends, but they aren't the same.[/quote]

The fact that your GPS works is thanks to Einsteins relativity theory being correct. Without science, you would have very little engineering.

Whatever the absolute truth is, — Pfhorrest

If it is the absolute truth you are looking for, might I suggest you try one of the many religions?

Nothing can be proven (only disproven). — Pfhorrest

The fact that your GPS works proves it.

But this is a small problem, since once any claimed "science" gains any importance — Qmeri

Science is what can be proven. All the rest is educated guesswork.

If the magic doesn't work, it's religion — unenlightened

Religion, Homeopathy and Acupuncture do work. It's effects are psychological and therefor very difficult to quantify scientifically. The mind has a healing power of which we still no very little.

I'm afraid that is total rubbish. — iolo

Clever response..

It does not make much sense to think and/or believe that a contradiction is even capable of being true. — creativesoul

How about the statement: 'I saw your brother today' and you reply my brother died yesterday. Wouldn't that be a true contradiction?

Okay, how do you want to be ruled? You either rule or be ruled or find yourself a nice island somewhere.