That is a thing, I've heard of that... from now on whenever things don't work out I'll take it as a compliment from the universe.

It's basically Platonism, only we can't actually know the categories, but they still exist.

What it means is that we can think the same thing, and it isn't dependent on the material that instantiates it, but on principles of form, which are universal, so that I and you, can construct the same idea, or thought, or meaningful thing out of any material whatever, and as long as the form is right, then we can obtain the same meaning, or idea.

Necessarily then, none of that form or meaning can be dependent on the material that is used in forming it. It can't be found in it, but in order for it to be meaningful, to be "rational" it has to be universal and the same precisely in all instantiations. This is just how reason works, and no material that instantiates anything does.

No, Kant isn't saying that we can't get outside the categories of thought, he's attempting to secure their objectivity in the face of Hume's critique that they aren't to be found in experience. He actually does think that there is a domain of experience that isn't subject to categorization, so we both can get outside of them, and he isn't trying to justify some cultural prejudices, but secure the objectivity and universality of thought itself. Without that it's only human, it's only us complexly ooting at each other about homo sapien stuff, and that's it.

I saw a studied that suggested that dumber people were more dishonest. They gave them a die, and asked them to go in a private box that actually was and for true private to roll the die, and paid out more for a higher roll. The dumber group overwhelming beat the odds, rolling a hell of a lot of sixes. The smarter group beat the odds too, but not as amazingly.

I think that philosophers are more honest, and I think that honesty is the true mark of intelligence. They don't have to be right all the time, or about everything, but no ones doing any better. Everyone is pretty much just saying the same stuff as the Greeks too, with small novel divergences and or just simple inversions on various points.

It's still the highest ends of what's going on in human thought. How it relates to some non-human reality is always secondary to me.

We're way better than chimps at it... probably...

I think that it's more useful to overestimate than to underestimate. People are getting stuff by you constantly, all the time. So much meaning in their actions, words and tones.

Everyone's the smartest one on the planet too. Unfortunately though, it's hard to see anything with our heads in the clouds.

Kind of both, or not really different. We know what things mean and imply for us. What things are good, and what things are wicked, and it is both in a sense of hating that we're not ideal in some sense, and loving ourselves so much that we're super protective of letting ourselves be harmed by things we see as possibly damaging to the things we care about, and want to see ourselves as.

It's because we love ourselves so much.

I'm the normalest. I'm uniquely exceptional at being normal.

Corrupting the youth.

I don't think that it's helpful to talk about morality abstractly, or divorced from demonstration, from a direct expression of your own life -- maybe even dangerous. Maybe somethings are profane.

The ironic thing is that the very concept of freedom coincides the concept of slavery. To be free meant to be sovereign, precisely to not have a lord.

I think it's nonsense because "free will" is vague, and I think something like constrained intentions. We can't freely will things, except in some imaginary sense that need not actually come to fruition. We can just try to make things happen, and we basically start out playing a game that we don't even know the rules of.

Usually it takes the truth to fool me.

I don't like animal testing... I have a personal aversion to it. Most of the time, I don't think that it demonstrates much, and is always a fucking horror story, even when it does.

Yeah, being in a cage surrounded by intentional agents and artificial equipment, with entirely random food delivery completely beyond your control, and having nothing to do with anything that you do. Just like the wild.

Then I just reiterate, that the study doesn't actually demonstrate anything other than that birds can be wrong, and we can trick them.

Other than that, all I see is insinuation.

How long did the pigeons' superstitions persist? A week? A year? Their whole lives?

Kind of reminds me of this documentary I once saw about squirrels. They said that the fuzzies buried like 200k nuts or something crazy, a summer, and wanted to know if they remembered all of the locations. So they put tracking devices in six nuts, let a squirrel bury them, and then caught the squirrel to starve it (because scientists are big on tormenting animals), and then released it. The squirrel dug up all six nuts, and then they were all like, "yup. looks like it remembers where all the nuts are."... the last six is all they showed, not 200k...

Similarly, what does that demonstrate? That it's possible to mistake correlation for causation? Pretty sure we knew that... that birds aren't always right either? Shocking...

It hardly shows anything remotely close to the creation, and persistence of myths through multiple generations...

With anything like financial advice, or sports team betting, all they have to beat is chance. A 51% success rate is still making money. What's awful, is that a hell of a lot of them do worse than chance, and you'd make money if you took their advice just to do the opposite.

My earlier post may have been too rationalist, or theoretical. I think that there is a domain of experience that isn't subject to categorization, or qualification (the immeasurable). A sense of the unseen, or behind the veil forces that effect our lives, and we need to account for the sensibility of experience at all.

This aspect of our lives requires accounting for, and I think that myths, or whatever "superstitions" persist need to be more than just useful, but true in at least some sense. There has to be something about them that resonates with our experience. It can't be all bluster.

I think that it's a side-effect of our inability to distinguish between correlation, and causation. Depending on the personal significance, a causative link can be inferred from a single example.

We want and need ways to improve or affect the chances of things, and predict events. The more significance, the greater the demand. Then there is selection.

Plenty we agree with simply because someone said it confidently, or cleverly.

Some part of us always remains superstitious to some extent, no matter how rational we figure we are. If a loved one convincingly told you they had just seen a ghost, and you completely don't believe in that at all, and tell yourself that you're entirely positive, and that can't be... your heart rate will still increase, and a part of you is still all like "maybe though..."

I made that Hegel reference off the cuff, without checking, and it may not be quite right. Probably remembering that wrong. Just forget that part...

Hegel expands pretty good on Kant's notion of disinterest (which I'm alluding to), in his notions of the for itself, and the for us. I'm making a ridiculously absurd argument that in order to truly care about something, or see the beauty in it, it can't be about us. It can't be for anything specifically to do with us.

The disinterest is required to truly appreciate something for itself, and in its own light. Anything else is just "agreeableness", or useful.

I'm really just echoing Kant, because it seems right to me.

"Tell me what it is you cherish most, so that I may have the pleasure of taking it away" - Sephiroth

"I pity you. You just don't get it at all. There isn't anything that I don't cherish." - Cloud.

The opposite of love and care is not hatred or disregard, but disinterest.

That wasn't me, that was Ikuhara bombing interviews with glorious nonsense whenever he's asked what the symbolism in his work means.

You can think you're done and perfect, it's everyone else that's the problem, and you can let your guard down, but that's when it gets you.

At the very least, if you've heard of these immortal body snatchers, then they have most certainly failed.

I like to tell my family that we all have a competitive animal in us, trying to dominate, and gain the throne. That world religions are usually about that one guy that killed it, and is now perfectly good -- only that's bullshit. It never goes away. Eternal vigilance.

Essences, categories and such attempt to explain how words which are always general, can possibly consistently apply to things, which are always particular.

I don't think that it is easily denied that all ideas or notions are general, so in order to maintain that we're still talking about the objects and circumstances of our experiences, then these essential generalities must in some sense inhere in the objects themselves.

This then spawns the dance of siding with rationalism or empiricism, everything is completely unique, or uniqueness doesn't exist at all and things.

"This is just between you and me, but when I was fourteen, I saw a UFO.
That UFO telepathically told me this prophecy: "When you grow up, you will direct an anime about girls revolutionizing various things."
Surely you jest.
"You must not tell anyone about me. If you ever do..."
Wh-What will happen to me?
"People will call you a sketchy guy."" - Kunihiko Ikuhara

God never claims to be omnibenevolent, but the ultimate cause of all things " I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things" - Isaiah 45:7

God doesn't claim to be omniscient either : ""Do not lay a hand on the boy," he said. "Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son." - Genesis 22:12

If you actually read the Bible you'd see that God is a vengeful, judgmental jealous uncompassionate ass. Even in Jesus' head, he pleads with God to forgive everyone, because they don't really understand what they're doing. Moses pleads with God to not just kill all of his peeps for the golden calf thing. People have to be good, and actually ask God for things to happen, otherwise they're implied to just take an uninvolved natural course. Like when someone is going to die, they can pray to have their life extended. One needs to be a holy dude, doing the work of God. God just lets things happen pretty much otherwise, or worse, just would fucking extirpate everything that rubs him the wrong way, without the human prophets giving a case for moderation, and leniency.

You've got an ax to grind is all.

That's attacking when claims get speculative, this is actually demonstrable for at least the last few centuries (causes of course aren't).

That the consequential fearmongering is not to be taken literally, but understood to just be emotional manipulation on its face?

As I already admitted, I may have missed the point, but God is in the details.

And you did for the trends of violence, the only thing I have disputed?

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2014/12/the_world_is_not_falling_apart_the_trend_lines_reveal_an_increasingly_peaceful.html

Just do a google search. This isn't obscure, or complex.

Pinker most famously, because it's hard to get anything other than terrible news out -- but it is statistically and archaeologically supported, and not just a claim he's making. It's what the actual evidence suggests.

You can keep claiming that the world's about to burn up in the dead of winter if you want to. You can say things are wrong all you want to, but when you turn to consequences, don't just make them up.