They're religious people. So they say. They understand they're either right or wrong and should accept that including any potential reward or consequence thereof.

everything is meaningless — niki wonoto

What if your "knowledge" or ingrained belief is meaningless? Oh wait, apparently it isn't. Logic fail. So, why not build on your own knowledge if it's so intrinsically excluded from "everything". Not ego, but knowledge. This is confused many a time.

I think people like me also have our own valid (& logical, rational) reasons to be a pessimist (or agreeing with philosophical pessimism), when looking at the world, life, (human's) society, existence, & basically the cold, harsh, cruel reality around us everyday (I still even haven't discussed about depressive realism, antinatalism, pro-mortalism, efilism, suicide, etc etc). — niki wonoto

Yeah things can be pretty sh*tty. You should think of life as a sandbox. You can build a castle or you can piss in it. Naturally, you being one person can't change the choices of others.. as an individual. But. You can shape a better tomorrow if you so chose to, at least you could try. Yet you don't. Understandably because this is unrealistic. You could shout good tidings from the rooftops and depending on the crowd may even be shot at. This is discouraging. But there are other ways.

What joy is there to succumb to negativity and be at peace with it compared to resisting it, even in your own way, and succeeding to bring joy to others thus bringing meaning to your own? These are the questions only you can answer. And I hope you do.

I read most of this and will continue to read the rest when time or interest allows. I think most people go too deep with anarchy as an established philosophy or frankly anything else. You just got people who want more then they have and on occasion realize, most people do as well and so, often under false pretenses, conform to the same playbook authoritarians do, being "a vision of a better tomorrow" .. such as theirs is. Anarchy is selfishness personified, insidious as it claims to offer freedom, to those who take it. Which never lasts for long. If it did, that means there's some structure, hierarchy, or otherwise means to protect said state of affairs. It claims there won't be, but rather it's simply the worst form of authoritarianism there is. It's been many a time "they utopia they seek is really a dystopia of the worst kind". People get weary of blood on the streets, having more teeth, entrails, and cadavers on a sidewalk then small change, paper products and trashbags, as well as having to walk even the safest street with a sword on your waist and your eyes focused just as frequently behind you as in front. The allure or glow of "maybe" having more than you have in an all out melee quickly turns to a dull ember. One that any person would soon believe with a little understanding needs to be extinguished entirely. The grass is always greener. And when it's not, it's a crimson shade of dark red.

Why would we wish to do that we wish we to avoid? ignorance is bliss. Would anyone disagree?

Mental illness is simply the inability to pull your own weight beyond reasonable circumstance. Which includes pretending to be mentally ill to avoid work in front of people who aren't. Violent outbursts in protest of said duty included.

Ok, so, can we agree that information is "an idea that can be conveyed that may or may not be subject to error"? aka flat out wrong?

basically a flat out lie is information, though wrong, remains equal with an absolute accurate account? alongside a deeply held belief of something that just so happens to be wrong?

I don't see how the confusion persists. I'm not trying to evade any example but they seem consistent with my account. Did I miss a chance to be confused? — Cheshire

For the laypersons reading which does not exclude myself, let's see if we can simplify things. This is your "account"

Some of it's information about the other room and some is imagined. One or more is inaccurate. When I enter the room I make my own assessment and compare notes. The part that doesn't change probably isn't imaginary. — Cheshire

Your assertion that the definition of information seems to be that which "probably isn't imaginary" that's great. Who knows, maybe Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny "probably isn't imaginary". I mean, we see them every holiday. And that's when the legends say they show up. So, you see what I'm insinuating logically.

Meanwhile, you remain a prince and a scholar. By putting down someone who by your own assertion is unintelligent. You poor bastard.

You better cling to your atheism and suckle at its bosom. It's all you'll have left, and even that will be gone when you need it most.

For the record I'm not a fan of Banno either. My point has receded. Is this the short story page?

Some of it's information about the other room and some is imagined. One or more is inaccurate. When I enter the room I make my own assessment and compare notes. The part that doesn't change probably isn't imaginary. — Cheshire

But does it have to be imagined? Perhaps the person who describes the bottle in the room as blue did in fact see a blue bottle in the room that was subsequently replaced with the green bottle the first man saw? Perhaps he has some odd eye condition or whatever that made him simply see it as blue. Perhaps when the third man came in a fairy showed up and rendered the bottle invisible leaving him no other choice but to say "there was no bottle in the room"?

Right. So it seems information is not information unless it conforms to an observable and generally accepted consensus, which relies on our own senses or rather trust in them. But it was, everything, even assuming they were complete lies, were equally information until investigated. So does that mean information not personally confirmed are but clues? Lies? Possibilities? Relative?

While the nitty gritty of it all, including all widely-accepted views, have just been eloquently explained in much detail, perhaps one may begin to ask themselves a few simple questions.

There's a bottle that is, by all widely accepted views green, that happens to sit in a room you've yet to enter. One man informs you the bottle in the room is green. Another tells you it is blue. And still another tells you there is no bottle whatsoever. Are these not all bits of information? When you enter the room and confirm whether said bottle is green, blue, or even existent for that matter, does that change? Why?

Really though, I was at first expecting to leave a bit of good-natured and well-meant snark for not posting a question and whatnot but, I see that's been thoroughly taken care of.

The man was ahead of his time, and if I'm not mistaken shared ideas that modern science has springboarded off of. Two bodies perhaps being the primal elements being earth, wind, water, and fire. Light has a uniqueness, clearly. Obviously earth being opaque is an exception but as far as the other elements this element definitely has a curious place.

You will not go away. You shall engage with me and Gregory until we discover a new paradigm in physics and understanding of reality.

Eh just a longtime fan of the old adage that is "when you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth"

See. Take you. Why are you not sure you follow as opposed to simply dismissing my post as incoherent nonsense, which if so I appreciate your courtesy in not mentioning so. I've given you not information, but a request for information, that actually makes you seek the information you were already seeking, just in different places. Tricky, eh?

What is disinformation? From there you begin to gather what can be called an answer. As relative as it may be. Furthermore, what is the difference between information and education?

Can a distant whisper barely heard by you contain instructions that may save or take a life?

When you convince others to treat good as evil and evil as good, well, therein lies the real problem. For lack of complication, evil defined as a disregard for others when doing things that when done to yourself would find displeasurable. Or perhaps, some sort of joy or excitement from said activity.

The only thing that makes humans special is that we have free will. — Cidat

Yet few will ever truly understand this. Is a lion not the king of the jungle? A whale or shark the king of the ocean? If a tiny one-celled virus decimates humanity, is that not now the apex predator with free will? Until you embrace what you were given, you have neither freedom nor will, simply convenient or rather circumstantial will. And this, is what defines an animal and so differentiates a human.

Scientific laws are really mostly just uncontested theories.

The modulator on a guitar amp is not the sound it simply has a large amount of control over it.

Behavior can be against nature but nature can never be against behavior, which leads to my larger point. Just as one man's trash is another man's treasure, one man's idea of order is another man's idea of chaos. Without creating an enveloping obfuscation of both my point and yours in a fog of semantic divinity as I call it, well to be honest your question seems to be two unrelated questions. We have the age-old "nature vs. nurture" conundrum alongside the follow-up of, regardless of the answer to this question, is it chaos that defines one or the other?

Definitely a head-scratcher. Everything has an order to it, at least in some way, even if we fail to extract any real meaning from it. Before we understood what we now do about how many aspects of the world works around us, it was gods and magic. Depending on your interpretation, man brought chaos to order by simply being unable to understand it, which brought at least a sense of order to what was previously thought of as chaos. It's a real double-edged sword. I don't know how something works, so I might putter around with it some, and come up with an explanation that's not easily disprovable and makes people smile and nod their head. Is this a victory for chaos or order? The debate rages on.

Nietzsche's attack on the virtues of kindness and compassion seems to me an unfortunate flaw in his thinking. — Ross Campbell

Yeah, well. Just as unfortunate is the capacity for suffering and the likelihood of said virtues to be abused resulting in those who live accordingly to be taken advantage of in this world. Which can result in the very concepts (virtues) meant to prevent suffering sometimes creating more. You trust someone to borrow your car or a firearm, they might engage in a killing spree whereas if you did not they would have a knife. You may trust someone who said they broke down to enter your house and use the phone, needless to say what can happen there. It's a sad truth but, sometimes crime and cruelty really does pay. Or does it? What world does that create? An undesirable one in my view. That's where reasonable religion comes in. It teaches you to be just as smart as you are kind. If you actually pay attention.

his contempt for the virtues of pity and compassion regarding them as weaknesses which inhibit the "strong" individual — Ross Campbell

It's a tough one. The argument and counter-argument are best illustrated through anecdote. If you're a trained fighter and someone much smaller than you runs up, calls you a name, then knocks your hat off or even slaps you in front of someone you try to protect in life, it's easy to shake your head and laugh it off. If the person your with says anything you can just be logical and say hey, what do you want me to break his face open over some nonsense, learn to live and let live, and mosey about your day. Everyone around will think that's kind of awesome right away, and you'll feel awesome. However, in that scenario your biological fears were never tested since you knew you were never in really in danger, the other person was. But for sake of the anecdote let's say you're a highly spiritual pacifist both in this scenario and the following one.

In a different scenario, let's say someone much larger than you comes up and does the same. Now your biological fears are being tested, not the least of which being self-worth by proxy of peer approval. You had no interest in engaging in combat with someone who is lesser than you morally or mentally and so act in a way as to avoid it. Yet it's not the same, even if it really was. Humanity is a vain creature that can succumb to negative emotion at a moment's notice, especially when amplified by others whose approval is sought.

Long story short, people don't like that which they view as a hindrance to one's needs until one needs it themselves. Show me the man who lives adamantly by this about to face execution, and not a quick one either, and nine times out of ten I'll show you a hypocrite. After all, an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

Dopamine and friends. Along with security for a reasonably consistent environment in which it can be produced, procured, and enjoyed. That last bit is an understanding that differentiates modern man from his predecessors and fellow organisms.

It's all the same. Happiness. Love. Camaraderie. Entertainment. Some people want to start a family, some people just want to hang out or otherwise pursue some sort of nondescript inner joy that has long eluded them, etc. It's a combination of what makes one "happy" ie. brings joy and contentment and what one logically believes. For some people, mostly children, it's getting new things and having new/fun experiences whenever possible. For others, it's about solving problems, "moving society forward" as some would say.

At least, those are the rational explanations.

Not always. Depends on if you're doing anything impactful or not. A million dollars toward people who are stuck in only maintaining the same cycle and increasing the degeneracy is exponentially worse than a few thousand toward someone who's actually working to break it. Of course, everyone thinks they are, due to ingrained teaching, reinforced by penalty of negative emotion, per ego and peer (dis)approval, which is taught to come before if not replace self-worth completely ensuring it never really has a chance to develop. That's why the world is in such dire straits. But how long will it last? I suppose modern human value and virtue can be likened to an ever-increasingly dull game of hot potato.

anyone who thinks they have justification to deny other humans the same right to life and happiness — TheArchitectOfTheGods

Oh please. We just had other people do it for us so now we don't have to. You, we all, exist on that foundation. Now sure, there's no extenuating purpose to do so at present, so we often don't, smile, and call ourselves good people. But is it right?

Anything that disrupts my daily routine and/or intentions or desires for said day.

No. Unless you win. Otherwise, no. Just kidding.

You appear to be sidestepping the root question. You're describing an action or ideology. So we have to ask what is the driving factor behind said action or ideology. Therein lies your answer. If it's someone who was displaced by war, while justification is an important overall concept (though less so if you're an atheist or not a believer in some sort of absolute collective accountability), it comes down to a matter of basic sense and logic. No, it's generally not a smart thing to do. Beyond that if it's just someone trying to take more crap that doesn't belong to them, like is human nature.. well that's the root question. Is war justified? The governing authorities and the material provided will definitely convince the citizen so.

You know what it is. We all know what brings pain and what brings pleasure, the difference between the two. You knew by the time you were a few years old. We fool ourselves into thinking pain induced unto others for the pleasure of one's self or beneficial group can be moral if it may (possibly) change an ingrained lifestyle (religion) of another to that of one which is deemed greater, more fruitful, and more prosperous. That is to say, we become fooled by those who know this to be but a visage for material or some other gain, an attractive call to arms of which the root message is "It became necessary to destroy the town to save it". Which is a rare occurrence, yet not unheard of. It becomes a philosophical battle of net positive versus net negative, ironically one of which philosophers are generally barred, unheard, or otherwise ignored.

We can't fine-tune it — jamalrob

Nah, you could. I could, at least. While it would be complicated (yet far from unfeasible) to add an option in the user CP to choose which to display as preference.. these things usually have central templates or pages of code that are easily modified. Of course, like all created things you modify them at your own risk. If you do decide to do so, make sure you save a pre-modified backup.

Like, simply adding the likes to accent the post count or vice versa ie. 1.2k (0) or even showing both, if not changing the mouseover text to show either likes or posts. Which would be a nice advancement.

What are your intentions for TPF - to become like Facebook ? — Amity

I can respect that concern. So, putting all things aside, including the warranted belief that 'likes' as it were simply show the majority sentiment or viewpoint of a given demographic (this forum) .. as well as the fact it may skew one's own final interpretation as well as replies (shiny objects, projected authority, it's why managers wear suits and the new employees just have shirts, it has a real effect on our extremely susceptible influence.. but did post count not?) .. as well as simulated (non organic) likes (which I doubt would be a problem here) .. all that aside.

We get down to a question of post count vs. likes. Many of the criticisms are actually shared by the two. I see someone with 2k+ posts, I'm naturally inclined to read and dwell more on those arguments than say that of a new poster, "village elder" effect. Which is actually foolish (to do so as automatic policy for obvious reasons). In fact, one could say it's actually more "free", fair and balanced as it were. Someone who is on par with a poster who has been posting for years and has thousands of posts can now be on the same "social" level if they can so prove it. Which eliminates "newcomer" stigma. But of course, you can simply click on a profile to see which seems to make the difference minute.

It's a difficult question. Unless you pass it off as just about meaningless and little more than an aesthetic change of environment which most people seem to at least appreciate if not only as a transient event.

That said for newcomers to this site the allure of a philosopher with say thousands of posts as opposed to "a like or two" can be quite intriguing. It was for me. To summarize, In my opinion a semi-advanced philosopher with something to contribute probably wouldn't base any worthwhile thought or action on either.

1. How have you arrived at your belief that God exists? Was it after some theoretical or logical proofs on God 's existence or some personal religious experience? Or via some other routes?

2. Why do you try to prove God in a theoretical / logical way, when already believing in God's existence? — Corvus

1. Neither. Though it was through a series of observations.

2, What are you even talking about. Effectively is not always automatically logically. As in saying this and that. At the end of the day it is about action.

Beyond all this however people conflate "any intelligence, power, essence, or existence beyond human life" with God. Which is understandable. The idea of life continuing after death is not "God" per se, though it's all in the same philosophical boat, as it were.

A ban though. It's so.. permanent. Even convicted first degree murderers don't always end up with a death sentence. Just plenty of time to reflect where no harm can be done.

Well it seemed to have created you, this discussion, and the whole of human history. So the odds aren't looking so great.

Yes but only in the US. Anyone who thinks otherwise is dangerously mentally ill and needs to be forcefully incarcerated or institutionalized against their will. Banned from posting about it at least.

if ... a hole is real — Shawn

What a profound topic for debate. Really. It would seem 'nothing' is real. Apparently it goes for a premium of $3,500+ a square foot. Wow. That makes the last few years of my love life priceless.

When you create, or even foster life, it's antithesis becomes your enemy.

To be candid, the same way you'd think about any other book, story, or collection of stories, or "testament" even. Fictional or not. There are many parables and stories that offer the same. The parable of the fig tree. Or the wheat and tares. Or the flood. Or Job. Though depending on the person these are literal and physical, historical documentations of events that occurred, they can also offer great lessons depending on if you consider certain events, persons, or statements to be metaphors. Some will call this heresy of course but, you can accept a factual occurrence while extrapolating metaphors and lessons from them. Example, the story of Job. A man who proclaimed his faith or loyalty, or rather acted on it his entire life. The entity of which he claimed to be loyal to wished to test him, and did. He never once wavered and so was rewarded exponentially more than he had or could ever have obtained on his own. Many relationships are tangential to this story, be it employer-employee, father-son, or prospective life partners.

Oh it's not about me. It never was. Not really. I do like to reach out though. The government is not the same as the people however and I share your suspicions or at least concerns.

As long as you don't be a Nazi not letting Asian-(whatever the hell your country is) have a right to life and liberty thus committing a global atrocity and if sanctioned by your "government" a war crime and international crisis.

Or perhaps.. all that matters in appearance is society? Hmm? :chin:

science was chosen to prove the point — TheMadFool

Science and the 'cult of science' are two starkly differently things. One is a process of discovery and acknowledgement of said discoveries. The other is a system, more religious than scientific, one which places human beings last and if not stopped will actually be the end of discovery if not the entire world.

What do you think will it take for humanity to look at death as a problem that needs to be circumvented with technology or longevity extension type ideas? — Shawn

Circumvented? As in prevented entirely or otherwise postponed for hundreds of years? Peace and civility. Purpose and prosperity. The more you look around the world and at raw human nature and conflict you get kind of a "gazing into the abyss" effect imo. All the corruption, greed, strife, envy, rage, indifference, and violence, compounded by the fact many people will simply scoff at any such scrutiny and say "that's life pal" or "that's just human nature", really makes you hope for something greater.

The idea of an afterlife is exciting and encouraging. Not too encouraging one would hope.. but satisfactory enough to be content with the time nature gives us.

People have a inclination for this already. We want to stay fit, healthy, and avoid things that are hazardous to our existence.. usually. Most people will opt for surgery if it has a reasonable chance of success to prevent death or prolong life. So the seed is and has always been there.

I'm sure there's a clear divide between people who would "want to forfeit their natural body to live forever in a computer simulation (albeit one indistinguishable from reality)" and those who simply wouldn't mind taking a life-extending pill or maybe a small implant that slows aging and gives you a few extra decades to play around with. People do that already with vitamins and pacemakers.