That is, even expressed in statistical terms, the preference is aesthetic. — Banno

I don't disagree that using statistical reasoning is not a strong argument.

Are you saying that because this answer is complex, it must be wrong? — frank

This is a hay man or straw dog, or whatever you call it. It has nothing to do with the complexity of the system being described. it's the complexity of the unjustified inputs.

Methodologically the hypothesis with fewer assumptions is easier to work with. But it is not thereby true. — Banno

Agreed. A lot would depend on the assumptions used and their relative plausibility.

So choosing the simplest hypothesis is an expression of an aesthetic favouring laziness.... — Banno

There's more to it than that. The more assumptions, i.e. unproven data inputs, the more likely one of them is wrong.

Occam's razor, Ockham's razor, or Ocham's razor (Latin: novacula Occami), also known as the principle of parsimony or the law of parsimony (Latin: lex parsimoniae), is the problem-solving principle that "entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity".[1][2] It is generally understood in the sense that with competing theories or explanations, the simpler one, for example a model with fewer parameters, is to be preferred. The idea is frequently attributed to English Franciscan friar William of Ockham (c.  1287–1347), a scholastic philosopher and theologian, although he never used these exact words. This philosophical razor advocates that when presented with competing hypotheses about the same prediction, one should select the solution with the fewest assumptions,[3] and that this is not meant to be a way of choosing between hypotheses that make different predictions. — Wikipedia

This makes sense to me.

Atheists appear to be trying to make us just another senseless causal determined mechanism of brute nature in my opinion. — Andrew4Handel

I think you're right.

Does theism ultimately explain anything? — Astro Cat

Both science and theism are approaches to understanding reality, metaphysical positions. Neither explains anything, but both, either, can be useful and appropriate.

Also, if you truly want to stop sanding the wood on your spare time, you can. If you want to keep going you can. If you want to keep doing something to gain experience you can or to get better at it. It is fully up to you and not contingent on a disincentive of not surviving. — schopenhauer1

You need to put more effort into understanding what people are saying rather than immediately crumpling it up to fit in the odd-shaped little boxes your ideas fit in. Everything worth doing includes work that, in itself, is not fun or interesting but is necessary for the full enterprise to work. As I said, sanding wood, bookkeeping, cleaning up. If you value what you are doing, you come to value even that more tedious work. And where did I say you don't get paid for it?

AN, which if I bring up will get this thread booted to the ghetto of Antinatalism thread, so I dare not say it. — schopenhauer1

Ah, yes. The dreaded "AN." I sympathize.

Not to mention the very nature of some work is god awful boring activities you simply do cause you need to survive. Much work not related to artistic creative content would never get done without an impersonal transaction of compensation. — schopenhauer1

Anyone who does "artistic, creative" work knows that much of that work will be "awful boring activities." Sanding wood, printing and binding documents, cleaning up when you're done, bookkeeping, etc., etc., etc.

You seem to be unwilling or unable to accept that many people just don't see things the same way you do.

That would mean from the point of view of a God everything is deterministic (fully predicted from onset to end) and there is no free will. The naughty were and always will be naughty then perhaps and the nice always were and always will be nice. Moral absolutism which removes all the abstraction leaving just a binary system (+ and -). Equal and opposite reactions. — Benj96

So? What's your point?

Well put.

It seems to me that modern workplace cultures are inherently transactional by nature. However transactional culture is robotic, non-humanistic, and formal...

Also, I’m not just talking obvious abuse by corporations and owners but even most worker interactions. — schopenhauer1

This certainly isn't true for me. I worked for almost 30 years with good bosses and competent coworkers. We did good work and took care of each other. I liked almost everyone and came to love some. Still, you gave me an opening, so I'll post this quote from one of my favorite essays - "Compensation" by Emerson:

Ever since I was a boy, I have wished to write a discourse on Compensation: for it seemed to me when very young, that on this subject life was ahead of theology, and the people knew more than the preachers taught. The documents, too, from which the doctrine is to be drawn, charmed my fancy by their endless variety, and lay always before me, even in sleep; for they are the tools in our hands, the bread in our basket, the transactions of the street, the farm, and the dwelling-house, greetings, relations, debts and credits, the influence of character, the nature and endowment of all men...

...Labor is watched over by the same pitiless laws. Cheapest, say the prudent, is the dearest labor. What we buy in a broom, a mat, a wagon, a knife, is some application of good sense to a common want. It is best to pay in your land a skilful gardener, or to buy good sense applied to gardening; in your sailor, good sense applied to navigation; in the house, good sense applied to cooking, sewing, serving; in your agent, good sense applied to accounts and affairs. So do you multiply your presence, or spread yourself throughout your estate. But because of the dual constitution of things, in labor as in life there can be no cheating. The thief steals from himself. The swindler swindles himself. For the real price of labor is knowledge and virtue, whereof wealth and credit are signs. These signs, like paper money, may be counterfeited or stolen, but that which they represent, namely, knowledge and virtue, cannot be counterfeited or stolen. These ends of labor cannot be answered but by real exertions of the mind, and in obedience to pure motives. The cheat, the defaulter, the gambler, cannot extort the knowledge of material and moral nature which his honest care and pains yield to the operative. The law of nature is, Do the thing, and you shall have the power: but they who do not the thing have not the power.
— Emerson

Also monkeys (plus the prehensile tail!), lemurs, chameleons, some frogs, koalas, — Vera Mont

You're right. I left those off the list by mistake. Thanks.

I assume — TiredThinker

Why would you assume when you can look it up in 7 seconds? Here's the list of animals that have opposable thumbs:

• Gorilla
• Chimpanzee
• Bonobo
• Orangutan
• Macaque
• Grivet
• Opossum
• Giant panda
• Lar gibbon
• White-cheeked gibbon

Thought some of you might be interested.

There is a recent movie, "The Discovery," with Robert Redford that describes events after a scientist proves there is an afterlife. It is available on Netflix. Here's a link to the IMDB page:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5155780/

I watched a part of it but lost interest.

How easy is it to calculate individual culpability down to the last hour? — Vera Mont

That's one of the things God does. If I can watch all 3.28 x 10^80 quarks in the universe all day every day since the big bang with one hand tied behind my back, it will be no problem to figure out who's been naughty and who's been nice.

Welcome to the forum. I suggest you put in some paragraph breaks if you want people to read your post. I read about half and got lost. If you're going to go into this much detail about a biological system, you should put in references to specific sources.

If that sits right with you fine. If that's the god you would chose to be so be it. I myself prefer to envision perhaps a God that exerts reproach through reasoning, showing those that act badly the true nature of their actions, the consequences in full and allow them to feel shame, guilt, and suffering at their own hand. — Benj96

You can change my system when you get to be God for a day.

Karma could be interlinked between every single person's decisions as a summation effect. Eventually returning in a cycle to impact the people who caused it. — Benj96

But if I'm going to be God, I get to set it up the way I want. None of this so-called "karma." If you can't do the time, don't do the crime. I'll take my 27+ years. Hitler gets his 1,000,000+ years. You'll get whatever you deserve.

How would you fair in Theistic Iran or Saudi Arabia or in Communist North Korea? — Andrew4Handel

But I don't. You don't either. Why should we live our lives as if we did?

I say that as someone with a late diagnosis of autism after decades of struggling and someone now seeking help for ADHD. You get frequently judged for not fitting in. You are supposed to conform for everyone else's sake and society does not have to do anything for you unless you have an advocate or yell loud enough. — Andrew4Handel

You seem to have a lot harder life than I have. I don't begrudge you some bitterness and resentment. Just don't expect me to live my life as if I were you.

That is a strawman. — Andrew4Handel

So. Are you willing and able to work and live with people who have strong differences in opinion from you?

I am saying you are being complacent by thinking your beliefs are compatible with others. — Andrew4Handel

I'm 70 years old. I've lived, worked, played, and talked with many people in my life who I had strong differences of opinion with. I have almost always found that we could figure out ways to get along just fine. It so happens that I find your anti-natalist beliefs distasteful. There would be no reason for that to cause conflict between us unless one of us tried to inflict our beliefs on the other.

I am an antinatalist and there are increasingly large numbers of us now. We think it is unethical to have children and don't seek to perpetuate humans. That is a radical stance. And most antinatalists are not half hearted about it. — Andrew4Handel

So I guess you're saying that you in particular are not willing or able to work and live with people who have strong differences in opinion from you. And so you come here to whine about all the conflict in our society. It's hard to feel sympathetic.

Your pronouncement would sound a lot more authoritative if you were still The Baden.

If you were (a) God for a day, what would you do? — Benj96

I'd change the whole punishment and reward system. No more hell, if it exists. Instead, all of us would have to experience all the pain and unhappiness we have inflicted on others. For some good people, that wouldn't take long. For Hitler, maybe it would take millions of years. For me, 27 years, five months, two weeks, three days, 17 hours, 33 minutes, and 42 seconds.

It would be run like "Groundhog Day." You keep reliving it until you finally get it right. Then what? I guess send you back to life and let you try again.

I do not think atheists and religious people have compatible worldviews and end goals. I am an agnostic and my views are incompatible with both groups. To me the issue of whether you believe in an after life makes a big difference. Also whether or not you believe in free will or materialism. Or are capitalist or communist. — Andrew4Handel

This is not true in my experience. Whatever their politics, religion, philosophy, or other characteristic, humans always have more in common than in opposition. Just about everyone wants security for our families, the ability to make important decisions about our own lives, good education and medical care. I get along well with people who appear very different from me on the surface. There are people of good will everywhere.

homo sapiens are about 2 million years old. — Agent Smith

As I understand it, the correct number is 200,000 years. Some pretty close relatives were there earlier. The last common ancestor between humans and chimpanzees is estimated to have lived between 4 and 13 million years ago, depending on how it is defined.

I've taken my part in this discussion as far as I can. Let's leave it at that.

How is hope - or hoping - an intrusion/weakness or distraction? — Amity

That's how I experience it, how it feels to me. If we're looking for an explanation of that, I think what @unenlightened wrote is a good one.

I am not saying people don't appear to set and achieve goals, sometimes with the zeal of an addiction. I'm not saying that people can't be determined. I am just not convinced 'will' holds up to being fetishised or understood as a transcendent, transformative virtue. — Tom Storm

Temperament, personality, attitude - whatever you call it - I've noticed that some people are much more willful than others. More forceful, persistent. What's a nice word for stubborn. I have friends I call "people of will." I am as far from that as you can possibly be while still breathing. The Tao Te Ching is all about surrender of the will. I guess you could say it's a difference of style, but I think it goes deeper than that. I think at least some of it is built-in biologically, genetically.

I don't think any of this necessarily contradicts anything you wrote.

They do not experience life as we do so they can not have the consciousness we have. — Athena

I don't see that.

'Volitions' (i.e. more veto than volo) are only infrequent interruptions in involuntary systems, reflexes & habits (i.e. embodiment). — 180 Proof

Are you saying that will is useful to stop us from doing something rather than motivating us to action? If so, I think I agree with you.

What is it that you think 'hope' is that means you feel you have to stop doing or eliminate it? — Amity

Part of it is what unenlightened wrote:

One projects oneself into the future, and identifies with the imagined future self. Thus hope and fear arise together as acts of imagination - one fears the worst and hopes for the best. — unenlightened

And part of it is that I experience them in similar manners. They both feel like intrusions, weaknesses, distractions; causing me to pay attention to the wrong things.

In the real world, those fleeing people believe there is a better reality and those in the Hell dome would believe their reality is the only one. — Athena

Here we are in our own dome imagining, inventing, hoping for, fearful of something outside of the world we experience every day. Why wouldn't people in the hypothetical domes described in the OP do the same?

That is what I was trying to catch in my intro - intending to do something is a choice, but there can be obstacles to enacting a choice. To what extent one is or isn't prevented by obstacles is where it becomes a question of will. — Pantagruel

I agree, this I would say is the operation of habits. As mentioned though, will can also be internalized towards the modification of our own habits. Which can also be more or less difficult. — Pantagruel

Thoughts? — Pantagruel

A couple.

First a question - how is will different from intention?

In my experience, most of our actions are unwilled. Not that they are inadvertent, but that they arise without conscious or rational thought.

Nice. — Tom Storm

Thank you.

What is the status of treating common sensical language as the correct interpretation as philosophy done correctly. Anyone? — Shawn

So if someone holds their hand before them and expresses doubt as to it's being real, one is entitled to ask what they mean by that doubt - are they asking if it is a fake? a hallucination? a prosthetic? The question drags the supposed argument back from the metaphysical. — Banno

Banno and I discussed the meaning of the word "real" in a recent thread. In that discussion, I wrote the following:

I don’t think the idea of “real” has any meaning except in relation to the everyday world at human scale. Reality only makes sense in comparison to what humans see, hear, feel, taste, and smell in their homes, at work, hunting Mastodons, playing jai alai, or sitting on their butts drinking wine and writing about reality. Example - an apple is real. — T Clark

So I guess I would say that it's not ordinary language philosophy that is needed, it's ordinary experience philosophy. The more we talk about philosophical questions that have no relation to the way people live their lives the less value our ramblings have. That's why I hate the so-called "Trolley Problem" so much. None of the 50 or so billion people who have lived since trolleys were invented have ever found themselves in a situation like that and if humans are around for another 10,000 years, none of the billions yet unborn ever will.

Apophasis — 180 Proof

Thanks. I remember you talking about it before.

Why do you want to know, Apophatboy? — Janus

Yes, that went over my head till you clarified. Thanks.

Why do you want to know — Janus

Maybe that's the best way of defining irony - by talking about what it's not. — T Clark

How could you really fuck up? — DingoJones

Yes. Famous last words - What could possibly go wrong. Problem is, if you change anything, you have to change everything.

So would you say him as God would not be all knowing and would make mistakes along the way that ought to be corrected? — Benj96

If you made me God and that didn't include my foibles, prejudices, and values, it wouldn't really be me anymore.