What difference does it make how long ago we came into existence?

We exist, and if we are the result of a long natural process, then we are inherent in that system. As such we represent a fragment of that system....the meaningful fragment, that can relate to and be related to the whole.

Perhaps there is some remotely distant meaning inherent in the universe; I can't claim any knowledge about such a convenience. But neither Nihilism nor Absurdism are the necessary system you must land on once you decided there isn't any meaning built in to the universe.

In so far as we are in the universe, and we are aware of it, meaning is inherent in the Universe.

MIT is working on synthetic biology that might be of assistance to people with diabetes as well as other ailments.

http://news.mit.edu/2016/gene-circuits-live-cells-complex-computations-0603

The team has already built an analogue-to-digital converter circuit that implements ternary logic, a device that will only switch on in response to either a high or low concentration range of an input, and which is capable of producing two different outputs.

Bypassing the law of the excluded middle.

I wonder about this whole line of discussion as it applies to the Meno. Plato's Meno is an epistemological dialogue about what virtue is, can it be taught and how it is related to knowledge. It is not a phenomenological quest, so yes the paradox is only apparent but that is not the point...the point of the dialogue is the difference between knowledge in its strictest sense and true opinion.

I've had a look at the recent study and Professor John-Dylan Haynes who conducted it says it does not prove free will.

"Our conscious decisions are not slaves to unconscious brain processes," Haynes said.

"In other words, we can stop the fall of the dominoes. But does this ability translate to free will? Haynes says no."

I specifically avoided mentioning 'free will' in my post because I think to talk about man's viability as an autonomous agent is categorically different from talking about man's physical determination or freedom. They are two distinct but related discourses. Related in that the physical can effect the mental and the mental the physical , distinct in that neither can sufficiently explain the other.

Im interested to know when do we become responsible for our actions. Say a sleep walker goes to the kitchen turns on the gas which blows the house up killing everyone, is he responsible for that?

Take a look at:
https://priceonomics.com/what-happens-if-you-commit-a-murder-while/

It looks at legal precedents which suggest that if you can prove you were asleep and you can show a history of sleepwalking or engaging in activities while asleep, you cannot be held responsible for you actions....lucid dreaming or not (my understanding is that most lucid dreamers have only limited if any control over their dreams).

Jeff Welty, a law professor at the University of North Carolina, tells us, adding that the concept began to gain traction in courtrooms in the 1980s. He continues:

“Sleepwalking qualifies as automatism from a medical-legal viewpoint, as it meets both criteria: it is unconscious and involuntary. In general, a person can’t be convicted of a crime if he or she acted involuntarily; If a jury concluded that a defendant was unconscious when he or she killed another person, the jury could acquit the defendant on the basis of automatism.”

Neuroscientists have updated Libet's experiments. A study by scientists at Charite-Universitatsmedizin Berlin 1/4/16 studied the nature of cerebral process during conscious decision making.

Libet demonstrated that conscious decisions were initiated by unconscious brain processes, and that "a wave of brain activity referred to as a 'readiness potential' could be recorded even before the subject had made a conscious decision"

This lead to the question of how a brain process could possibly know in advance what decision a person is going to make at a time when they are not yet aware of it themselves, which has been regarded as evidence of 'determinism'.

The Berlin crew tested to determine if these early brain waves meant that further decision-making is automatic and not under conscious control or if a person can cancel the decision. They set up a 'duel' with a specially trained compute that could read the subject EEG data, which enabled it to indicate that the player was about to move.

If subjects were able to evade being predicted it would be evidence that control over actions "...are not at the mercy of unconscious and early brain waves". The study found that subjects were able to actively intervene and interrupt a movement.

Regarding dreaming and specifically lucid dreaming, my understanding it that neuroscientists think dreaming is a form of meta-cognition, similar in proximity to areas of the brain they can show active during self-awareness. They also think that people who have lucid dreams also have larger anterior prefrontal cortexs.

Dreams seem to be the way we organize what we experience, a memory function. Freud remarked on how traumatic events are ' relived' in our dreams and he suspected that it is our attempt to change what happened.

I liked Brokaw, he slurred his words in just the right tempo.

Yes, I don't think the Alt-right can be anything but nostalgic. Nick Land, says that the Alt-right are foundational, they can't be dialectical. A progressive agenda is lost on them because they cannot go beyond their foundations. Any give and take on their part is a movement towards the center, negating their foundations. The ultimate nostalgia.

Don't we invent? Create something (conceptually as a conjecture) that has no foundation and use it to unveil something through a process, which in itself affirms or denies our initial conjecture.

The following from Hillary Clinton's speech at a community college in Reno, Nevada

Alt-Right is short for "Alternative Right."

The Wall Street Journal describes it as a loosely organized movement, mostly online, that "rejects mainstream conservatism, promotes nationalism and views immigration and multiculturalism as threats to white identity."

The de facto merger between Breitbart and the Trump Campaign represents a landmark achievement for the "Alt-Right." A fringe element has effectively taken over the Republican Party.

This is part of a broader story -- the rising tide of hardline, right-wing nationalism around the world.

She claims the Alt-Right has taken over the Republican Party.

Yes, the laws that have been put in place over the last 70 years have had the effect of mitigating overt racism. Lynching is not occurring (last one in 1981 in Mobile, Alabama, by two Ku Klux Klan members), black people do not have to sit at the back of the bus, and, while it is still being contested in some states, blacks can vote unmolested. The police as upholders of the law, have not choice but to obey it.

No, racism is not gone, but it has gone undercover. Voter id registration laws, stop & frisk programs, the US bail system, an other legal means keep racism alive. Some police department have to do much better.

Humans discriminate naturally, we know what we like and how it differs from what we don't like. Prejudice in the wide sense of the word, is natural. We live on the surface of a world that appears in its various forms and characteristics. As I stated previously I think racism is chromatic. (think about the George Zimmerman fiasco), in agreement with Parmenides 'like knows like'. I read a psychology experiment in which babies in the crawling stage were brought into a room and set between two groups of women. One group of women were white and the other group black. The babies tended (like 80%) to crawl to the group of women most closely matching their skin color. The author of the study speculated that these infants did so because they felt more comfortable with the color they knew.

I remember my grandmother giving me a bath, drying off my toes, saying

Eeny, meeny, miny, mo
Catch a nigger by the toe
If he hollers, let him go
Eeny meeny miny mo

It was common then, and while I doubt many mothers or even grandmothers today use this version of the rhythm, it along with other not so nice expressions are embedded in the history of our culture. These expressions, the chromatic quality of race as well as our lack of comfort with difference in general are ingrained in who we are as a people. We can outlaw racial discrimination, but we cannot stop it.

While I don't think this means that we are doomed to be a racist society, I think it does mean that we must be cautious for racial bias, in ourselves and others. Powerful organizations, such as the police, the symbol of law and order in our society must be carefully monitored, or we not like the consequences.

I did not feel anxious when conversing with others or even in small groups, it was only in situations where I was addressing large groups. The affect, on me, was primarily physical. I could feel, almost hear my heart pounding, my speech as it fractured.

I found that I could channel my nervous energy into what I was talking about, initially by almost shouting >:O , and over time it became more natural, and my anxiety left me. Although I am still a little leery about talking in from of large groups, which I don't have to do at this point in my life.

Perhaps a chemical imbalance? I recall that I had anxiety attacks when I had to address large groups, and while it may sound funny, I found that 2 Harvey Wallbangers loosened me up, without too much of an adverse affect. Of course it must suck if you find your self anxious in all social interactions, but perhaps there are medical solutions that could help. I still remember my heart pounding and how my sentences fractured when I spoke, I outgrew it and the Harvey Wallbangers .

You may want to consider how norms arise. If what we value is based on desire what we want, then how we act must be based on our ability to act in such a manner so we can obtain what we want. What we ought to do to obtain what we want involves our associations with others. Norms arise in society's because each of us has wants and there has to be rules, to prevent mayhem. We follow normative rules so that we can get what we value.

[reply="VagabondSpectre;17761"

I am not saying it is endemic in our system, the Department of Justice is saying this, with all it reports looking at how police departments around the county. It is the system calling the system rotten.

The hypocrisy of the USA, its utter disregard its horrible history of dealing with blacks is not all over because some laws were passed. Pisses me off. To say it is over patiently absurd, upsetting and untrue.

Look at Wells Fargo's sub prime lending that targeted the "mud people" in 2005. It lent them subprime loans, which became infamous a few years latter. They ended up settling for around $355 million. The money does not matter, the ruined lives matter. The president of this bank should have gone to jail...that would have been proper reparation.

The MTV video was mean't to be cheeky.

But, you must compare apples to apples. Comparing White on White crime to Black on Black crime is not appropriate because of the economic disparities within these groups. The following conclusions from the Bureau of Justice Statistics:

For the period 2008–12—
Persons in poor households at or below the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) (39.8 per 1,000) had more than double the rate of violent victimization as persons in high-income households (16.9 per 1,000).
Persons in poor households had a higher rate of violence involving a firearm (3.5 per 1,000) compared to persons above the FPL (0.8–2.5 per 1,000).
The overall pattern of poor persons having the highest rates of violent victimization was consistent for both whites and blacks. However, the rate of violent victimization for Hispanics did not vary across poverty levels.
Poor Hispanics (25.3 per 1,000) had lower rates of violence compared to poor whites (46.4 per 1,000) and poor blacks (43.4 per 1,000).
Poor persons living in urban areas (43.9 per 1,000) had violent victimization rates similar to poor persons living in rural areas (38.8 per 1,000).
Poor urban blacks (51.3 per 1,000) had rates of violence similar to poor urban whites (56.4 per 1,000).

Cities like Chicago have areas with 40 to 60% of people living below the poverty level. Black on Black crime and White on White crime within the same economic level are near parity.

I believe that poor people black and white are discriminated against institutionally. Look at the Bail Bonds system in this country. A poor black or white person who cannot raise bond has to go to jail, while a person with the cash can avoid jail and work, earn money, and fight whatever crime they have been accused of committing. A poor person has to work, so the prosecutor will offer a deal, they plead guilty to a crime and they get off, even if they were innocent, but now with a criminal record. The Department of Justice just filed (http://www.courthousenews.com/2016/08/19/Bail.pdf) an Amicus curiae brief suggesting the system is unconstitutional.

To say that the police are not complicit in their subjugation of black communities to to fly in the face of recent Department of Justice reports that suggest that cities such as Chicago, Baltimore and Ferguson are systematically racist.

"The Baltimore Police Department engaged in a pattern of stopping African-Americans without any real justification. Between 2010 and 2015, there were three hundred thousand police stops, of which less than four per cent resulted in a citation or arrest. Forty-four per cent of those stops occurred in two small, mostly black neighborhoods, and ninety-five per cent of people who were stopped ten times or more were African-American." The New Yorker 8/12/16

The Department of Justice found the " Ferguson Police Department was egregiously biased and mercenary"

Here from Washington Post 8/16/16 regarding the DOJ task force study of Chicago's police department:
,
"The task force offered a bleak assessment of how the department treats people of color. In their report, the task force members recounted how residents said officers treat minorities poorly and then paired this with police department data that “gives validity to the widely held belief the police have no regard for the sanctity of life when it comes to people of color.”

And, these are just some of the studies cited.

No, the institutionalization of racism is endemic, to deny this is to put your head in the sand.

Sorry you didn't like the MTV video...hoped it would make it easier for you to understand.

Perhaps racism is endemic to democracy, being chromatic it is easier to see.

If the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness reflect the trans valuation of religious ideals into democratic 'secular' society, then sin, barbarism and the worst of religion, its intolerance of diversity, are also trans valued, just not overtly. These negative values show up in class structure, as in the dominant class's superiority over other classes in society. In how society subsidizes the poor and is antagonistic about it.

This 'antagonism' is not overt, it is denied. Instead of promoting economically blighted areas in large cities, they are earmarked for the 'war on poverty', the 'war on drugs', the 'war on____'. The solution to urban issues, I think, is impossible from with-out these communities, it can't be imposed upon them, these communities must see the benefit of acting in a manner consistent with a better life from their point of view.

So yea, I think racism is all around us, and we don't see it because we breath it, it is institutionalized.

I didn't see your post, kinda scanned through posts until I watched the incredible rant that the lady on the video put up against BLM.

The DOJ, report after report, has found fault in the police systems in Chicago, Baltimore, and Ferguson. So I am suspicious of any report that relies on police information. Report after report finds systemic problems in the US criminal justice system in large urban areas.

I am not surprised that the author Dr. Fryer was surprised by his own results...probably due to faulty police reports. Remember Sandra Bland's horrific death at the hands of the police, happened just outside of Houston, TX. They said she committed suicide...bullshit!

All right let's go on to the next 'study' Ms McDonald cites. The paper by Harvard Economist Roland G. Fryer, Jr. His paper is a 'working paper', it is not a peer reviewed study, it was not a "Harvard Paper".

Snopes.com outlined the information in the paper. It was anonymously funded, and it relied on police statements and information, which are the one of the very things we have come to question based primarily on citizen videos...the police's own cameras always seem to go on the fritz when one of these tragic events occur.

http://www.snopes.com/2016/07/15/harvard-study-officer-involved-shootings/

I only went as far as the Lois James study. The study itself states:

"..the current study only measured the alpha waves of participants drawn from the general public, not law enforcement or the military. Consequently, wrote the authors, “results from this sample are not generalizable to sworn officers.”

It only speculates that it can be generalized to police officers in the field.

I can also speculate, and I speculate that this lady is manipulating information to foster her conservative ideology.

Frank Ocean's Blond a shit load lot of music.



Ooh, oooh, oooh, ooh
I'm sure we're taller in another dimension
You say we're smaller and not worth the mention
You’re tired of movin', your body’s achin'
We could vacay, there's places to go
Clearly this isn't all that there is
Can't take what's been given
But we're so okay here, we're doing fine
I'm up and naked
You dream of walls that hold us in prison
It's just a scar, at least that's what they call it
And we're free to fall

Thinking a little more about this.

AlphaGo condenses enormous quantities of data and then filters its findings, arriving at new combinations that fit the rules of discourse...combinations that have never been seen prior to its formulation. Beautiful combinations. I think a machine can be creative in this manner. Input determines output, regardless of how virtually disparate the results.

Can a machine go beyond the 'universe of information' it has access to, we can also ask man the same question so ... is there a creative the ability to start a new series, where none existed, one that is apart from current discourses. In the twentieth century works by Duchamp, and Warhol seem to suggest a bifurcation in art, where art becomes self absorbed with its surface, a surface that is no longer representational. The conversation between art and anti-art, kinda schizoid, may be something new.

Man seems to be able to go beyond, to able to rise up against societal programming.

Not quite sure, sometimes the pigment kinda takes over,

Here is Rudy's, a small local pub, Mary is one of the owners...Rudy's is one of the few pubs with Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer on tap. They have a Taco Tuesday night, with lots of great music played on a wide variety of instruments. Free tacos, they go great with PBRs. The place is small, and it gets packed, the crowd overflows on to the street.

I asked Mary where the name Rudy's came from...she said it had to do with her mother thoughts and a cardinal (Rudy). There are images of cardinals here and there about the bar.

I think the only moral fact is freedom, our ability to choose what we feel we ought to do; and what we feel we ought to do is to follow the correct means to reach the desired ends. The 'correct means' must be rational if it is to be objective maxim.

Well we could start by saying that facts about the empirical world are contingent and facts about the mathematical world are necessary.

Perhaps the question 'is all art normative' needs to be answered. I think that progression in art is a dialectical progression, mostly normative but not entirely normative otherwise it would not progress. It may be that all progress is just a shuffling of existing concepts in a normative discourse we share with others.

When we talk about creativity in art, aren't we talking about how a 'thing',an art-work, reaches out to us in a way that goes beyond it self as a thing qua thing.

Hi M-Theory & Zookeeper

I liked Schwartz's talk, his semi-conclusion of a computer as a mirror. The computer can mirror that normativity, I am not convinced that it can go beyond the norm. Kurzweil's Singularity will be normative.

One interesting difference between Malcolm X and MLK were how they lived their religions. MLK preached, and he utilized biblical foundations in his political rhetoric and as an intergral part of his life. Malcolm was a Muslim, but unlike MLK, he clearly severed religion from politics.

Where MLK envisioned an ideal, a utopia (hey didn't you do a thread about Utopia's) An ideal must be a fiction or a lie or it becomes real, and eo ipso no longer ideal.

Malcolm wanted a community of blacks who would work together, share the same culture, economy and life. He talked about sitting at the same table with a white man, both as free independent men.

I wonder about the 'left'/'right' political directions. There appears to be many varying types of Populism in our current world politics. I am in agreement with a populism that pits the population regardless of its political leanings against an establishment that rules by virtue of its plutarchy. Italy's M5S is a good example of a populist movement that incorporates left and right into its program. They have a decent shot of taking over Italy's political structure in the next round of elections, which is amazing given their short record.

Brexit was an immense sign that left/right is leaving something very big out of the picture. Look at results of the primaries in America. We end up with two candidates that nobody can stand. 9% of the population (% of those who can vote) made the initial choice for the balance of the voters (around 100 million in toto so 9 million).

It's late.

I think today's liberalism is tomorrow's conservatism. Here's an answer to MLK's dream speech: "It's time to stop singing and start swinging."

Perhaps, but I think you can only understand that as if 'left' & 'right' express historical moments and not fundamental positions. So yes, the liberal of the 1940's would probably be considered a conservative today. A fundamentalist is always a fundamentalist, Anthony Scalia will always be a conservative.

I am not sure sure where to place Malcolm X, or MLK for that matter. They were certainly radical for their time but were their ideas or goals radical left? The goal of the radical left, as I understand it, is the destruction of class in society. History thus far has shown this goal is much worse than that of classes in society. Think of Hitler's attempt at a classless society, or Stalin's attempt, in each they trying annihilate those who they felt stood in the way of their goal. Today the left has moved right, towards socialism, it's only possible path.

X and King both wanted to improve the conditions of the people they identified with, Blacks in America. People who at that time, were treated differently from the rest of the population. It was and still is systemic in society, the major difference is that most understand that it was and still is an unacceptable bias in a free society. Then society as a whole was not trying to come to grips with it as an issue because they did not see it as a major issue prior to men/women like X & King.

Malcolm X wanted people to stand up for themselves, to protect themselves, to free themselves by whatever means necessary. Blacks and Whites could understand where Malcolm X was coming from. King had the same goal but refused to consider violence as necessary or moral nor as an effective means to reach their goal of freedom. He believed that there is great strength in weakness, non-violence because he believed in the ultimate humanity of man. For him non-violence was not passive, it is active, and a powerful force. Perhaps why the FBI considered him the most dangerous man in America at that time.

A killer bot pursued by its doppelganger bots.

I agree with you on this X-).

I think the very first music a child hears is its mother's or caregivers voice and that language is learnt as a song.

Well I imagine that he posts these photos for a reason, but that reason is probably not the reason he gives, i.e., that he wants to know why he should stop killing, which sounds like a plea for attention (or perhaps help). Probably, like the anorexic who can not eat, such a killer feels helplessly impelled to act in a certain manner, impelled in such a manner that he/she cannot act otherwise. Posting is part of his routine, and I gather that he does not depart from it, which means that he/she must derive some enjoyment from this action, his unique authorship.

I want you to show me why I shouldn't go ahead and kill my next victim".

Perhaps one way to show him why he should not kill his next victim is to render his post ineffective by fictive duplication of his posts, all claiming to be the killer, all claiming to be responsible and all mixed up in time with the complicity of the web site, so that no one viewing the site can distinguish which post is real versus the many fictive posts. This might blunt his horrific excitement/enjoyment, and spoil his routine without transgressing his injunction against deletion.

It's up to the authorities to catch the killer, not the posters.

I like Levinas' thought.

As far as Plato goes...his Philebus is all about pleasure and pain. He thought of pleasure/pain as limitations in a continuum, their genesis brings us in or out of balance. Pleasure is the restoration of human balance which leads to the Good Life and the Good Life is the goal. Plato thought that neither pleasure in itself nor knowledge in itself was sufficient to achieve the Good Life. What is required is the right mix of Pleasure and Knowledge that enables the Good Life. Of course what the right mix is open to question, but the idea is a balanced approach to life.

Aristotle agreed to a large extent with Plato ideas about pleasure and pain and he adopted many Plato's ideas into his Nicomachean Ethics Where they significantly disagree... Plato's takes pleasure as a genesis (a becoming) versus Aristotle who sees pleasure and pain taken in an activity.

I think the left is used entertaining contradictory views, and I doubt conservatives ability to seriously consider other viewpoints.

Is there an argument that authoritarian rule is necessarily bad. Is it innately bad and if so how is that possible, unless it somehow represent the evil in us all. Is Democracy good? or just maybe the best so far.

Have you ever read the Derbyshire Case. It involved a father's frank conversation with his Eurasian son about why he should fear Blacks. He got fired from the National Review...too hot for them. Somewhat similar to the talk the Eric Holder, prior US Attorney General, said his father had with him about how he should act when confronted by the police. Holder also said when he was a Federal Prosecutor he was stopped a couple of times by the police for no other discernible reason except that he is Black. The realities of life don't always fit well with theory.

From Martin Luther King's I have a Dream speech:

"I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

He goes on to state, it is a hundred years latter and the heat of oppression still goes on, and now about 60 years latter we are still deep into it...Black Lives Matter.

Interesting to note that the Conservative Party has tried to co-opt King's Creed, since it matches up well with many of our founding father's thoughts. They also like the fact that he preached non-violence and they have sought to make it part of their Creed, but I think King's Creed is beyond their range of thought.

How metal is Hieronymus Bosch's "The Garden of Earthly Delights"? Here's a fantasy metal version of the 500 Year Old Butt Song from Hell, based on the recent transcription of the music written on some guy's butt.

Human and other animals are attracted by pleasure and repulsed by pain. I think these are instinctual responses to things we experience. We don't have to have language to experience pleasure or pain. We may not even be aware of our automatic reflexes as part of these experiences.

Once we become aware of these sensations as sensations they become inferential, associative, cognitive, and we learn to enjoy what we desire. Our reflexive reactions become constructed normativley, we want what others want, our description of sensations tend to match up with what others who share our normative contexts describe as pleasurable. The first time I had a beer in High School, I couldn't stand the taste, but when I got to College my taste changed and I came to love the taste of beer. Isn't this what advertising & peer pressure is all about?

Chomsky postulated innate evolutionary structures in the brain which make language acquisition possible. Maybe similar structures in the brain account for our automatic reflexive response to pleasure and pain and also how we can come to have ethical or aesthetic pleasure.

I think that cognitive desire is form of time bias toward the future attainment of what is desired. Perhaps the concept of escaping from desire, and pain is actual a desire to escape time, since time continually frustrates many of our desires. Perhaps this is why monks spend years meditating, it is not easy to escape the hegemony of time.

Perhaps the idea of the Superhero is based on the concept of family, as in the human family. The fight to protect humanity from the evils that arise, similar to the way a father & mother protect their children from harm. I mean wasn't the Fantastic 4 the 1st family?