You have to start you day with either A) Music or B) Meditation or C) Musical Mediation, unless you're too hyped on coffee and cigs or have to do real work.

You just sit on your butt in the morning and start to hypnotize/self-soothe yourself with song/poetry. Yoga Mundra -- Ahhhhhhhhohhhhhhhhhhhhhmmmmmm with western melodic variation and hypnotic suggestion.

Until bam! one day you're liberated from the feeling that you have to always do what you never want to do. Then you'll get to do all the things that must be done while feeling joy.

Wind batters the peak
A leap of faith from its ledge
Downward rush, I fall

I've done this before
From bluff, tree and building tall
I've wings for a bird.

Surf the current up
Higher than that mountain's top
Into the sun's light.

________

Bam! Lightenment

As the sun lightens the dawn,

Bam! Lightenment.

:snicker:

Brew some tea or coffee.

Take out the guitar and exercise chord family progressions, learn some scales and practice a song or two.

Get on the philosophy forum first and ruminate about our terrible future.

______

“Music is a moral law. It gives a soul to the Universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness, gaiety and life to everything. It is the essence of order, and leads to all that is good and just and beautiful.” - Plato

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6837438/

According to this the side of stroke or aneurysm doesn't change prognosis that much. — TiredThinker

I'm just regurgitating what I've think I've heard from McGilchrist. Also I'm not sure that this study is comprehensive enough to establish the behavioral/psychological differences/problems between folks with substantial brain damage between hemispheres. It doesn't seem like behavior is a factor at all in this study and how it it is possibly linked to 'favorable outcomes'. I don't know the significance of what they are really measuring in this link.

Perhaps the State is all that holds them from returning to some state of nature, like beasts. This bothers me because if the State were to collapse tomorrow, it is those that need to be governed that the rest of us would have to watch out for. — NOS4A2

That is why you better start prepping NOS. Get a lot of guns and know how to use them. It's gonna be a major investment now but it will be worth it when you need to acquire/take resources in a world in which all proof of ownership is forfeit. You'll have to defend your property through violence (you'll be your own police/governor).

The world isn't fair with a functional state nor is it fair in its absence. The grass is not greener on the other side of the fence. It's soaked with blood.

It's not over until the fat lady sings, oui mon ami? — Agent Smith

Unless you've seen this opera before, we can't assume that there is only one fat lady singing. If I was librettist, my opera might be composed of only fat ladies, singing for hours and hours and hours (perhaps days).

They say statistically is far better to have an aneurysm in your left hemisphere than your right because of the right hemisphere's powers of global contextuality. The damaged brain is better at re-adapting/re-wiring with help from a healthy right hemisphere than the reversed.

One wonders how culture might preference/modify/evolve laterialized brain activity. This is all taken up by Iain McGilchrist's work but it is probably all highly speculative. You are permitted to dismiss it as bullshit if you like (you do you).

Mr. Leland was a bit addicted to oxycodone, by the happenstance of a past injury, and with his new found wealth he would easily enter into a downward spiral of further drug abuse and self-destruction. After his death his remaining family would become splintered and embittered over a long fight for the inheritance of what some called 'the cursed bullion of Leland'.

Mr. Dean meanwhile loved nothing more than the humble walkabout thrill of combing landscapes with his metal detector and little terrier dog, Boo.

The Earth is sometimes locally flat, yes.

But it is never perfectly flat! Is it? How do we measure flatness empirically?

Oh gawd! Maybe no thing is flat.

Process #1. — 180 Proof

:ok:

The question doesn't make sense to me. — Agent Smith

Why would you glue a glass back together instead of shaking it back together?

It might be a koan if you ponder a bit over technical constraints but to shake a box for gazillions of years would take up a lot of energy which would disperse a lot of thermal radiation compared to the other options. And there ain't no recouping that thermal radiation lost to do useful work, unless you've got a lot of super sensitive nano sterling engines or thermal radiation cells, shifting electrons along a chain, driving your mechanism to shake the box. Even then a fraction of the energy is lost/unavailable to do work.

Guess it's best to get gluing, Mr. Smith. Hopefully the glass owner won't notice all the fracture lines.

A simple example of entropy is a shattered wine glass. — Agent Smith

As punishment for breaking that expensive glass, you have a few options: 1) shake the glass pieces in a box until they reassemble into the wine glass 2) melt the glass back into a wine glass shape 3) glue the wine glass back.

Which process increases the most amount of entropy (wasted/dispersed energy)?

When Trump sells James Madison's crystal flute after the next American civil war, Lizzo's playing of the flute will have added to its selling value.

Maybe the heaven dome's populace is composed entirely of Sentinelese tribe members, except for one Christian missionary...

The scenario would be interesting if penetrating the domes meant death for everyone, like if they were under the sea.

Would those in the hell dome be less cautious with respect to getting out and what possible mechanisms would be available for them to infer the real risk of breaking the dome.

The parameters are not given. Just changing a few variables might demonstrate drastic differences between experiments. For example: What is it like outside of the dome? What if both domes have plenty of explosives laying around?

Sounds like a concept for a new edition of Sim City.

There is no correlation between reproductive organs/chromosomes/hormones and gender identity. — Susu

This sounds like the politically correct take perhaps but how do you justify/support it outside of that.

If hormones change facial characteristics and facial characteristics might determine whether others see you as a man or woman, don't hormones then influence gender identity. Why is personal gender identification sacrosanct when so many other aspects of myself are mediated externally by what other people believe. Why do people take hormones to transition (to gain the features associated with biological sex) if gender has nothing to do with hormones?

I'm confused.

What's the proof for premise 1? — Agent Smith

:up: I saw some good replies to your main thread about Agrippa's trilemma.

It's self-evident for Descartes. No proof needed. I still just don't see how the cogito serves as an epistemic foundation for Descartes when there so much more that needs to be taken at self-evident/axiomatic to even attempt to argue or philosophize. What else constrains Descartes doubting? To question/doubt on the basis of needing a proof already presumes were resting on/using functional axioms... but maybe he assumes we don't need to doubt those things either.

Just because Descartes can't doubt that he doubts (he cannot doubt the doubter, so there is a doubter), how does that serve as a certain foundation for anything, when there is everything else he could doubt or find self-evident before constructing his philosophy. It's seemingly not much to stand on compared to everything else he is already standing on (the assumed/unspoken laws thought/logic). But maybe he said as much.

His emphasis seemed to be on human DNA and less on sentients and the soul. — TiredThinker

What does DNA have to do with a pro-life stance? Was the priest trying to explain which scenarios make abortion permissible (if DNA abnormality shows soul won't stick to the fetus and the mother is at expected risk), or the threshold at which most abortion is impermissible (when chromosomes combine from germ cell fusion)?

I brought up the topic of beastiality and if a viable abomination should be kept alive. — TiredThinker

From standpoint of Catholics who believe in the literal miracles of God and the anti-miracles of Satan, it's possibly a relevant but impolite troll.

Are we not descendants of Cain, the envious murderer, inheritors of original sin, beastly in those aspects that deny everyone grace and dignity?

Why can't Satan cause virgin births, or induce holy bastards?

Who can discern what is true evil, if the entire Church is possibly the grip of Satans lie and we are tainted? What hope do we have if the God we've been exposed to by the artifice of men is the greatest of deceivers.

In that case, Catholics might really be unwitting Satanists. Who can know for sure...

Satan's pro-life stance is a kind or propaganda that belies his cunning pro-death drive. All the souls of those dead mothers and fetuses, denied life saving treatment due to terrible policy, will be made into cereal for the rich denizens of hell (or heaven or whatever).

contradiction of anatta & cogito ergo sum — Agent Smith

Maybe what Descartes meant was: thought arises and this cannot be denied (thought=thought). If no thought could arise, no selective ordering of recurring memories, on what basis could we construct/refer/reflect self?

Seems like he could easily fit in with the no self Buddhists, if he can refrain from his favorite foundationalist pastime. If no thought (or no unity/relations of thought), then no (illusory/abstract) self.

_______

Silly fiction...

Descartes awoke in a panic, hands pulling at the cuff of his nightgown. Am I mad. This elusive demon is tormenting me with doubt and how will I think and be from fear? What if I fall through the floor into a pit of pikes? What if the fleas around here have bubonic plague? What if those whores gave me syphilis? I think I'll just stay in bed until woken by a new absurdity. Descartes curled up under his heavy woolen blanket and closed his eyes. Mind, you must stop these sadistic fancies, tuned up by terror and paranoia. Why can't I doubt in moderation? Have I no free will?

"As Gregor Samsa (formerly Rene Descartes) awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect." ~Kafka (The Evil Demon as Author)

Can anyone please improve upon this scenario. — Agent Smith

Descartes walks into a pub, gets a beer and is kindly mocked by a fellow pubgoer: "I drink, therefore I am." (Bibo, ergo sum)

Soon thereafter Descartes found himself peeing on the wall outside, muttering to himself: "I take the piss, therefore I am."

Later that night Descartes dreamed of the Evil Demon, who looked a spitting image of Descartes except for the lurid glint in its eyes. "I'm sorry to feed you these doubts, my friend, but as a demon I know the truth of the matter. You must stop thinking or terrible things are going to happen to you." Evil Descartes took a gun from his pocket and waived it around. "You thought and therefore I might shoot... I see your fear. To kill is a thrill for me I must admit, second only to fomenting unreasonable doubts. The truth or... lie, is that this is a dream you're dreaming. Fortunately, for you at least, you dream therefore you are, Descartes."

Descartes woke up to find he had wet his bed.

My half-complete solution to Agrippa's trilemma follows. — Agent Smith

Why can't we just be fine with the dogmatic horn of the trilemma. Axioms (provisional laws of thought) are the foundation for inferential knowledge.

You have faith in axioms. :clap:

Nitrogen isn't toxic to drink? — TiredThinker

Considering it (the gas, triple bonded N2) makes up 78% of the air you breath by volume, I sure hope not.

Said the Buddha to a monk: "It is imperative that you realize that I haven't said anything that you don't already know."

The monk replied: "Is that because you haven't said anything?"

Buddha: "I've said plenty, have you not been listening? Do you feel unsatisfied with all that I've said to you?"

Monk: "Yes, I'm unsatisfied with your self-help. I found this new book called 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson and I feel that it tells me things I do not already know, all the things you've told me I already know, which I thought I didn't know once."

Buddha: "Ok, you do you. But if you come back I'll shut up and you can shut up and we'll both shut up together for a moment non-judgemental awareness Samadhi. Then for a moment at least we won't know that we know that we know nothing about what we don't remember because I haven't brought it up.... Have you been drinking? You stink like a keg..."

Monk: "My brother had his birthday yesterday. Yes, I've had a few."

Buddha: "Just remember what you already know about that and you should be ok."

Monk: "My dad and my grandpa are chronic alcoholics."

Buddha: "Tell them to come to my AA group."

Monk: "Yes, I know."

Can't you change the pH of carbonated water by just adding a base?

They put nitrogen gas in beer/soda.

Nitrogen infusion creates beverages with a sweeter taste, even without the addition of sugar or sweeteners. Unlike C02, nitrogen doesn't create any acidity, removing the aspect from a beer or coffee's flavor profile. — www.drinkripples.com

Good answer! :up:

Currently it looks like you're right. Everyone on death row is there for murder.

One can imagine the death penalty is suitable for a depraved serial torturer if it is suitable for other kinds of murder. Could there be some room in the law for applying it despite custom/precedent, if the evidence was really crazy (Sawmovie stuff that could kill if it got out of hand)?

Maybe all the most extreme serial torturers just happen to end up murdering their victims so it's very unlikely that you'll have one crime without the other. The dead can't tattletale so easily.

However, the penalty for torture is less severe than the penalty for murder. — Agent Smith

Don't you think there is far more nuance to criminal sentences with respect to who did what and how bad it was and what the law is wherever it happened? All murder, neither all torture, is the same. Justify your lazy generalization (cite something).

Whosoever kills a human being without (any reason like) man slaughter, or corruption on earth, it is as though he had killed all mankind [...]
— 5:32 — Agent Smith

So straightforward a rule but this is from the Quran. I can imagine that if the Passion of Jesus were just another Greek play the chorus could say this to the audience. But he was a disturber of someone's peace/order. What was the formal legal justification for the crucifixion?

As a mythical moral equation it is kind of interesting in light of the scapegoating rite.

To kill one is to save all (unconsciously).

versus

To kill one is to kill all (consciously).

Better yet... Jesus comes out of the tomb and proclaims, like a swashbuckling Muskateer,
One for All and All for One... who's with me?

And soon there would be many...

Girardian theory is not true; it does not make us better readers; and it’s not an exaggeration of anything important. Like the “everything is water” claim attributed to Thales, the “all desire is mimetic,” “all violence is mimetic,” and “all culture comes from violence” claims reduce, at best, to something trivial. And while Girardianism may well be “generative,” it is surely no more so than Scientology. Yet there it is, still going strong at a literature department near you. I’m not sure how we can stop it. — Joshua Landy

_____

Similarly, did we really need Girard to tell us that innocent individuals are sometimes singled out for punishment by communities in need of an outlet for negative energy? No, we already had J. G. Frazer (1913) for that, and Sigmund Freud (1930), and Kenneth Burke (1935), and Gordon Allport (1954).[42] In fact Frazer has an entire volume of The Golden Bough, running to some four hundred and seventy-two pages, dedicated to the topic. My point is not that Frazer has it right (let alone that Freud does); my point is just that everyone has always known that scapegoating happens, just as everyone has always known that mimetic desire happens, and that rivalry happens, and that violence happens. — Joshua Landy

Deceit, Desire, and the Literature Professor: Why Girardians Exist (Joshua Landy)

You could view a moral code as just a kind of rationalization of social relations that emerge in nature.

Take for example chickens. They can't rationalize their behavior but if they did they might uphold the pecking order (generally). Hens never(?) outrank a rooster. But if rationalization came into play, hens and roosters might be justifying the system with regard to their self-interests. Is the risk to give reasons for why the prevailing system is bad, tolerable? If you're getting pecked to death you might have nothing to lose, assuming you've persuaded others to your cause.

everyone hates God? — Agent Smith

He/It is the transcendent outlier and humankind is bewildered/enraged/despaired by the problem/reality of suffering. Just like in attic tragedy, the Biblical king of kings undergoes the pereipetia reserved for all mortals, a fall (through son). Otherwise how could such a being be relatable, if you couldn't empathize with a true victim of a natural cycle of life. God has become one of us, affixed to the cross of time and materiality.

In very simple terms, because God is greatest of outliers, he must partake in the scapegoat sacrifice because that is the natural perennial process/rite, from man to god (in sacrifice) and back from god to man (in sacrifice). It's a show of reciprocity.

Otherwise our hate/despair might consume us...?

Altruists, poor chaps! — Agent Smith

That Captain America scene seems kind of dumb, unless Rogers knew the grenade was a fake. But if he knew it was a fake and jumped on it only because he knew, that doesn't show authentic altruism. If he didn't know, could he really expect such an action to protect anyone... it'd just be a terribly stupid act on his part.

Who is writing these scripts?

The ‘thing-in-itself’ is also your perception. — ArielAssante

Our loosy goosey language use is gonna get us in trouble from those who might know better. Careful you don't contradict yourself, or inconsistently/incorrectly define things with respect to intersubjective standards and what you are arguing.

Encountered a passage in Robert Sapolsky's book, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst, about the hedonic treadmill/adaptation.

An emptiness comes from this combination of over-the-top nonnatural resources of reward and the inevitability of habituation; this is because unnaturally strong explosions of the synthetic experience and sensation and pleasure evoke unnaturally strong degrees of habituation. This has two consequences. First, soon we barely notice the fleeting whispers of pleasure caused by the leaves in autumn, or by the lingering glance of the right person, or by the promise of reward following a difficult, worthy task. And the other consequence is that we eventually habituate to even those artificial deluges of intensity. If we were designed by engineers, as we consumed more, we'd desire less. But our frequent human tragedy is that the more we consume, the hungrier we get. More and faster and stronger. What was an unexpected pleasure yesterday is what we feel entitled to today, and what won't be enough tomorrow. — Robert Sapolsky

Compare a passage from Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality.

Since these conveniences by becoming habitual had almost entirely ceased to be enjoyable, and at the same time degenerated into true needs, it became much more cruel to be deprived of them than to possess them was sweet, and men were unhappy to lose them without being happy to possess them. — Rousseau

Philosophy is intersubjective, insofar folks collaborate to use language and logic to question/analyze what they believe in methodical ways.

All perception relies on your mind — ArielAssante

Is there nothing other than my mind that a perception relies upon? If I decide to take a trip to England, does the material stuff I take to be England occur in the field of my perception because I'm actually a hallucinating Boltzmann brain floating in some outerspace? Is there then no concept of cause and effect with respect to what could be considered separate from me? How could perceptions be their own cause?

If all perception relies on my mind, how could there also be the possibility of a thing-in-itself, as if something outside of it was a cause?

Is there a good reason, if not due to an instersubjective fact, that the mind does not encompass all things? Is there only one mind? If so, whose mind is it? It must be mine... unless my mind is also your mind and there is no difference between the two.

Where is my mind?

I was of the view that human sacrifice was distinct from punishment (by death) of criminals — Agent Smith

The scapegoat is perceived as a criminal, a target to blame for social troubles. No doubt there is in the mix of the exercise of this supposed ritual through history true criminals and true victims, relative to whatever the ethical code is. At our primordial beginning, at least for Girard, the idea is that this scapegoating process is completely unconscious/ritual-magic and there is a good/bad duality to the act (ex. "god wants a victim, get him one, there is even absurd honor in being given over ").

Aristotle's aurea mediocritas comes to mind: bad is bad but too good is equally bad or worse than bad. — Agent Smith

:up: I gotta look this up.
_____

Someone talking about this stuff brought up a scene in the Dune book series after Paul Atreides becomes the emperor/tyrant-holdfast. His mother has landed and some members of the crowd are too slow to bow in respect and they are taken away to either be imprisoned or killed even though they are composed of the old and infirm. Such an extreme social demand might result in calculated scapegoating from both the top down (from leadership) and bottom up (crowd) at the same time. Ex. "Paul's rule killed my grandpa and our lives suck... kill em!, whose with me?"/ "You heretic, I will out you and you'll be quartered in the public square."

You can imagine Chimps might not be too far off from this drama, which makes Rene Girard's Christian apologetics and mythic interpretations somewhat grandiose.

There is an interesting balancing act between the unanimity of a crowd in seeking justice against the demands of social code backed by punitive/policing action.

probably a natural selection pressure against aggression but I'm not quite sure how effective it is or even whether it isn't the other way round — Agent Smith

It's all probably far too complicated for us to take any simple speculations too seriously. Somehow proactive violence (planning to take out a psychopath/outlier by coalition) puts an evolutionary check on impulsive violence. If the impulse for this kind violence wasn't removed genetically, it was possibly checked genetically/behaviorally with respect to the growing regulatory powers of the cortex. If you can't emotionally regulate according to the the norms of your tribe to a point, you're at risk of being purged.

What's interesting about the old Greek motif of the scapegoat is that it deals with outliers (very high status and low status victims). The king has transgressed moral law (there shall be no incest, no kinslaying) and must be taken out for the social welfare. Or, that old ugly, lonely outsider does not exemplify the norm as far as participation is concerned, so let's purge them from the group.

We can understand viscerally the emotional power of ethical norms as the result in our senses of admiration or disgust for social outliers (and those who become the subject/object of mass interest).

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. — C.S. Lewis

By whose standards? I might be able to pick a random bear in the woods as a moral teacher if the cult I was born into taught it so.

The chicken was running from a perceived threat but didn't realize that it was crossing a road. It wouldn't have had time to consider the risk if even if some chicken god had tried to warn the danger of busy highways.

How do supposed rational beings, wise from practice in some cognitive gymnasium, stay cool under pressure? Do philosophers, like chickens, panic (and possibly forgo their virtues)?

Why did the philosopher cross the road?

Because it was the most reasonable thing to do?

Philosophers and Chicken Enchiladas

rounded up, and executed in pogroms — Agent Smith

It's worrisome our human history is so rife with genocide/war. We're never out of the woods as far as the potential for mass violence is concerned, though we like to believe we've made great progress.

________

Richard Wrangham proposes that collective violence, in disposing of violent males, actually played a role in diminishing the reactive violence of our species, as a process of self-domestication. Apparently chimps display far more reactive aggression (tit for tat) than we do. Maybe this was a hurdle for our ancestors to overcome toward developing a more complex culture.

A Bold New Theory Proposes That Humans Tamed Themselves (Melvin Konner, Atlantic Magazine)

Nothing wrong with the anesthetizing power of the black mirror, enrapturing the senses in the glow of a thousand dreams.



Edit: An exaggerated version of media/illusion as powerful distraction/anesthetic comes from the film/poem of Aniara. There is an AI on the ship whose special function is to comfort the passengers by projecting the features/illusions of earth that have disappeared due to ecological disaster. The film has a great dramatic event of losing the Mima because of the burden of its empathy with the traumatized crowd.

For frequentlv the world that Mima shows us

blots out the world remembered and abandoned.

If not, the mima never would have drawn us

and not been worshipped as a holv being,

and no ecstatic women would have stroked

in trembling bliss the dais of the deity. — Excerpt of translation of Aniara, original poem by Harry Martinson