I think that it's fair to assume that it won't take long for chimpanzees to learn the use of knives, axes, spares and ropes. It is also conceivable that the use of such tools would revolutionize their way of life. — Jacob-B

I don't think it is likely, beyond a chimpanzee using these objects indiscriminately (ie. swinging on a rope, throwing knife like it would throw a rock). You're probably leaving out any number of some crucial elements of what shaped the human experience, like developing a sophisticated language over time and a consistent exposure to a the benefit of burnt plains (food cooked by accident).

If pristine lighters existed on the the Earth in the proximity of all ape tribes for 100ks of years, we might or might not be surprised that no animal learned how to use them in all that time. "Fire burn! " as Frankenstein's monster said.

This guy says the institutional side actually drives a large proportion of the trend upwards on the basis of algorithms/automated strategy.

But you didn't see any genitalia? Sorry, guy, but your missing out on the benefits of pareidolia.

Yes, I am reminded of picking all those so called "free" wild blue berries on the slopes of Denali national park.

They weren't free because they were not freely given by an agent. The bushes did not give them freely. And since I had no teeth because of the work required to maintain teeth (teeth do not "freely" maintain themselves) I had to crush the berries first on a rock to taste them. The work of that crushing, was just like the work of the picking, the cost of traveling to Denali was arduous. The swallowing was also very difficult. How I wish such mechanics were as smooth as nature and as ignorable as the best kinds of autonomic nervous function.

Yes, nothing is free, except when somebody gives you something freely. The sinister (costly) aspect of such giving is implicit. Why would a coworker buy another coworker lunch? Why would blue berry bushes hang their costly carbohydrates on stems? What future acts of quasi enforced reciprocity has now been sown into these absurd relationships?

As a totally depressed ignoramus I don't really post in the main forum.

I've resigned myself to the Lounge. No questions are worth asking, except those that are (but what are they?).

Once heard the experience of a man who was changing his hormonal make up toward a female/feminine profile and what was emphasized was a tremendous shift in his aesthetic experience of beauty. The gist was that the aesthetic field somehow broadened away from a a more narrow, possibly sexual preoccupation, to encompass more general phenomena (ie. the stark beauty of a variety of mundane scenarios of being in the world somehow ballooned). But this could just be anecdotal testimonial hormonal drama of an n of 1.

Empty Lives (Lyrics)

JJ's got a piece (&) he's learning
How to use it
If he can't find release then someday soon he's gonna lose it
But nobody sees him turning or knows that inside he's learning
Looking for a chance to go out inside a fiery blaze

Jodi has a chance and she knows she has to take it
Because she's the only one who JJ understands will never fake it

Now who do you think you're fooling
Why would I walk on by
I can see what you're doing
But I just don't know why

You don't want to have to climb your mountain
Want to sail away to some other shore
Are you going to find somebody there who loves you more

You don't want to think about the future
If there ain't no light (life) to see

But I'm gonna show you there's a light (life) when you're with me

Where do the italicized quotations come from and why does anyone take them for granted as common belief?

If a mindless insentient group (collection of organisms) can exist prior to the development self-reflection and counting its constituents (selves) by some language then isn't that a case where a group exists prior to the concept of the self?

Or are we talking purely about the hypothetical sequential emergence of these concepts? Why not simultaneous emergence of self (1) aside other (2)?

Surely it helps to have multiples of a kind in order to say that at any time there is only 1 of a kind out of other possibilities (2, 3, 4..). There is one what? One what? There is two what? Two what?

Cue the mirror!

Interesting ball game. — praxis

Just a Magic the Gathering (card game) reference, fun and extremely expensive game many kids in U.S. are exposed to in junior high or earlier, since 1990s. Somewhat reminescent of DnD. The premise is that you are a spell caster who uses a deck of 60 cards (colored mana and spells) to reduce your opponents life to 0 from 20. Deck construction can be thematic from fundamental color types to a multitude of (sub)category types out of a potential pool of 20,000 distinct cards. Lots of great art on those cards. Maybe that is part of the reason they were/are so expensive.

We can make it all fit by a selfish abuse of language and anthropomorphism (in a selfish poetic coup d'état).

Things are like selfish selves insofar as things lack consideration for others by default. Or the consideration (or lack-thereof) that things have for others (things) are merely a feature of their nature, whether changeable or not.

Those inert things (selves) that can be manipulated to serve life/agency of the manipulator (self/thing) must be arranged. Those things that are resistant to a favorable arrangement by the inescapable fact of their being (thingness) are more selfish than things that aren't. But it is relative to the self/thing seeking to order things for itself.

Saying that everything is selfish is the ugly permutation of another neutral statement: things are what they are. But who is telling you what a thing is but some beautifully suspicious SELF for apparent or suspicious REASONS. Philosophers are selfish untrustworthy pricks, just like everyone else.

When the selfish wind rushes down in a storm across the plain, the strong obstinate selfish oak breaks under its force. When the selfish lighting bolt strikes the brush, it births a selfish fire that eats up the homes of selfish humans. When a selfish lover caresses its beloved, it requires a selfish arrangement of things just so.

Is that Rudy G? Good image for a magic card.

Has someone been juggling?

Is there a difference, a distinction, between youre behavior (in the jungle) and the rat Y's behavior (in the scenario described in the OP) in terms of information available for deduction (a sound) and the deduction made (defensive behavior)? No! — TheMadFool

If a rat smells cat urine and perhaps there is time-sensitivity gradations to this smell, such that a rat smells recently discharged urine, then the rat reacts as if a cat were present. But this representation in language of "cat is likely present" as affirming a possible consequent through representative logic is quite human. I can't say that this necessitates any conscious mental, logically represented, working hypothesis for the rat but maybe it isn't needed. We as humans can rationalize a rat's behavior, but what is going on in the mind of a rat?

Let's say I smell cat pee on my rug but I own no cats. Is this again an example of affirming the consequent in as far as I conclude that a cat must have peed on my rug? What if I take a chemical sample of this odor to a lab which confirms that there is cat DNA in such sample. I then further conclude that it is likely a cat peed on my rug, but am I still not affirming the consequent? At what point of conclusion is the fallacy overcome in terms of probability? To what extent is the investment in obtaining this certainty rational or irrational?

I'm deeply intrigued by this claim. Can you edify me on this most fascinating idea of "neither rational nor irrational"? — TheMadFool

I'm not committed to this claim. Just being wary of transferring aspects of human experience (reasoning in abstract) to animals. I see reason as self-aware abstraction, though insofar as most of what a brain does is not conscious, I'm probably wrong.

In what circumstance of living my life, making decisions actively or passively, am I neither being rational or irrational, or is everything to be subject to such kind of analysis?

Does an animal run from predators as a tried and true effective strategy because said animal "wants to live"?

If this fails to convince you, the theme of this thread - it's rational to be irrational or it's irrational to be rational (sometimes) - is transferable to humans. — TheMadFool

Well you're example of associative learning is a kind fundamental to life it seems.

The other day I was witness to a cattle egret that walked up to me after I had turned on my pressure washer. They associate the sound (x) of lawn mowers with easy access to insects(y). This scenario was somewhat novel I thought. No lawn but I was surprised he was still getting insects from what the pw gun by force unsettled from nooks and crannies.

I aimed by gun to the surface very close to the bird and it got soaked and blown but it didn't retreat. I would say the bird was being neither rational or irrational in the human sense of the term. There is not way it could weigh the pros an cons of the novel situation. Of course there may be context specific stimuli for the bird which I'm totally unaware. Like if an engine is humming but there is a doglike/catlike creature somewhere in the vicinity, do they decide not to engage?

Same as ullage?

Long ago I saw a documentary film were a guy on the deck of a ship was cracking open a Roman(?) era amphora of wine and tasting it. The wine was brilliantly colored. Still looking for that scene.

The purring cat and the squeaking mouse, like every other life form capable of thought, whether simple or complex, relies on rationality to survive, cats have to be rational to capture rats and rats, similarly, have to be rational to escape cats. — TheMadFool

Can't we flat out reject this? The behavior of cats stalking rats and rats running from cats is a consequence of natural selection, which is not a process that involves rational decision making in the ordinary sense.

It maybe the case there are cats/rats that have learned techniques by which they're comparatively better at what they do than on average but it's still unlikely that any process of rationality is involved.

There is no need to affirm a consequent. If you hear a sound that causes you to run for cover, then you run for cover. As to whether said rat is actually thinking, "is that really a cat?", I doubt it.

If an animal is incapable of rationality then isn't it also incapable of irrationality?

No, haven't been, but what is the significance of Iquitos or Summats with regard to millennial shamanism?

Is everyone gulping down ayahuasca in those places by way of "shamans"?

God is a He because he wears the pants in His household. Or, his wife "fell down a set of stairs" after her kids were born and this has been kept a secret.

The kids still wonder, if God is like a man, why did he make women? Are they the less favored of the natural binary?

Schadenfreude may emerge from a frustrating envy or a frustrating desire for retribution. There is an possible psychological connection between the two in the way envy-induced resentment might actuate violence in some direction (ex. up or down the social hierarchy). To feel good that a bad actor got their comeuppance by some kind of incidental or intentional harm is an example of schadenfreude. Case example: Reddit's Karmic Justice.

I will now warm my soul by the internal blazing hellfire of envy for what lies on the other side of the proverbial fence.

The shaman is like the hunter-gatherer counterpart to the priest/medicine man of a more complex hierarchical society. Both might interpret dreams in prophetic way that might guide individual/collective action in community for weal or woe.

The impression is that they were/are medicine doctors of premodern polytheistic societies. Perhaps there was no separation between spiritual sickness and physical illness in societies which attributed causes and effects to spirits (flights of imagination that work within a mythic system).

Today religious priests, medical doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists probably carry out a comparable function of shamans in early cultures.

Within his study of the subject, Eliade proposed several different definitions of the word "shamanism". The first of these was that shamanism simply constituted a "technique of ecstasy", and in Eliade's opinion, this was the "least hazardous" definition. — Wikipedia: Mircea Eliade's Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy

Millennial Shaman New Age Dream Surfers:

"Whoa! dude, what if shamans are like dream surfers, if the dream world were a legitimate domain of experience. Like what if the waves of this world and the waves of the dream world were intermixed or one in the same. Whoa! bro, in that case, let's go ride the waves of our dreams." :P

Topping the thread.

One agent's undesired output is another agent's desired input.

Symbionts, commensals and parasites are all relative qualifications/valuations from an agent's point of view.

They are all on the wrong path, every single one of them. — Sir2u

Here's hoping that the separation of church state remains in religious folks' interest, insofar as they don't want to be subsumed/subordinate to the authoritarian governance of any one particular one brand. Can't speak for what it is like in your neck of the woods.

Right now we are suffering the effects of the tropical storm Eta. We have had 4 solid days of rain, There are floods all over the place. Rivers have over run, houses, roads and bridges have been destroyed. And what are the people doing? Praying for the rain to stop. — Sir2u

Prayer might help folks psychologically stabilize when they perceive to have very little control over their lives. Just watched a mini doc about kids growing up in the gang ridden districts of Honduras. Faith makes more sense to me in such situations because the most people can do is hope for good outcomes in the face of senseless violence and poverty.

The Quick End

The child (non)hero, afflicted by a curse causa sui (?), comes to the threshold of the labyrinth of illusion, the temple of the 10,000 aquatic reflections (Sahul).

B enters a hall of mirrors, after taking refreshment at the in-temple cafe, and he is assaulted with his own mental contents as apophenic projection.

The multiples of B are disconcerting. He sees himself as the cloaked woman who served him a piece of cake just moments ago, her copies fading into distance. The reflections of being other than himself in grand play of mirrored morphing figures dizzies him. In one scene he was cat in the lap of an obese orange-haired boy king. In another, he was a mummy-wrapped leper, shorn of limbs, laying sideways on a dusty street. In another, just a morning dove sitting beside its kin.

"I'm obviously not those, now." Said a mirror image of himself. The sound multiplied and echoed as much as the image.

"Ha!" The figure appeared, a golden shinning mask evocative of the sun with two black eyes, hanging in the billowing robes of a dark veil. "We've got you!"

"If you had been helped by fortune of other gods as authors, others would have warned you that this is the crucible of Nil, a house that turns the wayward aimless into its own disciples, who all share in the weals and woe of their god. You, soft clay cup, will carry the waters of Sahul."

B. stood still, and the anxiety fled out of him as if his own bowels had gone with it.

"Now brace yourself for the fixing transformation. The hall will be purified with fire and you'll be serving up tea in no time."

<-------(The End, The Middle or The Beginning?) ------->

All of the monotheists believe that they and only they worship the one true god, the rest are devil worshippers, pagans, savages and so on. — Sir2u

I always like to hear such things from those who profess to believe.

From the standpoint of Plumb's faith and or personal beliefs, are the Mormons headed for a reward in the afterlife as much as the Jehova's Witnesses insofar as any are righteous exemplars of their faith? Or are other Christians on the wrong path?

God exists and the proof is there but until you see Him with your eyes then He is not there. — david plumb

Guessing you're not a pantheist, in which any agents of any pantheon could be representative/symbolic aspects of a divine unity.

I am the Lord, and there is no other, besides me there is no God; I equip you, though you do not know me. (Isaiah 45:5. ESV) — Bible

I got this quote from Jehovah Witness at my door. They asked me to read a passage out-loud with them and this part was included.

Do all Christians have a correct orientation to this one true God, even though they belong to different cults? Which cult is the best cult insofar as it mediates a proper interpretation and obeisance of God's divine will?

Why not comment yourself?

I am sorry, I feel a heart attack is coming on. I can't handle this. Talking to people who immediately turn "write" to "say". — god must be atheist

Don't get all worked up on my account. It's just a silly meme. You are permitted as much as any person to speak and write in Jesus' name.

Says Jesus?

Sounds like Vigano would do well creating comic book propaganda for his 'children of light'.

What letter would Jesus have written?

-deleted-

They’re anti-superhero heroes, essentially. — praxis

Ha!

This inversion is interesting. The superheros as loved by the public are deeply corrupt figures who have a public persona (celebrity) geared toward manipulation in service of their private lives. The outward persona is the public superhero which belies what they actually are, supervillans.

The same relationship is at play. The heros are mortals with exceptional qualities (perseverance, skill, moral sense) who seek to eliminate the unjust tyranny of gods. The Boys (the group) have all been deeply harmed by the powers that be and this motivates their collaboration toward acts of justice.

Maybe your bugaboo is to be made by a parallel of social justice aspect of superheros and this somehow translates to a "dangerous" or misguided activism of a social justice movement now. Superheros might satisfy a power fantasy of those who have little agency. Though one could just as well be anesthetized by the consumer products of television (or any media art) in which the fantasy of superheros (or Fred and Barney) is just escapist entertainment.

Even the North Koreans risk watching Western media via thumb drives. Not sure any amount of superhero movies is gonna make them risk their lives for social change.

I've gone down the Captain Planet rabbit hole because of this thread. Damn 90s cartoons. They got me!

I might now be further corrupted if I read/listen to Murray Bookchin's Social Ecology propaganda. :monkey: Close your eyes, stopper your ears. Too many voices/channels exchanging ideas.

Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory (wikipedia)

Even if the Frankfurt school could be blamed for whatever historical change one dislikes, there are many other contributory forces. Maybe Capitalism itself, insofar as it must forever appeal to consumer demand in an ever increasing turn of cultural innovation, exploits human desire for profits to the point of undermining the authority of religious institutions. Things change in time even though we might love to complain about it.

Any church/government/culture (what/which?) could have outlawed television, radio and internet. Why didn't they. The Amish still don't use these things...(?)

Existential Comics: The Frankfurt Four

A belief is too strong a word to use and can be used to pigeon hole someone. When in discussion with the fundamentalists, rather than those paying lip service to their religion, there seems to be a belief that this life is a spring board to the next. — david plumb

Is it wrong to ask you whether or not you believe in an afterlife given the statements you made in this thread and further that you'd characterize yourself as a man/woman of Christian faith? Perhaps the afterlife is really just what you'll leave behind for your sons and daughters and your neighbor's sons and daughters and your enemy's sons and daughters. In other words, the afterlife is about the lives after (or beside) yours, tribal religious identity notwithstanding.

Bimble dreamnt again, of the shadow that was the anathema of his waking life, and driving him toward a mythic dissolution. It took the form of a raven with a feather beard and purple-tinted eyes, watching from a mossy boulder.

There were two other monstrous agents in this illusion, one red and one blue. The red creature, what came to mind as a proper anthropoid thrull, had immense muscular shoulders joined to a hunched backed spine, its toothy head curving down toward the earth, its body studded with boney protuberances. Its feet were anchored in the earth. Bimble's feet were clasped in the vice grip of its red hands.

The blue agent was ethereal and buoyant, suspended in the sky, very humanoid except for its well proportioned size and stature. It might have well been the combined volume of 10 Bimbles. Its body was emblazoned with a myriad of brands and runes. It held on to a physical chain which was wrapped around Bimble's wrists. It too had an ethereal chain but wrapped around its neck, tensed and terminating in the direction of the noonday sun.

The raven squawked, "Pull!"

Both agents pulled toward their respective poles, blue towards the sky and red downward along the gradients of earth.

Bimble was caught in the middle, tensed as the rope, in a cosmic tug of war.

They decided that the Church ( religion per se ) had control over the masses and set about dismantling the authority of the Church. — david plumb

This sounds conspiratorial as if it was a project of planned intent rather than a historical accident of the spread of ideas. The complexity of factors governing historical change makes this theory sound silly. Maybe if the public didn't know how to read at all the authority of religions (Christianity/Islam?) would still properly mediate moral behavior toward a reward in an afterlife.

Equality doesn't matter in this life as your reward is in the next. — david plumb

For the purpose of trying to make sense of this thread can you say that this quotation is a statement of your own belief? It's somewhat dumbfounding.

So is this thread really about advocating for belief in the monotheistic God of Roman Catholicism, or any comparable Christian faith?

Maybe Christian intolerance/corruption ironically lead to the loss of the Church's (what Church?) cultural/political authority.

There are way too many documentaries to watch. :meh: Just as there are way too many KitKats to eat. Ignorance is still bliss.

The Rotten series on Netflix is incredible though there are controversies as to whether some industries are fairly portrayed.



Next time you eat a KitKat bar, remember these folks in Ivory Coast. "The Ivory Coast and Ghana are by far the two largest producers of cocoa, accounting for more than 50 percent of the world´s cocoa.Apr 23, 2020" https://www.statista.com/statistics/263855/cocoa-bean-production-worldwide-by-region/