Don't go where they teach you to drink.

In these circumstances, there is no basis to make a reasonable decision. What is needed, and what is lacking, is trust. Trust is the liquidity of the knowledge economy, and of society in general. — unenlightened

Indeed. And politicians and the medical establishment have been working hard for decades to destroy people's trust in politics and medicine.

I think the fact that it happened on television means that it could be some kind of PR stunt including by the state. But you would need more info than that to decide either way. — Apollodorus

Indeed, but I don't think it will ever be possible to discover the truth about this incident.

Speaking of which, China seems to be making lots of money from selling face masks, protective suits, ventilators, and other Covid-related stuff. Could it be that it created and released the virus for some hidden agenda?

Awww. The China paranoia! Well, China is making lots of money from lots of things, so there's that.

It's certainly convenient to blame China, in order to divert the public attention from the horrible treatment of animals all around the world, from the exploitation of the natural environment, from the fact that Western governments handled the pandemic so poorly from the onset.

Last night, a group of covid deniers stormed the studios of Slovenian national television.
— baker

Sorry baker, but I'll have to ask this.

Were they really "covid deniers"? — ssu

Their stance is that the covid virus does not exist.

Thesis: If you want to control the situation, create an extreme opposition to yourself that you can control, and this will help you to control the legitimate opposition.
— baker
Well this sounds like a counter-insurgency tactic!

If you have an insurgency that has a) popular support, b) sound reasoning behind it, c) possibility to gain outside acceptance and justification, then this is the way to go. Create a group that is so bananas, so insanely crazy, and make them to attack the reasonable (actual) insurgents.

Are you familiar with the series Person of Interest? There, a group of people, Samaritan, who wanted to control the world by IT surveillance techniques engineered its own opposition, called Vigilance who were directly and violently opposed to such surveillance. Vigilance's opposition and use of violence made Samaritan look legitimate and necessary, and just the kind of organization the government should hire.

If the misinformation on the internetz can be traced back to a relatively small number of sources, this is suspicious and smells of sabotage.

It's an exercise in finding out what (and how) people believe — Isaac

Sure. But do you want to know what (and how) people believe just out of curiosity, or do you have a more urgent and useful reason for it?

(Such as tailoring how you speak to people, in order to avoid getting trouble from them.)

So, ultimately, it is for the individual to work out a solution. — Apollodorus

I doubt Plato or Socrates would ever say such a thing, at least they wouldn't mean it in the general sense that your sentence suggests.

The examined life is not prescriptive. — Fooloso4

And yet all ideas of the "examined life" are prescriptive. There exist lists of questions one _should_ ask oneself in order to "examine one's life".

Narcissus is the archetype of the addict. — unenlightened

He strikes me as the person of other people's envy, and the envied person.

So, what was so special about Narcissus? — Shawn

The historical reception of the literary character. There must be something appealing about Narcissus that catches people's attention. Which, of course, says a lot about the people.

Ok. The Big Bang is a better story than Genesis. With Genesis the story is given, and folk spend their time trying to make the world fit the story. With physics, the world is given, and we change the story to fit the world. One story closes off further discussion, the other opens it up. — Banno

No. For the ordinary person, they are the same.
For the ordinary person, with physics, the story is a given too, and one spends one's time trying to make the world fit the story.

The Buddha does something similar. I'd argue that Siddhartha Gautama very much opted to live on in maya as well.

In terms of enlightenment, there is a distinction to be made between Pratyekabuddhas (solitary Buddha) and Samyaksambuddhas (perfect Buddha).

The first one finds truth and keeps it to themselves. It is a sort of blissful ignorance that disregards everything that goes on within the illusion of existence.

The Samyaksambuddha on the other hand comes to the conclusion that while blissful ignorance is blissful indeed, this is not true liberation. They opt to live on still entangled in maya, teaching their way to others entangled in maya. They are similar in that way to the Beautician, attempting to make the illusion as nice as it can be.

Only, the principle idea here is different from the Beautician: While the nicest version of illusion for them is one that conceals the truth, for a Samyaksambuddha, the nicest version of illusion is one where everyone can see the truth despite living in an illusion. — Hermeticus

This is some kind of Mahayana doctrine.

Poetry is to thought as makeup is to a woman. A poet is a beautician - enhances beauty and conceals ugliness. The metaphysics of beauty is simply our dissatisfaction (dukkha) with reality and thus our obsession with illusion (maya). Turns Buddhism which believes maya is dukkha on its head. — TheMadFool

I agree with the sentiment!

It's just that there are two large books of poems in Early Buddhist scriptures, Verses of the Elder Monks (Theragatha) and Verses of the Elder Nuns (Therigatha), and other poems in the scriptures.

How is that a good peom can be written about the bad? — TheMadFool

Such is the power of poetry. If you read the above mentioned poems, they still have that aspect of "beautifying the ugly" to them. The effort it takes to become enlightened is great, much hard work, and the poems afford a dignified distance toward it, or else one would be crushed by it.

1. Establish agreement not only about basic definitions (which is important), but also about basic beliefs.

This is an essential place to start any discussion, as mentioned above, because it saves a lot of time, effort, and confusion. I can't count how many times an argument eventually loops back to these questions somehow.

2. Make sure to understand the other person's position.

This is best demonstrated by stating what you believe to be their argument, and by them confirming your accuracy. No straw men, no caricatures, and hopefully far less later misunderstanding.

3. Build on commonality.

Once basic beliefs and definitions are agreed upon, and positions accurately understood, then go on to problems and proposed solutions. — Xtrix

This assumes that people want or should want to cooperate, that their basic belief is something like "We should all be willing to cooperate with everyone else."

Not just a few people distinctly do not want to cooperate indiscriminately to begin with.
"He that is not with me is against me. I see that you're not with me, so I'll consider you against, you're my enemy, and I seek to defeat you in every way I can."

This has led to political tribalism and dehumanizing the "other," reminiscent of religious wars. — Xtrix

And for some people, sometimes, political tribalism and dehumanizing the "other" is precisely what they are in for in discussion, even if ostensibly, they're seeking to discuss advanced mathematics or climate change or whatever.

Political tribalism and dehumanizing the "other" isn't necessarily a(n unwanted) consequence of some discussion approaches, but can be the very motivation for engaging with others to begin with.

in a world that likes to privilege the folk wisdom of 'win/win' — Tom Storm

Where is that world??!

With that being said, I argue that it's best to avoid in-depth discussion of anything until this consensus is confirmed, if for no other reason than to avoid wasting time. — Xtrix

But when there is such consensus, what will people talk about?

In my experience, when I have so much in common with someone as you describe above, and when we have cleared up the terms, we end up having nothing to talk about. Except maybe the weather and trivialities.

What’s the difference between simply being infatuated with someone and loving them? — Benj96

The degree of goodwill for the other person. An infatuated person has little or no goodwill for the person they are infatuated with (down to lacking the most basic empathy for them). Whereas loving someone also includes having goodwill for them, wishing them well.

If you subscribe to the idea of love please explain why on earth we would need it. We are animals with a high rate of infidelity I would struggle to believe we are indeed as monogamous as culture and romcoms would dictate

The high rate of infidelity is possibly due to the high rate of infatuation, and with it, the low rate of goodwill.

There are social projects that can successfully be engaged in only when there is enough mutual goodwill. These projects can be anything from raising children to growing crops. People benefit from such projects, so we can say that they are evolutionarily advantageous.

Sure. But in a more realistic way, we can ask how it is that language, "the word", constructs meaning that makes it possible at all to conceive of anything at all. The tree in the Eden was a knowledge tree, so what is knowledge? It is the power of language and logic. We were kicked out of Eden because we developed that supreme violation of comfort and familiarity: the ability to inquire. Nothing but trouble from there.
Language "creates" the world. Prior to this, there is no world; there is what cannot be said, but talking like this raises Wittgenstein's, and the Buddhist's, ire. But once acquired, language is the backdrop of understanding that constitutes a person, who can then drop the explicit, move back into the primordial through the regressive (call it) method of yoga, and let the world speak as it once did. — Constance

So you want to do philosophy of language, but vaguely back it up and give it a sense of authority with references to the Bible (and other assorted scriptures)?

"Socioeconomic success is wisdom"? (transl: Greed is good :roll:) ... — 180 Proof

You misread my tone.

Have you read Döblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz?

It could very well be that being a liberal humanist, one expects too much from life, and from mankind, and that, like Franz Bieberkopf should have done, one should set one's hopes on no more than bread with butter.

I would very much like to believe that there is a wisdom that is beyond and above socioeconomic success, a wisdom that is worth more than socioeconomic success, a wisdom that trumps socioeconomic success. But I am afraid, sincerely afraid, that there is no such wisdom, and that socioeconomic success is as good as life gets.

I tend to doubt that they sought political power for themselves. Socrates was the antithesis of politician and he was an old man. I think the basic idea was to influence society, including the political classes, through education, though Plato may have liked to see himself in the role of advisor to political leaders. — Apollodorus

So what were they? The primordial armchair philosophers? I'm being both ironic and not.

The main point, though, is that they succeeded in popularizing philosophy.

I doubt a few men can have such influence, so I'd look for another explanation.

Meanwhile, we still have to deal with the damn pandemic.

The simple part is that more or less everyone wants the damn pandemic to be gone — jorndoe

Craving for a solution can get in the way of finding one.

The pandemic occured because people are not cautious and are exploitative toward nature and toward other living beings, humans and animals. And now so many want the pandemic to go away -- so that they can go back to their old non-cautious and exploitative ways ...

There is a lesson here, but it seems it won't be learned.

That paper seems to be saying that the risk is greater after vaccination and a positive test for covid than it is with vaccination alone. In other words it seems the subjects were all vaccinated individuals. — Janus

It's not news that vaccinating people who are already infected with the pathogen they are being vaccinated against can lead to complications, similar if the infection occurs too soon after vaccination.

That's why, if you intend to go to some tropical country and need to get vaccinated for the diseases there, you have to do it early enough, so that your immune system has the time to create the required antibodies.


The model of vaccination that many people seem to be implicitly operating with is that the covid vaccines are like direct doses of antibodies (so it makes sense to administer them to everyone). As opposed to thinking of the vaccines as substances that trigger and stress the body and make it work hard to produce antibodies, and that this is a process that takes time.

Despite your cherry-picked press clippings, the group you describe are not one homogeneous legion. Attempts to lump everyone who disagrees with the party line in with the tinfoil hat brigade are just political. There's a convenient bunch of loonies who can be called on to besmirch any view you don't like by association. Should we do the same with climate change? Environmental issues? I could definitely rustle up some seriously dodgy hippies who are all in for those sorts of causes. Shall we make the serious climate scientists look like fools by associating them with a few tree-hugging children of Gaia?

Is this the direction you really want public debate to head? — Isaac

There seems to be a limit to how much critical thinking and goodwill people are willing and able to engage in in a time of crisis, and that manifesting more than that and expecting others to reciprocate is, at best, seen as a perverse indulgence, and worse, it can backfire, causing people to be even more narrow-minded.

"Now is not the time to think, now is the time to act!" is the motto many people follow in a time of crisis. Which is feasible enough in the type of immediate crisis situations like when a house is on fire. But not in others, such as a drawn-out pandemic.

I think there is a real risk that people like you and I are doing more harm than good, because it seems that simply if we reply with anything other than "I agree, you have changed my mind, I will now think and do as you want", the others see every post of ours as more opposition to their stance (regardless of what we actually say) and they dig their heels in even more.

How about treating a 90-year old woman with heart surgery to provide her a new heart valve? She takes up resources too. Do it or not do it? — Benkei

In Slovenia, there has for a long time been an unspoken culture of how to proceed in such cases, and people in general were expected to "make the right decision" on their own. Ie. to not be a burden to others.

So, for example, terminal cancer patients have been sent home (if that is an option) with a large dose of opiate analgetics and told that if they took too many of those, they'd die. It's an indirect instruction for suicide and the means for it provided by a doctor. Mind you, euthanasia isn't legal here.

The pandemic has disrupted this culture now, as people are being hospitalized and treated possibly against their will (but which they cannot express due to being unconscious).

But there is certainly no culture of "going to heroic lengths to save everyone" the way one can see it in American films.

It's not a debate about the virtues of capitalism or socialism but a debate between privatised and universal healthcare. Under the first, you're definitely screwed if you have a rare disease. At least universal healthcare is subject to public debate, instead of board room decisions. Moreover, due to the fact universal healthcare includes more people, the risk mutualisation is spread over a greater number of people. In theory it should be more affordable to also cover rarer diseases. In practice this is proved time and again by the fact both coverage is greater and costs are lower in countries with universal healthcare as opposed to the US, while quality of care is, on average, better too. — Benkei

In some EU countries, we have a mixture of privatised and universal healthcare. Here, the bottomline is that health insurance only gets you at the end of the waiting line, which is usually quite long. So you have to pay out of your own pocket to get medical treatment in a timely manner, and of better quality (which makes for a bizzare experience: same clinic, same doctor, but different standards of care, depending on whether you pay out of your own pocket or whether insurance pays).

What this means now in the covid situation is that if you get side effects after vaccination, this gets treated the same way as if those symptoms would have arisen for some unrelated reason and you are expected to wait for months on end to get any tests done at all (unless you pay). Also, on principle, since the covid vaccines are legally still just experimental medication, health insurance does not cover the treatment of side effects.

I think pre-vaccination and post-vaccination medical and insurance programs would help a lot and that more people would decide to get vaccinated if they knew there is a safety net waiting for them post-vaccination, and if they would be better prepared for vaccination (such as by improving their health with doses of vitamin D and B12, and by being tested prior to vaccination and vaccinated only if negative).

It's only relevant if other triage considerations have already been exhausted (such as, acuteness of the care needed, beneficence and maleficence) and if the information is available whether such a person has contributed to the hospitalisation themselves, then I would use that information and I think it would be ethical to do so.

But would you include the consideration as to why the person didn't get vaccinated?

But, saying "hey, it works, which can't be right" doesn't work. — jorndoe

*sigh*

I'm not against vaccination in general, nor against vaccination against covid in particular.

But I am against vaccinating people of unknown medical status with an experimental medication.

And I am against vaccinating people in epidemiologically unsafe conditions. At mass vaccination sites, but also in smaller vaccination settings, people often don't wear masks, or don't wear them properly, they don't social distance, disinfect. It's a perfect place to spread the virus. And this at a time that is critical for the people there: they can get infected precisely at the time when they should be most cautious and most safe. Ideally, a person should go into sufficiently long quarantene prior to vaccination and afterwards. Some will say that this is not realistic. But then we get the result: covid hospitals filling with vaccinated people. The trend is clear: as more and more people are getting vaccinated in unsafe conditions, more and more vaccinated people end up in hospitals.

And no consideration is given as to why a person didn't get vaccinated
— baker

Maybe, maybe not? What do you think? It's usually easy enough to identify people that require special medical attention. (Maybe ridiculous conspiracy theories are special conditions.) Actually, I think trying to round up medical conditions is standard procedure; maybe frank or someone knows.

somehow, covid vaccines are a stellar exemption
— baker

Keep up. — jorndoe

You keep up. The official popular "Get vaccinated, or else!" narrative allows for no consideration as to why a person didn't get vaccinated. Such is also the practice: One is supposed to go to a vaccination site, roll up one's sleeve, and allow oneself to be pricked with a needle. There is no medical exam prior to that, not even people's temperature is measured prior to vaccination.


Back in January, when they first begun vaccinating people, at least in the EU, the standard medical protocol for vaccination was followed: The prospective vaccinee was examined by a doctor, a medical history taken, a covid test done, and only then, after the test came back negative and at the discretion of the doctor, was a person vaccinated. Now, they don't do any of that. They are mass vaccinating people of an unknown medical status, including those who are already infected with covid, but don't know it.

This probably also accounts for many of those vaccinated people who end up needing hospital care for covid. And their numbers are growing.

Loving kindness (metta) in Buddhism includes love for all living things. — Ross

"Metta" isn't 'love', and "loving-kindness" is an awkward translation.

From Thanissaro Bhikkhu: Metta Means Goodwill:
/.../
Metta is a wish for happiness — true happiness — and the Buddha says to develop this wish for ourselves and everyone else: "With metta for the entire cosmos, cultivate a limitless heart." (Snp 1.8) But what's the emotional quality that goes along with that wish? Many people define it as "lovingkindness," implying a desire to be there for other people: to cherish them, to provide them with intimacy, nurture, and protection. The idea of feeling love for everyone sounds very noble and emotionally satisfying. But when you really stop to think about all the beings in the cosmos, there are a lot of them who — like the snake — would react to your lovingkindness with suspicion and fear. Rather than wanting your love, they would rather be left alone. Others might try to take unfair advantage of your lovingkindness, reading it as a sign either of your weakness or of your endorsement of whatever they want to do. In none of these cases would your lovingkindness lead to anyone's true happiness. When this is the case, you're left wondering if the Buddha's instructions on universal metta are really realistic or wise.
/.../
metta is not necessarily an attitude of lovingkindness. It's more an attitude of goodwill — wishing the other person well, but realizing that true happiness is something that each of us ultimately will have to find for him or herself, and sometimes most easily when we go our separate ways.

This understanding of metta is borne out in the Pali Canon, first of all in the word itself. The Pali language has another word for love — pema — whereas metta is related to the word mitta, or friend. Universal metta is friendliness for all.
/.../


Please see the rest of the essay for canonical references.

However, I don't think that that is true, as virtue ethics tries to answer the question "how do we ought to be ?" while consequentialism, deontologism and other views on ethics tries to answer the question "what do we ought to do ?".

If it is possible for human beings to have any moral knowledge, then it must be that both of these questions can be answered separately, and the answers will not contradict each other in any way, that is, moral actions will always be made by people possessing the necessary virtues to perform that action. — Hello Human

How could these two questions possibly be separate??

- - -

It's not clear what the term "virtue ethics" actually means, since "virtue" and "ethics" are, for all practical intents and purposes, synonymous. Something that is virtuous is also ethical.

, you're a proponent of virtue ethics. Can you explain what this term means?

If the term "virtue ethics" should be meaningful, then there should also be a term like "vice ethics". Is there one? What do virtue ethicists have to say about this? Thanks.

Is it really the case that power wants to censor dissenting views?

Possibly not. It serves those in power to have dissenters, and some extreme dissenters at that, because this way, it's easier to dismiss all opposition as irrational, crazy, bad. It serves those in power to engineer incidents that look like they are attacks on them, because this way, by showing off how they handle those indicents, they can better control public perception of themselves.

My impression is that what he and Plato really attempted to do was to bring some order to the confused society and culture they lived in, and this implied some religious and political reforms. — Apollodorus

But what exactly were their roles in society then? What political power did they actually have?

Italy was well known for its universal healthcare system, yet the pandemic proved its flimsiness, with its hospitals unable to provide the basics. — NOS4A2

Yes. In some of those countries, doctors and esp. medical nurses have been complaining for years that they are severely understaffed (and underpayed). Even in peace time, the medical system wasn't able to take care of all the people who need medical care in a timely manner. Waiting times are measured in 6-months periods, or even years. For example, you could be having a severe headache for weeks, and have to wait for 6 months to get an MRI (and that would be fast).

So it's no surprise that people in those countries don't have much faith in the medical system.

The one vaccinated gets the one bed left, in priority over the other who deliberately chose not to be vaccinated (and may have to be isolated in a hallway, sent home, or whatever). — jorndoe

And no consideration is given as to why a person didn't get vaccinated.

It's quite strange that there are no contraindications for covid vaccines. For most medications and medical treatments, there are contraindications, even for non-prescription ones, but somehow, covid vaccines are a stellar exemption, popularily deemed safer even than Aspirin.

People with already compromised immune systems due to a genetic disease or cancer are put in the same category as perfectly healthy people. People with already compromised immune systems due to a genetic disease or cancer who are otherwise advised against many medications and medical treatments, on account that they would be too dangerous for their already compromised immune system, nevertheless are expected to get vaccinated.

Medically, this is a dangerous practice, although ideologically, it certainly makes perfect sense.

The question of the good is best addressed, to the extent it is possible, by becoming good, that is, by the development of a soul that is just and beautiful (well proportioned). But, of course, we do not have the standard by which to measure the extent to which we are good. The desire to know the good in order to be good and live a good life, seems to be the best guide available to us. — Fooloso4

But when you put it this way, it's so vague that it includes Hitler and Mother Theresa, anyone and anything.

So religion has to explain what this God is and how it can create something by sheer power — Gregory

In religion, God is defined as that one being who does things by sheer power.

Well, if you work on the premise that what is good for some is bad for others, then either (a) nothing is truly good or (b) you just have to decide which option is the best in any given situation and act according to that and to your best abilities.

What other option would you suggest? — Apollodorus

There is at least one further option, namely, that God is a tribalist, has a chosen tribe, and the objectively good is what is good for that tribe. This is what Jehovah is like, for example. And so that if one has had the misfortune of not being born into that tribe, then one is just doomed to bad things. If such is the case, then your option b above cannot apply.

Other than that, the issue at hand is the resolution of a person's fundamental moral (and other) doubts, which is a complex topic.

There is no need to take Plato as our spiritual master. He is only a guide that suggests one path out of many. If people know a better path, they are free to take it.

But the true master is the nous, our own intelligence. Our task is to learn to listen what it has to communicate to us. This is the meaning of self-examination.

This reminds me of a phenomenon we can readily observe among Western Buddhists. Namely, there are Western Buddhists who believe that the Buddha said this

“Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and common sense.”

and that if they act accordingly, they are acting in line with the Buddha's instructions and are on the path to enlightenment.
If, however, one were to inquire about the matter from actual Buddhists, esp. the Asian ones, and from the Early Buddhist texts, they would make it clear that the Buddha never said such a thing, nor that acting in line with that slogan makes for Buddhist practice.

Similarly, I suspect that simply acting in line with one's intelligence is not what Plato would applaud.
For one, it's inevitable that everyone acts in line with one's intelligence, so the idea is a non-starter to begin with.
For two, it's too general. I don't know the details, but I think it's is likely that just like the Buddha mentioned above, Plato, too, actually had very specific activities in mind and had a very specific moral system, and that only acting in line with that particular moral system would count as living an examined life, but not with others.

It seems the OP is trying to make it about the God of philosophers. But then it's not clear on the grounds of what a religious idea should be given relevance.

That's backwards, you're talking about the God of philosophers, not about God as he is conceived of in actual monotheistic religions.

(I haven't read the whole thread, so ...)

whenever we find information, we find it inscribed or encoded somehow in a physical medium of whatever kind.

This is taken from this page which aggregates various articles about Landauer.

Landauer was the head of IBM Research Labs — Wayfarer

I think this pretty much says it all. From what I've seen, computer scientists tend to view information as physical. What they do is called information technology.

What, exactly, was there in the beginning such that to utter the words makes beginnings possible at all? — Constance

God's word has the power of creation.

Your request is as absurd as your accusations. My only hope for you is that you remain blissfully ignorant of what you miss out on in life and the damage you do with your combative and authoritarian attitude, and that you will only become aware of that late in life, when it will be too late to do anything about it.
You had your chance and you wasted it.