Comments

  • Is an armed society a polite society?
    Do police where you live actually stop people and search them for weapons without a valid reason? — Sir2u
    They don't need to. Where I live gun ownership is very rare and the gun crime rate is very low - partly because we have strong gun control laws, that have overwhelming public support.

    Rarely means not often, seldom, infrequently, it is rarely used in any other sense so I see no reason to be providing a definition of it. — Sir2u
    I know what 'rarely' means, and you know that I know it and that that has nothing to do with what I asked you.

    You implied that some ratio is low and that that somehow helps your argument against gun control but, when we take your sentence and try to find a clear, precise proposition in it, we end up with nonsense. I suspect you've already realised this, which is why you keep on dodging the question.

    Here's the nonsensical sentence again:
    You must have noticed that [the police] rarely get there before the crime has been committed, that is why the tape they use says "crime scene" instead of "crime prevention scene". — Sir2u

    Why not just admit you wrote something that made no sense? It's no big deal. We all do it quite frequently, especially me. The admission wouldn't hamper your ability to continue arguing against gun control, should you wish to do so.
  • Is an armed society a polite society?
    ↪Sir2u
    That post doesn't answer the question, and provides no new information. I had already read the context.

    To what ratio were you referring with your use of 'rarely'?
  • Is an armed society a polite society?
    You must have noticed that they rarely get there before the crime has been committed — Sir2u
    You seem to be hinting at some sort of ratio being low. What ratio do you have in mind? There is no obvious ratio that makes sense, given the above sentence.
  • It is life itself that we can all unite against
    ↪schopenhauer1
    That doesn't follow.

    Even if one were to accept that preventing the commencement of any new human lives is morally preferable because it prevents all future suffering, it does not follow that, given the human race will not stop procreating (as @csalisbury pointed out), the morally preferred choice is to not procreate oneself.

    The arguments for the latter proposition need to be different from those for the former.

    In addition, there's no point in pointing your posters at me. I am past the point of procreation.
  • It is life itself that we can all unite against
    Another fact is that [suffering] can be prevented fully. — schopenhauer1
    That is not a fact.

    You may feel that you personally are preventing some suffering by not procreating. But that doesn't do anything about all the other procreating that goes on, and hence does not prevent suffering 'fully'.

    Since it is human nature to procreate, the only way to prevent it fully is by killing or sterilising the entire human population at a point in time. It is hard to imagine anyone having both the power and the will to do that.

    Hence it appears not to be true that that action 'can' be taken.
  • Exercise from Bonevac's "Deduction"
    Let's try making it a bit more intuitive.

    Let the set of all objects be U. We don't know what properties the predicate G has, but we know that, like any unary predicate, it must divide U into a set of objects that satisfy G, call it u1, and a set that doesn't, call it u2.

    Then the first statement, call it P1 tells us that only one object satisfies G, ie that u1 consists of exactly one object.

    The statement we are asked to prove, call it P2, has two parts, call them A and B, that we are asked to prove are logically equivalent, ie that the <-> holds, given the assumption P1.

    Inspecting A carefully, we see that it says that U consists of exactly two objects.
    Inspecting B carefully, we see that it says that u2 consists of exactly one object.

    Stepping back and thinking of a universe containing only two objects, it seems plausible that P1 would imply that A and B are equivalent. Now we just need to prove it formally.

    As is usual with proofs of equivalence (<->), we chould first prove one direction, then the other. Choose the easiest-looking direction first.
  • Our conscious "control" over our feelings.
    Is it possible to have a choice whether to feel or not? — Thesailor123
    I think it is not possible to directly control our feelings, but is possible to control what we do, and thereby indirectly control our feelings. It is that insight that disciplines like Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) and, before that, Stoicism, use.

    An extreme example. Say you are feeling bored or sad. You go and do a bungy jump. I imagine that, unless you are an experienced bungy jumper, you will be feeling neither bored nor sad around the time of the jump. Terrified, exhilarated, elated are emotions that seem more likely. You have controlled your feelings indirectly by changing what you do.

    Scientific studies indicate that exercise helps mood. So - less extreme than bungy - doing a hard exercise session can alter our feelings. Not by as much as the bungy, but still significantly.

    We can also, with practice, control what we think about - another control of what we do (thinking is doing). CPD invites us to think about something else when we have negative feelings that are of no practical use. The reported evidence is that this works to some extent, and the more one practices it, the better it works.

    I don't think that any of these indirect approaches render one emotionless.
  • Why the Greeks?
    ↪Jacob-B
    I like BitterCrank's hypothesis, which can be boiled down to "Because of the Romans". The Romans adored Greek culture and transmitted it to their colonies, which covered most of the countries that a thousand years later went on to colonise much of the world, and thus spread the Greek influence further.

    Perhaps the same answer can also serve for the question "Why Christianity" (why is it the world's largest religion).
  • 2020, or Flick the Peas From the Pod,
    Yes I'd second 'Optimistic and Hopeful'. If nothing else it's a chance for the USA to rejoin the international community of civilised nations. You have been very silly, but we'd welcome you back like the prodigal son.
  • Total Recall - Voluntary Ignorance Paradox
    ↪pbxman
    My source for this was originally the talks of Alan Watts.
    When I went searching for it in Indian scriptures, I found myself mostly pointed towards the Gita. I find the Gita pretty hard to understand, but the interpretation I get from this series of podcasts is in line with Watts' "Brahman's Dream" rendition. The guru giving those talks is from this spiritual community, which appears to be Vedanta.
  • Identity wars in psychology and Education.
  • Identity wars in psychology and Education.
    I'm not clear on what war you're talking about. Could you specify? — frank
  • Total Recall - Voluntary Ignorance Paradox
    ↪pbxman
    I don't know about paradox but the 'voluntary ignorance' idea is present in Advaita Vedanta (an Indian Philosophy), which hypothesises that every conscious being is actually a dream of Brahman, in which Brahman forgets their identity during the dream in order to fully experience the consciousness of the subject of the dream.

    There was a Doctor Who episode - I think with Matt Smith - in which he forgot he was the Doctor and lived in a country village in the late nineteenth century. It was something to do with hiding himself from his enemies, and in order to completely hide, he had to forget that he was the Doctor.
  • There is No Actual Profit Gained by Business Activity
    ↪Bloginton Blakley
    You have shown no interest in discussion, only in lecturing others, hectoring them with questions and ignoring the questions they ask you.

    I'll leave you to enjoy your thread on your own.
  • There is No Actual Profit Gained by Business Activity
    Then where is the 5.3 trillion in damage coming from? — Bloginton Blakley
    Mostly from households. People using energy to keep their houses warm, cook, heat water for baths etc.
    Are you sure? Would you mind quoting me... or admit that you are making a huge assumption? — Bloginton Blakley
    Of course I'm not sure, and I am assuming nothing! That's why I said 'it appears', and then directly asked you to confirm or correct the hypothesis. Honestly, if you can't be bothered to read carefully and try to comprehend posts before you respond, your discussions will never get anywhere!

    Getting back to my question then: are you advocating that all humans should revert to hunter-gathering? If not, what are you advocating?
  • Proving a mathematical theorem about even numbers
    ↪Ulrik
    I think Sophisticat's method will be easier. Just to make the hint a bit broader, consider that if are the digits of our number from left to right, then the number's value is:

    , which we can re-write as



    which is equal to .

    So if we can prove that is divisible by 3 for every positive integer k, the sum of digits will be divisible by 3 if and only if the original number is.

    Now if is even, equal to , we have
    , which is divisible by 3 if is.
    Alternatively, if is odd, equal to , we have
    , which is divisible by 3 if is.

    We can then use induction on to prove our result.
  • There is No Actual Profit Gained by Business Activity
    The article also points to business, my friend.

    "IMF says energy subsidized by $5.3 trillion worldwide"     — Bloginton Blakley
    That is not pointing to business. It's pointing to governments. The word 'business' does not occur anywhere in the article. Nor does 'profit' or 'company(ies)'.

    The article is concerned about the relationship between governments and consumers of power, most of whom are individual people, not companies - see ref to China's "more than 1 billion consumers".

    From the rest of your post it appears you would like to see agriculture abolished, and humans to revert to a hunter-gatherer existence. That is an extreme proposition, but it is coherent. It would be good if that had been stated as your position in the OP.

    Can you confirm or correct the impression that what you are proposing is actually a dismantlement of civilisation and a return to a hunter-gatherer model of existence by all humans?
  • There is No Actual Profit Gained by Business Activity
    I've given data. — Bloginton Blakley
    No you haven't. You've linked to an article that criticises governments for not charging for greenhouse gas emissions. It provides no support whatsoever for your claim that "business is a con game".

    Hysterical claims like that are the worst enemy of those that are campaigning for governments to meaningfully address climate change. They are even more helpful to the big polluters than handing out 'Vote Trump' flyers.
    Any good that business does has to be weighed against the consequences of doing business. — Bloginton Blakley
    Most business in the world is small business - farmers managing small, rural lots, streetside fruit and vegetable sellers, cafe and corner shop operators. Without that business, most people would starve to death. That is the consequence of not doing business.
  • There is No Actual Profit Gained by Business Activity
    ↪Bloginton Blakley
    If the substance of the article is that business is bad, I am rejecting it, which is not avoiding it. You are tarring all business with the same brush. To be taken seriously you need to acknowledge that business is a tool and, like most tools, it can be used for good or evil.

    If you want to argue for certain restrictions on business, or that certain types of business should be forbidden, then by all means do that. You'll likely find a much more sympathetic audience.
  • The unavoidable dangers of belief and believers responsibility of the dangers
    Belief can be categorized into three parts:
    A) Belief without rational cause, a belief that is without evidence, accepted as truth and acted upon by the believer.
    B) Belief with rational cause, a belief that has rational reasoning and logic and which has gone through falsifiable reasoning as much as possible, acted upon with caution because it is never considered to be true.
    C) Scientific belief, i.e Hypothesis, educated guess based on observations, previous evidence, careful induction, partly researched, but never accepted or acted upon as true before proven into a scientific theory     — Christoffer
    This all falls apart when we notice that all 'rational' beliefs can be traced back to unprovable axioms that we take on faith, such as the Principle of Induction.

    Religious beliefs can be as rational as non-religious ones. They just use a slightly different set of axioms.

    If one insists on ranking beliefs in order of 'worthiness', one will have to do it by looking at the axioms. One way to do that is to observe that some axioms are accepted by all people. The Principle of Induction is one. We might then claim that the only reasonable beliefs are those that are derived from the minimal set of axioms that is believed by all humans. That would rule out religious belief, but it would also rule out many other beliefs that most people are very attached to - such as the belief that there are other consciousnesses (anti-solipsism).

    That's why I think it's a doomed and unhelpful exercise to try to categorise beliefs based on 'rationality'.

    There are other and better ways to oppose beliefs that one finds harmful (and only a minority of religious beliefs are harmful anyway).
  • There is No Actual Profit Gained by Business Activity
    ↪Bloginton Blakley
    What a wild and baseless generalisation! There are businesses that do a great deal of good. Don't make the fight against exploitative multinationals and businesses that ruthlessly exploit externalities look ridiculous by casting your accusations so widely. All you achieve by that is to support the Koch brothers and Murdochs of the world.
  • Is Gender a Social Construct?
    ↪Walter Pound
    That's as I thought. So if what you mean by sex differences is just differences in the averages of certain metrics, I'm just a bit perplexed at how that relates to the discussion. Has anybody been denying that differences in averages exist?
  • Is Gender a Social Construct?
    ↪Walter Pound
    The vast majority of the wiki article on dimorphism is about difference of kind, not of degree, like the extravagant tail of the peacock, which a peahen does not have. There is a section on humans, but it only really talks about averages for items of degree, not of kind.

    When is a difference in height between humans of different sexes a 'sex difference' and when is it not?
  • Is Gender a Social Construct?
    ↪Walter Pound
    What is a sex difference and what would it mean to believe there are none?
  • Is Gender a Social Construct?
    ↪Walter Pound
    What would be an example of denying biology?
  • Is Gender a Social Construct?
    The average height of men is higher than for females. When a woman is taller than the male average, do we say she has a 'male height'?

    No, we say she is a tall woman.

    Men are on average more proficient at mathematics than women. Whether that is nature or nurture is uncertain, but the observation is robust. When a woman is better than the average man at maths, do we say she 'has a male brain' or 'is like a male mathematician'?

    No, we say she is good at maths.

    The majority of men are sexually attracted only to women and the majority of women are sexually attracted only to men. When a woman is only sexually attracted to women, do we say she has 'male sexuality' or is transsexual?

    No, we say she is a lesbian.

    In all these cases we just act according to the basic principle that it is the norm to deviate from the average, and averages contain very limited information.

    What properties are there that have significant difference between male and female averages, or are more commonly possessed by one or the other sex, that cannot be dealt with by this common-sense approach (a woman that likes fixing bikes / a man that likes interior design), other than those that are physically shackled to biological sex, like ability to bear a child, or ability to produce sperm?.
  • Is Gender a Social Construct?
    I've been outfoxed on a number of occasions by nuts and bolts, — Bitter Crank
    That is a deeply philosophical topic. Robert Pirsig dedicated a whole section of 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' to the phenomenon of stuckness, starting with its application to frozen nuts and then expanding to its occurrence in life in general.

    That section brought me great solace in the seventies when I sometimes had to spend whole days trying to remove stuck cotter pins (sometimes one had to drill them almost out of existence before they would give way, and they were very drill-resistant). In my view cotterless cranks were the best invention since the wheel, but in the seventies, only the more expensive bikes had them - beyond my meagre budget.
  • Redundant Expressions in Science
    The syntagm "Natural Selection" in Darwin's theory is redundant in a sense that the word "Natural" could/should be omitted, as there is no alternative to nature when we talk about reality, ie not imaginary processes but real processes. — Hrvoje
    The work done by the word 'natural' in 'natural selection' is to indicate that the selection is not done by a conscious being who says 'we'll have this one instead of that one'. With that meaning, there is no redundancy. It's a different meaning of 'natural' from the one you envisaged.

    A more accurate alternative would be 'unconscious selection' or 'accidental selection', but they don't sound as good.
  • Redundant Expressions in Science
    You're a naturalist? How so? Do you walk around naked? — karl stone
    That is a naturist, not a naturalist.
  • Should billionaires be abolished?
    Because of their influence, we can't pass laws to limit their influence. — frank
    Nicely put! :up:
  • Proving a mathematical theorem about even numbers
    How would one express 'sum of digits' more formally in order to reason with it mathematically? — Ulrik
    Are you familiar with the concept of functions? That is the easiest way to express this, by defining a function f, whose domain and range are the positive integers, such that f(x) is the sum of the (base ten) digits of x.

    The theorem is that, for any positive integer n, it is divisible by 3 if and only if f(n) is divisible by 3.

    Many theorems that involve integers, as these do, can be proved by mathematical induction, so it's worth getting familiar with that concept. Once one has the technique down pat, it's a question of finding a way to apply it to the problem. Sometimes there is more than one way, and some ways are easier than others.

    For this one, we could start by observing that the theorem is true for the numbers 1, 2, ...,9. Next we seek to prove that if it is true for n it is also true for n+1.

    That's not necessarily the quickest or the easiest way to do it by mathematical induction. But it's the first that comes to mind.
  • Should billionaires be abolished?
    ↪Benkei
    I support your proposal in principle. But it would need more than a change in tax rates, because most of the wealth of billionaires is in the shares they own in their companies, and that is not taxable income until the shares are sold. A law could be introduced to tax unrealised gains on shares, but I can imagine there being an enormous resistance to that because of its effect on middle-class people's savings. A slower, but less controversial, way to do it would be to introduce a very high rate of death duties.
  • Morality and the arts
    that art, primarily writing, explains [morality]: Homer, Shakespeare, Doestoevsky. — Brett
    This doesn't sit well with the notion that morality is objective, because Dostoevsky's morality - which is essentially deontological and divine-command-based - is a thousand miles from that of Homer, which is that of an honour society where bravery meant everything and compassion nothing. And neither of them would agree with the secular, compassion-based morality that we see in Steinbeck, and that imbues most of Western culture, when it can be bothered to be moral.
  • Morality and the arts
    Do we have writers like Homer, Shakespeare or Doestoevsky? — Brett
    JM Coetzee immediately springs to mind. He's still alive and writing.
    And John Steinbeck, going back a few decades. The Grapes of Wrath changed my life.
    Nick Hornby is not as deep as Coetzee, but I think he matches with Shakespeare, and is still writing.
    Vikram Seth is another. I found An Equal Music profound, beautiful, moving and insightful.
    Kazuo Ishiguro (Remains of the Day, An artist of the floating world)
    David Mitchell (not the funny one) - Cloud Atlas and number9dream

    I am currently reading Le Liseur du 6h27, a short but moving and perplexing book. Apparently it was a bestseller in France, which says something about the French, as it is much too perplexing and strange to ever be popular in the Anglophone world. I have noticed there's a lot more reading on trains in France than where I live.

    I find the authors above to have significantly greater moral depth than Shakespeare or Homer, who were primarily entertainers rather than artists. Dostoevsky is a different kettle of fish.
    I would put JK Rowling on a par with Shakespeare, for her inventiveness, clever use of language, mixture of drama and comedy, and the strong memorability of the characters she creates.

    And, picking up the Death of a Salesman ref - Arthur Miller. I believe that play plus The Crucible to be amongst the greatest plays ever written.
  • Morality and the arts
    I was watching an old BBC interview program in which John Cleese and another Python were defending recently released The Life of Brian against Malcom Muggeridge and some aged Anglican bishop. — Bitter Crank
    That was a legendary episode. So much so that the BBC made a TV drama about it a few years back. Quite engaging and interesting as I recall. Worth watching if one can find out how.
  • Morality and the arts
    ... From the earliest myths to the most recent novels, all writing that is not fundamentally cheap and frivolous is meant to throw light on the difficulties of the human situation ... ‘ — Mary Midgely
    That sounds a bit grumpy, and highly inaccurate. Writing really good comedy is a high art form, and at its best is timeless. My children love Monty Python as much now as I did forty years ago. It doesn't shed much light on the human condition, but it's certainly not cheap, and has been enormously influential - in a good way, I would say.

    Throwing light on the human condition is one of the things literature can do, and a very important one. But it is by no means the only thing that makes literature worthwhile.

    I agree with you that the arts can help us to "explore our morals and human situation", but I don't agree that they have become shallow and meaningless. There is plenty of great art around now. There is also an enormous load of dross. But it has always been thus. I see no cause for pessimism.
  • The meaning of Moral statements
    It seems to me, then, that you think moral statements are primarily tools for influencing the actions of others. Yes? — Moliere
    Yes I think so. There are occasional exceptions. For instance I may be wrestling with a moral decision about my own potential future actions, and seeking advice from others. I may put forward a moral statement and ask others what they think about it, as a means of exploring what decision I really feel I ought to take. In that case my purpose in making the statement is to try to resolve my own bout of indecision.
  • Identity wars in psychology and Education.
    What are some of the expectations of the United States culture that are enforced by laws? Don't we already have laws for the unequal treatment of anyone? What more do you want? — Harry Hindu
    I am not aware of any laws in the US or any other developed country that enforce gender norms (unless we count Saudi Arabia as a developed country. Saudi's gender norms are amongst the world's most vicious, and are enforced by law as well as social pressure). In developed countries gender norms are enforced by social rather than legal pressure, as well as by the way people raise children. What I would like to see is the reduction of that social pressure and more people raising their children without placing gendered behavioural expectations on them. As I read it, the second of those is what the APA doc related to.
    But I thought this was all about trying to not be rude and offensive and here you come along and say that it's okay to be rude and offensive. — Harry Hindu
    I don't think it's rude to talk about sex. I was just referring to the fact that there are still plenty of people in the world that think it is, and it is out of ill-advised deference to them that I have in the past said 'gender' when I meant 'sex'. Let's proceed as though I had put quotation marks around "rude" in my earlier post.
    So in a gender-neutral society you would only enforce heterosexuals to use gender-neutral pronouns when referring to each other but when referring to a trans person we have to use gender specific pronouns? — Harry Hindu
    I don't want anybody to be forced to use any pronoun they don't want to use.

    The idea that people would be so forced is a piece of hysterical nonsense spouted by Jordan Peterson, who claims that Canadian Bill C-16 does that. I have read C-16 and it says nothing of the kind. So either Peterson has very poor comprehension skills or he hasn't actually read the bill or he is being dishonest. He appears a clever chap so I doubt his excuse is poor comprehension skills.
  • The meaning of Moral statements
    ↪Moliere
    I think that the concept of 'meaning' is over-used, particularly at the macro scale. We can ask what a word means, and in some cases there is a simple answer to that, provided by the dictionary. But that often will still not enable us to understand the speech act in which the word is contained.

    It becomes more dubious when we ask what entire speech acts, or even larger things like novels or symphonies, 'mean'.

    I have been reflecting recently on the Intentionalist vs Anti-Intentionalist perspectives in aesthetics, and find myself tending towards the view that it is an argument over nothing - that novels and symphonies do not have any meaning.

    With speech acts, I find Wittgenstein's perspective intuitive and satisfying: the relevant question is not what did somebody 'mean' by a speech act but rather, why did they do it? - what were they seeking to accomplish?

    'What do you mean?' is often an aggressive debating tactic, used to imply that one's interlocutor is spouting nonsense. In rare cases it is said in a friendly way because the speaker did not understand the speech act they have just heard, and are hoping the speaker will rephrase it in a way that they can then understand. Here I use 'understand' in the Wittgensteinian sense of 'realising what the speaker was trying to achieve'.

    Moral statements are more easily understood in a Wittgensteinian framework. If someone says 'pre-marital sex is immoral', then likely their purpose is to influence, however slightly, the amount of pre-marital sex in the world in a downward direction. But in some cases it may be that they wish somebody to like them, who they know to have that wish about pre-marital sex. Or it might be said to somebody in order to dissuade them from trying to seduce them.

    When a politician says that XYZ group of people is untrustworthy, violent, dangerous, lazy or whatever other moral insult, it is likely because they want people to support their drive for a war or other aggressive attack on that group.
  • Euthyphro Dilemma (false dilemma?)
    ↪TheMadFool
    Indeed!
Home » andrewk