Must the cogito rely upon a notion of the past and future in order for its doubt to make sense? — Moliere

No. It seems as though there is something more to it than the solipsism Descartes allowed in his analysis on the cogito. I think that one can allow skepticism about things like God's intention or even the Will itself.

If Dems were really out to win, then this guy Bernie Sanders would have beaten Trump twice.

Is that statement of belief a reaction to the sad state of American politics, in which top-down competitive Capitalism is winning the "game" against bottom-up Cooperative Socialism? — Gnomon

No, I think this is mistaken. I believe we are living in an age of syndicalism. You can see it with the banking sector, pharmaceutical industry, and insurance companies, alongside with their push for laws protecting their interests with special-interest groups and lobbying in congress. I actually believe this is a natural tendency of competitive markets being forced on oligopolistic rational actors. As rationality increases through iterated game-theoretic strategies, then a desire to dominate the market landscape forces companies to cooperate and form syndicalist tendencies.

Would you agree with this?

* The lynchpin of this is that a capitalist market can only maintain growth through competition. Yet, to increase profits instead of constant decreases in prices through competition, these rational actors form a desire to syndicalize their operations or even cooperate to form oligopolies, which then later could be seen as a syndicalist environment for such companies.

Before this thread closes, there really should be infractions enabled towards members for various offences.

If the Rules and Guidelines can be updated with 2 strike rule instead of 3, I think it would be worth it for members. If people scream for earning an infraction, then just refer them to the Policies/Rules and Guidelines of the forum...

I think the EU should focus on funding NATO or a EU-NATO alternative itself.

I have always been against the diversion of funds towards military expenditure; but, the EU simply needs its own defense force.

Most abstractly, based off of what is actually good. If you mean to ask what normative ethical theory I subscribe to, then it is a form of Virtue Ethics. — Bob Ross

Yes, I understand. I believe a normative theory has applications on the very governing of a nation. I think my point is that nationalism, and the currents of history seem to indicate that certain ideologies should be viewed in terms of their consequences that they may entail towards a nation. Regarding which, nationalism has been historically viewed as a source of ills towards any country aspiring towards a democratic state.

I submit to you, that you should accept a sense of nationalism in two respects. The first, in the sense that whatever nation you belong to you must have a vested interest in its flourishing and protection against other nations—or move to a different one (if you can). The second, in the sense that, if your country has substantially better politics than other ones, you should have a pride in it and want to expand its values to the more inferior ones (which leads to imperialism). — Bob Ross

I suppose this is the thesis of the OP. I have some questions about how nationalism is usually seen-as. One, would be the aspect of nationalism enabling negative consequences. I don't think this issue can be seen deontologically, with the baggage of human history in mind. The second question is whether if you don't accept the consequentialist assessment of the merits of nationalism, then on what merit do you asses its morality or goodness to a nation defined as nationalist?

Oh buddy, I hope women just help this one out, as you hope they do.

What about division by 0? This stuff got me so confused in calculus. Also, this 0.(9)=1 is also confusing because people don't view it as an ever expanding series, which is a contextual issue between a non-converging series as a limit (AS DEFINED by stating 0.(9)) and a converging series as a limit towards infinity. What matters in my opinion, is the law of identity in clarifying how these mental cramps arise.

Yes, well the very premise, which when I read about dialectics caused me to instantly want to read-about Hegel made me think about the issue of 'truth-formation' in terms of science.

My natural inference from discovering significant truth in Hegel was regarding the nature of causality. I posted hereabouts some thoughts about the nature of causality and its significance to the field of law, science, and philosophy. I am not that interested in the socio-economic aspect of Hegel. I view it as an appeal to civil democracy, where or which has been attempted in the US, (as usual), first in the 1950's.

Thanks for commenting. I am also interested in your take on the notion of conservativism, as seen in the US. I am quite tired of seeing US conservatives dominating headlines in terms of their proselytizing of being first to this or that in terms of economics. If you really think about it, once you divorce the notion of being more rational for believing in theories or doctrines, which naturally arise out of human rationality, then you kind-of deflate the whole hot air balloon.

Anyway, thanks and hoping for your response.

It's important to note that axiology is a branch of ethics regarding the degree of good or evil.

I felt compelled to scribble a little nonsense about fawns burning in the forest. It's an example of the Will to Nonsense. — BC

This is said in regards to "a blind aimless will", I assume?

Well, if Bambi is incapable of being self-aware, and we really go down this path of how humans are so much more self-aware, then isn't there at some point a need to invoke morality about how, if not nature itself, then human nature affects our self-awareness and deeds and acts we do?

You'd have to explain more for me to respond to what you are actually saying. — schopenhauer1

According to Arthur Schopenhauer, the concept of a creator, particularly a personal God, is essentially non-existent; he viewed the driving force behind the universe as a blind, aimless "Will" which does not correspond to any conscious or intentional creator, effectively negating the idea of a traditional God figure.

So, I believe that without a driving force guiding the universe apart from the Will, which determines how things happen, then my concern is over how to find happiness in a world where the Will is all encompassing. With regard to the totalizing nature of the Will, what are your thoughts about it?

But we need not take Will literally as a metaphysic for the metaphor to be true. — schopenhauer1

Yes, well this is where Schopenhauer left this aspect out of the discussion about the axiology of the World itself. I believe that this aspect left out of the discussion about the nature of the Will is important to have.

The World as Will can lead to absurdity. With so much to say one sometimes expresses life affirmations.

Yet, every act or deviation from the nature of the Will could be perceived as ignorance of a greater truth.

There's also the Will. I think that's a pregnant topic which I haven't seen you often talking about. I made a shot in the dark about how wild nature is and how we struggle with our own inner instinct.

There's also the poor fawn in the burning forest that experienced what some might call gratuitous harm.

But I'd like to take this down a path that I think there is a case that practical reasoning leads to various conclusions if one considers the fact of self-awareness. — schopenhauer1

Yes, well the trodden path is usually, according to Schopenhauer, that of the nature of desire and how it causes us harm.

Other paths include life affirmations and even the vanity of existence.

Well, I don't like labeling things as totalizing or brute in terms of facts, and I think you may have a point. Even with the high propensity for beings with self awareness to feel grateful sometimes changes after learning and the growth period ends.

It is perplexing that children just feel happy or not depressed most of the time; and yet such feelings subside as they grow up... Food for thought.

In terms of axiology, being the science of value, you can find the predominantly expressed attitude of the earliest time of self-awareness as a highly valued state. Most beings express gratitude for being able to exist and enjoy their own existence.

Hell, there are even laws written about this.

The social machine that reproduces knowledge is also the principal site that society collectively reproduces itself within. — fdrake

Astute and well said. So... just as a snide comment, is this secondary education meant to seem like "work"? I mean, the kind of work that we do to make and make due with bills, etc.?

cyborg super consumers with the only free beings forced to live like rats at the edges of the internet and in their mother's basements. — Baden

Hear, hear. I suppose it isn't a bad life. Don't let your imagination fool you, it sounds like a sober life.

Covert Assault Zen, maaan is what is needed...

I think you are betting too heavily on women. It may be more conducive to appeal to independent voters, yet I haven't seen VP doing it yet.

If only she would vow to do away with student loans, which seems like a rallying point... :chin:

the framework is what's primarily internalised and grounds them. — Baden

:cheer: :fire:

Interesting posts. I assumed that most interlocutors would agree with the notion that during our most impressionable years, such as 3-5 years old, when preschool starts, and then kindergarten, and then even elementary school, and then high school, and then (for some) college, and then graduate school, and then post-graduate school, well I don't want to labor the point that we spend quite a lot of time in the educational system.

Yet, I see that most users agree or disagree that knowledge and education seem to have an impact on their identities.

However, I suspect that some people take their psychologies as a form of identity. If true, then what would it mean to profess one's psychology as an identity? Or maybe the right question would be, to what degree is an identity related to one's psychology?

Thanks for the posts.

The cognitive dissonance is going to be so extreme when Trump wins. Even for the government itself.

Let's just take a moment and realize that this has got to be one of the weirdest elections ever.

Procrastination is a nasty pig. It always is in want and can never be satisfied.

Therefore be satisfied!

‘Sense data’ is an amalgamation of all these constructions. — Antony Nickles

Where would one place the notion of a "concept" with the above about "sense-data" in mind?

@180 Proof is really charged up over this one, this year.

:halo:

My point is that you are not specific enough. You'll need to define more precisely what you are doing. Including some calculations of the processing time and memory demands. — Carlo Roosen

My apologies for not specifying the technicalities. I am not a comsci major or a programmer. Sorry for wasting your time if you didn't find anything of interest in this thread.

Now it sounds a bit like "could we use a generator to stop a truck instead of normal breaks, and reuse the energy?" - probably yes, but why aren't they doing it everywhere? — Carlo Roosen

It is actually called KERS.

LLM's for instance require a randomizer. In fact, after reading this remark I'll change "My point is that you are not specific enough." to "You seem to be dreaming" — Carlo Roosen

Sure, I'll go back to dreaming in that case. Thanks for your input.

As others might fathom, this is going to be an Obama 2.0 president.

Sure, I'll try and present my considerations or reason for asking this deep question. Since I lack the skills, I'll just start out by saying that since logic has been progressing in a manner where one does not know whether that logic or a system of logic is universal, then assuming that logical monism is true, then one can think that it should be possible to find a hermetic/tautological language.

But, to really reduce what I have to say or rephrase it as a question, are the implications of Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems somehow restricting us or preventing us from arriving at an answer? Is it that because of his theorems, scientists don't believe that P=NP? I'm only saying this because it is thought that for P=NP to be proven it would have to be a formally complete and consistent complexity class.

Maybe you can do something with this conjecturing about processing. My own thoughts are to utilize the very same LLM's to do this with, once they are sophisticated enough...

Maybe OpenAI could potentially do this. Doesn't seem like their methodology wouldn't be applicable to object oriented languages in terms of coding... They already do some coding tasks at the moment. Who knows, seems trivial, so I wouldn't be surprised if they actually attempt to do this. Seems like a lot of money could be involved.

Kudos.

Next step is to work it out in a table, a diagram or in pseudocode, with the number of bits for each step. Maybe you found some magical loophole, but I believe you made a logical error somewhere. I am unable to give more feedback without more details. — Carlo Roosen

I think you are alluding to the problem of discovering relations in the information of the mapping of programming code processed on the CPU. I actually think inference models via data analytics could do this. You could mine quite a lot of relations from the data stream in my mind.

Also, please comment on the rest of my answer because you leave a lot of things unclear. Do you want to capture the full memory state of a computer at every clock cycle? If not, what do you select and based on what? — Carlo Roosen

I am not really adept enough to comment on the rest. But, yes you could retain the memory state of the logicality of various programming languages to discover complexity of the code to the data presenting the logicality of the respective languages.

Anyway, thanks.

[edit] Reading your post again, you want to store the complete state? But in a 1kB memory, there are 2^(1kB) possible states. So in any new state, you want to search your harddisk to see if you have done this already? This explodes. — Carlo Roosen

Yes, it's possible to do so; but, would it not be easier to map the logical operators for the possible states in computability they could exist in - instead of the readout to the disk of the states? This is done according to the logic of the programming language itself with respect to the mapping of computability, instead of mathematical or informational states...

Did anyone catch THIS video?

What is the first effect? And you’re welcome, even though my intent wasn’t as honorable as a white knight’s. — praxis

The first effect is the attitude of dropping one's concern over controlling things out of one's control. If it hasn't been pointed out, that requires quite a lot of processing power on your brain. Eventually, one would be able to emote this attitude as apatheia or a passionless state.

Assuming what I'm saying is true, a person has his or her emotions to deal with, which arise sometimes due to events or are internally hard to regulate.

Talking about the term "regulate", the body has its own way of doing that called, homeostasis. To maintain homeostasis in terms of one's psychology is something everyone wants; but, there's no clear way of doing it. Buddhists think that desire is the root of evil for an individual.

Just my two cents.

Aren't you alluding instead to "desire"? I mean, it's written on the wall that everyone desires, right? Aristotle with his virtue ethics actually described how a man should feel his, and about, his emotions, in some sense of saying so.