It reminds me a bit of Gnosticism. Gnostics had secret knowledge only the initiated can understand fully. — schopenhauer1
But some people think the disclosure will prove all the skeptics wrong. It'll happen soon by X date, with X person. — schopenhauer1
If it's harmless, let them have it. — schopenhauer1
As to grinding, chronic issues, those become the "norm" over time and don't independently tip the scales to "not worth living". — LuckyR
Clinical depression is notorious for it's roller-coaster trajectory of ups and downs, that is how you're feeling is likely temporary. — LuckyR
I think Steven Greenstreet pretty much hit the nail that there is a group of UFO aficionados who essentially cross-reference each other. I don't think all of them are necessarily lying, but rather embellishing or falsely attributing unknowingly. — schopenhauer1
I think the UFO/alien folks are looking for meaning beyond the mundane. It also gives a sort of hope- that something bigger than humans is out there and that their beliefs would be vindicated all along. — schopenhauer1
Hence my observation that the argument against suicide is: it's a permanent solution to a TEMPORARY problem. — LuckyR
For fun's sake, let's say it's all true. The government has aliens and alien technology and have for years. If they were to disclose this, what would be the best way to do this understanding social psychology? — schopenhauer1
You've heard of Fermi's Paradox? "If intelligent life is plentiful in the universe, then where is everybody? We should have been visited." — BC
So in a way, you can make a matrix like this:
The institutional distributor of information matters for the public (Is the info coming from a "legitimate" institution like government agencies, or is it coming from your Uncle Joe).
Sources matter for the information gatherers: (Is the info coming from "legitimate" credible witnesses and accounts, or from bad actors?
Evidence matters for information gatherers and the public (Is the info first hand accounts, are they recorded, do we have any physical artifacts? Have they been analyzed for material compos ition, biologics, and comparative design? — schopenhauer1
UAP does not entail aliens; the concern is that a foreign government might be using technology beyond ours. — Relativist
Yes, so you are attributing it to psychological phenomena, something like mass hysteria or public psychosis. — schopenhauer1
What should the public think of it? — schopenhauer1
I am more than willing to change my mind if someone gives me good reasons to. — Bob Ross
Let’s parse this argument. You are saying:
P1: If moral facts exist then societies could not turn to killing people indiscriminately.
P2: Societies have turned to killing people indiscriminately.
C: Therefore, moral facts do not exist. — Bob Ross
Sam Harris just blanketly asserts that wellbeing is objectively good: his approach to metaethics is to avoid it….. — Bob Ross
Many times that is the case, but don’t you agree that it is possible for a human to completely go against their nature qua animal in accordance with only reasons they have for it? — Bob Ross
What do you mean by “essentialism”? — Bob Ross
What you are describing here and with Harris’ “approach”, which is really a form of moral anti-realism, is that subject’s set out for themselves, cognitively or conatively, ends for themselves which are subjective (or non-objective to be exact); and somehow because of this there are no objective goods—just hypothetical goods. Viz., a hypothetical good for basketball would be, under this view, something like “if you want to be good at basketball, then you need to practice it” or “if we want to have fun, then let’s invent a game called basketball”; but, importantly, the examples I gave are NOT convertible to hypotheticals. “Lebron is a good basketball player” is not convertible to a hypothetical: it is a categorical statement which is normative, because it speaks of goodness which is about what ought to be. E.g., the good farmer is not hypothetically good at farming. — Bob Ross
Why is the fascination with UFOs back? — schopenhauer1
I wondered about that, but this article says religious people are less likely to believe in UFOs than are atheists. — Hanover
Perhaps Fraser? It was astonishing how much he improved after he left office. — Banno
So the issue is, Federally, how much damage are they doing to themselves, if any? Or is the brand name now irrelevant? — Banno
And how long until they hand whatever reactors they succeed in building over to Gina Rinehart? — Banno
History doesn’t corroborate your position: rather, it tends to function as a tendency towards flourishing for an in-group. There have been tons of societies that do not generally care about the suffering of other people outside of their own group. — Bob Ross
What we can see here, is that we have a form of moral objectivism which is a form of moral relativism; whereof each objective good is relativistic to some teleological structure such that what is good is fundamentally about what best suits and sizes up to the teleology of it. — Bob Ross
We see here that this view inherently admits of evolutionary teleology, which is a hot take these days, so let me speak a few words on that real quick. The idea that biology supplies us with teleology has lost all credence nowadays, but it is easily recoverable by understanding that we behave as if it does provide a telos. — Bob Ross
Back to the good human. In order to understand what a good human is, we must understand (1) the nature, teleologically, of a human and (2) how a human can behave so as to align themselves with it. There is a ton I could say here but to be brief, human’s have rational capacities with a sufficiently free will (that can will in strict accordance to reason—to cognition—over conative dispositions); and this marks them out, traditionally, as persons. A person—viz., a being which has a rational nature—must size up properly to what a rational nature is designed to do. Some of which are the intellectual virtues like the pursuit of truth, pursuit of knowledge, being open-minded, being intellectual curious, being impartial, being objective, etc. The one important right now, for your question about stealing, is Justice. — Bob Ross
Of course, the Buddha was writing prior to ideas of Nietzsche and Jung, which throw absolutism of good, evil and ethics open. — Jack Cummins
Because it enables us to enact what is actually good; and anyone who doesn’t want to enact what is good must be either evil, ignorant, or a lunatic. Don’t you agree? — Bob Ross
So, then, if we by-at-large hate the jews; then we would be correct to extinguish them under your view. It’s the same glaring issue over and over again. — Bob Ross
We are not isolated nomads, indifferent to the fates of others. Just consider what it is to be a person. We are all invoked in webs of affinity and webs of sympathy and acquaintance. We are connected to others. We don’t (generally) want others to suffer. We are a social species. We support behaviors which support such human dispositions. — Tom Storm
Wayfarer Tom Storm anything to share on it? — schopenhauer1
While I don’t find non-physicalism to be univocal in what is upheld as an alternative to physicalism, physicalism does in all its variants entail nothingness in the sense of non-being upon mortal death, as well as before the commencement of life. — javra
How, then, can physicalism be understood to allow for the possibility of a meaningful cosmos, hence a meaningful existence, and, by extension, of a meaningful life (be it in general or in particular)? — javra
I think this is right. The aesthetic appeal is important. I'm reminded of the sublime aesthetics of the great cathedrals and Christian rituals. — Janus
When people take their own ideas, what seems self-evident to them, too seriously it seems that culture wars are looming. For some on both sides this is can become a moral crusade. — Janus
So, why should anyone who disagrees care? Is Hitler wrong, then? Under your view, he has no reason, other than his own subjective dispositions, to change his mind. — Bob Ross
According to you, again, well-being isn’t actually good: it’s just, at best, what everyone mostly wants to be the case. So, why should anyone who disagrees care? — Bob Ross
In the case of the latter, there may be legitimate disagreement if they subjectively agree on some maxim(s); but there’s not true disagreements because there are no facts. I say “I like vanilla ice cream”, you say “I don’t like vanilla ice cream”—who’s wrong? Neither. — Bob Ross
what difference do you think it would make to how we live our lives? — Janus
Here’s another gigantic issue with moral anti-realism: there’s no way to resolve these disagreements. — Bob Ross
But according to you we don’t agree that it is actually better: we just subjectively like it more, whereas the masters subjectively liked their society more. — Bob Ross
We don't need 'true' or objective morality to build a useful system.
To whom? To the slaves? To the masters? — Bob Ross
What you are noting is correct, insofar as it outlines how human social structures work, which are inherently power-structures, but the problem is that you gutted out the part where we are actually developing better social structures because they are ethically superior to previous ones. — Bob Ross
Then, you are a moral anti-realist; and no one should take your view seriously; because all you are saying is that what is right or wrong is stance-dependent. So if, e.g., I want to do something you consider wrong, or others consider wrong, then there is absolutely no fact-of-the-matter that makes me wrong: I am just as right as you are (objectively speaking). — Bob Ross
One can accept that there are objective goods AND that society is a power-related structure. The idea that some people are exalted as heroes and those very same people criminals by others just highlights that humans are creating laws; and does not negate the fact that humans should be creating laws which abide by facticity. Under your view, those laws are non-factual; because there are no moral facts. — Bob Ross