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  • Trust
    ↪Yohan
    Nice! Opinions seem divided, eh?

    Fun fact:

    1. Nobody gives their bank details to anyone? I wonder why?

    2. We all have our little secrets.
  • Question: Faith vs Intelligence
    Faith is a matter of choice. Intelligence is not. — Fooloso4

    Yup! Within the current zeitgeist intelligence means being rational i.e. to submit oneself to logical rules & principles - slavery!

    Faith on the other hand is to reject logical authority and go one's own way, believing whatever one wants - freedom!
  • Giradian Violence in Crowds
    ↪Nils Loc


    I was of the view that human sacrifice was distinct from punishment (by death) of criminals; intriguing that even altruists qualified as fit victims (they are outliers too). Aristotle's aurea mediocritas comes to mind: bad is bad but too good is equally bad or worse than bad. Hence, as per some sources, the sacrificial lamb was an innocent e.g. babies as in Carthage.
  • Bannings
    Obviously can't be god - that's Bartricks. — unenlightened

    :rofl:
  • Bannings
    claiming he’s God — Xtrix

    :rofl:

    He could be God for all we know. To untrained eyes good sometimes appears to be evil and vice versa of course. There's this Buddhist tale in which a man, because of his bad karma, sees an ugly, mangy dog with a wound infested with maggots instead of God; bad karma manifests as maya (illusion). :smile:
  • Jesus Christ: A Lunatic, Liar, or Lord? The Logic of Lewis's Trilemma
    ↪180 Proof
    :up:
  • Jesus Christ: A Lunatic, Liar, or Lord? The Logic of Lewis's Trilemma
    Weak sauce. His argument begins with a questionable assumption that a mere mortal could not be a great moral teacher. — jgill

    Good assumption! It's the same kind of logic in Cotard's delusion - I couldn't possibly have survived thaaat! (a major accident); ergo I don't exist.
  • Money is an illusion to hide the fact that you're basically a slave to our current system.
    absafragginlootly! — universeness

    :grin:
  • Jesus Christ: A Lunatic, Liar, or Lord? The Logic of Lewis's Trilemma
    ↪180 Proof


    A liar, eh? Do you mean to imply that to do good requires deception of some kind?
  • Why did the chicken cross the road?
    As far as I'm concerned "why did the chicken cross the road?" is a Zen koan. :cool:
  • Money is an illusion to hide the fact that you're basically a slave to our current system.
    You need some more small change there, buddy. The US leads the world in incarceration rates. Land of the Free, except...
    https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=incarceration+rates+by+country+per+capita&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
    — unenlightened

    It's all maya (illusion). :up:
  • Jesus Christ: A Lunatic, Liar, or Lord? The Logic of Lewis's Trilemma
    ↪180 Proof
    If we, arguendo, accept only the 3 options in Lewis' trilemma, which would you say Jesus was - liar, lunatic, or lord?
  • Question: Faith vs Intelligence
    ↪180 Proof


    1. Be mindful of one's mortality
    2. The Golden rule, be good; try at least
    3. Accept one's fate
    4. Trying and failing is better than not trying at all
    5. Rebel, sensu eminenti, against life's indifference
    6. Drink life to the lees

    :grin:
  • Reverse racism/sexism
    Similia similibus curantur (like cures like). — Homeopathy

    Remember the dilution level is crucial - one molecule of the therapeutic agent in a volume the size of the solar system. In other words, nanoscale reverse racism is the cure, homeopathically speaking.

    Watch the late great The Amazing (James) Randi video on the subject.

  • Question: Faith vs Intelligence
    Courage — 180 Proof

    What's courage? I know it's one among the 4 cardinal virtues (fortitudo) - it seems I don't know what I don't have.
  • Money is an illusion to hide the fact that you're basically a slave to our current system.
    ↪universeness
    I sympathize with your views, China is communist in name only.
  • The Fine-Tuning Argument as (Bad) an Argument for God
    So you're asking me to "zoom out" to get an idea of what Holism is all about. That maketh sense!, I wonder though whether this conforms to the standard interpretation of monism (don't you havta zoom in?)
  • Jesus Christ: A Lunatic, Liar, or Lord? The Logic of Lewis's Trilemma
    Lewis' Trilemma, though it draws a pro-Christian conclusion, is also a depressing account of the times we live in. Would you take it as a compliment if someone said "it's either Dermot Griffin or Hitler or Stalin"? Chrissakes, someone mistook you for Hitler, for Stalin!
  • Money is an illusion to hide the fact that you're basically a slave to our current system.
    So why not socialism/humanism and a resource based economy? — universeness

    People are so afeared of communism that they wouldn't touch these ideologies with a barge pole. It's kinda a slippery slope fallacy but they want to play it safe, the risks are just too high to take the gamble. Apparently suffering outside a gulag is better than suffering inside one. My two cents.
  • Question: Faith vs Intelligence
    Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. — Jesus of Nazareth addressing Doubting Thomas, the Apostle
  • Money is an illusion to hide the fact that you're basically a slave to our current system.
    1, To get rich is ethical no matter how you achieve it and there must be a majority of poor, inferior undeserving unfortunates for the rich to compare themselves to. — universeness

    Pecunia non olet. :snicker:

    So, should all us inferior, undeserving, unfortunates accept the dictates of the rich 'law of the jungle' predators or should we keep fighting against them? — universeness

    I'm not saying we should let injustice continue but I don't see an alternative; if there's one then it's communism OR capitalism and we seem to have opted for the latter. Perhaps my ignorance of economics & politics is showing.
  • Artificial intelligence
    What we need, as far (artificial) intelligence is concerned, is what is described as the technological singularity - an exponential growth of intelligence - each subsequent intelligence should be greater than the one preceding it by a factor that would depend on what's possible given physical/chemical/biological constraints. This kinda growth actually occurs at a small scale with individuals - a person is today more intelligent than she was yesterday (books & experience as invaluable teachers).
  • Money is an illusion to hide the fact that you're basically a slave to our current system.
    ↪universeness


    To get rich is glorious. — Deng Xiaoping

    In my humble opinion, under capitalism,

    1. To get rich is ethical (equal opportunity).

    2. To stay rich is unethical (you'll have to meddle in politics).
    3. To get richer is unethical (ditto).

    This is probably just the tip of the iceberg as regards the complexity of the problem of money tending to accumulate in the hands of the few at the cost of massive poverty and hand-to-mouth existence.
  • Money is an illusion to hide the fact that you're basically a slave to our current system.
    ↪universeness
    Well, I made it a point to stress on the necessity for improvement, but whether it's possible/not is an open question. We could at least try, but there are no gurantees as to how it'll all pan out in the end. It's my suspicion that it's easy & healthy, mind you, to expose flaws but generating true solutions to problems is a whole new ball game. In short people aren't stupid - if there was a better alternative to capitalism, we would've jumped at the opportunity to adopt it.
  • Consider a stickie guideline for subforums e.g. reading groups?
    You propose a new category for "reading groups" — javi2541997

    That would be great but it's my understanding that any changes to the forum has to be paid for. Isn't that how it/everything works? Found that out the hard way.
  • The US Economy and Inflation
    ↪Xtrix
    :up:
  • Money is an illusion to hide the fact that you're basically a slave to our current system.
    ↪universeness


    Well, it does feel terrible to be at the bottom of the food chain. However, it seems to be the way nature works - its gotten us this far hasn't it? Your own family tree is probably marked by many ruthless, brutish characters - you wouldn't be here otherwise, oui monsieur? I once said in another thread that I'm no longer "happy to be alive" for this reason.

    In short, on the matter of survival (of one's genes), morality is a hindrance; that's how I explain this to myself anyway. It's in our nature to, well, "neutralize" competitors.

    Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. — Agent Smith
  • Is space 4 dimensional?
    ↪noAxioms


    Most interesting. — Ms. Marple

    Everything is a clock. I'd like you to, if possible, expand and elaborate that point. Muchas gracias in advance.
  • The Propositional Calculus
    Following on from the previous posts, if any proposition follows from a contradiction, then if the contradiction is true, any proposition is true; that is, there is no longer a difference between a true and false propositions, and so every proposition is true: truth is trivial. — Banno

    I still don't get it! I need another example of triviality to help me grasp the notion of trivializing. I read the Google definition and it says trivializing is to reduce the importance or significance of something.

    I've encountered the notion of the trivial in mathematics. Take Fermat's last theorem: for n 2 (where n = 2, we have Pythagoras' theorem). The trivial solution is n = 0. What does "trivial" mean in this case? Does it mean obvious and/or uninteresting? I think it means the latter but can't say for sure.
  • Money is an illusion to hide the fact that you're basically a slave to our current system.
    ↪universeness
    I did agree that we need to ethicize economics as what some like yourself seem to be grumbling about is the injustice that seems baked into capitalism.
  • Money is an illusion to hide the fact that you're basically a slave to our current system.
    ↪universeness


    First of all, gracias for attempting to make me see the light. I feel capitalism is all about competition and it models evolution in my humble opinion. The spirit of competition can be summed up in may the "best" man win. Unfortunately, ethics is sidelined or demoted (re all is fair in love & war) and thus the disgruntlement rife among the people.

    I concur that just like how evolution can be improved upon, capitalism can be too. How exactly is beyond me, but there is a clear & present danger which you've tried to bring into the light - the time bomb is ticking!
  • The Propositional Calculus
    ↪Metaphysician Undercover
    OK!
  • Money is an illusion to hide the fact that you're basically a slave to our current system.
    ↪universeness
    Bill Gates' donations should be treated and appreciated as charity. No where does capitalism say that once you become wealthy, you have social responsibilities and this is implied in our (all of us) deal with capitalism. In my estimation everyone agrees on this point.
  • Do you know the name of this informal fallacy?
    As far as I'm concerned there's no fallacy. The interlocutor has caught you in a compromising position :snicker: with no one but yourself. First you go on to say reality is everything; then you posit something outside of everything; after that you claim that something is real; quite obviously you're making no sense at all if what follows is the claim that that something is outside of everything.
  • Money is an illusion to hide the fact that you're basically a slave to our current system.
    ↪universeness
    Well, it's a sad story, but to my reckoning, capitalism's selling point is that anyone and I mean anyone can become a Bill Gates (Owen in your story). In essence capitalism gives everyone an equal opportunity to become super-rich and that's why no one, save a few, complain. I thinks its just an accident that the super-rich are, sometimes, a**holes! :snicker: Sour grapes?
  • Money is an illusion to hide the fact that you're basically a slave to our current system.
    Do you think money or its like as the main means of controlling exchange cannot be improved upon? — universeness

    I have no clue. I'm not so well-versed in economics.
  • Money is an illusion to hide the fact that you're basically a slave to our current system.
    Do you value the lives of others or do you mean 'value' as in what you can exchange for it? — universeness

    Anything we value becomes our master and we its slave. On some occasions, we're willing to enter into such a relationship (healthy up to a point) and at times we're not (toxic).
  • The US Economy and Inflation
    ↪ssu
    I get the general idea, printing money inflation, but I don't understand the actual mechanism so to speak - there seems to be some intermediate steps that I'm missing you see.
  • Money is an illusion to hide the fact that you're basically a slave to our current system.
    Money is anything that we value and yep, we're slaves to anything we value. That's how it works I'm afraid.
  • Same-Sex Marriage
    gay people say they wanted the same legal protections — Paulm12

    & the same legal restrictions. Fools!

    :snicker:
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