• The US Economy and Inflation
    ↪ssu
    I need to read more. Fun fact: News media seems to be an educational program that's relatively cheap but also has credibility issues because reporting is by and large slanted.

    Arigato gozaimus for the reply.
  • The Propositional Calculus
    ↪Banno


    Great! You brought up contradiction. When I first encountered contradictions in real life, back when I was in my teens & later on, it was, now I realize, incomprehensible or incomputable (that was the pre-logic phase of my life). I couldn't make sense of it at all. I reasoned to myself there's something fundamentally wrong with statements like p & ~p. It's snowing AND it's not snowing is "wrong" for the reason that the the second conjunct denies/negates the first - they cancel each other out and its as if someone who utters/writes a contradiction says nothing at all (+y + -y = 0].

    Those who know don't speak, those who speak don't know. — Laozi

    "What a genuine word of God would look like?"
    — Art48

    Silence. — Banno


    अति सुंदर

    (Ati sundar: Glorious/most beautiful).

    Accounts of God having answered prayers is total hogwash! That however doesn't mean we stop praying.     — Agent Smith

    Then I took an introductory course in logic and came to realize formalization (logic to logicians) meant that contradictions, their unacceptability to be precise, need to be put on firmer ground than just than intuition I outlined in the previous paragraph. This, I came to know, takes shape in the famous ex falso quodlibet (anything follows from a contradiction). How this happens is as follows:

    1. p & ~p
    2. p [1 Simp]
    3. p v q [2 Add]
    4. ~p [1 Simp]
    5. q [3, 4 DS]

    q here stands for any and all statements & even their negations [you mentioned inconsistency and this is it].

    According to logicians, contradictions, and I quote, "trivialize the notion of truth". What this means isn't clarified in the books I read. What does it mean Banno? If p is true and ~p is also true, I would say that negation (~) is being trivialized (it doesn't matter whether its present/absent). Please help! :smile:
  • The US Economy and Inflation
    Inflation as caused by the increase in the quantity of a currency ('money printing') is a form of devaluation or debasement of currency. It's quite literally a hidden tax.

    So there's not much difference, really. That may have been your point.     — Tzeentch

    Danke for the clarification. :up:
  • The Fine-Tuning Argument as (Bad) an Argument for God
    ↪Gnomon
    Pardon my obtuseness, but I still don't get monism. Lemme try and explain my bewilderment. Light means not dark and vice versa. So, my brain tells me, that light and dark can't be unified as one. My intuition is probably flawed but, in my defense, I offer an example: Both good & evil can't originate - they're contradictory i.e. if one is the other isn't and if the other is, the one isn't - from the same source and hence God & Satan. Contradictions/opposites are destructive to monist philosophies in my humble opinion.

    However, I don't rule out the possibility of a point of view that reconciles monism with opposites. Perhaps yours is one, but frankly speaking such is as of yet incompatible with my current worldview.
  • Giradian Violence in Crowds
    ↪Nils Loc
    I somewhat agree - there's probably a natural selection pressure against aggression but I'm not quite sure how effective it is or even whether it isn't the other way round. Time will tell I suppose.
  • James Webb Telescope
    Roma uno die non est condita. Too bad, looks lime some of us won't live long enough to see the JWST data analyzed. How long will it take to get to the really juicy stuff, you know paradigm-shifting findings? 5, 10, 15 years? :sad:
  • Quantitative Ethics?
    ↪Alkis Piskas
    :up:
  • Xi Jinping and the CCP has no clothes
    Agreed. News and media are in their worst time. They spread lies without any type of consideration. I no longer trust on journalism and I feel sceptical about all the news which come from China or Xi Jinping — javi2541997

    Good for you! Be careful out there ... homo homini lupus.
  • What makes 'The Good Life' good?
    Eudaimonia sounds impractical. Who actually has achieved it? — Yohan

    sophia which no one to my knowledge knows what it is. — Agent Smith

    I know!
  • Is space 4 dimensional?
    Maybe if we experienced 4D space we wouldn't see curved lines created from gravity and in fact wouldn't experience gravity at all? — TiredThinker

    Have you ever driven through mountains? The curves that hug the slopes are actually straight then, oui? Gravity & the transgender movement, something worth investigating, si señor/señorita?
  • Xi Jinping and the CCP has no clothes
    It basically about how Xi Jinping is trying to run his country through a cult of personality, and since he has gotten rid of anyone and everyone who is able to say anything about how he runs things he has effectively turn the rest of the leadership in China into nothing more than a bunch of bobble heads. — dclements

    It is the beginning of the end, but it's too early to say! Criticism will mean certain death or life in a Chinese gulag or something like that! Yet, if you read the news, it doesn't look all that bad, but who trusts the media these days? We'll have to wait and watch, like always, oui monsieur?
  • Is the harmfulness of death ante-mortem or post-mortem?
    ↪Bartricks
    :smile:
  • What makes 'The Good Life' good?
    be non-judgmental — Marvin Katz

    Quare?
  • Is the harmfulness of death ante-mortem or post-mortem?
    ↪Bartricks
    I'm sorry, I can't explain it any better than I already have.
  • Is the harmfulness of death ante-mortem or post-mortem?
    ↪Bartricks
    I don't think it's that simple but I do agree, as mythology attests, immortality aka cancer :snicker: (+ happiness) have been/are/will probably remain our top priority. — Agent Smith
  • Is the harmfulness of death ante-mortem or post-mortem?
    They arrogantly suppose that they already know what death does to us. — Bartricks

    Nobody's perfect - we'll have to work with what we got. Their position does have merit though as death seems to have that finality to it which is the reason why we dread it.

    In line with your own view, religion comes along and raises the specter of naraka (hell). :scream: Just a few days ago I was on my bed doing nothing in particular when I heard a a threatening voice on my daughter's phone (she was on TikTok) say "I'm not done with you!" Death may not be the end suiciders hope that it is. Et in Arcadia ego :groan:
  • What makes 'The Good Life' good?
    I think I pointed this out before, eudaimonia (live well) is priority #1, everything else is secondary. It is on this issue that philosophy reveals its true nature/goal - sophia which no one to my knowledge knows what it is.
  • Most Important Problem Facing Humanity, Revisited
    We were screwed in 2019 and we are screwed in 2022. We will be screwed in 2025. — Bitter Crank

    :rofl: It's that bad, eh? I had my suspicions.

    There is no "key problem" to address first, second third — Bitter Crank

    Most insightful - I think this way of looking at things is because of right-handed people (the majority), disturbingly computerish. We lefties/southpaws are all about adiaphora (was Pyrrho left-handed?) - monochromatic vision, that's us.
  • Quantitative Ethics?
    ↪Alkis Piskas


    :smile:

    What is mathematics?

    Before we discovered/invented math, we were like folks with poor eyesight - everything was a blur/pixelated and if one studies pre-math texts, it should be evident. Math, a precision tool, was like a pair of corrective lenses which we duely mounted on our noses and we could finally see ... well. Math helps in differentiating what was once undifferentiable. Oui monsieur?
  • Trust
    ↪180 Proof
    Yeah, I know. C'est la vie.
  • Is the harmfulness of death ante-mortem or post-mortem?
    ↪Bartricks
    Sorry for the double post - I hope you 're not a tit-for-tat kinda person.

    It's quite intriguing - the part where you say harm isn't necessarily immoral. There's plenty to unpack; perhaps best that you start another thread on the topic.

    Coming to the postmortem harm of death, what's your response to some posters saying that post death there's literally no one to injure/damage? Here too there's a lot going on than meets the eye. Your ideas have antinatalistic undertones and I would love to hear more from you, if it's not too much of a bother.
  • Quantum Mechanics, Monism, Isness, Meditation
    Science seems to be going in the direction of monism. Begin with all the different objects in the world, to about ten thousand different chemical compounds, to a bit over a hundred elements, to the seventeen particles of the Standard Model, hoping to reach some Grand Unified Theory. It’s not difficult to see a trend. For simplicity, we’ll call the one thing that exists “Isness,” although it’s also called “the ultimate ground of existence.” — Art48

    Big Bang Theory style?

    P. S. We've reached the limits of our understanding is what it is. That's all.
  • Is the harmfulness of death ante-mortem or post-mortem?
    ↪Bartricks
    Punching a wall is a scaled down version of suicide and indeed it isn't clear whether suicide is moral/immoral acceptable. Interesting. Go on.
  • Is the harmfulness of death ante-mortem or post-mortem?
    These terms 'harmful' and 'immoral' are not synonyms. — Bartricks

    So, if I harm a person, that isn't necessarily moral/immoral?

    How come this latin phrase primum non nocere appears in bioethics?
  • Most Important Problem Facing Humanity, Revisited
    Most Important Problem Facing Humanity: Humanity

    We are our own worst enemy! The lion has nothing to fear except ... another lion.
    :lol:
  • Quantum Mechanics, Monism, Isness, Meditation
    Most interesting. — Ms. Marple

    I recall this youtube video on the making of Top Gun 1. It seems that the Air Force allowed only one missile to be fired from an F-15. So what did the producers do? They captured the missle from different angles to create the illusion that multiple missiles were launched. It was just one missile. That, in a nutshell, is monism. :snicker:
  • Giradian Violence in Crowds
    A new scapegoat (external threat) would have to unify the entire national crowd. We've heard the notion that if aliens landed (Independence Day style) there would be a unifying focus toward the aggressor. Or maybe due to accident/impasse, we'd project onto these aliens a threat that isn't altogether true. — Nils Loc

    Recall what happened to the Jews in Europe - they were blamed for everything bad that happened in the village/city, rounded up, and executed in pogroms. BBC has a report on some bodies found at the bottom of a well - all Ashkenazi jews, includes children - in the UK. Historians believe they were killed and their corpses dumped in the well. Aaah!, sic vita est.
  • The Fine-Tuning Argument as (Bad) an Argument for God
    ↪Gnomon


    I'm still not clear about the rationale for monism. If eventually one has to resort to some form of dualism/pluralism, monism feels more like wishful thinking/optional than fact/necessity. Do you have anti-information (noise) as the opposite of information (signal) in your theory? :chin:
  • Is the harmfulness of death ante-mortem or post-mortem?
    ↪Bartricks
    Good argument. I remember asserting that ethics is about

    1. Thanatos/Death (vegans feel guilt)
    2. Algos/Suffering (veganism is preferable to carnism)

    My take is that 1 (killing) is immoral because life has intrinsic value; for you its because of postmortem harm. It's the same thing, no?

    2 is something we can all agree on.
  • Trust
    So I shouldn't trust grammar? — 180 Proof

    The answer, it looks like, is no!

    ↪Moliere
    I concur, trust is vital to our collective well-being. However, the way things are done suggests betrayal is the norm, especially when the stakes are high.
  • Quantitative Ethics?
    This doesn't help much to chose a place for my vacations! :grin: — Alkis Piskas

    Why not? I thought vacationing had to be within one's means.

    Well, ask him! :smile:
    Right. We can't know about the nature of ethics, as we can't regarding freedom, mind, consciousness and a lot of other concepts.     — Alkis Piskas

    I'm afraid I'm not qualified enough to commune with the divine.
  • What a genuine word of God would look like
    "[Moses] said, I have been a stranger in a strange land." — javi2541997

    Kinda like how Einstein couldn't accept action at a distance - it was "spooky" to him. It just didn't make sense to his humongous brain. He wasn't alone though; Newton famously replied "hypothesis non fingo" which in modern terms translates to "I haven't the foggiest". Sounds better in Latin don't it?

    By the way merci beaucoup for the translation.
  • Quantitative Ethics?
    If you refer to "Avoid major damage or harm" as having shortcomings, what is a counter or other position that hasn't? Or, if you like, what do you propose as having more advantages and/or strengths? — Alkis Piskas

    I never said that "avoid major damage or harm" is flawed. I quite like the negative formulation - instead of do good, we should not do bad - for the simple reason that the choices presented to us isn't good or bad but bad or worse. :snicker:

    What is "the true nature of ethics"? — Alkis Piskas

    God knows!
  • What a genuine word of God would look like
    Dicens, advena fui in terra aliena. — javi2541997

    Translation please.
  • Philosophy vs Science
    Philosophy is the junkyard of the sciences.
    — Some dude/gal

    It was so painful to read... that dude or gal is ignorant as hell.     — javi2541997

    Parricide! :scream:
  • What a genuine word of God would look like
    Si comprehendis, non est Deus!
  • Most Important Problem Facing Humanity, Revisited
    what is the root disease? — Xtrix

    Good question! I think all our problems can be traced back to not listenimg to Aristotle. :snicker:
  • Quantitative Ethics?
    Furthermore, without quantification, even if only illusory, ethical matters would be adiaphora; we would then get a stroke!
  • Quantitative Ethics?
    ↪Alkis Piskas
    I get it, it's complicated and that's putting it mildly. The trolley problem has been crafted to expose the shortcomings of utilitarianism which is the poster child of quantitative ethics as defined by the OP - there's something nonquantitative about morality but this could be an illusion of course, an illusion generated by misunderstanding the true nature of ethics.
  • The US Economy and Inflation
    What's the differency between inflation and (currency) devaluation?
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