• The elephant in the room.
    Oh yeah babe, Jackson got banned.Noble Dust

    My memory is in tatters!
  • The elephant in the room.
    Isn't there already an elephant in this particular room?Noble Dust

    I dunno!
  • A new argument for antinatalism
    We have to cure the illness without killing the patient!
  • "Stonks only go up!"
    Not at all, it predicts cognitive bias in those unaware of the issue and less so in those aware of it. Easily falsifiable by showing a general lack of cognitive bias in those unaware of the issue and a greater effect in those aware of it.Isaac

    I thought you'd say that! However, what's odd about it is that it amounts to saying the cure itself is a disease! Please continue.
  • The elephant in the room.
    Elephants in the Room: Stuff that are important but uncomfortable to talk about. Everybody avoids it (like a leper), but sooner or later the bomb will detonate - the shit hits the fan and then pandemonium (sounds fun, oui?).
  • The elephant in the room.
    Wikipedia is a perfectly respectable source of information, I have contributed to it, and I donate monthly. Speaking of ‘ignorance’, did you manage to validate your spurious claim about Aristotle?Wayfarer

    We're most grateful! Complete strangers are payin' for my education! :heart:
  • A new argument for antinatalism
    A hopeful attempt. :up:DA671

    Please, please... :smile:
  • A new argument for antinatalism
    If I said you invested 1 and got 5, you'd think you made a killing!

    However, the truth is you spent $1 million and made only $5 grand!

    :snicker:
  • "Stonks only go up!"
    Uh huh. And which part of the published theory on cherry-picking predicted that would not happen?Isaac

    Well, if a (psychological) "theory" predicts both a behavior and its contradictory, it ain't a scientific theory now is it (unfalsifiable) - a theory that explains everything explains nothing. Good question nevertheless! Please continue.
  • A new argument for antinatalism
    So, once more, if you rack up $1m of debt to make $500 grand, you're a shite business person. And if you think the $500 grand is profit, you're an idiot. It's not profit. You're down 500grand. You made 500 grand - but you made it at $1m cost.Bartricks

    This needs to be published in a reputed philosophical journal!
  • "Stonks only go up!"


    Well, you could google that, but here's a little experiment you can do yourself. Take two people A & B. Inform A on comfirmation bias aka cherry-picking and keep the other, B, in the dark about this bias. Ask both to analyze their beliefs. There should be a noticeable difference betwixt the two in my humble opinion, oui? Philosophy, as I mentioned earlier, is an antidote for our psychological shortcomings.
  • Understanding the Christian Trinity
    The Father The Son The Holy Spirit (Sancta Trinitas)

    The Father = The Son = The Holy Spirit (Unus Deus)

    :chin:

    This is a symptom.
  • "Stonks only go up!"
    The theories of Freud have totally transformed public attitudes and behaviour regarding sex, from regarding a glimpse of stocking as something shocking, to anything goes.unenlightened

    :up:
  • "Stonks only go up!"
    What about it?Isaac

    Pre-publication: Bad science.

    Post-publication: People altering their behavior (now they know).

    Either way, disastrous for psychology, oui?
  • "Stonks only go up!"
    You've misunderstood my request (which is odd because it was quite simple) I was asking for evidence that this has actually happened, not a mechanism whereby it could.Isaac

    Replication crisis in psychology?
  • The Ultimate Question of Metaphysics


    Let's frame the question in terms of properties/qualities. A thing possesses at least one property. We can say of a thing that it is <insert quality>. Of nothing then for every predicate P, ~Pnothing.

    We can't say of nothing that it is so and so. I believe nothing is the negation of everything and yet, as apokrisis said, nothing is everything.
  • "Stonks only go up!"
    Are you suggesting that people no longer suffer from cognitive biases?Isaac

    Getting there...as we gain knowledge of our how our brains work, we will also be able to avoid the pitfalls we discover along the way.
  • "Stonks only go up!"
    So presumably has happened with a great many theories already? Providing an example shouldn't be too much trouble then.Isaac

    Read up on cognitive biases, the modern version of fallacies, and get back to me. Philosophy, with its emphasis on objectivity, is anti-psychology to that extent, oui monsieur?
  • The Ultimate Question of Metaphysics
    Perhaps the right place to start is with thing, what is it? What's a thing? Then and only then should we move to an analysis of nothing.
  • "Stonks only go up!"


    Yet, once we're in the knowAgent Smith

    You underestimate us, mon ami! You also fail, quite paradoxically, to understand human nature - wealth, fame, and power drive us and you, of course, know the implications of that.

    In addition, I'm not expecting the transformation and thus the falsification of a psychological theory overnight - it'll be gradual, depending on what you alluded to which is how fast the information is disseminated to the people, but falsification is inevitable. So, my advice to psychologists is don't even try and if you do, take the secret to your grave!
  • The Ultimate Question of Metaphysics
    It's impossible to know nothing.

    Below, I offer an excerpt from a book on apples:

    Apples are not rocks, they don't grow in tar. They're not found in the Arctic and they're not bitter [...]

    If we can't know nothing (what it is rather than what it isn't), it's impossible to answer the question "why is there something rather than nothing?"
  • "Stonks only go up!"
    Chaps do manage to forecast the weather to an approximation, and that's a complex system. I think economics suffers from the same problem as psychology, (and politics, as you mentioned) that the theories change behaviour and so confound themselves. For example, the effect of this thread, if widely read and believed, might be to send stocks into a long term decline as long term investors diversify. Until folks get as far as this post and realise that the long term decline has been caused by a self-fulfilling prophesy rather than real events ... and so on.

    I suspect every theory in the humanities is inclined to become either self-fulfilling or self-refuting as soon as it becomes public, but I wouldn't care to say which kind this one is.
    unenlightened

    Most interesting. — Ms. Marple

    Evidence then that panpsychism is false (no discernible change in behavior of matter/energy despite patterns/laws in their conduct being public knowledge since Galileo-Newton).

    This is the issue with psychology, oui mon ami? Any theory in psychology that explains (human behavior) will also have to predict (human behavior). Yet, once we're in the know about such a theory, we can alter our conduct, thus falsifying the theory. :chin:
  • The Ultimate Question of Metaphysics


    Most interesting. — Ms. Marple

    Danke kind person, danke!
  • Understanding the Christian Trinity
    Oh no, are you adopting 180 Proof's idiolect? :chin:Noble Dust

    :snicker:
  • Understanding the Christian Trinity
    Don't sweat it. It's just religion. It's not meant to be taken literally or rationally. The concept of the trinity is meant to be a sort of brain teaser - the contemplation of the trinity is merely a practice that helps one to reduce dependence on reason. It is only for people interested in cultivating their religious faith.Merkwurdichliebe

    Nice! I recall saying that any book, the Bibilia Sacra included, that makes the reader go huh, WTF? is either many or one giant Zen Koan(s), meant to evoke :chin: (deep thought) then :confused: (aporia) then :smile: (ataraxia)
  • The Ultimate Question of Metaphysics
    Si, señor!

    Everything can't exist (MAD - mutually assured destruction - of things and anti-things) and nothing would result. It is possible then, if everything exists, nothing would be the case. Is the something we experience just a phase in the transition from everything to nothing?

    Nothing then is everything (they're synonomous from a yin-yang perspective, MAD).

    That still doesn't answer the question though, does it? I dunno.
  • What is mental health according to Lacan?
    The normal person achieces nothing! Humanity rides on waves of madness! :snicker:
  • Whence the idea that morality can be conceived of without reference to religion?
    Are we talking about god-based morality or nature-based morality or not nature-based morality?180 Proof

    A perfect rational being (unbiased) aka God is going to be an authority on everything, including ethics, oui? Divine Command Theory? I'm referring to the intuition implicit in the Punctum Archimedis (God's-Eye-View).
  • The Ultimate Question of Metaphysics
    Why is there something rather than nothing?

    We need an argument that demonstrates that nothing is impossible or that something is necessary, same thing!

    It's quite a challenge to answer this question for the simple reason that one needs to have a deep understanding of nothing, but that's quite a difficult task if not impossible; after all how does one reason/experience (about) nothing?

    The man who knows nothing well enough to answer this question hasn't been born.

    I know that I know nothing — Socrates

    :snicker:
  • Whence the idea that morality can be conceived of without reference to religion?
    Okay, then I misread you. Yes, nature-based moral systems (e.g. disutilitarianism / epicureanism, (modern) virtue ethics, (modern) stoicism, deep ecology, etc) can be derived by sound reasoning.180 Proof

    Have you heard of Punctum Archimedis aka God's-Eye-View? God, on this reading, is the perfect rational being (free from all biases, known and unknown).
  • A way to put existential ethics
    Is this a discussion on (the pricking of) conscience?

    What is conscience but the realization that one has done wrong even when one has gotten away with it? The context, sensu amplo, is the perfect murder and the experiences of the murderer, morally and judicially speaking. Is an immoral act a cross to bear, a millstone around the neck, a sword of Damocles vis-à-vis an active, unforgiving, conscience?
  • Agnosticism, sensu amplo
    Nice!

    EnFormAction

    General ideas:

    1. Primum movens aka EnFormer/Intender
    2. BothAnd (yin-yang)

    Specific ideas:

    1. Information-based theory
    2. EnFormy (anti-entropy, vide supra BothAnd)
  • Whence the idea that morality can be conceived of without reference to religion?
    Deduced from "God"? Not soundly.180 Proof

    No, not deduced from God!
  • God, Agnosticism, Metaphysics, Empiricism
    Spinoza's "bondage".180 Proof

    There's this paradigm, quite ancient, that reason (mind) is at war with emotion (heart) which seems to have dropped out of favor in modern psychology (re EQ/emotional quotient). There's a precedent in the Chinese concept of Xin (heart-mind).

    I prefer not to write off emotions as a hindrance/obstacle, but prefer now to, as and when possible, feel for genuine reasons. This way of thinking is also as old as the mountains e.g. don't cry over spilt milk. Easier said than done though, si señor?
  • Whence the idea that morality can be conceived of without reference to religion?
    "God" is a fiction, so such reasoning / deduction is necessarily unsound.180 Proof

    Whaddaya mean? Can we not figure out (reason to) a system of morality à la Bentham-Mill, Aristotle, Kant?
  • The Largest Number We Will Ever Need
    Fool's gold.jgill

    Why? Are you saying string theory and all the other physics topic in which is swapped for is nonsense?
  • The Largest Number We Will Ever Need
    You seem fascinated by this anomaly. It's a kind of summation result for series that don't converge in the mathematically acceptable manner. Here's a link that should keep you occupied until bedtime:

    1 + 2 + 3 + ...
    jgill

    Well, it is fascinating is it not? If we could somehow prove that can take the place of in every calculation pops up in, we've struck gold, oui monsieur?
  • God, Agnosticism, Metaphysics, Empiricism
    I was alluding to emotions (limbic system) and reason (prefrontal cortex), respectively180 Proof

    I see. So, you mean to say reason is better than emotions. I concur - the former seems to be a means of sussing out genuine reasons to be happy/sad/angry/jealous/etc. For example, according to Buddhism, a religion that values rationality highly, we experience sorrow because we're ignorant of some fundamental facts of our world e.g. anicca (impermanence).