anthropology — Wayfarer

Anthropology should be considered a branch of primatology. That should put some of us who're obnoxiously self-aggrandizing in our place. Temet Nosce O Monkey, even if Hairless! :grin:

What has covid done to you these days? — L'éléphant

I dunno! I'd need to undergo a battery of tests to find out, something I don't have time for. I should've taken a picture pre-Covid and then one post-Covid. I would've got a rough idea about what Covid does to people.

I wouldn't characterize either the PRC or USSR as ever being "representative of leftism". Libertarian socialist / Green movements & Human Rights activists/NGOs rather than nation-states IME represent the hard left today. — 180 Proof

:up: They had devolved into dictatorships, cults of personality. Christopher Hitchens described North Korea as a Necrocacy, The Father (deceased), The Son (the portly Kim), and..."one short of a trinity" remarked the late, inimitable Hitchens.

I didn't have to. Read his non answer, he tells it all. — ArmChairPhilosopher

:snicker:

May I ask how old you are? — ArmChairPhilosopher

That's the wrong question. Ask what his IQ is.

:ok:

Damned! — Hillary

Double damn! It's true! We evolved from marine creatures - amphibians are the missing link. Kiss the frog princess, he's a prince!

He had a fish idea? — Hillary

Yep!

I've still a pair of gills dangling around in agony... — Hillary

:chin: Anaximander's fish idea turned out to be true.

If he can do all things, then he can lift something while not lifting it, what is the problem? — whollyrolling

No problem, that's the point I'm trying to make.

I hold that power. — SpaceDweller

:up:

:up:

Possibly. The general view as the concept of god growing from a ‘loss of parental guidance’ thingy theory is kind of along those lines too. I don’t buy that completely, but it likely plays a part in human psychology. — I like sushi

The origin of prayer could be the toddler's habit of her needy, pre-linguistic 'call' for her mother's tit and the soothing 'response' from her mother as she suckles. — 180 Proof

To both of you

If human neoteny is a fact, no one has seen an adult human!

We could be juvenile chimps for all we know. We share 99.9% of our DNA. :rofl:

Agent Smith will return with more disturbing thoughts...

:smile:

Merci beaucoup!

What I find amazing about modern wars is how immensely complex they are. In the good ol' days pre-globalization, there was a clear boundary between belligerents, they were self-contained units so to speak.

Compare that to the Ukraine war: Moscow is invading Ukraine, the rest of Europe is anti-Russia, but are also buying Russian gas for their homes. This is just the tip of the iceberg as regards the complexity I was referring to. Gone are the days when telling friend from foe was easy peasy.

I'll take what you said about me as a compliment! Muchas gracias.

At t1 and that has been shown. Measurements in decoherence experiments like the delayed quantum eraser are done by computers (the effects are much too fast for human perception). The idea of conscious observation being necessary has been refuted in physics a long time ago but it still lives on in quantum woo. And if it were true, it would end up in solipsism — ArmChairPhilosopher

You can never know can you, whether the wave function collapse took place at t₁ or t₂.

Yeah, but isn't conscious perception an inseparable part of measurement.

Question: Suppose you set up a quantum experiment. You rig it up to perform a measurement at time t₁. However you check the measurement only a later time (say two days after) at time t₂.

When does the wave function collapse? At time t₁ or time t₂?

Can God create a stone so heavy that He can't lift it?

Either He can or He cannot.

If He cannot, He's not omnipotent.

That means if He can, He is omnipotent¹.

But then the argument goes,

He can implies He is not omnipotent² (He can't lift the stone).

Vide 1 & 2. A contradiction.

The trajectory of an explosive shell, a parabola, isn't affected by race, nor is the area of its kill zone, nor the nature of the injuries sustained by shrapnel from it.

That said, one pontential source of danger is math's (claim of) objectivity.

As one poster has already remarked, the question is balderdash.

Suppose God can create a stone He can't lift, is God omnipotent or not? Since if He couldn't the argument claims He is not omnipotent, that He can implies He is omnipotent. The tale doesn't end there though as now because God can't lift the stone, He's now labeled not omnipotent. You can't have it both ways - the person who came up with the omnipotence argument is being self-contradictory (Ominpotent if God can create such a stone and not ominpotent because he now can't lift the stone He created).

Assume (p & ~p); anything follows.

Logic, and rationality, are rendered null, further discussion is void.

But still, the posts continue. — Banno

:rofl: :up:

I can't solve it as a paradox, but I can as a sophism! :smile: — Alkis Piskas

:up:

According to the Copenhagen interpretation of QM, the so-called wave function collapses when an observer makes a measurement. I'm told that consciousness is the key player in the whole process.

How are you doing? — L'éléphant

Well, I just recovered from Covid (my 3 jabs helped) and now I have a mild bakcache. I hope the question wasn't rhetorical.

category mistake — Hanover

I suspect so too. Furthermore, we defy logic on a daily basis, even toddlers (re solvitur ambulando).

You lost me!

I think the progress of weapons development will stop after WW3. After the war many people will have disappeared and others will be sick. So the further development of medicine will get a huge boost after WW3. The demand to live longer and perhaps eternal life will increase — Vincent

I wonder what kinda personality a soothsayer worth their salt has. Gloomy Gus-Nervous Nelly OR Dr. Pangloss-Polyanna? Which personality is more likely to make correct predictions?

You refer to the so-called two truths doctrine. Maya (illusion) joins the fray. Magic!

Given our poor track record in wars, even small scale skirmishes, I would have to give your pronouncements my nod (of approval).

This just popped into my head. In terms of (technological) advances, in which area do we have bragging rights - means of saving lives or means of ending lives? From what I gather, we have made more "progress" in weaponry than in medicine. It's not that simple but at first glance this is the impression that you'll get. I wish it was the other way round - wars would become less appealing as a solution (there would be no point to shooting someone if the bullet injury can be treated effectively).

So, like a business cycle, we alternate between pax and bellum. Laozi would've gone "I told you so."

How about if we use a different metric e.g. the humaneness of war? Has war become less horrendous? Stealth, sneak attacks, surprise attacks, launching offensives on religious holidays, and so on: dishonorable conduct. Then again human rights, bans on certain munitions like cluster bombs, the international court of justice (war crimes).

Speed limits on roads? If you drive above a certain reading on your odometer or a cop's speed gun, we're penalized with a fine or a few days of incarceration!

Haste makes waste. — Proverb

Speed thrills but kills. — Traffic Sign

Festina lente (Make haste slowly).

Wouldn’t say that. The first step on the eightfold path is indeed ‘samma ditth’ generally translated as ‘right view’ (although a big part of that is ‘not clinging to views’.)

This wikipedia article is not a bad starting point. — Wayfarer

Sorry about the misrepresentation of your position. It wasn't deliberate.

So, Buddhism endorses objectivity of truths. That doesn't sound right unless some kinda linguistic callisthencs is involved e.g. by claiming no view is the right view (the view from nowhere).

Having children is far more complex than (some) parents imagine. Filial responsibility doesn't stop at feeding, clothing, and sheltering. Parents have to ensure their children are good (sensu lato) and only a handful of people are privy to that secret! In fact we could make the case that all human problems are due to bad parenting.

Before I forget, suffering, extremum, is how it all manifests.

You have a very good thing going on there, monsieur/mademoiselle.

Did you know, I'm sure you do, that mathematically speaking, everything reduces to points, lines, curves, each one of these translatable into an equation? In other words, if you want to know what Plato's world of forms looks like, go to bed with the Queen of the sciences (mathematics).

Everybody is wrong but they are not aware of it. — javi2541997

This, in my book, means truths are objective; the real truth is hidden from view and everyone has, well, the wrong idea about the world (us inclusive).

The other option where everyone's right implies, inter alia, truths are subjective. There is no, as @Wayfarer would've said, orthodoxy or samyak-dṛuṣṭi / sammā-diṭṭhi, no right view. "Sophism" written all over it.

For which you should be profoundly thankful. :roll: — jgill

:smile:

:ok:

I get your point.

Most interesting. — Ms. Marple

We haven't been able to produce an objective definition of beauty. Nor is there a good subjective definition we could work with. Aesthetic appreciation may, therefore, lie in the interaction between subject & (the) object (of beauty). Reminds me of the lock and key model of biomolecular interaction. There's nothing about beauty that's either a ball or a socket, but ball-and-socket, that's beauty! Does that make sense?

Thanks go out to all the above posters.

I'm doing this on the fly and so I don't really have a clear-cut, well-defined, position on the matter, but what's interesting is 1. Everybody is right is a bona fide philosophical stance [re relativism (Sophists) & anekantavada (Jains)]. True that relativism has a bad rep, relatively speaking, but the point is it pops up now and then in serious philosophy i.e. there are takers for such a viewpoint.

This isn't the case for 2. Everybody is wrong. There are no known philosophies with this outlook or if there is one I haven't heard of it.

I maybe drifting into the subjective-objective distinction here.

False dichotomy – 3. Everybody is uncertain (re: the future). 4 Everybody is ignorant (re: the past). Etcetera.. — 180 Proof

:fire:

I agree.
And neither Theism nor Atheism are well formed propositions, thus can't have truth values. — ArmChairPhilosopher

:chin: