It gives me happiness to think of the Native American point of view and attempt to be spiritually woke.

Yes, native and indigenous peoples knew the importance of living in harmony and balance with their ecosystem. We can learn a lot from them.

If the people living in England would have joined Harold Godwinson, the Norman invasion probably could have been deflected. When attacked,

The Normans should never have been able to win at the battle of Hastings, but they had the good fortune that the English army had been fighting off the Norwegians two weeks before in the north of England. They were depleted and exhausted. Then the Normans seeing the English troops dug in a good defensive position on a hill at Hastings, came up with a dastardly plan. They made it look like their whole army was attacking the defensive positions. This attack seemed to fail, the English thought they were going to win easily. Then the Norman troops turned and fled down the hill. The English tasting victory ran after them to finish them off. But as they descended the hill, fresh Norman troops appeared on both sides and surrounded them.
This devious despicable behaviour was then exploited to bring the entire population of the England to heal over the next few years. Followed by the Welsh and the Scottish over the next few centuries. It was one of the most successful takeovers and emancipation of a country by hostile powers in history. But of course the history that comes down to us was written by the victors.

Nope, afaik the quantum vacuum is the ground state of nature.

Cool.

we should think about the ecosystem and how we can protect and live alongside it.

The British have never really had autocracy due to the Magna Carta.

It was worse than an autocracy, it was colonisation. The British people were ruled with an iron fist for centuries, by French colonialists. The invaders eventually became the aristocracy and retained their privileged status until the 20th Century.

Trump only wants regime change because Maduro is a “leftist”. If he were on the right, Trump would be inviting him to have tea at the White House.

Yes, we give with one hand and take back with the other. Berkeley is a spectacular example. He says nothing can exist unperceived and that he does not deny the existence of "any one thing" that common sense believes in. (He reconciles the two by pointing out that God always perceives everything.)

Yes, that is the only way around it, we are part of God and God sees everything. Therefore there isn’t anything that isn’t seen.
If this isn’t the case, then there must be other things that are not seen, even by an anti-realist. Because there might be more than one anti-realist.

Physicalist (philosophical naturalist).

So it’s Multiverses all the way down then?

I was trying to make the distinction between phenomenal and intelligible objects, but no avail.

He’s doing a neat trick whereby the phenomenal has to become intelligible (therefore an intelligible object) before it can be acknowledged.

Let's be clear: I'm pointing out that the OP isa a word game.

No more than your replies are a word game.

And "No".

The game seems to be, let’s insist there isn’t anything else (other than our reality), because we don’t have the vocabulary to do it’s ising justice. Meanwhile smuggling in the acknowledgement that there probably is something else (as a nod to the idea that you can’t prove a negative).

What's south of the South Pole?

Your replies read like a word game. But the OP is asking about what is, are you confining what is to what can be known by the use of words?

So which one are you?

Who are "these guys"?

I wouldn’t want to name names as I feel cheeky enough saying what I said.

There is a point though, only an idealist, of some kind, would restrict what is to what can be said, or known by a person. Surely by contrast, a physicalist of some kind would allow any of an infinite number of other possibilities and the fact that we cannot observe them directly doesn’t preclude their existence.

Yes, I think we're all in accord that the culprit here is the word "reality," no surprise. "Stuff we can know as humans" and "all the stuff that can be known" are fine with me instead, as long as the two aren't supposed to mean the same thing.

These guys are idealists masquerading as physicalists. They just want to shut down the debate and confine the physical material to their idealism. If they were true physicalists they would have brought the Many Worlds Theory to the table by now, but they haven’t.

The simplest answer to the OP is we don’t know what else there is. There might be all sorts of weird and wonderful stuff, that we can’t see. We just can’t see it.

This can then be elaborated by saying we know that there is a lot we don’t know about the world we find ourselves in. So we know that we don’t know things about things that we can see. Therefore we are not in a position to say, or know anything about what we can’t see. So we can’t say what else isn’t there, just like we can’t give a full account of what we know is there.

I looked into it, it’s a short article giving a summary of the conclusions from a study by Yi Zhang, at the Cooperative Institute for Modelling the Earth System at Princeton university. I can link the paper, but it’s 90 pages of difficult to decipher text. Unfortunately it doesn’t come to any firm conclusions about what is likely to happen. It just seems to firm up the modelling around the issue. The issue of wet bulb temperatures in the tropics has been doing the rounds and more science is being done around it.

It does seem to be one of the more serious potential problems thrown up by climate modelling. That parts of the world may become uninhabitable, both for communities living there and the ability to grow crops. On top of the trend which we can see already of climate instability making it harder to grow crops in many regions.

The greening effect is interesting, I'm not sure how it interacts and combines with all the other changes, but it certainly is a factor.

There have been some studies suggesting that there is some greening going on. I came across it because lots of climate change deniers have started saying that it will restore the balance, so we shouldn’t take action on climate change. Basically that more CO2 means more plant growth, which locks in that CO2 into biomass.
It’s crackpot pseudoscience spread by climate change deniers. Even if there is some effect, it will be small compared to the increases in CO2 by human activity. But what isn’t acknowledged in such claims is that this greening is of no use to the ecology of the places where it can be observed. Those ecosystems will continue to collapse due to the existing man made pressures regardless.

Don’t forget when the tropics become uninhabitable.
— Punshhh

Which is hyperbole.

I was joking with Unenlightened, when I wrote that. He was spreading doom, in a light hearted way, as is his want.

It is a real possibility though, joking aside.

This article explains why a 1.5 degrees rise in global temperatures could result in wet bulb temperatures above human habitation requirements.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2270357-keep-warming-under-1-5c-to-stop-tropics-becoming-too-hot-to-live/

On current forecasts (a simple calculation using projected CO2 levels), we are heading for 2.5 degrees, or higher. In which case the tropics will become uninhabitable.

That is nto goign to happen. I think some of the scaremongering is finally coming to an end.

The only serious threat from climate change--and it is serious--is unpredictable weather cycles that disrupt farming. Other than that there will be bumps in the road not a a collapse of civilisation.
7 hours ago

Well I’m not in a position to argue with that. The unpredictability is off the chart, all we have is modelling and a long list of factors which will to a greater or lesser degree increase CO2 levels. There are some things which we can be certain of and there is a baked in reluctance in humanity to not make the necessary changes. To bury our heads in the sand and just carry on as before.

We know for a fact that there are tipping points which will accelerate the amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, on top of what we add ourselves. Such as methane from the permafrost, which is melting as we speak. Or acidification of the oceans which will reduce the amount of carbon captured in the oceans, a major carbon sink. We know that sea levels are rising, it’s a slow process, I know (about 3mm a year at the moment), but something which could accelerate and certainly can’t be stopped. It can rise by 90 metres meaning that the majority of larger cities will by then be under water.

Then there is the stupidity of humanity, getting involved in more wars and producing more and more failed states. This might wipe us out before the famine etc does.

I'm not arguing that it didn't benefit the rulers.

My point is that Christianity provided the moral framework which enabled the development of Western civilisation. Wayfarer put it better than I could. Can anyone suggest an alternative that would have achieved that, I wonder.
I think that part of this crisis of modernity is that society has seen through this legacy and seen it as outdated and causing more problems than it prevents. We are unshackling ourselves from the religious code and looking around for a new moral code for the future. I would suggest it is not going to be easy as the code we are rejecting is much more deeply embedded in our culture than we might at first realise.
Capitalism has sort of stepped into the breach, and along with law and jurisprudence has provided a helpful framework. But now even that capitalism is turning toxic, we might only be left with jurisprudence. The problem here is that government can, in theory, change what the law says and government can become corrupted.

The stability of feudalism was imposed by a combination of church and aristocratic rule. The people were illiterate―so we have no way of knowing what their real thoughts were. They were compelled to give lip service or be punished. I think your view is rosy and simplistic.

Not rosy, I realise how the people were controlled with brutality. But at least the rulers realised the benefits of the ideological stability provided by the church.

Yes we have free, but will complicates the issue.

However, I would vary from what seems to be implied in your suggestion that one must be ripe for enlightenment, or find institutions that facilitate it.

Let me qualify that, I meant to be ripe on one’s soul (or equivalent). Not that the institutions facilitate this ripeness. But rather enable the flowering if the soul is ready.

My suggestion is that enlightenment is an awakening to the fictional nature of that agent. The so called transcendental ego, remains, nevertheless, the ego. Enlightenment neither involves, nor happens to that agent. The ego, mind, and human history have displace the human's natural being. Enlightenment is a shedding of that displacement. It is an emancipation from the fictional narratives restructuring reality for humans.

Yes, I agree entirely, but I would caution that we really don’t know the processes involved here. All we have to go on is scripture. So we are always approximating something we don’t know, that is hidden from us.

I take it that by ‘transcendent ego’, you mean an equivalent to the soul?

The church told us in an authoritarian way that God was watching every single thing we did, could even see in our thoughts to see if we were a sinner. This along with a strong moral code, reinforced every Sunday in church, enabled us to pull through the dark ages into the enlightenment without falling back into warring tribes, or corrupt competing kingdoms.
In a sense, Christianity enabled the enlightenment, by engendering a moral stability.

Don’t forget when the tropics become uninhabitable.

No. They can, of course they can, but they don't want to. The US crisis is deliberately created with malice aforethought. Disaster economics are being used to accumulate wealth in a few hands and the mass of the population is being deliberately impoverished, disempowered, and angered, because they are no longer needed by the rich and powerful. The economy used to run on mass production and mass consumption, but automation and 3d printing makes the mass of people unnecessary. The psychopaths no longer rely on the rest of us for their power. The plan is to get rid of most of the people, and sort out the climate later.

The last mass-production factories will be producing autonomous hunter-killer drones.

Yes this is the other front we will have fight on. Not just climate change, but bond villains too. Oh and mass migration too, nearly forgot that.

Very true :pray:

Namaste

Interesting, reminds me of the antique trade. Traders are looking for what’s in fashion and offloading what’s going out of fashion. What you guys describe is on a much more massive and volatile scale.

The problem I see here is where the foam becomes a house of cards. Inflated by hardware and resources which have no other use than the use they currently have. So when the house of cards collapses, whole swathes of hardware become useless and worthless. Also there is what looks like economies propped up by these bubbles. Economies which have become unsustainable due to Covid shutdown disruption, and tariffs war instability.

Let’s hope Trump doesn’t impose martial law, or a civil war doesn’t break out.

there are fairly coherent and consistent schemas of (let’s say) experiential insight that aspirants progress through on the spiritual journey. Whilst not scientific in the sense that physics or chemistry can be, neither do they rest solely on the idiosyncratic expressions and utterances of their adherents (although there will always be idiosyncratic types as well). But then, on the other hand, many of its modern enthusiasts may take it to be a science in the way that is not, in lacking the deep enculturation that it’s emic adherents naturally possess.

As I see it there is a confusion in the way Western commentators and teachers describe and teach and how aspirants operate and form ideas in this endeavour. They are confusing two processes, although one of them they might not even acknowledge is there. Firstly they tend to think that the spiritual endeavour is about working with the mind (and emotions to a lesser extent). That one can control the mind, direct it, deconstruct and rebuild it, in such a way as to result in spiritual insights and progress towards enlightenment, or even if they just get it right, it will happen in a flash. That once they have done this, they can then just perform the necessary practice and lifestyle and they will naturally reach their goal*.
The second process is the actual development of their being**, a development which is following a natural physical and spiritual course one which the person isn’t aware of, or can control in any way, other than in removing any conditioned, or cultural blockages in its path. By analogy, a plant can’t flower until a bud has grown and is ready to open. The science of this aspect of the spiritual path is entirely absent and unknown from the teaching and understanding.

So, in reality what teachers and aspirants are doing is endeavouring to remove blockages in the being of the aspirant, that is all. Whether they realise it, or not.

*many aspirants fail to reach their goal and then conclude that there isn’t a spiritual path to enlightenment at all, or that they are a failure of some sort. While in reality their bud wasn’t ready to open.

** a development which will take many lifetimes to come to fruition.

So all it takes is a pause in momentum, and we'll fall a lot further than we would have normally. If we do go into crash mode, it won't be Trump's fault, or anybody's really. It's just something capitalism is prone to, and automated trading amplifies it.

That sounds like a description of what happened in 2008. This time there is a vast crypto bubble being inflated by Trump, Thiel and Sachs. Which is totally opaque.

The approach to infinite wealth.

But that future of inexhaustible total abundance is within reach.

Though the most important "trend among trends" to appreciate is that everything is accelerating.

It’s looking like a bubble to me.

I agree. If this next jump in human life fails, we will not get another chance. A failure at that scale would be much more devastating than 2008, as you say.

Too big to fail.

You’re not filling me with hope here.

I was watching a documentary (BBC Panorama) yesterday in which they showed footage of Musk, Thiel, Zuckerberg, Knox, Sachs, all glad handing Trump. And forming an unholy alliance headed up by Spacex/Tesla and Palentir. Using AI to win big surveillance and military contracts. Including ex-Palentir employees saying how, the programmes developed for military use on the battlefield were being used by Trump’s henchmen to identify undesirables.

While all this is going on, Trump in league with David Sachs and Peter Thiel are building a crypto empire, which again looks like a bubble. In which large sums are moving around unregulated and undocumented.

Hence the mind, rather than an anomalous tenant of an alien universe, was instead the most concentrated and luminous expression of nature’s deepest essence. This is why it could pass with such wanton liberty through the “veil of Isis” and ever deeper into nature’s inner mysteries.

-David Bentley Heart.
Not only this, but in that reverence, it’s inherent sense of community, people naturally become collegiate, eager to contribute towards the common good, and wish to give of themselves, for a greater good or purpose.

By contrast we have in Western society an unassailable reduction to science, material fact and monetary value. Meaning (the deeper meaning you are talking about) has nowhere to go, other than the satiation of personal desires, or the profit motive. This vacuum eventually becomes filled by the exploitative influences of manipulative agencies. Themselves devoid of meaning and purpose. The race to the bottom will take us into dark places like rule by oligarchs and the end of freedoms which during the 20th century we, in the West, took for granted.

It's an entrapment of the materialistic attitude of modern society. Focus on the means narrows, or limits the end, to that which we're good at. Narrowing the end is a restriction on freedom. That is the impoverishment of purpose.

Very much so.
Where are we going now? that science and reason are king?
We are blind.

Here she is with her white hair.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CampingandHiking/comments/11ns3is/view_of_the_most_elusive_mountain_mount_nanda/

Horkheimer argues that in this transformation, reason has been stripped of its substantive and ethical content; it has become a tool for calculation, efficiency, and control. This marks the “eclipse” of reason—the point at which rationality itself becomes irrational, serving domination rather than enlightenment, and leaving modern civilization powerful in its techniques but impoverished in meaning and purpose.

This rationality becomes blind, a Minotaur, a Frankenstein’s monster. Look at the leader of the free world we have now, a sad indictment of the progress of the human race. Just when we realise the depth of the omni crisis we are embarking on, the system comes up with a narcissistic manchild to lead the charge.

I’m with you all the way on this, I’ll illustrate what I mean with an anecdote. Once on my travels in India, I set myself a mission to get to a point where I could see Nanda Devi, across the valley of flowers (the highest and one of the most sacred, mountains in India). Whenever I mentioned what I was doing to local people they would go into a state of reverence, which I found disconcerting at first, as I thought they were somehow revering me, a modest traveller, wearing the same clothes as them and travelling on the same cheap buses as them. After a while I realised that the reverence was for a sense of pilgrimage, or for the mere mention of Nanda Devi. This resulted in a moment of great reverence, magic, wonder and joy, the likes of which I have never experienced in the West. I was explaining what I was doing to a young boy, I thought he probably wouldn’t have heard of Nanda Devi, he didn’t know what mountain it was at first, so I said it’s the mountain that often has a cloud hovering above it like a trail of long hair. Then he realised and immediately there was a sense of something sacred and revered. He knew the story about the goddess Nanda Devi with her trailing white hair. The whole group around us were in a state of wonder. I felt like a magician, a conjurer, while at the same time humbled and just as in awe as the rest of them. You could have cut the sense of mystery with a knife, it was so thick.

I realised on many occasions what the rationality of the world I lived in back home had done to us, by comparison.

The problem with that kind of attitude they have towards this thread is that the basis of the whole thing was concerns about the awful things that almost undoubtedly are going to happen.

Yes, he/she was always attacking general comments about climate related issues, within a philosophical overview with badly researched data. It became pointless to debate them and it put people off posting.

I appreciate naming the things we are referring to in discussion overall, just because i literally did think you were hinting that maybe i was "the troll" since I responded to unenlightened in an almost opposite way.

There’s a difference between countering what someone is saying in a confrontational way and the continuous trolling of everyone who posts on a thread with walls of copy and paste data, for months on end. You’re not trolling at all.

You all can worry about inevitable global warming from behind a computer screen (sometimes i do since the wildfires create air pollution, and GW could lead to extra crop failures and water shortages), but talking about it through computers is not really addressing the problem, or coming anywhere close to lowering the carbon emissions.

Yes, you are right, but what can an individual do, other than make some ethical choices in what they buy and reducing their fossil fuel use where they can?
There is a serious problem of Malaise, feelings of powerlessness, reluctance to make big changes in one’s lifestyle, while most other people, or governments don’t. In some ways, the problem is just too big, too far away in the future for people to cope with, or grasp the urgency. In many ways, it’s already too late and we’re all just running with our eyes shut and our hands over our ears towards a cliff edge like lemmings.

For example, it's important to know that militaries disproportionately create carbon emissions. Why this tends to stay out of news media discussions is beyond me, except maybe it doesn't mesh with the profit motive of the news industry

Yes and right wing populists taking advantage of people’s fears, economic and political instability and war mongering are the very worst things we could be doing and yet the worse these things become, the more the populists and oligarchs thrive.

In other words, kids coming out of school need to focus on things that only humans can do.

Yes, exactly. Although one of my kids who’s 35 and has been working in IT his whole life. Lost his job last year and can’t find work anywhere.

It is my opinion that this "AI bubble" is not going to pop, and will continue to grow exponentially for at least the next 5-10 years. Unless there is a catastrophic change to the way our world works. Which is certainly possible.

Hi, and thanks for your input.
You do sound like an insider who is very excited about developments within a bubble. I’m holding my breath, I just don’t know what will happen, but all the warning signs are there. They might just fade away rather than cause a pop.
You say exponential growth for 5-10 years, well that is bound to pop because it’s so top heavy. What I mean is that when there is a bubble forming in a new technology, there are always some startups that fall by the wayside. While the general trend continues. It’s like a fizzing of excitement with little side bubbles popping. The problem is when it is on such a vast scale that those little side bubbles are large compared to other critical sectors of the economy and can cause disruption in other sectors. If this happens too much, a cascade can begin and there’s no way to stop the pop by then.

Take the sub-prime mortgage bubble in 2008. There was insider trading going on daily with amounts in the trillions being bet everyday on dodgy debt based investments. The froth was on such a scale that it dwarfed the real economy. By the time people began to realise, it was too late.

I take on board the idea that a lot of the growth is in real hardware and on a more sound footing. But this just means that if the bubble does bursts it will be much more devastating. Which introduces the idea of too big to fail. When people start saying something is too big to fail, then people stop being cautious and pump even more money into things that haven’t been carefully considered, because it’s “too big to fail”. Then we have an unpoppable bubble.

Have you read the posts and exchanges by Agree to Disagree?
Not just in this thread, but all climate change threads.

Well we don’t know much.