You’ve got to see this youtube animation to see how crazy this is – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-uuk4Pr2i8 . And these motor proteins are just one example of the range of molecular machines which organise the fundamental workings of a cell. — apokrisis

On the video you get to see a protein instantiation called John - with legs! Wouldn't it be cool if when we unravel the quantum level there's assemblies of subatomic particles with tentacles, some called Joan! The video supports my new metaphysics of infinitely fractally embedded agents, IFEA.*

The more realistic and serious simulation animations of proteins in action etc made by the TED talker are indeed suprising and "crazy" (ironically for depicting "sensible" behavior ) - thanks for the link apokrisis :)





*only joking

Yes, I understand but then the next question is, obviously, why the stress or emphasis on being rational? It doesn't lead anywhere at all. — TheMadFool

One can be as rational as possible, even though the information is fuzzy.

Sorry for not being clear here. .... he observed that politics of the day always invoked some sort of enemy or opposing group . He wasn't advocating it.

Yes, exactly.The more one consciously chooses an antisocial action, the more blameworthy they are, and therefore the more harsh the punishment should be. — kepler

Actually Kepler that is not what I am saying (sorry for not being clearer :) ) because I don't believe in punishment per se, except as a societally useful deterrence for certain types of "crime". I did say that true rehabilitation and repentance is likely to be more painful than a some fixed prison term lengths, but the pain is not supposed to be intentionally inflicted in such a schema. Rather it is a highly likely occurrence when undertaking a rehabilitative, repentant journey - almost a side-effect.

this global, technological, capitalist world order we find ourselves in is utterly corrupt and dehumanizing. — Erik

I don't see what's wrong with technology and consumerism if they are in a balanced environment. I don't think such a thing has existed for quite some time though, because of the nature of politics and tradition.

If someone - or some group of people (collaboration of artists, politicians, philosophers, etc.) - could tap into those intuitions and frame a vision of a more meaningful and humane world - one beyond the political Left and Right as they currently stand - then they may be able to awaken those latent possibilities and galvanize a sort of historically transitional and supra-political grassroots movement. Wishful thinking perhaps, but there's work to be done and this is the area I feel we should focus on. — Erik

Bertie Russell wrote a wonderfully astute essay on the nature of party politics, politicians, experts and the person in the street(gang) around 1930. ("The Need for Political Skepticism") The main strand is that everything political is sadly wrapped up in language and ideas that insists on positing an enemy of some sort. What is amazing is that it could have been written today for just about any western democracy. Nothing has changed! His solution is to break up party politics somehow. Of course he never had the net then, and never knew about the possibility of block chain voting and delegation....

Doesn't that show that our world is contradictory; afterall, the only way to disagree, given logic isn't at fault, is if we start with contradictory premises. — TheMadFool

Logic needs WFFs (well formed formulas) to operate in a water tight fashion and real life is unlikely to yield many, apart from rather weak syllogisms and the like ... "so then, my good philosopher friend, can we not agree that in some cases it is true that not all men who are wealthy are... whatever..." etc etc, if you see what I mean.

One big problem in these discussions is making one's meaning clear and actually explaining one's axioms. I think to do the job properly takes a lot of writing effort. I suppose that is the art of a certain sort of written philosophy - to be careful and thorough. I'm way too lazy for all that!

IMO, most people have pet foibles of opinion lurking in the background which they either are not fully aware of, or that they won't reconsider, even hypothetically. This makes them difficult to reason with.

But there was also the feather. Why didn't people choose it over the gun? — TheMadFool

Well, quite! People often find it easier to be aggressive than tender I guess, even in play/quasi play.

If ever I come across such a work I think I will attempt to upstage the artist and ermmm upstage a coup. I would tickle the gun with the feather and make a big speech.

"I would like to thank Marina for providing this interesting and exciting space in which we can consider human history, psychology and the future of politics and humanity. For that is the whole purpose of this wonderful work, of course.... No excuse me Sir - no you don't understand. Put that down please. You really can't do that. Thank you, now where was I?..."

Humans are crafty SOBs.

interesting ... I wonder how different the results would be if the artist's mother was seated alongside, or an actor dressed as a cop was stood nearby with arms folded. Or what about having a sign saying "please don't hurt or embarrass me?".

So, you're saying the artist was suggesting the audience to be ''sensational''. — TheMadFool

Certainly at least, the audience/accomplices felt they had a certain amount of license to be sensational given the presence of a loaded gun, razor blades etc.

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I think that Milgram's experiment is very different from Abramovic's performance.

Milgram's experiment purpose was to see how far people would go in their trust of authority. — Cavacava

But perhaps formal authority is simply a marker for internal justification, and it is the latter which ultimately drives the outcome of these experiments?

Practical wisdom and virtue go hand in hand; — Pierre-Normand

Then they are surely the same thing! Or at least they/it has a name?

We can certainly do better than locking people up forever to appease victims' families. — Bitter Crank

I was reading recently about a guy that had been assaulted by some drunk strangers. The worst offender kicked the victim's head while he was down, with full force and at close range. He wasn't pleased that the offender was out of prison after just a few years while he himself had to deal with quite severe brain damage for the rest of his life. Who couldn't be moved by that man's plight and at least get an idea of how much anger and hate he must feel? (though I'm glad to say he did also have a positive state of mind about getting on with his life).

For such a crime, I think the sentence term should not be fixed and finite; nor infinite. Rather it should be determined by the progress the offender makes in recognizing the awfulness of what he has done and that he needs to change and does change. This will surely be a painful process - far more than languishing in prison for some years in a state of denial.

I think Rhythm0 was mainly predictable, right down to
"When the gallery announced the work was over, and Abramović began to move again, she said the audience left, unable to face her as a person".

The aspect of the "work" that makes it particularly distinctive from the Milligram experiment is that it is announced as art, and the artist's intentions and wishes are unknown. People might think that they are expected to be sensational, for example.

Added: I would have fired the gun into a safe place to discharge the bullets!

So, I don't have a solution that get's us out of unfairness. — Bitter Crank

I think there are principles that could guide society as to "best practice" - perhaps based on what I posted earlier. The goal should always be to minimize actual overall harm - and that has to include harm to perpetrators of anti social behaviors where possible. Revenge without focus should not be part of the scheme of justice, but most societies tend to give great import to this emotion.

when psychopaths commit crimes they are likely to get zero sympathy because we hold them responsible for their acts, — Bitter Crank

Is that fair though?

I am certainly very much against the proposition that one has to be an expert, or even well informed, in order to make radical "outsider" propositions. But .....I think the content of such posts has to be digestible by the readers, acknowledging the range of beliefs and opinions they might hold and why. Letting it all out at once might make sense to the writer, but are the readers being taken slowly enough to get on board with the flow? Is the writer being realistic and commensurate with their own level of knowledge? For example ...

In the beginning there was a big bang…. And already science is in trouble. I call it the container problem, but I’m sure it has other names. What is it expanding into? Nothing? Bullshit. — MikeL

You ought to be aware, that the "container problem" is also a problem of human psychology. The analogy of a balloon's surface getting bigger without expanding into a bigger surface is often used to illustrate how easy it might be to have rigid ideas about space.

I don't think one needs to be an expert, or even very well informed, to muse on cosmology and physics in an interesting way. But unless you deal with highly unorthodox points one or two at a time you are going to turn readers off. If your ideas have any mileage, they should run a bit at least, on their own. For example the "container problem of physics" is surely worthy of a thread all of its own?

my original question lies in the nature of whether someone with a mental illness who ends up committing a crime is to be blamed. I don't think the will to resist committing crime is strong enough in some cases--due to the fact that the forces in such a person's brain move them to commit the crime. — kepler

What do you mean by "blame" ... are you saying that the more one consciously chooses a certain antisocial course of action, the more "blameworthy" one is, and hence the more .......[fill in your choice here please]?

How about everyone agreeing that "the soul (which is effectively "magical") is emergent from the organization of the brain and survives as long as the brain lives".

And now for those of you wish to have science dependent on rationality but not quite the same as being rational ,I can provide a neat answer "what makes science a science"

"Science happens when rationality can be used to arrive at a unique and "best" solution."

I imagine one of the reasons for banning brief OPs is to put off trolls from lazily lighting the touchpaper and standing back? OK, so deletion makes sense then.

But if an established poster makes a brief OP then OK, that is a bit lazy, but I bet that such threads almost always go on to generate bona fide discussion.

What about locking a thread and asking the OP to add something? Or at least messaging the OP that the thread has "unfortunately had to be deleted and please could you please try again with some more text..". It just seems a shame to lose posters over this sort of issue ... come back Jeremiah!!

it's not unreasonable to expect posters have done that. — Baden

well human nature and all that....

No that's [Occam's Razor] got nothing to do with it. — Wayfarer

I propose, regarding rationality per se

1) that there are situations where using the razor is rational.
2) that there are situations where using intuition is rational.
3) that there are situations where more than one rational solution can be found with no easy means of picking the best

Perhaps deletion should be a last resort, with the OP first prodded to add more to the first post? Particularly if they are not fully aware of rules about brief OPs.

Maybe the rule is not needed - given how many brief-OP threads go on to become meaningful and not actually deleted?

In formal logic directly self referential statements like the one you showed do not exist and can not be defined. — Meta

Surely there's a "New Logic" somewhere that incorporates them? An extension of formal logic ...

"What is rationalism" is a very interesting question. I think it could be said of "rationalism", that it requires for its application, a goal and the use of reason to attempt to reach that goal. Where the goal is stated only in subjective (as in non-objective, non-numeric) terms, then rationalism can itself only use "subjective reasoning" (if such a thing is possible...).

Also, the use of intuition might well be deemed to be "reason-enableed", or even just "reasonable" I think, and therefore rational.

You can create a perfectly rational argument for something which there is no prospect of falsifying through evidence or observation. — Wayfarer

Only if "rationality" is not subject to Occam's Razor, I suggest.

Rationality is insufficient, though. Pure mathematics attempts to be 'as rational as possible', but maths is not a science, per se. You can create a perfectly rational argument for something which there is no prospect of falsifying through evidence or observation. So 'tangibility' or 'testability' is an essential ingredient - the proposition has to concern something for which particular kinds of evidence applies, otherwise it ain't scientific. — Wayfarer

Nevertheless, "being as rational as possible" is a fundamental property of being "scientific", (though not a blueprint)and a good definition if the word is to have most power for good. In this manner, it is perfectly possible to take a scientific approach tojust about anything a very wide range of analysis; lab coats and test tubes are not essential. Stuff about observation and experiment, prediction, being systematic are merely instructions on how to be rational in certain applicable situations.

It is has been observed that as many as 25% of the general prison population demonstrate psychopathic behavior. In a study by researchers at the Dept of Psychiatry at the U of Iowa, 320 newly incarcerated inmates were tested for Antisocial personality disorder. ASPD was present in 113 subjects, or about 35%. — kepler

In such cases I think that the schema I outlined above still broadly applies, with the proviso that education and rehabilitation fully takes into account such a disorder. so the focus would be on behavioral strategies that minimise offending.

but one goal we should definitely work toward is the stabilization of society. People need a stable, reliable, economy and stable families in which to grow up. They benefit greatly from quality education experiences. That would, in the long run, end a lot of antisocial disruptive behavior resulting from growing up in chaotic, dysfunctional families. — Bitter Crank

Very true, yes.

On the nature of blame and "justice", I do feel that justice systems unfortunately do wield quite a big revenge stick,
Judicial systems should be about administering the following actions

1) punishment for reasons of deterrence - for crimes that can be effectively deterred through punishment. I suspect the latter class of crimes are certain types of less anti-social financial and property crimes committed as one-offs. If a person is a habitual offender, then action 2) is more appropriate

2) Education and rehabilitation to change the offender's mindset. This type of treatment should have no fixed length of time, rather it ends with a successful outcome, and is appropriate for highly anti social behaviors. Incarceration might be involved initially, and the danger the offender poses to society will determine how long the incarceration element is necessary.

Of course there is a great danger that society itself is not well, and imposes itself upon individuals in a rather malign Orwellian way in its attempt to "reeducate" the "errant". For example, homosexuality has only recently been decriminalized; attitudes to recreational drug usage are sharply divided in society....

3) Incarceration for the safety of others.

My university education (maths degree) consisted of rather bad lectures with lots of copying from the board into an exercise book. Modules seemed deliberately to be composed so as not to follow any particular textbook, thus making it difficult to access good printed material. I didn't do very well, but no doubt the idea was to force a spread of grades, because the education system was, and still is, self serving and propped up by the minority who manage to emerge well.

Does anyone seriously, I mean seriously, doubt they have a mind or do they think it is a matter of Cosmic Thermodynamic Destiny to enjoy hot dogs with mustard and sauerkraut? — Rich

I find it hard to imagine having a mind without any body or other sensory input. In particular not even concepts such as simple numbers would be obtainable by "pure mentality". Such a thing is surely unimaginable.

As far as I'm concerned any study or analysis which attempts to be as rational as possible is scientific.

Forgiveness, reconciliation, justice, revenge, anger, hatred, love.

Which is the odd one out?

A man walks into a bar.
Nothing happens.

You need a FAQs sort of blog to which you can simply point to as a reply. If you are "different" then you need to make an effort to help others understand your POV - don't expect others to make big efforts. As for me I like intense mavericks but I'm afraid I have no particular interest in your special interest but I might be tempted to post in your threads if your posts were short and snappy; but of course I realise that that might not be appropriate for your topics.

ESPECIALLY not in principle. — szardosszemagad

We have the (possible) example of the Copenhagen interpretation, which demonstrates the principle.

Once you decided the universe is causal, then it follows that it is deterministic. — szardosszemagad

The universe could , in principle, be a mixture of causal and non-causal. Proponents of the Copenhagen interpretation demonstrate quite a strong belief in that don't they?