:up:

Ok, I'll bite, why Tik Tok? — universeness

Short & sweet lectures. Just the kind of education that fits in my schedule.

And theism or atheism does? — ArmChairPhilosopher

Only truth/falsity are relevant to decisions.

I cite TikTok! :smile:

Wage war to make peace? Very practical advice, given the givens; the rationale being to reduce competition (the seed of war) via thinning the herd.

This, it seems, is a paradox: The problem (war) is its own solution (war).

As fire drives out fire... — Brutus

mis-uses of language that I described as being the the root of most philosophical problems. — Harry Hindu

Could you kindly expand and elaborate? Gracias.

Are you going Wittgenstein on me?

Does the Buddha know in the sense that post-death these categories are N/A or does the Buddha not know what happens post-mortem?
— Agent Smith
N/A – irrelevant to addtessing dukkha pre-death.

In other words is Buddha's stance (Noble Silence) ontological or epistemological?
IMO, ethical/psychological. — 180 Proof

:ok: Arigato gozaimus sensei.

Magnifique!

I wish it were all subjective.

3, w, m, ɛ.

Agnosticism per se is sterile - it doesn't help you in making critical decisions in life. So agnostics still have to make a choice between atheism & theism, becoming agnostic atheists or agnostic theists respectively. This isn't an aut Ceasar aut nihil kinda deal though - tertium quid is a valid position to adopt.

Then be a shepherd. — Ciceronianus

The shepherd features prominently in Christianity. I have a feeling that the OP meant that figuratively. If not, sorry for intrusion.

There is a chess puzzle called a helpmate where black assists white in arriving at mate of black, so the best black player would be the one that could best lead to his own demise.

It sort of responds to the OP, but not exactly, but it was the first thing I thought of.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helpmate#:~:text=A%20helpmate%20is%20a%20type,White's%20nth%20move%20checkmating%20Black.

The other type of helpmate would the husband who helps with the dishes, but that's a survival skill of sorts. — Hanover

:fire:

Superb! I didn't realize until your post that playing to lose is a variation of the type of games I'm attempting to analyze.

Hope. It is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of your greatest strength and your greatest weakness. — The Architect (The Matrix)

Point made, point taken. The world is, I hope/suspect, big enough to accommodate our two divergent viewpoints.

The first port of call is to make list of casus belli. In my humble opinion that's a good place to start if our aim is to find a solution to the problem of war!

Lemme get the ball rolling...

1. Territory

2. Resources

3. Honor
.
.
.

Your turn!

I was speaking more about the aesthetics of the created bodies of artificial intelligence rather than their specific artistic abilities. Your point about their own creative capabilities would raise the question as to what kind of minds can be created as artificial intelligence — Jack Cummins

What would beauty be to AI? Will it be identical/similar to our own (subjective/objective) standards of beauty? Remember wide hips, a feminine aesthetic feature, has a very sound biological rationale - women with hourglass figures are likely to be fertile and survive childbirth! In short, there's logic to beauty!

:ok: Didn't know that! Gracias.


:up:

A more concrete instance of what I stated in the OP: survival games which life itself is!

To both of the two posters above & others

What's the (Platonic) Forms of such games, games im which the point is to be the slowest/weakest?

Excelente!

Back when I was in college, we learned of what could be described as an emergency response plan for people an animals. It was taught to us as fight or flight response and it seems that was only two-thirds of the story in a manner of speaking - there's also freeze, the full complement of our emergency response plan being enumerated as fight or flight or freeze response. The freeze component is taken to an extrema in possums known for "rolling over and playing dead" which kinda vindicates my earlier claim that animals only attack when provoked (when they perceive a threat).

Could a deer be an existential threat to a tiger? Worth pondering upon!

Random musings.

Most interesting — Ms. Marple

You broached an interesting topic: can AI produce art?



If we (make the egregious error) of distinguishing AI from humans based on the ability to create art, write poetry, basically differences based on creativitivity, I'm afraid we'll have to either categorize some of us as subhumans or others as superhumans. That, to my reckoning, is going to go sideways faster than you can say Jack Robinson. That's that!

Furthermore, we seem to make a hue and cry of how the glamor industry in particular and all others in general photoshop their products and services. We do the same for children and we don't complain, hiding the dark underbelly of humanity as it were and applying filters on their minds so that all they see are sunshine and rainbows.

Another point is that the internet is just a modern, technologically upgraded, incarnation of an older version of a knowledge network based on real people and books.

What sayest though, monsieur/mademoiselle?

I don't know your back story Agent Smith but based on some of your postings, you are quite harsh on yourself. You don't need to put yourself down, there are plenty of nasties out there who get great pleasure out of doing that for you. You should take great pleasure every time you defeat them by not putting yourself down. Humility yes, genuine self-deprecation no f****** way!!!!!!! — universeness

Let's just say that I know there's always a bigger fish out there somewhere. Perhaps I compare myself to Socrates or Einstein or Gödel, basically someone with an IQ that's orders of magnitude greater than mine. My self-effacing manner is but an acknowledgement of genius (read Buddhas, sensu lato) past, present and future. :smile:

control — universeness

Yep, that's something I wanted to touch upon, it slipped my mind. Isn't it better to control one's passion "apps" than to delete them altogether? Isn't a man who wanted to kill but didn't better than the man (the Buddha?) who never has murderous intentions? I dunno, the jury's still out!

Sounds like an equal starting point for all of us then. — universeness

Si, we're back to square one! Snakes & Ladders. I always get eaten by the longest snake!

If we look at causality from a mathematical perspective, say as a function (input $\to f \to$ output), I think we have a good place to start as regards proving the necessity of causality. I dunno, just a random thought!

But I know one thing. Nobody knows the truth. — Vincent

:clap:

transhumanism — universeness

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for transhumanism but I feel you're expanding its scope in a way unintended by its proponents - into modifying our nature which is being done as we speak via incarceration and executions which amount to expulsion from the gene pool. In short, we're doing to ourselves what we've been doing to dogs over the past 30k years or so. While the intentions maybe honorable, the road to hell is paved with good intentions says an old adage. It may backfire is what I mean.

All that is speculation of course. The future is wrapped in an impenetrable fog.

Do you think that future life extension and more protection against suffering etc will cause humans to become less territorial, less aggressive towards others? — universeness

Tough question! I've heard this said more often than I could care to count but don't animals attack only when provoked? In other words, aggression maybe a good thing, part of our wilderness survival toolkit.

What I would suggest however is to channel that aggression into more benign activities (part of the ability model of EQ) like sports, board games like chess, you get the idea!

Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting. — George Orwell

:ok: Great way to get this thread going! Although my intention was to discuss structural aesthetics of the www, it seems content too has a bearing on how beautiful/grotesque the internet is. So, yeah, the web is/maybe a work of art, but the venomous arcachnid at the center is truly hideous!

There is a book called "life after death", it talks about survivors of clinical death, and their experiences.
most of them shared similar experiences, things such as "out of body" and "light and the end of tunnel" phenomena. — SpaceDweller

Well, for some of us who got a raw deal in life, I hope there's a second chance!

epistemology-constrained ontology — 180 Proof

I want to run something by you. It's been troubling me for a long time.

The Unanswered Questions

So legend has it that the Buddha refused to answer the following questions:

1. Does the Tathagatha exist after death?

2. Does the Tatagatha cease to exist after death?

3. Does the Tathagatha exist & cease to exist after death?

4. Does the Tathagatha neither exist nor cease to exist after death?

My question is this: Does the Buddha know in the sense that post-death these categories are N/A or does the Buddha not know what happens post-mortem? In other words is Buddha's stance (Noble Silence) ontological or epistemological?

For what it's worth, I'd say Kant was right on the money as regards immorality being a contradiction. I'm gonna speak in hedonic terms, hoping for a synthesis between deontological ethics & utiliatrian ethics. Contradictions are painful, ja?

We know upfront mirages are fake because it can be proven.
hallucinations, I don't know.

but things such as clinical death are real. — SpaceDweller

I like how those who've really thought things through speak/act. Clinical death! :up:

There are two components to a, any, mind:

1. The way a mind thinks (thinking style). Reminds me of Kung Fu and the numerous fighting styles in it.

2. What a mind thinks about (mental content).

Thinking style can be learned, passed on from one mind to another. Mental contents too can be.

So, yeah, minds can be uploaded onto other minds and hence onto computers.

What are our options?

(i) X is detectable then X exists (Rejected because of hallucinations)

(ii) X exists then X is detectable (Ok, can be used to demonstrate nonexistence via nondetectability)
— Agent Smith

Detectable implies material, but God is not material.
Therefore "detectable" should be defined so that it includes nonmaterial detection, ie. psychological phenomena, fulfillment of prayer and similar — SpaceDweller

What about so-called hallucinations/mirages?

:up:

I like the way you make ideals another type of being. It's close to what I said once in another thread. There's no nonexistence, just different kinds of existence. I think Meinong of Meinong's jungle fame thought along the same lines. On this view it's wrong to say God, or anything else for that matter, doesn't exist. God exists but not in the same way as (say) a rock! Wordplay?

What's this little idea you always seem to be alluding to about points Agent Smith? — chiknsld

I can't remember the rest of the lecture! :rofl:

Well, I'm of the view that definitions, like propositions, are subject to the Münchhausen Trilemma:

1. Infinite regress of definitions/proofs
2. Circular definitions/proofs
3. Undefined terms/unproven assumptions.

What I wished to convey was that, at least in math, the choice is 3: We begin with undefined terms e.g. points.

Is it possible for something to have no effect? Here's an example of one: I push against the Great Wall of China. Nothing happens! The force I exerted didn't have any effect.

However, my intuition revolts, for some unknown reasons, against this easily demonstrable factoid. Something in me tells me that everything has an effect, should have an effect.

On that view, walking under a ladder or breaking a mirror or wearing a lucky tie, and so on, all, should produce an effect, desirable/undesirable is an open question. As herein relevant, prayer is a bona fide cause of misery/joy/something else.

Note, prayer is, bottom line, telekinesis/psychokinesis, matter being directly influenced by (good/bad) thoughts (prayer) i.e. shortcircuiting normal channels of affecting matter (contact). Spooky action at a distance in other words!

mine is currently the last reply in that thread — Wayfarer

:smile:

I like a truly simplistic explanation: When embedded in spacetime logical necessity becomes physical causation. :nerd: — jgill

Hats off to you! :up:

@Wayfarer Thought you might be interested

:point: If a first cause is necessary...

Good that you brought it up. It seems all arguments for/against free speech/censorship are those categorized as arguments from consequences.

So free speech or censorship = anarchy or oppression (consequences).

Why is life so complicated? :chin:

You know something exists when you believe it exists, it does exist, and you have epistemic reason to believe it exists. — Bartricks

You sound like Anselm.