Do you want to
I have a way of knowing it -- but I won't say it here because then forum members would know not to do it anymore. And no, it has nothing to do with intellectual activities. — L'éléphant

I would like to know, yes, if there is a mind sex determination method based solely on one's intellectual output.

In medicine sex determination of fetuses is a criminal offense in some countries (e.g. India) because of female infanticide. Ultrasonography has been the bane of girls in countries/regions that prefer males over females. Who would've thought bats could have such a devastating effect on the fairer sex.

To All

What about so-called internet scams where men pose as girls and lure other men into traps using child pornography among other things.

Doesn't it remind you of the Twin Paradox?

A 40 year old waitress' biological clock moves faster than a 40 year old heiress'.

Yeah, women use their sex appeal to gain an (unfair) advantage over their competitors (men and other women). I'm quite puzzled actually that academia pre-1900s was so anti-woman. Are intellectuals immune to a lady's charms? Just imagine an all-male university board interviewing a female applicant who's good-looking. Couldn't she have then won them over simply by openly flaunting her beauty as happens in this day and age? Something doesn't add up, oui?

Without trying to check with an internet search, I doubt that is true in terms of recognition. — praxis

It was only a guesstimate, it's not a 100% true perhaps, but it does contain the proverbial grain of truth.

:up: So AI can't differentiate men from women. Intriguing to say the least. I wonder what are the textual sex indicators/determinants the AI assesses. It needs to be kept in mind that the AI is human-programmed; ergo, the AI's failure to identify the sex of an individual from only text means even humans (the coders and by extension the general population) have no clear-cut criterion to pin down the sex of minds.

Ok but if we go by brain size, how can neuroscientist distinguish the brain of an adult female from that of a teenaged boy (their brain sizes should be about the same)?

Too, I'm more interested in the functional aspects of the brain rather than its anatomy. If I were to read, for example, an essay, can I use it to deduce the sex of a person?

eternal life and eternal health — TiredThinker

cellular aging — TiredThinker

The aging (physical or mental) rate is not uniform. If you've had a stressful life, your body advances in age faster than someone who's the same chronological age as you but had an easier life. A manual laborer at 40 looks older than a 40 year old who works in an office. My hunch is that the key to solving the mystery of aging is to be found in this difference.

What does it mean to see a point "vaguely"? Does this mean that the point only has a vague existence, or does it mean that your mind only has a vague grasp of it? Or both, or neither? If the point itself is in your mind, then I would conclude both. — Metaphysician Undercover

Well, it's not at all clear that for the infinite monkey theorem to work infinite time is necessary. Imagine if I have an infinity of googol-sided (10¹⁰⁰) dice. Getting a googol on one roll of one such die is vanishingly small, unlikely. However, if I roll all of them (infinite googol-sided dice) at once (think multiverse), at least one of the outcomes will be a googol; the time required is finite - the average amount of time a die will take stop rolling - and not infinite.

Athena was decidedly ‘feminine’ though :) — I like sushi

Noted! :up: Sophia! If you notice, fools/imbeciles depicted in art and literature are usually men! :grin: Perhaps the takeaway is the best are men and so also the worst.

Yep, it's interesting alright. Assuming the logic we use is masculine (Aristotle, Chrysippus, Leibniz, Frege, all men), do you think there's a feminine logic? Banno once started a thread on logical nihilism, the speaker/lecturer was a woman, a Ms. Gillian Russell. Wikipedia has a list of logicians, the field seems dominated by men and most importantly no breakthroughs are attributed to the fairer sex. What about Agatha Christie and her creation, Hercule Poirot, the diminutive detective with a knack for solving mysteries using his "little grey cells"?

In the arts, however, women are giving men a run for their money. They stand toe-to-toe with the best of men writers/poets/painters, sometimes outshining them in these domains.

Lol I just guess the sex based on the name. — SatmBopd

That may not always work because some names are unisex.

Have you accounted for the greed factor (radix omnium malorum est cupiditas)? Desire, some say, is a bottomless pit.

Yeah but most of us now advocate for much more civilised behavior than was required under the Darwinian laws of the jungle. In fact, more and more people insist on it — universeness

I'll take your word for it.

Yeah, I did mention that existing gender roles, carried over from history, implies there'll be differences between male and female experiences; this will likely seep into forum discussions as different approaches, attitudes, and so on.

Could logic have a feminine incarnation? The Greeks thought that rationality was masculine and the passions as girly.

Well I did mention that God is the perfect man, feels like it was women who came up with god as the strong, brainy, kind-hearted gentleman! Men wouldn't do anything to sell themselves short like that, oui? As it is the competition is already a do or die kind; isn't that why love and war are equivalent in terms of fairness (all is fair in love and war) which is another way of saying fairness is not really a priority in these matters. Anything goes, no-holds-barred, free-for-all, if there is a law, it's the law of the jungle; aut nec aut necare!

Which is just so........human, isn't it. — universeness

Human, si!

Some really interesting ideas there. That last sentence, in particular. — Wayfarer

Merci beaucoup, monsieur/mademoiselle!

Proto-consciousness cooked your goose, did it for you, oui? :smile:

The human mind looks at an image of a bird and sees a bird. A computer looks at an image of a bird and it sees 1s and 0s, some advanced AI probably can process an image in terms of pixels but that's about it.

Photshop does something really interesting though. It picks out the borders between differently colored pixels, even if irregular and curved. That's in fact the secret behind many photo editing software. It's a start for computers, they can now at least "see" the general shape of objects; rudimentary animal vision, won't you agree?

Something's not quite right, yes?

Does that "we" include women? — Noble Dust

Women + men. A role model for the former, an object of desire for the latter.

:ok: The muses, if memory serves, were females, the source of artistic inspiration, oui? Thanks for reminding me of that. I owe you one!

As per Wikipedia, there are 3 muses

1. Aoide ("song" or "tune") which I intepret as innate talent.

2. Melete ("practice" or "occasion") which is praxis, a must.

3. Mneme ("memory"), one must recall the "song" and what was all that practising?.

Generally, if any of the muses ditch you (see what they're doing there?), your aspirations to produce great works of art are not going to be fulfilled; you'll just be like the rest of us, wannabe thises and wannabe thatses.



One question (aside): Why is it that when something good happens, it's because of team work, and when something bad happens, it's because of a proverbial bad apple, an individual?

Is it right to claim a handful of artists and intellectuals as a collective human achievement while singling out the Jeffrey Dahmers, Ted Bundies and Hitlers as outliers, anomalies?

It doesn't add up, oui?

I wonder if the Voyager Golden Record contains information on psychopaths, wars, and other atrocious acts humans have commited since the dawn of "civilization"? Reminds me of the Mantis Orchid! :fear:

mind is a mirror that mirror that mirrors man's mind. — Watchmaker

As Wayfarer keeps mentioning ever so often, a consciousness can't make of itself an object, it being the quintessential subject. Have you heard the Japanese tale of a man who was in the habit of looking at himself in the mirror every morning? One fine day, he looked and saw no head. He was convinced that he'd lost his head and turned the entire room over for his head. He eventually went back to the mirror and there was his head, as round as it had always been (he'd been looking at the back of his mirror). He was looking for his head with his head..

I guess the modern version of self-reflection is the selfie. I just went through my notes on philosophy and here's what I believe is a nugget of wisdom on art: Art isn't a photograph (representationalism only, like it was in the old days), but if you're gonna make any headway in re temet nosce, you better have a photographer who can produce a faithful copy of you rather than an artist who'll distort the image of your self with her own personal eccentricities.

As I mentioned in my previous post, there has to be an internal representation of the world that then can be thought of: The mind is about the world via the image of the world it has, an image created with the aid of our senses and our minds in partnership with each other.

That's all I have...limited panpsychism. Only mirrors or the like, objects that can reflect the world in them, can be conscious and if not that, can be treated as proto-conscious.

Don't you know there ain't no devil, there's just God when he's drunk
- Tom Waits, Heartattack and Vine — Tom Storm

:lol:

Here's the deal.

When presented with choices, most would say they assess the pros and cons of each option. This involves judging the consequences of every available alternative and we then make selection that best suits our overall aim in life.

In our imagination, we make all the choices offered. In actuality, we make only one that, as I said, is best for us. Please remember not to confuse a best choice with a pleasurable/joyful one.

To cut to the chase, in the virtual environment of our minds we've travelled down all possible paths branching out from a choice node (a point where one has to make a choice) but in the real world, we're limited to only one of them.

Can both of these (virtual choices & actual choices) be determined? Don't forget, the actual choice is aligned with our will (re Schopenhauer), but the virtual choices need not be so; in fact, virtual choices are completely unrestricted as we can simulate every possibility. That's freedom, virtual free will, as far as I can see.

Is Satan Evil or is Satan Praxidice andromorphized?

A female partner-deity of God would probably align with our conception of the ideal woman (beauty with brains, a good soul). Note for some men, beauty is all they want, the rest of a woman's qualities like intelligence and scruples are either unwanted or treated as bonuses.

Yahweh's consort/Goddess: Omniscient (science) + Omniaesthetic (art) + Omnibenevolent (ethics).

Perhaps our fascination with art (beauty), which is to a fault, is a sign that we yearn for a female deity, the Goddess who sits next to God.

Toxic masculinity. I thought that meant threatening to use or actually using physical force to settle differences or arguments.

While this is a known fallacy, argumentum ad baculum, William James thought differently: it's ok to believe in something when it's forced upon you (re Islamic conversion by the sword). How long such beliefs last is hard to say, but going by how many Moslems there are today, I'd say the effect persists through many generations, oui? Death or Islam! Not really a choice, is it? Islam's toxic masculinity? :chin: Hmmmmm...

I'll take the first bite.

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. — Genesis 1:27

Theomorphism: We're the likeness of god, physically and mentally. Not much has been said of god's appearance but the Greeks believed that rationality is the most divine quality we possess. To Leibniz, minds are little gods.

---

Anthropomorphism: The gods seem to possess human qualities, the only difference was that the devas were more powerful than humankind.

Later, it must've dawned on theists that god had to be (re theomorphism) the perfect human being and thus to power were added goodness and a knowledge. Out pops at the other end our ol' friend, the familiar OOO God (omnipotent, omnsicient, omnibenevolent).

If you notice, the OOO god is our conception of the ideal man, the eligible bachelor - physically strong, is smart and has a good heart. This makes me think it was a bunch of women who defined God this way. They were projecting their thoughts of the perfect mate onto God. God is a woman's (sexual) fantasy! Go figure!

God's a role model for men and Mr. Right for women. In other words, 3 things we gotta take care of:

1. Physical fitness (violence is always a possibility)
2. Moral compass (you gotta be a good person, have a heart)
3. Knowledge (you need brains too)

To the extent that I'm aware, consciousness, as many posters have remarked, has this so-called aboutness i.e. in the simplest of senses holds something, an other (other-awareness) or sometimes itself (self-awareness). This, in my humble opinion, requires for the mind to create and then latch on a facsimile image of this other or itself. Remember this image has to be perfect mind-apt replica of the real thing for the aboutness to work. A good example of what I mean is how our eyes hold an image of the world or even a single object and our minds then become aware of the world or this object via the image.

If all I said is true, the first order of business for consciousness is to create high quality images of the world and that's done by mirrors. I guess what I mean to say here is that mirrors possess a mind-like aboutness (the reflection or image is of/about something). Mirrors could be conscious or, to be conservative, mirrors have taken the first step towards consciousness.

Please note my use of the word "image" is both literal and figurative e.g. creating a mind-apt replica of sounds in one's surroundings is also an image, an acoustic one to be precise.

I don't think it's a coincidence that a synonym for thinking (consciousness) is reflection.

Good question. First cause seems to conflate both efficient and final cause. Ask a theist for more clarity I guess — apokrisis

:ok: That's a good answer! :up: Perhaps design (formal cause) + creator (efficient cause) + telos (final cause).

But if you frame your notion of final cause so that it only applies to humans, or even organisms, then you rob it of that kind of causal status as it is not a necessary part of nature as a whole. It becomes just a local accident of evolutionary history.

So if you want to argue for intelligent design - big daddy in the sky - you still have to try all the usual rhetorical tricks to make it seem you are making a solid causation-based argument.

Note that the whole "everything needs a cause" creating God is yet further evidence that a narrow "cause and effect", or efficient cause, model of causality is too limited. A larger model of causality is required — apokrisis

I get what you mean. It's better to leave Aristotle's 4 causes unmolested. I simply wanted to know which of these 4 causes (one/a combination) is being referred to in the Cosmological Argument (first cause) for God's existence.

The point being that the monkey needs all of eternity (infinite time). Assign any particular amount of time to the monkey and it is highly probable that it would not complete the task in that time. Give the monkey infinite time, and it is impossible that it will not complete the task. As I said above, this just shows how ridiculous the concept of infinite time is. — Metaphysician Undercover

I see your point, only vaguely though.

Not merit, but growth. — Punshhh

:ok:

The infinite monkey theorem, as a rendition of the principle of plenitude, is really a demonstration that the idea of infinite time is ridiculous — Metaphysician Undercover

I still feel, time isn't really a factor in re the infinite monkey theorem. Why, as you yourself so graciously pointed out only one monkey would be needed for this rather boring task, it has all of eternity to try out all character combinations.

Say you roll 2 die, the odds of you rolling a 3 on either of them is twice the odds with just one die. Extrapolate that and with $\infty$ macaques, one will get it right immediately. What say you?

Also I disagree with your point about random mystics achieving the goal eventually. — Punshhh

I guess you feel merit plays a role in all this. One must be pure of heart or a diamond in the rough (Aladdin, Disney), oui? Bad karma, it's said, can cloud your judgment, you wouldn't see God even if He appeared in person in front of you.

With bad karma,

1. You won't know what nirvana is.

2. Even if you know what nirvana is, you won't be able to attain it.

3. Even if you attain nirvana, you won't know you attained it.

4. Even if you know you attained nirvana, you won't reap its benefits.

5. Even if you reap its benefits,...ad nauseam (you'll never be 100%)

According to Tibetan Buddhism, everyone is a buddha. It's just that their bad karma stops them from realizing their own buddhahood (buddha nature). Introvertive mysticism; turn on your little gods (minds, re Leibniz).

One monk's change in heart, once it metastasizes and reaches critical mass initiates an unstoppable chain reaction which is precisely what a Marxist would love to be credited with but for a different purpose. It just dawned on me that is a meme version of a nuclear bomb but millions of times more powerful, some have a blast radius that spans the entire globe!

Depression, severe or not, is defined in terms of how debilitating it is (your life just falls to pieces).

However, if ever there was a person who handled it like a pro it was the Buddha who I've diagnosed, retrospectively, as a life spent battling melancholia of the most pernicious kind. Evidence? His first noble truth: Life is suffering. I don't think depression gets worse than that. Siddhartha must've contemplated suicide every day of his 80 years on earth. That's hell if you ask me. It's just amazing how he maintained his clarity of mind against such an emotional onslaught! You da man, Gautama!

Depression as a tool? Via dolorosa??? :chin: The way of pain, reserved for the most advanced practitioners of, for lack of a better term, religions.

:ok:

I was under the impression that it's kinda like a lottery. If the right number of people play, one is sure to win (doesn't take an infinite amount of time to actualize an event with a probability near-zero but not zero).

So, if we have an infinity of monkeys, one of 'em should produce the entire works of Shakespeare, in fact everything that was written, is being written, and will be written in a finite amount of time determined by typing speed and the size of all written/spoken text.

Imagine if this were doable. We could find out what Socrates said to his wife Xanthippe (for gossip-mongers), what orders were issued, verbatim, by Napoleon to his general in secret, and so much more.

You know the infinite monkey theorem is a feature of an infinite amount of time. — Metaphysician Undercover

:ok: No, I wasn't aware of such a connection.

You have a point. To be a (good) philosopher embrace complexity (nuance & subtlety) was one advice/suggestion given to viewers by a youtube channel content creator, can't recall who though.

Yet from a certain vantage point, it is quite simple, oui. From another, one would have to throw up one's hands in sheer exasperation and utter frustration, going "what a hairy problem!" Novacula occami?

Look at this:



Simplicity, no? Outlines only as far as I can tell.

Many a slip betwixt cup and lip. Reminds me the JWST; as Wayfarer replied to a question of mine (vide infra)

Will things go awfully wrong for the JWST or will it go as planned?
— Agent Smith

JWST got through all 344 single-point failures - things that, if they had gone wrong, would have doomed the mission. So - so far it is going exactly as planned, astonishingly well, in fact. — Wayfarer

Infinite monkey theorem: There are so many attempting to hit the bullseye of mysticism, that one or two most definitely will, even if no skills but only luck is involved. Serendipity, how spectacular you are! Very few could put up a fight against the barbarian hordes: sheer numbers guaranteed victory/defeat depending on which side of the battle you were on.

Art-Science-God: Divine Simplicity as in ; ) or in more familiar form :wink: Also $\downarrow$

Like I said, art is (has become) a language. "I love you" and "F**k off" are both valid expressions in English, a language, oui? Likewise for art vis-à-vis good & evil.

If you die young, does that mean you got your wish - eternal youth? If it's all wordplay, genies must exist, not in bottles or lamps, or is that a quibble too?

No man means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous. — Henry Adams

you will still eventually get hit by a bus — Miller

Better than being thrown under the bus by your "friend", oui?

Computers can't parse ambiguity, vagueness, metaphor or the like. Coders wil vouch for me that this does get a little exasperating: bugs in a piece of code, in addition to being logic bombs, are also due to our ability to work with lack of clarity in language annd a computer's inability to do so. Is this a disability (bug) or an ability (feature)?

Leibniz, I'm informed, envisioned a perfect logical language. Does such a language emphasize clarity, I'm not sure? Should, in my humble opinion, should! However, such a language would ignore or invalidate a large part of everyday conversation. Are we spouting nonsense 90% of the time we converse with each other? :chin: