¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Do you see the point? — GLEN willows

No, unfortunately no. What is your point? Nature's a mood-altering device? Intriguing and not in the least. It's as is she (momma nature) has her own mood cycles: summer & spring ( :smile: ), autumn & winter ( :sad: ). Mother nature is bipolar?

I didn't mean to suggest that karma is a means to an/some end. I simply wanted to point out that karma is a law of nature, every bit as real as Einstein's E = mc² or, more to the point, Newton's action = reaction.

Mastication is basically a process that initiates the digestive process, breaking food down into smaller and smaller (manageable) pieces. The basic idea is to increase the surfacre area of the food so that chemical reactions occur faster and more efficiently (digestion is a chemical reaction). Chewing bears a close resemblance to the martial tactic of divide and conquer. Military strategists might wanna make a note of that. Coders too.

Chew on that while I ruminate some more on this fascinating topic.

Not so - retaliating, 'paying someone back', is not karma. On the contrary, it would be regarded as a bad karmic act. — Wayfarer

Yes, I was mulling over that. What is karma?

Karma (ˈkɑːrmə/; Sanskrit: कर्म, IPA: [ˈkɐɾmɐ] (listen); Pali: kamma) means action, work, or deed.[1] For the believers in spirituality the term also refers to the spiritual principle of cause and effect, often descriptively called the principle of karma, wherein intent and actions of an individual (cause) influence the future of that individual (effect): Good intent and good deeds contribute to good karma and happier rebirths, while bad intent and bad deeds contribute to bad karma and bad rebirths. — Wikipedia

Are you agreeing/disagreeing with the above exposition on Karma by Wikipedia?

I thought karma is what goes around comes around, positively and negatively; in a you reap what you sow kinda way.

I'm genuinely curious, lemme ask again, what is karma?

"Twins" (I know from having 2 sets of uncles who are 'identical') are not the same. "Mind twins" would (could) not be the same either. You, my friend, are not the same you that you were yesterday, a decade ago or as a child. — 180 Proof

You breaked my toy! :cry:

What? Those hairless apes that immediately cooked their own planet?

Sounds legit — apokrisis

:smile:

You live in a culture that doesn't believe in natural moral laws. Put another way, the only natural laws that our culture recognises are physical. In other cultures it was assumed that misbehaviour would reap its consequences either through divine retribution or the law of karma. — Wayfarer

Your reply is an eye-opener for me. Merci beaucoup, monsieur!

Kant was, I believe, trying to make moral laws as all-encompassing and as strict as natural laws. Act only according to maxims that you would will to be universal laws(Categorical Imperative). I guess his view was it's aut Caesar aut nihil (all or nothing).

As you so kindly reminded me karma and retribution is a law of nature: Don't we (try to) settle scores? It feels natural to avenge a wrong. Hence justice, its civilized avatar. Don't we also like to return a favor or repay a kindness? The law of karma is real, at least in the here and now, in this life.

I've discovered another reason why miracles (violation of the laws of nature, including karmic law) are associated/atrributed to divinity (godliness). When one refuses to retaliate for a wrong you are, surprise, surprise, in breach of the natural law of karma i.e this is as miraculous as Jesus' resurrection.

Of course, the flip side of it is to, well, bite the hand that feeds you, an instance of again going against the law of karma. Evil too can perform miracles and in the days of yore this was known as witchcraft and sorcery (Satanic magick).

"Forced tickle torture can cause real physical and mental distress in a victim, which is why it has been used as an interrogation method or to simply show dominance over another person. Usually tickling is done on feet and armpits after tying the person's ankles and wrists. The recipient is also often stripped to their underwear." — EugeneW

:up: I just feel it's the least worst option. Could be way off the mark though.

the word 'real' is perhaps unnecessary. — lll

:fire: Perhaps nothing is necessary. Reality is overrated. Why is the film industry a multi-billion dollar enterprise?

I would like to understand what you are arguing about. — Angelo Cannata

:lol: Let there be peace on earth.

Colors are nature's way of expressing her emotions! Bright colors - she's on cloud nine, Crimson & fiery red - she's in the mood or she's screaming "off with his head!" :wink: , Blue - despondent, and so on.

But everything we do is for a good. — Metaphysician Undercover

:rofl:

stillborn ideology — I like sushi

:lol: Good one! Blighted ovum! Much worse, more painful.

Propaganda, what is it?

Truth, sexed up, and/or lies sold as truths. Reminds me of how business is done these days. It's like driving at 39.99999 km/hr or 40.0000001 km/hr on a stretch of road with a speed limit of 40 km/hr. She loves me, she loves me not, she loves me, she loves me not,... Moral cops looking at each other with blank expressions. Is s/he breaking the law? Well, yes, but not really.

Yeah, yeah!

Tickle Torture

:rofl:

Reserved for terrorists who refuse to divulge the secret locations of their bombs!

No God No Laws — Wayfarer

I'm just flummoxed by the fact that when I do something bad, I don't break any known laws of nature. Evil is perfectly compatible with the known laws of the universe. Quite dishearteningly, good seems less harmonious with how the world works. There's the reason why miracles are thought of as divine - they violate the laws of nature in a manner of speaking. God vs. God! He must be outta his mind!

Why do I feel like "conscription" falls in the same category as "passed away", "bought the farm", "left for his/her heavenly abode"?

Sometimes to show that something is not real, we employ the literary device of describing it in totally unbelievable (read impossible) terms. The Bible (could be) is just a joke which people, for obvious reasons, took (too) seriously. Those of us who got the joke are atheists (the Biblia Sacra is a book of contradictions, reductio ad absurdum i.e. the metaphorical feather stroking our soles).

Time has an odd geometry: it's linear & circular. If it's 5:00 PM today, it's again 5:00 PM (circular), but tomorrow (linear). Line + Circle = Sine wave (?)

Time Never Begins

But it's Saturday 19^th March, 2022.

Take that, Pembroke scholars!

Now you just need to show me a correlation, except that one side of that correlation is...private and impossible to show by definition. Do you see it ?

Note that I do not dispute that you can fish for correlations between different kinds of public entities. But it's nonsense to speak of mathematically linking public entities to 'ghosts' that defined precisely as that which can never be made manifest to others.

Think of it this way : a scientist says...listen fellows, so there's this stuff that only I can see and ... clearly there's a relationship of this only-I-can-see-stuff with the peanut butter consumption in Minneapolis.

The temptation is to derive synchronization of sign use from synchronization of qualia, but I find it more plausible to derive the intuition that qualia are synchronized from the synchronization of sign use. Consider the movie Her. Folks will fall in love with operating systems soon enough, simply because the sweet talk will sweet enough. — lll

There is no reason to doubt that our private experiences are not identical. Were they not, if they were even slightly different, society as we know it would collapse. Is it? Hard to say, we seem not too worried about an implosion of our way of life.

If I were to see Hate and you were to see Love when we both see a pretty girl, we wouldn't be able to talk to each other without, what's obviously silly, it ending in a quarrel; that's what Wittgenstein is saying with his idea of private, inner lives.

His ideas don't jibe with how things are (relative peace & quiet).

Uniqueness is actual, a result of differing experiences; Sameness is potential & actual (we could be mind twins for all we know).

Occam's razor, :kiss: Men are simple folk. Women, no, they remind me of Rube Goldberg machines, they do!

beauty — lll

A curve is beautiful, feminine. I wonder why we're hell bent on finding linear correlations. So masculine straight lines are.

I'd rather use a sine wave or some such like than a straight line. It would make my life hell, but women, they seem to love to do that to me!

Without a single data point? — lll

Genes?

qualia — lll

Nonphysicalism hanging by a thread. It's the last stand. Do or die!

false assumption. — EugeneW

Why is it a false assumption. It's proven that genes are the determiners of our physical makeup. We use genes? :chin:

but...It doesn't make sense to say either that they are poles apart or just the same — lll

I thought I made the case for our private experiences being similar (enough for government work) or even exactly identical.

Thinking about someone you haven't seen in years showing up around the corner — EugeneW

:lol:

:up:

Can you explain?

As the accuracy of measurement increases, do we have to switch between theories like it was done in your example with Mercury's precession?

Like you said, somewhere, it's about resolution - images (of the universe) at different resolutions isn't a question of plugging in more accurate values into the same equation; we need an entirely different set of equations. I can't quite wrap my head around this. It feels odd.

Logic! Given that we're all human, we all have the same genes, genes that determine, at the very least, our general physical structures (including the brain), does it make sense to say our private experiences could be poles apart? If one apple tastes sweet, another does too, then another yet, aren't all apples sweet?

Like @180 Proof has twice reminded me: doubt must have a reason. Why should we doubt my private, inner life as not the same as yours or anyone else's - we're all cut from the same cloth in a manner of speaking, oui?

Nevertheless, cultural differences do exist (right?) between, broadly speaking, the Occident and the Orient.

Right you are.

Qualia, the ineffable aspect of consciousness, always at hand to remind ourselves that many questions in the philosophy of mind remain (as of yet) unanswered.

What's your take on telepathy? Is it real? If it is, what are the implications vis-à-vis qualia and consciousness? Can I get inside your head?

Good point. I take Wittgenstein to show that the meaning of the 'Yahweh' is not inside each of its users but rather in the outside in the way the mark 'Yahweh' functions along with other worldly objects. If you want the 'meaning' of 'Yahweh,' look for it as you might look for the 'meaning' of money. See what people do with the little pieces of paper, how they fit in with other things people do — lll

What all of us do with "Yahweh"? That's public meaning, oui? In Wittgenstein's universe, that's about all the meaning a word can have; any private meaning, as he said and you pointed out, "drops out of consideration and becomes irrelevant".

Sensations aren't exactly perfect when it comes to conveying Wittgenstein's point for they have secondary public correlates (facial expressions, body language that is).

A purely subjective, completely private experience that doesn't have outwardly noticeable features would be just what Wittgenstein needeed. It's odd that he couldn't find one such thing.

Perhaps we evolved to be physically, observably, expressive such that we could decode each others' private thoughts & feelings easily and accurately. It's orders of magnitude better than guessing which would be necessary sans :smile: :sad: etc. You get the idea.

Many people have learnt to act true to Shakespeare's belief that all the world's a stage and And all the men and women merely players. It's not a good idea, so I was warned, to wear your heart on your sleeves.

Lady Macbeth: Your face, my thane, is a book, where men may read strange matters. (Shakespeare again).

People who can override/alter the evolved causal chain between thoughts/feelings and body language are inscrutable. Many people aspire to such a level of control over their bodies.

Where was I?

An exclusive private experience, looks like, doesn't exist. However, we can throw people off the scent so to speak. The reason we possess this ability is probably because it's is a dog-eat-dog world and being easy to read could turn out to be an Achilles' heel if happiness, etc. is a priority.

Now what?

Stoics playing poker. Now that I'd like to see! It's on my bucket list.

hubris where some leading scientists thought that reality was pretty much explained. — lll

There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement. — Lord Kelvin

How much does precision determine the validity of scientific theories? If a missle is accurate within 200 m, does it follow the same laws of nature as one that can hit a traget with an error of 10 m?

Any mathologers around here who could help?

The irony of it all (for me) is that Trump introduced me to the idea of fake news and he was busy denouncing real news as fake (not surprising because he wasn't exactly doing well in the public image front) while praising the fake news which portrayed him as a competent president as real news.

Truths and lies were swapped for each other. Truths were labeled lies and vice versa. The media was used against itself - it was surreal and still is I suppose.

SHOOT HIM! HE'S THE CLONE!

Abdera ăbdē´rə [key] or Avdiraävdē´rä [key], town, NE Greece, in Thrace, near the mouth of the Mesta River. It is a small agricultural settlement. Founded (c.650 BC) by colonists from Clazomenae, it was destroyed by the Thracians (c.550 BC) and rebuilt (c.500 BC) by refugees from Teos. The town passed to Macedon in 352 BC and in 198 BC became a free city under Roman rule. The term Abderite was used by the ancient Greeks as a synonym for stupid. However, the philosophers Protagoras, Leucippus, and Democritus lived there.

For the record, I have nothing against sophists.

a living dog is better than a dead lion. — lll

:lol:

Agent Smith alive is better than Socrates dead. :grin:

I was thinking of randomness on the level of particles, which must play a role in mutation and add up to whether a rock falls on the head of a critter or even (eventually) whether an asteroid smashes into our blue planet. — lll

Indeed, to understand randomness at all scales, one has to go its source, the level where it's most conspicuous, most apparent, most obvious - particles.