Nope, I definitely haven't done whatever you said. I also have no clue how to do that because I don't understand. — SkyLeach

Sorry to hear that. Good day.

Well, you haven't addressed the issue that something uncountable (the set of reals) could be mathematical i.e., to be precise, numerical in nature. The set of reals, as per mathematicians, can't be counted. How can something that can't be counted be mathematical? Can consciousness be counted?

[1]An imagination is a simulation but [2]a simulation doesn't need to be an imagination. [3]They are both simulations. An imagination is an imagined simulation. A simulation is just a simulation. — EugeneW

[1] Yes

[2] Yes

[3] :chin:

Not sure where you are or what you may have experienced, but based on what I've seen you're describing the opposite of today's approach and talk therapy is just one term - I am assuming by that you mean by counselling, which may not be 'therapeutic' but about problem solving and solutions focused to name key approaches). It's a big world out there. — Tom Storm

I've been to talk therapies and, as the name suggests, it's basically a conversation - the aim seems to be vent (one's frustrations) rather than treating the cause (of one's frustrations). No suprises there; after all, solutions to our problems, on more occasions than not, involve other people and people have rights to refuse taking part in your solutions. I mean why should anyone help you?

I think the right question, given how so many people have pinned the statistic in the OP to guns, is this:

What would happen if all countries in the world had the same (lax) gun laws as the US? I have a feeling the US murder rates will be rather low (comparatively).

Nothing odd there. If one suppresses death, one must also suppress life. They are two sides of the same coin. To live forever is exactly like being dead — Olivier5

:chin:

It seems this has always been the main approach most people used, and used a lot.
Remember, for the greater part of human history, human life was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short". And yet people somehow made it through it. Given the rich art history they've left behind, it seems they managed somehow. Perhaps they even coped better than we do, perhaps because their expectations about life were lower than ours — baker

:up:

Not really. If you look at public mental health campaigns in most Western countries the advice is defiantly not to shut up. It is the opposite. Usually it's, go see someone and talk to them about it - a doctor, a therapist, and shop around to get someone you click with and is actually helpful. Many big employers in my country offer free counselling to anyone who is dealing with trauma or grief and loss or depression. A lot of investment in this work was generated because of alarming suicide rates. — Tom Storm

We're supposed to come to terms with the way things are, miserable, rather than kvetch about it and become despondent. Much of talk therapy is aimed at getting people to accept their condition rather than cure it: learning to live with your problems instead of finding solutions for them.

Oh my god! You discovered the hidden truth that there is a rupture in mathematics! Division is not closed in the integers! A discovery as shocking as that Soylent Green is people! And there is not just your example, but thousands of them! Millions of them! Maybe even infinitely many of them! And this contagion is not confined just to mathematics but it affects even the entire garment industry! — TonesInDeepFreeze

:lol:

Jokes aside, my example is still in the rational domain. Perhaps I could give an example from construction/engineering: a circular $(\pi)$ dome like the one that tops the Hagia Sophia (Turkey) for an irrational number in the calculation.

We must learn to count with the reals, continuous as opposed to discrete, like the naturals.

What do you think of the following problem?

A man invests $7,127 in selling shirts. His selling price is 3 shirts for the price of $200. How many shirts must he sell to break even?

Where n = total sets of 3 shirts each he sells.
The money from selling n sets = 200n

$200n = 7127$

$n = 35.635$

The number of shirts he must sell to break even = $3 \times 35.635 = 106.905$

106.905 shirts!

The Antinatalism-Immortality Paradox

Once we've solved death and we become immortal, we can't have anymore children. Where's the space? So, just as the situation improves on a world, suffering becomes a thing of the past, natalism, paradoxically, stops being viable or reasonable. Odd that, given how the promise/guarantee of eternal life is, unequivocally, an invaluable gift you can bestow on the living.

Even so, there are similarities between simulation & imagination.

Rand defines altruism and selfishness in a very specific way. — ZzzoneiroCosm

That has to be, right?

Simulation: unreal/testing a scenario
Imagination: unreal/(also) testing a scenario

Notice how simulated worlds are fantasy worlds.

If there is objective truth (objective truth is actual), then objective truth is/has to be possible

□p $\rightarrow$ ◇p.

No. But I can imagine simulation software. — EugeneW

Yes, and...

I don’t think it’s my job to edify anybody. — Average

Your job duty is to justify your position then.

Altruism is, bottom line, cooperation; cooperation is, all said and done, a sign of weakness (I can't do this alone, help me). Am I now to take selfishness as sign of strength?

Humans can act like computers but can computers act like humans? — EugeneW

The first part of the statement is what's interesting. Just like there are computer games in which a vehicle's engine is simulated, why not let a human brain do the same simulation? Isn't our imagination a simulation software?

I see. :up:

Yes, it is a mathematical object. — ssu

Counting lies at the heart of mathematics. An uncountable object (e.g. the set of reals), therefore, must be, in some way, nonmathematical, oui?

That doesn't entail that mathematics must be limited to the natural numbers. — TonesInDeepFreeze

I understand. :ok:

Joe Mello. — dimosthenis9

:grin:

Agreed, in essence, but let's be honest here: she clearly delineates from selfishness and rational selfishness. Meaning, if this is a discussion about Rand, that needs to be the exclusive usage for the term. Same way if we were talking about Marx, we would discuss Capitalism from precisely his view, even the definitions are no longer the same today. Right? — Garrett Travers

I can say this much. The word "selfish" has a different meaning to its conventional one in Rand's works. If not I fail to parse her.

I know Michael Brooks' writing, but hadn't heard of that book - looks very interesting though. I'm not sure of the feasibility of simulating a computer in one's mind - you would have to have quite an extraordinary mind to do that, something which I lack. — Wayfarer

Good to know. Simulation, aka...acting: Data (Star Trek), Robocop, Terminator, etc. humans acting like computers (AI).

I guess the modern approach to mental health is get used to it! or, roughly, shut up or put up!
— Agent Smith

From the Buddhist point of view, that's encouraging people to endure needless suffering. The issue is that post-Enlightenment culture has lost sight of there being any way out of it, but that is due to its own philosophical shortcomings. — Wayfarer

:up:

I recall an anecdote I read decades ago about Arabs who used to play chess whilst riding camels across the desert - without a board. — Wayfarer

I'm reading this book on Mathematics, The Art of More it's called, by a Michael Brooks. It gives an account of how expert abacists can work sums with imagined/simulated abacuses. I find that quite fascinating, don't you? Do you think I can simulate a fully operational computer in my brain; you know, turn the idea of computer simulation on its head by reversing the roles - instead of a computer simulating a mind, why not let the mind simulate a computer for a change. Do you see any relevance/importance of this in the philosophy of mind?

The 'first noble truth' of Buddhism is that existence is 'dukkha' - generally translated as stressful, sorrowful, unsatisfactory. It is inherent to human existence, unavoidable - but there is a path out of dukkha, which is to identify the root cause. All of this is laid out and elaborated in innummerable ways by various schools of Buddhism.

The broader point however is that I think many ancient philosophies were oriented around the fact of existential dread and its amelioration - Stoicism, Platonism, and other Greek philosophies also approach it in those terms.

The radical problem with modern culture is that it seeks to 'normalise' the human condition, instead of seeing it as problematical or flawed, and then can't understand why happiness is still so hard to obtain — Wayfarer

I guess the modern approach to mental health is get used to it! or, roughly, shut up or put up! It makes sense, pragmatically speaking; after all, there's not much we can do to reduce all the suffering around us. To feel empathy and attempt to share the burden would be like throwing good money after bad. There's no need for the sorry lot to drag those better than them down into the pits of misery, oui?

The word "selfish" comes with a baggage that makes it unsuitable for use in an Ayn Randian sense which I believe is about being independent, able to stand on one's own two feet; self-reliant is another word that captures the Randian spirit of being capable of looking after oneself with the minimum of help/assistance/aid from others. I'm all for that interpretation of Ayn Rand's "selfishness". If we only learn to be self-supporting like many engineering marvels of the 20th century, I'm sure altruism will become as outmoded as top hats are these days.

I believe that I have some — Average

Pray tell, edify us as to what it is that you (seem to) know.

perfection is impossible — Average

One can't then expect a perfect answer to your question, oui?

:point: Perfect is the enemy of the good

Le meglio è l'inimico del bene. — Voltaire

Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without. — Confucius

The obvious or natural question is "does God exist?" and what about the ontological argument?

I’m not a skeptic — Average

Why not? Answer me, god damn it! Answer me! :grin:

I'm somehow not convinced by your words. Uncountability is, in a sense, beyond (conventional) mathematics seen as a counting activity.

True that the variety of numbers has expanded over history. Yet we seem distinctly more comfortable with the category of natural numbers than with any other I can think of.

hehaha! :rofl: — Garrett Travers

:up:

To be an epistemological skeptic is to invite the judgment you just killed yourself!. The things we have to do for Sophia, the femme fatale in this 2k+ year old tale about the search for wisdom.

I think what you're grappling with is how to even think about it. The way you originally phrased the question was 'are there non-physical things?' To which I think the answer is 'no'. And I think that this way of thinking about the problem goes back to Cartesian dualism, in particular. Why? Because of Descartes' 'res cogitans', which means literally 'thinking thing'. Unravelling all of that is the key. — Wayfarer

Yep, you could say that. I'm basically interested in broad outlines, an overall skeletal framework that gives me something to work with. Thanks for the interesting convo.

Right. Hence, dualisms of various schools. That is not self-contradictory but it contradicts materialism. — Wayfarer

I'm happy just knowing that the nonphysical is possible i.e. it doesn't entail a contradiction as such.

The next step would be to prove that if possible that p then necessary that p [◇p $\rightarrow$ □p] aka Modal Realism.

Reminds me of the fairy tale the Emperor has no clothes. It's not that meaning and acts of interpretation are nonphysical, it's just that you're too stupid to see their physicality. :grin:

I have no idea what the OP wants to discuss. It contains a variable ("something greater") and I proposed a value (knowledge). Joe rejected it. Okay; so I moved on when I read further as the variable became more and more vague woo-of-the-gaps. You believe he knows what he is talking about based on his vague logorrhea, good luck with that —> fly meet flypaper. :sweat: — 180 Proof

Nice! :up:

Demonstrate that the nonphysical is not just possible, but actual.
— Agent Smith

What I've been arguing is very simple: that meaning, or acts of interpretation, can't be accounted for in any type of materialist of physicalist philosophy. Of course, the materialist will always insist on being shown a non-physical thing, but there are no non-physical things. — Wayfarer

Isn't that a self-contradictory position to take? If meaning and acts of interpretation are physically inexplicable, it implies the existence of a nonphysical thing, oui?