Has anyone even clearly explained what a "spiritual" experience is, and why we should call them that? — S

https://www.aiprinc.org/mystical/

Suicide is a bad thing because it causes my trains to run late.

We are never satisfied with what we have, and dread living with nothing more than what we need. Forever is the average mortal worried about not matching up to their peers, being surpassed by their neighbor or losing their standard of living. Apply the microcosm of the individual to the macrocosm of politics and one understands the reason there cannot be peace. At least, not until humanity is collectively prepared to address these issues.

but 80 to 90 % is a lot of similarity — unenlightened

Humans share the same sorts of genetic similarities with many other animals, like cats, dogs, cows and even mice.

You know what humans also share a lot of similarity with? Water.

Get statistics involved and one is able to make a case for anything.

There's two sides to this.

On one side, for someone to spread a message of hate, there must obviously be hate present to begin with.

On the other side, the exchange of hateful messages creates echo chambers on the internet (as it is prone to do) which can send people 'down the rabbit hole'.

Is trying to ban the spreading of hateful messages the answer? Probably not. Letting people spread their message at the very least gives people an outlet for their anger. If there is no outlet, they will only feel more powerless and be more prone to lash out violently, in the only way they think can still make an impact.

Furthermore, banning 'hate speech' will only confirm their ideas about how society is rigged against them.

As I've argued in another thread on this topic, I believe the causes of these massacres is a profound anger and feeling of powerlessness.

Horrible acts may be carried out by normal people. Hate and powerlessness combine into a dangerous cocktail and will do more to compel a person to such acts than a mental illness will.

Individualism teaches us that there is nothing more important than our own happiness and well-being. Caring for our elders and all of the inconveniences it brings, doesn't fit into that picture. The elderly are seen as a burden.

Grandparents used to be part of the family unit and have an important role in bringing up their grandchildren. In many ways they do a better job at it than the actual parents. Perhaps their current lack of involvement helps to explain the deficiency of today's youth.

Dreams are harmful to the extent that they are based on illusions about what makes us happy.

That is to say people from Buddhist countries tend to be more submissive and prone to change the inside than the outside. — pbxman

I don't agree. This seems like an unsubstantiated claim.

Voluntary poverty is an interesting subject. It comes in many forms. One could argue that a hermit lives in voluntary poverty. Or a survivalist. Or a vagabond. If one doesn't miss the material wealth they left behind, should it still be called poverty? Where I live, people who earn no income can live in centrally heated homes and have a place they can get food for free, and they still call these people impoverished! Poverty has become a relative term here, and the metaphor of a dog chasing its own tail comes to mind. People are deathly afraid of losing their job and savings and end up in a situation I just described, but what is there to fear but their own illusions?

The choice to live in voluntary 'poverty' is perhaps quite extreme, but the mere realization that life continues if one were to lose all their material possessions can be liberating.

If one is going to cast off their material chains, perhaps one had best avoid places with particularly harsh winters unless one knows a handful of survival skills. Especially if one lives in a location where people would deny a freezing man a blanket or a starving man some food. But people generally are quite willing to spare such things.

A lot of homeless people have other sorts of chains. Drug addiction, alcohol addiction, psychological problems, to name a few. People rarely end up freezing and starving to death on the sidewalk out of the blue. While material reality is a lot more forgiving than one may think, one cannot expect their actions not to have consequences.

Like food, shelter, clothing... stuff like that. — Bitter Crank

In most, if not all modern countries these things are not of real concern. The concern comes around when one desires good food and not leftovers, or central heating and hot showers, or branded clothing instead of second-hand. If one is content with scraps, one will find treasures everywhere and one isn't forced to work for them.

Status requires a jealous crowd. No crowd, no status. — Bitter Crank

Doesn't that reinforce the illusory nature of status? And an illusion, no matter how many people believe it, is still an illusion. Be that as it may, my point is that I don't believe anyone is being forced to work by anyone other than themselves and the illusions they hold.

To understand what needs to change externally, one first needs to have some form of awakening internally.

For example, a person may find promiscuous behavior bad. However, do they find it bad because they have experienced that it negatively impacts those who engage in it, or do they tell themselves it is bad, but secretly they desire to engage in such behavior themselves, but have been denied? This is an example of a very common psychological pattern and without an internal awakening one will not be able to tell the difference between the two.

What is forcing one to work in modern society?
Status? The urge to maintain a high standard of living? Social pressures?
The value of these matters is all illusory in nature. Ultimately it is the person themselves who is "forcing", in order to obtain or maintain those things they desire or they think they cannot live without.

"Enlightenment" can be just a self-realization or the ability to reach a self-hypnosis or altered mental state. — pbxman

Perhaps enlightenment is the unaltered mental state and the end of self-hypnosis.

All roads lead to Rome. What matters in the end is that one arrives there. Labels like "better" are meaningless. Some people may have no chance of reaching enlightenment through Buddhism, maybe because it doesn't suit their personality. They may find some other practice that works for them.

Differential calculus provides an approximation by substituting a curved line with straight ones like so:



It doesn't solve the problem. It makes the problem so small so that it is no longer visible.

No, they need to check the peer-reviewed material and look at falsifiable results. Standard methods for a conclusion. Because only doing the experiment means you only have one result. — Christoffer

Your point is irrelevant to the ethical conclusion of my argument. Because the point of my conclusion is that belief in anything should be checked by the person believing them. — Christoffer

Even if one were to assume that by doing such things one would acquire knowledge, not many people do this. Let alone for every single belief they hold. In other words, a lot of what people believe to be scientific knowledge is nothing more than belief. Such beliefs can be false and even dangerous and should therefore be added to your list of potentially dangerous beliefs. This has been my position from the start of our debate.

You know that the device you are writing on is the result of science that has gone through peer reviews, fact-checking and other parts of the scientific process. All people involved with making this device took these papers and used it to create the parts of the device you have. If that was only belief your device wouldn't work. — Christoffer

I know my device works, but how it works is an entirely different matter. I could obtain a plausible idea about how it works by reading, etc., but would I know for sure? No. Not until I did the experiments myself. There's nothing metaphysical about this. It's fact. A lot of what we think of as knowledge is actually just belief. Beliefs that may turn out to be right, but beliefs none the less.

Because if we are to go down your line, then how do we prove anyone is guilty in court if anyone could counter it by saying; "this is only belief, we can only know if the person is guilty if we had been there for ourselves". — Christoffer

This is a problem that any judicial system struggles with. One can never be certain about events that happened in the past. Video images prove compelling evidence, but ultimately are falsifiable. How often aren't people convicted to crimes they didn't commit? It happens every day. Why? Because people had beliefs about that person that turned out to be false. In the judicial system it is a calculated risk. The law simply accepts that sometimes it makes wrong decisions and convicts innocent people. It doesn't make the belief that an innocent man is guilty any more valid, though.

Because, ethics philosophy needs a form of foundation. We cannot jump back into metaphysics to counter everything with Cartesian-like arguments about that nothing is for certain. The ethical conclusion I made in the argument is all about never accepting a belief that hasn't in any way been put through a rational argument, scrutiny or evidence. To say that peer reviewed and falsified evidence in science still is belief when just looking at the result on those papers does not counter my argument... at all. — Christoffer

As far as I know, we are still talking about whether people have science-based beliefs and whether they should be added to your list of potentially dangerous beliefs.

Does the man have a name? Does he present a claim with logic? Are you able to look him up? Are you able to search for those who criticized his claims and look into the logic of their criticism against the logic of this man? — Christoffer

Measuring the claims of scientists to one's own sense of logic is rather fallible, unless one is a scientist themselves.

Finally, a point of order:

It seems you don't know what a hypothesis is? — Christoffer

If you can't see or understand this difference I can't help you understand the argument and your misunderstanding of the argument cannot lead to a proper counter-argument to the argument I presented — Christoffer

You are making a biased fallacy-driven case that isn't even close to proving what I said was wrong. — Christoffer

You are just babbling about other stuff — Christoffer

You grasp basic philosophy? — Christoffer

This is a stupid fallacy of an argument with seemingly no knowledge of what science is or how it works. Irrelevant argument and you are talking complete nonsense with that kind of reasoning. It's close to populistic, anti-climate change crap from uneducated people. — Christoffer

you understand this right? — Christoffer

And:

Stop straw manning about science. — Christoffer

You are making a straw man out of this. — Christoffer

Followed by:

If you are going down the Descartes-road — Christoffer

If you mean that nothing is true until you, yourself has seen it, that's just ignorance and ignorance of logic and evidence. — Christoffer

you suggest this because you seem to drive an apologist agenda. — Christoffer

It's crystal clear that you intentionally disregard the nuances of the argument in order to shoehorn in something that is critical against science — Christoffer

Are you saying that it's more ethical to not check if your belief has any truth merits? — Christoffer

but are you saying that — Christoffer

Or are you saying — Christoffer

For the love of god, man. Practice a bit of self-reflection every now and then.

Of course, but as my argument points out, epistemic responsibility has nothing to do with specific institutions. It is about every person. If you choose to believe in some idea presented to you, you have the responsibility to figure out if it is true or rational, if not you break epistemic responsibility. This is about ethics for all people, not institutions or figures of authority. — Christoffer

I'm talking about persons. But if one has to figure out whether his belief is true or not, one has to do the experiment, and after doing that experiment one would no longer be believing, but knowing.

You don't have to do the experiment yourself, you can fact-check if the study and science have support in peer reviews and falsifiable scrutiny. There's a reason we have scientific methods. If you do the science yourself you will only confirm or deny by one check. This is why hypotheses take time to end up as scientific theories. Scientific methods are relentless with this and it's your responsibility to check behind the curtain before believing in anything. — Christoffer

Peer reviews and fact-checking without doing the actual experiments yourself just shifts the belief from one thing to the other. If you read peer reviews or read about facts online, one is back to believing words and pictures again.

As I said, this argument is about ALL people acting by the conclusion of the argument. You have, for some reason, changed my argument to be that of institutions and figures of authority rather than every person. My argument is for a core morality on the nature of belief for everyone, not specific people. — Christoffer

I'm talking about belief and how it is fundamental to human understanding, including many people's understanding of science. I'd say it touches at the heart of the subject you're presenting.

Because they do not say truths without a scientific theory and they never assume a hypothesis as truth. A true scientist acts according to scientific methods. If you cannot distinguish between a true scientist and a pseudoscientist you might need to read into the scientific methods and how they form hypothesis and theories as well as interactions between different studies and over time.

How do you discern what is a cup? If you take away the handle and make a hole in the bottom, is it still a cup? If you take away scientific methods and the ethics of doing scientific research, is that a scientist? No, that's a pseudoscientist or an amateur without education into proper methods. Just like the cup isn't a cup and cannot hold its liquid, a pseudoscientist cannot hold a rational idea without the proper properties of what makes a scientist a scientist. — Christoffer

That may be a theoretical 'true' scientist, but how does one discern one in real life? Lets say you see a man in a white coat on television telling you things about science. How do you determine whether he should be believed?

You are not talking about science but pseudoscience. — Christoffer

I'm talking about the belief in science of the average person, so I'm not talking about scientists who have carried out the experiments themselves. Call that pseudo-science if you will. It doesn't matter. It is a fact that most people's understanding of science is completely based on belief.

This argument lacks any complexity to the reality as it is. The priest is all about unsupported faith. The man in a coat on television could be a pseudoscientist and in that case the same, but if he's a true scientist in his field and he is presenting a study that has been falsified into a scientific thoery, how can you say that there is zero difference? — Christoffer

Because in both cases, unless one chooses to verify the claim themselves, one chooses to believe (or not) the words of either a priest or a scientist. One may have good reasons to believe these words, but can one be certain? Only if one does the experiment themselves and comes to the same conclusions. Until that happens, one is doing nothing other than believing the words of a person they deem trustworthy. The trustworthiness of such a person is fundamentally uncertain, and the nature of his findings is as well until one replicates the experiment.

How does one discern a "true" scientist?

No, you suggest this because you seem to drive an apologist agenda. — Christoffer

Och, och. An apologist agenda? You must not presume so much. Perhaps then you'd be a tad less insufferable to discuss with.

You want to add scientific belief disregarding the fundamental difference between the two. It's crystal clear that you intentionally disregard the nuances of the argument in order to shoehorn in something that is critical against science, but you don't understand the fundamental difference between belief claimed to be truth and a hypothesis that is never claimed to be true. — Christoffer

This isn't the core of the argument.

What I'm proposing is that science, to the degree that it hasn't been replicated by an individual, is pure belief. Belief in words and pictures. The individual may believe these words and pictures based on the authority he projects on a man in a white coat. One may observe consistency and therefore come to find these beliefs more plausible, but until one has done the actual experiments themselves, it is still just a belief that the man in the white coat is telling the truth.

This is a stupid fallacy of an argument with seemingly no knowledge of what science is or how it works. Irrelevant argument and you are talking complete nonsense with that kind of reasoning. It's close to populistic, anti-climate change crap from uneducated people.

Stop doing fallacies, its a waste of time. — Christoffer

Calling things fallacies doesn't make them so. It's quite easy to call everything one cannot find an easy answer to a fallacy, but it's hardly impressive.

Believing the priest in church is no different from believing the white man in a coat on television. There is literally zero difference.

Hypothesis = an idea about how something might be, never acted out as truth.
Belief (religious, spiritual or convinced of a specific thing) = An idea without proof, acted out as truth. — Christoffer

They're both ideas without proof, thus beliefs. That one supposedly is acted upon while the other is not is an arbitrary distinction.

What does this have to do with the ethics-argument I presented? You are just babbling about other stuff now, focus on the argument. — Christoffer

You've limited your argument to religious beliefs. I suggested we add scientific beliefs as well.

Because it has not place in ethics section, it belongs in metaphysics. You grasp basic philosophy?
If you mix everything together and just claim that you can't know anything, then there's no point in philosophy of anything. So what is the point of even talking about ethics? That's why your argument in here is nonsense.

If we were to discuss Descartes and his demon-argument under metaphysics we could have such a discussion, but this is about the ethics of belief. So do the dialectic properly please. — Christoffer

My argument has nothing to do with metaphysics. It has to do with the nature of beliefs and how the world, including most people's understanding of science, is riddled with them. These beliefs do not fundamentally differ. Believing the man in the white coat on the television that calls himself a scientist is the same as believing the man in the church that calls himself a man of god.

Religious faith and belief, or other beliefs that are held without caring to rationally explain or have evidence for them are not the same things as scientific hypotheses, which are beliefs which are never acted upon as truths before proven into theories. — Christoffer

I don't see how the fact that they are never acted upon as truths before proven somehow makes those hypotheses special. A belief is a belief.

If you can't see or understand this difference I can't help you understand the argument and your misunderstanding of the argument cannot lead to a proper counter-argument to the argument I presented, sorry. — Christoffer

Another way of saying "If you don't agree with me, I think you're stupid."

*yawn*

You are making a metaphysical claim about the nature of perception itself. — Christoffer

I'm not. I'm pointing out that pictures prove nothing. I could show you a picture of God. Would that be proof that God exists? I think not.

If your way of arguing specific sections of philosophy with "how can anyone know that what they don't see is true", you are essentially making a nonsense argument. — Christoffer

How is that a nonsense argument?

Even if you have reasons for finding an explanation plausible, it is still a belief. Until one has seen the things take place or done the experiments, one is trusting words and pictures.

The picture you linked could be a picture of anything. I could believe that it indeed shows atoms. How could I ever be sure without looking through microscopes? I might read some books, come to find it plausible, but it remains a belief.

One can be told by scientists that matter consists of atoms, but one cannot be sure until it is seen by one's own eyes. Until then, it is a belief.

Science, to the extent that one hasn't carried out the experiments themselves, is a belief. One may consider it a "rational" or "logical" belief, but that's an oxymoron.

Why only religious beliefs? Lets throw in all beliefs, including scientific ones.

It would be near impossible to profess pity towards people who spit on you, don't you think? — Wallows

It may be for you, but it doesn't have to be.

One finds that people who act in such negative fashion are rarely happy, and their negative behavior tends to be an act of denial towards their self-perceived inadequacies and not an act of healing them. So really the one they are hurting is primarily themselves.

Let's just say that if you conclude that exhibiting such behaviors would not make you any happier, perhaps a more appropriate attitude towards such people would be one of pity, instead of hate or dislike.

"to act", what do you mean by that? — Wallows

You expressed that you feel people can be mean, cruel, deceitful, to name a few things, and that you term yourself as somewhat of a misanthrope because of this. If you were to exhibit these behaviors, would it make you any happier?

Reflect. Hatred is often a form of self-loathing and such negative emotions can be an ocean of insight into one's own mind.

However, people can be mean, cruel, deceitful, and all the other host of attitudes and behaviors that cause disenfranchisement and unhappiness. — Wallows

If you were to act that way, would it make you happy?

Intuition can be a great source of moral wisdom, or at least a grounds for further investigation. However, it requires a developed personality to be able to distinguish between intuition, wishful thinking and projection.

You can have sex with hookers and snort cocaine, but that's an irrational aim for happiness. A rational person values productive achievement and has a purpose, which is better for happiness. — AppLeo

Why? To both assertions.

A rational life is a person who makes the conscious decision to think, reason, and use logic as much as he can. — AppLeo

So how does listening to one's emotions fit into this?

If you observe history, capitalism has lead to economic prosperity and is the most moral system because people are treated equally under the law. — AppLeo

Even though I don't agree with the general sentiment of this statement, it should be noted that it was not unrestricted capitalism that created a moral system. It was in fact the balance between economic freedom and individual rights. In practice these are often juxtaposed, which is why Rand's assertion that total economic freedom is 'the' system of individual rights is quite simply wrong.

Considering Rand's philosophy is called 'objectivism', and it is explicitly stated that emotions make for poor guides in life, I think you are not staying true to her point by saying emotional choices can be rational.

Those that live the most rationally will the most happy and prosperous. — AppLeo

What does such a rational life look like?

If they didn’t want to, why did they work for 16 hours a day? No one forced them to do it. They chose to do it given their circumstances.

I don’t see why working 16 hours a day to feed yourself and your family is a bad thing. I think it’s great that people had opportunity to work for long periods of time and make enough money to feed themselves. — AppLeo

Help yourself to this book:

The Conditions of the Working Class in England by Friedrich Engels

You'll find that the working conditions in Industrial-era England were nearly as appalling as those in Soviet Gulags. In some sense it was even worse considering the Gulags generally did not force children to labor.

If we cannot agree that de facto enslavement of the working class is a bad thing, I doubt we will be able to agree on anything.

Give an example of someone not choosing the objective choice and using their emotions instead... — AppLeo

Someone may quit a well-paying and stable job because they feel unhappy there.

That's why they should use reason to figure it out. Not their emotions. — AppLeo

Who defines what reasonable is, then?

What's wrong with working 16 hours a day in factories if what you want is money? — AppLeo

People in those factories didn't work sixteen hours a day because they wanted to. They did so because they had to in order to feed themselves. I'm getting an impression you don't quite realize how appalling the conditions were during these 'best and most free times'. Children had to work in order to keep families fed. For someone who holds reason as one of the highest ideals that sure is a strange definition of a utopia.

She says to reject emotions as guides to life. She's not saying to deny your feelings. She's saying that you shouldn't place your emotions above reality or what you know to be true. You need to look at things objectively so that you make proper choices. Emotions are poor guides to life. What you feel doesn't tell what reality actually is. Reason tells you what reality actually is. It's not just emotions either. Faith is accepting something as truth without evidence. What people say in authority positions should not be accepted as truths either. Being in a position of authority doesn't mean what you say dictates reality or the truth. — AppLeo

I agree that emotions shouldn't shape your conception of reality. I disagree that emotions make a bad guide in life. Objectively proper choices can be completely wrong if a person does not agree with them emotionally, or subjectively.

Does self-interest mean do whatever you want? No. It means to be in your own self-interest. And don't forget that Rand advocated for reason, so that means being rationally self-interest. Just because you feel like doing something doesn't mean you should. Being rationally self-interested is good for you and everybody else. — AppLeo

I can't find the "and everybody else"-part anywhere in the description that is provided in the link you shared, and if that was the intended meaning behind the principle the term 'self-interest' is a poor choice of words.

Coupled with Rand's thoughts on how the economy should work, I think her intended meaning is "As long as people do what they think is best for them, things will work out okay", and I don't think that is the case at all, because a lot of people have not the slightest idea of what is best for them.

How is politics greatly dependent on economics? In the 19th century, the government did perfectly well being separated. — AppLeo

Politics is about power, and power is about wealth. But what situation are you referring to? Wasn't the beginning of the 19th century the shining example how horrible unregulated capitalism was? The modern world eventually universally agreed (under much pressure) that the capitalists had to be regulated in order to avoid people, including children, working 16 hour days in the factories.

What's wrong is a bunch of large firms controlling everything? If they bought all the other small businesses, they did it out of free trade. They didn't steal anything. — AppLeo

What's wrong with that? Well, what if the interest of the large firms doesn't match with the interests of everyone else in the country? They would be free to exploit anyone as much as they wanted, because they own and control everything.

And one company isn't going to control everything anyway. — AppLeo

That is an unsubstantiated assumption.

If you separate state and economics, money cannot buy political power. — AppLeo

As long as food costs money, and as long as money can buy armies, money can buy political power.

The industrial revolution was perfectly fine just the way it was. — AppLeo

How do you account for the fact that virtually every country in the modern world disagreed that it was functioning 'perfectly fine', which is why the appalling conditions of the industrial revolution eventually changed. I'm honestly surprised that anyone holds such a viewpoint.

Going off the information provided in the link:

Reality: "Facts are facts". Okay, but what does man really know about facts or reality? Great thinkers have tried and got no further than "I think, therefore I am" and "I know that I know nothing". But the underlying idea seems to be to accept the laws of nature that one is confronted with, which is reasonable.

Reason: A repetition of the first. To follow reason and to accept reality are one and the same. There is a curious line, though: "To choose to follow reason, Rand argues, is to reject emotions, faith or any form of authoritarianism as guides in life." Rejecting emotions is a terrible idea for any human being. Perhaps "controlling" was the intended meaning here, but to deny one's feelings is a road to guaranteed unhappiness. Emotions are a great guide in life if one seeks happiness (one might even argue they are the guide to happiness), just not a great guide for one's immediate course of action.

Self-interest: Do whatever you want, there are no rules? That's a choice, but to pretend that this is a road to happiness, let alone a functioning society, is a dubious claim at best.

Capitalism: Laissez-faire capitalism? That has only one outcome, oligarchy. The idea that state and economics can be split is naive, because politics are greatly dependent on economics. Large economical powers will always gain political power, and uncontrolled capitalism will eventually lead to several (or even a single) huge firms controlling everything, which will inevitably come to control politics. Hasn't the industrial revolution already warned us enough of the dangers of uncontrolled capitalism?

That'd be a curious choice of words, but I guess one is entitled to their opinion. But again, claiming to be superior is probably the worst way of convincing people of one's views.

There's a difference between evaluating an action and passing judgement upon a person. I realize that 'to judge' and 'to evaluate' can be used as synonyms, but we have been talking about judging in relation to feelings of moral superiority, in which case they are clearly not the same, in my view.

What if you have a college who is late most of the time, and you yourself are only late on rare occasions when you had no other choice or at least a really darn good reason? Then you're not being a hypocrite. — NKBJ

Indeed. There is an important nuance, though. If one is late on rare occasions for reasons out of their control, it is not hypocritical to chastise others for running late often. But if one is late, even on rare occasions, out of laziness or complacency, then they would be hypocritical.

OR to urge others to try and make the world a better place.
If we never judged others or tried to change the status quo, we'd still have slavery, Jim Crow, no female vote, women wouldn't be allowed to own property, gay people would be thrown in jail...etc. — NKBJ

Judging people doesn't help them to be better persons, helping them does. Acknowledging someone exhibits behavior that is bad for both themselves and their environment is fundamentally different from judging them. It's perfectly possible to engage in dialogue with people about their behavior without judging them, and the world would in fact be a much better place if people would realize this.

I'd say you misunderstand morality and moral discourse. — ChrisH

I'm sure your understanding of morality is vastly superior.

Why would you even bother with plebeians like me, hm?