— Number2018

There are so many clichés and banalities about the internet – to your points, it is possible to add that there has been an ongoing and free exchange of ideas, technologies, and knowledge (in fact, you need to pay for all these). That the internet
brings people with different cultures and views together (actually, social networking are divided into isolated communities of like-minded persons). That the world has become the global village (very few people have been interested in and follow the global affairs). By the way, what is “the voice of the global village”?
Has it been the voice of few media giants, dominating the cyber-space?

They’re not any sort of absolute authority. It’s perfectly acceptable, and even considered a good and beneficial practice, to question these worldviews.


To accept them without question by mere authority or solidarity with the ‘group view’, especially if they appear untrue, would be more like religion.

a. Extend the pre-existing word-concept to cover all versions of the manifest image and restrict the use of differential vocabulary to distinguishing between the two scientific images which underlie the manifest image.
b. Add a new word-concept in order to distinguish the manifest image by variations in the underlying scientific images.

There is the manifest difference in temperature ranges often found on Earth where C02 ice sublimates into a gas, while H20 turns into a liquid.

Why do you use the word "image" for the scientific understanding? I get the manifest image, because it captures the notion of appearance for humans, given how visually dominant most of us are. But science is more abstract. Is "image" another word for description or model?

I don't think science has to make any metaphysical commitment like naturalism. I think naturalism and physicalism are quite meaningless in terms of picking out entities. But is science wants to promote a metaphysics it would then become a philosophical competitor.

I don't think you have to ask questions to make scientific discoveries. Just mixing chemicals can create innovations and new phenomena can appear under a microscope or any other form of observation..

I think most claims in evolution and cosmology are unfalsifiable because they are historical claims about one off events that can't be replicated.

@gurugeorge I'm really glad someone understands what I'm trying to convey.

"nothing is the possibility of something."

That's exactly it. That is the most efficient way to explain it. I wanted to have this statement critiqued but I thought it was too vague to extend to specific deductions that I've made if this statement were true.

I agree with you fully about the paradoxical nature of the concept. For most people, it's unfortunately a non-starter. I see it as an unexplored realm and believe that the idea can be reasonably discussed given certain restrictions are put on the statements. I think that in order for metaphysical arguments to be universally true, or at least hold some sort of merit, all indivisible constituents of the statement must also be true. So let's get down to the nitty gritty.

"But is that possibility not a something?"

What is something? Does it require an observer to exist? For example, would you say pi exists? Why or why not?

Well yes, I think so. But what do you call it when someone commits an error in interpreting it as consistent but behaves inconsistently with regards to it? Is that some error or fallacy?

I confess I feel rather the opposite. Why should texts obey some principle of non-contradiction? This would be the dream of an authoritarian, surely? Non-contradiction happens in logic, perhaps, but as soon as we use natural language it creeps in. And creeps, and creeps.

Certain texts may be regarded as some sort of guidance to behaviour, but how are humans to be governed in this way? As soon as I read 'Thou shalt not'...' written say by some stuffy patriarch, I want to go looking for a fellow-transgressor.

Hello again, btw, Posty. Hope you're well.

Well, yes. The absence of non-sequiturs implies that one understands something. Therefore, how do you lessen the chance of a non-sequitur from arising at all? Through consistency? But, how do you arrive at consistency without contradictions?

So, the absence of contradiction is indicative of understanding a text, correct?

I think vales are a different subject, although values are pretty close to higher order volition's. The difference it would seem is that values are static, where higher order volitions are more inclined to be dynamic. Or in other words, values obtain from higher order volitions, I think.

Yes, but having higher order volition's means that some inconsistency will eventually arise. No?

I don't know what you mean by that. Self consistency?

Yes, I do agree to some degree. I think there are higher order volition's, which seems like the apt term to use; such, as 'love' or 'envy' or 'jealousy'.

A good while ago I posted some topics about CBT or in general talk therapy/rational emotive behavioural therapy/metacognitive therapy, and even logotherapy contra what Hume had to say about the role of reason being the handmaiden to the passions. Each type of therapy seems to rely on reason being able to address personal issues, shortcomings, perceived deficiencies, and other issues.

It's my general sentiment that Hume, was in some sense wrong about his sentiment towards human rationality and emotions.

Yet, the deeper you look into the issues, all the aforementioned therapies, in some sense have to address the emotions through reasoning. So, in some sense it's almost true of reason being instrumental to the passions; but, the distorted perception of mine is that it's only a one way street or a bottom up or top down alley where one controls the other.

Therefore, I don't think it makes sense to talk about reason being the handmaiden to the passions; but, a more intuitive view would be to say they both work in tandem.

Would that be a more insightful way of putting the Humean saying in context?

Agreed, if you're reading Schopenhauer, stop immediately.

Nietzsche observed that every country claim to have a military in order to prevent invasion by another country's military. Is this a vicious circular logic, or are militaries a "necessary evil"? Is this not akin to the prisoner's dilemma?

Sure there are other methods. But the ones that are derived from the functioning of the human brain, which generally means interconnected neurons passing on signals are usually expressed that way.

The whole program is written to fulfill a certain purpose. How should it monitor that?

The AIs whose construction is inspired by the human brain are merely a bunch of matrices chained together resulting in a map from an input to an output. m(X) = Y. These get trained (in supervised learning at least) by supplying a set of desired (X,Y)-Tuples and using some math.
algorithm to tweak the matrices towards producing the right Y values for the Xes. Once the training-sets are handled sufficiently well chances are good it will produce plausible outputs for new Xes.

These things do not exactly have a representation of their goals - they are that representation.

Yes. That can be correctly classified as some level of self-awareness. This leads me to believe that most of what we do - walking, talking, thinking - can be replicated in machines (much like wormw or insects). The most difficult part is, I guess, imparting sentience to a machine. How does the brain do that? Of course, that's assuming it's better to have consciousness than not. This is still controversial in my opinion. Self-awareness isn't a necessity for life and I'm not sure if the converse is true or not.