I was once an observer in a room in which my friend having an intense and sustained conversation with an other who to my eyes and ears was not there. The Friend had taken datura and that becomes my 'objective' 'rational' understanding of a situation that otherwise has (at least) two conflicting subjective views of 'the same' room.

I found the experience disconcerting, my friend rather more so, but the guy who wasn't there for me but was there for my friend is the one I worry about. What was it like for him?

Creativity is the action of the unknown. It is that for which the recipe does not yet exist; it is the unprecedented; that about which nothing can be said, except in retrospect. It is the uniqueness of every moment.

Defining and measuring are not appropriate or even possible at this early stage in your enquiry. But you have an understanding of what 'good' means in various contexts.

A good dog is a dog that obeys its master. So you might be asking what constitutes a good human. Something different, I think, but in saying that, and assuming you agree, we already know that a good human has a relation to other humans that is not characterised by command and obedience, but in a more equal and perhaps mutual way.

But perhaps that isn't your question. Perhaps you want to say simply that a good human is one that performs good acts. Then there is a difficulty that a good plumber performs different acts than a good footballer.

But however it is, the way to proceed is not to make out that being an atheist prevents you from ascribing any meaning to a commonplace word. Atheists and the religious alike have to live in the world somehow, and have to decide what they think it good to do. and when you have decided that you are in that position along with the rest of us, we can start to exchange ideas on what we think it good to do, and see if there is any common ground.

Ad now for something completely different. An actual avowed mechanical mechanism that is a continuously variable geared transmission. I am almost as excited as the guy in the video.




It's not quite the Holy Grail, but it is a really neat gearbox.

As far as politics, the issue of 'others' is central. The nature of projection is its core feature, with the idea of the 'enemy'. There is always an enemy to be attacked, with evil being projected onto Sadam Hussein or some other critical figure. It involves the attempt to destroy 'evil', and Hitler himself saw his own mission as being about this, eliminating the 'inferior', which he identified in Jews, homosexuals etc. Projection of 'evil' onto others is the main dynamic factor in war. — Jack Cummins

You are so right, and this is the psychological analysis of the social system. But it is important to remember that 'projection' is itself something that we project onto the other. And the other is the unemployed, the rich, the foreign, the religious, the heretical, the ethnic-other, the left, the right, gay, trans, female, ... Projection is the inevitable result of identification — only no-one is immune.

I'm not sure how important this is, but it is not something I have seen discussed before, so maybe it needs to be, or maybe it doesn't. Yet another melting permafrost side effect.

Robotic swarm with AI commentary. It will make sense to an artificial observer perhaps?
—————————————————————

So IFF space time is a holographic projection from its boundary, which boundary seems undetectable from within, one might consider consciousness also to be "outside". The observer - thou and I - are outside, but observing from each their own pov within the holographic representation. This makes the universe an educational toy for nascent infinite minds. Or something? Thou and I are like Mario and Luigi, and our triumphs and disasters are just part of a game we are playing to learn together how to live.

Jesus and Hitler and Richard the Lion Heart
Three kings and Moses and Queen Cleopatra
The Cobbler, the maiden
The mender and the maker
The sickener and the twitcher
And the glad undertaker
The shepherd of willows
The harper and the archer
All sat down in one boat together
Troubled voyage in calm weather

Maya Maya
All this world is but a play
Be thou the joyful player — Incredible String Band

https://genius.com/The-incredible-string-band-maya-lyrics

There is a lot of confusion at the moment. Part of that is a deliberate attempt to disempower, which stems from the usual power seeking of politics, exaggerated by the urgency of the times. And of course it is always comfortable to find or concoct some 'other' to take the blame as times get harder and our way of life is disrupted.

But there are a great many people working already to adapt and ameliorate the situation; they don't make the news because a forest burning makes a good picture, but a forest planting looks like nothing happening. It is the way of weakness that will triumph over the way of power, but the power will have to exhaust itself and that will not be pretty.

There is a conflict between the global economy, national identity, and the modern radical individuality. What will an individual sacrifice to save the world? One cannot even ask this question, because the global institutions do not exist to ask it, and the Nationalities are dissolving into mere sovereignties owned by individuals. So there is no leadership at all. Compare that with the crisis of Britain at the outbreak of WW2; Churchill could ask that of the population and convince them to stand together. Not now.

This leads to the question of is it the end of civilisation or is there potential for transformation? — Jack Cummins

It's an interesting question, but to this either or, I have to say 'both'. Economically, we are approaching the end of the game of Monopoly. Once someone owns the whole world, and everyone else is bankrupt, the economic game has to end and be restarted with a new division of the assets.

Environmentally, we are in overshoot, and the human population is going to crash. That's going to be unpleasant.

But those that survive may well preserve something of civilisation and even learn from our mistakes. Certainly, they will learn the value of mutuality, and the cost of individualism.

The inerestingest person above to me was Federico Faggin, so here he is in a one on one conversation. This is where I am particularly interested. There is a short history of associations between spiritual understanding and modern physics, and here is the woo coming back yet again.



I keep being reminded of The Lathe of Heaven.

I'm hoping to post something a bit more substantial on this later if I can get a better sense of it, I think this is the heartland of most of my enquiries ...

More quantum consciousness drama, with horses and their mouths.

A cautionary tale.

NZ is not best placed for solar. They would do better to concentrate on hydro, wind, wave, and tidal. Australia is a bit sunnier tho, I hear.

I would not be surprised if Trump pardons himself at some point during his term. — Relativist

I would be surprised if he doesn't rename it something like "exonerating himself" Pardoning oneself sounds a bit like an admission of guilt.

Based on the argument you made, math and science are magic spells, because they predict how things work by the use of logic symbols. I would be angry that you have written such ignorant nonsense without even bothering to read the OP, but I am used to it by now. — Brendan Golledge

Not so. Science first looks. Science first considers evidence. Argument is the servant of evidence, not the master. I also am used to silliness - including my own.

And, a small correction; I read the thread before commenting, because I like to check that I am not repeating a point that has already been made, without acknowledgment.

File under "classical". Something for the existential angst.

The frontline of planet wars.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/nov/21/canada-arctic-herschel-island-qikiqtaruk-climate-permafrost-tundra-ecology-aoe

Some nice pics and little films and Timelapse's and some words too.

Proofs of freewill and proofs of determinism are as reliable as proofs for and against the existence of God. One may be sure that that they are unreliable without even reading them, because of unenlightened's famous principle: "No arrangement of words, howsoever cunning, can oblige the world to be thus and not so."
Thought experiments can only be useful when one already knows precisely what one is talking about. They are therefore of little value to philosophers, who are only called in when folk discover that they don't quite know what they are talking about after all.
To reject unenlightened's principle is to believe in the efficacy of magic spells.

Dipping a toe hesitantly into mathematical news:

I am earthbound, but not housebound. Freedom has limits and contexts. "Free will" is a philosopher's nonsense that has no place in life, and "determinism" likewise.

"Waiter, don't bother to show me the menu, just bring me the meal I am predetermined to eat."
"Sir, the menu is free although it is also predetermined, but the food is not free and the prices are predetermined. Pay what you are predetermined to pay, and then I will know what I am predetermined to bring."

Human freedom marks the distinction between reacting and responding. When I am reacting to a post, I am not free, but being controlled by my habits and by the post, But when I respond, I am free to accept or reject the meaning conveyed, and move the dialogue on.

Not green energy, unfortunately. Given an already overheating planet, extra sunlight is not what is required.

Sometimes, philosophy must give way to art.



Is it wrong to marry a duck-bill Platypus?

Reality is the current dream. The choice is between uppers and downers. The red pill is meaningfully different from the blue pill. The problem is which way is up and which way is down.

A Feersum Endjinn?

What I don't understand is why Trump voters are so eager to have more inflation.
— ssu

Perhaps they have little idea what they actually were voting for. — Wayfarer

While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society’s pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he’s in

But I mean no harm nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it’s alright, Ma, if I can’t please him — Bob Dylan

I think it's called "spite".

The US and Biden's push into Ukraine is the single greatest threat to the world since the Cuban Missile Crisis - not Trump. — Tzeentch

Interesting relation. As I remember it was the US issuing the apocalyptic threats, and Russia backing down over Cuba. Now the boot is on the other foot. Perhaps it is the US turn to blink. Putin is insane but cunning. But I thought Trumps' platform was to make America Great again, not to make America feeble.

Everybody got the right to cover they arse best they can.
But thanks for the permission.

Trump is insane, but cunning. And he will destroy America if he is allowed to, and possibly the world. How to respond, is certainly a conundrum for foreign politicians; my response to bullies, gleaned from long experience, is to attempt to bore them to death by not responding at all.

Try living in a picture of a house for a week, and get back to us.

No.

Keep a professional distance. There is a duty of care, a duty of justice, and fair and equal treatment, and these would be compromised by such a relationship. It would compromise your teacher, threaten their career, and undermine your achievements as a student.

Outside my comfort zone by several parsecs, so talk amongst yourselves; probably you have to be a friend of a friend of Wigner's mother at least to relate to this stuff. but here it is is from the mouths of several veritable friends of Wigner's horses. So, respect!

Everyone loses wars.

I am sympathetic to your instincts and the direction of your argument. But I am mindful of the difficulties. to take simple example, Dinosaurs roamed the earth and dominated the fauna for millions of years, and then rather suddenly died out, and were eventually replaced by mammals. What was their sin? Pride, perhaps?

You might like to look into eco-philosophy a little, not much discussed or represented on this site, unfortunately. Try this maybe:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arne_Næss
Lots of links there to follow up if you are interested. One advantage of this kind of approach is that it avoids the separation of human and natural interests.

The judgement that evolution makes is survival or extinction. Easy enough from there to say that survival is good and extinction is bad, (from the pov of life, at least) but you see at once the difficulty - the judgement is always provisional and temporary and may be reversed tomorrow - see dinosaurs above.

The industrial revolution seemed like a good idea at the time, and led to human growth; now, some of us are wondering ...

Yes, we will soon be shooting people at the borders and sinking the boats. But most will die of heatstroke or famine where they are. It turns out that frogs will not stay in the pot while you slowly boil them, but humans, I think, mostly will. Like the Palestinians of Gaza, respecting the borders imposed on them that they could have overwhelmed at any time.

I didn't know this was even a thing. I went looking for the story...

Garcia attorneys wrote in a press release that Character.ai “knowingly designed, operated, and marketed a predatory AI chatbot to children, causing the death of a young person”. The suit also names Google as a defendant and as Character.ai’s parent company.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/oct/23/character-ai-chatbot-sewell-setzer-death

Alas, young people are vulnerable, and legislators are old and out of date, (like me). So exploitation can run free. Well I hope you can see that here at pf. is some harmless, perhaps even beneficial, interaction with real people. The world needs a century or two to catch up with all the novelty of the virtual world; our legal and moral sensibilities cannot adapt so fast as the technology.

So now you have drawn our attention to this, What do you think might be done about it? AIs are very quick and smart, but they have no intelligence or discrimination. I don't think anyone is entirely sure how to prevent such things without crippling the beasts entirely.

Welcome to my world!

Governments of the world won't help people, they can't. — Christoffer

After a careful examination, I managed to find two words to disagree with - "they can't." They can do a great deal more than they are doing. Instead of sowing division and conflict and xenophobia, they could help poor countries adapt somewhat; instead of subsidising oil, they could subsidise renewables; instead of pretending that endless growth is possible, they could start managing the economy to be fair and stable instead of expanding and exploiting. And so on. It's going to be bad, but there's no reason in that, to go on making it worse.

Two fundamental problems that make our governments fail completely:

1. Democracy entails short-termism.
2. Giving all the power to the old does the same.

I'm going to go out on a limb here bit, but I think Jesus had disciples before he was crucified, and I would think it sensible to allow that they were Christians even then, as they already thought him the Messiah, and ...

Christ comes from the Greek word χριστός (chrīstós), meaning "anointed one". The word is derived from the Greek verb χρίω (chrī́ō), meaning "to anoint." In the Greek Septuagint, χριστός was a semantic loan used to translate the Hebrew מָשִׁיחַ (Mašíaḥ, messiah), meaning "[one who is] anointed".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_(title)

A report from Greenland; very quiet and sober, Not reassuring though. Time to start growing some gills.




And to escape the meaningless graphs for a moment, a short report on India, and how poor people are affected. Human, and animal impact.

Hey carful there, we are in danger of reaching an understanding if not Gob forbid, agreement!

Mu.

But philosophy, as also zen, is a practiced discipline, a way of looking, more than a theory in a book. Burn all the books and start again fresh. That's what we do here at pf, apart from burning all the books.