It can be said, not without adequate justification, that we've outgrown the colonial mindset and no nation is currently engaged in conquering other lands in an expansionist attitude. — TheMadFool

The existence of nuclear and economic superpowers and their role in organizations like the UN and Nato have a lot to do with that. It's not so easy to conquer another nation these days and get away with it.

The mediocrity principle implies that we should regard our habitable situation as "average". The rare earth hypothesis violates that. It claims our habitable conditions are/were exceptionally NOT average. Is there a good justification for this? — RogueAI

The justification is in multiplying the probabilities which lead to a technological civilization. You start off with some percentage for habitable planets, factor in some probability of life emerging, then the likelihood of that world being stable enough for life to stick around, then the advent of multicellular life, and finally some form of life that can create sophisticated tech.

On Earth, there's only been one species in 3.5 billion years which matches that. We also have a rather large moon that keeps the Earth from wobbling too much and generates larger tides, which may have played a role. And we have a Jupiter size planet farther out in the solar system which attracts or deflects a lot of large comets and meteors. Also, we don't live too close to the galactic core or a star about to go supernova.

There's a lot of factors that go into us or any complex, idiosyncratic species evolving. And consider one other thing. The principle of mediocrity doesn't change the fact that your birth was a very low probability event. If any one of a trillion things went differently, you probably wouldn't be here. But here you are instead of the countless other humans who could have existed.

Tardigrades, immortal jellyfish, flatforms, possibly lobsters and turtles... — Pfhorrest

All those organisms die. They just don't do so from aging. There's no such thing as immortality. Something always kills you.

Someone dropping a big rock on the earth is far more survivable than living on another planet, and there doesn't seem to be a lot of doubt that the latter will eventually (if not soon) be possible. — Pfhorrest

But if it's dropped with the purpose of knocking out the "immortality" technology, then there goes living "forever", or whatever takes out the backup body facility. A space rock is just an extreme example of blowing it up, or releasing some flesh eating nanobots.

And the Earth can be moved, and the sun can be changed. You're looking at things through the primitive lens of a Type 0 civilization. — Pfhorrest

That's all science fiction, but even if doable someday, none of it grants individuals immortality. If nothing else, we can kill each other just fine with all that fancy future tech.

Heat death of the universe is not guaranteed if it is not a closed system, which dark energy suggests it is not. — Pfhorrest

Pretty sure it is. At the very least, everything will expand until there's nothing left to harness. If you want to believe in immortality, just have faith in whatever deity grants it rather than hoping some extreme scifi scenario will get you there.

At any rate, research into telomeres isn't going to make you invincible or give you everlasting access to energy.

That's also the reason we better continue to cure "regular" diseases because otherwise longevity research will just be a waste as nobody can enjoy its full potential otherwise. — Benkei

Also because cancer will kill everyone eventually if lifespans are extended enough (assuming something else doesn't first).

Altered Carbon is on Netflix, though I did not really like the plot. — Echarmion

And people can be killed for good on that show. You just have to destroy the technology that stores people's minds, which happens. Even that super rich dude with a dedicated backup satellite and bunch of clones isn't immune to someone taking him out.

And of course Earth isn't immune to the sun expanding to a red giant, or someone dropping a big rock on it.

You think the wright brothers listened to people when they told them they couldn't fly? — Witchhaven87

Flying was possible, and birds already showed that to be the case, while living forever is not, and there is nothing immortal.

It's highly and most likely we will yes but you're not god so don't act like you know for certain that it is predetermined I'm gonna die as well as you. — Witchhaven87

It's 100% absolutely certain you will die at some point. No technological breakthrough will change that, ever. At the every extreme end of what's possible, entropy and the heat death of the universe will make sure of it. But before then, all sorts of things will kill you first.

What you're asking for is the equivalent of a perpetual motion machine. It's not thermodynamically possible. But we don't have to go that far, since statistics would make it 99.999999999999999999999% likely you die of one of a billion other things even if aging is cured during our lifetimes. You're more likely to walk through a solid wall.

I'm not gonna die because people can get it together. — Witchhaven87

You're going to die for one reason or another, no matter what medical and technological breakthroughs happen during your life. Only question is how long and how healthy will your life be.

whether chairs really exist. — Pfhorrest

It depends on whether God said, "Let there be chairs", or God said, "Let there be particles arranged chair-wise".

Or alternatively, the chair-forms emanated from the ground of being, and the particles partake in the divine form.

..because if there is an all-knowing, all-seeing and all-powerful being, then the answer to every philosophical question becomes "Because God Says". — Banno

Is it an answer to every question because God says so, or is God says so an answer to every question because of God's nature? If the first, then logic is divine fiat, if the second, then God is logic.

If God is logic, then checkmate, atheist.

Life isn't meaningful either. It's a misapplication of the term. Life just is. You might find any given action or goal meaningful (purposeful is a better word), but the fact that you're alive has no inherent meaning.

Are there true sentences involving colors as objects of them? If so, then colors exist. — Pfhorrest

"The sky is blue."

Obviously true, right? Well hold on there

We know there's a lot more eletromagnetic radiation in the atmosphere than what we can see. If we could see it, what color would the sky look like? Most likely not the clear blue we see.

So it can't be simply true in the objective sense. It can only be true for animals with vision similar to ours.

It's just ridiculous. If 'science' can't square with simple everyday facts... then 'science' is using the wrong linguistic framework. — creativesoul

Or common sense is just plain wrong, as it has often been shown to be the case. After all, if science disagrees with the obvious fact that the sun moves across the sky, the Earth is stationary, and the table is completely solid, then obviously it's using the wrong language when it says the earth is a sphere in motion and tables are mostly empty space, right?

Or the sky is water held up by the firmaments. Why else would it look blue?

So take this to the final step... is your conclusion that colours do not exist? — Banno

They don't exist as objective properties. But they do exist in the same way anything subjective or mind-dependent exists. I take the question to be an ontological one, and therefore colors don't have a mind-independent, real existence, anymore than hallucinations, thoughts or dreams do.

It's like asking whether pain exists. Yes, as a sensation it certainly does. But no, it doesn't exist independent of organisms that experience pain.

The table is made of wood; therefore there is no table, only wood.

Would you agree with this?

The table is made of atoms which are mostly space. Therefore there is not table, only space. — Banno

I would tend to say the table is a collection of molecules arranged table-wise. Ordinary objects don't exist quite as we think they do (yes, I'm hedging a little bit here).

The sky is the selective absorption of certain wavelengths of light. Therefore there is no sky. — Banno

There's an atmosphere, or collection of gas molecules several miles thick around the Earth.

Colours are differing electromagnetic frequencies. Therefore there are no colours.

Colours are just the result of differential firing of the rods and cones in your eye. Therefore there are not really any colours. — Banno

Colors, in terms of our experience of color, are correlated with visual brain states, somehow. The rest is a causal story of how visual perception works.

Perhaps. But do you see how naive realism is foundational? — Banno

Yes. And Philosophy began (at least in part) by challenging that foundation.

It doesn't hide the assumption of naive realism - it displays it and shows that it underpins language use. — Banno

But it doesn't show that naive realism is true.

And there is no rationality that can show how any statement can have a direct correspondence to the 'world of actuality'. — A Seagull

It's pretty easy to show how "Donald Trump is POTUS" is true, though. If I said instead, "Alien life exists out there.", then your criticism would apply, as we don't have any way of justifying that statement, so we don't know the truth of the matter.

Now if I knew you were guessing that about the president of the US, but didn't really know, then it would be a matter of belief.

The second asks about the domain of a predicate, are there things that are coloured? ∃(x)f(x)?

This difference in structure shows why it is so much easier to see the second as asking 'bout word use. — Banno

It's asking whether the world is colored in as we perceive it to be.

Let's take an example. "Is the sky blue on a clear, sunny day?"

On an ordinary language usage, it is obviously is. That's because the ordinary language usage assumes normally sighted human vision. Or at least for languages that make usage of blue hues.

But what if the question is asking whether the sky is actually blue on a clear, sunny day? Then it's no longer about normally sighted human vision for language speakers that utilize blue hues.

It turns into a question about the nature of the world. And since we know that visible light is but a small part of the EM spectrum, and that other animals can see in wavelengths and primary colors that we cannot, then it's not so obvious what the answer is.

It lends itself to questioning whether the world is colored in at all. Maybe color isn't a property of the environment and things themselves, but rather animal perceptual systems. If that's true, then the sky isn't actually blue at all. It's not any color.

That's the difference between a philosophical question concerning what we perceive, and one making use of ordinary language. The first can also be a scientific one.

The problem with ordinary language in this case is that it hides an assumption of naive realism when it comes to color. And a lot of other things, for that matter.

Why? — 180 Proof

Because it takes time to go from pond scum to up-right standing monoliths. There should be aliens running the gamut between us and the advanced ones. Unless there's a reason they get wiped out or subsumed.

Suppose, as I point out in wall-of-text # (iv), we can't recognize "any evidence for them" - we can't surmise validly from our own intellectual / technological deficits that we're alone even locally in this constellation or galaxy. — 180 Proof

For the god-like ones, sure. But for ones closer to pond scum?

Some people are bothered by consciousness not having a location in the atlas of the brain. It doesn't bother me. I'm just glad it's there. — Bitter Crank

The only thing that bothers me about consciousness is that I just can't turn it off when I want to. If I could go p-zombie mode for undesirable situations, that would be nice.

It might be that we're pond scum to the advanced aliens, and they ignore us for the meatier energy sources elsewhere. It could be that we can't detect them with our primitive technology. But there should be intermediates between the scum like us and the god-like aliens which would be a bit more detectable. And we haven't seen any evidence for them either. I also don't see why when/if we become sufficiently advanced that we'd lose interest in learning about ETs, unless our descendants just stop being curious, because their VR games are so incredibly compelling, or the machines are happy to just harness us as batteries neural-networks.

There's another possibility. When you multiply all the probabilities together, you arrive at a low enough number that makes us rare in the universe. Not alone, but separated by enough time and space that we wouldn't see evidence of the nearest civilization. Maybe even the leap to multi-cellular life is a fairly low probability event amongst all the simpler life out there. We don't know, but we do know we're the only species in our planet's 3.5 billion years of life that has produced detectable radio signals and sent probes into space. If that's par for the course on planets with multicellular life, then a once ever 3.5 billion years is a pretty large time gap.

We also don't know how long a civilization with nukes, computers and climate changing abilities lasts. We might be gone by the time a detectable alien signal makes it's way here.

That's just an artefact of capitalist culture. — Banno

Various hominid species spread out from Africa over the past two million years. Life has a tendency to spread where it can. At some point, life from the ocean spread onto land once it became possible.

If we're sticking to science fiction, The Federation in Star Trek sought to explore and unite with friendly species, the Borg sought to assimilate, the Klingons and Romulans liked conquest and empire, The Dominion wanted to subjugate and control the solids because of past persecution toward shape-shifters, and the Tri-Solarians in the Three-Body Problem trilogy were looking for a better home.

There could be different reasons for wanting to expand. Ray Kurzweil imagines a post-singularity society where the goal is to wake up the universe by turning dumb matter into computronium. And Elon Musk thinks Mars should become a backup home for Earth so we don't have all our eggs in one basket. That logic could someday be expanded outside the solar system.

From a scientific point of view, the world isn't colored, it doesn't sound like anything, it doesn't feel like anything. That's Nagel's view from nowhere. It's an objective mathematical abstraction. The subjective is how we experience that world.

Properties of our visual system. What kind of property, measured in what units, described in terms of what: charge, magnetism, force, attraction, distance, geometry, chemistry, computation, quantum mechanics...? — Zelebg

Welcome to the hard problem.

Does it make sense near the end of the first Matrix movie that Neo sees reality as a waterfall of symbols instead of colors and textures? — Zelebg

For the plot of the movie, yes. And the symbols are green.

Do you not think if you want to claim that we see actual colors as colors, instead of something else that we only interpret as colors, requires this thing “color” to actually physically exist in space as some new unknown substance rather than property or side effect of something else? — Zelebg

I don't think our experience of color exists as anything other than the experience and whatever underlying physical mechanism is responsible, or however consciousness works.

how would you say the colors we 'see' are ontologically "related to the reflectivity of electromagnetic radiation in the visible range"? — Sir Philo Sophia

I would say we see color for the evolutionary reason that reflectivity of that small band of the electromagnetic radiation is really useful for navigating the environment. But in a Matrix scenario, it would be possible to generate color experiences by exciting the visual cortex.

a. we actually see colors (colors exist)
b. we only think we see colors (colors do not exist) — Zelebg

c. We actually see colors, but they are properties of our visual system, not the objects or environment itself, although they are related to the reflectivity of electromagnetic radiation in the visible range.

I don't think that the experience of seeing color being an illusion makes sense. We are conscious of colors just like pains and smells. But those aren't real, meaning independent of an animal's perception.

Are you asking us how to use the word colour, or how to use the word exist?

One or the other. — Banno

Ontological questions aren't about how to use language, they're asking what is and what isn't.

Is the moon made of cheese?

That's not a question of how to use the words cheese or made. It's a question of what makes up the moon. Of course that's a silly question, but it illustrates the point.

Is the world made up of the four elements?

Again, it's not a question of whether someone knows how to use the words in the sentence. It's an ontological one. And as it turns out, the answer was more than four once we had a periodical table, as far as chemistry is concerned.

So do colors exist?

This is asking whether colors are mind-independent, objective properties of objects, like shape, extension or mass are. And the answer is probably not, unless one wants to go the idealistic or skeptical route. It's similar to our experience of solidity or temperature. Objects aren't solid or cold/hot in the way we experience them. That's just how our perceptual systems work.

A civilization would be some distance past radio capability before realizing that making noise attracts predators. So the silence would be a result of the fact that the predators already ate everybody. — frank

Yeah, that would seem to be the likely outcome. There would be a few super-predatory civilizations with some primitive ones like ours that haven't attracted attention yet. Everyone else was taken out.

The first advanced civilizations in the galaxy would have had the upper hand, and the ones that acted most aggressively would likely have prevailed. That makes more sense than there being a million civilizations keeping quiet. And as you said, how would they know to keep quiet before it was too late?

I hope that's not actually the case as I prefer Sagan's Contact version or Clarke's monolith aliens better. Also, because we're likely screwed if it is the case.

Nukes are child's play for advanced aliens in Cixin Liu's books. Humanity doesn't fully realize this for a couple centuries, though.

For example, A nuke won't do any good against matter tightly packed together by the strong force, similar to that of a neutron star. That would probably require advanced femtotechnology to construct your own form of matter.

As is obvious the former would need proof but the latter just follows from Descartes' skepticism. — TheMadFool

The proof would have to be an argument that other minds are incoherent, since empirically there is no way to prove such a thing. It would be similar to Berkeley's proof that matter is inconceivable, I would think.

"Some" observation "might" show it to be false? Sounds a bit weak.

What if it's one study that shows a hypothesis could be wrong? Does that make it falsified, or does the study need to be replicated first, and any correlations vs causations worked out?

My apologies for my part. Reading too much into it. You really never specified. Did you realize that that was unbeknownst to me - to even be a problem - because your replies never objected? — creativesoul

Yeah, I should have reread it and changed how it was worded. It kind of makes a difference to how people discuss the issue. There are some things the presenters said that could be controversial, but they didn't say that simply being a white person, or male, or straight, or of one gender was harmful. And I could be misunderstanding what the one employee meant by that.

But mainly I just wanted to discuss the notion of whether there should be an attempt to abolish an identity of a group that has discriminated against other groups. If we say we want to end sexism and create an equal world, thus demolishing the patriarchy, does that entail that males should no longer think of themselves as male? Or that white people should no longer identify as "white"? And if that's so, should "black" and other racial categories also go away?

I did listen to a podcast fairly recently where a feminist was saying the goal of feminism (or a goal of some feminists anyway), was to abolish gender. An ideal world is one in which people don't identify as a certain gender. Yes, the biological reality of sexual differences still exists, but the identity and roles around gender no longer would.

I think that's a pretty controversial and rather strong claim, but it is interesting.

It would only matter what our goals as human beings are. — Harry Hindu

Sure. But let's say for sake of argument, since I don't know what to think about all this, that black people feel like the white people want them to act white and lose their identity in order to be accepted. That the white notion of equality is a homogenization of race that conforms to whatever norms whites already have.

If that's so, then it's a legitimate concern and impediment to the goals we all agree on as humans. We're just not agreeing on how to get there. Diversity might be the better road than conformity.

Materialism is not opposed to fieldism. Materialism's tenet is not that matter exists; it is that supernatural powers don't exist. — god must be atheist

So I thought that was naturalism, which isn't committed to materialism. You could be an idealist and a naturalist as long as ideas have no supernatural origin. Unless naturalism assumes the independent reality of the world.

Matter is a function of fields; that is a given, and as such, matter may not be the fundamental component of materialistic relationships in the universe, but its name can be applied to include all those relationships alongside those that involve actual matter, that are not supernatural. — god must be atheist

I could have made the topic: Fieldism instead of Atomism

The focus is an ontological one. What is the world fundamentally made up of? It's not the ordinary stuff we experience everyday. As contemporary physics becomes further removed from the ordinary, the question is whether materialism is the right term for saying what the fundamental stuff or reality is.

It’s ever unsettling truth in the context of these race issues: “whiteness” is the villain. On some level recognising issues of white supremacy means taking issue with many aspects of how white people exist, including some base assumptions they make about their own identity. It means understanding one’s group, oneself, to be villainous on one level or another. — TheWillowOfDarkness

It's also because calling anyone a villain and saying their identity is villainous puts them on the defensive and sounds like an attack. It could be framed differently than an identity issues. Saying there's institutional racism many white people aren't aware of, and here's the minority experience of that doesn't make it personal identity crisis thing for white people. Rather it's something that needs to be reformed in society.

But I understand your point.

I think when it’s done properly, reaching this point of shared humility allows us to see the problem as one of shared conceptual systems that we can effectively rewrite by listening to each other with our defences down. — Possibility

Well said.

this is simply untrue, and by coincidence is racist, — sarah young

I don't agree with her obviously, but to be charitable, maybe she meant that the racial category of being white is founded on racism, and those implicit biases of that categorization influence people in society to think in biased ways. therefore all the subtle discrimination another poster brought up, that white people aren't even aware of doing. So she, identifying as a white person, embodies those racist assumptions.

Of course it's society that created and maintained the racial categories, and we're all just born into it, so it's not like you can just call yourself ex-white or pinkish and have anyone else accept that. I think that's what the criticism of whiteness is about, not the amount of pigmentation in your skin, or what continent your ancestors came from.

I also came away with the same impression as Maw and that was the source of my suspicion earlier — Pfhorrest

I probably phrased it in a more provocative way that sounded like that.

Anyway, I'm not sold on everything the actual diversity trainers said, but they were certainly respectful, and said we all have our own lived experiences, we need to be aware that people have different ones.

Capitalism's boundless talent to take anything and use it for marketing.

It sucks that you felt villainised. It’s a crap feeling, but it’s one that some people experience every time they walk out the door. Be thankful that you can post your frustration here and almost guarantee sympathy and support - that your experience won’t be trivialised as being overly sensitive about something that isn’t that big of a deal. — Possibility

I'm questioning where the line is between clear discrimination, and inferred discrimination because of all the little things. As I said, one minority person in the meeting did say regarding the being ignored incident that people with those experiences are conditioned to interpret things that way, and the white response to immediately try and recognize them after that was the wrong way to go about this whole thing. Probably for several reasons, one being that the white people are acting too anxious not to appear racist, which doesn't accomplish anything.

But I'm mostly annoyed with the white people who spoke up during that meeting. This was the only minority statement (the one about the person being ignored being hypocritical on the white people's part). But I think perhaps this person was annoyed with the meeting in general, and just was expressing their frustration, and were using that as an example.

This ‘permission to be offended’ situation is damaging to unleash onto a work environment. It sounds like they were trying to do too many things at once, and their approach seemed to demonstrate fear on the part of the facilitators more than anything. It’s sounds like an opportunity to create a more inclusive work environment has gone begging here. — Possibility

Yeah, I don't think they were quite prepared for the employee response. But maybe next time.