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446 No. 446 hide quickreply [Reply]
I have a strange problem, or at least to my thinking it's strange. I grew up in a religious household and environment, my school was religious and until I was a teenager I believed everything they told me. After years of discarding one belief after another, peeling them off, I was okay with the idea that I believed in a god and an afterlife and that was about it. If anyone had asked me why, I would have said it gave me comfort to believe in these things, because it meant that I could blame someone when bad things not in my control happened and hope that something better waited for me when I died.

These days I feel that more of that faith has disappeared but there is an annoying wisp of it remaining. Logically, I know that there is no proof of god or an afterlife, that religious beliefs and spirituality are created when people have no answers but need them. And yet I can't shake my superstitions of there being a cruel, selfish and capricious god who does whatever it likes with us, sometimes for good outcomes, sometimes for bad. The belief in an afterlife has faded, I think out of apathy more than anything. But still I feel irritated that any of these ideas remain in my head, they don't seem to do me any good, they seem to be more habit of believing than anything else. Most of my friends are atheists or agnostic, one or two might consider themselves spiritual. I hate to say that I feel peer-pressured to also be an atheist, but it may be true.

So, am I worse for having these little shreds of leftover ideas, even though they give me very little comfort and put me in a weird position of not-quite-atheist and not-quite-believer? Or maybe it's something that will eventually completely disappear as I get older? I always feel dishonest when I listen to podcasts for atheists or watch Richard Dawkins talk or talk with my friends, I feel like I'm trying to be a part of a culture that I don't really fit in. Has anyone else felt like this?
>> No. 449
In everyone's life, they're going to have 'good and bad' things happen to them. I might get mugged today, I might get given money, I might feel happy or I might feel sad- I have some control over these things. If I didn't want to get mugged I could chose to leave the house as little as possible, for example, but this doesn't mean that I would never get mugged. This is seemingly the way things 'have' to be, because we have to have to have an engagement with the world or the universe. It doesn't have a particular slant, it's just that pain and pleasure or success and failure, are parts of life. Some people choose to call it 'God' and other people choose to call it 'life, etc. Whether there's a big plan, a god, or nothing of the sort; I think we might be able to safely say that 'good and bad' things happen to people throughout life.

We live in a world where people are born and die, and we understand that for us that have yet to die, life carries on. I suppose naturally, we assume that things will continue as they are after our death. We can't prove that, but perhaps people feel like there's enough evidence to support the idea that the universe will carry on after I die. Scientifically, energy cannot be created and cannot be destroyed, only transferred. So I'll die and could become food for maggots or something. I think we safely assume that our own death is not the end of the universe, and so there is reason to believe in an afterlife, because we would readily assume that there is life after our life.

It's normal for us to grow up in our own specific context, and hence we do bring our ideas and learnings to the table that is our current life. You can't be wrong for how your particular life has taken you, but from what you're saying, I think that maybe you don't have enough to fill the void that has been left since your questioning of religion. I would imagine that having grown up around a lot of religion, the lack of it must certainly appear as a lack; whereas there are people who have almost no interest in anything 'spiritual/religious' and have no desire to.

Whatever feelings and beliefs you have are fine, you don't need to fit into a box. You could, for example, just believe in God when it suited you. Some people might have problems with that, but that is their problem. Do whatever you need to, and think whatever you want without worrying about if it's wrong.

For example, is the feeling of dishonesty when listening to a podcast helpful for you? I doubt it.
>> No. 450
Apparently, people have a tendency towards belief.
http://www.apa.org/monitor/2010/12/believe.aspx
>> No. 455
Maybe you felt God at one time and now you can't shake it. If you want to believe something badly enough, you can through conditioning I suppose. I, personally, prefer to stay open minded and believe what makes the most sense to me, remaining an individual.

Btw, God does not make bad things happen. I've heard it explained like this: God is the boss. He is in charge. He is not in control. He chooses to relinquish his control at times. This is when the devil/sin steps in. If you don't believe in the existence of the devil, I challenge you to explain how good and bad exist.
>> No. 462
I believe that humans have a natural tendency towards spirituality. We have evolved alongside religion and spirituality for a damn long time, and I bet that some of it has become embedded into our code.

There's nothing wrong with having this feeling. We humans have illogical feelings all the time. No human is 100% rational. Perhaps you can even use these feelings to make you a better person.
>> No. 475
>>462

Yes, but everything that is rational is interpretable in theory by humans. Who's to say that everything is by nature comprehensible? The positivists gave up last century as far as I know, widen your scope.

If you had a proof for God, it would not be God. The divine is unapproachable through the mundanely human. Also, I'm not talking about the pop culture jesus-around-the-neck god that many reasonable people are rightly disgusted by.

>>455
This is the kind of pointless apologist rationalization that tells us absolutely nothing. None of us could even begin to explain how a theoretical divine being would think or operate. I'll participate though, the problem of evil is a non-issue because good and evil are arbitrary human constructs. Besides, we can't see the big picture; Allowing the death of millions could prevent the death of billions.


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409 No. 409 hide expand quickreply [Reply]
Lets construct a timeline history of the universe, in such a way that all the various claims of Intelligent Design camp are intact. That is to say, let's concede every single one of the assertions that Intelligent Design literature implies. Additionally, lets make sure that this story is 100% consistent with known evidence from astronomy and astrophysics. Alright, let's do this!

So God caused the Big Bang according to his wise and creative plan. After he did this, he left the universe and went on a long vacation. In fact, his vacation lasted about 13.7 billion years. During this time, he was doing god-knows-what.

In the meanwhile, the universe formed stars naturally through a known, documented process called starbursts. The chemical elements of the periodic table were then fused during supernova explosions. In particular, these fusions took place when dying stars were collapsing. These are all natural processes, documented by astrophysics and astronomy, requiring no intervention on the part of a God.

God then returned to the universe after his long hiatus to see that his universe had cooked up stars and chemical elements all by itself. God sifted through the detritus and found carbon, potassium, nitrogen, and oxygen. God considered these elements (which he did not create), and God said to himself, "Ya know what? Imma design me some DNA!"

The first thing that God designed were gigantic lizard-like walking things that weighed up to 50 tons. He gave some of them a row of 32 razor-sharp teeth so they could spend their days hunting each other and ripping each other limb-from-limb. God designed them all to order with his DNA cookbook, including what look like little vestigial arms on the front of the Tyrannosaurus with two "fingers" and claws on those fingers. What the purpose of this leg/arm things is not clear, but this is exactly what God designed.

God also designed to-order, little viruses and filled the oceans with them. They are called marine bacteriophages. Bacteriophages are nothing more than a bag carrying around DNA connected to a tube with a needle. They get by via attaching to a bacterium and then squirting their DNA into the insides of it. Such a simplistic machine-like virus could clearly have evolved by natural selection. However, according to the Intelligent Design literature, because they contain DNA, they must have been hand-designed by God, according to his divine plan. So let's assume they were.

So the viruses sloshed around on God's oceans doing nothing but hijacking bacteria to make copies of themselves. The giant lizards tore each other limb-from-limb all day spraying the ground with rivers of blood. Four-legged horned triceratops gored each other with giant horns, and then were overwhelmed by velociraptor Clever Girls, who tore at them with sharp teeth, often eating them alive.

And this "designed" scenario played out, right in accordance with God's divine plan, since he hand-designed every last one of them. So that was good, and that was okay. Giant lizards tearing each other apart is truly divine and right. But the one thing God simply could not stand was when the children of Israel fell to iniquity and wickedness. That could not be tolerated!
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>> No. 517
>>514 here

>>516
>Then he continues with the typical edgy atheist 100% literal interpretation

The problem is that it's Christians themselves that are insisting that their Bible must be taken literally. Of course, when a non-Christian brings up one of the batshit insane things that the Old Testament has to say, like slavery being okay or rape victims being required to marry their rapists, suddenly they're all like "Woah hey, you're taking that outta context! You can't do that, man! Not cool!"
>> No. 519
>>518

This. Christianity is not some unified entity in regards to interpretation of the bible, many denominations don't look at the bible as anything more than a moral example in some situations and dispensing entirely with the old testament (most of the exceptionally crazy shit is old testament). In fact there are churches where most of the people didn't believe anything beyond the reality of a God incarnate as man, rejecting any specific claims as necessarily false because any story of one trait or act would not be able to communicate the sublime nature of God.

I'm sure you know this, it just bothers me to see educated people disparage the largest religion on the planet based on eccentric beliefs of a subset of that group. So yeah, there are many Christians who look at the bible as not even mostly-true.
>> No. 532
>>516
Well, ken ham did emphasize that little bible bit quite alot.

My interest is in doctrinal disputes. What would an orthodox or nestorian christian have to say? Why does the debate rest soley in the hands of the western pentarch and his bastard offspring?
>> No. 536
>>534

I'm not making a dispute, I'm just saying it would be interesting to know. From what I know of history, the east was the intellectual center of christendom, for most of it's formative period. If this debate is to be settled in any way, I want to see the best christianity has to offer, for a fair assessment.

It's like if you were learning about egyptology, you'd go to egypt wouldn't you? Or just stay in your university department?

I mean take an outside perspective. As a scholar living in the 12th millenium, interested in the debate for the sake of truth or some other frill. I mean there's hundreds of years of case law on the subject, if you consider church scholarship. Theological academia has a massive tradition, theology being coterminous with philosophy for a great period. So treat the catecheticals like any other text.

I want to see some sources cited and no bullshitting just because it's religion.
>> No. 539
I think what he is talking about doctrinal variations in Christianity on the creation of the universe.

The thing is that most eastern churches are different in identity and perspectives towards God, not in their account of creation. So, Saint Thomas Christians in India are creationists regardless of what the Pope thinks.

To find religious organizations that embrace an evolutionary timeline you would have to go to western churches with exposure to quality education. For instance, many Catholic, Episcopal, and Evangelical Lutheran churches in places like the United States and Europe are led and attended by evolutionists from the lay people to high level clergy.

Most churches try to not take a position on the issue at all in order to attract both groups of constituents.

Source: Been to a lot of churches and visited a few of the official websites of major denominations


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496 No. 496 hide quickreply [Reply]
everytime i read the papers, especially about politics i get a panic attack which is hard for me, because i want to read that shit. also nightmares constantly about war and massive surpression, using humans as guinea pigs and so forth. So I basically cannot process politics very well. do you have such problems? how do you cope with that? i always get that feeling when its about politics/world situation, thats why i post it here. pls move if its inapropriate. thanks.
>> No. 497
>>1017
>do you have such problems?
No, because I know that things aren't as terribly bad as your paranoid and misinformed mind makes them out to be
>how do you cope with that?
I try to be as informed and educated as possible
>> No. 498
You're transferring the concepts of tyranny and oppression from abstract to actual in your mind.

I don't want to comment on the actual veracity of your beliefs because I believe doing so would provoke a heated discussion about the state of the union and doing so would be counter-productive. Instead, I want to explain to you why your cognition is faulty.

First, you are effectively trying to predict the future. You cannot do this. Anything you think you know about the future is wrong. Things change in an instant, a single errant neutrino could kill the next Hitler without anyone even knowing. Granted the odds are astronomical, but you get the idea, now apply it to planes, trains and automobiles. Similarly, the same could happen to the next Ghandi or Mother Teresa. You just don't know.

You're assuming your opinions are facts, or worse you're assuming the opinions you read in the news are facts. The next time you read something about how Obama is the anti-christ and is literally waiting for you to leave the house so he can steal your guns, read an "everything is ok" newspaper for a different perspective on the same story. Unless you directly know of some secret society or group that is actively plotting to destroy western civilisation from within, don't believe it. Just because Alex Jones once met a guy at a bus stop who knows someone who said he saw Keith Alexander's super secret world domination plans doesn't mean it's true.

You are experiencing a phenomenon known as world narrowing. What that means is that you are slowly and subconsciously isolating your focus, resulting in you seeing mountains instead of molehills. For instance, talk to any neo-nazi skinhead and they will tell you that jews are the problem with the world, because they honestly believe that because all their friends do, which results in them seeing every news article in the light of "jews are bad." Similarly, talk to any anti-fa member and they will tell you that skinheads are the cause of all the world's problems for the same reason. Talk to a vegetarian, they blame meat eaters, talk to the greens, they blame big oil, talk to a democrat they blame gun nuts, talk to a republican and they blame statists. The solution to this is simple - find other hobbies. If you enjoy nothing but reading the news and posting on obscure imageboards, you will see the world through a depressed pair of eyes. If you enjoy several hobbies such as playing an instrument, socialising, attending sports games as a player or spectator, studying Shakespeare or jacking off, the news will seem much less important to you.

Finally I want to say that there's nothing wrong with the way you feel. You're experiencing basic physiological changes in your body in response to a perceived threat. What is happening to you is no different than what happens to people who suffer anxiety when they go outside, but your trigger is different. Stop reading the news and take up some hobbies. Expand your life, make it more interesting, then when you do happen to glance at a paper it won't seem like such a big deal. These changes take time, you won't notice them until one day you find yourself reading about China invading Japan and making a racist joke to your friend instead of worrying about the consequences.

Good luck.
>> No. 530
The brain is the biggest danger to brains.


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522 No. 522 hide quickreply [Reply]
Recreating various crisis situations or not results in invisibility and speed(people leaving by the minute of our time and then sometimes returning),altering you and reality,personally affecting reality,your mind returning to the past(time travel).They're hungrily pulling and grabbing peoples sleeping genitals,turning peoples places into a motel/outhouse and anally attacking colon cleansed people.Aliens,people are visiting and sometimes leaving this world and some of the people from this world are betraying the people from this world.Surrounded by the future,the past and nightlights,barking dogs,abductions,shootings.disappearances,suicides,murders,suffocations,draining energy,which year and world are you from? Being pulled towards the future or the past along with your iron coins and other materials your in contact with and surrounded by,people are disappearing,people are being replaced with clones,robots,etc,people travelling back in time are being attacked,getting into accidents or sending messages.Mind control and connected minds communicating,sensing peoples thoughts,interruptions,influencing,turning people into traitorous sex fiends or idiots by getting them to look at and/or sniff something or by injecting them with something,preparing them for what´s happening now and after(animalism),your suspicious,nature's,etc examples,stuck in this nest.They're waking people up again and again and people are waking up in this place and they're causing other sleeping problems and deaths,picking,poking,prodding,digging people with medical instruments,sometimes reviving people and bringing them out to court.The TV creeps and others are accusing people of being criminals and others in a past life,threatening,insulting and bothering people about what they are doing,saying and their thoughts,maybe they'll reach through the screen and your reality show from this world,concluding the experiments and cleaning the cages.


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No. 483 hide quickreply [Reply]
Paradise is like life: The more you try to define it, the less it exists.
>> No. 484
Except that's wrong. If something cannot be defined, it cannot exist.

That's not to say that being undefined = non-existence. That's absurd, there are plenty of things that exist that are unobserved so haven't been defined, but if it CAN be observed, it CAN be defined, so it DOES exist. If it cannot be observed, (by ANYTHING) then it cannot exist.
>> No. 487
>>484

It follows from what you're saying that both the past and future are not real.

As far as OP's post goes, I fail to see how any temporal act of definition could have any effect on whether or not something actually exists.
>> No. 488
>>487

No it doesn't. The past has been observed, and can be observed by someone with a large telescope light years away. For instance, if someone 300 million light years away with a powerful telescope was looking at earth, they would see dinosaurs.

The future can similarly be observed by us when we move in to it. It is also possible that it can be observed right now by beings other than ourselves.
>> No. 490
Confusion is the fuel of a personality.
>> No. 491
>>488

You may see the light that was reflected in your direction in the past, but regardless of what you're seeing, the telescope is still pointed at something very far away that is in the same time as us. "Looking into the past" with telescopes is no different than looking at at the Earth and claiming that you are looking back into the time of the creation of the solar system by looking at something that was created then. The only difference is the longer distances involved.

Seeing the future through the passage of time is completely different than seeing old light waves that reach you in the present.


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500 No. 500 hide expand quickreply [Reply]
The Petrodollar is the lifeblood of our nation's strength and essential for the maintenance of our global peacekeeping capacity along with our national survival.

The Obama administration has done too little to protect the status of the USD as the world reserve currency therefore we the people of the United States of America demand that the Obama administration set the protection of the petrodollar above all other foreign and domestic concerns.

We demand that the Obama administration punish any nation who tries to subvert the Petrodollar monopoly on oil transaction with force if necessary. This includes:

1) Demand that Iran, Venezuela, and Syria all sell, and continue to sell, oil in USD.

2) Declare war on any non-EU nation which chooses to sell petroleum in Euros.

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/protect-petrodollar-foreign-interference/89hHV2dS

Sign this petition and spread it like AIDS (except without the gay sex).

(USER THINKS OBAMA READS THOSE FUCKING THINGS)
6 posts omitted. Click Reply to view.
>> No. 507
>>1014
It's dumb for pretty obvious reasons. Yeah, people have warred for these reasons before, but it almost never ends with the aggressing party really becoming more prosperous as a result. 10 years of war have certainly taught us that it doesn't exactly bring ideal results.

But in a broader sense, it's still dumb because there's no such thing as just invading one country in Europe anymore. You'd also be going to war with all their allies, and your own allies aren't going to rush to your defense when they don't see their national interest in it, and might even join the other side. As high and mighty as we see ourselves here in the US, we would not win a full-scale war with the entire continent of Europe, and nuclear war in such a scenario would almost be inevitable, and if doesn't happen it means we would be invaded and defeated.

The most prudent move in this scenario is quite simple: get less dependent on oil. If one country buying oil in a different currency is such an incredible threat to our country, then we need to make it so that it's not a colossal threat, and in the process of becoming more energy independent, we can become a stronger nation, rather than one that has to invade and conquer in order to stay afloat due to internal weakness and an inability to address these problems.
>> No. 508
>>1015

Are you serious? War pretty much always ends with the victor becoming much more prosperous. It's how virtually every empire in history has funded its existence. Find a nation smaller than you, go in and take their stuff. End. That's why empires inevitably fall, they need growth to live, and eventually become too big to administer successfully.

You seem to be referring to modern wars, which almost always involve "peacekeeping" in some form. That is not the kind of war the OP is advocating. Think of colonial Britain - were their declarations of war to seek out and eradicate terrorism? Or were they to conquer, rule and plunder the target nation? Can you see the difference between say the British invading India, taking their land and spices, selling them for profit and imposing hefty sea trade tariffs and America sending soldiers to the middle east to track and kill terrorists?

War makes the world poorer, but it makes the victors richer.

I don't think the OP advocates going to war with any EU nation. In fact he specifically states "non-EU." I could be wrong, but that's the way I'm reading it.

As for your point about the US not winning a war against all of Europe, without armchair generaling here, consider that the US is about the same size as Europe, and has a military budget of $680bn/yr, compared to the top 4 EU countries which total 200bn/yr together. Then remember that 4 different countries with 4 different styles of military drill with 4 different languages can never be as effective as a single culturally cohesive entity.

I'm not saying the OP is right at all, in fact I agree with you that the US and the world in general should become less dependent on fossil fuels, but I do stand by my point that the OP shouldn't be dismissed just because you don't like the style of what he has to say.
>> No. 509
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509
>>1020
>> No. 510
I feel like raising hell on the issue is only going to reduce our political capital. We can get away with this because only crazy people like Iran are asking for it. But a reactionary backlash in the States could have unintended results. This petition is stupid.
>> No. 533
Heh, even better would be a return to bretton woods. Fixed pegs just semt inflation to other countries.


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486 No. 486 hide quickreply [Reply]
I wish to bring to your attention a game based around philosophy.

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/625356

I found this game incredibly frustrating, as it is closer to some kind of puzzle game than a "philosophical game". While certainly pioneering and a breath of fresh air, I can't help but feel that it was rushed and not given enough thought. I came to the conclusion that the search for an answer [to the question of morality] is not attainable, and that it would be immoral to search for one for various reasons. Yet this is not the conclusion you are "meant" to find.

I hope that you all do not take too much offense to a video game being discussed on this board, but I'd like to hear, among other things, how you would have wanted to approach arguments posed in the game.
>> No. 489
It's annoying that my logical argument against Kant, that there can be no such thing as a categorical imperative when all morals are intention based. For example, Kant describes the act of lying as something that must always be avoided, but is it good to tell a child that his drawing is poor? Conversely, is it always good to save a dying man's life if he wishes to die?

I can't work out what statement and challenge it wants me to link up, and it won't let me have any of those.


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480 No. 480 hide quickreply [Reply]
I haven’t done this sort of thinking in a long time, so forgive me if this comes off as sophomoric or undeveloped or whatever. I’m just kind of afraid of technology, man. It worries me. I have a four year old nephew who, by maybe a year or two ago, already had intimate knowledge of how to operate an iPhone (or at least how to find Angry Birds on it). But how is that going to affect him, ten, twenty, thirty years from now? How are any of us going to be affected by being constantly plugged in to electronics? Every day, I see people walking around or sitting, heads bowed, staring into a smartphone. I myself spend on average ~4 hours a day on the computer, and I hate it. I look back at my life up to this point, and realize that I’ve spent a lot of my waking hours in front of a computer, surfing the internet or playing games, and I hate that too.

I study history, and I understand that without advances in certain technologies – manufacturing, medicine, hygiene – we as a species would still be miserable, short-lived, smelly assholes. I just feel like the march of technological development in our time, especially entertainment technology, is unstoppable, and I can’t see what ultimate direction or purpose it has. The Japanese are building machines that resemble human beings, and are talking about instilling them with individual thought and intelligence. I saw this on the Discovery Channel once, so don’t quote me, but when I saw it, my first reaction wasn’t wonder or awe at what we’re capable of. I was scared and uncomfortable.

I can’t quite put my finger on why or how, but I just feel like all of this is really, really bad for us. I think about how I’ll raise my kids in the future, and one of my first thoughts is always to get them outside as much as possible. To connect them with both nature and other humans face-to-face. That thought is a lot more comforting to me than sticking an iPhone in my 4-year-old’s face just to get him to quiet down.
>> No. 485
I feel the same way. What have we gotten ourselves in to? Technology has reached the point where you either have to completely extract yourself from society or become an outcast to get away from it, there is no socially acceptable middle path.

To be honest I doubt there is any way to rationally discuss the effects of it here, or really anywhere, other than speculation. The only solution is to kick the ball down the road or reject it completely, and we humans seem to be very ok with making our luxuries someone else's problem down the road.

Honestly, I'm just thankful that I'm alive now to experience these wonders. I'd estimate that we have another 200-250 years of modern culture before there is a resource collapse, followed by a few millennia of ignorance, hopefully followed by something even greater and unimaginable in the even more distant future.


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436 No. 436 hide expand quickreply [Reply]
I don't really know much about research in this area to be honest. But, given the success of mathematics in science, i.e. natural philosophy, and the lack of success of theories without math, shouldn't philosophy in general be math based?
Given how modern math is structured (ZFC I mean) any idea in english can be mathematically mimicked. And given how little progress was made without math in physics, it seems silly to expect anything else from modern philosophy.
4 posts omitted. Click Reply to view.
>> No. 445
By restricting the scope of philosophy to what can be expressed mathematically, you handicap it greatly. And no, any idea in English cannot be expressed mathematically. Good luck expressing "quixotic unrestrained passion" in ZFC. Saying that all philosophy should be based in math is like saying that the only numbers we should think about are the ones we can measure with a yardstick.

In fact, as soon as you can represent something symbolically it ceases to be pure philosophy and becomes an axiomatized sub-branch of mathematics.

>>437
"All the real new work is symbolic-logic based"

Please. Not only is that an idiotic and arbitrary statement, it is just straight up wrong.
>> No. 447
>>445
>Good luck expressing "quixotic unrestrained passion" in ZFC.
That's certainly not impossible since passion is generally experienced by physical objects. The non BS parts of passion are certainly expressible. Moreover, In the metalanguage of mathematics, people employ nearly unrestricted comprehension, so any sentence in english is fair game as long as it's contradiction free. In some contexts even contradictions are allowed.
>> No. 459
>>447

The person experiencing passion is irrelevant, what is important is communicating the idea of it. The "BS" parts of passion are inherent parts of the idea that you can't just chop off so the remains can be expressed in terms of sets.

Once you turn a concept into a statement in mathematics, information is lost in the transformation. For example, you could approach a word problem and produce an equation that describes it, but if all you have is that equation and want to know what it describes you're out of luck. The equation could describe anything that happens to have those properties, including but not limited to the original problem.

Philosophy and mathematics cannot be one and the same without sacrificing the specific ideas that make philosophy relevant to our lives.
>> No. 476
>>436
No, absolutely not. This is cargo cult science.
http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm

Math is a powerful and useful tool, and it should be applied where it makes sense and contributes to understanding. Making everything mathematical just because it worked well in other disciplines and it looks impressive is idiocy. I wasted years of my life studying economics, so I know the damage this mindset can do.
>> No. 482
>>476
>I wasted years of my life studying economics
It's just sad people are coming to terms with this only now


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494 No. 494 hide quickreply [Reply]
Ok, let's review.

1. Second-hand smoke is harmful. This is accepted by every health- and science-related organization of the modern age. Is it going to kill you? Probably not. But it is harmful, however minute that harm is.

2. Libertarians essentially believe that everyone should be allowed to do whatever they want as long as they're not harming anyone.

So, why, WHY, do libertarians get their panties in a bunch a bunch whenever someone talks about banning cigarettes (totally unreasonable) or simply restricting smoking to certain areas - i.e. ones where non-smokers don't have to inhale or smell that shit (perfectly reasonable)? Since second-hand smoke is harmful, it's a person harming another person. Why are they okay with this?

I've discussed the issue with several libertarian friends. They all have the idea that if someone starts smoking around you, "you can just leave". But why can't the guy doing something harmful just leave? Why does his freedom to breathe toxic fumes trump my freedom to breathe clean air? By their own principles, libertarians should support restricting where smokers can smoke. Of course, their love of not harming anyone seems massively outweighed by their hatred of a government banning anything, even something that will benefit everyone and hurt no one.
>> No. 495
Playing Devil's Advocate, I think most libertarians and the like are upset that they banned smoking in restaurants and other private establishments. It's one thing to ban smoking in public establishments and places where people don't have to be, but as a restaurant I should be able to decide if I want smokers in there, and if other customers/staff don't like being around them they don't have to go there. The problem is, of course, that when it was legal pretty much all restaurants had to allow smoking to stay competitive, and even with smoking and non-smoking areas it wasn't uncommon for people to still have to deal with it when going to more or less any restaurant. Beyond that, they started banning it in outdoor areas, smokers had to move from outside the doorway to farther out and many colleges and workplaces require people to go pretty far lengths- many times no matter what the elements are- to get away from places where people MIGHT be, even if they're not there right now.

It's become a movement that was once focused on just making sure non-smokers didn't have to deal with carcinogens no matter where they went, but now the anti-smoking laws and movement seem to have the goal of trying to over-tax and inconvenience people into quitting. Taking the libertarian hat off, they would probably have more success in funding more broad-based quitting programs, the various treatments can often be quite expensive and Quit-Smoking lines and other programs only really give significant assistance to the poor.


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399 No. 399 hide expand quickreply [Reply]
How is survival of the fittest not the most logical philosophy?

Isn't the idea of an everybody wins "utopia" that everybody seems to want just the side effect of empathy, which only exists because we are social animals?
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>> No. 464
Any person who thinks they can stand alone will be beaten by the group of people who stand together. Civilization is evolution.
>> No. 465
>>427
Mutual aid justifies racism. It makes more sense to be empathetic to those more related to you than to some strangers you barely know.
>> No. 469
All y'all been indoctrinated by Western ideas of individualism yo. Humans came out the "fittest" because we managed to work together so as to increase to overall fitness of the species. Empathy exists because we as individuals could never survive on our own. We need other people no matter how much they suck.

Drunk posting on 99chan after a long break. Aw yeah.
>> No. 478
We can't make things best or permanent, but we can make them better or last longer. The proof that we can do this is in that we have been doing this all along. And this is not limited to skin-deep creature comforts. Technology and science are helping us to gradually improve important things like life and love. It's philosophy, not science, that could never do this. Certainly not to the extent that is being made possible by science.
>> No. 479
I am so stoned, I just chiseled all over me. lol <3


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472 No. 472 hide quickreply [Reply]
Anarchy is not chaos. Discuss
>> No. 473
"Is it necessary to repeat here the irrefutable arguments of Socialism which nobourgeois economist has yet succeeded in disproving? What is property, whatis capital in their present form? For the capitalist and the property ownerthey mean the power and the right, guaranteed by the State, to live withoutworking. And since neither property nor capital produces anything when notfertilized by labor - that means the power and the right to live by exploitingthe work of someone else, the right to exploit the work of those who possessneither property nor capital and who thus are forced to sell their productivepower to the lucky owners of both. Note that I have left out of accountaltogether the following question: In what way did property and capital everfall into the hands of their present owners? This is a question which, whenenvisaged from the points of view of history, logic, and justice, cannot beanswered in any other way but one which would serve as an indictment againstthe present owners. I shall therefore confine myself here to the statementthat property owners and capitalists, inasmuch as they live not by their ownproductive labor but by getting land rent, house rent, interest upon theircapital, or by speculation on land, buildings, and capital, or by thecommercial and industrial exploitation of the manual labor of the proletariat,all live at the expense of the proletariat. (Speculation and exploitation nodoubt also constitute a sort of labor, but altogether non-productive labor.)"
>> No. 474
As an anarchist, I can attest to the fact that an anarchist society is an organised one.


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461 No. 461 hide quickreply [Reply]
You live entirely in your own imagination.

You know that now doesn't exist, right?

Every particle in the universe can only interact with other particles necessarily separated in both time and space. Particles interact via forces, with their own mediator particles (the electromagnetic mediator is the photon). These mediator particles are constrained by the speed of light. They have a source of emission, and of absorption, separated by a duration and distance. These particles have no independent existence- they are not "real" except as abstractions. Although you can see things that are lit, what's really going on is that a lepton or a hadron is performing a quantum leap somewhere and causing a corresponding quantum leap in your eyeball. From your perspective, something is jiggling your eyeball from another coordinate in space-time. It is also equally true, though, that having your eyeball jiggled necessitates the jiggling of something else in the past; the event itself does not occur 'now' in any meaningful sense, but can be thought of as having discrete energy, length, and period, relative to other space-time coordinates.

The relativity of these space-time coordinates is the important facet I'm trying to get across here, because neither the distance, duration or energy are fixed, or indeed are objectively measurable- they remain constant only in aggregate. Some alien looking at his home star a billion years ago a billion light years away will note a certain distance to the star, the duration of the event, and the energy of the quantum leap, but these values won't be the same from our perspective, because the distant particles are receding from us at a notable fraction of the speed of light, and length contraction, time dilation, and redshift apply (as described by special relativity). Physics treats all such space-time coordinates invariantly, although you can't work out the future end of an event from its hypothetical past one, you can only stab at its probability (using the equations of quantum mechanics).

Events trigger other events, (causality) so all measurable events have occured in the past. That they occurred at all can only be inferred from other events that they cause- for example, seeing a photon of light will trigger a chemical reaction in your nervous system picks upon (or 'is' might be a better term) that makes you know that you saw it.

Setting aside the light-cone aspect of things, which make it pretty clear that there is no 'now' at least in a strictly physical sense, it is an indisputable fact of biology that it takes time for nervous impulses to travel from sensory apparatus to the central nervous system and be processed by the brain. This is why the highway code makes reference to reaction time in the section on stopping distances- it is physically impossible to react to things as they are happening.

What the brain does is take raw impulses that occurred in the past, process them, and project that information forward to create an *imaginary* "now". It does this quite well- this is what allows you to, for example, catch a ball that is thrown at you. We normally think that it takes time for us to react to things that we perceive "now" but it's more than that- the perception of "now" is a projection into the future of essentially out of date information to begin with. This effect is difficult to perceive, because it is not only intimately tied with the essence of what consciousness is, but it is also very well compensated for by the brain's synchronising processes. It is easy to dismiss the importance of it when response time is measurable in fractions of a second, but consider a hypothetical space whale with a brain hundreds of kilometers long. It would think in just the same way as us, be able to dodge asteroids just like we would in our hypothetical space ship, but it would be projecting from old data, say, three minutes ahead; its "now" would be- not old- but three minutes *uncertain*. You could wave your hands in front of its eyeball and three minutes later it would blink- just as if a fly gets in your eye, and you blink it away fractions of a second later. This is because it's "now" is three minutes uncertain. However, if you floated in front of it and three a ball at it that took six minutes to go near it, in three minutes time it would catch the ball. From its perspective, it would be catching the ball "now", having no understanding of any other frame of reference.

It is easy, and tempting, to think of now existing, but that we aren't absolutely aware of it. The problem comes when you consider other reference frames. Think about any given event- for example, clenching your left fist briefly. There is a time before you plan to do it, a time when you are planning to do it, a time when you do it, and a time when you are thinking about having done it. The event itself does not pass from being in the future, to a "present" and onto being in the past; the event occupies a discrete space-time coordinate. At each stage, there is a "you" occupying a different space-time coordinate (and a part of your body, but not the whole "you" occupying the same space-time coordinate). Our perception of these different times is only a recognition of the distance between the "self" at these instances and the event. These states of recognition remain the same independent of the time at which we, in turn, recognise them; in other words, what exists is a recognition of the separation in time between discrete events, relatively speaking, with no fixed zero-point which we can address as "now".
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>> No. 463
Cool. Anyway I'm gonna go make some coffee. I like coffee.
>> No. 467
I'm simply going to refute the first argument only, as I hope it is representative of the core of your sentiment. If this is not the case, please present the core of your sentiment. You went on too many tangents to make it worth addressing any of them.

Assuming you define an imagination as a mental image that is perceived not to be real, then you can safely say that sane people do not live in their imagination.

Even if it is not required to be perceived as not real, the external world still differs greatly from the internal world. Reading about lucid dreaming, asking oneironauts or even trying it yourself will show one very big difference between the internal and external world: consistency. The internal world is inconsistent. If you forget about something in a mental image, said thing will not appear there even if you do not recall it. This will not happen in real life. If you thought you brought your keys with you in a dream when you arrive at your locked door, you will have done so, even if you never touched your keys in the dream. This will not happen in the external world.

Unless you wish to entertain the idea that the measurable external world is still not real ["It is tempting to think of such a thing as a red ball existing"}, the external world is still by definition independent of you and me. The ball still reflects the same wavelengths of light regardless of whether or not you exist. This might be horrifying to some, insulting to others, but that is where all the evidence is pointing.
>> No. 468
>>467

Not sure you read beyond the first sentence. The gist of my sentiment is that the perceived 'present' is a construction based on limited information available in the near past- although I deconstruct this interpretation- so that in a literal sense, the consciousness exists in an imagined world. I might point out that any two tests of reality are comparisons between two separate recollections of the past, and therefore are tests of the self-consistency of your memory and the world as you imagine it to be; so yes, again, entirely in your imagination.
>> No. 470
>>468
>The gist of my sentiment is that the perceived 'present' is a [mental] construction based on limited information available in the near past
There is certainly a processing delay for us, the most simple example of it being referred to as reaction time. There are more advanced theories and studies on the subject that might be of your interest. The delay, however, does not mean that we do not perceive a present. We can obviously not look into the future, and we do not exclusively recall memories. We live, and act, in a perceived present. This perceived present may certainly lag behind our sensors (which in turn may be subject to lag), that is not the issue. The issue is that you claim that this makes it imaginary without motivating why this makes it imaginary. Please provide your definition of "imaginary".
>> No. 471
>>470

It is imaginary because it is a consciousness of a space that is generated within the mind, though also from external stimulus, like all other things which are imaginary. Consider the story of a novel, which necessarily makes reference to external impulses with which we are famailiar in order to render meaning. The story makes reference to an imaginary awareness of space.


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398 No. 398 hide expand quickreply [Reply]
So I fucked my sister last night..
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>> No. 416
>>415

The arrangement of nucleotides in one divine meatsack as opposed to another one is of no significant difference. Not that I read OP's picture. All the dots from the proofreading mode or whatever makes it impossible.
>> No. 430
If someone is you they are you. There is no such thing as a soul because I fucking said so; but I have no proof. You're an impossible occurrence of energy manifesting itself into physical consciousness in a universe of non-living stuff, and that is a bad thing. Circumstantial evidence of a fictional character claims that your life is determined by what you do; be ashamed of that as opposed to making the best of life due to that information. Everyone is unique just like everyone else. Imsosmartpayattentiontome.jpg
>> No. 431
Life is absurd. However, that doesn't mean it's meaningless; it means that meaning is created by human folly. You don't have ultimate control over your own life, but you have some. Yes, you are a deterministic pile of matter; this is nothing to be sad about.

'Soul' is not a well-defined term. It's not a helpful term to use. Regarding the nature of the soul, the best position is philosophical non-cognitivist; that is to say, to realise that there is no singular concept of the soul, therefore no-one can have anything useful to say about it.
>> No. 448
Two people being born and living under the exact same circumstances is practically impossible. There are too many variables. Everyone has a unique set of information in their memories. Everyone has a body that grew slightly differently. Yes, some people can and do become objectively better than others at doing specific things. Yes, this makes them objectively more successful than others at achieving goals that they themselves have set. There is no such thing as a 'default human'. Clearly 'special' people do exist, think people with disabilities - clearly they have less chances of success at certain things. Think savants - people who have far more chance of success at one or more things. Everyone is indeed unique. Not that this should make you feel better about yourself.
>> No. 456
>>448
Agreed.

Not that humans aren't still all on a level plain. Judgments are just an illusion created by the insecure mind. We are all the same, but we are all unique. Na'mean?


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421 No. 421 hide quickreply [Reply]
Anyone know the name of a book containing the philosophical papers Napoleon wrote before his rise to power?
>> No. 443
I believe this post belongs on the Literature board.
>> No. 444
>>421
Don't know if this will help, but it might:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3567/3567-h/3567-h.htm


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432 No. 432 hide quickreply [Reply]
What is existence but the irrational perception of a connection with your surroundings?
>> No. 433
Can a mind exist without ever having senses?
>> No. 434
It would exist through the recognition of concepts and self awareness, but would not have the same internal monologue we who do have senses are capable of. That being said, everything should be questioned, and I could easily be wrong.
>> No. 435
What if the sense of self is nothing but an illusion, and is representative of an artificial division between what's inside and the rest of the world apart from it? I would say that existence is ubiquitous and the illusion of the self is just generated from a tiny portion of existence that is capable of sapience.
>> No. 442
>>435

And there you go, you stumbled upon ego death.

The self is an illusion and not an illusion.


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423 No. 423 hide quickreply [Reply]
Could someone explain socratic irony to me? I don't understand it.
>> No. 440
I'm looking that up, I'll get back to you.

SAGE has been used.


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283 No. 283 hide expand quickreply [Reply]
This Guy says he doesn't have emotions. I think we are driven by emotions. He states "you cannot say how emotions affect people "
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>> No. 308
Everyone has emotions.

Some people, though, only have logical emotion, the kind that concerns decision making processes. An example would be someone with schizoid personality disorder. They aren't at all interested in other people, and will usually claim not to have any type of strong emotion.
>> No. 360
Bale confirmed for psychopath, which I imagine was probably useful for his depiction of a psychopath in American Psycho.
>> No. 385
Exoplanets.

We can infer that they are there because we can observe their effects on otherwise regular phenomena.

Emotions are like this. Even if someone can't process a giant ball of emotions, that doesn't meant that it's not effecting their behavior.

I don't know if I would agree that we are driven by our emotions, but I do think that the Limbic system, which is the emotional seat in our brains, is essentially who we are. It's the source of our desires and rewards, and it's also the filter for our experiences.

Additionally, it's one of the earliest-evolved brain structures.
>> No. 391
My emotional mood swings are fucking ridiculous. Keep in mind I am a male that is 100% straight and has not been diagnosed with any sort of fault or disease or lack of whatever...and yet, my mood swings change dozens of times a day, not just that many but that rapidly as well.

For an hour, I feel happy. Then I feel sad for 5 minutes before I get angry for no reason for like a half hour straight then Im back to being happy again!

Fuck, Idk what's wrong with me but Im sure as hell positive of the fact that we ALL have emotions, and whether we like to believe it or not, they come out in droves each and every single day, even when we dont notice it.
>> No. 393
Everyone has emotions. Otherwise you would die because of inactivity, i.e. starvation, suffocation. You cant logically prove that you should be doing this things unless you assume that survival is something you should be aiming for, and if you completely ignore logic as well you would just act in a random fashion or not at all.


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8 No. 8 hide expand quickreply [Reply]
I have never seen the issue with infinite regress. It arises when I begin thinking about determinism and the origins of the universe. I take a radical deterministic view and believe the universe has always been. Perhaps the issue people have with view our cosmological timeline as infinite is that it's hard to comprehend. What do you think?

Also, I know, "how did we get to this point if we started the chain of cause and effects infinitely long ago"
I think this is just a language game. Starting infinitely, for one, is nonsensical. Infinity didn't start. Secondly, you have to ignore time with infinity so "this point" is also meaningless.
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>> No. 366
They've designed an experiment to test whether the universe is a simulation. So I think this may help to illuminate the answer to this question.
>> No. 374
>>366

I've heard about that. It'll amount to nothing. Sounds like bullshit doesn't it?
>> No. 376
>>366
No, they designed an experiment to see if the universe was discrete. Just because computers use discrete math doesn't mean that anything discrete is a simulation, or even that all simulations are discrete.
>> No. 384
>>8

"Reason is always a region cut out of the irrational — not sheltered from the irrational at all, but a region traversed by the irrational and defined only by a certain type of relation between irrational factors."


>>66
Regression always comes down to one thing, induction. We are here. Something happened and we are here.
We have no reason to believe that whatever happened will or will not happen again because it exists beyond an infinite source. We will never know an ultimate how or why because INFINITE REGRESSION is INFINITE. Example, if the Big Bang created the universe, what created the Big Bang? Everything comes from nothing? If this is the science you have to offer, I gotta say it is not particularly tight.

We know we are, and that's what we get. Operate within your parameters. Play your position.


>>160

I would argue with just as much logic that "two" is not a real thing. Everything existing is distinct so there can never be two of anything as they could not occupy the same place in space time. So now that we've decided that all numbers are abstract concepts, infinity, the abstract concept/number rides again! Hooray!
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>> No. 392
>>289
i meant in terms of infinite regress

if there is in an unlimited number of universes, you can't measure "one" universe. at least i don't see how you could. to be able to measure one part of something would require that the whole of that something be finite, no? that was probably better to use as an example than the earth, which can obviously be measured relative to the universe it is in


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386 No. 386 hide quickreply [Reply]
I used to really enjoy philosophy and reading and the whole beauty of thought.

But now I just hate it. I loathe every quote of every author I've read, every discussion, every word related to anything philosophical.

Where's the wisdom of Thoreau, of Locke, of everybody for some starving family somewhere in Africa? Instead of discussing and arguing about how to put down a fire, shouldn't we just get some water?

I feel it's just pointless now, a waste of time. I feel every philosopher was some sort of spoiled brat, enjoying the comforts of a life without hardships, struggles, or actual suffering. Selfish.

I can't find any honesty in their words anymore.


Am I wrong?

I would really like some opinions
>> No. 388
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388
I don't think the purpose of philosophical thought is to "put out the fire", it's more to determine the structure and properties of the fire, to use your analogy. That starving family in Africa may not get any use of formal philosophy, but I guarantee you that they use the concepts in philosophy to some extent without even realizing it.

As far as your comment about most philosophers being self-centered dicks, I'm tempted to agree, as are many others. Of course there are exceptions to that generalization, but on the whole all people are unpleasant. Try reading some different philosophers, sounds like you've been reading some Wittgenstein or something expecting some kind of profound solution to the world's problems.

Personally I'm partial to my trill nigga Kierkegaard, he went through some shit in his personal life. It takes some suffering and realizations of the stark painful reality of our situation to kick off existentialism. Check it out if you haven't already.

Out of curiosity, are there any specific people/writings that made you feel this way?
>> No. 389
>>388
I know philosophy isn't supposed to have a lot of actual practical uses, and I used to be OK with that.

Now I just feel it's a waste of time to ponder about things, I'd rather do things. A philosophy professor I once had said to us the first day "Welcome to my class! You'll learn nothing from it!"

And damn, he was right.

It bugs me, the fact that there are more important matters in my life than to waste time reading and thinking. I feel, pardon my expression, as if it's just a load of bullshit.

I guess it bugs me because I really, really enjoyed reading and having some nice insights about things, but now I just can't do it. It feels fake.

I'll check out Soren to see what's up.


Hey, thanks for replying dude.
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>> No. 390
>>389
Entirely out of curiosity, why do you use double spacing for every sentence? For this sole purpose I am not reading your post.


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