Are we of above Average intelligence?
Do you have to be of above average intelligence to engage seriously with philosophy?
Does philosophy improve based on the philosophers hypothetical IQ?
Should philosophy and philosophical debate be made more accessible (without diluting it)?
Or should it be a highly qualified domain?
Does philosophy improve based on the philosophers hypothetical IQ?
Should philosophy and philosophical debate be made more accessible (without diluting it)?
Or should it be a highly qualified domain?
Comments (118)
Yes. And no.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
No. Unless, yes, in which case, yes.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Only when it does.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Yes. Where appropriate.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Yes. Where appropriate.
I'm not being facetious by the way. The questions are vague, your purpose in asking them unclear, and your own opinion as a guide to where to take all this, absent. Help us out a bit, please. What is the point?
Some of us can't help ourselves sometimes. Anyhow, imagination is key, I think. How exactly that relates to "intelligence" is anyone's guess.
It's true that one can be the smartest person in the world, and still spend 0% time perfecting their characters, but all things being equal, and both spending similar time perfecting characters, and the more intelligent person would develop quicker. More than that, if character actually is important, matters and relates to understandable wisdom and truth, one would think that the more intelligent person would appreciate this more often and more fully than the less intelligent person.
This pans out with criminal statistics, the average intelligence of career criminals is low, and the average intelligence of violent criminals is low. I would think that lower intelligence correlates with anti-social activity, and higher intelligence with pro-social activity, though of course not necessarily.
Right -- not necessarily.
Very intelligent people don't compete with morons in street crime, holding up convenience stores and shooting the clerk, or purse snatching, etc. They run much more complex rackets, like Enron, FaceBook, Bernard Madoff, the White House, etc.
What you need are good reading skills (comprehension, memory, ability to consolidate learning, etc). One needs to have received at least a solid high school education where one learned and practiced these and other skills, like math, science, history, etc. More education is better, up to a point--probaby BA. In order to receive a good high school and college education one also needs critical thinking skills. These can be learned.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Probably -- bright people are generally better at sustained complex and abstract thinking. Intelligence alone is not that helpful. What is really helpful is good education, wide reading, talk with other people, free expression of ideas, and so on. The guys in the cave looking at the shadows on the wall may have been geniuses, but their sources of information were very limited.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
It depends on what you want to achieve. If you want to interest the average reasonably well educated person (good high school education) in philosophy, then one is well advised to put the hay down where the goats can get at it. Goldilocks and the Three Bears can be told in very difficultabstruse, multisyllabic language which few will understand. One might do that as a joke.
Academics are especially likely to confuse "dilution" or "dumbing down" with clear understandable language.
People think, write, hear, read, and speak with somewhat different vocabularies. What seems clear in our heads may not be clear at all when we speak or write it. Most reasonably well educated people, push comes to shove, prefer to read clear, plain prose without a lot of decorative jargon. Clear, graceful, readily apprehended prose isn't genetic -- people have to learn how to write it.
There are fields and areas of fields where technical terms are necessary. To a doctor, "a lump" isn't equivalent to a "gastrointestinal stomal tumor". On the other hand, a fever is a fever to patient and doctor alike.
One has to decide just how much technical terminology is necessary in one's philosophy writing.
Do you have to be of above average intelligence to engage seriously with philosophy?
No, stupid people engage in Philosophy with the greatest enthusiasm. To engage seriously with philosophy one needs to have the capacity for independent thinking (a rarity), a love of honesty, a sense of humor, and a respect for wiser more erudite minds, this necessarily entails reading the masters.
Does philosophy improve based on the philosophers hypothetical IQ?
IQ is meaningless unless associated with erudition and kindness.
Should philosophy and philosophical debate be made more accessible (without diluting it)?
Or should it be a highly qualified domain?
Not really, the internet and open forums such as this make philosophy totally accessible. Deep thinkers tend to converse with deep thinkers and mostly ignore the fools who tend to ignore or insult the deep thinkers.... thats the way of the world and philosophy is no exception.
It's an affront to lump Russell in with Heidegger and accuse him of being an apologist for tyranny. Heidegger joined the Nazi party, and remained a member until the end of the war. Russell was a pacifist. Yes, the latter supported appeasement - he had lived through the horror of the first world war, and wanted to avoid, at great effort, a repeat of it - but he changed his mind at an early stage of the war.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
No.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Not necessarily.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
[s]The former.[/s] On second thought, yes, where appropriate. @Baden :up:
Why doesn't philosophy cause independent thinking?
My wife couldn't write a philosophy post to save her life. But then, she figured out that writing philosophy posts is a silly waste of time about 50 years ago, and I'm still working on catching up, and will probably never get there.
If you looked at her writing next to mine you would conclude that I'm the better philosopher. If you looked at her life next to mine you would come to the opposite conclusion. :smile:
:grin:
I don't think so, no.
How would philosophy "cause" independent thinking?
So much of what we are starts long before we get to the stage of philosophizing about it. Some children are explorers, independent thinkers, experimenters, etc. and others are not. When adventurous independent children get around to philosophy, they probably will be more independent thinkers than very cautious, risk-averse children.
Why is it that some people think nothing of traveling to a distant place they have never been to, and other people are nervous when they leave their familiar neighborhood? These are deeply rooted personality traits.
We see people here who are quite willing to climb out on a philosophical limb and others who stay pretty close to the trunk. Risk averse people play it safe. They may be boring, but they are happy that way. Risk tolerant people like to feel an adrenaline rush, every now and then. They have unfortunate accidents more often than others, but they were happy that way.
Insufficient data.
Because that is its fundamental methodology.
I don't see how philosophy can develop from parroting other peoples ideas and indeed that is responsible for the stagnation of philosophy.
Adhering mindlessly or subserviently to someone else's philosophy is not being a philosopher. You have to critically examine ideas for their substance and validity.
What conclusion a person draws from philosophy is problematic. Some peoples philosophising leads them to dark conclusions. I don't know if the most famous philosophers are necessarily representative of philosophy although they may reflect its major paradigms.
A lot of points in few words. :smile: Let's start on replying to them:
Does philosophy have a 'methodology', as science does (the scientific method, and so on...)? I don't think so. Unless we want to think of using logic and structured thought as a methodology?
No, philosophy can't develop if we only parrot the ideas of others. But I don't, and most people here don't either. I don't research my answers using DuckDuckGo, I write from my own understanding, such as it is.
Oh, and I'm not convinced that philosophy is stagnant or stagnating. General interest in philosophy is low, but it has always been so. Thinking for its own sake is something that few people enjoy. I think that has always been so too.
So we few do examine our concepts, and think about them, and discuss them, as you recommend. One of the things I have thought about is your introductory quote. Philosophy does not cause independent thinking; independent thinking causes philosophy. Or at least it leads to philosophy, as the means and techniques of structured thought are developed, and maybe recorded on papyrus, or whatever comes to hand. :smile:
Indeed. Your first sentence describes a sycophant--not a philosopher.
I'm all in favor of critically examining ideas for their substance and validity, and this is a task that will fall to those who are inclined to do it.
Quoting Marcus de Brun
Quoting Pattern-chaser
I like this because it is what philosophers have been accused of over the years. Also, there seems to be a positive correlation between intellectual acuity and the ability to holding one's perspective in relation to that of others; as well as a correlation between idiocy/shallowness and blind dogma or unhealthy dependence on doubtful beliefs.
Quoting Pattern-chaser
Is there a way we can make philosophy into a friendlier endeavour for the average guy?
Quoting unenlightened
I think the answer to this is: it's not intelligence if not coupled with sympathy. For me, sympathy is what brings out the harmony and understanding in interrelations.
Quoting Jake
This has been quite a conundrum for me. What part of philosophy is pure mental exercise and what part is our life discipline?
There appear to be many conflicting definitions of philosophy.
For some, philosophy is entering the conversations started by famous philosophers, reading their books, trying to understand the ideas presented, offering one's own analysis etc.
For others, myself included, philosophy is better described as the application of reason to human situations. In this definition, a person who can acquire intellectual fame, but not successfully manage their own household, would not be considered a very good philosopher.
I've been somewhat obsessed with this distinction since spending recent months exploring sites by academic philosophers. What I found is that academics can excel at analyzing the famous philosophers, but appear to have close to zero interest in nuclear weapons. From my point of view, this makes them successful academics, typically good writers, and piss poor philosophers.
But it depends on how one defines philosophy.
I participated in a brain scanning experiment a few years ago. The cognitive science subdept came and specifically asked for philosophy students as we were consistently scoring the lowest when it came to practical knowledge.
We may be brighter as a bunch, but its the kind of brightness that still thinks that a ton of feathers is lighter than a ton of lead.
He said psyche is the great danger.
Is that because it is hard?
When I started the thread I was just thinking to myself how it is a bit absurd to engage in some of these abstract arguments and to be reading random internet resources with obscure references.
Then I thought maybe this is what intelligent people do. Obscure analysis, obscure arguments, obscure facts. Their brain taking them down strange paths.
It seems problematic if people can't engage with sophisticated arguments and instead rely on pop philosophers spoon-feeding them diluted versions of ideas and conflating a lifestyle philosophy over the hard graft of rigorous thought.
It's rather because it is not urgent, nor particularly useful. And it is rather easy to subsume any "act" of philosophy under another domain.
I don't dispute the subject has been addressed here and there, that's true. The larger reality is that the vast majority of philosophers (professional and amateur) the vast majority of the time have pretty much no interest in the subject at all. I'm proposing that addressing the primary threat to human civilization only here and there now and again is not rational. It is instead literally insane. Insane. Literally insane. Not super smart savvy analytical intellectual blah blah blah, but insane.
Thus, if we were to judge philosophy as a whole to be a rational exercise, we would have to narrowly define philosophy as the study of the famous philosophers etc. If we were to define philosophy as the application of reason to human situations, very few people claiming to be philosophers would qualify as rational by that definition.
Quoting Blue Lux
The problem is instead that I've examined enough philosophy to see through the self flattering poses that the philosophy community is trying to sell itself. And for me personally, the problem is that I'm stupid enough to think that anything I might write on the subject will have any effect on anybody. So, we are brothers in irrationality.
And Russell campaigned against nuclear weapons. And there are plenty of academics who publish books on the threat of nuclear weapons, as evidenced by internet search results. All he really means is that he has spent a few months looking into a number of websites which contain writings by contemporary academic philosophers, and he found little to nothing relating to nuclear weapons.
Right. And why is that? Why aren't I finding extensive discussion of that subject on EVERY philosophy site?
Everything built over the last 500 years, and everything that could be built over the next 500 years, could collapse without warning at any moment. Not a theory, not hysterical speculation, but a very widely agreed upon proven real world fact. And this is judged to be just one of thousand topics that might be addressed. I'm sorry, that's simply logically indefensible, if one defines philosophy as the application of reason to human affairs.
But of course, there is no law of nature which requires us to define philosophy in that manner.
Quoting S
Apologies, truly meaning no personal offense for my quarrel is not with you as an individual, and I do thank you for responding to my challenge. I'm responding to the quoted section above because it pretty accurately represents the quality of thinking even the highest ranking professionals display in their work.
Observe how you characterize my challenge as not being a reasoned analysis, while you offer no reasoned analysis of your own. No where do you make a case for why it is rational for an imminent mortal threat to modern civilization to be considered just one a thousand issues. You simply wave your hand and dismiss the challenge in the laziest manner using the classic "above it all" defense which academics so love to hide behind.
But you are right in that:
1) It suits my agenda to make such claims.
2) I seek to raise the status of the nuclear weapons topic.
3) I do try to force a way of thinking (called reason) to the exclusion of alternatives (such as self delusional self flattery).
4) And yes, I do characterize the lack of attention to the topic of nuclear weapons as invalid lunacy.
You have as yet not identified the irrationality which does plague my position on this issue. And that is the delusional faith based assumption that philosophers are capable of reason. I find myself guilty of a wishful thinking perspective unsupported by any credible evidence.
What philosophers are capable of is fancy talk. Sometimes quite articulate fancy talk. Some philosophers are skilled at the philosophy business. Many philosophers have a talent for projecting an image of intellectual authority which is persuasive to their audience. These are real skills which require considerable work to develop, so I am not calling philosophers stupid. I am instead claiming that, by and large generally speaking on average, they are not capable of reason.
Are philosophers of above average intelligence? I would agree this may often be true, if we define intelligence as a particular set of skills related to analyzing abstractions and perhaps writing. So if we were to define intelligence and philosophy in this limited manner, I could vote yes.
This isn't the yardstick I measure by, but I would agree it is the yardstick many people are using, and I would agree that I don't personally own the yardstick.
Because there's a vast multitude of topics in philosophy to write about, and that's just one topic, and it's one which is associated more with politics, relating to national defence and foreign affairs.
Quoting Jake
No, not quite, but yes, there would of course be unprecedented widescale death and destruction. No one is denying that, but that's a humongous "if". That "if" being a global nuclear war.
Quoting Jake
No, it's not indefensible. That it needn't be treated as priority number one has already been reasonably defended on this very forum. You just can't bear to acknowledge it, as it upsets your narrative.
Quoting Jake
It's not imminent. If a nuclear missile capable of breaking through whatever defensive systems are in place were headed in our direction as we speak, then that would be an imminent mortal threat. That is not the case.
Quoting Jake
You try to force [I]your[/I] way of thinking - which is reasoned, yet contains flaws - to the exclusion of alternatives - which are similarly reasoned, yet you dismiss with name calling.
Quoting Jake
Mischaracterise.
Quoting Jake
Of course they are, as are doctors, lawyers, scientists, mathematicians, shop workers, the unemployed, school children, and so on and so forth. That is not a claim to be taken seriously and can be outright rejected.
Quoting Jake
Absurd. You're either straightforwardly mistaken or you're merely playing with words. It's a lose-lose scenario.
Hmm. I don't know. But I will also observe that general interest in politics is low, but it has always been so. Maybe all 'hard' subjects are unpopular, or maybe it's that some subjects are unpopular anyway, independent of how 'hard' they might be. I tend in the direction of the latter, but who knows? :wink:
To ignore serious threats is worrying indeed. But nuclear war is moving down the threat list, and has been for some years. Higher up are chemical weapons, biological weapons, human-created climate change, and human-created destruction-by-extinction of our supporting ecosystem. There may be others too.
Oh, and where do you get the idea that humans are civilised?
Yes, it could, but we must just hope that the global financial system can be kept working, or that a better alternative to it can be found before disaster strikes. Today we (i.e. those of us who live in Western 'democracies') live in luxury; within a month we could be back in the stone age.
Your concerns are real, and serious. But nuclear war is just of of many possible hazards that we humans have invented. It probably isn't wise or rational of us to concentrate on only one. :up:
Rather I am asking whether it is a difficult subject making it inaccessible to some people. I have met intelligent people (couldn't say exactly how intelligent) that struggled with philosophical concepts. Including including syllogisms and understanding the "Cogito ergo sum"
I feel like syllogisms are basic to philosophy and basic reasoning so you can work out what does and doesn't follow from a set of claims.
And I have met weak people who struggle to lift 100 pounds above their heads. I am one of them. Am I deficient? No, but like everyone else, I have a collection of abilities, some better than average, and some worse. My strength is less than average, as is my fitness in general. Some people can do philosophy; others are capable of protecting their families if attacked.... :joke:
Philosophy is not easy ... and it's not to the taste of many people.
Many academic fields -- chemistry, geology, mathematics, English or French literature, history, sociology, classics, supply chain management, etc. are difficult subjects inaccessible to the casual, not-well-educated reader. We would not expect a typical, reasonably intelligent person to be able to walk into a college classroom and make sense of the subject matter without some difficulty.
Why would we expect that the large blocks of material from the classical period or 16th-19th centuries, written in difficult prose would be readily accessible to anyone? It isn't. It's not impenetrable, but it requires motivation and extended effort. No one wonders that a deep appreciation of Geoffrey Chaucer's Middle English poetry also requires motivation and extended effort.
"The People" are interested in philosophical questions like "Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?" (or maybe if they are morally sensitive, "Why Do GOOD Things Happen to BAD People?") because they witness good and bad things happening. I think millions of people are interested in Kant's questions, “What can I know? What should I do? What may I hope?” without wanting to read Kant's prose.
Telling the person who wants to know “What can I know? What should I do? What may I hope?” to "just read Kant" is a dismissive, terminating response.
Oh darn, and you were doing so good there. :smile:
None of the other possible hazards come close to the scale and pressing nature of nuclear weapons. It would be wise and rational for us to concentrate on the most immediate threat.
If you were holding a gun to my head, a gun which could go off at any moment, perhaps even by mistake, please name any other issue which should receive more of my attention. Would you judge me rational if I ignored the gun and instead focused on writing a book about Plato?
See? It's the simplest thing.
Well, you got me there. I guess I meant, in comparison to living in caves, which is where we'll be shortly after nuclear war.
Ok, I give up, you win...
I find these novels of great interest, because we are already being pushed to move in that direction even without a dramatic catastrophe. Global warming--if nothing else--suggests we ought to develop or maintain some more disaster resistant technologies, like steam, animal traction, backyard gardening, canning, and the like.
And what makes you think that you're going to land a spot in one of those caves? Welcome to the rest of us who will be busy digging holes in the ground to crawl into and pull in after us.
:cheer:
Yes, that's it. How much food do any of us have on hand in our house? Civilization begins to collapse at the moment we conclude we won't be able to replenish those supplies in a legal manner.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Um, what makes you think I think that???
http://www.randalolson.com/2014/06/25/average-iq-of-students-by-college-major-and-gender-ratio/
https://www.quora.com/What-college-majors-have-on-average-students-with-the-highest-IQ
It was a joke.
You call these people intelligent, yet they struggled with syllogisms. :meh:
As in, just by posting here you demonstrate yourself to be in at least the third quartile?
I don;t think the evidence supports such a contention.
Please explain how you know that something like the following quote below won't happen again later today.
Like most people, you may be coming to your position based on the current geo-political situation. You may not be taking in to account that the current geo-political situation may be totally irrelevant. In fact, I know you're not taking that in to account, or you wouldn't be posting as you are.
Speaking of which, let's remind ourselves who has control over 90%+ of the world's nukes. Putin, the world's leading gangster, and Trump, a wacko in the White House whose own employees are scrambling around trying to figure out how to get rid of him before he does something insane.
Like almost everybody, you aren't using reason and thinking for yourself, but are instead referencing authority in the form of the group consensus. You look around you and see that all the big shots of various flavors are complacent, and so you understandably feel it's ok for you to be complacent too.
Agreeing with me would require you to grasp that we are like passengers on a bus traveling down a steep mountain road, with no bus driver in attendance. This is understandably something few of us want to see. I don't want to see it myself.
================
From the New Yorker article....
And then there was the time the Air Force accidently dropped a live nuke on South Carolina, and all the failsafe devices malfunctioned except the very last one.
And then there was the time that Americans notified the Russians they would be launching a research satellite from northern Europe. Except that, ooops, the person they notified forgot to pass the info up the chain of command. So when the research missile went up the Russians thought they were witnessing the opening salvo of a first strike. The generals brought the nuclear football to Yeltsin and told him he had to launch. Luckily for humanity, the usually drunk Yeltsin was somewhat sober that day and he declined to launch right then, and told the generals to go back and confirm.
On and on it goes.
Available on YouTube for $3. (May still be on Netflix, not sure.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FNoY5jnm04
WTF!!! You're calling me a joke??? :smile:
We can't correlate philosophy with global intelligence. Philosophers are instead, like pretty much everybody else, intelligent at a particular set of activities, which don't necessarily have much to do with reason.
No, I don't have to. I haven't claimed or implied that I know that any particular event will or won't happen later today, and I don't need to. That's an unreasonable thing to demand in response to my objection. If I claim that being struck by lightning is an [i]imminent[/I] threat, and that the [i]pressing nature[/I] of it is such that it's akin to someone holding [i]a gun to your head[/I], and you object that my claim is misleading, then would you have the burden of having to explain how you know that I [i]won't[/I] be struck by lightning later today? No, of course not. That's an argument from ignorance, an informal fallacy. It's possible that I'll be struck by lightning, and you haven't denied that possibility. Lots of things are possible. That both misses the point and tries to shift the burden of proof.
Moreover, people have of course been struck by lightning before, and it has happened way more times then we've been on the verge of a nuclear war, so, in that sense, it's way more of an immediate threat. But you'd still be right to object that my claims are misleading. Being struck by lightning is not an imminent threat. I have gone my whole life without being struck by lightning. So have most others. That's not lucky, that's average and to be expected. It would be unreasonable to resort to extreme measures against being struck by lightning, as though it were an imminent threat, as though it could happen any minute now if I don't do something drastic right now to prevent it from happening, and as though I'm being held hostage by an armed criminal.
You're scaremongering, Jake, and there are intelligent people here who can see it for what it is.
Quoting Jake
That's another great example of a false analogy you conjured up from your imagination in the hope of scaring people into action.
If that analogy were true, then it would be virtually inevitable that a nuclear war will break out within minutes, just as it would be virtually inevitable that the bus will crash within minutes.
Let's see what happens, shall we? I'll be generous and give you twenty minutes, and then we shall see whether you're right or wrong.
Quoting Jake
Precisely! And that's what you're trying to exploit, you little devil. This is a place for philosophy, not dirty politics.
If it serves to end the conversation, it might be worth it.
Blah, blah, blah, blah etc etc etc.
If I was holding a gun to your head you would have no problem at all seeing that as the highest priority issue.
But when it comes to a gun to the head of civilization, like a good philosopher you try to turn it in to some abstract, complex, sophisticated, analysis that displays your laser sharp reasoning etc, etc. The problem here is that this is not some abstract, complex, sophisticated issue like you want it to be.
It is instead ruthlessly simple....
1) Gun...
2) To our heads...
3) Important!
Simple! Can be explained to a child of ten in a few minutes.
I'm assuming that S is an intelligent well educated person. He may have taken philosophy classes, or even be an academic. Perhaps he has a Nobel Prize!
Makes no difference at all. Philosophy is worthless for things that really matter.
Why 2 minutes, and not 10 minutes or 45 minutes to Doomsday? Because more countries now have deliverable nuclear weapons. North Korea has had nuclear weapons for a few years, but they now have (apparently) learned how to shrink the size of their bombs to fit on their long-range rockets. In addition, a gangster and a lunatic are in charge of the two largest arsenals.
Pakistan has an at least somewhat unstable government, with uncertain security over their nuclear weapons and missiles. Iran has probably not abandoned nuclear weapons research. When and whether Israel will feel called upon to defend itself with it's nuclear weapons is uncertain.
It may well be the case that a nuclear exchange won't occur between the US and Russia (though that can't be ruled out) but what North Korea, Pakistan, India, and Israel might decide to do is less certain.
I think the risk of nuclear war is relevant to a thread about the intelligence of philosophers--or anybody else--because the justification for nuclear weapons comes from a deep pool of very bright scientists, politicians, philosophers, strategists, etc. You and I and a few hundred million others may disapprove of nuclear weapons' mere existence--never mind destructive potential--but there are also hundreds of millions, or maybe billions, of people who are quite proud of their nations' nuclear achievements.
4 hours have passed since your last post, no nuclear war yet. Big deal. 73 years have passed since the last use of nuclear weapons. Still, the number of bombs has increased from 4 or 5 bombs in 1945 to maybe 15,000 today. The US and Russia have something like 1800 nuclear weapons on high alert--which if used would pretty much be The End. (Think of the massive fire storms that would follow the nuclear blasts.)
Thank you. You said it better than I did.
Yes, if plumbers and cocktail waitresses aren't focused on nuclear weapons, that's not too interesting. But when intellectual and cultural elites, especially those like professional philosophers who are presumably experts on the art of reason, also show little interest we're entering different territory.
But anyway, having accused pretty much everyone of not being able to reason, I feel an obligation to publicly upgrade my own reasoning.
Imagine that our grandma is 85 years old and ailing, but she's at peace because she believes she'll soon be in heaven with Jesus. All of us would have enough sense and compassion to not rock that boat, even if we believed the Christian story is a bunch of hooey.
Seen clearly, the rest of us are in a situation not so different than grandma. We're all trying to get through life as best we can, and we're all a lot closer to our own personal demise than we like to think. Like grandma and her Jesus, we want to go through what time we have left with a story that helps us get through with minimum suffering.
And for the culture at large, including the elites, that story generally is that everything is basically under control and that the progress of the last 500 years will continue. Sure there will be bumps in the road, but we'll get past them as we always have, so says the comforting story.
And then some annoying butthead typoholic comes along and tries to force reality on us, spoiling the cozy fantasy story party. What an ass, he probably argues with his grandma about Jesus too.
If I was as rational as I demand everyone else should be, I would sit down and be quiet, and not disturb the fantasy story our culture clearly needs to get through the day. If I was rational, I would calmly accept the obvious reality that we are too stupid as a species to survive, just as I calmly accept that grandma's time to depart is upon us.
I've been writing about this for years. I have pretty much no evidence it's ever to ever accomplish anything. Rational people are supposed to listen to the evidence, right? Hopefully I will someday before my own time comes become an intelligent enough of a philosopher to realize that philosophy is just an entertaining parlor game, and I'm taking it way too seriously.
Hey, if everyone else is going to enjoy a fantasy story, I deserve to have one too, right? :smile:
I'm not fond of the view that everybody is stupid. Some people definitely are very stupid, in fact, but most are moderately bright, at least. Given a good high school education, they'd do just fine. But you now, just try to get a good high school education, these days.
Philosophy might be a parlor game to some extent, but rational thinking is for real.
It seems a successful life requires some balance in how we are intelligent. As example, our culture is brilliant at technology, but idiots when it comes to seeing where our technology is taking us. The problem is perhaps less that we are stupid, and more that our abilities are out of balance. If we were both less brilliant and less stupid, we'd be in better shape. All things in moderation etc.
Yeah, but you're not.
If I burned your house down, then you'd have to relocate. If I was Elton John, then I'd be a best selling solo artist. If apples were made of concrete, then they wouldn't taste as nice.
We could do this all day, but it won't change the facts.
And how are you doing yourself? Because your line is what I've been hearing from the 80's myself personally and this goes to an earlier discourse. Straight from a large group consensus that various authorities starting with Bertrand Russell among others presented to us: the utter doom that nuclear weapons present to us and the World.
You can list all the false alarms and broken arrows, yet no war happened during MAD between the US and Soviet Union. What history has shown is that when just one side has a nuclear deterrent and the other side hasn't, war can happen (one example is Israel and Syria). Or when the war isn't an existential threat to a country with nuclear deterrence (as with Argentina attacking the UK in the South Pacific). And when one side has a huge advantage in nuclear weapons to the other, war can be at least seriously contemplated (just like the US generals did during the Cuban Missile Crisis and nearly went to war).
Yet let's not forget that the vast majority of the nuclear weapons that US and Russia had during the Cold War were actually destroyed after Cold War. And that part of those Russian nukes made to destroy American cities were then used to fuel their electricity needs (see Megatons to Megawatts Program). And that many countries have ended their nuclear programs (like Brazil and South Africa) or didn't get on with it (like Sweden). We have less nuclear weapons now than during the end of the Cold War, no matter how many Pakistan, North Korea and India are now building. Basically in number terms there are as many nuclear weapons in the World as there was in the late 1950's.
In my view being against nuclear weapons has been the most easiest opinion any philosopher can have. Just like the warnings, sounded decade after decade after decade, of the imminent end of humanity by an all out nuclear war. That we have not had the doomsday can been brushed off quite easily with "pure luck" without any serious question or debate just why we haven't had the nuclear armageddon, if it would be so imminent. Hence the topic is a no-brainer for the so-called intelligentsia.
You're right, because philosophers (along with most of the rest of us) aren't rational enough to focus on a hair trigger gun aimed at their heads.
Meaning no disrespect to you personally, for I have no beef with you, what you've just expressed is the corrupt idiot group consensus, which no amount of education seems able to cure.
It's always the same blah blah blah. Philosophers have already done it, they are the elites, whatever it is they must already know it, don't think we know any better than they do etc etc etc. That's just blind authority worship, not rational thought.
I have other more pressing matters in my life.
Hair trigger.
Quoting Blue Lux
It's not about you. It's about the billions of people who created what we enjoy. It's about the billions of people alive today who would lose what's been created. It's about the future generations who would live in violent squalor, and curse us as the stupidest human beings who ever lived every single day of their short sad existence.
And yes, hair trigger. The autocorrect on my phone must have changed it.
Nuclear war is a problem, but I am not sure any of the most powerful countries are ready to blow themselves up and enter into a global thermonuclear war. People have not been this stupid yet, and so as long as there are people in the government who care about this sort of thing, the potentiality of it is dormant.
Something that maybe could happen is worth focusing on. But people don't focus now on the number one killers of themselves. Instead of nuclear war you should be talking about the opioid epidemic, heart disease, emphysema, diabetes, certain cancers, etc., which are in huge ways preventable, although not 100% preventable for everyone.
More people die from these diseases, these preventable causes... These things are actually happening. If you want to focus on some sort of 'hair-trigger' then focus on the problems that already exist. One could make the statement that in this you are extremely irrational for emphasizing the risk of nuclear war.
I didn't make this point.
Quoting Blue Lux
Here you (along with almost everyone else) are counting on two fantasies.
1) People are rational.
2) There won't be any mistakes.
Was it rational for Hitler to invade the Soviet Union (a much larger country) against the advice of his generals when he had already won most of Europe? No, it wasn't rational, but Hitler was a high stakes gambler addicted to the next role of the dice.
Can we count on there not being any mistakes which unintentionally trigger a nuclear exchange? No, we can't. I've already offered a number of examples in other threads, and you can educate yourself in detail on this subject by watching the documentary Countdown To Zero.
Quoting Blue Lux
Um, a few generations ago they burned most of Europe to the ground, a stupid pattern repeated over and over again for thousands of years. You're basically arguing we should rely on a shortage of stupidity which has never existed.
Quoting Blue Lux
All these things fall in the category of manageable threats. I'm referring instead to a threat which could end our ability to manage anything, a game over event. As example, if I have heart disease maybe I can manage that with diet, exercise and drugs etc. If I put a gun in my mouth and pull the trigger that's the end of me managing anything. See the difference?
Quoting Blue Lux
Thousands of nuclear weapons sit in their silos on hair trigger alert ready to erase modern civilization at the push of a button. This situation has existed since the Kennedy administration, perhaps earlier. It exists now, right now, and the missiles could start arcing over the poles at literally any moment.
The problem you're having is that I'm just some anonymous nobody on a little net forum so you can't believe me, or even your own reason, over basically the entire culture. I'm sympathetic to that problem, but the simple reality is that our culture, including the vast majority of the intellectual elites, are irrational morons. I'm sorry, but there's no other way to describe people who are bored by a huge gun in their mouth.
I get why people don't want to see this. I don't want to see it either. It's a staring in to the abyss experience that few would welcome. But there it is, like it or not. This is where reason can take us, to the perception of reality. Those who can't handle the view might consider abandoning philosophy in favor of tennis.
Hi, I've seen your passionate call to philosophers to speak out more against nuclear weapons with respect to a possible nuclear fallout. I'm wondering, isn't the core of that topic already established? While the talk has already been talked, I don't see how philosophers can also walk the walk for everyone.
My thinking is that the measure you give to a negative outcome, is the same given for the need to have them (nuclear weapons). Worse, the arguments against nuclear weapons falls short as insufficient and hysterical when contrasted with the practical value that they provide in these uncertain political waters. Wouldn't a nation argue that it's better to have and not need than to need and not have? Also, I think if not for the presence of nuclear weapons in most, if not all, of the powerful nations, then the war to colonialism would still be on-going. Presently, there seems to be attempts at indirect approaches to colonization and while still potentially dangerous, especially in such a politically unstable world, they do not seem to imminently disrupt the overbearing stalemate.
I think another reason why we do not make too big an issue of this subject is to avoid unnecessary antagonism. This is because we still have a lot of tyrannical and unhinged leaders across the globe who would see the extra focus directed at the subject as a stage set for them to showcase what they've got or add to their arsenal in rebellion to the cause (Kim Jong-Un and Trump do readily come to mind).
As you say, it's like a gun to our heads. However, philosophers do understand their limitations too. How can we convince individuals that they don't need to own guns to protect themselves from criminals who would take them at gun point? One person's philosophy cannot address the fear in the other person. The same with nuclear weapons - it would be a hard sell for nations to give up their ultimate defense against another 'hitler' situation.
Perhaps the only consolation to this madness is that, happy as the fingers on those hair triggers may be, the risk of losing everything overcompensates against their need to gain something. Right now the stalemate exists because of mutual distrust and the high risk of mutual destruction.
I think we need a very creative way of addressing the issue, and even then, the best we could probably hope to accomplish is a lie that they have been disarmed or destroyed. In the end, because we've set this precarious situation ourselves, we must learn to endure, and live with the outcome should anything happen.
Don't be trite! :wink: :joke: Because nuclear war is possible, doesn't mean the threat can be dismissed because it didn't happen within the space of a few hours. For myself, I believe that the loss of 75% of flying insect species in the last 25 years is more serious than a nuclear war that had already broken out. A 'limited' nuclear war could be survived by most living things on the planet. [Admittedly, a bigger war would be much more pervasive and damaging.] But I wonder if humanity can be survived by all the other living creatures? I don't think we could destroy all of them, but we could destroy enough that it would take life millions of years to recover. There are other threats too. Nuclear war is definitely one of them, but only one.
Don't take my criticism out of context and straw man it!
If you look at the comment just before that one, it should be clear that I only made that criticism in response to what I argued is a false analogy which erroneously suggests [i]just that[/I], i.e. not merely that nuclear war is possible (which I have explicitly acknowledged), but that it would have broken out [i]well within[/I] the two hour limit I set.
I think all you need is a questioning spirit, a way to look into yourself, and honesty.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
I think everybody ought to have a right to learn to think for themselves.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Honestly, I know it pays to be able to write and speak clearly when philosophizing. I haven't always done this.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Professional philosophy yes, amateur philosophy no.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
It seems how we answer this would have a lot to do with how we measure intelligence. If for example we were to measure intelligence by one's ability to create orderly polished presentations of intellectual arguments in print, then philosophers could fairly labeled as being of above average intelligence, for their ability in this arena exceeds most of us.
In my posts I'm measuring intelligence more in the way that nature defines it, in our ability to survive. This measuring stick is not appropriate for many or most species, but it is for humans because without our intelligence we wouldn't last long.
In today's world especially, modern civilization is essential for most of our survival. In the past many or most humans could live off of the land, but today all the average human knows about how to get food is the ability to swipe a credit card at the grocery store. Most people have maybe a week's worth of food in their house and once that's gone, or rather once they begin to fear it will be gone, civilization begins to unravel, chaos begins to rule, and masses begin to die.
There are many problems in the world, and many threats to civilization. That is surely true. But there is no preventable threat to civilization which compares to the threat presented by nukes in terms of scale and immediacy. Nothing else can convert the modern world in to chaos in less than an hour.
Thus, I'm reasoning that our relationship with nuclear weapons is a reasonable standard by which we might measure our intelligence. Using that standard, I see no evidence that philosophers are any more intelligent than the population at large. So I vote no to a theory that philosophers are of above average intelligence. Instead, I suggest that philosophers are like plumbers, talented at very specific operations which should not be confused with global intelligence.
As far as nuke go, philosophers arrive at the topic with a serious liability, a need to complicate everything. For some topics this bias may be an asset, but when one has a gun in one's mouth, one is facing a ruthlessly simple equation. Clarity is the essential ingredient in such situations, not cleverness.
In fairness, I think chemical and biological weapons come very close to the imminent threat that nuclear weapons present. And if the timescale is extended just a little, there is the forthcoming famine and drought, as our soil collapses [ link ], and there isn't enough drinkable water to go around. [ link ] Then there is pollution of all kinds, or rather the effects of that pollution (e.g. micro-plastic granules in the earth, water and air....) on the living world, and all of the effects that climate change is starting to create. Hurricane Florence, for example. The list is extensive, and I venture to suggest that none of these life-threatening and species-threatening things are taken seriously enough by us humans.
But we also shouldn't forget the possibilities for the rest of the life on Earth, aside from humans. To them, by far the greatest threat is humanity, the creatures that have annihilated - and this is only one example! :fear: - 75% of all flying insect species in the past 25 years, and the carnage is still accelerating, not slowing down.
The world is filled with really serious, preventable (mostly), threats. Nuclear war is one of them.
Yeah, but good luck trying to convince Jake of that. He sees it that way, so everyone else [i]simply must[/I] see it that way. Evangelism in a nutshell, which is probably why he was banned from other forums, and it should be why he's at risk of being banned here, given that evangelism is against the guidelines. But that would be a shame, because he is clearly intelligent and has expressed views on other topics in a way not symptomatic of the evangelism he has regarding nuclear weapons.
Do you two actually know what the word "imminent" means? For your information, it means "about to happen". For example, "they were in imminent danger of being swept away".
synonyms: [i]impending, at hand, close, near, approaching, fast approaching, coming, forthcoming, on the way, about to happen, upon us, in store, in the offing, in the pipeline, on the horizon, in the air, in the wind, brewing, looming, looming large, etc.[/I]
A nuclear attack is not imminent.
Stop using misleading terms.
Nor is a bullet to my brain. No one is holding a gun to my head. Nor is a road accident involving myself and others as passengers on a bus. We're not on a driverless bus going down a steep road. I'm at home, not sat on a bus.
Stop using misleading analogies.
So, really, to be clear, what you're talking about is only the potential consequences, not the actual situation we're in. That is, if[/I] there's a nuclear attack, [i]then these would be the consequences.
Once again, that's a big "if".
Pertinently, a nuclear attack isn't imminent. It has the potential of being imminent, under the right circumstances; which, pertinently, have yet to reoccur since the last nuclear attack; which, pertinently, was the first and only such attack to ever have occurred; and which, pertinently, occurred 73 years ago back in 1945.
Also, pertinently, just as a nuclear attack has the potential of immediacy, stability has the potential of being sustainable in the long-term, as it arguably already has been. So your one-sided and partially concealed talk of potential immediacy is effectively cancelled out by contrary potentialities.
It doesn't really make a difference what you're talking about. You could use the same underhanded tactics to scaremonger about the threat of meteorites or an alien invasion. And, by the way, either one of those renders your last sentence false, and there are probably other counterexamples too. Take your pick.
Of course the threat of nuclear weapons is a terrible threat. But it is hypocritical to focus on one cause of death. What is leading to the quickest extinction or mass death of the human race is overpopulation. In fifty years, at the rate we are going, do you know what the population will be? That is the greatest threat, along with pollution, diseases and war of all kinds,
The threat is war, not nuclear weapons...
And just looking at the current trend of human behavior, the human race has BEEN screwed. People are screwed every day.
As long as the human race is responsible for the deaths of the human race, the human race is inadvertently doomed.
Your point is irrelevant to the subject I'm discussing, the collapse of civilization.
Your point is however indeed relevant to my claim that philosophers in particular, and the larger public too, are largely incapable of simple common sense reasoning on this particular topic. Thus, no, we philosopher types, amateur and pro, are not of above average intelligence. We are average at best, and maybe on this particular topic below average due to an incurable need to complicate everything so as to demonstrate our awesome laser sharp logic, and other similar fantasy poses.
So, really, to be clear, what I'm really talking about is that we philosophers are morons with a rich fantasy life. As example, my fantasy is that typing all this over and over again is going to ever accomplish anything.
No, it isn't, but one might argue that the threat is. :chin: Either way, there are a number of serious - species-threatening or world-threatening - things that we might chose to be concerned about. Nuclear war is one of them. Is it really worth arguing any more about this? I think not, and I will add no further comments on this sub-sub-topic. :up:
Yes, if one were incapable of ranking threats in order of importance, by scale and potential immediate impact, then one could get lost in an endless ocean of potential problems, the end result of which would likely be that one paid little real attention to any of them.
That's what is happening here. You will list other problems in an attempt to sweep nukes under the rug, and once you feel you have accomplished that you will ignore both nukes and all the other problems you insist on listing. This is a very normal human pattern called "rationalization".
Usually we can get away with rationalizing and will muddle through somehow. What you're NOT getting is that such a sloppy system doesn't work when applied to technologies of such enormous scale, where one mistake equals game over.
Quoting S
We have no way of knowing that. You're persistently making the same mistake pretty much the entire culture is making.
1) You're completely ignoring the threat of unintentional launches, a threat which I've attempted to document in other threads, evidence which you (and most of the rest of the culture too) have deliberately ignored.
2) You're assuming that we have full control of the nuclear weapons machinery. Such an assumption requires a willful ignoring of the history of humanity, where FUBAR has run rampant in countless situations.
3) You're assuming that a nuclear attack would be the result of a rational calculation, but then the mere existence of nuclear weapons proves convincingly that we are often not capable of rational calculations.
4) You're assuming that no leader will conclude that they are smarter than everyone else and can game the system and win, a pattern which has repeated itself countless times throughout human history.
My mistake is in assuming that all of the above can be cured through a process of reason. There is little evidence to support such an assumption, so I do agree I am guilty of wishful thinking fantasy.
What's going to happen instead is that the willful blindness articulated in this thread and across the culture will continue until it is blasted away by a real world detonation. We're going to have to see the million dead bodies rotting away in a flattened city to get this.
Hopefully it will be just one city, and that will be sufficient to wake us up. Or, it may instead just push us ever deeper in to denial. I have no idea on how that will play out.
No, I'll observe that nukes are one of a number of existential threats. If we concentrate on one or all of them, that's what we will spend our lives doing. It may be called rationalisation by some, but it's just common sense. Yes, a global nuclear war could start without warning, but it probably won't. I can spend my life preparing for Armageddon, or I can just live my life in the knowledge that the unknown could interfere at any time, which has always been the case, and will always be the case. I choose to spend my retirement philosophising, not digging a deep bunker in the garden. Is that sweeping things under a rug? Maybe it is. Reality is full of rugs, with all manner of nastiness under them, from previous sweepings. :wink:
Yes, and by doing so successfully sweep all those threats under the rug where they can remain intellectual abstractions which won't impact us emotionally. Thus, we won't do anything about it. Thus, it will likely happen. You're doing a good job of articulating the group consensus which is the real threat.
Quoting Pattern-chaser
There's a consistent longstanding pattern in human history where things go along pretty well for awhile, and then every so often we go bat shit crazy and start killing each other with wild abandon using any and every tool available. I would agree that nukes have sobered the great powers so far, but it's not credible to propose that a consistent longstanding pattern thousands of years old is now obsolete.
Our relationship with nuclear weapons is like playing a game of Russian roulette. Every day that passes is another pull of the trigger. You guys (and most of the rest of the culture including the intellectual elites) are arguing, "Hey, it's working out fine so far, so stop being hysterical."
The problem that philosophers in particular are having (the very people whose job it should be to destroy a blatantly false group consensus) is that we/they are incapable of looking at things simply and directly. Nuclear weapons are a gun in all of our mouths. A gun that could go off at any moment. A gun held by some of the least moral people on Earth. That's all there is to it. All these attempts to complicate the issue so as to demonstrate how clever we are just muddy the water.
Quoting Pattern-chaser
The thing is, you're NOT philosophizing. That's my whole point. And you're not alone, even the professional philosophers of highest stature are not philosophizing either, that is, they are not following reason where ever it leads. They and we are following reason where we want to go, to a parlor game which demonstrates our cleverness, which is not actually reason at all, but rather an emotional agenda.
Thus, my point again that philosophy does not involve above average intelligence. Imagine the philosophy professor who enters the classroom and sees that all his students have guns in their mouths. The professor decides the appropriate response is to proceed to give his lecture on what Socrates said about what Plato said about something almost nobody cares about at all.
This is what professional philosophers are doing. While the fate of modern civilization hangs in the balance on the edge of wobbling knife blade. This is not above average intelligence, but a form of madness.
This time, I will try harder.
We have said what we have to say, several times. This sub-sub-thread is going nowhere.
It's going nowhere because my honorable fellow members along with the intellectual elites and most of the rest of society all insist that it not go anywhere.
Again, this illustrates that philosophers are not of above average intelligence, as they are taking the same approach as pretty much everyone else, ignore the threat, sweep it under the rug etc. I wouldn't say that philosophers are of less than average intelligence, but instead that it seems reasonable to have higher expectations of philosophers given that with their degrees and jobs etc they seem to be claiming to be experts on the use of reason.
If you're run out of things to say on the topic that's because you haven't given the subject very much thought, an obstacle which could be overcome with further discussion. There's plenty more that could be said which would be of a philosophical (and not political) nature. As example, see this thread which attempts to explore our relationship with knowledge.
I don't mind you calling this a sub-sub thread, but really we are on topic. The OP asked if philosophers are of above average intelligence, and I am replying to that question by making a case as to why they are not.
However, I would happily state that my fellow members here on the forum are more intelligent than the average professional academic philosophers, who seem impossible to engage on this topic at all, preferring I suppose to hide behind an "above it all" defense. Some of you have done your job of challenging my thesis. You've failed, but you have tried, and I thank you for that.
The great weaknesses in my thesis is that I keep trying to address the issue of nuclear weapons with reason, in spite of a mountain of evidence that suggests we aren't capable of reasoning our way out of the nuclear threat at this time. To degree I am frustrated it's my own fault for ignoring the evidence and stubbornly engaging in a wishful thinking fantasy.
If it's true that we can't reason our way out of this threat at this time, then sooner or later a bomb is going to go off and some city will be erased. That will likely be a pivotal moment. What is now an abstraction will become an in our face flesh and blood reality. I don't claim to know how we will react to that moment of truth. It may bring us to our senses, or it may drive us in to further madness.
If it's true that we can't reason our way out of this threat at this time, then a single city terrorist type event may be our best hope. At least then we'd have an opportunity to wake up and learn. Without such a limited wake up event then it seems we'll keep playing Russian roulette game until the day the chamber comes up full.
a) There are a lot fewer nuclear weapons today than there were during the Cold War.
b) However problematic the Russo-American relations are, the two countries aren't on the brink as they were during the Cold War. And Russia isn't the Soviet Union.
c) The nuclear forces aren't in such imminent stand-by as during the Cold War.
d) Many countries have given up their nuclear weapons projects and even their existing nuclear arsenal. The weapons are not becoming more common even if the technology is now over 70 years old.
e) Even with as hostile relations that Pakistan and India share, never has the conflict between the two escalated to nuclear weapons. Nobody has used them since 1945 and there is an overall consensus (among the nuclear states) that they are intended for deterrence.
f) the testing of nuclear weapons has been dramatically reduced.
g) nobody is saying here that nuclear weapons don't pose a threat. Only that it isn't the most likeliest threat/problem that we have in our hands (like, lets say climate change). The above facts shouldn't be ignored when talking about nuclear weapons and the threat they impose.
Quoting Jake
Your wellcome.
Our game of nuclear Russian roulette has worked out so far, so why worry?
- You don't understand that so long as we have nukes it's only a matter of time until the one bad day arrives. There's nothing about human history to suggest a longstanding pattern of all out fight to the death violence that is thousands of years old is now over.
- You don't understand that the very real possibility of unintentional launches renders everything you said above irrelevant. As example, consider nuclear energy reactors. Most of the time nuclear energy reactors work fine, but sometimes they blow up, because human beings are, and always will be, imperfect managers of complex technology, any technology. This matters a LOT when discussing any technology where failure is not an option.
- You don't understand the crucial difference between threats like climate change which are very real, but not imminent direct threats to civilization itself. If you want to make comparisons, you should be talking about civilization crushing threats like incoming giant asteroids which might arrive out of the blue with little warning.
There are a million problems in the world and always have been. We've always overcome these problems because civilization remained in tact. As example, WWII was a massive calamity but we recovered from it because enough of civilization (primarily the Western Hemisphere) remained up and running.
You're confusing this longstanding pattern of mistake and recovery with events which bring the entire system down, thus ending the pattern of mistake and recovery, at least for centuries to come.
If you had a loaded gun in your mouth which could go off at any moment that becomes your immediate number one priority concern. Simple, simple, simple. You'd instantly get it without me having to type 12 billion words.
But to philosophers nuclear weapons are not real life, but instead an entertaining abstraction, just another pile of fuel for the parlor game.
Perhaps you live in the Western Hemisphere and hence it's difficult for you to understand, but Europe and even Japan were quite up and running in a short time afterwards and their culture and civilization remained even if WW2 killed 61 million from 2,3 billion people (equivalent to our times would be over 200 million killed).
If we then got over WW2, nuclear weapons would be in your view the equivalent of an incoming asteroid hitting Earth that threats civilization itself. With this I assume you are referring to a similar event that happened with the dinosaurs. As bad as a nuclear war might be, would it really be the end of humanity and civilization?
What you don't understand is that just with US and Russia, the 'all-out' nuclear war looks dramatically different than during the Cold War. And how about the whole Southern Hemisphere, South America, Africa? How would the people there all die and the civilization there would collapse too? Of radiation fallout? Nuclear winter? The Chernobyl accident release radiation the equivalent of 500 nuclear detonations, a similar amount of all atmospheric tests done in the World (and this is an estimate on the higher side). And that radiation cloud after turning in Sweden (that got higher radiation than us) came here too. And what was the result? I remember it: the local radiation authority here said that the radiation levels were up from normal, but not so high that protective measures should be started. I think that they cautioned later of excessive eating of berries and mushroom (or something) and there was debate about the radiation levels in reindeer (who roam around in the wild and eat hundreds of different plants). And what is the result in Ukraine and Belarus? An unintended wildlife sanctuary where we can see what happens when humans are taken out of the equation. It's one thing to say that a nuclear war brings death and destruction, it's another to say that our civilization would collapse.
My understanding is that when it comes to nuclear war, people are happy just assuming the worst and latch onto this hype of utter doom and truly don't think what the actual reality would be. It fits so perfectly to a simple humane view of the World. In fact, many oppose anything else than a catastrophic end to humanity itself as a result of a nuclear war (which btw allways ends up in an all-out exchange) as something else not so dire would just "bring us closer to nuclear war".
There is no meaningful difference between 2,000 nukes landing on a country and 20,000 nukes landing on a country.
Even a handful of nukes on key transportation hubs would disrupt the human food supply chain leading to social and political chaos in short order. How many days of food do you have in your house right now? How many days? Complacency depends entirely on the blind faith that we'll always be able to reliably replenish those supplies. Once that faith is broken, chaos begins to flourish.
A single small nuke in Washington DC would wipe out the heart of the US national government, paving the way for geo-political instability all over the world. The fact that we have most key federal agencies all bunched up together in one place, making a perfect high value target, is yet another example of intellectual elites not being of above average intelligence.
There definately is a difference. Ten times of a difference.
Quoting Jake
Now you are talking about a country that is attacked by nuclear weapons. But how about South America? There's no nukes pointed there. Or other countries that aren't belligerents? A lot of countries are and could be self sufficient in their food supply, rationing works. Globalization surely will take a hit, but just how permanent would the disaster be in the end? You see, if we compare nuclear war to an asteroid hitting the Earth, we truly have to take the scale into consideration: the Chicxulub impactor delivered an estimated energy of 10 billion Hiroshima A-bombs. That is way much more than all the nuclear bombs in the World combined. Comparing our man made nuclear war to an asteroid hitting the Earth isn't simply in the same category.
Quoting Jake
While belonging to "the world" (hence I don't live in the US), I may have to disagree a bit with that. Not everything revolves around you and everything wouldn't collapse without the US. And I do you think you underestimate the capabilities of the US states to organize an emergency transitional government, have elections, have the Capital moved to somewhere else during the time Washington DC is rebuilt.
Ok, thank you for engaging, but you're clearly not qualified to participate in this conversation, at least not to a level that can hold my interest. See you in some other thread.
I don't think so. It's just that there are a number of existential threats - the most immediate being uranium, plague or nerve gas, in everyday terms - and you wish to concentrate on only one. Environmental collapse, or a global financial crash, are equally serious, and probably more likely. [There are those who would say that environmental collapse is already unavoidable, although it will take a little more time to complete. :fear: ] I see no reason to brush these other threats "under the rug", to concentrate exclusively on nuclear catastrophe.
So when I counter your argument of "if you want to make comparisons, you should be talking about civilization crushing threats like incoming giant asteroids" by stating how totally different event these are, your answer is to say I'm not clearly qualified in this conversion?
Seems like anything that doesn't support your conclusion aren't in your interest.
You aren't actually interested in the topic you wish to discuss, that's the problem. To disprove this, show us the threads you've started on nuclear weapons, articles you've written etc.
You're interested in debating. Ok, this is a philosophy forum, so go for it, no problem. I'm just not that interested in debating just to be debating, on this particular topic.
You guys are lost in the group consensus complacency delusion. You are in very good company, almost the entire culture including the most prominent intellectual elites. There's nothing I can do about the delusion you are experiencing. We'll just have to wait for the first nuke detonation and see if that helps.
Furthermore, S already answered to you in a very eloquent way, which I can totally agree with:
Quoting S(And this was an answer to your opinions in the first page)
To the actual question in the OP of Andrew4Handel about philosophy and intelligence, even this sub-topic represents an answer: one has to be educated about the subject one discusses. Especially one that raises so much fears and where one can easily go with the crowd. (And actually here the crowd goes in your direction, even if you don't think it goes.) As BitterCrank put it, a good education is important and one also needs critical thinking skills. Ignorance of facts leads to personal opinions and feelings taking over. Yet "the love of wisdom" isn't about feelings. Perhaps the answer is that one has to have some intelligence to overall use critical thinking skills a get to educated.
Philosophy and critical thinking shouldn't be things someone either "has or doesn't have." We should all be equipped to learning and studying, and if it were more enjoyable for the lot of humanity, perhaps we would reach conclusions more quickly and thoroughly.
I am going to go from personal experience and say that I for one am somewhat intimidated by some philosophers and deep thinkers because I know that they have more knowledge on many subjects than I do. Perhaps this is silly, but alas let us not forget that the limbic system is in high demand. For someone who does not engage in deep or critical thinking on a regular basis, I can only imagine that they would be even more intimidated than I am considering their limited association with the process, and so my suggestion to limit this particular issue is simple... When you can... Dumb it down.
I know, I know, we have spent gobs of money buying the ability to create million dollar sentences, and while they are necessary in times in order to maintain specific clarity, they don't captivate society in a broad sense. If you can explain something in vast and great detail, so too should you have the ambition to reduce it to it's utmost simplicity. Of course this is not always easy.
I'm sure there are more ways to consider this question as well.
After studying a masters degree in the university, have to confess that many academic people won't do this.
They limit or accept the 'dumbing down' principle only for the popularization of science or philosophy, which they see as important method to communicate to the masses... but nothing else. Using difficult terms that open only to people educated in the field is actually a social way to create your own academic niche and promote yourself (and your peers that use the jargon) to be 'experts' on the field. So if you don't understand the term da sein, tough luck! Few philosophers will dare try to describe Heidegger's term in their words (and we assume that is his term, not just the ordinary word in German). Perhaps they'll refer to a book by Heidegger to you. After all, any serious philosophy student understands the fundamental concept of Heidegger's existentialist thinking.
This doesn't only concern philosophy and philosophers. Economists, sociologists and even historians fall to this vice. I'll give an example. When working in the Academy of Finland as a junior researcher, I remember one historian in the project who had wanted to make one of her books as accessible to the general public and wrote her book in the most readable way as she could make it. She explained all the difficult historical jargon and the historical terms used in the book (as old terms from agriculture are usually totally unknown to people nowdays). What was the result? She was viciously attacked by her peers of writing a book that was totally unacademic nonsense. It nearly went to ad hominem attacks.
Well, yes, I agree with you to some extent. There's certainly no shortage of people with a rich fantasy life within philosophy, and yes, there are morons too, as you'll occasionally encounter in most places. Everything's an idea! What if I'm a butterfly dreaming of being a man? Are we brains in vats? How can I know that I have a body? Why do you think I kept trying to get through to you that philosophy, in and of itself, is not the bastion of reason you're looking for to get humanity seeing things your way? People will do their own thing, as they always do. You can only get out of philosophy what you put in. Philosophy is not going to be the answer you're looking for to accomplish your goal, it's just a tool, and the job at hand is going to require way more than that. Hence to blame philosophy for this is, as I've repeatedly said, to scapegoat it. You'll only set yourself up for disappointment with those kind of naive expectations. Unless you happen to be the next Ghandi or Martin Luther King Jr., you probably won't get very far. Deal with it.
The threat is about to happen? What does that even mean? Trump's about to do the modern equivalent of beating his chest? Yes, that's somewhat concerning for a number of reasons, but hardly as though there's a gun pointed to my head.
Quoting Pattern-chaser
Yes, there are, and some of them I am concerned about, to some extent, some of the time. But that's not what the dispute is over. The dispute, as I see it, is over the misleading rhetoric.
That seems good advice for you to follow.
Ok, now you're getting deep in to dishing out the BS.
This is much of what I'm attempting to address in this thread. There is no reason for you to be intimidated. Well, ok, so it depends...
HISTORY: If you define philosophy as the accumulation of historical information regarding which famous philosopher said what and when etc, then professional academic philosophers are quite likely to know more about that than the rest of us, given that they've spent some number of years studying these subjects all day long everyday. If that is your vision of what philosophy is, and if you don't have that training, then some humility is in order, agreed.
REASON: If on the other hand you define philosophy as the application of reason to human situations (as I do) then there is really little reason to be in awe of the professionals. We in the public are largely ignoring the nuclear gun in our mouth, as are the intellectual elites. There's no meaningful difference between the public and the professionals.
BUSINESS: If on yet the other hand, if you define philosophy as the ability to accumulate cultural authority, position and status within academia, and to receive payment for one's philosophy, then in that case the professionals are clearly leading the field.
If your quoted words above you reference both "deep thinking" and "knowledge". In the spirit of philosophy, you might wish to question the degree to which deep thinking and knowledge are really what philosophy (defined as reason) is about.
As example, there's little deep thinking in my posts above. All I've done in my comments above is apply simple, straightforward, common sense to the reality that our culture has a gun in it's mouth, and we are largely ignoring this remarkably huge fact. That doesn't require deep thinking, or specialized knowledge, or a PhD. It requires only an interest in applying reason to human situations, and in following the path of reason where ever it might lead.
Dear Professor Dimwit,
Are there thousands of hydrogen bombs on hair trigger alert poised to erase at least Western civilization at the push of a button, or not?
Yes? Or no?
Please observe how you will now display an inability to answer a simple yes or no question based on widely agreed upon facts in a straightforward direct manner.
That's because you're not actually interested in the topic being discussed, but in the experience of debate. That's not wrong, but neither is it interesting.
"Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid."
“If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.”
? Albert Einstein.
These two quotes often attributed to Einstein make me believe that most philosophers tend to miss a big chunk of philosophy by not considering the intelligence and impulse behind the actions and experiences of the 'average guy'. He (average guy) may not be able to express himself with the same dexterity as a highly educated person but he still has the capacity to direct his life to as great a utility as most highly educated people. This, to me, reveals that philosophy goes beyond mental exercises and is best expressed through actions than statements.
"Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school."
? Albert Einstein.
I think that many have noticed that.
Quoting Jake
Or actual knowledge about nuclear war either. What you've just done is to get fixated with the nuclear war scare and with the exaggerations of the imminent doom of civilization so typical 30 years ago. And we know why the discourse was and is still so apocalyptic. If the effects of nuclear weapons have been greatly exaggerated, there is a very good reason: since these weapons are indeed extremely dangerous, any posturing and exaggeration which intensifies our fear of them makes us less likely to use them. From this logic also follows then that any discussion where nuclear weapons and war wouldn't be described as being so catastrophic to humanity would (somehow) get us closer to using them. This was very typical during the Cold War.
Yet then you make then the quite odd conclusion that if philosophers haven't constantly written about this, they are not rational, they have to be morons, basically insane, because of the imminent threat to humanity. This shows your ideological zeal about the issue, which can be seen also in that you simply don't take into account any other views on the subject.
It's alright. I understand why you're lashing out at me. Go ahead and call me names if it makes you feel better, but that won't improve your weak arguments.
Quoting Jake
Yes. (But that's beside the point, which is about your misleading rhetoric, including your talk of guns being pointed at heads, a driverless bus, and your use of the term "imminent").
Quoting Jake
Good job at making a fool of yourself. :up:
And your comment about Nazism in the other discussion either says nothing at all remarkable or something profoundly wrong. A case that is in some sense logical can be made for virtually anything.