TheMadFool

Hi Jack Cummins. I was worried you had left us for greener pastures. Good to see you! The torturer could not torture if...

Yeah, ideas/philosophies/theories are like ports to a ship - some are friendly, relaxing, exhilirating places, others are hostile, disturbing, dull as...

I dunno if this makes sense but the following statements are all different: 1. A \subseteq B 2. A \subset B 3. A = B

The Tathagata is a synonym for Nagarjuna's tetralemma. You can take him/her (the Tathagata) as a personification of the madhyamaka.

What should I have been talking about?

A very good point. Modal logic: 1. ?P \rightarrow ?P It's like looking for water in the desert or something like that. I'll leave it at that.

Expansion from a certain vantage point but contraction from another. When I feel more for others, I feel less for myself.

Empathy, does it exist? David Chalmer's hard problem of consciousness and, more generally, theory vs praxis (Mary's room argument). Why does a discuss...

:grin: Sometimes I go too far but then some of us don't go to where a path actually leads, preferring to find a comfortable spot and make it their hom...

Doubt: Someone knows. Skepticism: No one knows. :chin: The Doubt-Skepticism paradox!

The difference being... To be eternal is basically to claim that the passage of time doesn't/fails to register change. Suppose an object, call it x, b...

:clap: :100: All I know is that it's a scientifically valid method. If not homeopathy is legit. See :point: homeopathic dilutions. Since water & air a...

No choice! Doesn't sound all that fun! I quit!

Yes, Buddhism is realism in that it has a rather dim view of metaphysics. From how metaphysically austere Buddhism is, we can discern an attitude that...

:up:

It's hard to find one's bearings in the world, it's one big messy affair and yet, from a certain angle, life boils down to, what?, a handful of simple...

Reminds me of a phrase my brother-in-law, P, likes to use: "the elephant in the room!" It's a rather sad tale, life - we forget life's misery and suff...

but then... The game is not worth the candle, is it? :grin:

The Chinese Game Paradox Recently, the Chinese government set down restrictions on (video) games, probably by limiting access to gaming platforms. How...

:100: Alas! Few understand this. The question is why? Innumerable works, both true & fiction, are available on the topic of pain/suffering for anyone ...

Interesting! :up: How right you are! Essences do seem to have a subjective side to it. How would, for example, an alien define a dog, in terms of its ...

They're not the same thing either (false positives & false negatives are errors). I might as well ask, do you suppose so-called cognitive biases give ...

Even your deleted posts make sense! :lol:

Kindly expand and elaborate. As far as I can tell, probability is the mathematics of possibiliity - it's basically a numerical perspective on possibil...

Words are not symbols.

You brought numbers into the discussion. You have to explain why?

What a remarkable statement. Morality seems more pain/suffering-oriented (negative utilitarianism) and everyone who's been through high school knows e...

:up: See :point: Eco-"terrorism" & Radical Environmentalism. Hmmm... :chin: :up: :up: The danger in beauty or the beauty in danger. Perhaps another re...

Update We know the formulae for good & evil. 1. Thou shalt not this 2. Thou shalt not that . . . There are 10 commandments, some are local and others ...

:flower:

This is exactly the kind of confusion that can be avoided if we stop theorizing. Since we're talking about physics, how different things would've been...

:up: The next worst thing that can happen to one, after death, is ennui and the most exciting thing on earth is death & dying! Go figure! Gives a whol...

You brought up probability. Are you saying you have no idea what you're talking about? This thread :point: Higher dimensions beyond 4th will elucidate...

:up: Screw logic! I wanna live! :grin:

Isaac Newton stopped short of formulating a hypothesis. Galileo and Kepler, the same thing. Einstein, on the other hand, put a theory (SR + GR) on the...

First comes possibility, only then probability.

Let's just give it a try before we start criticizing. The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

Update As indicated in my reply to @"Gnomon", possibility is, let's own up, is the Devil's work. There's something evil loose in the world ( Satan: Th...

Then, I'm afraid, you didn't understand Newton! :lol:

Was the Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica written in the Dark Ages? I think not! Newton was very clear on what he wanted to do - describe na...

:up: @"180 Proof" Is there some kind of psychological principle that makes us more inclined towards bad news? What explains the media law - if it blee...

:grin: The deck is stacked against me, I know. Doesn't what I say make sense though? Scientists would no longer need to disprove hypotheses/theories s...

All made the same (silly) mistake - hypothesizing/theorizing! From Newton (hypothesis non fingo), through Einstein (hypothesizing/theorizing), to Nath...

I'm going to focus on scientists here. There is no need at all to theorize/hypothesize. All scientists should be doing is extract the mathematical law...

Interesting, no?, how the need to think about possibilities arose from predation. Both hunters and the hunted need to be on their toes 24×7 to survive...

:zip:

Socrates was, let me be very clear, executed! Do all philosophers have a death wish? Is philosophizing just another way of suiciding? When I'm in a ce...

:rofl: That means...Buddhism is a big fat lie!

I'm unable to tell whether the extra digits in relativistic velocity addition compared to Newtonian velocity addition is a question of accuracy or pre...