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TheMadFool

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He comes off as a person of great erudition. It's great to have him in the forum. I hope to keep learning from him...and others too. I've always maint...
May 18, 2021 at 18:16
Lucky you! Someone at least knows how to have fun around here! At certain angles, your reflection falls outside your field of vision. The same may app...
May 18, 2021 at 17:36
I'm talking about moral injunctions and not about how adhering to/violating them reflects on one's character. Remember, which comes first - moral code...
May 18, 2021 at 17:25
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0ZFkm5D9C8
May 18, 2021 at 15:11
This is getting really interesting. Your words, in my humble opinion, get to the heart of the issue in the blink of an eye as it were. Why should mora...
May 18, 2021 at 14:35
I found something interesting on the Wikipedia page on Socrates, the father of Western philosophy. See vide infra, :rofl: :clap: No One Scroll down to...
May 18, 2021 at 14:12
If you ask me, we need to look at scientifically-confirmed physical limits. Take, for example, the speed of light. It is finite of course at 186,000 m...
May 18, 2021 at 12:08
If you say so! Out of curiosity though, are you a physicist by any chance?
May 18, 2021 at 11:08
I'm sorry you feel that way. Give me another shot at this, if it's all the same to you. First, the link between purpose (teleology) and the non-random...
May 18, 2021 at 11:06
These are probably descriptive accounts of evolution but let's get down to the brass tacks, shall we? 1. You, yourself are living proof of teleology b...
May 18, 2021 at 10:14
Proof?
May 18, 2021 at 09:43
No mistakes at all. You're ignoring my argument for reasons that I can't fathom. If you disagree, here's a challenge for you: name one non-random proc...
May 18, 2021 at 09:37
Clearly, you've missed the point. Perhaps an analogy is in order. Imagine the situation where we have two distinct things AB and BC, where A, B, and C...
May 18, 2021 at 09:26
While I hesitate to say that's correct, I'm fairly confident that's not wrong. Consider for the moment a normal person's behavior. Does a person not h...
May 18, 2021 at 08:13
Simple. Imagine you meet an alien from another planet. This alien's behavior isn't random i.e. given a set of possibilities, some are preferred over o...
May 18, 2021 at 07:37
If evolution isn't inherently random, we must conclude that evolution is teleological. Pray tell, what is the ultimate goal of evolution? Now, don't r...
May 18, 2021 at 07:29
Indeed, time is shared - between people that is - and that immediately complicates the packing problem vis-à-vis time; multiple activities, each with ...
May 18, 2021 at 07:23
This gets more and more interesting but it's likely that I speak from ignorance rather than any real knowledge. The best way to express my concern her...
May 18, 2021 at 07:07
:grin:
May 18, 2021 at 04:13
Right! :up: I sometimes forget the 4th dimension (time) - things change, the new, allegedly better, replace the old, reportedly inferior. Perhaps this...
May 18, 2021 at 04:10
Yes, My description of thoughts was metaphorical but it isn't completely wrong to look at it that way. Nevertheless, it probably isn't a definition a ...
May 18, 2021 at 03:48
It all boils down to Packing problems The aim is to "pack" as many useful/productive activities into a given time slot, keeping time wastage at a mini...
May 18, 2021 at 03:16
:up: Perhaps I read too much into the socks analogy. Thanks!
May 18, 2021 at 03:08
I'm fairly certain that Manson & his "family" were put through psychological tests of IQ, personality, schizphrenia, and the like. Given the court's v...
May 18, 2021 at 02:57
A discussion in another thread with 180 Proof revolved around mind and intelligence. 180 Proof said something to the effect that evolution is intellig...
May 17, 2021 at 18:23
We, in a sense, hold an image, understood in the broadest sense possible, of the entire universe, including ourselves and this image is made up of eve...
May 17, 2021 at 18:05
Thanks for alerting me to that. Completely missed it. So, yes, we have mindless AI, at least rudimentary versions of it and let's not forget the chess...
May 17, 2021 at 17:58
:rofl: The best Taoist is no Taoist!? :chin: Jokes aside, 1. Best goal: Don't cause problems. 2. Better goal: Solve problems 3. Good goal: Find proble...
May 17, 2021 at 17:43
I don't know how tests/exams are conducted these days - the last one I took was at least a decade ago, excepting a COVID antigen test a few months ago...
May 17, 2021 at 15:33
Thoughts are, to my reckoning, reflections of reality on what is essentially an analog of a narcissist's favorite object, a mirror. The reflections ei...
May 17, 2021 at 15:04
Principle of charity among other things I suppose. Put God and Abraham in the best light possible. Take a long, hard look at Abraham's story. The obvi...
May 17, 2021 at 14:17
:chin:
May 17, 2021 at 14:07
The challenge for solpisism is this: granted that everything except one's own existence is doubtful but the catch is we simply can't distinguish minds...
May 17, 2021 at 14:04
@"Wayfarer" Anatt? Buddhism has this concept of annat?, link above, in English, no-self. Taking this into account, solipsism which claims the self to ...
May 17, 2021 at 11:07
Spirit is one among many thousands, probably millions, of names for nothing.
May 17, 2021 at 10:24
How unfortunate for it appears that it needs to be interpreted correctly for very important moral lessons in it to come through. First things first, w...
May 17, 2021 at 09:54
In my humble opinion, the above two statements can go towards formulating a good argument for why there's something rather than nothing? 1. Nothing co...
May 17, 2021 at 07:41
Oh! I thought God and mind were no-go zones for physicists. How come they don't come up with regard to the EPR paradox vis-à-vis Bell inequality? On t...
May 17, 2021 at 07:27
Great question. An exposé of an underlying inconsistency - at times, you're deemed capable of saying, "no" to external influences and at other times y...
May 17, 2021 at 06:45
Maybe our creator is a die-hard fan of detective novels who wants us to figure it all out on our own. He must've left clues all over the place, not ju...
May 17, 2021 at 05:21
Nature As you can see, there's no recognizable pattern in mutations that are either beneficial/harmful to an organism in the sense beneficial mutation...
May 17, 2021 at 04:14
Nothing that isn't obvious. "Love" in French means zero I believe. To be fair though, if I were to look at it with rose-tinted glasses, I'd say love i...
May 16, 2021 at 17:32
If consciousness is a function of complexity then, yes, it could be a phenomenon that arises from the myriad ways complex structures/systems can be pe...
May 16, 2021 at 17:19
A government, as far as I can tell, is supposed to run the country; a country is nothing without its people, from infants to senior citizens; people h...
May 16, 2021 at 16:53
Love is, as I once said, an illusion created by the mind to make it itself look bigger than it actually is but you can't blame the mind for doing that...
May 16, 2021 at 16:40
Educate me! What is randomness to you? For me randomness is a state of a system consisting of a set of possibilities in which each is as likely as any...
May 16, 2021 at 14:05
All that I can say is that I must, sadly, disagree with you. Compare Trumps statements to those of the "witnesses" of Christ's resurrection, the forme...
May 16, 2021 at 13:52
I'll agree to that although non-empirical claims too can be extraordinary e.g. "I don't exist", pace Descartes. No, not begging the question. Take a l...
May 16, 2021 at 11:10
References? Somehow I don't believe you. Is random mutation not a good way to handle extremely variable environments if the purpose is to perpetuate l...
May 16, 2021 at 10:59
Indeed there's a possibility that Tertullian, Aristotle was quoted out of context but the statements that he makes, "credo quia absurdum" and "certum ...
May 16, 2021 at 10:35