Agent Smith

How do we develop our consciousness and self-awareness? By using a combination of ratchets & pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps of course! :snicke...

(Subject)ivity vs. (Object)ivity. The meanings of these two concepts are evident when you study their etymology, oui mon ami? The former is of the sub...

Sweet dreams.

Your double reply threw me off. :grin:

It would depend on what one means by nothing and real. It's quite fascinating although not unexpected that at those scales of reality, there's confusi...

A (true) philosopher wouldn't resort to brinkmanship - it's out of character.

I suppose so.

Yeah, we havta make up our minds what to do.

Apologies, unintended.

:chin:

I don't know where you're going with this. Philosophical brinkmanship as in calling for change/belief ... at any cost? That would be terrible indeed!

So we eat in silence! :up:

First off, congratulations for seeing what very few people do. Your committment to pessimism is worthy of a standing ovation. Did you notice, how some...

We must transmute water into wine! That's what we need to do!

All power is equal? Why then is there evil in the world?

What you desire and what you settle for are two different things. Nevertheless, we could say best = least worst and that, my friend, is how the evil g...

What's the evidence for pessimism?

Power asymmetry, oui mon ami?

I see what you're getting at. Nevertheless, philosophers have been thinking about (moral) luck.

Jainism has two intriguing concepts. 1. Anekantavada (no-one-sidedness): A claim can be true, but only so under one/more conditions. Remove/alter thes...

Just trying to make sense of RAA. There's another way of showing why RAA works.

I'm particularly intrigued by your decision to link antinatalism to the utilitarian trolley problem. Life is defined by the choices we make: in most c...

Prove P via Reductio Ad Absurdum. (1) \neg P . . . ( n ) \bot (n + 1). \neg P \to \bot (n + 2). \neg\neg P \lor \bot (n + 3). P \lor \bot (n + 4). \ne...

The DIY craze (80s-90s) had something to do with post-apocalyptic survival strategies people were thinking up during the US-Soviet nuclear standoff. I...

The lion (the electric chair) or the hyenas (the firing squad)? How do you wanna die? A no-win situation. :chin: :snicker:

:up: My point was we shouldn't take the moral high ground because luck/chance has a significant role in our ethical lives.

Aye! Like I once said, true/not, we're, each one of us, the best we can be given our circumstances. So if someone doesn't give a flyin' f**k about the...

Keeping oneself well-informed isn't easy at all.

Well, it is what it is, oui mon ami? Do you know the student syndrome? Assignments are postponed until the 11th hour! It's part of our psychology it s...

Good point. So determinism & unpredictable and therefore empirical testing is not going to help us settle the matter. However, the dice & balls scenar...

Philosophical brinkmanship happens, in my humble opinion, when someone commits to a creed and becomes its strong proponent, willing to fight to the de...

Brand loyalty is one way to combat cartels - the members would havta compete then, to win over customers i.e. offer the best at reasonable prices. I d...

Philosophical brinkmanship! Sounds dangerous and being rational, being a truthseeker, comes with risks to life and limb. How many people have laid dow...

The free will-determinism issue is well beyond my ken. I asked around but to my surprise very few are willing to share their findings on the topic; ei...

If I see an egoist, it relieves me - one less person to worry about, he can take care of himself. If I see an altruist, it comforts me - someone's wat...

My take on psychiatry: It's a question not of kind but of degree. For instance, grief (maybe intense and lasts a few months after which it's business ...

Sy?d ... :up: Marxism suffers from the same malady that Christianity & Islam does - the belief, conviction rather, that it is absolutely correct, it i...

Argument from incredulity/Divine Fallacy As for bad grammar, mea culpa. It sounded right to me; perchance it's a dialectical variant of "let's not". I...

There is a world in which predestination is true & determinism is false, oui? Don't let's commit the argument from incredulity fallacy, oui mes amies?

:smile:

Gracias for the kind words. According to Pyrrhonists, skepticism is supposed to lead to inner peace (ataraxia), but speaking from experience, I'd havt...

Syat ... a paradox then. The system that puts people first leads to despotism of the worst kind. Have you heard of Gödel's loophole? Maybe something s...

I'm a big fan of skepticism. :grin:

Is Marxism hijackable? That, my friend, is the right question. If it is then something's wrong with it, oui mes amies? Using simple logic here.

Sy?d/Syat = Maybe/Perchance/Perhaps. Visit anekantavada (non-one-sidedness) page, Wikipedia, for more.

From one naya, profanity, from another, liberty. C'est la vie, mon ami! We either embrace freedom in every possible manner and at the same time desecr...

Sy?d ...

Sy?d ... The Matrix hypothesis is when skepticism becomes fun.

Sy?d, true! Allow/permit evolution, sensu latissimo, to do its thing.

Syat ... What was taken for real (out there, distinct and separate from us) is being questioned; it could all be a hallucination (in our heads). As fo...