Agent Smith

Epistemic responsibility & ethics of belief! Our task has always been, is, always will be to make the true (verum/satyam) synonymous with the good (bo...

Good call OP! We're all guilty of thought crime, the vast majority of hate speech, and only a minority of crime crime.

Magma makes me think of (man-made) volcanoes. :scream: Supervolcanoes have been posited as possible causes of global catastrophes - The Year Without a...

:up: Good one!

The possibility of us not having sussed out the truth notwithstanding, we might as well treat ourselves to some irrationality every now and then.

It seems nature doesn't care which one of us survives so long as one of us does. We're gonna change that!

Something like that. While we figure things out, let's assume the least worst theory. In fact, on occasion, let's not...figure things out. The truth, ...

Keeping it simple, if existence entails a mass & volume (basic/naïve materialism), nothing simply can't exist (there isn't a thing that can possess ma...

The human mind is an agent of extinction, the human heart is an agent of conservation. An assassin is the best bodyguard! :snicker:

Materialism is best says the novacula occami (do not multiply entities without necessity). If materialism is false, it must be out of a dire need viz....

So, good health makes us happy because it has value and philosophy has value because it makes us happy? Why does good health make us happy? Because it...

How? An example or two?

It appears that we're not so much against predation as we are against parasitism with symbiosis being our ideal of what a relationship should be like.

Good point! I've asked this question before, I'll ask it again: Do things have value because they make us happy or do things make us happy because the...

I asked the question "why do people have children?" because, as you rightly pointed out, the reason whatever it is has nothing to do with the well-bei...

You're right on the money Bitter Crank - I was offering an explanation as to why the world hasn't been able to give up carbon. I believe it isn't due ...

I'm glad to know you're ahead of the pack; maybe metaphysics isn't meant for everybody, just like skydiving isn't. I just happened to come across a Wi...

Once the message is received, neither the sender (God) nor the medium (the messenger/prophet) are no longer of any significance, oui? In other words P...

Crumbs! I would've loved to be Peirce-pragmatic and be done with metaphysical mumbo jumbo with one fell swoop of a question (does it matter, in practi...

:cool: Yeah, the way I was taught ecology in school does jibe with what you say here. However, why would nature make itself so vulnerable which would ...

Pragmatism (Peirce) already eliminated metaphysics, quite a long time ago I might add, by asking a simple question "does a metaphysical propositions's...

Excellent idea! I love it! An argumentum ad consequentiam is a fallacy they say...naaah!

How long have fossil fuels been around? I'd say 2 centuries minimum (1800s - 2000s). Every aspect of our civilization has been adapted to them to such...

1. All knowledge is belief 2. Not all belief is knowledge i.e. some beliefs are not knowledge (missing justification)

My two cents... Philosophy will (probably) go extinct from the world of formal education conducted in universities and colleges in the coming 50-100 y...

Only the rich can guarantee their offspring a life worth living, hedonically speaking. The vast majority of us (the lower & middle income bracket) can...

The more succesaful, evolutionarily speaking, an organism is, the more vermin/pest-like it is. Make any sense?

It appears that the mind and heart have different criteria for belief. The mind uses justification as the gold standard (is/cope). The heart, on the o...

We couldn't have made it this far without a mean streak: aut neca aut necare (kill or be killed). It's only after we managed to claw our way to the to...

I guess the paradox I mentioned in my previous posts can be "resolved" by changing the question (what is a question?) into a command (define "question...

The paradox of antinatalism Those who produce the most children are those who suffer the most (compare birth rates between first world and third world...

I suppose it has something to do with politenss and etiquette.

The basic idea of deconstructionism seems to be that words derive their meaning in a world of (other) words - the latter serving as a contrasting back...

Reminds me of Skynet in Terminator. The first thing Skynet thinks of after it becomes self-aware is humans are an existential threat.

We need some statistics: Isolation cells are not all that popular among inmates I hear.

Yep, that's the complete picture in my humble opinion. Self-awareness has something to do with hedonism, not just suffering but the whole enchilada (s...

Superb monsieur, superb!

Are you advocating fatalism?

:up: We're caught in a trap of sorts - we don't like it (life) and so, we search for justifications to like it (life). That's positive thinking on a w...

Well, I wanted an argument from you refuting my claim.

I don't think you're right about this.

It appears that there's a strong causal connection between self-awareness and suffering. The latter induces/effects the former. Self-awareness \propto...

:chin:

Misery loves company - the loneliness of suffering is obvious/evident, oui?

:fire: There's a connection between suffering and self-awareness. When suffering we feel most alone and being so isolated, one naturally drifts toward...

A bit disappointing that a mystical interpretation of QM is considered woo-woo; just when it was getting interesting.

:ok:

Yeah, in a way, on target! Fun fact: Predators are more intelligent than prey (dolphins, chimps, octopi, dogs, cats (small & big), etc.

@Rocco Rosano Good post. If there's a message to metaphysics, it's exactly that which you state viz. it's not as simple as one thinks it is or it's mo...