frank

Interesting. But the US wasn't sitting at the adult's table prior to the world wars. Britain and France were the global exploiters back then.

I've been reading about neoliberalism. I don't think there are CEOs or oligarchs who try to instigate racial conflict. They don't have to. There's gen...

So we never exit the realm of models, right? We just deal in models of models, and models of modeled models. This language implies the thing that's be...

A computer is just a machine. Commands are just input. Printing is output. Humans are the meaning-makers and we're outside the computer. Thinking of t...

You want a lesson in computer architecture?

Oh good.

What are the good and bad ways?

Does it ever come to you that you're looking at yourself when you look at others?

:up:

Machine language is usually handled in hexadecimal, but yes, of course you could deliver commands in binary. Realizing that is not at all the same as ...

I've come to the same conclusion.

So you would say there is a race war taking place?

On Polanyi: (wow) "There are, he noted, two kinds of freedom, one good and the other bad. Among the latter he listed ‘the freedom to exploit one’s fel...

You do realize this is just a social construct right?

"What the Mexico case demonstrated, however, was a key difference between liberal and neoliberal practice: under the former, lenders take the losses t...

Physical things are always changing. They're transient. We ourselves are transient. If ideas are eternal and unchanging (I think they are), and we're ...

This is dualist talk then?

No comment

The insane popularity of Trump stems from the impression he gave of himself as a savior to America, particularly to Americans living on unstable econo...

Was Trump ever a threat to neoliberal agendas? For instance, the trade war?

Were you born into it? Or did you join as an adult?

The US is transitioning out of crisis mode. Wow.

:up:

I see.

So we made up the idea of materiality and he created it for us?

But materiality is supposed to be an illusion, right? Did God create this illusion or did we?

So how does good give birth to evil?

I think I got sattva and rajas mixed up.

I see. I actually do know what these are (I think). They're the gunas. On a sine wave, rajas is a rising curve, sattva is the point of 0 slope and tam...

Right. You have to eat a meal with the lord of illusion before you kill him. Actually I know nothing about Hinduism (sorry!)

Exactly. So you start with recognizing a duality: mind and matter. You then arrive at monism by declaring one side to be dependent or illusive, right?

Western monistic idealism recognizes matter and thought. Matter is supposedly an emergent property of mind per Plotinus. This clearly shows a dualisti...

This is a conclusion an idealist comes to, but it's not the starting point. It can't be. You have to start by comparing thought to material in order t...

I'm trying to to point out that a mind independent world is the setting for your narrative. You need material as the counterpoint to ideas. See what I...

How do you know that?

A dualist then.

For psychopaths maybe.

Well, even in a dream I act like a materialist, so...

Yes, I've had dreams that left me wondering for years about my ability to build worlds, and so led to my half-assed interpretation of Kant: that we're...

But is it intuitive that the trees and birds around you are made of mind stuff as if we're in a dream? And what is mind stuff anyway? I think the defa...

Leibniz provided a famous answer to the problem of evil (there are two PoE's, this is the later one): this is the best if all possible worlds. Contemp...

I think it's good to have that sense of authority derived from your own experience. Among the handful of indubitable things, your own experience stand...

I see. But you'd still be conscious, just not chained to a particular identity?

Is it?

I'm not a physicist, but I understand that quantum theory doesn't work in the Big Bang. That's not a detail.

I guess. First Amendment protects their bullshit, though. The Big Bang is also presently a mystery.

True. Philosophers are good at living with contradiction though. Idealists do, materialists do. The perennial philosophy is basically solipsism. It's ...

Typically they claim that God is beyond our comprehension.

It crashes both empiricism and rationalism. Neither can account for our confidence in natural laws, so it takes aim at foundations.

Is constructivism also inconsistent made-up shit?