Punshhh

But we always were in a hall of mirrors, to deny that doesn’t remove the philosophical dilemma.

Well at least the troll (don’t mention him by name) has left the thread. Maybe we can now get back to serious discussion.

So if pressed, you would declare agnosticism?

I don’t want to argue about who is the most despicable. But in terms of genocide, the holocaust wasn’t that unusual, albeit on a grand and industrial ...

Trump backed down in his standoff against China. Indeed all Trumps antics have strengthened China and weakened the US on the world stage. China had al...

Apologies, I missed these two questions, thinking there were only two questions. Firstly we don’t know why their cannons were created, it would seem t...

Yes, it appears to happen in all cases of genocide. The aggressor feels a moral duty to continue the genocide until the victim is extinguished.

Of course. No not evolutions as given to us in religious ideology. Rather any actual evolution that is going on. This is on the assumption that there ...

Yes, we are in the dark on this issue, all we have are the accounts from people who claim to have experienced revelation. I include myself, as I have ...

Yes, I relate to your definitions here and my next point was going to be about what you refer to here; Which I was getting ready to explain myself. I ...

Yes, Sufi’s have developed a good language for expressing these things. I remember the first spiritual book I read when a teenager, Autobiography of a...

You can open yourself to the possibility that a development within yourself can result in enlightenment. Provided your evolutionary stage of developme...

There are plenty of documented cases, although they are mainly from the east (there are some in the Christian tradition and also shamanistic tradition...

Science only works with what we can detect with instruments. Its conclusions are limited to that. It is mute about the basis of existence and key phil...

I know what you are saying, but there is a problem with the use of truth and knowledge here. These are both things which us mortals experience and wor...

Quite, I remember when I met and became friends with a guru at his ashram. I had expressed an interest in meeting him and when he came to sit with me,...

The man’s a moron. But I accept there are clever people behind the scenes playing him for a fool.

Yes, I know the size of the stock market. But it can crash in seconds, it doesn’t have a head, it relies on the fears, or lack thereof of the investor...

Yes, but people like Trump can destabilise the global trade flows we rely for competitive growth at the stroke of a pen. Just in time supply lines hav...

Agreed, we somehow have wrestle capitalism back out of the hands of the fascists and populists.

Agreed, there is a churning going on here. The forces of authoritarian backsliding are strong this time due to developments in social media in which e...

Yes, I agree, although the article claims that the bubble is propping up a weak and unstable economy. One being abused by a tyrant wielding king like ...

A lot of people are stocking up on AI shares. The U.S. stock market has risen 30% in the last six months. AI is stealing people’s jobs all over the pl...

But we are animals with all the animal passions present therein. These days we value and wonder at the diverse creatures in our ecosystem, we don’t co...

Yes, I entirely agree. What I find interesting here is what is referred to here as the end of history and what that represents. What are your thoughts...

Thankyou.

More than this, people in those days didn’t think rationally as we do. They thought in allegory, it was much more like the dreamtime of the Australian...

Well biologically we are all clones (I know there is sexual and therefore genetic diversity, but this is merely a means of introducing a mechanism for...

This is best done face to face, but I’ll have a go, from two angles. Firstly, the idea that all organisms (although, it could go further than just org...

It has to be done alone in the later stages. Because by that point it is internal.

Agreed, although the practice may colour the thoughts.

The idea of mysticism perhaps, but to a mystic, the practice they follow isn’t necessarily so. When it comes to “truth” and “real”, the problem is tha...

Yes, but this takes one out of philosophy (thinking) and into mysticism, where thinking is merely a side show, or cogitation after the fact. I know, b...

The mind is that which can be enthralled.

Yes, I am familiar with the notion. I don’t delve so deep into quantum ideas as this myself, I understand the principles behind it and it fits as an e...

There is no way to determine whether the AI is conscious. We don’t know how, or what specifically leads to consciousness in cellular life.

That’s just evidence of AI learning on it’s own. Are you sure about that, it’s not a given?

I don’t mean end literally, it’s a figure of speech. It’s more a question of a direction, a rudder, a movement rather than stasis, or aimlessness. For...

I’ve read the OP it all sounds reasonable to me. There are two unknowns that come to mind. Firstly, how can we know if the artificial mind we create i...

Are you a robot? I’m not joking.

It’s a joke.

Talk to the hand.

I’ll re-read it and get back to you.

Cellular organisms. I think you’ll find that all living things are composed of colonies of cellular organisms.

I’m not a Thesaurus.

There is a problem here, that intelligence is a means to an end. What is the end? This has been explored in science fiction. You know V’ger in the fir...

What mitochondria and cells do? (Putting viruses to one side for now.) I’m no expert on this, there are many scientists, biologists who have analysed ...

Surely “consciousness” is synonymous with “living”? The interesting bit is where AI becomes a living organism.

When it came to my own children I just told them about religion, what its teachings say and what atheists and agnostics say. But didn’t reveal my posi...

Not necessarily incomprehensible, but perhaps alien. So different that it just doesn’t make sense, or seem sensible to even consider it to be the trut...