leo

I would say, if you pretend to be someone you're not, people eventually see you and treat you as who you pretend to be, rather than who you are.

As I hinted in other threads, the main problem I see is that psychiatry is focused on making people adapt to the system they live in, and assumes that...

The point is that, in your hypotheticals you can say things such as "such person has X% chance of killing someone" or "if you don't kill a billion peo...

Ok, it could have been interpreted as if "both taken together" have a 50% chance of killing someone. So if you kill track A on average 2.75 people die...

Well the hypothetical doesn't mention how many children they're gonna have, what kind of life their children will have, it doesn't say what a bad life...

Do the people on the track come with a sticker on their head that says how likely they are to kill someone in their life? What if the guys on track A ...

To be fair to him, you only changed one letter and added a comma.

I can tell you there was zero embellishment in my experiences I reported, I described them as I felt then. Also there are quite pessimistic people out...

What is there to gain by winning the war though?

Wittgenstein had a nice solution to stop bothering about these kinds of problems, basically do we ever observe infinite things? No we only observe fin...

Yes we can't imagine it, we can just imagine the process. Honestly I think those who try to apply the concept of infinity to the universe just do it o...

Well you can imagine a finite part of the universe and visualize the metric expanding in that part, and imagine that the same goes on in every part of...

Cosmologists/astronomers observe that the light coming from distant galaxies is redshifted. They assume that this redshift is due to these galaxies re...

I agree to some extent with that, I have said numerous times in other threads how psychiatry focuses on making the individual adapt to the system we i...

I agree that there is no absolute objective justification or worth to anything, I agree that you didn't choose to be born, but I don't agree that you ...

I simplified, but yes our desires are shaped by our experiences and beliefs, which themselves are shaped by our desires, in an interacting whole. It m...

Yes. This is the way I see it: We feel desires. These desires lead us to set goals and attempt to reach them. Without any desire we wouldn't do anythi...

What could ever be absolute truth? How could we ever know whether the 'laws' of physics we discover will remain accurate tomorrow or in 1 billion year...

The way I see it people are driven by their desires. Maybe all our desires were selected through evolution. Some people have the desire to understand,...

It's a bit dishonest to the fish and tiger to describe them solely from what we see them do, while describing humans with having a mind because we are...

In what way does it separate humans from other animals? What objective purpose does it ultimately serve besides helping us guarantee our survival? (wh...

These were more rhetorical questions rather than a personal attack, I only phrased them that way to provoke thought. Probably many german people back ...

If you were a psychiatrist trained in a system where you are taught that concentration camps are normal, and that mentally healthy people are well-ada...

This is partly the case, but does it mean we should consider that people who can't adapt to being tortured in concentration camps are mentally ill and...

A lot of things work, exercising, eating healthily, feeling loved, supported, understood, feeling free, feeling having one's own future in one's hands...

Sure it does, you just haven't realized it. If your patient sees or hears things that you don't, either you will find an explanation within the range ...

Psychiatry does rest on shaky foundations. For instance the idea that psychiatry knows an absolute distinction between what is real and what is not re...

I think one of the traits we have in our survival toolset is not wanting to pursue pointless endeavors, yet once we find life as a whole to be ultimat...

Interesting, indeed continually trying to find the best way to perdure might keep us busy forever. That includes finding ways to keep wanting to perdu...

There are regularities within experience, or at least apparent, temporary ones, I suppose in a world without regularities we couldn't exist. Science's...

Evidence that we are not just biological machines driven by feelings that have been selected through evolution as a survival aid, evidence that there ...

Yes, but what makes the other goals absurd? Behind every goal there is a feeling, a desire at the source that gives rise to the goal in the first plac...

By survive better I mean simply to have one's survival more guaranteed. For instance those who have to hunt for food every day and who can't cure thei...

Yes you understand. The drive to help people seems just like another survival tool we are equipped with, it doesn't necessarily help directly the one ...

I can see how that would be true, but isn't the reason essentially that those people are faced with the conflict between their will to live (that unde...

I agree, but if we are biological machines driven by feelings whose sole reason for being there is that they were shaped through evolution so we can s...

I agree that our basic survival requirements are usually met, but it seems that once they are met we engage in activities to guarantee our future surv...

I agree to a point, we spend our lives fighting to live, fighting against death, it takes effort to survive and guarantee our survival as best we can....

I would say going to work is done for survival, as it is done to get money which allows to then easily get food and shelter and tools helpful to survi...

Art is used to communicate things to others that can't be easily communicated through speech, things one may have noticed or understood about the worl...

Is that supposed to be a disproof of the theory? A blog post written by an anonymous individual, who finds the idea ridiculous, and who lies about wha...

When you look at the life of people who have done atrocities to others, there is always a story. The guy who killed a bunch of people in Christchurch ...

Is there any example where that greater cause isn't aimed at making others survive better? Some women fight for women's rights so they can survive bet...

I agree, what I meant to say was, it seems as if everything we do is geared towards survival in some way, even though sometimes some act that would he...

Those would be appearances too, within the range of experiences that we use to call imagination. You visualize that object somehow, but you're still i...

I agree that it matters we apply technology responsibly. What I don't agree with is that science gives us the way to apply technology responsibly. Som...

If science is truth, why do scientists contradict each other? If a scientific consensus is truth, why are scientific consensuses of the past contradic...

I disagree, many people hate their life, and would give up some of the comfort brought by technology in exchange for more freedom. In fact it is quite...

What I was getting at is that when you do experience the wonderful things you don't see ending your life as a better state of affairs. When you do exp...

I would have a lot to say on the subject, because it can't be put concisely into words. You see, you hear, your smell, you touch, you taste, you have ...