BC

You are a tough grader. I didn't think it was that bad. But what I did think bad was that the New Yorker saw fit to print it. The New Yorker! Publishe...

I don't think "wisdom" is just a pile of good advice. Take the book of Proverbs: 1 The proverbs of Solomon son of David, king of Israel: 2 for gaining...

Nonsense. "Cat Person" is just not a great short story. I'd give it a B-. The New Yorker is the Big Time for short stories, and this just isn't that g...

This has been an interesting discussion. Thanks. I have to go to bed now so I can get up early to make it to a root canal appointment at 8:00. Only ba...

Old gay men like me don't have much (any) experience dating millennial women, but It seems to me that the zeitgeistich thing of men having expectation...

I went back and read the ending again. The story effectively ended at the end of the first paragraph below. The second paragraph begins the redefiniti...

Why "Cat Person"? Odd title. It was a moderately engaging short story. Nothing that happened seemed particularly remarkable. Of course, sometimes the ...

I define wisdom as deep knowledge. "Fine" he says. "So what is "deep knowledge"? Deep knowledge is the best of the stuff one has learned, boiled down,...

Damned if I know what happened to you. Clearly your ego didn't die, dissolve, or ditch your body and depart. It sounds like a good thing, though, and ...

One thing we can do is to stop opposing reason and emotion. Our senses, emotions, memory, reason, metabolism, hormones, muscles, and so on are all one...

There are, as a great philosopher said, "known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns." We can sort things into those three categories. known kn...

Certainty means that your certitude is a definite fact. I agree that because a calculation that demonstrates that something is very likely or unlikely...

Surely there are no cacti in heaven! Hell, yes.

That seems like a genuinely generous attitude toward other people's interests.

Philosophy is by its nature one big hooha, when you get down to it. Whether it's necessary or not is under review. You will be notified when a decisio...

Watch me. And pay up.

How on earth does it undermine your (plural) capacity as moderators?

I'm fining you 50 points for misusing a cliché. Your discussion among yourselves whether to delete a thread ensures collusion, not a level playing fie...

I live in the midwest; I have always lived within 100 miles of where I was born (except for 2 years in Boston). I also like buildings and places with ...

I thought the World Peace OP was interesting and serious. Discussable in this forum? Absolutely. I thought the discussion was perking along just fine....

I stated in the now-deleted thread that most men are not violent and most men do not oppress women,. Some men do oppress women, and some men are viole...

This is the Eads Bridge, completed in 1874, over the Mississippi between St. Louis and East St. Louis. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/...

It would be better to have two threads on the same topic that attracted different posters.

I found "Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body" by Neil Shubin informative and an enjoyable read. Obviously t...

Life is like a sewer; what you get out of it depends on what you put into it. Thomas Lehrer.

Harmonic convergence, I suppose. I said the same thing there that I said here. So will we all, I suppose.

Reproduction is the default. It isn't so much a "trap" set, as a way forward provided. Most people seem to enjoy raising children, at least in retrosp...

What have I been reading... The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit; Designing Detroit: Wirt Rowland the rise of Moder...

It is, perhaps, better to view the human condition at a middle distance, rather than up close. Animal existence (alligators, otters, wildebeests) view...

Pretty much. We are inventive and adaptable, so we make new stuff and then we get used to it; then we begin to look for a new frontier of invention. R...

Banned in Boston, condemned in Cleveland, and banished from the Philosophy Forum for annoying the moderators or using the word m o r o n too often.

If I discount the severe harms of global warming, over population, nuclear annihilation, and other near-terminal events, can I be up-beat about the fu...

Posty McPostface and Schopenhauer1: I owe both of you an apology. For some reason I thought this thread was started by Schop. Given his anti-natalist ...

So no crucifixion then. Let's see, what are the current recommendations for hapless optimists?

So, what have you got against morons?

So, why is "mor on" a trigger word? Why not fuck, bag of shit, etc.?

Evidence should definitely direct policy writing and decision making. All that is necessary is for us to decide to do that. What on earth would interf...

Science fiction, as you say. Remember, it's more fiction than science. What do you mean, "any civilization can survive with violent tendencies"? The R...

There is nothing inevitable about artificial intelligence. If it ever exists, it will be a product of some large company, or consortium. It will be de...

It isn't with any delight that I shall rain on your parade into the bright future. That's a reasonably good estimate. It will not be evil, stupid, or ...

True, and another part of our problem is that we can't seem to tell the difference between being "advanced" and just consuming (literally and figurati...

My apologies for misreading you. Squirrels don't have equal access to all of the acorns. Some squirrels are bigger, smarter, and more aggressive than ...

Oh, oh... now there's a Danish faction to contend with.

Is it the case that 'respect must be earned, then kept or lost' while 'tolerance can be legislated and can be permanent'? Is 'respect' more interperso...

Nature intended for our basic needs to be met? Nonsense. 1) nature has no intentions 2) nature seems to be content that animals starve, freeze, don't ...

I didn't express myself clearly. Here's the do-over: "Industrialized systems produce agricultural surpluses and are generally rich enough that governm...

Detroit is a pit of poverty, and it seems like a mystery. Once the auto industry got going (in the first decade of the 20th century) it boomed. It boo...

Have you read George Orwell's Road to Wigan Pier or Down and Out in Paris and London? Both are about Orwell's experience of British and French poverty...

Not only is it expensive to be poor, but because the poor have no money in the bank, every small disaster (flat tire, need new shoes, Fortune Magazine...

If one can face the situation without holding on to the unlikelihood that everything will turn out just fine in the end, it seems obvious that we are ...