Pfhorrest

As I said before, it's precisely as useful a statement as naturalism is. To a necessitarian naturalist (of which I am also one), any object cannot hel...

Oh right, that problem. I didn't recognize it by name before; I think the capitalization threw me off, maybe. Anyway, I gave my answer to that above: ...

It's not so much of a wish, as a wonder. But yeah, sometimes it is a wish too. I have very well-defined positions now, but I have moved through many d...

Thanks! Fluidity and rigidity are those kinds of abstractions I have no problem with. If you just model the mechanical interactions of molecules, you ...

Functionalism about access consciousness, panpsychism about phenomenal consciousness.

Hahah, thanks :)

He implied that the US is letting potential tyrants run for president. I’m wondering which person(s) he thinks are potential tyrants running for presi...

The functionality of things is what groups them. The way information flows through systems, the causal connectedness or isolation of them. And phenome...

“Free will” in an incompatibilist sense is a bad thing anyway. You want compatibilist free will, which would not be lost in heaven.

That’s all about access consciousness. Functionality. Phenomenal consciousness is something much less interesting.

Who exactly do you have in mind?

Admitting uncertainty even in the face of what looks like an obvious answer and then investigating it anyway is what makes scientists “smart”.

It is impossible to do science without agreement on foundational things like empiricism and realism and some form of rationalism (as in rejecting appe...

Everything that exists.

Access consciousness is a functional property that only applies to things with the requisite functionality. Phenomenal consciousness is nothing more t...

I just realized that I forgot to ask for one rather important piece of feedback, which thankfully has not applied to the five essay thus far, but will...

(as toilet paper, implying printing onto paper) (you print something, that something being bad posts, that have been posted to this web site; not that...

I have noticed that, especially in politics, where right-wing people disagreeing with me feels trivial, because of course they do, while other left-wi...

Why do those ones deserve an exception? The physical sciences we have today began as a branch of philosophy, "natural philosophy", that pretty much so...

FiveThirtyEight has finally updated their election odds predictor with Super Tuesday results, and it's showing Biden with close to 90% odds of having ...

There are certainly cases where neither of some alternatives are morally obligatory, but agreement on them is still valuable; the road-side case is on...

Thanks! :) (No time to reply in more detail now, off to bed time).

Indirectly tangential from the conversation that ensued from this, I've added a bit to this essay Against NIhilism clarifying relativism vs objectivis...

Yeah, that's generally what I experience here. Although, not so much the thing about non-commutative agreement, but agreement and disagreement on diff...

That's a textbook case of survivorship bias. You're looking at how many people who did escape poverty did so through individual initiative. What we're...

No, it's a meta-ethical question. Just like the foundations of the physical sciences are found in answers to meta-physical questions (broadly, includi...

"Nuh uh" isn't an argument. You're just stated your disagreement, not said anything to refute my explanation of how interest (not just lending) is nec...

(I had accidentally written something here that belongs in another thread instead)

That's beside the point. The point is that someone who only has $5 safely saved up ("safely" as in money that they don't need to keep out of risky inv...

I said exactly that, yes. And note the words "at interest", which are very important. Lending interest-free is certainly helpful behavior. Lending at ...

My analysis of the root flaw of capitalism could be phrased as "all lending (at interest) is predatory". There are degrees, of course, what we normall...

It's not utilitarianism. Do the criteria of success for a system of science themselves belong in the science category? Must you have a scientific judg...

That's completely besides the point, which is disappointing because you seemed to have gotten the point before. Say there is a simple gambling game wh...

That's not how the steps we just walked through work out.

I sense sarcasm here but I'm not quite discerning your point out of it. In any case, my point was that hedonism as a philosophical principle isn't sel...

What you said upthread sounded like you were talking about desires more than appetites. "An average of what people think pleasurable" (what they think...

There are similarities, but also a lot of sophisticated differences, that make all of the difference. Most of this was covered in the bit of my Codex ...

Okay great. And you said earlier that more risk comes with greater rewards. Combine those two things then: the more wealth you have, the more risk you...

My point is that ethical and moral judgements are wrongly held to be not "objectively measurable", and that the same kind of processes by which we tea...

The more wealth you have, the more risk you can afford to take. If there is some gamble you can take where for 49% of the time you lose everything and...

That depends entirely on the situation. If you are in a disadvantaged minority (not necessarily racial, just numerically) facing some kind of systemic...

It's not at all about power, it's about getting the policy results you want. Say the thing you care about is the well-being of puppies. - Candidate A ...

Carlos, the thing that you really seem to miss here, which should really be obvious because it's a basic tenet of mainstream capitalist economics that...

And the fact that the greatest predictor of a child’s future wealth is the wealth of their parents doesn’t contradict that at all?

It totally is if they can’t find a high enough income or low enough living expenses to live more than check to check. Which apparently most Americans ...

Thanks, I took that as complimentary. And don’t fault yourself for not finding a cheap deal in rent yet: by definition they are hard to come by, and i...

I’m still not sure I will be able to retire at all, never mind “and then some”, off of even twice a median income. In the past seven years since I las...

Strategic voting is about not making perfect the enemy of good. Say there are three candidates, A, B, and C. A if your favorite candidate. B has probl...