Pfhorrest

That is a moral claim itself. If someone disagrees with that moral claim and tries to stop someone from stopping someone from attacking themselves or ...

So Alice is about to kill someone when Bob stops her because Bob thinks killings like that are immoral. Bob is therefore immoral, for forcing his mora...

Defining love as forking is pretty sophomoric and reductionist.

Unfortunately “majority” does seem to be used in sociology to mean something other than its literal meaning, such as when women are considered a minor...

I also came away with the same impression as Maw and that was the source of my suspicion earlier. I’m glad to hear that wasn’t the official message of...

This reminds me of the author of the webcomic Sinfest, who since 2011 has turned it into an author tract for his particular bizarre form of SWERF 'n' ...

As someone who thinks the best beard is no beard, I expect our rankings by this criteria will be incommensurable (and I say that as someone who named ...

I don't think you made it up, but I'm suspicious that although that may have been the message you took away, it was not the one that was intended, or ...

I know @"fishfry"already left but I would like to second this question. A quick Google of the phrase doesn't turn up anything that seems unambiguously...

Why do I doubt that this is what was actually said?

I think there's some element of truth to that assertion, inasmuch as love is for things we find good in some way. I'd argue that all kinds of good ult...

This reminds me vaguely of a philosophical or logical problem I read about once, and can't remember the resolution to at the moment. The argument for ...

Only stupid arguments would lose their bite. But yes, that would be a good thing.

I see the point you’re making, but it seems separate from the point I was making. I for instance don’t find “bullshit” offensive like the Million Moms...

That would be a good thing. Imagine if everyone became bulletproof. Then guns would lose their bite. And that would be a good thing.

Yeah, this is what I really take the truth of mathematical or more generally logical statements to be about. “All bachelors are unmarried” isn’t reall...

That’s what I meant yeah, thanks! And also I’m totally on board with ambivalence about the “existence” of mathematical objects, ala: As I understand i...

Hurray, we're finally just about up to what I initially thought of as the beginning! Would it be fair to say that thus far, we have only discussed the...

@"fdrake" Maybe you can take a stab at this? I’m getting tired of being called names by someone who clearly understands even less than me about this, ...

I think maybe you meant to write “inconsistency” there?

This all sounds very similar to Buddhism, which is all about how suffering stems from desire, so overcoming attachment is the way to peace. Stoicism a...

The argument that we're addressing here is the one that says that since we could in principle simulate our world, and that simulation of our world cou...

You miss the point of the analogy. Selective breeding works because of genetics, but we didn't need to know that in order to do it. We did it first, a...

It doesn't prove every P2 simultaneously, so it's not a paradox as in it gives rise to a contradiction. It proves whatever you plug in for "P2" in the...

I picked up what little of this I knew from extracurricular reading in introductory places like Wikipedia after getting interested in the foundations ...

I said "grounded in". There have been long-standing questions about the foundations of mathematics, the current best answer to which is set theory. We...

I'm not trying to change your mind about whether or not the mind is algorithmic, I'm just commenting on the progression of technologies-people-think-t...

That's not what I'm talking about. I'm saying that you can use a continuous flow to implement a discrete computer. Which was my original point, in res...

It sounds to me like you have no familiarity with set theory at all. Everything in mathematics is grounded in set theory, starting with empty sets. Th...

It maybe renders them useless in that particular case, but we don't usually talk about that particular case for exactly that reason: nobody cares to k...

Pneumatic digital computers are an actual thing. Voltage is continuous too, that doesn't stop us from using "high voltage" and "low voltage" as discre...

Computers are a kind of machine. A kind of machine that can actually be implemented as flows of water, as can many kind of machines (flows or water ca...

To assume P1 as a premise is to assign P1 the truth value of "TRUE", and we can therefore substitute "TRUE" for P1 anywhere it occurs within P1 itself...

The difference between senses of "is" actually is a philosophical matter that Clinton was referring to. There's the present-tense "is" and the tensele...

I don't think anyone is saying that the proof is invalid, just that it's conclusion is trivial. All conclusions of valid arguments are baked into thei...

Yes, that is true. But then the base reality will have trillions of years worth of more history for more people to have lived, meaning that in all of ...

Art is anything presented by the artist to evoke a reaction in an audience. It is "good art" to the extent that it is successful at provoking the inte...

These two things are directly related to the OP. The OP addresses the point 4 by saying that the odds of being in one of the many simulations is reduc...

We can actually hold our breath temporarily at least, which is a rare thing among animals. A lot of spiritual practices put special emphasis on breath...

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"This sentence is false." If P1 is "not P1", assuming P1 assumes a contradiction. So if P1 is "not-P1 or P2", assuming P1 assumes either a contradicti...

"If P1 then P2" translates to "P2 or not P1", so assuming P1 = "if P1 then P2" is just assuming that P2 (or else self-contradiction), and of course yo...

Everyone being happy is the same thing as everything being good. One person being (continuously) happy is the same thing as everything being good for ...

But even in relativity, there is still an objective truth. Space and time may distort relative to an observer, but a spacetime interval is the same fo...

That's exactly the point. Out of a set of nothing, of zero things, there is no difference between the most of it and the least of it. But only in the ...

Literally, something that is. “Entity” comes from ”ontos” which means “being”, and “to be” is the infinitive of “is”.

I was thinking of it more the other way around: environmental problems are detrimental to wealth. Everybody has reason to care about the environment f...

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Simulating an electric field does not produce an electric field in the non-simulated world, but you can totally simulate an electric field that acts j...

It says no such thing. It says that the mental/experiential is physical, nothing at all about it being anything like electromagnetism or gravity. You ...