Wayfarer

That's the crux. To avoid the 'observer effect'.

I put this question to NoAxioms but he wasn't sure how to respond, so I'll try again, as you seem to have insight into this area. On face value, the m...

if you can have multiple singularities, you'll need to change the name.

It's OK with the women wearing shoes. Not the men, though. The first is titillating, the latter merely vulgar.

I’ve heard that Japan has a massive store of uneaten whale meat, by-product of the scientific research program they conducted on ways to infuriate Gre...

Sure. But I don’t regard what it turned out as particularly brilliant, merely competent. It helped me because I had those specific questions. It’s no ...

There is definitely a thrill of transgression. It has to be knowingly wicked. Actually that reminds of a legend about Kerry Packer, once upon a time A...

I get how a lot of people just don't get how it can be a problem. I've never really understood how anyone can get addicted to gamblng, but people loos...

I have read numerous times over the last several years that the vast majority of children have been exposed to pornography before age 12, and that it ...

What? And prevent them from digging themselves into even greater holes?

Scarily good. I think it's going to make the internet revolution look quaint by comparison.

Old-school Buddhism - traditional forms - are just as puritanical about sexuality as Christians or Muslims. Then there's Western Buddhism, which came ...

I watched a powerful youtube doco on it last night, you can find it here. Cutting edge.

I first saw actual hardcore aged, I think, 19, when an incredibly vulgar full-page photo was printed in a student newspaper in defiance of obscenity l...

As I say - it's one of the consequences of the way Western thought, in particular, evolved. Because Christian orthodoxy absorbed so much of so-called ...

Hey I'm a Libran. Always terrible at reffing. But if I spot obvious trolls or phishing scams I will be merciless.

How is it a scientific issue? Why are such questions to be arbitrated by scientific methods, and by what criteria? And more to the point, I'm certain ...

Kinda fell into it consequent to drafting the Help article. Happy to help out although have actually done anything yet. I was a moderator at the Dharm...

'I am afraid we are not rid of God because we still have faith in grammar…' ~ The Great Moustache

My main complaint against atheism - and bear in mind, to many religious types, I myself would be categorised atheist - is that it casts its net too wi...

I guess so. I wrote in another thread that I recently re-discovered David Crosby, who died just the other day, of Crosby Still and Nash fame. He had l...

I recall reading that one of the things that drove Coltrane to his early death from heart attack was the requirement to keep creating something entire...

I've come to the sad conclusion that there's far too much popular music. I recall seeing, about 20 years ago, auditions for one of those TV talent sho...

Huge problem. Any child with a digital phone or tablet device, anywhere in the democratic world (and in the absence of parental control software), now...

Thanks for that example. That passage is clearly a poignant reflection on mortality, but I will have to continue to explore that theme, sans Proust.

I've been on a David Crosby bender since last year, when my dear other and I discovered his last album, and more to the point, his last single, with t...

It should not be an issue. Newt Gingrich was the malevolence that started this entirely inane and destructive tactic in modern American politics. Ever...

Right, although he’s long since cut his hair. The more serious issue is that of explanatory frameworks. You and I have often discussed that, and I see...

Can’t possibly disagree. I guess someone in Chalmer’s role *has* to couch it in those terms to maintain some kind of credibility for the mainstream au...

It might be helpful to include an example of Proust's prose or perhaps some aphorisms in which this idea is articulated. I've never wrestled with Prou...

Presumably the Original Poster thinks his thread has gone wrong.....

The Trump and Biden classified documents cases are very different. Trump took documents as trophies of his time in office. Even when asked to return t...

All fair points. I agree that Chalmers himself is not a phenomenlogical analyst. But I think the philosophical dimension, however articulated, is what...

But I agree - that's a different way of making the same point. What is the name for the human subject? Why, that is 'a being'. And the failure to gras...

Well, my philosophy has been hugely shaped by Buddhism (not to say I'm actually Buddhist). But empathy, 'fellow-feeling', the connectedness of all bei...

It also radically illustrates a profound disconnection from reality, in my opinion. Instructive, considering the oversize role Descartes had in the fo...

Well, sure. But nailing dogs to boards and flaying them alive to make a philosophical point is a whole other level of cruelty. Makes me appreciate Bud...

:clap: This is very much the point I've been labouring (subject of my Medium essays.) I will also re-iterate that I think the 'hard problem of conscio...

I don't know if it's either/or. Maybe that just happens to be the options our particular cultural situation forces us to choose from. In any case, the...

I do understand, however, that abiogenesis will remain an article of faith for most people, as any alternative will offend their belief system.

You should investigate panspermia. 'Panspermia (from Ancient Greek ??? (pan) 'all ', and ?????? (sperma) 'seed') is the hypothesis, first proposed in ...

I had previously read that Descartes believed that animals were automatons devoid of consciousness, but I didn't realise he would have taken it to the...

Can any animals be described as morally worse, or morally better?

Realism assumes that the world is just so, irrespective of whether or not it is observed. It may be a sound methodological assumption but it doesn't t...

Just took delivery of the book from which that was excerpted, I might return with an update Human Cosmos: A Secret History of... https://www.amazon.co...

It's not complicated. There's broad consensus that religion and metaphysics are archaic, they haven't moved with the times, and are no longer relevant...

Right. I was recommended a book by Fooloso4 - again, a very difficult read - but I found this snippet which exactly described my original intuition as...

I get it. After all, as Piggliuci says in that article, '“If one ‘goes Platonic’ with math, empiricism “goes out the window.” (If the proof of the Pyt...

Carlos Rovelli appears in the article I mentioned when I re-started this thread.: It's fundamental because of the way the world is, because we are ind...

Of course, but I don't see any particular conflict with what I'm saying. I had the idea that arithmetic and geometry developed greatly with the establ...