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How's that again? I can perceive my brain. I can get an x-ray or an MRI and see pictures of it. I can take drugs that change it physically. I can shove something up through my nose and poke a hole in it. It sends signals down to the rest of my body to animate bits and pieces of it, and I could measure the signals.
The world is not made out of quarks only. It's made of stories. How so? Well, everything is interconnected and the complexity of it all gives rise to incredible stories. Just like the one we're living right now.
I'm sure this is meaningful to you, but it means nothing to me, because you're using the word "made of" to mean something confusing. The world isn't "made of" stories in the same way that a wall is "made of" bricks, so I don't know what you mean. The complexity of the world gives rise to goldfish, but I don't say the world is made of goldfish.
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So this means that you are your brain, your brain is perceiving something other than himself (absolute mystery how this happens) and you look at a picture and a man tells you that this is your brain. He might be lying and at best what you're perceiving is how the brain looks to an outside observer, which is not to experience oneself. So where does this endless loop start - outside observer looks at thing looks at outside observer etc... It's an impossible loop. You never experience yourself, you always experience the others. Nah. This is absurd. We experience ourselves and all the props of this world that you see and hear and touch and smell are just temporary parts of our interior.
We can measure the patterns that are going trough our bodies at each moment and predict the future to some degree. This has nothing to do with the problem at hand.
Eh, about the second one - fine, have it your way, I don't see how the wording is so important though. Do you have a quarrel with saying that the world consists of elementary particles moving in space time? Anyway, you're dodging the important point about stories and complexity.The problem is that reductionism is a blind ideology. The sum of the parts is something different.
....I shouldn't have taken the bait.
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Sounds like the ending of The Dark Knight....
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On July 20 2010 04:46 RhaegarBeast wrote:
So this means that you are your brain, your brain is perceiving something other than himself (absolute mystery how this happens) and you look at a picture and a man tells you that this is your brain. He might be lying and at best what you're perceiving is how the brain looks to an outside observer, which is not to experience oneself. So where does this endless loop start - outside observer looks at thing looks at outside observer etc... It's an impossible loop. You never experience yourself, you always experience the others. Nah. This is absurd. We experience ourselves and all the props of this world that you see and hear and touch and smell are just temporary parts of our interior.
Sure, I "experience" myself. I just think that my experience seems like it is probably a product of what happens in my brain, not some other mysterious thing, and so if my brain goes away, my experience stops.
Do you have a quarrel with saying that the world consists of elementary particles moving in space time? Anyway, you're dodging the important point about stories and complexity.The problem is that reductionism is a blind ideology. The sum of the parts is something different.
No, I have no quarrel with that. The only way I know how to understand things is via reductionism. I have yet to encounter anything in the world that didn't turn out to be the sum of its parts, so I'm hesitant to say that minds are in that category just because I don't know how they work.
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Loli
60 Posts
On July 20 2010 04:14 RhaegarBeast wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2010 04:04 semantics wrote:
To think about life after death is a waste of time as you cannot prove anything, and it assumes something happens after death that gives us meaning. It's not unknown when you die you die end of story until you can prove other wise without hearsay i'll stick to my guns on how we think the universe works. How did you learn what dying means? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_immortality Take a look at that please. It's hard science.
Hi. I'd just like to step in to say that Quantum Immortality and Quantum Science is not necessarily hard proven science.
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On July 19 2010 21:15 Doctorasul wrote:
You're addicted to feeling philosophical but you are just rambling. Throwing around important-sounding words and trying to appear sagely and wise when you have absolutely nothing to say makes you look ridiculous.
Philosophy, science, game theory are serious subjects and you have to make an effort if you want to understand or discuss them. All you are doing here is posing. It's a disgrace. Freedom, morality, free will are difficult topics and your word salads are holding back the conversation.
If it is not intentional, then you are delusional. You tricked yourself into thinking you are profound. You are a pseudointelectual and you are wasting everybody's time.
lmao
i kept reading the thread expecting rhaegar to wisen up, but it turns out some people fall for his pseudo intellectual rambling
rhaegar, you want to help me make stone soup?
i'll provide the stone
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I had to sit on the bus today listening to some new age lady ramble for about 4 hours straight about death, life, the interconnectedness of all things etc. At one point she was declaring how stupid one would have to be in order to hold the belief that consciousness ceases with death. Then I went on tl after being off internet for 10 days to get a dose of sound rational thinking and I find this thread. And the reason I'm really pissed off is that I can't help but envy anyone who has the ability to fool himself into thinking otherwise.
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On July 20 2010 05:56 Loli wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2010 04:14 RhaegarBeast wrote:On July 20 2010 04:04 semantics wrote:
To think about life after death is a waste of time as you cannot prove anything, and it assumes something happens after death that gives us meaning. It's not unknown when you die you die end of story until you can prove other wise without hearsay i'll stick to my guns on how we think the universe works. How did you learn what dying means? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_immortality Take a look at that please. It's hard science. Hi. I'd just like to step in to say that Quantum Immortality and Quantum Science is not necessarily hard proven science.
Damn, I suppose you got me there. The problem with science is that you have to be an expert to judge whether something is likely true or not. It makes no sense to convince non-experts of either as the only thing that happens is that science becomes religion.
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On July 20 2010 10:55 opsayo wrote:Show nested quote +On July 19 2010 21:15 Doctorasul wrote:
You're addicted to feeling philosophical but you are just rambling. Throwing around important-sounding words and trying to appear sagely and wise when you have absolutely nothing to say makes you look ridiculous.
Philosophy, science, game theory are serious subjects and you have to make an effort if you want to understand or discuss them. All you are doing here is posing. It's a disgrace. Freedom, morality, free will are difficult topics and your word salads are holding back the conversation.
If it is not intentional, then you are delusional. You tricked yourself into thinking you are profound. You are a pseudointelectual and you are wasting everybody's time. lmao i kept reading the thread expecting rhaegar to wisen up, but it turns out some people fall for his pseudo intellectual rambling rhaegar, you want to help me make stone soup? i'll provide the stone
Sure. Why not? That's exactly the way the world exists anyway.
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On July 20 2010 11:14 Barrin wrote:with all due respect, i find it hard to believe that these are your true feelings about death. perhaps there is a very real possibility that after you die there is nothingness which is essentially neutral. but if someone comes up and points a gun up to your head, im pretty sure the last thing you're gonna say is "death is neutral". no offense i luvz u <3 edit: oh yeah @ op Show nested quote +My problem is that the riddle already tells you what you want to do. It's not a fair situation if I am already told what I want to do.
If pressing the lever gets me out of the prison I press it so I get out of the prison. I don't kill the other person, the mage does. If I am tormented by the prison and so is the other prisoner I am sure he understands.
If the other prisoner wasn't tormented then our situations were not identical. this is what i was thinking, but i had a hard time putting it into words before i read that lol.
There's a difference between fear of not achieving one's ideal and fear of departing from the known world.
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On July 20 2010 11:34 hifriend wrote:
I had to sit on the bus today listening to some new age lady ramble for about 4 hours straight about death, life, the interconnectedness of all things etc. At one point she was declaring how stupid one would have to be in order to hold the belief that consciousness ceases with death. Then I went on tl after being off internet for 10 days to get a dose of sound rational thinking and I find this thread. And the reason I'm really pissed off is that I can't help but envy anyone who has the ability to fool himself into thinking otherwise.
You're fooling yourself that I'm fooling myself. In the end the Paradox is king.
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On July 20 2010 11:39 Kashll wrote:
pseudo intellectual
There is no other kind of intellectual.
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Well, that's not true. We all tremble in fear of the mighty Troll now, don't we?
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Singapore759 Posts
On July 20 2010 21:43 RhaegarBeast wrote:There is no other kind of intellectual.
I'll be honest. While I can understand that English is not your main language (possibly) and that youre intentions are good, I find this the whole thread rather offensive.
Philosophy is a discipline as much as it is about thinking out of the box
There is a reason you go to university to get a philosophy degree. There is a reason why actual philosophers are who they are and not the crazy guy down the street. And that's be cause a part of philosophy that is as important as the ideas themselves is the ability to structure your thought into a meaningful way. Statements like "there is no other kind of intellectual" to an accusation of being a pseudo intellectual is either a) nonsense, b) weak argument or c) a deeper discussion (about how if all intellectuals are fake intellectuals (pseudo) is there really such a thing as intellectuals in the first place, leading to a logical loop of how can something be fake if there is no true form to be fake off in the first place). What I would stress about c) though is that as fascinating as this new discussion is, it is completely tangential to the original problem and is only muddling up the discussion at at large!
So HONESTLY - have some intellectual discipline here are talk about one thing, make a point and move on. If you wrote something like this in a thesis, you would fail. If you presented it as a professor to the class, they would not take you seriously. And if you do it on an internet forum, you are asking to be flamed.
Just look. Already you have brought up interesting issues, but all of them are dealt with in such a shallow manner that they might as well just be mentioned.
1) Game Theory:
- how the opposing sides will chose the "best" choice to suit them, but ironically the most rational choice will produce an irrational result
- Or in the second version of the problem, pulling the lever will kill me but let the other free. As time passes, I realize that he has not killed himself yet and therefore I know that he is trying to hold out. Morally I have less incentive to save a selfish person. Logically I will hold out until the suffering outweighs the penalty of death. So in either case the passage of time gives incentive to not pull the lever and thus prolongs suffering.
2) Free will
- If you don't pull the lever, you are still trapped in the prison and at the whim of the mage. Yet if you do pull the lever, then you are following the mage's plan and thus still not exercising free will. And in scenario two, pulling the lever will kill you, ending any chance at future free will. Lots of discussion on free will and predestination here.
- After living in the prison for so long, the absolute freedom of the unknown outside world is worse than the controlled bondage of the prison. The value of freedom thus becomes not absolute, but relative.
3) The fear of death
- If death is the end of life, then there is logically no reason to fear death, since you will be dead. If you are alive, you are not dead, so you need not fear. If you are dead, you are non-existent and so cannot fear. Thus what is feared is the dying and so you might want to ask how the pulling the lever is going to kill you, or the person in the other cell.
4) Morality
- Does self-preservation justify the termination of someone else's life? And if yes, wouldn't that make self-preservation ironically a good reason to deny someone else's self-preservation. And at that point there would not be any morality at all, but merely might is right (or in this case whoever can pull the lever first). So if the answer to a question of "is it moral?" is an amoral scenario, then it would mean that logically killing for self preservation is not morally acceptable and people just make excuses.
... and so on.
Just from these bullet points, there's so much potential for discussion and the bouncing of ideas. However instead of letting these discussion flower, what you ended up doing is to stymie the debate by constantly interrupting and spouting your verbiage of spotty throw away one liners like this convoluted string that is simply trying too hard.
I like how they put it in "V for Vendetta" (what does this tell us?). You become an idea and ideas are bulletproof (how is this related to the question?). I also suspect that In the end the intention that you hold at all times will eventually manifest.Why do I believe that? It's difficult to explain. (Why post yourself a question you cannot even answer?) It's just that everything is connected. There is no vacuum in the world (What are you trying to say?). Everything counts (this 2 word sentence tells me nothing). In the end it's not all about whether you attack or defend or suicide or sacrifice. (THEN WHAT IS IT ABOUT?!)
So as a suggestion to your future posts - intervene only when you really have to. And when you do, you might want to try to use less of these wide, general statements that can mean ANYTHING. You really need to polish up your rhetoric.
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On July 21 2010 06:04 levelping wrote:
1) Game Theory:
- how the opposing sides will chose the "best" choice to suit them, but ironically the most rational choice will produce an irrational result
An action only needs to be rational a-priori.
If a man believes he can fly, only to jump off a building and die, his action was still rational a-priori.
Thats not to say that the consequences don't matter, but just that man acts rationally almost always.
Why hasn't anyone in the thread mentioned tit-for-tat, or this?:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3494530275568693212
the first thing I think of about the prisoners dilemma is this doc'...
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EPT
