|
On March 30 2015 11:00 IgnE wrote:
There's also an infinite number of hells you might fall into. How can you avoid it?
And why would you assume that all N-1 options have hells?
There are an infinite number options with hell (or similar) post life outcomes. And also an infinite number without hell (or similar) outcomes.
There are an infinite number of things that might happen after we die, since we cannot observe this, we cannot be certain of which is what happens. Of those options, only one option has it be that nothing happens--but there are an infinite number of ways to produce that outcome (including God/s being real and specifically making sure humanity has no afterlife all the way to there being nothing happening at all)
Stop being so limiting in your way of seeing the world as a binary of god vs no god when the discussion of an afterlife is far more complex and infinite than that.
|
On March 30 2015 11:44 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On March 30 2015 11:00 IgnE wrote:
There's also an infinite number of hells you might fall into. How can you avoid it? And why would you assume that all N-1 options have hells? There are an infinite number options with hell (or similar) post life outcomes. And also an infinite number without hell (or similar) outcomes. There are an infinite number of things that might happen after we die, since we cannot observe this, we cannot be certain of which is what happens. Of those options, only one option has it be that nothing happens--but there are an infinite number of ways to produce that outcome (including God/s being real and specifically making sure humanity has no afterlife all the way to there being nothing happening at all) Stop being so limiting in your way of seeing the world as a binary of god vs no god when the discussion of an afterlife is far more complex and infinite than that.
If anything can happen, there's not a lot to talk about to be honest. You need boundaries, or there's nothing to base a discussion on, there's no foundation.
|
other than the color, is there any significant difference between green, purple and red grapes ?
like can i make wine with all of them, will them taste different ?
|
On March 30 2015 13:17 miky_ardiente wrote:
other than the color, is there any significant difference between green, purple and red grapes ?
like can i make wine with all of them, will them taste different ?
Yes they are different. The tastes depend on how refined the palate. It's a matter of more gross to less gross for me so I'm not the one for that. But I can assure you they are different and wine drinkers will probably tell you they taste different.
|
On March 30 2015 12:31 Millitron wrote:Show nested quote +On March 30 2015 11:44 Thieving Magpie wrote:On March 30 2015 11:00 IgnE wrote:
There's also an infinite number of hells you might fall into. How can you avoid it? And why would you assume that all N-1 options have hells? There are an infinite number options with hell (or similar) post life outcomes. And also an infinite number without hell (or similar) outcomes. There are an infinite number of things that might happen after we die, since we cannot observe this, we cannot be certain of which is what happens. Of those options, only one option has it be that nothing happens--but there are an infinite number of ways to produce that outcome (including God/s being real and specifically making sure humanity has no afterlife all the way to there being nothing happening at all) Stop being so limiting in your way of seeing the world as a binary of god vs no god when the discussion of an afterlife is far more complex and infinite than that. If anything can happen, there's not a lot to talk about to be honest. You need boundaries, or there's nothing to base a discussion on, there's no foundation.
Which is why the discussion is an extension of Pascal's Wager.
Since we can't empirically know what we experience when we die--then there's infinite possibilities which we designate as N.
In N Possibilities, only one end result has a result of Nothing Happens (albeit, an infinite variations on what leads to that conclusion, the rewards system gives the same output)
Of N possible options, the options present that provides no rewards gives no rewards to you whether you believe on them or not.
Of N possible options, the options present that provides rewards either gives you a reward, or it does not.
Of those two options, of the possibility of a reward, and no possibility of a reward, which option is the logical/sane one to pursue? If you are wrong with either selection you will be punished/nothing happens. But if you are right, even if its only 1/N chance right, then it is logical to choose the option that provides something as opposed to provide nothing.
Pascal's Wager remains the same whether we are talking about Christianity or the Spaghetti Monster. For the most part, logically, believing in *something* (anything really--divine, not divine, whatever) has a greater chance of reward than believing that nothing happens.
If you read my many posts prior--the problem with Pascal comes from the cost being asked for by his Wager. Pascal asks for sacrifices being made in the current life, for a possible reward in an afterlife. BUT the sacrifice does not weigh the same between a person who believes in a life after death and a person who does not believe in a life after death.
Assuming a person does not believe in something happening after they die--asking them to sacrifice ANYTHING in their current life is asking them sacrifice from the totality of their existence. People who believe in an afterlife believe there is a bargain, where they lose something to gain something in the future. But people who don't believe in an after life are already in their happy space, already in their preferred destination, to them, being alive is the same as being in heaven is to a christian. I had used this formula to present that prior.
X = Life
Y = After Life
T = Total Life
Believers see it like this X + Y = T
Non believers see it like this X = T
To believers, manipulating X does not affect T, and they are willing to do whatever is needed in order to maximize the amount of Y they get. The reason for this thinking is that we have no knowledge of Y, but we do have knowledge of X, so people try to do something in X to affect Y in some way. Its a negotiation to them. I lose this much X to get this much Y.
For example, pre-christian Romans believed that what people remembered about you is what is important, not what actually happens to you when you die. So they are willing to make statues/stories/etc... (X) to make themselves memorable (Y) because they believed it is the combination of both that provides T.
Agnostics feel something similar. They don't think there's enough evidence for an afterlife--but just in case, they will do good works and try to not outright piss off the universe "just in case." So you see a lot of agnostics, although not believing in a specific afterlife, they appropriate different aspects and creeds from different systems (X) to try to make a little bit of each happy in case they are wrong and there actually is some kind of afterlife (Y). So even though they personally believe that there's a near 0% chance of there being an afterlife, they actively keep loosely ready as a fail safe.
There is a constant negotiation, no matter how small, about how much of one's present life can be affected to maximize a possible after life. It could be heaven (like Christians believe) or just your memory (like the romans believed) or nirvana, or valhalla, or whatever. If a person honestly believes that its possible something happens after death, even if the possibility is near 0%, they will always negotiate in some way to maximize Y so long as it doesn't hamper X too much. Although, how much hampering is too much will be infinitely different from person to person.
People who don't believe in an afterlife only sees a world where X = T and as such cannot philosophically commit any sacrifice of X because it is a direct sacrifice to T. Unlike believers who see their actions as never affecting T, a believer sees the world of the now as the only thing real, important, and the place you can actually be happy in.
Pascal, being a believer himself, thought non-believers thought of Y as equaling 0 and that believers thought of Y as either +/- (Heaven/Hell respectively), but this is where Pascal's Wager falls flat. Pascal is wrong because non-believers don't see a Y at all. Its not that they believe that there is essentially no value in the afterlife--to them there is no better place to go to. There is no Y, life itself is Y. To people who are not believers--X, Y, and T are all the same thing. "Heaven" to them is already all around them.
The problem with Pascal's Wager is it is asking people who don't believe in something happening after death to sacrifice the heaven they already have just in case they are wrong. It would be the same as asking a Christian who died and went to heaven to turn around and go to hell "just in case" he was wrong about being a christian. You can't ask someone already in his happy place to sacrifice it for the potential of another happy place.
Most people feel compelled to fight or battle christianity when pascal's wager is brought up, usually because they are going on autopilot instead of wanting to actually discuss philosophy. Pascal's Wager is truly interesting when you take it to its actual conclusion--there are Infinite Possible things that can happen once you die. No matter which of the infinite you choose--you only have 1/N of being correct. However, of N possible orientations, which *IS* the most logical? Assuming he is correct that choosing "nothing" provides no reward, what would be the best ratio of X and Y that produces the best T knowing we have (N-1)/N chance of being wrong no matter which direction we choose. That is where discourse of Pascal's Wager is really interesting.
|
On March 30 2015 01:32 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On March 29 2015 11:05 Cascade wrote:On March 29 2015 06:17 excitedBear wrote:On March 29 2015 05:55 Thieving Magpie wrote:On March 29 2015 05:27 excitedBear wrote:
Logical positivism failed because philosophy would have nothing left to debate about.
The irony is that logical positivism itself is part of philosophy.
The application of logical positivism creates a closed system that only allows questions to be asked that can be verified.
It's like going into a box and close the lid from within the box. Quite beautiful actually.
It would mean the end of philosophy, that's why it's not accepted by philosophers. Actually no--the problem with the relationship between Logical Positivism and Philosophy is that Philosophy is the exploration of all possibilities while Logical Positivism does not wish to interact with things outside its scope. Its akin to putting your head in the sand and smirking about how dumb everyone is for not having your opinions in how best to discuss the nature of the world. Right and it turns out that putting your head in the sand and keeping it there works out spectacularly well (as can be seen in the hard sciences). Physics simply doesn't ask questions like "Is there a free will?" or "What happened before the big bang?". There might come a time when these questions become verifiable and then these questions will be asked. The crowning of logical positivism can be seen in the initial formulation of quantum physics which doesn't even speak of an objective reality at all. Quantum physics simply provided a mechanism to predict the outcome of experiments. And this model works amazingly well in the actual world (e.g. modern computers as a result of quantum mechanical considerations). So I don't know anything about philosophy, but I am (was) a physicist and I share hawkings viewpoint regarding "what is time" and similar questions. I think most physicists do, as has been stated. I don't feel like I am putting my head in the sand. It is not a matter of saying that the question should not be asked, more a matter of not being able to produce any empirical data to answer it any time soon, so we leave the question to other disciplines. FOR NOW! > : ( Actually, I still remember my supervisors' opinion on the "what is time" question: "It's what we measure with a clock." Which is essentially the same standpoint, right? Let's talk about what we can measure. If you want to talk about other things, sure go ahead, but it's not really physics. Most if not all theoretical physicists would object to that last point.
Interesting. What's make you say that? Are you referring to string theory?
|
Believers operate in the complex vector space. Nonbelievers operate in the real vector space.
The real vector space coincides with actual life. Afterlife is the complex scalar field.
Operations in the real vector space are comprehensive, giving them complete culmunarity.
Taking a decision in the real vector space does not require knowledge of the complex scalar field.
However, the complex vector space can be completely construed from within the real vector space.
It is perpendicular to all the possibilities derived, but also distributive.
The possibility of the complex vector space to exist transforms the reality of its existence back onto itself.
This proves that an after life exists.
The paragraph I have written above is completely made up bullshit.
Since the assumptions are not verifiable, I can willy-nillily take any position I want.
That's why discussing metaphysics or philosophy in general is a complete waste of time.
|
|
|
On March 30 2015 16:45 Lily ana wrote:
why this post is so hot?
Someone 5 pages back posted a question that could be interpreted in a religious context.
|
And the kraken was released.
|
The professor lied to me :O he said he sent the letters but today the university contacted me that they haven't got any :O
Deadline is next week and it's been 3 weeks since I asked - what do i do? Kidnap him?
|
On March 30 2015 19:26 SoSexy wrote:
The professor lied to me :O he said he sent the letters but today the university contacted me that they haven't got any :O
Deadline is next week and it's been 3 weeks since I asked - what do i do? Kidnap him?
Depending on how stuff works, you could consider walking up to him with a printed version of a recommendation letter and say "Could you please just sign this?", then send the scanned signed recommendation letter per Email/the original per post. I have no idea if that would work, but at least it would be really hard for your prof to weasel out of it.
|
I actually already filled out the forms because he told me he trusts me. Problem is the letters must be sent through his institutional email and I cannot bypass that. 
|
Cayman Islands24199 Posts
On March 30 2015 16:27 excitedBear wrote:
Believers operate in the complex vector space. Nonbelievers operate in the real vector space.
The real vector space coincides with actual life. Afterlife is the complex scalar field.
Operations in the real vector space are comprehensive, giving them complete culmunarity.
Taking a decision in the real vector space does not require knowledge of the complex scalar field.
However, the complex vector space can be completely construed from within the real vector space.
It is perpendicular to all the possibilities derived, but also distributive.
The possibility of the complex vector space to exist transforms the reality of its existence back onto itself.
This proves that an after life exists.
The paragraph I have written above is completely made up bullshit.
Since the assumptions are not verifiable, I can willy-nillily take any position I want.
That's why discussing metaphysics or philosophy in general is a complete waste of time.
while i am sympathetic to this sentiment, metaphysics is still pervasive and there is no neat delineation between the logical and the empirical. much of analytic metaphysics after kripke is hogwash though true dat.
|
On March 30 2015 16:27 excitedBear wrote:
Believers operate in the complex vector space. Nonbelievers operate in the real vector space.
The real vector space coincides with actual life. Afterlife is the complex scalar field.
Operations in the real vector space are comprehensive, giving them complete culmunarity.
Taking a decision in the real vector space does not require knowledge of the complex scalar field.
However, the complex vector space can be completely construed from within the real vector space.
It is perpendicular to all the possibilities derived, but also distributive.
The possibility of the complex vector space to exist transforms the reality of its existence back onto itself.
This proves that an after life exists.
The paragraph I have written above is completely made up bullshit.
Since the assumptions are not verifiable, I can willy-nillily take any position I want.
That's why discussing metaphysics or philosophy in general is a complete waste of time.
The little green teapot says you're wrong.
|
Cayman Islands24199 Posts
On March 30 2015 02:39 Thieving Magpie wrote:
snip
the problem with the 'we dont know what happens after death' argument is that it carries an implicit idealist assumption of first person experience being the immediate frontier of reality. the most concrete fact is still a version of the cogito, which could be surprised by experiences after death.
now this is an absurd formulation if we take a third person view of what a human is, a bunch of brain matter. while not going into the validity of this type of idealist initiated skepticism arguments, it is sufficient to say that the idealist assumption provides much of its intuitive force.
a metaphysics taht is happy to talk about 'what i know after death' without realizing the connection between death and that 'i' is pretty bad. might want to think harder on it.
|
On March 30 2015 22:23 oneofthem wrote:the problem with the 'we dont know what happens after death' argument is that it carries an implicit idealist assumption of first person experience being the immediate frontier of reality. the most concrete fact is still a version of the cogito, which could be surprised by experiences after death. now this is an absurd formulation if we take a third person view of what a human is, a bunch of brain matter. while not going into the validity of this type of idealist initiated skepticism arguments, it is sufficient to say that the idealist assumption provides much of its intuitive force. a metaphysics taht is happy to talk about 'what i know after death' without realizing the connection between death and that 'i' is pretty bad. might want to think harder on it.
So remove the "I"
Take the initial premise of Pascal's wager to it's logical extreme. Stop fighting an imaginary religious zealout and just look at the logic of actually exploring the unknown.
Pascal was personally held back by his Christian bias--but take his wager away from that binary into infinite options and then listen to his actual question. Pascal asks what is the benefit of believing in no afterlife vs believe that something happens. He does not talk about which has more likelihood or which is more verifiable, he just asks about the benefits. Is it good for people to live knowing that anything they do now has no bearing, punishment, or reward. That if you do the greater good, that you will be rewarded the same as doing the greater evil. That all your efforts of this life no matter how good or Noble leads to nothing but oblivion. What he asks is "what is the benefit of that mindset" and then he asks that if, statistically, would you be willing to sacrifice a certain amount of the knowable even for the smallest chance of being rewarded "something" no matter how insignificant the chance no matter how insignificant the reward?
Even the Romans believed in "living on in memory" for their afterlife, this isn't some heaven vs heathens bullshit. This is straight up philosophy attempting to discuss basic human desires and passions. To discuss concepts of fairness, totality, and human value.
That is what Pascal's Wager is actually about. There's no need to get your atheist pitchforks up in arms to stop the evil theists especially when nobody is arguing for that. There's no need to paraphrase the beginning of your counterpoints with variations of "but when someone brings up ____" or "usually people mean ____" and instead just discuss the conversation at hand instead of acting like mini-Dawkins ready to tell us that it's all muslim's faults. Be more mature than that please.
|
On March 30 2015 13:38 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On March 30 2015 13:17 miky_ardiente wrote:
other than the color, is there any significant difference between green, purple and red grapes ?
like can i make wine with all of them, will them taste different ? Yes they are different. The tastes depend on how refined the palate. It's a matter of more gross to less gross for me so I'm not the one for that. But I can assure you they are different and wine drinkers will probably tell you they taste different.
According to French wiki, 210 varieties are allowed for wine making (out of several hundreds known to exist). A chemical analysis describes about 150 molecules that can be tasted (analysis made on muscat grapes).
Appart from the color itself (anthocyanosids), I haven't found any significant chemical difference in existing articles that would allow us to identify by taste the color of the berry from its flesh alone if you take all varieties into account.
If you limit yourself to making the difference between any two berries, then that can most of the time be learned (regardless of the color). I'm not so sure for varieties that are really close : the difference may have more to do with soil composition/amount of sunlight received/ ...
For wines, the best you can tell is that you cannot get a red whine from a green grape 
|
On March 30 2015 22:12 oneofthem wrote:Show nested quote +On March 30 2015 16:27 excitedBear wrote:
Believers operate in the complex vector space. Nonbelievers operate in the real vector space.
The real vector space coincides with actual life. Afterlife is the complex scalar field.
Operations in the real vector space are comprehensive, giving them complete culmunarity.
Taking a decision in the real vector space does not require knowledge of the complex scalar field.
However, the complex vector space can be completely construed from within the real vector space.
It is perpendicular to all the possibilities derived, but also distributive.
The possibility of the complex vector space to exist transforms the reality of its existence back onto itself.
This proves that an after life exists.
The paragraph I have written above is completely made up bullshit.
Since the assumptions are not verifiable, I can willy-nillily take any position I want.
That's why discussing metaphysics or philosophy in general is a complete waste of time.
while i am sympathetic to this sentiment, metaphysics is still pervasive and there is no neat delineation between the logical and the empirical. much of analytic metaphysics after kripke is hogwash though true dat.
Thinking that logical and empirical are two different entities is in itself already an assumption that is not verifiable. In fact you cannot do philosophy without starting to make assumptions. This is where it all breaks down.
To be rigorous, you would need to test the assumptions by having a "philosophy of philosophy".
Since you cannot do that without assumptions, you would need to have a "philosophy of philosophy of philosophy".
And so on, this continues until infinity.
If you would program philosophy on a computer, this would be called infinite recursion and you would get a stack overflow error.
|
Cayman Islands24199 Posts
there is no imaginary religious zealot, just a bad foundation for the metaphysics. ive given my take on the pascal wager previously with the simple phrase 'well formed pascal's wager,'
this means simply evaluating a conditional probability without all the heaven etc motivation. the motivation for the wager is flawed, but once u have the lopsided probability and reward table it is a well formed problem
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
