************
Empathy:
Well, I do NOT claim there is no basis for objective morality. I claim general empathy provides an innate basis for making decisions about social morals, ethics, values, purposes. I claim empathy among perspectives of consciousness is objectively innate (self evident). What I DO claim is that such empathy is subject to nurturing and that a subjective aspect for such issues cannot be eliminated. Certainly, not merely by defining a rug under which to try to sweep the subjective aspects.
I am less concerned with definitional contrivances than I am with how to sustain a decent, responsible citizenry for a representative republic. I do not think you addressed those concerns. I do not care so much about systems for definitions that do not relate to real world concerns beyond definitional contrivances. It is fine to contrive a definition of "physical health" (or even well being or welfare) to a system that avails measurables. But it is not so fine to pretend that a mere system for definitions or measurables can lead to resolution of real world concerns that such definitions do not address.
Weinberg made the inference to utilitarianism. For trying to prescribe an appearance of objective morality, one can substitute any word one may want. Utilitarianism, pleasure, happiness, greatest good for greatest number, well being, physical health, and so on. The problem will remain: How to apply an objective standard for one as a standard for all subjects. That is where nonsense tends to come in. I gave examples for that, which you seem not to have digested.
The nub is this: To what extent do we want responsible, competent, free thinking adults to participate in the assimilation of social morals, ethics, values, purposes, and to what extent do we want such responsibility to be surrendered to moral experts, for them to make decisions based on definitions contrived because they yield measurables? The "answer," I think, is CONTINGENT on what kind of society/republic we want and what kind of cultural competency the general citizenry has. Some societies are not especially competent or liberty literate, so rule under "moral experts" may be what most of them want (or deserve?).
Regarding sacred texts: I did not mean to imply that I take specific literalisms in any such texts to be sound for all societies in all places. Rather, I take them as guides for understanding historical ways of thought and as metaphors. I tried to point up how Jesus swept most of such literalisms under two general moral commandments. In modern parlance, I prefer Good Faith as a synopsis for the Great Commandment, and Good Will as a synopsis for the Golden Rule.
However, I subsume both under an innate tendency for being empathetic. The problem for a society is in how specifically to nurture and assimilate that empathy to particular and recurrent social applications. By no contrivance can any unfolding resolution of that problem be accomplished entirely free of either the objective (implicating innate empathy) or the subjective (implicating nurtured values). For such purpose, I think the objective and the subjective are inextricably linked. I think trying to untie that link is a snipe hunt.
*************
Well, what does "physical health" mean? Does it encompass the health of dangerous individuals, societies, or national rulers? Does it prefer mental prowess, emotional stability, or cultural purposefulness? How should it encompass goals for genetic and cyber engineering, and for which individuals? Or fitness to an assigned job? To be assigned or determined by whom? Does physical health favor conditioning for speed, or endurance, or strength, or disease resistance?
Is it objectively moral to improve the health of a despotic psychopath able to put his finger on the button? Should every person receive medical treatment to maximize "physical health," even if it leads to reduction of effectiveness of inoculations or susceptibility to pandemic because of lack of genetic or health diversity?
Nonsense, Per Steven Weinberg: "Now, Sam Harris is aware of this kind of counter argument [to utilitarianism], and says it's not happiness, it's human welfare. Well, as you make things VAGUER and vaguer, of course, it becomes harder and harder to say it doesn't fit your own moral feelings, but it also becomes less and less useful as a means of making moral judgements. You could take that to the extreme and make up some nonsense word and say that's the important thing and no-one could refute it but it wouldn't be very helpful. I regard human welfare and the way Sam Harris refers to it as sort of halfway in that direction to absolute nonsense."
IAE, what would maximizing the physical health for the greatest number entail? Whose health would be sacrificed so the health of the greatest number could be maximized? Who would decide? Some healthy people stay that way because they decline to live in antiseptic environments. That way, they harden their immune systems. Can any moral scientisimist say who should thus harden himself and who should not?
What resources should be sacrificed to pursue the greatest physical health for the greatest number? Should resources be sacrificed for developing technologies to defend nations or the world against artificial or natural asteroid attacks? What objective moral science based on physical health or well being can or should objectively answer such questions? Should the masses have no say against the "moral experts"?
NOTE: I do not oppose scientific research to find cures or to improve health. I think populations should seek to assimilate values for pursuing such aims. But to call such assimilations of values "objectively good" in the sense of being purely determinable by expert moral scientists is a reach too far. I agree with the idea of contingent morality. I agree that an idea of mutual empathy is both contingently and objectively valid. However, because such idea of empathy necessitates reference to subjectivity, I think moral issues, like existentiality generally, entangles both with objectivity and subjectivity. To me, that seems obvious.
To me, a notion that morality is entirely subjective is nonsense. And an idea that morality can be reduced to pure objectivity is likewise nonsense. Rather, the idea of morality is entangled both with innate empathy and with particular subjectivity. As Jesus said: Good Faith (Great Commandment), and Good Will (Golden Rule). If (CONTINGENTLY) we want a decent republic of free thinking and responsible adults, we need to stop teaching children that morality is entirely subjective (or does not exist), and we need to stop teaching children to believe, irresponsibly, that morality is entirely objective (what fake moral scientisimists say it is). And we need to stop ridiculing or reviling wisdom just because it may be found in ancient texts.
Btw, I suspect some neuroscientists believe they can objectively quantify pleasure. Problem: Do we really want a world of pleasure addicts? Maybe we can put everyone on the Cloud/Matrix after we divine algorithms to control AI to service our pleasures. Lol.
**********
Higher minded: Do you have principles? Moral values that you advocate? On what basis do you advocate them?
If you advocate no basis, then, morally, you are irrelevant. Just noise. In that case, why should I care what you think?
Is being "adaptive" your idea of a moral principle? Why should I care whether you think x is more adaptive than y? In either case, the world will adapt, will it not? So what does your idea of more adaptive add, morally and inspirationally speaking? Answer: Little more than background noise.
Do you suppose it is your higher purpose to relieve believers of their moral metaphors and language for apprehending their beingness and purposefulness? Who elected you for that presumption?
Now, if you have a specific engineering concern for the world, then perhaps that may be analyzed in if-then terms, concerning what approaches may be feasible or effective to reduce x or y problems. But to presume you ought simply to sweep aside everyone else's emotional investments or metaphorical attachments is rather grandiose. That style of thinking has probably led to as much or more destruction, violence, and death as any religious system.
The thing is, no human engineer is going to save the planet from a shit-load of problems. The planet will always have a shit-load of problems. If it's not one shit-load, it's another. The human concern is how to make them endurable, even to appreciate the challenges they pose as fulfilling.
************
QUESTIONS OF TIME, CAUSATION, SEQUENTIALITY, POTENTIALITY, REMEMBRANCE, FORGETFULNESS, EPIPHENOMENA, OBJECTIVELY MEASURABLE MANIFESTATION, SUBJECTIVELY EXPERIENCE-ABLE INTERPRETATION:
Time-in-itself does not exist. The Eternal present exists. However, it is appreciated, via feedback, in infinite varieties of sequences.
If the future is already determined, then how could time travel be possible, unless the future is multi-funnelled?
What am I / We?
We do not travel in real time, but in different subjective interpretations. Epiphenomena of present math presenting itself in self-sequences.
Objectively, perhaps our consciousness is only epiphenomenal, as opposed to being causal or manifestly preserved measurable.
Subjectively, we may causally participate with respect to our own unfolding interpretations.
Does a Conscious Aspect of the Reconciler learn or forget? Or simply cycle through never-ending sometimes never-repeating math-phase sequences?
*************
I doubt Consciousness of I-ness ends. I suspect it simply phase shifts to find expression with new forms and bodies of Substance. More of the same, but from different perspectives. Not that I find that to be especially attractive. Rather, it simply is what it is.
Meantime, we have human perspectives. Should a human seek to enhance the freedom and dignity of fellow humans? I feel so. I doubt that can be well done under elitist, socialist, communist, or totalitarian rule. Those kinds of rule sub-humanize us, and they destroy representative republics.
An Ideal of spiritual respect for varying perspectives of Consciousness (respect for a Reconciler) may help inspire more care for preserving decent republics that respect human freedom and dignity. Coming together in a church forum to celebrate and inspire that kind of respect can help assimilate decent common purposes, values, and morals. And those can better sustain a republican nation than can utopian belief in the promotion of personal pleasures and the fake promises of self-godded oligarchs over everything else.
Otherwise, absent some ideal of Higher Mindedness, what could possibly help to assimilate us or to preserve our society, other than corrupt desire to use and abuse all others?
************
No moral code is without some arbitrary subjectivity.
Most modern institutions of education, indoctrination, and information tend to be somewhat godless.
As I survey the condition of the USA, I do not sense much hope that it will be able to continue to abide as a representative republic or to be able to resist the machinations of oligarchic people farmers.
I do not sense such farmers to be benign, nor do I get why so many useful idiots actually believe there is any effective intention to usher in a new age of globally socialistic free stuff.
Whatever the "scientific" or "progressive" bent of modern educators, it seems more likely to promote human degradation and collective enserfment than it does enlightenment, dignity, freedom, or even humanity.
Most ideas about God tend to imagine a benign Reconciler that is interested in humanity. That aspect is neither entirely subjective nor entirely objective. Rather, it shares aspects of both.
Similarly, Consciousness objectively abides, but it functions subjectively.
The idea of God tends to be of a Conscious aspect or entity. Which entails subjectivity.
Many god believers take traditional religious stories to be metaphors. Like stories with morals. For moral guidance.
No responsible parent would raise a child to be without moral guidance.
The goal is to produce a responsible, free-thinking, caring child.
Without that, no representative republic can be sustained.
Militant atheists worry too much about literalism that most thinkers do not literally believe in.
Why else would we see so many child abusers, pervs, and deviants celebrated and promoted to positions of power, everywhere? Nowadays, responsible parents can hardly trust priests, teachers, journalists, politicians, and certainly not lying people-farming oligarchs that want to destroy the republic by opening wide its borders.
IOW, militant atheists tilt at windmills, while their republic is stolen beneath their feet.
****************
Facebook keeps the servants of the fascist or totalitarian neo-plantation. The oligarchs are either so confident or so desperate that they are taking off their masks. Hard lines are being drawn. We live in interesting times.
*****************
RACIST MINORITIES:
To test which groups are tribally biased, one need only look at the trends for immigration and indoctrination. Obviously, many whites are in favor of the assimilating model (e pluribus unum), to allow each person to pursue his/her own advancement on their own merit. Some even bend over to try to give make-up advantages to minorities. But no one that identifies as a minority or an historically disadvantaged group does anything of the like. Many among them enthusiastically play the imavictim card.
The racism, bigotry, and phobism that everyone sees to be undermining the nation is not coming predominantly from whites. It is coming from so-called minorities. Moreover, they see nothing wrong with using racial bias to erase the demographic whose ancestors penned the Constitution and Bill of Rights. IOW, they come to a land that has been blessed because of ideals set forth at the birth of the USA, in order to sack the nation and turn those ideals upside down.
Such a new entitlement-minded demographic will not incline to continue to produce prosperity. Rather, it will produce a neo-plantation. An idiocracy. People farming corporatists think this is good. And they are corrupting and funding the nation's politicians and opinion leaders.
**************
I doubt many people want to create a war machine. But when they see one developing, they figure: I may as well be the one to profit from this, because if I don't, someone else will. I don't think this is necessarily a consequence of religion. But it is a consequence of bad religion and a lack of better religion. It is probably time to jettison the ideas of a chosen tribe and of salvation through mere belief. I think grace may be extended to us to grow spiritually --- provided we work at it. We need to assimilate as free thinking and dignified human beings. And try to toss aside the tribalism, identity politics, and snake oil chants.
***************
If Jews playing divide-and-rule identity-politics and acting tribally control nearly all the significant institutions of political persuasion, then, based on the open-bordered neo-plantation we see being pushed worldwide, the question begged is this: Is identity politics a good thing? Ask: Who pushes divide-and-rule identity politics?
Well, that seems to consist of an alliance between greedy imavictim groups and the corporatists that want to use them to farm them and everyone else.
Not all such corporatists are Jews, but no doubt many are. Is that because of superior ability, morality, is it because of hypocritical tribalism, or is it because of some combination? Regardless of cause, if human freedom and dignity are to continue to be valued, then the identity politics behind the pursuit of the neo-plantation needs to be stopped.
*************
Most of media and academia is now fitted and filtered to shill for corporate fascists that want to destroy and replace every representative republic with one vast open-bordered plantation for elites seeking to farm the cheapest and most desperate labor. That media is hired to breathlessly re-package all news as if it were the latest proof of the virtue of the New Plantation Elites over every leader who seeks to preserve a republic. Nasty stuff.
*****************************
SHEPARD SMITH:
Shep is a Big-Lie whitewash agent for the Deep State. Regarding his propaganda and the crap he spouts as "facts":
1) "Conspiracy to defraud the USA" is a vague charge that can, and apparently is meant to, cover a witch hunt under a Deep State Star Chamber.
2) Worthless and irrelevant indictments that do not relate to anything pertinent about Trump or the election are of little interest to anyone focused on the preservation of the republic and the defense of its borders.
3) Comey deliberately set Trump up, so the media could publish its nonsense about Golden Showers. It appears other operatives of the Deep State were in on that. This was coordinated spy work, if not treason, from within the Admin and the Deep State.
4) The apparently targeted uncovering of NSA recorded conversations about Trump, under deviously obtained FISA warrants, constituted disloyal spying by agents of the Admin and the Deep State. If this was not spying, then neither was the Watergate break-in.
5) The NFL knee-takers are protesting police, without offering any viable suggestions or demands, except possibly to stop policing. This is juvey and not calculated to help anyone for any legitimate purpose. So it entails ineffective, illegitimate, gratuitous, and offensive insult against the symbol of the republic.
6) Being forced to watch Shep would be torture.
7) Humanity is simply not the major factor regarding climate or its change (when has the climate not been subject to change?), nor is there any scientifically established optimal climate --- either for preserving biodiversity or that is under the control of humanity.
8) The normal investigatory process is not for agents beholden to the Deep State to take it upon themselves to unite for the purpose of ousting a duly elected President that wants to defend the borders and to improve the economy of the nation.
9) To reasonable people, the length and timing of the Mueller investigation is evidence in itself that Mueller and his aides are seeking on behalf of the Deep State to meddle in the midterms.
10) Shep's position that Kim scored a unilateral win in the sit down with Trump simply by sitting down with him is the kind of silly thing one might expect a silly person to say.
11) As to Clinton Cash and Uranium One, even Wikipedia recognizes: "Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders, during his unsuccessful presidential campaign, criticized Clinton for a conflict of interest: "Do I have a problem when a sitting secretary of State and a foundation run by her husband collects many, many dollars from foreign governments — governments which are dictatorships? Yeah, I do have a problem with that. Yeah, I do". Republican Senator John Cornyn, who voted for Clinton's confirmation in 2009, says that she duped Congress, that he now regrets his vote, and that President Obama should appoint a special prosecutor to investigate whether donors to the foundation gained improper access at the State Department.
An August 30, 2016 editorial by The New York Times opined there was no proof that donors to the foundation received special favors from Hillary Clinton when she was Secretary of State. However, the Times added that there was reason to question where the Clinton Foundation ended and where the State Department began."
**************************
Shep seems to be a mouthpiece for the divisive and silly identity politics that are promoted by open-border loving, deep-state oligarchs --- perhaps especially for LGBTQ. But such politics are often generally counterproductive. Apart from respecting privacy in the bedroom, why should the Fed Gov and taxpayers be specially tasked to act as a federal normalizing force for ever increasing demands of every tribally organized group? Especially as such increasing Fed intrusiveness divides the nation while it weakens and replaces States, local communities, and longstanding values relating to families?
*****************
Both the Dem free-loading commies and the Repub corporatists want to farm the people under claim of moral science. Since they claim to have the science (fresh down from the mountain), no mere citizen can be tolerated to deny it.
These love-spreading totalitarians are very tolerant of totalitarian intolerance. Everyone that opposes them is despised for being intolerant of totalitarian intolerance. This is the path that leads away from individual dignity and responsibility to totalitarian perdition. They love Room 101 so much they want to put the world into it.
*********************
Very scary question: "If Trump goes, who you gonna call"?
Who after Trump could stand against the maelstrom of corporatist people-farming evil that has infested every institution? Who is The Apprentice?
Look upon the sea of demented oligarchic corruption and trained millennial snowflakes and ask: Who has the will, skill, funding, and cunning to defenestrate the infestation?
***************
Everything Mueller does is calculated to please and collude with all the people that want to destroy the borders of the USA. Mueller is only a pimple on mountains of ooze that want to destroy the nation and the key ideals under which it was founded: Self reliance, individual responsibility, dignity of work ethic, resistance against gangster tribalism, equality of opportunity (not outcomes), color blind assimilation, family values, resistance against elitist despots, individual freedom of thought and expression. Mueller is O'Brien, working his way towards pushing Trump to Room 101. And all the while expecting that we should all love him for it. We have seen the face of collusion against the republic. It's face is Mueller's.
*****************
SELF FACTORING INFINITY:
Is there some self-factoring infinity, to factor ordered algorithms out of infinite capacities of chaos? If so, is that self-factoring infinity itself a mere algorithm, a mere chaos, or some innate entanglement of consciousness with the possibilities of mathematical structures? Who can say? All that seems to lead to too much reasoning in a circle, trying to prove assumptions by assuming them. Why not simply begin with direct experience of subjective consciousness?
If God encompasses capacity to express consciousness, to be meaningfully conscious and receptive to feedback, then some aspect of the Godhead can be consciously (subjectively) surprised. If God can be subjectively surprised, then a subjective aspect must permeate and be entangled with all apprehensions of moral right and wrong. Subjective Consciousness must be entangled with every presentation of objectively measurable Substance and Information.
In that light, the Godhead is a source of appreciative feedback and guidance, not a pre-determining or robotic judge of any objective math of moral right and wrong. In that case, we have a feedback system of good faith and good will in respect of which to come to reason together. A Worthy to consult and, in calm meditation and good faith and good will, to seek reason in respect of. Not a precise or robotic instruction manual for the best response to every situation. Not a dead how-to book for objectively measuring poetry.
For a subjective appreciator to expect to quantify objective values for the quality of his experience makes little sense.
https://youtu.be/tpeLSMKNFO4
*********************
Even those that claim not to believe in a higher source of purposefulness tend religiously to find their purpose in something. Otherwise, it would be hard to lead a sapient life.
Leftists are lock-step, emotionally-stirred, mind-slaves, at war with decent free thinkers. They pretend to tolerant only to disarm free-thinkers from fighting back. They are a disparate hodge-podge of self-gratifiers, united only by stirred up hatred of Christians, notions of godly higher mindedness, patriotism, representative republics, and being asked to launch from the nest.
Decent Americans should unite against them. But Leftists and their mind-owners have learned how to put sand in any such attempt at assimilation in the name of human decency. They do this by targeting and peeling off various groups of otherwise often responsible Americans, such as: Single women, femimen easily guilted by so-called white privilege, confused matrons of charities, shill profs for division-minded oligarchs, indoctrinated and easily-triggered but unable-to-think-for-themselves students, and show-me-the-money politicians.
Per Saul Alinsky, Phony Progs are turning the best teachings of Jesus (good faith and good will) against decency, in order to serve the perversions and power lusts of the most deviant and corrupt among us. Evil seems often to know how best to twist Sacred Stories to its use.
I have personal experience trying to be patient in having conversations with Lefties, only to encounter lalalala triggered won't-listen-to-you shout downs. It's a bit hard to seek common understanding through reason with a person who is trained to be beyond reason, but who claims to have all reason already on his/her side. Because, moral science, you see.
***************
STALIN'S MORAL SCIENCE:
What does it mean, to "take intolerance outside of the likeminded group and forcing others to accept/tolerate your intolerance"?
Parents pay taxes to fund public schools that often prescribe courses of study that violate the parents' values. When the general populace largely shares the same values, this tends not to be a problem. When the society has been (deliberately?) divided among various and non-assimilating groups, it is a problem. If one group wants the school to groom grade school kids that they should experiment with gender fluidity, and another group does not want that, then which group's values should be "tolerated" over those of the other? That kind of thing impacts many generations to come.
Such issues are wedging up everywhere. This is a consequence of importing and indoctrinating diverse cultures faster than the general citizenry of a nation or state can assimilate them. That problem becomes a raging fire when it is fed by oligarchs that profit by dividing, wedging, hedging, and economically weakening the "little people" (sheeple).
It is not uncommon for selective mechanisms to be such that, among the worst of the worst, some float to power by profiting from wars, conflagrations, and holocausts. Currently, we have specially-networking oligarchs with private islands, underground bunkers, plentiful stashes, and even plans to escape to transhumanism or The Cloud. (That may relate to an old episode of the first Star Trek series on TV.) Such people do not identify with ordinary people, nor are they patriots.
Notwithstanding Steven Pinker, I do not see how a worldwide and sub-humanizing catastrophe can likely be avoided much longer. Nor do I see forcing elitist "moral science" upon the little people as being a decent solution. Stalin and Mao already tried that.
********
PHONY PROGS AGAINST THE GREAT COMMANDMENT:
Per Saul Alinsky, Phony Progs are turning the best teachings of Jesus (good faith and good will) against decency, in order to serve the perversions and power lusts of the most deviant and corrupt among us. Evil seems often to know how best to twist Sacred Stories to its use.
**********
Hitler tended to be tolerant of those that agreed with his solutions. He believed in a kind of open borders: That other nations' borders should be open to his invasion.
He was not often tolerant of those that wanted to give sanctuary behind walls to people of principles. But he was very progressive about wanting to share and redistribute other people's wealth.
He also promoted the Big Lie technique, which his Successor-Fascist-Progs of today still use. So now, intolerance of national borders is the new tolerance. Replacement of representative republics with global elitist rule is the new moral science. And fairness is mind subjugation. S/
**************
In many parts of the multicultural world, child marriage, goat intercourse, polygamy, temporary traveling marriages, and child sex mentoring are normal or near normal.
To be omni-tolerant of multiculturalism and open borders is to grease the way for child grooming sex predators. We are getting closer. Soon, for libs and gender fluids, that will be seen as a "good" thing.
We have a last chance, under Trump, to pull human freedom and dignity in our republic away from the moral dump. Effing omni-tolerant, pig-moral, Hollyweird-ian Rinos and Dinos!
*************
3D DNA Printing / Gibson Assembly:
Re: "As to your atempt to claim that I’m asserting that we’re activly engineering our DNA, which I never said. Well that’s just stupid. Don’t be stupid please."
You should search Gibson Assembly. In fact, we are even teleporting dna assembly. See recent talk on TED. Also http://miller-lab.net/MillerLab/protocols/molecular-biology-and-cloning/gibson-assembly/.
See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibson_assembly (you may have to go to Wikipedia and search under Gibson Assembly, since the link is finicky): "The Gibson Assembly method can also be used for site directed mutagenesis to incorporate site-specific mutations such as insertions, deletions and point mutations."
To say engineers are not already programming for dna assembly and mutagenesis is simply to be uninformed. You simply guessed wrong, no getting around it.
The next step will be something like 3D printing.
***************
Using Mueller's techniques, is there anyone in the world who would be safe from being criminally indicted and convicted? We need better protection from such a police state, especially when it is in the service of sociopathic data-invaders and people-farmers.
We used to have that, in the attorney-client privilege, the reasonable expectation of privacy under the 4th Amendment, the requirement that there be reasonable cause to expect to discover a crime before issuance of a search warrant, and so on. But what we have now is a Witch Hunt under a Star Chamber that is funded or goaded by all the sociopathic forces of Hell.
And for what? Because establishmentarians that thought they had finally bent the republic under their complete dominance were foiled!
Imagine when all online data is made available to AI. Will it find that every human being is a pile of crime, of which the world would be better served by eliminating or at least re-enserfing most of humanity? So this is "progress"? Forward! S/
**************
Are Lefties generally age-ist and sexist superficial thinkers? Are they prone to fall for socialism more so when it is presented by aging men with white hair, like Marx and Bernie, than they are when it is presented by a young female? Might that be why Bernie seems to be taken more seriously and to interview better than Ocasio?
****************
Again, I did not say minds exist without bodies. I said what we experience as mind and what we measure as body are entangled aspects of what we experience as reality. Moreover, bodies are packets of stored Information, which is continuously being accumulated. Bodies do not exist as things-in-themselves. If they did, we would have no meaningful way to relate to them.
*************
Refusing to use 50 different pronouns is now phobic phobic. Refusing to celebrate and fund femimen and the grooming of children is now homophobic. Abhoring the teaching of children that they should be as gender fluid as they are led to want is now transphobic. Detesting identity politics is now anti-humanist. Abhoring the takeover of institutions by sociopaths is now lack of education. Detesting Nazi moral scientism is now anti-progressive. Wanting to teach children to discriminate and think in making factual analyses is now anti-consensus-science. Wanting to teach children to become individually competent and responsible is now misogynistic and anti-elitist-science. Respecting the freedom and dignity of others is now fascist. Wanting to preserve borders and defend against illegal invasion is now white supremacism. Refusing to submit to mental toddlers being choreographed by sociopathic people farmers is now ground for being escorted to Room 101. A pox on PC!
************
My, what a bitter little personage you are!
ORDER OUT OF CHAOS: Patterns evolve out of chaos, depending on their capacity to survive and reproduce. Do you think of patterns as not beginning to evolve until after the first single celled biological organisms appeared? Do you think they appeared by magic? Did the process of evolution evolve?
CIVILIZING VALUES: Do civilized and organized societies have advantages in developing expertise by dividing tasks and taking territories over from less organized people? To bind a group or people together, does it help for them to assimilate and express shared important values and purposes?
IDEALIZING LEADERS: Do chimps choose the strongest and most brutish for their leaders, or do they choose as their leaders the ones with capacity to make and lead competent friends?
Do chimps have capacity to idealize the qualities they want in a leader they are willing to accept? How do such capacities to idealize what one desires and values evolve? Must not that capacity be something that is selected for by evolution? How is it that our universe is able to select for that capacity?
PREDICTING AND CONTROLLING EVOLUTION AND SCIENCE: Are you able to quantify and evaluate all the factors that go into the mix of evolution, to be able to predict what will unfold in every case?
DO ALGORITHMS EVOLVE OUT OF UNORGANIZED MATH: Do you think our universe of ordered natural relationships was bound to appear out of pure nothingness of unorganized math and infinity? Do you think something or some process, other than pure math, was necessary to put fire into the math, to organize it to express the algorithms that constitute the natural laws that govern our evolving unfoldment?
EX NIHILO: Or do you think we and the natural laws that govern us were bound to bubble up and evolve out of pure nothingness, ex nihilo? Do you think unorganized infinity is bubbling with life and purpose, that makes the appearances of various universes and algorithms inevitable?
METAPHYSICS: Apart from metaphysics, can you explain how infinity could be factored to produce the algorithm that governs our universe? Whatever the ultimate process with which our universe is produced and unfolded, do you imagine that calling it "nothing" is any more an explanation than calling it metaphysical?
***************
I think even Sam Harris recognizes that Consciousness is the one thing we can be sure is not an illusion. Jordan Peterson points out that rationality and scientific structure are nested within a larger metaphysical structure. For my example, I would note how, between the unlimited math-based parameters of eternity and infinity, our universe so happens to be nested to avail its conscious adapters with a common defining algorithm. That entails science nested in metaphysics.
As rational order evolves out of chaos, a civilization may find advantage in sustaining itself by nourishing its members to idealize shared basic values. This happens even with chimps, where the group leader tends not to be the strongest, but the best at grooming for the empathies of others. IOW, there seems to abide an innate tendency to idealize a mix of qualities beyond complete reduction in science. What is the meta-Source of that innate tendency?
See https://youtu.be/jjYQ48t4C8U and https://youtu.be/28i3lWxW5xs and https://youtu.be/f70hae63YbI and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PvX6S4FFcY. Regarding articulated wisdom, soul construction, and consciousness.
**************
Liberals are trained. Not educated. Liberals, Progs, phony Antifa-ians, and Femimen are all being trained to hate Whitey. But Whitey is just a stand-in for what they tend to be too chicken to say what they really hate: happy Christian, heterosexual, patriots. They hate traditional ideals of faith, family, fidelity. Because they are misfitted and malcontented, they desperately want to groom and "educate" children to become like themselves.
However, the root of their inability to pursue much coherent meaning in their own lives is not due to Christian, heterosexual, patriots. Rather, it is due to their own internal spoilage. The only siren they have been trained to assimilate in respect of, beyond anything other than themselves, is the mindless proud zombie call to pursue their immediate gratifications. Against that, they see Whitey as their mortal enemy. Even though, without Christian-heterosexual-patriots, most would be without assimilable skills to feed themselves.
**************
Stossel would celebrate plural, communal, orgiastic marriages. Maybe temporary contractual marriages, for lonely travelers. Good idea for progressive brothels. So how should civil law be applied to such marriages, with regard to claims for child custody or schooling (grooming) decisions? Should it be ok to groom or initiate children early for communal marriages? Maybe immigration spouses should offer their services to marry hundreds of wannabe immigrants. Or maybe big gov should assume an ever more intrusive role in moderating such issues. Sometimes Stossel is a moral moron.
************People are not leaving religion as much as they are leaving organized religion that has been coopted by people-farming pervs. Too much crap has floated to the upper echelons of institutionalized power and persuasion.
*************
After faith-family-fidelity have been undermined, it becomes necessary to replace them. The "Thread" program would seem even better founded if, beside repairing individuals and communities, it had any focus towards repairing families. If faith-family-fidelity remain reviled and unrepaired, I do not see how a representative republic can withstand being replaced by an ever more invasive system of big central government that will come to coopt and sponsor community indoctrination.
*************
Your incapacity to say anything pertinent that would incline towards preserving the republic against the allied despotism of corrupti and ignoranti is noted. There is nothing so mule headed as a fascist who believes he has the scientific moral truth.
****************
Even those that claim not to believe in a higher source of purposefulness tend religiously to find their purpose in something. Otherwise, it would be hard to lead a sapient life.
FACTORING PROBABILITIES AMONG PERSPECTIVES OF CONSCIOUSNESS:
Bayes’s theorem describes the probability of an event, based on prior knowledge of measurable conditions that might be related to the event. For example, if cancer is related to age, then, using Bayes’ theorem, the measure of a person’s age can be used to more accurately assess the probability that they have cancer, compared to the assessment of the probability of cancer made without knowledge of the person's age. With the Bayesian probability interpretation the theorem expresses how a subjective degree of belief should rationally change to account for availability of measurably related evidence. Bayesian inference is fundamental to Bayesian statistics.
Subjective Consciousness functions as if measurable events of the past should be a guide. This is how "if-then" reasoning proceeds, as it filters to select for the most reliably measurable factors to guide subsequently desired results. This can help Consciousness more in the "how" to achieve a desired result, but not so much in the "why" to desire a particular result.
The combined effect of various perspectives of Consciousness (subconsciously functioning as if commonly confirmed perceptions concerning the past should be assumed to be a "how to" guide) seems to function towards making such assumption self-fulfillingly consistent.
*****************
THINGS AND WITTGENSTEIN: There are not objective "things." There are fluxing relationships that are, thanks to the uncertainty principle, not subject to any absolute, complete, or fixed measurement. However, they are often subject to practical measurements within orders of significance, which often avails astonishing technologies. The flux of relationships does entail the continuous transmission, reception, and reconciliation of Information.
For example, the speed of light is not fixed as a thing-in-itself, but as a constant relationship to every perspective. To whatever the extent needed to preserve that constant, every perspective will have a differently "curved" (or reconciled or renormalized) experience of its space-time frame of reference.
When Wittgenstein-ians argue among themselves about banalities, such as whether there is an "end to every thing," they bore me. Apart from co-dependent flux of relationships, there are no things-in-themselves, there never has been any such things, and there never will be any such things. Every relationship that we experience, sense, measure, appreciate, or communicate concerns Information about fluxing relationships --- not any "things" in themselves.
***********************
THEOSOPHY:
Regarding the link I provided, the online source apparently does not support its direct use. I have encountered that kind of difficulty before. When I'm really interested, I simply search the first clause of the first quotation from the link. Which I provided, along with other salient quotations.
Regarding scientism, I don't think it is honest to suggest I have used the term to condemn all scientific endeavor. Rather, I have specifically advocated that the method of philosophical conceptualization not be used if it impairs science.
Otoh, I think common sense indicates areas that are beyond scientific kin. Such as for determining or measuring precisely what existed "before" the "beginning" of our measurable universe. Or for speculating that our universe could arise or be sustained out of nothing more than math, without the qualitative involvement of any activator. Or for prescribing what is good or bad in purely scientific terms. Or for prescribing the best form of government for a particular society or culture. Or for prescribing or even defining equality of economic results among all people of the world. Or for deciding which groups should be "scientifically/morally entitled" based on superficial traits (such as color or recent status of invasive-"immigration") to gang up politically to take the stuff of other people. Or for pretending to make spiritual concepts irrelevant merely by imagining an infinity of untestable parallel universes or bubbles.
For those areas, I think philosophical conceptualization can provide at least as good an approach as over-greedy scientism and anti-theistic scientisimists. For such areas, much depends on choice of worldview. Not every political philosophy is necessarily appropriate to every society or culture.
Now, if I were from a failed culture or nation, I may be tempted to imagine I have some kind of "natural right" to invade a neighbor to "ëqualize" his stuff. However, I don't think that kind of philosophy is suitable for sustaining the modern world. I do not believe it would raise economies. Rather, I suspect it would tend more towards equalizing poverty and misery. It may even impair real science from being deployed to repel that asteroid that may have Earth's name on its trajectory.
But I do not base that on science. I base it on my judgment and experience concerning human relations and history. I do NOT call that judgment "science." In some cases, I may call it coming together to reason in good faith and good will.
For example, I happen to value a Constitution-based representative republic. Which I do not think can be sustained by importing or indoctrinating a flood of liberty-illiterates that can be easily bribed (and not to their long term good) by nefarious, godless, self-godded, people-farmers.
I do not believe you have thought through any point about "theosophism" or non-scientism "insights." I hope you do not believe that conceptual assimilations concerning social values are devoid of insight merely because their truth values cannot be proved in ultimate logic or science, outside of self-fulfilling experience. I hope you do not believe that nothing is of value unless it can be utterly reduced to 1's and 0's.
Moral conceptualism (theosophy?) can help on conditional bases. For example, if I decide to identify with the idea of a representative republic, then I can make conditional recommendations. Such as, don't swamp the nation with a majority of imported voters that value instead electing politicians that promise free stuff, often elevated based on gang identifiers (such as race, etc.)
Now, if I decide I just want to suck off the work of others, then I may prefer a gang, culture, or nation where the rulers have specialized in that sort of thing. And once they have sucked their own nation dry, I may want to emigrate with them to plague another nation with my "special sense of fairness." It's not for nothing that many liberty-illiterates want to emigrate to the West.
If you have not noticed the degradation of life in London, Paris, New York, and San Francisco, I'm afraid there's not much I can do to help you.
*****************
SCIENTISM:
I am surprised that, for someone so apparently dedicated to science, you seem unfamiliar with the now common term of scientism.
A good primer is here: https://www.philosophybasics.com/branch_scientism.html:
Scientism is the broad-based belief that the assumptions and methods of research of the physical and natural sciences are equally appropriate (or even essential) to all other disciplines, including philosophy, the humanities and the social sciences. It is based on the belief that natural science has authority over all other interpretations of life, and that the methods of natural science form the only proper elements in any philosophical (or other) inquiry.
....
Proponents of Scientism often assert that the boundaries of science could and should be expanded so that something that has not been previously considered as a subject pertinent to science can now be understood as part of science. In its most extreme form, Scientism can be seen as a faith that science has no boundaries, and that in due time all human problems and all aspects of human endeavour will be dealt and solved by science alone
....
It has been argued that Scientism, in the strong sense, is self-annihilating in that it takes the view that only scientific claims are meaningful, which is not itself a scientific claim. Thus, Scientism is either false or meaningless.
Certainly, it requires the almost complete abandonment of any metaphysical or religious discussion, (and arguably also any ethical discussion), on the grounds that these cannot be apprehended by the scientific method, which is very limiting for a supposedy all-encompassing doctrine. Some would say that proponents of Scientism merely avoid actually engaging with many important arguments.
*************************
Since you seem unfamiliar with the concept, you probably have not thought much about tendencies loosed when corrupt or fake elites indoctrinate a citizenry into radical scientism. A society so indoctrinated will be trained to defer to so called scientific experts in every field, including morality, art, and politics. This is what I consider to be very dangerous to any citizenry that values and wants to preserve itself as comprising a representative republic. If you refuse to appreciate that, then I agree, we have very little to discuss.
*************
THE RUB:
Does potential for manifestation that is not presently manifested "exist"? If so conceptualized, then perhaps we should imagine the Universe at its simplest as a superposition of presently appreciated manifestation and potentiality of non-presently appreciated manifestation.
I agree that given an infinite number of yes and no answers, 1s and 0s (yin and yang?), such would carry potentiality for simulating an infinite number of realities. Question: Would that implicate an activating and involved Simulator? Would that Simulator retain capacity to intervene (or remain involved) in guiding the unfolding simulation?
The rub: What turns math into a functioning Algorithm? What can use mere math to avail interpretations or appearances of measurable sensations? I do not think science can provide or test for such an answer. I think whatever IT ultimately is, IT is beyond the reach of mortal science, but perhaps not beyond the reach of mortal appreciation.
THEOSOPHY:
Regarding theology or metaphysics: It's not so much that all things end, but that all appearances transition to other phases. Like an unfolding of math translations and interpretations.
My conceptual interpretation:
Substance (S) is that which stores Information (I). I is that which cumulates into S. Consciousness (C) is that which experiences what it is like for I to be accumulated into S and for determinations of manifestations of cumulations of I to unfold.
In that respect, C, S, and I are co-fundaments. But I conceptualize them not as necessarily having an original beginning point, but as always phasing, fluxng, and operating in synchronicity.
Each entails involvement with the other two. All three are innately adapted to the Math (laws of Nature) and the math Activator (God?) that regulates and reconciles them.
But may that Activator be conscious in any worthwhile sense that we can appreciate? For a purpose of inspiring hope or the assimilation of ought from is, it is not necessary that such a case be proven. Only that it be thought internally reasonable and not disproved by free thinkers.
********************
First, I think common sense can often differentiate between what is necessarily in the realm of metaphysics versus testable science. We do not have access to a twin universe with which to conduct double blind experiments.
Second, I thought it was you that indicated the science is settled, that the universe arose from nothing. Do you see the irony in the position you are taking now?
IAE, I do find it worthwhile to conceptualkze how the apparent unfolding of our universe may be derivative of nothing more than math and a math activator. But that is not nothing.
*********
Btw, I am not especially interested in the metaphysics of heaven or salvation. Though I do suspect that consciousness from one perspective or another never ceases. But what is of more interest to me is how to inspire and assimilate ought from is. I do not see science as much help for that. And I do not see decent civilization as having much chance without it.
Moreover, I suspect a lot of wannabe people-farmers have adopted some very demented codes of morality. There have been some "moral science clubs" that I think tend to support elitist despotic rule more so than a decent regard for the freedom and dignity of ordinary citizens. In that regard, I see scientism as often being in the service of, or being deployed for, conniving or even evil purposes. I suspect many Nazis, Fascists, and Communists convinced.themselves they were being good little moral scientists.
For myself, I prefer the New Testament teaching of good faith and good will. I think that had much to do with the general success of the American Project. Notwithstanding snooty pretense.common among Brits.
************
THREE LAYERED DREAM:
I had three dreams last night. In the first, I was concerned to keep a reminder close to me. So, in my dream, I woke up, got the item, and dreamed I placed it on my chest. But then I woke up in my dream (except not really), when I found the item not to be there, so I again in my dream retrieved the item and placed it on my chest. But then a third time I woke up in my dream (except not really), found the item not to be there, so I again retrieved the item and placed it on my chest.
Finally, I really did wake up, and for a fourth time, retrieved the item. This time, I really did wake up and really did place it on my chest, and then I went back to sleep. Then, when I awoke in the morning, it really was there, this time. Three layered architecture. Shades of DiCaprio! Very very strange. Maybe that prepped me to write this op about consciousness. Lol.
*************
RED PILL V BLUE PILL:
Maybe we achieve something like absorption into nirvana when the quantum-calculating Singularity arrives and we migrate to the cloud? Maybe that's where all the sapient extraterrestrials have already gone? Do we get to choose between the red pill and the blue pill?
*******************
GUIDANCE V. RANDOMNESS:
For scientific purposes, it makes sense to assume evolution is not guided. Even so, to the extent God were to deploy system-wide shifts to guide the unfoldment, we would seem to have no math-based way to determine such involvement or guidance.
No matter how strong the evidence of fine tuning may seem to be, a person can always imagine ever more parallel universes as needed to make the occurrence seem an inevitability. In a way, to assume an infinity of ex nihilo parallel universes seems akin to dividing the arguments by zero. But that hardly seems parsimonious.
So long as one is open to other non-parsimonious conceptualizations, imagine what it would be like for Consciousness to function at levels of apparently random expressions of quantum leaps. There would be little reason to expect such Consciousness to be passionately invested in such leaps, individually. There would be little reason to expect such lack of appreciable investment to be measurably expressed in such leaps, except as randomness. At lowest levels of involvement, such determinations by Consciousness would seem to be interpreted as random.
However, even there, Consciousness may show a glimmer of relevance. This is because quantum leaps seem not to collapse from wave form, absent "measurement" (appreciation?) by, or entailment with, some level of Conscious Observer.
(PROBLEM?: See http://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/experiments/wave-function_collapse/ , suggesting that it may only be informational probalilities that collapse, not actual waves.)
ROLE OF BUTTERFLY EFFECT: At higher levels of complexity, given the butterfly effect, little would be needed by way of mindful guidance by Consciousness to effect great changes in complex unfoldings, except strategic interventions among otherwise apparently random leaps.
Regardless, for scientific purposes, the universe-system that nourishes mortals necessitates math-based orderliness. So every intervention or involvement by Consciousness at every level must perhaps not violate the math-basis that defines and preserves the system that nourishes us. At least, not so long as we are nurtured to live.
**************
EXTRATERRESTRIALS:
Not at all. I don't believe any reputable scientist purports actually to have tested or proven any such a probability. If I am wrong, it should be simple enough to show me a peer reviewed paper. I am aware of various papers or formulas for speculating. However, they only guess regarding probabilities to be assigned to various factors. If you assume certain probabilities, you may calculate what may follow for other probabilities, if the previous probabilities are assumed. I have a suspicion. I suspect sapient extraterrestrials exist.
*************
PARTICIPATORY WILL:
True, I am only a limited and imperfect perspective. (I have only the perspective from an egg.) Not the Godhead. Nor do I have Free Will. But I think I do enjoy Participatory Will. And how or whether I observe or appreciate various events and sequences does seem to affect how they unfold. Whether society holds people responsible for their actions also affects how it unfolds. I do not think I would care for a society in which citizens philosophically declined to hold anyone responsible.
************
MORAL ASSIMILATION:
Well, what are consciously knowable truths? Perhaps truisms, trivialities, truths by definition, technological demonstrations. But what can be said about political, social, and artistic values: Can it truly be said that some political, social, or artistic expressions are objectively or "truly" of more value than others? Is there one best political system that is objectively best for all societies and cultures? Should some values become true as matters of self-fulfillment? Should we assume sapient life on Earth is worth projecting throughout the galaxy? Should members of a civilization assume the defense of their civilization is worthwhile?
Should we truly not stand for any value or concept that we place higher than ourselves? We can proceed in conscious good faith and good will. But to know that we are on a good or best path, well, that poses a problem. Should we deny ourselves voluntary forums or churches in which to come to reason together to consciously seek to respect and assimilate worthwhile values?
***************
MISSING THE POINT:
Well, you seem to be missing the point. I do not conceptualize that there is an objective IT. I think IT is inherently subjective. That is a qualitatively defining aspect of consciousness. It is subjective.
I agree it is unnecessary --- FOR MEASUREMENT PURPOSES --- to explain or conceptualize why there seems to abide quantum indeterminacy. That would be consistent with the "shut up and calculate" school. Even so, that does not stop physicists from seeking explanations, that often and obviously seem prone to to pan out to be beyond confirmation or testing. Such as multiverse "theory" or elegant string universe "theory."
So ask, WHY do some physicists work so hard to try to bootstrap ultimate TOE's, etc.? I suspect some, not all, carry hatred with them against any kind of religious based intimation or intuition. (Dawkins -- Better many universes than a God. Tyson -- God is either not existent or not good --- as if Tyson has a way to measure ultimate goodness, or as if, were a jet airplane to assemble itself out of nearby atoms, Tyson would not sooner attribute that to space aliens than to God).
However, for political and social purposes, is it really "not necessary" or helpful to conceptualize about ultimates? Do not many physicists that deny they have political purposes actually seek to substitute elitist rule for representative republicanism? Do they not blame and seek to discredit or even to ban religion (alternative conceptualizations or metaphors about ultimates)? Do not many among them seek to substitute government under cock-eyed "scientists of morality and social justice" for republics that represent "fly-over rubes" that find much of their inspiration in religious metaphors? Do not elitists often adopt scientism in order to promote elitist rule?
So, why is it "necessary" to entertain cock-eyed metaphysics of physicists, but not helpful to entertain religious metaphors of lay citizens? Especially if the religious metaphors may be not inconsistent with testable science, yet helpful to a citizenry's assimilation of mores and preferences for smaller central government?
It does seem FUNNY, when elitists own arguments (about selfish genes, singularities, and clouds) show to be as serviceable for spiritual arguments as for so-called scientific arguments.
**********
CAUSAL CONSCIOUSNESS:
I defined the sense in which I use the term Godhead. What you want to discuss relates to something else. You are conceptualizing that the experience of consciousness has no causal effect on that which unfolds to measurable manifestation, but that consciousness is entirely and only an epiphenomenal byproduct. IOW, that everything that unfolds is determined solely by materially measurable relationships. That is a philosophical position, not a scientifically testable one. Nor does it seem consistent with ideas of quantum indeterminacy.
The sense in which I conceptualized a Godhead does not entail a material monism, a single point of origin, or a God-sex. It entails at least a Fluxing Dualism, being a field of math and something to activate and continue the math. The upshot of that relationship is to give expression to unfolding perspectives of consciousness (C), measurable appearances of substance (S), and cumulations of information (I). The CSI are not derivative of space-time-matter-energy. Rather, space-time-matter-energy are derivative of the field of math and that which activates and continues it. C, S and I are not being conceptualized as separately independent, but as constituting fluxing aspects of one perpetually unfolding Reality.
**********
NO BEGINNING:
I seem unable to grasp an idea of a smallest first or largest last number in math. If something innately operates to sequence with math, I am unable to grasp why it should or should not have a beginning or an end, versus simply undergoing an eternal and infinite number of fluxing sequences and phase shifts. Whether it simply abides or self-created seems beyond human scope and perhaps not necessarily helpful either to science or to moral conceptualization or philosophy.
***********
BIO-LOGOS:
*********************
Very scary question: "If Trump goes, who you gonna call"?
Who after Trump could stand against the maelstrom of corporatist people-farming evil that has infested every institution? Who is The Apprentice?
Look upon the sea of demented oligarchic corruption and trained millennial snowflakes and ask: Who has the will, skill, funding, and cunning to defenestrate the infestation?
***************
Everything Mueller does is calculated to please and collude with all the people that want to destroy the borders of the USA. Mueller is only a pimple on mountains of ooze that want to destroy the nation and the key ideals under which it was founded: Self reliance, individual responsibility, dignity of work ethic, resistance against gangster tribalism, equality of opportunity (not outcomes), color blind assimilation, family values, resistance against elitist despots, individual freedom of thought and expression. Mueller is O'Brien, working his way towards pushing Trump to Room 101. And all the while expecting that we should all love him for it. We have seen the face of collusion against the republic. It's face is Mueller's.
*****************
SELF FACTORING INFINITY:
Is there some self-factoring infinity, to factor ordered algorithms out of infinite capacities of chaos? If so, is that self-factoring infinity itself a mere algorithm, a mere chaos, or some innate entanglement of consciousness with the possibilities of mathematical structures? Who can say? All that seems to lead to too much reasoning in a circle, trying to prove assumptions by assuming them. Why not simply begin with direct experience of subjective consciousness?
If God encompasses capacity to express consciousness, to be meaningfully conscious and receptive to feedback, then some aspect of the Godhead can be consciously (subjectively) surprised. If God can be subjectively surprised, then a subjective aspect must permeate and be entangled with all apprehensions of moral right and wrong. Subjective Consciousness must be entangled with every presentation of objectively measurable Substance and Information.
In that light, the Godhead is a source of appreciative feedback and guidance, not a pre-determining or robotic judge of any objective math of moral right and wrong. In that case, we have a feedback system of good faith and good will in respect of which to come to reason together. A Worthy to consult and, in calm meditation and good faith and good will, to seek reason in respect of. Not a precise or robotic instruction manual for the best response to every situation. Not a dead how-to book for objectively measuring poetry.
For a subjective appreciator to expect to quantify objective values for the quality of his experience makes little sense.
https://youtu.be/tpeLSMKNFO4
*********************
Even those that claim not to believe in a higher source of purposefulness tend religiously to find their purpose in something. Otherwise, it would be hard to lead a sapient life.
Leftists are lock-step, emotionally-stirred, mind-slaves, at war with decent free thinkers. They pretend to tolerant only to disarm free-thinkers from fighting back. They are a disparate hodge-podge of self-gratifiers, united only by stirred up hatred of Christians, notions of godly higher mindedness, patriotism, representative republics, and being asked to launch from the nest.
Decent Americans should unite against them. But Leftists and their mind-owners have learned how to put sand in any such attempt at assimilation in the name of human decency. They do this by targeting and peeling off various groups of otherwise often responsible Americans, such as: Single women, femimen easily guilted by so-called white privilege, confused matrons of charities, shill profs for division-minded oligarchs, indoctrinated and easily-triggered but unable-to-think-for-themselves students, and show-me-the-money politicians.
Per Saul Alinsky, Phony Progs are turning the best teachings of Jesus (good faith and good will) against decency, in order to serve the perversions and power lusts of the most deviant and corrupt among us. Evil seems often to know how best to twist Sacred Stories to its use.
I have personal experience trying to be patient in having conversations with Lefties, only to encounter lalalala triggered won't-listen-to-you shout downs. It's a bit hard to seek common understanding through reason with a person who is trained to be beyond reason, but who claims to have all reason already on his/her side. Because, moral science, you see.
***************
STALIN'S MORAL SCIENCE:
What does it mean, to "take intolerance outside of the likeminded group and forcing others to accept/tolerate your intolerance"?
Parents pay taxes to fund public schools that often prescribe courses of study that violate the parents' values. When the general populace largely shares the same values, this tends not to be a problem. When the society has been (deliberately?) divided among various and non-assimilating groups, it is a problem. If one group wants the school to groom grade school kids that they should experiment with gender fluidity, and another group does not want that, then which group's values should be "tolerated" over those of the other? That kind of thing impacts many generations to come.
Such issues are wedging up everywhere. This is a consequence of importing and indoctrinating diverse cultures faster than the general citizenry of a nation or state can assimilate them. That problem becomes a raging fire when it is fed by oligarchs that profit by dividing, wedging, hedging, and economically weakening the "little people" (sheeple).
It is not uncommon for selective mechanisms to be such that, among the worst of the worst, some float to power by profiting from wars, conflagrations, and holocausts. Currently, we have specially-networking oligarchs with private islands, underground bunkers, plentiful stashes, and even plans to escape to transhumanism or The Cloud. (That may relate to an old episode of the first Star Trek series on TV.) Such people do not identify with ordinary people, nor are they patriots.
Notwithstanding Steven Pinker, I do not see how a worldwide and sub-humanizing catastrophe can likely be avoided much longer. Nor do I see forcing elitist "moral science" upon the little people as being a decent solution. Stalin and Mao already tried that.
********
PHONY PROGS AGAINST THE GREAT COMMANDMENT:
Per Saul Alinsky, Phony Progs are turning the best teachings of Jesus (good faith and good will) against decency, in order to serve the perversions and power lusts of the most deviant and corrupt among us. Evil seems often to know how best to twist Sacred Stories to its use.
**********
Hitler tended to be tolerant of those that agreed with his solutions. He believed in a kind of open borders: That other nations' borders should be open to his invasion.
He was not often tolerant of those that wanted to give sanctuary behind walls to people of principles. But he was very progressive about wanting to share and redistribute other people's wealth.
He also promoted the Big Lie technique, which his Successor-Fascist-Progs of today still use. So now, intolerance of national borders is the new tolerance. Replacement of representative republics with global elitist rule is the new moral science. And fairness is mind subjugation. S/
**************
In many parts of the multicultural world, child marriage, goat intercourse, polygamy, temporary traveling marriages, and child sex mentoring are normal or near normal.
To be omni-tolerant of multiculturalism and open borders is to grease the way for child grooming sex predators. We are getting closer. Soon, for libs and gender fluids, that will be seen as a "good" thing.
We have a last chance, under Trump, to pull human freedom and dignity in our republic away from the moral dump. Effing omni-tolerant, pig-moral, Hollyweird-ian Rinos and Dinos!
*************
3D DNA Printing / Gibson Assembly:
Re: "As to your atempt to claim that I’m asserting that we’re activly engineering our DNA, which I never said. Well that’s just stupid. Don’t be stupid please."
You should search Gibson Assembly. In fact, we are even teleporting dna assembly. See recent talk on TED. Also http://miller-lab.net/MillerLab/protocols/molecular-biology-and-cloning/gibson-assembly/.
See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibson_assembly (you may have to go to Wikipedia and search under Gibson Assembly, since the link is finicky): "The Gibson Assembly method can also be used for site directed mutagenesis to incorporate site-specific mutations such as insertions, deletions and point mutations."
To say engineers are not already programming for dna assembly and mutagenesis is simply to be uninformed. You simply guessed wrong, no getting around it.
The next step will be something like 3D printing.
***************
Using Mueller's techniques, is there anyone in the world who would be safe from being criminally indicted and convicted? We need better protection from such a police state, especially when it is in the service of sociopathic data-invaders and people-farmers.
We used to have that, in the attorney-client privilege, the reasonable expectation of privacy under the 4th Amendment, the requirement that there be reasonable cause to expect to discover a crime before issuance of a search warrant, and so on. But what we have now is a Witch Hunt under a Star Chamber that is funded or goaded by all the sociopathic forces of Hell.
And for what? Because establishmentarians that thought they had finally bent the republic under their complete dominance were foiled!
Imagine when all online data is made available to AI. Will it find that every human being is a pile of crime, of which the world would be better served by eliminating or at least re-enserfing most of humanity? So this is "progress"? Forward! S/
**************
Are Lefties generally age-ist and sexist superficial thinkers? Are they prone to fall for socialism more so when it is presented by aging men with white hair, like Marx and Bernie, than they are when it is presented by a young female? Might that be why Bernie seems to be taken more seriously and to interview better than Ocasio?
****************
Again, I did not say minds exist without bodies. I said what we experience as mind and what we measure as body are entangled aspects of what we experience as reality. Moreover, bodies are packets of stored Information, which is continuously being accumulated. Bodies do not exist as things-in-themselves. If they did, we would have no meaningful way to relate to them.
*************
Refusing to use 50 different pronouns is now phobic phobic. Refusing to celebrate and fund femimen and the grooming of children is now homophobic. Abhoring the teaching of children that they should be as gender fluid as they are led to want is now transphobic. Detesting identity politics is now anti-humanist. Abhoring the takeover of institutions by sociopaths is now lack of education. Detesting Nazi moral scientism is now anti-progressive. Wanting to teach children to discriminate and think in making factual analyses is now anti-consensus-science. Wanting to teach children to become individually competent and responsible is now misogynistic and anti-elitist-science. Respecting the freedom and dignity of others is now fascist. Wanting to preserve borders and defend against illegal invasion is now white supremacism. Refusing to submit to mental toddlers being choreographed by sociopathic people farmers is now ground for being escorted to Room 101. A pox on PC!
************
My, what a bitter little personage you are!
ORDER OUT OF CHAOS: Patterns evolve out of chaos, depending on their capacity to survive and reproduce. Do you think of patterns as not beginning to evolve until after the first single celled biological organisms appeared? Do you think they appeared by magic? Did the process of evolution evolve?
CIVILIZING VALUES: Do civilized and organized societies have advantages in developing expertise by dividing tasks and taking territories over from less organized people? To bind a group or people together, does it help for them to assimilate and express shared important values and purposes?
IDEALIZING LEADERS: Do chimps choose the strongest and most brutish for their leaders, or do they choose as their leaders the ones with capacity to make and lead competent friends?
Do chimps have capacity to idealize the qualities they want in a leader they are willing to accept? How do such capacities to idealize what one desires and values evolve? Must not that capacity be something that is selected for by evolution? How is it that our universe is able to select for that capacity?
PREDICTING AND CONTROLLING EVOLUTION AND SCIENCE: Are you able to quantify and evaluate all the factors that go into the mix of evolution, to be able to predict what will unfold in every case?
DO ALGORITHMS EVOLVE OUT OF UNORGANIZED MATH: Do you think our universe of ordered natural relationships was bound to appear out of pure nothingness of unorganized math and infinity? Do you think something or some process, other than pure math, was necessary to put fire into the math, to organize it to express the algorithms that constitute the natural laws that govern our evolving unfoldment?
EX NIHILO: Or do you think we and the natural laws that govern us were bound to bubble up and evolve out of pure nothingness, ex nihilo? Do you think unorganized infinity is bubbling with life and purpose, that makes the appearances of various universes and algorithms inevitable?
METAPHYSICS: Apart from metaphysics, can you explain how infinity could be factored to produce the algorithm that governs our universe? Whatever the ultimate process with which our universe is produced and unfolded, do you imagine that calling it "nothing" is any more an explanation than calling it metaphysical?
***************
I think even Sam Harris recognizes that Consciousness is the one thing we can be sure is not an illusion. Jordan Peterson points out that rationality and scientific structure are nested within a larger metaphysical structure. For my example, I would note how, between the unlimited math-based parameters of eternity and infinity, our universe so happens to be nested to avail its conscious adapters with a common defining algorithm. That entails science nested in metaphysics.
As rational order evolves out of chaos, a civilization may find advantage in sustaining itself by nourishing its members to idealize shared basic values. This happens even with chimps, where the group leader tends not to be the strongest, but the best at grooming for the empathies of others. IOW, there seems to abide an innate tendency to idealize a mix of qualities beyond complete reduction in science. What is the meta-Source of that innate tendency?
See https://youtu.be/jjYQ48t4C8U and https://youtu.be/28i3lWxW5xs and https://youtu.be/f70hae63YbI and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PvX6S4FFcY. Regarding articulated wisdom, soul construction, and consciousness.
**************
Liberals are trained. Not educated. Liberals, Progs, phony Antifa-ians, and Femimen are all being trained to hate Whitey. But Whitey is just a stand-in for what they tend to be too chicken to say what they really hate: happy Christian, heterosexual, patriots. They hate traditional ideals of faith, family, fidelity. Because they are misfitted and malcontented, they desperately want to groom and "educate" children to become like themselves.
However, the root of their inability to pursue much coherent meaning in their own lives is not due to Christian, heterosexual, patriots. Rather, it is due to their own internal spoilage. The only siren they have been trained to assimilate in respect of, beyond anything other than themselves, is the mindless proud zombie call to pursue their immediate gratifications. Against that, they see Whitey as their mortal enemy. Even though, without Christian-heterosexual-patriots, most would be without assimilable skills to feed themselves.
**************
Stossel would celebrate plural, communal, orgiastic marriages. Maybe temporary contractual marriages, for lonely travelers. Good idea for progressive brothels. So how should civil law be applied to such marriages, with regard to claims for child custody or schooling (grooming) decisions? Should it be ok to groom or initiate children early for communal marriages? Maybe immigration spouses should offer their services to marry hundreds of wannabe immigrants. Or maybe big gov should assume an ever more intrusive role in moderating such issues. Sometimes Stossel is a moral moron.
************People are not leaving religion as much as they are leaving organized religion that has been coopted by people-farming pervs. Too much crap has floated to the upper echelons of institutionalized power and persuasion.
*************
After faith-family-fidelity have been undermined, it becomes necessary to replace them. The "Thread" program would seem even better founded if, beside repairing individuals and communities, it had any focus towards repairing families. If faith-family-fidelity remain reviled and unrepaired, I do not see how a representative republic can withstand being replaced by an ever more invasive system of big central government that will come to coopt and sponsor community indoctrination.
*************
Your incapacity to say anything pertinent that would incline towards preserving the republic against the allied despotism of corrupti and ignoranti is noted. There is nothing so mule headed as a fascist who believes he has the scientific moral truth.
****************
Even those that claim not to believe in a higher source of purposefulness tend religiously to find their purpose in something. Otherwise, it would be hard to lead a sapient life.
FACTORING PROBABILITIES AMONG PERSPECTIVES OF CONSCIOUSNESS:
Bayes’s theorem describes the probability of an event, based on prior knowledge of measurable conditions that might be related to the event. For example, if cancer is related to age, then, using Bayes’ theorem, the measure of a person’s age can be used to more accurately assess the probability that they have cancer, compared to the assessment of the probability of cancer made without knowledge of the person's age. With the Bayesian probability interpretation the theorem expresses how a subjective degree of belief should rationally change to account for availability of measurably related evidence. Bayesian inference is fundamental to Bayesian statistics.
Subjective Consciousness functions as if measurable events of the past should be a guide. This is how "if-then" reasoning proceeds, as it filters to select for the most reliably measurable factors to guide subsequently desired results. This can help Consciousness more in the "how" to achieve a desired result, but not so much in the "why" to desire a particular result.
The combined effect of various perspectives of Consciousness (subconsciously functioning as if commonly confirmed perceptions concerning the past should be assumed to be a "how to" guide) seems to function towards making such assumption self-fulfillingly consistent.
*****************
THINGS AND WITTGENSTEIN: There are not objective "things." There are fluxing relationships that are, thanks to the uncertainty principle, not subject to any absolute, complete, or fixed measurement. However, they are often subject to practical measurements within orders of significance, which often avails astonishing technologies. The flux of relationships does entail the continuous transmission, reception, and reconciliation of Information.
For example, the speed of light is not fixed as a thing-in-itself, but as a constant relationship to every perspective. To whatever the extent needed to preserve that constant, every perspective will have a differently "curved" (or reconciled or renormalized) experience of its space-time frame of reference.
When Wittgenstein-ians argue among themselves about banalities, such as whether there is an "end to every thing," they bore me. Apart from co-dependent flux of relationships, there are no things-in-themselves, there never has been any such things, and there never will be any such things. Every relationship that we experience, sense, measure, appreciate, or communicate concerns Information about fluxing relationships --- not any "things" in themselves.
***********************
THEOSOPHY:
Regarding the link I provided, the online source apparently does not support its direct use. I have encountered that kind of difficulty before. When I'm really interested, I simply search the first clause of the first quotation from the link. Which I provided, along with other salient quotations.
Regarding scientism, I don't think it is honest to suggest I have used the term to condemn all scientific endeavor. Rather, I have specifically advocated that the method of philosophical conceptualization not be used if it impairs science.
Otoh, I think common sense indicates areas that are beyond scientific kin. Such as for determining or measuring precisely what existed "before" the "beginning" of our measurable universe. Or for speculating that our universe could arise or be sustained out of nothing more than math, without the qualitative involvement of any activator. Or for prescribing what is good or bad in purely scientific terms. Or for prescribing the best form of government for a particular society or culture. Or for prescribing or even defining equality of economic results among all people of the world. Or for deciding which groups should be "scientifically/morally entitled" based on superficial traits (such as color or recent status of invasive-"immigration") to gang up politically to take the stuff of other people. Or for pretending to make spiritual concepts irrelevant merely by imagining an infinity of untestable parallel universes or bubbles.
For those areas, I think philosophical conceptualization can provide at least as good an approach as over-greedy scientism and anti-theistic scientisimists. For such areas, much depends on choice of worldview. Not every political philosophy is necessarily appropriate to every society or culture.
Now, if I were from a failed culture or nation, I may be tempted to imagine I have some kind of "natural right" to invade a neighbor to "ëqualize" his stuff. However, I don't think that kind of philosophy is suitable for sustaining the modern world. I do not believe it would raise economies. Rather, I suspect it would tend more towards equalizing poverty and misery. It may even impair real science from being deployed to repel that asteroid that may have Earth's name on its trajectory.
But I do not base that on science. I base it on my judgment and experience concerning human relations and history. I do NOT call that judgment "science." In some cases, I may call it coming together to reason in good faith and good will.
For example, I happen to value a Constitution-based representative republic. Which I do not think can be sustained by importing or indoctrinating a flood of liberty-illiterates that can be easily bribed (and not to their long term good) by nefarious, godless, self-godded, people-farmers.
I do not believe you have thought through any point about "theosophism" or non-scientism "insights." I hope you do not believe that conceptual assimilations concerning social values are devoid of insight merely because their truth values cannot be proved in ultimate logic or science, outside of self-fulfilling experience. I hope you do not believe that nothing is of value unless it can be utterly reduced to 1's and 0's.
Moral conceptualism (theosophy?) can help on conditional bases. For example, if I decide to identify with the idea of a representative republic, then I can make conditional recommendations. Such as, don't swamp the nation with a majority of imported voters that value instead electing politicians that promise free stuff, often elevated based on gang identifiers (such as race, etc.)
Now, if I decide I just want to suck off the work of others, then I may prefer a gang, culture, or nation where the rulers have specialized in that sort of thing. And once they have sucked their own nation dry, I may want to emigrate with them to plague another nation with my "special sense of fairness." It's not for nothing that many liberty-illiterates want to emigrate to the West.
If you have not noticed the degradation of life in London, Paris, New York, and San Francisco, I'm afraid there's not much I can do to help you.
*****************
SCIENTISM:
I am surprised that, for someone so apparently dedicated to science, you seem unfamiliar with the now common term of scientism.
A good primer is here: https://www.philosophybasics.com/branch_scientism.html:
Scientism is the broad-based belief that the assumptions and methods of research of the physical and natural sciences are equally appropriate (or even essential) to all other disciplines, including philosophy, the humanities and the social sciences. It is based on the belief that natural science has authority over all other interpretations of life, and that the methods of natural science form the only proper elements in any philosophical (or other) inquiry.
....
Proponents of Scientism often assert that the boundaries of science could and should be expanded so that something that has not been previously considered as a subject pertinent to science can now be understood as part of science. In its most extreme form, Scientism can be seen as a faith that science has no boundaries, and that in due time all human problems and all aspects of human endeavour will be dealt and solved by science alone
....
It has been argued that Scientism, in the strong sense, is self-annihilating in that it takes the view that only scientific claims are meaningful, which is not itself a scientific claim. Thus, Scientism is either false or meaningless.
Certainly, it requires the almost complete abandonment of any metaphysical or religious discussion, (and arguably also any ethical discussion), on the grounds that these cannot be apprehended by the scientific method, which is very limiting for a supposedy all-encompassing doctrine. Some would say that proponents of Scientism merely avoid actually engaging with many important arguments.
*************************
Since you seem unfamiliar with the concept, you probably have not thought much about tendencies loosed when corrupt or fake elites indoctrinate a citizenry into radical scientism. A society so indoctrinated will be trained to defer to so called scientific experts in every field, including morality, art, and politics. This is what I consider to be very dangerous to any citizenry that values and wants to preserve itself as comprising a representative republic. If you refuse to appreciate that, then I agree, we have very little to discuss.
*************
THE RUB:
Does potential for manifestation that is not presently manifested "exist"? If so conceptualized, then perhaps we should imagine the Universe at its simplest as a superposition of presently appreciated manifestation and potentiality of non-presently appreciated manifestation.
I agree that given an infinite number of yes and no answers, 1s and 0s (yin and yang?), such would carry potentiality for simulating an infinite number of realities. Question: Would that implicate an activating and involved Simulator? Would that Simulator retain capacity to intervene (or remain involved) in guiding the unfolding simulation?
The rub: What turns math into a functioning Algorithm? What can use mere math to avail interpretations or appearances of measurable sensations? I do not think science can provide or test for such an answer. I think whatever IT ultimately is, IT is beyond the reach of mortal science, but perhaps not beyond the reach of mortal appreciation.
THEOSOPHY:
Regarding theology or metaphysics: It's not so much that all things end, but that all appearances transition to other phases. Like an unfolding of math translations and interpretations.
My conceptual interpretation:
Substance (S) is that which stores Information (I). I is that which cumulates into S. Consciousness (C) is that which experiences what it is like for I to be accumulated into S and for determinations of manifestations of cumulations of I to unfold.
In that respect, C, S, and I are co-fundaments. But I conceptualize them not as necessarily having an original beginning point, but as always phasing, fluxng, and operating in synchronicity.
Each entails involvement with the other two. All three are innately adapted to the Math (laws of Nature) and the math Activator (God?) that regulates and reconciles them.
But may that Activator be conscious in any worthwhile sense that we can appreciate? For a purpose of inspiring hope or the assimilation of ought from is, it is not necessary that such a case be proven. Only that it be thought internally reasonable and not disproved by free thinkers.
********************
First, I think common sense can often differentiate between what is necessarily in the realm of metaphysics versus testable science. We do not have access to a twin universe with which to conduct double blind experiments.
Second, I thought it was you that indicated the science is settled, that the universe arose from nothing. Do you see the irony in the position you are taking now?
IAE, I do find it worthwhile to conceptualkze how the apparent unfolding of our universe may be derivative of nothing more than math and a math activator. But that is not nothing.
*********
Btw, I am not especially interested in the metaphysics of heaven or salvation. Though I do suspect that consciousness from one perspective or another never ceases. But what is of more interest to me is how to inspire and assimilate ought from is. I do not see science as much help for that. And I do not see decent civilization as having much chance without it.
Moreover, I suspect a lot of wannabe people-farmers have adopted some very demented codes of morality. There have been some "moral science clubs" that I think tend to support elitist despotic rule more so than a decent regard for the freedom and dignity of ordinary citizens. In that regard, I see scientism as often being in the service of, or being deployed for, conniving or even evil purposes. I suspect many Nazis, Fascists, and Communists convinced.themselves they were being good little moral scientists.
For myself, I prefer the New Testament teaching of good faith and good will. I think that had much to do with the general success of the American Project. Notwithstanding snooty pretense.common among Brits.
************
THREE LAYERED DREAM:
I had three dreams last night. In the first, I was concerned to keep a reminder close to me. So, in my dream, I woke up, got the item, and dreamed I placed it on my chest. But then I woke up in my dream (except not really), when I found the item not to be there, so I again in my dream retrieved the item and placed it on my chest. But then a third time I woke up in my dream (except not really), found the item not to be there, so I again retrieved the item and placed it on my chest.
Finally, I really did wake up, and for a fourth time, retrieved the item. This time, I really did wake up and really did place it on my chest, and then I went back to sleep. Then, when I awoke in the morning, it really was there, this time. Three layered architecture. Shades of DiCaprio! Very very strange. Maybe that prepped me to write this op about consciousness. Lol.
*************
RED PILL V BLUE PILL:
Maybe we achieve something like absorption into nirvana when the quantum-calculating Singularity arrives and we migrate to the cloud? Maybe that's where all the sapient extraterrestrials have already gone? Do we get to choose between the red pill and the blue pill?
*******************
GUIDANCE V. RANDOMNESS:
For scientific purposes, it makes sense to assume evolution is not guided. Even so, to the extent God were to deploy system-wide shifts to guide the unfoldment, we would seem to have no math-based way to determine such involvement or guidance.
No matter how strong the evidence of fine tuning may seem to be, a person can always imagine ever more parallel universes as needed to make the occurrence seem an inevitability. In a way, to assume an infinity of ex nihilo parallel universes seems akin to dividing the arguments by zero. But that hardly seems parsimonious.
So long as one is open to other non-parsimonious conceptualizations, imagine what it would be like for Consciousness to function at levels of apparently random expressions of quantum leaps. There would be little reason to expect such Consciousness to be passionately invested in such leaps, individually. There would be little reason to expect such lack of appreciable investment to be measurably expressed in such leaps, except as randomness. At lowest levels of involvement, such determinations by Consciousness would seem to be interpreted as random.
However, even there, Consciousness may show a glimmer of relevance. This is because quantum leaps seem not to collapse from wave form, absent "measurement" (appreciation?) by, or entailment with, some level of Conscious Observer.
(PROBLEM?: See http://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/experiments/wave-function_collapse/ , suggesting that it may only be informational probalilities that collapse, not actual waves.)
ROLE OF BUTTERFLY EFFECT: At higher levels of complexity, given the butterfly effect, little would be needed by way of mindful guidance by Consciousness to effect great changes in complex unfoldings, except strategic interventions among otherwise apparently random leaps.
Regardless, for scientific purposes, the universe-system that nourishes mortals necessitates math-based orderliness. So every intervention or involvement by Consciousness at every level must perhaps not violate the math-basis that defines and preserves the system that nourishes us. At least, not so long as we are nurtured to live.
**************
EXTRATERRESTRIALS:
Not at all. I don't believe any reputable scientist purports actually to have tested or proven any such a probability. If I am wrong, it should be simple enough to show me a peer reviewed paper. I am aware of various papers or formulas for speculating. However, they only guess regarding probabilities to be assigned to various factors. If you assume certain probabilities, you may calculate what may follow for other probabilities, if the previous probabilities are assumed. I have a suspicion. I suspect sapient extraterrestrials exist.
*************
PARTICIPATORY WILL:
True, I am only a limited and imperfect perspective. (I have only the perspective from an egg.) Not the Godhead. Nor do I have Free Will. But I think I do enjoy Participatory Will. And how or whether I observe or appreciate various events and sequences does seem to affect how they unfold. Whether society holds people responsible for their actions also affects how it unfolds. I do not think I would care for a society in which citizens philosophically declined to hold anyone responsible.
************
MORAL ASSIMILATION:
Well, what are consciously knowable truths? Perhaps truisms, trivialities, truths by definition, technological demonstrations. But what can be said about political, social, and artistic values: Can it truly be said that some political, social, or artistic expressions are objectively or "truly" of more value than others? Is there one best political system that is objectively best for all societies and cultures? Should some values become true as matters of self-fulfillment? Should we assume sapient life on Earth is worth projecting throughout the galaxy? Should members of a civilization assume the defense of their civilization is worthwhile?
Should we truly not stand for any value or concept that we place higher than ourselves? We can proceed in conscious good faith and good will. But to know that we are on a good or best path, well, that poses a problem. Should we deny ourselves voluntary forums or churches in which to come to reason together to consciously seek to respect and assimilate worthwhile values?
***************
MISSING THE POINT:
Well, you seem to be missing the point. I do not conceptualize that there is an objective IT. I think IT is inherently subjective. That is a qualitatively defining aspect of consciousness. It is subjective.
I agree it is unnecessary --- FOR MEASUREMENT PURPOSES --- to explain or conceptualize why there seems to abide quantum indeterminacy. That would be consistent with the "shut up and calculate" school. Even so, that does not stop physicists from seeking explanations, that often and obviously seem prone to to pan out to be beyond confirmation or testing. Such as multiverse "theory" or elegant string universe "theory."
So ask, WHY do some physicists work so hard to try to bootstrap ultimate TOE's, etc.? I suspect some, not all, carry hatred with them against any kind of religious based intimation or intuition. (Dawkins -- Better many universes than a God. Tyson -- God is either not existent or not good --- as if Tyson has a way to measure ultimate goodness, or as if, were a jet airplane to assemble itself out of nearby atoms, Tyson would not sooner attribute that to space aliens than to God).
However, for political and social purposes, is it really "not necessary" or helpful to conceptualize about ultimates? Do not many physicists that deny they have political purposes actually seek to substitute elitist rule for representative republicanism? Do they not blame and seek to discredit or even to ban religion (alternative conceptualizations or metaphors about ultimates)? Do not many among them seek to substitute government under cock-eyed "scientists of morality and social justice" for republics that represent "fly-over rubes" that find much of their inspiration in religious metaphors? Do not elitists often adopt scientism in order to promote elitist rule?
So, why is it "necessary" to entertain cock-eyed metaphysics of physicists, but not helpful to entertain religious metaphors of lay citizens? Especially if the religious metaphors may be not inconsistent with testable science, yet helpful to a citizenry's assimilation of mores and preferences for smaller central government?
It does seem FUNNY, when elitists own arguments (about selfish genes, singularities, and clouds) show to be as serviceable for spiritual arguments as for so-called scientific arguments.
**********
CAUSAL CONSCIOUSNESS:
I defined the sense in which I use the term Godhead. What you want to discuss relates to something else. You are conceptualizing that the experience of consciousness has no causal effect on that which unfolds to measurable manifestation, but that consciousness is entirely and only an epiphenomenal byproduct. IOW, that everything that unfolds is determined solely by materially measurable relationships. That is a philosophical position, not a scientifically testable one. Nor does it seem consistent with ideas of quantum indeterminacy.
The sense in which I conceptualized a Godhead does not entail a material monism, a single point of origin, or a God-sex. It entails at least a Fluxing Dualism, being a field of math and something to activate and continue the math. The upshot of that relationship is to give expression to unfolding perspectives of consciousness (C), measurable appearances of substance (S), and cumulations of information (I). The CSI are not derivative of space-time-matter-energy. Rather, space-time-matter-energy are derivative of the field of math and that which activates and continues it. C, S and I are not being conceptualized as separately independent, but as constituting fluxing aspects of one perpetually unfolding Reality.
**********
NO BEGINNING:
I seem unable to grasp an idea of a smallest first or largest last number in math. If something innately operates to sequence with math, I am unable to grasp why it should or should not have a beginning or an end, versus simply undergoing an eternal and infinite number of fluxing sequences and phase shifts. Whether it simply abides or self-created seems beyond human scope and perhaps not necessarily helpful either to science or to moral conceptualization or philosophy.
***********
BIO-LOGOS:
Assuming your acts reflect a principled or clear sense of moral empathy, your verbal choice of terminology is not of great interest to me.
**************
CONSCIOUSNESS:
To my perspective, I am availed with numerous choices, but only one sequence of universe appears to unfold to measurable manifestation. That entails that Consciousness abides, apparent but ephemeral Substance is measurable, and Information cumulates. A fluxing, trinitarinan godhead.
But maybe you do not have that experience of consciousness, substance, and information?
**************
EX NIHILO:
The idea of something arising out of nothing is inherently related to metaphysics.
***************
NOT POST-MODERNISM:
No demonization intended. Simply asking you to avoid conflation. Conflation is too often deployed as a brush off. I am not a post modernist attempting to measure consciousness. I am not posing an empirically testable hypothesis. I am posing a conceptualization.
My conceptualization of consciousness is as a quality that is experienceable, but not measurable. (Expressions and electrical brain activity that correlate with conscious experience are measurable, but not consciousness as a thing in itself.) So I distinguish between an immeasurable quality of consciousness, measurable quantities of Substance, and cumulations of Information.
I think math can leverage various perspectives of consciousness (brain chips, anyone?). But I conceptualize something beyond math as activating ("putting fire into") and reconciling the math (somehow conserving and availing algorithmic systems within infinity and eternity), to facilitate our various perspectives and interpretations of measurable appearances.
If our universe were not somehow bounded as a system in space and sequence, I do not see how it could avail expression of anything. So, what is IT that defines and maintains those bounds for that system of math? Well, whatever IT is, it seems to me that IT is necessarily metaphysically beyond our measure, but not necessarily beyond our qualitative appreciation.
I think it is important to avoid conflation. A conceptualization about ultimate sources or beginnings tends not to be meant as an empirically testable theory. (An atheist's conceptualization of a multiverse also would hardly constitute an empirically testable hypothesis! After all, any empirical feedback from another universe would link it back as part of our own, defeating the purpose of discovering a different universe.)
In any case, the testing for such conceptualizations about ultimates or beginnings would be via: Direct experience of consciousness; testing for internal consistency; testing for parsimony; testing to avoid impediments to reasoned science; and testing for usefulness.
To me, a conceptualization about ultimates that is consistent with direct experience, that promotes good faith and good will, that is internally consistent, that does not impede science, and that does not posit more than is needed to fulfill its functions, can be useful to civilization.
*************
DETERMINATION AMONG ALLOWED PARAMETERS:
Out of all possible choices, that which determines what actually manifests is an expression of consciousness. But perhaps you are of the school of metaphysics that believes that all possibilities are somehow required to become manifest in some universe? In that case, I suppose it would be possible that you are an unconscious bot.
**************
CONSCIOUSNESS:
To my perspective, I am availed with numerous choices, but only one sequence of universe appears to unfold to measurable manifestation. That entails that Consciousness abides, apparent but ephemeral Substance is measurable, and Information cumulates. A fluxing, trinitarinan godhead.
But maybe you do not have that experience of consciousness, substance, and information?
**************
EX NIHILO:
The idea of something arising out of nothing is inherently related to metaphysics.
***************
NOT POST-MODERNISM:
No demonization intended. Simply asking you to avoid conflation. Conflation is too often deployed as a brush off. I am not a post modernist attempting to measure consciousness. I am not posing an empirically testable hypothesis. I am posing a conceptualization.
My conceptualization of consciousness is as a quality that is experienceable, but not measurable. (Expressions and electrical brain activity that correlate with conscious experience are measurable, but not consciousness as a thing in itself.) So I distinguish between an immeasurable quality of consciousness, measurable quantities of Substance, and cumulations of Information.
I think math can leverage various perspectives of consciousness (brain chips, anyone?). But I conceptualize something beyond math as activating ("putting fire into") and reconciling the math (somehow conserving and availing algorithmic systems within infinity and eternity), to facilitate our various perspectives and interpretations of measurable appearances.
If our universe were not somehow bounded as a system in space and sequence, I do not see how it could avail expression of anything. So, what is IT that defines and maintains those bounds for that system of math? Well, whatever IT is, it seems to me that IT is necessarily metaphysically beyond our measure, but not necessarily beyond our qualitative appreciation.
I think it is important to avoid conflation. A conceptualization about ultimate sources or beginnings tends not to be meant as an empirically testable theory. (An atheist's conceptualization of a multiverse also would hardly constitute an empirically testable hypothesis! After all, any empirical feedback from another universe would link it back as part of our own, defeating the purpose of discovering a different universe.)
In any case, the testing for such conceptualizations about ultimates or beginnings would be via: Direct experience of consciousness; testing for internal consistency; testing for parsimony; testing to avoid impediments to reasoned science; and testing for usefulness.
To me, a conceptualization about ultimates that is consistent with direct experience, that promotes good faith and good will, that is internally consistent, that does not impede science, and that does not posit more than is needed to fulfill its functions, can be useful to civilization.
*************
DETERMINATION AMONG ALLOWED PARAMETERS:
Out of all possible choices, that which determines what actually manifests is an expression of consciousness. But perhaps you are of the school of metaphysics that believes that all possibilities are somehow required to become manifest in some universe? In that case, I suppose it would be possible that you are an unconscious bot.
*************
MATTER IS NOT CONSCIOUS BUT AN EXPRESSION OF CONSCIOUSNESS:
I do not see the measurable universe as a conscious entity. I see it as the unfolding expression of a reconciliation of consciousness.
*****************
I don't have a problem with the idea of a multiverse, either way. I do see how such an idea may complicate the metaphysics (and it may sooth some minds that detest anthropic fine-tuning arguments) --- but I don't see how it advances the debate about whether consciousness would be a fundament to any expression of a measurable universe.
Regarding: "that ongoing multilevel eternal process could be termed in a broad definition god not the Judeo/Christian/Islamic entity" ---
MATTER IS NOT CONSCIOUS BUT AN EXPRESSION OF CONSCIOUSNESS:
I do not see the measurable universe as a conscious entity. I see it as the unfolding expression of a reconciliation of consciousness.
*****************
I don't have a problem with the idea of a multiverse, either way. I do see how such an idea may complicate the metaphysics (and it may sooth some minds that detest anthropic fine-tuning arguments) --- but I don't see how it advances the debate about whether consciousness would be a fundament to any expression of a measurable universe.
Regarding: "that ongoing multilevel eternal process could be termed in a broad definition god not the Judeo/Christian/Islamic entity" ---
God is God. So I do not take issue with that. I see the Christian concept of God as a metaphoric, conceptual way for inspiring people to come together in good faith and good will in respect of God. Human concepts are necessarily incomplete. They are conceptualizations, not ultimate truths. I doubt God feels confined by our conceptualizations.
******************
So-called social scientists seem to rationalize leaps of faith about social justice, critical race theory, white privilege, popular democracy, open borders, guaranteed minimum incomes, and on and on and on. All want to wrap themselves in the respect of "science." But I think they are engaging in leaps of faith (or leaps of self-justifying cynicism). Even so, I doubt it is possible to avoid developing a worldview about moral purposes --- regardless of how "physically real" such purposes may be.
REGARDING LEAPS OF FAITH:
People, at the level of conscious self awareness, make choices. They have no choice but to make choices. To be conscious and to try to not make a choice is itself a kind of choice. It is a choice to let events unfold without your positive involvement. Each such choice tends to be rationalized to a purpose. If the purpose is consistent with a person's character, it tends to be consistent with his moral code. Different societies tend to evolve to have different moral codes, such as with regard to diets, fashions, displays of deference or humility, work standards, and relationships among families, friends, and fraternities. Once a moral code is adopted, its adherents, in a shared leap of good faith, tend to respect it as entailing more worth than mere happenstance, that could reasonably be cast aside on a whim.
Moral codes that happen to survive, replicate, and spread tend to enjoy evolutionary advantages for their time-place. They will often entail inspiring stories and metaphors. Some of them will be partially reformulated and carried forward from one religion to the next. They tend to have value for helping societies assimilate and carry forward shared values, purposes, and mores. In some ways, they seem preferable to governmental force, especially as the government falls under control of cynical people-farmers.
Even if a moral code amounts to little more than an injunction, such as "be empathetic," that is a code. It is not a code required by dumb matter. Rather, it is a code that is adopted by a perspective of consciousness. Now, a skeptic may say, Well, there is nothing spiritually special about such a code. It is simply reflective of what happens to work to establish, sustain, and replicate a competitive and viable society. But a spiritualist will say, Yes, that is precisely the role for every morality-based assimilation among spiritually reflective perspectives of consciousness.
Even for science, we do not access ultimate non-trivial truths. Rather, we access models that we refine to make more and more practically reliable. But the fount of every such model depends on assumptions or axioms that in themselves may be subject to practical testing but not to ultimate proof. I suspect that even what we take as science may in some fields be subject to an effect akin to self-fulfilling prophecy. Technological approaches building on technological approaches.
IAE, a person cannot prove an axiom merely by assuming it. Deploying the axiom entails assumptions (leaps of faith). Such as, an assumption that the Sun will rise tomorrow, rather than be obliterated by some force from deep space. Or an assumption that an external force will not intrude to usher in a sudden and non-survivable phase shift. Or an assumption that your friends, business partners, or fellow citizens will remain loyal or reliable. Or that they will continue to share your purposes, values, patriotism, and mores.
However, people often break faith with one another. When they do, their victims sense the treachery. Such victims do not tend to say, Well, good faith is a fallacy anyway.
****************
******************
So-called social scientists seem to rationalize leaps of faith about social justice, critical race theory, white privilege, popular democracy, open borders, guaranteed minimum incomes, and on and on and on. All want to wrap themselves in the respect of "science." But I think they are engaging in leaps of faith (or leaps of self-justifying cynicism). Even so, I doubt it is possible to avoid developing a worldview about moral purposes --- regardless of how "physically real" such purposes may be.
REGARDING LEAPS OF FAITH:
People, at the level of conscious self awareness, make choices. They have no choice but to make choices. To be conscious and to try to not make a choice is itself a kind of choice. It is a choice to let events unfold without your positive involvement. Each such choice tends to be rationalized to a purpose. If the purpose is consistent with a person's character, it tends to be consistent with his moral code. Different societies tend to evolve to have different moral codes, such as with regard to diets, fashions, displays of deference or humility, work standards, and relationships among families, friends, and fraternities. Once a moral code is adopted, its adherents, in a shared leap of good faith, tend to respect it as entailing more worth than mere happenstance, that could reasonably be cast aside on a whim.
Moral codes that happen to survive, replicate, and spread tend to enjoy evolutionary advantages for their time-place. They will often entail inspiring stories and metaphors. Some of them will be partially reformulated and carried forward from one religion to the next. They tend to have value for helping societies assimilate and carry forward shared values, purposes, and mores. In some ways, they seem preferable to governmental force, especially as the government falls under control of cynical people-farmers.
Even if a moral code amounts to little more than an injunction, such as "be empathetic," that is a code. It is not a code required by dumb matter. Rather, it is a code that is adopted by a perspective of consciousness. Now, a skeptic may say, Well, there is nothing spiritually special about such a code. It is simply reflective of what happens to work to establish, sustain, and replicate a competitive and viable society. But a spiritualist will say, Yes, that is precisely the role for every morality-based assimilation among spiritually reflective perspectives of consciousness.
Even for science, we do not access ultimate non-trivial truths. Rather, we access models that we refine to make more and more practically reliable. But the fount of every such model depends on assumptions or axioms that in themselves may be subject to practical testing but not to ultimate proof. I suspect that even what we take as science may in some fields be subject to an effect akin to self-fulfilling prophecy. Technological approaches building on technological approaches.
IAE, a person cannot prove an axiom merely by assuming it. Deploying the axiom entails assumptions (leaps of faith). Such as, an assumption that the Sun will rise tomorrow, rather than be obliterated by some force from deep space. Or an assumption that an external force will not intrude to usher in a sudden and non-survivable phase shift. Or an assumption that your friends, business partners, or fellow citizens will remain loyal or reliable. Or that they will continue to share your purposes, values, patriotism, and mores.
However, people often break faith with one another. When they do, their victims sense the treachery. Such victims do not tend to say, Well, good faith is a fallacy anyway.
****************
No comments:
Post a Comment