MSC

Oh it's relavent but you really really should have read it. Honestly if you're not going to read stuff before claiming it supports what you say then you're not arguing in good faith as far as I'm concerned. I mean if you won't even read what you share, how can anyone expect you to be willing to read what anyone else shares? I'm going to suggest that you read Cohen's preface to logic. You probably won't, but there is the suggestion. You've fooled yourself into thinking you actually know what you're talking about. You have a grasp on some philosophy but it's not very well structured or consistent because the more you speak, the more you contradict thing's you've previously said, betraying a lack of understanding of some topics and how they relate to subjects you have some understanding of. This is one of those situations where the only one looking at shadows on the cave wall and is calling it reality, is you. If you were to put a name to your belief structures and philosophical ideologies, what would that be? To be fair, he seems to have a habit of diluting his own thinking closer to meaninglessness the more he speaks so of course he'd expect us to redefine it that way!

Above good. Below bad. When I said earlier to stop trying to be smart, I said so because you are obviously intelligent and some of your writing has insight, nothing I've not heard before but better insight than you get from your average joe. The problems start when your ego starts to outstrip your ability to articulate insight and you get caught up in trying to convince us you're smart when you really don't have to. Not saying this to put you down at all but to help you succeed, and there are plenty of people here who know I am speaking from experience when it comes to my ego outstripping my ability to articulate insight and I'd get caught up in trying to prove how smart I was, by putting so much weight into everything I said, even the bullshit. Then I'd take it personally when people called out said bs, flame out and get temporarily banned from posting here for long periods of time. Okay, why this was bad? Because you've crushed me down into a single point in space to my Schwarzchild radius and I've turned into a very small black hole. Not cool. As for the rest of it, 2 things, go on youtube and type in "Crow documentary" then go on google scholar to find out what linguists actually have to say on bird language(cue the IASIP bird law meme). You'll see generational learning in the crow documentary and that they can solve puzzles and mimic human speech. Why? Well because the linguists say birds have language. In a nutshell. Oh no I'm so sorry, half of my response was to you, the other half was to cladking. You've said nothing that has bothered me at all and my tone towards you was always meant to come across as more pleasant and collaborative. You're smart Luc, seriously those comments were for Cladking. He's smart too, just less secure about believing it enough to be himself. Being smart and trying to look smart are very different and you haven't done the latter as far as I can tell, you're just enthusiastically engaging with the subject as best you can which is the best all of us can do. Like most discussions in philosophy, this one has and will rage for a long time still. Forrest Gump famously said "Stupid is as stupid does." Which applies to being smart too. But what he means is, you're only stupid while doing stupid things and only smart while doing smart things. Otherwise you're just you.

Who defines lower? We are sort of in the same bandcamp where animals thinking is concerned, however if asked to point to conclusive evidence that they do in fact think based on empirical standards, I'd say I don't know any. So there are some caveats, linguistic thinking and impressionistic emotional thinking ought to be differentiated here. I have some reasonable certainty that the deductive case for; other animals do have some capacity to think, is based on deductive reasoning about motivations for animal behaviour and basic mathematical probability. Do birds tweet or whistle their tunes in their heads? Do whales sing their songs in their heads and take time to think up lyrics? Can a dolphin have an internal dialogue? Does my dog dream? Billions of current and past species and sub species of all shapes and sizes and the ability to think is confined to one species? The furthest I'd go, is to say that the burden of proof is on saying they don't think, since I'd wager that the best models that would constitute what thinking is, are in line with the behaviour we observe in some forms of life. A) You weren't arguing that animals could think at all on the previous page of the thread. Now you're flipflopping. B) And what experiment are you talking about precisely? Oh and don't say the double slit experiment. Our looking at reality isn't what defines it, how reality is, is what defines it. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum phenomena implies that the problem lies in our ability to perceive reality as it is, leading to the phenomena seen in the double slit experiment. My explanation is very poor tbh this isn't my area of expertise at all. I recall reading once about something called the quantum eraser experiment lending credence to the Copenhagen interpretation. Will try find the links this weekend. Unless someone else here wants to explain that stuff, it's beyond me and hurts my brain. Can you provide any clarity in the form of a paper you've read or something anything that will help me figure out what you're trying to say? Stop trying to be smart and just be yourself... also reread the rules around providing sources when asked while understanding you are more than welcome to ask the same of others.

So unlike other life, you're saying humans thoughts are often preoccupied with just one subject or interest? Because that's what a "one track mind" is. Anyone able to make it make sense? I dislike when people try and pass off word salads as absolute.

You literally claimed earlier that you believe only humans can think and are now backtracking with a word salad and not even an appetising one. Define axiomatic. How do you imitate an internal brain process? Is it self evident to a dog that we think too? Logic is a particle now? 🤨 All I can say is that what you are saying, doesn't make as much sense aa you think it does and isn't consistent in having a point.

Your response above is very at odds with your response below. The one above sounds silly, while the last paragraph of the response below sounds like it's coming from a person smart enough not to say things like "there are no laws of nature" mere paragraphs away from saying truth and logic exist. As for what you said about us all being a product of our beliefs, which comes first? Our experience of an event, or a belief about that experience?

There are definitely claims here that require evidence. You've not convinced me that a hungry bear would not or could not think that we'd both make a tasty meal and believe it to be true enough to try to take a bite. If you want to link consciousness to thought, instead of the awareness of thought, that's fine. To believe that animals are not similarly endowed, because you won the evolutionary jackpot of linguistic expression through the right vocal chords, dexteritous fingers and thumbs etc; that to me just reeks of an unjustifiable anthroprocentrism on shaky grounds. Especially since the bear is privy to a world of scent perception that you and I could never begin to understand. We literally cannot have the same thoughts about scent, that a bear can. If you want to carry on down the wiring route, bears have brain wiring and some mammals have more complex brain wiring than we do. Whales and Dolphins are good examples. Maybe it's better to think of consciousness in terms of degree, rather than type.

While I understand why you said this, I just want to nip it in the bud. This is the Philosophy section of a Science Forum. In philosophy though, there are some standards for at least backing up your line of thinking by supplying some references to someone else who's line of thinking is in line with or strengthens your own. The idea here is that if you believe you are arguing on the side of what is true, if you're failing to convince someone of it, it's because you're not explaining it in a way that your conversational counterpart can understand or accept, assuming they are arguing in good faith, which is polite to assume until proven otherwise. Sometimes, someone else said what you wanted to say, better. - Rene Descartes The above is a small example. Depending on the topic, more than 1 line is expected. You'd be shocked at how many people could get a decent grade on a philosophy paper, where the majority of the text is references to other texts.

Wow! Lots to catch up on! Thanks for all the contributions to the discussion (Even you Dim, maybe especially you!). Will have some responses for y'all tonight. Dw about off-topics too much for now, so long as whatever you're discussing is something that aids in your understanding of reality and your existence and we can put a pin in anything interesting that comes up that should split off into it's own thread.

Thank you so much! Yeah I'm doing just a section of the trail from Massachusetts to Maine. Trying to find a trail partner too. I'm especially grateful in regards to the water filter advice and protozoa warning.

Planning to hike a section of the trail, wanted to get advice from someone who has been on it before and since other social media platforms are flaming piles of garbage... y'all are the only folks I'll trust for sound advice.

Who is they? Kind of get the feeling you're just here to troll.

Completely understand. I hope your recovery goes well. Definitely don't push it, we're a patient lot here... well @dimreepr isn't, but the rest of us are!

Please tell me you did this? Also can you do the same thing but in Almonds?

Yup. Especially the newer smart devices with voice recognition and activation software. Only way for those to work, is for the mic to always be on waiting for the magic catchphrase. "Alexa! Stop listening to me!" Does not work. All it takes is a pipeline for that mic data to get to advertising platforms. I imagine if we go and take a look at the fine print on some of terms and conditions on AI assistants and different software, there is probably a bit about agreeing to the mic always being on, but that gets tied to the data they sell and if we've agreed to them using that data... I mean data is a pretty broad term when you think about the amount of sensors in these things. By agreeing to the use of your data, it's pretty all encompassing. If soul were just defined as the part of you that exists externally to you, it's data. I mean obviously if you want to use voice activation technology you've just gotta have a hot mic. No way around that without engineering some other conditional for an on/off switch (flip phones that have mic off when closed, mic on in use.) I'm gonna do a social media, data driven advertising and influencer culture thread soon. If people are gonna bite the hand that hosts these discussions, better to have a discussion about the larger issues and the actual problem cases. A grounded and structured science based forum doing what it needs to do to get by and pay for it's maintenance and server needs, isn't even a molehill let alone a mountain. YouTube, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok. Those are some mountains to talk about.

Yup. Especially the newer smart devices with voice recognition and activation software. Only way for those to work, is for the mic to always be on waiting for the magic catchphrase. "Alexa! Stop listening to me!" Does not work. All it takes is a pipeline for that mic data to get to advertising platforms. I imagine if we go and take a look at the fine print on some of terms and conditions on AI assistants and different software, there is probably a bit about agreeing to the mic always being on, but that gets tied to the data they sell and if we've agreed to them using that data... I mean data is a pretty broad term when you think about the amount of sensors in these things. By agreeing to the use of your data, it's pretty all encompassing. If soul were just defined as the part of you that exists externally to you, it's data. I mean obviously if you want to use voice activation technology you've just gotta have a hot mic. No way around that without engineering some other conditional for an on/off switch (flip phones that have mic off when closed, mic on in use.) I'm gonna do a social media, data driven advertising and influencer culture thread soon. If people are gonna bite the hand that hosts these discussions, better to have a discussion about the larger issues and the actual problem cases. A grounded and structured science based forum doing what it needs to do to get by and pay for it's maintenance and server needs, isn't even a molehill let alone a mountain. YouTube, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok. Those are some mountains to talk about.

Actually that makes sense. My ex converted to the church of latter day saints and I've hosted their missionaries for dinner and sometimes had to google something to do with their beliefs. It's not you science forum, it's me. Sometimes I swear the algorithms are getting data from our phones mics though, there have been more than a few occasions where we have definitely not keyword searched or clicked on anything related to something we've talked about and all of a sudden... it pops up, unless it can also make predictions about what people are going to be thinking or discussing? Either prospect is creepy as hell.

Some of the ads are also pretty... tasteless or just don't fit the venue of a science forum. I had one telling me my guardian angel was watching over me, but since it was an ad I couldn't comment asking it to provide hard evidence of angels. no fair!

Mate it's pure cauld here ken!?You try havin aw the baw shrinkage that comes wi wearing a kilt, ya mad wee rocket. Bolt!

Yup, the USA in particular even has it's subtle prejudice towards non Americans who are "white", until we open our mouths. Not as bad as the treatment of the groups you mentioned, but still there. Then you have the very generalised european stereotypes and caricatures some Americans believe in. It does come up in police interactions but how can vary, sometimes positively like I've had a cop be very kind and informal with me because I'm from Scotland but also have had the assumption that this means I'm an alcoholic or keep a kilt at home...

Exactly, that is what the cameras are for. Whether that's the officers own bodycams or the cameras of civilians during their encounters with police. Video documentation from many angles is what gives investigations more clarity. I do understand where you're coming from though, where a youtube auditor is being a complete ass and escalating things needlessly for views and likes, I've seen those videos, but I've also seen plenty where the audit was warranted. Also police aren't required to wear body cams in every jurisdiction. Berwyn PD in Illinois as an example doesn't wear body cams and they have a lot of abuse of power allegations against them. Illinois has cop watcher laws that make it a right to film the police in their public duties. Why? Because a lot of PDs are still not adopting bodycams. And some cops straight up turn off their cameras and hide their badge numbers still sooooo.... what are people expected to do? If they were trustworthy in the first place nobody would feel the need to point cameras at them and no civilian is to know if it's a good or corrupt cop in front of them. Assuming either is ignorant. Always be cautious when interacting with police officers.

I believe almost any group of humans is going to be made up of individuals with and without questionable ethics. True of police, true of auditors hell it's even true of killers because some of them killed out of self defense, not malice. If you're suggesting the act of auditing the police to be morally questionable, then I think that's ignotant. Everyone in a position of public care requires oversight, checks and balances and corruption does exist soooo? We done with this discussion now?

If only Elon was competent enough to make a name stick, tweettweet lol Have been, it was clearly a dude. Even if it had been hard to tell, I think folks would forgive me misgendering a criminal whom is without recourse lol That said, I'd actually love to see cops interviewing someone trying to get out of a mugging charge because the victim misgendered them!

Yeah, that makes sense. Although I do feel that on an individual level as a citizen of a high consuming nation, the scale of the overconsumption problem (because as you've made clear, a 10billion transitional phase followed by a organic population reduction, isn't much of a problem) is daunting and the expectation of purchaser power being a deciding factor, is at odds with what we know about consumer behaviour and human nature. Corporate policy structures are much more maleable and quicker to change than human nature is. I think there are plenty of people who are aware they are part of the problem that wish to be part of the solution and some who are actively being part of the solution while stuck being part of the problem, at a small scale. I fall into the daunted category and unsure of what I can do to convince people to not only consume less, but to switch to more ethical sources for what they do consume when large corporations have cornered the affordability market so that most who live paycheck to paycheck, have nowhere else to go but to the companies that not only consume the most, enable individual overconsumption on a massive scale. Apologies if I'm getting off topic and overconsumption needs it's own thread, I guess I just agree with you that overpopulation isn't really problem provided there are no large shifting changes in fertility rates or lifespans.

Greater than zero lol what's the point of this line of questioning for you?