Phi for All

1 hour ago, nec209 said:

Is having money and wealth a sin? Did God hate money and wealth?

The Christian god's son thought it might be easier to thread a needle with a camel than for a rich person to get into Heaven. Can't see how a "Christian" feels good about amassing enormous personal wealth while fellow people starve. 

16 hours ago, MigL said:

Never thought of it that way.
I do remember the old saying
"No one ever got rich by doing an honest day's work"

I just heard someone do the math to show that the average McDonald's employee would have to work for 3000 years to earn what the McDonald's CEO made in 2017.

PatrickStar and MichaelLewis have been banned as sockpuppets trying to manipulate discussion for personal gain.

13 minutes ago, MichaelLewis said:

Like I said... it's all about the view count...  Guess I am just an attention whore after all...

On 8/10/2024 at 7:54 AM, KJW said:

I think billionaires is the new millionaires.

I hope this isn't the general sentiment. It isn't possible to be a billionaire (US) without unethically exploiting many aspects of the free market. You've probably heard the math by now. We pretend your "position" pays you $1 every second you're alive. That's $60 a minute, $3600 an hour, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. At that rate it takes a little more than 11 days for you to become a millionaire. At the same rate, it takes just short of 32 years to become a billionaire. If you have multiple billions of dollars, you have it at the expense of many, many people. You've used your money to do things nobody should be allowed to use their money to do, you avoided paying your fair share of taxes, and underpaid those who actually did the work you got paid so much for.

31 minutes ago, JohnDBarrow said:

My dream is not a 1997 Honda Civic.

It's ironic that your attitude about cars and driving in general, including all the complaints, are often the very source of heavy traffic, the thing that makes most of us hate driving. Meta-studies have shown that the cause of traffic is simple: brake lights. Stepping on your brakes takes energy out of the system and signals others who see you to do the same. Who causes more people to step on their brakes? People who focus on their own needs and comforts while driving, rather than reading the road conditions and cooperating with the drivers around them.

Driving such a mass of metal at high speeds is dangerous if you're inconsiderate. If driving were dancing, it shouldn't be break dancing or disco, it should be ballroom dancing, where you need to cooperate and make it easy for others to enjoy doing what you're also doing right next to them.

Your dream car sounds like you favor competition over cooperation. My CIVIC helps my society. Make sure your BARROW doesn't put you in an early grave.

There are only a couple of things on that list that are objective, that don't rely on your personal preferences (which interest me NOT AT ALL). Some of them seem downright dumb, like being "neatly constructed". You mention Tucker in the title, then apparently change your mind and just start listing things you like. 

One of the few objective listings is "American-built", but I'm guessing you're an anti-union person, so I can also guess you want this car dirt cheap and don't care if the workers aren't paid well, as long as the car is practical and quiet and roomy and good-looking enough for you.

Your dream is basically my 1997 Honda Civic, built here in the US.

2 hours ago, npts2020 said:

Why is judging necessarily placing oneself above another? I don't want to speak for Phi but I suspect they would expect to be banned themselves for doing the things others get banned for...

Sensei is purposely confusing judgement with enforcing established rules. He didn't like something I wrote in another thread, and seems to be hyperfixating. I wouldn't worry about it.

On the whole, the Abrahamic religions want us to view the father as infallible and all powerful, while the rest of us are stacked up against our weaknesses and judged accordingly. And since this god is unobservable, all the earthly judgement is dispensed by humans. A flawed process for judging flawed people.

1 hour ago, Trurl said:

What makes the cosmos so inspiring? Understanding it is one thing, but I think what makes it so inspiring is the deeper meaning.

Observing what goes on in the universe isn't inspiring for everyone, I get it. With a god, you get to make it up, so it can be as deeply meaningful as you want. Very deep, very meaningful. Infinitely so, if you choose.

16 hours ago, Trurl said:

Smart doesn’t mean anything. But he was reflective in his writings. He had to feel his life was blessed.

Smart means a LOT when it comes to personal beliefs. It seems like the ones most closely held are the most fragile and sacred, unable to withstand the light of scrutiny. Those types of beliefs don't seem smart at all to me. They wither when challenged, and are only fed by unquestioning faith. 

I think Einstein was too smart to believe in miracles. The cosmos itself is so incredibly awe-inspiring that just being part of it naturally is enough, and we don't need supernatural entities to explain anything.

Dave has been on holiday, and today he's back and will have a chance to take a look at this, see if we can't make it right.

5 minutes ago, graybear13 said:

Just because you can not understand it doesn't mean that it is not timeless truth (truth that doesn't change when conditioned by time).

3 minutes ago, Sensei said:

Not many people, at the same time, that is, if you are watching a TV screen, you don't have time to read (especially technical/scientific articles that require special attention).

I wasn't talking about ability, but about how someone spends their (free) time.

It was not a prejudice, but a joke. Play of words. And true one. It applies to every nation. But Americans have one of the largest shares of Netflix (53% of U.S. homes had a subscription in 2022, which is counted in tens of millions). If you spend all your free time after work after school watching episode after episode, you don't have time for anything else, including reading valuable (or not valuable) things. You don't have to be a genius to understand this.

Ah, OK. Cheap dig, then. Got it. Thanks for the generalizations. You so great.

8 hours ago, Sensei said:

Most Americans don't read. They have Netflix..

And some can do both. Curb your prejudice, please.

5 hours ago, julius2 said:

My model says that a universe - ie planets and stars - form after a Big Bang. But the thing is that this is actually a "mashup" of times from before. Where the times are like vectors - rather than many spherical objects in it.

Does your model say this, or do you? A good model is based on reliable observations and should SHOW how the explanation is formulated with as little assumption as possible. I don't think you can model something from before our observational abilities begin. You aren't modeling, you're guessing. 

40 minutes ago, ITRB said:

I left Islam in 1999.

Islam and Judaism is similar to each other and are ant-humanity and are male-ism and are ant-woman and are anti-art and are anti-sience and they have taught and have recommended to slavery and enslave and violence.

One God theism have been made for one-king dictatorships.

On the whole, this has been my experience. The vertical morality bothers me a great deal as well, judging others to place yourself above them.

13 hours ago, Michael McMahon said:

So one way to think of slow-wave sleep is like nuclear fusion where each half of the brain shares ideas in one timeline.

11 hours ago, Michael McMahon said:

Determinists assume they’re better at determinism than the free will advocates fathoming evil against determinism knowing that the might of the material world can withstand evil! So determinists might risk falling for bait where chaos theory isn’t technically required by time-travelling versions of sleep even if it’s offered as a concession. So when you ponder if your mental decisions can be predicted if God knew the movement of every atom in the universe then surely it’d be much easier to predict the movements of your neurons if you knew the position and charge of every neuron in a brain scan.

7 hours ago, joebialek said:

Former president Trump, you had four years to lead the United States and failed us by your own choosing.   Whether it be in foreign policy or domestic policy, you did not protect the nation as commander in chief.

It seems clear now that he didn't expect to win. He was counting on losing to Clinton, so he and Steve Bannon could start their own media empire based on the outrage of a stolen election. He and his people knew nothing about protecting the nation. His son-in-law asked the outgoing Obama administration how many of them would be staying on. They had zero clues about how difficult the job was, and how the process requires knowledgeable people at every level.

And it sounds like Project 2025 favors loyalty over capabilities, so no real changes there. Dismantling a democracy takes time, even if you have a good portion of the country helping you with all the hate.

19 minutes ago, Tegmark said:

What if I told you...

On a science discussion forum, an extraordinary claim needs some extraordinary evidence to support it, so I'd definitely ask you for some.

On 8/3/2024 at 9:41 AM, dimreepr said:

You could ask for clues, which is kinda the point of cryptically; not my fault that you don't understand the language...

Is that the point? I usually reject the premise that you hold all the philosophical answers and we're simply asking you the wrong questions. 

2 hours ago, MigL said:

All I'm trying to say is, if you don't like Harris/Shapiro, you can vote them out in 4 years; you may not be able to with Trump/Vance. You may "never need to vote again".

So good to know! Meanwhile, Harris' running mate hasn't been chosen, so I'm going to continue discussing her options. Brace yourself, I may be critical.

5 minutes ago, julius2 said:

The pretence is that there was time before the Big Bang.

12 hours ago, MigL said:

Now is not the time to start questioning our candidates; the Republicans will do that soon enough.

I disagree. The time to question the candidates is ALWAYS before they become candidates.

9 hours ago, StringJunky said:

Shapiro is being like a good scientist: changing his position with the mounting evidence.

I hope this is the case. It would help distinguish him from Vance, who is obviously changing his tune strictly because his new stance benefits him better.

On 8/1/2024 at 2:45 PM, joigus said:

I think the problem with the multiverse is how to make it a predictive idea. How to take it to the testing grounds of... well, the testing grounds.

Is gravity allegedly common to all these universes, or does each have it's own unique distribution of mass, fundamental laws, etc? Could a gravitational wave act as a signal from this universe to another?