That's the thing about the need of a lot of people to be awoken--and I don't mean that as an insult--to the reality that abusers and bad faith actors are taking advantage of them. It's a terrible fallacy. Cosby didn't need to trick anyone into liking him back then.

Could they both not be right.

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so thesis, antithesis, …

Cool take on the function of animism...

Yall say pessimist i say realist

> There's no doubt that over time, the human condition has been and is improving.

This is a completely arbitrary assessment. People belonging to societies wiped out might disagree. The billion or so undernourished people currently alive might disagree. The two billion without ready access to clean water might disagree. And even the people who drive to work and work to drive might disagree.

> Humans, on the other hand, are just as awful as they have ever been.

That might be harder to measure. But I'd tend to bet that people are worse now than they were during most of human existence.

All artists are human beings just like we are all in this debate. But if we truly look at ourselves in the mirror of Life we can reach the conclusion that no one is a saint. There is no need to separate art and artist; just like separating a carpenter from creating a wooden structure. Art must be beyond good and evil just like ourselves.

The key here is that Laplace's Demon doesn't know what an "otherwise" is. The Demon has no notion of possibility, no notion of an ability (something that "can" happen or that we "can" do). The Demon always knows what will happen and what we will do. If we want to know what will happen we can ask the Demon. But if we ask the Demon, "What can happen?", the Demon will not know what we are talking about. The Demon, being omniscient, has never had any reason to evolve the notion of a "possibility".

It is only because we are not omniscient, like Laplace's Demon, that we have evolved the notion of possibilities. The notion of possibility has these qualities:

1. A possibility exists solely within the imagination. We cannot drive a car across the possibility of a bridge. We can only drive across an actual bridge.
2. A possibility is an essential token for certain logical operations, such as planning, inventing, creating, and choosing. Without this token these operations become impossible. For example: We cannot build an actual bridge without first imagining a possible bridge.
3. Most possibilities will never happen. We may expect one possibility to happen, but we never expect them all to happen.
4. As soon as any possibility is realized, we cease calling it a "possibility" and immediately begin calling it an "actuality". A possibility is the opposite of an actuality.
5. There is a separate language and logic used when speaking in the context of possibilities versus the context of actualities. We smoothly switch from one context to the other when triggered by certain words. For example, when speaking of what "can" happen we are in the context of possibilities, but when speaking of what "is" or "will" happen, we are in the context of actualities.
6. When we know for certain what will happen, we do not use the word "can" or "possible" or "able" and other similar words. It is only when we do not know for certain what "will" happen that we switch to the context of possibilities and use words like "can" or "ability" or "could".

The choosing operation, like addition or subtraction, requires at least two inputs before it can begin. The inputs are called "options" and are logically assumed to be possible to choose. If we believe that we cannot choose an option or that we cannot carry out an option, then it is excluded for not being a "real" possibility. But any option that is choosable and realizable is considered a real possibility. There must, by logical necessity, be at least two real options before choosing can begin.

We must conclude from this that there will always be two inevitable outputs from every choosing operation: (1) The single option that we "will" choose and (2) at least one other option that we "could have" chosen but would not choose.

Thus, "could have done otherwise" will always be true, even though "would have done otherwise" will always be false.

Whenever we discuss what we "could have done", we are switching from the context of actualities to the context of possibilities, which leaves the real world behind and enters the imagination, where all possibilities exist. We are no longer speaking of what we "did" choose to do, but instead we are returning to that point in the past, where we had two or more things that we "could" choose to do. We may even be introducing to this imaginary scenario new possibilities which did not occur to us at the time. The point of this exercise is to evaluate our prior choices in order to make better choices in the future.

This is already a metaphysical position lol

The existence of anything metaphysical is implied by the existence of anything

>Germans who thought they'd figured it all out. Not the first, not the last.

What does that mean? Do you mean like Nietzsche?

What do we do about the unknown evils committed by artists whose artwork we admire? The implications of supporting an artist who ‘may’ have committed abhorrent acts is so great that maybe we must withhold all our judgements of all artwork so that we are never inadvertently supporting evils that we are unsure have occurred by the artists. We can never be too sure of how much of our appreciation of art is being showered upon the the right artists of high moral caliber, because they may be crypto-deplorable people in which we should withhold our praise indefinitely. Is this going too far or should we separate the artist from the artwork instead?

Should I have used weasel words like "many men"? I figured that went without saying. The purpose of the example is not to belittle anyone since I myself don't sympathize with the sentiment, it's to indicate where this analogy historically came from. Ironically I was drawing attention to its sexism - that men have historically set the terms of the meanings of words.

More importantly, do you disagree with the explanation of why "Luck" has been equated with "lady"? Because clearly this is a cultural pattern, and it seems to beg for a socio-cultural explanation.

Edit: I updated the post to be clearer about the intent.

Edit2: I felt bad about being abrasive and decided to change the language of my comment.

Analogy: "a comparison between two things, typically for the purpose of explanation or clarification".

Analogy doesn't mean metaphor. It is an attempt to connect two things. Another word people use is "copula" but that doesn't apply to similies.

I suspect you didn't stop reading because of that. You stopped reading because you suspected this was going to be a science-bashing piece. I hope you decide to give the post another shot.

Edit: I felt bad about my abrasive language and changed it.

What you’re suggesting is training your brain to replace one shortcut with another. Once your brain is conditioned, you have no control over the perception. You’re intentionally trolling Reddit for things to argue about with the limited knowledge you learned watching YouTube.

Renny Descartes was a drunken fart who was just as sloshed as Schlagel

Well, it's 2023, and there's a barbaric war in Eastern Europe right now between two Slavic countries. Could Mr Schopenhauer be onto something, by any chance?

Oh yeah, let's trust in stuff that feels good.

That's funny but makes sense too.

Believe it or not, the reality is even spicier than that. When Schopenhauer was applying for a lecturer position at the university, one of requirements was to deliver an oral presentation (if I'm not wrong the subject was his PhD thesis) which would be evaluated in front of a committee. Hegel was one of the three members of the committee and in fact Hegel's vote ended up being decisive for Schopenhauer to be approved. Hegel was pretty much totally indifferent towards Schopenhauer during his tenure as a lecturer, even though Schop quarrelled with a lot of people there.

This does not address anything I said.

The fact that your brain interprets sensory data does not tell us about what the affect of aestheticism has on your view of art (in fact, the latter presupposes the former). It’s like if I made a comment about literature, and you pointed out “well your eyes take in light, you know”.

If you “looked into psychology”, you’d understand that cognitive behavioral therapy, for instance, involves altering mental models which results in altered perceptions.

Which two examples weren't analogies?

As a pessimist myself, naturally I find it highly attractive in others. It’s more unusual to come across though because everyone else is trying to adopt more positive frameworks, but that doesn’t necessarily work for everyone. Somehow we view it as a moral failing so it makes sense you would try to escape it, but I find a sort of comfort, refreshing honesty, and even humour in pessimistic philosophy... beautiful and uplifting on the contrary.

I like to think of it like this: your thoughtful-self is a pinball. Your body is the pinball machine (which includes the pinball). The player of pinball you can think of as any of the following: the big bang, your parents at moment of conception, the entire universe and its contents. From the perspective of the pinball you know only that you are rolling around maybe on a trajectory, maybe seemingly at random, all over the place, no apparent cause. But your body subconsciously is a very controlled space with a lot of clearly defined physical rules that actually place your thoughts wherever they are at any moment. And of course, the drivers of all of those bodily events are all things our body interacts with.

Metaphysical is a concept created by a mind, we have no reason to think there is anything metaphysical in the first place. It needs to be demonstrated that there is such thing as "metaphysical", as well as "essence" and other similar terms, before it can even be considered as a reasonable position to hold. We can debate about it, philosophize about it, but holding any positive or firm beliefs about the existence of anything metaphysical would be illogical until it can be demonstrated to have substance or standing as a legitimate part of our reality.