Interesting article. We are here for such a short time, hopefully we did some good along that path

Always nice to hear what the ancient philosopher thought. The idea that a human worth living is one that can fulfill its function is an interesting one. I appreciate its avoidance of the extremes on either side of the argument but I don’t think it’s quite enough as it could exclude the disabled from having a life worth living.

Thanks for the report

This is going to get brutal, but I believe that if a person’s entire existence on earth harms other people, then the world would be better off without that person existing (i.e. life imprisonment or death).

In my opinion, a tyrant should be assassinated if they perpetrate crimes against humanity, crimes against their own people, and show no ability to ever step back from such horrific acts. It would have been wonderful if someone could have killed Hitler earlier on in his mad run of power.

This then gets to the utilitarian realm of discussion: does the well-being of many outweigh the death of one? If some world leader was about to launch a nuclear weapon, I would be happy to hear their life was immediately put to an end. I would “celebrate” that day for the rest of my life, and teach my kids about the moment.

At some point, we get to this notion of self defense. The individual has the right to self defense, and society has the right to “self defense”, essentially now through the justice systems of the world.

What I wonder is, what is the net value to society when people believe they "got revenge" on a criminal / "they got what they deserved" / some notion of "we are happy the wrongdoers are suffering"

I truly wonder myself if that type of thinking promotes a safer society with less harmful criminal acts. Of course we MUST balance this with the sense of rehabilitation and reduction in recidivism.

Personally I believe the justice system should strive to fully rehabilitate and integrate offenders into society whenever possible, but still punish those who committed atrocious acts like rape, murder, violent robbery or home invasion.

Does anyone believe that the universe preserves itself just as how humans do?

Personally, I think that since humans preserves themselves, animals preserve themselves, cells preserve themselves, RNAs preserves themselves, that probably all things preserve themselves just by being themselves. Likewise the universe preserves itself just by being itself. So this is probably one of infinite timelines. Does something change in the future? IDK, but there’s always gonna be another one.

This is based on an assumption though. I can’t see there being nothing forever since there is currently something and this must have come from something, nothing, itself atleast right? I mean, I am here currently…

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Alright, but what is the point of DNA replicating itself. I wonder about DNA and if it made the decision to keep itself alive. It became aware of its own existence and perpetrated it. If not, then we’re did the self Replication start. If we follow it, particles would therefore attempt to maintain their state and form larger particles as a product of their maintaining. So, if particles maintain themselves, then, is the Big Bang, an attempt at the universe maintaining itself infinitely (assuming another one starts after the end of this universe).

I find it hard to follow the person maintaining themselves to the DNA as I have no concept of DNA’s consciousness just the idea that some RNA self replicate. States return to maximum entropy. The most stable form of the system. When everything is stable though, nothing will happen, or maybe something does happen in stability. In stability, one movement could mean a massive reaction.

Thank you. I think Musk's proposal with Neuralink will separate the old and new race of humans. This and genetic modification, trans-humanism, cybernetics, etc. A forced "evolutionary" adapt or die decision for people to make. This ends free will and independent consciousness, so any risk of resistance or revolution. The one's who don't adapt, simply go extinct.

On the economy, automation would drastically reduce a necessity for large populations. Their mission is a self replicating system, for their personal enjoyment. Robots which build and maintain their own numbers. The consumptive resources (carbon) required for human labor, they'd rather cut out altogether.

Once a monopoly amasses every scrap of resource possible, their purpose no longer becomes profit (which only has advantages when there is a free market to compete in), but maintenance of control.

I think Brave New World is one side of their vision. We can see it plainly in modern culture, along with 1984's mass surveillance, open air prison grid. There's too much evidence they see the population as property to be done away with once they've reached their desired end.

The market system has worked favorably for major corporations to consolidate from thousands in free competition into a handful, thanks to cronyism. "Competition is a sin." The majority of working capital in a few hands, and the working class living hand to mouth (the little capital they possess funneled back into conglomerate bank indices), there's an ever intensifying cartel system.

Capital has concentrated to the point where the market becomes a monopoly, which puts people in utter dependence. If AI eats the lunch of the remaining free market (small-mid business), there is no advantage for capital to maintain a high or growing population, as they've already achieved complete domination. They would rather have a small manageable number of the most destitute and compliant, which is why war and immigration from the poorest nations is Western hegemony's number one priority. And we see from every "democratic" country, policy to decimate native birthrates through cultural and legislative genocide.

Again, evolution is not a hypothesis. Also the burden of proof is on the one making the positive claim about a god. Also you need to do some research on what the theory of evolution actually is I think you are quite confused about what it is.

Do you guys have any good podcast recs?

I've listened to a rendition of the Republic. I've also listened to Understanding... By Laurence Houlgate. Both of his series are absolutely incredible.

I don't mind incredibly dry so long as it inspires thought.

Hey, I learned a new term today!

Anyway, don't social studies pretty much do the tea leaf adoption? The definition I keep hearing from practitioners for what makes a science (paraphrase: a body of knowledge that agrees within itself in order to make predictions) is the same one Llewellyn George used in the early 20th century to show astrology is a science, and it actually works.

Interesting read. I’m intrigued by the idea that intoxication is an inability to classify experience according to the laws of nature. If we approach an intoxicant like this can’t we (at least potentially) go hog-wild reclassifying our experiences to find a new-ish flavor of being for us individually? Isn’t that a well established idea? The whole thing of “blah, weed makes me creative?”

It's not meaningless, it's a gradient, not binary. Some methods of acquiring knowledge are more or less scientific, and of course some things are completely unscientific.

To simplify, we might imagine a scale from 0% science to 100% science, and different forms of learning or belief fall at different points on the scale. From that viewpoint scientism is the claim that knowledge perfectly correlates with that scale, and anti-scientism is the idea that there are forms of learning which are low, maybe even 0 on the science scale, yet high in knowledge.

If you push the definition of science to such a degree - then yes, you can mostly justify "scientism" (although I still think there a couple exceptions with experience).

However, if you push the definition that much - it becomes an almost meaningless term. Almost any form of learning and/or belief becomes "science".

This is not what people (like me) who oppose the mindset of scientism are targeting. And this is not what the people who promote scientism are saying.

I see it as more of a gradient. There isn't a clear delineation between "doing science" and "not doing science." But when we do science we use all of those methods.

Let's say I make a logical deduction, which you claim is not science. But my conclusion becomes a hypothesis. Then, throughout my life I have experiences related to my hypothesis, and I recognize patterns in my experiences. Then I compare the patterns in my experience to my original logical conclusion. That's science.

They are used in scientific fields, but not every use of them is "science". You aren't "doing science" every time you make a simple logical deduction or appeal to the best explanation.

Those are all things that science also does, so I guess I don't see them as being separate.

Wrong, given that a scientific theory must be both experimental and falsifiable, and the hypothesis of evolution is neither. Evolutionists infer common ancestry, leading back to the first cell, which was composed randomly through time and chance. There is no way to test this hypothesis throgh experimentation, making it unfalsifiable. Evolutionists assume it's true based upon their preconception about God, namely that he does not exist, which is another hypothesis they presume to be true, yet have no evidence for.

Know that God loves you, but it's on his terms.

How can intent exist without free will?

I'm mostly convinced that criticisms of "scientism" are, for the most part, essentially about politics and have little meaningful to say about knowledge.

Alcohol's great danger is that it is a displacement activity, robbing us of the time that could be spent on meaningful pursuits and gradually taking over until it can often become the primary but inferior outlet for private actions.

-Experience (which is inescapable, even science is filtered through our experience)

-Logical deduction

-Appeal to best/simplest explanation

-Intuitive comparison of patterns to what is already known

They were trendsetters in many regards though, especially the broader circle, e.g. Schleiermacher in Theology, the Schlegel brothers in Literature, Schelling, Hegel and Fichte specifically in Philosophy. That was a really interesting time to say the least.