That first sentence. What weak and pathetic English is everyone using? Declarative? Imperative? Does anyone not know that if we allow English to become ALL business language then words will become a subscription set for stupid people that we corral into crunch patterns?

I lament the lack of intelligent language users.

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He's not asking for a source as in argumentation; he's asking you to back up the claim that most philosophers agree that IQ is not a good measure of intelligence.

This man has a heavy namesake to live up to.

https://www.jotform.com/blog/40-terrific-works-of-art-made-from-common-trash/

I don't know the depths of his work beyond arguing for metaphysical idealism, but I research psychedelic drugs and his argument here is completely wrong.

> No, I am not kidding. Blue represents decreased brain activity. I didn’t create this figure; I downloaded it from the paper in question. Here is the direct link if you want to check it. Contrary to what the researchers claim in their reply, the findings in this paper weren’t “only modest increases in brain blood flow confined to the visual cortex”; they were of widespread decreases in activity throughout the brain.

If you actually look at the figure you see reductions in alpha activity, which would indicate increased brain activity as alpha rhythms are suppressive.

Not citing a paper here but quick copy/paste from wikipedia:

> Alpha waves are reduced with open eyes and sleep, while they are enhanced during drowsiness. Historically, they were thought to represent the activity of the visual cortex in an idle state. More recent papers have argued that they inhibit areas of the cortex not in use, or alternatively that they play an active role in network coordination and communication.

Kastrup ignores this and just states blue = less activity. He also proceeded to die on this hill and continue to try to engage in debate with actual scientists that understand EEG.

If he's this arrogant about fields he's uneducated about I'm not so interested in his philosophy.

Isn't it a bit of a blanket generalisation to depart from? Probably depends on which strains you follow?

Hi I’m looking for a philosopher who is concerned with the following work: the idea that it’s impossible to put a label on yourself because thoughts don’t have physical properties. I hope I’ve explain that well enough. Do any philosophers do work about this idea?

>But in light of our real challenges ALL those "internal purposes" are secondary or even tertiary. Who gives AF if a state 'has done its job just fine' when harvests are failing due to a forever-unhospitable nature.

I agree completely.

>Democracy might be good or not so good at tackling its own aspirations. But while it does, it is using up attention, trust, time, and resources.

I think one problem might be that the "democracy" we have today is a pretty limited and inflexible version of it. Certainly, the liberal capitalist model seems to have failed.

>And my implicit/suggested value (collectively binding decision structures should solve the most important collective challenges) is "external" to all that; it evaluates the political system not by its own self assessment, but by its objective failure - not having changed the apocalyptic direction of society. > >By that criterion, (also) the democratic ideology is failing us miserably. And that made me say "not functioning properly".

That makes sense.

Ignoring the issue of implementation (naturally), what is it that forms the base failure of our systems? Is it lack of awareness of material reality, i.e. ecology, physics, and so on? Is it the manipulating media and social superstructures that restrict imagination and shunt thought into preexisting lanes of inquiry? Some mix of both?

It's entirely possible that humans, as we are, just aren't wired for making decisions at this scale and complexity. But something about that feels wrong, given how fantastic the diversity of human social adaptations has historically been. We can shape a social reality to produce almost any result- the only question is if that can be done in a way that helps us end up in the best possible place during this ongoing crisis.

Certainly religious traditions all have some sort of eschatological collapse in their narratives (with many hoping in a renewal the other side as well).

I think on the scientific / humanist side we've seen the following all come and go as apocalyptic concerns that never played out as they were originally prophesied:

• Fear of overpopulation / food scarcity
• Fossil fuel scarcity
• Nuclear war
• Ice age
• The original round of global warming concerns in the 80s and 90 (after the ice age scare ended). Most of it in the 80s and 90s said we'd be hosed by now)

That doesn't mean that existential threats to humanity can't exist just because we seem to be horrible at actually identifying them and rarely factor in continued scientific development and improvements.

“For the first time in human history, our fate is almost entirely in our hands. But our ethics has hardly progressed since the Greeks and our biology and psychology is the same as our hunter-gatherer ancestors: we are nepotistic, tribalist free riders prone to violence and fanaticism who hold a causal sense of responsibility, shunning the disastrous effects of our omissions. “

LOL Julian Savulescu put that pretty well!

Sounds like a bunch of political hacks. They should bring a nihilist up there to show it doesn’t matter Lmfao who gives a damn

Thanks a lot, that helped me much to clarify it. When I said "never functioned properly", I did not mean the self assessment of that system.

Of course, there are many "internal" purposes, of which you mention a few:

> purpose ... states... > consolidate ... manage power ... resources ... people
> policy ... institutions
> national interest ...
> ...

But in light of our real challenges ALL those "internal purposes" are secondary or even tertiary. Who gives AF if a state 'has done its job just fine' when harvests are failing due to a forever-inhospitable nature.

Democracy might be good or not so good at tackling its own aspirations. But while it does, it is using up attention, trust, time, and resources.

And my implicit/suggested value (collectively binding decision structures should solve the most important collective challenges) is "external" to all that; it evaluates the political system not by its own self assessment, but by its objective failure - not having changed the apocalyptic direction of society.

By that criterion, (also) the democratic ideology is failing us miserably. And that made me say "not functioning properly".

> to fix this we need new structures

I completely agree.

>and empower us to fight back

It is really easy not to feel terrible from people's Facebook posts. Just don't use Facebook. The same applies to any other online platform that makes one feel terrible.

I personally have never had a Facebook page as it never seemed like a good idea to me. Keeping superficial contact with "friends" and family isn't my thing. Friends and family who wish to maintain contact can do so in an individual way. If they don't want to do that, then that tells you something important about the closeness of the relationship and what it means to them. And if you don't want to bother with individual contact with your "friends" and family, that indicates something important about how you feel about them.

Probably it's hard to focus on theories of mind and the like when you're concerned if your great-grandchildren could ever possibly exist.

It should concern us that we have to pause our moral and ethical progress to deal with this matter of everyone dying pretty soon.

Is this phenomenon of being worried about human extinction a new thing or did people commonly feel this way 500+ years ago?

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I'm currently reading Warhammer books, and they are really interesting and actually there are some interesting ideas that teach me stuff. Kastrup's books are completely fiction just like the Warhammer books.

I just take issue when people try and classify Kastrup's stuff as philosophy rather than fiction.

Climate change is a normal cycle the world goes through ffs

Everyone seeks their look. Since it is no longer possible to base any claim on one's own existence, there is nothing for it but to perform an appearing act without concerning oneself with being - or even with being seen. So it is not: I exist, I am here! but rather: I am visible, I am an image -look! look! This is not even narcissism, merely an extraversion without depth, a sort of self-promot­ing ingenuousness whereby everyone becomes the manager of their own appearance.

Jean Baudrillard, The Transparency of Evil: Essays in Extreme Phenomena

> never been

Yes. Exactly.

To each his own. I really enjoyed most of the essays in Science Ideated and his other books are certainly worth a read. Starting Decoding Schopenhauer's Metaphysics now, we'll see how this one goes.

Its exciting, to me at least, diving into books who challenge the tacit acceptance of determinism, etc. Especially nowadays when we know for a fact we live in a non-local universe.

I really don't understand why the focus on comparisons, Reddit and Discord generate the exact same level of apathy and depression, and there are no "personalities" being followed or misrepresented here.

Yes, I agree. But then this 'entire purpose of democracy' might be the flaw that is going to cause the mass murder?

Whether a political ideology lives up to its own standards or not - is that really the most important overall criterion here?

"Internally", with its own expectations ("put the power in the hands of the people") it might seem to function, but that is not what my "not functioning properly" was all about!

THE ONLY governance system which could establish collectively binding decisions ...

(and which should have long ago already changed the direction of our current route towards annihilation, or at least mass death and massively deteriorated living conditions, for everyone but the very rich) ...

... has NOT been solving the biggest collective issues.

So it is not "functioning properly".

shrug

While I do agree, philosophy is regarded as a science of the past times, massively obsolete by younger logical sciences that have come mind you directly from philosophy. How to teach something when it's deemed as unnecessary?

• Even if we assume that conscious valence provides an ought for the conscious being with the valence, it's not clear how you can universalize valence maximization separating it from particular individuals. Having an ought from my consciousness valence doesn't immediately imply that I am obligated to, say, sacrifice my consciousness valence for "overall maximization of some utility function accomodating valence of all beings" or such if one is not already poised towards selflessness.
• Open Individualism may help with the above concern, but it's more controversial and niche than utilitarianism itself. Kind of undermines the whole project when to support X, you have rely on something even more controversial than X. Either way, I also don't see why I should care for some "metaphysical unity/lack of separation" -- which can be up to how we use language. I don't see why boundedness of consciousnesses (restriction from accessing other's consciousness unmediated) isn't enough to ground for individuation and separation irrespective of whether all the separate perspectives are united in a higher dimensional spatial manifold, God, or Neoplatonic One or what have you. It's unclear to me if such abstract metaphysical unities really matter. We don't individuate things based on them being completely causally isolated and separated from the world.
• I don't see why a proper normative theory shouldn't be applicable and scalable to hypothetical and idealized scenarios. Their lack of robustness to hypotheticals should count as a "bug" and proper reason should be given as to why it doesn't apply there. Real life scenarios are complex, before just blindly applying a theory we need some assurance. Idealized scenarios and hypotheticals allows us to "stress test" our theories to gain assurance. Ignoring them because "they are not realistic" doesn't sound very pleasant.
• I don't see how logarithmic scaling helps with repugnant conclusion. Repugnant conclusion comes from the idea that x beings with utility y but high quality utility for each of x beings can be always overtaken by a seemingly less ideal scenario where m beings (m >>> x) exists with utility z (z > y) but each of m being has low quality utility. I don't see what changes if the individuals happiness grows logarithmically (you can always adjust the numbers to make it a problem), and I don't see what changes if there is a underlying unitary consciousness behind it all. Is the "same" consciousness having multiple low quality experiences really better than that having multiple high quality experiences but in less number?
• I also don't see the meaning of calling it the "same" consciousness if it doesn't have a single unified experience (solipsistic).