For the record, there is nothing credible that questions 5g health effects.

Perhaps there is no such thing as infinitely small distances/moviments. And the smallest possible distance (thus movement) is the Planck length

Regarding the nature of perception: Can you detect infinitely small movements of, for example, someone's hand? Can you think "I'm gonna look at his hand until it has moved"?

Perhaps I'm sniffing at Zero's paradoxes which claim that motion is impossible.

You're getting this idea of observation mixed up with the senses. Yes, we can observe the external world (nature), but introspection (observation of the inner self) is something different entirely. Observation of nature deals with the physical while observation of the internal deals with the abstract like state of mind and virtue, which are the contents of the soul. My thoughts and emotions are unique to only me and are most surely not tangible; they are not external.

I agree that we cannot find this "ultimate truth", but you must also consider that all actions you have taken which you have deemed "correct," come from within. We all believe there is some truth to what we say and believe, else we would not say or believe it. Truth does exist, and it may exist only in our minds. Nothing in nature is explicitly telling us what is true and what isn't; we are the ones deciding based off of belief. You can absolutely believe that there is nothing we ought to do, and you can absolutely say that the goals of living are separate from the goals of observing, but I challenge anybody to live without a single thought about their condition. Surely, it is hard to deny that you do not have flaws and things which could be improved upon. I simply believe that basing your life upon attaining the unknowable is pure folly (as alluring as it is); there are much better things to concern yourself with. The same goes for proclaiming to understand things you clearly do not. You are only going to contort your perception of the world by thinking you know what you do not. We may be human, but that doesn't give us the excuse to act irrationally.

I think you make good points, but I think you might be distracted with the pedantics of the world (as we all are, though surely to differing extents). The most important thing in life is the betterment of the self and others, I believe. Truth is supportive of this goal, but not all-important. We can attain enlightenment through self-truth, but we do not need ultimate truth to realize this.

Everything you typed is not related to evolution whatsoever. Mastication is directly related to evolution. That’s the difference. Use a different word. It’s not evolution. Laughter has nothing to do with evolution of humans. It’s has to do with cultures. There are cultures in history who NEVER laugh. Laughter is not an evolutionary function of humans. It’s a learned social behavior based out of culture. It is absolutely NOT instinctive. When someone tickled you, your animal brain wants to murder them. SOCIETY and culture has taught you to laugh instead. That’s cultural dude. Tribes in the Amazon do not laugh. They murder things. That’s evolution.

We may not ever truly know who we are, so we should not act like we're even capable of knowing.

"Observation of the external is not supplementary to observation of the internal" To observe is something YOU do, if you can observe the internal, then you are not the internal.

Are we a soul - a consciousness - or are we our thoughts and behaviors? If we are a soul, then trying to understand who we are is merely an observation of thoughts and feelings. If this is true then thoughts become part of the external and observation of the internal becomes impossible. A soul cannot observe itself. Trying to understand who you are becomes natural phenomena pondering about natural phenomena. The goals of living is to live and the goals of observing is to observe. If there is no universal meaning to life, there is nothing you ought to become. And if there is a universal meaning to life it is in its definition; to live. Thus there is nothing you ought to become.

To some extent you are correct though, I came to these conclusions by "looking within". Yet there is nothing that says I have uncovered the truth. I have a hard time seeing how you could ever uncover something universally true about something within. The nature of us means, it seems like, there are some things we will never know. The truth of the soul and the truth of the reality we see around us, including that which we see in our thoughts, are equally unknowable. It is also very human, I think, to reject that. We want to know the unknowable and we will stop at nothing to try to understand. This includes me. We can never know what was before the universe, yet we still ponder. We are full of contradictions and absurdities. We are humans.

Laughing probably does play a role in memory recall and establishing beneficial social arrangements. I don't know if it's massively influencial in who we build friendships with, since it seems to be a general rule that we're drawn to people with similar values / tastes when it comes to finding freinds.

In other words, I'm not sure the purpose of laughter is to signal compatibility, because that function does not seem to be unique to laughter, and generally each evolved behaviour has at least one distinct purpose.

It probably is part of the process of matchmaking though.

​

With regards to modern culture, I wonder if it is more the case that our humour is largely the same as it was 2000 years ago, but that the setting it is present in has changed. I moved to a wealthy city recently and one profound thing I noticed was that no one here is funny or laughing much. Humour is almost dead, but go to a comedy show and they laugh constantly and often at stupid things. Has people's sense of humour change much, or is it their environment that has changed? Probably a mix of both, but I think environment is a factor too. I think people are a lot more pessimistic then they would of been 2000 years ago (which initially seems silly, but we're able to percieve more threats in the modern world than we could back then).

Overconfidence leads to a higher rate of being wrong. You should discuss things more before making assumptions. I'll attempt to rephrase my point so you can better understand it.

The biological product of an extremely thorough process of trial and error, your biological design, cannot see. You can see, but you as a consciousness are not your body. The reason your body does not consult your eyes is because it is aware, most likely through the aformentioned process of trial and error, that your conscious mind is not fully perceptive. You might not know there are people watching you or within earshot.

I suspect the reason this is optimal is because breaking engagement with the thing making you laugh means you lose the information it is providing whilst you look to see if anyone is nearby, which would then warrant laughter.

Possibly more importantly, if we had to do a paremeter sweep before laughing, the source of the information / novelty / laughter might have expired by the time we've drawn other people to it. Laughter is immediate and distinct.

From the perspective of designing a biological organism in an optimal way, this makes a lot more sense than having to engage the conscious mind in a decision making process and commit its attention to another task (seeking peers to draw the attention of).

​

On your points about yourself, you sound like you might be an extreme outlier. In my moderate life experience I've not met a single person who could consciously decide when to laugh, what to find funny and how loudly to laugh. People have some restraint, to a degree, in specific situations, but what you're reporting is completely unheard of in the human race to my knowledge. A comedian might learn how to not laugh at things they find funny, but laughing is still an instinctive behaviour.

I'm not sure how your comment onf Mastication is relevant.

Interesting thought process which brings up the question how you define teleporting and how you define a living being. If we include our consciousness into the process of teleporting or even our soul if you believe there is one that brings up the question what happens with those things as they are not known to be part of your body. So in my opinion if you disassemble yourself and put a perfect clone of yourself as a replacement we don't know if our consciousness or subconscio are traveling or getting replaced aswell. So if we were able to teleport our body I don't think we can teleport our mind aswell which leads to my conclusion that you change time/space by doing so. Leaving behind a body with no soul that teleported. Just my opinion on teleporting in general though

Question about consciousness and subconscio

Ok so basically some friends and me are arguing over this philosophy topic everytime we see each other and we can't get up with an agreement.

So the topic is about our consciousness and our subconscio. I will refer consciouness as CN and SC for subconscio for the remaining threat.

So the example we can't figure our head around is pretty simple and stupid but in my opinion has a deeper/wider meaning behind it. I recently read Martin heidegger's book about his take on CN and SC and kind of agree with most of his points.

But enough talking around here is the example. Imagining a person is totally straight. Can this same person decide for himself that he wants to be homosexuel all of a sudden without having any interest in such a relation before?

I know I know stupid example but I think it's kind of interesting on a wider scale. The question that brings up is can you willingly by thinking about it put a thought from your CN in your SC. Can you trick yourself by persuading your own SC willingly?

The definition about our CN and SC and there range is a hard topic to discuss as every philisopher in history has their own thesis about it.

We can put this example into a simpler relation. If I willingly want to get to sleep earlier and proceed doing so every night my body will earlier or later adept to that circle and I will get sleepier earlier. So I willingly changed my SC into putting a thought in my CN over and over again.

If that works on a small scale like that. Does it work on a larger scale aswell?

To get back to my first example. It's not the biggest thought in human history I just think it interesting thinking about being able to trick our SC to want something even though we didn't want it in the first place - manipulating our own thinking of life on our own.

Closing words: We get manipulated by the media or other people everyday. Either on a big or small topic about our life. But that all happens unwillingly. So to sum up this threat: Can you willingly change your subconscio?

Maybe I am totally wrong in this topic and stupid. I didn't study philosophy - just enjoy reading old philosophers and discussing about topics like this. Looking forward to hear your opions on this or to make me look like a coward ;)

Cheers,

When I think of this question, another question pops into my head.

What type of person would be talking to a “chatbot”? Evaluate this question deeply. I think being mean to Chatbots occurs because the person being mean is projecting experiences which they might’ve faced (or something along the lines) or projecting negative emotions because they lack other ways to cope with those feelings or something in between.

The assertion that nothing is true seems useful in the sense that it creates a crack in generally accepted norms. The idea creates a way to re-examine that which we have long ago accepted, but may no longer be true in new contexts.

Science is pedantic and our lives are not actually improved by it.

We should not confuse the goals of living with the goals of observing. Living is about introspection and becoming who you ought to become. Regardless of how you rationalize what you ought to be, observation of the external is not supplementary to observation of the internal.

Life is full of distraction. These distractions are not limited to the things which keep you from your goals. Your goals very well could also be distraction. If you end your day not having learned something about yourself, have your learned anything worth truly knowing?

Learning about the world seems useful to the extent that we are the rational extension of nature. We came from nature, and we will return to nature. The only thing which separates us from animals is our ability to rationalize. We must learn about nature to learn about ourselves, surely, but we must not care only about nature; nature, as its own entity, will only take us so far.

We may solve practical matters pertaining to quality of living, but we never become better for it; our lives only become easier. There is nothing easy about being a rational being, yet we seem to want it to be. You're a fool if you believe life should be easy. If a man endeavors to learn mathematics, then he has a hard path ahead of him. He shall rise and fall at different points in this endeavor, but he shall always come out stronger mathematically. He may have learned how to problem solve, but has he actually improved his condition? Surely he has become a good mathematician, but has he become a good human? I'm not convinced the skills directly translate. This man may lack the ability to ask himself difficult and pervasive questions about himself--the questions that truly matter--despite his impressive mathematical achievement.

We're too afraid, and we always have been, of ourselves. We all possess insecurity and doubt, yet we seem to want to ignore it. I know that I have. We are so preoccupied with superficial means that we forget about the true ends. The issue, however, lies in that people don't want to, or know how to, address it or do anything about it. People are content living by the masses and going through the motions we've been told to go through. Do you possess no unique insight into your own life? Are you really an individual? Do you even believe in your own ideals? or are they someone else's handed down to you? We don't even know what is and isn't a distraction, anymore. *note, there is not necessarily anything wrong with this, but this kind of life leaves me, personally, unsatisfied and I think it leaves many others (who don't even understand why) unsatisfied, as well.

You ought to strive to become this individual person. You ought to understand what makes you tick. If you can't stare your insecurities and flaws in the face now, then when will you? when you're old and gray and have but a few years left? When will you decide it's worth trying to live a meaningful life?

Perhaps you're happy, and that's wonderful. I'm happy, as well, but that does not mean I should stop trying. You must always keep trying. The moment you stop trying to become better is the moment you stop truly living. This is my philosophy.

Let me make an important distinction here: your life is made up of belief. You don't know anything besides what you perceive life to be. This isn't solipsism, this is your everyday reality. You ought to know yourself, as the Oracle at Delphi said (basically). We all have our own paradigms which we follow, but how blindly do you follow them? or do you understand why you perceive the world the way you do? Do you let pedantics govern your life? That is, is your life one distraction after another, or do you ever actually focus on you? Understanding what is and isn't a distraction is difficult and, I find, very unsettling. It's worth a good think.

I believe that we ought to live in a constant state of both teacher and pupil. We must learn from and teach others as well as ourselves. We have, within us, every capability of uncovering truth. If we want to understand the point of nature (and of God, if you're into that), then look no further than within. What comes from nature shall go to nature; what comes from God shall go to God. We must not proclaim to know what we can't, yet we must continually question. This, I believe, is the essence of the socratic method. We may not ever truly know, so we should not act like we're even capable of knowing. We may only seem to understand approximations against the immensity that is knowledge, but we will never know. We ought to exist to experience, not to understand.

My thought exactly. Humour is a way to validate assumptions about other people. It is a way to probe them in search of common hermeneutical grounds. If we can laugh together and eat the same things, then chances are we can also have a constructive relationship together. I think its main evolutionary purpose is the production of pleasant shared experiences, to add positive feelings to the memories of others - and others' memories of us. I have a better chance of our relationship being beneficial to me if you remember laughing every time you see me. And if I can make a lot of people laugh on the regular, then I stand a better chance of building beneficial relationships with my peers than those who can't, thus increasing my chances of survival.

I believe humour is one of those evolutionary attractors, a sort of inevitable side-effect of the coexistence of communication and play. Obviously it has been rendered way more complex and nuanced through our development of language and all our social rituals, but most animals we regard as highly intelligent seem capable of both play and humour. They are both ways of testing different behaviours in safe contexts, as well as ways of getting to know other individuals. Humour lets me simultaneously play with a social situation (thus learning about its intricacies and trying new things), produce a pleasant memory of me in the other's mind (thus increasing my chances of building a beneficial relationship with them) and probe them to garner information on their culture, idiosyncrasies and reputation (thus making my relationship with them potentially safer).

These three direct benefits of humour are reason enough for this behaviour to have taken evolutionary roots. Starting from there, the behaviour has evolved through culture, like many other social behaviours, to become a sort of fractalized version (or, more exactly, versions) of itself. Now, humour feeds on itself ad infinitum into ever more incongruous and bizarre regressions. That's how we get memes that are surreal versions of sarcastic memes, that were themselves parodies of other popular memes laughing at completely ordinary real world situations.

What are better theories?

>But that's the thing: unless someone's getting hit with completely falsified evidence, the arrest itself doesn't become less valid.

It still doesn’t represent actual crime; it represents crime that the police enforced (i.e. based on police interactions). For example, if white and black people carry illegal drugs at the same rate, yet police stop and search black people more, arrests will show a disproportionate amount of drugs among black people and therefore devote more resources to black neighborhoods even when the data doesn’t merit that response.

> It's irrelevant to the data whether or not a crime is uncovered because of a biased interaction or an unbiased one.

How is a prediction model supposed to function when it doesn’t have an accurate picture of where crime occurs? If you tell the model that all of the crime happens in area A because you don’t enforce area B that heavily, how is the model supposed to know that it’s missing a crucial variable? For example, speed trap towns that gets like 50% of their funding from enforcing speed limits in a mile stretch of highway. How is the system supposed to know that speeding isn’t disproportionately worse there despite the mountain of traffic tickets given out?

>The issue isn't measuring the data, it's getting you to start acknowledging data accuracy.

How you measure the data is crucial because it’s easy to introduce selection biases into the data. What you are proposing is exactly how they are introduced since you don’t even seem to be aware it’s an issue. It is more than just whether each arrest has merit. The whole issue is that you are selecting a sample of crime to feed into the model and that sample is not gathered in an unbiased way. Instead of measuring crime, you want to measure arrests, which are not the same thing.

I have evolved eyes and ears to tell if someone is near me. Nice try though. Behavioral “evolution” is really complicated, even more so than functional evolution. In fact, different cultures can have complete opposite behavioral “evolutions” as you claim. The behavior of laughter, is not like the function of eyesight. I have evolved to be able to decide when I want to laugh, what i think is funny, and when to laugh loudly or quietly. Humans, all humans regardless of culture, evolved to have two eyes with the general upper limit being 20/20 vision. So no. To your theory on behaviors being evolved. No. Mastication is an evolved function. But different cultures chew differently and make different noises when they eat. Alone with others. It’s called culture. Not evolution

Thanks for your detailed reply and thoughts!

I think by "irrelevant" as used the in the context "to put it more simply, logic and human intuitions are, at the most basic level, irrelevant," I just mean that logic is not inherently related to human intuitions. I do not mean the question of "meaning of life" is irrelevant. I actually do not take a stance on whether the question "what is the meaning of life" is relevant/important.

The psychiatrist's basic point (and my current position on the issue) is that: "meaning of life" is a human construct. Being a human construct, its definition inherently depends upon each and every individual's different human intuitions. Since different people have different definitions of "meaning of life," there's no hope at arriving at a universal answer to the question---so there is no thing in the universe that is objectively meaningful and have intrinsic good/value to all humans. That is my first point. The second point is that because the whole concept of "meaning" is very much an intuition of the human mind, and human intuitions are not always logically consistent, may be we should not trust logic so much as a tool to arrive at an answer to the question, "what is the meaning of MY life." If two pieces of intuitions are logically contradictory, it is not because one piece of intuition is "true" while the other piece is "faulty." Both intuitions are valid---we should not extrapolate intuitions too much using logic. Because human constructs are based upon individualized human intuitions, there is no such a concept as "universal truth" with regard to human subjects. This is not a claim that is isn't "universal truth" about any question in the universe. It is just a claim that there isn't "universal truth" about human-related questions in the universe. So, the basic claim is that logic is overused in arriving at answers about meaning of life, and it is perfectly fine living a life that intuitively feels meaningful to you without giving much weight to a logical argument that tries to disprove your intuition about what is meaningful to you.

​

>I would argue that it is only through examining what feels meaningful to us that we can learn what is really at root meaningful to us. To the extent that our beliefs about what is meaningful to us are dependent upon other beliefs then they're going to be dependent on those other beliefs in specific ways and knowing in which ways they are dependent upon other beliefs will help us to further abstract those beliefs away and get closer to the root of what is meaningful to us.

I agree with that!

This reminds ds me of when my 2nd grade teacher told me that pers don't have emotions. She said we simply ascribe human characteristics to things we don't understand.

Just because a thing hasn't been emperically proven to exist doesn't mean we should assume that it does not exist.

Medicine makes this mistake with prevalence. Often, as with celiac disease, Graves' disease, Sjogren's and other autoimmune diseases, lack of awareness leads to a dearth of diagnoses which is too-often confused with prevalence.

It's unsettling to see that some scientists proceed as though they know everything knowable.

I'd certainly agree that many people are unwilling to engage with these questions (or even internally interrogate or understand their own positions) to much depth. That in itself is a complicated problem to tease apart.

In any case, I think your comment here has helped me understand the angle you're coming from.

Still missed something.

> is more then one

Did you mean to say "more than"?
Explanation: No explanation available.
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What Life is.

The prevailing physicalism of the modern era describes life as a system. A system is defined a set of things working together as parts of a mechanism or an interconnecting network.

However, to define life as a system is try to explain with something that needs to be explained.

A living thing is understood as a being whose parts work together for one goal, which is the sustainment of the whole organism. In this sense, the parts comprise truly one being, as this principle that unites the parts is intrinsic to the organism.

However, a machine is not a one being as much as a heap of sand is not a one being, as its goal, function is imparted from the outside. Its principle of unity is extrinsic, its unity is in the perceiver's mind, not in-itself.

Therefore, we can say that a machine is only a metaphor, something that resembles life but not quite.

If this is the case, why are we defining life based on the thing that life is giving meaning to? This does not make sense.

I buy it 👍

I'm saying that out of 100 past "official versions of facts", X (where X is a number > 0) turned out to be false. So it's very likely that out of 100 contemporary "official version of facts", X (where X is > 0) will turn out to be false.