RobertZ

Octopus—if our closest relatives were octopi, then I suppose we’d be ocean-dwellers. Forming and exoskeleton and coming inland like a slug is unlikely (invertebrates). Well—Maybe our brains rapidly evolved and grew though psychedelic sea sponges instead of magic mushrooms and cooked food. One of the first things we’d need is an effective way to kill sharks and other large animals. Some kind of readily constructed weapon or quill armour. I think it’s pretty important that people exterminate all similar animals and all larger animals where ever they live—as history demonstrates: almost all large animals and similar humanoids dies off where people went. Large sharks have to go. Big whales are dead meat. Wolves— the novel, the Wheel of Time, points out that a wolf person might have something akin to telepathic communication—possibly greater intuitions about group dynamics and collective action. I don’t know too much about wolves or dog packs though. cows—always surprise me how an animal like cows exist. Of course, people breed them now, but they are pretty tough animals—versus other animals and even versus difficult terrain (like hills/mountains) and weather. I think we’d look for a way to stockpile grass and food without opposing thumbs—maybe we developed better ways to plant seeds in our grazing rounds. I can’t get over the whole empathy thing with lizard—how apathetic lizards are. It’s such a significant distance in evolution. When I was a kid, I bought an African fat-tailed gecko. Looks like something pulled off its tail as a baby—poor thing—and it grew back. But it was jumpy—maybe not just trained fear, but no matter how kind I was, gentle, good, and kind, it was always scared of me. I wanted it to be like a cuddly bird or something, cuddling up against my cheek. but it just never connected with me. It was only fight, flight or freeze. That’s it. If we were like really smart Komodo dragons or alligators or something—Exothermic (cold blooded); we would only live in certain climates. We’d probably rely much more on our muscles, claws, and teeth, than shared knowledge or communication.

I think philosophy is like art—but then again, I think that the picture of Kermit the frog eating popcorn and chilling out in a movie theatre is art. Philosophy can be lighthearted, chill, and amusing—just like the picture of Kermit. Philosophy can also be serious, heavy, difficult, and profound. Personally, I like scientific approaches to philosophy, like using statistics in evaluating the common usage of terms (or re-defining words that are used in a non-ordinary ways). It’s actually not a bad position, to say that philosophy is science. For example, “The aesthetic study of art must involve hypothesis and testing.” Is a picture of Kermit the Frog “stupid”? Not serous enough in an answer about art and philosophy? Insulting? Humiliating? But here, let’s see some statistics about how people ordinarily use the term “science” (or at least some dictionary definitions of “science” and “philosophy”). Do we really need a statistical analysis of people’s opinions about Kermit—or can we simply assert that Kermit represents the belief that people are trite and superficial—no transcendental ideals here? Off the top of my head, there are at least a couple reasons why we should say that philosophy is a kind of science. The characteristic of rationality in science is appealing. People are philosophical by nature—or at least they have philosophies that are either conscious or unconscious. But science has taught us a great deal about better and worse conclusions. So, it is good to define philosophy as a science, to focus on the application of scientific methods in philosophy. Another reason reason to define philosophy as a kind of “science” or knowledge is not ancient etymology—but a need to use the social legitimacy of science to legitimize a field that has lost a great deal of its credibility. For example, philosophy departments justify their now meagre budgets by promising analytical thinking skills for other fields of knowledge. Some philosophy department are even sub departments of ancient (art) history departments—like a specialization of studying ancient pottery. Now some ancient art professors might make a lot of money, but those are not booming philosophy departments. Maybe it’s better to define philosophy as a kind of science—“philosophy is like like medical technology research: it’s heavily experimental and useful...”

Coming down from mushrooms—once I seemed sober enough, I took a bath to distract myself from the very painful nausea. I had basically booked the day fee (in my own house) so, no distractions or worries about anyone coming over—but after I got in the bath, I heard people’s talking downstairs—my wife came home early, and some relatives arrived from out of town and dropped by for a visit! I was like oh crap. I listened carefully—“What is this? Are these drugs?” Oh my gosh, I thought, I left the baggie of mushrooms in my coat pocket—they must have seen it while they were hanging up their coats! So one of my cousins started insisting how bad this all was, and getting all upset—like this major drama. I was like, ‘oh no—I’m going to have to go downstairs’. So, I quickly prepared a confession in the bath. I was going to be honest—look, this was one day—there was even a leap year (an extra day) this year…I took the mushrooms for my own health and well-being…I needed to do this. I dried off, got dressed, and came down stairs, ready to face the music. No one there. So I got to chill on the carpet and look at the eight-pointed star-shaped patterns of stucco on the ceiling sway bigger and smaller, as I happily and gratefully reflected on the partial healing from my moral distress that the mushrooms helped my think though—and not having to deal with any worries

Zelda. Tears of the Kingdom.

From age of 0-36, on about three days a month (spread out), I’d have approximately $0 to my name, and net debt. (never mind borrowed sums of cash). I have lived paycheck to paycheck for my whole life with credit maxed out as I am able, and never really saved a paycheck. I remember refusing coffee meetings with classmates in university because I didn’t have $2 available to my name and I could not get $2 without begging. Still, I made it through degrees in philosophy and theology, became a Preacher, an improvised explosive device screener; I completed degrees in law and business; I worked as a parks and recreation laborer; a criminal lawyer, a hard manual laborer, a contract administrator, and finally, I work as a contracts manager. I write and negotiate contracts for infrastructure engineering (like portions of bridges or buildings) I’m 37. I still have like maybe $70,000 of debt (never mind my wife’s $20,000 credit card bill and she’s in school) but I might have $400 or $1000 sitting in my bank account after paying for housing, food, phones, debt interest, a new vacuum, this or that. So that’s progress. We do own almost half of our house and we have some money saved up for our kids’ university. Plan is to buy them each of our kids a degree and a good down payment on a house.

Another factor for ChatGPT is ‘quality in quality out.’ If you just as a question like, tell me about meditation’, you’ll get a predictive sequence of words based on the information with ChatGPT has been trained. However, you can also feed ChatGPT information, templates, and models. That is what people do when they ask for corrections or shorter versions of computer code. For example, ‘here is a 2000 word essay. I’m going to ask you to write an outline for a similar document. Do you understand? yes, I understand. ‘For this outline, I will also want you to include my values, which are aaa, bbb, and xxx which defined as Yyy. Do you understand? yes. please write the outline, the essay, [different topic] another example is ‘write a cover letter for this job description (past) using my resume (paste). - now rewrite this cover letter incorporating key element of the mission, vision, and values [from business website], and make the cover letter more succinct. anither example is, “here are two versions of a contract. Explain the differences in rights and obligations… another example is, So it can increase productivity through prompts like, ‘ write this email in succinct business style: “John, get XYZ done. Thank you.’ but you can also feed ChatGPT the information you want to use and instruct it to provide certain kinds of output I think you can have about 4000 words in a question to ChatGPT.

He followed the spiritual path for many years. With respect, it sound like he has a different perspective than you—or at least a different emphasis. I hate to raise a cliche, but is it possible that this difference of perspective became a “Christmas debate” because he is a family member? I can’t wade into that territory, but it seems to me pretty cool that your family would bother debating an issue—as opposed to simply fighting or pacifying one another. Seems to me like you are characterizing the debate as a stage blue versus stage yellow—moral choice versus understanding. This brings to my mind the fact that yellow is built on healthy blue developed. There are probably logical reasons why your uncle is emphasizes, ‘it boils down to choice.’ Maybe a debate is the best forum to explore his perspective. Personally, I’m a fan of small talk at family gatherings. If people want to reach out to me and discuss topics further, that’s fine. I find parties—like Christmas family parties—a better chance to just make people feel welcome. But it’s pretty cool that you discussed some deeper topics . Merry Christmas.

I can’t give you a top three—just three that come to mind immediately 5 Methoxy Dimethyltryptamine because it gave me perspective on what’s interesting to me. Learning diverse perspectives in thinking for oneself For the caution of academia, consider epistemology.

Hi @at_anchor. My name is Robert. I’m from Canada. In your post, you said that you are living in a hostile environment. You also talked about destroying ‘them’ though some kind of power—like the police or using evidence [at law]—but that’s not very hopeful. However [people] are scaring you, demonizing you, and betraying you; while you are vulnerable and dependent. I can only share a bit about my story, and what helped me. Personally, I focused on my basic needs—safety, health, belonging and self-respect. This focus helped me a lot in hostile environments, over time. My experiences were not family, but 2 toxic work places. After university, I found myself at a very toxic and abusive job—I was financially dependent and vulnerable for some unique reasons. I had a sociopathic boss who saw me as a puzzle to pick apart. I had to work quite a few 36-hour days. Visiting the hospital for heart pain. I got much lower than minimum wage at that job—well, I had to go through vitriol to get out of that servitude—it was one of these hell holes. A lawyer helped me get our It took me well over a year to recover from the shock of that experience While recovering, I made an excellent decision: to focus on my basic needs. Simple things, like eating rice and butter (healthy food I could afford) and exercise, and trying to make the people around me feel welcome. Forget about improving my skills. Just basic stuff Then I got a better job digging a trench (hard labor)—which was totally fine with me because I got along well with my coworkers. All I want is to work in peace. But then we all got subbed out to a company that my employer hired—so we ended up working directly under a few bullies (who were abusive). All my coworkers quit—but I stayed. All I can say about having to be around people who are abusive—can be oppressive. I took a few notes to help myself psychologically (date, hour, and minute and basic facts, nothing fancy or long). Notes like this: - January 9, 2021, 9:20 I set down the table an inch from the other table. Colton shouts, ‘Why the FUCK did you put it there, instead of closer?!’ - January 10, 2021 3:35 pm, Colton said: ‘Great, great—just like sex with a 10 year old girl.’ Toxic environments can get overwhelming, oppressive, and difficult to think about, or explain. Some brief factual notes might help promote a safe environment through the ups and downs, and clarify issues like gaslighting. Later, I got a truly excellent job with a safe and positive with environment. To me, it’s health/safety First (including psychological safety). Then belonging. Then self-respect. Then all the other stuff. Take care.

It’s a good reminder. I’ll try skimming the chapter and conceptualizing the contents first. I suppose a chapter summarization would help me to remember what I read and get more out of it (instead of forgetting most everything). However, then there is still something to be said for the habit of reading. The thought, ‘I can only read if I summarize’ might deter me from reading.

I would not dispute the position. I might ask about the data points though. Fiction, or ‘something the imagination invents’ could apply broadly. For example, an imagination could invent money or property interests. At what point does more money yield an incrementally lower rate of goods or services per unit of labour?

Digital information has various drawbacks. The battery one one of my computers exploded. It got old and cold. Lost all my notes. Thousands of photos on a physical hard drive corrupted. Old physical hardware required transfer and update—a convenient service like renting online storage seems to last longer as hard and software updates. Digital information requires more upkeep than physical photos, books, and notes. But digital info can duplicate to new hardware/software with ongoing attention (or a digital storage service). Yeah—who reads end-user licenses? The idea of physical property does seem a bit more intuitive than licenses. Property interests can be quite convoluted —like social defence of property over time.

I intentionally take 200 grams of dextrose when I lift weights to spike my insulin when my muscles are more sensitive than other tissues (like fat). Sugar cravings satisfied.

One challenge for epistemology is in its application. Theory considers possibilities but application introduces further information. For example, Agrippa’s Trilema explores foundationalism, coherence, and infinite regression as justifications of knowledge. In application, how to discuss with a coherent but criteria-critical conspiracy theorist? Then there are analytical tool like defeater analyses. Again—how to apply these tools to justify what I do/don’t know in my daily life? What questions should I ask in ambiguous situations? I also find identifying the contextual salience or logical relevance of claims to be difficult in practice. (Contextual salience concludes that statement 1 is false but a logical relevancy concludes that statement 3 is false: 1. Sam knows his class begins at 1:00. 2. If Sam knows that his class begins at 1:00 then he also knows that his teacher did not cancel class. 3. Sam does not know that his teacher did not cancel class.) Salience vs relevance is easier in theory. For example, if Sam knows that his class starts at 1:00, then he also knows that an evil demon is not misleading him to falsely experience his class starting at 1:00. Therefore, Sam does not know that his class starts at 1:00 (contextualist)—or the demon is irrelevant. But distinguishing logical relevance from contextual salience is difficult in practice.

There is a similar passage about the eternal recurrence in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. There is an image of a dwarf weighing down Zarathustra’s final climb—guilt and shame. The image of the young man with the snake biting fast the inside of his throat can laugh as no one has ever laughed once he follows Zarathustra’s advice: “Bite! Bite!” ‘Change your values and case of guilt and shame before it is too late—then you can laugh at Eternal Recurrence.’

Wanna with kids is not the opposite of Wanda without kids but with kids has without kids as a possibility [a the same universe—not creating another many universe. I like the idea of many universes in different space times; but the idea also seems to be non-falsifiable and based on many inferences.

“Next, Dr Kagan plans to test the impact alcohol has on the mini-brain's ability to play Pong.” Lol. Pretty cool.

Lord Denning. Oldie but goodie—‘loved by all’—a good sign that he understood a broad range of human needs.

I studied Latin for 1 year and here are my comments: 1) Latin grammar can teach the principles of the grammar that other languages use (such as Spanish or Portuguese), compared to English—at least familiarize a person with the concepts of Latin family grammar. For example, English relies more heavily on the order of certain sentence parts than Latin to show the relationship between the words. In English, a person might say, “I give the ball to you,” or “I give you the ball”. In Latin (but not English) the order, ‘The ball gives I to you’ could have the same meaning. Therefore, studying Latin improved my English grammar by identifying the significance of the order of certain sentence parts. 2) Many words in Latin were quite easy for me to remember, as an English speaker. Many Latin words sound similar to a similar-meaning English words. For example, the Latin word for ‘danger’ sounds like the English word ‘precarious.’ Time sounds like temporary. Mercy sounds like misery, and so on. Personally, I find the pronunciation of Latin sounds very similar to English words in pronunciation—so I found it easier to remember Latin words than French or Spanish words personally. I studied Spanish for a year but remember much more from Latin than Spanish. I can never remember French words because the pronunciation is different than English or Latin; but I never studied French. 3) Latin is of course less useful than a living language—Similar to Hebrew or Greek in that respect, I suppose. The study of old languages might be useful in reviewing old texts that survived the test of time. But It is also more difficult to learn a language well if you cannot live in a place where people speak the language. Besides the academic study of texts—Unless perhaps you are taking a licentiate degree at the Vatican to become an exorcist, formator, or bishop—you probably won’t be speaking much Latin to people. Maybe liturgy—but that’s about it for speaking Latin. 4) One enjoyable part of studying Latin is discovering the sheer quantity of colloquial expressions commonly used in modern English that are literal word-for-word translations of ancient Latin texts.

Yeah, underwater cities are a strange phenomenon. “Now in this island of Atlantis there existed a confederation of kings, of great and marvelous power, which held sway over all the island, and over many other islands also and parts of the continent.” -Timaeus, Plato, Wikipedia says the modern theories of tectonic plates help us to focus on the political interpretation of Plato’s citation of Atlantis. Plato’s point about Atlantis is an example of the ideal political state (i.e., philosopher kings compared to the naval kings of Atlantis) rather than occult claims of ancient technologies, or the location of the triple-moated city.

I would like to see more social systems that can identify strengths and offer people circumstances in which people can thrive. For example, some people are born into suboptimal circumstances and they do not develop their skills, knowledge, or abilities fully. They are less happy, provide less value, and make less money than they could. Meanwhile, a lot of people are dissatisfied with their job—or worse yet, get burnt out. Even “successful job opportunities” like lawyers and doctors can filled with long hours, toxic environments of shame for mistakes, and pressure to be “perfect.” In general, most people are slaves of the almighty clock. Therefore current technology—rudimentary school tests—examine people’s ability to sit at a desk for 8 hours. We value hours of labour. But What if technology could optimize environmental stress for a person’s success? What if we could have 4-hour work days? 8 hours-a-day of intentional practice would no longer be valued (unless the person truly loved the optimized circumstances). Better hormones, better medical AI—whatever—meant the athletes or doctors did not have to work 8 hours a day. New tests would recognize more people’s potentials; and new social systems would change more people’s circumstances, to develop their skills in an environment optimized for success. The monitoring necessary to achieve these changing circumstances would probably cause problems with private interests. We might need to become more tolerant of untraceable monetary systems to balance increased monitoring of talent—I’m not sure. Essentially, technology that helps people recognize what they find to be truly valuable, and spend more on that.

First of all, great summary. It helped me remember and network various ideas. Personally, I found it difficult to absorb this summary because of the title, “Pure Philosophy.” I could not stop thinking, “How is a pure philosophy any different than a philosophy of purity?” This sardonic thought ran through my head the whole time I read the post: ‘We are the pure ones, with our pure ideas; and the outsiders—with their disgusting swamp of contaminated thoughts, words, and actions, are impure.’ For example when the summary said, ‘No appeals to morality without explanation,’ I heard, ‘Impure: appealing to morality without explanation.’ And when it said, ‘The concept that mind and matter are entangled,’ I heard, ‘Pure: believing that the mind and matter are entangled.’ I vaguely understand the word “pure” in “pure math” as a kind of rigorous discipline, abstracted from physicality or application. Again, how can the doctrine that matter is entangled with mind be “pure” in the common usage of the word? The concept of ‘purity’ is commonly laden with attitudes about the intrinsic irrationality of human sexuality and the way human (base) tendencies ‘deviate’ or ‘miss the mark.’ The mindset of a philosophy of purity: ‘With purity, I understand the creative love of God and I’d damn myself to rejecting God forever if I ever transgressed into such a disgusting Impure philosophy.’ Purity and non-purity has relatively non-moral uses in some cases, but I am afraid the word has too much baggage in common use. I’m not sure about alternate titles—something about understanding, truth, or experience, maybe. That being said, having purged or ‘purified’ my mind of these thoughts, I’ll read the post again and try to absorb its concepts. I also like the picture at the top. Everyone makes assumptions—but philosophy reflects on these assumptions.

There are many cities underwater, like Port Royal, Jamaica, which sunk suddenly, and Dwarka, India, which is 130 feet underwater and ~2000 years old. I’m not too sure of the history of believing that celestial bodies (like the sun or the earth) have consciousness or intent. When I was a kid, someone told me that various species of intelligent beings (angels) “guided” the course of astrophysical bodies. And there are fine lines between a river spirit, for example, and the river itself. One river in Australia even has the legal status of a person. Why not? Even corporations are legal “persons” with operating minds, etc. As for the earth’s “correction,” this explanation ties into interesting assumptions. Even if atmospheric composition could influence the frequency of volcanic eruptions, for example (and I’ve never heard of such a claim), I’m not sure that this feedback process would indicate that the earth is ‘trying’ to improve biospheric conditions for current life forms by killing off costal populations (if killing people who live on the coasts would even slow atmospheric change more than killing off people who live inland). Moreover, the dogma that overpopulation is threatening the existence of life on earth is highly dubious itself. A simpler explanation is that atmospheric composition fluctuates over time; and life either adapts or life does not adapt. Of course, human activity can affect the atmosphere in a way that could significantly impact life on earth (chlorofluorocarbons can bore holes in the ozone, for example). Again, I am not contesting that human activity can destroy life—such as monoculture causing desertification; or dumping toxic chemicals into pits near remote villages can cause painful diseases and deformations in the local populations. Examples of poisonous ponds, desertification, and atmospheric change certainly raises ideas of ethics, morality, law, responsibility. Perhaps we have to resort even to ideas like cosmic justice or planetary intelligences guiding the course of history.

I agree about the ‘trying very hard to sell something’ vibe. However, Hancock seems to be framing knowledge of human civilization pre ~10,000 BC as either well-settled (i.e., small bands of hunter-gatherers), or unknown (i.e., well-developed civilizations probably existed). The second alternative indicates that human beings are ignorant of our past. ‘Nothing to see here, folks—we know enough’ versus, ‘some people are suppressing the premise of investigation, that we don’t know.’ Personally, the claim that some people are suppressing investigation does not motivate me. However, I am somewhat inclined toward this application of the Platonic method. Hancock seems to be saying, “Some people are claiming that human beings remember who we are, where we came from, and what we have done. But whereas I am honest and admit that I do not know our past, they are doubly-ignorant because not only do they not know our past, they also don’t know that they do not know our past.’ I am inclined toward this approach not because of a conspiracy that people are hiding the truth, but because recognition of ignorance prompts better knowledge.