zurew

You are saying things that I mostly agree with , the issue that I have is your level of certainty about those things. "Can I be wrong about this?" - as long as the answer is yes, I have 0 issue. Reality having a consistent set of rules is compatible with you having wrong ideas about what those rules are, and even your very ideas about what is supposed to be a law or rule - those ideas can also be wrong. The human body having a particular design which constrains what the body is capable of is compatible with you having wrong ideas about those limitations and constrains. This whole back and forth on my part wasn't to establish whether breatharianism is false or not, it was to establish that we shouldnt be 100% certain about almost anything science related. And no, this doesnt give credence to breatharianism, it is just an honest reflection on what we know and what level of certainty we can establish given the epistemic tools and limitations we have when it comes to science. I want you to actually engage and to give a direct answer. How do you know what is a rule and how do you know what you can get around and what you cant get around?

You still have 0 reply to the problem of induction. Yes reality is reality, hardware is hardware, but you have no clue what rules reality has, you just assume that you are right about those rules beyond any doubt, and the reason why you are pushed on this, is because epistemically you cant accept the fact that you can be wrong about this. What got us here is your 100% credence talk ,where you think you cant be wrong on this topic. Notice that I only wanted you to say "I can be wrong about this" - but you cant say that. You understand that you saying that "I can be wrong on this", from that doesnt follow, that you are commited to the position that breatharianism is likely to be true, right? Do you know why the snakeoil salesman shit works in philosophy and spirituality? It works, because people have unwarranted high credence in mystical shit. Do you know whats ironic about that? The fact that you have an unjustifiably high credence in your position. Do you know what the solution to that is? Its to reflect on what you actually know and what justifications you have for your positions and to iteratively improve on your knowledge and iteratively update your credence on things. Saying that there is room for error doesnt commit you to getting fucked over by snakeoil salesman, but it gives you room to update on your beliefs about reality if and when enough evidence / a good argument is provided. In certain cases it might actually be the case that its impossible to change your position on certain things, given all the pragmatic and epistemic limitations we have, but even in those cases the conclusion isn't that you are right beyond any doubt, the conclusion is that given those limitations you won't change your position on certain things, but thats still compatible with you being wrong about those things. Stop and actually reflect on how do you know that breatharianism is false beyond any doubt - again not just that it is more than likely to be false, but reflect on how do you know with 100% confidence that it is false. Check what actual justifications you have for that and how that actually warrants a 100% credence.

But even putting that aside and granting that to be true, its not like we have a super precise grasp about what humans can do. You could run studies on the whole population of Earth in the 12th century and then make inferences about how much a human can lift or how much and how fast they can run and you would infer a bunch of false things. Also its not like anyone here could actually spell out a deductive inference (starting with the premises of the laws of physics, and then from that deductively infer the limitation of humans). This is why I implied in the past that even the task of spelling out what law is actually violated by breatharianism would be a big task, because its not clear at all what (if any) law is violated.

Yeah you can use a notion of deductive that is applicable there, I guess I used deduction in a slightly different way. You can make deductive inferences where some of the premises are actually inductive or when there is a hidden inductive premise that you already take to be true (like the uniformity of nature) - so in reality, you are still engaging in induction. For example, even if you can falsify something given some precise set of conditions, from that doesnt necessarily follow that will hold up in the future (what you actually show there at best, is that given those set of conditions at that given time, you showed that that particular thing is false) but at the end of the day, you are still relying on induction, because you make an inductive inference from there that your deductively derived conclusion will hold up in the future given the same set of conditions. And yes , you are totally right about Thomas Kuhn as well, because one can infinitely delay falsification by adding auxiliary hypotheses to one's already existing paradigm.

Read just a little bit about the problem of induction and you will understand what im talking about. You need to understand how much science relies on induction. Im extremely surprised that you dont know about this. You have this very naive view that scientific facts are well justified things to the point where there is no room for any error anymore, but that couldnt be further from the truth. Science is an inductive and abductive project and it definitely isn't a deductive one, where you can have 100% credence about almost anything. I can walk you through multiple different examples to showcase the issues about induction. The black swan one is one such example, and the exact same logic is used to establish scientific laws. Just because you observe a pattern repeating multiple times, from that doesnt follow that it will definitely without a doubt repeat forever and it also doesnt mean that it is applicable universally everywhere, those things are justified by inferences and not by validation, because you practically cant validate such claims.

It is closed-mindedness , because you quite literally dont even want to entertain the alternative. The fact of the matter is that you rely on inductive reasoning and refuse to acknowledge the limitations that comes with that. You are the skeptical dude in the 16th century saying: "I'm 100% confident without any doubt, that black swans dont exist, because no one has ever seen any black swan" and also say "cmon dude, stop the bullshit and the fantasy - we are not on the same level - you are telling me this nonsense that I should be open to the possibility that there are black swans? Stop the nonsense! I have the highground, because for all the existence of humankind, none has ever seen a black swan" and you would be right, but after that you would get completely obliterated by dutch mariners who were the first to discover black swans.

It isn't too abstract. it is the difference between saying that there cant be anything shown to you to change your mind on it, and between there could be hypothetically something that could change your mind on it.

Thats not what the claim is - this is the issue "Do you actually know that the claim is false?" 'No?' "Okay, then dont say that it is definitely false." This is compatible with you labeling it as fantasy and absurd and wishful thinking and this is compatible with your argument about what should or shouldnt be entertained (which again I agree with generally speaking).

That doesnt contradict what I said. But what you still fail to engage with is the fact that what I or you consider to be obvious and what my or your sense of rationality is - those things are subject to be wrong. All of what is absurd, what is rational, what is nonsense - all of that shit is informed by things that are subject to be wrong. You labeling that abstract or intellectual or nonsense doesnt show that your considered nonsensical thing is actually false, what it shows is that given your current understanding of reality (Which may or may not be accurate), that thing goes against it. So if we want to talk about honestly - lets be actually epistemically honest about what our sense of absurdness, rationality, experience, and nonsense is actually informed by.

I agree - thats why we shouldnt make claims with certainty what is fantasy and what is not. It wasnt me who claimed that it is true, it was you who labeled it as a "fantasy". All of this shit comes back to what I said - if you dont want to entertain it, thats fine, but the moment you start to make claims about it you are in trouble.

I could just negate this and say "Your notion of closedness is superficial and merely intellectual". But in any case, I dont think you know what I mean by openness. Openness doesnt mean that I assign a high probability to the given proposition being true , I just mean that unless I actually explicitly know with 100% certainty (which is almost never the case) that given thing is false, the door remains somewhat open. And in certain cases that openness could be 0.00000000000000000001% ( but still its different than the claim that "its definitely false", because there it would be actually 0%). Its nothing more than an epistemic attitude of "I can be wrong about this".

Wait, what do you think you are doing here other than purely intellectualizing about it? You are not doing anything more than expressing your skeptical beliefs about it. Yeah and thats fine. But I am not as myopic and superficial as "X thing isnt true in my current experience right now, therefore X is definitely false". X might actually be false, but an appeal to my current experience is a super weak appeal.

If by "fantasy" you mean "I dont have good reason to entertain it or I dont have any good reason to think its true", thats fine. But if you want to say - "that thing is definitely false" - then I would ask for a supporting argument for that claim.

Once you have different notions of impossible, you can make more precise claims like "okay, I say that x thing is bullshit , and by bullshit I mean it violates the law of biology - and by that I mean the biology given our current scientific understanding) But I dont even think that in most cases one can even spell out the nomological violation, its just some super unexpected thing that is probably even compatible with your current understanding of nomological laws.

You need to differentiate between different notions of impossible. You can have logical , nomological, metaphysical impossibility. Logical impossibility would be something generally that would violate the laws of logic or generally things that would actually entail a contradiction. Metaphysical impossibility is more blurry and more complicated. Nomological impossibility would be things that would violate the laws of nature. The math example is logically impossible, but when it comes to nomological laws (anything science related) there are a lot of weird things that are logically possible that you dont even want to entertain and you dont even have the capacity to entertain and at the same time nomologically impossible (where it would violate some scientific law) You can say that we shouldnt entertain all logically possible things ,and we should only focus on the nomologically possible things and thats fine, but your sense about what is nomologically possible is grounded in your current understanding of the Universe and all of that is subject to be wrong. Almost all of that shit is based on inductive reasoning that is super subject to be wrong - just take a look at how many things we adjusted in the 20 and 21st century about our understanding of science and the Universe. You can also think about it this way - go back to the 10th century check what set of things would be rational to accept given the scientific knowledge they had back then and tell me how you wouldnt be the guy back then who would make the exact same argument you are making right now. Think about what sense they had back then about what is nomologically possible. When it comes to your claim about openness, i agree with you in 99.9999% of the cases , but not when it comes to claims about what is logically possible, because none of what you did shows how those things are logically impossible, at best it only show that given your current understanding of the Universe some thing might be violated (but even that claim is often times too strong) - and again to be clear, I agree with you that when it comes to appealing epistemic norms - we shouldn't appeal to what is logically possible and we should appeal to our sense of rationality that is grounded in our current understanding of the Universe, but not when it comes to philosophy and not when it comes to claims about impossibility. It doesnt matter how weird or absurd a given proposition is to you, because that doesnt prove that the proposition is actually false. Its fine to say that we shouldnt entertain it, or that we dont yet a have good reason to entertain it (again an appeal to our current understanding, which is totally fair), but its not fine to say that it is therefore definitely false.

You can make this move where you claim that anyone who tried to help others definitely werent enlightened and by that move you can maintain your theory that anyone who tries to help others in any way is lost and has an inflated ego. We dont need to rely on Buddha or Jesus, we only need to find one person who was enlightened that you agree with who tried to help others. If you say so.

But you dont want to claim that its impossible, at best you can only say that given your priors its extremely improbable or unlikely to be the case. None of your thing is grounded in a non-conceptual sense , because you are making inferences about biology based on your and others experience but those inferences can be wrong. Your thing is subject to criticism just as much any other theory about biology. Even if you are realist about scientific laws, thats compatible with you having a wrong understanding about those laws

I dont think he is a realist about laws, but its more about having certain priors. When you are presented with a weird/unqiue relative proposition you dont evaluate it apriori, you include your baggage of priors (your beliefs about the world that you have abductive and inductive arguments for). Before evidence is considered, those relative claims will be evaluated/judged using your priors. Of course your priors should be adjusted once evidence is delivered and given this approach you should aways be open to change things no matter how outlandish or weird the claim is (but as you said, in most cases, epistemically you just cant meet the challenege and therefore you probably wont adjust those priors much. Its almost practically impossible for one person to construct those arguments and to collect enough evidence).

This is as low level engagement as someone saying that aiming for Nirvana is a bitch running away move, where you cant be bothered to actually help others using the wisdom you acquired/embody. Just take a look at most enlightened beings and you immediately realize that a good chunk of them are/were interested in helping others even though its all just Maya bro. You say that it makes sense for Buddha to teach, but given your logic it shouldnt make any sense to you , because why be bothered with reminding yourself about teachings if you could just leave any given time? Why not just dissolve and go for mahāsamādhi? Jesus also could have done that move , but he didnt, and we could include here a bunch of others here.

I agree with that. I would even say that they dont just expect it, but they are probably inclined to put pressure on the husband (if it is necessary) to play the masculine role.

I wouldnt say that they are more feminine though. Being a baby machine is one thing ,but if you take a look at their traits - they have a bunch of masculine traits as well. They have a lot of say in their relationship and they are ready to kick the husband's ass if the husband is bitching about things or if he doesn't act how she wants him to act. If you picture a typical russian woman in your head, then I doubt that you would picture a very submissive woman or I doubt that you would picture a woman who is any more submissive than any other western woman.

https://pastebin.com/ug0vH78L https://pastebin.com/JbrN02Kk

Will the episode involve you laying down what epistemic norms one should care about if one wants to be rational and laying down how that word meant something completely different than what it means nowadays? Because most "rational" people only care about not having contradictions, but you can add more epistemic norms like performative contradiction and more (for instance - when someone says "I dont exist" - thats not a logical contradiction , its just a false statement and you cant derive a logical contradiction where you show p and not p from that statement apriori, but it is a performative contradiction, because you can only utter that statement if you exist). The more epistemic norms you add to the "rational" stack the more you narrow down the space in which one can deny things.

Sounds like an accusation of derailing the thread, which is kind of fair, but the thread was dead silent. If someone is interested in others pov then they can still read the first 2 pages , but also - this discussion is still very related to the thread (imo).

What do you mean by "more fundamental" there?