Sunday School

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

Strega wrote:

Empathy is informed sympathy

I think that’s a good description, if you mean informed emotional resonance.  Empathy has three components: cognitive perspective taking, emotional resonance, and empathic concern or compassion.

A psychopath can have empathy in the sense of cognitive perspective taking; but they can’t do emotional resonance (because they don’t have or recognise emotions) or empathic concern.

Someone’s an empath?  Either they’re very susceptible to emotional resonance, or high in compassion.  I’m high in compassion but very ego-centric and self-oriented, so I’m not good at perspective taking.  If someone’s very other-centred, of course they will be empathetic.

Maybe they’ve suffered abuse, and are now always on the alert for what others are thinking and feeling.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Reg,

What is it like to be a Bat?

If you want to numb somebody’s sense of empathy, as well as any love of philosophical thought, just have them read that essay, as well as the others in Nagel’s What Does It All Mean?

I had to read that in a philosophy class with several other majors and to a class member, everyone was totally nonplussed by it! Book lovers though we were and haters of actual book-burning though we were, we mutually agreed that it belonged in metaphorical “Humean flames.”. That takes a lot of effort in futility to stir up that much revulsion in a writing.

I mean, what does it all mean to contemplate what it’s like to be a bat if, by Nagel’s own proclamation, it is impossible to know what it’s like to be a bat without being a bat, and even it that were possible, you couldn’t communicate it to humans!

Nagel’s work was the literary equivalent of Wile E. Coyote’s use of Acme quack solutions for Road Runner hunting and feasting:

The only way it could be more palpable is if Nagel asked: “What it be like to be a bee being a bee?” 🐝😁

• This reply was modified 3 weeks, 3 days ago by  TheEncogitationer. Reason: What it's like to be a spell-checker
• This reply was modified 3 weeks, 3 days ago by  TheEncogitationer. Reason: Addendum

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

TheEncogitationer wrote:

If you want to numb somebody’s sense of empathy, as well as any love of philosophical thought, just have them read that essay, as well as the others in Nagel’s What Does It All Mean?

It may or may not be a godawful book, but I think it’s an interesting question to ask what it’s like for some totally different organism to experience the world.

[Simon PayntonParticipant]

jakelafort wrote:

Mirror neurons and other neural junk whose name(s) escapes me and neural pathways are activated when something observed causes alarm or joy/ecstasy. If one is high in empathy watch a movie and start crying or repulsing the automatic response to some tear jerker shit. Zeus ex machina or some shit.

That would be emotional resonance.  Dogs can set each other off barking, and babies can set each other off crying.

It’s true that birds look after their young, which is where empathy comes from, so we would expect birds to have some degree of empathy.

Crocodiles carry their babies in their mouths, and they’re some of the most social reptiles, they get together in groups and squeak to each other.

[_Robert_Participant]

Triggering empathy is a Spielberg specialty. Most of us are running the same basic software (if you are not a sociopath). The thing is, I am never a fan of having people take pity on others if there is nothing they can or will do to really help. In fact, it results in the most helpless of feelings having to look up at “empath”, shaking their head saying “tisk, tisk, such a shame, isn’t it?”. Keep your fucking flowers that made you feel good.

Now if we have powerful people who have empathy for those who are suffering and then do great things, that is excellent. However, unfortunately many people who gain great wealth and power do not get there by having empathy. Look at the most powerful people in the world right now, Musk, Trump, Putin, Bezos, Zuck. They’ll send you flowers.

 

 

[jakelafortParticipant]

Saving Private Ryan. Spielberg special. Still remember watching that and feeling sick to my stomach.

Far left. Far right. Without data to corroborate but i think it is a good bet far left is better educated than far right. Less conviction but perhaps higher in empathy as well. And yet i am not sure whether it is the lefties or the MAGA who are exhibiting greater stupidity. Education divorced of a critical thinker provides little to no shield against taking a nosedive into nosegay of group think ideology.

So you are one of those decent humans who would hope to achieve better lives for the masses. You fancy yourself a humanist? The MAGA shmaga are troglodytic heartless mofo’s until you get to know some and find out they are equally likely to help a person in need as a woke bloke.

Rather than discuss the stupidity of the far left i will drop this video and recommend listening to at a minimum from 40 minutes although it is all interesting. Perpetuating and abetting the depression of human rights the progressive/lefty morons!

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Simon,

It may or may not be a godawful book, but I think it’s an interesting question to ask what it’s like for some totally different organism to experience the world.

An interesting question, but all for naught if we couldn’t communicate and share the answer. Again, this is the kind of stuff that encourages hatred of philosophy as empty egg-headedness.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Robert,

Instead of the myopic view, how about if we examine the accomplishments of Harvard Medical School alone, and gauge that against the alleviation of guilty conscience by the entitled Harvard students and staff with their flawed but inconsequential support of Palestinians.

It’s consequential to hard science when some of it’s best students are holed up in their dorms or libraries in fear of their lives from barbarians who probably keep a set of skull calipers as a nostalgia relic.

https://hms.harvard.edu/about-hms/history-hms/timeline-discovery

Imagine the contribution of Harvard Law to the “rule of law” that is now being undermined as well.

If the “Free Palestine” crowd had their way, all of that would be torched like Alexandria got multiple times by Roman, Christian, and Islamic raiders.

The greatest accomplishments and progress cannot be made by profit seeking companies who must financially support their quarterly shareholder. And the well- developed science that all these companies use for their “innovation” will not be there without academics.

I recall working to develop air collision avoidance equipment for the company. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory worked for years developing the algorithms and technology that we used. There was no way my company could manage losing money for so long.

Profit-making companies fund all of the scientific research, either by voluntary contributions or by paying taxes. And Richard Dawkins eloquently elucidated why they fund science voluntarily:

And science will be even better off if all the barbarians taking over campuses get expelled and their non-science Woke “Studies” get cut off.

So, China with its long-term, big picture plans will prevail and the USA circles the “cost savings drain” and goes down the shitter.

.

The campus barbarians could go to China. That would be the best “deal” yet.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Unseen,

In a recent Facebook post answering a person who likes to remind leftists like me that the Democrats were very keen on the KKK and it was a Republican who freed the slaves, I said that the two parties flipped sides in 1964 with Pres. Johnson’s Civil Rights Bill. He countered that with the notion that, no, the Dems are still the party of slavery. They just do it through public assistance programs whereas the GOP standss up for self-reliance.

So, maybe Lincoln was wrong then to free the slaves rather than letting them self-reliance their way out of slavery, whenever that would happen(?).

You could have teamed with Eli Whitney and made a Strawman Assembly Line with that line of thought.

Slaves, of course, are morally blameless for their condition, but it is also true that the anti-slavery ball got rolling by those who resisted and escaped without waiting for a party invitation and who did so with no assurance of a livelihood or even a life at the other end. Those are the real heroes of that grim part of American history and our continuing grim history of humanity. We can feel for both victims and heroes alike.

[UnseenParticipant]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

Perhaps atheism asserts nothing but an atheist can assert that God doesn’t exist and here I am doing it.

God does not exist because he/she/it is impossible like a round square, counting to infinity, or unringing a bell. If that is true, then God’s nonexistence is true to a mathematical-level certainty.

Consider an argument against an Abrahamic God, which is the God we are typically concerned with, not Odin or Vishnu or Ahura Mazda. Similar arguments would likely apply to them as well, as long as they are asserted to have superhuman or magical powers.

God is claimed to be omniscient and omnipotent. However, no being can be both omniscient and omnipotent. If God is omniscient, then he knows the future in every detail to a dead certainty, and can’t change it, which rules out omnipotence. I can make a similar argument showing how omnipotence rules out omniscience because if one is omnipotent, then there must be an unknown future waiting to be determined, in which case God is not omniscient, and can’t be.

So, God is impossible and if God is impossible. God doesn’t exist.

If you feel you still can’t agree with me that God doesn’t exist, refute my argument.

[_Robert_Participant]

@Enco, sure companies pay taxes, but no company was going to orchestrate a mission to the moon. The return on investment as far as business development enabled by the Apollo program was 700% or 7:1 to the taxpayers.

The point is that universities and businesses work together to elevate our nation and that no business can afford to undertake risky technology and/or medicine that are years to payback, if ever, especially now that the low hanging fruit has been picked.

The “Free Palestine” camp should be allowed to express their misguided opinions like everyone else AND be punished for rule breaking like everyone else. That should be the focus of the effort, but it’s not. The focus is on crushing education and replacing learned people with easily controllable idiots wearing red dunce caps. Defunding schools and education over “woke” nonsense is a fuckin as stupid as it gets.

[UnseenParticipant]

TheEncogitationer wrote:

You could have teamed with Eli Whitney and made a Strawman Assembly Line with that line of thought.

Slaves, of course, are morally blameless for their condition

If you accept determinism, as I do, then everyone is blameless for their condition.

That said, slaves have rebelled and freed themselves. There are many examples of this.

There’s the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804): This is arguably the most successful and radical slave rebellion in history.

You have the Zanj Rebellion (869-883 AD): This large-scale revolt took place in what is now Iraq against the Abbasid Caliphate.

Then, there’s the Palmares Republic (17th century): Located in the interior of Pernambuco, Brazil, Palmares was a large, self-governing community of escaped slaves (quilombo) that lasted for almost a century.

Let’s not forget the Third Servile War (73-71 BCE), led by Spartacus: While ultimately unsuccessful in overthrowing the Roman Republic’s slave system, this rebellion of gladiators and other enslaved people in Italy posed a significant threat to Rome.

Also, the Maroon Communities of the Caribbean and the Americas: Throughout the Americas, escaped slaves formed independent communities known as Maroons.

Even if rebellion is suicidal, as Sartre asserted, we are always free because there is always the possibility of suicide.

[UnseenParticipant]

_Robert_ wrote:

The “Free Palestine” camp should be allowed to express their misguided opinions like everyone else AND be punished for rule breaking like everyone else. That should be the focus of the effort, but it’s not. The focus is on crushing education and replacing learned people with easily controllable idiots wearing red dunce caps. Defunding schools and education over “woke” nonsense is a fuckin as stupid as it gets.

Trump stated that he loves his poorly educated and that really said the GOP’s quiet part out loud. You don’t have to be a Democrat or Republican to notice that universities turn out more socially liberal people than conservatives, especially from their arts and sciences programs. Less so from the business schools.

Their plan, obviously, has been to cultivate enough people ignorant of the world at large and economics to fool them into voting GOP, while hiring those they need to do the research and development, often from other countries, to keep businesses humming. One has only to look at Elon Musk’s operation. He’s a huge proponent of hiring from outside the country.

While I’m sure there’s antisemitism in campus movements to some extent, I’m equally sure that much of the pro-Palestinian protesters who genuinely hate, hate the Netanyahu government and its policies and war conduct, not the Jews.

But there will always be Jew haters, haters of blacks, whites, gays, women, men, and so on, just because we are humans with all of the flaws that come along with that affliction (LOL).

The Dems have fucked themselves by caving in on some of the wokeness. They might have just simply not taken a stand on some of the more controversial aspects like allowing trans females* to compete against natural-born females in sports or adopting statements of pronouns, to take two of the more obvious examples.

* A trans female will alwayas be a female with an asterisk. I see no way to change that and feel no compulsion to change that.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Robert,

@Enco, sure companies pay taxes, but no company was going to orchestrate a mission to the moon. The return on investment as far as business development enabled by the Apollo program was 700% or 7:1 to the taxpayers.

If you had paid attention to the video from The Hill, Harvard’s private endowment was $57 Billion compared against $1 Billion a year from the Feds. Harvard is feeling little pain and will feel less when it sheds it’s barbarism.

The point is that universities and businesses work together to elevate our nation and that no business can afford to undertake risky technology and/or medicine that are years to payback, if ever, especially now that the low hanging fruit has been picked.

You seem to think that business does nothing for scientific progress and want to tax it to non-existence.

The “Free Palestine” camp should be allowed to express their misguided opinions like everyone else AND be punished for rule breaking like everyone else. That should be the focus of the effort, but it’s not. The focus is on crushing education and replacing learned people with easily controllable idiots wearing red dunce caps. Defunding schools and education over “woke” nonsense is a fuckin as stupid as it gets.

“Woke” nonsense running institutions of supposed higher learning is what is fucking stupid. And the professors and administrators who teach and practice “Wokeism” are already controllable idiots with red dunce caps, controlled by their braindead ideology. And the “Woke” are rule-breaking by allowing barbarians on campus and excluding admissions of competant and excellent students to meet some box-ticking goal or timetable. The time for an academic enema is long past.

• This reply was modified 3 weeks, 2 days ago by  TheEncogitationer. Reason: Addendum

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Robert,

Here is the video I referenced linked on The Hill:

https://x.com/MarkGoldfeder/status/1912283082364998131

[Author]

Posts