Marianne

The thing about his guitars is that, if they are anything like his watches, they are far less valuable than their price tag would indicate.

Plus, if you’re going to emulate a Gibson guitar go all the way. You see, while his guitars look like Gibsons, having the single cutaway body desoign and dual…[Read more]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
OpenAI reveal they achieved AGI – OpenAI o3. Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) will have a degree of “self-awareness”, adaptability, and creative problem-solving in situations it hasn’t been explicitly trained for. It will have the ability to continually learn and adapt autonomously, mimicking human-like learnin…

[Read more]

Simon Paynton wrote:
What is the highest good or goal on each side?

Simon, Simon, Simon. We do not live in a world where the average person is a philosopher who acts rationally without prejudice based on information. Most people act from their gut, taking their attitudes into account, and based only on the information they want to credit or even hear.

Simon Paynton wrote:

Unseen wrote:
It’s often “framed” by people who aren’t facing the question and the woman facing the choice has already set aside “greater good for the child” question.

We don’t know how the individual women see it. It must be pretty subjective. As men, we never will understand it directly.

It can be argued that it’s very imp…

[Read more]

_Robert_ wrote:
They real plan is to privatize social security/medicare and get that money into the stock market. So first they have to screw it up and then they will get away with it. America is dumber than a box of hammers.

Hopefully, dumb as they are, it will become undeniable that the food shortages, restaurant closures, increasing rents, and…[Read more]

Fuck around and find out, as they say. And the GOP will find out, I predict, in the midterms and in the next presidential election.

Immigrant workers are already going back into the woodwork rather than risk deportation, and the Republican dream of taking everyone off entitlements like Medicare and Medicaid and forcing them to accept the vacant…[Read more]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
I frame the question of abortion as a healthcare choice.

Well, yeah, but (as a pro-lifer might say) what about the health of the baby?

There is a deep divide over this issue and it’s not a disagreement over facts (which would make it solvable). Rather, it’s a disagreement in attitudes.

Simon Paynton wrote:

Unseen wrote:
It gets more complicated when the acts are individual (like whether to get an abortion) rather than social.

But the abortion question is framed as the greater good for the child – on either side.

It’s often “framed” by people who aren’t facing the question and the woman facing the choice has already set aside “…[Read more]

Simon Paynton wrote:

Unseen wrote:
“Evil” is defined in different ways in different times, places, and communities. In Sparta, for example, it wasn’t evil to murder deformed or weak babies.

But they were doing it for unselfish reasons: for the greater good. That’s not so different from our conception of good and evil.

It gets more complic…[Read more]

@Robert

“Evil” is defined in different ways in different times, places, and communities. In Sparta, for example, it wasn’t evil to murder deformed or weak babies. Even today, is abortion evil? Depends who you ask, doesn’t it?

The first line of my above post should read “The notion of free will has many problems,…” (emphasis mine)

The notion of free has many problems, the first one being defining it. And, of course, one of the easiest and least honest of ways of “solving” a problem is to define it away.

One of the dishonest ways of giving us free will is to define it in a way such as this: “If you can do something you want to do and no external person or force is making…[Read more]

PopeBeanie wrote:
You define determinism as natural law, which is consistent with its standard use in science and philosophy: every event or state of affairs results from prior states according to fixed laws.

I realize I frame determinism that way but to be more precise every state of affairs is the result of its antecedents. Whatever happens is…[Read more]

jakelafort wrote:
Think how much the middle east has changed as a result of the invasion and religious rapture of Hamas two octobers past.

Think of how much the middle east has changed as the result of the creation of Israel by Euro-American external politicians 76 years ago.

_Robert_ wrote:
Oh, damn, too late

JP has become a parody of himself.

I’m reminded of a quote Google can’t find so I’ll have to paraphrase it, but JP reminds me of it:

“There’s no difference between the avant-garde and a parody of the avant-garde.”

A parody of Jordan Peterson is indistinguishable from Jordan Peterson.

Simon Paynton wrote:

Unseen wrote:
You talk about free will in a way that presupposes its existence. That’s what I accused you of in my prior post.

Maybe, but my point is, that there’s evidence for its existence. If I had no free will, I could not respond to contingent, random circumstances by deliberating and picking and choosing.

Is this “ev…[Read more]

Simon Paynton wrote:
Everything obeys rules, but that doesn’t in itself imply complete determinism.  My free will is constrained by rules: I will never be able to do exactly what I like.  As for the rest, I can employ free choice.

You talk about free will in a way that presupposes its existence. That’s what I accused you of in my prior pos…[Read more]