simon

@Simon – Yes, but you only experience that dot moving through time. It’s “now”.

Let’s roll it back a little. Let’s try to separate “experience” from “physics”.

Yes, We experience a present. That does not mean reality contains a moving present or a “now” that is moving towards a future. This is our experience of what feels like the “flow of tim…[Read more]

@Simon – Understanding is true belief. False beliefs are either redundant or harmful because delusion is always unsatisfactory.

That’s incorrect in modern epistemology. The old school of thought was that “Knowledge is justified true belief”. It is difficult to shake that idea because it is ‘folk epistemology’ and it has been around for centuries…[Read more]

@simon it’s not just people dying, like snuffing out a candle. It’s about leprosy, polio, and a million savage unrepairable wounds. It’s about the misery of pain, and the proximity to animal violence that pervaded in your ‘sounds great’ description.

@Simon – You should find a copy of “What is Life” by Schrödinger. He was based in Dublin and gave a talk on it at Trinity College in 1943/44. His original question, How does matter store information well enough to reproduce itself?, was basically an intellectual fuse-wire and DNA later became the detonation.

I went to a 3 day set of lectures to…[Read more]

@Simon –

Simon, the problem with JD Vance isn’t that he “respects” his wife’s atheism — it’s that he doesn’t respect her Hinduism. He’s implying she’s an atheist simply because she isn’t a Christian, which is a rather offensive way to erase a faith practiced by hundreds of millions in India. It’s disingenuous. What he’s really doing is getting…[Read more]

@Simon, – The coordinated flight of birds or the efficiency of an ant colony are examples of true emergence. It is complex order arising from simple, local rules. Each agent behaves independently, yet their interactions create a collective intelligence without any central plan or higher consciousness.

It’s legitimate emergence because the…[Read more]

@Simon. The Pravda Network in Russia is a huge misinformation ecosystem.  It is mostly automated and produces up to 10,000 articles every day. The process is known as “LLM grooming”.  More to read here.

@simon

”Extremists care about the one cause more than human welfare.”

I really like this point. It makes so much sense for today’s white river rafting kakistocracy.

@Simon

In the comments people talk about how the worst part, in the new relaxation of modesty rules, is the change in God’s unchanging and immutable Word.  How does that work?  It’s a contradiction in someone’s world view.

One of the Elders must have had a divine revelation from the Creator of the Universe. “Seeing a female shoulder is no long…[Read more]

@Simon – But when they do moral and ethical behavior well, they do it as well as or better than anyone else.

The Hitchens Challenge;

“Name one moral action performed by a believer that could not have been done by a nonbeliever.”

@Simon – In many cultures, morality is subconsciously equated with the prevention of harm. When someone is perceived as “immoral,” they’re often assumed to be capable of causing harm, either emotionally, physically, or spiritually. In moral psychology harm/care is one of the foundational pillars of moral judgment. Moral Foundations Theory covers…[Read more]

@Simon – He who is without sin shall cast the first stone…

Pope Bob, being a Catholic and with his degree in math, has SIN nailed down. Not sure what he is like with COS and TAN though.

@Simon

The motivation for people’s sense of responsibility to comply with moral norms and behave morally arises from a complex interplay of psychological, social, and cultural factors. Below are some key motivators:

1. Empathy and Compassion

Innate Response: Humans are biologically wired for empathy, allowing them to feel the emotions of o…[Read more]

@Simon he used to be a professor and clinical psychologist. His lectures are all over YouTube. This article looks like it’s talking about his new book, and even just reading it I can tell what it’s about because I’ve seen his lectures. The person who wrote that article clearly had a bias against him which you can tell immediately. They took a pag…[Read more]

@simon. Attilla the Hun had some people who succeeded as a result of his brutality.

Genghis Khan unified all the Mongolian tribes with his brutality.

Alexander III of Macedonia was a fiendishly cruel man who introduced elephants to the art of war. No doubt a few people were happy with this.

I’m not going to mention the German guy.

Your t…[Read more]