Simon Paynton
@simonpaynton
active 1 day, 2 hours ago-
Simon Paynton replied to the topic
Sunday School 21st February 2021 in the forum Sunday School 4 days, 5 hours ago
Steven Pinker says that the reduction in religious moral rules has contributed to a reduction in religious moral anger, and therefore, a reduction in religious moral violence, like torture and witch burning.
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Simon Paynton replied to the topic
Sunday School 21st February 2021 in the forum Sunday School 4 days, 16 hours ago
I think morality has two sides: promoting norms, and punishing offenders. A lot of religious people seem to really love punishing offenders, to the point where it destroys normal human empathic concern. In fact, this shows up how fragile empathic concern can be.
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Simon Paynton replied to the topic
Sunday School 21st February 2021 in the forum Sunday School 4 days, 21 hours ago
choosing the right thing to do.
This is interesting. I didn’t realise that established philosophy divides moral normativity (“should-ness”) into three categories: me, you, and objective self-other equivalence. It maps on neatly to Michael Tomasello’s classification: “me-concerns”, “you-concerns”, “equality concerns”, and “we-concerns” or r…[Read more]
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Simon Paynton replied to the topic
Sunday School 14th February 2021 in the forum Sunday School 1 week, 5 days ago
I know that specific abilities or talents run in families. Raw intelligence is one of those.
If people have less to eat, less good housing, less good health care etc., it wouldn’t be surprising if they turned out less intelligent on average.
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Simon Paynton posted an update 1 week, 6 days ago
Apparently, addictive behaviour is 40% inherited. (12 minute BBC radio programme.) If you ask me, some people have a “happiness deficit”, and other people have other emotional reasons for seeking chemical pleasure.
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Simon Paynton replied to the topic Veganism: Foolishness or Folly? in the forum Science 3 weeks, 6 days ago
I always see general intelligence as “grunt power” or how quickly someone can process information and draw new connections.
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Simon Paynton replied to the topic Are you and I only an illusion? Is our life an illusion? in the forum Small Talk 4 weeks, 1 day ago
West End Girls?
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Simon Paynton replied to the topic Are you and I only an illusion? Is our life an illusion? in the forum Small Talk 4 weeks, 1 day ago
If the present is an illusion and we are already where we are headed, we are not really traveling.
We are travelling along a 4-dimensional path, through spacetime, at the speed of light. If we have velocity in the space dimensions, our local time velocity slows down.
The present moment is any point along that path, which suggests…[Read more]
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Simon Paynton replied to the topic Are you and I only an illusion? Is our life an illusion? in the forum Small Talk 4 weeks, 1 day ago
the present being merely an illusion in which nothing is actually happening.
I’m sure I’ve heard it said, but I can’t get it confirmed, that we are constantly travelling through spacetime at the speed of light.
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Simon Paynton replied to the topic Are you and I only an illusion? Is our life an illusion? in the forum Small Talk 1 month ago
you’re outside of the concept of “simultaneous”. You can see it below you, within the universe, but you are not experiencing it.
But then, on the other hand, I thought it is true that there is no single frame of reference for time over the whole universe.
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Simon Paynton replied to the topic Are you and I only an illusion? Is our life an illusion? in the forum Small Talk 1 month ago
If you could step outside the 4-D universe, you would be outside of space and time. Therefore, where you are, you’re outside of the concept of “simultaneous”. You can see it below you, within the universe, but you are not experiencing it.
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Simon Paynton replied to the topic Are you and I only an illusion? Is our life an illusion? in the forum Small Talk 1 month ago
It’s a hypothetical dimension – a straight line, orthogonal to the other four.
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Simon Paynton replied to the topic Are you and I only an illusion? Is our life an illusion? in the forum Small Talk 1 month ago
“Simultaneously” is a property of the time dimension, no. 4, and the space dimensions: something happens at the same time in multiple spatial locations. Now, I thought that there is no such thing as a universal standard time in the universe, only relative time frames, or something.
Dimension no. 5 would be neither space nor time, but a way of…[Read more]
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Simon Paynton replied to the topic Are you and I only an illusion? Is our life an illusion? in the forum Small Talk 1 month ago
I have questions, the first of which is this: If the future is already out there, then isn’t just a kind of past, according to how most of us think of the past as a “been there done that already” kind of thing? Is there a future-past in addition to the familiar past-past?
It works if you think of spacetime as a 4-dimensional lands…[Read more]
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Simon Paynton replied to the topic
Sunday School 24th January 2021 in the forum Sunday School 1 month ago
Knipperdolling of the week: Can you spot any flaws in this letter?
It’s pretty scary when people say that it’s sinful and evil not to be religious.
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Simon Paynton replied to the topic
Sunday School 24th January 2021 in the forum Sunday School 1 month ago
From an outside perspective, as a white person, I see that black people in the US/UK face two main problems: being forced into a low socio-economic status, and not being treated as equal human beings. The first is very hard to fix, and the second is easier.
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Simon Paynton replied to the topic
Sunday School 24th January 2021 in the forum Sunday School 1 month ago
Sam Harris — The Moral Landscape: How Science can determine Human Values.
Sam Harris is great, and I think his book has a lot of interesting things to say, but he makes a fundamental error in assuming without question that benefit and harm are the primary human values. He should have recognised that these are a so…[Read more]
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Simon Paynton replied to the topic
Sunday School 24th January 2021 in the forum Sunday School 1 month ago
The battle for moral authority.
Eli Steele seems to be saying that the reasons for the disadvantage of black people in the USA is that the Left have treated them as an identity rather than as people – promoting people based on their identity, rather than on personal merit. He favours the idea of personal development rather than an “easy hand…[Read more]
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Simon Paynton replied to the topic Is the US officially a fascist country yet? in the forum Politics 1 month, 1 week ago
My take on human nature here is that we evolved with both the alpha male aggressiveness of chimps, and the milder, feminine nature of bonobos. Both kinds of behaviors are emotion-based, rather than cognitively-enhanced forms of self-reflection, with intellectual discourse only newly-enabled by invention of high level…
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Simon Paynton replied to the topic Is the US officially a fascist country yet? in the forum Politics 1 month, 1 week ago
lol, is Star Trek your religion?
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