Simon Paynton

Autumn wrote:
I can understand concerns that someone on the edge already might feel emboldened by the idea of solidarity.

That’s a potential concern.  But we live in a world of random crap already.  I refuse to worry about random crap like terrorism.

I understand that in the US they do “shooter” preparedness training in schools.

If there’s a situation where someone can cause havoc anonymously, at no cost to themselves, just by pulling a TikTok prank – of course someone’s going to do that sooner or later.

I think you’re both handling it in a very mature way.  He’s not going to allow one malignant jerk to ruin his education. Life is full of risk, especially in a country awash with guns.

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
Marge and Homer’s ice cream argument, or why meta-ethics matters.

The question remains, what is goodness?  What does it mean to be good?  I think that goodness falls within three domains: 1) maximising the well being of the group or team as a whole (respecting order and tradition, responsibility, duty, etc.); 2) max…[Read more]

Unseen wrote:
Tell me what mathematics has helped me to understand about the length of the coast of Great Britain? I seem to know less in some regards.

The kind of length we are familiar with is linear, i.e., a one-dimensional straight line or two-dimensional curve within a two-dimensional plane.  The coast line of Great Britain is like a…[Read more]

I think it’s Morgan Freeman.

The reason mathematics is a toolset for understanding the world, is that it captures logical properties of the world, and so, it has to be discovered, just as the world has to be discovered.

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
Marge and Homer’s ice cream argument, or why meta-ethics matters.

We need to know, ultimately, if the meanings of our moral concepts affect our practical action. We need to find out if shared or unshared understandings of ethical judgment can help us understand disagreement about what we ought to do.

I think that p…[Read more]

I’m not sure.  It seems there have been a number of attempts to unify mathematics with one principle.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/philosophy-mathematics/

Simon Paynton wrote:
Even mathematics doesn’t have a theory of everything

For all we know, there may be a theory that explains all of mathematics.

Even mathematics doesn’t have a theory of everything.  It’s too much of a patchwork quilt.

Simon Paynton wrote:
a moral norm is an ideal way to be cooperative in otherwise potentially competitive or aggressive situations

That should be, according to theories of evolutionary morality: a moral norm is an ideal way to be cooperative generally, and a social norm is an ideal way to be cooperative in otherwise potentially competitive or…[Read more]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
Marge and Homer’s ice cream argument, or why meta-ethics matters.

This article looks very interesting.

Utilitarianism, a moral theory defended by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, urges us to place moral importance on the consequences of our actions. On this view, if the consequences of an action would bring a…

[Read more]

It would be like Star Trek, or Red Dwarf

In fact, it is worse, because the intervening generations would be forced, without any choice, to live out their entire lives in a spacecraft.  That’s an unethical removal of someone’s agency, inflicting something on them they almost certainly wouldn’t choose, without any other option.

It seems to me equivalent of volunteering to go and live on Mars.  One is part of a historic scientific endeavour, but one has a miserable time doing it.