TheRobin

The main difference between science and pure philosophy is that science makes quantitative claims. So far your theory seems to only consist of the idea itself.If you'd work it out into something that can be represented as a mathematical formula, then you could easily test it and see of it works or not. "Prediction" in that sense doesn't mean predicting something like the moon shrinking before it happened but describing exactly how that's gonna happen in numerical terms and then compare that exact numerical prediction against reality.When Newteon came up with the theory of gravity, everyone already knew that apples fall to the ground, but he could predict, how fast and how long it takes them to land etc. (well among other things).@Lians: I'm pretty sure EM waves don't travel in an electromagnetic field. an EM field isn't a medium for EM waves, but more a visualization of force-vectors from electrically charged particles

Since you pay her to help you, and she said that: "People like to believe that parents do the best they can." . I would probably have asked her if that's how she wants to help me, by making me believe stuff that's not really true and whether she thinks if that's actually healthy.

Haha, for better or worse, this made me laugh out lout quite a lot

Since you have to trade (i.e. GIVE something) to get what you want, it doesn't matter that there's more stuff you want than there is to get. Since you also can't give infitely, which means you have to prioritzie your wants, which means you can't consume whatever you want without anything holding you back. Also, wanting something isn't an action, so I don't see how morals come into play here, or how you define "moral" so that it can be applies to wants.

in order for there to be a debate you need two people who are able to reason and put forward reasoned arguments. From what you tell me, the people you try to debate with don't do that (for whatever reason, imo doesn't really matter anyway). SO even if you'd WANT to, it seems an impossible thing to do. and imo, it sounds like you're trying to disturb a KKK meeting with scientific evidence that blacks are not inferior. Everyoen who's at the KKK is almost by definition so biased that having an open talk or debate is impossible anyway. Imo save your energy for people who actually CAN be debated and reasoned with and don't bother with people who clearly can't

it's not like I believed that I'm the only one who's self-aware (nor do I know of many people who do). So I still don't see what the point here is. Unless you want to say that there's literally only one Conciousness that inhabits all our brains. Is that what it is, that you're saying?

so the video claims there is this thing they call Consciousness that experiences all of our experiences (or rather nor "ours" by definition of the video), because a particular manifestation in reality (certain patterns in our brains) have the same properties (being concious). That's just making a subject out of an property, like saying there is a thing called "Redness" that inhabits all red things or something like that. I don't see how that holds logically.

Nothing happens "to the universe", "universe" is just the term for the sum of all that is. By definition nothing can happen "to it" as that would require something that is not part of the universe itself I don't quite undertand what ethical implications there are to this. Could you expand that a bit?

idk, ask them if they could possibly think of any are in their life where they'd rather have someone be able to force them against their will to do what he wants without being responsible or liable for the outcome and without the possibility of firing that person or even stop "paying" them. I mean, generellay there's no "proof" for hypothetical futures and people who don't want to accept that violence is wrong are even less likely to accept any argument from effect, because it's just as easy to say "well, that's not "realistic"" (whatever "realistic" might even mean to them). But also, generally, if people think there's no link between a prinicple or theory for action and action itself, then I don't know what one would use as an argument, since they can always just ignore anything anyway, since there's no solid basis from which they work from.On the other hand to most easy examples where more freedom leads to cheaper and better stuff, is the technology market (computers, phones, internet), and compare that to a heavily regulated and government controlled market like finance or money.

just because something is available, doesn't mean it's efficient or cheap enough to be implemented. When cellphones first came out, almost nobody could afford them because they were so expensive to produce at that time. But sounds like cool stuff and I'm sure if it's cheaper (i.e. more efficient) than what we have now, producers will implement it (or go out of business eventually)

JackClap, I get that the creation of something for view shouldn't be free or copied against the owners will (though I don't see it being justified to use force against that in principle), BUT idea/principles are a different thing. If someone has an idea, saying other people can't talk about it is not the same as even the government form of copyright. So again, I don't see by what law or principle you'd go, if you say, that you can't simply state what it's all about. Also, I can almost garantuee you, no one will bother to spend time getting the lectures and stuff, because that's just such a common marketing/sales-trick these days (i.e. saying a lot of positive tuff about something, without ever saying what it actually is, so by the time people see what it's all about, they're so primed to receive it positively that they usually overrate the product compared to how they would've reacted if it was presented like anythign else is. Basically you get people to commit emotionaly before hand so they're more hooked afterwards, which ironically is quite the opposite of acting intelligently, so given taht the prodcut advertised here is about intelligence, taht's quite a funny irony and puts the thing in question even more )

I didn't know you need permission to quote someone. But yeah, maybe explain it to me once you can. Stepping around the issue and dropping hints isn't really helping me (or anyone I'd assume) in actually understanding what this is all about. So far all we got is a nice advertising without substance. Not saying there might not be substance in there, but you haven't provided any so far, so I don't really feel inclined to spend more time on that, if I can't even be told what "that" is. Thanks for taking the time though and I'm happy to hear a more to the point explanation at some point, if you want/can provide it

how does he define "intelligence"? And how does he measure whether it's increasing or not?

Intreview about a method to organize stuff more efficiently. I haven't read the book, but the interview gives a good overview it seems, and certainly gave me some useful and practical approaches and general ideas and pricniples on how to organize stuff (I don't know how to embed, so here's the raw link, sry, couldn't find the button) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-3nTl8M44o&feature=youtu.be

Make sure, they won't fail you just because of that first, imo. No need to waste all the prior work in the public hellhole known as school for some ideological reasons.

I think it might be more accurate to make the following distinction into "caring for something/someone" and "appreciate/admire something/someone for his/her actions and/or choices".I think it's only natural to care for other feeling beings such as animals, but appreciation or admiration for the choies one makes is impossible in regards to the animal I think, as it's mental capacities just aren't there in that regard. So care in that sense could probably be called our involutanry response to feeling beings if we ourselves are emapthetic (darn, I'm sure there's a better word than "feeling", but it eludes me just now). And admiration/appreciaton would be our invluntary response to the virtuous choices of other if we ourselves are virtuous (i.e. love).

My first thoughts: You also get more money for yourself, which means more quality of life for you and, in case you have (or going to have) kids and family, for them.

Well, I'm not sure if it's even appropriate to come up with the whole UPB framework, as that itself requires certainly more than 1000 words explanation, but Harris isn't asking for alternate theories to his, but for a rebuttal to his theory, so I think it'd be certainly nto in the sense of his contest to provide an alternatr theory, as long as he still accepts and can't find the flaws in his own. But yeah, thanks for sharing, there's still a lot of time until february, so, let's see what happens or what rebuttals come up. On a very basic level I think, the easiest way to do it is focusing on the lack of possibility of comparison or the vagueness of his terms. He seems to try and dodge this by a (imo very faulty) analogy with saying that there are no "units of health" either, so he doesn't need to provide "units of well-being", but the problem is that you don't compare a patients health to another and use that a s a metric for who gets the treatment (well, unless it's a clear emergency). But if he can't provide a clear method of figuring out who's well-being at what time and in regards to waht conetxt would be more important and therefore jsutify the behaviour as moral, then his theory can't even pass a simple two guys in a room test. As if you're in a room with a murderer, at least one of you will be dead afterwards, either kill in self-defense or being murdered, but using Harris' method, both results would be equal from a "well-being" persepctive (unless he clarifies that in his books somewhere), so idk. edit: just listened to the first 15 Minutes of said Joe Rogan podcast. interstingly he calls himself Libertrian and made the claim the that people who don't cause anyone any harm have the right to be left alone.Nothing to do with the mroality challenge, but makes him at least to me quite a lot more sympathetic than before :)edit2: ah, nvm, 15 more minutes and I have no idea what the guy's principles are about -_-'

well, as far as I see it, you'd first have to buy and read his whole book basically, to get to his argument, before going on to refute it, so idk. I think if he wants to have a 1000 word rebuttal, then he should first provide a 1000 word public argument that is to be rebutted, else it's kind of cheesy imo. I mean he says the basic argument is this one:"Morality and values depend on the existence of conscious minds—and specifically on the fact that such minds can experience various forms of well-being and suffering in this universe. Conscious minds and their states are natural phenomena, fully constrained by the laws of Nature (whatever these turn out to be in the end). Therefore, there must be right and wrong answers to questions of morality and values that potentially fall within the purview of science. On this view, some people and cultures will be right (to a greater or lesser degree), and some will be wrong, with respect to what they deem important in life. " But all that basically says is that some people (objectively and measurably) find pleasure in things and dislike other things. Unless he wants to claim that all humand minds are similar in that regard (something which is clearly not the case) he'd say that "morality" is basically "whatever people like or dislike", which isn't quite the same thing (or if he'd claim that it is, then that would rather be a case for saying that "morality" is a useless concept to begin with). From an (amaeteur) praxeological point of view "value" is also not something that can be objectively measured except as seeing through the action of people, that they value A higher than B at point C. So you can makea temporary scale of things that are valued more or less than other things, but that's it. No possible comparison could be made for comparing the scales of two different people (unless they meeet and exchange things). So it's not a constant even for one person, let alone the whole human population. So again, unless he wants to claim that moral is whatever people like in the moment, then it's quite obvious how that doesn't hold. BUT I'm assuming his argument is probably a bit more, erm, sophisitcaed, BUT again, we'd probably need to read the book first, which I'm not sure is kind of a fair way of having a contest on his part. tl;dr: Unless he makes a public statement somewhere where he actually defines "moral" and shows how his theory holds logically and empirically, I don't see the point of bothering. Unless he's kind of a really famous guy whom a lot of people listen to, but I genuinly don't know that.

Won't we have robot buttlers for that?

Wesley, thanks for the clarification, though I don't see that's quite true, as different substances have different effects. Some diminish one's emotional experience, some enhance it, some don't do much either way. As I understood him, he wants to use it more as a sort of energy booster, to get some projects done and don't fall in a pit of paralysation. I guess, it would depend on the consequences as well. If he's so paralized that he won't be able to do his job, then what's the alternative? Go broke and sleep on the streets? On the other hand, if it's just somethig like, that it postpones some carreergoal that could still be achieved a few years later as well (if that's still of interest then), then yeah, maybe going for caffein isn't the best idea, maybe instead try to cut down on working hours and take more time for yourself, if that's an option.On the other hand again, if it helps as a basic energy booster, it can also help for having the energy to gain self-knowledge. Well, lots of variables, maybe Elias can clear that up a bit, instead of us guessing

Morally, thre's nothing wrong with it, if you're not stealing the coffee. Practically, I'd say that if you're working on the underlying causes and not use it as something you want to take for a specific purpose and limited amount of time, I don't see any problems with that either. My experience has been that a lot of substance use has declined as an automatic result of working through the traumas that caused them in the first place (without even being aware, that they might've been the cause), and since coffein is to my knwoeldge not something that causes irreversible brain damage, I don't see any harm in it. As a long time coffee drinker, I don't see how this would get you motivated to do stuff though either, but I don't see any harm in trying, if the alternative is not being able to function at a basic level.As Wesley said though, if you can have a therapist help you, that's recommendable, given the severity of the situation. Either way, best of success for getting through that, sounds like you're in quite a horrible place at the moment. btw Wesley, I don't see how you can call that "dissociative behaviour", it's not like coffee will emotionally dissociate you like, say, alcohol or other sedatives.

idk, I think I've greatly benefited from being taught some basic principles or models of how to relate or understand one's own behaviour and emotions, without which I'd still be either without a lot of knowledge of myself or with a lot less. I can even compare the models I came in contact and use now to those earlier and can clearly see a huge different in results of gaining knowledge and understanding (and having actual or mroe acces to) myself. So in that regards I think being given good tools is highly necessary and recommedable. To bring up the map analogy again. Since we all start on a different point, our road to Barcelona will lead us to different terrain, but having an approximate knowledge of the location of the endpoint, our starting point and a functioning compass are irreplacable if we ever want to get there, even though none of these tools can tell us anything of what kind of terrain we have to walk through.

I remember my music teacher once told us a story, when he visited some tribes in an african country (iirc). They had this thing (I assume religious but not sure) where they'd dance really hard and rhytmic and to drum music, and it got mroe and mroe intense to the point that it was so intense, they got scared and ran away from the group and musicians. Only to later sneaking back towards the music and starting the process all over again :)Is it more that sort of "you can enjoy it without believing in any supernatural deity"-sort of thing you had in mind?