121–130 of 179 posts
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Yes it does, it means every "frame" (yay video games terms) of your life, including the complete state of your mind, is a cause of the previous "frame". Every decision is a product of your experience and state of mind, that are the product of you previous decisions, that are the product of your previous experience.. something, something!
Yes, but to speak in video games term, you can still move the arrow of your character. Of course your decision are the product of your previous experience + a lot of other factors. But I believe there is a random factor, when we make a decision, we do choose one over the other. We'll never know anyway, but I feel like there would be nothing, no universe, no life, no space etc... if there was not this "random" thing.
Nevertheless, I agree with your critique of determinism. Think outside the "system". Nobody knows why stuff exists or why it behaves the way it does, it's all just observation and ideas.
I am curious. Are video games such an influential component of American twenty something year olds that every fucking thing has to be couched in terms of gaming lingo? I see this shit on Reddit all the time and it baffles me.
Every time I see an article like this I just want to grab the readers and shout "Read a philosophy book!" to them[1]. Literally every point in every article on how to live a happy life was being made by the likes of Seneca and Aristotle thousands of years ago, and there are good reasons why those writers are still the foundation for philosophy today - they were right. [1] I would recommend something like "Philosophy…
Basicaly those readers try not to waste time on reading old creazy guys from ancient past. It is easier to get pieces here and there on random internet sites. I would sum this article with such quote: "It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the who…
Every time I see an article like this I just want to grab the readers and shout "Read a philosophy book!" to them[1]. Literally every point in every article on how to live a happy life was being made by the likes of Seneca and Aristotle thousands of years ago, and there are good reasons why those writers are still the foundation for philosophy today - they were right. [1] I would recommend something like "Philosophy…
It's "I'm so irritated that I already knew what you just told me and I learned it from a better source that I want to assault you!! Why don't you read the same things I read!!?"
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But Seneca and Aristotle never wrote SEO-optimized 7 item listicles or produced YouTube linkbait. "This crazy Greek drank Hemlock. What happened next will blow your mind."
Oh crap. Imagine BuzzFeed but for ancient philosophers and classic literature. Awesome.
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Well, I'm at the opposite scale of thinking. I think that inherited genes and location only plays a smaller part - but it depends on the person. For a normal western person my personal belief is that it is less than 10%. I am a strong believer in free will and it's what makes us so different than animals. Animals have insticts and very little free will. The thing is that if you believe in free will you have more free…
> I am a strong believer in free will and it's what makes us so different than animals. Animals have instincts and very little free will. Let me give you a friendly advice. Belief in free will has a purpose on it's own, just like belief in God. But if you choose to believe, stay away from attempts to explain it scientifically. You will only waste everyone's time and energy. Just assume free will as a fact and move on…
The advantage of science isn't that it can proof stuff (which it can't) but that it is open for change instead of being dogmatic.
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Finding the right partner isn't trivial.
Maybe it's blasphemy for me to say this, but in my life it's been a lot harder to start a relationship than to keep one. Relationship books say that you have to work just as hard to keep one but that's nonsense. I don't need to buy my spouse flowers constantly or go on dates every weekend. (But surprise flowers are always a good idea.)
Starting one still looks rather random to me, you roll the dice until finally someone that you like likes you too, and that's most of what there's to it. Your attitude or effort can give you some small modifiers or penalties to the dice roll, but that's about it. It might sound childish but honestly, if I have to start a new relationship at some point, I'll be as lost in a sea of pure chaos as I was the last time.
On the other hand, keeping a relationship is pretty rational. Love the other person, care about her, don't be a dick, be emphatic, try to make her life as good as possible, and if you are not unusually unlucky you'll normally succeed.
Maybe it's also that as people that for one reason or other have a very hard time looking for relationships, we tend to value them more and make more effort to keep them than those who have it easier to get into one.
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That may be true. We'd need to find out how many teeth each gender has on average.
Here's a guess: Women, on the average, are older than men. So women, on the average, have fewer teeth.
The perspective here is consistently egoistic. It's not even mentioned. It's just assumed that the way one goes through life is as an individual, with one's own interests solely at heart, and one's own state the only thing to be managed. You win by maximizing your own state, by grabbing as many achievements as you can before you die. And even if you're not a dick about it, your concerns are very much limited to your states, health level, and the contents of your inventory.
This is no way to go through life! It leads to suffering and a small view of things. I'm really interested to see, actually, what this community makes of that insight. It will dawn on people eventually—or at least its negative will: that everything we've been putting so much damned energy into isn't making us happy. But this community is so relentlessly introspective, communicative, articulate, well-equipped, and outright successful. And we have so many blogs like this one: so many people actively, sincerely, unabashedly interested in the science of happiness and fulfillment. So the potential there is pretty big. The potential for massive burnout and dissolution or massive reorientation.