r/badphilosophy

In my (uninformed) opinion, the most fundamental definition of an all-powerfull God would be something like: "The expirience of having complete control over ones own expirience".

So God would only be trully certain of the fact that he is conscious in the present moment. Everything else could very well be an ilusion as far as he knows. This is, fundamentally, the same exact situation we humans are in.

I think this shows very clearly that the idea of an all powerfull God is most likelly a human creation, a projection of out biggest and only desire. To fully control our own expirience.

As George Carlin said, "We created God in our own image and likeness".

This is just a random thought. I would love to read your opinions. :)

They're not *real* doctors who study metaphysics. They're just people doctors.

All of this is according to Yuds own theories. According to Yud, we should accept killing as many people as necessary to prevent rogue AI, up to the limit for repopulation being possible. Luckily we only have to kill one person, baby Yudkowsky. Despite making it his aim to stop the development of AI, most of the CEOs pursuing it right now directly site his writing as inspiring them to begin working on AI. It would not be far-fetched to say his work started the race to build AI. Moreover, accoring to Yud it's totally fine to kill children under the age of one, possibly even under the age of six, since they can't talk and therefore probably don't have qualia. So, obviously killing baby Yudkowsky would both be morally permissible and stop the development of AI that will surely kill us all. From a longtermist view, then, we should devote all of our resources from here on out to inventing time travel and murdering him as a baby.

I am tired of non-professionals falsely claiming Philosophy is not making progress! When those of us in the know see it on all fronts. Largely unsung heroes are fighting valiantly to bring illumination and illustration to humankind. While this selfless struggle in itself should already be highly acknowledged, normal people are even less aware that we are winning!

Why is this? We cannot fully pass the blame to low IQ in the general public. There must be some influencers who would be able to understand what we tell them or who at least would promote the idea based on the impression we make on them. But are we reaching them? Are we making the case to them that Philosophy is succeeding in clearing the way for human development? The answer is sadly no at this time.

The underlying causes are two-fold. If there are any shortcomings to be found in the Philosophy profession, they are its lack of self-confidence and public relations. We need to get better at both of these if we are to preserve our avantgarde position in humanity's journey toward enlightenment.

So I am inviting colleagues and others who love knowledge and have secured some to educate the public about philosophical advancements and achievements. Go as far back or into other fields as you deem necessary to demonstrate the progress we have made and continue to make. Let's give them a show of intellectual force they won't forget!

Modern gender theory is all about personalization and validation and shit, not deconstruction.

So they don't necessarily all individually have the tools to give proper criticism or observations because its not fine-detail enough. So their groups still have sex expectation problems just due to the nature of the scope limits of their terminology.

But its still a bigger issue for conservatism daters who are inexperienced.

Now to clarify what I mean. 'A real man [gender expectation]' 'A real woman [gender expectation]'. Gender expectations are composed of assumptions of roles in society, and are relative to the nature of the individual and how they can differ. Like 'don't all men drink beer and watch football with their friends?' This is in a social circle right, social expectation.

There are the implicit qualities that are unspoken. Emotionally invested into a technical combat simulation sport, emotionally invested into tribalism, beer is normal.

When people have sex the reason why age matters in consent is not because of some objective moral principle, its because you are getting your esteem shorted like a scam, and because of motivating neurochemicals this can pull the wind out of your future sails. Akin to spiritual premature ejaculation.

The micro expectations and future expectations are a complex emergent system that influence each other, akin to how a formula can be tweaked in a small way and the resulting function can look entirely different.

So people with more experience having intercourse with those of less experience are the pushers of bad expectations. They don't necessarily profit from esteem tho, like a hooker gives their 'surplus value' to the pimp.

So who benefits? In a sense this is like a scam from propaganda causing misdirection of future expectation. Essentially sex is political. If you see a story about a teacher marrying their male student who 'just turned 18' or whatever, sometimes arrangements are not bad for the individual themself, but are bad for their future socialization group should it have not happened. So in a sense, time can get stolen not just money. And not just time but future potential social energy.

One might argue that some situations are mutually advantageous despite being underage. But because the male student in the example is trapped by their past decision this is not necessarily true. The scam comes from locking in an answer, then the reliability can benefit some systems and disfavor others.

So when we consider other countries having different age of consent laws, like Japan you might expect that their social system is just adapted to younger sex. But if you check their suicide rate (extremely high) you know that its not that simple. So I assert that the surplus esteem gets stolen from comprehension gap regardless. Also Japan is more carried by their fish diet than anything else tbh.

And this is why the upper educated often find it more difficult to reproduce. Because consent is actually difficult to establish properly and they have more knowledge of this. Also some 'use it or lose it' and inexperience perhaps but knowledge is not just attained by first person experience. You can look up how to finger a woman to orgasm quite easily.

So essentially sex and social momentum are beholden to Marxist theory as well. And the way to differentiate is by examining sub-attributes assumed of gender or sex in culture. Which gender studies I don't think really tackles, they are for specific categorization. This is more a humanist philosophy than a gender one, because it involves examining individuals more accurately.

Like gender studies acknowledges expectation failure, but it doesn't address the fine details of how it relates to culture in an unbiased or formal way. I suggest its a failure of terminology. Because wordy things like this post don't necessarily get communicated concisely but terminology does.

Plus expression culture for non-conformists who are gender focused have their own gender expectation biases. Sometimes trans people are sexist intersocially and don't realize it.

But the terminology might differ too much to be useful (wow, 90 sub-genders! /s). The issue is in categorization bias. Like a form of scientism they are beholden to. We don't need a whole phylogenetic categorization system for everyone to memorize a billion words. We just need the word Attribute added. Then it enables proper political or social examination.

I suppose I ought define it.

Gender Attributes are presumed or existing gender qualities within a culture. Gender Attribute Expectation is how one accurately or inaccurately presumes the characteristics of individuals in a culture relative to their gender.

Alright have fun.

What is the evolutionary reason behind killing yourself? In addition do animals have the same behavior?

Would you say concepts or ideas that infer with this action are always deterministic in nature, like seeing the future and a agent acting to prevent that?

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Whenever I have thoughts about topics like the meaning of life, purpose, God, death, or religion, I do some research to see what books have been written on the subject because I like to dig deeper. Once, while reflecting on my faith, I discovered the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard and his book on faith, "Fear and Trembling." Reading it gave me several new perspectives, but after a while, I couldn’t process all the new information. I felt overwhelmed, and during that time, my mind couldn’t focus on anything else—I was constantly thinking about it. Eventually, I became mentally drained, stopped reading halfway through, and had to focus on other things. This cycle kept repeating: a new thought, a new philosopher, a new book, followed by feeling drained and stopping midway. I always get so mentally caught up in it that it’s hard for me to focus on anything else until I’m completely drained.

Hi guys, actual philosophical zombie here.

Just wanted to come on here to let you know that we're out here and we exist. Well, actually I didn't want to do anything really as I'm entirely incapable of intentional thought! Lol!

Like I said, I'm a philosophical zombie, so feel free to ask me anything and rest assured I will answer with absolutely no consideration as to what you've asked me, nor will I even reflect on it (I am incapable).

Thank you!

When simulation becomes the norm, it weakens the human capacity for discernment. As a result, our social bonds close in upon themselves, forming self-referential circuits that no longer expose us to reality. We thus come to live within bubbles, impermeable to one another. Feeling threatened by anyone who is different, we grow unaccustomed to encounter and dialogue. In this way, polarization, conflict, fear and violence spread. What is at stake is not merely the risk of error, but a transformation in our very relationship with truth.

Hi! Please check wikipedia for a description of the "paradox": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newcomb%27s _problem I've seen endless debate on wether to be a one-boxer or a two-boxer. The problem is based on the possibility of existence of the predictor. To convince us it can exist it's pointed out "unlimited budget", repeated experiment etc. And also: the predictor can "simply" pick up some detail about the player that correlate with being a one-boxer or a two-boxer... but we do not only make decisions based on who we are, we also adapt to the situation at hand. Here the player has to guess what the predictor guessed they would guess about the predictor trying to guess what the player will guess and to so on to infinity. So no matter how smart the predictor is, some questions can't logically be answered. Like giving the truth status to the statement "this statement is false". Newcomb's paradox hides its self-referencing nature behind "the predictor is accurate don't you worry about it" or "the player is the type of person to" as if the player was not going to think.

I was debating a self-described radical feminist by the name of Oannejay Owlingray.  She spoke first and her argument was long winded so I will do my best to summarize in good faith.

She stated that trans-women are too far away from the “perfect form” of women to be considered part of the same category.  That they had some traits that no women would have, while lacking traits that all women should have.  

She used cars as an example, saying no one would be confused if you referred to a formula one car and a Volkswagen bug as cars.  Despite them being quite different they are both close enough to the theoretical perfect form of car that we all accept them both being in one category.

If you referred to a tractor as a car everyone would get confused, and that trans-women in this analogy are the tractor, and not the racecar or VW bug.  A person born with a penis and without the ability to produce large gametes clearly places them outside the bounds of womanhood.

I took the stage next to make my case in the affirmative, trans women are women with the following logic.

I am a heterosexual man, strictly attracted to women.  That means anyone who makes my dick hard is a woman.  Trans women make my dick hard; therefore, they are women.

Everyone in the crowd stood up and clapped and I was declared the winner by Obama himself!

If you too are a straight man too you may find success using this argument in the future!  

I have always been bothered by this sentiment, so generalized, that only the Greeks were original and “genius” in their time; as if Vedic philosophy, or the thought of the Chinese, couldn’t compete with the “oh so elevated” reason of the pre-socratics.

Any other tradition besides the greek isn’t even taught in schools; the historical, lived context of the greeks (who were very much in contact with the rest of the world) is completely omitted. And any ounce of religious or theological (“mystical”) dialogue is excused as “a device to appeal to the masses” (like Parmenides using poetry), a “metaphor” or whatever myth.

To believe that Parmenides wrote in hexameter just to “appeal” to people is both unfalsifiable and the result of modernist myth. Parmenides was as much a mystic and a religious man of his time as were, say, Buddha or Zhuang Zu. Trying to “elevate” ancient philosophers to the standards of the modern academia and its methods, to “excuse” the theology and their religious and spiritual attitudes, is deeply dishonest.

It also paints them in a light that conveniently separates them from all the other sages of their time, pertaining to other cultures (like the Egyptians, the Chinese, the Hindu, etc.) in an attempt to make them seem more “elevated” and fitting of today’s standards. It is also extremely offensive to the rightful authenticity of Ancient Greece and its culture. This is a myth deviced to demonstrate that the western tradition is “better” than any other. I have encountered philosophy professors who argue that philosophy use strictly western, no one else can or has participated in it. These guys weren’t even western by today’s ideas.

What I don’t understand is why this attitude is so widespread still. You’d think that a scientifically inclined society that has a reverence for history and a tiny bit of epistemic humility wouldn’t make that mistake. But it is extremely widespread, even within professions circles. My Ontology teacher genuinely believed that Aristotle was a sort of “pre-christian”, somewhat the “first monotheist”, and a “direct precursor of western science.”

I find this laughable, unfair, and quite shallow.

>!Also: I hate that the!< >!r/philosophy!< >!subreddit is so strict it becomes almost esoteric in the way it handles posts and participation. You have to submit a fucking dissertation for the MODs to let you respond to questions or even interact with others. Any post is so extremely moderated that… damn. It doesn’t have to be that strict.!<

If there is truly nothing, like total non-existence of everything including the universe itself, then there is no law of logic preventing something from coming from nothing, and there is no law of physics preventing matter/energy from being created from nothing.

Therefore, something can come from nothing!

We have all heard the slur that Philosophy does not translate into anything useful. And many colleagues resign to this characterization, allowing themselves be bullied into a corner and reciting tired teachings in hopes of edging out a living. Sadly, all this coping with expectations often does not pay. And our massive private contributions to humanity are not adequately rewarded either. Philosophy prevents us from making ends meet.

I have seen this addressed on a departmental level with corporate branding on clothing, buildings, publications, and even department names. This is usually not an option for individual colleagues. Only some institutions share their sponsorship bounties.

But do not despair! There are a number of untapped income sources for financially struggling philosophers, or even for colleagues who would like to match the prestige of their position with means. All it takes is an open mind. A tall order for some. But you don't even have to compromise your professional activities. Just muster some willingness to commercialize your messaging a bit by infusing it into a profitable side business. Here are some ideas:

Start a restaurant showcasing your favorite philosopher or philosophy. Greek, German, or other Continental, Indian, and Chinese fare seem a safe bet. You could keep it neutral, just referencing philosophy or a type of philosophy in the business name, and then pack your expertise into décor and selection of dishes. You might also hire trained waiters who dress and behave as philosophers, possibly even providing short philosophical introductions or advice from a menu. Or you might feature more elaborate philosophical entertainment in show format. What a beautiful setting for public philosophy!

Already claimed are:

Plato's Cave - A sports food pub with a TV on every wall

Plato's Cavé - a Greek coffee house serving 50 types of baklava

Sun Tzu - a Chinese-German fusion restaurant that will close shortly

Schlegel - a German chicken restaurant

If gastronomy is not your strength, you might want to offer products or services that evoke philosophical interest. For instance:

Aquinas - bottled water (note the great opportunity here to teach philosophies on the wrapper).

Parmenides & Gadamer - a cheese store

Nietzsche - nasal spray

Kierkegaard - spiritual remedy

Confucius - mental clarity supplement

So-crates - a storage solution enterprise

Im-manual Kan't - handyman service

Arendt - funeral services

Analytic Philosophy - a hemorrhoid treatment clinic

Any of these businesses can generate ample contact with normal people and put your knowledge to good use. A fulfilling win-win by generating income from your expertise while providing a much needed public education and elevation service.

These are just some of my ideas. Please share yours here with a grateful community!

The Tautology of God 3.0

I believe there are three or four key components to the logical tautology of God.

1. Almost everyone has feelings, passions, and executive function. Almost everyone processes conscious experiences with an array of qualities, qualia, and then a burst of understanding, sphota. People have epiphanies. Many people experience an inner voice. They dream, mull, and ruminate.

2. It serves a purpose, like a focal point for awe, hope, and the machinery of moral decision-making, a conscience. A person's datum can be themselves or external.

3. The combination of these things is not God unless you call it God; otherwise, it is a label.

4. Lastly, a secondary definition can be defined, such as the creator, Jesus, Vishnu, nature, or a combination.

For me, the secondary definition of God is "everything natural, at least," and I'm using nature as the datum for my proposition.