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Re: OT: totally off-topic

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On Sat, 29 Mar 2025, Salvador Mirzo wrote:

>>> I see a lot of neighbors here that don't get along.  I am probably a
>>
>> Ahh... sounds more normal! ;) In my current apartment, the community
>> is either non-existent or nuts. I don't like them, and therefore I am
>> selling the apartment.
>
> Not an unwise decision.  But the wises decision is to buy a house.  An

True. But a house means higher cost, more maintenance, more time lost doing
things I do not enjoy. So there is no perfect solution. But I have actually
thought about getting a house. So let's see what the future holds! =)

> apartment is like living together with strange people, except that you
> have a very nice room (that comes with a kitchen inside) that gives you
> a good sense of privacy.  (But you have none.)

True. It is a little bit better in northern europe where people do not want to
socialize. Most of the time you meet no one. Another solution could be to buy a
nice pent house apartment, making sure you share the floor with no one, and
ideally, a private elevator! =D

>> In the other 2 places I have apartments, I do like the community! 66%
>> goodness!  ;)
>
> Dude, 66% is no good. :)

It's better than 0%! ;)

> admit it.  I had never eaten a Cheddar McMelt 'til then.  I never
> thought I would like it.  Many years later I tried it out.  It's all I
> eat now when I go there---once every 5 years?

Interesting, I have never seen this burger in europe! How does it differ from
regular cheese burgers?

>> No worries... it is very interesting to note these differences between
>> cultures.  =)
>
> It was more like a joke---I'm apologizing on behalf of my countrymen.
> Surely it's not my responsibility that my countrymen are not very
> polite. :) (Except that it is because they're all humans.)

Ah, got it! =)

> Above all, I identify myself with people with vigor, passion and energy.

Sounds like a nice group of people to identify with if you can find them. =)
I've always been a loner from that point of view, so I tend to not identify with
others much at all.

>> I think our increasingly sedentary lifestyles are to blame as well as
>> the mindset of instant gratification which makes people want to
>> achieve things with the minimum amount of energy necessary.
>>
>> I also think this ties in with the fertility crisis we spoke of
>> before.
>
> Yeah---the experts always include nutrition in their hypotheses.

The question is... how can we, you and me, change the trend? ;)

>> I am lucky! I do not like to exercise, but my wife forces me to. ;)
>
> Doesn't sound like fun.  If you take a half hour walk each day, you
> should probably be good.

I do walk, voluntarily, but the wife judges that not to be enough. I am thankful
that she makes me train, since it is healthy. Without her, I would be a lot less
healthy and eating a lot more junk food. So yes, it is one of those things that
are annoying in the short term, but good in the long term! =)

> I've reached a routine I've been looking for for a long time.  I wanted
> to bike to the beach, walk and swim.  I was swimming in a gym pool.
> It's not very good for me: the chlorine water doesn't feel right at all.
> Sea water, on the other hand, is ideal.  I live in a part of the town
> that's elevated.  When I bike to the beach, I must go down.  Coming back
> is not easy.

Why not try an electric bike? ;)

>>> I think proofs are just constructions.  In math, for example, their role
>>> is quite clear.  I don't even know what it would mean to prove that
>>> there is reason.  I think there's reason because we seem to be doing
>>> some stuff here that we decide to call reason and then, evidently, it
>>> exists in the sense that we conclude it does and move on.
>>
>> You do sound like a philosopher to me! ;)
>
> Lol.  I should probably take that as a compliment.  On a more serious
> tone, I'd ask what is a philosopher to you.

This could definitely be the start of an eternal conversation. 2500 years has
not been able to pin down the definition. ;)

A wise man, someone who is full of wonder, someone who likes to ask questions?
Many ways to define a philosopher.

>> Based on a recent conversation, there can be proof, as in math, and
>> evidence, as in empirical science. Since philosophy is not about
>> empiricism, I'd say proof is probably it. There is of course a new
>> branch of philosophy called practical philosophy, but to me, it seems
>> more like a closet branch of sociology or psychology.
>
> I had never heard of practical philosophy.

It is a fairly new branch of philosophy, about 100 years old or so, depending on
how you define it.

>>> If someone /rejects/ an axiom I came up with or a definition I wrote,
>>> then there's likely little friendship there.  Friendship exists when
>>> people go along with you without judgment.  Rejecting /or accepting/
>>> anything is judgment, which is not friendship.  When someone proposes me
>>> anything, I look at it without accepting it or rejecting it.  (Unless
>>> I'm a really bad mood!)
>>
>> There is a theory of truth called the consensus theory of
>> truth. Sounds as if that might be what you are thinking about?
>
> No.  Certainly not.  I have nothing to do with consensus.  Truth should
> have nothing to do with consensus.  We can easily imagine an outrageous
> group denying obvious facts.

There are facts, and then there are "facts". Is it true that blue is the best
color? Good luck answering that objectively. ;)

Is it true that there is a coffee mug on my right on a table, yes! And if you
were here with me, I am 100% certain that we would agree.

> I'm quite okay with the keeping ``truth'' undefined.  I may have some

Even if your life depends on it?

> idea in my mind that I think it's totally true.  Perhaps I can't get you
> to assert the same.  So what?  Does that keep in doubt?  So?  I can't
> see any problem with living life with a little doubt.  Every now and
> then it's a good idea to hang a question mark on those things we've
> taken for granted.  (Have you located where Russell said this?  I can't
> even be sure it was him.)

>>> Excessive refinement in thinking?  They want a kind of super assured
>>> certainty?  I think that's a waste of time.  It's not a waste of time to
>>
>> So do I. In 2500 years no such thing has been found, so I am quite
>> happy and content to accept what my senses tell me. ;)
>
> Our senses also do make mistakes.  And some things can't come directly
> from the senses---what we see in a microscope, for example.

True, but just because we sometimes make mistakes I do not think is enough of an
argument to refute completely the idea that what we can confirm with our senses
is not the truth.

When it comes to the microscope, it is true, but at the end of the day, we do
use our senses to look into the microscope.

> Even ``senses'' is a complicated word.  I met someone at the beach last
> Saturday.  It's a person who lives very far from the beach---another
> town.  For about a year and half, I've been thinking about (as I walk on
> the beach as I always do) that I could someday meet that person by
> chance on that beach.  But, of course, this is just fantasy because it
> nearly makes no sense.  So, after my Saturday surprise, I was thinking
> to myself---omg, how weird!  Do the things I imagine come true or is
> this imagination a kind of premonition?  (Or just coincidence?)

My theory, conincidence, selective memory, and priming your psychological
filter.

1. Yes, sometimes it is just conincidence.

2. You think a lot of things, and forget a lot as well. If you think about an
event x, and x never happens, you would have forgotten about it. If you
envounter event x, after first thinking about x, you'll say to yourself, Oh, I
did think about x, how strange that I know encountered x.

3. When thinking about a thing deeply, you are in a way telling your
subconscious mind to be on the lookout for that. So when you filter your 1000s
of daily sense impressions, your usbconscious mind has been programmed to
"trigger" based on what you thought about.

Those are my 3 theories around why that happens.

> This is not the first time this happens.  But many of the other past
> coincidences (such as this one), I have been able to explain in a
> special way, which I have been calling long-range planning.  I can spend
> years imagining a certain situation (a little bit every now and then)
> and then I end up putting myself in a position where I can live that
> imagined situation.  I could then claim to have materialized that
> situation or that somehow my imagination was having a glimpse of the
> future.  But I actually call that long-range planning.

True! No hocus pocus at all! =)

> But the beach event of last Saturday seems very much outside of my
> control.  The most I could do is to always go to beach, which in fact I
> have been doing lately...  Still...  It still feels totally outside my
> control.

>>> care for your math proofs, say, or removing bugs from your programs and
>>> so on.  But rejecting the senses as in I don't know if really exist or
>>> I'm being fooled by an evil genius?  I think that's excessive thinking.
>>> That's when thought escapes from the leash.
>>
>> Agreed! That is why I do not care much for interpretations of quantum
>> theory as well. Plenty of thoughts escaping from the leash there, and
>> plenty of useless (in my opinion) speculation.
>
> The case of quantum mechanics is a necessary one, though.  Yeah, surely
> there's a lot of imagination there, but I think that's part of science.

Oh yes... I am not against imagination and speculation, if that serves to
motivate a person, or inspire him, or help him advance theories. My main beef is
when people confuse speculation and theorizing, with what we can or cannot
prove. Mistaking the map for the real world so to say.

> Quantum mechanics is giving us great philosophical problems.  It's a

Yes!

> very hard read, but to see them all you could skim a quantum theory book
> by descant.  Interpretation of quantum mechanics force us to make up
> our minds about how we want to see the world.  The fun thing is no

I think we are never forced to make up our minds. I am happily agnostic about
the interpretations of QM and I live my life just fine. I am just content to
note that some interpretations are absurd, some impossible (in my opinion) some
meaningless, and some I do not understand.

So I wait for more evidence, and for science to march along, and that is about
it.

> matter which perspective we take, they're all problematic.
>
>>> Most psychologist are so full of nonsense that being one wouldn't help
>>> you here. :) I haven't read The Interpretation of Dreams, but I really
>>> would like to do it.  The book could be wildly wrong, but notice that
>>> nobody seems to have made any advances since then anyhow.
>>
>> I find the Dodo effect quite facsinating. It says that it is not the
>> school of psychology that makes a difference in therapy, but only the
>> person.
>
> I had never heard of it and I can't look up anything right now, but it
> makes perfect sense to me.  The inner is the outer.  What a person lives
> in the outside is a reflection of you'd find on the inside.  A
> therapist, like any intelligent person, can be of help, but you can't
> put your life in order if you are not able to find order where you
> should be looking.

Like the buddha said somewhere... he cannot do the work for you. You have to do
the work (meditate, live a good life) yourself if you want peace. Buddha can
facilitate, point in the right direction, but you have to do the work to
experience the result.

>>>> Not quite. Counterfactuals are questions such as... "imagine you ate
>>>> an apple this morning, would that mean that later in the day you
>>>> would have a stomach ache". So when those types of thought
>>>> experiments are not made with the intention of high lighting
>>>> something tangible or empirically provable, I find them to be
>>>> useless idle speculation. That's what I was trying to get at.
>>>
>>> Oh, I see.  We're in total agreement.  I think counterfactual
>>> propositions are useless distractions.
>>
>> Excellent! There has been a meeting of minds! ;)
>
> This is the USENET.  We could be yelling at each other for an entire
> year.  Instead, we do something completely different.  We're weird.  And
> we don't even use our real names.  Our friendship can't leave the
> USENET.

Haha... true. I find that usenet has great power, due to its simplicity!

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              Re: broken schools Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-03-07 21:41 -0300
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                Re: broken schools D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-03-09 00:14 +0100
                Re: broken schools Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-03-08 22:26 -0300
                Re: broken schools D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-03-09 22:52 +0100
                Re: broken schools Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-03-10 08:39 -0300
                Re: broken schools D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-03-11 22:59 +0100
                Re: broken schools Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-03-14 12:10 -0300
                Re: broken schools D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-03-15 23:58 +0100
                Re: broken schools Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-03-17 00:02 -0300
                Re: broken schools Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2025-03-18 03:00 +0000
                Re: broken schools Eva Lu <evalu@tor.soy> - 2025-03-18 21:20 -0300
                Re: broken schools D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-03-18 11:17 +0100
                OT: totally off-topic (Was: Re: broken schools) Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-03-19 13:51 -0300
                Re: OT: totally off-topic (Was: Re: broken schools) D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-03-19 23:20 +0100
                Re: OT: totally off-topic Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-03-21 11:52 -0300
                Re: OT: totally off-topic D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-03-23 00:31 +0100
                Re: OT: totally off-topic Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-03-29 20:50 -0300
                Re: OT: totally off-topic D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-04-01 16:43 +0200
                Re: OT: totally off-topic Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-04-04 11:20 -0300
                Re: OT: totally off-topic D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-04-06 23:17 +0200
                Re: OT: totally off-topic Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-04-10 15:19 -0300
                Re: OT: totally off-topic D <nospam@example.net> - 2025-04-12 21:05 +0200
                Re: OT: totally off-topic Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> - 2025-04-13 13:10 -0300
            lifestyles Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.netREMOVE.invalid> - 2025-03-11 20:20 +0000

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