FreedomPatriot @[email protected]

But it is not a Democratic Republic...

@h4890 @freepatriot

Probably a bell curve like anything else, from schizoid to genius.

I also disagree on biological programming. Regular critters can learn too.

The problem is that our ability to learn is biologically determined...

@h4890 @freepatriot

I do not think the phrase is meant as "life is (only) suffering" but more as "life necessarily involves suffering."

@h4890 @freepatriot

Good response to compatibilism. This parallels a lot of the nihilist critique. We do not know how we think, so we just do things, and then conclude it was free will, ex post facto rationalization style. Nietzsche mentioned this in "On Truth and Lies in an Extra-Moral Sense."

@h4890 @freepatriot

It's the brain in a vat argument.

I looked at it for about five minutes and concluded that like Spinoza's Stone it was a useful teaching tool, but irrelevant since the results are the same.

If this is a simulation, I want it to be a good one.

@h4890 @freepatriot

This means the rules do not change: still consistent external stimulus, still arranging it for maximal adaptation and thriving, etc.

@freepatriot ceiling cat is watching you.

@freepatriot @stsmith01 then again, half are smarter. #optimist

@monarchist @freepatriot So essentially, the concept is meaningless. There is no way to detect it, and for all intents and purposes, it acts exactly like the real world.

So why not call it the real world?

But the counter is always... "ah, but you don't know that no one can break out. Maybe they did, and just won't tell us". Sigh!

That is precisely why they are the way they are.

@monarchist @freepatriot Ahh... this is another branch of my refutations of the simulation people.

It gose like this... fine, let's assume there is a simulation. But you will never know, and in every single aspect, the world acts as if it were a physical external world. There is no way for you to break out (at least not that anyone in our entire history has written about).

@monarchist @freepatriot Feeling/perception, yes, I think I agree that it can be described in this way.

Another way to look at it is that this feeling is generated, since the deterministic variables and laws that predict what we do require such massive amount of input, that we can never use them. Since the world is so complex that we cannot "grasp" it deterministically (except for obvious things such as motions of planets etc.) that is what gives rise to the feeling of free will.

@monarchist @freepatriot When it comes to life is suffering, I disagree. I agree that there is suffering _in_ the world, but I disagree that that makes all of life suffering.

I know many people who enjoy life, and I do so myself (except when I have to deal with banks or employees of the public sector, especially the thieves of the tax authority), so this is what I call the fallacy of buddhism.

Life is good! Compared life today with life 1000 years ago, and we have it infinitely better today.