Quote of the day

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Hypocrisy

“Nothing that we despise in other men is inherently absent from ourselves. We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or don't do, and more in light of what they suffer.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Or in light of all the suffering they inflict on others.

“I often wonder why the whole world is so prone to generalise. Generalisations are seldom if ever true and are usually utterly inaccurate.” Agatha Christie

Like, more or less, that will ever stop them.

“The rule seemed to be that a great woman must either die unwed ... or find a still greater man to marry her. ... The great man, on the other hand, could marry where he liked, not being restricted to great women; indeed, it was often found sweet and commendable in him to choose a woman of no sort of greatness at all.” Dorothy L. Sayers

Way, way back then, right?

“For me, the most ironic token of the first human moon landing is the plaque signed by President Richard M. Nixon that Apollo 11 took to the moon. It reads: 'We came in peace for all Mankind.' As the United States was dropping 7 ½ megatons of conventional explosives on small nations in Southeast Asia, we congratulated ourselves on our humanity. We would harm no one on a lifeless rock.” Carl Sagan

Let's call it the "show me the money!" deep state.

“The self-righteous scream judgments against others to hide the noise of skeletons dancing in their own closets." John Mark Green

What, even here?!

“All of us have to be prevaricators, hypocrites, and liars every day of our lives; otherwise the social structure would fall into pieces the first day." O. Henry

Want me to explain this to you...again?

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Heaven

“He lifts her breasts, which fit perfectly into his hands, though he knows this is no promise that he gets to keep them. A million things you can't have will fit in a human hand.” Barbara Kingsolver

You can keep mine if I can keep yours.

“I can see Richard Wagner standing at the gates of Heaven. "You have to let me in," he says. "I wrote Parsifal. It has to do with the Grail, Christ, suffering, pity and healing. Right?" And they answer, "Well, we read it and it makes no sense." SLAM.” Philip K. Dick

That can't be good.

“They say that in the second before our death, each of us understands the real reason for our existence, and out of that moment, Heaven or Hell is born.” Paulo Coelho

Good to know?

“Without favours, there would be no friendship.
Without Paradise, there would be no worship.” Mouloud Benzadi

Sounds about right.

“The blessed in the Kingdom of Heaven will see the punishments of the damned, in order that their bliss be more delightful for them.” Thomas Aquinas

Doesn't surprise me.

“Heaven is the most angelically dull place in all creation” George Bernard Shaw

If only for all of eternity.

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Determinism

“We should rather consider the events, as they happen, with the same eye as we consider the printed word which we read, knowing full well that it was there before we read it.” Arthur Schopenhauer

Well, not counting what we post here...of course?

“You have not built your mind. And in moments in which you seem to build it—when you make an effort to change yourself, to acquire knowledge, or to perfect a skill—the only tools at your disposal are those that you have inherited from moments past.” Sam Harris

Projected [inevitably] into the future?

"My choices matter—and there are paths toward making wiser ones—but I cannot choose what I choose. And if it ever appears that I do—for instance, after going back and forth between two options—I do not choose to choose what I choose. There is a regress here that always ends in darkness. I must take a first step, or a last one, for reasons that are bound to remain inscrutable.” Sam Harris

Word games, let's inscrutably call it.

“Speaking from personal experience, I think that losing the sense of free will has only improved my ethics—by increasing my feelings of compassion and forgiveness, and diminishing my sense of entitlement to the fruits of my own good luck.” Sam Harris

On the other hand, losing what you could never, ever, have won?

“On a philosophical level, it struck me as an operational way to define free will, in a way that allowed you to reconcile free will with determinism. The system is deterministic, but you can’t say what it’s going to do next.” J. Doyne Farmer

Get it? On a "philosophical level"?

“You yourself are a soul. And that’s exactly why you are free. No machine can ever be free. Nothing born in time can be free. You may think that you yourself were born in time, but you weren’t. Your body was created at a specific time, but not your soul. Your soul was never created at all and doesn’t exist in time. It’s eternal.” Mike Hockney

See how it works? Unless, of course, Mike can demonstrate ontologically -- and then for all practical purposes, teleologically? -- how this all actually unfolded in his own brain?

[iambiguous]

Hell

“I don't believe in the concept of hell, but if I did I would think of it as filled with people who were cruel to animals.” Gary Larson

Of course, we're animals too, right?

“Enough hell has swallowed me for too many years. But finally understand this--I have burned up one hundred thousand human lives already, from the strength of my pain.” Antonin Artaud

Can you say that?
Would you like to know if I can?

“The voice says, maybe you don't go to Hell for the things you do. Maybe you go to Hell for the things you don't do. The things you don't finish.” Chuck Palahniuk

New thread?

“But there’s a Sufi story that challenges the notion that people believe only because they need an opiate. Rabe’a al-Adiwiyah, a great woman saint of Sufism, was seen running through the streets of her hometown, Basra, carrying a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. When someone asked her what she was doing, she answered, ‘I am going to take this bucket of water and pour it on the flames of hell, and then I am going to use this torch to burn down the gates of paradise so that people will not love God for want of heaven or fear of hell, but because He is God.'” John Green

On the other hand, what on Earth does that mean? Among other things, for all practical purposes.

The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.” Bertrand Russell

Sounds about right.

“After all, is not a real Hell better than a manufactured Heaven?” E.M. Forster

No fucking way!
Right?

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Stupidity

“It’s understandable to be alarmed at the spread of artificial intelligence, but we should be more alarmed at the increasing global stupidity.” Nkwachukwu Ogbuagu

Let's pin this down. Only this time existentially.

“Lies are the insecurity of our egos refusing to acknowledge the stupidity of our choices.” Craig D. Lounsbrough

Though not by a long shot all of them.

“Here's a definition of Wokeism: There are people just sitting there, who are deliberately waiting, for the thrill of being offended.” John Cleese

Let's run this by, well, you know.

“I am saddened by those who ride the merry-go-round of circular arguments, repeatedly passing me by again and again not because they have a superior argument, but because I didn’t get on.” Craig D. Lounsbrough

Exactly!
Let's call them Stooges.
I have mine here and you have yours.

“It was a combination of genetics, stupidity, and bad luck, like everything else that goes wrong in life” Cade Metz

And, alas, virtually as well.

“Money, success, integration into a solid, recognised world - all these factors contribute to an economy of the self. There is no longer any need to think about your needs, your mood, your behaviour, your friends, or your life, no need to understand or to look any further: the world you're in provides all that right away.” Martin Page

Next up: the world we're in.

[Impenitent]

...

Exactly!
Let's call them Stooges.
I have mine here and you have yours. ...

Iggy had his too...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbLRf0j80wU

-Imp

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Simulation

“His eyes search the crowd until they find my face. My heartbeat lives in my throat; lives in my cheeks.
"I still don't understand," he says softly, "how she knew that it would work.” Veronica Roth

Let's explain that.

“Using fake feelings and relying on a trick box of artificial gadgets in order to create a simulation of desire, will not unravel the knotty puzzle to reinvent oneself." Erik Pevernagie

Next up: a fractured and fragmented puzzle.
Still simulated though.

“All over the world major museums have bowed to the influence of Disney and become theme parks in their own right. The past, whether Renaissance Italy or Ancient Egypt, is re-assimilated and homogenized into its most digestible form. Desperate for the new, but disappointed with anything but the familiar, we recolonize past and future. The same trend can be seen in personal relationships, in the way people are expected to package themselves, their emotions and sexuality, in attractive and instantly appealing forms.” J.G. Ballard

So, what's our theme?

“If we are blinded by the razzle-dazzle of the limelight and can't even bring a little depth into our story, we must recognize that self-estrangement has besieged our minds, and reality has become a simulation.” Erik Pevernagie

True, but only if you are really, really lucky.

“Whence the possibility of an ideological analysis of Disneyland (L. Marin did it very well in Utopiques, jeux d'espace: digest of the American way of life, panegyric of American values, idealized transposition of a contradictory reality. Certainly. But this masks something else and this "ideological" blanket functions as a cover for a simulation of the third order: Disneyland exists in order to hide that it is the "real" country, all of "real" America that is Disneyland (a bit like prisons are there to hide that it is the social in its entirety, in its banal omnipresence, that is carceral). Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, whereas all of Los Angeles and the America that surrounds it are no longer real, but belong to the hyperreal order and to the order of simulation. It is no longer a question of a false representation of reality (ideology) but of concealing the fact that the real is no longer real, and thus of saving the reality principle.” Jean Baudrillard

Sounds like something he would say. Does it sound like something you would believe? 

“The media represents a world that is more real than reality that we can experience. People lose the ability to distinguish between reality and fantasy. They also begin to engage with the fantasy without realizing what it really is. They seek happiness and fulfilment through the simulacra of reality, e.g. media and avoid the contact/interaction with the real world.” Jean Baudrillard

Hint, hint and/or wink wink.

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"Artificial Intelligence

“We are not just facing a more efficient competitor; we are facing a different category of economic life.” Emad Mostaque

Us vs. them: the final chapter?

“Asking ChatGPT for life advice is like asking Google Maps for emotional directions—accurate, fast, but still might reroute you through childhood trauma.” Saurabh Dudeja

Again, in other words.

“The lines between sectors may be vanishing; when will the line between human and machine also fade?” Roger Spitz

My guess: either much sooner than we think or much later than we think. 

“After thousands of years of coevolution, humans are now inextricable from technology.” Roger Spitz

No shit, let's say.

“AI is developing quickly, and the goalposts to remain relevant are constantly moving. Anything we think we know today in relation to AI will change tomorrow.” Roger Spitz

Or even later today?

“The machines have not just taken our jobs. They have freed us from the lie that we are our jobs.” Emad Mostaque

New thread?

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Free Will

“You can’t change the past. You can’t even change the future, in the sense that you can only change the present one moment at a time, stubbornly, until the future unwinds itself into the stories of our lives.”  Larry Wall

Or there about, let's say.

"...human souls are more free when they persevere in the contemplation of the mind of God, less free when they descend to the corporeal, and even less free when they are entirely imprisoned in earthly flesh and blood.” Boethius

Though not necessarily in that order.

“Libet’s EEG experiments suggest that we might not have free will. If the results of the experiment are to be believed, then what is the point? What is the fun if everything is determined? Wouldn’t the Almighty get bored with us? We are more than our thoughts. And we are certainly way more than our actions. But how and why?” Abhaidev

You know, going all the way back to how and why anything exists at all.

“Annushka has already bought the sunflower oil, and has not only bought it, but has already spilled it.” Mikhail Bulgakov

Yep, that's how it works, alright. If, in fact, that actually is how it works.

“He sat a long time and he thought about his life and how little of it he could ever have foreseen and he wondered for all his will and all his intent how much of it was his doing.” Cormac McCarthy

More to the point [for some], how much of it is his doing now?

“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty.” Henry David Thoreau

Uh, whatever that means?

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Hypocrisy

“The important task of literature is to free man, not to censor him, and that is why Puritanism was the most destructive and evil force which ever oppressed people and their literature: it created hypocrisy, perversion, fears, sterility.” Anaïs Nin

Let's try to Trump that.

“When I see men callously and cheerfully denying women the full use of their bodies, while insisting with sobs and howls on the satisfaction of their own, I simply can't find it heroic, or kind, or anything but pretty rotten and feeble.” Dorothy L. Sayers

Too close to call?

“The truth has become an insult.” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Mine first?

“He'd always liked women who'd talk back to him just a little bit. "Girls with balls" were good. Women with an actual mind of their own who could prove him wrong in something were, of course, castrating bitches who should be drowned in bottomless wells.” Warren Ellis

Let's run this by the castrating bitches here. Both of them.

“The lamb misused breeds public strife
And yet forgives the butcher's knife.” William Blake

Let's explain that.

“He was very religious; he believed that he had a secret pact with God which exempted him from doing good in exchange for prayers and piety.” Jorge Luis Borges

You too?

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Diane Keaton

This living stuff is a lot. Too much, and not enough. Half empty, and half full.

On the other hand, half full of what?

What is perfection, anyway? It's the death of creativity, that's what I think, while change on the other hand, is the cornerstone of new ideas.

Next up: the perfect philosopher.

The exhausting effort to control time by altering the effects of age doesn't bring happiness.

Tell that to the plastic surgeons.

Choosing the freedom to be uninteresting never quite worked for me.

In spades.

Nothing is ever the same. Nothing is permanent. Nothing can be trusted to be there. Nothing is safe, including home. Why lie to yourself? Every day we leave something, someone, some observation behind.

For example, shuffling off this mortal coil. 

Old as dirt. Wow. I went to my bathroom and looked in the mirror. “Let it go, Diane. No wallowing in self-pity. You have a family. You have a brother and two sisters. You have a daughter and a son. You have work. You have friends. You can feel. You can think, up to a point. Your legs walk, your arms swing. You can see. Seeing is believing. Seeing is the gift that keeps giving. It’s much more engaging than being seen. That’s the bottom line, Diane.… Get over yourself. Listen to your friend Daniel Wolf’s advice—want what you have.

On the other hand, what does she have now?

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John Searle

With Derrida, you can hardly misread him, because he’s so obscure. Every time you say, "He says so and so," he always says, "You misunderstood me." But if you try to figure out the correct interpretation, then that’s not so easy. I once said this to Michel Foucault, who was more hostile to Derrida even than I am, and Foucault said that Derrida practiced the method of obscurantisme terroriste (terrorism of obscurantism). We were speaking French. And I said, "What the hell do you mean by that?" And he said, "He writes so obscurely you can’t tell what he’s saying, that’s the obscurantism part, and then when you criticize him, he can always say, 'You didn’t understand me; you’re an idiot.' That’s the terrorism part." And I like that. So I wrote an article about Derrida. I asked Michel if it was OK if I quoted that passage, and he said yes.

The rest is history.

In general, I feel if you can't say it clearly you don't understand it yourself.

Next up [here]: more specifically.

Nowadays nobody bothers, and it is considered in slightly bad taste to even raise the question of God's existence. Matters of religion are like matters of sexual preference: they are not discussed in public, and even the abstract questions are discussed only by bores.

Let's change that.

One of the many marks of a philosophical sensibility is an obsession with problems which most sane people regard as not worth bothering about.

See, I told you. Hundreds of times, right?.

There is, in short, no way for us to picture subjectivity as part of our worldview because, so to speak, the subjectivity in question is the picturing.

So to speak?

...when we talk about the Background we are talking about a certain category of neurophysiological causation. Because we do not know how these structures function at a neurophysiological level, we are forced to describe them at a much higher level.

Next up: the background here. Though only if there is one.

[iambiguous]

Heaven

“As long as a population can be induced to believe in a supernatural hereafter, it can be oppressed and controlled. People will put up with all sorts of tyranny, poverty, and painful treatment if they're convinced that they'll eventually escape to some resort in the sky where lifeguards are superfluous and the pool never closes."  Tom Robbins

Enough said?

“Then she opened her eyes, Veronika did not think 'this must be heaven'. Heaven would never use a fluorescent tube to light a room, and the pain - which started a fraction of a second later - was typical of the Earth. Ah, that Earth pain - unique, unmistakable.” Paulo Coelho

Enough said?

“Maybe I'm in Hell. That's okay, I'm not scared of Hell - it's just Heaven for bad people.” Steven Moffat

Good to know?

“They don't live here. They live in Heaven.'
Where's that?'
I don't know,' I said. 'Enos says it's right here, on this side of the wall, but I never saw an angel over here. Kuba says it's in Russia. Olek says Washington America.'
What's Washington America?'
Enos says it's a place with no wall and no lice and lots of potatoes.” Jerry Spinelli

Good to know?

“Hill House, she thought, " You're as hard to get into as Heaven.” Shirley Jackson

Anyone here get in?

“I'm not interested in absolute moral judgments. Just think of what it means to be a good man or a bad one. What, after all, is the measure of difference? The good guy may be 65 per cent good and 35 per cent bad—that's a very good guy. The average decent fellow might be 54 per cent good, 46 per cent bad—and the average mean spirit is the reverse. So say I'm 60 per cent bad and 40 per cent good—for that, must I suffer eternal punishment? Heaven and Hell make no sense if the majority of humans are a complex mixture of good and evil. There's no reason to receive a reward if you're 57/43—why sit around forever in an elevated version of Club Med? That's almost impossible to contemplate.” Norman Mailer

Your own percentages might be different.

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Determinism

“Life is a long agonised illness only curable by death.”  Spike Milligan

Well, so far anyway.

“A puppet is free so long as he loves his strings.” Sam Harris

Let's run that by the puppets here.

"You can choose what you want, but cannot choose what to want.” Mokokoma Mokhonoana[/b]

Now that sounds familiar.

“Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is as an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I.” Herman Melville.

Pick two:
1] for the better
2] for the worse

“To the strong there is no such thing as free will; for free will implies an alternative, and the strong man has no alternative. His ruling instinct leaves him no alternative, allows him no hesitation or vacillation. Strength of will is the absence of free will. If to the weak man strong will appears to have an alternative, it is a total misapprehension on his part.” Anthony Ludovici
Click.

“Man is a deterministic device thrown into a probabilistic universe. In this match, surprises are expected.” Michael Lewis

In other words, either more or less fractured and fragmented.

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Chaos Theory

“In fact, the mere act of opening the box will determine the state of the
cat, although in this case there were three determinate states the cat
could be in: these being Alive, Dead, and Bloody Furious.”  Terry Pratchett

Though, of course, not necessarily in that order.

“It used to be thought that the events that changed the world were things like big bombs, maniac politicians, huge earthquakes, or vast population movements, but it has now been realized that this is a very old-fashioned view held by people totally out of touch with modern thought. The things that really change the world, according to Chaos theory, are the tiny things. A butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazonian jungle, and subsequently a storm ravages half of Europe.” Neil Gaiman

On the other hand, blah, blah, blah?

“They believed that prediction was just a function of keeping track of things. If you knew enough, you could predict anything. That's been cherished scientific belief since Newton.'
And?' Chaos theory throws it right out the window.” Michael Crichton

Click?

“If patterns of ones and zeroes were "like" patterns of human lives and deaths, if everything about an individual could be represented in a computer record by a long strings of ones and zeroes, then what kind of creature could be represented by a long string of lives and deaths?” Thomas Pynchon

Not sure, myself. But I'll bet Pi is in there somewhere.

“Government succeeds by failing.” L.K. Samuels

Let's Trump this.

“... although the future is not predictable in any detail, it is manageable as an aggregate phenomenon.” Herbert A. Simon 

Praise the Lord?