r/badphilosophy

Life is not fair, at least not to women. Even the most privileged of us suffer many obstacles men cannot even fathom. So should we not have the right and even obligation to make the most of what we got? In my case, should I not use all my womanly attributes in addition to my intelligence and work ethics to level or even slant the academic playing field in my favor?

I know a lot of my sisters say no and that we should meet the battle of the sexes strictly on male terms. But most of those don’t have, to say it diplomatically, a very high level of female weaponry, at least not in an affirmative, positive, attractive sense. I feel they often try to make up for this deficit by pushing negative female stereotypes.

So I think using my inner and outer beauty is not only fair and called for in gender justice, but also to balance the bad press the movement is getting for displaying undesirable human attributes.

Word is "brains are computers"

A quick argument:

1) Computers were invented by humans no earlier than the 19th century

2) Brains are computers

3) Therefore, brains were invented by humans no earlier than the 19th century (1, 2)

4) All people who lived before 19th century were brainless (3)

Suppose someone denies 1 and suppose we grant it. Presumably, the objection targets the exact century or time period when computers were invented. In that case, we can run the following argument:

1) Computers are man-made objects

2) Brains are computers

3) Therefore, brains are man-made objects (1, 2)

4) Dinosaurs required brains for life

5) Therefore, dinosaurs required man-made objects for life (3, 4)

6) But dinosaurs went exctinct long before humans even existed

7) Humans travelled in the past and animated dinosaurs (5, 6)

In any case, computers are human invention, so since 3 is obviously false, we should deny 2

(Excuse my grammar)

Im in search of a guy in tiktok.. theres a bunch of edits of him... and im really interested, but i didnt check the dudes name, now it's stuck in my head.. I think he's pretty niche..

Description:

In the edits.. usually thered be a soyjack or wojack crying... and then the guy would be there..

He's drawn in cartoon style.. reminds me of how people used to draw cartoons backs then.

No color, it seems hes faving only to the left.. circular tiny glasses, smoking.

In one edit i remembered it was about how he gave up his religion? Not so sure.

Im not sure he checks out as philosophy, but im a bit certain this community got an idea of this mf.

I hope my description is enough for u guys to help me out! Thanks!

People always cry and say “oh if god exists then why bad exist too ”. Hm it seems they haven’t thought deeply because if they did they would know evil doesn’t exist only preferences. What even is evil anyway.

Ok fine, to label something as evil is a moral claim which can get tricky…so then they just go back and say “if god exists then why suffering”. Suffering exists bc we need to avoid it to survive. If we didn’t suffer when putting our hand on a stove then what would stop us from doing it ykwim?

Checkmate atheists 🥸

In my philosophy of time class I discovered that time seems to be moving from cause to effect but it’s actually effect to cause, the future is the past and we are actually running backward but only perceive time as running forward because memories are stored in the actual future and not the past, which we can access.

Every time I tell my professor it goes well but the next day is yesterday and he can’t remember. It’s super frustrating because I really need a letter of recommendation.

Philosophy never seems to lead to obvious shifts in morality. What has philosophy done for anti-racism, feminism, LGBTQ rights, wealth inequality, etc.? None of these get meaningfully addressed in philosophy.

Like what has philosophy done for human rights? Philosophy is just the study of certain books my Phil 101 prof. thinks it's important for me to read. We had to read through pages of that bloke socrates yapping but we still can't even disprove the existence God.

What is the point of philosophy anyway, it's not like Aristotle discovered deductive reasoning. It's not like Kunt discovered ethics. It's not like Descartes discovered doubting his own existence like a some kind of schizophrenic hobo.

I will wait until more Philosophy 101 courses discuss Dr. King instead of Aristotle to be proven otherwise.

So, if we look at God and see him, we don’t actually see him bc he isn’t there. Take gardening for an example. You see garden, so real.

But then someone put a good point, if windows are real, under your logic, why do I not see them? Only what’s behind them? And I was flabbergasted. Until I realized that I actually do see the window because I do see it it’s right there. #TrueThat

I am academically trained in philosophy for many years and graduated from an IVY League university with a masters degree. Yet I never understood the significance of Camus. In my opinion he is a lousy literary writer and an even worse philosopher, yet his works have been widely praised and discussed in all academic settings. To me he doesn’t even qualify as a philosopher worth mentioning in an academic scene let alone being in the textbook.

Let’s set aside The Stranger for now since it’s literally a novel. In Sisyphus he just up and claims that we will inherently look for meanings but the universe doesn’t have any which creates the absurd. And then at the end of it all he just asserts that “we must imagine Sisyphus happy”. There is NO ARGUMENTS. What meaning are we talking about? Why do we inherently want to chase your “meanings”? Why does the universe not have the whatever “meanings” you’re talking about? Why does this collision lead to the absurd? What exactly do you mean by the absurd? And why must we imagine Sisyphus happy and how does that revolt against the absurd? So basically he assumes A and B, and assumes that from A and B must come C, therefore we should do D to revolt against C. Seriously, what the F?

Also, to me it seems like his stance is no different from the nihilism that he claims to oppose. The universe is meaningless thus we should not kill ourselves or believe in God instead we should “revolt” by living our daily lives imagining ourselves “happy” while keeping in mind that the absurd exists. Just because you add a forced optimistic psychological layer to your nihilism doesn’t change the fundamental metaphysical stance of your nihilism. You’re not offering a solution nor offering a different metaphysical stance that it’s not the case that the universe is void of meanings. Defying a meaningless universe by doing meaningless things happily? So nothing matters, but do have a good time rolling the boulder up and watch it slide back down? What kind of dumb solution is that?

Even if somehow you’re his target audience so you say, “well I think that’s a perfect solution”, in philosophy, you cannot derive an “ought”from an “is”without a middle step.

1. The assumption (Is): The universe is devoid of meaning.
2. Camus’ solution (Ought): Therefore, you ought to revolt by living happily, and refuse to surrender.
3. If I was a nihilist, I would argue that if the universe is a void, then surrendering, sleeping all day, or jumping off a bridge are all metaphysically identical to your so called rebellion. Camus arbitrarily decides that rebellion is heroic and surrender is cowardly. But words like noble and cowardly require a framework of values to mean anything. If you claim that there’s no values, then what heroism are we talking about?

Willingly accept a meaningless existence then trick our minds into enjoying it, I don’t think I need a whole course on that. If you’re philosophically trained (not an amateur like Camus) and you want to convince me that Camus has any significance, I very much welcome you because I’m genuinely so confused why we even talk about him.

Some friends laughed at me when I shared them this! For your sake, there is a tldr at the end which is also quite long and unhelpful. I think all flares are pertinent here, especially limes and tuna and logic and bzns. If we could get combo flares I’d appreciate it. No reading group though

On Human-made Things

We will start off with a definition of human-made thing: a human-made framework structured to persist given parameters.

Anything human-made will fit, it’s a pretty broad definition. Like that sentence was one, no? Just take anything we make, think of it as a thing, and then ask yourself what it is doing (or trying to do) in it being as it is. This will work for non-physical human-made things and physical human-made things and human actions.

Now, you thought of what it was doing—or if you didn’t, do that now. Now, you thought of what it was doing. Now, think of what parameters it needs to account for given what it is doing (or trying to do). Now, think of what parameters it is accounting for in it being as it is. Is it, in how it currently is, accounting for all the parameters it should given the thing it is and what that thing is doing?

If it is, brilliant—a very well-designed human-made thing.

If it isn’t, well, now we know better where the gap is between is and ought for some human-made thing. And a very clear direction in how to close it: account for more parameters that should be accounted for given the human-made thing that some thing is.

While the parameters might define what some human-made thing is they are not what the human-made thing is. This is very important. Like think of “life”—how many forms it takes, but it’s one thing, it’s life. Our things are like life. And you can think of some form of life as being an idea about what could be given what is. “What could be” as in the possibility exists for some thing to exist; and “given what is” as in the parameters that are determine what is possible.

Our things are also ideas about what could be given what is. We look out at what is, and first, we frame it. And then, we frame the frames—name them. That naming being possible through other things we have framed—concepts given a frame. Like think of all the parameters saying “tree” to someone accounts for, or all the parameters this sentence accounts for. Everything to do with humans and how they are and the reality we find ourselves within and everything to do with that reality. The idea the sentence contains propagated how it could be propagated given all the parameters to do with what is. I didn’t telepathically try to communicate the idea to you—that would have been a very suboptimal way to try to propagate the idea, it probably wouldn’t have reached you, I wouldn’t have been accounting for parameters to do with what actually is. Our knowledge about reality becomes evident in the things we make, as echoes of our conception of what is and the parameters we are accounting for are there in those things. Ideas embodied, echoes of mind. Like maybe they figure out telepathy a bit from now and I look like a complete noob.

Now humans are bodies, and we frame things, that framing things being making a body for a thing. (Natural bodies who make artificial bodies.) Sometimes that frame is purely an idea around an idea, sometimes that frame is physical around an idea. The frame isn’t what the thing is, it is just a frame. Like a jacket is an embodied idea, an idea about what could be, given what is, yes, but it also contains the echoes of what prompted jackets in the first place: “I’m cold.” And the jacket is an evolution of our response to that frame, given parameters. We didn’t always have jackets, but we have had responses to the framing that we are cold for a very long time. Those responses carry those echoes of mind and world knowledge.

So the parameters we have to work with as time goes on change even though we are still generally making things in response to millennia old frames.

One thing we have been asking for a while now is, “how do we organize large numbers of ourselves?” And our responses have been fairly varied.

But, the response to that question I live within is America.

Now, you can think of America as a big question mark to the question, “how do you build a human-made thing that lasts, given parameters?” And, this is anything but a straightforward answer, but, it is “given parameters.” And, one of the current parameters is the super category missing. This post is an attempt to rectify that issue. Then, the super category existing and being in place becomes a new parameter, one that isn’t accounted for by the human-made thing that is America in its current form. Facilitating its adaptation to its next form.

I say it is a big question mark to that question because here the idea is put before the substrate. The idea being human-made things. I’m saying “the idea” like we have ideas, and then I’m pointing at those things. Those things are put before the things that have them.

Now the human-made thing that is America is a human-made thing that some number of random humans enter into existence within. Because of this, it is some human-made thing that by nature of the thing it is cannot choose which humans enter into existence within it. For this reason, each human becomes a parameter for the human-made thing that is America.

Now, is the human-made thing that is America accounting for all of the parameters that are humans that it should? And, well, I think we can fairly definitively say it isn’t. I think I see an unaccounted for human every single day.

But this goes back to how our things contain echoes of mind, world knowledge embodied—the human-made thing that is America is a reflection of our current world knowledge of the things we make and ourselves. This is to say, it is still incomplete—we haven’t arrived, as our human-made thing that is America isn’t well enough designed that it accounts for all the parameters it should given the thing it is.

Now, in some human-made thing that puts human-made things before humans it is very hard to account for each human. Because as soon as you are putting the idea above the human you are essentially forcing some level of conforming to that idea. Enforcing conforming ensures that some number of humans in themselves will be missed by the human-made thing they enter into existence within. This is not good for the human-made thing, as missing some of your parameters doesn’t mean the parameters go away. It means there is room for something else that is trying to do what the human-made thing is doing to do that thing better than it. There is room for something else to out-compete it.

Currently, it isn’t a direct peer that is the biggest threat to its current being—it is business-corporations. This is because business-corporations are human-made things that are able to be explicit about what they’re doing, whereas the human-made things that are nations are still being implicit about what they’re doing. Leaving things implicit has allowed business-corporations to infiltrate the gaps between what America does and what America says it does and co-opt the gaps for their own ends.

Closing those gaps is the most efficient way to stabilize America in its being.

This is because it is very hard for some human-made thing to account for its parameters if the humans making it think it is doing one thing when actually it is doing another.

The most efficient way to close the gaps is to make America explicit in what it is doing. Essentially, mythologize the actuality.

And luckily, America has been a really good human-made thing to figure out the shape of human-made things—think back to the big question mark again. The human-made thing that is America is essentially a breeding ground for human-made things because of the ideas current position—above its makers. And those human-made things it is a breeding ground for are business-corporations, or, human-made things made explicit in their form.

Having arrived at a point where we better know the shape of the thing by going though our current understanding, we can look back at the human-made thing that produced the shape and re-shape it accordingly. Give it a new frame that is more in line with its actuality.

So, let’s think about the business-corporation and how it is the explicitified version of a human-made thing. Like let’s say at rock bottom business-corporations are ideas, and let’s say ideas are frames, and frames are tools, and tools are value propositions. So a business-corporation is all of those things, and that isn’t an exhaustive list, but let’s just say for now a business-corporation is a value proposition. And we also said a tool is a value proposition. It’s very easy to think about a business-corporation being a value proposition—it makes it very explicit. “We give you some thing. You give us money.” They propose, and we and they either agree—or do not.

But a shovel is a value proposition too. Remember, it’s an idea about what could be, given what is. That accounts for parameters to do with goals and materials available and how humans are and…well everything it needs to account for. And in its being, it is making that same value proposition a business-corporation is, it just isn’t explicit about it. It doesn’t say, “I am selling you something for dollars please buy it.” It simply is, and in being, speaks. Because, remember, it is a human-made thing and contains echoes of mind that are wrapped up in its being. And you can read those echoes—see the string of if statements instantiated into a that, a body—a corporation. (Err I mean human-made thing)

Now a nation is also a human-made thing, which is an idea, which is a tool, which is a value proposition. And the value proposition that some human-made thing is is an accounting for of parameters given what is there to work with. Like the parameters of the value proposition that is the nation right now are not the same as the parameters in 1492. Obviously. They’re not the same now as in 1985 either. Like think shovel to backhoe to boring machine. Those different tools were always latent possibilities, we just had to see that they could be as we grasped understanding of more parameters to do with what is. So, the nations latent possibility buried within what is is just waiting for our understanding to arrive at a place where we can see the necessary parameters to account for the upgrading of the tool to do the job the current tool is doing but in a manner that accounts for more of the parameters than we previously were able to account for in prior iterations. Or, shovel to backhoe to boring machine. Or abacus to slide rule to ti-86 to Mac mini m4. More parameters accounted for, better value propositions.

So as a human-made thing, what is America doing? Well, human societies for a while now have done this thing where they conscript new individuals who enter into existence within them into their ranks. Very essentially, the collective, that is the idea, sells the human-animal to itself at zero dollar cost basis to compel the human-animals action within the idea-world that is the system so the human-idea can sustain its human-animalness. Or, the human-animals necessary consumption to sustain their own existence has been systematically levered to compel desired action. And this is compelled by making the alternative quite generally highly undesirable. The human-animal cannot do what the human-animal would do unless they operate in a manner that the idea finds acceptable to it. This is the mechanism by which the human-made thing that is America ensures that it gets the input it needs to maintain being as it is: humans being within it. And the method used to procure that necessary input is coercive and one of the main issues most take with what we call capitalism. But this also is the general mechanism of human societies.

So America is a value proposition, and it is a value proposition like the shovel is a value proposition: silently, speaking by its being, not being-explicit. And the value proposition it makes is: “look at all these human-animals within my idea-borders that need to do-certain-things to maintain their own being-existing! You may make explicit-human-made-things that operate within this environment-of-myself to compete for a portion of the-bounty-of-my-bosom!” (Or, “damn m8 there really do be a lot of niches that need filling within this world-of-human-need-of-myself won’t somebody come get all up in those 4 me?” *wild incentivizing noises*)

Speaking of capitalism, our conception of it is sort of like the shovel to backhoe to boring machine. Like frames are tools, and our conception of the thing that we call capitalism is itself a frame, and frames, just like tools can evolve as more parameters to do with what actually is come within our understanding. Like the laws of nature are frames, frames we have systematically made upgrades to (with much struggle against the entrenched prior frames), and our conception of what is actually happening within the invisible world of ideas is much like framing the laws of nature with more accurate conceptions as we have moved along our path of existing within it (nature).

Now I know this is long and tedious but we are almost there: let’s think back through it, we have America, it is a human-made thing, and because of the human-made thing it is, each human who enters into existence within it is a parameter for it, and currently each human is not accounted for by the thing. So there is a gap. It is also a human-made thing that is put before the humans within it, ensuring that gap. Framing the thing in its actuality, or mythologizing the actuality, that is, making its value proposition explicit, gives a unique opportunity to account for more parameters that it should be accounting for given the human-made thing that it is. Because let’s do it real quick: we said earlier this: “Very essentially, the collective, that is the idea, sells the human-animal to itself at zero dollar cost basis, to compel the human-animals action within the idea-world that is the system so the human-idea can sustain its human-animalness.” And if you think about it, the selling of the human-animal to the idea-world at a zero dollar cost basis is the actual action that is the idea-before-substrate. To mythologize the actuality is to make explicit the selling of the human-animal, and in that making explicit lies the inversion of the action that is the idea-before-substrate because it opens the door to compensate the human-animal for their being-existing that is already being-sold.

And there, in that inversion, is the fulfillment of the value proposition the nation makes to its inhabitants by it occupying the position it does. It is just the realization of higher-order value propositions given the parameters that are there to work with. Our current configuration of things has brought us to a point where making better on the value proposition the collective makes to the individual is available. And that making better is itself a parameter, one that the not-acknowledging-of is itself costly to the current configuration. Basically, alternative reasons for things must constantly be used, and this is hard to maintain coherently. But the fulfillment of the value proposition speaks to that structural quality of human societies being coercive towards the individual, and how, in utilizing the structural fact of that coercion to make explicit the selling that the coercion is, you give foundation for the basis of a check on society handed to each by society, for society. Or, the idea-world paying the human-animal for its necessary position within itself, in the form the idea-world values—cash (Anything else is the idea-world positing it still knows what is right for each, and the whole thing needs to be a positing that it does not know). Giving the human-animal the necessary means by which to resist the idea-world, which is the value proposition of the collective to individual realized.

This is also an update to our frame that is capitalism, because it is capitalism that has taken itself seriously enough to reach the natural conclusion of the human-animal capitalizing on their position within it, which is the necessary check on the system, or the idea-world, that is currently missing—and the move that makes capitalism coherent with itself. And capitalism, in present time, is merely being as it is incentivized to be. Altering the incentives, as I gestured at earlier when I mentioned facilitating adaptation, can be done by introducing new parameters into the mix that produce pressure on what currently is. The super category of human-creation being in place produces that pressure because the cut it makes is between the natural and constructed realities, and one of the most perverse moves in present time is the naturalization of that which is constructed.

TLDR there is a category of things we don’t acknowledge very often: the category of everything that humans make. They’re all the same kind of thing, and you can describe this kind with: a human-made framework that is structured to persist given parameters. The business-corporation is this kind made explicit in its form. Our framing of how the nation is is one of these human-made things. The frame we currently have accounts for some number of the underlying parameters. As in, the description of the thing is a frame, and the thing has an actuality that is independent of that frame. Convergence between the frame and the actuality is desired, as that is a more structurally sound human-made thing—less prone to fracture under stress. To make the nation explicit you can use the business-corporation, and in making it explicit you can better identify where the frame and the actuality diverge.

Philosophy is the pursuit of rational knowledge. Religion is the dogmatic organization of belief. The two are diametrically opposed.

So why is it that religion is still widely accepted as being part of philosophy? I am not talking about Philosophy of Religion, i.e. the phenomenological study of religions and related topics. My beef is with including religion as a legitimate way of pursuing philosophy. Why is this still allowed? Heck, they even let religious institutions award degrees in Philosophy!

This is all the more surprising because in the western word, religion has for about two millennia been the sworn enemy of rational inquiry. It relentlessly persecuted actual philosophy and systematically sought to impersonate and replace it.

Why has academic philosophy not kicked out this chronic abuser once it became free to choose?

I don't have any reason for you to believe in the God I believe in other than the three ultimate blessings that exist in the universe.

Blessing One: Life in all it's complexity and ability to survive in extreme conditions and survive against all odds in a hostile universe.

Blessing Two: Death, the ultimate mercy of a hands off God ensuring that all things are made new and that all suffering will eventually end.

Blessing Three: The infinite nature of the universe and the speed of light boundary that keeps all of existence separated so one part of the universe can only impact a certain area ever no matter how fast they travel because the universe is expanding faster than the speed of light and there are permanent boundaries that no matter what we do we cannot ever reach. This means that no one good or evil can ever control the entire universe and everything is possible because the will of one cannot ever be in control of everything in the universe no matter how much time passes.

I believe in God but a God you can't ever reach in this world. If your God looks like you do you haven't looked far enough. If your God looks like little green aliens you still haven't looked far enough. Don't let anyone not even me tell you who your God is. Religion gives you a prepackaged version of God and people stop looking for God thinking they have already found God because a book tells you to believe this way. God is the highest and only by constantly seeking God can you ever have a chance of finding it. I don't think you can ever reach God and instead curtains get pulled back replaced by wisdom and enlightenment and another curtain leading you forward towards a God that always keeps you seeking. Only by seeking the highest can you ever elevate your perception of reality and grow towards a better understanding of God and the universe and our special little place in the grand scheme of things here on this hurtling rock of ice and water that just happens to be chasing a star speeding through space with no guide other than the pull of gravity that propels the universe to dance it's glorious ballet.

Is there a Hard Problem of Consciousness? How could we even know?

Is silence a sign of submission or weakness, or can it be an act of resistance and defiance? We’re interested to hear your perspectives.

i was thinking about free will, and i realized that i can prove it exists by writing this post. i wanted to write it, and then i wrote it.

where’s my nobel prize this shits too easy?

(The flair is to highlight the fact that I am talking out of my ass here.)

I've quit thinking of moral frameworks as either objective or subjective. This happened when I realized moral frameworks are imposed. The difference is the source of the framework, and in what the framework is rooted.

For many, like Christians, the imposition is through a religious tradition, rooted in a god-concept. For others, the imposition is secular, rooted in the state. And still others, the imposition is natural, rooted in human empathy. There are probably more that I don't know about.

We might call these subjective or relative, but that's as inaccurate as calling them objective.

I guess the next question is, how do you judge which is best? For now, I'll leave that to the philosophical thinkers, as I've just started thinking about morality this way. Maybe I'll find a method for judging one over another. Or maybe they're all equal. Or maybe it's turtles all the way down.

Since everything can be possibly doubted, except the fact that I am here doing the doubting, then the only thing that reliably exists is me.

You're all bots, basically.

So, if somebody asks "is this song good?" or "is this painting bad?" then nobody's answer has any value except mine, because I am the only one who exists.

My taste is the only objective criterion of goodness or badness of any art.

And there's nothing you can do about it.