Also, you can’t expect the studs to be 16 from an inside corner. Layout is mainly for exterior sheathing and starts from an outside corner which outside corner? You can’t tell. Tldr: stud finder.

Well to be fair, when Neitzsche said God is dead, he wasn’t celebrating the fact. It’s more like he was going “oh shit what are we going to do now?” And yeah, a lot of us are in that position

Josiah Royce said the moral purpose of society is to create and foster strong individuals and at the same time, the moral purpose of individuals is to create a strong society. We are sadly getting worse all the time on both sides.

Saying the Universe is such and such old implies a mind standing outside of the universe and measuring its duration. Science likes to pretend it can do this but it’s actually a silly conceit. Anthropocentric thinkings at its most hubristic.

The universe is basically a time-space continuum. There is no way to measure the age of time.

TIL what Anarchism is and that I am one

One theory is that former tech relied on biological advances rather than material advances.

I tell people when they say AI, they really mean IA. We can’t make artificial intelligence (the term is basically silly) but we can make some pretty Intelligent Artifice

Thank you for the classic definition. Can you agree with me that it immediately falls apart, as a definition? “The possibility to have done otherwise “ is way too frivolous as a philosophical statement. Possibilities are figments of the mind, acted upon to varying results. It’s impossible to define all the possibilities of a given phenomenon so we have to leave that out of the definition for sure. “Otherwise” is also problematic- another figment that we construct from experience.

Why we do things, isn’t because of chemistry. If you chose to, you will change your brain chemistry. Free will is a phenomenon of mind and the pieces and atoms of our selves are not mindful. It’s not that much of a mystery, unless you’re a reductionist mechanistic sort. Which seems to be the fashion around here, but if living in that metaphysical framework makes you happiest, by all means, go ahead.

Just don’t insist it’s the only one. Don’t absolutize your conceptual schemes, man.

The problem again comes in with the attribution of absoluteness to a relative mind-set. Some thought is heavily conditioned- it is not very free. Other thinking is less conditioned , it’s more free. This value plainly exists, whether or not it exists in what is called “objectively “

Monkey thinking is a lot more conditioned than human thinking, but it’s much more flexible and adaptable than ant thinking.

Honestly, I would start with Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Don’t read any reviews, just get it on Amazon and read it. He lays out a lot of this in a nuanced way that would be helpful in many ways. Don’t listen to what anyone says, the book wasn’t made for anyone but those asking the kinds of questions you’re asking.

You’re in line there with my philosophical choices, as well as my intellectual heroes, Royce, James and Peirce. Fictional ontology is a cornerstone of Pragmatism. But just because they are all postulative in nature does not mean we despair. They are all not all equal, some are better than others.

The problem comes in when you absolutize your ontology, like religion does and science has done.

I like where your going. You’re almost there… but the universe does not have a chaotic nature- the parts of it we comprehend we call “ordered” and the parts we don’t we call “chaotic “ but these are subjective terms.

Most arguments against free will are specious. They take “freedom” in its most absolutist sense and then attack it. There’s a very simple way to understand free will: Free Will equals consciousness. For instance, we deduce a rock has no free will because all it ever does is just sit there. Humans have more consciousness (free will)than rocks so a human can pick up the rock and skip it across a pond or carve it into a semi-conductor. The more mind you have, the more freedom to think about things and how to be. Freedom = mind. If you want to argue against the existence of mind, be my guest.

Algorithmic thinking isn’t restricted to computers. Bureaucracatic humans can fall into the same pitfalls as machines. I’m fond of saying, the thing we ought to fear is not computers that are becoming more human, but humanity becoming more machine-like

Why don’t I like this Reddit downvote algorithm in a philosophy group? Because downvoted comes to mean “you shouldn’t have posted that” rather than “you’re technically correct but that’s not the whole point “.

Because I’m a Pragmatist.

From wiki:

Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that considers words and thought as tools and instruments for prediction, problem solving, and action, and rejects the idea that the function of thought is to describe, represent, or mirror reality.

So what defines our potential? The Bible? Mein Kampf? Scientology? You? Whatever ideals you’ve assimilated , the fact of Human potential is the potential to destroy life on the planet and while I’d say that’s pretty stupid, it’s certainly not weak.

The intellectual problems that come with asserting an objective reality are myriad but I’m happy to continue the discussion at a leisurely pace. William James said that he didn’t see how a philosophical club or society would be possible when it takes so much patience to define terms and understand the others. If you have the time and patience, so do I.

I wish downvotes were used a bit more sparingly in the Philosophy sub. I mean is the main idea of philosophical discussion limiting things you disagree with? Maybe that’s where moronic arguments come from.

."Consider the practical effects of the objects of your conception. Then, your conception of those effects is the whole of your conception of the object." C.S. Peirce

The problem with your “assumption “ (it’s actually more of a postulate) about a mind- independent world (and I assume you follow this from a scientifically oriented worldview ) Is the way one tends to reify one’s conception as if it’s absolutely real. This is The problem of our modern day. Josiah Royce in his biggest work, The World and the Individual, described it as the common metaphysical stance, but no real thinker can hold it for long because of its inherent self contradictions. “

However to make a fully supported argument would take more space than we have time for in this forum, and besides, my philosophical heroes do a better job than I. A good intro would be RM Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

Causality as such doesn’t exactly exist outside of the will. It’s a tool of human thought used to help us understand the world.

Free will cannot be criticized because criticism itself is dependent upon a will to truth. People talk about free will like it’s such absolutist terms - if there is any environmental constraint or causes, then how can I be free? Freedom, like truth and gravity and substance, is a relative thing. We seek more freedom, we evolve towards freedom and if we are constrained, we struggle against those constraints. It IS possible to choose to confine ourselves or others with our beliefs, but at some point we used our free will to adopt those beliefs.

If I sound aggressive, it’s not because I’m railing against you, but a philosophical stance I find facile and ill-thought. Your reply just gave me a chance to unload something that’s been stirring inside.

There ARE problems with your statement- for one it assumes an objective reality outside of ourselves

• independent of our observation or interaction. The refuting of this idea would take longer than I have right now, but suffice it to say that there is nothing to logical stand on there.

As far as humans being weak, I’ll just have to ask, compared to what?

Ah yes, there is no meaning of life, there’s no purpose in evolution, free will is a myth, all the common tropes of MORONISM - the Metaphysics of Randomness as Ontological Necessity.

I encounter lit often on Reddit. Not so much a philosophy tho as a psychological reaction. A way of thinking that projects: Thou shalt have no other gods other than me.

Thanks for the update. Never been a big Russel fan. I prefer Josiah Royce’s metaphysical system and find it more logical

Ahh. Thanks for clarification. I had issues with that as well, but then, I’m a Pragmatist