TheVat

For completing a project, another useful thing is to create a place where you can only do the one thing. A desk, a chair, the bare minimum of whatever tools a job requires. A minimalist space that says you are here to work. Ideally, outside that space is an area to walk in that clears your mind and does not distract it. It seems paradoxical, but creativity blooms in a boring setting.

It is unforgivable that he would steal and then distort (for such base purposes) Jonathan Miller's classic Beyond the Fringe line. IIRC Miller's original line was "I'm not a Jew...but I am Jew-ish..." If he won't step down, he should like James Traficant be expelled from the HoR.

If you read my posts, I explained that I meant objectivity only in the sense of measurable outcomes for social groups and their members. Twice. And clarified how it was not a religious or metaphysical take on intrinsic moral good. Have a good day, or night, depending on time zone.

If your survival depends on the welfare of your tribe (which is a reality I would suggest is demonstrable), then you can say there is an observable value to the ethics of a social contract. I wasn't actually saying "should." It is an objective fact that humans, the vast majority of individuals, desire to live and thrive. It can then be objectively measured that a social contract of mutual cooperation has benefits to everyone's survival. Benefits that Hobbes' "war of all against all"* does not. I won't quibble semantics. If you prefer to call this intersubjective agreement, that will work, too. But that agreement has powerful objective markers (if one can zoom back from one's life and realize all the benefits and privileges that we subjectively take for granted). *(Hobbes actually used the Latin phrase, bellum omnium contra omnes)

Bon aire, indeed.

I think you may be misunderstanding my context in using "objective." I am referring to facts about how a certain moral valuation would impact the viability of a species or society. No one is suggesting that those valuations have objective existence, rather that a certain moral rule could have a measurable consequence in terms of survival. For example, "eating your children is bad," is subjective, but the result of widespread adoption of the principle could conceivably have a measurable outcome which could be objectively stated. ("Tribes B, K, and X, which forbade infantiphagia, grew and prospered, while tribes A and M, which served them up with fava beans and a nice Chianti, died out...") IOW do our standards for the rightness or wrongness of actions have some grounding in external measurable facts about the human condition? So "objectivity" here only referred to an external state of affairs, not some numinous inner goodness. Does that help clarify?

We have a recent thread that discussed this, so it may work well to merge these threads.

In normative ethics, it is possible to look for standards of behavior, of what is right or wrong, that have some objective foundation...for example, the surviving and thriving of one's species, or the integrity a society. So a normative ethics could begin with suicide in terms of asking what is the effect on society, i.e. is there some verifiable effect, as from social science research, that it has on our lives generally. Many data sets and ways to analyze your data....e.g. what is the effect of someone with young children committing suicide? In that case, you could look at life outcomes for the spouse and children, for starters. Maybe compare such events with suicides by older persons (and those more along the lines of the ceremonial cliff in "Midsommar," say). I honestly don't know what could be learned, but it seems like it could maybe give us a glimpse beyond "personal priorities" given that our actions ripple out and effect others. And maybe answer toughies like "who do we become, if we decide we are okay with this, or against that?"

And for everyone with relatives that have highly specific and convoluted personal requirements and numerous taboo topics of conversation, try a little bourbon or rum in the eggnog! And don't forget the motto of Possum Lodge: Quando omnia vincit, moritati. (When all else fails, play dead)

Happy Xmas, Festivus, Near Solstice, 7th day of Hannukah, and summertime in Australia to you all. And more snowcats and generators to Buffalo NY. if possible. https://www.npr.org/2022/12/25/1145468209/millions-in-the-u-s-are-hunkering-down-from-a-freezing-and-deadly-christmas-stor I remember what a pleasure it was replacing our metal-handled broom with a wooden one. The wooden handle, if it's not real cold out, you can sweep snow off the porch and not need to get gloves. IIRC wool fibers absorb water inside the fiber rather than let water permeate the spaces between the fibers, thus preserving the air pockets. The water inside each fiber then migrates to where it will most rapidly evaporate and not just drip/ooze into the spaces. The fibers are also more kinked than other fibers like cotton, which increases the total number of air spaces. Nature is amazing.

Icy beards and eyelashes, minus 42 C., Baku to Moscow for first time, minus 35 C. bus wait - all sound fairly unpleasant. When the cold gets to things like ears and feet and hands, the misery is great. I find feet the trickiest to maintain warmth. As, apparently, did members of Robert Falcon Scott's tragic expedition. Any warming tips anyone has to offer (that aren't the usual obvious ones)? When I was a child, carrying a freshly baked wrapped potato was a common one. Handy for at least 20 minutes, and if your mittens got wet or your hands just got frozen anyway, you could wrap hands around the spud. Now they've got the exothermic hand warmers that use sodium acetate or similar. But you can't eat them later.

Wow. That joke really succeeded in going a different direction than I expected. I bet funeral directors love that joke.

A leading cause of habitat destruction (e.g. coral reefs, temperate zone forests, etc.) is warming, caused by CO2 rise. And the carbon rise is caused by a vast array of human activities that also cause collateral damage in addition to changing the atmosphere. When we extract carbon for fuel, boreal forests are razed, mountains are flattened, groundwater contaminated, seashores ruined by spills, and on and on. So, no, it's not a small part.

The demographic transition is so far the only known way that fertility rates show sustained drop. Wars, famines, pandemics, are all temporary and often lead to a reaction bounce later which cancels out their effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition So while we must help that transition happen wherever possible, with measures like erasing heavy debt for third world countries, we need to also get serious about transition to green energy, methane-reduced rice and other agriculture, rainforest protection, etc. There's not a one most important thing that fixes everything

Ha! Perhaps she felt her husband's carrot was in the wrong place.

I used to have a quip something like: what if global warming isn't real and all we end up with is cities full of clean air?

But wouldn't a planet similar enough (in its surface environment and solar wind protection) to be terraformed also be a planet likely to have developed its own biome? It might take a lot of searching to find sterile planets that also happen to be in our Goldilocks zone. This is all highly speculative, of course, but maybe survey projects like the JWST can gather more data on Earthlike planets and biosignatures. (Like certain ratios of oxygen and methane, and traces of phosphine, et al). Reminds me of Isaac Asimov's classic story, Breeds There a Man?

I was reminded this morning, walking outside, that -10 F. is roughly where my nose hair freezes and crackles if I don't put on a face mask or neck gaiter and there's some breeze. We are headed to minus 20 tonight, and possibly minus 22 tomorrow, which is about as cold as I've personally experienced since Dec. 3, 1970, which was minus 29 in Lincoln, NE. We children were out that day, but since it was a week night (and school was rarely cancelled there for just cold), the parents vetoed staying up into the wee hours to have the full Shackletonian experience. The windchill tomorrow night could reach that magical number that is the same temperature in both Celsius and Fahrenheit, minus 40. In most of those years since 1970, I did not solve the extreme cold weather problem of wearing both a scarf or neck gaiter, and glasses. Some breath always worked its way upwards from the scarf and fogged the glasses. It was the discovery of the securely fitted and valved N95 mask that finally fixed that. Not stylish, but it does the job.

"Know" is a really vague and context-dependent verb in English. Many languages have multiple and specific terms, like German with wissen and kennen. Wissen is used for knowing something for a fact, while kennen means knowledge that is based on experience and familiarity. This kind of specificity probably makes languages like German especially suitable for philosophy. And if you were translating "I know Hanna, and I know how much Hanna weighs," your mind would have to take the extra step of finding two different verbs for know. (Interesting sidebar on language, given how much it shapes our concepts like reality and the self)

I wonder if there are multiple reasons - and if any one had particular selective importance - that hair remained thick on the head - sun protection on area most exposed to midday sun, sexual attraction, extra cushioning for blows to vulnerable braincase and nape, etc. I would guess a hominin having, in youth, a visible growth that somewhat indicates one's quality of nutrition (thick lustrous hair v thin patchy dry) might serve as one signal of health and vitality in a potential mate. Would be further confirmation on top of other signals like facial symmetry, height, muscular development, etc.

You can get a tan, sitting in the English rain.

Let me see if I'm following this so far: you got a coin sooty and this will get you into outer space. If you send me five hundred dollars, I will propel you into a higher plane of wisdom.

If I can broaden the topic to include other dangers down under, am curious to find out what was the toxic weed that got into Aussie spinach... https://www.health.nsw.gov.au/news/Pages/20221217_00.aspx It sounds a lot like Jimson weed (Datura stramonium) effects, and I hear that Datura has spread (as an aggressive invasive species) to Australia. Here in the US (where it is native, and throughout the Americas), horses and livestock will occasionally get sick from it, and some native tribes have used it as an hallucinogen (carefully dosing to avoid the anticholinergic toxicity) in spiritual quests.

The popular name of that tick seems well-crafted, in getting people vigilant to its possible appearance. I wonder if the greater sensitivity is what SJ Gould called a "spandrel," something that was not initially driven by adaptive needs and was not itself selected for. I.e. the selection process of losing bigger hairs was driven by better heat dissipation during running after game, and the creepy-crawly sensing was a spinoff byproduct that was not itself selected for but, as Gould et al noted, could later prove to be advantageous to fitness. Population migration could play a role in this. A band of humans lives in a savannah where mosquitos and ticks were not much problem (either few, or the particular species are harmless nuisance, and do not decrease reproductive prospects) but it's quite hot. So follicles shrink and produce tinier hairs to help handle the heat, and the sensing enhancement is a Gould-ian spandrel. However, later migration into forests where ticks etc are dangerous, turns the spandrel into part of the suite of adaptive advantages.

I think the early thinkers were evading the question of what the "something" is - leave that to the field of ontology. It only asserts that thoughts are about something, without asserting what that something might be. For some those somethings might be objects that exist in the mind of a deity. For others, they might be somethings that can be later moved from the subjective column to the objective column, agreed upon things in a physical world that lies independent of mind. I'm not up on my philosophy history enough to name all the usual suspects, but I know Kant, Berkeley, Hume, and Locke all grappled with this migraine inducing stuff.