Phi for All

It's a line that's consciously/unconsciously designed to fail, or to explore a single conclusion. Is there ANYTHING reasonable I could mention that you wouldn't automatically declare isn't "enjoyable" or "valuable"? You've now added two more huge subjective terms to this allegedly objective question. If you're trying to look at this objectively, you'd be looking at things that are common to all instead of specific to some. If objectivity is your goal, you're applying far too many subjective parameters to the line of questioning.

I agree with iNow, you're asking for objective answers but the parameters you set ("a given subject does not feel that it has intrinsic worth") are entirely subjective. If you're claiming this is an objective question, wouldn't this have to be the way everyone feels about their worth? If you want the only objective answer about life that applies to this line of thought, it's that life is much more efficient than non-life in using light as energy. Even if you have nobody that gives your life personal meaning beyond yourself, the planet/system/galaxy/universe will always be a tiny bit more meaningful and useful with you in it. Living, you represent a potential that doesn't exist for inanimate matter.

! Moderator Note Our rules state members can't be required to go offsite in order to participate in discussions. It's also a new member spam prevention protocol. Please post a summary of the research in question, or I'll have to close this.

As DrP mentions, there is plenty that's impossible, and the sooner you accept that, the more focused you can be on natural explanations, and the more effective your research will be. If you aren't persuaded by the lack of mechanisms argument, consider that if our dreams could affect us physically like you suggest, we would see a lot more of it with so many billions of people on the planet. And how would evolution treat such a trait? If it's not beneficial, it probably wouldn't be passed to the next generation. If it's detrimental and could prevent procreation, the trait would weed itself out. And if it was somehow beneficial to us, we'd see a LOT more evidence of it occurring more often in succeeding generations. These are some obvious places to study, and I think it's telling that we still find no evidence that dreams can directly cause physical trauma to human tissue.

! Moderator Note We were willing to let you start a discussion about a free book since you provided enough information that members weren't required to go offsite and read it, but you need to defend the concept you're promoting with more than your personal incredulity. It won't persuade anyone that there is a scientifically measurable connection. For that, you need evidence, and frankly that book is very lean on supportive evidence. It reads like most religious rants, full of assertive statements not supported by reality. Please do more than just wonder why nobody is persuaded.

! Moderator Note Please see a doctor. We don't prescribe medical treatments here.

By definition, if you have confidence and trust in your religious belief, it's a blind faith, based on nothing tangible or reasonable.

! Moderator Note THIS should be the title. Thread closed.

It is. Your perspective on common sense is different than mine, or anyone else's. Common sense is anything but. Yet I gave you examples showing this is far from obvious. It sounds like you're preaching instead of having a discussion. One thing is clear, YOU want to be right about this. Enjoy.

Of course. I wasted four years on a business that was wrong. I knew it, but I thought I could make it work. I eventually admitted I made a mistake and moved on to something else. I've been wrong about plenty, but I've been right often enough to experience life well. Why would I lose the motivation to live just because I found out I was wrong about something? Being wrong is not being a bad person. Being wrong isn't evil. I don't understand why not being right about something is a reason not to live. Are YOU that concerned with being right? Because I have to tell you, you post a lot of misinformed, wrong stuff. I don't know where you picked up most of it, but it's wrong. That doesn't make you a bad person, it just makes you wrong. Fix it and you'll be right, right? Strength like physical might? Endurance strength? Strength of character? Tensile strength? Agile strength? Explosive strength? You talk about absolutes, but you talk about them subjectively. You're going to fail with this approach.

It's not their fault. Dumbells have a bad reputation because people do stupid things with them.

I disagree with the ones you have, and I don't think morals are absolute, not in any way. To prove my point, I don't always think I'm right. There are times when I know I'm wrong. No absolutes. I don't think I'm better than anybody else. "Better" is so subjective. I think people are a collection of experiences, and everyone has something to teach me. I do think I'm loved, just not by everyone. What's the matter, do you think nobody loves you? Why would you think nobody loves anyone else? So NO, you haven't illustrated that there are moral absolutes. You've illustrated that you think you can force your definitions on ALL people, and I've illustrated that you can't. As you define "strength". I'm already unimpressed with how you defined "love", so I think I'll reject these "roots" as well. They're all subjective, and you're fooling yourself if you think these are universal and absolute.

It's certainly a great thing that nobody here suggested you do that, isn't it? Or is that really what you got out of the two replies? Suggesting that an idea is ridiculous doesn't mean a person is crazy. I even linked you to it. Wouldn't some mechanism from a parallel universe qualify for that? The brain would only need some kind of context. Assuming a parallel universe had some kind of recognizable context (a barking dog, e.g.), and if your dreams could be influenced in the first place, it would still affect you despite lacking senses from that universe. Does that make sense? The argument to use is from this French study. They used people with a neuropsychological disorder in addition to a normal control group in order to show how dreams are a function of the brainstem. https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/136/10/3076/329883 Now your friend has to support the idea that these parallel universes can act on brainstems in this universe. And if they can do that while your sleeping, there's no reason why they couldn't affect the brainstem while awake. We're much more active about observing people while awake, so your friend has a lot of explaining to do as to why we don't see this effect.

Exactly. A good government provides the framework to allow each type of ownership to do what it's intended to do. Focus on the economy benefits the already wealthy far more than anyone else. A big part of our problem is that most of the best solutions are fairly boring, and don't get air time against the outlandish things our leaders are doing. Medicare for All is a no-brainer, quick and simple (not easy, simple). It will scale nicely, and as long as we give them back their bulk purchasing power, Medicare will do well. Fixing existing bridges and other infrastructure problems is equally boring, nothing innovative, and doesn't attract attention from the electorate, until the bridges fall down, then private companies swoop in to provide the fix at triple overtime because our leaders let it get so bad. But there are many who think a wall between us and Mexico is more important than all those bridges and sanitation facilities and water treatment plants. I'm very tired of the Republican party in this country. They're overrepresented, they're the only party that actively and willfully fails to do the job of certain agencies they don't approve of. They're ignorant of climate change, so they put morons in charge of the EPA. They don't care about OSHA, they don't care about FEMA, and the only thing they want to do with public education is turn it into an investment opportunity. They've destroyed the integrity of our media, they've continually put profit ahead of people's lives, and I hope the newer parts of the party (the Tea jerks and the White Supremacists and the Neocons) rot and fall off like the disease they are. That said, I don't want the Democrats to have all the power either. The wealthy manipulate the Dems as well, but we usually get better social focus.

! Moderator Note A page of personal ranting split to here.

Oh, I got that. I AM that relative moron, tbh. Still learning.

I think the US is out of balance. We have too much private ownership involved in our publicly-owned operations, and that's given the wealthy too much power. But I'm starting to wonder if we need new words to define our basic needs as a modern society. Just claiming we need more "Socialism" to balance the "Capitalism" isn't going to reach the ears it needs to. I'd love to see the US develop a system together with the EU where any of the citizens could study in any of the universities. I'd love to see Medicare for all in the US, and I think it should be set up so later administrations who don't believe in healthcare for its citizens can't mess with it. I think some kind of basic universal income could be the third point of this different political and economic system. In any case, people need to remember that they give up many freedoms when they agree to abide by a societies rules. They should get more out of it, and the system shouldn't be set up to prey on them, or keep them in their place with a foot on their throat. We need systems that educate, and keep people healthy, and value them for their potential contributions. More emphasis on public ownership without private profit will really help.

Occam's Razor fits this situation. Dreams coming from parallel universes is a far more complicated explanation than ones based on the natural mechanisms we observe. I would also remind your friend that, just because dreams aren't fully understood, that doesn't mean we don't know a great deal about them. A basic science rule of thumb is that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Does your friend have anything outside the anecdotal that would support his claims?

Does sophistication scare you? Educated, experientially-based critical thinking is far more objective and effective than what you call "common sense" (which always seems to be code for "This is what I would do!"). If you can't see that the current "conservative" administration is acting anything BUT conservatively, I think you need to check the way they're spending. Check the way they're profiting. Check the way they're embracing dictatorships for investment opportunities.

I ask two questions, "At what point in school did you decide science was too hard, and which pop-sci article did you read years afterward that made a weird kind of sense because your imagination filled in all the parts you didn't study?"

Many without a mainstream education in Physics think this lack gives them special intuitive powers that will allow them to show where Einstein was wrong. I don't say they're wrong to try, but I do think you should be well-educated before attempting to disprove a theory. There's usually a staggering amount of misunderstanding when clever people who didn't study the mainstream claim it's wrong.

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Oh well, it would only be the most Earth-shattering discovery of the millenia, if it were true. But I understand about how busy you are.

This may be part of your misunderstanding. The "real world" is observed, questions are asked and thought about, experiments to test the observations are devised, and the results are modeled mathematically. But it's all based on real world observation that yields conclusions trustworthy enough to base predictions about the future on. The theories may seem strange because they aren't "answers" or "proof", they're our best explanations for various phenomena. Theories change as we get better at observation.

I was skeptical of your claim about the event. I didn't wish to remain that way, so I looked into it. I found it wasn't supported by any evidence I could trust, therefore I fell back on the null hypothesis, that this extraordinary event didn't happen. I feel better knowing which are facts and which are conjecture. It's a proven methodology that helps me decide what is trusted, and worthy of my belief.