Phi for All

Using a Hollywood movie as a starting point?! It's clear to me how uninformative that will be.

At least in the US, 24/7 news programs play a big part in this perception. Violent crime overall has been dropping significantly since the 90s, including school violence. But ask the average citizen about the schools and all they remember is the graphic news coverage of every single violent event in the whole country. I find it a bit ironic that it was Bill Clinton who gave the media moguls the right to own media as well as other businesses, thus paving the way for our present non-informative, money-motivated, if-you-scare-them-they-will-come news broadcasts, and it was also Clinton who worked to improve a lot of the after-school programs that are being praised for helping reduce violence in schools. You'll almost never hear about the good that happens if the media can find something bad instead.

Or what you want to be you, or what could be you if you put in the kind of effort others have. You're not there, and won't ever be until you go back and study mainstream science until you know enough to be a theorist. You don't have the basic knowledge it takes to "assimilate disparate facts into coherent theories". In fact, you reject many of those coherent theories, theories that have proven worthy countless times, but don't make sense to you because your studies of them are incomplete. A theorist asks themselves, "How does this fit with that?", but they have to know this and that very, very well before they can begin to use their theorist powers effectively. You have the drive, maybe the mindset, but you got lazy with the schoolwork (assumption based on "I did not like attending school"). You don't have the core knowledge of the methodology and how it's used to build upon what we know, to strengthen it. Your frustration comes from trying to disprove certain principles without trying to understand them first. You look at something you don't understand and you assume the knowledge is wrong. Worse, you're convinced this makes you some kind of Galileo being persecuted by an angry church. You assume some kind of out-of-the-box solution is necessary before you question whether your own understanding may be flawed. This is definitely not what a theorist would do.

If I take a Humanist stance, accepting that I can't really know anything about god(s) if they do exist, and that they don't seem to be consistent enough to merit much allocation of resources if they do, then I'd like to know how various religions will view my stance. If I side with humanity, and invest my efforts at understanding into flesh and blood people, are religions going to help me or hinder me? In the US right now, we're becoming more sensitive to people and businesses that are neglecting their duties as citizens in favor of what's right for their religion or business. Corporations are hiding profits from taxation, and reducing the middle class that typically paid the lion's share of the revenue that keeps the country going. I think humanism (and history) tells us we're much more powerful in cooperative groups that help each other. Many religions foster this concept, but many promote political and social agendas that call more for personal responsibility. They don't support government welfare, and many social programs that help keep our society on an even keel. They believe you're only worthy if you pull yourself up by your bootstraps, as most of them believe they've done. How can humanism survive when so many people in positions of power use religion to shape a society of subordinates rather than peers?

You're actually very close to an understanding here, if you can focus on this part right here for a while. Please bear with me. The folks here who DID enjoy school, who studied a LOT of science as well as the methodology used, they picked up something that you didn't (I'm sorry, but it's true). They learned along the way how to spot what deserves to be questioned and what can be accepted. Science knowledge is like a jigsaw puzzle cut from the skin of an onion and all it's layers. It's very intricate but the more you study one area, the more likely other areas will make more sense. The other aspect you're ignoring is that many people here don't "instantly accept" what's in the books; they learn what the book says, they learn it thoroughly, and then they perform experiments to see if it supports what the books say. You have this idea in your head that people who study science just absorb knowledge without questioning it. There are probably people like this but not the majority. This is something you keep telling yourself to make all your questioning seem legitimate. You believe you are The Skeptic, not easily swayed or fooled because of your mighty logic. This is a very strong image, but it makes you question everything, and that's not really sustainable, is it? You're questioning people who test these principles every day, but you're really just a very interested amateur (like a lot of us!) who has latched onto specific pieces of science without an adequate framework of study to support you. That means things aren't going to make as much sense to you as they do to people who studied lots of science in school. How did I do? I'm really hoping I said this in a way that will resonate without seeming condescending. You're obviously smart, but you're just as obviously frustrated with certain aspects of your studies.

! Moderator Note Thread locked temporarily for staff review.

What you do is not discussion. You're not having a conversation if you ask questions and then don't listen to the answers. In my years here, I've seen a lot of people do the same thing. You think mainstream science is hidebound to their textbooks, the same books you rejected when you were in school. You've found some inconsistencies which have caused you to question the whole of science rather than question your own skills. You hear phrases like "think outside the box" but don't realize that you need to know the box very well before you can be effective thinking outside it. In answer to your question though, you could probably find a site where somebody will just agree with everything you're saying. I think this is what you're looking for, since you reject mainstream answers. You're guilty of "my way or the highway", but you don't have the benefit of thousands of scientists working in reality to support you. Your best bet, for the way you practice science, is to start a blog. That way you can turn off the comments and nobody will try to show you where you're wrong.

I'm not sure how the virtual reality proposition would work with the idea of colonization. If the couch is too comfy, most people won't get up. If your concern is for physical restraints, can we use your virtual reality wish for some physiological enhancement tech?

What if you get to live on Earth no more than 100 years, then you have to move out? You get booted from the "nest" and have to go colonize a new home.

! Moderator Note After review, clarity has not improved. Putting words together and tossing them like a salad is inimical to good conversation. Please review your source material more carefully, to avoid having your threads go in the Trash.

! Moderator Note This is a mainstream science area. Rejecting the current best understanding is not an option. You must understand "the box" if you ever hope to think outside it. Thread closed. In the future, if anyone thinks a thread has become unproductive, report it rather than commenting in the thread.

Thank you, Iota!

We wish you the best of luck in all your endeavors. Thanks for briefly stopping by.

I don't think anything reliable can be taken from the footage at all. It's questionable evidence at best, given absolutely nothing else physical to corroborate it. And since it very well could be faked.... We're just too good at finding patterns, and ignoring how many times the patterns fail to fit for each time they do. How many other details can't be seen that should be seen if this isn't a suit? Are we latching onto a calf muscle when other muscles should certainly be present?

You really should stop making up new phraseology and just study what others have already pioneered. You'll find people communicating about their ideas in a more seamless fashion, because they're all on the same page with their definitions. You seem like a smart person with good ideas; you don't need a new alphabet to be taken seriously. None of what you're saying is new, but the way you're saying it is, and I think you're mistakenly proud of that. Just saying something in a new way doesn't make you a visionary, it just makes you hard to understand. Learn what's in the box before attempting to think outside it. The box is known as the box for a good reason; it holds our most valuable stuff, and it's completely awesome.

1. A secular education for every single person on the planet. 2. A handkerchief to wipe away my tears of joy when everyone has a basic modern education. 3. A desalinization device I can wring out my handkerchief into to obtain fresh water instantly.

What you're saying has far too many caveats and requires a whole lot of explaining. Isn't it more rational and accurate to say "The planet as a whole is currently essential to our needs and must be carefully nurtured"? This would remove some of the ambiguities surrounding what different people consider "good". Being more precise is a hallmark of human communication. We can pack more information into our communication with precision, such as saying, "We all need water that has a Maximum Contaminant Level of x", rather than saying, "We all need clean water". Does that make sense to you, do you see the difference? This whole greater/lesser good/evil nomenclature is clunky and open to far too much interpretation. Your message is drowned out in all the misunderstandings. Your signal isn't getting through the noise you've purposely created. A new "mentality" isn't likely to form without more precision. After all, you've seen what happened with all the interpretations of religious doctrines. Ambiguity is not your friend.

Why do you think harsh conditions makes creatures evolve into humans? What makes you think our earlier ancestors didn't suffer in harsh conditions? You really should study evolution, you have a lot of misconceptions about it. You're only considered "advanced" in your own environment, surrounded by other humans and all your tools. As I said before, you aren't more advanced than some bacteria if we were to place you in an environment where they thrive and humans don't. Advanced is a subjective term. Once again you demonstrate how changing definitions really messes up a good conversation. Now you're using "advance" to mean move forward, where I was clearly using it to mean "a higher order" the way you first used it. Too frustrating. You keep responding to what you want me to mean, rather than what I wrote. No. I'm not using "good" at all, for the reasons I've told you about twenty times. And again, since you think there is someone there to "judge you at the end", you're no atheist. Far too many assumptions and misconceptions on your part, and since you get to torture the definitions of any word you choose to use, this is a pointless conversation. You can just keep shifting the goalposts and we learn nothing.

So true. And we've been imagining things we can't see but suspect are out there ever since we formed tribes around a campfire. When gods got squeezed out of the gaps in our knowledge, I think we substituted a more rational type of being to be curious about. Earth is the only planet we know that abounds with life, yet only one species is capable of intentionally going offworld. We're highly intelligent, probably because we had a very unique combination of agile hands, a cooperative nature, and extraordinary communication skills (among others). I realize the OP is more aimed at aliens on Earth, but it always intrigued me to think about how another intelligent life form, capable of offworld travel, might evolve on another planet. Would it require the same amount of biodiversity we have? Motivations for space travel are also interesting. In broad strokes, I see two main factors, Necessity and Exploration. I think there would be a big difference in aliens who came to visit depending on whether they need something they can't get at home or they're just out cruising around to see what's out there.

You can talk about anything you want to in Speculations. The special rules were created so those discussions don't end up circling the toilet. IOW, think of Speculations as being on life support, and if you can't provide enough the plug gets pulled.

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This is wrong on a couple of levels. First, we didn't "come from monkeys". Apes and humans share a common ancestor that was neither. Primates split from other mammals around 60 million years ago, so before prosimians we looked a lot like squirrels. Talk about suffering! Second, being successful in your environment is one of the major survival drivers of evolution, and it doesn't care at all how much you did or didn't suffer. If you get to pass along your genes to offspring, it doesn't matter to evolution whether the road was tough or easy. It's not only the creatures who get the food that are successful. Sometimes it's just the ones that get the girl. It's clear you think the suffering of today's South Africans (well, not all of them) was brought upon them by some unnatural cause, but you haven't come right out and said that modern humanity is unnatural. Please, if you learn one thing here, it should be how to think critically about what you're saying. "Advanced" is another subjective term when applied to evolution. You think you're more advanced than, say, a krill? What if I toss you in the ocean, who's more advanced now? Who is the more advanced flyer, you or the mosquito? Evolution is all about adaptation to your environment. If humans have enough cooperation, tools, and resources, our high intelligence allows us to manipulate the environment. Without them, your intelligence alone won't let you be a more advanced dam builder than a beaver. So much of the problem understanding where you're coming from is because you use all these terms like good and evil, where your definition and mine may not match with anyone else's, and yet you're trying to pitch this as a "we should all think this way" sort of proposition. Your black and white perspective doesn't allow for all the rich nuances we see in reality. Poor people can be happy, we're not all programmed or automatically submissive, and we eat sometimes because we're hungry, and sometimes because we're bored, and sometimes because we don't want to waste it, and sometimes because we don't want someone else to eat it, and sometimes because we don't know when we'll eat next.

I mentioned neither "hasty" nor "nature". I don't like your broad use of the word nature, you use it interchangeably when you mean natural processes, and Earth's capabilities, and when you talk about nebulous essences that may or may not be conscious of us. I don't see what's "obvious" about the suffering of species leading up to humans. Don't all species "suffer" to some extent? Or are you saying humans suffer more than other species because we have high intelligence? Does high intelligence increase suffering ("they obviously weren't suffering as much")? When you talk about "Africans", are you talking about human Africans? Because you also talk about billions of years before humans evolved, so it's a bit unclear. Humans are no more "advanced" than any other species. That's not how evolution works. Other species aren't "advancing" towards becoming human. We just have high intelligence, but that alone isn't what gives us our adaptive capabilities and allow us some control over our environment. Suffering is yet another subjective assessment you're trying to generalize. Do you think everything is suffer-free in "nature"?

Nature considers things? Do you have any support for the idea of nature being capable of thought? I don't understand why you brought this up, it seems completely out of context. Why do you mention this? Again, I'm baffled. Within Africa, there are countless separate populations that are affected differently by changes in allele frequency. There is no single "African evolution", just as being African has absolutely no bearing on anything but geographical location. And I can't even begin to imagine how you're trying to tie another subjective concept like "suffering" to evolution or Africans in general. Baffling. And since no one else did, I have to wonder why you feel the need to defend this stance. This is another example of your preconceptions causing you to argue from a "canned response" position. You create strawmen to battle but ignore the real arguments, what people are ACTUALLY saying. I'd still like to know how you feel about bad things that create good things. Like a senseless death that galvanizes a community to make changes to prevent recurrence. If your definition of good requires that lesser goods be created, this senseless death seems to fill the bill.

This is another aggravating habit you've fallen into. Where did ANYONE even hint that "good is not real"? It's been said that good isn't an objective assessment, since it varies from person to person. It's like you have some canned responses you're bound and determined to drag out even if nobody is actually making an argument. Can you see this from our perspective? I was pointing out the dangers of changing definitions on people you're having a discussion with, and you respond as if I said, "Hey, good isn't real". I didn't, I can support that by re-reading what I wrote. You should try this. Would you like a short list of bad things that also create "lesser goods" (if I understand this made-up phrase correctly)? Lying is bad, right? But as children, it's an important step in our development psychologically, since it signals the start of planning ahead for the best results. Lying tells parents their child is thinking about the future and how to make it better. Breaking the law is bad, right? But if nobody broke the law, we'd never know that some laws are bad. My state no longer puts people in jail for A YEAR for smoking pot, but this would never have changed if so many people didn't break the law to show how silly it was. Having a fever is a bad thing, right? But raising your body temperature is the body's way of killing off infections, which contributes to overall health. Context is everything, and your redefined system seems to throw a big generalization blanket over the concept of good. I also don't understand why you mention "the judge of what's good is above them in the hierarchy (natural selection, planets to humans, etc)". This seems to imply that Earth is our judge on what is good. This assigns mental process capabilities to an inanimate object, which is every bit as supernatural as any deist position.