The biggest problem with philosophy besides its lack of inherent fundamentals is in my opinon the words. It is like teaching a Magikarp Flamethrower. Doesnt make any sense, you must evolve it into Gyarados first. That requires too much effort, it just doesnt make sense. You cant expect every Magikarp in the sea to evolve into Gyarados, they have better things to do than being super angry all the time.

Got it? Of course you didnt. You needed to be super knowledgeable about Pokemon of all things to get why Magikarps cant learn the move Flamethrower. It is that same way when you guys use references and very specific ideas to explain something. Dude, you cant just expect everyone to have read that very same book you did, as basic as it may seem to you. And if they did, why even mention it? They already got the ideas. You cant expect people to know "this is _____ fallacy" and even if you did, how would that help at all? The possibility for misuse is so huge you are better off explaining their mistake or the right logic. I guess if philosophy is as pointless as many people make it seem, and it is if it doesnt have the right fundamentals, goals and observations, it is better off not being a burden to society, and more of a hobby for nerds like you and me. This applies to vocabulary too, to a lesser degree. Still, if you want the widest range of people to understand you (if you agree with me that that is one of the valuable things you can put in everything you say) it is best to use simple vocab. I think it makes it seem more of a special club that way. I think I thought before the likely reason people said this is because they wanted to feel like part of an elite. Fair enough. I don't think so anymore, but I approve of you if you do so. I dont think it gives you charisma points though, if my short experience in r/iamverysmart is anything to judge off of. I guess it makes sense if you want to discuss that thing in particular, but once again that does make it seem like more of a club than a form of conversation. Tell me if u agree or disagree. I dont understand how this isnt fitting for a post so Ill repost this somewhere else noting the requirements in the rules.

That’s the point though. We still have the will-to-live mentality despite having transcended that survival state. It’s not possible for most animals to deny their Will, because they still exist in that state; humans alone have that freedom, yet we don’t use it. Many of us still exist with a will-to-live- not necessarily “kill or be killed,” but with the goal of instant gratification.

The author is arguing we have a responsibility to control our desires (will-to-live) BECAUSE we aren’t in that natural setting.

https://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/xyumwc/quantum_philosophy_4_ways_physics_will_challenge/isan22w

Not humility with respect to me.

With respect to professional physicists (and philosophers).

Evidently it was 53,000 in the EU alone in the month of July based on excess deaths during the heatwave...

https://globalnews.ca/news/9134651/european-union-excess-deaths-july/

The whole concept of 'resisting desire' always bothered me because when you think it through 'resisting to desire' is just 'desiring to not desire.'

My desires are what makes me human, it's what makes life fun, interesting, and gives me something to live for. As long as my desires don't hurt someone else I don't see anything wrong with them.

If you want to 'reduce suffering' we need to teach ourselves how 'not to care so much' if our desires don't come true. For instance, thjat girl we were totally crushing on didn't like us back. So now we suffer, but we can 'suffer through it' by realizing that there are plenty of other girls out there that may even be better or more suited for us as individuals; plenty more fish in the see and all that.

This notion of desire being 'a problem' really isn't a problem, it's what makes life interesting in my view.

We aren't in a natural setting with limited resources, and haven't been for an extremely long time though... That just seems like a massive stretch to me.

I think the author makes a distinction between the mechanical view of evolution, which he accepts is correct, and the emotive view which he acknowledges is neither accurate or logical, but stems from a desire to attribute will to nature. Obviously fish don’t will legs on themselves- he’s using this to introduce the spiritual idea of Will as a concept, a will-to-life not necessarily rooted in anything mechanical. I see it less as anything tangible and more as an idea used to explain Schopenhauer’s argument. Tbh this part didn’t make a ton of sense to me either.

As for the leap connecting will and violence, he’s saying possessing a desire to live, in a natural setting with limited resources, inherently puts you in competition with other beings with a will-to-live, leading to violence and suffering. Optimism (the author argues) denies this reality, while pessimism accepts it- it’s not miserable so much as realistic, and is the starting point for the “enlightenment” Schopenhauer talks about. Once you accept the reality that suffering is caused by Will, one can begin the journey to temper their Will and reduce the suffering it causes.

That’s how I understood it, at least.

There were a few thinkers who tried to unify Hegel and Schopenhauer. One of them was Hartmann. Although it is very contradictory, and kind of archaic

It is incredibly how perfectly Schopenhauer aligns with the goals and views expressed in the sutras and Upanishads, though of course his Will is more dire than the wheel of karma, which however in contrast seems to be less compassionate to suffering. I’ve always felt that Schopenhauer contends with the experience of life as it is at a much more basic and universal level than his contemporaries and arrives at very similar conclusions to the wizened sages of ancient times.

>nothing is "interesting" (something you'd see in the frontiers)

Sure, but this is philosophy, not physics. Judging philosophy that is looking for new interpretations of physics by the standards of physics itself is missing the point.

>nothing is controversial

There's controversy regarding even more "basic" features of reality, like whether a chair that's disassembled and put back together is the same chair.

What it really sounds like to me is that you just don't like philosophy. Philosophy is largely about taking "common knowledge" and trying to find new ways to look at it. In other words, to create controversy and interest when there normally wouldn't be any.

So, yes, in that mode of thinking, I completely agree. There may very well be nothing interesting or controversial about any of this in the realm of physics itself, just like there isn't anything interesting or controversial about chairs within the realm of general, practical thinking. But the point of philosophy is to challenge those modes of thinking, and it very much sounds to me like the issue you have is with that process itself.

I think, to some extent, this wraps around to this point:

>most of the time it's just "A and B are both fanciful ideas journalists made up and actual professional philosophers somehow confused for real physics". It gets annoying.

I can't speak to this without knowing a specific example, but it's quite possible that in these circumstances the physicists and philosophers are simply talking past each other. They're two different fields with some things in common, and that means that physicists can sometimes disagree with a philosopher and call them wrong simply because they're talking about it in a different way. Physicists do disagree amongst themselves, so saying that someone got the physics wrong because they're an ignorant philosopher instead of a physicist is a particularly convenient way of dismissing a conflicting view that isn't available when debating with another physicist. I personally have had discussions where a non-philosopher said that one thing isn't real physics, it's just a misunderstanding by philosophers...only for me to find that the idea in question was actually a physicist's interpretation, not a philosopher's.

But ultimately, I see this attitude even when none of your points apply. Someone simply says "consciousness" or "quantum" and people will storm in saying it's BS.

Amateur philosopher

Arguing with a pal

But we got bogged down with semantics and prosody of prior tangential arguments.

Roughly.

My general stance.

Facts logical reasonings etc are just for increasing confidence in beliefs

Beliefs aren't necessitated by facts

Their stance

The universe and all of reality operates on a logical system even if all the logic isn't known yet - thus beliefs are contingent on facts of reality and are determined by reality

They describe belief as a kind of hyper fact - created information but factual only that it is - and not itself knowledge or understanding.

I only had one counter before we got tangential

That having facts doesn't determine goals - information simply is without a goal aim etc it's up to the individual to believe a goal and then gather information towards it

I can add the tangents if people think it would help.

BIG EGO hates this trick that Humanists have been using for years!

Of my head

Social contract and private property

There are already situations where you forfeit or place your life in jeopardy.

Interestingly adding politics into it brings alot of other stuff with it.

Abortion - right to life.

Imprisonment - white torture - social isolation torture.

Historical property rights - the ten feet of history.

Etc

Still it roughly revolves around whether your body and mind are ironclad your private property.

Social contract would seem to indicate that there are situations where your ironclad private property is traded or borrowed against with other property.

Limiting this trade and possible forfeiture entails other limits - already suicide has gone through a cycle of illegal to legal - so the prime importance on human life seems to be fluid.

What I'm getting at is

Because we can vote it in - the only thing that is necessary is that we also have the ability to vote it out - as rights etc seem to change like the wind.

That is - we give the state power - but they should only ever be borrowers - not owners.

Greetings fellow sufferers

https://www.nationalpeanutboard.org/wellness/the-peanut-allergy-panacea-is-hypoallergenic-peanut-possible.htm

Alot of times people would rather destroy inconvenient things

Instead of improve them to a state of convenience.

I think that this author’s example of the older sibling wishing they didn’t have the burden of being the only person their wayward younger sibling would listen to is very relatable and makes his point well. I struggle, though, when he goes on to extrapolate to issues like the climate crisis and extinction events. Sure, we can make or not make decisions in our personal lives that can be more environmentally friendly or save the life of an individual animal, but we really don’t have power beyond that, and the impact of those decisions is infinitesimally small in comparison to the magnitude of the issue. So, I think the desire for/aversion to control is kind of beside the point when it comes to such macro issues. Maybe I’m missing something, though?

>You're just waving away a very obvious problem, and I don't understand how you can. Lithium production is constrained.

So separate out discussing batteries and lithium.

Batteries are production constrained and require fairly significant capx into new factories to get. That has been happening in a major way for the past few years and is only accelerating. It will take many years of scaling to truly satisfy world demand, but that means a lot of money and investment (again already happening).

Lithium itself has a different dynamic.

Lithium is quite abundant and has been considered a waste product from other types of mining for quite a long time. That has now changed and will be solved in reasonably short order. No new tech is required and tons of reserves are already proven. Within 5 years the price should be reasonably stabilized.

Also, most of the battery mass are what I mentioned. Iron/Aluminum/Carbon/Silicon. People fixate on lithium because it is in the name of the battery, but its a relatively small part by mass. Its just not a serious problem outside of the next few years.

​

>Currently, grid-level storage cover at best minutes, sometimes hours in very small areas. To cover windless, sunless periods, we need days, and indeed more like 2 weeks.

The more solar you build, the more predictable it becomes. The solar panel on your house might change based on relative cloud cover, but solar over a whole region becomes quite predictable.

To make power reliable, you have to over build it. The current fossil fuel is overbuilt. So you would need more solar than for you average day. Also major appliances (like EVs) will become more responsive to changing grid prices. Demand will become more elastic.

​

>You say nuclear plants take too long to build, but there is no way we can produce enough batteries in 20 years, which is plenty of time to build reactors.

Plenty of time. Now someone actually has to put up the money.

Its already happening in renewables, hopefully government or capital desires to actually invest in nuclear. In the meantime, nuclear is standing still and will waste out another decade.

> Batteries are economic for gird use right now. Its just production constrained. Just so happens capitalism is really good at solving that particular issue

You're just waving away a very obvious problem, and I don't understand how you can. Lithium production is constrained. Batteries cost money, that means energy, production capacity, and lithium as well as other stuff. On top of that, they don't improve à la Moore's law as you appear to believe. We gain a few % every year, not an order of magnitude every 5.

Currently, grid-level storage cover at best minutes, sometimes hours in very small areas. To cover windless, sunless periods, we need days, and indeed more like 2 weeks.

You say nuclear plants take too long to build, but there is no way we can produce enough batteries in 20 years, which is plenty of time to build reactors.

Despite his irrational hatred of Hegel, I wonder about their compatibility, given Hegel's discussion of desire in the self consciousness section of the phenomenology of spirit, where consciousness realizes the limits, the unsatisfactory nature of a certain type of animalistic desire, preceding the master slave dialectic

Batteries are economic for gird use right now. Its just production constrained. Just so happens capitalism is really good at solving that particular issue.

Nuclear is totally different. Massively expensive, high risk, and long time horizons. Something capitalism is bad at solving. Thus gov intervention is required to change the dynamic. This is borne out in the empirical reality of how private companies are currently investing.

Still grid storage can dramatically lag wind/solar for a few reasons:

• Wind/solar naturally complement each other (wind tends to produce more at night, when solar is offline)
• Existing hydro is easily retrofitted to be more on demand and act as grid storage (already currently happening)
• EVs are not picky about charging times and are easily setup to take advantage of low prices and reduce at times of high prices, helping to decouple generation and demand
• If we dramatically overproduce during the day, there are plenty of productive uses for basically free power, desalination is a great place to start

Dramaturgy

> Solar and wind can be built out much much faster.

The necessary storage cannot, even accepting the overly optimistic prediction you posted earlier.

I am not arguing against Nuclear, its part of the solution. But only part.

Solar and wind can be built out much much faster. You can see that from the economics alone.

Nuclear requires government funding to make it feasible. Wind/solar are being built out currently in a major way with private investments. Sure gov incentives help, but are no longer mandatory. Private capital going towards wind/solar is a massive advantage in the fight on climate change because it bypasses political processes that oil money has stymied.

I would like more nuclear. But its simply not economic to do so. If we could get governments to move past inaction and invest in the future grid, sure it would come along. But in the meantime, significant nuclear will be nothing more than a nice idea.

Now look at the amount of lithium and other materials required to produce those batteries. Compare and contrast with the material cost of nuclear plants -- hint: they're the lowest of any power generation amortized over lifetime. Incidentally, they require less CO₂-emitting concrete than windmills per Wh.