Random Thoughts Part 4 - Split Thread

[WWGD]

I am one of the apparently very few people who are not bothered by nails scratching the surface of a blackboard.

 

[HomogenousCow]

In my opinion, many philosophical questions don't have definitive answers because they are bad questions. When you ask a ill-defined question you will not get a well defined answer.

 

[zoobyshoe]

In my opinion, many philosophical questions don't have definitive answers because they are bad questions. When you ask a ill-defined question you will not get a well defined answer.

I don't think people who are into philosophy want definitive answers, hence the unanswerable questions.

 

[WWGD]

In my opinion, many philosophical questions don't have definitive answers because they are bad questions. When you ask a ill-defined question you will not get a well defined answer.

AFAIK, once a question has been settled, or even clearly-defined, it is out of the scope of Philosophy. Psychology was initially part of Philosophy, but once the objectives and scope of Psychology were defined, it became a stand-alone science. But you may have a valid point: if all those questions were answered, Philosophers would be out of work. And if many of these were settled quickly, it would make the enterprise of Philosophy seem kind of trivial.

EDIT:Still, it may be at least in part an issue of convergent vs divergent thinking: http://www.cuil.pt/r.php?cx=002825717068136152164:qf0jmwd8jku&cof=FORID:10&ie=UTF-8&q=convergent+and+divergent+thinking&sa=Search

EDIT2: Maybe the issue/need for Philosophy is the fact that any knowledge area, knowledge in general, will always rest on some assumptions. Philosophy would then examine these assumptions, examine different assumptions one may make, etc., all of this done explicitly. Outside of Philosophy (the study of Phil) ,e.g. in Science, assumptions are also made/used, but mostly implicitly, more as a given.

 

[WWGD]

One of the waiters in a coffee shop I frequent looks almost exactly like the portrait I have seen of Nietschze. Strange, since the waiter is from Pakistan.

 

[WWGD]

Interesting: A company that measures emotional states and emotional reactions :https://labs.affectiva.com/superbowl/affdexweb.html

EDIT: What a waste, seems like it is mostly for marketing.

 

[Silicon Waffle]

I don't think people who are into philosophy want definitive answers, hence the unanswerable questions.

I totally agree to this.

I don't like philosophical ideas like "I shoot an bullet and it flies forever and never reaches the target", which almost sounds pretty silly because if it never does, the speaker should try being my bullet's target and let's see if it hits him.

 

[DiracPool]

I'm randomly thinking what PF Member Awards I'm going to win this year for my valuable contributions to this forum..

 

[Ibix]

I don't think people who are into philosophy want definitive answers, hence the unanswerable questions.

I think, rather more cynically, that some of them do want definitive answers, and have a pretty good idea what they want those definitive answers to be.

Did you know that university administrators hate physicists? We ask them to pay for particle accelerators. They much prefer mathematicians, who are happy with pencil, paper and bin. But they really like philosophers, who can manage without the bin...

 

[zoobyshoe]

I think, rather more cynically, that some of them do want definitive answers, and have a pretty good idea what they want those definitive answers to be.

Possibly, depending on what you mean, but my impression is that it's a collection of people who want everything to be muddy and mushy so that they can cling to the hope that anything is possible.

 

[Ibix]

Possibly, depending on what you mean, but my impression is that it's a collection of people who want everything to be muddy and mushy so that they can cling to the hope that anything is possible.

I think the only difference between us is that I think some of them don't want "anything" to be possible, they want a specific something to be possible. They select the school of philosophy that best supports that something. It feels like quantum woo, with pedigree.

 

[collinsmark]

Questions, answers, 42, and philosophers.

 

[WWGD]

I think you are all missing the /a point. Answers with capital A , do not exist; they all rest on assumptions. If you want definitive answers, you start with clear assumptions. But your assumptions are not certain, they are just that, assumptions. But this is not Philosophy then. Philosophy is intended to examine this process , together with different sets of assumptions to be made, what answers result from these assumptions, which assumptions are justified under which terms, etc. Of course, there may be philosophers of all types, but this says nothing definitive about philosophy itself. Philosophy is at least one layer removed from knowledge itself; it is a stance outside of it used to examine it.

 

[HomogenousCow]

I think you are all missing the /a point. Answers with capital A , do not exist; they all rest on assumptions. If you want definitive answers, you start with clear assumptions. But your assumptions are not certain, they are just that, assumptions. But this is not Philosophy then. Philosophy is intended to examine this process , together with different sets of assumptions to be made, what answers result from these assumptions, which assumptions are justified under which terms, etc. Of course, there may be philosophers of all types, but this says nothing definitive about philosophy itself. Philosophy is at least one layer removed from knowledge itself; it is a stance outside of it used to examine it.

What I mean is many philosophical debates don't seem to have any solid definitions of the ideas involved.
Take free will for example. Rather than asking the question, "is there free will", I'd rather ask "what does free will even mean?"

 

[WWGD]

What I mean is many philosophical debates don't seem to have any solid definitions of the ideas involved.
Take free will for example. Rather than asking the question, "is there free will", I'd rather ask "what does free will even mean?"

But then there would be different schools starting with different sets of assumptions, here on the meaning of free will itself -- at some point you need to make an assumption in order to avoid an infinite regress of justification. Each school would provide its own answer.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I think the only difference between us is that I think some of them don't want "anything" to be possible, they want a specific something to be possible. They select the school of philosophy that best supports that something. It feels like quantum woo, with pedigree.

I think we're on the same page. They want anything to be possible so that their specific thing can be possible. The more general mush, the less their specific thing is excluded in any way.

 

[WWGD]

Ultimately, this discussion on Philosophy reminds me of the guy who goes to the store
called " Only Sausages" and then leaves, complaining:" I couldn't find a single hamburger in that damn place".
You're criticizing Philosophy for not doing something it was never intended for .
Damn that hammer, I hit the shirt really hard with it for an hour and it is still not clean!

 

[HomogenousCow]

Ultimately, this discussion on Philosophy reminds me of the guy who goes to the store
called " Only Sausages" and then leaves, complaining:" I couldn't find a single hamburger in that damn place".
You're criticizing Philosophy for not doing something it was never intended for .
Damn that hammer, I hit the shirt really hard with it for an hour and it is still not clean!

It just seems to me that most of the philosophical writing that I've encountered sound like eloquent nonsense.

 

[WWGD]

It just seems to me that most of the philosophical writing that I've encountered sound like eloquent nonsense.

Yes, there are pretentious people everywhere, and tenured faculty face no real pressure to be clear, nor to publish reasonably and avoid nonsense. And this is , I think, mostly an academic discipline; I can't see many people graduating in philosophy not intending to be academics, unless they are significantly wealthy -- don't see many wanted ads for Philosophy graduates. This may be part of it.

 

[WWGD]

I was confused by seeing people from India that were, or seemed to be, Caucasians. Never seen it before. And also by this Israeli guy who has an aerobics show on TV; I assumed all the Israelis were tough guys who could build a tank with a paper clip, a piece of wood and some duct tape, given they all go to the army. And they could kill you using just their index finger.

 

[Borg]

I stood up a web server a few weeks ago and immeadiately started getting hack attempts from all over the world. So I changed the port to a very non-standard one and the hacks stopped (the script kiddies just look for servers running on port 80 or 8080). Today, I was walking past a house that I walk past every couple of weeks when I noticed that the car out front had a license plate with just four digits and they were the exact four digits that I changed my server port to. Now the question that's bothering me is - was this just an interesting coincidence or did I subconciously remember the plate number when I picked a 'random' number?

 

[DiracPool]

I assumed all the Israelis were tough guys who could build a tank with a paper clip, a piece of wood and some duct tape, given they all go to the army

That sentence inspired me to do further research around the subject of "mandatory conscription." To my astonishment, it's actually a fascinating topic as to to how different countries view and constrain their "subjects" to perform military duties, both male and female.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_service

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription

For example, in North Korea, conscription is mandatory for all males for 120 months. That's 10 years! In South Korea, mandatory conscription is 2 years. The articles I posted are interesting in the exceptions and qualifications to these standards, as well as interesting "outlier" cases as with the South Korean pop star Yoo Seung-jun

 

[WWGD]

I stood up a web server a few weeks ago and immeadiately started getting hack attempts from all over the world. So I changed the port to a very non-standard one and the hacks stopped (the script kiddies just look for servers running on port 80 or 8080). Today, I was walking past a house that I walk past every couple of weeks when I noticed that the car out front had a license plate with just four digits and they were the exact four digits that I changed my server port to. Now the question that's bothering me is - was this just an interesting coincidence or did I subconciously remember the plate number when I picked a 'random' number?

I assume neither license plate numbers nor server ports start with 0 , so the numbers are from 1000 to 9999, so if all numbers equally likely, you have 1 chance in 9000. Not so low.

EDIT: This may be a bit tricky: there are a total of 9,000x9,000=81,000,000 pairs of numbers, of which only one pair ( of the two 4-digit combinations) is a hit. But if your number is selected, then there are 9,000 possible numbers to match it with.

 

[WWGD]

That sentence inspired me to do further research around the subject of "mandatory conscription." To my astonishment, it's actually a fascinating topic as to to how different countries view and constrain their "subjects" to perform military duties, both male and female.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_service

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription

For example, in North Korea, conscription is mandatory for all males for 120 months. That's 10 years! In South Korea, mandatory conscription is 2 years. The articles I posted are interesting in the exceptions and qualifications to these standards, as well as interesting "outlier" cases as with the South Korean pop star Yoo Seung-jun

EDIT :Is that the " Gangnam Style" guy (quickly forgotten; this was a big pop hit last year)?

Seems they may need to change things in the U.S, because not enough people are volunteering.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I stood up a web server a few weeks ago and immeadiately started getting hack attempts from all over the world. So I changed the port to a very non-standard one and the hacks stopped (the script kiddies just look for servers running on port 80 or 8080). Today, I was walking past a house that I walk past every couple of weeks when I noticed that the car out front had a license plate with just four digits and they were the exact four digits that I changed my server port to. Now the question that's bothering me is - was this just an interesting coincidence or did I subconciously remember the plate number when I picked a 'random' number?

I think there's a good chance you noticed the four digits on the plate if they are a "catchy" combination. For example, I would find 2536 to be "catchy" since it's two consecutive squares. And any four digits could be "catchy" for purely personal associations, not necessarily mathematical ones.

 

[WWGD]

They have this new coffee shop where , after you slide your credit card, you have to write (with your fingers) in a screen, your name, and the tip. The options for the tip are: 15%, 20%, 25% (all pretty high, given it is self-service) , or you can explicitly select " I am leaving no tip" . Nice way of laying on the guilt. Pretty sure it has been designed to do this, to induce guilt and increase the tip amounts. I got an ugly look after I selected to leave no tip. I just received my coffee and pastry and took it to my table. What would the tip be about?

 

[Borg]

I think there's a good chance you noticed the four digits on the plate if they are a "catchy" combination. For example, I would find 2536 to be "catchy" since it's two consecutive squares. And any four digits could be "catchy" for purely personal associations, not necessarily mathematical ones.

Perhaps. Although when I was deciding, I just decided to do simple addition and subtraction to 8080 to get to the number that I chose - I changed the thousands place by one number and changed the second 80 by another number.

 

[WWGD]

Perhaps. Although when I was deciding, I just decided to do simple addition and subtraction to 8080 to get to the number that I chose - I changed the thousands place by one number and changed the second 80 by another number.

Hey, you're narrowing it down too much by giving this info away. 8 choices for first 80 and 98 choices for the second , a total of only 784 combinations.

 

[DiracPool]

They have this new coffee shop where , after you slide your credit card, you have to write (with your fingers) in a screen, your name, and the tip. The options for the tip are: 15%, 20%, 25% (all pretty high, given it is self-service) , or you can explicitly select " I am leaving no tip" . Nice way of laying on the guilt. Pretty sure it has been designed to do this, to induce guilt and increase the tip amounts. I got an ugly look after I selected to leave no tip. I just received my coffee and pastry and took it to my table. What would the tip be about?

Yeah, I have to deal with this everyday in "gratuity crazed" America. Personally, I hate leaving tips. It's not because I'm cheap, it's because of the forced social constraint that you are faced with in the USA everyday, explicitly when you just want to go out for a cup of coffee or have a sandwich at the local diner. There's always this pressure on you to tip tip tip.

The barista stand I go to typically charges me about 2 dollars and 35 cents for a 4-shot "Americano." So, I usually just give them 3 scraggly looking dollar-bill singles left over from the strip club cache I assembled the night before, and they seem to be happy with the 65 cent tip.

Every once and a while, I'll show up with no cash and they pull out the iPAD with the gratuity scam. It's basically as you stated it, $1, $2, $5. or "No tip cause you're a cheapshit"

 

[JorisL]

Hah, I knew it!

RE: Doctor who opening scene