Entelecheia
1yr ago
It boils down to the fact that it is incoherent to assert that only what is empirically verifiable can count as knowledge. To demonstrate this, simply attempt to apply the proposition's criterion to itself.
I’m a SWE making big tech rates. But I am early in my career, have a huge amount of student debt from bad decisions I made in the past, am paying a lot of rent, and kind of hate working and want to retire fast. So it’s not actually over my budget or anything but it doesn’t feel good because I’d rather invest that money to get out of the system faster than spend it on something that feels like a waste. That said the high rent is definitely more of a burden than the car expense.
Entelecheia
1yr ago
In the classical schema, the knowledge of God is presented as the apex of theoretical contemplation, which does not need any external justification but is itself the foundational good of human life. From Aristotle's Protrepticus:
To seek from all knowledge a result other than itself, and to demand that knowledge must be useful, is the act of one completely ignorant of the distance that from the start separates things good from things necessary; they stand at opposite extremes. For of the things without which life is impossible those that are loved for the sake of something else must be called necessities and contributing causes, but those that are loved for themselves even if nothing follows must be called goods in the strict sense. This is not desirable for the sake of that, and that for the sake of something else, and so ad infinitum; there is a stop somewhere. It is completely ridiculous, therefore, to demand from everything some benefit other than the thing itself, and to ask "What then is the gain to us?" and "What is the use?" For in truth, as we maintain, he who asks this is in no way like one who knows the noble and good, or who distinguishes causes from accompanying conditions.
One would see the supreme truth of what we are saying, if someone carried us in thought to the islands of the blest. There there would be need of nothing, no profit from anything; there remain only thought and contemplation, which even now we describe as the free life. If this be true, would not any of us be rightly ashamed if when the chance was given us to live in the islands of the blest, he were by his own fault unable to do so? Not to be despised, therefore, is the reward that knowledge brings to men, nor slight the good that comes from it. For as, according to the wise among the poets, we receive the gifts of justice in Hades, so (it seems) we gain those of wisdom in the islands of the blest.
It is nowise strange, then, if wisdom does not show itself useful or advantageous; we call it not advantageous but good, it should be chosen not for the sake of anything else, but for itself. For as we travel to Olympia for the sake of the spectacle itself, even if nothing were to follow from it (for the spectacle itself is worth more than much wealth), and as we view the Dionysia not in order to gain anything from the actors (indeed we spend money on them), and as there are many other spectacles we should prefer to much wealth, so too the contemplation of the universe is to be honoured above all the things that are thought useful. For surely it cannot be right that we should take great pains to go to see men imitating women and slaves, or fighting and running, just for the sake of the spectacle, and not think it right to view without payment the nature and reality of things.
Entelecheia
1yr ago
It's a meaningless argument against the concept of knowledge itself
No, it's an argument against your proposed criterion of knowledge on the basis of it being self-contradictory.
does absolutely nothing to actually advance the notion of god existing
That's because it's an argument whose goal is to figure out what knowledge is, not whether God exists. If you want arguments that advance the notion of God existing, you should look at those, rather than looking at an argument about knowledge and observing that it doesn't prove that God exists.
The point being to describe people who were far from Republican moderates pulling the lever in favor of abortion rights against ban attempts when the chips were down.
Right, and the point here is that (speaking as a pro-life person) if a condition of us getting their vote is that we don't do anything to ban abortion, we don't want it. So if you are arguing that we should moderate (in the sense of giving up on making abortion generally illegal) because of this, my response is no. If you are arguing that as a descriptive matter we'll have a harder time winning because of this, that may be right, but the alternative is a hollow victory that doesn't accomplish enough of our goals to make it worth it for us, so it's worth the risk.
If the proposal is a less stringent ban that actually gets us a lot of what we want but not all of it, like a total ban but with certain specific exceptions, then I think a lot of people would be open to considering that. But safe legal and rare isn't good enough.
Entelecheia
9mo ago
That seems plausible - too much demand for housing in safe, clean, walkable areas and not enough supply so the rent is through the roof.
I’m not sure what you’re objecting to in the statement you quoted. There’s nothing spontaneous about having to drive for an hour to see people, so it sounds like you’re agreeing rather than disagreeing, you just don’t mind it. If you’re okay with that, that’s fine. I’m not. But I’m not agitating for some sort of political change that would require you to live differently. I’m trying to figure out what I can do to live the kind of life I want to live.
Entelecheia
1yr ago
Cool, would love to hear what you think of it!
Entelecheia
1yr ago
The new tactic is presuppositional apologetics
The new tactic where exactly? I have no idea what presuppositional apologetics is; probably a more fruitful tactic is real engagement with the history of philosophy and with the arguments that have been proposed by the best thinkers in it. Cosmological arguments for example are absolutely treated as worthy of serious engagement by even atheist philosophers of religion.
Entelecheia
1yr ago
What do you consider the place I should have ended up in after I had done all my investigations?
I'd say that if you diligently investigate the merit of classical philosophical theism then you should arrive at a place where you consider it philosophically formidable and worthy of respect if not actually true. The best introduction to this tradition that doesn't require you spending an inordinate amount of time reading Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas is probably Edward Feser, who has a couple books that distill a lot of the classical argumentation into a more approachable format.
Entelecheia
1yr ago
It means that if we have any knowledge of anything, then we can be sure those are not the actual constraints of reality. Either our item of knowledge K is not scientifically verifiable, in which case the point is proved, or it is scientifically verifiable, in which case in order to count as knowledge, the scientific method must be known to be reliable, which cannot happen by scientific verification.
Entelecheia
1yr ago
Are you sure the constraints on science are not actually constraints of reality?
Yes? If only what is scientifically demonstrable is knowable, then we have no way of knowing that science is a valid source of knowledge, because a scientific demonstration of the validity of scientific knowledge would be circular.
Entelecheia
6mo ago
Sounds interesting. For me it's the Mediterranean lifestyle and walkability that I am after. I'm still very junior though so I'll probably need to put in more years before I can realistically start aiming for this.
Entelecheia
6mo ago
Most of my English speaking friends have switched to remote working for American companies
Do they make American salaries? I'm an American developer but I don't like living here. I dream of moving somewhere like France or Spain. But the wage disparity is so high that it is hard to justify. If there is a way to make a US salary and live there, that would be perfect.
The places that are most well designed to further spontaneous interaction with relatively normal and stable people like Boston or NYC are some of the most exorbitantly expensive places in the whole country. So clearly there is much more demand for that sort of lifestyle than there is supply of housing to accommodate it, which suggests that’s a luxury too.
The commenter above has a wife and a kid. What does he need to find out in the wild, another wife?
Community and making new friends. Or are you supposed to just be done with that once you have a wife and kids?
Entelecheia
9mo ago
My only other option right now without getting another job would be to move to New York City and that’s off the table for me because of the filth and disorder. So it’s either suburbs, London, or new job.
Note that the only other human you have mentioned in your description of your quality of life is your child. The rest of it is all stuff. SUVs, guns, fences. If that’s what you care about, American suburbs have a lot to offer you. For people who want to experience natural and spontaneous human connection (that you don’t have to fight against the environment of huge yards and parking lots to obtain), they don’t, and most of the cities don’t either.
Entelecheia
1yr ago
They demurely posit their invisible god
This is redundant; the necessary being cannot be corporeal because what is corporeal can be corrupted, and what is not corporeal cannot be visible.
who isn't really associated with any particular religion
That's a feature, not a bug; everyone, not just people who have encountered a particular religious tradition, can know God.
who doesn't really do anything
In classical theism, God not only does things, but everything that exists at any moment exists only at that moment insofar as God makes it exist, so this is wildly inaccurate.
seemingly motivated more by a desire to at least be treated as Serious People rather than any urge to actually prove that anything in particular exists
The arguments you're talking about were developed throughout the history of philosophy by people who had no particular motivation to appear any way in internet debates thousands of years later.
Actually I'm not sure if I've been interpreting this argument correctly up to this point. My objection is to a kind of methodological materialism or ruling out a priori the possibility of knowledge from philosophical methods. I'm not sure that's coherent because of the obvious issue with stating that one knows this. Perhaps one could deny that one knows it but say it is possibly true, but I don't think that makes any sense, because advancing that proposition (p = "I don't know if the scientific method is the only way to knowledge, but it could be true") is effectively asserting knowledge of p, and one does not know p scientifically.
If what @SSCReader or you mean is just that metaphysical materialism may be true - that it may turn out to be the case that materialism is right and we can make philosophical arguments for and against that and evaluate them according to philosophical methods to arrive at knowledge - then I have no objection.
Entelecheia
6mo ago
without the guilt trip of having to make up an excuse for not attending a wedding or some other shit that you don't want to do
The thing I don't want to do is work, because I'd rather be doing various things that a dependency on work is keeping me from doing (like exploring the world or full-time intellectual pursuits), so this doesn't really seem like autonomy to me.
Entelecheia
8mo ago
Antibiotics are the most common prescription for Rosacea, but topical Ivermectin is the 'it' new thing.
I've tried both of these with not much effect unfortunately. Ivermectin in both topical and pill form even lol. I should probably go back to a dermatologist regardless though, as you mention it's good to keep up with new developments.
The problem doesn't lie in food (like an allergy), the problem lies in your gut biome.
I've wondered if this might have something to do with it, because I seem to have exhausted most conventional explanations.
Can you try drinking homemade milk kefir and see if that's a trigger?
Dairy in general doesn't seem to bother me very much. I haven't looked too deeply into the gut side of things but I probably should because I have few other leads and it seems to have something to do with digestion. I take a probiotic pill regularly but I imagine that is not the optimal approach. I do like the kefir idea and might try that next.
Entelecheia
8mo ago
Have you spoken with a dermatologist in person?
I have, but I guess only before I discovered the dietary "cure". But I tried lots and lots of creams, gels, antibiotics, etc up to but not including accutane and some of it worked okay but the diet change blew all of that out of the water. I could try again, but from some basic research I don't have a ton of confidence that the sense that dermatology knows much about the food-acne connection yet, and even if it did, my reaction seems abnormal and idiosyncratic and not along the lines of "okay, sugar and/or dairy may influence acne" that I've read in articles here and there.
Could you have rosacea?
I think they've used that term for it before, yeah.
It was a good movie but I did not like it as much as John Wick 4 or the previous MI movies, maybe it is just action movie fatigue setting in.
I thought it was noticeably worse than 6 and 5. The plot did not seem compelling and was hard to follow. The character decisions were bizarre, specifically the sidelining of a quite captivating female lead character in favor of a less interesting and more annoying substitute. The spectacle at least was fun, so there's that, but overall it was missing the other factors that make Mission Impossible feel like a fun adventure you get immersed in, rather than just a sequence of cool set pieces you're looking at.
Entelecheia
9mo ago
Yeah, I'm getting to the point where I just can't stand the crushing boredom and isolation anymore even though my tech salary would take a big hit to emigrate. The stuff you listed is table stakes for living in any number of European capitals so it makes my current approach (tough it out in US HCOL to make more money but spend a lot of it on rent and cars and be miserable) feel like I'm getting scammed. Maybe I'll try it for a year and see how it goes.
In America, anyway. Tokyo and Vienna are doing just fine.
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