/sci/ - Science & Math

Shit threads go to >>>/x/

>>5029106
I'm asking for an opinion, not a recommendation.

Hold onto your shit, Philosophy Masters here. Chill your nips for a minute while I read your picture, OP.

>>5029111
Technology makes peoples lives convenient. People got tired of living in 100 degree temp huts made of mud and clay. Now we have air conditioning, travel methods, etc. These services can not be maintained without some sort of economic system or you will run out of resources very quickly.
Whats so bad about working for things? Nothings stopping you from packing up going to the desert and living off of primitive methods. But if you want technology and convenience, you should have to make a contribution. The better the contribution the more you can have. Welcome to the basics of capitalism. Now fuck off.
How you even needed to ask an opinion on this is retarded.

>>5029122
The point of the image is to recognize the general delusion of America by the example provided here where someone claimed an incident (a discerned phenomenon) and further pondering was not correlated to the development of the camera.

>>5029120
like a degree in philosophy really means shit.
Im glad you have critical thinking skills but philosophy should be something more of a hobby, not a degree.

>>5029128
>>5029128
I think it was more than just the camera. I read it and interpreted it as western culture vs minimalistic culture and how we sacrificed our happiness and simplicity for our technology which we have become slaves too. And my opinion is that I would rather have the western culture.

>>5029130
The point of the thread goes deeper than that (I was OP). Our value system is messed. I will not be getting into details tho.

The topic is related to the content of the thread, and what it means to philosophers.

>>5029132
How is our value system messed up? Do go into details because I have read you're screencap and I don't think the westernized culture is delusional.

>>5029137
>>>/b/423355737
Extract what you can from this thread. To even begin would make me write a novel.

Ok, where do I start...

1) OP post in the picture: People with plentiful resources tend to exhibit these behaviors. Nothing unexpected here, just a stark contrast to the excessive and occasionally artificially generated scarcity in our modern culture. You can actually see instances similar to the Polynesian behavior on the internet with open and plentiful sites (Bittorrent, etc.) whereas you'll find more modern behavior in areas with scarcity (games you have to pay for, MMOs, any service you have to pay out the ass for). If you're expecting me to cite some philosopher here, sorry to disappoint, but this is really discussing something more along the lines of economics and psychology.

2) Yes, the camera was invented that way, and yes, Americans in general are pretty uninformed despite having the strongest opinions.

3) Ah, the real meat. Generally speaking, philosophy with a label DID NOT precede technology. In fact, mathematics beat philosophy in the "which field was solidified first" brawl.

Continued...

>>5029144

That being said, philosophy without a label boils down to the process of solving problems of all kinds. In that respect, philosophy gave birth to every single field that exists today. The ability to solve problems requires, a priori, a manner and method in order to do so. Remember that saying about a bunch of monkeys eventually typing up Shakespeare? Well, that's basically what happened. Eventually, one clever monkey figured out how to bang rocks together or add dicks or something.

We happened to be lucky enough to possess a keen ability for mimicry, so while some monkeys were busy mimicking farts, others were busy farming ants for XP. That process of randomly applying objects to find solutions IS philosophy, albeit a very primitive one. Eventually, some people figured out that setting down guidelines and rules, especially to language, gave us more right answers than wrong ones.

Continued...

>>5029146

You still find your contrapositives, contradictions, and other oddities, but for the most part philosophy has done a pretty good job. Of course, the major goal of philosophy is to solve problems.

Once everyone agrees that the problem has been solved, philosophy is discarded, just as one would leave a doctor if they were well. Of course, we haven't figured out everything. There's still the problems of consciousness, morality, judging quantum effects, qualifying language, classifying animals, judging cultures, and all sorts of things that we often take for granted.

These are very important problems that everyone thinks are all figured out, that there's no need to try to solve these. If that were true, people wouldn't kill each other over imaginary beings. Law wouldn't be open to interpretation. A platypus wouldn't be hard to figure out and Schrodinger's Cat would finally come out of his box.

But none of these things are solved. None of them have a solution we all agree on, a 1 + 1 = 2 answer. Yet the effects they have are very real. So until some clever monkey comes up with a way to bang rocks together for world peace, philosophy will always have a place in human academia.

>>5029149
Pretty good read. I don't think philosophy is going anywhere, philosophy, logic, analysis are all so important. But when things like morality don't have a definitive 1+1=2 answer like you suggested (because they don't) you will never have complete world peace. The human ego and self imagined importance is too big for that.

>>5029149
I really like your posts, but there's something that bother me a bit
>contrapositives, contradictions, and other oddities,

Those are some of the basic formalizations of logic. They are extremely useful in science and mathematics.

>>5029155

Of course they are. Philosophy can apply to a large number of fields and are particularly relevant in the most abstract fields of math, logic, and language. If your objection is that the terms are logical and not philosophical, it is an unfortunate result of metaphilosophy devolving into "it's turtles all the way down". Using phrases from a derivative field which nonetheless applies to the parent field is far easier to explain.

The root of our suffering is self-centred egotistical thinking. Thinking only about ourselves gives us an unrealistic sense of the importance of our own problems and leads us to ruminate and stress about them. It also leads us to see other people as competition for resources, leading to emotions such as hatred, fear, jealousy, aquisitiveness, etc. These emotions are not conducive to happiness.

On the other hand, if we don't focus on our own problems and think and act for the welfare of others, we have a more realistic view of the significance of our own problems and they affect our happiness less. Acting for the benefit of others also gives rise to emotions such as love, compassion and kindness, which have been shown to be the emotions most highly correlated with positive effect (positive states of mind).

Although it seems counterintuitive, the best way to be happy is to care about other people more than yourself and cultivate genuine emotions of selflessness, compassion, and love. This is not intended to be moralistic, it logically leads us to happiness. Modern western society however reinforces our attitude that we should be "out only for ourselves", and makes us obsess about things which do not actually bring us happiness.

I don't think that technology itself is the problem, it's just that the perception of the world which is reinforced by modern society is not optimum for maximising personal happiness and minimizing the suffering of human beings in th world.

>>5029189

I'd also like to add that the consensus within the neuroscientific community is that the "self" or "ego" is lterally an illusion created by the brain, pressumably to help us survive.

However, while an illusion of self may have helped us survive in prehistory, in modern society we don't have to be aggressivley aquisitive in order to survive.

Here are some links:

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/05/31/the-self-illusion-bruce-hood/

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/leading-emotional-intelligence/201108/the-illusion-self-awarenes
s

http://www.pkrishna.org/Is_Self_Illusion.html

http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-illusion-of-the-self2

>>5029189
Alot of good reading and valid arguments.

This is a good thread.

I think the problems pointed in this thread should be adressed better. Like shoved into mainstream media for everyone to see and read about.

It would be a good catalyst... I think

>Waah I'm too autistic to succeed in a career doing what I like to do AND EVERYONE ELSE IS TOO

lel comedy gold

>>5029165
The post I was referring to seemed to dismiss contradiction and contrapositive as "oddities" irrelevant to our understanding of logic and universe. I wanted to point that they were as relevant as anything else in that respect.

"Man does not strive for pleasure; only the Englishman does."

>>5029197
Saying that the self is an illusion is sort of pointless. It's an illusions to whom, the illusionary self? What is the reference point here, relative to which "the self is an illusion"? An illusion to an illusory self?

Funny.

>grass came from fart.

Take my internets, fine sir.

I think it should be clear by now that communism is the answer

>>5029122
>These services can not be maintained without some sort of economic system or you will run out of resources very quickly.

Now this is a delusion.

There was a time when you had to manually start and stop your air conditioner when the room got hot, do you have to do that now? No. We developed the technology to automate that task.

Technologies are invented to make people's lives easier and/or more fulfilling, economic systems quite often derail that intention for their own longevity.

As an example we've had outstanding growth in automation over the recent decades but the standard work week is still 40 or more hours and there has been no increase in real wages. Economics took technology that should have benefited the workers and negated it's effects on them.

>>5029930
This is true. You are a fucking idiot if you think capitalism works in favour of the majority.
Refer to:
>>5029895

What is a higher moral value, giving to others because they deserve it or because they need it?

>>5029930

This in a nutshell is the real problem. Technology has made our lives much easier, but all of the benefits have been subsumed by a small fraction of the population which uses preservation of the pre-advance status quo to enrich itself at the expense of the majority rather than spreading out the benefit of, for example, automation, to enable all to have a small utility benefit instead of a few having a large utility benefit.

This is, by and large, because of the political systems under which we operate, where those with the most influence and power, the ones who are making the rules for how this utility is distributed, are also those of the minority who have the opportunity to gain the most benefit from organizing the system in this way.

So, while profits from automation COULD be used to provide a shorter work week at higher wages for the remaining workers, or compensation for those who are made superfluous, such a thing will not happen under a system in which those in power have a vested interest (and no opposing moral, ethical, economic, or social reasons) in keeping the benefits confined to a select few. Either the system needs to change, or the utility calculation made by those in power needs to be skewed one way or the other by social, moral, or economic forces.

But it is possible. Never believe that it isn't. We are not living in the best possible world, and neither are the Polynesians.

>>5029154
>But when things like morality don't have a definitive 1+1=2 answer

OH RLY

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/sam_harris_science_can_show_what_s_right.html

Capitalism provides incentives to produce desirable products as it will lead to personal enrichment of the inventor and producer. This is good.

However it provides no disincentives to those who supress competition and abuse their position in a way that harms society and other competing capitalists. This is bad.

As for the deal about philosophy, iits nowsays just a glorified label that spends more time glorifying itself than doing anything useful. Study and experiment brings clarity, crativity and experiment brings novelty.

>>5029128
I'm pretty sure that guy was saying that the specific sequence outlined wasn't how the camera was invented, because he took "box camera" to mean a photochemical duplicate image maker instead of the "camera obscura" that the other guy was probably referring to. Both of them didn't know/failed to look up their terms, if they had they should've seen the misunderstanding.

>>5030057
That's a very big stretching of benefit of doubt considering where you are posting.

some sects think life is better without technology. don't have to go to Polynesia to find them: the Amish also live without modern tech.

>>5029930
>Economics took technology that should have benefited the workers and negated it's effects on them.
How?
>>5029952
My understanding that a lot of the profit gain, probably over half of it in the last few decades, from increased automation comes from not having to pay as many workers or not having to pay them as much.

I don't think OP opposes technology. It has its benefits. It's about the western culture's belief system and practices I think.