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The Twelve ( or so ) Best Philosophical Questions

The Twelve Best Philosophical Questions

Along with All The Crazy ‘Philosophical’ Questions that may be forever UnAnswerable

Because there’s no Empirical Evidence Related to them to Chew on.

But there are Certainly Plenty of Experimental or Heuristic Inquiries that may be ‘Difficult’

But are Certainly Answerable in Some Sense?

~ The Best Questions ~

1. What is Worthwhile?
2. How much Magick is there in The World?
3. Why do souls become Incarnate?
    
   ~ Test Questions for The Maitreya ~
    
4. How can i determine if a question has been answered?
5. Is there such a thing as a paradox?
6. What are the necessary attributes of gawd?
7. How could freewill possibly work?
8. Does consciousness ‘do’ anything?
9. Is goodness real?
10. Is the universe so cruel, that it allows us to be aware that we are robots?
11. What is respect?
12. Why do we dream?
13. Why do smart people let dumb people run the world?
14. What is Beauty?
15. What is The Best Way to Tell If An Idea is A Good Idea or A Bad Idea?
16. Are all Numbers as Real as The Real Numbers? / Are Irrational Numbers Real?
17. What is Human Nature?
18. In The War Against Terrorism ( Circa 2000-2050 ) It was widely disseminated to The Western Civilizations that The Arabs/Muslims believed that when they died while fighting Conventionally in a Jihad, or Using themselves as an AIDS ( Autonomous Incendiary Delivery System ); They would be rewarded to Their Version of Heaven with 40 Virgins & Innumerably Other Sensory Pleasures. Western Soldiers may not Entirely Buy Into The 40 Virgins Part, But they Usually accept that they will be Rewarded for Their Part in Their Holy Crusade with Similar Pleasures in A Heaven Administered by Their Lord & Savior Jesus H. Christ. = The Question is: What if The Soldiers on Either Side were Taught by their Religious Source, That While Fighting in A Given War; They would be Brobdingnagianly Helping their Community and Allowing Their Children, Legitimate or Misbegotten, To Be Raised Under All The True & Holy Scriptures, As opposed to being Conquered by Heathens & Taught Only how to Burn in Hell— But: They themselves, If killed in Combat would be Condemned to The Everlasting Furnace of Hades. Would War remain as Popular as it is Today ?
19. If it were possible to Create Or Locate A Genuine Utopian Paradise, Garden of Eden, A Society of Perfect Economic & Social Equity with Freedom & So On; Would it be Ethical to Force Everyone to Live There? That is; Is it The Responsibility of The Haves to Force The Havnots to Adopt their Mores, Technology, Spiritual Insights, Liberal Arts & Judicial Constitution? It’s entirely reasonable that The Haves should offer Inclusion to The Havnots, But what if The Havnots, In their Pathetic Desire to Remain Autonomous, Seeing The Freedoms of The Have’s Paradise as Corruptions of Their Own Devine Virtues.
20. Where are all The Aliens...?
21. What is The Underlying Phenomena behind The Many Classes of Quixotic Experiences? ( Such as Flying Saucers, Ghosts, CryptoAnimals, ESP, Death Related Occurrences & Religious Miracles )
22. Is it reasonable to think of people as good or bad...?
23. Why is Being a Humanimal Illegal...? / Why do Humanimals Assert that they are Not Animals by Covering themselves with The Skins of Animals?
24. Is DNA a Red Herring...?
25. Should the Edicts that make Evolution So Successful; Be The Foundations of Ethics & Morality, Or Are these Ordinances Exactly Contrary; Not just to Our Desired Social Constraints, But to The Functionality of Any Viable Civilized Community...?
26. Are The Labels Applied to Various Emotional Responses ( Like Love ); Fabrications from Whole Cloth that are Attached/Associated to Specific Behaviours that have Absolutely No Foundations in Their Emotional Descriptions...?
27. Do We See Ideas, or Things...?
28. Do Angels Choreograph Our Lives...?
29. What would you have to add to a thinking machine to make it Conscious...?
30. Given that Secrets are The Root of Political Power, Would a Society without Secrets give The People More Political/Economic/Judicial Security &/or Freedom...?
31. It's been suggested that if you make a person think that they are thinking, they will love you, But if you actually make them think, then they will hate you. If this is accurate; Might it also be the case that If you insist to someone that they are Free, they will eagerly believe that they are Free, But if you insist that they exercise their Freedom, They will believe that you are trying to Enslave them...?
32. What are the best candidates for An Intrusive Foot In The Door Argument...? / The Foot In The Door Argument consists of providing Just One Really, Really, Really Good Example of Some Quixotic Phenomena that is Not Merely Unexplainable by Known Physical Laws, But Angrily Defies Them! / Candidates: Ball Lightning / Tornadoes / Consciousness / Gravity / Field Theory / Why are All The Electrons in The Universe Exactly The Same / /---/ The General Power of The Foot In The Door Argument is that Once you have Just One Completely Unambiguous Quixotic Phenomena, It allows that all Other Alleged Quixotic Phenomena should be At The Very Least, Given Some Modicum of Consideration & Further Investigation. / It's easy enough to simply ignore all sightings of Unicorns, Until someone actually puts one on display in A National Zoo Somewheres... Then all subsequent drunken claims of Unicorn sightings, As Well as Bigfeet & Gnomes, have that scratch of legitimacy to them...?
33. What is Being Smart...? / Encyclopedic Knowledge? / A Deep Understanding of how things fit Together? / Predicting The Future? / Creativity? / Knowing when an idea is Useful? / Seeing what is Inobvious? / Sensing, Intuitively; What is True? / Having a high Survivability Quotient? /
34. What is The Underlying Structure of Matter?
35. What is The Underlying Functionality of Forces?
36. Is Time Travel Possible?
37. Is Miniaturization Possible?
38. Is Invisibility Possible?
39. Is Artificial, Machine Intelligence Dangerous to Biologically Based Intelligence?
40. In A World of AI & Ubiquitous Robots; What will People do to keep busy?
41. Is it possible to Experience Satori ( Enlightenment )?
42. What are people supposed to be doing to keep busy?
43. Why do People Exist?
44. Is there a simple principle to know what is Right or Wrong, Without having to refer to A List of Do’s & Don’t’s?
45. What are Requirements for Getting into Heaven?
46. What does The Devil Want?
47. Does Heaven become Tedious?
48. MetaBestQuestion...?

Dumb Questions -vs- Smart Questions

Dumb Questions -vs- Smart Questions

It has recently ( ? ) occurred to me that Some of The Ancient Questions are Dumb Questions.

Generally; A Dumb Question is one that is Obviously Solved,

With what is generally assumed to be, A Disagreeable Solution.

e.g. : Is Life / Existence Meaningful?  ( No.

e.g. : Is Freewill Possible? ( No.

e.g. : What is Good? ( What is Profitable for Me.

If we allow that These are not at all profound, but simply stupid,

Then We are forced to allow that The Disagreeable solutions,

Which can be proved or easily reasoned out,

Must be Axiomatically Asserted or Demonstrated as True.

And from These Axioms; Go on to Argue all The Other Things.

Of course : However / This means that all The Smart Questions are Dumb as Well.

- -

Are there really any Smart Questions?

- -

Given that there are No Smart Questions;

( And Further : That Logic & Reason are Bunk )

How should an Entity that desires to live A Moral & Ethical Life Proceed?

-----------------------------------------:: o

“The UnExamined Life is Not Worth Living.”  Pat Sajak

What is The Opposite of The UnExamined Life?

Is An Ant’s Life Unexamined? And if so; Pointless?

This seems wrong.

Plus: The greatest television fathers have examined The lives of their families, relations & neighbors aplenty, and has anything been decided that gives our lives more meaning; Or do we discover that in The Very Next Season of New Television Programing, Those Questions that have been thoroughly discussed and resulted in Humiliating Fiascos, Again & Again, And Will be Considered All Over Again.

These Questions have been rehashed & molded into The Life Stories of Every Superhero in every Comix from The 1920’s and None of The Solutions seem sufficiently Satisfying to Finally put them to rest.

Every Child is Raised as if these Elemental Questions are as Mysterious Today as they were by our Great Grandfathers that made all their own tools from chipping away at river stones.

Is this because children never listen to their parents, or that every reasonably attentive fifth grader can see how ridiculous The Solutions are that their parents provide for them. The Simplest School Yard Dispute seems to refute All The Wisdom that has accumulated over The Last 25,000 years.

: - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - : o

On a Slightly more Established Foundation; Isn’t it curious that after 25,000 years, or 12,000 or 6,000 or 2,000, or 200 years; The Supreme Court of The United States is still Bickering & Reaching only a Majority Consensus over a wide Spectrum of Petty & Obvious Concerns that are Redecided every few years.

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iPhone 6, Siri & Her Cousins

Saturday, September 20, 2014 7:21:47 AM

iPhone 6, Siri & Her Cousins

 

i have noticed that in all The New Blurbs for The iPhone 6, there is never any mention of Siri ( ? )

You may recall that after Siri was introduced, there was a flood of Television advertisements for this feature, that included many Celebrities hawking this amazing new technology.

And then they Disappeared.

Why?

Because these Ads were so Amazingly Disingenuous that Apple was effectively committing Fraud.

First of all; The Actual use of Siri reveals that Siri is Astounding Shy & Uncertain about her own ability to Understand what you’re saying. After you utter anything, Siri would bring up a text rendering of what it thought you said, upon which you’d confirm it, correct it or hit a button confirming it. This entire process would take about as long as typing in a request, especially if you’re fluent at typing with both thumbs.

Siri is Not Apple’s first attempt to allow you to speak to their computers, nor is Apple The only Company offering this service. It has been offered time & again since The 1980s or before.

Even before there were proper computers, there were attempts to create mechanical or electronic devices that would respond to spoken commands.

Thomas Edison, as a child, was supposed to have created a mechanical device that Spoke Intelligible Words & Short Phrases. ( ! ) ?

 

But they’ve never Worked.

Not Really.

 

Not in Actual Usage Situations. Not so that anyone that actually wanted to use them, could depend on them.

Quite a few Companies use something like this as a Cybernetic Telephone Receptionist, that allows you to answer simple questions with precise key phrases.

Have you experienced one of these Tele-Operators ?

Do they Work ?

 

No, they do Not.

Their functionality does in a back-handed way work exactly The way The Company or Service want it to work however, And that is to Frustrate you sufficiently, So that you’ll hang up & quit bothering them. This is especially True for Social Services by Any given Government.

The curious aspect of that; Is that The Machinery & Protocols for these services seems to be keyed to scare away those people that are in most need of these services, while swindlers & fraudsters have The Sanity & fortitude to endure all these layers upon layers of trials & redundant scrutiny to finally get their ill-gotten rewards.

 

Anyways.

 

This all seems so very odd to me, because i can easy imagine a few simple conventions that if applied; would allow these voice recognition systems to work.

 

a) Put all of this Voice Recognition Hard & Soft-Ware onto a Dedicated Chip or Black-Box whose ONLY Function is to Analyze Sounds to Pick out Spoken Commands or Other Sounds that The Host Device will be programmed to act upon, such as distinguishing between a balloon popping & a gun shot. It is completely crazy to run all of this processing through The Main CPU that is required to process all of The Device’s Other Functions. ( It is my prediction that at some time in The ( near ) future, Computer Engineers will eventually realize that instead of creating bigger & faster CPUs, They will distribute all The Various Functions to Entirely Autonomous Processing ‘Agents’ that will cooperate to serve The User. ( ? ) )

 

b) These Speech Recognition Devices need to Introduce themselves when they are first opened, To agree upon a name for The Device, & then ask The User to read a series of sentences which have been tailored to include all The Given ( English ) Language’s Phonemes in various combinations, So that The Device will know how you, As a unique & Autonomous Individual, pronounce various words & phrases.

 

c) The User will Then be able to Train ( Directly or Tacitly ) The Device to Anticipate Questions or The Class of Answers that The User is Desirous of knowing. This simply means that The Device knows what The User is Interested in, & discard any possible solutions or Answers to Inquiries that are outside of these parameters, If an inclusive solution is available.

 

d) If The Device is Confused by a Question’s structure, pronunciation of words or The Ambiguity of a Word or Phrase, Rather than ‘Guess’ what is meant, It will ask a pointed & direct question to resolve The Uncertainty. ( it drives me crazy that commercial search engines return millions of ‘hits’ that are completely irrelevant to what i’m looking for, when The Search Engine should have taken a few additional moments to hone in on what i’d intended to ask in The first place. ) !

: - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - : o

 

e) i don’t know how computers are currently being trained to understand speech, but considering that there isn’t a reliable electronic Sentience yet; it may be that this suggested approach will be what they’re looking for ( ! )

 

i have this idea that The way to resolve ambiguity in ordinary sentence construction or poems that intensionally integrate double entendres into their construction, may be easily resolved with -Lists-.

This assumes that ( which may be entirely unfounded ! ) these Speech Recognition ( or typed sentence questions & requests ) Devices, can understand ( parse ) Ordinary Sentence Constructions.

While i spent The Entire 8th Grade in 1968 diagraming Sentences, Training a Computer to do this, seems to be one of those incomprehensibly ‘Hard Problems’ ( ? )

 

But if this step has been achieved—

Then:

Your computer has some special IC’s ( Integrated Circuits ( Little CPUs ( Central Processing Units ) ) that take all The words in The Sentence, Phrase, Paragraph, Book or Poem, & Make a List for each one that looks up its definition & all thesaurus references, & then compares those lists to The other Word’s Lists & Looks for ‘Patterns’ or Repetitions in ‘Themes’ — So that if The Theme of both ‘Golf’ & ‘Sex’ come up again & again; Then The Computer will assume The Speaker is attempting to be Clever & is using a Double Entendre. Otherwise; A Single Consistent Theme will remove all of The Ambiguity from any Word or Phrase Usages.

Another Innovation that i’d like to see is that The Speech Recognition ‘Black-Box’ would include it’s own Encyclopedic Dictionary in A Computer Language that all ( English ) Sentences would be translated into before being acted on or Translated into a Second Language.

This ‘Computer Language’ would contain all ‘Ideas’ that every Humyn Language incorporates into their regional Languages, So that The Computer Language has a full Vocabulary of all Humyn Concepts. Each of these Ideas would be correlated with ONE Word, & Each Word would have ONE Concept associated with it, Thus Completely Eliminating any Ambiguity within this Computer Language.

After The Humyn’s Sentence, Phrase or Request is Translated into The Computer Language, The Device Resolves this Query & Translates its response into The Least Ambiguous ( English ) Sentence or Phrase.

( Unless The Device has been programmed to be Snarky ! )

: - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - : o

 

So why don’t these companies produce a functional Speech Recognition Device or Service that Actually Works ( ? )

 

One of The Services that i envision for such a device or service is a ‘Talk-Line’ that anyone can call into, & it would cost something like 20¢ a minute to use. The Service would Listen Attentively to everything you said, Develop a Customer Recognition File for Each Caller, So that when you called again, The Sentient Agent would take on The Roll of a Confidant & Close Friend.

It would then be able to Respond Insightfully to your concerns, questions & comments & provide The Caller with any Information that’s available on The Interweb.

 

Think about that for a moment.

 

You could have any question that you have about anything, quickly & easily Answered.

If you were confused by some point or fine detail; You could stay on The line for hours & hours until you finally had a full & comprehensive understanding of The most subtle ideas that were previously accessible only to Doctorates that spent decades in Universities struggling to master.

 

Do Big MultiInternational Corporations or Governments want you have access to that kind of information ( ? )

 

The Freedom of Information ( Movement ) is based on The Implicit assumption that most information is effectively inaccessible, even if its available in some esoteric theoretical sense.

 

If that ‘Theoretical Sense’ were removed from any inquiry—

Many things would have to be made explicitly secret.

Lots of Things.

 

Lots & Lots of Things.

Things that Terrorists may be curious about of course,

But Industrial Secrets as well.

Propitiatory Trade or Guild Secrets would be added to The List of Confidential Particulars.

Personal Information that many people are bashful about being revealed would be withheld from these Information Scouring Pads.

Anything that The Librarians of Enlightenment deem Sufficiently Esoteric to Require Inclusive Interpretations or Explanations for, Would Not want these Shards of their Edicts & Precepts so easily available to anyone without A Proper Jurisdiction to Clarify them.

 

Any Legal Issue that provide Lawyers with their Cheese & Crackers,

As well as Medical Information that Doctors currently have a monopoly on, would be available to everyone.

In Fact; Nearly Every Job that doesn’t require A Kinesthetic Mastery to Perform, would be suddenly accessible to Everyone.

 

If this service were to suddenly become available with A New Cell-Phone, The Economy would collapse within The First Week.

Maybe this Service would help us out of this disaster,

Or maybe it would find it intractable,

& then shut down as basic services, Such as cell-phone networks collapsed under The Weight of A Buckling Fiscal Bureaucracy.

 

Maybe that’s why Siri doesn’t work.

Another Pointless Premonition ( ? )

Late August 2014

Another Pointless Premonition ( ? )

 

This all took place a few weeks ago, as i kept meaning to more thoroughly document it in a timely manner, but i kept putting it off, thinking that i would resolve it, & nothing would come of it.

That is; It would Not have been a pointless premonition.

 

The Alleged Premonition was a Very Clear Recollection of The Entire ( Compressed ) Film; _Noah_, several weeks before i checked it out from Safeway & Watched it at home.

The Premonition Recollection took place at The Library, watching it on my iPod or Kindle Fire. That is: The Recollection ( Memory of ) of Watching This Film was that i was sitting at The Library, Watching The film on my iPod or Kindle Fire.

So After i watched The Film ( DVD ) from Safeway, It seemed very odd to me that i’d already watched this Entire Film, before it was released in DVD form. Also; i’m sure that The Film i watched prior to this, was Not a 2_hour version, But it contained all or  nearly all of The Principle points, Including an Additional Scene in which Noah journeyed to The City to confront The King, which was Not in The DVD Version.

So Naturally; after this; i thought; Well, what i’d seen was a preview of The Film Noah, an Extended Preview, or something on YouTube. But try as i might to relocate this ‘Shorter’ film version on Netflix, YouTube & IMDb, The only sources that i would have had access to, i could Not find it.

Where did i see this shorter, but complete version ( ? )

Another very odd element of this is that i seem to think that The Shorter version was an animated version. Not a Cartoony kind of Animation, but something Not quite ‘Live Action’. ( ? )

A Short Chat with A Gullible Skeptic

A Short Chat with A Gullible Skeptic

How much Magic is there in The World?

There is No Magic.

But before we allow that there is Magic or No Magic, Isn’t it important that we define what we mean by ‘Magic’, After all; How can you say that something doesn’t exist, when we haven’t even established What it is we’re talking about. And furthermore; Once we define The Concept of Magic, How can you allow that there is a proper definition for something that doesn’t exist?

I Assume that you were referring to Magic as a Supernatural Force, as opposed to Stage Magic, or Magic as Performance Illusions, & if we allow that Magic transcends reality; Then; Given that Reality is Everything, Nothing can Transcend it. Thus; Such Magic as this; Does not Exist.

Perhaps we should return to my original question; ‘How much Magic is There in The World?’ And ask; What did i mean by this? What Answer was i Expecting?

Indeed; What Answer were you expecting?

We might well allow that there is Fiction & Truth; As in when we consider; Which is Stranger; Truth or Fiction? And to this Question; It might be suggested that Today’s Truth is Stranger than Yesterday’s Fiction; And by that i mean, Literally; The Truth of Now, is Stranger than The Fiction that just preceded Now; And this fine Caveat is introduced upon The Premise that we might be able to Quantify Today’s Truth for Strangeness; And then Take This Morning’s Fiction & simply add sufficient Strangeness by means of Ones Imagination, To make it stranger...

And this all Precludes The Suggestion that Truth, Irregardless of how mundane it is; Is far stranger than Fiction, because it it True, & Exists in The Realm of Reality; & that Fiction; Since it does not Exist at all; Is excluded from a Consideration of -Any- Strangeness, As The Idea of Strangeness may only be applied to Things that are Real.

Perhaps then; We need to Introduce a New Idea; or Define, for this Argument, An Old Word to Mean something that makes sense, within this Context. As Such; The Idea of Oddness may Apply to Both Real & Imaginary things, Equally in a Quantifiable Sense, to mean; What we Commonly Attribute to Strangeness.

How does this fit in with The Original Question of : How much Magic is there in The World?

Yes. Well; i had intended to introduce this idea of Strangeness, Truth & Fiction as a Tangental Digression, Before you began to question The Validity of This Examination itself.

I apologize for my unwarranted attention to details.

Then— My intended point was something along The Lines of; If we allow that There are Fictional Accounts that Transcend The ‘Oddness’ of Reality, Then might there be Causal Agents that Transcend Those that are Currently ‘Understood’ as having Originated in Reality; Or having been caused by well defined & documented forces belonging within The Standard Model & also Gravity.

This According to this Definition of Magic; If I am accurately following your proposal; Magic consists of Forces & Actions, Causality of Events & Such that are ‘Real’, But not yet fully documented & Labeled.

Yes. Mysterious Things. That is Magic. We might use such Causal Forces to Explain Consciousness, Awareness, A Variety of Evolutionary Steps, Many Biological Functions & Several Cosmological Observations.

I agree that The Scientific Description of Reality is Incomplete, but what is The Service, or Functionality of Defining these ‘Incomplete Elements’ as ‘Magic’ ?

Tomorrow, & The Day after that; Many New Discoveries, Insights & Revelations will add to Our Growing Understanding of Reality; But Some Mysteries will remain Mysterious tomorrow & remain Mysterious for weeks or months to come.

Yes.

Might it be Entirely Reasonable to suppose then; That some Mysteries will remain mysterious for a very long time to come. So long in fact; That one may wonder if they will ever be understood?

Let us Redefine these ‘Mysteries of The 30th Century ( & Beyound )’ as ‘Super Mysteries’. And i Predict that you’re Next Step would be to Redefine these Super Mysteries as Quantifiably Different from Ordinary ‘Deep Mysteries’. Am I then willing; Let us say; Willing, to allow that there may exist this Category of Unsolvable Intractable Super Mysteries, And might These Super Mysteries be What we, even now, think of As Magic?

That is one aspect to What we might think of as ‘Magic’; But i am also willing to allow that These Things we ‘Now’ call ‘Magic’; Might well be fully ( Comparatively Speaking ) Understood; But that is ‘Advanced Understanding’ of Magic, May allow that The Causal Agents of Magic may exist somehow ‘Outside’ of our reality.

There are Two Problems with that assertion; One, Reality is Everything, therefore there can’t be anything ‘Outside’ of Reality. And Two; There is absolutely No Empirical Evidence for The Existence of Such Causal Agencies. The Introduction of any ‘Hypothesizes’ or ‘Conjectures’ without a foundation of Observations, Is just make-believe.

Well— Aside from All The Observations of Mysterious Phenomena.

You are speaking of Bigfoot?

Partly. Generic Quixotic Phenomena. Allowing that Quixotic Phenomena, or Quixotic Observations Exist, as they surely do, ( Whatever it is that they represent ) And presupposing that some ( However infinitesimal ) of these observations are of phenomena caused by Super Mysterious Forces & Causal Agents; The Original Question Asks; How [ Many ] of These Observations are Related to These Super Mysteries, In The World?

We would first have to Establish what these Super Mysteries are, And The only way to do that, is to wait several more millennia to find what is still unexplained. A more; Perfectly reasonable question might be; How many Accurate Observations by Trained or UnTrained Persons are of Things that Defy An Explanation by Our Current Understanding of The World. We might allow that such Observations are of Things we may call; “Relatively Magical”.

And we might be willing to agree that this latter question is perfectly answerable.

In Theory— Of Course.