Jaycifer

I reject the assumption that there’ll never be such a thing.

Yeah, that all lines up with what I’ve read. The philosopher William Clifford argued that we should ensure certainty of all beliefs, his example being ensuring you have a JTB that a sailing ship is seaworthy before putting it out to sea. William James later argued that, while justification is important, the passion for truth should outweigh the fear of being wrong.

Reading On Epistemology, I learned the term conscientious belief, or a belief that one holds while acknowledging the possibility of it being wrong. In practice, I think that translates belief to mean something you act on or live your life as though it is true until finding a reason to reconsider. It still requires accepting that fear of uncertainty though.

Wait, is that what astroturfing refers to?! That makes so much sense now.

On top of what has already been said, some advice based on personal experience; if you plan to wear the watch, check what the watch face material is and avoid bio-ceramic. My first mechanical watch had a few big scratches within a few months which was kind of disappointing.

What do you think idealism and materialism mean when you use them?

I’m not debating whether the philosopher is fooled by the background, but whether they would decide they could properly justify holding a belief that you are using a digital background or not in the first place, knowing that digital backgrounds exist. I suppose if they had seen your room in person to know what it looks like, seen one video instance where the digital background had a door open and then you altered the render for the next meeting to have the door shut, that may convince the philosopher to believe that they are looking at actual footage of your background.

But at that point, the philosopher would have a justified false belief that they are looking at your background, rather than the unjustified true belief that it is a digital render of the same background.

This where I stop addressing you directly and start rambling about my feelings on the topic at large. Having read Gettier’s original paper as well as Elizabeth Zagzebski’s On Epistemology which discusses justified true belief (JTB) and feeling strongly enough to get a short paper published on the matter, I think people generally have an unhealthy fear of holding justified false beliefs. In Zagzebski’s book she lays out a few modern attempts to “fix” JTB, and I can’t remember the term for any of them because they all boil down to JTB, but with an extra word affixed to the front that means making sure you really justify your belief. But any attempt to justify your justification is really just a form of justification and therefore already part of the J of JTB. Sometimes you can do everything right and still end up wrong.

But knowing that zoom backgrounds exist, would a properly conscientious philosopher hold a belief on whether it is the real background?

https://youtu.be/OG6HZMMDEYA

I would consider this to be two separate, semi-related concepts asserted together, one that consciousness is an illusion, and one that you are a different person each day.

The first point draws many questions; consciousness is an illusion of what? What mechanism causes the illusion? How does it cause it? Why does the illusion exist? And you may note that you could replace illusion in those questions with consciousness and be left in a similar (though still distinct) place. So simply calling consciousness an illusion seems to me to kick the can down the road without actually addressing the problem.

As for being a different person after a lapse in awareness, I’d like to take it a step further and say that you could be considered a new person with every change in moment. It’s easy enough to look back 10 years and say “yeah, that’s a younger me, but they’re not the same as me I can just see the path that led to where I am now.” Getting closer, you may feel different today compared to yesterday depending on various factors (sleep, diet, events), but are you a different person because you slept and had a lapse of awareness, or because the state of your mind and thoughts have shifted? When your internal monologue (or equivalent thought) asks “what is this guy talking about?” Is it not thinking “what” in a brand new context given the words it is responding to, forming a new beginning to a thought that puts the mind in a unique state primed to then enter a new state of “is?” And if the mind is in a unique state of novelty, could the person attached to the mind be considered distinct from the person that existed before?

There is a reason the word revelation exists, it indicates when a person has a novel thought that changes their perspective or way of thinking, altering who they are. Would they not be a new person despite being aware of the process of their change? Due to the above points I don’t think new personhood only occurs at sleep, but constantly. The rate of change may quicken or slow, but the change is always there.

“Sometimes a hypocrite is nothing more than a man in the process of changing.” -Stormlight Archives

No, I think it’s unfortunately much more normal for American men at least to be exposed to something espousing toxic masculinity and get into it for a time.

For me it was 2015 reddit in r/kotakuinaction and r/theredpill, for my buddy it was Atlas Shrugged, and there have been more since.

By unsubscribing from r/kotakuinaction, Ayn Rand, or whatever manosphere-equivalent thing you flirted with as a naive teen or young adult.

“Waltuh, we gotta take down-“

We’re getting pretty close to an effectively popular vote-based system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact

I have never watched the movie, don’t know that I’ve ever seen an image from this scene, but instantly recognized it because I’ve read people complain about it so many times online.

I can’t speak for them, but when I get angry and frustrated it can come through as aggressiveness, and I am very angry and frustrated with what has been done to the HHS (to say nothing of the rest of the US federal government). At this point, I would double check the source of any health claim, and ignore it if it comes from the HHS in 2025 to now. I’ll be getting my health information from the NIH or Health Canada for the time being. I don’t know that they are as well funded or reliable as the HHS has been historically, but at least the guys in charge of them are not literally insane on matters of health.

There are only a couple pieces of writing advice I see people consistently agree on:

1. Write something consistently, even when you don’t want to. If you’re a full time writer, that might be at least one page a day. If it’s just a hobby, it could be less. The important thing is to keep what you are writing somewhere in your head to keep the creative juices flowing eventually.

2. Read. Read good books/stories to give you an idea of what to do and what’s been done when writing. Read mediocre or even bad books/stories to give you an idea of what not to do and what’s been overdone in writing.

3. Learn about or experience some stuff to help spark ideas for writing.

So you’re saying there is zero nuance on the internet ?! ;P

I’ve been a fan of Fountains of Wayne for most of my life, I like the way he writes lyrics about ultimately mundane, everyday experiences. Mexican Wine, Someone to Love, and Action Hero are pretty good examples.

I hadn’t heard of this show, but I just watched the video for “Antidepressants are so not a Big Deal” and it had a similar thing going on, I may give it a try.

Always happy to find something Adam Schlesinger had a part in!