Does anyone else get the feeling that the human race is now engulfed in some form of collective insanity ?
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Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.Yes. I often find myself confused over what wine goes best with a dystopian nightmare.
hemingwaykitten
Level 6
May 2, 2018
0
Oh, take a look around, insanity abounds - gender wars, a dying planet (we are killing it while we kill each other), idiots in control (i.e. trump), corporate organisations acting as legal human entities without the moral responsibilities of a human, millions starving while the west builds weapons, species disappearing daily but we don't think we will be one of them (duh!), etc.........
JayTea
Level 6
May 1, 2018
0
No worse than its ever been.
Progress can be impeded but not stopped.
The problem is that evolution is painfully slow.
Our ability to think in abstracts exceeds our ability to realize those thoughts.
Slappy_Longarms
Level 7
May 1, 2018
1
I feel like I'm surrounded by crazy people and that I am also crazy. I mean we are monkeys moving around on a giant balloon by disbalancing our weight and avoinding the fall by putting a foot in front. Communicating to one another by vibrating our throats, with absolutely no idea why we're here. Ultimatly everyone you know will die, and people have been murdering one another for centuries about whether or not something happens after death! How can you be mentally stable in this situation!?!
PhilippeLavoie
Level 4
May 1, 2018
1
It is, and it always has been - most people are plain irrational. It's surprising really that any people are rational at all. I resolved the Mere Addition Paradox a few days ago (this is an important paradox in moral philosophy as it was believed to have pulled the rug out from under utilitarianism, but it contained a fundamental error which I have now exposed). I've posted about this in places where it should have led to acceptance, but all I get are people down-voting it because they don't like utilitarianism. They are not interested in seeking truth, but prefer to cling to their existing beliefs no matter what. It's exactly the same with religious people, of course, and it doubtless has the same cause: most rational genes must have been wiped out by murders by religious mobs over the last many thousand years, so it takes an unusual combination of genes to restore rationality in the odd individual every once in a while.
(If anyone's interested in that paradox, you can see my resolution of it here: [lesswrong.com] )
David_Cooper
Level 7
May 1, 2018
1
cava:
"We can see now that A with access to all the resources of A+ (but without the population A'smile009.gif is inferior to A+ in terms of happiness because it's failing to use all the resources available to it, whereas A with access only to the resources of A is superior to A+ in terms of happiness per unit of resources. This is the key difference which Parfit missed."
This assumes a homogeneous population in which each member of the population has equal access to all the resources available to the population. If only a small # in any population hold say 90% of all the resources, then that population on a per unit of resource basis, would be superior to a similar size population with say 30% less resources but over where 50% of the population have access to all the resources. This population with less resources but more equitable access would (on this basis) have higher level of happiness per person, even though it has less resources per person.
@cava There are lots of ways to complicate things, but the paradox is gone - not surprising really, because every paradox I've looked at contains an error.
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