Sounds like a less bleak version of the parable in Kafka’s Trial…
P.J. O’Rourke:
Hell is other people , as Jean - Paul Sartre pointed out ( especially true , by the way, for someone with Simone de Beauvoir around the house )…
Because it wouldn’t matter.
This was my point. I need to find a better way of presenting my thoughts in this thread. And yes, cough cough…#me too
no lives matter
I changed the thread title to expand the scope of the discussion.
Been reading a book on the Stoics. Hit the Seneca chapter, which is a big one.
The On Anger is a must read…and I haven’t done that yet…but the gist is we worry too much. We are angry when we hold unrealistic expectations. If we are a bit more pessimistic, we won’t be a disappointed when bad luck hits us. When I was a kid someone told me not to set my hopes too high about something…I guess she was on to something.
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I don’t agonize over mine. This is not too heavy and made me think of chats with @jdsmith (Hoffman), @yyy (truth in numbers) and @tempogain (objective reality)
edit: oh yeah, and @Dr_Milker made a quantum joke recently
or did he?
I have the same feeling about this kind of stuff as a lot of writing about free will. The bottom line is I can’t understand it, and I strongly suspect that no one else can either, not really 
I often note that it seems like a lot of words to make a point that I feel like I’ve always understood instinctively–there are things about the universe that are currently beyond our ability to understand and may well always be. Peeling back some of these layers just makes it more obvious. Even if the old paradigm of atoms and particles was unchallenged, there would still be massive unanswered questions that would mock our pretensions to anything like a complete understanding of our reality.
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Free will is a toughie, and agency, I’ve thought and read on this some, Sam Harris is a good thinker here. I have no real conclusions.
I love Sam Harris. I forget what he says about free will though. That really makes me tune out; I’m really that guy described in the 4th paragraph on it. I’ve kind of stopped paying attention to a lot of this kind of stuff since last year, mostly I think because I got bored with it after a couple of years of reading/thinking/discussing it a lot, and other stuff seems more pressing now
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Can’t disagree! I was just flipping through Flipboard looking for stuff to read and that one made me think of y’all. I’m not deep into the philosophizing right now but I did have the motivation and means to put some resources into it during my doctorate.
I also see realism as a no-brainer. The arguments against are too theoretical or high falutin to be of much concern given the pressing problems 
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Yeah, if stuff is not real I guess I don’t see the point of reading that article I get it on the level of quantum physics and how weird it is, and that scientists understand some of it and are working to figure out more. I’m sure they will more and more. When you get to the idea of ultimate knowledge of everything I’m not sure much has changed 
the author says stuff is real!
agreed!
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Thank God, I like my stuff 
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Yeah, I tend to skip over any discussion of free will. Libertarian free will seems to be contradicted by everything we know- “you can have actions without a cause?”-, determinism means not only you are denying what seems to be human freedom and responsibility, but accepting the idea that everything follows a pre-set path; compatibilism seems to be a case of special pleading to split the difference.
As to the Nature of the Universe, I’m mostly a naive realist, but things like “spooky action at a distance”, the double-slit experiment, or the Many-Worlds Hypothesis make me wonder- mostly at my own lack of qualifications to understand, but I’m comforted by the knowledge that the people that are qualified are in violent disagreement.
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Me too. The issue seems to attract a lot of “true believer” types, but I’m still waiting for anyone to explain any of this stuff to the point where I can understand it. For the time being it sure seems like I decide to do things or not to do things and those decisions have consequences.
Ha, that is somewhat comforting, but I’ve never really doubted that no one totally gets it
Interesting, I had to look this up, but I would say both sides are a little bit right. We can’t escape subjectivity, but it does seem we can agree on a lot after all.
Lol, I guess that didn’t quite carry the same weight as saying “I am a naive realist”.
Well, I did say “I’m mostly a naive realist”. I’d say that puts me in TT territory.
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