whocoulditbe?

39 minutes ago, Nungali said:

Have you read the Sufi story ; ' Fatima  the Ropemaker '  ?

No, but thanks for the reference. All I found from searching was a video of a story being told. I'm curious about why you called it Sufi.

@NaturaNaturans I just skimmed the thread and noticed you're also arguing for virtue ethics throughout. Do you have any thoughts on the idea that modern rights-based ethics is basically the inversion of virtue ethics? I've come across some interesting writing on this in the context of Confucianism. (link) There's also care ethics, a form of virtue ethics developed by feminists in reaction to the patriarchal nature they percevied in rights-based liberalism. The increasing focus on human rights really worries me because it seems to lack any defined form of accountability when rights fail, and leaves positive ethical activity out of the picture.

Edit: Spinoza's Ethics is also good stuff, and nice username!

I can tell you I'm addicted to coming up with all sorts of personal projects to dedicate my time, energy, and love to, and I think this tendency is due to a lack of confidence in any overarching purpose in my life. Every time I've formulated and really believed in some definite worldy "meaning of life," it has resulted in harm and regret. This probably wasn't as much of a problem during periods when everyone's purpose was firmly assigned to them from above, but in the current age, it's better to have a modus operandi in life than a fixed plan, especially if you happen to be a lonely, drifting person. In practice that takes the form of virtue ethics: be decent and kind, improve yourself, develop an appreciation for beautiful things, etc., all the while seeing the purpose of all this as lying outside of life, far beyond this or any other world.

Haven't read this yet, but posting here for storage:

https://studenttheses.universiteitleiden.nl/access/item%3A2711225/view

Stack – an insanely good singer who only does touhou songs

1 hour ago, Apech said:

Profound thoughts indeed!

I love Shing02's Luv(Sic). Part of what got me thinking about this was Part 4, which follows the months starting in January, and breaks into a massive lyrical diversion at In a new semester, back in September.

People like autumn because it's essentially modern-day spring. I have better luck making my new-years resolutions around this time than in January. Almost every formative turning point in your life–your first day of school, your first day of high school, maybe university, graduation, and in many cases, your first experience of work–took place in September. Thus, in our age, falling leaves and darkening weather have become subconscious symbols of renewal and growth, things that should belong to Spring. But if you look at the features of Autumn for what they are, even with the celebration of some harvests, they correspond more to death, depression, and preparation for rest. I think this irony of the calendar is a long-term sign of the end times. Compare the old agricultural calendar, where summer was industrious, to the summer holidays we spend our youth enjoying today. We grow up relegating work, which should be fulfilling enough to feel like the purpose of our lives, to the darker months, while celebrating the light of the sun through sloth.

7 minutes ago, kakapo said:

I feel like already this has reached the level I will probably be suspended already, even though I have done my best to remain respectful to you and to encourage you to take this private.

It's annoying, but I don't think going on and on about getting suspended should be a valid cause for suspension, which is all you're really doing here. Mods please don't bite.

Just now, Apech said:

Imagine if you will, a tank driver wearing thick gloves attempting to fry a duck's egg in a frying pan.

Is he blindfolded? I wouldn't want him to get fried.

The best way of arguing that the observer is the obsevred is to argue that there is neither observer nor observed, but this line of argument can also be used to support the claim that ducks are frying pans.

One can accurately predict the obnoxiousness of a post from the saturation of line breaks \half-joking

How could 各異 have been replaced with 異名? Is it down to visual similarity?

2 hours ago, ChiDragon said:

We are not just looking at one character 異. This is not a guessing game. We are looking at compound character 異名. In simple Chinese, it means differ in names. It says no more or less.

That's surprising to me. Are there any other instances of this compound in the DDJ or other classical Chinese texts?

I suppose it's strange to say that the nameless differs in name from the named. Could 異 refer to the difference between presence and absence of a name, or only to difference between names? I.e., is it closer to the meaning of English "difference" in the sense of subtraction between quantities, or of qualitative variety?

Lurking is fine, though I didn't do it for more than a week before joining here. There are plenty of sites where people get told to "lurk moar" if they post something out of line with the culture.

4 hours ago, Daniel said:

On 14/09/2023 at 5:51 PM, Mark Foote said:

Gautama turned his focus to teaching his own way of living, after the suicide of scores of monks a day, as they reflected on the unlovely aspects of the body

What are the circumstances which culminated in these deaths?  Please.  This is very important to me. 

 

Is there anything else that is known besides their reflection on their body?  What sort of monks were they?

You should take a look at meditation sickness.

17 minutes ago, Taomeow said:

And I merely noticed that it's my favorite kind -- shifting the responsibility from words or actions one actually produced to the person who "felt" something in response.  I.e. "apologies for the way things are wrong with you," effectively.  

I've experienced an even better kind – try having someone break a promise and then hearing them apologise for making it to you in the first place.

Continuing from pages 14–16 of The Grades of Initiation

12 minutes ago, Daniel said:

relevance? 

It just seems like you think A being a subset of B requires that A is in B, which is rarely the case. The idea of a set which is it's own power set is interesting, but I'm not sure if it's possible.

8 hours ago, Daniel said:

 

Ask yourself this.   And maybe let's skip it for now.  If {} is a subset of itself, doesn't it suffer from the same paradox as the set of all sets?  You've repeatedly asserted "the universal set does not exist".  OK. 

 

{} ⊆ {} ?

 

Is it {}?

or is it { {} }?

or is it { { {} } }?

or is it { { { {} } } }?

or is it { { { { {} } } } }?

What do you think a subset is?

16 minutes ago, Nungali said:

I love the way Daniel previously sushhhed  people so as not to interrupt HD's thread  / stream of thought         

Well, I'm also to blame after idealising slower posting here. The discussions drift so much on this forum, but the mods don't seem to be in the habit of spliting threads.

How is "fail to percieve" compatible with "awakened"?

12 hours ago, Daniel said:

A set is a collection of elements.  It is **inclusive**.  That is it's defintion.

What's {}????  It is NOT a collection of elements.  It can never ever under any circumstances possess an element.  It is the inversion of a set.  It is **exclusive**, excluding ( verb ).

 

A set includes, {} excludes.

A set is something that can include. It also turns out that all sets do exclude, because there is no universal set. There is nothing especially strange about an empty box, an empty set, a silent room, or a muon no heya. You are projecting some kind of horror vacui onto set theory, yet it works perfectly well as it is.

13 hours ago, Daniel said:

If A & B are not disjointed then A ∩ B ≠ {} is always true AND A ⊆ B is always true.

This is plainly false. try A = {1, 2} and B = {2, 3}.

13 hours ago, Daniel said:

If A, and B are disjointed, then, A ⊆ B, is always false.

I'm denying this. It's not in any axiom and you haven't shown it to be true. You've put an exact equivalent of your conclusion inside the premise. (A => B means the same thing as ~B => ~A by contraposition)

19 minutes ago, Nintendao said:

just spit out the words

tweet it loud like birds, to all

who have ears to hear 

Who have ears to hear,

Who have hands fit for the task,

Think themselves too good.