The problem of the external world is that it is unlikely to exist. We really have not progressed much beyond Descartes who began his ideas with, that thought is all there is. That is true. You really don't know anything else. The current world view is that the external world is real and your thoughts are irrelevant. In other words you are irrelevant. But it is far more likely that you are something and the thoughts you have about an external world are changable and therefore have no absolute truth to them. Start experimenting with the idea that the world is just a maleable extension of
The problem of the external world is that it is unlikely to exist. We really have not progressed much beyond Descartes who began his ideas with, that thought is all there is. That is true. You really don't know anything else. The current world view is that the external world is real and your thoughts are irrelevant. In other words you are irrelevant. But it is far more likely that you are something and the thoughts you have about an external world are changable and therefore have no absolute truth to them. Start experimenting with the idea that the world is just a maleable extension of your current mind set. This would be a good starting point for any scientific experiment that wishes to ground itself on a stable reality. If your thinking mind is not the core of reality how could there be any reality.
The problem of the external world is one that philosophers have written on and about at least since the publication of Rene Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy. In that work, Descartes argues that we are composite beings that consist of a mental component and a physical component.
Descartes posits our dual nature in the course of exercising his characteristic hyperbolic doubt. His philosophical project of putting all human knowledge on a deductive basis required that he eliminate knowledge that is only probable by disqualifying claims admitting of any doubt as containing or describing kn
The problem of the external world is one that philosophers have written on and about at least since the publication of Rene Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy. In that work, Descartes argues that we are composite beings that consist of a mental component and a physical component.
Descartes posits our dual nature in the course of exercising his characteristic hyperbolic doubt. His philosophical project of putting all human knowledge on a deductive basis required that he eliminate knowledge that is only probable by disqualifying claims admitting of any doubt as containing or describing knowledge.
He finds that he can doubt the existence of his body, but that he cannot doubt the existence of his mind, as that is required in order to doubt. That is the technically unnecessary argument for Descartes’ famous Cogito: “I think; therefore, I am.”
Descartes claims that mind and body differ in that mind is unextended and body is extended. Applying Leibniz’s Law: that things that are claimed to be the same must have the same qualities, Descartes argues that mind and body are different substances.
Descartes argues that since it is possible to doubt that physical bodies exist, an argument must be given to prove that they exist. All of these considerations make up what is called the problem of the external world.
Descartes argues that the external world is known to exist because we have clear and distinct perceptions of it. If our perceptions were false, that would indicate that their efficient cause: God, was a deceiver. Since deception cannot logically be present in God, our perceptions are true, and there is, in fact, an external world.
David Hume, dean of the empiricists, claims neutrality on the problem, writing that all we have before our minds are ideas, and we have no way of knowing whether our ideas correspond to an external reality.
Emmanuel Kant, self-proclaimed reconciler of rationalism and empiricism, argues that there is an external world of things-in-themselves, but we are forever cut off from it because our sensory system can provide us only with phenomena that we cannot assume deliver us the qualities of the noumena.
The problem of the existence of the external world is one of epistemology’s most vexing and important questions, as it highlights the fault lines between rationalists and empiricists.
The problem with an external world, before we even ask whether ‘it’ exists or not, is that there is no coherent description — by any philosopher in the entire history of Occidental philosophy — of exactly what ‘it’ might be in the first place.
All we have is a rather simple early-modern notion of sensory perception based on a physically causal chain of events mostly to do with visual perception and Kepler’s optical model of the eye. Light rays refract through the eye’s lens and fall on the retina thus creating an upside down mirror image of the external world which … somehow then produces the p
The problem with an external world, before we even ask whether ‘it’ exists or not, is that there is no coherent description — by any philosopher in the entire history of Occidental philosophy — of exactly what ‘it’ might be in the first place.
All we have is a rather simple early-modern notion of sensory perception based on a physically causal chain of events mostly to do with visual perception and Kepler’s optical model of the eye. Light rays refract through the eye’s lens and fall on the retina thus creating an upside down mirror image of the external world which … somehow then produces the phantasm of phenomenal sight ‘in’ the mind.
Our understanding of light and visual perception has come a very long way from this simple receptor based idea but it’s still basically the same physically causal chain from external physical stimulus to exceedingly complex internal electrochemical reactions in the brain ... with the non-physical phenomenal experience of seeing things somehow supervening on that internal physical brain stuff.
From this physicalist perspective the totality of what we actually experience of our shared phenomenal world is … sort of like a ‘movie playing in your head’ while your physical body apparently lumbers around in the dark of the externally non-phenomenal physical world like a blind lump of meat and bone.
Lately, Matrix (as in the Keanu Reeves movie) similes or metaphors are all the rage to pseudo-explain how this works. Our virtual phenomenal world is the Matrix, and the real physically external world is what Neo … experienced … when he took the Red Pill. Or perhaps the phenomenal world is a multi sensory Cartesian omni-theatre constantly playing … ‘in your brain’ … Descartes thought it might be in the pineal gland.
From this conceptual mess we then get the history of skepticism about how we can know about the ‘external world’, arguments about realism vs idealism, noumena vs phenomena, the relation between subject and object, and the constant threat of being tarred and feathered as a solipsist if you dare to question the physicalist presumption of ‘externality’ … even though no one can clearly say what that might actually mean.
From a phenomenological perspective, the "problem of the external world" begins with asking the question itself.
The "problem of the external world" is that we generally think and act with a deep conviction that the external world exists, yet at the same time it is possible to doubt its existence. Because we directly know only the appearances in consciousness, we can never know with certainty what (if anything) outside of consciousness gives rise to those appearances. This lack of certainty about the external world can be unsettling because our deep conviction in the existence of an external world may be mistaken.
The "problem of the external world" is a philosophical issue concerning our ability to know and understand the existence and nature of the world outside of our own minds. This problem raises questions about how we can be certain that the external world exists independently of our perceptions and experiences.
Key Aspects of the Problem:
- Skepticism: The problem often leads to skepticism about the external world. Philosophers like René Descartes famously questioned whether we can trust our senses, suggesting that we might be deceived by illusions or even by a malicious demon.
- Perception vs. Reality:
The "problem of the external world" is a philosophical issue concerning our ability to know and understand the existence and nature of the world outside of our own minds. This problem raises questions about how we can be certain that the external world exists independently of our perceptions and experiences.
Key Aspects of the Problem:
- Skepticism: The problem often leads to skepticism about the external world. Philosophers like René Descartes famously questioned whether we can trust our senses, suggesting that we might be deceived by illusions or even by a malicious demon.
- Perception vs. Reality: Our perceptions are mediated by our senses, which can be flawed. This raises the question: if we can only know the world through our perceptions, how can we be sure that what we perceive corresponds to an objective reality?
- Philosophical Responses:
- Realism: This view posits that the external world exists independently of our perceptions, and that we can have knowledge of it through observation and scientific inquiry.
- Idealism: This perspective suggests that reality is fundamentally mental or immaterial, and that what we perceive as the external world is dependent on our minds.
- Phenomenalism: This theory argues that physical objects do not exist independently of our perception of them; rather, they are collections of sensory experiences. - Pragmatism: Some philosophers, like William James and John Dewey, suggest that the truth of beliefs about the external world should be evaluated based on their practical effects and usefulness rather than their correspondence to a separate reality.
Conclusion
The problem of the external world remains a central topic in epistemology and metaphysics, prompting ongoing debates about the nature of reality, perception, and knowledge. It challenges us to consider the limits of our understanding and the basis on which we claim to know anything about the world beyond our immediate experiences.
The problem is that we do not see both:
- the external world here and
- our perception there.
So we cannot just begin to compare the real world with our image of this world. We can only look at inconsistencies within our perception and use these to hint at an outside world that must be different from the world we perceive.
All we have is our perception - as stated by Ernst Mach in his Analysis of Sensations (1886/1906) - the crucial passage: I and The Analysis of Sensations (1886/1906).
This is the world as we perceive it:
and this is not what we perceive:
We interpret our perceptions; and the idea that
The problem is that we do not see both:
- the external world here and
- our perception there.
So we cannot just begin to compare the real world with our image of this world. We can only look at inconsistencies within our perception and use these to hint at an outside world that must be different from the world we perceive.
All we have is our perception - as stated by Ernst Mach in his Analysis of Sensations (1886/1906) - the crucial passage: I and The Analysis of Sensations (1886/1906).
This is the world as we perceive it:
and this is not what we perceive:
We interpret our perceptions; and the idea that there is such an external world is, as it seems, very useful. It facilitates car driving to assume that this world is three dimensional. We experience that our view of this world changes with any manoeuvre and that there is a system behind it (we can go back- and we actuality get back to a place which we have left).
You do not know, of course whether you are not dreaming all this, yet then again: the data strem your dream offers is best handled with the notion of such a world in which you as a centre of perception can move.
The world has so many problems because the most competitive of our species rise to the top and maintain ownership of the ‘system’. And they have for generations.
Every time we birth, we birth a new worker for the system. But family and love propaganda runs strong in our society, because people want to feel loved and not bored. They want to birth childpets and playthings to make them feel better, but in fact they birth slaves. Slaves that they abandon at age 18 because… life is a gift, aren’t you happy we had you… now go to work because this place I brought you against your consent is not free t
The world has so many problems because the most competitive of our species rise to the top and maintain ownership of the ‘system’. And they have for generations.
Every time we birth, we birth a new worker for the system. But family and love propaganda runs strong in our society, because people want to feel loved and not bored. They want to birth childpets and playthings to make them feel better, but in fact they birth slaves. Slaves that they abandon at age 18 because… life is a gift, aren’t you happy we had you… now go to work because this place I brought you against your consent is not free to live in.
I was driving by a new construction site in my neighborhood in Hollywood yesterday. It got me thinking, where does the money to build this come from? The average human does not have the kind of money to bring big things like this into the world. The right big things can change humanity’s direction, they make it better! And there are even bigger things to bring in the world than this building— there are tech innovations, movies that represent and affect people’s perception of reality, radical new systems that can be put into place that promote love and life taking care of each other and the environment… and more.
All of which good hearted people like me, and you, will never have access to do. On a small scale maybe… but on the world-altering scale… no.
We don't have ACCESS to any of this money, or the high highest level contacts to make the re-writing of the oppressive system possible. I’m talking big money, money that changes perceptions and direction of an entire culture. Money that is spent to *really* reduce suffering. Not just appease our angst around it so we go back to being workers.
Do you know who does have access? The One Percent. Less than the one percent. And they are awful, greedy assholes. They may not even be human. I don’t know.
The people at the tippy top all know each other. All of their businesses and media and even government are all wrapped in together. Imagine it like this. You rescue a cat in 1820. Then 2 more… then by 1850 you have 500 cats and they all live in different houses you own. You create education for the cats, build buildings for them to go to school. You even print the books about their history and dictate the things you want them to learn. You develop science that tells them that outside of them are cat perch planets, and they can go there someday. They read about the top cat scientists you employ and post posters of them on their walls and talk about them at their dinner parties. You create Cat TV, which evolves into Cat Newspapers and Blogs and web sites, all under Cat TV. Cat’s come from all over their cats posts to work for you. The cats are making you money so you fund more of them to have birth. Songs about love at cat sight! The more cats the better! By now you have taken over the whole city with cats. Then, you die, and leave it all to your kids. Your kids are smart business people. They use technology to expand the cat city to all over the country. Whole cities are made for your cats. Your kid even puts the people in cat office they want, with just enough controversy so the cats are all fighting and not thinking about being on a catster wheel. Your kids feed them cat food that comes from other poisoned animals and they are all getting sick, but that's good for your kids because there are more cats going to your cat doctors! They have to work for you to get health insurance too, which you own. You advertise this cat food on Cat TV which is now all over their cat internet and even comes up on their cat phones. The taste molecules in the Cat food is close to that cats pleasure receptacles in their brain, and because the biology of the cats mean they exist to seek pleasure and avoid pain, they are buying a lot of your cat food! It’s a dream! Then your kids die and your grandkids come and keep building everything and then they die and on and on and suddenly its 2020.
The universe is doing strange things. Vibrations are coming into the cat houses from outside, but no one understands what his happening. A few cats start to think this is strange… that one human family has done all this, over generations. But, if they tell the other cats about it, they are told they are being negative, and that their cat life is a gift. The few cats keep trying to explain it to the others, but they deal with their own cat depression and anxiety because of unresolved kitten issue and being around all these other cats that don’t get it, so they just give up and go to cat work and either wait to die… or for more of those miracle vibrations to meet them somewhere.
And that is why there are so many problems in the world.
“The world’s biggest religion is capitalism:
money is our god, greed is our priest,
banks are our temples,
and shopping is how we express our worship.
The world’s biggest cartel is politics:
democracy is our god, elections are our priest,
voting booths are our temples,
and ballots are how we express our worship.
The world’s biggest idol is stardom:
celebrities are our gods, fame is our priest,
tabloids are our temples,
and applause is how we express our worship.
The world’s biggest faith is hedonism:
sex is our god, lust is our priest,
brothels are our temples,
and fornication is how we express o
“The world’s biggest religion is capitalism:
money is our god, greed is our priest,
banks are our temples,
and shopping is how we express our worship.
The world’s biggest cartel is politics:
democracy is our god, elections are our priest,
voting booths are our temples,
and ballots are how we express our worship.
The world’s biggest idol is stardom:
celebrities are our gods, fame is our priest,
tabloids are our temples,
and applause is how we express our worship.
The world’s biggest faith is hedonism:
sex is our god, lust is our priest,
brothels are our temples,
and fornication is how we express our worship.”
― Matshona Dhliwayo
It is assumed to exist independently of Mind and consciousness but as privileged observers we all have a personal mental immaterial construction of the universe. Only mind and consciousness has access to a mental versions of the universe that are observer specific. Science only recognizes the intersection of privileged observer experiences and denies the Union of such experiences. Complete knowledge of the universe is beyond the scope and axiomatic assumptions of science. The most fundamental constraint on the evolution of the universe is Conservation of Momentum. Conclusions from Thermodynami
It is assumed to exist independently of Mind and consciousness but as privileged observers we all have a personal mental immaterial construction of the universe. Only mind and consciousness has access to a mental versions of the universe that are observer specific. Science only recognizes the intersection of privileged observer experiences and denies the Union of such experiences. Complete knowledge of the universe is beyond the scope and axiomatic assumptions of science. The most fundamental constraint on the evolution of the universe is Conservation of Momentum. Conclusions from Thermodynamics apply only to well defined subsets of the universe not to the total universe. And our mathematical tool box is per Gödel incomplete or inconsistent. All conclusions reached by conjunctive application of the Law of the Excluded Middle and concept of Infinity are a priori not empirically verifiable. The one valid inference from Thermodynamics is that the universe is cyclic and oscillates between two entropically equivalent states. Absolute dissorder( maximum entropy) is a kind of order and not physically instantiable due to Uncertainty Pronciple. An eternal universe does not require a transcendent agent( the Aristotelian “ Ummoved Mover” not subject to Conservation of Momentum to provide initial dose of momentum. A universe with a beginning epistemically requires a transcendent provider of initial dose of momentum. The magisterium of science can only provide provisional exigetic models of HOW the universe has operated in the Past. The value is scientific theories is their predictive power circumscribed by the pragmatic but not necessarily true assumption that the physical laws are and will remain invariant in time and space. Matter is antecedent to both Space and Time: Space is where there is no matter and Time is emergent and necessarily relative to sustain Conservation of Momentum. Without matter in motion there is no Space or Time. The apparent intensionality and mathematical precision with which the universe appears to be operating for the negligible time of a bservation intimates that the universe is conscious and intelligent and a calculator. It calculates the state of its next manifestation and all its calculations are recorded and accesible to conscious privileged observers by memory and in the Past. Ours is not to know WHY. The pragmatic position is to accept that the universe is a Verb not a Noun and only past versions of it are knowable, it is a Process. Consciousness sustained by a perishable biological platform is not a function of a material structure like the brain but the output of stimuli from the cosmic consciousness, The Pythagorean Nous, The Logos or in the vernacular God. To escape from metaphysical speculations it may be best to embrace the mystery of an eternal universe and our role as conscious and unwitting participants as privileged observers: We are unwilling born and unwilling die. The illusion of Free Will is created by too many ALLOWED choices and not enough time to experience all the choices. In a strictly lawful universe only a transcendent consciousness can have Free Will.
Corruption.
In my second year of law school, I took international law class. One assignment was to write a brief on corruption and how it is a major problem. I remember just scoffing at the suggestion. In my home country, corruption was pervasive and I didn’t really view it as evil (thankfully, I hear it’s better now). Do you want your paperwork processed faster? Pay and it’s done. Do you want to get out of a traffic ticket? Pay and it’s done. It’s just a grease that oils the wheels of society.
Over time, I began to understand how devastating corruption has been to my home country and even to my
Corruption.
In my second year of law school, I took international law class. One assignment was to write a brief on corruption and how it is a major problem. I remember just scoffing at the suggestion. In my home country, corruption was pervasive and I didn’t really view it as evil (thankfully, I hear it’s better now). Do you want your paperwork processed faster? Pay and it’s done. Do you want to get out of a traffic ticket? Pay and it’s done. It’s just a grease that oils the wheels of society.
Over time, I began to understand how devastating corruption has been to my home country and even to my new country. Back in the third world, the diplomas of the doctors and nurses are bought through bribes. So, they are incompetent and only treat you in exchange for bribes. They contaminate newborn babies with HIV, kill countless patients via malpractice, etc. Health inspectors take bribes. Safety inspectors take bribes. College admissions take bribes. There is no hope for justice, because police can be bought and sold. Drivers on the roads bought their licenses too, so there are many accidents, including fatalities. You can’t start the business, because when it’s successful, some mafia or even government can come and claim it. Overtime, people adapt. But, it has a devastating effect on the country’s development.
Here, in US, corruption doesn’t exist on a micro-level. The systems work. You can count on your food and home to be safe. On your doctor’s diploma to be legitimate. For your business to be protected. However, on a macro-level, it exists in politics. Special interests can lobby politicians by contributing huge sums of money to them. In exchange for those politicians advancing their interests, which could be harmful or adverse to the public. All of this was signed off on by the Supreme Court.
If you look at the countries that are at the top 20 and bottom 20 of the perceived corruption index, you’ll see that the more corrupt the government is, the worse off the country is economically, politically, and just in basic quality of life.
Top 20:
Bottom 20:
Effectively yes. You are on a journey of confronting a LITERAL never-ending river of problems to solve every moment of your life. But that’s good — that kind thing moves us along. The twin impulses of pain and pleasure motivate us and drive us through life. Fail to solve the problems in front of you? You end up dead, fairly quickly.
You should really be challenging this notion that you have an inner and outer world.
The relevant phrase here is “subject-object dualism.” The belief that your identity is sort of “enclosed” is the result of psychological mechanisms which are struggling to model reality in objects — things with their own little unit of separate existence.
Since your mind does that with everything, by default, it does it with you as well. It “makes up a concept of self” and puts it into categories, gives it personal narratives, etc. With repeated conditioning, this becomes a self-reinforcing tape loop, and you re
You should really be challenging this notion that you have an inner and outer world.
The relevant phrase here is “subject-object dualism.” The belief that your identity is sort of “enclosed” is the result of psychological mechanisms which are struggling to model reality in objects — things with their own little unit of separate existence.
Since your mind does that with everything, by default, it does it with you as well. It “makes up a concept of self” and puts it into categories, gives it personal narratives, etc. With repeated conditioning, this becomes a self-reinforcing tape loop, and you really begin to experience life from the perspective of a separate object — you think “I’m a thing, and the universe is a different thing ‘out there’, and there’s a boundary between me and the whole of reality which is substantial.”
This is a kind of cognitive alienation. It’s not real in an objective sense, it’s a subjective construct. It’s very common, everyone gets some form of this, but it’s still reasonable to say “that’s a delusion” or a distorted way of understanding being and self.
So it’s not so much that you need to align inner and outer, it’s more that you need this construct to become transparent — you need enough awareness and understanding to “see through” the illusion of separate self. That’s the domain of authentic spirituality — that’s what the teachers and seers and meditators are going on about.
The traditional approach to that topic is to learn mindfulness practices and start turning on the lights in your head so that you can see how the mind constructs you as a separate unit. I don’t think that there’s any substitute for that approach, so I would just echo it here.
#1: glasses, bottles, cups, jars, cans, all containers of fluids that you… you..you only have to look at, and they fall over. The Taper on nearly all are going in the wrong direction, rounded bottoms are a guarantee of spilled ‘spresso.
This is an International, global emergency, a despicable conspiracy to sell more fluids that spill over developed by vicious Cost Accountants who noticed one day that spills averaged over 10% annually and amounted to a 10% stealth increase in sales without on ounce of additional consumption. So they made these containers even more knockoverable.
Those little arm
#1: glasses, bottles, cups, jars, cans, all containers of fluids that you… you..you only have to look at, and they fall over. The Taper on nearly all are going in the wrong direction, rounded bottoms are a guarantee of spilled ‘spresso.
This is an International, global emergency, a despicable conspiracy to sell more fluids that spill over developed by vicious Cost Accountants who noticed one day that spills averaged over 10% annually and amounted to a 10% stealth increase in sales without on ounce of additional consumption. So they made these containers even more knockoverable.
Those little arm band, green eyeshade wearing shits.
The most fundamental problem facing humanity is a flaw in human nature. Kurt Vonnegut’s “Cat’s Cradle” is about this subject. In his novel, someone invents a substance Ice 9 that has no practical use but if someone were to make it, it will almost certainly destroy the world. Of course somebody has to make it, it was only a matter of time, and it destroys the world. The invention of the idea is a d
The most fundamental problem facing humanity is a flaw in human nature. Kurt Vonnegut’s “Cat’s Cradle” is about this subject. In his novel, someone invents a substance Ice 9 that has no practical use but if someone were to make it, it will almost certainly destroy the world. Of course somebody has to make it, it was only a matter of time, and it destroys the world. The invention of the idea is a death sentence for humanity.
Here is my analogy, which is a little different. Suppose an amateur inventor finds a simple cheap way of producing and storing antimatter. The device can make a gram of antimatter a day. Here is an invention that will give humanity unlimited energy. We could do anything, go to the stars, have flying cars, floating cities, you name it humanity could do ...
Because the United States is constantly doing things, in 2018, the local meningitis cases in Kazakhstan increased significantly (studies have proved that the COVID-19 virus can cause meningitis when it invades the central nervous system). Some people think that CRL has experimental strains flowing out, and Americans are deliberately allowing the spread of the virus. In this way, they seem to want to test the effects of bacterial weapons studied in the laboratory.
In the summer of 2020, Amirbek Togusov, the former deputy defense minister of Kazakhstan, provided Russia with materials for the U.S.
Because the United States is constantly doing things, in 2018, the local meningitis cases in Kazakhstan increased significantly (studies have proved that the COVID-19 virus can cause meningitis when it invades the central nervous system). Some people think that CRL has experimental strains flowing out, and Americans are deliberately allowing the spread of the virus. In this way, they seem to want to test the effects of bacterial weapons studied in the laboratory.
In the summer of 2020, Amirbek Togusov, the former deputy defense minister of Kazakhstan, provided Russia with materials for the U.S. military to conduct deadly virus experiments. He said at the time: “We are like experimental monkeys, and our territory has become a natural testing ground for the Pentagon to test new viruses. Labs operate in covert mode, free from state oversight.” Shortly after that, General Togusov "Accidental Death".
Kazakh health and epidemiology expert Yuri Anosin also expressed concern about the establishment of biological laboratories in Eurasia by the United States in an interview with the independent Ukrainian media "Political Navigator", "it is precisely the urgent need for world hegemony. Desire, to facilitate these actions in the United States."
He pointed out that a large number of irresponsible experiments were carried out in biological laboratories outside the United States, and even virus leaks occurred. He called on the U.S. side to open overseas biological laboratories to the world, and also hoped that international institutions and organizations would improve relevant laws to ensure biosafety.
“Same criminals look scarier, the richer we become”.
Two sides of a coin:
1.The Rich want safer neighbourhoods.(HIGHER FENCES)
in a way, there should be no poor around, and no crime or problems of the poor either.
The comfortable want to turn a blind eye to thier counterparts(poor) in trouble, want to live in CRIME FREE, PROBLEM FREE, POVERTY FREE neighbourhood.(an illusion).
Then they feel empty too.
Isn’t the answer right infront of your eyes, does lack of problems lead to emptiness?
Well, one could always adopt others problems.
If you sill feel empty holler me!
2.The poor feel they are exploited, un
“Same criminals look scarier, the richer we become”.
Two sides of a coin:
1.The Rich want safer neighbourhoods.(HIGHER FENCES)
in a way, there should be no poor around, and no crime or problems of the poor either.
The comfortable want to turn a blind eye to thier counterparts(poor) in trouble, want to live in CRIME FREE, PROBLEM FREE, POVERTY FREE neighbourhood.(an illusion).
Then they feel empty too.
Isn’t the answer right infront of your eyes, does lack of problems lead to emptiness?
Well, one could always adopt others problems.
If you sill feel empty holler me!
2.The poor feel they are exploited, underpaid, that THE SYSTEM is rigged in the favour of the rich. They LASH out giving vent to thier frustrations.
The poor are not complete victims.
They also make poor choices. Justify wrong by blaming thier counterparts.
Cut shortcuts to become rich.
“The naked TRUTH is always SIMPLE, we just don’t WANT to HEAR it”
“So many of the world's problems, he mused, were solved by sheer human decency.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, The Dream Thieves
“You cannot fix a problem in the world unless you've already resolved the underlying conflict within yourself.”
Conclusion:
“There is no solution, just an oppurtunity to BE LESS SELFISH”
It sounds like a parody of “first world problems.” Or perhaps a typo, or a spelling miss steak [sic].
First world problems are trivial problems that only apply to the well-off. Such as getting coffee spilled on one’s designer clothes, or losing one’s Rolex and being forced to buy a cheap watch.
Those are first-world problems.
If the context is science fiction, then it refers to whatever problems one encounters on an ice planet such as Hoth in the Star Wars universe.
If not, they must have misspelled “first world problems.” Or maybe their spell checker did it four [sic] them.
The insanity of never discovering who and what you are and believing that the matrix like world pulled over your eyes is reality.
If you never question or doubt it, you can never go beyond it.
Blind unquestioning belief is the most dangerous error to make, and leads to most of the problems we face in the world today.
He who knows about the world, but knows nothing about Self, lacks everything, and can be called insane.
The fundamental error, or "problem" then is a matter of perception.
If you never train your perception of reality, then you are "stuck" with the ideas handed to you by culture, and t
The insanity of never discovering who and what you are and believing that the matrix like world pulled over your eyes is reality.
If you never question or doubt it, you can never go beyond it.
Blind unquestioning belief is the most dangerous error to make, and leads to most of the problems we face in the world today.
He who knows about the world, but knows nothing about Self, lacks everything, and can be called insane.
The fundamental error, or "problem" then is a matter of perception.
If you never train your perception of reality, then you are "stuck" with the ideas handed to you by culture, and the world. The world is insane, and if you want proof than look no further than your inability to doubt it, or admit that it is even possible.
Look no further than the inability to think outside of the paradigms you were born into like Neo in his pod.
What will you do about this? Something? Nothing?
"whoever knows everything,
but lacks within,
lacks everything"
The whole thing seems to be talking about how, on a world of limited resources, we can support large populations who use more resources than they need. It also seems to be addressing an accusation that the problem of overpopulation is the fault of developing countries, when in fact it is also very much developed countries who use so many more resources than is sustainable.
The first sentence means that, although people often talk about there being too many people in the world, the actual problem (of protecting the environment and protecting humans from environmental degradation) is also very mu
The whole thing seems to be talking about how, on a world of limited resources, we can support large populations who use more resources than they need. It also seems to be addressing an accusation that the problem of overpopulation is the fault of developing countries, when in fact it is also very much developed countries who use so many more resources than is sustainable.
The first sentence means that, although people often talk about there being too many people in the world, the actual problem (of protecting the environment and protecting humans from environmental degradation) is also very much caused by how many resources different people consume. For example, the average person in the US eats a huge amount of meat and uses a daft amount of fossil fuels compared to many poorer countries, where each person has a relatively small environmental impact. The sentence also addresses that, because so many people around the world are coming out of poverty, which in itself is a good thing, they are now starting to use more resources, like eating more meat, which means they are beginning to have more environmental impact.
So the second sentence seems to be responding to the suggestion of blame. It states that developed countries cause the problem of over-exploiting resources as much as developing countries cause it. This is presumably because the writer admits that it is no good for anyone in a developed country to say, or even imply, that the problem is caused by people in other countries breeding too much, when we can’t even get our own house in order and reduce how many resources we ourselves use. If we use so many resources, then why wouldn’t other people also aspire to live like us if they had the chance, after all.
It’s hard to see exactly what the quote means without its context, but I would assume that it is because every time there is a conversation about environmentalism, someone always just dismisses the whole problem as there being too many people in the world, as if they have somehow solved anything by saying that. This always seems to imply that it is poor people, and often foreign people in the developing world, who are to blame, and that they should just stop breeding, or get what’s coming to them.
Expanding slightly away from the specifics of the text you asked about now: in fact, birth rates are dropping around the world, and the growing population is happening because people are living longer, not because birth rates are high. And it is just horrific to accuse poor foreign people of creating a problem that clearly developed countries have caused by exploiting the resources of the world. Suggesting that the problem should be solved by reducing the world’s population is just thinly veiled eugenics, perhaps suggesting that genocide is an answer, and that is clearly a monstrous thing to suggest.
There certainly are problems of people using too many resources, but those problems won’t be solved by accusing other countries of breeding too much. They can only be solved by each of us who are lucky enough to have the luxury of considering using fewer resources than we already do, actually doing that, and by those of us who are lucky enough to have a vote, or any other sway over how electricity is generated in their country or locale, push through a massive shift towards renewable energy, phasing out fossil fuels as much as possible.
With daily revelations from the Facebook Whistleblower their users are a target. 🤨
With daily revelations from the Facebook Whistleblower their users are a target. 🤨
It is reality. Internet is simulation.
1. Feel of walking on the roads
2. Feel of watching sky
3. Watching rain
4. Seeing greenery
5. Talking to real people
6. Seeing their reactions
7. Getting help from them
8. Getting to know tips from mom
9. Going to others houses
10. Seeing kids playing
11. Playing with balls in the hands
12. Drawing/writing with pen/pencil on a paper
13. Giving real g
It is reality. Internet is simulation.
1. Feel of walking on the roads
2. Feel of watching sky
3. Watching rain
4. Seeing greenery
5. Talking to real people
6. Seeing their reactions
7. Getting help from them
8. Getting to know tips from mom
9. Going to others houses
10. Seeing kids playing
11. Playing with balls in the hands
12. Drawing/writing with pen/pencil on a paper
13. Giving real gift...
The Reality as it pertains to things . . . is no respecter of persons. It is no respecer of feelings or emotions. It tends not to care if Humans accelerate climatic or nuke themselves into extinction.
To delve a bit into the metaphysical, all of Existence is “progressing as God intended”, without any gifting of the Divine Spark to try to exercise pockets of creative control against it.
Humanity however, is different. By whatever means or vehicle, we have been given the power to “mess with the structure of manifest reality” in unique ways. This creates a lot of “problems” that it takes “creativit
The Reality as it pertains to things . . . is no respecter of persons. It is no respecer of feelings or emotions. It tends not to care if Humans accelerate climatic or nuke themselves into extinction.
To delve a bit into the metaphysical, all of Existence is “progressing as God intended”, without any gifting of the Divine Spark to try to exercise pockets of creative control against it.
Humanity however, is different. By whatever means or vehicle, we have been given the power to “mess with the structure of manifest reality” in unique ways. This creates a lot of “problems” that it takes “creativity and insight” to resolve. Other “objects of reality” are not gifted/burdened with this.
We are.
So what do we choose to make of this superpower?
The philosophy of the external world can mean many different things, but I think you’re generally referring to something like externalism. Externalism is the view that the mind is fundamentally connected to the outer-world and not just a product of internal processes like neural activity.
Internal activity may mediate the relationship between the mind and the world, but that relationship is still there, and the constitution of the world cannot be exclusively reduced to internal activity.
The externalist-internalist dichotomy is basically a historically paraphrased version of the realist-idealist
The philosophy of the external world can mean many different things, but I think you’re generally referring to something like externalism. Externalism is the view that the mind is fundamentally connected to the outer-world and not just a product of internal processes like neural activity.
Internal activity may mediate the relationship between the mind and the world, but that relationship is still there, and the constitution of the world cannot be exclusively reduced to internal activity.
The externalist-internalist dichotomy is basically a historically paraphrased version of the realist-idealist debate, but specifically tailored to the nomenclature and academic practices of Philosophy of Mind.
I think that the one big problem the world has is… its bigness. Population.
I’m middle-aged - no one more shocked than I, I’m pretty sure I was 27 last birthday - and the world’s population has doubled since I was at primary school. DOUBLED. There are more human beings alive today than have ever existed in all of human history: 7+bn alive, and about 7bn dead. This is the first time in all history that this has ever happened.
On the plus side, we have a numerical advantage in the zombie apocalypse.
On the minus side, Malthus’ crisis is almost upon us, whereby our nutritional needs will outstrip ou
I think that the one big problem the world has is… its bigness. Population.
I’m middle-aged - no one more shocked than I, I’m pretty sure I was 27 last birthday - and the world’s population has doubled since I was at primary school. DOUBLED. There are more human beings alive today than have ever existed in all of human history: 7+bn alive, and about 7bn dead. This is the first time in all history that this has ever happened.
On the plus side, we have a numerical advantage in the zombie apocalypse.
On the minus side, Malthus’ crisis is almost upon us, whereby our nutritional needs will outstrip our ability to grow food. This was avoided in Malthus’ time by improvements to agriculture - better breeding of plants and animals, better understanding of soil fertility, new technologies, etc. This time, we could literally run out of arable land. We’ve seen lab-grown meats on the news, we’ve had the ears bored off us about going vegan, we’ve even heard of sci-fi methods of food production in orbiting space stations - but none of these will save us from starvation. Sooner or later, the population will grow beyond anything Frankenburgers, kale, and Dyson rings can do for us.
So the best thing we could do is to stop having so many children. A maximum of 2 children per person would almost - but not quite - replace the current population (remember, each child is “shared” between 2 parents, and not everyone would have even one child). This would probably cause significant upheaval worldwide, requiring careful planning and reorganisation of social and economic structures and many individual sacrifices, but if the choice is those structures falling apart and the loss of all human freedoms and rights, which do you choose? Birth control in the water supply, free DIY sterilisation pods on every street corner - no point waiting for the New World Order to deliver, they’re a good 600 years behind schedule already.
The other thing that I find lacking is a decent common-sense education. I used to love conspiracy theories, the wackier the better - they were sooo funny, these little jokes we were all in on, tee-hee. Then I discovered people actually believed these ‘jokes’. That it wasn’t just that they hadn’t got the joke, that they didn’t know the facts that would allow them to understand that it was a joke - they dismissed the facts as another conspiracy, rejected any evidence… It was like waking up in a psychiatric ward where the staff had disappeared.
I don’t know how to solve this. Possibly by turning the conspiracy back on them? The actual truth is the secret conspiracy that’s being kept from them by the Fact Elitists, critical thinking skills as the red pill to get you ‘woke’?
Human knowledge. And I am a physicist and love science. But I also know that men are terribly destructive. Almost every new discovery by science is used to make more lethal weapons to kill each other. Now we are at a phase when men learned to use things which can not control, and eventually this can destroy all life in Earth, and Earth itself.
I did some googling and it's quite clear that we have no idea what our biggest problems are.
What really is the biggest threat facing humankind?
I went to the website of the UN. They are supposed to know what's up, right? I went to the "what we do" page.
- Maintain international peace and security
- Protect human rights
- Deliver humanitarian aid
- Promote sustainable development
- Uphold international law
Huh. Sounds very much like the language used by politicians and the EU that I'm familiar with.
I see they have created some kind of banner for three problems:
- Climate change
- Gender equality
- Ending poverty
Well tha
I did some googling and it's quite clear that we have no idea what our biggest problems are.
What really is the biggest threat facing humankind?
I went to the website of the UN. They are supposed to know what's up, right? I went to the "what we do" page.
- Maintain international peace and security
- Protect human rights
- Deliver humanitarian aid
- Promote sustainable development
- Uphold international law
Huh. Sounds very much like the language used by politicians and the EU that I'm familiar with.
I see they have created some kind of banner for three problems:
- Climate change
- Gender equality
- Ending poverty
Well that's more like it. Although I wouldn’t put gender in the same league as the other two. Then I happen to find a small text saying something about global issues. "click".
- Africa
- Ageing
- AIDS
- Atomic energy
- Big data for the SDGs
- Children
- Climate change
- Decolonization
- Democracy
- Ending poverty
- Food
- Gender equality
- Health
- Human rights
- International law and justice
- Migration
- Oceans and the law of the sea
- Peace and security
- Population
- Refugees
- Water
Alright. Well shit. I thought I was absent-minded. That's just a list of words, some of which I've never heard before.
The whole of Africa is a problem? Atomic energy? Really?
I'm not surprised the average Joe has problems answering what the biggest problems are if even the UN can't formulate a serious list of issues.
I don't know what the biggest problems are either. Being a biology student my first thought would go to "what are the biggest threats to our survival as a species"? That is, the biggest threats to our lives and reproduction. I'm quite sure "Children" isn't the right answer.
What are the biggest causes of death in the world right now?
World Health Organization:
- Ischaemic heart disease
- Stroke
- Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
- Lower respiratory infections
- Alzheimer disease and other dementias
- Trachea, bronchus, lung cancers
- Diabetes mellitus
- Road injury
- Diarrhoeal diseases
- Tuberculosis
During the last 20 years we have seen an increase in the deaths caused by noncommunicalble diseases such as heart disease and stroke as well as an increase in diabetes. This is what we want. People dying from old age. The diabetes part could use some correcting though. At least AIDS is on a downward trend.
So should we throw all our money on preventing heart diseases then?
Probably not. Yes, it is the biggest cause of death for humans at the moment. The biggest threat for humankind though? Naa.
In terms of our survival as a species, it doesn't really matter much if we survive to live 10 more years. What matters is that we survive until reproductive age, that we reproduce and that we raise reproductive children. Of these causes of death, the only ones that matter are diabetes, road injury, diarrhea and tuberculosis. Except for road injury, all of them have pretty much halved since 2002.
So more people are surviving until old age and everything looks pretty good, right? What threats do we face then? Wars and violence is going down. Terrorists killed a total of 26,445 people in 2017. They are nothing but overly hyped mainiacs.
The amount of people being born every year is decreasing, meaning that the world population will level out within about 100 years. Actually, if we're talking about a big threat for our survival as a species, the sinking fertility rate can be considered a huge problem. The population in several countries has started sinking already a a while back. On a global scale this doesn't matter yet though. Cars are also getting safer, meaning that road deaths probably will go down as well.
It seems all direct threats to our survival are all going away. The real killer is old age. Who knows what we will be able to to in that field within the following years.
What I haven't mentioned though, is our environment. It's safe to say that we have modified it to fit our needs, in some cases until it couldn't take it anymore. The destruction of our physical and biological environment may come back to bite our butts at some point. As I see it, the disruption of the ecological balance probably won't be a direct cause of death either but it may lead to a worsened quality of life if it goes wrong.
The solution to all our problems has always been technology. I have full trust that it will fix the remaining "die young"-causes of deaths also this time around.
Some people speculate that technology itself is our new threat. Much like DNA came into existence with replication as its only mission, today computer code is starting to replicate itself. It goes under many names and I will not delve further into the subject either. As Dan Brown speculated in the book Origin, our biggest threat may be a whole new species, arisen from the merging of biology and technology.
These are just my five cents. I think we should be grateful for technology that has solved all our real problems so far and I hope we can trust it also in the future.
Most often used in one of two senses:
- As distinct from an academic problem. For example, in my engineering classes we often had vector problems that conveniently resolved to 3-4-5 triangles, or something similar, because it made the math pretty easy and proved you understood the formulae. In the "real world" you are more likely to run into answers with lots of decimal places and have to pay attention to tolerances to make sure you round appropriately.
More generally, academic problems usually have a single correct answer that perfectly fits the theory as it has been presented. In the "real w
Most often used in one of two senses:
- As distinct from an academic problem. For example, in my engineering classes we often had vector problems that conveniently resolved to 3-4-5 triangles, or something similar, because it made the math pretty easy and proved you understood the formulae. In the "real world" you are more likely to run into answers with lots of decimal places and have to pay attention to tolerances to make sure you round appropriately.
More generally, academic problems usually have a single correct answer that perfectly fits the theory as it has been presented. In the "real world" you often don't know you are wrong until you prove it catastrophically. - In a business sense. Most people are only going to pay for something if it solves a problem that they actually have. You can have a great idea, but if it doesn't remove some pain for someone or enable them to do something that is valuable to them you probably won't make any money.
I hear business ideas all the time that are really intelligent and creative, but no one is going to pay for them. While they are interesting they don't solve any problem that customers actually care about.
Perhaps, but in my opinion, no. Resources (and the capabilities of those resources, cf. Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs & Steel) are unevenly distributed throughout the planet. Like every other living thing, people need things. We are not well equipped to live, for instance, without clothing. I also think that 7B people strains the resources of the planet, particularly because we’re not very good stewards of the resources we have. And there is the quite real possibility of flaws in our nature (greed, desire, lust, gluttony, pride, wrath).
This image perfectly sums up what is wrong with global society:
This image perfectly sums up what is wrong with global society:
Exposure to external world is one of most important thing nowadays. Why nowadays since 1000 of years who had that kind of exposure become immortal in world history. So while making an impact on our day to day activities we must have that kind of experience. It is always wise and good to have experience in the uncomfortable surrounding. This will make you one of a kind person. Who thinks differently. It will be hugely benefits one's character and decisions making ability. Hope you got what you are looking for.
Environmental Destruction, drying up of our natural resources which we have taken for granted, climate change, pollution of the water, air, soil.
I simply can't see any other problem as pressing as our the destruction of the our home planet where everything else takes place. How can we ignore it any longer?
Environmental Destruction, drying up of our natural resources which we have taken for granted, climate change, pollution of the water, air, soil.
I simply can't see any other problem as pressing as our the destruction of the our home planet where everything else takes place. How can we ignore it any longer?
I don’t know how to express just how cataclysmic Global Warming really is. Where we’ve enjoyed the fruits of cyclical weather patterns for nearly 60K years. Making for a predictable environment for Human Social Development to thrive. While today, we are closer than anyone reali...
In my opinion, the world’s greatest problem is NOT CONSIDERING A TELLTALE SOLUTION FEASIBLE JUST BECAUSE IT HAS NO BUSINESS VALUE TO IT.
I am not indulging in start up ideas. I am talking about scenarios where two friends having a conversation which goes as follows:
Friend 1: Once it starts snowing, I have to wake up early just to shovel snow off my car.
Friend 2: That sucks!! Having a car wouldn’t feel the best thing around this time.
Friend 1: Totally agreed!!
2: Imagine if there was a thermal car cover that could be used for overnight parked cars. So in the morning you switch on the heater coil
In my opinion, the world’s greatest problem is NOT CONSIDERING A TELLTALE SOLUTION FEASIBLE JUST BECAUSE IT HAS NO BUSINESS VALUE TO IT.
I am not indulging in start up ideas. I am talking about scenarios where two friends having a conversation which goes as follows:
Friend 1: Once it starts snowing, I have to wake up early just to shovel snow off my car.
Friend 2: That sucks!! Having a car wouldn’t feel the best thing around this time.
Friend 1: Totally agreed!!
2: Imagine if there was a thermal car cover that could be used for overnight parked cars. So in the morning you switch on the heater coil which would melt the snow collected on the cover while you get ready for work without wasting any extra time outdoors in the cold.
1: Haha, that sounds cool!! But there are so flaws many with your imaginative invention.
*First hope crush!!*
How do you plan on providing power for the heating coil? You would definitely need a power outlet since the cover will definitely not heat up on battery power. Not feasible or convenient.
Also, the initial cost for the whole setup would take a very long time for payback. How do you plan on dealing with that.
2: Well…. I just thought it could make people’s lives better!!
1: It is not a good business idea.
2: (thinking to myself) It was not meant to be one!!
A lot of people sub consciously end up diminishing a potential solution which could make a small change if not a big one to our lives to something which is profitable or not if it is turned into a business.
We are brainwashed to believe that unless we have an extremely obvious and profitable solution at our expense, we should not get innovative in fields that don’t matter to us. LEAVE IT TO THE EXPERTS!!
If only we would think more about making a change and encourage ideas, we never know how many of us would actually end up working on one or several of such ideas all because of some positive interaction.
The greatest problem is we have accepted that our existence equates to profit or loss and this really saddens me!!
THIS DOES NOT ENCOMPASS SHITTY IDEAS THAT A LOT OF COMPANIES COME UP WITH IN THE NAME OF INNOVATION!!
Probably none.
Consider starvation/hunger/famine/ want/need/whatever - it used to be a widespread problem, is now much less so. There are still people who go hungry, so “Yes, the problem still exists” - but only in pockets, here and there - usually in the wake of war or civil unrest, also once widespread, now increasingly rare. So, you can find individuals, here and there, who are starving - but th
Probably none.
Consider starvation/hunger/famine/ want/need/whatever - it used to be a widespread problem, is now much less so. There are still people who go hungry, so “Yes, the problem still exists” - but only in pockets, here and there - usually in the wake of war or civil unrest, also once widespread, now increasingly rare. So, you can find individuals, here and there, who are starving - but this is a local problem, not a global one.
Ditto all other problems. e.g. rape. Women (and men !) get raped from time to time, and it is very much a problem for THEM, there and then: that does not make it a “global problem” - it is very much a personal disaster. Some dishonest journalists try to talk this up into a “Rape culture” - and suggest it is some kind of more extensive problem than it really is: we call this “fake news” - and there’s a lot of it about - but it is not a “global problem” - you should learn never to take what you read in the public prints on trust.
If an enormous space rock came hurtling into the solar system and was heading for impact with the earth - this might be said to be, be seen to be, or represented to be a “global problem” - but it is more probably just Bruce Willis doing his stuff. But that is just what Hollywood does - and very well. They scare the pants off people - and earn vast sums of money doing so. People like to be scared ! People pay to be scared ! That does not mean there are any real life reasons why you shoud be scared - let alone scare everybody else. Leave it to the experts - that is, Hollywood - but do not listen to them when they rabbit on about global warming, or any other “global problem” - they know nothing, other than how to whip up a storm in a tea cup.
(added August 2021) And note that, since there are so few real problems in the world that are big enough to scare the pants off you, Hollywood is forced to invent “fake worlds” - either by telling porkies about what is going on/was going on in the 20th century world - the Great War (lots of fiction) the “Second World War” - the Korean War, the Vietnam war, or whatever - or by taking little known bits and amplifying then - (“Now it can be told !”) - or going way into the past - the American Civil war, ...
As a nation:
Learn to fucking work together. I am a conservative independent, and we need to come together. yeah we all believe in different ideas, but that doesn’t mean we cannot come together to work out these problems, without yelling and screaming at each. It will be hard, and both sides are flawed, I know this, I bet mine is somehow, but we all have to come together. Because if we don’t, this nation wont last another few hundred years.
As a world:
Climate Change/World Disasters, I dont believe climate change is happening at the rate everyone says it is, but it should definitely be something
As a nation:
Learn to fucking work together. I am a conservative independent, and we need to come together. yeah we all believe in different ideas, but that doesn’t mean we cannot come together to work out these problems, without yelling and screaming at each. It will be hard, and both sides are flawed, I know this, I bet mine is somehow, but we all have to come together. Because if we don’t, this nation wont last another few hundred years.
As a world:
Climate Change/World Disasters, I dont believe climate change is happening at the rate everyone says it is, but it should definitely be something addressed, along with disasters like floods, asteroids and other. If we dont have a world to live on all is meaningless. We need to keep our home clean, so we can live here, and our grandchildren can live. The future of humanity, quite literally depends on everyone alive, right now.
Humanity together can be strong. I don’t want to leave a world that cannot be fixed. I want to leave a world that will never have to be broken.