I actually really enjoy the cyclic Big Crunch theory. I imagine that it’s [probably] impossible to know which cycle we’re currently on but seems unlikely that we’re on the first cycle… For me, it truly confronts human exceptionalism and forces us to think about alternative versions of life.

The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten: 100 Experiments for the Armchair Philosopher by Julian Baggini?

I could actually use an explanation. I’m not familiar, what makes it so good?

Tabs vs. spaces

Absolute clown government in charge of an absolute clown country.

https://www.philosophizethis.org/podcast

The gift that keeps on giving.

I think that’s a really healthy conversation to have with your kids, man! I totally agree with your sentiment, and being “authentic” feels right, but it’s odd when you think about it. Where does it come from? Humans self-deceive all the time, right? It’s almost a useful skill in certain situations (e.g. optimism bias), but there’s an overriding feeling that “real” is “better”. It just boggles my mind a bit tbh.

I have mad respect for Orthodox Christians. My sense is that they typically grok Christianity on a completely different level to other, more modern denominations. When I try to talk about God with my average local Christian, there is this “white man in the clouds with a big beard” image and that’s the level you’re starting with which I find very difficult.

What question am I trying to answer?

Thanks, it wasn’t clear, I thought it was more meta than that.

I think it matters because God can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Are we talking about Plotinus’ “το Ἕν” or are we talking about Allah? This is the problem with these kinds of questions. It’s difficult to discuss the nature of what God even could be, before we get on to whether or not you “believe” in it. As other posters have pointed out, even the language of “belief” is generally inadequate as a starting place.

Why do you think truth matters so much? Don’t disagree, but why is it humans will forego a more beneficial situation if it’s proven to be “untrue” or “not real” etc?

How is it possible to answer the question until you define what “God” you’re referring to? Christian God?

It’s always irked me that we operate on “text” files as the basis for software development, rather than some symbolic representation of the code. If I have my preference about layout, and you have yours, why do we have to pick one? We aren’t forced to choose other aesthetics like colour scheme or font, so why layout? Why tabs vs spaces? Why single-line or multi-line? The compiler doesn’t care, it only cares about the symbols.

I guess you can kind of work around this by, for example, having inbound source code files formatted automatically (e.g. eslint) into your style and then have an outbound file also formatted into the style of whatever the project mandates (assuming they’re different), but this is a bit ick.