It seemed to me like your parentheticals were you stepping out of the hypothetical and making commentary about the standpoint in your hypotheticals. I apologize if I interpreted that wrong.
That was indeed not my intention.
Yeah, I think I understood that is what you’re saying, I’m saying I don’t think your point is accurate. I do not think you have to figure out which of your scenarios we’re dealing with. The scenario type is orthogonal to the question I’m asking.
I don’t see how that can be. Surely, if you ask me whether some category of thing exists, it is not an orthogonal question, to break that category down into subcategories, and make the same inquiry of each subcategory individually? Indeed, it may be that the original question was intended to refer only to some of the listed subcategories—which we cannot get clear on, until we perform the decomposition!
I’m asking if you think it’s possible for these sort of ideas to exist in the real world:
“these ideas are harmful to hear for people who aren’t me/us (because we’re enlightened/rational/hyper-analytic/educated/etc. and they’re not)”
I’m confused about how what you’ve said has a bearing on the answerability of my root question.
The bearing is simple. Do you think my enumeration of scenarios exhausts the category you describe? If so, then we can investigate, individually, the existence or nonexistence of each scenario. Do you think that there are other sorts of scenarios that I did not list, but that fall into your described category? If so, then I invite you to comment on what those might be.
Just because believing something makes someone feel superior does not logically mean that the thing they believe is wrong.
True enough.
I agree that what you describe breaks no (known) laws of physics or logic. But as I understood it, we were discussing existence, not possibility per se. In that regard, I think that getting down to specifics (at least to the extent of examining the scenarios I listed, or others like them) is really the only fruitful way of resolving this question one way or the other.
I think I see a way towards mutual intelligibility on this, but unfortunately I don’t think I have the bandwidth to get to that point. I will just point out this:
But as I understood it, we were discussing existence, not possibility per se.
That was indeed not my intention.
I don’t see how that can be. Surely, if you ask me whether some category of thing exists, it is not an orthogonal question, to break that category down into subcategories, and make the same inquiry of each subcategory individually? Indeed, it may be that the original question was intended to refer only to some of the listed subcategories—which we cannot get clear on, until we perform the decomposition!
The bearing is simple. Do you think my enumeration of scenarios exhausts the category you describe? If so, then we can investigate, individually, the existence or nonexistence of each scenario. Do you think that there are other sorts of scenarios that I did not list, but that fall into your described category? If so, then I invite you to comment on what those might be.
True enough.
I agree that what you describe breaks no (known) laws of physics or logic. But as I understood it, we were discussing existence, not possibility per se. In that regard, I think that getting down to specifics (at least to the extent of examining the scenarios I listed, or others like them) is really the only fruitful way of resolving this question one way or the other.
I think I see a way towards mutual intelligibility on this, but unfortunately I don’t think I have the bandwidth to get to that point. I will just point out this:
Hmm, I was more interested in the possibility.