Posts by Scott

Haha! Wow! That's good stuff. So easy even *I* might be able to do it. (I'm the one of the world's WORST small talkers. I've never been comfortable with it.)

Quote from Don

Is that a *Philadelphia* Eagles reference?

Actually, Don, no. I'm afraid I know nothing about that sports team (or any sports team, basically). I was just giving the VS# that I thought related to the Eagles song - where Cassius was asking:

Quote from Cassius

what Vatican Saying needs a particular type of song that fits Already Gone?

Quote from Cassius

Of Course!

Awesome! How do I collect my prize?

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...oh wait. I got PLEASURE from that! 🙂🙃🙂

47?

Quote from Cassius

"Epicurean calculus"

OMG that's the first I've heard this term. Perfect! I'm using that instead of hedonic calculus from now on! "Hedonic calculus" is sooo loaded with baggage which is not in line with what we know of Epicurean thinking! It is a term that will just continually cause misunderstanding. Thanks for that one Cassius!

Welcome, nixmercury!

It was great chatting with you. Nice to have an informal, relaxed opportunity to discuss ideas and questions. I hope this continues.

I plan to attend. Discussing personal outlines is a fine topic IMO. We could also have "Q&A" time, in which anyone can pose a question on their minds about EP and everyone can discuss. I'm pretty sure everyone has questions they could ask, and there would be plenty of discussion, and hopefully some answers to questions posed. Cassius, I have no doubts you would be able to gracefully facilitate and keep things within the EF forum guidelines if things strayed off course. (If no one really knows the answer to a posed question or there is no consensus on the "answer", someone could be assigned to try to go after finding out more and bring that back to the group next week?)

I haven't looked into the discussions on KBs on these applications so I can't speak to that, but I have used tools similar to the Geo mapping and those can sometimes be helpful in brainstorming and information/knowledge design.

And hyperlinking between documents is a great feature. Outlines like Epicurus employed are good, but he of course didn't have hyperlinking capability - like what we have built-in to this forum, allowing jumps between relevant material that would otherwise either not be known about, or when it was, be cumbersome to locate and travel to.

*Obsidian and Logseq also provide other capabilities beyond what Markdown does. They help organize and structure the files that are created in Markdown. Think like outlines and hyperlinks and creating knowledge bases

I'll just echo most of the above thoughts. I use a breathe and focus technique many times a day. It relaxes tension, breaks me out of automatic mode and reminds me how pretty much every single moment is an opportunity to enjoy being here. What could be more wonderful than being here? Without "being here", life would be rather less interesting!

Makes sense, Cassius, thanks.

Pacatus , I think you will find Zoom pretty easy to use. It is designed to be user-friendly. I hope you are able to join in.

I also like Markdown, though I only use it for personal stuff, never anything that I share out. How is it the average folk will benefit from this? Most people don't know what Markdown is, and common office suite/word processing apps don't read it correctly.

(I haven't tried Obsidian. I'm going to download that and play!)

Well so far it doesn't seem like we would have much attendance for this one. In any case, should this event happen, I am still interested.

I'm always stunned - I find it completely amazing that people think "rational thought drives our behavior". How deep that idea has pervaded our culture!

I wish for all of you the best year you've ever had.

Be of stout heart and good cheer!

Quote from Kalosyni

I feel like I want to thoroughly understand the ethics of Epicureanism before I start "proselytizing"

Right there with you, Kalosyni. I'm not there yet.

Quote from Don

Even if we could explain it have basic intros, how to get them in front of people's eyes?

Right! And not only get it in front of eyes, but ...it must GRAB you. One can't simply produce good information/explanations. One needs "hooks" to be "fishers of men"! (if I may steal a quote from a different philosopher)

I don't know about the percentages, but I think you bring up an important point, Kalosyni. I personally plan to put a good deal of effort into understanding EP, and I've only begun. I can already see how incredibly much value there is in this philosophy, but with my brief introduction so far, it is obvious there is a LOT to figure out and understand. And there are those who will put in the time, and who have the ability to digest and work with this complex material. But those are few.

I doubt this philosophy was so wildly successful for 7 centuries without being able to be presented in simpler form, easy to understand and remember (of course from there, individuals could continue to learn more as they were motivated, but most folks then and now would only dive in if initial content made sense and drew one in to learn more).

If only we had more of the original content! Some of this must surely have existed. Since we don't have that (and even any we might have already or will yet find would have been prepared for presentation to ancient cultures, not to people in our modern world), I agree it would seem worthwhile today to develop basic materials that make this philosophy engaging and accessible to as wide an audience as reasonably possible.

(How are our finances? Do we have enough to engage a top tier marketing/promotions firm to develop and deploy the content? )