Posts by Kyle

> For god cannot be conceived apart from thought

I was confused by this phrase, but I think in context this must mean that god/a god can't be conceived of as a thoughtless being (like a p-zombie).

Possibly related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geschwind_syndrome (there's evidence this is what happened for Ramana Maharshi)

Quote from Cassius

Quote from Kyle

He might disagree with the premise and instead argue we should be grateful and that Nature makes it easy to acquire the good and avoid the bad if we pursue natural and necessary desires.

Does that mean that if someone came up to an Epicurean and said "The World isn't just!" or "Live is Unfair" that a proper response would be. "You're looking at it wrong and you shouldn't see it that way...."

What if the person says further:

- What you're saying doesn't change anything about fairness or justice!

- So in fact you are agreeing with me: The World ISN'T just and Life ISN'T fair!

- That's what you're telling me?

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I remember this one video saying that Epicureans promoted the use of stigma as the natural way of enforcing justice:

Maybe we can argue that it is our responsibility to enforce justice by stigma?

> Life ISN'T fair

Life and the world have no divine providence in Epicureanism, so justice is up to humans.

> There never was an absolute justice, but only an agreement made in reciprocal association in whatever localities now and again from time to time, providing against the infliction or suffering of harm.

However, we should be grateful to Nature for "making" life desirable/choice-worthy and such that the good is easy to get.

He might disagree with the premise and instead argue we should be grateful and that Nature makes it easy to acquire the good and avoid the bad if we pursue natural and necessary desires.

As long as we can achieve our basic needs, and we are free, we can be truly happy even without great wealth:

> The cry of the flesh is not to be hungry, thirsty, or cold; for he who is free of these and is confident of remain so might vie even with Zeus for happiness.

> Since the attainment of great wealth can scarcely be accomplished without slavery to crowds or to politicians, a free life cannot obtain much wealth; but such a life already possesses everything in unfailing supply. Should such a life happen to achieve great wealth, this too it can share so as to gain the good will of one's neighbors.

He admonishes ungrateful attitudes or excessive desires:

> Nothing is enough to someone for whom what is enough is little.

> Don't spoil what you have by desiring what you don't have; but remember that what you now have was once among the things only hoped for.

This VS seems to argue that people who do unjust things suffer some consequences (so it's like there's some justice built in):

> Neither he who is always seeking material aid from his friends nor he who never considers such aid is a true friend; for one engages in petty trade, taking a favor instead of gratitude, and the other deprives himself of hope for the future.

> Another thing I want to figure out is how to start the opening location on the first screen lower on the page at the beginning , as I am thinking that might help as well.

Yes, I'm certain this can be done by modifying the script. I'll see if I can solve it later today.

> I am also wondering if I can just break down the audio into separate files, and process it separately by "chunks" and give the video a chance to catch up that way.

You could break the audio and text file into corrosponding chunks and run the python script for each chunk, I was thinking about making the script do this for you if you specify the chunks so you don't have to run the python script for each chunk.

Hmm, the text scrolling can be wonkey because it applies a consistent scroll speed to a voice with variable speed. It averages out as shown at the end, but the text can get so behind that you can't see the words being spoken. The only way to solve this would be to give the user the option to set keyframes (like telling the text-scrolling engine what part of the text is being read at the middle of the audio, then the engine could change the times before and after the keyframe to help stabilize the text scrolling).

I need to find the time to analyze the ideas holding me back from seriously pursuing pleasure:

I'm still trying to work things out when it comes to my philosophy, I've been studying objectivism for a while but it has led me down a road where I feel like it's not the life I want to live. I need to think carefully because I think Epicurus might be right about how to truly live the best life, but I need time to also do university and do my interviews. Like, maybe I need to carefully analyze the questions I have, but right now it seems like a whole lot of questions and a whole lot to analyze that I need to find the right place where I can do this in an organized way.

I think Epicurus has a more intuitive approach to observing what your desires are, looking to your nature. I think we need a great level of open mindedness to discover what our nature desires, but after all this time I dont understand how Ayn Rands philosophy will point you there. Do I need reason to justify playing and enjoying my finite life? Shouldn't reason be instrumental to living the best life rather than reason for reason's sake.

I was in this discussion forum with people that were rationalists and objectivists for a long time, but I think it's kind of a nutty place where they have very strange ideas that just dont match up with my experience, definitely contradict epicureanism, and I almost cannot accept will lead to the best life.

The thing that really disturbed me which led me to leaving that place was when I was told by the leader that.... and this is a long story I need to explain that I'm forced to go to church with my zealot christian younger brother because my parents are very controlling, occassionally malicious, and irrational, and I talked about this in the discussion forum. And I was fed up with the sermon message they were talking about one day which was about "sexual immorality". The objectivist rationalist philosophy discussion group leader said "you dont understand the cultural battles, gays are hostile against the church. That pastor is supporting the church and therefore are defending civilization and is on the side of the good." I dont know if it's a coincidence I became sick for a few days after that. I know I wouldn't be able to argue against this guy because hes too clever. But why should I argue against this guy? Why am I going down this road, how does this lead to the life of true enjoyment?

Epicurus focused on the important things, like undermining any superstitions. I think undermining the disturbing psychological afflictions my religious upbringing brings me a tremendous physical peace. Why should I focus on anything Epicurus showed was vain?

It's late, I'll just post what I wrote. The key point is I need to have a relatively organized analysis of the reasons why I'm choosing to follow Epicurus and abandoning these other ideas. Reason should be instrumental to living my best life.

(There's still lots of good ideas from these non-Epicureans, like being honest when talking about philosophy and using abstractions to solve problems (But this should be instrumental to pleasant living)).

Am I (becoming) epicurean? <--- I didn't know where I should post this, you're free to move it Cassius, if you read this.

Sorry the titles are too hard to implement for me to work on it unless you think they're necessary

Yes I can make a title. I'm working on that now.

You can move the text (x-position, 'center')

replace x-position with something like 10

(i think this will work, i'd test a short clip first).

I'm making the web app, it's gonna take a bit i have to learn how to do APIs

I know how to fix that error,

https://askubuntu.com/questions/8731…cted-by-moviepy

First of all, I install libmagick++-dev by using sudo apt install libmagick++-dev. Secondly, I follow the suggestion from reddit. Specifically, I open policy.xml of ImageMagick by using command: sudo vim /etc/ImageMagick-6/policy.xml and then comment the @ policy by change from <policy domain="path" rights="none" pattern="@*" /> to <!--<policy domain="path" rights="none" pattern="@*" /> -->.

Admittedly, my server is going to be very slow, so a 15 minute video will take an hour to create.

I've decided to make a Web Application like I described earlier, it would be very enjoyable to make

Then it should work, and yes, the TTS takes time. Then it should show a progress bar once Moviepy starts to load the audio

Yeah I should make it print something at the start to let you know it's working.

It takes a very long time to create the video.

An installer will work..

I'm also considering making this into a web application so that you can just create the video by pasting text into a website and download it from the website

ok, I have work and after like 5, I can set up easy install instructions

BTW it will only work with MP3 (I could change that tho if y'all want, I think I will add m4a)

> What kind of text-to-speech engine are you using?

The python library will use whatever is native to your operating system, in my case it's using Mac.

I tested the human reading option and it works.

Here's a demo of human reading

I added the option for choosing a premade audio file and it should work well. I'd recommend not leaving any silence at the beginning or end of the audio file so it matches with the scrolling text.

The scrolling text will use the length of the audio file you give it (in AUDIO_FILE, if you leave it blank it will generate audio through TTS) in order to calculate its scrolling speed.

I uploaded the changes. Next I'm going to create an installer so it's easy for others to use