When we talk about identifying something there are two interesting ways to do that. The first being with definitions. Where we take a sort of Ideal Form of a thing and go

"If it has 4 wheels, designed to travel at speeds close to 100 miles an hour, has at least 50 horsepower, and can transport at least 2 people then it is a car"

However, these always have a "Diogenes Chicken Threat" in that now someone can strap two electric scooters together and duct tape a jet engine to those and

"Behold! A Car!"

Which is why I think a prototyping understanding of a thing is often better. With the prototyping example we see the more natural way in which humans recognize things. We have a massive brain built for pattern recognition for a reason. So we see a car and we know it's a car. It may be a car that's non functional or maybe it's in a weird context. But we know by some innate thing that it is a car.

Within philosophy, I think we spend a lot of time with the definition approach because it provides something we can do more philosophy with or even the act itself of asking "what is [thing]?" is a core component of philosophy itself.

That said, I think for the type of philosophy that Plato wants to do, it's important to look at something we've prototyped and ask "what is [thing] to me?" Because then we can know our own values in either what we notice or what we find important in our own personal definition, but we're maintaining that this may not be universal. So now we can explore the question of what a thing is with others better.

So with this in mind. I want to explore the question

"What is good?"

This can only be understood in my eyes as an innate feeling. We will look at something and know stereotypically whether or not if it is good.

But the question I want to know is what is the quality good? what does it mean to be good?

And asking this question knowing there is an individual understanding of good for sure and potentially there is a more basic and universal understanding of goodness. Or at the very least there is a actionable definition of good that we can use as a philosophical first principle.

Or maybe there isn't. Maybe good can only be understood as an individual idea and we can share some aspects of it with others. I'm not sure.

So what is good?

I am trying to solidify my understanding of why god is necessarily good in Platonic terms and I think I finally get it, but I would love for a double check if anyone is willing. Here's my shpeel

To the Platonists, our minds are a part of the The One. How this part of the One ended up trapped in a material body is unimportant to the Platonists because they know they cannot know this story only that it must be true (The Timaeus is their "creation story" but it is explicity stated within the Timaeus that it is only a "likely" story). Consider this jump, that our minds are derived from the first principle of the One, as a "leap of faith" (I do think it's a weak connection, but I vibe with the idea.)

So since our minds are just a sectioned off pieces of the great consciousness that is the One, then values that we hold dear must be values that the One holds. We can deduce to some degree that cultivating the mind, practicing moderation, being a just member of society are all good things because they allow us to see, be, and communally create beauty in this world. To the Platonists, goodness is beauty, order, things pleasing to the examined mind.

So the logic goes that I feel some sort of connection to a higher order of thing. I can intelligently imagine things that aren't here and create them. So I must have some sort of connection to the entity that has created this world since I have some similar skill. So assuming there is a god and I have some sort of connection to that god, then that god must share some sort of intelligible first principles with humans.

What do humans value? Beauty, Order, Nature, Creation. These are things that we value so these must be things that god values so these must be good because we find them good. We also value virtues like moderation, learning, justice. These are virtues because they help us grow as individuals and help us strength society.

So, I know God is necessarily good because I am imbued with the values of god. And when those values aren't corrupted by the material world, they only seek to continue to create what is good. It is diverting from the core values of god that cause corruption and thus things we call "evil".

Explanation: "the historian Herodian described the funeral in Rome of Septimius Severus as an example of the standard pattern for such ceremonies. Not much had changed. Herodian refers to people wearing masks representing Roman generals and emperors of the past (though he describes them now as travelling in chariots, not walking on foot), to choirs singing dirges, and to the procession from the Forum to the place of cremation. But in this account the wax image played an even more prominent role. Septimius Severus had died in York, in northern England, and had been cremated there, before his ashes were brought back to Rome. There was no body whatsoever at this funeral, not even a decomposing one. The waxwork was all there was. According to Herodian, this was displayed for a week on a couch at the entrance to the palace, ‘looking like a sick man’, with the whole senate in attendance. Every day, doctors would come and pretend to examine the model emperor and agree his condition was deteriorating, until they eventually pronounced him dead and the waxwork was taken down to the Forum." - Mary Beard "Emperor of Rome"

Wanting to dip my toes into kubernetes for homelab stuff and I have a few questions.

1. Do I need a specialized OS for it? I've been trying to get some TalOS VMs running but I've ran into some issues. Would you recommend like a Ubuntu server running kubernetes over something like TalOS?

2. Could I run this on a Windows server? I'm personally a Linux guy, but a friend who prefers windows server wanted to try it and I thought I'd ask.

3. Can I migrate Docker services to a Kube cluster? How easy is it?

4. Any recommendations for learning materials? I've clearly struggled with TalOS's quick start materials as I haven't been able to get into the tutorial cluster made with docker locally. I keep getting weird errors and reinstalling Talosctl and docker. I've diagnosed this as a "skill issue". My learning budget is like $100 for a udemy class or good interactive guide (Paid for by work apparently. I was learning this for fun, but it may actually be needed knowledge for a project)