I suppose it could be interpreted as "more people than I have been to Russia". — Michael

So, following that route:

The issue seems to parallel subject/object confusions such as replacing "He traveled to Russia more quickly than I (did)" with "He traveled to Russia more quickly than me" (which though common usage is less clearly logical and too close to the semantically distinct "He traveled to Russia more quickly than (to) me." (Maybe I'm in a further away country. Odd. But logical.) But this example pertains more specifically to extent of ellipsis and aux vs main verb uses of "to have".

So, writing

"More people have been to Russia than I."

Seems to be the solution avoiding some ambiguous association. We ellipt the main verb and its auxiliary to avoid the auxiliary resonating with the main verb meaning of "to have" as applied to the subject "people".

Consider the sentences:

1) "More people have been to Russia than I have counted." [Aux verb "has" + main verb "to count" + anaphoric (backward) reference from main verb: (The subject of counting is "people". And you cannot ellipt "counted" and retain the meaning.)]

vs.

2) "More children have been to Russia than I have (children)." [Main verb "to have" + object (children) (No anaphoric reference)]. You can ellipt "children" because the noun has been given and it's logical if somewhat confusing.You cannot ellipt "have" though because it is given as an auxilliary verb in the first clause and a main verb in the second. (lack of symmetry across clauses).]

vs.

3) "More people have been to Russia than I have been to Russia." Here, "have" is employed as an aux verb and symmetrical across clauses, and as the following main verb "been to" is also the same, it's logical to go for maximum ellipsis, so as not to confuse this form with the kind of limited ellipsis of the last example (that limiting ellipsis explicative of a lack of symmetry across forms of "to have").

This bring us to:

"More people have been to Russia than I."

Which sounds more natural and logical.

tl;dr The issue regards the logical choice of maximum ellipsis as pertains to symmetry across clauses especially regarding the aux vs. main verb uses of "to have".

tl;dr 2: The default ellipsis is maximal ellipsis. Not maximally ellipting when an alternative structure maximally ellipted shares the extent of the partial ellipsis of the structure you're using sounds unnatural due to a kind of false resonance/garden path effect.

More people than Baden have tried and failed to argue against me. — Michael

(By the way, I presume you mean "More people than Baden have tried and failed to win an argument against me". At least give me and the Russian agent some credit!)

Yeah, there's also that Russian sleeper agent who shills for Trump on here. Can't remember his name. I'm in good company anyhow. :halo:

Neither meaning nor grammar is exactly right or wrong. You can shade from obviously correct grammar and clear meaning all the way to the polar opposite. So, it's not hard to find in-betweeny stuff. The fun is in not in saying it's right or wrong then but in figuring out what's going on with the rules and our intuitions.

Hm. So, that would translate down to:

"More people have been to Russia than Englishmen have been to Russia."

Which does seem OK. Though:

"More people have been to Russia than one person has been to Russia."

Starts to sound odd though is seemingly as logical.

And

"More people have been to Russia than I have been to Russia."

Confuses because of the crossing of expectations with regard to subject and object.

Interesting. Something missing from my analysis then. I'll have a look at it again when I get some time.

The first example construction you gave is in the passive voice. In the passive, subject and object swap places.

If so, then what about "more people have visited Russia than fish have"? — Michael

"I" am a person. A fish isn't. That makes this a different type of comparison.

It's worth more thought though. I'll get back to it.

Anderson Cooper made me do it. He's had more hot Russian dinners than Trump and the CIA put together.

:lol:

So (considering the implied ellipsis) the sentence says:

More people have been to Russia than I have (been to Russia).

"Been to" in this context means "visited".

So, it's:

More people have visited Russia than I have (visited Russia).

The problem is the incongruent asymmetry of subject and the concomitant incongruent symmetry of (ellipted) object. In this type of comparison the subject of the main verb "visited" (or "been to") (when the main verb does not vary across both clauses in the sentence) should match in type and vary in some quality, and the object of the verb should represent the varying quality. In this case, "location visited".

As in "More people have visited Russia than have visited Bhutan."

i) The subject is a proportion of people in general.
ii) The comparison concerns proportions of those people visiting one place as opposed to another.

To make the comparison about I/me, the sentence could be rearranged to something like:

"Most people have been to Russia more times than I." (Meaningful, but necessarily untrue given most people have never been to Russia.)

tl;dr: The sentence as written is meaningless but cross-pollinates meaningful sentences in a misleading way.

More people have been to Russia than I have (had hot dinners). — unenlightened

You can't ellipt unknown information though. And this would, in any case, need to be rephrased to: "The number of people who have visited Russia is greater than the number of hot dinners I have had" to be clearly symmetrical.

And this:

This explains everything:

I get it now. This is Hansover's way of apologizing for his huuuuge mistake in voting for this nut. Aw, cute. :hearts:

Everything Trump knew about Trump was wrong. And still is.

Oh, is it one of those, "Nobody thought he'd win but pussy grabbing is more popular than you think, vids?" Yeah, old news.

Everything everyone knows about Trump is wrong: — Hanover

So, he's not President. Well, that's a relief. :up:

Thanks for taking a look and being so reasonable about it. :up:

Interesting. Anyway here's more (this time not an actual stoning but an accurate representative video of one). Again, so people make no mistake about what Agu's thinks is morally worthy of debate and is a just punishment for adultery.



Essentially the moral equivalent of walking around on your hands and knees and eating shit from the ground.

And I'm going to keep doing this until Agu realizes that no-one will sink to the level of even justifying this by debating it. It speaks for itself.

Here's a first hand description of an actual stoning. Of Agu's "just and moral" punishment for adultery:

"An Execution in Ghazni: Stoned for Adultery

"When the soldiers reached the stake, they inexpertly drove several nails into it -- and lashed the prisoner's hands to these nails, at the same time securing her ankles to the bottom of the stake. When they stepped back, the dirty white chaderi fell completely over the bare feet and the prisoner was wholly masked. She was still free, however, to look out upon the world of hate-filled faces. I turned to watch the mullahs and did not see what happened next, but I heard a thudding sound and a gasp. I looked around quickly...to see that a rather large stone had struck the woman and fallen at her feet. The gasp must have come from her. Now the men at my right, the ones who had eaten with me and brought me to the scene, knelt to find stones...they began throwing at the shrouded figure. From all sides stones whizzed toward the stake, and most struck, and it was obvious that punishment for adultery in Afghanistan was severe.

The Woman refused to cry out, but a cheer soon rose from the crowd. One powerful man had found an especially good stone, large and jagged, and he threw this with force,aiming carefully at her body, and it struck so violently in her abdomen that soon the first blood of the afternoon showed through the chaderi. It was this that brought the cheer...another stone of equal size struck the woman's shoulder. It brought both blood and cheers...A large man with unerring aim pitched a jagged rock of some size and caught the woman in the breast, blood spurted through the torn chaderi and at last the woman uttered a piercing scream... men from all sides gathered fresh ammunition.

The sagging body was struck eight or nine times in the next fusillade, but mercifully the woman could not have know. Now a burly man shouted that he had found the perfect rock and the others must stand aside. The crowd obeyed and watched breathlessly as he took careful aim, whirled his arm, and launch his missile with ugly force. It flashed across the fifteen yards separating the men from their target and sped accurately as intended, striking the unconscious woman in the face. Quick blood marked the spot and the crowd cheered.

The blow was so terrible that it wrenched the prisoner's hands from the nails and allowed her to collapse in a heap about the stake. As she did so, the crowd broke loose and rushed to the fallen body smashing it with boulders which no man, however powerful, could have thrown from a distance. Again and again they dropped the huge rocks on the fallen body until they crushed it completely, continuing the wild sport until they had build a small mound of stones over the scene..."

http://lobojosden.blogspot.com/2010/09/death-by-stoning-description.html

Animal barbarism at its moral best.

Agu's "just and moral" society of fear, hatred and lack of human rights where religious police can grab women off the street and torture them to death or you can be tortured to death for not obeying any of the tenants of their holy books is basically a classic dystopia.

I know, sorry. But this is the reality. This is what Agu is condoning as moral. Real people today, men and woman, are suffering the punishment that he is trying to paint as just and moral. This along with holy books being used in an equally sick way to justify slavery and rape. None of this has anything to do with a civilized approach to religion or morality and just reflects an animal level of barbarism. And then Agu will ask, "But what's wrong with animal barbarism?"

Don't give me this self-righteous stuff about philosophy. You are not peddling philosophy any more than ISIS are, and you're not going to get any more respect for what you're doing than they would. Torturing a woman to death by standing above her while she's in a hole and throwing large rocks at her head until you've broken it into so many pieces that she dies is obviously morally wrong just as killing Jews for no reason other than their ethnicity is. If you are trying to convince us you are not utterly degraded morally because you can see the latter is immoral while still claiming the former is moral, you're failing. Again, you don't need a philosopher, you need a psychologist.

I am asking the question because I see that there have been many people, in fact, entire cultures in the past, who didn't see it this way. — Agustino

So what? Cultures, like individuals, can be morally wrong. You need that explained to you? What exactly is wrong with you?

As Zizek says (somewhere), one mark of a civilized society is that certain things are considered without the need for debate as right and wrong. We have a basic moral background, which allows us to consider ourselves above your beloved barbarism. When some morally sick individual such as you talks about rape, slavery, or torture to death by stoning (for a moral infraction that is not even a crime) as being a form of justice, we call the mental help professionals. We don't debate them. We are above that. It's called progress.

If you can't figure out and need it explained to you why putting a woman (or man) in a hole and throwing rocks at their head until you do so much physical damage that you kill them, and doing this simply because they committed adultery then you are too morally disgusting to be worth engaging. Why should anyone who is not a professional psychologist waste time on explaining to you why torturing someone to death in this way is wrong any more than we would waste time explaining to someone why raping someone as a punishment for their crimes would be wrong? There are certain things that no civilized individual would contemplate doing, and yes, there are reasons for that that any half-decent ethical theory can provide. But you're beyond all that. The best thing for you to do would be to crawl back into the hole from which you emerged and leave the moral debate on these boards for those with at least a reasonable degree of human empathy.

Anyway, here's a picture of an actual stoning victim for you.

"Neo-Nazi groups regularly incite their members to violence." dont mean to apply that its a lie, but are there any reliable sources and statistics about this? — Aleksander Kvam

Fair request. I don't know, but I'll look into it. Just to add that by incite violence, I don't limit that to direct imperatives such as "Let's go beat up some [insert minority group here]" (though I have seen that done too) but include stirring up hatred which is likely to lead to violence. If you present minority groups as a threat then you prime those who believe you towards violence as a means of defense against that threat even if it's a "preemptive strike" type defense.

I believe groups like antifa are slowing down that prosess by egging them on. — Aleksander Kvam

They're not helping, I agree.

Neo-Nazi groups regularly incite their members to violence. It's not like they're just these harmless mislead folks having their freedom to speech rights trampled on by evil oppressive lefties. They are dangerous scum. I don't support violence against them except in self-defense. At the same time if someone incites violence and then suffers violence by a third party such as antifa, I would hold them to a great degree responsible for their own fate.

...what about if it's someone espousing an unpopular political opinion? — Marchesk

Like this:

https://theintercept.com/2017/07/19/u-s-lawmakers-seek-to-criminally-outlaw-support-for-boycott-campaign-against-israel/

"But now, a group of 43 senators — 29 Republicans and 14 Democrats — wants to implement a law that would make it a felony for Americans to support the international boycott against Israel, which was launched in protest of that country’s decades-old occupation of Palestine. The two primary sponsors of the bill are Democrat Ben Cardin of Maryland and Republican Rob Portman of Ohio. Perhaps the most shocking aspect is the punishment: Anyone guilty of violating the prohibitions will face a minimum civil penalty of $250,000 and a maximum criminal penalty of $1 million and 20 years in prison."

https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/US-Anti-BDS-Bill-Giving-Trump-Power-to-Punish-Movement-Supporters-Gains-Traction-20180629-0006.html

"The Israel Anti-Boycott Act is practically ready for a house vote after being approved by the committee Thursday and would allow for the punishment of businesses engaged in BDS with criminal penalties of a maximum US$1 million fine and 20 years in prison.

Brian Hauss, attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), criticized the bill arguing it “seeks to dictate the political activities Americans can and can’t engage in.”"

That's up to 20 years in prison for disagreeing with the policy of a U.S. ally. Free speech. Not so much.

Not only fulminate. You can draw any conclusion you want as long as you look at something. So, for example, if you want to find out crime rates in Sydney Australia, you don't need no stats, you just use your eyes to look at a city anywhere and that will tell you the answer. #noneedstats #doeasyway #MakeScienceGreatAgain!

If so, that would make even his anecdotal sample size zero and his 'argument' exactly the type of baseless hot air we've come to expect from Trump supporters. They believe because they want to believe. Reality is irrelevant.

...what determines right from wrong? — Waya

There's this whole field of philosophy called ethics. I suggest you look into it.

How many? The point relates to American college campuses. You don't live in the U.S. You don't work in the U.S. Have you been on holiday there? And if you were, how many college campuses did you visit while you were there?

Do we get a headline with that?

If you can't tell the difference between complimenting yourself and impersonating a known academic and using that as a basis to compliment yourself then...I'm not surprised.

@Martha Woodmansee is actually Michael Rectumwelt (sp?) who has now been banned, and let's not waste any more time discussing him.

Banned @Martha Woodmansee for being someone called Michael Rectanwald pretending to be Martha Woodmansee in order to use her name and reputation to compliment himself. (Won't tell you how we know for confidentiality reasons, but we do know.)

Ha, in the editing stage. Will PM you a link anon. :)

I would absolutely read 8 books published by at least a good dozen of the regular contributors here. Fdrake, StreetlightX, Baden, Pierre-Normand... — Akanthinos

Aw, thanks man. Some of those are real philosophers though. I'm just mostly here to make jokes and ban people. :up: Although, coincidentally, I have just written a book. Of short stories. You shall get a free copy my friend. Whether you like it or not!

Wha... just happ..?? :eyes:

I stopped reading the tweets when I saw the mention of Trump sycophant Tucker Carlson. Anyway it all sounds very amateur Jordan Peterson. Not good.

Again, frightening that my attempt at satirical ridicule and mockery is so hard to distinguish from the real thing... — VagabondSpectre

It was a close one. I was like "Hang on a sec...?" :lol: