• Perception
    But could we experience the red colour itself?javi2541997

    Sort of. I could ask an artist if she's familiar with true Prussian blue, and if she is, ask her to create it with paint. In this case, Prussian blue isn't the property of any particular object, although the name is attached to a unique synthetic chemical. The artist and I are talking about the color itself.

    So the experience of seeing the color itself involves ignoring the medium. I'm not saying everyone can do that. I don't know.
  • Perception
    I would pay for experiencing that experience. How would it be? Like the sweetness of a candy or the sharp odour of non-drinking water?javi2541997

    Red is Arizona, driving toward Phoenix. It smells like burning Juniper.
  • Perception
    Does the color “red” exist outside of the subjective mind that conceptually designates the concept of “red?”Mp202020

    The concept of red and the property of redness belong to the whole community. You can speak of them either subjectively or objectively. When you say you've had the experience of seeing red, that terminology is subjective. If I say you need to stop at the red sign, now I'm speaking in objective terms.

    We don't really know how consciousness works. Does it only exist on this one little planet? Or is it an aspect of everything? Who knows?
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    "You know, FDR 16 years — almost 16 years — he was four terms. I don’t know, are we going to be considered three-term? Or two-term?” Trump quipped at the National Rifle Association annual meeting, speaking before a crowd of gun rights supporters.". Politico

    He wants to change term limits.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    "we'll have it fixed so good you're not going to have to vote.". --Trump

    People who vote for Trump think we need a dictator. Do we?
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    I wonder if Vance, at the behest of the donor class and GOP apparatchiks, will pull a coup on him and take over his campaign.NOS4A2

    Not likely.
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)

    It's that Vance's approval rating sucks and he doesn't balance the ticket. People think it was a mistake. Trump isn't known for loyalty, so maybe he'll ditch the guy.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)

    I think it usually takes some kind of crisis before the basics change. It's interesting to try to guess what the change will look like
  • The Most Logical Religious Path
    What are your thoughts?Igitur

    Religion is like opium. People take it to keep from curling up in a ball on the floor in the face of adversity like the death of a child. The main threat to religion is good healthcare. So if you look out and find people living with little to no safety net, more religion is on the way.
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    If Harris does make a major misstep in the next few weeks, I wonder who the powers that be will replace her with so that I can know who to vote for.Hanover

    You're going to vote Democrat?
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    No, I don't disagree that the rhethoric is anti-establishment.Echarmion

    Exactly. His rhetoric gave him so much power that he seemed untouchable. That's a social current worth examining.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    People can openly express and complain about real issues, and then perpetuate them.creativesoul

    I don't think you understand. He believes in authoritarianism. I get that you're not taking it seriously. I do, though. I don't think it's an act.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    That's part of "why" I think that.creativesoul

    He openly expresses pessimism about democracy. That doesn't sound like a schtick to me. It sounds like something else.
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)

    And you're happy to let Americans live however they like. :up:
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    I didn’t say they should.NOS4A2

    Cool. You're quite ready to live and let live.
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    I am outraged that people are given power based on race and gender, yes. You’re not?NOS4A2

    So you're outraged. Why should other people live by your rules?
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    I have a conscience. What does yours say about giving people power on the basis of their race and gender?NOS4A2

    Your conscience is telling you to be outraged at American politics? For real?
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    Once again, proving the above. At least attempt not to be ethically disgusting.AmadeusD

    You could stand to grow a sense of humor, Amadeus. :razz:
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    You don’t care about a race and gender-based selection process in politics?NOS4A2

    Why do you care? It's not even your country.
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    It's racist and sexistNOS4A2

    They don't think so. Why does your opinion matter when it's not even your county?
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    People should not be appointed to office based on their race and gender.NOS4A2

    Why not?
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    She was, in fact, a "DEI hire.NOS4A2

    So?
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    It's nostalgia as a substitute for the future.Echarmion

    It was anathema to neoliberalism, so anti-establishment. I think we're just quibbling over who the establishment actually is?
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)

    Yes, creating a "flexible" labor market was supposed to help avoid stagflation episodes. That meant less job security. It wasn't just evil doers on high, there was a theory.

    Oh, and Vance's memoir is pretty well written. He's a fraud though. Profit and power are his sole motives.creativesoul

    Why do you think that?
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    A counter-movement would be one that develops a positive vision for the future.Echarmion

    If you listened to his speeches in 2016, the message was: we're going back to the 1960s and 70s in terms of job security. That was the positive vision he outlined. Obama commented on how his vision was impossible because the industrial infrastructure of America is already gone. I take it you missed that aspect of his first campaign.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    Trump as a person is not, or was not, part of the establishment. But since he also did not come with any formed policy, his actions ended up being mostly in favour of the republican establishment.

    He has the irreverence and the populist instincts of a revolutionary, but not the conviction. So I guess we could say that he is not an establishment candidate, but he also doesn't care about being anti-establishment. As long as the establishment - in this case the republicans - stroke his ego he won't move against them.
    Echarmion

    i agree. I'm just more focused on what it means that there was so much popular support for him. He was telling people what they wanted to hear. Let's focus again on what that was: what did they want to hear? Think about it terms of social forces instead of personalities. That's what I've been doing since he was elected, anyway. Focusing specifically on him as if that's going to tell you what's happening is forest for the trees.

    So if you think of Trump vs Harris in terms of the social forces involved, how do you read it?
  • Pragmatism Without Goodness

    Imagine a snake that sees it's own tail, but doesn't recognize that it's seeing itself. At the point of meeting, there are two, but it's also only one.

    Or imagine a diamond with many faces. Each face is the whole diamond.

    Unity and duality are in opposition and two sides of the same coin. It can't be one, but not the other.
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    I'm not quite that generous. Significant brain damage, but recoverable after at least 4 years of intensive therapy for people who have brain injuries. Additional therapy will be needed to rehabilitate his faulty morals and his poor comprehension of the reality situation. Since his misfortunes are self-induced, he would need to pay for this out of his own funds. Once he's impoverished by the medical industry, Medicaid will kick in to cover some (???) level of services.BC

    :lol:
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)

    When I read that Vance's memoir is a good way to understand how Trump was elected, I thought about a conversation I had with a woman from Kentucky. The way she described it, heroin addiction is like a plague there. This was back when it was coming in from Afghanistan, so I don't know if it's improved since then. I'm not sure what to do with those puzzle pieces.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    Right, but that makes it a power grab, I don't see how it's anti-establishment. These are not revolutionaries, they're part of the elite cementing their (relative) power.Echarmion

    I guess you could call Trump elite, but I wouldn't say he's part of the establishment, which is those who set foreign and domestic policies. His power came from public support that was so strong that establishment Republicans dared not antagonize him. In that way he's anti-establishment. The only reason he's not a revolutionary is that he couldn't pull it off. No?
  • US Election 2024 (All general discussion)
    Thoughts about Kamala Harris?Shawn

    Not a chance
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    That's their rhetoric in any event. Though in my view, the republican party can hardly be anti-establishment given that they're half the establishment. It's not like they want to abolish their own position, they intend to remain an elite. They just want to extend their power.Echarmion

    They're actually making lists of loyalists to plop into critical spots. I think they're serious. This isn't the old Republican party.

    What's different is also that the rising right wing movement is not traditionally conservative but progressive in the sense that they want to actively change society.Echarmion

    Exactly. The Democrats stand for the status quo. The parties switched roles (again).

    We could say that the establishment is centrist by definition.Echarmion

    I don't think that's true. The political pendulum swings and the establishment is a dragging reflection of that. This is why people like Vance want to actually change out the government's employees in a far reaching way. He wants to get rid of everyone who refused Trump's orders the last time around. They're saying the government needs to be friendlier to the Right. They mean they want obedience.

    I think economic anxieties are a big part of it everywhere.Echarmion

    Which is weird considering the economy is booming.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    I think what you're seeing is the trend away from the old left / right distinction and the movement towards a system of multiple elites with their respective supporting and opposed groups, as put forward by Piketty.Echarmion

    People are still using right/left terminology, though. It's just that they've redefined it. The new American right is skeptical of liberal democracy, which would have been a blasphemous position previously. They're populist and anti-establishment. They basically want to fire everyone in the US government who isn't loyal to their cause. They've already talked about how to defy the SCOTUS if they resist this transition. I don't know who the significant elites are in this situation, but it looks like the existing establishment has nothing to gain from this and quite a bit to lose.

    The situation used to be that young people tend to vote against the elite, i.e. for the left. This is no longer the case as experience in Europe already shows.Echarmion

    I think that's because the present establishment is very centrist, isn't it? The rising movement is rightist. That's a big switch from the old days. Everything used to be pretty moderate.

    In addition, the big wedge issue that defines politics in the non-asian industrialised nations seems to be migration. There seems to be a culture shift where younger voters, traditionally more accepting of social changes, including migration, are now more pessimistic about it.Echarmion

    For the American right, this is specifically about jobs. They want to stop immigration and force out all the illegal aliens presently here. That would up-end the economy, so it's bizarre that they're actually thinking about doing that.
  • Wittgenstein, Cognitive Relativism, and "Nested Forms of Life"

    Scott Soames did a pretty detailed analysis of the private language argument and concludes that it's not an argument per se. It's more of an exploration of the consequences of ever morphing memory, the open endedness of the patterns of thought, and the nature of confidence.

    In line with that is the pretty fascinating issues Kripke sees arising from it. It's not everyone's cup of tea, but it's not just misinterpreted voodoo either. One interesting idea related to it is that just as we model the world around us in the present and create hypotheses about the future, our accounts of the past are also constructed. It's like: you're not just modeling the world out there, you're modeling yourself!