but I've always been treated with courtesy and friendliness, and it was just better than I expected. — Wayfarer

I'm glad to hear that. :up:

as I now have two American grandkids (although they will be dual Australian citizens.) I get the Wisconsin is kinda dull, but Lake Michigan is something. — Wayfarer

True. I used to live in Ohio and I was enchanted by Lake Erie. I would so move to Australia if I had dual citizenship.

Cheese is important. Do you have something against cheese? — BC

I love cheese. NY style sharp cheddar is my favorite.

Who doesn't want to visit an ice castle made out of cheese curds? — BC

Good question. :chin:

Then there is bratwurst and beer. — BC

Columbus, Ohio also prides itself on its bratwurst. They have a festival and everything. It's so exciting.

Hey, let's not be denigrating the upper midwest. Wisconsin has several points of interest. — BC

Do they involve cheese?

I have family in Wisconsin. Lovely place, hope to be back there again in August. — Wayfarer

It's kind of unfortunate that you travel all the way to North America to visit Wisconsin. :confused:

If I want a laugh I might pop on Blue Velvet. — Tom Storm

There might be something wrong with you.

90 seconds to midnight. The closest it's ever been. Posted by people who are not idiots by the way. This cannot be forgotten, regardless of who one "supports".

It can tend to fade into the background given immediate deaths, but, it's a real problem. — Manuel

It's winter. We'll start back up in the spring.

Man on the Moon was pretty good.

The Shining
Hero (with Jet Li)
Young Frankenstein
Apocalypse Now
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
It Follows
Pandorum
Solaris (American version)
Adaptation
House of Flying Daggers

What? We can use the James Webb, land on the moon, calculate the age of the universe and the distance of galaxies all on the basis of the little we do know. Is this not real knowledge of the universe even if the science is incomplete? — Manuel

Telescopes and moon landings are engineering feats and it's a pet peeve of mine to assign their victories entirely to scientific knowledge. It's doesn't actually work that way, but that's beside the point. :smile:

There's no scientific findings published by Nature that address mind independence. This is an assumption arising from your worldview. I've said this several times now. I'm not sure why it's unclear.

So is there mind-independence in your view, or no? Like, do you believe all these is to the world and the universe are our thoughts about it? That's perfectly fine if it is your view. — Manuel

I have the same worldview you do. I'm just clearer on the arbitrariness of it than I think you might be.

Since Newton at least, physics has not been wrong — Manuel

Yes. My point was just that since it's incomplete, the claim you're making isn't really about science. It's a philosophical bias that's common during the time in which you live.

There's weight to scientific findings. You can't really borrow that weight to say there's a mind independent world.

To some extent it's a hinge proposition that there are mind independent things, but I don't know how much of your behavior really revolves around that hinge. I don't know how differently people behaved 5000 years ago.

I don't think these theories will be shown to be wrong (as was the case with Newton's theories), but obviously incomplete. — Manuel

We might be in a black hole. Physics isn't slightly incomplete. It's very incomplete. Physics doesn't indicate any particular ontology.

The alternative is that we created everything, including the world and that all we know are our ideas and nothing else. That's an extreme form of Berkelyianism. — Manuel

Plato would say we forget most of the Soul's wisdom when we're born. There are all sorts of alternatives. There's nothing wrong with our present worldview. It works well for us. But there's no telling what people will believe in a thousand years.

So you think the stuff physics describes wouldn't exist if we were absent? That is, there would be no such thing as an age of the universe, nor would there be things we call planets (after we arise and call them this) and events that led us to our evolving? — Manuel

Notice that in your previous comment, you added the caveat that our theories may have to be revised. Physics is in such a state that we really don't know how far from reality our intuitions are.

That means your claim pretty much reduces to: there is non-mental stuff that preceded us. That's not a conclusion drawn from any facts. It's an interpretation that's rooted in our present worldview.

Ok, so we have the same meaning of terms. So what's extra mental, like, if you look outside your window or go woods or something - what's extra mental in this environment? — Manuel

"Extra mental" would be anything that's beyond mental. It's an idea, not something you witness with your eyeballs.

I don't understand. What is extra mental, when we look at the world?

No, culture has nothing to do with my view. — Manuel

I just meant "not mental stuff."

I think your worldview is the basis for your belief that the world existed before there was anything mental.

This is all mediated by mind, but there are glimmers that we are seeing something extra-mental. Having a degree of confidence is the best we can do, given the circumstances. — Manuel

I don't think the glimmer of the extra-mental is seen anywhere. It's part of the structure of our worldview that we look out at a non-mental world. A few thousand years ago that would have sounded absurd. So the ground of your claim is cultural, right?

The problem is in most cases we can never know what might have exised in that gaping hole. — NOS4A2

Fire!!!

Acceptance

By all means, continue believing that nuclear devices can cause tidal waves then — Tzeentch

Ok. Thanks.

He doesn't mean that we are doomed or that we don't also do magnificent, selfless things, but this dark patch is there, waiting, and history tells us it doesn't take much to be activated. — Tom Storm

Right. Aggression is a two edged sword. We didn't take over the land surface of this planet by being model, moral creatures, although that has a place.

The question that's left is whether you can accept that, or does it make you grind your teeth to know that it will all happen again? Because that's wasted grinding, isn't it?

Well, had you asked me in 1944 or 1968 maybe I would have answered you differently. — Tzeentch

Physics hasn't changed that much since 1944, Tzeentch. You don't know what you're talking about.

well said

You tell me. — Tom Storm

How am I supposed to know? :grin:

Because the power of a nuclear device is dwarfed by the power required to cause tidal waves. — Tzeentch

But apparently the US military thought it was possible.

Only someone who knows absolutely nothing about military hardware would think nuclear torpedoes can cause tidal waves, so don't worry. — Tzeentch

They can't? Why not?

:up:

In organizations/governments there need just be factors/ideas overriding (positive) ethics, and atrocities can take place. — jorndoe

What kind of factors cause that?

Killing Jews was a crowd pleaser well before the Enlightenment. The Crusades had people doing it at home as well as abroad. — Paine

I know. But I think the average human would be left speechless by Dachau. It was just in another level. Although, people who witnessed conditions in Brazil during the slave trade reported Holocaust-like conditions where there was brutality for the sake of doing it. As @jorndoe pointed out, it's group think that does it.

"A pro-Vladimir Putin TV host, Dmitry Kiselyov, said in May last year that these torpedoes would be capable of causing a 500-meter [1,640 feet] high tidal wave of radioactive seawater, and that they could "plunge Britain into the depths of the sea". Newsweek

I'm starting to wonder if there's a big disaster at the end of this tunnel. (One which Russia won't survive).

Totalitarianism was a completely new phenomenon in the beginning of the 20th century, so it was not "business as usual" - something clearly changed.

Scientism may have played a role with its promise of final answers and singular truths. It is a way of thinking which is apparent in especially the Soviet system, where society as a whole was treated literally as a scientific equation with their planned economy. — Tzeentch

Exactly. This wasn't something that had ever happened before. Was it?

In a way, the Enlightenment was more about what is, than what ought be. — jorndoe

That's what I was getting at. The particular kind of immorality that created the Holocaust, for instance, could it have been related to a weak moral anchor?

In the big picture, people have not changed. — BC

Yep — Banno

Humans are killer apes — Tom Storm

So we're just in a lull? We can expect 100s of millions to die violent deaths at the hands of their relatives sometime around the corner?

Or could we find a way to channel our aggression with less bloodshed?

It's the accountability — Outlander

How would you assess accountability?

Machine guns. Bombs and Missiles. Industrial Project Management. Mass Media. The shrinking of the world as a shared — Paine

I assume you agree that these things were to he result of science and technology. Do you agree that scientism was also a factor?

Ennui — Paine

How so?

There's a similar list for the United States. Right? Genocide and chattel slavery aren't ancient history, either. — Moliere

The US came into existence in 1776. It was on the back end of both of those crimes.

If you check your source again, I think you'll find that he or she was assigning blame to Europe, not the US.

How could the West not foresee Putin was dangerous!? Look at this highly specific analysis using only points which lead towards the conclusion of Putin being dangerous, it was all there for anyone to see at any time! — Judaka

Since he had been repeatedly aggressive to his neighbors, I don't think anyone thought of him as benign. Plus, remember that when the US tried to persuade China to ask Putin to back down from invading Ukraine, they publicly scoffed in a way that wasn't particularly graceful.

I don't think this one counts as hindsight analysis.

Or are you the special one? — Isaac

No, that would be Geoffrey Hoskings, who spent time in Russia examining records from the Soviet era.

Aren't you banned yet?

That's why there are historians which are both pro and anti — Moliere

The 20th Century events in the USSR and China are unique in human history. It was mass insanity, not evil. No other country can compare, including the US.

Although, crediting capitalism for the robustness of the western economic scene is over simplifying. The west received a boom of energy through emancipation from religious tradition, which acted as a cap on progress. Descartes' works on philosophy were partly an attempt to pull the Church out of the mud so as to enjoy its blessings on scientific and mathematical advancement. Capitalism funded the Reformation, so together, they crushed the opposition. Science and capitalism have been joined at the hip ever since.

That hinges on knowing the outcome. If I turned history into a video game, you could "backtest" your prediction skills to see if you're using your analytical tools correctly.

It's not slight. It just seems like a simple acknowledgment that Stalin has secured a place in history far worse than any US leader would be a simple thing to do, with the understanding that that doesn't mean the US hasn't done bad things as well. — Hanover

I agree. So would the average historian. Westerners don't have any frame of reference for understanding what happened in the USSR.

It’s just dressed up Ayn Rand — i.e., an excuse to be a selfish asshole. That’s the “theory.” — Mikie

That's kind of a childish attitude. The world isn't black and white. It's shades of grey.

The reason owners get to be owners and maintain a higher percentage of profits is because it works better that way and people want it that way. — Hanover

It is very effective and efficient. It's also volatile and occasionally crashes, so a little of both sides of the spectrum is a good thing.

So last Great Depression it didn't happen here, but it did happen in Russian and millions died. So, sure, this time it will happen in the right way, or whatever Marxist thought says. — Hanover

I don't know if the next economic crash will take out the US government. I hope not. I just meant we'll probably renew socialist measures that were enacted during the Depression (and dispensed with starting with Reagan), and probably do further steps to the left.

The subsidization of farming is to protect a dysfunctional industry that society isn't willing to allow to adjust to true economic forces. — Hanover

I think it's that rich farmers know how to lobby. I don't think the average American knows how much they're actually getting. In some cases they're being paid to withhold planting. It's state sponsored price fixing.

All of that started as an attempt to help small farmers, but the wealthy quickly turned it to their own advantage. That's happened over and over, which is one reason to let the poor starve: if the state tries to help them, it just ends up making the rich more powerful.

I know. The revolution is at hand. — Hanover

It will happen eventually.

The other idea is that we can collectivize the farms so that all the food belongs to society so that we can all share in the profits, but instead we all starve. — Hanover

American farms are pretty heavily subsidized, and we haven't starved. It actually doesn't make sense to pay CEO's the bizarre reimbursements they get.

That will change in the next big economic adjustment. We always lurch toward the left when the whole system starts breaking down, as during the Great Depression.

This is an old union song sung to the melody of an Appalachian spiritual.

C'mon all you working people
Good news to you I'll tell
All about how the good old union
is coming here to dwell

Which side are you on? (sung four times)

Rich man say he's gotta put us down
and educate his child.
His children live in luxury
and ours are almost wild.

Which side are you on? (sung four times)

Now we got the good fight
I know we're bound to win.
Cause we got those gun thugs
looking mighty thin.

Which side are you on? (sung four times)