They are tools. Not participants. — Frederick KOH

A corporation must be a tool, considering it cannot do anything without human activity. That's a given.

Nor should they be allowed to be a means to convert and amplify individual economic power into political power.

Why should people be limited in what tools they can use to raise money for individual use?

As I said, I have several independent verifications. — ernestm

And yet you withhold the verifications from us. Why? It was signed by "Trump Headquarters," as if that's some real entity. And now the conversation had turned to Trump's other factual mistatements and some golf hypocrisy, as if my attention span is so short that I'll be unable to realize you've changed the subject from the OP. Set out your proof, or admit that you have none, making you no different from your characterization of Trump.

I think the problem is that philosophy is defined as the field of unanswerable questions, and so if a firm answer were given to a question, it would no longer be considered philosophical. What is beyond the realm of science is within the speculative realm of philosophy, but should science advance, philosophy will contract, except to the extent the new scientific discovery arouses new philosophical questions.

Actually, I'd argue that the study proved dumb people are luckier than smarter people, thus the saying "dumb luck." It is most likely that the Heavenly Creator bestows luck upon idiots as a divine apology.

A person named "Molly Crabapple" tweeted that this survey came from "Trump Headquarters." I think before carrying her tweet down to the Governor's office and pontificating upon the definition of "fascism," I'd figure out who "Trump Headquarters" is. It might be Molly or just about anyone. I mean I get that it was on the internet and it did feed into your worldview, so it must be true, but before making the trek down to Capitol Hill, maybe double check.

I don't think so. "Am I going to the store?" versus "Ought I go to the store?" seems to ask distinct questions. How do you derive ought from is?

What about "ought"?

Dude, that was so me screwing with you not some actual UFO.

There is either a platypus in my pocket or not, so there's a 50% chance that I have a platypus in my pocket. Seems kind of high odds there. I either have an IQ of 250 or I don't....

That a person is dependent on a corporation should not be confused with an alignment of interests. In general they are not. — Benkei

Can't we just substitute the word "corporation" here with "employer." I don't really see why it matters how they've structured their business.

Accordingly, the tactic you've singled out here is morally compatible with an interest in reforming the role of corporations in politics, and it's utility is to some extent independent of the current degree or state of corporate influence in politics. — Cabbage Farmer

It's not so much reforming the role of corporations as it is the continued use of corporations for personal benefit. If a corporation uses its profits to interfere with climate change regulation or if it uses it to protect gay rights, it's all the same thing: the use of corporate power in the democratic setting to affect policy. When the corporation does what you want it to, you can't simply refer to it as reform, and when it doesn't, you refer to it as improper interference.

I'd also say part of your post is a straw man. Few are actually calling for the elimination of the corporation, but many are calling for limiting the influence of corporations. It would seem that if corporations should have limited access to the democratic process, that should be the objection universally and not just when that influence makes you unhappy.

And this issue can be illustrated in a variety of ways, from corporate divestiture in unpopular countries to the creation of PACs to fund liberal (or conservative ) causes.

Your point is that a baker can refuse to make gay wedding cakes, as long as it's the cake he refuses to make and its not the person he refuses to bake for? That is, he'll happily sell gays Christmas cookies, but he won't sell them a cake he knows will be used for their marriage.

And that raises the question of what a gay wedding cake is. Does it have to have gay symbols on it, or is it adequate the baker knows that it will be used in a gay wedding ceremony? Are you just saying the baker has the right to refuse to put a gay couple figurine on the cake, but he must otherwise bake a generic cake for our gay couple (and then they can do the honors of placing the figurine on top?)

It just seems that if the baker can refuse to bake cakes for all gay couples he thinks will be used to celebrate their marriage, he could push the argument further and say that he won't bake anything that will be used within the relationship that might normalize what he finds abhorrent behavior. My point being that your distinction might may no practical difference and gays could be denied all baked goods (such homophobia among bakers, who'd've thunk?).

So pretty trivial on the specific level but if you abstract away from it and consider the possibility that gays could be discriminated everywhere all the time, it's clear why you need to nip this in the butt as quickly as possible. — Benkei

It's the slippery slope argument, although the slope is leaning in the opposite direction in reality. That is, we've gotten ourselves into a situation where we we're requiring the general public to respect whatever it is that two consenting adults agree to, even if what that is happens to be repugnant to someone.

To me, it's a pragmatic issue at some level, and until gays are actually discriminated against in a way that limits their ability to live their life as they want to live it (as opposed to having to endure the insults of those who don't share their viewpoint), then there's no practical reason for the law. The trend has been favorable for the gay community and pushing the matter on those holdouts who find homosexuality disagreeable seems far more designed to make a political point than to make anyone's life easier.

Hyena! I'm so glad you're back. Are you here to stay this time, are you going to mosey on again?

Midnight beans on toast isn't something you'd eat in America. In America we eat gruel and boiled dandelions on crackers we make by burning a corn meal paste on a scalding iron skillet. We then rub red Georgia clay on our bodies to protect ourselves against the mosquitos and gnats as we sleep face down in the pine straw so that our sadness will be hidden from the heavens.

That, my friend, is the way you write a last word.

I heard that at Disney, they don't hire workers, but they hire actors. So, if you were assigned the job of sweeping the street, you would wear the clothes you'd imagine a street sweeper might wear in a Disney movie, perhaps suspenders and an old style hat, you'd whistle, say hello to the kids who walked by, and you'd show an optimism impossible of any actual street sweeper.

I'd imagine those folks look at their job differently and go home feeling differently than those with just routine jobs. They aren't street sweepers after all; they're just playing them convincingly.

Next time you must stock shelves, ring up some customers, or do whatever it is you do, don't buy into the notion that that is you. You are you, with all your amazing nuances, but by day, you're an actor, playing a role. If you find yourself not doing your job very well, maybe work on your acting skills and do what any fine doctor, lawyer, or Indian chief would be expected to do.

The Sanders quote is ironic. The liberals, not the right, have denigrated the electoral process itself by openly proclaiming Trump's election invalid. John Lewis attacks the integrity of the electoral process, and the left's response is that it's shameful to attack John Lewis for saying that.

And where's the evidence of bias in the CBO? — Baden

You can Google "bias at cbo" as well as I can for historical claims of bias by both parties.

You've presumably noticed that tendency? — Baden

Of course, but he didn't create this problem. He simply identified it and exploited it. Both sides have fostered an us versus them attitude, and so absolute skepticism of criticism has been the result.

They're not 'fair game', and your argument simply capitulates to the notion that everything really is a matter of opinion. — Wayfarer

If they're not fair game, why do the liberals attack conservative justices and FoxNews? Even Obama struck at the Court. https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/post/obamas-unsettling-attack-on-the-supreme-court/2012/04/02/gIQA4BXYrS_blog.html?utm_term=.645ad4aec527

I'm not defending your friend's statement about Vietnam, but terrorism has in fact been going on for 100s of years. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_terrorism&ved=0ahUKEwjn-6SU7tDSAhUp34MKHbJvD-cQFggcMAE&usg=AFQjCNH6S1kk9Vlac3RMTwi8gJkZrOvaNA&sig2=Dx-C2zGmeB-FsUA36PTdSA.

I'd also point out that the variation in usage of the term "terrorism" over time (to the extent it has) only means that it shares a trait that many words do and it's not a sign something is wrong.

Your reply isn't responsive except to defend against a perceived ad hom attack against the CBO as obscure, which really wasn't at all my point. The point is if the courts and media are fair game, everything is. The CBO isn't a great protector of American freedom like the press and the courts and it holds no sacred place in American history.

It's a simple enough tactic, though, to take advantage of the current state of polarization, much of which arose from previously dependable objective bodies abdicating their roles as objective bodies.

Would you not criticize the Supreme Court if all members adopted Scalia's ideology and do you not distrust Fox News? That is, the media and the courts are already distrusted with each side asserting only their allies are to be trusted. Since both sides have no deference to the other, why should it be surprising when someone expands who they are willing to challenge? If the courts and media are fair game, so it would seem appropriate for some obscure agency to also be.

It's the writer's responsibility to be understandable and the reader's to understand, and it seems equally possible that either can be deficient. That is, a perfectly understandable statement can be misunderstood and a perfectly reasonable interpretation can be something unintended. If communication were so easy, we'd have far less need for philosophy professors to teach us Kant and for divorce attorneys to sort through broken marriages.

No, I mean like why do you condemn the effects of media in changing what we consider the meaning of a neutral expression (or of anything), as if media events are different from other types of real world events? That is, why do care particularly whether media changes our opinions as opposed to our opinions being changed by the weather, political events, or anything else? The media's no more or less artificial than anything else.

Why do you consider the results of media artificial and what preexisted it pure?

I know. I got a crazy face now cuz it stuck too.

I can suppress my startle reflex. — Wosret

I once knew someone who could suppress their gag reflex.

The Falcons lost, keeping intact their record of never winning a championship in the 50 year history of the franchise. A perfect record.

Would it really make any sense if there were an object that no one saw as being red but some scientist told us was actually red? What would we then call that object that looked red but actually wasn't? My suggestion is that we call it "red." Surely we mean by "red" that it looks to our eyes as red.

Let us suppose we live in a color blind community and we see blue where the non-color blind see red. We are later informed by the outside community that there is this red color we didn't know about and what we've been calling blue often isn't blue, but it's red. I would suggest that as long as the outsiders remain outside our community, we will correctly be calling all such objects blue, despite that they're really not.

I've been told that once you go through a black hole, you never wish to go back to a white hole.

So to the OP's question, you answer in the affirmative. He should be permitted to modify himself to be a dolphin and he should be accomodated as a dolphin without judgment by others.

Sure, this is a slippery slope argument, but you're explicitely arguing for no lines at all.

Like I said, your post, regardless of where it came from, isn't going to result in any response in the form you've presented it. You're going to need to state your position and see where it goes. Otherwise, you're just going to be frustrated that no one is responding.

Do you have a question or is this just an invitation to read everything you've ever written and to discuss it, with the enticement that we won't be disappointed with the contents because your esteemed father was duly impressed? If that's the gist, I'll pass, although if you highlight some salient points, I (and others, I suspect), might engage.

I mean something beyond appearance. I'm talking about the thing itself, at least inasmuch as I'm talking about what it is not. Whether it has no colour, or is a different colour, or has colour in a different sense to when we talk about how something appears - the point is, to talk of colour in the way that you and Hanover have done is problematic. — Sapientia

Well, to the extent that we're dividing the world between realism and anti-realism, the only thing of significance is that we admit to seeing the same thing, regardless of what it is. That is, whether the color is "really" in the strawberries or is imposed by the mind by something the fact that we're both seeing the same thing consistently speaks to some external reality.

Further complicating things is that when I speak of colour, I speak of color.

They're red. To say they look red but are actually not red is incoherent. To look red is to be red.

And should he pop in and then out of existence as suggested, how will we know? Will he humbly ride into town on a donkey or will he drop from the sky singing "I was born this way."

As they say, bad facts make bad law, meaning the best way to get a bad rule change is to have the rule maker be confronted with a bad set of facts. I can't say that I've read the exemplar thread cited in this thread, but, from what I've gathered, there were some really bad posts in it, and the mods finally had to arrive at a way to bring that under control, and there's now some concerned with the precedent set by those decisions. If I've gotten that right, then, yeah, we have some bad law created by the bad facts.

But, let's stop really being so complicated about this, with all our talk about rules, precedent, clear moderating rules, bad facts, and bad law. The problem most often comes down to someone. Get rid of that someone and we no longer have all these complicated problems.

The reference was made to Paul and how he handled things. He not only didn't have rules, but he expressed a disdain for rules. What he did was sort of decide, based upon what he thought was right and wrong, and just banned people unapologetically.

Do that.

Why can't manual/genital involve a partner?

I'd like a feature that allows the rank and file to ban other members from this site. My feeling is that if the general public can be trusted not to pull the emergency brake in the subway, not to pull the fire alarm in public places, and not to play with publically available defibrillators, then we can be trusted not to misuse our power here.

The wosret is the sadness that lingers in an empty field that was just previously a trailer park but for the tornado that cleared it of all struggling life.