Or perhaps it won't be so bad and they'll allow us to live out a seemingly normal life in the Matrix. — Sapientia

You might already be in the Matrix. As far as the guy in the Matrix knows, he wasn't in the Matrix until he was being told he was being removed from the Matrix.

As I recall, John Henry competed valiantly against the steam driven hammer only to die at the end. Such folklore began during the industrial revolution as people began to have the same fears we are now seeing reemerge as machines aren't just replacing our brawn, but now our brains. It's hard enough to compete against one another, much more so against machines designed to work harder and faster than us.

I don't know what ought to happen, but I do see what is happening. It's that fewer and fewer truly compete, with an educated elite ruling the world. The simple hard worker just has less and less to do. So, we raise taxes to give benefits to those who can't earn them and we redistribute the wealth and further polarize the have and have nots.

If we get to the point where the economy is largely automated, we have to start sorting out who gets the wealth produced, with me arguing it should go to the people who automated it, and you arguing a more equal distribution. With each election cycle we can see which way it'll go. One day we might get so polarized that there won't be any moderate candidates, like you might see if it's Sanders versus Trump.

Was Marx really of the position that we're all motivated out of a sense to promote the common good? Or was he rather of the position that we ought to be? The former seems naïve and mistaken. — Sapientia

If he only thought that people ought to be concerned about the public good, but recognized they wouldn't be, then that would suggest he fully intended communism to be totalitarian, else how else would the people do something they didn't want to do?

No, that's not quite right, since security is only part of the job. They're also to ensure that no one pays too little. They're to ensure that the correct amount of money is paid and secured, as well as providing satisfactory customer service. — Sapientia

Concerns about people paying too little and that the money is secured are generally security matters, namely that the money that belongs to the store is received and protected.

Let's aim a bit higher than satisfactory customer service. Let's go for exemplary or remarkable. Come on team, we can do better!

Alternatives to capitalism need not be in the form of the naïve, unrealistic ideal that you describe above. — Sapientia

I was attacking Marxism, which was what had been brought up. It seems that no matter how many times Marxist regimes fail, Marxists insist upon explaining how that failure was the result of poor adherence to true Marxist doctrine.

But to the question of whether there is something better than capitalism, I doubt it.

Truvada is an HIV nucleoside analog reverse transcriptase inhibitor and prevents HIV from reproducing within target cells. — Bitter Crank

Analog is so old school. Is this hipster medicine? When is the digitally remastered version coming out?

If Marx were correct and we all were motivated out of a sense to promote the common good, we wouldn't need check out operators. We could each just take what we needed from the shelves (no more and no less) and go home and feed our families. The check out operator is actually just a security officer, standing over the money and making sure no one takes too much. He's a creation of the capitalistic greed machine, where people are assumed to be selfish. I envision a time when such selfish motives will vanish from the human psyche and we'll all live together as one in a John Lennonesque orgasm (a Lennongasm if you will). All we need is for humans not to be humans, a realistic goal as any.

However, I disagree that screwing my best friend will necessarily change our relationship, anymore than taking her on a fantastic boat ride would - it depends on the expectations which each has. — Agustino

Uh, yeah. Sure. Just like going on a cool boat ride.

Dating without sex doesn't seem to make much sense. — Agustino

So it's not a date until you have sex? What was it before the moment of penetration? Just a friendly encounter?

A drug addict may happily go his way and ignore my advice, but that is not an argument against my advice being useful. — Agustino

My point is that there is enough variation in acceptable behavior that someone doesn't have to model themselves after you in order to be normal. I'd also say that your views seem to be based upon intellectual notions of virtue and righteousness as opposed to any real life analysis. We are talking about human behaviors and relationships which are inherently emotionally based, which means that any analysis that simply declares a behavior inappropriate based upon some logical reason will be incomplete (and really naïve sounding). We all understand that if logic controlled such matters, Romeo wouldn't have dated Juliette. Of course, they really never "dated" because they didn't have sex before they were married.

Well perhaps they should think about it themselves, and ponder it carefully, and see afterwards if in fact they do not come to this same conclusion. — Agustino

Sort of like telling me that I really didn't enjoy that glass of wine because I didn't comprehend the nuances of a glass of wine well drunk, despite my assurances that I did. We're now into refined fucking that only the sophisticated can truly appreciate I guess. Sounds complicated and somewhat tiring. Too each his own I guess.

Only when one has reached their potential for freedom and independence can they truly enjoy sex - not as slaves running after something without which they cannot live - but as dignified human beings, sharing their freedom with one another out of a free choice to do so. — Agustino

The gift of being able to channel other people's experiences and declaring them inadequate is quite a talent of yours. I can only imagine the surprise of those who thought they were truly enjoying sex, but are now learning they weren't.

Running to the closest woman because I cannot control my sexual impulse is shameful - a parade of my un-freedom, masking itself as a free decision, when it is no free decision, but a forced decision. — Agustino

It's not shameful as much as it might be embarrassing and futile. Although I am far from being one to offer advice on how to score with the ladies, sprinting up to them asking for sexual release might not be effective.

A relationship cannot be improved by not having sex. If the relationship isn't good, then it's not good, full stop. And it's not good because of character defects (in one or both partners), not because of the presence or lack of sex. — Agustino

You just sort of announce things, as if they're self-evident. Relationships rise and fall for all sorts of reasons: stresses, incompatibility, boredom, or whatever, none of which are character defects. It's not like every person of upstanding character is compatible with every other person of upstanding character.

Your other comment here is striking for how incorrect it is. Sex can dramatically change a relationship, either improving it by bringing the people closer together or by destroying a friendship. If you don't believe me, go screw your best friend and see if everything is the same the next morning. The point being that sex is an important component of a relationship, but obviously one of many.

Celibacy is developing the inner strength to: 1. refuse to take that which isn't worth your time (refuse to engage in sexual relationships with people who will hurt themselves and hurt you), and 2. learn to live alone (because sometimes in life you may actually have to), and 3. learn to be patient and wait so that you may catch gold. Simple. And it's not my philosophy, it's the philosophy that has existed for reasonable men and women since Aristotle. A diamond cannot be found without patience, perseverance, learning to say no, and temperance and prudence. All of the former are virtues.
So my point is aim to get married. Keep looking for virtuous people. Stay in their company, and ultimately marry one. But do not marry just because you need to have sex. Do not marry just because other people are. Do not marry the wrong person because you cannot find better. Be of good courage and persevere in your search. And this is all greatly facilitated by celibacy until then. — Agustino

It's really not important to me if you have sex or not, but at least make sense when you present your case. Your references to celibacy conjure thoughts of lifelong abstinence for spiritual reasons, but then you go on to say that really you're only advocating abstinence before marriage. And by "marriage," unless you're committed to the Christian concept of two souls melding as one, I assume you simply mean a truly committed relationship. If that is the case, then all you're telling me is that you don't want to have casual sex, but you want to be sure it's with someone you truly care about. What started out as advocating celibacy turns out really to be just a hyperbolic way of saying you object to promiscuity. I mean that's hardly a controversial position. Such a position avoids STDs, unwanted pregnancy, and a certain amount of guilt, regret, and heartbreak I suppose from time to time, so it's a fairly supportable position.

Where your argument makes no sense is in your correlation of celibacy (as you've defined it) with being alone. I'm not sure why celibates who are just waiting for marriage cannot have meaningful friendships or even romantic non-sexual relationships. Those who preach abstinence do not mean that you can't date anyone. They just don't want you to have sex until marriage.

The only ones who are willing to do anything to get laid are desperate people who cannot control or manage their own urges (a character defect by the way - a defect which will certainly not be solved by "getting laid"). — Agustino

I don't favor promiscuity, but your simple declaration that those who are out looking for meaningless sex are somehow flawed is nothing but a moral judgment by you as to what sex ought to represent to people. There are those who don't live by that standard and go happily on their way, which simply means that your advice may not be useful to a segment of the population.

My hypothesis is that a strong relationship, when both partners care deeply about each other, are loyal and faithful, are of similar intellectual capabilities, etc. is the best for one's health. — Agustino

Marriage leads to longer lives for men. http://healthresearchfunding.org/married-men-live-longer-single-men/

But, such a relationship is exceedingly rare. So the next best alternative would be celibacy. But naturally - it follows from all this that one should cultivate the ability to be celibate. — Agustino

This strikes me as utter nonsense, to suggest that because most marriages are imperfect, we should all live in chastity.

The truth is that all relationships (sexual or not) are imperfect. If I'm already not having sex with all my friends, what do I do to improve those relationships if the panacea is to stop having sex with them? I'm already taking a healthy dose of the don't-fuck-my-friends medicine, so why do I still have occasional tiffs with them?

I wonder as I read these posts if there is some rationalization going on here. Do you guys really think that celibacy is the cure to your various physical and emotional challenges or is that just a comforting thing to tell yourself because you aren't getting laid?

It could also be someone whose lifestyle negates the possibility of having children, such as celibacy, meaning that they practically assent to anti-natalism, if not theoretically. — Thorongil

Priests don't assent to anti-natalism, but very specifically believe in being fruitful and multiplying, so much so that they object to any form of sexual behavior that interferes with it leading to pregnancy. That is to say that there are celibates who are clearly not anti-natalists. I don't think there is a consistent correlation between celibacy and an objection to having children, as the typical celibate (I would assume) is not celibate simply as a way to practice effective birth control. There are far simpler ways to avoid pregnancy than life long abstinence.

Those who believe that there should be no more children on the planet can have as much sex as they please without being logically inconsistent as long as they practice safe sex.

Why you've chosen not to have sex is your business, but I don't see how it bears at all on the anti-natalist position.

Against techno-optimism — Bitter Crank

Who needs all these gadgets to entertain us anyway? When I was a kid, all we needed were a few jacks and a rubber ball. I'm going to go stand on my porch and yell at the whippersnappers to get out of my yard.

There needs to be a specific system for rating priority that removes the subjective judgment element so that it can be carried out the same by everyone. That is, who gets the drug shouldn't be determined by who happens to be presiding on the death court that morning.

As to the specific criteria, I'd think it'd be the same as who should get the next kidney, the next heart, or the next ear. Those sorts of decisions have to be made all the time. Since there is often really no perfect answer, the best we can do is be consistent and create a fair process.

It's a twist on the age old question of who to throw out of the sinking boat in order to save it from sinking and killing everyone: the priest, the rabbi, or the prostitute. I mean, you throw out the rabbi, what's a priest going to do with a prostitute (especially if she's a female)?

Yes, yes they will. Other than bellying up to an occasional smorgasbord, you likely retain little of your Scandinavian culture.

Reading these forums (this one, the old PF and others), I've come to the conclusion that Americans actually don't think much of their state, they somehow don't believe it is a melting pot anymore. — ssu

The concern is that many of the newer immigrants don't wish to assimilate like the old ones. That's really less a matter of opinion than an empirical question.

A reason to believe the concern is real is because the Mexican immigrants (as opposed to earlier rounds of immigrants) are more likely to retain their culture due to their proximity to their homeland and their ability to move back and forth without having to fully commit to immigration. There has also seemingly been a shift in ideology, where it was once accepted that one should assimilate to it now being advocated that there be an acceptance of other cultural norms. I'm not condemning that ideology, but whether there has been such a shift is again an empirical question, and not simply one of opinion.

The question is whether the US is a melting pot or whether it is becoming a mosaic of all sorts of cultures living side by side without "melting" together as one. Typically assimilation takes a number of generations, so it is too early to tell. My expectation is that the concerns among English speaking Americans today will be replaced with the concerns of Hispanic Americans tomorrow, when they note that with each generation, fewer will speak Spanish or retain that culture. The monster that will eat them up is the American economy, which will demand they speak and act a particular way in order to find financial success. There is no question that the typical American will benefit from learning Spanish, but not nearly as much as one will benefit from learning English.

The point being that I do think there are legitimate concerns about what it means for a person to be an American, but I don't think those concerns will amount to much. The status quo isn't maintained by accident. There's a machine in place keeping it as is.

Infrastructure decay, just one kind of problem, are endemic from coast to coast. How do citizens get their representatives to pay attention before the bridge collapses, the gas storage blows up, the water poisons the whole town? — Bitter Crank

Or, better yet, how do the residents get the city to build higher levees before they predictably overflow and flood the entire city?

It's sort of like my roof. Every few years I hope to get a few more years out of it. It's just too expensive to replace when it seems to work just fine, and what fun is a new roof?

We can build new schools, add new lanes to a packed road, give our struggling firemen raises, or we can replace a pipe that the engineering schedule says should be replaced this year. It's easy to just push it off and wait for the moment when it's politically popular to replace the pipe, which should be right about the time it bursts and not a second sooner.

Having been the President (yes, President I said) of my HOA, I can tell you that when the savings account number rises, the neighborhood citizenry comes up with all sorts of creative expenditures (and this is in deep red country), none of which include saving it for the day when the tennis courts will predictably need to be resurfaced. Fortunately for them, they have a President who feels free to say no and then to offer them my job when they object. It's the same thing I think at all levels, but some politicians actually want to preserve their jobs and weren't elected simply because someone said "Hey, you're a lawyer, you should do it."

Your laments are the focus of the right, who point to the inherent inefficiencies and incompetence of government. Government workers don't get fired because there is poor oversight, no immediate financial incentive to fire them, political reasons to protect the people, the departments they work for, and those who run the departments, and employment protections not provided in the private sector. Add to that many public jobs don't pay that well and aren't exactly intellectually stimulating, and you just end up firing one low level employee and finding a carbon copy to replace him with.

If McDonalds serves bad hamburgers, then everyone goes to Burger King. If the line at the DMV is long, it's not like I can take my business elsewhere.

And no, this isn't an anti-government rant. It's just pointing out the inherent problems with a system that doesn't have immediate rewards and consequences.

Mental operations are so inextricable tied into emotion that it seems unlikely that atheists and theists would not be motivated in their movements towards and away from. At least, that is the way I see minds at work. — Bitter Crank

The word emotion itself is derived from the same root as "motion." We are "moved" by passion. Without emotion, we'd have no motivation to do anything, mental or physical. I therefore have no problem accepting the illogic of emotion if it serves to motivate to a higher good.

I have a close friend who is devoutly Mormon, who actually claims to believe the ancient Israelites found their way to the Americas and are ancestors of the current day Native Americans. That belief is tame when compared to many of his other beliefs (like of an actual corporeal God who lives on an actual planet, pre-life, post-life, the permanent binding of families for all of eternity, etc.). Utter bat shit crazy by all objective standards, but I must admit, what a neighbor he would make. He and his 5 kids would cut your lawn, repair your fence, bring you food if sick, have a group of missionaries out at your house at the crack of dawn to help you move, and they'd never drink, smoke, or tell you to fuck off.

As I get older (not more mature, just more resigned), I tend to shrug off the objections I once had regarding the preposterousness of religion. It used to really bother me how people could shut off their minds to absurdity and actually follow these religions like sheep. Pragmatism seems to be an overriding concern of mine, and if believing in nonsense makes you a better person than you would otherwise be, then I'll help you down a big tall glass of nonsense.

The challenge then is for those of us who do not believe and are of little faith. Do we actually have the motivation of our religious brethren to do the good acts they do? I certainly try, but I can't say that I have their sense of urgency and absolute commitment.

Punishment in general has weak deterrence value. — Bitter Crank

I generally agree, and I think this whole deterrence argument is a red herring. It's simply not the real basis provided by conservatives for the death penalty. The suggestion is that the right refuses to consider the overwhelming evidence showing that the death penalty is not associated with fewer murders and they just keep insisting over and over that it works. The truth, which is plain to see, is that the right doesn't care whether the death penalty reduces the murder rate. The reason is related to just deserts, plain and simple.

The right does not associate itself with consequentialist ethics, but generally adopts deontological and Biblically based theories. This weighing of happiness or whatnot is not a conservative doctrine, so I don't think the arguments in this thread suggesting otherwise hold much water.

And despite the myriad of ways that society has demolished creative philosophical thought, the author of that article has been able to transcend it all and still create insightful philosophical musings about the failed philosophical state of the world. It is refreshing to see that the inherently philosophical mind of man perseveres even in the most trying times.

don't doubt that the right's beliefs stand on "principles," only that many of said principles are ill-founded, and not as unified as you seem to think. — Arkady

No doubt that pragmatics play a role in every political ideology and there are few true ideologues anywhere, but to the general proposition that the right is less principled than the left, I don't think it holds. The general thought by the left of those on the right is that they are either (1) wealthy and greedy and only trying to create policies that protect their advantaged state, or (2) poor and stupid and have been duped by the #1s into supporting policies that are against their interests.

It's no more logical to criticize a poor conservative for voting against his interests than it is to criticize a rich liberal for voting against his interests. In either case, the vote is being cast because the person thinks it's the right thing to do, not because it may or may not put more money in his pocketbook (assuming he's a guy with a pocketbook).

I understand that there is skepticism in some quarters about climatologists' ability to predict climate or to reconstruct past climates, — Arkady

That is the general criticism of the right, along with the view that the current measurements encompass a fairly small window of time. Anyway, I'm not getting dragged into an anti-global warming debate here (as I'm far more equivocal than many of my right sided brothers), but I do think there is a real argument that must be made regarding the impact of global warming regulations in terms of how effective they'll be and how much economic damage they may cause. There must be some balancing test there, and there is a considerable ideological divide in the left's general view that the earth and its many creatures have inherent value that approaches the value of the average human being. The right would disagree and would happily see the death of all sorts of creatures and the destruction of all sorts of environments if it meant people could live better lives.

So, for instance, the Clean Air Act and regulations governing mercury levels in drinking water are not meant to protect humans? Who or what are they meant to protect? — Arkady

Or course I don't want poison in my water. The slippery slope works both ways: Should we deregulate to the point of immediate death or should we regulate to the point of putting everything under shrink wrap to the point of immediate death. The truth is the that the right and the left are on a sliding scale, with the right wanting less regulation and the left wanting more. The terms "right" and "left" describe the relative positions of location on a spectrum after all.

And even if the death penalty is desirable in principle, in practice it is riven by so many problems, both institutional, legal, and epistemological, that I don't believe that any reasonable person can defend its use. — Arkady

We all agree that the death penalty should be applied to the guilty. If we limit it to cases where there is positive DNA support, and admission of guilt, and videotaped evidence, would you support it? I think not. That is to say, your objection isn't fear you've got the wrong person, your objection is that it simply is counter to your sensibilities. In fact, if I removed your every objection (racial, economic, etc), I still think you'd object. You're standing behind rationalizations and pretense, and that is the objection of the right to your objections.

Deterrence has been cited many times as one reason for having a death penalty. And appealing to the consequences of the death penalty (i.e. deterrence, in this case) is definitely a consequentialist argument. — Arkady

Sure, if the typical person advocated the death penalty because he thought that someone else would not kill for fear of being killed, then he'd be a consequentialist. I really don't think that's why folks want the death penalty. I think they'd tell you that they don't care what happens as a consequence of the guy's death; they just think he deserves it. I will agree, though, that the typical person (right or left) hasn't sorted out the distinctions between consequentialism and deontology, but religious positions tend heavily toward deontology as a whole.

The God that believers claim to know is unknowable. I say, believe, then shut up about the object of belief. There is nothing to say. — Bitter Crank

This summarizes my belief really in a nutshell. In fact, it's my belief that any attempt to attribute substance to God in terms of what he is, how he looks, what he does, etc. is idolatry in the broadest sense of the definition. Just like we are prohibited from chiseling our gods from rocks and sticks, we are prohibited from attributing anything to God that specifies what he is and makes him subject to worship.

I'd argue that the first commandment tells us that there is but one God, the second that we shall not make a graven image of him (which I take most broadly as noted above), and the third that you shall not take his name in vain, which Orthodox Jews actually take to mean you shall not speak his never ever. For that reason, the actual name of God as written in the Torah is considered unpronounceable since no one has dared said his name since folks last spoke to him.

Leaving aside all the horseshit interpretation surrounding such biblical passages over the millennia, I take all this to mean just what you said: God is too great to even consider, so stop considering him and just sort of accept him in all his esteemed nebulosity.

So do come join me this Tuesday (that's my holy day) at the Hanover Church of Nebulosia. We speak not of that which cannot comprehend, but we have spaghetti dinners every Tuesday. Wednesday is Ostracism Day where we cast out certain members for violating our rules. We are a religion after all.

Ulcerative Colitis diagnosed at age 13. — ArguingWAristotleTiff

We are living parallel lives I tell you. My diagnosis was in my 30s, though. It's fully controlled for me, but I do enjoy the more frequent colonoscopies I get to have.

If humility were an illness, I'd be dead and gone, leaving the world an empty, useless place.

And, for the record, it was extremely difficult for me not to reclaim some malady related to over-developed genitalia or legendary sexual prowess, but because I liked the humility line so much, I went with that.

I don't think that those conservative precepts hang together without at least some tension. For instance, it is hard to maintain that one adheres to the "sanctity of human life" while also disregarding environmental regulations which, in part, are meant to protect human well-being, and while supporting an utterly dysfunctional justice system's ability to separate the sheep from the goats and execute only for-realz murderers, and not just poor blokes who have been railroaded by the system. — Arkady

My objective here isn't to argue that the right's position is accurate, only that it is much more principled than the left wants to recognize.

The right's skepticism of environmental regulations is based upon the proposition that our planet is neither fragile nor realistically knowable on a macro level. They do not believe that humans are destroying the planet by simply living on what God gave them to live on. They also believe it is hubris to suggest that we really know what is causing our weather patterns. Your comment that environmental regulations were created to protect humans is simply not what the right believes to be the case. If they did believe that, then only then would their position be inconsistent, but they don't.

No one wants to put the wrong guy to death. That is not in dispute. The general view of the right is that the guilty should be punished because they are responsible for what they've done. The resistance to criminal justice reform isn't rooted in a desire to continue to punish the wrong people, but it's a distrustful reaction to the left's efforts. What the right really thinks the left is trying to do is to make it impossible to convict the guilty by affording unreasonable restrictions to prosecution (and the death penalty in particular) under the guise of fairness. The left is seen as trying to find excuses for improper conduct (like poverty, upbringing, psychological issues), where the right sees the issue as very black and white. You have free will and, regardless of what your past was, and you therefore have the ability to avoid improper conduct.

Conservatives also cling to the quaint notion that the death penalty is a "deterrence," seemingly oblivious to the fact that the evidence for this notion is murky at best, and steps into a hornet's nest of consequentialist-oriented ethical conundrums. — Arkady

I don't think the right really cares if the death penalty deters future crime, nor do I think religious based morality is at all consequentialist. You mischaracterize the right here as a bunch of Utilitarians. They are far more Kantian in the outlook.

So, government can't be trusted to hand out food stamps, but it can manage trillion-dollar foreign adventures? Just a bit of tension in those beliefs, — Arkady

As I noted, the government's role is in protecting inalienable rights, not in granting rights. For that reason, the protection of the public from harm is the highest responsibility of government. It is doing what the right believes it must.

Food stamps are well beyond what the government ought to be doing, according to the right, and it violates principles related to self-autonomy and hard work.

You seem to want to point out how stupid the right's position is, which isn't really part of this discussion. The question is whether there is a way to extrapolate what the right's position would be in a novel situation. If there is, then there must be an underlying principle at play. If not, it's just a bunch of ad hoc positions cobbled together. My belief is that it is the former, even if you think the conclusions they reach are stupid.

The object of the discussion wasn't at all to convince you of the validity of the conservative position, but it was too offer the underlying principle for that position so that it's beliefs could be understood.

If, for example, you observed a South American tribe behaving in a peculiar way and all that behavior could be explained by reference to the underlying principles of its religion, it would make little difference if you thought their behavior stupid if all you were seeking was an understanding for why they were behaving like they were.

I suspect you'd find it equally irrelevant to this conversation if I announced that I found left leaning principles stupid.

I've not dismissed the myriad of problems an assertion of God brings and mine isn't an argument for why he should be accepted. I do think the other side has an equal problem though in their steadfast insistence that there really are certain rights. The planet, women, children, etc. all have sacred places in the mind of the left, but he can no better support his position than the person who inserts God as the explanation for why certain things are in fact sacred.

All of this is impenetrable to me, I'm afraid. — Thorongil

Push harder I always say. The payoff is worth the effort.

At the risk of repeating myself too many times, I will only emphasize once more that these terms OVERLAP. They are not totally mutually exclusive. They answer different questions but they are perfectly compatible with each other. — Thorongil

I can only say how I use and understand terms. I take the person who simply does not know whether God exists to be an agnostic. He throws his hands up and shrugs his shoulders when asked the question.

Do you think O.J. killed Nicole? You've got three choices: yes, no, or I don't know. If you say yes, you're a believer, no a non-believer, and if you just don't know, you're an agnostic. That's how I use the terms.

And that's all that this is about: belief. It's not about knowledge. That is, do you believe in God is the question. If you say you "know" God exists, you're simply trying to emphasize how firm your belief is, but I'd contend you can't know it in the traditional sense of the term "know" because your justification is not based upon a rational basis, but it's based upon faith.

Lemme fill you godless heathens in on the reasons behind conservative ideology:

The death penalty -- just desserts, reaping what you have sowed
Opposition to drugs -- sanctity of human body, work ethic, personal responsibility
Anti-abortion -- sanctity of human life
Strict law and order -- absolute right and wrong
Critical of unemployed -- idle hands, personal responsibility
Critical of government -- rights are inherent (endowed by the Creator), not given by, but only protected by, the government.
Guns -- self reliance, anti-government (as noted above)
Critical of environmental regulation -- human's right to dominion and control over the universe

The reasons can be summarized as being (if not directly religious) based upon absolute notions of right and wrong, the placement of humans as the central and dominant feature of the universe, and the demand that each infinitely sacred person contribute his fair share to the world and accept responsibility for his actions. Little sympathy is offered for those who fall short, largely because most failures are thought to arise from bad choices and the poor exercise of one's free will.

It is not at all coincidental that the right tends toward religion. It is also not coincidental that the right is referred to as conservative, as those holding firm to tradition and to the rules that have brought our society to where it is. The left is seen as dismantling the sacred traditions and casting society into ruin.

Before scoffing at the right for their clinging to religion, there really isn't much of a solution to the age old question of where to hang our most basic beliefs. We can demand that humans be treated a certain way because such are the dictates of morality, but without an absolute power out there establishing our authority, such are just emotionally stirring words. That is not to say that imposing a god as the support for our beliefs doesn't pose countless problems of its own. God: can't live with him, can't live without him.

I did a quick Google search and found that Mars Man/Oliver Carter was active in a number of forums. One of his close friends provided a good bit of detail about his life and the sort of person he was. You can read about it here: http://www.jref.com/forum/threads/rest-in-peace-mars-man.58490/

The strong agnostic knows that there is no God. — Thorongil

"Know" here is being used in a confusing way. Knowledge generally requires that the object of the knowledge be true, else it's not knowledge. If I am certain Joe Biden is President and claim to know he is, the fact that he's not the President makes the statement "I know Joe Biden is President" false. Truth is a condition of knowledge.

So, someone can only know there is no god if there is no god and he has a justified belief there is no god.

At any rate, if we change the word "knows" to "believes" in my quote of you above, I don't agree with the statement. You have defined "strong agnostic" how I would define "atheist." An agnostic does not know whether there is God or not because he's unable to arrive at an adequate justification for his belief one way or the other. An atheist does not know (he only believes such) there is a God unless you're either (1) stipulating there actually is no God and he believes it, or (2) you're equivocating with the term "know" and just using it to emphasize the strength of his belief (as in, e.g., "I just knew Clemson would beat Alabama, but it didn't work out that way").

If someone asked me how I dealt with very smart people that disagreed with me, I would respond by asking if they meant how I dealt with very smart people who disagreed with me. That would be my entire response.

Temerity is my humblest virtue.

I wasn't around when PF first began, but I must assume it began with less than what we have here. We at least have a base of good posters. These things take time, and I'm in no real hurry. Someone was talking about some sort of Google crawler that creeps around websites and moves them up or down the search page. We need to bait that thing over here.

My concern with PF really wasn't the ads. Every site I go to has ads, and if that were my concern, I'd be back to reading newspapers, which also have ads. My concern with PF is that I think I'm morally and intellectually superior to the folks running it. I also think I'm more reasonable and exercise better judgment than they do. For those reasons, I don't want my posts scrutinized by them, and I can't stomach someone inferior to me telling me how I ought to be doing things. Only Baden can tell me what to do.

I have thought of a way to market and it includes soliciting the 100s of philosophy departments across the English speaking world. The emails of every professor are available online as are the graduate students in some departments. That would require hours of work, but it could be completed in a few days. A catchy email topic might get opened by maybe a few percent of the people who get it, a smaller number will click on our link, and then we'll get a few dozen new people right off the bat. They'll then bring their friends over, and we'll be huge I tell you.

The other way is to join other sites and to include our link there for people to check out. That idea worked fairly well at bringing folks over from PF.

I'd also suggest putting fliers on mailboxes. I'll do my cul de sac and see what happens.

So, get to work guys. I'm the idea man, not the do it man.

If the concern is that the level of discussion is too high and that makes some uncomfortable, I would be willing to bring the level of discussion to a lower level. I'll help out as best I can.

I do think some bad posts are helpful to morale. They create a feeding frenzy and some bonding. Maybe Baden can pretend to be a 17 year old girl whose hotness keeps causing her moral dilemmas. I'd like that. If he'll accept the challenge, I'll pretend to be an equally hot, yet eyeless young woman. I mean how unfair is that? You're hot as all get out, but you can't even see yourself. This should work well.

What's the story on the murdering of the cat? I heard tale of it, but it was never explained to me.

Gettier problem. Theories of knowledge are in flux at present. The problem is central to philosophy of mind. — Mongrel

Your epiphany was that truth was an object of knowledge, and my response was that your epiphany was what was already traditionally accepted.

If actuality is a dream, all the parts still have to interrelate — Mongrel

If actuality is a dream, all the parts still have to interrelate. — Mongrel

Unless I can dream up an example where they don't.

No, it's not correspondence. I'm saying truth is the object of knowledge (or potentially the object of it) as opposed to a property of statements. — Mongrel

If your argument is epistemological, setting out what knowledge is, it's generally (although certainly not universally) accepted that knowledge is a justified true belief. That being the case, it's generally accepted that truth is an element of knowledge.

Actuality is the world I inhabit (as opposed to some other possible world). Apriori, all the parts of this world have to relate to one another in some way, so actuality is, in a sense, all there is from beginning to end. — Mongrel

I don't know if it's a priori that all parts of the world must interrelate unless you are referring to the world in an external sense. Dreams need not interrelate with one another, and I don't see why it's necessary that actuality not simply be a dream. I'll acknowledge that we intuitively believe the rock we perceive is "out there," but that's not necessarily true nor is it universally accepted as true.

If you want to talk about what happens then talk about what happens. — Michael

"What happens" is synonymous with "what the truth is." If you tell me what happened and tell you that something else actually happened, then our dispute is over what happened, which is a dispute over the truth.

What's wrong with "Truth is actuality?" Why doesn't this work? — Mongrel

That's a restatement of the correspondence theory of truth. It's discussed here in detail, with all the various arguments for and against: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-correspondence/#5

In your formulation, you will need to define "actuality," which you've equated to truth. Is it something as it is, unmediated by the perceiver, and what would that look like?

Just a little background on these rightwing welfare queens and how they leech off taxpayers — Landru Guide Us

Is your objective simply to point out the hypocrisy of those who claim to be conservatives by showing that they receive the same sort of government subsidies they condemn when received by those on the left? While I get that you wish to present your position in the most mocking and inflammatory way possible, when logically considered, all that you're really doing is demanding consistency. That would mean that you would be perfectly satisfied if the government ceased providing any subsides to anyone.

That being the case, I'll just assume you're a rightwing conservative, but just a bit disillusioned by those who claim to be in your camp because they too accept government handouts when it's to their benefit. The solution (and I think this would work for both of us) is that these nut jobs should not be considered rightwing, but should instead better be understood to be what they really are: liberal wolves in conservative lamb clothing.

Later on, I found that the blue jeans costume fit well in working class anarchist / socialist circles too -- well, maybe not the chaps without blue jeans underneath. — Bitter Crank

If you are the sort who spends considerable time creating the perfect "I don't care" look, then you fall squarely in the gay camp (but could also be metro). If you truly don't care but wear what you must in order to avoid harassment, then you're hetero. If you are just now finding out that you are in fact hetero and have been going about things the wrong way all these years, I expect you'll be feeling a certain amount of embarrassment, but who among us hasn't committed some sort of faux pas?.