it's interesting how the definition of tact you quote is almost the opposite of what Winston Churchill describes. I guess there is a time for snark (churchill's tact), but i think the need for it often gets overstated by modern people...

I can tell from your disposition as well as the dismissal of his meta-point, you clearly know where you're going to get your next meal from. Not everyone has that luxury. — Outlander

That's an interesting point, yet a somewhat irrelevant one to the discussion. Most (if not all) impoverished people still can see the distinction between a gold chain and a meal. People do at times kill each over trivial possessions, but clearly morality and rights do not often come into the mix when that happens.

However, i don't think there's a whole lot i can do if some folks question whether "transgendered rights" are human rights: seems pretty trivial and basic. Not worth my time, the socratic method isn't a solution, and yes im familiar with his method. Not that it should be recommended: history has it that he was killed by the state as a result.

Lets pull it out of the abstract and look at your own life. Lets say you stumble upon a person in a lone allyway. They mean you no harm but you notice they have a gold chain around their neck. Looking around, you realize you could get away with stealing it, the other person does not suspect you have a knife, and you could quickly end it. Do you need a law to tell you that murdering them for their gold chain is wrong? Or have you thought through it any particular time and concluded "That would be wrong".?

Rights are the algebra of ethics. X + 1 = 2 "Stealing from another innocent person is wrong" is the circumstance, the number, while the abstract is something like "X is the right way to treat a person". X is where we put the rights like "Letting them speak their mind, respecting property, not murdering them". We can of course go about our lives without thinking at all about what or why we do things, but if you've thought about them at all, you've essentially been considering rights.

Rights are therefore a form of morality. There is an idea that we should or should not treat people in fundamental ways. This does not require a law, it only requires a mind. — Philosophim

Wow! What a HORRIBLY irrelevant and convoluted mess! Where do you get the idea I have seen anything like that in my life? "Oh! Gold chain, me stupid, i'll kill person with gold chain in alleyway because we alone and nobody catch me! Me shmeagal, i want ring!"

Also, I'm pretty sure you are making up this "rights as part of morality algebra" stuff as well. It's not even coherent from a logical or historical perspective. You made this comment in your other thread:

Now if a person is trying to avoid bullying or disrespect, they should avoid poor grammar and unclear communication. — Philosophim

I now know that i should not expect to have a clear and coherent conversation with you.

Stealing from another innocent person is wrong — Philosophim

The constitution (which is where all rights are derived under american law...) says absolutely nothing about innocent persons, because the people who wrote the document knew that guilt an innocence were matters of local states/tribunals etc., the rights granted were only supposed to be a guarantee against a tyrannical government, and it really doesn't take a whole lot of thinking to understand that they haven't been very effective.

Not at all. Rights are the framework upon which we should want laws written. Even in a society without some authority figure over your head, rationally we would want to treat each other with the respect that we believe each person should be given for merely being a person. Laws are simply an authorized way to enforce behavior. Rights are a rational conclusion of what behavior we believe is appropriate towards others in the world. — Philosophim

but earlier you said that people don't have to do anything, so fallowing from that logic, how would rights make any sense on a practical day-to-day basis? Are you saying that rights are only higher ideals that we can imperfectly conform to?

Fair question. I posted a link in the OP, and TClark posted a link to generally what the transgender community is asking for in terms of rights. I am not talking about an individual, but the spokespeople who are asking for trans rights as laws that are documented and well known. That is why I put this under the political category and not ethics. Can an individual trans gendered person have a different view on what they want? Absolutely. But this is addressing the people pushing for lawful change who are claiming this is what all trans gender people deserve. — Philosophim

Okay, thanks for telling me about the link. However, it is still just one .com website, it's not some transgendered lobbying group that's asking for specific changes in the current laws. You can go on communicating how you'd like to, yet i would said "this website phrases transgender and transexual rights as such", and then discussing the rights exactly on the websites terms. Being clear and direct makes things easier to read.

Does everyone agree that if that bar is agreed upon, a person should not be administered cruel and unusual punishment? I would say yes — Philosophim

In this context, one would argue that with cruel and unusual punishments, that the cruelty itself sets a poor example and is morally wrong. If people accept that premise, wouldn't it then be easy to argue that any prison sentence whatsoever is cruel punishment? There's no "everyone agrees", yet "cruel punishment" is redundant because punishment is supposed to be cruel instead of rewarding.

In a rights based society, the government ultimately should answer to and serve the people it governs. Thus it is up to the citizens to uphold rights through laws and culture. Does a country and its citizens have to do this? No. People don't have to do anything. — Philosophim

So wouldn't you then agree with me when i say that rights are totally meaningless outside of their usage within a legal framework?

I personally like thinking and breaking things down philosophically, but this has nothing to do with "the purpose of philosophy". Maybe philosophy is part of what it means to be a human, for I don't think you will ever find a single purpose.

If the rights they are asking for fit in and do not contradict human rights, then yes, they are. But in the OP its clear that some of the things being asked as rights conflict with human rights. Therefore these are not human rights. — Philosophim

I'm really sick of this over-use of "they" i am seeing in talks about transgendered people here. It's very similar to how people in the U.S. talking about "the liberal agenda". Conflating a bunch of different things so they seem unified doesn't help clarify a philosophical discussion. Maybe you could use sources: tell me where "the transgendered people" are united in their demands. Give us a more concrete "they" rather than a nebulous one.

The above rights I've examined are within the context of trans gendered individuals claim that the requests they are making are human rights, which are generally based on the context of one individual not trying to violate the rights of another, or the agreed upon standard outcome when certain human rights do conflict. — Philosophim

what if "rights" themselves are not valid? If you're not willing to be more critical of rights, then i don't think you will get very far in this discussion, as the government wants rights to be inviolable, but all the evidence points to this not being the case. Let me give you a very clear example.

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

These are seen as "rights", that the legal system shall not do any of these things in reference to rulings in a criminal trial. However, a lot of people are in disagreement about what constitutes a cruel and unusual punishment. Some say the death penalty is cruel and unusual punishment, yet i think life in prison fits that description more so than an execution (depending on factors). A lot of people have been discussing the cruelty of solitary confinement over the years, and they have plenty of evidence to support their claims.

So if rights only apply in specific circumstances, and state authorities have the liberty to disagree about who has rights to what, how can rights be viewed as valid or meaningful in a philosophical sense? It seems to me they are only a legal mechanism, and nobody whatsoever is guaranteed rights.

i think you are making this one way too complicated: transgendered people are people, so if we are to talk about "human rights", than transgendered rights must also be human rights. "Transgendered person" is merely a sub-category of human.

However, I'm confused how anyone can have "a right", because wouldn't that entail an ability to do something without anyone else's capability to take away that ability? People are always talking about "the right to free speech", but people only have this right on the surface: the supreme court of the united states has decided repeatedly that speech is not an inviolable right, but only grants you a right if it feels appropriate and relevant to some legal case either you or another party brought to court.

Yes, but people like Trump can destabilise the global trade flows we rely for competitive growth at the stroke of a pen. Just in time supply lines have fine tuned production and consumerism. This can collapse like a house of cards. Causing stock market collapse and depression. — Punshhh

I don't think you are giving the stock market credit for the massive size and power it has: the net worth of the stock market is about 68 trillion dollars. Trillion...with a T. That's more than twice the debt of the U.S. government. The stock market itself is a force to be reckoned with.

And sure, a powerful person like Trump could theoretically do all sorts of horrible things, but i'd recommend that until you have a clear line of thought (you can confidently say that a particular executive action will cause a stock market crash because of a clear reason) about a particular thing he is looking to do, that you don't act on these kinds of existential fears.

Trump doesn't have a personal/political reason for crashing the entire stock market: he was causing miniature crashes with his tariff policies, but he must have known that it wouldn't cause any large scale harm to rich people's wealth...as he is one of them, and many of his friends are wealthy people.

Also, there's a lot in your quote that doesn't appear to have a clear meaning to it, I would maybe adjust your arguments so it's possible for us to read them and understand them:

Yes, but people like Trump can destabilise the global trade flows we rely for competitive growth at the stroke of a pen. Just in time supply lines have fine tuned production and consumerism.

i think there are two ways to look at this...

yes) NVIDIA's stock has been the poster child of A.I. stocks, and the hype around artificial intelligence inflated this one then deflated it because investors realized the price of it was obscenely high. For those of you who don't know, NVIDIA was the target of such massive hype because quality GPUs are one of the main components for A.I.

no) the dot-com bubble occurred during a radically different time period. It was pretty recent (if i had to guess, i'd say most of the people on here at least were alive during the dot-com bubble), but technologically speaking, the internet infrastructure was way behind what it is now. Now, we live in an era of constant network connection. This, in a way, has stabilized the stock market by making it much larger with much larger volumes of buyer activity. Much of the buyer/seller activity has also been replaced with artificial intelligence, so immediate, catastrophic events of total "SELL, SELL, SELL!" are harder to come by.

However, i think a bigger question to ask is how long can the stock market last? Will it get wiped out in a heartbeat, or will the destruction be slow over long periods of time? I don't think it can last forever, since scientists agree that the sun will no longer be able to support life on earth in the future, but all estimates exceed 1 billion years as to when this is going to happen.

What do you mean by transgenderism being a legal framework? It’s a ideological view that one can convert to a different gender. — Bob Ross

The examples you gave of playing sports with the opposite sex, going in women's bathrooms, and changing the sex on a drivers license are legal in the sense that these conventions already shape what we're allowed to do and not. It's actually certain feminists (who tend to be overwhelmingly liberal) who reject the idea of transwomen being in their bathrooms, or getting social services as women...these women tend to be insulted as "T.E.R.F"s by trans supporters (trans exclusionary radical feminists). With the sports, its always a case by case basis, and i personally am fine with that and trans women should not always expect to be able to compete with women...it's up to them. The bathroom issue is a liitle more dicey, because kicking them out of women's bathrooms means forcing them to use men's bathrooms, something people shouldnt do to each other. If i really have to take a crap, im running to whatever is there.

I dont get hostility towards putting something different on your drivers license or the drag shows: in the former, it just makes it even easier for the police to identify you (i.e., sally with a beard, or explicit trans labeling), and drag shows are only entertainment, i don't get why people get offended....

i only answered because you seemed to bothered by Old Testament atrocities, but of course, these things can explained any number of ways. In my experience, I've had to conclude it was just people writing it, as I've seen/heard no personal evidence of the God of Abraham.

Liberalism in America tends to want the social and legal acceptance of:

1. Sexually deviant, homosexual, and transgender behaviors and practices;
2. The treatment of people relative to what they want to be as opposed to what they are (e.g., gender affirmation, putting the preferred gender on driver’s licenses, allowing men to enter female bathrooms, allowing men to play in female sports, etc.);
3. No enforceable immigration policies;
4. Murdering of children in the womb;
Etc. — Bob Ross

1. i personally think it has to do with differences in terms of what rights people think they should have have...for example, lots of completely heterosexual liberals want people to freely practice "those deviant behaviors", but are indifferent as to whether or not they do it, it's a matter of what they should be allowed to do, rather than enforcing homosexuality...etc.

2. transgenderism in a legal framework, no unified agreement...not something i hear a lot of liberals advocating besides transexuals and their supporters

3. the "no enforcible immigration policies" is an extreme left-wing or anarchist point of view, it's not the kind of thing advocated by your typical liberal. Biden and Obama both intensely enforced immigration policy, the severe drop in mexican immigration we see now started at the end of the Biden administration...

I personally am against any kind of immigration enforcement, as i think people should be free to move where they need to, but "liberal" tends to mean accepting immigration enforcement but with a softer framing.

4. That's a fairly loaded way to discuss abortion, it's a purely moral framing as opposed to a consequentialist or ecnomic/social way of looking at the problem.

These are all differences in how people think policies should be shaped, none of them are really "agendas" unless you apply the same logic in reverse (i.e., opposition to gay marriage is a "conservative agenda"), it's a basic part of representative democracies for differences in opinion to exist.

I fully agree with the notion that you can't totally separate gender from sex. However, since we are looking for clarity instead of fear/confusion, i recommend avoiding certain popular scare terms:

When conjoined with liberal agendas, it becomes incredibly problematic — Bob Ross

Can you come up with examples of liberal agendas? There are liberals, there are agendas, but "liberal agenda" paints a unified conspiracy when political agendas always have to do with money and power.

Logic and reason is what clears the confusion. — Harry Hindu

That, and overtime applying the logic and reason to understanding politics/power was helpful to me personally, but that also gives you a sense that "we live in confusing times", with the fragmented and separated nature of human activities.

For example: You get falsely accused of some wrongoing at work, you get fired, you are blamed for losing your job, so you're not eligible for unemployment benefits; you don't have the money to pursue the matter legally. How do you get peace of mind in such a situation (without doing something illegal)? — baker

My previous was a little too depressing, as i was only thinking of it in terms of "getting justice". Things similar to what you have described have happened to me before.

While retaliation tends to be off the table, what does tend to help is finding a sympathetic ear, and looking for what can be learned from the situation. The saying "the best revenge is living well" speaks directly to situations where you want revenge but also realize acting on it just makes your life worse...

For example: You get falsely accused of some wrongoing at work, you get fired, you are blamed for losing your job, so you're not eligible for unemployment benefits; you don't have the money to pursue the matter legally. How do you get peace of mind in such a situation (without doing something illegal)? — baker

Well, it seems like in that kind of a situation (being accused of something falsely) means there is no legal recourse without some evidence of the business behaving illegally. The unfortunate reality is that alot of times people do not get punished for harming us...even though dishonest behavior can have long term disadvantages (for example, alienating people who could useful or comforting in the future)

there aren't any gaurantees you won't become jaded, it happens for all sorts of different reasons. I didn't answer your question because i don't understand what you want, i thought you were hinting at wanting to get justice.

Here's the thing: How do you cope with blatant injustice done to you, and you have no recourse for rectifying it? Without becoming cynical and jaded? — baker

You can't really dish out punishment without either committing some crime, or getting some collective approval that someone committed a wrong against you

and for my ethics, i just have to accept transgendered people the way they are, with their gender essentialism, until they fail to respect my preferences. We live in very confusing times.

Hence gender is not a social construct on the scale of society as a whole — Harry Hindu

To me this is correct, even though the political left usually refuses to see things this way as it would unravel their worldview. The midwest is different from more metropolitan areas of the U.S., yet even with those areas, there are still major differences of opinion. It is a large scale construct, but not in interpretation.

For example, when i said "guys like that", i wasn't referring to the masturbation thing, but a trend within my party going social environments to rate people on how much they get layed. Sometimes i would have to talk to people like that through association. The shame over masturbating is only something me and one of my later friends noticed about the internet masculinity preachers, but i coupled them just because the mindsets are very similar...you see "getting layed" as some sort of spiritual status that's a sign of how important you are.

In that respect all good philosophy is ‘self-help’ — Joshs

For me what is most admirable about him is not the ambiguous aspects, but the aspects the philosophers I most admire are in general agreement about, such as the meaning of concepts like eternal return and will to power. I can’t imagine a powerful philosophy which doesn't — Joshs

The part that makes it fun, at least for me, is the ambiguity. Otherwise, i wouldnt read his books themselves, but i would leave it up to some academic interpretation. Kaufman was a pretty good source for that among others, yet there's always room to make your own, even after all this time.

Would this be appealing to you? — Joshs

Of course, the source of my disagreement was praxis trying to argue that my take on Geneaology of morality was false, and that his edited version was correct. They both work IMO, even if criticisms like "Nietzsche was the prototype for nazi and fascist ideology" are mostly false. What i like about him is the ambiguity and multi-faceted dimension of his writing. I don't like the prospect of turning his writing into a self-help authority.

i think artificial intelligence could kill everyone like in the terminator series, but other than that it's an extension of the kinds of technology we already use (computers, for example, are like artificial intelligence). I also think we should be careful about believing we can fully remove the human element in artificial intelligence, or believe that it really can act on its own.

sure, but with preaching, it's always about what the person means: the Nietzsche morality he was using to replace christian thinking is pretty far from clear-cut.

i personally think N tried to avoid preaching simple morals, for that reason trying to "know the truth" about his ideas is almost impossible.

, i accept that and will let it stand because a much bigger part of his critique was slave moraliry (the inversion of master morality), because of how it relates to christianity, but it should be known to people reading this thread that Nietzsche phrased this issue very differently than we have, and it's up to them to read Geneology to interpret Nietzsche themselves.

Don't we actually have laws to not discriminate, as in treating people differently because of their sex? Then what is gender as an expectation of the sexes, if not discrimination? — Harry Hindu

that's an excellent point that gender itself is a form of sexism: however, the laws to discriminate only apply to jobs and services, and the discrimination has to be openly spoke. Any employer can refuse to hire a pregnant woman ("she may not be as useful as someone who isn't expecting"), but the employer can't tell them it has anything to do with them being a woman.

Transgenderism is like religion in many ways: It's a mass delusion and it makes people talk in non-sensical ways as they abandon all reason and logic in their discourse. — Harry Hindu

this very well may be the case, yet as you were basically arguing in the quote of yours i just used, the more normal ways of looking at gender are also religious mass delusions. For example, women have always been prized by their societies for their effeminate looks, yet now adays the beauty standard is so high for some people that it basically alienates everyone (women and men included). I think our extreme attachment to youthful looks and beauty also has negative side effects like encouraging pedophilia, which people are ironically too childish to talk openly about....

Also, outside of school age I've found the expectations people have about me "being a man" are pretty much trivial and non-existent. However, there's that domineering attitude that men are supposed to be regularly having sex with women and that masturbating is the sign of "a loser". Luckily I don't have to talk to make friends with guys like that anymore. "Toxic masculinity" is one of those things where men tend to weave their own webs of destruction through more brutal attitudes about themselves and others, and it has a lot in common with the extreme attachment towards youthfulness and effeminate beauty.

When I declare a communist/anarchist state I will call the public holidays by generic names such as 'festivity day x3827.5'. — unimportant

You should look into modern day anarchist culture, they've got their own holidays but they relate to anarchist history, not festivus

So you're advocating a progressive conservatism? I am very sympathetic, yet that's basically what gets achieved by clashes in ideology. The issue with conservative positions in general is that they often cannot be defended logically, the issue with liberal traditions is they only have the strength of science and rationality behind them, and the ideas of science are always subject to change.

It would seem then, with the clashes of irrationalitities, that one must ignore politics to the greatest extent they can, but I just speak for myself. I'm definitely supportive of your desire to discuss cultural idea, but count me out if it must be defended by some sort of institutional or bureaucratic reasoning. I've found in my life that the wisdom of authority can't be relied on in full.

Being sweet has nothing to do with gender. — Harry Hindu

Uh, im going to have cry fowl on this: when i was a teenager, i liked girls...so sometimes i would say stuff like "sweetheart" to them with sexual overtones. I realized later i sounded like "a creep", but the point is, my kinda grubby/masculine appearance is what made it look malicous. It doesn't carry the same overtones when a 40 yo woman says that to people affectionately, regardless of their sexual feelings.

The coding with is subtle in modern times, and is far from universal, but it does exist. Trans seems to be about personal preferences...

It's not even that interesting of a question, really. Anyone with eyes to see can tell that the teachings of Christ are completely incompatible with the Old Testament, and that the two should have never been conjoined in the way they have been. — Tzeentch

this is a pretty interesting point; i remember in christian school the logic was that "Jesus fulfilled the word of God", but seems pretty empty, no? What the hell does that even mean? In 6th grade, at a 7th day adventist school, i was confused about how enternal hellfire could be a just way to punish the wicked. They were nice enough that they set up a meeting for me with the preacher so I could talk to him, and he could clarify what their religion. The preacher said it was the Catholics who believed in that, but THEY believed that the hellbound are currently in some sort of holding pattern until the next return of Christ, and the wicked would simply be obliterated while the fallowers would join God in heaven. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are simply too nonsensical for me to take them seriously.

but I am finding the choices and actions God makes in the Old Testament to be littered with blatant atrocities. I would like to get other peoples' opinions on it. — Bob Ross

it's really hard to know what went through the minds of people who wrote ancient documents, but the old testament was likely part of some ruling class's doctrine on why they are superior; one part of the old testament that supports this is how Lot's daughters got him drunk in a cave and had sex with him to continue the bloodline of their family. It's a blatant appeal to lineage.

there are of course logically consistent and different theories:

1. The existence of a jealous, controlling, and evil God. Whether or not this makes sense is entirely up to you, it's not exactly a comforting belief in my opinion.

2. The people who wrote the old testament were simply crazy and delusional.

3. The documents representing the "Old Testament" are not being translated properly, and we impose our modern ideas and agendas on these ancient people. Lots of people talk about the bible as it is truth, but i have little sense of what the sources are. I think translation error is pretty unlikely because jewish people have been passing down these ideas as traditions. Maybe things got distorted along the way for selfish purposes.

I think it has to be a combination of my theory on it being used as part of a social control scheme and number 2#.

The old role of myth making also wasn't to speak the truth bluntly, but people seem to have a need to condense things into narratives. If you have observed children, you'll see that they have spontaneous imaginations: when humanity was early, they just didn't have access to the type of accumulated knowledge we have today, so they stayed more childlike in terms of belief and explanation.

I still think it's naive and idealistic to think a person of low status could correctly measure or evaluate the words and actions of a person of high status. — baker

the biggest issue is not that you are wrong, but the same can be said in reverse. For example, the racist trope about african americans being lazy came into being because the latter would be tired after working all day, and white people thought that this was a sign of their inherent laziness. Where great distance exists between two people, the ability to properly judge them diminishes. If a low status person attended a university, it could happen that they have all the tools they need to judge the words and actions of other people, but this of course is never guaranteed....it could be an awful university, it could be that the lower status person will feel too alienated by the culture and curriculum to get very far, yet i don't see how someone could get through there life without being open to different possibilities...

I still think it's naive and idealistic to think a person of low status could correctly measure or evaluate the words and actions of a person of high status. It's naive and idealistic to think that the same measurments apply to everyone, regardless of status. — baker

i think you're conflating and assuming way too much. Who is the ultimate judge of "correct"? Here's a John Cage quote to further elaborate on what i'm saying:

“A ‘mistake’ is beside the point, for once anything happens it authentically is."

It should be noted that John Cage largely got famous for making very weird and unconventional music, some of it isn't even "music" in the technical aspect. His interest was re-writing the classical music standards: you can complain that a person of "lower status" couldn't have done what he did, but the truth is that we are creative animals, and what we do is what we do: it doesn't apply to a standard until we use them. I get you feel anguished that double standards exist, yet i do not need to internalize them, nor do i need to except some horribly slavish existence. Some will, some people will have it so bad they can't think of their life in any other way, but you don't need to bring every other person into it. It's very, very naive to think the rich and powerful are always happy.

You are talking about status...but what type of status are you talking about? People apply measurements, but the measurements themselves have absolutely no objective value. I personally don't want to go down your train of thought of trying to impose an objective truth, to me that's really depressing, because i can no longer judge a situation for myself. I can't go through my life using the opinions of others as a reference ONLY, while assuming that i can't know or judge at all. That's pretty viciously masochistic yet seemingly common.

Yes, that's physics getting in the way of free will. I cannot get out of this jail because physics compels me to stay here. Nobody can do everything they want to. — noAxioms

or in other words, you're in a state of relative inertia: you know getting out would be hard, you know the charge isn't that severe (and don't want the extra punishment), so you sit there until someone says you can go. It's mild fear mixed with resignation.

However, in the other scenario among many, energy and angst compel you to get out because you see an opening, which is arguably still not anything you have control over...

It does amazing things with anything related to computers...yet sometimes it makes poor guesses about what should work in a certain situation.

for example (just sharing my experiences), it's excellent for verifying claims from random internet users (it immediately calls out their BS) and helping you write computer programs, but pretty aweful at helping with musical creativity, and i've gotten mixed results with organizing wildlife information. With text, it's easy for it, but with photos, it still struggles a little.

guard against confabulation by asking for sources and checking them. — Banno

yes, and overtime you can kinda intuit accuracy of what it's telling you based on subject matter and topic. For example, it's pretty much 100% accurate if you are asking it for common knowledge in popular subjects, but if the subject is more obscure, or relies more on analogue information, then it's much more likely to fail.

i can't comment on what's best for anyone else here, but i find the most productive way to use it is using it for very specific purposes, rather than generating a whole body of thought...like if you need to verify something you or someone else is saying, that is appropriate, but don't use it to write an essay as that could easily backfire (unless it's an experiment). You can also use it reasonably as creative innovation, even if it never gets off the ground.