Y'all were supposed to remove Trump from office after impeachment (it would have been an important lesson and catharsis for America and the world, and would have proven quality of democracy itself).

I'm left to wonder what upshot might remain...

What about the post-Trump Republican party?

Trump billed himself as the pied-piper that was going to drain the rat-swamped capitol for us...

Is there any chance that some of the republican rats who bent over so pathetically (Lindsey et al) will now sing and dance themselves out of town as Trump takes his un-paid leave?

Heaven forbid that Trump absconds with our sweet, pure and innocent children like Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz...

(personally I cant wait until Lindsey starts insulting Trump again (once his Stockholm subsides), because it's instantly going to be thrown back in his face. "Hey, you remember that time that you shredded your own dignity to be an attention hungry cock-holster for Trump?").

And you still couldn't take the senate... Dems...

I wonder if the DNC had allowed Bernie (the popular one) to actually run against Trump, that we wouldn't now be tucking in to 4 years of lackadaisical lame-duck geriatric centrism, during a time when aggressive economic and political changes are so sorely needed...

God save the rich...

Mental phenomena aside, one of the keys to understanding the epistemic frame of reference that we try to take when labelling emergent phenomena is the scale of time and space involved. For instance, the duration of the phenomena (and the sensory recording required to perceive it) can easily constrain whether and to what extent it is observable in the first place; fast phenomena are hard to work with, and slow phenomena even more so. Furthermore, by arbitrarily defining something as "emergent" because it is self-sustaining or long-lasting, we're simply brushing aside potentially immeasurable complexity that occurs on time scales too quick or slow for us to notice or care about.

Spatial scale causes similar problems: Browning motion might be an emergent rule or heuristic that we can derive by looking at a system at the molecular scale, but zooming out we might be able to instead derive something like the ideal-gas law (the fact that pressure and temperature tends to average out when a gas contained).

... One molecule of hydrogen doesn't do much when it is alone. A few million hydrogen molecules don't do much either... But if we get like... an octo-dectillion of them... all together within a certain radius, their sheer cumulative gravitational pulls will cause them to begin clustering at their centre of mass...Wait long enough, and once they get close enough together, they start heating up, until eventually the heat and pressure is so great that they start fusing into heavier atoms, while releasing tons of photons/radiation.

If we keep adding more mass, gravity keeps rising, and we eventually get a black hole... (I wonder what happens if we over-feed a black hole...)

It would be very hard, if only given the details of how a single atom of hydrogen behaves, to deduce what would happen if you get enough of them together (stars or black-holes). Unless we're capable of making detections/sensory observations over the scales required to observe these phenomenon, we could likely never have anticipated them. Although vast time and scale changes are not required for emergent phenomenon to exist (certain complex systems are especially good at giving rise to emergence, where others take eons), the human scale of time and space is one of the primary factors that boot-straps our ability to make observations (and therefore boot-straps our ability to make inferences about the emergent phenomenon we are confronted with).

In other words, pressure and temperature are either irrelevant inconsistent, or inaccessible if you're a quark or a solar system. The way/length that the observation is carried out inexorably shapes and constrains how we then define and interact with it.

best out of 7 match — Hanover

:rofl:

I'm definitely willing to accept that America needs at least a best of 7 to really get firing on all stupid.

I do like his strategy of trying to get them to stop the counting there, especially if the counting is not putting tick marks next to his name. — Hanover

that's the fairest thing to do. — Hanover

So... Like...

Cheat until it's become clear you have lost, and then try to call a mulligan cause fairness?

Complaining and conspiracy theories are the bread and butter this President was raised and finished on...

We're about to endure weeks and months of Trump et al, whining their butt-holes bloody about how unfair it is that they lost the election...

The right has been accusing the left of being over-sensitive snowflakes who cannot accept reality for the last decade. It's going to become clear that it was projection all along...

What's worse, the crime of bribery or the fact that the media is covering it up (yet we still somehow all know about it)...?

Didn't trump try and make bribery legal back in 2017?

Didn't a recent report also find that "over 200 companies patronized Trump properties while receiving benefits from his administration?".

Granted, both Trump and Biden are corrupt. Wouldn't you agree that Trump is the more belligerent offender? And if so, why vote for Trump?

Trump riffing live at a rally...

I'm just gonna watch it dispassionately to purge what remains of my political emotions, in preparation for the circus of the coming weeks.

Good luck and god speed to all.

1. If the apostles were willing to be martyred for the sake of Christ, then they must have had intense belief.
2. Intense belief must be backed by equally sufficient evidence.
3. The apostles were willing to be martyred for the sake of Christ.
4. Therefore, the apostles must have had sufficient evidence for their intense belief. (MP 1,3) — Josh Vasquez

Comon now, even just a passing whiff of this argument reveals its stink:

"Intense belief must be backed by equally sufficient evidence"...

Setting aside the fact that people can hold intense beliefs without "sufficient" evidence whatsoever, our individual assessments of what constitutes sufficiency are often in disagreement.

For example, if someone thinks they see Jesus in a piece of toast, they might label the toast as sufficient evidence, whereas another person might think they're simply mistaken or dumb.

And what of the Judas exception? Judas clearly was not willing to be martyred for Jesus, and presumably he had access to the same evidence as the other apostles, yet lacked the same conviction?

And for that matter, why didn't they show their sufficient evidence to the Roman authority? Upon confronting Jesus and his sufficient evidence, should Pontius Pilate not have been willing to be martyred for him?

Why could that be?

On second thought, it's totally explicable:

Both of them are spineless attention-seeking homunculi who will do, say, and dance through any feces-based ritual in pursuit of popularity with the gaping masses...

The words right out of my mouth...

Watching or even just listening to either of them is inexplicably grating.

Am I wrong to wonder if Trump even has Covid to begin with? Didn't we only really get information stating "Trump tested positive for Covid"? How many Covid tests per day does he take and how many of them are expected to be false positives? Such an event would be all it takes to give Trump the notion...

Trump's tried and tested tactic of obfuscating one scandal with a new unrelated stunt (distraction) is basically his only manoeuvre, and the timing after the debate is just too convenient. Now he can say that he suffered alongside the America people, and then turn around and downplay "the China virus" because he survived it. The fact that he seems to only have spent a couple days in the hospital (and was being chauffeured around by secret service all the while) makes me additionally suspicious. (I also wondered whether or nor he caught it back in March and just concealed the fact, as many would have advised). That would explain why he has been so fearless regarding masks.

I know I'm being a dick for insinuating that Trump is a liar and the the current White-House Administration are more than happy to chew their own lips off about this, but can we so easily and quickly forget the sheer volume of lies and bull-shit of the last 4 years?

Trump's nasty and often semi-coherent rambling is practically unchallenged, and Biden is mostly just vacillating between silence, anger, and saying "here's the deal" or "look". I had to turn it off rather than watch Biden sleep through the thorough gumming Trump has mustered.

It's a halfwit against a nitwit, and one of them is going to be president.

Here's the deal...

We're fucked...

oh my god

I.Q doesn't cause intelligent behaviour, intelligent behaviour is itself what I.Q tries to measure.

In other words, I.Q is a measurement of behaviour.

Having a large vocabulary, the ability to perform mental-spatial reasoning, and the ability to recognize patterns are examples of faculties that support "high IQ behaviour" (actions that will lead to a high score on an I.Q test).

That just makes no sense. Police arrest people who are suspected of committing crimes. The courts determine the sentence. It’s the consequence of breaking the law that’s the deterrent. Though it obviously is not the most successful theory.

What exactly do you mean by “ higher police performance” and how would it reduce crime? — Brett

To be specific, it's the fear of getting caught. We don't need to analyze how police reduce crime so long as we agree that's one of their intended functions (especially if you're willing to say that without police crime would rise). If we agree on that, then we also agree that the more effective police become, the less crime there will be, and the fewer police we will require to maintain some acceptable low amount of crime.

It's not a formal argument (more like an interesting comment), but it does get at the idea that "more police" is of questionable benefit.

What exactly do you mean by “ higher police performance” and how would it reduce crime? — Brett

If police didn't have a reputation as unfeeling thugs in the so-called "high-crime communities" that they so-love to patrol, they might have a reasonable chance of helping to lead change rather than just leading the inter-generational destruction of poor communities.

Here's a gif of some cops interacting with children in a particular community:



This is the ideal pastime of police. He clearly feels safe enough to let his guard down; crime must be low. He could force the kids to sled elsewhere (it's a public street after-all), but instead he lets it and them slide because the letter of the law is not the intent of the law, and he's human. The children here are given a chance to interact with police in a way that is completely non-oppressive. These kids must view this cop as a good person; to be respected or even loved; not to be feared and loathed: not the enemy. The mere presence of this officer fulfills his patrol duty in a constructive way (as opposed to the destructive methods too many PD's have standardized).

Positive police presence and community interaction/partnership is the world I want to live in, but it's evidently not a feasible goal unless we live in the heart of upper-middle Suberbia. By "performance", I mean the holistic effect that police behaviour has on the communities they are meant to serve and protect.

The benefits of trust-building shouldn't be underestimated (especially when it comes to the ability of police to actually catch the real bad guys when working in communities that have such severe distrust of them.

it is quite odd, don't you think, that police officers aren't given the same leeway in conduct? — TheMadFool

Are police given less leeway?

Most of the anti-brutality protests which have happened in the last decade began with a reaction to police getting away with murder. The cop who killed George Floyd (through negligence, brutality, or worse) seemed to be given too much leeway.

Regarding "heat of the moment" conduct, this is what is called a "mitigating circumstance" (a factor that judges consider when deciding appropriate sentencing), but it's not always a useful or valid defence. For example, if you initiate or escalate a confrontation prior to accidentally killing someone during its course, you could still be culpable for the death on those grounds (if only as criminal negligence leading to death). Negligently heating up the situation can be just as bad as the split second accident that directly caused death or injury.

We do understand that police-work isn't easy, and that accidents do happen, but we still expect basic competence. When genuine (read: reasonable) accidents happen, I don't think we should be necessarily criminalizing them, but we certainly need to establish accountability and to act accordingly. Error-prone police must be fired (something that is easier said than done). If a doctor makes an egregious mistake, we don't necessarily assumes they had criminal or malicious intent, but there is still a good chance the doctor loses their license due to incompetence or negligence. The nature and context of the mistake does also matter: mistakes that cannot be prevented by showing reasonable diligence can be more easily forgiven (mistakes that are less reasonably foreseeable or avoidable).

Some mistakes are harder to forgive, and which cross the line into felonious neglect of duty. When doctors make mistakes, it's called "malpractice", and when those mistakes meet some standard of negligence (and when harm occurred as a result) malpractice can also be a criminal offence (typically "manslaughter" is the term used for criminal accidental killing). Average people might not know the basic protocols for conducting safe surgery or safely prescribing new medicines, but these are things we expect doctors to know, and we hold doctors to that relevant standard. Being able to restrain someone without slaughtering them is one of the basic competencies that we ought to hold as a reasonable standard for police conduct. The ability to remain calm and de-escalate non-violent situations in the first place seems like an even more pertinent competency that should be expected of police.

As it stands, police are free to escalate when and where they see fit, and unless it's filmed and protested, they seem to do it with a high degree of impunity. One way of phrasing the very purpose of these recent protests is "police are currently given too much leeway".

When we routinely forgive and make our peace with other people for doing/saying things in the heat of the moment on the grounds that extreme agitation/excitement clouds people's judgement — TheMadFool

We don't always forgive them. It often depends on the crime and the circumstances. Whether or not the transgressing behaviour stems mainly from the nature of the person, or from the circumstantial forces they were placed in, is one of the chief considerations that we make when deciding how to administer rebuke or punishment.

Sorry for not attending the thread more quickly, but I have been busy of late (and I also wanted to leave time for more input).

I disagree that that is their purpose, strictly speaking. Their purpose is to enforce the law, regardless of whether or not those laws are just. A wild example would be if it was the law that police had to beat up civilians — Pinprick

Enforcing the law is the instrument by which they fulfill their purpose, which is the protection and service of the nation and its people, (visa The Constitution). Police swear oaths to the constitution when they enter into service. You're right that in practice police are enforcing laws, but ideally (ideologically, constitutionally) the laws they enforce service the constitution, which services the people. The best example would be police protecting someone's right to protest (the gravity of failure in this is may precipitate a constitutional crisis).

Sure, there’s risk involved in every profession. But what you seem to be proposing is for the safety requirements to be scaled back, so that the job is less safe. I’ve never seen this done, and I’m not sure how that type of action could be justified. Especially if the employer has previously shown that the previous safety requirements were effective. — Pinprick

I'm not advocating for more danger for police in a vacuum; the issue is complicated. There is no fathomable limit to the amount of measures police could take to increase their safety, and at some point, it can only come at the expense of civilian safety. There are also diminishing safety returns (and sometimes negative returns) when police use extraordinary and violent measures to jealously protect their own safety. The protests we're seeing right now are happening almost precisely because police jealously place their own safety above all else (and they are predictably making it worse by doubling down on brutality).

If the nature of current laws and police institutions lead to an outcome where thug-like enforcers freely instigate potentially life threatening altercations with innocent civilians. If broad cultural, legal, and institutional reform is required for us to have a situation where police don't need to wear jackboots, then that's what we must do. The American punitive (in)Justice system is a stupendous waste of life to begin with. De-funding those police departments which fuel the entire industry with fresh meat and blood seems like an excellent starting place to prepare for change. Dissolution and reconstruction if necessary says I.

I think you’re generalizing or misunderstanding what I mean. I’m not saying police should be more violent, just that they shouldn’t be less safe, or have less safety. — Pinprick

(I intended to leave a footnote clarifying that I was not meaning to conflate your own position with my rebukes of the list of reasons you provided, just looking to flesh out my own position against the full spectrum of possible arguments).

I agree with you that police shouldn't be less safe, but if we live in a world where we can only have very safe police at the expense of risk to civilians, then we should be limiting police-work to only the most essential functions. The point at which increased police safety disproportionately reduces safety for civilians seems well passed, and that's something we must change. The fact that police and civilian safety are pitted so at odds from the get-go is a symptom or effect of more deeply seeded problems in the culture and institution itself (the laws and regulations which guide and bind police, the culture that galvanizes them and upon which they operate, and the culture of mutual fear and resentment between police and civilians in general). I would say it's a classic freedom Vs security dilemma, but it's not even that, it's security vs security, and in some cases life vs life.

Again, I’m not justifying brutality, I’m justifying safety. I would argue that police brutality doesn’t make police officers more safe, it makes them less safe. — Pinprick

100% agree.

The aforementioned and well entrenched problems that I have mentioned (those that give rise to brutality, and those that brutality itself incites) are what give me the most pause regarding the subject of "change". Short of systemic reform, I don't see us reaching escape velocity from the black-hole that vast swaths of American police culture has become.

I agree as well, but wanted to add that often police officers are ex-military. I’m guessing military training is light on compassion and patience, so even if police training incorporated this into its training the act of unlearning the military training is difficult. Also, I think both military and law enforcement professions attract a certain type of personality; those who want authority and/or control. This type of personality seems incompatible with compassion and patience in general. — Pinprick

I agree. For relatively low pay for the amount of stress being dealt with, I would imagine that the people who thrive the most as police officers are those who get a kick out of it (what kind of kick is the rub; do they want to be heroes or do they just want to have power?) Those police bringing in large numbers of bad-guys are probably well favored in their internal hierarchy as well. This is a pretty big problem if we want to have a police force we can be proud of.

And the racism... It's almost as if power-tripping police know that black people are less likely to have a real lawyer (not the 5 minute McAttorney™ their constitutional right pays for), or that because black people have genuine cause for alarm when approached by police, they may be more likely to make any kind of force-justifying action or statement. It's also as if many of them seem to think that there will be no consequences for their behavior; that broader society just won't care enough to hold them accountable (the outwardly racist America of yesterday is still too close for comfort in too many precincts, but evidently the times are a changin'). Some police and politicians worry about criminals slipping through the cracks in their machine, but what about the innocent lives that fall into it? In some geographies, these cracks have become chasms.

Inaction seems to now be a non-option. There's no camera-free rug left under which America's (and beyond) remaining bull-shit can be swept. I think that police brutality and crime in general are symptoms of wider economic and social realities that unaddressed will generate unrest to the point of revolution. We either start here or eventually we're in for a bit of a fall.

I get the impression that no such guidelines/protocols exist and the decision to use force or not and the decision how much force to use is left to the individual cop's discretion. Such a state of affairs inevitably leads to police-related events people will view as excessive use of force or police brutality. Can we blame a person who's authorized to use force but not given the specifics on when and how much force to use if that person does something we feel is wrong?

I guess what I'm getting at is that the blame for police brutality doesn't fall only on individual cops who get involved in so-called police brutality but also on the system that makes cops work without clear-cut guidelines that would help them make good decisions. — TheMadFool

I agree, it's a broad failure of many parts within the system. Police are supposedly trained on how to escalate and de-escalate, but we're seeing the quality of that training in the news of late. Patience and compassion seem to be entirely lacking; whether they're not paid well enough for patience, or are just too jaded to have compassion, I can't say...

1. Because if police officers were not well protected, then their job would be more risky. This would have the effect of more cops being wounded or killed in action, which would lead to there being fewer cops. Fewer cops means fewer people to protect the citizens, which results in more crime — Pinprick

Police safety for utility is the traditional argument used, but it defeats the main purpose of police in the first place, which is to protect civilians from criminals. We're just trading one thug for another.

2. Labor laws require employers to provide the safest environment possible for their employees or risk being sued for unsafe work conditions. — Pinprick

There are limits to how much safety is reasonable to expect in a given occupation. Undertaking certain actions or professions can, legally speaking, amount to an automatic liability waver (unless negligence of the employer can be shown). That said, this is why some jobs pay more than others.

3. If cops were being harmed or killed on a regular basis, no one would even want to be a cop. Which leads to the same issues in 1. — Pinprick

Now we're entering catch-22 levels of positive-feedback-loop territory:

>Police become more violent in order to protect their own safety
>Police violence against civilians inspires attacks on the safety of police
>Police become more violent in order to protect their own safety

4. Because their responsibility to the public they serve is greater than the responsibility of the average citizen. Therefore they are more important to society. — Pinprick

This is one of those rare informal fallacies called an "Ouroboros", which is my favorite kind of fallacy! (my avatar is an ouroboros, a snake devouring its own tail).

In fallacy terms, it's an argument or action whose conclusion negates one or more of its own premises or purposes. In this case, because their responsibility to the public is controverted by the actions they take to protect their safety (brutality), they negate it as a possible justification for said violence. It's not even means justifying ends; it's means justifying means, ends be damned.

I think your suggestion makes sense. I would add to the list more psychological testing, counseling, etc. Not just when a specific incident occurs, like when an officer shoots someone, but as part of their normal training. Of course some actual mental health requirements would be needed as well. Also fair prosecution for those officers that are corrupt, racist, etc. Victims deserve to feel that justice has been served. If not, it undermines their respect and trust for authority, and they may very well feel forced to seek justice on their own terms, vigilante style. Which would only increase crime, and reinforce negative stereotypes. — Pinprick

If a police officer shoots and kills someone in the line of duty, for whatever reason (even with the best of reasons), they should be rotated out of active beat-work for mental health reasons alone.

One of the barriers to tight regulation of police is the existence of police unions...

I'm not an expert on unions, but so far as I know they're sometimes necessary bargaining tools that collectives of employees use to negotiate fair compensation (they're not inherently bad). They don't exist across all industries though, not just because unionizing is too hard in some professions, or because some companies are too aggressively anti-union (walmart...), but also because in some industries the workers are compensated and treated fairly by their employers (the employees have no need for a union). What does it say about the career of "police" if extant police believe so strongly in their workers union? In the worst case, unions become bloated and complacent bureaucracies that also eventually begin to merely service their own existence (much like the major political parties of America).

America needs answers to many of these questions and issues. And we need persuasive rebukes to the possible reasons you have cited. The legal, social, and economic complexities of the reform work that has been cut out are enormous, and I'm quite worried about what's going to happen if we don't soon figure something out.

the job of the police is to put themselves out of a job. Their violence sure as hell doesn't do that. — StreetlightX

This is absolutely right. High police performance should reduce crime, and reduced crime should result in fewer needed police.

I don't know how representative this is, but much has been said in my province on the subject of police "quotas". Apparently, given crime forecasts, police essentially had "quotas" to perform a certain number of traffic stops or street checks (or to file a certain number of criminal reports), lest the budget be affected. Even without "quotas", which police in my province have been explicitly ordered to abandon as recently as last year, the amount of crime that a given police department confronts may play a significant role in determining future funding. This is clearly a bad way to fund police.

The conflict of interest between the duty of police to protect and serve VS their desire to protect their own job security shouldn't be underestimated. And behind the job-concerned police, with out-stretched palms, is the judicial branch and prison systems (which also suffer from the same conflicts of interest). In America, the for-profit prison system appears to amount to one of the greatest on-going crimes in the history of the country. Together they all create some kind of sadistic justice pipeline and industry; built destructively over and through our communities, treating human life like fuel...

That protests against police-brutality are used by police as excuse for more police-brutality makes America look like some pre-revolutionary repressive dictatorship. Trust and respect between civilians and police is so far gone at this point that I can scarcely imagine existing departments bridging the gap through reform (which is why I'm quite interested in the idea of phasing out old school police departments while erecting something other).

The entire justice industry (euphemism of the century) in America clearly needs radical reform. I'm not entirely sure what we should do about bad judges and shitty court circuits, but at the very least there should be no "for-profit" prisons. The fact that these prisons can spend millions on lobby groups who advocate for more incarceration for the sake of more incarceration is flabbergasting.

What's more bewildering is that vague republican and conservative sentiments pretend to embrace principles like "freedom" and "small government", but then they go and fall for stupid ideas like "the war on drugs".

He said he stands with protesters but also wants to protect American‘s lives and property from violence, looters, and vandals. I’m not sure why one would have to pretend looters and vandals are protesters, nor can I understand why one would condone or excuse that behavior, but I guess that’s exactly what you need to do to politicize it and blame it on Trump. — NOS4A2

"When the looting starts, the shooting starts... Protestors should get 10 years in prison.'

Be honest: if Obama had said this, you would be advocating for civil rebellion right?

I'm not blaming the riots on Trump, I'm ridiculing Trump for being incapable of properly handling them, and for making them worse with his words and actions/inactions. (his tweets have obviously exacerbated the riots, and his failure to acknowledge the seriousness of covid-19 back in January obviously contributed to America's deaths. These two facts alone render his performance incompetent at best).

Also, what do you mean "politicize"? We're talking about the most politically relevant issues of the day. Are you offended that political issues are political? Are you just incapable of comprehending how a global health pandemic affects politics, and how political and policy decisions affect the outcomes of said global health pandemic?

Again, I'm calling trump stupid for making demonstrably stupid statements and taking demonstrably stupid actions in response to the challenges he has been faced with. As president it was his duty to lead the nation's preparations for the pandemic (he had the most advanced knowledge of it, and the main central powers for quickly taking preparatory action at the national scale. Instead of informing and warning us, he ignored, downplayed, and spewed outright bullshit. And during the pandemic, he seems to have done nothing but bull-shit more and play the never-ending blame game).

Remember when Mitch McConnell, Trumps most valiant supporter, came out and blamed the Obama administration for failing to leave the white house any pandemic response plan, but then had to shut his mouth and hide in his orifice when it was pointed out that since Trump has fired so many people, they just completely forgot about it entirely? It's like republicans have had their heads so far up Trump ass for such a long time that they've forgotten where they're at. The inside of Trump's asshole is now the new norm and standard...

Congratulations.

And yes, state governments are in charge of their own public health. Coronavirus death rates in Democratic areas are triple those in Republican ones. So why do you think it’s Trump’s fault? — NOS4A2

I don't quite get why Republicans love playing stupid... Is it some kind of inside joke?

They spend 8 years (and beyond) blaming every audible hiccup and dog-fart directly on the eternal Kenyan soul of Hussein Obama, and how all they do is obfuscate//deny/deflect any perceived criticism as a matter of course. At this point the apologia is so transparent that Trump's surrogates are starting to intellectually resemble Trump himself.

I know right? Coronavirus was a complete hoax just like Donald said. The 100,000 dead are the fault of democrats. Not at all exacerbated by the unbridled stupidity and incompetence of Donald Trump himself.

And Trump is handling these riots perfectly! When the looting starts the shooting starts. Right? Didn't he also suggest that protestors should be given 10 year prison sentences?

Who needs first amendment rights when Trump gets such great T.V ratings?!!!

Has anyone ever seen the T.V show "Lost"?

Or really any reality-esque show that persists for an unfortunate number of seasons?

One of the fundamental trends of these types of shows is that because they're mostly or only entertainment, because they're made-up as they go along (aka: bullshit), and because we quickly tire of the same old songs and dances, they must become increasingly sensational, outlandish, or otherwise insane, to hold the interest of their audiences. It's a slow and degenerative process of tabloidization...

The Trump election campaign of 2016, and its continuation as his presidency, is an absolute ten ring circus. When it started, "grab them by the pussy" was a huge scandal (it wowed audiences...), and without fail, the circus as grown increasingly more intense, as each act out-does the last. Like Trump's own reality T.V show ("the apprentice"), what was fake and dumb to begin with has become tiresome and ridiculous beyond measure or description.

And it's going to keep getting more ridiculous, rest assured. I'm no longer confident that Trump will win in November (due to the complacency of Biden) simply because at the moment Trump is reaching new levels of "__________".

What's the word for it? Do we even have a word for this?

That stunt with the church and the bible...

indefensible. — Banno

Obama is to blame. He left the Trump administration with no pre-existing plan for violently massaging piss and shit into the root and stem of every positive and progressive value that Americans ever held sacred or dear.

This one is definitely related

Source

Random question that I'm not sure is related to the thread:

What's worse:

Someone who breaks into your house with the motivation of stealing your television?

OR

Someone who breaks into your house with the intention of killing your dog?

---

Protesting: good

Looting: bad

Behavior and culture of American police: worse

Using very broad and vague terms that are borrowed from reflections on complex systems, thought experiments actually represent a very interesting and important layer of "intelligence", where intelligence is defined as a planning-capable sensory-experience-having agent.

The evolutionary purpose of our very capacity for thought experiment is that it allows us to make projections about cause and effect (it helps us understand the past, make sense of the present, and anticipate the future): the minds eye.

Taken at face value, thought experiments are like imaginary canvases upon which we can noodle and practice, and create anticipatory models. For instance, without this capacity, we could not anticipate the motives and intentions of other intelligent agents, and this is capacity almost directly impacts our capacity to survive and reproduce in social environments.

The more that I think about it, the more the titular conjecture seems patently false. There are lots of bad philosophies that rely heavily on shitty thought experiments; thought experiments alone does not good philosophy make. Valid priors and real world utility really goes a long way. But without thought experiment, without imagination, we wouldn't have the cognitive power to explore more complex ideas in the first place.

I like to use plausible (or sometimes implausible) thought experiments to either search for or convey exceptions to rules.

It's basically like applying a simulated real-world test to check and see if something holds, and they're especially useful if we can rapidly iterate through thought experiments in order to refine a generalization/model/rule/prediction.

Thought experiments are especially bad when the underlying simulation being run (the worldview and supporting premises of the thinker, more or less) is itself bad. Appealing to incorrect ontic/epistemic/physical/metaphysical priors just imbues the thought experiment with the same inaccuracy.

Ultimately, thought experiments (or at least the "rules" they help us refine) must be put to the test in the real world. If they're never actually put to the test, then the thought experiments in question may in fact have been bad and useless all along...

Can we anticipate before hand whether a given area or field of inquiry, and the accompanying thought experiments that would help expedite that inquiry, will turn out to be useless? Coincidentally, my instinct is to use thought experiments to begin exploring that question.

The bully husband leans over his wife's shoulder whilst she fills her ballot paper out. There you go, it ain't rocket science. — Chester

What should we call this new evil you have described? "Battered voter syndrome"?

Let me just check and make sure that this term is not already coined...

Oh shit: battered voter syndrome

It is the victim, in this instance, who chooses to "blame the victim," who chooses to hew to the objectively false belief that this time will be different, that the failure to govern amongst the politicians whose ideology appears to match their own is not a symptom of dishonest political hacks inhabiting the broken system which so appeals to those types, but is the fault of the other political party or of the ideologically impure (read: willing to compromise and innovate cooperatively) within their own party, which would be enabled to enact triumphant policies if only, if only the voters could straighten out their act and elect the ideologically pure for some sustained period and not be fooled by "moderates."

Sound familliar?

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The marriage contract is not risk free, and in free countries women should have access to divorce if their civil rights are being violated by their husband. I don't really know what to say. A similar argument would be that marriage itself is wrong because of some inherent bullying risk. Blindly trade freedom for security and you will wind up with neither...

Let's say that a common sense idea is that postal voting is easy to manipulate , easy to corrupt. — Chester

How are mail-in-votes easy to manipulate or corrupt?

I don't want too many immigrants - is this white supremacy? — remoku

Depends on whether you don't want immigrants because they might be brown, or not.

These other race people came looking for refuge from war torn countires; my policy would be to help them, til a future date - where they would be sent back. Is this supremacy or proudness? — remoku

As Streetlight pointed out, this attitude is a bit hypocritical.

If a country accepts refugees (why are they accepting refugees at all i wonder?), is it right for that same country to eject them a few years later on principle alone? What's the main benefit of ejecting them? And how does that reflect on the ethics of the host nation?

Am I to put my trust in these people from foriegn lands and let them live next to me? — remoku

How do other people put their trust in you at all? How do your neighbors know that you aren't a criminal of some kind?

Is that smart for a man of my colour? — remoku

Why would you suggest it might be unintelligent for a white person to condone immigration and accept immigrant/non-white neighbors?

Is there a chance that they might be black, yellow or brown supremacists, or is this an impossible case?

I want all people, including those of my colour, to grow in strength. — remoku

Your argument is that non-white immigrants might be too racist to let in. It's ironic because the argument apparently contains the thing it condemns (racism). Specifically, you're suggesting we generalize brown people as racists by shutting down immigration for brown people.

I see nothing but weakness, for white skinned people, by immigration. — remoku

Can you explain this at all though?

What do you mean?

Are white people going to lose jobs? (to be fair, we're capitalist, and nobody deserves a job just because they're white) competent and productive whites have nothing to fear). You're a competent and productive white, right?

Are you afraid of interracial marriage? Are you referring to some kind of dilution of the white gene pool? (handsome male whites like yourself will do just fine; have no fear!).

Are the immigrants going to come and use up all of our limited welfare? (the numbers actually show that cheap immigrant labor from Mexico adds huge value to the American economy, in addition to being essential for some industries like seasonal harvesting on farms).

You say that you "see nothing but weakness, for white skinned people, by immigration", but how? Do you actually see anything at all outside of something emotional?

You, a man of different colour to me, probably disallow such speech that is pro-white. Why is this? Can we not build ourselves with you?! — remoku

What?

Is this more weakness for people my skin colour? We can't be united with you - you don't accept us - you accept individuals.

I think you might be racist against whites. — remoku

And if some people are actually racist against whites, would that justify racism against non-whites?

I was never racist, I showed concern for everyone's skin, but potentially not everyone's western world. — remoku

I'm willing to accept that you're not racist, but when you make statements like "but potentially not everyone's western world", which are poorly worded and ill defined, my mind goes-a-wandering...

What do you mean not everyone's western world? Do you mean, like, the west should only allow whites to immigrate? Are you a supporter of "ethno-states" and segregation along ethnic lines?

P.S:

You might feel rather attacked by this post. Don't be (I only really care about the ideas)... The half-baked ideas you have driveled into the thread are entry level alt-right musings, and while I don't blame you for coming to them, you need to drop the emotion and the pretense. You're likely 20 or under, and to be frank you don't know very much about the way the world works. I can promise you it's more complex than whatever your old-school isolationist or you-tube philosophy espouses. And I'm willing to prove it for you; all we must do is get into the nitty gritty of the original claims that were made (like your claims about the risks of brown supremacy, the weakness for whites that immigration causes, sources of trust for neighbors, etc...)...

What did the reanimated corpse Rene Descartes say when asked if he was conscious?



On a serious note, I'm inclined to agree with your last statement from the OP.

Maybe our reports of our own conscious experiences are those of a P-zombie; we're hard-wired to believe that we are conscious..

Silly though it may seem, the notion does hold with the way we work on a neurological level: we have stored memories that exist as a somewhat static record, and every new milliseconds our brains generate new frames of cognition (perception, learning, inference, action).

If we imagine cutting the lifespan of an individual into a series of discrete frames (quite a lot of them I guess) - if we could freeze time -, is a single frame of a live person "conscious"? (by anyone's measure...).

If we merely juxtapose two adjacent frames and flick back and forth between two states (maybe there is some measurable change, like some neurons sending or receiving a new signal), does that create consciousness? Perhaps on the most minimal order of the stuff that consciousness is made of?

The hard problem is pretty hard indeed... Even panpsychism starts to make sense after too long...

I'm tend to air on the side of self-delusion. That consciousness is something "real" (as in, woo woo magic and other presumptive metaphysical rigamarole) is almost certainly delusional. That it's "something" at all beyond a mere report or belief does seem somewhat plausible, but I would not be surprised if we're just self-delusion all the way down.

Ah yes, the classic "deploy the military to shoot at civilian looters in the name of a man killed by police" tactic.

Definitely nothing to worry about here...

Imagine if I edited your post, applied my warning to it, and hijacked it in order to link to contrary information.

The one time trump mentions regulation people immediately turn libertarian. Personally I’m not for regulation, but if a social media company wants to act like a publisher, it should be treated as one.

I know what censorship is. — NOS4A2

If you left my original text intact and merely added editorialized trimmings of your own, then I wouldn't much mind actually...

Even if you decorated it above and below with shit-emojis, I would still expect my statements to stand or fall on their own merits...

So answer me this: What if you made a post that was factually incorrect (what was the tweet in question even about? I still haven't cared enough to check...), and let's assume that it is something relevant to "politics". Would you feel so-violated if someone merely added a disclaimer stating that it is factually inaccurate?

some pencil-neck in Silicon Valley can editorialize on the president’s tweets, alter them, and use the bully pulpit to push his agenda — NOS4A2

How do you get all that from a misinformation warning?

The president threatens to shut down twitter (apparently, but I'm too lazy to check) because they called BS on one or more of his tweets, and you're saying that twitter are the ones behaving like the CCP?

What's more CCP-like: Fact-checking and applying misinformation warnings, or threatening to shut down a private corporation for not obeying glorious leader?

You know what censorship is right?

And you have established this correlation by researching the psychology of signaling, rather than just, say, pulling it out of your ass? — Echarmion

Standards pulled from one's ass can be satisfied in the same manner. Is your argument that nobody has ever signaled virtue for the positive social sanctions that might be bestowed as a result?

I thought this thread was originally about our personal feelings about masks, as per the question in the OP:
"Are you wearing a mask inside, and why? — Echarmion

Maybe I misread the title and the OP...

Is Bitter Crank trying to tell us that we should wear a mask inside? Is he curious about whether or not we wear masks inside?

Why would he bring up virtue signaling and explain why mask/no-mask inside signals virtue/incompetence, while also pointing out how downright easy it is to acquire and wear a mask?

I think that he is saying while we should certainly be wearing masks inside, the way we process the sight of others with or without masks (especially inside) is now a kind of moral signal in and of itself...

As if merely wearing a mask gives you some kind of moral coupon that can be exchanged at a later time for adulation and anger from or at others... Right of rebuke...

I'd like to know what methods you'd practically apply to figure out if someone is virtue signalling or not — Echarmion

Statistical inference. When someone is too offended on behalf of a fashionable cause that doesn't affect them, there's medium to high correlation with virtue-signalling.

But this threat isn't about the virtuous merit of a given cause, it's about what signalling support for causes can mean about an individual.

I repeat myself because you repeat the same question like if I have not answered previously. — David Mo

You're restating your opinion, sure, but I'm just holding you to the same standard you held me to in your criticism of my response to the thread.

What makes your opinions about the scope and definition of philosophy any more philosophically valid than mine?

Why is it that your standard of evidence requires me to fetch ten bona fide philosophies or philosophers, while it allows you to just quote yourself ten times?

Isn't that some kind of double standard?