do you think Hunter's involvement with Burisma had nothing to do with his dad being VP and his dad having made prior efforts to clean the place up? — Hanover

It certainly had everything to do with his dad being VP. I would prefer that people not capitalize on their parent's position (are you reading this Ivanka and Jarred?)

Do you really think Joe got zero financial benefit from that or that he had no idea what his little boy was up to?

There's no evidence of it, and fanciful speculation ought not to be reported as fact.

Do you think there is no story here at all and that it ought not be reported by any news outlet other than Fox and that Facebook and Twitter should block it?

I'm fine with reporting facts, and the facts include the murky means by which these emails became available. They also include the content of those emails, along with their dubious authenticity.

I'm not fine with reporting that the facts constitute "smoking gun" evidence that a crime was committed, because they don't in the least. If the emails are accurate, it suggests Biden agreed to meet with someone. Shall we list the people Trump has met with that seem somewhat suspicious?

The excessive military presence around the world.
A burgeoning police-state. The corporate corruption of the political process. The gradual erosion of constitutional rights. — Merkwurdichliebe

These are reasonable concerns, but "shining a light" on them will not get a majority to agree these are problems, much less agree on how to solve them.

If someone with the authority and influence of the US president was merely to shine light on the real issues that are never included on the ballot, I imagine the system would quake, and possibly open the door to real systemic change. — Merkwurdichliebe

Please elaborate. Give me a few of the "real issues."

IMO, Trump has shined a light on some of the big issues in our society: he's exposed racism, xenophobia, self-righteousness, pettiness, and intolerance of disagreement. I don't believe this exposure is helping, I think it has hurt, because these things have been encouraged.

I'm surprised I forgot it too. I'll edit the post.

What is achieved by shaking shit up?

Choosing who to vote for, or choosing not to vote, is about predicting two futures and deciding which is better. You seem to believe either future is equally bad. That's a good reason not to vote.

I believe the future is better with Biden. Policy-wise, I want the ACA to survive and be improved, likely with a public option. Trump wants to eliminate it. I want real immigration reform; that will never happen with Trump. I want Social security rescued - that's much more likely with Biden. I want more judges who have an expansive view of human rights, and Trump is guaranteed to appoint the opposite. With dems in power, there's a better chance of moving in a better direction on climate change, with Trump - well, he doesn't admit there's a problem.

There's more, but these are my top issues.

By contrast, with Trump, we'll get the wall completed, and perhaps a head added to Mount Rushmore.

Even if I believed, as you do, that they're both assholes, I still have good reasons to vote for Biden.

if you make something with that function, it will both exhibit that behavior, and undergo that experience. — Pfhorrest

That is clearly not true: it fails the zombie test. A zombie could respond to pain as we do: noting damage, seeking remediation, future avoidance, shouting "ouch" but this omits the feeling.

I literally do not give a shit about Trump retweeting whatever trash he happens upon while internetting. You couldn't pay me to give less fucks. If you continue to be surprised and outraged by such behaviour, you deserve a shithead like Trump. — StreetlightX

I'm explaining my point of view, not criticizing yours. But I am sad that there are so many people who don't care that the president tells such blatant untruths. It's bad enough that politicians tend to spin facts; at least there's a core of fact. If all politicians were to give us Trumpian level fiction, the last bit of influence by the people would evaporate.

I know you disagree, so no need to point that out. But I would like to understand your vision of the ideal President. What would he do?

The scorn heaped upon Trump's personal (rather than political) behaviour had always had a humongous element of classism built into it. — StreetlightX

Trump retweets an implausible conspiracy theory about a staged killing of bin Laden, defends doing so because he doesn't know if it's true or not, and he wants people to judge for themselves. So you think the judgment of that is due to classism. I strongly disagree.

That he does it while being a clown makes him no less establishment. — StreetlightX

What's unique is that this clown-like behavior is the core of his appeal to his supporters.

I disagree. Trump is an incredible politician, in that he really knows how to connect with certain people and motivate them. Suppose he motivates a 90% turnout of his supporters: he will win.

He's not in the same category as Trump. More in the same category of being an establishment politician like Hillary Clinton, except without the toxic image, which is why he'll likely do far better than she ever did. — Mr Bee

Trump has certainly not been establishment. Was that a good thing?

I wonder if the 2016 Bernie supporters who voted for Trump are truly happily with what they got.

That's not an answer. Explain the physical-immaterial interface, both input and output. Is there a single point of access into the brain? Can the mind directly access every component of the brain? Can my mind interact with physical things other than my brain? If not, why not?

What becomes of the mind when the brain is dead? Did it exist before my body? If not, when did it come to exist? Did it pop into existence all at once, or did it slowly develop, like the brain?

Have you heard the theory that the memory is stored in the tissue of the body, analogous to tape recording, and the brain mere acts as the processor for accessing those memories? I think there is a name for it but I can't recall. ironic huh? — Merkwurdichliebe

How does an immaterial mind extract the data in a physical medium? The mind also stores data into the brain: we can remember past thoughts, so it can't just be a passive reading.

Negative, destructive passions? You mean like drones strikes on foreign land? — Merkwurdichliebe

No, I mean things like normalizing degradation of those with whom we disagree, and stoking hatred and division.

You need to account for the mind-brain relationship. For example, you say the mind is immaterial, but is it spatially located? If so, where is it? My thoughts can cause me to raise my hand. Why can't my thoughts cause your hand to raise?

Thoughts draw on memories. Aren't memories stored in the brain? Memories become lost, or at least inaccessible, when the brain is damaged by trauma or disease. How do you account for that? If memories are in the brain, how does an immaterial mind access them? If my mind can access my memories, why can't it access yours?

Sure, but you have the burden of showing that minds are things, not just a reified abstraction, and that these things have non-physical parts.
— Relativist

Minds consist entirely of thought and belief. Thought and belief... correlations between different things. Correlations are not physical. Not much of a burden really. — creativesoul

I'm glad it's not going to be much of a burden, si make the case. Assertions don't do it. Show that the mind is a non-physical thing. I will then have a number of additional questions.

Absolutely scum. He's a lacky to the status quo. I hope he gets elected so you can see all the fucked up shit he never talks about, but that he plans on doing. — Merkwurdichliebe

You're judging both Trump and Biden "scum" because they won't do the things you want done. That's a weird standard. You must think the world is filled with scum.

I judge Trump scum because he is a narcissistic sociopath. Even if I believed the well-being of the country would be identical in 4 years, regardless of winner, I'd vote for the guy who'd not the narcissistic sociopath.

But I actually think the nation WILL be better off with someone who displays decency and refrains from stoking negative, destructive passions.

To each his own.

I can write a hundred sentences describing the pain, but nothing I say will be equivalent to the raw experience.
— Relativist

Agreed. But that says nothing at all about what kinds of things can have such experiences. — Pfhorrest

Let's talk about the kinds of things that experience pain.

Start with its function: it alerts us to damage, induces us to seek remediation, and to avoid the behavior that caused it. So only objects that can function in this way can have it: complex, living organisms. Maybe they don't all experience pain (do grapevines experience pain?), but this at least narrows it a good bit.

This doesn't get us any closer to understanding how to reproduce the experience in a robot.

If minds/consciousness consists of both physical and/non physical elements, then they cannot be properly taken into account in terms of one or the other. — creativesoul

Sure, but you have the burden of showing that minds are things, not just a reified abstraction, and that these things have non-physical parts.

The physicalism project is to account for mental activity, not some incompatible, abstract concept of "mind". IMO, the one thing physicalism has a problem with is certain qualia, like pain. If that is fatal, then all accounts of mental activity are also dead - because they all have things they don't account for.

Scum like Biden?!

I can get people disagreeing with him about policies (what he will and won't do), their being disappointed that he's the candidate instead of someone they prefer (Bernie?), or being apprehensive about his age...but "scum"? He seems like a decent, if imperfect, man. I can't see how anyone could put him into the same category as Trump.

I'm not saying that, I'm just saying that's the latest possible date we'd know. It's a deadline SCOTUS would need to work backwards from, if a lawsuit comes to them.

Capacity for experience is not necessarily magical or non-physical. And granting it to everything is the only reasonable way of preserving the existence of minds in a physicalist account, since the only logical alternatives are that either nothing, not even humans, have any first-person experience (and so minds in the normal sense don't really exist); or else some things, like humans, magically get it from nothing (and so something non-physical happens)." — Pfhorrest

Well done on the dialog, but it needs to continue. As defined so far, the capacity for experience is inherent in anything we consider to have a persisting identity.

Consider some particular boulder. It was "born" when a metamorphic outcrop collapsed due to a stress fracture. This is the boulder's first experience, and that experience gave it its shape. Our boulder sits on a slope for a few thousand years where it gets rained upon, which gradually starts to cause some erosion. Other rocks fall on it from upslope, chipping off pieces here and there. Each of these experiences changes the rock. This boulder has the capacity for experience, but it differs in two important ways from us: 1) it lacks self-reflection on those experiences; 2) it does not experience qualia.

You can easily accommodate self-reflection, even self-reflection of qualia (thinking about the pains of the past). But this still does not account for the pain itself. I can write a hundred sentences describing the pain, but nothing I say will be equivalent to the raw experience.

That’s the part where my panpsychism comes in. Whatever it is besides mere function that human consciousness involves, I hold that EVERYTHING already has that in some form or another, and the specific form of it becomes more sophisticated along with the functionality, because it is the other half of functionality besides the behavioral output. — Pfhorrest

Jaegwon Kim's answer is more appealing to me: he considers qualia to be epiphenomenal, a causally effete byproduct of minds. It's still not entirely satisfactory, but it makes more sense to me to consider it to be something that only minds have. The notion that rocks experience qualia makes no sense to me.

Other than that, I'm fine with the rest of your views.

IMO, the most important moment in Trump's "town hall" roast last week was his defence of tweeting falsehoods because the mainstream media is "corrupt". Sure. that makes perfect sense. Guthrie compared this tweeting behavior to a "crazy uncle", and true to form - he responded like a crazy uncle (transcript below).

It's important, not because it exposes what thinking people already know about him, but because it's the sort of behavior that may get him reelected. I dare say that some of his supporters believe the false tweet, and are delighted (and energized) to see him repeat it. Those that don't necessarily believe it, don't care that's it's false - they only care that he thinks like they do: mainstream media is against "us".


Transcript:
Guthrie: "Just this week, you retweeted to your 87 million followers, a conspiracy theory that Joe Biden orchestrated to have SEAL Team Six, the Navy SEAL Team Six, killed to cover up the fake death of Bin Laden. Now, why would you send a lie like that to your followers?"

Trump: "I know nothing about it, can I..."

Guthrie: "You retweeted it"

Trump: "That was a retweet. That was an opinion of somebody.(Guthrie interrups)..and that was a retweet. I’ll put it out there. People can decide for themselves. I don’t take a position.
===================
Pause right there. Trump doesn't take a position on whether or not bin Laden is actually dead. Perhaps someone will ask him about this in the next debate. What can he answer? If he says, "of COURSE I know bind Laden is dead" then he will be admitting to retweeting something he knows to be false. If he says, "I don't know if he's dead", then he's derelict - as President, he clearly has the resources to get to the bottom of it. And it's a pretty big deal.
===================
Guthrie: "I don’t get that, you’re the President. You’re not like, someone’s crazy uncle who can just (Trump interrupts)...… retweet, whatever.

Trump: "That was a retweet. And I do a lot of retweets. And frankly, because the media is so fake, and so corrupt, if I didn’t have social media… I don’t call it Twitter, I call it social media. I wouldn’t be able to get the word out. And the word is...

Guthrie: "Well, the word is false."

Trump: "… and you know what the word is? The word is very simple. We’re building our country, stronger and better than it’s ever been before."

elativist
wrong thread? — Pfhorrest

Oops. Sorry bout that. (although it does have something to do with philosophy of mind).

(deleted)

So after the election, everybody is going to sue everybody, the SCOTUS will have to weigh in, we'll have a president some time in February. — frank

That's not possible. "The 20th amendment states: "The terms of the President and the Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January" Backing up from there, there is law that states the electoral college votes must be certified on Jan 6.

Worst case, a Supreme Court ruling would be needed to meet the deadline. The actual deadlines are not subject to debate.

How would a machine experience qualia, in a non-zombie way? — Relativist

The same way a human does: by instantiating the same function as a human, and so having its phenomenal experience (which correlates with function, in all things) be like that of all things that instantiate such a function, like humans. — Pfhorrest

Instantiating the function isn't enough - a zombie could record the frequency of reflected light and proceed to function appropriately. I'll go a little further:

Redness begins as sensory perception, producing a sensory memory that neurally connects with the other quales concurrent at the time. e.g. the first perception of redness is the site of blood from one's painful injury. Those neural connections are activated in future experiences of redness. Qualia like this do not seem problematic.

On the other hand, the pain quale seems problematic. I know its function, but I can't envision a physicalist accounting of it. Redness is, at its core, a passive experience that gets associated with other memories. On the other hand, pain isn't like that - it's more basic. Its function is clear: to induce us to seek relief. But there needs to be more to it than that, because that's a zombie-like account.

So when it comes to phenomenal consciousness, either it is wholly absent from the most fundamental building blocks of physical things and so is still absent from anything built out of them, including humans — which I've already rejected above — or else it is present at least in humans, as concluded above, and so at least some precursor of it must be present in the stuff out of which humans are built, and the stuff out of which that stuff is built, and so on so that at least something prototypical of phenomenal consciousness as humans experience it is already present in everything, to serve as the building blocks of more advanced kinds of phenomenal — Pfhorrest

I don't see that you've accounted for qualia. Consider Mary, who is the world's foremost expert on color, but has never experienced redness. She learns to associate her intellectual knowledge with the experience only after she actually has the experience.

One way I look it physicalism, is that if true, it should be possible, in principle, to construct a machine that operates identically to human consciousness. How would a machine experience qualia, in a non-zombie way?

Is Nixon still available, does anyone know? — Hippyhead

Have you never watched Futurama?

No, but it's reasonable to conduct surveillance on suspicious individuals irrespective of whether or not they are working on a campaign. Campaigns should vet their staff, and establish rules that require disclosing all past and current contacts with foreign nationals.


What if it’s based on fake info sourced from Russian intelligence and payed for by the opposing political campaign? If the FBI using Russian propaganda, lying, concealing evidence, and manipulating documents in order to spy on a U.S. citizen in the middle of a presidential campaign isn’t a problem, then what is? — NOS4A2

As a hypothetical, information that was known to be fake would be an inappropriate basis for an investigation. The problem is that you are jumping to politically biased conclusions based on partisan interpretations of sketchy facts and cries from Trump (in the record books for prevarication) that he's been treated unfairly.

I disagree. Some of Trump's words are quite inspirational. Like "Stand Back and Stand By!"

I’m not saying Hilary Clinton is guilty of anything.

Don’t listen to Bunkey and just think about it. Do you think the American government should use the intelligence apparatus to spy on opposing political campaigns? — NOS4A2

No, but it's reasonable to conduct surveillance on suspicious individuals irrespective of whether or not they are working on a campaign. Campaigns should vet their staff, and establish rules that require disclosing all past and current contacts with foreign nationals.

It appears the Clinton campaign is guilty of the exact same thing they accused Trump of for numerous years, — NOS4A2

What are you basing that on? The only thing I'm aware of is the quote I gave from the Ratcliffe letter, and that obviously doesn't imply she did what Trump did. Seems to me you're just echoing Trump's claim that the investigation (the one he obstructed) was a witch hunt.

IMO, the worst provable thing Trump did was to encourage perjury by dangling pardons and following through on the pardon. That was criminal and prosecutable. What did Clinton do that is comparable? If you're simply going on hunches from sketchy evidence against Clinton, then we can open the floodgates on possible acts by Trump.

I don’t care how much you hate Trump, but if you want to condemn his campaign for wanting wikileaks to release emails, you should show equal concern for the propaganda efforts of the Clinton campaign, who actually did share false, Russian-sourced info in order to find political dirt on their opponent. — NOS4A2

If there were comparable evidence of wrongdoing by Clinton, I would absolutely condemn her. It's pretty standard for a campaign to hire a company to do opposition research and to use that information. That company hired Steele, an experienced MI6 analyst with extensive experience with Russia. Irrespective of any other facts that have since come to light, what was know at the time doesn't sound nefarious.

Tell me: do you really think it's fine for the President to call on Barr to indict Biden based on that paragraph in Ratcliffe's letter that I quoted?

Meanwhile the Clinton campaign sourced actual disinformation from actual Russian spies — NOS4A2

Here's the quote from John Ratcliffe's letter:
In late July 2016, U.S. intelligence agencies obtained insight into Russian intelligence analysis alleging that U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal against U.S. candidate Donald Trump by tying him to Putin and the Russians hacking of the Democratic National Committee. The IC does not know the accuracy of this allegaton or the extent to which the Russian intelligence analysis may reflect exaggeration or fabrication.

So, although the IC doesn't know the accuracy of this allegation, you treat this as a confirmed fact. If there were additional evidence, I'm pretty sure the Senate Intelligence committee would have told us.

But what is the problem if it is true? It has been established (not just alleged) that the Russians actually DID hack the DNC email system, they supplied it to Wikileaks, and Roger Stone worked with Wikileaks on the strategic leaking of that information, lied about doing so (while Trump was signalling a pardon), was convicted of it, and Trump fulfilled his commitment by pardoning him. This is stronger circumstantial evidence of Trump's involvement in a crime than the paragraph in Ratcliffe's letter is about Clinton committing a crime.

I don't care how much like Trump, you should stop and think about how idiotic it is to suggest the more important story is that Clinton wanted to use some of this factual information for her political benefit. Now the Republicans are using the unsupported allegation for THEIR political benefit. Have you no shame?

*EDIT*
I just noticed that Trump has asked Barr to indict Biden for "greatest political crime in the history of our country" - referring to the allegation against Clinton, and apparently his clairvoyance about Biden's criminal involvement.

The president’s rambling and ill-tempered interview with Maria Bartiromo on Thursday saw him run through a long list of his usual grievances,

In a way, it's nice that Trump keeps the holiday spirit in his heart 365 days of the year. It's too bad the holiday in his heart is Festivus.

The Democrats have been nearly unanimous in stating that the last elections was illegitimate—something something Putin, something something Russia. They didn’t accept the last election and I doubt they will accept this one. — NOS4A2

"Something something Russia" = stealing emails from the DNC, coordinating with the Trump campaign on their release, and Trump denying that Russia did anything wrong and even joking about it with Putin. How much this (and Russian advertising and misinformation campaign) influenced the election is anyone's guess, but it's legitimate to complain about it. That doesn't imply Trump didn't win, and most Democrats accept that he won and is the legitimate president. If you have a study or poll that proves me wrong, point me at it. But don't just toss out right-wing hyperbole to counter left-wing hypberbole.

I agree there's some hyperbole among Democrats, but at least there's a factual basis to their complaints. Contrast this with Trump's hyperbole (hyperbole that goes off the charts). You may have forgotten that commission he put together to investigate 2016 election fraud because he didn't believe he lost the popular vote. Now he talks about fraud in the current election nearly every day without evidence to support it, and says he won't accept the results if he loses. Perhaps that's hyperbole, but it's pretty extreme.

I think in order for Trump to win, he cannot win by just a narrow margin, but decisively, or else they are going to contest the election, demand recounts etc. — NOS4A2

Let's see now, Trump has been crying "fraud" since 2016, calls polls "fake" if they don't show him on top, has never acknowledged an efforts by Russia to influence the election, and refuses to even say that he'll accept the results if he doesn't win. Sure....it makes perfect sense to think it is the Democrats who will cry foul.