I don't think he's a nazi either (btw, why does it matter?), just an über-rich, sociopathic, racist provocateur. — 180 Proof

Which is why I think it's important to know why he's an über-rich, sociopathic, racist provocateur. We can't criticize and fight labels; they are incapable of being criticized as they describe themselves. A nazi is just as much of a label as a sociopath and über-rich. We cannot criticize a sociopath for being a sociopath, since it just underlines what is already known.

But we can criticize what's underneath. Why is he a sociopath? A racist? Über-rich? Doing so opens up to actual critique and means of fighting against these types.

One interesting reveal of this was that after years of trying to criticize Trump for being, what he's already being, nothing stuck. Except when people started calling him "weird". That somehow affected him more than anything else. Because it's not a label, it was calling out his behavior as being at odds with the norms.

That such a basic description of Trump rattled his emotions and senses more than calling him a racist underlines how labels are meaningless when dealing with these people.

Calling Musk "an insecure boy" I think carries more weight to him than calling him a sociopath. He made a twitter tantrum over the fact that gamers called him out as having faked his success in the video game. In a way much more childish than he usually does.

Because just calling these people labels ends when they deny it. Not because they're right, but because the discussion won't be able to move past such blunt denial.

But it absolutely matters if he is a nazi or not. If he is, then that's what's being fought against. If he's not, then trying to fight him as someone who does a nazi salute will just backfire as the reasons for it is something else than being a nazi.

I don't think that white supremacists liking his salute means he himself is a nazi. I just think he's stupid and don't know what he's doing. Paying people to paint him as a smart man, as a leader. He was just outed to have paid some other gamer to play a character in a game to a point of being the best game character in the world, then trying to act like he was responsible for it, which other experts of that game saw through.

He spends a lot of time on crafting an image of himself as this super smart individual who think above society, but he's an insecure incel-type who gets high on power. Here's what I wrote in the news thread about his salute:

These new incel-type billionaires and celebrities do whatever it takes to frame themselves as masculine hard men, but they're like those insecure kids in school who tried too hard to be cool and tough but when cornered they could lash out in pathetic ways, while sometimes truly dangerous ways. In the US I'd argue it's those personalities who are more often than not the school shooting types.

Elon Musk seems to be such a person. He's not smart, but he spends a lot of money on trying to show the world that he is. He's radicalized into other people's ideologies because he's not smart enough to spot his own biases. He pays people to play his video games so that he can show his progress being that of the best players in the world.

It's all a show to fill that craving for attention. And up on that stage he doesn't know what to do. He dances around like an awkward drunk and he tries to interact with the audience in this euphoria of power, and in that moment he strikes a greeting that he doesn't understand looks like something else.

I don't think he did made that salute intentionally. I think it's being used by everyone online and in media to craft this narrative.

But I'm not sure this other explanation is any better. It just shows he's an insecure, emotionally unstable and stupid man who is easily drawn into ideologies with whoever gives him power and attention of a crowd.

A nazi we can deal with and fight, but a stupid man with too much power can be more dangerous. That's what no one seems to get in all this. Stop putting people in boxes and realize the actual issues, otherwise it's impossible to fight the real dangers.

If you fight him with the pretense that he is a nazi, then you will probably fail as he probably isn't and all the offense you used up with that pretense ends up being a weakness in the critique.

The public, on all sides, are so ill-equiped to deal with stuff like this today, everyone jumps deep into any polarized depth at the first glance of anything that can enforce their ideas. — Christoffer

Of course white supremacists will take advantage of this, but I don't think Musk is a nazi, I think he's just stupid and in over his head. He gets so high on the attention of the crowd that he doesn't know what he's doing.

Just look at his awkward dance; is that a man who is knowledgeable about, and controls his own body with enough self-knowledge to know what salute he's making?

Is anyone here prepared to claim Elon Musk made a Nazi salute? — AmadeusD

These new incel-type billionaires and celebrities do whatever it takes to frame themselves as masculine hard men, but they're like those insecure kids in school who tried too hard to be cool and tough but when cornered they could lash out in pathetic ways, while sometimes truly dangerous ways. In the US I'd argue it's those personalities who are more often than not the school shooting types.

Elon Musk seems to be such a person. He's not smart, but he spends a lot of money on trying to show the world that he is. He's radicalized into other people's ideologies because he's not smart enough to spot his own biases. He pays people to play his video games so that he can show his progress being that of the best players in the world.

It's all a show to fill that craving for attention. And up on that stage he doesn't know what to do. He dances around like an awkward drunk and he tries to interact with the audience in this euphoria of power, and in that moment he strikes a greeting that he doesn't understand looks like something else.

I don't think he did made that salute intentionally. I think it's being used by everyone online and in media to craft this narrative.

But I'm not sure this other explanation is any better. It just shows he's an insecure, emotionally unstable and stupid man who is easily drawn into ideologies with whoever gives him power and attention of a crowd.

A nazi we can deal with and fight, but a stupid man with too much power can be more dangerous. That's what no one seems to get in all this. Stop putting people in boxes and realize the actual issues, otherwise it's impossible to fight the real dangers.

If you fight him with the pretense that he is a nazi, then you will probably fail as he probably isn't and all the offense you used up with that pretense ends up being a weakness in the critique.

The public, on all sides, are so ill-equiped to deal with stuff like this today, everyone jumps deep into any polarized depth at the first glance of anything that can enforce their ideas.

To all: NOS4A2 has made outrageous remarks and refused to reply to questions about his remarks. I request no one interact with him until/unless he replies. My own feeling is that while the lounge is a place for very informal discussion, it is unacceptable to refuse response to civil questions and yet still participate in the discussion. His is the behaviour of a troll, and I request we shun him while he behaves that way. — tim wood

I've asked and wondered why he's constantly allowed this behavior. Some have been banned for less, but the constant spamming in this thread of his Trump propaganda-level of discourse is surprising that it keeps getting allowed. And it seems it's all he ever does on this forum; pushing these narratives like an evangelical servant of the MAGA cult.

It's rather impossible to have a proper discussion about Trump, MAGA and the impact of them that's also elevated from the normal discourse online when we have people like that just constantly spamming bullshit and twitter crap-level rage baits.

I'm asking mods (@Jamal?) again... why? Isn't there at least some kind of level principle the lounge should be existing on as well? Or is the lounge just basically the trash heap of the forum? Then how would we ever be able to discuss news-related topics if it's basically "anything goes" and most threads get hijacked by single individuals who just spam threads to death as their main contribution to the forum? There has to be some level of proper discourse principles even for the lounge, no?

If it's how things go, fine, but I find it interesting to discuss these topics on a more elevated level that doesn't need to be full blown philosophical essays. Only, there's a fly in the soup.

:lol: — Tzeentch

The use of that emoji as a response just further cements how you follow the same rhetorical pattern as any other Twitter warrior.

I'm defending no one. I'm scolding you lot. — Tzeentch

Neither gives the impression that you are anything more than what you are yourself criticizing. You may want to turn that self-reflection back on yourself before you embarrass yourself any further.

The pretense that Trump is somehow uniquely bad — Tzeentch

He isn't uniquely bad? Regardless of how bad others are, this is undoubtedly an odd statement about Trump.

while categorically ignoring that the Biden administration was objectively an unmitigated trainwreck and probably among the worst of all time, is childish and suggests a delusional view of reality that is unbecoming of adults, let alone philosophically-inclined, intelligent people. — Tzeentch

Why is it that people like you seem to defend Trump by just trying to flip things towards Biden every time? It's like you are unable to discuss Trump and criticism against him without adhering to whataboutism and trying to change the narrative to be about Biden. This thread is about Trump and so the defense against any criticism of Trump is not "but Biden also bad and badder than Trump".

Talk about childish level of attempt at philosophical intelligence on top of an such ad hominem answer.

America (and large parts of the world, for that matter) are done with them, and people like them, the ideas they uphold and their hypocrisy. — Tzeentch

Which people? What ideas specifically?

The total lack of self-reflection amidst the moral whinging makes this collective mental breakdown even harder to watch. — Tzeentch

If you mean supporters of democrats, then compared to the conservative right wing I seem to see a lot of self-reflection. There's a lot of attempts at figuring out why democrats didn't gained votes among working class people. I've yet to see much self-reflection among the conservative republicans though. Or do you mean they're infallible and don't have to?

It's like watching children getting confronted with reality. But they throw a tantrum and there is no adult around to spank them. — Tzeentch

Are you really defending Trump and his followers with that? Really? Trump, Musk etc.? They're the adults in the room? Give me a fucking break

This forum is turning into a clownshow with all the adults whinging over a lost election. Jesus. — Tzeentch

So talking about the policies and what Trump is doing while in power is whining about a lost election? Or is it about talking about Trump and what he does as what this thread is about?

What's interesting is that some on this forum seem to be turning to Twitter rhetoric; using the same Trump-defense as all his other cultists.

What definately will happen is that has been already cleary shown after the election: Trump's attention goes from this to that and the administration will be chaotic as Trump is chaotic. And the Republicans (and people like NOS4A2) will spin this the best way possible. There's a lot of hopeful, wishful thinking going around. That nevermind the Trump tweets etc, the administration will work just fine. Well, the Biden administration was a disaster also, but I guess it worked just fine too. Yet be it about taking Greenland or renaming the Gulf of Mexico, it's everything about just being in the limelight and not actually planning something to the end. — ssu

Definitely, Trump and his followers don't know shit about how to actually run things, how to run a society and solve problems. It's a wrestling match and they're numb in their narcissism to the possibility of people getting hurt.

I'm really hoping that with the more powerful administration this time around, Trump oversteps so much that it goes too far. The west needs a big example of what uncontrolled populism can lead to. The best form of overstepping would be for his own followers to end up in a really awful position, giving them an existential crisis that can only be solved by waking up.

His first administration was kind of a snooze-fest, nothing drastic really happened. It was just incompetence making things worse in a way that was rather unseen by the public. But this new administration is so filled with lunatics that the stage is set for a real clusterfuck and I really hope it happens so that the pathetic and apathetic herd of the people wakes the fuck up.

That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about how the people don't care about the competence and ability of their elected leaders. How their idea about them is a fiction, something "on TV", not real, not really affecting them.

You are right in that they care when policies affect their income and financial situation, but it only leads to a flip between parties in the next election. How the economy actually functions is also just some fiction they see on financial news. And they only see economical problems when something sudden happens, like hyperinflation.

The problem is that people today view reality as fiction. While they might know intellectually that it's reality, they don't treat it as such as their emotional connection to reality is both skewed by media, social media, and online influencers. People have lost the ability to find truth in a sea of lies, and eventually they lose the ability to sift out what is actual truth. It leads to either shutting down their ability to take care of society as a civilisation, or they alienate from society entirely, forming a fictional narrative to "live within".

In this situation, the populists thrive as they can construct whatever narrative they want. They create "TV shows" that people can binge as they're slowly sucked dry of their financials.

It's remarkable how easy it is to program people. To slowly change people over time so that they get used to the new conditions. How a worse financial situation becomes the norm that they then celebrate because their elected leader calls it "good".

Money is only opium when people are told it is. It's the capitalist condition, the neoliberal free market built in the 80s that has constructed this narrative of financial success that is fueling the young today. It doesn't happen "just because money", it happens because people are programmed to like capitalism, to defend capitalists, to defend the status quo. In so doing they aren't just craving money, they crave the ladder to climb, being taught by their parents and society that this ladder is the true meaning of life.

The fundamental truth is that the masses are stupid. Too occupied by their own lives that they don't care about anything else... until that life is threatened. They are unable understand how politics affect their lives, they are too narrow minded to care for policies or how politics work.

They are told what to vote on and what to do in politics, that's it. They're fed a fiction and they opt in for the one they like. Just like having a favorite TV-show or film. It's all constructed fiction.

Previous generations were much more careful about who they voted for. It may be that's because democracy was rather new and people felt a need to care for the society they wanted to have. And with two world wars, they also cared for the possibility of a new one. They did not want someone who's "shaking things up", because they knew what that can lead to. Previous generations were keen on getting corruption out of politics.

But people today don't care about corruption. It's all just fiction anyway. It's the other side that's corrupt, but my side cut corners to give me what I'm told to want.

What I'm tired of hearing is everyone complaining about the people up top. Both in capitalism and political power. As long as a nation isn't a full blown fascist state, the people can organize and make a difference.

The only thing is that they don't care, they're not interested. It's just fiction on TV, it's not real for them. It only becomes real, when it's actually real, when there is a boot on their face because they didn't care to organize against a policy that enabled that boot.

People forget that the only reason why the top 1% have power is because there are people who follow their orders. The top 1% against 99% and those 99% believe in the fiction that there's nothing to be done because the 1% have all the power.

Everyone is just a stupid.

So the Jack Smith report has been published. — Wayfarer

Corruption doesn't matter for people unless it affects them. It all just becomes a fiction, with no difference between "House of Cards" and the real world. People don't actually care until they get a boot on their face and they cry out "how did this happen!?"

So, no one really cares about the report. It's clear that political leaders of the past had much more responsibility to respect democracy and the political system and people cared that they did. But today, the brain rot of the general public have made the people fundamentally stupid to the point that everything they hear in the news is fiction, a reality show, a wrestling match.

I don't have any hopes for the people to gain political intelligence and rationality. They need to get a boot on their face before realizing that rising political corruption and crimes is a dangerous path.

People actually voted for this person. Drugged fools believing in magic.

Also the same with honesty, why is it considered such a strong thing I do not understand. I think being honest is terrible but stoicism argues agains it. I would rather be someone ahead in life than honest loser. Maybe I am missing something, that is why I am here asking? — Atrox

Ahead of what? In relation to what?

Almost across the board, people who are on their deathbed regrets missed social relationships. They regret not having something more meaningful with friends and family. People don't regret being kind and missing out on business riches.

Your philosophy about life is this modern condition of binary polarized ideals. It's either unconditional love or it's individualistic egotism, with the latter favored through the lens of self-actualization in business and getting rich. A pushed ideal by online influencers and the demands of the modern attention economy, raising new generations into the very type of life that older people recognized destroyed their sense of meaning in life.

The undercurrent of neoliberal capitalism that fuels this new lifestyle and morals has been called the new church after religion disappears, but it's only in our modern times we see the zealots of this new church.

I wonder, when life finally gives you the riches, after you've let down and dismissed anyone around you who cared, what then? When you have your castle, when all love you get are illusions from paid servants and you have all material gain you could ever wish for; what then?

It's clear that people today don't grow up. They don't really mature into social beings, they don't understand why being social is crucial to life. People growing up today seem to get stuck in development; in the phase of childhood when they start to become independent before forming the meaningful social bonds that stay with them long into adulthood. And it shows up in how they keep childish traits far into their 20s and sometimes 30s.

But at some point they will hit the age in which social relations shows itself as being the most important. When the existential horrors start to creep into everyday life and all the money in the world can't heal it. And they can sure try and distract themselves with all those riches, but at some point they will find themselves alone among plastic illusions that mean absolutely nothing.

That is, if they even get to that point of financial gains. Most will just chase that meaningless dream and find themselves lacking both social life and financial life. Becoming the angry incels who rage in dark corners of the internet about how their situation was everyone else's fault but themselves. Ending their lives in that meaningless state rather than turning their backs on that kind of ideal once and for all.

Why be kind? Because it rewards you with kindness. It's a trait that can be universalized into actual well-being compared to the opposite.

Not being kind turns people into individuals that no one cares about. They might believe they're fine, but no one cares about them anymore. If they fade away alone, what did they actually gain? What were they actually "ahead" of? By what metric are they "ahead" in life when they, at best, end up in the pathetic state of kings over nothing?

The existential horror at the end of their lives would be something to sympathize with if it weren't for us always trying to tell them this is the case. Their arrogance and attitudes led them to it and all they actually got was alienating any kindness they would have been given if they gave it themselves. At some point people will just not care anymore and their death becomes an irrelevant footnote in everyone else's lives as they dine together and appreciate each others kindness.

I'm 100% sure that the video is a great reply to the OP. What it ISN'T a great reply to, is the quote of the conversation it was given as a reply to, which was specifically about the apparent visibility of the curve of the horizon. — flannel jesus

I'm just giving a note on that. I've seen the whole thing and it's a really good video. All of Folding Ideas' videos are masterfully done arguments.

Judging by how you cut off my quoted post, and your subsequent response, I think you missed the part where I explicitly said that THIS question is within the realm of a normal person. I think you got mixed up in what I said there. — flannel jesus

Oh, sorry, my bad. However, the rest of my answer is about why they don't do it.

so he does disprove that the earth looks visibly flat to the naked eye in that video? So... where's the time-stamp for that? — flannel jesus

I recommend watching it in its entirety. It's very thorough about the whole thing and the people believing earth is flat.

However, I believe the question of the shape of the earth is one where we can actually kinda go along with the flat earthers in rejecting expertise entirely, and say "no, no really, how can I personally demonstrate the shape of the earth?" Not all questions are within the grasp of the average person — flannel jesus

Yes it is, you can test it yourself. You can just walk the footsteps of everyone who was able to measure the curvature of earth before we had rockets that went into space. You can use telephoto lenses yourself etc. Without it being out of reach for a common citizen. The folding ideas video is a good example of this.

I think the major problem with all this is that people aren't questioning or are critical of scientific facts because they've measured anything. Their beliefs are rooted in the laziness of never looking for actual answers and facts themselves.

They operate on pure belief, no different from religion.

The reasons for them doing so comes not from a genuine interest of what is true or not, but the emotional foundation of wanting to be better than others. And without education or intellectual capacity, they are jealous of scientists and experts. So they form a cognitive bias in which they manifest a truth of their own making that contradicts what experts say about some specific thing, in order to feel like they're the ones in the know and everyone else is stupid.

It's basic Dunning Kruger biases forming.

It is never about earth being flat, it is about people feeling lost in a world in which experts dominate the consensus of truth. These kinds of cognitive limitations are the basis for all forms of populism, it's the basis for MAGA and other extreme movements around the world (pun intended). People find a family and social structure within these groups as they don't feel welcome anywhere else.

Because numbers are the mental concept. — Corvus

Not really. They're mental in the way of being an interpretation of reality, but the categorization of things still end up in amounts. We can argue about how categories are human constructs, but at some point we get to things like 1 atom, 2 atoms. In relation to what numbers represent you cannot have 2 atoms if you didn't have 1 atom first. The same kind of works the other way around, how can you define something as 1 object if there wasn't the possibility of there being 2? You cannot form the interpretation of reality into an object existing as the only 1 object in existence if there wasn't a relation to more than one. So naturally, math has a backwards causation in that math, as an interpretive system requires the whole system in order to form a "1".

On the other hand, that may constitute that there's no causality for the existence of numbers in order, but rather that if you have 1, you also have all other numbers when using math in our reality. If you have 2, you have 9, and 5 and 4 and 1.

The interesting thing, however, is whether or not "0" has a relation. That concept has more of a constructed meaning than single existence. What is "0.5"? Is it half of a one thing, or is it half of nothingness?

The concept of non-existence is therefore much harder to correlate with a causal connection in math. Maybe that's why math using infinity end up so confusing for everyone. We fundamentally operate in a reality where everything exists and there's no physical representation of absolute nothingness.

Here I take you to mean existence must be perceived logically, not egotistically. With some nuance, I agree with this premise. — ucarr

Precisely. Any perspective of our consciousness being a higher state or more special than everything else in reality is a conjecture based in our emotional reaction to our own experience rather than rational argument about our function.

What's the relationship between entropy and consciousness? My spitball conjecture says: Consciousness drives some part of entropy. — ucarr

Consciousness is a development in evolution and evolution is a result of entropy leaning towards more efficiency. The concept is that life appears out of chemical reactions that utilize energy absorption for its continued reaction and in doing so start to develop more and more complex ways of doing that process. As it continues it becomes more advanced, forming higher cellular structures that streamlines the same kind of process between multiple parts. And as an ecosystem it spreads out this process of efficient entropy more and more.

The development of consciousness being more a part in the evolutionary system than entropy, but at a higher scale still moves towards even more efficient entropy, so it may be that entropy even has part in forming consciousness as higher conscious beings require more and consume more energy. Humans compared to gorillas consume a lot more energy because of our brains, so it makes sense, but we are also beings that create things that push entropic processes into high gear, so to speak.

Here we come upon a complex issue: the language of the above statement imbues the universe and its laws with teleology. The universe, having a goal, behaves with design towards spreading out energy as effective as possible. Also, the universe, because it prioritizes effectiveness over its opposite, has a value it adheres to. The implication is that the universe is itself conscious. — ucarr

Not necessarily. Our laws of physics have constants and variables that push processes and behaviors into specific leanings. Like the cosmological constant, which exist at the right balance to allow the formation of galaxies and even slightly changing would collapse out universe.

While these are often used by theology to "prove" the existence of God, there's no need for such explanation as it's no different than how specific parameters of matter cause things like the surface tension on water. All over nature and in the universe there are balanced parameters that in that balance produce a certain effect.

If we were to view the universe as any other "sample" of a chemical process, we can write out the parameters that dictate its behavior.

That entropy functions like this does not require purpose or meaning anymore than the meaning and purpose of the surface tension of water.

I usually try to view reality through this lens in order to not imbue my emotions onto explaining things. Viewing it in relation to other physical systems we know very much about and through that dispel any human arrogance or sense of insignificance to the greater whole. If I look at the universe as a petri dish of chemical reactions that functions due to certain parameters that govern its entirety, it starts to make sens why things happen without any meaning or purpose being applied to it.

Here's how I define entropy for myself:

entropy - the unidirectional increase of disorder within any dynamical system utilizing energy toward performance of a function. So, entropy is rooted within InputA→logical/operator→OutputB

The negation of inherent design within creation is a gnarly problem for sentients. This is so because sentients must perceive patterns in nature in order to live.

If you discern patterns in nature, you cannot deny that nature has purposes, as patterns and purposes are intimately related. In fact, if you say there’s a pattern to activity, you’re as good as saying there’s a purpose to activity. If there’s a logical sequence to activity, a sentient observer can only conclude there’s a goal-oriented progression including a start point, a mid-point and an end point. If you randomize this sequence, and all patterns along with it, the sentient being cannot practice life-sustaining behavior. Working backwards, we see that existence without patterns and purposes would not lead to the emergence of life.

So, teleodynamics - thermo-dynamics at the higher level of entropic systems organizing constraints on natural forces towards a future state of the system - or cognitive design by sentients, is about something not immediately present, but rather something predicted to emerge at a later state of the system. — ucarr

Natural laws can create ordered structures and sequences without any goal or intent. The standard definition of entropy does not imply function or design. Recognizing patterns in nature doesn't mean nature has intrinsic purposes, it simply reflects consistent physical processes.

Patterns, as we humans see and experience them are linked to our predictive coding organizing experience in ways that is easier to perceive, it doesn't give them value or purpose. We are good at it because it is beneficial for survival. We prefer symmetry and order because then we can spot disorder (something breaking it, like a predator in the bush).

if you say there’s a pattern to activity, you’re as good as saying there’s a purpose to activity. If there’s a logical sequence to activity, a sentient observer can only conclude there’s a goal-oriented progression including a start point, a mid-point and an end point. — ucarr

I'm not sure that's correct. I don't see how pattern to activity has the logical conclusion to be the same as purpose or having a goal. They do not logically follow each other. You can have patterns without any purpose or goal. You can have a randomly created constant that because of it produces certain patterns. Like how the patterns of fractals form due to certain mathematical values, but those values in themselves are meaningless.

I take you to mean entropy is an essential and iterative process.

Could it be the iteration of entropy and the complexity of mind are joined by the bi-conditional operator? As the iterations of entropy evolve upwardly, the complexity of mind evolves upwardly. From the reverse direction, as the complexity of minds increases, the vertical stacking of re-iteration rises.

Conclusion – there’s no conflict between the entropy-driven evolutionary process and the egotistical mediation of its resultant: sentient beings. — ucarr

A big problem with the reasoning of many who try to evaluate consciousness is that they look at it as some form of "order creation mechanism that produce order out of chaos". But this is again tapping into the biases of our consciousness seeing patterns where there are none. What we view as "order" does not equal order in the point of view of reality. We can see the dead process of a mountain being formed as perfectly symmetrical and beautiful in its "order", but it is as dead of a process as any other chemical system in nature and reality. We imbue value into a process because it looks beautiful to us, but it makes no difference to the universe.

Thus when we think ourselves as beings that through our consciousness can make order out of the chaos of the universe we act in arrogance in front of the more logical truth; that we act in accordance with that chaos. Our sense of "order" is only order in our perspective, but the processes of the universe and reality does not have such a perspective. We are therefor just part of the chaos machine, part of entropy and the entropic processes that happen through time. We take energy, absorb it and consume it, then dissipate it. All according to entropy.

We fool ourselves with the illusion of seeing order, but if we had the capacity to view the totality of the universe, from that elevated perspective beyond our comprehension, we would not.

And we don't know about any next steps of evolution of consciousness. It may very well be that the next step is our own creation of synthetic consciousness, being even more effective at entropic processes. Maybe the paper clip scenario is in fact a natural end game for entropy.

Isn't your argument relying on the Von Neumann–Wigner interpretation of quantum physics? And Schrödinger's cat wasn't a proposed concept of how things work, but an example of the absurdity of how the logical end points of some interpretations of quantum mechanics lead to absurd outcomes. It was an example used as criticism of how some thought about it all.

The Von Neumann–Wigner interpretation of quantum physics has the least, or rather no empirical evidence behind it. It's, in my own words, an argument or interpretation out of the "arrogance of man". That we elevate our own sense of importance in the universe because the notion of ourselves as just being as basic as all other matter and energy drives us to despair. It's an emotional drive that tries to imbue ourselves with an attribute (consciousness) that elevates ourselves to deities of reality.

As I see it, there's nothing to support consciousness being "special" if we observe everything from the point of view of reality itself.

I think that leaving out evolutionary reasons for consciousness and the reasons for life itself is a grave mistake when trying to assess what consciousness is. People have a tendency to become bias to their own existence and skew explanations into the realm of religious belief. But if we look at a logical concept of why consciousness and life formed, we begin to see why it emerged from our universal laws of physics.

------------

The major process of reality is entropy. Energy, both released and trapped in matter, is simply spreading itself out over time. Without going into the physical processes of the relation between time and entropy, the universe is, by the laws of physics, leaning towards spreading out energy as effective as possible. Life, as a process, is highly effective at transferring energy. Both from the sun and from the matter of celestial bodies. There's an inclination towards the formation of life, by entropy itself. And the more energy demanding life is, the faster entropy moves. The complexity forming out of this is generally in line with speeding entropy up, and the complexity might seem oddly beautiful to us, but may just be iterative as anything else in nature. Consciousness then, is the spear tip of life adapting to energy consumption. Adaptation is a key component of consciousness.

And it's through adaptation that I propose consciousness stems. There's an interesting "coincidence" that we see advanced consciousness in mammals and some reptilians. The evolution of advanced consciousness seem to be linked to major apocalyptic events in which the remaining animals that survive require themselves to be highly adaptive to the post-apocalyptic environment they exist in. The more adaptive a species can be, the better they will prosper and spread. And those who required most adaptation among large animals were the mammals and remaining reptiles. Basically explaining why mammals and some birds show the highest level of intelligence in nature.

High intelligence in consciousness becomes a second step of evolution. The basic form of evolution relies on cellular adaptation out of chemical reactions. The next step is instinctual behavior that is changed over generations. The third step is the lifeform itself adapting to continuously changing environments. The fourth step is spreading adaptive behaviors between lifeforms. Through this we can see life evolving the consciousness we possess; featuring all steps within us and the fourth through advanced language and spreading of ideas.

Consciousness, with empirical evidence supporting the predictive coding theory, operates on primarily generating a hallucinatory representation of our surroundings, then using previous experiences stored in memory to predict events as we navigate through reality. This process is so complex and malleable that our experience of it appears as the experience we have as thinking beings. We believe ourselves to have free will and "thinking" but in general, we are only operating on an advanced prediction process in order to adapt to our surroundings. Rather than our adaption being moments apart in time, our advanced cognition makes it happen on extremely short timespans. We can adapt within microseconds. Evolution has driven chemical reactions, genetic changes, through instinctual behaviors changing over generations, to social changes (like in dolphins), to end up operating so fast in adaption that our experience produce the illusion of free will.

But in the end, we are still acting on simple prediction operations, generating an experience that fold in on itself, predicting its own predictions, thinking about thinking. As such, this feedback loop produces abstract concepts that evolve out to complex ideas that is being spread by language.

Essentially this feedback loop forms a new level of complexity, just as we see in any other system in nature. Emerging a state of operation that on its surface look more complex than the parts permit. But we are not more complex than any other system in nature and reality, we just believe we are due to the limitations of a system reacting to itself.

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So I don't think that consciousness relation to quantum physics has a special bond of meaning or is linked in the way you describe. Consciousness operate much more simpler than being a bridge like that. Just because our brain have quantum mechanical operations being part of our function, does not mean consciousness itself stems from a bridge between Newtonian and quantum physics. It only means that as anything else in the universe and reality, quantum processes are part of our being.

We are, in essence, only an emergent complex process that is a natural progression of the physical laws and processes of our universe. And in my opinion, it's important to be humble to the fact that we are not special, but part of a hierarchy of emergent processes, steps on a ladder in which we exist pretty high, but without knowledge of the steps above us.

I challenge you to try to justify, in your response to this OP, e.g., why Western, democratic values should not be forcibly imposed on obviously degenerate, inferior societies at least in principle—like Talibanian Afghanistan, North Korea, Iran, China, India, etc. Some societies are so obviously structured in a way antithetical to the human good, that it is virtually impossible to justify leaving them be in the name of anti-imperialism. E.g., if we could take over North Korea right now without grave consequences (such as nuclear war), then it is obviously in our duty to do so—and this is a form of imperialism. Why would you not be a Western supremacist? — Bob Ross

Installing democracy in a nation in which its people follow other moral rules for their politics is impossible. Even if you forcefully destroy what they have and force them to vote, they will never find a stable ground to operate on. You are effectively not trying to install democracy, you are trying to reshape their entire world view, their beliefs and sense of normalcy.

Yes, we can argue that cultures can be evaluated out of their humanistic qualities. We can oppose a culture for how it treats its people. But change can only come from the inside. We can try and expose these people to our values, show them another way and if they want to follow that they will eventually change.

But enforcing it by force will attach that brutality to the values that's supposed to be installed.

In essence, if I invade a nation, killing anything that comes in my way and then try to communicate my message of peace and understanding, of free will and love. My entire course of action to do so creates a cognitive dissonance in the people I try to "help". They might agree with the love, peace and understanding, but at the same time your actions speak of violence. Will that people not see view the whole package of what you brought them? That you did not only bring the message of love, but also the force and violence as well?

Because we can also look within the western democracies that we have. As a swede I could view US politics as barbaric. With its inability to help its own people, the racial violence, the risk of authoritarian power and the risk of its military capability to initiate a new world war when some delusional president takes power.

Should the more balanced democracies within western culture gather together and invade the US, kill its corrupt leaders and corporate "oligarks", rip their constitution to pieces and install the better constitutional laws that we have, the parliament politics that better function as a representative democratic system and stay there until the US population have learned the better way of how democracy should be handled?

Because democracy in itself and the western values in general are in some places wildly in conflict with itself. And many democracies are ill-built to govern against manipulation and corruption within their halls of power.

The bottom line is that change has to come from the inside. The only way to truly change a nation to the better is to inspire better ideals. It is painfully slow, but it is also rock solid in the long term. Most attempts at "installing democracy" have failed miserably, with even more dire consequences like terrorism growing not only to fight back within their own borders, but also against he power that came there to "help".

What you are talking about when mentioning North Korea is not about installing "better values" and changing their culture to a "better system". You look at their existence as a danger to the world, with their nuclear capabilities and their threats of war. Invading to defeat that is not about "installing democracy" any more than invading Nazi Germany to get rid of Hitler's regime. That's another action entirely that has to do with offensive defense, not "helping" people.

limited though! — kazan

Impossible to in length write out all parameters of a system that governs against what I described in here.

And based on an assumption that there is a level playing field called democracy that only has one form/ universal understanding. Why democracy? — kazan

Democracy when functioning as intended in representing the people and without corruption, have always functioned better for the sake of humanity than any other form of system. The problem is that many nations are too naive or ill-built to protect it from corruption or manipulation of this system. The necessary steps to eliminate the rise of demagogues and manipulation is by the people confused to be fascist suppression and this confusion gets taken advantage of by the demagogues in order to rise in power until they can install real suppression in order to seize authoritarian power.

Democracy only shows its broken side when the protection of it that I speak off is non-existent.

And in times of immediate crisis, multi party democracies can not always act swiftly i.e. stop playing politics and start producing good governance.
Many limits to that one form of governing! — kazan

It all depends on what constitutional rulings that are in place.

As I see it, there's too much focus on philosophical debates about democracy vs something and not enough about what constitutes a good democracy and how the world can evolve democracy itself past the problems it always seem to face.

this conversation is drifting towards The Trump Thread, although that thread is of course ghosted by our own dedicated MAGA fanatic. — Wayfarer

It's kind of telling that we globally are tumbling down into two sides of some polarized positions. Is there a logical conclusion at the end of this? We either as humanity begin to understand this self-radicalization and abandon the binary conflict, or we further tumbles down and face a world war not between nations, but between two fundamentally constructed simulacras of meaning. If that were to happen, it would be as pointless as the first world war, but the consequence might lead to the eradication of stupid politics, a new system of politics which respect democracy, but abandon emotionally driven politics that give birth to demagogues.

I think there are lessons the world will learn in this century, that will teach everyone about the dangers of giving too much power to individuals and that politics needs a collective of opposing leaders as the composition of power. We already see how proper parliaments with a collective of many different voices, maybe not act fast, but act balanced and better for the entire people as well as the world.

The only nations of the world who pose actual threats to humanity are the ones where the concentration of power is just a small group or a single ruler.

This type of ideal of a single ruler needs to be eradicated, by revolutionary force, if necessary. It is an echo of barbaric times in history that masked itself as civilized. Modern politics need to rid themselves of individuals and install a neutral system of operation that channel the people's will and which protects against any attempt to control it by a single few. Any attempt at disrupting such a system has to have a rationally reasoned ground that everyone agrees upon, not just the majority.

I think there's too little debate and discussions on how to evolve politics. Everyone has just given up on doing so and keeps playing this game of "I hope democracy survives". :shade:

one has to understand that Anti-Americanism typically leads to a distorted view that supports the disinformation of a totalitarian state.

We don't have to pick sides, I think it's totally logical for example be against Israel's actions in Gaza and Russia's actions in Ukraine. Yet the Anti-American typically goes with the thinking of my enemy's enemy is my friend. — ssu

This entire thread can be renamed to Pro-American / Anti-American illusions.

Because the majority of sub-topics and arguments in here are generally only about that and nothing else. The biggest problem in this thread is that people project their emotional and political ideologies in the form of fallacious arguments about Ukraine, rather than out of facts or rational reasoning. So instead of being about the war, about Russian aggression and the ripple effects into world politics, for the most part it's mostly just anti-American evangelists coming into conflict with people trying to make arguments that the anti-Americans fallaciously argue is pro-American.

It's a thread riddled with reductionist, overgeneralization, genetic, and false cause fallacies.

Most of the back and forth between people in this thread has been extremely low quality and it's just running on empty these days.

I agree with everything there. Trump and everything we see is the symptom of the modern condition.

We’re no longer in the neoliberal era, it’s claimed. We’ll see. Biden was neoliberalism lite, Trump is just an idiot — so anything is possible. But what eventually emerges will be interesting to see. And how it disseminates to the masses via this strange media landscape. — Mikie

I think post-truth-ideals have taken over from neoliberalism. It's not a value system, but a sign of neoliberalism breaking down. The values of neoliberalism have programmed everyone to only be looking out for themselves; both as a sense of having a strong identity standing against the world, as well as stopping to care for anything. Everyone is in a bubble thinking they can exist without having to interact with anyone else but who they choose to. That they're not affected by climate change, economics, war and so on.

Communism was something that previously stood as a counter-weight to the neoliberal change. But since the fall of the Soviet union and placing communism's tyranny on full display as a failed system, it's more or less died out and neoliberalism could rage freely. We have the playbook for communism, we know how it played out, but we haven't truly for neoliberalism until now. We're starting to see the terrors of what it really did to our culture. And in the hindsight of the future I believe we will look back at the peak of neoliberalism just as we look back at the peak of failed communist empires obscuring the tyranny and terrors at its core. We will have an historical context showing identity enforcement and the tyranny of isolation that failed to organize people into movements for the betterment of humanity. Failing to organize the world into dealing with something like the climate change for instance.

Trump's authoritarianism is a clear sign that neoliberalism is ending. I'm only hoping it inspires a new world order to form around less authoritarian views as people get fed up with that form of fallout from the ending neoliberalism. And that the world finds a better equilibrium between the liberal values of freedom and the necessity of collaborative collective projects and systems that help people and improves life for all.

I don't think that's really a dream scenario, because I'm seeing how fed up people are with how things have been run over the past 50 years. No one wants a communist state, people don't want authoritarian leaders, they don't want a state boot, but they also don't want the soulless capitalist neoliberal machine just grinding them into mindless dust in which the existential dread of being reach a climax of absolute meaninglessness. People crave for a system that actually works, something well-planned and intelligent.

It might not look like it with all the trash and unintelligent brain rot that's going around, but you can see it in people's eyes... they're tired. They want meaning. Some go back to religion, only to find themselves in the same mess of incoherent ideas that it had. But some look for more collective coherence, something that connects people beyond the superficial realm of online trash that is algorithmically controlled social media.

People need big projects, big movements, stuff that connects and builds towards something profound or that gives a sense of it.

One example of how neoliberalism has reached its end and is about to fall is young people's interest in only short form TikTok-style media. The entertainment industry became democratized with the rise of YouTube and short form media to the point that it took the formula of commercials as the main media format. TikTok and Instagram reels functions like commercials, one after another of short form content. It flipped the idea of watching a show with commercial breaks into the commercial format being the main form of entertainment. But there's very little substance in this format, not because it's uncreative, but that it doesn't have the time to form deeper meaning. It's like looking for answers to existential questions in the commercial breaks on TV.

But young people have started to behave lost, finding themselves dissolution and without a sense of actual meaning. We're seeing a peak of this soulless consumption of the neoliberal market and that soullessness is beginning to become clear to everyone. There's a reason why we see trends like the vinyl records making a comeback. It's not because of some hipster-nostalgia, but for the purpose of slowing down and be more personal with things like listening to music. People are leaving social media or don't care for it as much anymore; they're mostly using it as a main form of communication with friends and family, but not as an identity sign post.

This form of anti-behavior against the plastic shallow nature of neoliberalism will build something new, it's a movement that is yet to have a specific form and core idea, it's a reaction that I think is the seed for what's to come after neoliberalism as a system of values truly crash down.

I think this the wrong place to discuss this. I think you want reddit.com/r/getting with teacher. — T Clark

Yeah, I don’t really understand the reason for it here. This is too personal for a discussion like this. Sure, it can be philosophical, but then make it so, not some advice as no one here can advice the specifics of case to case morality that has consequences beyond the theoretical.

That is just eugenics for the disabled. — Hyper

That's why I wrote out both paths, not to propose it is, but as a form of question. You either attribute acts in society that happens out of the psychological problems people have as immoral, and in that case you use moral values to judge acts out of the psychological state they're in.

Or you make no moral value apply and accept that there are only different psychological states which produce certain behaviors.

The problem with morality overall is that people want to talk about if an act is moral or not, but all acts comes from the psychology of a person, and that psychology can be defective.

Where do you draw the line between a decision that is psychologically affected and one that is not? Because the fact is, there are no acts that aren't psychological.

So, are you calling psychopaths disabled? ADHD? People suffering from trauma? PTSD? Alcoholism? Stress syndromes?

What about what we call "normal states of mind"? What is a normal state of mind?

If all acts are psychological, then what is a disability? And what can be judged as moral and immoral?

Well there's certainly a distinction between the concept of pain and the sensation of pain. They are both brain states but they're different kinds of brain states. — Michael

While the two can be different on paper, both are composed of brain states. Both are perceptive and internalized products of physical processes. Just like magenta doesn't exist, it is the interplay of the biological being that is us, with the photons of specific wavelengths that forms our perception of magenta.

In essence, all is part of the physical as a holistic physical thing. There are no dividing lines in physical reality, only due to the human psychological process of categorization, which is automatic and fundamental to human cognition.

So our act of categorizing and dividing up things is for us to make sense of it, but in reality, there is only one whole of interplaying energy and matter.

Because of it, all exist. Illusions that we experience as the perception of reality or concepts of abstract things are merely illusions, they don't exist as we see them in our minds eye or conceptual process, they're only illusions we attribute as existing because that's how we operate as animals. My perception of reality, my concepts and ideas are only as as real as me hallucinating something into a belief of its existence, but it doesn't exist.

The only thing that exist and is the actual reality of my illusionary experience, is my brain state producing it.

I don't think the concept of sight is of much comfort to a blind man. — Michael

Yet, if his eyes don't work, his brain will still have the capacity to form a neural map that produces an internal image. And the concept of sight will still be something he internalize, even if the abstract nature of it for him produce a wildly alien internalization for the seeing person.

I distinguish sensations from concepts. Colour is like pain, not like justice. — Michael

In what way does your concept of justice distinguish itself from your perception of pain? The sensation of pain or perception of magenta is just as much a construct of your brain as your concept of justice. The brain doesn't distinguish between the two, its merely forming different neural pathway maps based on what is going on. Like, what happens if you condition someone to feel pain when thinking about a specific concept of justice? Then you have a neural map that is both an internalized concept of justice as well as pain, inseparable as a perceptive thing.

Certainly my concept of justice exists as a physical brain state, but when we talk about justice we're not talking about people's brain states. — Michael

No, but the brain state that produce concepts of justice is akin to magenta not existing as an actual physical color. It's a state of physical reality that produce a perceptive reality in us, but that reality isn't a thing, it's just a product of the physical, i.e there is a physical state that constitutes the effect of your internalized concept of justice.

Does magenta exist?

Well, one definition of "real" is "existing or occurring in the physical world; not imaginary, fictitious, or theoretical; actual". — Michael

If the imaginary could be summed up as the result of a physical specific state of our brain and its present energy distribution, would that not mean it is also existing? And since theory and fiction can only be something when interpreted or imagined by something, they become a form of physical reality through it? Even though the perception we have of it isn't what constitutes the actual physical of them, just like our perception of light isn't the be all end all of the properties of its physical nature.

At least part of what dictates a being’s reality, according to these philosophers, is the extent to which its existence is dependent on other things: the less dependent a thing is on other things for its existence, the more real it is. — Wayfarer

Just like how quantum mechanics basically only form a defined and measured reality when probabilities are in relation to something (the measurement/instrument, surrounding elements defining it). I.e The only things that isn't, is that which is in total detachement to everything in reality and everything that is, is that which bonds with something else.

Kind of like a powder of iron dust on a table, they have no defined form in their spread out state of possible forms to be part of, but moving a magnet through (reality/measurement/known states), gravitate the non-states to becoming part of a known state (being part of and in relation to the magnet and its form).

So the teenage girl-screwing creep is out of the mix — oh, what high standards the GOP has! — Mikie

It's very telling of the entire republican party being so ignorant and bad at speaking out against these creeps and behaviors of Trump and his closest circle of people that the entire party is immoral.

How much proof is needed?

If you are a republican, are you supporting this or not? If not, then speak up, if so, then you're just as immoral as them. And if you're against it, but fear them, then bite the damn bullet and organize together into a new party. Take the loss if that leads to a loss in the next election through diluting the voters between the two factions. Eventually your moral faction of the republican party will gain in popularity and snuff out the immoral trash of the other. The Lincoln Project already tries this, support them, gain their strength instead.

Republicans turning a blind eye towards the immorality makes them complicit in the immorality. Either take a stand against it or embrace it, either way, the current state of republicans is that of immoral bad people. Doesn't matter where you stand politically, that conclusion is solid.

It's willful engagement in behavior that is likely to produce an unsafe condition of elevated likelihood for birth defects. "Life is better than no life" would not be a way to justify drinking alcohol during pregnancy or competing in a boxing competition while pregnant. Why would it be any different in this scenario? — Outlander

Adding to this, I would also argue that there is a psychological dimension to this as well; we evaluate the mental health of people's decisions. Outside of religious and elitist ideals of pure blood delusions, when people live close to each other, such as within a family, and form sexual attraction, it generally arise out of issues in forming social normality.

The Westermarck Effect shows that people growing up together forms aversion towards attraction. It's seen both between biological siblings and those who aren't biologically linked. But genetical similarity can also produce attraction, seen in relatives who never grew up together and meet as adults.

So, human's seem to form aversion of incest through the Westermarck Effect, a socially formed programming of their attraction mechanism that prevents incest. And incest that is occurring may happen due to a problem or issue with that process forming properly.

A good explanation for it might be that humans were generally living closer together as a family and the Westermarck Effect formed properly because of it. But civilisation broke up these structures faster than evolution could keep up, and so distance between family members screwed up that programming to properly form. Either families split up, family members were too distant to each other, or other psychological traumas prevented it from forming.

From an evolutionary perspective, incest does not make sense, and so nature has a lot of functions to avoid incest from happening. Many animals have strong scent cues to avoid it, but human's generally form it through social structures and processes programming our brain and chemistry.

But just like many things in modern society, we break against the norms of our species evolution through culturally formed behaviors, and thus we have broken up family structures of our species into a culturally formed structure, dependent on societal behaviors rather than what we developed as animals.

We have less social programming in our modern world to avoid incest. And the latest findings that incest is far more common than previously thought, support that conclusion.

So is it morally wrong? If we're applying our behavior to the conditions of our species, many animals will perform incest if there's no other mating partners available, but seen as how many people there are in the world, we can only conclude that incestual behavior is a psychological defect of failed social programming among relatives; primarily by our modern society standards not aligning with our natural state of evolutionary programming.

It then comes down to if we can apply morality to such a psychological defect, or which defective behavior that we would consider immoral. It could be said that every psychologically deviant behavior that is destructive in society is immoral as every one of them are formed as psychological defects, and in that case incest is immoral. But if we aren't considering psychological deviant behavior as immoral and more of an involuntary mental illness, then it is a form of mental illness formed out of a failure to form our natural avoidances of incest. Just like we have other mental illnesses that's formed in modern society because we're not aligning with what is natural for us as a species, for example how modern society increase our stress levels to such dangerous levels that it produces brain damage.

It is rather worrying that incest is so common in society as it is. The 1 out of 7000 is very telling, but that's only counting the times when incest leads to childbirth. There's such an obvious obscured number in those statistics seen as incest are more common without producing a child. So the statistical number might be a lot higher. But in my conclusion, not that surprising.

.How many will follow Gaetz and not even make it through the beginning of the nomination process? Hegseth seems like a good bet. — Fooloso4

Trump is in a peculiar position as nominating these morons sends a signal to his Maga crowd that he's fighting back against the "deep state", but it will only lead to these positioned people screwing up and show that what Trump is doing is fundamentally incompetent and that everyone is a clown that ruins everything. But if he backs out of it, he's gonna show himself being weak and that the "deep state" is winning, and for a narcissistic fascist like Trump, showing weakness is loss.

So what will the clown do? :chin:

What I don't understand is why Trump voters are so eager to have more inflation. — ssu

Because they don't know how inflation works. They don't know these things, and since they don't know any of it, they're gullible enough to listen to someone speak in a charismatic way and be emotionally charged with passion for something they only think is good because their leader said so.

If he stood there and promoted eating shit is healthy for you I would guarantee some people would do it just because he said so. People are generally absolute morons because it takes effort to not be one, and lazy people won't put in the effort. While education helps some, a lot of people are generally just incapable of overcoming their idiotic state of being. It's too ingrained by other morons around them as an epidemic echo chamber of bad influences.

Yeah, I also think that there's no reason for it to be obscured to people not logged in. Even if you have to log in, the story is already "out there" in public, so stories being visible to outsiders is not a weird thing.

The only thing I guess is that AI spiders captures those texts, but that might just make things become part of the cultural whole much more than being obscured.

I think it would be a good thing.

You do not know that. The approval of Democratic donors is not the same as the approval of "the people". — Fooloso4

It's as much representative of the people as an election itself. You think they would donate to someone they wouldn't vote for? And on top of that, what other metric do you have to measure this?

Not unless it is done democratically. How would that work? — Fooloso4

By checking against facts. For example, politicians inflate numbers all the time to make their statements sound better, only to retract when stakes are less high. By demanding facts to be represented correctly you can install a strike method to make sure continuously lying politicians stay to actual facts.

Demagogues can win democratically by just playing the part, scheme and hide problems. "Democratically" doesn't mean anything if there's no protection of truth surrounding it.

How would you make sure that anything "democratically" is handled with care to protect itself? Hitler got to his power "democratically".

It is anti-democratic! I don't know what the forum would look like if it were democratic, but my guess is that I would prefer it the way it is. — Fooloso4

While there's no democratic election of the moderators, I would say that if some mod were to abuse his power and people rise up to that, the other mods would surely democratically decide to strip that mod of those powers. And for bannings, they're done together with a stated reason for it, and if that reason isn't according to the rules, then that too could be contested. So far the reason why things on this forum works is because to become a mod you need to show that you have the virtue of keeping the quality of this forum. And it works well.

But then, apply that to the scale of society, it's impossible to keep it from being infested by corruption and bad actors. Through democracy it works better to cycle leaders and make the people decide who they trust. But such trust can be manipulated.

So how do you get similar quality, but through a democratic system, without having the ability to safeguard against bad actors? Banning the ones who lie and scheme, taking down the leaders who try to manipulate the masses to hide the fact they're not on their side.

It is not the same principle. One is a government regime the other is a forum. — Fooloso4

You don't know what an analogy is? We are talking about different governing systems, on how to improve the quality of representative democracy. We ban people on the forum in order to not infest the place with low quality trash that's only there to feed the ego of the person behaving like that.

In the government, politicians should not be there to feed their ego, to work for themselves, they are there for the damn people, to represent the people who put them there. That's the whole point of democracy. And if politicians lie and cheat people to get votes, then it's not a democracy anymore, it's a demagogy.

To argue for better protection of the democratic system is to argue for a way to keep such manipulators and liars out of halls of power. To effectively ban them from being there. The people they were supposed to represent can choose another one who can behave according to the rules and regulations of such a protection system, just like we have rules on this forum. Banning such people do not remove the representative power of the people, it protects the whole system from abusers of power.

Right, it is not. Rocket science is much less complicated. — Fooloso4

I don't think so, I think people are lost in definitions and ideologies. People seem unable to look at a system without wearing lenses of their personal value systems infecting how they read certain words.

Democracy is not a single thing that cannot be evolved. There's lots of room to improve a democratic system to rid itself of corruption, demagogues and improve the quality of its people-representative function as a governing power.

Donors who gave to Bernie over other Democrats only shows that Democratic donors favored him, not that he had the support of the people. — Fooloso4

The map shows people's donations. There's no candidate voting by the people, the people can only vote on what the Democratic party puts forward. If the people were to vote for a candidate, it would have been Sanders.

But that is not what we have. The question is how to democratically make it a representative democracy? Banning people from the halls of power is anti-democratic. — Fooloso4

Banning people who actively lie is a protection of the democracy. Banning people who try to manipulate and abuse their power is protecting democracy. If you tolerate the intolerable, it's going to erode everything and you lose democracy. You're not banning representation of the people, you're not banning based on political leaning or politics, you ban people who abuse their power and through that focus politics to function as representative of the people's vote.

Just reacting like that to the concept of "banning people" is like the freedom of speech ticks that people misuse as some kind of defense for whatever they like. You need to have context, otherwise it's like when someone is banned off this forum, people would complain that this is anti-democratic, disregarding that censorship has to do with state censorship, banning people off this forum is there to protect the standards of quality that this forum has. It's the same principle. Getting rid of the demagogues require getting rid of the people who act as demagogues. And that requires laws and regulations to do it in order to protect the quality of democracy that should be considered obvious. It's not rocket science.

Unless I am missing something, if donations are any measure then Harris would have won. — Fooloso4

How do you figure that? It's not about winning the election but who's the Democrat's candidate running for office. Without Sanders, she's third, and that's including all the public exposure she's got as a VP.

I am not sure that is entirely true. It may be that people do not understand Sander's proposals, but a proper understanding of a candidate's position has never been a requirement for voting. — Fooloso4

He's being countered and bullied by both the Republicans AND the Democrats. He doesn't get as big of a stage and he's never been an elected candidate that gets all the attention to speak nationally. And it's not about understanding his position, it's about understanding his politics. The people actually understands him and likes his proposals because of it, every time he's spoken it's relatively crystal clear. Compare that to the non-vision gobbledygook that the other Democrats constantly spew out. And he has the ability to change his rhetoric depending on the crowd. When he speaks to working class voters he's doing the most basic 1 to 1 logic of policy to result based on their questions.

So, you are not in favor of democracy. — Fooloso4

Yes, I'm more in favor of democracy than most, that's why a representative democracy should actually work as one and have true representatives, not manipulators, liars and demagogues. To force the representatives to form policy out of facts, research and what the people ask for, pitting that against other politicians who have other conclusions about how to solve issues. What we see in politics, especially in the US today, is not actually democracy and everyone who thinks that, are fools.

We really don't know how many people would have voted for him. The label "socialist" still scares a lot of people. I do think, however, that targeting wealth disparity might be a winning message. — Fooloso4

The map over donors from the public towards candidates is a pretty clear indicator of what the people want. What the Democratic party then does is just ignoring this and go for the elite at the top (those criticized for being out of touch with the people).



The fear mongering using "socialist" is just the right playing their cards. Sanders modell his politics after Scandinavia and people buying into the socialist fear mongering gets quite the cognitive dissonance when living conditions in Scandinavia are brought up to be among the world leading. But they're not socialist nations.

What Sanders is capable of doing is to sell in the politics and policies to the people with just basically asking them what they want and then telling them that's what these policies will do. "You can't take care of your sick relative and need to have three jobs to even support basic living conditions? Here's the welfare system to support it, free health care, sick leave, vacation weeks, constitutional workers rights etc."

He says things as they are and gives people what they ask for. The problem in the US is that Democrats are too afraid of losing voters on the right, who themselves want better living conditions and they do it by just catering in to the same lies and narratives of the right rather than go harder into left economics and give people what they want.

And we see more and more people just saying the same things that the Democrats have been following for years now: "do the same tactics as the right", "try to speak the Maga language" and more of such nonsense, pushing the party more and more to the right by the day.

Instead of just facing reality and distinguish themselves as a left leaning party. Here's the left economics focused on supporting the people.

The absolute hilarity of the right trying to cater to the working class while still increasing the people's living costs while funding the military to such an excess it nearly breaks the economy, much rather than taking a microscopic part out of that to fund a really functioning and good health care system, better education, support for the conditions of the working class etc.

...things that overall, over time, produces the foundation for future industry, entrepreneurs, engineers and workers who can build an improved future.

This short-term self-indulging elitist politics need to stop and it will stop when parties like the Democrats choose someone with a properly intelligent vision that the people can gather around. When are people going to realize that politicians go by their own interests, in the direction of money ans building their own wealth of power rather than caring anything for how to actually care for a nation and the world?

This is why I want to ban anyone from halls of power who's not a true representative of the people and who constantly lies. Statements in politics that aren't factual should lead to removal of their power. It would get rid of not just clowns like Trump, but all clowns on both sides.