So instead, he suggests that qualia are an illusion. By this, he does not mean the experience of the green leaf itself (or red apple, etc). He just doesn't think the experience has any properties of qualia. It just seems to be that way. — Marchesk

The usage of the word illusion in this context strikes me as strange. What is it an illusion of? If the experience is "real" but doesn't involve any qualia, then the qualia are not an illusion. They're a representation. But that just brings us back to the view Frankish rejects.

So what accounts for the illusion that conscious experience has properties of qualia? Keith suggests that one the one hand there is the perceptual account. But then there is a separate internal monitoring of the perceptual processes that gives rise to the sense of a rich, internal world. — Marchesk

This doesn't seem to solve the issue of how the internal monitoring process constructs the internal world with qualia if no such qualia are present in experience. It would force us to conclude that qualia are a priori properties of the human mind.

And the reason for this illusion is to make ourselves and other humans feel special. The seeming hardness is a feature of the illusion, with the implication being one of survival and ethical considerations. — Marchesk

Isn't this an explanation that could equally be applied to any possible outcome? That is, it merely restates that since all properties of the mind are evolved, qualia must also be evolved. But it doesn't provide any account of how this works.

It seems about right to me. In view of evolution (including by-products of gene survival traits) being an explanation for pretty much everything about us, I think it reasonable to suspect the same of our experience. — Down The Rabbit Hole

The problem is that an explanation for everything is an explanation for nothing. If you can equally explain every outcome, you have zero knowledge. If you look at things from the perspective of evolutionary biology, everything has some kind of evolutionary reasoning. But this only provides you with a plausible explanation given the framing. It doesn't tell you what actually happened.

I meant lockdowns that are not related to covid. Ergo, historic lockdowns. — Book273

Like which ones?

Methinks the price be too high. — Book273

And because you think that, the government are fascists?

I am seeking input from anyone that can recall the beginning of the rise of Nazi Germany. I have read the history books, and it seems to bear horrifying similarities to Canada now. — Book273

I don't see these similarities. Where are the brown shirts, where is the blood and soil rhetoric? Who are the people singled out as aliens for their ethnicity?

We are not after Jewish people, but anyone who dares speak out against the lockdown or masking, because clearly, they must be bad people. — Book273

That's not remotely comparable. Also, I highly doubt "speaking out" has any consequences itself, other than social ones.

The worst part of it all is that, historically, lockdowns do not work and neither does general masking — Book273

Historically, all the lockdowns in Europe, the US and Australia have drastically reduced the spread and prevented or stopped the collapse of the healthcare system.

The exact efficacy of masks is unclear, but wearing one isn't much different from wearing a helmet on your bicycle.

What are the options available to a people when its government is hell bent on grinding them into the ground under the guise of striving for an unattainable goal? — Book273

In the case of Canada? Waiting for the numbers to drop and then doing your protest?

Well, I think the strategy that I think is faulty is outlined in this paragraph here:

The Senate and the electoral college are set up in such a way that disadvantages the left. So, when you move left in areas that can result in local gains in liberal areas, you risk the Senate and you risk the electoral college. And I think you know this, so I'm not going to go into detail on it unless you insist on pressing the fantasy that somehow a big heave-ho left would be uniformly politically advantageous. And no, it doesn't matter that left-wing policies are actually popular with the general public because the general public does not decide who runs the country, a small group of voters in states with outsize representation in the Senate and the electoral college do. — Baden

For one, while accurate for the US, several European countries have similar political trends without the same amount of systemic issues. And in those countries, too, the moderate left seems to be bleeding dry. And even if we are only talking about the US, the strategy to react to authoritarian nationalists with non-threatening moderates basically concedes the field to the authoritarians.

One of the main mistakes the left seems to be doing is that they assume that no-one wants to vote for nationalism, xenophobia, regressive social norms etc. That people who vote for these things are, at best, poor misinformed souls, and at worst a basket of deplorables. But these policies do have popular support, and will get votes. And they are very amenable to being spun into a justification for power grabs.

In order to defeat these currents, it's not enough to worry about not scaring suburban voters. You must offer something that is more enticing than the snake oil. There is no way forward if the left cannot offer a vision at least as desirable as that which the right offers it's supporters. And someone with the actual credentials to back up their words.

As much as @StreetlightX striding around on the world's highest horse to berate everyone annoys me, I think he has a point here. You're correct when you say that the left has a problem with their tactics. But at the same time the current tactic, whole marginally more effective at getting into power, also cements the power of the right wing.

Over the last 20 years, there has been a resurgence of the extreme right wing all over Europe and the US. In many countries, new parties formed to the right of the traditional establishment. And instead of splitting the right wing vote and helping the left to sharpen their profile and win votes, as one might naively expect, the result has been the opposite. Far from the right being tainted by their association with regressive authoritarians, it's the center left, the social democrats, that have been eviscerated.

Consistently, economic considerations are pushed into the background by a culture war narrative on the far right. And instead of rejecting this entire framing and focusing on the actual factual challenges, many establishment left-wing parties have allowed themselves to be drawn into the swamp of identity politics and promptly lost. Because it cannot offer a vision anywhere near as rosy and consistent as the fake past peddled by the other side.

So I think it's true that there needs to be a new approach. Neoliberalism with some bells and whistles cannot compete with blood and soil rhetoric.

The only way to resolve this conflicts is to appeal to one absolute authority to grant us all absolute morality. — magritte

I don't see why this is the only way to resolve the conflict. One might simply accept that there is no "absolute" authority on moral question, because morality only arises in a community of conscious beings, and can only be as "absolute" as their shared reality.

It's a bit like asking God for absolute verification of our observations.

I would argue that this is antagonistic to the populate conception of morality which is generally isn't seen as a just a concept and generally is seen as relay quite absolute.

For me the burning question is, dose morality as popularly conserved of exist? — Restitutor

That depends of course on just what you consider the popular notion of morality to be. Two observations I'd make in that regard are:

a) morality usually deals with social obligations, and while there are many examples of a connection to divine law or will, moral duties are rarely exactly fixed.

b) certain moral duties are consistent across different societies and times.

There are almost no societies, for example, which don't have basic moral guidelines for conflict resolution or responsibility for the sick and elderly.

So in that sense, I think it's justified to say that morality exists as something specific, distinct of individual preferences. But of course the individual justifications for the rules will often be contradictory or unconvincing.

Why should this prediction be believed this time around, after it has failed so many times before?

The presumed population "explosion" has in fact already happened. The rate of population increase is slowing, and we can make decent guesses about when it will stabilise. Even if we were willing to expend more effort to slow the increase, it's unlikely to make much of a difference.

The real elephant in the room is not population size, but resource consumption per capita.

I think that the letters M O O that make a word like moo are not identical with the sound but fit the conventional pronunciation assigned to those letters. — Andrew4Handel

Letters are a much later step. Language developed as spoken language first, and that's what you're thinking in.

In the case of pictures they are similar to what the writer wants someone to understand. — Andrew4Handel

First of all pictures are abstractions of experience. A picture of a cow doesn't look like a cow to you because it's creator imbued it with cow-ness. It's your own pattern recognition that matches the picture to the animal.

However I don't know how hieroglyphics create sentences or information. — Andrew4Handel

I don't think they create information. They're an arrangement of information you can pick up if you have the corresponding experience, i.e. you recognise the animals / actions etc. The real amazing part about language is that it is ever so slightly different for everyone.

This seems to be basic strategy in philosophy of language to make meaning start with something simple like basic colours, sounds or pictures or pointing and build out from there. But I think this strategy is limited to a small segment of language.

For example how would you represent "Yesterday" in a picture or "The Unconscious".

I am not opposed to this strategy but what puzzles me is how meaning does not seem to reside in letters, words and sounds. — Andrew4Handel

There are millions of years of improvement between a modern, alphabetical language and a basic system of language as it may have been around with our hominid ancestors. So it's not surprising that it'd be hard to imagine simple pictures and sounds turning into language, just like it's difficult to imagine a dog-like critter turning into a whale.

I think our ability to use abstract words must be understood in conjunction with our mental ability to abstract in general. We can form categories, and because we can do that, we can also read categories into sounds we hear or symbols we see. So we can group different cries of birds into the sound of "a bird". And because we can do that, we can also understand when other people do it, and hence start the process of abstraction.

There is a type of word that has "inherent" meaning, onomatopoeia. Similarly, hieroglyphic writing has "inherent" meaning because you understand it using your basic pattern matching ability, not anything specific to language.

So it seems plausible that thinking starts with pictures and sounds, which become more abstract and eventually form language.

I don't believe there is such a thing as right or wrong. — Unlucky Devil

That's not exactly a unique stance on these forums. Plenty of criticism of objective morality is around.

As I see it there are only actions and every individual will either agree with the action making it good/right to them or disagree with the action making it evil/wrong — Unlucky Devil

Morality is certainly related, on a fundamental level, to personal preference. However, humans are also fundamentally social and care about their groups. I think it is also hard to deny that people treat moral convictions differently from mere personal preferences. I think it follows that morality is a different kind of preference where we treat ourselves not as individuals, but as representations of the entire group.

My overall point is that morality is flexible dependent on our understanding of a persons acts and the context in which they are carried out. — Unlucky Devil

I think it's pretty obvious that any moral judgement would rely on accurate information. So do all other judgements. So when you say that this means morality doesn't "technically exist", it seems like you view morality as some exact catalogue of actions. Like the ten commandments, or perhaps even more specific. That is not the only way to approach the topic though. You can, for example also view morality as a method analogous to the scientific method. But where the scientific methods seeks to provide accurate predictions, the moral method would seek to provide accurate guidelines towards a social goal.

That is the "program" that I am referring to, which controls their free will. — TheQuestioner

Yeah we're all totally controlled by our urge to have children. That's why every family has many children as they can, intentionally childless couples don't exist and generally everyone is out there dating and having sex all the time.

That's totally the world we live in.

However, I don't think you can disprove my theory. I think that the reasons I have expressed in this post present the possibility that my theory is true, so I will give myself 1/2 point. — TheQuestioner

You can't disprove my theory that you're an idiot, so I am going to give you -99.5 points for wasting everyone's time.

The laws of probability allows us to see that the "causation chain" must be controlled by an external source that is able to rig the outcome. — TheQuestioner

Pray tell us what these laws are.

What are the odds that:
1. The human race could survive all the pandemics and wars that have occurred in the past 6 million years? — TheQuestioner

I don't know. What are the odds? Do tell me. With the relevant formula for calculating them.

2. Fallible humans would always make the right decisions to sustain the human race? We sure got lucky in WW2, and with N. Korea. — TheQuestioner

We got lucky that millions died because one guy wasn't allowed to go to art school?

3. Most importantly: Each person reading this overcame the zillion-to-one odds that not only their individual sperm won the 300-million-to-one lottery (in one ejaculation), but all their ancestors won the 300-million-to-one lottery. You, as an individually unique soul, would not be reading this unless the "causation chain" had allowed you to overcome those ridiculous odds. — TheQuestioner

Err, no. That argument only works if you think that at the start of the universe, there existed some number of souls X, and only a "zillion to one" fraction of those ever gets incarnated.

Without that assumption, the people reading this are simply the people reading this. There was no lottery because every result is equal. Every possible combination wins.

Yet they all believe that reality is what it is.That is the one, and the only constant that does not change in the world view of poeple, no matter what philosophy they subscribe to. — god must be atheist

Well, that is kinda the definition of reality. But the point is still important, because we really only experience reality as one stream of information. We feed this into a constantly updating model and receive the causal structure which provides us with a determined path through the past.

But looking at the past we created out of the present, and then treating the present as the surprising bit is really quite odd. There is a past because there is a present, not the other way around.

Without a master plan, humans wouldn't have lasted 100 years. Too many "coincidences" had to happen for the race to last 6 million years. — TheQuestioner

How do you know that? What are you comparing this outcome to?

I don't think we just happened to win the evolutionary lottery. I think there is a well-written "program" whose complexity is well beyond our comprehension, which has compelled us to follow an efficient algorithm.

That "program" includes the illusion that we have free will, and the motivation to succeed and receive recognition, and the pursuit of sex. — TheQuestioner

You can believe whatever you like, but what's the point of posting here if you're not interested in supplying an argument for your belief?

What makes the will free is not it's freedom from causation as such, i.e. the will is not somehow unconnected from the fabric of causality.

The will is free if it is the manifestation of the person having it in the world. Not just a product of pressure from outside or biological needs, but of the mind having it.

By "free will", I mean the assertion that humans can actually make their own choices, instead of following a master plan that is beyond their control — TheQuestioner

But humans obviously do make choices, at least in their heads. So what exactly do you think would be different if humans had free will? How would the world look?

Here is why I think "a specific sequence of events can only happen without it":
I think it is impossible that our current reality is the result of 6 million years of free will. I don't believe that free will would have resulted in such a favorable outcome. — TheQuestioner

And do you have more to offer than your unqualified belief? Or is this a theistic argument that requires faith?

I can't see any logical reason why you think this specific outcome is so spectacularly unlikely.

In response to your assertion that another timeline might be similar to the present timeline, consider a person that causes other people to become violent. Some people (not all) may not have become violent if that person never existed.
If you removed one important person from the timeline (e.g. Hitler), the "other timeline" would have been much different from the present timeline. — TheQuestioner

It would only be different to a hypothetical observer that somehow had access to both timelines. But all observers exist within a timeline. So the timeline would not be "different" in any meaningful sense of the word. To have a difference, you need to make a comparison, which is impossible.

We do not know if the world would have been a "better place" if Hitler was never born. It is possible that one of the people he exterminated might have procreated to create someone far worse, someone that could have caused the end of all humanity. We will never know, but we do know that humanity still exists. — TheQuestioner

In any world where humanity doesn't exist, we wouldn't know about it. So all these hypothetical worlds are irrelevant.

We also know that we are using a wonderful technology right now, which allows us to exchange ideas in a manner that was never imagined 50 years ago. In my opinion, this technology was created by a combination of procreations that was not determined by "free will". — TheQuestioner

You still haven't actually explained what you mean by "free will" or why you think a specific sequence of events can only happen without it.

Instead of "That could not possibly be a coincidence.", I should have said "That could not possibly have occurred as a result of free will." — TheQuestioner

Why not though? What do you think something called "free will" would look?

I disagree with your assertion that "any number of combination would have lead to a similar result". Einstein would not have been born from any other two parents, and no other human would have made his discoveries at exactly the same time that he made them, which was required for subsequent discoveries to have been made at exactly the time that they were made.

IIf the parents of the following great composers had not procreated, music would not be as it is today: Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Stravinsky. — TheQuestioner

The problem with this argument is observer bias. We only have access to one timeline, the one we live in. In any other timeline, "we" do not exist, something else does, which might be more or less similar to us. So any assertion that a specific sequence of events could be changed so that "we" experience a different reality is false. We will always experience the timeline we are already part of, no specific sequence of events is required.

During the past 6 million years, every male and female had to procreate in the exact combination that actually occurred, for the creations described above to take place. That could not possibly be a coincidence. — TheQuestioner

How does that follow? It's reasonable to assume any number of combination would have lead to a similar result.

But perhaps more importantly, I am not quite sure what you mean by a coincidence. A coincidence isn't any less determined than any other event.

Then you cannot call the police when you see a rape occurring outside your house. The police might hit a pedestrian when responding to the call. — Paul Edwards

That doesn't follow from what I said. You have to consider likely outcomes. Some risks are justified. But you can't go around simply ignoring all undesirable outcomes.

Note that if I was having my tongue cut out, and I had a button to destroy Earth, I would do so to end the injustice. Certainly International SWAT can do a much better job than destroying Earth, ie they will accidentally kill a lot fewer people. — Paul Edwards

That just means your moral compass is way out of whack.

So long as they don't deliberately target them, it's not immoral. — Paul Edwards

Yeah, I disagree. You're limiting responsibility for your action only to your intended results. But it's a fact that you don't control the exact result, so your idea of responsibility rests on a fiction.

If it was you having your tongue cut out by Saddam's goons, would you want International SWAT to rescue you? Doesn't your moral code require you to look at the world from the perspective of others? — Paul Edwards

From a purely rational perspective, I'd only want to be rescued if the rescue can be achieved without endangering even more innocent people. I would not want to make it a rule, for example, that you're allowed to torture the spouses and children of kidnappers in order to determine their hideout.

There is nothing immoral about calling up International SWAT to go and spread human rights. There is something immoral about trying to stand in the way of SWAT. — Paul Edwards

Of course there is. Because yours is not the only SWAT team around, and all of them also shoot innocent bystanders.

I didn't sign any such thing, so my moral code is not dependent on the UN Charter. Is yours? — Paul Edwards

Contractual obligations have moral weight according to my moral code.

Not all parties consented to being raped by Saddam's goons either, or having their tongues cut out. It's already mob justice in my eyes. But not yours? — Paul Edwards

Two wrongs do not make a right. There is a difference between you personally fighting an injustice and you employing the machinery of a state against another state to help their subjects. The latter will obviously have significant negative consequences on an international scale that you cannot just ignore in your calculus. An goal is only morally good if it can also be accomplished by morally good means.

What moral/philosophical code introduces the concept of a "country" where a previous strategy becomes invalidated? — Paul Edwards

The countries, and thereby their governments, and thereby the people these governments represent, insofar as they were democratic at the time, have signed the UN Charta, which enshrines non-intervention. That's at least a contractual obligation with some moral weight.

But the rule is also reasonable because outside of the UN, states operate in an anarchic environment with only few overarching principles. Interventionism would amount to a state, or states, imposing their will on other states without any process of redress and without any possible oversight. It'd be akin to mob justice, done without the consent of all parties.

If you look at right wing media, they're more or less openly discussing the strategy.

Deligitimize the result in key states, prevent them from certifying their results in time or, if republican controlled, send in competing electors, then vote Trump in via the house.

Trump is then in a position to use the police and military to quell the inevitable massive unrest.

But it'd be a huge gamble, and massively destabilising to the country. So again they might not do anything other than sow doubts this time around.

He doesn't stand much of a chance without the support of the GOP establishment. You can't just order a military coup in an established democracy. Without some kind of legitimate claim, such orders would simply be ignored by the rank and file.

I think an actual military coup is pretty unlikely. Such an operation would be far too likely to turn off large swathes of the population.

If overt moves are made, it'll be interfering with the electoral college to cause a gridlock on the road to inauguration. Then the Trump administration may try to simply stay in office since no new president was constitutionally elected.

Since there are scenarios where the US Constitution just fails, this might cause enough confusion among the military and police forces to allow Trump to avoid being removed. He can then use the inevitable riots as an excuse to deploy the police and perhaps the military.

That's not necessarily what Trump and / or the GOP want though. This might all just be posturing to keep the "stolen election" alive for the next 4 years, in order to gain another fully GOP controlled Congress & presidency. Then the real power grab might happen.

I don't see how you can equate anything Obama believed with Trump's world-view. — Tim3003

He offered something new and, in it's own way, radical.

I think populists don't call for change. Just the reverse. They surf the wave of the conservative's fear of change. Brexit was not a change but a reaction to the changing nature of the EU, a wish to hold on to a notion of Britain from the past, before immigration and those Brussels burocrats started trying to control our green and pleasant land. That's why the retirement age voters went for it and the young did not. — Tim3003

I think you misunderstand how right wing populism works. Yes, it is backwards-looking, but it's not conservative in the usual sense. Right wing populists like Trump, Johnson et al did not promise to keep things stable. They promised a return to the natural state of (national / racial) superiority by smashing the "establishment", which purportedly maintains an artificial, unnatural state. They want change, but change toward some ideal version of the past.

In the same way Trump didn't call for change either, just a reversion to an America-first view that would have been the only show in town a few decades ago. It's the fear of change, and especially that threatened by globalism and climate change, that populists thrive on. Their supporters are usually those with so little imagination they can easily bury their heads in the sand instead of considering the effects of their wall-building. The word 'conservative' isn't used for no reason.. — Tim3003

But Trump's version of America first has no roots in recent history. America has been a global power since world war 2. You'd have to go back to the interwar period to find a similar isolationist tendency.

UKIP support collapsed as soon as Farrage left it, which was well before the Brexit deal was signed. There was however a Brexit supporting govt by then so he thought his fight was won. When Teresa May failed to get her deal through parliament he realised it might not be, so at the election the in-coming Boris was forced to call he formed the Brexit party to keep Boris honest. Voters flocked to Farrage and not to UKIP, which still existed. — Tim3003

And is your position that, has Farrage not returned, there would have been much less support for the Brexit party?

I see this a bit in Fox (though they still provide a platform for the fraud narrative, just hedge their bets both ways).

But Breitbart as of right now has the following front page headlines: — boethius

Yeah they seem to be gearing up now. Perhaps there was some confusion over what their position would be, or perhaps they always planned to rev the machine up slowly so they'd be able to react to events.

You are the one claiming that motherhood starts at birth. — Gregory

Not really.

I have a much more respectful and wholesome view of pregnancy. A pregnant women is a mother, and females know this too. — Gregory

Nothing says wholesome like referring to women as "females". Your respect for mothers apparently does not extend to their ability to judge what's best for them and their children.

I know life can be hard, but you just don't care if something that might be a full human is killed. You are willing to publically defend it. — Gregory

Like millions of other people are. So the question is, why do you think all these people want to kill babies?

I know I'm not a robot because only I make my decisions. If we are going down that sceptical rabbit hole, i ask you to prove Jews and blacks are equal to whites and shouldn't be enslaved. What's your evidence and PROOF that slavery isn't good for them. — Gregory

The proof is that I have met and talked to them, and they seem to be like me. Unlike fetuses, by the way, but I don't really care to discuss at what point in pregnancy one draws the line.

I respect life and other people. You are willing to use doubt to take life (even up to birth?) — Gregory

What do you mean by "using doubt"? I personally haven't killed anyone or was in any way responsible for a specific abortion. So I don't "use doubt" to kill people.

I don't think I can prevent abortions in any reasonable way that doesn't cause more harm than good. So I don't try. Your position is obviously that abortion is a terrible evil to be rooted out at all costs, but I wonder why you think this will result in a better world for anyone.

The followers of populists follow the person as much as the policy. It's been said many times that Trump was policy-lite. His basic stance was of simplistic anti-immigration anti-leftie anti-foreigners tropes that anyone could understand. — Tim3003

Policy-lite is still policy. That everyone can understand it makes it more likely that it was the reason for the success.

His rise was echoed by Farrage in the UK. When he left UKIP and politics altogether it collapsed. At the last election he returned and formed the Brexit Party, which stood in the election with no policies at all, except to achieve Brexit. Millions voted for him. The idea of Brexit was agreed to by many others, but only Farrage was liked and trusted enough to get the poll ratings. (His party ended up being irrelevant because Boris Johnson removed any point in voting for him by copying his Brexiteer stance.) — Tim3003

There is an alternative interpretation for the chain of events, which is that UKIP was elected by people wanting Brexit (=policy), and once that was achieved, support collapsed. Farrage, knowing this would happen, conveniently left beforehand.

So this doesn't strike me as strong evidence for personality being the deciding factor.

Populists appeal to voters who are bamboozled by the complexity of policy, and they keep it in simple primary colours. — Tim3003

Yes. But in doing so, they actually get people to care about the policy. It doesn't stop being a policy issue because it's simplified and sensationalised. The fears they play on are real.

They are usually political outsiders - as the voters believe themselves to be. These voters will probably not vote at all but just moan about politicians in general until a charmismatic figure comes along to galvanise and organise them.
Where was Trumpism before Trump? His right-wing views were (probably secretly) held by many, but only when he came along as the new Messiah who spoke their black-and-white language did voters wake up and flock to him. — Tim3003

What all the populists have in common is that they call for radical change, and usually change along some simplistic model of the world.

Trumpism before Trump was Obama's "hope and change". Obama was undoubtedly more charismatic than Trump, but that did not allow him to make a lasting change to his support base. Trump just offers his supporters what they always wanted: simple, easy to understand solutions that validate their existing views, especially their fears. Politics in the US and Europe has trended towards this outcome more generally. In that sense, Trumpism is another step in the populist trend both US parties, as well as many European political parties, are in.

It's called The Cult of Personality. People voted for him because they trusted him as one of their own. In the UK Nigel Farrage had the same appeal. He too came from outside the political establishment. Once Farrage left UKIP it floundered under several leaders. It is not as easy to replace these populist icons as it may appear. It's them, not their policies that voters trust. — Tim3003

I don't really buy the personality cult angle. Trump, Farrage, Bolsonaro, those are all not people known for their personal virtue, even among their supporters.

Quite to the contrary, their lack of virtue is often considered an argument in their favor, as they serve as conduits for the anger of their supporters. It's not who they are as people - it's what they stand for as figureheads. That's one reason why the obsession with Trump's personal failings on the part of the media and the left failed to have any impact.

The followers of populists actually care for the policy, not the person. They care so much about the policy that they're willing to put up with anyone who gets them closer to that goal. They'll go so far as to hail them heroes for channelling their anger and frustration.

The focus on simplified policy questions over "old fashioned" concern with the personal ability of the candidate to do their job is what has paved the way for populism.

The value of human lifes is not solely dependant on when a killing is considered lawful. That there is no blanket ban in killing doesn't imply that some human lifes are judged to have no value.

For the time being, death is not something we can completely prevent. Nor are we able to avoid clashes of different lifes that can only be resolved by death. This starts at how we fund doctors and hospitals and ends with intentional killing in self-defense. When we ascribe absolute value to human lifes, we do not mean that life needs to be preserved absolutely. Rather, what we mean is that the interests of individuals are to be given equal weight.

That's what differentiates general rules around abortion and self-defense from slavery or genocide.

As to where this value comes from: it's based on every individual's recognition of the other as their equal and mirror.

You guys have no evidence that shows the fetus is not a human baby and are willing to take a chance in killing it. — Gregory

And you have no evidence you're not a robot.

You'd rather be sleazy in your thinking and try to get away with killing what could possibly have all the dignity you have — Gregory

What interest do you think we have in killing someone?

They don't care about motherhood, they don't care about pregnancy, and they really don't care about sexuality. They demean the whole subject in the name of "freedom" — Gregory

You're the one demeaning pregnancy and motherhood by acting as if it were all sunshine and rainbows and noone ever needed to make difficult decisions.

If they are in terminal pain, yes. But not for lesser reasons like abortions are usually for — Gregory

Ah, so it isn't about baby killing after all. It's about the reasons we have.

The abortion debate suffers from a lack of people who are willing to admit their solutions also suck. There is no solution that'll magically make the world a better place. Just ways to avoid the worst outcomes.

Since you cant, it's obvious that they might be human. Isn't it obvious that you don't kill something that might be human? Its called basic respect for (here comes that that word) life. forget about the killing animals thing. I brought that up as an example. You're ok with killing something that for all you know is a full human baby. — Gregory

I think it should be legal to kill humans, never mind "might be humans", under certain circumstances. Do you disagree?

I'm not sure about this. Trump's attempt to go full tilt at this is largely falling on indifferent or deaf ears as his allies - with the exception of the utterly pathetic Giuliani - drop him like the rotten hot potato that he is. Short of some still-possible court shenanigans, the vibe is that people seem to be accepting the results for what they are. But maybe that's 'cause I don't follow Q or Breitbart or whatever close enough. — StreetlightX

He has failed to rouse the rabble, partly because of Biden's statesmanlike patience and inclusiveness, partly too through there being no evidence. — Tim3003

I have been checking Fox and Breitbart in the past days. It looks like the large GOP donors have decided to let this one go, and not take up the opportunity. Perhaps it's because of the senate runoffs, or perhaps because they have gotten all they need out of Trump. This does not look like a failure to incite action. It looks like they aren't trying.

Yes, votes for Trump are fundamentally a rejection of the status quo political class. The evidence for this is Bernie Sanders, who represents the same kind of rejection on the left. Two very different candidates with two very different policies, united by their ability to speak to a loss of faith in the status quo. — Hippyhead

Not merely of the political class. It's part of the wider populist movement that decides societies into "the elites" and "the people".

The heart of the problem is that the accelerating development of knowledge is challenging us to look at ever more fundamental issues at an ever faster pace. And we're just not ready. — Hippyhead

I'm not convinced we're simply not able to cope. Rather, we just did not cultivate the right culture (including political culture) to deal with change. The "West" has almost entirely lost it's vision for the future. We're all focused on managing the status quo with as few bumps as possible.

For all yes/no questions that are not gibberish (i.e. are reasonable and coherent), there has to be an answer, right? — dimension72

Isn't this circular? You have to determine what questions are reasonable and coherent. How would you do that, unless you already knew which questions have an answer?

The idea that people should expect of their head of state what they do of their spiritual leaders is a silly one. — NOS4A2

Yeah, it's very silly to expect the people in charge of the police, the military and foreign relations to be well informed and reasonable. What's the worst that could happen?

Any paid actor can virtue signal. — NOS4A2

And any paid actor can promise you the moon.

Come January 20th we can close this thread, yeah? — Maw

But then where will we discuss the trials?