The New York Times also. I guess Breitbart will call it next. — praxis

Breitbart is calling the call. They have been avoiding actually making any statements, instead letting the Trump team supply theirs.

Why is this not the big topic on TPF? What happened to the big pandemic? Did people stop dying? Or has our new way of life finally set in as the new norm? — Merkwurdichliebe

CoViD fatigue.

It's not a thankful topic for philosophers anyways. It doesn't lend itself to analysis from first principles, and a lot of data is unclear. Figuring out just what kind of reaction is justified is very technical.

The biggest danger is that some armed right-wing groups will start some trouble, and Trump will praise and encourage them. — Relativist

It's the most immediate danger to people on the ground, but in isolation it's unlikely to do damage to the institution. I think the stance of the GOP will have a far more lasting effect. If they further amplify the accusation of fraud, more and more people will believe it.

What are the chances of Alaska flipping? And why hasn't NC been called? The summary I saw has 70,000 votes in favour of Trump and less than 50,000 outstanding ballots. — Benkei

Ballots can arrive in NC until Nov. 12. There are about 130k ballots which could theoretically be on their way, though it is almost certainly much fewer.

I think the "permanent campaign mode" is one of the bigger problems - along with unlimited money. Read recently there are laws/restrictions on this in Europe - perhaps others here can comment - but in the US, by now the next campaign starts the day after inauguration day (or sooner?) - and the bid for 2024 is perhaps already underway. This seems to me to favor those that can afford such a thing. — Kevin

Interestingly enough, since 2016, money has become less important. Because it is now so easy to reach an audience, it seems like the new currency has become attention rather than money.

I know people like to accuse liberals of not trying to understand and reason with conservatives/Trump supporters, but if they're the kind who believe this then I can't see how that's at all possible. Some people are just a lost cause. — Michael

It should probably be mentioned that there are several "levels" of the conspiracy, a bit like with Scientology. The entry level is "just" the global sex trafficking ring.

It's one of these convenient theories that are so vague that you can always give up this part or that and still hold on to some other parts.

McConnel is specifically referring to illegally cast ballots in a tweet. Seems like a dogwhistle to me.

People seem awfully quick in predicting Trump's downfall in disgrace. The counting of votes hasn't even finished, and it's a long road to Jan 20.

He still has motivated supporters. There are protests. They're peaceful for now, but things are held in suspense because a winner hasn't been announced. It's not at all clear it will stay that way once CNN calls it for Biden.

We can only hope that he will, against the Republicans who're about to drop him like a rock, and then he'll split the right-wing vote. — Pfhorrest

Why'd they drop him though? That doesn't seem in their interest. Much better to make him into a Martyr and keep him around as a "shadow president". Then you can wheel him out whenever you need justification for your obstructionism and keep his base on your side.

It's an excuse not to address the fact that, I dunno, the democrats have run two dogshit candidates who, in the face of an electorate clamouring - violently - for change, stand for the opposite of that. — StreetlightX

You know, I have been wondering if Hillary Clinton is secretly smiling over the nail biter race. After everyone treated the 2016 loss as her personal fault, this may be a kind of satisfaction.

Third, with a party that many claimed always submitted itself to Trump's will (but was in fact more than happy to oppose Trump whenever it suited their purposes) not submitting to Trump's will, with tweets not having the intended effect, with street gangs not materializing on anywhere near a sufficient scale to implement the leader's will, it seems clear that Trump's only hope lies in the courts. Which may not be there for him either. But it's important to remember that, in the end, Trump's whole career now depends on what it has always depended on: not the apparatus of fascism but lawyers and judges. And that the Republicans are happy with the Senate. — StreetlightX

I'd not let my guard down just yet. There is still plenty of room to influence the electoral college. The GOP might not be willing to openly challenge the counting of votes, but they might still be willing to prevent the counted votes from actually taking effect on charges of fraud.

Both Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy were limited Socialist states and limited Capitalist states -- synthetic hybrids, whereas, Communist Russia was completely Communist — charles ferraro

In terms of economic reality, Nazi Germany differed very little from any other capitalist state. It was actually rather more internally competitive and less centrally planned than the allies. Apart from a view bells and whistles, the "socialist" part of the program was quickly dropped.

But then the value of the Nazi regime in particular for comparisons is somewhat limited, because it was so much dominated (in the later stages, anyways) by Hitlers peculiar ideology.

So, in baseball, in the World Series (which is a true "world" series, with teams spanning the globe from as far as Atlanta to Seattle), it's a best out of 7 match. We ought to do that for elections. That's all I'm saying. It's not really a "do over" per se, but more just proof you didn't just happen to have a particularly good or bad day. — Hanover

I think there should be playoffs. Just have Trump beat Jill Stein 1 on 1 first.

I'm going to be so incredibly depressed if Biden loses. My nihilism isn't working! — frank

I'm already depressed even though it looks like he's winning. This bodes poorly not just for the US, but for the resilience of liberal democracy in the 21st century.

Under your "decent" Presidents the likelihood of the people getting what they want was no different than under Trump. Even if we were to accept the US is a democracy (highly debatable) Trump's character has absolutely nothing to do with how representation of the people's will is provided by the system. Very badly it seems. But in the end democracy is not one man and it's certainly not just this election. — Benkei

I don't really agree with that. I think "character" plays a central role in a representative democracy. The problem is that character is hard to assess.

I'm not a fan of everyone making up their mind on every single policy question and then selecting the candidate most likely to deliver. I think it's unrealistic to expect people with jobs and families to make these calls. I think Trump is far more a symptom of an undue focus on policy questions than he is the symptom of a cult of personality.

A representative is not merely a servant. I expect a representative to make decisions in my interest on the spot. That requires that I look at their personality.

As to power politics, this is precisely the only way you can keep a semblance of democracy alive in the US because of the winner-takes-all system. You don't build common ground, you don't compromise and you should win at all cost. If people can't tell the difference between us and them it will cost us votes. If we don't win and give voters what they want, it will cost us votes. This has nothing to do with decency. — Benkei

That strategy is going to fail, because people who actually want to solve problems are always going to loose this game to autocrats and demagogues who only care about power. Democracy relies on the consent of the loosers, the minority, to function. Piss them off and they're going to bring the roof down on your head. You don't need majority support to crash the system.

The only reason Democrats need to act "decent" is because they try to appeal to 20.000 different groups instead of providing an overarching story that transcends modern identity politics and goes back to people vs. corporations, workers vs. capitalist, poor vs. rich etc. take your pick. Not "not Trump". But Democrats are too scared of losing their Wall Street backers, who, despite record spending and outspending of Trump, can't even decisively deliver victory, if at all. The story is wrong, the politics naïve and shows that it's basically the Democratic Party that is in crisis - in light of the challenges they don't offer anything new, they just double down on the same old thinking. Donkeys indeed. — Benkei

The Democrats are in this spot because they have failed to deliver a vision for the future. That much I agree on. They have also failed to meet the raw power of the GOP head on, instead relying on compromise with people who are no longer interested in compromising.

But the reason for their failure isn't their "decency". It's complacency, lack of vision.

When Trump says he's won before the votes have been counted people just laugh at Trump being Trump. But when the President of the United States says we should stop counting votes, that's different. Most Trump voters are not fascists. They don't want somebody on top deciding whether their votes should be counted. They want to vote and they want to win of course. But they don't want somebody deciding whether they get to vote. — Hippyhead

The president has been saying the same thing over and over for the last couple of months. With the silent support of the GOP. How is him acting the way everyone expected him to going to just now break the facade?

I don't really care whether republicans consider themselves fascists. What matters is whether they'll fight fascism, and it appears they won't.

My first impression was that this is good. — Hippyhead

I find it hard to see anything good about the results. Biden is still favoured (even heavily so if AZ flips), but the result still seems to validate a politics of extreme polarization.

The GOP got three SC Justices, tons of lower level court appointment and in general a free reign to try every strategy they might want out of the Trump presidency. They will now get an opportunity to throw everything and the kitchen sink at the electoral system and see what sticks. Even if this doesn't save Trump, they'll have massively solidified their powerbase and, given likely results in the house and senate, did not pay much of a price for doing so.

Trump or no Trump, this is a not at all good for anyone hoping for an improvement in US politics.

Democracy is brought to you by revolutionary wars, or then the threat of revolutionary war. — boethius

A country that engages in revolutionary war every four years isn't going to last long.

Your idea that when a minority criminal cabal breaks laws, abuses established customs, entrenches anti-democratic policies by passing anti-democratic laws or appointing anti-democratic judges, and does whatever it takes to gain and maintain power, that the only thing that can and should be done about it is "be nice", has no basis in reason nor history. It is the wishful thinking of cowards. — boethius

I didn't say anything of the sort.

Some back-of-the-envelope math on Pennsylvania:

Trump is currently ahead by 680.000 votes. There are about 1.7 million votes to be counted. If those break 2/1 for Biden, Trump's lead would remain, but only barely. If they break closer to 3/1 for Biden, he wins.

If principled means that the end justifies the means then you're just a pussy whining about details. Politics isn't about decency. This is why the left sucks monkey balls at playing the game. — Benkei

But democracy does require decency. It cannot work in an environment of pure power politics. It requires the consent of all involved to abide by some basic rules, like conceding and a peaceful transfer of power.

There is no way to enforce democracy by power politics.

Breitbart and Fox haven't gone all out yet. Fox still looking decently neutral, but Breitbart looks like it's gearing up it's spin machine.

Isn't Biden ahead still in the official tally so far? — Benkei

What matters to Trump and the GOP is whether they can plausibly spin this into a victory, and have the means to fight it to the bitter end.

Trump hasn't lost Florida. If he did, the race would have been all but over. Georgia is close, but might well go to Trump. Trump can still plausibly win. And with control of the Senate, the GOP can challenge the election all the way to the actual meeting of the electors.

I fully expect them to launch an all out war on the vote count now.

Edit: Hey and Trump's speech just proved me right. Now we'll see whether the powers that be in the GOP have a smidgen of decency left in them. I wouldn't bet on it.

Trump is about to make a statement. We are at exactly at the point where, according to predictions, Trump would look the strongest. At the end of election night, before mail in votes are counted.

This unfortunately sets the US up for the nightmare scenario of Trump declaring that the election is being stolen from to try and stop the count.

Trump is currently fairly comfortably ahead in Florida, which is good for his chances.

He's behind in Arizona though, which is bad for him.

So far Trump is perhaps doing better than expected, but the map hasn't changed in his favor yet.

It doesn't look like a clear landslide for Biden, and that means it's going to be ugly.

So, the devil is really in the details here. Almost anything could have some moral concern under some circumstance. — TheHedoMinimalist

That seems to me a perversion (no pun intended) of the notion of morality. Morals / ethics are about interpersonal relationships / conduct. Fantasies or wishes do not enter into it. So unless you have an agreement with your partner regarding masturbation, I don't see how any of it could be of moral concern. And I think that applies even to fantasies which contain immoral acts.

About the only moral duty you have regarding your fantasies is to ensure that they don't turn into an addiction.

Haven't really followed those races. From 538s forecast it seems likely, but by no means obvious that the senate will flip.

It seems obvious to me that women have the right to have sex but when the act is done abortion is a renaging on this act and putting it in the dumpster. It seems like a philosophy that eats itself, saying you have the right to kill your rights, but someone else can have the last word if they wish — Gregory

I find this connection weird. It has the acrid smell of puritanism to me. An abortion is a medical procedure that aborts a pregnancy. It's not some kind of reneging on sex. This attempt to lump sex, pregnancy and child support all together as some big whole seems to be designed to somehow give men equal access to something that happens to a woman's body.

A lot of people apparently feel it's very unfair that women have the sole "control" over a pregnancy, and I can see where this feeling is coming from. But without fault, the suggestions to address this perceived issue seem worse than the problem itself.

It's very tempting to try to bring the reality of abortion in line with some clear principle, like the sanctity of life or the right to bodily autonomy. But at the end of the day it's an issue that's so intensely personal and has such significant personal consequences that any such attempt will just lead you to ignore reality in favor of theoretical purity. It seems much better to just draw a line somewhere and then spend our energy trying to help mothers, fathers and children instead of judging them.

So, any bets on when Trump will declare victory and demand that no further ballots are counted?

Social media exists in all countries (except North Korea), but we don't see the same kind of polarization in the US as in places like the UK or Canada. Also social media was only a recent invention. Polarization in the US has been around since the early 90s. Not coincidental I think, since that was when the Cold War ended and I suspect that alot of that anti-communist rhetoric that was so prevalent in the latter 20th century didn't exactly go away as one would've thought. — Mr Bee

It is important to point out that extreme polarization in the US does not originate with social media. There is some evidence it has accelerated since 2010, but that's difficult to measure.

On the other hand, the polarization is very clearly spreading. Europe is experiencing more extreme polarization across the board, a reduction of trust in government institutions and in some places serious authoritarian tendencies. The protest movement in France was in some ways very similar to Trumpism. Germany has an extreme right wing party in parliament, and polarization has markedly increased, mostly in the form of the right wing of parties increasingly separating from the mainstream.

There are also various populist governments across Asia which run a lot of their campaigning and propaganda over social media. In some SEA countries, Facebook is pars pro toto for the Internet, so it has significant influence.

I'd say the US is first in line, but unfortunately not unique with respect to this problem.

So how is it that inanimate chemicals can form a living thing. And when does one call a living thing conscious? Some believe the whole universe is living in that it possesses conscious agency as a fundamental force of nature. And that the boundaries we place between that which is living and that which is dead is a false artificial construct — Benj96

I personally tend towards the idea that a dividing line between biology and chemistry, between animate and inanimate, simply does not exist.

"Life" is a category we use to order our world. It is useful insofar as it allows us to quickly make overarching conclusions about how things inside or outside the category behave. But it being useful doesn't justify reifying the category. The very name "abiogenesis" has obvious religious connotations. I suspect it's a bit of a holdover of a religious, or faith-based, perspective.

There are some very complex exothermic reactions, which at some point have become so complex that to us, they look qualitatively different. We have some good theories about how that happened. But it's not inherently more Mysterious than the formation of stars, planets, or weather patterns.

As to consciousness, we are a biased observer. Because we have, or perhaps are, consciousness, we cannot pretend to objectively tell what is and isn't conscious. Instead, what we are doing is comparing how similarly things are to us, and from that conclude consciousness. Not that this is an irrelevant or fruitless task, but it does mean it's somewhat misguided to look for the a physical source of consciousness.

Taking off the blindfold, you do not observe that you are dead. No surprise there: you could not observe that you are dead. Nonetheless, you should be astonished to observe that you are alive. The entire firing squad missed you altogether! Surprise at that extremely improbable fact is wholly justified - and that calls for an explanation. You would immediately suspect that they missed you on purpose, by design." — RogueAI

The interesting question here is why you are surprised. Is it because you expect at any moment to die? No. It is because you know how guns work, you know the intention of the firing squad, and hence you can construct a model of the future - a prediction - where you are dead. And then the model turns out to be false.

No such thing exists for the fine-tuning argument, and hence a similar surprise isn't warranted.

Additionally, exactly what conclusion is justified given the facts depends on circumstances that aren't given in the example. Most importantly, how many executions there are in total and how many people survive them.

Just wait until 2024 when the GOP somehow nominates a candidate who's even worse than Trump. I mean we all thought that Bush was the worst they can offer, but as we've learned over the years there's no such thing as rock bottom for them. — Mr Bee

If Trump looses 2020, he'll just run again in 2024, if he isn't dead or in jail.

In fact I fully expect him to pretend he is still the "real" president for the next 4 years regardless of the results.

Please dont call yourselves "progressives" if your voting for the old racist white guy that has been in power for nearly 50 years. Dont complain about systemic racism and white privilege and then go vote for the old racist white guy that has been in power for nearly 50 years. Dont expect anyone to take anything you say seriously when you do such things. — Harry Hindu

Ah, the good old hypocrisy fallacy. You don't get to decide what people are allowed to complain about. What matters is whether the complaint is warranted, not whether or not the person making it meets your standard of purity.

Abolish political parties and then you limit group think. — Harry Hindu

Yeah, that worked very well in the USSR. Or Nazi Germany.

How is the zeitgeist determined that will dictate which interpretative scheme you use? This sounds like you're getting close to allowing public sentiment to enter the judge's decision making process, which seems antithetical to the concept of objective justice. — Hanover

The idea is that you figure out what the law is, in a given situation. Laws are after all made for real people in real life. They're not some kind of artefact to carefully preserve in a glass case. They're made to be applied.

It's not an algorithm that you input some facts into and it'll spit out the result. You weigh different aspects, you decide which ones are the most important ones, and you make a decision. The constraining factor is that you have to be able to justify your decision, and that justification has to obey a bunch of rules. Acting as if there was one single rule which solves cases is merely obfuscating the actual decision making process.

Since consequences are objectively determinate, it seems natural to use the ambiguity of intent to one's advantage. — Aryamoy Mitra

If consequences were always determined by intention, there would be no difference between intentionalism and consequentialism. The two would necessarily line up. The divide only exists because intentions do not necessarily determine consequences.

Returning to the hypothetical circumstance listed above, does the practitioner in question possess the right to redefine his intent for himself, and thus, ascribe to himself a moral stature? — Aryamoy Mitra

This would only be a fiction. The actual intent to act necessarily includes all contingent steps towards the ultimate goal. One therefore has to reckon with all possible consequences, not just the positive ones.

There is another uncertainty to be grappled with: if an immoral intent is passive and does not actively manifest, can it be forgiven upon a utilitarian outcome? — Aryamoy Mitra

We'd have to differentiate between the passive "character" of a person and a specific intent. An intent selects a set of actions in other to arrive at a desired outcome. It governs the entire sequence of events from start to finish. It can therefore also include more than one outcome. If we talk about an intent manifesting, it makes more sense to me to look at the actions as manifestations, not the outcomes.

If this inconsistency is resolved, one may ask posit an even greater abstraction:
Are intentionalism and consequentialism fundamentally incommensurable? If not, how might one construct an epistemology that reconciles the two? — Aryamoy Mitra

If we understand intent as that which selects an outcome, and then selects the actions to bring about that outcome, then the two views are merely the halves of an overall theory of action. The consequences, insofar as they are predictable, are properly part of the intent. Insofar as they are not predictable, why should they have any moral weight?

I say that knowledge is believing something because it is true, such that not only does one believe it, and it is true, but if it weren't true one wouldn't believe it. — Pfhorrest

Eliezer Yudkowski has said something similar, defining knowledge as "the ability to be more confused by fiction than by reality". If you can equally explain every outcome, you know nothing. This links knowledge with the concepts of information and entropy.

It also, however, limits knowledge to the physical. Knowledge can then only be gained about things that are falsifiable, i.e. subject to a prediction. You couldn't know anything about morality, for example.

Namely, rather than the usual justificationist sense of rationalism, whereby no belief is justified until it can be supported from the ground up somehow, instead any belief is justified (including contrary ones) until there is support to the contrary, i.e. reason to rule that belief out -- an epistemological position called critical rationalism, supported by philosophers like Kant and Popper. — Pfhorrest

It would then presumably follow that only those beliefs can be considered knowledge that have no justified contrary beliefs, i.e. all contrary beliefs are rules out. But, if we insist on some objective notion of truth, a belief can be true before we are able to find significant arguments to rule out contrary beliefs. We'd then have to conclude we have knowledge of something even though we are similarly believing contrary things about it. That doesn't sound very useful.

At what point does this kind of logic lead one to preferring Gobbels because he's not a Hitler? Or a Beria because he's not a Stalin? — StreetlightX

What's wrong with preferring Goebbels over Hitler, in theory?

At what point does the boiled frog think, well, it's just one more degree rather than five, and that's a pretty substantive difference so despite the fact that I'm boiling to death, well, I'll take what I can get? — StreetlightX

The argument implied here is that, as long as the situation doesn't seem really dire, people will prefer to adapt and accept their oppression, rather than fight back. As a psychological fact, that might be the case. What I don't see is what solution you have in mind.

I get that this is election is a referendum on Trump and that it is his to lose. What I don't buy is the feel-good bullshit that a Biden win is not an endorsement of the democrats. It is. It absolutely is, and anyone who wants to pretend to think otherwise is lying to themselves in the name of a pseudo-realism that disregards reality. You vote for Biden, you endorse him, you endorse what he's done, you endorse what he's going to do, and you endorse the corporatist ecology that he'll extend, expand, and entrench. Fucking own it. — StreetlightX

I have heard that view expressed in a number of conversations with people intending not to vote. The basis for that argument seems to be the abstract idea that votes provide a mandate to the politician who receives it, and therefore entail responsibility for their action.

Interestingly, this argument implies exactly what you have earlier said you oppose: that politics are personal and about the character of persons. Where else could this mandate attach other than to the person being elected?

On a more fundamental level, this view seems to reify the social contract into an actual contract. It turns the idea that government receives it's power from the people and turns it into a literal transfer of power, via the ritual of voting. But that is of course not what actually happens. What actually is the case is that the machinery of the state simply has power, as a brute fact, and we have a bunch of institutions that keep this brute force in check by instilling certain ideas in the people that wield it.

So the question to ask is not whether the government of the United States under Biden somehow receives extra power or legitimacy from your individual vote. It doesn't. The question is whether too large a majority for Biden has any symbolic significance that affects the Institutions of US democracy in a way that should be avoided. And I don't think that's the case.

I mean, really, do you think Hunter's involvement with Burisma had nothing to do with his dad being VP and his dad having made prior efforts to clean the place up? Do you really think Joe got zero financial benefit from that or that he had no idea what his little boy was up to? — Hanover

The first part of the story makes sense. Burisma hired the son of the US VP to get better connections with US politicians and thereby soften or avoid further US influence to their detriment. While it is possible that Joe Biden directly set up such a deal, it's at least as plausible that it was simply tactics hatched by Burisma themselves and / or Hunter Biden.

Nothing about the sequence of events suggests that Biden received any personal financial benefits, so that seems to be baseless speculation. Whether he knew what Hunter Biden was up to, I don't know, but his knowledge doesn't seem particularly relevant.

That's why I'm not voting for Biden. Censorship, evasion, and lack of transparency. So, sure, I understand the reasons provided why you shouldn't vote for Trump, but why not the reasons for not voting for Biden? — Hanover

Of all the reasons for not voting Biden (his actual voting history, his policies etc.) you choose some questionable story about how Biden was maybe somehow involved in getting his son some capitalist welfare payments (also known as board positions)? That seems very strange.

His son earns $80k per month from a known corrupt entity that was being investigated by someone who his father fired? Maybe it is all innocent (???), but shouldn't it get a little more play time that it has, and are we not at all concerned that the media has taken a side on this? — Hanover

You mean apart from all the other times when the media has taken sides? What's your concern, that US media might be getting increasingly partisan? Because if so I have bad news for you...

Would you say in this sense that weakness is necessary for survival, and thereby there is some good in weak people just in lieu of the fact that they are weak relative to their potential? — kudos

Diversity is necessary for survival. Weakness is not a biological fact, it's merely a human judgement.

Of course this latter developments don't fit the anti-immigration narrative, so it's forgotten. — ssu

In a more general sense, the idea that continued immigration into Europe threatens "western" culture and secular culture more generally seems to be based on some deep insecurity with that culture. Shouldn't the goal be to convince those new arrivals of the benefits of the secular way? After all, we presumably value it for a reason, and reason can be communicated.