I find this level of ignorance staggering. — Tim3003

What does it take to be knowledgable about general history, general science, current affairs, and the like? It takes lots of reading in these areas, selective TV viewing (mostly PBS), and discussion with others likewise informed. Avoiding the slop troughs of social media is also helpful.

Why don't more people do these things?

Time, for one. As a gay man I've never had the demands of raising children. I have had time to read a lot. I've generally worked at professional service jobs where there were other college educated people. The more one comes to understand, the more one can fit into a better understanding of the world.

Social reward is another. It helps if others appreciate one's knowledge.

On the other hand, we well-informed people should be grateful that most people are taking care of business, and not spending al their time reading.

The only reason I have for believing that things are as they seem to be is that my beliefs "work". I believe most people are good, but some people are definitely not good. So far this has turned out to be true.

What we believe tends to be related to experience. We do not choose a lot of the experiences we have. Consequently, IF a lot of our beliefs are not chosen, they at least have to "work" to support our beliefs. Otherwise, we are up to our necks in cognitive dissonance.

Which part -- that someone has falsely claim belief & allegiance, or the beliefs themselves?

The behavior of people who actually believe in the cited values is--taken as a pattern--different than those who do not actually believe in those values. One would expect more fraudulent behavior, illegal behavior, cruelty, terror, and so on from someone who thinks truth, justice, kindness, democracy, and respect for persons are meaningless words.

As for the meaning of these -- or any other words -- there are reference sources which report how the meanings of these words have been defined in social processes. "Truth" wasn't defined on Mt. Olympus. "Truth" was defined by discussion and by people using the word in ways that others found understandable and acceptable. That's how most words come to have meaning. A few, like using "charm" to name a quark, are arbitrary.

Truth.
Justice.
Kindness.
Democracy.
Respect for person. — unenlightened

Those "higher ideals" can mean anything anyone wants them to mean. — baker

Maybe what you mean is that one can falsely claim to hold these values, when in fact one does not.

does the population increase necessitate more advanced technology, or does the advancement of technology necessitate the increase of population? — darthbarracuda

An intriguing question. I can only guess--no definitive answer from me.

The quality of life plays a role here: A population can increase without necessitating more advanced (hardware) technology. It probably can't increase beyond a certain point or improve it's quality of life without more technology. Advancing technology may require more population. The industrial revolution required many new workers drawn from somewhere--hence an increase in the population. Better transportation, more efficient mines, factories, etc. requires more people to consume the bounty of goods produced. If the goods don't get consumed, the economy fails; a given population can consume only so much.

Were we to have a stable world population, we would have to be very careful about what technology was introduced.

Didn't people have a lot more free time back in the day? — darthbarracuda

No. Taking a typical 19th century early 20th century midwestern farm as an example... Back in the day, there were still only 24 hours in a day. Prior to mechanization, farmers milked their cows by hand. This was time consuming and has to be done twice a day, 12 hours apart. Plowing fields, planting, and cultivating fields with horse power took considerably more time than when using a tractor. Making hay; threshing oats, barley, or wheat were all labor intensive and took quite a bit of time. Rather than a multi-day 4 step process to harvest grain back in the day, big combines now do it all in one pass, and keep track of yield by the square yard. Caring for horses, cattle, hogs, birds, or sheep; tending fences; maintaining buildings, etc. were year round projects. Yes, there were lulls in the flow of work--in the winter, especially; then after spring planting there would be a short respite. Once the crop was too high to cultivate, another short respite. Then the harvests would begin, which takes us back to late autumn and winter.

A farmer probably has more free time today. If he has a small not-terribly-profitable farm, he and/or his wife will probably work for a wage in town to balance their budget.

require a more complex society, with everyone working more — darthbarracuda

"Society" was no less complex 100 years ago. Most people generally worked longer hours 100-140 years ago -- between 8 to 10 hours. a day, 5.5 to 6 days a week. Almost everything--housekeeping to manufacturing farm equipment, involved a lot more physical labor. Technology became progressively more complex throughout the 19th century.

People work less per unit of output now than they did 100 years ago, thanks to gains in efficiency, automation, administration, technology, and so on. People seem to be spending at least the same amount of time at work despite more efficiency. [Parkinson's Law corollary: a worker can stretch a given amount of work to fill the available time.]

Compare the dinky horse-powered harvest machine [below] with the John Deere monster. The horse-powered machine increased the farmer's efficiency considerably. The machine was probably manufactured in Chicago, shipped to Minneapolis by rail, might have been sold at a warehouse showroom, then shipped to South Dakota by another railroad, to be picked up by the buyer when he got back home.

The John Deere machine might be purchased by a company providing harvesting services and would harvest many fields of wheat, corn, or whatever crop it was suited for. These machines make no financial sense on a farm of 2 or 3 hundreds of acres. These big machines can mow down thousands of acres a day.

There was a big change in land ownership over the 20th century (to very large acreages) which required these giant machines.

However, self-driving vehicles seem like a sci-fi delusion to me. — Maw

Still, their are companies pursuing what is either a delusion or a premature technology.

Full automation only makes sense if labor is counted as an unnecessary expense. — Bitter Crank

This is sort of the Uber view -- labor is an unnecessary expense. But in reality labor is essential to their model.

What makes Uber and Lyft workable at all is a large enough number of workers with inadequate income and a willingness to spend a lot of time in traffic with no guarantee of enough ride orders to make it worth the time. Lyft and Uber are post-great recession companies, becoming 'popular' about 8 or 9 years ago.

I use Lyft 2 or 3 times a month for trips where public transit takes too long. Maybe taxi companies have acquired the kind of software that makes Lyft workable--knowing how long the car's arrival will be, and knowing how much the ride will cost.

Automation/robots would be created by an immense amount of physical labor by humans. — Zazie Kanwar-Torge

Yes. A technology where robots could replace themselves and produce other machines without involving human labor is imaginable, but is more in the realm of science fiction (at this time). The robots we use have narrow application. We don't have plenipotentiary robots, yet. A robot's fully autonomous production reaches back to mining ores, mining and refining oil, creating complex raw and finished materials, and so on.

Humans are fully capable of doing all these things--and, of course, have been doing them for a long time.

Full automation only makes sense if labor is counted as an unnecessary expense.

A very large problem of capitalists eliminating labor in production--but maintaining ownership of all the factories--is 'how would the market of goods continue to exist when the people had no income to buy'?

Yes: automated factories producing goods to satisfy the needs of people, rather than for producing profit, would liberate us to pursue fulfillment rather than dreary work (work is not always dreary, but it usually is, sooner rather than later).

Actually, I don't see any reason for capitalists to automate all production (which they alone would control) because their wealth is extracted from the workers. Unemployed workers can't buy much, and several billion unemployed workers is a hazard they would not prudently allow.

Unless, of course, they could eliminate workers altogether. Capitalism is perfectly capable of disposing of workers. The American rust belt has been the site of large scale worker disposal. It's not pretty. These people have sunk into poverty rather than seize the means of production. (Had they seized anything they probably would have been shot.).

Capitalists could operate the worker-free factories to meet the minimum needs of the unnecessary workers--as protection, not out of the goodness of their hearts--but why would they if they they could find a long-term solution to the existence of unneeded workers?

If we grant that there is a tendency toward automation (which there seems to be) and that this does reduce the amount of productive* labour required for the reproduction of the working class as much as it can, that still leaves open the possibility that there is a lower limit of that process of production - a non-zero asymptotic socially necessary labour time for the labourer's good basket, which suffices to sustain the dynamics modelled by the labour theory of value long term - keeping the engine of capitalism going. — fdrake

Eliminating all labor through automation would be a colossal blunder on the part of capitalism. We are aware, are we not, that capitalists are perfectly capable of Colossal Blunders? They would destroy the model that creates their wealth and power--without another model in sight. They might fantasize a world of Alpha Plus people (Brave New World) without the plague of betas, deltas, and epsilons, but achieving it would be inordinately messy.

↪darthbarracuda So there must be more people maintaining farm equipment today than there used to be people farming then, no? — Pfhorrest

↪Pfhorrest Indirectly, yes. — darthbarracuda

Back in the day when farms were shifting from horses to machines, about 1/3 of the population was engaged in farming--32,000,000. Today there are about 2,000,000. Are you saying that there are many millions of people repairing the machinery used by 2 million farmers? That just doesn't seem plausible.

In any town in agricultural areas one will find a few equipment sellers and a number of people engaged in service and repair--not a large number in absolute or relative terms. Of course, farmers do some repair themselves.

Is the reason crime rates are decreasing because nobody is calling the police? — Huh

There is nothing even an extremely competent police force can do about many petty crimes in a large city. With that understanding, many minor property crimes do not get reported--perhaps out of a concern that such a call would result in wasted police time.

However, local crime waves are often the work of a small number of people; competent policing can, with community cooperation, apprehend the culprits. That means, among other things, reporting.

More serious crime, though, does get reported. (I'm excepting domestic abuse and rape which are not always reported.).

Just because machines do the labor doesn't mean that labor isn't the source of wealth. — Pfhorrest

Ricardo and Marx, primitives that they were, referenced actual live human labor, not automated machines. It is true, though, that machines impart some of their cost and value to the goods produced.

Probably this t-shirt took half time to made it but imagine is made of good cotton and with hands of professional. This is forced to be more expensive than the hat. — javi2541997

To use an English expression, one can make a purse out of silk or make it out of a sow's ear. Or to be more precise, try to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Moving on from the pig pen...

The thing is, whether it is a fine Egyptian long-fiber cotton T shirt or a ratty polyester one, a certain amount of time is required to make it. Same for the hat, whether it is $9.99 hat or a $99 hat, depending on time/labor inputs.

It seems to me that a large portion of the world's work force will be increasingly irrelevant as automation, robotics, AI, and the like advance. I've had some clerical jobs that I would have happily handed over to a machine to do. (I hate detail work)

How much extra would you pay to have an actual bartender mix your drink rather than a very reliable drink-mixing machine? Is beer better if you can chat with a live bartender? I'd say, definitely -- live person, please.

I, for one, do not understand what conclusion you are trying to reach. Say more about your objective, if you would.

I've never read a book on philosophy in my entire life — Huh

You said it.

Nietzsche insists that there are no rules for human life — Huh

A quote from Nietzsche and 50¢ won't get you a cup of coffee.

Well, if you can trust that you will do the right thing, then you are NOT an immoralist. So what's it going to be?

A-morality is no more likely to lead to peace than immorality or morality. One reason there is strife in the world is that there is not enough of the good stuff to go around. For instance, if everyone wants to be free and autonomous, we will quickly start clashing with each other. I'm not proposing the opposite -- that we be automatons who obey as robots. The solution (may be) limited freedom and limited autonomy. Finding the "just enough but not too much" is a delicate process which everyone has to carry out.

I'm not sure there is ANY guarantee that one will always be at peace. One can make it more likely by limiting one's claims on the good stuff, and learning to live within one's skin.

Can I just trust that if I'm a good person I'll be a good person
and if I'm a bad person I'm a bad person? — Huh

No, you can't--BECAUSE good people are capable of doing bad things, and conversely, bad people are capable of doing good things.

Is the only way to live in peace to be amoral? — Huh

You will have to label yourself a lazy-assed amoralist. You really aren't working very hard on this.

Statistics say that 25 percent of all internet searches are related to porn. — TaySan

Hidden in plain sight!

The internet has facilitated the distribution of porn, in the same way it has facilitated the distribution of all sorts of information. Prior to the arrival of the web, browsers, search engines, and plentiful bandwidth, pornography was physically situated in magazines and videos (and before video, film). One had to go somewhere to purchase porn. In the same way, before the internet and WWW, one had to go to the library or book store to acquire information.

Technological innovation often leads to expansion. Access to information was hugely expanded once Gutenberg's press (mid-1400s) started turning out books. Better presses, more information.

There is also an 'institutional factor': State and federal court rulings do not give blanket endorsements to pornography--they don't say, "anything goes". Instead, there is a set of conditions and terminology which generally allows, if not everything, quite a lot. Charges of obscenity are still brought--take the Cincinnati case:

In 1990, the director of a Cincinnati art museum was indicted on obscenity charges for mounting an exhibit of Mapplethorpe’s photographs that only a few weeks before had been hanging at a nearby university without incident. The photos included men displaying their genitals and engaged in sex acts.

The art director was acquitted of the charges. Some of Mapplethorpe's photos could be considered mildly pornographic--most would not. They certainly turned the crank of the local district attorney!

Porn is not harmful. There is only good porn and porn that doesn't do it for us.

One statistic that helps us understand pornography is that porn video rentals in hotels are rarely played longer than 5 minutes. They come for the climax, then turn it off. On the other hand, authoritative web sites like CinamaBlend (somebody said they were authoritative) say that people are watching more Netflix than porn. They perceptively observe that more people are getting porn on the Internet (customizable) rather than from video rentals.

People watch porn as fuel for their erotic fantasies. Let's face it: in reality, our experience is that many sex partners are not wildly exciting over the long run. Some people are a lasting turn on, but most are not. This isn't due to any deficiency -- it's just the lack of novelty. (This from a gay male point of view.)

One problem with porn is that a lot of it isn't very good -- I am not referencing the camera work, lighting, sound, or--god forbid--plot. It's just not engaging most of the time. That's true of a lot of movies, produced for the broad population. It's bad art. It's a rush job.

Just for historical context, porn has been around for a long time but in the US it was hard to get until the late 1960s, thanks to Supreme Court rulings. Here is a satiric piece by Tom Lehrer (the Harvard mathematician turned humorist) on SMUT (ah, the adventures of a slut; I don't know what compares with smut...). This piece predates the ruling that opened "the flood gates".

I agree completely.

I finished college and had still not acquired a very good, practical understanding of how a body worked. Over the last 50 years since I have put together what I think is a solid understanding through reading magazines like Scientific American or the New York Times science section, and picking up consistent information here and there in books, conversations with well informed people, etc.

Careful use of the Internet is also a good source of info, with the understanding that there is a lot of garbage out there.

For instance, Wikipedia affirms your evil spirit treatment by trepanation, but also says:

Evidence also suggests that trepanation was primitive emergency surgery after head wounds[4] to remove shattered bits of bone from a fractured skull and clean out the blood that often pools under the skull after a blow to the head. Hunting accidents, falls, wild animals, and weapons such as clubs or spears could have caused such injuries. Trepanations appear to have been most common in areas where weapons that could produce skull fractures were used.[5] — Wikipedia

Is trepanation an effective treatment for evil obstructionist conservative politicians? Let's find out! I have a wood chisel and a hammer; line them up and send them in. We could also try icepick frontal lobotomies, while we are at it.

Excellent topic!

Sorrowfully, I think this only works in Kids or Young minds because when you get older you start losing the ability of dream/having fantasies. — javi2541997

Art teachers say young children are much more fun to teach because they haven't lost their ability to either imagine, or express what they imagine. Teenagers and adults tend to be less expressive when they attempt art. I wouldn't know, myself, because I've never been good at "art" (drawing, carving... I''m better when it comes to words).

There are a few different kinds of fantasy: sexual fantasy; spatial fantasy (architecture); anger fantasy (also called 'vindictive perseverating'); literary fantasy (Tolkien); all fiction; etc. I'm not sure musical composers or choreographers are fantasizing as much as 'thinking'. Similarly, I'm not sure Picasso was 'fantasizing' as much as thinking as he executed his paintings. (Are realist artists fantasizing or representing?). People who write film scripts aren't fantasizing either -- they are applying technical knowledge to a text--which is not to slight a job well done!

At 75 I fantasize less than I did when I was 50 or 30 and the fantasies are different. I'd say I 'reflect' more now than I did in the past. For the last several years I've been doing a lot of intensive historical and sociological reading which I've found very satisfying. I read science fiction, quite often. There is less sexual fantasy now, and very little 'angry perseveration" like their used to be. Why? I don't know. I'm just grateful there is less of it.

Medicine is not that difficult to get a reasonable handle on. — synthesis

I agree with you -- under the condition that one do a lot of reading (reliable sources only) over time. It is not reasonable to expect a population of hundreds of millions to do this. It isn't that they are dependent state / corporate teat suckers. You know perfectly well that a good share of the population would have considerable difficulty maintaining a high level of laymen's knowledge.

Public Health is a different beast than medical practice--one patient at a time, generally anxious to be treated, and usually cooperative. Public Health deals with millions of people, many of whom resent any instruction directed at the whole population, like social distancing, masking, avoiding large gatherings, hand washing, etc. Same thing for MMR and other vaccination, smoking, drinking, eating too much fat and sugar, unprotected promiscuous sex with strangers (one of my past favorites) and the like.

Oddly, people who regularly follow individual medical advice (taking meds for chronic diseases or acute infection) balk when it comes to 'group health'. My uneducated sister is well informed about ordinary health issues but has taken up all sorts of misinformation and non-information about this specific vaccination. This is consistent with her very conservative political views. Trump managed to politicize what should have been an a-political issue.

It's not the 1950's anymore when the majority of people were pretty honest. — synthesis

I thought the 1950s were the years of 'mindless conformity'!

One part of this 'jungle' is that we can form beliefs in irrational, subconscious, and accidental ways. If one is born into a devout family, one will probably have religious beliefs installed early and deeply. Risk aversion vs. risk tolerance (something we don't choose to have) will shape beliefs. If one regularly gets beat up by a Norwegians gang, one will probably develop unfavorable beliefs about all Norwegians (as well one should).

It is debatable (and doubtful) that we can just 'choose our beliefs' from a menu of options. We can change beliefs, we can believe new things, and abandon old beliefs, but it is fairly hard to do it.

Is this ethical in terms of the abortion context or the slaughterhouse example? — FlaccidDoor

The slaughterhouse yield of military activity in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and numerous other places dwarfs the "abortion slaughterhouse".

Taxation for the purposes of maintaining a military for the sake of safety and enforcement of law seems hard to argue. — FlaccidDoor

This a mighty poor example for a libertarian to use for an attack on taxation. You are worried about the pennies spent on funding abortion, while ignoring the buckets of money spent on many useless military operations. The military depends on a lot of taxation of most of the population who do not receive either safety or enforcement of the law from the funded military activity. [It's mostly local and state police that protect safety and enforce law.]

Who does benefit from world-wide military activity? The military, for one. Major suppliers of goods and services purchased by the military for two; and three, the owners of the companies that do the supplying. Some amount of military force is necessary, but it can be argued that the American military establishment is a grossly wasteful operation funded by the extortion of "threats to the national interest".

Here's a phrase for you from science fiction:

All watched over by machines of loving grace. - author, Richard Brautigan

Locke is saying there's no innate knowledge, it's only whatever we glean from the external world. Whereas, Leibniz says knowledge is innate. — Dharmi

My specialty is the irrelevant aside.

The documentary, "My Octopus Teacher" shows that 'knowledge' or adaptive capacity, or resourcefulness, is sometimes innate - in octopi, at least. Octopi do not live very long - 2 or 3 years, and are both a prey and predatory species. Success requires effective ability from the start--they come preloaded.

Octopi resources go beyond rote instinct. They appear to have an inheirited store of knowledge.

Human infants also have a little pre-loaded knowledge. They have a few basic facts, like "when things are dropped they fall". So, when they see a balloon filled with helium, and the balloon is let go of, they are shocked and appalled when the balloon rises to the ceiling, contradicting the laws of the universe.

Aside from a few examples, we have to work hard to acquire facts.

Thank you for convincing me that your really ARE 100% evolved from pond scum. — Joe0082

That is the sort of statement that can get ungrateful peasants banned. Look, the moderators are volunteers. They do a generally good and pretty much thankless job.

Would the mind and soul of the one before and the one after not be, in essence, two separate and distinct individuals. — Steve Leard

I have no idea what the soul is. (well... some idea, but that is neither here nor there)

One thing, though: we can only be ONE person -- not different people at different times. That's why the post-coma good person can be tried for the pre-coma bad person's crimes.

Another thing: Serial killers are thought (by some) to have physical defects in their brains which produce the aberrant and repulsive behavior. Particularly, psychopaths / sociopaths lack circuitry between the limbic system (source of fear) and their pre-frontal cortex (executive center). Most people learn to fear displeasing their caregivers (who might deprive them of love or punish them). This fear becomes the emotional basis of morality. Psychopaths / sociopaths can't develop that fear / morality connection. Most people apply morality or ethical system to control their own behavior.

One could argue that they should be held as mentally ill persons, rather than as criminals. As far as I know, there is no effective treatment for psychopathic personalities.

I am going to run full tilt and throw myself at one of those pair of slits. If quantum mechanics is correct tomorrow i will be two of me. — Steve Leard

People who try to act like photons do not pass go. They do not collect $200. They exit the game--sic transit gloria mundi [thus passes the glory of the world]

It is remarkable that life evolved so many different forms, including us. It did take a long time -- life appeared on this planet about 3.5 Billion years ago. The first multi-cellular life appeared about 600 Million years ago. The first creatures slithered out of the oceans 440 Million years ago -- preceded by plants 700 million years ago.

Take the eye: cells found a way of reacting to light about 600 million years ago -- around the time of the Cambrian Explosion in species. From there it took many millions of years to develop what we would recognize as an eyeball.

Just guessing, but maybe 99.99999% of all evolutionary events resulted in flat out nothing. A very small percentage of errors in cellular duplication resulted in a feature that was useful to the animal, plant, or fungus.

Problem is there are so many people who just don't seem to care very much about this sort of thing. — synthesis

Most people are not / will not be intellectuals; most people are not / will not be rebels--political deviants. Most people are not engaged in philosophical discussions. This is so now, and as far as I can tell, always has been. Most people are now, and always have been, engaged with life as they know it. They are not stupid clods.

40+ years ago, I was interested in reading and applying anarchist writers like Emma Goldman (1869-1940); the writings from the IWW - Industrial Workers of the World; Marx's Manifesto; the Catholic Worker's founder, Dorothy Day (1897-1980). There are, here and there, other individuals (or very small groups) who are interested in this sort of stuff. I found it quite liberatory and motivating, and so have others.

One of the consequences of political deviation is that if an individual exercises their new-found interest, they are likely to become economically side-lined, which means a declining or flat income. Most political deviants are broke -- poor, economically precarious. I compromised enough to stay employed to keep food on the table and a roof over my head, but had I followed the typical upward path, I'd have been economically better off.

The United States has an extremely stingy safety net. Most people recognize that fact -- implicitly if not explicitly. If they want to eat and be housed, and raise their children, they understand what is expected of them.

There is a an anarchist / radical bookstore in Minneapolis that has, somehow survived for 50 years, or so. It has mostly been supported by donations. Its small circle of friends and supporters and meeting participants are a rag-tag bunch of politically deviant intellectuals types. Few and far between.

air moves when energy is imparted to it. Heat (more energy or less energy, depending) is the primary energy involved. There is also the force of gravity and the rotation of the planet. A hot desert imparts heat to the air above it, causing it to rise. air more distant from the rising warm air moves in to take its place. Cold air is heavier than warm air and tends to sink. By such mechanism air moves, becoming wind -- or maybe just a breeze.

I would maintain that those going to the "good" school and are running the place are absolute idiots. I don't care if they aced every test since kindergarten, they are almost all fools. — synthesis

There is, of course, no shortage of liars, thieves, knaves, and scoundrels. Plenty of absolute idiots, and fools, too. You are focussing on the right side of the distribution of goodness and intelligence--out in the territory of Trump, Putin and Balsinaro; the robber barons; Mark Z. and Jeff B. The Normal Distribution will not be mocked. Most people are in the middle--neither rotten nor perfect. Then there are the people on the left side of the distribution who are unusually competent, kind and decent people. The distribution is skewed to the left -- there are more very decent people then rotten mafiosi.

BC, what's with all this anti-capitalist bullshit? — synthesis

I've been anti-capitalist since October 28th, 1982. Prior to that I was merely unenthusiastic.

How well is capitalism working out for you? Don't like the state? Marx didn't either, He called the state 'a committee to organize the affairs of rich people'. You are free in America insofar as you obey.

Here's a communist joke:

Comrade A: "After the revolution, there will be enough strawberries for all!"
Comrade B: "But comrade, I don't like strawberries."
Comrade A: "After the revolution, you WILL like strawberries."

Large organizations, be they states or corporations, on down to small non-profits, are controlling and repressive by their nature. People don't like to be controlled. I don't either. I want neither the state nor the corporation telling me what to do. I too want to be free.

But wake up: There can be no great individual freedom in the kinds of states and workplaces we exist in.

Yes, the corruption could / should be much, much more evident than it is.
— Bitter Crank

How is that possible? — synthesis

Ah well, publish the contracts between insurers and providers (hospitals, clinics, pharmacies Medicare/Medicaid, etc.). Here's a prime example: Big Pharma corrupted enough congress people (men and women both) to get a law passed forbidding Medicare/Medicaid from negotiating drug prices. Unconscionable.

One need not use Google or Facebook, whereas we see what happens if you do not comply with police or government. So I cannot see how these entities can be a source of any denials of freedom — NOS4A2

True enough, one does not need to use Google, Facebook, Amazon, et al. It's also the case that the operation of these extremely large corporations is only visible on the front end -- our computer screens. The algorithms, scraping and sale of data, massive profiling (for various and sundry purposes), and so on is not at all visible, let alone not obvious. Check out SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM by S. Zuboff - it's on YouTube -- another giant social media operator, but Zuboff is quite enlightening.

The police are the hard fist; most of the tracking, profiling, data scraping -- all that back-office monitoring -- is the soft fish.

FOR EXAMPLE: What do back office companies do with the data they scrape off of the zillions of pictures posted on facebook (and identified by FB users)? Likely, that information goes into the construction of facial recognition systems--something that has definitely hard, as well as soft, fist uses.

Target Corporation figured out how to tell which women were in early pregnancies by studying changes in purchase patterns. The women's changes were not dramatic -- they started buying more items like hand cleaners and unscented soap. Later on, they started buying baby products. Ah ha -- more unscented soap in June, baby products in December! An opportunity to become the mother's and baby's primary supplier.

That in itself may not be tyrannical (it IS manipulative) but suppose there are changes in run-of- the-mill purchases that predict a right- or left- shift in political views? Maybe crypto-nazis buy more canned peas and plastic containers 9 months before they start posting on a Proud Boys site. Maybe crypto socialists start buying fresh organic vegetables and white socks 5 months before they subscribe to The Militant and start spouting theory from Leon Trotsky.

Could the schools get any worse? — synthesis

Yes. There ARE good schools with good students getting a good education. These schools produce the next generation of cadre that the ruling class needs to keep society functioning in the desired manner. Maybe 20% of American students attend these (usually suburban) schools.

Yes, there are some fairly good schools left, and a lot of schools that have won the race to the bottom. That's OK because the students attending the crappy schools were never going to be very useful, anyway, except as consumers -- which they'll do well as.

Does anybody in public life ever tell the truth anymore? — synthesis

Yes, Somebody, somewhere, is telling the truth in public. Why do you expect people in power to speak the truths that would probably result in their not being in power any more?

Could political polarity be any worse? — synthesis

Oh yes, much worse. Think Germany in the 1920s-1930s. Bloody street fighting between Communists and Nazis was a regular and frequent occurrence. @Go Reds, Smash State! The Communists as well as the less radical, centrist parties were brutally suppressed as soon as the Nazis took power in early 1933. The recent storming of the US capital building was very widely condemned by both sides of the shallow groove that marks the shallow political divide.

The US doesn't really have much polarity -- we are a unipolar political system, the two poles are both capitalist.

We could, we should have more polarity -- workers of the United States, Unite -- then revolt. We have a small amount to lose, and a lot more to gain.

Could the fact that the health care system is corrupt beyond your wildest dreams be any more evident? — synthesis

Yes, the corruption could / should be much, much more evident than it is.

Exploitive, licentious, gangster ... predatory — 180 Proof

Exactly!

As we devolve into a totalitarianism characterized by intolerance, divisiveness, and massive propaganda/ignorance, you just have to wonder whether the desire to be free has been selected out of Western people. — synthesis

The 'loss of freedom' will, and does, come from unexpected sources. Google, Facebook, Amazon, et al are much more likely to compromise personal freedom than the Centers for Disease Control or the police. How? Commercial Internet companies make a great deal of money by manipulating people through their operating algorithms and content. Tracking your clicks and mouse moves, "scraping" information off the pictures we post, the texts we write, the things we buy, the things we watch (or do not watch) enables companies to profile, and manipulate us on ever deeper levels.

Years before many of us here were born, Marshall McLuhan observed that "the medium is the message". He was talking about television; the internet had not been invented yet. However, the principal applies as much to the internet as television.

The medium of the internet is no more liberating than television was/is--I'd say even less so. Television is much more a mass medium than the internet, which can be individualized by those background algorithms--toward purposes we are mostly not consciously aware of. That's how we get sucked in.

The problem of evil must be common knowledge to any regular visitor on this forum; and, this seemingly states that God allows evil to happen, so how does this mesh with Him or Her being all good? — Shawn

We are supposed to be good, or at least, we COULD be good if we wanted to, at least a good share of the time. But quite often we opt for doing things that are not good. It's as difficult to reconcile our refusal to be as good as we could be, as it is to reconcile evil and a good god.

...one must address as a good person or at least a person concerned with the good? — Shawn

Yes: we can, we should reduce suffering. We should do that just because each of us wants to avoid our own suffering. Do for others what you would like them to do for you.

It's amazing to me that an invertebrate, related to clams, may have self-consciousness. — T Clark

It is amazing. It's also amazing that all the remarkable features that an octopus has are innate -- it doesn't have time enough to learn it's remarkable repertoire of behaviors. MY OCTOPUS TEACHER is a fine documentary on a particular octopus - on Netflix.