Wait all you need. None of what I said requires painting pictures of how society would look. My only point to you was that states violate the human rights they purport to protect. You even went out of your way to show that rights are subject to abridgement or suppression by the authority that confers them.

You don’t need to explain the physics or biology. And It’s true that if we alter the physics or biology we perceive differently. I just think it more precise, leads to less problems, and is just plain easier, to think of these things in terms of direct realism, at least as far as my limited and naive understanding goes. I think we perceive the flower; I don’t think we perceive perceptions.

If a wall stands between an observer and a flower, we no longer perceive the flower, we perceive the wall. The environment is altered. If an electrode is inserted in the brain, and we are unable to view the flower in the usual manner, we still perceive the flower. The biology is altered. As far as I can tell the fact that we perceive or regard a flower is not altered.

I don’t know if any of this factors into it, but for me the locus of perception is the entire organism. With this I don’t need to evoke Cartesian theaters and brains in vats to understand how we perceive.

B is true: we see the same flower differently than the bee; our lenses and the rest of our biology is different than a bee’s; but the differences are with the creatures themselves and how they act upon the flower. Why must we assume some other thing?

In my understanding of direct realism there are no differing representations of the flower to present and there is no observer beyond the lens to present them to. I think at the very least indirect realists need to prove that there is some sort of barrier between observer and observed.

Yes there is. Read them at your own peril.

Is the flower the way I see it or the way the bee sees it? If some creature sees it as a blinking light, is it a blinking light?

It's a tough question. I might be off here, but I would think direct realism would permit that different creatures, with differing biologies, see the same thing and that the experience is always veridical. So in both instances the flower is observed directly, without any mediating factor standing between seer and seen. In all cases and with all creatures they see the flower. As soon as we insert "the way something sees" (the flower as a blinking light, for example) in between seer and seen we presuppose indirect realism. So I think the question is somewhat loaded.

But for some curious reason it does not feel threatened by it when white people do it. Well, maybe Ruby Ridge and Waco. But not the Michigan State House, Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, Bundy's ranch, Unite the Right and Proud Boy rallies, and countless other examples.

All those people you mention have been met with state force, as far as I know.

Why is that? Did they say that to the black man and his daughter in the photo you put up?

Why would they say that to the father and daughter? there was no violence or rioting or property damage occurring at the time they were exercising their rights.

Thanks for taking the time to write that.

I think you're right that a state legal order would see the open-carrying of weapons as reckless. It is a threat to its monopoly on violence. I always bring up this quote of James Madison's because I think it describes the motives of the state perfectly well: "you'll perceive the old trick of turning every contingency into a resource for accumulating force in the Government".

One needs only look at the Black Panthers to show that the state, both federal and regional, will undermine the militia clause in particular, and the right in general, if it feels threatened by it. All it needs to do is float some frightening contingency to justify violating it. Hoover and Reagan said as much about the Black Panthers, and now no one can open-carry in California because of it. Ironically, people nowadays applaud such “gun control”, even though, in that instance, it was used to undermine a marginalized community’s right to stand up against state tyranny.

Curious question: do you know why the Dutch lost their right to bear arms? Have they ever had it?

I don’t care how many arms people carry. If they don’t attack each other no one gets shot. The child rapist who first attacked Rittenhouse assumed, wrongly, that Rittenhouse wouldn’t defend himself. He said “you won’t do shit” as he attacked him. He wasn’t deterred by the weapon. Boy, was he wrong.

And the picture goes against your race-thinking pundit. Everyone was cool with it.

A recipe for escalation… it’s a nonsensical notion unless people start attacking the person carrying the gun.

A man and his daughter excercized their same right just outside the Rittenhouse trial where people were protesting, and no escalation entered the equation. Had people attacked them it would be a different story, of course.

Fair enough about your legal interests.

But your question about whether his carrying a weapon into a riot should contribute to his blameworthiness is interesting. I say it does not. He has the right to open-carry that weapon in that state (I’m not sure about carrying concealed weapons). He wasn’t out there committing crimes. His attackers are aware he is carrying it. And he used it to defend himself from attack. Why would a legal system ascribe more blame to this scenario?

Probably the best method would be to lead by example rather than diktat. That way you don’t have to force people who want to work more, not less.

Reduce the work week for your employees. If people see that it works or is beneficial or gives you advantage, they might try to adopt it.

Is it a common ploy of yours to rehash what I write into language that comforts you? It’s been a few times now that you’ve done it, that I have to stop reading as soon as I notice it. You’re a good writer, James, and you should use your gift, even if it’s in service to state power.

White people are black people, riots are protests…anymore doublespeak to add?

The Dutch system is probably a fine legal system, but completely irrelevant in both jurisdiction and rights. I’m not sure why we’d compare them.

My point was that deterrence and self-defence is the most likely intent to open-carrying a weapon. I don’t know about you, but my own common sense dictates that I would not go near anyone carrying an AR. Even so, it obviously did not deter the attackers. The first attacker yelled “you won’t do shit” before lunging for the weapon. It didn’t work out for him, but it does help your point about deterrence rarely working.

Rittenhouse went to Kenosha to shoot black people, did so, but was acquitted by a jury instructed to ignore anything Rittenhouse did to cause concern to others.

You’re words, not mine. Race-thinking and disinfo don’t mix, I’m afraid.

How many black people did he kill again?

Thank god it is not up to Dutch law, then. The US has the 2nd amendment, and in Wisconsin a man can bear arms for security. In other words, a man can carry a gun with the intent to protect himself. “Simply being armed” is not only a deterrent but an effective means to defend one’s life from violence. Given that both the deceased attacked him and tried to grab his weapon, it appears that’s what Rittenhouse did, and we need not construct any intent beyond that.

When did I pretend something like that existed? Never once. And I disagree with your assertions.



I love when you start gossiping about me. The “more or less” lies increase in proportion to your sanctimony and race-thinking. An ugly combo.



The problem is once you sacrifice some individuals to “collective objectives” you ruin the collective whole in favor of certain individual members of it. You divided it, fracture it, subordinate some of it. So any talk of “collective objectives” or society over the individual is a ruse designed to disguise that you would submit to discrimination and human rights abuse in order to protect your vision of society. Just come out and say it.

You didn’t deliver. The United States did not form to protect rights, but to seize power, coordinate war, and to exploit the wealth of the people in order to serve those ends. Every ideal you claim the American state has was violated by the American state. This is because ideals belong to individuals, not states.

And the moment individuals with these ideals wield your tool, they violate those ideals. They utilize organized monopoly and the right to distribute property that is not theirs. The preside over institutions designed to protect their right to do so. They are no longer ideal men, but officials.

The Declaration of Independence was to announce independence from state rule and to dissolve their political allegiances. Rather, the American state came together under the articles of confederation and the constitution, not because it could better protect human rights, but because it needed a way to acquire money and prepare for war. As soon as confederation began and the state seized power and aggrandized itself, the government became destructive to the ends of the declaration, and the right of the people to abolish it quickly disappeared. Now look at her, the poor bloated thing.

Do you have any examples of a state that has came about to protect the rights of its subjects?

I’ve never stated there was a society without a centralised government that had an excellent human rights record. So I’m not sure why I would have to demonstrate it.

Any bill of rights was formed in spite of the state, mostly to protect the individual from infringement by state authority. The UN declaration, for example, was brought about because various “centralized governments” had the bright idea to submerge the earth in war and genocide. Bills of rights don’t come about because centralized government is the best protector of them, but because they are the worst violators of them.

Yes, I’d rather not wield the tool.

I’d rather not.

I didn’t mention any noble savages.

If you can mention any “centralized government” that has not violated the very human rights it purports to protect I’ll be very surprised. The history of states since time immemorial prove otherwise.

Perhaps the probability of being surprised in conditions where a creature is unable to use its senses overrides the probability of being surprised in conditions where it can.

There is no un-curated information

My point, I guess, is the choice between curating your own information or letting others do it for you.

I fear that most are concerned with whom the wealth is given to rather than the fact that it is stolen in the first place. In effect they accept that state institutions are above and beyond common morality.

Good article.

To me, the problem lies in the utilization of these principles.

From an information theory or statistical perspective, free-energy minimization lies at the heart of variational Bayesian procedures (Hinton and van Camp, 1993) and has been proposed as a modus operandi for the brain (Dayan et al., 1995) – a modus operandi that appeals to Helmholtz’s unconscious inference (Helmholtz, 1866/1962). This leads naturally to the notion of perception as hypothesis testing (Gregory, 1968) and the Bayesian brain (Yuille and Kersten, 2006). Indeed, some specific neurobiological proposals for the computational anatomy of the brain are based on this formulation of perception (Mumford, 1992). Perhaps the most popular incarnation of these schemes is predictive coding (Rao and Ballard, 1999). The free-energy principle simply gathers these ideas together and summarizes their imperative in terms of minimizing free energy (or surprise).

The computational theory of mind and the conflation of brains and creatures invariably leads to such problems.

Observation, trial and error, scientific method, logic, principle—foundational critical thinking skills can suffice to help navigate information.

You’re a big boy. Figure it out.

Lies, misinformation, errors, superseded theories, pseudoscience. If you need someone to differentiate between truth and falsity then you are a part of the problem.

Your case against independent media reads like it was written by CNN. But to derive your info from the legacy, fake news media, is too puerile an approach to informing oneself. It’s narrow, curated, doesn’t involve much thinking, and is subject to the whims of someone else.

Much better that all information is provided, true or false, and to learn to navigate it. Not everything is meant to be curated and disseminated for us. We ought to wean ourselves from curated information or we will never learn.

In that sense the internet has brought us closer to informed democracy.

There is nothing disproved about the fact that men can afford other men rights. History is blood-soaked with states denying rights, so I’m not sure you know what you’re talking about.

Exactly, they stole the land and gave it to their friends. It’s an organized monopoly. Now you say I should become their friend, to enjoy “all they’ve given you”, which turns out to be no more than the fruits of their robbery.



I’m not an anarchist when it comes to the organization of defence. Though I believe people should protect their communities, they are at risk being wiped out and subject to the worst that man can offer. So I agree with Paine that government may be a necessary evil in that regard, a mode rendered necessary by the inability of moral virtue to govern the world.

No, it didn’t earn it. First it begged for it, as with war bonds, then it took it, as with income tax. Only after the money is seized could it provide for you the things you claim it does. It doesn’t just start providing services in wait for some true-believer like James to tell everyone it is deserving of some payment for its services. Hilarious.

The government created the problem by imposing lockdowns, shuttering businesses, forcing people in their homes, thereby altering consumption and shopping patterns.

The government didn’t earn that money, that’s for sure. It won’t give to anyone but itself.

Brilliant. If taxes go up on shipping then shipping raises the prices, and, as usual, the cost is left up to the citizen. It makes no sense, if true. But also as usual, government sees itself to the solution to a problem it created, like any protection racket.

That’s a strange conception of freedom.

Voltaire was right: In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another.

Note that they skipped the letter xi and went straight to omicron.

Slavery exists too, ssu.



Any man can afford another man a right, and anyone can defend someone else’s rights. It’s as simple as that. If you need a state to tell you what rights are important and when you should defend them, they can get you to do anything.