Yes, free speech invariably causes harm to the censor. We all know that. It’s why they censor. And they will make up imaginary scenarios to justify it.

It’s clear from your own examples that you want the government to decide what you can and cannot say.

It’s true: you or I would not have written what we wrote had either of us written something different. But I do not believe in counterfactual causation, and doubt causation as a folk science. The brute fact that you scrolled to my response, read it, thought about it, and formulated a response puts you at the helm of your actions at every instance. You could have just as easily not opened up the thread, not read it, not thought about it, and not formulated a response. “Guided by the context”? Might as well say your actions were caused by your computer, the owner of the website, the utility companies, the government, the universe.

It doesn’t matter anyways. You can say your actions were caused by the Big Bang, for all I care. If I remove causation my argument still stands: you cannot move or change or alter any person into some other action with words.

Well, no, the cause of you reading what I write is you. You’re moving your eyes, digesting the words, and so on. I haven’t caused you to do anything.

Sorry, maybe I didn’t pick up your argument.

Personally, I make that point for many reasons: so others can read and think about it if they choose to, so I can hear arguments against my position, to challenge my own beliefs etc., none of which include altering the world with words in any way. So there is plenty of reasons, but zero effects on the world. Zero irony there.

So no, you don’t got it.

I don’t see the irony because I’m not trying to alter the world or other minds with speech, as if we had the power to do so. I’m writing here for my own enjoyment.

By pointing out that people cannot alter the world with speech as much as they claim they can, and that people overestimate the powers of speech, my point is that you have no reason to censor others. That’s it.

And who decides what those legitimate reasons are?

When Bertrand Russell was appointed to the City College of New York, conservative residents opposed it, filed lawsuits, and eventually got his position revoked because they feared his atheism and immorality with women. Clearly they believed those were legitimate reasons to protect “public safety”. But the act of censorship itself was entirely unjust.

Should those people be the ones to decide? What about the church or government, who have all been notoriously tyrannical when it comes to the suppression of dissent?

That’s the sort of appeal to tradition they used to defend slavery, but you see it often to defend censorship. No nation has ever had absolute free speech, therefor we should keep censoring people. The mere existence of the tradition of censorship is no argument for its continuance.

Another Trump-brokered peace deal, this time between Armenia and Azerbaijan. “The deal includes an agreement that will create a major transit corridor to be named the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity.”

https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-white-house-armenia-azerbaijan-069379e9c4a058c96af38afbf4684829

Your insults don’t do you any favors because that’s clearly how you mask your evasions, like a squid shooting ink. The more you do the more you get on yourself and the dumber you end up looking.

Yes, I believe I am my body. That’s not a controversial belief, but here you are feigning surprise.

@ssu

It looks like the military has joined the fray against the drug cartels, just as you predicted.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/08/us/trump-military-drug-cartels.html

Attorney General Pam Bondi has ordered a grand jury investigation into the intelligence regarding President Trump and Russia in the run-up to the 2016 election.

She has directed Justice Department staff to begin legal proceedings and ordered a federal prosecutor to present evidence to a grand jury about the matter to secure a potential indictment, according to a source familiar with Bondi's efforts. It is unclear what the charges would be and who would be charged.

https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/doj-russiagate-trump-grand-jury-investigation/

The political scandal that duped hundreds of millions might finally generate some accountability.

You have explicitly moved the goal post. It is not under your volition. That is the point. You have no control over it (other than by brute force, which is present among all these arguments). You simply don't. It isn't even connected to your brain, so there's no way for you to control it. What's called the "intrinsic pacemaker" is what's making sure your heart keeps beating. You have no knowledge or control of this.

“Signals from your body’s nervous system and hormone from your endocrine system control how fast and hard your heart beats. These signals and hormones allow you to adapt to changes in the amount of oxygen and nutrients your body needs.”

“Your heart has a special electrical system called the cardiac conduction system. This system controls the rate and rhythm of the heartbeat.”

https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/heart/heart-beats

Do you believe that I am not my cardiac and nervous systems?

I see you don't grasp reality. That's fine.

What’s your excuse?

“ Pupil: The pupil is the opening at the center of the iris through which light passes. The iris adjusts the size of the pupil to control the amount of light that enters the eye.”

https://www.nei.nih.gov/sites/default/files/2019-06/parts-of-the-eye.pdf

“ The auricle (pinna) is the visible portion of the outer ear. It collects sound waves and channels them into the ear canal (external auditory meatus), where the sound is amplified.”

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/how-the-ear-works

“The iris (pl.: irides or irises) is a thin, annular structure in the eye in most mammals and birds that is responsible for controlling the diameter and size of the pupil, and thus the amount of light reaching the retina.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iris_(anatomy)

“ The auricle is a paired structure found on either side of the head. It functions to capture and direct sound waves towards the external acoustic meatus.”

https://teachmeanatomy.info/head/organs/ear/external-ear/

“ Your eyelids are a protective covering for your eyes, shielding them from outside objects and light.”

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/eyelids

You have almost no control, whatsovever, over your heartbeat. It is separate to even your brain's control center. You do not control the vast, vast, vast majority of what happens in your body. You couldn't possibly...

Then I have to ask once again, “what does”?

If anything else in the universe that is not me can be shown to beat my heart I will concede. But if it is the case that the cardiac conduction system controls the heart rate, or branches of the nervous system, you’ll be left trying to prove how I am neither my heart or my nervous system, advocating some sort of dualism. This is why I always repeat that free will is often an issue of identity.



Sheer force of repetition and the proliferation of URLs cannot convince me that understanding is an effect of words, or that words cause understanding. You have to explain how words can cause understanding.

Like I said before, you both control the amount of light that enters your eyes and direct the sounds that enter your ear, and convert any and all stimuli into impulses you can understand. So what effect exactly has the lights and sounds caused? How do they produce that effect?

As stated, and always unaddressed, the error is in moving the words to the subject position and the listener to the object position. This grammatical trick allows you to make the case that the words are always acting upon the listener rather than the other way about.

While it’s true that we use cues from the environment such as sounds that might indicate danger to make decisions, it is untrue that those cues move us around, act upon us, and make us do so. In short, they do not have the causal power people pretend they do.

As for your counterfactual dependency, if the American revolution did not happen, you would not have wrote those words. Therefor the American revolution caused you to write those words.

Not everything our body does is voluntary.

Just as “one’s heartbeat” refers to a particular thing in the body, not the body as a whole, so too is “one’s will”. If eliminative materialism is correct then one’s will is a particular kind of neurological phenomena, and only bodily behaviour caused by that particular neurological phenomena is “being willed by yours truly”.

Voluntary or not, the thing that does the action is operating under its own power, is self-governed, autonomous, and freely determined by itself.

None of those noun-phrases refer to any singular or particular thing outside of language. They’re just abstractions.

Well, I am my biology, my brain activity, my thoughts and so on, so to me this is another instance of everything being willed by yours truly.

Good times.

I was not aware Russell had said that. Thanks :)

Quote from book or essay?

It’s an essay.

On The Notion of Cause

https://users.drew.edu/~jlenz/notion-of-cause/br-notion-of-cause.html

A life of suffering suggests the absent of its opposites, such as pleasure, joy, or flourishing. But the countless reports of the experiences of these feelings or states suggests their existence. If life can entail the opposite of suffering, life is not suffering.

I see you won’t or can’t take up any of my arguments, which shows that what you call effects are actions performed by an agent.

Cheers.

Another trade deal, this time with the EU. It might be too early to say but it looks like the Euros get the short end of the stick on this one.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jul/28/eu-us-trade-deal-tariffs-european-union-five-key-takeaways

You can find that one in the anti-Trump trophy case, with all the other Supreme Court losses. It appears abusing the courts and weaponizing the justice system is unconstitutional.

You’ll never get anywhere in understanding the origin or purpose of these beliefs by dismissing them as personality defects (status-seeking on the part of the economically privileged). If I introduced you to non-affluent woke activists who have sacrificed personally for the sake of their social justice aims would you try to poke holes in their sincerity, or make an effort to accept their ethical intent and try to understand why they think their approach is superior to more conservative politics?

I would never dismiss anyone’s beliefs and concerns so long as he was talking about them. But activism is not conversation. It is anti-social, ill mannered, and unethical behavior, in my view, no matter the intent, no matter the politics. I would likely dismiss it and ignore it.

At any rate, the phrase “luxury beliefs” is narrow enough to exclude the marginalized.

I have no reason to doubt the media reports on it. As for you, you want to believe it, as one who has spent the last 8 years defending and supporting Trump.

You have no other choice because believing media reports is how you form your beliefs. How could you operate without them?

For BlueAnon, making such statements before all the facts are out is the going rate, these days.

Good points, and I think that if we want to look at the foundations of what is happening with wokeness we will find that it stems from a morally robust culture combined with increased leisure. Or in other words, you have a morally conscious population of busybodies.

Whenever a group of people find more leisure time, they tend to become more involved in cultural and political issues. They wish to extend their influence into these areas. When such people are morally charged, and morally charged in the particular direction of identity politics, you get wokeness.

I think the increasing leisure is going to produce all sorts of similar phenomena going forward, even though the particular determination of wokeness will not be the inevitable outcome.

I think the phrase “luxury beliefs” coined by commentator Rob Henderson encapsulates some of the psychology and dynamics. These are beliefs and activities that seek to confer a certain status and halo upon those that express them, while damaging those who they claim to support.

The “defund the police” phenomenon a few years back is a prime example. It was largely expressed by the affluent and well-educated, who were insulated from the consequences of that movement, but their activities negatively affected the lower classes who were then subject to more crime in their areas. And, like luxury apparel, it eventually became unfashionable. They could easily dispense with that belief while the less-affluent were left to live in their consequences.

Causation in general is a fraught notion itself. It's been discussed for thousands of years and the theories as to what it is or means still vary to this day. Some even doubt its usefulness in science. Bertrand Russell's famous quote goes so far as to relegate it to the status of folk science, not fit for physics and the like:

The law of causality, I believe, like much that passes muster among philosophers, is a relic of a bygone age, surviving, like the monarchy, only because it is erroneously supposed to do no harm.

- On the Notion of Cause

The Senate Intelligence Committee report relied on the Intelligence Community Assessment of January 2017 and the testimony of its drafters, all of which left out the contradictory evidence as reported in the newly unclassified HPSCI report. This report, found locked away in a safe-within-a-safe in a hidden room at CIA headquarters, illustrates damning evidence regarding its failures. It also illustrates how Putin probably had kompramat on Clinton. Why do you think the drafters of the ICA report would actively hide and misrepresent this evidence?

You might want to give it a read and judge for yourself.

https://www.odni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/DIG/DIG-Declassified-HPSCI-Report-Manufactured-Russia-Hoax-July2025.pdf

No I like that, that's fair. But. Remember. There are close to 200 countries in the world today. Yet the chart pairs 11 (ot of 200) against 1. Does that seem standard or fair to you? I'm sure if you sample any random group of 20 people 1 of them will be awful people who should not exist. Is that really supposed to mean anything though?

Venezuela banned the private ownership of guns and ammunition in 2012. They stopped issuing firearm licences and confiscated thousands of guns. Ten years later it’s still pushing 43.65 violent gun deaths per 100000k people, the second highest in the world.

Agreed. My mom almost got kidnapped when she was pregnant with me. Without her gun threatening the guy off, it's very possible she, my younger siblings and I might not be here. It's honestly wild to me that some people are so excited by the idea of making sure the most vulnerable among us have no personal protection in exchange for some nebulous idea of safety.

That’s right, and guns are great equalizers of power. A small woman can drop a very large man. Unfortunately, leaving everyone defenceless is a by-product of prohibitionism.

There are three types of people who wish to keep guns away from citizens and to limit the right to self-defense: criminals, tyrants, and gun prohibitionists.

It may be effective to ban weaponry, but is it unjust? I believe so. It's a brute fact that not every gun owner is a potential murderer, and not everyone is going to shoot someone if they happen to legally own a gun. Yet, the innocent are prohibited from owning guns.

But here is an argument.

• The right of self-defense is an important right.
• A firearms prohibition would be a significant violation of the right of self-defense.
• Therefore, a firearms prohibition would be a serious rights-violation.

I agree with the premises and conclusion. Though it may be effective to prohibit guns, it's a rights violation, and those that prohibit guns are violators of rights. This is dangerous. I mean, the UK police will knock on your door for social media posts. There is no way to reverse course on that road to serfdom, as the tyrants posses all the guns.

One of greatest myths perpetuated by the Russia hoax is that the Russian “developed a clear preference for candidate Trump”, “aspired to help his chances of victory”, and that “Russian leaders never entirely abandoned hope for a defeat of Secretary Clinton”. This is listed as a fact at the top of this thread, for example. But an HPSCI report from 2020 released yesterday by the Director of National Intelligence reveal this to be nonsense based on "significant tradecraft failures".

https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/DIG/DIG-Declassified-HPSCI-Report-Manufactured-Russia-Hoax-July2025.pdf

This particular piece of misinformation is by now so deeply embedded in many minds, that it will be interesting to see if that conviction can be changed, and maybe we can unite and hold to account those that lied to them for all these years. That would be the honorable thing to do. Yet, doubling down and distorting the media landscape with distractions might be their modus operandi. Last night I saw a clip of a CNN host speaking over the DNI’s allegations as she went live, in what appeared to be an attempt to censor and distort for their viewers her most damning claims. The state media in my own country, which pushes that narrative to this day, went so far as to call it all lies.

So-called wokism is the same old racism, injustice, and tribalism dressed in another garb. Beneath the strange arguments and complex surface-level manifestations lies the perennial epistemology and logic at work.

Sociologists have come up with a decent enough theory called Social Categorization (or self-categorization). It’s the process through which we group individuals based upon superficial information, such as age or race or class and so on. The quick mental trick of dissolving the target’s individuality into the soup of our social categories is supposed to shape downstream evaluation and behavior by providing prewritten judgements in the form of stereotypes and assumptions. It’s a way for the abstract-minded to better deal with the concrete complexities and diversity of life. But it is also the impetus for in-group/out-group dynamics, hierarchies, discrimination, and—as we always see with this stuff—racism, injustice, and tribalism.

Do you agree with the core premise? I’ve noticed that this theory has taken on new dimensions today due to the nature of our information environment.

I don’t agree with it.

We should recall that in the mouths of Nazis and their critics, the claim of The Big Lie is used to smear their enemies as cheats and liars. Hitler claimed the Jews employed the Big Lie, Goebbels claimed the Brits did, and the Allies and their historians claimed the Nazis did (and sooner or later, the Soviets).

It doesn’t look like it was used as an actual propaganda technique as is often accused, at least according to what I’ve read. I could be wrong.

So, if looked at in this way, it doesn’t look like the idea has taken on new dimensions, since it is still commonly used today as a smear tactic and argument for censorship. Beware those who use it.

We write/read speak/hear words/sentences.
All part of our social practices, like this comment to you (the reader).
Such socializing can go via light (to eyes), touch, soundwaves (to ears), doesn't matter much which, and the reader/listener may (mis)understand, presumably with an awareness of some writer/speaker, at which point the words/sentences have already had an effect.
Without the writer/speaker and their words/sentences, it wouldn't have happened.

I read your words if and when I want to. I focus my eyes, move them along the sentence, think about them, consider whether I should bother responding, and do so according to my own whim and fancy. Frankly, it’s ridiculous to think that your words sat there for hours, causally frozen until someone looked at them, and then suddenly and without cause go on affecting people. When in fact I turned on the light of the screen, went to the website, scrolled to your post, and by reading the words you left there I literally caused them to go into my eyes. All you’ve done is put them in the ether, affecting a couple inches of space on a website.

Whether machine, plant, or human, the involuntary behaviour of any sense receptor is causally influenced by external stimuli according to the laws of nature, which may be either deterministic or, if quantum indeterminacy is a factor and is not explained by hidden variables, stochastic. These stimuli are causally responsible for (even if not exclusively) subsequent steps in the causal chain — ended only if something like a non-physical mind interferes.

So there is more to causation than just the immediate transfer of kinetic energy and I can turn on the lights by saying "Siri, turn on the lights".

As such your defence of free speech absolutism fails.

That’s all I have left to say on the matter.

If it worked all the same you wouldn’t have had a problem discussing human beings, but you invariably chose machines engineered by human beings to be controlled by the voices of human beings. Counterfactual thinking, before this therefore because of this, and false analogies, all of it founded on superstition.

Thank you for the lengthy discussion.

Tulsi making some serious allegations. Inserted here for historical record.

How so? You might be incorrigible, for example.

Either way, once you've (mis)understood words/sentences that you read or heard, then they've already had an effect.

It’s the other way about. We affect words. We direct the soundwaves, transduce the signal, interpret the vibrations and electro-chemical symbols. What can you say that they do to you? That’s why you keep putting words in the object position of the sentence, which is the proper way to do it by the way.

Other than your use of the term "spontaneously", which I didn't take to be literal given that you previously denied that uncaused causes occur in the body, nothing here is incompatible with the causal determinist's claim that everything that happens is caused to occur by antecedent events according to the laws of nature.

The common incompatiblist argument is that if you have no control over the past and the laws of nature, you have no control of the consequences of the past and the laws of nature. If determinism is true, free will is false and vice versa.

But I'm curious, if plants do not have free will and if their behaviour is not causally determined, then what is going on with them? Is there some third option?

I’m not sure. The behavior of plants is so limited that I don’t think any satisfying account of their will could be made.

I value brevity. So I often re-read my comments and then re-write them to slim them down if nobody has replied.

But you removed any references to the human body and reverted back to plants. It’s a shame; we almost had an opportunity to discuss the actual subject matter.

Unfortunately they didn’t have access to those files. More to come, too. Buckle up.

Verbal nouns inevitably lead to ambiguity. But in this case the answer is relatively easy. A painting is “that which is painted”, the combination of paint applied to medium.