Any such definition must take into account not just sex but gender. — Fooloso4

If Jackson started identifying as a male, wouldn't we have to refer to her as "Mr. Jackson"? You would then have the bizarre sentence: Mr. Jackson was the first black woman Supreme Court Justice.

I said he continued the war that Ukraine started by refusing to accept Crimea and Dombas right to self determination. — boethius

If you think about it hard enough Russia is the real victim here! Do you ever stop and listen to yourself?

In the sense they were both expressions of empire and the countries propping them up responsible for millions of death across the world. Sure. Pick your favourite mass murderer. — Benkei

There's no difference between Stalin and FDR? You don't really believe that, do you?

:up:

Do you think there's a moral equivalence between NATO and the Warsaw Pact?

Again, no threat to USA, Australia, Germany or France of Italy and most Western nations, of the war spilling over. — boethius

The war could turn nuclear, which is a very serious threat to the Western nations (and the world). Everyone on the planet has a stake in what's going on in Ukraine.

We're not talking about levels of resources here, but an authoritarian government limiting free speech. — Christoffer

That is really the central point, isn't it? The idea of government, using all its powers, to suppress certain types of speech is chilling. Shades of 1984.

Someone asked a seasoned bank robber why he robbed banks. "Because that's where the money is", he replied. — unenlightened

America is very rich, that's true.

Why do you think so many people try so hard to get into America?

I would argue the fine-tuning problem in cosmology leads to a disjunctive: either god(s) or a sufficiently large multiverse exist. Since the evidence for the existence of a sufficiently large multiverse is very limited, it is rational to choose the god explanation over the multiverse explanation.

:up:

Think of it this way perhaps. Before Trump, the brakes on fossil fuel had already been tampered with. By the time Biden got in the driving seat, even the steering wheel had been removed. — apokrisis

I've reconciled myself to the fact humans won't prevent the coming climate change. Maybe there'll be a tech miracle that pulls our chestnuts out of the fire, or maybe it won't be as bad as we think it will be.

Biden's tapped the strategic reserve to release a million barrels a day to try and reduce gas prices. We became fracking kings under Obama. The Democrats only pay lip service to environmentalism.

Interesting read:
https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-april-3

However, we also need to know Ukrainian soldier deaths as well. Even if Russians have lost a lot, if they can point to having killed twice or three time, etc., as many Ukrainians, then this can be some form of "military performance" measure (US uses this metric all the time to evaluate performance). — boethius

The ratio of Ukrainian soldiers killed per Russians killed would matter if Ukraine was actually any kind of threat to Russia and diminishing Ukraine's military capability somehow benefitted Russia. Since Ukraine is not a threat to Russia and never was (and is a much smaller country punching "above its weight class"), the fact that Ukraine might have lose 2 or 3 or 5 for every Russian killed isn't an "achievement" for Russia. Russia is on the hook for those deaths, since the war was not necessary and based on deceitful reasons.

In the war in Iraq, America killed tons of Iraqi's for every American killed, but since that too was an unnecessary war, it just made America look even more like a bully picking on a much smaller non-nuclear country for dishonest reasons.

The prediction is that Russia will simply end it's offensives at some point and declare it achieved its objectives; as, the land bridge, which it already achieved at that point, is already a major strategic achievement. — boethius

Achievements have to be measured against the costs. Russia will have wrecked it's economy, become a pariah state, suffered grievous military losses, and united the West against it for a security guarantee it didn't need and small amounts of land it already partially controlled.

:up:

I don’t know. I do know that everything displaying qualities I relate to consciousness possesses a brain (in order to ‘feel’).

I generally view a body as a requirement for consciousness too, but that is a whole other area. — I like sushi

As an idealist, I disagree, but I realize my position is horribly unpopular, so maybe there's something to this "matter" idea. Everyone seems to think it exists.

Why do you think they do? — Daemon

I don't know if they do or not, but if they do, panpsychism is much more probable.

A bacterium can swim towards a desirable chemical, say a food source. To do this it needs to able to tell whether the concentration of the chemical is rising or falling over time, which seems to require a memory, which is an aspect of consciousness.

However, we know in astounding detail how the bacterium does this, we can describe the process fully in terms of chemical reactions, without having to talk about the bacterium feeling, experiencing, being conscious. There's an explanation here: https://www.cell.com/current-biology/comments/S0960-9822(02)01424-0 — Daemon

That doesn't answer the question. We might not have to talk about bacteria feeling things, but that doesn't mean bacteria don't feel things. How do you know they don't?

Given that neurons seem damn important for thinking I’d rule out bacteria. Ants … they certainly do not appear to be conscious like I am and nor do dogs for that matter. Maybe they can be said to be ‘conscious’ in some rudimentary fashion and even have processing that could be called ‘thinking’ in some fashion? Who knows? Bees appear to be quite clever in some ways, btu appearances can be deceiving. — I like sushi

There's the rub. We can only infer consciousness in anything other than ourselves. There can be no direct evidence of any consciousness other than our own. That makes me think science is useful in discovering conscious correlates, but has utterly failed (and will continue to fail) wrt to causal explanations.

Also, if insects are conscious, then we're getting pretty close to panpsychism.

Something it is like to be that thing; having subjective experience; feeling things

After bacteria, before baboons. Maybe around 500 million years ago? Why do you ask? — Daemon

How do you know bacteria aren't conscious? Are insects conscious?

Why even assume matter exists in the first place? Idealism solves so many of these problems: minds don't come from matter, everything is mind. Life is but a dream.

Entities arise through biology. — Daemon

I don't see why robotic entities can't be created through non-biological processes.

Before single-celled organisms there was nothing with an inside and an outside, so to speak. — Daemon

This is unclear.

That "individuation" is a precondition for consciousness, which arrives later, as an evolutionary development of non-conscious "sensing" processes in the organism. — Daemon

When did consciousness first arise?

:up:

And because consciousness only happens in biological organisms, we can pinpoint it to that extent too. — Daemon

No machine consciousness?

OK, that's close to where my thoughts are. Appreciate the response!

Make a prediction, Baden. Where are we in a month's time? I predict Russia will have made little to no progress. What say you?

However, I may be totally wrong, I'll admit. — Manuel

You're not. Russia has committed a catastrophic blunder.

Very good analysis:
https://warontherocks.com/2022/03/a-new-phase-of-the-russo-ukrainian-war-begins/

:up:

Issac, you're not an honest debater.

For a start, the comment I responded to was...

It proves they are not afraid of public opinion. — FreeEmotion


Nonsense.
— RogueAI — Isaac

The entire quote was:

Nonsense. Leaders in democracies are obsessed with public opinion and constantly monitor it through public and internal polling. — RogueAI

Next time, quote the whole thing.

...or we could just make shit up instead. Your choice — Isaac

Leaders in democracies DON'T monitor public opinion through polling? Is that what you think?

It proves they are not afraid of public opinion. — FreeEmotion

Nonsense. Leaders in democracies are obsessed with public opinion and constantly monitor it through public and internal polling.

It's pretty bad.

You can also play Scrabble. With equal effect. — Isaac

:brow:

Only in a democracy can you complain about your own government without fear of reprisal.

This only seems just because the conflict roughly ended at that point. History is written by the winners, as is morality.

The Western colonialists won the wars against indigenous peoples, but we generally don't think of the colonialists as the good guys (even as we know that the indigenous peoples were doing horrible things to eachother). — baker

I think it's objectively true that in WW2, America was fighting for the good side and Germany was fighting for the bad side.