Let me try to simplify too, because when there are these increasingly long posts, no-one's reading or engaging.

My position is simply that when it comes to subjective experience there remains a large explanatory gap; questions we cannot answer and would like to, with actual practical implications.

I think noAxioms, because you've started this thread from a position of "I don't know why there's all the fuss about...", you're responding to the problems and questions somewhat flippantly. Either with your best guess -- which is meaningless here, if the conclusion is not coming from a specific model or description it's not a solution, and we have no reason to think it's right.

Or pointing out that there's no reason to suppose something non-physical is going on -- which is fine, but is also not an answer.
It's like saying "What's all the fuss about why some people have long covid, while some are even asymptomatic...there's no reason to suppose it's not physical" -- it's an irrelevant excuse to handwave the problem.

We have a reaction to a negative input. It is a choice of language to describe that process as involving pain or not. Perhaps it is a choice of language to describe it as negative or not. — noAxioms

This is backwards. The input is not inherently negative; it's just data. It's as subject to interpretation as all other sensory data.
The experience is negative, and that's the difficult thing for us to explain here.
If someone were to peel off your skin, it's not a choice of language that you call that a negative experience -- the brain somehow generates an extremely unpleasant experience using a mechanism that as yet we don't understand.

It's not like there's a 4th set of nerves coming from the eye, lacking any 4th-color cones to sense, so they remain ever unstimulated. If those unused nerves were there, then I suppose they could be artificially triggers to give the subject this experience he otherwise could never have. — noAxioms

Your claim was that science says there's no way we could conceive of what the world looks like to tetrachromats. Even if the cones of the eye stimulated color perception in a consistent mapping (and it isn't...it's contextual), it wouldn't rule out that we can imagine another primary color independent of stimulus.

Are there non-philosophical papers that conclude that something non-physical is going on, and that matter somewhere is doing something deliberate without any physical cause? That would be news indeed, a falsification of 'known physics is sufficient'. — noAxioms

No idea where that came from.
I've been speaking entirely from the perspective of neuroscience. If anyone has been claiming a soul, or anything beyond known physics, it isn't me.

Behaving as a human does when experienceing human pain? Seems unfair. It feels pain if it chooses to use that word to describe what it feels. — noAxioms

I can trivially program an agent then that feels pain. Pretty easy to make an AI that chooses to use expressions like "Owie! That's the worst pain ever" in response to the user issuing the command "feel pain". So am I now guilty of inflicting great suffering?

It would be pretty pointless to evolve the data of pain and nothing to consider it to be something to avoid. — noAxioms

Avoiding stimuli does not entail having a negative experience. Indeed there are plenty of processes in your body that reflexively counter some stimulus without you experiencing pain. So these two things are not intrinsically coupled.

Now, one of the most popular hypotheses for why we have the negative experience of pain is that it allows us to make complex judgements. If cutting my arm reflexively made me pull away then I would not be able to hunt as effectively as someone able to consider the hunt more important than the "bad feeling" of having a slashed arm. I think this is likely correct.
However, understanding some of the reason that we evolved subjective experience is still not a model of what it actually is and how the brain creates experiences.

Exactly. Science acknowledges this impossibility [of describing a tetrochromats vision with words], and yet it doesn't recognize said 'hard problem'. — noAxioms

Several things here:
1. Science absolutely does not claim the impossibility of describing experiences with words. For all we know right now, it may be possible to induce someone to imagine a fourth primary color with some kind of description. The fact that this seems implausible is not a proof of anything.
2. Science absolutely does acknowledge the hard problem. It doesn't always call it that, because that's a philosophical framing, but even strictly googling "hard problem of consciousness" finds many papers in neuroscience journals.
3. I think you have a misconception about the distinction between science and philosophy. Many things that were once philosophy have become sciences as they made testable claims. Indeed all of science was once considered "natural philosophy".
Even if it were the case that the hard problem of consciousness were entirely confined to philosophical debate, that doesn't mean that the scientific community is rejecting it as a concept. Only that it wouldn't yet be something amenable to the scientific methodology.

The AI isn't going to feel human pain if that's what you're wondering. — noAxioms

That wasn't the question though. The question was how we could tell the difference between an agent being in pain and merely behaving as though it is in pain.

In this case though your deflection just serves to reinforce the point. If you're claiming that an AI would feel a different kind of pain to a human, what kind of pain is that, and how do you know?

It's always best with these things to bring it back to the practical.

The measure of how well we understand a phenomenon or system is what kind of useful predictions and inferences we can make about it.

When it comes to something like pain, say, we do understand very well the sensory inputs to the pain centres of the brain. But how the brain converts data into an unpleasant sensation remains quite mysterious.
This has practical implications -- it would be very useful to have some kind of direct measure of pain or some non-arbitrary way of understanding different kinds of pain. If we make a sentient AI one day, and it tells us it's in pain, how could we know if that's true or just saying that is part of its language model?

And we call it the "hard problem" because, right now, it doesn't seem feasible that a set of words could ever provide this understanding. How will words ever tell me what the extra colours that tetrachromats can see look like, when I can't tell a color blind from birth person what red looks like?
And indeed, how can I know whether an AI feels pain, when I can't know that you feel pain?

This is what makes it a "special" problem. The OP seems to basically acknowledge the main problem but seems to be shrugging it off in a "how could it be any other way" kind of perspective. But "how could it be any other way" doesn't give us any predictive or inferential power.

Because, the only thing we can know for sure about PC, from the transporter problem as it is usually phrased, is that an identical copy is a continuation of the self.
— Mijin

I don't think this is the case. The problem as it's usually phrase is designed to test your intuitions about what constitutes identity. — AmadeusD

I think this is the critical misunderstanding on your part, and is my response to all of your points in that post.
I was laying out what the personal continuity position is. The "you are transported" position.

No, it is not asking you to question whether an identical copy is you: that's the point of Parfit's transporter problem in the first place. PC is explicitly a response about such problems; it's making an explicit claim about what would happen.

Which, as I have quite clearly and distinctly laid out for you - does not have anythign to do with sex determination. Aberration doesn't change your sex — AmadeusD

Right and we're talking about how we determine sex. And your idea of using the SRY gene fails for at least these 3 reasons:

1. There are more than 2 genotypes for this gene -- it's not binary
2. How would we know what gene someone has, since their genitalia and secondary characteristics may not align. Call that an "aberration" or whatever other word you like. It remains impractical, since you balked at the idea of mandatory DNA testing, so how would it work in schools, prisons, hospitals etc?
3. Biologists do not define sex this way as it's completely arbitrary. I know you're happy to handwave everything that people who actually study this topic say, but it's a critical point for those of us who are not guided by conservative talking points over science.

This is pure nonsense. You brought it up. You deal with it. I didn't suggest we do that and no where did I intimate it was reasonable to suggest so. — AmadeusD

WTF? We were talking about gender being non-binary, and you brought up the SRY gene. Don't blame me if it's an indefensible position.

You can't avoid holding philosophical positions. And I find that often the people most dismissive of philosophy are the people trying to push their own (e.g. Creationist sites are often even more derisive of philosophy departments than they are of evolutionary biologists, say).

That said philosophy as a formal area of study does require certain cognitive skills and a lot of patience. Not everyone can do it.

I often regret not studying philosophy at Uni, but on the other hand, I do glaze over sometimes in very abstract discussions on definitions. And there are several topics in philosophy that I feel are pretty silly but have reached the threshold where you can't just question the whole premise any more.
I probably don't have the chops for it.

Many items on the list [of fascist traits] didn’t apply to Trump at all. — Fire Ologist

Like what? That was exactly the question I asked, so let's hear the one on the list that doesn't apply?
AFAICT the only one really debatable is the last on the list (launching a war of conquest) which is given as something common to fascism, not necessary. And there's still time...

And also you say that other leaders like Biden meet the items in the list. Let's hear that elaboration.

----------------------------------

In terms of the central thread topic of "wokeism" though, nobody knows what point you're trying to make, least of all you.
You write that "I see pretty clearly what woke is", and yet here's a selection of the changing, arbitrary ways you've defined it:

- Wokeism is a type of totalitarian fascism
- Woke teaches me that there is a difference between white people and everyone else, and that all white people must be reeducated about their implicit biases and privileges
- The word “woke” as a class of people is itself a bit anti-woke, elitist, oppressive
- the woke have to bring their own facts to the table, and they don’t seem to care about or need real proof
- The woke coined the term “woke”. Which is ironic now that they flee from the term. It’s CRT.
- Woke says people are doomed and chained to their biases, and have to be told by the enlightened what their real motivations are
- Wokeism makes everything political
- They want to include trans, so they exclude cis-gender. They want to include black women, so they exclude white men. It's been happening with great progressive success for 40 years. To the wokeist, I must be living in a different world
- From what I can tell, woke principles are in need of discussion (like, what does woke mean?) — Fire Ologist

And then the icing on the cake: "Not seeing what “woke” is, is very woke".
So are you woke? :scream:

What is funny is that the same people who can’t see what wokeness is, somehow see with absolute clarity that Kirk was racist. — Fire Ologist

Yep. You think "woke" means everything has to be relative or subjective or something?
No wonder you're so against it!
Have you taken a moment to consider the possibility that maybe the problem is with your understanding?

Or Trump is a fascist dictator. — Fire Ologist

Definitely fascist. Once again: which of the things in this list does not fit trump?

"Dictator" though is a status, not merely an ideology. He wants to be a dictator, that's for sure, but he's not there yet.

Not seeing what “woke” is, is very woke. — Fire Ologist

If you had meant this as a joke, I'd salute you as thread winner.
But, sadly, it seems more likely that you're being serious.

the US might be 'less woke' in some respects, but it is also woke ground zero in the only considerations that matter. I mean, the philosophical roots are international, Marx, Foucault, Marcuse, Friere, etc.

But CRT and the vast majority of modern 'wokeness' come from US universities — Jeremy Murray

That's not a relevant point though, CRT is a college level topic in the US, where's the evidence of US schools being "woke"? Indeed *more woke than German, Kiwi, Spanish schools etc* to make sense of this talking point of wokeness being the problem?

I am puzzled, tbh, by you guys. You genuinely don't think wokeness is a problem? Do you endorse elements of the practice? — Jeremy Murray

It largely doesn't even make sense as a coherent concept, and in general I am suspicious about content aimed at provoking outrage.
Let me explain where I am coming from.

Here in the UK we've had a long history of calling things "woke", except that actual term didn't exist so it was "political correctness gone MAD".
Headlines about how you couldn't say Christmas any more, or that blackouts were becoming brownouts. They always turned out to be exaggerations, misconceptions or just outright bollocks. But they reliably sold newspapers: people love that feeling of outrage.

Unfortunately it spilled over into the UK shooting itself in the foot and voting to leave the EU, as a huge proportion of Brits believed that "crazy rules from Brussels" were responsible for all the problems in society. Now that we've left the EU and the UK economy remains stagnant, no one can point to a single mad law that we've supposedly extricated ourselves from.

And there's a worse element to this, because now even reporting accurate information about US history is being labeled "woke", and censored. Or it's "woke" to point out that immigrants eating dogs or being part of a crime wave is lies. It's being used as an excuse to lie to people, and keep them ignorant.

So anyway, yes if there's an example of a DEI policy that went too far or whatever, of course I'll call it out. But in general when someone's ranting about "woke" my finger is hovering over the Google button because I know 9/10 it will be pure bull.

It's also in the context of Trump saying he'll come for the other late night shows next and government threats against universities, corporations and private individuals based on their speech or protests.

But nah let's handwave it all, and "whatabout" to the imaginary time when supposedly something anywhere comparable happened to conservative voices.

Does your wife still teach? It's a tough gig, primarily because of appalling behaviour, regular violence, tolerance of disruption, etc. I was told thirty years back, during my b. ed, that we didn't need to 'worry' about discipline, because good lessons, culturally relevant material, etc would solve all the problems.

Wokeness has been the defining philosophical approach of public education for decades. Even the insistence on whole language over phonics is 'woke'. — Jeremy Murray

But the US is far less "woke" than most of Europe and the anglosphere, so by this logic we should all be envying the remarkably peaceful and disciplined American schools.

The reality is that it's the ways that the US genuinely is an outlier that makes schools more chaotic. Poor public funding, genuine poverty, a violent culture and parents who are suspicious of experts and science.

A personal bugbear for me is also how high schools are depicted on US TV. Every single time, even if it's a Disney movie or whatever, bullying is a significant plot point.
Don't get me wrong; kids are people and some people are jerks. Bullying happens. But having it central to the high school experience seems to normalize it IMO. Other countries manage to tell stories about kids that don't have to center around that behavior.

Well that was what I found odd about his reply to me, purpose not existing in the objective sense doesn't mean that we don't know anything or such. — Darkneos

I couldn't quite follow what was going on in the linked thread, but he may have been alluding to "pre-supposition" arguments.
Pre-sup has become really popular in the context of philosophical / theological debates. The debater basically argues that the other person cannot say anything because they have no foundation of knowledge.

I could write a lot about why I think these arguments are flawed (frankly they remind me a lot of sovereign citizens, trying to define themselves into victory), but it would be a hijack for this thread.
I'm just making you aware that that might be where the person in the Quora thread was going if you're not familiar with this phenomenon.

Agree with 180 proof.

We do not *know* there is no objective meaning to life, there's just no good evidence for such a thing at this time.

The OP is right though that that doesn't entail everything being meaningless let alone impacting epistemology. You can decide on your own meaning. And you can value this life for what it is.

Unless you want to say something more about how DEI leads to a diverse workforce and more profits. — Fire Ologist

Sure, here's a detailed analysis by McKinsey.

How about deny a claim if the insured isn’t able to demonstrate compliance with the law? — Fire Ologist

Sure -- which is very different to your original claim. The law doesn't say to get a DEI officer, only (in some jurisdictions) that you submit a summary of diversity policy; something which would normally be well within scope of an organization's legal and HR team.

Look, I think it's great that you hired a DEI officer, but do not claim that an insurer made you do that (or offered you cheaper insurance if you would), because that would go out of scope of what insurers can ask for, and would be open to litigation.

Why are we making an issue of the term "woke"? Discussing the behavior might be more productive? But arguing about the meaning of the word, is like a dog chasing its own tail. It seems obvious the word can mean anything a person wants it to mean. But what is the social value we are talking about? — Athena

Yep. As I say, in recent days the president has claimed that the reason that the US did not have a victory in Vietnam, Korea, Iraq etc was because of "woke".
Good luck to anyone trying to make sense of that. Were we trying to teach CRT to the viet cong?

One thing they can do is name a DEI officer to be responsible for compliance, to figure out how to train, etc. Looks really good on paper. Saves money on premium. — Fire Ologist

Brilliant, this is the claim I am asking you to support. Any link to any insurer suggesting that they will reduce their price if you hire a DEI officer? Remember, you're the one ranting about how common and severe "woke" is, so this should be easy to find.

No one has been “gagged”. Everyone is free to print whatever news is fit to print. — Fire Ologist

False. What planet have you been living on? These are the most widespread assaults on free speech that the US has ever seen; much worse than McCarthyism.

You are being a baby. Like the news media. And your average college professor. — Fire Ologist

Yes, pointing out the myriad ways that government is deporting, imprisoning and defunding people on the basis of speech is babyish...what we should be getting concerned about is an anecdote one person shared of years ago some women saying mean things about men.

I never said requirement or legal requirement to get insurance. You said that. I said we had to do it to get good insurance. — Fire Ologist

So to try to lay the groundwork for climbing down from your claim you take the unbelievable step of cutting a piece of a sentence to pretend to have misunderstood the question?

This was the whole sentence, including the bit you disingenuously cut:

Let's get it straight: are you maintaining that it was a requirement of a particular insurer / package that you hire a DEI officer? — Mijin

So no, I did not say, that you had said, that it was a legal requirement for insurance. I am exactly responding to the claim that it was necessary for "good" insurance.

So, I'll ask again: are you maintaining that a given insurer, or a particular insurance package, mandated that you hire a DEI officer?

OTOH if your claim is that the insurance was advertized as cheaper if you have a DEI officer, that's worse because that would be public information that we could all google.

Which is it?

So some gagging is terrible, but gagging Athena wasn’t. — Fire Ologist

Lol, "some gagging" == universities, government agencies including health agencies, the judiciary, the free press and millions of Americans' right to protest.
While "gagging athena" == an anecdote from one guy, from an unknown number of years ago, about something absolutely inconsequential even if not embellished.

Is there any point in this where you are going to pause and wonder if you've got the priorities right?

So are corporate profits and capitalism good to you? Because that’s not woke - that’s exploitation and greed and builds oligarchies and permanent underclasses. — Fire Ologist

I'm responding to your point. You were saying that if diverse workforces were more profitable then the market would ensure that workplaces would indeed be more diverse.
I was illustrating why that doesn't follow -- because human nature and corporate inertia gets in the way. Workplaces are becoming more diverse, but there is still competitive advantage in being more diverse than the average, and it's still taking DEI to make it happen within our lifetimes.

I don’t want to proceed unless you tell me what woke actually is to you - if you don’t think it’s a thing, a force, a set of policies, a philosophic worldview, then we will never build a conversation. — Fire Ologist

Then don't proceed. Because my position is that it's a nebulous scare word for people who don't want to think. I'm not going to do the work for you in turning the concept (as RW media uses it) into something coherent.

It's like you saying you don't want to address whether the emperor has no clothes until I describe in detail the fine silks I think he lacks.

You might not know what you are talking about. Maybe there is no basis to accuse me of exaggerating. Google some more.. There are lots of ways to meet insurance underwriting requirements. There are lots of ways insurers can hike up your premium. There are lots of ways insurers can deny your claims? You really might want to talk to some business owners about what they actually do, what they have to do, what they do that is above and beyond the law and insurance requirements, and why they do it. — Fire Ologist

An impressively evasive response.

Let's get it straight: are you maintaining that it was a requirement of a particular insurer / package that you hire a DEI officer? Or are you withdrawing that claim?

We have a DEI officer because we can’t get good employment insurance without it. — Fire Ologist

BTW, from some googling around it would seem requring a business to hire a DEI officer would go way beyond the bounds of what insurers can request and would invite legal challenges. Some (minority) of insurers require a declaration of what the DEI policy is, but they can't ask you to hire someone.

See what I mean about needing to exaggerate, versus the real and present attacks of freedom in the name of "fighting the woke"?

In terms of the example you're quoting from athena, it's pretty weak sauce.
We don't get to hear their side of it, and it just sounds like the typical exaggerated with each retelling "I worked at the worst place ever" story.

Even if were entirely true (and to be clear: I don't believe it is), we have...what? Misandry, based on the accurate observation that men are far more likely to be the abusers. And athena's disgust that they were not being bigoted towards gay men?

Oh my god! This story from "years ago" is so much worse than the gagging of universities, government departments, journalists etc that right now is happening under the pretext of fighting woke! Eyes opened.

You don’t really think a company that wants profit isn’t trying to draw from the widest pool possible to gain more profit? — Fire Ologist

No because markets are not perfectly efficient and human nature gets in the way.
Think how much money was left on the table for decades by keeping women out of senior roles.

If I were to point you to the data that more diverse workforces are associated with higher profitability, would it change your view on DEI? If not then there's your answer.

Wokeism is a type of totalitarian fascism. Can we acknowledge that first on a thread about the end of woke? — Fire Ologist

I'm baffled that you would even ask me that. Are you reading my responses?

My position is that "woke" is a boogieman of the political right. It's manufactured grievances and culture wars, put under a single umbrella so that people can turn their brains off and just boo when the flashing sign tells them to.

Just today, the president of the united states blamed all of the US military victories since WW2 on being "wokey". That's the level of bullshit we're talking about here.
24 carat bullshit.

Now, in terms of your specific question, I don't think the word "woke" even has a coherent meaning in the way that RW media uses it. So it's as much "totalitarian fascism" as it is a cabbage, or a dream of electric sheep.
But in terms of the definition you cited earlier, the answer is clearly "no".

It’s punching. That is the point. You can claim your own spot on whatever ladder you are climbing up or down if you want, and see your poor victims punching up and your privileged assholes punching down. — Fire Ologist

Again -- I'm not advocating for jokes like that, I am explaining to you why society -- whether white or black -- generally views jokes about the majority versus minority differently, because you asked.

Now, if you're asking me if I'd prefer all race-related jokes to be off the table, then sure, fine by me. I disagree though with any notion that this is a significant problem right now. ISTM, once again, manufactured outrage.

So that means woke people who rail against the system, rage against the machine, are missing the mark, wasting our time, contradicting themselves, making incoherent arguments, and suggesting terrible policies and practices. — Fire Ologist

Yes Mr Woke Strawman sure has strong opinions.

DEI is an academic, theoretical discussion - but implemented in HR departments of corporate America, it’s utter bullshit. It utterly divides and polarizes brown versus red versus yellow versus black versus white. It builds intolerance, inequity and exclusion, just in a new form, and of a different color. — Fire Ologist

Again this is flat out wrong. DEI is about equality and trying to draw from as wide a pool as possible. And it has worked just fine for thousands of corporations, not just in the US but elsewhere (under similar names to DEI).
The "problem" is when it got weaponized, and right-wing media went hunting for any cherry they can pick of a badly-implemented policy. When I'm on conservative forums, it's pretty typical for the primary cite of the horror of DEI to be more than 10 years old (as well as usually being pretty trivial). There's been hundreds of implementations of this kind of policy in that time, if it's as bad as you've been led to believe how come there are no better examples?

I am trying to focus on woke qua woke. You want me to acknowledge maga qua facism. I see that as another discussion. — Fire Ologist

I don't, and I've explained why repeatedly.
Fighting "the woke" or "the woke mind virus" is the excuse being given for taking away rights and freedoms of millions of Americans, and eroding the separation of government, the courts and even the church.

That's pretty damn important context as you uncritically repeat their enabling talking points.

That means you completely agree with the facts. The facts are, when you are racist against white men, it is poking fun, but when you are racist against others, it true racism. — Fire Ologist

Not at all what I said, and it's pretty shameful for you to put words in my mouth when my last post was so clear.

You had made some point about how we can call white men rapists or something that was categorically false.
So, trying to give you the benefit of the doubt I widened it slightly to be a broader point about why, say, a standup comedian can make a joke about white people going to whole foods, but it hits differently if a comedian makes a joke about black people going for fried chicken.
The answer is because in a country like the US, everyone knows there are white, straight men doing all kinds of jobs, going to all sorts of restaurants, and having all sorts of personalities. No-one takes a stereotype about whole foods seriously. Whereas there are people who take stereotypes about black people seriously, with caricatures of them eating fried chicken all the time often being the thin end of the wedge.

That's me explaining why society treats those things differently; it's punching down versus punching up.
Personally, I don't like either kind of joke though.

I’m saying when I’ve heard woke people tell whites they can’t be victims of racism because they are in power, — Fire Ologist

I've never heard that, but I would disagree with it. Yes, white people can be victims of racism.
It's just rare and usually insignificant given that it's a white majority country.

What is far more common is the old saying: "When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression"

It is precisely the fact the poor black and brown people can be racist against rich white men, that makes racism immoral and illogical [...] Identifying white majority status is necessary; but saying there is no racism against the ones in power is misunderstanding racism, ignoring facts, a lie, an agenda that has nothing to do with race, bad reasoning, all of the above… — Fire Ologist

Again, we have given you, repeatedly, the long list of the ways that fascism is being implemented in the US right now, with one of the justifications frequently being "fighting woke". You haven't acknowledged any of it.

But, instead of these actions objectively happening in the real world and affecting millions, you want us to focus on a hypothetical poor black person being racist against a rich white man: a thing which would be of zero consequence if true as the former has no money or power.

What do you think? [of my definition of woke] Where am I off on the wrong foot? What needs to be added? — Fire Ologist

Yes that be the standard definition, at least before the current weaponizing.
For the last 5 years or so, it's only ever been used as a scare word on the political right -- "the woke mind virus". Famously there was the author who wrote a book on the horrors of woke, then couldn't define it in an interview.

I don't blame her-- who the f knows what it means at this point.

You can’t clarify exactly how the anti-woke are living in fantasy grievance land a bit more? — Fire Ologist

I did list off some examples. Using the pretext of fighting woke, this administration is taking away rights that Americans of all stripes used to condemn. They're banning books, banning protests, banning government institutions from using certain *words*. Whitewashing history, pulling funding from scientists making the "wrong" conclusions and now trying to get doctors to report those getting gender affirming care, in contravention of HIPAA.

This is the extent to which Americans have been duped and this has been weaponized. And posters in this thread are choosing to be on the wrong side of this.

Now, I'm aware that your question is more focused on what the specific myths are of anti-woke, rather than why I see it as so dangerous.

But the myths are as amorphous as the idea of woke itself. They are generally about mischaracterizing DEI as hiring minorities who aren't as qualified as the white people going for the same job. Mischaracterizing CRT as something taught in public school. Mischaracterizing the accurate teaching of history as telling kids to hate white people.
There's some examples.

What if he’s rich too? A capitalist white prep school nepo baby with some German/Italian/Irish in his veins. No reason not to pick on such a person, right? I can use them as a stand in for any theft, lie, rape, conspiracy, murder, war, and I am within bounds of respectable argumentation. All white men are the same on some level, because they are all white men. Right? — Fire Ologist

No, of course not. What are you talking about? That I can accuse any white person of being a rapist?
What the hell?!

How about if I said this about some other race? Do you think I could make any point talking about some non-white person without inviting utter condemnation and disgust? — Fire Ologist

Well firstly, as I just said, it's not cool to call anyone a rapist etc regardless of their race.

But I can shift what you're saying to something more sensible-- how come you can poke fun about white people in ways that are considered racist if you were to say about other races?

And the answer is that it's not symmetric because society is white majority, particularly among the rich and powerful. Most of us walk by statues of heroic white dudes every day, and learn about them in school. We pull money out of our pockets with white dudes on it. And chances are, we go report to a boss who is white.
This is why the line for teasing is different. No one is going to generalize something negative about whites, but people absolutely believe crazy stereotypes about minority groups.

So you won’t say what is woke, but the anti-woke is a clear threat. — Fire Ologist

Correct. Because while "woke" is some amorphous term at this point, there are people who self-identify as "anti-woke".

Institutional freedoms? Like the wonderful judicial system that, used to be hated for incarcerating too many victims of racism, but is now under threat from the president? — Fire Ologist

Both of these statements are correct too. I don't know what point you think you're making.
More than one thing can be true at the same time. That in the past, and less so today, the courts have favored some racial groups over others. The data on sentencing is very clear.
And MAGA is trying to weaponize the judicial system against their political enemies while pardoning their cronies. Both these things are bad.

Institutional freedoms like the rule of law, which would include border immigration reform? — Fire Ologist

The rule of law does not entail any particular immigration policy, but what it does entail is things like due process; not unidentified men kidnapping people from the streets and deporting them to Ecuador against court rulings.

The reason woke thinkers won’t define “woke” is because it would reveal its incoherence and contradictions. — Fire Ologist

I have to lol at this thread, and your ranting about woke, and you can't even define it. You're insisting on a "No, you!" attitude, when I'm not using the word. I think it's meaningless bullshit.

One man and one woman, married, as mother and father, typically provide the basis of a good family, and typically the best situation to raise a child.

Why should anyone cringe at hearing the above? Because it’s not woke. — Fire Ologist

I don't cringe, I just think it's closed-minded.
The basis of a good family is loving parents and/or guardians, and a state that can help support families where needed.

And I generally think society is best not getting involved in how people pair up or form families, except when children aren't being cared for adequately. We should always default to freedom.

So you didn’t even try to define it. You should ask yourself why you don’t think a definition of your position is necessary. — Fire Ologist

My position though, is that the people complaining about "woke" are largely talking about a boogieman and a bunch of myths. My position IOW is that it's bullshit.
It's not a word that I use, so why on earth would it be on me to define it?

Is there anything illogical or incoherent or contradictory going on as this progress is being made, because if there is, don’t you think things may come crashing down as the inconsistencies rot any progress from within?

Is the only critique of woke to come from the unwoke? — Fire Ologist

I just think you've got this backwards. It is a boogieman of mostly manufactured and exaggerated grievances.

And right now in the US it's "anti-woke" that is impinging on individual and institutional freedoms -- banning books, banning words, banning protests, shutting down journalism, whitewashing history etc etc

It's absolutely the wrong time to be saying "Oh they might have had a point though about this one cheesy diversity training at Yahoo".

Why not just:
1. Define woke. — Fire Ologist

I don't use the word, and I didn't make a thread about it. The only time I hear it now is in conservative media, why's it on me to guess what on earth they mean?

However, I don't want anyone to accuse me of dodging, so here's the definition:

Woke (adj) - Pejorative used in conservative media against any policy the author does like, has no consistent or coherent meaning. See "political correctness gone mad"

2. Construct something new, propose good woke policy and practice — Fire Ologist

In terms of diversity and equity policy, things were progressing well before it got weaponized. The idea of such policies is that eg the best candidate for a job might not be the white, male, able-bodied guy who looks like all the others and we should try to cast as wide a net as possible.

Thousands of companies have implemented such policies successfully. Right wing media though, tries to claim it's about hiring people who aren't qualified. And, in a country as large as the US, it's possible to cherry pick an example of a poorly implemented or constructed DEI policy.
However it's simply a lie that it's commonly implemented, let alone defined, that way.

3. Self-reflect from the woke side of the equation and show where woke needs improvement - be critical of “critical theory” for just a bit. — Fire Ologist

Good example.
No-one had even heard of CRT before Christopher Rufo made claims about it on conservative TV, as it's a college-level optional topic.

Almost immediately people were railing about CRT in elementary schools, because people are easily duped now, and have a desire to be outraged.

Right -- the vast majority are white males, usually of a conservative lean. Strange that no-one's proposed restrictions on that group.

1. It’s unwoke to define something clearly - definition itself is an oppression. A well articulated principle is like authoritarian law, and tyranny. — Fire Ologist

2. Woke debate tactics are to wait for the opponent to make an assertion, and attack and deconstruct that. — Fire Ologist

3. The woke, the masters of “critical theory” never self-reflect, because they have already decided their position is obviously superior, common sense, morally superior, rational, and most practical. — Fire Ologist

Sorry but this is all such bollocks. A whole thread discussing the fine embroidery of the emperor's clothes. You can't even say Christmas any more!

Meanwhile, back in the real world, there's an authoritarian, and, yes, fascist* administration in the white house. Freedom of the press, of the judiciary and academia is all under threat. And in terms of rights, we've had due process, freedom of assembly and free speech all attacked as part of a move towards white christian nationalism.

Oh but the real problem is being forced to say there are 37 genders, a thing which hasn't happened.

* I don't use that word as a pejorative. Look up the definition. MAGA fits every part of it.

I thought it was clear, but to answer the question directly: you won't exist after the transport. In fact, you won't exist in 5 minutes regardless of whether you take the transporter or not.

But to summarize the whole thing again:

1. The assumption that most people make in daily life, me included, is that we are a singular, persistent consciousness throughout our lives. Even for people who (incorrectly) believe our brains shut off during sleep, they will generally believe that the consciousness that awakes the next day is still the same singular instance.

2. The question of parfit's transporter problem concerns what happens to that singular instance when transported ala star trek. Is it merely copied, while the original is destroyed? Or can we meaningfully say it has been moved, or at least is now at, the destination?

3. The two positions outlined in (2) basically map to "bodily continuity" and "psychological continuity" respectively. We'll use BC and PC for brevity.

4. Both BC and PC have many well known counter-arguments, and the imperfect transporter is adding to that list. For the sake of us clearing up any misunderstandings first, it doesn't matter if you think all the counter arguments are flawed. They could be complete balls; let's put that to one side.

5. So I have been asked, what my position is. And I have said that the best supported right now is "no continuity" (NC). Under this position, we question the assumption, made all the way back in (1).
If consciousness is never persistent, we just have the illusion of it being so, because we inherit memories from the last guy, then all the arguments in (4) disappear. And indeed, the transporter problem is vanquished in general.

I have no idea what you mean. I am not talking about anybody looking back. Was this response intended for this thread?

The transporter does not need to result in a you the way you are (relatively strictly) describing it. On a PC position, you can come out, and diverge immediately (becoming "someone else"). And this does not matter. — AmadeusD

It does matter though.

Let's, as you say, break it down, because there might be a degree of us talking past each other.

1) We agree that, under PC, there is a continuation of "you" if the person at destination is the same as the person at source (was)
2) We agree that there are hypothetical situations where, under PC, there is no continuation of you -- e.g. Abraham Lincoln walks out at destination. Or a turtle.

Now, what I take you to be saying is that:
A) If the person at destination has diverged a tiny bit, well, that's still a successful translation, the same as (1) above.

...but I am not prepared to grant that.

Because, the only thing we can know for sure about PC, from the transporter problem as it is usually phrased, is that an identical copy is a continuation of the self. Anything more than that is an extrapolation, and it's one that I would want a proponent of PC to give, with an argument, because the arbitrary and unknowable nature of that is the whole point of the imperfect transporter.

If you were to say that there is a period of time in which the source and destination person are indeed identical, even if that is just for a planck time, or even if they are not coexistent (e.g. destination person at t=1 is identical to source person at t=0), then fine.
Being identical and then diverging is answered with vanilla PC. Anything else is not. And that's why the distinction matters.

In differentiation, yes. I have explained that quite clearly too. Those aberrations don't change your sex. — AmadeusD

Once again, this statement of faith. But the problem is you've been hoist by your own petard.
Your claim was that sex is binary because of the SRY gene (never mind that biologists do not define gender this way).

But, oh look -- there are more than 2 observed genotypes for that gene. By your logic, we would have to concede that either there are more than 2 sexes, or that some people do not cleanly fit into one of the two most common ones. Unless we're going to engage in special pleading?

Humans are (in some studies) next-to-100% accurate in telling sex from facial features alone. What we need to do is trust that people will not lie about their sex. If that's a concern, then perhaps we do need testing. But that's not my position. My position is that we separate almost all private spaces by sex (for almost all of history). That is right. We should continue to do so. We understood there were bad actors before 2010 and almost every male weasling their way into a female space was promptly dealt with.

More males in female spaces is a bad idea. That's the headline. This isn't controversial. — AmadeusD

Firstly "next to 100%" is a red herring, because trans is rare and intersex is rare.

Secondly though, the point I was putting to you was that some people with the "male" SRY gene might look cisfemale and even have lived their lives assuming they were women (e.g. those with AIS). They might be married to a heterosexual male.
But, if we go with SRY gene as the determinator of strictly binary sex, then we are forced to consider them male and insist they go to men's bathrooms, men's prisons etc.

If, on the other hand, the SRY gene isn't the ultimate designator here, then that's the end of your argument. Because you're agreeing with me and the scientific consensus, that while most people can be trivially placed in a male or female bucket, there are special cases.

Which is it?

You are clearly not reading anything I have presented. THe SRY gene determines whether you are male or female. That's the end of that part of hte discussion.

During sexual differentiation your phenotype can be aberrant — AmadeusD

No it isn't the end of the discussion. Your own cite's exact words are:

"SRY is an intronless sex-determining gene on the Y chromosome. Mutations in this gene lead to a range of disorders of sex development"

(emphasis added)

I've not said anything at all about a DNA test. If you could ask a non-loaded question on the back of a fairly confused response to some biologically crucial information, I would be happy to treat hte "what we should do" type questions in good faith. — AmadeusD

I didn't say you had, I was saying it's the obvious implication of using SRY as the determinator of gender in society. If it's the wrong implication, then please explain why so, and also answer the actual question. Instead of, frankly, using indignation as an excuse.

Hmm, I don't think it changes anything. THe transporter need not 'work' for there to be an acceptable output. PC does that, avoiding hte problem of whether it 'works' entirely. That's why its the 'best' avenue for hte vast majority of people's intuitions. — AmadeusD

I'm not following you.

The psychological continuity position, as I understand it, does require being qualitatively the same. Abraham Lincoln walking out at destination isn't you. So it absolutely does matter whether the transport works or not.
On the subject of divergence; that matters too. If the copy is different to the original on creation, then it wasn't a successful copy, but if it diverges afterwards, that's fine; as our whole life is a kind of "divergence".

Of course we can get into the weeds of how similar is "the same" -- and that's exactly the point of the imperfect transporter.

If I've misunderstood you please elaborate.

I know this might seem like threadshitting but I just want to offer a conflicting view.

I've never seen "is there a god" to be one of the significant, or difficult, philosophical questions.

Whether a deity exists is a simple claim in itself, and doesn't actually affect much.

It only becomes important by association. Eg if we claim God is the cause of everything existing, then God becomes important because how / why anything exists is an important (and difficult) question. It's like if I were to say Whether midiclorians exist is the most important philosophical question, because midiclorians are the source of morality.

Otherwise it's just the claim that there's a big daddy figure. That there's no evidence for, and it's pretty easy to explain where the concept came from in terms of human psychology.