They're also 4 times more likely to experience violence so perhaps that's related. The correlation of male-to-female transsexual crime rates and male crime rates was only significant for the period prior to 1989; the time before they received mental care during and after the transition. And female-to-male transsexuals actually show male pattern crime behaviour (look at that, women with masculine traits). But with n=60 in a 30 year period these conclusions are all bullshit anyway.

Can you read? Who did I reply to?

Nice false analogy there. Traits are behaviour not biologically given. You ignore the fact the traits you qualify as feminine or masculine are exhibited by the other gender as well. A black person cannot act as if he's a white man by changing his behaviour. A man can act "feminine" by changing his behaviour and vice versa. Your "traits" are therefore gender stereotypes and not informed by biology (alone). Behaviour is in any case relational: caring for others, submitting to others, aggressive towards another, etc. You cannot ignore the sociology which is rive with the confirmation bias and people's average need to belong (and therefor fit) to one of these categories. The statistics don't prove traits, they prove bias. If both sexes are capable of the same behaviour, you'd expect a normal distribution of them among the populace.

That doesn't follow at all and what you think isn't a fact so we can ignore that. It's rather well known stereotypical gender traits are expressed by the other gender, so it's not as if they are incapable. And it certainly isn't as if men are biologically hardwired not to care about others. So no, it's not biology.

I thought you liked Spinoza. That's one guy. And I know you positively love me and I pretend to be a guy online.

Neither. Why waste the resources?

Those aren't male or female traits but gender stereotypes. You shouldn't confuse the two. That said, it is correct that male gender stereotypes are valued more than female ones. It reinforces biases as people try to conform their behaviour to what's expected and the end result is a lot of sexism even from people who don't intend it.

It's proved crap when it logically doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Or are you now suggesting logical rules are also subjective?

Right, no deductive argument is stronger than it's premises (assumptions); but I think it is likely that only those among the religious who don't understand that believe that the arguments for the existence of God constitute absolute proofs. The arguments can be thought to "work" without the requirement that they be absolute proofs; like any valid argument the requirement is that the conclusion follows from the premises. — Janus

God is a pathetically persistent fairy tale people keep wanting to rationalise and when it's pointed out it's all crap, because none of those arguments work, some complain about manners. I wasn't even talking to Clarky. If anybody would start a thread about proof that unicorns existed he'd be summarily banned for low quality. Such is the immersion in Christian culture we can't even admit it's crap and then I'm the one being "provocative" and "disrespectful" for pointing it out. It's so sad that it's funny again. Anything worthwhile that can be found in religion, is easily subsumed under ethics and metaphysics. Plenty of good thinkers wasted their lives working on Christian dogma and it has resulted in some decent insights.

Yes, exactly. And assumptions aren't proof so they don't work.

I'm sorry? You've been on this site how long? If you think any of the proofs of God actually works, you haven't been paying attention.

Ah, you've just described religious persons as bigots. That's not very nice.

I'm not anti-religious, I'm against stupid threads. And since all the god arguments have been disproved, all of them are stupid.

Finally, no more religious crap!

you'll do better than what we have now.

I'd go for option two. It will last about 4 to 5 decades and then I'll be dead and after that things will go to normal. It solves the population problem for awhile and since everybody lives for me and to make me happy I have some time to make some demands on how to treat nature and each other.

@Christoffer Holy moly, I gave it some programming instructions to build a market place for buyers and sellers in python and as far as I could tell that looked nifty. 2 minutes work, 1 minute phrasing my question correctly and another minute for it to write the code.

As someone who actually works with stories and writing, I can tell you, it's not easy. Story and storytelling is extremely hard since it taps into a poetic language that needs a certain individuality to be consistent and a poetic language that structures every sentence in ways not present in more academic or other texts. — Christoffer

Ooh, please comment on the short fiction contest then. Your experience can be invaluable criticism there.

I was playing around with it too. Some things I worry about is that it's not capable of telling truths from falsehoods and to understand what is appropriate. So if this replaces a search engine, I'm worried the level of misinformation in certain areas will get even worse. Your other option that it starts writing software seems much safer and useful to be honest.

As I said: snark.

It's been explained regularly on this thread and I have no appetite rehashing the same discussion. Point is that it's ridiculous to expect a nuclear escalation if they'd join and maintain it's not a reason for this war. It's the regular arguments for convenience where every fact is interpreted to suit preconceived conclusions. The lack of analysis here is simply embarrassing and when it's pointed out the thread rapidly deteriorates into snark.

You have a strange way of expressing yourself if you didn't just say "[Ukrainian] moves towards NATO membership could possibly trigger a nuclear response."

Why would it when according to you those moves weren't a reason for the war to begin with? Why would it all of a sudden illicit a reaction even worse than conventional war if it wasn't the reason for war in the first place?

For this reason, I predict Ukraine will join the EU but not NATO. Russia cannot possibly use nukes just to stop a nation from freely joining a trade group like the EU, but moves towards NATO membership could possibly trigger a nuclear response. — Olivier5

I don't agree with that assessment. Russian doctrine is clear, attacks on the motherland will illicit a nuclear response. This wouldn't qualify. The risk of Ukraine joining NATO was what caused the current war but funny how for 400 pages you and others argued against that being the reason for the war and now all of a sudden it would be grounds for a nuclear attack?

So BlockFi also crashed which is a competitor of Nexo offering a similar service as I'm using. Turns out Nexo moved all its crypto out of FTX beginning of November before it crashed. I wonder what tipped then off.

There's a lot of incestuous lending going around in the background which creates all sorts of counterparty risk without any level of transparancy or oversight. It does seem so far, on average, European crypto institutions are not as leveraged or risk taking as their US counterparts.

Market movements in crypto are irrelevant to me because I'm only holding stable coins with a guaranteed 1 on 1 conversion. Downward fluctuations in market value in crypto need to be covered by additional collateral by borrowers or part of their collateral gets sold to pay off part of the loan until the LTV is within range again. I'm not running any market risk, whereas index funds do.

This is in principle less risk because it's irrelevant what the markets do, whereas index funds will crater during recessions.

The main threat NATO poses to Putin's Russia is to them getting away with free military actions, not the dire existential threat proselytized by their propagandists. — jorndoe

Why exactly should a country accept that another country or group of countries limits its possible actions? If we accept countries are peers, this is principally problematic and militarily an issue because it means you're constrained in defence. If it's about aggression, we should be encircling most European countries and the USA.

A lot of what's written about this, does not take into account how Russians see NATO. Which is why people keep reiterating NATO is defensive and countries join because they feel threatened. That doesn't preclude the Russians feeling threatened, which in turn causes them to threaten their neighbours. So we have a nice vicious cycle and the West demands it to be broken by Russia acquising to the expansions, while it could also just stop expanding. A cynical interpretation is that NATO must expand or become irrelevant as tensions would subside and a geo-political equilibrium would arise with buffer states between the West and a regional player that doesn't want to be "Western".

I personally think limiting a nuclear power's conventional choices also increases the likelihood of nuclear escalation but I'm told not to worry since proxy wars never escalated before. Except of course everybody was fucking scared about a nuclear holocaust during the Cold War, entirely aware of the distinct possibility. The hand waving about the risk I see during this war should be grounds to worry about an escalation more instead of the opposite, simply because it's not taken seriously.

Nuclear anxiety was prevalent in many parts of the world during the 1980s. [3][6] Nuclear threats were identified among northern European students as their biggest concern, as the second or third biggest concern among North American students in 1986,[4] and was a source of anxiety in Third World countries, such as among Colombian youth.[5] It was rated the most frequently mentioned concern among Ontario students in 1985[10] and Finnish children and teenagers in a national survey in the same year.[3]

Is this an objection to my post? If so, that's a strawman argument since you are suggesting that I believe "the West is a power for good for the rest of the world" which thing I never stated nor believe. On the other side, if you are simply suggesting that I believe "the West is a power for good" because I'm living in the West where is the objection? You yourself claimed: "Which it mostly only is when you actually live there".
In any case, I never stated such a slogan "the West is a power for good" nor I would express myself in such terms. — neomac

So the West should lose then?

That entire post is build on the predicate that the West is a power for good. Which it mostly only is when you actually live there. For the rest of the world it's been mostly shit.

I'm on a stable 9% return per year so far without leverage and trying to divine what the crypto markets are doing. The only thing I have to worry about is getting hacked since it's a live wallet. I'm holding a stable eurocoin which is used to effectively lend Hodlers euros and they pay me lots of interest for that service. Counterparty risk is managed by the platform with LTV-ratios of 50%, margin calls and automatic liquidation if people are late with posting collateral. I read a lot of complaints about people having their assets sold because they were late, which is a good indication it's working. If I could insure my wallet from getting hacked, I'd be pumping all my savings into this.

I agree that parties should be negotiating if not peace at least an armistice for the winter. But I'm afraid Ukrainian hardship will be used as leverage instead.

I think one of the bigger problems is Ukraine wanting security guarantees. It's not getting them from the West, no mutual defense pacts and no joining NATO. That last option was already explicitly taken off the table by several NATO members.

Possibly Ukrainian security can be created through a demilitarised zone but I'm not sure how much sense that makes with Crimea containing an important naval base. Nevertheless perhaps a DMZ for grounds forces along the Eastern Ukraine-Russia border would be enough. You can't invade with boats after all.

The second problem is how much land the Ukrainians are willing to part with. Negotiating now means giving up land and if the Ukrainians can continue to make gains, then the timing is not good for them. And that's also dependent on "ally fatigue", which I thought weird was openly communicated. Why not say "hey, Russia, we'll probably blink before you so just keep it up and you'll get the upper hand". That only makes sense if Russia has communicated a palatable (to NATO/USA) solution to the conflict.

Maybe you should look what "context" means in a dictionary? What other "action" than a further escalation was he alluding to according to you? Christoffer already mentioned a no-fly zone which is a huge increase in risk towards nuclear escalation. Which is a bad enough interpretation and precisely why I think that Zelensky's uninformed/informed accussation was made in bad faith with the potential to ruin even more lives than this war is already doing. What else? Enlighten me what kind of action Zelensky meant in the context of his little speech because all I get from you "that's not what he meant" but you're entirely unclear what he then did mean with "action".

Yo miss!

It's not a fallacy to contest another poster's interpretation nor method of argument. Benkei says he knows best what Zelensky meant, "in the context", because we're not native speakers. That's a ridiculous claim. — Olivier5

I was trying to be charitable by assuming there was a language issue, especially since you got the meaning of good faith wrong already, but we can go with "knowingly maintaining a wrong interpretation".

Russian missiles hit Poland, the territory of our friendly country. People died. Please accept condolences from all Ukrainian brothers. Poland, the Baltic states. it's only a matter of time before Russian terror goes further. We must put the terrorist in place. the longe Russia feels impunity, the more threats there will be to everyone who can be reached by missiles. To strike with missiles NATO territory isa Russian strike on collective security. It's a significant escalation. Action is required. I now want to tell our Polish brothers and sisters - Ukraine will always support you. free people won't be broken by terror. Victory is possible when there is no fear. And we and you are not afraid. — Zelensky

This is what he said. He qualified it as a "strike" on NATO territory knowing full well the article 5 obligations (it has no added meaning otherwise, as he could have left it at "Poland"), qualified it as a "significant escalation", raises the spectre of the Baltic States and Poland being subject to Russian terror going further than a missile strike and then his call to action in that context isn't "have an investigation" or "keep sending arms". He's not asking them to answer another party's escalation with "keep doing the same" because he already got that, so that doesn't qualify as "action". So yes the context is quite clear. But happy to have that discussion based on a French translation source.

It's also funny how we then have this scripted propaganda when he realises he fucked up:



"We shouldn't jump to conclusions after I did exactly that."

Anyone who thinks making a living out of hiring themselves out for contracted murder is a good idea, is insane.

out of arguments and back at ad hominems I see, how novel. It's obvious for anyone who can read using the common sense meaning of words in the English language.

I meant a translation of his whole speech and we can do this in your native tongue.

It's nice how you deny what happened. Mook claimed the Russians hacked to help Trump. That was called collusion in the media, and that's what was reported on and turned out to be true. That's not criminal conspiracy, which much more common word would've been obvious to use of that's what they wanted to suggest.

And just because something isn't illegal doesn't make it morally right. The goal and purpose of those 100 meetings between Trump and his associates with Russians was hardly benign. See again, the Mueller report.

I don't trust my own politicians so that's the wrong question.

Whatever. I get you're not a native English speaker and the finer points of the translation are lost in you. Why don't you find a French translation and share it here?

He is only calling for 'action'. That's vague enough. It could be anything. An increase in weapon delivery would qualify. — Olivier5

I already mentioned to Christoffer that in the context of that small speech it's quite clear what he means.