There’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in — Leonard Cohen

I can honestly state that it is unreasonable to speculate that just because there are pictures of Trump on a van that the person killed because of Trump's speech — LD Saunders

Not to mention you keep, at the very least, insinuating, that Trump's speech has caused the violence. With zero evidence to support your claim. You have actually proved my point if anything. — LD Saunders

Given this evidence* I think it's reasonable to speculate that Trump may have been influential in the cases you mention.

some governing mechanism — Jake

Praxis: All over. Just click on YouTube and watch videos of CNN, MSNBC, and numerous political pundits. They have been saying over and over that Trump is responsible. — LD Saunders

Show me any scientific evidence for how Trump's rhetoric caused the bombings, which is a claim numerous people on major news outlets have been making. — LD Saunders

Are you claiming then that you know that Trump's rhetoric caused the bomber to send out bombs? — LD Saunders

How does the conscious mind impair itself without administration of actual stimulants. — BrianW

Yes, I read your post in it's entirety. You presented a problem. I'm waiting to see if you are interested enough in this problem to try to address it yourself. You're under no obligation to do so, but should you choose not to, I'm not interested in discussing this further with you. — Jake

Have you ever read any Schopenhauer? — frank

Karen Horney asserted that low self-esteem leads to the development of a personality that excessively craves approval and affection and exhibits an extreme desire for personal achievement. According to Alfred Adler’s theory of personality, low self-esteem leads people to strive to overcome their perceived inferiorities and to develop strengths or talents in compensation. — Bitter Crank

I’m asking who these adult-adults are.
— praxis

Who do you think they are?

Please note how you made NO EFFORT to address the question yourself. — Jake

For children, there are adults who can responsibly handle dangerous substances and technologies and effectively limit the access children have to them for the children's safety. For adults, there is no more mature class that may reliably act as ‘adult-adults’.

What are your thoughts? — frank

So who are these ‘adults’ (enlightened folk like yourself?) that will limit the powers available to the ‘children’?
— praxis

If you're interested in this question, you'll try to answer it yourself. If you don't try, you're not interested, and thus it wouldn't be a good use of our time to engage on the subject.

I suspect you're just looking for something you can reject. If true, you can look forward to me saying the above a lot. — Jake

My position is just simple common sense, no more complicated than how we routinely limit the powers available to children. — Jake

The purpose for seeking conflict could be practice in argumentation in order to improve skills, or to gain a reward of some kind (perhaps only an ego boost), or merely for amusement.
— praxis

I agree. Any sort of conflict may or may not boost identity. — frank

The vigor with which you seek interpersonal conflict reflects what? — frank

I'm sure you're aware of the Peter Principle, which suggests that people will rise in their careers until they finally arrive at a job that they can't handle. That's basically what I'm suggesting, that we will continue to develop greater and greater powers until we inevitably create one that we can't manage. It's reasonable to argue that this has already happened with nuclear weapons. — Jake

The question is moot because enough power to ruin the world is already available to people with bad motives or those who are too shortsighted.
— praxis

And so we should build even MORE such power, as fast as possible. That is the logic, or rather illogic, of the group consensus. — Jake

And so there is no escaping the question, how much power do we want to be available when people have bad motives, or fail to fully think through the consequences of well intended uses? — Jake

Most of the culture, led by the cultural elites, is determined to cling blindly to a relationship with knowledge straight out of the 19th century.

This is a philosophy forum. I'm arguing that our philosophy needs to be updated to match the technological environment, that we need to adapt philosophically to the new reality. And the group consensus says, "No, no, no and no, we're intent on staying in the past!". — Jake

When I first got in to web publishing in 1995 you had to be a kind of NASA scientist power nerd type person to create a website. I could charge people $75 just to upload some images to a web server. These days, your dog can create a web site for free in countless places. — Jake

Why you think the prospect of this happening in the DNA field is ridiculous is beyond me. — Jake

"It's going to be an election of the caravan," Trump said at a campaign rally in Missoula, Montana. "You know what I'm talking about."

In an extended riff about illegal immigration and the caravan, Trump told the crowd that Democrats were banking on the caravan to arrive before Election Day so they could vote for Democrats -- even though as asylum-seekers, they wouldn't be citizens and therefore would not be able to vote in the congressional elections.

I didn't invent this story. That's exactly what's going to happen — Jake

As wonderful as all these dreamy notions are, the fact remains is that civilization is racing towards calamity today, and it is imperfect humans who will have to fix it. You guys don't wish to face this, and so you are escaping in to various futuristic fantasies. — Jake

To be candid, however, what caught my eye was, "it should not only be respected, but protected against the too frequent assaults of superficial minds." — tim wood

The "more is better" paradigm you are defending arose in an era when the powers available to human beings were modest in scale, in comparison to today, and what is coming. That era is over, and my honorable fellow members along with most of the rest of society, are still stuck there philosophically. — Jake

If my neighbor could do something that impressive it would mean that biotechnology had advanced to a degree that more things are possible than we could imagine. For example, with that advanced biotech, we might have modified our immune systems to withstand any biohazard that a terrorist could unleash, or that we modified our neurology so that we had less fear and aggression and more cooperativeness so that terrorists would no longer exist, or we might have wiped ourselves out with the tech long before my neighbor could get his grubby little hands on it.
— praxis

Or a million things. Or your neighbor might crash the ecosystem before any of that happens. — Jake

True mysticism is never found without some theology — tim wood