The fact is, you don't know what the cause of death was, and deciding whether it was murder is absolutely not your call.
— counterpunch

Yes I do. The world does. — Kenosha Kid

The world may think they do. You may think you do. But you don't. Calling it a murder is just as absurd as calling it racist.

Watch it and tell me, if it was your job to arrest that man - would you keep him restrained?
— counterpunch

Yes, and once he was restrained, I would not then murder him.[/quote]

Rhetoric. Not even good rhetoric. It's the intellectual equivalent of 'I'm rubber you're glue.' That's what you're doing with a man's death, and four men's careers, you're playing some idiotic virtue signalling game. Please leave me alone.

I think you're just a bigot. — frank

Typical. I'm the white working class majority that Labour used to represent, but now don't because they have been overrun by politically correct ideologues. It's a typical lefty ideologue move to cast insults like bigot and racist at people like me - particularly when they complain that they're not represented by the left.

I'll repeat this again for you slow kids at the back - I don't discriminate against people on the basis of skin colour, gender, sexuality - or any other arbitrary characteristics. I do judge people on the strength of their character. You judge people on the basis of skin colour. You're the racist here. Not me. You discriminate against people like me - with an ideology that makes me last in line because I'm a straight white male.

May have? It was videoed. You are without doubt the most disgusting individual I've ever really encountered, conversationally speaking. — Kenosha Kid

Your opinion means less than nothing to me because I have a very great disrespect for the virtue signalling motives behind it. The fact is, you don't know what the cause of death was, and deciding whether it was murder is absolutely not your call.

I imagine you've seen the cell phone footage. You should really watch the leaked police bodycam footage. It paints a very different picture. Watch it and tell me, if it was your job to arrest that man - would you keep him restrained?

Labour were built by my forefathers to represent me, but I cant vote for a Labour party overrun with politically correct, far left ideologues. They don't represent me, they represent blacks, gays, women, trannies - anyone before me. They're too easily distracted by some politically correct twitter mob witch-hunt to form a government I can trust in a crisis. The Tories don't represent me except maybe in some distant trickle down fashion - which is only ever so slightly better than the nothing Labour have to offer.

I has high hopes for Starmer after Comrade Corbyn was rejected by the electorate - then he unequivocally endorsed gender self identification and leapt to his knees for Black Lies Matter. So had Starmer not heard of GIDS, and the 30 or more therapists that quit since 2016, citing politically correct pressure to hand out puberty blockers to dysphoric children? Did Starmer not check out the stats on the number of Arrest Related Deaths - or did he endorse Black Lies Matter on the basis of politically correct pretence alone?

I don't want a government with less strength of character and less integrity than 30 gender therapists - who don't unequivocally endorse gender self identification, especially in children. Nor do I want a government that lacks the presence of mind to do two minuets googling before abasing themselves before an organisation burning and looting homes and businesses across the pond on the basis of a false narrative.

Resisting arrest is not an explanation for murdering someone *after* they're cuffed. Condoning racist murder with such obviously flawed argumentation is disgusting. — Kenosha Kid

Floyd was arrested. He resisted arrest. He was restrained. The restraint may have contributed to his death. What was racist about it? What was murder - about it? You're the one employing flawed argumentation?

How does racism and anti-semitism enter his worldview? Racial diversity just magnifies his sense of living on unstable ground? — frank

No. I'm perfectly fine with a diverse society. I'm pointing out the hypocrisy of political correctness - and the weakness of political correctness given the tendency of Labour to abdicate from major political crises (brexit) and disappear up its own arse in search of anti-Semites. I have no problem with Jewish people, or black people, or anyone else. But I do have a problem with political correctness - not least that it leaves people like me, lacking political representation.

All of these claims require support. There's absolutely no point in maintaining an internet space to act as nothing more than a selective database of what some random people reckon might be the case. — Isaac

The people here are not random. They are self selecting. They are here to share and discuss ideas. Not all ideas require support. It's perfectly acceptable to express an opinion. Like you did when you said:

"There's absolutely no point in maintaining an internet space to act as nothing more than a selective database of what some random people reckon might be the case."

It would be bizarre to demand, can you support that opinion with evidence? Nonetheless, I think we've all learned something from the fact you said it!

I cited anecdotal evidence for the idea that resisting arrest is more likely to get you shot. It's common knowledge that police don't judge the crimes people commit. That's not their role. They arrest people who are suspected of committing crimes. If the courts then prove they committed those crimes, the courts sentence them. The police only arrest people, and if someone resists arrest, they use force - sometimes lethal force.

It's repeating statistics over and over that makes me look like a bastard. But that is Bureau of Justice Statistics data, that shows the BLM narrative is a false narrative - created by left wing ideologues under the cover of political correctness. No-one challenges it because political correctness is an aggressive, oppressive dogma. But black people commit more crime, more violent crime - and so, perhaps, are more likely to resist arrest.

Michael Brown resisted arrest, George Floyd resisted arrest, Breonna Taylor's boyfriend opened fire on police and she ended up dead. It's fairly easy to conclude that if they'd complied, they wouldn't have died.

I know it's not currently against the rules, but repeatedly making specific factual claims without even an attempt at citation or support (as counterpunch is doing here) is just wasting forum space. — Isaac

The facts cited are from the Bureau of Justice Statistics - data sets from 2003-2012. I have mentioned this in previous comments. Mentioning it every time I have had to repeat the same points over and over again to try and push the facts past the political correctness goggles of left wing ideologues, would be a waste of forum space. Unlike your comment - which was sooooo worth the pixels.

The implied claim here is that the disparity can be explained by different behaviour when faced with arrest. Do you have evidence for that? — Echarmion

I cited evidence; albeit somewhat anecdotal. Dylan Roof - alive. Michael Brown - dead. Roof - gave up. Brown - resisted. It's not rocket science.

The police don't kill people unless they can't help but do so. The number of arrest related deaths is tiny. 1000 deaths per year, from over 10 million arrests. 0.1% - from all causes, i.e. suicide, overdose, shot by police. etc.

If there are disproportionately more poor black people than poor white people then inequality could be the explanation. For example if 90% of black people are poor compared to 70% of white people, and if being poor is a motivator to committing violent crimes, then there will be disproportionately more black violent criminals than white violent criminals. What's your alternative suggestion? That black people are genetically predisposed to violence, and that racial disparities in income and poverty are incidental? — Michael

I have no explanation. I'm not looking for one. I'm merely pointing out the politically correct hypocrisies. It feels very uncomfortable to be speaking about race at all, but it's the left that are playing identity politics - and so it falls to me to state the statistical facts, over and over again until I look like a complete bastard.

Personally, I'm an individualist, and treat people as individuals regardless of skin colour, sexuality, gender or whatever - and I think that's the way it should be. These are what's called arbitrary characteristics, and it's wrong to discriminate on that basis.

It's not me that imagines all black people, or all white people, or all gay people share a common identity. That's the left, and it sucks - it's identity politics, and whether it's done by the right or the left, it's wrong.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck fuck - will you LISTEN. The raw data doesn't show that:

unarmed black people are 3.49 times more likely to be shot. — Michael

The study concludes that, but only AFTER the data has been weighted - such that a black person being shot isn't equal to a white person being shot, when various demographic and factors have been ASSUMED, and taken into account to skew the raw data. It's a TAUTOLOGY. Garbage in - garbage out.

It shows that unarmed black people are 3.49 times more likely to be shot by police than unarmed white people. Unless unarmed black people commit 3.49 times more crimes that warrant being shot by police than unarmed white people then this shows that there is racial bias. — Michael

Or they are more likely to resist arrest - thereby endangering the police officer or members of the public.

Even if black people are twice as likely to commit such crimes as white people, that would only explain them being twice as likely to be shot, and so the figure still shows racial bias. — Michael

To repeat myself a third time - 13% of the US population commit more murders than 76% of the population. That's 5.8 times more likely to commit murder, based on the raw data. But again, it's not the crime - it's the arrest. You can commit mass murder - Dylan Roof springs to mind, but give yourself up to police and they won't kill you. You can be selling bootleg CD's outside the kwikimart - Michael Brown springs to mind, act like a jackass and end up dead. The crime is irrelevant - except insofar as it indicates a propensity to resist arrest.

It says exactly what it says: — Michael

It's a fact, not a theory - that black people commit significantly more crime, and more violent crime in particular. I looked at the statistics, and 13% of the US population (blacks) commit more murders than 76% of the population (whites). There are plenty of poor white people. Inequality isn't the explanation. And you can't over-police murder.

there is no evidence of an association between black-specific crime rates (neither in assault-related arrests nor in weapons-related arrests) and racial bias in police shootings,

You highlight this - and it's easy to miss, but the sentence actually begins:

In the models fit in this study, however, there is no evidence of an association...

Well, d'uh - you set out to disprove any such association with a Bayesian analysis that attributes a weighted hierarchical value to data points. "In the models fit in this study!" It's left wing academia double speak for "we messed around with the raw data until we proved our own politically correct assumptions."

The raw data is very simple and the explanation is obvious. Black people commit more violent crime. Violent offenders are more likely to get shot.

I have an answer - let's give everyone free speech, and let them say what they like, because to my mind, people who say hateful things - it says more about them than the people they hate. Hateful opinions are almost always ignorant opinions. And if they're not ignorant opinions, it's likely something that needs bringing out into the open, and not swept under the politically correct carpet.

I honestly can't believe you think that calling Bojo and his incompetent toffs "gammon faced clowns" is racist against white people. They absolutely have a choice not to be gammon faced clowns, the same can't be said for skin colour. I'm calling them names because of policy decisions. — fdrake

It's the hypocrisy I seek to highlight; not the casual anti white racism per se. It's that you would be screaming blue murder if someone made a similar comment disparaging black people as 'chocolate faced clowns.' And the fact you don't see this as an hypocrisy is precisely the point. Your political correctness hypocritical because you don't apply the same standards equally. This carries forth into areas that matter, like I showed with the concrete example of Stormzy and his exclusively black scholarships, while Thwaites was branded racist - an example that you have failed to address.

Regardless, I see you have a very low bar for branding events instances of racism against white people in the UK, how could you have possibly missed systemic racism against PoCs in the UK if your bar is that low? — fdrake

You've also failed to address the fact that white working class boys are now the lowest performing demographic in British schools, and that Asians are the highest, and highest earning demographic in the US. Nonetheless, this "systematic racism" narrative plays out both sides of the Atlantic. You haven't explained how Asians can be doing so well in a systematically racist society. But in regard to police shootings, you seek to account for every confounding variable, while turning a blind eye to the fact that black people commit massively more crime. You ARE a racist - and the fact you do it in reverse doesn't make it any less morally repugnant.

In your estimation, do the wealthy nations that struggle with the problem of mass migration also exploit the countries that the immigrants are coming from? — Echarmion

Depends on what you mean by exploit. Is 0.7% of GDP in foreign aid exploitative? Is vast amounts of charity, given by British people anytime there's a war, famine or natural disaster anywhere in the world - exploitative? Are equally vast sums earned by migrants to Britain, and sent abroad - exploitative? I don't know what you mean by exploit. It's one of those 'eye of the beholder' things.

I don't really get that notion of pride. I don't contribute to my own whiteness, so it doesn't seem to be something I could be proud of. If I wanted to be proud of, say, past inventions, I'd at least have to consider my conduct to be in some way a continuation of the inventors ethos / methods. — Echarmion

But you get the concept of an inherited shame for slavery - I suppose? Given that slavery existed since the dawn of time, and was practiced by every civilisation until the west put an end to it, and given that western civilisation also invented everything - in those terms, on balance, its positive contributions to the world massively outweigh the bad, and we should be able to be proud of our history - but on the contrary, the left seek to shame us with it.

I don't think you know what "adjusting" means. . — fdrake

Nor did my tutor in statistical methodology when I studied Sociology and Politics at university. Nonetheless, I know my way around SPSS, and I passed the module with a reasonable grade.

In a statistical analysis of data - in this case police killings, there are lots of confounding variables. In this case, crime rates are higher in poor neighbourhoods, and poor neighbourhoods are more likely to contain more non-whites. You need to "adjust" for the economic causes of police killings since they're causally related to demographic disparities in police killings - systemic racism. — fdrake

No, you really don't - because that's tautological. You will only prove the assumptions you feed in to skew the data. Bayesian analysis attributes a hierarchical weighted value to data points. The death of a black person is not equivalent to the death of a white person, and so - unsurprisingly, the analysis shows black people are killed disproportionately. You assume systematic racism - so you find systematic racism.

What you've made is an emotional appeal, and I can see it as persuasive if you feel you are under attack. And your civil liberties and equality of opportunity are under attack; just not by working class civil rights activists and their working class allies. If you live in the UK, your civil liberties are being eroded by Bojo and his possy of gammon faced clowns. — fdrake

If this were a right wing forum - like such a thing could exist on the internet without getting de-platformed, I'd gladly rip into "Bojo and his possy of gammon faced clowns" (as you describe them, careless of the racist overtones because they're white.) But this is a left wing forum, so let's focus on the left - (and their possy of chocolate faced clowns Is that acceptable language? No, it is not!) ...in particular, on the left's abandonment of the white working class in favour of an upside down form of identity politics.

I gave you a concrete example of politically correct discrimination against white people. It's not a feeling that you can dismiss by offering your patented brand condescending left wing sympathy and understanding. You can't "whatabout" me by turning this on the Tories. You haven't got the back of the average white working class man. Another concrete example - in the midst of the brexit fiasco, Labour went completely AWOL and did one of their typically searching anal audits on anti-Semitism. A Labour government would be dangerously susceptible to being thrown off track in the midst of a crisis - so utterly consumed are they by political correctness. It's hypocritical, it's unjust, and worse than all that, it's weak. Knock if off!

Here's something I really don't understand; how have you managed to convince yourself that political correctness is systemic racism against white people, but you believe systemic racism against nonwhites can be explained entirely by its alleged targets' individual merit? This makes very little sense to me. — fdrake

The same explanation applies. The systematic racism of political correctness is a consequence of the individualism and cowardice of white people; that they don't have a collectivist sense of identity, less yet racial identity, and individually, fall victim to left wing ideologues who seek to make them ashamed of their history and skin colour - not least to justify mass immigration. In fact, white people should be proud of the massive contributions they have made to the world. They invented damn near everything - from the scientific and industrial revolutions, to modern democratic governance, rule of law, medical science, the steam engine, the internal combustion engine, flight, radio, television, computers, the internet and so on and on.

I can understand your feelings of persecution. I just don't think you're being persecuted like you seem to believe. To my reckoning, you're actually repeating the talking points and using the same data as right wing rags - and it's to your credit that you've actually looked up data. You should read this, which studies rates of police killings in the US while adjusting for poverty, — fdrake

Oh, for goodness sake - stop adjusting for this and that, and take some fucking responsibility. There are plenty of poor white people. They don't commit murder at 6 times the national average.

The kind of politics that limits police power, empowers social programs, and provides more security for the worst off and the worker, regardless of skin colour... — fdrake

But it's not regardless of skin colour is it? It's black people to the front of the queue, followed by women and homosexuals, and you straight white males - who should be ashamed of yourselves, to the back. I'll give you a for instance.

Stormzy is a black British rapper - and he created scholarships to Cambridge exclusively for black students. Everyone approved. Giving back to his community! What a guy! Some years later Sir Brian Thwaites - originally from a white working class background, sought to create scholarships exclusively for white working class boys like him, and was denounced as racist. The money was rejected by the schools in fear of a politically correct backlash. The telling fact is, that white working class boys are now the lowest performing demographic in schools - but they can't get any help ...because that would be racist.

Political correctness is an hypocrisy. It simultaneously stereotypes people by race, and criminalises stereotyping people by race. It doesn't even make sense in its own terms, less yet make sense of the world.

Government should buy up all the poor quality housing stock, demolish it - and build more and better housing on the same site, and then have a government backed rental/ownership scheme - where the money is ploughed back in to fund the purchase of poor quality housing stock, and the building of more and better housing. Self financing solution to the housing crisis!

What would it take you to change your mind on the following issues:
(1) that systemic discrimination exists
(2) that a politics (BLM) wanting social programs for the worst off isn't "racism against white people"
? — fdrake

I know systematic discrimination exists. I call it political correctness, and I fucking hate it - precisely because of how it plays out in relation to politics like BLM. Here are the facts. In 2012 Obama ended the collection of data by the Bureau of Justice Statistics on the race of Arrest Related Deaths. In 2013 Black Lies Matter was formed. BLM used carefully edited cell phone footage to create a social media narrative to suggest that police were murdering black people - and no-one disputed this because of political correctness. No-one wants to get twitter mobbed and denounced as a racist - so they let it slide.

When the rioting started, I wanted to know what the facts were - and so I looked them up. From 2003-2012, there were on average 10 million arrests per year. There were around 1000 Arrest Related Deaths per year - 42% white, 32% black. That's a 0.1% failure rate in a country where people carry guns. The police are not murdering people. In fact they are incredibly professional. But how to explain the fact that black people are 13% of the population, yet make up 32% of deaths. For that we have to look at the crime stats - and they are fucking abysmal. Black people commit massively more crime than white people. Really, it's shocking. The black 13% of the population commit more murders than the white 76% of the population. Violent crime, drugs, theft - all way above average. Put simply, black people commit more crime.

Compare this with Asians in America. Virtually zero crime rate. The top demographic in education, and the top earning demographic overall. How is it possible that Asians are doing so well if there's systematic racism? Face it - your politically correct bullshit is appeasement, and it's not good. The stereotype is well earned. It's there in the music - just listen to some racist, homophobic, sexist gangster rap - glorifying criminality and violence, that all the young black men so admire and seek to emulate. The problem is cultural - and it's never going to change until black people take personal responsibility, start to value education and aspire to a socially useful idea of success.

Corbyn and his ilk are the problem, not the answer. The working man doesn't want a zero sum, identity politics game played against the Eton-Oxbridge set, that incidentally discriminates against him because he's also white.

He won't vote for that, because - while he does want a fair days pay, affordable rent, decent public services etc, he is nonetheless a patriot. He's not an anti-capitalist, anti-western, politically correct, bleeding heart, eco commie - ashamed of his history, his gender and his skin colour. That shit isn't going to fly, and the collapse of the Labour vote in the north; the utter rejection of Corbyn in 2019, demonstrates that.

Labour needs another Blair - not another Corbyn, because the working man wants capitalism with a social conscience; not to seize the means of production. He has no such aspiration. He never has done. All that Marxian bullshit is another middle class idea of the working class interest - like political correctness. If Labour ever want power again, they need a centrist pitch - like Blair's Third Way. Not political correctness, nothing to the left of Clause IV, but a practical pitch for government that recognises the value of business, so that he can go out and earn a decent living.

Thanks. This is my philosophy - and as far as I know, it's fairly unique. That said, it is based on quite extensive reading. If you want an enjoyable introduction to evolutionary thinking - I recommend Darwin's Dangerous Idea - by Daniel Dennet.

That which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. — fdrake

If you think providing the title of a book - not even a passage from that book, just the title: 'Debt: the first 5000 years' - constitutes evidence that slavery was not endemic until the West ended it, I have a book title for you: "Despised" by Paul Embery. Run out and get it and see what it says about your left wing, politically correct, North London intellectual circle jerk. Spoiler alert - you are the reason Labour will never be elected again.

...it begs you to answer the question of how we could emerge from an imperial history, a global slave trade, and enter into a post-colonial present without the expropriated, undermined groups of all that suffering under the weight of that history. It beggars belief that all of this can neatly be explained by differences in individual merit.[/quote]

You demand I answer for the actions of my ancestors? My working class ancestors built the Labour Party from nothing to represent their interests relative to the owners of the means of production. And you've abandoned us, to weep bitterly and constantly on behalf of everyone but us - while the owners of the means of production have privatised everything, sold off council housing, destroyed the unions, cut pensions, ended job security, imposed zero hours contracts...etc, etc, and I'd still vote for them before a Labour Party overrun by people like you!

Both these philosophies are wrong.
— counterpunch

How so ? — Eliot

I was afraid someone might ask that, but then, I was also afraid someone wouldn't - so, here goes. Meaning. The surviving organism has to be correct to reality or be rendered extinct. From the structure of DNA, to physiology, to behaviour, to human intellect - organisms are tested at every level in relation to reality, and what is wrong is rendered extinct as a matter of cause and effect. This truth relation between the organism and reality is the fundamental source of meaning. Truth is the primary virtue. Without truth there's no justice. Human beings are imbued with a moral sense; primarily, an irresistible attraction toward truth, and from this, a moral sense ingrained into the organism by evolution in the context of the hunter gatherer tribe.

Nietzsche didn't understand this. He believed primitive man was an amoral brute - and was fooled by the weak, and chained with Christian morality. That's not what happened. Chimpanzees have morality of sorts. They share food, groom each other and defend the group - and they remember who reciprocates, and withhold such favours accordingly. Primitive man could not have survived if he were as Nietzsche imagined him - an amoral, selfish animal, exerting his will through violence alone. Humans lived in hunter gatherer tribal groups led by the alpha males - and moral conduct is an advanatage to the individual within the tribe, and to the tribe made up of moral indididuals who share food and defend eachother.

Eventually, hunter gatherer tribes joined together to form multi-tribal social groups. This required that the implicit morality imbued in the hierarchical structures of the tribe, be made explicit - lest any dispute over food or sex or whatever, divide the fledgling society along tribal lines. They needed an explicit set of moral laws - and an absolute, objective authority i.e. God, as justification for those laws. Think Moses, coming down the mountain with the Ten Commandments.

With the advent of science generally, and evolution in particular, Nietzsche declared God is dead, and flushed the moral baby with the religious bathwater. But he failed to understand that morality is not God given, and objective to human beings, but in reality is an innate sense, like a sense of humour, or the aesthetic sense - drilled into human beings by evolution. Religion is merely an expression of that innate moral sense. Disproving religion, for Nietzsche, disproved morality - and he died of nihilistic despair. He was wrong. That so, absurdism is also wrong.

That's very nice of you to say so Tim but my name is chosen wisely. I just work better responding to others people's ideas than explaining my own. I've tried it and it comes across as ego-maniacal - particularly given that, I think recognising the truth value of a scientific understanding of reality (as opposed to an ideological understanding of reality) is the solution to the climate and ecological crisis. I don't want to come across like I think I'm the second coming. I'm just a philosopher of science, happy when I can point out that science works!

If this imaginary audience wants to read a more civilised and in depth discussion of related issues; which includes citations; I invite them to read here. — fdrake

I wouldn't presume to discourage the imagined audience from doing so, but would merely point out that it is assumed that any disparity is the consequence of discrimination - conflating effect with cause. It is not assumed that person Y has a personal responsibility to qualify for the loan, or the job, or not commit the crime. It is not allowed that X doesn't have a discriminatory opinion of person Y. If it's not explicit, it's implicit, it's institutional, it's subconscious, but it's definitely discrimination. The one thing disparity cannot be, is the consequence of person Y being judged fairly on merit - even while, disparities are bound to result from people being judged fairly on merit, because any one person is different from any other.

I don't think either of us will benefit from continuing the discussion. — fdrake

"I don't think either of us will benefit from continuing this discussion."

My friend, I had no such illusions going in. But please don't discount the possibility that someone other than you and I, reading this, might benefit from seeing a lefty twit get handed his arse over and over again.

Absurdism is a philosophy - Søren Kierkegaard and Albert Camus being the chief exponents. It was coined in relation to nihilism - Friedrich Nietzsche, so it seems phylogeny does recapitulate ontogeny - which is to say, for some time - philosophy too believed nothing mattered, and then, just like you, decided that everything is simply absurd. Both these philosophies are wrong.

I have a philosophy that's quite at odds with the society, and world I live in. I cannot live in accord with my philosophy - because society doesn't work that way. The world is ideological - I'm more scientific. People draw their identities and purposes from these overlapping, religious, political and economic ideologies - and these are beyond my ability to correct because they exist in a kind of collective consciousness. If someone comes to me and starts talking about moving to another country - I can't tell them, as a matter of scientific fact, there are no countries. The earth is a single planetary environment.

I do think in those terms for the purposes of addressing the climate and ecological crisis, but for everyday use - I'm stuck with the ideological description, everyone else seems to believe is true. Thinking about things in terms of a scientific understanding of reality necessarily takes me out of the world. Conversely, I have to form opinions about things that are purely the products of the ideological world, today. Those views say nothing about the validity of my philosophy, perhaps because philosophy is about how the world could be and should be - and not so much about how it is.

Leftists are trying to stop me from having sex with my own brain, but I won't let them. — Maw

Is that the entirety of your remark, or should I be waiting for something....more substantial to follow?

I'm sure the "Icelandic" will be sending you a cheque for you excellent suggestion that they use pipes. — Banno

ditto.

If by applause you mean agreement, then yes, that is what I'm waiting for. But all I've met with is disagreement - some of it, quite vitriolic. In part, I believe that's because I don't subscribe to the 'limits to growth' approach to sustainability - promoted by the left as an anti-capitalist trojan horse.

In my view, a left wing, stop this, carbon tax that, pay more and have less approach to sustainability - isn't necessary, and wouldn't work anyway. If they had an honest desire to secure a sustainable future - they should be delighted all these cuts, taxes and prohibitions aren't necessary. But they don't want to know. The left love telling people what they can and can't think, say and do. They get off on it.

I can show windmills cannot produce enough energy to meet our needs. Don't want to know. Battery powered cars are an environmental and economic disaster. Don't want to know. Fusion is a non starter. Don't want to know. That's what I mean by an apparent determination to misunderstand and stumble into extinction.

I am duty bound to promote truth - in particular, a scientifically rational idea of truth, because that's the philosophical method I advocate. I have to live up to my own philosophical standards. Everything I wrote there is true, but that doesn't mean I don't have a sense of humour about it.

The Icelandic should line the bore holes with pipes - not pump water into a hole in the ground. If you pump water into a hole in the ground, thermal expansion will create earthquakes. If you pump water through pipes - thermal expansion produces electricity.

Read this aloud into a mirror — Monitor

I did, and Candyman appeared and told me best of luck and to keep up the good work. It's odd that more people don't feel that way. A lot of people just want to insult and belittle me, when all I'm trying to do is promote ideas that will provide for a sustainable future. Why do you think that is?

You'll be banned anyway if you don't stop talking nonsense. — Baden

I don't want to get banned, but banno is quite obviously seeking to provoke me. He was nothing but insulting. And he's wrong about nuclear fusion. I am quite willing to honestly and openly thrash out any disagreements we may have, but he's coming at me sideways.

I'd have thought that a philosophy forum was the last place on earth I'd have to negotiate this kind of thing. Has he no appreciation for the grand scheme of philosophical ideas - developing over thousands of years? The problem with a left wing (anti) intellectual circle jerk is that, they're all too afraid of the mob they've created to speak freely. When they've de-platformed everyone who isn't entirely agreeable, how do they know when they're wrong? Other than that their lips are moving!

Oh - psychoceramics. I should have spotted it earlier. Is this a direct consequence of the closure of Parler? Can we expect more visitors as they look for somewhere else to share their wisdom? — Banno

Oh boy, more straight up insults. I am forced to ask whether you think you, as a moderator capable of banning people from the forum, should be insulting people, creating personal antagonisms? I am not willing to respond to your repeated insults in kind, because I'll get banned. So please desist, or grant me license to speak freely.

"No" is an exclamation used to indicate a negative response. It's also an adverb, meaning "not at all; to no extent."

Fusion can occur on earth - I don't deny that. But there's a big difference between making two atomic nuclei fuse - and a self sustaining fusion reaction.

It's the latter (I suspect) that's not possible - because the same density of plasma; plasma with the gravitational force of 333000 earth mases forcing atoms together, cannot be created on earth.

Demonstrably, recreating solar plasma density on earth is possible. — Banno

No. The gravitational force of the sun is 333000 times the mass of the earth?

This seems to me to display a misguided picture of how the physics of fusion works. Seems to me the sort of thing that someone who has read pop accounts and not done the maths might say. On that basis I will not be taking much of Counter's pugilistic advice to heart, until I see some evidence to the contrary. — Banno

Misguided in what way? I freely admit my instinct isn't based on calculating the gravitational effect upon atomic nuclei of the mass of the sun, relative to the Pauli Exclusion Principle - but my layman's understanding isn't misguided. I suspect a sustained nuclear fusion reaction in the sun is only possible because the plasma is so dense under immense gravitational pressure - it overcomes exclusion, and that recreating solar plasma density on earth is not possible. Or is a self sustaining fusion reaction still just five years away - like it has been for the past 50 years?

Regardless, fusion is not something we can rely on to come along any time soon to provide the limitless clean energy we need to balance human welfare and environmental sustainability. We have to look elsewhere - and one doesn't need to be capable of calculating atomic trajectories to realise, the earth is a big ball of molten rock containing more energy than we could ever even put a dent in - no matter how much energy we care to spend, extracting carbon from the air, desalinating sea water to develop land for agriculture, recycling waste, and lighting, heating, transport and everything else. The promise of limitless clean energy from fusion has not been fulfilled. It's time to drill for magma power on a massive scale, and we can secure the future.

Do you believe science has an answer to something like: "BLM protesters pulling down the statues they did is praiseworthy because it simultaneously highlights histories of oppression and dismantles symbols of that oppression"? — fdrake

I quote the passage above to illustrate where we came in on this question - just a day or so ago, and how already, the point has wandered quite a ways from its origins. If it weren't possible to click back a page or two, and look up where we came in - I would be quite lost. I really couldn't explain why we are seeking to establish the precise mildness of your approval for removing statues that remind us where we came from.

No worries, I have the same bad habits of stereotyping the people I seem to disagree with. — fdrake

I do worry though.

"The world's two largest standing Buddhas - one of them 165ft high - were blown up by the Taliban in Afghanistan at the weekend. After failing to destroy the 1,700-year-old sandstone statues of Buddha with anti-aircraft and tank fire, the Taliban brought a lorryload of dynamite from Kabul."

How mild is your approval for this? Or do you disapprove of this - and maintain it's only your lefty cultural vandalism that's praiseworthy?

I don't think "slavery is the default" fits the anthropological record; — fdrake

You don't? Ancient Egyptians, Greek, Romans all had slaves did they not? Ottomans, Muslims, Africans, Russians all had slaves. British people were slaves until 1584; only they called them serfs. Slavery is the default, and capitalism is the cure. Don't be sly - making sideways arguments, and referencing books I haven't read, and am obviously not about to run out and buy. Slavery was everywhere - all around the world and throughout all of history until the West ended it.

"a society can be said to be systemically discriminatory against group X iff belonging in group X amplifies exposure to negative outcomes relative to those who are not in group X AND that exposure has strong social+economic contributory causes". — fdrake

Another sly argument. In society and economics, it's necessary to discriminate - for example, between people who are qualified for a job, and those who are not qualified. So, for example, if numerous black people applied for a job without having the necessary qualifications, by your logic - they are being discriminated against, relative to the white person who is qualified. The discrimination isn't racial discrimination, but you switch effect with cause - like with Redlining, to suggest a racial disparity in effect proves racist intent as a cause. It's not so. That's politically correct logic. The same logic that denies slavery existed everywhere, since the dawn of time. You - lefties, are not capable of an honest argument.

I'd already read your post. I assume you're just into dealing with even the obvious criticisms of it. — Kenosha Kid

First, you might want to deal with obvious criticisms of the grammatical structure of your attempt at a sentence.

Then, you may wish to give my post a reasonable response.

Or, alternatively, you could just get fucked off.

You're indifferent to statues, but support tearing them down. Yeah, that makes sense. The thing is, building a statue is a constructive symbolic symbol. It communicates through time. Tearing them down isn't. It leaves nothing behind - and so says nothing beyond a fleeting moment of signalled virtue.

I used the term "you" in a collective sense - meaning, you left wing types. It came across as personal to you, and was more aggressive in tone than I intended. For that I apologise. But it remains that slavery existed since the dawn of time, and without the British Empire and the United States - it couldn't have been ended. It therefore seems to me, massively hypocritical - to denounce western civilisation for what had been a universal practice, throughout all of history - that we brought to an end.

This obvious left wing hypocrisy can only be achieved by denying the ubiquity of slavery to the human condition, and that's not a lesson you want to forget. Those statues should make you aware, and happy you live in a society and era that allows for individual liberty. Yet you, lefties - protest against the very society, philosophies and economic system that afford you that freedom. You act as if freedom is some natural default setting. It's not. Slavery is the default - and freedom is hard won. So no, it's not quite:

the argument you've made applies to any action which goes against a tradition, — fdrake

It's that you falsify the history to forge a weapon against the very system that affords you the freedom to have an opinion, and to express it. You turn our own achievements against us - and it's just dishonest. We have multi-cultural societies, and have set racial equality in law, but it's still not good enough for you lefties - because, when it comes down to it, you're playing identity politics, and it's a power game. It's you lefties stirring up racial animosity for political advantage - not the right. Western society isn't institutionally racist, there isn't a racist genocide being committed by the police. It's all a lie. You politically correct lefties are the real racists, only you're racist against white people so that's okay then! .