Measles.
Rubella.
Polio.
Tetanus.
Diphtheria.
Smallpox.
Influenza.

Your idea of the utility of exposure flies against the face of previous experience.

I love the old books. I am better versed in them than more recent ones. I own the biases of my preferences.

I don't agree that the old writers all accepted what has been discarded today. They fought each other tooth and nail. I think you are romanticizing the past. I realize that the 'present' has much to be questioned and struggled against. That is what Socrates said about his situation.

Your account is interesting, and I have had my own experiences struggling against decisions made by those who make them. I figure all the sides in the arguments are made by scientists doing science. At least as the matters regard outcomes we personally care about.

Then I must not have grasped the nuance of this seemingly unqualified statement:

So what is one to make of the moral character of folk who hold someone who tortures folk unjustly in the highest esteem?

I see Lewis' point

The rest of my comment was given to show that generations of reactions to such declarations has also become what is 'Christian.'

That is not apology. I have my own objections as someone who wants to see things a certain way. Who knows, maybe you are right; No good can come from these beginnings.

But the assumption that this point of doctrine includes all who understand themselves to be Christian is a self-fulfilling prophecy. That will be all that you see.

Why would my observation be based on what people have been charged with as a matter of law?

A group of people tried to hang on to power after having been voted out. If the situation is much different from that description, the situation needs to be seen in a different light.

But that light has not yet shined. Go ahead, enlighten me.

Why ask me?
The intentions of the proceedings at the time are pronounced clearly by those interested in the results.

I accept that the models created through science end up getting involved with other kinds of narratives beyond what they claim to claim as science per se..

But the notion that such an influence is beyond the realm of effective ways to do things versus not having those means escapes me.

Take the problem of mental illness as an example. We have the means to understand all kinds of suffering to be outside of the means of 'society' to manage. But our politics are far away from dealing with this thing science has put at our feet.

I will become more interested in the problems of 'scientism' as a pattern of thinking when it proves itself unable to meet the challenges it has already given itself.

The riot was incited to keep him in power after that date.

I am not sure what you are trying to say here.

They were not done to change who was in power.

Your proposition asserts that all points of views are arbitrary by default. Then you ask if anyone could come to a different conclusion after accepting those premises.

A more philosophical approach would move toward the premise as the matter of interest.

Are you suggesting you have no way to figure it out by yourself?

But certainly, that allegory cannot be condensed into a metaphor, "Life is a shadow", or something like that... — jancanc

That leads me to wonder at what point a metaphor is different than other predicates. From a certain point of view, there is always a Two; The one being said to be another.

Is that use of the one being said to be another thing a particular problem of speech?

The war won't happen.
Previous wars broke out because there were competing forms of production.
The only forms of production in the U.S. are dominated by corporate entities. The hold outs are various forms of finding opportunity despite that; Not a countervailing movement but more like a bunker. It is not a sustainable model.

It is true that people have used the arguments of justification to support terrible acts. Christianity became a dominant idea through violence, both physical and rhetorical.

The Christain idea also brought up various renouncements of that power. The element of personal testimony has long since been a thorn in the sides of dogma, however it is expressed.

Outside of saying what happened versus what did not happen in history, the arguments between sincere belief are our inheritance.

So, are you arguing that such discussion is no longer necessary? The past is a mistake and the future is ours?

I greatly appreciate the differences between how people endure loss.
But the loss is its own thing, a life, of a kind.

Refusing to admit defeat to someone demanding it is different than our struggles as persons with ourselves. The idea of withholding judgement of others comes down to this singularity. I cannot lift the stone, much less cast it.

You have not yet entered any of the discussions you have started.

In this one, you assume the only purpose of 'freedom of speech' is to avoid conflict. That is something one might argue if convinced that was true.

What is your argument for this opinion?

is not a metaphor a comparison between a minimum of 2 terms, concepts, etc. — jancanc

If one states the terms being compared, is that not more like an allegory? Plato's allegory of the cave places our experience of knowing and ignorance side by side with an image that is meant to correspond with it.

The use of metaphor is more of a direct predicate. Like Eliot saying: "We are the hollow men, leaning together, headpiece filled with straw." How will one compare that identity with another?

Great transitions in that song.
James Dewar is still the missing limb for me.

Robin Trower is pretty good.

I love this concert:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wkkscG08So&t=2382s

Le Rochefoucauld described education as a second self-love. For many years, I thought his observation was mostly a precautionary tale against taking our 'egoistic' forms of expressions too seriously. There was also recognizing an element of disdain for those who proposed surpassing the ego as something that could be done as a matter of engineering.

But I have come to understand his statement is also a form of gratitude. Education is reading and listening carefully; maybe teaching a few things. Another opportunity.

Ultimate concerns are preoccupied with existential problems raised from living life itself and trying to find meaning in it. The most prominent ultimate concerns consist of life, death, nothingness, and meaninglessness. I would also like to lump into one of the concerns is finding something aesthetic in accompanying one's journey through life. — Shawn

I understand the idea that we have problems without bringing them upon ourselves. One could say that the examination finds us, not the other way around. Such a formulation seems to be at odds with the expression, 'the unexamined life is not worth living.' How the idea is understood leads to very different points of view.

If it means one can chart the difference between the 'speculative' and the 'practical' with confidence, problems formed by asking for them is a pastime, comparable to playing bridge or throwing darts. If the difficulties we face keep leading us to places where nothing can be distinguished from each other, the need for context is not a luxury.

From that perspective, your list already has crossed the line you draw. We all know the fear of death but speculate about death because reports on that subject are not reliable. We struggle to understand meaning against the backdrop of confusion as a given in our condition. It is not like we had a proper lexicon at one point in time but it was snatched away from us. The problem can be ignored. The value of doing that against not doing that could be framed as a measure of worth, but any sort of comparison gets back to the difficulty tim wood observed. The absence of a measurement is not one of the possible measurements.

And the matter of aesthetics is a clear crossing of the line because simply liking stuff requires no reflection. Once one starts having problems with preferences, what is the place where these preferences are comparable? Why do other people want stupid things? Why are all my problems so annoyingly joined together with all these other people?

I figure the notion is not bound to various explanations of what might be true but asserts that a particular experience reveals the truth.

The problems surrounding such a proposition are many. But the idea itself seems simple enough. The assertion is that one is presented with the truth, and it is readily misunderstood as such.

So, not an argument against a possibility but a problem with possibility as such.

In supposing the Evil Deceiver, Descartes is presenting a counter to the logic of Anselm where we can only conceive of what we are given the ability to conceive. So, if there is a limit to the utility of doubt, it has to be approached from a different starting point than something like: 'we are not the source of our ideas.'
The purpose of having a method is that we actually are the source of some ideas.

I don't know what an 'equality movement' is.

I do know what principles of equality regarding access to opportunity, equal application of the law, and restraining the concentration of power to a self-selected group of the favored looks like. None of those principles are based upon an assumption that everyone is equal in their abilities or potential to improve their condition given the chance.

What they do assume is that a system based upon providing outcomes purely based upon different standards of measure are inherently prejudicial and suppress the ability of people and groups of people to make their own way amongst others. Upon that basis, communitarians and libertarians both have problems with authority of a kind that ranks outcomes by edict.

From that perspective, the problem of preserving free speech is how to keep the topic upon what should be counted as an authority more than worrying about whether differences between people are permitted to be expressed.

Hobbes does not base the need for the 'concentration of power' upon the evident virtue of a ruler but upon the fear of violence and a desire for peace between individuals. He says those arrangements between men are not overruled by the covenant between an individual and his maker. In the later portions of The Citizen, Hobbes describes the idea of God as a fiction to be equivalent to saying the natural world has no causes.

There are, of course, many different expressions of monotheism that represent a view contrary to Hobbes.' That makes the unqualified nature of your reference to the idea a misrepresentation of the topic.

Taking a page out of monotheism, people don't mind the concentration of power in one individual, so long as said individual is not just good but all-good. — Agent Smith

That is precisely not true in regard to seeing the realm of a single universal realm as above any organized by men.

Hobbes does not call for the 'sovereign' to direct all the affairs of the citizens, to wit:

15. The liberty of subjects consists not in being exempt from the laws of the city, or that they who have the supreme power cannot make what laws they have a mind to. But because all the motions and actions of subjects are never circumscribed by laws, nor can be, by reason of their variety; it is necessary that there be infinite cases which are neither commanded nor prohibited, but every man may either do them or not do them as he lists himself. In these, each man is said to enjoy his liberty, and in this sense, liberty is to be understood in this place, namely, for that part of natural right which is granted and left to subjects by the civil laws. As water enclosed on all hands with banks stands still and corrupts; having no bounds, it spreads too largely, and the more passages it finds the more freely it takes its current; so subjects, if they might do nothing without the commands of the law, would grow dull and unwieldy, if all, they would be dispersed; and the more is left undetermined by the laws, the more liberty they enjoy. Both extremes are faulty; for laws were not invented to take away, but to direct men's actions; even as nature ordained the banks, not to stay, but to guide the course of the stream. The measure of this liberty is to be taken from the subjects' and the city's good. — Hobbes, The Citizen, Chapter 13, section 15

As a general note on reading Hobbes, it should be observed that ending the natural state of war between men by means of agreeing to the power of the commonwealth does not signal the end of other "natural" activities and rights of Man.

In Plato's Phaedo, the act is wrong because it puts asunder what the divine has brought together. The proposed exceptions to the prohibition are presented as respectful arguments brought forward as a human desire for a different outcome in a particular situation. That is what a human being can do.

But that means humans are also involved with what continues to live. The argument with the divine is leverage of some kind; Not understood before it is applied. Not understood very well after that either.

In the Leviathan, Hobbes argues for monarchy being the best system because it forces the different agencies of government to be answerable to a single source of power. The primary differences between the agencies relate to the work that they do. The alternative to their existence would be the absence of institutions dedicated to the benefit of the public good. Such an absence is described by Hobbes as the natural condition where man is at war with all other men.

This scenario does not provide much of a context for the struggle between 'bodies of government' you describe. Hobbes recognizes that such institutions are liable to corruption in both aristocratic and democratic regimes. But that is quite different from suggesting that the work of government is itself conditioned by the war its acceptance by a society is supposed to avert.

That from improving ones life, life itself becomes a more enjoyable experience, or that you should at least hope for that "in the long run". — Cobra

That makes life sound like some kind of trust fund; Some balance between resources explains outcomes.

But actual optimism is not confidence in a return but persistence in a method; Not knowing if it is all for not.

So, it is like not proving the existence of love. If one assumes it exists, events unfold a certain way. If one does not, other stuff happens.

We always try to gauge what we deserve and what others deserve, but how is any such thing measured objectively? — TiredThinker

I am not sure what the 'we', presented by you amounts to. If you are referring to the laws set up to arbitrate disputes between various claims of right and injury, the possibility that arbitrary decisions will be made without regard to more refined senses of justice is exactly why those institutions came into being.

'We' came to a limit to what could be understood in the dealings between persons and came up with a system to carry on despite that insight not being available to an 'us.'

Your mention of Ancient Greek struck me how lucky we are to have a number of different genres to compare with others over measures of similar and different time. The plays written by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes. The mathematics of Euclid and Apollonius. The poems in different generations going back to oral traditions. The different histories and commentary regarding the 'pre- Socratics.' The style of Thucydides is especially helpful as he wrote for a completely different purpose than other writings that have survived from the precise years of his authorship.

Many other languages permit a contrast of that kind. Sanskrit, Hebrew, Chinese, Farsi, Latin, etc. I am sure I am leaving out many others due to my ignorance. The point is only that such examples are different from inscriptions and examples of writing where there is little to no means of cross reference to other uses of speech.

One difference between N and those Stoics is that N dd not appeal to a cosmic Good as a point of departure.

One of the elements to be observed is that one can prepare for the test(s) by help from people who have studied the exams. I have taken SATs, ACTs, and a GRE without prep and recognize many years later the advantage I would have had if I had cooked the algorithm.

Another element to consider is that many intellectuals are talented in ways that make a standardized format difficult to perceive. They start assigning possible values to answers meant to be discarded out of hand. They know they are supposed to reject certain answers immediately but are not happy with the choice as a choice. People who are not afflicted with that propensity blow right past the others and finish the test on time.

I realize my remarks are not any help in regards to current debate. But my emphasis on testing is a different matter from standardizing curriculums. The different arguments I have seen have not done a great job of separating the issues.

Edit to Add:
As for proponents against universal curriculums, Ivan Illich put that forward as his criticism of modern society.

Vulnerable means, in my book, to be deprived of all means of escape/relief - there's nothing you can do (amor fati) and so :grin: and bear it! — TheMadFool

That expression is at odds with Nietzsche saying life keeps happening despite the entropy. The cups keep getting filled over. We have no idea why.

And what do you make of all the language surrounding freedom from bad science and sick thoughts? He does not replace all that with sunshine. That absence is part of his proposition, if you could make it a sentence, the sentence would have been written.

If evil is the creative element you describe, it doesn't need anything from anybody. it is either observed with acuity or misunderstood.

Celebration and worship are directed toward what won't survive without attention and love.

The interest in 'identity theory' (google it, I didn't know about it until it was pointed out to me) is that the duality that anchors our epistemology is not necessary any longer if states of the brain are whatever the 'real' as a one-to-one correspondence could possibly entail.

The element about the idea that most interests me is how the proposal could be tested. If what is said to be Two is actually One, won't I need a Third to arbitrate?

There is no doubt I am viewing the matter through my own peculiar view of the world.

I meant no offense. The comment was put forward as an alternative reading of Nietzsche and Pascal to your interpretation.

Nietzsche spoke specifically against the 'punishment of self' Pascal applied to himself. I am not aware of any remarks by N regarding Pascal's wager. Leaving aside my reading of Pascal in the context of Christian expression, what text of Nietzsche exemplifies the grin and bear it quality you hear?

Would you have preferred he write in a different style? — Joshs

That is an interesting question. He was clear that if someone wanted to do better, then do better. That is as honest a response I can imagine.