The economy was doing well, and the summers weren't as hot. A President doesn't control either the weather or the economy. — Relativist

Where in my post did I say that Trump controlled the economy that was doing well. I stated a platitude -- the economy was doing well. A great economy helps any sitting president.

I think from what I'm reading in this thread, there's a lot of psychological fear of the idea that Trump might be president again.

The Paul Ryan tax cuts passed under Trump, and tax cuts stimulate the economy. — Relativist

You mean the 2017 tax cuts and job acts. What were the votes? Did both parties vote for it?

In my view, it plays into the narrative of the MAGA/Trump mediaverse, which is investing a lot of hype and hot air into bringing about this outcome. And believing it means they're succeeding, so I refuse to believe it! — Wayfarer

I was reading how the economy was under his leadership and the economy was actually going well. When the pandemic hit, it was used against him like a perfect storm.

IMO, it's merely wishful thinking to believe that the eight year losing trend of 'suppressing minority voters, misogynist anti-choice, The Big Lie propagandizing' Republican candidates will not be reversed merely by Biden dropping out of the presidential race. Like 2020, most likely voters still oppose Insurrection/Criminal Defendent/Rapist-Defamer/Fraudster-1 rather than support President Biden. — 180 Proof

I don't follow the day to day american politics. I look at trends and studies. Trump seems to be the only one that is a "brash vulgarian" and a maverick, as @Tom Storm described earlier. Honestly, I'd like to see if Trump could win again. There is fear, for sure, in people because psychologically, Trump's impact is greater.

Why do you believe Biden will lose to a candidate he's already beaten once — 180 Proof

I reviewed my posts previously and I don't see where I said this. Please tell me where to find this thought?

But let's say, to answer your question -- if one believes the current president might not be president next time, things happen. Simple. He could suddenly keel over, for example.

I don't have a crystal ball.

Seems to me that many Trump supporters think that the system is utterly corrupt, so for them it takes a brash vulgarian, a maverick outsider like Trump to stick it to the system's gatekeepers. — Tom Storm

It looks like it is working. In 2017 or 2018, an independent (rather academic) study was conducted about the strength of Trump's candidacy. It was very strong. That was apparently very shocking to the American public.

Trump is an AI, complete with hologram form, created by the deep state, or the deep fake, or maybe the deep Putin, who knows?. — Metaphysician Undercover

Is it psychologically uncomfortable for you to ponder that soon Trump could be president again?

Well where do you think the electricity comes from? — LuckyR

Good point. Apparently, we would need an additional 30% increase in electricity production if all cars are EVs.

Although it seems obvious to anyone not inside the bubble that it's a con. — Wayfarer

The one person that can answer this is @Athena.

the nomination conference is not until July, and there are, shall we say, legal issues which might become apparent well before then. — Wayfarer

A thought which puzzles me. Why is it that there's not an all-out apparent in his personal and public lives? He's been hounded in all directions.

I think Trump is going to win the Republican caucus.

Only an AI could run against him.

Thoughts?

**this OP should be merged into the Trump thread** — Wayfarer

So I guess this is now the thread.

Driving less worked (works) for me. I lived about 20 minutes from work and we don't take car trip vacations. I don't have a problem with electric vehicles, especially when they nail the batteries (which they should by next generation, with solid state versions). But for me, electric would a less fun, expensive, inconvenient alternative with negligible carbon improvement. — LuckyR

I think, though, the carbon footprint is much less because of zero emissions. I guess we have to look at it this way-- we can't get rid of cars completely, but we can reduce the harmful effects of driving. I have not really looked at the studies as to whether the manufacturing of the vehicles, batteries, and storage units are not equally worse than manufacturing other products.

But certainly with less driving, collectively, that's also an improvement -- if you're using the ICE car.

I deplored spending such a huge chunk of my life in this building. It made me feel my life was being squandered. All the usual distractions there didn't help.
Working from home, I still feel my life is being squandered. — hypericin

:100:

Many Americans could drive less. I don't really expect people to walk 2 miles to a supermarket and then carry 30 pounds of groceries back home. They could bike, but biking requires a reasonably safe street, and there are a lot of places in the suburbs which are hard to get to while remaining safe on the street.

Many people do, however, live reasonably close to drugstores and supermarkets, and could get there on foot or bike with little risk. It is more work, sure. But the labor of shopping and schlepping one's stuff home saves a trip to the gym. — BC

Absolutely. I think the US has no history of bicycle usage as a mode of regular transportation, unlike the Netherlands and China. Planes, trains, and automobiles, these are what built its economy.

Here am I, on a Sunday afternoon, traveling 10 miles to downtown and my favorite gay bar. It took me 10 minutes to get to the bus stop, and the bus I was aiming for zoomed past when I was 1/2 block away. It will be 30 minutes before the next bus arrives -- and this won't get me downtown, It will get me to a transfer point where I will have to wait for another bus to finish the trip. Between 60 and 90 minutes later, I arrive. — BC

Time is the biggest objection against the public transit, I think. What could take a 15 minute drive, would take an hour or more on a bus. So, if you're taking the bus to work, you would need to add at least a couple of hours more to your time of the day. That's a lot of hours that you would need to add to your working life each day,

Internal Combustion Engine. I didn't get it either. — BC

Runs on fuel. A conventional car.

BUT I drive less than half of the average number of miles per year in my state. So my carbon footprint is probably on par with electric vehicles, with less risk of accidents, injuries etc. — LuckyR

So drive less, is what you're saying.

Whenever I set a goal, usually part of the very goal itself is to get it done within a certain time period. — HardWorker

This is true. To me part of accomplishing something is get it done by certain amount of time. I sometimes allow a bit of a grace period, but nonetheless, I know if I give a time limit, I get it done.

Consequently, you feel good...rewarded. Oh, and there are no REAL consequences to you getting virtually shot. No deterrence! Seems like a logical gateway to get multi-dimensional and include the body for some physical activity and, perhaps, increased stimulation and reward while perpetrating some actual carnage. — Steven P Clum

I can only find studies on children, young children on violent video games. How and when they act out this gaming in actuality is something I'm not sure about. But you made a great point below:

Whereas myself, (for example) who used to engage in full contact karate back before it was a thing, learned to avoid fighting outside of the ring because I knew first hand the ramifications of giving and receiving a can of whoop a_s. I was as much satiated and humbled from the matches that I lost as those that I won on account of I always reflected and learned from both experiences. Peace! — Steven P Clum

In the live sports of karate, with rules in place and guidance provided by the organizers, you are actually trained not just the actual physical contact but the rules surrounding the activity. There is something that serves as a safety gate.

On this thread, I'm not going to make a for-or-against decision on the violent video games and other forms of violent entertainment. But I want to point out that the OP did qualify its claim as

prolonged and disproportional enough to that of the multi-dimensional world, — Steven P Clum

.

So, at least on that thought alone, we should consider discussing it.

Violence aside, the marketing industry is half a billion a year revenue. Why there's so much money involved in marketing and advertisement? It's because it works. People can be manipulated by images, symbols, and persuasion to act and make decisions to purchase, use, idolize, believe in a certain product or person.

Now, you might argue that "well, food choices in advertisement and marketing are not like selling violence. People are aware that food is good. And people are aware that violence is bad. So, they're not going to make a stupid decision to act out the violence they've been fed through video games". Behavioral and psychological manipulation works equally on all behaviors. Not just the good ones. Conditioning does not discriminate.

In order to cut down on traffic and parking costs, and to keep from annoying citizens more than they already do, Mayo organized a transit system for its employees, collecting 1 or two bus loads of people each in small towns up to 50 miles out, and dropping them off at the buildings in which they work. In the evening the routes are traveled in the opposite direction. Several thousand workers get to work this way. — BC

Wow! That actually sounds doable. If employers in the cities provide a benefit like that, I think that is a happy medium between convenience, not having to drive, and relinquishing some freedom from driving yourself.

In other words, it doesn't have lines that go INTO the neighborhoods to allow for people to walk easily and not have to "park and ride", which I saw you discussed earlier. — schopenhauer1

Yeah, the rail is very limited when it comes to "customization" of travel. Commuters go to the rails, not the other way around. And this poses a problem still, because you have to have a car to go to the ride. That's why buses, as BC has been talking about, are the way to go because they can drop off the travelers to every corner of the roads.
(I'm saying this as if I'm the department of transportation, :lol: )

The thing with rail is physical limits. Things like curves and grades that don't work everywhere. — Mark Nyquist

Absolutely! And the rails don't come to the people also. It's where the planning commission could plant them.

Secondly, proposing mass transit over personal vehicles displays an urban bias. Rural folks are completely left out of the conversation.

Of course, a robust debate can be had on shifting a higher percentage of urban dwellers to mass transit and away from cars. But that is very different from declaring personal vehicles evil, as if they have no (inherently obvious to essentially everyone) huge positive impact to humans. — LuckyR

I think in the rural area mass transit is not practical. I think the OP meant the cities full of cars -- that's why the evil reference. But you are correct, there should be a two-tier proposals on the restrictions of vehicle use. I don't know. How are the Amish doing, btw? Do they use vehicles on the road now?

light rail. — Mark Nyquist

In Asia, it's monorail. I've ridden a monorail before -- built by the Japanese. It's high up from the streets, unlike subways. The streets below have the regular vehicular traffic.

The fact of the matter is that a large share of "mass transit" is largely transit for the poor and the disabled who have little choice but to use "shabby transit". — BC

The modern rail is open to everyone. Some have seats like an airplane cabin. Maybe the "bus" still bears the image of the uncouth crowd, but we should really change that now and make the bus ride as comfortable as the private car.

At other times mass transit must be available for the small volume of people who want to use it, and it must still be frequent enough to meet people's needs. This means that mass transit is underutilized but must still run to meet people's transport needs. So you get buses, trains, etc carrying only a few people. This is very inefficient. Cars don't have this problem. — Agree-to-Disagree

This is only true on paper. In actuality, one wonders why at any given day of the week and at any given time, there are so many people "not at the workplace", but going to shops, restaurants, the beach, and somewhere else. I witness this myself everyday.

As far as the public transit, there's park-and-ride, which is also nonsense as you still need to drive yourself to the location of the ride, park your car, ride, and come back to get your car and drive home. That's bullshit. Then there's the lame trolley as it is only available for short strip of the city, so it's like a joy-ride only, not a real serious shit that's gonna take you to work, home, school, and stores. Like it's a token ride so the politicians could point to "there's the trolley, if you don't own a car". Like, WTF!

Avoid getting any virus -- you may think that it's just like a common cold: everybody gets it and it goes away. Viruses are different. They actually have a long term after-effect in your brain years down the road.

Strenght training. Cooking my meals. Biking to places I need to go (under 10km). — Lionino

This is all you need to do.

I read something about when the Ford model T cars came out and a family went out for a ride at 25 miles per hours. They got into an accident and one of the daughters died. Not collision with another vehicle -- owners of model T were rare. They drove into a ditch.

Think. Usain Bolt could run at 27+ miles per hour.

I am not sure whether workers saved up for a car, bought it on time, or borrowed the money, My guess is more the former and less the latter. — BC

Some certainly did save up for it. But we're talking about the mass produced cars whose buyers didn't have the time to save up. 1919 was the first time auto loan was available to the general public.

This quote is attributed to Publilius Syrus:

The pain of the mind is worse than the pain of the body.

I wonder to what extent despair is a temperament or a philosophical perspective? Also, to what extent is it a chosen viewpoint or one arrived at through outer experience of suffering? — Jack Cummins

So, I am asking how do you see the idea of despair, and hope, as philosophical concepts in making sense of the navigation of life possibilities? How may ideas of despair be juggled effectively, to go beyond the deadend of pessimism and thinking? To what extent is nihilism a 'realistic' philosophy or a flawed one? — Jack Cummins

Despair is alive and well in philosophy.

I found out about Lev Shestov. This is his take on despair:

People who read much must always keep it in mind that life is one thing, literature another. Not that authors invariably lie. I declare that there are writers who rarely and most reluctantly lie. But one must know how to read, and that isn't easy. Out of a hundred bookreaders ninety-nine have no idea what they are reading about. It is a common belief, for example, that any writer who sings of suffering must be ready at all times to open his arms to the weary and heavy-laden.

This is what his readers feel when they read his books. Then when they approach him with their woes, and find that he runs away without looking back at them, they are filled with indignation and talk of the discrepancy between word and deed. Whereas the fact is, the singer has more than enough woes of his own, and he sings them because he can't get rid of them. L’uccello canta nella gabbia, non di gioia ma di rabbia, says the Italian proverb: "The bird sings in the cage, not from joy but from rage." It is impossible to love sufferers, particularly hopeless sufferers, and whoever says otherwise is a deliberate liar. "Come unto Me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

But you remember what the Jews said about Him: "He speaks as one having authority!" And if Jesus had been unable, or had not possessed the right, to answer this skeptical taunt, He would have had to renounce His words. We common mortals have neither divine powers nor divine rights, we can only love our neighbours whilst they still have hope, and any pretence of going beyond this is empty swagger. Ask him who sings of suffering for nothing but his songs. Rather think of alleviating his burden than of requiring alleviation from him. Surely not—for ever should we ask any poet to sob and look upon tears. I will end with another Italian saying: Non è un si triste cane che non meni la coda... "No dog so wretched that doesn't wag his tail sometimes.”
― Lev Shestov, All Things Are Possible and Penultimates Words and Other Essays

I do not have a better passage to provide here as I don't own a book he'd written.

It's an economic fight -- it would be hard to get rid of private vehicles in favor of public transport. But humans could get used to not having a garage and a vehicle. I know I can and I know people who would favor not having cars anymore.

Ah got it. Yes, loans for all. Cars for all. Shit for all. — schopenhauer1

There were societies where loans are unheard of, let alone mortgage loans. Guess what? They built their own homes and did not buy a vehicle and used the public transportation instead. Look up Asian countries in the long ago past.

The production of automobiles was a result of capitalism. How to sell those cars if not enough people are wealthy enough to buy all the cars produced. Loans. Who are the people behind the production of vehicles and the invention of loans? The owners of the means of production.

For sure it would have been a totally different world without the mass produced automobiles.

Imagine a world where automobiles were rare, and mainly used in rural areas that were extremely remote or for emergency purposes only. — schopenhauer1

Not rare. That isn't the word you want. I believe you mean government-approved uses.
In any case, you can't solve the problem of automobiles without first addressing the allocation of resources where no one gets insanely wealthy while others work for minimum wage.

I asked, "And how do you distinguish between who a person is and who you think said person is?"
Replying, "Okay, seriously, by spending time with them" is below one would expect at a philosophy forum. — baker

:grin: I was lazy to elaborate. I'm sorry.

Judging from what I experienced, there are things they say that give away how they feel about certain issues.

"My wife is a Karen." I heard this uttered by a man. Though I cannot divulge what led to his statement, what he was revealing about himself is that he is an easy man to deal with and expect no issues with him. He wouldn't cause any drama.

This is what I mean, and to me, these things are obvious.
People's bodily appearance is like the picture of Dorian Gray: it depicts all their sins and passions. — baker

To a certain point, yes.

This is a philosophy forum. Presumably, you have a systematic methodology for distinguishing between who a person is and who you think said person is. — baker

I was actually speaking of people I actually do meet in person and spend time with.
The philosophy forum is probably very limited in providing insight to a person's true personality.

But there are outward clues as to who they are if you look closely.

"Closely"? I think it's quite obvious. — baker

Are you really just going to literal-ass this?

Obviously, the outward appearance is "obvious". When I said closely, I meant you would need to ignore the superficial curtsies and social routine so you could see a couple of measures -- integrity, maturity, and respect, for example.

How do you tell which is which?

And how do you distinguish between who a person is and who you think said person is? — baker

By fucking them. Okay, seriously, by spending time with them.

I would also add that I never know who a person really is. — Tom Storm

This I agree :100:

What do you mean by "appearance"? And what by "who they are"? — baker

Hi Baker, appearance is what we see when we meet people or see them in pictures. Who they are is their core personality. However, what Tom said about almost no correlation between appearance and who they are -- I disagree slightly. I work with all kinds of people, and so does Tom, I believe. But there are outward clues as to who they are if you look closely.

@Tom Storm, you can disagree with what I said above. I also do not have a scientific backing for what I said.

We can ask ourselves: Does the gravitational singularity coexist with the current state of the universe? Should we differentiate them as two different moments? You could say: "In the gravitational singularity there is no before or after." Well, then there is an inadequacy of that space-time scheme that we use to represent the difference between one state of the universe and another state. — JuanZu

This is your opinion. If you believe there are deficiencies in the conception of what existed prior to the big bang, or even in the blackhole, this is beyond the task of philosophy.

So, is philosophy very much invested in physics? Should it be? Is philosophy equipped, in general, to circumvent details and pull quantum tricks out of its big hat? — jgill

Physics is invested in philosophy. :cool:

I wouldn't say Newtonian. I conceive spatiality and temporality as part of the thing to the extent that it is always in relationship. However, when talking about the order of coexistence and order of succession I am talking about something that all science implies when using the notions of space and time. — JuanZu

And I'm saying that you can't. Gravitational singularity does not have spacetime.

This is strange territory where philosophy can't seem to abstain trespassing. — jgill

Please don't say this. Physics is very much invested in causality -- which is the prize of metaphysics.

If the universe is actually eternal, that solves the problem. — Count Timothy von Icarus

No, the universe is not eternal. The singularity, however, is infinite.

Basically, if inherit fluctuations in the singularity could produce the universe 14 billion years ago, how did the singularity not produce any such fluctuations for an infinite amount of time before these fluctuations finally did occur? My understanding is that this is the problem that drives the appeal of cyclical universes or Black Hole Cosmology. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I am lost here. We could only describe quantum fluctuations outside of the singularity, I believe. That is, we can only describe the quantum fluctuations within the universe.

Of course, we could appeal to the status of time in singularities, but we have reason to think our understanding of singularities is incomplete because of Hawking radiation, conservation laws, the prediction that black holes will decay and have an end, etc. — Count Timothy von Icarus

No, there's no time in singularities. Let's try not to confuse the Newtonian causality with the infinity.

But as I said in my answer, although things come into existence constantly, what would be unusual is for them to come from nothing. Since generally there is a causality that precedes and explains them, kinda. The important thing is that "coming into existence" presupposes the order of coexistence and the order of succession. From this it follows that the universe did not come out of nothing: It could have been there forever. — JuanZu

You're still stuck in the Newtonian causality. While I agree with you, in fact I said this in my previous post that there was always something, and that the universe did not come from nothing, your train of thought is still the regularity of the laws of the universe. We are totally not on the same page.

I know it's hard to wrap our heads around the idea that there was always "something" and that something was a single point. There was never a time when there was nothing. There was always something.

Yes, that's the premise I was accepting starting out. Things can begin to exist for no reason at all, no Principle of Sufficient Reason in effect.

I'm not really sure if you're trying to rebut my solution or the problem itself? If a singularity can start to exist, i.e., it did not always exist, why can't others? Why does one beginning to exist preclude others? — Count Timothy von Icarus

No. Singularity as described is the infinite density - this is what was. (matter cannot be created nor destroyed). So, that said:

Actually we do see many new things appear: new stars, new human beings, new social problems, new diseases, new hopes, new philosophies, new theories, new films, new technologies, etc. What is not common is that something new arises out of nothing and for no reason. — JuanZu

This is totally not what we're talking about here. The "new" is missed here.

Stars, for example, as part of the galaxy is not "new" -- stars are not born -- they form out of gas and dust. So, when they undergo change in properties, they age and collapse.

What's new and had existed infinitely was the singular point that has infinitesimal volume. Then big bang happened.