I think literally all of Hamas would try to do exactly what Hamas's stated goal is. Not all Palestinians want Hamas's stated goal, but *enough* of them do. — flannel jesus

In other words: more terrorist attacks? I mean, what they're doing is fueling the Hamas of the future. Being friendly toward Gazan Palestinians would make things worse?

I think there is an element of both. I don't think it is completely a posteriori, for if it were, we wouldn't be able to associate anything as being something we can sit on. This has to connect to some mental model that is innate in us.

Similarly, I don't think it can be entirely a-priori. We need experience with objects to stimulate such ideas. If we never encountered anything we could sit on, say we only experience a spiky world, perhaps the idea of sitting wouldn't arise. — Manuel

Do you think this generalizes to encompass all thought? There's this dynamic tension between our ideas on the one hand, and the information we come across on the other? I guess I'm just using "information" to mean unorganized data (if there is such a thing.) Maybe ideas and the content of experience are so fused that we can't really dissect it and lay the pieces on the table and have something that's anything like the real thing?

Or you could say that we try to dissect it because that's also part of the nature of knowledge.

Some of those Palestinians in Israel have lived there their whole life, and some are vetted and given permits to work in Israel from the West Bank. It's fairly obvious why those two groups would be less of a risk than just immediately opening up the borders with Gaza. — flannel jesus

What do you think would happen?

No. This case, and other cases of manifest reality are mind dependent. Being able to sit on is a mental construction as are the things we designate as "sittable".

I don't believe this applies to atoms and particles. — Manuel

Do you mean that the property of sittable-ness is a construction of human minds? But we still learn a posteriori whether a thing has this property? Or is it a priori?

Most Palestinians aren't going to be the ones creating boat loads of dead Jews. You don't need most of them to accomplish that — flannel jesus

There are already a lot of Palestinians in Jerusalem. No corpse laden boats have appeared. The idea that the two groups can get along has already been tested. They can.

35% of Americans have a favorable opinion of Donald Trump. Doesn't mean they're all going to raid the Capitol. At least I hope not. :grimace:

Do you think one day there will be Jewish presidents of Arab nations? — BitconnectCarlos

Not until they become democratic.

Unfortunately granting the Palestinians full Israeli citizenship just isn't feasible if Israel is looking to survive as a democratic, Jewish state. — BitconnectCarlos

That will fall by the wayside eventually. Future generations will see that trying to establish a Jewish state was a bad idea which just stained their religion with blood. One day the president of Israel will be a Muslim and all the old people will be like, I thought this would never happen! There will still be dumshits whining about this or that, but in general, the worst will be behind them. Free at last, and all that.

I don't. I think you open the borders of israel to all of the west bank and gaza and you just get busloads of dead jews. — flannel jesus

I doubt it. Most Palestinians are just regular people.

Unless what you mean by 'treat palestinians the way it treats jews' doesn't involve opening the borders... Does it? Is that part of what you mean by that? — flannel jesus

It means treat them with respect. No more trying to get rid of them.

Hamas, and many Palestinians, consider the existence ofany Jewish state in "Palestine" to be "occupation" of Arab lands. So I guess it's just endless fighting until Israel ceases to exist. — BitconnectCarlos

I think if Israel treated Palestinians the way it treats Jews, Hamas would disappear in a puff of satisfaction.

We're getting too deep in this metaphor, so maybe spell out what everything represents the way you're presenting it. I think I'm assigning different entities to different objects than you maybe. — Hanover

What's the pitbull? Hamas or the Gaza strip? Israel is attacking both. Gaza is 2 million people, 55% of which live in refugee camps, and 80% are in poverty. I know you're hearing nothing but politically motivated Israel bashing, but that's not where I'm coming from. I think Israel actually is in the process of committing a major moral screw-up, not that you or anybody else can do anything about it, but to avoid it, they need to stop the attack and pursue Hamas by other means.

Drawing it out a bit further: — Hanover

When you shoot this particular pitbull, the whole neighborhood is likely to fall apart. That's why a giant swat team has pulled up along the coast of your house. Does pulling the trigger really seem like a rational solution?

What do you propose? How would you defend your home if it were under similar attack? — Hanover

I have to imagine that the US is under attack from a strip of land that contains eight refugee camps. I have to imagine that this ungodly situation is a result of my country's generations old efforts to run them out or annihilate them. I think the answer is to reach out with compassion to them. Start trying to undo the damage.

I don't know if Hamas drank too much of their own Kool Aid, just badly miscalculated, or simply acted for Iranian interests here. The more I think about it the less sense it makes. — Count Timothy von Icarus

There used to be a theory that the Boston Tea Party was masterminded to bring about colonial unity in the face of British punishment. I think most historians today believe the people who dumped $12 million dollars worth of tea into the harbor didn't realize what they'd done till the next day. The mastermind was probably whiskey.

I lean toward that perspective for most events of this kind. There's no mastermind and no plan. But then, Muslims don't drink, so I may be missing something.

Certainly. What one should do in these circumstances is die. It's very clear; Jesus did it and he told his followers to do it. And everyone can understand it. The blood sacrifice has to be made. All the horror comes from wanting someone else to do it. — unenlightened

:lol:

Yes, I can see how I gave that impression. I have no problems with Muslims, Christians, or Jews, except when their belief systems entail hating on women and LGBTQ. — RogueAI

I hear you. One of the things that's really hard to understand is honor killing. It's where male family members kill their sister/daughter by beating her to death for dishonoring the family. One woman who survived this kind of attack said her family tried to kill her for running away from an abusive arranged marriage. She said her mother and sister-in-law were there and looked on approvingly. It haunted me for a while, so abysmal.

You're on the verge of sounding racist, dude. I'm sure that's not what you intended.
— frank

I despise any group that treats women as second class citizens, whether they be brown, black, or lily white MAGA Republicans. — RogueAI

Ok. But you've been making statements about how Israel ought to conquer the whole region, and then vague swipes which appear to be directed at Muslims in general. I hear you saying you have no problem with Muslims as a group, you just hate sexism. I agree with that.

Oh. I wonder if you had general relativity in mind. — Banno

General relativity is about gravity and acceleration. Special relativity starts with a thought experiment that shows that in a void, with one object stationary and one object moving at a constant speed, there's no fact of the matter about which one is actually stationary and which one is moving.

Isn't that correct @SophistiCat ?

I supose one might argue that the void disappeared when Newton introduced action at a distance. After that the void was never empty. — Banno

There's no void.

doesn't your argument presume that there will always be things? — Arne

I think if there's nothing there, there's no time.

Special relativity is from a thought experiment that starts with a void. Then we put two people in it. One is you. You see another person who is apparently moving, either

A. toward you
B. or you're moving toward him

In the void, there is no difference between A and B.

Perhaps we can deal with "nothign" in a similar way, by asking what it is that there is nothing of...

He has nothing in the bank; I've nothing in my pocket; there is nothing in a vacuum.

What there is nothing of is decided by what is absent.

Absolute nothing is a non-starter. — Banno

Zero came from the Babylonians. They used something like an abacus to do inventories and then would record the abacus layout on clay tablets. That's the origin of a mark that indicates zero. It revolutionized math, which received the stamp of abstraction from its association with money. I think a case could be made that money is ground zero for all abstractions.

If by "absolute nothing" we mean the void, it's obviously a useful idea. Einstein used it.

Does any of that impact an Iranian's ability to take care of a toddler?

I don't think so, but If Bush, Kasich, Christie, Pence, and Trump are all Republicans, I'm not sure what it means to be a Republican. — Hanover

:up:

Who would you prefer babysit your toddler? Israel or Hamas? More to the point, who would you trust as a nuclear power, Israel or Iran? — RogueAI

You're on the verge of sounding racist, dude. I'm sure that's not what you intended.

@Hanover
Have you morphed into a Democrat? Just curious.

We are governed by toddlers. — Tzeentch

Hamas just recently killed some toddlers:

I really like that 'President Biden's Demands' Says a lot — FreeEmotion

It sounded like, "We don't have any common decency, but since we need American support, we'll let some water in to the southern side."

Netanyahu is such a butthead.

1 - Israel will not allow any humanitarian aid from its territory to the Gaza Strip as long as our abductees are not returned.

2 - Israel demands the Red Cross visits to our abductees and is working to mobilize extensive international support for this demand.

3 - In light of President Biden's demand, Israel will not thwart humanitarian supplies from Egypt as long as it is only food, water and medicine for the civilian population located in the southern Gaza Strip or moving there, and as long as these supplies do not reach Hamas. Any supplies that reach Hamas will be thwarted." — Manuel

It's better than nothing. If I were a Palestinian in northern Gaza, I think I'd be moving my butt south on foot if necessary. Those who decide to stay put, I don't know what to say. I think that area is about to be the stage for a ground invasion.

If that happens, probably no aid will get into Gaza. It's a disaster, not made better by Netanyahu's total incompetence. — Manuel

Hopefully it will get there soon.

It's not over till the fat lady sings

UN update on available humanitarian aid waiting to go in

:pray:

Haha! Yeah, those Christians man, they're wild too. We've just become numb to the BS they spew. — Manuel

True.

Or it could simply be indecision. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Biden's coming. Maybe they're waiting for that? Why couldn't they get a whole new crew to run Gaza? Have an election?

I see @ssu was thinking the same thing about waiting for Biden).

The Ayatollah said in the end of times Israel should disappear, right? Bad comment, evil judgment. Israel is making Palestine disappear, massive difference. — Manuel

He's some kind of Shiite. They have the most bizarre beliefs ever. But there are Christian groups who also think the end of the world has something to do with Israel. I don't know the details.

Well, absolute nothingness is not just a mental negation of something, it is actually the negation of something. That's what it is defined as, and any would-be referent would correspond to that definition. — Ø implies everything

Negation is a logical operation. The void is no-thing, so we understand the void as the negative or opposite of things. When we say "things" here, we specifically mean existing things, such as objects that take up space and exist for a certain amount of time.

So when Einstein places moving objects in a void, we now have space and time in the void by virtue of having moving objects in it. The ancient Greeks would have been gravely troubled by this talk of voids and placing things in them. But we have the number zero, so we're accustomed to talking about absence or vacancy. We think of it as a cubby hole of some sort, where there's nothing in the cubby.

I think if you're interested in this topic, you'd probably love a history of the number zero. It's fascinating stuff if you haven't already read about it.

Do you believe Palestinians should be allowed to "retaliate and make sure such attacks can't happen again"? — Tzeentch

People who attack so as to annihilate their enemies don't wait for permission. They just do it.

If you would change it up so you're saying we wouldn't be able to conceive of the void without contrasting it to something, then I'd agree. Everything appears to the mind against a backdrop of its negation. But here we aren't doing ontology exactly. We're just talking about what we observe about how the mind works.

With that said, there will be resistance to these developments. Entire swaths of the population, including individuals in high leaderships roles, will stop at nothing to prevent this from happening. As they are motivated by rather techno-pessimistic religions and/or worldviews. — Bret Bernhoft

There's a lot of techno-pessimism, as in The Lord of the Rings, which is along the lines of a contemporary epic. Contrast that with Bladerunner, the protagonist of which is probably a robot, but doesn't know that he is. I'd guess that if a new global religion appeared, it would contain both elements: pro and con. Religions that provide a forum for conflicting values have ideological dynamism. In other words, they provide something valuable in the form of a clear common ground.

In any case, I don't see the situation in Gaza not leading Hezbollah to act, unless Egypt and Israel agree to open the Rafah crossing, just by allowing basic necessities, would make the situation in Gaza a smidgen better. They should do it, looks unlikely. — Manuel

I think they'll have to do that soon.

I wonder what they have in mind. Haven't seen any preemptive action yet.

I don't think so. They're going to squash the hell out of Gaza. Hamas will be gone. They have nuclear weapons. They don't care about Iran's bullshit.