Long seems like a subjective evaluation to me. They are certainly much longer than yours, but I think adequate to the task. And in that length I explained how we deal with not getting plaid shirts criminalized, using skills similar to how we prevent extremes in laws you do accept like those against physical violence and contract breaches, where all sorts of subjective evaluations come in. Just as they do with sensory stimuli and what is 'too much.'

se

Some people really like loud repetitive noises late at night, so what is it that makes playing the drums for sixteen hours a day something that its reasonable to legislate against?
— Isaac

Well, I'm a free musical instrument playing absolutist, so I don't believe that there should be any laws restricting the freedom to play drums really loudly all night, every night, when your neighbours are trying to sleep. — S

I'm a Heraclitian flux you cannot make a contract since it will not be me after signing it absolutist. I want to end all contract law. How can I bind a future self that is not me to obligations? And with companies it gets really ridiculous, Ship of Theseus and all that.

I want the court to demonstrate that I am the same self.

And this certainly would hold true for mortgages...what is it 7 years before all the matter is replaced in the body.

Dang, I am not sending in my next payment. It's been 8 years.

I would also like to bring up the idea of people being overly sensitive to a loss of freedom. That seems arbritrary and emotional to me. Neurotic even. How can we measure the results of the loss of freedom like a decibel meter one measures sound?

n

Okay, whereas I wouldn't hinge anything merely on whether someone is "having an unpleasant experience" because arbitrary people can have an unpleasant experience — Terrapin Station

Right, so I would want people to work on dealing with the specific cases, just as we do in contract law and even with physical violence. What kind of contact was it? Was it intentional? How were the bodies moving? What signals were given? Often the impacts can't be measured in physical violence and the context is extremely important and the communication. It can lead to very complicated court procedures, though over trivial stuff (unless it was, say, a police officer or a rich person on the receiving end) it gets dropped. Contracts, which you accepted before, can often have incredibly complicated interpretive differences involved, even if the contract were made with anal precision. Like whose name should get on a screenplay, jeez, that can be complicated. Or how an employee carried out tasks or didn't and to what degree and in what circumstances and in relation to what actions and inactions of coworkers and bosses. Again, jeez, anyone's position might seem arbritrary, but humans can develop methods to try to work this out. Obviously far from perfectly.

But me I don't want the verbal threatener, for example, to have free reign. So, I am will to also have complicated and nuanced processes to determine if it was serious.

For example, someone could completely flip out because someone is wearing a plaid shirt, whether the plaid shirt-wearer knows the person will flip out or not. That shouldn't be a problem with the plaid shirt-wearer. The person flipping out needs to get help. — Terrapin Station

If only there were ways for adults to make decisions about this kind of thing. I am not sure how they manage around physical violence and contracts since they could not around verbal threats.

In my society people have a responsibility to not be too sensitive, — Terrapin Station

And look at that, you are capable of deciding what is 'too sensitive'. You could take part in the process. You seem to have a way to measure sensitivity. That's great. That means there is some equivalent to decibels.

I'm not going to base laws on people being neurotic, not being able to handle simple things, etc.--because we can find people who'll flip out over any arbitrary thing, and then nothing is legal because of that and we've got a big mess where people only have to claim to be bothered by something in order to be able to control others over any and every little thing they don't like. — Terrapin Station

Sure, and I wouldn't want any physical contact to be considered assault (or is it battery) and it seems there are ways to determine the difference, though obviously there is a subjective element there. Likewise with contracts. I wouldn't want to get arrested for assault if I brushed past someone on the subway either.

That's completely the opposite direction of what I'm shooting for. — Terrapin Station

Well, I wouldn't like that either. I am also shooting for a way to deter, for example, threats that most humans would find disturbing enough to cause them problems. I would prefer that that is not treated the same as other kinds of free speech use. And, yes, it might be very tricky to work out individual cases. So be it.

I would also want to be able to use physical violence in some situations where harrassment has gone on for a long time or the threat is so horrible. I'd prefer a society where we realize that as social mammals some kinds of non-physical contact acts, after a time, can and generally will cause emotional suffering in people who are not oversensitive nor neurotic. I think paparazzi often move into the area, as do stalkers, protection racket thugs and even some aggressive salespeople (though it is generally members way out on the end of the bell curve with the last, in my estimation that is).

This is also why I don't base any ethical stances or laws merely on "harm" or "suffering" or anything like that, and it's why I have minimum requirements even for nonconsensual violence. No one is being arrested, fined, etc. for intentionally poking you in the arm or something like that. It has to be something with macro-observable effects days later--that's a requirement for a minimum intensity, otherwise the "victim" needs to just chill out and not overreact. — Terrapin Station

t tMy slap might or might not pass that test, thought I have to say it seems rather arbritrary. I could probably use a little shiatsu like pressure that leaves no damage or scars and gives someone agony for 15 minutes. That should be a crime unless there was some serious justification for that. Like every time you tried to let them up they went for the gun they had recently pointed at you.

As said. I see us as different from other animals, those of us who understand language. I also see us as not mere tabula rasa (whatever the plural is), but as have strong tendencies at least in relation to certain things, like threats of physical violence. We are social mammals which has given us many advantages, but also means that even words can do damage and this is used by people. I seem to be hitting a slippery slope where if any speech is stopped it means that people wearing plaid shirts will be arrested. I think we manage to differentiate between differerences in degree and kind in many parts of the law that are not related to speech and could manage there.

I also think that sensory stimuli are radically affected by personality and attitude and any law based on decibel level, duration and so on, with be culturally arbritrary. My Latino neighbors seemed to thrive with noise levels that would have put me in the hospital after a year.

I don't want to pretend that I am essentially the same as a species that has no language.

I also can't wait for a utopia where I can just quit and find a new job

Just as I wouldn't expect my neighbors to move whenever I move in with my drumset.

There could be all sorts of problems with this, just as there are in other parts of the law - lucky lawyers dealing with contract law cases. But there it is. Not everything human be broken down into numbers neatly so we can just send a person out with a measuring device. We are more complicated than that.

So I would prefer legal recourse for, amongst other things, threats.

Well, I think we'd need to get into Terrapin's morality, which I think he once said to me was neither consequentialist nor deontological, and he has used the word preferences. But noticed early on that people were getting extremely upset at him, and when I decided to really go at his position, I started to also, but then I realized that it is as if one need convince him. Somehow the discussion ends up being in the format of 'can you not see?'. Of course most discussions end up this way, but if his morality is actually more like preferences (and he is open about that) then he will prefer to treat sensory stimuli differently than verbal stimuli. Or better put, he not only can, but will fall back to that, because that is what he wants society to be like. If we put the onus on ourselves to convince him, we are putting the onus on ourselves to convince someone that a preference is wrong.

I am not sure if this is what is happening, but it seems like it. So I am trying to shift my responses to. I prefer X, what's wrong with that?

Well, he may say, that's nebulous.

But I prefer to have measures in place to take into account emotional pain caused by speech, rather than expecting I should act less like a social mammal who can also understand language. Put the onus on the other side. Perhaps that will sit fine with him. I don't know.

And we are nuanced creatures who often interact and have to deal with nebulous criteria. We do have tools for that.

This kind of onus jockeying is incredibly hard to track - this can be seen in the Khaled, you, me T Clark thingie, I decided I couldn't keep track of anymore.

I did want add, relevant to your post here, that we might have different laws than salamanders who likely are sensitive to sensory stimuli but not to words. But I fear pursuing that gets into the 'what is a cause?' morass, despite my thinking that the laws protecting salamanders and creatures who understand language will have categorical differences. And necessary ones.

Then I must, unfortunately, ask for a definition of logging. Apologies in advance.

I know what I think subjective experience means, and I've said as much many times. For me it means something like the logging to memory of sensory inputs. I've been told that doesn't cover it. — Isaac

Couldn't we say that a computer, with security camera feed, does this, perhaps, shuttling anomolous movements, recorded ones that is, to special files and throwing out the rest or storing them elsewhere?

I realize this is dependent on a number of the terms you used, so I'm probing.

I wonder if some kinds of genetic and epigentic process might also be covered by that description also.

As Coben has already indicated, there is ample relationship between anxiety from verbal bullying and loss of sleep, but you'd say they chose to react that way but needn't. Why the different approach to annoying noises? — Isaac

I think the issue is partly coming down to a damning of the limbic system or emotions. IOW if it is possible to change the way you relate to emotions and this is a factor in the disturbing stimuli, then you with the emotional reaction should have no legal recourse. It is your problem.

But the weird thing for me is he rules out physical violence. But we have limbic reactions to physical pain.

You may have read how I tried above to show that physical pain and emotional pain (fear caused by threats) both in the end have to do with the limbic system. It's unpleasant, we don't like it. And most of us would easily choose one slap in the face over all sorts of verbal threats or harrassment. We can compare these things because they come down to unpleasant for us experiences.

But I think the approach to TS has to shift from trying to convince him to not being convinced. More of a there's nothing wrong with legislating X or responding to verbals stimuli with Y. I don't see how he can say more than he doesn't like that. He can then try to convince me that slapping is inherently bad. But I think that is trickier than us trying to change his mind since all he has to do and I think it ihas been much of his defense is to repeat his criteria and his preference.

Of course this approach is not dealing with the main kind of hate speech discussed earlier in the thread: speech that may or may not lead to violence.

That people can censor in private regions. If you have enough money you can fence in (literally or metaphorically) a portion of reality and shut down free speech in that area and often related to that area. And if it involves employees who come to that area, you can also punish them for what they do outside of that area. Punishments can be internal: loss of promotions, loss of job, assignment of unpleasant tasks, or even external: lawsuits, intentionally damaging the employees reputation in the field, court injunctions, punitive pr campaigns. You can also influence media to not publish or report certain things. Sometimes you barely even have to make a threat. You can lobby to reduce focus on certain issues - even if they are not completely censored. The types of internal censorship can censor non-business related conversation, lack of enough enthusiam, political opinions, whisteblowing, jusftified criticism whatever. Money censors and it has legislative support.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_censorship
https://electricliterature.com/corporate-censorship-is-a-serious-and-mostly-invisible-threat-to-publishing/
https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/08/19/can-free-speech-and-internet-filters-co-exist/corporate-censorsip-is-untouched-by-the-first-amendment
https://fightthefuture.org/article/the-new-era-of-corporate-censorship/
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/while-everyone-frets-about-state-censorship-corporate-censorship-tightens-the-noose-c357e3bdd95d

In the past there was a commons, areas of life and land commonly held by the people. We have been privitizing the commons, Reagan and Thatcher made some jumps there, so what can be owned has extended. This means corporate censorship has extended. They are right now keeping news stories out of circulation. But also within organizations, people are being punishment for being honest or having opinions. No one who works for McDonalds has freedom of speech. But probably they can say what they like at parties, because no one cares. But in other corporations or higher up in McDs, you can get punished for whatever you say, anywhere.

I'm still missing the concern about corporate and private censorship and what measures will be taken to eliminate the legislative support for this.

But what does that have to do with the fact that I'd legislate persistent sensory stimuli of a certain intensity etc.? — Terrapin Station

Sensory and verbal stimuli and physical contact stimuli have different effects on different people. The receivers personalities and measures taken affect what they experience. I wouldn't protect one category of stimuli and not others. Or better put, I would include verbal stimuli. I prefer to have a society where intentionally created unpleasant experience can be responded to with moderate violence. You cause unpleasance, you experience unpleasance. And we look at individual cases and decide as a group. Whether tribe or jury process or DAs. No jury would convict me for slapping someone who said they were going to rape my child. It wouldn't get to the DAs desk.

Because we're not billiard balls or panes of glass.

And the neighbor in your socialist utopia who didn't like loud music at night, he or she could just move to a quiter area of the city, as the person with the foul mouthed using sexual langauage as aggression can be dealt with by changing jobs.

But here also, create unpleasance, even if not everyone would experience it that way, you get some unpleasance. Here I think fines related to income or wealth would be good.

It doesn't have anything to do with expression.

It does for the guitar player. We got people in these scenarios.

A boss sexually harasses my wife. She can move.
A neighbor plays guitar loud at night. You can move.
A neighbor issues a threat to rape my child. I can move.

I don't see why different stimuli need to be treated differently. But ok, then the neighbors disturbed by loud noise can move or take measures to reduce their reduce the noise reaching them or their attitudes and emotional reactions to the unpleasance..

Me, I notice that humans respond to a wide range of stimuli with pain. This can be compicated. Measuring decibels by comparison is simpler. Well, there we are, complicated creatures sensitive the a wide range of stimuli. I'd like a society that reflects our wide range of senstivities. We're not salamanders, though I would protect salamanders also from noise if possible. I would not put anyone in prison or even slap them for telling the salamaders they are going to rape them. Because unlike us that stimulus does not lead to pain.

I see free speech going down as corporations consolidate power. This doesn't seem to concern free speech advocates nearly as much as any potential hate speech laws. We are all so used to this censorship and most of us have taken steps to automatize self-consorship in relation to people with control over our money. And heck we were trained to do this via schooling. and often parenting. Very few schools respect free speech and even respectful free speech and very few parents do either.

I obviously wouldn't make legislation based on any arbitrary thing bothering any arbitrary individual. That's what you seem to be arguing for. — Terrapin Station

No, I am arguing that threats of violence are such an effective stimuli that they need only be delivered once to have endocrine reactions in large numbers of humans since they are social mammals with active limbic systems. Not all, but many. I gave a specific example, but there would be a category of threats.

In your system verbal expression must be protected in all cases.
Other types of expression can be shut down.

I am not sure why.

Further me slapping a man who says he is going to rape my child would seem to also be considered an expression that can be legally punished and stopped. (see in the other thread where I suggest that physical violence can be fine in relation to some speech acts)

It's a one shot stimulus. Not an ongoing one. The other man might even get a good night's sleep, since the slap, unlike the threat, does not entail concerns that most humans will ruminate over since it is about the future, whereas the slap is over and did not turn into a beating. More would likely have come then and not the next day.

I'd prefer a slap in the face to many consversations, some even polite and without threats. Boredom can be more painful for me, since I have a large neocortex like some other social mammals. I am not sure why physical violence is súch a no no, if I interpreted your posts int he other thread correctly it seemed like it had to be off limits.

Must I change to fit into your society but not the light sleepers who won't buy ear plugs?

Right now censorship is protected by legislation. Despite some whisteblowing laws that often don't protect people, companies can punish people for speaking freely. Their power to do that is protect implicitly in ideas about private property.

Let's not shift to what my solution might be, let's stay here and see why some stimuli are protected and others not, that is your position. Perhaps my solution would be a poor one but that wouldn't mean yours doesn't have problems.

Nope. go on. It's the way my organism reacts to single stimulus of a certain kind.

Should I change my personality to suit my neighbor`?

Why can't the person who is sensitive to noise change his attitude or buy some soundproofing. I need to change, why can't he`?

Some people can sleep through loud music. Some people need it to sleep.

So they get to censor people. But we know you judge them for it.
So we have a society where some people get to censor but not others.

Yes of course, censorship exists. If the boss believed in free speech, on the other hand, she might not be fired. — NOS4A2

Sure, but it seems like when free speech comes up and the strong advocates advocate for it they think in terms of legislation. Let's not have any legislation limiting free speech. I rarely hear much attack on the private sector for its inhibition of free speech - of course this is a vast thread and there are many threads out there and I may miss them, but it seems like the private limitation is not really noticed. And it is endemic.

A stimulus led to my not sleeping. This should also be considered in the context of the post before the one about loss of sleep, where I asked why verbal expression is to be protected at all costs various kinds of artistic, in this case musical protection need not be. People can soundproof their houses and all that.

But she doesn't have a right to free speech in a capitalist society or most societies other than the one TS is hoping one day will arrive. If she tells the boss to go fuck himself, he can fire her. That seems a lot like censorship. In a capitalist society those with power can censor and that's where we are now.

I'm still not sleeping.

A big guy moves in across the hall. He tells me he is going to grab my kid one day and rape him.

I won't sleep well.

But note that I'd not have a capitalist system in the first place. I'd have a socialist system, which also wouldn't be based on money in any traditional sense. In my system, if someone is uncomfortable with someone they're working with, it's no problem to simply work somewhere else instead, with people who you like better. — Terrapin Station

So, what does my wife do in the meantime? Would it be wrong for her to censor or punish him, given that she lives in a capitalist country?

I'd have "sensory ordinances" similar to what we have now re sounds, smells, flashing lights, etc. — Terrapin Station

Why should non-verbal expression be limited, but verbal expression be allowed if one can see increases in negative symptoms in the experiencers of both? Higher cortisol levels, lost sleep, whatever. If the symptoms are very similar why is one protected absolutely but the other has a limit? And why can't we expect people to buy soundproofing, and other measures to take care of their own sensitivity.

I ask this last because it seems to me the idea with absolute freedom of speech and cause has as the implication that I choose to have problems when exposed to speech harrassment. Given that I am a social mammal with all that entails, what if I don't want to change my personality to where I don't get annoyed, if that is possible? Why shouldn't the disturbed by sound person be expected to make changes to not be bothered, rather than suppressing the expressiveness of the artist?

I think a slap in the face, off the top of my head, would be a reaction I would not judge as morally wrong or impractical. I'd probably yell back shit first, and for a while. But the paparrazzi-ish free speecher on me might well get a solid slap in the face. Someone following my wife around and telling her was going to rape her, smack. I don't now what's so unholy about a bit of well placed violence. There's emotional pain and destroyed time. I would have traded a number of seriously harsh slaps to not have to listen to one boss I had. I would have happily traded those lectures for short notes with the key information the boss was getting across, if any, and a few slaps.

I do think escalating should go through a speech response, a 'get the fuck away' and perhaps even a warning.

There's nothing sacred about the nerve cells in the face as opposed to the one's in my limbic system.

You wanna torture cells at a certain point you need to expect some torture and not of your choosing either may be on the line.

Physical pain, emotional pain. Someone happy creating the latter should be ready to experience the former. They are both unpleasant.

If they were genetic scientists who made me from scratch and claimed to be all knowing and all powerful

sure.

How long can an arbitrary stream of language expressions continue before it contradicts itself? In my experience, not very long. That is why I will not easily say, "I do not believe you". My knee-jerk reaction is rather: "Please, go on."

So, no, it is not suspension of belief. I will certainly be in doubt, but not in disbelief. Doubt is rather some kind of indecisiveness. Doubt and disbelief are quite different from each other.

People get pissed off if you disbelieve them for no good reason at all, and they are actually right, because there is not even a need for that. — alcontali

And here we see a process unfolding over some period of time.

Other models, such as the one I think implicit in the Hitchen's razor, are very precipitous. Notice the assertion. Demand evidence. Upon judging this lacking dismiss. Notice also that any evidence would seem to be verbal or immediately experiential. A link to a paper, the paper itself, some kind of immediate pointing. Not a process that might take some longer period of time. Nothing with a large experiential component. No longer discussion that might lead to experiences or attitudes that might lead to experiences. Meet, assertion, produce or not, decide. A kind of assembly line of rapid decisions.

Of course anyone should be free to do this. Maybe there's a newborn in the family or they don't like the person asserting, or they are tired or their gut feeling is they'd rather have some other conjecture to mull over. Fine.

But it's, then, a razor that really one need not have. That's all self-care and self-guidance. If one needs that razor to back up such choice in situ there's a deeper problem.

ok

Hitchen's razor, however, would obviously not work. The police would get absolutely nowhere with their investigations, if they used it. — alcontali

Well, it is fundamentally anti-investigatory and hasty. Now or never, and it takes oneself out of the equation also. I encounter idea X. Person who has idea X does not present me with evidence. I dismiss. (or 'can' as people keep pointing out as if the real life use of the razor was via this modal verb). I encounter. I demand evidence or note the lack. I dismiss. I do not interact. I do not probe. I do not see where it might lead me. I do not see if I have any evidence or a frame in which it might add something. I do not black box. I do not tease out. I close a door.

How unlike a good learning heuristic that is.

Of course there are moments for such a reaction. But, again, how unlike a good learning heuristic it is.

One certainly can, and many do, but there's no reason to have it as a habit. One might even find, even after a few seconds, but perhaps much later, that there is something to it. Or that exploring it leads to something that is useful.

I can imagine scenarios where the scientists and the companies that hired them are quite pleased (or the government that assembled the team) but where one scientists thinks there is a problem or where certain citizens realize there is a problem, and hopefully not too late.

On the other hand the two issues do need to be separated. Let's say God does exist but is not a loving deity, by any standards. Then there is the option to not worship such a God. It's a scary thing to consider, but if one does follow an evil God, who exists, one is very much like the sychophants around an earthly dictator: afraid and currying favor, and in a certain sense contributing to evil. I would understand the fear. And I would understand the fear of even wanting to notice that the dictator or the deity is evil. And I think a lot of conventional monotheists lack the courage to notice that on some level they are afraid to even consider their God is evil. Not just their conception of God, but to notice their fear that He exists and is evil. And just because one has that fear, it does not mean the fear is right. But it still needs to be noticed, accepted, and integrated. But that all gets hopped over.

It seems to me both morally and then in terms of coming into full maturity you have to notice and integrate these feelings and fears. And then consider what you would do, feel, intend if you realized that at your core you thought your God was evil or making mistakes, etc.

It takes courage.

There can be a great relief in simply doing what you are told and currying favor and ducking your head down when the dictator walks past.

No, and this last post made it clearer to me what you meant. No, it making sense need not be evidence. I would urge caution, at this very abstract level, of thinking that 'making sense' will always be easy to determine. There could be biases and assumptions involved in that determination. There should be some, at least slight, grip on the semantics of the conjecture, but we know from some things that have turned out to be true, they would have sounded like nonsense before the confirmational results later started coming in. So, making sense in the sense of being intelligible, but not making sense in the sense of fitting common sense or current models or even not being paradoxical and so on. And even teasing these two types of 'making sense' into discrete categories might be hard. I suppose I am thinking of physics mostly, but there may very well be similar types of nevertheless useful conjectures in other fields as well.

Which wouldn't be problems then. One can't really complain about people who try to limit free speech if one thinks speech cannot have negative effects on people, even other people.

But by limiting speech (through coercion, no less) they limit speaking, reading, conversation, which are actions which have meaningful and important effects. — NOS4A2

If the method through which they try to limit free speech is to speak about their ideas about the problems with totally free speech and hate speech and this leads to people voting for legislation, or for legislators, against pure free speech, then either

their use of free speech led to problems and you agree with them, that free speech leads to bad things
or
it did not lead to problems.

The people here are just exercising free speech. If this should be stopped, I can't see how your position holds.

If you disagree only, well that's another thing.

This will move us away from hate speech/free speech, but it is in the background of my thoughts while following this. Sexual harrassment in companies. A boss who makes sexual comments to his women (or men, but let's keep it to one group). Does not back off from this pattern when challenged. Can companies limit the bosses speech within the laws of your country? Can this kind of thing be contracted? Then a jump even further away.

Your neighbor practices his electric guitar until five in the AM and your bed actually vibrates - and not in a fun way. No way to call in the law? or can one? How do you see something like this getting resolved?

It's not that speech can't have an effect on others. It's that it can't be shown to force them to perform particular actions. — Terrapin Station

That's you. Others treat speech as having only the effects of gibberish. Presumably of a similar volume and pitch. IOW speaking to someone does not cause any other effects than speaking gibberish. I really had that discussion - a rather interesting one - for a series of posts. Might not have been the guy I just responded to, but it wasn't you, in any case.

Would this be a general heuristic in law for you? If an action cannot be shown to force people to do something, then it should be legal?

c

Again, justify is a subjective state. The fact that one person (requiring more information) is redirected by another only demonstrates that that second person does not have information sufficient for the first. It does not tell us anything about whether they have information sufficient for them. — Isaac

for themselves, I assume you mean. Sure. But T Clark doesn't know what Khaled needs for justification. Khaled asked him for the source of the theories. That presumably is within the abilities of T Clark. It is not, as T Clark made it seem, like being asked to walk him through the research. It is asking for someone to specify. IOW then Khaled would have a similar amount of justification as T Clark. Right now, he has been presented with an abstract non-specific 'theories'. He has less justification that TC, or let's say, he has less view of what justification led to T Clark drawing a conclusion.

Also part of the context was T Clark saying: you can't know this. I think the answer for most of us would be, no, I don't. But here's why I have this belief. Perhaps he meant the response to implictly acknowledge this, but I don' t think it's clear.

Yes, because the science is indeed out there, and the estimation included was that he could not justify it to Khaled's satisfaction — Isaac

He couldn't know that yet. So his, yes, honest self-evaluation, seemed to me a general one. I cannot satisfy interlocuters. And even telling you which theories I read would not do it, so find someone else. I am taking his demurral in this context. He doesn't even get Khaled up to speed on which theorists he means. Perhaps he forgot them.

But then one wonders why respond. What is the substance of his previous post. I read some stuff and it satisfied me that the issue is resolved as X. But if you want to know anything further I am the wrong person. That makes it seem like a poll. IOW that doesn't seem to me like an adequate response as if one is countering the other person's arguments. Of course we can all weigh in with opinions, but I think it should be made clear that the role of the posts is not to justify, but rather to just put forward one's take.

Your not "taking" their conclusion, and your claiming their conclusion is not justified are two different things. You may not belive T Clark when he says he has read such conclusions. That is a matter of trust, not logic. In a situation like this, I can't think of any reason why he might lie — Isaac

I never even considered that. I did think that it was possible that whatever theories he had read might not actually cover the issue the way he presented it. And that whatever research he read did not actually have as its conclusions what he was saying. That would be my interest in relation to Khaled's request for which theories. Is it a mere impression that that's what they meant? Did they come out and say it in the conclusions of their peer reviewed paper? Who are these people? What kinds of documents were they? There are models out there which carry the presumptions of many scientists but even by the scientists themselves may not be considered the justified conclusions of repeated testing.

Perhaps that discussion would be beyond T Clarks abilities. Peachy and understandible. But that wasn't even on the table. We don't even know what his justification was and he doesn't know if it would satisfy Khaled. Khaled didn't get to see whatever it was. And that was not even an issue.

So the issue of justification being subjective seems not on the table to me. It was a non-issue whatever degree would be necessary. Which is why I raised the issue of why he is himself convinced. I think I framed it as a question.

If we want to know why consciousness arose, and by 'why' mean to find a necessary and sufficient set of causes, then we must look to physical chains of events and eliminate each until the phenomena is no longer present. That is an empirical investigation, not a philosophical one. — Isaac

Sure, but often people conflate for example memory and consciousness. So if someone does not remember it is assumed that this means they were not conscious. I have seen this in discussions led by scientists and by lay people and by philosophers (overlapping groups). Philosophers can have a role in sorting these things out. Philosophers can also look at what the research actually shows and what is being concluded because it fits with current models. Philosophers could also look at paradigmatic bias. As I said somewhere in here scientists did not consider animals conscious or subjects. They were considered automatons, or perhaps better put, it was considered the best default position to consider them like this and professionally dangerous to do otherwise certainly upinto the 60s. I think that was a philosophically poor default choice. And I am not just hindsight backseat driving. I was alive then and challenged the idea then. There has always been a bias to consider things like us to have consciousness. Right now plants are moving into a grey area against default resistence. This is based on philosophical ideas that are not clearly to my mind justified. One common one is that complexity is necessary for consciousness. I have all the sympathy in the world for why this seems like a good default, but I don't think its justified. All sorts of cognitive abilities absolutely are dependent on complexity. I have no doubt about that. The question is whether consciousness is in the same category as those cognitive abilities. And since we know that many extremely sophisticated cognitive abilities can be handled without consciousness I think it would be best not to assume they are the same or have the same cause or are facets of the same 'things' or processes. I am sure there are other roles philosophers can have, or really intelligent non-scientists cna have.. And I would point out that your description makes assumptions. Like that consciousness is best sesedescribed as an effect rather than a facet, say.

If, rather, we want to know which concepts about why consciousness arise are internally non-contradicory and consistent with what empirical evidence we have, then such is an ideal task for amateur philosophy to be engaged in. But by that standard, T Clark's position is as good as any other. It is not internally contradictory, and it is not overwhelmingly contradicted by empirical evidence. — Isaac

But his post was not a position, or not just a position, it was a response or presented as a response. And when taken as a response, a critical arguement is, and fairly basic things were asked about it, I don't think it held up as a counterargument or response to the post it was responding to. Yes, he presented his opinion. It's a discussion forum. I thought it was an odd response to be questioned about it in that context, however much I truly do admire his open and humble explanation of why he draws the conclusion he does.

Which wouldn't be problems then. One can't really complain about people who try to limit free speech if one thinks speech cannot have negative effects on people, even other people.

The topic here is 'Should hate speech be allowed' not whether Terrapin (or anyone else) is a moron. — Baden

I haven't written any posts about whether Terrapin is a moron in this thread or whether anyone else is. Earlier I raised the issue of the specific case of people who want to limit free speech, iow do not share Terrapin's aboslutism, posting insults at him. I thought this was ironic, though not necessarily hypocritical (I now add) since this would depend on their ideas about what should be limited. It was pointed out to me that I had missed insults aimed at the people who wanted to limit free speech and I did find one specifically hurled by Terrapin. Of course, he, given his position need not have a problem with the hurling of insults.

I do think the specific case of people here who are advocating for limitations on free speech insulting people they disagree with makes for a nice case for the issue of Should hate speech be allowed.

We can do this without getting into the details of how appropriate the insults are, but rather see what the limits are. Why do the same people who advocate limitation use insults? What is the line they would draw and why? That seems like a great way to clarify position and actually come up with what the criteria are. Or some of the criteria.

and Terrapin can go advertise his absolutist views on his own discussion if that's all he wants to do — Baden

I don't see what this has to do with my post, but it seems to me he has from the beginning of the thread responded to posts and argued a position and one that is precisely on topic. He thinks the answer to the question is no and has argued for that. I don't agree with his absolutism, but I think couching his contributions to the thread as advertising is off and an odd thing to include in your response to me, even odder if you are a moderator, which you post might indicate, and itself off topic.

I've mainly followed the Terrapin stuff, though not at all completely. I mainly noticed posts near mine in my dialogue with Terrapin and then more recently with S. But OK, I missed stuff. And missed Terrapin doing this - he was the one I noticed being insulted quite a bit by others - if he did.

Still, it seems like role modeling speech without hate might be a good start for those who want to limit speech in general. And yes, I understand the difference between the kinds of insults I saw and saying 'niggers need to be shot' or whatever.

Furthermore, the budget for decommissioning is gigantic, and probably also still underestimated by at least an order of magnitude. — alcontali

And then we have to deal with the waste for thousands of years, and the security around that waste. Which means government and likely outsourced private security or monitoring passed on for generations or until some safe more complete technological solution is found. So, current profits paid for by random masses of future people. And that's all fi it goes well, where the measures work. If they don't, well, that also will have various kinds of costs.

good point about claims vs. conjectures. I think I was responding to someone using the word conjectures and should have stuck with it.

A conjecture without evidence, maybe...but a conjecture without context? (A context will consist in some observations that have been used to construct it surely?). — Janus

The word 'context' is very general. I don't think there needs to be any evidence it is the case or observations that somehow lead one to believe the conjecture is true. I would assume that any intelligible statement/conjecture would be within some already mapped out area of knowledge. And that area of knowledge would include observations, but none of them need indicate the conjecture is true. But then, that would be evidence.