I read those studies and the Wiki article as well. That data (defensive gun use) is far from clear based upon varying methodologies, so I didn't cite it. My reference was specifically to gun ownership and the increased liklihood of gun injury.

But there's going to be a set of people for whom that's not true. If I'm a single male in a high-crime area, I don't see how keeping a gun in the apartment will put me in more danger. In the aggregate, — RogueAI

I agree that stats cannot account for every variable, but the data doesn't generally support the proposition that gun ownership offers greater safety than not owning a gun. You can drive accidental shootings down with taking greater precaution and getting better training, but it's just not being intellectually honest to insist you're safer with a gun than without when the numbers point that you're much less safe.

The anecdotes unfortunately dictate the debate, where someone will describe averting disaster by brandishing a gun and heroically protecting their family, but that's not the typical result.

Fortunately, owning a gun as a single predictor of being the victim of gun violence is low enough that it'd be wrong to suggest it's irresponsible to own a gun, so I have no irrational belief no one should own guns, but I do think you fool yourself if you think that gun is making you safer

So on top of being poor, I'm more likely to accidentally shoot myself. — frank

Yep. There's no positives to being poor. People are even more likely to steal your stuff, even though you've got less to steal.

It is common sense. When I am unarmed and someone is coming for my life, I have virtually zero chance of survival. With a firearm it will be significantly higher. — Tzeentch

Common sense also tells you that you're not going to have someone coming at you with a gun, and that if you do that you will have the gun handy when the coming at you occurs, and that if you do produce the gun timely that you'll beat him to to the trigger.

What the data shows is that your gun will more likely cause you more damage than had you not had it.

Again, I don't care if you buy a gun. I'm just telling you you have no reason to feel safer because of it. You can feel like you're protecting yourself and family with a gun, but you're just endangering them. Why can't you let the stats speak for themselves and just say you're comfortable with the increased risks but you want the gun?

So the advice to not own a gun has a lot in common with the advice to sell this or that stock. It is highly time-dependent advice. The advice will become outdated once a few contingencies change. — Leontiskos

But this is consistent with what I've said. Mine isn't an ideological position. It's a practical one, The data shows a gun currently provides 4 times more danger than protection. I therefore should have a buy order in with my broker to buy when that number shows it will offer me safety. Because I seriously doubt it ever will, I don't expect the purchase will happen.

The data shows as gun ownership increases, so does your risk of death. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1359178924000776?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Do you have data that shows that trend spikes and dips like the S&P so that I should be watching and waiting to buy?

To me gun ownership makes sense if you're at very low risk of suicide and you get something positive out of the gun. Say hunting, target shooting, collecting, skeet etc. — LuckyR

That'd I agree with. That's not for protection fantasy, but for other use.

If you live in a safe area then there indeed seems little reason to invest time in familiarizing yourself with a firearm. But not everyone is so fortunate. — Tzeentch

I could find no data suggesting that gun ownership increased one"s safety in more dangerous areas. What i found was the opposite, although I could not find anything that didn't require significant interpretation. Typically as socioeconomic conditions drop, things get worse in every regard, including accidental shootings or failed attempts to thwart attackers.

If a criminal right now, were to God forbid, attempt to trespass onto your home with violent intentions, one larger than you, what would you do? Call the police? — Outlander

The likelihood that I be able to produce a gun and use it effectively is lower than that gun being used otherwise to cause me harm. That's my point. You're not safer owning a gun all things considered. The gun in your nightstand drawer is a false sense of security and a greater danger than if it weren't there.

Life is about reducing risks. I'm not immune from gun death, but it's a risk remote enough to navigate without having to eliminate it by force of law or to change much in my day to day life.

That seems to be all that can be ascertained from your unusually dull and dense analysis of the topic at hand. — Outlander

Just because you can't accept anything but applause at attacks on gun ownership doesn't make the analysis dull or or dense. It just makes the point that there is not a meaningful risk of loss of life to being shot by a gun in the US if you take the simple precaution of not choosing to have a gun nearby. The math doesn't support widespread efforts at gun control to reduce the negligible risk guns pose to those who, like me, have never owned, nor will ever own a gun. It's someone else's bad decision, and focusing on it is meant to and does in fact polarize and group identify.

Yay guns! is as boring and dense a battle cry as Boo guns! In a liberal open society where guns and all sorts of bad decisions surround you, you get to be stupid. I wish it weren't so, but the right to be stupid is a right you do have.

Looking at this data, 5 out of 100,000 people are murdered by a gun in the US each year. I found some other data that showed that you are 4.23 times more likely to be murdered if you owned had a gun.

Based upon these stats, per one million people per year:

~40.4 gun owners are murdered

~9.6 non-gun owners are murdered

Other Causes Deaths per 1,000,000/year

Gun homicide (base rate) 50
Motor vehicle crashes 129
Sharp object (knife) homicide ~12
Choking (suffocation) ~17
Lightning strikes (fatal) ~1

So, yes, all deaths are significant, but your chances of being murdered by a gun if you decide not to own a gun in the US is not something you really need to spend your time worrying about, but for some reason it gets a lot of press. Non-gun owners are more likely to be murdered by a knife than a gun. This means that solid protection against gun violence is not to own a gun.

I'm in favor of those who choose to own guns just like I'm in favor of those who choose to hang glide. Chances are that if you crash you'll just kill yourself and not land on me.

You are saying that as long as you are certain that the order came from God, you are justified in carrying out that order because it is God's will. — GregW

No, what I'm saying is that as long as the order came from God, you are justified in carrying out the order because it is God's will.

The problem is not that following X is the best course. The problem is in authenticating X and personally deciding that X is the course of God's will. — GregW

This is obvious. My point, and you can go back through my posts and show where I've said anythying inconsistent with it, is that Exodus stipulates that God, the creator of the universe, decreed the destruction of Amalek. Those are the facts of the book. The book might well be fiction, and I do believe it is, but those are nontheless the undisputed facts of the book. Under the terms of the fictional tale, the destruction is just.

That is, if you're going to read a fictional book, you have to accept its fictional metaphysics and you can't keep jumping between the fantasy on the pages and the real world before you.

It's like if I write a book and name Knute the smartest person who ever lived. Every time Knute does something apparently idiotic, we later learn it was brilliant. He plays 4-D chess and we just have to wait and see how things unfold. That is the Amalek story. God said kill them all. Saul left one standing by the name of Agag. 600 years later Agag's greatest of grandchildren Haman tried to wipe the Jews off the face of the planet. Shoulda listened to God. That's the moral.

Well, my argument was an external critique; but one could make an internal critique that the NT is incongruent with the OT: it just isn't as powerful of an argument. — Bob Ross

Your argument if I understood it is that the NT description of God is the true God and to the extent the OT God is incongruent with the NT God, it does not descibe God. Yours is therefore both an external critique and an internal critique.

The greater part of of my point is that you cannot condemn the OT God until you define the OT God. Your definition of the OT God comes entirely from Genesis and Exodus. My post referenced the fact that the God of Leviticus and Deuteronomy describe a different God as is further modified in the books of the prophets. The Book of Esther doesn't even mention God's name. What you're then saying is that you can't figure out how to make the earliest renditions of God in the OT consistent with the God of the NT. The point is you can't make the later OT God compatible with early OT God either.

What does this mean? It means the sacred literature of the Jews and Christians describe an evolving God, which says nothing about God as much as it does the people conceptionalizing God.

But the whole question is whether the OT God is God. — Leontiskos

@Bob Ross

This made rethink this whole OP. My first response was going to be to point out that you're assuming a particular hermeneutic that might be subject to challenge. That is, you're asking whether Yahweh would fare well if judged as, say, an American citizen who decreed the annihalation of a neighboring community. My response would be that you can't ask that question because the OT context must be maintained, meaning that Yahweh is a character in a story with stipulated perfectness, so it must be better that Amalek be destroyed than it not. The OT God is the entity that literally spoke the universe into existence after all, and he should be trusted to know what ultimately is best.

But this is overly simplified, and it overlooks something not addressed (I don't think) in this thread regarding "What OT God do you describe?" As in, are we improperly assuming that the OT god is consistently described throughout the OT, and is the God of Genesis and Exodus the same God of Deuteronomy, and is he the same as described in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Amos? I say that because there is something very different from the God of Genesis who says "Let there be light" and later writings where God ceases to directly interact with the Jews, the prophets cease to exist, and there are no more miracles.

Early on God is anthropomorphic, gets angry, debates with humans, performs miracles, then he turns to a lawgiver and demands obedience to the law, and then he moves to what we consider more justice and righteousness based principles.

So what do you do? Do you say the OT God is actually different gods during different periods? Do you say he's an evolving god, changing over time? Do you just say the bible is a hodge podge of different books so it just isn't consistent? It would seem that if you can't say the OT God is the same God throughout the OT, you shouldn't be worried that the NT God is different also. On the other hand, if the OT God can be many different things and still be the same God, then he can also be the NT God too.

What is really being pointed out in the OP is biblical inconsistency, which is problematic only if you believe the Bible (OT and NT together) should be consistent as a single work. It's clear that it's not a single work and that it's not from a single author, so from a critical literary analysis, these problems aren't problems. They just give us insight into how the document was pieced together.

The hypothetical just seems to demand the conclusion. If all things considered, the right thing is to do X, we must do X. So, you then posit a god who is able to fully consider all things completely accurately, including how this might impede upon free will, and he says do it, then by definition, you should it.

If the computer says mate in 12 and it gives you the moves, then those are the best moves. I get how giving the moves might be wrong because it deprives the players the chance to play themselves, but there could be an instance where it's better not to all things considered.

Hanover

Hanover, you appear to be saying that as long as you are certain that the order cane from God, you are justified in the killings of thousands of people. Sadly, I think that most people agree with you. Today, Presidents, Prime Ministers, and religious leaders have ordered men to fly airplanes to drop bombs into buildings full of people, innocent or not. These are all considered to be legally justified killings, we no longer need to use God for justification. — GregW

Yeah, but you entirely misunderstand my post. If you posit that God, the knower of all, in fact said that X is the best course, then that is by definition the best course.

You are discussing politicians declaring knowledge of what God dictates to justify their behavior.

I agree that there are legally justified killings. If you commit a legally justified killing, then you will likely not be in trouble with the law. let's look at a hypothetical example. God asked a man to hijack an airplane and crash it into a building full of evil people. In obeying God's command, is he justified in killing thousands of people? Is this a justifiable killing in a court of law? — GregW

Your hypothetical assumes God assessed the evil of the people within the building and determined that their death would save the world from greater harm, or perhaps he assessed their just dessert to be death by airplane. That is, this was not the killing of innocent people, and it would go somewhere along the lines of any other preemptive response (like self defense) or just punishment.

This is not to suggest that when someone believes God tells them to do something that they are justified in doing it or that that there isn't real danger in relying upon what you believe the will of God is when you act. Your hypothetical, strictly construed, is that God directed the order, so here we know it was God's will.

We can hypothesize a rational basis for any decision. As in, should I use a baby as a baseball bat? In a typical day, no you probably shouldn't do that, but suppose the only way to save a village from complete annihilation is to beat back the attackers with a slinging baby? Maybe the act itself would bring such fear to the attackers, they'd leave the village alone for millenia. But this ridiculous hypothetical makes an important assumption: you know with certainty the baby as weapon will be effective, you know with certainty that there are no lesser alternatives, and you know that without it, your whole village will die.

How can you know all this? You know it because your hypothetical asserted it when it said the information came form God.

Back to Amalek. We are working within a scenario where we know God is talking to the actors in the story. There have been miracles of plagues and the parting of the sea and God seems to be having fairly open conversations with Moses. Presenting this story as myth, a work of fiction, but with a consistency among its characters, we say of course the response to Amalek was justified. We have a super-hero built in the story that is always right.

If God asked you to commit a justifiable killing, then you won't be in trouble with God. Do you wonder why the "God defense" don't usually work in a court of law? — GregW

There are legally justified killings. Self defense is an example. If you know with 100% certainty that your failure to protect others will result in death, that would be justified. Our hypothetical is usual in that it gives literally god-like certainty, so I'd say it'd be justified.

You are not obligated to nip that in the bud. The original premise is that God is perfectly good and not evil. God cannot and will not command you to do evil things, like murder. You cannot justify your evil acts by saying that God himself told you to do it. It is your choice. — GregW

God didn't tell you to murder. He asked you to commit a justifiable killing.

Else, given what Bob Ross has said, I am not convinced he would find this persuasive. He would ask whether it is permissible to "kill" a demon for their future crimes, Minority Report-style. Admittedly, I myself wouldn't have such qualms — Leontiskos

It's not a speculative preemptive strike, but one where we know what will happen if we relent because the warning was from God, not just some UN inspectors who might be wrong.

First, let me try to elaborate on the second consideration I gave. Consider this argument:

1. It is impermissible to indirectly kill an infant
2. Killing an infant's parents will indirectly kill the infant (if left to itself)
3. Therefore, it is impermissible to kill an infant's parents (for any reason, so long as you cannot support the infant)

Would you agree with that argument? Because anyone who accepts that argument simply cannot justify killing the Amalekite parents, regardless of what the parents have done, unless of course all of the infants can be supported. — Leontiskos

That's not correct because you've decontextualized a fantastic tale and are trying to plug in a few facts to 2025 western civilization.

Per the story, Amalek attacked the Israelites unprovoked from the rear, picking off the weakest after they had recently been freed from 400 years of slavery through a series of miracles. The Israelites were under divine protection as part of a covenant between God and the Israelites at that time. This attack characterized absolute evil directed against God himself.

The sole survivor's descendant of these Amaleki went on to try to murder all the Jews 600 years later. That is, Amalek are the metaphoric spawn of Satan in this story and boldly confronted the the very force of good (i.e. God himself).

So, to your question: if there were a community of demons, some old, some young, and some cute as a button, all of whom you know for certain will perform horrible acts of violence, destruction, and mayhem because God himself told you they would, are you not obligated to nip that in the bud?

Ron Burgundy, the greatest jazz flutist the world has known.

Some more rock flute.

There is no third party. It's just God and humanity. Next: criticisms. — frank

Are you fully and completely equating Jesus and God and saying God sacrificed himself? Maybe I'm not following what you're saying.

An overview of the problem you've identified and some of the criticisms and responses: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_substitution

The Rabbi, granting Chatgpt even got it right, is inventing a new kind of light to explain it when the simpler answer is that the author had no clue how light works OR the author was trying to convey something spiritual. — Bob Ross

Which part of the midrash or Talmudic passage cited do you contend doesn't support the interpretation?

My comment just points out you didn't explore those cites or other rabbinic commentary because you've already decided upon a hermeneutic that demands author intent determine meaning. Notwithstanding the Creation myth passages clearly provide distinct stories strewn together and you have no basis to suggest the original author(s) ever expected their tale to be taken as a literal account.

Is the interestiing part of Aesop's fox and grape fable that it accurately describes human behavior or that foxes can speak?

My point here is simply to say if you've arrived at literalist method of interpretation within the four corners of the document, you will reject others, but just appreciate you're using language differently.

Wittgensteinian speaking, you're a different form of life.

I see your point. It's a tough nut. Do we need to try to find some limit cases where we could speak of a programmer "intentionally" doing something via a program? And do we agree that the idea of a program doing anything intentionally is a non-starter? (just leaving Davidson out of all this for the time being) — J

I'm with you on this. I think we all talked about langauge with a sense there was something special that occurred in the conscious that would make it impossible to communicate without it. What protected this view was the Turing Test barrier, where no interaction with a computer could be remotely confused as human. Then all of a sudden (so it seemed) ChatGPT dropped, and while you can decipher it as not being a human, you can't really argue it doesn't perfectly appear to understand the questions you are asking based upon any inconsistent behavioral manifestation.

What this means to me is that the ability to engage in langauge games does not require an inner state. What this does not mean is that we can ignore what the conscious state is or that langauge does not provide us a means for that conversation.

This seems right in line with Davidson, because even by ascribing no intention to the program, we're able to explain the meaningfulness of its outputs by deferring that ascription back to the programmer -- again, without needing to be able to say specifically what these intentions are. — J

I don't think that works because Davidson speaks often of concatenation, which is the placement of a finite number of words into an infinite number of sentences. That is, we compose sentences of different meanings based upon the words used. AI composes from its database, which means the sum is greater than the parts. There is no programmer out there, for example, that went through and intentionally answered whatever question you might pose to ChatGPT. In fact, AI can create a program, which can create a program, which can create a program, etc. Suggesting you can, through the principal of charity, assume a rational and logical intent based upon a programmer's program 20 generations ago who had no idea of the data within the massive internet database seems quite a stretch to define Davidson as defining AI speak as meaningful language .

I’m a little confused. If malapropisms “by their very nature run contrary to the conventions of language” then there are conventions of language. So the very existence of malapropisms is proof that there is a (conventionally) “correct” way of speaking (else nothing could be a malapropism). — Michael

I can't imagine a language that lacks some degree of conventionalism and I'm not sure anyone holds that. There must be rules to a langauge even if you have full buy in to an internal mentalese. The question is whether it's entirely just a rules based language game or whether you're trying to find some other foundational structure. That's my point directly above related to Davidson's need to rely upon ascribing intent else he would just be a conventionalist.

In responding to @banno and your comments here, is that intent is a necessary component in Davidson's triangulation theory. This does not mean that we look into the heads of the speakers to decipher intent, but we have to ascribe it to the person based upon our assumption that they are rational and logical. "Ascribe" is the operative word, where we assume it and place it upon the speaker, but we don't pretend to know specifically what the intent is, but we do know there is an intent, but it's a black box.

Should Davidson not hold that way, he woudl lose the foundational element for meaning to exist and he would blur into a "meaning is use" position. His position is different than Wittgenstein, although he very much rejects private language and mentalese sorts of claims. I get why there is pushback against anyone who tries to oversstate the intent requirement and tries to turn Davidson into a metaphysician when it comes to understanding meaning, but I think the opposite problem arises when someone tries to ignore the importance of the intent for his theory.

Need not words
— Hanover

But I'll give them anyway. — Banno

That was a spellcheck error where it somehow put "not" instead of "more." You charitably read me as rational and deciphered my intent correctly. Very Davidsonian of you.

Is it different to say say "nice smile" or "nice painting of a smile" when referring to the Mona Lisa?
— Hanover
"Nice smile" picks out the smile. "Nice painting of a smile" picks out the painting. — Banno

Same referent though.



I'm a huge Hopper fan.

If a 16 year old is considered within the custody of his parents, would the parents be required to permit him to vote if that right were afforded him? Do they have a duty to get him to the polls? Can they withhold his vote to punish him for some offense? Can he only vote with the consent of his parents like in other instances (military and marriage) when they wish to be adult like at earlier ages?

there's no appeal to internal meaning or intention - doing so would result in circularity. — Banno

We must charitably assume the speaker is rational and presents his statement accurately to intent. This makes no demand upon deciphering internal thoughts, but if we dispense with linking what he meant with what I understand, it deflates to Wittgensteinian meaning is use.

"To understand the speech of another we must interpret in a way that makes most of his utterances true and rational, given the totality of what we take to be his beliefs, desires, and intentions."
“Radical Interpretation"

I take this as requiring us to construct intent from behaviors but also coupled with an assumption of internal coherence and rationality.. We're not getting into the speaker's head, but we are assuming intent.

All in all, I think education can help people of all ages to acquire a better perspective from which to vote according to their beliefs, desires and needs. — I like sushi

I'm obviously a huge advocate for education for education's sake, this being a philosophy forum and all, but unfortunately education is not what creates better people and better voters

Just get the scope right. Not really a problem. — Banno

Not sure what you mean here. Need not words.

He's saying that the expectation of intent goes into calculating meaning. He's not saying the listener actually knows the speakers intent. — frank

I agree with that. The interpreter applies the principle of charity to assume the speaker's rationality and logic, which assumes consistency of usage, but he's definitely not admitting to a tapping into the speaker's internal state.

But assumption of intent is demanded, else it would be a simple conventionalism.

The problem with using ChatGPT is that it's processing statements that were intentional. It's not just randomly putting words together. — frank

I'm not sure what you mean here. The sentences created by ChatGPT are truly compositional it would seem. That is, they are not just the random slamming together of simple words into sentences or the combination of preset sentences into paragraphs. Davidson often refers to "concatenation" which identifies the ability to create infinite sentences from finite words.

Explaining how oncatenation comes to be is a major part of his project. That is, how does meaning emerge as a sum greater than its parts.

I think it's a hard argument to make that ChatGPT is just an arranging finite elements into finite sentences. It appears to compose, to concatenate.

This ties into Davidson"s resistance to convention being the primary driver of meaning. Intent of the speaker is demanded, which pulls ChatGPT out from producing meaningful statements.

If that is the result, I wonder if AI disproves triangulation. AI under his theory speaks without meaning, yet I feel I understand what it means. But, should I say its lack of intent erases its meaning, am I not just demanding the secret sauce of consciousness into the equation? If that, he becomes just another dreaded metaphysician.

Somewhat perfunctorily, the goal is not to expose the intent of the speaker, but to note the circumstances under which their utterances would be true. — Banno

Is this correct though? I took the truthfulness of the statement to be the 3rd prong, not the 2nd. As in the "cat is on the mat" has meaning if (1) I believe the cat is on the mat, (2) I charitably infer your intent is to communicate the cat is on the mat based upon my assumption you are rational and logical, and (3) the cat is in fact on the mat.

I asked ChatGPT to paint a drawing of a painting. This creates a few interesting questions.

Is a painting of a drawing of a painting a painting or a drawing? Is a painting of a house a house or a painting? Is it different to say say "nice smile" or "nice painting of a smile" when referring to the Mona Lisa?

Are these questions aesthetic questions, linguistic, or metaphysical? Is a representation art, symbol, or a phenomenonal state?

Just what is the house?

The second prong of Davidson's triangulation requires ascribing intent to the speaker charitably assuming rationality and logic to the speaker.

Does ChatGPT satisfy #2?

If not, must we smuggle in internal state talk to maintain the distinction between humans and AI?

The PM's comments don't suggest that working, paying taxing, or serving in the armed forces are conditions that must first be met to vote, but just states that if society already treats 16 year olds as adults for other purposes, then to be consistent, they should also be allowed to vote.

Your suggestions are more problematic because they impose potential voting tests, enfranchising only those that meet certain criteria beyond just age and citizenship. Historically, those sorts of tests have eliminated the least powerful and traditioanally most discriminated classes from the voting rolls.

The age of majority is necessarily arbitrary, and I'm fine with it being 18. I do know that those underage can serve in the military and get married and do other adult activities, but that typically requires parental consent. Whether it ought be 16 and not 18, I suppose an argument could be made either way, but 16 just sounds awfully young to vote or to serve in the military.

But how are they interpreting it? How do they respond to the things Hanover said? If you would like to respond to a specific example, then here's one: why does Genesis describe God making light for the earth before the sun? — Bob Ross

I am not Rabbi Hanover, so I'll cite to ChatGPT, which is generally forbidden here, but I offer it to provide you a glimpse perhaps into what I'm talking about:

Key Rabbinic Interpretations:
The "Or HaGanuz" (אור הגנוז) – the Hidden Light:

Midrash (Bereishit Rabbah 3:6) and Talmud (Chagigah 12a) teach that the light created on the first day was a special, transcendent light.

This light allowed one to see "from one end of the world to the other."

Because of its purity and power, God hid this light after the first few days of creation and reserved it for the righteous in the World to Come.

The sun and stars, created on the fourth day, are seen as "cloaks" or physical vessels to carry light going forward.

Rashi’s View (Genesis 1:3):

Rashi, citing Midrash, holds that the initial light wasn’t the same as the sun’s light.

It was an independent illumination that allowed for the division of day and night even before the celestial bodies existed.

Philosophical and Kabbalistic Views:

Maimonides (Rambam), more rationalistic, tends to allegorize these verses and sees "light" as symbolic of form, potential, or divine emanation.

Kabbalistic sources (like the Zohar) associate the first light with divine emanation—a manifestation of God’s presence, not bound by physicality.

Literal Harmonizers:

Some rabbinic commentators, like Ibn Ezra, try to harmonize with natural observation by suggesting that “light” was created in a diffuse or unlocalized form first, and only later gathered or fixed into celestial bodies.

He suggests perhaps the sun already existed but was not yet assigned its calendrical role until day four.

Your questions (all of them), trust me, have all been answered in one form or the other over the past couple thousand years.