Comments

  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    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.
  • Does the idea of incorrect questions make sense?
    Colorless green ideas sleep furiously
    was composed by Noam Chomsky in his 1957 book Syntactic Structures as
    an example of a sentence that is grammatically well-formed, but semantically
    nonsensical.
    PL Olcott

    It would have a bit more bite to it if he replaced "colourless ideas" with an actual colourless idea.

    Green angles sleep furiously
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    yes, they aren't the Palestinians in Gaza though are they? They aren't the Palestinians that just raided the towns and the music festival and slaughtered innocents?

    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.

    The question isn't "can some Palestinians co exist with Israel without violence?", obviously they can. The question is, can ALL Palestinians do that, to the extent that it's a reasonable request to open Gaza up? I really think it's immensely clear that the answer to that is no.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    I have no idea what you're trying to say here.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    It doesn't have to be genocide. A lot of people just want the Jews to willingly leave.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    I think it's very unfortunate that we've come to focus on exactly how they were slaughtered. Beheaded, burned alive, slit throats, stabbed through the heart, shot... It's a complete red herring to focus on this I think.

    Did they murder them? Did they torture them? These are the two questions that are relevant.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank


    While I think it might not be right to ban the phrase, Palestinians chanting that ABSOLUTELY mean "from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean sea, Palestine will be free of Jews."

    Ignorant westerners trying to virtue signal don't realise what the chant really means.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    it does mean that if Donald trump gets back in power, we risk another coup attempt. You don't need all of a group to do something terrible for something terrible to happen
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Most Palestinians are just regular people.frank

    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
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    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.

    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?
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    it was almost certainly a made up number. the hospital doesn't house that many people, not even half that many people, and the number came out immediately after the explosion - there wasn't even enough time for them to count the victims before people were spouting off '500'.

    It's amazing what Hamas can just say and the whole world will believe.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    It's not conclusive, no. Al Jazeera is of course just a propaganda machine, AP at least has a history of being more objective. We don't have conclusive proof one way or another, but everyone immediately believing what Hamas said was a mistake.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank


    Fyi AP seems to be confirming now, based on the evidence available to them, that it was most likely a Hamas rocket.

    https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-war-hospital-rocket-gaza-e0fa550faa4678f024797b72132452e3

    My comment that "it would sound like it's incoming no matter who shot the rocket" turned out to make a lot of sense I think.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    I don't see why you would expect the sound of the missile to be different. I understand that incoming and outgoing missiles sound different, but from the point of view of someone near the hospital, that missile would be "incoming" regardless of if it said "courtesy of HAMAS" written on it or "IDF", right? It was "incoming" either way, regardless of its source

    I see you're asking the same sort of question
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    from what point of view was the video taken? Near the hospital?
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Egypt ethnically cleansed their Palestinian population?
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Now, they have to face the consequences.javi2541997

    Do they? That doesn't look like that's what's playing out to me.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    I don't think those comments matter right now. I can agree with every single word of what you said about Israel and the old testament and still not have an answer to the question I asked.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    He's simplistically boiled down the issue so that he can take the opportunity to criticise his rival to the world. "Give Palestine independence and sovereignty" is OF COURSE ideal, but how do you do that without putting Israel at even further risk?
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Of course Putin the peace keeping expert can teach them how to achieve peace.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    looks like less than half of Israelis support a 2 state solution. Looks like a huge portion of them recently were in support of the "status quo", which... is nonsense. Sure, you're prospering under the status quo, but you can't possibly think Palestinians are going to accept things as they are permanently.

    Seems like a lot of Israelis don't want to solve the problem - as long as they're happy, everyone else can go suck a lemon. Very disappointing mindset from them.

    After this attack, though, I wonder if the number that support the status quo has decreased. It probably has, but not in a way where they want to find a solution that also works for the Palestinians. Really unfortunate.

    Seems like it's just unbridled hate on both sides. People suck.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    maybe I'm just disagreeing with how you're stating it as a general principle, rather than stating it just specifically as what you think about this specific situation. In general, I don't think he principle works.

    In this specific situation, it might of course be that doing nothing is clearly not the correct answer, but not because of your general principle.
  • Argument for deterministic free will
    oh I thought you were referring to something more robust than general ignorance
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    No not really. If you're analysing the choices available to you, and "do nothing" is an available choice, then the risks involved in doing the other choices can absolutely be a factor in deciding if maybe you should do nothing instead.

    You're hiding in your wardrobe. There's a murderer in your house looking for you. You haven't heard him in a minute, you don't know where he is. You could leave your wardrobe and run to the phone to call 911, or you could try to run to the front door, but you don't know if the killer is still in the house and would kill you if you did those things, or you could do nothing. Why isn't the risk of future death in this situation a good reason to do nothing? I don't understand.
  • Argument for deterministic free will
    Every single group of observational data ever collected is consistent with Free Will,LuckyR

    I don't know what you're referring to here
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Future risks are not a good argument not to do anything now.Benkei

    Of course they are. If doing one thing now raises the risk of some other terrible thing happening in the future, that's absolutely something to consider in your decision making. I don't see why it wouldn't be.
  • Argument for deterministic free will
    but to an outside observer who has true insight (in this example of Determinist universe), would see that as Determinists claim, the idea of choice (and thus a true decision) is an illusion.LuckyR

    I don't see it that way at all

    you're presenting as if the program and the algorithm are two separate entitiesLuckyR

    I don't think I am. The rating algorithm is one part of the program, I don't think my words implied otherwise. There are of course other algorithms in a piece of software that chooses a chess move.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    I never said it should be a death sentence. I brought up the statistics to support my statement that a really, really large percentage of Palestinians do not want a two state solution. Obviously children and infants aren't counted in that, because they don't vote and they can't decide anyway.

    For a two state solution to be viable, Palestinians have to want it.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    So low?ssu

    No. That's high. How in the world do you interpret those numbers as low?

    https://apnews.com/article/hamas-middle-east-science-32095d8e1323fc1cad819c34da08fd87

    Fatah, the party you're comparing it to, has 14% support. So no, not low.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    https://coopwb.in/info/how-many-palestinians-support-hamas/

    What is the current Palestinian sentiment towards Hamas?
    According to a PCPSR survey, 58% in Gaza and 42% in the West Bank support Hamas.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Again in my opinion, wrong.

    I think the majority of both Israelis and Palestinians would want peace and accept a two state solution. Especially surprisingly many Israelis have totally clear and reasonable understanding of the conflict.
    ssu

    Majority of Palestinians support Hamas, which lists in its charter a goal of eradicating the Jews entirely.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    And why this isn't possible?ssu

    Majority of Palestinians don't seem to want it.
  • Argument for deterministic free will
    Firstly, if antecedent state X ALWAYS leads to resultant state Y, there can't be decision making going on since there are no other choices to choose between, it's always going to be Y.LuckyR

    That doesn't seem at all obvious to me. An agent who doesn't know what the future holds can still undergo a process of "decision making" even if that agent is fully deterministic and it will always make the same decision given the same starting state.

    A deterministic chess program for example, which looks at a number of legal moves and decides which one it "likes" more based on some position-rating algorithm
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    As far as I can tell, both NATO and the UN have investigated claims of Hamas human shields and found them to be truthful.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    And I also don't see what Hamas' long term goal is, getting thousands of civilians killed for some prisoners doesn't look like a price worth paying.Manuel

    I also don't understand what they wanted to accomplish with this. But it's obvious Hamas doesn't care about civilian deaths. There's a reason they set up their military operations in schools and hospitals. Palestinian civilians are nothing but human shields to Hamas, and at best future recruits.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    That said, Israel exists and is unlikely to go away. So, efforts to annihilate it are futile. I frankly feel a two-state solution is the only viable option, but doubt that is something Israel will accept.Ciceronianus

    I share a lot of your view. I personally doubt that it's something Palestinians would accept, but two-state seems to be the only viable solution outside of one side massacring the other
  • To be an atheist, but not a materialist, is completely reasonable
    about half way through but what a beautiful video.

    I've seen quite a lot of veritasium, he's great at making all sorts of math and science things more interesting. Brilliant presenter.
  • To be an atheist, but not a materialist, is completely reasonable
    Wonderful study.

    However, you said prior in the conversation that this couldn't be accounted for in materialism. Why not? Everything involved in this process interacts with each other materially. There's no fundamental reason why the cause of synchronised heart beats couldn't be physical. Sure, there's energy involved, but like, just normal energy that physicists talk about right?