The specialness could be seen, from the alien outside observer viewpoint again, as possessing consciousness and reflective perception. We are the only species that knows they are going to die as one example, so they say.

Now that is only special to us because we can appreciate it but perhaps other species with similar intelligences could also appreciate it as special. From a none (relatively higher) consciousness being's perspective it would not be special. Any of the animals you stated above of course would not see it as special.

So I suppose the question of special is, to whom? and only those species with similar traits would see those traits in other species as particularly special.

Some interesting debate has been had from a so called 'creepy and disgusting' thread eh? :)

This is why "special" seems a random label designed for something, rather than reflecting something. I don't know why. That said, i am most closely aligned with antinatalism, so showing my hand a bit. I think you've got it right - we've inserted this term without sufficiently defining it so we can continue to have babies despite overwhelmingly good reasons not to, for the most part. Not a moral argument here - I just cannot understand the press to consider babies 'special'. They simply aren't. They're one of a billion and useless, without sucking out resources from the world around them. I want the reason that gets past this.
I note the two arguing against me are (most likely.. Don't want to put my foot in it) coming from theological positions. I accounted for that, so unsure I need continue answer those challenges without the reason I'm after articulated clearly. — AmadeusD

You seem to be going on the assumption that society acts in perfectly rational ways and so why aren't they making the perfectly rational designation to devalue childbirth for the good of the greater society.

Most politics in populism. There is quite a bit of overlap with was discussed in my previous post a few weeks ago on humans following traditions, 'just because', when most times they are irrational.

Look at the stupid laws that stay in place like drug prohibition and euthanasia because of the puritanical views about both. No guys I am not a Puritan! as many here have accused me of being just from my OP.

Also on that note, for those who say it is Puritanism to say sex is somehow dirty, in the great words of Paulie Walnuts of Sopranos fame (paraphrased), "pi**ing, shi**ting, and fu**ing all take place within a few inches of each other, did you ever wonder why that is?" You can dress up having sex as much as you want, calling it beautiful love making or whatnot, but it is still getting pleasure from those waste expulsion orifices. That is a biological observation, not some theistic moral judgement.

As I have thought about this over the last few days there are many similar paradoxes in life - the union of the man and the woman begins in beautiful lovey dovey and can so easily turn to hatred, abuse and custody battles and even murder of the spouse.

Forgot the other examples but there are plenty when you think about it a bit.

I suppose it is just the age old yin and yang at play.

What it is is precisely something that will grow to be able to do those things. — Leontiskos

Indeed, it is like buying stock with potential. They know that, as a human, it has value.

However I would not say that is why there is the urge to protect the baby. It is rather it is just an instinct. Likewise how a man finds a woman attractive it is not some rational calculation that she will provide good off spring. A man just finds her 'hot'. It isn't a calculation that a person who finds a baby 'cute' is saying to themselves 'one day they will maybe be the next Einstein'. They just have the instinct to protect them due to natural selection having favoured those before which did so.

The OP seems to express a familiar Protestant hatred of sex which Denis Potter beautifully expressed in The Singing Detective. — Tom Storm

Here you are glossing over/ignoring the many times I stated it is not MY view. I guess you just skimmed a couple of the recent posts.

I think we are on the same page, for once, if we agree that both the value of sex and babies are an anthropomorphism.

Both the view that sex is good/bad and babies being special is subject to being a human. Of course some do not feel the same way such as asexuals, gays have different value of beauty, sociopaths will not care for babies or other humans, but by and large a normal example of a person in society is expected to view babies as valuable and special.

It is simply a product of the usual Darwinian urges is it not? like how humans are social creatures in general, and other rules of thumb that make up the traits of the species. As how fish are expected to swim and monkey expected to climb. There are exceptions where it isn't but by and large that is what is expected of the average human specimen.

A mother is expected to love her child and indirectly the larger society they are in are expected to see the baby as special because that is what keeps the species going. So it can simply be said it is natural selection because if that wasn't the case neither of us would be here typing and the mothers and societies that didn't see babies as special didn't continue their progeny.

There's nothing inherenlty good about a baby being born. Its often bad for all involved. — AmadeusD

You seem to be conflating what is objectively useful from what society deems as valuable.

You can say the same about a beautiful woman. They are not valued outside of the human realm but most guys will drool over her, while she has her best reproductive value at least.

Also in turn society values them highly. If you think it is perfect egalitarianism go to a nightclub on your own on any weekend and see how you are treated by the bouncers compared to attractive an woman. Many other examples but that would be the most stark.

As the old saying goes 'women and children first'. That leaves men at bottom of the barrel.

I suppose I was discussing a fact of nature in my OP, so your response is a correct answer to my original query. However I was not aware at the time, that my value judgement of sex being dirty or whatnot, again not talking from a Puritanical point, just that it can be hot and nasty and also fun, is probably a societal view so perhaps better to shift the goalposts now to the societal aspect.

They are not telling anyone how to live their lives. Only the right wing does that. They have the more rigid ideology, which expects everyone to conform to their beliefs. Any dissent from that is seen as moral failure. — Questioner

Well, to play devil"s advocate and precisely what I meant in the OP, that is exactly what the Right are saying the Left do, in the form of 'wokeness' and demanding everyone use new genders to refer to people and such.

Though I would say that the super wokies are not representative of the majority on the Left, however the closed mindedness you point out on the Right is probably more prevalent. I say probably as I have not bothered to think about it much but in general the Right are less 'tolerant' of other's ideas as a fundamental part of the party/political views whereas that is not the case with the Left. The authoritarian wokeness trend seems a more new phenomenon, I would trace back to the 70s, where it started with noble goals but become 'runaway' ideology with finding more and more things to be outraged about just for the sake of adding fuel to the movement rather than it being legitimate injustice.

The left can coherently tolerate the more extreme views of those on the right without accepting them. — Banno

I am not sure this has to be about tolerating extreme views?

Also the term tolerance seems to be a sticking point which lends itself to the interpretation it must tolerate extremism.

I would say that the positive ideals of the Left are that they welcome diversity and difference as diversity is healthy just like sexual diversity in dna and such.

So on this interpretation it is not inconsistent to welcome diversity but be intolerant of those who don't welcome it. Then the Right might say 'but why don't you welcome our views equally?' then I would say because they don't encourage inclusiveness.

As I wrote that it reminded me of where I got that from recently. David Pakman made a good point that the Left welcome diversity but the Right in general see difference as a threat and want to protect against it. Tighter immigration laws, more guns to protect your stuff and so on.

He put it much better but that is the gist I recall.

Although the names of political parties can be meaningless, in this case it seems to ring true that Conservative is in line with their values to want to conserve existing values and resist change.

Overton Window — Leontiskos

Lol any time I have read that phrase it has been in some Right wing conspiracy article. Similar to 'cultural marxism' and 'Great Replacement' and talk of 'European stock'.

If you don't think that conservative politics struggle not to appear heartless, you're probably in an ever-shrinking minority. — Pantagruel

Exactly what I was getting at in my OP.

The Right try and claim the Left are just as/more intolerant which I don't think is true from an unbiased point of view. Of course they would say I am biased, being on the Left, so I could never give a fair appraisal and they will say 'we are just as tolerant or even more because of xyz', Usually the xyz is that they are anti-woke and bastions for free-speech.

The left and right are mutually intolerant because they are motivated by incompatible ideas of freedom. For the right, individual freedom takes precedence over social freedoms (i.e. opposition to free-market regulations). For the left, social freedoms surpass individual (hence anti-discrimination laws, which essentially sanctify or at least codify tolerance).

An orientation that prioritizes social freedom still includes a real residuum of individual freedom (for example, what is not explicitly prohibited is allowed). But an orientation that prioritizes individual freedom inherently destroys social freedom, because the residuum in that case consists only of what remains after private discretion has run its course ("trickle-down economics" of freedom).

So the left implicitly allows for the existence of the right, they simply require them to constrain their acquisitive behaviours within the limits of social functionality. The right makes no such concession. In Kantian terms, the philosophy of the left is universalizable, the right, not. — Pantagruel

That seems a good roundup of Right and Left.

I think I want to get more to the nub of my question.

Could it be said of an outsider Alien race looking in that the Left's policies were more tolerant than the Right's?

I am thinking of something like the Starfleet Federation from Star Trek right now. They are enlightened Left aren't they? Isn't this vision of interaction rationally more appealing than the selfish every man for himself, let the strongest survive, of the Right?

"that person" — Outlander

First time I am learning referring to someone as they is improper. Nowadays it is improper to assume gender and be told off of 'misgendering'.

"that person" — Outlander

Doesn't make sense to me, perhaps a language difference thing? Nitpicking anyway to look further.

since you had previously mistakenly mentioned my post as something derogatory, thus priming my expected use of "they" to include multiple persons as opposed to it's actual use. An understandable misunderstanding. As it were. — Outlander

Yes I see, no problem.

Perhaps the OP's underlying sentiment can be likened to how coal (a crude, dirty material) is the only way that results in diamonds (highly valued and generally clean and pure material) from otherwise violent, messy, and mindless forces. — Outlander

This is the one and I don't see anything creepy or disgusting about stating such.

One 'them' made 2 comments in the derogatory - that my post is creepy and then followed up that it is disgusting.

Rather than some noble interpretation that Jamal states I read it more in the "shutdown this line of enquiry because it deviates from the societal norm" in the cancel culture type of vein.

Them? — Outlander

You are not familiar with them being used to refer to a person in the singular?

Also let's not forget the 'new' none binary gender!

one which is probably closer to the way T Clark sees things. I mean the view that sees the idea that sex is dirty or that the animal in us is something to be ashamed of or to transcend—that this idea itself is what is offensive, rather than sex or the "bestial". In other words, it is disgusting that people find sex disgusting. — Jamal

That seems a very charitable appraisal of them calling my post creepy. Seems you are assigning your own interpretation.

It seems the much more likely evaluation is they said it is creepy/disgusting simply because I am talking about sex in probably what they think is a puerile manner; one which they deem as socially inept which is usually the reason for calling something creepy.

I just shared what I found to be a biological observation that there is an incongruence between the base act of sex and the happy act of baby productions.

You are misinterpreting what I was saying. I am not saying sex is dirty in a Puritan type of way. I am saying it is nasty in the 'sexy' way. Like you want your girlfriend to be nasty in the bedroom. That is not to be prudish. Quite the opposite. It is to embrace the nastiness and revel in it.

I am not making value judgements about it. Sex is nasty by nature and that is all fine. I am only pointing out the juxtaposition between nasty sex and sweet coochy cooo babies which result from the act.

I had thought of another corollary which is salient. Manure is also thought of as nasty and yet that feeds the soil to produce good healthy crops.

But in light of T Clark's scathing analysis — Outlander

Again this bandwagoning is what I see far too much on other forums. As soon as one negative post comes, others seem to get their courage and pile on.

This is the saddest, creepiest OP I’ve ever seen on the forum. It’s worse than even Hanover’s true stories. — T Clark

Best thread on TPF in years, OP. :up: — Outlander

Why turning to base trolling and name calling I would expect on other forums?

T Clark you are the one also made the 'low effort' "get help" response in the very productive Suicide thread that many are enjoying so not going to put much stock in your comment.

I am not saying the OP has the highest intellectual vigour and was rightly placed in The Lounge but there is no need for guttural replies as there it was an honest observation and don't see what is 'creepy' about it. If you want to say it is creepy then say why, as this is a Philosophy forum, not just a little hit and run insult.

Seems your delicate sensibilities are easily offended.

Tolerance is often insufficient. It will not do to simply tolerate divergence while still despising it. The further step is to accept divergence. We accept multiculturalism, LGBQTI+, disability and so on as aspects of human variation. Racism, we don't accept, but tolerate; that is, we refrain from denying them civil rights or using coercion against them so long as they abide by the law. This is quite different from accepting racism itself. Acceptance applies to people’s identities, capacities, and ways of life; tolerance applies, in limited fashion, to people whose doctrines we reject. — Banno

Ok I see the term tolerance is problematic but kind of part of the question, but the following replies have cleared up the conflation.

The original accusation was clearly a low effort 'gotcha' by the right anyway, not one to be taken to be serious.

I have no idea what AmadeusD means by me strawmanning myself.

The quote I made is the stawman that I want to unpick.

Although it isn't serious it can lead to a serious debate on what the Left accepts (shall we use that instead of tolerance now?) and what the Right accepts? There seems to be a bit more jockeying over Right wing vs Conservative - I would see them as one and the same for the purposes of the discussion?

It would be those who you would commonly expect online to be complaining about 'woke Leftists' ruining the country. I happen to agree with most of what they are saying about wokism and cancel culture which creates a terrible landscape where people are afraid to have open debate.

That is why I touched on that in the OP and said I would also stand against that.

I am more thinking about your average Left leaning person who might enjoy David Pakman for instance. He too is against what I mention above. Sam Harris being another good example of public faces in the kind of sphere I am discussing.

I would say ideally a 'good Leftist' is one that is accepting of others while now becoming domineering about rooting out 'evil' where there may be none just for their own need to feel important.

The Right who criticise the Left for this and the Left that do it I would say are 2 sides of the same coin. The Right will call anything not Trumpist/MAGAist as woke nonsense and the wokey Left will likewise try and shutdown any discussion about legitimate issues such for example if any men want to gather to discuss issues they can often be out picketing as it is 'patriarchy'.

I would add that a moderate Conservative or Leftist could have thoughtful and intelligent discussion.

I suppose it is like average religious people vs. fundamentalists. All religions get along side by side in cities from day to day but the tiny minorities of extremists are the ones that are most visible and cause the most trouble. Though in this case it is far more than a tiny minority on the Left and Right who are the troublemakers.

Here in Australia — Tom Storm

Speaking of which, it is an aside but, why is Sky News super right-wing and even conspiracy pandering, yet in the UK it is pretty even. Well I can answer that myself as I looked it up the other day - because the Australian arm is still owned by infamous tabloid giant Rupert Murdoch yet the UK one was bought out, by someone else, who I forgot now but certainly more even handed in their writing.

incommensurability between the act of sex and the effect of procreation — Leontiskos

Indeed.

Most things are of a like kind to produce more of the same.

Not sure how to articulate, but living a certain kind of way produces more of the same. If someone lives a life of abusing their bodies they can expect results in kind. If someone eats healthy they can expect healthy results.

I suppose what I mean is that sex is nasty by nature, and nasty in a good way, due to being naughty, but babies are like a wholesome thing. It is like a strange alchemy where one base material produces its opposite.

Do you find satisfaction in Buddhism? — Jeremy Murray

Kind of. I would still much prefer my old life back, but it is like my hand has been forced to seek out something else and Buddism has a lot of explanations for the suffering.

I find lots of it ridiculous though, so have to pick what I take, as, while they claim to be non-theistic, it is still steeped in religious dogma, such as reincarnation, fantastical supernatural acts, like the Buddha could supposedly levitate and other such silliness.

This is when you look on contemporary Buddhist forums as well and if you question those things you are told 'you do not have faith'

I don't really read much into that now. Sam Harris has done a good analysis of this, taking the good rational bits and throwing out the nonsense.

The problem of evil is avoided, for one thing. — Jeremy Murray

Don't know what you mean here. Sounds like a misinterpretation. Nothing is avoided in Buddhism, it is all to be accepted and detached from, good and evil, until you do not care one way or the other and move past the dichotomous world.

Do you find any solace in talking about these things? — Jeremy Murray

Not much though I am indulging myself in this thread. I prefer discuss other philosophical subjects.

It is fine at the moment, or I wouldn't have posted, but not something I actively seek over other philosophical matters.

deep dive — Moliere

Deep dive you mean a life downswing? I usually see that term these days used just to mean heavily researching a topic.

There is ample archaeological and paleopathological evidence that ancient humans, including early Homo sapiens and even Neanderthals, cared for and cared for their fellow tribesmen with serious injuries, disabilities, or illnesses. This is evident in the traces of old injuries on the bones of the inhabitants of that time, and yet, later in life, the tooth enamel of such individuals often appears better than that of their fellow tribesmen (they ate pureed food). This is interpreted by scientists as evidence of healthy group members caring for the sick or disabled. — Astorre

Interesting and good evidence of our sociability being a core aspect of our nature..

reddit seems to make big mistakes — ProtagoranSocratist

I think that is very different. They get to a size where they are too big to fail and think that everything they do is right and people will keep coming no matter what.

Lol why do you need him to ban you? I often just delete my saved credentials from forums, usually because people are rude and troll when I am being, what I feel is, nothing but civil. Don't rely on others, be self-sufficient.

However, why don't you wait and see what the new forum will be like? which I know is a big topic around here at the moment. I personally doubt it will be any improvement to this, and don't like this one much either as I prefer older fashioned forums, but I have said my piece on that already in the dedicated thread.

It is testament to the general quality of discussions that I stay despite my dislike of the user interface.

have you read Ligotti's book or the pessimists? It's depressing stuff, but I found comfort in it. — Jeremy Murray

No but I did philosophy as my degree and Existentialism was my favourite, with Political Philosophy second, I would say, for very different reasons. I remember eagerly waiting the year it would be studied proper and when it came it did not disappoint.

Yes Camus said that about Sisyphus; they pretty much all were saying the same thing weren't they, from different angles, as per my comment above, to embrace the absurdity of life through living authentically.

As I wrote in my reply to @Moliere this was well and good while things were working out for me through that hard toil of 'living authentically' but when life hit reset for me does not feel fair, while others still get to carry on their own paths unfettered, and I am once again disillusioned.

I suppose that is the absurdity part, which I am not accepting.

Btw why do @ mentions of users seem to work for others but not me?

what has gotten better is my ability to live with depression, and that's made a huge difference in my life satisfaction. — Moliere

This was me after many years thinking I was finally finding my stride and then I got hit with chronic illness and it just tumbled the whole house of cards.

Before it felt like life, while difficult, could be enjoyed if I, and others, worked hard enough to achieve it but being struck down just as I felt like I was about to start enjoying all the fruits of my labour has made it all seem worthless and that anyone can be smote at any time.

Most annoying to still watch others enjoy their lives in blissful ignorance.

I know lots of people deal with various chronic illnesses and still enjoy life but for me it has stripped away my ability to engage in what I devoted my life to for about the last 20 years.

If it happened when I got older and it was expected then I could have felt like it was inevitable and accepted it more but I feel I have been shot down in my prime.

Now I just feel like why bother when it could be taken away at any moment. I have tried to find new things, like picking up philosophy again in joining this forum, which I do enjoy, but I don't think anything will ever replace my first passion. It just feels like 'plugging the gap' now until my eventual demise.

It has certainly made me see the nature of impermanence which the Buddhists would say is good.

I haven't looked through the replies yet, so don't know what's been discussed already or if I am retreading old ground, but I saw the title in passing on previous visits and the idea percolated in my head to some thoughts.

I joined this forum again after many years of not thinking about anything much philosophically after finishing my degree almost 20 years ago (wow!).

The intent was to just toy with ideas for the fun of it like the old Greek boys.

I actually became disillusioned with philosophy at the time of finishing my degree, having thought for a while before that, before completion, that it was going round in circles and many philosophers were saying the same things, just from slightly different points of view, and that it was mostly impotent.

This made me in the following years read more into the hard sciences as they were very clear about goals and achieving them with rationality.

Now though, having come back to it, with this forum, it has reminded me how it can be enjoyed just for its own sake. One of the awful issues when studying for a degree was, while we were studying very interesting topics, there was such pressure to meet deadlines that there was very little time to enjoy the subject matter.

It just felt like a constant conveyor belt of essays and exams, which it was. You could only pick one topic per semester as I recall and due to the tight deadlines it worked out better to just skip the rest once you picked one you wanted to write an essay on as it effectively 'wasted' time that could better be spent studying for that one subject/philosopher you chose to do the coursework on.

This outcome dependence really stymied the enjoyment.

I think I stated my point enough on that.

A 'useful', in the real world, Protestant work ethic sense, application of philosophy would be areas like politics and ethics.

It's a dark thought, 'life will only get worse' but perhaps an accurate prediction, in some cases. — Jeremy Murray

Sure it is but it is my life experience which has drawn me to this thinking.

I feel that the eras I have passed through have gotten worse with each decade, and that is not even considering the health side of things. 90s were the good old days in my mind with people just seeming to get stupider and stupider as the years have gone on.

You can call it classic cynicism of aging but most seem quite happy in middle age compared to me now. Maybe it is superficial and they are suffering too but they certainly don't seem as motivated as me to reject the status quo.

The Buddha too became 'disgusted' with the wheel of samsara which pushed him onward to find a better way.

I'm glad the discussion has continued on despite the timid early posters with their wrote and trite 'get help'. This is a very important area of study for philosophy and when we studied it at university it was not shied away from, as it should not be.

From the top of my head Kierkegaard’s leap of faith, Camus in his embracing absurdity and various other flavor generally espousing the same with most of the Existentialists. This is a fundamental question for philosophy to tackle and not something to brush aside. Philosophy should tackle the big questions.

It does feel like 'concept creep' has affected this issue in the way it has with many progressive interventions — Jeremy Murray

Hehe concept creep is a good way to put it if I am understanding you correctly in it being a slippery slope to normalise suicide for what seems lesser and lesser maladies.

I was watching a documentary on assisted dying recently which is current in the uk due to their passing some prelims in parliament for it. It went to the States to interview people where it is legal as well as Canada.

What I thought 'silly' was how some disabled people were rallying against it, for the future creep idea you propose, envisioning a holocaust type scenario where they will be shuttled off for their lethal injections.

They are saying they want to keep it illegal because it makes them feel 'unsafe' and in so doing forcing others to suffer who will not have access to it. Pretty selfish I thought for their paranoid hypothetical. I get the sentiment but it is another case of over reaching just like black lives matter and metoo - as in there is a kernel of truth where it is justified but blown out of all proportion.

I was thinking of a more radical idea. What if it was instead taken to be super cheap and easy to do with little checks at all, if someone felt like it? Buddhism and other eastern philosophies say how all is impermanent and suffering in this world. Never mind the reincarnation fantasy mentioned above and other metaphysical nonsense it is steeped in.

From a coolly rational point of view wouldn't it be better to let it be a simple matter. If we can divorce ourselves from the idea of life being precious - which is really only Darwinian impulse, then why not?

A Buddhist practice is to imagine you could die after your next breath. Perhaps there would be a more light feeling to the world if you knew you could end it simply at any moment.

who began whinging in their teens and never stopped. — Tom Storm

Sounds like usual 'alpha male' rhetoric.

In the last few years I feel like the only guarantee is life will get worse and worse so what is the point?

"Just because" is usually the reply or some prettied up version of it.

My parents are elderly and either they or their peers are talking of an ever growing list of health issues. You can do very little of what you used to enjoy so why wait to reach that stage? "Just because".

The live fast die young adage seems better. Also from an evolutionary perspective we weren't 'meant' to live past our 30s anyway so pretty much fighting against the tide. You can say it is part of our nature to fight against our nature, but, as above, why? if the only reward is worsening health.

My mother often tells me about putting money into pensions for when I am old but it seems like retirement is a scam. Build loads of interest for the banks and you spend on stupid superficial stuff when your body is broken and not really able to enjoy it.

Euthanasia for the terminally Ill is one thing. — hypericin

It doesn't have to be terminal illness. Chronic illness is torture for many. Complex illness is largely ignored by the medical institution.

Read this discussion about infinite scroll — Jamal

The time it took to load that link is case in point lol. Discourse takes like 20+ seconds for me to load a page. Phpbb very quick.

It is like the latest windows versions require greater and greater hardware requirements in the name of 'progress' when I can run linux just fine on cast off machines from family members from a decade or more ago.

I don't care what people say about infinite scroll, won't change my mind. Pagination worked perfect and cannot envision a case where infinite scroll would be better since I value conserving resources and that is the opposite "load everything to get to the part you want in a thread" rather than jump to specific page. If I am wrong, don't care, don't like it!

EDIT: Ok I did read the thread. I see a message claims that 'posts are loaded in and out while scrolling just the same as with pagination'.

Maybe true but I just prefer the old style even if performance is 1:1 the same, just because that is what I first learned and liked. Don't care if it is nostalgia or what. I hate social media too maybe because it wasn't around when I was young but I think I would dislike the vapid nature of it even if I was young when it was already established.

I have always despised 'booze culture' and that has been around for a long time before I was born.

So much this. — Outlander

Right on. Time for a 'hard fork'? :yum: would probably be a community of 2.

Well, respectfully, it is because I could pick a host of things I dislike about current forums - the bloating and infinite scroll, the overly 'busy' design and litany of options which do little, imho, to improve the experience. Maybe improve the addictive nature, like with the social media sites they are based on, but do not add anything positive over a simple text forum.

I opt for things like command line email clients though which is not most people's cup of tea so not expecting to win anyone over.

Lol, then we have nothing more to discuss on this matter.

I see. Thanks for explaining. I had never looked into it tbh. I know a lot of forums use discourse these days and simply have not had an interest since it is not the old school aesthetic I like.

I have been toying with the idea of making a forum or two myself for a while - nothing to do with philosophy - and I quickly decided I would choose phpbb if I ever use one.

I too have been a coder for some years, though haven't done it in a couple of years now. Not coding directly but adjacent skills of admin of server running and command line stuff which I also enjoy.

Can I ask why you have gone the subscription and premium forum software route rather than free and open source?

Being honest the choices I read above about Discourse being 'slick' to paraphrase seemed rather trite.

I am a wholeheartedly biased open source advocate.

Also biased in that I much preferred forums from the early naughties in my formative years of the internet when phpbb was top dog. I still prefer that forum software in this day and age of emojis, reaction scores, and other social media inspired forums with added content and phpbb is still an updated project.

Not saying that will sway you just that is what I prefer. I have come to enjoy the ragtag motley crew especially our raucous and polarising Uncle Boethius so will go to whichever y'all go most likely just that I prefer clean and simple forums like phpbb. For the subject matter which is about level headed rational discussion I don't see why you have to be 'trendy' and go with the most flashy forum software of the moment with its related costs.

Lol, I thought I would check @boethius's new posts and came upon this thread.

I got a lot more out of your anarchism/communism discussions which seemed much better rooted in actual historical precedent, backed up by the source material which I further explored. It seems your content has veered far from the vigorous philosophical subject matter I first came to respect you for when joining this forum.

Maybe all these what ifs are true to your life as @Jamal indicated but I don't see what these extremely idiosyncratic scenarios have to do with the 'price of fish' (to use a British colloquialism) here.

I understand if someone, for instance, suffers a violent attack they may have much more awareness about threats in the future. It is whether the vigilance is rational or not. If it becomes hyper-vigilance where they were afraid to leave the house then that is not helpful, which seems akin to these extreme hypotheticals you are posing here.

From your postulating, this forum does not seem any different from other businesses in the UK, and all businesses in the UK should shutdown immediately to pour over these possible risks.

Of course nothing is 100% and any other company would be open to the risks of being sued you are proposing here.

I am finding it tedious how "I asked chatgpt..." has become the "let me just google that" seemingly overnight.

Also more annoying is when people will respond to you by interjecting AI answers into a discussion. What is the point of discussion forums if they are just going to regurgitate AI content?