So will Trump do the right thing and bring all his troops in Asia home, before they get infected?
Or will he bottle out and start denying the seriousness of the situation?

the corrupt warmongering hag

Oh, those emails, scary stuff.

So Trump's Middle East policy has lead to a good place?

It won't matter soon once the virus becomes endemic in the Middle East. Smart move, Trump should pull out all US Troops from the region, including Afghanistan and Pakistan pronto, or they will either get stuck in endemic hells holes, or they will bring it back with them when they return.

device

Now we're getting somewhere, I new if I hung in there a pearl of wisdom would emerge.

I don’t call people names and compare them to cartoon characters. That’s the bag of you and your fellow travellers, who opine about character and divisiveness out of one side of the mouth while engaging in snark and ridicule out the other. Politics is all about division. If you cannot handle an opposing opinion it’s probably not for you.

I'm a political cartoonist, or hadn't you noticed? This is the only time I have used satire in referring to you.

Politics is not about division, it's about running the country in a way which avoids corruption and despotism. The fact that politics in the US has become about division is a failure of politics in the US.

Looks like being poor is a lifestyle choice, one that holds back the rich from even greater success.

Or bad luck. For having Trump as president I suppose.

It doesn't surprise me, as the US has a disjointed healthcare system. Boethius gave an exemplary explanation a couple of pages back.
I don't follow US news, but from the dribs and drabs I do hear I gathered it had already gained a foothold before anyone had noticed. Trump is a rabbit caught in the headlights, this was not supposed to happen while he was grooming his place in history. He will be nothing more than a bystander I expect, while the national security and healthcare organisations sort it out.

All you and your fellow travellers can do is imply that the people who reported on these questions are lying. But perhaps their claims are sincere while yours are mistaken.

Why don't you agree with folk on occasion and discuss the issues themselves, rather than this false them and us reactionary rhetoric?
You remind me of Dick Dastardly in The whacky Races.
Or is this all part of the Trumpian divide and rule rhetoric?

I already offered an extreme example of predatory lending, that of payday loans.

Apologies, looks like I was arguing with the wrong person.

My point was only that accepting that money lending isn't necessarily exploitative doesn't get us far in understanding the way it is used to exploited vulnerable people. The adding of value to the capital borrowed only really happens in business borrowing, in which a sober financial calculation is made. Whereas personal borrowing tends to be more to do with a remedy for poor financial planning, or issues around poverty.

I am in line generally with Kant's idea that people should not be used as a means if you can help it. Well, having children in order for them to take care of the elderly or having children to outpopulate your enemy is using children for a means. What is the cost of using people like this? The suffering person that will be born. Think of the suffering not how they can be used, or how much YOU think THEY should enjoy this or that part of life.

I agree with the notion that people should not be used as a means, but again it is not that simple because the species has developed in a way in which parents are used at times by their offspring and offspring are used by their parents. Reducing natural human societal behaviour into idealological arguments is not of great value. Likewise it is not helpful to view procreation as the fault of the parents. It is a natural human state for babies to be born, the parents are merely continuing the processes of human life when they procreate. It is actually more helpful to look at humanity as a whole. Indeed I am very much of the opinion that humanity is one organism, one animal, which has divided into individual beings so as to take advantage of its situation.

The point is that if there is something like Ebola in the world and physical diseases of all sorts known and as of yet unknown, who are we to throw more humans into that and cause more suffering?

Some of us see the possibility of a bright future for humanity and indeed the world. Admittedly it's not looking very rosy at the moment. But it is not necessarily the prerogative of any individual to decide the fate of future generations, in the light of current conditions.

Many lenders aim at borrowers who are not adding value to the capital. They know how many people find it easier to spend money than make it. Those who borrow for other reasons than to add value to the capital, are often short of funds for one or more of a myriad of reasons and become exploited by the lender to varying degrees. Often the people who are the least able to repay are leant at the highest interest rates. There is a lot of money to be made from " chuggers ", people who only make the minimum payment on their credit card each month, for example.

People are just a helpless bunch, aren't they?

And what if they are born with flat feet, so the army doesn't want them?

I was watching a documentary last night about a specialist children's hospital. There was a child born helpless with numerous serious health conditions. The specialist team had worked tirelessly for a number of years to keep her alive, with a good quality of life. This must have cost millions, her parents where poor. They didn't have to pay anything towards her care. Everyone there was working and living in a nurturing loving lifestyle, in which money didn't figure.

Will she find a proper job when she grows up, to pay the healthcare bill? And what if she is too lazy to do the work?

You are mistakenly assuming that the destitute have the money, the knowledge, the method, the ability to implement, and the time it takes in order to do all these things...

Here in the UK the privelidged classes are of the opinion that the poor choose to be poor, it's a lifestyle choice. If they don't like it well they can get one of their rich daddy's friends to give them a job, or set up a business making face masks for example. It must be their choice, or they would do something about it.
Now we have a rip roaring right wing Tory government, they say it out loud. It's time to punish the poor, for holding us back.

So, it will be a very interesting systems-analysis case to compare how things play out in Europe compared to the US after the pandemic (that one, among many, reasons to have a social safety net system is to have the institutions already in place to deal with these sorts of black-swan events).

Yes interesting, with the UK transitioning form the high welfare provision of Europe to the low welfare provision of the US. The effects of the pandemic combined with the Brexit folly and a hard right populist government, the UK is going to go through a top to bottom crisis. The government are clowns with no grasp of what is going to happen over the next year. There will now be a succession of businesses going under, even today the Flybe airline went into administration. Also there are large numbers with no sickness provision living hand to mouth in what is known as the Gig economy. These people will have to keep working, often working with the public. Also there are large numbers of people who are two or three pay checks away from destitution.

The NHS is chronicly underfunded, in crisis and understaffed, with vacancies for 100,000 nurses. While the Prime minister says the health service is in great shape and ready for large numbers of poorly people if there is a pandemic. What a joke.

Better buy more toilet paper...

You must have been reading my mind. You are not usually this illuminating.

Why is it apparently never enough simply to say that I cannot doubt the occurrence of certain experiences? We can build our knowledge up from our own experiences.

Normally I would agree with you, but this thread is about certainty. So when you have certainty about an experience, what is it you are certain of?

I agree with you when it comes to questions about the unknown. I don't use the word believe, for the same reasons you give. However I have no issue with the philosophy of epistemology. Jtb is appropriate for philosophies which address human issues, humanities, politics etc.

But this thread is not about that, it is about certainty, the certainty of reality. So jtb is irrelevant and we both have to rely on logic and a kind of thinking which ignores human issues, beliefs and ways of thinking.

This leaves me at the position expressed in this phrase. "I know, therefore there is something"

Sh*t this might go viral.

”I think, therefore I am”.

I prefer "I think therefore there is something". Because it can be debatable what "I am" means.

The problem is that we can't be certain about what we think we are certain about. Or what it is, or what is real and what isnt real.

For example, we don't know what consciousness is, or at least how it comes to exist. We do know with certainty that we have an experience, which we call consciousness. Also we don't really know what I am, what, or who, is having the experience.

So we are certain of something, but there is little certainty of what exactly we are certain of.

Right, this was the point I was making. Fundamentally art is something to get inspiration from, not something to get meaning from. However, this does not mean that art is something we cannot get meaning from.

I can't see where there is a disagreement between us.

I hear what you are saying about pandemics, but I agree with Benkei, that this virus is so highly contagious that it is different to the other pandemics.

I can't see anyway to avoid it becoming globally endemic. The only way we are to avoid this is through effective vaccination, which will take over a year and to administer it widely will take a long time.

Are you alright, did you get out of the wrong side of the bed this morning?

Firstly I wasn't aware that I was having an argument with Janus. Secondly, I'm not a eugenicist, I'm discussing the effects and efforts to combat coronavirus.

You can't be mistaken that you're conscious and have a mind. You could be wrong about the properties of your own mind, or about what, exactly, consciousness is, but you can't be wrong about the salient points: you have a conscious mind.

Yes I agree that one, apparently, can't be mistaken that one is conscious and has a mind and that as an explanation it is generally sufficient. But this thread is about certainty.

So when it comes to certainty, one has to consider alternatives to that certainty, however irrational they may be. Merely their possibility means they negate that certainty.

In reality the human mind finds itself existing in a place surrounded and built upon impenetrable unknowns, including circumstances where logic fails us too. This being the case your assumption that consciousness and mind exist as we experience them and that this is certainly the case is vulnerable to criticism of the extent and relevance of human knowledge to reality.

The only thing we know for certain is there is at least one conscious mind. Everything else is speculation with no justifiable foundation.

We can't claim to know what it is that exists. Our experience and knowledge of conscious minds may be naive, mistaken, or a fabrication.

The only thing that anyone can be sure of is that there is something. But they can't be sure what it is, where it is, or how it came to exist.

We have 12 new cases in the UK today, some of whom contracted it in the country, from an unknown source. Apparently there has been a jump to 1,000 in Iran, I expect this is an underestimate. Also South Korea is saying that efforts to trace people who have had contact with infected individuals is failing. So it is showing signs of spreading more widely now, with countries failing to contain it.

How about part of the response is not having children?

I sympathise with your sentiment, but it is not that simple. Say some regions do that and their enemies don't then their enemies will overpower them in the future. Also there is the demographic problem of an aging population not being supported by younger people.

I think some kind of managed reduction in population is the way forward. However what is more likely that we will have an unmanaged, unplanned reduction.

On the plus side a great depression or collapse might contribute towards ameliorating the effects of carbon emissions.

Yes and it might sober us up a bit, from this drunken populist malaise.

I hear you, there is the issue of how people and leaders address this crisis. Do they close borders and prevent the spread across the world, while crashing their economies. Or do they just let it in an take a hit to their population.

It is a catch 22, where do we turn?
Hopefully a cure all vaccine will be produced, but that may take more than a year and then God knows how long to administer it. Also it may mutate and the vaccine might not be very effective.

Perhaps this is the corner we turn towards the fading out of our civilisation.

Thanks for that I'm a big Coltrane fan.

I agree with your observation of an artist not knowing what he/she is creating subliminally. I have an insight with many artists of how they are trying to reach this subliminal narrative. For me Picasso is the clearest example. I can see how his style developed, what he was trying to achieve, how he struggled and so often failed to grasp his vision. Also his subliminal messages.

Indeed he addressed this directly in his Vollard Suite, a collection of drawings in which Picasso explores the artist's studio of an artist attempting to capture the beauty of life itself with the aid of his lover and muse. Over the course of the suite he lays his psyche bare, I doubt it was his intention, but it is there for the perceptive viewer to see.
Here is one of the earlier sketches

And here is one towards the end of the suite where Picasso( in the subliminal viewing) has become a blind, impotent Minotaur, a figure he was to become in his later years. Crippled by his loss of virulence, youth and new vision.

The intentions in the conscious mind are only a small part of what is going on.

Yes, this nails it, along with the fact that an artist is informed by previously being a viewer of art.

So art is a touch stone through which artists and viewers of art live an aesthetic narrative. I see the spiritual angle come back into view here.

I'm surprised he hasn't said it yet, that coronavirus is a Chinese plot. If thousands of US citizens die, what will the spin become. Maybe, it's all for the fault of Congress, they tied my hands. Or thank the lord that I was able to reduce the deaths to only a few thousand.

And whatever the spin is his base will drink it up like the elixir of life. Drunk on the power without reason, or justification, just neat raw power.

But "decadence" actually means in its original sense, in French, "Death, dying, the dying process".

Thanks, I get it now. There was a part of me thinking something along those lines.

Regarding the 2%, I agree with your view that it is a low mortality rate. The problem is that in our modern societies allowing 2% of the population to die without trying to prevent it is anathema. So we will commit economic hari kari and probably still loose 2%.

The only choices available were all against their interests.... Not sure if that can be attested to control and manipulation of information or just plain ole untrustworthy insincere political leadership.

Here in the UK, the populists most certainly did manipulate the information and media, including social media and persuaded two specific constituencies to vote leave in the EU referendum. So clearly voting against their interests. The unfortunate thing is that it is probably irreversible now.

While in the process of politicizing the Coronavirus, Trump claims that the Democrats are politicizing it.

It's known as Munchausen's syndrome by proxy. All the populists are doing it, it's a well known snake oil salesmans trick.
To illustrate, I have experienced it myself, as I have a relative who suffers from the condition. She would walk up to me and knee me in the leg, then immediately fain a limp claiming that I had kneed her in the leg. The people witnessing the deceit, don't know who kneed who in the leg. But will believe the deceiver because they are skilled at reacting as the victim and the person they actually kneed is shocked and confused, so appears less plausible.

The populist Home Secretary in the UK government is doing it at the moment against the top civil servant in the country, leading him to resign and state that he is going to sue the government today.

I don't know if you realize the pun you uttered.

I still don't, where is it?

In that sense, the somewhat hysterical media reporting might end up being helpful, slowing the spread significantly

I don't see it as hysterical ( that may be the media I watch), the hysteria spreads readily. I live a long way from the nearest case of the virus and already I find myself modifying my behaviour, I was in my local supermarket today and people were clearly panic buying (discretely), including myself. And this in a country of 66 million and only 23 confirmed cases. Basic food stuffs had nearly sold out. Imagine what it will be like when there are a few thousand, or hundred thousand cases.

I'm preparing for the point where the country is locked down and we are all told to stay home for a few weeks, or months. I know it is not certain that this will happen, but better to be prepared.

It will soon have a foothold in many countries without the adequate resources to prevent it becoming endemic. This means that in future travel will have to be severely limited, if we are to keep some countries free of the virus. Also we don't know how effective any vaccines are going to be.

The fact that an artist is a connoisseur of art prior to making the piece informs the piece.

Maybe it will wake us up. Maybe we will continue to be jerks and only deal with crises when they are upon us.

Yes, hopefully we will wake up. I think the younger generation are ones who can see the challenges. Most of the older generation are either hiding their heads in the sand or reverting to a world view from about 50 years ago. This inertia has always been our downfall, turned opportunity into malaise, or stubborn defiance of change. Well change will be thrust upon us now.