I think the two biggest problems that the decline of oil presents are energy production (and storage) and transportation.

Right now oil and it's products, like gasoline, performs the job of both being the source of energy and also being the battery which stores it. A tank of gasoline is like a very cheap and very powerful and very portable battery that holds it's charge for a very long time. In the past this was far an away the easiest and most efficient mechanism for getting shit done and is largely responsible for the last 100 years of human success. If the reality of our dependence on this doesn't change before oil becomes too costly, our quality of life will be the thing that changes.

Solar panels are looking to become the new source of most of our electricity, and right now the cost of solar energy is actually starting to approach levels similar to that of coal...

The recent advancement in batteries and electric cars made by Tesla are pretty impressive. If we can make batteries that are stronger than tanks of gas ever could have been, and electric motors that don't cost too much or break down too easily, then it's entirely possible that we will see fully electric farming/construction/demolition vehicles.

Regarding the vast periphery of products which come from oil, I wonder how much quantity is required to fill our needs in that regard? Chemicals for medicines for instance would not theoretically be required in vast quantities, and with cheaper and usable electric based methods for material processing of various kinds, replacement materials could become more economical for use in the host of products we could come to rely on.

It's my hope that the transition away from oil will indeed happen quickly, spurred by market innovation which might finally make sustainable energy sources, electric batteries, and electric machinery, more economically efficient an option. If not then we will become somehow impoverished as we run out of the substance which is currently fueling our lifestyle.

I want to further discuss hate speech and censorship in general, but I feel that this would be a different topic of the thread, which was to acknowledge the authoritarian left. Do you all think I should make a separate thread or should I just post about hate speech here? — Chany

Please feel free to post that here. Censorship is central to the issue of this thread, and while the point I wished to make was slightly different, it is still more than related to the existing discussion.

Cheers!

May I kindly suggest that you discontinue using the internet following the oral consumption of rolled hashish? :-| — TimeLine

Just to get this out of the way, I will try to be straight forward: You presented an example of sexual harassment in the workplace to establish that we do regulate some speech, but you also implied that hate-speech "keeps people from employment". I pointed out that all forms of sexual harassment, and more, can be covered under existing harassment and human rights laws. You went on to point out that "Research has shown that people who have "foreign" names have a unlikely chance of getting a job interview; it is that invisible discrimination that I made reference to vis-a-vis the ramifications of hate speech in the broader context. ". Please explain what you meant by this. Was it meant as a partial justification for having broad hate-speech laws? (above and beyond the current laws of America, for example). If this is what you meant, can you explain how the mechanism of forbidding certain speech will actually change what you refer to as "invisible discrimination" for the better?

Are you talking about the riots? Because, again, perhaps since I was talking to another member you may have missed it, I do not condone it and I hardly think that discussing hate speech laws somehow means that I do. I assume from the above-mentioned that you disagree with the mob mentality? If this is what you are talking about, as in, what the rioters have done, I agree. I still think the riots were nevertheless a product of many cultural and legal failures within the United States. — TimeLine

I'm not accusing you of anything except subscription to a few bad ideas. Since you asked if my motivation for defending free speech was sympathy to white supremacy (context: I framed you as wanting to send white supremacists to re-education camp), I was simply making it clear that my reasoning is if we do violence to otherwise peaceful racists, we're actually committing a worse crime than racist speech. Whether it's by mob or by legally sanctioned incarceration, using force to revoke the right of individuals to hold opinions and to communicate them peacefully, regardless of how offensive they might be, is inherently a bigger potential threat to democracy than the potential threat of hurt feelings.

Hate crimes based on race, ethnicity, skin colour, religion, gender and national origin have a higher probability than crimes against someone with cellulite on their elbows. — TimeLine

The definition of a hate crime is that it is based on the aforementioned collection of demographic categories, they're just instances of sufficiently offensive speech as they apply to those specific groups. But why should we have a more severe penalty for something that in your view is a much more common crime? Because ridicule for obesity is more rare than ridicule for race or gender, it somehow doesn't count or is less of a crime? Is there really that big a difference between offending someone based on race or gender and offending someone based on obesity?

People don't like a lot of things about the law and there are certainly risks. What I fail to understand here is that you are saying 'force us all to adhere to the linguistic rigidity' but is that not what the first amendment is doing? — TimeLine

The first amendment advocates for the very opposite of linguistic rigidity being forced upon us. It enshrines freedom of expression, for the press and the people, and goes on to establish the right to protest and petition the government for a redress of grievances. These values are the upshot of free-speech, but the downside is that sometimes hateful people say needlessly hateful things for no good reason and try to claim it protected political speech. We have many civil land criminal laws which do a pretty good job of separating legitimately harmful speech and behavior from actual political speech, and the upshot with these is that we get protection from many forms of physical and emotional abuse. But if we over-do these laws, we run the risk of doing damage to the utility of freedom of expression by over-censoring too broadly (see: obscenity in humor and vaudeville vs burlesque), or accidentally censoring something that really ought not to be censored (see: liberals in Moussilini's Italy and Hitler's Germany).

I understand you do not advocate for the kind of mob violence seen in the earlier video, but there is a kind of equivalence between someone like Milo being legally arrested for the things he says (under a hate speech law) and being a target at large for a group of ideologues who (illegally) shut down some of his speaking events; both deprive him and others of their freedom of expression and freedom to peacefully gather. I suspect that if there were laws explicitly protecting certain groups, (lesbians to name an example, due to the outrageous things Milo has said regarding them) that Milo could conceivably be arrested for speech and actions which are more than reasonable sources of offense on that basis. We both scarcely agree with Milo, if ever, but do you think provocateurs like Milo ought to be legally sanctioned for their speech in the form of fines or incarceration?

So it sounds ridiculous? Yet, it is not ridiculous to say that everyone else should adapt to the rhetoric of the far right? Why and what exactly is your reasoning here? Do you sympathize with white supremacy? — TimeLine

You were appealing to the notion that since people have subconscious biases towards names that sound foreign to them we need to somehow ban or enforce speech and language laws which will reduce this bias to give a fair playing field to people with foreign names. Right?

So what you're proposing is to revoke the right to exist in society of whichever swaths of the political spectrum and their associated speech habits which you think winds up making employers behave favorably towards people with familiar sounding names? Riiiiight?

I was joking that this would entail sending people to re-education camps, which is a clever way of saying "incarcerate them for thought crime and wash their brains of their filthy ideas". It's just that this seems like something a very authoritarian government would do...

I don't sympathize with white supremacists, but I sympathize with any non physically violent group being crushed by another group through violent force in a depiction of might makes right because if we allow it to happen to them we're in principle allowing it to happen ourselves. One day, the mass offended might begin to find you or your ideas offensive and they could use your own precedents to silence you...

the amendments themselves are unnecessary and could have once perhaps been used as a guide but now redundant amid changes to our understanding of human rights and freedoms, particularly following the Nuremberg trials — TimeLine

So are you saying that free speech is now obsolete because we know what should and should not be said? (for instance, the need to outlaw national socialism/racism?).

In Australia, we have legislation - namely the Racial Discrimination Act that legally enables perpetrators of racial hate speech to legal account without flagrantly opposing freedom of speech. There needs to be a clear disproportionate harm caused by the hate speech to ever risk the human right to speak freely. The freedom to communicate - particularly on political subjects - on topics of public interest is fundamental and plays a very important part in Australian culture and democracy. One important element is that it needs to be a case-by-case - procedurally thus within the common law jurisdiction - that assesses this proportion. — TimeLine

I simply don't condone a law that makes it illegal to say something in public that causes offense just because it's on the basis of race. Why not make it illegal to offend people on the basis of hair color? Body-weight? Height? Etc? Keep in mind if someone is actually engaged in harassment (which goes beyond merely uttering a single statement on a sidewalk) then harassment law can legally sanction them without the need for special cases of race based offense.

Being politically correct is emotionally considerate and sensitivity to the feelings of others is laudable, but to force us all to adhere to the linguistic rigidity that is required to spare all possible feelings sacrifices too much to preserve too little (the gaps in existing harassment law).

Free speech is about having no punishments for expressing views, not about providing a platform from which such views can be expressed. — andrewk

Very true. We are not entitled to hijack any platform except the top of a soap box. Specifically my concern is that by force third parties are trying to shutdown the private platforms of others. Protests, letter campaigns and the like are wholly justifiable presuming no laws are broken in the process. And it is a sad truth that people have been getting the professional axe for beliefs and statements made which wound up being severely unpopular. Even though sometimes this has resulted in the clearly unfair firing of individuals (see nobel prize winner Tim Hunt who was fired because of what he thought were funny jokes), we would be remiss to oppose it in principle. Slander, libel, and privacy laws I think are suitable for determining what kinds of letters you should be able to send to your political enemies' bosses or publish about them.

If there is evidence of the 'antifa' movement systematically advocating violence against fascists, it needs to be brought out and discussed. I am not aware of such evidence. Rather, it is the fascists that advocate violence, as we saw in the Trump rallies where he encouraged attendees to beat up their detractors. — andrewk

Advocating for violence is technically criminal. You can get away with it by being vague or veiled but any pundit worth their salt won't be caught directly doing so.

What really caught my eye about Bray's interview was the part where he is describing the antifa movement, specifically about what gets headlines he says: "And so, as I’m sure you and, and the number of listeners are well aware, there been high-profile instances recently, such as in Berkeley, of trying to physically shut down events that has raised the profile of anti-fascism.". And then goes on to tacitly condone it:

Interviewer: "Physically confronting people, that's part of the strategy, right? "

Bray: "Yes, it is. It’s an illiberal politics – [laughter] - of social revolutionist applied to fighting the far right". "

I would like to resist appealing to video evidence I would probably source from youtube, (perhaps it will be inevitable), but there are more than a few recent examples of protest groups, some labeling themselves as antifa, using violence, force, and assault to disrupt and shut down the speaking events of some controversial speakers and groups.

What I will say about trump is that while he did condone violence (I mean, comon, he's an idiot: BIGLY), the extreme behavior Mark referenced is more consistently, and surprisingly, emerging from the left. Specifically young ideologically driven ultra-progressive minded students, some claiming to represent BLM, others claiming to represent ANTIFA, and many other ultra-progressive groups are carrying out such actions at large and sometimes seemingly at random. There is separation though, an inconsistency, from the academic sources of their political ideology and calls to violence or violence itself. The former serves to somewhat stir emotion while advocating for peaceful resistance, while the latter occurs in the fog of protest when emotions are in the moment further inflated and people make regrettable decisions like hurling a rock, macing a reporter, blocking entrances/exits to the event being protested, and sometimes worse.

This is in all likelihood the "instance" of "illiberal politics of social revolution applied to fighting the far right" that he was referring to. I would say this behavior in response to a mere speaking event is sufficiently similar to the original blackshirts to warrant my framing of them.

I wouldn't say "people are born gay". But I also wouldn't say "people choose to be gay". Nobody really chooses everything when we get right down to it (another story though).

Genetic and epigenetic biological influences can give rise to hormonal predispositions toward masculinity and femininity, and cultural developmental experience and norms can shunt people toward whichever societal norm will tend to feel right for them (along with every aspect of "identity"). When someone's biology and experience leads to their particular (in this case sexual) identity that really doesn't fit any of the existing social molds/niches, then the result you get is labeled "deviant" simply because it is statistically anomalous.

It's a mistake to think that the "moral argument justifying homosexuality" begins with the burden of proof falling to the pro-gay crowd. It actually needs to begin with a condemnation of homosexuality, which can then be rebutted and rebuked (quite easily I might add), otherwise we would need to sit around making moral justifications for every random thing: "moral argument justifying trees", "moral argument justifying albinos", "moral argument justifying soccer", et cetra...

This, in turn, stipulates that the amendments themselves are unnecessary and could have once perhaps been used as a guide but now redundant amid changes to our understanding of human rights and freedoms, particularly following the Nuremberg trials. — TimeLine

So the American Constitution is just a redundant guide then because we once convicted Nazis of war crimes?...

Let's see where this goes folks...

... tensions of positive laws such as rights vs. freedoms, ambiguity in legal frameworks is necessary to enable common law jurisdictions to assess on a case by case basis and apply decisions according to the fundamental rule that the intent of the law itself was developed by the principle of protecting the people. This is how landmark cases here is Australia - like Mabo v Queensland - were applied by the high court and why our government continues to try and challenge it. — TimeLine

I really don't get what this has to do with free speech clauses, but O.K.

You're still not getting it, are you? You are consistently attempting to justify pernicious acts by purporting the victims are the ones requiring flexibility and adaptation, on the contrary, it should be those that discriminate that should be adapting. It is almost a master-slave dialectic, as though the master - the far-right who you purport should be allowed to speak freely - while the slave - everyone else who you purport should adapt, the latter almost at fault for not. This is a incorrect way of analysiing the situation. How about we reverse your line of though here, that the far-right adapt by our acknowledgement of the madness of such extremism and extremist rhetoric, whereby a pluralistic and inclusive society dedicated to righteousness would ensure that it is the far-right that should adapt. — TimeLine

Wait a minute, are you still talking about odd names on resumes not being selected? How do we fight against people innately not calling to interview people with names they've never heard before?

I'm just spit balling here, but hows' abouts' we silence the far right and force "different name" mandates upon employers such that they need to hire more of the most oppressed class currently in America: The differently named.

"The far-right should adapt" in this context bears the same sentiment as "send them to the re-education camps". (Better finish that cirriculum ;) !)

You seem to be tossing in confusion as to your position and I think that it really quite simply lies in your misunderstanding of how the legislature functions. You are holding victims partially responsible for actions committed against them and this is an attitude and a barrier that requires elimination, as you say below: "If ideas in and of themselves make someone feel unsafe, then they've got psychological issues of their own that need sorting... Experiencing ridicule is a part of life... If someone told a joke at your expense, or stated an idea you are afraid of, contact your nearest adult.... " - Vagabond — TimeLine

I'm ridiculing you, you know...

I realize only now that it's entirely possible that me alleging "you should contact an adult" if and when your feelings get hurt could actually cause your feelings to get hurt (what cruel irony!). Which, theoretically, could trigger the draconian law you want to be put in place that will see me physically sanctioned for victimizing you with my emotionally harmful and therefore hateful-speech.

What level of ridicule need I muster for you to consider my speech ban-worthy? Does it all depend on your subjective and emotional reaction?

We can and do legislate behavior, but we ought not legislate against certain thoughts and ideas themselves, even if they can be emotionally or psychologically offensive.... " - Vagabond

What exactly is the first amendment then? Hence the necessary ambiguity. — TimeLine

The first amendment is the thing that tells the US government to NOT make any laws which abridge people's right to religion, or abridge their right to political opinions and to peacefully speak those opinions, for the sake of freedom, truth, and democracy.

You are still gobbledygooking, buddy. — TimeLine

How is pointing out that Trump is the largest recipient of verbal harassment in recent human history "gobbledygooking"? Care to substantiate your disagreement?

You're the one who equates any and all ridicule with land grabbing and bullying someone to the point of suicide, who equates free speech with national socialism, and is suggesting that constitutions are really just antiquated forms of guidelines from old dead slavers, but I'm the one "gobbledygooking"?

Ideological? As I said earlier, in Australia we have legislation that ensures all parliamentary bills adequately adhere to human rights principles to avoid corruption prior to being passed and changed into a law. If the separation of powers remains, corruption is minimized and laws are made by the people for the people. — TimeLine

I'm asking you specifically for example statements or ideas (not contextually enhanced bullying/harassment) which you feel, on their own, ought to be forbidden from public speech or topics of public discourse.

But how can we be sure that banning certain ideas is really by the people and for the people if we're then not permitted to discuss the ideas in question?

Please though, which ideas should we ban?

Whilst I appreciate your detailed answer, you have unfortunately misconstrued my point in use as the remarks were not an example of hate speech, but rather the absurdity to disregard hate crimes because no one was physically hurt. Violence needn't be aggravated assault and can also be emotional and psychological. But, I certainly agree with you nonetheless that it is wholly dependant on the particular circumstances; bullying legislation here in Australia requires a particular set of circumstances before it could be considered serious harassment - such as repeated behaviour that is clear and/or evidenced - that would enable the judge to ascertain the potential damage it could/has caused to the victim. Someone just yelling out absurdities once to a person is not considered bullying. Ambiguity in legislative terms is necessary to enable this judicial process to work effectively, something the positive, inflexible regulations in the amendments stifle. — TimeLine

By your own description the 1st amendment flexes to additional stipulations wherever we choose to add them. Anti-harassment laws are a good example which exist quite happily in US criminal law. If you can show that an action is a reasonable source of fear for physical safety or damage to property, that can be prosecuted. The existing laws in the end are meant to protect individuals, not broad demographic categories.

Research has shown that people who have "foreign" names have a unlikely chance of getting a job interview; it is that invisible discrimination that I made reference to vis-a-vis the ramifications of hate speech in the broader context. But, certainly, yes there are a number of protective instruments that empower workplace rights. — TimeLine

"Foreign names"... You mean any name that is too far deviated from what people are used to? Not: "typical names of foreigners"?. Research shows that race isn't a factor so much as the non-average nature of the names themselves. Turn out Deansandrae D'Squarius Green Jr. , Maleficent Constance, Dong-Quay-Lo (he got hired), Abdulla Rahman Al-Genin and Billy-Joe Cletus Brown all get the short end of the interview stick. But if you put photos on those resumes and give everyone typical names, seems to even things out. I don't know why people don't like different sounding names, but how do you suggest we fight this? All they need to do is abbreviate their name to something common in the header, problem solved. No hate speech (subconscious thought?) laws required.

Whilst your opinion is duly noted, unfortunately psychological harm is a great deal more vicious than mere pangs of cognitive and emotional development. Laws here have changed only recently (inclusive of my own petitioning) which we call Brodie's Law because of a young girl who committed suicide from the repeated bullying done to her by male staff. Psychological - and sometimes psychiatric - injury is serious and we cannot brush the circumstances aside and blame Brodie needed to sort out her own issues and the inevitable result was her fault. That is victim-blaming, again, your failure to see that the actions themselves are wrong despite the injury it has caused. — TimeLine

Experiencing ridicule is a part of life. Everyone is going to experience it at some point and we're never going to outlaw it altogether. What we do outlaw though is harassment and bullying. Quite obviously bullying and harassing women in the work place is not ridicule as a part of justifiable political speech. Nor is it merely "hearing an idea that makes you feel unsafe". I really don't get how you've taken the examples I've given of justifiable ridicule and instantly equated them with the worst sort of harassment and me with "victim blaming". We need better anti-harassment and bullying laws, or have them better enforced, not laws which rigidly outlaw words and ideas for our own protection.

Interestingly Trump would probably be with you in this. The amount of ridicule he has received over the last year or so might actually be more than any single person in such a short period of time ever in history. Surely if we outlaw all ridicule because of the deep emotional trauma that it might lead to then ridicule of Trump would at this point be the the majority of all crime committed day to day.

We can and do legislate behavior, but we ought not legislate against certain thoughts and ideas themselves, even if they can be emotionally or psychologically offensive. We can legislate the manner of their transmission and even some aspects of their content (is it harassing? Is it physically threatening?) but we air on the side of caution when it comes to outright banning the holding and communicating of certain ideas because to do so deprives us of the ability to actually understand the issues in question, thereby weakening the decisions of the public. Democracy is meant to function with a well informed public, not a sheltered one.

The founding fathers are old, dead guys Vagabond. They each owned slaves and it was the onset of executive corruption. Things have changed....

...This is just mere gobbledegook. It is not just about white supremacy and whether these extremists are more or less appealing is completely besides the point. Is it wrong? Yes. No. — TimeLine

So you hereby claim glorious and honorable right of list maker who lays great foundation for ideological future of mankind?...

Once and for all defining the forever-banned speech, ideas, and thoughts we must protect the world from isn't actually something we can reasonably do.

Should we hold a referendum on that instead?

P.S(.A) If someone is harassing or bullying you, contact the police. If someone told a joke at your expense, or stated an idea you are afraid of, contact your nearest adult.

This would actually increase the need for free speech protection. The right to be wrong can be important too, ironically most so in world where a ministry of truth actually exists.

The goal of a scientist is to discover truth, but sometimes the only way to do it is by exploring hundreds of false hypothesis while in search of what works; the examples provided to us by distinct untruth often proves a didactic experience. The right to be wrong is a necessary part of trying to discover more and more truth. Cacava is quite right to say that if we could only speak truth then we would never have anything (new) to say. Nothing new would ever get discovered and nobody would be permitted to voice a disagreement if they so happened to have one.

We identify rights when there's a need. I think the 1st Amendment was responding to a situation that doesn't really exist now. If Vagabond is right, that we should recall the value of free speech, I think that means we need to focus on what we're looking to address. Is it a looming Leftist Threat? Obviously not. — Mongrel

It's a looming cognitive threat at it's core. Fighting brownshirts with brownshirt tactics isn't inherently a leftist threat and thankfully the majority of leftists aren't engaged in the kind of chicanery I'm criticizing. It is out there though and it is more prevalent than I would like, hence this thread.

I do think there's a slippery slope of increasingly alarming physical threats which does justify the reaffirmation of free speech values, ideally before the slipping accelerates.

Seeking to have a speaker you fear dis-invited can be wholly proper, and you can even demonstrate against and protest the speaking event and the speaker themselves without infringing on the free-speech of others (it can be stupid to do though if you only give them free publicity). But when a protest crowd decides to block entry to an event, they're infringing on the right of the speaker to hold and share their own political views, and the right of every would be listener to hear them and to judge for themselves. Once doors are physically blocked it's a short march toward even more direct physical confrontation. Storming the stage to shut down an event and throwing rocks into crowds aren't your dad's social sanctions. Given their current prevalence, are they about to bring an end to the so called great social experiment of America? No, but at what point does the creeping of this fringe behavior and political mindset into media, academia, and popular culture warrant serious redress? It's mostly the young and stupid giving a face to these nameless idiots, but as they literally and figuratively grow up their ranks will be filled by the next wave of infants, fully charged with their own piss...

The fact that this behavior happens to be coming predominantly out of the left is for me like finding cat poop in my closet (but I don't own a cat), and so in a way I feel an extra obligation to find out just where it's coming from. The threat we need to address are the causes and lapses in society which are leading to such a severe erosion of fundamental democratic principles, especially in the younger generations which are set to become the most socially interconnected groups in human history.

The first amendment would not have been overly relevant in a fresh and new free America, but the founding fathers duly recognized it's importance none the less having seen first hand what persecuting particular religions, controlling and manipulating public discourse through control of media, preventing citizens from gathering peacefully, and preventing the protest of their own government could wind up supporting in the end.

I linked this particular video because he addresses the crux your post in a clever way. — Emptyheady

Indeed. It's bitter sweet for me that I am forced to give Gavin ample points here (probably because I've laughed at him too many times by now), but when he's right he's right.

I've been thinking a bit about the left right dichotomy in terms of how the correlation between the liberal/authoritarian personal rights spectrum and the collectivist/individualist economic spectrum is starting to be upset. Where once I saw the economic left associated with ideologically liberal principles now seems less certain. At the same time as the libertarian (economically conservative) right seems to be growing, a new authoritarian left is also taking shape in the form young progressive social media charged collectivists. The older liberal left (me I guess) now feels an odd kinship with the likes of Mcinnes and Farage and it makes me start to wonder whether there is some affable center we should come to in the name of actually promoting liberty.

Maybe the values of free-speech simply need to be re-learned in a new and increasingly connected world who for whatever reason was not able to digitally export them off the bat. The internet is itself a place that could be so drastically altered by draconian censorship that in some ways it's more important an issue than ever. I am just so continuously flabbergasted as to why people who I thought were like minded in this way are unable to come to grips with this reality while Nigel 'Frikin' Farage is already shouting it in exuberance from atop the Notre-Dame cathedral... It's like they're trying to change the character narrative of Trump himself from Dr Bannonstein's Igor into a sun-baked Quasimodo.

If someone says to woman "every time you bend over I get an erection" and she makes a complaint about it, saying "he didn't threaten to rape her" doesn't justify the original remarks that brought about fear and intimidation. Such hate speech can cause just as much damage in a variety of different ways including bullying, discrimination from and within employment, psychological harm to say a few. — TimeLine

What if a man says to a woman "you're pretty" and she makes a complaint that she felt intimidated but the man only meant it as an honest compliment? Even if a man were to be obscene in making a pass at a woman it seems that some reasonable context could be examined in court which can shed light on whether or not the remarks in question should be labeled as sexual harassment or intimidation.

On a dance floor for instance, especially depending on the kind of dancing, the every-time you bend over line wouldn't strike me as reasonably threatening. Given the fact that a dance floor is populated with many other people and potential witnesses, for instance, such a remark on it's own is not a sufficiently reasonably source of fear or reasonably perceivable as an attempt at intimidation. The point here is context matters. If the only stipulation that sexual hate-speech has been committed is that the victim feels afraid and intimidated as a result, then courts would be at the mercy of anyone with an emotional grievance resulting from any interaction.

Using an example of possibly sexually harassing words as something we ought to censor is actually a very bad example to use to make the argument for anti-hate speech laws because we already have a very detailed set of existing laws which handle issues of verbal harassment, sexual harassment, stalking, intimidation, and sexual assaults. The difficulties of trying to set proper speech standards for such dynamic, informal, and context dependent situations in and of itself is a legislative nightmare...

I'm not sure how discrimination from and within employment is facilitated by hate-speech, but there is also a rather large set of anti-discrimination law and human rights laws already on the books which are designed to handle cases of human rights abuses in the workplace (many overlap with the anti-harassment laws). There are many instances of speech that we can all agree are criminal, but we don't need to appeal to hate-speech for 99% of those instances.

Regarding the psychological harm that might be incurred as the result of experiencing ridicule or hearing an idea that makes you feel unsafe, these are the natural pangs of cognitive and emotional development in my opinion. If ideas in and of themselves make someone feel unsafe, then they've got psychological issues of their own that need sorting, and when it comes to ridicule, there's a difference between justifiable political speech which includes ridicule and verbal harassment or bullying. If I publish a client-patron anarcho-communist gift-economy manifesto I'm opening the door completely for the use of ridicule. Ridicule is often the first and last line of defense against bad ideas. Likewise if someone publicly publishes a picture of themselves on the internet and says "Am I hot?", they are opening the door very widely to ridicule and speech that we might otherwise classify has harassment. Context matters.

It is dangerous, yes, because not everyone can be like you and me where we could utilise the opportunity to dissect - perhaps psychologically or politically - the motivations that would compel a person to such ideological extremes. For most, hearing a bigot or fascist has greater ramifications as it can easily influence the ignorant who are politically compelled but have little learning just as much as it can fill people with fear and anger. — TimeLine

If you censor the very idea of white supremacy all you will do is give it the appeal of a forbidden fruit and increase the already inflated fear of it in others. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and if liberal and progressive morals and ideals really do have merit, then we should not be afraid to put them in the ring against any opposition. But deciding that the masses at large are not capable of making sufficiently rational decisions when it comes to the finer points of governance and ideology is to throw the baby of democracy out with the bigoted bathwater. And by absolutely protecting people from the emotional difficulties and occasional harshness of the real world you will be hampering their ability to develop any real resistance to it.

If I agreed though and we sat down to write out the list of every political idea which could possibly compel someone to an ideological extreme, how large would that list be and what would it look like? What if I felt that the tenants of socialism inherently provoke some people to the ideological extreme of infringing upon my natural land ownership rights? What if I felt that irrational religious beliefs inherently lead to terrorism? That very long and immutable set of every idea we forbid would be nothing more than an expression of our own imperfect moral and material assumptions about the very uncertain future of a very complicated world, to the exclusion of all others.

Because he does it so well, and because I agree with him so thoroughly, the late great Christopher Hitchens explains:

1 theological horse is defined as maximally dead
2 theological horse would be more dead if not just fiction

Therefore, theological horse cannot be non-fiction? Seems like it follows to me...

1. define Ariel as a maximally grrreat mermaid
2. Ariel would be grrreater if not just fictional

Premise 2 contradicts the definition of Ariel. If Ariel is maximally grrreat then she cannot possibly be made grrreater. Taking this into account, we can conclude that it is therefore impossible for Ariel to ever become non-fictional, or premise 1 is somehow false.

Let me take a different approach:

1 Quixflooper is defined as maximally zanquacious

2 Quixflooper would be more zanquacious if not just gonksploosh

By defining Quixflooper as less zanquacious due to being Gonksploosh in premise 2, you have either contradicted the definition of quixflooper as maximally zanquacious from premise 1, or it is actually impossible for quixflooper to be more zanquacious (by being non-gonksploosh), and here "more zanquacious" refers to some hypothetical impossibility because Quixflooper cannot possibly be non-gonksploosh.

I'm somewhat familliar with Gavin, and many other Youtubers as well; it's an interesting cross-section of popular culture. Gavin is one of the more outlandish pundits who cater to young conservatives (MGTOW and MRA crowd specifically IIRC). He's more or less a hipster amalgam of some liberal and some conservative values whose primary interest is protecting his man-flare/ (I took a moment to wiki him for more, turns out they call him: "the Godfather of Hipsterdom".... LOL!)

He sometimes rants about how kids should be learning how to build tables instead of playing video-games, but he's not a complete idiot. It's very easy for him to be a reactionary in what he perceives as the war on free speech given that his niche is oft branded as bigoted and intolerant by the outrage savvy proponents of the overly passionate left.

Giving non-profits the ability to act as a tax free campaign finance dump is a great way to make a mockery of the free speech we do currently have while simultaneously undermining the very reason we give non-profits tax exempt status in the first place. The conflict of interest between a non-profit doing work/favors for a politician who could then return them is obvious, but another problem is that this could easily circumvent any existing campaign finance law designed to balance elections toward a scale other than the deepest pockets win. super-PACS seem to do a good job of this already though(I think without the tax exempt status) so it's not as if this kind of tool is not already at the disposal of those who can afford to use it (or as if big money in elections is not a problem).

I cannot recall too many examples of the right calling out "treasonous speech", but this is certainly along the very same lines as the left using the "hate-speech" argument in order to try and have their political opponents censored. While I do agree with the principle of censoring someone who broadcasts "Hey let's all go kill these gays at this place and at this time" or "Here's how to comprise North-American ICBM defenses ... ...", but the risk we constantly run is when our own biases have us use these labels when it's not apt or accurate to do so. Saying "I hate Jews" is hate filled, contemptuous and entirely contestable, but it's not reasonably perceivable as a threat to anyone's safety, and it's not feasible to cultivate a society free of hate by legislating the emotions, even if irrational, that people happen to feel. Likewise saying "I hope the president fails" could somehow be described as a treasonous desire, but it is not a treasonous action nor in any way facilitates treason.

Both in the case of expanding free speech rights to non-profits and corporations, or attempting to contract free speech rights along the lines of moral sensibility, the intent and purpose of free-speech in a democratic and liberal society is undermined. People seem to opportunistically embrace these pitfalls when they happen to temporarily align with immediate political interests on both sides. Notably on the right with a desire to politically empower non-profits like churches because they mostly align with the party platform (although this is already an issue on both sides, just not on the left as an actual ideological position (the left opposes big money in politics in rhetoric only)), and notably on the left with the labeling of opposition as hatred fit to be physically confronted rather than intellectually/ideologically challenged and overcome. All I can say is that in all such cases we need to recognize and understand the fundamental importance of free-speech if we're to protect it as a democratic function from our own immediate biases.

As it relates to my intent with this thread, the contraction of speech (rather than the over-expansion of it) is more in line with the intolerance that typified the original fascists. Both are a threat to the successful functioning of democracy, but specifically in address to those who believe they oppose fascism while simultaneously silencing by force those who they disagree with, it might only take a look in the mirror to disarm them.

But the real question here is whether freedom of association and speech of any group - call them fascists or white supremacists - that endorses hate against particular races or the like, should be permitted. — TimeLine

Being Canadian, what I define as hate-speech mostly has to do with knowingly inciting hatred or violence against a particular religious or ethnic group. It's legal to hold the belief and proclaim that the white race is superior (whatever that might mean), but it is illegal to advocate for actions (which may or may not be based on such a controversial belief) of hatred or violence against a specific group.

"Hatred" here is a bit tricky, but more or less the hate speech laws are about protecting people from harmful hate speech, which specifically does not include something like mere ridicule or affronts to dignity. People like Milo who are excellent provocateurs certainly ridicule and affront the dignity of many individuals and groups, but what Milo has not done is actually advocate for any violence of any kind. For me a part of the whole issue is that people are asking questions like"is it moral to punch nazis in the face?" and "Ought we to permit white supremacists and other groups who do not share our moral values the right to public assembly and free speech?" as if the people they're actually talking about (Trump, Milo, et al.) are genuinely fascist or nazi or white supremacist, let alone the fact that they're preparing to throw democracy out the window by doing so.

Everyone seems to have jumped the gun of actually trying to understand their political opponents and straight to the moral question of whether we need to use physical force against them in a sudden desire for pre-emptive-thought-police-brutality. Is hearing a bigot or fascist speak and seeing their ideology for what it is really so dangerous?

If we should censor opinions of white supremacists, why? And what else should we be censoring on those grounds as well?

In a way the "Pewdiepie fiasco" is part-in-parcel with the new culture of manufactured outrage which thrives on a kind of PC-virtue economy.

If we ignore the blatantly misleading framing of the original WSJ article, they're still putting forward the idea that depicting objectionable content whatsoever regardless of context is still a punishable offense (which if true also describes their own article for reposting the allegedly anti-semitic content). This is very much along the lines of that whole micro-aggression hypothesis that has us censor any speech which might offend any minority group in a never ending game of ever inflamed and ever growing emotional sensitivity.

The call to de-platform a popular youtuber because of some edgy jokes is just the latest, but one of the most ridiculous, in a series of cultural missteps that mainstream thought leaders have been taking.

I was tempted to cite this in my OP as an example of the term Fascism being ironically mis/over-used in contemporary culture, but I thought quoting a PhD holding historian anti-fascist describing his own fascistic platform was better because it referenced tangible ideology.

But, since this is too big a story and too relevant not to mention, here it is: The (most) popular Youtuber Felix "Pewdiepie" Kjellberg has been openly labeled as a nazi-supporting anti-semite by the wall-street journal, who upon contacting Disney armed with about a dozen or so jokes involving hitler pulled without context from a few of Felix's 3000+ youtube videos, managed to get their partnership dropped

In each and every case Felix was not in fact supporting anti-semitism or spreading Nazi propaganda, he was very obviously attempting to make humorous and valid social commentary/satire which more often than not seems to have hit it's mark. Robbed of all context however, and having successfully maneuvered Disney and other sponsors to drop "Pewdiepie", the WSJ decided to publish the hit piece and give it the title : "Disney Severs Ties With YouTube Star PewDiePie After Anti-Semitic Posts", which in reality should have read "Once respected journal alienates the entire (mostly youth) fan-base of one of the most popular internet and social media figures of all time by publishing blatantly desperate and libelous misrepresentation of political views". Not your typical style of headline, but the WSJ have dug themselves into a not-so-typical hole by doing this, along with many other sources are demonstrating journalistic incompetence by parroting the same misrepresentation...

Even J.K Rowling is tweeting about it as if the labels of "anti-semite" and "nazi" and "fascist" are in any way deserved or are going to stick. I'm no fan of Felix but I feel absolutely forced to rally behind him right now because the attack on him was so swiftly and haphazardly decided, and so unreasonable in measure, that's there's no telling who will be next, or for what reason.

This is kind of a new height of un-glory for the WSJ. Three bored "journalists" with the hundreds of hours required to review Felix's entire channel have potentially managed to sour a massive chunk of our youth's perception of (once) respected mainstream media with the single solitary tool of lying by omission by making technically true statements 100% devoid of all relevant context.

You know it's entirely possible that without Milo, Trump would never have won the election? (let's strike that from the record though :D)

It was pretty interesting to see Bill and Milo in the same room, let alone actually attempt to have a conversation where agreements were had. Bill has always been opinionated in the extreme and while I have not agreed with his many of them in recent years he at least understands the importance of meeting ideological opponents on an intellectual level, and the hypocrisy and danger of meeting them with force or violence instead.

Milo did seem to get away with one interesting point: free-speech now appears to be a conservative value more than a liberal one (despite Trump and his thoughts on slander law). That some proponents of the left are so willing to turn on their own and "de-platform" them rather than actually come to consensus or clarification through discussion and debate is a pretty good example of what he meant by this. The obsession of some with political correctness is what I think largely creates the moral superiority complex these de-platformers appeal to in order to feel comfortable doing so. The group feelings based mentality that some use as an approach to progressivism is close to the heart of why serious political discussion has become so difficult of late. If someone gets hurt feelings then according to the PC crowd a crime has been committed, and are therefore they are unable to realistically discuss any controversial issues whatsoever. (unless, (for some reason), the controversy happens to lay at the feet of white-cis-straight-males).

What I would say to the PC crowd is this: "Paraphrasing Hitchens: Fuck your feelings. If you don't show up to the debate, you lost it. If you shut the debate down because your feelings are hurt, you lost it. If you're unable to expose yourself to the positions of your political opponents from your safe spaces, grow up or shut up. What's worse than Trump-tea-toadling bible belters is the sight and revelation of your mewling infancy when you suddenly realized hand-size jokes and "'cause oppression" wound up being less than persuasive arguments. Fuck your feelings because they get in the way of truth, and you fucked that up so bad this time around that we had to instead settle for the lunacy that now pervades every day of our lives".

Hate-speech codes, safe spaces, trigger-word warnings, and all that are not highly compatible with "free speech". The politically correct AcLibs are maybe more interested in free speech than your typical fascists, but truth be told, people of all stripes dislike hearing too many dissenting opinions. Mostly we think we are obviously correct in our views, and other people who disagree with us are either stupid, crooked, or both — Bitter Crank

I think it does take some humility and understanding to accept that you live in a world where you don't know everything and don't always know best, and that other people ought to have a right to their say as you to yours. When widespread dissatisfaction is prevalent though, this democratic tenant is tested by moral counter-argument (and rightly so in my opinion).

It becomes a question of whether not prevailing conditions are so bad that they warrant the subversion of democracy itself. Through specific lenses, from within specific social and academic circles, in the media and on the streets, many are finding an answer to that question, or at least beginning to, and I see free speech as the unhealthy canary about to signal more and more violence to come ...

If i recall correctly, Stalin and the Bolshevics hated the fascists at one point or another, the context being that the Fascists advocated for typically right wing/conservative economic policies and structures, so in that regard they were the outright ideological enemy. (As you rightly say, they were not The fascists).

When it comes down to it I'm not at all certain what the actual Nazi sentiment towards democracy as a whole was (democratic dictator is an oxymoron certainly). Having emerged within what was possibly perceivable as a democratic state (a constitutional republic?), they managed to do the kind of authoritarian control by force (arguably subverting democracy) that we have since come to associate most heavily with the term fascist. In contemporary use it seems the ideological particulars of a group are less important than the style and manner in which they are implemented for people to describe it as "fascist".

In that sense the USSR does bear many hallmarks of a fascist authoritarian state: killing (en masse) of political enemies, unquestionable rule from the top, violent enforcement at the bottom, and the dogmatic belief in the one correct way of doing things. Semantically speaking, I would indeed label the USSR as fascist (in 2016) presuming that this connotation of specifically anti-democratic rule-by force can be garnered rather than "whatever Don Trump is" being the grab bag.


SEEEE!? THIS IS WHAT AN ACTUAL FASCIST LOOKS LIKE!!!

BONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNG!!!!!!

Well, one of the methods of the academic liberals (AcLibs) is to exaggerate. Construing a racist joke as tantamount to lynching, or a sexist joke as rape, and so on are exaggerations. Another method of the AcLibs is to reduce the colorful, nuanced world into black-and white, not even employing half-tones of gray. Black and white is of course much simpler than 1000 shades of gray. — Bitter Crank

There's an interesting phenomenon that happens when you shovel black and white AcLib rhetoric semester after semester onto young impressionable minds; they believe it. The AcLib pundits themselves seem to know better than to actually call for or condone violence, and they (seem to) understand that free-speech is is a necessary part of a liberal democracy, but at large and out on the street violence is justified on the spot with slogans like "our lives are on the line" under an extreme all or nothing mentality.

The AcLib will at length explain to you how micro-aggressions like edgy jokes normalize subconscious xenophobia and attitudes which otherizes and excludes minorities in a self-perpetuating of cycle of inter-generational bigotry and systemic oppression, but out in the field an insensitive joke or action is perceived as the final swing of the axe. Minor defeats become the validation of their worst fears, and the zeal really seems to be showing of late.

But then, there are some fascists or crypto-fascists around. I'd label one of my brothers-in-law as one: he's extremely conservative; is a fan of the southern confederacy; he's pro-military (former submariner), doesn't like blacks, gays, or leftists; is rigid in his thinking; and so on. He isn't an unpleasant person (as long as you don't tangle with him on politics, religion, and the like). — Bitter Crank

I can only dream of a world where people use language in a way that actually and effectively communicates substantive meaning. <3 Thanks for that momentary window into a linguistically sane arena :)

I want to freeze your in-law in carbonite and use him to repeatedly bludgeon the intellects of this crowd of ideologues which seems to be growing at an uncomfortably large rate. I had better be careful though, as metaphorical violence such as that might warrant a bit of the old actual-violence visited upon by these oh so humble droogies.

Hear hear! Let's stop labeling absolutely everything fascist, or at least somehow make it distinguishable from anything "anti-progressive" in appearance.

Really my intention with this thread is to point out the glaring hypocrisy among the groups who do seriously overuse the term "fascist". The behavior of those who constantly use the term is more akin to what made the fascists actually dangerous in the first place than the rhetoric of those who they label as fascist nazis is actually fascist or nazi-esque..

Belief in their own moral superiority and dissatisfaction with the status quo is the emotional catalyst that seems to allow them to go beyond what the tenets of democracy permit, and in that singular regard they become more like the actual fascists than any other existing political group. I'm not a fan of labels of this kind myself, but given they've already bastardized the word, I simply cannot resist re purposing it as a rhetorical tool against them

Indeed in every society there is a shifting set of norms but as I would define it beyond the common meaning, "fascism" itself can originate from the desire to shift or progress these norms but manifests as the distinct anti-democratic willingness to physically enforce it as an immutable national and moral standard.

It's of course a host of complex things which drives the adherents of any particular political platform toward what I view as the crux of fascism, and when it comes to some modern liberal crowds, the ingredients seem to be there all in ample supply.

Take healthcare for example: One ideologue believes that the ACA makes medical coverage more expensive, and therefore oppose it on liberal grounds. Another ideologue believes that trying to dismantle the ACA will also make their medical coverage more expensive, and therefore oppose it on liberal grounds (and they might even both be right). But while from both their perspectives they are thetrue liberal, the moment one of them shows up the the other's political rally with the intention of silencing their political speech and to use violence to achieve this, they've gone ahead and attacked the very foundation upon which liberalism depends, and have re-enacted precisely the actions that made the original fascists distinct from other right/conservative parties.

(Some context about where this came from...)

I've been air-boating over this odious ideological cesspool for over a year now in an effort to understand it, but what caused me to suddenly write this is the recent uptick in it's severity and prevalence. It comes not from general anti-racism and anti-sexism, but rather (at least originally) from a specific and radical line of reasoning (and rationalization) which until very recently was stuck inside an academic bubble of it's own creation. I'm starting to see it like a virus that mutated to make the leap from infecting birds to infecting humans.

It begins by explaining how individual instances of micro-aggression or casual prejudice serve to perpetuate the statistical inequalities facing any given minority by contributing to a system of widespread (feelings) oppression. They don't focus on tangibly racist actions that are already illegal such as refusing customers based on race, but instead how our subconscious biases lead directly to the emotional suffering of minorities and therefore indirectly to their physical and economic suffering.

So to put this in other (their) words, when a person tells a joke which *may cause* someone to feel offended on the basis of race, gender, or identity, this is tantamount to, and the very foundation of, everything that is bad in the world, because the emotional suffering experienced by minorities as a result will inherently keep them down while reinforcing our own sexist and racist tendencies which currently prevent us from being not sexist and not racist, on the whole, as evidenced by the existence of statistical inequalities.

The dearth of genuine western racism and sexism in the post 90's world is really what forced a mutation from "don't oppress" as a mantra to "don't offend" instead, and with all the offense taking that's been happening recently it has finally found a suitable vector to spread. Now I see people equate insensitive satire with hate speech, and hate speech with the holocaust on an almost daily basis. For those so taken with these ideas, lives are on the line when a speaker shows up to their university who happens to make X Y or Z group of people feel "unsafe". Free-speech is a small price to pay when you already have the right ideas and all that remains is their physical and morally righteous enforcement.

It's perhaps even more ironic that by censoring and shutting down their ideological opponents (and anything that offends them), these individuals and groups are largely insulating their own worldview from external criticism, thereby protecting their resolve from the very thing they have unwittingly begun to destroy: liberalism and democracy.

The appeal of simulation theory is that it paints a picture of the universe as an interconnected machine which follows specific laws/programming. It is the hope of all good physicists that everything in the universe be determined in some such way because that means complete understanding of the physical laws which govern them could then explain and predict everything.

It brushes aside the origin of the universe by just supposing it is generated on some grand computer, and it comes with an inherent appeal to cause and effect (which on it's own is persuasive).

Really it's just determinism with window dressing and isn't cause for immediate jubilation. Elon Musk really thought he was onto something when simulation theory inspired in him the following argument:

It is possible that the only way for new universes to exist is for them to be simulated

It is possible that we are a simulation within a simulation

It is possible that the programmers of the simulation will destroy us if we do not "pay it forward" by ourselves hosting simulations of new universes from within our own

Conclusion: As an ultimate goal we need to strive to simulate a sub-universe in order to ensure the continued existence of our own

[insert slow clap]

↪VagabondSpectre
For me, Noam is a puny ant, he hasn't even come under my radar, that's how (un)important he is — Agustino

To each their own, but he certainly has a mighty high reputation in many circles. I like a lot o what he has to say.

I know I'll catch hate for this, but it's Noam Chomsky.

Don't get me wrong, I find myself almost always agreeing with Noam, but he is just too highly rated.

As a linguist, no he is not over-rated; he has set the bar regarding the philosophy of language. As an all around philosopher though (such as that which applies to morality and science) I don't see him really making any great strides. Don't get me wrong (again!), Noam seems pretty damn moral, but his ability to verbalize a clearly coherent moral foundation seems labored (at least from what i've been exposed to) or in other words not too refined.

Some have called him "a gatekeeper of the left", but I've not been exposed to any of his philosophies which pioneer any sort of social or economic reform. He is definitely a champion of many worthy causes, and that is entirely laudable, but he is not a philosopher of these causes as he is in the minds of many (or else, so too is Bono?). I think the main reasons why an appeal to Chomsky works so well in average discourse among the left are A, because we know that he is in fact a genius of language, and B, because his moral causes are very and laudably progressive.

Just to make this point again, I'm not here trying to say that Noam is by any means stupid when it comes to moral philosophy and politics (or even that i disagree with him on anything in particular), just that his astronomically high rating/status in philosophical fields other than his own makes him a good candidate for the most overrated philosopher.

Tbh the questions of these tests were kinda shitty... Agreeing or disagreeing with a statement is pretty crap (no neutral option) and being forced to select between two statements is even more crap.

In traditional logics, probability has nothing to do with it. Reasoning is fallacious if it doesn't guarantee validity, where validity is when it's impossible for the premises to be true and/or the conclusion false. — Terrapin Station

Inductive reasoning is still reasoning. We use it all the time. Instead of making its conclusion guaranteed and therefore sound as in deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning makes it's conclusion "strong" or more likely or probable without actually necessitating it.

Keeping the above in my mind let us now consider the theory of evolution whose basic message is we retain and pass to our progeny traits with survival advantage. If this is true am I wrong in inferring that our minds, its processes (including fallacious thinking) are life-critical traits we should be actually cultivating and reinforcing instead of avoiding and purging from or minds? — TheMadFool

When positions and arguments are framed properly, we call them sound and valid; not fallacious. A fallacy is by definition an argument whose conclusion we choose not to accept because it's conclusion is either not necessitated (deduction) or not made adequately likely (induction) by it's premises.

The bushes rustling for instance is decidedly NOT fallacious when one takes into account overall survival strategy and the general context in which such a decision would be taken. If lions are known to leap from rustling bushes, even in only 1/1000 instances of bush rustling (it's rare for it to actually be a lion), it will still be quite rational to presume it is a lion for safety reasons and flee none the less. Depending on the prevalence of lions, bush rustling, and the combination of the two, it might be entirely rational for a person to assume that every bush contains a lion and for survival purposes burn them all down. The (proper) conclusion is actually that there is a chance that there is a lion in the bush, and based on the adequacy of that chance, a decision is made to flee or not flee based on probability (lacking a better term). Here the fallacy is not the argument or the conclusion, it's the very acceptance of the conclusion (in deciding to flee) when it is actually not strategically productive to do so (pertaining to the goals of the individual in question).


p1.1 Meteorites could kill someone if struck by one
p1.2 Meteorites hit the earth every day
p1.3 You are on the earth

c1.1 [p2.1] You might get hit by a meteorite

c2.1 DUCK!

The first argument is sound and valid, it's precisely c2.1 that commits the fallacy here by grossly overestimating the actual likelihood of getting struck by a meteorite. We could call this a fallacy, but we could also call it a weak inductive argument. Fallacies tend to be the tricky mis-steps in the logic game which wind up being convincing. That is to say, we take pains to labels specific types of errors as certain fallacies because we need to train ourselves to avoid them.

We train ourselves to avoid fallacies because they don't work. If they worked more often than not then we would call them strong inductive arguments and happily employ them on a regular basis.

If fallacies worked we would embrace them. The precise reason why we take pains to identify and reject them is because we know from experience that they lead to unreliable conclusions. At best you might describe evolutionary endowed predispositions leading to behavior which might resemble actions resulting from fallacious reasoning (like instinctual bush paranoia vs concluding every bush rustle is a lion, or being addicted to the thrill of fishing vs the gamblers fallacy), but when we understand the logical or rational benefit of being a dedicated fisherman and a careful woodsman, we can re-frame the argument in such a way that it makes perfect sense without embracing either instinct or fallacy. How often do lions kill people by leaping out of bushes? Might want to consider not taking chances if the frequency is high enough. Never giving up fishing, during either a time of feast or famine, is always beneficial to long term survival where food is not guaranteed to always be available.

The rub here is that if you manage to present a rational argument which makes fallacious reasoning somehow beneficial to survival or other such goals, then it becomes rational to adopt the actions prescribed by the fallacious reasoning in a strictly logical and strategic way; not fallacious.

What's your standard of "guilt"?

Also, should we hold him "responsible" and incarcerate him?

Solipsism isn't the most problematic of possibilities; even given it's truth, pragmatically speaking, nothing changes from our perspective. We would still be trapped within the illusion of a world where other minds exist. As McDoodle points out, even if the works of Shakespeare are actually created somehow (per solipsism) by my own mind, in order to get access to them I still need to read them, and I still can only best interpret them by making considerations to Shakespeare as a once extant mind rather than by assuming or acting as if the works are procedurally generated by my own subconscious mind. That is to say, in order to get access to Shakespeare's works, I need to in action embrace the possible illusion of his existence in order to acquire the materials, bridge the language gap, develop understanding, etc. I could still learn about Shakespeare and hold to hard metaphysical solipsism, it would just pose continuous semantic hurtles as I constantly (and without pedagogical benefit) make the clarification that the works of Shapeskeare were actually created by a part of my own mind which I am now consciously scrutinizing.

This may very well be a strong argument against solipsism (certainly a good argument against behaving as a solipsist would), but it is not a deductive proof against it. In order to do away with the possibility of solipsism entirely, some sort of (what is now considered "the metaphysical") claim regarding the fundamental nature or "source" of existence must be raised and subsequently justified. Per my understanding of physics and epistemology: we're not there yet.

Zoos aren't just for the public display of animals, and so if we're talking about the study and conservation function of zoos then a "greater good" defense can be raised based on the fact that this study and conservation is better for animal species in the long run.

Focusing only on zoos whose sole or main purpose is the public display of animals, yes indeed there is at lest some degree of moral onus upon us to ensure that the animals we keep for our own entertainment are not suffering unduly because of it (at least according to my own moral 'beliefs'). On the one hand we could easily offer an animal a more stimulating or happy existence in captivity, if done right (barring certain animals like whales, whose needs are beyond us), but on the other hand if all we do is exploit captive animals and give nothing back to them then surely we're committing a moral sin at least as far as the animal is concerned.

In the best case zoos for entertainment can be a happy alliance between often willing captive animals where the zoo gets an income stream and the animal gets a fat, happy, and generally conflict free existence.

In the worst case zoos can be horrendous places of suffering where people pay for the novelty of seeing something new, even if it's sick or dying. To whatever extent we extend moral considerations of these kinds toward animals is the degree to which such zoos are morally culpable for transgressing. I can't exactly define the extent to which we owe animals moral considerations, but what I can tell you is that as we gain the technology and capability to survive and thrive free of cruelty to animals, whatever moral onus there is on us to do so only increases.

The self cannot be logically equivalent in reality to the non-self without infinite regress of self recursion. — m-theory

You're equivocating between different definitions of the term "self".

Under metaphysical solipsism ("the world and other minds do not have objective "existence"."), everything that exists is presumed to be a part of one's own mind, but not equivalent to one's own mind (that's kinda the whole ontological point of solipsism). The "Mind" ("self"(2)) encompasses everything that exists, including "self"(1). Everything that exists, as a whole, is "the mind". The "self"(1) is a part of this whole, and the stimuli the self(1) experiences (like trees and animals) is also a part of the greater "mind" (the whole), but it (a tree) is neither equivalent to self(1) or self(2). It is a thing generated by self(2) and perceived by self(1) (under metaphysical solipsism).

When a hypothetical solipsist suggests that the world we perceive is actually generated by "the self" or is a part of "the self" they are not saying that the world they perceive or the things in it is equivalent to their consciousness, they're saying that their consciousness is the only thing with objective or continuous existence while the things they perceive are some form of non-continuous illusions brought on by some fundamental aspect of the way their conscious/subconscious minds work.

When people are dreaming they can perceive of things within their dream, like trees, but instead of the perception of the tree coming directly from some external reality, it comes from (is a part of) the mind itself. This is the kind of position that a metaphysical solipsist would take. In essence they would accuse you of being an illusion, and thus far your retort would be "But you perceive me/can draw conclusions about me, and if I was an illusion you would not be able to do either of those things". That is however the precise nature of an illusion. It is a perception offering false data (in some way).

You're saying in a solipsistic world "we would not be able to draw conclusions" (based on our perceptions?), but the only argument you have offered to establish that is the idea of an infinite logical regress which depends upon semantic equivocation between "the conscious mind", "the things the conscious mind perceives" and "the whole". Since solipsists are not conversing with trees while operating on the presumption that the tree is equivalent to their own conscious mind, you ought not maintain that this is what solipsism necessarily entails.

-----------------------

The relevance of all this to the question posed in the title is to assail the notion that our "knowledge" is absolutely sure to be correct when it comes to our understanding of "the objective world". Such a grand destination has simply not yet been reached in any rational or empirical schools. The fundamental nature of the universe ("objective reality") is still an open problem, and there are a host of annoying and goal post sliding hypotheticals, like solipsism, which exist as thorns in the side of even the most well founded epistemological systems which would seek to establish some absolute form of "objective truth".

I am saying that if solipsism was true then the only thing it would be possible to reference would be the self which is self recursive and leads to an ill defined infinite regress.

I don't care what definition of self you use, if there exists only one object and that object includes a reference to something, it will be a referencing only of itself.
That simply cannot be avoided. — m-theory

It doesn't have to be avoided because this is not a description of solipsism, it's description of something else entirely. Under solipsism "self" is more than just a single object; "self" is everything that exists, including one's personal "self"(1), but it is still distinct (being a part of, and not the whole. See: compositional fallacy) from the expanded solipsistic definition of "self"(2)

Because we reach conclusions all the time within a finite amount of steps and without any issue this means we can be logically certain that solipsism is not really what is going on ontologically or epistemologically. — m-theory

What kind of conclusions do you reach that allows you to be logically certain solipsism is not true?

"Tree's exist"?

What about the ontological/epistemic gap that exists when confronted with the dogma of uncertainty?

Can you give me some examples of the infinitely regressive steps that we would begin taking in pursuit of a conclusion under solipsism?

So saying turtles all the way down never gets you to the bottom, just like saying only the self exists would never allow you to reach a conclusion about the existence of self or anything else. — m-theory

Turtles all the way down is an expression that has come to represent the inherent incompleteness in any of our cause and effect/ hierarchical descriptions (of any kind) of the universe. The moon orbits the Earth, the Earth orbits the sun, the sun orbits (another star) the gravitational center of the galaxy. What does the galaxy orbit? And so on. "Turtles all the way down" was allegedly one answer given to support the concept of a flat earth when confronted with the question "What holds it up?"; it point's out that a final "conclusion" of source or cause is unachievable because it must always be supported by additional claims, which in turn themselves must be supported. This kind of dogmatic regression exists in the currently accepted cosmological model and leads inexorably to an unanswered question or the supposition of an axiom. What created the universe? Ontological regression is not unique to solipsism.

"The tree is created by my mind. What created my mind" might be "ontologically regressive/recursive" but there is no actual infinite repeating loop and no "self reference". To say that a tree is generated by some aspect of my mind is not to say that the tree is in and of itself equal to my mind. Parts need not share characteristics with the whole, and vice-versa.

I guess I only have two quick points to make:

You're equivocating between two different definitions of "self". The first is the conscious experience we're having right now; the traditional "self"(1). This is the context in which someone says "look at that orange tree". The second definition, which comes from solipsism, is "the source of everything that exists"(2.1) or "the only real mind"(2.2). So when a solipsist encounters a tree they could think/say: "look at that tree which does not exist in any reality external to some conscious or unconscious part of my mind" .

My second point is that solipsism is and always has been presented as a possible explanation for phenomenon, not a rejection of the existence of phenomenon. Saying that if solipsism were true there would be no trees blatantly misrepresents the inherent thrust of solipsism. The single object universe you describe as "self-referential" isn't solipsism because it says nothing about the nature of the phenomenon we perceive as solipsism does; it depends on their non-existence to be an apt objection.

As far as applying the epistemically/ontologically recursive objection to actual solipsism goes: once we invent some sort of original cause to anything we're always left holding the same empirically empty bag: What caused the original cause? Humans are unfortunately limited to this sort of causative temporal thinking. If my mind creates everything what created my mind? What created the big bang or sustains the universe?

My mind all the way back is no more problematic than turtles all the way down...

Let's trim the fat if we may.

The issue is what I perceive your statement "we should not indulge transgender people" to mean.

The way I have previously interpreted this is: we should not allow transgender people to indulge their desire to be the opposite gender; we should not allow them to transition. Your comparisons of transgenderism to anorexia and suicide are in part what gave me this impression. Telling an anorexic person to "not eat" (indulging their mental disorder) would be directly analogous to telling a transgender person to "transition".

But if all you ever meant by we should not indulge them; treat it as a mental disorder, is that: we should let people live how they choose (I'm extrapolating this from your lack of condemnation of cross-dressing) and when it comes to surgery/hormones we should assist them in medically transitioning if whichever relevant authority deems it an appropriate form of treatment, then I would say we have no remaining relevant disagreement.

And by the way you misquoted me. I never said "the delusion" but that is fine, just don't moan if I accuse you of straw manning.

You are referring to this post. Again, I never used the words "deluded" or "regressive left." I do not mind this straw man, but it strongly indicates that you read things between the lines that are not there and it shows how sloppy you are in this conversation. This explains why I have to milk out an obvious uncontroversial point. — Emptyheady

Harry Hindu asked "Why do we find it okay to tell the religious that they believe in a delusion, but not okay to tell this to a transgender?".

You responded "Because they are a treasure of victim points for the Left. So we must rationalise and intellectualise a case...". So I guess you did actually describe transgender people as deluded by telling Harry that the only reason we don't label them as such is because of rationalization among leftists.

The fact that you "don't mind this strawman" (read: I agree with this position but i didn't actually say that" strongly indicates that I have accurately interpreted and represented your position in this thread.

I literally said regarding important decisions and exampled clothing as a not important decision...

Can you read? — Emptyheady

It's just that when you morally approve of allowing someone to dress as the opposite gender you're indulging their mental disorder in the same way that someone who says to an anorexic person "you are right, you are fat, stop eating" is indulging anorexia. Anorexia is the desire to be unhealthily thin (or the belief that they are too fat) , transgenderism is the desire to be the opposite gender (or the belief that they are the wrong gender), and so by your own comparison you're indulging the mental disorder. (BTW, Every time i say "right?" (even when you may have already stated you disagree) is because I'm trotting out the internally contradictory sub-points of your overall position.

Just to be clear, transgenderism/transsexualism is the desire to be the opposite gender. It's not the same as "getting a sex change operation" or even "wanting a sex change operation". SRS is a form of treatment for gender dysphoria/treanssexualism/transgenderism, not the disorder itself. "Indulging" transgenderism includes more than just condoning SRS case by case or at all as a possibly beneficial treatment, which you already seem to have condoned.

By treating a particular mental disorder like we treat all other mental disorders... — Emptyheady

You realize that we don't treat people with different mental disorders the same way right?

As in, how we treat an anorexic person is different than how we treat say, an autistic person. You know that right? Even people with the same disorder often benefit most from different kinds of "treatment" and being "treated" differently...

Sexual reassignment surgery is not associated with increased suicidal behaviour (or at best there is some weak correlation) -- none of my links show that. It just shows that surgery does next to nothing regarding the attempts of suicides, which further backs my point to not indulge transgenders. Again, it reveals your shoddy reading. — Emptyheady

You're right, I guess you were arguing that since sexual reassignment surgery is not a statistically effective treatment for their disorder, we should not indulge transgenders. Got it. Your first serious post in this thread was to say that we should not indulge transgenders because SRS does not reduce the risk of suicide among transgenders. Isn't that your own shoddy reasoning?

By not indulging them in their mental disorder. — Emptyheady

Full circle eh?

So for example, not permitting someone to dress as the opposite gender, right? To do so would be indulging them in their mental disorder after all, and we shouldn't do that... Right?

Another analogy is how we treat children. A child can not request on his/her own a surgery. The doctor (legally) needs the signature of the parent (or official superior -- the legalities can get immensely complex but you get the point). Why? Because the child is simply mentally incapable to make such important decisions. — Emptyheady

If by "indulging the delusion" you mean installing sex-change booths on every corner and handing out pez-hormone dispensers to children, then I really don't know why you bothered to post in this thread in the first place; nobody here is disagreeing with that.

But given that you opened by describing transgendered people as deluded victim trophies of the left, cited raw statistics (a common tactic of the regressive left you seem to know so well) indicating that sexual reassignment surgery is associated with risks such as increased suicidal behavior, and proceeded to equate transsexualism itself with anorexia (beause they're both in the DSM!), mental retardation and suicide, perhaps why you can see why I'm confused as to your actual position.

Depends on what basis the doctor performs the operation. He has to do so by a decision of a person with good judgement. In this case, not the patient, but a superior (e.g. psychiatrist?). — Emptyheady

So essentially what you're saying is that sometimes transgenderism, a mental disorder, should be indulged?