I stumbled upon this while surfing ebaumsworld lastnight, (Yes I know, unforgivable), and while at first glance it seems campy and overblown or something out of infowars, it actually puts forward some pretty unambiguous evidence of "the rigging of the election". The first video mainly features a seemingly well positioned DNC connected mover and shaker (Scott Foval) who brags openly to an undercover reporter about using engineered violence in order to impugn a target politician, group of supporters, event, campaign, or party. The second video features the same undercover reporter approaching mainly the same person about organizing potential voter fraud.




I'm reticent to formulate any conclusive opinions on this as of yet, I only just last night and have not gotten a chance to investigate things more deeply, but one thing I have found which lends credulity to this exposé is that the individuals it features seem to have been unceremoniously defrocked and excommunicated.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/18/undercover-video-shows-democrats-saying-they-hire-/

Generally in order to answer the question "how damning is this?" I would first try to get a sense of the actual gravity of the particular grievances the film airs before trying to get a sense of how representative of the democratic party (or even both major parties) these grievances are as a whole (which might be decidedly difficult).

This is what trump meant by "paying people to beat people up" I guess...

In theory he would have the power to call for his hardcore supporters to not accept the results when the time comes. He could cause tangible civil unrest by emotionally riling them up essentially...

My operating system (windows 10) notified me via desktop pop-up the instant that Trump came out and said "I'll accept the results of the election if I win"....

BAHAHAHA!



(Yes, I'm aware of the Orwellian nature of my desktop pop-ups)...

How about that debate, huh, folks?

It was nice to see them put more effort into making it seem like they were actually discussing politics (more so thanks to Hillary's efforts), and even though trump was his usual self, something about him seemed a bit more palatable, a kind of je ne sais quoi.

That said, aside from Hillary's single foible when she continued to talk over the moderator toward the end (probably due to rehearsing talking through Trumps constant interruptions and one-liners), I think she performed a bit better.

Not to say I think it was a passable debate or informative beyond a study into ancient Greek style (even worse than) rhetoric and sophistry, it's just that this late in the circus you really start to become invested in whose shit stains are slightly less visible.

According to Pew according to Trump "millions of people are registered to vote who should not be" and also according to trump "Hillary's people are telling people to beat other people up" (not entirely clear what he meant).

I can't help feeling that reliable predictive powers were granted us long before 'science'. After all knowledge of the acceleration due to gravity is neither necessary nor useful if there is a piano falling on you from a great height nor to my dog when she's happily catching biscuits tossed across the room to her. — Barry Etheridge

In the past we had predictive power yes, but science has given us more predictive power, and more reliable predictive power.

Science is not useful once the piano is falling; science usually takes more than an instant to achieve results. But it could help in the calculations required to figure out how many straps are required to spread out the weight and keep them from ripping. The medical science that was put into your dogs biscuit to ensure that it is healthy has utility, even though your dog will likely never grasp how or why.

Broadly, science deals with the physical world as a matter of study, whereas philosophy is a more broad term for many fields of study. Dathbarracuda is right though, scientific beliefs are also philosophical beliefs.

Any random belief regarding the physical world is not therefore science however, beliefs need to fill additional criteria before we would want to label them scientific.

Consider the nature of any scientific experiment. A hypothesis is put to the test by taking a prediction which follows from it and seeing if this prediction holds true with an actual experiment we run and can observe. When the results of an experiment contradict the prediction made by a given hypothesis, we take it to mean that the hypothesis is therefore falsified. When the results of an experiment hold true with the predictions of a given hypothesis, we do not presume that the hypothesis is true, but rather we continue to test it's predictions from as many angles as possible and with as much reproduciblity as possible. After we've exhausted our ability to test the predictive power of a given hypothesis and are unable to falsify it, we resign to accept it as a sufficiently robust belief to call it "scientific". Scientific beliefs are basically predictively and experimentally robust or reliable beliefs.

In the future if we manage to falsify such beliefs, we will consider them to be less or unscientific as a result. Or if we come across a fundamentally different and more predictively powerful model of something, we may also consider them to be less or unscientific beliefs, but this is a matter of hindsight and the relative progress of "science" as a whole (which equivocates scientific truth with "science" and separates "science" from it's method).

So a few robust observations some spiraling out of this. In a nut shell: scientific claims must necessarily relate to the physical (or actual) world we live in, in such a way that it is somehow conceivably observable, or else it's predictions can never be tested, and therefore can never be falsified, which would render us unable to determine if it is a predictively reliable belief or not.

It can also be noted that as science improves itself, which is to say gains more predictive power and more reliable predictive power, the standard of "reliability" continuously goes up, making some once "scientific" beliefs of the past look like "pseudoscience", which is a word we use to refer to predictively weak or easily falsifiable hypotheses.

The final point of note regarding this subject is that science is more useful to us because it has reliable predictive power, not because we assume or hope that it reflects or approximates the true behavior of the external world (but many scientists wish that too). Utility has got something to do with science, although I'm not very confident what it's extent might be.

This is all so intriguing...

Before the pussy grab remark video, the amount of animosity toward Trump at home across the entire globe (save in Russia it seems) was already staggering, and America in particular is perhaps nearing it's maximum potential emotional charge.

The way everyone instantly reacted to the hot mic video was predictable and understandable, and even Trump himself came out and apologized (has he ever done that before?). It's a fair point of character on which to base voting discrimination after-all.

But after Trump apologized for those remarks, it was as if the collective media and entranced viewership noticed a chink in Trump's until then impenetrable armor. The remarks began to be framed as "Trump admits to/advocates sexual assault". While this is a possible interpretation of what Trump said, It is hard to know if what Trump actually meant could amount to sexual assertiveness rather than actual sexual assault ("making the first move" so to speak, which is not necessarily without a prior phase where interest/consent can be reasonably discerned) and was just speaking in hyperbole.

Denigrating Trump for his 2005 remarks is one thing, but on the heels of this scandal of rhetoric, 9 or more specific allegations of sexual assault have emerged against Trump and have caught the main sails of the entire mainstream media. The court of public opinion has decided that he is a rapist deserving of nothing but scorn, incarceration, or worse. If the allegations are true, especially some of the more serious ones, then Trump does deserve jail time and we should all be thankful that we know now rather than after he potentially got elected, but if the allegations against Trump turn out to be false, then the presidential election will have been decided on something wholly separate from democracy.

In reality we're in a shittier situation than we were before, because the election has already been decided, meaning that Trump's candidacy really was a detrimental waste of time from the get go. Maybe because he's a rapist and he was not vetted by anyone with a brain before taking his campaign this far, or maybe because all it takes is crude "locker-room talk" and a few individuals willing to make an accusation that sends us so reliably into an emotional fervor. In future elections, how ready will the media and voting public be to take seriously any accusation of a sex crime that emerges before additional evidence is gathered?

Even though there's at this point seemingly a low probability that all these accusations are untrue, given the amount of emotional bias that already existed toward Trump, and that he was about to have a shot that the presidency, the incentive certainly would be there for individuals to make embellished accusations. In any case, the power that allegations of sex crimes have and the speed that they spread through and dominate media and public discourse has been very starkly demonstrated. If I was a campaign strategist in future elections, I would save sex scandals against potential political enemies, such as Trump's 2005 hot mic video, to use as magic bullets in the general election to destroy them.

TL;DR:Before we were stuck with either a giant douche or a turd sandwich, now since the giant douche turned out to be a giant rapist douche, our ability to choose between them as voters is basically meaningless. We're getting the turd sandwich.

The problem that you're pointing out with the statement "the sun rises" (i.e: the sun doesn't actually rise) does not have anything to do with what I'm pointing out about it, which is that whatever the sun is, there is consistency in our observations of it. A pattern is identifiable within those observations, and these particular observations and particular predictions (I could see the sun for the last thousand days therefore I will be able to see it tomorrow) take the form of a strong cumulative argument from observation (inductive reasoning).

Let's go back to the beginning of our disagreement, I said: "Even while our experience might be wholly subjective in any sense of the word, there are still consistencies within and between our experiences. The sun will rise tomorrow is a belief held by all humans because of a very strong cumulative argument (inductive reasoning) coming from our experience of it rising each day"

Then you said:

"The problem here is that the sun really doesn't rise. The scientific explanation of this phenomenon, the illusion that the sun rises day after day, is that the earth is actually spinning. The sun is really not doing anything in this scenario, therefore it is actually false to say that the sun rises.""

If you had charitably interpreted what I was saying, you would have acknowledged that my point was not to say or even imply that "the sun moves through the sky while the earth remains still", but instead that "whatever the sun does (or does not do), it does so with observable consistency, which can be the basis for an inductive argument which can be strengthened through additional repetition".

Yes, the point is that semantics is important to objective truth. You seem to think that you can dismiss the problem by saying "that's just semantics". That doesn't make the issue go away, it's just a case of you finding an excuse to ignore it. — Metaphysician Undercover

You're focused on telling me how "the sun rises" is inherently a false statement when all I'm trying to discuss is the consistency of the observable phenomenon we all know and colloquially refer to as "the rising of the sun".

Models which predict reliably is not truth at all, it's predictability. As I've just demonstrated, the capacity to predict can hide profound falsity which lies beneath. Therefore the capacity to predict is really irrelevant to truth and falsity. Prediction is derived from conclusions of deductive logic. The truth or falsity of the conclusions depends on the truth or falsity of the premises. The premises may be derived from conclusions of inductive reasoning, but the truth or falsity of these inductive conclusions is an issue of semantics. Whether "the sun rises each morning", "water boils at 100 degrees Celsius and freezes at zero", "the sky is blue", are true or not, is an issue of semantics. — Metaphysician Undercover

Everytime you say "truth", somehow I think you're always referring to "ultimate and objective truth". Well what is that? Does it even exist? Can we ever refer to something as "true" and not be inherently stating a falsehood? I've been very clear from the beginning, in every single one of my posts, that "objective certainty" is not achievable. I've not been concerning myself with it or been discussing it at all since my first post or only to clarify that science and what we call "objective scientific fact" is not founded on deductive certainty, it is founded in inductive likelihood from consistency in observations and reliable predictions. It's a whole different kind of truth than the truth you continuously charge me with not recognizing that science does not produce.

Semantically, you framed an attack on the point I was making about the consistency of experiences and how this consistency serves as a logical foundation for empiricism and science by stating "It is false to say that the sun rises" in order to try and point out how there might be deeper truth to a given phenomenon which therefore renders the more superficial observable truth false.

Well... No. They don't necessarily render them false... The superficial induction based truths, if strong enough from the get go, tend to remain true, while the deeper truths, which are also founded in induction, provide additional explanatory and predictive power which the more superficial truths lack. The fact that the earth spins does not falsify the actual meaning of the statement "the sun rises" (not the misinterpretation you keep using as a straw man, which I have clarified many times thus far), it is what creates the cyclical phenomenon we observe to begin with. I don't need to know the earth is round, or that it spins, or that this is why the sun is visible and then not visible in order to experience and record one of it's effects ("sunrise"), or to use induction to reason that it this effect will likely continue happening.

You're basically using plato's allegory of the cave to try and convince me that my statements are "false" when all I'm trying to do is point out that the more consistently the shadows on the wall behave, the more reliably we are able to predict their future behavior. I'm pointing at consistency in the behavior of the shadows and you are saying broadly "you can never be certain of shadows", but I never said that we could be certain, I said that the more consistently these shadows behave the more confident we can be in predicting the future behavior of said shadows.

I don't think so, the pattern is in the description, it is described as a pattern. It is dark then it is light, that's how it is described. When it is light, it is called "day". Not by coincidence, the sun is in the sky when it is light. That the sun is "in the sky every day" , is the description. But is the sun really "in the sky", or is the description really inaccurate? The sky is the atmosphere, and the sun is not in the atmosphere. And if the description is inaccurate, then how is the pattern real? The sun is not really in the sky, so this is a false pattern on account of a false description — Metaphysician Undercover

The "sun" "appears" in the "sky" every "day". There's nothing untrue about this. The sun is visible each day from the surface of the planet earth. No amount of trying to enforce semantic technicalities to say this is "unobjective" will change this observable truth.

An observation does not have to amount to a complete description of something, it can be specific, incomplete, or even be inherently an abstraction. "The sun rises every day" is a very simple observation and the strong inductive argument which arises from it is extremely specific: the sun is visible with predictable regularity. Again this does not say anything about what the sun "is" beyond that whatever it is, "it's visibility from the surface of the earth follows a cyclical pattern".

No, I don't think so. The sun appearing in the sky every day is a description. Unless someone makes that description, how is that pattern actually there? — Metaphysician Undercover

Because presumably the sun would be visible from the surface of the Earth even if people were not around to describe it, as evidenced by the proliferation of plant life.

You seem to missing the point. Observations are themselves descriptions. Unless the scientists can agree on the terms of description, then the same event will be described differently by different scientists, hence there will be varying observations, which are actually just different descriptions of the very same thing. The point I am making is that when the scientists come to agreement as to how to describe a specific type of event, this does not ensure that the agreed upon description is an objective truth concerning that event. Agreement doesn't produce objective truth. — Metaphysician Undercover

Agreement does not ensure objective truth, but it makes regular truth more reliable.

We can differ about whether it's permissible to say "the sun will rise at 5:30" instead of "The earth spinning will result in the star at the center of our solar system being visible at 5:30 eastern standard time from New York city", but both of our "descriptions/observations" can be said to be true because they both contain truth: the moment that the sun becomes visible at a given point on the planet. This is why you saying that "the sun will rise at 5:30 is falsity" actually does not address the argument in question. The argument never established what the sun is, it only establishes when it becomes visible (or that it will become visible).

Your observation, "the sun rose yesterday" is a description. You and all your colleagues might agree that these are adequate terms for the observation. But this does not make it true that the sun rose yesterday, just because you and all your colleagues "observed" this. — Metaphysician Undercover

You're still using semantics to try and make your point while missing the one you are trying to criticize.

"The sun rose" does not mean "the sun is inside of the earth's atmosphere". It means, "The sun was visible yesterday". That's the observation and nothing more. Now, the fact that we observe things repeatedly and that our observations agree with one another, as in the case of the sun's visibility, does not produce objective truth, but it does function as a tool to help us approach universally reliable truths.

My point is, that if your observations are not proper descriptions of the events which are occurring, if they are just the "agreed upon descriptions", then the current models are already "not objective", they may well be falsities, despite the fact that they may be highly useful in terms of predictability. Therefore predictability doesn't provide any type of objective truth. — Metaphysician Undercover

Repeatable observations of reliable phenomenon assist in producing models which allow us to reliably predict various aspects of said phenomenon. It's not objective truth; it's reliable and useful truth; that's science.

No, that's the point I am making, there is no pattern inherent in the numbers. The pattern is a property of how the numbers are applied. So numbers, as objects, ideal objects, don't have inherent patterns. Take "two" for example, it indicates two distinct entities classed together under the same title, "two", but there is no necessary pattern within these two entities. But when "two" is related to "one", and to "three", or other numbers, then we have an ordering, which is a pattern. There is no pattern within the object itself, "two", or "the number", the pattern is created by the application of the number. — Metaphysician Undercover

The pattern is that the sun is visible in the sky every day; that's the pattern, not the numbers or symbols we use to represent them.

See here, it is the series of 1's, and the checking, which creates the pattern. — Metaphysician Undercover

The sun appearing in the sky every day IS the pattern. The pattern is there whether I check a box, scribble a one to record it, or not. The pattern may be caused by physical forces I do not understand and my ability to observe it limited, but I can still describe a phenomenon which I observe, and make inductive predictions from how consistently the "phenomenon" (a bright thing appearing over the horizon) behaves.

But let's not forget my original point, "the sun rose" is not a fact, it is a falsity. The sun did no such thing, the earth is spinning in relation to the sun. The capacity for prediction creates the illusion of objective certainty, but if the premise, "the sun rose" is an inaccurate, imprecise, or in this case false, description, then the conclusion "the sun will rise tomorrow", is equally false or imprecise. — Metaphysician Undercover

All "the sun rises" necessarily means is that "A big warm bright thing appears in the sky everyday over the horizon". That's not false. It might not be an absolutely thorough explanation of what the sun is, but I never claimed that the example argument I provided produces a thorough explanatory model. The only thing we gain from the argument I presented is predictive power in and of itself, over the bright thing, which is the phenomenon it records. Think of it as analogous to "I could see the sun from here yesterday, and every day before that, therefore I could see the sun from here tomorrow". I'm not saying anything about what the sun is on a fundamental level, how it was created, what causes it to appear to move across the sky, etc... All I can tell you is when and where it will appear, whatever it is. I understand your point, that "the sun orbiting the earth is falsity", but it's against a position that is completely irrelevant to the one I've articulated.

The point being, that the predictive power, which science gives us, is only an illusion of objective certainty. If the observed, and predicted event is incorrectly described, then the predictive capacity may hide a profound falsity. The predictive capacity makes one believe that there is an objective truth there, when really there is a profound falsity. All that is required, is for the scientists involved to agree on a description of the event, then the prediction of that described event is supposed to validate the objective certainty of that event. But how is it the case that people agreeing on a description can validate the objective truth of that description? — Metaphysician Undercover

"People agreeing" does not confirm or invalidate the "objective truth" of something. But in science we use "agreement" as a tool to approximate objectivity. On an individual level, scientists seek to find "descriptions" (sometimes to describe, sometimes to explain, sometimes to predict) of things which "agree" with observation and experimentation. There's a second level of "agreement" which is between individual scientists and their various theories; this is helpful for catching mistakes made by one individual, and for testing theories against one another to see what "agrees" and can be combined into a more comprehensive description of whichever physical system they seek to model.

That our descriptions, models, laws, and predictions remain consistent with observation and experimentation does not "confirm" their objectivity, but it does "approximate or approach" it. Even if there's no such thing as objectivity as the OP suggested, then this consistent "agreement with observation and experimentation" still can be used as a tool to point to more and more reliable (and perhaps more useful)"subjective truth".

Suppose we see a dark spot on the horizon, you and I, and we agree that it is a big rock. We can predict that every time we walk past this place, we will see a big rock in the distance on our right. We assume to have objective certainty about this big rock, because the dark spot is always over there whenever we walk by. Perhaps this dark spot isn't even a big rock though. The predictive capacity has hidden a deeper misunderstanding, such that there was no objective truth there in the first place. — Metaphysician Undercover

I never said what the phenomenon was, you did. All I said was there is a dark spot on the horizon, and with my recorded observations of it's "relative position" over time I have identified a pattern which allows me to predict where this dark spot will appear tomorrow. I don't claim to have knowledge about what the dark spot is; that's your own presumption, I've never said it was a rock. All I claim is to have reliable predictive power over where this dark spot is going to be on the horizon tomorrow.

We can know, with a high degree of certainty that some of our descriptions will prove to be inaccurate. This we know from experience. Because of this, we can assume that the "laws of physics" will need to be changed to account for new, better descriptions. Therefore we can have a high degree of certainty that the laws of physics will change. — Metaphysician Undercover

I'm not talking about the inherent fact that science is incomplete or has flaws, I'm talking about the constant physical laws which science seeks to describe and understand. The constant improvement it makes to itself is essentially this process of approaching or approximating "objectivity and reliability". It's the fact that things appear to remain consistent which persuades us that whatever we uncover about them through repeatable experimentation (predictions) and observation (regardless of whether that knowledge is objective certainty or not), is worth knowing.

But by "laws of physics suddenly changed" I meant things like: "What if gravity suddenly reversed the direction of it's force?", "What if the speed of light suddenly slowed?", "What if the nuclear bonds holding atoms together suddenly became stronger or weaker?", "What if empty space suddenly became electrically conductive"?. These are the kinds of things which we hope will never change, because if they did then some or all of what we pragmatically rely on as scientific or even just general fact could suddenly change, and continue changing, forever, rendering some or all of our current models useless and evidently "not objective".

How does Einstein's general relativity contradict Newtons law of universal gravitational attraction?

Say I want to figure out what trajectory and velocity to use in order to make a rocket slingshot around the moon, which theory do I use? General Relativity or Newtonian physics?

Are you trained in physics at all? I'm just curious as to which one of us ought to be giving the science lessons...

Could you give me a keyword to search in google so I can figure out how? I did provide an explanation of my position at least. Would you like direct links? This should do : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newton%27s_law_of_universal_gravitation

OK, so you have a record of past risings and settings of the sun. I have a record of milkman and postal deliveries to my house. I guess that makes us even?

I predict that there will be a milk delivery on Monday morning and a 66% chance of post. I am scientist! — tom

You are misunderstanding the point or claim that I made. I never said that the simple argument that the sun will rise tomorrow (from experience) was a scientific claim or scientific argument, I merely pointed out it's similarity with the strength and type of reasoning that actual scientific arguments employ in the foundation of their proofs.

The sun rising every day for the last million days is like a repeated experiment which has always given the same result. Reproducible evidence. It's the cumulative inductive reasoning which gives us confidence in the foundational assumptions that we make about the world in order to facilitate, reinforce, and expand our understanding of it.

Where science begins and ends is a matter that is hard to pinpoint (see: Demarcation problem). Whether it's in the initial theorizing or exploration of hypotheticals, or in data collection, or in analysis of that data, or in the corrections then made to existing models, or all of it, I'm not exactly sure. What I can tell you though is that the confidence that we have in many of the scientific facts we rely on are strong not because they describe basic fundamental and objective truths (many of them don't, science has flaws), they're strong because the predictions we can make with them are reliably repeatable, including the initial experiments and predictions used to establish their normative parameters in the first place.

Here in this thread asking for how we can approach objectivity, I'm (trying to) explain how science achieves this.

Yes scientific theories, the big ones anyway, amount to vast explanatory models which employ many sub-theories and laws which interact with each other to model larger systems, but the nuts and bolts of these theories are all derived from repeatable experiments (giving them "predictive power"). And yes, sometimes hypothetical phenomenon are supposed in order to explain other phenomenon, even when we have had no direct experience of them, but these hypothetical inferences about what exists also stem directly from observations of other phenomenon, and they remain "hypothetical" (i.e: not scientific fact) until we can actually confirm their existence with direct, reproducible, evidence. That is to say, the Boson was not a scientific fact until we were able to actually "observe" it (repeatably).

Are you asking for a science lesson? — tom

If you understand the mechanism of gravity, please don;t waste your time on me, write a paper about it and submit it to a physics journal for peer review at your earliest convenience.

Here's the equation for determining the force that gravity exerts between two objects:

Force of gravity=(Mass of object one)(mass of object two)/ (distance between them squared)

There is also something called "the universal gravitational constant", which is essentially just a modifier which assumes mass measurements in Kg's and outputs a force measurement in Newtons (IIRC).

Am I wrong?

We haven't done that for 100 years. — tom

How do we predict how much force one massive object will exert upon another through gravity?

What is the fundamental mechanism of gravity?

"I don't wait; I just kiss". "When you're a celebrity they let you do anything, you can grab their pussy".

In a vacuum I'm quite willing to defend these remarks as not necessarily inherent descriptions of sexual assault, past that it might be a bit too much effort for too little gain on my part.

What does he not wait for? Written consent? [pause for eyeroll] Does he just grab any woman's pussy or only only the ones he knows will let him because they are into his money or celebrity?

I'm really not here to defend trump, but rather to just share any insights I can scrounge about how this historic election is playing out. I have no actual opinion about the legitimacy of the specific allegations made against him, and I'd prefer to let the courts decide. That said, the fact that these as yet unverified accusations, seemingly almost on their own, have been able to grind to a halt the out of control train that has been Trump ,which so far nothing else has been able to slow, raises a peculiar question about the potential impact that an allegation regarding sexual assault alone, in October, and in the right media climate, could have on the election. It also demonstrates that sex is a prime mover of scandal; a controversy among controversies. It riles us like nothing else does, and not always rationally so.

When 49 year old President Clinton began a sexual relationship with his 22 year old intern, we took it very seriously, even to the point of technically impeaching him, but now we look back on that, and on him, through some sort of biased haze that has us reckon that old Bill is just a lovable sex hound.

So here's the dilemma:

On the one hand, if Trump is in fact a rapist and an incorrigible molester then the public ought to know, both because we have a right to know who is a sexual predator according to current legal standards, and because he is running for president, and sexual predation speaks greatly about character, which many people use as a part of deciding whom to vote for.

On the other hand, if it turns out that the accusations following the pussy grabbing remarks are false or embellished greatly, then Trump will have been right to say "it's all slander and libel and I'm gonna sue them", and he would have a pretty strong case. If it turns out this way, (not that I have an opinion, just exploring the possibility), then the presidential election will have been in the end decided largely through hysteria, not politics.

If our current "democracy" was a horse, would we need to put it down?

I think you might be missing something here. #2 is the conjectured *explanation* of #1. The reason that certain regularities exist is that the sun orbits the earth, and you cannot, via any logical process arrive at #2 via #1.
...

Science begins when an explanation of certain phenomena, be they regularities or irregularities, is proposed. Why does the sun orbit the earth? Why do we have seasons? Why can't Demeter and Zeus just get along? — tom

I'm not talking about "explanations", I'm talking about empirical observations. I was pointing out that measuring and recording the suns behavior (#1) is how we can gain predictive power over it (through strong induction based on sound observations), not by "explaining" it.

As far as "science begins when explanations are proposed" goes, you have it completely backwards. Science does not "begin" with an explanation. It begins with a lack of an explanation, and then uses evidence and reason, like measurements of when and where the sun rises over the horizon, to try and figure out more and more functional (and presumably accurate) understandings.

Science does not begin with explanations, it ends with them; that's it's final goal or product. Science decidedly begins with that most basic and fundamental activity of data collection.

Unless we need to do accurate calculations for GPS, orbits of planets close to the sun, black holes, gravitational waves, the big bang, and indeed some long range missile targeting. Then we can't just approximate "its force with mass and distance", rather we need to deal with what we know gravity to be. — tom

We predict the force of gravity between two objects by looking at their mass and the distance between them. This is physics 101. We don't know what gravity is unfortunately, so rocket scientists have do things my way... With precise approximation...

Yes, that is precisely how we are able to predict with absolute reliability that the next swan we encounter will be white. — tom

Reliability is not the same as "absolute reliability".

It's neither absolutely reliable that the next swan you see will be white, nor absolutely reliable that the sun will rise tomorrow. These things can be considered "reliable" (one much more so than the other) but we cannot call them certain.

I must admit I am kind of confused...

Did trump actually confess that he is a sexual predator? Or are you referring to the pussy grab remarks?

It's pretty much a sure thing at this point right? We need to buckle up and accept the fact that it's Hillary's turn. How history will remember her presidency is not yet known, but the social ramifications will spread far. I can already imagine the nursery rhymes sung to the babies which will be named after her:

Hillary Hillary Bo Billary -
Banana Fana So Sillary -
She Shy Sho Shillery!
Hillary!

It seems fairly apparent now that Trump's campaign is a goner.

It turns out that that sex and the condoning of vague sexual aggression is the worst thing that could possibly happen... I mean, I guess you can condone fisticuffs between your followers and your opponent's followers, brag about being able to randomly shoot someone in the head and not lose any political support, advocate carpet bombing whole cities, murdering the families of suspected terrorists, marking or banishing people based on religion, and restricting the free press, and it doesn't really bother anyone...

Just a little bit of sex related scandal though, and uh oh, we got us a pussy grabber folks; a grabber of pussies. He just randomly grabs pussies! Who'da'thunk it? Yep. This all checks out. Nothing to see here folks, nothing at all. Go home everyone, forget about it. There's absolutely nothing interesting to see here whatsoever. *Nods several times and bows. Exit's stage:left*

The patterns would have been of their own creation, how they interpreted what they saw. So they would have made geometrical figures, patterns, to represent what they experienced (saw). Since the interpretations of what they saw were inaccurate, so were the patterns they created. Why not call these geometrical figures, these patterns, false representations? — Metaphysician Undercover

The point being, that you can make adequate predictions while maintaining false representations. One could claim that a dragon takes the earth in its mouth every evening, and brings it around, through the underground, spitting it out in the morning, and still predict that the sun will rise. You seem to be questioning whether these representations are actually false. I would say that they are false. How then, does the ability to predict come about if the representations are false? — Metaphysician Undercover

"Reliability" is produced by accuracy in the numbering system. This is where you find the value of inductive reasoning, in its relationship to numbering. We can entirely remove the pattern, and rely solely on the numbers. It has always been (infinite number of days), in the past, that the sun rises the next day, so we conclude that it will continue. We need not speculate about patterns to produce this conclusion. — Metaphysician Undercover

The pattern is inherent in the numbers though; in the data; in the observations. In the most basic argument saying "the sun will rise tomorrow", the observational data is a series of 1's or checked boxes representing each previous consecutive day recording the fact that the sun rose on that day. The pattern is repeating ones. It's the same kind of reasoning which makes statistical arguments strong: induction. The fundamental truth behind "the sun rising", whether supposedly moved by dragon or chariot, does not change that fact that whatever it is, it appears to rise reliably.

The reason why you can believe that a chariot pulls the sun across the sky each day and still be able to predict when and where it will next rise with great precision and reliability is because that predictive power is predicated on precise observations of a real phenomenon which is itself reliable (it has a pattern) (which is the actual "rising and setting" of the sun), not the bit about the chariot or the strength of it's horses.

I would say that falsification comes about in different ways. First there is falsification with respect to the numbers themselves. Suppose the people found 365 days between when the sun came up at the same place. That's not quite right, so after a number of years, 365 days would be falsified, and they would have to adjust. Secondly, falsification also comes about in respect to the relationship between the geometrical patterns, and the numbers. That there are not precisely 365 days in a year indicates something. It indicates that the year and the day are not parts of the same phenomenon. There is incompatibility, inconsistency between the year and the day, because we cannot make a representation of a year, in which a day remains incomplete. Therefore we must have two distinct geometrical representations, one which represents the day, and one which represents the year. There is a much more evident incompatibility between the month (moon cycle) and the year. — Metaphysician Undercover

What you're describing is an issue with precision rather than reliability or even accuracy. Overtime the inconsistency between the "365" day cycle of the "year" can be noticed and measured, even by ancients presuming they're around long enough to notice it, and then can be accounted for with an even longer unit of time which describes how many years it would take (of 365 days with leap years, or otherwise) for the imprecision (the gained or lost position of the earth in it's rotation around the sun when one year is described by a whole number of days) to come add up to one full rotation of the earth around the sun, when the cycle then would restart. This longer count would of course also have some imprecision, but an even longer count could then be constructed to reduce the imprecision even further.

Precision is great, but only a certain amount of it is needed depending on what we're discussing. If we're arguing about whether or not the sun will rise tomorrow, I don't need precision beyond "the sun rose every day within memory" in order to (through induction) identify a pattern with which to make the prediction "the sun will rise tomorrow". If I want to predict when or where the sun will rise over the horizon, then I need more precise observations (what we begin to call measurements). If I want to be able to make these predictions further and further into the future, then I will require more precise measurements in order to maintain the same level of precision in those predictions.

The thing of note here though, the thing which I think is of value to the thread, and which I've been trying to point out, is that the simplistic argument "the sun will rise tomorrow because it has always done so in the past" uses a particular form of reasoning which happens to be exactly the same as the reasoning which serves a large role in the foundation of "scientific objectivity" as a whole; repeatably. Repeatability is perhaps the best standard we have for approaching objective certainty in a world where we lack an un-doubtable source of knowledge. The OP is wondering how we can know for sure whether or not there is an external or objective reality. I'm here to tell him that we cannot know for sure, but what we CAN do is look for consistencies which would indicate that such an objective reality exists, but more importantly which also would pragmatically force us to behave as if there is one. The repeatability of experimentation in science and the reliable predictive power that this repeatability permits is what makes science a source of useful knowledge. We can never be absolutely certain that all the laws of physics wont all suddenly change one day, making science useless, but until then the overwhelming consistency of the empirical phenomenon that scientific theories are developed from represents an extremely strong inductive argument which is why science itself is strong.

Gravity is something whose fundamental nature we do not yet fully understand, we just approximate it's force with mass and distance. And yet, the sheer consistency with which we measure it's force allows us to construct theories and to make reliable predictions about what effect it will have on particular bodies of mass. Maybe one day we will fully understand gravity (like how people used to dream they would one day fully understand the sun), but until then we will have to settle for only being able to reliably predict it with very marginal degrees of imprecision (like how the ancients reliably predicted the rising of the sun without knowing the deeper nature behind the phenomenon.).

I would not say that this ability to predict was founded on a reliable truth at all, it was founded on a falsity. If ancient astrologists, cosmologists, and geometricians mapped the sun, and other planets as circling the earth, and were capable of producing predictions based on these geometrical constructs, then these predictions were derived from a fundamental falsity, not a truth. — Metaphysician Undercover

Well they had to bend their false models to comply with observations in order to be able to make reliable predictions, but you're missing the point.

The predictions that they made were not based in essence on their false models, but instead were based on identifiable patterns in observed phenomenon. For instance, they will have noticed that the sun appears in the sky every day with cyclical regularity. They will have taken this observed pattern and done two things with it: 1, they would be able to make future predictions based on the previously observed pattern, and 2, (If they believed the sun orbited the earth) would have guessed that the day and night cycle is created by how long it takes the sun to complete one orbit around the earth.

While conclusion #2 represents falsehood, conclusion #1 is a completely rational strong cumulative argument (induction) whose strength is can be found in the reliability of the pattern that it observes and hence the predictions that it makes. "Ability to (successfully) predict" IS "reliability". The actual core foundations of their predictions were sound observations, not falsehoods. Their predictions did not work because of sheer luck, they worked because the phenomenon they observed, measured, and then predicted was reliable. Sure it was not "science" in that they were plunging the depths of the physical world in search of root causation, but as it happens their arguments, particularly about what the sun would appear to do in the sky, are in the same magnitude and order of reliability (reliability is science's version of certainty) as much of the best science that we have today.

Many people say science works because of the process of falsification, and they're right. What rigorous attempts at falsification achieves the weeding out false positions, so that the batch of ideas we're left with, while not necessarily "certain", are distinctly more reliable than whatever came before. We care so much about the repeatability of our experiements/predictions because that's what makes them safe; what makes them reliable.

Regarding "the sun will rise tomorrow" as a statement of fact, let's try to remember that this not an example of deductive reasoning, it is an example of cumulative induction based on empirical evidence. The point of bringing it up was not to give an example of an objective scientific fact or even an objective fact, but instead to explain the logical structure which forms the very foundation of science itself, and therefore supports and limits the "objective scientific" knowledge that it is alleged to produce. It's about the strength of the argument and the form of reasoning it employs, not it's ultimate objectivity; it's not "objective" in the sense that it is "absolute certainty".

Geocentric models of the solar system and much of ancient astronomy could be described as the result of primitive scientific approaches to gaining knowledge. Even while they did not have accurate descriptions of the fundamental hierarchy of phenomena that caused the goings on of the night sky they still had a very reliable ability to predict certain events. Even while they had a lot wrong, like the fact that the earth orbits the sun and not the other way around, the "objectivity" of their knowledge (what they could reliably predict) was never founded on the basis of "objective fundamental truth", it was founded on "reliable truth". The steady succession of improvements made from the primitive models of the past to the more objective models of today are products of the scientific process in action. They might not be ultimate objective truth, but they're the best we've got.

Despite the fact that many human beings might say that they belief that the sun will rise tomorrow, I don't think that they really believe that the sun will do any such thing. — Metaphysician Undercover

The "sun rising" every day is a great example of a strong cumulative argument.which requires very minimal technical or absolute depth in reasoning or understanding yet which delivers as reliably as any science what it promises; predictive power from experience. This is not a scientific argument, but it does delineate, albieit primitively, the logical shape that scientific theories set out to take.

Through repeated testing and rigorous precision and accuracy in data gathering scientists seek to strengthen or weaken various hypothesis. While "the sun will rise tomorrow because it has risen every day that I can remember" makes only one single prediction, and has only one premise which is tested and confirmed with each passing day, scientific theories can make a whole host of varying predictions, and themselves can employ other more fundamental scientific theories as parts in a model seeking predictive power. But in order to "confirm" any given hypothesis, scientifically speaking, and thereby make it "an objective scientific fact", what we must do is be able to confirm it through experiment (not being able to prove it wrong essentially) with adequate accuracy, precision and repeatability.

I guess one way of putting it is that the answer to lacking ultimate and absolute certainty is to instead of seeking to firmly arrive at it, we can seek to approach it by continuously reinforcing what we do know until the remaining doubt regarding specific truths becomes negligible in every respect.

That debate though... It really blurs the lines between comedy and tragedy...

I really don't want to defend trump here, the point I was making was that what trump was describing is not necessarily a description of sexual assault. Consent can be a tricky issue both legally and morally. One camp will say that you must have enthusiastic affirmative verbal consent at every stage of escalation in any sexual encounter or a rape has been committed. Another side will say that anything short of full blown violent resistance is implicit consent.

Obviously the pragmatic truth lies somewhere in-between these points. Body language counts for something. Some would argue that not objecting in any way can be considered tacit consent (cases in which such arguments apply may vary) especially when a prior relationship has already established. Alcohol is a mostly unrelated but great example of how people can differ drastically about how we should perceive of and define sexual assault and consent: some say if you're drunk and you have sex with a sober person that you've been raped (this might only apply to male on female rape).

I agree with you that grabbing random women's vaginas IS sexual assault but this is not exactly what donny was describing. He was envisioning himself kissing a woman and this leading to the fateful pussy grab manuvre: "You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. I just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.". Random kissing can certainly also be described as sexual assault, but kissing someone without explicit verbal consent is an entirely different story. IMO body language is how you get consent to kiss someone. Kissing often is escalated to more... explicit... sexual acts and these escalations seldom always involve affirmative verbal consent in the course of an entire sexual encounter.

Before I forget my current rationalization for actually defending trump in this, allow me to play Trump's advocate: What Mr. Trump was describing in his 2005 banter is something that many celebrities are aware of, and that is the fact that with celebrity comes a sort of status that many people simply find attractive, some on a sexual level. Mr Trump may have very crudely articulated this, but many celebrities have had spontaneous sexual encounters with their followers, and just because a celebrity might not have asked for explicit consent in a given sexual encounter, this does not mean that consent may have in fact been there from the beginning and at every stage of escalation through body language and other such contextual indicators.

I feel dirty somehow for that :) , but I feel less dirty than I would for attacking trump on the basis of his seduction strategy of sudden snatch snatching rather than something politically substantive.

There's no proof against solipsism; perhaps the thing of which we are most certain of is actually our own prevailing lack of absolute certainty.

When you say "inference at best" you're really selling us short though. Inferences on their own can be weak, but with tests they can be strengthened, and with additional corroborating and testable inferences they can be strengthened even further. Even while our experience might be wholly subjective in any sense of the word, there are still consistencies within and between our experiences. The sun will rise tomorrow is a belief held by all humans because of a very strong cumulative argument (inductive reasoning) coming from our experience of it rising each day

Science does a pretty good job of this. Scientific theories such as those found in astronomy not only constantly agree with our observations of current and past events, but they also give us very reliable predictive power over forecasting future events. This power and utility is what convinces us to accept causality as an axiomatic truth. Even if all knowledge is subjective, we still highly prize it from within this subjective experience.

To answer your introductory question, we identify the difference between subjective and objective in science through testable hypothetical models of phenomenon. It's not objective in the ultimate sense, but it is a great tool for trying to approximate it. Something that is not objective in science is something that is either falsified through experiment or not falsifiable whatsoever. In broader philosophy, the subjective and the objective are essentially categories relating to the differences between "facts" and "feelings" (for lack of better terms). "The mountain has more mass than the mole hill" is something that could be considered an objective truth describing an "external world". "The mountain is more beautiful than the mole hill" is something that would be considered subjective even while it may or may not reflect some quality of the external world. We are careful about which subjective experiences we use in argumentation because they may or not be shared with everyone else. But if we base our arguments on objective facts we can essentially use the brute force of empiricism and reasoning to necessitate the shared applicability of our conclusions.

Hillary is just as big or bigger of a flopper though, and according to the recently leaked "wall street speeches" she has both a real and a private position because "if everybody's watching, you know, all of the back room discussions and the deals, you know, then people get a little nervous, to say the least. So, you need both a public and a private position.".

I know what she was trying to get at here: the eye of the public wields a peculiar form of scrutiny, and fear of this scrutiny can get in the way of honestly dissecting complex issues and replace it with bias and pandering to popular opinion. The supreme court refuses to allow it's proceedings to be filmed or broadcast live because they know that the public is not equipped to handle the scope and complexity of the issues they navigate, and that their emotional or otherwise irrational reactions to those goings on could and would find a way to have a causal effect upon those very or future proceedings; it creates room for bias.

I'm pretty sure she meant something along those lines, but if she was addressing a bunch of private bankers and asset managers I'm not so sure I see the merit.

well, if he can be convicted of sexual assault, that might be one thing (to be honest it might not even actually disqualify someone for the presidency other than in the eye's of voters).

Here is the offending bit:

""Trump: Yeah, that’s her, with the gold. I’ve got to use some Tic Tacs, just in case I start kissing her. You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. I just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.

Unidentified voice: Whatever you want.

Trump: Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything." — Trump

As far as I can tell he is not necessarily describing sexual assault. "They let you do it" seems to be the crucial bit that differentiates his attitude from one of sexual assault to one of consent. I mean, if Trump was going around randomly grabbing vaginas completely unsolicited then I reckon someone would have noticed by now.

He was telling a story about how he "moved on" (tried to seduce) a married woman and failed. Maybe we could just ask her whether or not Trump sexually assaulted her. Should the police investigate this incident?

I gather that you really dislike trump and all, but do you honestly think that "2 billion worth of free air-time" is a fair point to make?

Two billion dollars worth of pontiffs and pundits talking about the size of his hands isn't exactly worth 2 billion to trump now is it?

It's much more accurate to say that he got airtime for two reasons: 1, because he gets good ratings (they made money off of him. Period. It's their own damn greedy fault), and 2, because ridiculing Donald Trump fits well with the established agenda of the dems (the pubs get in on it too though it seems).

One thing that I think a lot of people don't realize is that when some people see the mainstream media doing nothing but ridiculing trump they actually get the idea that trump is "anti-establishment". They think: "Well if the powers that be do not want him to be president, maybe he is a threat to them".

People are getting more and more cynical and fed up when it comes to the election process and norm in America, and it's becoming harder and harder to sell each time. This current election is unprecedented because a part of the American public has become so blasé and lackadaisical toward the election that the only rhetoric and content capable of stirring them must be in some ways "extreme".

Trump "asking" Russia to hack the DNC for instance... Alleging that the two are any way in-cahoots is certifiably insane, and yet as an extreme point of rhetoric I see it falling out of everyone's mouth with extremely persuasive prejudice. Maybe the Kremlin do want trump to win, but why? Could it perhaps be that Russia desires a "regime change" in America so that it could possibly have it's economic sanctions eliminated?

Come on. Of course any sane Russian leader would want Trump over Hillary; Russia knows Hillary'sattitude toward Russia and global politics as a whole and they would rather roll the dice. That said, if and when Russia does release more evidence of some new Hillary scandal, will you literally blame it on trump because he once said "I hope Russia releases what they hacked"? After-all, Hillary is the victim in all this and trump is a misogynist...

How can a man with hands that small be president? What is he gonna shake Putin's baby toe? That's not classy.

In all seriousness though, no, sex scandals should not disqualify presidents because last i checked sex scandals were not inherently criminal. You might lose more than half your shit in the divorce, but that's for the spouse to decide (if a divorce is wanted), just like how it's the voting public's right to decide who they want to put in that most heated of seats, regardless of whether or not he has the appearance AND brain AND sex drive of a red-assed-orange-coated mountain baboon.

Unless you can show me the law where womanizing disqualifies you from the presidency, I'm actually inclined to believe that America loves to care but in the end really does not. See: Bill Clinton.

You're right though, this is no worse that all we have seen before from trump. The new great wall for me is enough to not take him seriously as a thinker on policy, which leaves me to speculate whether or not he is a calculating genius for being able to get where he has gotten. But then I remember where and why this all started... Hillary -"It's my turn"- Clinton. She bullied sanders out of what seemed to be a sure win against trump in the general election. The constant litany of serious scandals both in her party, the charity organization her hubby founded, and in the performance of her own official governmental duties would be grounds to have anyone else laughed straight out of North America and into some Tahitian dive bar.

Where m'ah country gone? (Actually I'm canadian, so it would be pronounced: "Where's aboots is your country gone to eh?".

Edit: meant general election, not the primary (proof I am Canadian)

Descartes cogito ergo sum was the first un-doubtable truth that he came to (IIRC) in his process of attempting to doubt everything (and thereby come to certain knowledge). As such the conclusion is normally taken to be in the very limited sense of "existence", lest it stray too far and lay claim to something which doubt could demolish.

As far as the question you seem to have been asking goes, which is "what is the true nature of consciousness (and by extension, our existence)?", we simply do not know.

We're scientifically "certain" that the conscious mind is seated in the brain, and that the mechanics of the brain determine it's activities, but beyond that and some of the low level mechanics which facilitate that functioning, we simply do not know.

We cannot defeat solipsism yet, perhaps as a consequence of not comprehending the true nature of consciousness. All we can do is appeal to experience, the prevailing consistency of causality, and the predictive power of our theories.

We're not necessarily left in any existential lurches though. Consider this: we currently do not know the true nature of consciousness. If we somehow discovered the truth what might change from our experience based perspective? Would pain be less painful and pleasure less pleasurable?

Even if we are but pixels or lines of code being run on a quantum Hewlett Packard of the future, that we are not "real" and have no "free will", what would change from our perspective? While exceedingly tantalizing, these potential undiscoverable truths, even if discovered, might have little to no impact whatsoever on the lives of human beings.

For instance, some people believe that our "realness/existence" is tied into our "free will" such that if determinism was true, they would assent to a linguistically similar position as the thrust of this thread: "we do not actually exist". Confronting this aspect of determinism involves the same sort of obstacles of cognitive dissonance as does solipsism and many other hypotheticals; when the way we cognitively (in reflection for example) value experience itself is based on something that can be so casually doubted, we are left calling into question the value of everything given that it all flows through conscious experience.

The solution to this dilemma, in my humble opinion, is to value experiences directly and for what they are as you perceive them rather than appealing to a more base foundation in search of elusive and supposedly ultimate truths. "Drop a heavy television onto your foot" is an old line that I'm unable to forget, because as a thought experiment it cuts straight to the strength of experience based values and the weakness of metaphysical values which would suggest that dropping a television on your foot is meaningless, inconsequential, not real, or otherwise unobjectionable.

Hopefully this is the content that interested you originally, and hopefully it is helpful!

Cheers!

Eyeballs and Enzo Ferraris are really very "absurd" things. When I was young I could not fathom how such absurd things could come into existence and I appealed internally to some creator god.

Once I learned of the processes of evolution that contributed to forming human eyeballs, along with the history of the combustion engine and computational science and the development of the automobile these things began to seem distinctly less and less absurd.

And now, when I force myself to conceptualize things as absurd as a part of a thought experiment, I realize that everything that does exist, and anything that could exist, can be considered absurd. At some point "something existing rather than nothing" in and of itself can be taken as absurd. If existence is possible without god, then absurdity does not reveal his hand.

The reason why the statement contradicts itself is that it's first premise "There is a phenomenon called "thinking" ", is mutually exclusive from it's conclusion "The phenomenon called "thinking" does not exist".

Crop circles exist but the popular myth about their source is false. In the same manner that I would demonstrate that crop circles exist, I would demonstrate that "thoughts" exist (falsifiable observations), and in neither case need we learn anything more about their inherent source or "true nature" to alleviate doubt as to whether or not they exist. This is the difference between the problem of existence and the problem of "consciousness" (whatever it is) from matter.

Perhaps "cogito ergo sum" enshrines a brute fact which has no explanation yet is plainly and prevailingly true. Non-existence, even if it were our current situation, would change nothing from our perspective; the experiences we have would remain the same and referring to demonstrably existent phenomenon as "non-existent" would be incoherent when we actually need to interact with them.

How could it be possible that we do not exist and yet are having this conversation?

The hard problem of existence (what cogito ergo sum purports to satisfy) is a bit different than the hard mind-body problem, which is in one sense the "mechanism" or "causal force itself" behind the relationship that exists between bodies and minds. We do not need to know the fundamental source or nature of a phenomenon before we can conclude that it "exists". Rationally the existence of a given phenomenon (like falling apples or crop circles) precedes the investigative processes seeking to determine it's function, mechanism, source, purpose, nature, etc...

Even in a dream state, cogito ergo sum still applies; the dream exists in the thoughts of the dreamer, the dreamer exists..

"Cogito ergo sum" does not give us any useful information about the nature of existence, all it does is confirm that something is there, for certain (purportedly), to begin with.

Maybe we're just images flowing from a projector, if so, the images still exist... Cogito ergo sum does not help in solving the hard mind body problem, nor does the hard body-mind problem invalidate "cogito ergo sum". If it did, then the argument would look like "We do not understand how this thinking experience thing works or is created, therefore we/it might not exist at all", which seems to contradict itself.

Someone should erect a PF funerary/memorial/eulogy thread where we can say our piece, reminisce and rant about the good old days.

It's well fucked guys. Tits up. IT'S A GONER!

If anyone has content they put a lot of work into on the old forum, what you can do to try and recover it for saving or for re-posting is to log into your account and visit the "options" page, which should give you a list of the threads you have started. You can hover over the title of the thread in order to get an excerpt from the beginning and use this and the title of the thread in a google search to find the direct google search result. At this point, you can click the little green down arrow at the end of the URL text and select "cached" version in order to actually view the first page of a thread.

Another method you can try is to use "the way back machine" and paste in the actual URL of individual threads and there's a chance that (if it is old enough) it will be saved there in perpetuity.

Basically it looks like the forum is in it's final death throes. No content from it is accessible directly from the website any longer. If you have any writing you want to save, now is the time to search for it. (google caches do not last forever)

VagabondSpectre is an ally 'wolf in sheep's clothing.' His primary interest in calling himself feminist is to police women and 'politely disagree' with them about what counts as feminist, and to tell feminists that they're hysterical and to 'get their acts together.' This is perhaps the worst kind of male feminist, and I agree with feminists in being repulsed by them, if maybe not for exactly the same reason. SX's wide-eyed feminism, and csal's 'we're all just people man' views are naive in a way, but VagabondSpectre strikes me as downright sinister... — The Great Whatever

I wonder how you would have approached this comment had you not known that I was a man...

Can you even imagine how you might have responded if you didn't have my penis to attack? Or if I happened to have a vagina and you a penis?

It would have read something like: "As a man my opinion on issues facing women is not valid, and the best that I can do to support your plight is to listen, believe, and to support your thoughts even while I am unable to comprehend them. You're a hero."

I'm sorry if this seems "sinister" but I feel like I must go out of my way to combat fallacious appeals to character and identity, especially here on what is meant to be a forum of reason and argumentation.

Put simply, you have not confronted a single solitary point that I have raised in this thread. All you have done is allege that I am a sinister man and that yourself and feminists should be repulsed by me. You have played the exact same morally bankrupt game of thinking that skin color or genitalia is a rational or moral grounds through to question or attack someone that I have depicted in this thread.

You have just demonstrated the cognitive and social results of the identity politics that has infected not just feminism but many other contemporary social justice movements as well. As a feminist I resent your notion that men can only be "allies" and I feel like your ideological camp is giving the entire label a bad name. Get your act together please ;)

Reading that paragraph is as a soothing balm on an open wound :)

More universities are going to start following suit, not only for their own protection against some of the more unreasonable social justice flack, (I.E: students calling for staff admission of white privilege and formal resignations.... Yes, that has happened....) but also because more and more students are becoming aware of and openly opposed to the rhetoric and ideologies which we are seeing go too far. "A free and open market place of ideas" is sometimes directly opposed by these groups, perhaps with important repercussions as it seems that on level playing field most of these ideas fall flat.

The all too sad truth is however that tens of thousands of these kinds of videos exist; I only posted this one because it happened to be the most recent example. This overall ideology might not be representative of the majority of students or westerners at large, but it is out there and has a nucleus capable of reproducing more of itself. Startling and fascinating...