Oh my God!

Was the upper upper part (where's the name of the site, forum, inbox, members etc.) RED TOO? :vomit:

Soo... When will come back those sites which started to play simple musical tunes when you opened the (with crude computer tones)? Or how about moving pictures of various philosophers? Nothing is more annoying to eyes than a site with movement that you don't want.

That's not purple, at least as my screen sees it. — Bitter Crank

For me it's purple too. How about Purple rain as background music?

I believe it is you who makes the fundamental error, to be more precise, the fundamental attribution error, the assumption that what Trump does reflects who he is. — NOS4A2

?

Isn't what you actually do define what you are?

No?

So now it's something else.

It’s relatively easy to modify the css code of your browser and override the color, should the red remain and be unpleasant for you, FYI. — praxis

Ah! Even a condescending remark to the discussion.

Wasn't it blue? Blue was nice. What's wrong with the color? Don't like the color.

FYI.

Hong Kong should see an opportunity to direct their energies towards a future where the core tenants of Mao'ism and quite frankly a version of stat'ism into a working methodology. — Wallows

What on Earth are you talking about? Or are you being ironic?

People of Hong Kong enjoyed not only wealth, but also Western freedoms when part of the British and then became mere chess pawns who nobody cared about when China took them over. China had the need to treat them with silk gloves when Western money and investment was important for the country. Now Chinese leaders can show their true face.

Why, oh why would the people of Hong Kong have an 'opportunity' in an utterly dead ideology that is nothing else than a totally empty shell having the name of "Chinese communism" for the purest form of fascism seen in the World now? China is a corporatist fascist state controlled by a single party system that relies on economic growth and nationalism to survive.

The Chinese may talk about communism/socialism, but don't let that fool you. Since Deng Xiaoping, China has had less and less to do with socialism. The government controlled industry and economy is a pure example of fascism: authoritarian nationalism characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, and strong regimentation of society and of the economy. The nearly three hundred billionaires of China should quite well show anybody that the 'socialism' is just pure semantics or parlance. (And as long that economic growth continues, surely it will have genuine supporters)

Now, with this in mind, I don't think a direct opposition towards the powers that be in Hong Kong will ever amount to much, apart from some theatrical resignations. — Wallows

Yeah, I didn't believe at all that Soviet Union could collapse either. They had to believe in what they were talking all the time, right? It was a Superpower. Not a remnant or relic of an old Empire just held up together because of a totalitarian system that everybody had stopped believing in a long time ago.

Hong Kong might not change China, but it can give an example what to do if people get disenchanted with Communist Party rule.

SINGAPOREAN DEMOCRACY
You have two cows. The government fines you for keeping two unlicensed farm animals in an apartment.

AMERICAN DEMOCRACY
The government promises to give you two cows if you vote for it. After the election, the president is impeached for speculating in cow futures. The press dubs the affair "Cowgate".

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS
You are associated with (the concept of "ownership" is a symbol of the phallo - centric, war - mongering, intolerant past) two differently - aged (but no less valuable to society) bovines of non - specified gender.

These are the best, thank you Wayfarer :lol:

Experiments like Milgram's and Zimbardo's are undoubtedly over simplifications, but that is necessary in any descriptive modelling. We have to simplify complex interactions to produce models. — Isaac

Yet oversimplification is a problem especially if we just want to get a simple model and then assume it can tell more that it does. One can obviously argue that the behaviour of a group is the aggregate of the actions/intensions of it's members, but that doesn't mean that from the behaviour of an individual we can say everything about the behaviour of a group. And once that group grows in size, has various instititions and so on, the complexity grows to such levels that the individual / small group experiment has little use.

Zimbardo was brash and too much of a showman for my liking — Isaac

Well, thanks for StreetlightX for giving that response of Zimbardo. From that I took away that the guy is a self-centered asshole.

Anyway, I always have had this feeling that if time travelers from 200 or 300 years in the future would come to the present, they would look especially at psychology and psychologists/psychiatrists to be as clueless and inherently harmful as Medieval doctors, who cured people by draining blood from them. We know a lot about diseases caused by bacteria, yet in psychology (or sociology) we don't know so much.

It is not simple, partly for reasons that are even contained in your statement: both the left and the ruling elite lost!? — boethius

Let's say both with Brexit and in the GOP primaries things didn't go as planned. At least the Democrats could handle the somewhat similar revolt by containing the popular Bernie Sanders, but the Republican party didn't and Trump's win came especially to Trump as a surprise (which is evident from his pre-election night posturing). Same thing with Brexit: those who issued the referendum in the first place were endorsing the "remain camp" and got a nasty surprise. That the left lost simply comes from the fact that there's no dispute what the leanings of the Trump supporters and Brexiteers are. Now populism can get a stranglehold on the left too, but this time it's right-wing populism.

Trump and Brexit are not "simple losses" for the left, they are a new kind of political phenomena (in our political time at least). — boethius

Indeed it's a new phenomena, I agree with that.

And also traditional values both of the left and the right are in change. Traditional conservatism is far away from Trump and anti-EU populism. The left it seems that it's supporters are quite ignorant of old school socialism. Seems like the male factory worker has been taken down from his pedestal. I have been surprised that in the US something as old as social democracy is seen as this new thing with just changing the word order to democratic socialism. Even if the US has it's welfare state, the rhetoric never has been anything close to European style socialism.

Brexit is also simply not as high stakes as Trump; leaving the EU isn't remotely on the same level as putting a person like Trump in charge of nuclear weapons — boethius

Uhh...no. Trump and nuclear weapons isn't an issue. Trump is simply such an inept leader that he simply cannot do such trouble. And what is rarely mentioned is that Trump supporters don't like the neocons and the hawks in Washington. He hasn't leashed yet out against Iraq, and there is no push for a new war inside Washington DC. Iran is a difficult enemy, it's not Syria, Libya or Saddam's weakened Iraq.

Do notice that the warmonger neocon John Bolton was fired from his position of being national security advisor. He lasted only 520 days, which is a very long time in the Trump administration, but still.

(That's actually a great move from Trump. :up: )

Though it's a truism on the left that Brexit mirrors Trumpianism, and there are similar issues for sure, I am not yet ready to give the British so little credit as to be in a Trumpian level delusion — boethius

It might not, but are we able to really answer your question? How are the Brexiteers depicted in the UK?

Brexit and Trump are phenomena were the left simply lost and things didn't go as planned for the ruling elite. Both the Republican and the Conservative party are in disarray. The heart of the support for both Brexit and Trump is in that they gave a giant middle finger to the establishment. Since giving that middle finger succeeded, the supporters are just happy about it and think that little details like political decisions afterwards don't matter so much. They won't leave their baby.

You see both Brexit and Trump are seen as under threat from the left by their supporters: There is the threat that Brexit is cancelled (theoretically at least) and that Trump is impeached (also very theoretical) and the power-elite simply rule out, erase away both voted results. And this 'threat' gives the headphones both to Trumpists and Brexiteers to hear only a ferocious rant from the left in the media, supported by the powers that be, to further this agenda, not genuine criticism of where the policies of Trump and the Brexiteers actually lead the two countries.

In fact both Trump and Brexit need a constant outrage and criticism from the media to gain support.

I think that Zimbardo's and Milgram's experiments just hit a nerve that people wanted to hear. These experiments are so well known because they simply fit the discourse and mainstream academic views. What people just love are simple behavioural answers to complex phenomenon like systematic cruelty, war and genocide. The idea that 'anybody can be made to be a torturer' is the basic extrapolation that people take from these ugly experiments and people are quite willing to believe them.

That Zimbardo hadn't visited a jail before and wanted for the guards to be cruel is quite in line with all this. This is actually quite evident even from Zimbardo's own rebuttal, which I find quite amazing:

Central in the training of guards was to exercise their power over their prisoners so that they would readily obey orders, prevent rebellion and eliminate escape attempts. My instructions to the guards were that they should maintain law and order, and also command the respect of prisoners.
In the power dynamic between them, guards should have most, while prisoners had little
or none.

From this it's totally obvious what Zimbardo's agenda is, especially when he is the one writing this.

Notice from the above what Zimbardo defines to be central in the training. Who on Earth trains guards "to exercise their power over prisoners" as the way to get them to obey orders? Ever heard of "carrot and stick"? No? If a prisoner wants to read a book, then what actual prison guard wouldn't give this kind of easy carrot? A prisoner reading a book simply isn't trouble. Not giving something as normal as that will just only increase the possibility of rebellion and escape. But of course this kind of logic isn't what Zimbardo had in mind and his 'rebuttal' exposes quite well his thinking. Because what is obvious (from the rebuttal also) is that Zimbardo was especially pleased with that his experiment in anarchy gave rise to violence, which then he can take as an example.

Yet that totally untrained people without supervision take their behaviour from Hollywood films and behave unprofessionally is quite understandble. And also that they want to do their part: by Zimbardo's own words the 'John Wayne' had said: "He said he wanted to make the experiment work, so stepped up to lead his night shift to be really tough on the prisoners."

Similar conclusions can be easily drawn from for instance wars: when you have two well trained armies that adhere to the Geneva conventions, then the war fighting can indeed happen without war crimes. The best example of this is the Falklands war. On the other hand, when the combatants are totally untrained and part of a mob and not of a military, then the violence can be just dreadful and worse than a Tarantino film.

Britannia was the name of the Country when it was part of the Roman Empire. There must surely have been some reason, like being British? — iolo

Just like the Romans called one place Germania. Copied in the similar way. Yet Modern Germany and 'the Germans' is even a younger thing than the talk about the British. I assure you that during Roman times there weren't Germans as we know now living there. There is a difference between 'the Germans' and 'Germanic tribes'.

Well, actually you can have even private companies in an universal health care system. Starting from private insurance companies ordered by law to give the service with a reasonable modest incentive to do it. Or the government buying the medicine on bulk, which can lower the prices.

But when the private companies themselves define the health care system, then you are right, it indeed is impossible.

The problem is one cannot have a good, cheap, universal, private healthcare system. — unenlightened

Look, every other health care system IN THE WORLD is cheaper than the US system. And A LOT of these health care systems even with their flaws make the people under these systems to live longer and be healthier than Americans.

The only reason for this is extremely simple: the American system IS INTENDED to make a profit for companies in the health care business, who basically have made the system for themselves. Americans simply want to pour money to the system in order for someone to make a fortune.

And it seems like many Americans are so demoralized, that they fear anything radically different would be even worse.

But the racial—indeed racist—images that pop into his head upon hearing certain words is not evidence that the speaker intended him to think that way. “Welfare queen” might just allude to people on welfare, no matter their color. In fact, Nurnberg’s admission that he thinks “racial images” when he hears the phrase “welfare queen” says a great deal more about his own racism than that of the speaker’s. — NOS4A2

You forgot the most important quote from Nunberg:

The important thing is that they leave you room to deny the associations to yourself and to others. And they provide the opportunity for a kind of rhetorical jiu-jitsu in response, where you turn the charge of racism against your critics. Somebody taxes you with racism for a remark about bands of youths in hoodies, and you indignantly point out that Mark Zuckerberg wears a hoodie too — and they're the one with race on the brain.

In my view the whole dog-whistle thing just shows how inflamed and defunct the current debate has become in the US. And we outside of the States are unfortunately mimicking you. In fact, one shouldn't even define it as a debate anymore. It's one of those things in the long line of ways how to dominate the discourse.

I think we are still basically the same people as we ever were, British. — iolo

Especially when the term and (the layered identity) started to be used only from the late 17th Century onwards and Britishness started to be used in the middle of the 19th Century.

Wondering why there's so much general agreement, even between cultures who have never met... ethical naturalism may be a useful way to think about that. Wondering whether to spend more on health care even at the expense of people's financial autonomy...I doubt ethical naturalism will be anything other than a pointless distraction. — Isaac

Could not have said it better myself.

Sure. The conclusion in the abstract is an appeal for greater equity, not a warning against recognising non-cis genders. — Banno

And actually it sounds totally logical. No matter how tolerant the society is, to be in a gender minority will likely cause bit of difficulty among people and some anxieties.

The only minority that people don't have any problem belonging to is to be rich. And even with this minority, those being born to prosperity it can be problematic.

About this topic, from the (now fixed link's) Introduction part I find this important. It shows from what perspective the author starts:

All that we can understand, imagine, believe, and do is dependent on the anatomy and physiology of our brains, which are products of natural selection as much as our limbs and our other organs. We try to maintain ourselves in existence for as long as possible—to achieve a respectable span of 70 or 80 years—and to produce offspring who will themselves be capable of producing offspring. It is pointless to ask what the purpose of our existence is.

What comes to my mind is the 'anti-natalism' humbug as a perfect example of how truly complex things turn out with morality and reductionism isn't perhaps the best way to tackle these issues. Because I assume this thread isn't about the morals of one historical person and what he thought, but an idea that our morals are based things like evolution. Why stop there, why not go to physics and quantum field theory and look from there the answers and the causes for our morals?

Fashionable nonsense I would say.

Wayfarer quoted above ever so annoying Dawkins with a quote that assures me of how annoying Dawkins is. There he links "Darwinian society" and "Darwinian morals" to Thatcher, hence he likely isn't a great fan of the famous female politician, but clearly in his example shows how think of things 'Darwinian'. I'd say once things get as complex as morality, reductionism may not be the best way forward.

The actual article does not support your interpretation.

McHugh is not himself without controversy.

You talkin' shite. — Banno

The abstract doesn't cover all what a paper says, so I don't know everything what Ketchen Lipson et al say.

From the abstract on the link you gave:

Across mental health measures, a significantly higher prevalence of symptoms was observed in GM (Gender Minority) students than cisgender students. Compared with 45% of cisgender students, 78% of GM students met the criteria for 1 or more of the aforementioned mental health outcomes. GM status was associated with 4.3 times higher odds of having at least 1 mental health problem (95% CI=3.61, 5.12).

What I find very disturbing are the statistics here: 45% and 78%. If nearly every second person has mental issues, then perhaps one should define at least some of these issues as normal behaviour among people. Every second student isn't going to attempt suicide or go insane. (Or, perhaps I'm wrong and vast segment of American students are totally off their rockers and truly need their safe spaces.)

. Ill-informed and irrational people don't vote for what's right but for what they want. — TheMadFool

Or they just choose something from the plate of rotten choices given to them. And just whine about the choices being bad, but not doing anything themselves.The problem isn't irrationality, it's more about basic apathy, the belief things won't improve and there's nothing you can do about it.

For example, I haven't met the American who is happy about the country having the most expensive health care system in the World that only gives out a mediocre service (except for the rich) and results in poor health statistics compared to other countries. Perhaps it's the rich doctor enjoying his 1%-status that enjoys the system.

We're in an ice age. — frank

At least for me it's important that we aren't nowhere near the peak of glaciation: there's not a glacier where my house is now.

It is technically possible to lower the levels of CO2 and methane fairly quickly. It would just mean slamming the brakes to the floor on the world economy and producing a political-economic-social train wreck. — Bitter Crank

Nah.

Let's just go to renewables and use nuclear energy as a stop gap and forget the absurd visions of Thanos environmentalism (from Avengers, you know). People take actually quite well droughts and other extreme weather. Heck, we have done just fine with repairing or at least stopping the breakdown of the ozone layer.

One might rationally be in favour of all the above, but in general, one cannot have all 3 at once; something has to give. — unenlightened

Actually you are wrong, unenlightened.

You can indeed have all of the three.

You just erase the public debt that the central bank has, which is the largest individual owner of that debt! Erasing 2,5 trillion dollars, basically 1/8 of the gross debt, has to give Trump some money to build that wall and lower taxes of the wealthy, you know. As you can say the central bank is de facto part of the public sector, a consolidated public sector balance sheet would net this debt out.

Yippiee!!! :grin: :grin: :razz:

Just for the record, the meme that ‘both sides of the climate debate are hysterical’ is straight out of the climate change denial playbook. — Wayfarer

What side on an argument would say they are hysterical (too)?

Simply put, it's tribalism.

A member of a different tribe gets integrated fully if and only if s/he not only accepts the societal and personal institutions and morals, but also accepts the religion of the tribe adopting him or her. — god must be atheist

Tribalism is this catch-all that we are served at the present. As if our society would truly be so rigid and not as permissive as it really is. Naturally it doesn't have to be like this. Where did we lose our individuality or is individuality only allowed when we think about our hedonistic and narcissistic me-myself-and-I lifestyles?

This is a primal and indelible instinct in humans.

I am an atheist, and as such, try to destroy religionism and recruit more members to my ideology.

The religious do the same thing. Recruit members for their ideology, and destroy other ideologies.

This is so much human nature. Nobody can override this. Not the MODs, nobody. This is the bread and butter of humanity. — god must be atheist

You can tell yourself this as much as you want, but it won't make it more real.

The vast majority of people aren't out there to destroy the people who don't think like them. They just leave them alone, avoid the unnecessary confrontation and live their own lives.

A divided vision. How to manage ?
It is not the case that the EU is blind to the problems of expansion. The problem might be that some people can make such blind assumptions and run with them.
The trouble is when the anti-EU brigade, like Farage, start to demean and destroy the EU from within its system.That is what I don't get. It troubles me. — Amity

Of course one alternative line exists: And that is just to be happy what the EU is now and not go forward with even more integration. Why wouldn't the EU of the present work? You can improve small things (transparency, efficiency etc.), but not totally organize it to be something else. Accept that the EU is far more EEC than a federation and totally different from the United States of America. Having open borders inside the EU and border controls on the outer frontiers generally works OK, especially if one prepares for actors like Turkey deliberately opening the flood gates of refugees. One doesn't need to break up EU.

This analogy doesn't work. — Benkei

Coming from the promised land of associations I can assure you the metaphor of movie fans and a movie fan club works very well. I do understand that your point is that EU can make legislation over the member states, yet this happens all the time with international agreements too. Basically to be a UN member state limits the sovereignty of countries... at least theoretically. But my point was something more basic.

You see, it's one thing for a group of movie fanatics to meet and watch movies together. It's a totally other thing when they decide to form an association, basically a legal person, with the idea that the association can organize events better. Yet once when that fan club exists, be it a formal association or not, it has a separate agendas from a single movie fan. Will the association continue? Where will it get it's members and are more members needed or not? Will it have enough money to operate? Will it try to organize something else, like trips to movie festivals or whatever? And now of course it has to have some kind of a staff, let's say a secretary and a chairperson. Even if these are movie fans themselves, they have a separate job now to take care of the club.

Yet let's not forget the movie fans, now the members of the new glorious association. For them to be a member of the association is just a tool for their convenience. They get something out of the membership. If the fan club doesn't give them anything, if they would be better simply watching movies themselves, then why shouldn't they opt for that?

This is something that is many times forgotten in the EU debate: the EU is just a tool for it's member states. Nothing else. The members states could co-operate even without it. It isn't an existential institution: if the EU would collapse Europe wouldn't go to war with itself as it did earlier. The EU doesn't exist because there are people hell bent on defending it and willing even giving their life for it. There wasn't and surely isn't an ideological grass roots movement that made the EU. Yes, the EU surely does have it's support, even I think of myself being a supporter of the EU and voted to join the union, yet that support didn't grow from an independent movement. The EU (or the EEC and earlier agreements) were concocted by leaders and top politicians of nation states, like Adenauer, De Gasperi, Schuman and Monnet. And I should add that it was a quite rational and logical concoction after the pile of millions of killed in Europe in WW1 and in it's sequel WW2. Still, the whole process has been right from the start a top-down process and has been done with the sovereign nation states firmly at the helm.

Hence to say that EU's problem is that the nation states have too much power totally ignores from where and how the EU has been created. It shows a lack of historical understanding of just how states form and how they differ from other institutions.

So, to cut short - given the fact that all future tech-progress must increasingly become susceptible to the old law of ‘Diminishing Returns’ — Robert Lockhart

Until there is a technological revolution, when the whole concept changes.

Just look at transportation: modern ships aren't far more faster than the classic liners in the 30's were back in the old days. The modern Queen Mary goes 30 knots and S/S Normandie went 32 knots. The fastest trans-atlantic crossing by a liner was made in 1952. Modern US aircraft can go little over 30 knots. To get to higher speeds one needs catamarans and hydrofoils. Yet then came a totally new way to transport people by air with aircraft. Here too there are limitations of economics: the speed of sound has defined the practical or economic limits to air speed for aircraft.

It was neither physics or engineering. It was politics. — fishfry

100% true.

We could have been on Mars during the Reagan years. If there would have been the political will (with Nixon) for a similar pace space mission. In fact, if the Russians would have succeeded with their moon rockets and beat the Americans even in this occasion (and we would not remember Neil Armstrong, but yet again a Cosmonaut, perhaps even Gagarin, as the first man on the moon), it could have been that Nixon may indeed have gone with von Braun's ideas of a manned Mars mission (or manned Venus fly-by) and not opted for the "cost-effective" Space Shuttle program.

And isn't that the problem this thread complains about? It may be aimed at religious threads, but it surely applies to all of them? We can approach it from a number of directions, but what it comes down to is a lack of courtesy. There is an unwillingness to oppose the argument without insulting the arguer. This is bad philosophy. VERY BAD philosophy.

Why don't we make this better? We can, if we choose to.... :chin: — Pattern-chaser

(an answer to Pattern-chaser from page 3)

One clear fact is the media itself of the internet. We are discussing these topics with total strangers who we don't know and who we will not meet. Never underestimate how this discussion would change if we were having this in a physical location sitting in a classroom, an auditorium or a cafeteria with people making comments after the person giving the 'opening paragraph' would have made his or her case. Usually people won't directly want to instigate disputes, spread discord and start verbally attacking others, especially when the occasion is an open forum debate. In a contest of some sort between opposite sides where one speaker represents one side and another the other side it can be confrontational, yet people understand they have a role to play.

Then I have to say that courtesy isn't anymore appreciated so much. It's very unfortunate.

And finally, there are those that view Philosophical discussions as competitions and of one side winning and other losing the argument. I'm not in favour seeing philosophical debates as a 'blood-sport', but some competitive people and many young people see it this way.

It is a thread to discuss the disruptive and disrespectful behavior of atheists and anti-religious posters on this thread. — T Clark

Well, those kind of threads where the views of others are respected and cordial manners dominate are few and far between. More typical is the disrespectful ranting. I don't think this an issue of just this topic, but it is quite general. F*ck the internet and it's algorithms.

For some reason the anti-religious and atheists view themselves to be somehow under attack and act if they have to be on the defensive. Perhaps it's the example of the few public atheist media celebrities who share their atheism to the World and seem to be on a crusade against the remnants of obsolete beliefs in hokus-pokus magic like...religion. Because, from their point of view, what other stance could a modern progressive thinking person have towards such backward ignorance?

The thing is, there has been, and still is, very little substantive criticism of the EU. Much of what is touted as "criticism" is, in fact, either nationalism or straight up lies. — Echarmion

That is how the debate is portrayed, unfortunately.

The real problem is that you need to be critical to improve things, but if you assume that every criticism is some kind of nationalist lie, you won't go far. The only "criticism" that is tolerated is that the federalization program hasn't gone far enough and we need more integration, which is simply one agenda that is pushed in the EU.

There's actually a lot of criticism directed towards the EU starting up with the bureaucracy of the organization, the lack of transparency, the peculiar illogical things like the EU Parliament hopping from Brussels to Strasbourg and back. Or things like Greece could outright lie of it's fiscal situation in order to wiggle it's way to the monetary union (and that people believed that with monetary union the countries would start acting in the same way). How well could the EU handle the Yugoslav civil war? The EU was totally incapable of doing anything. How well is the EU managing now it's foreign policy? Turkey wants to occupy parts of Syria and if it doesn't get it's way, it has hinted that it will open it's gates for more refugees to enter the EU. And what just is the EU? For years the EU was basically a large organization for handing out agricultural subsidies (and still is, actually).

The real problem is that what the EU needs is self-criticism and a debate how to improve it, which way should it go. It's hardly not only about two options: a) the EU has to be formed to be like the US or b) It's a monstrosity that has to be done away with quickly.

The truth about the EU is that a lot of it's faults, like the power of the commission and the relative lack of democratic legitimacy, exist because they work in favour of the national governments. — Echarmion

Why would this be a surprise? The EU was formed by national governments. It's wasn't formed by Napoleon (or Hitler), but with genuinely sovereign states coming together and through co-operation between them. Why then do you find this to be the problem? It's like some movie fans creating a fan club and then someone coming and objecting to the fact that the fan club is made of movie fans!

It's not only the mathematics, Zeno's tortoise paradox and Arrow paradox just show how time is related to movement and change.

Assume everything, to the smallest particles would be still without anything moving anything else. The fundamental forces wouldn't effect anything. What would it matter if a microsecond or a milennium would pass by? If after two milennia things started to move again, we wouldn't notice the two milennia that past just by.

Thanks for the answers.

I too believe that there is something of a more general phenomenon working here than just something unique to British politics. In Europe the main problem is that there hasn't been a proper way or entity to critique the flaws or the shortcomings of the EU integration and EU itself from conservative/right-wing stance leading to populist "fringe" movements taking over the issue, typically new political movements or parties that are basically defined just by their anti-EU stance and not much else centered around one politician. EU has only tolerated a pro-integration federalist discourse and paints anything else as "nationalist". As the political elites have gone along with this (with perhaps the exception of the UK starting with Thatcher), criticism has been left to the previous "fringe" populists. The outcome has been obvious: in many countries the political landscape has changed and especially centrist parties are having a tough time. And sometimes the populists can take over a right-wing party (as they can a moderate left-wing party too).

Both in the US and in the EU the neoliberal development, globalization, has not only been criticized from the left, but also from the right, which is now obvious several years to the Trump administration. Neither the left or the right are happy with the power of lobbyists and corporations in present have. This can easily morph into populist anti-elitism. Once this populism gets into the political discourse, you are far away from consensus building and normal politics etc. as the last thing populists try to reach is a political consensus on the policies.

I would like to ask the British here one question, even thought of opening a different thread:

What has happened to the Conservative Party?

There might be not many that have actually voted for them (yes, I understand this is a Philosophy Forum), yet for a foreigner it looks that the party simply doesn't look like the one that was in power during the time of Thatcher and John Major. Especially it doesn't look conservative to me.

What do people think is the reason for this?

But surely there are also borders that exist because they lie between different things, like the sea-shore, which bounds the sea (or the land, depending which way you're oriented)? — Pattern-chaser

The sea shore, a river or a sea does exist physically just like a mountain range. That they are a border between two states is something totally else.

Every space program has it's good days and bad ones. Even going to the Moon can be difficult, with other planets (Mars is the real probe eater) it's even more difficult.

Another day in the office... as long as politicians understand the importance and aren't keen on slashing the budgets to where nothing actually can be done.

(Just look at the numbers of failed probes to Mars: )

The belief that all politics is Identity politics is a toxic pill for democracy and for a Republic to function, yet an extremely popular belief, which is gaining ground.

It's main target is to attack the underlying idea of citizenship, that we as citizens ought collectively through our representatives decide on the political agenda and decisions that the state takes. That we could do this as citizens and could have more ideas than just fighting for more power and spoils to 'our tribe' is directly attacked and tried to be refuted by the supporters of identity politics. Identity politics refutes the idea of people being individual citizens and tries to put us in a mold based on our race, gender, sexuality or wealth or whatever is deemed to be our 'identity'.

And American believe it and other countries too are inflicted with this as well. The easiest way is simply not to listen to others as individuals, but simply insist that they are talking as (add race), (add sexual preference), (add priviledge status) and so whatever they would be saying is just identity politics done consciously or unconsciously.

Because we surely cannot think about anybody else than of our kind that share our 'identity'.

As I understand it borders are physical. It would simply exist whether we agree or not. — TheMadFool

?

Even in my lifetime a lot of borders have been redrawn, one important border that I personally crossed over has vanished after the unification of two states. And where I live there are historical borders in my neighborhood where earlier was the border. A border is a perfect example of an institution, just like the picture above from Terrapin Station shows.

Where are the brand new, so to speak, organisms that, forgive my limited vocabulary, pop into existence like, presumably, the very first single-celled organism that came into existence a couple of billion years ago? — TheMadFool

So you aren't talking about evolution, but a repeat of abiogenesis: basically you are looking for a single cell organism to 'pop into existence' somewhere where there isn't life before. First problem is that we don't know exactly how it happened. Secondly, perhaps the places where abiogenesis happened have already life, which has made it a bit difficult to have that 'pristine state' where it would happen again...

Please read my replies above. — TheMadFool

Still I don't get your reasoning. It's as if you have made up your mind that somehow the evolution of new species has stopped.

Speciation takes a long time. But nothing seems to show that it would be slowing down. As humans rapidly change the environment, evolution will naturally follow.

And to the idea that new species aren't coming up, just a brief internet search shows that this isn't so. Nylon eating bacteria surely have not been around since nylon was made only in 1935 and the bacteria were only found in 1975. Bacteria, plants and insects are the first that can change fairly 'quicly'. And as humans have changed the landscape so much, species that have adapted to the urban environment are the obvious choice for new species to come around (as cities haven't been around for long).

Borders I hope are objective and disagreeing on it wouldn't make it magically vanish. — TheMadFool

When enough people agree on there existing a state, that state and it's borders do exist. Sometimes people have problems in understanding the existence of human institutions and think they wouldn't exist because they are just 'made up', 'invented' or 'agreed upon'.