SteveKlinko,

The problem is that people see in your argument just the words "Science has zero understanding" and they stop reading there as they are offended by all the anti-science rhetoric they are confronted in our times.

Sure, there's a lot we don't know. That doesn't mean that Science is useless.

Why? What would that prove? — SophistiCat

I would say then that computers really can think, but I assume that I would be just confusing you.

Ok. Assume a computer that you give a program to run. The computer follows first the program, yet later you find it running a totally different program, which wasn't at all described in the first program to be done.

You haven’t addressed the substance of my post. — Michael

Neither have you my post.

You see the definition of a computer, a Turing Machine, matters. It's not a synonym for agent. Computation has it's limits. You simply cannot argue that because there is cause and effect, because there is this "Black box" in between input and output the two everything is computable. This actually isn't a thing about consciousness or free will, but the limitations of computation.

First of all, most computer programs are algorithms that process data, so it is not just an algorithm that you put in - it is algorithm plus data, and data can bring in potentially unlimited information. — SophistiCat

Yet how the handle the data has to be in the algorithm. There surely can be feedback loops even in very simple computer programs, that in the old days were called cybernetic systems and there is a myriad of other ways how computers "learn" from the given data. Yet for that learning there has to be a specific algorithm.

Or let's put this another way. Give me an example of a computer that doesn't follow an algorithm, instructions provided by a software or hardware program as said above.

What does it mean for an algorithm to tell a computer how to react? — Michael

Again:

Definitions of an algorithm:

"A process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations, especially by a computer."

"An algorithm is a step by step method of solving a problem. It is commonly used for data processing, calculation and other related computer and mathematical operations."

"An algorithm is a set of instructions designed to perform a specific task."

Definitions of a computer:

"A computer is a machine or device that performs processes, calculations and operations based on instructions provided by a software or hardware Program"

So: computer follows instructions (algorithms). It doesn't do things that the instructions don't tell it to do.

The children are waking so I have to close — Athena

My have to go soon to sleep.

I have a very different understanding of Germany than you do. The book "The Anglo-German Problem" by Charles Sarolea is on line. It was written when Germany was mobilizing for the first world war. — Athena

That is in a way a totally different time and not only in Germany. Europeans hadn't seen a major war since the Napoleonic times nearly a century and the fact how lethal modern warfare had become wasn't understood.

In a way there is some resemblance to our time,yet we aren't so oblivious to the perils of a World War as the people in 1914 were. When Hitler rose to power everything was different than in 1914.

Instead of seeing me criticizing what is so, would you please interpret what I am saying as saying what is so and saying there are consequences to the change in education? — Athena

Sorry Athena, I'm not sure what you imply here. Could you say it in another way?

And you don't think that we operate according to algorithms of our own, albeit ones that are a product of DNA-driven cell development rather than intelligent design? How exactly do you think the human brain works? Is our mind some mystical homunculus, operating with libertarian free will, and that can only occur naturally and never artificially? — Michael

I think that you aren't grasping the fact that this is basic and a fundamental issue in Computer science and computational theory. An algorithm is simply a set of rules and a computer follows those rules. It's about logic. Period.

There is absolutely nothing mystical here: the simple fact is that not everything is computable even in mathematics. True but uncomputable mathematical objects exist. And everything here is about the limitations of computability.

Just think a while what you mean by that "we operate according to algorithms of our own". OK, if indeed it would be so, then these algorithms by definition of the term could be described to you: an algorithm is a process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other problem-solving operations. Thus you surely could read them, understand that "OK, this is me, I do react and solve things the way that the algorithm says". However, and here comes the absolutely crucial part, the algorithm to be an algorithm that computers use must tell how you react to it, how you learn from seeing this algorithm. Now people might argue that this is because you are conscious or have 'free will' or yadda yadda and thus you can look at this algorithm, set of rules, and do something else. Take it as a whole, learn from it and change your behaviour in a way that isn't in the algorithm. There's nothing mystical here. You simply aren't using an algorithm like a computer does.

A computer or a Turing Machine cannot do that. It just follows a set of rules. If you think that a computer can overcome this problem, then congratulations! You have just shown Turing's Halting Problem and a multitude of incompleteness results in Mathematics are false.

↪ssu Have you not heard of machine learning? — Michael

Yes. And there's exactly the problem. Just from the Wikipedia link you gave me:

Machine learning explores the study and construction of algorithms that can learn from and make predictions on data – such algorithms overcome following strictly static program instructions by making data-driven predictions or decisions, through building a model from sample inputs.

As I said, the Computer has to have an algorithm. It cannot do anything without an algorithm and it cannot do something that algorithm doesn't say to do. It's Limited by it's algorithm. Now you can look at an algorithm (1. do this 2. Then do that 3. check what you have done works) and think out of the box and come up with a new algorithm (1. Go and drink a beer and let others do those things and check they work). Your basically conscious. You can look at the algorithm, understand the objective that the algorithm is intended for and then do something else.

However data-driven decisions it makes and however it builds a model from sample inputs, the computer has to have instructions how to build these, how to use the data, and all that still is very basic instruction following just like a Turing Machine does.

A computer simulation is just taking some input and applying the rules of a mathematical model, producing some output. The article I linked to explains that biological computers can do this. It's what makes them biological computers and not just ordinary proteins.

And we know that at least one biological organ is capable of giving rise to consciousness. — Michael

Yeah, but unlike computers which follow orders and basically use algorithms, we being conscious can look at those rules/algorithms and create something else, invent something, which wasn't in the rules/algorithm in the first place. When a computer "creates" something new, it has to have specific orders just how to do this.

Hence computers simply cannot follow the algorithm "do something else". They have to have specific instructions about how to do 'something else'.

Well, the last veterans of WW1 have already died. In the US there are less than half a million veterans of WW2 alive from the 16 million that served in that war. In about 12 years there will be very few left.

No. NPR says rain meant he'd have to go by car instead of helicopter. — frank

Actually, Trump tweeted that himself. Didn't find that on the NPR site now (perhaps in a radio broadcast?)

But you said he didn't go because he didn't want to get his hair wet. That's fake news that you have now doubled down on with unenlightened along with you. — frank

At least he was still bitching about getting soaked at the later cemetary, so that's there to confirm that Trump didn't like being outdoors in the rain as the the Vanity fair scoop said

One Republican briefed on the internal discussions said the real reason Trump did not want to go was because there would be no tent to stand under. “He was worried his hair was going to get messed up in the rain,” the source said

. See here.

But I think we should continue (if we want to) this debate on the Trump dump, sorry, Trump thread.

This claim of multirealisabilty has in fact been deeply challenged by research into the biophysics of life over the past decade.

Everything biological hinges on the ability of informational mechanisms, like genes and neurons, to regulate entropic metabolic flows, like proton gradients and electron respiratory chains. So this biology, this set up, now seems so special, life and mind could only arise with very specific “hardware”.

This familiar assumption of cogsci, and hence 1980s philosophy of mind, now sounds horribly dated. — apokrisis

I think the basic problem is learning and the interaction with the World that isn't part of you. Too many times the focus is just on the very broadly defined physical mechanisms.

So he went to the cemetary? Ok, then my bad.

Has he visited the troops in Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria? He has promised to go to see the troops, but he doesn't think it's important. See Trump: It's not 'overly necessary' to visit troops in the war zone

So, here's more fake news to you, frank.

The German is handling of their own history is extremely rare. Self criticism is usually very rare. This is not because they lost the war, just as in WW1, but because they were utterly devastated and ruined in WW2 with the nazi regime finally turning on it's own people. This was a total defeat, physical and ideological, which you can notice from the fact that there wasn't any kind of nazi resistance afterwards. This lead to a total reformation on ideas and values especially in free West Germany, whereas East Germany under socialist tyranny simply brushed aside the past as had nothing to do with the past. It lead in West Germany to look at history in a totally different light, as you gave examples of, and created an effort to avoid the mistakes of the past. For example when the new Germand Bundeswehr was formed, a lot of effort was put to create new army based on citizen soldiers, whereas you can say that the East German army was the direct continuation of the old Wehrmacht.

Our schools should teach our history and its effect on others. If the whole world acknowledged their wrongs and how their wrongs affected others, we might have a better human experience on this planet and change our consciousness in an important way. — Athena

Well, that's what university history departments do. Not perhaps primary schools, but the highest learning does this. The focus on others and the negative impacts is so popular among historians that one should really put an effort on the bright side also, really. True objective history isn't pushing a political agenda, it's telling the past how it is and showing what was bad, but also what was good. Criticism is needed, but don't forget all the positive effects on others too! Perhaps the problem is that view too easily historians as pushing some agenda just with the topic they study.

What World War 1 was compared to other wars is visually presented in the Auckland Museum War Memorial. There in New Zealand, on the other side of the planet from where the fighting took place, a huge hall in the museum is furnished with the name of the fallen soldiers just from the Auckland area. Next to it is the hall remembering those who died in WW2. That hall is smaller and there are notably less names. The museum continues with this theme and the lists of names rapidly get smaller of the it wars that the country has participated later. When WW1 losses were over 18 000 and WW2 over 11 000, in the Malayan Emergency nearly twenty got killed, in the Korean war 33, in Vietnam 37 and finally there are the few names of the fallen in War on Terror (5 killed). Going through the halls and you can see the change from a conflict that had a huge impact at a small population of only 1 million, which sent over 100 000 of their boys to far away to places like Gallipoli to the present time where likely many people don't even know if the country is participating in the US lead actions around the World.

Why there are memorials built in New Zealand is simply because the graves are on other continents and nearly a third of the fallen soldiers have no grave.

Lol. Must be also fake news that Trump never has visited as Commander-in-Chief (or before, of course) the troops in the field in an actual warzone like Afghanistan or the Middle East, unlike Obama or Bush. Of course, it is totally logical for him not to do that because it would just focus media attention to the longest war that the US has fought and is, well, losing. But if you keep it out of sight, it is out of mind. Talk about a truly forgotten war in Afghanistan.

And Trump, who doesn't remember just in what foot he had bone spurs, has said, his personal Vietnam was avoiding venereal diseases in the 1970's. That's fitting too.

Even if there is another thread for the subject, I think this Renewal and Remembrance thread is the most proper one to note this following anecdote.

During the official centennial ceremonies of the ending of World War 1, the American president decides (against the advice of his staff) not to go the American cemetary at Belleau Wood as it's raining and he doesn't like his hair to get wet, as he might look bad with wet hair.

Now, even the best poet couldn't come up with this which is so telling of our time.

Do they remember what they did to others? — Kippo

I'm sure people remember what they did personally.

And on the rare occasion people can experience even collective guilt as the Germans do even now.

And capitalist concerns prefer to do away with national borders as much as possible. — Kippo

Only when it's beneficial for the capitalist. And countries aren't irrelevant of their national companies. Just look how many corporations are nationalized. The emergence of Sovereign Wealth Funds also shows this too.

"National identity" has to be culturally imparted - history, myths, hurts, triumphs, strengths, and so forth. I can understand your confusion though because we tend to think that we as individuals have the national mythology embedded in us intrinsically — Kippo

WHO thinks so?

Where you seem to be confused and many others are also is when we talk of a national identity as a social construct, something that people have invented, that this means there's nothing "real" in it, as if it is just an imaginary construct and hence unimportant or easily changeable. However you mentioned history and to history there exists an objective reality of what has taken place (and not only subjective stories about it). And people do remember what has happened to them. That collective memory isn't just something invented out of thin air.

Perhaps it's simply that in our time we take nearly everything as given and don't see how entitled we are especially in the West where we do have functioning democratic nation states. Then it's easy to question the whole meaning of it. And of course, a dispute between two countries make news, not a long term mutually beneficial relationship between two or more countries. Perhaps you have to be a Kurd or a Palestinian today to understand just how important an own nation state is.

In regards to your questions, the lack of distinction given in the matter makes it impossible for me to imagine what Fukuyama is saying when he says marginalized groups are demanding more than equality. This is why I said in my first response to ssu that:
"What Fukuyama leaves out of this account is whether the demands to be treated equally were met. It also leaves out the unpleasant fact that a "celebration of intrinsic differences" is what the "dominant" group has been doing for centuries."
Where can I find this "broader society"? If the "marginalized group" is both an equal part of it and outside of it at the same time, this discussion of motives that Fukuyama embarks upon seems like a blame game about an invisible offense. — Valentinus

I think the reasoning goes that when obvious institutional and legal discrimination, like women not being able to vote or homosexuality being illegal, is done away with (through universal suffrage and abolition of the sodomy laws etc.), then one can argue that you have equality on the legal/institutional level. However, this obviously doesn't mean that everything was great after women got to vote and homosexuals weren't put into jail or treated as mentally ill. Attitudes take more time to change. Yet one can make the argument that playing the victimhood card and arguing that one is being discriminated can go a little too far and that simply be employed as a political method.

Perhaps this can be seen from the example of the far-right when it has adapted in it's identity politics of victimhood the idea of "reverse racism" and the lunatic "white genocide" argument.

Because the nation state tends to promote itself as a competitor with other nations. — Kippo

Yet you disregard the fact that most countries do have good relations with each other and conflicts are quite rare these days. If you argue that countries are competitors at the economic level because of capitalism, well, that's part of capitalism. And then you disregard the fact that countries prosper for mutual trade. Those countries that have closed their borders and think they don't need the outside World are dirt poor with huge problems. And that there are poorer nations and wealthier nations surely isn't a fault because nation states are formed based on nationationality. How a society works, how prosperous it is, how strong it's institutions are and how much social cohesion there is a result of a multitude of factors.

People who make up "minorities" and " majorities" require a cultural context to be given to them in order for them to accept the classification. In order to accept belonging to some groups even. They have to be told that they are group X because of Y. This is not true of language, admittedly, whereby you automatically identify with those who speak your language. It is partially true though even for appearance — Kippo

Partially? I think a racial minority that is discriminated wouldn't see it so lamely as you do. Or if you are dirt poor and I'm extremely rich, that class difference between us doesn't require a 'cultural context' given by somebody for us to notice the difference. That difference is evident in our everyday lives.

Awareness of your identity is seldom something you seek or you invent, but something that your surroundings give you.

I chose irrational expansions simply because they are more in the spirit of the experiment, as opposed to predictable, repeating, rational expansions that could be known in advance. But there are all kinds of mathematical entities that would suffice. — EnPassant

So basically irrationality or what the number would be used here wasn't important. "Known in advance" is quite vague definition here. By whom? Someone who isn't good at math (then even a rational number makes it) or the a math-enthusiast who can use his brain as a calculator?

But if physical determinism is to obtain all the way through it must be shown how the value of the digit is determined by physical laws. But it is not. It is mathematically determined. — EnPassant

This is a bit confusing. How do you define these two to being "physical", yet then something being "mathematical" as opposition to the first?

there´s a big difference between representing U.S. interests in the Gulf, like any other president has done before, and actually having your presidential campaign by dozens of donors from Qatar and Saudi Arabia like Clinton. — DiegoT

Lol. Yeah, and there's a huge difference campaign donors and outright and evident corruption of the Trump administration. Once Qatar bailed out Jared Kushner's familys investments at 666 5th Ave, magically Trump went from supporting the Qatari blockade to the totally different stance of being against the Saudi lead blockade. Btw. his cabinet had been thinking of being a neutral mediator between the Saudi coalition and Qatar, but Trump (or Jared) surprised every including the secretary of stat with their different views. Oh, it's just a matter of over 1 billion dollars or so.

The fact is that the Trump administration is the most corrupt administration for a long time in the White House.

In other words, it's not just that the left abandoned economic problems in favor of identity-based ones, it's that neoliberalism has systematically defanged and deprived the people of the ability to intervene - and thus conduct politics - at the level of the economic. Having subject governments around the world to regulatory capture, while increasingly shifting decision making power away from the demos and into the hands of the already-powerful, identity politics is the only 'kind' of politics left that anyone can scrap over.

While it's easy to blame the left - and the right - for the turn to identity politics, this should also be coupled with the necessary question: what other options for political action are available, and more importantly, how viable are they? — StreetlightX

Good viewpoint.

The fact is that a lot of the legal agenda and objectives that various political movements have histrorically had have already been reached: universal suffrage, labour and employment laws, end of open segratation etc. For example classical liberalism, once a potent political movement in the 19th Century, has basically had all of it's basic agenda pushed through and hence liberal parties have turned into caretaker parties or have withered away as they don't have some obvious objective to fight for and hence exist.

Perhaps it is when economic needs are met (at least with the majority of voters) and globalization is working at least somewhat, parties become as I said complacent caretaker parties just running the government as usual and promoting their state in the global market. They are not thinking much about why they exist as elections are just a silly season repeated in a few years or so. Thymos has been forgotten and as you say, neoliberalism has defanged the people of the ability to intervene. Or at least it feels like it.

Perhaps the best example of how important identity is and what happens when there's a lack of it is the European Union itself. The EU basically has basically sold itself to it's member state citizens as something that will improve the economy. Sure, it has a flag, has taken one old masterpiece as it's "national" anthem and even has come up with a "Europe Day", but otherwise it has failed miserably in creating an European Identity. Or basically doesn't think it needs one. It seems that all you need is bureaucrats in Brussels and nothing else.

The English could form a unifying identity with "British" above the older national identities and was accepted by the Scots and the Welsh (yet it failed with the Irish). Being British didn't make them less Scotsmen or Welshmen, which is notable. Likely the EU simply doesn't have the stomach or the will to push through a new identity that would unite people under a common European (Union) Identity. Now in the US, perhaps if you put in a glass cup a New Yorker, a Texan and a Californian and shake the glass, they will start fighting each other, but I would argue that they would find a common identity of being American even if they differ a lot otherwise. In Europe, we differ a lot and don't have a strong common identity.

When this promise of economic prosperity hasn't worked (at least not for all) in the EU and there isn't that common identity, then unfortunately the EU has chosen a path that one European philosopher warned in a lecture (and I've forgotten the name) and that is to vilify nationalism and hint that critique of the EU is this ugly nationalism. Of course those that think their nation state is important doesn't mean that they are jingoists or extreme-nationalists. Add the fact that some countries in the Eurozone have acted more irresponsibly and recklessly than other (notably Greece) and you get a bit of hostility with the different countries (of "why we should pay for their lousy faults").

Hillary had the support of the Arabs, that are not better friends than Putin on his worst day. — DiegoT

Um, who did Trump visit first when he got elected President? With Trump Saudi-Arabia got a far bigger friend than any Hillary administration ever would have been. They have played Trump's son-in-law like a fiddle. Actually Trump's other cabinet members tried to have the US to behave as it would have ordinarily done, but Trump sided with the Saudi's and created a bigger mess in the gulf.

And of course even they don't have such influence as Russia has over Trump.

Terrapin, repeating what Apokrisis said above, a democracy is "a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives". So a democracy logically needs the members of the state for it to be a legitimate democracy. Those members, citizens, are in a nation state defined by nationality just as the term nation state implies. I don't think there's any problem in the logic here.

Now, one other way to create that identity at the present (that comes to my mind) is with the terrorist state IS who think they're creating a Caliphate for the muslim Ummah. They have very strict attitudes at who is a member of that state (who is a proper Muslim) and who is an infidel based on religion, not nationality or ethnicity.

Yet your argument is that either democracy doesn't need membership or that identity linking to that membership is totally irrelevant. Well, guess then I should be able then to vote in the next US elections because the actions that the US makes affects my country and me. And you pick such lousy presidents anyway. Why don't actually everybody that wants to participate in the next US elections have a chance to vote or even become a candidate?

Perhaps then the next elections in the US would be won by the Chinese Communist Party!

Citizens in the relevant sense are members of a state or native or naturalized persons who owe allegiance to a government and are entitled to protection from it. — Terrapin Station

Isn't that part of their identity then? Even if they don't actually like the country or it's government. (Who wouldn't be critical about his or her government.)

And there you said it yourself. Persons who owe allegiance to a government. Owing allegiance is the "problem" here. And if you don't feel that you get protection from the state, perhaps it discriminates against you, doesn't take into account you or perhaps even persecutes you, why would owe allegiance for that state? Obviously it's not working for you.

And with the passport they actually check your identity.

No one is positing people not relating to the state in any way. Unless you think that the only way to relate to a state is via national identity. (In which case you'd need to present an argument for that.) — Terrapin Station

Question, Terrapin: what do you think citizenship is?

If you go to a vacation on another continent and fly there, what do you think that passport is about?

So, you don't think that people with no concept of national identity (it doesn't matter why exactly they wouldn't have that, it's simply a thought experiment scenario) would be interested in voting on laws about, say, health care, whether marijuana should be legal, whether taxes should be raised, etc.? — Terrapin Station

Now you are mixing up identity and how the people understanding what their identity is. As I said, many people don't give a damn because it's no problem to them.

And I asked you, who do you think has no notion of a unique ethnic or other cultural identity? How's that possible? The language you speak makes part of that identity. The place you live makes part of that identity.

It just seems like a complete non-sequitur to me.

Imagine we have a nation state, and for whatever reason, there's some conceptual block where the citizenry have no notion of a unique ethnic or other cultural identity, etc. — Terrapin Station

Perhaps you haven't thought this out.

How could there be a block of citizenry who have no notion of a unique ethnic or other cultural identity?

OK. What's you mother tongue? English? Whatever it is, imagine then that everything officially given to you, taxes, tickets or even the newspapers you can buy, everything is in different language that either you can barely read or don't understand at all. You simply won't get the service in English (or in your mother tongue). So, you think that doesn't affect you and your identity? Do you think then that government is for your when you will not get any service from any official in the language you speak? Now, if your relatives, friends and co-workers would have the same problem with the official language, wouldn't there be something common between you? No? You just happily go to vote without any knowledge what actually you are doing in the voting booth as all the instructions are in a language you cannot understand. Still democracy prevails.

The fact is that identities are not usually a personal choice you make. You don't pick them like your diet of being vegetarian or whatever. At worst it's pushed down your throat by other people in everyday life. If you argue that there are people who don't care about the issue, that's surely true, there are masses of them. They likely live in a country where the official language is the language they speak and everything for them is just given, all the perks from education to social welfare to other public services brought to them by their state. Hence they don't have to care at all about it, they'll just take it for granted and so hence they can question the whole reason for the state to exist.

So, the claim is that just in case the above obtains, that nation state can't practice democracy, they can't all vote on the laws they'll institute, because . . . well, I have no idea why we'd think that, because it seems like a complete non-sequitur. What in the world does the one have to do with the other? — Terrapin Station

Because if people don't relate to the state in any way, why would they vote? It's not their government, it's for somebody else.

Tzeentch, you are correct about the agenda of the Soviet Union, which actually has continued with Putin (which is no wonder, when you think where Putin comes from). Yet the fact is the Russians have been so successfull in their information warfare as there is obvious market for them. Americans left by themselves are quite capable of destabilizing their institutions and being sceptical about their government. It's just adding fuel to an already lit fire.

Perhaps when people don't support universal agendas anymore, they then go with identity politics.

Sure. That much is obvious. What's not obvious is the notion that you cannot have legimitate power and a democracy in a nation state without a national identity. — Terrapin Station

Give an example. Do you have in mind another way how people could identify with their nation or is the whole identity issue meaningless?

The nice thing about this pair of terms is that there is a built in ambiguity that will lead to lots of disputes as to whether transgendered people, for instance, are asking to be merely equal to others or not. Maybe they are claiming to be more special than everybody else. If I assert the isothymia of white people, is that believable? Everybody knows that white people think they are superior. If you are against open borders you must be a white supremacist. (The Guardian carried a piece the other day in which the author equated the Republican Party with white supremacy.) Thymos = isothymia = megalothymia. — Bitter Crank

That's the problem. Vast majority of people don't have a problem for example with transgender people being treated equally, but many can get offended if one has to start referring themselves being of cis-gender because this rather small minority came up with the definition. And of course, everything concerning "white people" and the discourse goes quite nuclear, just like the debate about nuclear energy.

Why our hipster marxists can't understand the basic facts of class definition and class interest is beyond me. It is not that complicated. And their ignorance has led them to go in search of exotic and more interesting problems than those of people who are merely forced to work for a living. — Bitter Crank

Thanks Bitter, nice to hear that from an old school Marxist. :wink:

The problem is that class distinctions seem antiquated especially when many academic jobs, like teachers or military officers etc. are actually low paying jobs which previously weren't. The term middle class confuses this quite if then it's counterpart below is the underclass. And so do terms like the bourgeoisie and the proletariat seem something from only fit for the 19th Century and early 20th Century.

What Fukuyama leaves out of this account is whether the demands to be treated equally were met. — Valentinus

Well, that may what I left out from the quote from Fukuyama. He acknowledges that these before invisible minorities did have success and they indeed had been repressed.

Another fatal flaw committed by Fukuyama through assigning a divisive animus to all forms of self identification, per se, is that it provides no explanation why all forms of life protected by the Establishment of Religion clause have failed to destroy the country yet. The whole point of setting up a shared public space this way was in order to allow groups to withdraw from it as much as they like as long as those actions do not cancel the shared public space.
By Fukuyama's measure, there is no way to distinguish between the desire to be an Amish person and the desire to be a self identified Nazi. — Valentinus

I'm not so sure he is assigning a divisive animus to all form of self identification. But I guess his idea is that that the "you cannot relate to me or understand me as I'm x and you are y" is divisive. I think it's obvious from the next quote.

Civil rights activists in the United States demanded that the country fulfill the promise of equality made in the Declaration of Independence and written into the U.S. Constitution after the Civil War. This was soon followed by the feminist movement, which similarly sought equal treatment for women, a cause that both stimulated and was shaped by a massive influx of women into the labor market. A parallel social revolution shattered traditional norms regarding sexuality and the family, and the environmental movement reshaped attitudes toward nature. Subsequent years would see new movements promoting the rights of the disabled, Native Americans, immigrants, gay men and women, and, eventually, transgender people. But even when laws changed to provide more opportunities and stronger legal protections to the marginalized, groups continued to differ from one another in their behavior, performance, wealth, traditions, and customs; bias and bigotry remained commonplace among individuals; and minorities continued to cope with the burdens of discrimination, prejudice, disrespect, and invisibility.

This presented each marginalized group with a choice: it could demand that society treat its members the same way it treated the members of dominant groups, or it could assert a separate identity for its members and demand respect for them as different from the mainstream society. Over time, the latter strategy tended to win out: the early civil rights movement of Martin Luther King, Jr., demanded that American society treat black people the way it treated white people. By the end of the 1960s, however, groups such as the Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam emerged and argued that black people had their own traditions and consciousness; in their view, black people needed to take pride in themselves for who they were and not heed what the broader society wanted them to be. The authentic inner selves of black Americans were not the same as those of white people, they argued; they were shaped by the unique experience of growing up black in a hostile society dominated by whites. That experience was defined by violence, racism, and denigration and could not be appreciated by people who grew up in different circumstances.

Thanks for the responses, everyone.

Does he give any indication of what the argument is for that claim? — Terrapin Station

I think the link between a nation state and it's citizens, which then as citizens of that state do share a common identity, is rather obvious. Once that common identity is meaningless, you can have at worst a civil war. After all, how many in Jugoslavia believed in the 1990's that "they are, first and foremost, Jugoslavians"? Suddenly you were a Serb, a Slovenian, a Croat, a muslim Bosniak or an christian (Serbian) Bosniak. Not a Jugoslav citizen anymore.

It's wiser to read this as being more about a shift a la a statistical trend that's noticeable. — Terrapin Station

Might be so. Nearly everything today has it's roots in the past and hence every topic or discourse can be argued that it's not anything new.

Support him in measures that both Republicans and Democrats can agree on; come on, there must be a few items there — DiegoT

The only ones I can come up with that are truly bipartisan agendas for both parties are:

1) Keeping political power to themselves, hence preventing any possible third party to emerge as a realistic alternative to the two of them.

2) Staunch support for Israel.

Trump is there becouse Hillary was worse, so bad in fact that even Dems didn´t like her. — DiegoT

Unfortunately the Dems don't get this as they have the Russian assistance that Trump got as a figleaf. The assistance is btw is totally evident, but still...

No. All that is required is that the digits are unknown in advance (to counter the argument for brain states making the choice.) I can say 'I will choose the 75th digit in the expansion of the square root of 7'. I then go and see what it is and act accordingly. In this way physical determinism has not made the choice, it has been replaced by mathematical determinism. Any physical determinism that would have made the choice is terminated at the point when the digit intervenes and makes the choice. — EnPassant

So why then irrational numbers in the first place? Unknown in advance is quite a loose definition the way you say it.

Now a rational number that repeats 123123123... might be easy to remember (even easier is the one which repeats 0123456789012345...) and easy to think an algorithm that gives what's the 75th number will be. So, if I follow your reasoning (?) this then isn't unknown if I can count what the number will be.

Well, if I've understood you correctly, take a rational number that in the decimal expansion starts repeating itself only after 10 000 digits, that may then be "unknown" as it obviously is hard to find a person that remembers a 10 000 digit decimal sequence.

To really get digits to be unknown in advance and you would have to use numbers that don't have an algorithm to crunch them. That's just my point with transcendental numbers.

Comments? — EnPassant

I think the number has to be transcendental, not algebraic and hence not just irrational. Then it Works, I assume. You see algebraic numbers are countable. The square root of two is irrational, yet it is a solution of the polynomial equation x2 − 2 = 0.

What you are using in a modified way is called Cantor's diagonalization method. Yes, it refutes this kind of simplistic determinism solely based on math and logic.

Basically it's negative self reference, which is totally possible. And it's in the root of how Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems or the argument of a Turing Machine in the Entscheidungsbproblem are made.

I think it does refute determinism in the Laplacian way, and the fact is that we simply are part of the universe. (Laplacian determinism usually is defined with the example of Laplace's demon: if someone, the Demon, knows the precise location and momentum of every atom in the universe, their past and future values for any given time are entailed; they can be calculated from the laws of classical mechanics.)

Let me give you a totally different kind of example:
You can simply then ask the Demon a simple question:

"Which number, 1 or 2, I will pick next?"
You then base your choice the following way,
If the Demon says 1, you pick 2
If the Demon says 2, you pick 1
If the Demon says anything else or stays silent, you pick 1.

Hence there is a correct forecast of what you pick, but for the Demon it should say the number that it doesn't say as you base your decision on what the Demon forcasts. That's the negative self reference. You simply cannot say something you don't say.

Now the transcendental number in decimal expansion is an endless number line that doesn't repeat itself (if it would, it wouldn't be irrational). As it doesn't repeat itself in any length, there's no way to compress it. And this "compression" basically makes it possible to have the idea of Laplacian determinism.

Men and women should be encouraged (taxation, financial incentives, political reeducation camps in North Dakota, Mississippi, and West Virginia...) to have their single child while they are young and healthy. — Bitter Crank

Nonsense (or was this a bit tongue in cheek, bitter?). Everywhere they have had such ludicrous policies they have only backfired creating a bigger mess. The simple answer is and has been everywhere: make people more affluent and they will have less children. That's it.

I suppose I'd say: War, though it is not glorious or something to be celebrated, is sometimes necessary. In what sense necessary? I don't believe I'd say even morally speaking. Or even ethically speaking. Only that we find ourselves at an impasse, and here it is we are now. I don't wish for it, and think it a good to avoid at most costs. But sometimes it seems to me that war cannot be avoided, because it would mean such and such for not just the people I love now, but forever the people I love into the future -- or, if not forever, then at least war for them. — Moliere

I would say defending against an attacker is justified. War isn't anything glorious, but defending against an agressor it is justified and isn't a futile endeavour. As coming from a tiny and quite expendable country which got it's independence thanks to WW1 and barely avoided defeat, occupation and the Soviet dictatorship in WW2 my views perhaps are different from others.

Many see WW1 as something totally avoidable and as an accident that just happened because of stupidity of the ruling people (who as monarchs perhaps shouldn't have held power in the first Place). Yet then WW2 seems for them to be something else, as the justified war against evil. This view is highly distorted as WW1 and WW2 are interlinked with the second truly being the sequel to the first. And how avoidable was WW1? Luckily it didn't happen after the Agadir incident and if Serbian extremists would haven't been successfull in their , I am sure something would have started it. After all, the continent hadn't blown up since the Napoleonic Wars and those wars were ancient history even then. No way without WW1 and WW2 and a pile of millions of dead bodies would Europeans started an integration process and formed an European Union. The bellicosity of Europeans wouldn't have waned just by time. Yes, it's sad, but unfortunately true.

Usually it's the fourth generation when history doesn't touch us anymore personally as few have had their great grandparents alive to tell them to how was for them and how they experienced history. Then history becomes just pages in a history book.

Astrology is not so bad; consider how people such as Newton, Copernicus or Tyco Brahe were accomplished astrologers, and they were great contributors to knowledge. - Astrology, like Economics, did a very good job for millennia of calculating the passing of comets, predicting eclipses, adjusting the calendar to the celestial motions, and perfecting navigation — DiegoT

You mean early astronomy, right? I think something perfecting navigation isn't astrology. Astrology is when you measure celestial bodies to give political advice or similar forcasts, not things like maritime navigation.