And I don't think I am alone in viewing the possibility in purely scientific terms. — Questioner

As do I, but we still run into the hard problem, that our imagination of another reality is dependent on the physical properties of our own, thus making our imagination unable to comprehend any of it. We can try and theorize it, but it will mostly boil down to extrapolations of how it relates to our reality, rather than form an actual understanding of the other reality.

The only real dangerous position is that they clearly state they should “support resistance” in th EU. They are basically saying that they will try and control elections and support populists against nations Trump don’t like.

This is a hostile act against nation sovereignty and should be met with resistance. Best way would be to shut down social media that’s based in the US, but since that won’t happen, the EU should install laws that makes it illegal to try and change algorithms for political purposes and that Meta and other social media sources need to comply with transparency about their algorithms. If they don’t they will have to pay billions to the EU in damages.

And we need to block European politicians to get funding from American sources that aim to fund the political campaigns of American puppets.

And we need to block American companies to establish themselves within the economy of EU nations. Not block trade, but block the purchase of EU companies that have influence in a nation or in the EU. We’re already doing this with China and Russia.

In essence we need to treat the US as China, Hungary, Belarus, and Russia, as a dictatorship that acts just like they do. Trying to control other nations and infiltrate wherever they please.

1. Human senses are limited.
2. There may exist parts of reality humans cannot detect.
3. It must be god. — Questioner

First two correct, but not the third. What I meant is that the act of asking the question in the way the OP does, is a form of cry out for God. It’s a cry out for a meaning beyond the reality we have. My argument is that this kind of question is a form of circular reasoning in which the usage of the fact we face a hard limit to know the unknown conditions beyond our bubble of reality, becomes the reason to question if “this is all there is”. The question rather expose the intention underneath to be about the fantasy of something beyond our reality, rather than engaging with the possible scientific reasoning about what would likely exist outside our reality.

And with the example of the holographic theory, the problem we run into if we entertain the question scientifically is that the conditions of our reality makes it impossible to comprehend any other reality and likely impossible for that reality to comprehend our own.

Reality is not the same as our bubble of the universe, it is the definition of the parameters that allows this universe to exist. If those parameters change or are different, it not only changes the resulting universe, but also perception itself, leading to a hard limit for which there is no comprehension of the other.

So, I’m not talking about “God”, but that the way the question is asked reveals an underlying fantasy of a state of reality beyond our own, that would somehow be accessible by us. Because if we can imagine it, it is in a way accessible to us. My answer to that is that it isn’t. The question itself becomes nonsensical as the answer is that we cannot access it, not even through imagination based on our best scientific theories. It is fundamentally inaccessible. Imagination of it relates more to our religious beliefs of a realm beyond our own, a heaven and a God etc. so the discussion often just takes the form of a religious one, rather than a scientific one. Metaphysics leading to a craving for heaven and God, rather than reasoning about the physical properties of a reality outside our own.

No, but it is also not evidence that what we experience is all there is. We evolved as these creatures with a finite set of senses. Our reality consists only of what we can detect. Doesn't follow that that is all there is. — Questioner

Yes, but that’s not what I’m getting at. We know that reality looks and behaves vastly different than our senses and limited perspective can perceive, but the question asked is about the possibility of something beyond our reality, based on our limited perception. Such a question becomes a form of wishful thinking, utilizing the limited perception we have as an unknown factor to project a fantasy of existence beyond our reality. It’s existential comfort.

It’s more likely asked because we want it to be true. We entertain the idea as a form of science fiction. Because if we look at what we lack in perception, it’s rather about frequencies of light and sound waves, of energy levels and the ability for higher dimensional reasoning. Neither of it speaks of concepts of other realities, only elevated perceptions of the same reality we’re already in.

The right question would rather be… if we were able to perceive everything, what would we perceive?

And if we want to ask if there’s anything beyond our reality, the answer is most likely, nothing that would help us understand ourselves, this reality, or function as any comfort at all because it would probably be so dramatically different from everything we understand of our own reality that it would be a useless glimpse. There wouldn’t be anything recognizable, there wouldn’t be a perception level able to comprehend anything as it would be different from even perceiving everything in our own reality, which in itself would overload our minds.

In the end, the question becomes a cry for god, not a question of perception or understanding. We are limited to this reality, for which we still have lots more to discover and understand about. Anything beyond our reality becomes white noise to us, as our existence itself is bound to this reality, as nothing of us is proven to function outside the reality we are part of. To ask about realities beyond our own is to ask for some other plane of existence we could enter into. But we can’t, as doing so would untangle the very being of our existence. It becomes as meaningless as if there is nothing at all beyond this reality.

A good example is the holographic theory of our universe. That our reality is due to a projection from some event horizon in some elevated reality. But it’s not a projection of our existence as people seem to believe, it’s a projection of whatever is originally there that due to being projected has formed the parameters of our reality. It projects the conditions that forms everything we know and our reality becomes something else entirely because of it. The conditions of our reality change the projected original into not resembling anything of itself at all and the process itself giving rise to conditions that transforms the very nature of it.

By entertaining the though truthfully, the idea breaks, as our parameters of definition for something beyond our reality is dependent on our own reality, which differs from anything beyond.

It’s a hard limit to our existence, as any answer of the beyond becomes meaningless to any of our conditions.

We simply want it to be there because it would entertain the thought of all our religious fantasies.

Coming in late to the discussion, but just adding one key note… the fact we only experience reality in the way we do is not evidence there’s something more beyond our reality.

It is good for Europe and the EU to get shaken to the core by all of this. We will all benefit from the EU becoming stronger and more connected as a collaboration. It’s the whole point of the union. So if we focus our attention to security, industry and collaboration between nations in a way that’s better than it is now, the EU will be much stronger in the long run. The US has only been good for military security, much of the industry is globalized today, meaning most production isn’t made within the US regardless of what the christo-fascists believe will happen through tariffs. And even if they bring production back home, it will cost so much compared to globalized production that the US won’t be able to export in competition with other nations. And if the EU regain a focus on actually building better production within the union because of this, unconstrained by nationalist ideologies, the EU could actually become a real power house.

But we also need to see that the republicans and the Trump regime is eating their own tail. They won’t be able to sustain their path for long and Trump will eventually die. Will other republicans be so eager to rely on the other openly white supremacist ghouls who aren’t popular? I think there’s a growing group within the republicans who have recognized that if Trump and his people don’t go away, it will doom the entire party. So I think there’s lots going on behind the curtains of planning to rid the party of all these christo-fascist extremists.

This also means that we will likely go back to a form of healing idea between the EU and the US.

I would bet that campaigns later on will focus much on healing the bad blood, to shake hands and show that we are healing as an Atlantic collaboration. It will be part of the opposition against Trumps type of people, and spawn a new era of the same kind of “hope” posters that boosted Obama into power. It doesn’t matter if there’s actual progressive politics going along with it, but there’s a win for anyone who’s about to fight dirty and point with their whole hand at the problems Trump caused and who speaks for “healing what was lost”.

It’s the kind of shit that gets campaigns exploding and people rallying. Since Trump has moved so hard in this extremist direction, there will be an equally powerful reaction. Politics and sociology works within the same entropic form of energy dispersion. With a lot of powerful actions comes an equally powerful reaction.

It’s why I like the Hegelian political interpretation of society through thesis, antitheses and synthesis, even if it’s a bit cliché. And what has happened is that with the rise of the internet, the polarization has grown more violent and large compared to traditional processes that formed a synthesis in political ideas and previously hold ideologies.

We’ve essentially already entered a World War III in ideas and ideologies. It’s sped up before militaries had time to lock and load. It might even be that the movement of clashing ideologies that previously led to war moves so fast that we already enter a synthesis phase before anyone has properly fired a bullet.

The war in Ukraine is for instance not because of ideology, it’s out of the delusion of a despot. The problems we have are that representatives of the extremes have gained powers through the speed of the internet, but that also means these ideas are all shot at the same time in large quantities of ammunition. Rather than slowly building itself into much more rigid frontlines that usually ends up in actual world war. So actual world wars aren’t really starting because of it, because the ideas are already being tested and dissected on the world stage. The public of the world behaves like the intellectualization after World War II, without the war happening.

We’re already dissecting the problems before they grow.

It might be hard to see in all of the stupid noise we experience today, but I can’t shake the idea that this is a temporary dark point, and we’re letting all these christo-fascists, right wing extremists, and Putinists blow their load all in one go, making them deeply unpopular in the future.

When people get fed up with the current status of things, they want change. And if most things look bad today, people want to change most things.

I can see in the archive that our stories from the story competitions are in the open. Would they be indexed by search spiders and AI scrapings? Just wondering if they should be brought over to the new TPF site and kept under login requirements so that they can still be published in places which demand them not to have been published before (which happens to be the case if they’re in the open I think).

I think them and the discussions should still exist, so not removing them, but maybe those exist in the new place rather than in the archive? Not sure how though, I’m not a coder. :chin:

"Progressives" is a very broad term.

As a fundamental definition, progressives merely represent a focus on changing society from a set of humane moral values. Placing people and their wellbeing before industry. It's focus is to try and establish what is true about the human condition and change society based on it.

Conservatives on the other hand rather want to decide on a set of rules and principles that are more rigid over time.

While progressives focus on change to find the best system, conservatives think that having rigid rules and principles is what leads to the best system.

And there are problems with both forms of thinking. Progressives might fall into bias as they try to argue for a newly established truth, and through it miss finding a balance in the change they argue for. Conservatives on the other hand, fail to recognize systemic problems that their rules and principles uphold, and they become ignorant of criticism of those rules and principles they hold close. Most ironically, conservatives sometimes are just the progressives in youth becoming so attached to the principles they fought for that they become conservatives around it, arguing their, in their era, progressive ideas, were universal truths.

A healthy society is, I think leaning more towards progressive thinking, because it is a realization that "truth" requires dedication to figuring it out. Conservative ideas of preservation of certain rules and principles usually comes from an ignorance of how reality works, not seeing that society change all the time and it changes with new knowledge and discovery about the human condition.

But equally, unchecked progressive thinking leads to a chaos you can't build a society on, because there's not a lot of room to establish those new ideas into practice.

So a society leaning more towards progressive thinking, but still utilizing the conservative concept of a rigid system, might be the best path through history. Constantly establishing new conditions of being based on new knowledge and dedication to truth, but with the rigor of establishing a longer lasting practical reality through preservation of the best ideas.

I would call it an obligatory watch in order to understand the psychology behind much of what is happening. — Christoffer

Of course the US state would pressure Google to take it down, though there's nothing in that video that warrants censorship. It will be up and running soon enough. People are so on the edge in front of Trump's guns right now that it's hard not to call it anything other than a fascist state.

I started wondering, what should we think about? After reading a geology book, I have become concerned that we don't think about the world's resources and their connection to everything else, including riches, poverty, and war. If we had a king, this wouldn't matter, but as a democracy, perhaps there are some things we should be aware of. — Athena

Is it because there's some other thread that this discussion continued from that let it spiral down politics alone?

It seems to me that you asked for a more general question about "what we should think about". As in, what should a regular citizen in a democracy think about in their day to day life so that society addresses issues of the world and maintain a healthy morality in that society?

Topics that need to be thought about as a form of philosophical foundation of being in a society.

Is that the basis of the question here?

I think F.D signifier breaks things down better than any of us have succeeded in exposing exactly what is going on with US politics and where the right is at today. I would call it an obligatory watch in order to understand the psychology behind much of what is happening.

It's all interconnected, it's not different topics, it's one and the same. It's Immortan Joe and his war boys. It's the radicalization by abandonment and false promises all within an algorithm that traps white men into a feedback loop until they die, socially or literally.

People need to see the bigger picture here. To not get bogged down by details obscuring the overarching problem of our modern condition.

Is all this about risks to freedom of speech in the UK? I'm no expert in those legal things based on nations, but wouldn't Ireland be better since almost all companies operating in Europe seem to have their office there for billing and legal. Seems like the most free place in that regard.

Well, Sweden or any nordic nation would be even better I guess, I don't think there's any real legal issues here except if someone threatens to kill or do such harm or something. So for legal reasons that would probably be the safest. I guess even France holds freedom of speech in high regard. But I guess that would only create a lot of hassle and problems with the business side of things having it somewhere else.

Regardless, as you listed above, those things are pretty basic things to ban, so I don't think UK would be a problem.

Wouldn't that be like, a huge deal, turning Jamal into a celebrity overnight and elevating this quiet little corner of the Internet into something anyone here wouldn't ever imagine in their wildest dreams? He would be the ultimate "every man" martyr everybody and their grandma would get behind—point being, it would make the elected official look bad which is not in any elected official's MO. No? — Outlander

Jamal becomes a champion for a true place of discussion, showing the world that there are places of discourse that doesn't turn to polarized cesspools in an instant. Fighting the power of governments for the freedom of philosophical discussions... could be a future film based on the history of the forum. I got dibs to the film rights :fire:

It's not slavery in this case, it's treating an animal in a way that it's stressed out its whole life, which is immoral. — frank

I think it's all over the modern world, and rather than how the "how do they do it?"-question was asked in the past in genuine childlike curiosity of the world, much of what I believe is a reason why many of us are on a forum like this, the question today is rather an expression of deliberate ignorance in which we ask it to fool ourselves and others that we genuinely don't know.

But in the day to day world of common people it's even worse. I don't want to make a generalized generation critique, but the younger generations today are far worse with this as they seem to just accept the bad when they buy from Shein or whatever.

It's like they, through their online experience, have fully embraced their shoes in Peter Singer's child drowning dilemma and know fully well about the suffering in the world, maybe even more than older generations; but they still don't give a shit. A form of active ignorance, almost worn as an identity statement.

I don't think people should beat themselves up over the modern condition as there's little one can do. But to at least shop and behave with some cognizant mentality in order to not chose the obviously worst products available might be in order.

The worst handling of animals in the meat industry is hard to moralize more than realize it is the effect of a highly neoliberal capitalist industry. It exist like a machine pushing people to become numb to their work and pressured to ignore what they do. What is I think more immoral is knowing it is like this and still buy from it anyway because you just want those damn good nuggets today.

I've not gone vegetarian, but for my own morals I've lowered my consumption both for environmental reasons and because I won't ever buy the cheap stuff. I'm lucky to be able to buy almost directly from farmers and hunters and I'll never go back to anything cheaper. But of course, this is far from an available market for most.. though I think it morally should and cost appropriately. Good for the environment, animals and the people who eat.

Or why would we raise that as a topic to debate, if it was, like hunger, our nature? — ENOAH

I don't think the philosophical mind raises the question of evil, because the philosophical mind recognize that "evil" is a made up concept, unconsciously invented to cope with the lack of knowledge of the things that hurt us.

We are just nature, we are just part of a chemical soup which formed itself into increasingly complex emergent behaviors until it became so complex that it formed meta-interactions with itself through what we call consciousness. But in the end, we're still just that chemical soup, in which we attributed parts of its behavior as "evil" because we are yet to understand just how the physics of it all, works.

Yeah.... "how doooo they do it?" is the one question modern people in industrialized nations ask themselves with the most fake ass expression on their face. Comedy at its best.

there are several heavy posters who are obviously and somewhat aggressively left — AmadeusD

How does that make the entire forum lean left? And what is your criticism through that? Isn't that just a genetic fallacy ignoring ideas based on their own merits?

Most 'clubs' as such have a lean. — AmadeusD

There's no club... at least, I'm not invited into any club. So it sounds more like conspiratorial thinking in which you group together some people in order to categorically frame them based on the attributes you ascribe, rather than their actual writing.

I write my own ideas to the best of my ability. That they sometime align with other people's thinking is just called humanity.

Philosophy is quite left-leaning in general. — AmadeusD

And why do you think that is?

Hate Speech is amorphous, and largely spurious. We can talk about what speech you find offensive, but using a label "hate speech" is a cudgel and nothing more. — AmadeusD

Hate speech is only ever confusing and amorphous among people who seem unable to recognize it as opposed to human rights. If human rights, in a basic Kantian way, stands for the respect of the individual or a group defined by some defining trait, to exist as "an end in themselves", then speaking of that individual or group in a way that lowers their existential value compared to the speaker themselves, is what falls under hate speech.

It's not rocket science, or what people find "offensive". It's recognizing when someone dehumanizes others for reasons that isn't them already dehumanizing themselves.

But on the Left, its a darling to shut down conversation. As we've seen with Kirk. — AmadeusD

What do you mean by this? Are you blaming the left for his murder?

And Kirk wasn't involved with "conversation", he used the idea of free speech "debate to find a platform to scream out dehumanizing hate against homosexuals, transexuals and proposed white supremacy ideals. To say the left "shut down conversation" as if Kirk was trying to enable any actual conversation, is seriously lacking in depth about what he was doing. Not being able to recognize his behavior for what it is, and just falling into the post-assassination narrative of the US conservative right, or rather the christo-fascist movement that's grown under Trump and Maga, is just a sign of times in which the world has begun to normalize white supremacy speech, and with Kirk, using him as a martyr for it. What did the conservative right do after his assassination? White washing what he spread around by silencing anyone who criticized Kirk for what he actually said, pushing companies to fire people for criticizing Kirk. Through the actual evidence of the behavior of how the right and left reacted to the assassination, do you really think it's the left who's "offended" and going against free speech? The conservative right basically uses state force to silence anyone who criticizes Kirk's values and what he actually spread around in his podcasts and rallies.

And how is it that our world is now "the left" that criticize anti-scientific, white supremacy, fascist ideals? Usually, both the left AND the right did so. But instead of recognizing that the right has been infiltrated by such extreme right ideas and anti-intellectual nonsense, the right seems to have just accepted being assimilated into those values and ideas.

The question isn't really what the left is doing or criticizing... the question is rather, why is the right silent in their criticism about things they were equally opposed to before? Why did the right let themselves be turned into a christo-fascist movement, populated by actual white supremacists and nationalist populists? How did they go from neoliberal economic policies to burning books and banning LGBTQ people?

If people see this as just normal, then I think people are blind to the fact that nothing of this is about the left or the right in any shape or form. It's about decent people standing for human values against people who want to put a boot on other people's faces.

the conservatives on the staff are no more ignorant of the facts than the others, as far as I can see. — Jamal

I was speaking generally of the current political climate. I know "conservative" isn't a description of "a person denying facts".

Facts have nothing to do with it, and the accusation that the other side ignores the facts is thrown from each side. It's a nothing argument, on its own. — Jamal

As I elaborated on.

I don't agree with any of this, and I'm very left. — Jamal

How do you mean?

Are we not seeing primarily conservative rightwingers deny climate science or, for the purpose of this thread, medical science? Isn't it often the right that confuse hate speech, racist remarks etc. with politics, then defending themselves with "it's free speech"?

Whenever I see arguments about some place being left leaning, it usually tends to be about rightwingers science denial demanding their arguments to be taken seriously, even if facts are against them.

Although, the whole "left vs right" polarization is something I feel is such a low point overall. What people attribute to left and right seems arbitrary or bound to whatever definitions culturally they have in their own nations and life. "left" and "right" in Sweden is for the most part left of Democrats in the US, so discussions nationally in Sweden about "left" and "right" tend to look very different than in the US.

Maybe people should stop calling themselves and others "leftwinger" or "rightwinger" in discussions that has nothing to do with economic politics. Because someone like RFK, could exist on either side of the spectrum, it's just that he got a home on the right because the republicans have incorporated ideas into their party and policy that comes from the conspiracy theories of the MAGA movement. So everything is about being against trans, gay, medical science as well as outright racism, I'm surprised they didn't have room for flat earth as well, seen as how in denial RFK makes the party towards medical science that helps people and children from dying.

None of that has anything to do with rightwing economic politics really, and it doesn't even have much to do with classical conservative values.

The "left vs right" has just become the way the polarized world brands itself. It's become a marketing tool for both sides to strawman the other and protect the self.

Yet, true knowledge based on facts doesn't care about such arbitrary labels we place on ourselves and others. It's just tribalism.

Yet, there's also a point to be made that many arguments that rely on facts tend to be called leftist. There's far more climate science deniers or general deniers of scientific results on the conservative right... so if a human's best attempt to reach a truth based on facts and scientific data is considered "leftist", then I guess that tells more about the political spectrum than that this forum is "unbalanced".

And even so, conservatives can make their points and arguments in here anyway, there's nothing removed because of that. But if people think hate speech or similar is just a matter of politics, then that's maybe the fault of that person and not a forum that aims to reach for a higher level of discourse than the usual online climate.

If this place seems leaning towards the left... it may have more to do with who actually seeks discussions and knowledge rather than some "agenda" by the mods.

In what way?

Existing members will have to sign up to join the new site. — Jamal

Had some problem receiving emails from this site when changing passwords. If the move over to the new site requires an email invite for the current account, what happens if it fails?

Wouldn't there be an email list for all current members? So that taking that list into approved members for the new site will work and when signing up the email is already registered on an approved list there.

Meaning, using the email you registered on this site will let you into the door of the new site when registering.

And if there are any trouble, the new site should have a way to contact moderators if there are any trouble transferring over.

Also, what happens to stuff hidden on this site from people not logged in? Like the short stories? If there's stuff like that disappearing from view, maybe that should be moved over to the new site?

The larger bubble is that the market has not yet come to realize how its shifted from day traders on the floor to everyone being day traders. Previously, the day to day movements were mostly made by traditional traders, working off analysts etc. but today, I think the majority of people doing day to day trade are actually regular people globally.

Everything is becoming meme stocks, it's becoming gambling and amateuristic in nature. People do not invest with the narrative and speculation of a company's worth, based on finances and its operation. They rather invest based on popularity and positive headlines in online news and social media.

So everything has become artificially speculative, with no grounding that defines a company's actual worth. We see it primarily in the tech sector, but it exists everywhere.

Stocks are slowly becoming crypto in nature; a company's worth tied to popularity rather than actual business worth.

How long will this be able to be sustained? Since this all relies on money flowing that isn't really financing the businesses of these companies, but rather becomes a bettin market and gambling, a gamification of the stock market. And we see a lot of companies being created just for the sake of gaining a stock's value, without any actual business underneath.

While AI surely is a bubble in the making, the major actors of this bubble are still having an actual business. Nvidia actually has a major income on selling the chips. So there's actual money there. However, other companies are starting based on just marketing themselves as AI related, driving up their stock values without any actual business underneath.

But this is not just happening within AI, it's happening in every sector of the economy, and traders are dragged with it, dancing to this empty tune of inflating the worth of worthless companies.

It kind of reminds me of the 2008 crisis, which happened because of a speculative market of housing which essentially sold worthless papers on housing.

If the stock is driven mostly on speculations on empty air... that's the air in the real bubble, and when it pops we will see an actual economic crisis, not just the AI bubble popping.

And with the majority of people trading a lot of money these days, it's not just banks or investment firms that will crash... we will see the majority of people's life savings crash as well.

It could be the worst economic crisis we've ever seen if this happens.

Unless any kind of hope for change at all is an opium, in which case it's not much of an accusation. — Jamal

Sometimes I wonder if the earlier Marx went into the opium of hope later on as more revolutionary comments were made. His and Engel's theories at their core is just a form of psychohistory (The Foundation), in which they try to map out the dominos falling within the system of capitalism. But maybe Marx got fed up by people who didn't understand the theory to the point of calling for the demolish of capitalism as a revolutionary action. It's always been a point of conflict for those discussing Marx whether or not he actually called for action against capitalism or not, cherry picking his statements out of context to support either criticism or in support of his theories. Even to the point of blaming Marx for all the problems of communist nations building from his ideas. It all kind of supports the existentialist's ideas of how language shapes our reality, in which the entire being and legacy of Marx shifts depending on the way his words have been interpreted and decoded.

But I'm in the camp of looking at his theories in the form of decoding the cogs of capitalism, and I think there's no opium to be found there, only a form of scientific observation that's been lost in how to interpret language over a historical timeframe in which language have changed to give extremely different interpretative values.

And through the observation of the cogs of capitalism, I think it's very important to understand what Marx and Engel's was talking about, especially in a neoliberal era in which there's no ceiling to how much wealth billionaires can pool into their pockets.

Society is in a breaking point close to what Marx laid out; in which the divide between owners and workers is so large that we're beginning to speak of universal basic income and other strategies to mitigate the consequences of capitalism's progression.

The biggest lie or misconception that supporters of capitalism perpetuates, is that the wealthy will re-invest their wealth back into society. But in a globalized neoliberal capitalist economy, they rather pool their wealth into tax free hubs, like banks or investing in extreme architecture in places like Dubai and Qatar. The value and wealth becomes solidified monuments of gold and never trickle down to the very society that it fed from.

So what we're witnessing right now is the verification of Marx theories for what will eventually happen with capitalism. I'm not sure I want to call it late-stage capitalism because we don't know how far it will get, but we're starting to see problems rising up for the poor and low-income, and if the wealth and money doesn't start to trickle down back into society (preferably with higher tax for the wealthy since the neoliberal experiment proved to not work as people believed it would), we will eventually see a revolution, not by the will of Marx, but out of the desperation of the people, all along the line of what Marx and Engels theorized.

So I don't think there's any opium other than the trust in that society is a self-correcting organism. If one part feeds too much on the other, they will soon be devoured by the ones they put into starvation. Economy is humanity's simulation of evolution, and as such, an unbalanced eco-system will always self-correct in the end.

1. Autonomy and Consent

* Only sane, competent individuals may form binding agreements.
* No contract may be valid if made under coercion, fraud, or extreme necessity (eg.,signing under starvation) — Copernicus

I see this as disrupting the whole thing. How do you define "sane" and "competent"? Where do you draw the line? How do you prove it wasn't under coercion, fraud, or extreme necessity? Subsequently, someone could claim that they've been coerced, under fraud or under extreme necessity and it would throw the whole legitimacy into question.

There are too many holes in which the binding nature can be called into question.

I’m always wondering how long it takes for a revolution to happen these days. Have the world gone so apathetic that no one is turning the guns back towards the top of a nation that has turned their backs on them?

With so much suffering and oppression in Russia, why isn’t there any sign of resistance? Either the population is entirely indoctrinated into Putinism or Putins people have such a violent grip on the people that it is impossible.

But I wonder how this can be true? Wouldn’t there be any people with military background that would organize an underground resistance? Aren’t there any hackers who feel the need to sabotage the government?

With all of this going on in Russia, why is it only that Ukrainian special forces do operations deep in Russia and not more bombings by the people of Russia fed up with Putin?

Nazi Germany had tons of sabotages and underground resistance movements. But it seems Russians are too depressed and drunk that they have no ability to fight the power.

We’ve heard like nothing about any resistance, which is very odd. If Russia is so incompetent on the battlefield, wouldn’t their corruption and incompetence spill over into intelligence as well? Making it more likely to actually be able to organize an underground resistance

House Trump has
disregarded legal process and court decisions, and circumvented/side-stepped law
concentrated power that should be independent
replaced specialists with loyalists, including intelligence, military, judicial, science, ...
threatened media/news, politicians, countries, whoever (submission comes to mind)
ignored/dismissed scientific consensus
told a record number of lies or misleading statements (for someone in this position)
raced ahead with populist or manipulative/exploitive moves
alienated/back-stabbed supposed allies/friends, and sided with authoritarians — jorndoe

Since he is still in power and hasn't been removed from power, I guess all of that is legal and aligns perfectly well with the constitution? Right?

This is why he should be removed by force. And since he isn't, we know that the US is broken and does not have a functioning democracy that upholds law and constitution. To say that he is in his right to do whatever he wants is to be an apologist for an authoritarian leader and an authoritarian regime.

There's not really much nuance here.

(By the way, my possibly wrong impression is that personally, Trump isn't particularly racist — jorndoe

Did you miss how he talks about immigrants? Or are you saying that he is too stupid to understand what he is saying if he forward racist remarks from others?

It could very well be that he is too stupid or rather, just don't give a shit about what he says. That anything that can give him the love of his followers will be said, regardless of what it is. I wonder how far he is from relaying an idea of using deadly force against democrats? I mean, if he is too stupid to grasp what he is saying, but he gets love from his followers by saying that, then he could say it. Only his legal team would have to scramble to try and cover it, but if he said something like that, I think he's done for.

Thinking is hard. All I need to do is learn how to dress myself in the morning and do a basic function, any function really, it can be as simple as pushing buttons or pouring coffee, and I get to live a life that a monarch 1,000 years could only dream of. I do that, I get to make a living. Anything else is superfluous. That's what the average person thinks. — Outlander

Yes, and this is why I hate the masses more than the authoritarian leaders. Because that would be like hating a rock for being a rock, there's no point. But the apathy of the people, to ignore fighting for the freedom and good life they have, to defend against those who want to destroy it for their own benefit, that apathetic people are the worst and they deserve the authoritarian boot on their head so they can re-learn what others already know.

Just think of the farmers who voted for Trump, now panicking over rising costs, lost workers to ICE raids, and exports diminishing. They deserve what they voted for, because maybe now they'll learn not to be stupid. Or they'll perish under their own stupidity, either way, normal, thinking people wins. I despise these people; a bunch of spoiled children who whines to their daddy Trump only to end up being left behind when Trump is done with them. Absolutely pathetic.

As this seems a gently Left leaning forum — unimportant

Do you think people who are left of the extreme right and Trump to be left leaning? I don't think this forum is very left leaning, I think it's pretty balanced. But it is generally the case that conservatives on the right don't care about rational reasoning or established science. This is built into what it means to be a conservative, i.e the established values of the past are more important than what any science or reasoning in the present says.

So when a forum is dedicated to rational reasoning, scientific scrutiny and philosophical discussion, it tends to clean out much of the narrow thinking that the conservative right, by design, does.

It is fundamentally impossible to be truly philosophical and also adhere to a conservative right-wing ideology as that positioning is evangelically rigid.

With that said, the Trump regime and MAGA cult does however not work according to conservative rightwing values and ideas. They're essentially without any ideas or visions. If you actually track what they say over time, there's no structure, no center point; they essentially pick up any topic and go in any direction that builds their community, especially if it organizes them against something or some people.

It is the behaviors of a cult, taken advantage of by a leader (or rather, leaders) who know how to manipulate and steer them in order to have support for whatever vile agenda they put forward. It's the same for Trump, RFK and everyone at the top.

It's no wonder that the MAGA movement have grown out of evangelical christian fundamentalists. If you want to have a following that will take a bullet for you, then rein in the gullible religious people into your influence and you will have a following that will support you in whatever you say.

Normal republicans, or people on the right need to wake up to the fact that Trump and his cult is a cancer on their side. The problem is that the republican party is so filled with people who are just interested in their own journey as politicians that they bend over for this cult as long as they can continue this journey.

Most of them are so blind to the consequences of this that they will realize too late that they've been dragged down into the lunatic wing of the right.

Trump is kind of silly and people don't take him seriously. Well a lot do since he is elected. — unimportant

It doesn't matter if people take him seriously or not. His policies hurt people, his policies and decisions have lead to the deaths of people. I think it's important not to be blind by the indirect causes of his actions and decisions, and the actions and decisions of people around him.

Just because he's a laughing stock doesn't mean the consequences of his decisions and actions are.

The entire entity that is the MAGA right and Trump and his closest in power, is in fact a fascist movement. And as such shouldn't be taken lightly.

Historically, it's the apathy of the people that brings forth fascism, acting only when it's too late to act.

The recent behavior of Trump and MAGA seems to solidify the fact that we’re dealing with a narcissistic dictator wannabe who takes advantage of a crazy christo-fascist cult powered by with a team of actual nazis within his inner circle.

What laws and regulations can battle that if their entire drive is set on a “second coming of christ” delusion? I don’t think people realize how dangerous such a movement can become, especially when they seem to now self-radicalize because of Charlie Kirk.

It also cements that the US is a christian fundamentalistic nation, exactly in the same vein as how we view many Islamic nations, forming laws and values out of whatever skewed idea in their religious delusions they push forward as their primary creed.

I have no doubt that most of the people at the Charlie Kirk event want to burn the rest of the world in holy nuclear fire. We’re witnessing a proper cult getting dragged out from the dark by someone bathing in their love.

And few seems to actually care. :shade:

Jimmy Kimmel's show suspension over the comments he made about about Charlie Kirk's death, and all the other people fired over comments about Kirk's death shows the state of free speech in America. — alleybear

And the irony is that the ones who use free speech the most as a defense for whatever vile thing they have to say... are the ones who silence Kimmel. It underscores that whatever delusion about "woke left" being against free speech is nonsense, it's the extreme right who's the ones being against free speech, and they just use free speech as a defense to get a free card to say whatever racist, homophobic, transphobic, hateful message they can.

It is exactly what Popper referred to when pointing out the tolerance paradox. That a group can erode the tolerance in a tolerant society to the point it loses its tolerance and no longer has free speech.

I don't know why this chain of events that Popper describes is hard for people to understand. It's like people don't understand how a promotion of intolerance leads to intolerance. It's not how people work. Otherwise, the whole field of marketing would not work. The fact that marketing campaigns can steer a whole herd of people to do what they want is the clearest evidence of how gullible people are and easily duped by words that "sound good to them". So when someone promotes intolerance, it "feels good to some people" which then slowly spreads like a cancer through society.

A free and tolerant society needs to be defended to uphold those standards.

So now that Trump's people threatened Disney to fire Jimmy Kimmel "or else", we have truly arrived at the very definition of what censorship is (not how common folks use it). This is the proper definition of how a fascist state dictates free speech.

And the irony that the extreme right have been crying about the "woke left" and their cancel culture, but are now not only doing the very same thing by firing people who haven't even said anything extreme, but also, as a state, threatening a private company into silencing one of their talkshows.

Is it ok to call Trump, Maga and his people fascists now? Is it properly aligning with the textbook definition? Or will people still debate the true nature of Trump and his people and followers?

It is rather remarkable that people think that the words spread by anyone isn't enough to cause shifting values and morals in society. The harmful, destructive rhetoric keeps being spread in society, radicalizing people into violence. But when people demonstrate, speak out and become vocal about the opposite, with words in favor of human rights, of compassion and empathy, they're being actively criticized for it.

This assassination seems to whitewash what Kirk spread around, and it was not to spread love. He's part of the same side that spread hate, calls for violence, and for dividing people into us vs them. This side has no political color. It just happens to be more common on the extreme right in this time in history.

The point being, we could actually divide the world into two sides of legitimate good and bad. The good stands for respecting human rights and rejecting the concept of an individual as a means to an end. Those who argues for equality, the respect of each individual, respect for another group than them etc. ...and the other argues in opposition to that.

Arguing for the good side is arguing for the side that, with evidence in living standards and quality of life in the world, produces the best living conditions in a society.

Right now we're seeing a rise in the spread of hateful, polarizing rhetoric. Something that divides and makes enemies of neighbors. This rhetoric is eroding society and causing a lot of suffering and even deaths.

When speaking on a topic like this thread, I think it's important to be aware of which stance people holds in an argument. Which also means we can't ignore what someone like Kirk spread around. We can't whitewash what he did with spreading hate because he was the target of political violence, just as much as we can't ignore that the assassin acted out according to the bad side as well through his violence.

I think it's important not to get lost in these basic ideas about what is good and what is bad. The reality is that we can't justify the assassination, but we can't justify what Kirk stood for either.

Both sides of this thing were part of the bad and the way out is not cheering for either of them, but acknowledge the truth of why it happened, the reasons why, and help finding a path that moves away from the bad towards the good of humanity.

I don't think it should be this hard for anyone with a working intellectual mind to function by.

This is, candidly, absurd. Nazis systematically herded 6 million Jews to death camps, gassed them, and set their remains on fire with the aim of bringing about thei extinction of their race. — Hanover

Isn't this hindsight bias? You are comparing the end result of a shift in society with a society in shift. Nazi Germany started with "talk", with a rhetoric that slowly shifted how the public viewed jews. It wasn't "flipping a switch" and then they shipped them to extinction. A key question in this thread has been the problem of projecting where a society is heading, but there's no denying that the rhetoric of the extreme right erodes a large portion of the population's ability to show empathy and more and more opposing basic human rights. The indirect violence that this rhetoric causes, especially through much of it being supported by the very top of the government, means society could very well shift far into the extreme right, with more violence, more suicides, more suffering for certain groups in society. To compare the end result of the Nazi's transition into extreme right, to a time when we're balancing on such an extreme edge is a hindsight bias.

I saw him as a kind hearted sort with a sincere Christian faith, with views obviously inconsistent with my own on a variety of topics, but not the evil incarnate he's being painted as. — Hanover

So his ridicule of victims of other violent crimes, his homophobic, transphobic, and racist ideologies which he spread through his large reach into young people's hearts... were just him being a kind hearted Christian? Are you seriously arguing that?

There was no kind hearted attitude from him at all. Even the worst people in the world treated their own family and loyalists with kindness. But calling someone with his track record a "kind hearted Christian" is wild. His behavior wasn't even consistent with Christian values [insert Jesus face-palming here]

I respect the unhappiness it brings to have questioned the ethical propriety of one's sexual or gender preference, which is hardly distinct from those telling me Jews like me are destined to hell for my beliefs, but that doesn't justify my declaration of victimhood and my right to lash out. The world is full of disagreement and the anti-social way a murderer handles that isn't cause to reassess whether the anti-social psychopaths might have it right. — Hanover

I don't think anyone defends the assassin. What we're doing are assessing why this happened. Based on the info at hand it's clear that Kirk wasn't a random target. It wasn't a case of a lunatic who just kills the first well known person to step in front of them (as have been the case with some political violence).

So, since he wasn't a random target, why did this happen? The problem at the core is the fact that the world has become extremely polarized. But rather than polarized as a specific political stance, which can be debated in a normal fashion, it has become the very behavior of polarization that has taken root.

Any topic that enters the online sphere becomes a polarized topic, it doesn't matter at all what it's about. And since the algorithms of social media and channels like Twitch and YouTube push content that has a lot of activity, and activity being more common when it's a conflict going on, driving interactions; the behavior of people becomes extreme, without many of them really understanding why.

It becomes a wrestling match, it becomes a simulacra of a real debate; pushing the extreme as much as allowed to drive attention. In this form of attention economy, people like Kirk and even Trump becomes really popular.

The problem with this is that it radicalizes everyone. The polarization itself radicalizes and we get people on the right who are radicalized into violence against trans people, homosexuals, different ethnicities, while on the left people are radicalized more and more into fighting fascism.

It doesn't really matter if the world ends up in the same form of fascism we've seen before, the thing we're seeing now, with all the political violence going on... is the result of radicalization by the very behavior of people like Kirk.

He's not a debater, he uses the defense by the second amendment to make it valid to spread hateful ideas. It's a strategy that the extreme right is always using, it's the reason Popper developed the Tolerance paradox as a concept. A free and tolerant society eventually leads to intolerance because the freedom of speech legitimizes spreading intolerance if there are no guardrails defending against it. And its naive to think that this intolerance being promoted won't radicalize people and cause radicalization in its opposition.

So the problem at its core is not really the extreme right or left, it's that society is too naive in regards to how we stop intolerance to spread in a free society with free speech. As long as we handle free speech this sloppy, we eventually invite radicalized extreme people into power and lose that freedom. Because Kirk and the extreme right aren't interested in upholding freedom of speech for all people, they want freedom of speech for THEIR speech.

What this strikes me then is not a legitimate philosophical question as to whether Kirk's murder constituted self-defense, but instead in his opponents searching for some possible mitigation in the evil iof his murder. As in, a hateful bastard who is killed for his hate can't be just like this murder of Mother Thersa. Well it is. The rule is not to do unto others as you think they would have done unto you. — Hanover

By that logic, Kirk's logic of the aftermath of violent acts against the left would legitimize that he falls victim of violence against the right?

I think you are blinded by the idea that people defend the murderer, but explaining why this assassination happened is not the same as defending it. I think we are all much more intellectually capable than the shallow reporting of news, social media and officials. Otherwise you are just summerizing this by the measure of "good vs evil", which isn't very respectful of the complexities of reality.

My view, for what it's worth, is that murder is never justifiable. Violence takes place in an amoral realm in which survival is the goal on both sides. The will to survive can't be justified and requires no excuse.

Sometime before we descend into bloody apehood, we have a chance to see if there is some better way to do things, or if we're going to need violence, can we at least coordinate it so that it's not doing more harm than good? — frank

How does that rhyme with...

I'm a moral nihilist. — frank

Seems like you are arguing through a Kantian perspective, which is the opposite of a nihilist.

I would say that history shows lots of examples of situations which would have justified political violence. Events that would have saved a lot of good people. It's the prime example of how naive the Kantian perspective can sometimes be.

No one would deny that killing most of the upper elite of the Nazi party would have saved a lot of people, even if it happened before wartimes.

I think the more interesting question isn't if an obvious bad person who will obviously kill or cause deaths directly in the future deserves to be put out to save them, but rather what happens when someone is indirectly responsible for deaths and suffering.

I think there's very little talk about how hateful rhetoric slowly shifts society into a place where that hate becomes action onto those this hate was aimed at. Nazi Germany is always talked about in the context of what eventually happened, but society eroded its views on jews long before that and shifted society into a place where the suffering for jews became more commonplace.

No one really address the fact that when an influential elite spread hate speech that shift society, it actually hurts people down the line.

And if we are morally arguing that political violence to prevent innocent people from getting hurt, killed or suffer, is justified, then why do we not accept that for when hate speech rhetoric leads to such suffering and death? Is it because people are unable to logically connect hateful speech to people becoming radicalized under such speech, to those radicalized people actually carrying out that hate in action against the people that hate was aimed at?

Case point... Hitler never killed any jews himself, he never killed. Why do we consider him responsible? Because he orchestrated the thing, he pushed for it, he argued for it, he spread the hate, he influenced the nation.

So if the hate speech influence that leads to violence in society becomes the foundation for viewing an assassination of that influential person as morally good in order to stop that societal violence and decline into violence against a certain group of people; what does that mean? What context does such political violence against an influential person become valid?

I'm thinking some of that divergence can be attributed to the history of their foreign support/influence. Seoul went democratic/humanitarian/aspiring, Pyongyang went militant/crazy, etc. — jorndoe

Yes, but one needs to also ask, if nothing was directly influenced, could the entirety of Korea have come out leaving behind authoritarianism and not being divided? The probable reason for why they went so far in either direction might be because outside influence pushed the country to that extreme divide.

Point being... if the US would have leveraged diplomatic power through trade agreements and aid... the carrot rather than the stick... might we have had much more peaceful transitions to democracies in the world?

Subsequently, would the US have become an actual force for good? A nation that wouldn't be involved with military and getting criticized and instead through its economic power have actual soft power to influence without stepping on the freedom of each nation it involved itself in.

Sweden was long a great diplomat between nations in conflict, per capita I think we have more diplomats that made a difference in the world than most other nations. But we didn't have the economic power, so we could only act as mediators. If we had the economic power of the US, maybe we would have been able to change much more than the US which produced the consequences of fracturing nations, destroyed people, cultures and giving rise to terrorism.

But put me in a different context, e.g. in front of his family and, not being made of stone, I would have a very different attitude. Then, on here, I can take a purely intellectual stance. Same with Gaza, many on the right especially dismiss, by default, the suffering there, but transport them next to a pile of rubble with Palestinian children suffocating beneath it, and it would most likely be a very different story. Contexts drive us and mislead us about the issues and about ourselves. — Baden

Of course... but we also need to remember that when a person becomes an influential figure in politics, especially with extreme views that indirectly hurt people in society. What is the morality around that context surrounding an event like this? Does the suffering of the family take away from the suffering caused by his influence? Context change depending on perspective, but I think it's also important to remember that when it comes to political violence, it's no longer just about the act itself, but where it came from, what it leads to, and what it means to the political situation of the world.

Those topics are really what we're talking about, not really him as a human being, not really dismissing the suffering of the family and relatives. The killing of a human being is a tragedy... but the killing of him as a representation of his political views and hateful viewpoints, is another form of act and another form of context that has philosophical and historical proportions worth discussing.

The assassination of a Nazi functionary in 1934 by a Jewish sniper would likely have almost universally been condemned at the time. Now, I, and I suspect most of us, would consider the assassin a hero. — Baden

And this is a problem with any discussion about politics and war. It demands a great deal of understanding of society to be able to say that a current event is justified or not. It requires both an understanding of history and psychology as well as philosophy.

To be able to understand current events without being wrapped up in biases and fallacies produced by the herd of people pushing and pulling on culture, or lesser intelligent people influencing media and social media into extreme bubbles, is extremely hard.

The fact that this is about a real person who has really just been killed is unfortunate because it becomes understandably almost impossible to divorce oneself from the immediate tragedy of those who cared for that person. Maybe it's just all in bad taste to talk about it now. — Baden

I disagree to some degree. I think it's important to discuss it because a person like Kirk, so involved in spreading the kind of hate he did, will easily become a martyr for that hate, whitewashed through the shallow charade of people ignoring what he stood for in order to score political points. I also think that this forum is exactly the place to discuss something like this, because here we discuss the philosophical ramifications of what is going on in the world... rather than what the rest of the internet is doing at the moment surrounding this event. And because of this, I think that a truly civil discussion like this is extremely important to have surrounding something like an assassination of a public figure of this importance to the current political climate.

Are you asking when it's appropriate to add violence to your political activism? — frank

Was operation Valkyrie political activism?

This is the question, when is it justified? What is justified? Is it ever justified? As a philosophical question, it is valid one as there's been many times in history it was very valid.

I think the more interesting discussion in terms of this specific assassination is why we have a rise of political violence. What is causing it? Of course we all know why; the rising polarization and extreme rhetoric driving radicalization.

So the follow-up question becomes, how do we stop this polarization and extreme rhetoric driving radicalization?

The solutions require an examination of what we allow in society, while still remaining free. This is the global problem for free societies to tackle in the coming years, because if they don't, they will become so polarized that political violence becomes a common practice. A form of room temperature war rather than a cold or hot one.

Is that so? I didn’t know that. — Wayfarer

"Pardon" was the wrong word, rather wanted a patriot to bail him out. Then rejecting that the right wing rhetoric had anything to do with pushing acts like this.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/paul-pelosi-charlie-kirk-bail-conspiracies-b2214680.html

On top of that he also called Kyle Rittenhouse “a hero to millions", so...

Wow, you went back a bit to find that. — Sam26

Sorry, the thread popped up and it's a long read to go through everything so I was just thinking I would address the original premises. Maybe the discussion has taken such routes already.

It was mainly my reaction to that premise of how language and thoughts/beliefs are separated, which I don't think is true. If it's already been addressed or if it doesn't add any dimension to the discussion you can ignore it.

Second, not only are there beliefs that arise non-linguistically, but our thoughts are also not dependent upon linguistics. This it seems, has to be case if one is to make sense of the development of linguistics. For if there are no beliefs and no thoughts prior to the formation of linguistics (language), what would be the springboard of language? How does one get from a mind of no thoughts and no beliefs, to a mind that is able to express one's thoughts linguistically? It also seems to be the case that language is simply a tool to communicate our thoughts to one another, which also seems to lend support for the idea that thinking is prior to language. — Sam26

We are not certain that language evolved separate of thought. The idea that thoughts are not dependent on lingustics, ignores that language does not need to be a complex chain of communication (internally or externally), it can also be argued that the thought itself has a linguistic dimension, a linguistic structure.

If we look back at what would arguably be a logical development of our cognitive abilities. Here we have an ape, using its instincts and pre-determined evolutionary knowledge of the surroundings and themselves, like any other species. But the demands of nature around this ape put so much pressure on him that his evolution starts to change through generations, demanding better and better ability to adapt to changing conditions. Slowly, evolution develops a more complex mental map of his surroundings, giving him the ability to understand context better, understand causality better. In order to adapt, the ape needs to utilize this understanding of causality and this is fundamentally an understanding of context over time.

Context over time is essentially linguistics, even if it goes on internally within the mental map of reality inside the ape. It is a form of understanding that requires a start and an end, like a sentence. It requires a context over time and a mental projection of possible context over time.

Add to that the importance of communication between apes, another result of evolution evolving the capacity for adapting to changing conditions. If the conditions are so complex that an internal context over time isn't enough to save entire groups of apes, the collective of apes forms the evolutionary trait to communicate this context between each other and thus language is spoken.

Beliefs require a context over time, it evolves out of the questions asked about reality around the ape. The question of why hunting the herd gives you food gives rise to the context over time being the herd giving you food. A belief forms of the herd's connection to you and your group of apes. And the need to adapt to changing conditions makes your context over time try to formulate a complex mental understanding of why the herd gives you food. A question, needing an answer. A language of forming more and more complex mental models of reality.

Language and our consciousness, our ability to reflect and create these mental models of reality might not be separable. I'm not in the camp believing that language formed cognition, but I do think that our complex language formed as part of the whole experience of the evolutionary trait to adapt to our environment. Without it, we couldn't form any context over time and thus we couldn't produce mental models that predicted our next moves, which is what separates us from pure instinctual planning or repeated behavior.