The issue is, if the policeman pleads not guilty, that he cannot be proven beyond doubt to have been responsible for the death. — ernestm

If the autopsy finds that even though the medical condition is part of the cause of death, it is still initiated by the act of the police. The fact that he wasn't dying before the police arrived and then he was dead is quite clearly pointing to the fact that the police is responsible for the killing. Otherwise, what evidence is showing that he would have died anyway?

With the facts that the police used praxis that isn't allowed (the knee) and didn't help when he pleaded for help, they can still be found guilty, whatever substance he had.

His prior arrest history has also not been reported in national news — ernestm

But that is a fallacious argument. It doesn't matter which history he had. Time served is time served. It doesn't warrant killing him in the street. Or should we accept police killings as long as people the people killed have a record? Sounds more like a "let them die" argument than anything related to facts.

If a trial found the cops not guilty because George had substance in his system and that he had a previous criminal record, then that is not based in law or in law praxis.

I wasn't talking about Antifa specifically. Antifa activism is in some respects a special case, and I understand the arguments around why, say, pacifism is not viable when confronted with facism. I don't want to argue that certain tactics are off limits. The broader context of my position is one of effectiveness. — Echarmion

But since leftist activism is acting against fascist developments, it will always be Antifa, since Antifa isn't an organization, but a movement under the idea of anti-fascism. So all activism from this political realm of thinking will be Antifa activism. It is also effective. Media and right-wing politics often label Antifa based on the ones doing violence during riots, but everyone who opposes fascism is being part of Antifa whether they like it or not. Infiltrating white supremacy movements, sabotaging alt-right propaganda channels etc. is as much part of Antifa as anything else. I think there's a big misconception about what Antifa is and the right-wing is taking advantage of that lack in knowledge people have.

Perhaps I should have chosen a different word, but I did say "unnecessarily confrontational". I don't mean to apply confrontation is never warranted. I don't even ascribe to the position that violence never is. It's more to do with messaging. — Echarmion

Agreed, but how do you define confrontation? If a society's status quo is mainly liberal right-wing, how can any voice of the left, not be confrontational?

If the slogan you chant needs a 30 minute explanation video to be properly understood, that's a problem. — Echarmion

But it's not though. By saying: "Black Lives Matter refers to how the police act as if "Black Lives don't matter", that would be enough for "all lives matter" people, but it isn't. Somehow, 30 minutes is needed to explain something that rationally should be quite logical and crystal clear.

The problem is empathy and normalization. People today don't seem to have empathy like before. Because communication is held online and in text form more than eye to eye, people lose the empathic connection you have when you speak to someone right in front of you. https://liberalarts.oregonstate.edu/sites/liberalarts.oregonstate.edu/files/psychology/research/okdie_guadagno_bernieri_geers_mclarney-vesotski_2011.pdf
Since racism has become more normalized through people like Trump and it's less taboo to speak racist thoughts, while interactions is held mostly online and people don't have as much empathy against the opposing side of the argument, then the side that is less status quo in society will be looked upon as "unnecessarily confrontational".

This is why I argue for unbiased arguments without fallacies. Because the only way to debate two sides of something without it becoming that brawl and lack of empathy online is to stick to facts outside of your own biased opinions.

Meth and fentanyl are a deadly combination by themselves, even without a pre-existing heart condition. — ernestm

Are you a medical doctor? Can you conclude this amount and combination to be the cause of death? How can you rule out the cops actions being the reason for his death based on this? He wasn't unconscious before he put his knee on him, so if that were a lethal dose and combination, wouldn't he already be dead?

You sure you are making an unbiased approach to this thing? Because reading the whole thing, it is not really the conclusion being made.

Russia seems to be doing much better. — ernestm

You think they are doing better because they have a better system? Like Putin slowly changing the forms of government into dictatorship-like power systems and opponents are snuffed out?

I agree that there's too much of mud throwing praxises in politics today, but I rarely see proper arguments even from the so-called intellectuals. Sometimes I would just wish for Plato's philosopher-kings to just take over.

https://heavy.com/news/2020/05/george-floyd-cause-of-death-autopsy/ — ernestm

I see nothing in this that concludes a cause of death being anything other than the acts of the police or the combination of health issues and the act of the police. It seems rather clear that the act of the police, since the way of putting the knee on the back as he did isn't allowed as police praxis, and that the fact they didn't intervene when he clearly wanted help, concludes that they are responsible for his death.

If you make your own personal conclusions based solely on the fact of drug substances present, without regard to any other factors, then you are making a biased conclusion.

When Aristotle confronted this problem, he said all had to be given equal rights of speech, regardless eduction, and history has shown that is necessary for democracies to function. It remains a question whether democracies should continue to function. One of the founders, I forget which, said the USA should be disbanded after a hundred years. — ernestm

Freedom of speech in the way that everyone has the ability to participate in saying their opinion, yes. However, for a democracy to work, you also need to channel the collective knowledge into debates and arguments that actually moves things forward. The only way to have a dialectic or an argument between two opposing ideas, that will not just end up in a biased stalemate, is to have rational arguments done properly.

Arguments that minimize biases and fallacies is the only way to do it if the truth is what matters. So while all can say their opinion, the fact that not all know how to argue without biases and fallacies means that not all are capable of discussions that furthers knowledge that informs good decisions.

Just like anyone can voice opinions on medical issues, only doctors can voice educated conclusions.

Philosophical discussions need a method thinking and without method, you will only have opinion, not truth.

When the autopsy report is read in the trial, showing the dead guy could have died of an overdose of meth and fentanyl — ernestm

You mean this autopsy?
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/01/us/george-floyd-independent-autopsy/index.html

Or what are you referring to?

even in the philosophy forums here, that many people are incapable of accepting the basic facts of reality — ernestm

Maybe because many people think they are doing philosophy without having the knowledge of the actual praxis of what philosophy is. A forum like this invites people who like to think about stuff, but only a handful are actually philosophically educated in how to argue rationally.

It's the biggest problem with open forums like these, educated philosophers and biased nutcases doing dialectics, what could go wrong?

left-wing activism seems to have a problem of being unnecessarily confrontational. — Echarmion

If you are speaking about activism specifically, then yes, antifa is a confrontational movement of activism. It reacts to fascist movements and development and act against those developments in a confrontational way. Doesn't have to be violence though, they infiltrate alt-right movements, lobby governments to restrict white supremacy meetings etc.

There's nothing outside of being confrontational since an anti-movement can only act upon the existence of what they are anti about.

If you, however, are talking about leftist politics in general, then the confrontational notion might come from the fact that the world's status quo right now is global neo-liberalism. Any politics that question the status quo will be confrontational.

So, be very careful to label political movements as "confrontational" just because they oppose the status quo. Anyone in Nazi-Germany who had different political views than the Nazis were looked upon as "confrontational".

It doesn't mean anything more than questioning the status quo, but can easily be made into a fallacious argument against leftist politics.

For example, I noted earlier how "defund the police" is a really poor slogan to use for what an overhaul of policing. Very easy to use to evoke fears of the lawless anarchists. — Echarmion

Defund in this case has to do with the balance between funds for things that help people in the community which the police are governing. If the police have more funding than all combined active organizations that try to help the poor, trying to increase the quality of life and get people out of unemployment, you know, helping people to actually end the socio-economic conditions that will eventually breed crime, then that funding is unbalanced and not based on rational reasons.

Much of the funding also has to do with how the prison system works. You should check out "The 13th Amendment" on Netflix if you want a deep dive into the problems.

Also, who are the lawless anarchists? Anarchy is a political ideology and I don't seem to recall any of that in this.

You're asking the same question. What percentage of cops are racist? — Harry Hindu

No, asking for actual statistics is one thing, asking for pseudo-statistics that is argued in a form of fallacy is another. Did you even check the statistics given? Or are you just going by this in a biased form without even knowing it? For you are either biased and not knowing about the fallacies you're making or you know about it and are actively trying to hide it through nonsense arguments. I did a full argument for which you replied only a short replay of the same things you already said.

So, if you want to be taken seriously, stop acting like an alt-right appeaser if you aren't one and start doing unbiased arguments.

How many cops and how many whites in the United States are racist. Give me an exact number or at least a percentage. What is it? — Harry Hindu

That is a fallacious statistical request. You should look at the statistics of how cops act towards black people.

You keep making these accusations that blacks are legitimately scared of whites, but forget that far more blacks die at the hands of other blacks, and they are legitimately scared at their own race. — Harry Hindu

They are scared of state police violence. They aren't scared of white or black people, they are scared about being killed based solely on the color of their skin by the violence monopoly of the state. In the worst neighborhoods, you could fend off violence with defensive violence, but you are not allowed to defend against the violence of the state. That's why no one can step in and save someone like George as he is slowly dying under the police officer's knee. If that had been done by someone else in the street, the people would have been able to save him.
"Black people were 24% of those killed despite being only 13% of the population."
https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/

If you want to point the statistics that blacks are killed by cops and a higher percentage relative to their population, then you should also acknowledge that blacks commit crimes at a higher rate relative to their population. — Harry Hindu

The differences in crime rates in terms of race is not an excuse for police killings. It's also ignoring the reasons for high crime rates within those communities. You seem to think that police violence is a detached form of systemic racism from the rest of society, but the very nature of systemic racism is that it exists throughout society. It's the systemic racism over the course of decades or hundreds of years that keep the segregation going, even though direct racist laws were abandoned decades ago.

You are arguing out of a notion of free will, when the deterministic nature of society is a proven fact. You cannot act or be acted upon in society without a deterministic causality link throughout history.

If the wealth built up in slavery is distributed among a majority of white people; if places like Tulsa, the "black wall street" gets destroyed, people killed in a massacre and their wealth stolen into the possession of white people: if housing laws segregated black people into parts of cities where the lack of wealth never increase the quality of life and no industries want to have shops... and so on, you will have a society that is built upon systemic racism since the system itself is governing how people "should" act within it.

A police officer is able to not be racist, but still enforce a racist practice of handling the job, because of the underlying systems.

To just claim that because crime is higher in black communities and because of that it's more common that black people get killed and that this is somehow a proof of there not being any systemic racism... is an extremely fallacious argument that ignores so many complex aspects of what systemic racism is about.

Your writing reflects a lot of what other people write, the surface level analysis of this issue. But in here, on this forum, I think there should be a demand for much better scrutiny of these questions than how the surface level Facebook-debates usually goes.

So first, are you a determinist or believer of free will? Do you think society acts separately from history and that history has no effect on the present events? Do you think that laws and regulations are the only forms of guidelines on which society behaves? Do you think that socioeconomic factors over long spans of time affect the conditions in which society acts and exists?

I see no such dive into these issues, only attempts at proving a point with biases and fallacious ideas. I think the discussion should get back into philosophical praxis, instead of these surface-level outbursts.

Probably the only way some folks here will understand what systemic racism is is if we make their group slaves for 400 years then when we have everything and they have fuck all, tell them they're free, offer them jobs in Target, with the other major option being prison, and if they complain, tell them the system is stacked in their favour. (And maybe we'll throw in 100 years of apartheid just for fun). — Baden

If people cannot understand the deterministic consequences of 400 years of racist legislations and behaviors, they aren't really doing philosophy but liberal ideological evangelism.

Kathryn's analogy of monopoly in the video Benkei posted shows pretty clear why things are bad. I recently also saw the movie "The 13th amendment", which is a seriously dark mirror into an almost Lovecraftian overview of the racist systems in place.

Even if hardcore individualism and agency was a thing, you can still have systemic racism as an ermee property of the whole. — Benkei

E-X-A-C-T-L-Y

As I already have stated, we have a system that favors blacks — Harry Hindu

The amount of ignorance and lack of education in this comment is too low quality for me. Maybe you should be educated by someone who actually knows her shit about all of this, and look at the video with Kimberly Latrice Jones above that Benkei posted.

Better question for this thread is, is questioning the existence of systemic racism in the US, an act of racism itself? — Benkei

I would say it's a form of appeasement of it. I also think that many people will defend against the idea of systemic racism because acknowledging it would mean that their world view of individualistic free-will has problems. They do not defend their view with facts, but out of the necessity to deny any form of systemic or structure since their ideology cannot exist if such systems and structures exist.

For them, the very notion of a structure and systemic thing is an attack against their worldview, that's why they abandon facts and knowledge in favor of empty phrases and low-quality arguments.

Believers in free-will will often dismiss the notion of systemic racism since they are biased towards looking at the world through the lens of liberal free will and agency of the individual.

However, the more commonly proved determinism demands that systemic racism exists in our timeline of history. All the events against black people and communities for over 400 years has a deterministic line of causality that cannot break free from the consequences we see today.

Free will is an illusion and so is the idea that because black people and communities now have total free will agency in society, they will just break free of the deterministic consequences of what has happened before.

Believers in free-will and many liberals advocate for this line of thinking, but that thinking is rationally just plain illogical. So the conclusion is that systemic racism does exist and anyone who says otherwise needs to actually prove the consequences of determinism to be wrong.

(9) Mandatory education in psychology and conflict de-escalation tactics.
(10) Mandatory meetups with community members of the districts they patrol within.

These points would A) have the police using de-escalating tactics rather than force in situations where unnecessary violence usually occurs while being able to assess a person's state of mind rather than just viewing them as hostile and B) Create a dialogue between the police officers and the members of the community they patrol in, in order to let them hear the voice of the people and humanize the ones they have a duty to protect.

The human factor to de-escalate conflict and binary divisions between police and the people would dramatically reduce the conflicts and violence. So far, all decisions made today are to enforce more conflict, not less. While psychologists know the mechanics of how to build bridges between people in conflict, there are no practical applications applied to actually do this.

But what's to do when "fascism, alt-right and white supremacy" are in power? 'Fight the power' seems like an idea... — unenlightened

Power is set there by the people, the people are informed by other people with power and influence outside the government. If you can't change how the government works, who's in office etc. you can change which movements that put certain people in government power positions.

So, who are the ones that drive public opinion and push certain ideologies into government power? Social media platforms only act when their PR is damaged. Exposing white supremacists, alt-right, racists and fascist groups, channels and posts together with linking them to the platform they are on will push bad PR for these companies. Twitter finally fact-checked Trump after years of people giving them the bad PR of being a channel for his opinions. If the largest social media platforms are forced into taking actions against racist movements and propaganda, it would choke a large part of that spread and force these people into creating their own places for expressing opinions. This, in turn, puts them into an echo chamber where their opinions doesn't spread as well as it has.

Since capitalists and neoliberals behind these platforms usually want the most users and don't ideologically care to silence racists, they will need to be pointed out in supporting racism, which would force them in another direction. If these people were indeed not of these ideologies, they would either already have put into action anti-racist decisions or are forced to do so in order to protect capitalist interests.

One way would be to actually use the Karl Popper frame of reference in the critique against the platforms. To ask them how they view his tolerence paradox and why they cannot enforce restrictions of their platforms around that philosophy. If they don't have an opinion on it, a question can be asked whether they actively support racists or just have apathy against such issues.

Someone who's philosophically educated could through the support of the people mount an offense against the social media platforms to silence out all of these racist movements that create public opinion voting politicians like Trump into office.

Cleaning up the social media platforms from the unrestricted (and uneducated) idea about freedom of speech and through that all the racist, white supremacist, alt-right, fascist propaganda... is a first step at least.

Where's our President? Clearing out peaceful protesters with tear gas and rubber bullets so he can stand in front of a church to get a picture taken. — Relativist

Chester is as gone as the President is from his duty of leadership.

Why is it? In that thread StreetlightX insults several people, calling them stupid, fuck wits and such. Is that okay?

Clear case of one rule for mods and another for others — I like sushi

Low quality posts mean that you have no substance of relevance in the discussion at hand. If you call someone stupid or fuck wits while still providing a relevant argument and maybe even examples of why they are fuck wits, you have no real reason to be banned. Some people are really deserving of being called idiots and fuck wits, especially if they write propaganda and stuff that have no philosophical relevance whatsoever. Pushing ideological agendas for example, with no interest in a deep dive of those ideologies means that the only approach anyone can take against them is to call them fuck wits and idiots, since there's no room for discussion with such people.

So, there are no different rules for mods compared to others.

The solution to the problems is to create anti-segregation laws and funding to help black communities to prosper up to a level on par with the privileges of white people. While silencing white supremacy, alt-right racist propaganda and their spread online based on the Karl Popper principle of not tolerating the intolerable.

Society acts upon a level of uncertainty about how to fight fascism and the intolerable which are pushing states into racist acts against their people. This confusion among the public creates an apathy that let racist ideologies to spread and destroy society, especially when they enter the stage of state police violence.

Silence fascism, alt-right and white supremacy. Push social medias and youtube to take down popular channels who can be proven to spread that propaganda. The only problem I see is the inaction of people confused as to how to think and act while still agreeing that white supremacy propaganda is bad.

I agree with the sentiment. Though I wonder what exactly the relation between systemic injustice and individual morality is. It strikes me that while your argument sounds true, there seems to be an element of collective punishment. It doesn't matter who, specifically, the violence hits so long as they share collective guild as part of some group. Do you think that's a problem? — Echarmion

To compare, we can compare to feminist theories about the collective guilt of white males. That is a much harder collective guilt since I have not chosen to be born into the privileges that I'm in and therefore cannot really be blamed on past actions by others because of it. However, the guilt of the people in society within the context of the protests, are directly linked to the situation at hand. The inaction and indifference to the problems within their own borders of society is the exact reason to why Afro-Americans have been subjected to systemic racism by the police.

If people in this community had any interest in changing things for the better they would have elected politicians that would work for solutions to the segregation problems. They would have acted together for the inclusion and empathy towards people of color, for building bridges where bridges are needed. They would have listened to Afro-Americans instead of just ignoring them. But they didn't. Throughout the years, there have been so many invitations from Afro-American communities to act against the problems. To discuss, inform and educate people on the complexities and there have been so many peaceful protests that have just been ignored or downright mocked.

People blame the police, but the police and their level of violence is a power that is positioned there by the people. So the people outside of these communities are as much to blame for what is happening as the police conducting violence. It's not that if you give a police officer a gun he will murder someone, it's not that if you give the police an automatic rifle he will murder ten people; the level of violence in power is given to the police from the people, directly or indirectly.

If people wanted a better space for everyone, they would have acted for it, but they didn't and what is happening now isn't punishment, it's the desperation against that inaction, indifference and apathy that people shows the world. If people don't listen now, then the people are the appeasers of fascism and appeasers of fascism was the ones who paved the way for Nazi Germany. What did the world think about appeasers after the war? The apathetic narcissistic people who paves the way for fascism, deserves the fate that fascism deserves. Act and do something or consequences will unfold, not as punishment, but as a deterministic force to balance out the inbalance.

I was hoping for some kind of discussion about what is happening, how it can/could be handled, and what steps to take towards a future goal - and what such incremental steps may look like.

I think it reasonably fair to say progress has been made, albeit with backwards steps along the way. The encouraging signs are that these public protests look string enough not to dissipate - this looks like an opportunity for rational discussion and a rethink about troubled areas in US culture. — I like sushi

People have been opened to such debates for years now, especially since Trump took office. And Afro-Americans have been very forward with their observations and thoughts on police violence and segregation. The problem isn't what has happened now, because that is the result of inaction for fixing the problems. If people would actually listen to the one's discussing the issues, the socio-economics and segregation problems as well as the observations of the rise of fascism over the last couple of years, that would have been the start of the solution. But people are mentally lazy, they are surface-level thinking and media plays along. The actual problems are complex and deep and need a deep dive in order to find a solution. The biggest problem has been that the alt-right narratives of "leftist agendas" and other nonsense about "leftist propaganda" has become mainstream and people cannot discuss the actual problems without being branded Marxists in a negative fashion.

Here's the solution: silence all the alt-right propaganda, silence all the surface level anti-intellectuals and have a proper discussion about the problems in society. People need to stop pitting leftists against alt-right and think that is where the issues are. People need to stop branding any discussion about class and segregation as "leftist". I'm sick and tired of pseudo-intellectuals who does this and gets a voice in both media and social media.

The ones actually looking into the problems knows where the problems are, it's the indifference, inaction and apathy from the ones putting people in power and those in power that rolls out the carpet for fascism to have control over groups of people that now had enough.

No one who's intellectually seen behind the curtain of society is in any way surprised by the current protests.

Does this mean it's nearly the end of the war already? What is it with fascists and bunkers? — unenlightened

Fascist mancaves?

Yes, I know. It's pretty funny to me. It's like declaring the 'alt-right' a terrorist organization. It's so stupid, its funny. — StreetlightX

You are also a part of the anti-fascist movement if you do things like informing a company that they are in business with white supremacies, if you work against an alt-right politician who's close to being elected into power etc. All active forms of anti-fascism will put you into that movement.

So it's just another tool for the racist fascist fucks to control the narrative. Get regular people to think it's an act of terrorism to stand up against fascism and you've laid out the carpet for that fascism.

We need to push forth the "appeaser" phrase, make it a hashtag or whatever. An appeaser is a word for anyone who just let fascism happen, who doesn't do anything and never acts to block it's growth. Society is filled with appeasers and they are far worse than the fascists because, without them, fascism will never grow or happen.

Anti-appeaser movement = AntiApp movement unite.

Something that can be done. — unenlightened

The only thing that can be done on individual police levels is to educate them in psychology and philosophy. A police officer who understands segregation, socio-economics, class struggles and the psychology of the persons they encounter will be able to do their job in a way that respects the community they invade.

However, it's hard for them to do so if the state orderers more militant actions. You, as an officer, only have a choice of putting down your weapon or complying with the state fascism.

They can't really since it's not an organization and has no leadership. It's a movement based on action against fascism. It acts against active forms of fascist growth. Compared to fascists, they do not continue doing either violence or acts against fascism when fascism disappears. But fascists will never stop what they're doing until the groups they aim attacks at disappears completely, which is hard when those groups generally are of color. Anti-fascists disappear when the fascists disappear and fascism is a choice, compared to being of color. The blame they get is so obviously out of the interest of alt-right lobbyists and neoliberal capitalists, it's an easy way to block anti-fascist movements and stigmatize their activism against their interests.

Charlotte black clergy understand anger about George Floyd, but preach peace and solidarity: — Marchesk

The problem is still that the peaceful approach has had no significant impact on society, the fascist state machine still grows. This is why violence and destruction from protestors cannot be condemned by anyone having insight into what is actually going on. If people peacefully protest for years and still get brutally killed by police violence, then they will move on to violent and destructive ways, because the former peaceful methods don't work.

If society ignores or is indifferent to suffering and problems in a part of their community, then they have no right to condemn the violence and destruction erupting.

There is no logic to ignoring people's peaceful protests and requests for help in changing things and then condemn violence and destruction that happens because nothing changes. It's the same as asking them to just accept that they might get murdered by the police one day and there's nothing they can do or change. Nope, people will stand their ground against such indifference, ignorance and downright fascism and anyone condemning that need to examine things much closer.

What the state and police is doing is a form of long term entrapment of an entire community, they push and push and when the keg blows up it's the "thugs" of the community that are the criminals. Nope, entrapment is a crime committed by the police and murdering people in those communities and hiding behind the state violence monopoly of the police will push the entire community to commit crimes when things have gone too far. The protestors committing violent acts cannot be blamed if viewed through the idea of entrapment, which the entire society is guilty of.

The myth of “outside agitators” is being simultaneously weaponized by conservatives and liberals to demean and intimidate protesters.

It's hard for them to weaponize it if there are numerous observations of white supremacists instigating violence. It's in the best interest of fascists to instigate violence during protests.

Not even the ones trying to turn this into their own revolution? Fuck them. I hope they all get arrested. — Marchesk

The ones hijacking the protests, or the white people who use the protests as excuses to ventilate their destructive tendencies in no relation to the reasons for the protests, or the ones destroying stuff and doing violence in an attempt to further their alt-right white supremacist agenda with labeling destruction on the protests by doing it themselves, yes, fuck them. Because they are part of the problem the protests are against. The violence I don't condemn is, for example, the ones beating the guy who took out a bow and arrow to shoot people around him. That is a fascist poster boy if there ever was one and he had it coming, he had it coming for years.

The current neoliberal ideology that much of the world is governed under leads to more fascist rules of governments that push state police violence against the people. The narrative of Afro-Americans being responsible for more crime than others are based on one set of facts and one set of fascist racism pushed into the power of government. The fact refers to somewhat higher crimes in poverty areas, with a demographic higher for Afro-Americans, this then fuels prejudice from the police against them. The reasons for poverty are the socio-economic factors that echo down from earlier segregation laws and ideologies going back decades. Something like that doesn't just end when laws disappear. With those facts fueling the local and individual police prejudice/racism against Afro-Americans, the fascist factors fuel them even further by creating narratives for the general public through media and right-wing lobbyism which skew the public view of the conflict.

The current violence erupting now isn't the result of the police killing one Afro-American person, that was just the spark that blew the keg of gunpowder that has been filling up by peaceful protests over many years. We've seen all the kneeling, the hashtags, the peaceful requests to open a dialogue. We have seen all the movements trying to enlight how fascism is growing, how the alt-right and racist movements have risen. But no got damn person is actually doing any actions to battle it. Normal, regular people go back to their lives, they don't care, they don't do anything and then they are surprised when all of this blows up.

I'm not going to condemn the violence of the protestors. The apathy and indifferent attitude among the people make room for fascism to grow and the violence and destruction seen now is as much a blow towards that as towards the state violence. If years of peaceful protests and requests don't lead to anything, while fascist movements and white supremacists grow loud, then it's no damn surprise that these kinds of destruction and violent protests occur. I cannot condemn the current protests because society had it fucking coming.

And he threatens to close down social media because of it. Per definition, that is active censorship by the government. Wouldn't that be against the law in US? Or at least, wouldn't that be a very serious act against the people by an acting president? If this happens it will either be the end of Trump or Trump will enforce even more power that the people are "fine" with.

For example, a while back when I read the books “Maze Runner” and “Divergent” only to have the very same movie versions of the two come out a few months later(books came out 5 and 3 years before movie versions respectively). Other times I have heard or thought about a certain thing that no one would normally talk about, only to have that very topic pop up repeatedly. — Braindead

None of these are coincidences. Divergent and Maze Runner were popular, film studios were looking for more franchises to milk money out of after Harry Potter and took the most popular books they had in store to produce them. The reason you read them was that they were popular, you discovered them because they were popular and wide-spread and because they were popular and wide-spread they caught the studio's attention as well.

The other part is the thing that made Carl Jung think of the collective unconsciousness. But the reality is that we as a society take part in the same events and ideas until they become a feedback loop. What we perceive as coincidences are mere that we observe and take part in the same things as others, therefore, we think similar thoughts and we observe others express the same kind of ideas as us. It's the concept behind why two movies from two different studios gets made at the same time, case point, White House Down and Olympus Has Fallen.

Coincidences are how we perceive similarities around us, it's an intellectual flaw out of our biology as pattern-seeking animals, nothing more. If you want answers to your phenomena you can do further reading in psychology.

This all brings up the question of the validity of talking about the subjective in the first place. We can all agree that there are subjective experiences, but no one will ever agree to value other subjective experiences over their own since their own subjective experience is the only one they can have. We cannot as individuals, value something we can't have, can't experience, can't see etc. The closest we have is empathy, the closest we have are stories, protagonists of stories and their perspectives as fantasies. But we will never have someone else's subjective experience, which means we can only accept other's subjective perspective in concept, but never truly accept any other experience or perspective over our own, ever.

I have read some of Russell's books on morality. I have never read a reference to the "four cornerstones" of the scientific method applied to morality. — David Mo

Because that's the line of ideas I'm pursuing. If everything about philosophical discourse is about referencing other philosophers and never build upon them, then all the dialectic becomes is a quoting contest.

I draw upon their perspectives, trying to create another argument based on their ideas on epistemic responsibility and Russels Value of Free Thought. The challenge is, as mentioned by many, the definition of well-being. The phrase makes people view my argument as a duplicate of Sam Harris, but his ideas are so ill-supported in his writing and without any arguments at all, which makes my attempt a bit more leaning towards analytical philosophy. I want to make the argument solid, as solid, it can be. The problem is definitions, without them the argument fails. Sam Harris never cares for definitions, I do.

The key thing about the argument is that it denies the act and consequence to be in themselves objectively moral. The moral or immoral value of the act and consequence is impossible to predict, which is why most moral theories fail. What I'm aiming at is that while the act and consequence can't be defined, we can define the method of choosing how to act.

In essence, how do people arrive at moral choices, not which specific method leads to good acts. The method, by way of freethinkers, is about detaching yourself as much as possible from the choice you make, minimizing biases and assumptions. A scientific mind has to do with a mindset borrowing cornerstones of how scientists handle epistime. It's not about applying the scientific method of testing, gather data, statistics and so on, but applying an unbiased approach when making a choice. I could easily say unbiased rational thinking, but what does that mean?

What is the practical way of doing it? The four cornerstones that I borrow from the scientific method give hints on how to think when making a choice. Can I verify my choice by any data? Can I replicate my choice as something many could do? Can I test my choice, falsifying it so that I know there are no other possible choices? Can I predict different outcomes of my choice?
This is not the scientific method, but it's borrowing parts of how scientists handle information and data. Borrowing these things from the scientific method and applying to thought when making choices in life gives you a method of doing unbiased rational thinking.

There's no point in asking for unbiased rational thinking when people clearly approach such methods in biased ways. So a method of thinking, a mindset, a scientific mindset is my suggestion for the approach. It might sound pedantic, but I argue it needs to be clear.

I really don't see the ways of thinking unbiased rational thoughts, conducting freethinking methodology is where my theory suffers, since it's just a practical way of following Clifford and Russel's philosophies. My theory suffers in defining well-being, as mentioned, and to complete it as a moral theory, that definition needs work. Which is why I think you argue against my theory from the wrong angle. I think my idea about borrowing from the scientific method to apply practicality to freethinking based on Clifford and Russel is pretty clearly explained.

The same can generally be said for our intelligence and even health to a large extent. — Pinprick

Without genes to pass down an increase in intelligence over time due to practices that heighten intelligence, we will lose intelligence and fall back into a society where the standards of living and quality of life are less than today since no one with high intelligence is there to handle those kinds of practices.

I see a world governed by a highly intelligent super A.I, where the population of humans can't understand how it works and can only decrease intelligence as it's evolutionary irrelevant to life and existence.

The idea that countries getting together to form post-democratic empires is somehow good for the long term is farcical. The idea that the EU has saved Europe from war is farcical..NATO did that...Japan ain't in the EU ...have they been at war since WW2 ? — Chester

How do you know that the post-democratic form was an intentional form and not a symptom of bureaucracy? How do you know that only military security through Nato was the single reason and not also that national ideals of being part of a larger group formed less nationalist movements which lowered the ideologies of nationalist empires?

Aren't you assuming your premises correct before a conclusion? I see a lot of ignored possible reasons and moving parts here.

The point is that no one can forecast the future but we can decide how we get there, like choosing not to go down the post-democratic empire building route for instance. — Chester

So you are saying that no one can forecast the future, but you forecast that EU is bad? What about trying to improve the problems with bureaucracy and moving away from post-democracy within EU? You assume that EU equals post-democracy, but I see no link there other than it has the symptoms. The idea of EU is not post-democratic by definition. So why wouldn't improving the coalition that is EU be better than dismantling it or abandoning it? You must first prove that EU is undeniably unable to change to the better before knowing your decision to leave EU to be the right choice.

Otherwise, you are doing just the kind of forecasting of the future that you say is impossible. In light of other options, abandoning the EU project is so far only ideologically based, not based on reasoning and rational thought. I'm not saying leaving isn't a conclusion of rational thought, I'm saying that the induction argument for leaving is so far very ill-supported in evidence outside ideological opinion.

You only have to go back through some posts here to realise that the people who want the EU are overwhelmingly leftists...leftists love authority, big government and all the corruption that comes with it.
Here's something for leftists to consider...there's fuck all difference between big government and big business, that's why they get along so well in China. — Chester

Which you prove about your reasoning by these statements of labeling the other side of the argument.

I'm interested in hearing you put your ideas through philosophical scrutiny, not ideological opinions. We are writing on a philosophical forum after all.

FI you can work from home, theres a good chance yours is a bullshit job. — Banno

Most philosophers can work from home and teachers will later teach their ideas. So without some seemingly bullshit jobs, the non-bullshit jobs would have nothing to work with. There are many bullshit jobs that lead to great discoveries throughout history, sometimes seemingly outside their field. The one who decides which jobs are bullshit is the one to question which knowledge that definition is drawn from.

Is there a branch of knowledge that is based on these "four cornerstones" and is not science? I don't know of any. — David Mo

Contemporary Freethinkers is closest to mind. It's not science per se, but the method of thought. It's from Clifford and Russel I draw from when forming the argument. If that is the method, the problem is its foundation, as you and others mentioned. The method can't work outside clearer defined aspects of well-being and harm. If the method is close to what freethinking is, a clearly defined foundation of well-being and harm can place it into rationality-based moral theory that is solid enough within an anti-realist approach.

The gain was mentioned a while back...less over paid politicians and less unaccountable commissars getting to decide what the over paid politicians get to vote on. Leaving guarantees nothing except UK politicians get to take the blame or credit for what happens...if they fuck up it's easier to get rid of them because they are elected. — Chester

I asked for answers to the question in terms of long term, in terms of 50 to 100 years. People seems to only think a few years ahead, not civilization as a whole over longer spans. Like the span of peace from when the EU was first formed until modern times. I'm not interested in short term ideas.

Reading through a lot in this thread is quite the comedy.

I have a fairly straight forward question. What is to gain by Brexit? I understand the feeling of autonomously being free from dealing with other people. It's a feeling I have most days against the stupidity of other people. But I'm curious to what is to actually gain in the long run. Think past corporations, globalism, capitalism. There are far too many empty phrases thrown around and in most cases not very well understood in the context so the question again is, what is there to gain by cutting yourself off from a larger group? Looking forward, into the future, what is there to gain?

The world is not the same as before, so what is to gain when thinking about where we are heading?