See title. Please don't me for mod reasons after Friday, kthx. — fdrake

You're still staying on the forum though, right?

It is a proven equation. I don't know what the issue or question is about? It's true because it's proven, not because anyone thinks it is or is not.

Since many aren't academics in philosophy and we've not had any rules of essay formatting for this forum, are there any good sources of inspiration for how to structure an essay in more detail?

Is there any way to avoid writing on something too similar to someone else given the anonymity? Or do we not care? — AmadeusD

I'd say this would be more interesting as we would get two perspectives on a similar topic.

now the largest democratic cooperative around — hypothetical news headline

It’s a nice idea. Rather than a geographic union, form a union based on how corrupt or non-corrupt a democracy you have. Democracies with low corruption go into a union of free trade, military securities etc.

Essentially a union around modern and better values than corrupt criminal states and an ability to block them out until they prove themselves worthy enough to be part of it.

So this thread is now just a venue for delusional Trump cultists to give Twitter updates and repeat news stories that everyone already knows. Cool. — Mikie

I’ve asked about it previously and it seems so. Rather than being a thread of discussion it’s just a propaganda channel for Trump evangelism.

Not sure what the point is. Maybe it could be cleaned up of meaningless spam propaganda? If a link doesn’t come with any substantial comment, maybe don’t allow it? Otherwise it’s just gonna fill up with spam.

He hates Government for many reasons, but one is definitely because of the prosecutions that were launched against him between his terms. He just sacked a whole bunch of prosecutors from DoJ because of their association with those cases, plus he's just offered redundancies to practically the entire Federal workforce. His loathing of the deep state is well-documented, but it turns out that the deep state turns out to be much of the federal beauracracy. He wants to turn the Government into a subsidiary of Trump Inc, and at the moment, he's not getting a lot of pushback. Congress is completely supine. They're terrified of crossing him. — Wayfarer

Sounds very fascist to me. Installing fear and sacking people who oppose him. A fascist, slowly restructuring government into an oligarchy. Building holding camps for refugees in order to solve a “problem” before its final solution.

Hopefully there are still people in government who aren’t afraid of him and who can oppose him with the backing of law until such laws don’t exist anymore. It’s still a functioning bureaucracy with laws that can oppose him.

I have a friend who tells me it went to shit after Musk bought it. — frank

I don't even know why people are still there. Why it's still used as some official channel for many officials and celebrities. There's been a surge towards BlueSky instead, so hopefully people go there eventually. If people really need it at all.

Oh. I don't go on Twitter or whatever it's called. — frank

Don't... it's like a bottomless maelstrom for ships of rational people to drown in.

I guess I'm out of touch. I don't know anything about that. — frank

Search around for long enough to get the algorithm going and you will be flooded with zealot influencers popping up everywhere. He bought Twitter and it's become his own town square, not the public's. He's shouting in there and getting feedback from his crowd.

I wonder if dictator military marches on town squares work for the symbolic town squares of public online spaces? :chin: It would be an apt visual image to how he's being reviewed at the moment.

"...as a cult leader"

If you look at the way people follow him, it's the same kind of cult behavior as with MAGA. The psychology is the same as with any cult leader. Uncritical following and worship of his ideas.

Some who liked what he did years ago have woken up, but there are hundreds of thousands following everything he does like zealots.

Nationality doesn't matter today, you gain power by the totality of how much traction you have online. It's the attention economy at work.

He's pretty smart. He founded PayPal, started Tesla, acquired Twitter, and took a seat on the cabinet just by dancing around on a stage with Trump. He has a reputation for being unstoppable. — frank

He's as unstoppable as a cult leader.

He's good at optimizing production efficiency, like playing a strategy game in which a certain type of optimization is the focus of the game. But he's as smart as such a gamer who mastered such a game, but who still knows little to nothing beyond it, never actually read and understood a book.

His self-radicalization is very telling of the person he is. And since even Heidegger became a Nazi, being "smart" in one aspect doesn't mean you are in all. And Musk isn't even close to Heidegger's intelligence. Being good at optimizing production does not mean he's good at philosophy. Involving himself in a lot of areas really starts to show how stupid he really is.

At the same time, being good at optimizing production is a pretty low ability. The reason why so many companies fail at this is because they form company structures out of the tradition of how companies look and the people at the top are usually just corporate suits with next to no understanding of what their employees do and how their own production works.

So Musk's success is mostly down to him being something other than the usual suit. If other companies want Musks success, they need to put someone at the top of optimization who's in the same ballpark of "strategy-game nerdery". A form of holistic view of production with an understanding of each part and how all interconnects. Then make drastic and unconventional decisions to optimize beyond tradition.

The same person doing that does not mean they're experts in philosophy, politics, psychology, biology, sociology etc. Areas that Musk constantly interferes in with his moronic tweets and outbursts.

No doubt, but I'm curious to see if there's any deeper thought beyond the view that DEI oppresses the poor white race because it's kinda like affirmative action. — Relativist

The narrative that's going to be presented is the kind of deep state bullshit or stuff like that about some group "trying to push DEI propaganda" as a form of destruction of traditional values. That it's some form of societal takeover by a certain "group" to infect every part of society with such propaganda. What this "group" is, what their reasons for doing so is, what it all means... anything of that sort, is left obscured. It's basically the same narrative as any racist who points towards a certain ethnic group to blame for whatever shit they find themselves in.

It's even like "DEI" is just a name for something bad. It doesn't matter that it stands for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. It doesn't matter that most consider these terms as being morally good for society, that we include everyone and doesn't segregate out certain people, that we have diversity that is proven to be historically good for society in the long term and that we fight against inequality to balance society into better economic stability. It doesn't matter that much of the ideas behind these three words are Nobel prize-winning concepts about how to make society a better place for the majority of people living in it.

No, "DEI" is just a three-letter word to these people, something "the other side" want to impose (without fully understanding the meaning behind it), and since the "other side" is doing it, it must be the work of the fucking antichrist and needs to be defeated.

It's MAGA-cultist and brainwashed populist behavior; being pushed around like voting-cattle in order to form democratic wins for puppet masters who realized they can herd this stupid group of sheep into giving them power without having to care for any of the rational normal people out there. They just need to puppet a small group that can pivot elections enough for a win.

"DEI" is just the next victim after "woke". Taking terms and words and turning them into rhetorical weapons to herd their stupid cattle around.

I use Microsoft. Can anyone recommend other options? — Amity

No one can be moral like this in these times. All companies fracture tentacles out into all kinds of directions. You can use Linux, but I'd bet some robots used to kill innocent people somewhere use Linux as its code base for its system.

Basically, trying to avoid giving money to companies who are into shady stuff only works so far as to them being directly responsible for the shady shit. Like, people who buy from Shein when it's so blatantly obvious what they're doing, is bad. But Microsoft is so intertwined into everything today. You might even find your fridge have some component that when you bought that, part of it went to Microsoft. Or most equipment used in hospitals to save lives. There's an irony in how tech exists everywhere. There could be Microsoft tech involved in killing civilians, and then there's Microsoft tech in the equipment helping to heal the wounds of that same attack.

At some point, one has to realize that we're so deeply intertwined in the capitalist machinery that it's impossible to try and steer it morally, outside the directly obvious ones.

Trying to be part of controlling the flow of money in these sectors is like trying to steer the flow of an entire river using the palm of your hands.

Also, it depends on what Microsoft stuff you use. If you're on a PC you're only options are Windows or Linux, but Linux is limited. If you're going over to Apple, then that might help, but who knows what they're up to behind the curtains. If it's a cloud service you have lots of other options. Though Google is shady as well, so Google... *ahem* use Duck Duck Go to search for other cloud services to subscribe to instead. But then again, who knows what those companies are involved with as well.

Basically, it's either to live in this capitalism or live outside the grid. What helps is to use political power to pressure these tech companies, but since the US voted for a lunatic that will just build a techno-feudal empire, that won't happen anytime soon.

To choose anything within this system might be seen as morally wrong, and if we are all dependent on this system, then we have to live in this system while trying to change it at the same time.

Could you please explain how it's been a failure? — Relativist

He can't because his a far-right ideological zealot who buys into the pseudo-intellectual narratives that's been spewed out by the rightwing influencers online for the past 10 years. We've seen a lot of people fall down into that hole. It's cult-like behavior.

I think trying to label people as some definite type usually backfires. Just because something is greyish doesn't mean it's not bad. Musk probably isn't a Nazi, but he's a naive moron who buys into ideological stuff that suits his personal beliefs. So when a far-right party in some other nation says something he agrees with, it's not that they're composed of former or present nazis, it's because they align in their current policies with what he agrees with.

He's supporting these people because of that and doesn't get the broader picture. Though he's been radicalized into a trans hater so that aligns well with far-right extremists.

Bottom line, if he continues down this path, he will become a full blown nazi. Maybe he should stop with the heavy drugs before it melts his brain completely.

I don't think he's a nazi either (btw, why does it matter?), just an über-rich, sociopathic, racist provocateur. — 180 Proof

Which is why I think it's important to know why he's an über-rich, sociopathic, racist provocateur. We can't criticize and fight labels; they are incapable of being criticized as they describe themselves. A nazi is just as much of a label as a sociopath and über-rich. We cannot criticize a sociopath for being a sociopath, since it just underlines what is already known.

But we can criticize what's underneath. Why is he a sociopath? A racist? Über-rich? Doing so opens up to actual critique and means of fighting against these types.

One interesting reveal of this was that after years of trying to criticize Trump for being, what he's already being, nothing stuck. Except when people started calling him "weird". That somehow affected him more than anything else. Because it's not a label, it was calling out his behavior as being at odds with the norms.

That such a basic description of Trump rattled his emotions and senses more than calling him a racist underlines how labels are meaningless when dealing with these people.

Calling Musk "an insecure boy" I think carries more weight to him than calling him a sociopath. He made a twitter tantrum over the fact that gamers called him out as having faked his success in the video game. In a way much more childish than he usually does.

Because just calling these people labels ends when they deny it. Not because they're right, but because the discussion won't be able to move past such blunt denial.

But it absolutely matters if he is a nazi or not. If he is, then that's what's being fought against. If he's not, then trying to fight him as someone who does a nazi salute will just backfire as the reasons for it is something else than being a nazi.

I don't think that white supremacists liking his salute means he himself is a nazi. I just think he's stupid and don't know what he's doing. Paying people to paint him as a smart man, as a leader. He was just outed to have paid some other gamer to play a character in a game to a point of being the best game character in the world, then trying to act like he was responsible for it, which other experts of that game saw through.

He spends a lot of time on crafting an image of himself as this super smart individual who think above society, but he's an insecure incel-type who gets high on power. Here's what I wrote in the news thread about his salute:

These new incel-type billionaires and celebrities do whatever it takes to frame themselves as masculine hard men, but they're like those insecure kids in school who tried too hard to be cool and tough but when cornered they could lash out in pathetic ways, while sometimes truly dangerous ways. In the US I'd argue it's those personalities who are more often than not the school shooting types.

Elon Musk seems to be such a person. He's not smart, but he spends a lot of money on trying to show the world that he is. He's radicalized into other people's ideologies because he's not smart enough to spot his own biases. He pays people to play his video games so that he can show his progress being that of the best players in the world.

It's all a show to fill that craving for attention. And up on that stage he doesn't know what to do. He dances around like an awkward drunk and he tries to interact with the audience in this euphoria of power, and in that moment he strikes a greeting that he doesn't understand looks like something else.

I don't think he did made that salute intentionally. I think it's being used by everyone online and in media to craft this narrative.

But I'm not sure this other explanation is any better. It just shows he's an insecure, emotionally unstable and stupid man who is easily drawn into ideologies with whoever gives him power and attention of a crowd.

A nazi we can deal with and fight, but a stupid man with too much power can be more dangerous. That's what no one seems to get in all this. Stop putting people in boxes and realize the actual issues, otherwise it's impossible to fight the real dangers.

If you fight him with the pretense that he is a nazi, then you will probably fail as he probably isn't and all the offense you used up with that pretense ends up being a weakness in the critique.

The public, on all sides, are so ill-equiped to deal with stuff like this today, everyone jumps deep into any polarized depth at the first glance of anything that can enforce their ideas. — Christoffer

Of course white supremacists will take advantage of this, but I don't think Musk is a nazi, I think he's just stupid and in over his head. He gets so high on the attention of the crowd that he doesn't know what he's doing.

Just look at his awkward dance; is that a man who is knowledgeable about, and controls his own body with enough self-knowledge to know what salute he's making?

Is anyone here prepared to claim Elon Musk made a Nazi salute? — AmadeusD

These new incel-type billionaires and celebrities do whatever it takes to frame themselves as masculine hard men, but they're like those insecure kids in school who tried too hard to be cool and tough but when cornered they could lash out in pathetic ways, while sometimes truly dangerous ways. In the US I'd argue it's those personalities who are more often than not the school shooting types.

Elon Musk seems to be such a person. He's not smart, but he spends a lot of money on trying to show the world that he is. He's radicalized into other people's ideologies because he's not smart enough to spot his own biases. He pays people to play his video games so that he can show his progress being that of the best players in the world.

It's all a show to fill that craving for attention. And up on that stage he doesn't know what to do. He dances around like an awkward drunk and he tries to interact with the audience in this euphoria of power, and in that moment he strikes a greeting that he doesn't understand looks like something else.

I don't think he did made that salute intentionally. I think it's being used by everyone online and in media to craft this narrative.

But I'm not sure this other explanation is any better. It just shows he's an insecure, emotionally unstable and stupid man who is easily drawn into ideologies with whoever gives him power and attention of a crowd.

A nazi we can deal with and fight, but a stupid man with too much power can be more dangerous. That's what no one seems to get in all this. Stop putting people in boxes and realize the actual issues, otherwise it's impossible to fight the real dangers.

If you fight him with the pretense that he is a nazi, then you will probably fail as he probably isn't and all the offense you used up with that pretense ends up being a weakness in the critique.

The public, on all sides, are so ill-equiped to deal with stuff like this today, everyone jumps deep into any polarized depth at the first glance of anything that can enforce their ideas.

To all: NOS4A2 has made outrageous remarks and refused to reply to questions about his remarks. I request no one interact with him until/unless he replies. My own feeling is that while the lounge is a place for very informal discussion, it is unacceptable to refuse response to civil questions and yet still participate in the discussion. His is the behaviour of a troll, and I request we shun him while he behaves that way. — tim wood

I've asked and wondered why he's constantly allowed this behavior. Some have been banned for less, but the constant spamming in this thread of his Trump propaganda-level of discourse is surprising that it keeps getting allowed. And it seems it's all he ever does on this forum; pushing these narratives like an evangelical servant of the MAGA cult.

It's rather impossible to have a proper discussion about Trump, MAGA and the impact of them that's also elevated from the normal discourse online when we have people like that just constantly spamming bullshit and twitter crap-level rage baits.

I'm asking mods (@Jamal?) again... why? Isn't there at least some kind of level principle the lounge should be existing on as well? Or is the lounge just basically the trash heap of the forum? Then how would we ever be able to discuss news-related topics if it's basically "anything goes" and most threads get hijacked by single individuals who just spam threads to death as their main contribution to the forum? There has to be some level of proper discourse principles even for the lounge, no?

If it's how things go, fine, but I find it interesting to discuss these topics on a more elevated level that doesn't need to be full blown philosophical essays. Only, there's a fly in the soup.

:lol: — Tzeentch

The use of that emoji as a response just further cements how you follow the same rhetorical pattern as any other Twitter warrior.

I'm defending no one. I'm scolding you lot. — Tzeentch

Neither gives the impression that you are anything more than what you are yourself criticizing. You may want to turn that self-reflection back on yourself before you embarrass yourself any further.

The pretense that Trump is somehow uniquely bad — Tzeentch

He isn't uniquely bad? Regardless of how bad others are, this is undoubtedly an odd statement about Trump.

while categorically ignoring that the Biden administration was objectively an unmitigated trainwreck and probably among the worst of all time, is childish and suggests a delusional view of reality that is unbecoming of adults, let alone philosophically-inclined, intelligent people. — Tzeentch

Why is it that people like you seem to defend Trump by just trying to flip things towards Biden every time? It's like you are unable to discuss Trump and criticism against him without adhering to whataboutism and trying to change the narrative to be about Biden. This thread is about Trump and so the defense against any criticism of Trump is not "but Biden also bad and badder than Trump".

Talk about childish level of attempt at philosophical intelligence on top of an such ad hominem answer.

America (and large parts of the world, for that matter) are done with them, and people like them, the ideas they uphold and their hypocrisy. — Tzeentch

Which people? What ideas specifically?

The total lack of self-reflection amidst the moral whinging makes this collective mental breakdown even harder to watch. — Tzeentch

If you mean supporters of democrats, then compared to the conservative right wing I seem to see a lot of self-reflection. There's a lot of attempts at figuring out why democrats didn't gained votes among working class people. I've yet to see much self-reflection among the conservative republicans though. Or do you mean they're infallible and don't have to?

It's like watching children getting confronted with reality. But they throw a tantrum and there is no adult around to spank them. — Tzeentch

Are you really defending Trump and his followers with that? Really? Trump, Musk etc.? They're the adults in the room? Give me a fucking break

This forum is turning into a clownshow with all the adults whinging over a lost election. Jesus. — Tzeentch

So talking about the policies and what Trump is doing while in power is whining about a lost election? Or is it about talking about Trump and what he does as what this thread is about?

What's interesting is that some on this forum seem to be turning to Twitter rhetoric; using the same Trump-defense as all his other cultists.

What definately will happen is that has been already cleary shown after the election: Trump's attention goes from this to that and the administration will be chaotic as Trump is chaotic. And the Republicans (and people like NOS4A2) will spin this the best way possible. There's a lot of hopeful, wishful thinking going around. That nevermind the Trump tweets etc, the administration will work just fine. Well, the Biden administration was a disaster also, but I guess it worked just fine too. Yet be it about taking Greenland or renaming the Gulf of Mexico, it's everything about just being in the limelight and not actually planning something to the end. — ssu

Definitely, Trump and his followers don't know shit about how to actually run things, how to run a society and solve problems. It's a wrestling match and they're numb in their narcissism to the possibility of people getting hurt.

I'm really hoping that with the more powerful administration this time around, Trump oversteps so much that it goes too far. The west needs a big example of what uncontrolled populism can lead to. The best form of overstepping would be for his own followers to end up in a really awful position, giving them an existential crisis that can only be solved by waking up.

His first administration was kind of a snooze-fest, nothing drastic really happened. It was just incompetence making things worse in a way that was rather unseen by the public. But this new administration is so filled with lunatics that the stage is set for a real clusterfuck and I really hope it happens so that the pathetic and apathetic herd of the people wakes the fuck up.

That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about how the people don't care about the competence and ability of their elected leaders. How their idea about them is a fiction, something "on TV", not real, not really affecting them.

You are right in that they care when policies affect their income and financial situation, but it only leads to a flip between parties in the next election. How the economy actually functions is also just some fiction they see on financial news. And they only see economical problems when something sudden happens, like hyperinflation.

The problem is that people today view reality as fiction. While they might know intellectually that it's reality, they don't treat it as such as their emotional connection to reality is both skewed by media, social media, and online influencers. People have lost the ability to find truth in a sea of lies, and eventually they lose the ability to sift out what is actual truth. It leads to either shutting down their ability to take care of society as a civilisation, or they alienate from society entirely, forming a fictional narrative to "live within".

In this situation, the populists thrive as they can construct whatever narrative they want. They create "TV shows" that people can binge as they're slowly sucked dry of their financials.

It's remarkable how easy it is to program people. To slowly change people over time so that they get used to the new conditions. How a worse financial situation becomes the norm that they then celebrate because their elected leader calls it "good".

Money is only opium when people are told it is. It's the capitalist condition, the neoliberal free market built in the 80s that has constructed this narrative of financial success that is fueling the young today. It doesn't happen "just because money", it happens because people are programmed to like capitalism, to defend capitalists, to defend the status quo. In so doing they aren't just craving money, they crave the ladder to climb, being taught by their parents and society that this ladder is the true meaning of life.

The fundamental truth is that the masses are stupid. Too occupied by their own lives that they don't care about anything else... until that life is threatened. They are unable understand how politics affect their lives, they are too narrow minded to care for policies or how politics work.

They are told what to vote on and what to do in politics, that's it. They're fed a fiction and they opt in for the one they like. Just like having a favorite TV-show or film. It's all constructed fiction.

Previous generations were much more careful about who they voted for. It may be that's because democracy was rather new and people felt a need to care for the society they wanted to have. And with two world wars, they also cared for the possibility of a new one. They did not want someone who's "shaking things up", because they knew what that can lead to. Previous generations were keen on getting corruption out of politics.

But people today don't care about corruption. It's all just fiction anyway. It's the other side that's corrupt, but my side cut corners to give me what I'm told to want.

What I'm tired of hearing is everyone complaining about the people up top. Both in capitalism and political power. As long as a nation isn't a full blown fascist state, the people can organize and make a difference.

The only thing is that they don't care, they're not interested. It's just fiction on TV, it's not real for them. It only becomes real, when it's actually real, when there is a boot on their face because they didn't care to organize against a policy that enabled that boot.

People forget that the only reason why the top 1% have power is because there are people who follow their orders. The top 1% against 99% and those 99% believe in the fiction that there's nothing to be done because the 1% have all the power.

Everyone is just a stupid.

So the Jack Smith report has been published. — Wayfarer

Corruption doesn't matter for people unless it affects them. It all just becomes a fiction, with no difference between "House of Cards" and the real world. People don't actually care until they get a boot on their face and they cry out "how did this happen!?"

So, no one really cares about the report. It's clear that political leaders of the past had much more responsibility to respect democracy and the political system and people cared that they did. But today, the brain rot of the general public have made the people fundamentally stupid to the point that everything they hear in the news is fiction, a reality show, a wrestling match.

I don't have any hopes for the people to gain political intelligence and rationality. They need to get a boot on their face before realizing that rising political corruption and crimes is a dangerous path.

People actually voted for this person. Drugged fools believing in magic.

Also the same with honesty, why is it considered such a strong thing I do not understand. I think being honest is terrible but stoicism argues agains it. I would rather be someone ahead in life than honest loser. Maybe I am missing something, that is why I am here asking? — Atrox

Ahead of what? In relation to what?

Almost across the board, people who are on their deathbed regrets missed social relationships. They regret not having something more meaningful with friends and family. People don't regret being kind and missing out on business riches.

Your philosophy about life is this modern condition of binary polarized ideals. It's either unconditional love or it's individualistic egotism, with the latter favored through the lens of self-actualization in business and getting rich. A pushed ideal by online influencers and the demands of the modern attention economy, raising new generations into the very type of life that older people recognized destroyed their sense of meaning in life.

The undercurrent of neoliberal capitalism that fuels this new lifestyle and morals has been called the new church after religion disappears, but it's only in our modern times we see the zealots of this new church.

I wonder, when life finally gives you the riches, after you've let down and dismissed anyone around you who cared, what then? When you have your castle, when all love you get are illusions from paid servants and you have all material gain you could ever wish for; what then?

It's clear that people today don't grow up. They don't really mature into social beings, they don't understand why being social is crucial to life. People growing up today seem to get stuck in development; in the phase of childhood when they start to become independent before forming the meaningful social bonds that stay with them long into adulthood. And it shows up in how they keep childish traits far into their 20s and sometimes 30s.

But at some point they will hit the age in which social relations shows itself as being the most important. When the existential horrors start to creep into everyday life and all the money in the world can't heal it. And they can sure try and distract themselves with all those riches, but at some point they will find themselves alone among plastic illusions that mean absolutely nothing.

That is, if they even get to that point of financial gains. Most will just chase that meaningless dream and find themselves lacking both social life and financial life. Becoming the angry incels who rage in dark corners of the internet about how their situation was everyone else's fault but themselves. Ending their lives in that meaningless state rather than turning their backs on that kind of ideal once and for all.

Why be kind? Because it rewards you with kindness. It's a trait that can be universalized into actual well-being compared to the opposite.

Not being kind turns people into individuals that no one cares about. They might believe they're fine, but no one cares about them anymore. If they fade away alone, what did they actually gain? What were they actually "ahead" of? By what metric are they "ahead" in life when they, at best, end up in the pathetic state of kings over nothing?

The existential horror at the end of their lives would be something to sympathize with if it weren't for us always trying to tell them this is the case. Their arrogance and attitudes led them to it and all they actually got was alienating any kindness they would have been given if they gave it themselves. At some point people will just not care anymore and their death becomes an irrelevant footnote in everyone else's lives as they dine together and appreciate each others kindness.

I'm 100% sure that the video is a great reply to the OP. What it ISN'T a great reply to, is the quote of the conversation it was given as a reply to, which was specifically about the apparent visibility of the curve of the horizon. — flannel jesus

I'm just giving a note on that. I've seen the whole thing and it's a really good video. All of Folding Ideas' videos are masterfully done arguments.

Judging by how you cut off my quoted post, and your subsequent response, I think you missed the part where I explicitly said that THIS question is within the realm of a normal person. I think you got mixed up in what I said there. — flannel jesus

Oh, sorry, my bad. However, the rest of my answer is about why they don't do it.

so he does disprove that the earth looks visibly flat to the naked eye in that video? So... where's the time-stamp for that? — flannel jesus

I recommend watching it in its entirety. It's very thorough about the whole thing and the people believing earth is flat.

However, I believe the question of the shape of the earth is one where we can actually kinda go along with the flat earthers in rejecting expertise entirely, and say "no, no really, how can I personally demonstrate the shape of the earth?" Not all questions are within the grasp of the average person — flannel jesus

Yes it is, you can test it yourself. You can just walk the footsteps of everyone who was able to measure the curvature of earth before we had rockets that went into space. You can use telephoto lenses yourself etc. Without it being out of reach for a common citizen. The folding ideas video is a good example of this.

I think the major problem with all this is that people aren't questioning or are critical of scientific facts because they've measured anything. Their beliefs are rooted in the laziness of never looking for actual answers and facts themselves.

They operate on pure belief, no different from religion.

The reasons for them doing so comes not from a genuine interest of what is true or not, but the emotional foundation of wanting to be better than others. And without education or intellectual capacity, they are jealous of scientists and experts. So they form a cognitive bias in which they manifest a truth of their own making that contradicts what experts say about some specific thing, in order to feel like they're the ones in the know and everyone else is stupid.

It's basic Dunning Kruger biases forming.

It is never about earth being flat, it is about people feeling lost in a world in which experts dominate the consensus of truth. These kinds of cognitive limitations are the basis for all forms of populism, it's the basis for MAGA and other extreme movements around the world (pun intended). People find a family and social structure within these groups as they don't feel welcome anywhere else.

Because numbers are the mental concept. — Corvus

Not really. They're mental in the way of being an interpretation of reality, but the categorization of things still end up in amounts. We can argue about how categories are human constructs, but at some point we get to things like 1 atom, 2 atoms. In relation to what numbers represent you cannot have 2 atoms if you didn't have 1 atom first. The same kind of works the other way around, how can you define something as 1 object if there wasn't the possibility of there being 2? You cannot form the interpretation of reality into an object existing as the only 1 object in existence if there wasn't a relation to more than one. So naturally, math has a backwards causation in that math, as an interpretive system requires the whole system in order to form a "1".

On the other hand, that may constitute that there's no causality for the existence of numbers in order, but rather that if you have 1, you also have all other numbers when using math in our reality. If you have 2, you have 9, and 5 and 4 and 1.

The interesting thing, however, is whether or not "0" has a relation. That concept has more of a constructed meaning than single existence. What is "0.5"? Is it half of a one thing, or is it half of nothingness?

The concept of non-existence is therefore much harder to correlate with a causal connection in math. Maybe that's why math using infinity end up so confusing for everyone. We fundamentally operate in a reality where everything exists and there's no physical representation of absolute nothingness.

Here I take you to mean existence must be perceived logically, not egotistically. With some nuance, I agree with this premise. — ucarr

Precisely. Any perspective of our consciousness being a higher state or more special than everything else in reality is a conjecture based in our emotional reaction to our own experience rather than rational argument about our function.

What's the relationship between entropy and consciousness? My spitball conjecture says: Consciousness drives some part of entropy. — ucarr

Consciousness is a development in evolution and evolution is a result of entropy leaning towards more efficiency. The concept is that life appears out of chemical reactions that utilize energy absorption for its continued reaction and in doing so start to develop more and more complex ways of doing that process. As it continues it becomes more advanced, forming higher cellular structures that streamlines the same kind of process between multiple parts. And as an ecosystem it spreads out this process of efficient entropy more and more.

The development of consciousness being more a part in the evolutionary system than entropy, but at a higher scale still moves towards even more efficient entropy, so it may be that entropy even has part in forming consciousness as higher conscious beings require more and consume more energy. Humans compared to gorillas consume a lot more energy because of our brains, so it makes sense, but we are also beings that create things that push entropic processes into high gear, so to speak.

Here we come upon a complex issue: the language of the above statement imbues the universe and its laws with teleology. The universe, having a goal, behaves with design towards spreading out energy as effective as possible. Also, the universe, because it prioritizes effectiveness over its opposite, has a value it adheres to. The implication is that the universe is itself conscious. — ucarr

Not necessarily. Our laws of physics have constants and variables that push processes and behaviors into specific leanings. Like the cosmological constant, which exist at the right balance to allow the formation of galaxies and even slightly changing would collapse out universe.

While these are often used by theology to "prove" the existence of God, there's no need for such explanation as it's no different than how specific parameters of matter cause things like the surface tension on water. All over nature and in the universe there are balanced parameters that in that balance produce a certain effect.

If we were to view the universe as any other "sample" of a chemical process, we can write out the parameters that dictate its behavior.

That entropy functions like this does not require purpose or meaning anymore than the meaning and purpose of the surface tension of water.

I usually try to view reality through this lens in order to not imbue my emotions onto explaining things. Viewing it in relation to other physical systems we know very much about and through that dispel any human arrogance or sense of insignificance to the greater whole. If I look at the universe as a petri dish of chemical reactions that functions due to certain parameters that govern its entirety, it starts to make sens why things happen without any meaning or purpose being applied to it.

Here's how I define entropy for myself:

entropy - the unidirectional increase of disorder within any dynamical system utilizing energy toward performance of a function. So, entropy is rooted within InputA→logical/operator→OutputB

The negation of inherent design within creation is a gnarly problem for sentients. This is so because sentients must perceive patterns in nature in order to live.

If you discern patterns in nature, you cannot deny that nature has purposes, as patterns and purposes are intimately related. In fact, if you say there’s a pattern to activity, you’re as good as saying there’s a purpose to activity. If there’s a logical sequence to activity, a sentient observer can only conclude there’s a goal-oriented progression including a start point, a mid-point and an end point. If you randomize this sequence, and all patterns along with it, the sentient being cannot practice life-sustaining behavior. Working backwards, we see that existence without patterns and purposes would not lead to the emergence of life.

So, teleodynamics - thermo-dynamics at the higher level of entropic systems organizing constraints on natural forces towards a future state of the system - or cognitive design by sentients, is about something not immediately present, but rather something predicted to emerge at a later state of the system. — ucarr

Natural laws can create ordered structures and sequences without any goal or intent. The standard definition of entropy does not imply function or design. Recognizing patterns in nature doesn't mean nature has intrinsic purposes, it simply reflects consistent physical processes.

Patterns, as we humans see and experience them are linked to our predictive coding organizing experience in ways that is easier to perceive, it doesn't give them value or purpose. We are good at it because it is beneficial for survival. We prefer symmetry and order because then we can spot disorder (something breaking it, like a predator in the bush).

if you say there’s a pattern to activity, you’re as good as saying there’s a purpose to activity. If there’s a logical sequence to activity, a sentient observer can only conclude there’s a goal-oriented progression including a start point, a mid-point and an end point. — ucarr

I'm not sure that's correct. I don't see how pattern to activity has the logical conclusion to be the same as purpose or having a goal. They do not logically follow each other. You can have patterns without any purpose or goal. You can have a randomly created constant that because of it produces certain patterns. Like how the patterns of fractals form due to certain mathematical values, but those values in themselves are meaningless.

I take you to mean entropy is an essential and iterative process.

Could it be the iteration of entropy and the complexity of mind are joined by the bi-conditional operator? As the iterations of entropy evolve upwardly, the complexity of mind evolves upwardly. From the reverse direction, as the complexity of minds increases, the vertical stacking of re-iteration rises.

Conclusion – there’s no conflict between the entropy-driven evolutionary process and the egotistical mediation of its resultant: sentient beings. — ucarr

A big problem with the reasoning of many who try to evaluate consciousness is that they look at it as some form of "order creation mechanism that produce order out of chaos". But this is again tapping into the biases of our consciousness seeing patterns where there are none. What we view as "order" does not equal order in the point of view of reality. We can see the dead process of a mountain being formed as perfectly symmetrical and beautiful in its "order", but it is as dead of a process as any other chemical system in nature and reality. We imbue value into a process because it looks beautiful to us, but it makes no difference to the universe.

Thus when we think ourselves as beings that through our consciousness can make order out of the chaos of the universe we act in arrogance in front of the more logical truth; that we act in accordance with that chaos. Our sense of "order" is only order in our perspective, but the processes of the universe and reality does not have such a perspective. We are therefor just part of the chaos machine, part of entropy and the entropic processes that happen through time. We take energy, absorb it and consume it, then dissipate it. All according to entropy.

We fool ourselves with the illusion of seeing order, but if we had the capacity to view the totality of the universe, from that elevated perspective beyond our comprehension, we would not.

And we don't know about any next steps of evolution of consciousness. It may very well be that the next step is our own creation of synthetic consciousness, being even more effective at entropic processes. Maybe the paper clip scenario is in fact a natural end game for entropy.

Isn't your argument relying on the Von Neumann–Wigner interpretation of quantum physics? And Schrödinger's cat wasn't a proposed concept of how things work, but an example of the absurdity of how the logical end points of some interpretations of quantum mechanics lead to absurd outcomes. It was an example used as criticism of how some thought about it all.

The Von Neumann–Wigner interpretation of quantum physics has the least, or rather no empirical evidence behind it. It's, in my own words, an argument or interpretation out of the "arrogance of man". That we elevate our own sense of importance in the universe because the notion of ourselves as just being as basic as all other matter and energy drives us to despair. It's an emotional drive that tries to imbue ourselves with an attribute (consciousness) that elevates ourselves to deities of reality.

As I see it, there's nothing to support consciousness being "special" if we observe everything from the point of view of reality itself.

I think that leaving out evolutionary reasons for consciousness and the reasons for life itself is a grave mistake when trying to assess what consciousness is. People have a tendency to become bias to their own existence and skew explanations into the realm of religious belief. But if we look at a logical concept of why consciousness and life formed, we begin to see why it emerged from our universal laws of physics.

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The major process of reality is entropy. Energy, both released and trapped in matter, is simply spreading itself out over time. Without going into the physical processes of the relation between time and entropy, the universe is, by the laws of physics, leaning towards spreading out energy as effective as possible. Life, as a process, is highly effective at transferring energy. Both from the sun and from the matter of celestial bodies. There's an inclination towards the formation of life, by entropy itself. And the more energy demanding life is, the faster entropy moves. The complexity forming out of this is generally in line with speeding entropy up, and the complexity might seem oddly beautiful to us, but may just be iterative as anything else in nature. Consciousness then, is the spear tip of life adapting to energy consumption. Adaptation is a key component of consciousness.

And it's through adaptation that I propose consciousness stems. There's an interesting "coincidence" that we see advanced consciousness in mammals and some reptilians. The evolution of advanced consciousness seem to be linked to major apocalyptic events in which the remaining animals that survive require themselves to be highly adaptive to the post-apocalyptic environment they exist in. The more adaptive a species can be, the better they will prosper and spread. And those who required most adaptation among large animals were the mammals and remaining reptiles. Basically explaining why mammals and some birds show the highest level of intelligence in nature.

High intelligence in consciousness becomes a second step of evolution. The basic form of evolution relies on cellular adaptation out of chemical reactions. The next step is instinctual behavior that is changed over generations. The third step is the lifeform itself adapting to continuously changing environments. The fourth step is spreading adaptive behaviors between lifeforms. Through this we can see life evolving the consciousness we possess; featuring all steps within us and the fourth through advanced language and spreading of ideas.

Consciousness, with empirical evidence supporting the predictive coding theory, operates on primarily generating a hallucinatory representation of our surroundings, then using previous experiences stored in memory to predict events as we navigate through reality. This process is so complex and malleable that our experience of it appears as the experience we have as thinking beings. We believe ourselves to have free will and "thinking" but in general, we are only operating on an advanced prediction process in order to adapt to our surroundings. Rather than our adaption being moments apart in time, our advanced cognition makes it happen on extremely short timespans. We can adapt within microseconds. Evolution has driven chemical reactions, genetic changes, through instinctual behaviors changing over generations, to social changes (like in dolphins), to end up operating so fast in adaption that our experience produce the illusion of free will.

But in the end, we are still acting on simple prediction operations, generating an experience that fold in on itself, predicting its own predictions, thinking about thinking. As such, this feedback loop produces abstract concepts that evolve out to complex ideas that is being spread by language.

Essentially this feedback loop forms a new level of complexity, just as we see in any other system in nature. Emerging a state of operation that on its surface look more complex than the parts permit. But we are not more complex than any other system in nature and reality, we just believe we are due to the limitations of a system reacting to itself.

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So I don't think that consciousness relation to quantum physics has a special bond of meaning or is linked in the way you describe. Consciousness operate much more simpler than being a bridge like that. Just because our brain have quantum mechanical operations being part of our function, does not mean consciousness itself stems from a bridge between Newtonian and quantum physics. It only means that as anything else in the universe and reality, quantum processes are part of our being.

We are, in essence, only an emergent complex process that is a natural progression of the physical laws and processes of our universe. And in my opinion, it's important to be humble to the fact that we are not special, but part of a hierarchy of emergent processes, steps on a ladder in which we exist pretty high, but without knowledge of the steps above us.

I challenge you to try to justify, in your response to this OP, e.g., why Western, democratic values should not be forcibly imposed on obviously degenerate, inferior societies at least in principle—like Talibanian Afghanistan, North Korea, Iran, China, India, etc. Some societies are so obviously structured in a way antithetical to the human good, that it is virtually impossible to justify leaving them be in the name of anti-imperialism. E.g., if we could take over North Korea right now without grave consequences (such as nuclear war), then it is obviously in our duty to do so—and this is a form of imperialism. Why would you not be a Western supremacist? — Bob Ross

Installing democracy in a nation in which its people follow other moral rules for their politics is impossible. Even if you forcefully destroy what they have and force them to vote, they will never find a stable ground to operate on. You are effectively not trying to install democracy, you are trying to reshape their entire world view, their beliefs and sense of normalcy.

Yes, we can argue that cultures can be evaluated out of their humanistic qualities. We can oppose a culture for how it treats its people. But change can only come from the inside. We can try and expose these people to our values, show them another way and if they want to follow that they will eventually change.

But enforcing it by force will attach that brutality to the values that's supposed to be installed.

In essence, if I invade a nation, killing anything that comes in my way and then try to communicate my message of peace and understanding, of free will and love. My entire course of action to do so creates a cognitive dissonance in the people I try to "help". They might agree with the love, peace and understanding, but at the same time your actions speak of violence. Will that people not see view the whole package of what you brought them? That you did not only bring the message of love, but also the force and violence as well?

Because we can also look within the western democracies that we have. As a swede I could view US politics as barbaric. With its inability to help its own people, the racial violence, the risk of authoritarian power and the risk of its military capability to initiate a new world war when some delusional president takes power.

Should the more balanced democracies within western culture gather together and invade the US, kill its corrupt leaders and corporate "oligarks", rip their constitution to pieces and install the better constitutional laws that we have, the parliament politics that better function as a representative democratic system and stay there until the US population have learned the better way of how democracy should be handled?

Because democracy in itself and the western values in general are in some places wildly in conflict with itself. And many democracies are ill-built to govern against manipulation and corruption within their halls of power.

The bottom line is that change has to come from the inside. The only way to truly change a nation to the better is to inspire better ideals. It is painfully slow, but it is also rock solid in the long term. Most attempts at "installing democracy" have failed miserably, with even more dire consequences like terrorism growing not only to fight back within their own borders, but also against he power that came there to "help".

What you are talking about when mentioning North Korea is not about installing "better values" and changing their culture to a "better system". You look at their existence as a danger to the world, with their nuclear capabilities and their threats of war. Invading to defeat that is not about "installing democracy" any more than invading Nazi Germany to get rid of Hitler's regime. That's another action entirely that has to do with offensive defense, not "helping" people.

limited though! — kazan

Impossible to in length write out all parameters of a system that governs against what I described in here.

And based on an assumption that there is a level playing field called democracy that only has one form/ universal understanding. Why democracy? — kazan

Democracy when functioning as intended in representing the people and without corruption, have always functioned better for the sake of humanity than any other form of system. The problem is that many nations are too naive or ill-built to protect it from corruption or manipulation of this system. The necessary steps to eliminate the rise of demagogues and manipulation is by the people confused to be fascist suppression and this confusion gets taken advantage of by the demagogues in order to rise in power until they can install real suppression in order to seize authoritarian power.

Democracy only shows its broken side when the protection of it that I speak off is non-existent.

And in times of immediate crisis, multi party democracies can not always act swiftly i.e. stop playing politics and start producing good governance.
Many limits to that one form of governing! — kazan

It all depends on what constitutional rulings that are in place.

As I see it, there's too much focus on philosophical debates about democracy vs something and not enough about what constitutes a good democracy and how the world can evolve democracy itself past the problems it always seem to face.

this conversation is drifting towards The Trump Thread, although that thread is of course ghosted by our own dedicated MAGA fanatic. — Wayfarer

It's kind of telling that we globally are tumbling down into two sides of some polarized positions. Is there a logical conclusion at the end of this? We either as humanity begin to understand this self-radicalization and abandon the binary conflict, or we further tumbles down and face a world war not between nations, but between two fundamentally constructed simulacras of meaning. If that were to happen, it would be as pointless as the first world war, but the consequence might lead to the eradication of stupid politics, a new system of politics which respect democracy, but abandon emotionally driven politics that give birth to demagogues.

I think there are lessons the world will learn in this century, that will teach everyone about the dangers of giving too much power to individuals and that politics needs a collective of opposing leaders as the composition of power. We already see how proper parliaments with a collective of many different voices, maybe not act fast, but act balanced and better for the entire people as well as the world.

The only nations of the world who pose actual threats to humanity are the ones where the concentration of power is just a small group or a single ruler.

This type of ideal of a single ruler needs to be eradicated, by revolutionary force, if necessary. It is an echo of barbaric times in history that masked itself as civilized. Modern politics need to rid themselves of individuals and install a neutral system of operation that channel the people's will and which protects against any attempt to control it by a single few. Any attempt at disrupting such a system has to have a rationally reasoned ground that everyone agrees upon, not just the majority.

I think there's too little debate and discussions on how to evolve politics. Everyone has just given up on doing so and keeps playing this game of "I hope democracy survives". :shade:

one has to understand that Anti-Americanism typically leads to a distorted view that supports the disinformation of a totalitarian state.

We don't have to pick sides, I think it's totally logical for example be against Israel's actions in Gaza and Russia's actions in Ukraine. Yet the Anti-American typically goes with the thinking of my enemy's enemy is my friend. — ssu

This entire thread can be renamed to Pro-American / Anti-American illusions.

Because the majority of sub-topics and arguments in here are generally only about that and nothing else. The biggest problem in this thread is that people project their emotional and political ideologies in the form of fallacious arguments about Ukraine, rather than out of facts or rational reasoning. So instead of being about the war, about Russian aggression and the ripple effects into world politics, for the most part it's mostly just anti-American evangelists coming into conflict with people trying to make arguments that the anti-Americans fallaciously argue is pro-American.

It's a thread riddled with reductionist, overgeneralization, genetic, and false cause fallacies.

Most of the back and forth between people in this thread has been extremely low quality and it's just running on empty these days.

I agree with everything there. Trump and everything we see is the symptom of the modern condition.

We’re no longer in the neoliberal era, it’s claimed. We’ll see. Biden was neoliberalism lite, Trump is just an idiot — so anything is possible. But what eventually emerges will be interesting to see. And how it disseminates to the masses via this strange media landscape. — Mikie

I think post-truth-ideals have taken over from neoliberalism. It's not a value system, but a sign of neoliberalism breaking down. The values of neoliberalism have programmed everyone to only be looking out for themselves; both as a sense of having a strong identity standing against the world, as well as stopping to care for anything. Everyone is in a bubble thinking they can exist without having to interact with anyone else but who they choose to. That they're not affected by climate change, economics, war and so on.

Communism was something that previously stood as a counter-weight to the neoliberal change. But since the fall of the Soviet union and placing communism's tyranny on full display as a failed system, it's more or less died out and neoliberalism could rage freely. We have the playbook for communism, we know how it played out, but we haven't truly for neoliberalism until now. We're starting to see the terrors of what it really did to our culture. And in the hindsight of the future I believe we will look back at the peak of neoliberalism just as we look back at the peak of failed communist empires obscuring the tyranny and terrors at its core. We will have an historical context showing identity enforcement and the tyranny of isolation that failed to organize people into movements for the betterment of humanity. Failing to organize the world into dealing with something like the climate change for instance.

Trump's authoritarianism is a clear sign that neoliberalism is ending. I'm only hoping it inspires a new world order to form around less authoritarian views as people get fed up with that form of fallout from the ending neoliberalism. And that the world finds a better equilibrium between the liberal values of freedom and the necessity of collaborative collective projects and systems that help people and improves life for all.

I don't think that's really a dream scenario, because I'm seeing how fed up people are with how things have been run over the past 50 years. No one wants a communist state, people don't want authoritarian leaders, they don't want a state boot, but they also don't want the soulless capitalist neoliberal machine just grinding them into mindless dust in which the existential dread of being reach a climax of absolute meaninglessness. People crave for a system that actually works, something well-planned and intelligent.

It might not look like it with all the trash and unintelligent brain rot that's going around, but you can see it in people's eyes... they're tired. They want meaning. Some go back to religion, only to find themselves in the same mess of incoherent ideas that it had. But some look for more collective coherence, something that connects people beyond the superficial realm of online trash that is algorithmically controlled social media.

People need big projects, big movements, stuff that connects and builds towards something profound or that gives a sense of it.

One example of how neoliberalism has reached its end and is about to fall is young people's interest in only short form TikTok-style media. The entertainment industry became democratized with the rise of YouTube and short form media to the point that it took the formula of commercials as the main media format. TikTok and Instagram reels functions like commercials, one after another of short form content. It flipped the idea of watching a show with commercial breaks into the commercial format being the main form of entertainment. But there's very little substance in this format, not because it's uncreative, but that it doesn't have the time to form deeper meaning. It's like looking for answers to existential questions in the commercial breaks on TV.

But young people have started to behave lost, finding themselves dissolution and without a sense of actual meaning. We're seeing a peak of this soulless consumption of the neoliberal market and that soullessness is beginning to become clear to everyone. There's a reason why we see trends like the vinyl records making a comeback. It's not because of some hipster-nostalgia, but for the purpose of slowing down and be more personal with things like listening to music. People are leaving social media or don't care for it as much anymore; they're mostly using it as a main form of communication with friends and family, but not as an identity sign post.

This form of anti-behavior against the plastic shallow nature of neoliberalism will build something new, it's a movement that is yet to have a specific form and core idea, it's a reaction that I think is the seed for what's to come after neoliberalism as a system of values truly crash down.