I'm thinking, the first salvo of war # 28 or 29 by this weekend... But that won't be about automation.
The only question we need to decide what's the ethical response to any technology :
Is man made for the factory or is the factory made for man?
(And once that's settled, the logical questions of any new inventions: Does this machine do humans and the world they live in enough good that justify and offset the harm it does? Do we know how to nullify or mitigate the harm? Will there be lasting fallout? Is there a less harmful alternative?) — Vera Mont

The biggest risks in terms of war will not be tyrannical leaders' delusional dreams of bigger empires, because the rest of the world is pretty much fed up with those kinds of people. The biggest problems we face will be the result of climate change. We might have billions of people being forced to relocate to areas of the world that are habitable and the consequences of that are just ignored worldwide. Even if it seemingly happens smoothly, the following years will have a dramatic shift in culture clashes and democratic shifts due to the number of people affecting other nations' elections through sheer numbers of new voters from entirely different cultures. If we thought that the immigration crisis of 2014 produced a problematic situation right now, just imagine what billions of people might do. This might lead to an actual world war 3 starting as civil wars in regions of the world heavily affected by an influx of a large population.

Automation might even be a solution to this since a nation's economy wouldn't take a hit by millions of people not speaking the language and not having a job in that nation. With automation and UBI, that economy might even thrive. Of course, that is a heavy simplification of the consequences, but comparing an automation/UBI economy with the traditional neoliberal capitalism we have today, the latter would collapse under such massive immigration due to climate change.

And to answer the other questions. Man made factories, so the man isn't made for the factory. And studying the destructive effects that a neoliberal capitalist system has on humans, there's no question that automation is a good progression. However, humans need to do something with their time and not all can manage a sense of purpose without work. Some will work with what they like, some will probably revive extreme religion in search of purpose and some might go insane. For this there need to be a new philosophical movement that focuses on existential questions from the perspective of a life without work.

For this, I'd turn to Star Trek, seriously. In that story/lore, money doesn't really exist anymore. The reason why they are up there in the universe is our need to explore and answer big questions. If we would reach such a society, I'd be really happy, because it's basically putting people into the ideal place where we use our intellect to solve problems and focus our purpose on expanding knowledge. Capitalism is essentially putting us in a system of irrelevancy, where people aren't really relevant anymore, only the cashflow that upholds the stability of living.

We are essentially robots in a system. Why would it be bad to replace us with real robots and be free of that system?

is it ethical for technological automation top be stunted, in order to preserve jobs (or a healthy job marketplace)? — Bret Bernhoft

No, because a better question would be: "is it ethical to keep people working themselves to death in a system that doesn't care for them?

Define if capitalism is healthy or an illusion of healthy. The way the world works today consolidates wealth to a very few on the backs of workers working themselves to death.

Automation would cut out the "working to death" part and present a conundrum for the wealthy in that there won't be people having money to purchase the goods they produce with automation. So in order to keep the economy running, some kind of universal basic income is required so that the loop is kept intact. The less people work, the larger that UBI needs to be, leading to more freedom for the people to do what they want instead of "working to death".

Essentially, automation is a capitalist's dream of cheap labor and high income, but it would kill the market if no one has the money to buy products or services these capitalists provide. So essentially, it's the end of capitalism by maximizing capitalism.

The more advanced automation gets, the less we will be able to keep capitalism as it exists today and in the end, we would require a new system to replace the old.

If we do not figure out a working system, this will lead to future wars and conflicts.

Exactly. People have not "disregarded" domino effects, they just disagree with you about what they are, how likely they are, and how to measure them. — Isaac

How do you disregard the fact of Russia's war crimes? The fact of China's interest in Taiwan? The fact of North Korea's recent aggressions? The fact of how Russia treats its own people? The fact of people being killed when opposing Putin?

These are facts and a solid foundation for any speculation that revolves around the possible consequences of just letting Russia get what they want. Disregarding these facts is just ignorant and not a valid foundation for any counter-argument. These consequences are things seriously considered in every place where serious discussion about the war is happening, but in this thread, such dismissal is somehow approved to be a valid disagreement regardless of how weak any premisses is in support of such disagreements are.

This is why this thread is shit.

The irony... — Isaac

The irony is that you are blind to these simplifications because I've yet to hear any actual consequence analysis of such a simplified position. I'm waiting to hear it...

Just trying to frame disagreements over subjective speculation as the naivety of whichever party disagrees with your subjective judgment is disingenuous. — Isaac

I'm not doing that, that is you framing things in that way, as you always do with your strawmen and why you have dragged this thread down to your level. What I call naive is the black-and-white point of view where everything is only about a life-and-death dichotomy because that is, objectively, an extremely simplified way of looking at this conflict, disregarding any domino effect of short-term decisions just to save lives in the here and now. That you interpret that as me "calling people naive for disagreeing with me" is intentionally strawmanning and changing the very context of what I wrote. This is why your arguments are constantly low quality and why this thread is mostly bullshit today and why I rarely come back here. Mods should rename this thread to "Strawman discussion about the Ukraine war", because that's basically what this thread is.

Do Ukrainians deserve to be protected against Russian aggression, answer: yes. At any cost? No. — Benkei

How would you define "at any cost"? However you turn things, there's gonna be suffering. The problem is when the evaluation of the best solution becomes a black-and-white dichotomy of life and death without ever evaluating if a life becomes worth living or if deaths further down the line are at a greater number than in the short term. When someone argues that it's good that Ukrainians are fighting back against Russian and reclaiming their land and people from the horrors of Russian war crimes, they get criticized for somehow not caring for the ones dying because of the fight or other consequences of the war ongoing. But then what about the people they have freed, the ones who survived the war crimes, who cry in the arms of the Ukrainian soldier who freed them, or the unseen consequences of pushing back Russia showing other nations with similar warmongering leaders that it's not worth it, like China and North Korea? Just putting down arms and sacrificing Ukraine to Russia just to end the war might show China and North Korea that they have the same power and that the rest of the world is powerless to do anything meaningful about it. So what suffering might that lead to if we don't stand up against the tyranny that Russia has shown the world?

The main question is, how do you evaluate "at any cost" when there's no answer that is objectively good? Do you just hold onto a strict "no-death" ideal or might that be too naive for the complexity of this conflict and beyond? Instead of branding interlocutors with being "for" or "against" "at any cost". What "cost" is worth it when the consequence of giving in to Russia's demands may be much more severe than people seem to realize?

if you all would like to give your opinion on the internal affairs of our nation, learn to read our language — Gus Lamarch

your politicians are destroying your economies, principles, values and liberties exactly as the left has tried to do here. — Gus Lamarch

:brow:

Yeah, not actually.

We already saw this didn't happen in the case of the Soviet Union collapsing. Or with the sad case of the Iraqi scientists building Saddam's bomb.

Those people will be on the kill list of many intelligence services.

And that's why knowledge of nuclear technology, which is now basically ancient tech, hasn't proliferated: if anyone is so stupid to try to sell services to terrorists, that's a guarantee you will get on the CIA/Mossad hit list. And actually, those people (with the tech knowledge) know this. — ssu

The key difference is that the number of nukes and people behind them is much higher by the collapse of Russia than anyone else. It's by a large magnitude different. And a collapse of modern Russia would be different from the Soviet collapse seen as Russia would be fractured into more states than before and each state would set its own agendas rather than deal with a larger main state as was the case after the Soviet collapse.

My point is that it only takes one scientist and one nuke to get into the hands of terrorists and seeing as how much of the Russian army is infected by right-wing extremists and downright nazis, what would happen if neo nazi terrorists get hold of a nuke? Most people think of Islamic terrorism when mentioning terrorists, but that's probably not what the outcome would be with nukes from Russia. Neo nazis and right-wing extremists are a much more probable group to weaponize themselves with nukes. And seen how the governments of the world slowly move towards such extremism, like in Italy, it's a major threat to the world if that would happen.

The authors conclude that nuclear weapons are most likely out of reach for terrorists. — neomac

The thing to remember is that if a state fails and collapses, most of the people with technical knowledge of nuclear weapons would also be subjects for terrorists to recruit into their organizations. If successful, they won't need state support.

In this case the next foreseeable concern for US/NATO would be - as it was for Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union - the Russian nuclear arsenal (and even nuclear plants) remaining in the hands of ex-Russian sub-states (with all their unresolved border issues) and the Chinese hegemonic ambitions in est/central Asia. Likely even Turkish and Iranian, at least in central Asia. — neomac

Yes, it would be a mess. But it can also be leveraged. The west could initiate trade agreements and transactions with such states as long as they give up their nukes. It might sound like a loss for them, but since their nation will likely be much smaller, their existence is much more fragile and the west would probably block them even more if they keep holding onto their nukes. So for them, their quality of life gets a massive bump if they give up nukes and that might be preferable. (Using "the west" as a broad term for nations opposing Russia in this conflict).

Of course, with tensions around their borders, they might lock into a Russian-based cold war for decades, slowly suffocating themselves with their finger on the button to eradicate their neighboring nation. It all depends on how stuck up their own ass they are.

The problem isn't really that there will be new nations with nukes, that can be resolved with diplomacy. The biggest problems are broken arrow scenarios in which nukes go missing in the turmoil after Russia collapses. Terrorist organizations could end up with tactical nukes or with knowledge make suitcase bombs out of old bombs. This could become one of the most dangerous terrorist situations in history.

It's actually viable for the UN to go into the new fractured Russia and seize control of the nukes before that gets out of hand. Nato and the UN would need to hastily initiate a plan to acquire all nukes, maybe even by force, in order to have the situation under control.

Russia's destruction of civilian infrastructure deepens the motivation to keep the structure of sanctions after any kind of cease fire. — Paine

Even if we see peace or cease-fire at some point, most of the west will probably not do business with Russia. The lesson has been learned: "never trust them, they will use a deal as hostile leverage".

Russia will be blocked until it has changed into a proper democratic state with low corruption. So basically, since that won't happen overnight, Russia will probably collapse in the long run and fracture into smaller nations that want to get out of the national bullshit while healing their relations with the west.

Most of modern society in developed nations as well as third world nations soon to be considered developed has been built around a globalized infrastructure of goods and tech. Cut off from that it's basically setting a nation back 50 years. So the choice for any nation is to either work peacefully with each other or risk ruining themselves and their people's ability to be on par with the rest of the world. That might work to some degree and in some nations better than others, but at a certain point, people won't accept it. Generally speaking, most people want to reach some basic liberal and human rights and if a nation blocks the people from that too much it will break the back of that government, either over time of political degradation or by the hands of the people.

Just look at Iran, if the people keep on pushing against that totalitarian bullshit, it will, at some point break into a takeover of power and could change Iran into a nation completely different from today (closer to how it was before the 1979 revolution). All it takes is a single event that makes people organize opposition.

What that would be like in Russia is unknown, maybe the police shoot someone who flees drafting, who knows, but I would not be surprised if there are oppositional groups in Russia figuring out how to stand up against Putin's regime and waiting for the perfect time to do so. It might be that they're waiting for Putin to be removed from power and in the following political turmoil they will push for change and take over. And what would happen if draftees were to organize not just to lay down arms but to turn around their weapons towards their own leaders? We've already seen things like soldiers killing their officers or groups of draftees organizing a laydown of arms as a massive group. If all the elite fighting forces are in Ukraine, then how many forces can be used to defend Putin and Kremlin if the people take up arms?

When I spoke about this in the earlier days of the war, I was heavily criticized for being naive, "to think that Russia would fall" was a preposterous idea. At this time I don't think anyone would argue against it being a possibility. People who didn't have insight into how bad the state of the military was in Russia before the war thought that Russia was an unstoppable freight train if they dared to wage war against someone, but they weren't, they were rather pathetic. And with the decline in almost everything that makes up modern Russian society, I don't see how the trajectory for Russia right now is anything but utter state collapse. I mean, Putin is also getting older, if he dies of anything in five years, that's not enough to rebuild the economy and what's been domestically destroyed by this war. So eventually, Putin will disappear and if Russia is in the same bad shape as it is now, that would definitely collapse the region, especially if someone takes over trying to "be Putin", people might just snap and initiate a revolution to remove the corruption at the top.

All of this is of course speculation, but not so much as it was a couple of months ago.

I see your point, and think you are wrong. — Manuel

That's usually how it goes. But the conclusion you put forward usually only have cherry picked details from all over the place in history. I'm drawing sources from experts on Putin and Russia here, https://sceeus.se/en/
While many in this thread just reference their own non-scientific conclusions on the matter. There's a common thread among the Nato blamers to always refer back to their homeboy Chomsky, but it's beginning to become an circlejerk of appeal to authority arguments and little to no actual proper research. I'm drawing conclusions from gathered knowledge from many experts, who's day job is to actually study these things and who's been doing it for decades. Chomsky on the other hand, is a philosopher of technology, psychology, linguistics, but isn't an expert in this field of political research, he's been doing opinion pieces but is painfully simple-minded in his approach. But he's the main "expert" source for everyone who argue for the Nato angle in this matter. The argument that Nato is a threat to Russia has no ground whatsoever, for anyone with an insight into Nato and Russian affairs. Nato is a piece on the chessboard, but not a player. Russia uses the Nato chess piece as a way to legitimize their actions, but it has no real foundation as truth.

Post-Soviet nations are all extremely scared to be snuffed out by Russias delusional dreams of being a grand empire again and they seek security against that, which Russia, especially under Putin's rule, views as a ticking clock against realizing that dream. Therefor Russia has built up the narrative that Nato is threatening Russias very existence in order to keep post-Soviet nations from joining and blocking Russias expansion back into its old form.

That's not based on my own research, it's based on the collective research of the institute above and shared among many researching Russian foreign affairs. But in here, the counter argument just boils down to people "thinking this is wrong" because Chomsky, or some cherry picked quotes from a wide range of people in modern history kind of hints at something that might be a Nato angle. This is why this thread has a trash status on this forum.

You talk with them, because they are the one you are dealing with. Iraq had to talk to the US after the invasion did it not? That war was pretty ugly but nobody in the West ever said it was a bad idea for Iraq to talk with the US, as they should and did.

That's the world we live in. You don't like it, I don't like it, but we deal with what we have not what we want. That's politics. — Manuel

Most nations involved in wars and conflicts have psychologically balanced leaders who, regardless of the horrors of war, conduct diplomacy for the good of everyone. However, some leaders aren't balanced and psychologically stable and then diplomacy doesn't work anymore because one of the leaders are fundamentally untrustworthy. I'd say the same for someone like Trump. There are no deals, no peace treaties or agreements to be made with someone who breaks the entire rulebook. Putin is a type of dictator who doesn't play along except under military threat. That's his whole play.

To think that diplomacy will always work is a naive point of view that's grown out of our modern period of history where people grew up believing everyone to be rational and wanting peace. The people living today haven't been forced to deal with someone like Hitler on the world stage but here we are and anyone who would suggest diplomacy with Hitler would be laughed at.

This is the world we live in, not the always diplomatically rational bad world you describe. Sometimes threats of war or actual war becomes the only way forward when someone like Putin threatens the very existence of Ukraine or further. And this chess play also has the effect that there's a possibility of Putin being removed from power by the Russians themselves. People in this thread laughed at that when I mentioned it in the early days of the war, but they're not laughing as much today as this might actually be an outcome of the pressures put on him and Russia.

And when confronting the argument about stopping the war, regardless of cost, I'm just reminded of the tears of joy on the faces of the civillian people who're at the moment being liberated from Russian occupation by Ukrainian offensive movements. Would you tell them to their face that they're expendable for the sake of just ending the war?

The world is complex and any ideal of "no war" is a naive and potentially dangerous absolutist position that disregards the consequences of not standing up against tyranny.

What makes you think he will move again? — Manuel

What makes you think he won't? Your foundation for him being trustworthy is by blaming Nato and make him look desperate in defense of Russia, but that's the false narrative his regime has been spreading for years. If it's rather the opposite, supported by actual research on the matter, that he wants to join post-Soviet nations back into Russia, then what do you think he will do when failure in Ukraine is a fact? He'll most likely invade another post-Soviet nation while waiting for a new opening to invade Ukraine, or rather, he will play it differently by target assassinations and puppet mastering people into the Ukrainian government trying to initiate a sham election on a higher level. Or he will take time to build up a massive army to just win by force on a whole other scale than we've seen so far. If Russia becomes a North Korea-type state, then he would just force people into the military, brain wash them to the point of submission.

But you go ahead and negotiate, what was it you said before? Some Disney empire stuff? Simplified movie version of how tings would go? I can see other movies where heroes through diplomacy save the world from war. It's even more of a Hollywood naive outcome than what I've described. You can't talk Putin out of this, if you think that you're buying into his whole strategy. Do you think his KGB methods are just in his past?

And will continue dying, unless this war stops short. — Manuel

Your absolutist ideal of stopping death disregards what many Ukrainians deem a life worth living. They don't want to live under a tyrant, period.

I believe sensible people should understand that giving up pieces of illegally, criminally obtained land (and this is what the borders of ALL nation states are, regardless of the state) would prefer to give a bit of land, for thousands of lives. — Manuel

Would you give up a large part of the land you live in and then live under an authoritarian regime? Are you seriously proposing crushing the dreams and lives of the people living there just to reduce deaths when Russia is already conducting genocide? What the hell do you think will happen to people living there if they all of a sudden are forced to live under Russias authoritarian leadership?

And you still haven't understood the consequences of such an act. What it communicates to the worlds authoritarian leaders. It shows them that it is possible to gain land by force. It's naive absolutism. There are no lives to be saved by giving in to authoritarian leaders. You think your idea would have saved people's lives if the same was done with Hitler? This is the whole foundation for police forces not giving into the demands of hostage takers, because if they did, how do you think others would act? If you witness someone getting away with taking a hostage and gain both money, freedom or whatever you want, then there will be an epidemic of hostage takers. It's because of not giving into demands that there's been a decline of such acts, it's not worth it for the hostage takers. But you suggest we do just that, so what would happen in other nations around the world? Those leaders are looking very closely to the outcome of this war.

Will this be good news for those in the annexed territories? Of course not. How can you satisfy all the people in a country that large? It's impossible. So you try to find the least worst option, and make a case for it. — Manuel

Your measurement of "least worst" is only based on a life/death dichotomy, disregarding a life worth living, which is the reason Ukrainians are fighting for survival in the first place. And what about Taiwan? What happens if China sees Russia succeeding gaining land in Ukraine? Would you "save" Taiwan in the same way when the floodgates are open for authoritarian leaders of the world to invade other nations?

When does your "solution" end?

You are seriously misinformed and confuse the symptom with the cause. And stop with the hypocritical holier than thou attitude. — Manuel

Would you mind sending the Center for Eastern European studies the same message please? I'd love to hear them respond to you when you call them misinformed.

Plenty of criminals in the US and Europe, many of them far worse than Putin (Bush, Blair, Sarkozy, etc.). But if you can't see that because of some strange notion that we are better because we have more freedoms, then yes, we do well to stop here. — Manuel

Earlier, you wrote:

It is indeed strange that we must pick sides, because otherwise we support Putin, as such views appear to exclude each other. — Manuel

So, you speak to me about not being able to see the bad people in western society because you essentially position me to have "picked a side" against Putin and therefore I must support the bad people in western society. Talk about being hypocritical.

And if you think they are worse, let me remind you that Putin is very much involved with orders directly down to the military on the ground in Ukraine, the same military who put hundreds and thousands of people and children in mass graves. I've yet to see such a directly ordered systemic genocide by the people you mention, but yet you think Putin is less worse than them? Are you for real? Are you so blinded by your own reasoning that you become morally corrupt to who Putin really is? While so hypocritical that you criticize that we're "forced to pick a side" while putting interlocutors into a specific side anyway. Once again I'm reminded of the low quality in this thread which made me leave it in the first place. Philosophical garbage.

Arguing for a stop to the war is not the same as standing or supporting Putin - it does not follow at all, logically speaking. — Manuel

Of course not, but the arguments in here rarely follows that and instead boils down to defensive stances for Putin to give him something he wants to end the war without ever even thinking about the consequences of such an action. It's essentially giving a murderer who killed for money, all that money and be set free to maybe in the future murder again. And what about China, if they see that it's ok to invade and murder to gain some land and that the rest of the world will just have to accept it.

This single minded idea of ending a war by giving a criminal what he wants just to save lives is philosophically shallow and doesn't follow the actual analysis of consequences of such acts to its end point. How do you actually talk to a criminal like Putin who over and over breaks deals, lie and does whatever he wants. There is no peace talk that works with such people so thinking the war can end by giving a criminal what he wants thinking that's the end of it is naive to the extreme.

The resistance, the sanctions and opposition towards Putin seems by all measurements to actually work, regardless of what many have said in this thread. If this leads to getting rid of Putin, then it was all worth it. Would you agree that all the deaths in World War II to stop Hitler was worth it? Or should we just have given Hitler what he wanted in order to save those lives? What do you think the consequence would have been if that fascism spread and infested society on a deeper level over decades after it?

I would also like to know what is meant by "the West". Does South America count? Africa? Clearly not China because NATO members don't like it. If by the West you mean those countries here that sanction Russia, then I think it's a very nebulous notion: — Manuel

Fair point, "the west", in my definition, are nations with democratic elections, freedom and at least some social security for its citizens. I would barely say US is a truly western society, in terms of such definitions, but they still (hopefully) have a working legal system that protects democracy and still gives people the right to speak their opinions and minds without being put in prison. If democracy, low corruption, freedom of speech, freedom to choose your own life and have protected human rights is a definition of western society, then you can use that against the nations you want to evaluate. There are definitely nations in Africa that is western by those definitions. China isn't a western nations, not because of Nato, but because they don't have human rights in place, they don't have proper elections and they have a power structure and society that limits people to the extreme. Even though on a surface level they look like a free nation.

Putin doesn't like the west and that post-soviet nations want to be western societies because that would mean his form of power gets destroyed. He is afraid that this spreads into Russia, regardless of what the people want, because then he can't be the czar he wants to be.

The less bad "side" is to avoid another World War, because apparently two of them were not enough for us to get the message. — Manuel

There's no guarantee that giving Putin what he wants would safeguard any of that and doing that would probably giving China a reason to invade Taiwan. Too many think that avoiding a World War needs to be avoided at any cost and this gives Putin a big tool to do whatever he wants. He can just threaten with nuclear weapons and everyone will dance to his music.

Taking a stance and opposing back can also stop a World War. It's the whole foundation for the cold war and it worked in its twisted way. And that would also show China that it's not worth invading Taiwan. Which could block another potential opening to a World War. These nations lives in a past era that the rest of the world essentially moved away from and if they could evolve into more modern times, primarily by the old people in power dying off, that could help creating an actual world peace on a level never seen before. Keeping a stalemate until then is also effective.

Putin wants the west to be weak, it's how he gains power. If we give him that power, how can you guarantee he will just be ok with what we gave him and not just attack another post-soviet nation?

You can be outraged at the war crimes and want them to stop, while at the same time seeking to reduce the number of Ukrainians killed. Or you can create a Disney film in which the Empire is defeated. — Manuel

Those kinds of arguments were posted early in this thread when I described potential acts by Putin that we have specifically seen later in this war. The "Movie villain" counter argument rings hollow when Putin actually acts like it and is just a way to dismiss arguments by strawman.

How would you reduce the number of Ukrainians being killed when they seek to defend themselves against those killings? We should, by your argument, give Putin some land where Ukrainians grew up and lives on after they conducted genocide. And what happens when he makes a move again? Give more land? Give up the whole of Ukraine? What about the respect for the Ukrainian people and what they want? Do you think they fight in this war just for the sake of it? You think they don't know they're dying on the battlefield? You think they are involved in a war where they don't know why? They do know why, they want to survive and be their own nation and you suggest that we should give Putin what he wants because we would then save Ukrainian lives? You think Ukrainians would be fine with all these deaths so far just to give up?

It's not me that has a simplified point of view here, it's you who suggest that ending the war at any cost is worth it, without even thinking about further consequences and what Ukrainians feel is worth fighting for. It's a naive point of view.

You may say my last sentence is a defense of Putin, when it is a description of fact, going all the way back to the dissolution of the USSR, stated clearly by people who actually know about this conflict, like the US' last ambassador to the USSR Joh Matlock and others. But if you can't make a distinction between these two, then we are stuck. — Manuel

No, I'd say it's a naive point of view to disregard the actions of Putin and the world view he put forward. And all actions taken in this war that made it worse has been from Putin and Nato has never been an existential threat to Russia. Putin doesn't own the other post-soviet nations and your point of view requires them to be a legitimate part of Russia, just like Putin want it to be, which they aren't. The expansion of Nato has been because of nations fearing what Putin might do and seeking security in an alliance that blocks such aggressions. I know, I live in a nation who wants this security. Any notion that Nato is an existential threat to Russia is a delusional idea promoted by Russian propaganda in order to give justification for Russias actions. And at the end of the day, Putin is responsible for all of this and any delusional idea that Nato forced him to do so is just buying into his narrative.

I left this thread to get away from these kinds of arguments because I'm tired of the level they ended up on. Read between the lines of what I write, I won't repeat myself.

People have to grow above the excitement and entertainment of the freak show. — universeness

They never do. Voters are rarely intellectually involved and politicians desperately seek voters attention, everything in current democracy is always boiling down to demagogues and populism.

Democracy needs to evolve to a higher form, what that is, is up to political philosophers to figure out.

People should be voting for people not political parties. — universeness

Could devolve into becoming just like presidential elections and wrestling fights between individuals and media covering who wore the best clothes and so on.

Such a system needs moderator personel who will steer the ship away from such downfalls and focus on the actual politics and strategies being pit against each other.

You are kinda describing Tony Blairs New Labour Party or perhaps even Keir Starmer's current labour party, who are indeed having tremendous success in the (non-Scottish) polls. That's why the tories keep stealing a lot of their policies, because they are soft tory policies.
Current labour and the liberal party should just merge as there is very little between them. :angry: — universeness

I'm not that well read-up on British politics so I didn't know that they did that.

In all essence I think a lot of western nations of the world needs new political movements that aren't fascist conservative super-capitalist racists. I'm kind of stunned that there aren't enough people who want a more non-extreme leftish movement, but maybe such voters are so content in their middle class life that they're too fat and obsessed with TikTok and social media to ever care about politics until it's too late. Just look at all the Millennials and Gen Zs in Russia who were just ignoring everything up until now and then being all surprised about everything.

It is indeed strange that we must pick sides, because otherwise we support Putin, as such views appear to exclude each other. — Manuel

The only ones supporting Putin are those who argue in defense of Putin. The side-picking is obvious in people's rhetoric. Personally I side with the west, not because it is an innocent perfect utopia, but because it allows progress, personal freedom and security far better than any other form of government or society so far. Siding with the least worse does not mean supporting the bad sides of it, but it damn straight stands up against the tyranny of someone like Putin.

The problem is that when people who generally argue against western ideals, i.e, and specifically, unhinged neoliberal capitalism and the consumer existence, they, in lack of actual rational thought, are unable to intellectually and emotionally handle a discussion surrounding the war in Ukraine. They're so deeply entrenched in their dislike of western society that when a person like Putin essentially wage war against western ideals and any post-soviet nation who wants to rebuild into such ideals, they get confused into somehow defending Putin or validating his perspective just because it somewhat aligns with how they dislike western ideals.

But anyone with the least sense of rationality, empathic ability and philosophical scrutiny would clearly see how tyrannical Putin really is, why he does what he does and how morally corrupt people under him are after all the war crimes and bodies of civillians and children that gets dug up from mass graves right now. It's massive, spread out and systemic, not singular events of isolated morally corrupt soldiers and leaders. From top down to individual soldiers conducting it.

The "good" vs" "bad" is in all aspects extremely obvious in this war and "picking" the side of the west does not validate previous war crimes and morally corrupt actions that infest western society, it just means that we pick the side that is the least worse, the side that can actually progress past the bad and that has a potential future where all people can live a good life with a sense of fulfillment. Putin stands for a totalitarian society where people are meat bags that can be thrown at whatever he feels he wants and progressing that society is an impossibility in its current state. If people cannot distinguish between the sides of this war, it basically means they are morally corrupt or unable to understand further than their superficial dislike of western society. Like people defending Hitler during the start of World War II. When society moved past that war, it was clear that those holding on to judging Hitler throughout his political movement and wartime were the ones who were right and the ones defending him were wrong. There was no grey area in that matter.

Some wars and conflicts aren't as complex as people like to think they are. The complexity can exist on individual scales and domino effects of foreign policies pushing details of a conflict in different directions, but picking a side against Putin, the people under him and their war does not mean we side with a neoliberal capitalist machine of destruction that the west is infected by, but the basic liberal core values that stands against the tyranny and brutality of people like Putin and the people supporting him.

But this thread has for a long time been infected by that kind side-picking. One side of empathic people who get outraged by the brutality of Putin and one side who can't align their criticism of the west with standing against Putin so they disregard any judgement of him or try to justify his reasons because of some weird emotional inability to both criticize the west and see Putin and his war machine for what it really is.

There's a naughty chubby lad with messy hair and even messier morals waiting in the wings and ready for a return to action! Hi, ho, silver! — Baden

So the only people they have available as replacements is the last dude who failed. What does this say about Tories?

And why doesn't the more rational and balanced Tories just leave and start their own new party and leave the incompetent and stupid parts to drive Tories into the ground? I think they would have tremendous success if they did that at this time.

I'm not sure what you're having trouble with here. One can over water one's houseplants. One can under water one's houseplants. — Isaac

And you position yourself as being the one deciding what level of imagination people are on in their writing and then putting yourself into the balanced rational position and everyone you don't agree with into either having too little or too much imagination, whatever fits your way of dismissing someone else's argument without engaging with them honestly.

We can't be responsible for your lack of imagination. — Isaac

I can't account for your overactive imagination. — Isaac

What's the balance here? You both ask for imagination and condemn it throughout this thread. Is it only when it fits your narrative that imagination is needed and when others use it you call it overactive and wrong? I guess consistency isn't your strong suit.

“our scale” and which physical processes? — Deus

Our scale = us, human-sized things observing our surroundings.
Physical processes = physics at our human scale, i.e Einsteins theories etc.

Randomness produced at the quantum level = randomness and classically defined phenomena on the macro level. And vice versa — Deus

Not sure what you meant by this? It's an increasing probability certainty of cause and effect the larger in scale you go from the smallest to the largest.

A good way to wrap heads around the concept of quantum physics is that things at the smallest Planck measurement to the largest objects in the universe tend to be a scale of probability. Going from total randomness at the smallest scale and sequentially becoming less and less random. At the scale we exist, the probabilities that go against deterministic cause and effect, are so infinitely small that they basically never happen.

So... our scale in the universe cannot be randomized in physical processes, even if we can witness randomness and strange probabilities at quantum scales.

No man-made change is inevitable — 180 Proof

Of course, a world disaster could end humanity and it will not, but if no such things happen, it is inevitable because it is a natural progression of how we manufacture tools. Humans have never stopped improving on the tools that we have and advanced automation is a pretty effective tool over previous tools. So, in conclusion, it is inevitable if nothing else happens.

especially to the degree it adversely affects so many people as the prospect of total automation of production and services would. — 180 Proof

Has anything ever changed the course of maximization of production just because some people get run over by it? And even so, it's not all just doom and gloom, advanced automation can also free people from working to death. Like, stopping cheap child labor because robots are cheaper is a positive outcome, regardless of whether the company has any intention of helping the children or not by that decision.

Has the world been helped by the industrial revolution? Did our living standards and life quality increase because of how the world shifted from before the industrial revolution? Of course.

Examples: global Lenin-Stalinism / Maoism, global laissez-faire capitalism, nuclear war, etc. — 180 Proof

All of those ideologies, ideas, and inventions are the result of value-driven, human factors. Progress, on the other hand, happens regardless. You could destroy the world and remove all books and information about everything and the surviving humans will build up a new society and they will continue the progression of tools from what they had.

The progression of tools, inventions, and machines does not have anything to do with how we value them or think of them. A better hammer will be a better hammer, always. So a better robot will be a better robot, always.

Therefore, if humanity isn't totally destroyed, we will eventually reach a point of total automation. So the question is, what would that economy be like? What would that world look like?

No doubt, the 'automated future' you mention is trending, so to speak, but it's not inevitable, or an inescapable prospect. — 180 Proof

Name a reason why the world would not jump onto advanced automation the first chance it gets. It is just as inevitable as how the wheel changed the world. No one would oppose it, except those who oppose the consequences of it and call for a ban on automation, but which government would choose to ban advanced automation seen as it would exponentially improve the national economics of that nation?

With over abundant workforce and general population education needs to play an important part in skilling them towards this new future. — Deus

Even though full-scale advanced automation isn't happening yet, we have kids in schools today actively working towards a job that will most definitely be dead in a couple of years. Politics around education and the faculties themselves aren't equipped to change since they aren't even entertaining the scenario of full-scale advanced automation. They act upon the status quo, they never act upon what will be. Advanced automation will happen fast. The point is when we have generalized robotics that can be adapted based on the user training them rather than having a software programmer doing it. This would mean that a clothing company that requires a robot to fold and organize clothes in a store according to a set plan can teach that robot one time how to fold clothes, hang clothes, and take care of the store chores and then multiply. Over time, these robots will become more advanced, faster and better at their tasks and can also be sold as "store template workers" to speed up the training phase. All of a sudden you have a or multiple stores that only have one human employee, the one who talks to customers, with that job also being in danger by socially trained robots.

Point is that we will have a point when a general-purpose robot becomes a reality and from that point, if it is inexpensive and reliable in day-to-day work, it will almost completely change the western world overnight. No company will look at their expensive human workforce, then look at a workforce of robots who cost just a fraction compared to the humans and go "yeah, I love to lose money".

There's no coincidence that Tesla is developing such robots since Elon Musk is trying to push the edge on how effective manufacturing can get. Human workers have limits and cost money, so with the world's most advanced self-driving system, he can just repurpose that to cover other tasks than just driving. Tesla might be the first industry in the world to become fully automated in all areas of production at their factories. If his goal of selling these robots becomes a reality, we will have the first general-purpose robots existing in society. If successful, in that they lower costs for companies, that would be an exponential factor for the automation industry, leading to more and more companies wanting to work on general-purpose robotics and the industry would explode into a new era.

Politics and education will lag far behind that development because it will happen too fast. We will have an era of mass unemployment and we will probably see UBI become implemented as a desperate attempt to save the world economy from a total collapse. That's in the western world, imagine the consequences for third world countries or nations on the brink of becoming rich due to how western industries put people in low-income jobs there. Advanced automation will make no sense to have in these countries because it's cheaper to just build factories closer to home when the workforce is just robots. Western industries will abandon these nations and their economy will collapse to a much worse state than before. There will be civil wars and also even wars against the west. Of course, some companies in these nations might use robots as well, maybe even catch up with competing products, but once again, education and politics lag behind. If leaders of a third world nation were aware of this development, they would right now make a policy of educating many people in engineering and automation technology. Since western societies are so filled with TikTok-numbed kids and adults, we will see a surge in any nation that jumped onto this development fast for a desperate population in need of jobs.

India is a good example of this since there are a lot of technicians in India who work within industries primarily from outside of India. If all of them focused on purely Indian companies, that also take advantage of automation, they could easily become a dominant factor in the future where western companies lag behind.

The conclusion is that advanced automation will radically change the world as it looks today. It's going to be a total transformation in the same style as the industrial revolution. With massive shifts in labor types and how people live their lives. Since culture is often defined by how our economy and work affect our lives, it will radically transform culture worldwide.

Sprinkle in the outcome of climate change and we will see a massive change over the coming hundred years that is unprecedented compared to the previous hundred years.

I think Capitalism is pretty obvious what it is, it's more interesting to ask the question: is there an economic system past Capitalism that isn't Marxism? Seen as how Marxism has a problem being combined with the autonomous future we're heading towards, in which millions will be out of a job, replaced by automation. Previously, during the industrial revolution, there were fears that automation would produce a lot of unemployment, but it just transitioned into a new form of a job for people and also pushed plenty to move to cities and work in the factories there.

However, future development, based on a normal capitalistic trajectory, needs advanced automation in order to maximize further profit. Industries today are close to maximizing their profit due to there just not existing enough people. Facebook, as an example, are pushing free internet to poor nations, not as a sign of goodwill, but to get more people onto their platform.

So if future industries start to rely more and more on advanced automation and more and more people go unemployed as people can't transition into new job titles as easily as during the industrial revolution, then a new form of economical system needs to be created that can cover life quality for an entire population. Some suggest UBI as a solution, but that's just short term and it doesn't really create a system where finances flow organically. It would generally be that corporations pay 75% taxes on their profits in order to cover a UBI system that would then go straight back into the corporations from people buying their products as well as being part of the tax being used to finance infrastructure that also goes into corporations who handle such work. On top of this, the only work being done by humans are technical jobs managing automation and engineering improvements, as well as government people and artists and creative people doing "high art", meaning, not content produced by AIs but art commercialized through specific individuals (a whole other discussion, but anyway).

In the end, automation will both be a blessing and a curse for capitalism and we are yet to have a system that can function within this kind of future scenario. If we are partially destroyed by climate change or some large-scale world war, then we will have decades of "normal" capitalist work after it that will postpone the automation revolution, but one day it will eventually come and by then we need to have a functional economy in place that replaces capitalism and free market democracies as we see them today.

Will this show the supporters of Tories, Republicans and other right-wing populist parties how they're not political parties for low to mid-income households and not improving for anyone but the rich? People voted for Brexit, people voted for Tories, people voted for Trump, and people now recently also voted for Giorgia Meloni as well as the Swedish Democrats getting more seats in the Swedish parliament.

I mean... the ideological information is right there in front of anyone if they were to look, but people have learned to stop listening to experts and instead listen to influencer-style con-artists without any second thought as to any underlying agendas of these people.

This is what people get for wanting irrational people in power to "shake things up a bit"... because now they have shaken things up quite a bit. Hopefully, the people who voted for them are happy now that the whole economy has been shaken up because that's what happens when you give the power to these people and stop listening to experts who tried to warn about upcoming issues.

What makes this any different from how philosophy is "done" among humans? — Bret Bernhoft

Just as with AI images, the AI doesn't create anything new but uses a set of millions of images as its baseline to generate new forms on top. This kind of looks like how humans generate new things by combining ideas from the past into something new, but the AI doesn't have ingenuity, it can only act upon human input instruction to generate something, meaning, the ingenuity is always human. It's like taking the part out of the mind of a human that revolves around combining memories into something new, without any guideline as to a goal for that new idea, essentially, it's like having severe mental illness and a constant psychotic breakdown.

The problem with how the public reacts or thinks about our current algorithmic AIs is that people think that these programs "think" just because it looks like they are. It's a fundamentally wrong analysis of how current AI functions based on a misunderstanding of its processes and human psychology.

Meditation and drugs can help with ego-death — Xtrix

I think ego death is the most lacking thing about our modern world. In a world order built around narcissistic tendencies due to the rampage of neoliberal individualism, we would need an ego holocaust to return to something closer to decent morality for humanity.

Death is death, like shutting off a computer and then smashing the disk drives. There was a lot on it, but no one would consider that data to "float away" into some other place. So why would we do it?

Concepts of something after death are the result of the fear of death combined with a narcissistic idea that the ego, the self is the center of the universe, so "how could it possibly just disappear!?"

In my opinion, it's a fear and concept that never left a childish state of mind, like how conspiracy people try to understand something really simple with extremely complex and elaborate explanations just because they can't accept the simple as being true. And all attempts to provide rational thought and facts that support the simple truth just make them more scared and in need of even more extremely convoluted ideas about it.

Because they can't simply handle it, "Me... being gone? Preposterous! I'm immortal and evidence of my decay, evidence of mental changes by neurological degradation only means my body dies, and my mind my SOUL will be immortal and exist somewhere else and it will all be better because I will transcend all my bodily pains and aging aches and once again be happy, like I was in my youth... ah, I will be young again, my mind will be young and healthy, and all will be fine, all will be as it was supposed to be for me, all my problems in life, gone, I will be happy again...".

It is... hilarious.

Therefore, is what is needed for better philosophy actually a fasting and detoxification of thought? — Xtrix

This topic has been split up into this and the other thread about excessive thinking. So I'll just quote what I wrote there since it covers both topics:

In a manner of speaking nature just forgot to add the mechanism to dumb it down again once we were safe
— Seeker

Nature didn't forget this because that's not how evolution works. And we're not even close to an evolutionary transition into a "dumber" human because we are now "safe". People have, for only around 30 years, been somewhat safe in the manner of speaking you position it. Before this, the threat of nuclear war, the threat and reality of the second world war, and then just go back in history for more and more threat level ups and downs, means people have never been "safe" and intellectually we have never been it either.

As humanity has grown into a much more complex state, where we incorporate the entire world and universe into our assessments of possible problems, we've never been in a more complex state of thinking. At this time in history, only the ignorant would position themselves as "safe", even if it's true for their own personal lives.

But what this topic is actually focusing on is more of the necessity to "breathe" and not be overwhelmed by all that thinking. The world changes faster and faster and demands a much faster pace of intellectual and rational thinking about it, so the pressure on the individual to understand and think about world complexity is increasing as the timeframe to formulate a thought around topics decreases.

So we're left with being pressured to think faster and more complex in order to be able to grasp the complexity of modern times.

Within this concept, we can definitely see a need to pause, otherwise, we become consumed with a complexity that risk breaking down our overall ability to organize internal thoughts. This is why I think we actually have positive scientific results from meditation. It is, in its essence, a way to "pause" our minds and let our critical thinking "defragment".

The complexity of today, especially the interconnected domino effect of increasing complexity as a result of clashes between cultures, classes, technology, ideology etc. that happens at an increasingly faster and faster pace, requires a mind that is much more intellectually evolved than what we have today. The only way to be able to grasp the entirety of it without going insane would be to find a way to "pause" all of that thinking. Be it with meditation or "intellectual vacation" (like shutting everything like social interactions, work, and information technology off for a while).

There are scientific results that shows very clearly the importance of "shutting off" our minds at a regular basis.

On a side note, this is why I think Nietsche became clinically insane in the end, apart from just the cancer doing it. He was clearly a man who couldn't pause thinking, it occupied his mind all the time and the incident with the horse was probably the incident that led them to discover the tumor, misdiagnosed as syphilis. So more or less, his breakdown was probably a result of a realization that the world didn't listen to what he had to say, that the world around him ignored his attempts to humanize a godless world and it shook him into a severe depression that was increasingly deepened by the realization of dying.

If anything would put someone in an insane state, it would be the realization of the futility of their thinking and the realization they would die before that thinking led to anything good in the world. The irony then, that his sister helped produce the nazi regime by corrupting all those thoughts he wished would help the world. As a fan of rational reasoning and intellectuals, she's in my opinion even worse than Hitler since Hitler just became a pawn of a self-indulgent ideology based on her corruption of an intellectual who wanted nothing but to bring sense to a senseless world. — Christoffer

In a manner of speaking nature just forgot to add the mechanism to dumb it down again once we were safe — Seeker

Nature didn't forget this because that's not how evolution works. And we're not even close to an evolutionary transition into a "dumber" human because we are now "safe". People have, for only around 30 years, been somewhat safe in the manner of speaking you position it. Before this, the threat of nuclear war, the threat and reality of the second world war, and then just go back in history for more and more threat level ups and downs, means people have never been "safe" and intellectually we have never been it either.

As humanity has grown into a much more complex state, where we incorporate the entire world and universe into our assessments of possible problems, we've never been in a more complex state of thinking. At this time in history, only the ignorant would position themselves as "safe", even if it's true for their own personal lives.

But what this topic is actually focusing on is more of the necessity to "breathe" and not be overwhelmed by all that thinking. The world changes faster and faster and demands a much faster pace of intellectual and rational thinking about it, so the pressure on the individual to understand and think about world complexity is increasing as the timeframe to formulate a thought around topics decreases.

So we're left with being pressured to think faster and more complex in order to be able to grasp the complexity of modern times.

Within this concept, we can definitely see a need to pause, otherwise, we become consumed with a complexity that risk breaking down our overall ability to organize internal thoughts. This is why I think we actually have positive scientific results from meditation. It is, in its essence, a way to "pause" our minds and let our critical thinking "defragment".

The complexity of today, especially the interconnected domino effect of increasing complexity as a result of clashes between cultures, classes, technology, ideology etc. that happens at an increasingly faster and faster pace, requires a mind that is much more intellectually evolved than what we have today. The only way to be able to grasp the entirety of it without going insane would be to find a way to "pause" all of that thinking. Be it with meditation or "intellectual vacation" (like shutting everything like social interactions, work, and information technology off for a while).

There are scientific results that shows very clearly the importance of "shutting off" our minds at a regular basis.

On a side note, this is why I think Nietsche became clinically insane in the end, apart from just the cancer doing it. He was clearly a man who couldn't pause thinking, it occupied his mind all the time and the incident with the horse was probably the incident that led them to discover the tumor, misdiagnosed as syphilis. So more or less, his breakdown was probably a result of a realization that the world didn't listen to what he had to say, that the world around him ignored his attempts to humanize a godless world and it shook him into a severe depression that was increasingly deepened by the realization of dying.

If anything would put someone in an insane state, it would be the realization of the futility of their thinking and the realization they would die before that thinking led to anything good in the world. The irony then, that his sister helped produce the nazi regime by corrupting all those thoughts he wished would help the world. As a fan of rational reasoning and intellectuals, she's in my opinion even worse than Hitler since Hitler just became a pawn of a self-indulgent ideology based on her corruption of an intellectual who wanted nothing but to bring sense to a senseless world.

That all would make sense... if it weren't for the fact that people within Russia risk prison for speaking out about how Russia is losing and the fact that they leave precious hardware behind when they retreat in a situation where they have to grab chips from home appliances in order to keep up with the hardware advantage of Ukraine.

While the offensive seems to take more casualties than Ukraine is being official about, this is more in line with traditional warfare. Keep the war propaganda up to keep the morale up. It's part of how war is conducted and it would be foolish to do anything else.

The problem I see is that the tribalistic nature of the discussion around all of this makes people either deem the offensive a pure failure or pure success. But it just is what it is, Russia is being forced back, faster than they expected and it is a noticable defeat on Russias part, otherwise there wouldn't be that much hardware left behind and negative words in Russian state media. But it's also not a complete success for Ukraine as they've suffered a lot of losses.

In the end, the balance hangs on if the losses were enough to make a huge difference. If Russia has problems pushing back the line and win back territory, then there's a new line bunkered down over the winter, or Ukraine chooses to use the winter as a way to push Russia before they have time bunkering down. Taking advantage of the chaos this has caused.

"solutions" would be too unrealistic at this stage it seems — Janus

Agreed, we will still get a world drastically changed then how it was. For example, we will have annual heat waves of upwards of 45 degrees celsius in Europe based on the current progression, but if we fail to mitigate further it could end up being 50-55 degrees as peaks. Such high temperatures will be like someone putting a magnifying glass over the lands and burning a scar through Europe. Not to mention how it will be in places like Iraq, where heat waves already peaks at 50 degrees celsius.

Universal cooperation is a pipe dream. — Janus

Not if there's a collective threat happening. We will not see collaboration until we seriously get to experience the first consequences. We've already seen how a large portion of politicians and the general public have shifted into grasping the magnitude of the dangers of global warming through this summer's heat wave. And with worse and worse heat waves, more drought, more fires, and unstable weather and storms as a follow-up, I think we will see better universal cooperation when climate refugees, food supply energy problems, heat wave deaths, houses destroyed in storms, and so on gets worse. Humanity won't do anything until they have a gun to their head.

The "political" part of the problem is the promulgation of impossible targets, but also, the unwillingness (due to the perceived unpopularity) to promote the idea that we (in the "developed" nations) should all use much less energy — Janus

This is the problem with representative democracy in a time when we have more demagogues than actual politicians. They do anything to keep their power and the public is too stupid, too uneducated or easily fooled by people with power over them to be able to vote for something of actual value and win that over. This is why the general public needs to experience a catastrophe before they would vote for politicians that focus on actual solutions.

Let the people burn and then they might want to fix the problem. :shade:

This explains very clearly the problems involved with trying to de-carbonize rapidly. — Janus

The problem is that innovation doesn't get enough funding. There are teenagers inventing water cheap water filtration systems that were earlier not invented because there wasn't much economic incentive to do so. There is a lot of innovation going on in the energy sector that gets so little funding that they cannot come into volume production or into collaboration with other technologies. All while strategies are formed based on previous volume-produced solutions.

It's not irrational to question the prevailing view. It's how we grow out body of knowledge. — Tate

There's a difference between questioning a prevailing view and irrational questioning out of group think and biases, especially if the bias is highly politically driven or based on emotional instability.

The problem in the world today is that too many think their opinion or knowledge matters regardless of how informed that opinion or knowledge is. The narcissism of today has cluttered discussions on any topic, introducing noise of irrelevant bullshit because people think just expressing an opinion is just as valid as expressing an informed opinion. It's the jealousy by common folks towards informed people that have created a world where informed people are regarded as some low-class annoyance and the ignorance rising due to this as people shut their ears off and instead start to believe that their own opinion has the same value as informed people's opinions is seriously damaging to the planet and the quality of life in general.

Since politics always focus on the lowest common denominator we now have a world where expert opinions get ignored and uninformed bullshit gets promoted.

We don't grow a body of knowledge in this environment before we return to a better established hierarchy of knowledge. Where informed people, education, experts, and actual facts are handled with care and dignity. When actual rationality and wisdom are regarded as virtue again.

It's the path of taking adequate epistemic responsibility. Knowing when to shut up and not express an opinion is just as rational and morally responsible as making informed questioning of a broadly accepted idea.

and that's an extremely threatening proposition to those who have been attempting to claim the moral high ground for years. — Tzeentch

Or a failure to function as a rational person. A rational person does not stick to their guns when the opposite has been proven, because they see through the normal bias others are slaves to.

Being in the middle of crushing heat waves, draughts, and floods all at the same time here in 2021 — Xtrix

Welcome to 2022.

Is it already too late? — Xtrix

No, if everyone acts right now.

If so, will we reach tipping points no matter what policies we enact? — Xtrix

No one is acting right now and just now reports are made that the arctic is warming four times faster than predicted.

Will we actually turn ourselves into Venus? — Xtrix

That would require a lot of neoliberals having absolute power to push industries not complying with climate goals.

If it's not too late, what exactly can we do to contribute to mitigating it? — Xtrix

- Global ban on the production of fossil fuel transportation vehicles from 2030 at the latest.
- Global financial support to people buying electric cars. The more effective the car and sustainable production of those cars, the more financial support.
- Global ban on coal, gas, and other fossil fuel power plants.
- Global government investment into battery research and tech to create power storage solutions
- Global government support for homeowners to install battery technology for automatic power storage management.
- Global government investment in the installation of city-wide solar panels on the majority of roofs.
- Global global initiative for Thorium power plants before fusion is solved or solar panels efficiency reaches viable levels.
- Carbon neutral industry changes (like carbon neutral steel production in Sweden)
- Global government limitations on food production and fishing to sustain the ecological balance, mainly coral reef and algae (since they soak up as much CO2 as the Amazons)
- Global limitation on air travel, maybe even customer limitations to restrict km/year traveled by air.
- Global ban on the oil and coal industry lobbying-money getting into governments, i.e fossil fuel industries cannot "bribe" themselves into being safe from restrictions.
- Global government investment in companies who work on sustainable solutions, for example, Tesla.
- Global "green city" architectural requirements in order to plant more trees and plants integrated with city infrastructure and environments.
- Local food production initiatives, including insect farms as a protein source.
- Meat tax that goes straight back to meat production to push sustainable levels of production and lower numbers of animals in the chain. Part of it also goes to lab-grown meat research and development.
- Increased penalty for people starting wildfires, i.e maximum sentence, life in prison. The consequences of such crimes are too severe for the entire world and in areas with drought. It will become an annual problem that will escalate. Governments also need to demand land owners have counter-measures in place, if not, penalties or risk of losing their land.
- Penalize anti-climate-research speech (climate deniers), and classify it the same as hate speech in order to block the spread of misinformation and disinformation (yes, this thing is too serious to warrant any free speech bullshit arguments to protect some uneducated morons who won't even survive to see the consequences of their actions).

To name a few

Is there ANYONE out there who still doesn't consider this the issue of our time? — Xtrix

Republicans and similar people in other nations. General conspiracy nutcases. Boomers who are stuck in conservative bullshit and are too fragile to accept change. Millennials who are too occupied with their own narcissism and ego to let anything distract them from upholding a perfect image of a successful life. Gen Z's too hypnotized by TikTok during their development to be able to have a normal working brain that isn't too distracted by dopamine deficiency and the inability to stay on topic for more than 2 seconds.

I would say that the problem isn't people who actively work against fixing this, but the ones who ignore even trying to. Those are the majority and those people could change the world in an instant.

No, just saying you tend to assume a bit too much about what I know, based on too little. A mere philosophical disagreement is insufficient ground to conclude that someone doesn't know the history of science. — Olivier5

It's not the disagreement, it's how you talk about science that informs me. Especially in relation to our consciousness.

That science is a human activity, and hence inherently subjective. A scientist is and can only be a subject, i.e. a spectator and actor in/at the world. — Olivier5

The scientist is a human, science is not. The whole point of science is to detach human biases and subjectivity in order to prove truths. That's the goal. Basically, every other activity we do is subjective, science's whole point is to not be that. It's what the entire history of science has been working towards, to reach better and better methods to reach truths about our reality.

And it's this that informs me that you don't seem to grasp the difference between a human being subjective and the theories presented and proved. Higgs calculated a logic that isn't something subjective, it's logic. You can twist the subjective experience however you want, but something logic will remain logic regardless. And that logic predicts behavior and the existence of objects we've never even experienced, seen or known about. But since it's based on logic in a mathematical equation, it has a merit past our experience and consciousness, it can be tested and once we did, the Higgs particle was discovered, as predicted, now verified.

Your argument is that Higgs somehow invented the Higgs particle through his physics equations and when we built the Atlas detector, it "created" that particle when it was detected. - An argument that is wildly bonkers and needs much more elaboration.

The "basic point" of relativity is that the laws of physics are the same for all observers.

Your two people will objectively agree that time is slower for one than the other. It's not an example of a subjective, phenomenological difference.

The notion that phenomenalism is central to physics is flawed. — Banno

I think you basically misunderstand everything I say. I didn't say phenomenalism is central to physics, I said it helps conceptualize the theories presented in physics. How we experience the world and universe in relation to how it actually functions. But you twist that into it being central to tha actual theories, which isn't what I'm talking about.

I also don't know what it is you are objecting against? My argument was about the notion that our consciousness is responsible for creating reality and how it is false, and that the only practical idea in phenomenology that is useful is how our experience, internal and subjective point of view, our senses, can relate to the raw reality as it is outside of our experience. I used the examples with science to point out how logic and mathematics, things that aren't "born out of our consciousness" but that work as a language to communicate about things that otherwise would have no way to be sensed by us and our consciousness alone, is a way to prove that our consciousness isn't creating anything. Using this language we can discover things that can later be tested and when verified it also verifies a reality past our subjective experience, i.e our consciousness does not create reality, we merely experience it in a limited way compared to how reality really is.

So are you objecting against that? I just think the argument has been going around irrelevant circles to the original point I made.

I still don't see how. We "grasp" periods of billions of years and billionths of seconds, and calculate accurate relativistic times. — Banno

We conceptualize through proving behaviors of such things through physics equations and verified tests. If our tests can predict behaviors of matter and time that we can't really sense, we can conceptualize by knowing facts about the universe. A case point is how we didn't know how a black hole would look, but that our physics equations pointed towards a visualization that we could simulate and therefore, in the movie Interstellar, Kip Thorne collaborated with the visualization in order to create a physics accurate representation of how a black hole would look like. Later, when we generated the first ever image of a black hole (my profile picture here), it showed the accretion disk and formation basically exactly like how we predicted, except for the redshift difference.

Not if I use a clock. In any case, there is more to a conception of time than mere perception. A child knows that an hour can go in a flash or take an age. — Banno

No, it is still very subjective. Not only in the way you describe it, which would be the phenomenological way of describing it but also in how general relativity means that if you are closer or further from a gravitational hot spot it would mean that our actual temporal relation is off. If I'm closer to a massive object I will grow older slower than you, even if on earth we can only calculate it by maybe a few seconds over the course of a lifetime.

This is the reason why I bring up GPS, because the clocks need to be synced with the devices on earth in order to track correctly, and because of relativity, the clocks have been adapted to tick differently to compensate for each other's temporal difference due to gravitational differences.

You seemed to indicate a relation between phenomenology and physics, but what that might be remains obscure. — Banno

There's no material relation, that's exactly what I object against. I'm saying that phenomenology is a great tool for us to use in order to include human perception as part of how to explain our existence and the universe. For example, the basic point in relativity; that two people going at different speeds will in relation to each other experience a temporal shift; the larger the difference, the larger the shift; but the subjective experience of the two persons will not change, they will experience their own time as if nothing has changed. So including phenomenology into how we conduct physics makes it easier to conceptualize concepts that are very alien to us. We need to relate an experience to the raw data of the universe in order to understand what that data means.

As a matter of fact, I have a much better understanding of science, its methods, history and current status than you seem to believe, on the rather flimsy basis of a mere epistemological disagreement between us. — Olivier5

That is kind of the equivalent of saying you know better because you say you know better. But your argument doesn't show that understanding. Come to think of it, I'm not really grasping what it is you really argue for, you just make comments on what I write rather than present a case. So far it seems you argue for reality deriving from our consciousness? That's how I interpret the way you comment on what I write, objecting to the conclusions I made. What's the point you're arguing for?