As for people on the left supporting Hamas … there are people on the right who support Nazism.

Small minorities are small minorities. I think they should be shunned and more focus paid to those peacefully demonstrating.

There will always be elements wanting to cause unrest.

Either way, the ‘left’ vs ‘right’ thing is silly. I hold some views that more liberal and others that are more conservative. I think it makes more sense to say Conservative and Liberal that some distanced term like ‘left’.

I have no real idea how to define western civilisation either. I know most people everywhere are pretty much the same. The differences accumulate with education. Education is key.

Israel is the one that respects the basic human rights and civil liberties of its citizens — Merkwurdichliebe

People in Gaza and West Bank and citizens of what nation? How are they treated by this so-called ‘Western Civilisation’?

I think western ideals reach beyond religious dogma most of the time. Needless to say this is a complex issue.

I can say one thing for certain though. I do not think of Israel when I am talking about Western Civilisation. What I do think about though is how Europe (mostly UK) made a horrible mistake in backing Zionist zealots out of some kind of collective European guilt due to the horrors committed on Jews throughout the centuries.

I think people are just bothered by indiscriminate attacks by both sides. End of story.

Hamas for the best of two bad choices given to the people well over a decade ago. Things have changed. Israelis have an obstinate leader and many Israelis want him gone.

Western? Not much to speak of here of Western civilisation as far as I can tell. Just another hate vs hate scheme orbiting religious dogmas and bigotry.

Stupidity is our main redeeming quality. Only someone utterly stupid would continually try and fix the unfixable … and by pure chance sometimes the stupid succeed ;)

Looks like this discussion has shifted focus somewhat? There is a thread dedicated to whole debacle.

It is only as good as the questions asked. Plus, I believe it has no real filter to determine what is or is not factually backed up only that which is reported by humans and posted online.

People are lazy and stupid. Once systems exist to eliminate what creates such laziness and stupidity (pedagogical reforms) we will all remain witnesses to the status quo fooling ourselves into believing things are changing when they are just stuck in the same old cycle.

A non-existent one. We are perhaps closer to this now than ever before. The signs have been present over the past few millennia. Maybe some of us will live long enough to see this come into fruitition.

In term of religion as most people use the term 100%.

Religious institutions generally struggle to reconcile facts with beliefs unless it suits their worldview. This is clearly dangerous and regressive.

Note: I would say pretty much the same thing in terms of Patriotism.

Nothing has changed in the middle east. It is in a state and will remain so.

The effect social media has is something we should all be concerned about. Propaganda has reached a new height.

“What have the Romans ever done for us?”

If all scientific facts were absolute, then there would be no possibility for scientific progress, because that requires rewriting the relationships, definitions and specifics of what came before. An update. Updating the facts. — Benj96

This is either purposeful obfuscation or ignorance.

There is a considerable difference between someone stating that they believe 1+2 = 4 against someone who knows they are wrong. Science is the art of applying abstract facts to reality to increase our precision and understanding of the world.

You can believe the Earth is made of cheese at its core if you wish but not many people will take that seriously. Dogma is more about scholarly laziness than stubbornness or misinterpretation.

Seems a bit silly to equate beliefs with facts in the public sphere.

From a semantic standpoint there is something to be said, but it makes more sense to distinguish the difference rather than gloss over any clear distinction.

How about this:

- beliefs are determined by facts.
- facts are determined by our reality.

Just because one can be mistaken by certain experiences (or misinterpret them) it does not mean that facts and beliefs are hard to distinguish between.

A pure fact is always a fact. Meaning an abstract fact is always known to be true as long as the rules put in place are followed correctly. Mistakes happening do not undermine the meaning of the term ‘fact’.

I imagine it can be argued that one can oppose a state government but not its inhabitants. Surely that is easy enough to understand?

The blur between the two is initiated both internally and externally for various silly reasons.

I am sure many citizens of many countries have been wholly opposed to the actions of the state government that is meant to represent them. There is nothing wrong with criticising a state government. Leaders of states should always be questioned and held up to scrutiny.

Is the pilot and the group of armed men morally equivalent? — BitconnectCarlos

Anything is equivalent if you have reason enough to legitimise it in your own head. Hence, the futility of adding weight to judgement from afar.

More often than not if we were in their shoes we would almost certainly behave in a similar manner. This is regardless of the comforting lie we tell ourselves about our moral superiority.

Except you a monster then you have an iota of a chance you can placate yourself to act in a less monstrous fashion when life comes to taunt, poke, prod and provoke you (which it will!).

After several decades without major wars, two have begun in the last 2 years. — Tim3003

Untrue.

Conflict in Ukraine has been going on for a long time. Same for the Israel and Palestine conflict. There has also been conflicts in Africa several times. Then there is the break up of Yugoslavia.

Any more positive views of the world's future? — Tim3003

Plenty.

It is just that positive news does not sell anywhere as well as negative news. This has been further exaggerated by AI and people living in little ‘safe’ bubbles.

You can read quotes from people like Orwell and Russel from last century that ring just as true today as then. The difference now is more people are aware than in the past. We are currently adjusting to universal media exposure so things may seem more off than they actually are.

Mind altering experiences happen without introducing foreign substances into your body. Maybe it could be argued that doing so is good preparation for the inevitable traumas life will throw at us?

There are several schools of thought in this area. I think you are confusing Hard Determinism for Determinism. Those who tend to argue against free-will are Hard Determinists or Fatalists.

Determinists can easily believe we have free-will for the very same reasons you have stated. There are a plethora of different flavours of ‘Determinism’ though.

All in all it makes sense to live as if free-will is a thing rather than not.

As a rule of thumb I am generally against any kind of institutional organisation.

Authorship seems pretty important for a sense of self.

Google Kantian intuitions. That might help you explore a little.

Define ‘sure’. There is no absolute certainty anymore than there is ‘absolute’ other than in the same sense that noumenon is ‘negatively’ ‘known’.

Words are words. The issue is deciding when we are just using words or the words are using us.

Pretty sure we all have moments like this :D Such is life. Some days rainbows and unicorns, others gloom and doom or emptiness.

The meaning of meaning is what I mean it to be once I decide what meaning means in any given moment. Most if the time now I do not bother with such temporally inconsistent rhythms and just laugh, smile or mock reality and its absurdism.

We all die and that is strangely satisfying for me :)

The terms ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’ are relative. Some could argue that they do not exist so your question is irrelevant.

In a broader sense of the terms used it is clear to me that we are all capable of ‘good and evil’. Some are inevitably more likely to fall into one more than the other because life is like that - due luck/circumstance/experience/opportunity or whatever you wish to frame it as.

Nature vs Nurture is a simplistic means of categorising two different perspectives of human life. They really just the same thing but useful as abstractions to investigate our existence further and open new avenues of investigation. Much like someone claiming to be conservative or liberal, no one is truly a pure form of one or the other because they are organs within the same body of thought.

Good and evil are landmarks on a vast landscape that allows us to navigate better. That is all.

Decades ahead of his time. Still the best imo

Scrivener is a useful tool for writing.

Question is: If these experiences are representations of things in the outside world, why would I expect such a representation to be reducible to the brain activity that supports it? The information in a photograph doesn't contain any direct information about the physical medium it is being represented on, and neither should it if it is caused by information from the outside world. — Apustimelogist

This is precisely the point of phenomenal consciousness not necessarily telling us anything about a physical world but rather representing it.

The argument does not refute physicalism outright it just presents a problem of irreducibility within materialist views. Phenomenology makes no assumptions about some proposed ‘existing world’ and works purely with experience as the core of our worldly knowledge. It is hard to refute that we all act as if the world is a physical certainty though.

The way I see it is that we necessarily operate ‘as if’ things exist and said things exist due to our ability to question them NOT because we have apodictic/irrefutable knowledge of them.

Has the economic anarchy of capitalism produced the current status quo of 2/3rds of the world living below the poverty line? — an-salad

Is this true?

Answer: No.

Yes, you can. Thinking need not be worded thought.

Well, I have issue with saying that laws can be only based on consequences because no one knows the full consequences of their actions.

So it seems like I have to assume there is some hypothetical law that can be seen as unquestionably ‘the best’ law. If so then why would anyone question it. Point being rules are questioned and the kind of ‘laws’ I believe you have in mind are not ever brought into examination they are just accepted.

For comparisons sake, we do not question whether or not a ball will drop if released, we bring this inot question only when experience shows otherwise (ie. in outer space). Obviously we are talking about ethics here so there is far more to question here when it comes to human biases and subjective opinions soak with human emotions.

I have looked again and do not really understand the argument sadly.

I get the impression the premises are based on some proposed ideal of a consequentialist (whatever that may be).

Do we have to assume it holds or are we meant to pick at it?

Everyone had an agenda and perspective. This is a problem if viewed as a problem.

Generally you best of picking who you converse with carefully whilst listening to everyone you can as passively as possible, then with personal intent. By this I mean sketch out your map, find the boarders, and do not let anything outside in BUT view it passively and adjust borders as needed.

That is it really.

‘Philosophy’ is another umbrella term ;)

That could just be down to quality. Maybe popularity is a thing. People are stupid so it happens.

The younger people are the more they want to be heard and the more attention they seek.

If people are attracted to threads due to number over responses that is a sad sad sad situation. Makes no sense at all to me. I look at threads based on topic not popularity and assume literally everyone else does too … why wouldn’t they?

You need one or the other in general. A ‘focused’ dialogue can quickly become one that that misses the forest for the trees whilst one with more participants becomes little more than a free for all.

To go into a bit more depth … if someone insists that something someone is saying has nothing to do with the topic it could just be that they are missing the chance to take an alternative approach. What can seem like far off the beaten track can be key to the fundamental question at hand.

With ‘Participants’ too many lines of inquiry can cause confusion and what was once a dynamic discussion between 3-4 people turns into a muddled mess following several different themes/lines.

With 3-4 people involved less guarding of focus breathes life and exploration into the discussion. With more and more people the focus needs to be rigid to avoid confusion … but imo this will result in a severe lack of exploration.

I disagree with Focus and Participation.

I can tell by your attitude you are not at all interested in discussion so bye bye

I do question the ‘survey’ that states that over 50% are living pay check to pay check btw. Sounds a little obscure how they acquired this data.

I was suggesting that the government should award automatic investments for low income. Given the inbuilt aversion to social care in the US I imagine things won’t change anytime soon. The battle for social care in the UK is pretty scary too … but at least there is a semblance of it there still.

Yes, I am ignorant about US. If the majority of people in the US are literally living to pay check to pay check I imagine the US economy will collapse soon enough. I do know that the richest nations have the largest degree of poverty compared to its counterparts. That is the nature of economic growth.

Read exactly what I said and consider the context it was written in and how I repeated what I meant.

Do you think some kind of scheme should be put into place to help minimum wage workers in later life? I do. Maybe open up a pension/saving scheme to set up like I said? Good idea or bad idea?