Here's a clue. You're all wrong.

he wants people to follow him — Sir2u

I never looked that facility before, so I don't follow anyone, but I just looked and discovered I have 22 followers. That's almost a whole cults-worth! I must message them all and tell them where to send their money.

the separation of the state and economy? — NOS4A2

Can you explain what you mean by this, since you cannot give an example? It seems to me that if there is a state at all, it needs an income, and therefore to be part of the economy. If it does not exist,
the problem with an anarchy is that it cannot resist a mafia/government taking control.

If it does exist, it needs to either participate directly in the economy as a player, or else to raise taxes through legislation. The former is very much where the wold seems to be headed governments are losing power to international corporations. The latter is where we have come from and what I assume you object to.

What is it that you advocate?

As a visual indicator, we italicize the terms used to identify white supremacy characteristics as defined by Jones and Okun (2001). They are as follows:
• Perfectionism
• Sense of Urgency
• Defensiveness
• Quantity Over Quality
• Worship of the Written Word • Paternalism
• Either/Or Thinking
• Power Hoarding
• Fear of Open Conflict
• Individualism
• Only One Right Way
• Progress is Bigger, More
• Objectivity
• Right to Comfort

https://equitablemath.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11/1_STRIDE1.pdf

So, obviously, if one applies a minimum of charitable interpretation, it is the style and institution of education that is in question, rather than the topic itself. And it is part of a much wider analysis of the legacy culture of capitalism that grew out of slavery.

Now obviously again, if one changes the implicit values of an education system that serves a particular society that education will fail to serve that same society, by the measure of its own values. This is an excellent argument against all progress, beloved by conservatives.

The article is another right-wing hatchet job on critical race theory that refuses to even imagine that societies' values might change - The American Way is the only way and nothing better can be conceived.

Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger. — Hume

What people are calling 'subjective' is an area of lived experience that is evaluative. It encompasses desire and desirability, preference, morality, and whatever is 'what one makes' of 'what is'. So in order to evaluate life, one needs life, and as your intuition seems to be telling you, in order to evaluate non-existence, one needs to experience non-existence. The latter is not possible, and to me, this makes the former also impossible. One can not unreasonably prefer pizza to cheese on toast if one has experienced both, but to prefer non-existence to existence... ??? Ask anyone who has died which they prefer, the living cannot know. Or just wait 'til you attain this status yourself, and then decide.

You might be interested to google 'Marshall Rosenberg'. I started this thread on him a while back.

Non violent Communication

The founder of the club, Nicholas Maxwell , manages to misread much of the philosophy of the past 100 years. — Joshs

You may well be right. But he is a legitimate, well published academic, based at UCL a fairly good university. A crank, maybe, but not one to be dismissed quite that quickly.

Surely we'd still be 93 million miles from earth — frank

You are the sun god, and I claim my eternal life!

God had to make shit smell, to prevent folks disappearing up their own arses like the Ouroboros.

You are by no means alone. Here is club you can join.

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/friends-of-wisdom/what-went-wrong#blu

A paradox shows the limit of language, not the limit of being. If as a matter of fact particles turn out to be wavy and waves turn out to be particular, then so much the worse for the convenience of philosophers; there's no arguing that it is impossible because {words and arguments}. Likewise, if God is omnipotent, just put up with it and sort your logic out as best you can. Obviously he can make a rock that takes up the whole of space so that there is nowhere to move it to, and then squash it into a long stick and use it to get the fluff out of His belly button. In fact looking around, it would explain a lot if that's what He already did, because the devil was teasing Him about how He couldn't be omnipotent because {words and arguments}.

There are mixed race people and mixed culture people and life is complicated.
— unenlightened
Not really. — Harry Hindu

No, really!

Then tearing down statues of a particular culture isn't trying to erase a particular culture?
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/502492-list-statues-toppled-vandalized-removed-protests/ — Harry Hindu

No it isn't. One does not wish to erase the memory of slavers or colonial exploiters, or of Hitler or Stalin or Pol Pot or whoever. But one wishes to change a culture that lauds them as heroes and role-models. It is fairly clear that a culture that is defined by its oppression of others such as nazism or slavery, cannot coexist with one that defines itself as fair and open. so we object to graffiti swastikas and statues that celebrate slavers.

Some complained that a white, female artist has no right to depict a Black male, Emmett Till. This is not good logic. — Jackson

I agree. But that there are silly claims, does not entail that there are no sensible ones.

absolute boundary of a culture. — Jackson

Of course there are no absolutes, but on the contrary, cultures interpenetrate. There are mixed race people and mixed culture people and life is complicated. But sometimes there is justice in claims of cultural exploitation and expropriation too.

That’s the necessary result in that kind of thinking, and yours. — NOS4A2

Alas it is the result of your thinking, not mine. I do not think cultural differences should be erased - you do.

and The Chinese communist Party agrees with you. :rofl:

Well, we’re all of a certain species, is basically what I’m saying. — NOS4A2

It's your bullet dude; bite it or spit out. This is what the Chinese say, that Tibetans, Uighurs, Kazakhs, and others need re-educating. Your turn will no doubt come. We're all of a certain species, but we sure ain't all of a certain culture.

Ha ha. Yes indeed, we are all Chinese now.

The culture lines should be erased, not drawn. — NOS4A2

According to which culture?

Only self-portraits and autobiography are permissible. Don't even speak to me, never mind of or for me. :wink:

There is a kernel of justified complaint when the white industrial complex ignores black musicians but exploits black music as with Elvis for example. Or when companies try and patent traditional medicines like neem. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4333627.stm

I don't know where the cultural lines should be drawn, but somewhere around exploitation and oppression.

There are facts of humanity, such as the long state of dependence of infants and our social nature, that lead to a conflict between what is best for the individual and what is best for others. If we were a species that laid eggs by the 100,000, our moral attitude to our offspring would be very different. If we were a solitary species like pandas, our morality would be far less important or even non-existent.

Justice is a social being's concept.

So then amongst social beings there can be conflict about the society's extent and its interests.

And we know that the law seeks to remedy the unfairness and cruelty of what is - of the law of the jungle and reward virtue and punish vice, which is contrary to nature.
— unenlightened

I wonder if this all is true. I do not think it is in fact. If I am right then we do recoil from acts of unjustice naturally. — Tobias

Yes indeed, we recoil naturally from injustice, (in that useless sense of natural where everything we do is natural) because we are social beings; but not all of us, and not when we are the beneficiaries of injustice so much. This is why those afflicted with moral qualms are at a disadvantage, and why social pressure, aka the law is needed to support sociality, particularly in larger more complex societies.

Poor old Abe could not tell a lie - a severe disability for a politician. Or perhaps that story was itself a lie? But there again language is useful for a social species, but only if what is said is true, for the most part, as the boy who cried 'wolf' found out when folks started ignoring him. I think this is what a naturalistic account of morals would look like, species specific, cooperative behaviour that benefits survival of the group.

An example of moral disagreement: Extinction Rebellion is a group urging a change in society to improve the survival prospects of the group/species. But according to other members of that society they are anti-social disrupters of the proper functioning of society.

We already know that what ought to be is not, and what ought not to be is. And that is why one cannot derive the one from the other. Do we not know this from the outset?

And we know that the law seeks to remedy the unfairness and cruelty of what is - of the law of the jungle and reward virtue and punish vice, which is contrary to nature. God declares for freedom: "Do what is right and suffer for it, because it is right, or do what is wrong and be rewarded because it is expedient." But the law attempts to remedy God's error and make it expedient to be good. Do we not know this also?

There seem to be an awfully large number of self-help books on the shelves... — Isaac

Yup. All written without exception for the other chap, by people who think to have no further need to unfuck themselves.

they don't seem to be about changing other people's minds, but rather the reader changing their own. — Isaac

Books written to change the readers' minds are exactly authors' theories about how to change other people's minds. Who has a theory about how to change their own mind? It would be superfluous, would it not?

The trouble with psychological problems is that every man and his dog has a theory about how to fix them — Isaac

Every Englishman and his dog has a theory about how to solve everyone else's psychological problems, but no clue at all how to solve their own. I'm always trying to change your mind and keep mine the same. This is the problem.

Alaska and Siberia are going to become more inhabitable in principle -those parts that are above the flood line. but expect migration from the tropics.

An Englishman's home is his castle; and everyone else's home is his bailiwick. Unfortunately, this only makes sense when there is only one Englishman. These days, everyone thinks they're the Englishman. This is the problem that has to be solved before we can effectively deal with climate change. It is a psychological problem. The solution to climate change is straight forward, but we are busy keeping out the migrants and fighting wars against the baddies. until that mindset changes, we are indeed screwed so tight the thread is stripped.

Eternalism has a long history.

Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” — John8:58

The searchlight in the block universe that is everywhere at once, is consciousness, which is nothing other than God's knowledge. But it is surely hubris for ordinary mortals to pretend to this god's eye view. Therefore I am a presentist - it's all "I" can know.

I find it hard to identify what fair means in general. But assuming there was an all knowing and all powerful god that created us and wants the best for us. Are they fair? It is easy to imagine how we'd do things differently, but can we determine if such a god is fair? — TiredThinker

No. Wanting the best for us includes wanting us to be our best morally. In all fairness, the good deserve rewards and the bad deserve penalties. but if it were the case that good deeds were always rewarded and bad deeds always punished, bad people would do good deeds for the rewards and to avoid the penalties. There would be no difference between good and bad, except that to be bad would be foolish and self-defeating.

Moral freedom requires injustice. therefore God necessarily created the world such that the scum always floats to the top, and the gold sinks to the bottom.

Proper alien music; don't ask yourself whether you like it or not, but whether you can hear it or not.

Great song, great musicians, but I don't like it, they overplayed it and over-sentimentalised it, and clearly thought twice or even three times. I wish there was something they could sing or play to try and make me change my mind, but they entirely lost the vitriol and irony of the original. And you even linked it twice!

...precision guided weapons like cruise missiles are so popular. They don't disengage from the attack if there's a lot of tracers around them. A human pilot might do that. — ssu

Especially in civil wars, there has to be reasons for the fight. And that's why the bloody and long civil wars tend to divide between lines of religion and ethnicity. — ssu

Ha! Kamikaze and suicide bombers have a machine mind - the highest possible morale. No doubt no fear, no regret. "I am a Camera Mine."

it's pretty common for people to psychologize and metaphysicalize world politics. — StreetlightX

It's pretty common for military commanders to psychologise their troops both during a war and through specific training exercises. This is because most weapons do not yet fire themselves, thanks be to God.

So are we to say that some nations are 'pluckier' than others? — Isaac

Double down on your stupidity why not? "we" say nothing. I say that indeed nations have a morale in relation to other nations. It is not fixed, but variable. So Ukraine in relation to Russia clearly has changed in attitude in the last 8 years. They were a push-over, and they are not now. And of course Western weapons are a factor too. There's nothing like being well-armed for making one brave.

So to limit our analysis to 'pluck' doesn't really tell us much, does it? — Isaac

This is the heart of your insulting stupidity; to presume that if one discusses one thing, one is (a) discounting everything else, and (b) making what one mentions absolute and eternal. It's a completely ridiculous parody of an argument. Stop doing it.

You see any success you ascribe to the Ukrainian's sheer pluck, you must also then accept failures to be the result of a 'lack of pluck'. To the extent that the Ukrainian's national character is the answer to their success, the lack of such character must then explain the failure of the Chechens, or the Belorussians, or the Russians themselves to resist Putin's imperialism. — Isaac

That is a parody argument. Pluck, luck, and whatever the fuck can all be factors of success and failure. Morale is certainly important, and weapon supplies are also important. So are leadership, geography, infrastructure, wealth, age distribution and size of the population, culture, and bunch of other shit. And the quality of the enemy is also relevant in all these ways too.

And when the big bombs are falling, sheer pluck is totally irrelevant; everybody dies, cowards and heroes alike.

Thanks for that video, Great speech, short and clear. It didn't have to be like this... I haven't heard much from 'our' leaders of this wisdom. I speak, incidentally, from Wales, a vassal state of England; the self-styled "first colony" thereof.

Logic is timeless - present tense eternal. Socrates is mortal, always has been and always will be for ever and ever. Whereas in time and cause, Socrates was alive and became dead and being dead and alive contradicts logic. No one has a problem with this though, because we have tenses to keep them separate. Cause keeps them separate Socrates was alive and is now dead, because he drank hemlock. In this way cause saves logic from time.

These devices are built around microelectronics, devices comprising millions (even billions) of minute components, unfathomably complex to the untrained (including myself). These generally operate with quite astonishing degrees of precision and predictability through the mediation of sequences of billions of separate logical steps carried out at lightning speed and providing instantaneous results — Wayfarer

The point is just to dump the hardest bit of the metaphysical puzzle in some dark corner that no one any longer wants to talk about. — apokrisis

In the dark corners of computers are hidden the variable, unpredictable analog signals that are 'treated as' 0s and 1s.

I think the Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics is the same problem restated more clearly. And I don't think it is all that intractable. Mathematics is the study of abstract structure of every kind : symmetry and asymmetry, order and chaos, temporal and timeless, etc. So it doesn't actually seem surprising that mathematics can be applied effectively to both electronics and pebbles on a beach There is a pattern in the pebbles but it is statistical; there is randomness as well. Logic had better just shut up here about the law of non-contradiction for a moment. We come to understand the cause of the pattern in terms of prevailing wind and wave angle moving pebbles of different sizes at different speeds along the beach - "on average" over centuries. A simple explanation using 'cause' with a very broad brush indeed and a deal of handwaving at the forces of chaotic waves that no one is going to calculate individually.

Edit: Note that mathematics aways begins with a biblical style commandment of creation: Let there be light. Let x be a number.

I propose to defend God’s proportional justice by claiming there are degrees to heaven and hell. — lish

I propose that nobody knows jack shit about the afterlife 'til they get there and then they do not share their knowledge with us.

Or, I propose that justice is heavenly, and injustice is hellish. Or that the afterlife is not reward and punishment, but this life is the reward or punishment for the after prior-life. Or I propose that to get to heaven you have only to perform one unselfish act in a lifetime; unfortunately if you perform kind act to get to heaven, it is selfish. Thus the bar to heaven is set very low, and only a total shit goes to hell, but unfortunately nearly everyone is a total shit. Or...

They discuss the rise in social media and the effects it has had on all of us. — universeness

If I was discussing social media on social media, (which I am), I would not care to divide the world into stupid and smart, remaining of course on the smart side. Rather, I would want to look at what the huge increase in communication does in general. One might think that it is divisive, but I think rather that it exposes division. It is a medium and therefore one needs to look carefully at what features of the human world are exposed. And that is, I would say, the lack of superior wisdom or morality of the ruling elite, the corruption, violence, and self-centredness of mankind, along with our gullibility, irrationality, greed and short-sightedness. But to call all this 'stupid', and assign it to others is, ahem, stupid. We don't listen to serous debates by people with good insight, but to youtube debates between self-appointed pundits, more concerned with their own media image than anything else - just like the rest of us.

I find sports people have an unfair advantage over me because they take exercise and practice. Until such artificial stimulants are banned, I have no hope, no matter how many drugs and hormones I take.

Farmers, of course, don't always go broke. Farms have been the basic of a lot of capital accumulation by small entrepreneurs--at least in the past. — Bitter Crank

There's an old saying; If you want to make a small fortune in farming, you need to start with a large one.

In the good ol' days, one made money, not directly from farming but from owning property. On the small scale it is called renting and leasing, and on the large scale it is called taxation. Either way, one charges the peasants for merely being alive on one's property. This is the crop that never fails. The more people are starving because their crops fail, the more desperate the next tenants become and the more valuable the tenancy.

Where have I heard that before? Oh yes:-

Maybe it's China, — god must be atheist

That would be my guess; they've been supplying the world with lovely cheap stuff for a generation, and I suspect as a country goes bankrupt, they will be bidding in the sell off.

We really shouldn't be surprised that the people who run money run it on behalf of people who have money, not on behalf of those who do not.

One might be forgiven for thinking the IMF was an organisation of profiteering capitalists.

They seem to behave like payday loan companies, preying on the desperate poor like financial leeches.
Hear them crowing about the creation of the Russian oligarchs: - https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2015/09/28/04/53/sp040198
That worked!