Trust is earned, it cannot be enforced. When it is lost, we suffer the consequences. But trust will not be regained through enforcement. That ship has sailed. This thread is depressing. — Metaphysician Undercover

No. Trust cannot be earned. You may have turned down 40 pieces of silver to betray me, but what about 60? One has never quite earned it. But to enforce a standard is not to create trust at all, it is to declare whatought to be trustworthy. It's like having a law against shop-lifting; it doesn't make every customer trustworthy, but sets out what being a trustworthy customer consists of.

Well first you try voting for the ones that agree with you, and if that doesn't work, you start a revolution.

The question then is why can't we sue every politician who secures votes saying he will not vote for X the minute he votes for X if he is just another gizmo producer? — Hanover

Strawpolitician, you have there. Anyone is entitled nay obligated to change their plans as circumstances change. Think matters of fact. As per my previous example of a UK politician claiming that leaving the EU will save money that it cannot possibly save. Or incompetence on this sort of scale.

except to the extent the acts of politicians amount to actual violations of law. — Hanover

Well all I am suggesting is that politicians be subject to the same kind of legal restrictions as every other citizen in every other kind of job.

I don't think we can talk about the decline of trust in public without talking about the political use of fear and the political strategy of anti-politics. — fdrake

I'd like to try, anyway. I gave a link in the op to the Open Learning site. It is a source I trust, both academically and politically. I trust them, not to be perfect, but to be careful; to be concerned to be accurate and unbiased in their material. Likewise, I generally trust the ingredients list on food packaging to be accurate. And as Wallows points out, money is entirely made of trust - well trust and rather thin paper. It's not a matter of left or right particularly - social life, economic life, law and order, governance, academia, science, every good thing depends on trust.

I had thought that would be obvious enough not to need saying. So when a scientist fiddles his results, it's a big scandal, he loses his job and so on. When a policeman takes bribes, it is a scandal and he loses his job, his pension, and goes to prison. When a firm lies about the meat in its pies, it is a scandal, the product is taken off the shelves and they are prosecuted under the trade descriptions act.

So we see how it is when people do not trust the media and do not trust politicians. It's not a different kind of case; things stop working. The difference is that there is no enforcement of any standard. In the UK it used to be managed by peer pressure...

That's how a representational democracy govt. works. You choose someone to handle the budget. If you don't like how they handled the budget, vote for someone else next election. — Harry Hindu

Why does it only work that way? No one would consider that an adequate way to regulate surgeons. 'You don't like how they handled your operation, use a different one next time.' It's ridiculous, and with the government, many many more lives are at stake. To demand at least honesty does not seem too much. To expect that failed politicians resign or be sacked is no odder than to expect surgeons that fail to resign or be sacked.

Please take your fascinating discussion to the Trump thread.

Please don't talk about Trump, and please don't talk about communism and capitalism in this thread. Please talk about TRUST, and the importance of telling the truth, and how these things can be sustained in a merely human and imperfect world.

https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/summer-2019/when-schools-cause-trauma?fbclid=IwAR37PLdKqCJJhibcdln9OpSI1tGpoZ2X8OvdZGOk7Pphmnk1AdPv1woWUVE

Just wanted to re-establish my bleeding heart credentials a bit, and this was handy...

You can’t have a functioning democracy where the main role of the head of the Justice Department is covering up the President’s felonies. — Wayfarer

More broadly, a state that runs on lies and falsehood becomes unstable.

You might look at fuzzy logic.

There is a bit of a problem. If there is evidence that reality is an illusion, then the evidence is equally illusory. In which case there is no evidence. Things for which there can in principle be no evidence do not generally count as 'science', but as 'metaphysics'.

I'm still laughing. You can't expect much sympathy for having to have things your own way.

How many therapists does it take to change a lightbulb?

Dunno what you're saying, dude. I'm saying that one can change one's mind, and I'm saying that what happened at one time doesn't have to happen every time.

I mean, if a person was exposed to trauma, abuse, and neglect, and form a resulting aversion towards risk with dealing with people, then what's wrong with that? — Wallows

Indeed. That is the first principle; that response to trauma are necessary defences and aids to survival. To take an obvious example, a soldier in a theatre of combat where there is a constant risk of snipers develops a state of heightened vigilance whereby a twitch of a curtain across the street is enough to make him take cover. Unfortunately, it is not so easy to turn down the sensitivity when he is back home and there is no threat. So he has PTSD. It's not always so simple and direct, but the principle remains the same.

To put it another way, if one learns to expect abuse and neglect, then one expects it from everyone thereafter. It makes perfect sense, except that one does not continue learning - that some are abusive and some are not. And the nature of relationship is that if you treat someone as if they are abusive when they are not, they will eventually almost always become abusive because they are being abused by you, or at best they will withdraw, ie become neglectful.

I will happily defer to you on this as we are in perfect agreement.

Excessive deference to other people's preferences, — fdrake

Excessive? I suppose that means 'more than I want to defer'. And that depends, personally speaking, on how and who the other is. I call this being responsive.

The particularity of childhood trauma is that the anxiety is turned inwards to the developing self. One needs to control the (m)other because (s)he is dangerous and inescapable. And that becomes the only possible relationship; everything depends on my deference or defiance or avoidance, whatever. Until one learns different.

So in terms of theory, and possible therapy, the above discussion turns around this traumatised axis of possibility, and cannot expect to get anywhere.

handling returns of products, I soon found out that the favorite word the customer wanted to hear was "I'm sorry", followed up with a quick refund for the created dissatisfaction. — Wallows

And did you also learn when to defer and when not to?

May I enquire what's wrong with pleasing people? I think I'd like it if people spent more time pleasing each other and less time making each other miserable, by and large.

Is it not obvious to you though, that a thesis must be stated before it can be agreed to? — Metaphysician Undercover

Agreement is reached without ever being expressed.
— unenlightened

The point though is that the words must be expressed before they can be agreed on, so agreement follow language. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think the point is now pointing the opposite way to the way it was pointing before, so I'll leave it there.

I'm talking about how that agreement made by generations of yore came into existence. The spoken word must be prior to the agreement as to what the word means. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes. one can describe the process, and I have done so in this thread. A cry of alarm comes to be understood by others as indicating danger, and then the difference between the sound made when looking up and looking down due to stretching of the throat becomes indicative of the direction of the threat. so now there are 2 words that mean danger from above and danger from below respectively. BUT no one has defined them except me; no agreement has been made explicit, but by means of memory and habit, a mutuality of understanding arises. Agreement is reached without ever being expressed.

Much later, a philosopher come along and tries to make explicit all the agreements that have been reached in this way, and finds it rather difficult.

Not entirely, but for most of us, mostly. A surgeon, or a bricklayer, or a philosopher has hopefully a real skill that makes a real identity, but even here, there is an element of performance, one dons the garb, gathers the tools, and behaves in a conventional way with others. Surgeons do not wolf-whistle on the job, even their inappropriate behaviour has other conventional forms.

Things do not have names until after there is agreement that this will be the thing's name. And this agreement can only be produced by someone suggesting names for things. — Metaphysician Undercover

First sentence is fine. but how can the suggestion be made until we have agreed that 'name' and 'suggestion' mean what we agree they do? And when I say 'agree', there is of course no question of you or I having any significant impact on the naming of much other than our children, and possibly a plant variety we have developed. The distinction between a tree and a shrub, for instance, is pretty well established to the extent that you and I can argue about it with some hope of arriving at a resolution that is not based on our reaching an agreement but on our learning the agreement that has already been made by generations of yore. Heather has a branching woody stem with leaves on, and lives a long time, but there is a matter of scale... Is a sapling a small tree? (Is a foetus a small human?) We don't agree to speak English and then start speaking it; that agreement must be in place before we can speak (that, or an agreement to speak Welsh, or something).

Children have to be agreeable, and learn the language(s) they are immersed in, but that agreement cannot be expressed until they have already agree and learned.

Someone mentioned drama. — creativesoul

That will have been me at least; and Alice Miller.

Drama in the sense of the narrative of the dramatis personae; in this sense, identity is drama - the identity 'prostitute' already implies the relationship, financial and sexual and moral, and the identities 'therapist' and 'client' also imply a drama of being that is already understood and merely acted out.

So by and large, allowing for exceptional people, serenity is another drama, and the stoic, the philosopher, the reconciled, even the oracle, are all dramatis personae.

Wouldn't the thesis (which stated the obvious) have to be advanced before we could agree on it? — Metaphysician Undercover

There is tacit agreement. And there must be in relation to language, because the agreement has to be there before anything like a thesis could be stated.

That's fine for a website, — Benkei

It's also fine for academic institutions, serious newspapers, government advice panels and so on. Even public libraries need to have some quality control.

Speakers' Corner is where batshit crazy arse-wipes can have a platform of a soapbox and free speech. And sensible folks can go elsewhere while they indulge. For god's sake, even Belgium's Got Talent needs a bit of discrimination!

In other news, and note that my stunning analysis will not be appearing on mainstream news sources, Physics departments do not discuss flat Earth theories, and political analysis does not discuss David Ike's Alien Lizard theory. And it would be a pretty good idea and long overdue to start de-platforming climate change deniers.

And in other news again, speech is nowhere free and equal, or at least platforms are not, because people can and do buy time on platforms both openly and, when advertising tobacco is banned, by secretly suborning people like Scrotum to lie on their behalf, by the endowment of academies and by charitable think tanks. Money has always talked a lot louder than hard work, and scandal much louder than virtue, that is why other forms of protest and resistance are legitimate and essential. Peasants are always revolting because nobles are always monopolising the platforms; That's capitalism. And talk that it is the other way round and nobles are being unfairly treated belongs on speaker's Corner, not a sensible debating forum.

This is a deplatforming site. People get banned. Shit gets deleted.

It doesn't prevent engagement, it enables it.

Who needs philosophers when you got scientists...

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans-annotated.html?gtm=bottom&fbclid=IwAR28nXGJUSYpusnKj_yVTMqbItdeKCL7cwUeD0CaDKeY_fd_f9aI_eyvm

It is not that there is a rule against it, — Fooloso4

No, it is that there's a rule against it. Either there's a rule against it, or there's no rule against it. that's the rule.

Surprisingly little. Because the Uk government still has to make a decision, unless the EU finally runs out of patience. Somehow I don't see a few Brexit MEPs swinging the EU to a vote to expel the UK.

"What is a rule? If, e.g., I say 'Do this and don't do this', the other doesn't know what he is meant to do; that is, we don't allow a contradiction to count as a rule. — Sam26

'We don't allow it ' means there is a rule against it. The rule of rules.

I'm interested in why, were such to be produced, "it would never be possible to debate them, because everyone would agree to them.". — StreetlightX

Here we are - the rule of non-contradiction. Everyone agrees because disagreement cannot be understood. Is it not the case that a theory of language is the rules? And the rules as expressed in the language.

Context and history do matter; the phrase "all men are created equal" is too ambiguous otherwise. — SophistiCat

Let's add the context therefore - "... in dignity and rights." And immediately every objection falls away.

Dignity and rights are social constructs and thus whatever we 'hold as self-evident' is the case.

for a new religion that has to gain popularity among Romans in order to thrive the last thing would be: "Oh btw, your people killed the son of God." — ssu

I can't find the emoticon for :Jesus wept:, so you'll have to imagine it. Political expediency would suggest that camels can get through eyes of needles and the Samaritans had weapons of mass destruction - definitely.

After all these years interacting with you, and trying to find some guiding theme in your philosophy, I am coming to the conclusion that you either want us to digress into a state of an atavistic emotive reactionary motivating force that would 'direct' us or a Nietzschian derivative of logotherapy. Am I mistaken here? — Wallows

I try my best to be just what I am, but everybody wants you to be just like them,
They say 'Sing while you slave', and I just get bored.
I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more. — His Bobness

See, that's where you go wrong, looking for guidance, as if there were someplace else to be. Get back to the fields and sing! :rofl:

I'm sorry, but CBT is just more coal as far as I can see. Nothing is far more genuine than one's feelings.

Feelings are evoked by drama. One enacts the drama in order to have feelings to cover up the emptiness.

First the place of safety. Off-stage, the green room perhaps, an asylum.

And then stop acting, stop the dramatics, for which you need someone who won't feed you lines, and won't try to 'direct' you.

And then there is the possibility of insight. I will say some words about that and they will be inadequate.

It doesn't arrive through clenched teeth as the result of effort and struggle, nor is it earned by good works; it is the gift of grace. One sees what one is, what one is made of, that it is the drama, that it is the past that one replays, and that there is nothing else to one's substance than this melodrama, and one is always hiding the void from oneself and from others. And if ever you hear someone telling you how they have realised the void, you can be sure they have made a drama out of insight.
But if one hasn't done that, then one sees that the drama does nothing to fill the void, it is just a distraction and a mischief. One stops, and then life can begin.

Interesting exchange.

So maybe let the real you wreck friendships and produce frowns as long as it is the real you and not pent up frustration and unresolved dramas having to do with childhood crap. — frank

I would agree with this, except that it turns out to be the same narrative - the same play with a different ending. Rather like the great virtue of not shaming puts all the rest of us to shame.

What's discomfiting is there doesn't seem to be much left but a kind of somber blankness, which my mind tries feverishly to cover up — csalisbury

'They saw that they were naked and were ashamed.'

The original narrative; and thus universal. We cover up, we make plays, and live out dramas, and a life without these dramas looks empty, like the void from which creation sprang.

Anyway, it was the Romans. And anyway Jesus was a Jew, and he didn't kill himself.

Argument? There is no argument.

Perhaps this: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/may/10/athlete-shootings-swane-simmons-jaylon-mckenzie-kareem-abdul-jabbar?CMP=fb_gu&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR25VXxNr0HycbmI4gz99MlOugCaBDRzquwmIwL2xYoXB2pCAeqMxpDlMAg#Echobox=1557491332

In other news, broadcasters not wishing to be sacked in a shit-storm, are advised not to used pictures of chimps in their tweets about newborn babies unless they are quite sure that the child is entirely white.

And actually, it's just as bad if the child is white, and even if you have a working class accent.

"Can't take a joke?" - the endless complaint of the bully called out.

But back to taboo words. It is of course essential for taboo words to be used in order to be forbidden. And it is a matter of class distinction to know the rules and conform to the etiquette.

That reads so like every thread here; a disconnected dialogue that never finishes a thought. And the cat as stern therapist/moderator/parent, does not respond to all that extravagant God-wise moralisms, but just closes the thread at an arbitrary point.

:ok:

Compare it to Santa giving coal to naughty kids on Christmas I think. After my limited experience with dealing with some people who have gone through rather troubling experiences, they tend to (if the desire to do so at all exists) to cope with these adverse experiences by some derivative of the Stockholm syndrome. What do you make of that sort of phenomenon? — Wallows

why should you expect that the therapist really knows you or cares about you? How can you trust someone if you do not feel that they genuinely know you and care about you? — Janus

When one generalises from the patient's side on the psychology of the therapist, one's findings are bound to align with one's experiences. And indeed I am sceptical that most therapists are very effective, even though they may give good service as mental prostitutes.

Perhaps you might relate better to a machine? You know they are effective substitutes when they start having human problems...

With machine learning algorithms being more susceptible to biases in the form of racist and sexist remarks, key industry players need to ensure robustness in their AI system before bringing it out to the market.

I wonder if I can or need to convince anyone that seeing in such virtual relationships (and remember that our relationship too is virtual, though hopefully not entirely mechanical) the necessary safety that is the first requirement, is actually a symptom of the widespread trauma in relationships. My phone is my only friend.

There is absolute safety only in death. So an actual encounter with an actual other is something to which both parties must bring their fears and suspicions. And if you will allow a moment of unsolicited advice, in such an encounter, do not make your first demand that the other will always love you and never leave you. That is what a 0 year-old needs, but a 10 year-old already needs a measure of separateness.

@Wallows All you will ever get here, or from a machine is coal; if you want to meet the real Santa, you have to find that other with whom you feel so safe as to be prepared to take a risk. And this is not a once for all affair, but a relationship that builds trust where there is not much trust, little by little. There are some who can see to the heart of another immediately, but most of us take a long time.

It would be really nice to think that there is someone in charge who knows what they are doing. Alas, we sceptics suspect it is just a whole lot of fans and much shit.