The word "universe" is indeed problematic. What it usually means in a scientific context is "everything in this timeline". So if you don't ascribe to some sort of multiverse, it's literally everything there is. If you do, there is more out there, which would require a different term.

Making no positive claim is a valid epistemological position. Saying "we don't know yet" isn't the same as saying "and therefore, God".

I don't forecast the elections to be ugly. I think they will be hideously ugly, even if Biden isn't as inflammatory to the Republicans as Hillary was. — ssu

Perhaps the most interesting factoid to come out of the Bolton book is that Trump actually wants to be re-elected. I had always assumed that Trump would be fine with loosing the re-election and leveraging his status as ex-president to stroke his ego. But, if the Bolton book is accurate in that regard, he has actually invested his ego into being re-elected. That will guarantee it gets very ugly.

The Cause of space-time is "first" in the sense of "ultimate", not merely the first of a series. Logically, the Creator of our evolving universe must be prior-to the big-bang emergence of space-time, hence Eternal, and external to the Physical universe, hence Metaphysical. Prior, not in time, but in logical order.

Ultimate : a final or fundamental fact or principle
Prior : existing or coming before in time, order, or importance — Gnomon

This nevertheless means that cause and effect isn't universal. I was really just pointing out that logical contradiction.

It - the first cause - has to be something real (physical) and permanent: — Devans99

If it's outside of spacetime it's not physical. If it's outside of cause and effect it's not physical. If it's outside of time it's not "permanent" in any traditional sense of the word.

But if it's outside the universe, then it could be anything - or nothing. If causality is not universal, it might be circular, or work in some other bizarre fashion. We just end up with a big unknown.

So if the assumption that cause and effect holds universally is correct, we have the result that there must be a first cause and that the first cause itself must be uncaused. Causality appears to be a feature of time - everything in time appears to have a cause - so for something to be uncaused, it seems it would have to be external to time. — Devans99

But if cause and effect hold universally there cannot be a first cause, because that first cause would, by definition, be outside of cause an effect, and so it's no longer universal.

You can define terms whatever way you like, and that definition will in a fashion be "universally true".

But I don't think very many people will agree that "good" simply means "cooperating with majority opinion".

However, I think that the requirement of education can A) make people who have that ambition only to reach power either give up their attempts and quit — Christoffer

Requiring several years of study might dissuade some people. But then the higher positions in politics tend to be taken up by older people anyways. Most people need to travel up through various local and minor posts before they reach the spotlight, and there is frequently a lot of not at all glamorous work involved. So I am not sure whether people who want power but are unwilling to put in the effort are actually all that common in politics. Sure you have populists which get catapulted up out of nowhere, but it's not clear yet whether that will be a major feature of democracies going forward.

B) reprogram them into proper praxis and reduce such primary goals. — Christoffer

I am very sceptical of that line of thinking. It feel like it could easily go the other way, too. A form of modern aristocracy forming around these courses where people are socialised as part of an elite. There is already arguably a problem with certain prestigious universities forming networks of contacts that lift people into high places regardless of their skills.

I also think that because it's not only about education but how debates in parliament are handled, they wouldn't be able to survive such fact-based scrutiny. How can someone who doesn't apply their education survive debates with the fact-checker? They would be humiliated in parliament if they have attempted to bypass the praxis of parliament. — Christoffer

I think that changes to the way that debates and policy decisions work is, in general, the right approach to the problem. The problem with any neutral element of a parliament is, of course, how it is controlled. It's easy to imagine a "fact checker" neutered by onerous requirements to establish a "fact", or debate simply avoiding concrete proposals that are subject to checking.

I think that, as a starting point, it would be helpful to look more closely at the actual structure of incentives that surrounds politicians. For example, maybe it's too easy to convince a politician to vote for some lobbyists proposal because, in the grand scheme of things, their vote won't be noticed anyways and they figure they can't really spend the time to figure out the consequences either. Having parts of parliament with more clearly defined roles and responsibilities might help with that.

I feel there is a curious disconnect between your analysis and your suggestion. You wrote the following about the current problems:

We live in a time when demagogues rule far more than actual leaders. And they have been placed there because of a representative democracy using psychological warfare, propaganda and advertising. In some cases even manipulating people through targeted advertising. The corruption of democracy we've seen in the last couple of decades has become a big problem for the type of system it's supposed to be. With enough resources, you could actually rule a nation as a dictator by manipulating the democratic system behind the curtain, like a wizard of Oz.

Most of this has to do with the politicians being interested in power, rather than knowledge and leadership. The motivations for becoming a politician often starts out with a will to change something and quickly descends into becoming a struggle for power instead. Like a video game where the goal of the game is drowned in meaningless tasks to the point where the game's initial goal becomes meaningless. — Christoffer

None of this seems directly related to education. Rather, the problem seems to be one of virtue. The people that are successful in politics aren't the people we might want as leaders. That suggests to me that we need to change the mechanism behind success in politics to be more in line with our goals.

Any such choosing is no more than an illusion.

But what is the mechanism that causes the illusion?

Why does there "have to be"? — Lida Rose

As I said, otherwise you run into a problem of infinite recursion. Any machinery you discover will have moving parts, which will require more machinery to explain, which will have more moving parts, requiring yet more machinery, and so on ad infinitum.

I've already conceded that QM events may be random, and I'm not about to qualify determinism every time I mention its ubiquity. — Lida Rose

Fair enough. We're on the same page there then.

See here

And

See here — Lida Rose

The first link is a very basic overview of space-time. I didn't see anything about the mechanics behind space-time. No foundational explanation for why things are the way the theory describes them.

The second is a list of very technical descriptions of papers. Most of these seem to be related to statistics and algorithms. Not sure how that relates to the question.

Naming a process and presuming to "know" it doesn't explain it. — Lida Rose

I didn't just name it, I described what happens. What else do you want, exactly? Can you give me a detailed explanation of explanation?

Okay,
An illusion in this context is: the impression that when you do (did) something, you could
just as well choose to do (have chosen to do) something else. — Lida Rose

That'd be an example. A definition is something like: an illusion is when something seems to have attributes that it actually doesn't have.

Because my experience isn't supported by appealing to a free will as its cause. — Lida Rose

But, conversely, your experience of choosing is supported by determinism?

No one has yet to divulge the machinery that drives a free will decision. They simply assert "It Is," and walk away. — Lida Rose

Logically, there have to be some things that don't have any further machinery behind them. Otherwise, you run into an infinite recursion of machinery behind machinery. Do you agree?

Meanwhile, it's well agreed upon that everything else in the universes is deterministic. Every outcome is preceded by cause/effect events that inexorably led up to that very outcome and no other. — Lida Rose

That's not actually true. Quantum physics aren't deterministic in this sense. There are multiple outcomes from a single cause.

But apart from that, how do you know the determinism you only observe via your fallible senses isn't the "illusion"? Can you explain the machinery behind causality?

Because If there is no foundational explanation for free will then why bother to accept it as true, other than to save oneself from the onerous thought that a person has no control over their thoughts or behavior? One may as well suppose that faeries are at its helm. — Lida Rose

There is no foundational explanation of space and time, cause end effect, either. Physics describes those, but it doesn't provide a "foundational explanation".

If there's no basic process (reason) for choosing A over B then the event could just as well be one of choosing B over A, there being no reason for either. A mental world of true randomness; we do things for absolutely no reason what so ever. When it comes to human activities, mental or otherwise, we may as well take "because" out of our vocabulary. — Lida Rose

The process is known, as I have already pointed out. It's just that this process is for some reason considered "not good enough" because it doesn't look like the kind of explanation we see in physics. But physics is just another product of the mind.

The impression that when you do (did) something, you could just as well choose to do (to have done) something else instead. — Lida Rose

Ah, sorry for not being clear. I meant to ask what your definition of an illusion is in this context.

But I do want to hear about it, only something more than the name of an operation I've already dismissed as true. If you truly want to claim choosing is an explanation then tell us the process by which one arrives at choosing A rather than B. I'm all ears. — Lida Rose

So, this makes me wonder why you dismiss the thing you have first-hand experience of. You're asking for an explanation, but why do you expect there to be an explanation?

Maybe you expect choice to be the result of some other, more basic process, but I don't think there is a rational reason to expect that. Your mind is the most basic thing you have access to. Everything else depends on it. Including all your knowledge of the outside world. The choice you experience is more basic than the determinism you observe.

No, like everyone else, I only have the illusion of doing so. — Lida Rose

What is an illusion in this context?

But one doesn't, in fact can't, choose. (We're talking freely choose as with a free will) A person can only do what they're inexorably led to do, and nothing else. — Lida Rose

Well you asked for an operation. If you didn't want to hear about it, why did you ask?

I'm not saying the determining causes must come from without, but only that they rob the will of freedom . . .whatever their origin. A person must do whatever he has been directed to do by all the relevant cause/effect events leading up to the moment of the doing. There is no such thing as choosing. — Lida Rose

You don't have direct personal experience of yourself choosing between two options? Because I have experienced that many times. And since I experienced it, it would seem to follow that it "exists" in some way (how could I experience something that doesn't exist?).

Thing is, if there aren't any determinant causes, as some people claim, then exactly what is the Operation that induces a person to choose A over B? — Lida Rose

The operation you perform when you choose. Namely, weighing all the different reasons for choosing one or the other and deciding which side tips the scale.

But since leftist activism is acting against fascist developments, it will always be Antifa, since Antifa isn't an organization, but a movement under the idea of anti-fascism. So all activism from this political realm of thinking will be Antifa activism. It is also effective. Media and right-wing politics often label Antifa based on the ones doing violence during riots, but everyone who opposes fascism is being part of Antifa whether they like it or not. Infiltrating white supremacy movements, sabotaging alt-right propaganda channels etc. is as much part of Antifa as anything else. I think there's a big misconception about what Antifa is and the right-wing is taking advantage of that lack in knowledge people have. — Christoffer

I think you're short-changing antifa by saying any leftist activist is automatically antifa. To me it would at least take a conscious effort to be antifascist, rather than be, say, pro socialised healthcare. It has to be a major part of your motivation for the particular activism.

Agreed, but how do you define confrontation? If a society's status quo is mainly liberal right-wing, how can any voice of the left, not be confrontational? — Christoffer

Well, based on opinion polls about the current protests, we see that a majority of americans agree that there is systemic racism and that there is a problem with police brutality. That's a lot of common ground. But only a tiny fraction support anything that sounds like "defund the police". So, instead of making something that doesn't appear to resonate outside a very narrow group your rallying cry, start with something like "demilitarize the police". You can fit very similar policies under that heading.

But it's not though. By saying: "Black Lives Matter refers to how the police act as if "Black Lives don't matter", that would be enough for "all lives matter" people, but it isn't. Somehow, 30 minutes is needed to explain something that rationally should be quite logical and crystal clear. — Christoffer

Black lives matter is not one of the slogans I consider problematic. But look at how many different meanings the phrase "white supremacy" has. It's not surprising you get kneejerk reactions when you start out by calling ordinary people part of "white supremacy", not matter how justified that assertion is given your specific definition.

The problem is empathy and normalization. People today don't seem to have empathy like before. Because communication is held online and in text form more than eye to eye, people lose the empathic connection you have when you speak to someone right in front of you. https://liberalarts.oregonstate.edu/sites/liberalarts.oregonstate.edu/files/psychology/research/okdie_guadagno_bernieri_geers_mclarney-vesotski_2011.pdf
Since racism has become more normalized through people like Trump and it's less taboo to speak racist thoughts, while interactions is held mostly online and people don't have as much empathy against the opposing side of the argument, then the side that is less status quo in society will be looked upon as "unnecessarily confrontational". — Christoffer

I think what the online discourse mostly does is split people into different camps with increasingly deep ditches between them. The lack of empathy you describe leads to less desire to seek common ground, and more desire to reinforce your own values by way of negative idenitifcation. And I think this happens to everyone. The problem is that the extreme right wing already knows how to operate in such an environment. I feel that the left has a bit of catching up to do.

If you are speaking about activism specifically, then yes, antifa is a confrontational movement of activism. It reacts to fascist movements and development and act against those developments in a confrontational way. — Christoffer

I wasn't talking about Antifa specifically. Antifa activism is in some respects a special case, and I understand the arguments around why, say, pacifism is not viable when confronted with facism. I don't want to argue that certain tactics are off limits. The broader context of my position is one of effectiveness.

So, be very careful to label political movements as "confrontational" just because they oppose the status quo. Anyone in Nazi-Germany who had different political views than the Nazis were looked upon as "confrontational".

It doesn't mean anything more than questioning the status quo, but can easily be made into a fallacious argument against leftist politics. — Christoffer

Perhaps I should have chosen a different word, but I did say "unnecessarily confrontational". I don't mean to imply confrontation is never warranted. I don't even ascribe to the position that violence never is. It's more to do with messaging.

Defund in this case has to do with the balance between funds for things that help people in the community which the police are governing. If the police have more funding than all combined active organizations that try to help the poor, trying to increase the quality of life and get people out of unemployment, you know, helping people to actually end the socio-economic conditions that will eventually breed crime, then that funding is unbalanced and not based on rational reasons.

Much of the funding also has to do with how the prison system works. You should check out "The 13th Amendment" on Netflix if you want a deep dive into the problems.

Also, who are the lawless anarchists? Anarchy is a political ideology and I don't seem to recall any of that in this. — Christoffer

I know all this. I consume left-wing media. The thing is that not everyone does. I feel that left-wing politics and activism have a communication problem. The stuff we're talking about is complex. And much of the vocabulary is as well. If the slogan you chant needs a 30 minute explanation video to be properly understood, that's a problem. And "defund the police" is not the only case where that applies.

Sure, perhaps people are intentionally misunderstanding because they just don't care about or don't want change, and misunderstanding is an easy way out. But perhaps better communication might help.

I have had some heated disagreement with some posters in the sister thread to this one, even though we share (I think) a broadly similar outlook on the issue. So I am inclined to agree with you insofar as left-wing activism seems to have a problem of being unnecessarily confrontational. I characterised that as an overwhelming concern with ideological purity over "realpolitik".

There has always been a revolutionary school of thought in left-wing academia. And I am not saying they're wrong. Perhaps the only way out is an ideologically pure one. But so far I haven't been convinced.

For example, I noted earlier how "defund the police" is a really poor slogan to use for what an overhaul of policing. Very easy to use to evoke fears of the lawless anarchists.

Thats a good point, but surely we can find a more reasonable cut off than the examples NOS used but that do include the example you used. What gets compared (and shut down) to your swastika example is pretty egregious. — DingoJones

There probably is a better way. We'd have to look at the examples in detail. As I said, when a topic is a hot button issue, bad decisions are more common. I just don't think it's evidence of some sort of organised suppression of dissent. For one, if it was, the people doing the suppressing wouldn't report on it. Rather it's society grappling with changing views on this issue and settling into a new normal. That inevitably means people that used to be within the acceptable mainstream no longer are.

Lol, that's not a good example, it's an unreasonable comparison. Rejecting Nazism isn't a contentious issue, you can't compare it to the very many far-left ideas which aren't even accepted by most of society and how censorship works there and compare it to a fucking swastika. — Judaka

I wasn't intending a comparison. The post I - indirectly - quoted was framing these firings as evidence of suppression of dissent in order to protect a "weak idea" from criticism. The example was intended to point out why that doesn't follow.

The censorship isn't even democratic, social influencers on twitter threaten businesses and get people fired for exercising free speech. Left-leaning universities and education boards make rules without needing widespread support. — Judaka

I think framing this as a conflict between free speech and censorship is a bad approach to the problem. The actors you note aren't state actors and the way trends spread online isn't analogous to a central authority deciding on what acceptable speech is. There is also the complication that the people involved in "censorship" are utilizing their own right to free speech to various extents.

I think that this is therefore more of an issue with how society is becoming more partisan than an issue of free speech as a traditional freedom from state interference.

Side note, this happens every time, systemic racism isn't about identity politics and the far left but somehow this topic ends up dominating the conversation. Unnecessarily inflammatory statements on both sides that just supports my claims about how we get distracted. You can't even have a serious debate about the issues, because the inevitable inflammatory remark about race, racial histories, identity politics or what have you is made and people get angry about it.

That's the rut we're in. — Judaka

I think this lines up nicely with approaching this as a problem of social dynamics, rather than one of censorship.

Low support for defunding police: — ernestm

It's a very poorly chosen slogan, IMO.

Well said. — DingoJones

The problem, as I see it, is that the argument can be applied to any position. "I am getting fired because of my swastika tattoo? Clearly you're just afraid of an open exchange of ideas." There is always going to be a sliding scale of what views are sociall acceptable. And when it's a hot button issue, it's likely that there are going to be bad calls made. That's not some form of organised suppression of dissent though, and the conclusion that the ideas supposedly "protected" by the suppression is weak simply doesn't follow, as my initial example illustrates.

When we discuss a making a promise, we are discussing the act of giving one's word to make the world match their words. To make a promise is to voluntarily obligate oneself to do what they promise to do. — creativesoul

I don't think the first sentence is strictly true. Making a promise doesn't necessary entail a result, and even if it does, I don't think it's reasonable to automatically take it as a promise that the result will happen. Only that one will make a good effort.

I can promise to "try to persuade someone". Even if I promise to "plant a rose garden", I don't think a resonable expectation is "therefore, there'll be a rose garden". Rather, the "promisee" would expect me to make a honest effort, but I might still fail.

That's a problem for your second argument:

When one promises to plant a rose garden on Sunday, then on Monday there ought be a rose garden. The second statement is true, and it contains an ought. — creativesoul

On Monday, I ought ot have made the effort to plant a rose garden. It could still end up destroyed by meteor strike.

So Biden is against defunding the police. Great way of wasting an opportunity to consolidate a lead. Do Democrats want to lose? I mean, at least lie about it like every other politician just to get the goddamn votes. — Benkei

I am not sure supporting defunding the police is going to win relevant votes. Bidens team presumably regards PoC as a captive voting block. He doesn't think he needs to do work to get those votes, and he may very well be right about that.

"Defund the police" just isn't a good slogan to get behind if you want to get the votes of middle aged white people.

Time is a local entropic anisometry in the phase space of possible worlds. — Pfhorrest

Time is what a clock measures. — A Seagull

I love how these are both excellent but also completely different answers.

Many agree that when you are dead you do not exist or you cease to exist.
I dont get it. From my perspective nothing that exists materially can ever cease to exist it can only be redefined as something else according to the conservation laws. — Benj96

The obvious question is: are "you" something that "exists materially"?

As for consciousness, whether it is intrinsic to the matter of the brain or to genetic code or something less attached that the brain can simply tunes into or channels, in either case with finite matter and energy recycling continuously on earth, consciousness is a phenomenon that can be re-applied or bestowed onto living systems again and again. Like a flame lighting another flame. So to me there is just existence. — Benj96

But the consciousness isn't necessarily "you"

This is kinda a sidenote, but do you think it's a problem that we apply the same term, e.g. white supremacy, to a worldview, a movement and a systemic effect? I get the feeling it causes negative gut reactions in a lot of people who might otherwise be sympathetic.

This is implies that U is false and that, by immediate inference, E too is false. Immaterial (undetectable) things may exist. — TheMadFool

It all depends on how you define existence. What would it mean for immaterial things to exist? Certainly it wouldn't mean they are material, but what else is there?

With his existing known medical condition while on lethal drugs, with such a long rap sheet, the jury won't be able to find Chauvin guilty beyond doubt. — ernestm

Neither preexisting conditions nor a long rap sheet make kneeling on someone's throat for 8 Minutes any less intentional or any less deadly.

I do not acknowledge the long-lasting economic consequences in the way that people want me to because it means continuing to treat black people as having a separate history because of their skin colour. I reject it, people are people, they aren't Africans, they're Americans, who share the same history as all Americans as Americans. Slavery was people hurting people, I won't view history the same way that the slavers we call evil did. — Judaka

What do you mean you don't "acknowledge them in the same way?" It's a question of fact, not of acknowledgement. Either there are economic consequences or there are not.

I'm a fan of people such as Andrew Yang and UBI, let economic redistribution be a way of reducing divisions between Americans rather than highlighting them. — Judaka

The thing is that one of the criticisms of UBI is that it's not going to do anything to address the inequality that's already present.

You cannot "reverse" racism and sexism, you can only stop it. — Judaka

But of course both have long lasting economic consequences, and those you can reverse.

Economic redistribution based on race only reinforces the narrative of racial histories while excluding poor people from different backgrounds in the name of an irrational interpretation of fairness based on group identities. The benefits of economic redistribution cannot be used to justify doing it by race. — Judaka

Presumably we agree that if it were the case that the only poor people were of one specific race, doing it by race would be justified. Helping all poor people is of course always preferable, and there might not practically any good reason not to do that. But it's still better to do something rather than nothing, no?

What's ironic about discussions about economic redistribution based on race is that it parallels the very same racist policies that it is trying to help undo the consequences of. — Judaka

That's what "undoing the consequences" means though, right?

I'm very much for increasing economic redistribution, I think America is doing far less than it should but none of the benefits of economic redistribution should be used as an argument for doing it based on race. — Judaka

Why not? It seems very obviously false to say that no problem can possibly be solved by doing something based on race.

As for people who live today, racism and sexism are inexcusable. We must do what we can. — Judaka

Including redistribution based on race to reverse it?

No I know you didn't. You made it clear you want to guard against the innate tendency. I just suspect the tendency isn't innate at all, and that that might be relevant to the question how best to guard against it. — bongo fury

Fair enough. I shouldn't go around positing things as fact when I haven't done the legwork first.

So, do you at least see how, if I were right about the whole innateness hypothesis being (gladly or not) a racism-serving myth, that repeating these psychologisms might be counter-productive? — bongo fury

Not really, honestly. Do you mean because it might lead us to misallocte resources for fighting racism? Or could reflecting about how your mind deals with "being different" actually make you more racist?

It may be, now, but were there any pseudo-scientific theories of racial superiority disseminated widely prior to the advent of the trans-Atlantic slave trade?

If not, do you perhaps mean rather that some more general and symmetric relation of xenophobia is innate? — bongo fury

Yes, you may be right about that. I should have said "xenophobia". I don't know whether, say, ancient egyptians or the romans had any fixed ideas about race or racial inferiority based on their contacts with africans.

I doubt that anyway (here), but the kind of racism that I imagine I would find especially hard to bear politely would be the kind that dared to assert my natural inferiority. (And compounded the error to the nth degree by seeing my resultant social subjugation as evidence for the theory.)

So I am especially suspicious of the claim of innateness if it is meant to apply to that kind of racism.

Anyway, perhaps by "human condition" you don't mean innate? — bongo fury

Well, I don't know it's innate in the strict sense. I didn't want to allude some sort of is-ought-fallacy, where racism or xenophobia are (more) acceptable because they are in some way "natural". I just wanted to point out, partially from personal experience, that not being prejudiced is really hard, and that there are mental mechanisms (wherever they come from) that introduce and reinforce prejudice, of which racism is a subtype.

Just refusing to say the word "black" won't keep your brain from noticing that "these guys over there look different", and if you don't pay attention, your brain may turn "different" into "dangerous".

It's not circular, it's simply the definition of "what you do when you see a threat: you act with regard to that threat". — boethius

But sometimes people don't. It's not a law of nature. You can guess what will probably happen, but for that you need data.

If you threaten my life, I will act; if you threaten my business, I will act. My action will be based on my evaluation of the threat and what is an justifiable and effective response. — boethius

But this of course doesn't actually tell me anything about your response. It can equally explain any outcome and therefore is useless as an analysis.

What is "ethical research", or otherwise permissible research, in a given state is the state policy about what kind of research it views as non-threatening. — boethius

That's not at all a given. A state might not have enough power to fully control what is considered permissible or ethical.

Research the state subsidizes in a given state, is that state policy of what kind of research it views as useful, under one argument or another (why else would it fund it). — boethius

That's a useful heuristic (whatever the state funds it probably considers useful), but it's just a heuristic. There might be other considerations in play, since decisionmaking in a state isn't monolithic and a state might have to negotiate with other actors.

Yes, of course. The law against murder or assault governs the whole of your life, and the whole of the country. You can of course do whatever you like, if that is allowed. — unenlightened

It governs a specific action with a specific intent. Sure, you can play semantics and define terms any way you like. But if you want to analyze how law actually affects a society, simply ignoring when and how people actually incorporate their idea of the law into their decisions is probably not a good start.

Sure. It's the riot act. If I talk too loud, the police will be called to the restaurant. — unenlightened

And how is this related to what you are talking about? Are you going to argue the law governs dining etiquette because you're not allowed to stab your guests with a fork?

There are things you can do that the state allows. And the law specifies what is allowed and what is not allowed. There is nothing that is not either legal or illegal. — unenlightened

There are, however, things that the law simply does not talk about. And even among those things that the law talks about, there are provisions that are practically enforced, and those that do not. It's easy enough to set up a hypothetical law that, say, applies to every conversation ("seditious talk is illegal"). But for that law to actually govern, you'd have to enforce it rigidly enough to actually influence every conversation.

So at home, as long as I am not disturbing the neighbours and as long as my talk does not constitute coercive control, or blackmail, or sedition, or incitement to violence or terrorism, I can say whatever I like. In other words, what i can and cannot say to my wife over the dinner table is enshrined in law. Got it? — unenlightened

That only works if you think that the law implicitly governs everything it doesn't explicitly govern, but then your conclusion is also your premise.

You are quite right. there is no state control over what we write here, for example, except of course in those states that block sites like this. And other states that would block it or otherwise sanction us if they didn't like what was being said. But I seem to recall not very long ago the state, or a state, that some of us might want to call legitimate, putting pressure on Facebook, to regulate content. Patently absurd. — unenlightened

You said every aspect of social life. You didn't say "some aspects" because that'd be a trivial claim not worth writing about. Please tell me about the law that regulates what you talk about with your significant other at the dinner table.

If we all stop using words like "black" "white" etc and teach our children that those are bad words then racism will end in a few generations. — dazed

I don't think racism is sustained purely by language. If that were the case, where would racism have come from in the first place? Did someone accidentially invent racist language?

I think the real problem is a lot harder. Racism is part of the human condition. And everyone has to actively work to not be racist.

Yes, more or less. The state guarantees the law, and the law governs every aspect of social life from the voltage of electricity supplies to the allowable chastisement of your children. — unenlightened

It's patently absurd to claim that the law governs every aspect of social life. That isn't even the case in extreme cases like North Korea, and it certainly isn't the case in the vast majority of states. The law cannot possibly hope to adress, much less effectively govern, the multitude of social interactions we engage in.

However, the legitimate state will still stop you from conducting research it views as threatening. If you engage in human experimentation the state views as illegal and unethical, the state will stop you, arrest you, or then send you back to where you came from. The state feels threatened because the state genuinely identifies with it's citizens and wants to protect citizens from unethical human experimentation. — boethius

That's a nice bit of circular logic. The state will stop your from doing things it views as threatening. And it views as threatening that which it stops you from doing.

However, more generally, research conforms to state policy because research is funded by the state or proxies to the state. Researchers who insist on not conforming may have some degree of toleration by the state due to the potential for blow back of "interference in supposed objective researchers"; however, there is always a point beyond which the state will directly interfere, and, more importantly, what the state learns from such experience is that it needs to better filter out such people from getting the token of credible expertise to begin with. — boethius

An interesting take on the "no true scotsman". If the nonconformity isn't adressed, that's just because it's not truely threatening.

But even before one's first degree, never mind the PhD, 'the state' or as i tend to call it 'the status quo' selects and filters. As of course it must in the situation of educational scarcity that has been set up. Most of us have to be ignorant experiment fodder for the elite. — unenlightened

You're equating the state and the entirety of society. Under this framework, anyone is selected, even criminals are the result of negative selection by the "status quo". Such immensely broad frameworks have the tendency to go off into the weeds, notably with unfounded pars pro toto substitutions.

Here, your usage of "the elite" is questionable, because you have set up the state as all encompassing, yet somehow there is an elite controlling it from the outside as an "experiment".

If the energy of space itself (vacuum energy) is positive, then expansion produces more energy, in the sense that a volume that expands with the universe (comoving volume) will encompass more and more space, and thus possess more and more energy over time. — SophistiCat

That's an if though, right? And it'd also have to be useable in some way.

Well I would call that neglect. One might call it racism if they were inclined. However, whatever it is the result is the same, which is poverty. — Brett

So, let's fight poverty. I think we can all get on-board with that. Let's take the current protest, reinforce it, and make it about poverty more generally as well.

Perhaps the inability to engage in the racial problems of the present and having a discourse that goes in circles? — ssu

Perhaps, though I am not entirely sure what you'd refer to.

People ought to understand that nothing will change if people are successfully divided. — ssu

That is an important point. But unity cannot take the form of unified inaction. The line "don't divide people" can also be used to stifle protest. "why must bus drivers put their issues before anyone else's needs", "why do these black people chant about black lives when white people live in poverty too" are things I have often heard. It frames standing up for your rights as a form of division. But isn't it the case that e.g. poor white people could just as easily augment the protests with their numbers, and use the increased powerbase to tackle more general problems?