But you would need to persuade me that the government consciously created that system to deprive blacks of an education. — Brett

I don't know when this system was set up. I doubt anyone consciously sat down and said "lets set up school funding so it disadvantages black people". Presumably, that wouldn't even have been necessary, given that there was more direct segregation still in place. But assuming they realized that this disadvantages black people, do you think that, on average, they'd have cared? I don't.

In any event, I think you're getting hung up on direct intent as a defining characteristic of systemic racism. I think the problem with systemic racism is precisely that it creates outcomes that diverge by race without relying on any mustache-twirling villians. To use a popular quote: all that is required for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.

The OP is why is systemic racism happening? That means now. If the restrictions governments have towards education is poor policy that impacts on blacks that have found themselves in circumstances created by past actions that does not equate to systemic racism now. — Brett

I think that is exactly what systemic racism is like. Policies that "happen" to impact people differently along racial lines. Of course you wouldn't conclude systemic racism from a single policy. But if there is a bunch of policies that are connected to very obvious and direct racism in the past, then I'd consider that sufficient evidence.

The policy of education budgets based on taxable income is obviously absurd, but as I said, I don’t imagine it was implemented as a racist act. — Brett

But there were a bunch of other racist acts that led to the policy affecting people the way it is today.

This is your position then, that Capitalism created racism. — Brett

No, racism is simply part of the human condition. I do think that capitalism feeds racism though.

If that is the case, it would seem to imply some sort of "vacuum energy" indeed exists and can be used.
From the information philosopher's website, I kinda get the impression that the universe (according to his cosmology, anyways) exchanges useable energy for information. I.e. the energy in a system is used to create a small amount of information, which causes a proportionally larger amount of waste-heat, which is unuseable energy. The expansion of space deals with the problem of waste heat, but I couldn't find anything about generating new energy.

Would blacks be deprived of access to education? I don’t know. If they were I would regard that as racism. — Brett

If I am not mistaken, school funding in the US is based on the tax income of the school district. The obvious result of that is that poor districts have little money while having higher needs (poor families can supply less homeschooling).

Now combine this with a history of segregation and housing policies that have made sure that poor black people only live in districts with other poor black people. Thus, the whole vicious cycle gains a racial dimension.

But there seem to be real factors besides racism that have contributed to black poverty. — Brett

Aside from the vicious cycle of poverty, driven by capitalism, what real factors are there? The most obvious seem to be: slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, housing policy. Policies that kept wealth out of the hands of black people, imposed on the basis of race.

They’re largely a bunch of poor white men who are looking for anyone they can to scapegoat for their poverty. — Pfhorrest

Wealthy white men have voted Trump, too. There is much debate on whether Trump actually has special appeal to a "white working class". There is a podcast episode on fivethirtyeight that addresses the question.

Why not remove the word racism and instead say "systemic injustice", "systemic greed", "systemic corruption"? — Brett

Why not all of those?

It's hard to deny that the protests are at least achieving something. If we want to address other subsets of injustice, why don't we just do that?

I can’t find any elaboration of what that would actually look like when it comes to the ways that far future civilization could be powered after the stars burn out etc., though. That’s what I’m hoping someone more familiar with his work can point me to. — Pfhorrest

Well, space constantly creates pair of particles and antiparticles that immediately annihilate each other, correct? Those are essentially fluctuations of the waveform. Is it possible that this symmetry occaisonally breaks down, leading to particles and hence useable energy?

The arguments I presented in the Racism issue are from a political perspective of evaluating the state's legitimacy to diagnose mental health issues and the role of psychologists in maintaining state order. Of course, a illegitimate state diagnoses dissidents as mentally ill and people who complain of intolerable working conditions as mentally ill. — boethius

But far from all illegtimate states rely on this. Most just brand dissidents as "traitors to the cause": Robust definitions of mental illness aren't required.

You can verify that mental health providers are agents of the state in making an appointment for the purposes of exploring the justification of arson and looting as a political tool against oppression, if that oppression is really there and what other methods might be available to compete with arson and looting in a struggle against oppression, and to share one's struggle with these issues. I can guarantee you that even if you were to conclude arson and looting was not, not yet anyway, a viable pathway, that this agent of the state will not only provide no useful political analysis but the only consequence of this meeting is that you will be placed on a list. — boethius

Why would you expect useful political analysis from someone whose field of work is mental health? And I am pretty sure it'd violate the principle of confidentiality to place you on some list for things you talked about in abstract.

For instance, China's "re-education camps" are entirely premised on the diagnosis of mental disease requiring "a cure". — boethius

Are they? I was not under the impression they're premised on mental disease at all, but rather on lack of proper socialisation. They're called re-education camps after all, not asylums.

In promoting and developing a "scientific discipline" that is so easily compatible with such state mechanisms of oppression and social control, fitting so easily within such a tyrannical structure with the aid of western consultants educated in western institutions of so call learning, the entire international community of psychology, and by extension academic community that tolerate them, are equally guilty in Chinese genocidal re-education crimes. — boethius

And by this logic the inventor of gunpowder is equally guilty in every single war and murder involving guns. That's a completely absurd moral philosophy.

However, that being said, we cannot conclude from this that mental health does not exist, only that, without the presumption that agents of the state are there to help, mental health (as well as just living in general) is much more difficult and complicated.

That mental health exists need not be thrown out, only a deep suspicion of agents of the state ability to help provide it. — boethius

So, who isn't an agent of the state?

However, it is a mistake to view philosophy as a therapy. This contemporary development of "philosophical therapy" is simply the thrashing about of a discipline that is becoming aware of it's inadequacy to deliver any real value to society as a whole and, indeed, being always at the forefront of the greatest crimes against humanity: manipulative mass marketing being the most global and potentially the most harmful activity a group of humans has ever embarked upon. — boethius

Mass marketing is worse than genocide. You heard it here first folks.

the role of philosophy is to invite you to see clearer what is worth tossing aside and what is worth building upon. — boethius

Are you interested in my judgement on whether or not your post is worth building upon?

Again, I suggest the tool of reading to participate in text base discussion: — boethius

I think this discussion has gotten too heated. I apologize for being condescending or insulting. And I'd ask you to not engage in these little jabs either.

To adress what you wrote here:

The same can only be said of all academic scientists: the primary roll of mathematics, physics and engineering becomes the arms industry, the primary roll of "political science" becomes apologetics for the state, the primary roll of creative pursuits becomes entertainment and distraction, the primary roll of psychology becomes manipulative marketing, the primary roll of philosophy becomes the denial of moral courage as a component of "the good life", if not the denial of any moral truth as such. — boethius

All that seems to be saying is that all knowledge can be abused, and all people can be corrupted. Which may be true, but doesn't say anything specific about psychology. Are you of the opinion that, say, physicists should have formed a conspiracy to keep the secret of building nuclear wepaons out of politicians hands?

I am using the term "academics" to refer to the group of people in academics, not as synonymous with knowledge.

So, if you're trying to say the academic is a tool of state authority, I agree. If you are trying to say that knowledge is a tool in the hands of the academic to service state authority, I agree. — boethius

But how does one avoid becoming a tool, outside of simply not existing?

If you are trying to say the process of selection of who gets to be an academic is independent of state policy, then I disagree. — boethius

No, it's not independent. Academia relies on grants and funding. Privately funded studies have been cause for concern in a number of fields now. The solution would seem to actually be more state funding in academia, not less. And if relying on state funding makes you an extension of state authority, then almost all public life is an extension of state authority. The term would become so broad as to be essentially meaningless.

Again, what's with the not reading things? — boethius

I indead did not read that part. Apologies.

We morally condemn the serial killer of legitimate state agents, we morally condemn illegitimate states and their killings and their state agents who kill.

When a illegitimate state kills a lot of people we say it is "mass murder" (i.e. serial killing, just with a difference in scale).

The nuances you might like to get into I am aware of and refer to as "with varying degrees of apologetics we can engage in depending on the Nazi". I agree each individual Nazi may not have the state of mind of a serial killer, but it is only because they are fully convinced they are engaging in just warfare on behalf of a legitimate state. Who we are not so morally lenient with are those orchestrating the serial killing and have the intellectual capacity to evaluate their actions and the system they are promoting as a whole.

However, you said specifically: — boethius

Actually, the belief to be engaged in "just warfare" isn't even required. Lots of states of mind can lead to people doing monstrous things. That's why I think you are oversimplifying things. There isn't any one "serial killer mindset" that could be blankedly applied to any and all unjust killing. And if there were, you'd obviously need psychology to tell you that. So your very analysis presupposes knowledge you seem to reject.

You are not referring to individuals soldiers who may not know better (and have been selected by the organization for this quality), but you are referring to the organization as a whole and its process of selecting and killing victims.

This process of the organization as a whole is no different in it's essential quality than that of the individual serial killer: They do it because they can and it brings them immense fascination and satisfaction. — boethius

Again, this is little more than a naked claim, and not a very believable one in my opinion. Organisations don't work like minds. Prima facie, organisations and minds are entirely different in their physical constituents and the way they make decisions. To argue there are "no essential differences" would require an analysis of how all the parts of one map to the other.

Trying to understand an individual is an I-thou relationship Very very different to trying to measure an abstracted average five-yr-old, or whoever. — unenlightened

But our I-thou relationships rely on abstracted knowledge. We learn social interactions by observing, and use the abstracted knowledge of what we learn to interact with new people. In that sense, we are constantly engaged in the study of other humans, which according to you is constant objectification. But without that, none of us would be able to deal with all the relations we have to other humans. Saying that there are certain qualities of an "average human" does not deny or diminish the subjectivity of any specific individual human.

I quoted my own thread where I discuss this in some detail and with further references, I also linked to a book that makes part of the argument by a well respected author and with his wiki page. Nobody has mentioned any of this either to discuss, or dispute at any point. — unenlightened

Of course noone is going to dispute points written somewhere in a book you pointed out (which, per the abstract, doesn't seem to be about anything like the things you are saying) or some 30+ page thread. To expect people to do so is to set yourself up for disappointment.

I think you can find your own evidence, but here's something to get you started. But the close connection of psychology to advertising goes back to Bernays, as you will have seen in my thread already, or not. — unenlightened

I am not disputing the connection between psychology and advertising, which is obvious enough. I am questioning to what extend the "values taught in psychology" really affect the society, which I figure would be an extremely difficult question to answer. It also looks to be a somewhat circular questions, since it basically requires us to use psychology to figure out to what extend psychology predisposes us.

I'm not sure why reading things is not part of your approach to text base discussion, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume there's a psychological motivation for it. — boethius

Tools are not extensions of authority. They are tools. An extension of authority would be something that is vested, explicitly or implicitly, with an official function.

Otherwise you'll have to explain why a tool is responsible for its use.

You say the difference is obvious, and yet you plunge directly into nuance. — boethius

You're being dishonest. You didn't initially bring up the Nazis or anything similar at all. You brought up military operations. That's what I was referring to.

I don't see where you are trying to go. Yes, there is more "decorum" in the killing apparatus of an illegitimate state, but lot's of serial killers had themselves "decorum", so it doesn't seem an obvious difference. — boethius

For one obvious difference, a serial killer is a single person, whereas for the killing apparatus of a state, many different actors fulfill different tasks and make different decisions.

Yes please, how was the Nazi's process of selecting and killing victims obviously different than that of a deranged serial killer, except for the scale? — boethius

Who are "the Nazis" you refer to? Hitler, Goebbels, Heydrich or Eichmann? Wehrmacht soldiers? Prussian police officers? The answer depends.

What about the rest of my criticisms?

Evaluation of behaviour cannot be concluded without first concluding the form of government is not only legitimate (enough) but moral (enough) to justify adhering to norms promoted by that society. Such an evaluation is outside the purview of psychology as an intellectual edifice, rendering psychology, at best, a hypothetical exercise. — boethius

That's a highly dubious conclusion. Your examples leave out obvious differences between the way a serial killer selects and kills victims and the functioning of an organised military. It's also not at all clear why one cannot simply study aberrant behaviour without establishing the exact moral pedigree of the rules. This might be true in certain fringe cases, where we would suspect individual moral decisions to be statistically significant. That's not the case for things like juvenile delinquency or traffic infractions.

Of course, as @Isaac correctly points out, not all psychology deals with rules and rule following either.

As representing state authority in a legitimate state, psychological research — boethius

How does psychological research in any way represent state authority?

the primary roll of mathematics, physics and engineering becomes the arms industry, the primary roll of "political science" becomes apologetics for the state — boethius

It's "role" by the way. A roll is a round oblong object.

However, other sciences, apart from academics, may form, from time to tome, intellectual structures that are independent of academics as an extension of state authority. — boethius

You haven't justified this claim that academics are extensions of state authority anywhere that I can see.

secondly they always depersonalisation the subject by objectification. — unenlightened

I'd love to hear a justification for this. Is anyone who is an object of some study thereby objectified?

Roughly at the point where, we hope, they get the permission of the parents, but probably, alas, not of the children themselves to experiment on them. It is the state that allows parents that authority, or denies it to them and the state also demands of psychologists that they gain such permissions. Though it is not well enforced. — unenlightened

The permission is completely irrelevant to the experimental results.

I am putting the whole subject and institutions of psychology under philosophical scrutiny and highlighting difficulties and you ought to be grateful. — unenlightened

No-one ought to be grateful for badly argued oversimplifications. This post is the first time you ever actually provide an argument, your protestations that it's all so simple and obvious notwithstanding.

It starts with an I-it relationship (as opposed to an I-thou relationship) because that's what objectivity means. — unenlightened

As above, I disagree with that definition of objectification. By this logic, trying to guess how a person might react to something I say is objectifying them. As is trying to figure out why an infant might be crying.

Psychology graduates go into advertising, into human resources (there's an objectifying phrase for you) into health, social work, education, and they bring and promote the values and views they have been taught. — unenlightened

And I suppose there is some sociological evidence to back this claim up?

Aren't income/occupation and education very related?? — Nuke

Related, yes. But as an example, non-college educated business owners aren't "working class", but apparently are an important part of Trumps base

There are such folks on all sides. You know, some lefties want the government to control pretty much every aspect of our lives. If you need to fart, you must first file a 17 page application with the EPA. :-) — Nuke

Fair enough. I guess every side tends to portray it's opposition based on their extreme fringes. When talking about US politics in particular, though, a big problem remains that the republican power base is a small, highly mobilised voting block. In almost all policy questions, the majority leans democratic. But because of the electoral college, voter suppression, and highly polarizing rhetoric, the Republicans have so far managed to stave off their demise. I say "so far" because the demographics have steadily shifted against them.

The flip side is that, on the part of the voters, views are more and more entrenched, and fears of becoming irrelevant work against any conciliation. Usually, the only chance of overcoming such divides is to leverage an existing emotional connection. So for friends and family members who you disagree with, seeking common ground and being understanding is a good idea. But I don't know how one would translate that into a nationwide reconciliation.

There will always be policy debates of course. My point is just that those debates will be more productive if we stop thinking of those on the other side as deplorable idiots etc. — Nuke

Well, yes. I see what you mean. Differences in world view don't mean someone is an idiot. And basing your self image on being one of the enlightened fighting against the dumb Trump voters is dangerous.

What I wanted to point out was that there must be limits to what is considered a reasonable position. I am sure "white replacement" theorists think of their concerns as "reasonable", but there is no way to consider their concerns without buying into their worldview. While it's definitely a good idea to try to understand their emotional state, I don't see how one could "address their concerns" in any meaningful way while maintaining that their worldview is irrational.

For decades that included the working man. Democrats largely abandoned those folks, so they found a new home. That's not Trump's fault, that's our fault. — Nuke

Studies of voter movement don't support that conclusion. The republican / democrat split doesn't run along income or occupation lines, but along education lines.

This is a good question. I'm not asking any Democrat to give up their principles. I'm suggesting we dial down the tribalism and show those with different views more respect. You know, the urban leftie mindset which thinks of rural citizens as country bumpkin bozo yahoos. Stuff like that has to go. — Nuke

It's hard to disagree with that. It's essentially prejudice against your political opponent, and prejudice is rarely a good thing. I think your intentions are good here, it's just hard not to conclude that people who still support Trump really must be in favor of tyranny, so long as they get to be part of the ruling class (or race).

I tried to offer some examples, and would encourage members to think of more. We don't have to agree with Trump's immigration policies to acknowledge that being concerned about immigration and population is a reasonable concern. Same for abortion. Same for guns. Same for religious freedom. What else? What am I missing? — Nuke

Any concern can be framed as reasonable from the position of the ones who have it. Even outright racism can be made "reasonable" if you're willing to entertain the notion that there are races, and some are just inferior. People don't usually hold intentionally unreasonable beliefs. But I am very sceptical about calls to "understand" such reasons. Shouldn't we instead figure out how to make people be better at being reasonable?

Then why did they lose the last election to a comic book character who boasts about assaulting women? Why were all the Democratic candidates in 2020 second rate figures who don't even know that a Presidential candidate should have something useful to say about nuclear weapons? Why did Bernie and Warren not grasp that "all angry all the time" is a recipe for failure, as has now been proven?

I don't share your confidence obviously. — Nuke

They obviously failed. The question is whether we could do better.

Trump is President because the Democratic Party has not only ignored it's traditional base, it seems to often enjoy insulting them. There is a regrettable passion among we lefties for snotty superiority poses which are often directed at the very people we need to be winning over. Hillary Clinton's "basket of deplorables" comes to mind as a quick example. — Nuke

What is the democrats traditional base at this point? Studies suggest it's college-educated people, young people, women and minorities. Trump is president mostly because the Republicans have successfully used voter suppression to get a candidate with no majority support elected. Running against Hillary Clinton of course helped.

Also, I am pretty sure the democratic party employs strategists who know what voters to target better than we do.

1) Immigration - The population of the United States has doubled in my lifetime. Over the same period the population of Florida (where I live) has grown from 3 million to over 21 million, a seven fold increase. It's certainly reasonable for any citizen to question how much farther we wish to travel in that direction. Politicians on all sides have generally ignored such questions for decades and so, no surprise, large segments of the population are attracted to any national figure who won't ignore them. — Nuke

But the national figure they did gravitate to didn't offer any reasonable take on immigration. He instead pandered to fears and misconceptions. There is no reason to suspect that these voters could be won back with a nuanced take on immigration. The US already had fairly restrictive immigration policies prior to Trump.

2) Abortion - Many religious people held their nose and voted for Trump due to their concern about abortion. It's not unreasonable for them to have serious concerns about the mass killing of babies. Who's next, inconvenient old people like me? — Nuke

I don't think it's strategically viable for Democrats to appeal to the religious right. But even if it were, a more fundamental questions occurs: is politics about doing what is right, or doing what people want? To what extent is building a broader coalition worth encroaching on your principles?

I just read on fivethirtyeight that, according to surveys, 48% of Americans believe that black people enjoy equal rights and no further changes are necessary. That's compared to 80% of police officers who hold that view.

I'm not here for a lesson on Eternalism, unless it involves an explanation of how anything is supposed to work in a motionless universe, including the supposed illusion of temporal passage. — Luke

And I'm not here to serve on your whim. I have already spend time trying to give you an example, if you don't care for it then I guess I'll just leave you to it.

Nothing is travelling. — Luke

It's a metaphor.

If you want to ignore the fact that more whites are killed by cops than blacks to focus on the rate at which blacks are killed compared to whites, then you are essentially saying that because there are more whites, those lives that were lost don't matter as much as the black lives lost because there are less blacks. Whites can afford to lose a few lives more than blacks — Harry Hindu

By this logic, the genocide of a small minority is "just as bad" as the occasional misuse of force against the majority, so long as the numbers line up. Hell Since every death is a tragedy, what relevance do police killings have besides millions of people dieing of heart failure?

I would be out marching for All Lives Matter and against police brutality in general, not march for the narrow-minded view that Black Lives Matter, when the problem of police brutality would include racism as part of it's scope. Racism isn't being denied, rather it is being incorporated into the larger problem of police brutality and corruption. — Harry Hindu

So, why haven't you marched yet?

Either there is motion or there is not, unless you know of a third option. I thought you had already accepted that there is no motion or no "continuum where changes occur" in an Eternalist universe. I'm not buying your "never mind the details" argument — Luke

I just want to note that I don't ascribe to an eternalist view on time, I am just trying to illustrate it for the sake of discussion.

As to your question, objects are arranged in space in an orderly way. Their arrangement can be described without referring to "passage of space" or some equivalent of motion. You can start your description at any point in the coordinate system and move in any direction, look at subsets in arbitrary order etc.

The same thing could be true for time. This wouldn't mean that events are no longer connected to each other. There'd still be the same laws that describe how one event (a region of time) is connected to another. Causality just would not be a line of causes of effects, but rather a web of relations that you can follow in every direction. Motion only appears because you're traveling that web in one direction, seemingly getting events that follow another. Like being on an amusement park ride, where it looks like the animatronics perform a story for you, while in reality they just keep repeating the same thing.

I don't know what "subject to the same construction" is supposed to mean. — Luke

The core idea here is that "everything you think you know is false" or more specifically: It is possible that the metaphysically objective world is entirely different from the physical world. One of these differences could be that time isn't what we think it is, that our concept of time is a construct of the human mind.

I don't follow how this is not problematic just because our understanding of physiology is "based on perception". I get that it's not a problem if there is passage of time and motion, but how is it supposed to work if there isn't? — Luke

It could simply be that the relations of events in the time dimension are not fundamentally different from the relations of things in the spatial dimension. There'd still be a continuum where changes occur, just like there is a point where your desk ends and a wall begins. Just the specific appearance of a unidirectional passage of time would be just that - an appearance rather than an ontological reality.

If you've got China, Russia, and now the US going this route, open democracies start to look like a weird novelty. — Baden

And plenty of people seem to be in favor in Europe, too. Even those that aren't are hardly enthusiastic about open democracy. "The West" seems to have lost it's promise to the people. A large part of that is economics, but there is also a lack of idealism.

I think it’s possible that the police force is not racist but that there are cops who dislike their job and the people they deal with until they reach the point where they have a hatred towards these people. It’s possible the job has damaged these people. Somewhere along the line they must have exposed what was happening but nothing was done about it. — Brett

But that would still be a systemic problem, and still a problem that would disproportionatiely affect black people, so it could reasonably be called institutional racism.

Those cops don’t have any others skills so they’re not likely to resign and look for another job, policing is the only thing they know. — Brett

Yeah, I agree that asking cops to resign is neither realistic nor very helpful. They're caught in the same economic system, they just occupy a different spot in it.

It seems to me there have been many examples of cops crossing the divide in a positive way. Obviously bad cops are more newsworthy and get more coverage. But what I’ve seen over the last week or so makes wonder about the idea that the cops are “racist”. — Brett

There have been positive examples of individual cops. Saying the police is, as an institution, racist, doesn't mean that all individual cops have racist beliefs. That's what's so sinister about the problem, really. In a setting where certain behaviours and policies are encouraged while others are discouraged, you can end up disproportionally targeting black people with aggression without ever noticing the blip on your moral radar.

Whites are accused by blacks and whites of being “privileged” and being “privileged white males”. This is obviously not true of all white people or all white males but it’s a feeling applied by many to whites. So there appears to be a problem here that’s a human failing. — Brett

I think you misunderstand what the theory behind white privilege claims: namely that all white people (in a given society) have white privilege, regardless of the other factors that influence their station.

The cops only wants to do their job, and they're given many means to do them. Some cops choose a more destructive approach because it either feels safer for them or if they're lesser good by nature, and that aggression could be related to them being unprofessionally trained to deal with stressful situations so they use the destructive tools that was given to them. Cops should be more professionally trained. — EpicTyrant

How do you know it's individual cops "choosing" to be destructive rather than a system that encourages them to be destructive?

I don't think that they suffer structural discrimination, more like structural deficiencies. — EpicTyrant

What's the difference?

They have the same rights as white people — EpicTyrant

On paper, yes. But they don't appear to have the same rights in practice.

but harder prerequisites to abide by the core values of the white man. — EpicTyrant

What are the core values of the white man? What does it mean to have "harder prerequisites"?

This may be a bad example but the Stamford Prison Experiment is worth considering in this case. The implications we can draw from it is amazing as I would not consider it somewhat like a mental prison for both the guards and prisoners as both were trapped in their roles, resulting in their mental beliefs changing. Maybe this example could help advance the discussion further. — Josh Lee

Slightly off-topic, but the Stanford experiment is no longer considered scientific. The results haven't been replicated and there are concerns that the lead researcher influenced the participants, which were not a large sample size in the first place.

If you play with the thought that black people are over represented in crime, it makes sense for humans/cops to identify that section as a more probable cause to the structural problems of crime that they're trying to solve, and therefor have a more destructible/aggressive approach towards it. — EpicTyrant

How do cops solve a structural problem, especially with aggression and violence?

Black people in low class society should rise up against themselves and really show the world that they're ready to make a change and be left out of the typical "afro american" stereotype that you see in movies, that would be beautiful and remarkable human feat to see. — EpicTyrant

Didn't you just write that this is an impossible demand due to the structural discrimination they face?

In either case, a mysterious power is required to produce the perception of movement. — Metaphysician Undercover

Couldn't you argue that Presentism presumes that same power, it just names it "time"?

How does a mind work if there is neither passage of time or motion? How does the human body work? What becomes of our understanding of beating hearts, circulation, respiration, vision, and all the rest? — Luke

The human body would be less of a problem, since what we know about it is based on perception, and thus would simply be subject to the same construction.

How the mind works is the more interesting question. Given my description, it'd have to be outside the space-time block. That may be the reason @Metaphysician Undercover called it a "soul".

The OP question is not as stupid as it sounds. I would reformulate it as "What does it feel like to be in a quantum superposition state?" There is some discussion of this and related questions in the literature on the foundations of quantum mechanics. — SophistiCat

Presumably, that depends mainly on your interpretation of the equations, i.e. on metaphysical speculation. If it's many worlds, maybe you are an infinite number of persons at once.

Here is what an eternalist might say: There is neither passage of time nor motion. Simply different spatio-temporal locations. Your mind simply apprehends temporal locations as a series of events, rather than as a region of coordinates, and this creates the appearance of motion.

Given the scale of police violence and brutality we have seen - in response to protests against police violence and brutality - all cops are bad cops. Which is a children's-book way of saying state-sponsored terrorists, at this point. — StreetlightX

I wonder if that whole "good cop / bad cop" dichotomy ought be rejected as bad framing, just like the good protester / bad looter dichotomy. It's about systemic violence, not individual merits. Anyone bringing up how "some cops are genuine good people" is missing the point. I hope we all agree people are people regardless of their job. Asking individual cops to be "better people" and speak up isn't going to work. The system must be such that ordinary people will speak up.

Nope, I mean "spend less money so there are substantially fewer persons playing the role of police officer" - get rid of beat cops. Make it a service you request rather than one that shows up to keep "order". — Moliere

I think there is an interesting discussion to be had on what social functions the current police fulfills, what functions it should fulfill, and which ones should be transferred to other kinds of institutions.

I don't know enough about American beat cops, in my experience with the police, they're mostly on beat so they can respond to calls from the area quickly. Not sure what else their job is besides "making people feel safe", which obviously doesn't apply to many black communities in the US.

We do as the Elite's please and your words follow suit. I came here in hopes to interact with great minds and indulge in the love for knowledge. some of you at least somewhere between the "everything is subjective, to the trapped in the day to day societal paved road of survival" not post ass whooping pulling your pants down asking "may i have another?" not making snow angels out of the regurgitation or Elites funneling the last morsels of our arbitrary right you imbeciles!! — ModusOperandi

Are you all right? That post is almost indecipherable.

There have been good remarks just why is this so difficult, starting for example with the police unions. I think that also electing key figures in the legal system, which sounds great, is also a part of this "systematic racism" problem in the US. Unlike in my country, in the US the sheriffs and prosecutors are elected, which makes the an issue far beyond just the realm of the police force. Americans love retribution and punishment, something in the culture of the frontier or so (likely people know this better than I). "Tough on crime" is something that sells and will get you elected. — ssu

The whole "electing your prosecutors and judges" thing has always struck me as insane.

I'm tempted to be more base, but instead will just say that defunding the police is the only way to have fewer killings -- because at least then there will be fewer cops doing the killing. — Moliere

I don't think it's the only way. After all, plenty of police forces around the globe perform much better. Unless by "defund" you mean essentially "demilitarise", i.e. stop throwing more guns at the problem.

More on following the money - state prosecutors can accept money from police unions in the US, which some places are only just trying to curb, thanks to the protests: — StreetlightX

Wait, what? That's insane. Prosecutors shouldn't be allowed to take donations from anyone.

Cops kill by virtue of their sheer existence as black holes of state funding. — StreetlightX

All those assault rifles are expensive. It's great really, the weapons industry can sell their old stuff, the politician can be "tough on crime", and the police get new toys. Everyone wins...

Six days later the Civil Rights Act of 1968 was passed, because LBJ and the rest of the government were shitting their pants.

Anyone moaning about violent protest not solving problems can go fuck off a bridge and never come back. — StreetlightX

So I have been thinking about this bit. Is there any reasonable expectation that this time around, there will be Bipartisan support for change? That the republican establishment didn't even seem to blink at Trump's suggestion to send in the army isn't encouraging.

And there is the question of how much good reform does in the short term. Police departments cannot retrain, much less replace, their entire staff overnight. And arguably the police violence is another symptom of the huge economic disparities.

So if the political will isn't there for not just police reform, but a change of economic policy, then what is the next step? The elections aren't until November, and whoever does get elected will not necessarily change much. If the political will doesn't materialize, and I don't think it will, what level of disobedience to the system is justified & effective? Will property damage cause enough disruption to force the holders of economic power to the table? Will just being out in the street, refusing to comply with curfews etc. continue to build pressure?

Thinking about it, it's hard to maintain any hope that anything can cause the necessary change. Just like with gun control, climate change etc.

As I understand it, there is a genuine dispute between A-theorists and B-theorists as to the nature of time, with the former affirming that temporal passage is real and the latter denying it. — Luke

I don't deny there is genuine dispute, but the dispute isn't necessarily productive. I cant shake the feeling that the discussion simply runs into a language and comprehension barrier.

I don't know of any B-theorists who claim that time actually passes and that temporal passage only "disappears" (or is not real) due to it being a more objective perspective. This seems contrary to the definitions I've posted and to what I've read on the subject. I'd welcome any information you have that says otherwise. — Luke

I didn't mean to imply that my view is compatible with what B-theorists say. I just think that the ontological nature of time cannot be established due to a lack of available information. It's too fundamental to the way our minds work. Time is essentially our stream of consciousness.

As they do not know any different can they say that this technology has improved their quality of life? — Luke1i1

This sounds less like you're talking about quality of life, and more like you're talking about individual happyness. From what I have heard, happyness is far less related to material circumstances than people tend to assume. It is nevertheless related. Starving or being mauled by a bear are not fun.

There is also the fact that technology allows us the necessary leisure time to figure out how to make people happier. Psychotherapy presumably was less prevalent in 10.000 BC.

There is good metaphysics and there is bad metaphysics. Not every conceptual issue has an answer.

In the case at hand, all you're doing if you move from the A-theory to the B-theory is abstracting from the individual observer to a hypothetical universal observer. That is, in fact, what the scientific method always does. Because the universal observer has no individual position in time and space (physics being assumed to be uniform across both) "A-properties" necessarily disappear in the process, being replaced by "B-properties". This does not, in principle, seem any different than what happens to spatial directions when you do the same.

None of this implies the ontological truth of one theory or the other. In fact, it doesn't even imply that time has an ontological nature. It might just be an ordering principle in our minds.

Now now. — Luke

See this whole discussion just seems confused to me. And noticing confusion is important. What is it we actually want to know? We already know how time appears to a subject. We also already know how time appears on an intersubjective scale. Is it possible that's all there is to it?

As I keep repeating, what it adds is the difference between the A-theory and the B-theory, which is temporal passage. A-theorists think it's real; B-theorists do not. It is not "just a question of what exists" if temporal passage is something over and above everything that exists. If it's not, then there's no distinction between B-theory Eternalism and the Moving Spotlight theory, which would imply there's no distinction between the B-theory and the A-theory. — Luke

How would anyone know whether it's real? There is no possible source of information on that question.

Even his comedic value was very limited.

Don't talk to me about 'ideological purity' when you pearl clutch over broken Targets and stay utterly mute about police violence or solutions. With 'allies' like that who need enemies? — StreetlightX

And that's the problem with left wing movements. The right wing may be morally bankrupt and their policies reprehensible, but they do know how do build coalitions and push their agenda down everyone else's throats.

Why spend your time calling out potential allies on their supposed lack of ideological purity, rather than, say, use the common ground to build an effective coalition? Making this about "people who criticize the riots Vs people who don't" is a great way to hobble your own movement.

It's become abundantly clear in the last 24+ hours that the USA is past the point in getting constructive around solving police brutality and militarization. Since we'd rather beat down protesters regardless if they are peaceful or, heaven forbid, destroying sweet precious property, law enforcement will once again be off the hook. — Maw

On some level, I kinda wish Trump would actually call in the military, because that will really rally support behind the current protests, and the state will actually show it's most ugly face for people to protest against.

Of course the more armed people there are, the more people are at risk of dieing.

What is this either/or? has anyone actually said it was okay? — praxis

Sorta, kinda, maybe? It's difficult to tell what people actually think. Several people have been accused of openly calling for riots and destruction. Several others of devaluing the protest by focusing on some inconsequential property damage. No-one came out and drew any lines as to where justified protest ends, in this case or generally.