Yesterday it was the CNN crew being arrested, now this. Who trains these cops?

Are you familiar with the concept of belief in belief?

If this was any other topic, I'd say you asking the question is a performative contradiction, and that it implies you don't actually believe in hard determinism. Perhaps you believe that you believe, but the belief doesn't actually inform your view of the world.

Of course this topic is tricky, because the distinction is between your view of the world and your view of yourself. I suspect you have no problem viewing the world, that is everything external to you, as deterministic. But viewing yourself, the observer, as deterministic seems to be a contradiction. If you are deterministic, then "you" don't exist.

You could consider that, as an observer, you are the cause of there being a world you see in the first place, and therefore whatever applies to your world need not apply to you. Though the question would be whether that is still hard determinism.

Left or right are old, outdated ideas really, we all know you need a combination of the two...trouble is the left are the establishment now and wish to destroy the ideas of the right that are fruitful. — Chester

So, since you're so interested in debate:
How does one destroy an idea?
What ideas, specifically, are in danger?

It is clearly being used for political gain (covid 19) by the left .Don't forget it was a leftist regime that inflicted this on the world too Mr Moron. — Chester

You probably also think the Nazi party was left wing because it had "socialist" in the name, right?

We are here, yes, but none of us got here on our own. We are social animals and if we're talking of "us" as a species, our social structures predate us. Our ancestors have been living in family and band level societies before they evolved into modern humans.

I think setting up the individual against the society, or, in more modern terms, the state, is therefore a bit of a false dichotomy. The two have always existed in relation to each other. And in many ways, our modern version of "the individual", endowed with unalienable rights, is very much a social construction. It's a result of the way western culture has developed.

Standards pulled from one's ass can be satisfied in the same manner. Is your argument that nobody has ever signaled virtue for the positive social sanctions that might be bestowed as a result? — VagabondSpectre

No, that's not my argument. We are social creatures, and probably do a lot of signaling. My argument is that you have no reliable way to establish when someone is doing it. So any accusation of virtue signaling is merely ad-hom.

I think that he is saying while we should certainly be wearing masks inside, the way we process the sight of others with or without masks (especially inside) is now a kind of moral signal in and of itself...

As if merely wearing a mask gives you some kind of moral coupon that can be exchanged at a later time for adulation and anger from or at others... Right of rebuke... — VagabondSpectre

That's a good reading. I initially took it as tongue in cheek, but the subsequent comments do support your take.

Sure, it makes sense that masks made out of normal cloth don't block viruses. It also makes sense that they alter the pattern of aerosol that you are breathing out.

Yet the principles that lay behind our success are based on the rights of the individual and the strengths of the individual in the sense of the great diversity that lies with the individual and from which our development depends. — Brett

That's a pretty big claim. "Our success" has always been achieved in the context of social organisation.

To what extent is logical structure infused into the domain of phenomenal perception? — Enrique

This may have to be addressed before talking about the evolution of logic, since it may be that logic is not actually a capability that evolved separately, but rather part of the structure of thinking and perception.

The law is a 'fact', the opinion of an 'expert' is an 'opinion'. — A Seagull

I'd say the law is subject to interpretation. Wo while the text of the law is a fact, the rules that the text establishes aren't

Have I missed anything here? — Baden

Not something you missed, but two things that I think are useful to keep in mind when dealing with the "named fallacies" are:

1. There is technically only a single logical fallacy, and it's non-sequitur. So if there is fallacious reasoning, you should be able to explain why it doesn't follow without using the name of a specific fallacy. If you can't, that suggests you're missaplying it.

2. All the fallacies are only fallacies in the context of strictly analytic deductive arguments. As soon as you leave that narrow field, they become guidelines that can no longer be strictly applied.

Appeals to authority tend to come up when we deal with questions that are at least partially about facts, and therefore aren't purely deductive exercises. Appealing to authority is a perfectly valid heuristic for determining the facts.

I do seriously think that armchair psychoanalysis gets an unfairly bad rep though. It rarely yields solid answers, but then few 'armchair' activities do. Our motives (including hidden and subconscious ones) are a massive part of our interactions and the way we form beliefs and concepts. If speculation about them is too early ruled 'out of play' then we're going to miss most of what's going on. I think abandoning it is excessive, just taking it with the very large pinch of salt all armchair analysis requires is sufficient. — Isaac

I guess it depends on what we're doing. For large groups and general trends, I think a discussion by laymen can be useful.

The more personal you're making it, the more it approaches poisoning the well. And the more difficult it gets, because there are a lot of biases associated with judging other people's intentions and character. Plus if it's an issue you feel strongly about, you'll be inclined to attribute negative character to whoever holds an opposing view.

Statistical inference. When someone is too offended on behalf of a fashionable cause that doesn't affect them, there's medium to high correlation with virtue-signalling. — VagabondSpectre

And you have established this correlation by researching the psychology of signaling, rather than just, say, pulling it out of your ass?

But this threat isn't about the virtuous merit of a given cause, it's about what signalling support for causes can mean about an individual. — VagabondSpectre

I thought this thread was originally about our personal feelings about masks, as per the question in the OP:
"Are you wearing a mask inside, and why?"

I'd like to know what methods you'd practically apply to figure out if someone is virtue signalling or not. Short of them outright telling you that's what they're doing.

I thought we were avoiding judging worth by hasty generalisations? — Isaac

Clever, but then I am saying we shouldn't do it because it doesn't usually end well. I am not judging someone.

Indeed. Although a bit of armchair psychoanalysis might be thrown in for good measure...after all, we're doing everything else here from the armchair here, why not psychoanalysis too? — Isaac

Because it's usually done in a dismissive manner and amounts to little more than an ad-hominem.

Sometimes they doth virtue signal too much, me thinks... — VagabondSpectre

Can you answer the question or are you just virtue signaling?

So why should we question our own behavior when we encounter someone that is "virtue signaling"?

Is it because we should be jealous of their virtue? — VagabondSpectre

How do you know they are virtue signaling and not actually virtuous? Just saying they're "just signalling" doesn't make it so.

The great thing about dismissing the 'labelling of behaviours as virtue signalling', is that you get to ignore the problems with virtue signalling whilst maintaining your ability to gain the social advantages of doing so.

We could go on... — Isaac

It seems like the best strategy is to avoid using hasty generalisations like that in the first place. It's not like you cannot debate the pros and cons of a behaviour without engaging in armchair psychoanalysis.

Other people proclaiming how virtuous they are makes you relatively less virtuous by comparison. — VagabondSpectre

That's of course nonsense, and not anything I said.

The great thing about 'virtue signaling' is that people identify the signaler as being virtuous, without the signaler having to actually go to the considerable inconvenience of being virtuous. — Bitter Crank

The great thing about labeling behaviours as "virtue signaling" is that you get to identify the signaler as a hypocrite and can dismiss both them and their behaviour without having to actually go to the considerable inconvenience of questioning your own behaviour.

Does this leave skepticism as the foundational philosophic default? — Statilius

That is what I was thinking of, yes. Not necessarily a radical scepticism, more a methodological approach.

But perhaps that's only true of parts of philosophy. There is also the philosophy of meaning and purpose, which seems to be less concerned with questions and more with guidance

Well it would cause no more inflation than if everyone now just withdrew their government bonds. — Justin Peterson

Everyone withdrawing their government bonds would cause total chaos and very serious economic damage. So your statement that it "wouldn't be worse" is not reassuring.

ome mathematicians a lot smarter than me would be able to figure it out but think of it this way, if I make 100k a year, and I usually pay this much in taxes, and it would usually take me X amount of time to pay off those taxes with the money currently owed to me, then I get this many gc’s for the TOTAL amount of gc’s, but since there would be less in circulation at that time you could actually pay off a years worth of taxes for less than if all the gc’s were in circulation, does that make sense? — Justin Peterson

No, it doesn't. I can't make out what you're trying to say.

And yes you are right, the government can’t pull money out of thin air anymore, but if I personally don’t go to the bank and pull out $100,000 to buy that new Ferrari I want I’m going to be a lot less flexible than if I did pull that money out. It’s no different for the government. — Justin Peterson

That's an asinine example. The government doesn't buy Ferraris.

take China for example.. their currency is so inflated that the value of one yen is close to absolutely nothing. If you were to tell them that they could have a currency that holds just as much weight as the American dollar, they’d probably be all for it. — Justin Peterson

You've got this entirely backwards. The chinese Yen is artificially weakened relative to the dollar, because China relies on exports, and a strong Yen would hurt exports. For a country with a weaker economic productivity per capita, a stronger currency is often a disadvantage.

Not to mention the American dollar is already almost the staple of the global economic system anyway, if we started using it as a means of exchange they’d almost have no option but to accept, not to mention the value of the currency would be a lot more viable. — Justin Peterson

The American dollar is already the main currency for international exchanges. Almost everyone already accepts it as a means of exchange.

but in the system we are in now, promising to pay back a loan with money we can create out of thin air is like saying “You give me this money that is worth something now, and I promise to pay it back later but I can’t promise that it’ll be worth anything when I do.” — Justin Peterson

That's not really how loans work. When you give out a loan, that's when you create money out of thin air. And then you have to work to create the goods to actually back that loan. When banks give out loans, they don't actually give you some of their money. Only a small fraction of the loan is backed by money the bank actually has, and even that money stays in the bank.

The scientific method seems to have a pretty good track record. There are the basic rules of logic and of honest argument, which also seem pretty stable.

It of course has a number of enduring questions: how do I know, what is my knowledge actually about (how real is reality), what should I do. And I think associated with these a basic position of doubt, that asks for claims to be justified, even if a true argument from first principles is perhaps impossible.

consider this, let’s say there’s 20trillion dollars in current money in circulation + promised debt. The valuation of how much is given back to the people the country is indebted would be in relation to how much is currently in circulation, but doesn’t account for the promised debt, so they would receive more than gc’s than its value in dollars, because after the gc is settled then the amount in circulation will be equivalent to circulation + debt (so during that time I can pay my taxes with 1 gc instead of 2). — Justin Peterson

Right, so if the state owes me 1000 bucks, I get, say 100gc immediately. So the state prints money to immediately pay off all debt, but that will just result in massive inflation, no?

Well here’s the thing, the value and the deficit would put the economy at ground at zero. From that point on, no more cryptocurrency can ever exist because cryptocurrency is only ever a set amount and nothing more. It’s basically like filing for bankruptcy, except now the gvt’s credit score would be shit so it can’t get a loan. — Justin Peterson

No loans mean a lot less flexibility though.

It’s likely that in this case the UN would have to create a new cryptocurrency based on the global market and analyze what countries get how much currency compared to the value of their dollar and the assets that the countries contain as a whole. — Justin Peterson

It's entirely unrealistic that the world gets together and actually agrees to this. So is this more than utopian fantasy?

The point would be that it would reduce the deficit of the current economic system to 0 by granting the government the opportunity to pay back its bonds while still maintaining the flow of currency. — Justin Peterson

How does that work though? If you could just print a new currency to repay bonds, governments would have done so already. Where does the value of the new currency come from?

Also, it would reduce any type of inflation as the government would not be able to print money, and so the bad habits of government spending cannot be sustained. — Justin Peterson

If it can't print money, then where is all the entirely new money coming from?

What are your opinions about this economic strategy and what would be some of the pros/cons of establishing this new form of exchange? — Justin Peterson

It seems incredibly complex and I cannot see what the practical value is supposed to be. Perhaps you could add a paragraph or two on just what you're trying to achieve, and how this system achieves it.

For example, I am entirely in the dark as to why you chose cryptocurrency over a normal currency.

If the goal is to better understand people that have a different perspective, I think what's missing here is a sense of personal emotional investment. It's all rather abstract.

One could flesh out the scientist some more. Imagine their entire life as a prodigy in their field. Internationally renowned, invited to conferences, interviewed on TV. Until they're suddenly utterly irrelevant. That perhaps catches the emotional side of things better.

Alternatively, instead of making it about science in general, choose a specific belief that is widely and emotionally held among your audience. Vegetarianism is actually killing the planet. Green energy is a sham. It turns out the Libertarians are right. That kind of thing.

So why do you find yourself being you, that particular human? It because you find yourself being everything. If one person is sure to hold the winning lottery ticket, and you are all of the people, you should expect to find yourself the winner, as well as all those who didn't win.

I think that people should rethink all anthropic principle stuff in light of this way of looking at things. — petrichor

As interesting as that is, what is the actual argument here? Because my perspective is clearly limited in my experience. So if one wants to claim that this limit is illusionary, there'd need to be an argument as to what justifies that conclusion.

It's about why I am this one (regardless of the properties of this one) and not another one (regardless of the properties of that one). — bert1

There seems to be, consciously or not, some sort of "humunculus theory" of consciousness underlying this question. Why would you think there is a "you" that is somehow independent from the properties of any specific "substrate"?

They desire a life without suffering and exploitation and therefore we should not deprive them of that considering we don't have to. — HannahPledger

That's a difficult point to prove though. How do we know what animals desire? Aren't we simply anthropomorphising animals by ascribing human-like desires to them?

We have moral agency unlike lions who kill without thought, and we also can live healthily without meat which lions can not. — HannahPledger

This raises a problematic issue though. Because while the lion kills without thought, it certainly does so with the implied consent of humans. The issue is more pronounced if you look at projects reintroducing predators like wolves into a habitat. Being killed by some wild animal is often accompanied with a lot of stress and pain. Do we therefore have a moral imperative to stop wild animals from killing other animals where possible?

"If we eradicated factory farms and the evils that go with it, the vast majority of people would still have to go vegan because there simply would not be enough meat to go around."
— Artemis

I completely disagree. How could you possibly come to that conclusion? — Graeme M

The sheer amounts of meat produced and consumed seem to preclude any significant consideration for animal welfare. Without factory farms, the prices would skyrocket well beyond what most people can afford.

There is also the rather significant waste of resources associated with meat production.

The only thing I can figure is that Trump or the Trump family has a personal financial gain in the selling of hydroxychloroquine, that they were somehow in the deal. I really don't believe otherwise Trump would be so enthusiastic and persistent in the promotion of the "miracle-drug". — ssu

It is odd. The normal Trump strategy would be to switch to some other miracle drug once discouraging evidence becomes undeniable. And then of course lie about ever being in favour of it in the first place.

Though it cannot be discounted that Trump drank his own Kool-Aid and is actually personally convinced it's a miracle drug.

Are there any 'new' thoughts? Or is all our thinking made up of reformulations and expropriations of previous minds/thoughts we have come into contact with? — Professor Death

That would depend a lot on what you think a "thought" is. Is there abstract content to thoughts or are thoughts intrinsically linked to a person?

We can talk about "what" we think, so there must be some way we can at least extract some separate content from a thought that we then communicate. And if we're talking about these extracts, there is probably little that is truly original. But then it cannot be too original, because if it were we'd have trouble communicating it. The thought that we extracted the content from might very well have been unique though.

So is this based on a "we're going to fix things once they're impossible to ignore" attitude, where we'll just scrape by on incremental improvements in both our ability to deal with the problems and reduce their causes?

Do you think a major technology breakthrough will make this whole discussion irrelevant (Fusion is a candidate here)?

Or is there some other fundamental assumption behind your position?

I am familiar with gapmider, by the way. I read the book and did like it. I usually lean towards a more optimistic and perhaps technophile outlook, but at times the situation seems very grim to me, especially considering that the quality of governance doesn't seem on an upward trend worldwide.

The clearest, and most effective means of combating climate change is, quite ironically, what many people keep complaining politicians focus too much on ... that is GDP. As GDP rises so does healthcare, education and access to opportunity, whilst malnutrition, disease and child mortality fall. — I like sushi

But that only works so long as you have the natural resources to feed that growth. But do we?

Thanks for the reply. I can agree with a bunch of the criticisms pointed out. I think it's problematic to accuse the filmmakers of "making the oil industry's argument for them", because not only does this miss the basic message of the film, it's also essentially a genetic fallacy.

I have some thoughts on the review you linked.

So what's the truth about renewables? Crunch the figures, and it turns out that with current technology an area of solar PV the size of 8% of Western Australia (or a quarter of Namibia or an equivalent area of hot desert) can supply sufficient energy to replace the entire world's oil industry, all 90 million barrels/day of it. So don't let any attention-seeking film-maker tell you the clean energy transition isn't possible. If they do, they're lying, and you need to ask why. — Mark Lynas

This criticism seems a bit tangential to what is said in the documentary, which is not that the capacity isn't there, but rather that the costs of producing and maintaing the capacity are themselves not sustainable.

The arguments about needing fossil backup to intermittent renewables? Not borne out by any experience, with renewables now comprising far higher proportions of grids than was ever imagined possible when this film was conceived a decade and a half ago. The only thing it gets right is that burning trees for biofuels is really bad, but anyone with a brain has been saying that for years already. — Mark Lynas

One thing the documentary points out a lot is that what is classified as "renewable" in the statistics isn't necessarily renewable, and that the vast majority of that capacity is made up by burning trees.

This Malthusian bilge I think is probably the most egregious part of the movie, and has received too little pushback - there are plenty of people out there quite rightly calling out the lies about renewables and defending Bill McKibben, but we need to look carefully at what these population de-growthers are actually saying. — Mark Lynas

On that part, I totally agree with Lynas. It was really weird how the documentary handled that. It never actually makes an argument about population growth specifically, it just has these soundbites about how population growth is the "elephant in the room". It really makes it seem like they secretly think we need population control, but are afraid to say so out loud. Maybe it was just bad filmmaking, though.

huh, wow. This is the first time I am actually sad about a ban. His posts will be missed.

31. To view something, is to form a minimal connection with something.
32. Hence, to make a statement about a thing, then has to view that thing.
33. In a world, me has to view something to make a statement about that thing.

34. In a world, me is one of FPP [D.]
35. In a world, an FPP cannot view other distinct FPP.
36. In a world, me cannot make a statement about other distinct FPP. — bizso09

I don't disagree with this, but my lack of knowledge does not imply absence of these other FFP.

Not sure if that is what you are looking for, but if I let my brain's pattern recognition take over for a bit here, there seem to be (at least) three ways people use the way "objective truth":

One is when people want to refer to objective facts, that is, states of affairs in the physical world. Usually, something is considered an objective fact when it's immediately apparent to every observer (the sun rises in the east and sets in the west) or has been corroborated by a sufficient number of trustworthy observers, ideally using the scientific method.

A second one is when people want to refer to something that is really well justified by reason. For example, it might be the case that certain strategies in chess are considered "objectively better" than others based on a thorough analysis of their likelihood to win games. The criterion here is simply that you can follow the reasoning an agree with it.

Lastly, on a philosophy forum, people might be talking about "metaphysically" objective truths. That is, things that are not just thoroughly justified by reason (though they need to be) but actually provide information about what things are like behind the veil of human perception. I think Descartes "cogito, ergo sum" would fall under this category, though it's no longer considered thoroughly justified.

The common element seems to be the direct opposition to subjectivity. So "objective truth" is supposed to denote something that is beyond an individual's ability to disagree with it.

But as mentioned, we don't need to assume that physicalism means the same as an older variety of materialism, in which it is very difficult to situate consciousness, simply because when we open up the brain, we don't see the qualitative consciousness of another person. It may simply be that the qualitative consciousness hasn't been detected yet, or can't be, using the experimental tools we have at our disposal. This is par of the course in physics - lots of phenomena are postulated but need technology or conditions to develop in order for them to be confirmed. — RolandTyme

But, then the question is: How is that different to just believing what you want to believe? Saying that "it's detectable, but we don't yet have the necessary tools l" is functionally identical to "God did it". It's not a permissible argument in rational discourse, because it's an admission of ignorance masquerading as an argument. If the qualia of consciousness hasn't been detected, for whatever reason, then that is an argument against physicalism. It cannot be turned around and be used as an argument for physicalism by tagging on an "yet".

That's a good question, and I don't know. It's just how it is I guess. I don't attempt to answer why everything, including me, exist at all, or why things exist the way they do. My hypothesis is that things just pop into existence out of literally nothing (the void?), until they pop out. Nevertheless, I still attempt to reason about stuff, however futile or random it may seem. I know there is no point, but what else am I supposed to do, while I "am"? — bizso09

That's exactly the performative contradiction i have been talking about. You claim to believe something, but you act as if you didn't. This suggests that either you only claim you believe it, or you only believe you believe it.

Apart from that, don't all things come from your FPP, according to you view?

Another thing to mention is that FPP by construction is supposed to be singular. I am not able to imagine a world from a neutral "God's eye point of view". Whatever world I can possibly think of can only be observed from FPP, and as such, I use that for the reference point. — bizso09

Yeah, but does this limitation of your imagination say anything about how the world really is?

Based on evidence I have available to me, if I had to choose between a world existing in some kind of objective neutral form, and a world where there must be a single FPP observer, my world being like that I would ipso facto choose the latter. — bizso09

But you choosing the latter is quite different from you proving the latter is actually the case.

I say:

1. There is one me.
2. You are not me.
3. Me only makes statements by numbers.

You say:

A. There is one me.
B. You are not me.
C. Me only makes statements by alphabet. — bizso09

Sorry, but I cannot make heads or tails of that.

The colouring scheme on that is super confusing. Instead of having a single scheme, they average it out per region. On a quick glance, it looks like the US is comparable to the upper half of Europe. But by the numbers, it's worse than any European country except for Turkey.

If the same standard is used for the world map, the resulting picture is misleading.

The reason is because FPP is just a reference point. — bizso09

Yeah but is it the reference point? I don't see how we could know that there aren't other reference points we don't have the same kind of access to.

A better word for observing would be "relating". If two things cannot be related to one another in any way, I don't see how they could possibly exist in the same world. If two things are completely unrelated, then they must be in different worlds. Relation implies some form of connection. — bizso09

A relation can take many forms though, can it not? Is the observer / observed relation the only one? For example, we see many physical things behaving in some orderly fashion, as if they were all related to each other. Granted, being physical things, that relation might simply be their connection to us as an observer. But it might also be relations among themselves.

Also, if something cannot be related to you in a world, there would be absolutely no difference between that thing existing or not existing from your perspective. — bizso09

That's true, but you did not title your post "In practice, I can assume to be the only observer in the world". If you want to prove something, that there is no practical difference doesn't suffice.

And again, there is one significant problem, as I see it, your view runs into. If the only relation in the world is to me, then why do I not start out omniscient and omnipotent? Why do I experience a "perspective" if I am not really looking "at" anything at all?

E. In a world, an FPP cannot view something.
F. In a world, an FPP cannot view another distinct FPP.

I say

24. If an FPP cannot view something, then they are in different distinct worlds.
25. Hence, in a world, an FPP can view everything [18.] — bizso09

We're running in circles here. You keep insisting that everything is contained in a single FPP. I keep asking for a justification. How do you know there are not things that are unobservable, but still real? Unless you can give a reasonable answer, there is little reason to continue here.