The US government is now one of Intel’s largest shareholders, kicking off fears within Trump’s own party of socialism, nationalization, state capitalism, you name it. The realignment of the parties continue.

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/investors-worry-trumps-intel-deal-kicks-off-era-us-industrial-policy-2025-08-27/

Your stoicism compelled you to spend time, search my name and Biden’s. I love living rent free.

Unfortunately that was 5 and a half years ago. I love how Trump is ramming this stuff down your throat. Three more years.

Properties, qualities, characteristics, and so on, are mental or linguistic abstractions of the things described, or even the descriptions themselves. Your morphological derivations “redness” and “carness” indicate this. They are derivations, not sets or properties.

I think all forms of protest are stupid. But I do defend your right to be as stupid as you want.

I’m not against it at all. You just don’t know what you’re talking about.

I think it’s to get his opponents to defend flag burning, personally. Tim Walz already encouraged people to do so.

Trump’s EO regarding flag burning is so stupid, so easily dismissed both by law and by precedent, that it makes me believe there is an ulterior motive. Hate speech laws are the relics of the typical nanny state. People should be able to burn flags, holy books, and burn rubber on rainbow-painted crosswalks without fear of state reprisal. The dumbest idea of the Trump administration since floating the vape ban.

DOJ releases Ghislaine Maxwell transcripts:

https://www.justice.gov/maxwell-interview

Sweet sweet justice.

the FBI just raided the home of arch-neocon John Bolton. This is awesome.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/22/politics/john-bolton-fbi-search

The New York appeals court has struck down Letitia James’ $465000000 civil penalty against President Trump. It was one of the more egregious examples of Anti-Trump lawfare that we have to date, but the repudiation of the New York attorney general and the anti-Trump factions of the judiciary is welcome news. Is the thumb being lifted from the scale?

https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/appeals-court-throws-trumps-454-million-civil-fraud/story?id=124848691

These are commonwealth countries:

https://thecommonwealth.org/our-member-countries

Point missed.

I’m not clicking on your links, bub. One day you’ll just have to make an argument.

You can watch in anti-Trump circles the increasing fanaticism in regards to Trump and Putin. The last thing they want is Trump to succeed.

Unfortunately, the ineffectual leaders of other countries have their peoples inured to the old diplomacy where a lot of talk and not much else happens. So the doubled efforts in the myth-making around the Anchorage summit and Trump’s meetings with Euro and Ukrainian leaders reveal the same old unhinged desire to set the stage, tell the history, while Trump is out there making it. If they get it wrong again it’s just another data point among many of their failing as a political class.

As the commonwealth peoples once again become serfs, Americans enjoy increasing freedom.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/08/19/uk-apple-backdoor-data-privacy-gabbard/

No one really cares what people from subordinate protectorates think, anyways.

The censors and their cheerleader finally fall off.

I don't know if I'm understanding you. Are you thinking there is a physical mechanism for consciousness within us, and we would be able to see it if our physical senses pointed inward?

Not only that but all mental and physical phenomena.

Firstly, so what if I made them up? We are speaking about principles, and setting laws. You think we don't need to consider what might happen?
Secondly, these scenarios *have* all happened, at least partially. So this whole talking point of "imagined scenarios" or whatever is garbage. They are realistic scenarios, you just don't like them because they show the flaw of an absolutist position on speech.

We have seen them. Socrates put to death because he corrupted the youth. Julian Assange jailed for leaking top secret info that embarrassed the government. Dissidents jailed for opposing the draft during WW1, based on the analogy that they were yelling fire in a crowded theater. Even the judge who came up with that dictum came to regret doing so.

These aren’t principles. They’re excuses. I don’t like them for the reasons I stated: they’re used to justify censorship.

I want the freedom to state any opinion, or good faith reporting. But yes, I am quite happy for the government to limit other speech e.g. say I can't claim a product is safe for human consumption when I know it isn't.

And there we have it. The problem is if you give them the power to decide what you can or cannot say, or anyone else, you don’t get what you want. You’ve effectively given them your freedom. You only get what they allow you to have.

The illusory aspects of consciousness is the result of how little information it gives about ourselves, the body. For instance our senses largely point outwards, towards the world, so I am unable to see what is going on behind my eyes. The periphery is so limited that I am completely unaware of what is going on inside my body save for the few and feint feelings it sometimes offers.

If that conscious periphery gave us enough information about the body I’m sure consciousness wouldn’t be a such a mystery, and ideas like panpsychism wouldn’t even be entertained.

So I have put it to you that you are not engaging with the problems with absolute free speech and gave three examples to illustrate the problems.

Your response is to...just straight up ignore the examples. Again. And just imply again that any restriction on speech must be about the government deciding what views are allowed.

If you aren't going to engage with the points, why are you on a discussion forum?

You gave three examples of speech you fear, ones you completely made up I might add. Then you finished it off with the “yelling fire in a crowded theater“ canard, which was used as a legal dictum to justify jailing critics of the First World War. It’s a good reminder that people will imagine scenarios where censorship could possibly be justified in order to justify jailing dissent.

I’m not sure why you refuse to answer the question. Do you want the government to decide what you can say or read?

Michael, Amadeus, me, Mijin, others - all totally different people who take radically different approaches on other issues, and who are all able to articulate complex ideas - all of us have said the same things in response to you.

There is something wrong with your position. You may still be right. None of us can see it. (Has anyone? It’s kind of stoic in a sense, is that what you are trying to say?). But nothing you are saying makes sense to anyone else.

That should give you some pause.

That’s right, I’m the only person who has ever made such arguments—ever, as far as I can tell. I’m not surprised people disagree with it because they’ve been believing the opposite for their whole lives. And their beliefs give them the false sense that they have some sort of linguistic power over others. Why would you want to lose that?

That, to me, is why you’re employing the bandwagon fallacy, as others have already. You think it does something to me; maybe it makes me feel lonely over here all alone. But it doesn’t. And it doesn’t do your little group any favors when you have to resort to such efforts.

Me slapping my hand across your face. That is not an effect in the world until your face resists my hand and your brain makes that slapping sound and sensation for you to enjoy as your own experience.

You are saying my slapping you across your face did not cause you to feel and hear a slap. You are saying your own brain caused these things and it is fully up to your free self to feel the slap, and/ or slap me back. Me, I am utterly not responsible for what happens in your experience.

That is what you are saying. Whether you like it or not.

Of course, that’s not what I’m saying. As already indicated, blows like a slap transfer enough force to move and cause changes in the body, so much so to cause a litany of effects, including causing someone to lose consciousness, to bruise, to cut their lip, which in turn can lead to subsequent behaviors. I’m saying words do not have enough momentum, force, potential energy, and so on, to cause any such changes, and thus cannot lead to subsequent actions and behaviors.

That you’d have to resort to such a false analogies and other fallacies should give you some pause. How can you be so obstinate and unreflective?

All you have to do is tell me what parts of my body you can change and move with articulated sounds and marks on paper. Once doing so you can describe how these changes result in different actions and behaviors. For now, how is your theory any different than believing in telekinesis and sorcery? After all, you believe it so you ought to know your reasons for doing so.

Of course it’s possible they spent about $7 million on the campaign without realizing that pairing the “Good Genes” slogan with a blonde, blue-eyed white woman might draw attention from the woke—because, as I’m sure you will agree, the woke are always so sensible and discreet.

If those phenotypes are the first things that come to mind when you hear the phrase “good genes” then you’re the problem to begin with. To me it was obvious they were pointing to the other parts of her body, especially the one’s she’s known for. This discrepancy and the racism inherent to the woke backlash is what makes it so stupid, and evil.

Your critique of “wokeism” focuses on certain highly visible activist actions and social media flashpoints, whereas I’m more interested in the underlying intellectual currents that can, at least in principle, inform fairer treatment of others, without inevitably leading to the authoritarian excesses you’re concerned about.

It is the intellectual currents that inform their treatment of others, and that treatment manifests into the highly visible actions and social media flashpoints we’ve seen too many times, and the countless ones we haven’t seen.

As I see it the necessary mental segregation required to understand and believe these currents begets actual segregation, such as race or sexuality-based “affinity graduations”, or diversity hiring. Perhaps their premises are too nationalistic and racialist to lead anywhere else. So I’m not sure it’s even possible to inform fairer treatment of others in principle.

Yes, free speech invariably causes harm to the censor. We all know that. It’s why they censor. And they will make up imaginary scenarios to justify it.

It’s clear from your own examples that you want the government to decide what you can and cannot say.

It’s true: you or I would not have written what we wrote had either of us written something different. But I do not believe in counterfactual causation, and doubt causation as a folk science. The brute fact that you scrolled to my response, read it, thought about it, and formulated a response puts you at the helm of your actions at every instance. You could have just as easily not opened up the thread, not read it, not thought about it, and not formulated a response. “Guided by the context”? Might as well say your actions were caused by your computer, the owner of the website, the utility companies, the government, the universe.

It doesn’t matter anyways. You can say your actions were caused by the Big Bang, for all I care. If I remove causation my argument still stands: you cannot move or change or alter any person into some other action with words.

Well, no, the cause of you reading what I write is you. You’re moving your eyes, digesting the words, and so on. I haven’t caused you to do anything.

Sorry, maybe I didn’t pick up your argument.

Personally, I make that point for many reasons: so others can read and think about it if they choose to, so I can hear arguments against my position, to challenge my own beliefs etc., none of which include altering the world with words in any way. So there is plenty of reasons, but zero effects on the world. Zero irony there.

So no, you don’t got it.

I don’t see the irony because I’m not trying to alter the world or other minds with speech, as if we had the power to do so. I’m writing here for my own enjoyment.

By pointing out that people cannot alter the world with speech as much as they claim they can, and that people overestimate the powers of speech, my point is that you have no reason to censor others. That’s it.

And who decides what those legitimate reasons are?

When Bertrand Russell was appointed to the City College of New York, conservative residents opposed it, filed lawsuits, and eventually got his position revoked because they feared his atheism and immorality with women. Clearly they believed those were legitimate reasons to protect “public safety”. But the act of censorship itself was entirely unjust.

Should those people be the ones to decide? What about the church or government, who have all been notoriously tyrannical when it comes to the suppression of dissent?

That’s the sort of appeal to tradition they used to defend slavery, but you see it often to defend censorship. No nation has ever had absolute free speech, therefor we should keep censoring people. The mere existence of the tradition of censorship is no argument for its continuance.

Another Trump-brokered peace deal, this time between Armenia and Azerbaijan. “The deal includes an agreement that will create a major transit corridor to be named the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity.”

https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-white-house-armenia-azerbaijan-069379e9c4a058c96af38afbf4684829

Your insults don’t do you any favors because that’s clearly how you mask your evasions, like a squid shooting ink. The more you do the more you get on yourself and the dumber you end up looking.

Yes, I believe I am my body. That’s not a controversial belief, but here you are feigning surprise.

@ssu

It looks like the military has joined the fray against the drug cartels, just as you predicted.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/08/us/trump-military-drug-cartels.html

Attorney General Pam Bondi has ordered a grand jury investigation into the intelligence regarding President Trump and Russia in the run-up to the 2016 election.

She has directed Justice Department staff to begin legal proceedings and ordered a federal prosecutor to present evidence to a grand jury about the matter to secure a potential indictment, according to a source familiar with Bondi's efforts. It is unclear what the charges would be and who would be charged.

https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/doj-russiagate-trump-grand-jury-investigation/

The political scandal that duped hundreds of millions might finally generate some accountability.

You have explicitly moved the goal post. It is not under your volition. That is the point. You have no control over it (other than by brute force, which is present among all these arguments). You simply don't. It isn't even connected to your brain, so there's no way for you to control it. What's called the "intrinsic pacemaker" is what's making sure your heart keeps beating. You have no knowledge or control of this.

“Signals from your body’s nervous system and hormone from your endocrine system control how fast and hard your heart beats. These signals and hormones allow you to adapt to changes in the amount of oxygen and nutrients your body needs.”

“Your heart has a special electrical system called the cardiac conduction system. This system controls the rate and rhythm of the heartbeat.”

https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/heart/heart-beats

Do you believe that I am not my cardiac and nervous systems?

I see you don't grasp reality. That's fine.

What’s your excuse?

“ Pupil: The pupil is the opening at the center of the iris through which light passes. The iris adjusts the size of the pupil to control the amount of light that enters the eye.”

https://www.nei.nih.gov/sites/default/files/2019-06/parts-of-the-eye.pdf

“ The auricle (pinna) is the visible portion of the outer ear. It collects sound waves and channels them into the ear canal (external auditory meatus), where the sound is amplified.”

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/how-the-ear-works

“The iris (pl.: irides or irises) is a thin, annular structure in the eye in most mammals and birds that is responsible for controlling the diameter and size of the pupil, and thus the amount of light reaching the retina.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iris_(anatomy)

“ The auricle is a paired structure found on either side of the head. It functions to capture and direct sound waves towards the external acoustic meatus.”

https://teachmeanatomy.info/head/organs/ear/external-ear/

“ Your eyelids are a protective covering for your eyes, shielding them from outside objects and light.”

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/body/eyelids

You have almost no control, whatsovever, over your heartbeat. It is separate to even your brain's control center. You do not control the vast, vast, vast majority of what happens in your body. You couldn't possibly...

Then I have to ask once again, “what does”?

If anything else in the universe that is not me can be shown to beat my heart I will concede. But if it is the case that the cardiac conduction system controls the heart rate, or branches of the nervous system, you’ll be left trying to prove how I am neither my heart or my nervous system, advocating some sort of dualism. This is why I always repeat that free will is often an issue of identity.



Sheer force of repetition and the proliferation of URLs cannot convince me that understanding is an effect of words, or that words cause understanding. You have to explain how words can cause understanding.

Like I said before, you both control the amount of light that enters your eyes and direct the sounds that enter your ear, and convert any and all stimuli into impulses you can understand. So what effect exactly has the lights and sounds caused? How do they produce that effect?

As stated, and always unaddressed, the error is in moving the words to the subject position and the listener to the object position. This grammatical trick allows you to make the case that the words are always acting upon the listener rather than the other way about.

While it’s true that we use cues from the environment such as sounds that might indicate danger to make decisions, it is untrue that those cues move us around, act upon us, and make us do so. In short, they do not have the causal power people pretend they do.

As for your counterfactual dependency, if the American revolution did not happen, you would not have wrote those words. Therefor the American revolution caused you to write those words.

Not everything our body does is voluntary.

Just as “one’s heartbeat” refers to a particular thing in the body, not the body as a whole, so too is “one’s will”. If eliminative materialism is correct then one’s will is a particular kind of neurological phenomena, and only bodily behaviour caused by that particular neurological phenomena is “being willed by yours truly”.

Voluntary or not, the thing that does the action is operating under its own power, is self-governed, autonomous, and freely determined by itself.

None of those noun-phrases refer to any singular or particular thing outside of language. They’re just abstractions.

Well, I am my biology, my brain activity, my thoughts and so on, so to me this is another instance of everything being willed by yours truly.

Good times.