Marxism ground Marxism into dirt, not to the mention the millions of people buried beneath it’s rubble. If the bourgeois, unclean, and philandering Marx was able to foresee the disasters performed in his name, I wager he would have written otherwise.

There hardly was any liberalism. The only thing liberal about what we have now is perhaps the rhetoric used to goad people into accepting increasing paternalistic statism and compulsory cooperation. The self-styled Liberal is taken at the face value of his pretensions, and policies which are put forth as Liberal are accepted in the same unreflecting way. See any Liberal party in the commonwealth.

At any rate, Biden is none of those. He, like other state careerists, is but a figurehead for a cabal of effete busybodies who want nothing more than to advance the state’s, and thus their own, interests.

I don’t think it can be said that philosophy is a one-to-one ratio to writing philosophy, so it need not be read in order to practice it. But the fundamentals of logos still apply whether reified in written form or not.

If you want to engage with someone philosophically, though, it is a net benefit to anyone’s education to do it with the best philosophers the world has remembered, at least insofar as their works have been passed down to us.

So one needn’t read philosophy to be a philosopher, but that isn’t to say one shouldn’t.

Chalmers’ zombie twin is not “logically coherent”, to me. He can only assume, and not prove, that “conscious experience” is missing from the zombie. This is because he assumes, and never proves, that “conscious experience” is a fundamentally natural phenomenon. Of course he can imagine it missing from a zombie because he has long assumed it occurs elsewhere.

I think you’re right. He’s reasoning in a circle.

Despite having one of the highest vaccination rates in the world, Singapore is seeing its highest surge of the pandemic, giving us a taste of what could happen with so-called “zero-COVID” countries, which is a euphemism for the authoritarian hellscapes found in China, Australia, and New Zealand. It will be interesting to see if it was all worth it.

In my corner of the Earth, though, the mostly-vaccinated populace still shuffles around with their masks and vaccination papers. Government subsidies are winding down, and all of those who required the handouts to remain afloat during forced lockdowns are doomed to find out what happens when their tax-payer dollars are redistributed elsewhere, and at the whims of careerist politicians. The money used to fund rent, wage, and income subsidies will now focus on programs that “incentivize work”, as if government incentives weren’t the problem to begin with.

In any case, the state regimentation of our lives and livelihoods has been extended.

Before taxes the US used bonds to accrue funding for military activity. Basically the government had to beg for a loan from its people. Nowadays they just steal our money or skim from our purchases and we have no say how it is spent. Maybe bringing back government bonds, and government begging, would help to fund its projects without all the theft and forced labor.

Human action shows that one can generally trust that his community members will not kill him, but it doesn’t show and it doesn’t follow that one should trust their rhetoric. Humans are too fallible and each one exhibits myriad biases, loyalties, conflicting interests. This is especially true when it comes to power and politics. De omnibus dubitandum. It would be epistemically irresponsible to do otherwise.

If people suffer from their beliefs, so much the better. It’s how we learn. But if we make them suffer for their beliefs, whether through censorship or campaigns of hatred, no credential or expertise will make our rhetoric palpable.

Belief is often so tangled with identity that if you challenge a person in the former you essentially ask them to concede the latter.

Biden’s new choice for Comptroller of the Currency, who supervises national banks, is Saule Omarova, a veritable commie. First Biden wants to monitor American’s accounts if they have total annual deposits or withdrawals worth more than $600, now he has chosen a bank regulator who thinks asset prices, pay scales, capital and credit should be dictated by the federal government, a true nutter, someone who earned her stripes at Moscow State University on a Lenin Personal Academic Scholarship.

Bidenomics in full effect.

I read the Doha agreement. It was the one good thing to come out of the Afghan war in decades. What you don’t mention is how it was backed by NATO and the UN Security Council, our allies. You don’t mention the intra-Afghan talks, anything about the process, and Biden’s failure to live up to and enforce the agreements. You don’t mention any of it because you’re crippled by anti-Trumpism.

Biden didn’t care about the agreement. He violated it.

The state is necessarily and increasingly paternalistic. So it is no wonder that its most obsequious subjects are invariably callow. In the UK, the welfare state architect used the phrase “cradle-to-grave” to describe his social security scheme. Now that’s a telling phrase.

It seems likely to me that anyone living in that sort of system—raised in it, educated by it, paying for it—is nearly doomed to become dependant on it. And to be honest, I can hardly blame the man, his money stolen and used to build the system, when he seeks some sort recompense in the form of what it can offer. It’s beyond the point of repair now. The best we can do is raise and educate our children otherwise and hope for the best.

It’s too late. EU leaders ran to contribute to world-wide fascism far quicker than Trump did. They’ll need to beg the man for forgiveness.

It’s not surprising, ssu, that you would attempt to shift blame back to Trump. I would expect nothing else. But it wasn’t Trump who abandoned Americans and Afghan allies while sneaking away in the night. It wasn’t Trump who left billions of dollars of equipment in the hands of the Taliban.

The drone strike was significant because, for the Americans, it was the last act of war in that 20 year campaign. The fake news immediately spread the government line that the drone strike was in retaliation for an “ISIS-k” attack. General Mark Milley said it was a “righteous strike”. These lies only served, however briefly, to distract from Biden’s withdrawal disaster. It was a fitting end to the whole charade.

And now they’ve all moved on. No accountability. Nothing. No protests. We live in a world where a president can be impeached twice for utter nonsense, while at the same time the predecessor and his officials can get away with lies and murder and gross incompetence.

There is some question begging occurring in the scenario. The conclusion is assumed in the premise. Why would consciousness occur in one but not the other? In the world without consciousness the people are not sentient. Why are they not sentient? There is no consciousness.

I don’t think so because idealism is inherently solipsistic. The idealist cannot view past himself, or at least believes he extends beyond his own boundary.

I just wonder why we would insert consciousness into our view of things. For whatever reason we often shoehorn these essences over nature, but is never actually deduced from it. After all, the term “conscious” describes things, and is not itself a thing. We add the suffix, make it a thing, and the world is supposed to conform to it.

I’m just pointing out there is no recipient to your behavior. It affects no one but yourself. The suffering you prevent, and the beings you’re saving, are imaginary. So why pretend?

The ideology undergirding all factions is that of statism, as it invariably will be. No other principle can reign over this one because the intention of any political party is to seize the state machinery, thereby attaining control of it, and thus power over everyone else. The people, facing the progressive loss of their own power, are left to use their measly right of suffrage, to vote for some power-seeking careerist, perhaps with the view that he possesses some remnant of a principle similar to their own, but never a 1-to-1 ratio.

So to answer why the statist would vote for a party that contradicts his own principles, it’s because he couldn’t do otherwise.

What if a baby was guaranteed to be born into a lava pit and you can convince the parent not to do that? You would, correct? The thing is you are not seeing life as properly that volcano.

You would only prevent the baby from being born in a volcano if you convinced her to have birth elsewhere. You cannot prevent a baby from being born in a volcano if there is no baby.

None of this is to say that life is good, or that one should have children, only that an antinatalist could never prevent harm and injustice by not having children. It could be said that his efforts go as far as preventing fertilization, or maybe pregnancy or birth, but that’s about it. His efforts cannot be stretched beyond that.

My arguments still stand from the previous conversations. I remember your analogy about preventing suffering in the future by removing an explosive someone might step on. If there is no one to step on the bomb you’re not preventing the suffering of anyone.

To prevent the suffering of X, X must first exist. You claim to prevent the suffering of X, but X does not exist. So whose suffering are you preventing?

We went over this haven't we? I have responded to this haven't I? You don't believe people can prevent future outcomes. Essentially your (weak) argument is basically.. "I don't believe in conditionals.. wah wah wah". But even other forms of ethics relies on "Could happen IF.."

I believe people can prevent future outcomes, I just don’t believe you can prevent suffering and injustice without other people involved. The question of “whose suffering are you preventing” still remains.

I am not explaining my objection yet again to this kind of argument.

I do not require you to do so. But I will state it anyways. You’re preventing no suffering and no injustice. Your behavior effects no one but yourself, so as far as ethics go, it’s all self-concerned and self-congratulatory.

I haven’t, though I love a good memoir. You’re probably right. But when I think of Eckermann’s Conversations with Goethe I find comfort that not all is lost on the man of wealth and power and genius.

I don’t know if it’s a problem with the way I think but I cannot imagine a group where I cannot see one. I prefer to speak in terms of reality, where a group or community is an actual, physical grouping of people rather than a thought. A real group implies proximity, interaction, and relation, which are wholly absent from human taxonomy and classification.

That is true. Insofar as these false identities are freely chosen one can hardly avoid to use them. It’s in the census, for Christ’s sake. This is the legacy of racism.

Wealth and power can come at great effort and cost, and often take entire generations to achieve. Rarely is tribulation absent and contentment fully present. Better to embrace the former to better appreciate the latter.

It’s not a group, is my only point, because no such group exists outside of the human mind. It’s as arbitrary as grouping people by shoe size. Any commonality of skin-color or eye color or height cannot serve as a basis for meaningful conclusions because arbitrary demarcations necessarily lead to arbitrary statistics. This can only serve to distort the real problems. Worse, the use of such statistics can justify injustice, as we’ve seen. Culture is formed through proximity and interaction, regardless of the superficial characteristics of those involved, so we should avoid making such specious connections.

I think you’re right that it does depend on the choice of how one seeks fulfillment, whether to be happy or interesting. One who seeks contentment must seek ways to dull the tribulations of life, while one who seeks to be interesting might embrace them. Perhaps Taoism isn’t the way to go.

I can’t help but cringe when someone brings up “black-on-black crime” for the same reasons I cringe when I hear about “white privilege”. Two racist assumptions occur the moment we consider such propositions: that human beings can be demarcated on grounds of race, and that this arbitrary demarcation has some bearing on individual behavior. From there it isn’t long before we’re talking about essences like “blackness” and “whiteness”, and other absurdities. But crime is an act of individuals, not groups, so it would make more sense to look at individual circumstances rather than invent racial ones.

We’re all to blame. State power grows in inverse proportion to the decrease in social power. We’ve given up on educating and rearing our children, passing that responsibility to the state, then wonder why people seek statist solutions. It’s all they’ve ever known.

That is more accurate.

There is no difference if the injustice is caused by the de facto situations of being alive in the world as a human animal or by the hands of a person. That is the big leap that's hard for people to understand. Do not put people in these circumstances in the first place. Why is that so hard? Can a human prevent this for someone else?

Also, why the hell would it matter if everyone started from the same unjust position? It's still unjust, just for everyone, instead of one particular set of people. Global antinatalism doesn't discriminate.

You could never point to this “someone else” you’re saving from this so-called injustice, because they do not exist. In other words, you’re not preventing people from being put in these circumstances. You’re not preventing pain and suffering and injustice at all. You cannot save imaginary people.

Individualism places the locus of cultivation in the individual himself. So despite the general societal views of what is considered success and happiness, the individual may still consider himself far more successful and happier than others, regardless of his lot in life.

As you know, I can never follow your injustice angle because when the supposed injustice occurs there is never any victim of it. At no point in the continuum of procreation is anyone forced to do something against their will.

So I think it’s wrong to say someone is placed into this situation, as if taken from the city of god and positioned in the world by the whims of someone else. It presupposes a different existence. Rather, in the world is where we begin. Each of us start and end here. There is no other state of affairs.

I find the whole antinatalist project, at least insofar as it makes ethical claims, to be humbug on those grounds. There are many reasons to not procreate, but to not procreate in order to protect a person from suffering and pain and depression is nonsense.

I imagine that’s a perpetual thing with you, Mike.

I like what you wrote there. But polarization is also the logical consequence of free speech, or at least speech less confined by the conventional limitations. We’re at a point where anyone’s views can be expressed and viewed on some medium or other, which has hitherto been unseen. I suppose that’s a kind of democracy. But it necessarily leads to people reading or listening to views they’re not used to, and finally to censorship.

It’s not the discourse itself that is spiralling out of control, for an increasing accessibility to avenues of expression and communication is arguably an encouraging occurrence, but the reaction to it will lead to far greater perils.

NOS, he was just an inept leader. Simple as that. A great commentator and could engage with his supporters yes, but the position wasn't for the Tweeter in Chief. That's not leadership. In that role, tweeting and engaging the public discourse he was great, at least Twitter was happy.

Certainly taking the media commentary at face value would lead one to such beliefs, but in comparing him to other leaders worldwide, I don’t see it. It’s as simple as that.

It’s writing, and yes I’m serious. The coverage is vastly different.

https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2021/04/28/at-100-day-mark-coverage-of-biden-has-been-slightly-more-negative-than-positive-varied-greatly-by-outlet-type/

All of it in the context of unjust political investigations and impeachment inquiries, not to mention the fevered media treatment unlike the world has ever seen, peering into every facet of his life. No wonder the strange admiration for authoritarian leaders: they don’t have a corrupt opposition party and administrative state obstructing their every word and deed.

Epic OP on Trump as a real and mortal danger to American constitutional democracy.

More deep-state, neocon dinner theater from Kagan. The specter of Trump’s fascism was already proven to be a canard, and has long been eclipsed by the efforts of run-of-the-mill collectivist politicians, most of whom have ruled by diktat, seized entire economies, erected police states, denied basic liberties, prohibiting people from leaving their house, opening their business, going to work, going to school. The worst thing is this is the type of febrile projection that ushered it all in.

To operate a business and employ others one needs the profit to do so, but he must also cover the costs of his forced labor whenever the state comes around to take it. So of course the profit motive exists.

What is philosophy?

At its worst philosophy is the overestimation of the power of language, manifesting in form of rhetoric concerned with creating certainty in symbols and doubt in the world. At its best it tries to settle matters of justice and conduct.

One can be a gentleman and, out the other side of the mouth, write authoritarian and paternalistic piffle. So long as his strength in manners and dignity override his cowardice in emotion and thought, he can do no harm. Even Marquis de Sade was a gentleman.