You'd think so, except that, as I've pointed out, Harris was rhetorically aligned with America's longstanding immigration laws, not against them, not trying to change them. So ... maybe not on immigration. — BenMcLean

There's some wiggle room a Dem politician has. A lot of old school dems like myself were turned off with Biden's open border policy.

Hey, I appreciate you taking the time to answer my questions honestly.

I think you are giving a pass to behavior that would make you apoplectic if the other side were doing it.

If the Democrats had a young, handsome, non-gay white male version of Bernie Sanders to say that, especially if he had a legit family with kids, then he'd be in the White House right now. Policies wouldn't matter. Appear normal, be JFK, appear genuinely more in touch with the voters than the other guy, that's all. — BenMcLean

Any Democrat politician has to toe the line on certain policies to win the primaries. No matter how telegenic a person is, they're not going to be the Democrat nominee if they don't check certain boxes: pro-choice, pro-gay rights, pro-environment, pro-gun control, pro-immigration, etc.

If Trump doesn't give the stolen election "fight like hell" speech on the morning of Jan 6th, do you think the rioting still happens?

Over Kamala Harris? Over any Democrat? Hell yes I did. I had to hold my nose a little because of some problems with Trump, but as far as I am concerned, if your reality denial is so deep that you can't say what a woman is then you have to be kept out of power over anything anywhere ever, no matter how trivial. — BenMcLean

This is always strange to me, and before we go further, I want to ask if you think the 2020 election was stolen and if you think Trump tried to steal that election. I'm thinking primarily of his phone call to Raffensperger asking him to find exactly the number of votes Trump needed to win, his pressuring of Mike Pence to not certify the election, and the various fake elector schemes. Do you think any of that constitutes an illegal effort on Trump's part to stay in power.

If the inflow of foreigners has a questionable effect on the economy, then you basically have an "immigration-debate" like in Europe. — ssu

It's not just a questionable effect on the economy. The British grooming scandal wasn't economical. There are real concerns with male immigrants from countries with institutionalized misogyny.

What I would like to happen is for the new American Right to:
1. Reject anti-white policies & rhetoric, but on the grounds of a moderate liberal civic nationalism, not white nationalism.
2. Stop seeing "socialism" as the boogeyman and instead work to get responsible people appointed and responsible policies made for real governance, not just opposition.
3. Actually get control of Big Tech, reigning it in so that tech works for the benefit of people and not the other way around.
4. Pursue pro-natalist, pro-family, pro-home-ownership policies across the board. See if we can make friends with labor.
5. Stay home from foreign wars. — BenMcLean

You didn't mention the conspiracy theory lunacy that has taken over much of the Right. Don't you think that's a big problem?

One area where I see the American Left as correct is that Trump really did lose the 2020 election and his continued insistence that he really won it is blatant reality denial -- always a serious problem. — BenMcLean

Did you vote for Trump in 2024?

Trump's actions on immigration are just a more consistent enforcement of existing laws that both parties voted for and neither party was willing to repeal and that's all. — BenMcLean

There's more to it than that. Sending immigrants to CECOT was never policy before Trump. The Trump Administration behaved in despicable fashion with Abrego Garcia, violating a court order by sending him to CECOT, than dragging their feet on bringing him back, then throwing bullshit criminal charges at him, and then having him go free when they couldn't produce a proper deportation order. And I don't remember previous administrations sending out masked ICE agents. Joe Rogan, who supported Trump in 2024, said the ICE raids are insane, and the country as a whole has given Trump bad marks on immigration (separate from how they view border security). And since we're talking about National Review:

"My guess is that at some point in your life, you’ve been falsely accused of something, and you didn’t like it one bit. Now imagine how it feels to be a Latino U.S. citizen and worrying that someone might accuse you of being an illegal immigrant, or you might be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and some ICE agent thinks he should slap handcuffs on you.

Yes, U.S. permanent residents age 18 or older are required to always have a valid green card in their possession. But if you’re a U.S. citizen, you’re not required by law to carry anything. And remember, a driver’s license is not necessarily proof of citizenship, because 19 states and the District of Columbia allow illegal immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses. Are Latino U.S. citizens supposed to carry around their passports at all times? Wear your best suit everywhere you go, and think you look too well-dressed to be an illegal immigrant?

For some Latino American citizens, this is not a hypothetical concern:

At least 35 events celebrating Hispanic heritage across 21 states have been canceled or postponed, with most organizers citing concerns relating to the political climate and possible interactions with ICE, according to a Washington Post analysis. One example: Organizers said they couldn’t risk going forward with the Salvadoreñisimo Festival — usually held in Maryland’s Montgomery County — out of fear that the event would lead to detentions.

Abel Nuñez, executive director of the Central American Resource Center in D.C., said there has been a “dampening of all activities that put people in danger.” . . .

As Trump’s “Operation Midway Blitz” took off in Chicago in early September, residents of the heavily Mexican neighborhoods of Pilsen and La Villita noted how quiet and still their streets had become.

Maritza Lara, a vendor selling fruit out of a cart in Pilsen, estimated her sales had dropped about 50 percent from the day neighborhood WhatsApp and Signal groups started reporting ICE vehicles in the area.

“It’s pretty serious. There’s no people around,” she said. “Nobody knows how it works anymore. Even if you have papers, even if you have everything, they’re still stopping people.”
https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/gee-how-did-latino-americans-become-so-alienated-from-the-gop/

Yeah, apparently we're going to be running Venezuela. We're so good at that sort of thing.

Maybe people will be glad Maduro is gone and will welcome a change? It's not like the Middle East, where you have historic enmities like Shia vs Sunni Vs Kurds.

I think they want to install that Nobel Prize winner, Maria Machado.

It might be that science is just not set up to answer questions like "what is it like". Myself, I don't think that question has an answer at all. The only way to know what it is like is to experience it. — Ludwig V

As an idealist, I agree.

Isn't science supposed to be explanatory? If science cannot answer the "what is it like?" question, isn't that a huge failure?
— RogueAI

No. — Questioner

:roll:

but doesn't provide any information about the content of the emotional state- the famous what is it like?
— RogueAI

Why does this matter? — Questioner

Isn't science supposed to be explanatory? If science cannot answer the "what is it like?" question, isn't that a huge failure?

My point is that there should be some healthy skepticism about how good neuroscience is at detecting emotions. It can detect physical correlates of emotional states, but doesn't provide any information about the content of the emotional state- the famous what is it like? question. And in the example I gave, neuroscience cannot tell us whether we should believe a person who claims to not feel any emotions.

Sounds like Mary is either delusional or lying. Brain trauma can interfere with the emotional response, but that would manifest in physical symptoms, like monotone speaking, no change in facial expression, avoidance of eye contact and neutral body language (i.e. relaxed and staying still in a situation where they should be tense)

Also - if she really "felt no emotions" the injury to the one of these structures would be detected: hypothalamus, amygdala, hippocampus — Questioner

Isn't it possible that a small unnoticeable change to a region of the brain could result in her condition? Or it could be a psychological condition that a brain scan will never pick up?

Let's go back to my earlier question about Mary: Suppose Mary falls and hits her head and says she can't feel any emotions anymore. Her body still displays all the physical signs of emotions, but Mary claims to never actually feel any emotion anymore. How would neuroscience verify this claim? Suppose her brain is studied and everything is normal. Do we not believe her?

I’d also like to mention that it is not an objective of neurobiology to ask “why?” but to ask “how?” — Questioner

OK, how does the brain produce consciousness? Your answer is to give it time, science will find a way. Pretend it's a thousand years in the future and we still don't have an explanation. At what point do we stop giving it time and realize there's some fundamental problem going on, like a category error?

Neuroscientific investigation has a whole battery of tests to measure emotion. — Questioner

I would say neuroscience studies the physical processes and correlates associated with emotional states. If you were unable to orgasm, neuroscience is not going to help you understand what an orgasm feels like. Suppose Mary falls and hits her head and says she can't feel any emotions anymore. Her body still displays all the physical signs of emotions, but Mary claims to never actually feel any emotion anymore. How would neuroscience verify this claim? Suppose her brain is studied and everything is normal. Do we not believe her?

"That's outside the purview of this discussion."

Is it? I thought this was about the primacy of consciousness. Is it only about the primacy of human consciousness?

But does the scientist need to feel the actual sadness, or the love, or the anger, that the subject of the research feels in order to discover how that emotion is generated? — Questioner

The scientist needs to actually verify the emotion is really there, before investigating the cause. With humans, this is easy. We all just assume we feel emotions because we're all built the same way, but what about alien emotions? What about machine consciousness? Will we ever be sure a machine is feeling the emotion it says it is? How on Earth could we verify that?

However, we can conceive of the object floating upward, or vanishing when released. These conceptual possibilities are not physically possible. — Relativist

Quibble: they are physically possible, under certain conditions: you're in a simulation, you're a Boltzmann Brain, the laws of nature, for whatever reason, suddenly change, some magic-seeming alien technology is at work

Would you say that absent a necessary being, the universe is a result of either an infinite series of causes or a series terminating in an uncaused cause?

Is Kastrup a traditional idealist in that he only believes minds and ideas exist? For an idealist, something is alive if it has a mind, otherwise it's just an idea/mental projection.

the existence of time and space — Astorre

Are you talking about physical time and space (space-time)? Also, isn't "there is at least one thinking mind in existence" axiomatically true?

I think I'm going to do what Athena has been doing.

There's no context that excuses what he said. He is using scripture to support his point that trans people are a "middle finger" to God and Thomas is an "abomination".

He also lied about the 2020 election being stolen.

If all minds in the universe suddenly vanished, would Holmes still exist?

Yes! I was going to bring up possible worlds. And Sherlock Holmes. Doesn't he exist in some fashion? What about undiscovered digits of Pi? Do those exist?

:100:

Who's "them"? Trans people???

“The person who pulled the trigger (on Charlie) is part of the demonic transgender ideology that warps the minds of our young children, that poisons them, that is antithetical to creation itself … God doesn’t make mistakes. Transgenderism is a lie from the pit of hell … and I’m sick of seeing transgender violence and murderers in my country … what a horrid and wretched ideology … it’s time to kick in doors, come on FBI, do some door-kicking, round them up.” — Questioner

That's scary.

Thank you! unless it struck you as one of the most stupid, lol

He was banned specifically for being bigoted. "We have been very tolerant, and Bob was warned many times, but he persisted in advancing racist, homophobic, and transphobic positions."

His framing of the term 'bad' and 'moral' were strange to say the least. — I like sushi

Strange? It was bigoted and stupid. It would have been one thing if Bob had been intellectually honest, but arguing with him was like talking to smoke.

Let's start simple: you think death threats should be illegal, right?

We're better off without his pseudo-intellectual bigotry.

:up:

I am largely sympathetic. I was playing Devil's Advocate. Leibniz claims this is the best of all possible worlds. As a theist who believes in an omnipotent omnibenevolent god he has to claim that. But it's prima facie absurd. THIS world is the best of all possible worlds? That's very hard to swallow. Would the world collapse in some way if God made toothaches 10% less painful? Would faith be negated by better evolved backs and knees? Good discussion! And full disclosure, I used ChatGPT to polish some of my responses.

I think what’s happening here is that the bar for “necessity” is being set so high that no theodicy could ever clear it. You’re asking for a proof that no possible alternative form of agency could preserve moral seriousness while eliminating extreme suffering. But omnipotence doesn’t require that every imaginable design be realizable, only that logically coherent ones are. Saying “God could have done better” isn’t an argument unless a coherent alternative is actually spelled out.

On the “serious agency” point: I’m not claiming catastrophe defines moral responsibility. I’m saying that a world where consequences are always capped, reversed, or preemptively blocked is not just a safer version of ours, it’s a fundamentally different kind of moral environment. Things like prisons, safety nets, and error correction only make sense against a background where irreversible harm is possible. They mitigate risk; they don’t erase moral finality. If final devastation is structurally impossible, agency loses depth in a way ordinary safeguards don’t touch.

You keep appealing to alternative “designs” of agency, but none are actually described in a way that preserves everything at once: meaningful choice, deep responsibility, transformation, and real stakes, without allowing catastrophic misuse. Pointing out that the human model involves vulnerability doesn’t show that vulnerability is optional. It might be doing essential work. Until a clear alternative is on the table, appealing to omnipotence just becomes hand-waving.

On epistemic distance: this isn’t about certainty versus uncertainty in general. It’s about whether the world clearly advertises a supervisory intelligence that steps in whenever things get too bad. A reality that reliably prevents extreme suffering, corrects outcomes in real time, and neutralizes catastrophic harm wouldn’t just be “nicer” or “more informed.” It would obviously be managed. At that point, belief wouldn’t be freely formed, it would be the default inference. Trust would turn into compliance. That’s not a slippery slope; it’s a predictable consequence of systematic intervention.

And I agree that faith and trust don’t require specific horrors like cancer or genocide. But the claim was never that each instance is necessary. The claim is that a world with genuine freedom must allow the possibility of horrors, and once that’s allowed, their actual occurrence follows from creaturely action and natural processes, not divine micromanagement. Treating suffering as if it were individually selected misses the level at which the theodicy is operating.

So I don’t think the dilemma comes back unchanged. The real disagreement is whether moral depth, free trust, and non-coerced relationship can exist in a world that’s systematically engineered to prevent extreme loss. You think yes. The theist thinks no, because agency, epistemic distance, and moral finality hang together. That’s a real disagreement about values and metaphysics, not a proof that classical theism is incoherent.