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.

Ukraine is getting a $90bn euro loan. That will fund their war effort for the next 18 months.
https://www.ft.com/content/e5691048-696b-44cd-8a0a-50b917e3d62a

Your response assumes that free will can be preserved while catastrophic consequences are engineered away. That assumption is unargued and highly questionable. A world in which harm is always capped, reversed, or divinely intercepted is one in which agency is never finally serious. Moral choice without the real possibility of irreversible failure is not the same kind of freedom. Omnipotence does not require God to actualize every imaginable form of agency, only those that are logically coherent.

You also assume God could indefinitely increase knowledge, power, and resilience without changing the moral structure of the world. But beyond a certain point, those increases collapse epistemic distance. A world that is too safe, too orderly, or too transparently managed would function as direct empirical proof of divine authorship and ongoing intervention. Belief would no longer be freely formed; it would be compelled by evidence. Faith would be replaced by inference, and trust by observation.

The claim, then, is not that suffering is good or instrumentally valuable. It is that certain goods—genuine trust, faith, moral responsibility, repentance, and transformation—logically require vulnerability and risk. Remove those conditions, and you remove the goods themselves. In that sense, the suffering is not “avoidable” without sacrificing the very features that give moral agency its depth.

So the dilemma does not stand. Either God could not eliminate suffering without destroying these goods (which places no limit on omnipotence), or God refrained in order to preserve free, non-coerced relationship (which places no limit on omnibenevolence). What remains is not a logical contradiction in classical theism, but a disagreement over which moral goods are worth having.

No, that's too broad-brush. We have the intuition that a great deal of suffering is bad and that we can conceive of a world without at least some of it. — J

Right. Would the world massively collapse in some way if PMS cramps were 10% less painful?

The theist could construct a theodicy to attack "Creating vulnerable, ignorant, and powerless sentient beings when one could instead create equally omniscient and omnipotent beings knowingly introduces avoidable suffering." For human suffering, the theist claims that it is necessary byproduct of free-will and unavoidable if God wants people to have free-will, which is supposed to be a good thing. So good, it outweighs the suffering that results from bad choices.

The theodicy I would use to attack "Creating vulnerable, ignorant, and powerless sentient beings when one could instead create equally omniscient and omnipotent beings knowingly introduces avoidable suffering." is the suffering is not avoidable. Th existence of beings like us is such a positive thing, it outweighs the suffering that necessarily results from our actions. God could create a realm of perfect beings where there would be no suffering, but that would not be a maximally good state of affairs.

That objection only works if omnipotence is already constrained by the being’s necessary nature. But in that case, omnipotence no longer means the power to bring about all logically possible states of affairs - only those compatible with a specific essence.

The existence of multiple omniscient and omnipotent beings is not logically contradictory in itself; it becomes “impossible” only once additional theological assumptions (such as uniqueness or simplicity) are imposed. Those assumptions are not part of logic, but of a particular model of God.

So premise 2 is not invalidated by necessity alone. Rather, necessity is being used to redefine omnipotence in a restricted way - which concedes the broader point that classical omnipotence cannot be sustained without qualification. — Truth Seeker

I'm not following this. If an O-O being is a necessary being, then it is impossible for an O-O being to bring about "the existence of beings who are equally omniscient and omnipotent." (Premise 2).

Also, suppose God has a compelling reason (unknown to us, of course) for bringing about the existence of beings like us, who need salvation, instead of O-O beings.

Good question. Since sports involve physical attributes, rather than mental, I think it's pretty apparent that transgender women should not be allowed in female sports, since with their male bodies they would have an unfair advantage. — Questioner

What about traditional women's spaces? Suppose you have a man who identifies as a woman walking around in the women's locker room at 24 Hour Fitness with their junk hanging out? I don't think women should have to put up with that.

In summary, gender/identity should take precedence over the physical attributes of the body. — Questioner

How does this apply to, say, women's sports? I think, in those cases, physical attributes take precedence over gender/identity. To take an extreme example, if Mike Tyson in his prime started identifying as a women, he would not be allowed to box in the women's division. That would be insane.

A necessary omniscient-omnipotent (O-O) being would invalidate premise 2: "If a being is omnipotent, it has the power to bring about any logically possible outcome, including the existence of beings who are equally omniscient and omnipotent."

What if omniscient and omnipotent beings also happen to be necessary? In that case, they could not be created, they would already exist. And also, if an omniscient-omnipotent being is necessary, could there really be, say, 12 of them? Or 20? Wouldn't there be 1 or an infinite amount?

If what you are saying is that mathematical and logical truths are true in all possible worlds and hence necessarily true, then yep.

Is there a problem here? — Banno

Mathematical truths are distinct from logical truths. It seems strange that mathematics cannot be reduced to logic when both logical and mathematical truths have the force of necessity.

What about something simple, like 2+2=4? Isn't that discoverable through pure reason?

then aren't mathematical truths also logically true?
— RogueAI

What do you mean by "logically true"? — frank

P or not P; If P then Q, P therefore Q; all bachelors are unmarried men, etc.

If mathematical truths are necessary truths (e.g., there is no possible world where Pi isn't 3.14...), then aren't mathematical truths also logically true? Or at least carry the same weight?

I agree Ai isn't the best way to arbitrate this. You brought it up, though.

It's not the media giving me that impression. It's Charlottesville and Birtherism and the Central Park 5, and Shithole countries, and the leaked Young Republicans chat and dinner with Nick Fuentes and pretending not to know who David Duke is and Mexican rapists and immigrants "poisoning the blood" and so on. MAGA eats that shit up.

ChatGPT, what percent of MAGA do you think are "white nationalists"?

Realistic range: ~10–20% of MAGA supporters hold white-nationalist ideology outright.
That’s not “most,” but it’s a big enough minority to influence the movement’s tone, online culture, and candidate incentives.

I think it's closer to 30-40%, but I can go as low as 1 in 5. The salient point is it's a big enough chunk to affect policy.

I have some of the same thoughts the OP has. But I don't think babies are all that special.

4o. I've heard Gemini is better for the sort of simulations I run. I'm going to try it out.

I've been running alternate history simulations with ChatGPT for awhile. I play different world leaders, give orders, and advance the timeline by 3 month increments wherein it gives me a sitrep and I give new orders, and so on. ChatGPT 4 would lose the thread after about eight years of the simulation. I just did a simulation from 1923 to 1940 and ChatGPT 5.1 only made two minor mistakes.

Mostly because I've watched more than 5 hours of video and I don't know who Fuentes is (including the Tucker interview, Fuentes' recap, and the D'Souza debate). I thought <this> was a good take, but I am surprised at how many people watch Fuentes and how hard he is to pigeonhole. I am not even convinced that the guy himself knows who he is or what he is doing. — Leontiskos

He's a white nationalist Christian fundamentalist who hates Jews.
https://www.mediamatters.org/diversity-discrimination/nick-fuentes-jews-are-running-society-women-need-shut-fuck-blacks-need-be
"Jews are running society, women need to shut the fuck up, Blacks need to be imprisoned for the most part, and we would live in paradise, it's that simple... We need white men in charge of everything again. That's it. Like, it's that simple."

"I like the thesis of Fetterman and others who claim that conservative opposition to anti-Semitism is much more pronounced than progressive opposition to anti-Semitism, but maybe you agree with that."

I agree with Fetterman. There's been a strain of anti-Semitism on the Left for my whole life. People like Louis Farrakhan have been tolerated when they shouldn't have been. The Left is terrible about calling it out.

That being said, I always wonder why the right-wing, which is dominated by Christians who have traditionally been hostile to Jews, loves Israel so much. There's something nefarious about it: [ChatGPT content] Many Republicans—especially white evangelicals—support Israel because their end-times theology says Israel must exist and be defended for biblical prophecy to unfold. In this view, the return of Jews to Israel and Israel’s survival are prerequisites for the Second Coming. The motivation is religious prophecy, not affection for Jews. I wonder how prevalent that view is.

The relevant question seems to ask how American conservatism is situated vis-a-vis an ethno-centric right. I actually don't see a great danger of conservatism flirting with ethno-centrism, and the outcry against Tucker is one of my data points. Conservatism does need to figure out how to manage the pendulum backlash against leftist identity politics, but I don't see ethno-centrism as a huge issue. I don't know if you disagree? — Leontiskos

MAGA is extremely white-nationalist. Did you mention you don't live in America?

I think someone in a position like Tucker's should have Fuentes on and go at him hard, namely by making him answer for the clips that become infamous. Pin him down on his historical inaccuracies surrounding WWII, etc. The guy has too large of a following to simply be ignored. — Leontiskos

Well, that's what should have happened. What actually happened was Tucker fawned over Fuentes, and now Trump is coming to Tucker's rescue. There's an old saying: the fish rots from the head.

That's not our only difference and I don't actually think Trump was lying when he said, earlier, he didn't know who Nick Fuentes was when Kanye brought him over. Trump is not very bright and it's believable he wouldn't have known Fuentes.

But if you're saying that NOW Trump isn't lying when he says he doesn't know who Fuentes is, after the latest kerfuffle? How can you believe that? Trump will have been briefed by now by his very capable campaign manager-turned-chief of staff exactly who Fuentes is and what the controversy is about. It's been roiling the conservative world for two weeks now. Trump is either lying or addled if he claims he doesn't know who Fuentes is at this point (or "not much about him")

What you've been arguing with me, if I'm not mistaken, is the rot in the GOP is relegated to the fringe. You said "Now that Republicans are learning who Fuentes is, we are seeing lots of opposition."
Are we? Trump just had a softball lobbed at him about it. Shouldn't he have said something like, "He shouldn't have had Fuentes on. Full stop." Why pussyfoot around on it? Why give moral support to Tucker when he's being raked over the coals by traditional Republicans over platforming people like Fuentes?

"We’ve had some great interviews with Tucker Carlson, but you can’t tell him who to interview. I mean, if he wants to interview Nick Fuentes, I don’t know much about him, but if he wants to do it, get the word out. Let him. You know, people have to decide. Ultimately, people have to decide."

Trump today.

A deep study found out that 99% of kids put on puberty blockers transitioned, basically making it a pathway to transition whereas 50-89% of them would never have transitioned at all. — Philosophim

There's something going on there. Why is being put on a puberty blocker such a powerful determinant for transitioning? Is the puberty blocker a casual agent for transitioning? Why? Why not just stop the blockers sometime in the future and be part of the 50-89% that don't transition. Is it a correlation? Are kids who get puberty blockers also the kids that are very serious about transitioning?

When people say all this is a bubble, like pets.com, I think: this is the worst these ai's will ever be and already they're incredible. What will ChatGPT10 be like???

Hello RogueAI! To bring it to the OP, do you believe that it is a human right that a person's gender allow someone to enter cross sex spaces? That if a woman is uncomfortable with this, she is against a human right? — Philosophim

No, I think women have a well deserved fear of biological men. I think they have a human right to some traditional women-only spaces and sports. This is easy to do in sports, but incredibly difficult to legislate wrt bathrooms and changing rooms. Suppose you have a biological woman who has transitioned to a man and looks like a man. Do we want him to have to use the ladies bathroom/changing room? And vice-versa? On the other hand, if a biological man is walking around the PlanetFitness women's locker room with his junk hanging out, the ladies have a right to complain.

If inquire into why spaces are separated we get various arguments based on human behaviour: safety and hygiene are the most common arguments I hear. Stuff like modesty/embarrassment/nakedness etc. are not usually talked about as much, but - I feel - often implied. I find the comparison to saunas interesting; they seem to be often mixed without problems: but there are two important differences: while nearly everyone uses public toilets, using saunas is far more optional. And the taboo nature of excreting heightens feeling of shame, which is absent with saunas. — Dawnstorm

This got me thinking about changing rooms in various gyms I've been in. None of them have been mixed, and women have complained about the presence of biological men, as in this story:
https://www.newsweek.com/gym-chain-center-tish-hyman-dispute-flooded-negative-reviews-10989692
This is also an issue in school locker rooms. Girls, understandably, are not always comfortable with biological boys being around them while they're changing.

:up:

There are some opinions that will get you banned, and for good reason. We don't tolerate Holocaust denialism, for example. This whole thread is an embarrassing display of homo and transphobia.

A tomboy girl is a masculine girl, which is bad even if they have done nothing immoral. — Bob Ross

Jamal is being charitable. I would have banned you by now.

Okay, this is a good point. I don't follow politics too closely. I was surprised to see conservatives defending Tucker's platforming of Fuentes and I have been trying to understand it. But this is a noteworthy antecedent. — Leontiskos

Thank you.

"Well this strikes me as leftist propaganda. Most of this has been explicitly clarified or corrected."

Musk's Ai literally called itself MechaHitler.

For example, even left-leaning Politifact published a transcript that shows what Trump actually said. It is a shopworn misrepresentation to claim that Trump somehow gave an endorsement to neo-Nazis."

It wasn't just Democrats who called out Trump over Charlottesville.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gop-sen-cory-gardner-urges-trump-to-call-charlottesville-crash-terrorism/

None of this is happening in a vacuum. The Heritage scandal comes on the heels of
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/14/private-chat-among-young-gop-club-members-00592146
"‘I love Hitler’: Leaked messages expose Young Republicans’ racist chat"

And MAGA darling (before he turned on Trump) Elon Musk's Ai turning into "Mechahitler", and Trump's dinner with Kanye and Fuentes and Trump's use of Naziesque language (https://www.npr.org/2023/11/17/1213746885/trump-vermin-hitler-immigration-authoritarian-republican-primary) and "good people on both sides" after the Charlottesville rally, etc.

Did Kevin Roberts resign? I'm not seeing that. Tucker privately hated Trump after Tucker got caught falling for his election lies. He then explained the texts away in some interview. Publicly (and maybe privately nowadays) Tucker and Trump are bro's. And are you claiming Tucker is not influential in MAGA world? MAGA loves him.

<Here> is Vance on Fuentes.

Sure, but what are Vance and Trump saying about this latest Heritage scandal or about Tucker hosting Nick Fuentes? Nothing. And Trump runs his mouth about everything. So, if the leader of the GOP can't be bothered to talk about it, it's not a big deal. Or at least that's the message the WH is sending: much ado about nothing.

And yet the president of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, just resigned over his support for Tucker's interview of Fuentes. This bodes ill for your theory. Now that Republicans are learning who Fuentes is, we are seeing lots of opposition. — Leontiskos

We are seeing lots of opposition from (what MAGA would call) RINO squishes. Has Trump or Vance weighed in on this?

Why blame China? — baker

I don't blame them. In many respects they're still a developing country. Developing countries use fossil fuels. They're cheap, easy, and reliable. If I lived in a developing country and the choice was between a wind farm that would provide power to my neighbor and a coal plant that would provide power to my neighbor and me, I know which one I would be telling my government to build.

Why buy cheap Chinese stuff? Stop buying cheap Chinese stuff, and China will have no reason to burn so much coal anymore, or even none at all, for that matter. — baker

People should definitely cut down on all the crap they buy.

It's not the Chinese who need to change; it's the rest of the world, esp. Westerners, who are eager to look wealthier than they are and so they buy cheap Chinese stuff. — baker

The rich countries should be helping the poorer ones electrify responsibly with renewables, but the rich countries (e.g., America) can't even fund food assistance programs for their own people.

That meant it was able to cut fossil fuel use by 2 percent, despite a growing demand for power.

Is this supposed to be encouraging? Catastrophic warming is already baked in. By the time China makes a meaningful reduction in fossil fuel use (say half), we'll be well into uncharted territory, and they'll still be pouring GHG's into the air.

It's like asking if there is something it's like being the interaction between you and your romantic partner, say. — Pierre-Normand

Or like asking is there something it's like to be the countless interactions between billions of neurons? That, also, doesn't make any sense to me. Why should a lump of meat, if it has certain kinds of cells arranged a certain way and with a bit of electricity thrown in, have a something-it's-like-to-be-it quality to it? But it does. So is it possible there's something it's like to be the countless interactions between trillions of transistors? But if that's true, are the ai's lying?