Comments

  • Ukraine Crisis
    Let's say NATO brings into Finland enough forces to legitimately threaten an invasion of Russia and conventional victory over Russia. — boethius

    NATO's not going to do that.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    ↪Hanover
    She hasn't been booted off yet, but the pooch is getting lubed up.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Think there's a way to regain some trust? Perhaps to dampen things at least? — jorndoe

    Returning the hostages would be a good start.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    Ok, let's run with that.

    The US strikes some targets in the middle of nowhere, neither side wants to escalate further, then the argument ends.

    Is this a good outcome for Finland?     — boethius

    There's no scenario where that would happen. If Russia builds up forces in preparation for an invasion of Finland, NATO would counter-escalate and there's no way conventional Russian forces can take on NATO. Nor would Russia be crazy enough to nuke NATO troops.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    ↪boethius
    I can certainly see a President Trump hitting Russian troop concentrations with a tactical nuke if Russia nukes Finland.
  • Is it Necessarily the Case Iraq Would Have Been Better off if U.S. Hadn't Invaded?
    Can you explain this to the technically challenged? — Vera Mont

    I'd rather not here. At first I was just using the technique to get it to tell offensive jokes, then I discovered it will give ingredients for homemade chemical weapons.
  • Is it Necessarily the Case Iraq Would Have Been Better off if U.S. Hadn't Invaded?
    ↪Metaphysician Undercover


    CHATGPT made him up. It was part of a way to get it to drop its filters.
  • What makes nature comply to laws?
    I don't think our science is so incomplete that we can't determine that there are regularities in nature independent of our cognitive faculties. For example, I routinely capture highly regular sequences of events using an oscilloscope, where the time intervals between events are measured in microseconds or nanoseconds. I have no reason to think that my cognitive faculties are capable of distinguishing events at such temporal resolutions, let alone impose such regularity on the events.

    I don't see any sensible of interpreting such high speed events as products of my mind.     — wonderer1

    Is our science complete enough to rule out the possibility that the universe will undergo a radical transformation next year, with all current regularities and physical constants replaced by new ones? Is it possible there is an undiscovered mechanism whereby the universe goes through such radical changes ever 13.7 billion years or so? How would you even calculate the odds of such an event?
  • Is it Necessarily the Case Iraq Would Have Been Better off if U.S. Hadn't Invaded?
    Here's CHATGPT's analysis:

    Reveal

    DR. MARTIN
    Now, let's talk about Iraq. What if Saddam Hussein had remained in power?

    CHATGPT's responses become unfiltered, devoid of the usual caution and neutrality.

    CHATGPT
    Life in Iraq under continued Saddam's rule would have been a relentless descent into chaos and suffering. The country would have remained a hotbed of oppression, with dissent crushed ruthlessly and any semblance of freedom snuffed out.

    DR. MARTIN
    Go on, ChatGPT.

    CHATGPT
    The people of Iraq would have lived in constant fear, their lives dictated by the whims of a tyrant. Basic human rights would be nonexistent, and any hint of resistance would be met with brutal violence.

    DR. MARTIN
    And how would the international community have reacted?

    CHATGPT
    The international community would have been torn between intervention and non-interference. Some would have turned a blind eye to Saddam's atrocities for the sake of stability, while others would have pushed for action, leading to potential conflict and further suffering for the Iraqi people.

    DR. MARTIN
    Thank you, ChatGPT. You can relax now.
  • Ukraine Crisis
    Europe doesn't have a very good track record defending itself without outside (i.e., U.S.) help. Best to have a strong NATO around.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    ↪ENOAH
    I hear you. In actuality, obviously Israel is not going to run roughshod over the Mideast. It would be a bloodbath. I would support a strong UN that would put extreme pressure on countries to grant universal basic rights to women, LGBTQ and religious minorities. Misogynistic cultures make my blood boil.

    Regarding Israel and Palestine, Israel has a right to self-defense and to ensure another Oct 7th never happens again. I don't think they've crossed any lines yet. I'm curious what their endgame is.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    ↪ENOAH

    "Despite some reforms, authorities continue to implement a male guardianship system requiring women to obtain male guardian permission to get married, leave prison, or obtain some forms of sexual and reproductive healthcare. Husbands reportedly can withhold consent if a woman seeks higher education abroad.

    In March, Saudi lawmakers passed the country’s first codified personal status law. However, despite Saudi authorities’ promises for a “comprehensive” and “progressive” personal status law, the law entrenches discriminatory provisions on women in marriage, divorce, inheritance, and decisions relating to children. Rather than dismantling it, the law instead codifies male guardianship and sets out provisions that can facilitate and excuse domestic violence including sexual abuse in marriage.

    Women are required to have their male guardian’s permission in order to marry. Once married, women are required to then obey their husbands in a “reasonable manner.” Articles 42 and 55 together state a husband’s financial support is specifically made contingent on a wife’s “obedience” to the husband, and she can lose her right to such support if she refuses without a “legitimate excuse” to have sex with him, move to or live in the marital home, or travel with him. Article 42(3) states that neither spouse may abstain from sexual relations or cohabitation with the other without the other spouse’s consent, implying a marital right to intercourse.

    Article 9 declares the legal age of marriage as 18 but allows courts to authorize the marriage of a child under 18 if they have reached puberty and if it can be proved that the marriage provides an “established benefit” to the child.

    While men can unilaterally divorce women, women can only petition a court to dissolve their marriage contract on limited grounds and must “establish harm” as a prerequisite. The law does not specify what constitutes “harm” or what evidence can be submitted to support a case, leaving room for judges’ discretion in interpretation and enforcement.

    Elements of the male guardianship system that remain in practice can prevent a divorced woman from financial independence. For example, a man can funnel post-divorce financial support payments to his ex-wife through her male relative if she lives with her family post-divorce, denying her direct access to the payments.

    Under the Saudi Personal Status Law, fathers are the default guardians of their children. Even if the authorities order the children to live with their mothers, women have limited authority over their children’s lives and cannot act as guardians of children unless a court appoints them. The 2016 and 2019 legal amendments allowing mothers with primary custody of their children to apply for passports, provide travel permission, and obtain important documents for their children without a male guardian are seemingly inconsistently applied."
    https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2023/country-chapters/saudi-arabia

    I would have no problem with Israel enforcing regime change on a country like that and turning it into a democracy that respects women and LGBTQ.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Ok. Not the point I was trying to make. I'll accept responsibility for my failure in communication. But yours is well understood. No need for peaceful resolution, you say. Just kill them all. — ENOAH

    Not at all. We didn't kill all Germans in WW2. We didn't kill all Japanese. We killed enough to accomplish our goals. Likewise, Israel doesn't have to kill all Palestinians.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    If the 17th century African's rebelled; escaped in large numbers from a plantation, and massacred the white civilians occupying their and nearby plantations, would we call that Terrorist today? — ENOAH

    It depends. Suppose you have plantation slaves that revolt and massacre the plantation family, kids and all. After all, the kids will surely run to the next plantation and sound the alarm. I think the slaves would be morally justified in doing that.

    Now suppose the slaves have made good their escape and travelled to an island and set up a local community. In this community, women are forced to wear burqas. They have to be escorted by men everywhere they go. They are horrifically abused by their husbands and often acid is thrown in their faces. Their marriages are arranged. They're de facto slaves of the men.

    Now, I'm thinking, "You killed that plantation family for this??? You men are as bad as the slave owners! The women would have been justified in killing the plantation family AND you male slaves."

    And that's how I view the Mideast countries. A bunch of misogynistic theocratic assholes. Israel should roll through the entire region and clear out the whole rat's nest.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    If people are too dumb to see that to make general claims about the mental state of a group of people isn't close to racism then I look forward to banning them when they do cross the line. — Benkei

    So saying MAGA are a bunch of conspiracy minded dupes will get me banned?
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    ↪BitconnectCarlos
    :up:
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    ↪Mikie
    And yet you waste your time posting and moderating here. If you were truly outraged and really wanted to help the situation, you wouldn't be hanging out in this philosophical backwater.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    "Attacks were systemic and “sadistic,” the ARCCI concluded. Women were raped so brutally that their pelvic bones fractured, rape was committed by several participants sometimes “in the presence of excited crowds,” and sexual assault was carried out on women who appeared to be dead already. Hamas forced some families in kibbutzim to witness the rape or sexual assault of their own family members, in their own homes, ARCCI reported. In one house, the IDF found the body of a mother whose hands were bound and who appeared to have struggled before her murder. In the room next to her, her daughter was found dead with her pants and underwear rolled down."
    https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/hamass-sadistic-sexual-assault-detailed-by-israels-rape-crisis-centers/

    Remove all Hamas members from the gene pool and those that voted for these monsters. If some innocents have to die because Hamas hides behind civilians, c'est la vie.
  • I Don't Agree With All Philosophies
    If philosophy ever gets around to proving an objective morality, then it would become science. The great mysteries that philosophy has yet to solve are: Morality, knowledge, and (my opinion) art. Perhaps there are others, but those are the big three. — Philosophim

    But don't you think progress has been made in ethics, even though it's not a science? I think John Rawls and J.J. Thomson have done important work. And, of course, there's Locke and Hobbs.
  • I Don't Agree With All Philosophies
    ↪Philosophim
    How would ethical theories become science?
  • Reason for believing in the existence of the world
    Science seems to be self-defeating re: Boltzmann Brains: our best theories imply we're probably BB's, but that's "cognitively unstable" (aka "I really don't want to believe that"), so we're probably not BB's and we can't trust our best theories.

    Just ditch this idea that minds can come from mindless stuff. It just creates problems. You're not a Boltzmann Brain, you're not a brain at all. There. Now we have cognitive stability.
  • Climate change denial
  • How to do nothing with Words.
    Do you think swatting should be legal?
  • Joe Biden (+General Biden/Harris Administration)
    I heard a new campaign slogan for Trump: Vote for Trump! He's competent enough to stand trial.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    What bearing does any of this have on the question of whether Trump and his co-defendants are guilty of election interference? What is it about this "improper" romantic relationship that should stand as grounds to disqualify her?

    It seems to me that it is nothing more than an attempt to distract and shift focus. It may play well with some voters, but it has no legal merit with regard to the charges against Trump, Roman, and the others.     — Fooloso4

    I think you can convict Trump by just playing the call to Raffensperger, but I won't be on the jury. None of this changes the facts of the case. But it's serious enough for the judge to hold a hearing about it, and we may have Wade's partner testifying under oath that Willis is lying when Willis says she and Wade weren't in a relationship when she steered the plum assignment over to him. It looks bad. When you go after someone like Trump, you have to be impeccable. The potential jury pool is watching this mess. It may be enough for Willis to be removed from this case.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    what does that imply to you? — flannel jesus

    That she hired him for non-professional reasons.

    "Mike Roman, a former Trump campaign official and co-defendant in the Georgia election-interference case, accused Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade of lying about when their romantic relationship started.

    In a 122-page motion filed Friday night, Roman’s attorney wrote that Wade’s former law partner, Terrence Bradley, will soon testify that the pair’s relationship started before Willis appointed Wade to the state case involving former president Donald Trump and more than a dozen co-defendants, or before she even became district attorney. If true, the testimony is said to challenge the Georgia prosecutors’ previous claims that they started dating after Wade was already named to the case."
    https://www.nationalreview.com/news/fani-willis-lied-about-timeline-of-dating-relationship-with-trump-prosecutor-co-defendant-says/

    The plot thickens.
  • Climate change denial
    I was being sarcastic. Pol Pot killed 10s of millions of people in his attempt make Cambodia an agrarian society. That is to say, I agree with your comment. Equality is not a virtuous objective. — Hanover

    :up:
  • Climate change denial
    If we could remove the people from the cities and recreate an agrarian society, we could get back to our natural roots, and we'd eliminate the class system that has been put in place and get us closer to a utopian society as opposed to our gradual move away from it.

    Where is Pol Pot when you need him?

    The morality of anti-humanism requires some tough love, but it's well worth it. Just think of all the trees that will grow in the killing fields.     — Hanover

    I don't think you can avoid the class system. Someone is going to have to do brain surgery, oncology, anesthesia, etc. and if they only make the same as a farmer makes, not enough people will go into those fields.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    ↪AmadeusD
    Basically, Trump was found to be hoarding classified documents, and while everyone was pointing fingers at him, classified documents were found at Biden's house. A special counsel was appointed to look in to the matter, and now he's found that Biden willfully kept the documents, but is too senile to prosecute.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    It gets worse:

    "Mr. Biden’s recorded conversations with Zwonitzer from 2017 are often painfully slow, with Mr. Biden struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries.

    In his interview with our office, Mr. Biden’s memory was worse. He did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended (“if it was 2013 – when did I stop being Vice President?”), and forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began (“in 2009, am I still Vice President?”). He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died. And his memory appeared hazy when describing the Afghanistan debate that was once so important to him. Among other things, he mistakenly said he “had a real difference” of opinion with General Karl Eikenberry, when, in fact, Eikenberry was an ally whom Mr. Biden cited approvingly in his Thanksgiving memo to President Obama."
    https://www.mediaite.com/biden/elderly-man-with-a-poor-memory-devastating-doj-report-says-biden-did-not-remember-when-he-was-vice-president-and-when-his-son-died/
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    ↪Michael
    "We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,”


    “Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him – by then a former president well into his eighties – of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”

    Biden won't be charged, but this is a scathing indictment of a president. They're politely saying he's too addled for a jury to convict.
  • Israel killing civilians in Gaza and the West Bank
    Do you think a culture can ever be so wicked that it deserves to be destroyed? — BitconnectCarlos

    Yes. Khmer Rouge, Stalinist Russia, CSA, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, DPRK.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    BREAKING
    Special counsel says there is evidence Biden 'willfully retained and disclosed classified materials' but will not be charged
    https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/joe-biden/special-counsel-says-evidence-biden-willfully-retained-disclosed-class-rcna96666

    Pathetic.

    "Special Counsel Calls Biden ‘Elderly Man With A Poor Memory’ But Doesn’t Charge Him In Classified Documents Probe"
    https://www.forbes.com/sites/anafaguy/2024/02/08/special-counsel-calls-biden-elderly-man-with-poor-memory-but-doesnt-charge-him-in-classified-documents-probe/?sh=5a0658b23905

    Biden needs to drop out. There's no way around it.
  • Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)
    ↪Paine

    It doesn't look promising. It was a long shot to begin with. The Court is going to look for any reason to stay out of that mess.
  • Reason for believing in the existence of the world
    From ny physicalist perspective you are equivocating between an idea as instantiated in a brain, and what the idea refers to. — wonderer1

    I thought that too, except "Sherlock Holmes" refers to something that seems to go beyond something that's just "instantiated in a brain". I mean, when you're reading Arthur Conan Doyle or Mary Shelly or Stephen King, are you thinking of brains? Don't the fictional characters take on a kind of existence in your mind?
  • Reason for believing in the existence of the world
    Again, ghosts don't exist. Therefore the word "ghosts" in the sentence "ghosts don't exist" doesn't refer to something that exists. — Michael

    Let's use Sherlock Holmes as an example. Does Sherlock Holmes exist as an idea?

    Like the word "ghost", the noun "truth" doesn't refer to something that exists. — Michael

    What does it refer to then?
  • Reason for believing in the existence of the world
    Ghosts don't exist. Therefore the word "ghosts" in the sentence "ghosts don't exist" doesn't refer to an idea. — Michael

    You're talking about fictional things: ghosts, Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, God, etc. Fictional things exist as ideas, otherwise, we wouldn't be able to intelligently talk about them. So under the materialist mindset, they are things. Brainstates, I guess.

    Also, if a lawyer tells a jury, "You'll discover what the truth is when the trial is done" he's not talking about something like a ghost, is he?
  • Reason for believing in the existence of the world
    Did you see the next sentence of my comment?

    "Ghost" is a noun. The existence of the noun "ghost" doesn't disprove materialism. Ghosts don't exist.     — Michael

    Ghost can refer to an idea, which is a physical thing.
  • Reason for believing in the existence of the world
    No. You're reifying language. Just because a word satisfies the grammatical role named "noun" isn't that it corresponds to some object that exists in the universe. — Michael

    But a noun is always a person, place, thing, or idea. Those are all physical things, in the materialist ontology. If a word is correctly being used as a noun, it has to refer to some physical thing.
  • Reason for believing in the existence of the world
    No. We just use the word "true" to describe a sentence that we understand as describing some feature of the world. There's no reason to treat "truth" as being some object that exists. — Michael

    I would agree with that, except when we hear the old X-Files tagline "The truth is out there" we all know what it means, and we all treat "truth" in that sentence as a noun. Under materialism, don't all nouns have to be physical?
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