What country do you live in?

Putin is Russia? I'm asking this to make this clear, were Dubya or Trump "America" and is Zelensky "Ukraine"? — Jack Rogozhin

Putin is the leader of Russia. Had he not wanted to invade Ukraine, it wouldn't have been invaded. Why did Putin want Ukraine attacked? What do you think was his primary motivation?

"What do you mean by "Russia"?"

I mean the country Putin is president of. If you prefer: why did Putin invade Ukraine? Although, that's an awkward sentence. Why did Putin direct his armed forces to invade Ukraine?

Why do you think Russia invaded Ukraine? What was their primary motivation?

No more than biological processes are identical to chemical processes. — T Clark

Isn't every biological process a chemical process?

That is a lot like Gettier's clock example in his paper on knowledge and justified true belief.

Suppose reality is as materialists claim it is. Wouldn't they then have knowledge of "base reality"?

Very well said. Materialists seem to have abandoned the idea of denying consciousness is a thing or waving it away by claiming mental states are identical to brain states. Panpsychism and Integrated Information Theory are all the rage now. I don't think eliminative materialism will ever make a comeback. It's hard to understand how it became popular in the first place, it's so intuitively wrong.

"In the audio, recorded three days before the election and published by Mother Jones on Wednesday, Bannon told a group of associates Trump already had a scheme in place for the 3 November vote.

“What Trump’s gonna do is just declare victory. Right? He’s gonna declare victory. But that doesn’t mean he’s a winner,” Bannon, laughing, told the group, according to the audio.

“He’s just gonna say he’s a winner.”"
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/14/steve-bannon-audio-trump-declare-victory

You replied to this post less than a day ago. You're just trolling at this point.

Bannon will likely testify that Trump had a scheme in place to claim the election was stolen if he was losing. That Trump, Bannon, Stone, etc. all talked about it and went forward with it. Wouldn't you agree that would be very damning? What do you think a jury would think of such testimony?

Well, India and China are not going to give up fossil fuels. They arrived late to the party. They resent the First World wagging their fingers at them after stuffing themselves silly.

I see.

Is your position that we can dig up and burn gigatons of fossil fuels and nothing bad will happen? Doesn't that seem a little naive, even without getting into the science?

And why does the spellchecker not recognize "naive"?

it is the declines in sea ice at the other pole—in the Arctic—that are pushing the global sea ice trend downward.

Yes, the global sea ice decline is worrisome, don't you think?

"Sea ice around Antarctica reached its lowest extent on February 21, 2023, at 1.79 million square kilometers (691,000 square miles). That’s 130,000 square kilometers (50,000 square miles) below the previous record-low reached on February 25, 2022—a difference that equates to an area about the size of New York state."
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/151093/antarctic-sea-ice-reaches-another-record-low

Bananas. People keep slipping on bananas. That too. :groan: — frank

Banana slippage is an existential threat?

It must be a quote from Donald Trump because he is the only one that can speak about his thoughts, intentions, and beliefs. If an eye witness can quote him then that would suffice for me. — NOS4A2

"In the audio, recorded three days before the election and published by Mother Jones on Wednesday, Bannon told a group of associates Trump already had a scheme in place for the 3 November vote.

“What Trump’s gonna do is just declare victory. Right? He’s gonna declare victory. But that doesn’t mean he’s a winner,” Bannon, laughing, told the group, according to the audio.

“He’s just gonna say he’s a winner.”"
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/14/steve-bannon-audio-trump-declare-victory

Does that suffice?

Yea, we'd need a global government probably. Or if a new power source was just so much better and cheaper than fossil fuels, that would do it as well. — frank

I think we're going to need a world government with some teeth because there are existential issues that keep popping up: climate change, Ai, genetic engineering, nanotechnology.

at some point the issue of climate change (and the ecological crisis more generally) clashes with some aspect of the ideology one holds dear. — ChatteringMonkey

I don't think that's it. I think people want cheap energy, vacations, and cars. They also want to combat climate change, but they really want cheap energy, vacations, and cars. It's ideology clashing with consumerism.

Do you only speak in questions? Is this an interview? — NOS4A2

Obviously, my point is there are a whole lot of people Trump has hired over the years who say terrible things about him now and/or implicate him in crimes. Are they ALL deep state operatives? Of course not. I also don't think you think Trump got more votes than Biden, which leads me to my next question: why do you support Trump over DeSantis? DeSanit's former employees don't hate him. He says the election wasn't stolen. He hasn't been indicted. Etc. Doesn't Trump's stolen election bullshit bug you?

Also, everyone grapples with questions of purpose, meaning, ethics, duty, etc. I think these questions are a lot more important to people than how old the universe is or what Dark Matter/Energy are.

Physics necessarily leads to metaphysics. Philosophy can't be avoided.

I don't think it will be. I think Biden will have a senior moment ala Mitch McConnell and Trump will be in jail or under house arrest. Maybe Harris vs DeSantis? DeSantis wins in that case. This country is a long way away from electing a black woman to be president.

I don't know what you're trying to say.

Are you agreeing with some kind of judgement unavailable to the rest? — Paine

I took Metaphysician Undercover to mean the lack of Trump supporters here is a mark of quality.

:100:

Is there only one Trump supporter on this whole forum?

The cold temperatures in Russia are not irrelevant to the people who live in Russia. — Agree to Disagree

And don't forget the researchers in the Antarctic! Imagine how much more pleasant life would be for them if the Earth warmed up 20 degrees or so.

That was Trump's government. Sessions recused himself over undisclosed conversations with the Russian ambassador. Republican Trump appointee Rod Rosenstein appointed Republican Bob Mueller as special counsel. Republican Trump appointee Chris Wray led the FBI that cooperated with Mueller. Why do you think so many of Trump's own people ended up investigating him?

Also, did Biden get more votes than Trump in the 2020 election?

My guess is because they are incompetent, deep-state bureaucrats. But maybe it was to clear their names from the blizzard of lies by then surrounding the hoax. — NOS4A2

Are Mike Pence, Bill Barr, John Kelly, and James Mattis also "incompetent, deep-state bureaucrats"?

Also: who got more votes in 2020?

The government perpetrated the greatest fraud against the US in modern history with the Russia hoax — NOS4A2

That was Trump's government. Sessions recused himself over undisclosed conversations with the Russian ambassador. Republican Trump appointee Rod Rosenstein appointed Republican Bob Mueller as special counsel. Republican Trump appointee Chris Wray led the FBI that cooperated with Mueller. Why do you think so many of Trump's own people ended up investigating him?

Also, did Biden get more votes than Trump in the 2020 election?

The Earned Income Tax Credit is a nice way of redistributing wealth.

I agree completely. Nepotism pales in comparison to insurrection. But it's like George Carlin said: "'Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that". This Hunter Biden crap will make the average voter think "a pox on all your houses" and they'll draw a moral equivalency between Trump and Biden, and there goes a huge advantage Democrats have. I'm almost thinking Biden should step aside, but there's no way this country will elect a black woman as president.

I think Biden's done a good job governing, but even liberal outlets are starting to question some things.

"NBC News hasn’t corroborated this reporting, but Lowell’s confirmation, as reported by Business Insider, that Biden knew some of his buyers is, in and of itself, alarming. It raises the possibility that buyers could use his art as a way to buy political influence or favors through his connections to the president."
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/hunter-biden-art-sales-democrat-donor-identity-rcna96411

This constant drip drip of shady activities is making it harder for Democrats to draw a contrast to Trump's rampant corruption.

And furthermore that the DA that handled the investigation was a Trump appointee and stated unequivocally that there was no political interference in the case. — Quixodian

And there are two whistleblowers who stated under oath that there was.

"IRS supervisory special agent Greg Shapley, and a second agent, Joe Ziegler, claimed there was what Shapley called in testimony a pattern of “slow-walking investigative steps” into Hunter Biden, including during the Trump administration in the months before the 2020 election that Joe Biden won."
https://apnews.com/article/hunter-biden-irs-justice-department-congress-republicans-32d9f33fb0d05c483d76926504d45bef

Also:

“I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled,” according to testimony the whistleblower gave to Congress, which quotes from texts that are allegedly from Hunter Biden to the CEO of a Chinese fund management company.

The message continues: “Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand. And now means tonight.” The message goes onto say, “I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.”
https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/28/politics/hunter-biden-joe-biden-2017-text-message/index.html

What's the evidence Joe Biden had anything to do with it? — Relativist

No evidence, except it's his son and his son is getting preferential treatment from the justice department. It looks bad.

No. But as I said, there's no evidence the DOJ is being influenced by Biden as Republicans allege. — Relativist

I don't agree. The plea deal that fell apart was a sweetheart deal. It looks bad.

I wanted him to successfully go after China, we almost had a DACA-for-border-funding deal, the Covid vaccine was a legendary accomplishment.

Have you ever criticized Trump here? It's not a hard question to answer. Why do you keep dodging it?

Making inferences from such experiences is only works if:
A. You are not yourself a Boltzmann Brain
B. We are not inhabitants of a Boltzmann Universe — Count Timothy von Icarus

(A) yes
(B) what is a "Boltzmann Universe"?

Cosmology at its best. A PhD thesis could be written on this observation. — jgill

The lack of observation of any Boltzmann Brains anywhere (they're not limited to space) suggests the density of Boltzmann Brains is rather low. If it were high, we would have seen some by now, right?