I've lived in L.A. County most of my life. I remember the Rodney King riots, wondering if the rioters would make it to my area. What's going on now is nothing like that. I've seen soccer rioting worse than this.

Obviously his statement is racist and wrong, but I don't find throwing back and forth quotes of politicians saying unhinged things particularly helpful in discussion. — MrLiminal

Oh, that's not the only thing:

"A speechwriter for the Trump administration has been fired following reports that he spoke at a white nationalist conference in 2016.

The White House confirmed to US media on Monday that aide Darren J Beattie, a former visiting instructor at Duke University, had been dismissed.

Mr Beattie had appeared on a panel at the HL Mencken Club conference, which is attended by white supremacists."
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45249154

And now he's an undersecretary at the State Department. Of all the qualified people in the country for that position, we hired THIS guy? After firing him years ago for being a racist? Nobody else could do that job? Really, now.

"If you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, then you ain't black!" - Joe Biden

It seems perhaps so. We could put this down to Biden making a gaffe, but that's cop out material. Given that his administration put forward at least a few overtly racist policies or guidelines (COVID recovery, ARP, COVID mortgage relief guidelines etc..) it isn't that hard to see why people are going to equivocate.

Its hard to think Trump or Biden are actually racist - they both played to their audience. Does this mean everyone is racist? Probably all the loud people, yes. — AmadeusD

It was terrible that Biden said that, but what do his actions show? Does he act racist? Did he hire someone who said "competent white men must be in charge" or did he prioritize putting the first black woman on the Supreme Court and arguing in favor of affirmitive action? What similar things has Trump done to help blacks? I can't think of anything.

There are legitimate differences of opinion about the size and scope of government but those who disagree with us are not traitors or enemies of the state. — prothero

I think we crossed a Rubicon in 2020 when Trump tried to steal the election. In the aftermath, there was a bipartisan vote to impeach and convict him, but it fell short of conviction. Still, very rarely do members of a president's own party vote to convict in an impeachment.

If the deportations are racially motivated, why is that not already happening? — MrLiminal

Why is what not happening? The foreign aid scenario I talked about? Because some things are a little too on the nose even for the Trump Admin to pull off. They have the Midterms to think about. If the racism becomes too overt, they suffer politically.

An undersecretary of the state department tweeted this:
"Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work"

Does that happen in a non racist administration?

It's funny how people thousands of years ago warned us about people like Trump. Truly there's nothing new under the sun. Regarding human behavior, that is.

My understanding is that the South African immigrants were brought here legally, whether or not you agree with the government's reasoning for doing so. — MrLiminal

It would be legal to double foreign aid to all countries with majority white populations and eliminate foreign aid to all countries with majority black populations. But what would you conclude about an administration that did that? You wouldn't spare a second thought about that? That wouldn't seem just a tiny bit racist to you?

If there weren't one, then I'm opposed to it. Like I said, you're asking me for an opinion on the validity of the court analysis, and I just haven't looked into it.

If you want to make the case that an opinion was rendered in error, you could well be right. It sounds like you're just asking me to be outraged though. I don't know. Maybe the US has outrageous laws. That's not a basis for ignoring them. — Hanover

Hanover, are you an American citizen? The Abrego Garcia case has been in the public eye for months here. It's like the Dreyfus Affair. These kinds of individual cases often come to symbolize different political factions. Are you trying to tell me that when people voted for Trump they voted for immigrants to be mistakenly sent to third world prisons?

Really. That's what it means to be a nation of laws. — Hanover

What law was it that said Abrego Garcia should be sent to CECOT?

Do you see anything racist in brown immigrants being sent to CECOT and white South Africans being welcomed as refugees? Anything at all?

It's awful. I'm ashamed to be an American.

These are complicated legal questions, and so I'd really have to read the court opinions on it. — Hanover

Really? You need a court opinion to figure out whether a non El Salvadorian person should be sent to an El Salvadorian prison?

What about returning Albrego Garcia back to the states when the Trump Administration admitted they sent him there by mistake? Do you agree with the way the Trump Admin handled that?

No. That's a legal document. — Hanover

Do you think we should be sending immigrants to an El Salvadorean prison?

And the Constitution is just a piece of paper with some words, right?

It's very complicated. You could be here seeking asylum, or protected by DACA, or on a student visa, or on a waiver by the Biden Administration which has just been revoked by the Trump Administration, or on a tourist visa or probably a dozen other things. It used to be that we wouldn't split up families and if you were here illegally and had a kid here, who was a U.S. citizen, you were safe. That was called an anchor baby. But the Trump Admin has no qualms about breaking up families.

Could we compensate them in other ways besides letting unvetted masses breach our national borders and become our responsibility? Helping them stabilize their own countries sounds like a better solution.

As I see it, a government's responsibility is first and foremost to its citizens. — BitconnectCarlos

It is, except a past president called us a shining beacon on a hill and we have a proud history of welcoming immigrants and one of our iconic monuments has this inscribed on it:

"Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Is that just talk to make us feel good, or are those words to live by?

:up:

No need to mention the Laken Rileys of the world. — BitconnectCarlos

On the other hand, there have been umpteen number of people who's lives have been turned around because they were able to escape from horrific conditions in their home countries and come here. Does that balance out? Maybe not, but now consider that WE, the U.S. are responsible in large part for the horrific conditions in those countries because of our insatiable drug appetite and constant meddling in internal affairs to keep the communist menace at bay. Now does it wash out? You probably still don't think so, but I think we have a debt to repay for those countries we fucked over and letting their people in is a small way to repay it, even if it means the occasional Laken Riley.

Jesus, Amadeus, just ask chatgpt to explain it to you!

"I'd also posit this is a privilege, rather than right, but that could be nitpicking here."

Yes, it's like getting pulled over for speeding and sweettalking the officer into a warning: I was brought here by my parents, I have no memory of my home country, please have mercy.

I was pushing back against Hanover because there is precedent for letting people here illegally be safe from deportation and it was upheld by the Supreme Court.

They don't age out. They have to renew every two years so we can verify they're keeping their noses clean.

That is in pursuit of the normal process of citizenship gaining though, right? It's not going to be indefinite and it doesn't actually grant people anything but a stay. — AmadeusD

No, DACA recipients don't have to be pursuing citizenship. You get a S.S. number and eligibility for state id.

The law is clear, and it does not allow those that make it here in violation of the law to stay once they've been in the US a certain amount of time. — Hanover

It does though. DACA is still in effect. The latest court ruling on it is people already in DACA can renew and are safe from deportation.

It's difficult to determine what percentage of demonstrators on the street are protesting Donald Trump's mere existence; protesting ICE raids; protesting law enforcement, or protesting all three. Rounding up people--be they vicious gang members, drunks, illegal immigrants, scoff-laws of all sorts--isn't a pretty sight. — BC

Neither Bush nor Obama had this problem, and they deported countless people. That was because they approached the problem in a humane way. They didn't revel in the suffering that deportation causes. Enforcing the law was the point, not the pain that it caused. ICE didn't operate like jackbooted thugs.

With Trump and MAGA, the cruelty is the point. Instead of deportations, we have people being sent to a third world prison. When someone is sent there by mistake (by the Trump Admin's own admission- the lawyer was later punished for admitting it), is he brought back? No. And when the courts intervene, the judges are attacked. The courts should be ignored. Habeas Corpus should be suspended.

Brown immigrants are sent to El Salvadorean jails. White South Africans are welcomed as refugees. An undersecretary at the State Department (Darren Beattie) tweeted this:
"Competent white men must be in charge if you want things to work"

People see the deportations as monstrous and racist and so they protest them and try to shield the deportees. Good for them. I would be particularly upset with American Christians, who have turned their back on Christ's teachings, but when is that ever not the case? American Christians aren't real Christians and haven't been for a long time. Probably never.

I withdraw that last comment. I'm going to edit it out. I don't want to be insulting.

Oh, I think he cares about his Big Beautiful Bill passing and being called a pedophile. Trump's a narcissist. Musk is inflicting narcissitic injury. Trump can't help but care deeply and plot his revenge. Musk must pay for his disloyalty.

Imagine if the topic were tax reform, and one of us kept bringing up the perceived impure motives of one of the parties.

We could do it. I'm not saying it's wrong in and of itself. — BitconnectCarlos

Ok, let's imagine it's tax reform and the President's children stand to benefit enormously from the president's tax proposal, as well as the president's biggest campaign donors. The president also has a new cypto named after him and the people who have bought the most TrumpCoin just so happen to also benefit enormously from the new tax reform bill's crypto regulations.

Even if you agree with the bill, are you trying to tell me you wouldn't care about all these conflicts of interest?

What are you trying to argue here? Let's say we both agree sending in the national guard and marines are necessary. Let's also say that a leaked copy of a Trump meeting gets released where we hear the President say, "This is just what I need! Now I can get the media to ignore my failed Musk bromance. I hope there's a bloodbath so the story has legs. Muhahahaha!"

If that happened, do you think we would be talking about the policy or the individual?

Right, could it be any more obvious? Trump's bromance with Musk has blown up in his face and here's a useful distraction and a way to make him look like a tough guy. After all these years, Trump is like a pane of glass to people with half a brain.

But like Orwell said in 1984 about Goldstein: "Always there were fresh dupes waiting to be seduced by him."

Yes. Ad homs aren't wrong per se, but you're engaging in classic ad hom:

Ad hominem (Latin for 'to the person'), short for argumentum ad hominem, refers to several types of arguments that are usually fallacious. Often currently this term refers to a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than the substance of the argument itself. — BitconnectCarlos

I'm not attacking Trump's argument, I'm questioning WHY he's doing what he's doing. This is not a fallacy. In criminal law, is the motive of the accused important? Yes. Did John kill Bob because he was legitimately scared for his life or because Bob was sleeping with his wife? That matters a lot, right? If John was legitimately afraid, he doesn't go to jail. If John was bent on revenge, he goes to prison for a long time.

"Well, is the cabinet member corrupt or not? This is a one-to-one scenario rather than a mass event. I prefer a good action done with impure motives to a bad action with pure motives, especially on a mass scale."

Yes, the cabinet member is corrupt, but that's irrelevant to the hypothetical. A president firing a corrupt cabinet member because of perceived corruption (even if the president is wrong), is totally understandable, right? If the President truly believes Bob is corrupt, he should fire him. But if the cabinet member is corrupt and the President fires him because he's Jewish, we have a HUGE problem on our hands, don't we? The intention is everything.

I don't want to press on with my points until we've reached agreement on this central issue: President Trump's motives in sending the marines to L.A. is very important. Agreed?

Ad hom. Focus on the action, not the character of the person initiating it. I'm seeing streets full of burning cars and absolute lawlessness in LA, but if you'd rather focus on Trump's motivations, go right ahead. — BitconnectCarlos

Are you saying it's an ad hom to consider a president's motivation for a particular action??? Let me give you an example: say you have a corrupt cabinet member. A president firing him for corruption is good. A president firing him because he's a Jew is bad. Right? So, the action can be the same, but the motivation is HUGELY important. Yes?

Oh, and you think the city of L.A. has descended into "absolute lawlessness"?

For normal Americans, rioters flying foreign flags and burning American ones is not a cause to rally around. — BitconnectCarlos

True, but a president salivating over the prospect of sending in the troops to an American city is much more disturbing. I've lived in L.A. County most of my life. I've seen bad rioting first hand. What's going on now is nothing like that. We don't need marines here.

Do you agree with me here that Trump is chomping at the bit to send the troops in and look like a tough guy?

What does that even mean, "fully transitioned?" Did they have their chromosomes changed? — Harry Hindu

A biological woman who looks very much like a man. Has had sex change operation, double mastectomy, hormone treatment, etc. What restroom do you want her to use?

AIs simulate, they aren't rational agents outside their ability to simulate of agents who may, sometimes, be rational. If we made AIs that modeled the range of human behavior, there would absolutely be AIs that snort fentanyl. — hypericin

But a pzombie is supposed to be a non-conscious duplicate of me, and I am a rational agent, so if the pzombie isn't a rational agent, it's not a pzombie.

Right on both counts. But I think part of a philosopher's job is to understand, not merely refute. To me, eliminative materialism/physicalism is not compelling, but Daniel Dennett (to pick one) was an extremely smart guy, and if we don't put ourselves in his mental shoes and try to work out his perspective, we'll just be creating a strawman to call "not compelling." We'd also be committed to the position that Dennett was the sort of thinker who is compelled by something obviously not compelling . . . hmm, not too likely.

So, no offense, but "That's absurd" and "Come on!" and "But you don’t believe that. Nobody does" doesn't get us very far. — J

No, but eliminative materialism is just so out there you reach an axiomatic level where further argument is pointless. What more can you say when someone denies consciousness, other than 'you can't actually believe that?' There's no evidence or arguments you can muster at that point. The person is denying one of the few indisputable truths about reality.

ETA: And an eliminative materialist, if they're being honest, would get the eyeroll. They would know it's coming. They know what they're proposing is extremely counterintuitive. They might then say, "wait, think about these intuition pumps" and to give Dennett credit, he is very clever.

How well might this satisfy people who think a person's experiences can only be experienced by themselves? — TiredThinker

The inverted spectrum problem is still alive and well. No brain scans or neural activity measurements will ever convince me that your experience of red is the same as mine. You might see red as green, for all I know. Pragmatically, I think you experience the world the way I do, but I have no justification for that. For all I know, you're a p-zombie with no qualia at all and no brain research will ever convince me otherwise.

So, it's just about physics being different? I don't think it makes sense to identify philosophical materialism with physics at a particular place and time - otherwise, it would just be physics, and we already know what it is and have a word for it. — SophistiCat

We were talking about intuitive appeal. The physics changed from becoming something a child could essentially grasp to something nobody, 100 years after QM, can understand or even agree on.

Think of an AI simulating human behavior. This ai would get shitfaced, because humans get shitfaced and it's been trained to do what humans do. Somewhere internally to the AI there is a decision being made, the neutral network takes in all data and internal states, and this time "get shitfaced" comes on top with the highest weight. So the AI goes to the liquor cabinet and starts doing whisky shots. All without the slightest affective state.

we are driven by affective states, but why is this necessary? It's not for AI, it's not for amoeba, and presumably it's not for p zombies. — hypericin

That's true, but remember pzombies are supposed to be identical to us except for lacking subjective experience. Humans aren't ai's.

Would a rational AI, one with a programmed “drive” for self-preservation, ever choose to do something totally reckless—like snort fentanyl—knowing it could likely die from it? No. Not unless it was explicitly programmed with some bizarre override to ignore its self-preservation "instinct". But if that’s the case, you’ve stopped modeling a rational agent and started writing sci-fi code. That’s not a human—it’s a toy robot with bad instructions.

You see, it forces the question, Why does getting wasted make you feel good? The argument here would be that the good feeling of being wasted is quite ancillary to the real work being done, namely some kind of resetting of brain activity so as to better cope with life . . . not sure what actually does happen, chemically, but we agree that something does. Mother Evolutionary Nature has cleverly tricked you into thinking that her point is for you to feel better -- ha! As if! The same thing would happen if there was no (conscious) you! — J

So under that logic, when someone’s being tortured, the screaming, the begging, the sheer mental agony—that’s all just “ancillary”? The real story is just neurons firing and behavior patterns playing out? That’s absurd. You're telling me the conscious experience of extreme suffering isn’t actually doing any of the work—that it's just along for the ride while the “real” causal machinery is physical brain activity? Come on. If you actually believed that, you'd have to say the same torture could happen to a philosophical zombie with no inner life, and it would be just as tragic. But you don’t believe that. Nobody does. The experience is the point. The suffering is not a side effect—it's the core reality. It's why the torture victim breaks.

I'm not claiming that that's your position, you're just telling the eliminative materialist side of the story. It's not a compelling story.

What do you think is olds-school materialism, and what is post-QM materialism? Again, examples of exponents of these views would help. — SophistiCat

*Old-school materialism is basically the “billiard ball” view of the universe—solid particles bouncing around in space, totally mindless, following fixed laws. Think Newtonian physics, where if you knew the position and velocity of every particle, you could predict everything. That kind of worldview felt intuitive: physical stuff acting on other physical stuff.

Post-quantum-mechanics materialism is way weirder. Now we’re talking about things like particles being excitations in underlying quantum fields—not little balls, but ripples in a weird, abstract ocean. Plus you get phenomena like entanglement and superposition, where cause-and-effect gets fuzzy and locality breaks down.

People trying to stay materialist after QM usually just shift the definition—like, “sure, it’s not solid matter anymore, but it’s still physical because it’s in a field.” But let’s be real, it’s a huge departure from the old view. The “matter” of today is more math-like than object-like. So yeah, I get why people still call it materialism, but it’s not the straightforward, common-sense materialism it used to be.

*Ai wrote some of this

"but we ought to allow them in our thought experiments since they show what would have to be true if they existed"

I started a thread here about that awhile back. I keep trying to picture my pzombie equivalent getting shitfaced after a stressful day and not being able to. I get wasted because it feels good. But that motivation isn't available to my pzombie counterpart, so why on Earth would he do it? Also, let's suppose there's a possible world Earth populated by pzombies. Consciousness just never happened in this world. Woudn't the vocabulary of pzombieEarth be radically reduced? How and why would pzombies have words for consciousness? Or any emotions? I suppose their vocabulary would reflect mental states that have obvious physical analogues, like screaming during intense pain, but what about mental states that don't get physically expressed, like boredom or contemplation or mild enjoyment? Why would they have words for any of that?

ETA: Also, would pzombie world have tortures?

If materialism is, as you assert, a popular and intuitively attractive view, then I don't find your characterizations of it plausible. — SophistiCat

I brought this up too. Old school materialism has intuitive appeal, I guess. Post QM materialism is utterly bizarre and counterintuitive.