Which is what brought me to the question: If you can't outvote Trump, et al., what's the other option? — Moliere

What do you do if Trump&co declare martial law and suspend elections? And then try to collect all the guns from registered Democrats and suspected LGBTQ people?

Im making an analogy about the trade-off for lives, in that sense cars and guns are analogous. — DingoJones

In the case of cars, we're willing to accept a certain amount of deaths to drive at speeds that make cars economically viable. Nobody would drive a car at 5mph on the freeway. We sacrifice safety for efficiency.

How is that the same with guns?

Yet the question is -- the ballot or the bullet? How do we justify each position, philosophically? — Moliere

You have to listen to your gut, I guess. Is a slave justified in killing the entire master's family if it means he'll be able to get a decent chance to escape? Probably. Would the Jews in Nazi Germany have been justified in gunning down every government official they came across? Certainly. If this country bans abortion entirely and a government official tries to step between a woman and the sympathetic doctor about to perform the abortion and she has a gun? I would support her using deadly force.

My point with that analogy was specifically about accepting some deaths as a trade off for freedom to have a gun. We do the exact same thing with cars, we accept that some people (many more than gun deaths actually) are going to die as a trade off for our speed limits and traffic volume (or as a trade off for the freedom to drive and if you prefer). — DingoJones

Again, because cars are essential for many people in this society. Driving is inherently dangerous and we accept the risks because cars are so necessary for so many. That's not analogous to guns.

Nick Fuentes hated Kirk and he has a small army of white nationalist thugs.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nick-fuentes-slams-charlie-kirk-over-support-for-israel/id390071758?i=1000723989144

Are you sure it wasn't one of them?

"I think it's worth it. I think it's worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights."
— RogueAI

Not reasonable statement? Replace “guns” with “cars”. Still unreasonable? — DingoJones

I need my car to go to work and the store and other things. I don't need my gun for anything, except to assuage my irrational fear that someone will break in and I'll be unarmed.

The irony isnt lost on me, but I think Kirk would 100% include his own death as part of that acceptable trade off. — DingoJones

Really? You think so? You think if an angel came down and said, "Charlie, I can make this assassin miss you be a hair, or you can be gunned down and leave your wife and kids behind and you can become a martyr for the 2nd amendment. What shall it be?" Charlie would have picked martyr?

Say what you want about Kirk, he did not lack conviction. To the point above, we certainly accept that trade off with driving vehicles dont we? Vehicle accidents kill more than guns, why dont we ban cars? Or make everyone drive 5mph? And thats just for our convenience, there are many who think right to bear arms is much more important.

Again, cars have important uses outside of killing things.

Can we not turn this into a discussion about firearms? Is that remotely possible here? There are so many cheap and easy ways to kill a person. A knife, a baseball bat, a hammer, a screwdriver, messing with the gas tank, following him home and running him off the road, tampering with food, running him over on a morning jog, the list goes on. — Outlander

Firearms make it very easy to kill a lot of people quickly. And from far away. It would be rather difficult for the Las Vegas mass shooter, for example, to do the damage he did with a screwdriver. Since Kirk was an outspoken 2nd amendment proponent, and was literally killed while answering questions about shootings, the whole firearm thing seems germane.

It's like someone in a thunderstorm begging the lightning to hit them, and it does.

Is it bad that I don't feel sympathy that a 2nd amendment nut who said the following has been shot dead?

"I think it's worth it. I think it's worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights."

It just seems so...karmic.

It definitely reminded me of the old racist trope of the big black guy menacing the little white girl. I didn't see coverage of it in any of the leftist media I consume. It was all over right-wing media, but I don't fault them for that: it was a brutal murder caught on video. It was shocking and newsworthy. The liberal outlets should have carried it as well. There was a chance for Gavin Newsom to come out hard against crime

Interesting

Shades of Daniel Penny, the New Yorker who put a threatening homeless person in a chokehold and killed him. It ended in a mistrial. IMO, he never should have been tried. Too bad there wasn't a Daniel Penny on that train.

Regarding this case? It feeds into the narrative that leftists are soft on crime, which they tend to be, because leftists are better with nuance, and they have compassion for people with mental illnesses. Conservatives just want those people disappeared. The murderer in the story, though, should have been locked up before this and Democrats should be saying that.

I tried to get ChatGPT to draw a dot-to-dot of a raven for my students. It didn't go well. The singularity is still a ways away. The rate of improvement seems to be slowing. ChatGPT5 doesn't seem to be any better than the previous version.

Have another one. :up:

:up:

But what, exactly, is a measurement?
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/quantum-theorys-measurement-problem-may-be-a-poison-pill-for-objective-reality/

And that is why it cannot do philosophy, which is the attempt to disentangle the muddles that words create using the world as template. — unenlightened

You don't think it will ever do philosophy on par with Nagels or Rawls or Chalmers?

I think it would be an injustice if a transwoman who looks cisgender female, and has committed a non-violent crime, is put in a men's prison where she is likely to be a frequent target. — Mijin

That's a good point.

I understand what you mean. I have been a vegan for 19 years. I do miss the taste of non-vegan food, but I prefer being a vegan because it saves and improves sentient nonhuman lives. — Truth Seeker

Even outside of veganism, people could demand an end to the more odious forms of factory farming. Future generations are going to judge us harshly on this.

That's why non-vegans murder sentient organisms and think they are doing the right thing, even though there are vegan options that avoid the deliberate exploitation and murder of sentient organisms. — Truth Seeker

But they don't taste as good. I had an impossible burger once. Never again. But, I would pay twice as much at the store for lab grown meat.

Veganism prevents harm and promotes the well-being of trillions of sentient organisms. Yet, more than 99% of the humans currently alive (8.24 billion) are not yet vegan. Non-vegans kill 80 billion land organisms and 1 to 3 trillion aquatic organisms per year. Why isn't veganism legally mandatory in all countries? — Truth Seeker

If plants are conscious does veganism lose some of it's moralistic appeal?

I would agree that the prison service in the UK has got this wrong a couple of times; like the high-profile case of the the rapist who "transitioned" after being convicted. — Mijin

But once you say that a biological man can't be with females (in this case, prisons), aren't you opening the door to banning men from other female-only areas?

Do you think the battle for legalized gay marriage all those years before Obergefell was "woke"? Do you think people who support gay marriage now are "woke" or it an issue that has become totally mainstream?

delete

Again, I don't claim to know, but it's the strongest position to take right now.
Both bodily continuity and psychological continuity have serious counter-arguments, which no-continuity does not.

What's your argument against no-continuity? Upthread I begged someone, anyone to come up with a counter-argument to it. I don't want it to be true. But before this thread I never heard an argument against it and that continues to be the case. — Mijin

Behaviorism used to be the strongest position to take regarding mind and consciousness, but it's gone out of favor, for obvious reasons. Dennett and the Churchlands used to be very influential, but now the energy has shifted from eliminative materialism to computationalism and panpsychism (which also had a heyday 100 years ago).

What's the strongest counter-argument against eliminative materialism? Your own lived experience. How do you know you're not a p-zombie? You can't be wrong about the fact you're conscious. The idea that I'm constantly dying and there's a new me popping into existence all the time (esp. when I go to sleep) used to scare the hell out of me, but I don't take it seriously anymore. As I became more idealistic, non-continuity became increasingly implausible.

I see. I would expect it to be me.

What is your opinion on "cryonic sleep"? — SolarWind

I haven't followed the whole thread. I just jumped in at the end. What is the issue with cryonic sleep?

I was quoting the OP

It's as clear an answer as I can give: I don't know, but the best supported theory of consciousness right now is that there is no such thing as continuity of consciousness. I am (numerically) not the same consciousness as went to bed last night, or began this sentence, and I won't be the being that wakes up from cryonics later. — Mijin

You think the you that's waking up tomorrow morning isn't really you? That if you go on a bender, you won't have to suffer the hangover? Someone else will? That's so obviously wrong.

Could be to get Dems to set some flags on fire to spite Trump, but is the GOP so craven now they'll look the other way at an illegal EO after complaining about Biden? Of course.

Trump’s EO regarding flag burning is so stupid, so easily dismissed both by law and by precedent, that it makes me believe there is an ulterior motive. — NOS4A2

I think this is the first time I've seen you upset over something Trump did. The ulterior motive is distraction. Ukraine isn't going well, inflation is up, job growth is down, Epstein is a running sore. Remember when Obama was going to be hauled in for treason? Seems like a lifetime ago, doesn't it?

I suspect this is the result of years of fear porn and woke propaganda about 'rape culture'. — Tzeentch

I don't know if you're in America or not, but here's why American women would look at you that way:

Over half of women and almost one in three men have experienced sexual violence involving physical contact during their lifetimes.
One in four women and about one in 26 men have experienced completed or attempted rape.
https://www.cdc.gov/sexual-violence/about/index.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com

Who do you think is raping and committing sexual violence on all these women? Men.

Perhaps one thing was that the Republicans started fearing that the demographic transition where white Americans lose the majority and minorities would stay loyal to the Democrats made them to choose populism. Or simply Trump and populism took them and they have carried on with the flow. — ssu

That's part of it, but a lot of it is Republicans and independents reluctantly voted for Trump because the Democrats have lost their minds. A lot of people here could care less if boys are playing in girls sports, but to many Americans, boys in girls sports became a gateway wedge issue that opened the door to much weirder shit: you can't tell me what a woman is? You want me to pay for gender affirming surgery for prisoners and detained immigrants? You want to allow doctors to remove 13 year old girl's breasts? You want to let male rapists in women's prisons? They concluded that Democrats shouldn't be allowed anywhere near political power. And that's not even getting into the open Southern border.

Slowed to a trickle, yes. Which will be a disaster, since immigration is a good thing and there never was a problem to begin with, other than a backlog. But I guess this was a fulfilled goal. — Mikie

Legal immigration is a good thing, illegal immigration is not. The Southern border was a festering wound during the Biden Admin that only started to get addressed at the tail end of his presidency. It's a big reason why Harris lost.

As for stocks being up— yes, as they have been for years. Where the 6% comes from is anyone’s guess. 6% in what index? From when? — Mikie

This is from GoogleAi, I assume it's fairly accurate:

"Total returns (through mid-2025):
S&P 500: For the year-to-date through August 11, 2025, the index was up 8.4%.
Wilshire 5000: Between January 17 and July 18, 2025, this broad market index had a total return of 4.8%.
Nasdaq 100: This tech-heavy index was up over 14% since the November 2024 election as of August 21, 2025"

An 8% return on the S&P500 in less than a year with inflation under 3% is laudable. This is just a continuation of a trend that was happening at the end of Biden's term, but historically, presidents get credit/blame for the economy during their tenure, and the doom&gloom predicted from the tariffs has yet to materialize.

I'm praying that the reports I'm hearing about Trump's imminent demise are true, but to say nothing good has happened under him is just wrong. I would also add he set back Iran's nuke program with no casualties and no blowback (so far). He's also pushed back against the insanity of tolerating men in women's sports. That's a trivial issue as far as the well being of the country goes, but it's one of those 70-30 wedge issues the Democrats managed to get on the wrong side of. Prominent Dems like Gavin Newsom are finally coming around on it. It was a significant factor in Harris's loss.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/poll-americans-oppose-trans-women-competing-female-sports-2-3-gen-z-rcna203658
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/02/26/americans-have-grown-more-supportive-of-restrictions-for-trans-people-in-recent-years/

Has there been ANY successes yet in this administration (in reality — not the delusions of the cult)? — Mikie

Illegal immigration at the Southern border has slowed to a trickle, stock market is up 6%.

No, I suppose not. :grin:

However, one might find value in the following analogy, be it "weak" or not. An AI or LLM is essentially a brain waiting to be trained (filled with knowledge). Consciousness in human beings is essentially a brain. Perhaps one may liken AI or LLM to a brain without a body. Schoolchildren have brains waiting to be filled with knowledge. So the two have at least that much in common, one might say? :confused: — Outlander

I'm so grateful to be alive at this time, to be in the middle of this epochal event.

Is the teacher who brought about a pupil who rivals or even surpasses his or her own intelligence a failure? — Outlander

Are we saying these Ai's then are like school children?

you'll see posts here by people using AI replying with AI — Manuel

If those posts are of better quality than us humans here (and they probably would be), isn't human philosophical discussion a bit of mockery?

There is a huge problem of trust with LLMs. If you ask a complicated question you don't know the answer to, you don't know whether the answer is complete bullshit. I asked for a summary of some Chapters of Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian and it gave me absolute garbage. It should of said upfront that it couldn't because it doesn't have access to the text. — Nils Loc

I don't trust it when it comes to fiction, but I haven't seen it make a philosophical mistake in a long time.

I use ChatGPT to clean up my posts all the time, but I don't have it write the entire post for me.