But as far as violence is concerned, the USA sees many tens of thousands dead by gun violence every year. — Wayfarer

Are you suggesting that there is more violence today? This is not reasonably disputable. There might be different kinds, and trends, but way less over all.

Maybe I missed the point... but I felt that it was a clear counter-factual, that needed jumping on.

As I attempted to explain to KoolCat, I am not making a claim to the actual explanation of global trends, I imagine there to be many many factors that I couldn't anticipate.

I only meant to offer a more persuasive, and fact friendly account than an alternative.

Further, I don't think that the reasoning even follows, and is better accounted for by what I've already suggested. When people think that we're "merely objects" then ethics becomes about our objective states of existence, it doesn't start to not value people's objective existences at all, because they don't believe in a higher, more significant one. The very suggestion is made by those that talk about one's objective existence as "mere", so who's going to be the one to care less about it, and think that some transcendental state, or whatever the alternative things is, is not "mere" but what is actually important?

I think that this just further demonstrates everything I've said.

I've heard that kind of thing a lot, but again, when it doesn't actually pan onto what's going on in the world, it can't be true.

For it to be true, all of our archaeological and statistical evidence to suggest that violence has gone down by many multiples in a few centuries, people's self-professed either systems, and the correlation of violence would have to be better accounted for.

You'd just have to ignore all of the evidence, or say everyone is actually lying.

I will grant one sense in which it is true. People are psychologically or emotionally more brutal than ever, I think. A consequence of a lack of physical reprisals, and distance.

Psychological violence is still violence. I will grant that I think that it is on the rise. I'm not entirely sure which is worse, either.

People sure love to respond with a lot of rhetoric, and zero content. Just like this post, notice how it's mocking and accusatory, and not a single word of it meaningfully addresses anything anyone said.

You're all silly and creepy, and are not my friends, nor my buddies, but have been reduced to my guys.

So people are more brutal now than ever before, and brutality has increased in the world? Where? In what senses?

I'm sure that it appears to be so if you listen to the right (wrong) people. It's just not at all plausibly maintainable that we're living in a more brutal time now than the past...

Which is equally manifestly the opposite of the truth.



A good analog for the brain is a bee hive. Bees do two things when they're doing their dance, which is try to recruit others to do the same dance, or stop others from doing a different one. Likewise, neurons fire, and prevent other neurons from firing. So, ideas, or actions start small, and then cascade.

To me it feels like a superposition of vague possibilities or thoughts until the act collapses the many possibilities into the one actuality.

My claim was to the notion that modern materialistic, and secular trends will lead to more violence. Firstly by noting that it actually hasn't, but has lead to less. I kept with keeping that there was a causative factor, in that people that would identify as that self-report their own ethical concerns to revolve by far the most around avoiding harm.

Might be coincidental and none of any of it has anything to do with the trends of violence in modernity, I dunno, my suggestion is as modest as, if the opposing ethical concerns are indeed a relevant and causative factor, then the evidence suggests that the inverse is that case. That it causes less, and not more violence.

With our minds we can care about everything equally and infinitely, but not in real life. It actually is a calculus where things get hierarchically ordered through various metrics. We don't have time to care and worry about everything, and if we do then we aren't doing anything anyway.

The most significant danger is for something else to over take harm in importance, so that it's more important that people be virtuous than not harmed, or pure than not harmed.

Maybe we should just reduce the external. One world government. Illuminati confirmed.

Metaphysics never really matter beyond their content as capital, like everything else. Just don't make shit up, as if you can re-invent a wheel 2,500 years in the making. No one will know this "new shit" you've invented unless it happens to be good enough to have already been considered, and contributed. If it is neither known, and doesn't blow people away, then it's probably shit, it's not that they're all idiots.

Don't believe shit you can't check, or didn't check. Recheck sources again and again and again because your memory can't be trusted for detailed recollection, but only general form. The more internalized and understood the content, the more the symbols can be distilled down into a general principle which isn't reliant on particular details for recollection.

Just get the information right, start to overestimate everyone that you underestimate, and underestimate everyone that you overestimate.

Realize that irony is a mastery of truth, and everything you think is actually the opposite of the truth, no matter what it is.

Then realize that straw is great insulation, and begin to weave the special pants that you'll need for the next step.

It's difficult to turn a military indiscriminately against its own populace. It would have to isolate a particular group, and then individual dissenters, intimidating the rest of the populous.

So no worries, only the most defenseless minorities are in the real shit when that happens.

I think that it's obviously what I suggested. When you look up the ethical concerns of progressives, and conservatives, you'll see that the godless only care, or care by far the most about only harm. Conservatives care also about purity, loyalty, and such. These other ethical concerns, to the extent that one is more concerned with them, must be less proportionally concerned about harm. It it also easily conceivable for someone to care more about other considerations than harm.

I prefer Super King.

If someone is doing the talking then someone has to be doing the listening. Maybe sometimes we do all of the talking, and none of the listening.

Except that is the opposite of the truth. Consumerism, materialism, and the suppression of the human spirit is leading to far less violence than ever before. When people care more about the universal, the behavioral, and objective, then ethics become about inclusion, and the avoidance of physical harms and ailments. It only makes sense that that would lead to less violence (like the unprecedented lows we now globally experience, northern hemisphere entirely war free).

A more complex ethic involving virtuous and vice filled behavior, purity, group loyalty over universalism, and a spirited physical lot, and you of course get more violence. It may be better, and more healthy for individuals, and people may be happier and this be closer to truth... but it would definitely be more violent.

Christians were the first to use "person" in the modern sense, taking from the concept of a "persona" from theater, in order to explain the unity of the trinity.

Pretty much for the same reason, Freud never uses the word "subject", thinking it too philosophically-laden, and implying a unified single thing, which he didn't think people are.

Also just pretty much Plato's notion of the tripart soul, the plant the animal and the god.

Wonder why Trump loves the Russians so much... he's probably not compromised though... probably not.

So their estimate is 10x the figure quoted in the article I referenced. — Wayfarer

A quick google search suggests that it is 40,000 and not 4,000.

I don't know a whole lot about physics, might not be true.

http://gizmodo.com/5882517/did-you-know-that-earth-is-getting-lighter-every-day

Actually the opposite is true. Due to the natural loss of energy of the core, and the release of gases, the earth loses more than it gains, and it getting smaller.

I don't know what you're goin' on about.

Also my family.

You mean like, why do I think that movies aren't as representative of reality as real events?

Also, an intelligent contemplative expression is neutral, or "empty". TV and movies ruin what used to be commonsense.

That one's true too. The kinds of facial expressions you make the most will determine how attractive and approachable you look, and this will become more and more true as you age.

You'd have to be able to with the stuff you swallow. Terrible doesn't equal true. Beware the stuff you joke about -- you believe it after awhile.

I'm confident that there's plenty.

I can suppress my startle reflex.

I know that you think that it's ridiculous... I probably shouldn't have commented.

Not that the quote is serious, but there are a number of species with more than two genders, some up to five (one of the reason that prenatal hormones is usually the favored, especially since they can consistently produce gender confusion in rats if they mess with their balances early in development), and there are also gay animals to.

So, keep them out of zones? Say they're the poor crazy ones? Or maybe the truth? There are different types of families.

The implication would be that it was either nurtured or crazied into them.

I'm a feminist, I think, and I'm for equal opportunity, social standing, and treatment under the law. I just think that the radical becoming, and denial of essentialism puts them at odds with much of the trans community.

There's a lot of trans people who don't see why they ought to be. These privileged princesses look down from Barbie's dream house, and think that the LGBT is about sexuality, and they're straight and normal as fuck.

As for the truth, I think that there is definitely a biological hormonal element to it, there is a lot of evidence of it in my view. The scientific case is far from in the opposition's favor.

I think that plenty about gender is probably constructed, and strikes me as inessential, and insubstantial.

No, many radical feminists definitely do that, and radical feminists hate trans people. Mainly because they see gender as a construct, and not biological, and therefore trans people are men, trying to gain access into women's spaces.

I don't think I'd be interested in reading those, I prefer horses mouths, rather than asses.

What do you mean? That the existentialism of the above is mutually exclusive with the essentialism of the below?

one's gender identity is a matter of self-determination and so a fundamental human right — Wayfarer

I googled the expression "gender self-determination" and did get many hits, from what seemed to be critical sites, but I'd never heard that before. Which activists are saying that?

I know one vaguely, and read a couple of books. I also hung around a few trans forums for a few years. The overwhelming vast majority take it as a matter of fact, that they have been systematically wronged for. That they're right about something that is right, and true, and not about just being able to do whatever they want regardless, as long as it isn't hurting anyone.

I don't even find that suggestion of radial self-determining freedom offensive, and I think that it's more encapsulating and unifying rather than attempt to identify particular features of the world. I think that the danger is that subsets will be marginalized if they can't pass the test.

Point being though, I really don't think that that is something that trans people tend to think, or trans activists tend to argue. So I was hoping to find out who was.