People are never going to feel safe enough, it clearly is a slippery slope. There is going to be push and pull. Obviously some will never be pleased until they get personal nukes, and others won't be until we all can't leave the house without helmets, and permanently attached oven mitts. It probably just has a lot to do with temperament, what temperature the water is you're already sitting in, and personal feelings of security, and anxiety.

Isn't it illegal in the UK to buy a knife of any kind if you're under 18? Isn't it true that knives are highly regulated, and there have even been calls for total bans on any knife that comes to a point? How long before you have to be 18 to be legally allowed to use safety scissors, with gloves on?

Worf was just hilarious. He was raised by earthlings, and living a caricature. He was always like "Klingons do this, Klingons don't do that" and being totally wrong, all the time. He was like a dude raised by a planet of women that only had legends and myths to go on about what men were like.

To make jokes in poor humor, the Vega guy was shooting up a country music festival, and was in a bi-racial marriage, pretty sure that makes him a leftist. Also, did you see the guy standing up in the crowd basically yelling "come at me bro?" with cowering people all around him, that he was putting the lives of in danger with his stupidity? That's how you can tell he was a young republican.

Moral principles are important to be freely chosen or imparted, otherwise it is just tyranny, and slavery. I really don't think that violence is ingrained and normalized. You know what the major delusion of people is? That everyone else is a product of their culture, but they're immune. Are you violent and unkind? If you aren't, then you can be sure that most people aren't either, as you're all products of each other. This is also why societal, and cultural change doesn't happen with arguments, war, or laws, but you and me. Change yourself and you'll change the world.

I don't much like guns either, but because they're too unskilled and equalizing, destroying the majesty of the martial arts, which has never truly been a thing after their invention. Making it possible for there to be child armies, and for four hundred pound hunters to wheeze from cover and kill animals four hundred yards off.

I wouldn't blame the inlaws. The most expedient way to get people to do what you want is to just emotionally manipulate them, with fear, pride, sympathy, shame and things of that nature, and politicized topics have a hell of a lot of that flying around.

Remember that Plato's political work was called "the republic", making him a republican.

Oh, I remember...

I bet making it illegal to not wear a helmet at all times would save more lives, and prevent a lot of head injuries. Don't you want to protect everyone from head injuries? Leaving bed without a helmet ought to be illegal.

You know that in the 18th century violence was like 1700% higher. People are focused, and flipping out over this kind of stuff because of the rarity. If it was business as usual, people would be a lot more cavalier. Global international news was hardly even a thing, so we all didn't get to be freaking out about the thing that happened in one place in a world of 7 billion.

The fact that we do that, just shows how comfortable and safe we are. I personally, simply think people are soft, and whiny, looking for "micro aggression" because there are no real ones, and scouring the globe for danger, because it isn't anywhere near me.

I think that he would note the overall significance of them, and number, and see them as not nearly as worrisome as people pretend, compared to much more significant issues.

People have a right from unjust violence, but that means that you would be protected from someone using unjust violence against you, you can't expect the state to, let along to have the omnipresent ability to remove all possibilities of violence from the land... that's not minimal government at all, and Locke was in favor of a minimal government.

Why is it more dangerous to give an untrained, or even unscrupulous person a gun, than political power, and influence without being informed, or scrupulous?

You have politicized caricatures of the government, and the types of people that would want guns for their self protection as dumb, violent red necks or something...

Plato, in think, would be in favor of strict gun control. — MysticMonist

On what basis?

JOHN LOCKE (“Two Treatises of Government”, 1689):

“Must men alone be debarred the common privilege of opposing force with force, which nature allows so freely to all other creatures for their preservation from injury? I answer: self defense is a part of the law of nature, nor can it be denied the community, even against the king himself...”.

The inspiration was the British bill of rights, which allowed protestants to keep and bear arms for their own protection. They were kind of persecuted back then.

The argument seemed to be that for a government to take military power, the people must disarm, but because the Americans were not super trusting of the benevolence of government, they wanted to ensure the people's rights to self defense against a corrupt state, like the protestants maintained in Britain.

I don't think anyone important takes immaturity, and name calling as all that devastating of an opposition.

The second amendment does actually appear to be about ensuring the right of the individual people to bear arms, to maintain freedom, and protect themselves from a potentially corrupt state (America can be pretty great). Why does everyone lie so much? I always hear people say that "well regulated militia" doesn't mean the individual people, but that just isn't true. Looking at the precedent it has been historically less interpreted to mean individuals since like the 1850s, but modern interpretations seem truer to the source, than less true historically, based on the inspirations for the law, and rationales given.

As was mentioned by BC elsewhere the NRA has about 5 million members, whereas something like 75 million American's own guns, the majority of whom are not fans of the NRA. Cracked has a good video on them that I like.

The point was disputing the dubious statistics.

I'm just saying that they lie is all... not because they're devious, but because their cultures differ. At no time did any of their cultures ever hold truth to be paramount. The Chinese tend to hold modesty above truth, and the Japanese public order, and politeness above truth. They've done studies on school children that show that they don't even count all forms of saying false things as "lying", like westerners, only if anti-social really.

Science, truth being paramount, even when it may be anti-social, regardless of consequences, held as paramount, is solely a Christian value. Show me a Kant in any other culture.

So you believe that a 99.7% conviction rate isnt a sign of corruption? It is established that the chinese at least release tons of fabricated clinical trails and economic data, why wouldnt they on this as well? There is a reason why they suck at science. Not to mention the epidemic of flat footedness... just saying...

You guys are pretty naive I think... never trust the chinese...

I wasnt going off of that article just crime statistics. China, particular Hong Kong has super low crime rates as well if you believe them.

"If we attempt an enumeration, every thing that is not enumerated is presumed to be given. The consequence is, that an imperfect enumeration would throw all implied power into the scale of the government, and the rights of the people would be rendered incomplete. On the other hand, an imperfect enumeration of the powers of government reserves all implied power to the people; and by that means the constitution becomes incomplete. But of the two, it is much safer to run the risk on the side of the constitution; for an omission in the enumeration of the powers of government is neither so dangerous nor important as an omission in the enumeration of the rights of the people."

James Wilson. So, the dilemma is that if a right is not enumerated in the constitution, does that imply that people do not have that right, siding with the power of the government? Or that they do, siding with the power of the people?

The ninth amendment addresses this.

As for Japan, I'm just suspicious of such a perfect record. Basically no crime, and they always get their man when there is...

I'm not entirely sure I'd trust the statistics coming out of Asia in general... Japan's conviction rate is also almost 100%. The statistics they release make it appear like they're fucking perfect at their jobs...

They aren't ignorant or stupid, they know the same things that Pinker knows about their motivations, but if even one media outlet is willing to reveal that juicy information, it will mean both that they will lose out on attention and revenue, and it will all have been for naught anyway. They operate on the same rationalization a lot of asshats do, and that's that if they don't do it, someone else will.

A lot of them outright say that's why they're doing it. I think we should go old school, and expunge their existence from the public record entirely. No graves, no nothing. Ensure that they are lost to history.

Steven Pinker tweeted an open letter to the media about not giving the notoriety that a lot of these mass murderers seek after the fact: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4Z7VkWcwLk-SjFJc00tdmI1eW8/view

I've brought this point up a few times as well.

Small step for man, giant leap for mankind. Though, being an astronaut isn't exactly normative, I think that people are generally more concerned with practical wisdom, or phronesis, how to live a good life, and be a good person in a way that is generalizable to all forms of being, and occupations.

Consider that if everyone is imitating everyone else, then it is a closed and finite system where the only introduction of novelty could be a form of error. The fact that "being yourself", "creativity", "originality" and things are held in such high esteem suggests that this isn't true. Imitation is only for followers, but at least the potential for genuine leadership must exist.

I gots problems with my momsies too. I think that forgiveness is for you. It's letting go of hurt and resentment. You no longer feel wronged, or victimized.

Reconciliation is actually getting back on good turns with them, which requires somethings on their part as well. I don't generally talk to my mom, but it isn't as if we're on bad terms or anything. My sister is astonished at how I talk genuinely to her, and say what I think and feel, whereas she doesn't -- but this is mainly because our relationships differ. My sister generally got a lot more help from her than I ever did, it was usually her getting help from me, and I don't really care about not talking to her. She has nothing besides covert insults to reproach me with, and I'm fairly thick skinned, so they don't really work on me.

I don't expect to really hear from her unless she wants something, and she isn't that capable of a conversation, she doesn't really listen, and wants to just talk about how flat the earth is, or her alien blood, and royal lineage and things...

I think that I'm pretty good at forgiveness, but seeing as I'm a loner anyway, I'm not so great that reconciliation. I have broken off relations with many people, and I eventually come to a point where I see my own mistakes, or see where they were coming from, or am simply no longer angry with them so that I no longer feel negatively towards them, or bother to think of them at all anymore, but that usually don't imply a restoration of relations.

Apollo is most associated with the sun, truth, illumination, and so mainly gold, and yellow.

Dionysus is the god of intoxication, freeing us from the cycles of death and rebirth through his mysteries, and being associated with wine, his colours are purple, and green.

Representing the known and the unknown, sanity and insanity, order and chaos, society and nature, constraint and freedom law and rebellion.

I think that a more interesting objection is that of art. Plato saw the very dangerous potential of art, for emotional manipulation. We're absolutely saturated in fiction, and no one seems to be able to tell their feet from their head. Even the eight precepts of Buddhism includes refraining from art as dance, music, and entertainment.

Analogies are attempted emotional manipulation. I tell you a story, and make you feel that it is silly, or dumb, and then say that it is the same thing as the point in contention.

I don't believe that Kant addressed at all the absolutely devastation power of art on the soul. We "suspend disbelief" and allow ourselves to be taken for a ride, as it were, but always included in art are both representations of the world, and cause and effect, neither of which need to be accurate at all, and the effects on the soul may override experience, tempt people into pretension, and generate widespread mass delusion, and enslavement.

Once I entirely crack the anti-life equation, I'ma write a book, and then all your souls will me mine, and I'll have escaped death.

I did use "decimated" recklessly without thinking of the literal meaning.

Gun deaths do just pale in comparison to cell phone related ones, or fast food related ones though. Also, everyone owns less guns, because everyone hunts less, but that hasn't stopped people from toeing party lines and supporting guns, and reducing regulation, because it's part and parcel with their political identities. Giving a shit about actual life and health isn't. Fitting in is.

The left will get decimated, they're unarmed. :p

Guns were for hunting, and gun control and regulation was in more support by everyone, but increasingly guns are becoming for protection, and murder, and polarized along political lines, and until one side defeats the other in a epic civil war (what an oxymoron), guns are going to be less regulated, and perceived more and more to be for murder, and not hunting.

Everybody loses.

You are free insofar as you obey. — Bitter Crank

I saw what you did there, with posting that video. Yeah, things are turning Orwellian fast. Fuck your rights, and your voice, they're infringing on, and disagreeing with mine, and I'm righteous as fuck.

Seriously though, guys are supposed to defend women, or at least it is upstanding, and more pleasant to see than them bashing them, if not just poking fun and in good humor, but it is also good to see women defending men, that's what I like to watch when I look for my anti-feminism.

I don't like to see men bashing women, or women bashing men. I like my men to defend women, and my women to defend men. Seems far more heroic, and less self invested.

Can you be wrong?

I posed the objection, which is a long standing one to the idea that morality is innate, and based in feeling, and that is that even if every single human agreed about what it was, it would be arbitrary -- it also means that if the majority felt something to be moral or immoral, it would be impossible for them to be mistaken, and divergence would be simply a different sense, a different feeling, that would be just as arbitrary.

It is to say, that people cannot be wrong about their feelings of right and wrong, and thus there is no room for discussion (as they could not even be genuinely persuaded in any sense, as their feelings would be innate, and unmovable).

We have many innate qualities, and traits. We aren't blank slates, or without natures and constraints, but getting to the truth of any matter (even moral ones) requires experience, reason, and judgment.

Either everything you've just said is only what you would like to be true, what you'd prefer to believe, it is coincidentally both what you'd prefer, but also true, or it is truth completely, and entirely regardless of what you'd prefer to be true. In the first case, which you seem to be suggesting, there is no such thing as truth at all. In the second case, my preferences coinciding with the truth is a happy accident, which is swell and all, but in the third case is when the truth becomes more difficult. When it isn't how you'd prefer, and allowing your preferences to determine you beliefs is called wishful thinking, self-deception, and things of that nature.

Only in the case of lies, do your preferences determine what's true.