You are willing to entertain that because Jane was murdered in her bedroom and because John's handprints are all over the house but not yet found in her bedroom that this is circumstantial evidence of John having murdered Jane. — Benkei

I haven't used circumstantial evidence in this way.

I'm willing to entertain a Nobel Laureate's (for work on HIV) claims about HIV and coronavirus, in the sense that claims by such a person warrants some analysis; otherwise, it's just picking and choosing experts.

I'm willing to assign the label of "circumstantial evidence" to facts about circumstances that are at least somewhat connected to the case, even if it doesn't help draw conclusions as to likelihood, now or in the future. This is how wikipedia describes "circumstantial evidence": weak evidence that is compatible with contradictory accounts; wikipedia does not say circumstantial evidence needs to make a scenario "more likely" (it's a fact of the case compatible with a theory; doesn't mean that theory is more likely).

I've gone to some lengths to demonstrate the same circumstantial evidence can be accounted for in all 3 scenarios, and that none of the circumstantial evidence (at the moment) makes any of the 3 scenarios "more likely" in any meaningful statistical sense (every "this is more likely" theory I have seen so far simply expresses the "feeling" of the theorizer based on their world view).

For instance, I go to some trouble to explain that even distance to the lab maybe no more significant than the null hypothesis (both in the distribution of labs, population centers, and likely pandemic virus reservoirs; as well as the sense that novel viruses are likely to be first noticed near a lab). However, that the first notable outbreak was at some distance to a lab is still "circumstantial evidence", just doesn't tell us much at the moment of what conclusion is more likely (i.e. it's circumstantial evidence an intense amount of statistics would be required to plausibly interpret).

When I describe a scenario and the circumstantial evidence that's compatible with such a scenario, it's not to say that scenario is more likely because there is "circumstantial evidence", it's just to show such a scenario is compatible with what we know so far; I do so for each scenario to demonstrate my opinion that no scenario can be ruled out as far as I can tell. To say one scenario "is more likely" would be an amazingly complicated statistical exercise, and so I don't have an opinion on likelihood either; I'm sure such studies will be done, but I doubt very much the authors will claim to have actually increased confidence in one conclusion or another (the "models of history" that would be needed are beyond our grasp to make; i.e. the best we can do is very simplified assumptions of how the world works, so simplified that it doesn't really tell us anything).

So, I am not providing any analysis of what's "more likely" but I am interested to analyse arguments that do make such claims (whether the Nobel Laureate claiming it's spliced from HIV; claims that it's for sure not engineered; claims that it's likely an accident; all three I am willing to analyse, and all three I find unsound; which is why I don't care about what we label "circumstantial evidence" or not, in each case the conclusions don't follow from the circumstantial evidence offered as premises, so who cares about whether the circumstantial evidence in question is even true; it doesn't matter if there's an HIV gene as it's presence tells us nothing since HIV is already a pandemic and we can expect it will spread successful genes around in co-infection events; it doesn't matter if there's no "telltale" signs of bio engineering as a bioweapon engineer may go to some lengths to remove such telltale signs (i.e. making sure the genome accomplishes the task at hand within the bounds of what peers will view as "statistically normal"); it doesn't matter the distance to the lab if we don't have the null hypothesis expected radius of such pandemic outbreak to such labs in our particular moment in history).

There is no circumstantial evidence, only a hypothesis which is not supported by any type of evidence. — Benkei

I'm not sure what you are disagreeing with.

The very definition of circumstantial evidence I cited from wikipedia is that it is very weak and compatible with mutually exclusive hypothesis. I am using circumstantial evidence in the way wikipedia describes.

Your issue with my statements seem to be you want to gate-keep the word evidence for the lawyer community.

If someone brings up a fact, and it seems plausibly tied to the case, I simply see no problem calling it evidence and analyzing from there. Questioning whether it counts as evidence or not seems a sterile debate. A detective tries to collect or record all the "evidence" in a case, without prejudice as to what's important enough to be called "evidence".

I have no problem saying "we have evidence" and concluding "based on the evidence, no scenario seems more likely", which is my position.

So, if you want to set yourself up as arbiter of what counts as evidence (what premises people are even allowed to propose for making an argument), then I am happy to continue there.

If we ignore the debate about evidence, our real difference, however, is you seem to think a lack of evidence proving (or even establishing as more slightly more likely) that the pandemic is a lab accident or purposefully released, means it's more likely it's natural.

Though I agree there's no evidence indicating a lab accident or purposeful release of the virus is more likely, I disagree that the natural occurring hypothesis is by definition the default hypothesis.

The paper "proving it's not engineered" is clearly bad faith. It is simply a non-refutable statement, as we cannot prove it's impossible to engineer a virus to not-appear-engineered, which would be a clear and strong motivation in the scenario where the virus is engineered. Indeed, it's fairly trivial to be convinced that such an engineering method is feasible, since both natural biology and biology manipulation are stochastic process so we can simply repeat techniques until they randomly appear natural.

So, if it's non-refutable to begin with, it's not science whatever these so called scientists are doing in the paper.

A scientifically valid approach would require, as a first step, a challenge to experts around the world to engineer viruses to appear natural and the team conducting the study trying to differentiate between these and other viruses actually taken from nature. If they are able to find the engineered virus in each challenge submitted by other labs around the world, then the idea they have such a detection ability becomes more credible. We would still need to wonder whether bio-weapons labs are not far, far ahead for such an exercise to be meaningful, but at least we have a starting point of a claim that has been properly submitted to refutation. So, this would be a refutable based framework for determining the engineered can be consistently differentiated from the natural by experts trying to defeat such detection, at least in the current state of civilian bioengineering.

Without such an adversarial framework, the claims these academics are making are simply their opinions based on non-refutable reasoning; i.e. they are not doing science as is understood by their contemporaries.

Now, that such academics are willing to squander their intellectual credibility and demonstrate they have either no basic critical thinking skills, no understanding of the scientific method or then they are simply liars, doesn't mean the virus is engineered, only that stupid is as stupid does.

Be that as it may, to be abundantly clear, I have not claimed here coronavirus has a "HIV gene" only that the we can't simply ignore a Nobel Prize winner (for work on HIV) claim that it does and it proves it's engineered (we need to actually analyse what we can before determining that this Nobel Prize winner's analysis makes no sense, which I bother to do, and by extension the Nobel Prize makes no sense as a standard of the "true-true" expertise).

I legitimately do not see any compelling reason to believe any of the scenarios (natural, accident, or on purpose) are ruled out in any significant way based on the information that's available.

All arguments, presented here or elsewhere of what is "more likely", seem to be mainly about the world view of the person proposing the argument. If one's world view is that "China would, like, for sure never release an epidemic with pandemic potential on their own population" then one is likely to conclude it's either natural or an accident. If one believes that "scientists are, like, totally competent and there's never, ever any reason to question scientific institutions are for the public good, even in totalitarian China", then one is likely to conclude it's not a lab leak. If one "doesn't believe in coincidences" in these tense geopolitical times, then one is likely to suspect foul play.

I realize Trump supporters are essentially rabid to believe it's not natural, so as to have a scapegoat. However, if there really is no compelling evidence one way or another, my view is that it only helps them to claim otherwise. Putting "credibility" behind the opposite of what Trump supporters, or Trump himself, believes simply because they believe it and entertaining the possibility "helps Trump", simply erodes the credibility put forth to back such counterclaims, and boost Trump supporters when they can show their basic ideas have not in fact been "ruled out" and alternative "debunking" has holes.

In my opinion, it's more productive to accept there is no compelling evidence (we just don't know, and I think likely at this point we will never know; and if we do find out, it won't be from any analysis that happens on the internet) because there is no compelling evidence, in order to move onto what we can know: which is if US intelligence suspected a bio-attack or then a bio-weapon leak, obviously the US administration did not do anything about it, for instance contain it when it was still possible to have an effective containment policy (what I advocated when I first joined this thread many moons ago) and when they failed to act on that, followup with further failure to prepare; and, more importantly, the global system, and in particular the US, was knowingly vulnerable to such a pandemic threat because ignoring it maximized short term profits: In other words, the market is not efficient at allocating resources, and, in addition, the US security establishment does not bother much to ensure the US is secure from threats to US citizens that don't happen to coincide with arms sales and imperialism (i.e. either way, US citizens aren't the object of "US security"; well, not in the way the republicans previously liked to imagine). So, regardless of the scenario of the emergence of the pandemic, we can draw the same conclusions: If it was an attack then it's an easy attack exploiting a weakness elites in the West didn't care to fix because of money and they don't care about the poor as they can get top-notch care and just hide from the virus anyways. If it's a lab leak, then obviously far more regulation is needed about these labs and drastically or fully cutting plane travel ties with any dystopian totalitarian state which cannot be trusted to police best practices. If it's natural, then capitalism as we know it today, in particular in the US, was obviously unprepared for a known risk along with bad public health policies in general that amplify that risk, unwilling to do a flight freeze in the critical moment because "will someone please think of the airplane stonks!", lacking the institutions to keep society stable in such a health and economic crisis, yet unhesitating to bail out the wealthy while they huddled in their compounds and traveled to islands and yachts and New Zealand to insulate themselves from the consequence of their governing system. I.e. we can draw sound conclusions about our leaders and sound policy recommendations about the current system in any of the potential scenarios.

I am saying that there is a higher likelihood based on circumstances of the case, not that there is right now any direct evidence. — schopenhauer1

Though I agree with your general position vis-a-vis @Benkei, that circumstantial evidence is still evidence we need to consider (if only to guide further investigation as you point out), it is not correct to say, at this time, "there is a higher likelihood" it is a lab accident.

To arrive at such a conclusion, we'd need to build numerical models of the different scenarios. To conclude the outbreak was "suspiciously close" to the lab in the first place, we'd need a statistical model that tells us the places where a pandemic outbreak is likely (population center, close contact with viral reservoirs) and some average distance to labs that study such viruses. If labs that study viruses are closely correlated with reservoirs and population centers within which an outbreak is most likely, then we can't really conclude anything based on the location of the outbreak and the location of the lab.

People have literally gone to jail based on statistical evidence (provided by legit statisticians) that didn't bother to run the null hypothesis scenario (which goes to show how easy these mistakes are to make).

So, until running the null hypothesis of the expected distance between labs that study viruses and completely independent outbreaks of those viruses, we can't do much with simply the distance between the outbreak and the lab. We may find that the lab will be likely in the city center, as that's where people work, and the first noticeable outbreak will likely be in the city center because that's where people are densely packed together to support a really noticeable outbreak.

It's still circumstantial evidence (a fact of the case that there is a lab at some distance to the outbreak), but we cannot conclude this circumstantial evidence renders any scenario "more likely" without actual
statistical models and calculations (which would be a lot of work).

Where there is stronger evidence is the claim employees of the lab had a side business of selling research animals to the exotic animal market that has been identified as the likely source of the initial outbreak.

But let's first consider how @Benkei is able to show this also wouldn't count as evidence even if it was true (which I am not claiming it is true, there are propaganda efforts from state actors spinning things one way or another; so I am fairly skeptical of any given purported fact).

And to be abundantly clear, whatever the origin of the virus, Trump has been completely incompetent in managing the crisis, and the virus origin issue in the right wing spin machine is largely to deflect from this, invoking mostly unsound or preposterous theories. However, not analyzing things properly, that revealing an argument to be unsound does not establish that the conclusions are untrue (if we have no sound and valid argument to the contrary, which at the moment we don't), in my opinion helps the right wing spin machine as they can point to these flaws in reasoning.

At the moment there is simply no strong evidence for any scenario; we cannot exclude natural random emergence, we cannot exclude a lab accident, we cannot exclude deliberate design and release (researchers who claim "there's no genetic evidence the virus is engineered", such as the lancet paper on this topic, are not considering what equally, or more, skilled actors would do to try to outwit exactly such an analysis, and it's simply intellectually dishonest to not entertain such a scenario; what's possible at the cutting edge of biowarfare we civilians simply don't know, and I would wager that of such people who do have cutting edge biowarfare expertise and have formed analysis on the coronavirus origin are state secrets on every side at the moment. For instance, considering:

Dr Lentzos said the issue of the virus' origin was a "very difficult question", and added that "there have been quiet, behind-the-scene discussions... in the biosecurity expert community, questioning the seafood market origin that has come out very strongly from China". — BBC

We can note Dr Lentzos doesn't tell us the actual content of these quiet behind-the-scene discussions of the biosecurity expert community.

This lack of knowledge about the cutting edge doesn't establish anything, but it is simply intellectually honest to admit we don't know what a sophisticated actor would be able to do). In my view, if tempting right wing reality deniers to exit the right wing spin machine is possible at all, it is by demonstrating the highest standards of intellectual honesty, and foregoing the use of the jump to conclusions mat on all occasions.

There can be lot's of motivations to create a pandemic from both state and non-state actors and there are means, both known and unknown, to find or craft the "sweet spot" virus; this scenario is relevant as, if it is true, such actors may have more planned for us so it would be best to find them out if they exist and, if they don't have further nefarious undertakings, seeking justice for the crime is a noble thing in itself.

Likewise, laboratory leaks happen; this scenario is relevant because, if it is true, it is best to know how it happened and review and increase lab standards accordingly.

Pandemics can occur naturally, if this is true of this case, it is best to know this to be able to understand how to avoid or contain such naturally occurring pandemics in the future.

In all cases, the world's institutions, in particularly the US, were woefully incompetent in managing the pandemic, and the origin of the virus should not, in any case, deflect from such failure and what it says about the people in charge at the moment as well as the neoliberal ideological approach to government (not mandating private enterprise have a stockpile of PPE for a known threat because it is more profitable for them to have only just-in-time supply lines, not shutting down air travel early because it would decrease airline stock and best to err on the side of airline stock, not nationalizing and rationing essential supplies so as not to set a precedent that government can more efficiently manage resources relative a crisis as well as ensure corrupt investor interests can make bank off the crisis, bailing out corporations and not people, and in the case of the US, not having universal health-care and other social safety-net institutions that allow the population and political system to weather these sorts of crisis without massive avoidable suffering, along with all the other day-to-day reasons to have such institutions).

I am willing to analyse the origins of the virus honestly, which at the moment my honest analysis is we don't know the origins (the circumstantial evidence we currently have can fit all sorts of mutually exclusive theories fine and dandy), and in exchange I can more easily expect honest evaluation of the failures of neoliberalism as a governing ideology and the right-wing fact denying enterprise and its role in supporting neoliberal ideology along with even more extreme delusions that even centrist mainstream neoliberals want to move away from.

Sigh. No, I'm not. I'm not going to condense months of criminal law study in a single post to explain this to you. Look it up. — Benkei

Dude, have you read the wikipedia entry on "evidence"?

Evidence, broadly construed, is anything presented in support of an assertion[1], because evident things are undoubted. There are two kind of evidence: intellectual evidence (the obvious, the evident) and empirical evidence (proofs).

The mentioned support may be strong or weak. The strongest type of evidence is that which provides direct proof of the truth of an assertion. At the other extreme is evidence that is merely consistent with an assertion but does not rule out other, contradictory assertions, as in circumstantial evidence. — evidence

If there is an HIV gene in coronavirus that is evidence, a "fact of the case" (and, please note, I say "assuming this is true" in my analysis), that would need to be established if one wanted to argue that the virus was genetically engineered with HIV (if other evidence came to light, such as testimony of a researcher claiming they were involved in mixing HIV and coronavirus, it would of course be necessary to establish whether HIV genes really are in coronavirus in the first place, because it's important evidence to such an argument).

I go to some lengths to explain that even if this evidence was true (HIV genes are in coronavirus), Luc Montagnier argument is unsound because there's other natural explanations for why a gene may appear both in HIV and coronavirus; viruses transfer genes all the time between each other in nature. However, if there's such a gene, it is still a fact of the case: a piece of evidence. Only much more evidence would be required to conclude that it was indeed genetically engineered.

I go to some lengths to explain why Luc Montagnier argument makes little sense. However, he does have a Nobel Prize for work on HIV, so it's difficult to to just dismiss his claims prima faci, without some analysis.

And, I would argue, it's this sort of intellectual dishonesty -- using "Nobel Prize" as a bludgeon of expertise when Nobel Prize winners support something the left supports (such as action is needed on climate change), but summarily dismissed when a Nobel winner says something "against the narrative" -- is what help fuel Trump supporters.

Luc Montagnier argument definitely sounds like "bullshit", as put it, which I agree with. However, it's still bullshit coming from a Nobel Prize winner, so can't just be ignored; simply ignoring it fuels the right wing spin machine's projection of their own intellectual dishonesty upon the left.

I also go to some lengths to explain why circumstantial evidence, such as "que bueno" or the proximity to the lab to the outbreak, as wikipedia says, "does not rule out other, contradictory assertions". It's still evidence though, just not something, in itself, that establishes any strong conclusions. I literally say:

However, as far as I know there is no hard evidence that it is lab origin, only circumstantial evidence. The problem with circumstantial evidence is that it's difficult to calculate probabilities because it's difficult to identify independent variables, dependent variables, cause and effect (without which calculations are nonsensical). — boethius

I then go on to explain that the same circumstantial evidence can be accounted for in completely different theories.

Circumstantial evidence is not strong evidence, but it is still in the category of "evidence" that can participate in the "facts of the case" (such as a insurance payout for a fire participating to establish motive for setting the fire; if there was no evidence of an insurance payout, it becomes much more difficult to argue there was motivation to achieve such thing); of course, only the circumstantial evidence of insurance payouts doesn't prove anything, much more evidence would be needed; but the basic fact of the insurance policy existing is still relevant among such a further body of evidence for insurance fraud.

The word "evidence" is literally right in the label "circumstantial evidence".

But please, prey tell, what would I learn in months of your criminal law tutoring that would illuminate me to the errors in the wikipedia entry so that I may correct it for the benefit of all mankind?

There is no circumstantial evidence, only a hypothesis which is not supported by any type of evidence. — Benkei

You're confusing evidence with proof, due to your fear that simply entertaining the hypothesis fuels Trump supporters.

Furthermore, my analysis was based on the assumption that the premises under consideration are true (I haven't bothered to check as it changes little). If the premises are true, that there is an HIV gene in coronavirus that is the key to it's success, then this is indeed evidence of genetic manipulation. It is not proof, however, which I explain in my analysis as there are other explanations for the gene being there.

Likewise, "que beuno" is evidence that the benefiting party may have been motivated to create such a benefit. If we look at the outcomes, China has indeed benefited in terms of increasing mass surveillance, shutting down Hong Kong independent governance (whatever was left of it) and also benefits from the chaos in the United States. These elements are simply true and cannot be ignored, they are evidence.

Again, I go to some lengths to explain they are not proof, as there are other explanations that account for the same pieces of evidence. Indeed, a global disruptive event will create winners and losers, so if it was completely random emergence of the virus of course someone will benefit. A property owner may benefit from the insurance money from a fire, it is not proof that it's arson, but it is evidence that there was potential motivation.

To be clear, I am not taking sides here. We know pandemics occur naturally (as they happened before genetic engineering) but we also know bio-warfare and lab accidents happen. Random emergence of the virus is completely adequate to explain what we see, even moreso in combination with Trump weakening pandemic institutional preparedness. However, we also can surmise that if the pandemic was deliberate (China being only one of many suspects) that it would be made to seem as natural as possible and numerical analysis would be used to design both the qualities of virus as well as the initial outbreak circumstances.

I see lot's of evidence that can be called on to support lot's of theories. I see no proof of any one theory, however, nor even a leading candidate.

Yes all this stuff you mention sounds like bullshit, and I was not referring to this, or any similar-dubious claim, so this is kind of a non-sequitor to my claim, though interesting to learn the nutty theories out there. — schopenhauer1

Your first question is has this been talked about. These theories, which we agree are bullshit, have been talked about the most, as far as I have been able to see.

Because of the nutty arguments supporting a lab origin, the liberal media has avoided the subject; usually choosing to imply that the debunking of nutty theories means that the basic idea has also been debunked.

I am simply providing context for your observation that this subject hasn't been talked about a lot.

I make it very clear this is not in relation to your statements, just how about the public discourse (one side has talked about it a lot, advancing nutty theories about it as deflection of excuses for Trump, and the liberal media has largely taken the position that to entertain the lab origin hypothesis is to support Trump).

I make this clear by clearly stating:

However, as ↪schopenhauer1, points out, there's no way to rule out a lab origin, either by accident or on purpose — boethius

I agree it's completely possible that the virus has a lab origin; I have mentioned this possibility on this very forum months ago.

However, as far as I know there is no hard evidence that it is lab origin, only circumstantial evidence. The problem with circumstantial evidence is that it's difficult to calculate probabilities because it's difficult to identify independent variables, dependent variables, cause and effect (without which calculations are nonsensical).

For instance: is the proximity of the outbreak to the Wuhan lab, that studied coronaviruses, likely due to the Wuhan lab releasing the virus? Or, does the Wuhan lab study coronaviruses as they have access to the same viral reservoir from which a pandemic would also likely emerge? Or was the virus discovered near the Wuhan lab because the Wuhan lab is able to study these viruses, but the real original outbreak was elsewhere but ability to collect evidence decreases radically the further into the past and the further away from such labs (early transmission chains of novel viruses can meander a lot, due to the chaotic nature of statistics at small numbers but also because the virus may require an incubation period of, on average only ever so slightly greater than 1 replication rate, to build up mutations to arrive at higher replication rates to cause outbreaks). Or, is there enough bio-labs close to enough population centers that an outbreak at random weighted for how people happen to be distributed is simply likely to happen "suspiciously close" to a lab without any relation between the lab and the outbreak one way or another.

In terms of historical political circumstantial evidence, is the timing of the pandemic likely because "it was the right time to release a pandemic to implement further surveillance measures with contact tracing as an excuse, cause global chaos in which killing protests in Hong Kong is convenient and "maybe it's genocide" of Muslims forgotten, without much fear of losing relative power because the incompetence of Trump ensures the virus won't be managed well in the US and there's little risk of auto-inflicting a large comparative economic wound (such as in the scenario that all flights are stopped to China to contain the virus until China is virus free, that the West simply manages things well generally to prevent and control outbreaks (such as SARS 1)" or is it likely "the governing incompetence of Trump the cause of dismantling the global pandemic response system, international coordination to respond to crisis more generally, and that pandemic potential outbreaks are happening regularly (SARS, Ebola, MERS, Swineflu), that high volume plane travel has rendered this sort of situation explosive for a while, but risks have been mitigated "just ever so slightly competently enough" and getting rid of these suppression mechanisms was simply lifting the lid on the whole thing and a pandemic the expected result." Or, was this virus simply the "100 year" emergence of a "sweet spot virus" impossible to contain, and that such a virus emerging at any time will have always historical circumstances supporting one political narrative or another (political intrigue, great power rivalry, winners and losers in a globally disruptive event, being more or less constant explanatory elements).

So, it's difficult to come to definite conclusions based on circumstantial evidence, but we are in agreement that the possibilities are worth entertaining as simply "the state of knowledge at the moment is open on the issue" as well as for the fact evidence may accumulate in one direction or another over time.

That's been dismissed as a hoax. — Benkei

What has been largely dismissed is various claims of genetic "proof" that the virus was engineered by gene splicing. I believe there was some Indian studies, or just one study, that sparked off these claims.

More famously, there's a French researcher, Luc Montagnier, accredited with discovering HIV causing AIDS, who claims the corona virus is for certain has a genetic splice of HIV, that it can't be natural. In the same interview, he makes the bizarre followup claims, to paraphrase, "that because it's unnatural, it is not in harmony with nature and thus will evolve away and be gone [by about nowish]" as well as an unrelated claim about his current research into the potential for electromagnetic waves to cure viral diseases. The interview is available here; this was right-wing super-juice as it both simultaneously supports the Wuhan lab origin hypothesis, China's attacked the US if you want to spin things that way, and supports the notion that the threat of the virus is completely overblown as it's not "natural" (supporting, as a subpoint, that the hubris of such scientists is ultimately futile against the power of God's maintained natural balance which is also why climate change isn't a threat) and so is already gone by nowish, and it's clams by a Nobel prize winner so "lefty-facty" people are hypocrites for not believing it wholesale. Unfortunately, the liberal media is so science illiterate and simply corrupt that this sort of highly dubious claims from someone already approved by the establishment cannot be dealt with.

Picking apart the claims is a pretty simple task.

Luc Montagnier supports the HIV engineered hypothesis based on the mathematical permutations required to create the same gene. Even assuming the gene is the same as HIV and a the mathematical permutations requires astronomical (i.e. even if the premises are correct, which I'm not sure about but don't need to bother to even check) the conclusions doesn't follow since viruses do not all evolve independently but share genetic information between them all the time. Someone infected with HIV, or an animal with a related virus, then infected with the coronavirus could pass the HIV gene to coronavius. Indeed, if the gene in question is what makes coronavirus so effective (the motivation for engineering into the virus in the first place) then it also has an advantage in transferring around in natural hosts as it provides the new virus with an immense advantage.

In other words, this "Nobel Prize" winner doesn't understand the basics of his own domain of expertise.

The even more bizarre claim that the virus is "non-harmonious" and therefore will just go away, doesn't even have a plausible mechanism, as the viral replication lines (chains of replication from one cell to another, one host to another) are happening all over the globe and at very different rates or replication, and there is simply no mechanism available to coordinate all these viral lineages to somehow peter-out.

His current research on radiation curing viral diseases is far fetched enough that a credible person realizes some basic proof of concept is required to entertain the idea; such as breaking apart suspended virus particles with EM frequencies (at energy levels well below what would just ionize or then cook the whole body). I.e. a credible person would preamble with such research, or then focus on these steps of proof of concept that could eventually lead to therapeutic application down the road. Presented as he does, it simply sounds completely delusional, and that he is engaged in some macabre program of trial and error of microwaving lot's of mice (and to the small mind of the bureaucrat, if a Nobel Prize winner wants to microwave some mice, it's not like anyone's proved otherwise; if we can broadcast television, why not health?).

However, as , points out, there's no way to rule out a lab origin, either by accident or on purpose, and any credible analysis must admit that if the premises are true, the conclusion still maybe true; and even if the conclusion isn't true, it doesn't rule out other bio-engineering techniques; therefore, it's better to ignore the issue altogether, and fuel claims of a conspiracy to suppress these sorts of claims (which, to be clear, there is a conspiracy between corporate media owners and executives to shape public discourse, and spinning a lack of evidence of one claim as positive proof of the opposing claim, that also lacks evidence, is a manifestation of this conspiracy to shape public discourse; there is only, ironically, a much stronger conspiracy in right wing media to shape right-wing discourse to be so far removed from reality, for instance repeating the idea that they are the real intellectuals and the more liberal media the real conspiracy funded by Soros and run by cultural Marxists et. al., that public discourse more generally is not even possible).

No there isn't. Universities are mostly private institutions and the state plays no part in their curriculum nor their decision about who to award doctorates to. — Isaac

You have no idea how the state functions, and you do not have the cognitive ability to participate in this discussion as anything other than a troll to put on display the hackish foolery of yourself and your colleagues.

Make a separate thread if you want to argue "private universities" are "independent institutions" that are legitimately independent of state power and do not serve as proxies to that state power for implementing state policy.

Furthermore, where's you "evidence" to establish "mostly". Lot's of people and universities in China, lot's of public funded and publicly owned universities in Europe. Lot's of "private universities" receiving state subsidy in exchange for conforming to state policy. These are in the minority according to you?

By "mostly" do you mean "mostly in the world" or just referring only to your own delusional understanding of things to maintain your precious ego with regard to what you delusionally believe will help your case.

The mere appearance of "independent intellectuals patting each other on the back" does not establish that those intellectuals are independent and not state agents. The mere appearance of "a legitimate state" does not establish that such a state is legitimate.

For, we expect the hackish fool to claim he's not a hackish fool. We expect agents of the state participating in the central delusion that they are not agents of the state and that they offer independent council and research to critique the state, to claim they are not state agents and their council and critique is genuine and not delusional.

To remind you of your own claim again:

And yet, despite repeated requests you've given not one shred of evidence to demonstrate that this actually happens (outside of your fevered imagination) in anywhere other than oppressive regimes - which we all know already are bad places, so you're not serving up anything new here. — Isaac

When you say "outside your fevered imagination" this is to further emphasize the obvious claim "we all know here" you are making that oppressive regimes are easy to identify. That, even if my analysis is obviously true for oppressive regimes, that we need not engage in analysis of what oppression means and if it can manifest in more subtle ways than China and North Korea. You are saying trust to appearances by literally making the statement that that "one shred of evidence to demonstrate that this actually happens (outside of your fevered imagination)".

You did not say "ok, yes, I agree Chinese psychologists are agents of the state participating in oppression, selected either for their willingness to do so or then delusions about state legitimacy, but, you haven't provided evidence that this occurs in any nominal Western Democracy". To which I could reply, "Ah, someone with the cognitive abilities to understand the analysis so far and that further political analysis is required to evaluate state legitimacy in places where, if it is there, it is not obviously so (well, at least to the privileged classes that live there ... just like Chinese state illegitimacy and oppression is not obvious to the privileged classes that live in China)."

So, unless you demonstrate you have the cognitive abilities to understand your own words and honesty about what "outside your fevered imagination" was meant to mean in relation to "oppressive regimes -which we already know are bad places", then there is no longer any purpose for me to engage in discussion with you, due to your lack of cognitive abilities to participate usefully in the discussion because you are a hack and a fool.

Not that I will abandon this discussion, but my next post will treat you as my case-study research subject to understand how psychologists in illegitimate states maintain their delusion. Fortunately I don't need state license for this particular form of psychological research. For the benefit of people following this conversation, I will demonstrate exactly how various smoke screens are thrown up and immediately abandoned when they don't work, exactly how strawmen are frantically crafted into an army of confusing discourse, how goal posts are moved again and again, how ad hominems are brandied about but dropped as soon as it's realized the "stigma power" the research subject "Isaac" is deluded in believing to have is not effective, how desperate the research subject "Isaac" is to transition the conversation to "peer reviewed" research in a field that has no intellectual legitimacy at all (other than as an afterthought to political analysis) because there is no credible way to disentangle psychology from state power, and, ultimately, how the research subject "Isaac", probably because he was selected from birth by various forms of state apparatus at various gates (the first selection gate simply being the class one is born into or then deluded into wanting to be apart of out of self-hatred for one's origins), participates in the central delusion that he lives in a legitimate state that does not maintain oppressive class relations, that he lends his credibility to other state agents who maintain this delusion for themselves and the populace with more clinical precision, and does research within the bounds and for the purposes of state policy (obviously, nothing politically relevant, and certainly the lack of any politically relevant ideas or intuitions or basic social skills that were not developed as a child, due to a postulated emotionally deprived upbringing, also played a part in the selection of the research subject "Isaac" to serve state purposes at later selection gates, and filtering out other candidates who would be "trouble makers" due to a more lucid understanding of political analysis and better infant phase social skill development, such as object permanence; that the research subject "Isaac" is unable to fix permanently abstract concepts in order to participate in clear adult discussion, but such concepts simply disappear and reaper and how they are related in each appearance is not understood by the research subject but rather the research subject "Isaac" treats such appearances as separate and therefore appears foolish and hackish and lacking in basic cognitive ability to anyone who is able to see where these conceptual objects go when they are not in direct manifestation).

"Oppressive regimes - which we all know are bad places" is not a claim, it's a qualifier. Not the set {oppressive regimes}, but the subset {oppressive regimes which we all know are bad places}. — Isaac

A qualifier of who?

Does the Chinese Communist Party qualify as "we all".

If your statement has any content, it is because "we all" relates to obviousness, that the analysis is only applicable to places that are "obviously bad" and that we need not think about other places not on our "obviously bad list". Your use of "regimes" provides this obvious interpretation, that there are "other oppressive regimes" but with regard to them as well we "all know they are bad places".

Now, if you are walking this interpretation back to an idea that "we all" does not relate to obviousness, then your statement is simply "your analysis applies only to those places we all know it applies; and, by we all I mean to refer only to those people who agree with me of where it applies and already agree with me on where it does not apply".

This is meaningless, unless, again, you are using "we all" to refer to people that agree to you because the agreement is obvious; otherwise, who cares who agrees with you or not.

So, investigation, political analysis, is needed to try to distinguish between the places where the analysis applies or not, the "bad places" and the "good places".

You do not have the cognitive abilities to follow this conversation, you don't even know where you are in the chain of argumentation. I have not even arrived at "how do we know which states are oppressive or not", so by jumping to this topic, you only demonstrate your fear of eventually getting to that topic (because you are a hack and a fool).

You claimed that psychogists were agents of the state because they required state permission to carry out their research. Forget the title of the thread, you made a claim within it and I'm disputing that claim. — Isaac

More strawmen. You do not have the cognitive skills to understand my arguments.

I mentioned 3 things: 1. Psychologists are selected because they already agree with state policy (there is a large state apparatus one needs to navigate to become a psychologist with lot's of filtering at lot's of steps), 2. Psychologists need permission from the state to carry out research or then to "cure people", 3. Psychologists receive state subsidy (directly or from state proxies) to get the resources to do research (vast majority of the time).

I've already mentioned legitimate sates also maintains policy through these mechanisms, and will also use coercive force to stop psychologists breaking the rules. The difference is, a legitimate state tends to have 'reasonable rules" (because the policy is to have "reasonable rules").

I will not bother to explain why you thought your strawman would work and why it doesn't actually work. I will only mention here that you don't have the cognitive skills to follow this conversation, you are a hack and a fool.

My claim is that they are not generally agents of the state because they do not generally need a licence to practice psychological research, they do not have to conform to state policy to do research. — Isaac

Psychologists do not need a degree (which is a license from the state) to be a "psychologist", nor "generally" work in institutions that contain a large network of people and state licenses for those people and institution as a whole, nor get permission from various oversight boards (which are specific license to perform specific actions) to conduct human experiments on a case by case basis?

Psychologists do not "generally need" state subsidy directly, or through proxies, to perform their research?

We all know they need lot's of licenses to interact with research subjects and also money from the state to fund those interactions, and I mean "we all" here to mean "obviously it's the case".

You do not have the cognitive skills to follow this conversation, you are a hack and a fool.

State policy (in both legitimate and illegitimate states) allows for choices. Those allowed choices, formally or functionally, reflect state policy. For state agents, their space of choice conforms further to state policy through the process of being selected for "proper belief in state policy" in the first place and the type of funding that is available (both generally speaking as well as the case by case basis of grant approval in particular cases).

Your discursive, and perhaps thinking method too, is to simply throw up tons and tons of straw, and you think you've accomplished something when your interlocutor cannot exhaustively analysis each piece of straw in every straw man you present. Certainly, you believe that with enough straw, the weight and the pressure of it will be so great as to produce one tiny diamond that you can run off with and covet. But that's not how diamonds are made, no one's ever just piled a bunch of straw to make a diamond, so when you find rocks in your straw piles it's simply more delusion when you think they are diamonds.

The criticism of Trump of many retired generals is actually notable. — ssu

In my opinion, we were very close to a formal coup, but Trump backed down.

This was certainly not inevitable, in terms of how "crazy" Trump would go as well as the US military reaction.

The US is reaping the dividends of having a history of "okish" democratic legitimacy most of the time (what is new with Trump and contemporary Republicans is that they are clearly fully intent in entrenching minority rule -- through the SCOTUS and their legal corruption and gerrymandering rulings, as well as the senate and presidency -- rather than minority rule being a temporary democratic weakness that plausibly self corrects and is credibly "checked and balances" meanwhile). So this is heartening to see, as there wasn't much way of being certain about military reaction at the start of the crisis.

Obviously Trump's "show of force" in the church was a communication mistake, as well as his "domination remark". Likewise, the general who talked about the "the battle space" was a mistake (either from Trump's perspective or then his own perspective, assuming that's what he wanted too).

Both these things not only helped lose the wider media battle over the political interpretation of looting, but were "hooks" to allow other elements of the military to declare that they do not view the American people as enemies and that's not what America is about. Extremely laudable.

I agree that retired generals primarily carried this message to avoid a formally "rogue" military.

Also this kind of notification to the forces from the top echelon of the US armed forces is quite rare. (And note that it has been unclassified too). General Milley is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest ranking general in the armed forces: — ssu

Possibly unprecedented, would be interesting to know if there are any parallels.

Whatever the case, it was clearly Trump's desire to "dominate the streets" and be able to send in the military to do that, and it's not just retired generals with "vague insinuations", message has been pretty clear even from currently serving generals, so we do have essentially open defiance. This was the big question for me; a few individuals at the top of a command structure can make things go in radically different ways depending on their level of defiance or cooperation, and even enthusiasm.

The communication battle over "police brutality is bad sure, but what we really need is to put down these riots" seems to have ended in favour of "police brutality is still the problem, not the rioters". Demonstrating more police brutality against protesters of police brutality, and shooting members of the media, obviously didn't help the argument.

So, it seems to me the situation has returned back to the political sphere. The military nature of the issue has been deescalated, for now.

Of course, we can't exclude some new "chaotic emergency" even greater than the riots happening, but, the political problems being so deep in anycase, I think worthwhile to discuss further what a political solution could look like in the current context. So I will update my analysis in my next post.

In the meanwhile,

It's not the first locale to break up a department, but no cities as populous have ever attempted it. Minneapolis city council members haven't specified what or who will replace it if the department disbands.

Camden, New Jersey, may be the closest thing to a case study they can get.

The city, home to a population about 17% of Minneapolis' size, dissolved its police department in 2012 and replaced it with an entirely new one after corruption rendered the existing agency unfixable.

Before its police reforms, Camden was routinely named one of the most violent cities in the US. Now, seven years after the old department was booted, the city's crime has dropped by close to half. Officers host outdoor parties for residents and knock on doors to introduce themselves. It's a radically different Camden than it was even a decade ago. Here's how they did it. — CNN

Is an interesting read.

My claim is that I think you, I and anyone else taking part in this discussion would agree that China and North Korea are 'obviously' oppressive regimes. — Isaac

To quote you again:

And yet, despite repeated requests you've given not one shred of evidence to demonstrate that this actually happens (outside of your fevered imagination) in anywhere other than oppressive regimes - which we all know already are bad places, so you're not serving up anything new here. — Isaac

You're key operative claim here is "oppressive regimes - which we all know are bad places".

The OP is literally entitled "Mental health under an illegitimate state".

So, either your complaint is "you're just analyzing the OP, what's up with that?".

Or, then you're trying to say something less transparently bad faith, relating "we all know" to "oppressive regimes", that this is somehow obvious to determine, that agents of the state, such as psychologists, we can't assume may try to lead us to believe a illegitimate state they represent is a legitimate state, that political analysis is not first required wherever we are that is independent of state agents -- outside China and North Korea, which I guess you do accept the framework and all the analytical conclusions I've presented, and that their psychologists do try to gaslight their people (being selected for this delusion in the first place, or then generally conforming to it anyways) as to the local oppression levels; that this is key state policy to maintain to stay in one's job as a psychologist in these places (or do you not accept the analysis even for these "bad places"?).

I've just supplied the rest of my list, China and North Korea. — Isaac

So to be perfectly clear, these are the only places on earth where state oppression exists, that you know to be "bad places"?

You've checked, it's obvious.

To summarize: You're defending the claim that not only that you've checked but that furthermore it's obvious, that you don't need to supply your own criteria of "oppression" and "bad place", as that's obvious too, and any debate about anywhere else concerning these political topics can be dismissed prima faci, as the list is clear and settled in your mind: China and North Korea, t'is all.

Yes, that's exactly what I'm claiming. — Isaac

But, according to yourself:

I said 'oppressive regimes which we all know are bad' and I've already provided my list. China. The only place you've drawn any modern examples from. — Isaac

So according to you, there's evidence this happens in China.

You're refusal to provide the rest of your "list" or then your denial of the basic syntax of your own claims, again, just demonstrates you don't have the cognitive skills to participate in this conversation, that you are a hack and fool.

You're claim in it's formal form is: "there's only evidence where there's obviously evidence! Ha! Show me the evidence!".

When I inquire about "the obvious nature of the evidence" you are unable to follow through and complete your list of "bad place" that you "already know" (the claim we "all know" these things is even more absurd, but let's start with your own part of "we all").

actually happens (outside of your fevered imagination) in anywhere other than oppressive regimes - which we all know already are bad places — Isaac

You are saying you "already know" what are "bad places" to which my analysis applies.

Tell us the whole list, not just China. Or then accept you didn't have the cognitive skills to understand your own claim, but now that it's been explained to you, you realize it's a hackish and foolish thing to do.

I said 'oppressive regimes which we all know are bad' and I've already provided my list. China. — Isaac

Your list includes only china?

May I remind you of your claim, since not only you don't have the cognitive skills to follow what I'm saying, you don't have the cognitive skills to even follow what you're saying:

And yet, despite repeated requests you've given not one shred of evidence to demonstrate that this actually happens (outside of your fevered imagination) in anywhere other than oppressive regimes - which we all know already are bad places, so you're not serving up anything new here. — Isaac

Do you even understand your own claim here? That "I am not serving up anything new" because "there is not a shred of evidence this actually happens".

Are you not able to read that you put an "s" at the end of "regimes" and thus implying you know there are more oppressive regimes other than China.

Is your list "China" or is it "China" in addition to other "regimes"?

Since it's obvious to you and something you already know, provide the list from memory according to your criteria of "oppressive and bad".

I didn't claim I "know" which regimes are oppressive and bad and which aren't, you're making this claim. Tell us so that we may know what you know (or then, either way, we can then evaluate this as evidence you don't have the cognitive skills to follow this conversation, and you are a hack and a fool).

No, I'm saying that the only modern example you've provided so far of state control over the direction of psychological research is China — Isaac

This is a philosophy forum, it is fairly usual to be concerned with sound argumentation, that conclusions follow from the premises.

Here, I am concerned with what arguments with regard to psychology and psychologists follow from the conclusion one lives in a illegitimate state.

I could carry on in this discussion making no empirical investigation at all, leaving it an exercise to the reader to decide whether illegitimate states even can exist, if they do are any around, and if they are around which one's are which. Since everyone seems to agree, including yourself, that oppressive regimes can exist, do exist, and China is one such example, I have provided some additional argumentation on this agreed premise and another premise:

insofar as a community of psychologists conceive of themselves as part of a global community that includes China and derives their expert legitimacy, in part, from the global nature of the community — boethius

However, on the subject of empirical claims, you make the empirical claim:

oppressive regimes - which we all know already are bad places — Isaac

Please write a simple list from memory of all the countries and which are oppressive and bad places and which not, since you know this information.

And yet, despite repeated requests you've given not one shred of evidence to demonstrate that this actually happens (outside of your fevered imagination) in anywhere other than oppressive regimes - which we all know already are bad places, so you're not serving up anything new here. — Isaac

So you're saying that the difference between an illegitimate and legitimate state, a "bad place" and "oppressive regimes", is obvious?

I don't want there to be any doubt that you are holding this view, I said I would provide examples if you fully clarified your claim of ignorance:

I'll provide examples if you are really so intent on claiming ignorance and demonstrating you are a total hack and fool before whoever is following this conversation. — boethius

You seem to have moved the goal posts, so please first clarify your position relative the first issue (the "state stopping psychologists practice and research, generally speaking, if it doesn't conform to state policy").

So clarify this first issue where you "wanted examples", and then clarify that you really do need examples of state legitimacy being up for debate.

Furthermore, your whole question simply ignores that people in "oppressive regimes - which we all know already are bad places" may want good faith analysis about their situation to be created that it may get to them one way or another.

It is only in your "fevered imagination" that I am saying anything else. I have never claimed I am an oracle of state legitimacy, I have made it very clear it is up for debate in each instance, in terms of the criteria and it's realization (that's what assuming a premise means, "assuming this is true, what follows"). Of course, if it is up for debate and a psychologist claims it's not, that such analysis is only relevant in "oppressive regimes - which we all know already are bad places", then that psychologist is completely delusional.

Not that it's likely I'll support your view you live in a legitimate state (assuming you abandon your delusion it's not up for debate, that we already "know" what countries are oppressive and not), which according to me would be based on majority rule with credible safeguards towards the influence of money and propaganda; but, I want it to be clear to people following this conversation that you don't have the cognitive abilities to interpret what has been said so far, and you are a hack and a fool.

My point though is that being a participant in an institution the state tries to coopt does not make you a state agent. — Pfhorrest

In my terminology, you are a state agent in this case, but you can still choose whether to subvert or not the institution's relation to state policy. Whole institutions can try to subvert state policy.

The reason to use this terminology is because we can't easily tell subversive and conformist state agents apart, they may seem the same. The other reason to use this terminology is because it's likewise unclear if a subversive state agent is successful in their subversion or not. A subversive state agent must usually still carry out at least some actions that genuinely contribute to state policy, so they are state agents under any definition while doing such actions; it takes a much larger analysis to conclude whether they are "doing some state agent duties but on the whole effectively undermining state policy".

It is simpler, in my view, to start analysis with who appears to be state agents, why we identify them as such and what processes lead to such appearances, and then go onto to discuss what state agents might be doing with regard to state policy (such as effective, incompetent, subversive, benign agents, and whether they are mostly deciding or following, mostly planning or implementing).

When @unenlightened jokes about "hippies putting on suits" it's an observation about what they seemed to mostly have done in practice, not that it was unavoidable.

From the state agent's point of view (actually wanting to be lucid and be morally autonomous agents and not just conform to state policy), it is necessary to fully acknowledge state agency and one's contribution to maintaining state policy and keep track of that in order to be able to contrast that with other activity and be able to conclude "I am doing more to change the system from within than maintain it".

Spies supported by hostile nation states have little problem doing this, but it turns out "revolutionary hippies" coming off a sabbatical year of recreational drug use and sexual exploration then putting on suits do not leave us with much historical evidence that they were so effective in practice (on the whole) as what they seemed to imagine would happen. I wasn't there, but @unenlightened maybe able to provide us more insight into what may have lead to such lack of historical evidence.

You could say the same about academic philosophers. — A Seagull

I did say the same:

The same can only be said of all academic scientists: the primary roll of mathematics, physics and engineering becomes the arms industry, the primary roll of "political science" becomes apologetics for the state, the primary roll of creative pursuits becomes entertainment and distraction, the primary roll of psychology becomes manipulative marketing, the primary roll of philosophy becomes the denial of moral courage as a component of "the good life", if not the denial of any moral truth as such. — boethius

It was on another thread, so I wouldn't expect you to have read it, but suffice to say we are in agreement here.

Tony Gibson was an English psychologist and anarchist. (First google result for anarchist psychologists.) As an anarchist he obviously didn’t believe the state was legitimate, but he was still a psychologist nevertheless. Which disproves your quoted statement as an absolute truth. — Pfhorrest

I say: we must evaluate the political situation before we can evaluate what state agents tell us.

I say: state agents are selected for certain criteria, such as belief the state is legitimate.

I do not say the state is perfect and always perfectly selects candidates who believe in state legitimacy now and forever.

There can be exceptions. If I conclude the state I am in is not legitimate, and I decide I need a psychologist anyway, I will search for psychologists attempting to subvert the state, for they potentially have a reasonable view of reality and agreement with my own morality (therefore genuinely want to accomplish what I want to accomplish, which is a better ally than someone who doesn't). Depending on the level of oppression (which is not binary but a scale or a space) such people may be easier or harder to find, but the point is my political evaluation changes completely my method of search and who I am searching for.

If I conclude the state is legitimate, then psychologists who claim otherwise will likely be the delusional ones.

So, I completely agree when you say:

I’m not questioning your general thesis that (of course) the state tried to coopt the institution of psychology to it own ends, like it does every institution. Just saying that you can’t dismiss every participant in every such institution as an agent of the state. There are people in every institution the state tries to coopt who don’t go along willingly if at all, and though the state tries to get rid of them when it can (of course), it’s usually not completely successful, and sometimes not very at all. — Pfhorrest

As I mention in another reply "Edward Snowden did not remain a contractor for the NSA."

The main purpose of the OP is to establish that political reality precedes psychological reality, in the academic sense of some science and mental health service.

State agents can subvert and undermine or even be traitors to state policy, but, as you clearly agree, we can't expect this to be the norm; so, what we expect from state agents will follow from our evaluation of the state as a whole.

Where in all that does it bring anything to Boethius's utterly ludicrous point that psychology prevents new mental structures toward truth while philosophy encourages them? — Isaac

The OP is about "Mental health under an illegitimate state".

I agree that Turing was not helped by psychologists, and I would argue that psychology as a whole does far more damage in such cases than the previous "criminality"; for, at least when dealt with as a matter of law, the role of state power and political and moral analysis is clear, and the homosexual can take a political stand to subvert the law and the state and, failing in this, the oppression of the state (assuming homosexuality is not immoral, which I think we agree on) is clear cut. In such a situation the psychologist is simply gaslighting homosexuals and confusing society by pretending there is a "scientific problem" with a "scientific solution", rather than a moral discussion with a political solution.

If we agree here more-or-less, you are simply adding weight to my "ludicrous point that psychology prevents new mental structures toward truth while philosophy encourages them".

The issue of homosexuality in @unenlightened's example is one of state legitimacy.

First, democratic legitimacy and the role of homosexual repression, and sexual repression more generally, in maintaining totalitarian structures. Second, moral legitimacy.

When psychologists believe a state they represent (for instance to "understand and cure homosexuality") is legitimate when it is not (more so if they believe it is not even up for debate), they are delusional and the entire practice of psychology becomes the maintenance of this central delusion.

People, under such circumstance, come to psychologists with a simple message "I am being oppressed" and the psychologist has a simple reply "sit down and shut up, let me oppress you some more". Both the psychologist and the individual, more often than not, are in delusion about this reality, but that delusion is irrelevant to the political situation and power relationship.

According to what legitimate state means to me:

In a legitimate state, the psychologist explains to the patient that peaceful means are easily available and viable for healthy engagement in political process, because this is true.

In an illegitimate state, the psychologist explains to the patient that peaceful means are easily available and viable for healthy engagement in political process, but this is a lie because it isn't true.

The idea that one is in a good social structure when one is actually in a bad social structure, is the worst and most evil possible gaslighting and "prevents new mental structures toward truth"; indeed, I would argue the most critical truth of all in terms of our relation to society and all of our actions that have any import at all.

In an illegitimate state, police (on the whole) gas and crack the heads of malcontents and resistors to dissuade them of exploring effective avenues of change to the political structure.

In an illegitimate state, psychologists (on the whole) gaslight and crack the heads of malcontents and resistors to dissuade them of exploring effective avenues of change to the political structure.

In a legitimate state (on the whole) both police and psychologists may not only do nothing to prevent change to political structure, but maybe active agents of such change themselves.

One of the questions I'm not clear about in relation to the op is how to tell a legitimate state from an illegitimate one. — unenlightened

Yes, one must first conclude if one is living in a legitimate or illegitimate state.

This is beyond the scope of the OP. However one decides, one cannot base such a evaluation on the authority of psychologists or other state agents (they have been selected, either way, because they believe the state is legitimate).

Therefore, political analysis precedes psychology both in terms of intellectual structure and practice. Psychologists cannot be separated away from state legitimacy and claim to be involved in some independent scientific reality.

Psychology is an afterthought to political analysis, in terms of understanding of social structure and moral evaluation of that structure.

If one concludes one is living in a legitimate state, I would argue it is reasonable to be less suspicious, though still critical, of state agents, including psychologists.

It's not a law of nature. You can guess what will probably happen, but for that you need data. — Echarmion

You're first response is that explaining "the definition of a threat" as it's used in a sentence is circular logic. That didn't work, so now you're claiming that "threat response isn't a law of nature".

You are unable to follow this conversation, you either do not have the cognitive abilities or then are of ridiculous bad faith.

Either way, you just demonstrate to anyone who is following you are a hack and a fool.

But this of course doesn't actually tell me anything about your response. It can equally explain any outcome and therefore is useless as an analysis. — Echarmion

That not what is at issue. It is part of my "threat identification process" to decide on some action, small or large, with regard to the threat I identify. I may misidentify a threat, I may have no effective actions available, I may at first simply think about it further, I may act immediately.

If you want to create the straw man of someone else who does absolutely nothing about threats, that understand threats to be "that which someone should do nothing about", be my guest.

It's even more ridiculous as the actual subject matter is states, and my personal example was just to illustrate what the word "threat" means. If you want to believe states are so inept as to have no threat identification process, or that such a situation is an edge of relevance to this situation, again, you simply demonstrate your inability to follow this conversation and that you are a threat and a fool.

You have said nothing of "analytical value" about my statement:

The state feels threatened because the state genuinely identifies with it's citizens and wants to protect citizens from unethical human experimentation. — boethius

That you seem to have issue with.

That's not at all a given. A state might not have enough power to fully control what is considered permissible or ethical. — Echarmion

Again, a strawman. I did not say a state has some sort of omnipotence, only that they respond to what they "feel threatened" by (could be a state agent deciding whether to file or not file a report about what they have perceived, could be just filing a report to recommend "monitor" this threat further, could be large scale mobilization and declaration of war). I say "feel threatened" because response is with regards to perception, on the individual case as with the case of a group or a state.

You do not have have the cognitive abilities to follow this conversation, and you are a hack and a fool.

That's a useful heuristic (whatever the state funds it probably considers useful), but it's just a heuristic. There might be other considerations in play, since decisionmaking in a state isn't monolithic and a state might have to negotiate with other actors. — Echarmion

Again, another strawman. I did not say the state does not need to negotiate with other actors, for instance other states (legitimate or not), its own state agents or its own.

The state does not always get what it wants. State policy does not immediately translate into reality.

The framework of this discussion is that state have policies, and the primary mechanism for selecting agents to carry out state policy is ensuring, state agents already believe in state policy when they are selected, and furthermore the primary mechanism of deciding on the vast majority of research that happens is through state subsidy.

You do not have the cognitive abilities to follow this conversation, you are a hack and a fool.

I did not say there is no negotiation that happens in such processes, nor that such mechanisms are perfect.

If you want to argue that, because of ambiguity in what state policy actually is at any given time and imperfection of mechanisms to implement that state policy, that therefore "no states exist" or then "all states are legitimate", or "states have no influence on state agents", you are welcome to start a new OP that makes such a claim.

I have also stated already said that "changing the system from within" can be done, it is just hard since institutions resisting such change will usually fire you as soon they understand what you are doing is a real threat.

Edward Snowden did not remain a contractor for the NSA.

Other "trouble makers" can remain nuances and avoid pretext for firing and navigate other responses. The state learns from such experiences to increase attention to filtering out such people in the first place.

How state agents can subvert the state institutions they are involved in is a separate discussion to this OP.

In terms of mental health under an illegitimate state, the argument of the OP is that psychologists are state agents that are employed to deny the reality of the illegitimate state and to promote productive or then benign "normal" behavior with regard to state power structures; therefore, insofar as they believe the sate is legitimate when it is not, they are delusional and one should be deeply suspicious of them, individually and as a community.

A useful "heuristic", as you might say, for dealing with state agents.

I am interested in hearing more on your thoughts about Stoicism and similar philosophies like Buddhism. I wanted that to be the focus of the conversation I was trying to start, but you barely said anything about it. — Pfhorrest

Yes, I also rather discuss the actual OP.

My argument is that philosophy cannot be approached from a point of view of mental health.

It simply doesn't make sense to say "I will become Buddhist to improve my mental health through meditation" or "I will become a Christian to improve my mental health through forgiveness and church community" or "I will become a Stoic to improve my mental health through ataraxia".

We cannot define mental health nor what is "good and bad" is in terms of mental states without a philosophical position in the first place.

For instance, a Christian will view "guilt" as a healthy motivation towards accepting moral failing and asking forgiveness. Other philosophies may view the same "guilt" as unhealthy. Even within the Christian community there will be disagreement as to how far exactly this "guilt" should go, exactly what it should be and for what it should be felt.

I say concluding that stoicism is actually true will improve mental health, not as a comment on the psychological process of truth conclusion, but because committing to the truth of some philosophy provides the basis of good and bad upon which mental states can be evaluated. From the perspective of assuming stoicism is true, it is mentally healthy to accept this as true, since it's true; likewise, for any other philosophy.

Now, one might be tempted to say one must not only commit to the philosophy and that philosophy must be "actually true" to improve health, but that would be to miss the point. In so saying, we are positing that a characteristic of the "true true" is that it improves mental health; but if we just finished saying we need the true-true in the first place to evaluate mental health in the first place, then there is no outside objective perspective (such as the psychologist deceives people into believing exists and that they are some sort of expert on this deception) upon which an evaluation of mental health apart from belief about good and bad can be established. Such an erroneous approach also leads to the unintelligible perspective that "feeling" (as some sort of supposed objective measure of mental health) is some sort of barometer for truth, rather than the arguments that support such a truth conclusion; this is dangerous not only because there is no reason to assume feelings inform us of what is true, but even more dangerous because there is no reason to assume that the worst lies do not create the best feelings from this fictitious objective mental health perspective.

In order to evaluate one's mental health, one must first conclude one's feelings and thoughts are "bad" or then "good", and how to go from the first to the latter. The psychologist wants to avoid the obvious philosophical implications of such an evaluation within which they have no epistemic authority, and change the conversation towards merely what appears to themselves (the key point) as good and bad and take the patient, and even society as a whole, through meandering maze of confusing discourse and, wherever possible to make a buck for themselves and their partners in this scheme, a pharmacology haze.

If a psychologist really is an agent of a illegitimate state -- or then, again a key point, there is debate either way -- and the psychologist does not either advertise themselves as an agent of an illegitimate state or then invite the debate and defend their own case on equal epistemic footing, the psychologist is simply maintaining their own delusion, the delusion of the patient about the psychologist, and the delusion of society about psychology as a whole. They may say "it's good to be deluded about these things and avoid pointing towards these delusions" but that's a delusional thing to say as well.

With regard to stoicism, therefore, it makes much more sense the simple question "is Stoicism true?" and "If so, how should a stoic consider things and what should a Stoic do about such considerations today?".

So you should have no trouble providing evidence of cases where this has happened, together with an explanation of the mechanism that was used. — Isaac

You are telling me that you know of no cases in your field where people's research or practices that have been stopped by the state throughout the history of psychology? By stopped, I mean either a refusal of a request (refusing to sanction the requested actions) or then intervening afterwards due to (from the perspective of the state, deceptive description of the requested permissions) nor are you aware of changes to state policy that made previous kinds of actions no longer permissible.

I'll provide examples if you are really so intent on claiming ignorance and demonstrating you are a total hack and fool before whoever is following this conversation.

I said 'anywhere in the world' by way of asking for proof that such processes were endemic. Picking the most oppressive state in the world as an example hardly makes your case. — Isaac

I never said the process was "endemic".

You clearly do not have the cognitive capabilities to follow the conversation, one such cognitive ability being the "reading of words".

I will, from now on, be simply pointing out the strawmen you create and repeating your lack of cognitive skills needed to debate, at least in good faith, each time I see it. I will no longer bother to go through the exercise of brushing aside your strawmen for completeness sake; if you want to surround yourself with an army of straw, that's only kindle for the burning of your own soul.

That was not my claim, it was Echarmion's. You know, the one whom you earlier accused of not reading the posts carefully. — Isaac

Ah, I am unable to tell you two apart, I will be more careful. Fools seem all the same to me, lacking any distinguishing personality.

So, what is your view on the re-education camps?

Let's continue the conversation from there.

That's a nice bit of circular logic. The state will stop your from doing things it views as threatening. And it views as threatening that which it stops you from doing. — Echarmion

It's not circular, it's simply the definition of "what you do when you see a threat: you act with regard to that threat".

If you threaten my life, I will act; if you threaten my business, I will act. My action will be based on my evaluation of the threat and what is an justifiable and effective response.

What is "ethical research", or otherwise permissible research, in a given state is the state policy about what kind of research it views as non-threatening. Research the state subsidizes in a given state, is that state policy of what kind of research it views as useful, under one argument or another (why else would it fund it).

Not so complicated that we can't, when accusing one institution of being complicit in class oppression, racial segregation, genocide...produce just the tiniest shred of actual evidence beyond insinuation and conspiracy-theorist level speculation. — Isaac

Class relations are not, in their essential character, conspiratorial. The class of people called "slaves" in pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary America was not a speculative thing; it really existed. The "institution of slavery" is in reference to real institutions that really existed to maintain slavery.

Nothing has transpired politically since then to assume that similar structures of oppression relating classes of people to institutions, to one degree or another of oppression, can simply no longer exist, and, if they do, would have nothing to do with the institutions that we may find to be operating in any particular nation or globally; or that we may simply carve out broad exceptions to such query because it is inconvenient to the enjoyment of class privilege.

You may argue a particular institution is not involved in maintaining oppressive relations, you may argue a particular institution is involved, yes, but "on the whole" contributing more to liberty than oppression (that the left hand washes the right). I am completely open to such claims and such analysis.

But, if the claim is that institutions are by nature, or at least Western institutions, incapable of involvement in oppression, then it seems you have a psychological problem of interpreting reality. Unfortunately, there's no pill I am licensed to provide that fixes this level of denial.

No, you absolutely will not. There are very few states left in the world where all forms of threat to state policy results in expatriation or imprisonment. Some will, others won't. — Isaac

You have a complete inability to participate in the conversation at a cognitive level.

I said three possibilities: "stopped, removed, or imprisoned". If the state feels your activity is threatening there will be a response, whether a legitimate or illegitimate state.

In a legitimate state, the state is not threatened by legitimate research into the mechanism and consequence of state policy and power.

However, the legitimate state will still stop you from conducting research it views as threatening. If you engage in human experimentation the state views as illegal and unethical, the state will stop you, arrest you, or then send you back to where you came from. The state feels threatened because the state genuinely identifies with it's citizens and wants to protect citizens from unethical human experimentation.

Now, in a illegitimate state, if you carried out research to investigate and expose unethical human experimentation, then the state would feel threatened because it does not identify with its citizenry and requires what people elsewhere say is "unethical research" in order to understand and control its citizenry, and would stop you, arrest you or send you back to where you came from.

If the state is not interested in your research, it is because the state does not feel threatened by your research.

However, more generally, research conforms to state policy because research is funded by the state or proxies to the state. Researchers who insist on not conforming may have some degree of toleration by the state due to the potential for blow back of "interference in supposed objective researchers"; however, there is always a point beyond which the state will directly interfere, and, more importantly, what the state learns from such experience is that it needs to better filter out such people from getting the token of credible expertise to begin with.

The legitimate state learns it must better filter out people willing to break "humane ethical principles" in human experimentation.

The illegitimate state learns it must better filter out people unwilling to break such principles, and even more so people willing to "make a scene" about such unethical behaviour and institutional design in a general (both in terms of human experimentation and other things).

Rambling on about China for a few paragraphs is not an answer. — Isaac

You say "anywhere in the world" and I use the example of China and your own claim that "I was not under the impression they're premised on mental disease at all, but rather on lack of proper socialisation" and your ability to verify that "impression" by scientific research, and you view this as "rambling".

Amazing, truly amazing.

But we don't 'lend our credibility to Chinese state agents'. — Isaac

This is off topic for this thread, as the OP is about mental health under a illegitimate state, so I will make a new thread and make my case that insofar as a community of psychologists conceive of themselves as part of a global community that includes China and derives their expert legitimacy, in part, from the global nature of the community, then they are both directly enabling Chinese state agency by supporting, collaborating with and training Chinese state agents, but also covering for Chinese state policy with their credibility, insofar as they don't vocally denounce it and cut community ties and are willing to say statements like "I was not under the impression they're premised on mental disease at all, but rather on lack of proper socialisation", which, of course, is only "scientifically" supported by the "evidence" provided by Chinese state agents carrying out the policy.

No, you stated that all psychologists (clinicaland research) need a state license to practice. I'm asking you what form that licence takes around the world and where, in it's provisions, is the requirement to uphold state policy. — Isaac

If you go to a state and threaten state policy, you will be stopped if not removed from the country, if not arrested and placed in prison.

Go to China and verify if they are really "I was not under the impression they're premised on mental disease at all, but rather on lack of proper socialisation".

Maybe this premise is true, or untrue. If it is true, you should be able to conduct research to demonstrate that, and perhaps, with sociologist colleagues, further investigate if this "lack of proper socialisation" is likewise true or untrue, in order to help verify or then help correct Chinese state policy.

Now, insofar as you accept that Chinese state power would not allow you do to that (try to get to the truth as a so called "scientist" to verify your own "impressions"), then insofar as you can "research around the world" it is, in its essential character, a state license to uphold state policy wherever you go.

Furthermore, insofar as you, or any in your profession anywhere in the world, lend your credibility to Chinese state agents as well as communities and institutions that help train Chinese state agents, then you are party to the crimes of the Chinese state.

If you lend someone your credibility, you receive in return their moral culpability.

Likewise, insofar as you cite in your research any research conducted in China or by agents or proxies of China, you are extending Chinese state power.

Where, in non-clinical psychology, does the state dictate research policy? Which psychology policy document has the state been in executive control of, and which sections of it represent restrictions based on state policy? — Isaac

I have already stated that the mechanism is the state selecting for people who already believe in state policy, most importantly of all that the state is legitimate.

In a legitimate state, this isn't a problem: the state is legitimate and selects for people who believe this true thing.

In a illegitimate state, there is a problem: the state is illegitimate and selects for people who deny this reality.

The state is not by definition bad, only extremely dangerous. Handle with care.

Well, why don't you show us the way? What is it the world of the — Isaac

Yes, if it is agreed that all actions against a illegitimate state are justifiable in principle, that all that is remained to be analysed is what actions are effective we can have that conversation in a new thread.

is doing that's not just going through the motions for the money. — Isaac

I have already said I am an agent of the state as a conscript.

I am also an agent of the state as a corporate executive. From time to time I de facto represent the state and state policy in diplomatic engagements, and, most importantly, I receive state subsidy to carry out state policy.

The modern corporations are extensions of state power, they cannot even formally exist without the state, are the primary beneficiary of the state judiciary, police force, infrastructure, defense activity etc.

I am not an important agent of the state; the state never sits down and says "we need boethius to go do this or that", but I am far more an agent of the state than the restaurant waitress or then the conscript that is unable to evaluate state policy and cannot be credibly said to be lending his or her agency to the state (this is not my case).

As I have already stated, I have no problem living in and being an agent of the state in a legitimate state, which, to me, means majority rule with credible safeguards against the interference of both money and propaganda in political process.

I will advise my fellow citizens that there are possibly even better ways of social organization worth considering, but I am content and grateful with what I already have.

Everything hinges on state legitimacy; that is the central issue.

It would seem there's no 'account' at all, just some fantasy being played out where psychologists are agents of the deep state - we're hoping to secure the film rights. — Isaac

What the hell are you talking about? I never said "deep state agents".

You seem to be going off the rails into some fantasy version of this conversation.

Psychologists are agents of the state because they need state license to practice psychology (whether clinical or research) and therefore must conform to state policy to get and maintain such license. They represent state authority when dealing with individual patients or research subjects (far more so, when doing so with state and/or state proxi corporate subsidy).

PhD is a token of the state. In return for that token certain actions and inactions are expected.

I am referring to academic psychologists and clinical psychologists, both, of whom, cannot "do their work" without the state. I have already explained that they are selected because their beliefs conform to state policy. An illegitimate state will select for beliefs that help maintain an illegitimate state.

Of course, this does not apply to simply anyone that has merely studied psychology, but only those engaging in state activity.

Undergraduate students I would agree are not, or then barely so, agents of the state, they are merely filled with (again in an illegitimate state) state propaganda. You can verify this because if you poke them it spills out on the floor.

That is what we hippies call 'a heavy trip' you're laying on us. It took me right back to the early seventies at uni, where, in the final year all my fellow revolutionaries ditched the flares for sharp suits, cut their hair to conventional length and started going to interviews with ICI and applying for teacher-training courses. And the story was that they were going to 'fight for change from within. Perhaps they believed it; I never did. — unenlightened

Thanks for coming for the ride!

Yes, the change from within strategy has clearly been unsuccessful. Of course it can work but invariably leads to getting fired as soon as the institution realizes it's working.

I suggest that what is needed is despair. In 1968 the doomsday clock was at 2 minutes to midnight, and I did not expect to become old. And now there is a similar despair amongst the youth that their world will remain inhabitable. But as long as academics think academia inhabitable, they will not despair of it enough to risk their lives and livelihoods. — unenlightened

Definitely, academics need to "adult up" and realize there is no point teaching the young to manage a world that cannot plausibly be argued will be there. There's not even any plausible jobs now, so I'm not sure what their apologetics even consists of today, justifying why these "lefty professors" go through the motions anyway ... ah yes, the money, I agree there.

I'm sorry if you've had some bad experiences with psychologists — Isaac

I have no experience with psychologists; I avoid them for reasons that maybe pretty clear.

As a privileged corporate executive I am, in any case, immune from state interference in my personal life, insofar as I don't break any laws, and I am also, in any case, immune from the "call out culture" you are trying to engage in.

I'm not about to fire myself for being called out on controversial "not ok" statements, so there's no use engaging in such theatrics.

Which is why corporate executive life is the life for me, it is the only position in capitalist society where you don't have to censor yourself.

but accusing us of complicity in genocide is not ok. — Isaac

I can make whatever accusations I want. What matters is if those accusations are true.

The global economic system is global, fully integrated with China as "the world's factory", and carrying out destruction on a before unimaginable scale.

Academics have not only the knowledge and the time to understand how this global system functions, they are the group most responsible for creating it, and a group that can most easily undertake "non-violent" actions with disproportionate leverage (a large scale academic strike could not be ignored, cannot be easily solved with scabs off the street, and would bring about rapid policy changes).

Since academics have the knowledge to understand the global system, have the skills and time to organize themselves, have actions available to disproportionately affect policy, have a supposed dedication to truth and justice, and they do not use their power, but primarily benefit from the global system, therefore they are responsible, perhaps the most responsible of any group, for the destruction the global system has brought to our planet and our people. With knowledge comes responsibility.

It seems to me that it'd be better to implement those as concessions if they want everyone to return home. — Moliere

Although I completely agree with the principles of your analysis; this is not just about the police, that was just the trigger.

Indeed, ironically, the police are, in my opinion, the least of the problems in terms of state legitimacy.

When visiting the US, what is the most clear thing about the police is that the job is in anyway impossible. The war on drugs, the lack of social programs, the judicial system that makes corruption legal and police brutality legal.

As you point out, the state isn't implementing the laws it already has fairly, and if we look at those laws more closely there a long list of clearly absurd "laws" upon which no society can function. By "laws" I mean SCOTUS going through several levels of insane reasoning to create new laws directly opposed to the purposes of the law they are considering.

How is law enforcement supposed to do their part to preserve the integrity of political process if corruption is simply declared legal by the judiciary?

How is law enforcement supposed to "police themselves" if the SCOTUS declares the crazy notion that the constitution does not apply if it has not already directly been applied for the same thing in the same jurisdiction. It's impossible to even make such reasoning up as part of fictional world building.

So, there is indeed a tragic element in the current conflict between the people and police. Of the judiciary, the legislature and law-enforcement, law-enforcement maybe the least to blame and there simply wouldn't be a problem if the judiciary and legislature were doing their jobs (which is an interesting difference with the 60s where the judiciary had a "what do words mean" approach to epistemology and the legislature functioned to reflect the majority "well enough").

Certainly, the issue at hand should be dealt with as best as possible, as you are suggesting; I fear, however, because there are so many fundamental problems that the focus on police brutality, as separate from the other issues, is in a sense wasting time as so many unemployed people will simply continue to rebel until they are satisfied the state has regained legitimacy and genuinely cares about them (of course, solving police brutality would be a part of that caring).

Even on the subject of police brutality as separate the context, so many nominal crimes have been committed that without a mass pardon (such as with the draft dodgers), it may be impossible to police anyway. Everyone who partook in the looting, if they start to fear the police are "coming to get them", will simply embrace a declaration of total war with the police even if some reforms are implemented. This is the "Mexico scenario" that I and @ssu have mentioned as a possibility.

What is also clear is that Trump wants this conflict between the people and the state, and, even if there is a lull in the conflict today, it is likely the president of the United States can get what he wants.

And there is still the pandemic happening.

I don't think that follows at all. Maybe it is a sign of sanity in a mad world. — A Seagull

I mean "mental break down" in the trivial cognitive sense that changing core beliefs is to "break down" those beliefs, but also in the social sense that so doing may lead people to accuse you of suffering a "mental break down" regardless of how you feel about it, while also the very real risk of, not in the sense of a disease, the "feeling of mental breakdown" when reviewing core beliefs. I do not mean "mental breakdown" in the sense of insanity; we are in agreement there.

But far from all illegtimate states rely on this. Most just brand dissidents as "traitors to the cause": Robust definitions of mental illness aren't required. — Echarmion

It's not an exclusive definition.

However, the roll of psychology to brand dissidents as mentally ill is primarily focused on children, over which the state has much more power and it is far more effective to destroy mentally a would-be-dissident adult in the name of mental health than to simply brand adult politically lucid dissidents as mentally ill, which is mostly ornamental as you suggest.

So, who isn't an agent of the state? — Echarmion

The vast majority of people of whom the state requires to create value, at at least shut up and not bother the state and who are not given any reasonable protection are not agents of the state. Academic benefit from the privileges the state provides (quality of life, reasonable legal protection of property, etc.), in return they are expected to conform to state policy and carry out state intellectual endeavors.

Are they? I was not under the impression they're premised on mental disease at all, but rather on lack of proper socialisation. They're called re-education camps after all, not asylums. — Echarmion

Oh, my bad, just "lack of proper socialisation" requiring a little fun re-education camping to rectify.

What? Is this direct from the politburo?

Mass marketing is worse than genocide. You heard it here first folks. — Echarmion

Yes, manipulative mass marketing underpins every modern destructive human enterprise, including the the Nazi genocide.

What convinced women to smoke? What convinced society the "science isn't settled" on smoking? What convinces society to over-consume with reckless abandon? What convinces global society that sustainability would be "too inconvenient"? What caused the obesity pandemic? What convinced Americans to pursue disastrous endless wars? What maintains China's system of state control? What maintains Trump's echo-chamber of die-hard supporters?

Anything truly terrible in society on most national and, moreso, on a global level, there is always manipulative mass marketing techniques convincing people to carry out or then do nothing to stop that terrible thing.

I am fully convinced humanity does not "want" to destroy the planet's ecosystems, and, therefore, if that is the case, someone must be manipulating humanity to behave in away despite "what they want".

And yes, the 6th mass extinction and the destruction of the entire world's capacity to support civilization, and perhaps any human, is far more terrible than any particular genocide. Clearly destroying the whole set is worse than destroying a subset.

You have not heard it here first, it is a pretty old belief of the environmental movement that essentially destroying the entire planet is the worst thing we can possibly do and the main foe in trying to stop it is manipulative mass marketing. No one of note is making the case we should destroy the planet, and therefore the only cause of our actual planet destroying activity is the manipulative mass marketing techniques that lead people to do what they believe they shouldn't.

Are you interested in my judgement on whether or not your post is worth building upon? — Echarmion

I am not interested in your judgement; nothing you have so far posted leads me to believe I should seek your advice on any particular subject nor that you are debating in good faith with a genuine reflection upon any of the conversations you interject yourself within.

I've not said they should just get back to work. I said they should find common ground. Apparently that's a controversial idea. Who'd have thunk? — Hanover

It is extremely controversial, and simply wrong, in the way you present it.

For nothing in what you say is a democratic process, but rather a fictitious fairness between you and your ideological opposition regardless of the numbers of who believes what.

Did the American founding fathers get in a room and compromise with King George? Did FDR get in a room with Hirohito and Hittler and find "common ground"? Did president Bush get in a room and compromise with the Taliban, or Sadam, or Bin Laden for that matter?

When it is your class using violence to reach political objectives, it's "serious discussion", "just war theory", "tough love", "doing what it takes", "no bleeding heart liberal hippy bullshit".

Yet, as soon as other classes express their power for violence to reach political objectives, it's "woe, woe, peaceful protest! peaceful protest! Violence isn't the answer bro! This isn't the non-violence of Martin Luther King! For the love of God, listen to MLK, just listen! Partake with me in the sacred compromise in the arms of the Holy Goddess!"

no way I'll object. How could I? It's sacred justice for God's sake. — Hanover

History teaches us something else:

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor, but must be violently taken by the oppressed.

My feeling is that African Americans are protesting what is happening in their communities by the police because they are subject to that violence and they want it to end. — Hanover

Is this really just a feeling for you at this point?

All of this is to say, even if I could objectively show that the US government was legitimate and that the current method of policing was the only effective and proper means of law enforcement, it's not like the African American community would be at all persuaded to accept their lot, put on a smile, and get back to work. — Hanover

Translation: "Boohoo, the oppressed classes are revolting, it's not like providing an argument that I don't have is going to get them back to work. What I do have is the whip though, and therefore should use that whip to get things back to the way I like it."

It's almost like maybe a state that asks a whole community "to accept their lot, put on a smile" is not a legitimate state, that even if there was a majority of people who wanted to oppress this community, that again, that would still not be legitimate because there would be no moral foundation to it.

This strikes me as far afield and an entirely useless discussion from a pragmatic perspective. If you are able to prove the illegitimacy of the US government from a moral perspective with absolute certainty, the police will still keep doing as they are doing as will the citizens. It's not like a good solid argument is going to change the world or even change a single interaction between the government and its citizens. — Hanover

It's completely relevant, it's the essential point of relevance in this whole conversation.

If the state is legitimate, then there are better methods available to change the policy of the state than through violent confrontation with the police, rioting, and other revolutionary activity.

If the state is illegitimate, then evaluating such illegal activity becomes a question purely of effectiveness in changing the policies and essential character of the state, despite the state not wanting that to happen.

Therefore, a legitimate state should be able to easily explain to any citizen how to engage in political processes to attain political ends, and how those processes are fair and effective if the majority of people agree.

Maybe things aren't fair right now, but a legitimate state (and the vast majority of its citizenry) can easily explain how things can be made more fair without recourse to violence; that is the whole point of democratic legitimacy.

A legitimate state has nothing to fear from its citizenry nor analysis of what it means to be a legitimate state.

US black people, and now a large portion of young people of all colours in the US, do not currently view the US government as legitimate.

It is of critical importance whether this belief is true, and therefore should be brought to its logical terminus, or untrue, and therefore explained as a misguided notion and that better political means are available to achieve changes to state policy and essential state character.

Tools are not extensions of authority. They are tools. An extension of authority would be something that is vested, explicitly or implicitly, with an official function.

Otherwise you'll have to explain why a tool is responsible for its use. — Echarmion

Again, I suggest the tool of reading to participate in text base discussion:

Exactly the same can be said of all science.
— Isaac

No.

The same can only be said of all academic scientists: the primary roll of mathematics, physics and engineering becomes the arms industry, the primary roll of "political science" becomes apologetics for the state, the primary roll of creative pursuits becomes entertainment and distraction, the primary roll of psychology becomes manipulative marketing, the primary roll of philosophy becomes the denial of moral courage as a component of "the good life", if not the denial of any moral truth as such. — boethius

I am using the term "academics" to refer to the group of people in academics, not as synonymous with knowledge.

So, if you're trying to say the academic is a tool of state authority, I agree. If you are trying to say that knowledge is a tool in the hands of the academic to service state authority, I agree.

If you are trying to say the process of selection of who gets to be an academic is independent of state policy, then I disagree.

You're being dishonest. You didn't initially bring up the Nazis or anything similar at all. You brought up military operations. That's what I was referring to. — Echarmion

Again, what's with the not reading things?

The Nazi's were deranged serial killers (with varying degrees of apologetics we can engage in depending on the Nazi) because the Nazi government was not legitimate, either in representing the people's will or then, if so, that will itself was not morally acceptable and had no moral legitimacy. — boethius

We morally condemn the serial killer of legitimate state agents, we morally condemn illegitimate states and their killings and their state agents who kill.

When a illegitimate state kills a lot of people we say it is "mass murder" (i.e. serial killing, just with a difference in scale).

The nuances you might like to get into I am aware of and refer to as "with varying degrees of apologetics we can engage in depending on the Nazi". I agree each individual Nazi may not have the state of mind of a serial killer, but it is only because they are fully convinced they are engaging in just warfare on behalf of a legitimate state. Who we are not so morally lenient with are those orchestrating the serial killing and have the intellectual capacity to evaluate their actions and the system they are promoting as a whole.

However, you said specifically:

Your examples leave out obvious differences between the way a serial killer selects and kills victims and the functioning of an organised military. — Echarmion

You are not referring to individuals soldiers who may not know better (and have been selected by the organization for this quality), but you are referring to the organization as a whole and its process of selecting and killing victims.

This process of the organization as a whole is no different in it's essential quality than that of the individual serial killer: They do it because they can and it brings them immense fascination and satisfaction.