Fuck you assholes who justify this shit. — Marchesk

You haven't bothered to read and understand @Baden or @StreetlightX.

If you just want to shout and insult, you can do that in youtube comments.

The relevant issue of political philosophy, as has been said here and elsewhere, is the legitimacy of the state.

For most people (in particular in the West), state legitimacy is founded on a fair application of justice. The "rule of law" is a term in political philosophy coined to distinguish with the previous theory of the divine right of monarchs to decide what they want.

For instance, you seem to think the looting and burning things down is a crime and perpetrators should be arrested for that. Ok, now if I ask you how you know it's a crime? You'll certainly shout: Because it's on video!!! But does that establish it's a crime? Maybe all the looters are co-owners of the places they're looting and have had a share-holders meeting and decided to liquidate their stock in a disorganized manner?

The cover-up of the murder of George Floyd is at the same intellectual absurd level as someone now trying to argue epistemological edge cases that have not been ruled out "100%".

There is simply no way to even plausibly argue what we see is not a murder, at least in the second degree, in broad daylight by 1 police officer and 3 accomplices protecting the first.

You may say, "sure, fine, it's a murder and a cover up by the police, the prosecutor, the coroner, the local, state level, and federal level law enforcement, but that doesn't justify looting! Oh the humanity!", along the same lines as privileged news broadcasters and privileged commentators on the internet are trying to make.

But they cannot be dissociated; the murder and the coverup of the murder is simply proof positive there is no equal application of the law. Heart disease has never protected strangulation before. If you were bullying a kid, got them in a choke hold, and continued a choke hold for 9 minutes while the person you're choking said they were unable to breath, while onlookers told you you're choking and killing them but they couldn't intervene due to your 3 friends shielding you, "underlying conditions" is totally irrelevant. Heart disease would only be a defense if the death was genuinely by surprise in an otherwise normal wrestling match. The murderer in this case also knows the victim and may know of the prior condition, in which case the prior condition may actually increase the evidence of premeditated murder (moving it from 2nd to 1st as the choice of tactic to "restrain a cuffed man on the ground" is evidence of a thought out plan to murder, targeting a weak spot), not decrease it. Indeed, it is evidence (though evidence is not proof) that these police officers were enlisted to carry out a murder in broad daylight as part of a political plan to create race riots and a new national narrative more favourable to those in power than a great depression. Whatever the truth is, it is simply conclusive from the video itself that a murder had taken place, and any other person would be immediately arrested with their accomplices and charged with murder.

The idea that arrests only happen after a total and thorough investigation to know "all the facts" that the prosecutor offered as plausible deniability for his actions, and the actions of every level of law enforcement above and below him, to coverup of a murder, is laughably absurd.

Similarly, if you chased down a white jogger in the middle of the day and shot them, you'd be immediately arrested; if you argued that "they might be a robber" and "anyways, it was self defense as they went for my friends shut gun" it would be simply dismissed as lunacy by police, prosecutors, judges and your own defense council, because obviously the person being chased by people with guns is in the position of self defense. Such a defense would be even more absurd, so absurd no one would every even dream it up, if the scenario was black men chasing down a white jogger (obviously the white jogger would be completely justified in immediately assuming it's a gang robbery or abduction).

So, if the law is not equally applied, then the law has no basis of legitimacy in Western political theory.

What is who's property is a legal definition, if there is no justifiable legal reference frame, then there is no basis upon which to condemn looting and arson.

As Baden points out, it becomes group against group, each with their own idea of legitimacy and their actions can only be evaluated in terms of effectiveness in pursuing their own idea of legitimate political power.

The same American's condemning the looting as "unjustifiable in principle" are the same American's that completely disregard the relevance of laws of other countries when American soldiers bomb, raid and kill. If you think through the political theory that justifies disregarding the Taliban's law, or Sadam's law, and categorizing it as illegitimate, you will see that the exact same chain of reasoning can be used to conclude America's laws are no longer legitimate; if so, all agents of the state become criminals from this perspective, and all acts of violence against them are in principle justifiable; only what tactics are effective is the analytically relevant question from arriving at such a conclusion (just as American generals wonder whether bombing a school or a wedding is effective even if they are sure in their heart of hearts it's in principle justified).

Now, true, the looters, for the most part, do not carry out such politically philosophic reflections, they have mostly not the time nor the education. However, this philosophical rendering of things is also an intuitive visceral experience. One does not need to be a philosopher to feel the pain and humiliation of double standards; it is simply an obvious lived experience. Likewise, one does not need to be a philosopher to conclude society is not providing a dignified future for oneself and one's community, one need simply observe no such options available. When one sees a murder on video in broad daylight carried out over 9 calmly excruciating minutes, and then see the double standard of justice spring to the defense of the murderers, one does not need to be a philosopher to simply lose all respect for the state, agents of the state and the property the agents of the state are enlisted to protect. Once that respect is gone completely, one simply follows one's own idea of what is justified: to take from the shops what one cannot buy.

The peaceful protesters are laudible only insofar as their belief in peaceful protesting ability to influence a fair (enough) political process is actually true. If the mechanisms by which peaceful protesting was effective in the past, which is debatable as otherwise why would society come to such a point, then peaceful protesters are less laudible than the looters and indeed the police; for at least the looters and police have some sort of realistic political understanding. American's today do not condemn the Boston riots and looting that birthed America, but the privileged classes that owned the tea did so at the time; so, from a moral perspective, this maybe all that we are seeing, and nothing else.

Well then, may all of your experiences be harsh. Of course not the Kantian kind, that's not harsh. As to your understanding of the psychology of the thing, that's equally bizarre. At the very least, harshness is a kind of noise that detracts or impairs or inhibits. That is, the only thing harshness facilitates is harshness. And btw, harshness not to be confused with all the things in the world that are not harsh nor harshness. — tim wood

You do realize the obvious hypocrisy here? Trying to curse me to a life of harshness in the name of "not-harsh" discussion.

And why would I confuse harsh with things in the world that are not harsh?

Harsh, if you will, though it's not the word I would choose. But as he describes the subject of his criticism, such a person would not be interested in his efforts, assuming it is not indeed an entirely straw- subject.

"To all the people ignoring me, you are wrong to ignore me." It is close to a performative contradiction to address 'the worthy gentleman' who is not interested. And Kant avoids that. One is left therefore with the backhanded compliment that flatters the actual reader who is 'not like them'. — unenlightened

Have you even bothered reading my posts here?

And how does Kant avoid that? He berates the people who use the expression "true in theory and not in practice" and completely demolishes any argumentative basis for such a saying.

Yes, he is simply saying "you are wrong to ignore me" (the academic working on better theories), and considering people are still using this "true in theory and not in practice" fallacy centuries later, it seems Kant did not avoid being ignored.

However, what Kant did do is provide an extremely harsh criticism of such a position (doesn't apologize or try to empathize or try to "soften the blow" of his critique in anyway). People who are interested can benefit from the critique, people who are not interested do not benefit.

Harsh critique does not persuade those that aren't interested, or are mildly interested; the objective of harsh critique is to try to actually get to the truth; it is of interest only to those actually willing to do what it takes to get more truth than they currently have.

When PhD's submit their dissertation, the ideas is not only that it is critiqued harshly, so that there is some basis to assume it has merit (if it withstands harsh critique) but that the PhD student, so motivated by the truth, is able to accept and process harsh criticism (for instance, to then address that harsh criticism before the final submission). The critical method is a harsh process, not a soft process.

Once one has a truth one considers actionable, then a followup question maybe "how do I persuade people to participate in my objective?" and in such a pursuit, I completely agree, harshly criticizing everyone one meets is not a good way to go about.

However, my goal here is the intellectual activity that precedes "one has a truth one considers actionable", how can I be sure, or at least more confident in my beliefs?

My method, and I am not trying to persuade you to use it, is to subject both my own beliefs to harsh criticism (by writing what I actually believe as clear as I am able to write, without truncation or dilutions engaged in for the purposes of being able to simply dodge all criticism by saying nothing substantive at the end of the day; and, more importantly, reading and responding to the criticism I encounter as far as I can, no matter how harsh it is), and, likewise, to provide my own harsh criticism of incompatible view points to see if my belief that I have a criticism is valid. If I do my best to criticize an alternative belief and fail, I have something to think about; if I do not try my best, and I fail, then I have accomplished nothing and can simply assume "I, like, totally could have taken them down, if I wanted to".

Connected to the broader sphere of social discourse; society really does need places such as this philosophy forum where opposing views can meet on an equal footing and subject each other to the harshest possible criticism each side can muster. Without such a process, then society cannot get to better truths than it currently has, and will flounder around in the morass of "every opinion is as good as another", "that maybe true in theory but not in practice", "my truth", "it's not factual but it represents a true feeling", "false balance", etc. that support echo chambers that lead to social division.

No one is forced to be here, and the rules here allow for the kind of harsh criticism I describe.

I have provided harsh criticism, but I have also received harsh criticism. You don't seem to defend me when harsh words are aimed at me, why is that?

Kant harsh? Someone does not know what "harsh" means.

Just for a point of reference:
"harsh
/härSH/
adjective
1.
unpleasantly rough or jarring to the senses.
2.
cruel or severe.
3.
excessively critical or negative." — tim wood

If you bothered to copy paste the whole thing:

1.
unpleasantly rough or jarring to the senses.

"drenched in a harsh white neon light"

2.
cruel or severe.

"a time of harsh military discipline"

(of a climate or conditions) difficult to survive in; hostile.
"the harsh environment of the desert"

(of reality or a fact) grim and unpalatable.
"the harsh realities of the world news"

having an undesirably strong effect.
"she finds soap too harsh and drying" — google definition

Please explain your point again with the context added to your cherry picking definition game.

That when Kant says:

Now if an empirical engineer tried to disparage general mechanics, or an artilleryman the mathematical doctrine of ballistics, by saying that whereas the theory of it is nicely thought out it is not valid in practice since, when it comes to application, experience yields quite different results than theory, one would merely laugh at him — Kant

And:

Yet it is easier to put up with an ignorant man who declares that theory is unnecessary and dispensable in his supposed practice than with a would-be expert who concedes it and its value in schools (perhaps only to exercise the mind) but at the same time maintains that matters are quite different in practice — Kant

That the word "harsh" is simply inaccurate, and rather these words are closer to being a good description:

Harsh
1.
[...] Opposite: soft, dulcet, subdued
2.
[...] Opposite: enlightened, kind, lenient, comfortable
[...] Opposite: balmy
[...] Opposite: mild smooth — "google

Seeing the context of your own citation, do you believe now the statement:

Someone does not know what "harsh" means. — tim wood

Is better applied to me (who does bother to read context) or yourself (who it seems does not bother with context, yet is ready to castigate others for their diction choice).

I never said I had the truth. Read more carefully if understanding is a goal of yours.

I said when I persuade, only then do I presume to have the truth, for why else would I presume to be justified in persuading. And, indeed, often I make such a presumption: that team members should follow a plan, that a client should purchase a service, etc. I maybe wrong in these instances, but I take the risk.

But, when I have the luxury to check if what I believe is true, then harsh criticism is the only method I have found that yields any advancement.

I am curious, however, would you say Kant's criticism I cited wasn't harsh? But that he puts on the kitten gloves; please point out where? If he is harsh, and right, why not emulate him? If he's wrong, where is he wrong?

Please, teach me.

Yes, Wittgenstein even met Freud in Vienna, didn't agree as I suspected.

I don't know why I didn't consider he would have just directly commented on Freud at some point.

Freud in his analysis provides explanations which many people are inclined to accept. He emphasizes that people are dis-inclined to accept them. But if the explanation is one which people are disinclined to accept, it is highly probable that it is also one which they are inclined to accept. And this is what Freud had actually brought out. Take Freud’s view that anxiety is always a repetition in some way of the anxiety we felt at birth. [...] It is an idea which has a marked attraction. It has the attraction which mythological explanations have, explanations which say that this is all a repetition of something that has happened before. And when people do accept or adopt this, then certain things seem much clearer and easier for them. — Wittgenstein 1966, p. 43

Freud has not given a scientific explanation of the ancient myth—what he has done is to propound a new myth.” — Wittgenstein (1966, p. 47)

Quotes I lifted from this essay (in a journal-psychoanalysis.eu, which seems to be making some sort of psycho-analytic apologetic of some sort in view of this criticism). There seems to be a whole tiny cottage industry discussing Wittgenstein's views on Freud; revolving around to what extent Freud is useful even if obviously untrue. However, it's quite clear Wittgenstein rejects all forms of scientism and pscychologization of belief, as is implied in Tractacus, but there's varying opinion to the extent he rejects the new symbolic language game of psycho-analysis as inherently useless (that it is not a science but "being good at it" could be a form of practical knowledge, in a sense).

I have a thread that summarizes the Tractatus, that should give you some idea of what the Tractatus is about. — Sam26

I will look into your summary, but here's also a summary:

Having developed this analysis of world-thought-language, and relying on the one general form of the proposition, Wittgenstein can now assert that all meaningful propositions are of equal value. Subsequently, he ends the journey with the admonition concerning what can (or cannot) and what should (or should not) be said (7), leaving outside the realm of the sayable propositions of ethics, aesthetics, and metaphysics. — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Psychologizing philosophy in the sense I am using is exactly to explain, and even to judge "really true or false" (i.e. that our foundational beliefs are more valid), what someone believes is their ethic, aesthetic and/or metaphysics. For instance, "Republicans like authority and so want family values and a strong leader etc. and prefer negative rights over positive" is a sort of pseudo-aesthetic psychologization of what kind of ethic and metaphysic they gravitate to resulting in what they believe; I reject such kinds of meta-theories offering new knowledge about what people believe and why, and I would assume Wittgenstein would say similarly (as I assume, so would you).

I don't see Wittgenstein abandoning this basic idea, and it's clearly incompatible with scientism in general and in particular psychologizing forms of scientism.

(Also, in the same summary, "Other writings of the same period, though, manifest the same anti-dogmatic stance, as it is applied, e.g., to the philosophy of mathematics or to philosophical psychology." so I will try to find these writing and see how he directly addresses psychology, which I wasn't aware he did, but can't imagine he'd be suddenly promoting dogmatic psychologization of belief, presuming to know the true nature of the noumena that is other people in themselves, of exactly what they believe and why.)

You've now switched back to Wittgenstein's early philosophy, which really has nothing to do, or very little to do with his last work called On Certainty. — Sam26

Wittgenstein doesn't abandon his early philosophy, only mellows out a bit about it; maybe backing away from his claim "every philosophical problem is a language problem" and that he's literally solved every philosophical problem and can go garden. But, insofar as he's looking at philosophical problems as language problems, he is saying all we can hope to do is express what we already believe. "This is the general form of a proposition. What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence." is to me a profound rebuke to pschologizing belief which was a total rage when he's writing, which I assume he was knowledgeable of what's going on in philosophy and psychology and smart enough to be aware of the implication of what he's saying (you cannot go deeper, you cannot psychologize the proposition, you must be silent). But I maybe wrong about what he thought, as I mention above.

You seem to be contradicting yourself, to know is to give a justification in some form. — Sam26

Yes, but you can give justification to what you already believe without contradiction. It is knowledge in this sense, it is not "new knowledge", reasons to believe it apart from already believing it, nor "more reasons" to believe it.

I've been pretty clear that ordinary use of language does not address this issue, therefore if someone makes an ordinary statement to express their belief I have no issue. If you want to bait and switch the ordinary meaning for a technical philosophical one, that's not my problem.

If we specify knowledge as only conclusions distinct from foundational beliefs, then, sure, foundational beliefs aren't knowledge, but this distinction is not given to us in the ordinary word knowledge. It makes sense to me if someone says "I know I have two hands".

Where did you get this idea from? — Sam26

I read the Tractatus to be motivated by hyper-pschologizing philosophy, which are forms of scientism. But as I mention, I do not foundationally believe that's true.

When it comes to bedrock beliefs or foundational beliefs, my point has been consistently that they are not beliefs that can be known, i.e., they are not epistemological. They are beliefs that are shown in our actions. The best way to understand this, is to think of them nonlinguistically, as I have already pointed out in other posts. The difference is connected with Wittgenstein's saying and showing. — Sam26

I'm not disagreeing with this.

We know what we foundationally believe in the sense that we know it because we believe it. We do not know it in the sense that we have carried out some chain of reasoning.

Since we cannot make a meta-theory that results in new knowledge content, I will agree with any meta-theory that simply reiterates what is already believed.

Wittgenstein was addressing the various psychological scientisms that was the rage of his day; pointing out it's mostly just confusing and new knowledge beyond ordinary understanding of these things is impossible.

Aristotle was addressing Plato and the theory of forms. Yes, we have first principles from which we reason; no we can't therefore conclude there is a world of true forms and we "re-remember everything we learn" precisely because we believe what we already believe and therefore cannot come to new knowledge without extending our existing beliefs which mean we already believed it and it isn't new.

As a reminder, it is widely held that the law of non-contradiction cannot be justified on account of being a first principle. Again though, if it can, why would it not then be a known? — javra

Yes, it's a foundational belief. You can try to justify it without first using the law of non-contradiction. What's widely held is that no one ever has nor anyone ever will; first principle is again just another word for foundational belief (in this context).

Have to go soon, however: If a so deemed bedrock belief - such as that of experiencing two hands - can be justified, why do you then object to it being termed a known? — javra

I don't.

"Belief" and "knowledge" and "justified" are applicable to our "foundational belief"; our ordinary language has no normal utility to name what we won't normally ever inspect.

Wittgenstein was pointing out it's not knowledge in the sense of resulting in a chain of reasoning nor ever could result from a chain of reasoning. He would not object to say "I know it" in the sense of "I super believe it". He's focused on the word knowledge to emphasize we can't create new knowledge using a theory about our knowledge (that of believing we can justify what we already believe and make it new knowledge is the path to confusion).

However, as to so termed bedrock beliefs such as that of experiencing having two hands, I gave an example of how such may be justified. — javra

This is the tricky part in all this; there's no problem in conceiving of a justification for our foundational beliefs. It is not incoherent to add to a system in which A is true a justification that A is true (insofar as it does nothing else); we can add as many such justifications as we want. What those justifications don't do is give reason or "more reason" to believe what we already believe.

If I start with a proposition A in a system, and later on I prove that A is true using other propositions; I have created a justification of A which (can be, but is not necessarily) true. But, I haven't created new reasons to believe A, "nor more reasons to believe it", it was already there, I've just re-extracted it from other propositions it was already contained within.

Our foundational beliefs contain all the attributes of knowledge and justification. It doesn't matter whether we say "I foundationally believe it", "I have complete justification for believing it", "I know it and can't conceive it's wrong", "this is just really, actually true", "it's the real reality", "I am totally committed to this axiom", "this is me". One or another expression may clarify our ordinary language in one situation or another, but they can all be the same behind the linguistic expressions (if there is difference, it's because it's not foundational belief, just expression of high degree of confidence we haven't made a mistake; that we engage in such hyperbole is why we need to clarify our language on occasion: "I'm absolutely certain I will win the game" is obviously not an expression of absolute certainty; the beliefs we would use to recognize a mistake are the "real foundational beliefs").

Also tricky, that we cannot access a meta-theory which explains our beliefs does not mean such a meta-theory does not exist and is not true and does not explain all our beliefs; indeed, we must assume such a thing must exist. That we cannot access the noumena (know it's true-true) does not mean the noumena does not exist in a true form.

Which I attribute to Scalia, in service of what or whom I do not know, but nothing or anyone good. — tim wood

In agreement here, but not that the other judges would have supported the malitia interpretation. The SCOTUS and all the Western elites are statists, so goes without saying that they wouldn't promote the idea of real local political power. The dissenting judges would have simply given the state more leeway to control arms, not ruled that local groups can have as many arms as they can justifiably "well regulate" for the purposes of defending freedom against a tyrannical government.

I don't know enough to say for sure, but my guess it that none of the judges understood what they were doing; that they were engaging in active cognitive dissonance; that their state of mind is "of course it goes without saying that we're statists who claim not to be statists".

So, I don't think that they conceived of themselves as ruling primarily the "militia" content out of the constitution, as to recognize that is to recognize that they are themselves outside it's bounds from which they draw legitimacy and so exercising tyrannical power. They simply erased that part from their understanding and conceived themselves to be ruling about the extent the state can regulate personal weapons, with "fighting tyranny" being meaningless empty rhetoric (no tyranny here, nor will there ever be).

Can anyone make sense of Scalia's Heller decision without tearing the 2d amendment to pieces? — tim wood

This would be interesting to see.

We might abstract the term truth in multiple ways, going even so far as to say there is no truth, but in all these cases there will remain our psychological dependency on what is existentially real. — javra

This kind of process as not creating any knew knowledge, just potential confusion, is exactly what Wittgenstein is talking about from what I understand. Certainly what I'm talking about.

Not that it's false, that's the key to understand, it can be a trivial true extension of what we already believe. However, it is easy to make a false analytic step and enter confusion -- we cannot abstract our concept of truth away without our current concept at every step and at the end: a proposition cannot be true and false at the same time and with the same respect.

That it's enticing to try to "make" new knowledge with the sort of meta-theory you describe is what's to be guarded against. Our meta-theory about belief cannot but confirm what we already believe, the reasons for believing our meta-theory is "actually true" are trivial extensions of what we believe without the meta theory; we cannot find new knowledge there, we only risk confusion by extending trivial implication beyond what we are able to properly analyse.

My emphasis, however, was on bedrock beliefs holding the capacity of being justified to be true. — javra

That there cannot be a justification is the concept of bedrock beliefs.

I'll argue that we are psychologically incapable, even in principle, of forsaking the notion of truth as that which is in accordance with what is real. — javra

Sure, but this adds no content to our idea of truth. Real is just another word for truth to add to our list; useful in certain situations to clarify ordinary language but adding no new content.

As a caveat: Being a fallibilist, I could come up with a general argument for why this belief is not infallible. — javra

This is not really an issue. There is no problem in knowing that the noumena maybe otherwise than what we are inclined to imagine about it, that whatever my hands are "in themselves" maybe different to what I naturally assume (a Cartesian Demon induced hallucination or the modern ersatz equivalent of a simulation); the "foundational belief" is that, whatever society calls them or I call them and whatever it is in itself that I don't really know: I experience having two hands and this is a foundational belief.

Yes, I can't conceive of believing I don't have two hands right now, but this isn't a meta-theory explaining why I believe I have two hands, it is simply the definition of believing I have two hands and nothing else.

A scenario that would lead me to believe I don't have two hands wouldn't invalidate my foundational belief I was experiencing having two hands before (assuming I remember so experiencing), it would just reveal I have other foundational beliefs that allow me to interpret the experience of not having two hands and the experience of realizing I was under such intense hallucination that I previously experienced something else. The truth value is not about the noumena of the hands, but about the phenomena of experiencing and believing those experiences in a foundational sense. I can conceive of new experience, including hallucination and simulation, but I cannot conceive of new experience that would not be the new foundational belief of what I would then be experiencing: I think with the category of time and I conceive of every experience at every moment as foundationally informative.

The point Wittgenstein, and Kant before him and Aristotle before him, are all making is that our foundational beliefs (our categories of thought) cannot be analysed beyond a simple clarification of ordinary language. To say something "is true", "is actually true", "is the case", "is the case that's it's true", "corresponds to a state of affairs that exists", "obtains", "a valid and sound conclusion", "coheres to everything else I know and the alternatives would be incompatible with every other thing I believe or know", and so on, do not create new philosophical content; they may usefully clarify ordinary language on occasion, but are just different ways of saying "it's true", and our foundational belief that some things are true and what that means has no further analytic content.

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." — tim wood

The only contradiction involved is the SCOTUS ruling that the first part of the sentence is logically independent of the second (contradicting the basic idea that words make sense, which is not explicitly stated in the constitution but presumably was intended by the founders).

A well regulated militia must be able to buy any arms it can afford to make sense as "necessary to the security of a free State", but must also keep those arms in secure locations to be "well regulated". A well regulated militia is a collectivist project that, as the name suggests, requires regulation to create, and SCOTUS ruling along these lines would have forced congress to make a plausible "this is how you defeat us" pathway to local militia based arms possession (which would easily unite both the right and left freedom lovers, by the way).

Ironically, the great "individual rights" victory of personal gun ownership (which we can interpret to some extent as part of a well regulated militia; but not a very far extent), was made by the SCOTUS precisely to avoid the obvious "militia" interpretation that people really should position themselves to overthrow the state if it no longer functions democratically (in case, oh I don't know, the advice of all information security experts is thrown in the trash and machines are enlisted to count votes for some unexplainable reason that is too crazy to ever happen, but hypothetically we could consider it), because SCOTUS knows its place. In the name of freedom, the individual gun owner advocate takes the position more compatible with their own subjugation; they also advocate against the far more powerful weapon of unions, again in the name of their own freedom to associate with whom they like and come to mutual collaborative agreement as they are want to define. In other words, they want to feel and appear fierce but be as tame as well trained dog.

Saying "I know..." often means that I have the proper grounds, as Wittgenstein points out. — Sam26

Yes, Wittgenstein is simply correct. "I know I have a hand" or then more basic sense experience that makeup that "knowledge" if you prefer (i.e. I know there's something I grab things with that people call "a hand"), is not knowledge but belief. It's simply the axioms that makeup our knowledge framework. It's knowledge in the sense that we believe it to be true, but it's not knowledge in the sense that we have prior knowledge to justify it. It's a confusion that results from simply having no practical need to distinguish between what is fundamental and we believe true and everyone agrees with what we believe is true that is not fundamental.

We can also criticize the word belief because we only "use" the word belief when a choice is involved. For instance "I believe the witness" implies there's a plausible choice not be believe, just as "I believe in Christ" implies there's a plausible choice not to believe. Foundational beliefs aren't this type of belief either, they are closer to knowledge as is colloquially used. "I know I have a hand" makes more sense in common situations than "I believe I have a hand".

What Wittgenstein found interesting about Moore's propositions is that they seem to play a peculiar role in our epistemological framework. Bedrock beliefs fulfill a special logical role in epistemology. They support the structure of epistemology. Understanding this, solves two problems, 1) the infinite regress problem, and 2) the problem of circularity. — Sam26

Obviously this is true, but it's not a new analysis (it's just the categories of Aristotle), rather (I would argue) it's rediscovered analysis after descriptive historical-psychological theories of our beliefs created a philosophical paradox that we need beliefs to understand those psychological theories of one sort or another. In an age where foundational beliefs are no longer widely agreed (philosophers before didn't have this issue because they had enough foundational beliefs that everyone did actually agree on to have constructive debates) a meta-explanation of people's beliefs and even our own becomes tempting (I don't know what's true, but I am comforted by a feeling that at least I know why people believe incompatible things and my own beliefs are at least explained by this same meta-theory even if I don't feel my own beliefs are really true).

However, we can't actually get to a meta understanding of how our beliefs emerge personally, psychologically, dialectically or historically without beliefs that make sense of those theories. The attempt at a meta understanding of ourselves as a "true theory" is useless as we already need foundational beliefs for a theory about foundational beliefs to be intelligible (therefore it resolves nothing other than that our foundational beliefs imply our foundational beliefs; which we should expect, it would only be a concern if this wasn't the case, and therefore our beliefs about how foundational beliefs emerge cannot be knowledge as there is no option for analysis to lead to different conclusions that chains of reasoning will resolve; we can already know we are going to believe what we already believe at the start of the knowledge process (i.e. we already foundationally believe the beliefs and that our meta-analysis will conform to these beliefs; it is to claim otherwise, that I have meta-knowledge that leave my own foundational beliefs open, as any meta theory would need to actually do to be a meta theory, that is the analytical mistake that we can know we shouldn't ever believe); I believe a key point of Wittgenstein, though I don't foundationally believe it to be so, as I could be wrong about what I think I know about him).

Wittgenstein also clearly understood that you can make as many symbolic substitutes for foundational beliefs as you want, but that never creates new knowledge, just mostly new philosophical sounding babbling (coming up with new words to replace old words), nor does it ever create new options of different foundational belief, only new options to confuse ourselves (about what we think we know and why, including what we think we know about ourselves).

I'm not sure if Wittgenstein or Moore ever placed things in the context of culturally what goes wrong if you try to prove or deny foundational beliefs (as happens in every scientism), but After Virtue is a good discussion of what happens culturally when foundational beliefs are no longer in sufficient agreement to have constructive debate.

In simpler terms, a meta theory of beliefs we can know exists, but is to us an intellectual noumena of which our self-justification is the phenomena we observe (including our speculation about the belief process thing in itself).

Anyone wanting to continue the debate, after 1 minute of searching on youtube I found this lecture series: 10-week course for non-science majors focuses on a single problem: assessing the risk of human-caused climate change.

This was made 10 years ago, and I'd draw attention to Lecture 11: Six Degrees, that reviews a book "Six Degrees" that was written in 2007 by a journalist going through decades of research.

But if you want the state of knowledge from over 40 years ago from a "leader in climate change science", look no further than Exxon:

From the late 1970s and through the 1980s, Exxon, one of predecessors of ExxonMobil, had a public reputation as a pioneer in climate change research.[1] Exxon funded internal and university collaborations, broadly in line with the developing public scientific approach, and developed a reputation for expertise in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO
2).[2] Between the 1970s and 2015, Exxon and ExxonMobil researchers and academic collaborators published dozens of research papers.[3] ExxonMobil provided a list of over 50 article citations from that period.[4][5]

In July 1977, a senior scientist of Exxon James Black reported to the company's executives that there was a general scientific agreement at that time that the burning of fossil fuels was the most likely manner in which mankind was influencing global climate change.[6][7][8] In 1979–1982, Exxon conducted a research program of climate change and climate modeling, including a research project of equipping their largest supertanker Esso Atlantic with a laboratory and sensors to measure the absorption of carbon dioxide by the oceans.[9][10] In 1980, Exxon analyzed in one of their documents that if instead of synthetic fuels such as coal liquefaction, oil shale, and oil sands the demand for fuels to be met by petroleum, it delays the atmospheric CO
2 doubling time by about five years to 2065.[11][12] Exxon also studied ways of avoiding CO
2 emissions if the East Natuna gas field (Natuna D-Alpha block) off Indonesia was to be developed.[13]

In 1981, Exxon shifted its research focus to climate modelling.[14] In 1982, Exxon's environmental affairs office circulated an internal report to Exxon's management which said that the consequences of climate change could be catastrophic, and that a significant reduction in fossil fuel consumption would be necessary to curtail future climate change. It also said that "there is concern among some scientific groups that once the effects are measurable, they might not be reversible."[15]

[...]

In 1989, shortly after the presentation by the Exxon's manager of science and strategy development Duane LeVine to the board of directors which reiterated that introducing public policy to combat climate change "can lead to irreversible and costly Draconian steps," the company shifted its position on the climate change to publicly questioning it.[1][24] This shift was caused by concerns about the potential impact of the climate policy measures to the oil industry.[1] A study published in Nature Climate Change in 2015 found that ExxonMobil "may have played a particularly important role as corporate benefactors" in the production and diffusion of contrarian information.[25]
— wikipedia - ExxonMobil climate change controversy

The key phrase is "there is concern among some scientific groups that once the effects are measurable, they might not be reversible."

Now that climate change is measurable and noticeable in our lives, catastrophic consequences may very well not be reversible. This is why environmentalism today is dominated by depression and the debate is about whether anything of significance is now doable or whether we missed our chance and if so how bad will it be (extinction or some polar communities).

People that stayed on the sidelines assuming "we'll certainly figure out all the science and the correct policy response at some point" were lulled by propaganda into believing it's static problem that once we build up "enough understanding" we can solve. But it's not, it's a dynamic risk management problem that gets harder and harder to solve the longer we wait to solve it, until a tipping point is reached where feasible actions are no longer available. We may already be passed this tipping point, we don't know; the basis for action is the "maybe" part, and now people are all confused that there are not clear and constructive policy plans available that are politically feasible (they were available in the 70s, the 80s, the 90s, and now are no longer available).

However, doesn't mean serious environmentalists were making wrong recommendations this whole time like the film "Planet of the Humans" suggests; they were outplayed by the fossil fuel lobby. True, they could have done even better and maybe succeeded, but there wasn't incomplete analysis as the film suggests. The analysis has been available and completely actionable from a risk management and technological point of view since the 70s, but the environmental movement has been too small and too weak to compete in public awareness and political access. Whatever "environmental" steps have been taken have been insufficient, but it is not the failure of "environmentalists": it is humanity's failure.

Now that we are passing the political feasibility window, environmental groups have a choice between presenting something politically infeasible and be dismissed or then presenting the problem but no politically feasible solution and be dismissed, or present fantasy and be welcome with open arms. The environmental groups and startups that do the former and the latter get funding, but not the middle. The latter are not even environmentalists but trying to make some edgy marketing and be "mission driven"; they know what the media wants and they oblige. The former are zombie organizations stumbling along, they may know internally that what they're proposing is no longer credible but they still need to eat. 350.org was created at the end of the "we can still do something fairly easy that is likely to succeed" window with a plan that was feasible at the time; the "Paris Climate Agreement" was the potential "we're turning this around!" moment and environmental groups going into those discussions had a clear message "make these measures ambitious (with peak emissions in the short term) and binding (tariffs for countries that don't meet targets) or we're headed for disaster: this maybe the last chance". This "last chance" was not hyperbole, but simply what all the analysis concludes. The targets were not ambitious and not binding; ok, now the chance maybe gone, but it wasn't the environmental organizations in those negotiations that were pushing for failure.

Environmentalists had no backup plan to the Paris Climate Agreement, it was nearly universally agreed among environmentalists that "this is it". The opportunity passed, there really was no plan B for environmentalists; that was totally honest assessment. The negotiators representing environmental organizations that came back from the Paris negotiations largely gave up and started exploring the intellectual space of giving up. There was not a rally around the next plan (as happened after previous failures) since there was no longer a credible next plan. Yes, people continue to work in those organizations because they still need a job, but, no, they do not believe what they are proposing is feasible, but it's unfair to not consider that their plan was politically and environmentally feasible when those organizations were founded. If you find rotten food in your fridge it doesn't imply you bought rotten food in the first place; maybe you din't make use of it in the long time you had to do so.

Why did Gretta become famous? Because the adults in the environmental movement no longer know what to say or do, nor what to say to the younger generation. Gretta figured out her generation is being served a nihilistic project that there's no rational reason to participate in. A good and brave story, the media paid attention for a bit (the analysis of a child is cute but not threatening to business as usual) while giving equal or more time to useful idiots as always, like every previous time someone broke through the denialism and managed to make a serious moral point which propaganda didn't already exist to neutralize (a small amount of time; propaganda quickly smooths things out and the story gets old anyway). Gretta represents the failure of the environmental movement -- that the consequences are now unthinkable and seemingly unsolvable and there is no credible project and even a child can figure it out now -- not a success.

I continue working on edge-case alternative plan's not because there's any reason to assume Exxon scientists were wrong when they said "that once the effects are measurable, they might not be reversible" nearly a half century ago, but because I am a Kantian and I am concerned with acting according to Maxim's that can be made universal regardless of consequential analysis of what is likely to happen, and you can't get a much more universal principle than preservation of the basic living conditions of humanity. It's a mystery to me why humanity has chosen this path, but that's not a reason to not try my best.

Then maybe you weren't interested enough in these topics as to be well informed to have a serious discussion to begin with.

To be frank, the earth is unsaveable. Even if we would find a way to create efficient fusion reactors and invent amazing new eco friendly tech, the earth will still crash into the sun eventually. And even if we would create great high tech interstellar space ship to go to a new planet, the whole universe is heading towards a heat death. So, in other words, this world is screwed. — Arvid M

You'll die eventually, does that mean you should take no actions to sustain your existence?

All the Jews would have died anyways, is therefore the Nazi's not morally responsible for their actions making those deaths sooner rather than later?

If you're not defending genocide in this way, then why is genocide of everyone by ecological collapse exempt in your moral system?

And, even if you did make some moral argument that the human species needs to last eternally, a mere 100 trillion years until heat death doesn't cut it, you haven't proved that case. Heat death of the universe is not entirely provable; within 100 trillion years maybe we discover our current cosmological theory is incomplete. So, even if you had some moral foundation, which I'm going to predict you are too cowardly to even attempt, you clearly lack the imagination to realize your empirical claim is not certain and the only way to be more certain is for humanity to continue.

Gapminder does pretty much show how raising GDP helps everyone in many ways. — I like sushi

No it does not help everyone. Being a slave in a factory or in a mine or being murdered by poachers or ranchers doesn't help you.

It also drives environmental destruction far higher than if that dirty development didn't happen.

It's entirely possible to develop cleanly and inclusively, but it's also possible to develop dirtily and oppressively and there's no evidence that if you develop dirtily and opressively long enough ... Poof! freedom and clean air.

And, in the long term, even merely local clean and inclusive development does not matter one way or another if global ecosystems collapse. It is also just a short term benefit and part of the problem if getting products and resources from those dirty and oppressive places; a geographically segregated middle class that leaves the hands-on work of exploitation and oppression to others.

Gapminder is an extension of Hans Rosling’s work, which I agree with, but it's responding to a false population dichotomy to begin with (that "African's are the problem" not white people). So great, false dichotomy deconstructed! I'm happy about that, but this does not establish that the technological and affluence part of the Impact equation is solved, just that the risks are in those areas and not population and if you look closely the risks are existential for the human species and most other specieis.

Of course, population still needs to be high for our systems and affluence to cause major problems, but if we look at our technological and affluence systems and there are orders of magnitude scale potential improvements with existing technology then we know already anyone primarily concerned about population (such as Bill Gates) is a useful idiot at best or simply protecting their privilege at worst.

The point about biofuels was not that the fuel made couldn’t meet demands it was that due to land clearance and planting the crops the net effect was to raise carbon emissions 6 fold (for this ‘green fuel’). — I like sushi

In other words, it cannot meet demand in a sustainable way, not even close.

If it can't even get even close to meeting demand, it's a completely irrelevant policy action. If even the tiny part that it can provide has a high and unsustainable environmental cost, it's not even a token measure; it's straight-up counter productive. This case was made at the time by ecological experts and the environmentalists that are concerned with correct analysis. The environmentalists that promoted biofuels did not have any environmental reasons for doing so; it was being hyped and they either joined the hype or they had convoluted incrementalists theories that yes it doesn't matter but somehow it does. Mostly, it was corporations (including the oil companies) and politicians that promoted biofuels when they saw the hype made an easy "eco win" (just as the lobbyists intended).

I’ve the figures. — I like sushi

Present the figures then.

What I was actually saying was an international body did a global survey of how environmental issues were being funded and tackled by governing bodies and organizations. I’ll have another look for it later. — I like sushi

Environmental policy is a disaster, that's why we have environmental problems so severe that studying the mechanisms and probability of a short-term (within the century) world-wide ecological collapse is now the cutting edge of ecological research.

However, it is not the case that "environmentalists" did not have a correct analysis since decades that has been continuously refined and continuously proven to be the best body of analysis available.

If you're a billionaire you can fund whatever you want and call it environmental and get lot's of press, it is only a label however.

In terms of distribution of funding, they are. The ‘trendy’ causes that get the limelight and funding tend to be the least effective (short term and long term). — I like sushi

This isn't determined by environmentalists, but mostly by the mainstream media and corporations and the super wealthy.

This happens in a few ways.

First, raising 10 million, or even a a few hundred thousand, can in itself propel you into the limelight.

Second, mainstream media focuses mostly on corporate friendly messages and criticism, so these are the "environmentalists" that are allowed to talk. When something "environmental" is proposed as a success, there is not allowed any criticism from environmentalists that disagree. It will be the "environmentalist" against denialist, without exploration that the "environmentalist" has a partial, or simply wrong, understanding of things; this leads to both inadequate policy as well as fueling the denialism by advancing lot's of stupid that have legitimate critiques (biofuels being a great example of this process), and so the media does another round of apologists for stupid and denialists.

What's never addressed is that there is an alternative to both a stupidly insufficient analysis of things as well as absurd levels of denalism and mental gymnastics. Again, biofuels is the best example where experts since the beginning have made the clear cut, irrefutable case, that biofuels cannot possibly displace gasoline on any meaningful scale (it can be a useful technology in the context of extensive and radical changes to our production systems: lot's of trolley, trains, bikeable cities, local gardening, decentralized closed-loop systems, and so on; things that are becoming trendy today were not invented today).

Third, when something not corporate friendly does reach public attention the mainstream media does its best to discredit it, so it's a "negative attention". Al Gore had a simple "these problems are real and severe", "we can't continue business as usual message", "money vs the entire planet is a false dichotomy", "the sooner we act the better", that couldn't be ignored because he was famous (but still only got media attention after some years of touring with his talk). Mainstream media pretends that Al Gore is somehow discredited or then "it's old had". Al Gore presented a good analysis, not perfect but completely adequate to inform policy, but you don't remember this "limelight" because the mainstream wasn't fawning over him.

Mainstream media fawns over projects and proposals that do not represent a threat to business as usual. The people championing these projects and proposals are generally useful idiots if not fantasy utopists. They easily get funding because "they are passionate" and have things that are easy to discuss, because they don't threaten anyone -- such as "fusion is coming! hurray" or "we're going to have trains ... Trains In Tubes!!! OMG! Hurray!" or "look at this render of a futuristic vertical farm in a futuristic city that does not exist that I've done zero calculations about the presumably solar based renewable energy needed to power these artificial lights" -- and they get media attention for the fundamental same reason.

However, talk to any serious environmentalist and you'll likely hear the same simple message again and again: business as usual is not sustainable and will lead to destruction (that's what unsustainable means), the more business as usual continues the more our ecosystems will be damaged and the less and less easy "fixing anything" becomes and the less richness we leave our descendants and the more suffering we create in humans and other species; business as usual won't fix itself (that's what makes it business as usual) and will push back (incumbent industries can finance lobbying for no change; future clean industries that would exist but don't yet exist do not balance this lobbying because they don't exist to be able to lobby; it is left to poorer to stand-up to big corporations and the super wealthy). There's lot's of difference of opinion on what exactly to do, but I think you will be hard pressed to find a credible environmentalist (someone who has really done serious reading and thinking) that disagrees with this message.

What you are addressing is the circle of hype that is a side affect of the mainstream media not doing credible journalism and credible analysis. The problems can no longer simply be ignored, so there is now recognition that "there is a problem", but without proper analysis they simply promote what is essentially magical thinking that talks about the problem: the latest startup making outrageous claims, the fanciest futuristic render, and most of all the economist that says things like "what about these coal jobs, what about the investors?", and "economic growth needs to grow; regulation, no matter how well intentioned, harms that growth", while giving "equal time" to anyone willing to make any plausible denialist claim even if conflicts of interest are up front and obvious and that the claims can't withstand any scrutiny.

If they’re taking from poorer countries then it goes with what I say (plus in terms of emissions China is comparatively low per capita compared to western and middle eastern nations. China isn’t exactly a ‘poor’ nation). — I like sushi

What's even your claim then? You say that it's making these poor people less poor, not just focused on survival, that will make them concerned about the environment, and so lead to ecological prosperity. China was poor, now is less poor (maybe even not poor), but has caused massive ecological damage throughout this entire process.

Likewise, the US is not poor, on per capita basis anyway (most Americans, the median, seems miserably poor to me from a Canadian-European-Nordic-Switzerland perspective), yet the US does massive ecological harm. I agree, we don't want poor and miserable living conditions, in poor countries nor the US, but there is no evidence that wealth magically leads to environmental concern and adequate policies. The hypothesis that "dirty growth is needed to get going and with that wealth clean growth will magically take-over" simply has no basis in reality. You can have clean growth (both wealthy and poor nations have demonstrated clean growth policy successes), but not only does dirty growth not lead to clean growth, but dirty growth creates path dependency on more dirty growth: the US cannot now easily leverage its wealth to create a network of high-speed rail; it is further away from creating efficient rail infrastructure rather than closer, compared to countries that made such long term investments and central planned schemes decades ago.

The most famous example of dirty-path-dependency is a car friendly policy in city centers displaces walking and bicycles leading to more cars and then congestion which then actually decreases speed compared to the previous bicycle / rickshaw / trolley based system; not only does a car system cost way more in terms of money people need to "economically compete" and has large health costs, it gets people places slower than before. Once entrenched it's difficult to reverse. Not only is this dirty development, it doesn't even accomplish anything; cities that pursued bike and walk friendly planning (internalizing the cost of driving in the city to the driver), attract business and have a built in higher standard of living of less pollution and more daily exercise. In terms of policy alleviation, mobility is one of the highest predictors and a system where you need a car to be mobile becomes nearly by definition a system where the poor stay poor since they can't afford a car, or just barely (so cities try to have some minimum public transport anyways, but there's little money for that when massive resource, planning and health externalize subsidies for cars are maintained).

Dirty development leads to dirty outcomes, clean development leads to clean outcomes. Clean policies can be put in place at every step of economic development. Dirty industries put a lot of effort into getting poor countries on a dirty path-dependency development process, but this does not benefit them (it benefits elites that take bribes and then stash that cash offshore, and benefits a small middle class that directly or indirectly manage clear-cut logging, slash and burn, unsafe factories and can feel like "a real civilized westerner") nor does it lead to magical clean outcomes: it is a dynamic of corruption, slumification, political oppression, and environmental destruction (and it is a dynamic that can be implemented in the middle of Africa or the middle of Detroit).

What is based on that? Sorry, you lost me. You mean ‘resources’? We have enough. The data, ALL the data, indicates that raising the standard of living in developing countries help preserve them environment. — I like sushi

This is simply not true. China has had the fastest rise in standard of GDP and living standards (according to our shortsighted metrics), but at large environmental cost.

In the West there was a phase of "getting so rich we can have nice plants around", but this was achieved by simply offshoring all dirty production to mostly China and India and resource extraction to mostly Africa and South America. Furthermore, fracking and tar sands, soil degradation, and insect declines (likely due to poisonous pesticides) are strong clues this phenomenon was short term (lobbies are now strong enough to on-shore environmental destruction), and of course if climate change turns large parts of Europe arid then the recent European net-reforestation doesn't matter in the slightest.

Is your position just denying these environmental costs?

Or are you arguing that sacrificing the environment for short term economic development has some sort of magical green teleological end?

The alternative view is that it's environmental protection requires regulation, to internalize environmental costs. Do you disagree with this statement?

Lots of money pumped into dealing with climate change and environmental issues does little to nothing - usual due to misinformed activist who understand little and don’t bother to look at the bigger picture. — I like sushi

If lots of money wasn't pumped into making conservation reserves, many more species would be extinct.

It lots of money wasn't pumped into environmental research, we wouldn't even understand the problems very well.

If lots of money wasn't pumped into research and development and then subsidizing renewable industries, even the "not there yet" technologies the film describes wouldn't exist.

If the comparatively little money (compared to fossil fuel company propaganda) wasn't pumped into advocacy and public awareness, we could easily be in a situation where there is no general alarm and anxiety about climate change or other problems (that's it's just "natural cycles" or small amounts of damage we can ignore).

Raise GDP so people can be in a position to give shit, have smaller families and have time to focus on more than finding food to eat that day (poverty results in ravaging the immediate environment. — I like sushi

This is simply not the cause of our global environmental problems.

GDP growth does not result, in itself, in people people giving a shit. US and China have high GDP but the prevailing attitude is to not give a shit about the environment.

The poor people of the world do nearly insignificant environmental damage on a global scale. The poor, especially the people so poor they cannot have any environmental considerations, emit insignificant amounts of green house gases and also do insignificant amounts fisheries damage and rain forest clear cutting and river and lake pollution.

The few issues that "poor people" are associated with (such as poaching and disastrous blood mining), it's wealthy economies creating the demand. It's not poor people who say "hmm, I think we need more blood diamonds and ivory around here". It is the high GDP nations creating the demand for these resources, and supplying all the bribes and weapons to make sure poor countries don't develop governing institutions to be able to deal with these problems themselves. Likewise, where you have massive influx of agricultural poisons, its not the poor countries that produce those poisons.

Destruction of the environment is a rich mans game.

As I mentioned in another thread, of the factors Technology, Affluence and Population, it's only Technology (i.e. the environmental cost of a unit of production) and Affluence (how many units of production we choose to consume above what we need) that we can act on at order or magnitude scales.

Yes, definitely we should strive to alleviate poverty, but that alleviating poverty through expanding our present unsustainable production system will somehow magically result in people caring about and then solve environmental problems is a complete chimera.

Money was pumped into biofuels for no good reason. — I like sushi

Here, you and the the film is correct. However, what you and the film ignore is that plenty of environmentalists were against biofuels. When these policies were being discussed, commentators would always add on "some groups say push for biofuels could lead to increased food prices in poor countries"; those groups were environmental groups. The biofuels thing was a fossil fuel company marketing coup; a way to slap "green" on gasoline by adding 5%-10% ethanol derived from the Amazon (only possible with subsidies because it took as much fossil fuels to make the ethanol as it represented).

You can see plenty of presentations on youtube (from that time until today) laying out the calculations that it's simply impossible to produce enough biofuels to replace gasoline, that clear cutting the amazon to make biofuels is absurd, and biofuels production is not even fossil-energy negative.

Biofuels was something politicians could get behind to say "look! we're doing something green", but I know of no environmentalist who lobbied for the biofuel policy we have today.

Of course, there are nuances like with everything. Environmentalists aren't against biofuel research to see how efficient it's possible to make and under what conditions is it an actually renewable energy source of energy (not taking more fossil fuels to make, not degrading the land base it's on). And although it's easy to show that whatever improvements are made biofuels cannot possibly replace gasoline on the scale we use it today, there is of course niche things that need a liquid fuel source boats: helicopters, propeller planes, trucks (where trains aren't an option), off-grid construction equipment, are difficult to replace by rail or batteries. Of course, this is only sustainable if these niche applications represent a volume that can be sustainably supplied.

And these prediction about the biofuels policy have come true (there was never any doubt): biofuels has done nothing to significantly reduce gasoline consumption (the volume is totally meaningless), biofuels have raised food prices, biofuels aren't energy positive, and biofuels degrade the land base. I.e. nothing about the current biofuels policy is sustainable.

However, the "deep ecology" or "basic math" side of environmental movement never supported biofuels and accused organizations that did of participating in corporate green washing. Mostly, organizations lobbying for biofuels were corporate groups (wanting to get the subsidies or oil companies realizing it's an excellent situation to shift focus from trains and batteries to biofuels), but the plausibly legitimate environmentalist that did support biofuels didn't make a counter argument to the above points but rather "trusted the policies would address and resolve those problems, not the full solution but a good incremental step, we need other technologies and changes on a massive scale too, etc." In other words, they were completely fooled and served as useful idiots, but they were never so stupid as to claim "biofuels can replace gasoline on the scale we currently use it" to begin with.

The film is correct about the massive amounts of green washing, but is incorrect in believing "environmentalists" wanted the biofuels policy we have today; it was always a corporate thing.

When in comes to developed countries the US needs to step up. Europe has made some steps that are better than nothing. — I like sushi

What's the cause of these better policies? GDP? US has has higher GDP per capita than Europe.

Look at anything Europe has done which has helped the environment and you'll see regulations that industry was against and that represented an economic cost in the short term, and you'll see lots and lots of money poured into subsidies or new industries, again an economic cost in the short term.

In other words, sustainable policies cause sustainable development, not GDP increases as such, and those policies have a short term economic cost both in harming incumbent industries (internalizing cost of production) and massive subsidies required to create new cleaner industries.

It’s a case of whether or not we can prepare and deal with what’s coming. — I like sushi

Way phrase this in a way that implies our environmental problems are an externally imposed force that all we can do is try to prepare. There is no self balancing limit to our environmental problems; the limit is extinction for which there is no preparation.

I agree with your positive attitude that "we can solve these problems" but I disagree with you framing that environmental groups have been somehow counter productive (some have, but the one's that haven't are the reason the entire world isn't smog choked and nearly completely oblivious to impending systemic environmental collapse), that raising wealth standard of the poorest people on the world will in itself accomplish something environmentally significant (making people less poor is of course morally significant and we should do), or that technological breakthroughs like fusion will save the day (where we have cleaner industries, such as in Europe, it's due to regulation, large investments in R&D, large subsidies to incubate cleaner industries; of course, the more research breakthroughs the better, but they are a small element; lot's of technologies are hundreds of years old, such as trains, and we can constantly improve them but there's no need to wait around for breakthroughs).

In either case, the tradeoff in management is due to deadlines, materials and skills. For writing a philosophy book you can take as long as you like and only be finished when you personally are satisfied with the quality.

As for the audience, assuming you are targeting a specific audience then there will be pros and cons to different stylistic considerations. However, you can always just write the contents of one book in two books for different audiences; a scholarly work and a popular work, or then just move all the scholarly stuff to footnotes and appendix.

You seem to be setting up a false dichotomy that something has to be sacrificed. This simply isn't a theme in philosophy, nearly all philosophers wrote how they thought good writing was; some wrote short and concise cause they thought "get to the point" is what's good, other's wrote thousand page tomes that took decades, and a rich mix of theater and fiction as well as oral debate. There's simply no tradition of philosophers lamenting having to choose between quality considerations.

You do have to choose an audience, even if it's just yourself, as @I like sushi and @Amity and others have mentioned, but this is rarely achieved by sacrificing quality, rather it's the creative challenge of writing to get your audience interested and keep them interested in what you want to share, as you want to share it.

Who heard it from...
Oooh, I heard it through the grapevine — Amity

It doesn't seem to me a controversial topic among historians, the whole printing press and internet parallel. It's been something that has been talked about since normal people could post to the internet, indeed even before that just speculating on computer technology.

I bet you have lots more where that came from.
I now want to read Voltaire, badly and bigly.
Wasn't he the one who said:
'Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.'
He would have loved Trump...and his Tweets. — Amity

Fortunately, there has been lot's of historical analysis of these pamphleteers; it's really interesting stuff, with the same anonymity based outrage, flamewars and feuds and so on as happens today on the internet.

Is there a theme tune for that ? — Amity

The theme song is "The Joe Rogan Experience".

I don't understand this conclusion. Perhaps I am tired or just stupid... — Amity

It's a historical parallel that is of course not exact. I didn't come up with it, I heard it from a historian.

There is a basic historical hypothesis that the internet is a similar disrupting technology as the printing press and culture is going through a similar transformation.

In the manuscripts era it was extremely difficult to trade in contraband literature. If you were a monk and wanted to write and copy heretical texts, you'd need to somehow organize having the supplies and time to do so. The Catholic church was constantly investigating such terrorist cells and burning books and people to keep the subversive fire well under control. To publish "officially" one needed to pass censorship, to pass censorship meant conforming to support of the institutions of church and government.

The printing press changed this dynamic, turning subversive literature from a cat and mouse game into a unstoppable tsunami. Protestant Reformation was probably impossible without a technology to actually print bibles for people to read in their own language, as well as the contraband pamphlets justifying doing so.

So, there was a first phase where subversive literature could overcome institutional oppression in a way infeasible before. In this first phase subversive literature is not "too far out there" and usually still produced by intellectuals in the system (Luther was a priest who wanted to reform Catholicism, not make a radical break with it, and certainly not an atheist).

However, as aristocratic institutions then lost legitimacy as well as their own motivation to censor effectively, there is a second phase where the dominant cultural conversation moves to this parallel pamphleteer world. There is a still a nominal "official world" of bureaucrats, courtiers, and papal bulls, but normal people don't care too much about it anymore. As more authors write and circulate pamphlets, authority is undermined further. Voltaire is probably the best example here:

He was an outspoken advocate of civil liberties, and was at constant risk from the strict censorship laws of the Catholic French monarchy. His polemics witheringly satirized intolerance, religious dogma, and the French institutions of his day.

[...]

In a vast variety of nondescript pamphlets and writings, he displays his skills at journalism. In pure literary criticism his principal work is the Commentaire sur Corneille, although he wrote many more similar works—sometimes (as in his Life and Notices of Molière) independently and sometimes as part of his Siècles.[119]

Voltaire's works, especially his private letters, frequently urge the reader: "écrasez l'infâme", or "crush the infamous".[120] The phrase refers to contemporaneous abuses of power by royal and religious authorities, and the superstition and intolerance fomented by the clergy.[121] He had seen and felt these effects in his own exiles, the burnings of his books and those of many others, and in the atrocious persecution of Jean Calas and François-Jean de la Barre.[122] He stated in one of his most famous quotes that "Superstition sets the whole world in flames; philosophy quenches them." — wikipedia - Voltaire

After the collapse of the old aristocratic and church institutions, new institutions emerged that were credible within this environment of "free speech" (governing institutions that respected free speech and no longer engaged in counter-productive censorship, as well as media institutions that built up credibility by caring about their reputation and withstanding criticism).

However, broadcast radio and television created a partial technological return to the monastic manuscript days in that access of the technology was controllable, resulting in an era of de facto censorship in that without radio and, especially, television, one was not a relevant part of the cultural conversation. The election of Ronald Reagan epitomizes this new institutional power of television.

However, Reagan only demonstrated the power of television in real power terms, and it would be unfair to say the media "elected him". Journalists standards carried over from print. It can of course be debated how stable this new institutional television based censorship system really was, but the internet rapidly destabilized it after credibility was sacrificed to support the Iraq war. The entire Iraq war and endless war on terrorism didn't pass critical scrutiny at any step, but critical questions could just be ignored; people don't stop being interested in those question, however, and the conversation moved to the internet: be it to keep following Chris Hedges, who was fired from the Times for opposing the war, or hear Chomsky's analysis or then take a few steps towards cannibalism, apparently, with Alex Jones; a completely new parallel world of discourse emerged.

The election of Trump represents the transition between the first era of institutional disruption where the world of "official" talk is at war with the subversives and still seem mostly in control, to the second era where the old official talk institutions aren't even relevant anymore. The transition can happen rapidly, as the Soviet Union best demonstrated. Time and time again the main-stream media tried to bury Trump, in every which way, and then be mystified by him polling the same or even higher. It simply didn't matter what they said anymore, the real conversation was happening in a parallel universe on the internet with various levels of Trump apologetics for every possible Trump criticism from every possible direction, to interpreting everything as some sort of 5-D chess move, to full on meme magick magicians saturating the internet with "gliffs", a hieroglyphic based magical symbol of cultural focus, to counteract the very same satanic gliff practices of the Clinton's and elite -- a frog being the key ingredient. Main stream media needing to address "Pepe" represented their surrender to internet discourse, and since then the merger of the discourse universes has started.

And that's all I have to say about that.

(jk, I'll say way more if asked to do so.)

Support for your claim. — Amity

Which claim? As I mention above: that our time is similar to the post-printing-press pamphlateering Era, or about how it would affect writing choices?

Where is the evidence for this pamphleteering philosophy? — Amity

What do you mean by evidence?

By pamphleteering, I'm simply referring to the end of Monarchy days where everything was censored so authors had to get there stuff out subversively which created a non-official chaotic parallel universe of discourse that disrupted the system; with the printing press playing the roll of the internet today.

As for the practical consideration, there's simply different options and limitations going DIY on the internet, which would result in different advice. "Getting a book published" is a different goal than reaching an audience on the internet, even if the content was the same. Whether due to self-censorship reasons above or simply not wanting to go through the hassle publishing a book, the same content could be developed over 200 blogs and 50 podcasts and 10 000 tweets, which would imply different stylistic choices even if one's arguments are the same.

Though I agree with these points, the list and explanations seem more motivated as an admonition to professors to not do "bad public philosophy" because it's profitable (tell groups what they want to hear and not take known criticism seriously) than they are as practical.

The article would be better title "moral considerations for popular philosophy writing".

However, the blame on "bad professors" is I think misplaced. Chomsky follows this list, but he is not welcome on mass media. Ok, he's still widely read and has a large base, but he was already famous from a time when he could speak on mass-media. A new author of philosophy doesn't have that benefit, and the choice is to conform to a roll on a stage (left, right or centrist; we know what lines the mass-media wants to hear) or then be an "internet heretic".

Fortunately, as the elite pursue this strategy through mass media consolidation and control, media institutions that built up prestige and reputation over literally centuries throw it frivolously away to support the war du jour without critical analysis and so rapidly lose legitimacy; we're now in a phase that being an internet heretic is no longer primary career ending and a living can be made in heretical writing in itself. There's large heretical ecosystems both on the right and the left.

Of course, the collapse of trusted information sources (because they have de-earned that trust) means for society at large zero scrutiny of incompetent and corrupt management, loss of faith in all institutions generally, precipitating a chaotic destabilization phase of American Empire, election of Trump to neatly consolidate these trends for us so that they are trivial to see and analyse ... and an easily avoidable global pandemic, certainly in its severity if not the outbreak itself, which represents the transition from an incompetent and corrupt elite entrenching and enriching themselves without any unifying vision and strategy for the future -- but things seeming to continue as normal due to sheer momentum of hundreds of years of managerial traditions -- to this new phase of rapid collapse where those institutions are simply no longer fit for purpose and all managerial accountability measures have been removed from the system meaning nothing will be rectified and problems will start to merge into and amplify each other until a radical change (of one form or another).

So, public discourse shifting to a non-institutional internet based discussion where people believe what they want to believe and no person or institution is viewed as widely legitimate by actual people (it is only the elite who continue to believe the old institutions mean a tenth of what they used to mean) has massive consequences.

However, regardless of view of who's to blame and where things are going, from the point of view of the individual author today, it's simply a fact that this internet DIY "influencer" path is available. Indeed, it's starting to merge anyways with traditional publishing in that authors are more and more expected to do all those influencer things such as blogging, youtubing, tweeting, engage in controversy and being edgy, and so on. It's not one and the same yet, so authors can lean heavily one way or another; in the case of non-political writing it is simply a style, commercial or just personal question, but in the case of political writing it's a self-censorship vs institutional support question, which has serious implications on what and how one writes depending on one's political ideas. When there's accomplished authors that crazily are admitted (even by the mainstream media) to being among great intellectuals of our time (such as Noam Chomsky mentioned above) or then writers that are fired from the Times (Chris Hedges), and simply completely ignored henceforth by those "Journals of Record", a new author has zero chance other than by completely conforming.

All this to say, we are back to a pamphleteer time and pamphleteering is a different thing than conventional book publishing, in terms of form, style, resources to work with, promotional activity, as well as level of engagement available.

I think you have not read much of it then. I’ve seen very little indication that you’ve read anything at all of it. — Pfhorrest

We had a whole conversation about the Greek and pragmatism thing. I'm using this existing conversation as examples of problems.

I have done that. — Pfhorrest

Then why are you asking us about what's novel or not?

Just tell us the authors made arguments to about yay high and explain how you've gone higher.

Where in the text I say “pragmatism”, I say what argument I am calling that. — Pfhorrest

That's what prompted our conversation about pragmatism, your use of the word pragmatism. Go back to that conversation if want to see where it appeared in your text and if you're interested in doing work to improve your understanding.

Also, I do have a reference to Peirce in the current version anyway. — Pfhorrest

So you added a reference to Peirce based on our discussion, but are maintaining that I didn't read any of your book and that you had never used the word pragmatism that prompted me to ask how you were using that term?

It would help if someone would point out where it looks like that, because that would be some kind of oversight or just careless writing. I am intended to spell everything out from scratch. — Pfhorrest

Then, as I've already suggested, spell everything out from scratch and don't use any references at all. Just make a introduction or "further reading" epilogue. If the references are not needed for the arguments to work, then they just add confusion.

You were complaining that I DIDN’T mention someone nonspecific in a nonspecific part of one essay. — Pfhorrest

I am not complaining. Your book does not matter to me and I have no personal motivation that you make it better along my criteria.

You're the one asking for advice, so I am simply providing that advice. You can leave your book the way it is for people to appreciate it or not.

But if you ask advice, presumably to improve it, I am giving the advice that if you reference an ism or an author, and that reference is critical content then you should provide a citation so that we the reader have clearer idea of what you're referencing. If it's not critical content, then it's just adding confusion as the reader now doesn't know what you mean by the reference and if it's important going forward.

But I have studied, and I’m not psychic, so unless you say what writing of whom is relevant to what part of my writing, I don’t know if you’re talking about someone I just didn’t think was relevant to mention or maybe something I actually haven’t studied. — Pfhorrest

You're on the "build everything from scratch" approach now. Which is fine, but then build everything from scratch, verify that no ism or reference is needed to understand. Or are you now saying the pragmatism reference was the only confusion of that kind, it's fixed now and I won't find anything else of that kind?

But I have studied, and I’m not psychic, so unless you say what writing of whom is relevant to what part of my writing, I don’t know if you’re talking about someone I just didn’t think was relevant to mention or maybe something I actually haven’t studied. — Pfhorrest

I gave you the example of the ancient Greeks, or pragmatism.

It's us the reader that aren't psychic and know what you know. So, if references then citations representing those references is what I recommend. But you've already said citations aren't critical, and everything is built from scratch, so then these sorts of confusions shouldn't appear.

If I have a thought that, after a pretty extensive study of philosophy, seems novel to me in light of everything I’m aware of having gone before, how can I know that it is not novel without someone telling me, or somehow being certain that I have read absolutely everything that there is to read? — Pfhorrest

Then post a thread about what you think the novel parts are, if you've studied extensively it should be easy to identify and explain: "that based on these assumptions developed by these authors, I make this argument that goes further".

By refusing to even comment on those particulars, you’re effectively saying “come back when you’ve read absolutely everything there is to read”. — Pfhorrest

Why introduce the strawman of "everything"; no where do I say read everything there is to be read.

I say seek out the authors formulating or critiquing arguments you are using. If you want to improve your book, then (whether you include reference or buildup from scratch) it's a time-saving device to find the best existing formulation of an argument as well as it's best criticism (so that you are certain you are using as good or better formulation that adequately addresses the best criticism).

If you don't want to improve your book, then stop asking advice.

If you want to improve your book, then what I would expect is that it will take you much longer to forego this mention research and to think of all the ways your arguments can be undermined and to then fill all those gaps (you claim don't exist?). By all means though, if you disagree prove me wrong.

The latter is impossible, and impractical to ever try to approximate, especially since this isn’t my paid full-time job, so I can only rely on someone letting me know if the thoughts I think are novel actually aren’t. — Pfhorrest

No where did I say "follow this advice and tomorrow your book will be better". You obviously have time to discuss on the forum, so you could put some of that time putting in research work to improve your book. If it takes ten years, it takes ten years.

Or are you asking "how do I improve my book considering I won't be spending much time doing so".

I have clarified that already. Primarily people like I was 20 years ago. People interested in philosophy, including those not yet very familiar with it, who I expect will not find what they are looking for in the existing corpus of it, because after a decade of study I still hadn’t. — Pfhorrest

Thanks for clarifying, I did not catch the original clarification.

Yes, why not just make a thread and state what the missing part is that you didn't find and have addressed in your book?

If you want your book to clearly add novel ideas to philosophy and be completely accessible to someone unfamiliar with philosophy, this is an even more enormous task, than just the novel objective which I have been addressing. Again, doable, but will take time and effort to achieve. Your criticism of my criticism seems to be "I don't have that kind of time! what do you expect from me!". No problem with not having time, but I don't see why I would reformulate my advice to be doable without the required time.

I always try to build up all of the arguments from scratch. I only mention other philosophers to show that I am aware when an idea is not original. — Pfhorrest

I have not seen arguments written from scratch.

Half the time, the ideas I’m putting forward were original to me, and I later became aware that others had already written on the same topic. — Pfhorrest

The reason to seek out where these "original to me" ideas have been discussed before is to scrutinize their formulation (maybe someone not only thought of the idea but had made it better and more precise) and, more importantly, with a writer or textual reference you can then much better search for who has criticized that argument.

This is the critical process to do serious philosophy.

In the case of Pragmatism, I had my own version of something like the Pragmatic Maxim, and was later told by someone I shared that thought with about Pragmatism, and read up about it, and found Peirce closest to my own thoughts. I’m not trying to defend exactly Peirce or anyone else though, so going into depth about them would just be pointless showing off that doesn’t advance the purpose of my writing. — Pfhorrest

On this point, you did not provide your formulation from scratch of your pragmatic maxim, nor cited Pierce. It's these gaps that need to be filled one way or another, otherwise it's no longer possible to follow your argument as there is critical information missing. If you look carefully at your writing there is lot's of these gaps that need either an argument from scratch, a citation or then simply stating a new assumption.

Sushi was previously accusing me precisely of “showing off”, so just going into unnecessary depth on everything that I know about every philosopher I mention would just be more of that. — Pfhorrest

From what I followed, @I like sushi was simply stating that demonstrating familiarity with some philosophical concepts is not interesting reading. It should be clear where you are going with your arguments. I did not see Sushi "accuse you of showing off", but please cite it if I missed it.

See, here you are assuming that because I have not mentioned something I am not aware of it. — Pfhorrest

I say that: if you don't cite authors you mention, myself and other readers simply cannot get much insight to your relation to those authors. It is simply adding confusion.

If your mentioning of an author or ism is only to "give credit" and it adds nothing but confusion to the reading of the book, then it's best to simply provide that credit outside the book in an introduction.

I have studied a lot of philosophy. Not the most that can possibly be studies, I don’t think I know more about it than absolutely everybody else about every facet of it, but enough to have what seem to be novel thoughts about it that take into account lots of priority work. — Pfhorrest

Key word "what seems like novel thoughts". The reason to put in a lot of work to find and then really get into where those thoughts are not novel, is that you will benefit from those existing arguments and debates about it. You can then either simply reference those formulations if you see no need to improve them or then reformulate them.

If I thought this was something good enough for academic publishing, I wouldn’t be here. I’m trying to do the best I can in the circumstances I find myself in. Saying it’s just not good enough and to go study more is no help at all. Saying where specifically and why so I can focus on improving in. — Pfhorrest

This is where you need to engage with what Sushi has been saying. We still do not know exactly your goal with the book or audience.

As it stands, your goal is to write "novel philosophy"; this is a serious project. If you're goal was less ambitious, the task will be less hard.

You’re saying, essentially, be absolutely perfect or give up. — Pfhorrest

This is not what I am saying. I'm saying if you persevere you can attain your goal; I have only added to that, it's a difficult goal to attain and will require a lot of time, effort and work.

It is not impossible!! I just factored 10**1000 as 10**500 x 10**500 in my head. — A Seagull

I say numbers, and you give me one number. At least put in the effort and provide numbers.

True, but every argument starts with premises the reader is expected to likely agree with, otherwise it can’t get off the ground at all. A good philosophical argument starts with something trivially agreeable and derives something controversially substantial from it. That it is what I mean to do. — Pfhorrest

Yes, I would agree arguments start at premises (though it's possible some will disagree even here).

My point is that isms are not premises. If you don't want to cite people who represent either the ism you have issue with or the ism you are agreeing with, then you need to build the arguments, positive or negative, from scratch. This is a laborious process.

Referencing previous thinkers is a shortcut, but requires the work of citation for it be readable; otherwise, I am not sure you understand or interpret the thinker or the ism in question the same way I do; and, even if I did assume that, I can't tell exactly where you're agreeing or disagreeing with that thinker or school.

For instance, in our previous discussion, you mentioned the word pragmatism; I asked if you were talking about pragmatism the philosophical tradition or just "being pragmatic" in a colloquial sense, to which you replied the philosophical school, to which I inquired which thinker you were closest, to which you said it didn't matter, to which I replied it did, to which you replied you liked Pierce but found Lock redundant. This is interesting to know and I can't possibly tell your position on pragmatism by just seeing the word. It would be even more interesting to see a citation of Locke and a citation of Pierce that you feel is representative of this redundancy. I would be then far more informed of what you're talking about.
More interesting still if you found a citation that represented the error or incompleteness of these thinkers you intend to extend or correct.

If a reader has not read Locke and Pierce, now they've gotten the value of a choice citation and interpretation and at least have something concrete to represent those thinkers and "pragmatism" in their minds.

This is a lot of work, you have to read all the pragmatists to be confident you are doing a good job.

You can forego citation by building the arguments you want to take form pragmatism from scratch. However, likely you will want to read all the pragmatists to be sure you are making the best representation.

Either way, you can then move onto the next step of reading all of the, at least recommended, direct criticism of these arguments you are reformulating or citing.

This attitude of “don’t talk back just do what I say” is tiresome. — Pfhorrest

You are misunderstanding the nature of advice.

Nor I, nor any of your other advisers here, want you to "do what we say". We don't care what you do. You ask advice, we provide our advice, you use it or you don't. There's simply no point in trying to "prove our advice is wrong"; if it's wrong, don't use it. Now, it's constructive to try to understand the advice better (so to better to decide to use it or not), but it's not constructive to argue with advice of this kind; you're just tiring your advisers and making them lose interest, which only harms yourself.

I am here asking people I expect to be my peers to help point me at details like that, that would be useful to include and that I have missed. You neither demonstrated what would be useful about mentioning them nor provided any particular details to include. — Pfhorrest

I'm not writing your book for you.

It also wouldn't help you if I provided you those details, as a few details about some thinkers is not a substitute to understanding those thinkers. My advice is not to quickly search for some citations so that you can cosmetically sprinkle them into your book and give the illusion you have grappled with all the nuance and life force those thinkers bring to bear; my advice is to actually do that grappling.

I am not posting about my book here to “show off my genius” or something like you seem to think. Quite the contrary, I am posting about it hoping that both those less educated than me will tell me what’s difficult to follow so I can try to write better there, and those MORE educated than me will tell me what I’ve missed. You basically told me THAT I missed something, but didn’t say anything actionably specific about what it was. — Pfhorrest

You simply underestimate the task you have set yourself.

Implying you've written novel philosophy without also claiming you are "more educated than us" is exactly the claim that you can show off your genius by your mastery of philosophical concepts without a need for training, education and work: just raw natural talent.

I brought up names of authors that I recommend you cite. Reading books and citing critical passages relevant to your arguments is entirely actionable.

If you are going to write a book with the intention that it's taken serious, you must be more educated about it's subject matter than us, otherwise it's effectively we that is writing the book for you.

Yes, experienced authors ask for feedback on their writing, but it's not to make content and intellectual changes, but simply to cut and clarify, which is very minor compared with the major restructuring you are now engaged in.

The rest of your post reads like a shallow attempt to “take me down a peg” from some hubris you supposed I have, and isn’t worth responding to. — Pfhorrest

You should read my words more carefully.

I simply explain the difficulty of the task in front of you.

Setting the goal of writing novel philosophy on important subjects is the most extreme intellectual task that you can possibly set for yourself, short of something completely impossible such as factoring thousand digit numbers in your head. Your choice is either to accept that difficulty and commit to the time, discomfort and effort it will require to (maybe) attain, or to deny that and be an amateur not taken seriously, or to abandon your goal.

Your method of not doing the required work and believing somehow we on the forum will do the work for you, is not a good method as you have been able to verify.

I'm not happy about it, but Biden is clearly the lesser of two evils. — EricH

Shouldn't you also trust the devil you know at this point?

I seem to remember that's also a solid principle when it comes to evil dealings.