No, a micro-entity is a type of limited company. I have run limited companies before. I had one on my own when I was a contract programmer. It was not difficult. — Jamal

Well that makes it slightly better, but the key difference is that only your clients would have grounds to sue you as a contract programmer and that would be costly for them. Logical solution is to just contract someone else next time if they aren't happy with your work.

So basic sub-contracting is not an area prone to lawsuits, as it would cost the firm more to sue than they would get back. Obviously plenty of small businesses operate without issue.

As important, you're also not developing any IP as a contractor. There would be no reason for anyone to go through the trouble to take your software contracting business away from you.

As we saw with the previous philosophy forum, that motivation does exist for philosophy forums; there's IP, a sort of brand, social network etc.

No one wants your software business as it has no value apart from you doing the software work.

So, simply existing as a brand online with IP (domain, data, network, brand etc.) may make you a target of some random person who wants it. If it's your personal belonging (as it is now) there's no real effective way to do that. As a just a person you can only be sued in the district where you live and you can just show up in court and defend yourself and your hobby. However, it would be far easier to prey on your philosophy forum IP in the UK (thousands of times easier) through a series of contrived lawsuits for the purpose.

Then there's anyone who really does take issue with something said on this website and goes through the trouble of filing complaints (all sorts of channels are available to complain about businesses), and even suing you in UK court. It's super unlikely someone taking issue with your code would be passionate enough to take every legal measure available against you, but someone that takes issue with your speech or speech on your website could very well be passionate enough to do that.

And the issue is it takes just one person who wants yo'shit or then hates your guts to have all these deleterious effects.

Note that since the company will be a micro-entity, accounts and administration will not be costly and burdensome at all. You are vastly overstating it. — Jamal

Zero overstating it.

People make absurd or predatory lawsuits all the time.

Judges make absurd rulings all the time with absurdly high amounts, and if the idea is the business runs off 100 dollars a month, even the essentially minimum amount losing any court case (of paying the other side legal fees) will be super high in the context of this budget.

That there's also the possibility of something insane happening and being sued for millions (and hundreds of thousands is "normal" business lawsuit level) should be taken into serious consideration.

I don't get this. If TPF is going to be sued I'd rather it was run as a company, since otherwise I'd be personally liable. — Jamal

That's not really how it works.

First you need to still deal with the lawsuit and if you don't then held in contempt of court and become responsible for the damages anyways.

Second, I'm not sure about UK law, but usually micro businesses are personal liability businesses, just adding a business name and various business codes to your personal identity.

To have limited liability you need a limited liability business, what ltd. means, and that requires shareholders and a board of directors and it is first of all the shareholders that are not personally liable for the debts of the business and second the board of directors but only if they satisfy certain conditions, referred to as "due care" for short.

Board members are only immune for personal liability for the debts of the business if they've acted both lawfully and in due care, meaning their decisions made both legal and business sense at the time.

Then there's how the law is actually practiced which may not make any actual sense.

That you're confident you've acted lawfully and in due care does not mean others can't argue the exact opposite and get a judge to agree, once a judge agrees then you're liable. Of course you could then appeal but that will take time and money.

People could have some real or (more likely) perceived grievance or then simply suing you to take control of the company and then get as much of your personal assets as they can.

Now, most "norma" micro-businesses wouldn't have these concerns, if they are selling knitted socks in their spare time for example, but you'll be in an area of business that is prone to lawsuits: speech people don't like.

Furthermore, you'll be amassing a new trove of data and a decent micro brand to go with your micro business, that people may see as valuable and may see that just suing you for anything will give them your business and your trove of data basically for free (and in fact you'll be paying them for the privilege).

Now, as just an individual you are only liable where you live and you have the sympathy of the court as a resident and just a "normal person" doing a hobby. So you could defend yourself.

As soon as you're doing business in the UK you're liable in the UK and anyone can sue you in the UK and "I'm not really a business, just a normal person with a hobby" judges will just laugh at.

Judges don't differentiate much between size of business, but generally have the attitude that "you want to do business, you got it. And everything that goes with it".

What changes specifically is that judges do not generally hold normal people to "ought to know" standards of highly obscure and technical legal information. You ought to know you can't randomly hit people in the face for no reason, sure, but highly technical regulations that affect your hobby and ... also only if you were a business, judges will be unlikely to say you ought to know.

However, as soon as you're doing business you ought to know everything legally relevant to running your business and anyone can go to court and hold you to account to the letter of the law, often with nonsensical arguments and no evidence, but zero sympathy from the judge that you "aren't really a business", and who maybe simply impressed by a lot technobabble and fancy clothes, and so the only solution is to hire people with even fancier clothes to impress the judge with even more technobabble.

Just one lawsuit is a major pain in the ass to deal with, is the point, and anyone in the entire world that thinks you've published something you shouldn't can bring you to court over it.

And this is true for any jurisdiction, but the UK seems to be making every more stricter speech control laws, so just seems to me inviting danger.

Now, in a jurisdiction like the US with super strong freedom of speech laws (whatever else we may criticize the US for they have been jealous of their freedom of speech and that's been reflected in the courts) then you would likely have the sympathy of the court who would just throw out any lawsuits.

Hearing a case against a philosophy forum is likely the last thing any US judge would ever consider (with the exception the case has nothing to do with philosophy). And you'd immediately get all sorts of support from all sorts of freedom of speech organizations and maybe even Elon Musk himself, would be an instant national scandal a philosophy forum is being sued for discussing philosophy.

If you have the same confidence in UK judges and courts, then ok, maybe I'm wrong.

However, jurisdiction in this case is the best protection.

As soon as there's a freedom of speech grey area then people have grounds to sue over speech, their cases can't be thrown out, and just dealing with the lawsuit is likely to be impossible for a micro-business.

Although this all seems good and necessary technical changes, I question the choice of the UK for the business jurisdiction.

UK is restricting free speech pretty severely and those existing and any new restrictions will automatically apply to the forum.

I strongly recommend choosing a jurisdiction where that would not be an issue, or at leasts not a super likely issue.

US would be far more preferable over the UK, and there would be plenty of free speech allies if ever the US government did want to moderate clear political expression, which seems unlikely.

However by far and away the best option is @Benkei legally administers the business in his country, presumably the Netherlands.

It's not a casual thing making a business structure, you're then liable as a business and anyone can sue you for any amount. The protections you have as a private individual do not extend to a business you happen to own. If you lose a lawsuit the business will be taken to settle the damages.

Simply because you don't make much money does not mean you can't be sued for enormous sums.

Honestly the idea of making a business to manage small donated sums seems to me extremely foolish.

However, if there's commitment to that, then 100% the only reasonable implementation is that @Benkei takes care of the administration aspects. Small errors in paperwork can lead to audits and fines and endless bureaucracy. Just filing the taxes properly will likely cost more than this 100 Euros a month.

A business needs a certain scale to function properly or then not function at all and sit on the "shelf". but any business activity creates liabilities that can result in both government and civil legal actions that are just as complicated to manage if you are making 100 pounds a month or a million pounds a month, the different being if you're making a million pounds a month you can pay someone to deal with the complications.

@Benkei can for sure avoid most if not all pitfalls from happening in the first place, and can just go represent in lawsuits that are clearly just legal harassment.

If he's not willing, then I'd strongly recommend carefully thinking through both the legal structure, jurisdiction, the business plan (if a business is really the way to go), all the alternatives.

Once a business exists and IP is owned by that business it is business IP essentially forever.

But definitely the UK is a poor choice for such a business operation. Requires just one UK national to complain to UK authorities that their feelings have been hurt and the site could be easily shutdown.

To clarify one thing, in the above discussion we are investigating capacity, plans and intentions.

Your model of a large global conflagration to the point of severely constraining world trade, if not a nuclear war, can be started at anytime by accident.

So you can price into your model both dumb luck and incompetence as initiating factors.

My model could only happen with level heads managing the process, which is far from being priced into anything.

I think the US is operating under the assumption that Europe is already at risk of leaving the US orbit, because US power is waning and Europe is in potential a great power that is being artificially kept weak by US influence. (The famous NATO slogan that ends with "... and keep the Germans down" should have been understood to mean "... all of Europe down".) — Tzeentch

Agreed that it was the case.

The European Trans-Atlanticist elite are under heavy pressure from so-called "populists" in a political battle that is essentially between Trans-Atlanticist US puppets and European nationalists. — Tzeentch

Agreed that this is the case.

This is something that I have been stressing for a while now: Europe is a potential rival to the US, and as Europe shakes the US yoke, the US will start to treat it as such. — Tzeentch

I believe this defeat of Europe as a rival has been now accomplished, for the foreseeable future.

Russian resources were a foundational part of European power and that can't be simply brought back online. The gas will flow to China as well as power Russia's own industry. Likewise with the other long list of resources Russia has.

They blew up the pipelines precisely to make the point that things will never go back to the way they were, with the response from European leaders being "and that's a good thing" and then bowing even lower and kissing the ring even sloppier than ever before.

There's no going back from that. That was the choke point: accept the destruction of your own infrastructure as a chastisement for even daring to have once upon a time thought of independent foreign policy thoughts, or then stand of for yourselves and have a foreign policy. For, if you accept the destruction of your own infrastructure by a foreign power you have no foreign policy (total subjugation being defined in this context as not-a-foreign-policy).

There's no need for a war with Russia.

What better way to hamstring Europe going forward than to leave it with war on the continent as a parting gift?

That will only increase European dependence on American weapons and goods. — Tzeentch

The problem with this is that you can't easily rinse and repeat Ukraine with other European countries as they are all in NATO. So the US would need to exit NATO, which is still part of it's force protection and prestige.

A war with Russia could go nuclear, so that needs to be taken into consideration.

But probably most importantly a proper Russian-European non-nuclear war would still likely be a marginal affair. Neither side has the forces to conquer large parts of the other's territory. Russians can't just march to Berlin, Germans can't just march to Moscow.

So actually starting such a war, with the US walking away, would simply create exactly what you claim the fear is of Europe leaving the US sphere of influence. New leaders would come in representing this fact and simply make peace with Russia and do exactly all the things this plan is supposed to avoid.

The status quo and it's natural progression, however, of a new cold war, of the eternal Russian bogeyman, of constant tensions and sabre rattling while Europe remains starved of resources, floundering economically, domestic and inter-European infighting, nationalism on the small scale, all that would accomplish the goals you layout for the Unites States.

Brexit having been the first step in this process (whether orchestrated or simply a surprise geopolitical gift for the US), and the Ukraine war locking the process in.

For whom the war with Russia is important is the current European technocrats that went all in backing the war and justify the economic sacrifices, geopolitical sacrifices, Ukrainian sacrifices, infrastructure sacrifices by the hand of the US, by reference to a higher calling and set of ideals it's worth sacrificing so much for, that borders shouldn't ever change by force (Europe has always stood for that, it's a long tradition) ... ideals that were ironically also sacrificed during the same period in Gaza and Sudan.

So a lot of sacrifices and if you have nothing to show for your toil the only way to delay the day of reconning is to say you haven't finished toiling yet, being asked a progress report completely disrupts the flow state, you "got this", and so to come back later. We've all been there and now the EU elites are also there.

What better way to hamstring Europe going forward than to leave it with war on the continent as a parting gift?

That will only increase European dependence on American weapons and goods. — Tzeentch

Slow boil yes. But abrupt: fight the Russians alone, we out of NATO, but also keep buying our weapons, may not get the desires response.

The current situation of European moral indignation and outrage and sabre rattling without any EU citizen needing to pay a direct cost of war so the virtue signalling can just keep going and intensifying like lighting off fireworks in a disco, without also these weapons systems ever being tested, is what maximized European purchase of US arms.

An actual war requires high volume commodity production of the basics, such as artillery shells. Why the West didn't provide that for Ukraine is because it's low profit, so just winding down stockpiles without a plan for continued protection is the high-profit, sophisticated Wall Street move.

What creates the need for high-end, high-sophistication, high-profit weapons systems (whether they work or not) is the continuous prospect of a war that never happens (and if that war never arrives then who's to say what weapons actually work).

In terms of arms profiteering we're in a sweet spot right now, no need to go making waves with all this "put bold words in action" immature talk.

It's a reasonable alternative theory, but I don't see the US giving up their hegemonic empire without a fight. — Tzeentch

We agree on the motivations, the question is capacity (and a lucid understanding and response to that capacity).

If China has simply got too powerful and US war planners and elites understand that, then they may in response retrench where they can and strive for a modus vivendi with China, which largely already exists with China.

I think the US has no real reason to let China develop peacefully in a process by which it will almost certainly surpass the US in power. The US is still powerful now, and it has many allies in the Pacific which can easily cut off Chinese access to sea trade (which is the staple of US policy vis-á-vis China). — Tzeentch

The problem is geographical. China is immense and politically consolidated to all its natural borders.

The exception being its border with Russia.

Hence the strategy in the cold war was to maintain tensions between China and the Soviet Union.

However, if there's no way to run that strategy again, mainly because China has way less to fear from Russia than the former Soviet Union (China's way stronger now and Russia isn't the Soviet Union), and Russia has thousands of nuclear weapons and seems clear they are both content to just do business, then the odd-man-out becomes Europe.

If Russia-China collaboration cannot be prevented, then the next best thing is to cutoff Europe from Russia and prevent pan-Eurasion economic integration.

Trade between China and Europe will become almost an impossibility, especially if the Europeans and the Russians are at war.

You can see how vulnerable the Chinese actually are in a hypothetical scenario where its trade cannot flow overland freely. This is of equal importance to why the US wants to see Europe and Russia at war. — Tzeentch

Some giant conflagration is possible to achieve these ends. I'm not saying it's impossible, but there's a lot of practical difficulties and the results are not guaranteed. It's a high risk gamble to have Europe fight the Russians and not help, they may just go make peace with the Russians. There's also a geography problem of exactly where this war would be fought.

War in the pacific I would argue is even less predictable.

So it's a high risk gamble with high risk consequences to US business and domestic effects also.

If, on the other hand, the Europeans and the Russians kept relations good enough to facilitate trade, Chinese goods could find alternative land routes via Russia.

The Russians through their conservative approach to the war in Ukraine are signaling that they understand this and are trying not to burn all bridges vis-á-vis European-Russian relations, basically meaning to normalize after the conflict in Ukraine simmers down. — Tzeentch

Agreed that these are the considerations.

The question is, however, whether the Europeans cannot be successfully goaded into some extreme actions that force Russia to act (for example, Kaliningrad), especially when we consider the European Trans-Atlantic elite holds all the levers of power and is basically carrying out American foreign policy no questions asked. — Tzeentch

This is an example of the geographical problems mentioned. Around Kaliningrad you can have of course some skirmish, even major skirmish, but the geography is not setup for extended indefinite warfare as with Ukraine. In addition to the complicating factor of nuclear weapons.

You could have a second Ukraine in Finland, but there's not really anywhere to go from Finland, you just reach the sea so it's not some existential risk to Europe. You could have a new contact line killing a lot of Finns to maintain that doesn't really move. Russia would have their defensive system and Finns would have one facing the Russians and there's not really any need for either side to go on major offensives.

EU leaders need this to happen in order to say they are still working on it, as mentioned above, and maybe the US (as a "faction majority" of US elites and war planners) also prefers it, but it's not a giant all out European and US war. In my model a new Finno-Russian war is optional. It's an enhancement but doesn't fundamentally change the dynamic as Russia can't really invade Western Europe through Finland, so would just be the slow attrition of Finns until they capitulate (which is the reason against having this war, is that eventually Finns would be worn down and capitulate, so you either need to accept that outcome from the start).

To be clear, I find this enhanced version of my model the most likely, as lot's of parties inside Russia also would want continued warfare after the defeat of Ukraine so starting with Finland would be continuation, not a departure, for the status quo. And if there's one thing we know about the status quo is that it likes to be maintained in its current level of comfort.

However, this scenario is very far from WWIII.

Once the powder barrel is successfully lit and the gears of war start churning, it will be too late for second thoughts and there will be no going back. That's what the US is going to be banking on. — Tzeentch

Definitely already happened with Ukraine, but that therefore does not mean all potential wars must be started.

There are forces working against the start of new wars.

For the record, I hope I am wrong. — Tzeentch

Agreed.

Point being the alternative to WWIII is consolidate imperial power over Europe and the Americas, let Russia and China have their corner of the cake. Continue to contest the Middle-East and Africa but in a friendly rivalry sort of way that happens to kill millions of people, but we don't have to talk about that.

If there's no way to start and then win WWIII, appreciating what you have starts to look pretty attractive.

↪boethius Why wouldn't they have the capacity? Eastern Europe is one false flag away from all-out war, and the US + Allies (Anglosphere, Japan, South Korea, etc.) are more than a match for China. — Tzeentch

Yes, they certainly have the capacity to start these wars, but it's unclear if they have the capacity to end them successfully.

Venezuela is a small fish, and US involvement there is probably just an expression of the Monroe Doctrine, which is a cornerstone of US geopolitics. (No great powers or great power influence in the western hemisphere) — Tzeentch

Agreed, but the sudden escalation could be indication of deescalating elsewhere, consolidate imperial assets in the Western hemisphere.

Europe is already consolidated as vassal states with no independent foreign policy, locked into decades of LNG, social media, AI, and defence purchases ... having European vassals fight Russia could be killing a golden goose that's currently nice and safe in its cage, and wants to be in its cage, delivering golden eggs on a regular basis. There may not be a need to upset that relationship. Golden goose may not even be able to survive outside of her enclosure: it's really scary, even if goose squawks and fusses sometimes like she wants to be free.

It seeks to decouple from Europe, while abolishing Ukraine's status as stabilizing neutral buffer, putting the Russians and the Europeans at daggers drawn.

The Europeans and the Russians fight each other to a bloody pulp, while the US takes care of business in the Pacific, this time with China as the big bad instead of Japan. WW2 with colors reversed - the same situation which landed world hegemony in Uncle Sam's lap. — Tzeentch

While I agree this was definitely the plan when all this started, I think it's less clear now to what extent the US has the capacity and will to continue this plan.

This focus on Venezuela could be indication of even the neocons abandoning the above global ambitions.

He may be crazy enough to cut off all funding. But even then I can’t see Ukraine agreeing to this plan as it’s written. — Mikie

Cutting off funding and arms and intelligence would not be crazy.

Ukraine cannot win the war, that is clear. The more it goes on the more Russia will want for its trouble.

That's the dynamic that's created when a peace is not agreed swiftly: both sides have a psychological need to "show something" for the additional bloodshed, but the losing side generally never achieves that, requiring more fighting to try to make up for the losses. Who does make battlefield gains and increases their military leverage is the winning side, who then demand more, making it even harder for the losing side to capitulate.

So a tragic process of chasing ever increasing demands: as things get worse, what could have been negotiated even 6 months ago would be totally acceptable but there's now additional demands that are too hard to swallow ... though again in 6 months again they would be acceptable but there is now still more demands to compensate the additional 6 months of fighting.

The losing side never has more leverage, always less (what it means to be losing), and therefore continued fighting always makes things worse and not better. The exception being the intervention of other forces, a la Rohan coming to save Gondor at the last moment, but that is clearly not going to happen for Ukraine.

Losing a war means you have less, not more, say in the peace settlement.

As for Ukraine accepting, it of course depends on what you mean by "Ukraine". If by Ukraine we're talking about Zelensky ... he seems pretty clear to Ukrainians that they may have no other choice but to accept a deal. The straight up Nazi factions and other organized crime groups are presumably less likely to ever accept such a deal, but even they maybe compelled by the disposition of forces on the ground, preferring to rule over the rest of Ukraine rather than lose more territory.

The strategy of the Russians has been to fight in what is essentially one large cauldron in the South-East of Ukraine, maximizing the distance personnel and supplies need to travel and maximizing the distance with NATO radars and other signal processing. As a corollary, minimizing the distance with their own country and logistics.

The farther Ukrainians need to go to reach the front the more likely their movements can be spotted and analyzed as well as interdicted with standoff munitions. The more fuel, vehicles, and time it takes also, effectively reducing the effective quantity of everything.

However, simply because the war has stayed in the South-East Ukraine for so long does not mean it will invariably stay that way, that is just lazy thinking.

Once Ukraine is attritted enough and cannot arrest Russian advances, then Russia can go basically anywhere: keep pushing up from the south but also re-invade from the North or anywhere along the border.

The basic geographic strategic problem Ukraine has, that compounds greatly their capacity problems, is that there are no choke points. Fighting has been mostly in the South-East because that's where Russia has chosen to fight, not due to any geographic necessity.

Manning what is effectively a 3000 km contact line (counting Belarus) simply takes a lot of soldiers. There's no way around that. You need soldiers manning some interval of the contact-line and borders, as at least a "trip wire" warning system, and then you need a lot of soldiers in reserve to then go and stop offences.

Once Ukraine's army is simply below this large amount of soldiers required, then in order to defend against one offensive Ukraine needs to start deprive other parts of the front of essential man power ... so the Russians can just attack there.

It becomes a simple numbers game that Ukraine can't defend everywhere in addition to this process causes efficiency to rapidly degrade, resulting in the consequence is Russia can make large gains in territory at little cost to itself.

Naturally, the problem of no geographical choke point is a problem Ukraine has now, but there is one big exception that is the Dnieper, so Russia may take all of Ukraine East of the Dnieper.

Military planners likely view that as a long term solution to security needs.

Politically, there's not really much international consequence for taking all of Eastern Ukraine (as the West already did max sanctions), but there would remain the political issue of managing all of Eastern Ukraine and how much that would cost (with a lot of unkowns such as the likelihood of an insurgency and how damaging and how long it would last).

Assuming you're talking about Trumps plan, it would be better than more war in my opinion.

Odds of it being accepted as it is by Russia is basically zero, but likely Trump has a "start high and settle lower" mentality.

Parts of the plan are downright bizarre such as Trump personally chairing some sort of enforcement council. However, again that could be a placeholder the time to negotiate something else.

The reason the Europeans (at least the vocal politicians and especially Brussels) are so against it is because the moment the war is officially lost, their actions are revealed to make zero sense in terms of national security of their respective countries.

The US can point to positive outcomes of the war such as locking Europe into LNG and the prospects of economic collaboration with Russia. The Europeans will not be able to point to anything, and Trump's peace proposal (in broad terms) is essentially just the near agreement of 2022 that was scuttled by the Europeans, at least public facing, personally involved, and taking credit for the scuttling such Boris Johnson (to what extent it was at the behest is a different matter, but that Europe took the credit publicly gives more leeway to the US knowing that Europe can't back down as easily having been the public face of rejecting negotiations for some years).

The end of the war could also lead to the breakup of the EU, since as soon as the war ends some Eastern European-EU countries may start to gravitate back into Russia's economic influence. If people forget why exactly we hate the Russians so much they may come to see what Russia is offering in terms of economic dynamism is more attractive than what Europe is offering. This would be a long process, starting with constant political agitation to get rid of sanctions that will be harder and harder to justify keeping in place, but the end of the war could be the start of it.

Why it's so vital for EU policy interest for we Finns to start fighting the Russians as soon as possible, carry the torch into the long dark night of government policy retardation (ultimately for the interests of organized crime).

Zelenskyy is left facing a choice between an unfavorable treaty v an unwinnable war. — Wayfarer

How exactly does the choice become between:

A. unwinnable war

and

B. A favourable treaty

?

Seems to me that an unwinnable war intrinsically creates the super high likelihood of unfavourable treaty terms.

Am I missing something?

But that aside, to continue my military analysis since the start of the conflict, the war of attrition has reached an inflection point as was essentially inevitable (what a war of attrition means).

To remind everyone, Ukraine doesn't just have a smaller population but they are disadvantaged in essentially every category of warfare: strategic depth, artillery, armour, air power, air defence, drones, missiles, defensive fortifications, and intelligence.

The only 2 categories Ukraine ever matched the Russians was perhaps drones and intelligence at the start of the war, as these can be supplied from outside and the US has immense experience and capacity in both drones and intelligence.

I would argue falling behind (as in having Ukraine fall behind) in drone warfare was mostly a policy choice by the US, and for intelligence (we really don't know precisely) but my intuition is that Russia and the US being equally matched as intelligence competitors in Ukraine at the start is a reasonable foundation for analysis; each with different strengths: the US having an advantage in satellites and signal intelligence and the Russians having an advantage in human intelligence, Ukraine being right next to them, filled with Russian speakers and ethnic Russians and a primary intelligence target since WWII.

The nature of human intelligence is that it expands with respect to decreases in morale of the opposing side, whereas satellites and signal intelligence remain largely fixed and each technology generation can be adapted to (entire new technology is then required to regain an advantage again), whereas humans are intrinsically adaptable and so human intelligence operations adapt themselves as they go. I.e. you can optimize a strategy to deal with technology (starting with the fact humans are adaptable and so will learn by trial and error what works and what gets everyone killed) and the only way around that is new technology, whereas human intelligence assets will adapt themselves and take advantage themselves of new opportunities in real time.

For technology based intelligence there's also the problem that the US will at some point not want to inform the Russians of their capabilities by demonstrating their use, especially new capabilities (if new capabilities were ever deployed in Ukraine to begin with). So, not only does the technological edge wear off but even if the US did have new technologies to regain an edge in certain domains ... they may not provide those capabilities to the Ukrainians. So there's both the issue of capability to begin with and the issue of what is actually deployed to Ukraine.

But, yes, I think we're basically as laidback as philosophy can get while still actually reaching for philosophy. — Moliere

I don't think that's the issue here, but as has been pointed out by @Outlander, the OP and some associates want their points to be taken seriously about matters in which they have not read the source material.

I would wager a hefty sum that the motivation for this grievance is that with respect to ordinary people who haven't read anything at all, having some familiarity with popular and other kinds of commentary is quite impressive. However, as you certainly are aware, you can't really "hold your own" in a debate on a topic in which you haven't read the key texts, but imagine yourself knowing what they say anyways, but others in the debate have read those texts.

To tie into the Kantian theme that has already been developed here, the approach of not reading the source material creates a sort of phenomenology of textual noumena that are assumed to exist but one has no access to (by choice in this case). Such a phenomenology of inaccessible textual noumena can of course be quite elaborate, clever and well developed, but of course seems foolish to anyone to which the texts in question are not noumena because they read them.

This form of discourse even has a control group, as we also have discourse on texts that really are missing, and so essentially noumena to us represented by phenomena of reference of inference by other texts we do have, and the speculations and analysis about those missing texts is essentially the same kind of discourse as people who talk about texts (or topics identified by key texts) who haven't read them.

Not only that, but when we compare difficult philosophical texts like Heidegger’s Being and Time with work aimed at a more popular audience, the latter will be of necessity be written in a more direct and less ambiguous style. There is pressure from the readership for the author to be polemical and hammer home some clear and likely controversial points. Writers like Dennett, Pinker and Dawkins are anything if not polemical and controversial. I’ve participated in many philosophy discussion groups, and the rule of thumb is that the more the material is aimed at a popular audience, the more likely it is to encourage polarized, oppositional forms of debate. — Joshs

Agreed, definitely also a good point to consider.

It's also a consequence, I would argue, of not having a sufficient framework, not to speak of an actual theory, in which critical questions can even be potentially resolved, the only option becomes to dict and contradict back and forth at each other.

Engaging in more complete analysis it becomes possible to at least agree on the structure and soundness of the arguments of different proponents, even if the validity is disagreed.

The dividing line I would argue is that "actual philosophy" understands the problems of moral assertions, whereas in regular discourse there's a few (always moving and never mutually coherent) "virtue anchors" that are taken for granted and people try to attach their argument to whatever their preference is and mostly what is "most virtuous" in society at any given time. Pro-life vs. pro-choice being a typical example of how this process plays out.

If I tie myself to one virtue anchor and you to another, then all we can do is shout back and forth at each other at a distance and never approach one another nor ever see things from the other's point of view.

To bring back to Pinker as an example, he anchors his argument mainly in the virtue that more immediate indicators of consumption and health outcomes is an unquestioned good thing, and so from this perspective any other "virtue anchor", such as biodiversity, is just shouted down as secondary and coming from just mean people really.

The "first" self-love referred to by the Duke is how much we do in the name of helping (or hurting) others that is actually self-serving. — Paine

Well that's a shame. I thought for a moment there may finally be a quote that really captures my methodological approach to things in my formative years, but, alas, I will have to keep looking.

... like.... after masturbation?

↪boethius I have a feeling it is this sort of analysis that the OP is not looking for :D I think what you say is a little harsh. When people give a sweeping analysis of the human race it is necessarily going to remain fairly large grained. I think what often riles people is that in their immediate surroundings they only see and hear terrible woes rather than see the huge leaps that have been made in different locations and across larger periods of time. — I like sushi

Exactly the point I'm trying to make. If you keep it leisurely it won't be analysis, if it is analysis it will quickly become non-leisurely.

And yes, obviously the basic proposition of "progress" can be defended; there's clearly many changes over history, maybe that's progress. However, it's obviously a difficult task, is my basic point, which Pinker doesn't come close to accomplishing or even develop the tools to accomplish in any remotely "philosophically satisfying" way.

My goal was to show that if we "got into Pink" the critique would many and sharp, then hose critiques need to be responded to (either referring to Pinker or then just getting into those issues, reformulating progress in an Apinker fashion), and then will keep going, and is not a leisurely exercise.

The people who like both Pinker and leisure generally won't want to debate anything, maybe just repeat choice stats and quotes, is my basic contention.

Obviously we could debate Pinker's claim and whether some actual moral, political, statistical analytical framework could support it, but the debate will just immediately get into those issues, become more and more complicated, refer to more and more material, going in an overall non-leisurely direction.

Basic point being that analysis is a process of critical scrutiny, so the people interested in it generally want to really get to the bottom of things.

You may simply be out of luck in that there's too few people engaged in leisurely analysis.

Take Pinker for example, his whole thing is that "everything is fine". His message is precisely meant for people who don't want to analyze or think too hard about anything and want to be comforted by the idea that "the real smart analysis", such as Pinker provides, concludes with laissez-faire everything is fine and dandy.

Congruent to this state of affairs, fans of Pinker don't generally engage in analysis to defend Pinker but just restate statistics that Pinker likes to state, such as "so and so amount of people out of poverty!!" Pinker is designed (whether "intelligently" by the man Pinker or then a broader media-evolutionary process) for popular consumption of people who support the status quo; things feel good for them right now and it's nice to think things are good for people generally speaking.

However, on any closer inspection by people who like rigour and analysis, Pinker's entire proposition simply falls apart.

First, whenever someone talks about progress, this simply begs the question "progress to where?" We need a moral theory in order to evaluate progress and weigh different statistics against each other.

The obvious and immediate criticism of Pinker is ecologically. If the progress he espouses is at the cost of ecosystems, necessary for long term prosperity and/or valuable in themselves, that issue must be addressed. If Pinker puts up a graph of poverty reduction and an ecologist puts up a graph of biodiversity loss, Pinker requires some moral framework to even make the claim things are going in the right direction. Which, as far as I know, Pinker never provides a moral framework in which it's even possible to compare different numbers in different graphs.

Point being, fans of Pinker don't concern themselves with defending or filling in Pinker's view of the world; the whole point is to support a laissez-faire, everything is fine attitude, and so no need to think about it further. Anyone serious about philosophy is going to immediately point out Pinker does not even have a moral framework in which "the good" can be asserted and any sort of comparative analysis with other values can be carried out.

There's ecological value (that Pinker's economic system that does all the great stuff he point to depends on, and if the system isn't sustainable then you also need a framework in which short term gains can be weighed against long term costs in the same metric) but there's also plenty of other moral and political decisions. For example, if prosperity in China leads to Chinese domination of the planet and spreading Chinese technological social control systems (great firewall, social credit, etc.) is therefore Chinese prosperity a good thing (even assuming it's ecologically sound)? If Nazi Germany had a poverty problem and then Hitler solved that poverty problem, seems to me Pinker's framework would view that as an absolutely amazing achievement of mankind right up until 1939, perhaps even 1943. Obviously China is not literally Nazi Germany, so is it's government "bad enough" or "good enough" or "benign enough" to support one conclusion over another is not easy to do, but would have to be resolved for Pinker's argument to be simply step 1 of plausible soundness.

However, even assuming "liberal democratic values" (which we can obviously question how great they are in reality, such as a genocide our liberal democracies are carrying out right now and China is not); what if, even assuming China is "bad" for liberal democratic values in China, nevertheless helps Africa and other poor nations develop in exactly the way Pinker wants, and just so happens that is and would be in a liberal democratic way outside of China? Can we weigh the "freedom" of the Chinese against the "freedom" of Africans? So even on Pinker's preferred metrics of evaluation, different scenarios can be elaborated with different pros and cons and Pinker's framework has no way of resolving them. Ultimately, all these critiques are answered with just "optimism" and the whole exercise is starting with an optimistic attitude, putting together statistics optimistically with an optimistic interpretation, and then being optimistic that potential for bad will be resolved by fellow optimistic people.

Pinker's place in the social discourse is simply serving as the counter-contrarian to everything. If someone starts analyzing an issue that really does seem governments are going to need do something about to avoid bad things happening, Pinker can be relied on to state that it's not a problem, and if it is it's not a big problem, and if it was it's not a problem anyone should really worry about, and if they should it can't be compared with all sorts of other things that are going absolutely swimmingly.

Therefore, Pinker resists "casual analysis"; either you repeat what Pinker says completely oblivious to all the moral, political, ecological, statistical collection and analysis methods, qualitative, issues Pinker never addresses, or then even the smallest analysis immediately starts to encounter questions and problems that just lead to more questions and problems, which is not a leisurely task to get through, and you just end up in those debates of those issues which Pinker ignores, and the whole point of Pinker's proposition is to encourage ignoring those issues; but if those issues aren't ignored, then in those "actual debates about stuff", Pinker's work becomes purely ornamental to the discussion.

Excellent.

Breathing air in the street is harmful, but until you can show the damage done by it, there is no actual harm been done. — Sir2u

No ... it's harmful, as is your premise.

Proving it is harmful, how harmful it is exactly, who's causing the air to be harmful, what the law should do, if anything, about this harmful air, would be different questions.

In order to show the air does damage the air must be already harmful in order to be able to show that.

I assume, to introduce another premise, you're thinking of pollution that people are generally not aware is harmful and therefore no one is liable for the damages caused until someone "proves" it is harmful.

If so, that is not a correct understanding of the law anyways, but is not applicable to this case of privacy.

We know invasion of privacy is harmful, why it's illegal. The damages caused by the harm are psychological distress of feelings of violation and placing the victim at risk of further crime (which is more psychological harm as well as enabling those actual additional harms).

Although awareness of the invasion of privacy is required for that harm "to be felt", that is not a condition for the crime of invasion of privacy.

In the same way that if I punch you in the face while you're in a coma, "that you didn't feel it" would not be a defence for the crime of assault; likewise, if I poison you but you'll only die next year, there is no need for everyone to wait for next year for me to be charged with poisoning you: "Wait! Wait! I have a year before he dies! You've got the right man at the wrong time! I need to do my bucket list, poisoning a guy was only number 7, so I used a clever delay!" is not a legal defence for poisoning in order to delay charges and trials.

The possibility is always there, like the trees killing people in parks these last few weeks, but until you can show that there is ACTUAL harm done by the things you explain in your theory nothing has happened. — Sir2u

If you're now talking about the OP, breaching people's data integrity is in itself harmful. Putting people at unnecessary risk of harm is itself harmful, which is why reckless endangerment is a crime. If you shoot arrows into a crowd and happen not to hit anyone: no harm done, still a crime.

Compromising people's data recklessly is basically a form of reckless endangerment, but since the world of data is complicated there's whole laws dedicated to the issue. In the US the law concerned would be mainly HIPAA (as medical information is involved) whereas in Europe the GDPR is the general regulation that covers all personal data and there's even stricter requirements for both medical and child information, as well as other laws and regulations that may apply.

These particular data security vulnerabilities (enabling spoofing of a domain that puts people at risk if it is spoofed, shady data processing on parallel domains, and non-transparent ownership of domains) have already been ruled by European courts as "inappropriate security" (as is common sense), which is the catch all term for what you are not supposed to do under the GDPR while handling people's data.

I've friend requested you both on chess.com, I'm the TheBluePawn

https://www.chess.com/member/thebluepawn

Feel welcome to add me too, and also anyone else.

So you have done the checking, how many reports have you made and to whom have you done so? Being as there are so many possibilities to report this to so many different agencies and organizations I imagine that there has been a lot of work for you. — Sir2u

I did not ask about possible future or imaginary consequences, it says quite clearly in the question I asked "actual evidence" of suffering. — Sir2u

You're question was:

Is there any actual evidence that any children have suffered because of what you explained? — Sir2u

To which I answered:

First of all, compromising people's data is itself harmful, which then, in itself, causes the suffering of needing to worry about how one's data could be used for ill, once one is made aware of the data breach (as required under the GDPR). If you knew your ID and medical history was stolen that would cause suffering even if the data theft is never exploited to commit further crimes against you. — boethius

Note "once one is made aware of the data breach" is quite clearly in my first answer on this question.

And then also explained:

So as I answered you the first time, yes, there is child suffering due in part to these data breaches.

Further crimes against children by the network involving the above company have also been committed; however, I can't as easily report on confidential information of ongoing investigations and / or court cases. — boethius

I have definitely for sure answered your question.

If you could post a list of the places that you have informed already, maybe some of us could repeat the information to them so that they would have to pay attention. Email addresses or whatever form of communication would be necessary for us to send to the same places. — Sir2u

There is zero harm if reports are made multiple times; if authorities see there's public concern for an issue the only real risk is they may do their jobs more properly than usual.

Therefore, there is no reason to list every place I've already reported to, and making such a list public could potentially help perpetrators. No one should worry that they reported something that has already been reported.

Anyone here who cares about children not-being-trafficked can easily report in their country; there's usually super easy anonymous tip lines to do so, and then you can rest easy that if someone has used this security vulnerability in your country to traffic children at least it's reported.

And to remind everyone, why I posted this information here is because due to the fact the data breach can be exploited by anyone in the entire world to commit crime in any country, that it's possible that some such crime could only be uncovered if reported to authorities in that country.

Most countries have an anonymous system to report crime tips, and in most countries it's a super simple matter of a search for these corporations and their domains in systems related to child protection and foster case etc. to see if there's been any communication with these domains which, since they are setup with zero security and anyone can spoof them, may warrant further verification.

It is a low investment in time for people to report this information, and it is a low investment in time for any honest investigator to do some basic checks. If only one country it turns out criminals did exploit this security vulnerability to impersonate Finnish child protection workers and traffic children, that would be worth it to uncover.

My purpose was not to discuss whether compromising someone's data, moreover children's data, is even a crime in "Western law". Obviously it is, and anyone pretending otherwise is lying to me and everyone here.

Therefore, coming here to point out the obvious: that what is described in the OP, invading people's privacy generally speaking or compromising their data integrity generally speaking, is against the law. Why? Because it causes suffering. As everyone here obviously knows.

On the issue of mental illness, the evidence of mental illness is definitely the people here who genuinely seem to believe they have a right to invade people's privacy as a matter of principle or then as long as they don't get caught, and also genuinely seem to believe I haven't answered this question like 12 times by now of why it's for sure a crime.

I would also like to point out, that due to the essentially the only response to this notice of a data breach being people trying to gaslight me and everyone that what I describe in the OP is not a problem as no "suffering" has been caused, I have lost significant respect for the entire forum. So, I am also less motivated to discuss with people I do not respect. Really, absolute bottom of my list of priorities, but, no worries, still there.

Pretty obvious to me Boethius is the disingenuine (and likely mentally ill imo) one here. How could a question so simple be impossible to answer? Instead, evasive, obtuse and…of a weasel like nature.
So much for outside arbitration. — DingoJones

I've answered this question of why a data breach which is also an invasion of privacy in this case (just in data form) is against the law (crime if intentional, negligence if unintentional) multiple times.

It is easy to answer, why there's a law literally called the "General Data Protection Regulation" and also various laws dealing with privacy.

Invasion of privacy, compromising someone's data for example, is a crime because it causes suffering.

It causes suffering in and of itself due to the violation of the victims privacy. It also causes suffering in enabling further harm and therefore the victim needing to worry about that and also if that further harm is actually carried out.

This is super duper basic and obvious and everyone in this conversation knows that if they went and spied on naked showering women through a peep hole they would be committing a crime, if they hacked my personal data or anyone else's they'd be committing a crime, if they setup a data processing system intentionally to compromise people's data they would be committing a crime.

Because it is an obvious crime there is now multiple investigations in multiple countries concerning this data breach.

Once investigations actually started, then that has been a bigger focus of mine then arguing about whether invasion of privacy, compromising child medical and ID data, is even a crime.

So, vis-a-vis the OP, hopefully there will be some public clarification of the matter.

Of course, as with the discovery of any security vulnerability, it is not immediately clear if the security vulnerability has been exploited or not, hence the need to report and for the matter to be investigated.

The matter of the OP is particular complicated as the security vulnerability these corporations create can anyways be exploited by anyone in the world; so there is both the matter of whether the problem is created intentionally for the purposes of crime, but anyways the matter that anyone in the entire world can take advantage of the problem for criminal purposes. Fortunately, in both cases crime concerning data tends to leave plenty of evidence all around the world in various logs.

Although I have found Boethius very entertaining, and previously informative, when they are posting, I too am veering to your own appraisal which I have come to think due to their very erratic posting habits. There will be a large flourish of frantic posting then radio silence for weeks. — unimportant

Zero obligation for anyone here to post anything at any time.

As mentioned in my post above, there's actual investigations concerning this data breach, now in multiple countries, so considering the data breach described in the OP enables child trafficking, and proper investigation of breach (how it was created, why, has it effectively been used to traffic children etc.) is a bit higher on my list of priorities than arguing about whether compromising people's private information is even a crime (which we all know it is), I have prioritized child safety over dealing with obvious lies.

There is no way anyone participating here does not understand that invasion of privacy, hacking, mishandling people's data, certainly children's data, is not a legal issue and if intentional a criminal issue.

If I have time to spare, I'll respond to people trying to waste my time, try to find some entertainment value in it as you suggest. However, if I really have better things to do (perhaps a piece of evidence in my possession could actually result in the interception of a child being trafficked as we speak; we don't know, hence the need to investigate), radio silence with respect to lies and intentionally stupid points such as invasion of privacy and hacking people's data is not even a crime, is entirely warranted.

↪boethius You could answer the question, please good sir, instead of prevaricating.

In the scenario i just gave you, what have i suffered, without something more? It's nothing, isn't it? — AmadeusD

I have asked specifically, in the scenario I gave (with no further elements involved), what I suffer by him receiving my information. This hasn't been answered. What happened was boethius then did two things: — AmadeusD

Again your claim is:

I've asked what suffering. You've not answered.

You receive information from my personal email account (clandestine, we assume). What have I suffered ? I shall short-cut this.

I haven't. Something more is required. Most Western Law even requires harm or damage to be established before a conviction or punishment will be metered out. — AmadeusD

Which is simply obviously not true, and you obviously know that if I clandestinely hacked all your personal information I would be committing a crime.

It's just dumb to need to deal again and again with your lies.

And you make it clear that my clandestinely stealing all your data does not make the definition of a crime: "Most Western Law even requires harm or damage to be established before a conviction or punishment will be metered out."

But you know my hacking your information right now would be a crime. It's a crime because it causes suffering. Why does it cause suffering? Because having someone's personal data causes them both distress as well as the potential for further harms.

1. Lied and said I claimed it "was nothing" that they have my information. I clearly, objectively did not say this. To claim I did is a literal lie. This is, i'm afraid, not debatable. The words are there to be read, and i did not say the ones he claims i did. q.e.d.; — AmadeusD

Those are your exact words:

↪boethius You could answer the question, please good sir, instead of prevaricating.

In the scenario i just gave you, what have i suffered, without something more? It's nothing, isn't it? — AmadeusD

What's the scenario? That I steal your personal information.

It's just incredibly stupid.

Unfortunately for my contributions to philosophyforum, there are actual ongoing investigations in multiple countries that I am contributing regarding this data breach, so I have had to focus on those for the time being.

2. Snuck in the "and you know about it" element. This is, quite obviously, what I had been pushing toward as a flaw in his initial statement. It took about six exchanges, and him sneaking that factor in, as if it were present in the initial claim, to get us anywhere. So, I pulled him back to my initial scenario. Since then he's been extremely immature and unbecoming for a philosophy forum. q.e.d. — AmadeusD

This is not "snuck in" as I already answered that the actual experience of suffering requires knowing about the invasion of privacy, and it is a crime (that I clandestinely steal all your information) because it causes that suffering, of course the experience of the suffering requires becoming aware.

However, this is irrelevant with regard to your claim, as you make clear this does not meet the definition of a crime in "Most Western Law", but it does even without the actual suffering taken place.

For example, you invade the privacy of someone who is unconscious in a coma and get caught. The fact they are in a coma and not aware of your invasion of their privacy has no bearing on being charged and convicted of a crime. "They were in a coma your honour!" is not a defence.

The process of becoming aware of an invasion of privacy is not required for "conviction or punishment will be metered out," but the invasion of privacy itself.

And again, there's no "sneaking" anything, I made it clear that the experience of suffering starts when one is aware of the breach, but it is against the law to cause compromise people's data, invade their privacy, steal their ID and medical information etc. due to that causing suffering:

Is there any actual evidence that any children have suffered because of what you explained?
— Sir2u

First of all, compromising people's data is itself harmful, which then, in itself, causes the suffering of needing to worry about how one's data could be used for ill, once one is made aware of the data breach (as required under the GDPR). If you knew your ID and medical history was stolen that would cause suffering even if the data theft is never exploited to commit further crimes against you. — boethius

And it is quite usual for crimes to cause suffering in a delayed manner. For example, if I poisoned you with a carcinogen that will very likely cause you cancer and die in some years, we do not have to wait for that suffering to start for me to be held accountable for poisoning you.

Yep, that was the non-answer I got. — Sir2u

What you got, as seen above, is exactly the answer to the question.

The OP is about breaching a whole giant law called the GDRP, which stands for "General Data Protection Regulation, and participants here are unsure whether compromising someone's data is even a crime.

I really have no other interpretation for such obviously false statements than the motivation comes from people who regularly spy and invade the privacy of others and feel that's ok because they don't plan to get caught and so people won't know and won't suffer, so it's not a crime really when you think about it.

I have little time for this nonsense, considering as mentioned there's real investigations happening in multiple countries now since I reported this data breach, but I will try to find time to repeat the obvious if people insist on it.

ontologically I regard every set as completely specified, just like in set theory — litewave

But this is true only in a formal system where everything really is completely specified.

However, outside formal systems, there is no completely specifying anything. For example, try specifying a tree; it's a pretty hard task even for just trees on earth right now (without even addressing questions like when exactly does a seed become a tree and when does a tree become log), but a complete specification would be able to tell us also exact moment the next individual in a species of bushes attains treeness, likewise what organisms on other planets and even other universes entirely would be a tree.

To have a "good idea" of what a tree is, to be certain we'd agree that the trees outside my window right now are indeed trees, is very far from a complete specification of treenness.

To say we know what the specification of set of even numbers in a formal system, does not imply we know exactly what the set of all trees is.

To make sets of objects in the real world you need to define apparatuses and procedures (and procedures to make your apparatuses) and then contend with all the edge cases; i.e. you have to do science in which mathematics is a useful tool but doesn't solve all your problems.

For example, a post-grad laser physics researcher I once knew, worked in a lab that dealt with edge cases by running an algorithm to simply remove outliers from the datasets entirely.

There is a branch of mathematics that deals with these kinds of issues, called fuzzy logic, as there's certainly nothing stopping us trying to make rigorous treatments of our pretty vague concepts about the real world, which I haven't looked into all that closely but maybe of interest to you.

In practice we usually don't have such complete specifications and we talk about approximately specified properties like "redness", but that doesn't refute my claim that a property (completely specified) is identical to the set of all objects that have this property. — litewave

It's certainly understandable what is meant, but in so doing in ordinary language you will still have the problem of delineation and universals and so on.

For example, a ball of red atoms.

Is the ball an element in the set? Is each atom an element in the set? Is subset of atoms of the ball in the set? What about the quantum level? Mostly these atoms are red but there will be random fluctuations that cause other colours; if photons are fired at an atom and bounce back another colour, is the atom still an element of the set? If the criteria is the potential to be red, pretty much all atoms can be red through relativistic effects of red-shifting; there are red galaxies in the sky due to red shifting, are they elements of the set of redness, each star, each dust particle, each atom and so on? There will be all these kinds of questions that need to be resolved to rigorously define what redness is and how to separate elements into the set of redness and not-redness; and the basic nature of this problem is that it goes on forever.

When formal structures help us describe things in the real world it is because those real things are in some sort of temporary stability that conforms to the formal structure and then it remains a judgement call when that is no longer the case. For example, computer "should" conform to rigorous formal rules, but it remains a judgement call if that is actually happening as memory and logical operations can be corrupted, so we remain "certain" about the formal structures in our mind but never actually certain an object we think corresponds to a structure actually does.

Of course, doesn't stop us talking about a set of red things, and that can be useful to do, but if you want a rigorous definition you'd need to solve all these problems; otherwise, the definition becomes the set of red things which I will decide on a case by case basis as I get to them to resolve all edge cases in a way I'm confident won't result in any contradictions whatsoever; which is not how a set is usually defined in formal logic.

I am proposing that we could plausibly identify a property with the set of all things that have this property. — litewave

This is exactly true, contingent on the what we mean by the word "plausible".

We can plausibly do a lot of things that on closer inspection can't be done, but finding that out does not negate that it was plausible to begin with.

In general, these kinds of ideas I would argue are best understood as naive set theory used in ordinary language.

What I mean by that, is that we have a bunch of mathematical concepts about sets that nothing stops us from using in ordinary discourse outside an axiomatic system to discuss various things; both to talk about axiomatic systems from a non-axiomatic point of view (such as to talk about what an axiomatic system "is like" and kinds of things that can be done with it using ordinary language to convey concepts to both experts and non-experts) as well as developing concepts that have nothing to do with axiomatic systems but the words and ideas of set theory are useful for the purpose.

Therefore, such informal use of set-theory language is going to have all the problems of ordinary language. We have zero problem with the fact ordinary language can be used to express all sorts of contradictions, paradox and nonsense, as well as having fundamental unresolvable problems such as delineation, universals, and so on, and throwing in some set theory words isn't going to change the situation.

That does not make it invalid to talk about sets of "everything red" for example, but we can know ahead of time that such a concept cannot be developed into something rigorous without axiomatization.

Once you axiomatize, if all goes well, you can have rigorously defined symbols, rigorously defined acceptable grammar (how you may put those symbols together), and rigorously defined permitted manipulation of those symbols (how you may move those symbols around), but in so doing we know ahead of time that we lose the flexibility of ordinary language; you can no longer just "say things" and hope to express meaning, but rather statements proposed to be true require rigorous proof.

What makes sense depends on what is being talked about.

For example, it makes sense to propose dividing the class into a set of short and a set of tall students. The meaning is clear that the goal is to either by symbolic representation of the students or then physically move them around, to define two groups of students based on height. The meaning can be clear and it can be equally clear that once we have our sets of students we can perform further set operations, such as creating subsets of those sets based on hats or whatever we please, and going on to create unions and bijections and so on.

What is of course not clear is exactly the difference between short and tall, how to handle a new student showing up (do the sets represent the students at the time of creating the sets, or then sets that represent students that may come and go, either by joining the class or then being expelled), and so on. Trying to resolve all these problems will run into all the problems of ordinary language and naive set theory, but the use of such language can be entirely sufficient to accomplish whatever the task was (forming teams by height and hat wearing for some purpose).

I rewrote the post to say "valuing beauty isn't just a Western thing." Valuing beauty is a human universal. — BitconnectCarlos

We agree here.

"Obsession" is really just a pejorative for "valuing," implying that the obsessor values the object too much. Anyone who values something can be accused of obsession. — BitconnectCarlos

That people can be accused of something without merit is not a defence in a different matter in which there is merit to the accusation.

Anyone who speaks can be accused of speaking too loudly. Anyone who eats can be accused of gluttony. Anyone alive, or dead for that matter, can be accused of murder; doesn't imply everyone is a murderer or then no one's a murder, but the merits of each case require consideration.

So in this case it is to be debated who exactly is obsessed with beauty, a whole culture, how other culture's compare etc.

Anyway, I'd loosely agree with Tzeentch: It's a symptom of modernity stemming from social media and the vast array of new treatments and products available. — BitconnectCarlos

Well then I think we are in agreement on the basic premise.

Beyond the connection to racism as the foundational psychological structure, an amplification of this beauty obsession I would argue (along with the advertising and other things) is also isolation within Western societies. The more you are isolated and without deep community connections, the more the interactions you do have are surface level and where your appearance has a disproportionate effect. Further amplifying this trend is that the more late stage capitalism progresses, the less there is even any expectation of what would have previously been called "character", resulting in appearances being even more determinative in the outcome of social interactions.

Beauty isn't just a Western thing. Even in traditional Islamic societies, women in burqas and niqabs will enhance their eyes and eyebrows - often the only features visible to the public. — BitconnectCarlos

I'm confident the argument of the OP is not that beauty is a Western thing, but that there is a particular obsession with beauty in the West, far beyond other society's, past and present, and, more importantly, far beyond any plausibly healthy level of aesthetic appreciation.

The point is not denying things like beauty having evolved for the purposes of things like procreation, nor denying that other societies appreciate beauty.

Don't you think ethnocentrism is maybe a better term than racism for your thesis. Racism emerges more a symptom of thinking one's culture/ideology/class/religious identity is superior to another and then differentiating members by superficial physical features. — Nils Loc

Ethnocentrism seems pretty vague and presumably can include healthy relationships to one's own and others ethnicity; certainly a plausible argument can be made that focusing on one's ethnicity (celebrating diversity) can be healthy. I am referring to what would be commonly understood and unhealthy ethnocentrism which is usual to call racism. Unless I am missing something in your comment.

This back and forth would benefit from outside adjudicators as to the claims leveled against one another rather than you two just slugging it out which is just ending up in the same claims being volleyed from one side to the other again and again. — unimportant

This is often the case.

It would of course be nice to have philosophical arbiters that could "make a ruling", but that just begs the question of how these arbiters know what the truth is.

In this case, @AmadeusD goes in circles so as to tire me out, then he can have the last word. However, I don't really mind because I'm unemployed at the moment so have plenty of time. It's also my overarching philosophical project on the forum to develop methods to deal with bad faith discourse (as that is one of the major political ills we are dealing with today).

I would agree boethius that it is glaringly obvious you have answered the questions many times so find it bizarre it is claimed you haven't. — unimportant

It is indeed glaringly obvious. Resorting to just repeated denials to frustrate the other side is not unusual, but what I find bizarre in this case is that it is to defend the interests of child traffickers by arguing stealing child protection data is not harmful.

I admit honestly. Often I deliberately reject any rational knowledge and make a decision simply on the basis of what I want (without explaining the reasons) without relieving myself of responsibility for such a decision. In the end, I am just a person. I believe that it is very important to allow myself this. — Astorre

Exactly what I'm getting at. "Philosophizing" I would say is exactly this process of starting to formulate justifications for things one had no need of before, and as soon as that process starts there's no putting the genie back in the bottle.

Now that you've formulated this philosophical foundation for acting on whim some or most of the time, the critical question is does this philosophy withstand critical scrutiny.

Once you do one critical scrutiny pass, perhaps you rectify or develop one aspect or another as well as encounter literature for and against the position, which results in a new iteration of the philosophy and the same question of whether this new version too can withstand critical scrutiny. If it has already been augmented or adjusted on first viewing, then it certainly stands to reason that further critical scrutiny will result in more adjustments.

After many years of this what "philosophy is" may become more apparent, in that pretty much any position at all results in a never ending series of insights, counter-arguments, rebuttals and so on.

However, the exercise is only interesting if it manifests in changes to "everyday life" to both reflect "actually believing it" when a view changes as well as testing philosophical conclusions in practice to see how it goes.

As to the quotidian situation with your wife.

Assuming your ordinary habits are just (I do not say above they are unjust, only that it is the critical philosophical question to find out):

It is generally of little use to argue with someone who does not want to argue.

I very rarely argue with anyone outside some practical need in dealing with bureaucrats, as most people interpret arguing as conflict, which is not the point of philosophical analysis. Hence I argue here with people who presumably also want to argue.

and my wife has no choice but to eventually agree with my views in everyday matters (but I do not want to suppress her). — Astorre

But if argue you must, why exactly does your wife have no choice but to accept your views?

If it is only because you are more practiced at arguing, then I would suggest a practical approach of not requiring your wife to accept your views but to bring your views to people who are able to scrutinize them, such as there are many on this forum.

Most people do not engage in analysis and view things intuitively.

Arguments can have subtle flaws that people may intuit there is something wrong with but cannot articulate, therefore to press the matter they "have no choice but to agree", but of course they don't feel good about that and are not convinced if they feel there is something wrong. They feel suppressed, as you say, more than having learned something.

To articulate what one intuits requires many years of intense study, to subject those articulations to critical scrutiny requires even more learning and practice.

Exactly as I say: a duel life of earning money during the day in service to assumed and unexamined objectives, and then philosophy as a pass time activity.

The alternative view is that what is of critical philosophical importance is exactly that regular activity that is taken for granted. Not so that philosophy, however you define it, can serve that activity and make it more efficient, but rather asking the question of are those regular purposes justified to begin with.

If you're "earning a living" as you say somehow apart from philosophy, well presumably there is some sort of reason for doing it. If it's because that's "just what people do" (get educated, get a job, "live" in a normal sense for the society you are in) ... well does that constitute justification?

The reason philosophy is presented as a hobby or discipline like any other (which are defined precisely as serving a well defined objective assumed by the practitioners) is to maintain a sort of firewall between the tools of critical analysis, radically different points of view, as well as just pure madness, from affecting "normal life", for fear that critical scrutiny will lead to decisions, or the feeling that a decision should be made, which one disagrees with in the present (i.e. fear of a future self that is wiser, more learned, but unpredictable and therefore crazy).

However, there is of course no justification for maintaining such a firewall. If things can be placed under critical scrutiny, so too can the normal life that gave rise to such critical thinking capacity in the first place.

Naturally, by definition, the self before realizing such a critical capacity does not desire any scrutiny, if only due to having no familiarity with it.

Therefore, it is a very tense endeavour to really think about things including what exactly it is that you are doing.

You're presuming a sort of duel life where a person has goals that are not up for philosophical scrutiny (presumably making money) and this daily activity has no philosophical content or meaning, and then a sort of philosophy moonlighting happens in spare time, which can include, among other things, analysis of the "normal life" as essentially a separate object.

Of course, nothing prevents someone living that way, but I hope simply describing it reveals a potential line of critique.

No pictures.

Ancient Origins

The earliest forms of scissors date back about 3,000-4,000 years to ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt. These primitive tools were known as spring scissors. They consisted of two bronze blades connected at the ends by a flexible strip of metal that acted as a spring, allowing the blades to automatically open after being pressed together. These scissors were used to cut fabrics, hair, and other lightweight materials. — THE INVENTION OF SCISSORS: A JOURNEY THROUGH HISTORY

The spring scissors are more flexible.

But even so, they are called scissor hands so we must expect some reasonable combination of the characteristics of scissors and hands.

It's like taking issue with potato salad because it is not made of whole potatoes.