People love to be bossy, they love to at least attempt to rule over others. And to assume that others want to be ruled.

Bringing this back to the original topic, if when we consider all men and women to be equal in terms of civil liberty and simultaneously assent to an implicit notion of an extended spiritual equality on which this is based, I just can't help but find this situation so utterly absurd and dysfunctional. — kudos

Why absurd and dysfunctional?

For example, in Christianity, it's the "soul" that either goes to heaven or hell for all eternity. The "soul" is what is relevant about a person. That "soul" is "who you really are", ie. your identity, your individuality.
Similarly in Hinduism, "soul" refers to a person's "true identity", the "who you really are".

The whole notion of (serial) reincarnation would be impossible without a notion of identity/individuality (aka soul).

What fact are you asking about?

Why is it you think that people often look away from these ideas? How is the injustice of putting someone else in the de facto nature of working-to-survive, not realized? — schopenhauer1

Generally, people invest vast amounts of time and effort in order to distract themselves. Life as it is usually lived is, basically, all about distracting oneself from the painful realities of life.

Have you never experienced a moment or period in your life you enjoyed and wish to repeat? — Outlander

There is some good in this world, but it's not worth fighting for.

What some old ones called "soul" is nowadays subsumed under "identity", "individuality" -- and highly valued.

This is actually what is happening and has happened in many countries. The pandemic has put the ruling administrations in a tough spot and if the emergency laws aren't up to it (as usual), it causes this kind of friction where governments have to back down because of legal reasons. Has happened here too. But I guess it still far from a threat of there happening a self coup or the polarization of politics in the US. — ssu

Actually, our current government has been using the pandemic to advance its own agenda. These same politicians have tried to establish a totalitarian right wing regime before when they were the government. As irony would have it, there was a political crisis and a change of government (with the current one coming into position) just a few weeks before the outbreak of the pandemic.

Still waiting for you to tell me so.

It's not clear where you're going with this. (And given that you have a banana where there should be a sickel, it's even further unclear.)

How seriously do you think we should take the 'rat race' of the natural world? — kudos

So, to try to make all this more concise:
Do you think that a system like the caste system they have in India, or the classist system in Europe are good, or bad?
Do you find that the upper class should despise the lower classes, and the lower classes should internalize that contempt, considering it righteous?

An equality of caring I guess it would resemble, though it may sound corny, is a missing link with the modern equality of wealth and employment and so forth. — kudos

And you think that this is good, or bad?

Hold your horses.

My proposal sets the bar high, so high that few mandatory impingements on bodily autonomy measure up.

The right to bodily autonomy is much harder to consistently argue for than high standards.

(For example, it would not be acceptable for a person infected with rabies to be allowed to do as they please; the bodily autonomy of such a person needs to be compromised for the wellbeing of others. Similar with smallpox, tuberculosis, and some other highly infectuous diseases with high death or complication rates.)

The choice over which we behave as if were true and which we approach with uncertainty is a psychological issue, not a philosophical one. — Isaac

Is this universal, or does it differ from person to person?

You're going to have to explain the relevance of this response, because I'm not seeing it. — Janus

Like Michael said:

Your very hypothetical scenario presupposes realism. Your wife is having an affair (unbeknownst to you), and then you find out. Obviously if you presuppose realism then you're going to find it absurd when you then consider anti-realism. — Michael

And Elster:

/.../ the relation between belief and observation is a two-way one, rather than the one-directional inductive process suggested by such phrases as ‘the most rational belief given the available evidence’. — baker

Yes, but that it had been going on for some time entails that it was true that it had been going on, and yet unverified — Janus

Which you can only say in hindsight, after catching your wife cheating on you. And it is only in hidsight that you will see certain past events etc. as evidence of the cheating, while at the time, you didn't.

To put crudely, a realist would need to maintain that his wife coming home late on a Wednesday is proof that she's having an affair. (For practical reasons, this is generally not feasible.)

It is becoming increasingly clear to me that those who would argue in favor of using government coercion to force people into getting vaccinated — Tzeentch

Technically, I'm one of those, but my reason for doing so is that making covid vaccination into an actual law would require a thorough vetting process and a safety net provided for the case of negative side effects of the vaccine and its failure. Which seems to be the best guarantee possible.

Also, it is unfair and dangerous to place the whole burden of responsibility on the people. matters of public health are a complex and urgent matter and shouldn't be left to individuals to decide about.

As things stand, people have as much protection against the negative side effects of the covid vaccine as they have for drugs they'd buy on the street, and as much promise of success.

Of course, but argumentum ex silentio is made on the basis of what isn't in canonical texts. That's the whole point. — TheMadFool

But to know what isn't in the texts, one has to read them first.

All I'm saying is that what I mentioned earlier - drawing conclusions from what was said and unsaid by the Buddha - is a perfectly legitimate hermeneutic technique.

Sure. And again: To know what isn't in the texts, one has to read them first.

Argumentum ex silentio is based on what isn't in scriptures (documents) - consulting them would be pointless.

Even I can tell that all of your questions so far have been addressed in the suttas. You yet have to come up with one that, to the best of my knowledge, isn't addressed in the suttas.

By the way, the previous post wasn't meant as a challenge; rather I felt you might find the concept of argumentum ex silentio interesting, you know, a cute tidbit of sorts.

Anything for a cute tidbit, eh!

The US armed forces are not exactly a pushover institute. Since the George Floyd riots, there had been friction between the military and the Trump team.
/.../ — ssu

I was much surprised by this at the time, and couldn't make sense of it.

In fact Milley has been quite consistent on his view that the armed forces won't get into politics. And if you think that he or the US armed forces will do anything and have a "yess suh, whatever you say suh!" attitude toward Presidents, please listen to the following clip that Milley gave in a speech during the chaotic last November 2020.

This is peculiar.

The country I live in, Slovenia, has been having a crisis as well. The right wing government issued a decree according to which most government employees would have to be either recovered or vaccinated in order to still come to work (with the decree, the government removed the T condition from RVT). The union of the police filed a motion to the constitutional court to assess whether the decree is constitutional or not. The constitutional court temporarily held back the enforcement of the decree, we're still waiting for its decision.

The salient point is that about 30% of the military and the police are not vaccinated and if these people would not come to work, the military and the police would be rendered defunct or at least seriously impaired. I am very much surprised by this, given that it always seemed like the military and the police are on the side of the current government (and the current government did put many of their own people in high positions in the military and the police).

Those who have actually studied at least some of the Pali Canon have some knowledge about which inferences are warranted or likely warranted, and which are not.

One learns this from studying many suttas and learning how they are interconnected, how one sutta can provide the context of or further detail for another sutta.

Those who have not studied the suttas simply don't have this knowledge. Some of those people instead have vivid imaginations and they rather invent things and make their own extrapolations from the little they do know.

Nobody is disputing their freedom to do so. It's just that what they're doing has no bearing on Buddhist doctrine.

I think the really ominous sign was people like general Flynn who insisted that Trump should get the armed forces involved. Luckily Trump is just a bully and wouldn't really go through (or in his ineptness incapable of doing so.) — ssu

This is the first thing I've read that sparks some doubt about Trump for me. Indeed, why didn't Trump get the armed forces involved after having lost the election!

Because you brought up the fact that people are having strokes. So while you may not make this argument yourself (as I would assume, given you’re vaccinated), I assumed you were bringing it up to demonstrate how others may be reasoning about this. If that’s not true, I wonder why you brought it up at all? — Xtrix

For one, because your position lacks empathy. And while you eagerly claim to empathize with others, it clearly doesn't matter to you whether the person you're supposedly empathizing with experiences you as empathizing or not. You have demonstrated on several occasions that you don't care how you are perceived by others, you don't care about how they feel about you.

Which, at the very least, is a strange position to hold for someone who wants to affect others (ie. get them to get vaccinated).


For two, I myself am not out of the woods. With the Janssen scandal now, who knows what lies in wait for those of us who got vaccinated with it. Of course I'm scared. And what do you have to offer to me as consolation? Luck?!! That it might just be my bad luck that I will get a stroke or some other bad side effect? To say nothing of the repugnant prospect of getting sick and debilitated despite being vaccinated.

But even if we aren’t, it’s a bit disingenuous to say “it’s not my business” and walk away. What exactly are you arguing about on here, then? You go on about “pro-vaxxers” and how bad they are at communicating, but you’re answer is: don’t communicate at all?

I expect the vocal pro-vaccers to offer something of substance that is relevant to people. Ie. that is assessed as relevant by the people, not merely by the vocal pro-vaccers. So far, your camp has offered nothing of this kind.

Getting vaccinated will not bring an added quality to one's life.
— baker

It will.

Only in the administrative sense in countries where there are mandatory covid passports, and being vaccinated makes some things easier as far as those passports are concerned. And in a social sense, insofar as one is trying to avoid being ostracized by one's pro-vaccer friends, family, and acquaintances.

But vaccination itself has no directly observable positive effects. One doesn't get a boost of energy from it; if one already has covid symptoms, getting vaccinated doesn't cure them.

Perhaps if some time after vaccination, one were to deliberately get exposed to the infection and then observe that one hasn't fallen sick, then that could bring added quality to one's life.

But beyond that, the added quality to one's life brought on by vaccination is symbolic and potential at best.

Also, what’s the consolation for the millions who have died of coronavirus?

You need consolation for those people?

It seems as though people just want to argue for argument's sake. That's fine -- but not when we have literally millions of people refusing vaccinations during a pandemic because of anti-vaxxer claims and massive amounts of misinformation/manufactured doubt. — Xtrix

Except that you're not actually asking them why they refuse to get vaccinated.

The discussion was about people refusing the vaccine out of fear of risks like stroke and death. Those risks are minuscule -- no matter how you slice the data. They remain so. — Xtrix

Those minuscule risks don't simply translate into minuscule strokes or minuscule deaths.

You play hard to please. The data is never good enough for you. — Olivier5

Actually, this is part of the standard problem of how statistical data based on large studies is presented by doctors to individual patients. It appears to be a "scientific" way to foster faith.

We don't give a rat's ass. — Olivier5

Riiight.

A brilliant attitude to have for the purpose of fostering trust and encouraging people to act in a way you want them to act. Really.

Risk analysis is not perfect, but it's a damn sight more complex than the naïve presentation of national prevalence statistics we see posted here masquerading as serious analysis. — Isaac

Not just here at the forums. More importantly, it's being fed to us by the government. What is worse, we can not communicate with the government, the government does not discuss with us.

If these orders entail those things you say are “definitely effective” then why aren’t they associated with reduced mortality? — AJJ

Some EU countries have been trying to scare people into getting vaccinated by making it a policy to publish the daily covid numbers (infected, hospitalized, dead) along with the percentage of the unvaccinated in those numbers.

Too bad that the percentage of the fully vaccinated who get infected, hospitalized, or who die keeps growing.

Just the other day on the Croatian news, the reporter said "Of today's 18 coronavirus deaths, as much as 13 were unvaccinated". No, adding that "as much as" doesn't make it more egregious, but it does make the other number more egregious.

Tell me now.

Correct. A lot of Chinese goods are made in prisons and concentration camps. — Apollodorus

But you see no fault in Westerners eagerly buying those goods?

But for Westerners in general to be so naive as to believe that China is the benefactor of the world, seems incomprehensible to me. — Apollodorus

Greed can make people believe all kinds of crazy things.


Make no mistake: I despise China, but I find less fault with China than with the Westeners who in their greed gobble up whatever China throws at them.

So the Westerners cry foul now, with the coronavirus? Why didn't they cry foul when they eagerly imported from China anything from cheap plastic toys to computer chips??!

While I don't think China has leaked the coronavirous, I think they're laughing at the greedy Westerners for being such idiots to eagerly buy trash that even China's poor wouldn't gladly do so.

People do things because they consider them worthwhile, in line with their value system and such. Not because something would be a low risk or a high probability of success.
— baker

Fine— and people should get vaccinated for the same reasons. It’s simply irrational not to, at this point. — Xtrix

"Oh, look, a guy on the internet said that it's irrational not to get vaccinated! So let's just all get vaccinated!"

- said noone ever.

Can't you see that calling people "irrational" (etc.) is _not_ serving your purpose (which is to get them vaccinated)?


For the most part, I'm amazed at the uproductive strategies and tactics that the vocal pro-vaccers use, ostensibly to get people vaccinated. Why does someone insist on spitting into the well like that?!

So you empathize more with anti-vaxxers and their concerns than those who are suffering and dying from COVID. Figured as much. Which is why you're a complete waste of time, and probably deserving of the contempt you so quickly project onto others while engaging in it yourself. — Xtrix

You get an A+ for emotional reasoning, that's for sure.

They can't relate to my concern, but perhaps to the injustice of a no opt out game.. — schopenhauer1

I suspect they would relate to that injustice only if they would be on the losing end of the no opt out game.

Because generally, many people are perfectly fine with unjust, uneven, unequal arrangements -- as long as they are not on the losing end, or at least far enough from it.

As long as a man has a wife and children to beat, or at least a dog to kick, he can find ways to be okay with being bullied by his boss.

Moreover, many people perfer to arrange their relationships with other people in a way that is unjust, uneven, unequal to others, but beneficial to themselves. Many people don't mind having slaves (and would probably prefer to have slaves).

So, it doesn't look like there are many people who can relate to your concern.

What role, if any, do the machinists of the long-running anti-vaxxer machines play? Do they assume any responsibility (of avoidable suffering/death)? Do they care about the consequences of their yelling? I don't recall them telling the friends/families of ☣ victims that they're sorry anyway. — jorndoe

The onus is on those who want to persuade others.

The terms of engagement stopped being equal the moment you express the expectation that some other people should be different than they are. So the onus is on you.


And let's not kid anyone: You don't care about the wellbeing of the vocal anti-vaccers. You don't want them to get vaccinated for the sake of their own health. You want them to get vaccinated for your sake, so that they wouldn't be a threat and a burden to you and your camp. They know that, and they're returning the disfavor.

Ask yourself where does this compulsion to disagree come from. — Olivier5

You should ask yourself that.

I agree with plenty of people on plenty of things.

That’s now the third time it’s been explained. But please don’t let that stop you from repeating lies. — Xtrix

You're not "explaining" it, you're merely stating it. Still waiting for a link to the covid vaccination law.
(And even if the US has one, many other countries don't.)

The legal option of a wrongful termination lawsuit is a false hope
— baker

You mean where you live? It's not a false hope here. — frank

You mean there is a country on this planet where suing your employer will not end badly for you in some way?

Firing someone for not being vaccinated, here in the US, is completely legal — both in wording and in reason. — Xtrix

Is there a law in the US -- and do name it, post a link to it! -- according to which covid vaccination is mandatory?


The issue in some EU countries is precisely that: Covid vaccination is not mandated by law, so the whole burden is placed on employers.
State/federal law is one thing, company policy is another thing.

So he must be he and I must be me? Why seek to move the immovable with this thread then? — Hanover

Is it immovable?

Are you slothful by nature, but have managed to overcome your sloth philosophically?

Anyways, no this isn't about me not cleaning the dishes or wanting to do "my fair share.." The whole point is that it is unjust to be put in a situation where you cannot opt out unless you die of /degradation/ or suicide.. — schopenhauer1

As noted above, some people do believe, by default, that life is a blessing and worth living. Such people cannot relate to your concern.

You could perhaps specify your point and instead of making a wholesale indictment against humanity for procreating at all, focus on pointing at the fault of producing children while failing to instill in them the belief that life is a blessing and worth living.

I think this is the point that people fail at the most: Showing and teaching others that life is a blessing and worth living.

While many people will eagerly criticize anyone who is in any way pessimistic about life as such, they are quite unable (or just unwilling?) to persuade them otherwise. They'll even go so far as to claim that something is genetically or otherwise physiologically wrong with the pessmist and dismiss them.

If you're the guy who waits for others to clean his dishes, and we all do have dirty dishes, you're not the roommate any of us want, especially if you try to justify your sloth philosophically. — Hanover

You're missing his point. His gripe is with those who made him, who made him exist (and more generally, with people making other people exist, and thus, suffer).

A hava nagila kind of person takes for granted that life is a blessing and worth living. But clearly, not everyone is like that. More importantly, whether a person will have a fundamentally positive outlook on life or not appears to be beyond a person's immediate control. It appears to be something that one must be born or raised with, but isn't something that can be learned later on in life.

justify your sloth philosophically.

Are you slothful by nature, but have managed to overcome your sloth philosophically?

I want very much to like this, but there are times when informal fallacies are useful - like appeals to authority or ad hominem when it is so much more trouble to show why the person is wrong. If an informal fallacy gets you to the same end with more expedience, I question why they shouldn’t be given the same status as any other heuristic. — Ennui Elucidator

Indeed.

From your link:

For example, I may advance a proof of some assertion, and my adversary may refute the proof, and thus appear to have refuted the assertion, for which there may, nevertheless, be other proofs. In this case, of course, my adversary and I change places: he comes off best, although, as a matter of fact, he is in the wrong.

If the reader asks how this is, I reply that it is simply the natural baseness of human nature. If human nature were not base, but thoroughly honourable, we should in every debate have no other aim than the discovery of truth; we should not in the least care whether the truth proved to be in favour of the opinion which we had begun by expressing, or of the opinion of our adversary. That we should regard as a matter of no moment, or, at any rate, of very secondary consequence; but, as things are, it is the main concern. Our innate vanity, which is particularly sensitive in reference to our intellectual powers, will not suffer us to allow that our first position was wrong and our adversary's right. The way out of this difficulty would be simply to take the trouble always to form a correct judgment. For this a man would have to think before he spoke. But, with most men, innate vanity is accompanied by loquacity and innate
dishonesty. They speak before they think; and even though they may afterwards perceive that they are wrong, and that what they assert is false, they want it to seem the contrary. The interest in truth, which may be presumed to have been their only motive when they stated the proposition alleged to be true, now gives way to the interests of vanity: and so, for the sake of vanity, what is true must seem false, and what is false must seem true.

The question is whether we should fully give in to the natural baseness of human nature, whether we should deem it absolute, the only thing that matters.

Although not fully explicated here, the thought is that the way that speak of truth is neither about coherence nor correspondence, but about achieving our ends. — Ennui Elucidator

Agreed.

It would be nice, however, if the realist would cease their reproach of logics that don’t meet their aesthetic based upon the faulty belief that logic is about the state of affairs.

Unless this belief (or, to the point: asserting this belief) is part of the realist's strategy to achieve his ends.

It's not like it is really possible to distinguish between a religious preacher who claims to have the Truth, the How Things really Are, the State of Affairs, from a realist who does the same (they just differ in what they state that Truth to be).

I am suggesting quite the opposite - that if truthmakers are states of affairs, then logic should not be faulted for its failure to ensure rTruth. — Ennui Elucidator

It seems that for all practical intents and purposes, (formal) logic is a response or reaction to what is intuitively felt as wrong thinking. In other words, for many practical intents and purposes, the history of logic is the history of addressing informal logical fallacies (and then explicating principles of proper ways of thinking).

The issue is relevant when it comes to persuasion, when one person tries to persuade another person to accept the proposed view and act accordingly.

Ideally, fending against informal logical fallacies should protect one against being duped (and, if one is very nice, make one refrain from duping others).

To do something about the polarization of politics is the problem. The political discourse is just spiraling out of control. It's like people are just waiting for the next clash to ensue. — ssu

This isn't just in the US, it's a global trend. Polarization (and simplificationism) appear to be the logical consequences of democracy.

Democracy wasn't born out of some deep mutual respect people would have for eachother, but is merely one of the options for what to do when there is no hereditary monarchy (or its equivalent) in place.
Don't forget that the original motto of the French Revolution was Liberté, égalité, fraternité ou la mort.

You don't think there's a fundamental difference between how information was searched for and reached us before Google and Facebook and now? We've got record numbers of people believing the worst things without any ability to even listen to opposing views. — Benkei

Sure, in absolute terms, those numbers are increasing, but in relative terms, percentagewise? You don't have any actual data for this, do you?

We've got /.../ people believing the worst things without any ability to even listen to opposing views. — Benkei

Do you know of any time in human history when this was not the case?

I don't. Sure, the superficial methods change over time, as technology changes, but the underlying principles are the same. Pick any actual time in human history, any actual year and place, and research whether people in that year and place had free access to all information.

Was there ever a time when the distribution of information was not in one way or another targeted?