MSC

You having a short attention span, explains a lot.

No need for an immigration hawk when Dems can just correctly point out that the Republicans killed attempts to push through new immigration policies while they controlled the house just to not give Biden a win in an election year. You can't even give these people what they want without them biting your hand.

Firstly; scenario two is a lot of language just to say "You do nothing." But there is a problem with freedom consequentialism as laid out in the primer. You've tried to define, good, bad and neutral in terms of "better" and "worse" which are both still value attributions but as yet undefined by freedom consequentialism/You. In short, you've not bridged the is/ought gap because you've not described what good or bad is to start with and your definition was circular. What is better? More good? What is good? Better than bad? Is bad better than worse? Earlier you mentioned moral intuition and later coercion. You didn't relate the two but moral intuition, or intuition more broadly is most likely a psychological phenomena relating to partially recalled memory. It's like a mental calling card for "This is so because it fits with a past experience of mine." And since we can never engage in moral learning from a clean slate, from birth to now, what we were taught about it, informs our intuitions. Stealing feels intuitively wrong to me and you, because that is what we were taught all along. Facts about quantum mechanics feel weird and counterintuitive because we've all spent our lives using our eyeballs observing how matter moves around at our level, all our lives. Literally spooky action at a distance is Einstein having a wtf reaction to quantum entanglement and how an apparent information exchange between two entangled particles can seem to happen faster than the speed of light. Why? Because he'd always observed nothing can break the speed of light. Rounding back to why I related this to coercion; our moral intuitions are essentially coercions by our past experiences and the fallibility of human recall. When I feel intuition, I ask myself what I'm forgetting, then from there I figure out whether or not the original root memory was correct and if it was useful intuition or just bias coming out. Are you making simplicity a criteria for simplicity's sake or are you implying that the truth is not complex? Okay, having now read everything, I'm going to be honest, I won't be entering this competition. It's not because I believe freedom isn't something to value, it is, and context relativism definitely gives limelight to consequentialism but it doesn't drop everything. Context relativism is actually a response really to the rut philosophers find themselves in based on "Moral intuition." This, "there can be only one" mentality. A monopoly on moral thought where everything can only be viewed through one lens or that one moral framework that is supposed to guide and get everyone through everything, morally and physically unscathed and that itself is just not based on reality. There is such a thing as moral ecology and context relativism isn't a normative theory about right and wrong, it's the set of all theories of right and wrong together, in a linguistic toolbelt, designed to help people figure out the rights and wrongs of their own moral thoughts in relation to other living beings doing the same, how to grow, change and adapt and recognize that in some situations, putting any one value, in this case freedom, isn't always going to lead you to good consequences in every situation and may lead to a failure or a tragedy of sorts. I'm a parent so honestly I've had about 1001 thought scenarios of all the things that could go wrong for my kids as they grow up and plenty of those scenarios are possible and for some of them the right choice is me lying about committing a crime and taking a fall for my kids, in the scenarios where they are about to be a victim of a broken justice system. So about 5 years ago, I came to the realization that moral philosophers and ethicists, when you ignore all the arguing and the tribalism and just, listen, without assuming, you realize that these old squabbling dead and living philosophers are discovering more and more about all the different ways humans think about right and wrong and I've yet to meet a single person who can really be called just a utilitarian, consequentialist, deontologist or even a pragmatist. A lot of philosophers are arguing about the right one or most true one and the answer is that it will always be context dependent. Our planet, our world, it's a context. On this planet, if I dropped you from a cliff you might die, if I drop you from a cliff on a different celestial body, with far weaker gravity, you might just get to experience what it would be like to be a feather. And yes, I realize the irony in that I still came up with a paradigm where I can say everyone is really a contextualist, so there is almost a "There can be only one" type vibe, the difference is that you are arguing for which is the best colour on the human moral tapestry, while I'm calling the tapestry a tapestry and really just avoiding the debate altogether because what we are looking at just wouldn't be the same without the majority of all the colours present (except for the parasitic one, a topic for another day. Freedom consequentialism is true... Until it's not. It is true that some people will think about right and wrong in these terms, weighing up freedom is a real phenomenon but... It's just not a complete normative theory because it doesn't, like many others, explain why all these disagreements exist in the first place, nor does it acknowledge the existence of moral situations and problems where different outcomes wouldn't relate to freedom threats. Contextualism does. Contextualism also acknowledges the inherent complexity of existence and while having epistemic tools to try and make things easier, it never ever makes them simple. There are only two simple facts; Nothing is ever simple and there are two simple facts.... That's it. Phew, sorry if I sounded overly polemical toward the end there, was just getting into the flow of these kinds of debates again. Keep it coming! Oh, last thing, when we care about truth, it's best to offer a prize for changing your mind too, else we aren't acknowledging the truth that we can always be mistaken because we are all fallible. My prize can just be more conversation though, keep your money. Seriously why are you offering a prize of 10k for this?

I think something to keep an open mind about is whether or not Shapiro can support Harris foreign policy agendas that might conflict with his views as governor. A hard stance on Israel for example; if the Harris administration felt compelled to take a hard action against Israel, sanctions etc, can Shapiro take to that?

Hi Daniel, I'm working my way through and came across this; Now I can understand completely where you are coming from with both subjectivism and most forms of relativism. However, my approach would be arguing for moral realism through objectively derived context relativism. Which is termed as new relativism in the Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. Rounding back to context relativism, it isn't a theory of what ought to be, it's a theory of what is already the case and is more of a statement on the observable truth of our moral psychology. The ought in context relativism, is that we ought to explicitly figure out the nature of our context dependent value attributions so we can understand how we already view morality and truth, understand contention, confusion and disagreement. Like I said however, I do understand where you are coming from and if I decide to take a crack at your challenge once I've finished the primer, I will. But definitely need to address the rejection of all relativism and I will make a case in a submission for why context relativism should not be a cause for exclusion, based on it's merits as a form of objective moral realism, that adheres not only to moral sentiment but discoveries made about the physical nature of the universe. It also deconstructs why other forms of relativism, like cultural relativism are incorrect, by identifying non-uniformity of moral thought within nearly every given culture. I'll leave it there and maybe you can let me know if there can be an exception for this relativism, as ultimately what really separates moral realism and moral subjectivism when it comes to relativism, is what we are saying things are relative to. I'll probably add more questions as I continue reading btw. Hope you are well and thanks, this has been pretty engaging so far.

Based on some new information I think you're right. New polling data shows her gaining in some swing states but not Pennsylvania, however she is due to attend a campaign rally in Philadelphia and is expected to attend with her VP pick who will be announced there. Why announce in philly if you're not going to pick Shapiro? Would be like visiting the Catholic part of Glasgow and saying you're a Rangers supporter. Dead on arrival! No way she'd be stupid enough to kick a swing state in the teeth like that.

I feel like I'd want Buttigieg to get the nom, but it won't happen most likely. I'm telling you, that narcissistic cowardice is gonna have him self sabotage to save his life from assassination. He's too paranoid not to, he doesn't trust his secret service detail and buys too much of his own deepstate propaganda not to self-sabotage at this point. As soon as the presidential equivalent of bone spurs manifests itself we'll see what we see. It's also hard to gauge what will even happen as Trump's ego wrestles with itself; stay in the race but maybe die, live but definitely lose? Could get a second wind or just deflate and deflate some more.

Although you'd think the inference of a king with the Camelot reference would appeal to these royalist ignoramuses... Whoops, I meant "Republican" ignoramuses. If anyone here does memes or satirical art, here's a pitch. Have Trump on a litter, wearing a crown, litter is carried by all of his stooge cronies, except every single one of them is the literal Rhinoceros version of themselves. All while pointing at a large mirror they've labeled "never trumpers" while screaming "Rinos!" Meanwhile JD Vance is being chased by the crazy cat lady from the Simpsons and junior is eating crayons and has peed himself. Go! Post it in the political humour page.

Allegedly disavowed* But that was also the closest thing they had to a policy agenda/election manifesto. Now they just have to figure out a bunch of compelling lies about what they can falsely promise voters... Before immediately trying to enact project 2025 on day one. As for Stephen Miller he's an extremely long species of snake, like Trump. Sure his head might be far away from project 2025 but you can bet your ass, his slimy ass is still coiled firmly around it! And that is the thing about Trump's MO, it isn't based on a narrative it's based on a network of so many lies that you can selectively respond to anything with "I did or didn't say x about y." It isn't to inform voters on what he stands for, it's to confuse them. Not just lies about himself but everything. Elon Musk does the same shit. It won't be long before he's openly saying he supports policies from Pro25 but omitting that is where they are from, he'll gradually push the boundaries until all his base and more are convinced crap from that toilet paper plan is something they've been advocating for, for years. Or someone will draft more ridiculous propaganda about what Democrats are planning so they can do some classic whataboutisms. "Oh forget about project 2025 what about the radical Democrats plan to abort every person under the age of five if they don't commit to transitioning into a sexually ambiguous communist that is 1/4 starfox!? Project evil Marxism for 3000 years!" The scary thing is; once a large enough portion of his supporters are convinced they want what is in the fine print, autocracy, dictatorship, monarchy whatever... At that point, the entire Democratic electoral process will be the target. MAGA Republicans will show up to polling stations sure enough but not to vote. Winning to them at that point won't be about getting votes, it will be about stopping them altogether.

I think what swansont is saying is that dedicated vloggers and independent outlets, lacking the prestige of established news media outlets (which is verifiably a monopoly) don't have the sort of reach as the latter nor the same level of trust. A vlogger is an individual and can be more easily dismissed or just never reach the people who need to listen to a vlogger with great journalism skills and integrity. Vlogging and marketing are two different skills really. Media coverage of Trump is ridiculous in terms of scale just because people will eat up any news about Trump. It takes up a lot of the oxygen of public attention and the way it is covered completely robs the public of a chance to get answers out of a very murky campaign, with little clear policy agendas/goals other than project 2025 and internal conflict on who does and doesn't support that crap. It would rather report on Trumps string of nickname attempts for Harris instead of having the headlines repeating questions the public needs answers to leading up to an election. Like "What exactly is the Trump policy agenda when he is allegedly disavowing project 2025?"

I saw that snippet. A part of me almost wonders if there is a little bit of subconscious narcissistic internal conflict after the assassination attempt, causing little bits of self sabotage in statements like telling people not to vote. Not to mention the role paranoia will play. "Can I trust that the deepstate (Even though I clearly want to make my own deepstate of loyal fanatics) hasn't infiltrated my Security detail?" And his massive ego being torn between his desire to win the presidency and desire to not be at risk of being killed as either a candidate or sitting president. Self preservation is a very powerful motive, probably even more so for narcissists I don't think Trunp could ever sacrifice himself for his children in any real way as his narcissism would overcome any paternal instinct he might have.

No, I think it's to do with being young but also the political climate has people hyper vigilant. I didn't have much issue with your word use and figured out your meanings based on context though they may not always be exactly how some academics in these fields would put it, but then this is a mixed group so it seemed to make sense to me for "Fittest" "weakest" and "strongest" to be synonyms meant to fit a given context. Absolutely. I mean any society powered by the overconsumption of fossil fuels and the production of greenhouse gases and other harmful emissions, or that has a practically useless placeholder resource as a barrier to all other resources in the needs based economy, is definitely harming it's species more than it is helping it. Makes you wonder what society is even for, to improve peoples lives or keep going? At this rate, it'll fuck up both. Many many more. This is why context relativism is far more absolute, clear and informative than cultural relativism. If the given context is animals living on a planet, some shit just isn't going to fly. Does it hurt your planet when you do that? Don't do that!

The conversation has covered quite a lot since this comment but you yourself alluded to not focussing purely on physical traits. Psychological traits for example are probably far more impactful than physical ones. For example in prey animals, skittishness is a good trait. When you say that humans are the only ones with morals, I do take exception to that and you don't have to watch too much Attenborough to figure out why either. Why do wolves and other pack animals, scold their young? Why do animals other than humans engage in altruistic behaviours? Moral philosophy ultimately concerns itself with the study of values and moral psychology studies how humans percieve and think about value, as well as valuing behaviours. It isn't a stretch to delve into comparitive moral psychology from there and I think once somebody is trained to identify the signs of value based cognition, you can't unsee it in almost everything we do. By we, I mean living beings. Rounding back to traits relating to a species survival. It's very hard to pinpoint, as others have said luck does come into it, so do numbers and some of worst types of natural disasters are so rare relative to animal lifespans, yet so destructive ( large meteor strikes as an example) that you can be the smartest, strongest and quickest species in a region with nothing that can outwit or overpower you, and still be taken out by a quick natural disaster. Our natural ancestor that lived along side the dinosaurs, was similar to a shrew. Small, weak, preyed on by most dinosaurs small enough to even notice it. Yet that burrowing behaviour + numbers saved it, even though there are so many many situations where it's weaknesses would give it no chance to survive. What it means to be the fittest animal is context dependent and is a dynamic multiplicity of factors and variables. Any trait, physical or psychogical can be a boon in one area of life and not in another. Take aggression and cooperation for example, these two traits together can be found in most pack animals and some herd animals. Take those wildebeest for example; it is a fact that they are hunted and preyed upon by lions, but if you asked me to give you the ratio of how many kills each species has scored on the other, I'd not be able to tell you. Suffice it to say some wildebeest get eaten by lions and some lions get killed by wildebeest. So how do you go about figuring out which is the fitter species? In regards to India and the Caste system and the claim that it is allowable there. Let me introduce you to the cultural relativists paradox. Lets imagine a country that claims that morality is relative to culture, but that same country also claims that criticising the morality of other cultures, is a part of its culture. This country would look at say Nazi Germany and would be making the argument for... what? For or against the holocaust? I can't tell you because of the cultural relativists paradox. They could argue from the position of cultural relativism that it is okay for the Germans to commit a genocide on the Jews as it is a part of nazi culture so therefore morally correct if that is want to do within their cultural borders, while simultaneously arguing that it is morally abhorrent because it's part of their culture to criticise other cultures. India is not equivalent to bee society as caste differences in bees are based on physiological taxonomical differences whereas a Dalit and a Brahmin are essentially the same in terms of their humanity with no where near as much variation between them as the differences between a warrior, worker and queen ant. The other problem with cultural relativism is that it assumes there is a consensus within a given culture, over the moral inclinations of that culture and then assumes that the consensus must be the correct position, which sounds a lot like "1 billion people can't be wrong." Even though I could go to India, throw a rock and hit a guy that curses the caste system even though he's Indian. Pretty much every Dalit hates it and you can even find folk from high castes that don't like it even though they benefitted from it. That's without going into all the different langauges, subcultures and ethnicities that exist within india. 1billion people is a lot of cultural difference to pack into a single country. Honestly I could go on and on about these subjects if I had the time but this is already pretty long and dinner will be ready soon. I hope MigL my comment makes you think a bit and that you're doing well.

I've found it always works both ways. I learn from you, you learn from me. Everybody wins. But yeah I'll open this up as a thread later today. Got my hands full with my daughter at the moment! We can get into the nitty gritty of traits conducive to survival via both natural selection and now human based conscientious selection later.

That's a very short sighted view of what it means to be strong. You would think the greatest benefit to future generations would be to not care about the weak, but not so, at least not in human society. This could be a whole thread on it's own but there are some very simple facts that illustrate why the survival of the fittest morality is a detriment to everyone. A) As Qui-Gon says "There is always a bigger fish." And what this means is that it doesn't matter if you believe you are strong and it doesn't matter if you indeed are strong, because there is always going to be someone stronger. B) The weak have family, friends and loved ones who aren't all weak. Kick the bear cub and get mauled by the mother. C) Memory and history run deep, you may be strong today but your descendants can still be weak tomorrow. While the descendants of those you wronged may be strong. D) Many hands make light work, the weak and the strong together can only be stronger than strong and weak on their own. E) If I am physically strong I can take the weak mans bread for myself. If I am mentally strong I can convince him to share with me or help me get my own and resist violent means which can only bring about violent ends. F) Revenge is a very strong motivator and a man you have wronged on a weak day may come back on a strong day. G) Strength combined with recklessness is a recipe for disaster, not survival. Sorry to pollute the humour thread with logic lol can open this up as a thread on it's own somewhere.

The reason I used the Vespasian comparison wasn't to do with being emperor, but with the fact that the Flavian dynasty of the Roman empire was the first passing of the emperor role from father to biological son and then to second son. (Well that didn't last long.) But anyway by that point Romans had lived under a number or emperors since Augustus so at the time, that was stability from their perspective. Father to son. It doesn't compare to now. I do get the sentiment behind the "god-emperor" phrasing you're going with, in the sense that the USA in general is more powerful in terms of people, resources and technology, under democracy. Give all that power to a king or an emperor and it will be unlike anything people have seen, even from histories worst tyrants up until the 20th century. Honestly though, I just don't see that happening. There would be a massive civil war and if Trump were king or emperor for a year, Putin would be king after. A civil war in the USA would be a perfect time for Russia or China to make moves.

Exactly and Trump is no Vespasian, by a long way.

Someone should tell Trump that if his polling improves after every bullet he almost takes to the head, maybe he should just stand on stage going full Matrix at every rally. "Ahhhh but Donald, if you're so great, you should be able to dodge the bullet every time right?" @LaurieAG was that sick enough for you? Fyi in Trump friendly spaces they are wishing Biden dies of covid. That said, I've never wondered why Hitler was hated but Mandela wasn't. Maybe it was the vast chasm of difference in moral character, maybe its maybeline. Who knows?

I'm curious as to whether or not the democrats may use Biden coming down with covid as a kind of fitness test or if this will cause people to doubt his physical fitness for the role more whether he makes a quick recovery or not.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/07/17/president-biden-tests-positive-for-covid-unidosus-leader-says.html So this is now happening. Anyone else feel like 2024 is actively trying to be bigger and badder than 2020?

I've been in laugh to keep from crying mode for so long it's all beyond a joke now to me really. I mean the guy responsible for countless deaths due to ridiculous levels of incompetence, negligence and shameless disinformation during a pandemic is now suddenly a hero because he dodged karma at the last second?! Don't mind me too much just now, I've had a few to drink and haven't drank in awhile so even my Celtic ass can get a wee bit tipsy on just a couple. That said, I'm sorry if I upset you.

I have an evangelical acquaintance who claimed God saved Trump at the last minute; I executed a perfect scripture based attack by pointing out that the bible claims the devil actually has dominion over this world until jesus returns after the tribulation. I don't believe it but hey you gotta meet some people where they are at. So who really saved Trump? Satan. Having salvation army ministers for grandparents has it's benefits... a few at least. Won some respect there at least and it also gave me a few ideas for advocating for rehabilitation based justice versus punitive justice within religious demographics. I think I felt my diplomatic reasoning skills level up! Although I think you could also make the argument, that god did save him but only from a "you're no martyr of mine mf!" sort of state of mind. I do actually have a legit deity, in the sense that I only deify that which I know WILL have the opportunity to judge me, future generations. I guess you'd call that generationism? So much better than a church. Just act in ways that will help future generations thrive and since most of those are things that help a human thrive in the moment in at least a resource based capacity, it's usually a symbiotic relationship. Plant peas for me today, enrich the soil for someone else next tomorrow.

Indeed, Mark Twain put it best by saying; I fear you're right. We aren't even close to the worst of it either. Fleeing to the north won't do any good when supplies dwindle and prices skyrocket and as the climate gets worse, more crops are going to start failing. Farming is hard work as it is with the elements already fighting you in a number of ways in an ideal climate. Fascists thrive on peoples fear, so as our existential fears grow, so too does their power over others. I admit to feeling a bit giddy when the assassination news first released... now I just wish they hadn't bothered trying, it's just made a bad situation worse. When dealing with people like Trump; it wouldn't surprise me but I'd never assume it without proof. Either the timing was too perfect and it's some kind of false flag but more likely is that Trump is just a master at using situations like these to his own benefit.

Calling a lie a lie is hardly namecalling. Nope. I've just been watching how you speak to folk, what views you share, what info you cherry pick and which of others points you choose to respond to. Yeah the Russian troll thing is speculation on my part but what isn't speculation is the accusation that you're conversing in bad faith by claiming to support one thing while only using talking points that originate in Russian propaganda about the state of affairs of American politics. It was really the antifa stuff that gave it away for me. No self respecting democrat or moderate would claim being anti-fascist makes you a member of a terrorist organisation.

Most of your views are straight up lies though... do you get reprimanded by your superiors in Russia when people figure out you're a paid troll?