Phi for All

Here's a Venn diagram explaining why Marjorie Taylor Greene's book isn't selling well:

! Moderator Note Too many people put too much time into trying to help you see your error, so we won't be deleting all that work. But I can certainly close this. Don't bring this idea up again in other threads.

! Moderator Note Perhaps you need to take a break and review? Back off the personal attacks? Answer clarifying questions so a reasonable conversation can happen?

Fortunately, you admitted to it very recently: It has been obvious and it's time to stop it. It boils down to "Why does mistermack get to make assertions, refuse to back them up, and later claim they're just his opinion and conjecture?" You should know by now how sloppy gets jumped on here. I don't think we're asking too much of you.

The way discussion works here is you should be able to cough up the evidence that supports any stance you assert if someone questions it. Now that you've questioned my stance, I'm prepared to defend the assertion I made. This is what you fail to do often enough that it's been a problem. You adamantly refuse to support some of the stuff you claim, and it gets pointed out on the regular. You claim it's your opinion, yet you refuse to state it that way. You seem to want a way to make your assertions without earning the right. My assertion was "If religious faith disappeared, the rest of us could progress and create heaven here on Earth." Organized Christians in the US are preparing to take steps to remove our current democracy, supporting Christian Nationalism through Project 2025. Some believe their religious goals can only be achieved by the destruction of human society and Armageddon. Religious faith seems to be undermining democracy in most areas. They object to science, to progress, to healthcare, birth control, and social spending. They insist on tiered morality with their god and them at the top and the rest of us somewhere below them. Without their obvious blockades the rest of us could create a remarkable society where it actually looked like people cared for all other people. All you have to do is ask me to support my stances. If I posted it here, I'm willing to defend it. And you can make damn sure that if I offer my opinion, it's going to sound like one. It'll be something inconsequential, like "Man, I think metallic lime green is the most obnoxious color on the planet!"

I can provide my evidence on request, and I knew I could BEFORE I posted. I didn't make this statement blindly, IOW.

Did you read what you wrote in that post? It was garbage from one end to the other, got reported multiple times, so you got a warning point for it, and an admonition to argue in good faith rather than insult us with word salad. Humans are conscious because they're material?! Give me a break. I'm a moderator who enforces the rules the site owners have. Your post was reported as spamming the Philosophy boards. You broke a rule, and now you think it was rude, arrogant, and insulting to hold you to the same standards as other members. It's not up to me to judge popularity or controversial topics. I just enforce the rules, which you broke. Take some responsibility, please. Who is calling for you to be banned? Objecting to your breaking the rules is NOT calling for a ban. Also, please be aware you just claimed you've always behaved perfectly, and it's always others who are wrong. Why didn't you report the person who used "autistic" as an insult, or called you "mentally ill"? Report it now, and I'll deal with the problem, since that's unacceptable. And where were you censored? Staff can see when posts have been edited and who did the edits. All your words seem to be intact. Can you point to where you've been censored?

Crap, is this your argument, that color doesn't exist for animals because you don't think they know what colors are? Holy moley, if I'd known that I wouldn't have bothered. I don't appreciate willful ignorance and purposeful obfuscation. It shows you aren't arguing in good faith.

And yet we see tigers in their garish orange color trying to sneak up on their prey. They're successful because their prey's eyes only have cones that see blue and green, so orange registers as green, so the orange tiger blends in with the green foliage. Tigers evolved this coloration in part because mammals have no green pigmentation. Tell me again how "there's no colour in the nature". Humans have trichromatic color vision, so we see more colors, but mammals still see colors. They just don't have cones for red.

If religious faith disappeared, the rest of us could progress and create heaven here on Earth.

How do you think you would have explained color to this man? If he'd never seen anything in his life, what could you say that to help him understand such a bizarre concept?

! Moderator Note Folks, let's not take professional disagreement personally. The science can be discussed without hurt feelings, can't it? I've read this thread through twice now and don't see anything other than disagreement, no vendettas or obsessions. Please carry on.

! Moderator Note It's been painfully obvious for a LONG time, but it's still frustrating that you don't bother to source your conjecture the way others do. You seem to think your raw opinions are meaningful without facts and evidential support. This has allowed you to post a whole lot of crap in otherwise scientific threads. You need to stop it. You seem very smart, and you often represent a POV that we need to see, but you ruin it with unevidenced opinion that you assert like it's fact. We can start trashing bad faith posts like that if you can't stop yourself, but we want to let you know our thinking on this.

How can the whole be correct if the particulars aren't? Nobody is trying to "catch you up", we just want you to explain this concept, and parts of your explanation don't make sense. How can colors be a factor to someone who's never seen them? How could someone explain what colors are to someone who's never seen them?

No, that's not the question, you're Begging that Question, which means you're assuming its premise is already true, and that's a logical fallacy. The real question is whether a universe with multiple temporal dimensions is stable in the first place. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_time_dimensions

In addition to what swansont said, having access to more news doesn't mean the quality is where it should be. When the aim is to entertain rather than inform, they report stories differently. We don't get as much signal as we did prior to Clinton and Reagan, so "more news" is actually "more noise".

Exactly. And prior to that act, we had at least some government guidelines requiring the news to actually inform the public of important events.

I think you get notifications from anyone who responds to your posts. Does it give you a general notice and then tell you it's from a person you blocked? That would be annoying, but if it's telling you what that person posted when you made it clear you want them blocked, then this needs to be fixed.

It's totally a guess. Does this change affect space as well? In our current best supported explanations, space and time are an inextricable continuum. Nobody in science is looking for "proof". It's all about explaining a phenomenon, modeling it, and then looking for evidence to support the explanation. Any one thing can show an explanation to be false, but supporting an explanation is an ongoing, never ending process. We always want the best supported explanations, and when we can't find anything wrong with one, we start calling it a theory. Proof is for formal logic and maths. So, do you have any evidence to support your idea that time has evolved?

The microorganisms adapted to the environments they found themselves in, and each succeeding generation that survives passes it's genetic traits along to the next. Slight changes create different species after enough time has passed. Organic life tries different designs, and the ones that can survive their environments get to procreate. This is evolution. I'm also very sorry you don't have the time to read about it formally, it's one of the most fascinating areas of science. My "quick enlightenment" doesn't do it justice. I don't know, I have a hard time with speculation built on ignorance. No offense, but you're trying to guess about something you claim you don't have the time to study. You don't have very many pieces of the puzzle, but you're trying to guess what the big picture is. You seem very smart.

The problem with "going back to the way things were" is that it's entirely subjective. The 90s was the most prosperous decade of my life, and before 1996 we actually had rules about what constituted "news" used to inform the public, so I could wish we could go back for those things. But the 90s also means the Columbine shooting here in my state, the one that started the media craze over school shootings. The genocides in Yugoslavia and Rwanda. The Oklahoma City bombing, and the first World Trade Center bombing. And going back to the 50s?! Not if you're a person of color, or don't like cars breaking down on the regular due to vapor lock, or if you don't want actual ballot box tampering. Most of the folks I hear talking about life being better in the 50s mean it was before civil rights, when white people could do or say anything they pleased. I'd have no problem with capitalism if it rewarded work/talent equitably, but in its current form it doesn't. Work/talent combined with resources makes goods and performs tasks, and all involved should profit equitably, but the resource owners look down on work/talent, and overvalue their resources to the point where the resource owners make hundreds of times more than the talented worker. And I'm not sure you need big surpluses to make some things free-to-all. If we'd been smarter about internet shopping, we could have made the big corporations pay to use our data to target us. And if we'd use public spending the way it should be used, with absolutely no profit motive involved, we could save a LOT on things just about everyone uses. Interesting. Generational wealth is a big problem. It might get a bit sticky for someone who just has a home and $30,000 in savings. That person's kids were hoping for a leveling up opportunity of their own. I'll have to think about this. I'm reminded that the modern narrative tells us to kick our kids out of the house at 18 and don't give them anything so it'll make them resilient, yet rich people do the opposite. They fund them fully, make sure they have a great education, and keep them close as they navigate through life. My hard left? I'd expand the US Postal Service, get them their own fleet of jets, and turn them into a hub of commerce and shipping, publicly funded. I'd have them set up an enormous website where anyone who wanted to sell anything and have it shipped could do so. IOW, I'd take care of the Amazon problem by competing with them using a socialist format that wasn't driven by profit. Shipping costs would go down, the USPS site wouldn't be trying to compete with its own vendors (like Amazon does), and both large and small businesses would see costs go down. To go along with this, I'd also add internet access in infrastructure bills. I think the US government using socialism to give every citizen access to capitalism is a huge investment in its People.

No, it's because I'm NOT ignoring the word "rights" and what it means. I think human rights aren't something you can find middle ground about. We're all due a certain basic amount of respect and access to resources simply because we've agreed to live in a society and participate in its economy. And do you really think my position is that extreme? That says a lot.

Well sure, but I'm asking why a Centrist solution to human rights has a better chance of being fair?

I think it comes down to selfishness. We've had the ability to take care of every single human on the planet for some time now. War for resources is obsolete. We have enough for everyone, so to deny anyone shelter, food, and water just boils down to selfishness, and feeling that some humans aren't as deserving as others.

Do you think a balance needs to be struck with the neoconservative fascists trying to seize power in the US, so their right to their beliefs is respected?