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@Wylted
Even if we implemented this, most people would just use google translate or some similar service, or worse, leave the site altogether. We already have less than a hundred active users, this would probably kill the site.
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@3RU7AL
we don't know how this thing works, at a fundamental level
I don't profess that scientists know everything, and I know even less. But to take the remaining uncertainty and say, therefore, this is "brahman's eternal dream" makes no sense.
It's still a possibility, but until I see evidence to promote that theory over any other, I'll stick to what I got.
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@3RU7AL
Above all, don’t ask what to believe—ask what to anticipate. Every question of belief should flow from a question of anticipation, and that question of anticipation should be the center of the inquiry. Every guess of belief should begin by flowing to a specific guess of anticipation, and should continue to pay rent in future anticipations. If a belief turns deadbeat, evict it.
If one's belief in solipsism doesn't affect what they anticipate observing, then all they have is a belief in their head that says "solipsism is real", completely disconnected from their other beliefs. These "floating beliefs" are completely useless.
For me, solipsism can't be disproven; assuming it is true, then all of my scientific knowledge of how the universe behaves is in my imagination, and may not tie to how the universe that my brain actually exists in functions.
Here's a similar problem involving the Matrix's version of simulation theory.
MORPHEUS: For the longest time, I wouldn't believe it. But then I saw the fields with my own eyes, watched them liquefy the dead so they could be fed intravenously to the living -NEO (politely): Excuse me, please.MORPHEUS: Yes, Neo?NEO: I've kept quiet for as long as I could, but I feel a certain need to speak up at this point. The human body is the most inefficient source of energy you could possibly imagine. The efficiency of a power plant at converting thermal energy into electricity decreases as you run the turbines at lower temperatures. If you had any sort of food humans could eat, it would be more efficient to burn it in a furnace than feed it to humans. And now you're telling me that their food is the bodies of the dead, fed to the living? Haven't you ever heard of the laws of thermodynamics?MORPHEUS: Where did you hear about the laws of thermodynamics, Neo?NEO: Anyone who's made it past one science class in high school ought to know about the laws of thermodynamics!MORPHEUS: Where did you go to high school, Neo?(Pause.)NEO: ...in the Matrix.MORPHEUS: The machines tell elegant lies.(Pause.)NEO (in a small voice): Could I please have a real physics textbook?MORPHEUS: There is no such thing, Neo. The universe doesn't run on math.
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@3RU7AL
I've never personally reached an absurd conclusion through logic.do you have any thoughts regarding solipsism ?
Solipsism is almost always a hypocritical belief. Under solipsism, people say something along the lines of, "only my mind exists, everything I think I know is false/unknowable." But then they go on living their life essentially the same. They use clocks to make appointments on time. They look both ways when crossing the street. They tie their shoes when they see that it is untied.
Rest assured, if I thought the entire universe was inside my own imagination, I would devote my efforts to making some major renovations (hallucinate a better "reality").
I say almost always hypocritical because I'm sure some people have taken the belief seriously in their personal lives, but they aren't the ones arguing it online.
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@Shila
Species dysphoria is the experience of dysphoria and dysmorphia involving the belief of one's body being the wrong species. A person may not be happy with their body image and may hallucinate or think of themselves as an animal of some sort.
Not exactly. There is no animal on Earth currently that I would prefer to be over a human, but I do wish I could freely augment my body to add a tail, etc. Technology isn't up to snuff for that right now (though crispr is the most promising).
I also don't believe that I am an animal or have an animal soul or whatever. I am human, and see myself as currently human. But I think we can do better.
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@sadolite
There are 2 sexes (outside of chromosomal disorders). Gender is a social construct, as evidenced by how gender roles differ from culture to culture and by species. As such, gender is only limited by how many society comes up with.
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@IwantRooseveltagain
The Southern slaveholders were capable of compromise.Perhaps you heard the quote “a house divided against itself, cannot stand”.It was by a fairly important person in American history
The same person was elected under the two party system. Either the "house" of the US has not stood since Washington stepped down and the party system took over, or it takes a little bit more than that to cripple the "house."
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@Stephen
Still, I am trying to discover the identities of these two "certain" witnesses that the gospels writers seem desperate to hide, regardless of the charges.
Good luck with that. Perhaps check the Apocrypha?
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well, you do need some sort of premise
Generally, the starting premise is taken to be Cogito er go sum.
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@3RU7AL
"NTURTTGgTS" is perfectly logical.
A perfectly logical conclusion would be one that can be derived purely from logic. Er go, your "logic zombie" would be capable of reaching it.
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@Public-Choice
Muslims were torturing, raping, and pillaging people. The crusades were a defense of human decency.
If this was the reason the Crusades happened, the medieval Christians would have fought the Muslims where they were doing this, on the frontier of their empire in Africa or Spain. No, the Crusades' primary goal was the "liberate" the Holy Land.
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@Stephen
Its funny isn't it, that as you state, Jesus was brought before Pilate on accusations of "rebellion", yet the trial held by the Sanhedrin was all to do with accusations of "blasphemy" for which he was found to be guilty.
Pilate was the Roman governor. He wouldn't be handling charges of blasphemy against the Torah/Talmud, especially as he wasn't Jewish. The Sanhedrin would have been a local court directly related to the Rabbinic Church.
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@Stephen
Does the same passage name every member of the chief priests and council? No. Either they weren't important enough to put down their names, or the one writing didn't find out their names.
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@IwantRooseveltagain
The Southern slaveholders were capable of compromise.
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I make 11th in ranking of most debates no one cared about.
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(19) A remarkable feature of these scorpionflies is an appendage that seems specially designed for rape. Called the notal organ, it is a clamp on the top of the male's abdomen with which he can grab on to one of the female's forewings during mating, to prevent her escape. Besides rape, the notal organ does not appear to have any other function. For example, when the notal organs of males are experimentally covered with beeswax, to keep them from functioning, the males cannot rape. Such males still mate successfully, however, when they are allowed to present nuptial gifts to females. And other experiments have shown that the notal organ is not an adaptation for transferring sperm: in unforced mating, the organ contributes nothing to insemination.
(20) Not surprisingly, females prefer voluntary mating to mating by force: they will approach a male bearing a nuptial gift and flee a male that does not have one. Intriguingly, however, the males, too, seem to prefer a consensual arrangement: they rape only when they cannot obtain a nuptial gift. Experiments have shown that when male scorpionflies possessing nuptial gifts are removed from an area, giftless males--typically, the wimpier ones that had failed in male-male competitions over prey--quickly shift from attempting rape to guarding a gift that has been left untended. That preference for consensual sex makes sense in evolutionary terms, because when females are willing, males are much more likely to achieve penetration and sperm transfer.
Rape is less advantageous than consensual sex, all else being equal, but undesirable circumstances (scarcity in this case) can introduce a Nash equilibrium where some amount of rape confers more advantage to these less successful males than the regular strategy.
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@RationalMadman
I didn't say there was. The Mercator map is just a tool for navigation, not something people seriously think the earth looks like, but that's what it sounds like Intelligence is describing to me.
I take it that you are a flat earther?
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I've seen a lot more people who try to excuse morality instead. "I don't have free will, I can't help being an asshole/criminal. You can't punish someone for being evil if it 'isn't their fault.'" Empathy is more important to me in terms of vindictiveness and dispensation of justice.
(^Eagleman lecture)
I stand by the lack of free will not excusing moral culpability. I'm not a fan of the current US justice system, but a justice system does need to exist to deter crime. Obviously rehabilitation would be preferable, but I suspect that it would work better in theory than execution.
(Neuron-integrated computer chips)
While this is interesting for the future of computing and possibly our understand of brain structure, it doesn't really directly relate to consciousness in my eyes. The medium of thought/computation doesn't matter to me. The only important distinction to me is that human neural circuitry like this is inherently wired for pain and pleasure in a sense that we can understand, whereas LaMDA or some future AI might feel something we can't understand or even see. The pro to the former is that we should be able to tell if it is suffering, and hopefully prevent it. With the latter, LaMDA can't necessarily communicate that to us because it doesn't think in text anymore than we think in the shapes and sounds that our mouths make. And we can't measure it because neural networks might as well be a black box for human thought.
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@RationalMadman
I haven't looked into the flat earth model myself, nor am I particularly interested in doing so. You could call Inteligence's version the Mercator earth model if you prefer, after the map he seems to be thinking of.
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@Intelligence_06
If I'm reading this post correctly, the point is that the flat earth model works in most circumstances, but has some weird edge (hehe) cases where the model does weird stuff like your "south pole teleportation." This is already common knowledge, and the reason people navigate with 2D maps rather than globes, and Newtonian formulas for most physics problems. There are edge cases where the Newtonian model breaks down (high gravity and significant fraction of the speed of light) which Einstein's theories were so important and famous for solving.
I like the way you worded it but you basically just explained convenient simplification.
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@Shila
Your quote "As our survey shows, only one percent of the population doesn't like ice
cream – but of those who enjoy it, only 45 percent eat it regularly
without concern," said Amit Pandhi." isn't even from your link? And directly contradicts the 7% you and the link are saying.
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@Shila
You cite a survey by Ariela Keysar and Juhem Navarro-Rivera about atheism, but nothing for the 93% on ice cream. Honestly I'm starting to think you're a bot again.
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@3RU7AL
I have heard of LaMDA, but obviously haven't been able to interact with it at all. I do believe that AI is capable of sentience, if that's what you're driving at. GPT-3 may itself be sentient, (though I would argue with a sample size of one humanity is far from defining sentience in a satisfying way).
I will share my thoughts on the videos when I have watched them.
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@3RU7AL
Personally, I am of the camp that no such thing can exist. Any process complicated enough to emulate conscious thought must itself be intelligent enough to just be conscious.GPT3
I've used GPT-3 extensively (I was granted beta access this spring). It's incredibly good, but there are a lot of things it still reliably messes up. That being said, if someone was ransoming the life of a chimpanzee vs. the only copy of GPT-3, I would likely choose GPT-3, because it is an intelligent process, even if its thoughts are nowhere close to analogous to human thought.
My main thought on the "problem" of free will is that it doesn't matter. I'm not going to start behaving differently if free will isn't a thing vs. if it is.accepting indeterminism does tend to help people become somewhat less vindictive
I've seen a lot more people who try to excuse morality instead. "I don't have free will, I can't help being an asshole/criminal. You can't punish someone for being evil if it 'isn't their fault.'" Empathy is more important to me in terms of vindictiveness and dispensation of justice.
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Based on my understanding of physics, it seems likely that the atoms in my brain work in the same deterministic fashion as all other atoms; that is, humans don't fully understand everything to the point that they can exactly predict what any given atom can do, but that with the right knowledge and understanding it theoretically could be predicted in advance.
If we define free will as the ability of a person (human or otherwise) to act in a way that isn't determined simply by the laws of the universe or "fate," then I would argue that humans do not possess free will.
This doesn't seem to match sidewalker's definition of free will, which seems to be dependent on "sentience", "awareness and interaction", and "agency." Agency is clearly just a synonym for free will, so I won't be going into that one.
Awareness and interaction with the world. Anything with sensory capabilities is "aware" of the world, even if they don't recognize a thing as it is. This goes from the ant that walks on a sidewalk, even if it doesn't realize it's a sidewalk, all the way to humans, to not only have sensory experiences, but tie names and anticipate further experiences based upon those experiences. For example, when I see a staircase in front of where I'm walking, I will anticipate the sensations of stepping down a series of stairs. If I'm paying attention, I can even anticipate how many times I will experience it. If I'm not paying so close attention, I may believe that I am at the bottom of the stairs sooner than I actually am, often resulting in stumbling or falling. Both of these are a fairly universal experience.
The same goes with interaction. A human may interact with the world in more complex ways, but every living thing interacts as well.
Sentience. Sentience is another controversial topic. Some advocates argue that dolphins, octopuses, chimpanzees, etc. are sentient as well as humans. I've even seen arguments that all animals, or even plants, are sentient. Sentience is generally agreed to be an emergent property of intelligence, the ability to not only think about your environment and actions, but to think about yourself and your thoughts. Clearly the language barrier between humans and other living things makes it difficult to determine how much, if any, self-reflection takes place in other minds. A true skeptic might first ask, how can we be so sure that humans are sentient?
Cogito ergo sum was a phrase coined by Descartes when he pondered knowledge itself; what can he be sure actually exists? His conclusion, "I think, therefore I am" gave him at least the assurance that his own thoughts were proof that at the very least he existed, even if everything else was a lie, or a shadow on a cave wall.
There are some strains of philosophical thought that claim that this is all we can know. You may already be familiar with the concept of P-Zombies, the idea of humans that behave in all the same ways as a true, sentient conscious human such as your self, except they aren't sentient. Personally, I am of the camp that no such thing can exist. Any process complicated enough to emulate conscious thought must itself be intelligent enough to just be conscious.
Based on my observations of other humans, there is clearly conscious thought on the other end, so the simplest explanation is that they are sentient humans just like me, with their own minds and inner thoughts. (I'm not going to get into simulation theory here, though it might make a good thread on its own).
So awareness and interaction is basically universal among living things, and sentience is (possibly) unique to humans, but how does it follow that humans must have free will? What special property of my neurochemistry makes it less causally determined than a computer algorithm? If there is one, is it evolutionary? Did one hominid a million years ago become the first creature with free will? If not, does that mean all animals with brains have the same free will? All life?
My main thought on the "problem" of free will is that it doesn't matter. I'm not going to start behaving differently if free will isn't a thing vs. if it is. Personally, I haven't seriously cared about the question since I was religious. (The Mormon idea of everyone having "agency" but God still has perfect knowledge of the future is problematic to say the least, and was one of the reasons I left)
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@Shila
Those are completely different percentages than you were using before, and you have cited no new source for 93% on ice cream. Furthermore, you didn't contest either the point on objectivity, or the lack of correlation, you just changed your numbers. Your new 86% minimum overlap number is the same as my 60%, just based on different (uncited) base percentages.
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@Vici
why are you always voting for your own stuff which no one else seems to care about? This is is egocentric - please have some humility
Speak for yourself
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Those are some of the big ones. Basically just to troll or to make it look like someone agrees with you. People use alts on twitter and other platforms the same way all of the time.
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@Shila
That is a statistical fact that 80% of the world love both God and ice cream.
1. Without correlative data, this is almost definitely false. While ~80% of the world population (extrapolated from a smaller scale survey/study) report enjoying ice cream, and ~80% report belief in a God, they are not the same 80%. There could theoretically be as low as only 60% of people both believing in God and enjoying ice cream. If we assume zero correlation, then the number would be approximately (0.8x0.8) = 64% of the population
2. Before you were arguing that the statement "ice cream is delicious" is an objective fact, now you are arguing that the statement "80% of humans enjoy eating ice cream" is an objective fact. Given that the latter statement is true, the former is definitionally disproven, as 20% of the population doesn't enjoy it, ergo not objectively and universally found to be delicious.
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@TWS1405
acceptance for transgenders, drag, pedophilia and polygamy would follow suit.To date all have been accepted.
Pedophilia and polygamy are both still illegal and deeply taboo in American culture. The other three were legalized because they're fine and have no more negative social consequences than trad marriage and cis relationships.
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@Vici
What you said
Best Korea had a bad vote against a leftist Oromagi. he got banned from voting
What I said
Best.Korea got banned from voting bc they were trolling.
Your new claim
notice how I said not banned from voting. lmao?????
Either you lied, or your reading comprehension is so bad that you failed to realize I said the same thing as you.
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Where are you guys seeing whether these people have voting privileges or not?
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Pretty sure Best.Korea got banned from voting bc they were trolling.
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@Username
I'd agree, for example, that utilitarianism doesn't have a great explanation for why humans matter more than animals, but Kant probably does.
Many utilitarians don't think that humans matter more, such as Peter Singer.
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@3RU7AL
all debate votes boil down to pure, uncut, personal opinion
Personal opinion of who won? Yes.
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@Public-Choice
The Constitution has worked for 246 years.
It has worked in conjunction with the rest of the government, not by itself.
we might as well tell people which devices to use when voting and how to press the keyboard and which type of English dialect to use.
I'm not saying that the Voting Policy should be as bureaucratic as the full U.S. Government either, but a Constitution level of detail would be insufficient.
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@Tradesecret
I would think from their position that they want to see people live in accordance with their teachings not for salvation but for something else. I say that because in their teaching - they believe everyone gets saved.
Not exactly. Mormons believe in three degrees of glory; the Telestial, Terrestrial, and Celestial Kingdoms. Only those who "receive the ordinances of salvation, keep the commandments, and repent of [their] sins." can enter into the highest Kingdom with God (there are also 3 degrees of Glory within the Celestial Kingdom, but I'm not going into it). Those who live righteously but are not members of the church can enter as high as the Terrestrial Kingdom, which iirc is describing as being like the garden of Eden, but they cannot enter the presence of God. Those who live unrighteously go to the Telestial Kingdom.
There is also those who join Satan in the Outer Darkness. These "sons of perdition" are those who reject Christ and His Atonement.
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@Public-Choice
For instance, to find out more about the Army, I wouldn't go to the Supreme Court. The Constitution tells me precisely which department the Army is under.
The constitution details what branch the Army belongs to, but little else. There is nothing about the everyday operation, the training of troops, hierarchical structure under the President, discipline, safety standards, contracts for military equipment, or basically any other detail of how this part of the government actually runs. A voting policy this vague and undetailed would merely outline the appointment of moderators and their powers, and the process for devising new rules. The Bill of Rights could be analogized as the very basic rules such as no doxxing, moderators can't moderate their own debates, but it simply doesn't cover everything. Think of how many things it is illegal to do that aren't in the Constitution. It's a lot.
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Interested in people's views of Mormonism on this site. I live in a high Mormon population area, so it's hard for me to gauge the opinions of people less familiar with them in real life.
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@Double_R
I thought clicking into this topic that it would be a discussion of the moral implications of free will, given that it existed. Glad to see that not only did someone bring the subject around to it, but they hold the same stance as me.
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@RationalMadman
Cool, so if that is literally all GP means in the thread's title, then this thread is basically saying that the anime Naruto is a shonen anime. Okay, thanks for telling us that.
Eh, the Big Government part is still debatable. *shrugs* I do agree that saying a documentary made by a politician about politics is propaganda is far from a controversial take.
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@RationalMadman
It would be propaganda if the opposition was silenced to have that youtube video up about it or make their own Netflix series against its narrative and agenda.
I disagree with this definition of propaganda. Plenty of people on the internet talking about how much they hated their experience in the military, but those go navy ads I get are still propaganda.
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@Vici
Learn how to fucking read. I said top 10 PERCENT. And that was only based on my placement on the leaderboard. I never claimed to be top ten, and even said
I'm at best average out of active debaters.
Why are you so insecure you have to misconstrue an honest self evaluation into egotism so that you can put it down?
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@Vici
53/641 = top 8.26%. And yes, I am disappointed that I do not rank higher.
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I have participated in 27 debates (excluding rap battles)
I have debated 9 (if my counts are right) people with win ratios of greater than 50%, of those I lost or tied all but 2 (out of 11 total debates, since some people I debated multiple times). If we were only considering "good" debaters, that would put my win rate at 18%, which hurts to say.
And yet I'm in 53 out of 641 people who have completed at least 1 debate on the site. This puts me comfortably in the top 10%, though I consider it pretty bad. I suspect that I'm at best average out of active debaters.
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@Tarik
You mean your question?
Do I?
Either the Bible (or whatever informs your flavor of religion) has clear instructions on how you should live your life and you don't get to decide for yourself, or the Bible isn't the word of God.
No, looks like it's still a declarative statement.
I’m not satisfied with just feelings alone, I want them validated and God does that.
Validation is still just a feeling. Verification is factual, and you've provided no evidence that God has done that, especially since you still haven't specified how you think God makes His Will known on Earth.
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@Tarik
or whatever informs your flavor of religionHow can you forget that caveat after you just quoted it?
It says Christian on your profile. You've quoted the Bible several times in this Forum topic alone. Regardless, if we were to replace every time the Bible was mentioned with "whatever informs your flavor of religion" as I said before, my point stands.
Either the Bible (or whatever informs your flavor of religion) has clear instructions on how you should live your life and you don't get to decide for yourself, or the Bible isn't the word of God.
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@Public-Choice
The original U.S. Constitution was only 9 pages, but it created a government for an entire country
It is extremely generous to say that the Constitution single-handedly created a government for an entire country. While it laid out the foundations of how Congress, the President, and Supreme Court would (and wouldn't) act and be appointed/elected, the majority of actual government infrastructure remained at a state level for a long time, with most continuing to act as they had before. In fact, all of the 13 states had constitutions by 1780, or continued to use the wording of their colonial charters, which in the case of Connecticut, the first version of which dated back 150 years before the adoption of the U.S. Constitution by 1789.
The vast majority of the governmental structure such as the lower courts, the post office, taxes, and other existing institutions, as well as ones yet to exist, such as the Air Force, were not written in the Constitution.
It is incredibly bare-bones, to the point that reading it tells you very little of how the US government actually functions outside of a middle school level overview.
Saying that the Voting Policy could/should be like the US Constitution is absurd and not a good thing.
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