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@ethang5
As we all know, many of those protesters were chanting “let’s hang with Mike Pence”.
But the Ministry of Truth line aside - your admission is pretty revealing.
I mean - if a group of people believe they have no political power and have are currently being systematically oppressed with individuals in power using their levers of power to maintain those systems of oppression - that sounds like something big enough and severe enough to want to riot about. I don’t agree with rioting - just to say I have no doubt that they believe what they’re saying.
Contrast for a moment, with the right. Apparently, there was a massive - Successful - effort to rig an election, which involve the courts, and multiple states, and usurped the democratic will of the people, your democracy was stolen, and people who literally want to destroy the country and take away all of your rights have taken over.
Don’t know about you, but going to a few rally’s, writing strongly worded Facebook posts, and a handful of people breaking into the capitol then going home; loudly declaring they will fix the complete loss of your democracy in 4 years when you get to vote for president again - doesn’t strike me as the coherent actions or behaviour of people who has even started to believe what they’re saying
I don’t say this lightly, but if Trump had been successful and a legitimate election was overturned through partisan chicanery - a lot of people would have ended up dying: because that’s what tends happen when elections are actually stolen.
I don’t know how you guys do it - it must be so tiring to be defending things constantly that you know deep down you don’t even beleive.
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@drlebronski
The last one was the hardest..
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@Dr.Franklin
your not quite getting it, yes laws can be reversed over time and even amendments can be voided within the Constitution but requires a major amount of political capital for that to happen, however a single judge can shut down a vote she doesnt like and claim it was "unconstitutional" out of nowhere.
For that judge to be there: you need to have won a majority of electoral votes, and a majority of senate seats. To override the law, you also need that to happen 5 times.
It doesn’t happen in a vaccuum.
But remember - not agreeing with you, is not an indication of them being legally wrong.
You could argue that appointing unqualified Federal judges and forcing through as many as possible is undermining the judiciary. But that’s Republicans.
You could argue that holding up an appointment to try and ensure your party gets to make a key appointment, or that ramming through a judge with a minimum of review in the days before an election is also part of the problem - again Republicans.
You could argue that it’s unfair that the judiciary leans 6/3 In favour of the party that has won the popular vote in a presidential election once since 1988. Again Republicans.
You could argue that a senate that represents a minority of the US population should not get to appoint 6/9ths of the court; but that’s still Republicans.
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@Mesmer
You’re clearly not too smart. Leading debaters on this site would disagree with you; and I have not seen any of those fallacies used myself. Everyone here makes great arguments, and if that’s the case it’s not possible that these four fallacies are that common.
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@oromagi
RM is wrong as often as he is right - in that he often leaps to accusations of multi accounts; and happens to be correct sometimes.
I mean - apparently I was a multi-account. *shrug*
I have no doubt that the similarity of style and structure and content is what made him make the leap. However, there are definitely structural style similarities - tells - if you will between the two that you are too unlikely to be simply coincidence.
If I was a multi-account no matter how well i spoofed my IP, you’d be able to tell it was me by my usage of “-“ and “;” that type of thing is hard to spoof because it’s so subconscious.
I’m not telling you “exactly” how *you*can tell these two can be considered “alts” but **if** I were, I would write it in a reply so that “you can work it out for yourself”
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@Dr.Franklin
So I’m not sure if you’re aware of how common law works: but the constitution establishes the principle of the Supreme Court, which is the ultimate court in making determinations of law. It’s not just the constitution that matters, it’s also precedent from common law.
The constitution basically provides the equivalent of unappealable president - eg; if the constitution says no, then the answer is no.
If the constitution doesn’t say anything in a contested matter; then the courts and Supreme Court has authority to make an ultimate ruling on it; this forms the principle of precedent that must then be followed by other courts.
For example; in the constitution, naturalization is given exclusively to the federal government, and previous precedents it’s established that and Federal government has jurisdiction on immigration.
Which kinda makes sense, you don’t want California to, say, vote to grant legal status to illegal immigrants; who then may cross into other states: the whole premise of a federal system is to be able to mediate issues where one states rules impacts an other state (part of the Commerce clause).
The issue is not that 9 judges have this power; it’s that in a system of laws and torts, you will always require some ultimate arbiter of what the law means, how it applies, and to rule on whether individuals have crossed the line.
The only question is who that is. Is it for the people to decide? It already is; you have the ability to elect people in Congress and to the president to chose the Supreme Court appointees: to ammend the constitution - ultimately overriding what the judges say.
Saying that, Prop 187 never made it to the Supreme Court for them to make that decision - it went through the court system, and the challenge was pulled by Gray Davis in 1999.
The suggestion that the court should only rule on the explicit content of the constitution, very much cuts both ways:
For example Granting legal status to illegal immigrants - against precedent, but not against the constitution.
All blue states could require militias to be registered and regulated; and weapons ownership could be limited to those who have signed up as part of a militia, with the weapons to be stored in secure facilities run by that militia, and not carried personally. That meets the text of the 2nd amendment, but not the established precedent.
There’s many more I could list that fly in the face of what we have established in precedent but not the constitution.
As mentioned, the constitution itself you have the checks and balances that give control over the courts; democratically elected federal officials control nomination and appointment, and removal of federal and Supreme Court judges.
The original statement in your title, though, has some merit.
The constitution itself, has no specific worth other than what you give it. If people think the constitution is worthless, it becomes so.
If for example, a President abuses their power, overrides congress on spending power; refuses to submit to confessional oversight - the constitution expects that the house will impeach and, of the accusations are true, the senate will convict - but if the senate don’t care, and acquit regardless of the evidence because the person is in their party - the constitution is meaningless.
Likewise, if a party, say, intentionally loads the federal bench with unqualified partisan hacks for the primary purpose of being able to jam through their laws, and oppose their opponents; then there’s not much you can do; if that same party then uses that court to say, override election results, enact laws that disenfranchise one side; and allow for substantial partisan gerrymandering or restriction of the press under the guise of “disinformation” ; then you've not only shown the constitution is worthless; but you’ve also lost your democracy along with it.
The constitution is only meaningful, if doing the right thing, acting in good faith, adhering to the rule of law is more important than winning; and that both sides recognize that in the other.
The issue here is not the judges; or the power they have: it’s that when you see decisions you disagree with and assume it’s abuse; circumvent the constitution to stop your guys losing power, and support jamming of partisans onto the courts because they’ll agree with you; and you support whatever actions lead to you getting the policies you want - that’s when the contrition becomes worthless.
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@ResurgetExFavilla
Per annum...
Flu mutates faster per cell infection; covid mutates faster per year - right now - because it’s infecting so many people.
That’s my point: a big benefit to the drive for vaccination is to reduce that mutation rate. Obviously, theres issues of long covid, hospitalizations, etc - and just the economic impacts of a bunch of people being sick, but a key factor is driving down the potential for mutants.
In the last year and a half, there have been a number of variants that are able to partially overcome vaccine immunity, after all.
The best case scenario, is that we lower infection rates, improve vaccinations, the vaccine continues to be updated to be more inline with circling variants, and with our built up immune response, we have a 20k-30k death covid season, which is likely manageable.
The worst case - as covid appears way more transmissible than the flu (covid mitigation basically eliminated last years flu season, whilst Covid still killed hundreds of thousands) - is that high mutation rates variant more effectively evades our vaccine response; spreads to the vaccinated, then mutates again to drop effectiveness against severe disease to, say 50% vs 94% for the current vaccine/immunity. The us gets another 150-200k deaths.
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@Dr.Franklin
Theoretical question:
If the democratic (51%)will of the people In California was to re-establish slavery, should that be accepted?
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Haven’t you said this about, literally, every moderator that there has ever been in this site?
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@thett3
The 80% of adults number is misleading given all the immunological nuances (repeat infections, breakthroughs, kids, etc)
The bottom line, is that with our current levels of immunity - peak cases in september has only dropped to around 2/3rds of where it was in January with almost no vaccinations.
Deaths are much better, down to less than 1/3rd of where it was in January so far. Though still at a rate of being a bad flu season every few weeks.
With delta, as Whiteflame suggested, with higher viral replication rates; there’s likely just as much chance of further variants as there was in January.
So we’re not at the point where immunity renders COVID endemic yet; and remember, there’s still issues of long COVID and hospitalization impacts, especially leading into the next flu season (which is likely going to pretty bad too)
The bottom line, is that with our current levels of immunity - peak cases in september has only dropped to around 2/3rds of where it was in January with almost no vaccinations.
Deaths are much better, down to less than 1/3rd of where it was in January so far. Though still at a rate of being a bad flu season every few weeks.
With delta, as Whiteflame suggested, with higher viral replication rates; there’s likely just as much chance of further variants as there was in January.
So we’re not at the point where immunity renders COVID endemic yet; and remember, there’s still issues of long COVID and hospitalization impacts, especially leading into the next flu season (which is likely going to pretty bad too)
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@949havoc
Given that he has not legally mandated COVID vaccines for all Americans indicates that there are fairly large exemptions, no?
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@949havoc
“...Then any person, male, female, whatever, has the right to refuse another invasive procedure, a vaccine.”
You do.
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@thett3
There is a lot of immunity; but in the US 100-150k people are catching the virus per day.
It’s not possible to say how low transmission has to be in order to appropriately reduce the risk of a vaccine avoiding variant - though I would say hospitalization rates substantial enough to harm care for Vaccinated people having non COVID health issues, and potential economic issues from long COVID are ask factors. That is all to say that it’s critical to maximize the number of people being Vaccinated.
I don’t accept the comparison with abortion; for a few general reasons.
Pregnancy, childbirth, poses a huge health, financial, time and economic burden - even in an uncomplicated pregnancy:
If the impact of pregnancy was 2 days of having a sore arm, and a 1/100000 chance of a Blood clot that you’ll probably survive - abortion would be illegal, and everyone would support that stance.
Likewise, if vaccines caused months of pain and discomfort, removal from the labour force, and substantial hormonal changes to your body - there would be no vaccine mandates.
Your forced to wear clothes to work, glasses to drive if you have vision issues - and you’re required to take medication if health issues impact your ability to drive safely.
There is a credible need in all these cases, including vaccination, being balanced against individual rights. Whether one set of rights or the other is maintained is a nuanced equation that has to be based on the situation, not some binary chest thumping absolutes.
For example, imagine airborn pandemic Ebola; mortality of 90%, but 50% vaccinations that are only 75% effective - with the same state as today. I suspect everyone would be in support of vaccine mandates.
Whether or not these vaccine mandates meet that equation of balance of rights - is a valid discussion - but I reject on principle this binary notion of rights.
That goes for everything. You should able to go in public and talk about how good you think the mandalorian is - but if doing so gave people nearby strokes I would support the police telling you to stfu about it on pain of imprisonment.
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@cristo71
“Only really true of one side”? How do you figure? It seems all too clear to me (as also evidenced on this very site) that there is a sizeable core base of President “NotTrump” supporters whose trusty refrain is “well, he’s still better than President Trump”— no matter how egregious the situation…
Biden has done a number of not great things. Some mistakes, some policy issues; big foreign policy errors - I don’t think Afghanistan warrants as big a black mark as is being portrayed; but there are lots of low level issues for sure.
Trump was an utter dumpster fire; wall to wall corruption, contempt for the rule of law, systematic undermining of key opposing institutions for the purposes of maintaining his own power; and clear cut abuses of his own power that culminated in him undermining public health in order to prop up his economic message for re-election; and then finally undermining US democracy by pushing a lie that the election was stolen and attempting to foment enough popular support to force an undemocratic override of an election in order to maintain power.
The key issue in your response is the utterly false pretence that the “no matter how egregious” even comes close to the abuses of Trump.
The pretence appears to implicitly presume that Biden and Truro have done things that are equally bad.
That is clearly, patently and ridiculously untrue.
Now, how do I figure this strict adherence to orthodoxy is only true of one side? Easy:
You’re not seeing liberal politicians culled because they disagree with Biden. Hell, the left is a loose affiliation of different groups that are always in disagreement.
You don’t see large left wing groups Calling for a boycott of CNN because they called North Carolina for Trump...
Trump is defended for everything - from his suggestion that they should look at injecting disinfectants as a potential treatment; to taking the side of someone who attacked America, to clear abuse of power. There is no real analogue on the left.
This is not to say that there are not hints; of course the left defaults to defending their side, often to the point of defending things that shouldn’t be defended. But the extremes of how strongly, how egregiously wrong, and the required adherence to orthodoxy is not even close.
This false equivalent is nauseating: because Biden is sort-of half defended for a Chaotic pullout of Afghanistan, with an acknowledgement that things are pretty bad, based upon a broad set of facts: and Trump supporters full throated lauded the pull out of Syria, admitting no error or issues as Former American allies that defeated ISIS fled, of were killed by Turkey, allowing hundreds of ISIs prisoners to escape - all against advice of his military - they’re treated as “the same”.
No. These are very different things at very different levels; and when things do get actually bad - everything in the base and on the left clearly shows the defence only goes so far. Take for example, calls for Cuomos resignation, now he’s gone. Take this very thing with Afghanistan, much negative press, negative coverage, and a left wing that partially understands, but acknowledges that it’s a clusterf**k. Together with general angst on the left about Biden’s policies clearly shows that while the left does defend the democratic president, that defense goes so far.
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@Double_R
Starting with the culture wars - and almost every right wing election strategy since has been to try and find wedge issues to outrage people - and as of 2004, just their base.
However you need more outrage for the same effect, which is why it was “they want a big government, which is ineffective” in 1994, and “the Radicals democrats want to impose socialism destroy the country and take away your freedom”
The way they do this, is by starting off with gross misrepresentation of the truth; pushing it through an amplified echo chamber that drives the issue to more extreme nonsense; which then poisons the actual discussion - to which then conservatives then point to as evidence that people are being silenced.
In general, on stuff like this, the right wing is correct about maybe 20% of stuff; but uses that to declare they are right about everything. This contrasts on the left, where what they’re doing is maybe 80% justified; which they use to ignore the remaining 20%.
That’s the main problem. The right wing tends to use some real issue as in order to push the lie; whereas the left tends to push the truth to gloss over the real issues.
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@thett3
COVID is likely going to end up a bit like the flu, a seasonal issue, that crops up at a lower level each year or every few years. Vaccines and vaccine mandates are not about eliminating COVID Altogether.
To get to that point that it is endemic, however, we need the mutation rate to be slow enough that vaccines can keep up with it. The only way of doing that, is to reduce the pool of people being infected now.
In the future, with wider levels of base immunity (like the flu), so it’s not as serious, and vaccines that can keep up with the slow rate of change - we can evolve it into something less serious - but that requires a low rate of change - which requires higher vaccination rates; and sure as f*** not hundreds of thousands of new cases per day affording an opportunity for the virus to our evolve the immune system.
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@949havoc
Over the last lord knows how long, I have been friends with a relatively large number of Now Trump supporting friends and acquaintances; and before that I’ve been on politicial discussion boards in and off for 20 years.
From 2000-2008 the right wing platform was basically “democrats will tax you and not keep you safe”, 2008-2014 it was “democrats will take your guns, and they’re trying to impose socialism”, 2015 - 2018 it was “democrats are corrupt radicals” 2018-2020 it was “democrats are trying to destroy the country”
In that time, started by fox, and accelerated by Trump - there has been a consistent approach by specific factions in the right to turn the key voting base against sources of information that provide contradictory narratives as the rhetoric became more and more extreme.
News is all fake (unless it says something you like), fact checkers are all shills (unless they fact check As true), any politician who disagree is part of the swamp (until they aren’t), and any member of the government that speeds out is deep state.
The right is being trained to reject - without thought - that which disagrees them.
The left do it to a point too; confirmation bias is a problem for everyone - but not to that extent. (Take lab leak - when new information came about, the left mostly came around. On the right if that had happened the change on news would have been rejected)
In that time; you have these advent calendar YouTube videos and posts and memes.
The last 6 years has been non-stop keep the faith memes about how all the things that the conspiracists haCe said will happen that made you want to vote for them are just about to happen; you just have to wait.
Like mollifying a child about when Christmas is going to arrive, only they keep changing adding doors.
No one really believes the conspiracies, or videos like this; same way no one really believes that there was election fraud - they just need to be told that salvation is right around the corner. Sometime. Soon. Just watch. Sometime. Next week.
So the people sharing and posting this, have already been innoculated against contradictory sources of information; to the point, where if Hilary was singing at the half time in the superbowl, if it was on every channel, and people’s phones - they would find *some* way of justifying why it wasn’t actually Hilary. I mean Hilary body double was a thing after all...
I find the fact checkers actually do a great job; specifically snopes and pilot fact because they show their working, and linking all the reasons and information for you to check yourself.
But the fact check is for people like us, not the people who watch the videos; given how fucking stupid the claim is - pointing out that Hillary has a weekly podcast, and has entered into a book contract is more than sufficient really in the absence of any evidence affirming the claim.
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@ethang5
One big aspect of your behaviour here, is that even when shown incontrovertible evidence that what you’re saying is a flat out, ridiculous lie: you will still repeat the lie.
Our first ever interaction was to claim I never voted against liberals or atheists - and you continued to make that claim repeatedly after being shown multiple examples of me doing just that.
So in that respect, and this is my entire point - facts don’t matter.
The real issue, is one of projection; which you demonstrate quite well above.
I strongly doubt you watch msnbc, have a NYT or WaPo subscription, browse Huffington Post, or CNN.
You’re determination about what the left is saying is not based on seeing it; but the snippets you are told by the wider right wing echo chamber.
It’s not reality, just a caricature. If you look at the real left wing media, there is, and was a tremendous amount of reporting on Afghanistan and how badly things are going. There were dozens of opeds about it, some Negative, some mitigating.
So you’re accusations, for which you have not managed to support with anything either, don’t match up with reality.
Secondly; I used the example of Syria.
Here Trump went against the recommendation of his generals to pull out of Syria, abandoned the US allies who were responsible for fighting and holding ISIS; it lead to Turkey, seizing land, killing a bunch of former allies, and hundreds of not thousands of ISIS prisoners.
This was not criticized by the base, but was universally applauded by the base as a perfect example of doing the right thing ; despite by its nature it was very similar to what is happening in Afghanistan; with none of the mitigation.
Similarly, the Trump base - including you - has systematically indicated that contradictory information cannot be tolerated. Which is my hold point.
For example, there is a voluminous amount Of outrage on the left on some of things Biden is doing - such as refugee numbers, and more centrist approach.
The right, and people like you, often point out this controversy in the press and amongst the left when you want to argue Biden is bad; but then conveniently forget this criticism whilst trying to pretend the left simply follows everything Biden does.
On the other hand: when fox calls Arizona for Biden; or a right wing politician state’s there is no fraud - they are “cancelled” by the base.
Conflicting opinions from the orthodoxy that Trump is always right is not allowed on the right - yet you just have to browse twitter to see a bunch of left wing activists shouting about Biden.
Alas: your accusations are not born out of reality - they are simply projection of someone for whom the narrative trumps reality, and who cannot tolerate conflicting opinions.
But by all means - please continue the baseless accusations; it primarily serves to prove my point.
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@Rm
Science:
Specifically, COVID has an RNA proof reading mechanism that reduces mutation rate whereas flu does not.
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@n8nrgmi
The whole premise of mahrats here in this context and the context of constitutionality is ridiculous.
The government cannot force you to wear glasses against your consent.
However, it can prohibit you from driving a car without them, or operating heavy machinery, or be in specific lines of work without wearing the glasses, specifically relating to scenarios where you pose a risk to other if you were not to wear them.
Same goes for safety goggles, hard hats, etc: the government is not forcing you to wear a hard hat - but limits where you can go or be without one; giving you the choice of leaving your hat off, or entering the site.
So many are billing this as an invasion of privacy or violation of fundamental rights to body autonomy - but there is no case or law I am aware of that states that you must put the needle in your arm if you don't want any more than you must wear glasses at all times.
The whole thing is a bit of a canard; the preoccupation with mahrats is really just a very fancy way of saying “please don’t look at all the policies we’ll try and pass if you elect us - but still vote for us”
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@Vader
That’s what makes them defamation.
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defamatory criminal accusations
Man, I can’t get over this. Do you mean:
- accusations that are themselves illegal , and also defamatory: “I’m now playing an advert all channels stating as a matter of fact that you called Keanu Reeves an A$$”
- accusations that someone engaged in criminal defamation: “you’re now playing an advert all channels stating as a matter of fact that Ragnar called Keanu Reeves an A$$”
- accusations suggesting criminal behaviour and also defamatory: “you smoked weed, whilst calling Keanu reeves an a$$”
- accusations about criminals who engage in defamation: “Tucker Carlson called Keanu reeves an a$$”
- criminals who engage in defamation making accusations? “Did you hear tucker Carlson just said you called Keanu reeves an a$$”
I think I speak on behalf of almost everyone when I say that these are the key details we need to know
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@thett3
COVID has a much lower mutation rate than flu; this is why vaccines are still mostly effective against delta, whereas it’s very doubtful whether a vaccine from one season will be effective on the second for flu.
What COVID lacks in mutation rate, it makes up for in the sheer volume of people being infected: if it’s 10x less mutable, but infects 10x as many people, the number of mutations is the same.
A huge number of people have been vaccinated which sets up a huge pool of people to act as a selective pressure; meaning that if too many people get infected, there could be one delta variant mutation that makes it more effective at causing illness in the vaccinated.
*hopefully*, such mutations will mean the virus is less deadly: as a change to the spike protein is likely to make it less able to penetrate cells - but if that happened; it’s also very possible that would still be pretty deadly, cause significant economic shock; and set us back up square one, or close to it.
The only way of preventing that, is by reducing the pool of people who can get infected to as small as possible - hence vaccine mandates.
If that happens; it’s going to be the most ridiculously obnoxious thing that the right has done in a while - remember that the only reason any of this is an issue, was because Trump was worried the economic impacts of virus mitigation would harm his economic message and cost him the presidency; as a result he pushed the narrative of government overreach and mahrats. Because we all know that the Republican Party platform has been Democratsgungetcha for the last two decades, with a brief foray into immigrantsgungetcha for a couple of years.
The really shitty thing about it, is that it stifles discussion on both sides. How can you have a mainstream conversation about whether vaccine mandates are warranted and effective when doing so often makes you sound close to the people who are claiming that vaccines make you magnetic, or contain microchips, or are just a facade for population control?
So the conversation is poisoned by Trump, it poisons the conversation on the left so that the left don’t spend as much time having the important discussions they need to; which is then weaponized by the right in order to maintain the narrative they made up - and so the cycle continues.
I await the trolls to ignore all of this and instead focus on a weird sound bite to try and derail discussion
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@Tradesecret
You just seem to be going through what I said paragraph by paragraph and creating a set of disjoint arguments that don’t really link up. I’m not going to go point by point; because chances are you’ll do the same thing again; creating 100 irrelevant sub arguments of sub arguments just drives a conversation off the rails.
Perhaps you should focus on the big picture argument; and actually present something comprehensive. We’re grown ups and can scroll up to see what we said.
To start with, I am absolutely an empiricist because it’s the only valid answer to this question, as I have and will show; despite the objections - ironically, you are an empiricist too.
You’re citing a particular form of experience as a way of gaining knowledge at the same time as trashing other types of experience as a way of gaining knowledge. That’s incoherent.
In reality, you’re just arbitrarily asserting, without justification, that a particular type of experience is somehow special, and reveals truth without explaining how or why. Also incoherent.
Your real objection is not whether observation of reality is required for knowledge; but that’s yours should be accepted as valid.
I find this fairly typical - it is not enough for many theists to simply have faith and believe; they also have to pretend that their belief is knowledge: religion doesn’t know anything, it’s just very good at loudly pretending that it does.
I’m going to explain my assumptions. You seem to be accusing me of making a bunch of then - without saying what they are or exactly why they’re inconsistent.
Assumption 1: We all appear to be collectively experiencing some form of shared reality.
Assumption 2: logic is a valid way to interpret this shared reality, and our experiences.
This makes no claims about what reality is; how accurate our experiences are, or claims that our reasoning is always valid.
But without these two assumptions; it’s not possible to have any discussion on truth: because without 1 truth can’t exist, and without 2, logical debate is meaningless.
If you reject them, then I will accept your concession, as you’re agreeing your position is inherently irrational.
From there, we have to define what we mean by truth. I defined it as that which is concordant with reality - the state of how reality is. While you vehemently objected to that definition - twice - but declined to actually come up with your own; which is no basis for rational discussion.
I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and presume you’ve misunderstood again - reality as it is, is not reality as we observe it.
You do seem get a bit weird by suggesting reality is subjective - which it isn’t. While I can never know what you think tasty wheat tastes like; we can have broad agreement on things we observe: trees exists, I have ten fingers, there is a day and night. That’s objective as these agreed facts are not dependent on feelings of opinions.
Perhaps you just have an odd definition of truth and reality - it’s hard to tell as you’re not saying what they are.
So given the two assumptions and definitions, the question becomes by what process can we make determinations about our shared reality - how do we determine what is true - knowledge.
The only way - almost by definition - is by observing, experiencing and reasoning about that reality.
How can you possibly make any determination about what is real, what reality is, or how it works - without the ability to tell whether the answer matches what is real, what reality is, or how it works?
I don’t know, you’re spending too much telling me you can to say.
That’s what knowledge is; in any functional sense that we use it in every day lives ; illustrated with the box examples: you can only know what is in the box if you can some make an observation that allows you to determine what is in the box.
Your reply utterly fails to understand this example:
You ask if the guess involved some reasoning based observation - is it knowledge. Well yes. Duh. You’ve made observations and used it to determine what’s in the box.
You ask what if the method of determining what is in the box is unreliable, is that knowledge? Well no; duh. If the fidelity, accuracy or reliability of your measurement is not sufficient to make an accurate determination - you can’t claim to know the answer.
Far from being any sort of rebuttal here; your “objection” really just expands upon the very point I’m making. In the same way you won’t offer a definition of truth, or reality; you also criticize empiricism, but fail to offer an alternative that you can show works.
How can you know what is in the box without making an empirical determination? Either to validate the boxes content, or to validate some methodology to determine the boxes content?
Let’s briefly expand on what I mean by knowledge, fidelity and reliability of the observation.
Knowledge is not binary true/false, it’s levels of confidence. Take “Do squirrels exist”
All observations are logically consistent with the statement that squirrels do exist in our shared reality: But as there are possible explantations that allow for squirrels not actually existing, that we cannot disprove, all assumption 2 allows us to do is to say one is far more likely than the other.
Conversely, if we have a grainy camera, or incomplete information, we may not have enough information to know to some reasonable degree, but we can offer better than a guess.
Someone could have doctored the image of the box; is it likely? Does someone have motive and means? In most cases you can reasonably say it’s unlikely. You can raise the confidence though, through additional observation (checking the camera, for example)
Perhaps part of your confusion is that you’re mixing up levels of confidence with a need for knowing something without doubt: alas this is not really possible ; there is always a possible alternative that cannot be disproven.
These issues dovetail nicely with fidelity and reliability. Take “Can I trust my eyes?”
Remember assumption 1: we live in a shared reality, and if we’re all consistently seeing the same thing, assumption 2 helps render it more likely that the observation is reliable than everyone imagining things.
Disagreements tell us we can’t always trust our eyes, movement, things leaping out at us, cataracts, hallucinations etc. Fidelity and Reliability is high but not perfect.
We can make rational conclusions about outlier observations, we can rule things out. We can perform vision tests, run comparisons, brain scans, etc - all to say we can use observation to justify the confidence in the fidelity of our observations.
That applies to religious experiences too : Are those experiences truth - representative of reality, or false? You can use observation to determine the fidelity of those experiences - to tell whether they show reality: Brain scans being able to discriminate a religious experience from imagination; and an established baseline of accuracy by taking the “knowledge” from these experiences and comparing it with reality outside what is to be expected if it were being faked.
If genuine religious experience always, say, unambiguously predicted otherwise exceptional events 5/10/15 years into the future - that would help render religious experience valid empirical evidence.
But the last 5000 years have an interesting tapestry of religion spectacularly failing to deliver anything. Whereas one only has to think about the knowledge needed for you and I to be able to communicate as we are to understand the unmitigated success of empiricism in delivering demonstrable knowledge.
Despite all the talk, all the hand waving, and vocal protestations - religious experience has not so much as carved an arrowhead. That, should be a much starker statement about whether your professed experience is a valid way of discerning reality - whether it is really knowledge - than a billion of my posts.
All this is, as it always is: just an attempt to try and manufacture knowledge from belief.
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@Mesmer
Congratulations. RM threatening legal action against you is one the new silver medals.
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@oromagi
The strategy is pretty effective; and fascinating
I raised key issues, described why I think I’m right, presented an argument; while most people tend to try and address the point - although many may do it badly - the approach taken seems to be, as I explained, to not answer the point being raised by simply divert the topic to an area of familiar comfort.
IE: shift to talk about government being untrustworthy, argue with the bold pretence that this is what the argument is actually about, rather than what I’m actually talking about which is whether two actions are comparable or one action can be supported when one cannot.
What’s tricky about this form of argument, is that it’s easy to get sucked in; because there’s always a compulsion to answer points raised. When you do that, you can then drive the discussion off the rails and away from the position of strength.
If you can find someone who can get sucked in, all you have to do is maintain that pretence and you can continually shift the conversation back to that point of comfort - goading the other person into constantly bashing their heads against that same pretence, whilst making no effort to respond to anything they’ve actually said.
I mean; how can you argue against someone who is not acknowledging you said anything - or worse - who continually pretends as if you said something completely different from what you did?
I want to actually have a discussion on the merits; and have been doing this long enough to understand that when confronted with this sort of diversionary tactic you have to continually draw the conversation back to what is being avoided, reject the pretence, and call out the failure to address the point.
One of the strategies I have for this type of technique is that once you’ve established the pattern; post your own expectation of how they’re going to divert the conversation next; I did it a few posts ago.
It undermines their ability to use the same strategy again; and forces them back into an area of discomfort; and from there as you can see, forcing them off that pretence makes their approach rapidly go off the rails.
I mean, the new pretence adopted; that constantly pointing out that the point has been ignored and the subject has been changed and to suggest that the other person should defend their claims is somehow Harrassment, is obviously patently absurd ; but in itself is just another way to change the subject in a way that derails the conversation - which could well be the intent.
Unfortunately there’s only one practical way of responding to that new pretence without achieving the goal of driving the conversation into a position of strength that will cede control back to allow the other person to control the course of the conversation.
I’m more interested in having someone rebuttal or attack my claims than trying to attack this new pretence tbh; though it’s always interesting figuring out different ways to attack silly rhetorical strategies like that :)
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Ahh so close... and we’re back to deflection...
Recall however, that a bulk of my previous posts, that you have done your best to ignore, go to substantial detail to explain exactly how and why these are two very different things; even though there may be similarities.
Those posts pretty broadly deal with what your saying; once you stop pretending they don’t exist.
I can make this pretty simple to illustrate the difference - please show me any US or Canadian law or enforceable rules at a federal, state or local level that legally forces any individual to put a needle in their arm for a vaccination even if they chose not to out of personal choice.
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@Greyparrot
I’m so close to being able to pull you into an actual discussion rather than you just yelling unrelated statements at me.
I will point out that just yelling what you think, does not, in any way shape or form, have any bearing, impact or pose as a rebuttal or attack on anything I just said.
Perhaps you’re out of practice; with all the meme throwing and habitual derailing; let me walk you through how to do this:
First, you take what I said; if you pay attention what I did is walk through why one thing is completely different from another; and what helps mitigate the issues one vs the other.
Second, you use logic and reason to justify why you think that approach is wrong; inconsistent, contradictory or hypocritical.
Third - and I cannot stress this enough - try your hardest not to try skip points one and two, deflect, change the subject or subtly ignore everything I said in order to focus on cheap troll points that show your worldview is as fragile as your masculinity.
I will point out that just yelling what you think, does not, in any way shape or form, have any bearing, impact or pose as a rebuttal or attack on anything I just said.
Perhaps you’re out of practice; with all the meme throwing and habitual derailing; let me walk you through how to do this:
First, you take what I said; if you pay attention what I did is walk through why one thing is completely different from another; and what helps mitigate the issues one vs the other.
Second, you use logic and reason to justify why you think that approach is wrong; inconsistent, contradictory or hypocritical.
Third - and I cannot stress this enough - try your hardest not to try skip points one and two, deflect, change the subject or subtly ignore everything I said in order to focus on cheap troll points that show your worldview is as fragile as your masculinity.
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@Greyparrot
You clearly have the time and energy; given the extent, timing and inevitability of your constant replies.
I think the issue you lack is one of capacity.
I base this one the grounds that were I wrong and if you were right, it would take a mere paragraph or two to destroy my point; whilst you have put ten times as much energy and time into trying to avoid doing that.
I mean - I did just that with my point about vaccines vs abortions - and it’s obviously eating you up inside that you have no ability to answer.
Instead of actually paying any attention to anything I’m saying; you’re just trying to change the subject to that of your meme du jour: in this case “Men in Washington DC bad!” It will probably be something else next week.
I mean, we both know that this completely and utterly irrelevant to anything that I said in any way shape or form; it’s just an obvious attempt to ignore the point and detail the conversation.
Which kinda draws me back to the original point, all your time and energy is comprehensively focused on avoiding a conversation, derailing discussion, and ignoring conflicting points of view. Which is odd for a long standing member of debate site, don’t you think?
I think the issue you lack is one of capacity.
I base this one the grounds that were I wrong and if you were right, it would take a mere paragraph or two to destroy my point; whilst you have put ten times as much energy and time into trying to avoid doing that.
I mean - I did just that with my point about vaccines vs abortions - and it’s obviously eating you up inside that you have no ability to answer.
Instead of actually paying any attention to anything I’m saying; you’re just trying to change the subject to that of your meme du jour: in this case “Men in Washington DC bad!” It will probably be something else next week.
I mean, we both know that this completely and utterly irrelevant to anything that I said in any way shape or form; it’s just an obvious attempt to ignore the point and detail the conversation.
Which kinda draws me back to the original point, all your time and energy is comprehensively focused on avoiding a conversation, derailing discussion, and ignoring conflicting points of view. Which is odd for a long standing member of debate site, don’t you think?
Of course; you’re likely not going to reply to any of this, instead I’m fairly sure you will reply with the same or similar nonsense you’ve already made, as you have nothing else.
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@949havoc
Part of the issue, is that what history would have been is irrelevant; as whatever happened, whether better or worse, it will be stoutly defended without question - this is based on past behaviour and some element of similar scenarios.
We can, however; very much second guess history based on things we already know when the scenario is small and understood. The simple question is of what could have improved the situation, would it have been thought of, and would it have been done by someone else? The biggest precipitating factor here is how fast the Taliban moved was unexpected; and that’s likely to have been the same regardless.
Either way though, it’s likely beside the point, no matter how good or bad it went for either - or even if it had been the same; any bad aspect would have been used to beat one side over the head; and the other would have been universally praised; my whole point is that the reaction and what is happening demonstrates that this my guy can do no wrong mentality is only really true of one side.
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@ethang5
No; you either misunderstand, or simply do not want to understand my post.
What you’re doing is simply weaponized hypocrisy. What is true, what is real, who did what; doesn’t matter, it has no bearing on how you approach this conversation, or argument.
All that matters is the who.
It’s the 3 minute hate: everything the other guys do is wrong, and everything we do is right. Dissent from that line is punishable, by removal or ostracism; and all that remains is a never ending narrative that Trump is always right and The left is always wrong.
This isn’t theoretical, this is based on indisputable observation; based on things like the Syria withdrawal, or Trumps base reaction to anyone saying he did something bad.
Truth is irrelevant; all that matters is being able to find some way to defend what your guy did, and beat the other guy over the head with what they did - even if they did the same thing.
Like classic Trolls and propagandists, the best way to control a conversation through lies, is to make sure you accuse the other people of doing what you do first; and that’s what’s happening here.
The narrative that the media will do anything to support the left, and the left will believe everything Biden does is perfect is completely and totally blown out of the water; sunk and destroyed by actually looking at what’s happening, what people are saying, and how the media and the regular left are portraying and perceiving it - opeds, articles, criticism in all aspects of the left about the what’s, how and the whys, with the only debate is quite how much blame to apportion.
If Trump had won, and pulled out in May, there is almost no reason to believe it would have been any better at all; and if it were just as bad, you would be here telling everyone how well it went; with no blame being apportioned to the leader; again, not theoretical - that’s what’s happened before, that was the reaction on every almost Everything Trump has done.
Like I said; for you and the Trump die hards - facts don’t matter, the past doesn’t matter, all that matters is an endless present in which Trump is always right.
You are at war with Eastasia. You’ve always been at war with Eastasia.
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@Tradesecret
I think you misunderstand.
We have reality - as it is, this is the truth of how things are, you are absolutely correct that what is true, is true irrespective of us.
Then we have knowledge - which is our ability to confirm that something is true or not.
Don’t confuse truth with knowledge. They are completely different, but related things.
Take a couple of examples:
There is a closed box with a random number in it. You guess that the box has the number 9 written in it. That’s not knowledge - that’s a guess.
You open the box; and it has the number 9 in it. You’ve confirmed the truth and can now say you “know” what was in the box; but your guess was still a guess - you did not “know” what was in the box before it was opened.
The process of confirmation is what makes something knowledge.
Likewise, if I had a camera recording of someone putting a 9 into the same box; then I can say I know that the box contains a 9. I have confirmed what was in the box before it was opened.
Imagine the number was chosen at random without anyone being able to see what it was; it goes in the box, then everything is burned to ashes. There was definitely a truth of what was in the box - but we can never know what it was; as there is no way of being able to confirm it.
Indeed, regardless of what is true or not; the only thing that functionally matters to us is knowledge - the ability to confirm what is true by checking it against reality.
In this respect there is no “truth” or “religious truth” just truth. And there is no “knowledge” or “religious knowledge” - only that which you can confirm is true.
What “religious knowledge” is, is a group of people getting together and professing loudly that they believe with all their heart that the box contains the number 48391, that people have had visions and experiences of it containing that number. With other groups claiming it contains the number 3628 for exactly the same reasons, and others still saying 9492.
These Boxists come into Boxism forums and loudly process that their belief and their ideas should be counted as knowledge, that we aboxists must agree that the box contains 48391, and that their agreement is not a guess because they all agree on it, and have all experiences something that tells them it is so; that somehow their guess is special because of their collective belief, and that if somehow holds some special deeper truth even though they have no ability to show what is really in the box.
Until you open the box, or have the ability to test and validate what is in the box, and confirm what is in the box; what these groups are saying is “belief”, it is not “knowledge”.
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@Greyparrot
Never have I seen someone spend so much time, effort and energy on a debate site attempting to avoid being drawn into a debate on an issue.
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@Greyparrot
Yah yah...if some fuckwit in DC gets to decide the word "substantive" then you can throw your freedoms out the window like the rest of the nutjobs.We get it sir.
If you paid attention to what I said; I’m pointing out the key difference between requiring vaccinations in order to go to restaurants or work in certain professions (rather than being legally forced to be vaccinated with no legal avenue to decline); and being forced to remain pregnant; is that one has almost no meaningful financial or health impact; the other has major financial, health and life impacts.
It’s what makes them very different things.
You don’t seem to be arguing or contesting that, but randomly changing the subject to some completely unrelated, nonsequitor which doesn’t seem to make any sense.
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@EtrnlVw
If you claim something is true: If you can show it’s true - that’s knowledge By definition. Otherwise it is not - by definition.
To show it’s true; you must be able to point to reality and show how the claim matches the reality.
Or, to use a snappy shorthand: if you can’t show it; you don’t know it.
The problem is that we’re unreliable observers; we don’t see things as they are, but after processing by our brains; we are biased, we can be mislead, we can misinterpret and we can see things that aren’t there.
So to be able to know things, there have to have a baseline agreement of reality: things we are confidant are real because we all see them; and things we cannot be confident are real because they are the unverifiable images inside one persons brain that cannot be independently verified.
Even at that point, we’re still unreliable observers, and there’s always multiple possible explanations for everything, so at some level knowledge is really just some level of confidence that something is true.
So in that respect - everyone confirms, everyone collectively confirms and agrees what reality is. This is, like, a basic epistemological discussion about what a group can consider knowledge, the question appears particularly obtuse.
There appears to be a preoccupation with theists in trying to pretend that unverifiable belief is knowledge.
We know religions exist as we can all observe them. It Matches reality. We know that religious people have religious experiences, based on brain scans, reliable testimony, etc. Again knowledge.
It is knowledge to say people have “religious experience”, but are those experiences reflections of reality? That cannot be confirmed against agreed reality, so claims of truth are not knowledge no matter how people protest.
They could be: for example, God could tell me how to produce anti gravity. Which would allow me to demonstrate religious visions provide knowledge - but only if it could be validated.
God could tell me in a vision how to set up a portal to heaven for everyone to go visit: that would show that religious visions produce knowledge of God specifically.
Short of something like that, religious experience are trusted as being from God, without external confirmation against reality - which renders it belief regardless of the nature of protests to the contrary.
To show it’s true; you must be able to point to reality and show how the claim matches the reality.
Or, to use a snappy shorthand: if you can’t show it; you don’t know it.
The problem is that we’re unreliable observers; we don’t see things as they are, but after processing by our brains; we are biased, we can be mislead, we can misinterpret and we can see things that aren’t there.
So to be able to know things, there have to have a baseline agreement of reality: things we are confidant are real because we all see them; and things we cannot be confident are real because they are the unverifiable images inside one persons brain that cannot be independently verified.
Even at that point, we’re still unreliable observers, and there’s always multiple possible explanations for everything, so at some level knowledge is really just some level of confidence that something is true.
So in that respect - everyone confirms, everyone collectively confirms and agrees what reality is. This is, like, a basic epistemological discussion about what a group can consider knowledge, the question appears particularly obtuse.
There appears to be a preoccupation with theists in trying to pretend that unverifiable belief is knowledge.
We know religions exist as we can all observe them. It Matches reality. We know that religious people have religious experiences, based on brain scans, reliable testimony, etc. Again knowledge.
It is knowledge to say people have “religious experience”, but are those experiences reflections of reality? That cannot be confirmed against agreed reality, so claims of truth are not knowledge no matter how people protest.
They could be: for example, God could tell me how to produce anti gravity. Which would allow me to demonstrate religious visions provide knowledge - but only if it could be validated.
God could tell me in a vision how to set up a portal to heaven for everyone to go visit: that would show that religious visions produce knowledge of God specifically.
Short of something like that, religious experience are trusted as being from God, without external confirmation against reality - which renders it belief regardless of the nature of protests to the contrary.
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@Greyparrot
Except when it comes to Covid vaccines. Then it's no longer your body nor your choice...
If only I had written a detailed rebuttal to this very point in the first three paragraphs of my response....
If pregnancy, childbirth, and all their related impacts was just as intrusive as wearing a peace of cloth over your face in a supermarket, or was limited to a minute risk of a significant adverse reaction, and likely only a few days of having an arm ache - i’d be anti abortion.Likewise, if wearing a mask or being vaccinated required at least 9 months of substantive health issues, cost, health risk, and a plethora of financial, health, career or other issues; I’d be anti-mask and anti-vaccine mandate too.But they’re not; they’re not even close to being on the same continent as the same ballpark.
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@Tradesecret
It all depends on what you consider to be “truth”.
If you think what is “true” is “what is concordant with reality”, then you can only “know” something is true if you can show it matches reality.
That implies religious “truth” you can’t confirm can’t be considered knowledge.
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@949havoc
One of the really telling things about Afghanistan, is that in the left there is a broad acceptance of the facts.
There’s a broadly agreed understanding that the withdrawal didn’t go very well, that Americans were left behind.
There’s a lot of stuff that Trump was responsible for, but a bunch that Biden and the administration could have done better.
There is a broad understanding it was bit of a f**k up, a little bit of anger at how few Afghanistan nationals that helped America didn’t get out; but with a general disagreement of how much blame; or anger towards whom is reasonable.
The “fake news” Biden supporting media is broadly reporting all the bad stuff that is happening, with op Ed’s criticizing the withdrawal everywhere.
On the other hand; imagine that Trump had won, and this went identically or worse.
There would be no such handwringing on the right, no such negative reporting in OAN, Hannity, etc.
The right would fall into lock step praising how Trump ended the forever war, how he did everything he could, and how this is all fake news and deep state conspiracy because of ending the military gravy train.
This is the obvious and clear weaponized hypocrisy of the right; where there is no clear and consistent standard of what is right - only who.
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If pregnancy, childbirth, and all their related impacts was just as intrusive as wearing a peace of cloth over your face in a supermarket, or was limited to a minute risk of a significant adverse reaction, and likely only a few days of having an arm ache - i’d be anti abortion.
Likewise, if wearing a mask or being vaccinated required at least 9 months of substantive health issues, cost, health risk, and a plethora of financial, health, career or other issues; I’d be anti-mask and anti-vaccine mandate too.
But they’re not; they’re not even close to being on the same continent as the same ballpark.
The bottom line is simple:
No Woman should be forced by the government to go through all of the varied and significant consequences of pregnancy and childbirth - at any point - if they don’t want to.
Whether or not you consider a fetus a person, or whatever set of complete or incomplete rights you feel it has, if the continued life of an individual - any individual - is only possible through major, sustained and substantial impact to another person, that other person must consent to it.
That’s a blanket statement in almost total support of abortion for any reason prior to just shy of the third trimester - where it is not possible for a fetus to possibly survive outside the mother.
If a woman does not consent to major abominable surgery, or all the related issues of childbirth after this point in order to be able to remove the unborn child without killing it; I also think she shouldn’t be forced into it that either; however the reality there is that it rarely happens other than in instances were there is genuine medical need, or in cases where the unborn child isn’t viable.
This is the real crux: all of us should be able to consent to having likely, substantial and life altering health impacts - visited upon us without our consent; preventing such life altering health impacts is part of what healthcare is. Right now, the only way of doing that is through abortion.
When artificial wombs, and transporters allow a fetus to be unobtrusively beamed out of a pregnant woman’s body; or if allowing the unborn child to live is as physically or emotionally intrusive as wearing a mask; or as impactful as a safe vaccine; then I would be happy to reassess my position; but it really isn’t.
Likewise, if wearing a mask or being vaccinated required at least 9 months of substantive health issues, cost, health risk, and a plethora of financial, health, career or other issues; I’d be anti-mask and anti-vaccine mandate too.
But they’re not; they’re not even close to being on the same continent as the same ballpark.
The bottom line is simple:
No Woman should be forced by the government to go through all of the varied and significant consequences of pregnancy and childbirth - at any point - if they don’t want to.
Whether or not you consider a fetus a person, or whatever set of complete or incomplete rights you feel it has, if the continued life of an individual - any individual - is only possible through major, sustained and substantial impact to another person, that other person must consent to it.
That’s a blanket statement in almost total support of abortion for any reason prior to just shy of the third trimester - where it is not possible for a fetus to possibly survive outside the mother.
If a woman does not consent to major abominable surgery, or all the related issues of childbirth after this point in order to be able to remove the unborn child without killing it; I also think she shouldn’t be forced into it that either; however the reality there is that it rarely happens other than in instances were there is genuine medical need, or in cases where the unborn child isn’t viable.
This is the real crux: all of us should be able to consent to having likely, substantial and life altering health impacts - visited upon us without our consent; preventing such life altering health impacts is part of what healthcare is. Right now, the only way of doing that is through abortion.
When artificial wombs, and transporters allow a fetus to be unobtrusively beamed out of a pregnant woman’s body; or if allowing the unborn child to live is as physically or emotionally intrusive as wearing a mask; or as impactful as a safe vaccine; then I would be happy to reassess my position; but it really isn’t.
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@Dr.Franklin
Some people have lost faith with science because their worldview is undermined by its conclusions, and the dissonance that comes from that mismatch has been exploited by individuals and groups wanting power and money, who use faulty reasoning and generalized propoganda to push people’s dissonance to the side of dismissing the science they don’t like.
Scientific institutions do have issues, they are human in nature and are prone to error; but this simple fact, and many real world examples of it, are often dishonestly used to push people who don’t want to believe something into rejecting conclusions that are indisputable.
Arguments become the comfortable regurgitation of talking points, where the approach taken by one side is “if I am right about one thing, I am right about everything; if you are wrong about one thing, you are wrong about everything.”
Scientific institutions do have issues, they are human in nature and are prone to error; but this simple fact, and many real world examples of it, are often dishonestly used to push people who don’t want to believe something into rejecting conclusions that are indisputable.
Arguments become the comfortable regurgitation of talking points, where the approach taken by one side is “if I am right about one thing, I am right about everything; if you are wrong about one thing, you are wrong about everything.”
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These sites work because content and dissension attracts engagement. Too much, or too toxic, and it harms engagement.
Moderation is there to constrain the toxic aspects that drive people away whilst maintaining as much of the dissension as possible to drive engagement.
It’s important to note that Moderation is constrained through popular support in shitstorms, and user interactions not by the rules assigned.
If a rule is applied exactly as written and intended, but in a way that ends up appearing or being clearly unfair; some moderators may possibly do it - but really only once before they’re constrained by shitstorm.
The real purpose of moderator rules here, is that any moderator decision will illicit at least 5% of active users suggesting it was the right decision, and 5% suggesting that the moderators are like Hitler.
Dealing with that is so tiring, so thankless, and so ridiculous; having rules to wave in those threads to give you cover that your good faith decision made in the best interests of all users wasn’t actually because you’re trying to become a forum dictator.
Decisions, users, context, etc, are so unique in each case that requires moderation, that you can’t really rely on these type of rules to always work for the good of the site; and sometimes you need an individual to be able to argue the case for the userbase (hence they president) or to be able to at least be able to convey that decisions are clearly made in good faith, for all but the three die hard haters that would object if you had banned Jeffrey Epstein from talking to highschoolers.
Moderation is there to constrain the toxic aspects that drive people away whilst maintaining as much of the dissension as possible to drive engagement.
It’s important to note that Moderation is constrained through popular support in shitstorms, and user interactions not by the rules assigned.
If a rule is applied exactly as written and intended, but in a way that ends up appearing or being clearly unfair; some moderators may possibly do it - but really only once before they’re constrained by shitstorm.
The real purpose of moderator rules here, is that any moderator decision will illicit at least 5% of active users suggesting it was the right decision, and 5% suggesting that the moderators are like Hitler.
Dealing with that is so tiring, so thankless, and so ridiculous; having rules to wave in those threads to give you cover that your good faith decision made in the best interests of all users wasn’t actually because you’re trying to become a forum dictator.
Decisions, users, context, etc, are so unique in each case that requires moderation, that you can’t really rely on these type of rules to always work for the good of the site; and sometimes you need an individual to be able to argue the case for the userbase (hence they president) or to be able to at least be able to convey that decisions are clearly made in good faith, for all but the three die hard haters that would object if you had banned Jeffrey Epstein from talking to highschoolers.
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@Yassine
If you're a naturalist, what makes you believe in the truth of this story knowing that it's unscientific?
Evolution is the most well supported scientific theory that exists, with the most well tested and validated predictions out of any scientific theory that currently exists.
In terms of beliefs, there are really three types of people:
Those that have concluded that evolution is the best explanation of life as we see it, those who don’t understand evolution, and those who refuse to be honest about evolution.
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@Tarik
is objective morality distinct from morality?I wouldn’t say so.It seems absurd to me that we should think chocolate ice cream is not really ice cream...or that any 'flavor' of morality is not morality.I agree.
I graciously accept your concession.
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@Tarik
The specific qualifying distinction I add to what I am defining that completely changes the specific thing I am describingThen your pretty much admitting that morality isn’t subjective.
No: see below. Defining what it means for the light to be on does not admit that the light is not on.
I am not defining what “light” means, or what “on means”, simply making sure we agree on what the light being turned on means in contrast to it being off.Difference here is a light bulb can turn on or off, morality can’t turn objective or subjective.
Also light bulbs are made of glass - and morality isn’t! So that’s a difference too!
The difference is not relevant to the analogy: the analogy is explaining that light bulb and and an light bulb that are turned on are describing a thing, and a thing with a given property.
This is just ridiculous knee jerk nonsense “omg I have to find some way to object” type response.
Your reply here borders on idiotic ; as you’re essentially saying that if I am drawing a distinction between a “light”, and a “light that is turned on”, the the light we are talking about cannot be turned on.But that’s not a distinction, your simply just making a broad topic more specific.
And this is specifically relevant how.
It’s a ridiculous argument that does not appear to recognize that I am talking about a quality of something, not the something of self.Well if the quality of it is subjective then you shouldn’t use the word subjective in your explanation.
I’m specifically referring to your interesting argument where to try and keep up the pretence that you are correct, you pretend that you are unable to distinguish a thing, and a thing with a given state: your apparent confusion that a fast helicopter is not a helicopter or light that is turned on is not a light.
In the case of morality. Subjective morality is morality in a given state, driven by something. No one disagrees on the definition of morality, or the definition of subjective - but it makes sense to clarify exactly what I mean by subjective morality in the context of what drives it - which is the entire context of this point in the original argument.
At this point, your argument has become what I refer to as “picking peanuts out of poop”.And your arguments have been illogical and dishonest, back in your court.
Ahh yes, the “I know you are but what Am I defence”.
Let me clarify. You’re not talking about your original claim any more: you’ve made a set of completely different arguments on each individual response that don’t make any sense related to each other, or tie back to the original. Indeed, these all make little sense and you’ll drop these to focus on specific new unrelated errors you can spin from what Ive said.
Your main defence is to argue that light, and a light that is on are not both lights. This is a rudimentary error of categorization - and that you can make it and call me illogical, is rather obscene.
You make this argument again, drop it for the rest of the reply - and make some rather ridiculous statements, such as that a light can be turned on invalidates an analogy that expresses that a particular object in a given state is still that particular object.
The fact that you haven’t defended the initial claim is “the poop”, this scattershot of individual arguments trying to find a variety of different issues with specific lines, without tying them back to the original, are like the little peanuts.
Let me call your responses: You will drop each one of these points when you realize they can’t be eaten, and then simply find other issues with each new reply, each time getting further and further away from your original point.
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@Tarik
No, because like I said before it was a meaningless variable,
The specific qualifying distinction I add to what I am defining that completely changes the specific thing I am describing; it’s absolutely not meaningless. And the only reason your asserting it is, is because you realized you messed up in your original objection.
unless you’re arguing a distinction between morality and subjective morality which weakens your original argument because if theirs a distinction then morality isn’t in fact subjective.
Replace morality with “light bulb”, and “subjective” with on.
I am not defining what “light” means, or what “on means”, simply making sure we agree on what the light being turned on means in contrast to it being off.
Your reply here borders on idiotic ; as you’re essentially saying that if I am drawing a distinction between a “light”, and a “light that is turned on”, the the light we are talking about cannot be turned on.
It’s a ridiculous argument that does not appear to recognize that I am talking about a quality of something, not the something of self.
At this point, your argument has become what I refer to as “picking peanuts out of poop”.
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@Tarik
I admit I am guilty of not adding the extra meaningless variables
You explicitly omitted a critical part of my post which rendered the two parts different.
I’m sorry you didn’t fully understand what I said originally; the correct response is to apologize: or just stop responding; not to deliberately shoe horn whatever dishonest argument you can make in order to save face for your original error.
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@Tarik
I’m defining what I mean by morality
Should be:
I’m defining what I mean by morality being subjective
Don’t intentionally misquote people; it’s intellectually dishonest.
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@Tarik
I’m not defining what morality is either.
I’m defining what I mean by morality being subjective in contrast to objective.
IE: I’m simply clarifying that subjective morality is simply morality that has a subjective standard, rather than a universal standard to avoid any potential confusion.
I’m not sure what your objection is.
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@Tarik
I’m not defining the word subjective.
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