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@RemyBrown
The former I can respect; the ladder I can't.
Can't make it up, I swear.
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@DavidAZZ
It seems the philosophy is more of a government intervention rather than a personal freedom, would you agree? Meaning, we both feel it would be a good thing for the ultra-rich to help out the poor, except you feel it should be governed through legislation and I feel it should be governed by conscience. Am I seeing this correctly?
As I see it, leaving "conscience" to do it has resulted in it not being done. I can tell my kids to vacuum their rooms and hope their conscience compels them, but when they don't do it, I have other ways to compel them, right? What you're saying is just keep trusting that someday the light of reason will dawn on them, in the meantime, your house is getting more and more disgusting. We all share the same space, we all have responsibilities to it. If you don't think the government should intervene when hoarding wealth actively harms its citizens, we just are starting at entirely different premises and arguing it further would be pointless.
I want to make this vanishingly small percentage of the population (less than 10,000 people out of 300,000,000) to help those who need it, a percentage that grows every single day. You don't like the verb "make" there and think they'll "choose" to do it, even though they have never done so. You think poor people are poor for mainly because they're incapable of "thinking like a rich person" or they just don't have the hustle to become the president of Microsoft. I think they're poor for a lot of reasons, but none of them have to do with thinking like a rich person. They're poor for reasons like a $200 monthly fee for a bank to maintain a checking account that doesn't have an average monthly balance of $1000 in it, for example. Thinking like a rich person isn't "save your money." Thinking like a rich person is "how do I replace $29 / hr David Azz with a $4 / hr Guillermo Gomez but still keep my selling price the same?" How that helps the struggling single mother is beyond me.
IF this were to happen to me, I wouldn't wanting to go to organizations that I don't believe in, such as Planned Parenthood, or a Catholic group.
Right on! Now you're talking: send every dollar you have over $200M to whatever organizations you think are worthy while you're alive. Spend it locally, would be my move, because that's where I live, that's the community I'm part of, and it'd be pretty cool to have built a park or a basketball court or a pool or a hospital or a school. But if I wait until I have $500M and I get hit by a bus, oh no, one of these other places might get it.
On top of this, it is forcing a person to lose his fortune that he has gained and demanding he do something good with it.
So $200M isn't STILL a fortune? That's what you get to keep, which you'd be able to will in any way you saw fit. I know conservatives tend to hear ideas like this and then it's all "hope you like the bread line!" but honestly, that's lazy thinking and cynicism that doesn't serve to improve our country in any way. The bottom line for me is if you're not earning $50M a year, you should be enthusiastically in support of any sort of plan like the one I describe, because you're never going to be a billionaire.
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@DavidAZZ
As I said, philosophically irreconcilable it seems. Good luck with your business all the same!
ETA, this is curious though:
Sounds great and all but this is like charging corporations environmental fees because they can afford it. The corporations will turn around and raise their rates to make up for that fee. They are not giving up that extra money. They will pass it to the consumer and raise the inflation rate because of government intervention. Keep the government out of the finance business. It has only made things worse.
No, it's not like that at all. I'm talking about taxing personal wealth, not corporate wealth, in this case. How would you "raising your rates" as someone who died with 250M dollars work to your advantage, what's it even mean? I'm confused. If the end result is you spend the last ten years of your life thinking "I don't want to government fumbling my money, so I better do something good with it rather than accumulate three more airplanes", then the goal is achieved AND you had control over the money.
You don't even try to make the moral argument, though, my friend. You just say it won't work.
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@DavidAZZ
I think the difference between what we are saying is that I would give the owner of the money the ability to decide where that money should be given rather than the government.
This is all well and good, and ideally, I'd love for it to be this way. History demonstrates though that these ultra-wealthy don't really do much for society with all that money. They sit on it, and then will it to their kids, who then sit on it and let it grow, and bang, you have a permanent landed gentry and now a ruling class, which is profoundly unAmerican. I'd rather have hospitals, roads, schools, no hunger, less homelessness, etc. I'd love to see billionaires taking care of these problems on their own, but instead they're buying yachts and going to Diddy's Freak Offs.
So, Donald Trump is a billionaire and the next President. You will have to agree that he has some sort of ability to get to where he was at. Is he a good person? Not hardly and I do not think he is a great role model.
Yes, that "ability" was having a rich dad. Everything else follows from that.
Just saying that a ultra rich stays rich through the government. Imposing more taxes would not change it.
Why not? What if we imposed a tax of 100% on anything over $200M at death? So if you have 1B, and you die, 800M goes to a pool of revenue for stuff like roads, bridge repair, energy initiatives, whatever. Sure, you'd have to find the leaks in this idea before you could implement it (like legislating against offshoring X% of your personal wealth in the Caymans, for example), but why wouldn't that change the way people at that level spend their money? I know, it sounds unsavory on the surface, and I know, conservatives will generally rail that "The government can do it to anyone then!" to which I say yes, they can, provided "anyone" has 250M in their bank account when they die. No one is saying YOUR business, my independent ironworker friend, will be "confiscated" or whatever other trigger words they'd use. I'm saying if your business is good enough to make you $250M, when you die, $200M goes wherever you willed it (though I have thoughts on this as well, different topic), and your community gets $50M to address issues within the community. Don't like that idea? Well, then I'd say when you are getting old, you decide "I'd like to fund a hospital wing and name it David Azz Children's Hospital with my $50m, so let me get on that before I'm dead." Or "I wonder how much of this extra $50M could be used to alleviate medical debt in my local community?" It should be a problem you HOPE you have.
Again, it's not a fully formed plan, it's just a framework, but I have yet to hear a moral argument against it that makes any sense. Most arguments are "WELL THOSE KIDS DIDN'T WELD ANY IRON! It's MY MONEY! DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO WITH IT!" That's a tantrum, and while it may be true, it's not a moral argument. Don't listen to the ultra wealthy when they say it's too difficult, nothing will change, that's how they lull you into inaction.
What do you mean by this statement? Are you saying we past the point of no return?
Once we decided corporations were people and allowed mega dollars into elections, we tempted fate, and now it's here. The billionaires are going to write laws that only help them, because that's how they became billionaires, it's all they know. It's a much taller hill to climb now, but I don't think America became America by a bunch of people at the bottom of a mountain thinking "That looks really hard to do, so I'm not gonna do it."
Important note here: make sure you really understand the difference between 1M and 1B. It's an evolutionary blind spot for us as people (there's no advantage to understanding this so we never do). I learned this through visualization or scale techniques, the one that really hit home for me was 1M seconds is about 11 days. 1B seconds is 32 YEARS. To scale it to our $200M number if dollars were seconds, that's about six years. $200B is not sixty years. It's SIX THOUSAND years. If they're inches, then $200M goes from Boston into the Pacific Ocean by about 300 miles. $200B converted this way goes from the earth to the moon.
THIRTEEN TIMES.
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@DavidAZZ
I actually would like to hear this philosophy where more than needed or more than possible to spend riches will be considered immoral.I would think a lot of the whole "rich is bad" and "poor mentality" stems from this philosophy.
What is the point of having literally more money than you could ever spend while your fellow man struggles to have their basic needs met? I'm not saying everyone has to be equal, not remotely. I'm saying it seems immoral to me, for example, for someone who could, just for example, build more homes than would be required to end the homeless crisis (this isn't to say that "not having a house" is why anyone is homeless, clearly there are many issues that lead to homelessness). I'm saying sitting on money you will never spend (because it is literally impossible to purchase something for 200B, let's say) while someone whose kid got leukemia has to choose between feeding themselves or buying their medication, that's immoral. I'm not saying the choice is everyone buys the same clothes or car or food and then there is no wealth inequality, that will and should exist. I'm saying the degree of it is immoral and that a certain level, a very, very high level, personal wealth should be taxed above 98% with that money going back to the community. I'm sure you will disagree, but I can't imagine what you will argue will in any way change my mind, same as whatever I argue won't change yours. It's one of the reasons I don't post here at all, too much of this is boring, and too many people just use some sort of AI to formulate responses, but I've had productive and cordial exchanges with you in the past, which is why I'm responding. I just don't get why people who think they're rebels and so anti "The System" want to prop up oligarchs and the financial status quo and continue this way.
I think there are proud rich people who look down on the poor because they are so smart and I also believe there are proud poor people who look down on the rich because they are so vile as to have so much money.
Poor people don't think rich people are vile because they have money (this is what rich people want to think, same as they want people to think the only reason they're poor is because they're lazy or stupid...this way, what choice do you have but to work for one of these megacompanies and be thankful for what they give you?). They think they're vile because they hoard it, and look at poor people as one of two things: the problem, or a way for them to make more money.
As for a landed Gentry, I get what is wanted to be avoided, but the ultra rich really don't pay taxes since the tax laws are made to help them too. Imposing a tax on them would not work since they will always figure a way around it. It will just bite people like you and me in the butt.
So the answer is "oh well, guess that's how it is"? Why not fix it? Why actively run toward it? Not to put too fine a point on my feelings on the matter, but fuck that. We can be better than that. Or, we could have been.
As for ultra rich, keep in mind that there would never have been a Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Walmart etc without these guys creating these things and making billions of dollars from it.
This is post-hoc reasoning and fallacious thinking, in other words you're assuming it wouldn't have ever happened if there weren't massive wealth as a result, because the result is massive wealth. ZUckerberg started facebook as a college student, and he wasn't an instant billionaire. Bezos didn't INVENT Amazon any more than the Waltons INVENTED stores. And again I'm not arguing against wealth, what I'm arguing against is hoarding wealth.
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@DavidAZZ
I would say someone at $250K can live very comfortable and have money to sock away for a leisurely retirement.I would say a person that has a million dollar portfolio is wealthy and is on the fast track to retirement if invested correctly.
You mean at $250K per year, right? And the 1M is already in the stock market, correct?
But do you have a threshold of wealth that would cross the line of morality?
I do. It's at the point where you cannot spend it, literally, where it does nothing for the economy at all. I think we have a fundamental and likely irreconcilable difference in philosophy here, so I won't argue about it, we're only going to talk past each other.
I think its terrible. The money has already been taxed and anything passed down to others upon the death of someone should be the wealth of those people. It a double tax of the monies. If I save up a nest egg for my children and grand children because I worked hard to do it, why are my children punished for my hard work? It's uncle Sam getting his dirty hands on more of American's money to blow like a drunken sailor.
THis is strange, because if all it takes to be rich is to think like a rich person, then your children and grandchildren aren't going to learn this lesson that you seem to value. They will, though, think like a rich person: born on third base thinking they hit a triple, figuring they're just smarter or better than the poor people who are too stupid and lazy to think themselves out of poverty. What did they do to earn this advantage, after all? I'm obviously a big proponent of the inheritance tax, but not at a "I own a small steelworking shop" level. I don't want a landed gentry in this country, and without the inheritance tax it seems impossible to avoid.
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@DavidAZZ
Are you saying that having a lot of money is UN-virtuous?
Not remotely, at least not inherently. But this once again makes me want to understand how much is "a lot".
No, but I figure that most wealthy people come from humble beginnings
What are you basing this figuring on? I am not saying this doesn't happen, but how many of the top, say, 2% of wealth in this country do you think built it from the ground up? Zuckerberg maybe?
I would say any path to wealth is respectable as long as it's a moral way to do things.
How do you feel about inheritance tax?
Also congrats on your business and good luck!
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@DavidAZZ
Wages for ironworkers (my trade) is $29 and some change for a journeyman ironworker, last I checked. That is still poor wages here in Phoenix.
What do you think would (I hate to say this, but WILL) happen to your wages as an ironworker when someone invents a reliable machine that does what you do? And your boss thinks "I'm paying David $29 an hour plus benefits to do what this $75,000 machine will do"? Because a rich person thinks "Sorry David. You're out."
So I told my boys to learn a trade but don't limit your education of business to only in the field/shop. Learn how the WHOLE trade works. Estimating, project management, marketing, etc. The longshoreman needs to do his research and notice his pay ceiling. What can he do to earn more? Become a foreman? Become a manager? Start his own? All of this will require this man to learn and to discipline himself. If he is not aware of / care for his finances, then these will not be something on his mind. Then one day he will find himself on the streets because he didn't look ahead, because he didn't care about his financial future.
This sounds good on the surface, but it sneakily equates being rich / financially stable (THIS may be a better term to debate over rather than "rich") with some sort of virtue. That's just not the case, I'm afraid. First, it seems to imagine some world where the workplace isn't, in fact, some sort of pyramid, where the worker bees can somehow all become queen bees, move up the ranks indefinitely. That's not how it works, as you know. And in this particular very real example (a labor action at the docks is still pending after being averted in Q4 of 2024), there are less and less foremen, less and less managers, why? Because when you have 2 machines reliably doing the job that forty people did, how many managers and foremen do you need now? Start his own longshoreman business?? Like open his own port?? I mean theoretically okay but in reality, how can he do something like that on his (let's use your) $29 / hr salary?
Would it be fair to say that you think the way things are SUPPOSED to work are such that a financially stable person should be someone who started out at the bottom and just worked his or her way to financial stability, and this should be the preferred path to wealth, the most respectable?
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@DavidAZZ
Ok, so we have different definitions of rich, for me rich is "don't have to work" and "too much money to even spend," live whatever lifestyle you want regardless of what others think, etc. In that case 250K a year isn't rich, it's certainly not poor but in most cases you still have to "add" to the 250k to be sustainable. For me, that kind of rich starts at about 10M bucks. As far as the poor people I've encountered, I haven't met one I think is poor because they "think like a poor person."
For example, there's no "thinking like a rich person" that would save a longshoreman's job from automation. If you're a longshoreman and your boss at the company you work for decides he'd rather invest $200K in a machine that safely unloads containers at a much faster clip than a person, that never gets sick, doesn't get tired, doesn't require benefits, never gets tempted to take a box of something, and will never complain about getting paid, guess what happens to you, Mr. Longshoreman? You're out on your ear, that's just how the market works. Now you're not making $XXX, whatever that number was, and you're in your mid to late 40's. This person has ONLY experience in a job that's going to be fully automated, because the shipping company's competitors are all going to do the same thing, automate their offloading. They have to in order to 'remain competitive.' So now this longshoreman has less jobs to pick from, fewer prospects. This person is on a path to poverty, we can agree, right? Without some significant change, he's going to get stuck in some entry level work somewhere.
Where is his path to $250K? Or $150K? 90K?
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@DavidAZZ
How often are you encountering poor people?
And probably good to define what you see as "rich." How much money do you think qualifies as rich?
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@DavidAZZ
You seem to answer your own question with your own answer here, I just want to see if I understand it. You ask "why are people poor". Your subsequent questions seem to elucidate what you think are common causes of poverty. Do you believe poor people are all poor because of their "mentality"? Conversely, then, are rich people rich because of their mentality? That poor people don't like, want or care about money? I'm not sure I understand what you mean.
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@DavidAZZ
How do you balance the one banker against all the non-partisan economic experts and study groups who say his economic policies will increase consumer prices and hasten the bankruptcy of Social Security? And also, how did the banker you talked to assess the Biden economic impact on the stock market? It closed at 30K on 12/31/20, it's currently up 25% under Biden.
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Does this mean no one in California will be able to read Greyparrot's posts?!?
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@Mall
Isn't believing not guilty a positive affirmation, and not believing guilty reservation of judgement?
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I kinda think people are missing the biggest liability in the debate because of the ridiculous dog eating tangents. She wanted to rile Trump up and get him to act exactly as he did, right? That's the whole plan. It took less than ten minutes for her to have him on the run, spouting craziness and generally looking like the imbecile we all know him to be. I don't think people are disturbed ENOUGH by how easy this was. If Kamala Harris, his stated opponent whom by his own admission he hates, in a debate for which his aides prepped him, where she has a clear aim (to defeat him), can do this so easily, you better believe bad actors who wish America and Americans harm can, will and probably has. The effect of it with Harris as the author is just embarrassing for Trump. If China decides they like this tactic, they will do it with a lot more subtlety, and as a complete idiot who doesn't trust his intelligence services, Trump will eat whatever pile of slow roasted asshole they put in front of him...and that's a disaster for Americans, not just for Trump. To me, that's the whole story of the debate, how easily manipulated Trump was, for everyone to see, with complete foreknowledge that she would be doing it.
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@Mall
I don't believe he is guilty and I do believe he is not guilty is the same value
Which one of these is the same as "I believe he is innocent"? Either?
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@Existential_Ruminations
Because an infinite regress is not possible, we must terminate the chain with one principle cause of all change. This being must be purely actual and not at all potential. It must be external to the world as all things in the world are made up of potentialities. It must be omnipotent in that it presently sustains all things. It must immutable as it has no potentialities. Finally, it must resemble intelligence as it grounds all intelligent states of the universe and further directs universal operations toward intelligent ends. This being we understand to be God.
This assumes an infinite regress isn't possible, without conceding that we can't know that at all. Your boxcar analogy doesn't allow for the possibility that you can't see the end of the train in either direction, so you assume that on one end or another there's an engine. This may be right or wrong. Your way out of this looks like "since I can't see the first or last car, and you can't see the first or last car, then we agree there is a first or last car." I don't agree with you. Demonstrate there's a first or last car, or we both must agree that all we see in either direction are a bunch of box cars with no apparent beginning or end. That's one problem, but then you completely jump the tracks and make these claims about intelligence, and to top it off, you just assign all that to a character who only exists in stories from the last ~5000 years (of 3.5Bn earth, ~14Bn universe years), presuming you actually mean capital G god, as opposed to generic nebulous 'god' that seems to have disappeared after the big bang ignition.
Even if you were granted that SOMETHING hit the ignition on the big bang, you've made zero progress toward defining that something through any logical or rational means. IT sounds all academic, but it's just a disguise.
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@YouFound_Lxam
The Big Bang's origins did not have a natural origin as we know understand natural. It supposedly had a supernatural origin.
A more accurate way to say this is we don't know the origin of the big bang. Anyone 'supposing' the second sentence is making a leap that would do with some justification. The Big Bang is not in any way a supernatural theory: at one point all of that stuff was concentrated in a singularity, and at another point expanded rapidly, which continues to this day. None of that requires magic or supernatural powers. What was 'before' the big bang is unknowable, but that's not the big bang.
Science has not even been able to recreate RNA. In order to be able to produce any type of life, you need RNA. Once you figure that out, its a billion steps more to figuring out life. But we haven't even gotten close to RNA yet. Not even close.
Okay, but amino acids are the proto-protein, and we only see those synthesizing in experiments done within the last 100 years. RNA was discovered within the last 80 years. Saying we should have done it by now, and therefore it's not possible, isn't really being fair to how much time such an experiment would require. And you only have to have a single cell organism acquire the drive to reproduce, the ability to do so, and the drive to survive happen ONCE. Once it does, absent any predator organism, then it very quickly becomes the dominant organism. As any first organism would. I'm asking why any of that requires a set of gods.
If you want me to provide rational evidence as to why I believe in God, I also expect you to provide the same for your philosophy. Just like I can't say," Well I don't understand how God works, so I just have to trust it", you can't say," Well I don't know all about science so I just have to trust it."
You want me to provide rational evidence as to why I am unconvinced at the idea of gods existing? Besides I don't see any evidence of that? I'm not sure how to do that. Perhaps you can help, actually: what was the evidence you used to rule out the existence of the gods I presume you do not believe in? As a Christian, how did you rationally rule out the existence of Zeus? Or Ganesh? Perhaps by explaining your reasoning, I can find a way to explain how "no evidence" requires some more rationale than is evident on its face. I trust science because it works, because there's concrete, objective evidence.
Why specifically is society forming a good thing though? Why is societal progression good?
I didn't say they were necessarily, but my answer would be that these two things have improved the lives of every person on earth. We're not 8 billion resource hungry cave dwellers for this very reason. "Why is progress good" is quite a question, though.
So there is a standard. A community standard.
Yes, I suppose that's a way to say it. I think you're seeking to take the meaning of "good" and "bad" and obfuscate the actual argument by saying neither one of us can know objectively what is one, or the other. As someone who does not accept there's any "objective" good or bad, that's not my argument at all, so those word games aren't really effective that way. People all over the world, today, disagree on what is good and what is bad, on issues large and small, and what's bad today (like calling black people the N word) was once completely fine, so it changes over time, too. That would lead me to believe good and bad are just matters of community opinion. I'm still unsure how this connects to any gods. You've made no progress on this front, as someone who believes in (thus far for purposes of this conversation) a set of gods.
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@YouFound_Lxam
The Big Bang is a supernatural event in of itself, or at least whatever ignited it.
THe big bang happened in nature, so it can't be supernatural. It can be singular, but we don't know that that's the case. "Whatever ignited it"? Can you explain?
The Origin of Life had to of been against the laws of nature, because the laws of nature tell us that life cannot come from non-life. It isn’t possible.
That's not what the laws of nature tell us. It's our experience so far, but we have seen amino acids spontaneously synthesize in several different experiments, As you are aware, amino acids are the precursor to proteins, these are the building blocks of life. And besides, life only has to come from non life once. Again though, how does this mean gods exist?
Your presupposition that the answer has to be someone naturalistic in order to be considered logical, is exactly what I was talking about. You have to be open to the possibility of God or Gods being real.
I told you, I'm open to the possibility. Sadly, so far it seems like your only supporting argument is one from incredulity or complexity, neither of which are compelling.
By 'good,' I mean what's generally accepted as goodI apologize for the correction but that is a circular definition.
Maybe when you take what I said out of context by cutting off the rest of the sentence.
Why is not being harmful to the people around you, good?
Because by extension, maybe they won't want to harm me, and maybe they'll look out for me if I look out for them. That's how societies work, and in fact how they form.
The concept of good for example. What determines good?
There is no standard. It's something a community agrees upon. I have a question. You said "yes I do" in response to my question do you use "what would a god or gods do" when making moral decisions. Why would gods, who so far it seems we're only ready to ascribe the "ignition" of the big bang to, care what you do? In other words, the existence of gods does not in any way lead necessarily to any moral conclusions as far as I can tell. You are making a lot of leaps: so far the only supernatural question you've got a good answer to is "what ignited the big bang." And it's 'generic god or gods.' None of that has anything to do with morality. Why is morality evidence of god or gods?
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@YouFound_Lxam
What would convince you?What type of extraordinary evidence would you require?
I answered this one: something that would be completely against everything we know about the laws of nature and our shared existence. Because I'm a product of those things, I have a hard time imagining what that evidence might be. But doesn't it stand to reason that a being as powerful as a god would be able to provide this evidence unequivocally, and with no effort on their part?
I'm not saying the complexity of life ISN'T overwhelming. But my lack of ability to comprehensively understand that doesn't make evidence for anything other than my own limitations. How are you getting evidence of a god or gods from the complexity of life? Or how much information our DNA contains, or the existence of proteins and the interactions of amino acids? What specifically about these leads to "so gods exist"?
What do you mean by good? What do you mean by the right thing? What do you mean by the wrong thing? What do you mean by moral person?
By 'good,' I mean what's generally accepted as good: not harmful to the people around me, or in accordance with the implicit agreement among the people in my community, or what's required for the protection of my family, the benefit of others. etc. I try to use reason, and probably most importantly, empathy, to make those decisions. That's what I mean. I admit, it's not a very easy thing to define, but that's the reason it changes over time. What we as a society see as good or bad, moral or immoral, changes as we learn and grow. But I literally have never said to myself, when presented with a decision with moral implications, "what would god or gods do here?" Is that a tool you find yourself using in your life today?
Because when you make truth statements about good or fair or right or wrong, you are comparing whatever you’re calling right or wrong, to a standard. There is a standard there that you use to measure right or wrong. So what standard do you use?
I disagree that there's a standard. Not a universal one, anyway. I act in accordance with what my community accepts as morally good or morally bad. This is exactly what people do all over the world. In some communities, it's considered moral to kill and eat a horse. In my community, it isn't. Which one is doing the "right" thing? The "moral" thing?
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@YouFound_Lxam
In order to have a conversation like this, you have to have a level of openness to God or the concept. If you go in with the purpose of proving God wrong and not actually searching for truth, then you will find any reason to not believe, or to deny.
I am open to the concept of gods. I just have never seen anything that convinces me they're real, that they exist today, or interact with our daily lives. I can certainly see how some gods made sense to people years ago, particularly pantheon style systems like those of Greece, Rome, ancient Norse, Hindu, etc. Does that help?
Either way I do think there is strong evidence for God. Life itself is an indicator of divine command as well as our universe and our moral structures in society.
You're smuggling this, perhaps not intentionally, but several times here. How did you get from small g gods to a specific god here? I don't understand how life itself is an indicator of anything beyond life being here. Divine command as I understand is a moral system (divine command wrestles with is it moral because god says it's moral, so god dictates morality by fiat, as opposed to morality guiding god's decisions, making god subject to morality, not author of it), not evidence of anything unless you accept prima facie that a particular god exists (which again is the cart before the horse).
Origins of LifeOrigins of the UniverseMoralityMathematics
Excellent. Let's leave personal experience off the list, because I don't have yours and you don't have mine, so we can't argue that sensible. Let's pick one and just see where it goes. I nominate morality. For me, I try to live a moral life. I don't always get it right, admittedly. I don't believe in any gods, and none of my decisions vis a vis morals are ever run through the filter of "what would a god do here." I don't kill anyone, I don't rape anyone, I don't steal from anyone, I try to be a good dad, all that without any gods. I don't do the right thing for a reward, I don't avoid the wrong thing for fear of punishment in some other dimension, as Christians do. If I don't need any gods to be a moral person, how does morality support the existence of gods? particularly if proto-morality, the concept of fairness, exists in animals who do not have, as far as we can tell, any concept of gods.
Please answer the question I asked earlier, because if you had evidence to make your decision, it must have been pretty compelling. As I point out, at one point, you were not religious, and then at another point you were. What was the evidence that compelled you to make the decision to follow that religion? In other words, at some point you questioned the origins of life, per your list, and you concluded "gods did this and I know this because ... and now I will live my remaining life according to this set of rules and beliefs."
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@YouFound_Lxam
Awesome, I'm looking forward to hearing more about them! Best thing about being people is we can learn new stuff and change our minds, opinions and stances.
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@YouFound_Lxam
So the question becomes what your definition of extraordinary is?For God at least, or Theism, how much would that entail?
Something that departs from everything we know today about the nature of our world or existence would be "extraordinary."
I thought we were limiting, at least for now, to theism, which to my understanding is the existence of some god or gods, not any specific deity. Using that paradigm, I don't know what sort of extraordinary evidence there would be. You know who'd know that? The gods trying to prove their existence. Such beings would be able to provide strong evidence, I'd think, particularly if they interact with our real world day to day lives. Did you have something in mind to propose? Maybe there's another approach to this question that will help us move the discussion forward.
What evidence was it that convinced you when you picked your religion that you had the right set of gods? Tell me what it was and I'll tell you if it's enough to convince me. At some point, you were not religious, and then at another point, you were.
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@YouFound_Lxam
"Sorcerers and shapeshifters" was your last argument on this topic, I look forward to your expounding on same.
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@YouFound_Lxam
How much evidence would you need to believe otherwise? How much evidence would be enough?
I would say that "some" would be a start. To believe something extraordinary, generally you'd need an "extraordinary" amount of evidence, right? For example, if I said I owned a dog, you'd probably take me at my word, inasmuch as you'd be able to tell a third party "That guy has a dog." If I said I owned an elephant, you might need more than my word, maybe a few pictures of me and my elephant, maybe I'd show you receipts for food I buy for the elephant, or the trailer I have on my car so I can take my elephant places. Then you could tell a friend "I know it sounds weird, but that guy owns an elephant, and I am confident in that because XYZ." If I said I owned a dragon, you probably want to see the dragon yourself before you could say "That guy owns a dragon," to someone else. Or, before you start donating money to my dragon reserve park and dragon preservation society, right? Or before you start living your life according to the new information that dragons are a real thing, like taking measures to avoid being eaten by dragons, or trying to learn how to get a dragon of your own.
Does that make sense?
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@YouFound_Lxam
My lack of belief in gods is that I don't have enough evidence to believe otherwise. I can't append "therefore it was done by gods" to every "I don't know."
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I too find this topic interesting, but is there something a little less broad you want to explore? Just saying "go" won't give you a foothold.
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@FLRW
OMG, Gp said something intelligent!
That's AI generated, and no, it isn't a joke. It 100% is a response from an AI.
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This looks like a combo platter: a youtube video you asked AI to summarize.
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@ILikePie5
Shouldn't something taking LESS effort mean you can do it yourself? I don't need three tabs open to respond to anyone, regardless of effort level. If you don't think it's worth responding to, there's an even faster solution: don't respond.
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There ought to be a limit in the site's terms of use about generating your content from AI. It's a debate / discussion site, if you're not coming up with your own ideas, what's even the point of being here? What a weird way to service your ego, or chase clout or whatever you're doing.
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So does secretly socially transitioning a child sound like something democrats would do or like republican religious zealots?
I've never heard this phrase before. What's it mean?
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@ADreamOfLiberty
OK, so you're a fan of charter schools but not public schools, but as many charter schools do not or cannot serve their entire communities, aren't public schools in some form necessary? How is eliminating them, or making them less effective / even lower educational value "pro child"?
What do you find kids are being "indoctrinated" with, or "corrupted" by?
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So nobody has any actual examples of this / these policies, or their supposed effects on children or families, we just have feelings about them?
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@WyIted
No, it doesn't list anything like policies. It lists your complaints and a study from some institute. I'm asking for the specific POLICY from the candidate, that's what the Trump campaign has accused her of. I also asked subsequently where you read that the stated or implied goal of the democratic party is the dismantling of the nuclear family. Here are your words:
. Some things to consider is that it is common in liberal leaning cities for teachers to think they have a right to override parents decisions or to assist their children in hiding information from their parents.We also have several studies from th catoninstitite showing how welfare harms the family structure and actually increases the poverty rate.
The first sentence is in no way a policy for the democratic party, and as I said, it may be that schools or states or whatever are implementing such a policy (THESE ARE NOT THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY) with the aim to protect children from abuse at home, which I'm afraid is absolutely a public school teacher's obligation by law.
How does welfare harm the family structure, in your own words?
I suspect you're one of these performance art posters like ebuc, like you're doing a schtick.
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@WyIted
I am just telling you what's discussed in academic corners, but it is in the communist manifesto.
I'm asking which of Kamala Harris's and more broadly "the left"s actual policies are anti child or anti family, as I've heard Vance and other republicans claim. Which specific policy is anti-family or anti-child, and how? If the answer is "we don't know because she won't specify her policies!" then what exactly is the complaint?
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@WyIted
For example since the goal is for the break up of the nuclear family they will often oppose things like homeschool
Where do you see the goal of "the left" as "the breakup of the nuclear family" in any policy or law? WHo on the left says "No home school for anyone", I've never heard that before.
Some things to consider is that it is common in liberal leaning cities for teachers to think they have a right to override parents decisions or to assist their children in hiding information from their parents.
Such as? And do teachers have an obligation to protect children?
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I've heard this concern about Harris and the Democrats having "anti child" and "anti family" policies. Can someone explain which policies they are and how specifically they're anti-family? If the answer is abortion, the 50 years of Roe V Wade being legal nationwide didn't seem to inhibit people from having families.
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Be the change you want to see in the world, why don't you.
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@DavidAZZ
One because he doesn't deny it, two because it's pointed out many, many times before, and three, if you use AI, ChaptGpt, for example, it has a very specific way of responding. It's also unusually cogent and sterile, not frothing with conspiracy theories, internet bravado and name calling. That's just not how people talk, which means it's not how they write either.
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Combat and Weapons Carrying: Tim Walz has mentioned in the past that he carried a weapon while serving in the military, which has led to some scrutiny. Walz served in the Minnesota Army National Guard and was deployed to Italy in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. However, his role during that deployment was not in a direct combat position but rather in a support capacity as a Command Sergeant Major. Critics have questioned whether his statements about carrying a weapon might give the impression that he was engaged in frontline combat, which has led to some debate about the accuracy and context of his remarks.Rank of E-9: Walz achieved the rank of Command Sergeant Major (E-9) before retiring. However, there was some controversy because after his retirement, his rank was administratively reduced to Master Sergeant (E-8) due to his not completing the required coursework at the U.S. Army Sergeants Major Academy. This reduction meant that, for benefits and official records, his final rank was Master Sergeant, and not an E-9. Many have viewed his earlier statements about retiring as a Command Sergeant Major as misleading, given the post-retirement adjustment and demotion.
More AI generated analysis. It wouldn't be so embarrassing to cite that it's not yours, would it? Basically any time you're not posting a youtube link, it's kinda sad.
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@WyIted
That depends on whether they have offspring or not and their IQ levels
So you're thinking if you have grandchildren, you should get to vote even more than parents, then? And having to pass a test to be able to vote, or to decide how heavily your vote is counted?
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@WyIted
Someone who's 75 cares about the next ten years. Someone who's 85 cares about the next five. Someone who is 35 cares about the next 50. Shouldn't that mean the 35 year old's vote counts most, and the 75 year old's count more than the 85 year old then?
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Appeal to swamp authority is the mark of the lowest tier of existence.
Lower than getting ChatGPT to write your opinions for you?
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Appeal to swamp authority is the mark of the lowest tier of existence.
Lower than getting ChatGPT to write your opinions for you?
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The average height of individuals in Africa can vary significantly depending on the region and population group. On average, the height of African men ranges from about 5 feet 5 inches (165 cm) to 5 feet 9 inches (175 cm), while the height of African women typically ranges from about 5 feet 2 inches (158 cm) to 5 feet 5 inches (165 cm).The percentage of Black Americans who play in the NBA is extremely small. Given that the NBA has approximately 450 players and the Black American population is about 42 million, the percentage of Black Americans in the NBA is roughly 0.001%.The presence of tall Black NBA players, often celebrated for their athletic prowess and remarkable talent, should evoke a profound sense of sorrow, considering the historical context from which some of these genetic traits may have emerged. During the era of slavery, enslaved Africans were subjected to unimaginable cruelty and dehumanization. Among the many brutal practices employed by slave owners was the selection and breeding of individuals based on physical traits that were deemed advantageous for labor.Tallness and physical strength were often prioritized by slave traders and owners who sought to maximize the productivity of their enslaved workforce. This ruthless selection process was a grim aspect of the dehumanizing institution of slavery, where human beings were reduced to mere tools of labor, their worth measured solely by their ability to endure grueling physical tasks.The legacy of this horrific past lingers in subtle and haunting ways. The extraordinary height and athletic abilities of many Black NBA players today can, in part, be traced back to the cruel breeding and trading selections made by slave traders centuries ago. This connection is a stark reminder of the deep scars left by slavery, where the bodies of Black individuals were commodified and exploited based on physical stature.The joy and admiration inspired by basketball talents should always be tempered with a somber recognition of the historical injustices that have shaped their genetic lineage. In doing so, we honor the resilience and humanity of those tall who endured such suffering, while we also mourn for those short that were often worked to death and not allowed to breed by slave masters.
Maybe we should just get ChatGPT its own user profile.
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the murderer and r@pist communities
Is this a thing?
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@TheUnderdog
Trump re-selecting his VP pick is not as unorthodox I think
Well, except he goes around crowing about how smart he is and how he only hires the best people. Getting rid of Vance within a month of "hiring" him would demonstrate that no, he is in no way good at that, and more likely that someone else told him who to pick, since he couldn't pick Vance out of a lineup four weeks ago and Vance said all that shit about him on the record. But that doesn't matter to people who are inclined to vote for Trump, because his entire cabinet already said he's not fit to serve the country and they see that as somehow a conspiracy against him, not a warning sign.
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@TheUnderdog
my tax dollars matter more to me than the life of a stranger child (this applies to all children regardless of citizenship status)
Then your subject line is wrong here. Migrant status is immaterial to your position: your dollar is more important to you than a kid you don't know, full stop.
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