MSC

No, but Russia has room for everyone. Hell, it's why they are so protective of themselves and put so much effort into diversion and division of their perceived enemies. The paranoia that comes with having a massive border is staggering. The thing that interests me about this scenario; if Pence pardoned Trump, does Biden have to honour that pardon? INow said no, but didn't explain why or point to evidence. So it's still up in the air as far as I am concerned.

Having read the constitution and finding it kind of open to interpretation how the pardon power works, I'm no closer to finding a good answer for this. Can a President pardon themselves? Is one question. Can the next President revoke that pardon? Is another. Obviously we are only talking about pardons of federal charges. Can Trump even pardon himself for a federal charge that has not been formally filed yet? If so, where does it end? Why shouldn't every president end their time with giving themselves a pardon for any federal crimes they may have committed while in office? It all seems so confusing to me. If it is the presidential office giving out the pardons, what is to stop Biden from revoking any pardon given by Trump to himself or others?

Not at all. Your tangents are always welcome with me. In fairness I probably should have made it clearer I was using a broad but context specific definition, in order to be charitable to the kids. Yeah, Mr Wednesday visits our house too. He likes all kinds of awesome foods. He never stays for very long though. Mr Wednesday actually likes my butternut squash chilli, my kid... Not so much 😄 What do you think are some good follow up questions with my sons current answer to the meaning of life? I was going to start by pointing out that some people can live with doing some things and that some people can't bring themselves to do those things for fear that they may in fact be bad things to do. Even the neediest can over-empathise to the point of declining charity, for fear there may be someone needier out there they may be depriving, which would leave them feeling guilty. it's all very well to say do anything and everything you can live with, there is a certain maximalism implied in that way. But what can we live with and what can't we? How are we defining living exactly? Is living just, breathing, excreting waste and taking in nutrients? Or is that just surviving? Then it would be as simple as not doing anything that could potentially kill you. Which covers quite a lot of ground and left open to interpretation, could lead to an extreme of avoidance of every day dangers like crossing the street or just going outside. Now, obviously I cannot go into this much detail with my kid yet, but it would be nice to have discussions in this thread about some of the things kids have said that could lead to interesting discussions. That and I could use other perspectives on how to get my kid to think more and expand on his thoughts. Side Bar: Thank you so much for your contribution to this thread and the work you did as a care manager. I have a lot of respect for people who work in care. jeez! Poor Robert, I really hope he isn't giving that advice based on first hand experience.. Ouch! Frank Gallagher on Shameless did that too, peed on a generator though! Eileen, you had me at baptize.. Thanks for sharing Michel! +1

Humour can be wisdom! Sounds to me like your son has something important to say about the meaning of language. I believe it was Wittgenstein who said that a serious and influential piece of philosophy, could be written consisting entirely of jokes. Someone should go to Wikipedia and alter the etymology of a merry-go-round. Amerigo round the world!

On that, we can both agree. I'm Scottish, swearing is an art form to us. Young people have morals? Since when?! Do you expect us to believe you weren't an ass as a teenager? In all serious though, teens swear more than I do. The best insults in Scottish though don't really have a lot of swearing. You can cripple a guy just by telling him his da sells Avon. True story

A pragmatist ought not to disregard optimism, planning for their best while preparing for the worst. That's all I'll say on that here though. Might have to start a topic about Pragmatism and the neo-pragmatic schools of ethics and epistemology. I think you'll enjoy it and I imagine you are already somewhat familiar with the subject anyway. Side bar: I'm glad we seem to be getting along now. Sorry for telling you to fuck off before.

Is that a foregone conclusion itself? Georgia by election is still to happen. I'll need to check the polls of those races myself but as I understand it, Reps have 48, Indies have 2, Dems have 46. If Dems were able to take both seats in Georgia, then the Independents and the vice presidents tie breaker vote would be the pivotal votes. Then you have the 2022 senate elections where, depending on a number of things, but also association with Trump, we may see a dem majority then, or even a Republican one again if Biden's first two years are perceived and received badly by the public. An extremely funny image there! Let me add to it by saying, I'm not the guy oblivious to playing a game with a chaos monger. I'm the guy waiting to Han Solo a bitch with a trigger trained on them, ready to fire the moment I smell burning or see a cheese puff. Even chaos has a pattern and trends. Ultimately, their are rules, even to chaos. Just because I think like a fox, doesn't mean I don't know how to act like a lion or think like one when I need to, Lions fuck up hyenas and jackals. A real worry for me too. What can I do but have a measure of healthy optimism that democracy can defend itself? I can be ready to act pragmatically should a more pessimistic outcome come to fruition. As it is, I cannot generalise that all Republicans or even Trump supporters are chaos-mongers as you seem to imply sometimes, don't know if that's intentional or not. I assume not. Can this be avoided?

"Nooooo, my inventions are meant to help mankind, not to destroy!" You'll get a laugh out of this, Major Agnew

We all hear a lot of doom and gloom when it comes to man-made climate change. What I hear less of, is what science, technologies and policies are being developed that might have the potential to halt it. So here is a scenario; imagine we have access to the military budget of every nation and we could use it to fight climate change. What should we do with that money in this scenario? Assuming all nations agreed to cessation of all military conflicts until the climate is no longer under threat from us, for the time being. Obviously this is a highly unlikely scenario, but for the sake of argument I want to know what could be done with a massive re-prioritisation of resources in favour of fighting climate change. This is not my AOE outside of the ethics of it, so forgive my ignorance. Appreciate anyone who takes the time to respond.

Depends on how you define wise. Having the wisdom to turn an awkward situation into a humorous one is sometimes no small feat sometimes, wisdom can come from what we say after we've done something kind of strange. Your cousin sounds like he thinks fast on his feet and on his ass 😄 Kid's are awesome Pragmatically explaining consequentialism. Invade my personal space with your hands, I'll invade yours with my urine. Wisdom haha

God dammit! Can we bring them back for five minutes so I can rail them for wasting my time being nice to them? Haha

No? I'm not sure I'm catching your drift but the point of this thread isn't to debate whether or not children have the capacity to be wise, the point is to share your own experience of when a child has said something interesting at the very least, even if it doesn't fit your definition of what it means to say something wise. I want to hear from other people about what they have heard and was sharing my own story to get the ball rolling. It wasn't really an open invitation to have a proxy debate with a 6 year old. Be careful though because you're currently in the territory of ageism and I don't appreciate anyone trying to invalidate my kids development. If you are comparing him to you, that's quite frankly not fair on him at all. He's not even 7 yet. So in line with the spirit of this thread, has a child ever said anything to you that has made you stop and think? Something you found interesting?

Which we acquire more of everyday of our lives, from the first day onwards. Children too, it's just about figuring out where the milestones are and considering what they say charitably. Admittedly, if an adult had responded to that question in the same way I'd not have been impressed but as a parent you've got to be able to see the forest for the trees and figure out what is wise or intelligent depending on stages of development. An example might be; it's not impressive for a 20 year old to tell me that the square root of 81 is 9, but it's very impressive if it comes from a three year old. Seriously, why do you carry the Worcestershire sauce around?

+1, Love Voltaire

I was at the park with my son today. Last night he'd been asking his mother some really big questions. Why are we here? What does it all mean? Why do we have to have blood when it's so messy? Things like that. He is almost 7 now, if you're familiar with CDP, you'll be aware that around his age, we start to form the cognitive faculties we need to be able to utilise logic. So I asked him today "What do you think the meaning of life is? Answer honestly, I won't judge what you say." His response was this; "To do everything that you can live with." So what little wisdom gems have you heard from a child that were pretty interesting to hear, despite their age? I mean to ask him more questions about his answer later, for now I think it is a good start to let him have a simple answer to a complex question, for a little while.

Good point. That being said; if there had been evidence of voter fraud specifically (not foreign interference as that takes place on social media) would Hilary Clinton have went about the legal routes in the same manner as Trump? Probably not, but then since voter fraud was a non-issue in both cases, it doesn't really matter what a reasonable person would do if they justifiably suspected fraud. As it is, the reaction of MAGA toward the results have been extremely corrosive. Raffensperger, the election chief in Georgia was a Trump support and still purports to be, yet he is now a pariah in the Republican party and the president called him a RINO for certifying the result for Biden. His wife has even received death threats via text. I actually feel really bad for him, he's probably one of the few who put duty over personal politics to call the state for Biden. I can understand a Republican being suspicious of votes in Democrat run states, it makes no sense to be suspicious of Georgia though. A good comparison might be the claim that the moon landing was faked. Raffensperger is doing what Russia did in that Russia, despite having wanted to win the space race themselves, have never once claimed that the Americans faked it. The result in Georgia by comparison, ought to have been accepted by Republicans as it was one of the few races where the result could not have been more free of political bias, when even the state appointed election chief there wanted Trump to win and still called the state for Biden. If that isn't a sign of a secure election, I don't know what is. One thing I have been thinking about recently, why I don't think Trump will be able to overturn the result, even by force. Is that quite frankly the bulk of his supporters lives are just too comfortable, to actually risk it all in the violent takeover that it seems Trump is trying to seek, through political theater. If his base were actually part of an objectively deeply and historically disenfranchised, excluded and abused group, that had little to no prospects in life due to that exclusion, then maybe we'd be seeing more desperate acts en masse to overturn the results of the election. As it is, what seems to be keeping this at bay, is in fact the privilege most of the MAGA crowd claim they don't have. This puzzles me too. He won by such narrow margins in 2016 and has spent the last four years not only demonising democrats, but any type of Republican who ever so slightly disagrees with him. Someone with as tiny a lead as they had, could simply not afford to alienate any of their voters. Especially when it's only a two party system in practice but not theory. I know of a few that voted libertarian because they could not stomach voting for Trump or Biden. The libertarian party was always more likely to win votes from the Republican party than it was the democrats. It will be interesting to see how Biden plays the next four years. If he is smart, since he won electoral votes by narrow margins, if he wants a second term he will have to follow through on his Unity talk with efficacy.

Most groups enjoy testing the newbie. Not putting them down. I was the newbie here a few months ago and had similar feelings as yourself then. I took a hiatus and asked the moderators to suspend my account for a month. Which meant I could just be a fly on the wall and observe how people interact and engage on here. For example; me and INow butted heads and I even told them to "fuck off" at one point. Since being able to observe their responses without any bias of them being directed at me, while I can recognise that me and INow both have conversation styles that can be construed as abrasive to some, I've come to be appreciative of their responses in my own AOE and recognise we aren't nearly as different as I first thought we were. Admittedly aided by another member here who did a good job of helping me reach a different and fairer perspective of the other users here, including INow. What do you mean by not shoving it in your face? Shoving what in your face exactly? Disagreement with you? I really would not take anything too personally or seriously here, including yourself. I say that as someone who already made the mistake of doing just that. It only leads to stress and it isn't even constructive stress at that. Keep in mind that what good and bad manners are, tend to vary between cultures. This forum has it's own culture. If someone on here is genuinely being unhelpfully rude to you, the mods will deal with it. If they don't, it's probably because it wasn't rude by this forums standards. I think what INow was getting at, is that although it's a nice thing to try and say, it's off topic for this thread somewhat. It also comes across as virtue signalling since you are aware that you are preaching to the choir. I wouldn't feel upset about INows criticism as you yourself said you should probably delete it, so you yourself weren't even sure if it was appropriate to this thread. You are absolutely allowed to have an opinion and I commend you for being brave enough to voice it. Just save it for the appropriate threads is all. If you want to talk about how this relates to Trump stealing the election, be our guest.

Unfortunately, Trump thinks he is America. He won't concede while his 'America' is potentially going to go to prison when 'America' is no longer president next year. As for what Trump owes democrats, they had issues with the 2016 election just as Trump has issues with 2020. The Obama led democrats however, did ensure a smooth and peaceful transition to the Trump administration and they never tried to overturn the results in the manner Trump is attempting now, impeachment is not overturning an election either. Trump is not even returning that favour, without a struggle and a flail.

I think you're being a little unfair here! For example; if god exists, I like that they created stupidity for us to mock. Life might be boring without little gems, such as posts like these. it's pretty clear to me, that everything that was put in this thread has been fairly entertaining, gods creation or not, I enjoyed its specialness.

Oh absolutely I'd agree with that. I experienced it myself, except it was my mother that left. I was 5 and she walked out on us and was gone for awhile. That being said; she was still a lot more present and emotionally available than my father, who would essentially have arguments with my teachers using me as a proxy. It was like it didn't matter what I was taught, to him, he'd already decided that I was stupid and couldn't be right about anything. Kind of takes the genetic fallacy to a whole new meaning there. Irony. That's because I was working from memory and got a few details wrong. My bad. I've digged it up and attached it now. The subjective aspect of 'quality' would impact all demographics however. There is a strong likelihood that 1-5% of the present parents, from all backgrounds are abusers and I wouldn't even care to try and guess what percentage were avoidably negligent. I say avoidably as it has already been pointed out by others that it is much more difficult for working class parents to be able to spend quality time with their kids without sacrificing on their required time to earn enough for the basic needs of housing, energy, clothing and food on the table. Which I think brings us to the most important aspect of this debate. Class based demographics. I can accept that we might never have schools that don't unfairly discriminate, but I don't think I can accept a society where the ability to bring discriminating individuals to justice, is determined by how deep your pockets or your parents pockets are. Which bring us to something extremely important. Probably the barrier we should e focussing on most. Here is something that is definitely true; it is illegal to discriminate based on race, ethnicity, religion, marriage, sexual orientation, gender.. It is not currently illegal however, to discriminate based on class or caste. They are not protected characteristics. There would be little to stop me or anyone else from denying equality to people because of their socio-economic background. There are means tested scholarships available but it tends to go that either their aren't enough of them for everyone who wants one, or there is no guidance on how to apply for them when they are under applied for. It's why I really like the look of the University of Arizona in Tuscon. They are one of the few institutions that I know of that seem to go the extra mile and try their best to make sure your education is financially achievable and that funding is smooth and debtless. Sucks that it is so far away though. We'd have to uproot and move again and we are thinking of buying a house here in IL... Sorry, I'm rambling. Suffice it to say, I think this has been a constructive discussion for all involved. You know I study philosophy and ethics. So you must know by now that you've already opened up a whole can of worms in the subjects of power, control and responsibility, right? I think the stoics and taoists put it best with The Archer. You can draw the bow perfectly, do everything within your control to give yourself the best chance of hitting your mark, and still fail because you cannot control the wind. In this analogy, I see other people as wind. I know I can't control them, I don't want to control them. Yet I can't pretend it is raining when really people are pissing on all of our legs. nhsr071.pdf

A good point. Maybe OP should forward their questions on to the psychology section. Philosophy of Time isn't really an area of discussion where we look at the subjective perception of the passage of Time. That being said; OP may enjoy reading about A and B theories of time. I'm partial to the quantum block A theory myself.

This is a good suggestion. I'd add to Swansonts points by directing you to research the psychology of time perception. There are anecdotal experiences claimed by some who say they get periods where it feels like everything around them is moving super fast. Some drugs can also produce a feeling that everything has slowed down. These experiences are extremely difficult to study however and it is obviously impossible for time to be speeding up for one person while everyone else around them is experiencing the perception of time normally... I mean, unless you're moving at the speed of light I guess or if you're observing something being sucked into a black hole. None of this actually changes the passage of time. It doesn't even make sense to say "This minute was twice as long as the last" all that would mean is 3 minutes have passed. Yet the clock says only two have actually passed. It might look as if an object is slowing down as it approaches a black hole, to the object in question time is still flowing and they will be across the event horizon long before you actually witness this happening.

I'm familiar with this old study. Did you know that part of the figure for absent black fathers comes from two things; black fathers who were in prison due to racial profiling and overly punitive sentences, and black fathers who were in fact in their childrens lives but just didn't live in the same home as their children. Basically, a fair portion of that figure were actually black fathers who were sitting down to a family meal with their children almost everyday, who were being labeled as absent fathers purely because they didn't have the same address as their children. There are also similar figures for white fathers absences. In a questionnaire delivered to kids as part of a more modern study, it turned out that black fathers on average spend more quality time with their children than white fathers do. Even when that white father lives in the same household as their children. You also need to keep in mind that at the time of that particular study, racial discrimination was more rampant and the people involved in producing that study, ultimately misled people into thinking that black people were more likely to be bad fathers than white people. It's just not true, that study was extremely flawed and the intent behind it seemed to be used to justify more negative stereotypes of black people. I'm saying this as a white person too, so it's not like I am biased toward debunking this because I'm black. I've seen figures of student demographics in a number of different schools and the pass rates for historically disadvantaged people from ethnicity to disability, are truly shocking. Even if the study wasn't dubious, it's from 1965. What makes you think it is still relevant today? I misspoke slightly when I wrote that OP, owing to being pissed off at the time (I really need to stop posting things when I'm in a mood, doing no one any favours that way). On paper, most institutions are against discrimination in most forms. Which is great, except the individuals they hire, from admissions to faculty, are capable of being biased, racist and ableist and they are capable of hiding this. Which leads to a bias within the institution where staff are allowed a great deal of freedom to practice as much discrimination as they like, by citing some unrelated and irrelevant reason as to why they went ahead with a prejudicial act and since the higher ups claim that their institution is against such acts, they close ranks and double down on the discrimination in order to defend their staff. It's gotten to the point where in some schools, even suggesting that you may be being treated unfairly due to a protected characteristic, is seen as more egregious and wrong than someone who is discriminating based on those characteristics and lying about it. Personal responsibility cuts both ways. Staff and student both. Students have a personal responsibility to care about and want an education; just as staff in schools have a legal and personal responsibility to give equal access to that education and to make reasonable adjustments for students who are disadvantaged through no fault of their own. Here is what disadvantaged people have to go through to take personal responsibility for their education under the current formats; they are expected to do the same coursework as their peers with less support and less resources, they are expected to keep silent about all the little ways the school makes things harder for them vs the majority of it's students. They are expected to show tolerance toward the implicit and explicit biases and prejudices of their peers and the institution itself, even though it makes college life far more difficult for them than it does for the majority of it's other students. A simple analogy, the disadvantaged are being asked to run a race with a ball and chain in tow, against others who have no such ball and chain and they have to give the unchained a head start too. Despite the ball and chain, some people still finish the race. However if you were to ask one of the people that didn't finish why they weren't able to finish when others did, they would say this; because not everyone can finish a race with a ball and chain attached to them and it's extremely demoralising to know that you're going to be unfairly compared to someone who ran the race without that ball and chain. It is not an excuse to say "I couldn't finish the race because I had a ball and chain attached" it's a reason, it's a cause. Now I'm not saying there are not people who just can't be bothered to put the effort in when they are given a chance at education without the balls and chains. They are a minority though, so generalising every drop out, every person who does not have a degree, as not having it because they didn't want it enough, doesn't take into account the individuals who put up obstacles specifically meant for them. Now; if schools now were as inclusive as it is possible for them to be, then I'd maybe not have posted this at all, I'd maybe not have given up on physics because a teacher said I should since they thought I wasn't "PhD material". Probably because in a school that is truly inclusive, would never have deemed it acceptable for any teacher to be allowed to say such a thing to someone who was disabled and the first of their family to get into higher education. Schools aren't that inclusive though, until they are then maybe they should focus less on putting the lions share of the fault on students and more on themselves. Until they are more inclusive, blaming their students who are keen to learn and keen to contribute to society is mostly an attempt to reject any consequences to their own actions and policies when they naturally trip up the disadvantaged. Maybe I am biased toward this perspective because I am from a disadvantaged group of people in multiple ways, but that doesn't make me wrong when I say that schools could absolutely do more to produce more competent graduates from all walks of life. Maybe I've just been going to the wrong schools or have been unlucky with the staff I've ended up dealing with. It's not easy to figure out if the contributing common denominator is me or the system of education, however those figures I spoke of earlier would suggest that I can only contribute so much when the school system is failing people. It's important to keep in mind that some people aren't giving up on their education. They are giving up on the school that is failing to give them one. As Mark Twain says "Never let your schooling get in the way of your education." P.S sorry for the lateness of my response but I was on my hiatus when you commented about that study, but I've been dying to tackle it since you said it.

The middle ground here would be ethics. If you're asking questions of the meaning or distinction of positive and negative values then we are in meta-ethical territory. That's not me saying, the middle ground is being ethical, the middle ground is thinking critically about what the good and bad are and what they mean. Also, google everything you can. If I had a dime for everytime I forgot to google something or go to the library, I'd be a rich man who's probably about to forget where he left that bloody fortune. Why you should research what you're thinking before you say it out loud; to avoid calling yourself stupid later. Not other people, yourself. Which brings me to the situational context sensitivity of things like being egotistical. Sometimes, it's beneficial, other times it is not. It depends on how the ego manifests itself. Imagine this scenario, a group of students file into an exam room. Two of the students are extremely arrogant. One believes outright that he will pass, because after all they are amazing. The other, believes outright they will do the right thing and use all the time they are given to complete the exam, because after all they are amazing. Both students believe they are going to perform really well, but only one of them is going to rush through the exam and leave early without checking over anything. As INow says, it's best not to build a bias toward egotistical thinking. Just because an egoic asshole says something which is true every now and then doesn't mean they will corrupt the knowledge, just their view of themselves. They might not even be corrupting that. You should also be aware that there are some theories that speculate that every act a human does comes from a place of egoism, even if they think they are being selfless or altruistic since even those acts can have positive benefits besides financial reward or thanks. I don't actually agree with them but the work behind them is still pretty insightful amd true to a limited extent.