MSC

Not to disagree with all of it, but the first part offers a specious way of defining ideology as illusionary, when that sort of thought itself has an ism attached to it and so falls under it's own definition. A definition which negates the very real power ideology has in motivating human behavior to have a tangible impact upon the physical world. The impact of a specific ideology can extend outside of ideology depending on what the ideology in question qualitatively is. In a way like, but not the same as, software being run in a network of computers. Only in our case, different computers reinterpreting the same software. Using this analogy further; pro-scientific ideologies or pro-democratic ones, can be thought of as shared software across multiple people, in ways beneficial to human existence that could negate some of the quotes later criticisms. Example; I believe in science, I'm running that software, evidence suggests therapy is good for me, therefore I don't have to deceive my conscious by concealing my true position on anything because I can share it with a therapist, even if the thought "Therapy is a crock of shit" ever comes into my mind. Like I said earlier, the impact of ideology extends outside of ideology. To shortly sum up; depends on which ideology you're talking about. Cult or not? Beneficial, benign, malignant? Which ideologies specifically did he give as examples? Got a day off tomorrow to have more of a read, these are just first thoughts only on what was shared, not the text in full context.

Yup. Trump pretty much stole credit for any positive impact had by Obama era policies. Meanwhile Democrats have to fix everything the Republicans fucked up, while receiving the blame for it being fucked up in the first place. I also despise the two party system, but I just don't see how America is supposed to break free from it. I tried joining the forward party a few years ago and honestly it just felt like it was a bunch of people who knew the issues with the country that were doomed to stagnate in that group, because of massive bias against the very idea of a third party due to the strength of the main two. It's just a loop where you need other parties to dilute the power of the main two, but first need to dilute the power of the main two in order to have other parties.

I had a thought; with mail in and early voting underway, is it possible that owing to the fact that more Democrats use mail in voting, is it possible there are likely voters who are being reached out to by current polls, whom would normally respond, but don't see the point as they have voted already? I suppose I'm just trying to account for Donald Trump's gains in both polls and betting markets recently, because I just can't figure out what event or events could have led to Harris momentum plateauing and declining, while Trump's only improves even though he's ducking interviews and debates and is in worsening cognitive decline. Is it the middle east conflict or is it a problems with the polls and as Toucana noted about Polymarket, manipulation of the betting odds with oversized bets or organized small bets by many trumpers?

Apparently turnout in Georgia for early voting was just over double what it was in 2020. One demographic polls fail to capture are non-voters voting for the first time for this particular election. Polls seem to underestimate now what will or won't make someone a likely voter worth reaching out to.

It should also be noted that although he also espoused Copernicus and the heliocentric model, in Giardanos time, this was not a heresy. As far as we can tell, it was strictly his theological views that were on trial. However; it's actually very difficult to determine what happened during both his trial and the years he was held beforehand as there was a 250 year culture of silence around the topic and documentation confirming that the Catholic church had in fact executed him, didn't surface until the 1850s, many of the documents (because the inquisition documented everything, making the lack of documentation even more disturbing as it shows just how powerful the inquisition was) were hidden in the Vaticans secret archives, with the possibility that some documents pertaining to it are either still there or were stolen by Napoleon and were part of a large shipment of documents later being sent back to Rome from France, that we're actually mixed with water to break them down, to sell to some kind of paper or cardboard factory for 4300 francs (that's a lot of paper) by one of the people charged with returning it to the archives. Bruno has been described as everything from a hero of the Renaissance, evil heretic, poet, philosopher, astronomer, magician and even a spy for the queen of England. Just a few things are certain; the modern Catholic church definitely would prefer people believe he was executed for his religious beliefs and not for his scientific ones. The other certain thing is that we can't be sure exactly because there was most certainly a massive and effective conspiracy to cover it up. That said, a researcher could discover more documents tomorrow so we may yet learn more details.

Yeah that probably was not smart, but a dialogue about two reasonable people making good arguments for their point of view probably wouldn't have been as entertaining to readers as mocking a nitwit, sad as it is. As to your other point, the sentence was life imprisonment and I'm sure after awhile, any small area of land or building you're never allowed to leave becomes it's own kind of prison. A gilded cage is still a cage, as the saying goes. I'll concede though that you're right, it was tactless, but you'd agree the response by the church was completely out of proportion and was based on more than just a knock to the popes ego, though it certainly didn't help.

Mixed up my heretics! My bad. House arrest/life imprisonment. Huh, learned something new. I thought it was all about the heliocentric stuff. Although now you mention it, it does ring a bell.

I'd add that it also misunderstands religion, as pro-science beliefs aren't mutually exclusive to being non-religious. As for the Galileo affair, it was specifically political paranoia and Galileo wasn't being tactless he was a victim of the Catholic churches response to haemorrhaging followers to Protestants, who were preying upon peoples mistrust of science. Prior to this, Galileo, and his earlier work were sponsored and landed by the Catholic church. From the perspective of Galileo, it would be like an employer deciding to have you executed because their competition convinced lots of customers that you're evil, so they want to execute you to keep customers. Galileo wasn't tactless he was betrayed really. The church could have chosen to try to convince people that the natural philosophers of the time were just trying to learn knowledge and wisdom of everything possible under god, but nope. Rounding back to good points in your conclusion; just to bolster it with a modern example. The modern LDS/Mormon church is fairly pro-science, particularly in the field of medicine. During the pandemic while other evangelicals were spouting the anti-vax and anti-mask nonsense spouted by TOAPOSG (a shiny updoot if you can guess all the words/profanities in that!), they were telling followers to listen to doctors and the CDC.

It's objectively you, which is objective enough for me. I didn't find myself disagreeing with anything you just said.

Trump is too old, now if we go with the whole Viking mythology boner that these Nazis seem to have, we can absolutely have Trump throw himself off the Ättestupa!

The caveat here being, that it can be; whether a person sees there own meaning and purpose in it, depends on them. It wouldn't be wrong of me to say that humanity in general finds some of it's purpose and reason for being, within scientific endeavors, from thinking to engineering. In short; yes. Religion as an idea comes from a linguistic evolution we can track to Latin, early Latin Religare, means to bind or tie fast while Religio means bond, obligation, reverence and it wasn't until the 5th century was the monastic bound to god meaning. In this sense, a religion is just a group with an obligation to commit to certain ideals, behaviors, beliefs and practices/ritual. What those ideals, behaviors, beliefs and processes determine, is how homogenous the group is. Scientists could be viewed through a religious angle, but the value system involved favours objective truth over observably falsifiable falsehoods.

Yeah I'm still relying on lichtmans keys too. Thomas Millers predictions based on betting numbers is an interesting idea; but it has some issues with it. Namely that in a poll of potential voters, they usually are potential voters. I can't vote, but I can bet, but me betting on Harris wouldn't be in reflection to some vote Harris is definitely going to win. That's one issue. Another is that bets are decided on an individual level of risk to said individuals wallet, meaning there is a cold feet effect and a doubt effect you don't get when voting. The final issue, is the reporting response. See, when a poll is released, you can't just decide to be a part of the next poll as people are reached out to by pollsters, randomly. When you report on betting odds, anyone who is old enough to gamble, can bet, in the context of this election, with one side being high in toxic masculinity, if you tell them they are losing in a certain arena, their pride will have them show up at that arena. Now, I haven't tracked it rigorously but it kind of felt like Kamalas odds for winning the election started to take hits, after Millers work entered into the news cycle. I suspect this may mean that republicans responded to this news by placing more bets on Trump. Which really is the easiest way to mess with Millers predictions model, as it can be made incorrect the same way a company can artificially inflate the price of it's stock. You see, I can't respond to a poll by getting 100s-1000s of people to take part in the next poll, but I can get that many people to make a bet, especially when you're asking cultists to bet on their leader, that's a no brainer for them.

My wife will be voting for Harris but I personally can't vote in American elections, not until I naturalize anyway. With y'all in spirit for 2024 and at the ballot in 2028. Thinking about putting up a pro-harris sign that combats misinformation at the same time. Something like "Vote Harris! As an immigrant, I can't!"

In this current political climate, Trump has actually backed himself into a corner and can't grow his base. How Trump behaves is all relative to his supporters because they aren't unified behind ideology but behind him. So if Trump doesn't maintain the illusion of being behind his supporters ideology, if they are deeply conservative, they just won't vote. If they are closer to the center, they'll defect to Harris. Putting Trump into the position where he has to figure out how to win new support, without losing any. Which he can't do, if he admits he lost the election, people like Nick Fuentes will crucify him. If he adopts relatively fairer policy in women's reproductive health, he'll maybe gain support from independents but lose it in evangelicals. Really it's less about how much worse he can act, but how media can improve on reporting it all.

There was literally a Trump supporter boat parade by a group of neo Nazis with swastikas just a few days ago. Those were definitely anti-semites supporting Trump. Someone needs their algorithm reset, damn. I'm sorry you have to deal with that Genady, my dad went down the alt-right Internet rabbit hole too. I'm honestly starting to think that politicians, judges and other civil servants need to start releasing their phone browsing data. There are way too many people straight facedly claiming utter bs and it's reaching the point where I just want to spend 15 minutes on their phone to find out where this crap is coming from. I don't really believe in devils and angels, but these devices are starting to become the devil on everybody's shoulders and most people believe it's an angel, metaphorically speaking ofc.

I get that; there are times though where even though "if" was used, the assumption itself still sounds like it was pulled from ass or ether. This might just be due in part to the lack of an explanation as to why it was necessary to make the initial assumption. There is also just a difference in principle and method, as I personally don't like to base my premises on assumptions but factual observations and if I ever do have to make an assumption, it is ordered more toward the conclusion being the assumption, based on the facts of the premise. So it's more like "premise A and B are true, therefore we can assume C" an example; we observe stars to be hot and spherical, therefore we can assume all stars are hot and spherical until proven otherwise. Another example; We observe humans to be engaged in value based behaviors, therefore we can assume humans have and care about values. I could maybe go a step further and say it may be safe to assume this makes it impossible for a nihilist to exist without engaging in behavior that betrays nihilism.

So this is why I hate when other philosophers say "we need to make some baseline assumptions in order to..." Or something similar.

I have just one question; do you find Maslow's hierarchy to be useful? He was a psychologist and espouser of the scientific method. I just want to get back to the original question in the OP; knowledge and understanding, are things that lead to gaining some power and control of your environment. Scientific endeavors in psychology, understanding how people think and feel, can definitely help with procreation. Science isn't useless, it's the most useful tool we have at understanding the nature of our existence and thriving within it. I just don't see how your later contributions to the discussion in anyway even touch on the subject you originally invoked. Nor do I see the point of it. But then I've procreated so maybe that's why I don't see the point of the discussion?

Exactly; secular ethical norms can be derived from biology, physiology and physics. Commonalities within the context of our existence as living beings on a wacky rock hurtling through space that could fly into another rock and end it all at any point. That's literally humans MO in everything they do most of the time so definitely not a conspiracy theory imo. Promoting prosocial behaviors, modeling good behavior, protecting from need desperation, educating in a framework for how to think about right and wrong; these are the things at the heart of effective crime reduction strategies. Some prisons have reduced recidivism with philosophy and ethics courses for inmates. I wouldn't say it is the religious influences specifically but whether or not those influences contain what I mentioned above, as it isn't hard to find religious influences where none of that happened and youth were taken advantage of and abused instead of helped. Some churches and religious groups do amazing work but others are no better than the gangs themselves.

I think you misunderstand how Maslow's hierarchy works; it isn't a top down priority structure, it's an order of supervenience wherein foundationary access to our needs is what enables further access to the upper levels. Put simply, you can't climb a pyramid by starting at the top. If you don't have access to water, food, warmth and oxygen, you die, and the rest of the needs you have and access to them, dies with you. A much simpler way of interpreting the hierarchy of needs, is just to look at the scale of the sections, not where they are from top to bottom, just the scale. The bigger the section, the greater the need. This turns it into more of a scale of whether or not something is a true need or borders on practically being a want. The context of the hierarchy itself is that it is supposed to be a description of what a human needs in order to feel like it is or has led a good and fulfilling life. The baseline foundation of that is simply a life where you have had steady access to food, water, clean air and shelter without worry of scarcity, if you had that, chances are you were able to have the opportunites to achieve access to the upper levels of our needs, which again are physiologically not as important as the lower levels upon which the entire pyramid rests. It doesn't matter how much self actualisation you can do, it will always come back to the foundational needs.

Most likely you're correct, although in order to derail it after this they'll have to come out and define "official" acts themselves in response to the inevitable Trump appeal and they'll punt that as far back as they can. Although if Trump loses and Democrats win enough congressional and Senate seats, maybe Roberts will try to desperately claw back some perceived integrity by throwing Trump under the bus. There is also the double edged sword that if they go to far in immunizing the presidency, a democratic president could theoretically legally intervene in any future election and deny Republicans a win for as long as it takes for a new court to re-address the issue.

I know, I loved that too. Took the presidential immunity strawman made by this Scotus and steelmanned the crap out of it. Expertly done. I'd also add that candidates have judicial recourse (where the judiciary checked the executives branches power by finding no credible evidence of fraud in the 2020 election) and therefore no incumbent president has any official duties in respect to an election campaign they are running in. It's like they tried to tie Smiths hands behind his back and he just immediately snapped the bindings. I've got the full filing downloaded and ready to read on Friday during my day off.

Yeah these are the types that I see conducting the actual shooting and bomb threats, but as a percentage of MAGA they make up what like 5-10%? I think if Harris wins, pitting those militias against law enforcement and the national guard, I think they'll still get their asses handed to them in the end, but who knows how much damage they may do before that or what might happen if they go further underground. It's less the militia I worry about but major financers. Elon Musk could pay for a 100k strong mercenary army for well over a decade or could outfit and supply these militia groups to be far more effective and dangerous. One thing to keep in mind about MAGA though, is that it isn't uniform extremism, it's a mixed bag of crazy that is ripe for it's own infighting over how extreme they really are. One militia group may not have the same motivations or grievances as another. One group may claim to be all about protecting the second amendment while another has fever dreams of a handmaids tale being made reality. Even when it comes down to in-group culture, MAGA has a problem with leadership, in that who gets to be in charge or higher up on a hierarchy, is determined by backstabbing and usurpation. Same problem the Sith have really. This isn't to diminish or play down the threat of this happening, just trying to point out reasons to remain hopeful that whatever happens, we'll overcome it. Still important things to think about and the court battles are sure to be messier than they were in 2020 all on their own. Really worried the supreme Court will be looking for any excuse to intervene and give the election to Trump.

It's already messier tbh; assassination attempts, bomb threats, the rhetoric is getting darker and the Trump side is getting more desperate and more deluded. I've just been operating under the assumption that America is in a cold civil war that will heat up to Irish troubles style terroristic warfare, on an American scale. Ironically enough most red and purple states are more likely to end up with intense infighting due to strong democrat support in densely populated areas. Houston, Austin, San Antonio, Dallas, El Paso, they are all blue dots in a "sea of red" that is a sea only in landmass, not of people, in Texas. A lot of those Democrats are 2nd amendment touting Democrats too so it's not so cut and dry that one side is better armed than the other. Honestly though, it's going to take a lot of monkey see monkey do for enough Trump supporters to get off their asses, drop the dunkins, hop into their mobility scooters and roll off to a civil war in some regimented way that even resembles military organization.

Starting to seem more like an election month than an election day with all the early voting taking place. Also there are numerous democratic legal challenges to many last minute rule changes made by pro-trump election commissions and officials so at least the trump sides efforts aren't going to go unfought. This is going to be a long October and things can only heat up. 😕