STer

Anarchism has absolutely nothing to do with claiming humans can live without any forces of any kind having influence or control over their lives. It is only about claiming they can live without an organized group of their fellow humans asserting authority over them in a formal, centralized way. Do you believe humans have lived without an organized group of their fellow humans asserting authority over them in a formal, centralized way? The fact is that was the case for most of human existence. Do you believe humans can live without an organized group of their fellow humans asserting authority over them in a formal, centralized way? That's a reasonable question, but it has absolutely nothing to do with any other forces of nature that you're trying to bring up. Do you believe humans should attempt to live without an organized group of their fellow humans asserting authority over them in a formal, centralized way? If so, you are an anarchist. If not, then you aren't.

It's hard to take this seriously when you've based an entire argument on simply purposely using a different definition of "the state" than everyone else is talking about, especially when I'm sure you realize you're doing that. As you surely realize, everyone else in this thread is discussing this state: "the body politic as organized for civil rule and government" and probably even more specifically this "the operations or activities of a central civil government" You seem to be talking about a number of other definitions of state. So the issue in this thread is whether humans can live without a centralized body politic organized for civil rule and government. It is a fact that for well over 99% of human existence, we did just that. If you want to discuss whether humans can live without states of matter or any other definitions of state, that is a completely other discussion. But again, I'm almost certain you know that and are just doing this anyway.

Moriartis, It sounds like you have a good grasp on the whole context of this discussion and where your strengths lie. You definitely did a nice job analyzing the issues from the angle you did it from. A lot of good insight.

Moncalanoo, you're right that as far as modern life, it's pretty difficult, if not impossible, to tease out what is influenced on some level by the state and what isn't. But it is worth remembering that humans lived for hundreds of thousands of years before there were states. In fact, states have only existed for a tiny percentage of humanity's time on this earth. So our species does have lots and lots of experience living without states. But few of us alive today have any direct personal experience.

Actually this brings up one of the most challenging issues for supporters of the non-aggression principle. When is something aggression and when is it self-defense? Many of those who see massive inequality and want to rectify it don't see themselves as aggressing against someone so much as standing up for themselves as a response to something being taken from them. This is really difficult because we no longer live in a simple person to person 200 person tribal economy. We live in a global economy that is highly networked. A person can steal from another in very sneaky, roundabout and indirect ways, without even ever meeting that person directly. Some of these ways are even legal. So people see this inequality and sense that something, somewhere has gone corrupt and have an instinct to stand up for themselves. Are they right or not? It's not always so easy to tell.

I think you'll have a tough time ever getting most people to just overlook massive inequality no matter how any particular philosophy may justify it being acceptable. I'm pretty sure multiple studies have shown that people respond emotionally more to relative status than even absolute status. And given our evolutionary history it would be easy to see why this is how we would have evolved. Does anyone really expect masses of people to someday be perfectly ok with huge inequality even if there was equal opportunity?

I'll add this. You did a great job in the OP of framing the debate looking at it from a person on the right trying to convert someone on the left. You could do the same from the perspective of someone on the left trying to convert someone on the right. And I think you'd find some mirror image stuff. And what it all comes down to, in my experience is: "There are bad guys, we need the government to protect us from them" vs. "There are bad guys, they end up in the government if we have one so we need to protect ourselves by not having a government" The thing is both of these have some merit. Neither of these views is completely wrong. It ends up being a strategic question, a consideration of which someone thinks is riskier - the possibility of bad guys run amok with no entity in existence big and strong enough to stop them (notice the parallel to a child with no adults to intervene and help, one being neglected) or the possiblity of the bad guys hijacking the big strong entity (notice the parallel to a child with adults who are the active bad guys in his or her life). The thing I always come back to is how many children, when neglected or abused in any way, have to rationalize it. They have to lie to themselves because the truth of the situation is unbearable. And I think often years later what you're dealing with is the remnant of this rationalization. To admit their view is wrong would be to give up the entire fantasy that kept them believing they were safe as children. But it's important to realize this happens on both sides. For some, the rationalization is "My authority figure is good and will protect me" even when it isn't true. For others the rationalization is "I don't need anyone to protect me. I just need to be left alone. I don't have any need for anyone else" when really those needs are deeply unmet and too painful to admit to. And it's only after you dig through all these layers of defenses that you can even get to the question of what the actual truth of the matter is.

This is a really interesting discussion. I'm not really a lefty or righty and try to take an independent approach. But here's what I'll say. In the OP you said that people are only irrational if it's from cognitive dissonance, ignorance or abuse. But, I think are many levels of reasons a person might be irrational about something, ranging from their personality type being more of a feeling-based decision-making type to poor reasoning skills to an organic brain problem (see the research out there about the biological markers of violence/aggression for example). The ironic thing though is that you mention abuse, which is all too common...and then go on to talk about logical arguments. One of the most powerful things about FDR is Stef's constant reminder that people's political views are quite often just projections of deep personal hurts, some of which may even be unconscious. When that's the case, you aren't likely to change their political views by talking directly about politics. What is needed is healing of the wounds. They're more likely to come to rational views through therapy than any kind of political discussion. As far as the actual logic of what you said, it's very interesting and worth discussing and there is a lot I could say on it. But I don't think in terms of converting lefties, but just converting people to healthier approaches in general. There's plenty of dysfunction on the left and the right.

Have you ever seen Red Eye late at night on Fox? There is a Libertarian streak on there. Especially from "TV's Andy Levy." The host, Greg Gutfeld also has a bit of a Libertarian streak at times. I'm not even that aligned with the ideology myself, but the comedy is often rather clever and some of the people on the show are very witty so I'll sometimes watch it. Of course, these guys aren't completely anti-state by any stretch. But it's the best example I could think of where I see some Libertarianism seeping into the comedy mainstream (if a show at 3 am EST can be considered mainstream)

Coming in late into this conversation… Maybe this has been already addressed, but I have not seen any evidence of it… I think there are three questions that need to be answered prior to starting the debate: 1. What do you mean by “absolute knowledge”? Does it even exist? 2. If atheists are required having it to make their case, would not theists be required having it as well? 3. If neither party has it, can they still use the labels? You'll notice that my suggestion of using the numbers quickly clarifies all of these questions. 1. By absolute knowledge, I believe he means having 100% certainty in belief that can also be justified objectively. He does not believe it is something human beings are capable of (neither do I, by the way.) They are capable of 100% certainty in belief, but not with the objective justification part thrown in. 2. This depends on how you define theists. Is a theist someone with 100% certainty that God exists? Or is a theist someone who has just enough certainty to believe God exists more than that he doesn't exist, for example 51% or 60% certainty? This shows why, in my view, it's easier to avoid even spending time on that question and go directly to the %'s. Anyone who believes with 100% certainty in belief would have the same requirements you mention. Less than 100% certainty in belief, whatever term you use for that person, would not. 3. Again this is basically asking "What % of certainty in belief is necessary to qualify for each term." It's a great question and one that anyone using the terms should clarify with the person they're speaking with before using them. But even if we clarify them here, the next person you talk to out in the world may have a different understanding of the word and you'll have to define them all over again. But if you use the numbers, you'll never have to bother with that and I honestly don't see the benefit of doing so.

There are also 100% atheists. And so yes, the fact that this one word, "atheist," is used to refer to this whole range of people who actually may have some real disagreements among them is just one of multiple reasons why I think it's more effective to go to the numbers if you really want to understand beliefs. When we're on the run and don't have time and just want a rough approximation, the words can be helpful as a quick and dirty shortcut. But I don't think just getting one of those words should give you much confidence that you've really ascertained someone's beliefs well. And when using the words is leading to endless semantic debates, at that point continuing to use them and not even try going to the numbers may reflect a desire to argue for argument's sake rather than to actually discuss each other's beliefs.

I’ve been following this debate with great amusement for some time now. I think what STer is saying (pls forgive me if I'm wrong) is that we make most decisions in life not based on absolute truth, but rather on our estimate of what being presented is indeed truth. Every estimate has a confidence interval around it, as one can never be certain without complete evidence. For example, I am pretty sure the original asker (who seems to have received his answer long time ago, btw) is under 25 years of age. Why I say that, is not important. But what is important is that I am 80% confident that he is. Is there a chance that he is older? Yes! Could I be over confident? Maybe! Could somebody else be more or less confident in this estimate? Most likely! The reality is that I will never be 100%, or absolutely, certain of his age. Can I just ask him? Yes, but he can lie. Although, his positive answer will increase my confidence, perhaps, to 90%. Can I ask him for a birth certificate? Sure, but, you know, people forge those. Although, this will once again increase my confidence, to let’s say 98%. Can I perform some kind of DNA test? If he lets me, but even that could be faulty. At some point I will reach some crazy 99.99% confidence, but NEVER 100%. More thread-appropriate example would be that when an atheist saying “there is no God,” he is likely somewhere between 51% and 99% certain that God does not exist. Or, to flip that, between 1% and 49%, that God indeed exists. You're correct on what I'm saying except for two things: 1) Regardless of whether you or I think anyone can actually be justifiably 100% certain on something, there are many people who, at least consciously, profess to being 100% sure of things. We call them fundamentalists, for example. So if you want to know what people believe about things and ask them, you will get people saying 100% and that is worth knowing. There are people who believe things with 100% certainty, no matter how misguided some of us may feel that is. There are even delusional people who not only believe with 100% certainty that God exists, but believe with 100% certainty that they are God. So you will find every range of belief level in this world, from 0 to 100. But that does not mean anyone actually is justified in having those levels of belief and that's another discussion. 2) My point, building on what you mentioned here (as I've repeated ad nauseum) is that not only do people assign these probabilities to things, but talking directly about the probabilities in number form is often more effective than talking about beliefs in terms of verbal labels we then assign on top of those probabilities. With those two caveats, I think you actually grasped what I'm saying. Phew

That's what I was waiting for you to say. This discussion is over because you're claiming we can more accurately represent how we personally feel about the truth value of a statement yet you're saying different people will arrive at it in different ways. So, it's still no more accurate because what I say is, "60%" may be something you arrive at as, "12%". Assuming you're correct, we can safely say that our conclusions can be totally different and don't give any additional clarification. If you'd given me an objective way of deriving truth (like the scientific method) then clearly you'd have already accepted that it can be objective and that there are things we can say are true/false (pending review of possible contradictory evidence in the future etc.) anyway. Thanks for giving me the chance to think this stuff through but I'm out at this point unless something staggeringly new comes to the table. EDIT: And one last thing, you should really look into Socratic dialogue because the essense of that is about discussing personal experience and not appealing to other sources. I am completely confused as to why you're repeatedly (it seems to me )not understanding that when I talk about accuracy, I'm not talking about whether the person's belief accurately assesses reality. I'm talking about whether we accurately have comprehended what their belief is, no matter how true or false it is. The fact you might assess something as 60% likely to be true and me 12% is the entire point. People assess likelihoods differently. If I understand that you think there is a 60% chance and you understand that I think there is a 12% chance, then the process worked. We now know what each other believe, which was the goal. What am I missing?

If your goal is simply a practical one of understanding someone as best you can, then it doesn't even matter if the words are "subjective." It just matters if they are often misused and misunderstood. Regardless of how well-defined they actually are to those who might study them closely, unless both people involved in the conversation have the same understanding of them, the words can diminish your ability to accurately communicate. Hence, using something less easily confused like numbers can help. Belief and opinion may be irrelevant to what the reality is in some cases. But they are not irrelevant for human relations. There are many reasons why two people may want to discuss or come to understand each other's beliefs, regardless of how much influence those beliefs have on anything else. You might want to know if someone would make a good partner for you or if you are comfortable with them teaching your child or many other things. In all of these cases, you might wish to know their beliefs more clearly. All I'm saying is that, when you are seeking to glean what their beliefs are, if you really want to be more confident you understood correctly, it will be helpful to try to talk in terms of probabilities, rather than just using English terms like agnostic, atheist, etc. It's that simple.

I understand what you're saying but I'm asking you to tell me how you derive these numbers. How do you think bookies get these odds? They don't just give it out at random and if they do then they're going to lose a lot of money. They base it on massive amounts of data, previous records for teams/horses/players, the weather, etc. The same with insurance companies, they set the price you pay per month based on enormous amounts of data they collect from all of their customers. Even things like the stock market. I can't just say, "Ah, this commodity should be worth $17.14" because I don't have enough information to say that. The market sets the price and the price is based on millions of people interacting together and using their combined information and predictions to say what they're willing to pay and sell for. This is the problem I have with your proposition and this is what I'd like you to clarify: How do you personally get these numbers? I don't care what other people may or may not say, I'm talking to you. If you don't address this, I'm very unlikely (78.65%) to reply again as it's getting tiring. Again, what I'm doing is offering a suggestion, in general terms, on how to best talk to any person and learn what their beliefs are more accurately on this subject. It is totally and completely irrelevant how I myself "get" these numbers. Everyone gets them differently. We aren't concerned with HOW they got these numbers in this conversation. All we're concerned with is what their numbers are. Let's take the example of bookies again. Do all bookies get the numbers the same way? Of course not. That's why they sometimes differ on the numbers. And there are even some people who take bets and just go on their hunches. Some people are more analytical, some are more emotional, some just flat out guess. Of course the more professional ones do more number crunching, the amateur ones probably differ more on their methods. But this is not relevant to what we're talking about here. It's a very very important subject, but a different subject. Do you see that? If you want to know why someone believes there is 100% or 10% or 0% or 5% chance of something, then go ahead and ask them. That will give you some insight into their epistemology. But that's a separate discussion. If you just want to know what their belief is, you don't need to know how they arrived at it. The fact you keep asking me personally shows me you're completely and utterly missing the point. This is not a thread about my epistemology or how I personally make decisions. Basically I saw some people talking about a topic and I came up and said "Hey I think if you ask this way and you answer this way, you'll understand each other better." It's a suggestion on how they can more effectively discuss the topic. Turning to me and asking me for my answers on the questions is completely missing the point. I'm just suggesting a way to have the conversation, not volunteering to be in the conversation. I've even given 1, 2, 3 step by step examples of how to have a conversation about beliefs this way so I really don't see what's not getting across at this point.

Looking at Merriam Webster's, "believe" has several definitions. And the differences between them show why this is complicated. For instance, one definition says: "to have a firm religious faith" Another says: "to hold an opinion : think <I believe so>" You can see the gap in certainty between these. The first sounds quite certain. The second sounds very open to doubt. You can easily hear the second one continue with "I believe so...but I could be wrong. In fact, I'd say there is a 20% (or 30, or 40 or whatever) chance that I'm wrong)" Yet both of these fit the dictionary definition of believe. Proving yet again why it's such an almost willful generation of confusion to insist on using these words, even when they clearly aren't getting the job of creating understanding done, instead of going for the probabilities. And I point out another example. The bookies, who deal in these kinds of guesses and beliefs and knowings and hunches and so on in a practical way every day...they don't put out lines that say "Certain to win" or "Believe they will win" or "We know they will win." They just put the numbers. The numbers give us MORE information than the words, and have the nice side effect of taking barely any longer to express. What they do do though is force us to think harder and, at least hypothetically, consider if we had to put our money where our mouth is. The reason I think some people try to stick to using the broader words, which are more open to interpretation, is because they actually are not comfortable with realizing how much probability calculation is going on underneath or enjoy the flexibility of not having to commit the way the numbers force one to do, at least verbally, if not with actual resources.

It is a tangent and I only mentioned it in passing because I wanted to get at the idea that if I say, "I believe that an invisible intangible unicorn floats around the universe but never comes within 100 billion light years of Earth." then it's not going to affect how I live my life in any significant way other than me possibly talking about it compared to if I think that chocolate ice cream is a daily necessity then I'll be eating chocolate ice cream daily but I don't think it's worth taking this any further. There is really no end to the absurdity of what some people will do based on beliefs. Perhaps what you say is true for you, but another person, perhaps mentally ill or perhaps just quite eccentric, might say the floating unicorn will never come near earth yet demands some sort of worship ritual...and off we go. It's truly incredible the myriad ways beliefs affect actions. And here we're only talking about the conscious interaction. On a subconscious or unconscious level, beliefs may play another layer of role. You said " it seems more likely than not to be true". My point is simply that the most precise we can get is to ask exactly how much more likely than not? That's all that all this discussion boils down to. It seems to me you're raising whole other discussions than what I'm talking about in this thread. They are interesting discussions but separate ones. I'm not concerned in this particular discussion with why or how someone comes to be certain or uncertain or whether it's justified. I'm simply offering a more effective way of having a conversation if you want to figure out what their beliefs are. That's it. Not if you want to judge their beliefs or talk about whether you agree with their beliefs. Just if you want to find out and accurately understand what they believe. Did you read my post on betting? I'm really confused why this is such a difficult concept. Every day people place bets on countless beliefs. They give or take different odds based on how strongly they feel about their belief. One person believes that a certain team will win tomorrow. Another person believes the same, but believes more strongly and therefore will take 2 to 1 odds whereas the other will only take 3 to 1 odds. Another person believes the other team will win, and believes it very very strongly and will take even odds. The same principle can apply to betting on any belief you have, even if the bet is only hypothetical. Again, is this really that confusing a concept? What is not being understood exactly?

Yes, this is true for a belief that, if you hold it and don't want to be hypocritical, you have to act on it. Like, if I believe that hitting people is the best way to solve problems then I'll be acting in that way. Actually it's true for any belief that people choose to act on for whatever reason, whether that they feel strongly about it morally or that they just think it's fun to act on, as long as it has to do with things they have an influence over. But that's really a tangent. It's irrelevant to this conversation what I would say. What's important is that there are people - many people - who don't believe humans can know anything with certainty. Indeed, Socrates is probably the most famous of those. So those people would never say they had 100% certainty for anything. I guess it also depends what you define "knowledge" as. Does knowledge mean something you believe is true with 100% certainty? Or is a very very high level of belief good enough? I would say, in everyday layman's discussion, that I know the sun will rise tomorrow, but technically it's possible it wouldn't. For all practical matters, I can treat my almost certainty as certainty in that case. But if we are having an epistemology discussion, I'd admit that I'm rounding up and in reality there is a small chance it won't happen. But here we are, to an extent, tangenting again because of the usual reason - defining of terms precisely because we refuse to just use the numbers. Even the word "knowledge" means different things to different people, whatever the technical definition may be. Some would argue knowledge requires 100% certainty, others that it requires a bit less. I believe in criminal cases, the standard is "beyond a reasonable doubt." Our legal system (I'm in the US) says that if the case is proven beyond that standard, then the person is convicted and treated as guilty. It's interesting that the legal system - which deals with practical matters - never gets into certainties. In theory, we talk about certainties, but those who deal with practical matters like crime and punishment or actual gambling and so on rarely ever seriously talk about 100% certainties. It's also worth noting that whether or not people have %'s of belief is not dependent on whether you're comfortable with the implications of it. It's interesting to hear you talk about how you would apply this "if you were to live like this." I would submit that you do live like this. If you go back to my post with the betting example, there are countless things you deal with every day where you would require varying levels of odds if you were to bet on them. You don't have 100% certainty on what is going to happen. But you don't need it. If you think something is 99% or 95% or even 75% likely, most of the time you'll bet on it. Humans are doing these probability calculations on an unconscious level all the time. If we needed to be certain about everything before we could make decisions, we wouldn't have lasted very long on this planet.

One more note: For anyone still having trouble with this "probability" issue, think of it like this. After you define a thing, you could ask someone how likely they think it is that that thing exists. But another way to put it would be in betting terms. If you had to put your money where your mouth is, what odds would you require on that bet? So to use Hterag's example of Australia. If someone defines Australia the way he initially did and asks "How likely do you think it is that Australia, so defined, exists?" Hterag may say "100%" if he is the type that believes in certainty. Or maybe 99.99999% if not. (This 100% vs. just short of 100% difference is itself interesting). But we could also ask "If you had to bet $100 on whether it exists, what are the odds you'd require?" I think on this bet Hterag would take just about any odds no matter what they were since he'd see it as an almost, if not certain win for him. Now the caveat is that with some issue like the existence of God (depending on the definition the asker gives for God), we may never be able to verify the actual outcome of the bet. But the question still applies. The question is IF we could verify it and you knew someone was going to appear and tell us the answer, what odds would you require? I think many people would require much better odds in their favor on a bet like that than on the existence of Australia the way Hterag initially defined it. But then there are some who might be so strong in their belief that they'd bet God exists or doesn't exist with just as much certainty - in other words, require the same odds - as they would for the bet on Australia's existence. Now I'm not sure if probability vs. odds in betting is exactly the same question. I can imagine people thinking differently about them and giving somewhat different answers. But the principle is the same. And the issue of it being more precise to get a number like that than just a shortcut label stands. Also note that while this may conjure it to mind, this has nothing to do with something like Pascal's Wager. Pascal was advising people to choose what to believe as if the belief itself was the placement of a bet. This scenario does not prescribe that you should hold any particular belief. It's simply drawing out how strong your belief is, regardless of what it is.

Yes there is a catch-22 in that in order to explain ways words are being misused you must "use" those words. But as I mentioned this is why we recognize two different "uses" of words. I keep trying to remember the terms I heard for this but there is actually utilizing a word (ie: "I ate an apple") vs. just referring to a word (ie: "The word apple starts with an a") I've been pretty much doing the latter here, commenting on the words themselves. And to whatever extent I haven't, it's only because - as is my point - this is a quicksand trap where it's hard not to fall into going back to those words which ultimately lead to more confusion. I think the probabilities are a way out of that trap but to agree to use them we first have to talk about it to get there and many seem to get trapped at that point As for belief vs. reality, this thread is about belief, not reality. People differ in the likelihood they assign to various things being true or not. As you correctly point out, this often does nothing to change the reality of it. Although there are ways in which people's beliefs do affect reality. If many people believe something strongly, they act on that belief, and this has consequences in the real world. If they believe it less strongly, the consequences may be less. But this only applies in certain cases it seems. In any case, this thread was, as far as I was concerned, about belief, not about the actual objective reality, which might differ from any person's beliefs. (ie: Their beliefs could be incorrect regardless of how weakly or strongly held). To me the thread became a discussion of how to discuss so as to most accurately glean what a person's beliefs on the issue of God are. I agree, and have said over and over again, that until you define what someone means by the thing they're asking your belief about, it's not a constructive conversation. I agree with your method of insisting on strong clarification of that thing (God, Australia, whatever). But as for the belief itself, I think it's less useful to describe it with a term and more useful to describe it as a number. I'm not sure why this continues to be misunderstood but I'll try yet again. There is no reason for ME to define God. My point is when two people - any people - are talking about their beliefs regarding God, I believe the most constructive way to go about it is: 1) The person who is asking must first be encouraged to precisely define what THEY mean by God (ie: What definition of God THEY are asking someone's belief about). 2) Once that is defined, the person whose beliefs are being asked about responds with the % likelihood they believe there is that that definition exists. Notice the key to the whole thing is that when you ask someone for their beliefs about God, there are two elements. The "God" part needs to be defined. The "beliefs" part is often expressed using words like atheism, agnostic, theist and so on. I agree that the first part needs to be defined (by whoever is asking in whatever situation, not by me here. I'm not asking anyone their particular beliefs. I'm commenting on the process by which these discussions can be had more effectively in general). The second part, the belief, I believe is more effectively communicated in number form. Why? Because the numbers speak for themselves precisely. If you use words like atheist, agnostic, theist, then, if you really want to know what the person believes accurately, you'll have to go through another whole round of defining what those mean to that person to make sure you're on the same page. With the % likelihood number, you skip that. Afterwards, if you feel like translating the number into one of those terms, you can sit there and make sure you share the same understanding of which one applies to which situations and so on. But this way you don't have to do that. It's kind of like if you're measuring something. You can tell someone the thing is 5 feet long. Or you can say "small" or "medium" or "large". Well knowing the exact number is a lot more efficient. People may have different ideas of what is "small" vs. "medium" vs. "large." Maybe one person thinks 5 feet is medium and another thinks it's large. If you just say "it's large" one will think that 5 feet could fit in that category and one will think it couldn't. But we all agree pretty consistently on what 5 feet is. "Small" and "medium" and "large" are shortcuts we use which give up some precision when we don't feel it's necessary to be precise. Similarly words like "atheist" and "agnostic" and "theist" are shortcuts we use to save time going into deeper precision about our stance. But my point is that there is so much confusion over what these words mean that I think we end up losing time and accuracy. If you're going to use a shortcut, you need to make sure that it's consistently understood and in a situation where precision isn't important. I don't think that applies here. I agree with those who say that words like "atheist" and "agnostic" and "theist" do have definitions. They aren't as subjective as "small" or "medium" or "large." But they're so poorly understood by the public at large that the effect is similar. So going right to the numbers makes more sense to me. Hope this clarifies.

Have you? I suspect not. Your posts tend to consist of sanctimony and snubs. I didn't ask you to quote me a paragraph in a book in which the author speculated on a study; I asked you to reference some evidence. How does the author, or the study, define normal upbringing, neurological problem, or neurological difficulty? You're simply taking it for granted that they define those things the same way that you do. What is sanctimonious is accusing parents of abuse with no evidence other than their child participating in bullying. Apparently the burden of proof issue went right over your head. Instead of realizing the burden of proof is on you, not us, you just ask again for proof. I'm surprised how often some people on this forum talk about what the evidence suggests in a way that very few people who work on that evidence for a living would agree with. They seek out the one or two they can find, like Gabor Mate, and act like this is the consensus in the field. I read about the work in this field daily and almost everyone in it says that nature vs. nurture is an unsolved issue and that to the extent we have any idea, it seems like a very difficult to separate mixture. I almost never come across anyone working in this field who says "It's nature" or "It's nurture" (though I do know of some who work in this field for years and lean strongly toward nature). But on FDR, among people coming at it from an ideological approach, I hear every day how we're quite certain it's nurture, not nature. Pointing out how this goes against every rational tenet supposedly held here only results in more of the same. So I've accepted it as almost a religious belief by some on the board, held to cope with their anger at their own experiences with abusers. Unfortunately this justified anger at abusers gets projected beyond where it's justified onto situations where we don't really know the truth. That's where I get uncomfortable. I think people here forget that while child abuse hurts kids and should be prevented in every way feasible, falsely accusing parents can also hurt kids. What kids need is for people to take the time to seek the truth and act responsibly in each case, not knee jerk jump to conclusions every time a kid acts in a way that is dysfunctional and just assume the parents are at fault.

Right, so you can't draw any solid conclusions yet - that means in either direction. Which means a lot more research is needed before we can make any grand statements like "children only bully if they've been bullied." That's all I'm saying.

Please reference a single documented case of a child raised in a loving, nurturing home, free of abuse and neglect, who was unable to restrain his/her aggression and impulsivity. Wait. Are you implying that children free of abuse in the home cannot be abusive, themselves? Please give proof of THAT. That claim is actually one of the fundamental claims made on this site. It's one I've taken a lot of issue with. See my initial post if you're interested. "Born Evil?": Ponerology as a Transcendent, Unifying Priority

Please reference a single documented case of a child raised in a loving, nurturing home, free of abuse and neglect, who was unable to restrain his/her aggression and impulsivity. Also I'll repost this quote from Evil Genes by Barbara Oakley, which I've posted several times on the board with nobody following up on it: "Oddly enough, one study has shown that murderers who have a normal family upbringing have even lower function in their right orbitofrontal cortical areas than murderers who were abused during childhood. Perhaps murderers "without a psychosocial 'push' toward violence require a greater neurobiological 'push.' In other words, children with less severe neurological problems may be helped by having a normal upbringing - but children with more severe neurological difficulties may not be." And here is the footnote for that statement: 12. Adrian Raine et al., "Reduced Prefrontal and Increased Subcortical Brain Functioning Assessed Using Positron Emission Tomography in Predatory and Affective Murderers," Behavioral Sciences and the Law 16 (1998): 319-32.

Please reference a single documented case of a child raised in a loving, nurturing home, free of abuse and neglect, who was unable to restrain his/her aggression and impulsivity. That's an astounding disregard for burden of proof for someone on a philosophy site dedicated to empiricism and reason. And that's exactly what I mean. If anyone made an equivalent request on any other issue, like, for example, religion, you'd be up in arms at their reversal of the burden of proof. But when it comes to child abuse, suddenly all of that goes out the window. Furthermore, have you undertaken a serious good faith effort to find such a case in an unbiased manner? Did you look just as hard for those cases as you do for cases on the other side? I suspect not.