shirgall

In my experience it's not being good or bad that makes a group effective but commitment. I'm sure that when this is all over Stefan will return to more lofty topics, and I'm hoping that nurturing commitment in those that follow the path of good will come up again. (If you doubt it, think about how many times the message of commitment to peaceful parenting has come up over the years.)

No matter what train you are on, or if you are on the sidelines, keep your powder dry.

The real question I'm thinking about now is what will be the nature of the unrest and economic chaos afterward, no matter who wins, and what will be the best way to deal with it.

The narrative today coming from Cernovich and others is that this particular attack came from Paul Ryan, who has an advisor married to an ex-NBC person who could have had access, in coordination with other establishment GOP people who abandoned Trump in unison swiftly after the tape emerged, ostensibly because Trump was no help to the Republicans who are down ticket.

Genesis 1:1 through 2:3 is a clearly different account than Genesis 2:4 through 2:25.

Indeed, I fall into that category. I have finite tolerance for risk, finite time to do what I want to do, and a whole series of responsibilities that I have taken on that must be serviced.

Are you asking because we've been droning and have now had a warship attached by Houthi rebels in Yemen? Or the Salafists in Algeria? Or the "Islamic Fighting Group" in Libya? Hizbul Shabaab (HSM) formerly Al-Itihaad al-Islamiya (AIAI) in Somalia? Etc, etc. etc.

Megan Kelly said she never talked like that, and then someone dug up her interview on Howard Stern... https://www.newsmax.com/Headline/megyn-kelly-howard-stern-sex-talk-donald-trump/2015/08/09/id/669255/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHtP_eInFCo

Oh, I know, I was going meta.

What's especially amusing about this kerfuffle is the soap opera scene Trump filmed with this actress involved her throwing herself at him and him saying "no".

I agree the debate wasn't the roast I was hoping for, but I'm not ready to give up. I think he should have stopped when he landed a punch and started to ramble and his explanations could have been clearer. Those explanations came across as being in the "uncanny valley" of not being practiced enough but also not "off the cuff" either, which misses the marks for both "heartfelt" and "clear". There's a couple more debates and October surprises to come. As a mail ballot voter, some of those have less impact in my state than others, but I'm cautiously optimistic that I'll see the evisceration of popular tropes in the near future.

I responded to your question about MMD's sarcasm, so the observation about arguments was related to his comment, not yours.

I do consider myself to be a credible witness but I wouldn't expect anyone else to take my experiences as gospel without appropriate documentation and reproducibility. I once dreamed an event that later happened. I think it was a coincidence, because the mind tends to notice coincidences, and not precognition. Unlike most people I was never indoctrinated in any of the mutually-exclusive religions that are out there so I didn't have to have a massive break with faith. If I'm forced to choose one, I'll pick one. It'll probably be at gunpoint like those unlucky people in the mall being quizzed on a certain prophet's mother. I'm not making any extraordinary claims that need to be explained. Reality exists. Evolution happens. I make decent money as a professional paid logician. Where did I make a claim about the origin of ethics and values? Perhaps you can explain why you think the carelessly handled and edited testimony of questionable ancient characters (whose stories are more likely to be parables than not, based on the fate of other passages of the same documents) constitutes credible evidence but similar stories from other religions do not. How do we know a particular sect is correct and not another?

It's a question of whether any god of any stripe has revealed him- or her- or themselves to a credible witness whose experience has been objectively recorded, preserved, and replicated. To date none have.

I'm going to vote, but I hold no lofty notions that makes much difference except in local elections. I live in the state of Washington, and near Seattle, and the looters outnumber the producers greatly here, probably drawn by the massive cash flows of Microsoft, Amazon, Starbucks, Boeing, etc.

Indeed, I think it's a gatekeeper tactic to "sharpen the saw" and create good calls. Based on past threads that led to calls this sometimes works. My own experience with it is negative.

Faith is *not* a choice everyone must make, unless one has already made the choice to accept a faith and then must decide whether to relent. The default position is no faith on any extraordinary claim. Credible people accept extraordinary claims too easily. Malleable people might be easily convinced. Skeptical people require evidence.

For the same reason he said there were no rational arguments on the forums on this topic when Stef asked many months ago. He's trying to get you to come up with a better argument, or he's going to ignore you if you can't. Negative reactions aren't an argument. Good arguments with a spirited call are revenue because those kinds of calls are interesting. This is why I never call in, because I don't think it would be interesting to anyone else and MMD has never offered a counterargument to that.

I don't disagree, but what I try to picture is the continuum of responses from the low bar of voting for a fire marshal to the high bar of voting for a President. It's not settled. Some people have made arguments that any voting within the system only serves massive initiation of force that is modern government systems.

It is justified to use countervailing, proportional force to prevent force being applied to oneself or the innocent, but you had damned well be able to prove force was being used on that innocent and that innocent really was innocent. If a libertarian knew someone was enslaved by captivity or threat of force they would be hard-pressed to ignore it. While a person is not obligated to put themselves on the line to rescue someone, a lot of people choose risky actions to do all sorts of things. (This is the biggest issue I have with voting. What is the proportional response to someone voting for a tax measure on a ballot? A vote against it. What's the proportional response to someone voting for a tyrant?)

I was using ephemeral in the sense that a concepts exist as a brain function when a person (well, entity, since even dogs grasp some concepts) is alive. The brain's ability to extrapolate from experiences to create abstractions and recognize patterns does not create something in objective reality that was not there before. For example, every middle school boy extrapolating that everything longer than it's wide is a penis does not make all of those things penises.

We can only speak of concepts by identity by relating those concepts to another and assigning that identity to them. The act of communication exists. The concepts don't have existence. In the best possible circumstance I can relate to you the idea of a flat surface supported by legs on which I may place my buttocks in a position of rest and you can grok the concept of "chair" but that is not the same as giving it existence. It just means that a useful categorization of objects has been related to you and if I ask you for a chair, you might produce one of a million different physical things that meet the standard. Yes, it's useful. But the idea of chairs is mental... or if it is physical, we lack the capability of pointing at a particular configuration of neurons and electrical impulses and saying "There it is, THAT is 'chairness'." It is the special ability of brains to hold abstractions and (sentient ones to communicate abstractions) that allows us to consume, replicate, and alter concepts. They are nevertheless ephemeral.

Then what does this mean? Argument against the idea that philosophers should focus on universals

I don't mean to be rude, but concepts don't exist. They are merely abstractions that once related to someone else can be shared. Yes, someone can give a name to a concept that doesn't match what that name means to you. So what? One of the first steps in debate is making sure you are talking about the same thing (or "not thing").