The argument makes a great deal of sense when that research directly effects people's lives, as in genetic or cancer research done at small, focused laboratories and less sense when talking about mega science like the CERN Large Hadron Collider or manned space flight. — magritte

Yet, most inventions people use today have come out of large scientific projects as the engineering required spawned much of the technology we use today. So that argument doesn't really hold much water and the public are generally pretty bad at knowing that the thing they use daily came from something the public once deemed "unnecessary" to fund.

This is the type of argument that makes me cringe a little, since you need to just take one look at the enormous money spent in military research to find projects that are absolutely ludicrous. Like, how's it going with those rail guns?

One might believe that because the outcome of scientific research is unknown, it is irrelevant, but that's not how to view these things. It's the intention that matters. We aren't doing science for no reason, we do it for the betterment of humanity, to add to the body of knowledge that is our entire species, and through it engineer our way out of the cave so to speak.

For all the things we can fund today, science, with its miniscule funding already, seems like an odd choice to criticize getting funding. There are tons of other stuff in society that actually warrants criticizing getting money. But science is not really one of them and I don't really understand why that notion keeps popping up.

We spend more money on mindless consumption of AI slop and influencer nonsense than we spend on science, education and engineering.

“an expensive joyride for the ultra rich” and “nationalism”, neither of which are “good reasons.” Is there something that I have overlooked? — an-salad

Science? The main purpose of the mission to go to the moon is primarily for scientific reasons and to establish a scientific base of operations in the long run. The only reasons why ultra rich people are involved is because their pride and bullshit keeps a flow of money to fund these scientific endeavours since the public don't care about anything other than mindless consumption and politicians don't care about anything but maintaining their power.

The amount of money spent on anything scientific globally today is so small it's embarrassing. If we took just a fraction of the funding that the global military gets each year we could have solved so many scientific problems today.

Every time I see someone question the funding of scientific missions, studies, experiments, research, engineering or education I wonder how they arrived at that perspective rather than questioning so much else we people waste money on globally instead of scientific research and development.

:up:

The difference between advocating and analysis is often obscured by those who use "freedom of speech" as a tool to attempt bringing in a trojan horse of bigoted bullshit to a discussion.

If someone is unable to spot the difference, that is either utter stupidity, or just an act to keep the "freedom of speech"-shield up against any criticism.

Not tolerating the intolerant is an act to defend freedom of speech.

But I’m more interested in how the republicans will deal with him.

If they don’t, in any way, then the republican party is dead by becoming a conservative MAGA death cult.

How will the republicans ever be able to heal from this? The only way would be to fraction off into a new party for those who didn’t side with Trump. It would create a bad election at the start, but they could recover if they side with the democrats on the main mission to put an end to this cult bullshit. Otherwise, what will happen when the boomers of the old republicans die off leaving just the young cultists left; those who were brought up in the evangelical radicalist church schools who produce fanatics like a factory, and who tries to torture LGBTQ+ people into becoming straight.

If the US don’t become a fanatical Christian fundamentalist nation that the MAGA wants, then it will probably strike back hard at the fundamentalists in a way that breaks the nation in half.

The people in the mid-USA have nothing to live for anymore. It’s just a wasteland of dismantled industries that will never be brought back, whatever people believe about tariffs. They’re doomed to hate the regions of the US that holds up the economy. And they will hate until they die off. These people are the ones who cheer on Trump’s violence, because it’s their fantasy of striking back at whatever made their life shit. How will they survive after Trumps demise? They will be absolutely ignored once the illusion of Trump caring about them disappears with him.

Either the US ends Trump now, or there’s a risk of pushing the cult into becoming actual violent extremists. I wouldn’t be surprised if they end up becoming a major terrorist faction in the future, especially if they feel failed.

Then others can follow his lead and claim they don’t need to abide with international law to deal with him.

But it seems no one has the balls to do anything about him. That’s why I always ask “where’s the line?”. How far can he go without direct consequences? His personal military force ICE just killed a civilian and him and MAGA just blames it on the left. He’s constantly pushing further and further without real pushback.

When does anything blow up in his face? Because there are lots of people just constantly talking about “the latest thing” he’s done being the end of him, yet he continues further and further. The constitution doesn’t mean anything, the law doesn’t mean anything, international law doesn’t mean anything, people’s lives doesn’t mean anything. And no one gives a shit.

In any functioning nation, they would have arrested him months ago. If the government can’t deal with him, then soon enough the people will. History is relentless with examples of this.

if Trump actually seized Greenland by military force, it would be a far bigger deal than extracting Maduro from Venezuela. — Wayfarer

I really hope Danish and allied military gets to Greenland and defend against such a thing. Attacking Greenland in a way that leads to combat against allied troops within Nato would be such a diplomatic disaster for Trump. He would also essentially become a military target and invoking article 5 against the US would stir things up quite a bit.

If the opposition in the US doesn't do anything about Trump in such a case, I would conclude that the US is quite fucked and have a hard time recovering. But the real deal would be to target Trump with the international court. He wouldn't be able to go anywhere as a president, not anywhere that actually matters for a US president anyway.

I would love for all of these morons who infested the US and Europe to just fuck off to Russia like all the other authoritarians and morons of society. It's quickly becoming a cesspool for such low lives and I wouldn't mind putting up a big iron wall against that part of the world. Let them rot in there.

I think the credible motivation is that there was some real Maduro hawks in the Administration - notably Marco Rubio himself - and Trump was infuriated by Maduro's dancing around on television like nobody could touch him. 'That'll learn him'. I can hear him saying it. — Wayfarer

Yeah, seems plausible.., I’m constantly reminded that I give Trump and his idiots too much intellectual credit for decisions, when in reality most of them are just a bunch of absolute morons representing the most brainless slobs of meat walking this earth.

Rubio was visibly infuriated when a reporter kept pressing him on what it means that all the other enablers around Maduro are still in place. Trump might have been wanting to cut the head off the snake, but what if the snake is a Medusa? — Wayfarer

Maybe because most people think that the problems with an authoritarian regime is only the leader. That's only true in authoritarian nations in which the dictator rules his closest people with fear. But most authoritarian regimes are composed of a wide net of people who keeps all parts of the nation within the same grasp of power. Even Trump's cult following functions like this, with lots of little nazis and corrupt grifters handling stuff around him. Even though Trump and his people are so stupid and incompetent that I think that house of card would fall with the weight of tungsten if he gets removed or dies.

Normally, if something like this happens, the best way would be to let the UN go in and arrange an election in which the people in power have no power other than to just run the nation until the election is done. The idiots in Washington have now essentially just created a power vacuum at the top and if they don't get an election running fast it will be chaos.

But it's obvious that Trump is just after the oil and minerals for the AI business. Venezuela is among the wealthiest in the world in that regard. He just want someone he can bully into giving him all those goods. He doesn't give a shit about democracy or the people of Venezuela.

The best flipping finger that Venezuela can give to Trump and his cultists would be to change into a proper democracy that starts to do business with their resources at a high price in order to enrich the people and make the nation prosper as a whole. It has just been so good for Trump that Maduro were so authoritarian, it enabled an attack that could just pass as legitimate, even if it isn't. But a proper democracy that opposes the US imperialism? That would be a nightmare for Trump.

The political opposition to Trump hasn't woken up to the fact that this isn't a normal President — ssu

I don’t really speak of the opposition, but everyone who sees him for what he is. This isn’t really about political sides, it’s an about normal people against a cult leader.

The big irony would be if the Swedish sub that took out a US carrier during Baltic exercises… in the end took it down for real during an invasion.

With that said, the US military does have the right to reject illegal orders. Maybe there’s some intelligent brain cells within the US navy who simply will reject orders from that orange pig until people had enough and remove him from office.

I still don’t understand how far he can go before those with the power to remove him, do so. How many illegal things has he done by now? What does it take for the US to remove a president? Impeachment doesn’t work if the people who decide on it are part of his cult.

I really hope that Denmark invokes article 5 if they try to annex Greenland. And seriously push back against the US with military force. It would cause such a turmoil in the US that I don’t think Trump would survive it.

The features are:

1. AI Summaries (Topic Summaries)
Automatically generates short summaries of long threads, helping users catch up without reading entire discussions.

2. Semantic Search
Search powered by embeddings rather than keywords, returning relevant results even when queries use different wording.

3. AI Moderation
Detects spam, toxicity, NSFW material, and problematic content, reducing moderator workload.

4. AI Bot
A chat-style assistant that users can interact with. It can answer questions using forum content or general knowledge, depending on the model used.

5. Post Editing Assistant
Suggests rewrites, clarifications, translations, or tone adjustments while composing or editing posts.

6. AI Autofill / Autocomplete
Offers context-aware writing suggestions to help users complete sentences or refine ideas as they type.

7. AI Tools for Staff
Provides moderators/admins with tools such as user-history summaries and condensed views of long discussions.

8. AI Tagging / Categorization
Automatically assigns tags or recommends categories, improving forum organisation with minimal manual effort.

9. Related Topics (AI-powered)
Suggests similar past threads based on semantic similarity rather than keyword matching.

10. AI Translation
Provides instant translation of posts or post drafts, supporting multilingual community participation.

In other words, it's not for doing philosophy but for (a) managing the forum, (b) providing help to users ("how do I update my avatar?"), and (c) other unobtrusive useful things like summarizing topics, translation, and suggesting titles. — Jamal

Here’s my take on the AI stuff…

Good to have:
1
2
9 (especially if it can also be recommendations when reading a thread as to find related discussions and topics if you’re in the mood for a certain general topic to discuss)

Good, but in need of careful monitoring so it doesn’t skew anything:
3 (as long as it is reliable enough and doesn’t falsely flag people)
7 (as long as the AI doesn’t hallucinate stuff about members and discussions leading to wrongful bans or thread locks)

Should not be used:
4 (will most probably be hallucinating and convey bad takes and information. It will inhabit the problems of LLMs generally)

5 (Tone can be a power and a negative, but an AI constantly breathing down your neck to make everything sound bland will make conversations feel unpassionately uninteresting, it will make mistakes, might interpret an ironic harsh tone for being real etc. And it will more often than not interpret an argument wrong if that text is too novel compared to the topics it’s been trained on. Even if it’s just assisting it will cause a writing experience filled with constant interruptions by an obnoxious entity pushing for a direction it thinks is right, but more often than not will be negative for the writer. And clarifications are part of the dynamics of a discussion, someone asking for clarifications is part of the process of figuring out a topic together with others. So number 5 is more destructive to the experience than people think. People can use outside LLMs for assisting in modifying tone if they want to analyze their argument, but shouldn’t be ”on” by default on the forum)

6 (for the same reason as 5, NO manipulation while writing. And in this case it would risk manipulating the idea/intent/argument by changing the context of the text. Absolute ban on this on)

8 (this would funnel the whole forum into an algorithm that promotes what it thinks should be recommended. The whole point of this forum is to get away from the algorithmic slop of social media. We should absolutely not have an algorithm like this, it is death.

10 (This forum is English as the primary language. That’s not controversial and any translations is up to members to use their own LLMs for, it shouldn’t be part of the forum. It can also be filled with errors if the AI interprets something more complex than common texts. A very esoteric and creative text could be interpreted wrong)

———

In general, any AI use that change texts, guides you while writing or manipulates what’s being recommended/highlighted/focused on, should be absolutely banned from this forum. Those uses of AI is exactly what the forum rules on AI were formed against.

Any form of summarization, advanced searches or mod tools for spotting problems (but with the mod verifying, not the AI deciding anything), could be helpful.

But what of hate? We see so much of it, in the current political turmoil darkening the world. What is the evolutionary advantage of hate? — Questioner

Hate is the reaction of our narratively constructed world view having an immune system, rejection towards that which threaten it. Some of it is logical, much of it isn't.

You hate a person who killed someone you love because the act of doing so needs to be stopped in order to preserve the being of your group. Naturally, it becomes a way to defend against what could destroy you and your loved ones.

But the irrational hate we see is that reaction system going haywire because of the constructed narratives we live by. Someone hates the other football team, because it threatens the success of their own group, based on the fictional narrative constructed about this sport and this tournament.

The same fictional narratives exists everywhere; we construct narratives that define our entire sense of being and world view.

Why we see an increase of hate in the world is because social media's research found out that conflict gains more attention and interactions, so the algorithms pits two opposing views together to produce that drama, increasing hate. Two fictional narratives which collides into hateful behavior.

While shutting off these algorithms would generate a good neutralization of much of today's hate, the solution to hate in general is to find out which narratives are fictional and which are based in actual facts. The narrative based on facts should be strived towards as the way of life, being and world view to dominate and we should abolish narratives based on nothing else by constructions through arbitrary experiences.

It is mostly through these arbitrary narratives clashing with truth that we get irrational hate. But I see no problem with those fighting for narratives which are based on facts to hate those who operate on arbitrary ones or outright lies for the purpose of power. That form of hate is the "immune system" fighting against a destructive social construct.

Was thinking of entering the topic, but then I realized there’s a rise in these topics seemingly increasing on this forum.

And it just feels part of the culture war nonsense that tries to subliminally attack trans, gays and every other LGBTQ person in society. My opinion is that these discussions are very low quality for this forum. I’m not sure we should entertain the level of discourse that comes out of the rising hate we see in society.

If we’re talking about the science around transsexualism, how the situation is for transsexuals in society and history, if we talk out of respect for transsexuals, then that’s fine… but wrapped in this form of moral judgement is just low quality in my opinion.

We can easily have a civil discussion between each other who aren’t transsexuals, but a civil discussion that isn’t having insights and perspective from the people it’s about is seriously lacking in being able to have a qualitative level. If any in this discussion are are trans, that’s good, but it risks just becoming a bunch of hetero males discussion LGBTQ topics through a very narrow lens.

And I don't think I am alone in viewing the possibility in purely scientific terms. — Questioner

As do I, but we still run into the hard problem, that our imagination of another reality is dependent on the physical properties of our own, thus making our imagination unable to comprehend any of it. We can try and theorize it, but it will mostly boil down to extrapolations of how it relates to our reality, rather than form an actual understanding of the other reality.

The only real dangerous position is that they clearly state they should “support resistance” in th EU. They are basically saying that they will try and control elections and support populists against nations Trump don’t like.

This is a hostile act against nation sovereignty and should be met with resistance. Best way would be to shut down social media that’s based in the US, but since that won’t happen, the EU should install laws that makes it illegal to try and change algorithms for political purposes and that Meta and other social media sources need to comply with transparency about their algorithms. If they don’t they will have to pay billions to the EU in damages.

And we need to block European politicians to get funding from American sources that aim to fund the political campaigns of American puppets.

And we need to block American companies to establish themselves within the economy of EU nations. Not block trade, but block the purchase of EU companies that have influence in a nation or in the EU. We’re already doing this with China and Russia.

In essence we need to treat the US as China, Hungary, Belarus, and Russia, as a dictatorship that acts just like they do. Trying to control other nations and infiltrate wherever they please.

1. Human senses are limited.
2. There may exist parts of reality humans cannot detect.
3. It must be god. — Questioner

First two correct, but not the third. What I meant is that the act of asking the question in the way the OP does, is a form of cry out for God. It’s a cry out for a meaning beyond the reality we have. My argument is that this kind of question is a form of circular reasoning in which the usage of the fact we face a hard limit to know the unknown conditions beyond our bubble of reality, becomes the reason to question if “this is all there is”. The question rather expose the intention underneath to be about the fantasy of something beyond our reality, rather than engaging with the possible scientific reasoning about what would likely exist outside our reality.

And with the example of the holographic theory, the problem we run into if we entertain the question scientifically is that the conditions of our reality makes it impossible to comprehend any other reality and likely impossible for that reality to comprehend our own.

Reality is not the same as our bubble of the universe, it is the definition of the parameters that allows this universe to exist. If those parameters change or are different, it not only changes the resulting universe, but also perception itself, leading to a hard limit for which there is no comprehension of the other.

So, I’m not talking about “God”, but that the way the question is asked reveals an underlying fantasy of a state of reality beyond our own, that would somehow be accessible by us. Because if we can imagine it, it is in a way accessible to us. My answer to that is that it isn’t. The question itself becomes nonsensical as the answer is that we cannot access it, not even through imagination based on our best scientific theories. It is fundamentally inaccessible. Imagination of it relates more to our religious beliefs of a realm beyond our own, a heaven and a God etc. so the discussion often just takes the form of a religious one, rather than a scientific one. Metaphysics leading to a craving for heaven and God, rather than reasoning about the physical properties of a reality outside our own.

No, but it is also not evidence that what we experience is all there is. We evolved as these creatures with a finite set of senses. Our reality consists only of what we can detect. Doesn't follow that that is all there is. — Questioner

Yes, but that’s not what I’m getting at. We know that reality looks and behaves vastly different than our senses and limited perspective can perceive, but the question asked is about the possibility of something beyond our reality, based on our limited perception. Such a question becomes a form of wishful thinking, utilizing the limited perception we have as an unknown factor to project a fantasy of existence beyond our reality. It’s existential comfort.

It’s more likely asked because we want it to be true. We entertain the idea as a form of science fiction. Because if we look at what we lack in perception, it’s rather about frequencies of light and sound waves, of energy levels and the ability for higher dimensional reasoning. Neither of it speaks of concepts of other realities, only elevated perceptions of the same reality we’re already in.

The right question would rather be… if we were able to perceive everything, what would we perceive?

And if we want to ask if there’s anything beyond our reality, the answer is most likely, nothing that would help us understand ourselves, this reality, or function as any comfort at all because it would probably be so dramatically different from everything we understand of our own reality that it would be a useless glimpse. There wouldn’t be anything recognizable, there wouldn’t be a perception level able to comprehend anything as it would be different from even perceiving everything in our own reality, which in itself would overload our minds.

In the end, the question becomes a cry for god, not a question of perception or understanding. We are limited to this reality, for which we still have lots more to discover and understand about. Anything beyond our reality becomes white noise to us, as our existence itself is bound to this reality, as nothing of us is proven to function outside the reality we are part of. To ask about realities beyond our own is to ask for some other plane of existence we could enter into. But we can’t, as doing so would untangle the very being of our existence. It becomes as meaningless as if there is nothing at all beyond this reality.

A good example is the holographic theory of our universe. That our reality is due to a projection from some event horizon in some elevated reality. But it’s not a projection of our existence as people seem to believe, it’s a projection of whatever is originally there that due to being projected has formed the parameters of our reality. It projects the conditions that forms everything we know and our reality becomes something else entirely because of it. The conditions of our reality change the projected original into not resembling anything of itself at all and the process itself giving rise to conditions that transforms the very nature of it.

By entertaining the though truthfully, the idea breaks, as our parameters of definition for something beyond our reality is dependent on our own reality, which differs from anything beyond.

It’s a hard limit to our existence, as any answer of the beyond becomes meaningless to any of our conditions.

We simply want it to be there because it would entertain the thought of all our religious fantasies.

Coming in late to the discussion, but just adding one key note… the fact we only experience reality in the way we do is not evidence there’s something more beyond our reality.

It is good for Europe and the EU to get shaken to the core by all of this. We will all benefit from the EU becoming stronger and more connected as a collaboration. It’s the whole point of the union. So if we focus our attention to security, industry and collaboration between nations in a way that’s better than it is now, the EU will be much stronger in the long run. The US has only been good for military security, much of the industry is globalized today, meaning most production isn’t made within the US regardless of what the christo-fascists believe will happen through tariffs. And even if they bring production back home, it will cost so much compared to globalized production that the US won’t be able to export in competition with other nations. And if the EU regain a focus on actually building better production within the union because of this, unconstrained by nationalist ideologies, the EU could actually become a real power house.

But we also need to see that the republicans and the Trump regime is eating their own tail. They won’t be able to sustain their path for long and Trump will eventually die. Will other republicans be so eager to rely on the other openly white supremacist ghouls who aren’t popular? I think there’s a growing group within the republicans who have recognized that if Trump and his people don’t go away, it will doom the entire party. So I think there’s lots going on behind the curtains of planning to rid the party of all these christo-fascist extremists.

This also means that we will likely go back to a form of healing idea between the EU and the US.

I would bet that campaigns later on will focus much on healing the bad blood, to shake hands and show that we are healing as an Atlantic collaboration. It will be part of the opposition against Trumps type of people, and spawn a new era of the same kind of “hope” posters that boosted Obama into power. It doesn’t matter if there’s actual progressive politics going along with it, but there’s a win for anyone who’s about to fight dirty and point with their whole hand at the problems Trump caused and who speaks for “healing what was lost”.

It’s the kind of shit that gets campaigns exploding and people rallying. Since Trump has moved so hard in this extremist direction, there will be an equally powerful reaction. Politics and sociology works within the same entropic form of energy dispersion. With a lot of powerful actions comes an equally powerful reaction.

It’s why I like the Hegelian political interpretation of society through thesis, antitheses and synthesis, even if it’s a bit cliché. And what has happened is that with the rise of the internet, the polarization has grown more violent and large compared to traditional processes that formed a synthesis in political ideas and previously hold ideologies.

We’ve essentially already entered a World War III in ideas and ideologies. It’s sped up before militaries had time to lock and load. It might even be that the movement of clashing ideologies that previously led to war moves so fast that we already enter a synthesis phase before anyone has properly fired a bullet.

The war in Ukraine is for instance not because of ideology, it’s out of the delusion of a despot. The problems we have are that representatives of the extremes have gained powers through the speed of the internet, but that also means these ideas are all shot at the same time in large quantities of ammunition. Rather than slowly building itself into much more rigid frontlines that usually ends up in actual world war. So actual world wars aren’t really starting because of it, because the ideas are already being tested and dissected on the world stage. The public of the world behaves like the intellectualization after World War II, without the war happening.

We’re already dissecting the problems before they grow.

It might be hard to see in all of the stupid noise we experience today, but I can’t shake the idea that this is a temporary dark point, and we’re letting all these christo-fascists, right wing extremists, and Putinists blow their load all in one go, making them deeply unpopular in the future.

When people get fed up with the current status of things, they want change. And if most things look bad today, people want to change most things.

I can see in the archive that our stories from the story competitions are in the open. Would they be indexed by search spiders and AI scrapings? Just wondering if they should be brought over to the new TPF site and kept under login requirements so that they can still be published in places which demand them not to have been published before (which happens to be the case if they’re in the open I think).

I think them and the discussions should still exist, so not removing them, but maybe those exist in the new place rather than in the archive? Not sure how though, I’m not a coder. :chin:

"Progressives" is a very broad term.

As a fundamental definition, progressives merely represent a focus on changing society from a set of humane moral values. Placing people and their wellbeing before industry. It's focus is to try and establish what is true about the human condition and change society based on it.

Conservatives on the other hand rather want to decide on a set of rules and principles that are more rigid over time.

While progressives focus on change to find the best system, conservatives think that having rigid rules and principles is what leads to the best system.

And there are problems with both forms of thinking. Progressives might fall into bias as they try to argue for a newly established truth, and through it miss finding a balance in the change they argue for. Conservatives on the other hand, fail to recognize systemic problems that their rules and principles uphold, and they become ignorant of criticism of those rules and principles they hold close. Most ironically, conservatives sometimes are just the progressives in youth becoming so attached to the principles they fought for that they become conservatives around it, arguing their, in their era, progressive ideas, were universal truths.

A healthy society is, I think leaning more towards progressive thinking, because it is a realization that "truth" requires dedication to figuring it out. Conservative ideas of preservation of certain rules and principles usually comes from an ignorance of how reality works, not seeing that society change all the time and it changes with new knowledge and discovery about the human condition.

But equally, unchecked progressive thinking leads to a chaos you can't build a society on, because there's not a lot of room to establish those new ideas into practice.

So a society leaning more towards progressive thinking, but still utilizing the conservative concept of a rigid system, might be the best path through history. Constantly establishing new conditions of being based on new knowledge and dedication to truth, but with the rigor of establishing a longer lasting practical reality through preservation of the best ideas.

I would call it an obligatory watch in order to understand the psychology behind much of what is happening. — Christoffer

Of course the US state would pressure Google to take it down, though there's nothing in that video that warrants censorship. It will be up and running soon enough. People are so on the edge in front of Trump's guns right now that it's hard not to call it anything other than a fascist state.

I started wondering, what should we think about? After reading a geology book, I have become concerned that we don't think about the world's resources and their connection to everything else, including riches, poverty, and war. If we had a king, this wouldn't matter, but as a democracy, perhaps there are some things we should be aware of. — Athena

Is it because there's some other thread that this discussion continued from that let it spiral down politics alone?

It seems to me that you asked for a more general question about "what we should think about". As in, what should a regular citizen in a democracy think about in their day to day life so that society addresses issues of the world and maintain a healthy morality in that society?

Topics that need to be thought about as a form of philosophical foundation of being in a society.

Is that the basis of the question here?

I think F.D signifier breaks things down better than any of us have succeeded in exposing exactly what is going on with US politics and where the right is at today. I would call it an obligatory watch in order to understand the psychology behind much of what is happening.

It's all interconnected, it's not different topics, it's one and the same. It's Immortan Joe and his war boys. It's the radicalization by abandonment and false promises all within an algorithm that traps white men into a feedback loop until they die, socially or literally.

People need to see the bigger picture here. To not get bogged down by details obscuring the overarching problem of our modern condition.

Is all this about risks to freedom of speech in the UK? I'm no expert in those legal things based on nations, but wouldn't Ireland be better since almost all companies operating in Europe seem to have their office there for billing and legal. Seems like the most free place in that regard.

Well, Sweden or any nordic nation would be even better I guess, I don't think there's any real legal issues here except if someone threatens to kill or do such harm or something. So for legal reasons that would probably be the safest. I guess even France holds freedom of speech in high regard. But I guess that would only create a lot of hassle and problems with the business side of things having it somewhere else.

Regardless, as you listed above, those things are pretty basic things to ban, so I don't think UK would be a problem.

Wouldn't that be like, a huge deal, turning Jamal into a celebrity overnight and elevating this quiet little corner of the Internet into something anyone here wouldn't ever imagine in their wildest dreams? He would be the ultimate "every man" martyr everybody and their grandma would get behind—point being, it would make the elected official look bad which is not in any elected official's MO. No? — Outlander

Jamal becomes a champion for a true place of discussion, showing the world that there are places of discourse that doesn't turn to polarized cesspools in an instant. Fighting the power of governments for the freedom of philosophical discussions... could be a future film based on the history of the forum. I got dibs to the film rights :fire:

It's not slavery in this case, it's treating an animal in a way that it's stressed out its whole life, which is immoral. — frank

I think it's all over the modern world, and rather than how the "how do they do it?"-question was asked in the past in genuine childlike curiosity of the world, much of what I believe is a reason why many of us are on a forum like this, the question today is rather an expression of deliberate ignorance in which we ask it to fool ourselves and others that we genuinely don't know.

But in the day to day world of common people it's even worse. I don't want to make a generalized generation critique, but the younger generations today are far worse with this as they seem to just accept the bad when they buy from Shein or whatever.

It's like they, through their online experience, have fully embraced their shoes in Peter Singer's child drowning dilemma and know fully well about the suffering in the world, maybe even more than older generations; but they still don't give a shit. A form of active ignorance, almost worn as an identity statement.

I don't think people should beat themselves up over the modern condition as there's little one can do. But to at least shop and behave with some cognizant mentality in order to not chose the obviously worst products available might be in order.

The worst handling of animals in the meat industry is hard to moralize more than realize it is the effect of a highly neoliberal capitalist industry. It exist like a machine pushing people to become numb to their work and pressured to ignore what they do. What is I think more immoral is knowing it is like this and still buy from it anyway because you just want those damn good nuggets today.

I've not gone vegetarian, but for my own morals I've lowered my consumption both for environmental reasons and because I won't ever buy the cheap stuff. I'm lucky to be able to buy almost directly from farmers and hunters and I'll never go back to anything cheaper. But of course, this is far from an available market for most.. though I think it morally should and cost appropriately. Good for the environment, animals and the people who eat.

Or why would we raise that as a topic to debate, if it was, like hunger, our nature? — ENOAH

I don't think the philosophical mind raises the question of evil, because the philosophical mind recognize that "evil" is a made up concept, unconsciously invented to cope with the lack of knowledge of the things that hurt us.

We are just nature, we are just part of a chemical soup which formed itself into increasingly complex emergent behaviors until it became so complex that it formed meta-interactions with itself through what we call consciousness. But in the end, we're still just that chemical soup, in which we attributed parts of its behavior as "evil" because we are yet to understand just how the physics of it all, works.

Yeah.... "how doooo they do it?" is the one question modern people in industrialized nations ask themselves with the most fake ass expression on their face. Comedy at its best.

there are several heavy posters who are obviously and somewhat aggressively left — AmadeusD

How does that make the entire forum lean left? And what is your criticism through that? Isn't that just a genetic fallacy ignoring ideas based on their own merits?

Most 'clubs' as such have a lean. — AmadeusD

There's no club... at least, I'm not invited into any club. So it sounds more like conspiratorial thinking in which you group together some people in order to categorically frame them based on the attributes you ascribe, rather than their actual writing.

I write my own ideas to the best of my ability. That they sometime align with other people's thinking is just called humanity.

Philosophy is quite left-leaning in general. — AmadeusD

And why do you think that is?

Hate Speech is amorphous, and largely spurious. We can talk about what speech you find offensive, but using a label "hate speech" is a cudgel and nothing more. — AmadeusD

Hate speech is only ever confusing and amorphous among people who seem unable to recognize it as opposed to human rights. If human rights, in a basic Kantian way, stands for the respect of the individual or a group defined by some defining trait, to exist as "an end in themselves", then speaking of that individual or group in a way that lowers their existential value compared to the speaker themselves, is what falls under hate speech.

It's not rocket science, or what people find "offensive". It's recognizing when someone dehumanizes others for reasons that isn't them already dehumanizing themselves.

But on the Left, its a darling to shut down conversation. As we've seen with Kirk. — AmadeusD

What do you mean by this? Are you blaming the left for his murder?

And Kirk wasn't involved with "conversation", he used the idea of free speech "debate to find a platform to scream out dehumanizing hate against homosexuals, transexuals and proposed white supremacy ideals. To say the left "shut down conversation" as if Kirk was trying to enable any actual conversation, is seriously lacking in depth about what he was doing. Not being able to recognize his behavior for what it is, and just falling into the post-assassination narrative of the US conservative right, or rather the christo-fascist movement that's grown under Trump and Maga, is just a sign of times in which the world has begun to normalize white supremacy speech, and with Kirk, using him as a martyr for it. What did the conservative right do after his assassination? White washing what he spread around by silencing anyone who criticized Kirk for what he actually said, pushing companies to fire people for criticizing Kirk. Through the actual evidence of the behavior of how the right and left reacted to the assassination, do you really think it's the left who's "offended" and going against free speech? The conservative right basically uses state force to silence anyone who criticizes Kirk's values and what he actually spread around in his podcasts and rallies.

And how is it that our world is now "the left" that criticize anti-scientific, white supremacy, fascist ideals? Usually, both the left AND the right did so. But instead of recognizing that the right has been infiltrated by such extreme right ideas and anti-intellectual nonsense, the right seems to have just accepted being assimilated into those values and ideas.

The question isn't really what the left is doing or criticizing... the question is rather, why is the right silent in their criticism about things they were equally opposed to before? Why did the right let themselves be turned into a christo-fascist movement, populated by actual white supremacists and nationalist populists? How did they go from neoliberal economic policies to burning books and banning LGBTQ people?

If people see this as just normal, then I think people are blind to the fact that nothing of this is about the left or the right in any shape or form. It's about decent people standing for human values against people who want to put a boot on other people's faces.

the conservatives on the staff are no more ignorant of the facts than the others, as far as I can see. — Jamal

I was speaking generally of the current political climate. I know "conservative" isn't a description of "a person denying facts".

Facts have nothing to do with it, and the accusation that the other side ignores the facts is thrown from each side. It's a nothing argument, on its own. — Jamal

As I elaborated on.

I don't agree with any of this, and I'm very left. — Jamal

How do you mean?

Are we not seeing primarily conservative rightwingers deny climate science or, for the purpose of this thread, medical science? Isn't it often the right that confuse hate speech, racist remarks etc. with politics, then defending themselves with "it's free speech"?

Whenever I see arguments about some place being left leaning, it usually tends to be about rightwingers science denial demanding their arguments to be taken seriously, even if facts are against them.

Although, the whole "left vs right" polarization is something I feel is such a low point overall. What people attribute to left and right seems arbitrary or bound to whatever definitions culturally they have in their own nations and life. "left" and "right" in Sweden is for the most part left of Democrats in the US, so discussions nationally in Sweden about "left" and "right" tend to look very different than in the US.

Maybe people should stop calling themselves and others "leftwinger" or "rightwinger" in discussions that has nothing to do with economic politics. Because someone like RFK, could exist on either side of the spectrum, it's just that he got a home on the right because the republicans have incorporated ideas into their party and policy that comes from the conspiracy theories of the MAGA movement. So everything is about being against trans, gay, medical science as well as outright racism, I'm surprised they didn't have room for flat earth as well, seen as how in denial RFK makes the party towards medical science that helps people and children from dying.

None of that has anything to do with rightwing economic politics really, and it doesn't even have much to do with classical conservative values.

The "left vs right" has just become the way the polarized world brands itself. It's become a marketing tool for both sides to strawman the other and protect the self.

Yet, true knowledge based on facts doesn't care about such arbitrary labels we place on ourselves and others. It's just tribalism.

Yet, there's also a point to be made that many arguments that rely on facts tend to be called leftist. There's far more climate science deniers or general deniers of scientific results on the conservative right... so if a human's best attempt to reach a truth based on facts and scientific data is considered "leftist", then I guess that tells more about the political spectrum than that this forum is "unbalanced".

And even so, conservatives can make their points and arguments in here anyway, there's nothing removed because of that. But if people think hate speech or similar is just a matter of politics, then that's maybe the fault of that person and not a forum that aims to reach for a higher level of discourse than the usual online climate.

If this place seems leaning towards the left... it may have more to do with who actually seeks discussions and knowledge rather than some "agenda" by the mods.

In what way?

Existing members will have to sign up to join the new site. — Jamal

Had some problem receiving emails from this site when changing passwords. If the move over to the new site requires an email invite for the current account, what happens if it fails?

Wouldn't there be an email list for all current members? So that taking that list into approved members for the new site will work and when signing up the email is already registered on an approved list there.

Meaning, using the email you registered on this site will let you into the door of the new site when registering.

And if there are any trouble, the new site should have a way to contact moderators if there are any trouble transferring over.

Also, what happens to stuff hidden on this site from people not logged in? Like the short stories? If there's stuff like that disappearing from view, maybe that should be moved over to the new site?

The larger bubble is that the market has not yet come to realize how its shifted from day traders on the floor to everyone being day traders. Previously, the day to day movements were mostly made by traditional traders, working off analysts etc. but today, I think the majority of people doing day to day trade are actually regular people globally.

Everything is becoming meme stocks, it's becoming gambling and amateuristic in nature. People do not invest with the narrative and speculation of a company's worth, based on finances and its operation. They rather invest based on popularity and positive headlines in online news and social media.

So everything has become artificially speculative, with no grounding that defines a company's actual worth. We see it primarily in the tech sector, but it exists everywhere.

Stocks are slowly becoming crypto in nature; a company's worth tied to popularity rather than actual business worth.

How long will this be able to be sustained? Since this all relies on money flowing that isn't really financing the businesses of these companies, but rather becomes a bettin market and gambling, a gamification of the stock market. And we see a lot of companies being created just for the sake of gaining a stock's value, without any actual business underneath.

While AI surely is a bubble in the making, the major actors of this bubble are still having an actual business. Nvidia actually has a major income on selling the chips. So there's actual money there. However, other companies are starting based on just marketing themselves as AI related, driving up their stock values without any actual business underneath.

But this is not just happening within AI, it's happening in every sector of the economy, and traders are dragged with it, dancing to this empty tune of inflating the worth of worthless companies.

It kind of reminds me of the 2008 crisis, which happened because of a speculative market of housing which essentially sold worthless papers on housing.

If the stock is driven mostly on speculations on empty air... that's the air in the real bubble, and when it pops we will see an actual economic crisis, not just the AI bubble popping.

And with the majority of people trading a lot of money these days, it's not just banks or investment firms that will crash... we will see the majority of people's life savings crash as well.

It could be the worst economic crisis we've ever seen if this happens.

Unless any kind of hope for change at all is an opium, in which case it's not much of an accusation. — Jamal

Sometimes I wonder if the earlier Marx went into the opium of hope later on as more revolutionary comments were made. His and Engel's theories at their core is just a form of psychohistory (The Foundation), in which they try to map out the dominos falling within the system of capitalism. But maybe Marx got fed up by people who didn't understand the theory to the point of calling for the demolish of capitalism as a revolutionary action. It's always been a point of conflict for those discussing Marx whether or not he actually called for action against capitalism or not, cherry picking his statements out of context to support either criticism or in support of his theories. Even to the point of blaming Marx for all the problems of communist nations building from his ideas. It all kind of supports the existentialist's ideas of how language shapes our reality, in which the entire being and legacy of Marx shifts depending on the way his words have been interpreted and decoded.

But I'm in the camp of looking at his theories in the form of decoding the cogs of capitalism, and I think there's no opium to be found there, only a form of scientific observation that's been lost in how to interpret language over a historical timeframe in which language have changed to give extremely different interpretative values.

And through the observation of the cogs of capitalism, I think it's very important to understand what Marx and Engel's was talking about, especially in a neoliberal era in which there's no ceiling to how much wealth billionaires can pool into their pockets.

Society is in a breaking point close to what Marx laid out; in which the divide between owners and workers is so large that we're beginning to speak of universal basic income and other strategies to mitigate the consequences of capitalism's progression.

The biggest lie or misconception that supporters of capitalism perpetuates, is that the wealthy will re-invest their wealth back into society. But in a globalized neoliberal capitalist economy, they rather pool their wealth into tax free hubs, like banks or investing in extreme architecture in places like Dubai and Qatar. The value and wealth becomes solidified monuments of gold and never trickle down to the very society that it fed from.

So what we're witnessing right now is the verification of Marx theories for what will eventually happen with capitalism. I'm not sure I want to call it late-stage capitalism because we don't know how far it will get, but we're starting to see problems rising up for the poor and low-income, and if the wealth and money doesn't start to trickle down back into society (preferably with higher tax for the wealthy since the neoliberal experiment proved to not work as people believed it would), we will eventually see a revolution, not by the will of Marx, but out of the desperation of the people, all along the line of what Marx and Engels theorized.

So I don't think there's any opium other than the trust in that society is a self-correcting organism. If one part feeds too much on the other, they will soon be devoured by the ones they put into starvation. Economy is humanity's simulation of evolution, and as such, an unbalanced eco-system will always self-correct in the end.

1. Autonomy and Consent

* Only sane, competent individuals may form binding agreements.
* No contract may be valid if made under coercion, fraud, or extreme necessity (eg.,signing under starvation) — Copernicus

I see this as disrupting the whole thing. How do you define "sane" and "competent"? Where do you draw the line? How do you prove it wasn't under coercion, fraud, or extreme necessity? Subsequently, someone could claim that they've been coerced, under fraud or under extreme necessity and it would throw the whole legitimacy into question.

There are too many holes in which the binding nature can be called into question.

I’m always wondering how long it takes for a revolution to happen these days. Have the world gone so apathetic that no one is turning the guns back towards the top of a nation that has turned their backs on them?

With so much suffering and oppression in Russia, why isn’t there any sign of resistance? Either the population is entirely indoctrinated into Putinism or Putins people have such a violent grip on the people that it is impossible.

But I wonder how this can be true? Wouldn’t there be any people with military background that would organize an underground resistance? Aren’t there any hackers who feel the need to sabotage the government?

With all of this going on in Russia, why is it only that Ukrainian special forces do operations deep in Russia and not more bombings by the people of Russia fed up with Putin?

Nazi Germany had tons of sabotages and underground resistance movements. But it seems Russians are too depressed and drunk that they have no ability to fight the power.

We’ve heard like nothing about any resistance, which is very odd. If Russia is so incompetent on the battlefield, wouldn’t their corruption and incompetence spill over into intelligence as well? Making it more likely to actually be able to organize an underground resistance

House Trump has
disregarded legal process and court decisions, and circumvented/side-stepped law
concentrated power that should be independent
replaced specialists with loyalists, including intelligence, military, judicial, science, ...
threatened media/news, politicians, countries, whoever (submission comes to mind)
ignored/dismissed scientific consensus
told a record number of lies or misleading statements (for someone in this position)
raced ahead with populist or manipulative/exploitive moves
alienated/back-stabbed supposed allies/friends, and sided with authoritarians — jorndoe

Since he is still in power and hasn't been removed from power, I guess all of that is legal and aligns perfectly well with the constitution? Right?

This is why he should be removed by force. And since he isn't, we know that the US is broken and does not have a functioning democracy that upholds law and constitution. To say that he is in his right to do whatever he wants is to be an apologist for an authoritarian leader and an authoritarian regime.

There's not really much nuance here.

(By the way, my possibly wrong impression is that personally, Trump isn't particularly racist — jorndoe

Did you miss how he talks about immigrants? Or are you saying that he is too stupid to understand what he is saying if he forward racist remarks from others?

It could very well be that he is too stupid or rather, just don't give a shit about what he says. That anything that can give him the love of his followers will be said, regardless of what it is. I wonder how far he is from relaying an idea of using deadly force against democrats? I mean, if he is too stupid to grasp what he is saying, but he gets love from his followers by saying that, then he could say it. Only his legal team would have to scramble to try and cover it, but if he said something like that, I think he's done for.

Thinking is hard. All I need to do is learn how to dress myself in the morning and do a basic function, any function really, it can be as simple as pushing buttons or pouring coffee, and I get to live a life that a monarch 1,000 years could only dream of. I do that, I get to make a living. Anything else is superfluous. That's what the average person thinks. — Outlander

Yes, and this is why I hate the masses more than the authoritarian leaders. Because that would be like hating a rock for being a rock, there's no point. But the apathy of the people, to ignore fighting for the freedom and good life they have, to defend against those who want to destroy it for their own benefit, that apathetic people are the worst and they deserve the authoritarian boot on their head so they can re-learn what others already know.

Just think of the farmers who voted for Trump, now panicking over rising costs, lost workers to ICE raids, and exports diminishing. They deserve what they voted for, because maybe now they'll learn not to be stupid. Or they'll perish under their own stupidity, either way, normal, thinking people wins. I despise these people; a bunch of spoiled children who whines to their daddy Trump only to end up being left behind when Trump is done with them. Absolutely pathetic.