The destruction of "Nazi Germany" is not the same as the systematic hunting down of anyone associated with "Hamas" to the point that it's OK to kill unarmed civilians and topple down Hospitals or civilian living quarters or stop aid from coming in to starve out anyone that might be associated in order to take over the land. — Moliere

That is different than hunting down and killing Hamas. I have no problem eliminating Hamas if it can be done without collateral damage or without the goal of stealing land. I see your point that Israel's goal is not just the elimination of Hamas at this point, and they are unable to do it without killing huge numbers of innocents, and what they are doing my fall under the definition of genocide.

That'd count as an example of "genocide": MW: "the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group" — Moliere

Then that is not a good definition of genocide. Sometimes political groups need to be systematically destroyed. If the destruction of Nazi Germany is genocide then nothing is genocide.

I'm not happy he's dead, but I'm not upset about it either. There's some reporting the shooter had a transgender partner. Trans people have been banned from the military and the DOJ is talking about restricting them from owning guns. How much abuse can a community take before someone snaps and takes out a particularly vile trans bully? Conservatives have this quaint idea that queers and liberals and liberal queers don't have guns and don't know how to use them.

I've noticed that everyone around me is happy Kirk is dead, not happy that people are going around shooting each other, just happy one jackass is gone. — frank

The attitude from liberals I know is amusement over the irony of Kirk being one of the shooting deaths that are "worth it" to keep the 2nd amendment alive.

What about revoking visas from people expressing support for Palestinians?

The point was made that Trump was stoking fear. You responded that sometimes fear of the other is "proper and rational". Trump stokes fears of immigrants, correct? Should I be afraid immigrants? Am I being irrational because I'm not afraid of them?

There are plenty of times in history where 'fear of the other' is the proper, rational response. — BitconnectCarlos

Is this one of those times? Trump stokes fears of immigrants. I live in California. I interact with immigrants all the time. Many of my students' parents are immigrants. Is the rational response to be afraid of these people?

Do you think Hegseth would be doing that if it David Hogg had been assassinated?

Our brains could be simulated by a binary computer. Would a simulated brain be conscious?

Also, this has nothing to do with Trump. — Outlander

“The way that Brazil has treated former President Bolsonaro, a Highly Respected Leader throughout the World during his Term, including by the United States, is an international disgrace. This Trial should not be taking place. It is a Witch Hunt that should end IMMEDIATELY!” Trump said in a letter that he sent to Brazil’s president, who is widely known as Lula, and posted to Truth Social on July 9.

Trump’s letter went on to tie Bolsonaro’s prosecution and de Moraes’ social media rulings to the tariffs he’d later impose: “Due in part to Brazil’s insidious attacks on Free Elections, and the fundamental Free Speech Rights of Americans (as lately illustrated by the Brazilian Supreme Court, which has issued hundreds of SECRET and UNLAWFUL Censorship Orders to U.S. Social Media platforms, threatening them with Millions of Dollars in Fines and Eviction from the Brazilian Social Media market), starting on August 1, 2025, we will charge Brazil a Tariff of 50% on any and all Brazilian products sent into the United States.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/trump-brazilian-products-tariffs-bolsonaro-rcna222534

I don't know if he was racist, but his transphobia, imo, was just as bad.

https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/tpusas-charlie-kirk-trans-people

That's the whole schtick, ": But." The 'but' is the whole point here, and the colon is apt. The rest is just the necessary window dressing needed to get to the 'but'. The caveat on not deserving murder is also pretty wild.

"Fucked up" is the correct description here. — Leontiskos

You ever see the second Die Hard movie? Bruce Willis has to wear a sandwich board saying "I hate n******" in a predominately black neighborhood or a bomb goes off. So let's say some racist jerk decides to do that and walk around a predominately black neighborhood and someone shoots him dead. Are you really going to object if someone says, "Yeah, it's fucked up that he got shot...BUT". Isn't someone who does that and gets killed get put in the category of "play stupid games, win stupid prizes"? Or "fuck around and find out"?

Charlie Kirk, to me, was the equivalent of the guy walking around with the "I hate *******" sandwich board. Yeah, it's sad he got killed, but...karma's a bitch. The universe has a sense of irony.

Spare us the lecture, Hanover. The shooter is still at large. This is a philosophy forum. Of course we're going to navel gaze.

It's not unheard of. Hinkley shot Reagan to impress Jodi Foster. We still don't have a clear motive on why the Trump shooter did what he did. Charles Whitman had a brain tumor.

It is the same in the “sacrifice” regard. The trade off of lives is analogous, not the reasons why or even what those lives are traded for. We are willing to trade lives, if it is a problem to trade lives (for anything… I think) then cars are a much better place to start than guns numbers wise.
Anyway, obviously I didnt state the analogy clearly enough and I hope that even if you disagree its at least more clear what I meant. — DingoJones

Could the analogy be to a prohibition era bootlegger who goes around touting the benefits of alcohol, says a certain number of alcohol-related deaths are "worth it" so we can freely drink, and then gets nailed by a drunk driver?

Killing doesn't change anything. Not really. Not after a time. — Outlander

I think this is wrong. Killing thousands of British soldiers year after year certainly changed things in the 1770's. Same with Vietnamese killing Americans, Afghanistans killing Russians, etc.

Which is what brought me to the question: If you can't outvote Trump, et al., what's the other option? — Moliere

What do you do if Trump&co declare martial law and suspend elections? And then try to collect all the guns from registered Democrats and suspected LGBTQ people?

Im making an analogy about the trade-off for lives, in that sense cars and guns are analogous. — DingoJones

In the case of cars, we're willing to accept a certain amount of deaths to drive at speeds that make cars economically viable. Nobody would drive a car at 5mph on the freeway. We sacrifice safety for efficiency.

How is that the same with guns?

Yet the question is -- the ballot or the bullet? How do we justify each position, philosophically? — Moliere

You have to listen to your gut, I guess. Is a slave justified in killing the entire master's family if it means he'll be able to get a decent chance to escape? Probably. Would the Jews in Nazi Germany have been justified in gunning down every government official they came across? Certainly. If this country bans abortion entirely and a government official tries to step between a woman and the sympathetic doctor about to perform the abortion and she has a gun? I would support her using deadly force.

My point with that analogy was specifically about accepting some deaths as a trade off for freedom to have a gun. We do the exact same thing with cars, we accept that some people (many more than gun deaths actually) are going to die as a trade off for our speed limits and traffic volume (or as a trade off for the freedom to drive and if you prefer). — DingoJones

Again, because cars are essential for many people in this society. Driving is inherently dangerous and we accept the risks because cars are so necessary for so many. That's not analogous to guns.

Nick Fuentes hated Kirk and he has a small army of white nationalist thugs.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/nick-fuentes-slams-charlie-kirk-over-support-for-israel/id390071758?i=1000723989144

Are you sure it wasn't one of them?

"I think it's worth it. I think it's worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights."
— RogueAI

Not reasonable statement? Replace “guns” with “cars”. Still unreasonable? — DingoJones

I need my car to go to work and the store and other things. I don't need my gun for anything, except to assuage my irrational fear that someone will break in and I'll be unarmed.

The irony isnt lost on me, but I think Kirk would 100% include his own death as part of that acceptable trade off. — DingoJones

Really? You think so? You think if an angel came down and said, "Charlie, I can make this assassin miss you be a hair, or you can be gunned down and leave your wife and kids behind and you can become a martyr for the 2nd amendment. What shall it be?" Charlie would have picked martyr?

Say what you want about Kirk, he did not lack conviction. To the point above, we certainly accept that trade off with driving vehicles dont we? Vehicle accidents kill more than guns, why dont we ban cars? Or make everyone drive 5mph? And thats just for our convenience, there are many who think right to bear arms is much more important.

Again, cars have important uses outside of killing things.

Can we not turn this into a discussion about firearms? Is that remotely possible here? There are so many cheap and easy ways to kill a person. A knife, a baseball bat, a hammer, a screwdriver, messing with the gas tank, following him home and running him off the road, tampering with food, running him over on a morning jog, the list goes on. — Outlander

Firearms make it very easy to kill a lot of people quickly. And from far away. It would be rather difficult for the Las Vegas mass shooter, for example, to do the damage he did with a screwdriver. Since Kirk was an outspoken 2nd amendment proponent, and was literally killed while answering questions about shootings, the whole firearm thing seems germane.

It's like someone in a thunderstorm begging the lightning to hit them, and it does.

Is it bad that I don't feel sympathy that a 2nd amendment nut who said the following has been shot dead?

"I think it's worth it. I think it's worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights."

It just seems so...karmic.

It definitely reminded me of the old racist trope of the big black guy menacing the little white girl. I didn't see coverage of it in any of the leftist media I consume. It was all over right-wing media, but I don't fault them for that: it was a brutal murder caught on video. It was shocking and newsworthy. The liberal outlets should have carried it as well. There was a chance for Gavin Newsom to come out hard against crime

Interesting

Shades of Daniel Penny, the New Yorker who put a threatening homeless person in a chokehold and killed him. It ended in a mistrial. IMO, he never should have been tried. Too bad there wasn't a Daniel Penny on that train.

Regarding this case? It feeds into the narrative that leftists are soft on crime, which they tend to be, because leftists are better with nuance, and they have compassion for people with mental illnesses. Conservatives just want those people disappeared. The murderer in the story, though, should have been locked up before this and Democrats should be saying that.

I tried to get ChatGPT to draw a dot-to-dot of a raven for my students. It didn't go well. The singularity is still a ways away. The rate of improvement seems to be slowing. ChatGPT5 doesn't seem to be any better than the previous version.

Have another one. :up:

:up:

But what, exactly, is a measurement?
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/quantum-theorys-measurement-problem-may-be-a-poison-pill-for-objective-reality/

And that is why it cannot do philosophy, which is the attempt to disentangle the muddles that words create using the world as template. — unenlightened

You don't think it will ever do philosophy on par with Nagels or Rawls or Chalmers?

I think it would be an injustice if a transwoman who looks cisgender female, and has committed a non-violent crime, is put in a men's prison where she is likely to be a frequent target. — Mijin

That's a good point.

I understand what you mean. I have been a vegan for 19 years. I do miss the taste of non-vegan food, but I prefer being a vegan because it saves and improves sentient nonhuman lives. — Truth Seeker

Even outside of veganism, people could demand an end to the more odious forms of factory farming. Future generations are going to judge us harshly on this.

That's why non-vegans murder sentient organisms and think they are doing the right thing, even though there are vegan options that avoid the deliberate exploitation and murder of sentient organisms. — Truth Seeker

But they don't taste as good. I had an impossible burger once. Never again. But, I would pay twice as much at the store for lab grown meat.

Veganism prevents harm and promotes the well-being of trillions of sentient organisms. Yet, more than 99% of the humans currently alive (8.24 billion) are not yet vegan. Non-vegans kill 80 billion land organisms and 1 to 3 trillion aquatic organisms per year. Why isn't veganism legally mandatory in all countries? — Truth Seeker

If plants are conscious does veganism lose some of it's moralistic appeal?

I would agree that the prison service in the UK has got this wrong a couple of times; like the high-profile case of the the rapist who "transitioned" after being convicted. — Mijin

But once you say that a biological man can't be with females (in this case, prisons), aren't you opening the door to banning men from other female-only areas?

Do you think the battle for legalized gay marriage all those years before Obergefell was "woke"? Do you think people who support gay marriage now are "woke" or it an issue that has become totally mainstream?