Terrapin Station

I agree with the vast majority of the outlook expressed in this comment, too.

I'm not a fan of Nietzsche in general--despite the fact that there are a number of views of his that I agree with, and typically I'm not a fan of any ...

I'm confused why you're addressing me in your reply. Did I seem to be saying that I thought that consciousness is a "Hocus Pocus magic thing"?

In terms of talking about ontological commitments yes. But you can simply see it as an instrumental way of talking about what's going on, and assume t...

You got to part of what I was trying to ferret out there inadvertently: you're not using "see-through" and "transparent" as synonyms. I'd say that mos...

But for one, now you ARE talking about perception instead--you're talking about "what we're seeing" per se. What I was asking for, rather, is basicall...

But supposing that "there are multiple, branching universes" certainly doesn't strike me as a "natural causal explanation" that's more reasonable than...

I respect that you almost always present aspects of the "tool paradigm" even though you feel I don't present "coherent arguments" (and in a simple com...

. . . which would make it far more disingenuous that you sometimes act as if you're not familiar with any physicalists/materailists who are not elimin...

How about D.M. Armstrong?

Right. And how are you defining "see-through" (also versus how you think that other people are defining "see-through")?

I'm an instrumentalist on some things, and not on other things. I particularly tend to be an instrumentalist with respect to explanations/theories tha...

As expected, you did an impressive job with that. That's a sound basis for critiquing/characterizing my views.

Definitely that's something I dislike about New York/about big cities in general. In public, not only is everyone in their own little world, but they ...

Yeah, I'm sure you could give a nutshell summary of my views on this issue (so that I'd agree that your summary captures my views).

The idea that it's self-defeating is sophomoric, although admittedly, people who espouse sophomoric brands of relativism online don't help in this reg...

Yes. Truth in general does. There would be no mathematical truths in that case.

(Just fyi, by the way, if you want a better chance of me seeing something and responding, use the "reply" function) Interpretations can be instrumenta...

Social Justice Warrior

What I quoted from you was this: "There's no need to call opinions idiotic just because you disagree with them." I do not disagree with that statement...

No disagreement there. But I think there's a need to call them idiotic when they're idiotic.

Yes, based on SJW-fueled idiocy.

That we agree on. And when we find it, we can point it out maybe. In this case, we haven't found it.

"With respect to MWI" doesn't imply "Using MWI in calculations." MWI works as an instrumental interpretation of the calucations, as do other interpret...

SJWism is what makes such things "racist" etc. I don't mind doing it, but if you don't want to continue it, you don't have to respond.

SJWists are by no means "decent folks" in my opinion. Glad you agree, but there's nothing in your example that entails racism.

John was apparently pointing out the straw man that you're attacking. You keep ignoring that you are attacking a straw man. Probably because it's not ...

To you, but you have an SJW mentality in a lot of comments you're making. That mentality is rather what suggests that someone is an idiot. For one, si...

...then you buy MWI instrumentally.

The term wasn't applied to everyone of a particular gender or sexual preference. It was applied to a particular a particular personality/ideological s...

I addressed that one, too. It's neither. Again, it's denigrating a particular personality type, and in contradistinction to a particular other set of ...

You mean the quote that begins with "Are there racist people involved in the alt-right? Absolutely." There's nothing racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. ...

How would the standard of conduct be expressed so that rating women would be against it? I'm sure the standard doesn't specify that one isn't to rate ...

. . . I pretty much agree with all of that. Lots of excellent points throughout.

I'm not "alarmed" by them, either. As I've mentioned a number of times, I'm a free speech/free expression absolutist, and I think it's important for f...

If he said, for example, what his wife claims he said about Jews, I would say that's "racist," but the problem with it is that it's hearsay, and in th...

At the moment, I don't have the slightest inclination or reason not to live as long as I possibly can. It's no more in question for me, than say, as I...

If I was implying anything by the question, it was only that if anyone were to claim that most physicists buy MWI as an ontological commitment, the pe...

rimshot

In my view it isn't. Mathematics, like logic, is a way that we think about relations, in this case, unlike logic, focused on "unit" type abstractions ...

Objectivity doesn't obtain via conventions. If anything about mathematics is objective, it's because it's mind-independent.

Okay. It seems like it would be important to know this, though, if we're going to claim that "illegal" necessarily implies "morally wrong."

Such as? What the heck does that phrase refer to? And this isn't a matter of value judgment. It's a matter of whether someone believes particular thin...

Okay, but you brought it up. Which is nonsense, but okay, so you're not just arguing that many people are intellectually lazy, you're saying that you ...

LOL--why would it make a difference if it were a day care center? Anyway, the analogy from the start has a number of problems, but let's pretend that ...

Imagining that I'd have the opinion on child porn that you're expecting me to have, that fact wouldn't disqualify them.

Sorry--checking back now. Oh, so you're just reiterating that re people making decisions about politics, they see making a clear distinction as "irrel...

Lots of folks are all too happy to make all sorts of ridiculous conflations, yes. People are all too ready to apply "racist," "sexist," etc. to all so...

I know it's close enough for a lot of people who can't be bother to think about things with any clarity, but that's why it's ridiculous. Is that what ...

Are there "legal issues" (what we're actually talking about is legislation, but maybe that's a "legal issue") that do not distinguish between right an...