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Echarmion

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Seeing how the bit from the video is focused entirely on a first impression, where personality never enters the picture, I don't see how it could show...
June 17, 2021 at 20:34
This kind of thinking might be related to a pervasive cultural trend to treat all kinds of relations as commerical relations, could it not? In which c...
June 17, 2021 at 18:43
Can you explain to me just what you're seeing when you watch that video?
June 17, 2021 at 18:34
Sure, prejudice of this kind is hard to avoid, though it's possible to be aware of it. But it's hardly a guarantee of a specific outcome. Beautiful pe...
June 17, 2021 at 17:19
You might start your elaboration by addressing the numerous people who are not beautiful and still successful.
June 17, 2021 at 17:04
You can play all kinds of word games like this, but none of this actually serves as an argument that all representation must be intentional. You're ju...
June 17, 2021 at 06:35
"Representer" is a word you just made up, and phonetic similarity to "representative content" isn't an argument. The term "representative" denotes a r...
June 16, 2021 at 21:40
This premise is about "awareness" and much of the argument following is about "knowledge", but you don't seem to define either term here. You seem to ...
June 16, 2021 at 21:23
Yeah, but "life", by which you presumably mean the process of evolution, is dumb. It needs diversity to survive because it cannot and does not predict...
June 15, 2021 at 16:35
If I'm allowed to let my imagination just run wild a bit, here's one way things might have turned out: Some HG bands return to the same locations fair...
June 10, 2021 at 09:47
So let me simulate a little conversation between our two positions: I say: Bread is important for people, I think people should have a right to bread....
June 09, 2021 at 19:16
Does it work this way for other rights? Doesn't restraining or injuring or even killing someone who is about to kill someone else violate their genera...
June 09, 2021 at 17:17
I'm not sure I find this really convincing. After all that mistrust of strangers would seem to work just as well without such rigid thinking. But perh...
June 08, 2021 at 21:26
Possession of what though?
June 08, 2021 at 19:27
The universe that is the model in our minds can not be, because we cannot list an infinity of things. That does not mean that that which is ontologica...
June 08, 2021 at 18:39
I was more thinking of things like black and white in-group / out-group thinking, the halo effect, and the tendency to treat admissions of mistakes as...
June 08, 2021 at 17:28
What's contradictory about it?
June 08, 2021 at 17:14
But you narrow the extend to that right to a few specific cases. You don't delineate a general right of free self-expression of actualisation. You're ...
June 08, 2021 at 14:48
I did not want to claim that we have a similarly unique tendency towards hierarchy, only that we also have this tendency, which seems to explain a num...
June 08, 2021 at 13:52
Has he not given me the right? Everyone has the right to force other to respect what's theirs. So since everyone can demand respect from everyone else...
June 07, 2021 at 20:22
Well, AFAIK, HG societies do have hierarchies, they're just relatively flat and come with little coercive power. Humans seem to have evolved pretty cl...
June 07, 2021 at 20:16
It's flawed because it's vague and you're not supplying any argument for why we should accept your conception of compulsion, why it should be avoided ...
June 06, 2021 at 06:42
From your previous posts, you seem to only be concerned with certain types of compulsion, where I cannot threaten someone with a slap on the face, but...
June 05, 2021 at 20:22
But who could be convinced by such a viewpoint? I don't think you can even live according to a standard of "all compulsion is bad", unless you are a h...
June 05, 2021 at 18:51
It has nothing to do with needing to do it. I want to do it. So do most other people. Most people prefer a technological civilization with all their c...
June 05, 2021 at 18:24
It should perhaps be noted that the alternative to money is not bartering - bartering presupposes a basic notion of money, though not necessarily of c...
June 05, 2021 at 18:12
Why would that be the case? You'd still have to actually exchange resources, because not everyone would have the same resources or do the same job.
June 05, 2021 at 10:44
But that's not true in historical terms. Power has repeatedly be decentralized as well. The idea that individual actions are unchecked until a law con...
June 05, 2021 at 08:58
And that's perhaps the answer to the question of why statism reigns. States may be historically contingent, but they're not an accident, and if we loo...
May 31, 2021 at 20:50
Us, hopefully. I really can't make heads or tails out of this kind of criticism. Yes history exists. Do we have any other options apart from starting ...
May 31, 2021 at 08:44
I don't know. This seems like the reification of a category to me. History is driven by the contingencies of situations and the long-term evolution of...
May 31, 2021 at 08:11
Ethnicities are socially constructed though. It sounds like you're arguing some kind of "ethnic essentialism" where the world can only ever consist of...
May 31, 2021 at 07:14
Theft and robbery rely on a distribution of goods sanctioned by some higher authority. "People who like the state are servile and obedient". Yes, nice...
May 30, 2021 at 20:32
You always face consequences for your decisions. How much those impact you depends on your circumstances. If you're well off and live a sheltered enou...
May 30, 2021 at 18:39
Yes, you may have "options" but that doesn't make spending the money in any way optional. The landlord, the train you take to work, the supermarket yo...
May 30, 2021 at 17:00
Censorship is the suppression of ideas before they can be disseminated. The ideas that are supposedly being censored by the "left wing woke pc brigade...
May 30, 2021 at 06:26
You can also evade the tax authorities and live in a cave. Theoretical options abound. But you must eat, have shelter, etc. So in a practical sense yo...
May 30, 2021 at 06:15
I'd say the analysis would have to be multi-dimensional. As @"tim wood" pointed out, a stereotype is always impermissible in the context of a formal, ...
May 29, 2021 at 20:49
Technically VAT is paid by the store, they just add it to the price. And indirect taxes like VAT are trash and ought to be abolished except for specif...
May 29, 2021 at 20:23
Provided you live in a democracy, you do have a say. Merely that you do not get what you want is not the same as not having a say.
May 29, 2021 at 18:55
So you do not live in a democracy? I thought you were living in Canada?
May 29, 2021 at 17:11
Your philosophical training was apparently insufficient to distinguish a reference from an appeal to authority. But it is quite obvious that you have ...
May 29, 2021 at 12:35
Piketty argues that seeing it merely as "people voting against their interests" is mistaken. Every system is propped up by ideology as well. The ideas...
May 29, 2021 at 10:41
Oh yeah, that's an even better story. You're right. Mostly because this debate is a microcosm of debates about economic policy elsewhere. Very little ...
May 29, 2021 at 08:16
The problem is you're basing your views on your ignorance. A lot of things "seem" to you this way and that, which is a nice way of saying you don't re...
May 29, 2021 at 07:28
It's genuinely baffling to see someone so confidently make an argument from ignorance. It's bad because it damages social cohesion, in ways that are a...
May 28, 2021 at 19:31
I have pointed out elsewhere that inequality is not simply "different outcomes". But regardless, the problem isn't that some theoretical amount of ine...
May 28, 2021 at 17:18
Well that's essentially what I mean by ideologically motivated ignorance. It wasn't intended as a personal insult. I have my own ideologically motivat...
May 28, 2021 at 13:36
Oh the middle class isn't growing right now, but it was essentially invented in the mid 20th century, a period of high tax rates. Yeah, I understand t...
May 28, 2021 at 10:33
That's because the left you are talking about are not the left they were 40 years ago. Taxation can absolutely work to combat inequality, and has done...
May 27, 2021 at 10:30