Echarmion

But what is the mechanism that causes the illusion? As I said, otherwise you run into a problem of infinite recursion. Any machinery you discover will...

That'd be an example. A definition is something like: an illusion is when something seems to have attributes that it actually doesn't have. But, conve...

Ah, sorry for not being clear. I meant to ask what your definition of an illusion is in this context. So, this makes me wonder why you dismiss the thi...

What is an illusion in this context? Well you asked for an operation. If you didn't want to hear about it, why did you ask?

You don't have direct personal experience of yourself choosing between two options? Because I have experienced that many times. And since I experience...

I think you're short-changing antifa by saying any leftist activist is automatically antifa. To me it would at least take a conscious effort to be ant...

I wasn't talking about Antifa specifically. Antifa activism is in some respects a special case, and I understand the arguments around why, say, pacifi...

I have had some heated disagreement with some posters in the sister thread to this one, even though we share (I think) a broadly similar outlook on th...

There probably is a better way. We'd have to look at the examples in detail. As I said, when a topic is a hot button issue, bad decisions are more com...

It's a very poorly chosen slogan, IMO. The problem, as I see it, is that the argument can be applied to any position. "I am getting fired because of m...

I don't think the first sentence is strictly true. Making a promise doesn't necessary entail a result, and even if it does, I don't think it's reasona...

I am not sure supporting defunding the police is going to win relevant votes. Bidens team presumably regards PoC as a captive voting block. He doesn't...

I love how these are both excellent but also completely different answers.

The obvious question is: are "you" something that "exists materially"? But the consciousness isn't necessarily "you"

This is kinda a sidenote, but do you think it's a problem that we apply the same term, e.g. white supremacy, to a worldview, a movement and a systemic...

It all depends on how you define existence. What would it mean for immaterial things to exist? Certainly it wouldn't mean they are material, but what ...

Neither preexisting conditions nor a long rap sheet make kneeling on someone's throat for 8 Minutes any less intentional or any less deadly.

What do you mean you don't "acknowledge them in the same way?" It's a question of fact, not of acknowledgement. Either there are economic consequences...

But of course both have long lasting economic consequences, and those you can reverse. Presumably we agree that if it were the case that the only poor...

That's what "undoing the consequences" means though, right? Why not? It seems very obviously false to say that no problem can possibly be solved by do...

Fair enough. I shouldn't go around positing things as fact when I haven't done the legwork first. Not really, honestly. Do you mean because it might l...

Yes, you may be right about that. I should have said "xenophobia". I don't know whether, say, ancient egyptians or the romans had any fixed ideas abou...

But sometimes people don't. It's not a law of nature. You can guess what will probably happen, but for that you need data. But this of course doesn't ...

And how is this related to what you are talking about? Are you going to argue the law governs dining etiquette because you're not allowed to stab your...

You said every aspect of social life. You didn't say "some aspects" because that'd be a trivial claim not worth writing about. Please tell me about th...

I don't think racism is sustained purely by language. If that were the case, where would racism have come from in the first place? Did someone acciden...

It's patently absurd to claim that the law governs every aspect of social life. That isn't even the case in extreme cases like North Korea, and it cer...

You're equating the state and the entirety of society. Under this framework, anyone is selected, even criminals are the result of negative selection b...

That's an if though, right? And it'd also have to be useable in some way.

So, let's fight poverty. I think we can all get on-board with that. Let's take the current protest, reinforce it, and make it about poverty more gener...

I don't know when this system was set up. I doubt anyone consciously sat down and said "lets set up school funding so it disadvantages black people". ...

If that is the case, it would seem to imply some sort of "vacuum energy" indeed exists and can be used. From the information philosopher's website, I ...

If I am not mistaken, school funding in the US is based on the tax income of the school district. The obvious result of that is that poor districts ha...

Wealthy white men have voted Trump, too. There is much debate on whether Trump actually has special appeal to a "white working class". There is a podc...

Why not all of those? It's hard to deny that the protests are at least achieving something. If we want to address other subsets of injustice, why don'...

Well, space constantly creates pair of particles and antiparticles that immediately annihilate each other, correct? Those are essentially fluctuations...

But far from all illegtimate states rely on this. Most just brand dissidents as "traitors to the cause": Robust definitions of mental illness aren't r...

I think this discussion has gotten too heated. I apologize for being condescending or insulting. And I'd ask you to not engage in these little jabs ei...

Tools are not extensions of authority. They are tools. An extension of authority would be something that is vested, explicitly or implicitly, with an ...

Who are "the Nazis" you refer to? Hitler, Goebbels, Heydrich or Eichmann? Wehrmacht soldiers? Prussian police officers? The answer depends. What about...

That's a highly dubious conclusion. Your examples leave out obvious differences between the way a serial killer selects and kills victims and the func...

Related, yes. But as an example, non-college educated business owners aren't "working class", but apparently are an important part of Trumps base Fair...

Studies of voter movement don't support that conclusion. The republican / democrat split doesn't run along income or occupation lines, but along educa...

What is the democrats traditional base at this point? Studies suggest it's college-educated people, young people, women and minorities. Trump is presi...

I just read on fivethirtyeight that, according to surveys, 48% of Americans believe that black people enjoy equal rights and no further changes are ne...

And I'm not here to serve on your whim. I have already spend time trying to give you an example, if you don't care for it then I guess I'll just leave...

By this logic, the genocide of a small minority is "just as bad" as the occasional misuse of force against the majority, so long as the numbers line u...

I just want to note that I don't ascribe to an eternalist view on time, I am just trying to illustrate it for the sake of discussion. As to your quest...

The core idea here is that "everything you think you know is false" or more specifically: It is possible that the metaphysically objective world is en...

And plenty of people seem to be in favor in Europe, too. Even those that aren't are hardly enthusiastic about open democracy. "The West" seems to have...