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Mijin

['Member']Joined: August 27, 2020 at 03:48Last active: February 21, 2026 at 20:262 discussions388 comments

Discussions (2)

Comments

I'll agree with you on "pitiful" -- this is one of the most embarrassing crashouts I've seen on this site. You couldn't just acknowledge that it is di...
December 23, 2025 at 10:13
Engaging with your cite (and pointing out the flaws) is not being an "honest interlocutor"? What exactly am I allowed to post in this discussion forum...
December 22, 2025 at 23:00
A claim like that should really ping the BS meter. From a quick googling, it's from a meme spread by Tommy Robinson (for non-Brits who are not familia...
December 22, 2025 at 09:55
Yes. An actual example of this kind of reasoning is the Palestine protests. A lot of Americans I talk to insist that you can't be arrested for protest...
December 21, 2025 at 14:45
The US also has laws against incitement; the difference is only with regards to hate speech. I say this because some posters are saying that in the US...
December 20, 2025 at 23:07
You brought up the idea of a straw man, and then you carried it on. If you had just said "I misspoke, I didn't mean straw man" that would have been it...
December 18, 2025 at 21:28
If it doesn't relate to the argument, and I am not trying to attribute it to you, then it's not a straw man, right? Next time, instead of just cutting...
December 18, 2025 at 16:45
...which I am not doing. I am trying to explain a logical point to you about the burden of proof and null hypothesis. I mean, that isn't the definitio...
December 18, 2025 at 12:13
A "straw man" is when someone misstates an argument for the purposes of attacking it more easily. I was not misstating your argument, I was trying to ...
December 17, 2025 at 23:58
No, that's irrational. No-one has demonstrated that the oogie-boogie monster doesn't exist and isn't feared by millions. Therefore, you need to accept...
December 17, 2025 at 23:48
Because you're asking me for a cite that most people don't consider your very specific claim to be true. It's obviously not a reasonable request -- th...
December 17, 2025 at 23:22
I live in Worcester. Just moved here a few days ago So in the same post you are making claims about what life is like in the UK, despite not living he...
December 17, 2025 at 23:16
Absolutely. One of my guilty pleasures is occasionally listening to the political "debates" on youtube and other media. And you can bet, every time a ...
December 17, 2025 at 23:10
You're asking me to prove a negative, otherwise your claim stands? This is a philosophy forum; if there's one place such sloppy reasoning wouldn't fly...
December 17, 2025 at 16:48
I don't think massive numbers of people agree with the specific claim of this thread, but go ahead and cite me wrong: I'm happy to hear it. If you ins...
December 17, 2025 at 09:31
I'm not going to question the legitimacy of these personal anecdotes. I will just say that, if you're wondering why few people agree with your conclus...
December 16, 2025 at 10:47
I would debate. It seems to be more complex than just the set of presentations -- most of us have met "tomboy" like women, or men who dress quite femi...
December 15, 2025 at 11:45
I agree with the first part, but not the second. Language is complex and we can refer to things both concrete and abstract and there is no need for th...
December 13, 2025 at 11:52
This is the kind of thing I mean, actually. I'm old enough to have used bitflags many times in my own programs. And there are programming challenges, ...
December 10, 2025 at 00:45
Pretty much nobody uses binary directly. Computers use binary because they encode numbers via on/off switches. But it's a completely unwieldy and erro...
December 09, 2025 at 16:46
My thoughts are that it's basically intractable at this time. "Something from nothing" makes no sense, but neither is it an answer in itself. I don't ...
December 09, 2025 at 13:14
Chatgpt flubbed then. A billion =10^9. And the number of stars in the observable universe is 10^23 to 10^24. So, that would mean 10,000 to 100,000 civ...
December 08, 2025 at 19:41
Quite right. The issue is that it gets repetitive typing out "based only on what we know right now" but that was the intended meaning. The point is, w...
December 08, 2025 at 13:58
As ludicrously big as the universe is*, it's also billions of years old. When we put the two together, there has been ample time for thousands of spec...
December 08, 2025 at 12:51
Yes, this. I'm in a fermi paradox debate on another site (the straight dope) and there I am running into the problem that people don't appreciate how ...
December 08, 2025 at 11:14
The cite doesn't really support the conclusion you're drawing though. Yes, in a relative sense we might be "early" but even that tentative estimate st...
December 06, 2025 at 18:08
I don't think anything warrants that level of certainty. I have not seen any analysis that we can say that the earth is exceptional in how early it fo...
December 06, 2025 at 13:15
I think the best guess based on what we know right now is that we are amongst the very first intelligent species. As ludicrously vast as the distances...
December 05, 2025 at 22:28
"Both sides" should always be questioned: there's nothing about political wings that entails everything is always symmetrical. And things change over ...
December 05, 2025 at 13:06
Ah I missed this response. Firstly I would agree that there is danger here in making suicide easy, as we all have moments of extreme grief, and, as I ...
December 03, 2025 at 23:49
Ah I see, thanks for clarifying. Hmm, from my perspective I do see it as obvious given the neurochemical underpinnings of thoughts and that the causal...
November 26, 2025 at 23:56
The topic of this thread is not the hard problem of consciousness though. There are plenty of threads on that, and in those threads I have always been...
November 26, 2025 at 23:08
Sure: both support the position that thoughts, and subjective experience, are based in neurochemistry. Or put it this way: are there ever subjective e...
November 26, 2025 at 14:26
False, and refuted by the other parts of what I said that you didn't quote. We can reliably, and precisely, induce subjective experiences with chemica...
November 26, 2025 at 11:32
A lot of loading in just that one sentence (whether intentional or not). Firstly, "correlation" massively mischaracterizes what we're talking about he...
November 24, 2025 at 23:33
Many phenomena have different characteristics that might seem wholly separate prior to establishing a model linking them. Imagine trying to explain sm...
November 23, 2025 at 23:44
If you can summarize one or two of the main points of controversy I would appreciate it, as my understanding is there is no issue with that descriptio...
November 23, 2025 at 15:28
I'd say I've had more negative experiences in my life than positive, but regardless, there are things that I look forward to and I want to try lots of...
November 22, 2025 at 20:52
The problem I often see in movies and TV is a protagonist who hurts (or even kills) innocents (eg persuing cops) because they are on some important mi...
November 22, 2025 at 16:47
I read the first few posts of this thread, and the last few, and I'm still not that clear really. So apologies if the following point completely misse...
November 22, 2025 at 15:15
Well I think it's implicit that we're talking about known reality. The way I look at it is this: I think hypotheses that we are living in the matrix o...
November 16, 2025 at 00:12
I would go further than just calling it false, I think it's nonsensical. Rewind time and things are either going to be the same, or different for thin...
November 14, 2025 at 23:36
Thanks and reading back my own post, I will say the same. My posts are often more acerbic / confrontational really than they need to be and I apprecia...
November 13, 2025 at 13:21
It seems to always be the case that when I state my opinion that free will is incoherent, the response is always, essentially, how dare you. No-one ev...
November 12, 2025 at 12:47
I gave my reasoning -- that I've never heard a formulation of free will that wasn't meaningless or self-inconsistent. If you believe that there are de...
November 12, 2025 at 00:37
My position is exactly that we should start with asking what we mean by the concept, and that determinism / indeterminism is a red herring -- see my f...
November 10, 2025 at 09:03
Apologies -- I've repeated my position on this so many times, on so many forums that I can forget the need to explain myself on a different site. 1. T...
November 09, 2025 at 20:24
True, but I think it's a bit misguided, or maybe gets us off on the wrong foot. (I mean their descriptions, not that you are misguided) For example, S...
November 09, 2025 at 19:48
My position remains that the concept of free will is incoherent. Let me be clear: I'm not agreeing with the position "there is no free will", I am say...
November 09, 2025 at 15:03
All genotypes originate as mutations. Look, let's even take a step back. I'll give you credit for the fact that you tacitly accept that the standard a...
November 06, 2025 at 14:16