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Count Timothy von Icarus

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I'll get back to you later, but in terms of your second question, I found the this course to be a really great primer on the "hard problem of concious...
March 01, 2021 at 01:49
A good story. Although, you also have to see the ironic humor in how faith often works instead in this one: https://i.ibb.co/FYDFBXx/1613515479030.png...
March 01, 2021 at 01:36
Or to sum up, this image contains the essential truths that Ibn Khaldun realized in his own era. The problem is that the people who use this imagery o...
March 01, 2021 at 00:42
Thankfully, America has birthright citizenship, so we haven't created a 30 million person underclass. That said, we have 10-15 million people who will...
March 01, 2021 at 00:24
:eyeroll: Yes, there are two sides. Defenders/survivors, and the Satanic forces of darkness. Only by a miracle can the hosts of the isms be defeated. ...
February 28, 2021 at 20:35
I'm skeptical of such Manichean pronouncements entirely. On one side the great hosts of racism, sexism, and oppression gather. On the other, the force...
February 27, 2021 at 22:28
I think the positive feedback loop example also works for systemic racism. I've seen examples of how car insurance and credit scores are racist. Unabl...
February 27, 2021 at 04:46
My intuition is that this truism, is part of the neurological behavior that makes racism so endemic and persistent. Racial biases act like positive fe...
February 27, 2021 at 02:16
Thankfully, modern interest in short term profits over all else has led to our water and food supply being so inundated with estrogenergic chemicals t...
February 27, 2021 at 01:23
Well maybe some people. My Holy Grail has Indiana Jones in it.
February 26, 2021 at 01:22
I'd add that the American left has also had a penchant for ridiculous conspiracy theories as well. They've largely been able to pull back from this ow...
February 25, 2021 at 23:39
Great example here. The "DNC hack was local," was actually an intentional hoax made up by a troll in the UK. The story ran in many major outlets becau...
February 25, 2021 at 21:52
You can be intelligent and believe conspiracy theories. Intelligence, at least in the psychometric sense it is used in research on intelligence, is mo...
February 25, 2021 at 21:37
Finally finishing William Durant's The Age of Faith, which is on the Middle Ages. Durant covers the history of the West from antiquity to the death of...
February 25, 2021 at 02:29
No, but I find Many Worlds the most philosophically interesting. From a practical standpoint, I highly doubt we will approach anything like a "Grand T...
February 25, 2021 at 00:08
I think the universe has some elements of determinism. For instance, it appears finite. If were infinite, with infinite matter disbursed within it, th...
February 23, 2021 at 23:12
That's sort of how I understand mainstream modern Christian thought. I've been to a lot of Baptist churches, since that's what my wife grew up with. I...
February 23, 2021 at 22:57
Under your criteria, what sort of statement wouldn't qualify as opinion?
February 17, 2021 at 19:06
I suppose it's the difference between deontological and pragmatic ethics. Yes, any consumption of factory farm meat or use of automobiles can be seen ...
January 19, 2021 at 14:17
There is surely some ethical reason to mitigate your impact though, right? For instance, you might eat meat, but not eat it for every meal the way man...
January 18, 2021 at 19:03
It probably wouldn't be. You would have to show that he knew of the plans for violence and took steps to enable it. The January 5 date was all over ex...
January 18, 2021 at 14:43
I've read almost everything Nietzsche published, listened to a course on him, and read Kaufman's superb guide. I would say if you're going to read one...
January 18, 2021 at 13:52
They have a razor think majority in the Senate that relied on holding the VP spot, so I don't know how much will get done. Manchin is the swingiest vo...
January 13, 2021 at 13:49
It won't remove him. Only one GOP senator has said they would vote to impeach. 7 in total signalled they might flip. They need 17. A large proportion ...
January 10, 2021 at 14:36
The media has repeated over and over that fraud allegations are ridiculous. The courts, including Republican elected judges and those appointed by Tru...
January 10, 2021 at 14:33
Anyone else think this impeachment is a terrible idea? It's totally doomed to faliure and it will dominate Biden's first month in office while he shou...
January 10, 2021 at 14:10
When did John Oliver claim that there were fraudulent votes and that Hillary actually was rightful winner of the election? Seems like false equivalenc...
January 10, 2021 at 13:35
Well, if you assume free will isn't real either, they don't really have a choice. I imagine being a determinist solipsist is depressing, but it's not ...
January 10, 2021 at 03:17
I don't recall any major outlets or Democratic politicians saying that votes were inaccurately counted in 2016. Do you have an example? Hillary Clinto...
January 10, 2021 at 02:36
Yeah, but it always astounds me the huge proportion of people who leverage up on debt and spend everything they earn on a year and then some. There is...
January 10, 2021 at 02:10
Trump voters in 2016 and 2020 were wealthier than average. The idea that the median Trump voter is a poor blue collar white worker simply doesn't line...
January 10, 2021 at 01:55
It's not even skills. Population density is far too high to sustain people based off small scale agriculture. That said, I think people wildly underes...
January 10, 2021 at 01:30
I don't mean to imply Trump's policies or ideology are similar to Nazism, but if you read Evans' Third Reich trilogy (a very comprehensive history), i...
January 10, 2021 at 01:21
They aren't the same process. The appeal to the House is the appeal for a second recount. The requests from Trump since he lost his recounts haven't b...
December 10, 2020 at 17:09
Trump is no longer asking for recounts. He is asking for either state legislatures to appoint electors for him, despite the fact that he gained fewer ...
December 10, 2020 at 13:31
Ha, I'd consider myself both a centrist and a moderate. I guess that's because I'm not very ideologically motivated. I totally get people drifting awa...
December 08, 2020 at 21:47
Not to defend Brennan, who was largely considered incompetent, but the US didn't disband the Iraqi Army, it disbanded itself. He stopped cutting them ...
December 08, 2020 at 15:01
Yes, he's referring to mass mobilizations. It doesn't necessarily have to be a war on a country's own land. WWII greatly reduced inequality and allowe...
December 07, 2020 at 14:02
An important point to be sure. It explains why some elites prefer extractive systems. More open markets and political systems tend to produce wealthie...
December 06, 2020 at 18:13
Even better, the academics who justify the system are caught in an even more hyper competitive loop than the general populace. Publish or perish. I ha...
December 06, 2020 at 17:47
Immortal Technique defined them in lyrical form. "I got a job and house and a bank account When I'm out, I doubt that's something you could say And if...
December 06, 2020 at 17:10
Just 27 Republicans in Congress will acknowledge that he won. Only 30 will say in writing that he will be President-elect after the Electoral College ...
December 05, 2020 at 21:19
Umberto Eco has a great art book on this called "On Ugliness." It's a discussion on the aesthetics of ugliness that is set up semi-chronilogically, an...
December 04, 2020 at 12:11
Biden will be 83 in 2024 and already shows signs of cognitive decline, so I'd say a one term Presidency seems likely. Although given that the average ...
December 03, 2020 at 13:27
That the wealthy don't universally, or even predominantly have the positive traits you ascribed to them. Certainly, they might embody those traits mor...
December 02, 2020 at 22:36
http://www.equality-of-opportunity.org/neighborhoods/ This has a county by county level map that shows the percentage chance that a child born in the ...
December 02, 2020 at 18:43
I'll be honest, the Tao seemed underwhelming when I read it because so much of it had filtered into anime and manga, so I had already absorbed some of...
December 02, 2020 at 18:18
Personal experience would show you. I can assure you, there are people who were born very rich, who have received rubber stamp degrees from prestigiou...
December 02, 2020 at 18:16
What's the source for most millionaires being self made? I know Forbes tried this once with billionaires, claiming most were self made, but the method...
December 01, 2020 at 13:20
"Competition," denotes intent. Can we ascribe intent to evolution? It seems more stochastic to me. Can we even describe intent to human action? Experi...
November 29, 2020 at 13:03