WOKE and proud of it....

[Will Bouwman]

You didn't check your own news sources (the Guardian, the Beebs, and whatnot...

What makes you think that? As it happens I did so before looking at CNN and MSNBC.

...not MSNBC or CBS, though they would work, too; because you've already said they aren't where you get your news).

Here's what I said:

My primary sources of news are the BBC, the Times and the Guardian.

I had to ask whether Gus understands what 'primary sources' means. Do you?

And that's what I've been telling you to do from the start. And I've also said that if you find them unimpeachably honest, then you have no problem.

Good grief, I actually have to spell it out for you: I don't find either the Times nor the Guardian "unimpeachably honest", that's why I read both. It is common knowledge in the UK that these two papers, like every news outlet on the planet has an editorial stance. In other words, different news outlets will put a different interpretation on the same story. The closest we have to unimpeachable honesty, I would suggest, is Private Eye, which exists in no small part to fact check, criticise and lampoon the British press in its Street of Shame column. The implication that you think any source of news is "unimpeachably honest" it pitiable.

Just check to see if they said one thing at one time, such as "the laptop is a Russian plant," and then later admitted, "the laptop is Biden's."...
This isn't rocket science, Will. You're quite capable of it...

Clearly not; my best efforts have failed to turn up the information you insist is easy to find.

...but you don't seem actually to want to face the plain truth of the test, for some reason.

I don't know why you think that either.

[henry quirk]

it's the moral and political objectivists among us who are far more likely to create an Orwellian dystopia

Yes, folks with conviction are more likely to damn the world -- or save it -- than folks without.

[Immanuel Can]

You didn't check your own news sources (the Guardian, the Beebs, and whatnot...

What makes you think that? As it happens I did so before looking at CNN and MSNBC.

It was you who said those were not your sources.

And that's what I've been telling you to do from the start. And I've also said that if you find them unimpeachably honest, then you have no problem.

It is common knowledge in the UK that these two papers, like every news outlet on the planet has an editorial stance.

What you call "having an editorial stance" is a great distance from that, in all the cases I already pointed out to you. But as I said: if you think otherwise, then you have no problem to address -- or so you think -- so I have no more to say to you about that. If you can't see it, I'm not going to make you see it.

Just check to see if they said one thing at one time, such as "the laptop is a Russian plant," and then later admitted, "the laptop is Biden's."...
This isn't rocket science, Will. You're quite capable of it...

Clearly not; my best efforts have failed to turn up the information you insist is easy to find.

Then that's what your "best" efforts have done. But if that's the case, then it's awfully easy for anybody to make "better efforts" than that.

Is it really hard to see the flipflop on COVID, for example? Let me ask you this: are you still wearing a mask, getting vaccinated, in lockdown, or hoarding basic supplies? Are the schools and other meeting places in your town all still closed? Are you still afraid to see your elderly relatives?

If not, why not? For your "editorializing" papers told you to do it, and that it was "the science," and that if you didn't, millions would die; and you did it, and now you don't do any of it. Why not?

I don't believe you don't see it. I believe you don't want to admit you see it. That's quite a different thing.

[Will Bouwman]

You didn't check your own news sources (the Guardian, the Beebs, and whatnot...

What makes you think that? As it happens I did so before looking at CNN and MSNBC.

It was you who said those were not your sources.

Again, this is what I said:

My primary sources of news are the BBC, the Times and the Guardian.

Having asked whether you understand what primary sources means, you have made it quite clear that you don't.

And that's what I've been telling you to do from the start. And I've also said that if you find them unimpeachably honest, then you have no problem.

It is common knowledge in the UK that these two papers, like every news outlet on the planet has an editorial stance.

What you call "having an editorial stance" is a great distance from that, in all the cases I already pointed out to you.

Not that you have pointed out, which would require citations, but rather that you have alleged without content.

But as I said: if you think otherwise, then you have no problem to address -- or so you think -- so I have no more to say to you about that. If you can't see it, I'm not going to make you see it.

I have enough common respect that I don't suppose you would try to make me see your point of view. I am however, disappointed by your refusal to provide evidence that might persuade me.

Just check to see if they said one thing at one time, such as "the laptop is a Russian plant," and then later admitted, "the laptop is Biden's."...
This isn't rocket science, Will. You're quite capable of it...

Clearly not; my best efforts have failed to turn up the information you insist is easy to find.

Then that's what your "best" efforts have done. But if that's the case, then it's awfully easy for anybody to make "better efforts" than that.

I can only give you my word that I have tried my best to find evidence to support your point of view on the subjects you have listed. Since you refuse to provide the evidence, I am quite open to others who might find it "awfully easy" to do your work for you doing so. I imagine you think it is my responsibility to find them. So this is a general appeal:
Dear reader, please supply the citations I can't, and Immanuel Can won't provide.

Is it really hard to see the flipflop on COVID, for example? Let me ask you this: are you still wearing a mask, getting vaccinated, in lockdown, or hoarding basic supplies? Are the schools and other meeting places in your town all still closed? Are you still afraid to see your elderly relatives?

If not, why not? For your "editorializing" papers told you to do it, and that it was "the science," and that if you didn't, millions would die; and you did it, and now you don't do any of it. Why not?

Do you think nobody died of COVID? If not, do you think anyone knew at the beginning how many people would die? I know enough about "the science" to understand that the appropriate answer to any question regarding a new phenomenon is 'I don't know'. I take it you disagree with me that it is better to err on the side of caution where human lives are at stake.

I don't believe you don't see it. I believe you don't want to admit you see it. That's quite a different thing.

What you believe about what I see is entirely your prerogative. I have the advantage over you, in that regard, since I happen to know what I see.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Of course, a theist would never subject himself to this kind of existential introspection. His raison d'être consist in believing in a metaphor reified in terms of absolute and thoroughly idiotic beliefs that Jesus is going to save your moist little soul because you believed in him, granting you a divinely mandated passport to transgress those boundaries which, since the beginning of time, nature has been testament to without exception. Without that myth, that belief, they have nothing, deprived of an existential wealth of existence which proceeds beyond the finality of the merely organic. Oh woe! Say it ain't so!

My impression of this rehearsal of yours — you have written and rewritten this paragraph at least a dozen times — is that you have made a deliberate choice to misunderstand and malign those possibilities and realities available to the practitioners of a religious path that is based in developing a relationship to a supernatural realness — which, it must be understood, is for you an unrealness.

That is your real message. In fact though that is your own discovery in the sense of being the limitation of your own capacities in that realm (spiritual experience, a lived relationship to supernatural spirit) that, concretized in your discourse, is just a description of what you are facing. Apparently, you must double-down on this discourse and continually refine that explosive paragraph until, finally, you get it just right.

It’s odd but last night I was thinking that within all your surly opposition you are actually affirming the realness of that which you deny.

In this general sense you share a good deal with Iambiguous and your •problem• is a similar and general one: very contemporary and modern.

My own view? You actually imply that to advance to that ideal point which is very much suggested within your own discourse, that you will have to transcend the same denial expressed together with it.

[Immanuel Can]

What makes you think that? As it happens I did so before looking at CNN and MSNBC.

It was you who said those were not your sources.

Again, this is what I said:

My primary sources of news are the BBC, the Times and the Guardian.

Yes, and that is what I said you said: MSNBC, CBS and so forth are not your preferred sources. So we can't take them as indicative that your news is slanted, since you say you don't use them.

I am however, disappointed by your refusal to provide evidence that might persuade me.

I'm convinced you have the evidence. All you would have to do is check, say, the Guardian's early and late reporting on COVID, or the Biden laptop, or any one of dozens of other such topics, many of which I've already indicated to you. But I can't make you check your sources, and I can't force you to agree. So I'm just saying that if you see no problem, having done your own examination, I have nothing further to communicate to you about that.

I can only give you my word that I have tried my best to find evidence to support your point of view on the subjects you have listed.

So you have looked in the back issues of your own sources, you say? And you remain unconvinced? Then either they did not join the other major news outlets in their common mendacity, or you cannot be convinced, perhaps. What else can be said?

Is it really hard to see the flipflop on COVID, for example? Let me ask you this: are you still wearing a mask, getting vaccinated, in lockdown, or hoarding basic supplies? Are the schools and other meeting places in your town all still closed? Are you still afraid to see your elderly relatives?

If not, why not? For your "editorializing" papers told you to do it, and that it was "the science," and that if you didn't, millions would die; and you did it, and now you don't do any of it. Why not?

Do you think nobody died of COVID?

That's not the question, since SOME people die of practically everything. (The Darwin Awards famously recorded the death of a man under an avalanche of elephant poop: that does not imply there were millions who died likewise.) But the major news outlets promised us a sweeping "pandemic" of fatal consequence to many nations, not merely to a few individuals...and they promised us that "14 days to flatten the curve" would be the best we could even do with lockdowns, sterilization, social distancing, closures, etc.

But it was all rubbish. And you can see it was, since we are not doing it now, and since countries like Sweden, that had the FEWEST and SHORTEST COVID measures did better in the end than the many countries that panicked and locked down harder. And you can see it was rubbish from the mere fact that you're not doing it now. And everything is back to normal, or as close to it as we're likely to get. Somehow, the coverage of all that was absurdly sensationalistic, unwise, unproven, and downright foolish. And all the major media were complicit.

...do you think anyone knew at the beginning how many people would die?

An ethical journalist does not report mere speculations. She reports what she has evidence for, what she knows to be true. If she does not know what is true, she reports nothing about that. She certainly doesn't gin up terror in the general population.

I know enough about "the science" to understand that the appropriate answer to any question regarding a new phenomenon is 'I don't know'.

Then why didn't the journalists in the major media say exactly that: that they didn't know?

I take it you disagree with me that it is better to err on the side of caution where human lives are at stake.

Not always. For it seems that lives were not at stake. Those who died with COVID often did not die from COVID. And that's like saying of a person, "He died while eating pie," rather than "He died from eating pie."

I don't believe you don't see it. I believe you don't want to admit you see it. That's quite a different thing.

What you believe about what I see is entirely your prerogative. I have the advantage over you, in that regard, since I happen to know what I see.

I will accept, then, that you don't see it. And while I find it implausible that anybody could take even a cursory look a the coverage by the mamor media could not, I will accept your claim as truthful. After all, the one thing you've not told me you've done is investigate using your own preferred sources. So it is, in the extreme, possible that you remain unaware. And why should I question that?

[iambiguous]

it's the moral and political objectivists among us who are far more likely to create an Orwellian dystopia

Yes, folks with conviction are more likely to damn the world -- or save it -- than folks without.

Okay, but then there are those who recognize that, in regard to things like "life, liberty and property", very different human communities down through the ages have had, at times, very different interpretations of what they mean given particular sets of circumstances precipitating particular behaviors that come into conflict.

That's why any number men and women have suggested that, given this, it is democracy and the rule of law that politically reflects the best of all possible worlds. Factoring in political economy of course.

As opposed instead to taking the conflicts all the way out to Ruby Ridge: right makes might. Righteous ends defended by any means necessary.

Now, what do the particularly fierce FFOs fall back on to "prove" that their own One True Path to Enlightenment will save rather than damn the world?

Pick one:
1] God and religion
2] a No God religion
3] ideology
4] deontology
5] genes

Of course, for some here, their arguments become little more than psychological defense mechanisms.

[iambiguous]

wrong thread

[iambiguous]

wrong thread

[iambiguous]

wrong thread

[Iwannaplato]

The irony here is that it's the moral and political objectivists among us who are far more likely to create an Orwellian dystopia. Why? Because they start with the assumption that how they understand the world around them is how everyone else should understand it.

Far more likely than whom and could we be linked to the statistics.

Anyway, as Matthew Silver argued in the article you quoted from but I'm not sure you read....

Relativists and nihilists sometimes attempt to justify their anti-objectivism by invoking what they assert are the effects of belief in moral objectivism: arrogance, smugness, intolerance, and widespread suffering. I dispute that those are the dominant effects of all objectivisms: a liberal, sensitive, egalitarian consequentialist (a species of objectivist), ever mindful of the fallibility of her judgments, can humbly try to foresee suffering, and minimize it. However, even granting the relativist/ nihilist assessment of the empirical effects of all and any objectivism, without a permissibility principle requiring avoidance of those effects, the relativist/nihilist has provided no grounds for rejecting objectivism. Railing against objectivism for the harms it causes is like protesting that the Constitution is unconstitutional.

And just in case that last key sentence is confusing...

Saying that certain things are bad is bad.

There's a problem in that assertion.

[Gary Childress]

What good is that, except to undermine civil society? Causing destruction and dysfunction?

See here

How does that video relate to a professed desire to cause "mayhem?"

[Dubious]

Of course, a theist would never subject himself to this kind of existential introspection. His raison d'être consist in believing in a metaphor reified in terms of absolute and thoroughly idiotic beliefs that Jesus is going to save your moist little soul because you believed in him, granting you a divinely mandated passport to transgress those boundaries which, since the beginning of time, nature has been testament to without exception. Without that myth, that belief, they have nothing, deprived of an existential wealth of existence which proceeds beyond the finality of the merely organic. Oh woe! Say it ain't so!

My impression of this rehearsal of yours — you have written and rewritten this paragraph at least a dozen times

Look in your own backyard before you accuse others of consistently repeating themselves. You really are over the top with your nauseating proclamations of superiority. What have you really offered so far? NADA, yet you keep writing among the most long-winded posts on the site always repeating the same crap! Do you think that hasn't been noticed!

Supernatural realness! What a stupid expression! Do you know what an oxymoron is? Think of it as your position between the ox end and the moron end.

[Alexis Jacobi]

It isn’t superiority but rather clarity.

[Dubious]

It isn’t superiority but rather clarity.

Your clarity is about as opaque as a New England fog.