FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
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User ID: 1739
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1mo ago
I can see an argument for saying that the obese are people with a chronic disease tautologically: arguably being obese is a disease, and it's certainly not an acute condition (nobody gets obese overnight, and nobody stops being obese overnight). Of course if you take that perspective then I'm not sure how you can square it with "fat pride." Nobody goes around being proud of having multiple sclerosis, or saying that goiters are beautiful. And the fact that it is a chronic disease does not absolve someone of responsibility for acquiring that condition: cirrhosis of the liver is another chronic disease that is almost always the result of personal choices.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
23d ago
It's about Natural Law. The problem is, moderns confuse the natural in "Natural Law" with natural as in "what happens naturally, what happens in nature, anything that happens that nobody tried to make happen on purpose" and that's the wrong kind of "natural".
In Natural Law, there is such a thing as a human, and such a thing as a male or female human, and these things have certain characteristics. For instance, humans have two legs. Even though some humans are born with only one leg, it remains the fact that the "natural" human has two legs. There is something wrong with a human who is born with only one leg, because humans are "naturally" supposed to have two legs.
By the same token, humans are "naturally" male or female. If you're born with bits that don't match either, then something is wrong with you: that's why we call it a congenital "defect" or "abnormality", we're comparing the condition to "natural" males and females and noting that it does not match. This kind of thing happens sometimes, just like you get humans born with only one leg. So if you surgically intervene to correct the abnormality, you are doing much the same thing as a doctor who removes a tumor (humans are not supposed to have tumors in them) or who performs plastic surgery to repair the skin of a burn victim (humans are not supposed to have their skin all melted off). You are correcting a disease, returning them to as "natural" a condition as possible by medical science.
In contrast, lets look at a male to female sex change operation. The genitals are surgically removed, and a kind of pseudo vagina is made. This is taking a physically healthy and "natural" male and turning it into a defective and unnatural male: a male with no penis, no testicles, and a hole where a hole shouldn't be. What's more, it removes some of his "natural" capabilities, such as being able to sire children. From a Natural Law perspective a sex change operation like this is completely analogous to cutting off someone's arm or leg or nose: you're maiming them, turning them from "natural" humans into unnatural and defective humans. Under Natural Law it may be acceptable sometimes to maim a human in the pursuit of a greater good: for example, amputating a limb that is badly infected before the infection can kill the patient. In that case the amputation is still an evil, but it is an evil that is allowed because it is in the aim of preventing a worse evil, death (a dead human is about as far from a "natural" human as you can get). This shouldn't be confused with consequentialism, because Catholics are not consequentialists: they call it the "principle of double effect". The doctor's goal is to save the patient's life, not to maim the patient. If the doctor could save the patient's life without amputating his arm, then the doctor would do that. This is different than if a BIID individual came to a doctor asking for the doctor to amputate his limb: in that case the whole purpose of the procedure is to maim the patient, there is no scenario in which the doctor would not amputate the arm if he could, since amputating the arm is the whole point.
(You could argue the actual point is to cure the individuals BIID symptoms, and if the doctor could cure the BIID without amputating then he would. That might be permissible under Natural Law, but it leads us naturally to the question of whether there is a non maiming way to cure BIID or not. If there is then the principle of double effect doesn't apply).
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
8mo ago
Exercise doesn't seem to reduce weight by much, though of course it will make you healthier overall.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
10d ago
So you're saying that refusing to let students enter common areas that they have a right to be in is not harassment, but recording video in a public area (as is your right) is harassment?
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
4mo ago
If someone put up missing posters of Gazan children buried in rubble, it would still be a pretty awful move for someone to tear them down. You don't tear down other people's posters, and doing so looks especially bad when the posters are raising awareness of dead kids.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
10mo ago
You can certainly try to believe.
By which I mean, behave as if God's existence is more probable than you currently think it is. Try praying, in earnest (or as earnestly as you can when you think it is very unlikely anyone is listening). Try reading scripture with an openness to the possibility that there is something valuable and true there to learn. Try going to a church: don't pretend you already believe, but be open to the possibility that your mind could be changed.
If there are particular logical issues that prevent you from being open to the possibility of God's existence, then take time to research them. There are a great many very intelligent and well educated Christians out there: is it really the case that you know something they never realized? It's more likely that there is an answer to whatever objection you have. Be open to the possibility that the answer may be right.
If God doesn't exist, then all this will cost you is some of your time and energy. If He does exist then you may gain all the worldly good you were searching for (family, happiness, meaning, community) and the far greater good of salvation from your sins and hope for eternal life.
I can understand an atheist who has no desire to be religious deciding not to go through all that effort, but if you're an atheist who does desire to be religious then the cost-benefit ratio seems pretty good.
Yes, obviously (assuming that harassment is a chargeable offence, which I don't think it is).
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1mo ago
If I was them I would be them and not me. I cannot think of a meaningful sense in which you could say "If you were them".
I'm sympathetic to the idea that environmental or genetic factors may make it more or less difficult to not make choices that will give you a chronic disease. That would change the level of responsibility, but unless someone held a gun to your head you've still got some responsibility.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
2mo ago
This is not purely self imposed: there's a reason it's the West Coast cities, and that's because they have to comply with the whims of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. In 2018 the 9th Circuit ruled that enforcing anti-camping ordinances (better known as "rounding up all the bums") was cruel and unusual punishment, unless the city provided some kind of shelter that the homeless could go to. Since then lower courts have expanded the ruling considerably in a wide variety of ways that chalk up to making the homeless unpoliceable. In 2022 the 9th Circuit doubled down, ruling that the homeless can participate in class action lawsuits against cities that impose criminal or civil penalties on homeless.
Have the pro-homeless NGOs made hay out of this situation? Yes. Is there more Seattle and the rest of the west coast could do? Sure. But even in conservative Anchorage, Alaska (where it gets down to -20 F on the coldest winter nights) has a serious homeless problem, and that problem is named the 9th Circuit.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1mo ago
While the consensus is that God knows the future with 100% accuracy, there is not Christian theological consensus on predestination, election, or free will.
In the Evangelical tradition I grew up in the position I heard the most was that the Bible commands us to choose certain things, which means choice is possible. And that the Bible says God knows all things, including the future. Like most Evangelical theology, how to square that circle is left as an exercise for the reader.
The Calvinists, quite famously, believe God chooses who will be righteous and who will be damned from jump. We have no ability to choose salvation or damnation. Many Calvinists believe that we do have free will, but our choices are based on our desires and characters and God choose to give us particular desires and characters that will constrain the choices we have available.
The Catholic church teaches that we have the free will to either accept or reject the grace of God, and that when God predestined the course of history he left room for us to make decisions. He knows what decision we'll freely make in advance, of course.
C.S. Lewis described the intersection of our choices and God's predestination this way in Mere Christianity:
If you picture Time as a straight line along which we have to travel, then you must picture God as the whole page on which the line is drawn. We come to the parts of the line one by one: we have to leave A behind before we get to B, and cannot reach C until we leave B behind. God, from above or outside or all round, contains the whole line, and sees it all.
…
Everyone who believes in God at all believes that He knows what you and I are going to do tomorrow. But if He knows I am going to do so-and-so, how can I be free to do otherwise? Well, here once again, the difficulty comes from thinking that God is progressing along the Time-line like us: the only difference being that He can see ahead and we cannot. Well, if that were true, if God foresaw our acts, it would be very hard to understand how we could be free not to do them. But suppose God is outside and above the Time-line. In that case, what we call "tomorrow" is visible to Him in just the same way as what we call "today." All the days are "Now" for Him. He does not remember you doing things yesterday; He simply sees you doing them, because, though you have lost yesterday. He has not. He does not "foresee" you doing things tomorrow; He simply sees you doing them: because, though tomorrow is not yet there for you, it is for Him. You never supposed that your actions at this moment were any less free because God knows what you are doing. Well, He knows your tomorrow's actions in just the same way — because He is already in tomorrow and can simply watch you. In a sense, He does not know your action till you have done it: but then the moment at which you have done it is already "Now" for Him.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1mo ago
Yes, if I was them I would be them.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
10d ago
They're going to pull US military aid out of Israel...by protesting at Columbia?
Even if their protest is successful, how is Columbia University going to pull that off?
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
21d ago
You cite as evidence an SS document saying no gas chamber was ever built, I cite as evidence a US Army investigative report from 1945 that not only says "yup, there's gas chambers here, we saw them ourselves" but includes photographic evidence. Not based on the testimony of "hundred of Jews" but based on the testimony of American soldiers of the Counter Intelligence Corps Detachment, Seventh Army, who were sent to the camp to investigate and report back. They have photos of the crematoria, the gas chamber buildings, and a detailed physical description of the gas chambers themselves.
I don't see how a single SS documents saying that no gas chamber was built at Dachau beats a comprehensive US report, with photographs, saying that there was a gas chamber there.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1mo ago
If I was them I wouldn’t be me, as you’ve said, so it’s a pointless statement to say “if you were them”. It’s like sayin “If X was Y, then X would be Y.” Which is tautologically true, but provides us with no new information. If I was a cat I’d be a cat. If I was Hitler I’d be Hitler. If my aunt had balls, she’d be my uncle.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
22d ago
Eyewitness accounts are about the most reliable sources of evidence you get when it comes to history. The more of them you have the better, since you can cross reference them. And there really seems to be too many eyewitness accounts to discount, particularly contemporaneous accounts. Like a letter President Truman sent Eisenhower in 1945 about the problem of finding housing for displaced civilians in Europe in which he writes "Apparently it is being taken for granted that all displaced persons, irrespective of their former persecution or the likelihood that their repatriation or resettlement will be delayed, must remain in camps--many of which are overcrowded and heavily guarded. Some of these camps are the very ones where these people were herded together, starved, tortured and made to witness the death of their fellow-inmates and friends and relatives" and quotes a report from another source (Earl Harrison, an American on the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees) who wrote "As matters now stand, we appear to be treating the Jews as the Nazis treated them except that we do not exterminate them. They are in concentration camps in large numbers under our military guard instead of S.S. troops. One is led to wonder whether the German people, seeing this, are not supposing that we are following or at least condoning Nazi policy." And that's just one random letter from Truman, we've got scads of accounts from US soldiers, survivors, and European citizens. Famously Eisenhower held a press conference in 1945 where he said "When I found the first camp like that I think I was never so angry in my life. The bestiality displayed there was not merely piled up bodies of people that had starved to death, but to follow out the road and see where they tried to evacuate them so they could still work, you could see where they sprawled on the road. You could go to their burial pits and see horrors that really I wouldn't even want to begin to describe. I think people ought to know about such things...It is something we have been trying desperately to find out, whether or not the German population as a whole knew about that. I can’t say. It does appear, from all the evidence we can find, that they were isolated areas and this one piece of evidence that the mayor being shown the thing and going home and hanging himself would indicate he didn’t know about it. On the other hand, what makes the story so thin with me is when we find these very high ranking Nazis denying knowledge of it. If they didn’t, they deliberately closed their eyes, that is all. As far as I’m concerned these people are just as guilty as anybody else – those high ranking Nazis – but I think it would be impossible to say, however, the German nation knew it as a whole. But a lot of them know it, because I told them to go out and give them a decent burial. We made a film an hour long and we have made many Germans look at it, and it is not pretty." To say that there are essentially no contemporaneous accounts is simply not true.
If you discount those accounts because they were by Americans, who were at war with the Germans, then you're holding an absurdly high bar for historical evidence. I doubt more than 10% of what we teach in history books could meet such a standard of evidence.
It's possible that those on the left value being skinny and attractive more than those on the right do. The urban left is more likely to be interested in casual sex with strangers, and more likely to be going from relationship to relationship as opposed to settling down with someone. Also more likely to get divorced and try to find a new partner. With that environment in mind, it is advantageous to maintain your attractiveness so you can continue to attract mates.
In contrast, the further to the right you go the more likely you are to have a culture valuing finding someone to settle down with and start a family. Once you've bagged a mate and said your vows, staying physically attractive is much less important for your day to day happiness. What's more, on the right you're more likely to have broad family and local networks to fill your social needs: people who don't need to find you attractive to be in your life. For the urban left, I can imagine you have to build your social network more from fostering relationships with new people rather than leaning on your family and the people who have known you since you were a kid.
All that is speculative, of course. What I can confirm is that in right wing cultural spaces if someone is fat they'll usually say something like "I love to eat, that's why I'm fat!" or "I know being fat ain't healthy, but eating food is what makes life worth living." It comes from a place of personal responsibility, including the personal responsibility to accept the consequences of your actions and the trade-offs you have made.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
2mo ago
It's not just this one ruling, but this ruling is tying the hands of anyone who tries to fix the problem: letting those who prefer not to fix it free reign to make things worse.
My mistake, when I said 'gas chamber' I meant 'homicidal gas chamber'. The camp had a 'gas chamber' but it was never used to kill anyone.
The Counter Intelligence Corps Detachment of the Seventh Army disagrees. Page 33 of the report:
"The internees who were brought to Camp Dachau for the sole purpose of being executed were in the most cases Jews and Russians. They were brought into the compound, lined up near the gas chambers, and were screened in a similar manner as internees who came to Dachau for imprisonment. Then they were marched to a room and told to undress...There were 15 shower faucets suspended from the ceiling from which gas was then released. There was one large chamber, capacity of which was 200, and five smaller gas chambers, capacity of each being 50. It took approximately 10 minutes for the execution. From the gas chamber, the door led to the Krematory to which the bodies were removed by internees who were selected for the job. The dead bodies were then placed in 5 furnaces, two to three bodies at a time."
So we have, on the one side, an SS document (which you haven't produced, though I have been so kind as to produce my source for your to examine) that says that the camp had a gas chamber but that it was never used to kill anyone. On the other hand you have a US report claiming that it was used to kill people, with photographic evidence, and the fact that the gas chamber is still there and can be seen today, and was clearly designed to administer poison gas for the purpose of killing people. Do you have any evidence that the execution device was never used to execute people? Something that would cause me to doubt the fine men in uniform of the 7th Army?
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1mo ago
If there is anything beyond our character and history and circumstances that informs our choices (personality, perhaps? Ineffable soul?), then it would still be the case that if I was him (in other words, had his character, his history, his circumstances, and his everything else that makes him him) I would be him and not me.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
4mo ago
The devil.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
8mo ago
The difference between DeSantis and Gavin Newsom is that DeSantis has shown himself to be competent at governing. Things have been going pretty great for Florida in material terms during his tenure, while California is more of a basket case than ever (that 2021-2022 Florida was the fastest growing state in the union for the first time since the 50s, while California lost population over the last two years says a lot).
On the other hand, being a competent governor doesn't mean that you can run a competent presidential campaign. We'll see what happens when the primaries start, but as a DeSantis supporter I've got a bad feeling about his chances.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
9mo ago
In my experience (reading guides to writing by successful authors, or listening to interviews on the subject) there are two types of professional writer out there: those who hate writing, and those for whom writing is as easy as breathing.
The first type (the Haters) are people like Freddie DeBoer, Larry Correia, or Roald Dahl. They are more likely to look at writing as a job like any other: it's hard, and it takes commitment and work and discipline if you're going to have any chance of being successful. Dahl would write about how writing was exhausting:
The life of a writer is absolute hell compared with the life of a businessman. The writer has to force himself to work. He has to make his own hours and if he doesn’t go to his desk at all there is nobody to scold him. If he is a writer of fiction he lives in a world of fear. Each new day demands new ideas and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not. Two hours of writing fiction leaves this particular writer absolutely drained. For those two hours he has been miles away, he has been somewhere else, in a different place with totally different people, and the effort of swimming back into normal surroundings is very great. It is almost a shock. The writer walks out of his workroom in a daze. He wants a drink. He needs it. It happens to be a fact that nearly every writer of fiction in the world drinks more whisky than is good for him. He does it to give himself faith, hope and courage. A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it.
I am in this camp myself: writing is hard to do. I'd rather be doing other things. When it comes time to write, (proper writing, not shooting off a comment on The Motte) I find just about anything else more attractive, like doing the dishes or weeding or finally cleaning out those gutters. For these writers the difficulty of writing is something that must be overcome.
Then there is the second camp (the Breathers) who have no idea why the first type are writers to begin with. This camp includes C. S. Lewis, Andrew Klavan, Scott Alexander, and Isaac Asimov. These are the type of people who, when asked how a young writer can start writing, would reply in either frustration or confusion that if they're not writing already then they're not really writers. Writers write, it's what they do, and it's easy. They couldn't not write if they wanted to. Lewis would hardly ever edit his books, getting them just the way he liked them on the first try. Asimov was one of the most prolific writers on earth, writing over 500 books and scads of short stories, essays, articles, etc. As for Scott:
On the other hand, I know people who want to get good at writing, and make a mighty resolution to write two hundred words a day every day, and then after the first week they find it’s too annoying and give up. These people think I’m amazing, and why shouldn’t they? I’ve written a few hundred to a few thousand words pretty much every day for the past ten years.
But as I’ve said before, this has taken exactly zero willpower. It’s more that I can’t stop even if I want to. Part of that is probably that when I write, I feel really good about having expressed exactly what it was I meant to say. Lots of people read it, they comment, they praise me, I feel good, I’m encouraged to keep writing, and it’s exactly the same virtuous cycle as my brother got from his piano practice.
That's just how it is. I would say the Haters become professional writers because they have ideas they want to share and stories they want to tell and writing, while difficult, is the best way they can express those things. The Breathers become writers because that's just what they are. If they weren't publishing books, they'd be one of those guys who constantly edits Wikipedia.
Eyewitness evidence is waaaaaaaaaaay better than archeological evidence when it comes to history. Ask any historian what they would rather dig up: a clay tablet with a contemporary account of an event, or a bunch of pot shards. Better yet, ask them if they’d rather have an ancient Akkadian magically transported to the modern day to talk to, or to find a new pile of old foundations and grave goods from the same era. Eyewitness wins every time.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
22d ago
The trouble is, if you abandon natural law concepts you lose a lot of important philosophical tools. For instance, the concept of disease. If we have no conception of a "natural" human, of what a human is supposed to be like, then we the concept of disease is meaningless. You have tumors? That's fine, there is no immutable concept of human that your body must align with, you're just as "healthy" as anyone else. No legs? Nothing wrong with that, humans have no static nature, being born with no legs is just an example of the diversity of the human form. Depressed, or blind, or deaf? That's a valid way to be, there's nothing wrong with you and anyone who tries to "cure" you is forcing you to conform to an outdated philosophical concept.
Without some idea of what a human is, "healthy" or "unhealthy" are meaningless categories imposed by the powerful on the powerless for their own ends. But it seems pretty clear to me that there is a way that humans are supposed to be. We can argue about how fine the resolution is on that idea, but it seems to exist. It seems that humans really are "supposed" to have two legs, and two eyes, and to be able to reason, and to have one heart with four atria that pumps blood through the body, and to be capable of reproduction, etc, etc. There does seem to be a constant that we can compare all humans to, and which can inform us of real facts (such as, this human has a disease because their liver is not working the way a human liver is "supposed" to work).
Natural Law wouldn't be opposed to giving someone whose legs are missing prosthetics (even cool robot prosthetics) because that restores some of the function they are "naturally" supposed to have. And you could make a Natural Law argument towards even replacing healthy legs with superior super robot legs: it is the nature of humans to have legs, and to run, and jump, and lift with them, and these robot legs let you do all those natural capabilities more perfectly. I don't know if everyone who believes in Natural Law would buy that (especially if the legs in question are spider legs), but you can definitely make a real argument in that direction. You're basically making that Natural Law argument when you say "Humanity has never been about limiting potential".
Your problem with the Catholic Church is more specific than against Natural Law generally. The problem isn't that the Catholic Church has a certain aesthetic, it's that they have certain beliefs about the nature of the universe: namely that human nature is the purposeful design of an omniscient and omnibenevolent God, and that human nature is in a meaningful sense an image of God, which makes human nature (and human life) sacred. You can do things to non-sacred objects that you can't do to sacred ones (see, for instance, how difficult it is to renovate a historically protected building. You can't just replace bits of it with whatever you want). So yes, I don't think Catholicism is likely to make concessions for robot spider legs, unless they're only for people who don't have legs.
Man, at this point I'm hoping Trump will randomly drop dead.
Well hoping is a strong word. I don't wish anyone dead, I don't think Trump deserves to be dead, I would be horrified and outraged if somebody killed him. It's just that I'm a Republican and I want to win. Trump seems to me to be just about the only Republican running who could possibly lose to Biden. A huge chunk of the country hates the man, and while he has a passionate fanbase a significant section of Republicans are tired of the Donald. I've never voted for a Democrat in my life and I'm not sure I'll vote for Trump if he ends up the nominee (not that I'd vote for Biden, I'd just throw it away on a protest vote for DeSantis or leave it blank). I voted for Trump in 2020 but all the talk of the election being stolen without the goods to back it up has soured me significantly. I want Republicans to win, but you don't rock the boat of democratic legitimacy like that. You could break America that way. I think a lot of Republicans feel the same way.
The way things are going Trump is probably going to be the nominee. And if he is then I think he's more likely to lose than not. The only way I can think of that would change the outcome is if Trump keeled over. It doesn't seem likely though: he may be old, but he's certainly spry. According to the SSA Actuarial Tables a man Trump's age only has a 4.9152% chance of dying in the next twelve months anyway.
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