aaa
4mo ago
25 years puts us in 1999 when internet porn was already widely available. Make that 20 and people even have broadband and can watch videos too. I don't know what you think the heyday of porn is, pornhub? They didn't invent internet pornography, there were plenty of before then. But really, mindgeek was founded almost exactly 20 years ago. Time flies.
aaa
4mo ago
I'm very skeptical that there has been a significant change in access to porn in the past 25 years.
aaa
1yr ago
But this argument is based on a particular interpretation of which portions of Marxism are salient (...) Specifics of the classes and their features and grievances do not seem terribly relevant to the question of how and why the ideologies operate.
IMO the contention that the salient portion of Marxism is not economic class is a pretty contorted view of how marxism has been generally interpreted in the past 150 years.
they appeal to the same people, they're pushed by the same people,
They don't, communism appealed very much to the working class. You may not see this because communism was basically illegal in the US, but where it did exist the parties were staffed by working class people and that's where they received votes. Wokism main centers of power are journalism and HR.
they attack the same important social structures in the same ways,
What would that be? I don't know where you are going with this, but often people say "the family" so I'll pre-empt that. All strong ideologies "attack the family" to some degree:
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in the 10 commandments, allegiance to the family comes after allegiance to God and to the Church
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fascism followed suit, proclaiming allegiance to "God, country and the family" (Dio, patria, famiglia) in that order
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Jesus says "For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother" as well as many others to the same effect
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Scientology practices disconnection from anyone who is declared SP, including family members if necessary
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Isolation from family members is a common cult technique
and the arguments against them are more or less isomorphic
Maybe for you.
aaa
5mo ago
PS. I'm glad that the religious right is making a comeback because maybe they can succeed in making sex negativity uncool again.
aaa
1yr ago
Google images "black dude sucking his own dick", tell me that's not what it looks like.
aaa
1yr ago
I've read it now. His story is weird but not impossible. If there is no sexual motive (which, if the bag doesn't have a garish floral motive, there probably isn't) then it's going to be even harder to prove anything.
aaa
9mo ago
You lose a lot of the persuasive power of the argument if you admit that there are things (Jesus Christ) that appear to be moving but do not in fact count as "moving" for the argument. The observation that there are some things that move falls away, as far as I am concerned everything could be like Jesus and actually be motionless.
The problem with those biblical quotes is that there is a colloquial meaning to change and a philosophical one, cosmological arguments only work with the latter but those quotes in context point to the former.
aaa
1yr ago
I'd skip on Feser entirely and just read Logic and Theism by Sobel, which was written 15 years before Feser, presents the scholastic arguments in a modern, formalized way, and refutes Feser arguments, as well as approaching other types of arguments for and against theism.
That book is not recommended enough given how thorough it is.
aaa
1yr ago
You'll have to clarify, then. I'm not sure what you are talking about. Are we talking about morality of the individual (as in: the ability of an individual to know good from evil) or are we talking about the moral basis of laws? Something else?
aaa
1yr ago
If the price they report is right it could be this one: https://verabradley.com/collections/rolling-luggage/products/hardside-large-spinner-2813515185?variant=40622072627244 which does come with garish floral patterns but also in generic black and silver. All other models have one or two "boring" (sane?) variants. Regardless, none of this is a unique piece.
aaa
1yr ago
I'm also not sure why you are picking on transubstantiation in particular as a flaw of Christianity in general. That is not a doctrine shared by all Christians, it's just Catholics as far as I'm aware. So at worst it's a flaw in Catholic teachings, not Christian teachings as a whole.
Narrowly defined as the aristotelian explanation for the eucharist, yes, it is only catholic (although most catholics don't even know this). But the belief that the eucharist is some real magical thing and not merely symbolic is patristic and exists in almost all christian denominations, although there are theological differences between catholic transubstantiation, orthodox transubstantiation, consubstantiation, sacramental union and whatever else protestants have come up with. I would agree with characterising all of them as nonsense, however.
aaa
1yr ago
The first one also falls under HBD. Only the last one, that diversity is necessary for race-based democratic representation, remains. Which makes affirmative action into a race based spoils system.
aaa
1yr ago
The NRSV says "But if the slave survives for a day or two, there is no punishment; for the slave is the owner’s property." I don't know which one is more correct, but from my point of view it doesn't matter either.
someone who clearly has a lot of problems with Christianity for reasons I don't know and don't want to speculate about. Pain is pain, however inflicted.
I think you are misunderstanding me. I don't really have any problems with christianity, the point I'm making is that it's silly to think the key to true morality is in a book (or in a tradition) that is so vague and varied that it has been used historically to justify both the most virtuous and the most vile of acts. I even said the same thing of utilitarianism but I guess you were to blinded by my words offending you religion to read that part.
aaa
1yr ago
I don't think you understand the nature of the problem. In general european elections will ask each citizen a handful of questions (for example two votes: one for the senate and one for the parliament). The US has far more elected positions than the average european country and also likes to aggregate local and general elections all in one (probably because general elections happen so frequently). So a normal US ballot will ask the citizen to vote for national elections but also positions in the state and county administration and include things like: seats on the supreme and appeals courts, sheriffs, various public attorneys, one or more referenda questions, seats on the school board, things nobody knows what they are, like comptrollers, etc.
Of course they could just use two ballots, put the one or two national questions on one and everything else in the other and then use two ballot boxes, and then just count the national votes first. I guess it never occured to them.
aaa
8mo ago
this or something close to this might be right
Seriously? Sarah Palin was 49 years old 10 years ago so definitely not fertile. She was also not attractive in any conventional sense of the term.
aaa
1yr ago
This is the Moldbug fallacy A descends from B, therefore A is B, you don't like A therefore you must also not like B. Ideas are all interconnected if you applied this principle rigorously you could refute western thought all the way back to aristotle, the trick is picking an arbitrary place to stop.
Wokism does descend from marxism but in a sense it also represents disillusionment with it, with the failure of class consciousness to materialize in the west and with the fall of the URSS simultaneously. Marxism says little about race and gender and is very preoccupied with economic class; wokeism is basically the opposite, to the point where you can make a corporate friendly version of it that disregards class entirely. Marxism is, in principle, materialist, wokeism is not.
aaa
22d 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".
Metacommentary: I wouldn't pursue this line of argumentation. At best your interlocutor will be utterly confused and think it's complete nonsense. At worst you'll have to end up defending extremely shoddy concepts of teleology.
aaa
1yr ago
I think the EA’s failure to have any effective impact on Bankman’s moral calculus is its complete absence of emotional salience. Traditional moral systems usually try to maximize moral salience.
All ethical systems are isomorph, they come to the same conclusions on basic questions but can also be used to come to any conclusion on any real situation. The whole thing is completely irrelevant in practice. Deontological systems will have to have a bunch of vague rules to handle all circumstances, reducing to either virtue ethics or to a form of consequentialism. Utilitarianism has enough free variables and unknown parameters that will let you reach any conclusion. Virtue ethics usually comes with a big book of excuses you can pick from.
Also nothing stops you from subscribing to an ethical system and then going "well actually I'd rather grab the money and run anyway".
Consider Christianity
Yes, lets consider christianity, a religion that tells you to turn the other cheek but also that it's ok to beat your slaves as long as they don't die immediately, that says don't murder but proscribes capital punishment, that preaches poverty and used to practice opulescence.
I'm sure if you try you can think of a few big atrocities committed by devout christians, too. For example, let's say that we agree that heretics needed to die, was it really necessary to burn them alive, could we really not find a more humane way to do it?
If we are going by historical record I think there's no contest that utilitarianism comes out looking like a saint, but I think it's only had 200 years to do damage compared to millennias.
aaa
4mo ago
I think you are reaching here. In general governments can't compel you to do any work, save for a few exceptions. The european declaration of human rights for example carves out 4 exceptions: prison labour, military service, emergency service and normal civic obligations.
For prison labour you would have to make the argument that prostitution is a necessary part of the rehabilitation process, which seems far fetched. Also most countries already ban prison labour for non-violent offenders (the US is basically the only western exception) and prostitution with a murderer seems a dicey proposition (I would want a prison guard supervising it, at least).
For military service I think the prostitution would have to be limited to other members of the military to count. You couldn't make the argument that prostitution to the general public is military activity, for example. However you could make prostitution one of the civil service options for conscentious objectors. I'm not sure if you could make it the only option. Also most countries have already abolished the draft so most governments could only do this during war.
An interesting case is emergency services, actually. In Iverson v. Norway it was determined that Norway could compel dentists to perform dentistry (for appropriate remuneration). You could use this to redistribute prostitutes (which tend to cluster in big cities) across your nation's entire territory. You could also make the argument that incels represent a national emergency that needs to be solved. But what principle would you use to compel incels to have sex with prostitutes? Probably something about involuntary treatments.
Normal civic obligations is probably your best bet. The case law on this is pretty nebulous, it's unclear what counts and you could make it like jury duty. I suspect it would get shot down, though.
aaa
1yr ago
Best defence is to claim they were drunk as a skunk after coming off their flight, grabbed the case in a drunken daze
Also possible
That still doesn't explain "so why were you using the suitcase as your own property?" for further trips
The bag used in further trips could also be his, which happens to be the same model. That he stole it for personal use is the least likely explanation, surely he's paid enough that he can afford to buy a $300 bag.
aaa
1yr ago
It's meant to be shocking to stand out. Fashion brands do weird stuff all the time to stand out. It worked well, I bet this was the first time you've ever talked about Balenciaga in your life.
aaa
8mo ago
Renaissance Europe is a very obvious example of a civilization which was both very scientifically/technologically advanced, and also deeply interested in religious/devotional matters
Intellectual work in renaissance europe was very different from today, the primary mode of argumentation was appeal to authority: they "knew" earth was spherical because aristotle said so, they "knew" it like they "knew" that nerves connected to the heart (not the brain), that planets were carried by large solid spheres of quintessence and that heavy objects fell faster.
They were doing "science" (the word is anachronistic in this context, but whatever) the same way they were doing theology: commentary on a small corpus of approved authors that were assumed to be nearly infallible and to contain the totality of all possible knowledge. It's no wonder that intellectual work and religiosity was compatible.
The cathedrals are beautiful but they are also not designed by intellectuals but by semi-literate head masons. And, tbh, when you understand why all the flying buttresses are really there they start to look kind of ugly.
He's going to appear in court, say "I took it by mistake I was tired after a long voyage", nobody is going to check if he has a similar type of bag and it's going to end there. It's probably even true. Either way nothing is going to come out of this.
PS. I'm surprised it even went this far. This retroactively justifies every time I double-checked the tag on my bag at the airport.
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