distic
11mo ago
The catholic dogma was interpreted this way at the time of the Council of Florence (see also Dante), but it stopped to be long before Vatican II. For example:
To be in the communion of the Catholic Church and to be a member of the Church are two different things. They are in the communion of profession of her faith and participation of her sacraments, through the ministry and government of her lawful pastors. The members of the Catholic Church are all those who with a sincere heart seek the true religion and are in unfeigned disposition to embrace the truth wherever they find it. It never was our doctrine that salvation can be obtained only by the former.
John Carroll, first bishop of the US.
For the protestant, I don't get it. I was taught that they believe in fate, so that your salvation was decided by God before your birth and your actions don't matter, but I'm no expert.
distic
1yr ago
But belonging to a country is a matter of allegiance more than of ethnicity. Would you argue that someone who has never lived in France, doesn't speak french and hates France is actually french just because his biological parents are? And anyway the person is french if society declares her french ( e g with an id or a passport), not if she self identifies as a french person. She can self identify as much as she wants, it won't change anything. The same is true for parenthood : your are the parent of a child if he declares you as his parent, not if you self identify as his parent. It means society expects you to take care of the child. When we think about parent, we think about that more than about the sexual act to make the child.
Transgender identity, on the other side, is meaningless because when we think about women, we think about people with a vagina, two tits, a menstrual cycle, who experienced that from their young age and can bear children. Men are free to wear make up if they want, a lot of men have, it won't make them women. Thinking you can become a woman is like thinking you can become King Charles: either you are born the first son of Elisabeth, or you're not. There is nothing we can do about it, even if you self identify as Charles.
distic
1yr ago
The transgender being "apoplectic when people question their metaphysics" is purely the result of their requests to be treated as the "gender" they identify with. Society is not discussing whether cis-women are women, so the only way to treat trans-women equally would be to not discuss it either for them. It is a ridiculous expectation, obviously, but it explains why the truth question is so important.
distic
1yr ago
I'm not sure you get it. I do not think the important part of it is about "making everybody else live according to my principle". Most people do not care that much about what others do. It's more that my freedom to live some kind of life enters in conflict with the freedom of someone else. For example, if someone wants to live without ever hearing "nigger", this person has to enforce a ban on the word. The person might not really care about what people do everywhere where they aren't, they just don't want to hear it. But the only reasonable way to enforce the "don't say nigger to me" rule is to find allies that do not want to hear it either and to ban it almost everywhere.
You may reply that it is not the same kind of freedom, as the freedom to say something is a freedom to act, while the freedom not to hear something is a freedom to a feeling or a non-feeling. But what about rape? The rapist is the actor, the victim is just feeling something. Or what about smoking in restaurants? A rape acts on the body of the unwilling victim, but so does the word "nigger" with the ears, and so does the smoke with the nose. Politics is often about finding practical compromises between opposed freedom.
If free speech is usually preferred to censorship, it is because without it, some truths cannot be said; that the government can start to live in a fantasy world where everything he does is wonderful. Such a government is obviously doomed. So it has been decided wisely that this should not happen. But it means that as long as every truth can still be said, there is no actual danger with censorship. A ban on the word "nigger" is not dangerous, as it does not change your ability to say any truth. I think that a ban that forbids the use of the word "nigger" as a quote of someone else's words is completely stupid, but it is not dangerous as long as there is some other way to speak, as ridiculous as it might be (like "n-word").
Then, there is the usual argument: if we ban "nigger", they will want us to reduce freedom of speech even further : this is the slippery slope fallacy. What about "if they can say nigger, they will soon try to kill black people"? History proves that limiting freedom of speech can lead to general censorship, but it also prove that racial insults can lead to mass murder. Is limited freedom of speech a worse result than a mass murder? Even if you think that a limited freedom of speech would eventually lead to mass murder, you have to agree that it works both ways: mass murder are a very good way to destroy freedom of speech.
distic
1yr ago
Abdication is very unlikely. The basic principle of monarchy is that no one chooses the king, not even the king chooses to be king. If the king is chosen by a popularity contest inside the royal family, then just extend the contest to everyone and elect a president. Moreover, it would create a competition among members of the family which is not a very good idea.
distic
3mo ago
You are comparing the US to countries were homosexuality is forbidden, sometimes leading to death penalty, while the original comparison was with Europe
distic
6mo ago
You are assuming that the only way the war might propagate to Iran is if Iran decides to. But Israel could very well decide that for them. Iran has been weakened by recent anti regime protests and Israel's government needs to prove they do something about the security of their citizen without hurting Hamas too much because Hamas has hostages. It's not the most plausible issue, but game-theoretically hurting Iran is somewhat sound, just like nuking Belarus as a retaliation against Russia (see The Bomb by Fred Kaplan)
distic
6mo ago
It's pretty hypocritical because antisemitism is a major driver of Zionism. When Jews have to flee, they go to Israel. Obviously those antisemits don't care about Palestine (when have they be interested about dead arabs anyway?)
distic
7mo ago
You are right, he just needs to provide help. For the discussion he might ask questions like "why do you want to cancel" and let her give her reasons. He can also emphasize that while canceling has a financial cost it's nothing compared to a divorce.
She might find no one now, but she has more chances than when she will be 10 years older and divorced with children. And losing weight is not that difficult compared to being in a terrible marriage
distic
7mo ago
The fact that an idea is stupid does not mean that someone as intelligent as Marx could not have agreed with it. Kant believed that you can know a priori the geometry of space and Popper thought that evolution theory was not scientific.
If machines do produce value, then the capitalist isn't stealing from the proletarian, they are producing wealth together. There is no exploitation and the ethical side of marxism falls entirely.
distic
1yr ago
First thing. I'm not arguing against the fact that you should be polite and kind with trans people. If someone wants to be treated as a woman, I would use "her" and "she" if this is this person's preference. At least when the person is there (but it's exactly the same thing as being polite with someone by calling him Caius Julius, because he thinks he is Caesar). The problem with the transgender activism is that it requires a lot more than that. It requires that I never say what I think to be the truth, even on the internet, and as a general comment (not to offend anyone, but just to state that I don't believe transwomen to be actual women if it's relevant to the conversation). It seems to me that if you transpose your sentence "in my mind I certainly perceive that family as not a real family." to trans people, you would get in trouble in some places (e g reddit). And that is what I call enforcing a lie, and that is what I think is an important issue. Would you comply with your own requirement that "it would be forbidden for anyone to mention the way in which you differ from a native or a biological parent", your entire post could not exist. You need to be able to mention the fact that both differ to build your argument.
By the way, I don't think nationality is a "social version" of ethnicity. It's not in the US, it's not in France, and it's not in most countries. Sure, some countries might decide that their nationality is about ethnicity, just like they can make it about religion. Would you say that someone is or is not "ethnically vaticanese"? Both parenthood and nationality are about law more than about identity. Your nationality gives you some rights, being recognized as a parent gives you some rights. From the political viewpoint, "nationality" and "parenthood" is just those set of rights (anyone who has them is a citizen or a parent). Being a woman gives you no special rights. The only special rights of women are actually rights of females, related to biology, like being accepted in a maternity hospital or competing with people with less testosterone in sports (female sports has never been about gender, but only about biological sex). All the rights that could relate to your gender (like the right to vote) have been extended to women, at least in the West, so being a "legal woman" is not a thing, because a "legal woman" is exactly the same thing as a legal man, as men and women have the same rights.
distic
4mo ago
Your example is pretty poor, you cannot tell someone "you don't trust everyone on the internet so no one can be trusted". Moreover, you ca. trust a random person and yet not trust a person arguing that "people just follow incentives"
distic
6mo ago
It's not that clear to me what they mean with "mother/daughter". Looking at a daughter and a mother having sex (incest porn)? Or for a daughter to want to have sex with her own mother? Or for a mother to have desires for her daughter? Because incest porn is quite widespread, but it's not the same as being excited by your own daughter.
distic
6mo ago
will drive them towards other less restrictive platforms.
Why would such platforms survive? Surely, if Google has to exploit "sources of revenues" because "budgets are tighter, bubbles are popping", smaller institution will have to. Or is google in a particularly bad situation?
distic
6mo ago
I have no sympathy for the terrorists, but are you sure Israel would have let them become richer? Sometimes they are targeting civilian infrastructures like power plants, it does not help when you try to build a richer country. A rich enemy is more dangerous, it's a risk Israel is perhaps not ready to take.
distic
6mo ago
I don't think so. I agree that the local government has mire physical power, but its incentives are quite different. The US government has to let americans believe that it acts in their interests. China does not care as much
distic
7mo ago
No I'm just explaining you the difference between the facts (the explicanda of the theory), like the price of diamonds and water, and the explanation of those facts (the theory itself), like supply and demand. It is true, however, that the theory is always more precarious than the facts
distic
7mo ago
The paradox of value is that things that are more useful than others as a whole, like water, have a lower price than other scarcer things like diamonds.
Replace water with cleaning ladies and diamonds with software engineers and you get exactly the same situation as above
distic
7mo ago
Well it's still as I said, excepted that the old usual system survives and makes it odd. We have something of the sort in the UE: if you are a binational, you can elect 2 governments, and those governments are ruling the EU together (I'm not sure it's not also possible to vote twice for EU parliament). As long as there are few people with two votes, it's not that important.
distic
10mo ago
Well it seems better for people there to let them go to moscow instead of stopping them and having them come at you. Civilians are not equipped to fight soldiers
distic
11mo ago
Everything is genetic at some point. Without arms, it is more difficult to steal. Having arms is genetic. Do you deduce that stealing is genetic? Then everything will be genetic. But everything will also be social, political, physical, economical, sexual...
Drinking might be partly genetic, but a woman who has the drinking genes and does not drink (for example because she can't, as there is no alcohol in her country) will have healthier children than a women who drinks even though she has no drinking genes (say someone forces her to drink). So the gene is only relevant as a factor in the drinking behavior. The behavior is everything.
On the other side, if there is an intelligence gene, no circumstance will change the final result: she can live her life however she wishes, it won't change the result. The only important element is whether the children get the gene or not. The behavior is not relevant.
distic
11mo ago
I'm pretty sure Luther did not believe in free will, though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Bondage_of_the_Will
It seems to me that for the catholics God knows (before your birth) if you will be saved, while for the protestants (at least those who don't believe in free will), God decides it.
distic
1yr ago
Some people have done it for millenia, but it doesn't mean that most have. Actually, if you take account of those who died as children, most people ever born have never got any children. You are the result of those who chose to have children, but it does not mean that most people have done it in the past.
It's called paradox of value, or water-diamond paradox (water is a lot more useful than diamonds, but the price of diamonds is higher).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_value
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