domain:web.law.duke.edu
Aapje58
14m ago
It would have to start the same way Dresden's and Tokyo's and Hiroshima's economic recovery did: by surrendering to the vastly militarily superior opponent.
And then what? Do you believe that Israel would then come in with a Marshall Plan, like the US did after WW 2? The big issue for decades has been that Israel does not trust the Palestinians to build up an economy and not use those resources to attack Israel. Israel's policy has always been to attack innocent Palestinians and destroy their property, when even relatively minor attacks happened. That is not how you get peace, but rather, how you get a forever war, where each new generation learns that there is no hope of a good life by doing the regular things to achieve that (getting an education and investing in companies).
The childish fantasy that each and every Palestinian would magically and suddenly stop believing in violence as a solution is not a way out of the conflict. It is as realistic as thinking that Israeli settlers would suddenly stop using violence against Palestinians, which Israel also has never been able to stop (but refuses to admit to that, because then it would expose their hypocrisy). So a total surrender, whatever that even means in the chaos that is Gaza, where central control surely doesn't exist anymore, will just lead to new forms of oppression of the Palestinians, that will inevitably cause people to rebel against that oppression with violence.
Fact is that the PA has been collaborating with Israel for a very long time, and Israel had (and still has) a perfect opportunity to gradually reduce restrictions on the West Bank, to actually give Palestinians a way out, by showing that there is an opportunity to build up a prosperous Palestinian state. However, instead, Israel is treating the PA like the Judenrat where the PA is supposed to keep the Palestinians compliant, while their land is getting taken from them, and they are being kept in a closed off ghetto with no prospect of building up anything.
The fact that Israel even threats Palestinian Israeli's as second-class citizens and that Israel is explicitly society that is only supposed to serve one race shows that there is inherently no desire to allow Palestinians to co-exist on an equal level. If you see Israel for what it is, a society that aims to be racially pure, then it is absolutely no surprise that the only solutions that it is willing to accept are permanent ghetto's, ethnic cleansing and solutions of that kind, and not a reasonable solution for the Palestinians (whether that is their own state, equal rights within Israel, or whatever).
SSCReader
55m ago
And they're likely the ones who'll end up walking into a house to find the body unexpectedly if they do just commit suicide.
Thats a problem with suicide generally, not the Swiss system specifically. The Swiss system at least means some kids will be informed in advance who wouldn't otherwise be.
You have to compare it with "standard" suicide and in almost all of those relatives are going to have to unexpectedly deal with remains. Excepting those where the suicidal person tries to disappear themselves. But that of course leaves family members with other issues instead.
yofuckreddit
1hr ago
I've fantasized about the GDMBR myself, and met people training for it out in Pisgah NF. I think what I've learned about myself is that my limit for routes like this is probably 7-8 days. Perhaps with friends it would be longer, but they do slow you down. Would you race?
yofuckreddit
1hr ago
I believe a head unit is necessary for smooth travel on a bike (stopping to unsheathe your phone and find out where you are is a massive momentum killer) and I hate mounting my phone. Network connectivity was good most of the time, but not everywhere. The route contained useful POI notes as well for food, hotels, and shops.
I couldn’t go without music
My performance measurably dropped without it. I regret not loading my Zune or something, though a bluetooth adapter to the Shokz would have been a dongle nightmare. I won't make the sacrifice again, I'll figure some other methodology out if it's stopping more, a bigger power bank, or a dynamo.
self_made_human
Sajjano durjano bhūyāt, durjano badhyatāṃ sadā, baddho'nyān nibandhāyet
1hr ago
· Edited 24m ago
Hmm.. It seems that my wording was imprecise. Reflecting on it, I guess the best explanation is that I think that frameworks, specifically in moral philosophy are unfalsifiable. There is nothing intrinsically superior about being Kantian or Utilitarian, to entities that aren't swayed by practical considerations.
In other cases, I think it is eminently possible to say that certain "philosophical" claims are, in fact false, because they don't hold up in the face of empirical scrutiny or are based off faulty premises.
In those scenarios: I've made factual claims about these topics. I believe Searle is wrong about the Chinese Room, that illusionists are wrong about consciousness, and that moral realists are wrong about the nature of morality. I believe they are wrong not because they have a different "perspective," but because their models of reality are, in my estimation, incorrect. They make claims that are either inconsistent with a physicalist worldview or are simply less parsimonious than the alternative.
Let's take the Chinese Room. My claim that the system as a whole understands Chinese is a functionalist hypothesis. It is a claim about what "understanding" is at a physical level. I posit that understanding is not a magical, indivisible essence, but a complex process of information manipulation.
Searle's argument is pure sleight-of-hand that works by focusing our attention on a single component: the man who cannot understand Chinese, while glossing over the fact that the man is merely the CPU. The system's "understanding" resides in the total architecture. To say the system doesn't understand because the man doesn't is like saying a computer can't calculate a sum because a single transistor has no concept of arithmetic (or my usual go-to, that no individual neuron in a human brain speaks English). Searle's argument only works if you presuppose that understanding must be a property of a single, irreducible component, which is precisely the non-physicalist assumption I reject. My position is a testable model of cognition, his relies on an appeal to "intrinsic intentionality," a property he never defines in a falsifiable way.
The same logic applies to my rejection of p-zombies. The concept of a philosophical zombie is, in my view, physically incoherent. It presumes that consciousness (or "qualia") is an optional extra, a layer of paint that can be applied or withheld from a physically identical object. This is closet dualism. At least real dualists are honest about their kooky beliefs.
My hypothesis is that consciousness is (likely) what a certain kind of complex information processing feels like from the inside. It's an emergent property of the physical system, not a separate substance or field that interacts with it. You cannot have a physically identical replica of a conscious human, down to the last quantum state, that lacks consciousness, for the same reason you cannot have a physically identical replica of a fire that lacks heat. The heat is a macro-level property of the underlying molecular motion.
Likewise, consciousness is a macro-level property of the underlying neural computation. To claim otherwise is to make a claim that violates what we know about physical cause and effect. Again, this is not a "perspective"; it is a hypothesis about the identity of mind and specific physical processes.
Finally, coming to "objective" morality. My claim that it does not exist is an empirical one, based on the lack of evidence. It is a claim about the contents of the universe. If moral realism is true, then moral facts must exist somewhere. Are they physical laws? Are they non-physical entities that somehow interact with our brains? The burden of proof is on the realist to show me the data, to point to the objective moral truth in a way that is distinguishable from a deeply felt human preference. Absent that evidence, the most parsimonious explanation is that "morality" is a complex set of evolved behaviors, game-theoretic strategies, and cultural constructs. It is real in the same way that "money" or "governments" are real, as a shared social reality, but not in the way that "gravity" is real.
So yes, I engage in philosophy. But I do so with the conviction that these are not merely questions for eternal debate. They are unsolved scientific problems. (In some cases, they might not even be solvable, such as the issue of infinite regress)
My positions are hypotheses about the nature of reality, and I hold them because I believe they are the most physically plausible and parsimonious explanations available.
I believe that this position is tantamount to philosophical naturalism, but correct me if I'm wrong.
SSCReader
1hr ago
Oh i'm not a mod ao I'm commenting on its truth/probability vis a vis the sources you quoted only. Personally i wouldn't consider you've done enough to show female answers would be obviously more incorrect.
You perhaps need to hedge a little more. Obviously is a very certain and consensus building word so your evidence should be equally convincing, i think. Probably or likely would give you more leeway.
yofuckreddit
1hr ago
Did you exclusively go to the cheapest hole-in-the-wall farmer's pubs?
Yes, the vast majority of my route passed exclusively through these and mountaintop restaurants. I saw zero risotto for 8 days, and was unbelievably happy with one of the higher-end meals I had that incorporated pasta. I passed through larger towns like Grindewald and things expanded dramatically for the back quarter of the route.
I did not visit a butcher shop either. My cooking utensils were limited to a camping stove. To put it bluntly: I know this method of travel did not give Switzerland the chance to flex its culinary muscles for me, and that I missed out on a lot.
yofuckreddit
1hr ago
You can't realistically tackle this route any time other than the dead of summer; the official race is in June. The weather was fantastic and analogous to an American spring. I had rain for the first few days, and then afterwards I was able to set up the tent without the rainfly almost every night.
self_made_human
Sajjano durjano bhūyāt, durjano badhyatāṃ sadā, baddho'nyān nibandhāyet
1hr ago
Well, duh. SSRIs work even if the original hypothesis was proven flawed. Hand washing worked, even before we had the germ theory of disease.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9632745/
If it works, it works, and knowing why it works is always nice.
I recall that you, in your Deiseach avatar, were noted to be the most prolific commenter of all time on both of Scott's blogs (in that recent guest post). In that case, you shouldn't be surprised at all to learn that Scott has written multiple posts about the topic:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/05/chemical-imbalance/
To this day, I don't know why people float it as such a gotcha. Psychiatrists have known better for a long time now, and the critique makes us groan in the same manner that economists are tired of claims that they only study perfectly spherical/rational humans in a vacuum.
Primaprimaprima
I am trying so hard not to say the MBTI type of everyone I reply to
1hr ago
Yes exactly! “Autonomy” for Kant just means… the ability to autonomously come to the exact same ethical conclusions that Kant did. Which is pretty hilarious.
self_made_human
Sajjano durjano bhūyāt, durjano badhyatāṃ sadā, baddho'nyān nibandhāyet
1hr ago
https://people.seas.harvard.edu/~salil/am106/fall18/A Mathematician%27s Apology - selections.pdf
It will probably be plain by now to what conclusions I am coming; so I will state them at once dogmatically and then elaborate them a little. It is undeniable that a good deal of elementary mathematics—and I use the word ‘elementary’ in the sense in which professional mathematicians use it, in which it includes, for example, a fair working knowledge of the differential and integral calculus—has considerable practical utility. These parts of mathematics are, on the whole, rather dull; they are just the parts which have the least aesthetic value. The ‘real’ mathematics of the ‘real’ mathematicians, the mathematics of Fermat and Euler and Gauss and Abel and Riemann, is almost wholly ‘useless’ (and this is as true of ‘applied’ as of ‘pure’ mathematics). It is not possible to justify the life of any genuine professional mathematician on the ground of the ‘utility’ of his work
https://mathoverflow.net/questions/116627/useless-math-that-became-useful
Number theory, in particular investigations related to prime numbers, was famously considered useless (e.g., by Hardy) for practical matters. Now, since "everybody" needs some cryptography it is quite useful to know how to generate primes (e.g., for an RSA key) and alike, sometimes involving prior 'useless' number theory results
That thread, in general, seems to have a great many examples. Other quotes from it:
The Radon transform, when introduced by Johann Radon in 1917, was useless, until Cormack and Hounsfield developed Tomography in the 60's (Nobel prize for Medicine 1979).
The most famous example is conic sections. Conic sections were of great interest to Greek mathematicians, and their theory was highly developed in the 2-nd century BC.
However I don't know of any application until Kepler's discovery that celestial bodies move on conic sections. Thus 18 centuries passed between math research and the first application!
Number theory, in particular investigations related to prime numbers, was famously considered useless (e.g., by Hardy) for practical matters. Now, since "everybody" needs some cryptography it is quite useful to know how to generate primes (e.g., for an RSA key) and alike, sometimes involving prior 'useless' number theory results.
I hope this shores up my claim that even branches of maths that their creators (!) or famous contemporary mathematicians called useless have a annoying tendency to end up with practical applications. It's not just in the natural sciences, I've certainly never heard cryptography called a "natural science".
Also, see walruz's claim below , that even what you personally think is useless maths is already paying dividends!
Maths is quite cheap, has enormous positive externalities, and thus deserves investment even if no particular branch can be reliably predicted to be profitable. It just seems to happen nonetheless.
Corvos
1hr ago
Fair points, but verification is usually way cheaper than generation. If one actual human PhD can monitor a dozen AI agents, it is plausible that the value prop makes sense.
Not necessarily! It's an adage among programmers that reviewing somebody else's code is often harder than making your own, because you have to figure it all out and then try to create some ideal version in your head and mesh the two together.
It's actually a big issue with vibe-coding - I end up with a codebase I don't understand and then have to do the work of figuring out the framework for myself anyway.
HereAndGone
1hr ago
Because it's the adult kids end up with "hi, here's your mother's ashes in a parcel, oh you say nobody notified you? not our problem anymore!"
HereAndGone
2hr ago
Most humanities programs are, to put it bluntly, huffing their own farts.
...Psychiatry is hardly perfect in that regard, but we care more about RCTs than debating Freudian vs Lacanian nonsense. Does the intervention improve outcomes in a measurable way? If not, it is of limited use, no matter how elegant the theory behind it.
In other words, "our farts are different"? 😀
There would be the view out there that "okay, so you are trying to distinguish yourself, as a psychiatrist, from those squishy psychotherapists, but dude, the main difference is that you guys are legal drug pushers and now there's some doubt that the drugs even work".
Depression caused by lack of serotonin? Yeah, we don't think that anymore, but we still prescribe drugs to bump up serotonin levels.
Many such instances!
RenOS
something is wrong
2hr ago
Starmer did a lot of work in, and seems to respect a great deal, international law in particular. The thing about international law is that it often has virtually no enforcement mechanism. The kind of lawyer who looks for technicalities to let their client get off scot-free does not go into international law, since their clients are already usually getting off scot-free if you do nothing at all. You need to have some moral belief in the righteousness of international law and need to use the weapons of activism as well to get anything done.
So the technically correct terminus for Starmer is international-law-brained.
5434a
2hr ago
What was the climate and weather like? Was it a factor in your timing? Obviously winter is out.
Yeah I'd want to complete a full circuit. Cannes, Nice, Turin, Lake Como, Milan, Verona, Graz, Vienna, Salzburg, maybe Munich, Zurich, Geneva, Grenoble, Aix. Peak Europe, minus the peaks.
self_made_human
Sajjano durjano bhūyāt, durjano badhyatāṃ sadā, baddho'nyān nibandhāyet
2hr ago
I hate to do this, but last time we did this, you were unable to even explain what it is that those terms meant. Would you like to take another go at it?
Thank you for reminding me of that rather unpleasant experience. I would actually not like to take another go at it. Anyone wanting elaboration is welcome to read the thread.
JTarrou
2hr ago
I saw no mention of any cutting of the slide in the FBI report, any the modifications were done to spare parts and the process confirmed by putting those parts in a new gun as well.
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
2hr ago
Exactly. I expect his comment to be deleted or edited with random words after a period of time.
SnapDragon
2hr ago
Hehe, I stand corrected!
DaseindustriesLtd
late version of a small language model
2hr ago
pbmonster
3hr ago
I took a total of 14 days to complete the route, with 12 being “par”. Per day, I averaged:
72 kilometers 2050 meters of elevation gain 5,000 calories of energy expenditure
Hardo. Congratulations!
Beef is my favorite protein – the Eastern Swiss essentially don’t eat it because their income is tied to the cows staying alive. [...] The main dish is pork schnitzel. Maybe chicken nuggets if you’re lucky?
Did you exclusively go to the cheapest hole-in-the-wall farmer's pubs? Entrecote (beef) and cordon blue (veal) are absolute staples in traditional Swiss restaurants, and the restaurants like selling those because the margins are much better than the pork schnitzels.
Even the grocery stores are the size of a small American apartment and almost exclusively stock pork and dairy as calorie sources.
Grocery stores will have lots of pork, but again, the higher quality cuts of beef will always be available. Yes, the deli meat section will have not much other sources, and small stores might not have ground beef (only ground pork), but there's always a random cut of beef steak. Did you get the chance to visit a butcher shop?
There’s no side dish at any restaurant that’s not a potato.
Come on, the Swiss love their risotto rice and their Italian pasta.
walruz
3hr ago
The twin primes conjecture actually has some applications: https://old.reddit.com/r/BadMtgCombos/comments/1feps3y/deal_infinite_damage_for_4gru_as_long_as_the_twin/
Tree
3hr ago
When you tell them to be more empathetic, they don’t take their ‘true opinion’, then ‘make it’ more empathetic and wrap it in warm language, like an alien intelligence(or a human) would. There's fundamentally nothing there. So instead, they go back to the human opinion repository where they get all their opinions from, find a warm empathic one, and give that opinion as their own, no matter how wrong it is.
And there go the goalposts. First the objection was that the comment was downvoted for "merely making an argument". Then, when it's pointed out the comment actually was doing something other than that, it's a complaint about different standards.
You're not the moderator of internet points. And the moderators here, so far as I know, don't moderate internet points. Further, they do moderate responses, so when someone posts some shit implying me and anyone who shares my views is as out-of-touch as Principal Skinner from the Simpsons, I can't just respond with "fuck off, you supercilious asshole" because that will get me modded; internet points are all I got.
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