Doug Morris

The expression "poor white trash" has been used with a variety of meanings. I think AlexL has given us the best clue to what it means in this context.

At the beginning, little was known about Covid-19 and in particular, about how dangerous it was. But there enough deaths to be very alarming. No. Some people disagree. Here's something that was posted here a while back. In this video, Olga Yakusheva, associate professor of nursing, discusses the study’s findings.

That theory explains how Scientology came about. Are you sure about how Scientology came about?

Why?

SARs are not proof of wrongdoing or illegality. They are reports of activity that looks suspicious and therefore may be related to wrongdoing or illegality.

SARs are supposed to be secret, so it would be hard to tell whether any SARs were filed against the Trump Crime Family.

If we're going to do a hypothetical like that, we should also have our hypothetical US being constantly attacked by Israeli terrorists with support from the government of Israel.

Should we trust this?

If the US occupied a part of Israel, legally or illegally, that could make complications.

It might be more difficult. We might have to go through an intermediary, like the cease-fire being arranged through Qatar.

How is this relevant to the current discussion?

Ask Israel to extradite the terrorist to face our justice.

Why does volition require entanglement? Why does entanglement require computation?

Why is this necessary? Why is it relevant? What are your grounds for saying that the brain uses quantum computation?

For a very different view, read Ayn Rand's Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology and/or read the relevant parts of Leonard Peikoff's The Objectivist Philosophy of Ayn Rand.

While this is the best way for them to learn it, they may be reluctant to start until some specific questions and concerns are answered or an overview is given.

Another misconception, to quote one source I read, is that Ayn Rand "hates charity". She has stated explicitly that there is nothing wrong with helping others provided you can afford it and they are worthy of the help. What she objects to is the idea that helping others is an obligation or a primary virtue. To make sure there is no misunderstanding, this refers to epistemological integration, not mathematical or racial integration. Although Ayn Rand was strongly opposed to racism. Ayn Rand was also opposed to government coercion in connection with any of the topics mentioned in my post here. She thought that government should only be used as a defense against the initiation of direct or indirect physical force. This is more fully explained in her writings.

The rise of capitalistic behaviors, starting several centuries ago, pushed everything, including religion, in a more rational direction. "The greater good" is a very vague term that could be interpreted to mean almost anything, from horrors like the Holocaust to something that looks superficially a lot like Objectivism, but without the foundation provided by Ayn Rand's philosophy.

Objectivism is radical in its ideas, not necessarily in concrete behaviors. Most people have enough grasp, on some level, of their true interests and of various rational ideas from various sources that they can come up with mostly decent choices and actions. Objectivism protects us from various errors others can fall into, such as feeling or thinking that giving and/or helping is an obligation for them, feeling guilty because they supposedly haven't done it enough, confusion about where their interests lie, thinking that business is fundamentally immoral or amoral, buying into collectivist and statist ideas, or thinking that mysticism is necessary in order to have morality.

Can you clarify?

There have been times in the past when this wasn't true. For example, Muslims invented algebra. Does anyone have any thoughts on why the difference?

OK. I take it this is both your view and Webb's view. My impression had been the opposite. What do you and/or Webb base this on?

Is this your view or Webb's view?

The following is my understanding of the underlying history based on what I have read. Please feel free to offer evidence for or against this narrative. The Palestinians have been cursed with bad leadership from the very beginning, and this is the fundamental cause of the trouble. If things had gone the way Israel wanted from the beginning, there would have been no displacements and no rational reason for conflict or enmity. Israelis were buying land and establishing settlements but were not displacing anyone and wanted to live in peace. The Arab governments appointed themselves the leaders of the Palestinians. They adopted a policy of crushing Israel and encouraging Palestinians to leave Israel during the war, supposedly to return after Israel was crushed. Israel both gained and lost territory in the resulting war, resulting in displacements on both sides and in pressure to preserve displacements as compensation for other displacements. If the Arab governments had brought this off and crushed Israel, this would have been a great evil and not in the best interests of the Palestinians, but it would probably not have been a disaster for the Palestinians. Of course they did not bring it off; Israel survived. Israel was willing to let Palestinians return, but they had to set an eventual deadline for this. The rational, rights-respecting action for the Arab governments would have been to encourage the Palestinians to return. A somewhat constructive alternative would have been to encourage the Palestinians to resettle elsewhere in the Arab world. The Arab governments did neither. They thought they could gain political advantage by turning the Palestinians into a permanent refugee population. The Arab governments expected to control this refugee population. They didn't bring that off either. The Palestinians became a force in their own right with their own leadership. There wasn't any orderly process for picking leaders, so the new leaders appointed themselves by force. It was still bad leadership. They were terrorists. They didn't try to follow policies of productiveness and negotiation that could have improved the situation. They followed a policy of violence that continued conflict and destruction and stimulated enmity. At one point a left-leaning Israeli government offered a generous deal that would have created a two-state solution that would have greatly improved the situation. The Palestinians still had bad leadership, the terrorist Arafat who took the generosity as a sign of weakness and thought he could get even more by rejecting the deal. What he got was a political shift to the right in Israel which resulted in less generosity and a pushing of the destructive settlement policy. Fatah has become more reasonable. If they led all the Palestinians we could hope for a decent outcome. But Hamas leads the Gaza strip, and they are evil terrorists who have created the present horrible war.

This brings to my mind quantum mechanics and special relativity.