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Grames

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Everything posted by Grames

  1. Yes. Israeli settlers have done similar things. Religious wars are like that. I reject both of the religions involved. You should too.
  2. Posting to subscribe to the thread. I really don't care about this conflict because I am neither jewish nor muslim. I would just like to remind everyone of the big picture: modern Isreal exists because of the ideology of Zionism and jewish supremacism embedded within it. If Zionism is invalid then anything which is a consequence of Zionism is invalid.
  3. Probably correct. The situation will progress until the Ukrainian government is no longer required to think, merely comply.
  4. Ukraine will never get another dime from the American congress now that the new Speaker of the House Mike Johnson is so adamantly against it. Ukraine cannot continue without American funding. Ukraine will require time to accept the inevitable, and Russia will now press its advantage and no longer feels pressure to negotiate. Therefore much territory will change hands on the ground over the next few months as Ukraine runs out of ammunition, men and money for salaries and Swiss bank accounts.
  5. With World Focused On Israel, WaPo Boasts CIA Is Behind Brazen Assassinations Of Russians BY TYLER DURDEN TUESDAY, OCT 24, 2023 - 07:05 PM At a moment the globe's attention is by and large completely focused on events in Gaza, The Washington Post has this week published a bombshell report which vindicates Moscow's worst fears. Up to now, any pundit daring to write that Putin's accusations that the West has for years backed a covert campaign to destabilize Russia while stoking the 2014 (and after) civil war in Donbass, was smeared as a 'pro-Kremlin propagandist'. But now, the D.C. establishment's premier newspaper is openly admitting that the CIA is actively running covert ops inside Russia, which has included the killing of journalist and geopolitical commentator Darya Dugina, the daughter of Alexaner Dugin. Another "conspiracy theory" has been belatedly admitted as conspiracy fact. The report stunningly documents of this "shadow war" that, "The missions have involved elite teams of Ukrainian operatives drawn from directorates that were formed, trained, and equipped in close partnership with the CIA, according to current and former Ukrainian and US officials. Since 2015, the CIA has spent tens of millions of dollars to transform Ukraine’s Soviet-formed services into potent allies against Moscow, officials said." Link: https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/world-focused-israel-gaza-wapo-boasts-cia-has-been-behind-brazen-assassinations Link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/10/23/ukraine-cia-shadow-war-russia/
  6. That is not my viewpoint, but a viewpoint not compatible with "Rand's substantial theory of truth". I led off my message with "It" and the referent of that "It" was "Rand's substantial theory of truth" from the quote that was given immediately above in that post. Long form writing and message board writing are very different, so my apologies for contributing to your confusion by not spelling things out more explicitly. To be clear, I agree with your "... unknown facts need not be characterized as a standing in some mind, specifically, as in a God-like omniscience-perspective." I was making the point that arguments based on hindsight have similarity to arguments based on that God-like omniscience-perspective. If the omniscient perspective is rejected then so should the hindsight perspective be rejected.
  7. Much old writing (old meaning before Hemingway) is very nice to read. Some old writing is just too ornate for my taste, for example I could never get through Melville's Moby Dick. This example anthropomorphizes an abstraction 'civilization' as a woman for poetic effect but it doesn't work as well upon reflection as it does on first impression. People get lost, wander in circles, walk into danger and disaster, and can forget and die. Forward is not synonymous with progress. The problem is that forward is entirely relative, not an objective direction or a goal.
  8. Hi Steven! It also rules out a God-like omniscient perspective as a standard for truth. Epistemology is normative in part and as ever "ought implies can". No one is or could ever be omniscient. A very small subset of the omniscient perspective is that called hindsight. It may well be that if I knew then what i know now I would not have accounted myself as certain or having knowledge of some item then, but lacking the power of time travel or for projecting information into the past that is an impossible standard as well. Real cognitive agents are finite and fallible which is why they need a standard of truth at all. Finite as applied to cognition must also mean rate limited in performing integrations. Thinking can be slow. It cannot be that being slow is some kind of original sin that makes it impossible to achieve knowledge or certainty. Peikoff wrote “Logical processing of an idea within a specific context of knowledge is necessary and sufficient to establish the idea’s truth” (OPAR 171). ... Rand’s picture in Peikoff’s bold statement is significantly incorrect in my view because as one’s (scientific) knowledge grows one’s knowledge of what was one’s previous context of knowledge also grows. Have you considered that the omniscient or hindsight perspective may be the source of your misgivings here? Or is it that there is a possibility that one never can catch up in fully integrating with the present context of knowledge? I think these two questions are the same. At what grade-level of reading comprehension do you aim for in your writing? As I understand the business aspect of writing a lower grade-level of reading comprehension has a potentially larger reading audience, creating a wider scope for dissemination of the ideas within and a potentially larger renumeration for works written for sale. So pardon me for the pretentious attempt at being your editor but why not just 'bite the bullet' and reuse Rand's phrase "measurement omission" instead of paraphrasing the whole idea and still using a dashed insert? Also, in the present age of computerized texts there is advantage in having your text use keywords that might be the subject of future scholars' text searches.
  9. He ain't wrong on this. The CIA, State Department and Pentagon have been writing the headlines in this country for decades now. People in news organizations cooperate willingly for the social status and the promise of future inside information which helps their careers and personal wealth. This is so commonplace and ordinary that some people don't even recognize it as corruption.
  10. It's over. Russia wins. The New Current Thing is Israel's war of extermination against the Gaza concentration camp. All further media attention and war funding will go there. Without being propped up by the U.S. their Ukrainian puppet regime will collapse and Russia and its puppets will survive. Biden will attempt to fund the two wars at once but it is too much to ask.
  11. Nothing will come of this except Trump will become stronger.
  12. Saul Alinsky wrote Rules for Radicals, and I see #13 here polluting your thinking. "Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have." "Never go outside the expertise of your people." "Whenever possible go outside the expertise of the enemy." "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules." "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. There is no defense. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage." "A good tactic is one your people enjoy." "A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag." "Keep the pressure on." "The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself." "The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition." "If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside; this is based on the principle that every positive has its negative." "The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative." "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it." This war is not about Putin, he has support and internal agreement to the degree that even an assassination would not change the policy of Russia or end the war. In focusing on Putin you blank out the thousands and now tens of thousands of people needlessly suffering and dying on both sides. The war is basically a stalemate except that the longer the war goes on the greater Russia's advantage will become. It needs to end, and if that means Ukraine gets divided then so be it.
  13. Metaphysics is so meta that it should be a short subject. We need the explicit affirmation that "existence really does exist' just to forestall some stupid shenanigans by people trying to shill their secret cultic knowledge. Metaphysics is also where the law of identity belongs. Non-contradiction closely follows on the law of identity but is epistemology. That's it for the "most fundamental" aspects of existence. The context is not "the most fundamental physics" but the most abstract statements that can apply to everything. It would be intrinsicist, you are not wrong there. It is a noncontroversial fact that all humans do NOT have reason, free will, individuality, etc. in their fullest senses, only the capacity for such. Gaining one's fullest degree of free will, individuality, reason etc. is where the normative aspects of philosophy come in.
  14. Definition entry at the Ayn Rand Lexicon. The meaning of any concept is what it refers to. A definition tells us what a concept includes (and excludes). A proper definition is given in terms of genus and differentia. The genus of philosophy is 'science' and the differentia is 'the fundamental aspects of the nature of existence'. The ordinary definition of 'science' in the sense used here is just "A systematic method or body of knowledge in a given area" (From The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition via Wordnik). That philosophy is the foundation of science and also a science itself is not much of a paradox, it just means that Rand is asserting a hierarchical relationship between philosophy and the other sciences. Other sciences are logically dependent upon philosophy because it is philosophy that explicitly identifies metaphysical axioms such as existence and identity and the methods of logic without which no other science could function as a systematic investigation. Specifically and most commonly that method is the principle of non-contradiction. Epistemology is the foundation of philosophy because the other parts of philosophy (ethics, politics, economics, ... ) are all also dependent upon epistemology to supply the methods used for systematic investigation. Epistemology is both a special area of investigation within philosophy (a branch) and a foundation because it enables other branches to be investigated systematically.
  15. All of these are wrong. The most important point to keep in mind is that volition is epistemological in nature. If we are determined by prior events to spout certain opinions then choosing between valid arguments and fallacies or truths and falsehoods is impossible and epistemology is pointless because nobody can ever claim to know anything. Any form of determinism or denial of volition that undermines the possibility of knowledge therefore refutes itself. The only question worth asking is "how does volition work?" Rand does not presume to even attempt to answer that. Objectivism accepts causality and Rand accepted that causality reaches into the human mind from the external world in its normal operation by means of the mechanisms of sensations and perceptions. Rand's identifies volition as the very delimited scope of choosing to focus or not, to engage in conceptual thought or not. An unfocused mind is drifting and determined. A focused mind that willfully chose to accept a certain idea may also be determined in its logical and psychological consequences (examples from Rand's fiction: Gail Wynand from The Fountainhead and Robert Stoddard from Atlas Shrugged.) The moment of choice is not characterized as an exception to causality but as an instance of it. Rand simply accepts volition as an attribute of the human mind and moves on because both rejecting volition or trying to explain volition are show-stoppers for philosophy. A reductive approach is possible in further researching what volition is and how it works (as a scientific not philosophical endeavor), but a reductive interpretation that attempts to explain away volition or deny it are obviously wrong. A non-reductive theory that is equivalent to a supernatural or 'quantum random swerve' theory is also rejected.
  16. "In just the past year, significant progress has been made in infusing Christianity into public schools." In "Philosophy: Who Needs It?" Rand teaches how everyone needs it and everyone actually has one whether they can articulate it or not. The previous generation of court decisions and laws that drove even the acknowledgement of the existence of Christianity from the public schools came at a cost: it made way for "alternative" value systems not technically recognized as religious to be taught instead. The current resurgence of Marxism, socialism, environmentalism and every other absurdity up to and including transgenderism is the direct consequence of driving Christianity out of the schools without mandating an appropriate replacement. People don't know how to rebel against those consequences and thus protect their children except to bring back the old time religion. But it is just a rebellion and rejection, a negating of a negative. Outlawing government education is a good idea. Good luck with that.
  17. The "shape" of philosophy? The boundaries? Okay. Do you remember the purpose of a definition? What is the definition of philosophy?
  18. Think what you may about Jordan Petersen, but his exploration into what religion does for people at the psychological level has got to be the only correct approach.
  19. meh. Sounds too good to be true. But if it is a fraud it is too dumb to believe because synthesizing the material is relatively easy and the experiment will be performed by others very soon. So something is there but perhaps it is just a large diamagnetic effect.
  20. I think it is economics and politics, not technology. COVID lockdowns brought about much corporate experimentation with remote and work from home arrangements but there is now a deliberate movement away from those experiments. In America the big cities with the most and tallest skyscrapers are the most locked in the grip of socialist politics at the local and state levels which discourages further investment beyond a certain point for a variety of reasons including the financial and tax aspects but now also crime policy and other social issues. In China building things is one of the few CCP-approved things that can be done with a pile of money. China has also been undergoing a mass movement of its population from the countryside to cities creating a legitimate need for large buildings. Arabian skyscrapers are speculative investments in real estate, a way to dispose of ("invest") a pile of money. Time will tell if the buildings and new cities will endure.
  21. Credentialism ought to be deprecated. Too much of "intellectual work" is memorizing and conforming rather than understanding.
  22. Only one can be correct, everything else is disinformation and an assault on your mind. The only correspondence that matters is correspondence with what exists. Anything else is correspondence with something that does not exist, and is no correspondence at all. That is what causes the false to be false. What is false is to be disregarded. All of Hegel and all idealist philosophy can be disregarded.
  23. So you refute my propaganda with your propaganda? How is that supposed to work? If only there were a way to detect propaganda. Who can save us?
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