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Grames

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Everything posted by Grames

  1. Risk is quantified by counting deaths and opportunities to die. Do the arithmetic or go home.
  2. They were dissuaded from participating in politics at the local and state level, working on election reform, electing judges, and being polling precinct workers. Time spent watching ex-military officers predict imminent coups and mass arrests is purely wasted time. "Follow the plan" is simply "stay home and wait". When none of the fantasies came true people get further discouraged from ever participating in actual politics. Actual work that gets shit done is tedious and time consuming.
  3. No. From the medical malpractice of the covid "vaccines" to the embrace of wild climate theories to attack standards of living to unconstrained fiat money creation to recklessly risking global thermonuclear war the present American government and those who support its policies are evil and a personal danger and I wish them ill.
  4. I now fully support Russia's cause in the Ukraine operation. Ukraine is contested territory between two empires, the American Empire and the Russian Empire. Russia is far away from me, I care about the American Empire. The American Empire is a personal threat to me and so I want it thwarted, defeated and even crushed in every project it undertakes.
  5. I hate Q. Fuck Q and the boomer fantasists who want to believe that the system they have lived with their whole life will somehow correct itself as they passively watch the show. Q is for people who have spent their entire lives sitting on their ass watching television, being mentally passive. Q is a pacifier. Q is a distraction. Q is a propaganda operation by an unfriendly power, your own government (probably the FBI with possible cross training and skill sharing with the CIA and DIA).
  6. "Official Music Video" but also 480p? Watching this costs me next to nothing but somehow I still feel cheated. edit: It's entirely CGI and at an odd aspect ratio, so the issue is they couldn't afford more pixels.
  7. There is no proof and can there can never be a proof, because the concept of proof presupposes so much that there can only be circular arguments. Rand settled on identifying the fundamentals of her philosophy as axioms, themselves using a vocabulary of axiomatic concepts. One is satisfied with the axioms or one is not, but there is no arguing for them. They can be demonstrated, but no more. Opposing philosophies are the same way but not all of them identify their fundamentals as explicitly.
  8. Haven't read it. Amazon reviewers and this academic review give him high marks for writing in an accessible manner, so Huemer would have that over Kelley. Huemer did not spend time getting grilled by Rand however, so I suspect from what I can glean from the reviews and the sample text at Amazon is too much effort spent on nonessentials and arbitrary principles. From the Notre Dame Philosophical Review article: Where does this come from? Kelley at least spells out and defends axioms, and points out the critical issue of 'primacy of existence' versus 'primacy of consciousness'. Kelley shows how an apriori commitment to one primacy or the other establishes a framework for the questions asked about perception and the answers that are possible within those frameworks. In other words, Huemer does not penetrate to fundamentals (from my limited information). Worse, I think I've read works by this guy discussing Objectivism and Objectivist epistemology. For him to fail to at least reference Kelley's book is pretty shitty of him even if he doesn't want to base his work on those who were prior to him.
  9. And the counter-party should be deprived of his money so he can do less harm to himself and others, and I can do more good.
  10. It is amazing to me how people that have studied philosophy and the nature of government can be so completely defenseless against low grade propaganda. "Safe and effective!" "Safe and secure!" Weak minds think alike.
  11. Grames

    Honesty

    Yes. So what that do? It means the conclusions of ethics are the premises of politics when it comes to behavioral norms.
  12. Songleikr | Ulvetime (Hour of the Wolf)
  13. Grames

    Honesty

    Well, let's not get carried away with discussions here that are tangential to the thread's purpose. I invite you to review and reply over the thread about "What is the objective basis of politics?" and specifically my post https://forum.objectivismonline.com/index.php?/topic/37482-what-is-the-objective-basis-of-politics/&page=2#comment-379434
  14. Grames

    Honesty

    Not indulging in mental evasion is an ethical principle that can be justified on rational self interest. I think Rand succeeded there. Founding honesty toward others as a political principle is a better way forward because Tomasello's "joint intentionality and its focus on communicating cooperatively with others" is "two or more people acting toward the same values" which is politics. I am apparently on a path of advocating the removal of the "right treatment of others" problem from ethics entirely, and moving that problem to politics. Being ethically good but politically bad as in a benevolent king or competent Machiavellian politician or even some descriptions of sociopathic behavior is then given a conceptual framework.
  15. Kalandra - Brave New World (Lyric Video)
  16. KVERVANDI (acoustic) by Ivar Bjørnson & Einar Selvik /LYRICS NORWEGIAN-ENGLISH
  17. Famine and war versus more mean tweets. I'd pick the tweets every time. Trump was the only president in decades to have not started a new war or military intervention. Of course that was the main reason he had to go.
  18. Nordsteam I and Nordstream 2 gas pipelines in the Baltic have now both been sabotaged. The most likely perpetrators are the Americans and the Ukrainians. There is no way in hell the Russians did it, the ability to return to the pre-war gas market as Europe's primary supplier was Russia's major negotiating chip to keep their gains in the Ukraine after things settled. They could always turn off the flow and had already turned off the flow for demonstration purposes so blowing up their own pipelines reduces Russia's political influence and is contrary to their financial needs and stated policies. But if the Ukrainians did it, that is just another way to state that the Americans did it. Elections have consequences.
  19. Children can be and are neglected, abused and murdered in violation of every principle of how any person ought to be treated. But because no contract law pertains nothing is to be done? I am grateful for the innovation in human society that is criminal law.
  20. The growth into full adulthood is gradual, but the moral and legal status of being a person with certain rights obtains at birth. "Persons not the mother don't have a proper right to control the pregnancy until the fetus is capable of sustained life outside the womb with or without artificial support." Technological advancements in medicine may make possible sustained life outside the womb with artificial support earlier and earlier in the pregnancy. Making the rights of mothers dependent upon not just technology but some judge's or legislator's assertion about that technology is not good practice of law. This is in principle far more amenable to restrictions on abortion than I would ever be. It also assumes that technology is provided but is silent on who provides and pays for it. How can you reconcile this position with what I thought was presented as an intransigent pro-abortion rights position?
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