AlexL

It seems to me that the most that one can reasonably do is scrutinize the logic of Sapolsky’s challenge: “What is needed to prove free will: show me that the thing a neuron just did in someone’s brain was unaffected by preceding factors”. This is a common fallacy of rationalism, which can only be countered by a counter-challenge. My counter-challenge is “What is needed to prove determinism is: show me your ability to predict the choices made by men”. (Cognitive) determinism is an unfalsifiable pseudo-axiom. What constitutes a proof is not metaphysically given and is not self-evident. A proof is a presentation of evidence and the disposition of counterevidence. Sapolsky does not get to stipulate what constitutes proof, that is an objective question of logic (does all of th evidence support the claim? That is what a proof is).
Ordinary observation of humans refutes the premise that all choices are predetermined. To refute that refutation of determinism, it is insufficient to cry out wittily “You were predestined to make that argument”, one (Sapolsky) has to provide an actual model of the universe from which we can compute any man’s choices, and one must provide at least a modicum of experimental evidence to support the correctness of that model of the human mind. Needless to say, nobody has come within a light year of that gauntlet, much less ever having picked it up.
The underlying logical premise is based on the law of non-contradiction, which says that being whipped and burned is not the same as not being whipped and burned. The universe exists in a definite non-contradictory state. Alas, certain philosophico-scientists conflate epistemology and metaphysics, believing that if one cannot know whether X is the case or denial of X is the case, then the universe itself has an indeterminate state. More traditionally, existence is binary but knowledge is ternary (or more): we have “true”, “false” and “I don’t know”, but the fact either exist, or it doesn’t.
The Sapolsky-style argument is based on flawed burden-of-proof reasoning, that he who makes the claim must prove the claim. I direct your attention to vast amounts of evidence for free will, but the Sapolsky-style argument rejects the evidence because a particular statement is offered as axiomatic, when in fact it is not an axiom. The burden of proof now rests on Sapolsky or his followers and predecessors to provide a model which predicts human choices at the level that ordinary science would hold to “disprove the null hypothesis” (the .05 level, which AFAIK is actually unacceptably lax in physics which I understand requires 99.7% CL to be “evidence” and 99.9999% CL to be “discovery”).
Up until 2001, there was no explicit physical model of the fact that bumblebees fly, but nobody seriously doubted that they do. Likewise, there should be no serious doubt that humans have free will, even if we can’t reduce it to an equation rooted in sub-atomic physics.

Saint Putin
"In his follow-on speech, Kirill highlighted the messianic role of Putin, whom he called a 'wise patriot' who is 'open to people'. In the old Russian language, the term 'people' also meant 'commoners' or even 'serfs'. 

Net Worth of Despot-Saint of Russia

That’s what’s known as context-dropping. The context of the discussion is the video that you didn’t watch, where a number of essential factual observations were made a propos Israel’s defense of its existence (and the anti-Israeli propaganda war). The cat predictably responded (since the posting of the video was directed against her and her ilk as partisans in this propaganda war), but didn’t respond at all productively, instead just making false counter-claims – purporting to disprove major factual claims of the original video, but really just pointing to a huge propaganda document and declaring “The truth is there, you just have to believe!”. I then requested even one concrete instantiation of a case from the document where the law of Israel treats Jews and Arabs differently.
That is the context that defines what is relevant. Your quote, which also lacks substantiation (or source) has no bearing on the question of whether the law of Israel treats Jews and Arabs differently (which, again, it does not). Your quote, if it were true, might be relevant to a different question, for example “Is it the case that all existing government have acted immorally?”. We can stipulate that all governments have failed to implement the ideal of rights-protection as the proper function of government, that much has never need in doubt. Because that fact is so self-evident, it needs not be discussed, except as an instantiation of the concept “self-evident”. Taxes and trade restrictions, I rest my case.
Palestine is not yet a nation, because it is unwilling to do what is required for existence as a nation. The primary difference between Palestine and Nazi Germany or contemporary Russia is that the latter two have better-organized armies and are better able to carry out wars of aggression against their neighbors. The Palestinians are much more overt in their declaration of an intent to drive the Jews into the sea, compared to Russia versus former and current colonies that they are trying to retake.

No, it hasn't. Yet. Read carefully your own quotations. Your activism blinds you.

"Free Palestine!" is not taking positions about a war, because:
"Free Palestine!" means suppressing an occupation, The current war is the one between Gaza government and Israel. During this war no occupation took place. Therefore "Free Palestine!" does not mean taking positions about a war.
Your comment tries to whitewash SpookyKitty's "Free Palestine!" call, which is a call for murder, a call for genocide, more precisely.
There exist, however, also a legitimate call "Free Palestine!".

"Free Palestine!" is not taking positions about a war, because:
"Free Palestine!" means suppressing an occupation, The current war is the one between Gaza government and Israel. During this war no occupation took place. Therefore "Free Palestine!" does not mean taking positions about a war.
Your comment tries to whitewash SpookyKitty's "Free Palestine!" call, which is a call for murder, a call for genocide, more precisely.
There exist, however, also a legitimate call "Free Palestine!".

You mean the 2022 Amnesty International report?
Yes, you are correct, I did not address this and I regret it. I focused on your denial of the principle/rule that, in a rational debate one has the obligation to justify one's claims, if asked. I looked back on your older comments in this thread and I found out that now is not the first time that you deny the legitimacy of this rule.
OK, now about your argumentation with this report. 
I asked you to provide facts justifying your claims/conclusions. But instead of facts, you pointed me to a source claiming those same conclusions.
Yes, I guess that that 280 pages report does list some facts in support of its conclusion, but the problem is : if I disagree with the truth o those facts and/or conclusions, to whom I address my objections?
Therefore: take your claims one by one and justify them. 
(Besides, by unreservedly recommending the AI report, you will also have to justify/prove every one of its claims, if asked. This is how it works!)
Here is a free😁advice for you: Only by researching a subject yourself can you justify your claims; merely reproducing the conclusions of others risks embarrassment.

Boydstun is not smearing you. The problem is in your head. 
Urgently go out and seek psychiatric help.

Ayn Rand once gave some really good advice that went something like this: "The most important thing you can do to help the poor is to avoid becoming poor yourself." I add: The most important thing you can do to stop destructive evil in the world is to not be destructive of yourself, such as by telling lies, using non-prescribed psychoactive narcotics (even if legal), possibly causing damage to your mind such as paranoia and delusions of Galt-level accomplishments made by yourself, mysteriously unheralded, in physics and engineering. From all you have described to us on your personal front and pleaded for us to accept, it looks most likely that if you "will be completely out of all resources", it will be at root due to your own compromised mind and behavior, whether you yourself caused that damage or it happened by the course of nature. If you die "within the next two weeks" it will not be because of evil of someone else. I hope you will still be alive in two weeks and not so out of resources that you no longer can communicate in this medium if you wish.
A sister of mine committed suicide a few years ago (a wife, mother, and grandmother), and from what I know of her physical miseries for which she could get no further help, it was a well-and-long-considered sensible suicide. I don't think she did it just so her loved ones would be pained. I do not know your health potentials, but that is surely the arena in which you need help and protection, assuming you are not just BS-ing the site in a show of fake feelings and mental states (which I doubt). I hope you are not in such a boxed-in and painful health situation as my sister evidently was. Be suspicious of any inclination you have towards suicide. Nature is going to end each life soon enough.
A year ago, a nephew of mine died of alcoholism. It destroyed his organs. He was 52. It had started as a young man, when he had been in the Navy. He knew he was an addict, but refused to let the appropriate professionals try to help him. I hope you are not on a destructive course along those lines, with some sort of long addiction. If so, please get medical help, and realize you can not make the return to health by yourself.
I experienced paranoia myself for a couple of days. I was in a safe place, a hospital I'd come to for what turned out to be symptoms from a bladder blockage. All my regular medicines I take each day to stay alive could not get released from my body and caused malfunctions in my brain. The neurological condition is known as Metabolic Encephalopathy. When I later saw my neurologist, he could predict all the various mental malfunctions that had ensued. I mention the paranoia part because I know first-hand that while you are in it, you do not know you are in it. You just keep putting every bit in every episode of life into a vast plot against yourself and things you treasure. But if there is for you periodic waning of it, get yourself some help, protecting yourself from yourself.
Don't be ashamed of mental derailments. The appropriate model of human perfection is not a perfect crystal, but perfect health, which can be lost and possibly regained. Resilience and recoveries are virtues. I was in a mental hospital myself as a young man, due to my suicidal responses to my existential situation. I began to read The Fountainhead there, and my doctor encouraged me to finish it, which I did. And I lived another six decades (so far, so good) without such problems again, and I achieved difficult things in love and work and in personal projects that, though difficult, were more modest than and more suited to my abilities than stellar physics breakthroughs. (I loved physics and, with engineering education also, I have been able to put what I learned to good use in philosophical reflections.) And I have been happy.
Here's hoping.
–S

A Greek Sham
The fire of the gods stolen by Prometheus was actually stolen by the story maker from man and given to the gods, omitting credit to man of having learned to start, control, and use fires without outside help.

I hope it is.

I hope it only sounds like BS, but I am not so sure, and this is very troubling for this OO forum...

They aren’t Objectivists, nor are they conservatives. They are both brilliant, two of my favorite modern day intellectuals. They are fact driven, rational, insightful, courageous and morally upright. The more I live the more I appreciate how great they really are. Leftists don't seem to produce those kinds of people.

You are free to create such a forum, but you cannot expect that a given forum owner, for example of this one, will tolerate on his premises the broadcasting of views he abhors. Or tolerate irrational behavior in a debate, for example when a person refuses to justify his claims, the concept of evidence-based debate etc.
This requirement will stop nothing: any idea may be found to have something to do with Objectivism😁
Not sure what you mean... In any case: force is not the only form of harm.

A forum is a space for discussions/debates. What you are describing is an unmoderated forum (= zero control over content). The owner defines what, who and how. It is not "pretty much true by definition" that a forum is unmoderated.
My understanding is that @Boydstun described various choices as to how to moderate a forum, not choices as to how to exercise one's free speech. One does not have an a priori freedom of speech on a private forum. It is implicit in the attributes of private property. The non-owners are guest and are subjected to the rules of the house.
Harmed is that owner who does not want his property to be used in ways he does not desire, for example to spread ideas he hates.

A forum is a space for discussions/debates. What you are describing is an unmoderated forum (= zero control over content). The owner defines what, who and how. It is not "pretty much true by definition" that a forum is unmoderated.
My understanding is that @Boydstun described various choices as to how to moderate a forum, not choices as to how to exercise one's free speech. One does not have an a priori freedom of speech on a private forum. It is implicit in the attributes of private property. The non-owners are guest and are subjected to the rules of the house.
Harmed is that owner who does not want his property to be used in ways he does not desire, for example to spread ideas he hates.

If you exercise editorial control, it ceases to be a "forum" at all, and becomes a "magazine" or a "journal." That's my point.
If I write a book I can control everything in the book. But it's not literally a "forum." It's a book.
(My biggest concern is that no one would read it, which is one reason why I like having access to open forums.)
(Maybe this is more like a continuum than an either-or thing.)
I can't find the exact quote, but I believe Rand said somewhere (perhaps in "What Can One Do?") that as long as free speech exists, the right ideas have a chance.
I will agree with @Boydstun that there are a lot of choices as to how to exercise one's free speech. But the thing about a forum is precisely that it does not constitute an exercise of one's own speech -- it constitutes giving others an opportunity to speak, which is a different thing (and can be valuable too, including to the giver of the opportunity).
Of course when you provide that opportunity it's pretty much true by definition that you give up control over what those others are going to say. You are signing up for surprises. Some of them may be pleasant, some not. The pleasant ones are what make it worthwhile.
(But also, a person may run or participate in an open forum because he wants to test his own thinking and ideas by being exposed to those of others.)
Peikoff writes that lies are "impotent" because the underlying reality is still there and will be discovered. This is why people who live by lies end up having to resort to force (because the lies alone are never enough). It's also why a free society can afford to have free speech. So in that sense there shouldn't be any harm in allowing people to speak their minds. (I'm excluding stuff like harassment that would render the forum useless). The truth will come out eventually.
Even posting the truth here isn't necessarily going to end the discussion, though, because people have to see that truth for themselves, and they have to see it in reality, not just in the forum. Discussions end when there is nothing more to add.
My concern is that the calls to exercise more editorial control are actually rooted in the idea that lies are not impotent, that lies have to be censored because they'll "mislead" people.
This is rooted in the primacy of consciousness, but not in the usual way: most people familiar with Objectivism know better than to think that lies "create reality." We all know that I can lie and say I have a gold bar, but the lie doesn't create the gold bar.
But there is a "second order" version of the "primacy of consciousness," if you want to call it that -- the notion that if false ideas spread around, people will believe them, and then act on them, and then this will give rise to oppressive governments and cultures. So well-meaning people then conclude that the spread of the false ideas has to be stopped.
False ideas need to be refuted; that's the only way to really stop them.
The possibility that people will believe bad ideas called "free will" and is metaphysically given, and there's nothing we can actually do about that. We can try to put the right ideas out there, and also try to explain why the wrong ideas are wrong.
Trying to fight the metaphysically given is why it's a second-order version of the primacy of consciousness. We can't stop people from thinking bad thoughts. If refutation is not enough then the human species is doomed anyway.
I think that setting up forum rules to ban the discussion of certain ideas only serves to create the impression that Objectivism cannot withstand those ideas, which is not true. Further, the ideas are not "gone," they just go to other forums. Merely hiding the arguments we disagree with doesn't help; it can even amount to self-deception.
I will admit that sometimes people raise the same tired old objections to Objectivism over and over. In that case it should be sufficient to refer to them to places where the objections have already been answered. However, it is possible that the answer to the tired old objection was somehow incomplete and so another question may need to be answered.
There are also people out there who would expect you to "prove" that 2 + 2 = 4, and they won't accept anything you say, so that they are either trolling or their reasoning is irreparably defective. In that case, just stop. There is nothing you can do. (Why get all upset about it?)
The correct thing to do, the only thing we really can do, about the evil in society, is try to patiently explain why having an oppressive culture is a bad idea, and how to make a better one -- which is sort of what Objectivism is about in the first place.
--
There is a second concern, too. The forum owners may say that they don't want their resources to be used to promote bad ideas.
The thing is, when the forum is open, and somebody posts a bad idea, it doesn't count as a "promotion" in the same way it would if it had been approved by editors. This is because people know that the forum is open and that just about anything can be posted.
If everybody wins an award, the award is not very meaningful, and that's an instance of the same principle.

Yours is only ONE conception of what a forum must be or should be. There is nothing in the technology requiring that model, and any conventions about it were born yesterday and should anyway be rattled with experimentation. Over at Objectivist Living, the owner openly restricted content to: do not criticize Nathaniel or Barbara Branden. In the later years, he had the covert content restriction: do not criticize Donald Trump. It's still a forum. The highly content-restricted forums (FB Groups) named "Ayn Rand Group" and "Leonard Peikoff Appreciation Group" are still forums. An electronic forum could have all the topic-restrictions and scholarly-level requirements I put on the Objectivity journal and it could have management such as the absolute monarchy as I did it there, and it would still be a forum. And it might be a useful forum for some writers and readers because of those considerable restrictions on content. 
The Comments section of online magazines are also forums. In the case of Philosophy Now, the owners have adopted a sufficiently hands-off policy that anything favorable to Ayn Rand or even accurately representing Rand will be met with vicious personal attack on the commenter as ignorant and idiot. The management allows that routine dynamic, and they evidently get the participants and product suited to their project.

To me that thread seemed to boil down to a flat earth type of thread where any rational argument or evidence was denied while looking for specific "evidence" from a conspiracy theorist even though it exists in countless forms.  Again, explicitly name the exact reason honestly for the thread. 

You @EC unexpectedly closed the thread "Remembering the CG Computer-Generated Pandemic Tyranny" and did not provide a reason. 
I was waiting for an important answer from @monart...
Some more transparency would be welcomed...

Yes, and these corrupt "people at the top", known or unknown, wield their power and influence such that, in this case of the covid tyranny, the majority of the medical profession just believe and follow their leaders, do their jobs, keep their eyes and heads down, so as to keep or advance in their positions -- while others who do speak up are dismissed or punished as purveyors of disinformation, "conspiricists", or "covid deniers".

A. The implication of your wording above is that "official, authorized(??), mainstream narrative" is mostly wrong, which in itself is a conspiracist claim😁
B. Yes, the labeling "conspiracist can be used to intimidate etc., but the fact that it is used does not necessarily imply intimidation: it can be a true factual statement. In our case:
1. You approvingly cite Christine Massey, a quack and a conspiracist: consider her YogaEsoteric [sic!] and FluorideFreePee [sic!] sites, her unscientific, ridiculous "No Records Found" research and her general denial of the existence of viruses;
2. You (and C. Massey) approvingly and with no caveats refer to the book Virus Mania as an authoritative source, although the title itself is very telling:
Corona/COVID-19, Measles, Swine Flu, Cervical Cancer, Avian Flu, SARS, BSE, Hepatitis C, AIDS, Polio - How the Medical Industry Invents Epidemics, Making Billion-Dollar Profits At Our Expense
The respective viruses allegedly do not exist, the bad and greedy medical industry invented them, and epidemics, for enormous profits at our expense. It is obviously a conspiracy; it had to start at lest 120 years ago (Poliovirus, 1909) and had to involve, since, dozen or hundreds of millions of medical professionals spreading this alleged fiction.
It is a shame to refer to that person and to the book approvingly and with no caveats - on this Objectivism forum.

A. The implication of your wording above is that "official, authorized(??), mainstream narrative" is mostly wrong, which in itself is a conspiracist claim😁
B. Yes, the labeling "conspiracist can be used to intimidate etc., but the fact that it is used does not necessarily imply intimidation: it can be a true factual statement. In our case:
1. You approvingly cite Christine Massey, a quack and a conspiracist: consider her YogaEsoteric [sic!] and FluorideFreePee [sic!] sites, her unscientific, ridiculous "No Records Found" research and her general denial of the existence of viruses;
2. You (and C. Massey) approvingly and with no caveats refer to the book Virus Mania as an authoritative source, although the title itself is very telling:
Corona/COVID-19, Measles, Swine Flu, Cervical Cancer, Avian Flu, SARS, BSE, Hepatitis C, AIDS, Polio - How the Medical Industry Invents Epidemics, Making Billion-Dollar Profits At Our Expense
The respective viruses allegedly do not exist, the bad and greedy medical industry invented them, and epidemics, for enormous profits at our expense. It is obviously a conspiracy; it had to start at lest 120 years ago (Poliovirus, 1909) and had to involve, since, dozen or hundreds of millions of medical professionals spreading this alleged fiction.
It is a shame to refer to that person and to the book approvingly and with no caveats - on this Objectivism forum.

No, that would be secondhanded, I did it to prevent myself from getting Covid and studied mRNA vaccines before taking the vaccines. This is ridiculous and I'm not taking part in this strange discussion anymore and will read to moderate it against arbitrary conspiracy theories and from those seeking to ignore reason,  evidence, and proper epistemology.