Grames

Managing expectations. Shifting the goalposts. Redefining success.

I wonder if the forum will embed tweets? Anyway, I deny being an Iranian propagandist of a useful tool of Iranian propagandists. All Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Islam, and Judaism) need to be put down forever. https://x.com/samparkersenate/status/1724434234264183240?

Muslims contributed to algebra but did not invent it entirely. A contributing factor was the increasing use of a more compact notation for numbers instead of the Roman numerals, what is now called the Arabic numerals. But the Arabic numerals were not Arabic, they first occurred in India. This gives the clue that Arab culture flourished when they could be peaceful trading empires. Unfortunately for those peoples who were not part of the Arab culture, such periods of peace only occur after victorious jihads that leave behind no handy additional targets for conquest.

This is quite correct, and even worse than a theocracy. Jewishness is based on blood. Israel is an ethno-state. Jews not observing the religion are still counted as jews (all over the world, not just the practice in Israel). The very notion of jewishness is intrinsically racist in that poisonous supremacist fashion that marked Hitler's racism. Ironically it is jews leading the way in crusading against racism and encouraging mass immigration and ethnicity mixing everywhere except in Israel. Actually, if you think about it is not ironic at all. Muslims are more prone to theocracy and less to racism.

No, this guy is what passes for establishment today. From https://cis.org/Steinlight

It used to be the case that America was run by a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant elite. It isn't anymore. Those who are the elite consider themselves a people apart. This link still works https://archive.is/5yeSC

It occurs to me that the end of Israel would be the end of AIPAC, the political action committee responsible to funding the entirety of the existing corrupt political establishment of the American government. And so I think about this and about what I should desire to see happen..

Interesting reading: American Pravda: Oddities of the Jewish Religion

Numbers only, no lurid stories here https://www.dci-palestine.org/child_fatalities_by_age_group

Yes. Israeli settlers have done similar things. Religious wars are like that. I reject both of the religions involved. You should too.

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.

Probably correct. The situation will progress until the Ukrainian government is no longer required to think, merely comply.

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.

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/

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.

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.

Why does Gaza even exist? Big picture.

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.

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.

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.

Nothing will come of this except Trump will become stronger.

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.

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.

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.