necrovore

When you imply that someone is a conspiracy theorist, that is a statement about the person rather than the argument they are making.
Saying that someone "must be irrational if they support X, Y, or Z" can be an argument from intimidation, like "Oh, you can't claim to be an Objectivist if you believe X, Y, or Z, because then you'd be irrational, and Objectivists have to be rational." It's an appeal to Objectivist peer pressure, especially trying to say that "this is supposed to be an Objectivist board so only Objectivist points of view should be able to be posted here," etc.
And both are a form of psychologizing -- attacking a statement by going into the mental state of the person making it, instead of attacking it by comparing it to reality.
If you want to show that some statement X is mistaken, then you have to show why without reference to the person making the statement.
If you want to show that a statement is arbitrary then you need to show that no evidence, of any kind, could establish its truth or falsehood -- that it is "detached from reality" in the specific sense that reality wouldn't make any difference to it.
(It's possible for something to be arbitrary "in practice" and to prove this by using other facts about the world to establish that it is arbitrary; it is valid, for example, to say that a statement is arbitrary because the current state of technology is such that nobody could know today whether it is true or false -- even if in principle it might become known someday. This is how you deal with the claim of the teapot orbiting Venus.)
Finally, it's not always possible to prove something definitively on any sort of forum. This is why civilization as such sometimes requires people to agree to disagree. It is also one of the reasons why freedom is important. There can be a difference between what you know and what you can prove to others.

When you imply that someone is a conspiracy theorist, that is a statement about the person rather than the argument they are making.
Saying that someone "must be irrational if they support X, Y, or Z" can be an argument from intimidation, like "Oh, you can't claim to be an Objectivist if you believe X, Y, or Z, because then you'd be irrational, and Objectivists have to be rational." It's an appeal to Objectivist peer pressure, especially trying to say that "this is supposed to be an Objectivist board so only Objectivist points of view should be able to be posted here," etc.
And both are a form of psychologizing -- attacking a statement by going into the mental state of the person making it, instead of attacking it by comparing it to reality.
If you want to show that some statement X is mistaken, then you have to show why without reference to the person making the statement.
If you want to show that a statement is arbitrary then you need to show that no evidence, of any kind, could establish its truth or falsehood -- that it is "detached from reality" in the specific sense that reality wouldn't make any difference to it.
(It's possible for something to be arbitrary "in practice" and to prove this by using other facts about the world to establish that it is arbitrary; it is valid, for example, to say that a statement is arbitrary because the current state of technology is such that nobody could know today whether it is true or false -- even if in principle it might become known someday. This is how you deal with the claim of the teapot orbiting Venus.)
Finally, it's not always possible to prove something definitively on any sort of forum. This is why civilization as such sometimes requires people to agree to disagree. It is also one of the reasons why freedom is important. There can be a difference between what you know and what you can prove to others.

This is nothing but an ad hominem and an argument from intimidation.
The whole debate is about which facts to use, because if someone can cause facts to be discarded, or lies to be treated as facts, they can rig the argument to produce any result they want, even without changing the principles.
The "mainstream Western media" has learned that they can get perquisites by going along with the party line; the government, which makes news whenever it changes its policies, can reward obedient reporters by giving them scoops. This has been true for a long time; Rush Limbaugh's radio show cited example after example after example (of reporters uncritically repeating what they were told by leftist politicians). I see no evidence that this situation has changed, and much evidence that it has gotten worse. I also see no evidence that the situation is any different with the Ukraine issue than any other (such as gun control). That the media lies is not a "conspiracy theory." It is very real, and has been going on for decades.
I do not agree with @whYNOT about everything, but I very much disagree with the notion of censoring or canceling everything and everybody that "goes against the mainstream." Ayn Rand also went against the mainstream, and if she were to have written her novels in today's environment, no one would know about her.

VDH gives some fine examples of specific actions of the political 'left' and the damage it has doen to the Republic in the recent past.
https://victorhanson.com/the-frightened-left/

Now instead of Republican versus Democrat we have Establishment versus anti-Establishment.
It is the Establishment side that sorts people into elites and "little people," and who hope to keep themselves at the top while keeping the "little people" dependent and incapable of escaping. (The whole idea that the Establishment try to embody is essentially Platonism.)
Of course the idea of "anti-Establishment" is almost as useful as "atheist" because the term doesn't say what someone is for.
It would encompass collectivists who want to transfer power from the existing Establishment to another (theirs), who might be more properly called "anti-this-Establishment." It would also encompass individualists who don't want an Establishment at all but who want a free country. It would also encompass anarchists who don't want any kind of government or laws at all.
It's a mistake to package-deal these kinds of people. (Think who gains and who loses from such a package-dealing...)
The sorting of people into elites and "little people" is not merely a conceptual device, it is an enforced set of standards. You end up with two rules of law for the two groups. Recognizing that this has occurred is not the same thing as endorsing it or helping to create it.
A politician who tries to get the votes of the "little people" is merely recognizing the categories which the Establishment has already created. However, aiming for the votes of the "little people" does not say if you are an individualist or not; it doesn't even say if you are anti-Establishment or not, since the Establishment also hopes to win votes from "little people" so that they can at least maintain the appearance of having been legitimately elected.

False alternative. The first thing you have to do is identify the reasons behind your emotions and check them against reality by means of reason.
The reason for an emotion is a generalization over your past experiences and your value-judgment of them, applied to your present situation. This subconscious generalization may be correct or incorrect. (It can sometimes even be surprising because the generalization may draw from experiences you have not thought about recently.)
If you figure out that the reason for an emotion is false -- and I mean really figure it out, not just try to talk yourself into it -- then the emotion will go away. If it does not, then there may be other reasons for it that need to be investigated.
If the reason for an emotion is true, then you have to deal with reality: change your situation, move to a different situation, or pick an activity where the situation doesn't matter as much.
You can train your emotions over time by getting more experiences and judging them accurately. (Reason is the only way to know if you are judging your experiences accurately.)
(Sometimes too you may have to recognize times when your emotion is incorrect because your experience, though real, was atypical, and is not really indicative of what's likely to happen next time.)
Trying to pressure yourself is pointless because it doesn't create any of the conditions necessary for success. But sitting around relaxed and doing nothing doesn't create them either.
The conditions seem to be, first, an opportunity, and second, the skills needed to exploit it. So build up a lot of skills and then look for opportunities. Put yourself in places where opportunities are likely to be found.
Both of these are hard problems. Philosophy is probably too general to solve them by itself; you need the "special sciences."

This looks like a very dangerous indictment to me because it implies that the government can define the "facts" to be whatever they want them to be. Once that is done, anybody who disagrees with those "facts" is obviously guilty of "perjury," "fraud," or the like, and any "evidence" against those "facts" is obviously "fabricated," etc.
Once a government can set the facts to their tastes, the constitution and the law mean nothing.

Seems on topic today: https://drhurd.com/2023/08/14/ukraine-the-biggest-money-laundering-operation-in-human-history/

It was towards the end of the book where they had captured him and they were asking him to rebuild the economy for them, and he was saying that he couldn't work with them. Near where they offered him a "cool, neat, billion dollars."
-- Actually it's "Fire your government employees." I didn't remember it word-for-word.

The first count raises an interesting interpretive question. The law says that

If two or more persons conspire either to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both
and one should wonder “who / what is the United States?” as far as this law is concerned? Words are often specially-defined for particular statutes. The term is defined:
The term “United States”, as used in this title in a territorial sense, includes all places and waters, continental or insular, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, except the Canal Zone.
The three main interpretations that would be sensible would be “the government of the United States”, “the entire United States including the government and all of the population”, or “some entity in the United States”.
We can rule out “some entity in the United States”, since that would make it a federal crime for two people to conspire to “commit any offense” against me. It is settled law that the federal government does not have jurisdiction over every offense committed in the US. To be valid federal law, the federal government would have to have personal jurisdiction – for example, acts against the federal government, or acts against specified federal workers. The addendum “or any agency thereof ” clearly indicates that an agency of the US government is supposed to me included in the scope of “against the United States”.
¶10(a) of the indictment asserts that “The Defendant and co-conspirators used knowingly false claims of election fraud to get state legislators and election officials to subvert the legitimate election results and change electoral votes for the Defendant's opponent”. However, said legislators and “election officials” are not part of the government of the United States. Maybe a case could be mounted in Pennsylvania or Wisconsin, but you can’t make a federal matter out of a state offense.

The claim is that there was an attempt to “defraud” the government of the United States. Therefore we need to turn to the chapter on fraud which brings us to infamous 18 USC 1001 (used to imprison Martha Stewart), which says that

whoever, in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States, knowingly and willfully—

(1) falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or device a material fact;

(2) makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation; or

(3) makes or uses any false writing or document knowing the same to contain any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry


goes to jail.
The term “matter within the jurisdiction…” means, for example, “a court proceeding”, or “a Congressional investigation” or “an FBI investigation”, it does not make it a federal crime to tell a lie in the US. There is no “matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States” (the election of president is not within the jurisdiction of the United States, it is with the jurisdiction of the several states).
There are a handful of other references to fraud in that chapter: all of then involve something rather specific such as fraudulent contract bids, forging documents and identification instruments, accessing computers (any computer connected to the internet), some violations of the Atomic Energy Act… A knowingly false claim that there had been electoral fraud is not “fraud” in the federally-relevant sense, and by the same logic, the indictment itself is fraudulent (however, not actionable, since one cannot be prosecuted over an indictment no matter how egregiously false it is).
The defense will of course attack everything, but the most important thing to attack, and the most significant crime against rights being mounted by the Biden Administration, is the “weaponizing” of words like “fraud”, and the usurpation of individual states’ interest in properly addressing these acts – or not.

My definitions of "fact" and "opinion" might not be the same as the legal definitions... I'd consider a "statement of fact" to be something concrete and an "opinion" to be something more abstract. A statement of fact can be correct or not, but you could verify it with observation (or possibly the use of instruments). An opinion can also be correct or not, but in order to assess its correctness you'd have to apply abstract principles which are drawn over large numbers of facts. It's possible for an opinion to be based on Objectivism or Communism but it's not possible for a claim of fact to be based on an ideology, because it's supposed to be the other way around -- ideologies, if correct, are supposed to be based on facts! (Of course, if someone lies about a fact, then the motive for the lie might be some ideology... and sometimes an ideology can bias someone toward making certain kinds of errors... but you cannot conclude that something is a lie or an error merely because it supports some ideology...)
A legal system cannot conform to reality by itself; it depends on its practitioners (judges, attorneys, police, etc.) for that. Sometimes practitioners make mistakes, but a legal system should be devised to take that into account and allow those errors to be corrected. A legal system should also be devised to correct for the situation where occasionally a practitioner is corrupt. Even when the legal system makes provisions for these kinds of problems, the provisions may not always work and errors may occur. However, if a majority of the practitioners are sufficiently corrupt, such as by an ideology, there is not much the legal system can do.
Ayn Rand noted decades ago that America had a rift between its people and its intellectuals. The intellectuals become the legal system's practitioners. Now they are the permanent bureaucrats, the DC "swamp." They have the power to declare what is "true" and "false" as far as the government is concerned, and to enforce those pronouncements through the legal system. Although that power should be used to keep the government aligned with actual reality, they can also use it to keep themselves in power, and that's what they are doing here, and I believe they have done it in other cases.
The question of what would be "laughed out of court," and what wouldn't be, is up to them.

Another article summing up what has been discovered so far: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/room-temperature-superconductor-new-developments

Another article summing up what has been discovered so far: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/room-temperature-superconductor-new-developments

I've read reports that the paper was published to Arxiv without permission, which may explain why it has errors.
I've also read that Argonne National Laboratories is among those trying to reproduce the results.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.12008
Looks like three researchers in South Korea have discovered the holy grail of superconductivity.
I saw this on Hacker News. People in the Hacker News comments seem to think it should be relatively simple to confirm or not, and might take a week or so. If it is independently confirmed, it will be big.
If it is not confirmed, it will be the next Cold Fusion.
I think it's exciting, but these days I worry that, if it works, it will fall into the wrong hands, like Project X (the one in Atlas Shrugged, not the Elon Musk one).

Covid was not as deadly as reported , it was dangerous to the elderly and those with compromised health, not the 'general' or even close to the majority of the population.
The mitigation efforts of masking and distancing were known by the implementers of the policies to be ineffective.
The lockdowns and school closures were morally and constitutionally abusive and solely facilitated by spreading the falsehood of the 'deadly contagion'.
HCQ and Ivermectin along with vitamin D and zinc supplementation in non toxic doses showed efficacy especially when used as a prophylactic. Suppressing the efficacy of safe and available treatments and protections enabled the issuance of the EUA allowing the use and distribution of an experimental medical treatment. Facilitated by the public's belief of the presence of a 'deadly contagion'. 
Hospital beds have been declining as a percentage of the population for decades, added to the fact that most medical facilities curtailed staffing , services and wards that resulted in ' the crush'.
Inaccurate and faulty testing and testing regimes were deployed to promote the idea that daily life was dangerous.
The recommended( read mandated) standard of care coupled with patient isolation practices were at best medically inappropriate and at worst lethal. All facilitated by the rationalization of a 'deadly contagion'.
Historic medical and scientific practices and methodologies were discarded or 'officially ' changed( mass inoculation in the face of a novel infection, three months of safety and effectiveness testing equals five real world years)
Unconstitutional changes to balloting laws across the country were facilitated by the acceptance of the public of being in the midst of a 'deadly contagion'.
Aside from the actual infection , the reaction and the public's acquiescence to the state's response were facilitated by the propaganda fomented by 'the media' along with active suppression of any dissent to the 'narrative'. Do you believe the falsehoods spread were the continued result of separate organizations all making the same mistakes as to the accuracy of their 'reporting'? 
Obama , the FBI and DOJ were briefed on the fact that the DNC/Hillary Clinton were going to perpetuate a fraudulent story about Russian/Trump collusion , allowed it to happen and facilitated its happening. The Mueller report was a joke as was Mueller 2.0 ( the Durham Report) , it's is a laughable idea that the people that perpetuated the hoax would 'investigate' and report out their own complicity.
Hunter Biden's laptop is and was always 'real' and no one thought otherwise, as is Joe Biden's corruption documented on the laptop.
All cause excess death has been running about 10% higher than the five year average for about two years now, numbers that will soon if not already rival the numbers from the deadly delta wave, and cardiac and circulatory problems are on the rise (especially among a younger cohort but no media is talking about it, somehow it seems all of 'the media' is just unaware of it , along with the CDC and the WHO.
I suggest you stop 'listening' to the thoroughly discredited 'media' outlets you seem to follow.
 
 
 
 
 

Natan Ehrenreich at National Review (may be paywalled) has denounced Freedom Conservatism for its lack of religiosity, the very feature that would make the organization most interesting to this readership. Their statement seems to show a Randian influence, most conspicuously in its insistence that free will and human nature, not religion, are the origin of liberty. The long list of signatories doesn't contain any recognizably Objectivist names.
I'll be watching them with curiosity.

I wonder if these errors might be a matter of imprecise phrasing. Maybe I am being too generous.
Not all individuals are inherently heroic -- but heroism, when it exists, is an attribute of the individual.
Governments -- when they overstep their proper bounds -- do only end up restricting human freedom, potential, and happiness. However, a government that does not overstep its proper bounds can be helpful in securing human freedom, potential, and happiness.
[Added later] I suppose I missed the big picture, though. You are right that the core of her philosophy is not political.

I spotted this article: https://www.foxnews.com/lifestyle/five-reasons-ayn-rand-loved-united-states-america-right-live-ones-own-judgment
It's positive and covers the basics for somebody who might have never heard of Ayn Rand before.
I did not know that there was any news outlet that would still publish such a thing. (Many are too Leftist or too Christian.)

I would argue with this:
Although NATO did have the stated purpose of defending Europe from the Soviet Union, it had another purpose. The US paid almost the entire cost of NATO. This meant that the European countries did not have to spend very much money on their own defense at all. This meant that they were free to spend the money on social programs instead. Therefore, NATO had the effect of subsidizing European socialism with US tax dollars. This allowed the Democrats to point to Europe as an example of "successful" socialism, so that they could advocate for it in the United States (even though it costs too much in the US because there is no one to subsidize the US's defense). It also gave socialists in Europe more power than they would have otherwise had. This is the main reason why NATO had to continue to exist even after the fall of the Soviet Union, and why Russia was not allowed to join.
Countries such as Germany have welcomed the opportunity to donate their old weapons systems to the cause in Ukraine and get free modern replacement systems from the US through NATO.
The Nordic countries didn't have to join NATO at first, because they were able to finance their socialism by selling fossil fuels, but now that those fuels are politically unpopular (because of environmentalism) they are eager to sign up for the free NATO loot.
Donald Trump earned enmity from the political class by insisting that several of these beneficiary countries bear more of the cost of their own defenses. Of course that would have helped to reveal the true price of socialism, and it would have disempowered the political class.
There is also the likelihood that Biden has personally been getting aid money from the US, intended for Ukraine, diverted to himself or to his favorite political causes. Hunter Biden served on the board of a gas company there and made a lot of money even though the only possible use he would have been to them is political. Trump got in trouble for merely asking for this to be investigated. Biden on the other hand actually got a Ukranian official fired for investigating it, and bragged about that firing later.
These facts tend to undercut Journo's argument even if his argument's moral judgment of Putin is completely correct.
It's bad guys versus bad guys.

Over the past decade or so it has become much more acceptable to "punish" people because of their opinions -- because they expressed them, or just because they have them.
It has been pointed out that there is a big difference between the government carrying out this "punishment," such as by throwing people in prison, and private individuals (or groups) carrying it out, such as by denying service at a bar or a bank. In the latter case, property owners are merely exercising their right to their own property, and their right to choose who they associate with, and if somebody were to force them to serve people they don't want to, even if this force is only forcing them to do what is in their actual best interest anyway, then, as Leonard Peikoff puts it, the act of forcing it on them makes it wrong.
However, in some cases the motivation behind using your own personal property to do something, and using the government to do it, can be the same, and in the case of "punishing" opinions, the motivation is wrong in both cases, even though initiating force is the only thing that should properly be illegal.
It is proper to address the motivation and expose its incorrectness even if it is not (yet) infringing anyone's rights. By doing so, it may be possible to talk people out of acting on it.
One can say that, for example, nihilism ought to be legal if you don't infringe anyone's rights, but one can also say that it is still wrong.
My point is: the motivation for punishing people's opinions contradicts the motivation for having free speech, which means, a person can't consistently support both. When you see more and more people "punishing" opinions, and supporting the punishment of opinions, you can know that the days are numbered for free speech, even if the government itself has not yet begun to act against it.
The motivation for free speech is confidence in reason (and reality). We can afford to allow people to state falsehoods because we have confidence that reason will expose the falsehoods as such. Free speech also ensures that it's possible for people to speak the truth even when it's controversial, so that the truth can also be exposed.
This confidence is what allows a store owner to let people he disagrees with walk into his store and buy stuff. He knows that their opinion, even if wrong, is not a threat to him; he knows that reality and reason will prevail in time; he can count on the police to be on his side if they initiate force, so he can just smile and sell them their goods.
When people have abandoned reason, when they believe they are the exclusive owners of truths that cannot be reached by means of reason (or "reason alone"), when they decide that "unbridled" reason is a threat to their point of view, when they find that reason (and ultimately reality itself) can be "misleading," they do not feel that confidence, and they seek to suppress contrary opinions.
If they cannot do it through the government, then they can do it through their own private property, but if they don't see the problem doing it with their own property, they will not see the problem with using the government to do it.
So, in that sense, saying "it isn't really censorship if they're using their own private property" is true, but it's not addressing the root of the problem.
The real problem is that people have abandoned reason -- and without reason, the distinction between merely using their own property and using government force to go beyond it will be abandoned, too. It's only a matter of time. (Actually it has already been abandoned. The separation between usage of private property [i.e., economics] and government powers [i.e., state] has never been formally recognized and has been on the way out for decades; however, it cannot be upheld unless reason itself is upheld.)
The notion that "free speech is dangerous," that "free speech corrupts people" and so forth, is coming from both political parties. Because of its widespread popularity, even if you do not see it affecting government policy now, it is going to affect government policy sooner or later, unless it can be exposed as the mistake that it is.
Exposing the mistake -- and defending free speech as such -- requires a defense of reason.

They may be able to get the evidence elsewhere.
Or they may already have it. Or they may have at least seen it so they know what I'm talking about.
I didn't reach my conclusions by having privileged access to information that no one else could have seen. I reached them by means of information that was available to many people at the time. Other people will have seen the same information.

That's a non-sequitur. I may have seen a judge's ruling but be unable to find it.
You are free, if you wish, to disagree with me on the basis that I can't find proof, but you are not free to demand that I withdraw my argument merely because I'm unable to prove it to your satisfaction. Someone considering my argument might have better abilities to find the rulings than I have.
Nor does my inability to find some piece of evidence or other "prove" that I am irrational or even that my argument is. By such a standard, every rational person would be required to maintain a properly indexed library of everything they have ever seen or heard, so that they can provide proof of all their beliefs on demand. That's absurd.

I have tried to do some basic searches on the Internet and I believe the results are heavily filtered. The thing is, I can't find any information whatever that the "mainstream" media believes to be false, unless the mainstream media is quoting it for the purpose of rebutting it. The only things I can find are things they would deem true.
It's far too perfect.
In a free country, or on a free Internet, I would expect to find conflicting points of view, just like I would expect to find books in a bookstore which contradict each other, like Rand and Kant. I used to be able to find such things on the Internet, too. Different groups might argue with each other, but each group would have a place where it could speak for itself, and you could use your own judgment to decide which group was correct (if any was).
What I'm seeing now is more like when you go into a Christian bookstore and there are no books at all that are critical of Christianity or have anything bad to say about it. They may have disagreements about other issues, but every book says Christianity is great. You wouldn't find atheist authors like Rand in there at all. Somebody who only had access to such bookstores would also have a hard time finding "evidence" that there is anything "wrong" with Christianity. (They might find contradictions, however, either between different pieces of Christian literature, or between the literature and the real world. But they'd have to talk about them in hushed tones, and only with people they could trust.)
The same thing happens if you go into a bookstore in a Communist country. There are no books that have anything bad to say about Communism or about the regime.
Maybe that's why I can't find any evidence.
Paradoxically I'd be more inclined to believe "Trump's claims" were false if I could find them in their original form and find other articles about them that explain why they are false. Instead, all I find is the latter.
Like I said, it's far too perfect.

The problem is that it is not just a legal entity. Rather, it is a government entity, empowered with government functions and powers, and controlled by a single corporation. That corporation obtained that special privilege in the '60s by corrupting the Florida legislature.
Let's be clear—Disney is not some free market hero who fought government and improved property rights for all. Rather, they bribed and corrupted a state legislature to gain exemptions from law, special privileges and their own local government, for themselves. That is not capitalism, it is crony-statism.