141–150 of 307 posts
Good article. The point about contemporary philosophers not having grand theories is something that comes up frequently in philosophy spaces (i.e., /r/academicphilosophy or https://dailynous.com ). The problem is that the academic system is really not designed to select such individuals, instead optimizing for specialized publications, pedigree, etc. The average philosopher has zero incentive for constructing grand t…
An annoyance of mine is that this person is from Europe and seems to ignore that the UK[0] and France[1] are modernizing and, at least in the UK's case, expanding their stockpiles.
There seems to be a continental myopia towards the European role in adding to the problems of the world.
EDIT: You can downvote me all you want, it doesn't make me wrong.
[0]https://fas.org/publication/delays-deferment-and-continuous-...
[1]https://thebulletin.org/premium/2023-07/nuclear-notebook-fre...
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I would love if the public discourse would allow for more diversity of opinions. Unfortunately, where I come from, the left has simplified the rhetoric to "If you are of a different opinion then we are, you are either badly educated (read, stupid) or a nazi." Unfortunately, this elitist attitude has only contributed to the divide of the people.
> If you are of a different opinion then we are, you are either badly educated (read, stupid) or a nazi Depending on where you are from, this could absolutely be true, as "elitist" and insulting as it might be. Well, fascist is more appropriate than Nazi because Nazi is superset of fascism with a heavy anti-semitic element, and I'm not aware of many rabidly anti-semitic parties in the mainstream in many countries.
Scratch a little deeper on the things popular Republican politicians and members of the current administration have been saying and promoting for the last few years.
Conspiratorial movements almost always end up at "it's The Jews", and so do theirs.
If you see talk about their opponents engaging in dark "rituals" involving child murder or abuse, you can be 100% sure you've found one that'll get you there. It's just blood libel, keeping reading and listening and you'll see that they're fully at that point before you've had to do much work. It's tedious.
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Not stupid, just lacking class consciousness
I would love if the public discourse would allow for more diversity of opinions. Unfortunately, where I come from, the left has simplified the rhetoric to "If you are of a different opinion then we are, you are either badly educated (read, stupid) or a nazi." Unfortunately, this elitist attitude has only contributed to the divide of the people.
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Some fantasy about how millions of leftists voters either boycotted the election or voted for Trump because of Biden’s position on Gaza. Complete nonsense of course, but it’s a popular conspiracy theory among certain democrats circles. It was also funny to see democrats suddenly realizing that Arab Americans vote republican. They always have and they always will. Just like how Latino Americans, and generally most imm…
This is, of course nonsense. The data is clear that Latinos vote majority Democrat, though it was a smaller majority in this election than the previous.
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And even though they are treated badly, they still have voting rights . This is not Apartheid. It just isn't. > full rights to be evicted and have their homes demolished That case is being tried in courts. Such an action against blacks in South Africa would never have been in a court. Your sources prove my point.
The real Apartheid is not the israeli citizens. It's the people in the West Bank and Gaza. All of them should be israeli citizens too. Either that, or half a million settlers should get out. Can't have it both ways.
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Some fantasy about how millions of leftists voters either boycotted the election or voted for Trump because of Biden’s position on Gaza. Complete nonsense of course, but it’s a popular conspiracy theory among certain democrats circles. It was also funny to see democrats suddenly realizing that Arab Americans vote republican. They always have and they always will. Just like how Latino Americans, and generally most imm…
This is, of course nonsense. The data is clear that Latinos vote majority Democrat, though it was a smaller majority in this election than the previous.
The world gets both better and worse. it is something that I regularly get voted down for saying here, but IMO the west is unduly pessimist because it had a golden age from winning the cold war until the late 2000s, took an overly optimistic view of the future and the inevitability of progress (remember "the end of history") and cannot cope with things going back to normal. Things get better, sometimes they get worse…
I talked to a history professor recently and asked him how he viewed the whole situation. He leaned back, thought for a bit and answered: It’ll be all fine on a 200 years perspective, democracy will continue to increase its footprint, people will lead better lives. It’s the next 30 years I’m worried about. PS: ofc, I have no clue if he’s right or not. But I thought it’s an interesting take to share.
There's a pervasive sense in online discussions these days that if it's cynical, dark or depressing, it has to be the truth. It's like Occam's razor for today's modern doomer: the bleakest explanation must be the correct one. And I'm not saying that things are easy or that democracy is guaranteed, but I am saying that pessimism isn't inherently more realistic than optimism.
Cynicism sells in the 21st century.
The world gets both better and worse. it is something that I regularly get voted down for saying here, but IMO the west is unduly pessimist because it had a golden age from winning the cold war until the late 2000s, took an overly optimistic view of the future and the inevitability of progress (remember "the end of history") and cannot cope with things going back to normal. Things get better, sometimes they get worse…
It doesn't have to get worse. Conversely, it doesn't have to get better, either, but at this point, we've got a lot of history that shows us what has and hasn't worked. I think the measure of how people are doing worth focusing on is how much of their potential they've fulfilled. I'm not really interested in how generally well off someone is today compared to someone in some random point in history because there are too many outliers on both ends of that one.
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> There's a reason it's called a Culture War and not a Culture Mild Disagreement. Culture war at this point is more than a decade old. It did not start with Project 2025. It started on the Internet. Also, GP said people do not change all that much morally. That much is true. Organizations change fast. Societies change slower. The acted on rules are a combination of three, but it's important to be aware of the distinc…
I'm not sure that makes sense to me; how do society's moral rules change (slowly) but peoples' moral rules don't/change little? I mean I can think of some isolated examples like pirating video content, but generally a society's moral rules reflect its constituents; where else do those rules come from, if not its people?
In short: "theft is bad" is something people are born with[1]; "pirating media is bad" isn't; the former will be universal wherever you go, the latter depends strongly on who you ask[2]; the former is constant throughout history, the latter can change within months or years.
On a more general point, human society is the poster child of "the whole is more than the sum of its parts" - there's a lot of ideas and institutions in our lives that are purely abstract, and exist only in the shared, social sphere. Things like money, rule of law, countries or corporations - they exist as long as people expect them to exist, but ultimately they can disappear overnight - unlike the more fundamental concepts like self-preservation or reciprocity, which are anchored in our selves.
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[0] - If it weren't, we would have much more trouble understanding or relating to the past; the saying is that the past is a foreign country, not that it's an alien species!
[1] - Or at least it's as close to innate as we can get.
[2] - And, of course, the progress of science and technologies that made this question meaningful in the first place.