Gregg R Thomas

No, but I bought a few shares 🙂 See graphs in article.

I was talking to a teenager 3 years ago after a park run. Just after Covid. I was 40 years older than him and I finished 40 seconds ahead of him. (No, I am NOT competitive!!). He said his disability forced him to be “a geek” and was obsessive with numbers. He said he had an unusual type of autism. I told him that it was not a disability that he…[Read more]

jakelafort wrote:
Think how much the middle east has changed as a result of the invasion and religious rapture of Hamas two octobers past.

Think of how much the middle east has changed as the result of the creation of Israel by Euro-American external politicians 76 years ago.

It has been reported by Russian media that Assad and his family are now in Moscow, and have been granted asylum on humanitarian grounds.

Enjoy the weather Basher el Sad.

@heatherspoonheim – I think the most creative people are probably on or very close to what we normies call ‘the spectrum’. That’s a good thing.

I included the video of JP and Harris today to show how Harris uses plain English to make his points and JP, while he has an extensive vocabulary, never take a straight line to make his. If I was to describe him in his own terminology, he tergiversates and is the personification of an ultracrepidarian, roughly speaking.

Here is an interesting rev…[Read more]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
Elon Musk calls for ACLU to be defunded.

Have a great week!!

“You don’t need religion to have morals. If you can’t determine right from wrong then you lack empathy, not religion.”

PopeBeanie wrote:
For believers in free will, I ask, do you believe you have power over determinism, or is determinism not even a thing?

It depends on how binding the restrictions are.

I’m not going to dismiss him, because I don’t understand him.  He might be Deepak Chopra by now, he might not.

I was asked recently why I have no interest in reading anything else that JP writes, especially his new book about Catholic Jesus (roughly speaking!!). I replied that he may have had some opinions worth consideration in the past but not since he was ‘Deephacked Choprafied’.

_Robert_ wrote:
Oh, damn, too late

JP has become a parody of himself.

I’m reminded of a quote Google can’t find so I’ll have to paraphrase it, but JP reminds me of it:

“There’s no difference between the avant-garde and a parody of the avant-garde.”

A parody of Jordan Peterson is indistinguishable from Jordan Peterson.

Simon Paynton wrote:

Unseen wrote:
You talk about free will in a way that presupposes its existence. That’s what I accused you of in my prior post.

Maybe, but my point is, that there’s evidence for its existence. If I had no free will, I could not respond to contingent, random circumstances by deliberating and picking and choosing.

Is this “ev…[Read more]

Yes, but he deals in stories, human psychology and human nature.  It doesn’t have to make perfect logical sense.  It can have a psychological logic – a human logic rather than a mathematical or physical logic.

If you’re expecting a meticulously logical philosophical treatise, you won’t get one out of him.  But his stories make sense in a human setting.

Unseen wrote:
You talk about free will in a way that presupposes its existence. That’s what I accused you of in my prior post.

Maybe, but my point is, that there’s evidence for its existence.  If I had no free will, I could not respond to contingent, random circumstances by deliberating and picking and choosing.

Just because I can’t directly fi…[Read more]

_Robert_ wrote:
JP strikes me mostly as someone mostly trying to extend his 15 minutes of fame. To me he’s the “Hawk-Tua girl” of the identity wars.

I don’t think he’s a fame-whore at all.  Being a little bit up close to him, I was impressed with his integrity and responsibility.  He was quite happy to apologise and say he was wrong about somethi…[Read more]

Simon Paynton wrote:
Everything obeys rules, but that doesn’t in itself imply complete determinism.  My free will is constrained by rules: I will never be able to do exactly what I like.  As for the rest, I can employ free choice.

You talk about free will in a way that presupposes its existence. That’s what I accused you of in my prior pos…[Read more]

_Robert_ wrote:
So, is he against egalitarianism, or just the overshoot?

He’s definitely against the overshoot.  I don’t pin him as anti-egalitarian.  I was following him from the early days of the trans-pronoun crisis in Canada, when I was in the middle of a breakdown.  Those opponents being “pummeled”?  That was mainly me.  I thought they were…[Read more]

Unseen wrote:
By contrast, free will exists as a feeling we seem to have, like deja vu, which we all recognize is an illusion. If it exists and if emergence explains it, then it obeys rules like the rules birds and fish follow in flocking and schooling.

Everything obeys rules, but that doesn’t in itself imply complete determinism.  My free will…[Read more]