jakelafort

Robert i was tongue in cheek. The notion of a free marketplace of ideas is itself a repudiation of the notion. I am often amazed at how putative intellectuals trot it out as valid.

Robert’s-. Also, I don’t hold any hope for the US as a nation; our time is over. I just hope the slide down is slower than it appears to be.

I can’t understand your pessimism. The time tested and still cherished free marketplace of ideas will come to our rescue.

Reg, just so, i knew you’d know but i couldn’t let it go.

Sunday School delayed is sunday school denied.

Enco, you wrote gravement. You meant gravamen. I often see tenant for tenet or realator for realtor but gravement for gravamen is new to me.

Enco, Like i said initially you are a very religious or black/white thinker. Just like a fundamentalist, you posit certain positions-those positions are unassailable and you are not in the least amenable to reexamining your positions.

Those haves HAVE because they are beneficiaries of a construct of civilization. When we subject all members of a…[Read more]

Enco, ya might not want to go to law school.

Captain Kirk 90? 90 used to seem like an age of such oldness, infirmity decrepitude and senility that it was unimaginable. But now almost a third of the way there it does not seem so ancient. Life seems to pass like a summer breeze.

Can weed lovers distinguish good from bad and or actually identify the weed? Weed is great but i think it is…[Read more]

I am not sure that libertarians conceive of our economics and lives as being ideally modeled against the jungle or a state of nature. But it sure seems to me that is the backdrop of their stance.

If it is true it is a paradigm that is inapposite. Nature does not give such great and overwhelming advantage to so few. Sure a mountain gorilla…[Read more]

Enco, all of those rights (liberty, property, life) are hollow when the inequities of capitalism create an unconscionable imbalance in wealth and opportunity. There are great numbers who in fact do need assistance to right the wrongs of capitalism. If it is by implied consent of the masses that an economic system that insures the few will have the…[Read more]

I know windmills very much. I’ve studied it better than anybody.

You know we have a world, right? So the world is tiny compared to the universe.

If you remove the face and examine the substance it is a 10 year old boy. It is a boy who has much to learn and yet in our free marketplace of ideas he is on a pedestal with a substantial minority of…[Read more]

I don’t claim jack shit for knowledge of nuclear but i can pass on some hearsay. I had a client who was in management at a nuclear power plant who told me if the public learned of how close we’d come to disaster they’d shit their pants upside down. Of course the same can be said of nuclear war.

Foul on Enco.

Moving the goal posts so that no true Scotsman can wear his kilt inside out.

Autumn it is an artificial conundrum because i am utilizing a hypothetical. Assuming arguendo the 10 billion same conditions/fixed outcomes your distinction between choosing to do otherwise and choosing to do so is misplaced. There is no choice involved in fixed outcomes. There is only the appearance of choosing to the actors on the stage who are…[Read more]

Autumn, as a reminder i am going with the hypothetical. The universe is fixed and given identical conditions of ten billion years earlier played out in ten billion universes-fixed results at all points.

You wrote…Moral responsibility can, as an example, be a function of understanding harm and moderating behaviour to reduce it. As a practical…[Read more]

I got the part about the atom bomb and the ostrich. Yet they’re not so far apart. Each one has a hell of a kick. And without the subatomic particles neither one would. So the little one is integral to the bigger ones and what separates em is a matter of degree.

So while our three actors on the stage have different properties and attributes it is…[Read more]

I left out the part about about punishment for criminals.

Autumn, remember it is a hypothetical.

You wrote…Helpless against what? It literally is us. The causal determinism is us. It is our actions. It is our nature. It is our thoughts, feelings, motives, decisions.

Disagree. You might as well say the same about a rock, fungus or a subatomic particle. That is why i wrote that it is another human…[Read more]

I thought you would disagree Autumn.

I am glad to finally disagree with something you have said. I don’t see any path to responsibility under strict determinism. In fact it strikes me as another human conceit to posit responsibility. Call it reductionism but if we are helpless to alter the inalterable then it is impossible to place…[Read more]

I wonder whether any of us will disagree with the following assertion.

If our universe is utterly and strictly determined so that cause precedes effect in an endless chain and everything unfolds in the only way it can and our persons are simply another manifestation of the universe then moral responsibility is inapposite. It is ludicrous under…[Read more]