Kara Connor

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’.

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]

_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]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
The squirrel does not respond as if it were giving careful consideration to its next move. It reacts to real events in real time. That reaction is entirely instinctive. That instinct is highly tuned and the reaction is faster than any considered choice could ever be. That instinct is the result of Evolution only and…

[Read more]

I agree that people are biased against him, because he’s not straight-ahead woke, and people just hate that.  But what kind of wisdom or knowledge have you gained from his lectures and books?  To me, he says a lot of stuff without ever actually saying anything.  I recognise that this could be because his belief system is new to me, therefore it go…[Read more]

@Belle Rose, what is it you get from Jordan Peterson?  I have sympathy with him and I don’t think he’s a right wing nutcase.  But I can never understand what he’s talking about, beyond his 10 rules for young men, which I think are a good idea.

Well, it (the squirrel) has to respond to real events in real time, so I’m guessing it has free will.

The squirrel does not respond as if it were giving careful consideration to its next move. It reacts to real events in real time. That reaction is entirely instinctive. That instinct is highly tuned and the reaction is faster than any c…[Read more]

_Robert_ wrote:
Ever stick your hand on a hot burner?

I could choose to leave my hand on the burner.  I’d be an idiot, but I could do it.

_Robert_ wrote:
That decision may have been made before the critter knew it would jump. The squirrel’s conscience was informed at some point. Yeah, I’d say a squirrel has some level of self-awareness.

Well, it has to respond to real events in real time, so I’m guessing it has free will.