Simon Paynton

That’s one thing I love about the Irish, they love reciting poetry and singing songs.

jakelafort wrote:
Which identity English or Jewish is more likely to cause a problem?

English.

jakelafort wrote:
It is kind of amazing that there is not more resentment of Brits as it relates to the Irish. The shit during the famine was so damn cold.

If you’re English and you go to Ireland, it’s well to mind your manners.

_Robert_ wrote:
That was the idea of being ‘woke’. To have empathy at least. Guess what? It worked. Gen Z and later IS woke. When my racists-as-fuck boomers and gen x cohorts are all dead; it is gonna be very different.

I agree, after wokeness hit us, everything is better in many respects.  People feel more included and there is less unki…[Read more]

He who is without sin shall cast the first stone.  We know you’re not an icorrigible rogue.

@strega – isn’t there a difference between individuality, and individualism?  Individualism can be a social situation, the opposite of communitarianism.  People rely on themselves and a small circle of people, while in communal societies, people rely on the whole community.  Community societies are “shame” cultures where the community governs th…[Read more]

What’s the difference between critical thinking skills and conspiracy theorising?  I guess it’s the quality of the evidence, and a willingness to have an open mind.  If you get all your evidence from Youtube, and won’t change your mind no matter what, that’s not critical thinking.

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
the White House Faith Office

What’s that for?  The Office of Slippery Hypocrisy?  Can they think back to the exact day they lost their personal integrity?

jakelafort wrote:
Obviously Islam causes humans to be much worse than their natural inclinations.

It is human nature.  There are many similar situations throughout history.  But there are unique things about Islam.

There’s a special combination of moral purity, God, and sacredness.  The religion itself has been made sacred and therefore su…[Read more]

_Robert_ wrote:
He’s turning the Iranian sponsored malfeasance at Harvard into another anti-woke shit-show instead of dealing with Iran like he promised. Hey, we all know anti-woke nonsense is way more important than having a democracy, a free market economy, an educated public or rule of law.

He doesn’t have to be such a dick about it.  I’m no…[Read more]

TheEncogitationer wrote:
Again, this is the kind of stuff that encourages hatred of philosophy as empty egg-headedness.

I think it’s ordinary straightforward philosophy.  It would interest some people.

jakelafort wrote:
Mirror neurons and other neural junk whose name(s) escapes me and neural pathways are activated when something observed causes alarm or joy/ecstasy. If one is high in empathy watch a movie and start crying or repulsing the automatic response to some tear jerker shit. Zeus ex machina or some shit.

That would be emotional…[Read more]

TheEncogitationer wrote:
If you want to numb somebody’s sense of empathy, as well as any love of philosophical thought, just have them read that essay, as well as the others in Nagel’s What Does It All Mean?

It may or may not be a godawful book, but I think it’s an interesting question to ask what it’s like for some totally different organism to…[Read more]

Strega wrote:
Empathy is informed sympathy

I think that’s a good description, if you mean informed emotional resonance.  Empathy has three components: cognitive perspective taking, emotional resonance, and empathic concern or compassion.

A psychopath can have empathy in the sense of cognitive perspective taking; but they can’t do emotional…[Read more]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
Yes, Wittgenstein argued that there’s no way to verify if two people feel the same thing internally. His “private language argument” basically says that sensations are private, but the language we use about them is public and is only meaningful because it connects to public criteria like behavior and expre…

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Unseen wrote:
Not by empathy. You may empathize but you experience no actual pain.

OK, I will experience distress and emotional pain, as if I had really stubbed my toe.

_Robert_ wrote:
Come on now. The billionaires need that money. You think those inflatable lips, tits and tender boats for their mega-yachts are cheap?

You’re right, they are that bad.  There’s a narrative in the UK that Trump’s tariff earnings are going to promote tax breaks for his rich friends.

TheEncogitationer wrote:
When Government defunds Harvard and the rest of Ivy League Academia, it is not so much exercising speech of it’s own. Rather the Government is forbidding forced speech, which results when taxpayers are forced to support these institutions promoting Antisemitism, as well promoting as the Critical Race T…

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Unseen wrote:
We use the same word, pain, but my sensation is mine alone. You can’t feel it. And of course it’s true vice versa. We simply make an assumption of parity based on similar behavior, but when it comes to my perceptions and yours, each of us is on a desert island with no hope of rescue.

But if I see you stub your toe, and I am at all…[Read more]

PopeBeanie wrote:
instantaneous disentanglement could occur if a dimension exists where those two particles are actually very close to each other, or perhaps even still joined as one particle or wave.

In higher dimensions, that could happen.  That makes perfect sense in its way.  Distance is distance, in 1-dimensional units, no matter what d…[Read more]