I am told, hand to god, this happened.

Boy and girl who work together. Girl usually goes for tall, in great shape, movie star face, goes for boy who's not really too tall, kind of average, dad bod. He's clueless she likes him and she has to throw the kitchen sink at him to get him to realize she's hot for him.

Finally do the deed. We'll call him Stan, for the purposes of this story.

G: Oh, yeah, put it in me.

B: Here it comes.

G: Oh wow... Stan!?

B: But wait, there's more

Laughter from girl interrupted by more.

Story told from girl perspective to the chorus of "really? Stan? Hmmmm" from other girls.

Shawn if there were no Gus.

Exactly. They should have led with

"Televangelist has 5th largest organ in the world gets his pipes cleaned."

So....... were you going to eat this plant?

God hashtag gosub damnit!

In the news today, a crazy cult of Woke activists tried to "take down" a financial giant.

No one cared.

Now on to sports.

You may enjoy this youtube channel.

You should check my history to make certain I'm not a bot or someone who plays a lot of pranks.

Do you have a quick sec to glance over the rules of the sub?

r/politics in r/philosophy

Each brand of crazy has their own pejoratives they like to employ to identify themselves. "Conspiracy theory" and "election denier" are left wing terms. Given that we are currently living through a time where the left has total control of their side of the corporate media to the point where it's unsettling how in lock step they are and there are so few right wing news sources, the terms are nearly meaningless. The difference between news and conspiracy theory seems to be about 6 months.

A key element to the leftist news center is to push for this "one Earth" globalism. Certainly, at some point in the future, we need to have a winner in this culture war, but I doubt that will ever completely unite humanity. It is in our nature to be diverse, and in diversity there is conflict and competition. This is why I said "THIS" version of humanity.

We currently have only our subjective experiences and a great deal of skepticism as to the capacity of others to accurately report their subjective experiences of reality. Political ideology often replaces individual morals, creating a situation where key indicators of the success or failure of society are tailor made to the strengths of that political ideology, instead of more universally accepted standards. This is why that one post of yours caused such great concern, because this disconnect with reality grows over time, more often than not, leading to a point where individuals feel that they must do something to "take back the power" from what the perceive are bad faith actors operating as a force of evil in the world.

Humanity takes a long time to evolve, and it is our very nature that rallies against success, causing each great empire to rot from within in this ever divisive madness we create for ourselves. The only way forward that I can see is to take the clear, concise arguments put forth by those who represent each side and have open, honest conversations about our motivations and goals.

Unfortunately, I see no clear, concise representatives from the far right or far left. I only see clowns and shills and actors exploiting the conflict for personal gain.

If you're subtly hinting that I'm a Russian bot, either for pure amusement or some kind of probing, I can tell you that I am definitely not. And that's правда I mean, TRUTH! Truth is what I meant.

I have had several individuals develop an obsession with me and follow me around Reddit with alts harassing me personally, so I can tell you it wasn't because of leftist censorship, which has become rampant on Reddit.

I think people don't "do" anything because they're efficiently divided and apathetic. The problem is that the ruling class has kept trying to squeeze every last drop of wealth for themselves and the Marxist have stepped up their game which includes disruption of the basic services of the masses which is far more quickly going to push people to conflict than abortion rights or arguments over people's naughty bits.

You were speaking about how the west optimizes for itself over the world. I was just commenting that yes, of course it does. It's competing with the rest of the world. We're not one global entity. We're individual countries. Cooperation is useful but problematic in the long run as a countries needs and leadership change.

The morality of man is, of course, as subjective as the experience of men. This is why we often attempt to lash it to the observable truth we can agree on. More and more we're seeing a greater amount of fog and shadow being artificially pumped into the world's optics by those who benefit from the obfuscation of morality, making it just as morally deplorable to prevent someone from killing a child as to kill the child yourself.

Which is why appeals to emotion, false dichotomies, and false premises are more common than grounded argument, because they're cheap and effective on the masses who feel themselves more intelligent due to their programming in university. The same people who can't answer basic questions about geography or history or even why they're calling someone racist or voting for someone are the ones gorilla glued to the notion that they're intellectually superior.

So when we measure success in terms of government, we once again attempt to bolt it to the observable reality that we share. Unfortunately we have 10K resolution on this reality now, where before we were 8 bits on a good day. So there were far fewer metrics to compare and winners were more easily decided. I'm not certain the high res view is helping, unless people are going to uncharacteristically shift to being more clear about what exactly they mean, which I severely doubt.

>I might be one of those Russian Trolls that I've been hearing so much about?

Not Russian. I see a lot of people who behave badly on Reddit get banned and come back with new accounts. It makes me wary (and weary if I'm honest) of anyone who's account is less than 3 years old but also participates in political or philosophical discussion.

>maybe something....not-entirely-organic about the whole package.

I think this is patently obvious to the most casual observer. Unfortunately most people are stupid and easily manipulated. One of the easiest things to convince people of is that they're smart and hard to manipulate.

>I'm of the belief that humanity, particularly "The West", optimizes for numerous(!) variables over and above the happiness of overall humanity.

There are still a bunch of governments and cultures competing on Earth. The suggestion that they should just "give up" and start working for global good, while all Star Trek universe greater good and all that, is unrealistic. Governments, economic systems and cultures compete. In fact, if they didn't, humanity wouldn't prosper; at least this version of humanity.

Governments are not moral entities. Not to say that they cannot act morally or immorally, but a government has a responsibility that surpasses individual morality. You, can individually make a decision to give up your lunch to a stranger who has nothing to eat. You cannot morally decide to give up the lunch of your children to a stranger who has nothing to eat. When you MUST SURVIVE (and governments must, foremost, survive) and further you must aim for the benefit of the largest group, it isn't a morality that guides you, but principles of success. There is room for morality only when there is surplus.

> I mean, do we humans even have a sophisticated (and legitimate, accurate(!), etc) methodology for determining what we should be worried about?

Look, a purely philosophical question. I like those.

Nearly every animal on the planet has developed some mechanism to recognize and cope with danger. Are they all legitimate? Accurate? Etc? To varying degrees.

To answer philosophically, it doesn't matter. The inevitability of death means that, success or failure will be washed away in 200 years anyway. From the perspective of the individual, well, they will have no perspective.

But a slightly less solipsist or existentialist perspective, you have the lab, the workshop and the field. I try to be an introspective person, dissecting my failures and trying to turn them into lessons to be learned for success. I try to test out my philosophy and methodology for approaching complex situations using forums such as Reddit and spirited conversation with strangers IRL. I also practically apply the underpinning principals I've learned through practical exercises in the real world.

I suppose, each person's ability to do these things varies in accordance with how much importance they're likely to place on the reliability of those tools.

Thoughts?

I just have a lot of them. First, I wonder who you were on Reddit before OCT 2020.

Second, all of Covid is a land war in Asia. It's nearly impossible to comment on the conflict without embroiling yourself in a 5 front war. The problem is that it has been politicized, with Trump pushing for vaccines and Democrats saying that they wouldn't trust them, then switching roles once Biden came to power. Thusly anything you have to say about the vaccines or mandates, pro or con, there's a healthy stockpile of argument and fact that can be used to support your position and it would take forever to unravel that.

Third, the very essence of the discussion was regarding how purchases have a cost in children's lives, so I'm dubious regarding your confusion as to why this is being brought up.

Fourth, humans have an amazing ability at storytelling which has served them for both news and entertainment for quite a while. Humanity also has the arrogance, imagination, bigotry and creativity to manufacture such irresponsible and damaging lies as to divide the greatest nations on the planet.

And lastly, I'm concerned. That's all. Just concerned.

>And a little artistry more often wouldn't kill us, I don't think.

It isn't artistry that I'm worried about killing anyone.

I find it interesting that what amounts to a "some assembly required" kit of call to violence manifesto is justified by the concept that an EA microtransaction is somehow, in some butterfly wings effect, responsible for deaths of children in the third world and proof of some oppression hierarchy built on genocidal white supremacy or some such.

I feel like the philosophically minded might find this ironic.

>I’m getting the last word because I’m correct about this.

Seriously, I was just testing to see if you were going to respond to my "last word" response.

>No, because, like I’ve said over and over, the argument assumes that to be true already, whether it is or not.

Which is how appeal to emotion works. It takes the focus off of "is this true" and puts it on "out of an abundance of caution surrounding our children, we should do this thing, because THINK OF THE CHILDREN".

Every, single appeal to emotion argument works this way.

OK. Have the last word.

Edit: for clarity, what I'm saying is that there's no effective difference between replacing the argument for something with an appeal to emotion and using it as an unproven premise.

Look at my comment history and post history. Clearly being "popular" isn't even in my top 20.

I mean this as criticism, but not insult, if you would be kind enough to indulge my splitting hairs. The kind of thing that I'm hearing in your post is exactly the kind of thing that would cause one to fail a psych eval.

1. Preoccupation with "righting perceived injustice" regardless of cost.
2. Authoritarian declarations.
3. Reductionist and uncharitable accounts of history and people's choices, especially describing freedom of personal choice as lunacy.
4. Expression of rage.
5. Expressing desire to turn thought into violent action to achieve a stated "manifesto" or political goal.

All of this causes me some concern.

I'm getting the last word because I'm petty.

You're wrong, it absolutely is attempting to push people to action out of an appeal to emotion. This is how appeal to emotion works all the time. Did you see an argument for "purchasing equals dead children"? You did not. What you saw was because purchasing equals dead children, we should....

That is appeal to emotion. And I posted last therefore I am correct. /s

>In part, but I am working from a much more advantageous position than you: I have ~direct access to my mind, yours is virtual (or at least:
>
>much more virtual).

Or you could just restate it more clearly instead of going off on this infinite loop of abstract obfuscation.

> Children (of all colors) >>> Western Boomers in my books.

This flies in the face of the laws of nature. Survival of the fittest. By taking ideas and processes that fail and elevating them over processes that produce "unequal" results, you're choosing failure as your condition for excellence.

I don't think I'm on board with that. Also not on board with racism or ageism.

>we can acknowledge that the future is predictable/probabilistic, or we can pretend it is a total mystery.

I see the merit in raging against the dying of the light, but recognize that one often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it.

>We're told we have control over our destiny

We're told we have an influence on our destiny through our actions. Not control.

>I'm ok in principle with engaging in extreme experimentation (including deceit) in pursuit of improving things for children and the underprivileged,

This is why I dislike the far left and far right. The supervillain proposition. Everyone is stupid but me, I see things clearly, therefore it's OK for me to fool or coerce everyone on the planet to my will. Think of a bad name in history, he/she probably felt the same way.

>No, that would be your heuristic interpretation.

Is that your heuristic interpretation of my interpretation?

> If you have an issue with the premise, that’s different from saying that the argument relying on the premise is using a fallacy.

This is going to be my last post on this because one of us is having an issue understanding this. He's not saying that appeals to emotion, in the abstract, are a good way to motivate people.

He's saying specifically that we should couch purchasing (and capitalism itself) in terms of dead children. It is his choice of using dead children that is appeal to emotion. He is saying, not only is it justified, it's righteous.

There are a lot of things wrong with the argument. False premise, false dichotomy, etc, but the choice to couch everything in terms of "dead children" is, on its face, an appeal to emotion.

You said your peace, I said mine. As far as I'm concerned, we're done.

> he’s not arguing that this premise is true using an appeal to emotion.

He is. He's using it as a premise for his argument. SINCE purchasing products have a cost in children's lives, we SHOULD label products in those terms to correct the gap in knowledge of the consumer, is essentially what he's saying.

Instead of arguing THAT purchasing products has a cost in children's lives, we're directly appealing to the emotional element of "save the children". Another poster put up some kind of poem or quote much more effectively putting forth the sentiment of the article. How many rivers and towns for progress, the false dichotomy of capitalism vs the Earth, etc.

We've skipped over the argument and gone directly to how many children are you going to kill with your consumerism.

So, your argument seems to be that since it "could" be false, it's false?

>Your accompanying flaws (as noted)

The "flaws" you pointed out were all basically saying that the most literal translation could be said to be untrue. Again, this was not what I was trying to do with the author. I use tons of literary license. Eh? You like that? Tons. That sentence just keeps on giving.

>If you think about it: is the particular manner(s) in which wealth is allocated in exchange for labour/assets (including national assets like minerals) not more than a little (at least) arbitrary, inconsistent, and of *at least questionable fairness?

I've often found myself criticizing how we determine who's wealthy or popular in our society, but it's a far cry from that to "vote Republican or you're killing children" or "don't buy this or you're killing children."

In fact, not buying goods may cause layoffs would cause lack of health insurance in some households which may lead to the death of children. In short, anything you do MIGHT lead to the death of children. Suggesting that there's some choice you can make, which is conveniently "do what I want you to do", that will result in no children dying, is an appeal to emotion. As I see it anyway.