No Objective Truth = Anarchy

[Old Things]

There is a lot going on in the world today. Lots of "wars and rumors of wars." Lots of people protesting about all kinds of stuff all over the world. It started in 2020 when Covid hit along with the death of a criminal. You also had the Epstine stuff. Have any arrests been made based on the list? No, because that is a position that goes against the narrative. The world has gone crazy.

What has happened since plays out like clockwork. The narrative driven by the elites continues to not own up to their mistakes while demonizing anyone who exposes them.

Now, with all this upheaval, what is the cause? The cause is simple: people no longer believe in objective Truth. At least the powers that be do not believe in objective Truth. Things are going to continue to get worse and worse until something drastic happens. How drastic does it need to be? Possibly a nuke going off, IDK. People hate each other. People have their "side" which they don't deviate from for anything. Why? Because they have been programmed to believe objective Truth does not exist. If we could all view the same information and acknowledge that we are seeing the same information, things would start to change pretty quickly. But people can argue about a picture of a stick or rock online.

Without Truth as the arbiter of our reasoning, things get very chaotic very quickly. It devolves into "might makes right" almost the instant people no longer care about Truth. Luckily, people still care about a dozen eggs being $5 (made-up price) so there is really only pragmatism holding things together at this point. That is NOT a good place to be. Why? Because with pragmatism, you can still make up the truth as you go along. Truth is not a transcendent reality in this paradigm. It is simply a tool to the highest bidder.

So, naturally, when things really fall to hell, then the only thing we will be left with is anarchy after a nuke or some other crazy thing happens because there will no longer be pragmatism to hold things together.

 

[Cognisant]

You would agree then that truth must be transcendent? That what is true must be true for all, and demonstrable, that what is good is good because it is good and not because someone says so.

For the longest time this has been my criticism of religion, that it is an inherently subjective truth, but the sheer insanity of recent times has shaken my faith in people's (including my own) ability to engage with the truth directly.

Language is a form of technology, the written word is a further development of that technology, philosophy and religion have taken it further still.

My concession to religion is that it's simply not practical for the individual to know everything, to verify everything, at some point you need to trust the wise men in an ivory tower to philosophize and do science for you, and to pass it down to you in a manner the layman can understand.

The church was not incorruptible but nor was academia and so that ivory tower could just as easily be a church as a university, so long as it serves the betterment of mankind. So long as there are old wise men within it working to understand us, our problems, our place in this universe and guide us towards something better.

 

[Black Rose]

cog is right

Human intelligence is limited.

There are things I want to do but cannot do without education.

That means I need to take a certain place in society.

And in that place, I will have a different perspective than anyone else.

Maybe I know how something works other people don't.

And when other people talk about it in such a way as to be wrong I get upset.

That is why we had guilds in the past, to talk to people who knew the same things.

I do not know how to fix cars, I should not talk about cars beyond what I know.

That is the same with anyone.

 

[Old Things]

My concession to religion is that it's simply not practical for the individual to know everything, to verify everything, at some point you need to trust the wise men in an ivory tower to philosophize and do science for you, and to pass it down to you in a manner the layman can understand.

This is something you probably don't really understand right now, but not everything is subpoena duces tecum. There exists evidence for some people (for me at least) that is not available to others. One of these things is revelation. I believe being a Christian is a religion, but it is also a relationship with our creator. You might think that sounds stupid or silly, but I can assure you, it is very real. I talk, God listens, God talks, I listen. It is how you would expect to have a relationship with a good spirit that you can't see, feel, or hear. I know (not cartesian certainty, but close) that God exists. Why? Because He communicates to me. That might sound like I am crazy, but there are hundreds of millions of other Christians who feel the exact same way. Faith is not without evidence. It is just a different kind of evidence than subpoena duces tecum.

The church was not incorruptible but nor was academia and so that ivory tower could just as easily be a church as a university, so long as it serves the betterment of mankind. So long as there are old wise men within it working to understand us, our problems, our place in this universe and guide us towards something better.

I do not believe anyone has ever been infallible except the Lord Jesus Christ, who I have a relationship with. When you pray for healing of a guy's dislocated shoulder in Jesus name and then he is healed, that is very solid evidence to me that Jesus answered my prayer.

But, yes, the best evidence you are going to get for Christianity is abductive. This can be both through physical means as well as things like the ordering of the universe, happy accidents, miraculous answers to (very) specific prayers, fulfilled prophecies, and even things like your conscience. Does there exist a 100% proof for God? No, and I would not expect one even given God does exist. One example of this among the several I have is that I had a prophecy for one of my elders one time. I told him that I felt like God was telling me to pray that his wife gets a new heart. I had no idea what that meant at the time. Usually, when people talk about getting a new heart in Christianity it is about conversion to Christianity. But in this case, about a year later, she literally got a heart transplant.

With all that out of the way,

Would anyone like to comment on the content of the OP instead of about religion?

 

[Hadoblado]

I don't think the truth has ever mattered much beyond technology which requires correct principles to work on. Outside of that, people are moved by stuff like strength, power, charisma, prior beliefs, or hierarchy and always have been.

I don't think we descend to anarchy. I think anarchy is a vacuum which will always be filled by someone who can benefit from applying order to it. There will be order but I suspect if given the choice I would prefer anarchy. There will be slavery.

The information environment definitely is different. Before we had reckless misinformation, now we have wholesale malicious disinformation. Polarisation goes up with hostility thereafter.

 

[Old Things]

You would agree then that truth must be transcendent?

100%.

If Truth is not transcendent, then we can't actually know anything including that we are not just a brain in a vat created five minutes ago. If Truth is not transcendent, then nothing should actually "work." Everything would plainly be chaos and life could have never come to be on Earth. Now, some will say that life began by abiogenesis (which there is zero evidence for) and so it is necessary that life exists. But this cannot be demonstrated; it is merely assumed. Some things are necessary and some things are not. It is not necessary that I ate pizza earlier today. It is not even necessary that I exist. Yet, here I am. What caused my existence? It was not random chance either. If it was, then we are back to square one where we can't actually know anything because then nothing is ordered and so it does not make sense that the universe is just so that life can exist on earth. So it is neither necessary nor blind chance. Therefore, something, or rather, someone with creativity and immense power is responsible for the universe and my existence. Therefore, truth is not necessary nor random but comes from a person. After all, if people are truthmakers, then it follows that all truth, including the transcendent stuff that no human understands, also comes from a mind.

Okay, I didn't want to talk about religion, but this is about mere theism and not Christianity.

 

[Old Things]

I don't think the truth has ever mattered much beyond technology which requires correct principles to work on. Outside of that, people are moved by stuff like strength, power, charisma, prior beliefs, or hierarchy and always have been.

I don't think we descend to anarchy. I think anarchy is a vacuum which will always be filled by someone who can benefit from applying order to it. There will be order but I suspect if given the choice I would prefer anarchy. There will be slavery.

The information environment definitely is different. Before we had reckless misinformation, now we have wholesale malicious disinformation. Polarisation goes up with hostility thereafter.

You understand your view is quite foreign to people who died about 100 years ago, right? Like they did not have this same sort of "ThE tRuTh Is SuBjEcTiVe" belief. You get that, right?

What we are talking about in some sense is the rise and fall of societies. What causes this? IMO, it is when things in epistemology get fuzzy. It's when people stop caring about how solid the reasoning for something is and they just give into their feelings and passions on things.

What is your hope for the future actually based on Hado?

 

[Hadoblado]

I don't care what they thought unless they can show good reasoning for it. But they dedge so I guess I just don't care :shrug:

I agree we're talking about the rise of societies but not necessarily the fall. Society is built on and sustained by lies. Don't agree? So every religion is true? Secular beliefs are true? Governments don't lie? There are many societies built on many "truths". The belief doesn't need to be true for it to hold people together.

Don't get me wrong, I believe in objective truth, just not in people's ability to know it. People can't access it and won't admit it, so come to care about their claim to truth whatever that might be, mistaking it for the real thing. The best we have is an approximation.

IMO if you think epistemology is ever not fuzzy you haven't been paying attention.

My hope for the future is that somehow humanity survives itself and gets off this rock. I am not optimistic.

 

[Cognisant]

Every empire thinks theirs will be the last.

 

[Hadoblado]

I'm not saying we're the last, just the best chance. If our society falls each subsequent one has less chance of interstellar travel. Industrial revolutions are hard without fuel and a second carboniferous period is unlikely.

 

[EndogenousRebel]

I still have the naive optimism of the world. And I plan to have baselines for what I consider stagnation, regression, and progress in society as I age.

I don't know if I can say we've made much progress since 2015. In some ways yes, and other ways no, and in others (politics/publicization) we've regressed.

The sooner people accept that there is a hole within themselves and everyone else, that can NEVER be filled and the learn to live with that, in a non-destructive way, the sooner we get people on the same page about making things better.

Humanity is barely in it's adolescence in the grand scheme of things. The most "advanced" countries are filled to the brim with mental health issues and escalating physical ailments. While poorer countries have a slightly lower occurrence of depression. Why is that?

Whatever our evolving civilization has built today it is not suiting us.

If you see Evil in the world (function of negative progress), then by all means point it out and tell your fellow man. But don't try to convince me it's because of some bullshit glorified high school event's policies.

If there is anything I've grown pessimistic about it's the fact that people, EVERY DAY PEOPLE, don't engage with these issues. A person of higher character? Maybe, but seriously, when people do engage, they say something ridiculous, because not only have they not talked about it with someone else before, but they really haven't even concidered the issue. They just adopt someone else's belief, a belief that was held for (social)political reasons.

It's a wonder why I have so much music of artists complaining about how the hippies in the 60s were a failure, and a disappointment of college traversers just getting high and drinking beer.

So how do we actually address these issues? Voting, lobbying? We are at the mercy of vultures.

I think Welfare is a good policy.

 

[Old Things]

I think Welfare is a good policy.

Who is going to pay for the welfare?

 

[EndogenousRebel]

I think Welfare is a good policy.

Who is going to pray for the welfare?

Lmao a vote is a prayer in America

 

[Old Things]

I think Welfare is a good policy.

Who is going to pray for the welfare?

Lmao a vote is a prayer in America

Pay. I meant pay. Who is going to pay for the welfare?

 

[EndogenousRebel]

I think Welfare is a good policy.

Who is going to pray for the welfare?

Lmao a vote is a prayer in America

Pay. I meant pay. Who is going to pay for the welfare?

Currency is a social construct. The thing that really gets stuff done, is mobilized labor and decisive policy action. Currency functions as an exchange of value, and labor = value = money.

We can compensate these people with something? Housing? Food? Most people tend to know what's best for them better than anyone else. We give them money probably.

We would need headquarters and materials. Maybe we also give cities money in exchange for that land and material.? Seems fair to me, but also maybe we cut them a tax break if they let us do it for free?

So now we have a labor force to process welfare applicants, and we have warehouses, food banks, and a nozzle for dispersing cash for groceries and rent. Of course more money.

Money is what we give people who do a valuable thing for us, so we give people money to faccilitate that, and then we give money to more people after that, because it is actually a pretty symbiotic relationship with a capitalist economy.

 

[Old Things]

I think Welfare is a good policy.

Who is going to pray for the welfare?

Lmao a vote is a prayer in America

Pay. I meant pay. Who is going to pay for the welfare?

Currency is a social construct. The thing that really gets stuff done, is mobilized labor and decisive policy action. Currency functions as an exchange of value, and labor = value = money.

We can compensate these people with something? Housing? Food? Most people tend to know what's best for them better than anyone else. We give them money probably.

We would need headquarters and materials. Maybe we also give cities money in exchange for that land and material.? Seems fair to me, but also maybe we cut them a tax break if they let us do it for free?

So now we have a labor force to process welfare applicants, and we have warehouses, food banks, and a nozzle for dispersing cash for groceries and rent. Of course more money.

Money is what we give people who do a valuable thing for us, so we give people money to faccilitate that, and then we give money to more people after that, because it is actually a pretty symbiotic relationship with a capitalist economy.

Holy macaroni. This is so cringe.

Where does money come from? People who produce value. So you want to take money from people who produce value and give it to people who produce no value. Why? Because they produce no value? This does not make sense.

 

[Hadoblado]

You guys are derailing the thread just FYI.

 

[EndogenousRebel]

I think Welfare is a good policy.

Who is going to pray for the welfare?

Lmao a vote is a prayer in America

Pay. I meant pay. Who is going to pay for the welfare?

Currency is a social construct. The thing that really gets stuff done, is mobilized labor and decisive policy action. Currency functions as an exchange of value, and labor = value = money.

We can compensate these people with something? Housing? Food? Most people tend to know what's best for them better than anyone else. We give them money probably.

We would need headquarters and materials. Maybe we also give cities money in exchange for that land and material.? Seems fair to me, but also maybe we cut them a tax break if they let us do it for free?

So now we have a labor force to process welfare applicants, and we have warehouses, food banks, and a nozzle for dispersing cash for groceries and rent. Of course more money.

Money is what we give people who do a valuable thing for us, so we give people money to faccilitate that, and then we give money to more people after that, because it is actually a pretty symbiotic relationship with a capitalist economy.

Holy macaroni. This is so cringe.

Where does money come from? People who produce value. So you want to take money from people who produce value and give it to people who produce no value. Why? Because they produce no value? This does not make sense.

The money is arbitrary. We can have that discussion if you want, The money that is spent ultimately will feed back into the pockets from which it came.

That money retains its value, despite it being in the hands of, as you put it, people who produce no value. Classy btw. We give it to them because what else are they gonna do with it. It's to pay rent, bills, and necessity. They may produce less, than "top producers", but they probably are getting underpaid by those very top producers.

Talk about gaul.

 

[EndogenousRebel]

My turn for a question. What is value? Would it make sense if I asked you where value comes from? Loosen your socks dude.

 

[Old Things]

You guys are derailing the thread just FYI.

To take @Hadoblado's advice to try and steer this back on track...

I think Welfare is a good policy.

Who is going to pray for the welfare?

Lmao a vote is a prayer in America

Pay. I meant pay. Who is going to pay for the welfare?

Currency is a social construct. The thing that really gets stuff done, is mobilized labor and decisive policy action. Currency functions as an exchange of value, and labor = value = money.

We can compensate these people with something? Housing? Food? Most people tend to know what's best for them better than anyone else. We give them money probably.

We would need headquarters and materials. Maybe we also give cities money in exchange for that land and material.? Seems fair to me, but also maybe we cut them a tax break if they let us do it for free?

So now we have a labor force to process welfare applicants, and we have warehouses, food banks, and a nozzle for dispersing cash for groceries and rent. Of course more money.

Money is what we give people who do a valuable thing for us, so we give people money to faccilitate that, and then we give money to more people after that, because it is actually a pretty symbiotic relationship with a capitalist economy.

Holy macaroni. This is so cringe.

Where does money come from? People who produce value. So you want to take money from people who produce value and give it to people who produce no value. Why? Because they produce no value? This does not make sense.

The money is arbitrary. We can have that discussion if you want, The money that is spent ultimately will feed back into the pockets from which it came.

That money retains its value, despite it being in the hands of, as you put it, people who produce no value. Classy btw. We give it to them because what else are they gonna do with it. It's to pay rent, bills, and necessity. They may produce less, than "top producers", but they probably are getting underpaid by those very top producers.

Talk about gaul.

When people are dependent, they pretty much stay that way. Too many dependent peasants means that when the peasants don't have what they used to, they go rioting in the streets. These riots fuel the fires of more spending by the rich to line their pockets with wars and such. The more there is war, the less everyone has (except the very rich).

 

[Old Things]

My turn for a question. What is value? Would it make sense if I asked you where value comes from? Loosen your socks dude.

I did not use the term value. You did. If anyone should be defining the term value, it should be you.

 

[EndogenousRebel]

My turn for a question. What is value? Would it make sense if I asked you where value comes from? Loosen your socks dude.

I did not use the term value. You did. If anyone should be defining the term value, it should be you.

You brought up money. The thread implies that we want objective truths. Money is the exchange of value. Value is dependent on the observers/set-of observers evaluation. To me.

Maybe that's too relative/subjective for you, you tell me the objective truths of value.

When people are dependent, they pretty much stay that way. Too many dependent peasants means that when the peasants don't have what they used to, they go rioting in the streets. These riots fuel the fires of more spending by the right to line their pockets with wars and such. The more there is war, the less everyone has (except the very rich).

That's seems like a plausible scenario. I can see the appeal to it, because it does make sense intuitively.

I am not saying ignorance is not abound, but that's really the problem here as I was trying to make *evident. This is the product of ignorance. We have all the worlds information at our finger tips, and we just now have gotten into that rhythm.

I'm not optimistic about the next 10 years to be honest. But we have some sort of large spread social change a couple times a century.

I would hope *YOU mindfully navigate the decision to engage in fear mongering over something unwaranted.

 

[EndogenousRebel]

 

[Old Things]

right rich

 

[dr froyd]

problem is not lack of objective truth, but a lack of interest in logical truth

what he have an oversupply of is sophistry designed to evoke emotion, monkeys throwing soundbites and 60-character messages at each other

 

[Old Things]

problem is not lack of objective truth, but a lack of interest in logical truth

what he have an oversupply of is sophistry designed to evoke emotion, monkeys throwing soundbites and 60-character messages at each other

That is certainly part of the problem. People's attention span is getting shorter every day. I don't claim to have the best attention span. I have ADHD after all. But at least I try to use my brain. I am not saying coming to objective or logical truth is easy, but it is a lot easier if you are not an NPC and actually try and use logic as you say. But I would say logic is only a species of Truth. It doesn't represent all of Truth. Logic is a tool of truth, IMO. Besides, where do the laws of logic come from? If they are dependent on what people say, then they can change, which just makes them pragmatic and not transcendent and I do believe that the laws of logic are transcendent. There is also evidence and such. Things that we can't prove* logically but are still justified in believing. I think logic is more solid truth than just evidence. But some things we literally can't get logic from.

This is all kinda splitting hairs since we mostly agree. It's just these small particulars.

I'd be interested to know what you think of this.

* = I really hate it when an atheist says "Prove God is real" because it's not based on logic that God is real, it is mostly experiential, and even if it was purely logical, you would still have tons of atheists who would still not worship God even if it was a logical fact.

 

[Drvladivostok]

There is a lot going on in the world today. Lots of "wars and rumors of wars." Lots of people protesting about all kinds of stuff all over the world. It started in 2020 when Covid hit along with the death of a criminal. You also had the Epstine stuff. Have any arrests been made based on the list? No, because that is a position that goes against the narrative. The world has gone crazy.

What has happened since plays out like clockwork. The narrative driven by the elites continues to not own up to their mistakes while demonizing anyone who exposes them.

Now, with all this upheaval, what is the cause? The cause is simple: people no longer believe in objective Truth. At least the powers that be do not believe in objective Truth. Things are going to continue to get worse and worse until something drastic happens. How drastic does it need to be? Possibly a nuke going off, IDK. People hate each other. People have their "side" which they don't deviate from for anything. Why? Because they have been programmed to believe objective Truth does not exist. If we could all view the same information and acknowledge that we are seeing the same information, things would start to change pretty quickly. But people can argue about a picture of a stick or rock online.

Without Truth as the arbiter of our reasoning, things get very chaotic very quickly. It devolves into "might makes right" almost the instant people no longer care about Truth. Luckily, people still care about a dozen eggs being $5 (made-up price) so there is really only pragmatism holding things together at this point. That is NOT a good place to be. Why? Because with pragmatism, you can still make up the truth as you go along. Truth is not a transcendent reality in this paradigm. It is simply a tool to the highest bidder.

So, naturally, when things really fall to hell, then the only thing we will be left with is anarchy after a nuke or some other crazy thing happens because there will no longer be pragmatism to hold things together.

Lack of believe in objective truth in society doesn't create more wars, it just creates lack of trust within society, cultural weakness (look at the UK), and hedonism.

At the heights of Religiosity people was just as excited or more so to hack of eachother's heads off as they are now.

 

[dr froyd]

But I would say logic is only a species of Truth. It doesn't represent all of Truth. Logic is a tool of truth, IMO. Besides, where do the laws of logic come from? If they are dependent on what people say, then they can change, which just makes them pragmatic and not transcendent and I do believe that the laws of logic are transcendent. There is also evidence and such. Things that we can't prove* logically but are still justified in believing. I think logic is more solid truth than just evidence. But some things we literally can't get logic from.

* = I really hate it when an atheist says "Prove God is real" because it's not based on logic that God is real, it is mostly experiential, and even if it was purely logical, you would still have tons of atheists who would still not worship God even if it was a logical fact.

logic is mostly just a formalization of the way humans think and perceive reality in general. There's nothing illogical about saying e.g. "god is real because i have had a subjective sensation of his existence". But it is making the assumption that your personal sensations are more precise than other people's who had similar sensations of any one of the thousands of other gods humans have "sensed" throughout the millennia.

this leaves people like me to either pick any one random person to trust, or conclude that humans have a tendency to make such claims in general. What seems the most logical?

 

[scorpiomover]

Lack of believe in objective truth in society doesn't create more wars, it just creates lack of trust within society,

The main reason for the global financial crisis in 2008, was because the banks lost trust in each other and stopped lending to each other.

Banks have to have 10% of their loans in cash on the site, and so occasionally need to borrow some cash from the other banks in order to keep lending. So the banks ran out of cash, and couldn't keep lending out loans to businesses.

So every business who was a bit short of cash, and needed a temporary loan, could not get one. So they went bankrupt in a few months.

In turn, their suppliers and customers lost lots of business, couldn't get a temporary loan to tide them over, and went bankrupt in a few months.

The dominoes just kept falling and falling.

Now that's resulted in a serious economic downturn, that has been compared to the Great Depression and 1930s Germany.

cultural weakness (look at the UK),

We just had riots up and down the country because of this.

and hedonism.

Enough people being turned to drug addiction, and enough women being treated like sex toys, and you'll get lots of people fighting too.

 

[Old Things]

But I would say logic is only a species of Truth. It doesn't represent all of Truth. Logic is a tool of truth, IMO. Besides, where do the laws of logic come from? If they are dependent on what people say, then they can change, which just makes them pragmatic and not transcendent and I do believe that the laws of logic are transcendent. There is also evidence and such. Things that we can't prove* logically but are still justified in believing. I think logic is more solid truth than just evidence. But some things we literally can't get logic from.

* = I really hate it when an atheist says "Prove God is real" because it's not based on logic that God is real, it is mostly experiential, and even if it was purely logical, you would still have tons of atheists who would still not worship God even if it was a logical fact.

logic is mostly just a formalization of the way humans think and perceive reality in general. There's nothing illogical about saying e.g. "god is real because i have had a subjective sensation of his existence". But it is making the assumption that your personal sensations are more precise than other people's who had similar sensations of any one of the thousands of other gods humans have "sensed" throughout the millennia.

this leaves people like me to either pick any one random person to trust, or conclude that humans have a tendency to make such claims in general. What seems the most logical?

Do you think the laws of logic exist even if humans didn't exist, or no?

 

[dr froyd]

Do you think the laws of logic exist even if humans didn't exist, or no?

i have no clue what that means. Are you talking about empirical application of logic or the formal system itself?

laws of physics probably don't change depending on whether humans exist or not, if you are talking about the empirical part

if your point is that logic was invented by humans so we're all free to decide our own reality, that's simply solipsism and there's no point in talking about anything that pertains to our mutual perception of reality. You believe in your god, i believe im elvis presley, next guy believes 2 + 2 = 5, etc etc - which is perfectly fine as long as none of us tries to organize an entire society based on such beliefs.

the problem from a societal point of view is not disagreement on objective truth - or even lack of belief in an objective truth - but people claiming they hold the key to objective truth while basing this on nothing more than feelings or subjective sensations of the supernatural.

 

[Drvladivostok]

We just had riots up and down the country because of this.

Just out of curiosity, what's your opinion on the whole UK riots that's been going on?
It looks like you were doing too little too late in mitigating criminality and radicalism.

 

[scorpiomover]

We just had riots up and down the country because of this.

Just out of curiosity, what's your opinion on the whole UK riots that's been going on?
It looks like you were doing too little too late in mitigating criminality and radicalism.

We also had riots over the killing of Stephen Lawrence and Damillola Taylor, 2 BIPOC people who were killed by the police.

During BLM, when American police were being threatened with defunding the police to stop BIPOC men being killed by racist cops, the British police did their own investigation. The conclusion was that British police tend to be more likely to assume that BIPOC are criminals and they are more violent with suspected criminals. So they were basically saying that the British Police are violently racist, just like the American cops.

OTOH, there have been a few times when BIPOC police have been reported as being corrupt and being sent to prison. But when it's been reported, they've usually done around 80 really serious violent crimes before they got arrested and convicted.

There's a general perception that the police are regarded as violently racist, and so to offset that, there's a general perception that the police are trying to be overly nice to BIPOC.

However, when you have no reports of BIPOC cops being convicted for a few small offenses, and you get multiple reports of BIPOC cops being convicted for over 80 serious crimes, you're bound to get a lot of people thinking that the only reason this would have happened is if the police were turning a blind eye to the corruption in their own BIPOC officers, because they are too afraid of being called racist for convicting the guy earlier on when his offenses weren't that glaring but still needed to be handled anyway, to prevent such a calamity.

Imagine if the police were living next to OBL and they know that he is planning 9/11, but don't want to be called homopobic, and so won't arrest him until AFTER he'd done 9/11.

In that situation, do you not agree that you'd be thinking that the police won't protect you from dangerous criminals who are BIPOC because they are too afraid of being called racist, and you'll have to take the law into your own hands?

Now you see the right-wing view.

OTOH, if you keep hearing about how "crazy white people are attacking and killing BIPOC for no reason", doesn't that also make you scared and think you have to take up arms to protect your family from these crazy people?

Because of the right-wing backlash against the police not dealing with even corrupt BIPCO cops and applying 2 different standards to people based on the colour of their skin, liberals believe that they HAVE to stop racism, ESPECIALLY in the police, and so put huge pressure on the police about racism and violence.

So now you see the left-wing view.

Because of the huge pressure on the police to not appear racist, the police feel that they have no choice but to treat BIPOC more deferentially and different to white people, even though they're just accelerating the spiral. If they ignore social pressure, they expect to get fired and replaced with someone who is agreeable to bend to social pressures and treat BIPOC better.

So whether they get fired or not, whether they stand up for what's right or not, the situation doesn't change, and things keep circling, escalating tensions.

The most they can do, is to try to keep the tensions from escalating even more than they already are.

So now you see the police's view.

All this tension is making Far Right people keep voting for the Far Right candidates, and Left-wing people keep voting for Left-wing candidates, which means that both groups' politicians are remaining in power for a LOT longer than you'd normally expect. They are literally gaining money and power for years longer than they normally would, because of these tensions. So they'd have to be cutting their own financial throats to want things to get better.

This might have been possible in the past when most politicians made their money in business and then entered politics after they'd retired from the business world.

But for the past 20 years, politicians have been entering politics only a few years after university, which means they have to make most of their income and wealth from being in politics. So now, keeping racial tensions going in order to keep fears high that will keep you being re-elected, is how politicians feed their families.

So now you see the politicians' view.

The anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-homophobia thing has gone too far, and yet still not actually dealt with the problems it has set out to. It's been a dismal failure.

But no-one wants to shut down the Left wing entirely, because those sorts of movements resulted in the Magna Carta, in the UK becoming ruled by an elected government rather than a king, and lots of laws protecting children from predatory capitalists who would make them work for 14 hours a day in the dark.

It's a mess.

 

[Old Things]

@scorpiomover, What do you actually think of the OP? Do you think it is accurate or not?

 

[scorpiomover]

@scorpiomover, What do you actually think of the OP? Do you think it is accurate or not?

Spin

Beeing going on since the 1990s, and probably before.

 

[Old Things]

@scorpiomover, What do you actually think of the OP? Do you think it is accurate or not?

Spin

Beeing going on since the 1990s, and probably before.

Interesting. That assumes things are getting better or at least not getting worse, which I totally disagree with. I think things are getting worse and worse. We don't have to go too far back in history to see this. The way Covid was handled by governments around the world is one example.

 

[scorpiomover]

Interesting. That assumes things are getting better or at least not getting worse,

That bit is also spin. Be more than a mite embarrassing for politicians, if people believed that spin controls politics.

But it's not untrue. Since the rise of spin, it's become so ubiquitous, that pretty much every company, organisation and government agency is full of spin. Forums, and especially political discussions are full of posters who are spinning narratives like crazy. Constantly spinning everything has been the norm for at least 16 years now. So to all those people, it's not "spin". It's "business as usual."

 

[Old Things]

Interesting. That assumes things are getting better or at least not getting worse,

That bit is also spin. Be more than a mite embarrassing for politicians, if people believed that spin controls politics.

But it's not untrue. Since the rise of spin, it's become so ubiquitous, that pretty much every company, organisation and government agency is full of spin. Forums, and especially political discussions are full of posters who are spinning narratives like crazy. Constantly spinning everything has been the norm for at least 16 years now. So to all those people, it's not "spin". It's "business as usual."

It's a truth claim. It is either true or false. If it is false, I could see how it was spin. If it is true, then you have to explain how the truth can be spin, which I take to be a kind of bias against the truth. I see spin as a lie. The Truth is not a lie. As such, it can't be spin FMPOV.

 

[Puffy]

We just had riots up and down the country because of this.

Just out of curiosity, what's your opinion on the whole UK riots that's been going on?
It looks like you were doing too little too late in mitigating criminality and radicalism.

I'm a UK citizen as well.

tl;dr version - three children were killed at an attack on a dance event which sparked a lot of outrage. Some of our population has falsely came to the belief that the criminal in question was a migrant (which isn't true, it was caused by a UK native citizen.)

We've recently had a change in leadership, with the labour party taking over. One of their pledges had been to undo the actions that previous leadership had taken around reducing the number of asylum seekers we're welcoming into the country.

So basically the combination of these two things seems to have incited the recent riots.

For context, the UK is a very densely populated country. We're a small island with a population of 67 million people. So immigration can often be a very contentious issue. It's the main reason that Brexit happened is that a significant number of the UK population wants to limit immigration into the country.

I don't condone the riots at all, this is just for context.

 

[LOGICZOMBIE]

Without Truth as the arbiter of our reasoning, things get very chaotic very quickly. It devolves into "might makes right" almost the instant people no longer care about Truth. Luckily, people still care about a dozen eggs being $5 (made-up price) so there is really only pragmatism holding things together at this point. That is NOT a good place to be. Why? Because with pragmatism, you can still make up the truth as you go along. Truth is not a transcendent reality in this paradigm. It is simply a tool to the highest bidder.

are you the "arbiter of our reasoning" ?

what is the "solid rock of truth" you are offering as an alternative to naked force ?

 

[Old Things]

Without Truth as the arbiter of our reasoning, things get very chaotic very quickly. It devolves into "might makes right" almost the instant people no longer care about Truth. Luckily, people still care about a dozen eggs being $5 (made-up price) so there is really only pragmatism holding things together at this point. That is NOT a good place to be. Why? Because with pragmatism, you can still make up the truth as you go along. Truth is not a transcendent reality in this paradigm. It is simply a tool to the highest bidder.

are you the "arbiter of our reasoning" ?

what is the "solid rock of truth" you are offering as an alternative to naked force ?

Alright, "naked force" sounds like a really bad porno, LOL!

 

[scorpiomover]

It's a truth claim. It is either true or false. If it is false, I could see how it was spin. If it is true, then you have to explain how the truth can be spin, which I take to be a kind of bias against the truth. I see spin as a lie. The Truth is not a lie. As such, it can't be spin FMPOV.

That's an argument, not a question. Sounds like you are trying to convince yourself.

Who exactly are you trying to persuade?

 

[Old Things]

Who exactly are you trying to persuade?

Who said I was trying to persuade anyone?

Never been good at persuading people of things. Remember, I am an INFP. I don't go around trying to change people's minds. I try and state the truth, but I have no control over other people's beliefs.

 

[LOGICZOMBIE]

It's a truth claim. It is either true or false. If it is false, I could see how it was spin

not all truth claims are actually true or actually false

most are pure opinion

 

[scorpiomover]

Who exactly are you trying to persuade?

Who said I was trying to persuade anyone?

Never been good at persuading people of things. Remember, I am an INFP.

True/False is a Ti-thing. Ethical/Unethical is an Fi-thing. Keep to what you are good at.

I don't go around trying to change people's minds. I try and state the truth, but I have no control over other people's beliefs.

But you are talking as if you're saying they are unethical, when your argument is about if their views are true or false. They are different types of judgements, that work differently.

In some situations, something is objectively true and ethical.
In some situations, the same thing is objectively true and unethical.

In some situations, something is subjectively true and ethical.
In some situations, the same thing is subjectively true and unethical.

Like the symbol of the Tao, there's no clear and easy rule to follow that ties ethics directly and easily to logic. They are definitely connected. But it's an indirect link, that is just as reliable, but not that easy to understand the connections.

 

[Old Things]

Who exactly are you trying to persuade?

Who said I was trying to persuade anyone?

Never been good at persuading people of things. Remember, I am an INFP.

True/False is a Ti-thing. Ethical/Unethical is an Fi-thing. Keep to what you are good at.

I don't go around trying to change people's minds. I try and state the truth, but I have no control over other people's beliefs.

But you are talking as if you're saying they are unethical, when your argument is about if their views are true or false. They are different types of judgements, that work differently.

In some situations, something is objectively true and ethical.
In some situations, the same thing is objectively true and unethical.

In some situations, something is subjectively true and ethical.
In some situations, the same thing is subjectively true and unethical.

Like the symbol of the Tao, there's no clear and easy rule to follow that ties ethics directly and easily to logic. They are definitely connected. But it's an indirect link, that is just as reliable, but not that easy to understand the connections.

My fault for bringing MBTI into it, but just because I am an INFP does not mean that I can't make truth claims and I find the idea that I should, "stick to what I'm good at" to be absurd. Truth is not specific to type. Anyone can get a piece of the truth, but no one gets the whole thing. We should all strive towards knowing what is true, not just INTPs. Besides, I'm not married to the idea of MBTI/Jungian thought anyways.

 

[LOGICZOMBIE]

Like the symbol of the Tao, there's no clear and easy rule to follow that ties ethics directly and easily to logic. They are definitely connected. But it's an indirect link, that is just as reliable, but not that easy to understand the connections.

PRIMAL ETHICS
(1) PROTECT YOURSELF
(2) PROTECT YOUR FAMILY
(3) PROTECT YOUR PROPERTY

 

[LOGICZOMBIE]

We should all strive towards knowing what is true,

perhaps engineers and physicists can determine what is true by testing it

but for most things

and the most important things

we merely need to believe what is most useful

 

[Old Things]

we merely need to believe what is most useful

Then objective truth does not actually exist because in this paradigm (pragmatism) truth is not a transcendent thing. And there are lots of ways to arrive at the truth without being a physicist such as philosophy.

 

[scorpiomover]

Like the symbol of the Tao, there's no clear and easy rule to follow that ties ethics directly and easily to logic. They are definitely connected. But it's an indirect link, that is just as reliable, but not that easy to understand the connections.

PRIMAL ETHICS
(1) PROTECT YOURSELF
(2) PROTECT YOUR FAMILY
(3) PROTECT YOUR PROPERTY

What have they all in common?
Protect MY body.
Protect MY family.
Protect MY stuff.

Translation: F**k the world. F**k humanity. I only care about ME.