What do you believe that most people of your political creed don't?
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We can disagree a bit about the sacredness of life but I think we agree about oreseving nature. Yet I think national parks are both a good and a practical necessity. If the general public can’t get a taste of wilderness they will not value it, and will not protest its demise. So it’s a balancing act— in a perfect world sure have some very large untouched reserves, but if you care about any wilderness surviving then national parks are a must imho.
Just so. The periphery of the parks may be visited- a shared border between worlds where the most intrepid of both may briefly meet, but just as bears and raccoons are driven out of suburbs, so too should people be driven from the deeper parks.
As for the sanctity of life, it's more of a balancing in my eyes. No life should be valued so as to cause undue stress to survivors. But I suppose my rather callous attitude is anathema to most.
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You measure those feelings in real time so 1 year is the same for any organism.
Well, I said "integral" in the vague gesture that things can have a greater or lesser amount of experience in a given amount of time. I suppose we are looking at different x axes?
I don't know how to estimate something's experience rate, but my intuition is that every creature whose lifespan is at least one year and is visible to the naked eye has about within a factor of an order of magnitude or two the same experience rate. I think children have a greater experience rate than adults because everything is new to them; as a result, someone's maximal moral value is biased toward the earlier end of their life, like their 20s or 30s.
I still don’t know why brains are different from a steel beam
This is all presupposing that consciousness exists at all. If not, then everything's moral value is 0. If it does, then I feel confident that steel beams don't have consciousness.
Dang that last one is the most interesting to me. Also sorry for getting anal about the axis. I trust you knew what you were saying.
This is all presupposing that consciousness exists at all. If not, then everything's moral value is 0. If it does, then I feel confident that steel beams don't have consciousness.
So there is a moral hierarchy but you regard its source as only possibly existing and extremely nebulous. Given that foundation why do you stand by the validity of the hierarchy, and especially why do you say it is moral to do so?
Also I imagine that your difference in how you see the steel beam vs a brain is based on how much communication you've understood from each. Do you think our ability to understand something or someone is a reasonable way to build a moral framework? I think there are many pit falls to that approach personally, but I get its intuitive appeal.
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I'm far left, but I believe that any citizen should be allowed to own any gun.
For what it's worth, the far left (internationally) is traditionally pro-gun. I wouldn't know what positions are about any citizen and any gun, but I wouldn't be shocked either to hear a socialist advocate for it.
[...] The whole proletariat [i.e. worker class] must be armed at once with muskets, rifles, cannon and ammunition, and the revival of the old-style citizens’ militia, directed against the workers, must be opposed. Where the formation of this militia cannot be prevented, the workers must try to organize themselves independently as a proletarian guard, with elected leaders and with their own elected general staff; they must try to place themselves not under the orders of the state authority but of the revolutionary local councils set up by the workers. Where the workers are employed by the state, they must arm and organize themselves into special corps with elected leaders, or as a part of the proletarian guard. Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary. The destruction of the bourgeois [i.e. owner class] democrats’ influence over the workers, and the enforcement of conditions which will compromise the rule of bourgeois democracy, which is for the moment inevitable, and make it as difficult as possible – these are the main points which the proletariat and therefore the League must keep in mind during and after the approaching uprising.
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Dang that last one is the most interesting to me. Also sorry for getting anal about the axis. I trust you knew what you were saying.
This is all presupposing that consciousness exists at all. If not, then everything's moral value is 0. If it does, then I feel confident that steel beams don't have consciousness.
So there is a moral hierarchy but you regard its source as only possibly existing and extremely nebulous. Given that foundation why do you stand by the validity of the hierarchy, and especially why do you say it is moral to do so?
Also I imagine that your difference in how you see the steel beam vs a brain is based on how much communication you've understood from each. Do you think our ability to understand something or someone is a reasonable way to build a moral framework? I think there are many pit falls to that approach personally, but I get its intuitive appeal.
The reason that I stand by the moral hierarchy despite the possibility that it doesn't exist at all is that I can only reason about morality under the assumption that consciousness exists. I don't know how to cause pain to a non-conscious being.
To give an analogy: suppose you find out that next year there's a 50% chance that the earth will be obliterated by some cosmic event -- is this a reason to stop caring about global warming? No, because in the event that the earth is spared, we still need to solve global warming.It is nebulous, but everything is nebulous at first until we learn more. I'm just trying to separate things that seem like pretty safe bets from things I'm less sure about. Steel beams not having consciousness seems like a safe bet. If it turns out that consciousness exists and works really really weirdly and steel beams do have consciousness, there's still no particularly good reason to believe that anything I could do to a steel beam matters to it, seeing as it lacks pain receptors.
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Leftism is unpopular by definition, especially to the privileged classes. Leftism seeks to upend the status quo, and loss aversion is a problem.
Not that efforts can't be made.
Leftism is unpopular by definition
This really depends how you define "leftism".
If you mean 'whichever side of politics is left of the population's center' then sure, it can't be a majority.
If you mean 'whichever side of politics is left of the political center' then that doesn't imply it's unpopular, and there's direct electoral evidence of 'left' parties achieving a majority government.
If you mean socialism and communism, they certainly aren't unpopular by definition. If anything, their definition makes them a mass movement of the proletariat, the vast majority of a post-industrial society.
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You still haven’t achieved that understanding. Ideology does not come about from ‘convincing’ or ‘swaying’ anyone. I once again suggest you to read Settlers to see why this thought process is flawed. I understand where you are coming from but the material precedes the immaterial
Ideology does not come about from ‘convincing’ or ‘swaying’ anyone.
Tell that to the propaganda model. False consciousness is a real barrier which can and has dominated material class interests.
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Why do you assert this? Based on what moral framework? Is it morally okay to abandon a baby to the elements after birth, in favour of the autonomy of those who would raise it?
I'm not going to engage with you on the topic of a women's right to choose, or the meaning of bodily autonomy. On the off chance you're not a troll, good luck with your research on this very well documented political debate.
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I figured your objection to the term "cultural appropriation" is that people use it to refer to exploitative things as well as what I view as innocent things like a professional dancer who is white dancing to an anime song or something. That's why I proposed a new term, to help differentiate these things.
Yes! I love it, thank you for that follow up. That's exactly what I mean.
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How it's possible that the political movement that aim for the benefits of the 99% is unpopular by definition?
Identity politics may be unpopular by definition.
But the leftist movement is by definition a popular movement, and tons of alienation are needed to make people stop supporting themselves and support the 1%
Because the status quo throughout history is an extremely small number of people getting the most benefits by far and everyone else getting screwed, and everyone seeing this as normal. People are used to it, while having everyone on relatively equal footing is new and therefore scary.
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Why would you think this would be in some way representative? It’s just your friend network.
I think it's representative of my friend network. Perhaps I misunderstood what you were asking. This was a response to "how many leftists do you know?"
No I have not read Sakai yet. This topic is not new to me, I just disagree with you. But very well, I am glad that we have reached the mutual agreement that it is not an appropriate word for non-indigenous people in general, which was my original point that you responded to:
Reading this reminded me about another unpopular opinion: I think “settler” and “colonizer” are poor terms for non-indigenous people broadly.
As I see it, it turns out we both agree. I misunderstood your initial response to that statement as one that was intending to be a counterargument. So, sorry -- I really didn't mean to straw man you; I legitimately misunderstood what your point was.
I think it's representative of my friend network. Perhaps I misunderstood what you were asking. This was a response to "how many leftists do you know?"
And what was that in response to?
No I have not read Sakai yet. This topic is not new to me, I just disagree with you.
These are somewhat contradictory statements.
But very well, I am glad that we have reached the mutual agreement that it is not an appropriate word for non-indigenous people in general, which was my original point that you responded to:
Reading this reminded me about another unpopular opinion: I think “settler” and “colonizer” are poor terms for non-indigenous people broadly.
As I see it, it turns out we both agree. I misunderstood your initial response to that statement as one that was intending to be a counterargument. So, sorry -- I really didn't mean to straw man you; I legitimately misunderstood what your point was.
I introduced the use of the term. When you started talking about your own understanding, I told you I was talking about something else and explained what it was twice and with examples and context. So far as I can tell that was entirely ignored in order to seek conflict. This is a tendency many of us have at the beginning, but we must train it out of ourselves because it is highly counterproductive.
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DNA based proofs are pretty undeniable unless you have a twin.
The science behind DNA profiling is grossly overstated. it doesn't sequence a full genome and is often using partial/degraded samples and relies entirely on statistical differences. In probability games, there's no such thing as certainty...
In addition since 2010 anyone using "standard molecular biology techniques such as PCR, molecular cloning, and recently developed whole genome amplification (WGA), enable anyone with basic equipment and know-how to produce practically unlimited amounts of in vitro synthesized (artificial) DNA with any desired genetic profile." and there have been a plethora of new tools/techniques which make doing that even easier...
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Is it moral to kill a 2-year old because the parents no longer want it?
I'm sure that abortion is fine for the first few months. After that, I am unsure either way, but I don't feel strongly enough to wish to see abortion rights curtailed at all. So this is largely academic.
A 2 year old is a baby, an unborn fetus is a fetus, an extension of the parent. It doesn't have thoughts, feelings, communication, and I would always value the parents life over its own.
If you give away a 2 year old you don't really have to do much, but if you want to give away a 7 week old fetus, you still have to carry it to term, deal with discrimation and discomfort, deal with any medical issues that may arise, go through the extremely painful procedure of giving birth.
Just as you cannot be forced to donate your organs after death to help save countless lives, you cannot be forced to go through so much pain and trouble just to give birth to a life that doesn't exist yet.
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you are so brave
So brave
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It's arguably ignoring their preferences, but how is it misgendering? they/them is gender neutral-- it implies nothing about their gender at all.
It does when you only do it for trans people. This is a common thing that a lot if trans people have experienced so it kinda comes across as being "PC" while not acknowledging their identity.
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Ideology does not come about from ‘convincing’ or ‘swaying’ anyone.
Tell that to the propaganda model. False consciousness is a real barrier which can and has dominated material class interests.
Propaganda functions with a pre-supposition of the initial dominance of the material over the immaterial. People are functionally motivated to accept specific ideological and social viewpoints where the material state encouraging that comes first. I think this article makes an interesting case for why this general concept is non-Marxist: https://redsails.org/masses-elites-and-rebels/
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No I'm not, I'm just not assuming immigrants have 0 buying power, which your post implicitly was, yes supply increases but demand also increases. Beyond that you get into the realms of having to do empirical research (which is hard).
it's not that difficult, it's quite obvious that immigrants and poor people have less buying power and therefore create less demand, while probably working harder than any billionaires and therefore create more supply.
i'd also argue that is straightforward to see. i don't see your misunderstanding?
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I don't like extreme leftists (they live in a bubble) but they've been right about everything and they are our best chance at resolving economic disparity
I'm curious how you square "they live in a bubble" with them being right?
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I don't like racism against white people or sexism against men. Do I think they're less urgent or worrying than bigotry directed at other groups? Sure. There's less hate against men and whites compared to other demographic groups, and bigotry against them simply doesn't have the same social or political impact due to current systemic racism and sexism being directed at other groups. But bigotry is still bigotry, and I don't like bigotry against anyone.
As a woman I'm not a fan of calling men simple or easy. They've just been conditioned differently, and that's a continued part of the patriarchy.
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I lean pretty hard left who is also pro death-penalty (IN VERY SPECIFIC CIRCUMSTANCES)
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If the case has absolutely been proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
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All appeals have been exhausted.
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Proof is absolutely undeniable.
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Guilty party shows no remorse.
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Crime is suffiently heinous (mass murder, child killing, serial killers, etc...)
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A legitimate psychiatric board has deemed that there is little to no chance at rehabilitation nor does the guilty party show any inclination to want to rehabilitate.
if ALL those things are true, (plus some that I haven't even considered) then I would rather execute them than pay for their living expenses for the rest of their natural life, or worse see them released at the end of their sentance absolutely knowing that they'll do it again.
I think we should create a system where people have a choice. Life in prison or death. I think k it would clear up a lot of the ethical issues of the death penalty.
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That progressive people should prioritize economic equality ahead of social issues.
I'd argue nearly every single social issue is an economic one. Abortion? Anti-abortion laws are intended to force people to have kids they can't afford, making them desperate for work to keep their kids fed and clothed. Racial equality? I mean, do I need to say more than the fact that most minorities are statistically poorer? The only one that can be argued is purely social is Trans people, and I simply can't fathom letting people die for being who they are, or ignoring the blatant attacks on them from the right.
