Politics thread (USA Elections 2016) - Page 290

On May 17 2021 22:37 blackjacki2 wrote: Show nested quote + On May 17 2021 19:43 Stroggoz wrote: There are a few easy solutions actually. You'd be surprised at how easy some of the solutions are to complex conflicts. For example, one of them is that countries like (the US), can stop selling arms to Israel. It's really not hard to do. Just don't sell weapons! SIPRI has now made a search database that allows you to search for all arms sold/bought from nation to nation, quite a useful tool that people can use. So your solution is to disarm Israel? I believe this is called the Final Solution. Hitler approves.

For sure. Israel know that Europe will not help them at all if they are attacked again like the 3 previous times. 48, 67 and I think 72? Hamas charter states that their main goal is the destruction of the jewish state.

Last time the arab nations tried to destroy Israel, american fighter jets was not even allowed to land in Europe to help them out... Those wars was about the exsistance of Israel and the jewish people in the middle east!! I dont understand why we would think Israel cares about what we have to say? At the very least we could make sure our criticism is objective and fair! Not one-sided. I think we owe them that much.

We are clearly not their allies, we clearly care a lot more about the arabic dicatorships for whatever reason (oil? Or them not overflooding the market with oil to dump the price? I dunno). We showed them and the jews again and again and again that we will not lift a finger to help them or even mass murder their people. We are totally ignorant to even think we have a voice and I hope Israel will not share their great technology and innovations with us in Europe anymore, we do not deserve it for how we threat/threated them and their people.

Yes, nobody lifted a finger to help Israel, they singlehandedly developed all of their military personnel and have the most modern arms, while taking control over that entire region and the second someone goes against them there's a statement from the US president hinting they shouldn't be doing that shit. Poor Israelis , they are the victims

On May 23 2021 04:56 blackjacki2 wrote: What is "mostly false" about this story? Who is saying that she is eternally banning white people? It references Tucker Carlson but after watching his segment I'm pretty sure he clearly stated that it's for the anniversary of her inauguration. Most people have enough sense to know that an anniversary is 1 day and not an eternity.

That she'd refused all interviews with white people, rather than just one-on-one interviews. Carlson's segment calls her a monster and compares her to Nazis, and "educates" us on how racism is built on hatred while it's pretty clear that her decision to do this for a day was purely symbolic and for attention and not rooted in some kind of deep hatred of white people. This kind of propaganda would be offensive to anyone who is not already biased towards that side.

On May 23 2021 18:20 Loco wrote: Show nested quote + On May 23 2021 04:56 blackjacki2 wrote: What is "mostly false" about this story? Who is saying that she is eternally banning white people? It references Tucker Carlson but after watching his segment I'm pretty sure he clearly stated that it's for the anniversary of her inauguration. Most people have enough sense to know that an anniversary is 1 day and not an eternity. That she'd refused all interviews with white people, rather than just one-on-one interviews. Carlson's segment calls her a monster and compares her to Nazis, and "educates" us on how racism is built on hatred while it's pretty clear that her decision to do this for a day was purely symbolic and for attention and not rooted in some kind of deep hatred of white people. This kind of propaganda would be offensive to anyone who is not already biased towards that side.

Tucker Carlson quoted her word for word and put the quote up on the screen. There is literally nothing that Tucker Carlson misconstrued so they must be calling his "hyperbolic outrage" mostly false? So now the fact checkers get to decide which opinions are true and false? This is exactly the kind of nonsense people on the left want for all of social media because they assume that these so-called fact checkers will always show bias toward their side.

Trump was called Hitler daily for his dog whistles but a politician literally excluding an entire race of people from something is not a big deal. The hypocrisy is palpable.

Why bother with people like Tucker Carlson, that guy had the option to do literally anything with his life and chose to be a puppet that manipulates the masses and I understand the irony that I'm using ad hominem but it's simply pointless to waste time on anything he says

On May 24 2021 14:59 Spitfiree wrote: Why bother with people like Tucker Carlson, that guy had the option to do literally anything with his life and chose to be a puppet that manipulates the masses and I understand the irony that I'm using ad hominem but it's simply pointless to waste time on anything he says

Loco is the one that brought Tucker Carlson to the topic. It's just a lazy attempt to say "hey you're on the same side of the argument as the Fox News clown so your argument must be shit."

It's just deflection. Just like in the middle east topic. You think Israel is wrong for stealing land from Palestinians? Well Hamas is firing rockets into Israel and trying to kill all Israelis so if you are more outraged over some legal evictions than what Hamas is doing you must be biased lol

On May 20 2021 06:51 Baalim wrote: Show nested quote + On May 18 2021 22:24 Liquid`Drone wrote: I mean I agree with that but I don't see a balance of power between Israel (and who? 'The arab world'? Iran? Palestine?) solving the greater question of 'where should we draw the borders'. My understanding is that allowing for the zionist landgrab after ww2 was a mistake - but that's 70 years ago, the people involved in that are dead. In the past I've been supportive of reverting back to 1967 status, but I mean, that's already 2 generations ago. Israel ending the settlements is a solution to the escalation of problems. Partially disarming Israel ends their ability to strongarm Palestine/neighboring countries, but it doesn't solve the greater issue of who should live where. Basically letting either side 'win' isn't an option - Israel 'winning' is what it currently looks like, and it's abhorrent. Israel 'losing' prolly wouldn't be any prettier, we'd just see a different set of victims.. Finding a compromise both sides are happy with seems fairly impossible. But yes, there are things we can do to stop the escalation of the conflict. And here, I hold Israel far more responsible than Palestine. I think equal military power would escalate the violence and maybe unleash an actual war, stop selling weapons to Israel won't happen since there are many countries selling and they can also develop their own, so the only way would be to arm Palestine and that sounds dangerous as hell. This is a problem will go on for many decades and there isn't much to be done, the hate runs too deep, maybe Israel stopping his shitty expansionist policies will get a ceasefire for a while but Hamas won't stop until Israel is wiped from the map.

There is something such as international cooperation, the united nations does exist. It is actually the only way to solve almost all the major problems in the world.

This podcast from 2014 took me from pro-palestine to neutral/a bit pro israel at the time:



He gave me a lot of arguments and perspective about the conflict that norwegian media never covers at all. Its just as relevant today even thou the war was not as ugly this time as it was in 2014.

Oh, wow. Sam Harris the intellectual juggernaut. I wonder how many of his 444 iq takes are nothing more than thinly veiled Islamaphobia.

Sam calls himself a philosopher yet he only has an undergraduate degree. Stanford University is an excellent school but what significant work has Sam actually done in philosophy?

I don't know if End of Faith counts. Does he Aristotle bro? Gödel? Frege? Heraclitus? Kant? Hegel? et al et al et al ...

I like to read philosophy, write stuff on occasion, and go for daily walks to contemplate things. Even if some of my days might resemble a day of Schopenhauer or Nietzsche this does not make me a philosopher and it would be absurd to brand myself a philosopher on resumes or social media.

While a phd in cognitive neuroscience from ucla is more of an achievement Sam runs into the same problem. He's not a practicing neuroscientist. Why the fuck does he say he is a neuroscientist?

Sam can talk about things he did as a graduate student but he is not a neuroscientist.

Sam is a charlatan. Sam has a podcast. Sam has written many books that are not very good. This idea that Sam is this super-powered reasoner of all things is a fraud. I think it started somewhere along the way with Joe Rogan. To think that Joe Rogan is some arbiter of thought is fucking ridiculous but in the 21st century Joe Rogan is some arbiter of thought!

APPALLING.

today I learned Sam Harris is an idiot therefore Islam should rule Jerusalem and the world

On May 28 2021 19:36 RiKD wrote: Oh, wow. Sam Harris the intellectual juggernaut. I wonder how many of his 444 iq takes are nothing more than thinly veiled Islamaphobia. Sam calls himself a philosopher yet he only has an undergraduate degree. Stanford University is an excellent school but what significant work has Sam actually done in philosophy? I don't know if End of Faith counts. Does he Aristotle bro? Gödel? Frege? Heraclitus? Kant? Hegel? et al et al et al ... I like to read philosophy, write stuff on occasion, and go for daily walks to contemplate things. Even if some of my days might resemble a day of Schopenhauer or Nietzsche this does not make me a philosopher and it would be absurd to brand myself a philosopher on resumes or social media. While a phd in cognitive neuroscience from ucla is more of an achievement Sam runs into the same problem. He's not a practicing neuroscientist. Why the fuck does he say he is a neuroscientist? Sam can talk about things he did as a graduate student but he is not a neuroscientist. Sam is a charlatan. Sam has a podcast. Sam has written many books that are not very good. This idea that Sam is this super-powered reasoner of all things is a fraud. I think it started somewhere along the way with Joe Rogan. To think that Joe Rogan is some arbiter of thought is fucking ridiculous but in the 21st century Joe Rogan is some arbiter of thought! APPALLING.

I posted the video because I never heard anyone argument better on this subject. He gave me perspective that nobody ever told me.

I dont even understand half of your post... The little I recognize does not seem correct, he critizes all religions not just islam. What on earth does it (your ad hominem attacks) have to do with the arguments in his talk?

On May 28 2021 19:36 RiKD wrote: Oh, wow. Sam Harris the intellectual juggernaut. I wonder how many of his 444 iq takes are nothing more than thinly veiled Islamaphobia. Sam calls himself a philosopher yet he only has an undergraduate degree. Stanford University is an excellent school but what significant work has Sam actually done in philosophy? I don't know if End of Faith counts. Does he Aristotle bro? Gödel? Frege? Heraclitus? Kant? Hegel? et al et al et al ... I like to read philosophy, write stuff on occasion, and go for daily walks to contemplate things. Even if some of my days might resemble a day of Schopenhauer or Nietzsche this does not make me a philosopher and it would be absurd to brand myself a philosopher on resumes or social media. While a phd in cognitive neuroscience from ucla is more of an achievement Sam runs into the same problem. He's not a practicing neuroscientist. Why the fuck does he say he is a neuroscientist? Sam can talk about things he did as a graduate student but he is not a neuroscientist. Sam is a charlatan. Sam has a podcast. Sam has written many books that are not very good. This idea that Sam is this super-powered reasoner of all things is a fraud. I think it started somewhere along the way with Joe Rogan. To think that Joe Rogan is some arbiter of thought is fucking ridiculous but in the 21st century Joe Rogan is some arbiter of thought! APPALLING.

You shouldn't care about qualifications, it's just an appeal to authority. Aside from that, all you do is ad hominem him, no real criticism is offered but there is a lot of good criticism out there...

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This is what qualifications and big names can get you in terms of political philosophy though:

Frege's logic was good (until it wasn't), but his political philosophy could be summed up as: Let's put Hitler in power, and expel the jews from Germany. He kept his views to himself, in his diary, however.

Godel was a proud supporter of joseph Stalin. He considered everything except for mathematics/logic to be pseudoscience, basically. His work in mathematics is one of the greatest theorems in history though.

I've read Kant's political philosophy and don't really remember much from it, it was not particularly interesting to me. It seemed to be a summary of enlightenment sentiments, and was pro internationalism, as a path forward to international order and peace. It's something i agree with, and maybe it was interesting at the time, I guess, but there were people before him that expressed these sentiments.

Aristotle's philosophy was impressive to me. He has some pretty bad arguments, but his work overall is quite scientific, and his methodology has become standard. Comparative politics! Very good for the time.

There's nothing wrong with calling yourself a philosopher if you have no qualifications, as long as you are one. Sometimes it's almost a requirement to lose your title/status to be a good philosopher/scientist, as history tells us.

The idea that a bachelors in philosophy from Stanford and a PhD in neuroscience from UCLA still leaves Sam Harris so unqualified to talk about philosophy that he is a "charlatan" is hilarious

Hi, my name is Ad-hom Andy. My strategy in the Politics Thread is to throw pickles at the window and see what will stick.

Another strategy is to never consume anything that Sam Harris puts out into the world. I thought VanDerMeyde's video was going to be a 3 hour Sam Harris podcast which I am not willing to pan my way through. I double checked and it is 15 min. which is easily doable but I still am not that interested.

Stroggoz,

I like this idea of losing title/status for good philosophy/science. I can think of some examples.

For continental philosophy though it seems pretty standard to develop a strong understanding of the Greeks and then progress through the Germans at an elite German University. Sprinkle in important French thought and that is the prototype for a God of Western Thought.

Heidegger wrote Being and Time but he also stabbed his mentor in the back for some hope of being a Nazi Philosopher King.

Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir, talks a big game about how Palantir will save the precious Western World. After-all, he did get a phd from Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany and worked with Jurgen Habermas for a period of time on his thesis. Karp would certainly know what the West needs... It needs new technology for the CIA, US Military, ICE, et al. for better "efficiency." What does better "efficiency" mean? You don't want to know...

On the other side of things there is a guy like Byung-Chul Han. He is a great example of how a strong education in German Thought can be the groundwork for a lot of future great thought.

Edgar Morin is an example of a guy that didn't seem to care about the titles or status and just went all-in on knowledge and a multi-disciplinary education. He is difficult to categorize. He never tried to sneak in with the post-modernists like Foucault, Derrida, Baudrillard, etc. I doubt he is taught in many USA universities as basically only 2 of his books have been translated into english. Loco is probably the most educated person on Morin's thought in all of North America. Maybe there are some others in Quebec and also Mexico since I got the impression latinx gente get more Morin translations but I never looked into it too deeply.

We could probably go back and forth for a while with all sorts of different examples. I just thought about Ramanujan...

blackjackijack,

Sam can talk about whatever he wants it is his podcast. However, he is not a thought leader in every category. If Sam wants to go off on how religion is stupid or how psychedelics changed his life that is all well and good...

Here is an example:

I remember reading Free Will by Sam and it made me think a lot. I was verging toward determinism and then Loco introduced me to Daniel Dennett. It was a game changer. Dennett simply has a much higher power level in that category. If I were to be a determinist I would have to do some more work than just rely on Sam Harris.

I don't think the majority of Palestinians have any desire for Arabic Muslims to take over the world. They just want to survive. They want clean water. They want schools and libraries that aren't rubble. They want to be able to go to sleep with out worrying about their homes and children being bombed. Imagine walking down the street in your open air prison and not knowing if the IDF sniper watching you through his scope is a psychopath or not. The chances of getting headshot are not zero even if it is a child playing.

"He is not a thought leader in every category" is a lot different from "He is a charlatan"

I didn't listen to that video VanDerMeyde posted until now. It's probably similar to the propaganda that was pedaled when the Native Americans were being exterminated. We're the dignified ones legally claiming the land and they are the savages that would not hesitate to take the scalps of any white person they could.

So, most of my experience with Sam Harris is on the JRE where Sam could talk about anything for 4 hours and Joe Rogan would suck his cock the whole time. It's not like Joe Rogan was even capable of pushback and those things were shit shows. I think the only time I tuned into Sam's podcast is when Jordan B Peterson was on. Curiosity killed the cat. That thing was terrible. The intellectual dark web grift was strong but thankfully they only swindled me out of my attention. I don't think Sam is as strong a charlatan as Peterson. I remember when I first read End of Faith I thought it was well thought out and a notable work for atheism. Free Will was interesting but I could have gone elsewhere for determinist thought all the same. I remember liking Lying. The rest are nothing to write home about. I read part of Peterson's first book Maps of Meaning and there was no way in hell I was going to subject myself to reading the whole thing. 12 Rules for Life is not worth reading.

I am not sure what you are saying in your 2nd paragraph.

I looked up what polls are saying in regards to support for Hamas in the West Bank and Gaza. It seems like support for Hamas is 40-50% (Gaza was more than West Bank) whatever that means. I don't like polls and I distrust polls but I don't know how else to quantify Palestinian support for Hamas. Certainly the people that insinuate that the West Bank and Gaza equal Hamas are ridiculous and clearly the people that say only innocent 5 year old Palestinians are getting murdered are also ridiculous. What is that old 2+2 question? How many 5 year olds could Netanyahu take on? Probably not the amount that reside in the West Bank and Gaza so clearly he has to bomb them all to death.

Terrorizing people in a Mosque on one of their most spiritual days of Ramadan is clearly not a fair thing to do. So, Hamas fires off rockets they make in their bathtubs. Is this the right thing to do? Probably not but what do you do about all the injustices to the Palestinian people? How many of these makeshift rockets even get through the Iron Dome?

Israel bombing the hell out of everything is not the right thing to do.

On May 30 2021 03:44 RiKD wrote: I am not sure what you are saying in your 2nd paragraph.

I'm saying his arguments in that video are so bad that they'd probably be similar to the propaganda used against the Native Americans to diminish the horrible things white people did to them. His main argument seems to be that Israel is morally superior because the Palestinians have more hatred for the Israelis than the Israelis have for the Palestinians. I'd expect an oppressed people to have more hatred for their oppressors than vice versa, that doesn't make the oppressors morally superior. He expects a kudos for Israel because they can commit genocide against the Palestinians but they don't. He also talks almost exclusively about Hamas because he prefers to frame the Palestinian side by their most extremist members.

On May 30 2021 20:07 blackjacki2 wrote: Show nested quote + On May 30 2021 03:44 RiKD wrote: I am not sure what you are saying in your 2nd paragraph. I'm saying his arguments in that video are so bad that they'd probably be similar to the propaganda used against the Native Americans to diminish the horrible things white people did to them. His main argument seems to be that Israel is morally superior because the Palestinians have more hatred for the Israelis than the Israelis have for the Palestinians. I'd expect an oppressed people to have more hatred for their oppressors than vice versa, that doesn't make the oppressors morally superior. He expects a kudos for Israel because they can commit genocide against the Palestinians but they don't. He also talks almost exclusively about Hamas because he prefers to frame the Palestinian side by their most extremist members.

During the time of the podcast, Israels war was only against Hamas. So why would you critize Sam Harris for focusing a bit on Hamas?

I disagree, I think all his points are valid (yes, also the ones against Israel).

"Whatever terrible things the Israelis have done, it is also true to say that they have used more restraint in their fighting against the Palestinians than we—the Americans, or Western Europeans—have used in any of our wars."

Should make us think that one.. He is right too.

Today I learned that transgenders are allowed to compete in their gender division in the Olympics rather than their biological sex .... that's a big joke