Zompist Bboard Again

christ's wounds, it's like you express an opinion that's to the left of bernard sanders and people stop reading you. no i'm not saying they're exactly identical (or, how travis puts it "essential equivalence"). i'm saying some things they agree on. any two parties will have a set of issue...

that's kind of the demopublican/republicrat strategy While granting that both parties have always had terrible foreign policy, there are plenty of important differences. Just to name one, the Democrats are not trying to rig elections to retain power permanently. They also at least gesture at suppor...

What's the difference? between party decisionmakers and people who support that party? really? The key word is "started" --- Arab Spring wasn't instigated by Obama, and Obama did not somehow instigate ISIS to do all their stuff. those are the reasons the us invaded. that does not negate t...

I dunno, why do you keep ignoring the things I actually say? " Pi isn't a physical object, nor a god; it doesn't live in Mathland eating smaller irrational numbers", "I'm not a Platonist", etc. I don't think the laws of logic are true because of something in physics, but I expec...

Latest polls, last month: Democrats support Palestinians over Israelis, 67% to 17%. I mean the party, not the constituents. people who lean democrat are not the democrat party. Can you name the last war started by a Democrat? lybia and iraq 2.0, no? [preemptive: it doesn't matter if gaddafi and isi...

that's kind of the demopublican/republicrat strategy I see that you're one of those people who intends that the Republicans have indefinite control by splitting the center-left vote because "but but but aren't the Democrats just like the Republicans!!!!1" no, i just think there's a defini...

that's kind of the demopublican/republicrat strategy

I think the circumference/diameter ratio has always had the same value, no matter what humans thought it was. I also think it's either true or false that Napoleon reached Moscow, and that dinosaurs existed. I think if p and q are true, then "p or q" is true. I don't think any of these bel...

That is a straight line— it's a geodesic in curved spacetime. see how maths change? See how "physical reality" changes? Back in Pythagoras's day the earth was flat, now it's round! It used to be that humans were created by God, now they were created by monkeys! Pi used to be 3, now it's s...

christ's wounds, man, no one's beating math with a stick here: i'm saying it's not a transcendental immanent concept-without-conceiver, but it is certainly one of man's greatest achievements. math is cool and good as it is, but i'm saying take mathematical nominalism to be correct here, i'm not sayi...

i agree that pi is a concept from physics. because it is a concept, it was conceived. i also agree that "something in the material universe must be causing it" leads obviously to the question "okay what", which man, i don't know. I can tell you the thing with parallels has to do...

i agree that pi is a concept from physics. because it is a concept, it was conceived. i also agree that "something in the material universe must be causing it" leads obviously to the question "okay what", which man, i don't know. I can tell you the thing with parallels has to do ...

it's true that paper only goes so far, but also there's functionally already such a system in place for the wealthy: if you have enough money you can get into any country you want and be treated as well or better than a full citizen of it, possibly with the exception of like north korea or yemen. an...

does that apply to all things that function more or less independently of substrate? for example, doom, which can run on -in principle- a computer made out of anything? is there a Doom that exists independently of material reality? now if we found a Doom that can run on no material substrate, then t...

That's just a special case of what we've been saying all along! what is, the "since pi is the same for circles of any materiality, there must be a Pi that exists independently of material reality" or the "pi is what is it because of some feature of spacetime or of what we mean by pi ...

I'm not convinced of that. settler colonialism does not amount to foreigners coming to live here [wherever here is], it also involves a regime of social and legal superiority of the settler group over the natives, as was the case in the past in colonial latin america, or north america, or africa, or...

What you call solipsism is what I'd call philosophy, or neuroscience... you can't get a much grimmer view of the brain than by reading people who study it. For everyday life, sure, we all ignore philosophy. But we're not indulging in everyday life here, we're talking about the nature of reality, an...

i live under a civil law system, and tbh i wouldn't be opposed to juries. precedent is something all legal systems have, though it's slightly less important in civil law regimes than in common law ones, Is that so? Wikipedia made it sound like precedent is the biggest difference between common law ...

Admittedly the common law system of the US has always sounded rather janky to me, at least as Wikipedia and such describe it. The whole concept of precedent, where law derives from continuity with past judicial rulings, sounds remarkably pre-modern like tribal custom or something. The civil law app...

Well, it looks like my mum has (early stage) breast cancer. It seems there is not a year where misfortune does not befall those I love. maan, that sucks, sorry to hear it. at least it's early stage, and breast cancers tend to have better prognosis than other sorts. an aunt got it a few years ago an...