In theory that’s how it works already. In practice, there is currently no disadvantage to appointing partisan judges and no system in which to objectively measure partisanship of a candidate. What that means is that there will always be partisan parties appointing partisan judges and there will always be candidates who claimed to be neutral who will be either accused of or proven to be partisan anyway.

In the current system true neutrality on the bench does not exist

I like the “formally” vs “formerly” suggesting Elon is never going to get away from Twitter in favor of X

My mind is blown. This is very well written. Thank you

Being self righteous about doing nothing is worse.

Despite your own brand of defeatism in insisting the outcome is the same no matter what, one side actually is better. Even if the metric of “better” pales on the grand scheme of what we deserve or should be doing.

I’m not trying to project self-righteousness by recognizing that there are only two real choices. I’m asserting that advocating non-action or pointless action is such a tired trope that what you’re doing is circlejerking for dopamine instead of applying what little influence you have as an individual to work toward the avoiding the actual worst outcome.

When the American populace as a whole is brainwashed into believing the only choices are red and blue, you have to accept that whining about it and voting green (or not voting) is going to accomplish nothing.

So make your colorful allegory and feel good about yourself on the internet. In the end, you are accomplishing less than the people you look down on who recognize the shitty reality of our situation.

I’m a little shakey on the details but I think it has more to do with the extra bone mass in relation to the way the jaw functions. It acts more like a shock absorbing bumper than a lever.

Other animals that get punched there tend to take that blow more to the throat, which is a bit more problatic

I read somewhere sometime ago that the theory that makes the most sense is that we evolved chins to take a punch, which animals besides our immediate evolutionary relatives do not do.

So we evolved chins as an evolutionary advantage over our immediate evolutionary relatives who would logically be competing for the same resources.

Touché

You can die of cirrhosis from drinking too much for too long, but it’s still culturally held as a stress reliever. You can die from diabetes if you eat too much sugar for too long, but it’s still sold to children as edible happiness. Hell, you can die slowly and painfully from taking too much Tylenol, but it’s still the world’s most popular painkiller by far.

Too much of anything kills eventually. That doesn’t bare any significance to whether or not it’s good for stress in some amount.

People here seem to be mistaking stupidity as a measure of intelligence. Stupidity is a measure of wisdom.

An abundance of information doesn’t fix stupidity in the same way that shoveling water out of a boat with a leak won’t stop it from sinking.

You have to address the leak before shoveling water becomes productive. Or to circle back around, you have to address how someone learns, parses, and applies information before feeding them more information becomes productive.

I start almost every comment I make on those instances with

I know this will net me a ban

to play a bit of reverse psychology with the mods there, who don’t touch my comments when the denizens there inevitablely say

Oh yeah you think you’re so smart well we don’t ban opposing opinions unlike some places

And the mods there have their hands tied because banning me would prove their own guys wrong.

It’s worked pretty well so far.

The Dollop podcast did a thorough job covering this one. Definitely worth a listen

Again, philosophy is only tangentially related to proof. You can’t examine a theory like the ship of theseus with any of those methods and come out with a conclusive answer. If you could, it wouldn’t be a philosophical topic.

You don’t understand that, and I’m not going to attempt the impossible to prove it to you. That’s why this conversation is meaningless and I don’t really wish to continue it.

Have a good night

Evidenced-based discussion is only tangentially related to philosophy. There’s no point in sharing my thoughts if the crux of your counterpoint essentially boils down to “prove it or go home”

In the meantime, if I can present three separate, historical philosophical ideas to you and you can shoot them all down with one phrase demanding proof and a supposition that everyone else is just mistaken, you may want to reexamine your idea of an open mind.

You have engaged a philosophical topic with evidence-based expectations. I recognize the futility of continuing this conversation, and so I won’t. Making a point and being countered with “maybe you’re just wrong” is literally a waste of my time.

I did more than enough to clarify the original person’s point. I don’t owe you a scientific explanation for that which you refuse to consider.

Later.

In this case, I guess I’d treat it as any other fantastical statement: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Ah, so this conversation doesn’t matter. You made up your mind even before you even asked for explanation.

By design, philosophical concepts neither require nor can produce proof. If they could, they literally wouldn’t be philosophy. If your idea of arguing how “you” exists includes the line of reasoning that you need proof, then the truth to you is that “you” don’t exist, because you cannot prove your consciousness to someone else either. Just the same as I cannot empirically prove my consciousness to you. You are an amalgamation of chemicals and genetics, as you said.

So really, one taking your stance doesn’t have the conversational authority to even ask what proof is there. The hard evidence is just chemical reactions and genetics all the way down.

In any case, all three of the concepts I listed are not my ideas. They are debated topics, some for literally centuries, in the philosophical world. If you suppose yourself better than the likes of Plato or Socrates because you think you can label a fundamental aspect of the universe as a “mistake” people make when they think about it, then there’s really no honest way you can even approach theories like those without immediately discrediting them.

I guess have fun with that. But for me, there’s no point in contemplating with someone who supposes that proof precedes basic concepts of philosophy in a question inherently about philosophy.

I read this 15 years ago in highschool. It was probably the single most defining piece of literature that shaped how I view life.

Every time I look at something or someone and ponder their perspective, I can’t help but get the itchy feeling that “I” (not myself of course, but my little point of consciousness) might be them one day and have to deal with their problems.

It usually makes me a lot more charitable in conflicts and it gives me a compelling reason to randomly make someone’s day better.

So thanks for changing my life that way, Andy Weir

Yes, we can on many levels. I am not sure who says these things

Never heard of the “universe started Thursday” theory?

Essentially, there is no proof that the universe didn’t start last Thursday. All of your memories, your experiences, your tangible progress, could be planted and you would never know.

So how do you know you are “you” as you think you are, or if you’re just a week old construct that believes you are “you”?

Also, I think that the whole “we can’t be certain we are the same person who wakes up every morning” is based on the ship of theseus concept they were building on.

You wouldn’t consider yourself the exact same person you were when you were 5 for obvious reasons. So it stands to reason that that change happened at some point. How would you know that you did not change over night? And if you did, are you the same person as yesterday? And if you answer yes, where’s the line? Are you the same person as last year? 5 years ago? Obviously not, so how can you know that that caliber of change hasn’t happened to you in a night, or that any amount of change makes you someone else?

Also, they could be referring to the broken consciousness theory, where consciousness is destroyed when you fall asleep, created when you wake, and dreams are an illusion.

In that scenario, if your stream of consciousness actually is broken, can you say you are the same person as yesterday? If the breaking of consciousness doesn’t matter in that question, would a perfect copy of you with all of your memories also be you? Or not, because you can’t experience their perspective?

I think the break here is whether or not you can define consciousness as “you”. For your supposition to be true, the answer would necessarily have to be no, as you said you can prove that you are yourself in many other ways.

But without a point of perspective experiencing the universe, what are we?

If you say so. It isn’t really my problem anymore either way. They can be insufferable by themselves if that’s what they truly want

I put up with hexbear for awhile, but I ended up blocking them eventually.

Sure, they don’t mind explaining their points if you’re careful about asking. But god forbid you express disagreement. If you aren’t with them completely, you’re a fascist.

Here’s the thing, if you disagree with American imperialism but you’re actively cheering on Russian imperialism, you’re a hypocrite.

It’s fine to be polarized against the actions of the American government. There are quite a lot of people who are, even within the states. It’s fine to be polarized against the west. Being at least wary of the west permeates pretty much everywhere in the east.

It’s not fine to call out imperialism from the west with one side of your mouth and praise imperialism from the east with the other side. And brother, I haven’t met someone on the tankie communities that doesn’t get a hard on simping for the Russian war.