[alancalverd]

What evidence do you have of the popularity of Lukashenko?

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

moderator   

Does he survive?
For how long?

[alancalverd]

Communist dictators and the heads of theocracies do not need to be popular as long as they pay the army, secret police, or whoever they use to suppress dissent. And since the said enforcers also collect the taxes,  there is no theoretical limit to their reign.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Communist dictators and the heads of theocracies do not need to be popular as long as they pay the army, secret police, or whoever they use to suppress dissent. And since the said enforcers also collect the taxes,  there is no theoretical limit to their reign.

At least they are popular among the army and secret police.
There is a technical/biological limit though.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

"What Am I Missing?" Sam Harris vs Alex O'Connor on Objective Morality

When the main terms of the discussion subject are not properly defined, we will feel like talking past each other.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

IMO there are two interpretations of the word "objective" which cause much of disagreements in discussions about objective morality.
The hard interpretation says that objective means independent from any observer. A statement can be objectively true or false even when no one is observing or verifying it. For example, the existence of the sun is objectively true even if there's no conscious entity to observe it.
On the other hand, the soft interpretation says that objective means independent from whoever makes the observation/evaluation. It implicitly assumes that there's always conscious entities to make the observation.

By definition, morality exists to distinguish between good and bad things. This distinction requires a goal as the evaluation criteria, or something to compare against. In turn, it requires a conscious entity to pursue the goal.
Those who said that there's objective morality must have used the soft interpretation, because otherwise, they are making an oxymoronic statement. On the other hand, hard interpretation leads to the conclusion that there's no objective morality.

To avoid confusion, I used the phrase universal moral standard instead of objective morality (which needs to implicitly use soft interpretation of the word "objective"). The word universal was intended to avoid contradictory requirements with the word morality, like when we use hard interpretation of the word objective.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Chomsky: "Education is not memorizing that Hitler killed 6m Jews.

Education is understanding how millions of ordinary Germans were convinced that it was required.

Education is learning how to spot the signs of history repeating itself."

Societies who care about their future and the future of their successors have better chance to survive and thrive, compared to those who don't. Some societies are more effective and efficient in their efforts to have a better future. Some kinds of sacrifice might be necessary to achieve their goals. Making unnecessary sacrifices can be seen as symptoms of evil actions.

[alancalverd]

Education is understanding how millions of ordinary Germans were convinced that it was required.

Worth reading "Everyday Hate" by Dave Rich. To sum up the entire book: thanks to religion and politics, antisemitism is the norm in most societies, ready for use when convenient.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Inside the Brain of a Psychopath

In this video, Justin from the Institute of Human Anatomy discusses the physical differences in the nervous systems of those that suffer from Antisocial Personality Disorder.

Video Timeline

00:00 - 00:47 Intro
00:48 - 01:59 Cluster B Personality Disorders
02:00 - 03:07 Psychopath vs Sociopath
03:08 - 04:55 Serotonin Creation/Action
04:56 - 06:16 MAOA and Genetics
06:17 - 06:36 Genetics and Psychopathy
06:37 - 08:39 Function of Serotonin
08:40 - 09:51 Serotonin and the Fetal Brain
09:52 - 11:25 Why Men Are More Commonly Psychopathic
11:26 - 12:22 The Contributing Factors of Psychopathy
12:23 - 13:04 The Struggle of Studying Psychopaths
13:05 - 15:13 The Empathy Center of the Brain
15:14 - 17:54 The Rational Center of the Brain
17:55 - 18:47 Childhood Trauma and the Brain
18:48 - 19:43 Sociopathy and Childhood Trauma
19:44 - 22:04 The Common Behaviors of Psychopaths and Sociopaths
22:05 - 24:16 Unique Behaviors of Psychopaths
24:17 - 25:37 Unique Behaviors of Sociopaths
25:38 - 26:56 Treating Antisocial Personality Disorder
26:57 - 28:16 Justin's Opinion on a Solution
28:17 - 28:53 Why You Can't Diagnose Children
28:54 - 29:34 The Impossible Task Ahead of Us
29:35 - 33:50 The Importance of Logic
____

Without a common terminal goal, we can't say that those psychopaths are the ones suffering disorders, and not the other way around. Some traits can be said to be disorders or disabilities if they cause the individuals with those traits have less positive impacts or have more negative impacts to the society they are living in.

Empathy can be seen as a calculation shortcut which works well in most social situation while using less time and energy, compared to fully rational considerations. Lacking of empathy don't always necessarily produce bad decisions, especially when it's compensated by a correct terminal goal and adequate information processing capacity.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

The Psychology of Psychopaths - Predators who Walk Among Us
Here's one of the comments.

I dealt with psychopaths for decades in the prison/jail system, they are an interesting group. Their psychopathy runs along a continuum from street hustles to someone void of empathic feelings. Some were nice  men/women, other were obnoxious, demanding, entitled and aggressive.

I agree that psychopathy is not a binary trait. Treating it as such is a false dichotomy.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

The Psychology of Moral Disengagement

Moral disengagement is a process of cognitive restructuring that allows individuals to disassociate from their internal moral standards and behave unethically without feeling distressed. It is the story we tell ourselves to not feel bad about inhumane actions that normally would go against our moral principles, or the excuses we find to avoid feeling guilty about hurting others.

In principle, moral evaluation can be done based on how accurate someone's assessment of cause and effect relationship with their actions.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Why Good People Comply with Evil - Daniel Schmachtenberger

In this episode Daniel answers the question, "Why should people care about global existential issues?". He cites 2 experiments, the "Milgram experiment" (1961) and the "Asch conformity experiments" to serve as examples of how good people can be complicit with evil acts.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Trump Official Brags About Giving Homeless People Fake Money to Get Them Arrested

John McEntee, a former (and likely future) Trump official, posted a TikTok bragging about getting innocent unhoused people arrested by giving them counterfeit money. His odiousness doesn?t stop there. He?s one of the instigators of Trump?s J6th insurrection and a senior advisor to The Heritage Foundation?s ?Project 2025? plan for Trump?s second term. We?ll give you more details about this cretin in this video.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Situations like these might happen when people are ignorant about the universal moral standard.

[alancalverd]

You are presuming that we are all in the same boat, and care about the fate of others. No evidence.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

You are presuming that we are all in the same boat, and care about the fate of others. No evidence.

The boat is a metaphor for something of concern that we commonly share and depend on. It could be a house, a building, a neighborhood, a village, a tribe, a city, an island, a company, a country, a race, a species, a planet, a solar system, etc. Even if we are being selfish, we should care about that shared concerns. Inability to do so shows our lack of consciousness, as if we are still a little child. In that case, we shouldn't be trusted with power to make decisions that can impact others.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Morally Uncooperative Worlds

What if there are moral facts, but we can't enact them?

0:00 - Consequentialism
2:31 - Virtue ethics
4:21 - Kantianism
6:44 - Skeptical theism
10:21 - Antirealism to the rescue?
14:48 - Morality as action-guiding
20:00 - Methodism vs particularism

Decision making process, either in morality, economics, or process safety needs to consider uncertainty about the future. The risk of a particular hazard can be quantified as a product of probability times severity of that hazard in a specified time period. On positive side, the opportunity can also be quantified as a product of probability times benefits.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

Student at Oxford and Cambridge explains why they're protesting and the demands that the students have for the universities regarding the Palestinian Protest.

Be ware of sarcastic comments by the co-hosts.

[alancalverd]

As they are not protesting about starvation in Darfur, the treatment of Uighurs in China, the invasion of Ukraine, the curtailment of human rights in Iran or Hong Kong, the treatment of Kurds in Turkey, or of Muslims in Myanmar, the supply of weapons to Saudi Arabia or the persistent refusal of the British Government to prosecute the criminals who ran the post office, supplied defective blood products to the NHS, or currently run the water companies, to we can safely assume that this is just another example of well-funded slimy antisemitism taking advantage of good weather and unthinking students.

If you look at a map, Israel is about the size of Yorkshire. If you look at a newspaper, you'd think it's bigger than Russia. No need to wonder why: antisemitism is always popular with voters, and nobody likes a Jew who fights back.

[hamdani yusuf (OP)]

They are expressing concern of where their money goes to.