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Thats very well put and those problems are generally very underappreciated here (especially the ethics part) .

If you accept that argument then it deletes itself, because whats the justification for the epistemic regress argument? ( you are still inside the regress problem) + there are responses to that argument ie coherentism and foundationalism.

@Rafael Thundercat Im sorry man, but even this thread became a shitfest lol. This unironically perfectly proves your point about this forum still running the exact same circles and debates around certain topics and it proves the point that almost every thread eventually turns into a philosophy or spiritual debate.

I see. Do we know how rules of engagement is conducted in general ( Im specifically asking in terms of what kind of and how international law(s) restrict rules of engagment) edit: It seems that it is self-imposed generally speaking.

Is that rule of engagment is unique to the IDF or that rule of engagement is standard when it comes to wars in general?

@Ayham The problem you are outlining is not exclusive to religious fundamentalists. It is a general tendency to be dogmatic about certain things. Regarding you debating them - you have to be clear to yourself about whats your goal with those debates and depending on what your goal is, you need to first check whether it is worth it or not. Sometimes you need to leave people alone even if you know for sure that their belief about something is 100% wrong. Some reasons for that are: 1) Not all people can be persuaded (especially about certain things) 2) Sometimes arguing with people make their position more antifragile ( if you show them contradictions in their view, they will adapt their original position to it,without needing to change the original worldview - so in this case you will get a more advanced muslim worldview). + you have to remember that persuasion doesn't stop with argumentation (especially when it comes to certain positions that wasn't rationally arrived at). Scientific arguments won't work in general on fundamentalists. Maybe a better tactic would be introducing them to different views in a much more friendly way, where they don't feel attacked. So for example: Introducing them to honest, friendly christians or hindus or to any other religious group who has those characteristics. The effect of such a move could slowly lead to opening their mind up somewhat ,and they might start to learn more about those religions and about different cultures and that could end up with them starting to question their own beliefs or at the very least, they can realize that not all non-muslims are stupid or bad people.

The part where Dr K mentioned that bias is good and not necessarily bad in all contexts , showed that he thought about this topic more deeply than most people in general. He didn't just cram the evidence hierarchy - he thought about the underlying reasons why it is the way it is and what are some of the underlying factors that could change in certain instances that hierarchy. You want to treat patients and not populations , and in order to achieve that of course ideally you would want to make your treatment as explicit/biased to your specific patient as possible. Now, of course In the real world we can't do that because of the lack of time, lack of resources , lack of money , hardness of logistics, lack of doctors to conduct 8 billion individual specific studies for each specific problem.

@Rafael ThundercatGood , enjoy your time. Going out and "touching grass" and doing the actual work is really important.

Well as long as we recognize that we shouldn't give much weight to his empirical claims (treat it as something that needs to be investigated) and as long as he is honest and open about what quality of evidence he can provide for his empirical claims - I have no problem with it. Regarding the comment about his work being subjective and trans-rational: I am not completely sure how you use the word "trans-rational" but empirical claims can be investigated and they are not inaccessible. So for example If he makes a claim about how certain things will effect/change the individual, then those effects can either be measured scientifically or at the very least reported by those individuals and then those reports can be investigated further if some patterns can be find in them. If he makes non-empirical claims as well - well, that kind of thing is a whole different can of worms itself (how those claims can be evaluated or engaged with ), but right now I am explicitly making a comment on the evaluation of empirical claims.

If I read the whole post that you wrote: , then the impression that I get from it is that you are talking about the need for and about the effectiveness of death penalty in general (making a general argument in favour of it) and I don't get the impression that you are making an explicit argument for El Salvador's case. If thats not the case (if you don't think that death penalty will reduce crime in general or if you don't think there is good evidence for it) then my bad for misinterpreting what you said.

I don't think there is good evidence that suggest that death penalty is effective at reducing crimes. But I see your point - if it would actually be the case that death penalty would reduce crime rates significantly - most libs would still be against it (because they probably have a principled stance against it)

Yes you can test stuff on your own, but that has its own downsides also. 1 being that you might waste a lot of time , another could be that even if some change happens in your life - it might not have come from the given practices but from something outside that you didn't track. Anecdotes are really bad in terms of quality and you can mislead a lot of people with your anecdotes. There are other potential downsides as well - for example maybe some practices will fuck some people up, because they have a different basis to work with compared to you. So no - having good intentions and telling people to try and test what you say isn't responsible and good enough (imo). It can be good enough in certain contexts, but in those contexts you have to have the honesty and integrity and make it very clear that you have no tangible evidence that it will work or whether it will be harmful or not. Be clear that you only have a theory that is based on certain set of reasons. You might have strong reasons for your conclusion, but still , empirical claims require evidence, because in practice a lot of theory will fail. Regarding your point about pushing the exploration further - you can't really push the exploration further without first gathering evidence for your current theory. Your further exploration would be built on underlying premises that are unproven, which doesn't necessarily mean that they are wrong, but it means that you are going blindly forward. And yes a lot of scientific studies can be shit for various reasons, but that fact shouldn't give anyone a leeway to just make prescriptions based on claims that don't have quality evidence for them. To be clear though - im not sure whether this applies to Wilber's work or to some of his work or to any of his work at all. Im basing it on the claim that Aurum made (about some of Wilber's prescriptions not having scientific evidence for them), but regardless, this is a general critique that I would apply to anyone who is making prescriptions on unproven or very poorly proven descriptions.

I think thats irresponsible on his part. Making strong empirical claims without actually establishing with studies how effective those prescriptions are. The level of confidence in claims should be aligned with the level of evidence you have for it. Just because some of these studies would be really hard to conduct that doesn't give anyone a free ticket to just freely make claims without needing to provide tangible evidence for those claims.

I am not even sure anymore whether they are actually progressing on laying out descriptively what the problems are and what the dynamics are. Could they provide any premise that they are actually sure of with a high confidence by now? Its unclear what the progress on the problems would even look like, because the fear of "the framing of the problems could be wrong (additional context might completely undermine most of the current prescriptions) and you could miss certain aspects of the problems" - which is true, but lack of action has its on consequences too (which they don't seem to take into account in the whole equation or they don't give much weight to lack of action ( or at least I haven't seen any of them talking about it). This fear of misframing the problem space is used as any excuse so that no one stakes out any positions (based on their current best understanding of the solutions and the problems) on anything at all. There is no confidence margin that is provided regarding any of the premises or problems at all. By now, they should be able to provide at least some answers even if they are not perfect . Its okay if you don't know all the sufficient things, but can you mention some of the things that you know are necessary? - talking about those could give a frame to work with and it makes this whole thing goal oriented, and people can actually have some concept of what the progress or the degress would look like. If the problem space in not defined in a clear enough way where people can track progress and degress, that means that we are probably lost in vauge space, where on the surface - seemingly we are talking about things, but in reality we are not defining anything in a coherent and clear way, and its unclear whether the ideas that are discussed are even coherent after an investigation of the semantics. There is also a difference between not having any solutions in mind at all vs having some solutions but you are unsure about all the consequences that the solution might bring. When they are asked a direct, non-vague question, they shouldn't dodge the question just because they don't have a 100% perfect answer for that question - they should lay out all the things to the best of their understanding and just say that the answer might change in the future.

Yep, thats where the interesting and worthwhile potential conversations are. But, lets be real here - to actually establish those kinds of arguments in a non-vague and in a rigorous way - that requires things that most of us don't have the prerequisite skills and or knowledge for (especially when it comes to domain specific things). How many people here do you think have good enough stat knowledge, so that he/she can properly evaluate the empirical data on any of your mentioned topics? How many people here do you think have actually read at least one full wiki article on any of your mentioned topics? How many people do you think in general here would be able to steelman both the pro and the contra side on any of your mentioned topics in a way where the inquiry actually goes down at least 5-6 levels deep and we don't get stuck at knocking down the weakest arguments or we don't get stuck at knocking down strawman arguments? How many people here do you think have looked up actual research on any of your mentioned topics? How many people here do you think have read books on any of your mentioned topics? and how many people do you think here even has an idea what a valid argument is ,let alone what a sound argument is and how many of them would be able to actually create a sound argument?