DocWatts

YouTube has had a longstanding policy of demonitizing and delisting videos for controversial topics that aren't palatable to advertisers (meaning they're on the site, but they won't show up in your Recommended feed). I've seen vids on topics such as suicide and the Holocaust get delisted. Ever notice a video title with 'N*zi' instead of 'Nazi' in the title? That's that the algorithm at work. Little surprise if Rogan's three hour pow-wow with a rapist who launched a violent coup against our government is deemed 'controversial' by the algorithm.

This ^. From their point of view, Trump is stern father figure who's fighting to protect their way of life from encroachment by a host of perceived enemies who aren't deserving of equal treatment (immigrants, LGBTQ people, etc). It's a form of aggrieved entitlement, born of fears about a loss of social status. Read about the psychology of what was going through the heads of people defending white supremacy in the Confederacy and Jim Crow apartheid state that followed, and you won't be far off.

Hi, MrTruf. In the event of Trump victory, I plan to stay engaged, build grass roots support for midterm elections on the local and state level, push my local representatives to resist implementing discriminatory federal policies towards marginalized people in my state, support the shit out of pro-democracy organizations like the ACLU which will be working to protect American citizens from having their rights and freedoms stripped away. Also take steps to protect myself and people I care about from state sponsored violence, if it comes to that.

Holding Trump's inner circle and the stochastic terrorists he's inspired accountable for flagrantly criminal actions isn't an iron first, it's the bare minimum for adhering to the Rule Of Law, essential for any functioning democracy. Donald Trump getting to effectively be above the law because he's got a violent Cult behind him sets a ruinous precedent. It's the equivalent of letting Hitler and his brown-shirts off the hook for trying to overthrow the Weimer government in his Beer Hall Putsch (in reality, Hitler got off the hook with a short, relatively comfortable prison sentence) - and we saw how that turned out. What's supposed to happen within a democracy is that when a political party loses, it's supposed to go back to the drawing board, figure out what went wrong, and figure out how to garner enough public support to win the next. Instead of changing course and moderating its views to be more palatable to ordinary Americans, the modern Republican Party has decided that they'd be better of ending democracy rather than competing for power within democracy.

Open dialogue sounds great in theory, but it only works when both sides are operating in good faith. Stemming the flow of disinformation, disrupting the ability of fascist groups to perpetuate violence, and piercing Trump's cult of personality through an election loss and legal consequences for his flagrantly criminal behavior is a start. Reforming our institutions to make it harder for minoritarian rule would be necessary as well - the Electoral College, Supreme Court, and Senate are obvious places to start. While heart-to-hearts may get some members of Cult like organizations like MAGA or the KKK to reevaluate their beliefs, there's difficulty in scaling that up to tens of millions of people. Fortunately for us, we don't have deprogram everyone who's in the MAGA Cult. We just need to disrupt their ability to dismantle our democracy.

Not at all - MAGA is, and will always be, a minoritarian position, supported by perhaps %30-35 of the country. Stopping it hinges upon the rest of the country taking enough of an interest in our democracy to save it from violent fringe extremists.

No point in trying to reach people within the MAGA Cult, who truly give no fucks as to whether the talking points they're sock puppeting are true or not - when what they're looking for is a powerful daddy figure to persecute their perceived enemies.

Which is a tacit endorsement of political violence, and consistent with fascist sympathizers who downplay and excuse MAGA's violent rhetoric and actions. This kind if attitude has no place within a democracy. A consistent trend among MAGA fascists is the same DARVO psychological tactics that abusers use to gaslight their victims: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender. MAGA's response to Jan 6 follows DARVO manipulation tactics to a tee. Deny that Trump did anything wrong by sending an arm mob to attack the Capitol. Attack anyone who tries to hold Trump and his inner circle accountable. Reverse Victim and Offender by decrying that Trump is the victim of a witch hunt by the January 6th Commission and the Department of Justice, who've been working to holding him legally accountable for his crimes.

Virtually every policy in Trump's Project 2025 agenda will make it harder to start a family. Paid family leave? Gone. Overtime pay that people depend on to pay their bills? That's gone too. IVF fertility treatment? Illegal. Child tax credits? Cut. Free school lunches? Nope! Early childhood education programs including head start? Also cut. Abortion access in case something goes wrong (ie a medical problem) during the pregnancy? Prepare to be prosecuted for murder.

Democrats can use a process called Budget Reconciliation to bypass the filibuster (indeed, this is how The Inflation Reduction Act was passed under Biden). But the types of bills that are passed under the process is somewhat limited : it happens once a year, and it's provisions have to have a plausible connection to the federal budget. Which is why investments in green energy can be included, but abortion legalization is likely to be shot down by the Senate Parliamentarian who oversees budget reconciliation, since it's far more tangential to federal spending.

Well, there's close to a %100 chance that Harris wins the popular vote (Hilary was an awful candidate and even she managed to win the popular vote against Trump), but because of the antiquated Electoral College, democrats have to outperform to win presidential elections.

I voted for Stein in 2016 and regret it to this day. The Green Party under Jill Stein is a grift that exists to siphon votes away from the Democratic Party. This is evident from the fact that they do zero campaigning between presidential election years, and aren't trying to build up a base of support and electoral presence through local elections where they might have a chance of winning. Mind you this is DESPITE the fact that I'm very much to the Left of the Democratic Party. But I'd much rather be advocating for progressive social democracy under Liberalism rather than fascism. No point in voting third party until Ranked Choice Voting becomes the norm throughout the country.

Also, some helpful flyers that I've been handing out as part of my door knocking . Folks who don't pay attention to politics aren't fully aware of Trump's fascist plans for a second term.

First off, thank you! Here in Michigan, the only reason that we don't have a total abortion ban from the 1800s in place is because Democrats were able to get an amendment codifying abortion rights onto the ballot, and then into our state Constitution in 2022. I happen to live in a critical bell weather county in the must-win suburbs of Detroit. I'm not only voting for her, on the weekends I've been part of a door knocking campaign with the Michigan Democratic Party as well. If you're worried about the outcome election, I'd highly recommend giving canvassing or phone banking a try. At the very least, make sure that people close to you (friends, family members) who haven't decided to sell out their country for a red hat have a plan to VOTE. If you're part of social activity like a church or even a gaming group, taking your friend without a car or your grandparents to the polls can make a huge difference if enough people do it.

The thing about accelerationism is that it has a tendency to blow up in your face. Sure, nazism blew up in the face of German nationalists, but 70 million people died as a result. Don't forget that there's a ticking clock for addressing existential threats like climate change. 4 years of a Trump dictatorship could set back an entire generation of progress on this issue, if the United States completely abdicates its responsibilities for addressing climate change.

My suggestion is to learn Spiral Dynamics, and then set aside. Without a strong grounding in other modes of inquiry, it's very easy to use SD as a form of epistemological and sociological bypassing.

All of the 'reasonable' Trump supporters broke from MAGA after Don The Con sent a violent mob to attack the Capital on Jan 6. What your boss would need is a version of Cult deprogramming, initiated by loved ones (family, close friends). Almost zero chance that showing them a vid on corruption will have any effect.

The problem with these tests is that they're too easy to game if you go into them with a solid understanding of Spiral Dynamics (ie, 'that's the Yellow answer, that one's the Green answer, etc'). What we would need is a test that shows Revealed rather than Stated preferences - how a person actually behaves in the real world, rather than how they say they behave.

Yes, that's me 🙂.

Hello friends! I thought I might share this presentation and Q&A I gave on my philosophy book, '7 Provisional Truths' @ Wayne State in Detroit. Context for this is Fluidity Forum, which is a Metarationality conference that's held once a year in Detroit. (More Info Fluidity Forum here : https://fluidityforum.org/vision/)

Thanks! Making an effort to try to make the subject more approachable than how it's presented in other contexts.

Thanks! Under the Enactivist framework I'm developing, categories are products of the mind - but that doesn't mean they're 'imaginary' or 'not real'! They're the end products of a cognitive process, but they also depend upon our interactions with a shared Reality. In essence, Enactivism isn't a solipsistic framework - but it is mind-dependent, because Reality is always accessed and reasoned about from within a particular perspective. To that end, Enactivism could be considered a version of philosophical pragmatism. The focus of Enactivism is on elucidating how Reality is disclosed to us in our lived experience. This view is agnostic on metaphysical questions about what Reality ultimately 'is' (not saying those questions are without merit, it's just not the focus here). Whether Reality itself is 'really' atoms floating in the void or pure consciousness makes no difference to what's being explored here, since the focus is on scrutinizing our subjective, lived experience - along with the interpretations we attach to that experience. Here's a bit more on 'interactional realism' as it relates to our conceptual categories, if you're curious: _________________________________________________________________ So if our conceptual categories aren’t a retrieval of absolute features of a mind-independent Reality, then what, if anything, makes the distinctions they embody ‘real’? The short answer? These distinctions are ‘real’. Just not in the absolute, mind-independent sense espoused by Transcendental viewpoints. Instead, our conceptual distinctions are ‘real’ in a different way; they’re interactionally real. They have substance because they’re grounded in our shared experience of Reality, distilling actionable generalizations that are attuned to our needs, capacities, and interests. These generalizations matter because they’re how we reflect upon our embodied experience. In essence, they’re the basis for the mental models that allow us to draw inferences, predict patterns, and solve problems. Essentially, they’re the key hallmarks of our distinctly human brand of intelligence; refined yet rooted in our shared evolutionary heritage with other animals. Crucially, this grounding within a shared, experiential Reality is what allows us to meaningfully differentiate these interactional realities from ‘imaginary' phenomena. Consider dreams and hallucinations, to list a familiar example. Though these mental phenomena may echo aspects of our shared world, their connection to it is inherently tenuous and inconsistent. The erratic nature of what we encounter within these domains renders them too unreliable to serve as a stable conduit to our shared, experiential Reality. If we return our gaze to the conventional wisdom about categories, the unrealistic assumptions of this familiar folk-theory come more clearly into focus. The crux of the matter is that our conceptual distinctions aren’t a glimpse into a ‘neutral’ Reality that exists apart from us. When this goes unacknowledged, it’s all too easy to treat these distinctions as if they’re variables in a universal equation with one right answer. Where it’s imagined that Reality will spill its secrets to whoever cracks this universal cipher. While this makes for an alluring metaphor, it’s a misunderstanding of our situation within the world. While we certainly have access to a staggering array of stable truths about our universe, the core illusion comes from how this relationship is framed. The crux of the matter is that Reality isn’t a ‘problem’ that can be ‘solved’. We put these distinctions into the world. They exist for us, inseparable from how we interact with Reality. By dropping this insistence that our conceptual distinctions are only ‘real’ insofar as they correspond to a God’s-eye view of Reality, we clear the fog that obscures their true purpose. Which is to help us grapple with our existential situation within Reality.

Thought I might share a section from the philosophy book I'm writing, 7 Provisional Truths', which is a type of 'field guide' to Construct Awareness. In this section, I go into some of our intutions about 'realness', as a prelude to an in-depth discussion of scientific realism (which I'm currently working on). Our Evolving Archetypes Of ‘Realness’ “What is real? How do you define 'real'? If you're talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then 'real' is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.” - Morpheus, The Matrix In The Matrix (1999), Morpheus embodies the Wise Sage archetype, who asks us to question our familiar assumptions about Reality. An archetype refers to patterns in our collective consciousness, which tend to pop up over and over again in stories, myths, and legends. The Sage is an archetype that stretches back to our distant past, serving as conduits of wisdom for their respective cultures. The Sage fulfilled an especially important function in pre-literate societies. Within these cultures, oral traditions were the primary vehicle through which collective meaning and purpose was preserved and transmitted. It’s a societal role that stretches back to the dawn of human culture, with tribal elders preserving a group’s mythological identity, and shamans serving as conduits to spiritual domains. Even as writing became more prevalent, the Sage archetype has endured, persisting across cultures and millenia. From its tribal roots to modern fictional portrayals such as Morpheus, the Sage is our lantern to the unknown, illuminating important truths about our connection to the world. In keeping with this archetypal role, Morpheus challenges us to ease our grip on the everyday assumptions that anchor us to Reality, and see if they hold up under scrutiny. In this intent, Morpheus is in good company, echoing time-honored wisdom traditions which suggest that there’s a ‘true’ Reality hiding behind the veil of everyday appearances. His question taps into archetypal allegories that liken our sense perception to cave dwellers looking upon shadows, mistaking these two- dimensional images for the full depth and richness of Reality. It’s a metaphor whose power stems from life’s hard lessons: appearances can deceive, and what we see isn’t always what we get. This deep-seated resonance with the ambiguities of daily life helps to explain the enduring appeal of these allegories. Since our aim at this juncture is to scrutinize our intuitions about the ‘realness’ of the everyday world, Morpheus’s challenge is of obvious interest to us. While these ‘tales of two worlds’ are undeniably captivating, it remains to be seen whether they’re apt metaphors for our relationship to Reality; or whether they’re elegant dead ends that obscure more than they reveal. Our task, then, is twofold: dig down to the foundational assumptions of these grand metaphors, and see if they’re sturdy enough to bear the weight of our embodied experience. After all, proposing an intriguing question is one thing, and providing a robust answer that illuminates the subject matter is another thing entirely. So while Morpheus might be onto something here, let’s use the Enactive framework we’ve been developing to dig deeper. What Morpheus is calling into question is a folk-understanding of Reality that should be deeply familiar to someone within a scientific culture. This intuitive view aligns closely with what philosophers classify as ‘Realism’. Realism is an umbrella term for viewpoints which posit that Reality has an ‘absolute ground’, or a fundamental basis for what’s ‘really real’. In this stance, an entity’s ‘realness’ comes from its connection to ontological primitives within Reality - essentially, basic building blocks from which all else is derived. Although Realism is a well-defined perspective within philosophy, in most other contexts it tends to operate as an unspoken background assumption. In sum, Realism isn’t just a philosophical perspective; it’s an invisible lens through which we tend to interpret Reality. To appreciate just how deep the Realism rabbit hole goes, consider the ease to which its assumptions become embedded in our sense-making frameworks. Physics isn’t ‘just’ an iterative approximation of how Reality behaves, it’s an objective description of what Reality is. God isn't 'merely' a felt presence that provides meaning and purpose to our lives, but the ultimate ‘first mover’ from which all of Reality springs forth. By that same token, consciousness isn’t ‘only’ our direct perspective within Reality, it's the promised contender that will dethrone physics as the actual bedrock for all that exists. Note that the use of 'just', ‘merely, and ‘only’ here isn't intended to diminish these viewpoints. It’s meant to highlight a commonality for how these frameworks are interpreted, which tends to slip beneath our notice. The shared thread of these diverse perspectives is that entities and phenomena need to have an existence which transcends our human perspective within Reality to be ‘truly real’. So that’s a high level overview of Realism. Now, let’s dive into the nitty gritty of its hold over the perceived ‘realness’ of our conceptual distinctions. To that end, we turn to two of its key variants - twin Rosetta Stones which operate so seamlessly that we rarely notice their presence. We could think of them as our background interpreters for daily life; content to quietly transcribe our perceptions until an encounter with the unfamiliar or the paradoxical brings them to the fore. So without any further ado, let’s introduce to the stage naive realism and scientific empiricism - representing the ‘simple’ and ‘complex’ sides of Realism’s coin. To kick things off, we’ll capture a snapshot of the ‘simple’ manifestation, known as naive realism. The crux of this stance is that the world is exactly as it appears to us in ordinary perception, and that others perceive it in the same way. We can think of it as the unexamined orientation that we tend to default to in daily life, when we’re taking our sensory impressions at face value. Settling into naive realism’s comfortable rhythms, we see a red apple and assume that its redness exists independently of our perception. We look up at the night sky, and take it for granted that the stars themselves are actually twinkling, instead of recognizing it as an effect of the Earth’s atmosphere. When stated explicitly, one might be tempted to write off this way of relating to the world as ‘crude’, and thus devoid of any value. But let’s not judge it too hastily. If we look beneath the surface, we find that far from being intrinsically ‘wrong’ or ‘useless’, it’s instead a vital component of how we navigate the day-to-day world. For a large proportion of everyday situations, these quick and basic impressions are perfectly sufficient. Take crossing the street: we see a car, assume that it’s really there, and react accordingly - no deeper reflection required. Then multiply this example by the hundreds of similar interactions that make up daily life, and we can gain a deeper appreciation of why it’s an indispensable presence in our lives. However, in spite of their practical utility, these snap-judgements have glaring limitations that can leave us ill-equipped to deal with a complex world. They can be a serious hindrance when we encounter ambiguities that demand a more nuanced level of engagement. This becomes especially important when surface appearances are misleading, or when there are relevant complexities that can’t be fully grasped without analysis and reflection. Precisely because naive realism is a largely unreflective stance, it tends to collapse like a house of cards when subjected to sustained scrutiny. Science has revealed a world of microorganisms and fundamental forces that are invisible to ordinary perception, which profoundly shape our lived reality. Moreover, psychology and neuroscience have uncovered a host of unseen cognitive processes that direct our thoughts and behavior, outside of our awareness or control. In sum, while naive realism is a potentially useful heuristic in day-to-day life, it can become a serious obstruction in situations whose ambiguities call for a more deliberative approach. So that’s the ‘simple’ version of our folk-understanding of Reality. But what of its more refined variant? For that, we set our sights upon scientific empiricism. Before examining its hold over the perceived reality of our conceptual distinctions, let’s first draft a blueprint of empiricism. To that end, we’ll introduce empiricism in its broad, historical sense. We’ll then reveal how its partnership with modern science propelled it into the familiar, folk-interpretation of Reality that many of us take for-granted today. Empiricism posits that our sensory experience and its extensions are the final litmus test for what’s ultimately ‘real’. Its key tenet is that observation of the ‘external’ world is where the rubber meets the road for verifying that our ideas have a basis in objective Reality. What empiricism drives home is that if we want to know whether it’s raining, we’ll have to go beyond armchair theorizing and actually look out of a window. While this may overlap with naive realism’s shared focus on the primacy of sense-perception, empiricism sets itself apart by acknowledging the potential gap between appearances and reality. Yes, empiricism still holds that accessibility to sense experience is determinative for what’s objectively ‘real’. But unlike naive realism, it insists these surface-level observations aren’t where inquiry ends - it’s where it begins. The basic aim of empiricism is to go beyond what’s immediately obvious, by using reason to interpret and extend our sensory observations in ways that can explain and predict phenomena. To illustrate this difference, let’s return to an earlier example. While naive realism would also acknowledge that it’s raining, it takes empiricism to tease out patterns for when it’s likely to rain, and how different levels of rainfall affects the vegetation in our garden. In other words: empiricism isn’t just sense-observation, it’s sense-observation paired with reason. So that’s a broad overview of empiricism. Now let’s trace out where science enters into the picture. Though popular perception will sometimes conflate the two halves of scientific empiricism, in actuality there can be no doubt as to which is the senior partner. Case in point: when modern science was getting off the ground roughly four centuries ago, empiricism was the millenia-old bedrock from which it took flight. Emerging relatively independently in both Eastern and Western thought, empiricism’s early practitioners included such paradigmatic heavy-hitters as Aristotle and Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha). Though Aristotle and Siddhartha explored life’s mysteries through highly distinct philosophical lenses, they were united in stressing the importance of direct observation paired with reason, albeit in different domains. (Aristotle’s emphasis was on how we fit into the systems of the world, while Siddhartha’s was on how we experience it.) While pre-scientific empiricism significantly expanded the scope of our problem solving repertoire, key aspects of it could be considered outdated by today's standards. As we shift our focus to its more rigorous scientific variant, we’ll gauge whether this perception of early empiricism’s obsolescence is justified. Are we just flat-out better off with this more precise iteration of empiricism? Or are we throwing the baby out with the bath water by discarding this foundation for modern science entirely? As we explore these questions, we’ll illustrate how this refined form of empiricism morphed into scientific realism, and what this has meant for the perceived ‘realness’ of our conceptual categories. We’ll also trace out how this metamorphosis unwittingly codified a seemingly unbridgeable gulf between our 'inner' experiences and 'external' Reality - and why this split is significant. What we hope to highlight is that this subject-object division is ultimately a mental construct that masks a deeper underlying unity. But here’s the kicker: mentally constructed does not mean ‘imaginary’. There are sensible reasons for why this bifurcation of Reality is intuitive for us. With this in mind, we’ll show how the Enactivist framework we’ve been developing offers a promising path for bridging this subject-object divide. A key pillar of this approach is that it doesn’t deny the ‘realness’ of our conceptual categories. It instead reframes them as interactionally real, emerging from our concernful involvement with the world. In essence, Enactivism aims to reconcile this underlying unity with scientific realism’s valid insights. But to get there, we’ll first need to understand why this subject-object gap exists, and how scientific realism entrenched this dichotomy in our thinking.

You're very welcome.

And pardoning domestic terrorists (if they happen to be 'Christian' fascists). Also, it bears saying, but how much of a p*ssy do you have to be to perceive a half-starved person who can fit all of their possessions into a plastic bag as a boogeyman?