Hey yall, its Chester here,

Now I spent plenty a long years now sitting back thinking bout the simple things in life, like how to mend a fence line, or what to make myself for breakfast, but as I been getting on in my life I been startin to considering some notions of a more philosophical nature. I've always just sorta considered those things to be irrelevant, mainly cuz typically a man oughta just keep his mind upon and tend to his business and get it done, just like his woman oughta keep to hers. That being said though, a few weeks past I went ahead over to the local school library to browse, and I stumbled upon their old dusty books in the philosophy section.

Now, first thing I began to realize as I leaf through pages of this book about a fellar named Socrates, is that there sure seem to be the same sorta people back then as there are now. One thing I noticed was that folk Socrates spoke to seem to have a way with words that makes the words themselves seem to just get in the way, and whatever they're saying seems to make sense for minute, but it don't tend to hold up. Like, he kept discovering that these people with whom he was interlocucating with were plumb unaware of the fact that they ignorant about what they thought they knew all about. Furthermore, these folk were accusing him of weaving a web of words to work a way out in which they was wrong, but tehy actually was wrong, and the pussies end up running away each time to prove it I thought.

And hell, that seems to happen sometimes when I'm talking to people out in the town. It really made me pause and consider myself for a bit. Like, seems to me that I really do know how to mend me a fence post, and hell my neighbors even come to me for help. But, there are things that I think I have an opinion on, but I ain't too sure I could even explain it too well, or not too well enough to be entirely precise like a philosopher would do, using the anal methods.

Like for instance, it seems to me to be normal how a man is typically attracted to a woman, even if she is really a man, but it also seems normal to me how a man could be attracted to another man too. Like, if its a good man with a good character, I could see how he'd be loveable. And therein lies another conundrum. In the first place I was speaking kinda bout a sexual love, and in the other, I sorta put the horse somewhere else, as the saying goes, and talk about some different type of love. But that being said, what really is the difference if you love someone? Youd just make a partnership I'd guess.

And yet, even though I'm straight up confused about there being types of love, there are people out in my town right now that say they know otherwise about what love is, and how it is a simple thing so easy to explain between a man and a woman. It gets me thinking that I oughta just go forth and interlocucate myself upon them. I just aint too sure of myself cuz I ain't often get out into public speaking much.

Anyhow, what it boils down to is, it seems like whether or not I should go out and start figuring peoples opinions out, that is itself a question to be answered by philosophical methods. And damned if I don't know to go about beginning upon my inquiry.

So, thank you in advance for your helpful sharing of wisdom.

Chester, out.

Why not spend your whole life advocating for conservatives to consider developing a strong third party option? At least that way even if you don't succeed you will be doing some good.

>not if the third party candidate is the person you most want elected.

I specified viable candidates. If your candidate has no chance of winning, it's the same as not voting.

Just to not have to be ambiguous lets say you are left wing politically. If you choose to vote third party because the Democrat is okay but not good enough and a Republican wins your third party vote doesn't prove the democrats need to go even harder left. They are more likely to move to the right which will make them more competitive with the other major party, the Republicans. Third party voting in the US isn't even going to register as a protest vote but instead push the closer of the two party members farther away from you.

I understand that those are the takeaways, but where is the evidence? The author just jumps to some vaguely related topics as if it's evidence, while what he's really doing is spinning some kind of narrative, and the narrative is wrong.

About the takeaways:

1. As I explained in my comment, this is not true.
2. Who thinks that way? Everybody I know, both laymen and people in the field of Data Science and Machine Learning, have healthy skepticism of AI.
3. Having worked as a data scientist, I can attest that data scientists check their algorithms, use common sense, and put an emphasis on understanding their data.

Honestly,the article just reads to me as a boomer theory-focused economist who's upset of the turn towards quantitative and statistics-heavy approach that his field has taken. There is a certain (old) school of economists who prefer theoretical models and takes a rationalist over an empirical approach. The problem with their approach is that the theoretical models they build use assumptions that often turn out to be wrong. They use "common sense" rather than relying on data but the world is complex and many "common sense" assumptions don't actually hold.

I do intend to get to your three comments, one of these days!!!!

remindme! 8 hours

https://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/yl9csx/how_to_have_better_arguments/iv8fu07/?context=3

https://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/yl9csx/how_to_have_better_arguments/iv7iva0/?context=3

https://www.reddit.com/r/philosophy/comments/yl9csx/how_to_have_better_arguments/iv7iuuk/?context=3

I didn't. You did.

>...voting third party, is basically a default vote for the candidate you would least want elected.

not if the third party candidate is the person you most want elected.

if you are only voting for the most viable candidate then you would only have voted for the winners regardless of their policy positions. and those politicians would never see the affect of changing their policies or reacting to new information because they'll be (irrationally) branded the most likely candidate to win.

Yes.

It says you may not have any choice but to hold those values and it may not be possible within the laws of physics not hold those values.

>how easy something is and how culpable you are have nothing to do with each other

Then why did you bring it up?

"lesser of two evils" is the glass half empty version of "most qualified for the job."

especially when you're talking politics. no politician is perfect. they don't make as much money as they would in the private sector. constituencies are going to have divergent needs.

so you take what you can get. no different than any other aspect of life.

I was oversimplifying my comments a bit. There is the curse of dimensionality. And in causal inference if you just use every variable as a confounder your model can also get worse because you're blocking forward paths. But if you know what you're doing it shouldn't be a problem. And I haven't met any ML practitioner or statistician who doesn't realize the importance of getting to understand your data and making proper modelling decisions.

how easy something is and how culpable you are have nothing to do with each other. Beating someone to death with a hammer and shooting someone to death with a gun are very different in how much effort they require but you are just as morally wrong for either killing. At least in the context of killing or not and assuming no difference in extenuating circumstances. I don't even know why you would bring up how easy something is in a conversation about morality and culpability of action.

I'm not really sure what you are even trying to get at given these responses nor do I know what you expect responses to be about so I am just going to not really engage here but have a lovely day.

i hear that same phrase repeated endlessly by non-independent party voters like it's the hip new Tourette slang.

Enduring hardship and suffering is not popular these days.

I agree with that too. 100%

Does that tell you anything about whether I should hold these values?

>Not giving to charity so that the charity doesn't have enough money so that one person is ultimately bumped from their services so that they eventually go on to starve is such an insanely far cry from you could have thrown a lever that right then and there would have prevented 5 deaths that they are not equivalent, they aren't even in the same country

I reject this. It's even easier to give to a charity considering they can automatically charge your card on a regular basis.

Same goes for not eating meat. You could do that at any time.

>If you are driving today and someone jumps out in front of you and you could swerve away but you don't are you responsible for that person's death?

Yes. You directly killed somebody using your vehicle.

>That's the real version of the trolley problem.

No the real version of the trolley problem is that you could have voted for gun control but you loved your guns too much.

>You aren't supposed to swerve away from an accident, did you know that?

Who made this rule up?

>If you could avoid hitting another car by swerving away from it, generally, you are supposed to still hit the car because by swerving away you might hit something and then it would be your fault. I

the word "Might" is doing all the heavy lifting in that sentence. Might implies "might not".

>If you, for instance, tried to avoid a deer in the road and thus ended up swinging your car and crossing the yellow line and hitting a car you are liable for the crash where before hitting the deer you might not have been liable and or even if you are liable for that crash you at least didn't hit another car.

I don't think most people have a moral issue with killing a deer.

If all your goals are synaptic action then so are all your values.

It is the best we have done, but is it the best we could have done?

And if we never ask ourselves such questions, and take them seriously, might it be possible that the best that we do do is always below what we could have done?

For some context: as a thought experiment, consider two streams of reality: the current one, versus one where the scientific method wasn't discovered, wasn't widely adopted, wasn't taken seriously, etc. Might there be a substantial difference between these two realities in the year 2022?

It’s the best we can do, so far.

Amorality is certainly possible for individuals, by which I mean a lack of concern or interest for moral reasoning and discourse.

I am amoral and do not have any morality. I do not view the world through a lens of good and evil, moral right and wrong, moral fairness and non-legal justice. Nor do I think of virtues and vices in a moral sense, but only if the actions and traits are instrumental to what the individual cares about herself.

When deciding what to do, I think of my desires, values and interests, and with no reference to what is morally good and right. There is no deeper or categorical "ought" in my decision-making and so I avoid the naturalistic fallacy. I take a pragmatic approach to language and simply find that hypothetical reasoning is useful to express my inner motivations.

When possible I try to use non-moral language when talking with other people, but morality is so commonplace that I often have to pretend to have moral beliefs. Moreover, my amorality becomes confirmed by the fact that the difference between my own and other people's way of thinking of—and motivating—our values and actions are drastically different from eachother.

In your opinion what philosopher had the best description/definition of justice?

What did the ancients say about dreams? (Other than Aristotle)

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Most people seem to pray to The Science and The Democracy nowadays in my experience.