Sree

I went to bed on election night with Trump ahead in Michigan, Wisconsin, and with more than that path to victory. I woke up the next morning with him losing everywhere in those states run by Democrats counting ballots dumps behind closed doors. American democracy is poison.

Cognition is the result of perception. – citizen

Cognition IS perception (when things come into focus). “Prior to cognition” (if such a state exists), there is nothing.

It’s your senses facilitate perception which gets processed into cognition !

Irrational supposition.

The mind is too quick. Any attempt – to slow down the process of perception f…[Read more]

Good point. it is a gamble. I know someone who got all their money back and is still collecting. It was less than the 250K that Cuthbert mentioned, but maybe they are higher priced these days. – Lausten

For the average Joe who is not crooked, 250k is a lot to accumulate. Most people – especially, those with kids to raise – live from hand to mouth,…[Read more]

How can everything be mental when one doesn’t even know if a mind exists. It just seems like a term we made up long ago to explain things. Your claim that there are no other minds is false though as you cannot know that. – @snowcity

“Mind” is a metaphor applied to the action of mental activity. If you can think, imagine, and remember, then the m…[Read more]

I’m generally a little higher risk, so annuities aren’t attractive to me.  – Lausten

How long do you figure on living? If the cut-off date is 75 but no later than 80, you can spare yourself a lot of anxieties. The longer you live, the greater the risk of crippling medical costs to stay alive.

What did Black people ever do to you? – mriana

They don’t have to do anything for me to not like them. I don’t like other things too: collard greens, sauerkraut, green beans, catfish. None of these did anything to me. I just pass them by and pick other stuff from the food bar.

I honestly have severe doubts of that to be the case. The guy here also has his own web page and google group that thinks materialism is wrong because there is no empirical evidence for matter. – @snowcity

He doesn’t say that it is wrong. He is discussing the essence of matter and pointing to the non-material nature of an objective world we p…[Read more]

Sree is right, Biden has been a little ahead all day. – oneguy

How come there is a pall in the air, not just on the Trump side but also on the other side. Why aren’t they whooping it up and running in the streets celebrating the victory over Donald Trump? Seems like they are also not convinced that a decrepit old Biden could knock out Superman.

Republicans do want to take totalitarian control of the US by any means necessary, but I highly doubt they’re willing to do it openly and start the second civil war.

Civil war is right. Until the results came in last night, each side believed that the other side is just a small bunch of crazies in a nation of sane rational people. Now we know: A…[Read more]

 So when all else is lost, we still have the moment and music.

Why the pessimism? The jury is still out and Biden is feeling good.

@mriana

Wikipedia says this:

The Venus Project is a communist cult that promotes architect Jacque Fresco ‘s vision of the future, which involves an economic structure known as a “resource-based economy.”

I couldn’t find anything (even on its website) of technical substance to review. The hype sounds very high-tech but Fresco had no formal edu…[Read more]

Already making excuses.  No worries; he won’t win.

I’ll drink to that. Cheers!

My son has had some ideas, but implementing them would be difficult to do because people are so stuck on Capitalism. – mriana

What are his ideas? Can you get him in this forum to discuss them?

But hey, those two posts were nearly 2 1/4 hours apart.  That is PLENTY of time for sree to come to exactly the opposite conclusion he came to so long ago. – widdershins

The first post #337015 was from another thread when I was talking reflectively about humanity to oneguy. The second post #337022 in this thread was addressing a different context…[Read more]

A reductionist argument which ignores the ongoing hardship that any and all minority groups still face today as a result of American’s racist past. – widdershins

What makes you think that the majority group (if it exists) is not facing ongoing hardship as a result of mankind’s fall from grace? Everybody has an excuse for hardship in his own l…[Read more]

In every measure of quality of life the US is nowhere near being a contender for top spot. You can hunker down in your expensive sty and say it’s a palace, but anyone who looks at the data knows you’re full of it. – 3point

There is only one quality of life that matters to me: the freedom to be or not to be whatever I want.

I have lived for ext…[Read more]

Another future inhabitant of “Anarchy Island”. – 3point

Why do you have a dim view of your fellowmen? To some extent, America is a land of the free, free-enterprise. This is what makes the US first among equals, and such a distinctive economic powerhouse compared to the rest of the world. The Europeans may disdain us, but we definitely have lef…[Read more]

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about another thread on this forum and it has lead me to a bit of an epiphany on what, exactly, the current conservative mindset is doing to Democracy, and it’s pretty scary.

An idle mind is a devil’s workshop. Feelings of anxiety over a discussion thread that you cannot dismiss offhand points to an inner problem.

Lots of people are obscenely overpaid and lots are obscenely underpaid. I say leave those poor souls in the middle of the pack alone and focus on the extremes. Good politicians will do that… we just need more good politicians! – 3point

Why do we need politicians at all? What is wrong with a society of independent people allowed the freedom to m…[Read more]