I think people put "understanding" (along with consciousness, awareness, and sentience) up on a pedestal because it makes them feel special. Just another example of egocentrism like how we didn't think animals communicated, or were aware, or could count, or use tools, or recreation.

Think about all the philosophical waxing and poetical contemplation that's gone into asking what it means to be truly alive! ...And then remember that gut bacteria is most certainly alive and all their drivel is more akin to asking how to enjoy the weekend.

Huh? You can't say I'm right and then double down on being wrong.

Software DOES physically exist. I just explained how and where.

> too many people on the planet, overall. Total global births MUST diminish.

OR, alternatively, we need to stop polluting so much and use what limited resources we have more efficiently. Thanks to all the technological advances, food isn't one of them. We have plenty of food. It's cheap. It's the first one that everyone jumps to, what with all the extra mouths to feed, but it's really not the problem.

Let's not advocate for genocide or holocausts.

Apparently I draw the line about 15 year ago. Because I still prefer books over e-readers. Boom, change rejected.

Of course, I'm a big fan of other changes. And the nature of this topic really just boils down to a bajillion little things about where people "draw the line". It's just so massively open-ended. It's a conversation starter, but there's really no answer / solution / actual goal the discussion is going to work towards.

...eh, that's like saying that software doesn't physically exist.

But it does. The pattern in the RAM and CPU is a real electrical charge and has real physical manifestation. Same with the pattern of connections, electrochemical signals, and hormones in the head.

Lemme make that clear. You're claiming something exists, but doesn't physically exist, like it exists outside of physics or something. It's bullshit.

Dayum! What did they do to get so many girls to sign up?

> This is clearly related to the concept of epistemic justice,

No, nothing about that is clear. Your obsession is showing. Not everything revolves around your personal pet topic of interest.

...like?

You make this sound like a big deal, but it's as simple as "you're not always going to be right and you're not always going to be wrong".

> The never-admit-your-wrong-or-say-sorry personalitiny

Ie, egomaniacal. There's probably some fancier term for it in the latest DSM.

> I can't imagine that people who actually work with software would trust these things.

There's a whole different genre of software when it comes to life-critical or mission-critical software. The sort where a bug could kill people or cost millions of dollars. Real engineering. Used to work on OBOGS which let fighter pilots breath. If you have a bug and the thing stops generating oxygen, the pilot has about 30 seconds to notice and pull an emergency lever to switch to the emergency tank. DO-178 would be the super-fun process to make this sort of software. And yes, you have to start worrying about stray cosmic rays flipping random bits in your memory. Lots of CRC checks and watchdogs and heartbeats. The time to reboot a system is important if the pilot can't breath in the meantime.

But if you ever.... drive a car on cruise control, ride an elevator, get an X-ray, then you've trusted your life to some lines of code.

> Some of them land themselves, but only in nice conditions. The new and fancy ones land themselves in mediocre or poor conditions.

Uh, you have that exactly backwards. The worse the conditions, the more that autoland is advised by the FAA

> Auto-landing tech in aircraft is very rare.

Wut? All airliners have it.

Whohoho, bringing real world facts into /r/philosophy? Stay in your lane buddy, this place is for made up make-believe.

Here in our everyday lives we go to places like /r/philosophy and pretend to be experts on everything. I don't think the scale of the stakes matter.

I had some dude claim "as a biochem engineer, I know frogs' sex is determined by their Y chromosome", when frogs don't have a Y chromosome. People try to appeal to (their) authority all the time.

Eh, not the best example. I would certainly expect a doctor to know that some things are genes. And siblings you know, share genetrics. He just fucked up the statistics of something within his field of expertise. This was his lane and he rear ended this lady.

But the irony of having this topic broached on /r/philosophy of all places. Do you know how how often people here pretend they're experts on anything scientific? As soon as science enters the discussion, this place goes to pot.

Agreed. Your 3 part plan was really just one thing. And "When everyone is paid more, they hire illegal workers for less" is still true. And "The idea is to legitimize them and regulate the wages they need to be paid so that EVERYONE is paid more." Is still kinda bullshitty and won't work. We're kinda going in circles at this point.

> I was distancing myself from the false dichotomy you put forward.

Well you stepped right into the other two.

> We CAN try to put a very quick, very harsh damper on our pollution, and that would be neither of the 2 scenarios you put forward.

OH, if it's harsh enough, it's the first. If it's not harsh enough, it's the second. Currently, we're doing the 2nd, which is really the right choice.

> give a sort of minimum wage visa to anyone willing to work, and then hire them.

RIGHT. And we DO 2 parts of your 3 part plan already. Read up on H-2A visas. H-1Bs essentially too. Are you not listening to me? When we do these two parts of your plan, what we get is what we have. Right here and right now. Meat-packers and hotels simply go get someone cheaper.

> as if those are the only 2 options.

They're ALL false dichotomies! Fight CO2 or bake the world. Combat immigration or screw the working class. Splurge on the military or abandon Ukraine and our defense agreement.

It's an antagonistic journalistic push poll trying to steer you into a conflicting statement. Hence the knuckles and such.

>The idea is to legitimize them and regulate the wages they need to be paid so that EVERYONE is paid more.

(We do that. That's literally what's happening right now. When everyone is paid more, they hire illegal workers for less.)

Although, off the record, arresting the hiring bosses and fining the corporations that illegally hire foreigners is really the right way to go about it. Neither Democrats nor Republicans actually want to fix the problem though. Offer green cards to anyone working there willing to flip on their boss and send them to prison. Between immigration, automation, and outsourcing, the gini-coefficient keeps on rising and the poor rural farmboys keep getting madder and madder.

Hot-damn though, average wage of an H-2A is $21.91 an hour. Like, legally, a place has to prove they can't find anyone local to work the job and there is no cap.

Like, none of your ideas are even bad. I do think environmentalism is a real thing. But you're a sane functioning member of society. Generally liberal. Whee. But any statement along the lines of "although", "while", "however", or anything with a "but" will be taken as a conflicting view. Irrationally wanting two opposite things simultaneously. Which is why any politician worth their salt avoids actually answering any questions.

Slips on the knuckle duster

So environmentalism isn't a political issue to you? You are apathetic to pollution. Is this an endorsement of eco-terrorists such as the Sea Shepard and the Earth Liberation Front? Do you advocate for the dissolution of the EPA? Do you have any words for it's administrator Michael S. Regan?

You admit you want to import more foreign workers and undercut working class wages. These workers whom I quote "drive wages at the bottom way way down", you want more of them? Do the economic rules of supply and demand no longer apply low-end labor? Are you not aware of our current robust system where foreign workers can be allowed to work that is the work visa program? Are you looking to remove the restrictions on H-2A visas?

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a "Though". While you openly advocate we need to cut down our military spending, you acknowledge that it is "necessary and should be used". It is without doubt that we find your views "conflicting" and inconsistent.

Pleading the fifth? A likely story!

> I don't have conflicting political beliefs, AMA!

Cracks knuckles

Would you prefer a mass die-off of humanity or would you rather we continue to kill the planet with massive CO2 pollution?

Do you want higher wages for workers? And how should we deal with illegal foreign workers?

What do you think of the military aid to Ukraine and how do you feel about military spending?

When did you stop beating your wife?

>How do we make sense of a party that simultaneously proclaims itself pro-life, yet wants to remove roadblocks to capital punishment

Because "pro-life" is a slogan, a sales pitch, a political statement that only tangentially involves the concept of life at all. It's MARKETTING the same way that socialism was selling point of a certain German national socialist political party. (And they did raise wages and rights of workers early on.) Or the "Democratic" part of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

If you even glance at the history, they have their roots in religious ideology which is a-okay with capital punishment (and also against it, depending how you want to pick those cherries).

It's just something they say to get the religious nutters to vote for them. Is a scam artist being irrational when he lies to a mark? Then along came a nuttier nut who actually delivered on that promise and boom, they're all losing elections.

>why political climate is the way it is

/r/history is over there.

>Our stated political beliefs are irrational when taken as a package

Excuse YOU. This guy has no idea what my political beliefs are and he's treating both the Democrats and Republicans as single unified blocs. There's more than one person in each party. So OF COURSE there are going to be incoherencies.

You don't have to be a philosopher to find out that statistics and sociological polls don't tell you the whole truth. Bloody A, political science and sociology are real sciences, albeit kinda soft, but you need to listen to the people who actually study and measure this stuff rather than people who talk about they feel about it. Don't step out of your box philosophers, you're just going to look like fools.

Is it not being sold by Facebook and Zuckerburg? That's a huge selling point.