Oh, I'm not saying there's no redeeming qualities to the piece, just that some of its assertions are ludicrous. Especially the ones made in the beginning. Sort of reminds me of the Motte and Bailey thing where someone pushes their luck and then backtracks to a more reasonable claim.

>Also, the opening line of "Anarchism is the only way of life that has ever worked or ever can" is beyond a stretch, and is likely a great way to lose 90% of your readers before the first paragraph is over.

I dunno, I might have lost interest if it weren't for that insufferably contrarian take. I'm tempted to think it's bait and I fell for it.

The only way I can redeem that claim is by arguing that anarchism has never truly been instituted, and therefore has a lower failure rate than other systems. Sort of like communism as Marx envisioned it.

Almost nothing, if anything at all, is inherently subjective. Morals are standards that are typically arbitrary, but when you focus on the subjective judgment that results in a thing being labeled as "evil," you're missing the point of doing such a thing in the first place. Some morals are just plain stupid, like the idea that sex is evil but reproduction is not. Calling such a code "subjective" is unwarranted validation.

>Good and evil are by definition subjective views.

I've never heard these terms defined that way.

>In what way would a neutral observer attribute good or evil to an action without adding their own biases?

Again, I don't get how this affects the objectivity or subjectivity of a thing in theory. Perception is fallible and a failure to observe something does not necessarily determine its existence or non-existence.

>To a "God", killing an infant is merciful and good if its part of their "plan".

That's such a hypothetical scenario I don't think it has any bearing on reality, and is not even a true thought experiment as you haven't defined "God." But the biggest problem is that you're just reiterating that you think evil is subjective as support for said belief. That is, you're using a belief that something is evil/good as proof that evil and good are subjective, when all it proves is that the belief is subjective.

The problem with good and evil is that they oversimplify complex realities, are vague, and carry a rhetorical weight that exceeds the objective information they convey. But that objective information still exists, and explaining away good and evil through semantics is a poor substitute for reframing it in more sophisticated terms.

It's equally okay to say you just like punching babies, as this is a philosophy sub and free discussion is "good." ;)

>How do you measure that, though?

That is notoriously difficult, hence the entire field of ethics.

>Even today, people will advocate death and torture of their perceived enemies. Are they evil?

Well, maybe. That's kind of my point. Calling something "evil" is essentially just a way of saying it is harmful, presumably intentionally so, as we don't usually assign moral weight to non-sentient objects, and most often to the extent that the harm exceeds its benefit to the evildoer. As a term, it carries connotations that are unhelpful (i.e., it tends to frame things in absolutes and does not allow for the existence of competing interests), but that's different from being subjective. When we're talking about torturing an infant or committing genocide, we're not talking about subjective perceptions. We're talking about the actions that are being done.

>How many people need to believe something is evil before its objective?

I don't see how that's supposed to have an effect on anything. Objectivity is fundamentally different from subjectivity, it's not just a degree of subjectivity.

Maybe I've read too much gnostic literature. I thought the moral of that story was that knowledge itself is a fall from paradise because ignorance is bliss, and you can never reclaim innocence once it's lost.

Good and evil are definitely not subjective. If the only evidence of harm exists in one person's qualia, no one would call it "evil." If it's called "evil," that means it's gone beyond subjective experience into something that can be measured objectively, like deliberate torture or genocide.

We can call them relative, but even that's a triviality as almost everything is relative. "Evil" is essentially that which is harmful to life, and is ranked according to its perceived necessity (e.g., killing for survival). At the most, you could say that these perceptions are subjective, that evil isn't wrong, or that it doesn't exist, but that doesn't tell us about what evil is. And that's something we can do whether we believe in evil or not, similarly to how we can say an action is "wrong" in a certain religion or ethical philosophy we don't subscribe to.

Ultimately, everything has some kind of objective value whether we can immediately perceive it or not. Object and subject are relational frameworks.

I thought Asians went to the bathroom to blow their noses.

I'm half-joking, but I've definitely never noticed that Asians are less hygienic than anyone else. Income seems to be the bigger factor.

Like I said, it's controversial. It is much harder to define "black" and "white" than it is to define "Asian" or "Mexican." Yet these constructs won't go away and the more they impact society and the individual, the more they become things in themselves. I don't think there's a perfect solution.

Gordon definitely seems to be operating from a less practical, tangible vantage point, which makes him harder to engage with than most people who draw this distinction.

>Maybe I'm misunderstanding you here, but that doesn't make sense to me because simply having dark skin does not, in general, determine one's ethnicity. There are multiple ethnic groups (e.g., Arabic, Brazilian, the plethora of distinct African nations) that can exhibit such a phenotype of dark skin color.

This is largely true, and Gordon might actually disagree with the explanation I'm about to give. But Black people in the U.S., at least those whose ancestry goes back to slavery, have some common experiences. Slaves in particular had their their identities and genealogy erased, and in a sense are more a distinct ethnicity than European Americans since we can trace our ancestry more easily. So there's a commonality between most Black Americans that goes beyond skin color. They have a culture that is distinct from both Africans and other Americans.

It gets complicated when you consider that many Black Americans are immigrants from Africa. Gordon may be including them, or he may not. They share some commonalities, but not others. I'm not including people in all countries because this is, to my knowledge, a largely American construct. Other countries have different experiences with racial stratification.

Not every Black person agrees with this. But there is a rationale for it that goes beyond academic obsurantism. It is controversial and, again, I'm not agreeing with Gordon on everything. But I think the shift towards capitalization is both respectful and logically sound.

I'm generally not a fan of existentialism and I don't exactly "get" this guy, so I can't perfectly represent his viewpoints. But the capitalization makes perfect sense to me. "Black" with a capital B refers to Black people as a distinct ethnic group, while "black" originally framed Black people in terms of darkness, impurity, and arbitrary racial norms and standards, the inverse of "white." The capitalization puts "Black" alongside "Asian" or "Cherokee" as a thing in and of itself.

I found his explanation of this needlessly opaque, but it's a pretty simple construct. Capitalization is just a way of framing Black identity in terms other than isolated attributes or social norms, like where someone falls on the "paper bag test."

I should mention that calling someone "black" without capitalization does not carry the racist connotations it originally did. With or without capitalization it's the preferred term. This is not to imply that "black" is a racial slur.

Nothing ever happens and nuns never fart.

"Can you leave the room for a minute? I'm about to quit and it's gonna be a big one."

He looks defeated and guilty as fuck. Like he farted.

Looks aside, she's just a likeable person and has survived some real shit in life.

>where’s the money in that?

Well gosh, I always thought insurance was this huge racket but then some genius at the bottom of a Reddit thread used poor grammar and punctuation to allude to this conspiracy while never quite explaining it, and now I realize that only drug manufacturers are wealthy enough to suppress a cure for cancer.

Poor BCBS.

Rabies given after exposure, but before disease. So that is still prophylaxis.

Edit: This is a small point and I'm not disagreeing with you overall.

Edit 2: Geez, I cannot type today. "Rabies after exposure, but before disease. Me Tarzan."

From top, left to right: Licking mood, staring mood, curious mood, soul leaving the body mood, stretchy mood.

I know it sounds hyperbolic, but people become less anti-slavery once you start reframing it.

You really should explain how these things are different. Because so far it just sounds like you're repeating a white nationalist doctrine that only exists to justify slavery. Namely, that people in prisons are laboring because they committed a crime, received a just sentence, and are paying restitution to society, rather than because some groups are worth more to this agenda incarcerated than they are free.

I'm not singling you out because I think you're racist, I'm singling you out because you sound decently intelligent and this sub seems to be a pro-slavery echo chamber due to the upvotes and downvotes. This shit is imbedded in society and a lot of people didn't even realize it until it was on the ballots this month.

A few states put it on the ballot and at least one state voted to keep it. You can't own people, but you can rent them.

There may also be a vaccine for multiple sclerosis in our lifetime. And not just the one for EBV (a proposed cause of MS).

So many diseases are either caused by immune processes or prevented by them. It's insane.

I feel like this is gonna be a boomerish cartoon in a few years. Like, a dad brings his son to the museum, he sees a Picasso and asks "Wow, Dad, what prompt was that?"

The perfect skin gives it away. He's obviously using a FILTER. 😡

Those damn lemon-stealing laiety!