To address your points:

>> Bush: Disaster. Remember, remember the Patriot Act?
GW is not up for re-election and to the best of my knowledge Jeb had nothing to do with writing the Patriot Act. He supports it, but almost all the candidates do. I'm not a huge fan of Jeb, but he actually seems like the smart one in his family. Would still prefer him not to be president.

>> Clinton: Lying, manipulative, currently under Federal investigation by America's FBI department. Really?
@newtboy already addressed the so-called "email-gate" or whatever. As for "lying, manipulative"? You're kidding, right? She's a politician. They're all lying and manipulative. Ultimately, I think Hillary will probably get the democratic nomination and while I'm not a huge fan, she's an order of magnitude better than any of the republicans.

>> Bernie Sanders: Self-purported Socialist. Lovely.
So what? "Socialist" is not a bad word. Many of the highest ranked countries for citizen health and happiness are socialist. America needs to grow the fuck up and get over it's childish clinging to McCarthyism. A bit of socialism would do it the world of good.

>> Ben Carson: I have no particular qualms, by all means intelligent, however, doesn't say anything beyond the bloated party line.
Ben Carson, "intelligent"? Are you fucking kidding me? The guy's borderline insane. How he ever got to be a surgeon baffles me.
This is a guy who thinks that "Joseph built the pyramids to store grain", that doesn't understand fucking magnets, er, gravity and believes evolution was ‘encouraged by’ Satan. He's a fucking moron.

>> That brings us full circle back to Trump... He has a real, tangible plan...
to fuck everything up? Seriously, Trump is an idiot and would be the worst thing to happen to the USA (and by extension the world) in decades. His ignorance is matched only by his ineptitude.

>> As for Obama, and I include him because many seem to think he is great for some reason..
a) I don't think he's great, he's been a huge disappointment and
b) he's irrelevant to this debate
but anyway...

>> His healthcare plan failed(look it up)
I did and it hasn't.

>> America is now over $18 Trillion in debt.
I wonder if the previous president starting two wars has anything to do with that?

>> And he insists on throwing pebbles at ISIS while the EU does all the fighting
Way too big a topic to address here. Post on another video if you want to discuss it further.

>> I am not necessarily saying that Trump is a good person, or would make a good President, but he would me loads better than the other shrimps for candidates...
He's not, he wouldn't and better than an invertebrate with a brain only barely recognisable as such is not a sufficient bar for the presidency.

Ok America, I appreciate your commitment to a joke as much as the next guy, and sure, we've all had some laughs, but I think it's time to recognise when a prank goes too far.

It's all fun and games until this idiot actually gets into office.

Congratulations, you've managed to recognise an obviously tongue-in-cheek comment by applying basic reading skills. Oh no, wait... you didn't.

You want credible sources?

Here ya go:
correlation of gun ownership with suicide and homocide
How right-to-carry impacts the crime rate (hint: it's not good)

Understand, I don't want to ban guns. I have friends who hunt and shoot a lot, (I've done it myself a few times and quite frankly, shooting is fun).

The problem is that it's simply way too easy to get a gun in the US. You know why you have "armed thugs" breaking into your house? BECAUSE EVERYONE HAS A FUCKING GUN. In other 1st world countries, most break-ins are unarmed, because as Jim said, most people just want your TV.

Now, it may be that the ship has sailed in the U.S. because you failed to do anything about this for so long. But it would absolutely make sense to make it just a bit more difficult for anyone to have access to a gun.

I went through that and suffered under a depression of knowing it, but then i underwent a brand new realisation when i was studying physics. The realisation that in actual fact, nobody on Earth has ever had a better idea about what happens when you die than anybody else. There's no experienced or authoritative perspective on that. It occurred to me because i asked the smartest man i know where he thought existence came from and he said "ask a philosopher".

Everyone's thoughts on it are either an imaginative guess (with no view point being better than the other) or a so-called educated guess based on the laws of physical reality. Well, the laws of physical reality only explain what we can observe (by definition) and furthermore at least some laws have been broken in unusual situations (where did everything appear from/happen from if there is energy conservation in the universe?). Not necessarily an educated guess in other words.

I recognise the way you talk about your 'realisation' with an air of finality, as though you have truly found the final answer. But i ask you, because i have spent my life wondering and years studying - what do you really know about what happens or why we are here?

I think it is equally likely to be a non-existence as it is to be an obscure, impossible to understand, trans-humanist wet dream. Literally anything is possible, and the only reason we limit ourselves to "god" or "nothingness" is because we're so used to waking up and seeing this undeniably weird and wonderful reality that we one day found ourselves existing in. I put it to you that it would be no more remarkable or unlikely to find ourselves in a second, entirely different kind of reality afterwards.

You would not believe how much attention the media over here spend on his appearance and overall attitude. Shaves his head, doesn't tug his shirt in, doesn't wear a tie, drives a motorcycle... a rockstar by every measure.

There were regular forecasts that the chicken would come home to roost for him any day now; that the public would recognise his responsibility in their suffering and that they would turn against them.

And every single time, the public cheered him on even more. The press couldn't understand it at all. What a glorious fella he is, throwing the entire establishment out of balance like this. Maybe someone should project his face onto the ECB monstrocity in Frankfurt at night, just to rub it in.

Anyways, I don't have a clue why he resigned. There are several rumours, but beyond that, nothing solid.

As for the comments: they are my way of processing my rage. Doesn't work particularly well though, I'm still pissed off. But it's nice to hear that it provides a different perspective for some folks.

ExxonMobil had the Bush administration lobbying strongly to replace the chair of the IPCC with a more agreeable alternative, which we know about because of a leaked memo. So let us not pretend that the IPCC are above the skepticism of being politically influenced. The name "intergovernmental panel" says it all, in my opinion; i had assumed the I stood for Independent.

I don't apologise for not reading the entire thread because i noticed that in your first post you said the following, and it gave me cause to doubt your take on the science in the rest of the thread. I've been in too many discussions in which i spent hours researching only to find out people were completely wrong, and i spent 45 mins on your first paragraph already. Anyway here is the quote again:

"IPCC best estimates for 2100 are about 1.5 degree increase, so another hundred years and increase that is about twice as bad. Of course, it's twice as bad as what we saw the last 100 yeas and not only survived, but thrived under."

Firstly, the planet's flora and fauna have most certainly NOT thrived during that time. Humans have flourished by exploiting nature, so yes we have 'thrived'. In the same way that if i were to steal money from a dozen old ladies, i might say i was thriving even though i was out of work during the economic downturn. Pretty much every source agrees that the one thing the ecosystem is not doing is thriving - we are in or on the verge of the sixth mass extinction on the planet. So this is an inspiring yet futile "hurrah for us!" bravado that ignores the truth; we stand on the deck of a galleon around a big bonfire, ripping up planks and chopping up the boat, throwing it on the fire and going "we're all lovely and warm!" as we sit lower and lower in the water.

Secondly and in my opinion most significantly, according to the IPCC conclusions on page 8 you have used the term "best estimates" to mean "best case scenario" rather than "most reliable estimate" - which is why i have downvoted that comment, as it is misleading and incorrect. I would say it's cynically misleading, but i suspect you've lifted that from a cynical source rather than being cynical yourself.

I don't know if you realise, but you referred to only one result out of four, the rest of which strongly indicate a greater than 2 degree rise. Your reference is to RCP 2.6 which assumes CO2 emissions peak between 2010 and 2020. A decade in which the most populous countries on the planet are developing and a decade in which we must start to reduce global emissions so that we have a good chance of your best case scenario happening. We are already half way through it, and according to Mauna Loa observatory and every other source i could find (including EPA, NOAA and IEA) we are still increasing our CO2 emissions year on year including this year, where we've broken the 400ppm milestone, 120ppm greater than pre industrial times, half of which occured since 1980 (Pieter Tans).

So in fairness, you might have underplayed the IPCC report (which you seem to get almost all of your information from) in as much as newtboy might have overestimated the dangers and rapidity of climate change. I think you're out on a limb by telling him that the scientific community disagrees with him and he's using dodgy sources, when you've cherry picked one quarter of a conclusion from one source (the IPCC) to argue for your best case scenario which you refer to (unscientifically and incorrectly) as the "best estimate".

However, i do at least appreciate that despite your doubts (and in my opinion, slight confusion over the results, i don't think you're being intentionally misleading) you are very much behind changing our behaviour and using resources that are more appropriate... and that's what really matters right now is that people recognise the need to change.

Yeah, I think that's great and I'd add that as this point, I'd say Rousey is their most publicly recognisable fighter, certainly to people who aren't aficionados of MMA.

Ironically, part of that is because of a combination of novelty factor and that she's easy on the eyes, but that's the public perception, and doesn't in anyway reflect on her abilities as a fighter.

I finally recognise where the voiceover for this comes from:

If men of GOD trip and fall, they're usually landing penis first in other men or children.
I loathe gay clergy not for staying in their closet of self-hatred, I loathe them for actively speaking out against their own nature and therefore making it harder for those who chose not to be liars.
I chose to discard the bible because of the immoral, unethical, cruel and simply made up stuff that's written in it. That should be reason enough.
I detest christian churches for supporting pedophilia and actively covering up pedophile's crimes while having the gall to tell me what I should or should not do sexually. I detest them for claiming the authority to make up rules of morality when they refuse to obey the rule of law and human decency. The Duggars are just a recent example of that.
The reason society won't allow sexual relationships with children is simply because we recognise that children aren't able to make informed choices regarding sexual consent. That's why the world frowned on Courtney Stodden and Doug Hutchinson, because everyone knew it was a shitty idea made by weird, creepy people.
Consent is something grown ups can give. And millions of gay men do it all the time, without your approval or not. All they want is equal treatment.
If pedophiles wanted that (and they did try in the past), we tell them to go fuck themselves because the people they want to, are simply too young to make that choice. There's a legal limit for drinking, driving and fucking and it's there for a reason.
If they claim "I was born this way!", which they often are, we tell them we have therapies for that. They don't go there because their sexuality is weird, out of the norm or gross, it's because it always hurts the other people involved. Always.

You are the one ranting "But what if you take away the rule book?! Goats will rape our children!" You seem to be the one worried that all goes Mad Max if we're not threatened with eternal damnation anymore.
I for one are not worried any place turns into Sodom and Gomorrah. You want to know why? Because I have all those gay, lesbian and transgender people to remind me that everybody deserves respect. They can walk up to me and start a conversation and don't have to worry I will yell "Abomination!" and start throwing my own poop.
Maybe I can learn something from their expirience. Maybe even somebody like you could. I hope somebody you truly love turns out to be gay, it would be quite educational for you to know what they know.
And you're right, I don't know anybody called Jack. I can only offer a Johannes but he was an idiot.

Joyce is an ex farmer and one of the National party contributions to the Liberal/National coalition government at the moment. Blunt is probably a mild way to describe him. Another way would be remove the "bl" and replace with "c"... ; )

But yeah, this is another storm in a teacup caused by some dickhead saying something perfectly reasonable in the most creepy and unreasonable way possible.

A simple statement such as: "Mr Depp brought two dogs in without observing Australian quarantine regulations and has been notified that if he doesn't remove them within the next 50 hours, the dogs will be confiscated and unfortunately will need to be destroyed."

Taadaa, crisis fucking averted...

Joyce isn't sucking up to constituents, he's just being his usual charming self. The Nats are borderline irrelevant in this country now apart from making up the balance so the Liberals can actually manage to go toe to toe with Labor (the leftist party). Most Australian's saw this as Joyce being a colossal douche even while recognising that Depp did the wrong thing.

ps. Oliver is also completely wrong about the baby koala. You see those cold black eyes, dolls eyes? And you know how everything over here basically wants to murder the shit out of you in horrible ways? Tread warily lest you wake the sleeping giant...

No-one gives a shit what your neolithic deity thinks. The same boring arguments were trotted out when interracial couples wanted to get married.

Here's the thing, most people are already in favour of gay marriage. It's just past the point where more than 50% of the US population lives in a state with legal SSM. Most of the developed world has either legalised gay marriage, allows civil unions or recognises marriages performed in other countries. You have more in common with Uganda than Utah.

Enjoy being on the wrong side of history (again).

So despite many of these encounters seeming like they could have been better resolved without the interference of random strangers, this illustrates surprisingly well what ought to be a universal practice.

Feels are all well and good, but you don't have to descend into the pig sty of emotions and sentimentality to recognise the utilitarian principle that whenever you can pay a small cost to give someone a substantially larger gain then humanity makes a net profit. You're enriching the entire world; and you live in the world, so that's usually a good idea.

Kindness? Pah. Karma? Pah. Game theory and rational cooperation? Yes.

Great talk. I love Nat, she's genuinely funny.

I have to say that it surprises me to hear her refer to "Asians" as a single group. There are massive cultural differences between Indians, Chinese, Japanese, Thais, etc. No-one refers to Germans, French, Italians and English as "Europeans".

I also don't really think there's anything wrong with making fun of your culture. Many of my favourite comedians do that all the time (Dylan Moran and Billy Connolly for example). There's a world of difference between recognising and laughing at your own cultural quirks and making racist stereotype jokes.

Coming at this from the perspective of academic philosophy I think the truth of the matter is ultimately very simple (however the details can be almost infinitely complex and diverse in how we apply them).

Simply put it appears impossible to demonstrate any kind of ultimate ethical authority or perfect ethical principles objectively.

One can certainly assert them, but they would always be subject to the problem of underdetermination (no facts, only interpretations) and as such subjective.

Even strictly humanist systems of ethics like concequentialism and deontology are at their core based on some arbitrary assumption or rule e.g. minimising harm, maximising pleasure, setting a universal principle, putting the concequences before the intention etc. etc.

As such I think the only honest and objective absolute moral principle is "Nothing is true and everything is permitted" (the law of the strong). All else can only truly be supported by preference and necessity. We do not "Know" moral truth, we only appear to interpret and create it.

This being the case it is the opinion of myself and a great many post modern philosophers that ethics is essentially a specialised branch of aesthetics. An important one still, but none the less it is still a study of preference and beauty rather than one of epistemological truth.

By this logic one could certainly argue that the organic "Humanist" approach to ethics and morality as outlined in this video seems infinitely preferable to any sort of static absolute moral authority.

If morality is at its core just a measure of the degree of thought and extrapolation one applies to maximising preferable outcomes then the "humanist" seems like they would have an inherent advantage in their potential capacity to discover and refine ever more preferable principles and outcomes. A static system by its very nature seems less able to maximise it's own moral preferences when presented by ever changing circumstances.


However I'm about to kind of undermine that very point by suggesting that ultimately what we are calling "humanism" here is universal. i.e. that even the most static and dictatorial ethical system (e.g. Wahhabism or Christian fundamentalism) is still ultimately an expression of aesthetic preference and choice.

It is aesthetically preferable to a fundamentalist to assert the absolute moral authority and command of God and while arguably less developed and adaptable (and thus less preferable by most Humanist standards), it is still at it's core the exercise of a preference and as such covered by humanism in general.

i.e. if you want to be a "humanist" then you should probably be wary of placing ultimate blame for atrocities on specific doctrines, as the core of your own position is that morality is a human condition not a divine one. i.e. religion did not make people condone slavery or start wars, human behaviour did.

We can certainly argue for the empirical superiority of "humanism" vs natural authority by looking at history and the different behaviours of various groups & societies. But really what we are arguing there is simply that a more considered and tolerant approach appears to make most people seem happier and results in less unpleasant things happing.

i.e. a preference supported by consensus & unfortunately that doesn't give us any more moral authority than a fanatic or predator beyond our ability to enforce it and persuade others to conform.

"Nothing is true and everything is permitted", "right" and "wrong" can only be derived from subjective principles ergo "right" and "wrong" should probably instead be replaced with "desirable" and "undesirable" as this seems closer to what one is actually expressing with a moral preference.

I completely agree with the sentiment in the video, more freedom of thought seems to mean more capacity to extrapolate and empathise. The wider your understanding and experience of people and the world the more one appears to recognise and appreciate the shared condition of being human.

But I must never forget that this apparent superiority is ultimately based on an interpretation and preference of my own and not some absolute principle. The only absolute principle I can observe in nature seems to be that chaos & conflict tend towards increasing order and complexity, but by this standard it is only really the conflict itself which is moral or "good/right" and not the various beliefs of the combatants specifically.

At this point, Israel are basically holding a midget at arm's length, kicking him in the balls with steel toe caps whilst Palestine slap ineffectually at their hand.

Israel has the capability to deal with the attacks on "their" land (let's not forget the UN recognise much of their occupation as illegal) without indiscriminate shelling of areas populated by MOSTLY innocent civilians. They are basically investing in future terrorism by choosing not to do so, giving themselves an excuse to elaborate on their prison camp which we refer to as Palestine.

You don't have to be FOR hamas to be AGAINST the killing of innocents, and i'm afraid Israel does the lion's (and the lioness', and the cubs') share of that. They can and should be better than retaliation.