*beg

Fantastic sift - I hope more people see it!

The only thing this video is good for is displaying what a prick this host is.

I love the laughing in the background.

Caller was trying to relate two unrelated properties of a thing. The two properties are "conceptual" and "physical". Things can be either conceptual or non-conceptual. Things also can be either physical or non-physical. A thing can therefore have 2x2 combinations of these properties: conceptual and physical, non-conceptual and physical, conceptual and non-physical, and non-conceptual and non-physical. It's unfortunate the host didn't recognize this, I think he was just too flustered to come back to it.

Asking for a third option between "conceptual or physical" is comparing apples to oranges. That is, unless conceptual is non-physical and non-conceptual is physical, which is not necessarily true according to the host's argument (because of the definition of "conceptual" meaning "of the mind").

One could say that there is a third option available between physical and non-physical, that being the idea of "null" or "unknown" or "undefined", but it could then be argued that just because it isn't known to us doesn't mean that it isn't "known" to someone, something else, or to the universe.

Fun video until the caller stopped listening and stopped considering the host's points. I'm impressed with the way they sling terminology around... they obviously did well in ancient philosophy.

This is the absolute worst interview I've ever seen.

I hope that kid sees this video when he gets older.

"oh, shit... that was pretty funny. better call dad."

>> ^Farhad2000:
Peace with a hostile enemy doesn't imply there is peace all over Iraq. I was referring to certain parts of Iraqi society and country.


With which hostile enemy did they achieve peace? What name do you call the people that are still fighting against them?

I sound like I'm trying to be a dick, but I'm not... I'm just totally confused by how you see the situation...

If she REALLY wanted to stand out she would have made it all asymmetrical.

>> ^Farhad2000:
Ha.
The US achieved peace with a hostile enemy by employed the methodology of COIN and hearts and minds to allow Iraqis to govern themselves, though years late cooperation and dialog in parts of Iraq have shown that soft contact with the local populace has meant that Iraqis actively gave up insurgents themselves.



The US achieved peace? Huh... I must have missed the news that US soldiers are no longer being killed in Iraq. Cool.

*beg because I think this is cool. By the way, I found a video of the same guy for which he said he used no audio modification... I'll post it shortly (if I remember).

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
...But in the end this vid (and others like it) berates people for how they think, talk, believe, and act while at the same time trying to say people should be able to think, talk, believe, and act as they wish...


Correct me if I'm wrong - it seems that your argument in the first statement here is saying that the video is contradictory because it berates the parents / others for their point of view (which is that they want their child to follow what they say without questioning it, and that they are unwilling to consider anything besides what they currently believe until the end of the video). Is that right?

Well, you have an interesting point. The video does, indeed, do what you're claiming.

This leads to an incredibly interesting topic of discussion - what do you do with someone whose moral code differs from your own / society's? In most of society today we tend to put these people in jail or in psych wards. In past societies, people have been excommunicated, killed, berated, dealt with hospitably and have fought against society to try to get it to recognize their views.

I don't know if this is an American video or not, but in America the right to the pursuit of happiness is guaranteed. There's a problem with that, though! The child in this video and the parents have conflicting moral codes which preclude each other from pursuing happiness while they live together. There's a difference between what the child is doing, however, and what the parents are doing. The parents' moral code requires them to attempt to force the child to change which prevents him from being able to pursue happiness. On the other hand, the child's moral code simply doesn't mesh with the parents' - but he's not attempting to force them into anything.

There is a flaw with the parents' moral code which goes against the right to the pursuit of happiness of others. There is no such flaw in the child's moral code.



Human morality and the resulting secular laws based on those moralities are based are deeply rooted in religious belief. You wish to wave a wand and change that, but it is how it is. What people perceive as right and wrong structures how they govern behavior, and how they reward or punish it. Unless your intent is to ban religion entirely, you are just going to have to accept the reality that Theists (the bulk of the planet's population) are going to hold positions of power, authority, and governance. You'll also have to accept that thier concept of what is and isn't 'good' is going to come with them.



Human morality has existed for a long time - longer than religion (depending on your definition of religion), and it has changed a lot over that time. There are still people in the world for whom it is morally OK to kill others, even to rape or eat other humans. There are videos on the sift which prove this (see the "we rape to get good magic" video - too lazy to get a link). Religion has certainly developed moral ideas, but it's not the root of all morality.

Personally, I believe that morality came about the same way most other things came about - out of need. Early humans probably found that they fared better by cooperating with people similar to themselves rather than fighting those people, so that became their moral code. This is why some cultures have moral codes that are questionable to other cultures - they've developed differently and have had different needs resulting in different lifestyles and different moral codes.

Theists are a majority of human population (though I believe that the percentage is declining - I have no proof to back that up, though). I believe (hope?) that most non-theists have no problem with people being theists, and they can accept that theists have their own concept what is good and bad, right and wrong. The problem occurs when one group attempts to impose restrictions on the other's ability to pursue happiness. Both the religious and the non-religious are guilty of this.

This video doesn't explicitly state that the parents / girls at the lake who tend to be the aggressors represent Christianity or any particular religion, but it also doesn't try very hard to avoid that implication (a book as an instruction manual is a very strong symbol easily identified with the bible). It seems to be a critique of violent intolerance, but it could have done a better job of being nonviolent itself by simply saying "It's OK for the parents to be unaccepting of others' beliefs as long as they do so in a way that doesn't prevent the others from pursuing their own happiness".


Man, that was a freaking dissertation.

tl;dr version:

Pennypacker is right that the video is intolerant. It's intolerant of violent intolerance, which leads to confusion over conflicting moral codes.

BART is the Bay Area Rapid Transit system, which I believe is a public service, so BART police are public servants as well. Whether they go through official police training or not, I'm not sure. If they have guns, then I'd imagine they do. [citation would be good, but I'm too lazy to look]

I think shootings by cops should be investigate and prosecuted more harshly than shootings by civilians. They have a more responsibility, more authority and more power than civilians, and as such they should be held to a higher standard. If they can't keep their cool on the job, they need to be fired immediately or put back in intense training or retested / given a mental exam. If they shoot someone, EVER, there should be a full investigation and they should immediately be put through psychological examination and training. That's some serious shit to be able to shoot someone, and the effect psychologically on the shooter must be intense and life changing.

Also, it's worth noting that this event occurred the morning of Jan 1st, so I think it's a fair assumption that at least some of the people in this video had been drinking. If they find that the cop had been drinking he should be immediately put in jail. Taking risks with such power is unacceptable.

I don't get all of the drama about the waves... isn't this just basic physics in essence, paired with very unlikely chance? Sure, this isn't supposed to happen very often, but the oceans are freaking huge and over the course of time it'll happen tons of times. What am I missing here?

I mean can mindless and submissively compliant partisanship really be that strong?


Yes.