Turi

So well argued...

I think this point has been made higher up, with slightly less offensive language!
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I think this is called the 'Compatibilist' approach?

One query though: Just because we run our society on the premise of free will, it doesn't mean it exists. Some of the most forceful critiques of the criminal justice system, of course, come from the fiercest critics of free will, including Robert Sapolsky, the Stanford Professor of Neurology and author of the best-selling Behave

Robert Sapolsky, the Stanford Professor of Neurology and author of the best-selling Behave, was recently on the Mindscape Podcast:

• "...not only am I a free will skeptic, I don’t believe there is a shred of agency that goes into any of our behavior"

• "...it seems self-evident from my perspective, if you spend enough decades studying enough different ways in which our brain and behavior are influenced by stuff we have no control over, that put all those pieces together, and free will is just what we call the biology that hasn’t been discovered yet."

Though, if there's no such thing as free will, believing in it or not should make no difference...?

I'm desperate to believe in Free Will, like some are desperate to believe in God (actually, I'd like that too). Most of the time, I'm prepared to wilfully suspend my disbelief and make do with the illusion, but - actually - this has given me comfort!

Do you think evolution explains it? Particularly in relation to social cues?
Though I love the idea of bringing a little more madness into business meetings!

I get that this isn't your general point, but on the specific question of hunter-gatherers working all day not to starve, there's been a bunch of recent research suggesting that in fact they had lots of spare time!
Marshall Sahlins was, I think, the first to propose this in his work on the Original Affluent Society, though in that Wikipedia article you'll also see the argument (more salient to your general point) that life was still pretty awful!

Thank you for sharing your story. I'm so glad you're doing well!

We're trying to debate ideas here, not to win the argument but to help us understand the other side.
If you don't understand someone's argument, the fault is likely with you, not with them!

Thank you for sharing. I hope you're OK, and that your doctor can help you get better!

😂

Thank you for sharing your story (as well as your suggestions) here.

Wow! Didn't know. Thanks for sharing!

These statements (#MaC) form part of the Morality as Cooperation Quiz

What is morality? Where does it come from, and how does it work? And how and why do moral values vary, between individuals, and across cultures?

The theory of ‘morality as cooperation’ (MAC) argues that morality is best understood as a collection of biological and cultural solutions to the problems of cooperation recurrent in human social life. MAC draws on evolutionary game theory to argue that, because there are many types of cooperation, there will be many types of morality.

These include: family values, group loyalty, reciprocity, heroism, deference, fairness and property rights. Previous research suggests that these seven types of morality are evolutionarily-ancient, psychologically-distinct, and cross-culturally universal.

Take the Quiz to work out what your particular mix looks like.

Thanks for sharing your story here!

I hear you...
My hope/sense is most people read it as: There is no such thing as Toxic Masculinity / 'Toxic Masculinity' is a nonsense invented by the left?

I really hope those of us who sometimes feel that way are just doing it wrong...

Sending thoughts your way. I hope you're able to find some light.
Just to share: things which have helped me include therapy, exercise (I know, I know... not much of a patch, but still), and a slight recalibration of expectation. I found this notion helpful: that a psychologically rich life is a worthy goal in itself - beyond the frenzied pursuit of happiness, or ambition.

If we assume that most people (the vast near-total majority of humankind) would say they were happy to have been born, is there an argument that not having children (who therefore are also overwhelmingly likely to be grateful for their birth) is depriving them of the experience of life? Even if it does involve some suffering?

😂 ♥️

Yes to this AND there are great arguments for levelling the idea even of meritocracy (imagine that the first student did have a demonstrably higher IQ, say, than the second).
Michael Sandel, prof at Harvard, is exceptional on this.
See his TED Talk on the 'Tyranny of Merit'.

One question: is this the right title for the Opinion? Are you arguing more something 'Your success is not your own'?

I like your definition :-)

🌭 "Instinctually, when you look at a sandwich you don't think "wow that hot dog looks tasty."" - that would be the argument you'd make if you thought a sandwich was a hotdog, which is obviously insane and likely dangerous... 🥪

But I have to say if I walked up to a hotdog stall with a friend and they turned to me and asked me whether I wanted my sandwich with ketchup or mustard, I would radically rethink our friendship.

Are people really not saying a ham and cheese roll is not a sandwich?

😂

I hear you but I think the idea behind the statement is political: if we frame obesity as a disease (a malfunctioning of the body, a condition that induces those who suffer from it to over-eat, to metabolise slowly, etc...) then we stop blaming obese people for it. We externalise the problem - it's no longer 'laziness' or 'unhealthy lifestyles' or 'letting yourself go'...

But I think the key thing here is the issue of spiking the blame....

😂 👍

There's an interesting case here!
Francesca Minerva (whom we interviewed here) wrote an article on precisely this question which got her in the most awful academic trouble.

Great points here, to which I'd add that left to their own devices, industries tend towards monopoly - that is to say that without regulation, all industries concentrate.
Fabulous book on the subject here - 'The Myth of Capitalism' by fervent free-marketeer Jonathan Tepper who argues regulation is the only thing that keeps the market free.
And nice primer on the topic in Vox here.

Your analysis is so thoughtful, funny, and - to my mind - bang on the money that I feel embarrassed to nitpick, but wonder whether there's a difference between neutral and unbiased.

Neutral, to my mind (and - if I'm not wrong - in the general discourse around journalism), means representing all sides.
Unbiased, I think, suggests not showing (unfair) prejudice towards or against a certain value statements.

To give an example, I think being neutral on climate change (citing both sides of the debate) is different from being unbiased on climate change.

One more reason I agree w your 'Against' position.

Beautifully described - thank you!

I love this re-framing!

Love this argument!
I had no idea of all those coincidences. Has someone done the maths here too? But I still don't believe those coincidences add up to a proof of determinism. Would we have to understand the cause, to justify a theory of determinism?

Help! Brain-fry: "such as a God towards us but simultaneously a force against God too, either from us back at the God force or from the force creating God itself back at God or even through to us? (Or both?)"
Help me understand what you mean?

I'm still a lil brain-fried, but it's now on me 😊!
Thank you for unpacking!

Thanks for sharing this: a crucial building block in this debate.

It's impossible to enact change unless you can imagine it...

History lesson in a box! Thank you!

Karen Stenner, an expert on Authoritarianism, did some experiments to work out how she could get authoritarians (obsessed with their in-group, terrified of 'others') to be more tolerant, and expand their idea of the in-group. The threat of alien invasion - a bigger, nastier other to protect against - is what works best!

Lovely point here, and I'd not thought of it this way.

Two great thinkers who describe how deeply contorted the basic human psyche must be before it can engage in mass war are, paradoxically, experts on de-humanisation.

See our interviews with Philosopher David Livingstone Smith and Social Neuroscientist Lasana Harris.

This is so helpful as a framer... Thank you 🙏

Always be that person ;-)

Plus: any subjective opinion that says ABBA isn't the best pop band of all time is wrong. Obviously. 🕺🏾

Prof. Ronald Dworkin:

"Professors and others who teach and study in universities have... a paradigmatic duty to discover and teach what they find
important and true, and this duty is not, even to the degree that
medical responsibility may be, subject to any qualification about
the best interests of those to whom they speak. It is an undiluted
responsibility to the truth, and it is, in that way, the closest a
professional responsibility can come to the fundamental ethical
responsibility each of us has..."

In We Need a New Interpretation of Academic Freedom, 1996

I agree with you, and I think we need a Nietzsche emoji.
"🥸 " doesn't quite cut it.

Is it the only clear cut moral wrong today? And I wonder what its cultural history is: when did it become so universally not OK?

Lovely point! Thank you for spelling out so clearly...

This is one of those deep gut feelings that separates us, both as individuals (where some prize loyalty above all else) and as cultures (status societies, predominantly based on kinship, vs contract societies, predominantly based on norms).
We all contain both instincts which is what makes those moments when we're faced with choice so tough...

Thanks so much for the personal context here - super helpful!

This a work of beauty, for which thank you!

I'd never thought about pizza from the perspective of impact before... ;-)

Such a good series of points and I hadn't bothered to look for the harder left perspective here!

These statements (#MaC) form part of the Morality as Cooperation Quiz

What is morality? Where does it come from, and how does it work? And how and why do moral values vary, between individuals, and across cultures?

The theory of ‘morality as cooperation’ (MAC) argues that morality is best understood as a collection of biological and cultural solutions to the problems of cooperation recurrent in human social life. MAC draws on evolutionary game theory to argue that, because there are many types of cooperation, there will be many types of morality.

These include: family values, group loyalty, reciprocity, heroism, deference, fairness and property rights. Previous research suggests that these seven types of morality are evolutionarily-ancient, psychologically-distinct, and cross-culturally universal.

Take the Quiz to work out what your particular mix looks like.

I was just reading about a very peculiar Left-wing response to the Beveridge reforms in the UK (which gave us the Welfare State, the NHS, etc...) on the grounds that by empowering the state to look after its most needy citizens, it dis-empowered the community and would lead to community atomisation... They may have had a point 🤷‍♂️

Ha! why are the Finns so articulate?

Nice!

Mind merging... such a wonderful idea. We aspire to it all the time - both when we try to empathise with people we love, and also when we find ourselves in situations and wonder "What would X do?" - but the thrill of perceiving the world through the mind of another? 🤯 ❤️ 🌌

Also, poetry?
In the right frame of mind, with enough calm around you, the best stuff gets you very very deep into the poet's head...

You've taken this in a way I wouldn't have understood it (I read the opinion as suggesting there's nothing 'natural' about being homosexual) and you make such a great point about the feeling aspect of this.
Loved reading.

Thanks for sharing such a personal experience! Fascinating to read.

Illegitimate, like out of wedlock? Was that the stated goal?
My understanding was that it was intended to protect against unwanted or surprise pregnancies, and against the rise in STDs.

And it does seem, as part of a broader Teenage Pregnancy Strategy, it has worked.
Good charts here showing steep rate of decline in teenage pregnancies in England and Wales. Since 1999, conception rates for women aged under 18 years have decreased by 62.7%.

Interesting. I didn't realise there was so much controversy around Kinsey.
For more details, check https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Kinsey

Ditto... I can drink far more wine (and frankly vodka) than I can beer... It might also be chemical, rather than psychosomatic!

Love this history lesson! Thank you!

They call it the 'little death' 😏

Whistleblower Frances Haugen's testimony to Congress against Facebook is pretty damning

• Haugen said Facebook routinely prioritises its profits and growth over the safety of its users.

• When it comes to oversight and accountability she said "the buck stops with Mark" - referring to Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of the company.

• Several lawmakers pointed to research that suggests Facebook and Instagram worsen teenagers' body image issues and promote eating disorders. Haugen told lawmakers that Facebook intentionally targets teens, including children under the age of 13.

• Committee Chairman Richard Blumenthal called the company "morally bankrupt" and said parents and bullied teens, among others, were watching their actions closely now.

• Haugen suggested Facebook was harmful to democracy and had taken away many safeguards it had in place for the 2020 election.

• Haugen argued the company has a culture of insularity that leads to a lack of accountability.

This comes off the back of a Wall Street Journal report on FB's own internal reporting on its impact on teens.

“We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls,” said a slide from one internal presentation in 2019.

“Thirty-two per cent of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse,” said a report in 2020

“Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression. This reaction was unprompted and consistent across all groups.”

I still think that flies though...
Stereotypes are, of course, wrong (because simplistic, etc), but I still think it's a fair question to ask whether they're necessarily negative or positive.

• Teenagers are rebels
• White people can't handle spicy food
• Koreans are hard-workers...

?

I think there's a plausibly similar argument against the election of the House of Lords in the UK. Of course they're political too now, but elections embed a very particular kind of selection bias: they only elevate people who like being (or are good at being) elected.
Which truly isn't the only qualification for judicial or legislative competence.

This one's tricky, because taxing the 1% (or even the top 10%) more is not quite the same as pursuing economic equality. The pursuit of economic equality feels much more ambitious, closer to communism than redistributive socialism even?

So helpful - thank you!

I had no idea of the history 😳... thank you!

This feels right to me, and chimes with the idea that - profoundly - we can map a commonality of emotional experience across humankind.

Interesting points here!
Here is the more general Opinion on the legalisation debate, which might also be of interest - https://www.parlia.com/o/prostitution-should-be-legalised

Do you think the spanking helped?
I was brought up with threat of it, which did most of the work...
Feel we need psychotherapists to comment here..

🧠🧠🤯🤩

Super interesting.

What kind of moral world are you envisaging in which 'having more' becomes immoral? And if so, what's the 'fair shot' at? Since morality is framed as equality.

Would love some of your favourite examples of those new ideas...!

Or maybe the same reason? That authoritarian fringe in each?

Ladies and Gentlemen, the 'Moth' joke.

After which, on the subject of life, the universe and everything, there may no longer be anything else to add.

Hunter-Gatherer societies were predominantly egalitarian. It is only since the advent of farming (and therefore of surplus) that society became hierarchical

There's lots of evidence to suggest that hunter-gatherer societies were, and in many instances still are, pretty egalitarian in structure.

The big shift comes with the advent of settled, farming cultures, in which surplus can be acquired and works as a measure of capital value and power. Early settler societies soon became extremely inegalitarian. Quickly, power concentrated into the hands of very few men, who reduced women to their personal property, and excluded the vast majority of non-powerful men from the mating pool.

The results are in our DNA and startling.
The male to female reproduction ratio is roughly 17:1, which means for every 17 women who passed on their genes, only one (very powerful) man did the same.

But to the opinion: while we see hierarchy all over the history of human society, and we clearly have a disposition towards it, that disposition may in fact be circumstantial (prompted by changes and opportunities in our environment) rather than somehow biologically innate to the group.

A hug isn't a lunge. Before you hug someone, you kinda size each other up to see whether it's a goer, and then move

Nobody just hugs. If you don't know the person very well, you raise your arms or make like you're up for a hug and they either do the same or kinda make it obvious they'd prefer not...

I'm not going to preface every hug - an expression of warmth and intimacy and affection and care - with a consent question, because it devalues those very feelings I'm trying to express.

You're right! My position is wrong on this one! Thanks for changing my mind ;-)

😂🥰

Again, I hear you. And there's maybe a merging of images here which is confusing. The idea is this one.
Can I ask you sincerely: do you actually think it's confusing or is it just the wording that grates?

Understood, and thank you!

Thanks for sharing your personal story!

Salman Rushdie has a great line about the UK (which I can't find a source for 😖): "The problem with the British is they don't know their own history - because all of it happened abroad"

"Phenomenologically, experiences of love are expected to rise from a source of subjectivity that can willingly choose to commit to the other."

It's harder to fall in love with some(one/thing) that doesn't love you back?

Given that assumption can only be projected, might it actually be easier to project it on a robot that performs the 'loving back' bit more consistently? And if, on the contrary, it's the very otherness of the lover that makes us love them, then what more other than a robot-lover?

Eurgh. You're right. Maybe we need a definitions section. Or a community committee to vet Opinion submissions...

There's strong evidence that higher intelligence (IQ) correlates with higher rates of mental illness

That's not quite the same as saying that Ignorance is Bliss, but
a) Neuroticism is directly correlated with intelligence, and has all sorts of negative mental health outcomes
b) The hyper brain/hyper body theory holds that high IQ is associated with psychological and physiological “overexcitabilities,” or OEs. These correlate with bipolar disorders, depression, anxiety disorders and ADHD.

I love this distinction between true 'openness' about sex (exploratory, personal, spiritual, curious) and 'openness' in the sense of 'availability' - transactional, commodified, degraded.

We're trying to work out how the comment was deleted, since all flagged comments are discussed before (if) they're deleted.
Thank you for flagging the issue.

Thank you for sharing your own story here... 🙏🏽

Thanks for sharing.
Here's the 'God / Evil in the world' argument you were mentioning...

This is such a strong argument. If you have any references to link to, that would be awesome, so we can go to the research too.
Thanks for sharing!

Totally agree.
The broad typology seems to be as follows:

• Leftist science denialism seems to follow a purity bias, specifically around nature. The terror of damaging the purity of nature blinds Leftists to the quite obvious risk/reward ratio of everything from GM to nuclear power.

• Rightist science denialism seems to follow their natural resistance to systemic change (they're called conservatives for a reason): climate change, evolution, etc...

In terms of science itself being liberal, again there's a widely evidenced division between the kinds of science. Big abstract theoretical physics tends to be done by and believed by Liberals. Conservatives, however, are super pro 'practical' science: engineering, medicine, etc... science that can 'do' things in the real world.

In terms of whether they do it both equally, there's interesting research by Peter Ditto that suggests they do but in different areas...

Parlia did an interesting podcast on the topic with Adrian Bardon: Why we lie to ourselves

Love this!

One of the very few advantages of being Jewish is that you get to tell Jewish jokes... But the thing about Jewish jokes told by Jews is that they're very different from those told by non-Jews.

We're teasing stereotypes, but they're the accurate stereotypes. They're about out mothers, our anxiety, our paranoia. They're about not fitting in, and not wanting to fit in, and not wanting to not want to fit in. And they are, of course, also about anti-semitism and about the Holocaust, but in a way only a victim could tell.

That's the reason insiders can make fun of themselves: because it's actually funny. Listen to a Jew telling Jewish jokes and you'll learn how Jews actually see the world. It's funny because it's true.

I think this response definitely is an Against! ;-)

Love this point... All about where the focus of sensitivity is.

Love this!

Super interesting!
That might be an extension of the Turing test... Whether a robot could fool a human into believing they were in love with them. 😛

If it's true that each of us has a 'Happiness Set-Point', a level to which we always return, maybe happiness isn't something we can optimise for

Lots of research suggests humans have a Happiness Set-Point. That after the highs and lows caused by short-term externalities, we revert back to a level of happiness that is pretty constant throughout our lives. To some it's proof of the 'hedonic treadmill' - the idea that we will always revise our expectations (and happiness) in relation to our circumstances. To others it's simply biology at play.

We might have some control over happiness if it's the former. If it's biology - and some people are just born a little happier than others - then it's unlikely something we can optimise, and therefore unlikely to be a good 'purpose of life'.

I think this 'food systems' approach you take to explain the ways in which we think and behave is fascinating, and applicable to so many other areas of life - from the ethics of our consumption, to those of social structures and hierarchies, through to our relationships with each other.

On March 1st, 20M Brits (30%) had received their first dose.
By the summer, everyone over 40 will have received both doses, and all adults will have received at least one.

While there's a chance these festivals do accelerate transmission to some extent, they'd be doing so amongst the least vulnerable section of the population, many of whom will have received both doses anyway. The personal risk, therefore, remains though at massively diminished levels. The more important collective risk to the NHS and hospital overflow will be minimal.

I'd have thought we should be OK to open by then, and even Liam Gallagher can't screw up the joys of a rave after 18 months of hibernation.

Good point!

This is fascinating, and usefully moves us out of the Race/Gender Science debate...
I wonder whether there's a difference between censoring and classifying research, or whether the fact that the state intervenes at all moves this from being a question or principle to one of degree.

There's a link here to these opinions around social justice and academia. Interestingly, roughly similar proportions of votes for/against as with this opinion, though the focus is slightly different.

There is a real lack of political diversity across US (and UK) academia, which is particularly prevalent in the Social Sciences. And it's bad for research.

"A 2014 study conducted by the University of California, Los Angeles, Higher Education Research Institute found that 59.8 percent of all undergraduate faculty nationwide identify as far left or liberal, compared with only 12.8 percent as far right or conservative. The asymmetry is much worse in the social sciences. A 2015 study by psychologist José Duarte, then at Arizona State University, and his colleagues in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, entitled “Political Diversity Will Improve Social Psychological Science” found that 58 to 66 percent of social scientists are liberal and only 5 to 8 percent conservative and that there are eight Democrats for every Republican."

Is Social Science politically biased?, Scientific American

Love that!

The argument here is that academics are more invested in the outcome of their work than in its accuracy - particularly when it comes to issues of equality.

Cory Clark and Bo Winegard describe the framework as 'Equalitarianism' and suggest it threatens research integrity.

Francesca Minerva, founder of the Journal of Controversial Ideas, worries that the very idea of academic enquiry is changing: that truth is ‘constructed’ rather than ‘discovered’. She says: "I don’t know if university as we know it is going to survive.”

Thank you so much for this beautiful argument...
I gather the big row takes place around the social sciences, where the research being done and the conclusions drawn does have a massive potential impact on policy.

We've spoken with Cory Clark about the downsides of what she calls Social Science's 'Equalitarianism' as well as with John Jost (NYU) who is an advocate of politicising the social sciences.

I'm sure there's a big element of this, culturally, and I agree with you that it probably represents the majority of the rightwing critique of 'leftist' universities. But that said, there really is a massive overweighting of leftists in universities (see @popipiopit's point below) and not all of that will be because 'leftists like science' or 'educated people tend to be liberal' (though both those things are broadly also true).

Anecdotally, not a single one of rightwing friends went into academia, despite First Class degrees / Rhodes Scholarships etc... and my one friend whose politics have subsequently swung right over his career feels ill at ease in his English dept.

(also: in what sense was Marx a critic of post-modernism? In the way that you've phrased it, it feels like an anachronism)

[Your point about the definitions of 'Liberal' is a big issue for us with equal numbers of Brits/Americans in our community... Maybe we need a standard. Or switch the term out for 'Progressive'...?]

Thank you for sharing such a personal story.
I'm so glad you're doing better.

In France, ethnicity and religion are deliberately excluded from demographic data (although gender isn't)...
In the UK and US, ethnicity is included - is that right?

This is fascinating - thank you!

Very very strong case! ;-)

Hard to argue against this... 😂

thanks for sharing - helpful

So true... I think you've flagged the most important balance in the news room after 'bias'

😂 🙌

I don't see the contradiction here.
The fact that "we all have different body parts, configurations of those body parts, and biologies" doesn't separate us from animals, since animals do too, no?

Never thought of this!

This is so helpful, thank you!
To clarify one point of yours, I think Nietzsche was perfectly happy with the demise of Christian morality - he welcomed it, even.

There's a lovely podcast episode, called Nietzsche on Morality by David Runciman on precisely this.

This is fascinating and I'd never thought of it this way... Thank you

So well expressed! Thank you!

There's an interesting view on data privacy that might resonate w/ DNA ownership. Since our data privacy is only marginally valuable to us as individuals, one argument is that we should share ownership to Data Trusts that can act in our collective interests.
I wonder whether they same approach might be used for DNA?

This point - "if government started funding museums, we could run into the problem of funds channeling only towards those areas which the government deemed worthy" - resonates hard and you've made me less sure about my position here.

What would the alternative reading of politics be? Who was Morgenthau pitting himself against?

I think massively, yes, but the proposition here is that biology holds at least some weight.

Plausibly yes, which would be catastrophic.
What do we do with research into this area?

I don't think BLM is racist in the sense that many on the Right would have it: that a focus on 'White Privilege' is racist. Racism only ever punches down: you can't be racist towards the dominant majority.

The BLM movement has, however, flirted with anti-semitism.
BLM UK tweeted an explicitly anti-semitic trope in response to the fighting in Israel-Palestine in mid-2021, there have been instances of BLM marches focusing on Jewish areas, and BLM-affiliated groups have equated Israel with Nazi genocide.

You're right to flag my use of 'majority' - I think the key bit is 'dominant'.
The question we're talking about has its own full opinion here: 'Racism requires prejudice plus power'

The UK is full 'horseback' too here.
There was a full referendum on the Alternative Vote in 2011, to which only 42% of the population responded, and AV lost by a wide margin.

There's a similar pattern when it comes to egalitarianism in society too.
Hunter Gatherers were almost completely egalitarian societies, before the advent of farming and settlers created surplus that could be hoarded by the most powerful. To your point above, early 'civilisation' is characterised by massive inequality in the distribution of fatherhood: only the most powerful men got to reproduce.
We've been rolling that inequality back, stutteringly and patchily, ever since...

Bias is also, possibly, rational 😉
We did a lovely podcast with Kevin Dorst on just this issue, which you might enjoy: Why bias is rational

I adore this point and think it's absolutely right.

You've changed my mind on this one, and helped me put back into positive perspective the confusion from leaving a religious upbringing...

Italian genders the table in two different, and fairly obviously traditional, ways!
Il tavolo: the physical table
La tavola: the laid table

The carpenter builds 'il tavolo'
You'd call your kids 'a tavola'

Third option! I read the statement as meaning that male and female cognitive processes are different. That women's and men's brains work differently...
Maybe the whole thing needs a rewrite!

Would you share the research here?
It's touched on here too - 'Men are smarter than women'

I think the best argument for the monarchy in Britain is negative.

You want your head of state to be powerless, a-political, and unifying.

Elected heads of state are none of those (the US, France).
And Appointed heads of state (Israel, Germany) are often deeply divisive (and often corruptible).

If the royals themselves are simply ciphers - emblematic figures whose function is only to symbolise royalty - their actual characters should be irrelevant as long as they have no power and don't actually degrade their capacity to function as symbols.

Andrew's behaviour clearly fails at the second hurdle. Charles' entitlement? - a small price to pay for his servitude...?

😂 nice point

Race Science - for understandable reasons - is one of the most ferociously political of topics. But if we're debating it as science, there is certainly a debate to be had

The fundamental premise is that heritability accounts - at least - for some of the traits we exhibit, without discounting the immense power of environmentalism (nurture, the culture we're brought up in).

The broader question is whether we should treat 'Race Science' as science or politics - and respond accordingly. Check out this Parlia opinion on whether we should privilege politics over science

Here, a calmer case for the Hereditarian hypothesis, by Bo Winegard, Ben Winegard and Jonathan Anomaly.

I feel that most people in the West are broadly on board with not being racist or sexist. So I don't think most people are keeping their views hidden from public view only to come out with the ugly stuff in the privacy of their own homes.
We're more likely, I feel, to be racist and sexist unconsciously than privately...

You flag a really interesting ambiguity here...
I think the argument is usually the opposite one from yours: that the market should not set the minimum wage because it would always set it low, to allow for greater profit. Only if the govt sets the minimum wage will it force companies to pay their workers in line with inflation.
But your point begs the question: why does private business not value the livelihoods of its employees more?

I feel like there are two arguments here... that Patriarchy is unethical (which I profoundly agree with) and that Patriarchy is unnatural (which I'm less sure about). I feel like your argument above slightly conflates them?

We'd prove Patriarchy is unnatural by finding counter examples of it in history, or amongst other primates?

I do think the key, however, is to distance the idea of what is natural from the idea of what is good - the is/ought fallacy.

This is so helpful - thank you

If you're ever interested, Karen Douglas gives an interesting taxonomy of conspiracy belief, here 😊

Minecraft is also educational for adults: it has built a giant virtual library of censored books and texts for anyone around the world to access

In partnership with Reporters Without Borders, Minecraft has built a censor-busting virtual library. It's not only a fascinating project, it's also architecturally stunning.

UK to ban Virginity Testing

In theory, I think you're right. Words shouldn't get in the way of conversation...

In practice, I think this is the fault line of the culture wars.

This is very well explained (thank you!)
I think the Opinion is about the definition of racism, and whether we understand it as simple discrimination or from, as you rightly describe it, the ‘sociological’ perspective?

More divorces mean more people leaving unhappy marriages

In the main, divorce rates have increased as both sides are more able to exercise their freedom. Rising income amongst women has accompanied higher divorce rates because women were no longer economically tethered to unhappy marriages. And there may even be an argument that women's growing economic independence allowed men to call it quits without fear of guilt for having abandoned their spouses.

One of the largest meta-analyses of intelligence shows men have, on average, a roughly 5point IQ advantage over women

The study by Dr. Paul Irving and Prof. Richard Lynn in the British Journal of Psychology reveals no sex difference in general cognitive ability up to the age of 14 and a significant sex difference at 15, which then increases to its adult value of 5 IQ points in favour of males.

Other research seems to suggest women's intelligence is more bunched, with men being both dumber and smarter (there are more men at either ends of the spectrum).

In the UK, Girls now achieve higher grades than boys in all subjects, including STEM, and at all age

The gap between girls and boys achieving A or A* in GCSEs was 9% in 2021: 30% of girls got the top marks vs 21% of boys. In Engineering, typically assumed to be a 'boys' subject, girls were ahed by over 32%.

Professor Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at Buckingham University, said: “such is the extent of girls’ lead over boys that one wonders if they just might be cleverer”.

Not sure I understand... Criminal activity in the bedroom, like plotting a bank heist? If it's sexual criminal activity is because it's non-consensual, no?

What's the best way to fast, do you think?

Thank you! Super helpful!

I 🧡 Period dramas.
My favourite is French - Le Bossu

I suppose the reason why we end up in a competitive framing is because the conversation around equity vs equality, or affirmative action, is a deliberate rebalancing, and therefore calls for a weighing up of relative injustice?

Love your argument

Organ donation should be default rather than mandatory

Today, you have to sign up to Organ Donation. It's a hassle, and feels a little morbid. Rather than signing up to it, we should flip it so that you have to sign out of it, which would make organ donation the default, and still allow those with religious or moral squeamishness the possibility of opting out.

I'm super excited by this framework through which to understand morality - that we should simply replace the word 'moral' for 'cooperative' since all morality is about human cooperation.
Through that framework, lying most likely can be cooperative, but only in certain constrained and specific instances.
As a general approach, however, lying is deeply damaging to cooperation because cooperation is a trust game.

What if your mother hates surprise birthday parties 😂

Love this point!

My gut tells me Boomers and Gen X (like me) criticise Millennials for being lazy because Millennials refuse to put up with a lot of the authority crap that we tend to throw at them, and want a) respectful relationships and b) meaningful work...

There's an argument Millennials are unmarried because they're still young...

Peter Turchin's theory of Elite Overproduction describes a society which produces too many potential elite-members (based on education) to readily absorb them into the structure of power. When this happens, revolution ensues.

Turchin predicted the rise of populism in the US and Europe in 2010, and is predicting the next decade will be the 'Turbulent Twenties'

I'm not sure this is the argument of Elite Overproduction. See the Commentary at the top!

How would you hold China accountable?

We're building Parlia as a space to foster conversation.

Check out our 'Keeping it Civil' and 'Rules of Parlia' blogs - they're just the beginning of community guidelines, so please also make suggestions.

We're building Parlia as a space to foster conversation.

Calling people names has no place here.

Check out our 'Keeping it Civil' and 'Rules of Parlia' blogs.

1. There was no 'intellectual dishonesty' in @shuggie's argument. Most Europeans view the tipping system in the US as absurd - forcing the customer to pay the wages of the restaurant's employees.
2. Both of Parlia's community guidelines explicitly ask our members to treat each other with respect, to assume good faith, and to try to learn from the arguments of others rather than beat them down. You do none of those here.
3. This is your second warning for incivility. If we have to warn you again, we will ban you temporarily from the platform.

Check out our 'Keeping it Civil' and 'Rules of Parlia' blogs.

I have sent my kids to private schools in the UK (this is a UK-focused opinion thread, because few countries have this issue to the same extent).

I'd have much preferred to not have the option.

• Socially, I think it would have a dilutive effect on the class system
• Educationally, there's evidence that loud, entitled and pushy middle class parents do actually help raise standards in schools
• Financially, it would save me a lot of money

But I am also sure those with the funds would also spend them on tutors and classes outside school, as you say. In Korea, where this happens, middle class school kids have an entire evening school programme on top of their normal one. As socially minded as one might be, the instinct to look out for one's own is almost impossible to fight when it comes to one's kids. Maybe that's natural, and maybe it's also good?

This is super helpful and interesting.
Can you drop links to point to the evidence for:
"After all, the most important years for academic development are from the ages 3-7, and you cannot send your child to private school before they are 8. In fact, when you control other factors there is only a 0.6% difference in GCSE grades due to private education. "? Would love to see more there!

Never apologise! Thanks for all your great ideas!

Thanks for sharing your personal experience here!
One thing: we are a site for all, and therefore discourage swearing! Can I ask you to edit your piece?

See our 'Keeping it Civil' guidelines here (and make suggestions!)

Super interesting distinction...

Would love to see the stats if you have them? And compared to similar GDP/Capita countries without guns?

This opinion, I think, teases out kinship bias - the extent we believe it is our responsibility to help family members come what may...

I think I've seen research suggesting women leaders have historically gone to war because they have to over-project and over-compensate for being women...

;-)

We're building Parlia as a space to foster conversation - sarcasm doesn't help that!

Finally the site is designed for universal access, so please cool the swear words!

Check out our 'Keeping it Civil' and 'Rules of Parlia' blogs - they're just the beginning of community guidelines, so please also make suggestions.

You're right! Apologies. Snarkiness, ridicule, mild contempt...? We want to make sure comments are as substantive and helpful as possible! ;-)

We're building Parlia as a space to foster conversation. Ad hominem attacks destroy any possibility of that.

We need to listen respectfully, assume honest intent on the part of everyone commenting, and engage civilly.

Nothing is going to change someone's mind less than being attacked personally. Always make your case against the idea, never the person.

Check out our 'Keeping it Civil' and 'Rules of Parlia' blogs - they're just the beginning of community guidelines, so please also make suggestions.

Thanks for your patience here.
"You are, in letter and in spirit, both sexist and racist" is a brutal attack on the person here, which would have been so much better framed as a comment on the ideas/approach/framework.

The more contentious and divisive a thread, the more the comments need to be thoughtful, respectful and substantive.

The rest of your post (and all your other posts elsewhere on Parlia) does that well.

The focus was, I think, Rashford not Sterling. Sterling didn't take a penalty.

Hey, we're building Parlia as a place for truly civil debate, especially around the most contentious issues.

Rhetorical questions - 'Racism isn't that big of an issue?" and injunctions to 'educate oneself' don't help the quality of the conversation ;-)

Always make your case against the idea, never the person. Check out our 'Keeping it Civil' and 'Rules of Parlia' blogs - they're just the beginning of community guidelines, so please also make suggestions.

@MrStrawHat - this is such a great response... can I please ask you to cut the last sentence? We're super early days with the site and every comment helps set the tone for the next...

Apparently, this is one of those precepts that goes back to forever... The earliest articulation of the idea is found in a Sanskrit treatise on statecraft, the Arthashastra - India, in the 4th Century BCE

'Stolen' feels like a strong word!

I think this is right, and the Opinion is badly framed, hence the voting results...

Thank you for sharing such a tough personal story, Jen

Female circumcision destroys a woman's capacity for sexual pleasure, and in many instances renders sex painful. Should be illegal.

Male circumcision is not much more than a cosmetic procedure with health benefits - hygiene, decreased risk of UTIs, penis cancer and STDs... Should definitely not be illegal (and I highly recommend!)

“Historians and anthropologists have found evidence of the ‘do [dreadlocks] in ancient Egypt, Germanic tribes, Vikings, Pacific Islanders, early Christians, the Aborigines and the New Guineans as well as the Somali, the Galla, the Maasai, the Ashanti and the Fulani tribes of Africa.” - I had no idea, but great point.

So, a question:
Even if it's fine in principle, would we judge a white person for wearing dreadlocks today in light of the furore around this? Would we be right to assume it was deliberately offensive?

We're building Parlia as a space to foster conversation. That means listening respectfully, assuming honest intent on the part of everyone commenting, and engaging civilly.

Nothing is going to change someone's mind less than being attacked personally. If you truly want to bring them around, rather than score points, then please make your case respectfully.

Finally the site is designed for universal access, please cool the swear words!

Check out our 'Keeping it Civil' and 'Rules of Parlia' blogs - they're just the beginning of community guidelines, so please also make suggestions.

❤️🤗🙏

We will come up with our own in due course! Hopefully a little better!

😂

Great point on historical memories...

The French (the country of Pasteur...) are also disproportionately anti-vax, which doesn't make sense until you remember the state dished out vast quantities of HIV-contaminated blood around the country in the late 1980s, and then tried to cover it up.

😱😱😱

Or - maybe more than the person - on the incident or circumstance?

You've changed my mind on this one! Thank you!

I think it might go back even further...
But no clear citation

We're building Parlia as a space to foster conversation.

Check out our 'Keeping it Civil' and 'Rules of Parlia' blogs - they're just the beginning of community guidelines, so please also make suggestions.

I've changed this for you... Works?

I hear you, and agree. In this instance I think the tweak is minor enough not to cause chaos, and - since we re-surface opinions you've voted on - people will have a chance to redo their vote if the change unnerves.

The big fix here is the shift to 'Suggest an Opinion' which you've seen, so that - as you've done w/ your 'books' opinion - we can crowdthink the best formulation and lock it before it goes up.

As a father, the idea of 6 months or more of paid parental leave would have filled me with terror. I got 2 weeks and was thrilled to go back to work.
So yes: maybe fathers taking much more responsibility for their babies should be normalised... 🤭

Thank you for sharing such a personal take, @waterstar314!

😂 Please elaborate in scientific and lengthy detail... ?

Thanks for sharing so personally, @gummii_!

💯! 😂

I like the addendum to your third point.
That arguing homosexuality (and therefore heterosexuality) is genetic also might block experimentation amongst straight people.

What's the data on funding amounts to each?

This is fascinating! Thank you!

Is this an argument from psychology? That to affect change you need a 'rebellious' attitude? Is there such a thing?
Can change not also happen incrementally, or rationally? Without the need for 'rebellion'?

Love your last point, which I'd not thought of. 🤗

So well expressed...! 🙏

I'm neutral on this because I find it hard to work out how offensive this might be.

I'm white but Jewish, and so constantly translate things back into 'Jewish' - an emotional register I can access.

I would not be offended if non-Jews starting wearing kippas as fashion accessories.
I think I'd be way more exercised if non-Jews starting growing out sidelocks, because they were such clearly identifying signs of Judaism across the East where Jews were targets of relentless persection.
And I'd be histrionic if non-Jews started wearing yellow stars on their clothes for fashion.

I can't quite see where dreadlocks sit on that scale.

I think you're talking about the distinction between polygamy (which covers men and women) and polygyny (which is just one man, many women). And yes, most of us associate polygamy with polygyny because that's been the more prevalent model.

I think they are this.
They look like an insult to nature.

I think the things we see in the sky are called 'Contrails' - condensation trails.
'Chemtrails' are the conspiracy.

Yogi Berra was the greatest philosopher...

His architectural drawings show skill. The rest seems kitsch, sentimental, nostalgic - especially given the amazing artistic movements taking place all around him at the time.
Some of them here

I am a landlord. I bought a small flat with the proceeds of the sale of my last company, and rent it to students. It has never crossed my mind there was anything even faintly questionable about it. Mind, belatedly, blown - for which thank you 🙏!

Help me: why is there something structurally different about owning a property and taking rent payment vs buying bonds or stocks and taking dividends?

Not taken as an attack at all!
But building much more social housing (which we're decades behind on in the UK) and providing rental options for those who don't want to own, or can't yet afford to own what they want, aren't incompatible.

How would you phrase the statement? I feel the argument driving it is that nobody should profit from charging people for shelter. And also maybe by extension that nobody should profit from sweating assets rather than building value?

It feels like this argument hinges on whether the work is productive rather than difficult, though.
I also think investors can do tremendously valuable work.

"Inferior" is the tough word here.
Some cultures are more cruel, more accomplished, more equal, more ambitious, more violent, more forgiving, more prejudiced, more free than others. Not sure that makes them objectively better or worse?

Without a subscription, that article only shows the two key bullet points, which seem to suggest the camps are designed as part of an anti-terror drive.
The evidence for the ethnic cleansing of the Uighurs, however, does seem very strong.
The BBC has done a lot of work on the issue. The NYT has covered a lot, after stories starting emerging in the mid 2010s, and there's pretty blanket coverage elsewhere outside of the US, including al-Jazeera.

TL;DR: Yes, morality is relative insofar as there is no 'external' moral truth. But morality is also almost universally constant across all cultures.

Oliver Scott Curry's work on morality around the world demonstrated that there are 7 fundamental moral precepts that repeat in every moral culture they studied.

He grouped those as follows: Family, Group, Reciprocity, Heroism, Deference, Fairness and Property

You can take his Morality Quiz on Parlia to see how you compare.

Thanks for contributing to Parlia, and for sharing your thoughts.

We will delete this comment because it is deliberately offensive to Muslims.

Having spent a LOT of time thinking about the best ways to argue and debate, we've come up with a series of guidelines. Please have a look and make suggestions in the discussion section!

Keeping it Civil

The Rules of Parlia

Abomination, as in 'cause of disgust'?
On what grounds?
Nature? History? Tradition?

Your point is totally valid, but - just from a tone perspective - sarcasm (even gentle sarcasm like here!) is reliably not good at engaging the other side 🙃!
I put together a very rough set of guidelines for conversation. Please make suggestions for improvement!

Hey @VirtualPoser

Thanks for contributing to Parlia, and for sharing your thoughts. This feels discriminatory in its language, though: you're stereotyping and judging on the basis of those stereotypes, which is never fair.

Having spent a LOT of time thinking about the best ways to argue and debate, we've come up with a series of guidelines. Please have a look and make suggestions in the discussion section!
Keeping it Civil
The Rules of Parlia

I agree with you and @Meglev24 to cosmetic surgery after a disfigurement.
Do we then end up in a situation in which it's argued a giant nose, say, counts as disfigurement? Or that a receding hairline is disfigurement?

fascinating!

Vulgar is beautiful

The counter would be that Martin Luther, one of the least funny people in the history of unfunny people, also had a spectacularly potty mouth.

[NFT's don't need to be part of the Ethereum blockchain - they can exist on any ledger. And I think one of the key things about NFTs is precisely that they offer such an ironclad proof of authenticity.]

Baked Beans are the one-night stand of tinned foods: heaven, with the spice of feeling a lil dirty too...

I agree with you. I think this might be the only truly systemic 'luck' that matters.

Nothing more complimentary to a poster than saying we've changed our minds because of what they wrote!

🙌- If the UK had had 'full integration' we'd still only be eating boiled meat.

TL;DR: If 'whiteness' symbolises the dominant culture, Jews are still an ethnic minority

Despite broad levels of acceptance and success across many Western societies, Jews are still seen as different, and are still subject to discrimination.

In Britain, there is a growing tendency particularly from the Left (see David Baddiel's Jews Don't Count), to treat anti-semitism as a 'lesser' prejudice on the premise that Jews as a whole have been successful in British society.

This whole issue gets way more complex when you have school kids identifying as trans or non-binary, which makes this approach - identical rules for all - all the simpler and effective.

TL;DR: Humanity evolved to cooperate, but also to compete - that's the rub

We are broadly altruistic creatures, because altruism serves us so well! Without cooperation, we would not have been able to defend ourselves against all the glorious megafauna of the African plains when we first climbed down from our trees, nor would we have known to cooperate around hunting, raising kids, etc...

It goes against our deepest natures to cause each other harm gratuitously (see Lasana Harris' work on dehumanisation), but we have developed all sorts of complicated systems to help justify it when it does serve our purposes - like taking over other people's lands or wealth... Then we use that 'kindness' (our unrivalled capacity for cooperation) to inflict maximum damage.

Are there even any examples of enlightened despotism?
Frederick II needed Voltaire, and still...

Thank you so much for sharing something so deeply personal, Jen. 🙌

These statements (#MaC) form part of the Morality as Cooperation Quiz

What is morality? Where does it come from, and how does it work? And how and why do moral values vary, between individuals, and across cultures?

The theory of ‘morality as cooperation’ (MAC) argues that morality is best understood as a collection of biological and cultural solutions to the problems of cooperation recurrent in human social life. MAC draws on evolutionary game theory to argue that, because there are many types of cooperation, there will be many types of morality.

These include: family values, group loyalty, reciprocity, heroism, deference, fairness and property rights. Previous research suggests that these seven types of morality are evolutionarily-ancient, psychologically-distinct, and cross-culturally universal.

Take the Quiz to work out what your particular mix looks like.

🎤 drop

I agree with you here.
The interesting piece with microaggressions, I think, is the massive imbalance between the severity of the act and the severity of the result.
The agent's act is invariably unconscious, devoid of any malice or ill intent, and - as the name suggests - 'micro'. The impact on the recipient is, over time, potentially traumatising and structural. To your example of the "No, but where are you really from?" question, that won't just make one person feel forever uncomfortable in their homeland, but potentially a whole race feel that way too.

We did a fantastic podcast with Prof. Regina Rini on just this.

The idea of the 'Marketplace of Ideas' comes from John Stuart Mill, in his classic defence of free speech "On Liberty", 1859.

In 'On Liberty', he writes:

"He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.
His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion...

Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them...he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.”

The core idea of the 'marketplace of ideas' is that truth will eventually replace error in a fair contest of thought.
History bears that out in some areas - science, for example, where there is such a thing as objective truth.

But there's a political sense in which the Marketplace of Ideas works - that it is in debate, through argument, in the 'marketplace' that we build our best political selves. A society in which all ideas can be traded is free, and is ultimately happier and healthier than its alternatives.

How do you mean?

I've spent way too much time thinking about this and reckon for a debate (and therefore democracy) to work it requires three fundamental features:

• Same Objectives: you have to be fighting for the same core goal (getting to the truth, say, for a debate, or building the best society in the case of democracy)
• Shared Rules: eg. no ad hominems in a debate, no assassinating candidates in an electoral cycle... 🤷
• Trusted Umpires: the judiciary, ballot counters, academics, journalists... if you can't trust the umpires, you have no incentives to play by the rules...

"Silence is Violence" is an activist slogan meant to motivate white, majority groups into fighting for change.

It's a contemporary spin on John Stuart Mill's more long-winded: "Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing." Or on Albert Einstein's line: "The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything."

Proponents say it's a critical element of being a good 'Ally' - that privileging comfort and passivity over fighting for other people's rights is a form of complicity. Its critics see the slogan as an attach on free speech - since demanding a form of speech is just as totalitarian as censoring it.

Intersectionality is the idea that one's race, class, religion, sexuality, gender, disability or appearance “intersect” with one another and overlap and create a hierarchy of oppression or privilege.

The term was coined in 1989 by Prof. Kimberlé Crenshaw to break Feminist thought out of its predominantly white, middle class concerns.

To its proponents, Intersectionality offers a far more nuanced approach to discrimination and prejudice in society. To its detractors, Intersectionality works for a society that celebrates victimhood.

🎤 Drop

😂100%

"Rhodes Must Fall" is a protest movement that began in March 2015 seeking the removal of a statue of Cecil Rhodes at the University of Cape Town. The protest movement subsequently spread across South Africa and further afield, including to Oxford University's Oriel College, where a statue sits on the facade.

Rhodes was a British mining magnate and politician in southern Africa who served as Prime Minister of the Cape Colony from 1890 to 1896. Today, he is seen as a white supremacist and brutal imperial overlord, having overseen the mass expropriation of lands and the disenfranchisement of millions of black voters.

I had no idea and am now considerably better educated!

Ensuring access is blind, and working actively to bring greater diversity in to universities seems self-evident.

But ditching grade boundaries would, I believe, be a terrible idea.
In France, the Netherlands, Italy and elsewhere, anyone who passes their A-Level / SAT equivalents can go to university. They are only then winnowed out, leaving many people with incomplete university careers, having spent years at institutions without getting a degree.

Not sure of the meringue and hoops look on Harry there...

Who else competes?

Very good point...!

Ooh, tricky...
When people call me an idiot, or challenge my ideas, it does me harm, but it might well be good for society.

The trouble with Hate Speech is defining the category.

Incitement to violence - obviously ✅
Being uncivil in argument - also obviously ❌
Attacking a religious belief? - much less clear...

It has taken me a long time to pull away from the rationalist approach to everything - and you articulate very nicely an instance of why that's right!

There is some homework in Finland, just a lot less than in the US.
https://in-finland.education/homework-in-finland-school/

I agree.
We likely do homework wrong, and give too much of it too early, but independent study is such a critical part of learning. It's where I had the most fun at school.

Thank you for sharing so generously here

Without excusing it, I've often wondered whether the old-fashioned model where full responsibility for initiating sex fell on the man isn't responsible for a whole raft of bad behaviour.

For the man, the encounter is framed as conquest rather than consent, and the woman is framed as someone who would initiate but cannot, for social convention (remember Baby it's Cold Outside?). What could go wrong?

TL;DR: the sexual marketplace is more egalitarian for women

The sexual marketplace evolved to favour the maximum number of women reproducing, leaving many men on the sidelines. Only one in four or five of our earliest male ancestors were able to reproduce (and in some societies, far fewer).

That trend seems to have reversed with the advent of more egalitarian societies, but data from Tinder showing that 80% of women compete for 20% of men, suggests it is still hard-coded.

🥲In part, it's in response to your critique of America that Parlia was founded... We've also dug super deep into some of the causes of, and some of the responses to, political polarisation on our podcast. You might like some of the episodes.
Apple Podcasts
Spotify

Beautifully put.
Professors Lasana Harris and David Livingstone Smith both work on dehumanisation and make the point that our capacity for humanisation, what you call empathy, is very deeply embedded as our default. It takes tremendous force to override our capacity to feel for our fellow (wo)man. And that force is often ideological, which is also to say religious.

This is very well-argued, thank you...

Like you, I think it's impossible to make a rule, though my natural instinct is towards intervention, on the premise human rights are universal, and we have universal responsibilities across borders.

But in the last two decades, we have three very striking examples in the same theatre.

• 🌕 Iraq: invaded, occupied, with catastrophic results
• 🌗 Libya: provided cover for the revolution, stayed arms-length, with catastrophic results
• 🌑 Syria: did almost nothing, with catastrophic results

Which also tells us not intervening for humanitarian reasons also doesn't work...

CMM on this one, and now agree with you. The right kind of chivalry should not be sexist, because it shouldn't be particularly gendered.

Original chivalry (Courtly Love) involved putting the Lady on a pedestal and vowing to adore and protect from, mostly, afar.
I'm just not sure how much fun that was for everyone involved...

TL;DR: Jesus himself said he was an alien.

Jesus told his followers about his extra-terrestrial background. John 8: 23 states “And He was saying to them, ‘You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world.’”

Conspiracy theorists have claimed that they have found the symbol of the crucifix on the surface of Mars. They believe that the discovery of this symbol helps prove that Christ was an extraterrestrial who sought to teach all intelligent forms of life across the cosmos about ethics and morality.

Mind-blown. I'm loving this argument!

For a really beautiful, and really terrifying, alternative take, Nick Bostrom, who runs the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford, wrote SuperIntelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, which is very well reviewed here in the New Yorker.

What would you replace it with?

I like the idea of a non-elected second chamber, allowing for expertise over capacity-to-win-elections, but don't know how it should be appointed.

I also like the idea of a Jury-Duty type of House of Lords.
You're called up for 5 yrs, and then rotated out.

Then there's the idea of turning the House of Lords into the UK Parliament and turning the House of Commons into the English Parliament.

Is there a difference between editing out diseases and editing out baldness, for example, or editing for blonde hair?

Feel like there are two arguments here...
Should Ireland be independent and united?
And should it be democratic?

😂

I've always read the line as justification for 'mirror punishment' (you burn my house I'll burn yours), but apparently the law turns out to have been used a) to limit retribution (if i've burnt your house down, don't do any more than burn mine - don't kill me, eg) and b) at least in Jewish law, it was used to justify equivalent punishment not just mirror punishment.

If you want to go deep, check out Sefaria on Leviticus 24.20

Great point!
I'm sure studies have also been done on whether paying more for a placebo increases its effect...?

https://www.steverscandy.com/ ?

QAnon conspiracies, Climate Change denialism, Racism, Antisemitism... all have very highly educated proponents all over the world. (In fact, to use just one example, there's lots of evidence that the most fervent Climate Change deniers are often the most educated)

Democratising voice - giving more people a platform and the chance to speak out - in my view has been a tremendous net positive for society. It's allowed us to hear views and perspectives that have historically always been drowned out.

What I think social media has done, however, is flatten the difference between experts and non-experts (by making share of voice a popularity contest rather than one around expertise), and make us question the terms on which 'authority' is granted. That can be a good thing - rich, white and male does not an expert make. Less good when we're questioning those with PhDs or decades of experience in a field...

Can you share the link to that research?

Does it matter?

I'm with you here... But find the prospect of the simulation also quite comforting, because it gives us a 'God' again...

🏖 Sand is the absolute worst. Gets between your toes, which is like a nail down a blackboard.

Love this argument...

Grand Gourmet... 100% agree

I had no idea - thank you for sharing

😂😂😂

Without taking anything away from the reality of mental health issues, there is, I think, gathering evidence that much of psychiatry is 'problematic'.

There is a giant replicability problem across the sciences but most massively in psychology, and a growing body of evidence to suggest the advantages of psychoactive drugs are highly oversold (and demonstrably so by people who financially motivated to do so).

See Irving Kirsch's Emperor's New Drugs

TLDR: Hitchens may have been the last great Debater - watching his fights on Youtube, on issues long since ignored, is still fantastic entertainment. But he is certainly not the last great intellectual, nor would he have been considered a great intellectual when he was alive.

He added nothing new to any field he approached - his books on religion are reductive in the extreme, his work on Islam wildly offensive and wilfully obtuse - but the fact that he so loved a fight, and would take them up with such intelligence and enthusiasm, made him one of the most important proponents of liberal enquiry and freedom of speech of his generation.

If that is what a makes a public Intellectual, then he is certainly up there.

If nations are 'Imagined Communities' (Benedict Anderson) then being proud of the one you come from is irrational.

It still begs the question of whether being proud of 'your' nation is useful. Are countries whose citizens believe in the nation and are proud of it more successful, more integrated, more apt to sacrifice personal gain for the common good?

This aphorism can be used to support communism, just as it could be to support Rawlsian ideas of social justice: allow full freedom of invention, and provide a maximum amount of support to those at the bottom.

I think the idea of systemic racism is useful - even in societies as multicultural as the UK - because it helps describes what we might see as 'passive' racism (all the examples you rightly flag above would be examples of active racism - like having different laws for different ethnicities).

And I do think that 'passive' racism does have a real impact on people's lives. I think we all have a sense of the kind of impact society's expectations can have on us. I thought this piece by Barnardos was pretty good on systemic racism in the UK

These statements (#MaC) form part of the Morality as Cooperation Quiz

What is morality? Where does it come from, and how does it work? And how and why do moral values vary, between individuals, and across cultures?

The theory of ‘morality as cooperation’ (MAC) argues that morality is best understood as a collection of biological and cultural solutions to the problems of cooperation recurrent in human social life. MAC draws on evolutionary game theory to argue that, because there are many types of cooperation, there will be many types of morality.

These include: family values, group loyalty, reciprocity, heroism, deference, fairness and property rights. Previous research suggests that these seven types of morality are evolutionarily-ancient, psychologically-distinct, and cross-culturally universal.

Take the Quiz to work out what your particular mix looks like.

Love this argument, and so carefully made.

Isn't Billy Eilish - the biggest star amongst that demographic of young women - a big counter here?
And before her, Lady Gaga?

LOVE THIS! 😂 ❤️

Agreed - and implicit in that guilt is the fear (maybe a psychoanalyst would say 'sublimated desire'?) that they might topple us and treat us the same...

Lovingly and passionately argued.

If you're interested in seeing exactly how screwed up contemporary capitalism is (from an ardently capitalist perspective), you couldn't do better than to look at Jonathan Tepper's The Myth of Capitalism

Super interesting argument and I'd never thought of it before. Thank you!

Terrorism is the killing of civilians for political gain. It's also one of the very few truly devastating weapons of the weak against the strong. Which makes it, in a sense, an understandable tactic in asymmetric warfare.
Understandable, heart-breakingly so in some instances, but still unethical.

😂 Eugh: I can't bear him. He's the same potato-dumpling in all his films.

Men who are better than Tom Hanks: Dustin Hoffmann, Lawrence Olivier, James Stewart, Stephen Berkoff, Robert de Niro, Jack Nicholson, Marlon Brando, Daniel Day Lewis, Peter O'Toole, Gary Oldman, Alec Guinness, Ian McKellen, Anthony Hopkins, Michael Caine. Honestly, I think Sean Connery has more screen charisma and versatility than Hanks.

As for the women... in the UK alone: Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Helen Mirren, Julie Andrews, Diana Rigg, Audrey Hepburn.

Devastatingly complete argument here...

Some conspiracy theorists believe Paul McCartney died after a car crash on the M1 and was replaced by Billy Shears. More information here.

The 'Paul is dead' conspiracy is one of the top ten most enduring, according to Time Magazine in 2009.

Excellent question... 😂

This is a super interesting point: when should the state intervene in matters of ethics, and when not?
Murder and theft, for example, seem obvious. What is the thing that is different about abortion?

If God exists, then God is an old-fashioned liberal — because God lets Her subjects choose how to live and what to believe. Many humans throughout history have called for divine rule, but God has never accepted the invitation. "We can assume that if God wishes to rule, God will find a way to do so. The fact that God does not rule can only be taken to signify that God does not choose to"

Quoting Richard Oxenberg in his essay Is God a Liberal?

"Playing the clarinet in 6th grade doesn't make me a musician; God being all-loving doesn't make him a Liberal." - love it 😂 ❤️

100% - conflating colour with nationality is one step even beyond conflating ethnicity and nationalism.

TL;DR: Churches are often exempt from filing tax returns - which can lead to embezzlement and misuse of donations

Because churches enjoy tax-exempt status, they are generally not required to file tax returns. In this way, the government does not hold churches accountable for their finances. This lack of accountability can lead to unfair wages for church employees and dishonest use of donations. Since churches make a lucrative amount of money, they should be required to reassure everyone that they are using it properly.

TL;DR: In a post-religious society, tax exemption for Churches is discriminatory

Youth Clubs, Football Teams, Volunteering Groups all provide similar community support and involvement, while giving people a sense of belonging and purpose. They too depend on donations. Why should churches (and other religious institutions) benefit when those others don't.

TL;DR: the Bible tells us the Earth is flat

The Bible clearly establishes that the Earth is flat. There are hundreds of scriptures that suggest that the Earth is a stationary object and flat.

According to 1 Chronicles 16:30, it states that "He has fixed the earth firm, immovable," which means that the Earth is an immobile, fixed object within space. This line of reasoning is continued with other scriptures including Psalm 93:1 which states that "Thou hast fixed the earth immovable and firm..." and Isaiah 45:18 with "...who made the earth and fashioned it, and himself fixed it fast..."

Although flat Earth is never explicitly stated within the Bible, the state of the Earth as a flat object can be inferred from verses such as Daniel 4:10-11.

In Daniel, the king "saw a tree of great height at the centre of the earth... reaching with its top to the sky and visible to the earth's farthest bounds." [2] If the Earth were actually spherical, then it would be impossible to see this tree from all corners of the Earth. Because it is possible, it proves that the Earth is flat.

The flatness of the Earth is further proven due to the ability of people within the Bible to see to all edges of the Earth.

Matthew 4:8 states that "Once again, the devil took him to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world [cosmos] in their glory." Seeing all of the kingdoms in the world would be impossible unless the Earth was flat. This is further supported by Revelation 1:7 stating "Behold, he is coming with the clouds! Every eye shall see him..." A flat Earth would allow everyone on the planet to see someone who is flying above them.

TL;DR: The horizon looks level and objects remain upon a flat surface

Even from high up in an aeroplane, the horizon looks level to the naked eye. Moreover, when looking out towards the horizon, the land appears flat. Objects also appear to be on a flat surface, meaning that the Earth is flat as well.

People argue the Earth is flat because when looking out on the horizon, everything appears flat. There is no curvature to the land at all. Instead, the Earth is "flat and round, like a pancake." In the center is the Arctic, which is surrounded by landmasses, which in turn are surrounded by the Antarctic.

Human senses tell us that the Earth is flat. When looking around your surroundings, all objects are flat. The horizon is a horizontal line. In the sky, the clouds, the sun, and the moon are all flat, and their movements are flat movements as well. Therefore, the Earth is not spherical as we are led to believe.

It's also possible to tell that the Earth is flat by simply walking around. No matter how far or how fast you walk or run, the Earth continues to not only look flat, but also feel flat. This is proven by the Bedford Level Experiment, which proved that the surface of water is flat and therefore does not conform to the supposed curvature of the Earth.[4] As a result, the Earth must be flat.

All of The Great Gatsby's characters are chasing their version of the American Dream - the idea that they will be able to transcend themselves.

Whether that is through love, social position, class, or simple wealth.

TL;DR: Most Democracies topple into autocracy via Populism, because populism has just enough of the smell of democracy (voting) not to appear revolutionary

Populism is the greatest threat to Democracy because it is its 'Shadow' (as Jan-Werner Müller puts it in his What is Populism?).

Is the idea here that Human Rights laws are colonialist in their Universalism?
That they assume, and project, Western values of universal human rights upon the rest of the world?

Like you, I think there's a strong argument that morality is pretty universal in its precepts (we all believe in self-sacrifice, heroism, protecting our family, etc), but it expresses itself very differently all over the world.

I do think that. And also think that Eleanor Roosevelt had a pretty good first crack at it 😊

The implication, I think, is that since Gaza and the West are de facto under Israeli control, they should also be considered part of the Israeli state.

Agreed completely. My concern here was trying to frame the conversation around why so many see Israel as an apartheid state.

Can you be a hero AND an unpleasant person?

"10/10 needed therapy not a kid named after him." ❤️ 🤣

See @meg_stalham above

The big split is between gender and sex (not sexuality), I think.

• Sex: what you're calling 'Biological Gender'
• Gender: the social construct that @freyaehope describes above.

Sexuality is a whole other question.

Doc, I feel there's a hint of a personal attack here?
Please remember that we're all working together - to build out the best versions of the arguments we can.

Arguing online is SO fraught because it's so hard to gauge or trust people's intentions. Our starting point, for every member of the community, is that we're all sincere, and all committed to the same goal: helping us understand all sides of the issue.

I put together a One-Pager on how to run happy conversations. Please also put suggestions into the discussion section!

Lovely point, subtly made.
You've kinda changed my mind here...

Absolutely fascinating and I had no idea...
This is also, obv, super important when we think about social and cultural constructions of beauty!

Is there a difference even between your two examples?
'You look nice today' is tough to object to.
'You're a pretty little thing' both objectifies (thing) and diminishes (little), and there's an argument that 'pretty' is a word most commonly used of young girls, not women.

Just to add to your point about nuance...

Beautifully, and concisely, argued 🙏

There's nothing so exciting or beautiful as a team try.
Nothing in football like it.

Is the argument here that the requirements for clicks promotes deliberate bad-headline writing, which ultimately promotes a kind of fake news?

They're not! but sometimes they are early - when opinions first drop, they don't have a ton of votes, so early 'tidbits' can look a little weird. We're working on building in thresholds... ;-)

Love this idea. You get all the advantages of cultural blending, mixing people up from different backgrounds and with different life experiences, you build up a sense of commitment to the idea of a nation... without all the militarism.
You've changed my mind on this one.

Great point!

Whether you think police funding should be reallocated towards social welfare programmes (which I do), or not, the slogan itself is terrible politics.

Here is Tony Blair in the New Statesman:
"“Defund the police” may be the left’s most damaging political slogan since “the dictatorship of the proletariat”... It leaves the Right with a powerful cultural message around defending flag, family and fireside traditional values."

TL;DR: There are undoubtedly social 'types' in the world, but the Alpha vs Beta labels imply there's a hierarchy of value.

Society evolved to require all social types - introverts/extroverts, progressives/conservatives, leader/followers, warriors/carers...

Grading people in a hierarchy - as alpha/beta suggests - does terrible things to the way we understand society.

Love this point.
Richard Wrangham argues that humans evolved capital punishment precisely to deal w the alphas.
https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/did-capital-punishment-create-morality

😊

That Japan example is fascinating.
But I wonder whether that doesn't reinforce the point about racism that's being made in the context of the West: that you can only suffer racism as the non-dominant ethnicity.
Prejudice can exist everywhere, for it to qualify as racism it has to be systemic.
And therefore, in the West, white people cannot be victims of racism.

Do the same arguments apply to transgenderism?

Also - is race strictly determined by one's genetics? Is race not also a cultural construct?

"brains are weird" ✅✅✅

Beautiful argument!

Can I ask you to repost here as a 'pro': https://www.parlia.com/o/there-is-no-such-thing-as-free-will since that's where the discussion is taking place?

Totally changed my mind on this!

I can't believe Chess takes fewer calories than Bowls, which is one of the 'core' sports of the Commonwealth Games. 😆

TL;DR: If a majority of people try to conform to the astrological stereotypes they were brought up with, could astrology end up predicting human behaviour?

You're born in November and told Scorpios are moody and sexual... Does that become your behavioural north star?

[I was born in May, and hate astrology because Taurus means dull, practical and materialistic]

This is such a helpful, informative and clear argument - I've learnt a lot. Thank you!

LOVE your point - which has also made me finally understand 'body positivity' as a generic term in its own right - and love the way you argue!

😂
'Biosynthetic human' is the most niche food thing I've ever come across! Surely, like everything, it just tastes like chicken...

Eating one's own snot is unquestionably the most disgusting form of cannibalism.

Western medicine is excellent at dealign with acute medical problems - broken legs, cancer, etc...
It's much less good at dealing with chronic issues.
Essential Oils might find their place for treating those.

Great point, very well made!

🧞‍♂️ Aladdin. Greatest film of all time.
🎤 - drop

Had no idea... 😿

Tights are sooooo itchy!

Robert Kagan wrote The Return of History a decade ago arguing that the 21st Century would be an ideological fight between efficient autocracies and inefficient democracies.

Even if we do accept that authoritarianism works better in a crisis (there are lots of environmental activists who argue only an eco-dictatorship can save the planet), the problem with dictatorships is they tend to last longer than the 'crisis'. They're tough to switch out...

Great argument

Yep - she should have shuffled over and they'd have held each other for warmth... 🤦‍♂️

😭😭😭

Ryan Giggs, David Beckham, Bryan Robson? Who else would compete?

I had no idea...
But still, maybe deliberately putting yourself into a coma on the very very off-chance you wake up speaking Nepali is poor risk-reward trade-off?

Super interesting thought here... That evil can exist in retrospect or in the minds of victims or survivors or spectators, rather than having to exist as a natural category...

I had never heard of this one! Thank you!

Smart phones are obviating our need to remember anything

Is memory a feature of intelligence, and if so what practical effects do we see from its loss, and the loss of its use culturally?

Note, too, that this question of what technology does to thinking has been around since Socrates, who refused to write anything down because knowledge had to be internalised (not read, and therefore taken second-hand). We had exactly the same conversations around the time of Guttenberg's invention of the printing press.

Prof. Frances Yates wrote a wonderful book on the Memory in the Middle Ages, and its function as a signifier of and tool of wisdom.

I agree. I think it's all about context, and to listen to the song is to hear a woman and man who clearly fancy each other try to come up with justifications for her staying over.
If anything, I think that is what is offensive - a society which doesn't allow a woman to just say 'yes'.

The reason this is such a hotly debated issue is because it feeds into 'Race Science'.

There are measurable differences in IQ performance based on ethnicity. In the US, and increasingly in the UK (where Dominic Cummings and his advisor Andrew Sabisky sought to rethink education policy based on so-called 'evolutionary predisposition'), there is a resurgence of essentialist thinking about those differences.

Some of the strongest arguments against IQ as a measure of genetic intelligence are the fact that IQ tests have, on average, improved dramatically since they first launched in the early 20th Century. That has very little to do with genetic evolution, and lots to do with our increased familiarity and exposure to abstract ideas (and education).

If we can get all our protein needs and nutrients from plants or plant-based foods - that we don't need to eat meat/fish - does that change the ethical calculus?

We've all seen Seaspiracy (at least in the UK where it caused a stir, and some controversy), but the suggestion there was that there is no such thing as sustainable fishing...

Does anyone credible still make the argument?
Has it been aired in any recent history books?

Great point, beautifully made!
I think the writing of history tells you more about the period it's written in than it does about the period it's describing... 😌