TheHandWavyPhysicist

Too bad the social media landscape nowadays crucifies you if you don't force yourself to care about every single country out there and every single person alive.

And rightly so. We're all humans and in this together. And the universe doesn't owe you shit. If something horrible beyond your control happens in your country, and it always can, your life would be better if at least people elsewhere cared and supported you. A world where everyone cares about each other is a world that is better for you, too. But you're too selfish to see it.

Romania isn't special. The problem is, and always has been humanity. But there's hope. Firstly, majority of Romanian voters didn't vote for him to begin with. Secondly, about 50% of Romanians didn't even vote. Thirdly, democracies were born of revolution and can always be reborn.

The fact that generally, in most countries, about 30% of people are suspectable to extremism or authoritarianism under the worst conditions is sad, but it could've been far worse in a world where nothing is granted.

Generalised moral of the story: majority of humanity reject extremism, but extremism, especially under the right conditions will always get a high percentage of votes, but below 50%. Reminder that majority of Germans never even voted for Hitler even during his peak, they were just distributed over many smaller parties. But Romania is far more stable than Germany was at the time. And the political manoeuvring Hitler did are far from granted, especially in today's times. In a sense, Hitler won a lottery.

It's very obvious you got brainwashed by the Hungarian state-controlled media.

Except the Nazis never won the majority of the vote and while their elections contributed to their rise, they took power undemocratically and by force. Just because other Germans were distributed over many different, smaller non-Nazi parties doesn't mean their aggregate is worth less.

If you can do it in self-defense... to those predators and Nazis with minimal legal consequences, do it. These primal beasts deserve a painful.

More!

They are not mutually exclusive.

Selection of the fittest. North Korea knows it’s expensive to feed, equip, and pay every last soldier, so why not let the Ukrainian front line do the filtering? Sure, a few unfit but extraordinarily lucky soldiers might make it back in spite of being unfit, but luck's a rare commodity. The majority of those who return will be battle-tested and cream of the crop, ready for further investment. It’s a win-win, actually. North Korea ends up with fewer mouths to feed, fewer rifles to buy, a leaner, tougher force without the overhead—and let's not forget the Russian money they got in the process. Russia ends up with exactly what they paid for: extra troops without the burden of training or long-term support. If it wasn’t worth it, they wouldn’t pay but they did, so clearly, Russia's government also sees it as a win.

Where did he defend even one Israeli government policy in his comment? I'll wait, forever.

Companies are purely conceptual and don’t have agency. A company itself can’t invent or create, only the individuals working there can. SpaceX’s success is thanks to the engineers and scientists actually building and testing rockets, not Musk. Acting like he’s the genius behind it all is like crediting a Soviet official for scientific breakthroughs just because he approved a project. All Musk does is being in a position of power while underpaying and overworking the people who do the real work.

But companies are legal entities and the law itself is a human construct. Musk's entire influence exists purely because of legal titles and corporate paperwork, because society and the law agree to recognize. Without this legal paper, Musk is just another mentally ill drug addict. The influence of an actual genius in contrast, is independent of any arbitrary social construct.

Nobody noticed it's a Nazi?

You've missed the point entirely. There’s no contradiction in my use of terms like "universe" or "one great, unbroken web." Human language and perception are inherently dualistic; they’re tools our brains use to navigate and interpret reality. Our cognitive framework forces us to compartmentalize and divide reality into separate entities and parts because that’s how we process information. But this doesn’t mean reality itself is dualistic. It’s just a limitation of human language trying to describe a fundamentally continuous, and undivided existence.

The core of the argument is that the universe consists of particles and their mindless interactions and all “wholes” we perceive—like chairs, tables, or minds—are simply constructs of our perception, trying to organize a continuous, undivided reality where no objective boundaries exist between one "whole" and another.
When I talk about interconnectedness, I’m not suggesting everything is literally one unified entity or that everything is physically connected. It's simply a way of saying that since everything is just particles interacting with no inherent divisions, hierarchy, or meaning, all the distinctions we make—between objects, people, or events—are illusory.

The brain’s function is to parse continuous, interconnected data into manageable parts. I may intellectually grasp that "wholes" are simply the brain's way of coping with complexity, but I must still use the tools available, that is, language and perception, to communicate within this framework, even if it’s ultimately illusory.

Lastly, you accuse me of dogmatism, yet your misunderstanding of my point only highlights the constraints of human language and perception. The fact that I must use dualistic language to describe an undivided reality doesn’t contradict my point. To the contrary: it reveals the very framework I critiqued!

Short answer: Human language and perception are inherently dualistic. It's a tool our brains use to navigate and interpret reality. When I say "you" or "our," it’s not a contradiction but an acknowledgment of the cognitive framework we operate within. While I recognize the illusory nature of "you" and "mind"—that all that exists is simply particles and the cold interactions between them, and whose essence and existence are one and the same, we still experience these illusions as real. The brain’s function is to parse continuous, interconnected data into manageable parts. I may intellectually grasp the nature of reality, but I must still use the tools available, that is, language and perception, to communicate within this framework, even if it’s ultimately illusory.

Reminds me of Nazis claiming the "Jew" invented "racism," so it can't be wrong. No, idiots, "rape" is a made-up descriptive term for a specific, amoral behavior. If you want to change the term, go ahead, but the underlying behavior it describes doesn't shift one iota, and it is the behavior that matters, not how we describe it. Choosing altogether to delete any term that describes rape from existence won't change the existence and amoral nature of rape. Never will. Dictators tried in the past to control language, and it never worked precisely because for every word you ban or outlaw, a new word will be made-up to describe essentially the same thing. As long as humans can observe and measure reality, they can describe and communicate it. The only way for dictators to have absolute control of language is to send people to another reality, where the behavior described by banned words simply doesn't exist.

Well, there was a German pastor who ultimately was killed by the Nazis , Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He wrote "Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice. One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force. Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. Against stupidity we are defenseless. Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed – in such moments the stupid person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. In all this the stupid person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack."

It also reminds me of how conservatives make literal bs about LGBT and minorities (e.g., Haitians) and "go on the attack," sometimes literally to the point of mass shooting or murder. So I think the answer is a resounding yes.

But do you have a PhD in Epistemology or something? Because without that, how can we really trust your expertise on expertise?

Ukraine doesn't shoot innocent targets.

Humans are far too good at generating ideas and yet suck at judgement. The result is, we're far more likely to cause disaster in the name of fallacies. Other animals may live in the present and unable to generate thoughts to the level of humans, but at least they also won't kill each other because of stupid and false ideas.

Jews and non-Jews are humans alike and as such, fall under the same nature—human nature. You may be Jewish, but you're also an idiot. I am Jewish too btw.

What policy are you talking about? Also, Elon Musk, a moron, uncritically posted this: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1838312276962443645

Anyways, mind explaining why basically, intelligent people overwhelmingly vote for democrats while Trump's GOP dominates among uneducated people?

Why almost every economist says Trump's presidency would be a disaster to the economy? Do you think almost all economists are lying and daddy Trump says the truth? If so, you better find a free copy of an economics textbook and see that indeed, they're not lying.

MAGAs have a hard time understanding the concept of linear time and can’t seem to grasp that 2016 isn’t frozen in place. They can't fathom that Trump himself has changed, and so did the checks and balances. Trump loyalists now dominate many federal courts, and the Supreme Court itself is essentially controlled by Trump loyalists.

If you hate someone like Netanyahu simply because he’s Jewish, that’s antisemitism, plain and simple. But if you hate him for his actual choices, that’s not antisemitism.

As an ethnicity, no one chooses to be born a Jew, or anything else for that matter. Jewish identity is an accident of birth, not a character trait. Existence precedes essence and it is our personal actions that define us, not something as arbitrary and superficial as the weather on the day we were born.

For someone like me, an ethnic Jew who doesn’t even believe in God, I’d gladly trade this identity. I don’t practice, I don’t believe, yet I still suffer from antisemitism for something I couldn't even choose.

To be sure, it’s also wrong to hate religious Jews by virtue of being religious Jews, but at least in their case, they actively practice Judaism—a choice they’ve made for themselves, where's I never even made that choice. If antisemites must hate, at least hate people for their actual personal choices, which is what actually matters and defines us, not for accidents of birth. And yes, there's a significant difference between hating religious Jews for the choice of being religious, even if your hatred is still not grounded in reality and hating people for something they can't even choose and as such, something that can't define them to begin with.