Making the news today....

[the village idiot]

12 hours ago, WesD said:

A lot of this post implies he has made choices and is in control of what to adhere too and what to discount? I thought we had solved this on the free will thread?! Surely we cant blame the charities and the people managing them as they aren’t really culpable, so to speak. 

 

Getting back into the fascinating free will debate here will cause too much of a distraction. Very happy to discuss it in the free will thread.

 

In short, the confusion here arises from looking at free will from a different depth of focus. Taking a 'stepped back' view of the decision making process gives the strong illusion of free will. When you zoom in to look at the mechanics of any decision at the point it is made, you find that a person could not possibly have acted any differently from the way that they did in any given moment. This fact, by extension dissolves the notion of free will. This has important implications for the way we structure society and the motivations behind punishment. It is an extremely unintuitive concept which takes a lot more explaining than I want to do here. The language one has to use to try to explain it also totally muddies the waters, but unfortunately there is no good way around this.

 

 

 

[Stubby]

Gun man goes on the rampage killing many in a school in Florida .....

[Gary Prentice]

17 was the last count I saw. 

[Vespasian]

I used to find myself reading these sorts of stories with seething contempt for american attitudes to gun ownership, then a few days later it'd be acceptance..

Acceptance that nothing is ever gonna get Americans to change their gun laws.. and so, these days I tend to look at these events as acts of nature as best I can..

 

The price you pay to keep the laws you have...   getting sad, getting annoyed ain't gonna make no difference no way..  read the story, move on to the next one.. they don't care, why should we?.

 

Edited February 15, 2018 by Vespasian

[tree-fancier123]

Yes, guns killing everyone -

Someone said after the last school masacre about arming the teachers so they can return fire, if a teacher heard shots down the hall they may have time to take aim at the doorway to their classroom.

 

also the Times has 'Ready meals and cereals linked with rise in cancer'. A million ways to die.

Edited February 15, 2018 by tree-fancier123

[tree-fancier123]

On 14/02/2018 at 09:00, scotspine1 said:

 

You haven't read her book so you're displaying a lack of openness to evidence. You're copy/pasting second hand criticism of her. Then posting links by your atheist guru Sam Harris.

 

Well done. 

 

Agree - even if she does work for the  vampire squid her ideas make perfect sense to me. Good on her.

As for Sam Harris all he seems to say is 'follow me I know the way' - like a pseudoscience Jesus. I'm an Athiest too, but I wouldn't give Sam Harris the skin off a bucket of cold piss.

[eggsarascal]

Anyone just heard Trump speaking about the latest school shooting?

 

Not a mention of guns!

 

He said Mental health seemed to be the problem. I wonder where he got that speil from?

 

18 School shootings already this year in the good ol' USofA (That stat blew my mind). 

 

No problem with Everyman and his dog having a gun. It's all down to mental health problems.

[WesD]

On 13/02/2018 at 18:21, WesD said:

If you have kids or intend to have kids would/do you raise them to the best of your abilities and share your wisdom whilst placing them in the best school/s for education you can to ofer them a good chance at life OR do you think f@ck it I can’t be arsed what difference will my kids make to the world?

 

@matelot please take your time to answer that honestly. 

@matelot?

[kevinjohnsonmbe]

11 hours ago, difflock said:

How very, very boring from a spectator perspective, re the two reasoned posts above.

Yawn.

mth

Yeah!  Get a room you 2!!

 

You'll taking up bandwidth that could be much better exploited by pitch fork wielding firebrands.....  

[Richard 1234]

Anyone just heard Trump speaking about the latest school shooting?
 
Not a mention of guns!
 
He said Mental health seemed to be the problem. I wonder where he got that speil from?
 
18 School shootings already this year in the good ol' USofA (That stat blew my mind). 
 
No problem with Everyman and his dog having a gun. It's all down to mental health problems.

Have the Americans not got a mental health issue with gun ownership so making the problem the same thing?[emoji16]