Very helpful, thank you!

Ahh that’s interesting, so the issue is as much having a conveniently shifting position as it is a further-right-than-progressives static position. Thanks a ton, that helps me understand a lot!

Gotcha, so it means fake leftists almost? Does it imply someone is even further right than a current “centrist”? Or more like, “the center is right wing at this point, and so much so that even the Dems who are just left of center are still on the right [but therefore less than centrists still]”? This is not meant to be obstinate, your response was just very helpful and I want to bracket in on where folks consider liberals to be on the political spectrum so I can understand/use it properly.

“we used to think that this was what we didn’t know, but thanks to exhaustive and expensive research, it is now this that we don’t know.”

Which are sometimes as or more important than answers, but it does tend to reveal that it’s “turtles all the way down”

Just one more collider bro, one more I swear. And we’ll know everything.

Like almost any concept, the argument over free will really becomes semantic (and pedantic) when pushed to academic extremes. At a certain point it shifts to “is there a difference between free will and the apparent ability to choose what we do in any given moment?”

This scientist claims that the inability to tease any choice from the infinite variables that affect that decision means that the decision isn’t ours. It is an equally valid conclusion that you don’t need to know every single thing that influences you in order to have agency among those influences.

Moore’s take on the Cartesian question of “how do we know we exist?” is similar. It points out that the debate actually has nothing to do with existence, but what it means to “know” something, and that “knowing,” like anything, can of course be made impossible with philosophical and academic contortions (e.g., arguments like “but what if this is a simulation and there is a “great deception” that only convinces you that you exist?”). It is not that some form of knowing cannot exist, it is that people are capable of imagining fantasies in which knowing cannot exist, and Moore denies that we should let the ability to conceptualize something beyond the intended context of our language (i.e., perceived reality) pervert our ability to see and accept something concrete.

Is Moore right? Who knows, but he gets at the point that the answers to questions of free will, existence, ontology, etc. have more to do with how the questions are framed academically and philosophically than with how the same concepts actually operate in real life. It will always be possibly to frame a question (or to define the words within a question) in a way that denies the possibility of knowing or agency. But the ability to do so doesn’t mean that other methods of asking or knowing are impossible.

Good riddance

Portlandia character vibes

Certainly not

Fair, low-risk not no risk, but a good buy

And the article you’re commenting on is about their global share of gold. So, rather than just propagandistic, I guess your pro-China rhetoric is also irrelevant here.

Not really. Globally, money still brings power. They have incredibly capitalistic international trade and relations.

But it is your comment, the even more propagandistic one about Xi’s humble, laudable, selfless annual salary

So you’re anti-propaganda and globally aware, but still spreading CCP propaganda? Why share this article of you want people not to believe in political deception?

But when money fails (hyperinflation, sanctions, digital collapse, bank failures, violent revolution, etc.), countries who already have gold reserves will be the only ones with anything of value.

Beyond that, just by virtue of the fear of any of those events or general international turmoil rising, the value of gold rises, too, as one of very few stores of wealth that can survive any such event. Investing in gold is a great low-risk move for guaranteed returns on huge reserves.

Edit: I don’t know why people are downvoting this lol. Talk to literally anyone in finance.