There is a logical distinction between valuing health and valuing the necessary conditions of health - the necessary condition of value is not ‘therefore’ valuable, this is a common logical fallacy. philpapers.org/rec/KOWWII Disease is a necessary condition of the value of penicillin, but disease is not valuable because penicillin is valuable. So, we can value what we need nature for without valuing nature because of it, precisely because nature is also a source of disease and pain, and the cause of death.
philpapers.org
Michael Kowalik, When it is Not Logically Necessary for a Necessary Condition of Value to be Valuable - PhilPapers
The premise that it is logically necessary for a necessary condition of value to be valuable is sometimes used in metaethics in support of the claim that agency, or some constitutive ...
Negative inclusion is Exclusion.
To include the negation of something with that something, you only exclude that something, without including anything else in its place. For example, by including as women those who ‘contradict the premise that only females are women’ with those who ‘are women only because they are females’, you exclude females from women and end up with an empty category.
To include the negation of something with that something, you only exclude that something, without including anything else in its place. For example, by including as women those who ‘contradict the premise that only females are women’ with those who ‘are women only because they are females’, you exclude females from women and end up with an empty category.
If most people are substantially controllable under certain conditions, and those conditions can be produced by a leader, then most people are substantially not free to begin with. The degree to which people are controllable is not all or nothing; this is evidently a matter of degree and varies from person to person. On the other hand, since Humans are essentially moral beings (if we were not moral beings then our freedom would have no intrinsic value), we are not blameless for being controllable. And here lies a dilemma: we must either accept moral responsibility for our unfreedom, or we did not deserve freedom in the first place.
There is a feedback loop between morality and rationality: bad moral choices give rise to irrational beliefs, and irrational beliefs give rise to bad moral choices, and over time this can escalate to a catastrophe, but the process can also be reversed, leading to general moral improvement.
What makes us Human (rational consciousness) occurs in a different time to biological evolution, in a different reality. Crocodiles evolved for much much longer than Homo sapiens evolved from apes and are still just reptiles. In a sense, animality and humanity are opposites, but humans have the capacity to go back to the other side, become less conscious by prioritising their animality, or go beyond it, by prioritising their rational consciousness, within a single lifetime.
That chimps engage in tribalism, violence and social competition proves that these are not Human behaviours, but animal behaviours, and something else is necessary to be human.
Forwarded from CunningPlan 🐭
This Canadian sets it out well: https://twitter.com/DNSWilson/status/1655819673756389376?s=20
A lot of people are getting upset having their conduct during covid compared to Germans supporting the rise of Nazism.
Let's recapitulate.
A fifth of the population was legally classified as unclean. They were barred from most public spaces, including theatres, restaurants, movies, pubs, clubs, swimming pools, sporting events, concerts, conventions, etc.
To access public facilities, people had to carry a digital mark with them so authorities could confirm they weren't unclean.
The unclean were fired and barred from most jobs: education, healthcare, courts - all public sector work, most major union jobs and a wide smattering of major private employers. When they were fired, the unclean were denied employment insurance, the reasoning being that they had been fired for cause on account of being unclean.
The unclean were banned from travel on trains, planes, and chartered boats. They had no legal means of leaving the country. Even if they wanted to, they could not escape the country that obviously hated them so.
It became illegal to socialize with the unclean. They weren't allowed to attend weddings or funerals, or visit sick relatives or friends in hospital.
Special laws were made for the unclean subjecting them to house arrest if they were around a person who had recently had a positive PCR test. The unclean had to continue to cover their faces in public when universal masking was dropped.
It became socially acceptable to wish death upon the unclean in social media and in major news organizations. Public health figures and other politicians gave press conferences to shame and insult the unclean. The public developed shared pejorative names for them, and relished in insulting the unclean.
News media regularly ran polls asking if the unclean should be arrested or fined. Public figures openly and proudly spoke about witholding medically necessary healthcare from the unclean - letting them die. The unclean were removed from organ transplant lists, condemned to almost certain death.
No end date for these measures was ever suggested, no timeline given. To the contrary, this was called the "new normal".
Criticizing any of these developments made you a social pariah, and likely cost you most of your friendships and family relations, if not your job.
The lesson of the Holocaust - and of covid - isn't that Germans or Albertans or people of the 21st Century are uniquely gullible or evil. It's that for most people, "morality" is not a matter of principle, but rather of adopting what they perceive to be the dominant group ideology - even if that ideology is marked by wanton irrationality or brutal inhumanity.
Indeed, as in certain cults or gangs, the brutality or irrationality of the acts or beliefs required to signal group inclusion further entrench people into the ideology, rather than repel them; a kind of perverse sunk cost fallacy writ large.
So, yes, if you're a typical person - Albertan, Canadian or otherwise - it is overwhelmingly likely that you would have been a Nazi if you were born in Nazi Germany. If you cheered along lockdowns and mandates, that likelihood approaches certainty.
Repent.
A lot of people are getting upset having their conduct during covid compared to Germans supporting the rise of Nazism.
Let's recapitulate.
A fifth of the population was legally classified as unclean. They were barred from most public spaces, including theatres, restaurants, movies, pubs, clubs, swimming pools, sporting events, concerts, conventions, etc.
To access public facilities, people had to carry a digital mark with them so authorities could confirm they weren't unclean.
The unclean were fired and barred from most jobs: education, healthcare, courts - all public sector work, most major union jobs and a wide smattering of major private employers. When they were fired, the unclean were denied employment insurance, the reasoning being that they had been fired for cause on account of being unclean.
The unclean were banned from travel on trains, planes, and chartered boats. They had no legal means of leaving the country. Even if they wanted to, they could not escape the country that obviously hated them so.
It became illegal to socialize with the unclean. They weren't allowed to attend weddings or funerals, or visit sick relatives or friends in hospital.
Special laws were made for the unclean subjecting them to house arrest if they were around a person who had recently had a positive PCR test. The unclean had to continue to cover their faces in public when universal masking was dropped.
It became socially acceptable to wish death upon the unclean in social media and in major news organizations. Public health figures and other politicians gave press conferences to shame and insult the unclean. The public developed shared pejorative names for them, and relished in insulting the unclean.
News media regularly ran polls asking if the unclean should be arrested or fined. Public figures openly and proudly spoke about witholding medically necessary healthcare from the unclean - letting them die. The unclean were removed from organ transplant lists, condemned to almost certain death.
No end date for these measures was ever suggested, no timeline given. To the contrary, this was called the "new normal".
Criticizing any of these developments made you a social pariah, and likely cost you most of your friendships and family relations, if not your job.
The lesson of the Holocaust - and of covid - isn't that Germans or Albertans or people of the 21st Century are uniquely gullible or evil. It's that for most people, "morality" is not a matter of principle, but rather of adopting what they perceive to be the dominant group ideology - even if that ideology is marked by wanton irrationality or brutal inhumanity.
Indeed, as in certain cults or gangs, the brutality or irrationality of the acts or beliefs required to signal group inclusion further entrench people into the ideology, rather than repel them; a kind of perverse sunk cost fallacy writ large.
So, yes, if you're a typical person - Albertan, Canadian or otherwise - it is overwhelmingly likely that you would have been a Nazi if you were born in Nazi Germany. If you cheered along lockdowns and mandates, that likelihood approaches certainty.
Repent.
X (formerly Twitter)
Don Wilson, LLB 🇨🇦 (@DNSWilson) on X
A lot of people are getting upset having their conduct during covid compared to Germans supporting the rise of Nazism.
Let's recapitulate.
A fifth of the population was legally classified as unclean. They were barred from most public spaces, including theatres…
Let's recapitulate.
A fifth of the population was legally classified as unclean. They were barred from most public spaces, including theatres…
I use the Kantian definition of Humanity (conscious, rational beings capable of moral discernment), because only that part matters for our moral status, as opposed to Homo sapiens (species of animal). Anything that is not rational behaviour is not a behaviour of rational beings. On this view only rational behaviour is Human behaviour, it is the basis of our moral status, and everything else is animal behaviour that is at best morally neutral but can also undermine our moral status.
“It also ruled he was not an “eligible claimant” because he did not meet the “hospitalisation requirement”, having only been treated as an outpatient.” They make the “conditions” so difficult to satisfy and the inclusion criteria so narrow that they don’t have to pay anything. See, we care, we are ready to pay, you just don’t qualify. https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-problems/my-life-is-on-hold-young-tradie-blinded-after-moderna-vaccine-denied-compensation/news-story/ecefe023035617123c78aa4321e8fc9e
The relevant moral and legal distinction between deaths caused by vaccine mandates and deaths arising due to occupational or healthcare risks is the element of coercion (not the degree of risk, not the magnitude of benefits to the majority from killing the minority). The coercion to engage in an activity where a percentage of people are expected to die is the proof of the intent to kill, a guilty mind.
Normal
The relevant moral and legal distinction between deaths caused by vaccine mandates and deaths arising due to occupational or healthcare risks is the element of coercion (not the degree of risk, not the magnitude of benefits to the majority from killing the…
Any “freedom activist” [influencer] who has not focussed on the above core violation but instead shifts your attention from one emotive case of vaccine harm to another, from one science paper to another, from one court case to another, must be considered a disinformation agent.
Religious rhetoric is a key feature of the fake freedom movement. It obscures that which is provable and universally accepted in the legal and ethical framework with appeals to unprovable metaphysical dogmas, ensuring thereby that no rational resolution of conflicting beliefs is possible. Religious dogmatism in the political domain is the hallmark of disinformation.
Plausible deniability has a use-by date, and at some point the evasion of core principles, universally recognised, becomes evidence of collusion.
Have I missed any instance where any of the leading influencers of the freedom movement argued that vaccine mandates violate the right to life? (not just that Covid vaccines kill some people, which even the TGA admits)
Forwarded from Normal (Michael Kowalik)
A modern dictator’s guide to counterinsurgency
The most secure way of neutralising the commoners’ resistance to progressive state policies is to create a reality-TV series called “the freedom movement” (or something positive sounding and empowering like that). A cast of charismatic organisers/rebels/mavericks from different walks of life are the main protagonists. They gain prominence in the pilot episode, each performing a simple act of resistance captured on video. Speaking the language of the people they deliver a daily dose of “the Revolution” right to your sofa, each with a high energy vlog of platitudes to motivate you to stay on it and “just trust me, we are making a huge difference”. From time to time the organisers will stage a festive meetup in a public place to give you the sense of full, realistic immersion in the series (this is a crucial element of reality-TV and what the audience loves the most). These meetups should be realistically called “protests” and contain surprise, hyper-real performances by affiliated artists. Some suggestions for the embedded performances: a thrilling visit from the “riot squad” in full gear, an occasional violent “arrest” of one of the protagonists, a discovery and capture of a “real” firearm on one of the “protesters”, an accidental run-in with ANTIFA, and the all time favourite: “the burning of the Parliament House”.
It was once understood, correctly, that “the [real] revolution will not be televised”. The task of the dictator is therefore to ensure that “the Revolution” is televised, vlogged, delivered right to your door, the information channels saturated with everything “revolutionary”, the drama and bloodshed of “true resistance” fed directly to your screen. The polarity of Good and Evil must be absolute, and the audience made to oscillate between hopeless terror and “nothing can stop us now”, driven to daily catharsis. Live-out the real revolution in reality-TV. “Oh! What a Difference.” ✊
Join NORMAL
The most secure way of neutralising the commoners’ resistance to progressive state policies is to create a reality-TV series called “the freedom movement” (or something positive sounding and empowering like that). A cast of charismatic organisers/rebels/mavericks from different walks of life are the main protagonists. They gain prominence in the pilot episode, each performing a simple act of resistance captured on video. Speaking the language of the people they deliver a daily dose of “the Revolution” right to your sofa, each with a high energy vlog of platitudes to motivate you to stay on it and “just trust me, we are making a huge difference”. From time to time the organisers will stage a festive meetup in a public place to give you the sense of full, realistic immersion in the series (this is a crucial element of reality-TV and what the audience loves the most). These meetups should be realistically called “protests” and contain surprise, hyper-real performances by affiliated artists. Some suggestions for the embedded performances: a thrilling visit from the “riot squad” in full gear, an occasional violent “arrest” of one of the protagonists, a discovery and capture of a “real” firearm on one of the “protesters”, an accidental run-in with ANTIFA, and the all time favourite: “the burning of the Parliament House”.
It was once understood, correctly, that “the [real] revolution will not be televised”. The task of the dictator is therefore to ensure that “the Revolution” is televised, vlogged, delivered right to your door, the information channels saturated with everything “revolutionary”, the drama and bloodshed of “true resistance” fed directly to your screen. The polarity of Good and Evil must be absolute, and the audience made to oscillate between hopeless terror and “nothing can stop us now”, driven to daily catharsis. Live-out the real revolution in reality-TV. “Oh! What a Difference.” ✊
Join NORMAL
Street protests are a blunt and dangerous tool that can succeed only under specific conditions: when the protesters express the will of the majority. When they occur too early, before the time is right, before the majority has suffered enough, street protests are an instrument of control that serves the ruling power. You were incited to protest AGAINST the will of the majority, seduced to fund hopless class actions and cases, because nothing demoralises like futile effort. Your energy and motivation were tactically exhausted by a smarter, better resourced adversary, so that when the time will be right you will be spent, without hope or energy, your spirit broken. A wiser strategy would be to patiently endure and feel the pulse of the majority, be wiling to suffer more than the majority until THEIR spirit of collusion is broken. You could never win against the majority with the blunt tool of street protests, you were led up the garden path.
Street protests and bad legal arguments were allowed and given airtime because they were useful to the ruling power, but this strategy also revealed a vulnerability. That which was consistently ignored, not publicly addressed even with contempt and criticism, is what the ruling power is the most afraid of, cannot openly attack since any attempt to confront it could be fatal to the illusion of legitimacy, could shift the majority against it. We know what it is.
https://michaelkowalik.substack.com/p/why-vaccine-mandates-are-unethical
Street protests and bad legal arguments were allowed and given airtime because they were useful to the ruling power, but this strategy also revealed a vulnerability. That which was consistently ignored, not publicly addressed even with contempt and criticism, is what the ruling power is the most afraid of, cannot openly attack since any attempt to confront it could be fatal to the illusion of legitimacy, could shift the majority against it. We know what it is.
https://michaelkowalik.substack.com/p/why-vaccine-mandates-are-unethical
Substack
Why Vaccine Mandates are Unethical
Summary of the strongest ethical arguments against vaccine mandates
BREAKING NEWS: The World Health Organisation has issued a new education guidance, described as an "evidence-based framework for policy makers, educational and health authorities and specialists", advising that toddlers should experience the effect of common narcotics in age-appropriate amounts, understand the difference between pleasurable and un-pleasurable use of psychoactive substances, and develop the attitude that “My body belongs to me” (except in the case of vaccines). "Education about narcotics, sex and pleasure starts from birth" said the WHO spokesperson, adding that children aged four and under should be taught about "the enjoyment and pleasure of narcotics when touching one's own body, watching pornography, or while engaging in early childhood masturbation";)
Very few doctors can discern and are willing to acknowledge the bigger picture, principled rather than utilitarian, of medical ethics. This is one of them. He deserves support. https://rmachine.substack.com/p/why-we-lost-before-we-started
Robert Against The Machine
Why We Lost Before We Started.
OR Why We Don't Need Data
The power of global rulers may seem insurmountable, but their domination is conditional on the acquiescence and collusion of the majority. This symbiotic relationship requires continuous maintenance of the illusion of legitimacy through deception. It is therefore not necessary to challenge the ruling power where it is strong, but only unmask the illusion of legitimacy. By relying on deception they are handing us silver bullets to use against them every day.