Mason Riggle

E c@Tyler Durden degrees of certainty. There's only 1 thing I am absolutely certain of.. direct experience.. there seems to be something occurring, rather than nothing. It's possible that I am totally confused about 'the contents of experience'.. experience may be illusion, or hallucination, or dream, for example. However, between 100% certain, and 0% certain, there seem to be degrees of certainty by which I calibrate my beliefs and behaviors. For example, if you tell me that your car is parked in your garage, I really can't be sure of this. But, based on experience, cars seem to be a thing, garages seem to be a thing, and it seems plausible that you might possess one and have it parked in your garage, and so I'm inclined to have a high degree of certainty about this, yet still less than 100%. If, on the other hand, you tell me that you have a pet T-Rex that speaks Mandarin Chinese in your pocket, because this does not match up with experience, I will have a very low degree of certainty. Basically I won't believe you. We don't choose what to believe. We believe whatever we find compelling to believe, and we don't choose what we find to be sufficiently compelling.

I'm not sure what you're getting at? We have laws to deal with property damage. Are you suggesting that if vandals come destroy my business (my livelihood).. and my neighbor shoots and kills one of the vandals, then the fact that my business was destroyed should have some weight in determining if my neighbor acted in self defense or not? If this isn't whats being suggested, please explain why the destruction of my livelihood is relevant to my neighbors 'self defense' case? (How is what looters and rioters did relevant to Rittenhouses self defense case?)

What dollar value do you put on a human life? Nobody should be talking about 'the value of property damage' as any kind of defense for killing someone, and that's why no one is mentioning it (other than you). Yes, it's absolutely horrible that people felt justified in rioting and looting and causing all kinds of damage. There is no justification for their behavior. They should all be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But this is an entirely separate issue. I don't think anyone here is arguing that the rioters and looters had any right to do what they were doing. What I do see here, however, is people making the argument that 'because people were rioting and looting', that this somehow bolsters or adds credence to Rittenhouse's self defense claim, or somehow justifies his actions. It does not, and people who bring it up sound like fools.

Yes it applies equally to the protesters. Unless permitted to demonstrate peacefully, they should not have been there, and had any of them killed anyone, they would be charged with homicide. If they went there looking for conflict, and found it, they can and should be charged, just like Kyle. (In fact the prosecutor of Rittenhouse is also prosecuting people who lit dumpsters on fire that day for arson). But keep in mind, it's entirely possible for both parties in a court case to be guilty of crimes. The guilt of one party does not equal the innocence of the other. (This is exactly why this whole riot situation began... some people in the US do not understand that 'they were breaking the law' is not a legal defense for murdering someone, not even for police officers) This particular court case, is weighing charges levied against Kyle Rittenhouse. Other people who were caught engaging in illegal activity that day will get their day in court. (Well, not the two people Rittenhouse killed.) Is this really that hard to understand??

@AdroseAkise you have to understand that Rittenhouse knowingly put himself in that position. I don't think anyone doubts that Rittenhouse did fear for his life, and did what many might do in a similar situation to save his own life (defending himself), but reasonable people don't put themselves in these situations. Your 'being fair' is simply disregarding all the circumstances that led to him being in that particular situation of being aggressively chased. We could, for example, imagine a scenario where I had just robbed a bank, and on the way out the door of the bank, someone began aggressively chasing me, trying to stop me.. would I be justified in turning and shooting them? Is 'being aggressively chased' enough information to go on in determining 'self defense'? I hope you can see that my behavior prior to being 'aggressivley chased' is hugely important in determining my right to legally defend myself.

@AMTO yes? You're alone here with me. You can't know whether or not I have 'independent thoughts'. The same way you can't tell if you're dreaming right now, and will 'wake up' to some 'more real' reality than this.

This is all you really need to know about the case.

@AMTO does it seem to you like I am an 'empty vessel'? Do I seem any 'less real' than this forum, for example? Hint: when it's all dream, there is nothing 'outside' of that.

@Godishere see above.

@AMTO it's possible to discover that it doesn't matter whether 'others are just empty vessels' or not. I mean, even if I'm an 'empty vessel', I seem 'real enough' to you for you to consider me 'not an empty vessel', at least to the degree that you are soliciting 'me' (or others) for answers on this topic. Consider, is this Forum, this conversation right now, real? Or is it imaginary and it 'just seems real to me when it does'? Do you see how there is literally no difference?

^what does any of this have to do with Rittenhouse injecting himself into a dangerous situation while brandishing a weapon? Was 17 year old Rittenhouse under some kind of obligation to maintain Social stability in a neighboring State that I'm unaware of?

This sounds as if you believe he was forced to go there because of what was going on. "If it weren't for those protesters, Kyle would have just stayed home." Did he not have other choices? Maybe if he wasn't "just tryin' to be famous'" he wouldn't have been there in the first place. Maybe if he had just followed the city-wide curfew, he wouldn't have been there in the first place. Maybe if he wasn't pretending to be an EMT, he wouldn't have been there in the first place. (Wisconsin Legislature 946.70(1)(d) - whoever impersonates an emergency medical responder, as defined in s. 256.01 (4p), with intent to mislead others into believing that the person is actually an emergency medical responder is guilty of a Class A misdemeanor.)

This sounds a little weird... but I guess that's the nature of language. How can I become Love, if I'm already no different from it? Is there a difference between 'differences not existing' and 'differences existing'? maybe differences DO exist, since existing is 'no different' from 'not existing'. (I'm being a bit intentionally obtuse here, but also not.)

@WokeBloke it helps to understand that 'everything' is the cause of 'everything else'... and where you draw the line between 'everything' and 'everything else' is arbitrary. When we try to nail down 'the cause' of something, we find that there is an infinite regress of 'cause'. Consider.. if I train a dog to bite a child, and it does.. what caused the bite? Me or the dog? If my dad taught me to train dogs to bite children, and they do, what caused the biting? The dog, me, or my dad? and on and on we go.. When we say 'the dog caused the bite'.. this is a 'proximate cause'. The dog is 'closer in proximity' to the bite than my dad. It's also very difficult for many, to wrap their minds around the notion of 'eternity'. The notion that 'existence' always 'existed' and always will exist, eternally.. and therefor has no 'first cause' or 'last event', etc.

@LSD-Rumi "Intervening" is an illusion. Any attempt to change what is occurring [by anyone or anything] is just more what's already occurring. An experiment that can be repeated to demonstrate this, is to simply attempt to do other than what you are about to do, and recognize that whatever you do is always what you were about to do. If someone says, "I was going to go for a walk, but I didn't.".. they are lying to themselves.. if they didn't go for a walk, then they were never 'going to go for a walk'. Do you see how it's impossible to change what is occurring, because any so called 'change' to what is occurring is actually just more 'what is occurring', and so nothing about 'what is occurring' changed?

@Preety_India yeah ill message it

@Preety_India it can be done!

ok, so the "center" of my mind is where I see the elephant. The 'background' of the elephant isn't clear to me, like the 'edges of my field of vision'. It's a faint and more vague elephant than if I actually saw one.

@Inception but can you sing to yourself in your mind? And yeah, I suppose when I conjure up a mental image of a pink elephant, it's against a black background. When you 'look out at the world' through your eyes and see trees and the sky and buildings, for example, what is 'the background'?. You're entire 'field of vision'.. what is the 'background' against which that appears? Can you locate 'the edges' of your visual field?

Good questions. It's hard to say 'where' it is. For me, when I pictured a pink elephant, there was no background, but there could be one if I imagine there to be one. When you close your eyes, and hear a noise, where does 'the sound' appear for you? Does it seem 'internal' or 'external'? Can you hear the song, 'happy birthday too you' if you 'sing it to yourself'? Can you 'sing to yourself in your mind'? (I think most people can) If so, where is the song?

@Inception interesting. If I say, 'pink elephant', that doesn't conjure up any image in your mind of a pink elephant?

@WokeBloke are you your hand? If you cut off your hand, are there now two of you? When the mother and fetus are connected by the umbilical chord, are there two individuals or one? Am I my blood? Is my blood 'in my body' or 'part of my body'? What can be noticed here, is that 'the body' isn't even really a well defined thing, which exists separate from 'that which is not the body'. If I'm 'my body', then I'm also 'my table', 'my mother', 'my experiences'.. etc.

Haha close, but no.

@Holygrail perhaps the closest thing to a 'how' that I've heard, is 'imagined duality'.. Nothingness/Everythingness (one-ness) pretending to be separate from itself (two-ness, Somethingness). A good example of this, is how reality 'creates' a 'self' or 'ego', through duality... by imagining a difference between 'that which is self, and that which is not self', ego arises. Conversely, ego 'vanishes' or 'ceases', when the illusion of separation is seen for what it is. (When imagined duality is transcended)