DocWatts

Psilocybin is already decriminalized in Denver as well as Ann Arbor, MI. Oregon has recently decriminalized small amounts of all drugs, including psychedelics. I imagine various psychedelics will follow a similar path that Weed took towards Legalization; (1) Decriminalized in more Progressive cities and States (2) Restrictions are gradually lifted for testing in a clinical setting, paving the way for Medical Legalization (3) Society doesn't fall apart, and as people begin seeing the benefits of clinical use, the Overton window gradually shifts towards public acceptance of full Legalization

@Scholar Okay then, I'll bite. From an epistemological standpoint, explain to me why reserving judgement pending further study informed by a scientific cultural standard is a mistake in this instance? Let's restrict this to the vast majority of people who don't claim to have Direct Experience with these phenomena: 1 ) Whether or not aliens are visiting us is an Empirical (rather than a Subjective or Metaphysical) claim. To the best of my knowledge the claim isn't that these are ethereal experiences akin to DMT entities, but are something that exists and is experienced as a part of 'physical reality' (however you interpret that). 2 ) Even if it's not the 'Last Word' on what is ontologically true, from a pragmatic viewpoint science is extremely useful when set to examining the merits of Empirical claims. 3) Science has helped bolster the claims of diverse fields of study such as History and Anthropology, and in a sense isn't totally separate from them. Likewise, applying Scientific scrutiny to video footage and eyewitness accounts can be clarifying, as it can help account for false positives. Seems like using out knowledge of things like Optics and Psychology should be useful in that regard, no? 4) Unlike say Climate Change, there isn't an obvious downside or Opportunity Cost to withholding judgement on these matters for the time being. 5) Pointing out that an object has unconventional properties that can't be accounted for with conventional explanations doesn't definitively prove that said object is what you claim it is; namely that it's alien in origin; it very well could be, but you're not going to be able to make a definitive statement about that using only Negatives (ie it's not definitely this or that type of thing, so therefore...). Which is sufficient for making more Limited and Modest claims, but seems premature to come to definitive judgements based on that. 6) Agnosticism as to the definitive explanation for seemingly strange phenomena that's yet to be fully explored is I would argue the position of Intellectual Humility. I'd posit that at least some of these objects being extraterrestrial in origin is a not unreasonable Interpretation; going beyond that and claiming anything definitive without some sort of verification process seems grossly premature. If this were an incoming message from SETI or the possible discovery of microbes on one of the moons of Jupiter, there are lengthy verification protocols in place to make pretty damn sure that it was the real deal before saying anything definitive about it.

Did I at any point compare verification of these sorts of claims to the world of physics, or insinuate that Laboratory experimentation is the only way to 'prove' something? It seems obvious that you're projecting an expectation of someone with a Materialist Reductionism worldview, when that's not the case, nor is it what I'm arguing. No one can 'prove' that alien craft aren't visiting us, any more than someone can 'prove' that an undiscovered species of Shark doesn't exist in the Pacific ocean. In either case there's a Verification process that would need to happen before said Discovery is endorsed by the wider community. If you're right, then no doubt that will likely happen at some point.

My overall impression is that David Fravor's account comes across as a highly trained and highly competent professional who is being sincere about what he experienced. The number of corroborating factors that you point out make the incident difficult to dismiss, and gives a much higher degree of credibility than is typical in the vast majority of encounters with unidentified ariel objects. If you recall, I never actually dismissed the possibility of at least some of these incidents actually being aliens. The David Fravor incident offers one of the more compelling Data Points pointing in that direction. In short: yes, I find David Fravor's account about as credible as an incident like this probably could be through eyewitness accounts that have been corroborated with indirect evidence. But for something that would without hyperbole be one of the largest paradigm shifts in the history of Humanity (that intelligent life outside of Earth not only exists but is interacting with us), I would think the bar of Paradigm Shifting Validation should be quite a bit higher than a very small handful of compelling incidents among a vast ocean of claims that either can't be verified or have been debunked. Seems like the bar of evidence should be at least as high as the Verification process that must be cleared when a new animal species is discovered. If that's a completely unreasonable reason to remain agnostic about the issue until it can be verified in a more substantial way, I'd be interested to hear why.

Well what you're contending with in even the more credible accounts of encounters with these types of phenomena isn't any sort of positive identification of any of these objects, but rather a process of elimination where the object seems as though it's not explainable through more conventional explanations. Now the possibility is certainly open that some of these objects might actually be from another world; but without some method of verification you're not really doing anything more than guessing at this point; there may be possibilities that aren't at all obvious which you're not accounting for. Note that I'm not claiming that the Scientific Method of attempting to empirically Validate claims is the only way of acquiring knowledge (or even always the best way), but I have my doubts that eyewitness accounts from other people of things that lie far outside of most people's lived experience are altogether reliable or trustworthy. Nor is the recorded footage that exists which shows objects recorded from a great distance behaving in strange or unexpected ways necessarily indicative of something from another world, though of course it could be that. If an Alien lands on my lawn tomorrow, or if additional types of evidence further add to the mosiac in a convincing way, I'm of course open to revising my opinions on this matter.

Well fortunately for me I'm comfortable with saying "I don't know" for any of the number of strange incidents that defy easy identification. Sure it could be that a US Navy pilot spotted an actual UFO, or a case of instrumentation error and a alien vessel being the most plausible interpretation given the inputs he had to work with at the time. I don't believe that the people involved in the incident are being dishonest, but even highly experienced professionals can make mistakes, or reach conclusions based on faulty info. Or it could be that the account is %100 genuine. I don't know, and neither do you. Agnosticism seems a perfectly valid response to situations like this. I'm not claiming to possess knowledge that I don't have, but I don't think it's unreasonable to reserve judgement until more conclusive and verifiable evidence is available from reputable sources.

I'm assuming you'd agree that how people interpret the world around them is filtered through whatever cultural paradigm they've been indoctrinated in to, right? Are the vast number of these sightings unambiguous enough where it's crystal clear that the thing that's being looked at is a 'fucking alien', or is it the case that the vast majority of these sightings are of a small blob or series of lights far off in the distance being Interpreted as a UFO because that's become the 'default explanation' for anything strange looking that defies easy categorization? Note : If aliens ever fly thier ship over my fucking head, I'll revise my tune on this ?

@Scholar Not sure if you've ever been on a Jury, but considerations of which account of events being presented is the most truthful is a huge part of what Jurors are asked to do in court cases (in addition to considering things like responsibility for blame in light of extenuating circumstances, of course). The one criminal case that I was a Jury member for revolved entirely around determining whether an ex-convict was in possession of a firearm or not (ie weighing the merits of conflicting factual Truth claims). And for the record while I do posit that aliens visiting Earth is at least possible, it's not a claim I'm inclined to take seriously from the types of evidence presented so far (generally consisting of people elucidating remembered perceptions of strange phenomena, and low quality, hard to decipher video footage). If something more substantial comes to light, I'll reevaluate my opinion. A problem I see with the 'aliens visiting Earth' hypothesis in this thread is that people defending the claim handwave away any Inferences at all that could be made about potential Aliens with a retort that basically boils down to 'nothing at all can be inferred, because reality is infinite and anything is possible'. Which if your metaphysical ontology rests upon the assumption that all of Reality is a creation of Consciousness (which is in assumption, by the way, just as much as Materialism is an assumption) I guess that follows, and is at least internally consistent. But as a way to defend a hypothesis it seems intellectually lazy, and just as inadequate as a skeptic trying to refute said claim on the basis of Materialist Reductionism (ie the Speed of Light cant by bypassed, ergo no interstellar travel). If you're in position of having to use metaphysical axiomatic assumptions to back up your claim, it doesn't make for a very convincing argument for people outside of that particular Paradigm.

You'd think the threshold of evidence to confirm a new paradigm so world changing in its implications (that aliens not only exist but are regularly visiting our planet), would be higher than the threshold a jury would use to convict someone of vandalism to public property (the evidence consisting of hard to decipher low quality security footage, and eyewitness testimony from people too far away to make out distinguishable features beyond just a silhouette, etc). Also: what kind of sense does it make that beings which possess the unfathomable level of technology needed to cross the gulf between stars somehow doesn't have the ability to mask thier crafts from detection? Sure someone might retort that "we have no idea what they're technologically capable of", which is true to some extent, but also misses the obvious point that we can make at least draw some general inferences. It's not unreasonable to assume that a civilization that has mastered interstellar travel would also be knowledgeable about how to hide themselves from detection from a much less technologically sophisticated society. While I posit that agnosticism isn't an unreasonable supposition, I see lots of confirmation bias for people who want aliens to exist... Hell, I want aliens to exist, but I do recognize that the more likely path of discovering microbes or indirect radio spectrometry evidence isn't nearly as exciting for most people as exciting as Intelligent beings that have taken a direct interest in our planet.

Vegetarians / Vegans would do well to put more emphasis on strategies for helping people transition towards a more ethical and sustainable diet, rather than approaching it from a viewpoint of moral absolutism. Vegetarianism/Veganism is a lifestyle change after all. For my part, it took me a good year or two to reach a point where something like %95 of my diet is Vegetarian, something that I wouldn't have been able to stick with if I didn't adopt it gradually.

@LfcCharlie4 You bring up some Valid points. Even if the Crony Capitalism is often used as a cop out by more Libertarian leaning types when discussing structural problems at the Heart of Capitalism, they are absolutely right to point out that the government is often in bed with private industry in corrupt ways that distort the Market. So no disagreement there. What I would argue though is that the incentive structure of Capitalism is such that Crony Capitalism is its inevitable outcome, unless safeguards are put in place to prevent that from happening. Which means things like regulation, transparency laws, publicly funded election campaigns, etc. While Free Markets are great in theory, and sometimes in Practice as well, the problem is that certain Industries/Services are much more well suited to Market Dynamics than others, for a variety of structural reasons. Going back to the Comcast example, even if the government did nothing at all to prop up Comcast's monopolistic businesses practices, it's not like a 'mom and pop' ISP has any chance at all to enter thr marketplace and compete with Comcast, due to the incredibly high barrier of entry for Internet Providers, as for most Utilities. And that's leaving aside the issue of Oligopolies, where companies form tacit agreements not to compete with one another, further limiting the amount of 'choice' a potential consumer has, which the ISP Industry is notorious for. In other instances, consumers are constrained in how much of a choice they really have. In a country with privatized medicine like the US, someone who needs an ambulance because they're having a Heart Attack can't really Shop Around for different ambulance services that offer the best price. (Be glad you don't live over here if you happen to get sick at any point in your life, ambulance bills are thousands of dollars). And yet another problem with Market Dynamics is when the incentive structure of Markets conflicts with people's being able to meet thier basic survival needs; the Housing Market being a prime example of this. Where you have something that's a basic necessity treated as an Investment by Market Incentives, with the result that a basic need (Housing) has become unobtainable for many people. Here in America you ha e this absurd situation where there's something like twenty unoccupied houses for each Homeless person who lives here. My non-original take on the issue is that Markets are a tool, one which has the capacity to be helpful or harmful depending on where and how they are used.

@LfcCharlie4 I try my best to be relatively non-ideological about what to leave in the public vs private sphere, and am all for means testing government programs to make sure they're fulfilling thier intended purpose. That said, there are some human necessities where introducing a Profit motive creates a Moral Hazard. I'm assuming you probably wouldn't be okay with someone selling thier Organs to pay thier bills, or someone agreeing to become an Indentured Servant with no Legal Rights for ten years to pay off thier Student Loan Debts. Likewise, introducing a profit motive in to things like Prisons or Healthcare creates perverse incentives where organizations directly benefit from Harming people. Hence, they become Predatory. In addition, when people mention that government programs can become bloated and inefficient (sometimes true), they fail to see how the same can be true of Private Industry. Hell, Comcast is still around, and they're one of the worst companies in existence, providing truly terrible service for a premium cost. In addition, public programs have a huge advantage over privatized ones; Public programs can be run at Cost, and not have to skim a Profit from people using thier services. A government program would have to be very inefficient indeed to not be able to compete with a Privatized Service which must provide Investors with a quarterly return, and CEOs with millions of dollars in compensation. Also, you'll notice that at no point did I mention that any public services were free: they're tax payer supported. What I will argue is that something supported by taxes will often be both more inexpensive and better than its privatized alternative.

While the above videos offer a valid critique of Spiral Dynamics and Ken Wilber, if you're interested in this topic, I would highly recommend the book The Listening Society by Hanzi Freinacht. The book is a Metamodern text on Developmental Psychology and Sociology, and deals quite explicitly with both Spiral Dynamics and Ken Wilber. The book points out some of the strengths and weaknesses of both models, and presents a more refined version of Spiral Dynamics that accounts for some of its weaknesses, a refinement that the author calls an Effective Value Meme. Some of the problems about the Spiral Dynamics model which the author points out is that it attempts to merge several different areas of human development on to a single axis, and doesn't account for how people may have a level of cognitive complexity (or Wisdom) that's either below or above what Spiral Dynamics stage they've been imprinted with. It also points out that Turquoise is something that really doesn't exist at this point of time, and is more indicative of the limitations of Spiral Dynamics as a model to integrate people who have reached a level of wisdom and sophistication beyond their current SD-Stage. A nice illustration of the limitations of SD as a model is that it doesn't provide a clear and unambiguous answer to the following question : Which of the following people is at a 'Higher' level of psychological and personal development - Aristotle (roughly SD-Blue), or a 15 year old contemporary hippy girl (roughly SD-Green)?

@amorri1010 Just about all Left leaning people agree that at least some necessities should be divorced from Market dynamics, it's just a matter of degree for what Industries should be de-commodified and made Public. Things like Health Care, Education, Utilities (including Internet) seem like no brainers, in that these are clearly things humans need for a happy and productive life, where the Market has either failed or presents an obvious Moral Hazard. Things like Housing and Transportation present more ambiguous cases, where a blend of public ownership and regulated Markets might make more sense. That said, I fail to see the Wisdom in introducing alternative methods of distribution to areas where Markets are working reasonably well, such as Food or Consumer Goods (the latter of which Planned Economies were notoriously bad at providing).

If you mean it in the sense that most people aren't creative geniuses who can make thier way in our socio-economic system on thier own terms, you'll find no argument from me. I do think that the comic speaks to a more generalizable yearning to live one's life authentically, and to not have one's sense of self worth contingent upon how high they can climb in the Social Hierarchy. I also think we should be doing more to normalize stay at home dads, but that's a different discussion.

@TheSomeBody From your vantage point, what sort of long term solutions to the Conflict are Israel Left of Center political parties advocating for (beyond the short term goal of defending against Hamas rocket strikes)? Is a Two State solution something that is still actively sought after by any of the major political parties?

@TheSomeBody Since you happen to be from Israeli, how would you characterize the Left/Right divide in Israeli? Is it more of a demographic or ethnic divide? Is the split between right and left a generational one? Something else? Hard to even pin down?

@cookiemonster That's fair. Obviously I'm well aware that religiously motivated Jews thought of Palestine as thier ancient home, and that Zionist Christians who had religious motives for seeing the Jews return to Palestine (as a prerequisite for Biblical Prophesies of the Rapture). My point wasn't that religion played no role as a motivating factor (obviously it did), but that the hatred between Jews and Arabs is relatively recent, and due to a political conflict of interests, rather than irresolvable religious differences that go back thousands of years. I would argue however that the only reason that religiously motivated Zionism got any traction at all was for pragmatic political reasons, stemming from the situation in Europe in the 19th and 20th Century. Sure a small and fragmented religious community may have had a desire to set up a homeland in a region where people were already living, but without a powerful State (ie the British Empire) with vested political interests in the region, it would have remained the dream of a stateless people who lacked political power. It was also my understanding that many of the early Zionists were cultural (rather than religious) Jews, including Theodor Herzl; in a similar way to how Einstein was a non-religious Jew. No World War 1 (and World War 2), no Israel state. No persecution of Jewish minorities by European/Russian political powers (often done for opportunistic political reasons), likely no Israeli state. You do make some good points though, and I may have overlooked how Religious motivations (for both Jews and Christians) were intertwined to some degree with the political situation, so I'll revise my statement to the Conflict being primarily Political.

Despite the rhetoric of religious hatred that gets thrown around on both sides, what's happening in Palestine is %100 a political conflict, whose root cause is British colonialism in the wake of World War 1, and the desperation caused by European Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust. Anyone who believes that the dispute is due to religious hatred that stretches back thousands of years (with the implication that there's nothing to be done about it) is either ignorant of History, or is being flagrantly dishonest.

I problem I see with attempting to apply Marxist economics to contemporary Societies, is that people are quick to lose sight of the Historical context that the work was created in. At the time when Marx and Engels were developing thier Theory, the average worker in the most advanced Industrial Societies of the time were working 80 - 100 hour work weeks in truly horrific conditions; labor laws weren't a thing that existed, and workers were treated as little better than serfs. While these conditions still exist in developing countries that the advanced economies 'export' thier exploitation of labor to, for people living within developed countries Social Democracy has solved many (though not all) of the problems of Capitalism. For someone lucky enough to be living in a country with strong labor laws, who may be protected by a Union and has access to free college and vocational education, Marxist economic Theory doesn't really have a lot to offer that person. Sure you could argue that they're not getting the full value of their Labor, but for someone making a living wage with a social safety net to protect them, it's not really a matter of Survival like it was for the 19th century workers Marx and Engels were writing about. Obviously this doesn't invalidate Marx's basic critique of Capitalism, so much as make it less relevant for the advanced economies some century and a half later. I wouldn't say that Marxist economic theory is wrong (it's not), so much as outdated. That's not to say that Social Democracy is perfect or an 'endpoint' of Social Development, but I would argue it's more attuned to contemporary challenges than 19th Century economic Theory. Not as if Marxist economies have proven any better for sustainable development than Capitalism, nor does it offer any solutions for how to address the most serious issue that humanity currently faces, which is Climate Change. Planned Economies might have arguably worse for protecting the environment than Market economies, which is really saying something.

Bill Watterson (creator of the Calvin and Hobbes) sums up a Green ethos quite beautifully. Full comic here: https://www.mommysbusy.com/calvin-hobbes-daddy-bill-watterson-proves-why-stay-at-home-moms-and-dads-rule/

@amorri1010 Of course what you say is true, and just to lay my biases on the table, when I refer to contemporary Socialism, I'm implicitly referencing to what I'll broadly refer to as Libertarian-Socialism. While that's far from the only ideological block under the 'Socialist' umbrella, but I do see it as the most relevant to contemporary conditions in the United States and Europe. That's not to deny the Historical and Sociological significance of other types of Socialism, but as a contemporary political force in the West, I would argue that they are negligible. Regardless of whether thier arguments have Merit, something like Anarcho-Syndicalism or Leninism are anachronistic by this point.

I would posit that wanting to separate Essentials (health care, education, utilities, housing, etc) from Markets is a far cry from positing public ownership of the entire economy... It's my understanding that most contemporary Socialists want to retain Markets, but believe that they should be subordinate to what's necessary for the Public Good (rather than the exact opposite being true).

@amorri1010 Great and thoughtful post, and welcome to the Forum. From my own vantage point, the most common mistake I see about Socialism (disregarding its demonization from intellectually dishonest actors) is to be Reductionist about it, and treat Socialism an All or Nothing affair. Either workers in a Society own the means of production, or they're being exploited. When from my point of view, thinking of Socialism as a gradation or a matter of degree makes much more sense. Powerful Unions which give workers a voice as to how their workplace is run is one point on that spectrum, with worker owned businesses being further along on that spectrum. While %100 socialist country is unrealistic, I see no reason in principle why various degrees and gradations of Socialism can't co-exist within a system driven by Market forces (at least within the more Democratic countries of the world, this system obviously wouldn't work where Democratic Institutions are weak). If one looks at the moral imperatives behind Socialism, namely that workers: (1) deserve the full value of thier labor (2) should have control over thier work environment (3) should be able contribute in a meaningful way to the products of thier labor. The mistake I see is that people become ideologically fixated on their chosen method for achieving these Principles, rather than on the Principles themselves; missing the forest for the trees, so to speak. I would argue that thinking that there's only one way to achieve these overall goals is Limiting, and there's a Spectrum for how fully these Principles are realized.

The illusion of separation between humans and the natural world is a systemic problem, one of whose root causes stems from the worldwide economic system not factoring ecological costs in to the costs of Production. Instead matters that are of existential importance to mankind as a living organism on this planet (Climate Change, the acidification of the Oceans, etc) are treated as 'externalities', and a perverse incentive arises for individuals and groups to gain short term profits at the expense of long term human survival. Obviously this sort of system can't last forever, the question is will humans make changes to this system on our terms, or will changes be forced upon us by an ecological crash that threatens human existence. Let's hope and work for the former, as the latter entails widespread suffering. Whatever economic system ends up eclipsing Capitalism will as a matter of necessity need to have Ecological as a central pillar, in order to have any sort of longevity.