You’re right, Jonathan!

“Dick” is inappropriate.

“Arrogant dick” isn’t.

I’ve been looking for a systematic approach to an Aristotalean philosophy updated with Bayes’. I had in mind a few additional updates that are sorely needed. I look forward to going down all the side routes you link to here, to see if someone already laid them out.

Suffice it to say, I am extremely gratified to see someone with your academic chops to raise the banner of renwed interest in the systemization of philosophy, and one that is neither more platonic claptrap, pop-psychology soup of the day (eg, Robbins; Peterson), nor dogmatic cult masquerading as rationalism.

Aside from minor disputes and arguments over details, I anticipate my main question will be, “what can I do to help promote this framework?” And I don’t mean with mere money. That’s not a question I’m expecting a personal answer from you on, but if you’ve already addressed that question in a general way, I’ll be grateful to be pointed in that direction.

Islam: That’s really fascinating. I suspect that latter intellectualized group on their own may not be very good recruiters for extremism because they won’t feed that desire for rage, the nuance is too substantial, they expose you to (even weakened) counter-arguments, and they need plausible deniability. They can help to be the person that the extremist cites, the way Sowell is cited even by Nazis. I also suspect that’s going to be more common in established ideologies like Islam rather than, say, neo-Nazism. The alt-right don’t have real intellectuals because they hate intellectuals.

“(A)s they say, imagining him to have suffered, as they themselves imagining being,”. That seems(Sic!) straight-forward enough. They don’t think Jesus’ suffering was “real” as they don’t think themselves “real”, a common enough claim about the world that pops up most everywhere. It might be they imagined Jesus’ suffering as they suffer, which just reverses what is commonly said of believers but doesn’t mean anything different, but you have to add language to make that work, so – even though you have to add language to Greek often to make it intelligible in English – I lean to the former. Neither ideas are docetic when you think the Greek through, nor unintelligible.

Art: But it wasn’t “proved wrong”. It wasn’t even proved wrong that Trump colluded. Mueller didn’t say that. More importantly, it wasn’t “proved wrong”, but right, that Trump surrounded himself with Russian-compromised people if not outright agents. Trump is just stupid and that makes him a useful idiot. And now, in 2025, he’s straight up repeating Kremlin propaganda. So Dore was a fucking idiot. And we now know he’s a fascist.

Yep, Chronicler. Richard is exactly correct. And you can do the research, starting with the analysis of the corner boys and moving on, and find this out for yourself. Black cultural aspirations, as with essentially any minority group, are actually not that different. They would like a picket fence and 2.3 kids. They just can’t get them. So they settle for what they can get. You know, like human beings do. Why do you think they’re not human? I think we can guess.

Propaganda.

Apply your critical thinking skills to identify the premises there (each claim to fact that they say supports their thesis) and fact-check each one. You will find they don’t pan out. If you need advice of how to do that reliably, see A Primer on Actually Doing Your Own Research.

And also, apply your critical thinking skills to avoid being “framed,” i.e. being pushed to only consider the fact-claims they make, rather than checking to see what the fact-claims of the actual organizers are (there will often be facts in there that this propagandist is steering you away from and thus concealing from you).

But the general rule is: stop just believing what people say. Check first. Only then can you tell who is telling the truth, and who is not.

Thanks a lot for your nice words!

I have been actively trying to be and do better since I got out in 2023 as I feel horrified and ashamed of what I used to believe.

As for the question, I will try to be as fair in answering it as possible:

They are split into three categories: the first one which is the vast majority of them fit that description perfectly.

The second one is somewhat better and they can at least have some form of discussion before they start to break.

The third one is rare which includes their minor and major “intellectuals” who are really aware of the arguments of the other side and are willing and eager to have a discussion on an empirical background. I have noticed that the last group are usually very smart people who start from these conclusions usually due to them being religious and use their sheer brain power to rationalize these conclusions empirically (not on purpose, they usually honestly do believe in these justifications and think they are logical).

Thanks so much for the insight, Islam! From what I have seen, I agree wholly that your change has been by far for the best for your humanity and conduct.

I’m curious, if you don’t mind: Did you find that what he said was true, that it’s easy for the right-wing radical to sound extremely certain and confident and rational when they’re in their echo chamber and online, but the moment you have to interact with them in a mixed setting you realize very quickly that they actually have nothing but a pretty lame and easily debunked script?

It’s about securing a chokehold on one of the most bloated, unaccountable bureaucracies in American government.”

An Operational Truth Report on the Political Weaponization of the VA Extortion Loop.

https://danafharbaugh.substack.com/p/this-june-6th-rally-is-for-power