Beneficence 🌲🩸

A paragraph written by Benjamin Whichcote on the nature of heaven and hell

Finally, I can watch Bryan Caplan be hunted down like a wild animal

In The Laws of People Rawls categorises types of societies that are not liberal democracies:

Decent hierarchical peoples
Burdened societies
Outlaw states
Benevolent absolutisms

Though the US was Rawls’s main example of a liberal democracy it’s increasingly moving towards being an outlaw state.

Well, there is, but it's only like eight people on Twitter, most of whom are GMU grad students

youtu.be/79NdaX3CeDE?...

Why is every conservative a fucking redditor

Vance talks like a guy that's going to tell you how epic bacon is. Musk thinks DOGE is the cutting edge of humor. Posobiec seems like she'll force you to watch a fails compilation at work.

If we're going to get fascism why couldn't they at least be cool

Should I start using this app again? Has it become less boring?

Do you think Francis ever turns towards the past only to be caught by a storm blowing from paradise, and suddenly sees before him one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage?

For instance, is this how some advocates of restorative justice approach the subject? Presumably so! But, is this what reflective and serious advocates for the position, Pettit and Braithwaite for example, argue for? No, of course not!

bsky.app/profile/pogt...

bsky.app/profile/earl...

Of course, it's fine to criticize movements at their popular level, but it seems, to me, that one should always be careful to delineate between the obviously stupid average representative of a position & careful, serious advocates of the position.

Relatedly, some of the arguments were just kinda bad! It might be a more fruitful approach, for instance, to deny the pessimistic induction anarchists make re: the possibility of good government, rather than attempting to show that *historically* most states have done more good than bad.

It's important to develop such intellectual virtues in a similar sense that it is important to develop & exercise civic virtues— they're necessary to maintain a well-functioning intellectual community.

One of those epistemic duties is to, when possible, consider the most robust version of your opponent's arguments. Even social anarchists & 'left communitarians' have an intellectual tradition that can offer stronger arguments than what the average online proponent may be able to provide.

Interesting to see liberal v anarchist discourse on here. It doesn't appear to be of a particularly high caliber.

It's consistently surprising to me how uncharitable even smart & well-meaning people can be. It should serve as a reminder that you have epistemic responsibilities.

Cc'ing @kevincarson1.bsky.social

A tough pill to swallow is that, no, our feelings are not always valid. Our feelings are all too often completely illegitimate, and we should just scoff at them, ignore them, and far from letting them fester or guide our action, we should deliberately act in ways that foster better sentiments.

I'm sad to inform many dear friends that Gab (@atheopagan.bsky.social) has passed away.

If you can spare it, please join me in helping their sister Amanda with funeral costs and assistance with emptying the apartment.

Thank you.

gofund.me/f2960acc

It is not unfrequent to hear men declaim loudly upon liberty, who, if we may judge by the whole tenor of their actions, mean nothing else by it but their own liberty, — to oppress without control or the restraint of laws all who are poorer or weaker than themselves.

Samuel Adams

one thing about my personal experience with trump 2 that is very different from trump 1 is that i feel that am i being attacked at a *civilizational* level in terms of basic norms and values that i hold

Trump’s presidency is a rebuttal or refutation of the Enlightenment. All the lessons learned in the last 250 years are proactively defied or fully assailed: Due process, habeas corpus, comparative advantage, germ theory, free immigration, free trade.

They've reduced themselves to animalistic freaks in their pursuit of the endless catharsis of hate. There is no stable or prosperous society that can exist as long as these people are allowed to walk around pretending they're like the rest of us, exercising authority

Their politics really can be reduced to the stupid racist memes and videos they post. "Look at this person! Don't you hate them? Let's hurt them for fun." They don't even really care who they're hurting, the drug for them is getting to inflict pain on their perceived inferiors

God save us from the tyranny of c-list fantasy novelists. Calling these people idea landlords is obviously ludicrous, for they have never had a genuine idea transmitted between two brain cells. It's just milking the tropes solidified through millenia of free cooperative labor and fencing the output.

The claim that libraries are an alternative to libgen is ridiculous. Almost all libraries don't have expensive academic books. Libgen is the university library of the world, open to everyone regardless of wealth, location, or academic credentials.

Intellectual property enforcement is not about anyone "asking" you to do anything!

It's about using state violence & threats thereof to physically intimidate (and, if necessary, cage) those who share or reproduce information in a manner the IP "owner" hasn't authorized.

The provision of the 14th amendment that the Supreme Court unanimously wrote out of the constitution existed for a reason. Its drafters knew what would happen if you allowed insurrectionists back into power.

The Democrats need to stop being a Hamiltonian party and return to their Jeffersonian roots.

It turns out the actual America political realignment was that the GOP became the welcoming home for people who are "bad" in an aretaic sense: Not just morally bad, but bad at being well-functioning people living skillful lives of excellence. And sadly there are enough of them to win elections.

Something I don't understand about this sort of analysis, common among people who broadly agree with Stancil, is how it is supposed to work rhetorically or on an ideological/spiritual level. Even if they're right (and I am not claiming they aren't).

Uprooting Violence | Phillip Vance Smith | INQUEST Restorative justice seeks to address the root causes of violence—while also doing the work of healing the grief caused by it.

90% of participants report being satisfied by restorative justice.

But people need to know about it to want it. Read this great story to see how healing takes place.

inquest.org/uprooting-vi...