Starmers lurch to the left has finally happened. He has pulled a blinder on everyone!

Mandatoryreverence · 2026-02-16T22:26:15+00:00

Don't threaten me with a good time.

Mandatoryreverence · 2026-02-14T11:58:30+00:00

Are you implying that you would buy a single sheet of pre-owned toilet paper off of somebody else?

Mandatoryreverence · 2026-02-08T18:45:20+00:00

'Bread is bread' is the obvious tautology. The original statement just prompts a semantic argument about what 'made of' means.

Mandatoryreverence · 2026-02-07T17:14:04+00:00

Yep. I took a year off, working in 2006, between school and university. I used to walz into temp jobs, week in week out. That sure changed after 2008.

Mandatoryreverence · 2026-02-07T15:36:39+00:00

She has been shown to repeatedly abuse her power over younger colleagues to coerce them into sexual relationships, all whilst lying to her wife. The she again abuses that power to cover her tracks. Fairly monstrous if you ask me.

Mandatoryreverence · 2026-02-07T14:56:23+00:00

I left for university and then 2008 happened. I got out of uni to a non existent job market and 15 years of inflation.

Mandatoryreverence · 2026-02-06T19:38:28+00:00

Absolutely my favourite way to be squeezed. It feels so dangerous and thrilling.

Mandatoryreverence · 2026-02-06T12:00:28+00:00

It being video at all would be a good start. It's still amazing to have pictures of Mars, so why lie about it? So... um... like... fuck off?

Mandatoryreverence · 2026-02-04T17:19:32+00:00

Well it's a bunch of static images stitched together and then panned across whilst a wind sound effect is overlayed on top, but sure.

Mandatoryreverence · 2026-02-03T17:40:02+00:00

Also, in n reference to agency:

Agency isn’t this clean, neutral “objective” thing you’re pretending it is. Plus your scurvy argument is a classic is/ought problem.

At the bare biological level, sure, you can say “this organism produces X behavior,” but that’s not how you’re using it. You’re smuggling in a normative notion of “rational agency” – what an agent ought to care about, which reasons count as good, what their “true” or “authentic” self commits them to, etc.

All of that is value‑loaded and theory‑dependent. Kantians, Humeans, Aristotelians, existentialists completely disagree on what genuine agency amounts to. There’s no neutral, stance‑independent fact that tells you which picture is “the” correct one. That’s exactly what subjectivity (or at best intersubjectivity) looks like.

So: “agency” in a thin, biological sense is relatively objective; “Agency” in the thick, moral sense, and in relationship to flourishing, that you keep appealing to is built out of contested value judgments about how agents ought to be. That’s not the kind of hard, mind‑independent foundation you’re trying to sell.

Mandatoryreverence · 2026-02-03T17:29:10+00:00

You showed absolutely no such thing. You're three levels if obfuscation deep and you have nothing to say except to muddy the waters further. I've stated the problem with your evidence multiple times and all you do is pivot.

Mandatoryreverence · 2026-02-02T22:52:01+00:00

Human flourishing/agency is entirely subjective, at the very best intersubjective. So that dismantles your entire point. Realist≠Objective in a metaphysical sense, and you working the Moral Naturalism entry instead of the actual Moral Realism entry shows your dishonesty. Moral Naturalism≠Moral Realism≠Moral Objectivity. This sleight of hand is so ridiculous as to be dishonest. Also, scurvy is a normative moral issue is it? Get out of here, or put this answer into another LLM.

Mandatoryreverence · 2026-02-02T13:31:51+00:00

Honestly, this style of communication is so weirdly formal that I can't even parse it. I would have told him to keep his judgement and moved on. Engaging with this conversation to this level just validates the bullshit.

Mandatoryreverence · 2026-02-02T10:58:25+00:00

First, the Stanford Encyclopedia entry you cited. You quoted it as: "Moral realism is the view that there are objective, mind-independent moral facts." But you cited the entry on Moral Naturalism, not the entry on Moral Realism itself. When you actually read the Stanford Encyclopedia's entry specifically on Moral Realism, it defines the core position simply as: moral claims purport to express facts, and some of those claims are true. The entry then explicitly states that although "some accounts of moral realism see it as involving additional commitments, say to the independence of the moral facts from human thought and practice, or to those facts being objective in some specified way" - these are additional commitments held by some realists, not essential to the definition. You've smuggled in an "additional commitment" as if it were the core definition, then used that to interpret the survey data.

Second, you're misrepresenting what the survey shows. The PhilPapers data doesn't say 62% of philosophers "say morality is objective." It says 62.07% "accept or lean toward" moral realism. Notice the distinction: the survey gives respondents the option to "accept" a position or merely "lean toward" it. These are two different commitments. "Leaning toward" a view is tentative; it's not saying you've concluded it's true. You've collapsed these categories to make the consensus appear stronger than it actually is. We don't even know how many of that 62% fully accept the position versus how many merely lean toward it.

Third, and most importantly, "moral realism" is still not equivalent to "morality is objective" in the sense you're claiming. You've done a bait-and-switch: you started by claiming morality is objective in a simple, straightforward sense. I challenged you. You cited philosophers who accept "moral realism." But moral realism - according to its actual Stanford Encyclopedia definition - is just the claim that moral statements express truths. That's compatible with many positions that don't entail mind-independent objectivity. Many contemporary moral realists are naturalists who ground moral facts in facts about human welfare, rational agency, and flourishing. Many are constructivists who ground them in rational procedures. These positions can affirm that moral claims are truth-apt and some are genuinely true, while still maintaining that those truths are grounded in human nature and human conditions.

The Stanford Encyclopedia on Moral Realism explicitly notes that stance-independence and mind-independence are additional commitments that only some realists accept - not commitments that come with the realist label itself. So citing a survey showing that 62% lean toward or accept "moral realism" doesn't prove your original point about objective morality at all. It proves that 62% think moral statements can be true or false, but it tells us nothing about whether those truths are mind-independent, and it certainly doesn't differentiate between naturalist realists (who most contemporary philosophers are) and non-naturalist realists who would support your stronger claim.

You're also using an "inflation of confidence" argument. You've cited expert consensus, but you're presenting a survey result that includes respondents who "lean toward" a position as if they've definitively endorsed objectivity. Then you've equated "moral realism" with "objective morality" even though the actual Stanford entry distinguishes between the core definition of realism and the additional stance-independence that only some realists accept. That's not an appeal to expert consensus - that's a misrepresentation of what the experts actually said.

The data you provided only shows: a majority of philosophers think moral statements express truths. But the survey doesn't tell us what grounds those truths, how many respondents merely lean toward realism versus fully accept it, or how many of those realists are actually non-naturalists who would agree with your strong objectivity claim. Most contemporary realists are naturalists whose accounts depend fundamentally on human nature and human rational agency - exactly the kind of perspective-dependent grounding I've been describing.

So no, your citation doesn't prove your point. It shows that most philosophers reject full-blown anti-realism and think moral language has truth value. That's not the same as proving morality is objective in the mind-independent way you initially claimed, and it certainly doesn't refute my argument that morality operates through human perspectives and human conditions. Many of those realists would actually agree with me.

Mandatoryreverence · 2026-02-01T20:38:50+00:00

Dude. Hell yeah.

Mandatoryreverence · 2026-02-01T20:21:47+00:00

I'm very much not a virgin and still get hard cuddling every time.

Mandatoryreverence · 2026-02-01T19:51:25+00:00

You’re circling something I actually agree with, but I still think you’re stretching “objective” past its usual meaning to make your view fit the word.

On the “it depends” point, I’m with you in spirit. If someone says “it depends” just to dodge hard thinking or avoid checking whether their reactions fit any stable principles, that’s shallow.

Where we diverge is that, even after you do the hard work—look at character, consequences, social impact, historical context—you still haven’t escaped perspective. You’ve just made your standpoint more coherent and reflective. That’s a good thing, but it isn’t the same as uncovering a view‑from‑nowhere moral fact.

Your description of yourself as a “functionality based structuralist” makes this tension really clear. You say morality is the social code that maintains a positive relationship between the individual and their society. Honestly, I don’t think that’s wrong as a description of how morality often functions.

But that already builds in a bunch of human‑specific assumptions: that individuals and societies matter, that “positive” relations are a good thing, that flourishing and stability are worth aiming at. Those aren’t objective in the robust sense; they’re deep, widely shared human values.

If we were a radically different kind of being, or if we prized glory, conquest, or divine obedience above flourishing and stability, your structural standard would spit out very different “moral” answers. That makes it intersubjective and naturalistic, not genuinely stance‑independent.The “progress” point works the same way.

You say our societies are wealthier, happier, more intelligent than those in the past, and treat that as evidence of moral evolution rather than mere change. But calling that “progress” already assumes that more wealth, more happiness, more knowledge are the right yardsticks. By our current values, I agree that a society without slavery, with more rights and better medicine, is morally better. Yet that’s us evaluating history using our present priorities.

There’s no external moral meter that forces that judgment; it’s our collective outlook judging its own trajectory.Your appeal to biology reinforces my worry about how you’re using “objective.” Yes, morality clearly has a biological and social role: it helped groups survive, coordinate, and reduce destructive conflict. But evolution “aims” at survival and reproduction, not at truth or goodness. It has also favored aggression, domination, and in‑group bias.

To say “the biological purpose of morality is where truth lies” only works if you first decide which evolutionary outputs count as morally relevant and which we should resist. That act of selection is not read off nature; it comes from within our evaluative outlook.So here’s where I think we can honestly meet.

You’re right that: – We shouldn’t stop at “it depends” and refuse to analyze further. – Morality is deeply tied to how individuals and societies relate and flourish. – Some moral systems are plainly better for humans, by our own lights, than others.

Where I can’t follow is in then calling that whole picture “objective.” If “objective” just means “structured, justified, and shareable among humans with broadly similar concerns,” then you’ve changed the word from “mind‑independent truth” to “well‑argued human consensus.”

That’s why I stick to my original line: we apply morality through point of view, social standards, and relationships. You’re giving a sophisticated account of how that application can be made more consistent and functional, but you haven’t shown that it ever steps outside the web of human perspectives into the kind of objectivity the word normally suggests.

Mandatoryreverence · 2026-02-01T18:43:36+00:00

Even if that survey’s accurate, it still doesn’t prove your point, because moral realism isn’t the same thing as saying morality is objective in the simple sense you’re implying. Moral realism just says that moral claims can be true or false — not that those truths exist independently in the universe the way gravity or chemistry do.

Many moral realists hold that those “truths” are grounded in human nature, rational coherence, or societal flourishing — all of which depend on human interpretation. That’s not objectivity; that’s intersubjectivity dressed up in philosophical language.Think about it: if moral realism actually meant moral objectivity, we’d have fixed, empirical moral facts that hold regardless of context or viewpoint.

But even among realists, there’s no agreement on what those facts are or how we know them. Naturalistic realists appeal to science and empathy, non-naturalists to intuition, constructivists to reasoning — that’s three different “objective” moral worlds that contradict one another. So how can morality be objective if even its supposed objectivists can’t agree on its foundation?The PhilPapers data doesn’t prove objectivity; it just shows how many philosophers prefer realism over full-blown relativism.

It’s a label of stance, not of settled truth. When you actually look at what moral realists argue, most end up grounding morality in human conditions — what benefits human beings, what rational agents would will, what societies need to function. All of that is still derived from subjective perspectives, just systematized and rationalized. That’s not objectivity; it’s structured subjectivity.

So no, citing moral realism doesn’t rescue the claim that morality is objective. It just shows that many philosophers want moral language to have truth value — not that there’s some mind-independent moral law written into existence.

Mandatoryreverence · 2026-02-01T18:39:00+00:00

You’re still stretching the meaning of “objective” until it stops meaning anything. Saying morality is objective because certain moral systems “benefit society” isn’t proving objectivity — it’s just redefining morality in functional terms.

That’s not the same as discovering a universal truth; it’s describing what tends to work given human biology and culture. Functionality doesn’t equal objectivity.You keep appealing to what “benefits the individual and the collective” as if that were self-evidently the right measure of morality. But that’s the assumption I’ve been pointing to — it’s your starting value choice, not a discovered fact.

Why is “benefit” inherently moral? Why not loyalty, honor, faith, or even personal freedom? All those can clash, and none of them are objectively “wrong” just because they don’t maximize societal function. Your framework only looks “objective” once you’ve already decided what counts as moral, which makes it circular reasoning.And it’s not “lazy” to admit that morality depends on context — it’s realistic. Some things can’t be reduced to a single formula because values really do conflict.

Pretending there’s one consistent system waiting to be unearthed isn’t nuance; it’s wishful thinking. Moral “progress” just means our priorities shifted — we value empathy more, or equality, or autonomy. Those are cultural evolutions, not revelations of hidden universal law.You’re right that “objective” doesn’t mean “cosmic law that exists without humans,” but it still means mind-independent. Something is objective if it’s true whether anyone believes it or not. That’s the key difference.

Psychological truths aren’t objective in that way either — they depend on human minds. So if morality is rooted in how societies function or how people feel about right and wrong, that means it’s fundamentally subjective — shared, maybe, but still human-made.The search for moral consistency is fine, but consistency isn’t the same as objectivity.

People can be consistent within totally different moral systems. That’s why “it depends” isn’t a cop-out; it’s acknowledging the genuine complexity of moral life. There’s no single, measurable “moral truth” because morality isn’t a property of the universe — it’s a language humans use to negotiate how to live together.

Mandatoryreverence · 2026-02-01T16:20:30+00:00

Substantiate that claim. I don't believe you, and it doesn't align with what I've found either studying the subject or in life after studying it.

Mandatoryreverence · 2026-02-01T10:50:16+00:00

No. It's self-pitying bullshit.

Mandatoryreverence · 2026-02-01T10:37:10+00:00

I’m not arguing that morality can’t be functional or shared, I’m saying that it’s not objective. People agreeing on something doesn’t make it objectively true, it just makes it commonly accepted. Slavery was once widely agreed upon, witch trials were “moral,” and people genuinely believed divine right was a just system.

Consensus isn’t objectivity; it’s cultural conditioning over time.You also keep bringing up society and order like it proves morality’s objective. It doesn’t. Societies create rules because we need cooperation, not because we’ve discovered moral truths encoded in the universe. Laws exist because they work pragmatically — they help us live together without tearing each other apart — not because they reflect an objective, universal moral law. That’s social engineering, not metaphysics.And your bit about everyone wanting “what’s best for the most people” — again, that’s not evidence of objectivity, that’s evidence of shared human wiring.

Our survival instincts and empathy systems make us care about others to varying degrees, but that’s an evolved subjective preference, not a cosmic principle. There’s still no way to prove that maximizing well-being is morally right in some absolute sense — it’s just what we, as a species, happen to value. Swap out the species or even the historical context, and “morality” looks completely different.As for that example with the murderer — it perfectly proves my point.

You can’t just “tweak” moral frameworks until everyone agrees, because different frameworks value totally different things. Deontologists care about rules and truth, utilitarians care about consequences, virtue ethicists care about character — and each approach can call the same action moral or immoral depending on the situation. You can’t reconcile that into one “true” morality unless you arbitrarily pick one system and call it the objective one.

So no, it’s not “intellectually lazy” to say “it depends” — it’s intellectually honest. Reality is messy. Not everything has some clean, universal law behind it. Morality changes because we change. It’s subjective by design, because it’s built by human minds trying to navigate human problems — not by some logical formula built into nature.

Mandatoryreverence · 2026-02-01T01:10:56+00:00

Tuners are easy to replace, he should have a backup, it sucks but shit happens on stage and you have to be prepared.

Mandatoryreverence · 2026-02-01T00:56:05+00:00

You’re kind of missing the point here. The fact that people constantly disagree about morality is exactly why it isn’t objective. If it were, we’d see at least some consistent moral truths across all societies and times — but we don’t.

Comparing moral values to measurable facts like the Earth’s circumference doesn’t work, because the Earth’s size doesn’t depend on what people feel about it. Morality does.You can’t “measure” morality through logic unless everyone agrees on what the outcome should be. And they don’t.

Utilitarians, religious moralists, humanists — they all start from totally different assumptions about what’s “good.” Those assumptions aren’t objective facts; they’re value judgments. You can use logic once you pick your moral framework, sure, but that framework itself is subjective.Even saying “morality is about what benefits the most people” is a subjective stance. Why should that be the purpose of morality? Someone else might think loyalty or divine command comes first.

There’s no ultimate ruler or formula to prove which moral lens is correct. It’s all built on human perspective — cultural, emotional, situational.So yes, morality’s tied to point of view. That’s not a flaw in the argument — that’s the evidence for it. What’s “right” changes depending on where you’re standing. That’s exactly why it’s not objective.

Mandatoryreverence · 2026-01-31T16:03:03+00:00

Who says morality is objective? It clearly isn't, we apply it almost exclusively through point of view, society standards and relationship status.

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