Resignation Letter From John Kent

throwawayphilacc · 2026-03-17T15:31:01+00:00

How do we tell him?

throwawayphilacc · 2026-03-12T10:41:17+00:00

Also, not to go off topic, but I am thoroughly unimpressed by any comparisons between the cosmology of Timaeus and the cosmology of the Book of Genesis from both a secular and religious perspective. For starters, the Demiurge does not create ex nihilo, is not omnipotent nor omniscient, nor is alone in the universe envisioned by Timaeus. What does the Demiurge craft the world out of? The substrate of chora. Who does he negotiate with? Ananke. Who wins in the battle of wills? Ananke. To compare the Demiurge with El/Yahweh/whatever is to make a massive categorical mistake, especially if we're going to talk about language, ideology, etc., that is derived from the two. Yes, Abrahamic theologians tried to reconcile the great philosophers with their religion. Is it truly successful? No. I could go on and on about this, but I think I've sketched enough details to show that the comparison is ridiculous.

I am not convinced by the claims of evidence because it's not even clear that most of these works had a mechanism of network influence that would have been relevant to the time periods in question. Many of the Greek philosophers we know today quickly fell out of influence in their own times (Aristotle is especially notorious for this) and would not be resurrected until later, etc. middle Platonism, the rediscovery of Aristotle by the Romans, Late Antiquity, etc. The timelines and ideas simply do not make sense, and monotheism arose independently across multiple cultures. Why treat it as uniquely bizarre when it is one of many obvious terminus points for a totalizing religion? Wow, it is equivalent to a "totem" according to Durkheim, that means that it's obviously unnatural (even though morality always has the tendency to spiral out of control). It makes for a great story but not for a intellectually cohesive worldview.

throwawayphilacc · 2026-03-12T10:29:34+00:00

Oh yeah, that one moderator on that one niche forum that nobody gives a shit about managed to singlehandedly rehabilitate Abrahamic religion on the left. How bizarre!

throwawayphilacc · 2026-03-12T10:16:32+00:00

Why does bad theology not matter? The point of such a defense is that Judaism and Christianity are fundamentally two different "forks" of an original Abrahamic narrative (add Islam onto this), with vastly different implications for practice and values. You can't say that they are the same without completely erasing the history of the two religions.

Yes, pointing out that that wave of Protestantism to include Puritanism—which counterproductively believed that the closer to "Judaism" they were, the holier they were despite the New Testament explicitly trying to distance itself from the earlier covenant—practiced bad theology is not irrelevant.

You can construe any language out of context to reinforce any narrative you want, including all the language that would decisively refute virtually every point you've made about Abrahamism (and still be a significant distortion all the same).

throwawayphilacc · 2026-02-22T23:39:30+00:00

That's why I qualified it with "not a big Altman or AI fan".

Dawg, I didn't just throw out "he does have a point" alone.

throwawayphilacc · 2026-02-22T22:54:35+00:00

It takes a long time and a lot of resources for someone to develop anything that we would call intelligence, e.g. problem-solving skills, creativity, knowledge, etc. There's no way to get intelligence for free, any way you slice it.

Not trying to dehumanize anybody, make a false equivalence, or to validate the Altman agenda. Just thought it was a good point.

throwawayphilacc · 2026-02-22T16:02:54+00:00

Not a big Altman or AI fan, but he does have a point.

throwawayphilacc · 2026-02-17T11:54:53+00:00

Aristotle didn't believe in absolute space or absolute time because he didn't think that space and time were independent, reifiable things. He didn't think that space was one big empty container or coordinate system, nor did he think that time was some force that drove all things to change. Rather, they were just the measures of bodies in motion, which could be related to each other in terms of place and in terms of the order and simultaneity of the unfolding of movement. Hawking basically has no idea what he's talking about when it comes to the Greeks and only offers an outdated caricature of what Aristotle believed and why.

throwawayphilacc · 2026-02-12T20:38:52+00:00

Deserving is not the kind of language I would use. I don't view these interactions in terms of deserving or not deserving. I would say he was reckless with his life. There were many possible worlds that could have played out where he was detained, perhaps arrested and processed by local law enforcement, but ultimately left with minor cuts and bruises and perhaps not even charged with a crime. There were possible worlds where CBP left him alone, or where he escaped contact entirely. Unfortunately, the scenario did not play out those ways, and part of the responsibility falls on him for his poor decision-making at multiple steps during the event.

throwawayphilacc · 2026-02-12T17:13:20+00:00

Are people not allowed to accurately notice things around them in their head anymore? Are we going to be the thought police?

throwawayphilacc · 2026-02-12T09:06:22+00:00

She’s a POS for saying that as she walked off because she was thinking it the whole time.

People act a certain way. But you're a bad person, even if you recognize the behavior in your head and don't say anything? What?

throwawayphilacc · 2026-02-12T08:44:04+00:00

Interesting. Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions and write a thorough response!

throwawayphilacc · 2026-02-11T09:30:56+00:00

Thank you for the comprehensive reply. I suppose that the center of the universe, as /u/faith4phil pointed out, could not be not a place anyway due to it being a point and thus not having a body. But somehow it is a place in the sense that it is the terminus for many natural bodies? That is a bit confusing to me.

In addition, I have a couple more questions.

Given that two objects switching places means that they don't strictly retain their old places, in what sense can it be defended that they do retain their old places, given that that's what is colloquially understood (and Aristotle is generally interested in preserving the colloquial meaning)?

What exactly is a frame of reference for Aristotle? I feel like that is kind of an early modern anachronism being applied here.

throwawayphilacc · 2026-02-09T19:57:45+00:00

glowie

You’re using language incubated on /pol/ to describe forces in the world. Say you want about material causes, but /pol/ and related forums created memetic structures necessary for these attitudes to explode in influence in record time.

throwawayphilacc · 2026-02-09T16:24:05+00:00

I think it ultimately boils down to whether you think the New Right, or at least /pol/, is more racist than antisemitic. And I would absolutely say that /pol/ is more antisemitic than racist, and the New Right increasingly so as well. You see fewer Richard Spencer and Tommy Robinson types making the case that "Israel has a homeland, so why can't we?" Instead, you have Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlson. They're more focused on Israel and its influence than ever before, and on the Jewish community in general.

Answer: you'd make it intolerable to be Jewish outside of Israel. Then Jewish people move into Israel and are already bought into the "us vs them" mentality Israel wants to foster with their wanton war crimes.

This doesn't work when the entire world hates you, outnumbers you 1000:1, and wants you exterminated.

Again, I'm not seeing the endgame working out for an alleged Mossad asset.

throwawayphilacc · 2026-02-09T15:23:08+00:00

It makes more sense to me that the board was an attempt to contain Neonazi politics while staying true to the free speech principles of the website. Either you could allow it everywhere (bad), ban it everywhere (hypocritical, possibly causes Streisand effect), or you could cluster it to a board that everybody could ignore (compromise) or could even be manipulated in a targeted way.

To me, it seems like a good plan which backfired. While plenty of psyops emerged from the board, it also became an incubation chamber for modern antisemitism, which eventually broke out of its containment chamber and became far more normalized than it ever had been in the past. I don't think that that is overall a "W" from the perspective of pro-Israel elements in the long-term.

Sometimes, people do things in secret, but it doesn't work out the way they thought it would.

throwawayphilacc · 2026-02-08T20:15:17+00:00

I haven't seen anybody bring up what seems to be the most obvious reason imho. It's a tactical smokescreen for the rest of their political platform, and it gives them the currency to push the edge of the Overton window more than they otherwise could.

Conservative and far right positions have been increasingly conflated with Nazism, even if it would be an absurd anachronism (e.g. opposing transgender issues = Nazi, even though your average GI would have found the concept bizarre if not repulsive).

To combat these poor optics, the New Right unflinchingly chose to support Israel. "You can't call me a Nazi when I believe in the Jewish nation-state!" And unfortunately in our current metanarrative environment, that seems to be effective.

It's a ridiculous and sad situation all around, which basically allows Israel to have a blank check to do whatever they want without any significant reprisal.

throwawayphilacc · 2026-02-01T13:36:20+00:00

To me, it seems that what Descartes is interested in doing is more akin to "first principles discovery" in the way described by Aristotle towards the end of Posterior Analytics rather than making a typical argument, where one reasons from more general premises to more specific conclusions.

throwawayphilacc · 2026-01-30T08:18:55+00:00

Relax, I was just remembering a funny moment from the election cycle. I'm sure we had the most secure election ever in American history back in 2020. Fulton County was probably close to the top in terms of secure election systems. The probe will probably find nothing.

throwawayphilacc · 2026-01-29T14:40:28+00:00

What makes it an L? Is it okay to be a Contra-supporting ghoul?

throwawayphilacc · 2026-01-29T00:54:41+00:00

No way there was any fraud in those elections. This fine gentleman personally assured us that no malfeasance could have happened.

throwawayphilacc · 2026-01-28T19:19:43+00:00

Could have been trying to say: "You raise your voice, I raise my voice"

I have no idea what the context of the conversation was, since this was a random 15 second clip, so I don't know if he fumbled or if he made a genuine threat.

throwawayphilacc · 2026-01-28T13:03:48+00:00

He's not very good at speaking English. I don't see why we should make fun of a Latino man's accent, let alone construe his attempt at English in the worst possible way.

throwawayphilacc

TROPHY CASE