Careful, the allies you found earlier in the post may soon stab you in the back.

But, yes, that's the issue overall. This is why the censorship games (via mods) on gog, youtube, etc are a problem. You don't get rid of bad ideas by making them illegal to discuss: you merely push them underground. This censorship stuff only makes those of us in disagreement with the status quo look better: clearly the inability to counter-argue is a sign that their arguments are falling apart.

But, i tell you, the conflation and false-dichotomies are on purpose, from what i've seen. "Christians are anti-science," because we might not agree with mainstream views, even if we have partial agreement. It's all or nothing; it's us vs them. Would you believe that the majority of climate change denier information i've seen actually supports that climate change is happening? Strawman arguments are the identitarian's friend.

Another fun conflation: even those that deny climate change in all forms are usually conservationists of national parks, the oceans, etc. My father, staunch conservative, believes all global warming theories are a crock of shit, but he donates money to the preservation of national parks and cleanup efforts. Why might that be? Why is it that when the left holds a rally, there's a mess, but the tea party rallies leave the land clean of trash? Conservatives, ideologically speaking, are far more interested in nature conservation than the progressives are, on fundemental levels: sanctity is a conservative exclusive foundation (no, that page doesn't say it, but it brings up the topic: the left sees itself as entirely rational, and sanctity has little to no basis in rationality). I don't necessarily agree with the moral foundations theory in entirety, but it's close enough to truth to be useful. The same thing can be said about rape and other things conservatives are accused of. Gotta be weary of these games (of conflation).

I stand corrected: we don't use assumption or presumed consequences to determine truth. Otherwise, it's totally true that i'm going to win the lottery this week, because i would donate all that money to charity. This is how mysticism works. And that's how politics manages to creep into everything: "Oh, but your realistic rain physics don't match climate change models, therefore not realistic." or "Dude, why does how much my character eat have to do with the rain?"

Note to self: don't browse forums before going to sleep; there's a good chance you will come across unrestrained idiocy, and it will make it that much more difficult to get to sleep.

That's funny: i've always found the usual stupidity here easier to help me sleep: it just gets so tiring.

Or is it that "stupidity" means "anything i disagree with, but i don't know how to argue against it, so it makes me anxious and keeps me up"?

Actually, in mathematics, we do have to make assumptions; they are called "axioms". It turns out that which axioms we choose to accept determines what is provable, and "provable" is the closest we can get to truth in pure mathematics. If we change the axioms, the theorems we get will change; for example, we might end up with triangles with two (perhaps even 3) right angles, or being able to prove that similar triangles must be congruent. (Just a couple of the things that can happen in forms of non-Euclidean geometry.)

Of course, if we take the wrong set of axioms, we might have an inconsistency and hence be able to prove literally everything. Unfortunately, we can't prove, within a system, that the system is consistent, unless the system isn't consistent to begin with!

(Can't you tell that I love math?)

We have axioms in philosophy and other things, as well. And some inconsistencies lead to illogical conclusions other than everything being impossible, such as nothing being possible. However, the key being that we don't evaluate axioms. Part of being axiomatic means we don't challenge the ideas. Axioms are a necessary evil (like government): everything should ultimately be challenged if we want to be rational, but we can't be rational without certain axioms. You can only regress and challenge things so far before the methodology puts known reality against itself (in the case of worldviews, that's a good thing, though).

Yes, this is why the big conservative party of the US has been, for decades, all about cutting funding to preservation efforts and general environmental initiatives, not to mention putting corporate profit above anything so laughable as the environment.

The disconnect between this claim and the reality of the US is beyond hysterical.

They're conflated: that's why. If i donate to national parks associations, i'm not donating to fund programs meant to justify taxing farmers for having too many cows, taxing food, trips to other parts of the world on big expensive private jets to talk about how common people are wasteful, etc. I'd rather my tax money to go to other programs that aren't out to get me. Someone picking up trash or cleaning up oil spills in the ocean is not out to get me for the benefits of some opportunistic billionaires.

I mean, common, the magabomber admits he was a democrat until the 2016 primaries: all his targets were "corporate democrats." So much for the big party of the left being about going after the 1%. Who was the 2016 wallstreet backed candidate, again?

An axiom of Critical Theory is that empiricism is flawed.

"Flawed" how? Like that Critical Theory can ignore any empirical evidence? Then how anyone can claim that this "Critical Theory" is connected to reality?

Critical theory claims that since theory is based on empiricism, yet theory cannot predict practice, that empiricism must be flawed, because theory and practice don't always match.

one of the pages i found on the topic.

To highlight a interesting quote out of context: You'll find that this is not exactly under the heading you would expect it to be, either. Mind you, it is for this reason that the modern progressive left manages to not be racist: they don't acknowledge the race-IQ correlation. Personally, i don't, either, but my theory also flies counter to their objectives (i believe there's an attitude and/or cultural factor, which kinda goes against determinism, because then the exceptions would then suggest free will). It makes more sense for the modern left to reject looking into the matter any further, since the mainstream ideology is in conflict with the data.

EDIT: This is also why Quantum Theory is such a big thing right now: quantum indetermanism, multiple world theory, virtual reality theory, and a few other things give comfortable ground as an alternative to religion: my truth and your truth are separate worlds that occasionally collide. And these theories tied with number tricks lead to mysticism, hence why i've been talking about it this whole post. If everything is ultimately numbers, then we can use fancy math tricks to make-believe whatever we want and also call it true, and honestly believe that it is.

You really are something.

"Conservatives are pro-environment because, despite for decades having supported policies that resulted in millions and millions of dollars of damage to environment, my uncle sends a donation to National Parks Association."

Gotta love all that projection going on in your post, too, since majority of cases of taxpayer abuse came from GOP itself.

But that's OK. Putting a literal coal mining lobbyist in charge of the EPA sure screams "environmental protection."

Oh, and that private jet flights? Yeah, Scott Pruitt, another republican, could give lessons on this type of graft with his record.

It's 2018, and going by all available evidence he's a yuuge supporter of Trump. Also, not exactly the best example of mental stability, either. But something something pizzagate buttery males, I guess.

Apparently, though, you're completely OK with somebody treating the presidency as personal money-making scam because the other candidate had (undeniably strong) ties to Wall Street.

I'm tired of sharing this planet with people like you. Our entire species could have achieved so much more by now. Instead, I'm watching a nation with the greatest potential for being an actual leader for humanity go down the drain because greed and tribal politics are more entertaining. Or whatever the reason is for spewing the type of "arguments" you present in support of completely sociopathic parasites in power.

Then again, shame on me from expecting logic from somebody coming up with gems like "quantum mechanics is useless."

Someone's salty

I could address individual points, but then i'd be at the bottom, other than the two weak points above.

But that's lunacy! I mean, even if it wasn't, then by the very logic of Critical Theory I can dismiss all knowledge of Critical Theory as lunacy if it doesn't fit me.

But Quantum Theory is based on classic science. Even many-words interpretation states that all worlds operate on the same basis of physical laws that were confirmed empirically. If Critical Theory rejects classic science then it should reject Quantum Theory too.
If Trump gets some money for himself by boosting US economy, why wouldn't a rational US citizen be OK with it?

For starters, the office of Presidency is not supposed to be a get-rich-quick scheme. He's supposed to be a public servant, not somebody out to con his way into wealth.

Secondly, because Trump is doing anything but "boosting US economy." Hell, if anything, the economy is doing reasonably well enough despite Trump's presidency, not because of it. Not to mention that when discussing the concept of economy with right-wingers the definition apparently does not seem to cover... well, anything that's not corporate, or beyond the toop-20% tax bracket. Our middle class has been hammered for decades, and things are anything but getting better with Trump's sweaty mini-hands at the steering wheel. Our poverty rates are beyond ridiculous for a country as wealthy as we are, as well.

If you want a quickie example, look at the Foxconn deal with Wisconsin that Trump was instrumental in pushing through: https://www.businessinsider.com/why-foxconns-wisconsin-factory-is-terrible-deal-2018-11

Kohlrak's party of "environmental concern" is giving a freebie "environmental laws do not apply to you" to somebody doing manufacturing resulting in a lot of highly dangerous by-products and waste. All to the tune of 4.5 BILLIONS of USD from taxpayers' pockets in return for constantly downsized supposed number of "jobs created."

So win, much MAGA! Wow!

But it's apparently more important that Ivanka and Jared get some easy money (and trademarks) on the side from the Chinese, I guess.

Tariff wars having a direct negative impact on our economy completely aside ( https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-trade-war-tariffs-usda-farmers-aid-soybeans-2018-8 ). Also, let's not mention alienating pretty much every ally the US managed to retain despite our past blunders. Apparently it's the Vlads, Kims, Salmans and Rodrigos that will be our besties... and that attitude will absolutely have an impact on international trade and corporate decisions.

In between automation and wealth transfer (and inequality being the worst ever recorded), our country should be looking for ways to reshape itself into a society that is not dependent on 19th century morality as the basis for its economic model. Not trying to roll back all the environmental protection and worker rights laws back.

I mean, if you give the slightest fig about people not born into wealth and power, anyway. And if you don't, you might want to consider that sooner or later the largest, numerically speaking, segment of population just might decide that a one-sided social contract is not worth upholding anymore.