• dohpaz42@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      He was already a convicted felon, so he’s got the credentials to be a GOP candidate.

      • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org
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        5 months ago

        To be fair to the GOP, he wasn’t a convicted felon when he became the candidate. They’re just having to pivot into why the alleged party of law and order is continuing to support a convicted felon.

        • Tja@programming.dev
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          5 months ago

          He isn’t the candidate yet, just the frontrunner. He will become the official candidate on July 15, fully being a felon.

          • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org
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            5 months ago

            He’s the only real candidate they have. It’s not like they could replace him with someone else at this stage and have any hope of winning.

            Nikki Haley was the last other serious GOP candidate, and she dropped out in March, before he was a convicted felon. So they either throw out primary results entirely and just pick someone to be their candidate, or they are stuck with Trump and have been since at least March.

            They have better odds with selling the whole “conviction was done as a political attack by Democrats because they know they can’t win a fair election” angle, at least if they want a chance at all to win.

            • pyre@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              if you’re progressive your career ends when you say “yeah” a little too enthusiastically. it’s not like the hurdles are extremely complicated.

              so this “he wasn’t technically convicted” comes off a bit too generous. we knew about his crimes, and he’s bragged about them. but he’s still the only candidate they were going to have anyway.

              they’re fascists, and they literally tried to overthrow democracy. probably want to try it again. they don’t care about the law.

        • Asafum@feddit.nl
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          5 months ago

          Oh they have that part covered real easy. EvErYtHiNg Is A HoAx! DeMoCrAt WiTcH HuNt!

          They aren’t electing a felon in their eyes so it’s not hypocritical of them. Of course he already told us in 2016 he could shoot someone on 5th Ave and not lose any supporters and he was absolutely right.

          • Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org
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            5 months ago

            That is basically what right wing twitter says. To them the timing of the case if nothing else screams the use of the courts as a political attack.

  • rustyfish@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    “Too old to be a threat“

    Whoever came up with this reasoning forgot to wear his thinking cap.

  • TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Yeah, some people are genuinely natural born killers. I was watching a documentary by Morgan Freeman (yes, god himself) on religion and the problem of evil. He interviewed a murderer who is sentenced to lifelong imprisonment. And the killer knows he did wrong but just doesn’t feel bad about it at all. CT scan of his brain showed that part of the brain linked to empathy is not active on him. So yes, unfortunately some people are just evil.

    • Hacksaw@lemmy.ca
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      5 months ago

      Not having empathy isn’t enough to be evil. Just like having empathy isn’t enough to be good. You need ideology.

      For example, the guy who lacks empathy could use basic libertarian or anarchist ideology for why we shouldn’t hurt people using logic instead of empathy.

      Another example would be if you use fascist ideology you can turn empathy into a weapon for evil. The us vs them ideology requires empathy. The idea is that they are going to hurt the people you love just by existing is what dehumanizes them enough for a normal person to attack them.

        • Leate_Wonceslace@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          5 months ago

          If we have a utility function, we are capable of assigning any arbitrary physically possible sequence of local world states to a unique real number. We can then designate a discriminant (if the utility function is capable of producing negative outputs, this would typically be 0). We can designate inputs that give outputs higher than the discriminant as “good” and lower as “evil”.

          This example has flaws, but demonstrates that the terms good and evil can be well-defined in a useful way that reasonably conforms to platonic ideals of the terms.

            • Leate_Wonceslace@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              5 months ago

              That’s the nature of language.

              Correct.

              That is also NOT the definition

              So your previous statement was that a specific (unstated) way of defining Good and Evil, while paired with our typical modern worldview implied that Good and Evil didn’t exist? I suppose you’re almost certainly correct if that’s the case, but I don’t find that to be a very interesting statement. The only other way I can interpret this is as a claim that there is exactly one definition of Good and Evil, and anyone who uses a different definition is wrong, but that strikes me as an utterly foolish position.

              I wasn’t aware of Hume’s account of definition, but it strikes me as extremely straightforward.

      • Leate_Wonceslace@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        5 months ago

        You need ideology

        No; compassion and naive morality is usually sufficient. A well-developed ethical system is good, and typically out-performs the former, but avoiding being outright evil without outside influence is easy.

        • Hacksaw@lemmy.ca
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          5 months ago

          I might have a broader definition of ideology than you because morality and ethical systems are ideology. Look how many different moral and ethical systems we have. Just choosing between what exists requires ideology first.

      • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Exactly, I have a loved one who struggles with empathy, but she believes in justice and she has logic and so she winds up with extremely pro social beliefs and behavior. She just can be a bit rough around the edges sometimes when she thinks you’re not making sense

      • efstajas@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        That’s one way to see it. Another is that empathy is all that’s needed for good, but ideology can be used to manipulate people such that their empathy for a certain group is suppressed.

      • Holzkohlen@feddit.de
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        5 months ago

        Great, now I don’t know if I can feel empathy. Better take a 2 min facebook quiz to find out.q

    • kameecoding@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      i think religious indoctrination plays a part too,I find it quite revealing when someone asks an atheist: “well if hell doesnt exist why dont you just go around killing and raping whoever you want?”

      Like bruh, because I am not a monster.

    • zarkanian@sh.itjust.works
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      5 months ago

      These people are called “sociopaths”. Most sociopaths aren’t killers, though. They will often go into a field where their lack of empathy is rewarded, such as business management.

        • Patapon Enjoyer@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          :Not OP:

          I think our brain is more complex than just if a particular area lights up in a scan but to call it all bullshit at the same level of phrenology is just ignoring the hard work of really smart people.

          • Leate_Wonceslace@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            5 months ago

            I agree. Unfortunately, I keep seeing people trying to argue that people are never born in a particular way, which is just such an ableist way of viewing the world. Like, how can anyone argue that someone’s psychology isn’t genetically influenced? Do they think everyone with congenital cognitive disabilities is just pretending?

              • Leate_Wonceslace@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                5 months ago

                You can, infact, use certain facts about someone’s genome to inform predictions about their behavior. If you mean to say that you can’t perfectly predict someone’s behavior, then of course you can’t; I don’t recall ever meeting someone who argued otherwise.

          • Leate_Wonceslace@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            5 months ago

            There’s something in rhetoric that we call the principal of charity. When arguing with someone, we try to figure out what was meant based on what was said, and arguing against our best guess at what someone’s best argument is instead of assuming that everyone always means what they say and never makes a mistake in communication.

            It is possible that the person you replied to does not understand the difference between Cat, Pet, and fMRI. This is in fact a very easy mistake to make for anyone who doesn’t work in medicine. So reconsider their comment with that in mind. If we substitute CT scan for fMRI, does that change your response?

    • thrawn@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Worst part is the judge acknowledged that he wasn’t going to age out of wanting to kill, merely the ability to. But like you said, guns are pretty easy to use even if you’re old.

      Such an unusual “oversight”