the west believe in liberalism and the idea that people essentially have free choice so long as that free choice doesnt harm anybody, banning face coverings or "burqa bans" for any reason outside of security or identity verification goes against basic freedom of clothing.

Some people try to argue that "well its not really their choice they were told to do it growing up, and indoctrinated into wanting to do it" this links to a philosophical idea like determinism, and is illogical, because this applies to any "free choice" somebody makes, including clothing or their haircut or something, this doesnt negate that the person hasnt chosen to make their choice regardless of its origins.

I believe that all the violence and property destruction is doing nothing but risking further support of the far right. I also think that destroying small businesses and burning down historical buildings (Hotel de Ville) will do nothing but add additional costs and are nothing but counterproductive. Overall I find this tactics undermine the cause they are supposedly protesting for.

I'm going to talk specifically about the Hong Kong protests in 2019. Which drew anywhere from 1-2 million protesters in one place at their peak.

The Hong Kongers in my opinion were facing a much more serious and dire situation than what is currently happening in France with civil liberties at risk, extradition to china, and legitimate concerns of police brutality (7/21 & 8/31 incident).

Although there were protesters in HK that took things to far, the scale of destruction seems nowhere near what I've seen from the videos in France. I do acknowledge the sieges of PolyU and CUHK, and vandalization of "pro-bejieng camp property" as moments of extensive property damage and in some cases violence. However the confrontations occurred during escalating clashes with the HKPF, whose use of force has heavily criticized.

What makes whats happening in France excusable to so many people? I genuinely don't understand because all I have seen online is people saying how the destruction of cars, shops, monuments is a necessary and acceptable cost that can't be managed, yet in Hong Kong the protests were generally peaceful despite them facing much more serious threats to personal liberties

I'm not trying to say that all protests must be strictly peaceful, but what are the current circumstance that justifies the use of violence to such an extent? I find it hypocritical that the actions in Hong Kong are seen as extreme by some of the protesters while in France its seen as something that can't be controlled and a necessary step to progress.

I understand that the situations are different and there is a level of nuance that must be applied so I'm open to seeing why in France this seems to be such a common theme of protests.

Gnosticism was an early branch of Christianity that was largely wiped out for heretical thinking claiming that Yahweh was infact Jaldabaoth, an evil false god trapping our conscious minds in the material world away from our natural status as divinity. It sees Christ as a figure opposing God attempting to get people to see that they were worshiping an evil false idol and to allow us to leave the material reality if we practice the teachings of jesus and act morally good in life similar to the Buddhist ideas of Samsara and Nirvana.

There is no objective way to determine the true nature of the universe, but we can make educated guesses. If we analyze the proposed explanation we can make observations in the real world that would either be expected under this explanation or not. The Problem of Evil is the most famous example of something we observe in the real world that we would not expect under an all knowing, all powerful, all loving god. If that is true as we are led to believe under Christianity, there is no reasonable excuse for God allowing infants to suffer from disease and die. Any explanation made either avoids the topic by say god is acting mysteriously or our suffering is necessary for a greater purpose. in order to fit the Christian idea of God with the reality we find ourselves in we have to bend or make excuses. Gnosticism does not have this problem as the Problem of Evil is explained by god's own existence, not only do we not have to make any leaps in logic we would actually expect to see evil and cruelty under this evil figure. Additionally every time God orders a towns worth of babies to be exterminated, we don't have to bend over backwards to justify why

The religions present two ideas for what will happen after their holy texts were written. Jesus is said to will one day returd potentially bringing about the apocalypse. to our knowledge this has not happened and we have no reason to believe that will change soon. It is possible it was intended that Jesus' return would take over 2000 years so far the christian beliefs have not come true. the gnostics however believe that Christ's message was ignored and Jaldabaoth intentionally corrupted it so we would worship jesus as an idol instead of the truth, and that Jaldabaoth would influence humanity to push down Gnostic thinking so we do not discover the truth of the world. The Gnostic View is consistent with the actual historical accounts. Gnostics were oppressed and almost wiped out meaning we wouldn't have to make any leaps in logic to explain the world we see now, Jaldabaoth won and we will continue to be trapped in an evil chaotic materialistic world

The fine tuning argument is an interesting one for god. Christians (correctly) claim the universal constants are too specifically well tuned to be a mere coincidence. This does not mean god is the only explanation but it is a very effective one. However, is our world as fine tuned as the argument claims? 99.999% of space and matter is wasted if humans are the focus of the universe. The universe is really only optimized for creating the necesarry conditions for life to form but is not optimized for that life. This would make sense under Gnostic View as Material Reality is a corruption of true reality and Jaldabaoth is a false god that is limited in his ability to create.

Supposedly you will go to hell if you do not accept jesus christ into your heart, meaning god created a system where the location of your birth is directly tied to whether you will spend eternity in heaven. Again this view makes sense under Gnostic belief, false gods would be celebrated and encouraged in Jaldabaoth's world

In the UK, trains have been Privatized, meaning the government doesn't own them. This is different to several western countries where train networks are publicly owned and maintained.

Privatized trains make no sense because two trains cannot arrive at the same time on the same track. This means the "more competition" theory of privatizing a government service doesn't work for trains.

In the UK, the one track problem has been "solved" by having shorter trains arrive two at a time to the same platform. But this negates the whole point of having a train. With less carriages, the train becomes effectively a bus. It also has higher ticket prices due to scarcity of seats.

UK privatization has many absurdities:

• Two carriage "trains" in some areas (artificial scarcity).
• Full ticket inspection on most routes (over policing).
• Meal carts on various very short routes (redundant service).
• Poor wifi service.
• Bad maintenance.
• Shot platforms that prevent longer trains.
• Extremely expensive tickets.

The very expensive tickets are justified in the UK by weird and crazy common statements. You are very commonly told to "buy a train ticket at least three months in advance" to get a good price. This is absurd, and makes train travel an obscure luxury compared to a bus or even a car, which requires no planning.

Other advice is effectively (I joke but it's not much of an exaggeration) "buy your ticket on a Thursday when there's a full moon."

Nationalizing the rails would immediately change things as follows. You could:

• Mandate longer trains with more carriages.
• Reduce ticket inspectors (studies show 30% inspection gets 90% compliance)
• Cap prices.
• Shift to a not-for-profit model (reducing prices)
• Mandate proper wifi
• Mandate proper maintenance
• Expand platform size to EU standard (this has the bonus of allowing more competition for cross-chanmel trains and demolishing Eurostar monopoly).

Outside of "it used to be nationalised and was still bad," and "there are some bad trains in Europe," I haven't heard a good counterargument to my view. I want my view to be changed to find easier solutions.

Tl;Dr Privatized trains have various issues from price to maintenance that can only be resolved through nationalisation to reduce these issues by govt mandate.

Ashkenazi jews have the highest average iq, estimated to be between 107 to 115. Intelligence has been proven to be genetically heritable. This can easily be googled. We need to stop pretending disparities between races, especially ones like IQ are entirely cultural. We need to stop expecting an average 85 iq person to be capable of making the same income as a guy with 100iq+ as IQ is a large determiner of success. If you accept evolution as a reality you have to accept this fact. I get that it's the boogeyman topic and that nobody likes to admit this but it's true.

a few reasons why i hold this view:

1. different races brought it in the same background have different iq scores and outcomes in terms of success in their careers.

2. if we accept that there are racial differences physically, then it stands to reason that there are racial differences mentally. as a quote i say "evolution doesn't stop at the neck." people that evolved in different conditions evolve to have different mental capacity. the most clear example how different groups evolved to be different mentally is the concept that people evolved in colder climates evolved to have higher iq's because they needed to have the intelligence to know how to farm and save seeds for the winter, both of which are iq tests.

3. appeal to authority: even people like richard dawkins (evolutionary biologist, zoologist, and ethologist) who i consider progressive admits that it's possible that different populations could have evolved to have different iq's.

4. to me the damning gap of achievement intellectually by ashkenazi jews makes me believe it has to be genetic. i believe environment plays a factor, maybe even a large factor, but not enough to account for all the differences. ashkenazi jews make up 22% of nobel prizes but make up only 0.2% of the population, making them have over 100x the impact you would expect proportional to their size. do we say that all that success is due to jews having a better environment? over 100x the impact? it seems implausible to me.

5. the empirics: easily googled, "The heritability of IQ is generally estimated to be 50% and 80% across a population, though it changes significantly as a person grows older."

there's plenty more reasons to believe this, imo the evidence is almost irrefutable but i can't remember all the other reasons so i'll leave it at that. change my view.

Initial disclosure: First, I am American and may have a different point-of-view than the English. Second, I am assuming, perhaps counterfactually, that the people described herein are arguing in good faith.

I have seen several rounds of debate about whether various immigrants to the UK and their descendants are "English". For example, Konstantin Kisin claimed that Rishi Sunak is not "English" because Sunak is Indian (his exact quote was "a brown-skinned Hindu"). Sunak responded that he is "English" because he grew up in England and identifies with the country.

Putting aside what Kisin was trying to get at, these positions can both be correct. "English" can describe a person from a particular ethnicity that originates from what we now call England. "English" can also refer to someone who is from the country of England and primarily identifies with that country before or at least equal with any other.

People arguing that Sunak cannot be English are using the first, ethnic definition of the word "English" above. People arguing he is English are using the second, civic definition of the word "English".

When people debate this, they are coming in with their pre-defined use of the word "English" and they are not agreeing on their definition before discussing. They therefore cannot agree on an answer. Without specifying how they are using the term "English" debaters are talking past each other and cannot have any productive discussion of whether a certain person is "English".