For instance, what if we used masonry instead of wood frame houses (masonry tends to insulate better; look at infrared pictures of American wood frame houses and European masonry). Also, orienting houses in proper relation to the sun and arranging rooms in a way that facilitates better air flow (embrace the summer draft). Also, evaporative cooling. I am not proposing we eliminate A/C, only find ways and build in a way that allows us to cool houses for cheaper or even for free.

Even here, you're committing the same fallacy by using the term "white people" which is promoted by the same people. There are no "white people". I presume you know something about European history. Try finding unity in that mess that could legitimize the notion of a coherent "white people". One "white" country subjugated the other. Much of the continent was never involved in any colonial endeavors, and it ignores the imperialism elsewhere in the world. "White people" almost smells like an attempt by former colonial powers to diffuse responsibility. They can't deny they were involved, but they can obfuscate it by unjustly spreading the blame across all of Europe, all Europeans. It's also a way to get ahead of the problem and to draw from victim cache by association. You see similar attempts by some to downplay German atrocities during WWII by exaggerating complicity in conquered countries.

But I agree with your general point and the right to your suspicion. There are political incentives to promote this kind of anti-intellectual stuff. All it does is reinforcement racist ideologies that e.g the Americans specialized in. It also results in division and conflict, something political regimes have long used to distract the people and keep the ire of the public away from the ruling class.

An obvious class of problems is where determining the optimum takes more time than the lifetime of the problem. Say you need to write an algorithm at work that does X, and you need X by tomorrow. If it would take you a week to find the theoretical optimum, then the optimum in a "global" sense is to deliver the best you can within the constraints, not the abstract theoretical optimum. The time to produce the solution is part of the total cost. An imprudent person would either say it's not possible, or never deliver the solution in time.

[0] https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12517b.htm

Such a bizarre set of practices. The point of HVAC is to bring the temperature to a comfortable level while you wear season appropriate clothing, not to eliminate or invert seasonal differences.

On a different node, I also see that accusing someone of "narcissism" can itself be an expression of envy. If you succeed, you can debilitate someone else with doubt and guilt to prevent them from pursuing what they want.

Here's one definition of "supernatural order" [0].

[0] https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14336b.htm

Restated: "I'm correct, about us all being prone to cognitive errors, where you like it or not."

Perhaps only as part of a way to ease those with low income. But this is no good in general. You are charging one person more than another for the same good simply because of higher income. This is price discrimination and is unjust. Usury can work in an analogous way, such as when someone raises prices to exploit increased need even though the cost of production of the good sold is the same.

> property owners provide almost no value

They provide shelter and must maintain that property. Problems occur when they begin to charge unjustly for services rendered. This calls for regulation, not state ownership. No need to go to extremes.

> The current setup creates guettos [sic] by default, by siloing people with different monetary and social capital into different building and areas, hurting social mobility

Social mobility isn't the only consideration and not the summum bonum and it exists precisely to allow people to sort themselves into social classes (otherwise, why have social mobility in the first place). People of a given social class tend to live closer to each other because they share class cultural similarities, concerns, and affinities. That doesn't mean there is no contact between people of different classes, but the solution isn't to mix everyone up into a uniform mass. There's a middle way between the hermetically sealed ghetto and uniform distribution, and it doesn't involve violating the principle of subsidiary.

Ultimately, it is poverty that is a problem, not having a lower or higher income as such.

Of course, you can get away with a lot of bad things. The question is: should you do such things? The answer is: no. No one of any sense of dignity will lie, cheat, steal, or bullshit. No one who know how harmful it is to themselves to do such things will do them. It is beneath them and their love themselves too much to want to harm themselves. It's degrading. Wine won through illicit means tastes like urine anyway, if it tastes like anything at all. It's like the devil has offered you a glass of Chateau Lafite under the condition that you hand him your taste buds, or that you let him take a dump in it first.

Give a shit about things worth giving a shit to the degree that they are worthy of being given a shit about. Don't worry about approval from others. Virtue is its own reward. Don't whine. Don't be envious.

I have a real problem with the distinction between "religious people" and "non-religious people" because it presumes a distinction that I don't think exists. Everyone takes something to be the highest good. Most philosophers (for most of human history, anyway) and what you call religious people typically take God to be the highest good, the supreme summum bonum. Others worship pleasure or power or Man or nature or whatever else. In this sense, everyone is religious. We just differ about what the highest good is and what Man's orientation toward that good is.

What you call religious people do experience awe at creation. Indeed, God is not generally knowable directly, but creation is taken to tell us about the creator or first cause (what is in the effect must be in some way in the cause for you cannot give what you do not have).

> mysticism can be fun in a world with rules.

Two problems. First, mysticism isn't obscurantism. I believe Rahner somewhat obnoxiously called mystery "inexhaustible intelligibility" which is to say that true mystery is fully intelligible, but we cannot exhaust the knowing of that thing. I might imagine this to be something like trying to swallow the Nile. There's no end to it. The mystery par excellence for Catholics, then, is the beatific vision.

Second, what do you mean by "rules"? There are no rules, but things do have natures and what we call "scientific laws" are just shorthand descriptions of tendencies of things of a certain nature. There are no externalized laws "out there" that "govern" the world from without, imposing order onto what is otherwise some kind of unintelligible chaos. Things themselves are ordered by virtue of what they are. It's important not to commit the reification fallacy here w.r.t. "law". Furthermore, it almost sounds like you're saying that what you call religion is somehow antithetical to there being natures and principles. On the contrary, that is essential to something like Catholicism. Read the first few verses of the Gospel of John. Jesus is identified with the Logos, which is to say something like the order of the universe which was made incarnate in the hypostatic union. Natural law theory, something traditionally embraced by the Catholic Church, presupposes not only the utter intelligibility of the universe, but that things have natures and that the basis for ethics is human nature.

So what I sense here is a number of presuppositions, among them that "religion" (a word itself too broad and vague) is essentially (and only) an emotional phenomenon, which, in the case of something like Catholicism, isn't true.

Imagine you have a deal with a friend who is a stock broker. You supply him with insider information to make trades. You give him your money and he makes trades on your behalf, and to conceal the deal, he trades Apple stock uniformly across all clients. He doesn't do anything that would make you stand out.

Or let's say his greed doesn't get the best of him and he doesn't invest anything but conservative sums of his own money in Apple stock using this information, and then, to launder kickbacks, you start a small company unrelated to investing that he pays for something intangible (like a "membership" or "retainer"), or he pays you cash.

I would find it difficult to believe that this sort of stuff isn't happening all over the place.

And strictly speaking, mechanical deduction is a simulation of deduction that exploits the formal properties of propositions. You cannot analyze the conceptual terms (e.g., predicates) in this fashion because, by definition, the content of those terms are exactly what formalism excludes. Formalism provides us with essentially this: that we can deduce the shape of the (or a) conclusion regardless or for any such terms from the shapes of the premises alone with no concern for the concepts involved.

> What I fear is that loss of certainty is something that keeps some people into the naïve realist position or so I've noticed in my own social circles.

> It's like talking to a brick wall. And honestly, I've given up. It's just one tiny example in a sea of ignorance

Are you certain about these claims? You seem to be fairly confident. While your interlocutors may not have the sophistication to have reasons for their positions (I don't know), that doesn't mean there aren't valid arguments against your convictions, and yet you seem quite certain that there aren't, whereas I claim that there are.

I think what needs to be underscored is that, in the typical course of affairs, we make best judgements based on our prior beliefs and revise them when we have sufficient reason to revise them. You may not have come across such reasons (again, I don't know), but if you did, would you consider revising your position? Do you have good arguments for your position?

It often seems to be used by people who demand that others make sacrifices for others and that’s a bad sign, a sign of coercion and exploitation. This is distinguished from considerations about the common good which entail considering the impact on others and how they might be compensated (eg responsible eminent domain), or crotchety curmudgeons who hate things that would even be to their own benefit simply because they’re resentful of everyone. Calling someone a NIMBY seems too often to be a way of demeaning someone who refuses to agree to give something up so you can have something you want.

We don't need to factor into the moral calculus the possibility that no pain is felt since the most reasonable and rational conclusion is that infants do feel pain. What reason could there possibly be to believe that they don't that isn't some stretched exersize in special pleading and evasion? The baby is human!

I'm not sure that's the case. Most people believe dogs feel pain by observing them, for example. Indeed, it is the most immediate common sense conclusion one can make based on observation. It wasn't until modern philosophy, specifically Descartes, characterized animals as zombie meat machines (pure res extensa). Aristotle, by contrast, did not deny non-human animals sensation or pain, as is evident in De Anima in which he reasons that sensation is in fact necessary for animals (this occurs in the context of determining the necessary faculties entailed by the nutritive soul, the sensitive soul, and the intellectual soul).

This is a category mistake, no? A cathedral isn't an architectural term, but a designation granted to the central church of a diocese (i.e., the seat of a bishop, hence "cathedra" which means "seat" in Latin). A basilica is both an architectural term and a designation.

1. Are human beings _human beings_ beginning with conception?

2. Is it ever licit to kill an innocent human being intentionally?

W.r.t. (1), if you answer "no", then the second question is moot. It may still be the case that abortion would be morally illicit, but that would be a different question. If you answer "yes", then you must answer the second question. If you answer "yes", then you are a utilitarian/consequentialist. The conflict has largely shifted to the second question over time.

(For the sake of clarity, the word "intentionally" is important. Treating an ectopic pregnancy to save the mother by removing the affected implanted tissue will result in the death of the unborn, but this is not an intended consequence, only a tolerable side effect given what's at stake. These sorts of situations are not the subject of the abortion debate.)