She's bought the "true love" myth from the romance media and industry and doesn't understand the problems are caused by the unrealistic expectations placed by it.

Right. If the fever would be at its height for the whole time, there would need to be a specific mechanism that stopped it when its not needed anymore. That's much more costly, in evolutionary sense. With a cyclical one, each fever is supposed to die on its own, so it's just a matter of trying again if the previous one didn't work.

Can you provide me a source to the PFC-thing? What I've seen about flow is that it was a description of a phenomenon Csikszentmihalyi found in various interviews. Despite flow being used in social sciences, I never saw well-defined criteria or unambiguous measures for ascertaining whether flow is "actually" happening.

Sorry, that doesn't help me understand the difference in case of brain, biology, and experience.

Ok, but in regard to brains an biology, is this just a modified hard problem of consciousness or something else?

What is the difference in your opinion?

What mistake did they make?

Not the best way to put it, true.

The point was that the article seemed to say that IF you are a supporter of a free society, you MUST accept these claims. Which is nonsense, because everything depends on what is meant by those things. And especially nonsense, if the claims are very abstract philosophical constructs, such as duties or rights, as the previous commenter mentioned.

Which step are you referring to?

It does attempt to address it, although I contend it fails in that attempt.

>But what constitutes “based on evidence and ways of reasoning acceptable to all”? According to Rawls we can only answer this question truthfully behind the veil of ignorance2. Because only under the veil the answer would represent an agreement to limit liberty only by reference to a common knowledge and understanding of the world.

The problem is that there is no common knowledge and understanding of the world. We all have our own points of view, and we all make those assessments subjectively.

I disagree somewhat.

The problem with the article is its theoretical level.

>The freedom of the intolerant should only be limited if the people holding totalitarian beliefs can no longer be “kept in check”, in the words of Popper, or is a danger to the public order, in the words of Rawls.

This implies a world where we can objectively agree on a clear line, and if someone stepped over it, we can all agree that this specific person can now no longer be kept in check and can now be suppressed. But the world is not like this. Everyone assesses from their own point of view, and may come to different conclusions. Fascist abuse of freedom relies on this: it pushes the boundaries, and when the first ones cry foul, they get support from those who do not agree with that assessment, and create division. And because the minds of people and the rules of the society are changed with enough support, the fascists can gather enough support by operating on the vicinity of the line to push the line further and further.

You say that we should only be intolerant of violence, not merely non-acceptance of our views, but if we wait until the fascists get to violence, it is already too late. They gather support by being intolerant, and if we don't suppress that, they are allowed to gather enough support that we will be unable to stop the violence when it starts.

I recognize the problem that if there is no universal rule, it is impossible to objectively say when are we not actually preventing the rise of fascism but simply suppressing non-acceptance of our views. This is a real problem. But I argue there can be no universal rule, because such a rule needs to be careful enough to not go too far (like you advocated), but a rule that is that careful is a rule that will not stop fascists.

I agree, the idea that being a supporter of a free society forces you to accept some logical-sounding but foreign-to-reality inferences is dumb.

ok

Of course they are related, but they are not identical.

>One could argue that falling in love is actually very rational because it helps promote survival of the human species.

Anything is rational or irrational depending on your assumptions of the goals. I think what's relevant is to explain why some specific goals should be assumed. You jumped to goals of a "selfish gene", while the example of falling in love is about immediate personal goals.

So I assume political authority and legitimacy are somewhat equivalent here.

You are talking about legitimacy as a philosophical term (some kind of objective legitimacy, similar to universal morality), rather than empirical (i.e. whether people factually behave in a way that makes ruling/governing possible)? If so, what is the difference between moral and political authority?

Right. Democracy isn't a solution for how to get a moral society, it's a solution for how to have a functional society at all when the people in it disagree on morality.

Aren't you conflating moral authority and political authority?

The problem is that you have a presupposition what morality is, and try to fit scientific answers to that, which is the wrong way around. If we don't assume that, science can help with finding out what people consider moral, and find reasons why they think so. This will produce an empirical understanding on morality similar to what Shermer is talking about.

So what makes one social contract better than another? A bunch of slave-keeping Southerners have a social contract where their freedom is important, but the slaves' freedom isn't. And if you say a contract that includes more people who have freedom is better, then does that directly make factory farming wrong, because the billions of cows, pigs, etc. should have freedom too? Or is there a reason to exclude animals?

I'm not following. If the experience of freedom is the foundation of morality, does it mean that the most moral thing to do would be to create and put all humans into Matrix where each person was given as much freedom as possible in their own private reality?