If I claim, "Donald Trump has a 99% chance to win the election," and then Hillary Clinton wins, does this show that I was wrong? So long as I don't claim a 100% or 0% chance, isn't any outcome just as consistent with my claim?

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights makes sweeping pronouncements about rights to housing, education, etc. Who is obliged, however, to see that such rights are positively protected or practiced--the universe? The UN has no institutional standing to require me to house the homeless. Isn't my role not to interfere with people seeking housing, just as I honor another' right to free speech by doing nothing to stifle her expression? The Declaration seems like it should be recast as a desired state document that serves as a guide for government policy and law. Do philosophers find the Declaration sound?

Someone told me that there are nothing like table or chair because what there actually are is arrangement of matter and energy and label attached to it, which only exist in our minds. He thought if we accept nominalism, then we must accept this. I think he confused abstract objects with concrete objects. It seems to me that it's possible to believe things like table and chair exist while believe those concepts exist only in mind. Am I wrong?

Say I smoke marijuana not just because I find it pleasurable but because it is a form of counterculture expression. That is, smoking marijuana is a political act. I think that some in the 60s might have subscribed to that notion. I insist that weed is speech (and why not since money and flag burning seem to be), and the government cannot deny me exercise of that right. How do we square the general right of expression with problematic individual cases like the one above? Surely my exercise will get me arrested in many jurisdictions.

People often ask ill-conceived questions about whether, by using things like modern medicine, we obstruct natural selection. My own thought is that this thinking is facile, because it presumes that either medicine or caring for sick people are somehow "unnatural" interventions for our species. Animals like chimpanzees are known to use tools, and we wouldn't say that is unnatural for them--isn't medicine just a human tool? But then I wonder if conceiving of natural selection in this way makes it impossible to say that we ever obstruct natural selection, which seems like an logically odd consequence. I was wondering if there is a more discriminating formulation of natural selection according to which we obstruct natural selection in some cases and not others.

Do we have moral duties towards institutions (like the Red Cross)? Do institutions have moral rights?

Do philosophers use computers to find logical proofs? Or are there good reasons the task of programming a computer to do so is difficult (perhaps because of the complexity of proof required, or perhaps because you need a human for some sort of creative step)? Just from my experience of undergrad logic, it seemed to me there was a lot of repetition in what I was doing, and that it was a task I could learn and get better in -- ie, it wasn't down to pure creativity, but there were learnable, repeatable methods of searching that perhaps could be codified, made systematic.

I'm 16 and have been studying philosophy for awhile. My question is when does a statement reach the point of 'absurdity'. For example, of the two statements, 1) My dog ran around the yard. And 2) My dog ran around the block with a big purple hat and green trousers. Number 2 seems the most likely not to have happened or seems 'ridiculous' by those who hear it. At what point does a statement cross the line of making logicalls sense to pure ridiculousness?

What might Socrates think of this year's presidential election?

I have been duscussing lately with my friend about thinking. We both agree on what thinking can lead to. But, we disagree on wether or not you should think. Our theory is that thinking will often/most cases lead to unhappiness or depression because most question/problems are for the most part hard to solve. For example, what is the meaning of life? Not an easy question to answer, and the answer you do get may be sad. Therefore, I think not thinking will be good for a person so hin won't get to a stage where hin gets sad. However, my friend see this as fake happiness because you only hide sadness away instead of dealing with the problems. The problems are philosophical and not physical or physiological. So the question is, should people asks "why" questions more often and seek answers to find true happiness? Or is not thinking at all about philosophically questions just fine?