In the sense that one could justify farmers yoking oxen to draw the ploughs in earlier times: yes, perhaps. But in the modern era such a practice would be considered crude to the point of nonviability. We now have better methods to discriminate between people to separate friend from foe, and we've had them for quite a while now. Good is always relative to the array of choices one is presented with. Ethics evolves with technology, and thus will never be complete (until technology is, if such a thing ever occurs).
Bolding mine. Big statements.
What are these better methods, Scrotie? Who is "we"? And, ethics improving with technology, what makes you think this? I'm curious.
No need to 'think' that, it's an absolute truth. [that everything is connected] One of the few, really. And for me one of the greatest joys in life is seeing or being shown connections that we'd otherwise miss or be unable to perceive. Those little moments where everything feels just a little bit transcendent. But just a little bit -- I've no interest in chemical overloads there. A little insight is more than enough now and then. :)
As for motherhood, I think we can amend that to parenthood in general. Cue the opening to 'Circle of Life'...
But in the context of Earth, I suspect something a little less circular will be the end result. It is sheer folly to say, 'we're killing the planet' but I think it's alright to suspect we might be actively killing our ability to sustainably stay with the planet. When the departure comes, it'll probably be goodbye rather than see you later. Which is fine -- some mothers eat their young, some are eaten by them. The term for this is matriphagy (simple enough to figure out if you've ever googled 'coprophagy' and hey, who hasn't?)...and I do believe we're engaging in some fairly superficial matriphagy when it comes to old lady Gaea. I doubt she notices though.
Ah, the doors of perception. I think that anyone who works for NASA should undergo ongoing psychedelic therapy. DMT sessions with a trained psych.
(NASA are not my only canditates for this, but yeah, it would be helpful). This may sound flaky to some, however it is an exciting frontier that's shedding the Altamont taint for example, where Dr William Richards, from John Hopkins will be presenting.
"
Most stars do not produce heavy elements.
This is because as soon as a star start making iron, it's decaying. This is because up until iron, every fusion (merging of 2 atoms, one of which is almost always hydrogen or helium) generate energy. Iron and forward though, consume energy. So for a star to generate heavy elements, it needs to be either extremely big or go supernova. The bigger the star, the farther down the periodic table it can go.
In addition, odd numbered elements are much rarer than even numbered elements (with the exception of hydrogen (1)) because the vast majority of fusions of elements use helium (which is element 2).
Thanks for the star science, Faerwyn. What's the heaviest element that can be generated by a supernova star?
the answer to that question is unknown but there's speculations/evidences that the heaviest elements of a given star is based on the its size.
That said, if a star can truly become a black hole in a super nova (it has yet to be observed), then it would be impossible to determine what is the heaviest element.
Build of the week #9 - Breaking your face with style http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_EcQDOUN9Y
IGN: Poltun
I wonder if any of you writing so many words about such trivial nonsense, evolved extra fingers so you can type faster?
Evolution has to work somehow right?
"it just does".
I wonder also if liberals evolved the ability to cry out more tears per second, after the supreme court pick last night.
Oh the joys of not believing i'm related to a slug and a toad, all while pretending to be super duper smart about how elements are formed by stars hahahahahaha.
Oh the joys of not believing i'm related to a slug and a toad, all while pretending to be super duper smart about how elements are formed by stars hahahahahaha.
†
By your definition as well. Why else draw the distinction between killing and illegal killing?
I don't quite want to go full anarchocapitalist meme on you, but I assume you're not opposed to taxation -- that is, the socially legitimized redistribution of wealth from parties that have earned it to parties who haven't, under penalty of law. Now if you don't want to call that "theft" because of whatever reasons then I don't want to get into semantics any more than I have to, but just as you draw a distinction between killing and murder, I'm reasonably sure you draw a distinction between the seizure of property by force and robbery.
So what you're doing here is trying to come off all holier-than-thou attacking my "fringe" views, when in reality the social acceptance of killing, property seizure and imprisonment/kidnapping under certain conditions is so pervasive that it's utterly banal. For the most part, we call it government, and there's virtually no place our species lives that doesn't have one (or more).
In the sense that one could justify farmers yoking oxen to draw the ploughs in earlier times: yes, perhaps. But in the modern era such a practice would be considered crude to the point of nonviability. We now have better methods to discriminate between people to separate friend from foe, and we've had them for quite a while now. Good is always relative to the array of choices one is presented with. Ethics evolves with technology, and thus will never be complete (until technology is, if such a thing ever occurs).
Bolding mine. Big statements.
What are these better methods, Scrotie? Who is "we"? And, ethics improving with technology, what makes you think this? I'm curious.
I define ethics as the art or science (I'm open to debate about which it is) of assigning value to choice. After assignment of value to choice, the economics is relatively straightforward; the hard part is ranking those choices from best to worst.
That said, it's obvious that certain technology greatly modifies the value of choices. Even different occupations under economic specialization greafmtly modify value: for example, consider the differences in whether it's good or bad to be a night owl or an early riser, depending on whether one is a baker or a barkeep.
If we do have a universal common morality, it only extends as far as that which provides the basis for economic specialization itself, because each job has different ethical values. Even then, everything beyond that common core (ignore the education reference) is highly variable and relativistic, such that tolerance of moralities other than one's own is itself part of said common core.
The hard evidence is in, and evolution is a laughable joke.
Sort of like the big bang, another theory invented by a Christian.
While I continue to disagree with you regarding evolution, I too am not sold on the concept of the Big Bang. I don't have any particular explanation of how the universe began (or even if it began), but I disagree with the notion that the evidence for the Big Bang conclusively points to a distant-past concentration of mass into a central point that somehow defied gravity and exploded, resulting in a current expansion of the universe.
When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted.
Last edited by ScrotieMcB on Jul 10, 2018, 9:51:18 PM
Glad, because Amartya Sen's book is not something I'm going to fly through. But after that, Foundation. I've never really liked hard sci-fi but obviously Foundation is one of those 'at least try' things.
I edited my post. I copy-pasted the wrong part of it. Sorry.
But yes, do that. You'll love to hate The Mule. Especially if you imagine him as orange-skinned and blonde-haired.
When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted.
Last edited by ScrotieMcB on Jul 10, 2018, 9:57:50 PM
Keep waiting for that one too. Or don't. It might not happen. My interest in politics is, at best, fleeting, and you've tried to drag it in that direction because that's how you read everything. Which is a bit like asking an atheist if they've heard the good word.
But for now I will say yes, I believe in the concept of taxation as the redistribution of wealth for the betterment of society. Whether or not that is how it happens in effect is another discussion entirely. I don't think even the taxman really believes in the ideal though; it's all just a process now. At any rate, there is something ethical to the idea of taxation but something deeply unethical to the execution of it. That's just human nature though -- taking care of one's own before others. Which, incidentally, seems to be closer to your idea of ethical than mine, which is odd given you've also tried to make this universal. This weird idea that what is best for all is best for any given one. That swings both ways. It all comes down to what you define as 'your tribe'. Your own vs others. Who you should look after, who can you safely screw over. I think if your answer to 'who are my own?' is anything less than 'humanity' then your ethical view is ultimately going to be a compromise.
And since someone needs to pull this back on track, I think Jesus
No no no. Not more Jesus. That's not really the thread topic. Also, bold mine.
Regarding the bold part, I don't share Templar's faith that evolution doesn't occur, which complicates that now-emboldened question of yours. Was it the ethical duty of the first homo sapiens to view the entirety of homo erectus as "their own?" If so, how far down the evolutionary ladder do we go? Is veganism the only moral diet plan? Is eating plants even ethical, if we have no way to establish that we are somehow more valuable than the plant?
What do I define as my "tribe?" I might not eat vegan, but it might surprise you to know that I consider all organisms on this great planet of ours to be members in some capacity or another. It's just that we can't all get through this alive. As we kinda-sorta agreed earlier, even some full-fledged members of humanity, your designated tribe, need to be killed for the greater good. Same deal with the chicken my family just ate for dinner. Yummy.
There's a very decent chance, on a long enough timeline, that the only life that survives this planet will be those we deign to take with us as we escape. Well, and likely a few stowaways. I doubt we'll be able to take them all, but I hope we take a combination that works well with each other to create a sustainable ecosystem wherever it is we end up.
And that's assuming that nothing evolves from us in the meantime. It might turn out we're much less capable than the new model. In the Foundation series Hari Seldon's one mistake in his calculations is (coincidently enough) one of being unable to account for human evolution.
Actual spoiler
He's damn lucky there was only one of them, so they couldn't breed.
Thus I see your way as one of 'coldheartedness'. You call it practical because you've been able to emotionally disengage from the present. You've been hurt, maybe even damaged, by being vulnerable in the past and the easiest sanctuary from that is to wax intellectually detached.
This is a recurring theme of your interactions with me and I sincerely wonder why. Sure, I've seen my fair share of troubles, but for the most part it hasn't been the truly maddening kind -- the inevitable kind that cares not about what one does.
I've been homeless, I've married poorly, I've been dogged by Child Protective Services, and other problems. But these biggest challenges in my life have never been the maddening kind where I couldn't find some error of mine that brought those troubles upon me. Could you say I was vulnerable in the past and hurt as a result? I think that's fair. But I am emphatically not emotionally detached from these events merely because I blame myself for creating the vulnerability. Indeed, it is my past errors that define what it is I am now more careful about first, and more thoughful about as a means to that end. If you fool me twice, shame on me!
Is that what you would call damage? It seems to me to be growth. One might even say evolution. Do you really believe in evolution or not?
When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted.
Last edited by ScrotieMcB on Jul 11, 2018, 12:51:56 AM
Keep waiting for that one too. Or don't. It might not happen. My interest in politics is, at best, fleeting, and you've tried to drag it in that direction because that's how you read everything. Which is a bit like asking an atheist if they've heard the good word.
But for now I will say yes, I believe in the concept of taxation as the redistribution of wealth for the betterment of society. Whether or not that is how it happens in effect is another discussion entirely. I don't think even the taxman really believes in the ideal though; it's all just a process now. At any rate, there is something ethical to the idea of taxation but something deeply unethical to the execution of it. That's just human nature though -- taking care of one's own before others. Which, incidentally, seems to be closer to your idea of ethical than mine, which is odd given you've also tried to make this universal. This weird idea that what is best for all is best for any given one. That swings both ways. It all comes down to what you define as 'your tribe'. Your own vs others. Who you should look after, who can you safely screw over. I think if your answer to 'who are my own?' is anything less than 'humanity' then your ethical view is ultimately going to be a compromise.
And since someone needs to pull this back on track, I think Jesus was an essentially ethical creature. He too saw the injustice of how the temples were operating, their obsequious behaviour towards Rome. The purely mercantile approach to worship. But as with most ethical creatures, his ideals really struggled when they came up against the real world, the reality of how things work. He was hardly the first martyr to die on Golgotha and I doubt he was the last, but he was certainly the most vocal in his march towards the hill of skulls. And he obviously made the most sense at a personal level -- on the other hand, his only real rivals there was a fast-dwindling pantheon of too-human-deities and Yahweh, who was at best a tribal deity leftover. Of all the things that fascinate me regarding Christ, *just where the fuck he got his ideas from* is pretty close to the top of the list.
Even more related to this modern idea of ethics: an old friend of mine recently touched base from Denmark, saying she was getting into a possible relationship with a philosophy Masters (not even a doctor! the pleb!) who has made a business out of consulting to various companies regarding the ethical implications of new technologies and practices. I find this deeply fascinating. I plan to discuss it more with her, but as a basic concept I think it's something that definitely needs more attention.
Evolution is boring. Darwin, like God and Nietzsche, is dead. If where we came from doesn't have a direct impact on where we're going, I find dwelling on it purely academic. And if Eternal Recurrence is a thing, then it's a very, very long term concept. Ethics are interesting as long as they don't spiral into an excuse for fucking others over. "How should I live?" is such an important question, and it'll only get increasingly difficult to answer, especially now that some of you seem to have taken the ideas of 'civility' and 'politeness' and 'putting others first' and made them almost antithetical to your idea of survival and success.
Thus I see your way as one of 'coldheartedness'. You call it practical because you've been able to emotionally disengage from the present. You've been hurt, maybe even damaged, by being vulnerable in the past and the easiest sanctuary from that is to wax intellectually detached. But that does not promote a fulfilled life. And I think a complete sense of life, a balance of emotional joy and intellectual enrichment in the everyday, is core to "how we should live", i.e. ethics.
You are mathematically unable to engage. We (USA) spend more on social welfare than ever and schools are worse, GINI index is higher, more poverty, more homeless, worse HC, etc. The problem is regulatory capture and corruption which is endemic in all powerful systems. Add in moral hazard it's been a disaster.
It's easy to say conservatives have no heart (although they give more to charity than liberals) but we have logic.
I'd go back before FDR times when no one died in the streets or staved with zero social welfare system at all because it worked and people took care of each other.
Git R Dun!
Last edited by Aim_Deep on Jul 11, 2018, 3:37:48 AM
I couldnt tell who but anyway I just get tired of people calling conservative cold hearted. Humans are basically the same tt's just a disagreement on how policy should go to achieve same results.
I couldnt tell who but anyway I just get tired of people calling conservative cold hearted.
Oh, fuck this shit.
I know Charan has made posts in the past that call out conservatives as morally defunct. I know he can be crafty with the innuendo -- to the point I sometimes feel a tad paranoid that I'm inferring things he didn't actually imply. And for all I know, he was thinking I was coldhearted just because my classically liberal ass is too right-wing for the Democratic Party these days.
But none of that was in his post. There's no explicit mentions of conservatism, and even my most tinfoil rereading doesn't pick up on any implication of it. You're acting as if he was accusing conservatives in general of "coldheartedness" here, when he was simply accusing me of it. When he's read hundreds if not thousands of my posts on topics both political and not.
There's also this thing called benefit of the doubt. Perhaps you've heard of it. Filed under common courtesy.
And yet there you go, white-knighting on my behalf simply because you know my political inclinations aren't that far from yours. The implication: ScrotieMcB can't be a cold-hearted asshole because he's got the correct political opinions. [sarcasm]Well thank you so very much for responding to Charan's accusation with such an easily defeated strawman, I'm sure that won't reinforce any preconceived notion he has or anything.[/sarcasm]
If what you're concerned with is conservative politics, this is how political movements let Hillaries in and defeat themselves. They start protecting their members based not in response to the particular claims against them, but on the presumption that any member of the politically correct club must be above-board in all facets of life. You're acting like some kind of right-wing social justice warrior. If you understand how bad SJWs make the left look, why would you ever act like they do to defend people whose politics you like?
For fuck's sake, if anything I was the one trying to veer this apolitical debate between me and Charan towards libertarian territory. To pounce on him for calling a "conservative" cold-hearted is essentially blaming him for my own impish mini-crime (that I totally won't apologize for).
If you want to discuss with me and Charan something other than politics in this thread, then by all means be my guest. But if all you're going to do is rail against the lefty for being a lefty in a thread where he's
not to bring his politics into the argument, then please take off your fedora and go elsewhere.
I can handle myself just fine, thank you very much.
When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted.
Last edited by ScrotieMcB on Jul 11, 2018, 5:06:56 AM
