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Seems like you jumped to the conclusion that Javi was talking about eugenics. How did you conclude that? Does "selective antinatalism" = eugenics? I t...
April 25, 2021 at 21:10
I don't think of masculinity or femininity as having much to do with moral compasses. Men and women of a stripes can be equally moral and immoral. Hav...
April 25, 2021 at 01:30
New Yorker Cartoon caption (below sketch of 2 guys chatting) Last summer I tried using prostitutes and found it surprisingly affordable.
April 24, 2021 at 00:57
I don't know what the actual ratio of young and old is here. I'm 75 and not the oldest guy here. There are many more men than women here (at least as ...
April 23, 2021 at 21:11
There are many activities which can occur without incurring material social costs: smoking weed, consuming narcotics and alcohol, engaging in unprotec...
April 23, 2021 at 04:00
Actually, it has always been harder to be good than to give into whatever primal urges we have and just ruin everything. We teach our children to beha...
April 20, 2021 at 20:33
"Be a good person but don’t waste time to prove it." Good advice. Good question, but an altogether different problem. There are numerous cases where l...
April 20, 2021 at 17:18
In: Fairness  — view comment
A bracket is missing from the end-quote at the end of my quote. The result is that I am credited with your very good response, You might want to fix t...
April 20, 2021 at 02:22
In: Fairness  — view comment
That pretty much nails the case against excellence in journalism, or maybe journalism at all. From the POV of the oligarchy, the plutocracy, or the kl...
April 20, 2021 at 01:10
In: Fairness  — view comment
Commercial newspapers, television, radio, cable, and internet channels are probably not a good place from which to expect fairness, probity, integrity...
April 20, 2021 at 00:41
In: Pronouns  — view comment
Which is OK, because 'majesty' can reference males, females, or God forbid, gender-liquified sovereigns or, for that matter, one's neutered cat.
April 19, 2021 at 20:38
In: Pronouns  — view comment
Did they accomplish anything at all in this conference? Sort-of radical groups often hold highly ineffective meetings in which all sorts of irrelevant...
April 19, 2021 at 20:32
In: Pronouns  — view comment
Your use of the preposition "forward" implies progress. It seems to me that what they are actually doing is just stumbling, possibly stumbling in circ...
April 19, 2021 at 20:19
It is better to spend limited resource on eliminating the death penalty. Next best is proving that the state erred in its prosecution of specific capi...
April 19, 2021 at 06:49
In: Pronouns  — view comment
A lot of the pronoun abusers are mad period, They can call themselves whatever they want, but I get to make the decision about what I call other peopl...
April 19, 2021 at 02:39
Cruelly insulting, like ridiculing the handicapped. I mean, people can't help it if they are lowbrow slobs, really. Also humiliating--particularly for...
April 18, 2021 at 02:15
One aspect of DEBATE--at least as I understand it--is that is a contest in front of an audience who may vote on the question at hand, validating one o...
April 17, 2021 at 22:47
In fact, cloistered monks did contribute something: They participated in critical ways in the reproduction of society -- the cultural part in particul...
April 17, 2021 at 00:08
It certainly looked that way at the time -- 1934. Germany, the USSR, Italy... But it is a mistake to oppose democracy and socialism: the former is a p...
April 16, 2021 at 18:04
If it is true that we are what we do, a corollary is that we do it with, to, for, by somebody else. As John Dunne said, No man is an island entire of ...
April 15, 2021 at 23:37
Penetrating topic. Way back in a college class we discussed whether "who the person was" could be separated from "what the person did". Back then I pr...
April 15, 2021 at 04:59
The neuroscientist would, presumably, share the leap. Would you, receiving the great insight, be changed in your control of brain operations? There re...
April 14, 2021 at 19:46
As I said to @'counterpunch", I agree with the animal part; the transition phase, not so much. For one thing, what @"Steve Leard" speaks of, require a...
April 13, 2021 at 06:02
6:20 in Albion; soon you will awake. Good Morning. I totally disagree. Look: Science is true. Science isn't the problem. It's self-interest -- yesterd...
April 13, 2021 at 05:19
Mining asteroids (which is why you want to catch them?--See John Donne below), to bring ores to earth for refinement in furnaces fueled by magmatic bl...
April 13, 2021 at 01:13
Sometimes it is, but a placebo involves the material world. A procedure or medicine is faked, but something real (even if it has zero efficacy) is don...
April 11, 2021 at 01:09
Yeah, I don't know about red or green or blue, not to mention chartreuse, beige, or puce! Very black and very white are more certain, and even then......
April 10, 2021 at 20:50
I like lists, and am duly impressed by long ones. You have found a lot and made your findings available. Thanks! There is a website in England, "Forgo...
April 10, 2021 at 20:31
Whose morality? Law and morality may agree that murder is a bad thing. Most people agree. Law and morality do not agree that the the state may take pr...
April 10, 2021 at 00:56
In what seems to be a less pressing situation, millions of people vote against the plug in the outlet (the fat man, in your example). Lots of people o...
April 09, 2021 at 20:06
Fat people are useful in these kinds of forced-choice situations. In the much discussed Trolley Situation, throwing a fat man off the bridge derails t...
April 09, 2021 at 19:08
I am one of the hikers; I am also the fat man's doctor. I have been telling this guy for years that being as fat as he is eventually is going to kill ...
April 09, 2021 at 18:56
Is it? Yes and no, I wanted to be as independent from other people's control as possible. I wanted to be independent enough to have executive agency--...
April 09, 2021 at 01:06
Guilty as charged. I just finished a nice pork chop I cooked myself. I could have raised the pig and butchered it. Too much trouble. I could have gone...
April 09, 2021 at 00:51
They may not have a very vivid idea of what it is you are talking about. Reading a few books about totalitarian states (Hitler's, Stalin's, Mao's, etc...
April 08, 2021 at 22:05
If you are a genetically-determined worry-wort, there is not much you can do about it. I won't tell you to focus on positive topics because such advic...
April 08, 2021 at 21:11
It is probably not healthy to worry very much about economic collapse or the arrival of a totalitarian regime taking over your country. Whatever John ...
April 08, 2021 at 19:45
Literally and figuratively wounded.
April 07, 2021 at 21:35
For the same reason that 13 States United in the late 18th century--in union there is more power than standing alone. You perhaps think that any large...
April 07, 2021 at 21:33
My window on Britain's confusion is very small, but it does seem like public policy in the UK is disordered. I thought Brexit was always a colossal er...
April 07, 2021 at 20:09
Imagine feeding yourself without any "systems": no agricultural system, no transportation system, no financial system... You'd have to do everything y...
April 07, 2021 at 19:45
Absolutely.
April 07, 2021 at 04:39
Epidemics, attacks, disasters, etc. can be the occasion to ratchet up social control. 9/11 resulted in security measures at airports which have been i...
April 07, 2021 at 04:00
I would not take the pill. Death makes life worth living.
April 07, 2021 at 03:43
Thank you for joining us, and presenting your vision of transhumanism. A thermonuclear war would indeed be a fine way to ring down the curtain, but pe...
April 05, 2021 at 23:05
As you know, as most people here know (I hope), sex is the means by which nature conducts reproduction in plants and animals. True, a lot of single ce...
April 05, 2021 at 05:59
In the grand scheme of things, there are children because sex is very pleasant. That's the most parsimonious explanation. True enough, some people dec...
April 05, 2021 at 04:53
Win today, lose tomorrow. That's one angle. Another angle: Don't take it personally. Just because the Boston Red Sox won, or lost, has no real bearing...
April 04, 2021 at 19:30
Some high-profit minded farmers rent their goats out to clear kudzu. They selectively eat it. It's environmentally healthy. And there's the fertilizin...
April 04, 2021 at 03:43
I wasn't think of you -- more the "super" theorists.
April 04, 2021 at 03:34