The benefit of the disclaimer which people have to check to begin posting is that it gives the moderators more standing. Even if one wanted to uplift ...
Well, the disclaimer suggestion I made would at least make sure people knew that there were standards and that they would be upheld. Having to assent ...
Did you mean "sword of Damocles" or was this a pun on the House of Hanover? I don't know how the site software works. Too bad there can not be a categ...
Yes, but we have to put that into evolutionary context. 99.999% of the time, brain hemispheres have never had to operate independently (at least in pr...
I am loath to admit 2 minds in one brain. Admitting two separate minds in one body gets out of hand very quickly. Interestingly, people can live witho...
If the halves of the brain were never connected by the cerebral commissure, then two "persons" might develop (from birth forward). I don't know whethe...
Catholic altar boys have that advantage in the classics. Methodists never had altar boys and they never did use Latin. Consequently, I had to learn it...
That we can "observe ourselves exteriorly" isn't a lie, but it is a self-deception. We may be quite happy with the way we see ourselves interiorly (or...
It's a deeper question than it appears to be, and I don't think there is one single factor. A highly inconvenient truth likely lurks around the corner...
One of the problems of discussing "suffering" is that we have not qualified it or quantified it. Below is a standard existential pain chart used in ho...
It gets worse. Paul adds... "If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen ...
Yes, he should. I love well done apocalypse and post-apocalypse fiction, especially when we are not saved by a convenient deus ex machina. To the exte...
Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962) or Ehrlich's Population Bomb and others began a change in our thinking about the environment where we began to re...
Moderns are no more possessed of reliable existential compasses than the ancients were. Google Maps and GPS systems don't help us at the most essentia...
Google translated this first as "there" then "What am I going" then "whither shall I go? "Mymemory" translated.net gave "whither shall I go?" first of...
Oddly, no one but the author has added to this thread. Is a trade war too remote to think about? The state and region I live in grows most of the US s...
It is true to a large extent that in politics, one group imposes their will on another group. Opinions are not thereby changed, but one can at least c...
It is rational to fear the details of approaching death, which can be quite ghastly. Once you're dead, we are beyond caring whether we believe in an a...
True, and I like soup, but I also like chewy foods like raw vegetables, meat, raw apples, nuts, good bread with tough crusts... all that stuff. Plus, ...
Mary was an off-the-cuff creation. Her non-existent situation was a quick and dirty way to show how the loading in a logical process could support see...
I thought so too. But then, how does one define Rationality? A dictionary definition is "the quality of being based on or in accordance with reason or...
Maybe utilitarianism isn't an appropriate moral framework for individuals. Planners in public health, urban design, military readiness, etc. can bette...
If you'd like a read to cleanse your brain of Royal Elegance, here's a title that will blow away the frippery of Meghan and Harry: Biological Exuberan...
I agree that the beginning of a fight is when one decides to fight -- which may precede the first blow by a significant time gap. (The decision to do ...
Question: can a pacifist legitimately engage in street fights, fist fights with his or her neighbor, all out screaming and rock throwing at the police...
When to fight, or if... What is at stake: Honor? Essential resources? Existence? How much do we stand to lose (or gain)? Do we have the means to fight...
Trump has an unfortunate habit of free associating in front of the media, large crowds, etc. Normally this sort of speech is performed in front of one...
Welcome to the forum! I'm a 71 year old gay white man; I've worked in education and social service, and have followed the discussions around various l...
As Tolstoy observed in Anna Karenina, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." It's difficult to predict which ...
A joke ribbing the NYT's biases: The world is going to end tomorrow. Wall street Journal's headline: World ends tomorrow; markets will be closed. New ...
Governments and corporations are worried about where the next generation of workers and consumers will come from, true enough. But most of the concern...
So, how does somebody who doesn't like being around children in the first place manage to have useful ideas about parenting? The nuclear family has ce...
There are good reasons for a hands-off approach to regulating parenting without taking the approach that children are aesthetic objects of the parents...
Which is the way it actually works for most people. I don't know what the stats are; the very limited anecdotal information I have is that home-school...
If we were going to regulate parenthood, we ought to be prepared to regulate courtship since parenthood frequently begins with wooing (whether or not ...
Your statement "antibiotics caused more deaths than the top 5 diseases..." sounds like hyperbole. Cite a couple of good sources for that. In his Nobel...
True: Science isn't "different". If human activity wasn't multi-generational, we would be operating below the level of our chimpanzee relatives, pan t...
Actually, the core technology of the cell phone is over 100 years old -- it's radio. Radio coupled with switching equipment. The smart phone is a comb...
The 1% does have some reason to fear the large working class and lumpen proles. It is smart of them to discourage hatred to delay the day they find th...
Yes. In order to prove determinism, we would need an account from the beginning of time down to the present. We don't, we won't, and therefore we can'...
Beer is gone, the fireworks are over, finally; everybody should be in bed because rest is important for clear thought. I was in bed, but then, DING wo...
Comments