YaDinghus

We take morality exams every day, they're just not in written form. It's called life in a society. As @Ten oz and I elaborated in our previous posts, what makes us feel secure is relative, and there is also a personal moral relativism (not to be confused with moral relativism as a standalone concept). A free society has a greater bandwidth of morally acceptable behavior than a less free one, and I would spuriously claim at this point that this is a bijective relationship. From what you write it seems to me that your idea of Utopia is one of a moral quality, with a high standard for its citizens, but also a very narrow bandwidth of acceptable behavior. My idea of Utopia is one of a large bandwidth of acceptable behavior, limited only by the criterium of doing no harm by design of intention (which means to me that if someone explicitly asks to be harmed and someone is willing to oblige, there is no foul)

They were in danger of losing part of their privilege over other humans who differed from them in a totally superficial manner, and their entire economic system was built on this privilege. We would usually just say 'deal wit it and pick your own damn cotton' but they thought it was worth fighting a war over not having to do any manual labour themselves... Anyway a lot of the discussion seems to be heading toward 'Utopia' being a post-scarcity-society. Who here follows SFIA (Science and Futurism with Isaac Arthur) on youtube? He has a nice series of videos on that particular topic

There is a slight chemical difference in the structure, but they are both C6H12O6. Glucose builds a ring with 6 links (one of them O) and one appendage(CH2OH), while fructose is a ring with 5 links (one of them again O) and two appendages (as above). But our cells can process fructose as well as glucose or galactose. It's the absorption in the colon that is problematic for some folks

Microbial pathogens are virtually impossible to get rid of completely in a space where biologicals lurk, so even the most advanced space aliens - assuming they're biological - would (have) to be familiar with the concept of vaccination. This is in fact a major resolution problem of Wells' "War of the Worlds" to my mind. Vaccination as a concept would even work of their immune systems worked radically different from ours, because exposure leads to death or tolerance, and so only the tolerant cells proliferate +1 because you gave another blow to the anti-vaxxers by bringing HG into this discussion ;-)

Eating Aliens isn't that far out there. If they're carbon based, there's a good chance that they store energy in a fashion that is compatible with our digestive system. If not ours, then some bacteria or funghi can certainly ferment it for us. Life has this incredible capacity of making use of chemical energy, and with photosynthesis also turn light into 'useful' chemical energy. Thing is, if we can eat them, they can eat us, too (maybe with some extra processing in case we/they are poisonous to them/us). The latter is the traditional scifi trope... I wouldn't however go around the galaxy eating alien intelligent life forms, of I had the means of travelling it decently fast. I would try and share in their cuisine if possible for cultural diplomacy reasons. But my basic assumption is that intelligence seeks out intelligence for the sake of communication and achieving even more fantastic intelligence

Even if future politicians remain inept at all other things above, they'll at least be technological natives :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D :-D Your point is however well taken

That might rein it in somewhat. And future politicians are bound to be less inept at technology, which is a big problem with todays lawmakers

Tbh I don't know. There arealready plenty of laws that can't be enforced practically, and I am not all too keen on addinganything to this list. My statement was primarily emotional

It should be illegal

I've been seeing it pop up in my feeds for about two weeks now, too. Dark Matter hype is worse thatn WoW xD

Science can examine faith. Faith doesn't examine

So, if there are sterile neutrinos, what other sterile matter is there?

I'm not sure it's even relevant here. Neutrinos are weird...

So their wave function isn't time symmetric. I don't know what exactly this implies, but I guess it's good to know...

Not sure that's an accurate statement. My understanding was that neutrino oscillations were the first evidence that the electron neutrinos had mass, and neutrino oscillations are not part of the standard model. I do know that the original prediction was that the neutrinos were massless, and observations to the contrary caused scientists at the time to consider a mechanism that gave them mass. I don't know if you would call the model prior to the massive neutrinos the standard model. Whatever the case. Something that popsci doesn't mention is that during its oscillations, Neutrinos gain and shed mass (ve are around 2 eV in rest mass while vm and vt are considerably more massive with 1.7 and 15.5 MeV). Sterile neutrinos, if this turns out to be true, should be even more massive, and therefore affected stronger by gravity, and thus keep them closer to other alottments of mass like galaxies. Also, neutrinos are a 'by-product' of fusion, and since fusion is happening all the time (as long as stars exist) this would imply that the ratio of dark/visible matter is growing, since visible matter is not increasing as far as we know

At least not in time for an update to be effective... To paraphrase what many religious conquerers have said:"Convert or die, M*****f**ker!"

+1. It's not like faith is broccoli. Broccoli is good for you whether you like it or not...

Dispelling fake news and propaganda is a lot of work, and people generally speaking don't want to put in that kind of work. It is mentally taxing and if you've been working all day (or night) in a physically or mentally taxing job, you want to relax. I'm quite aware that regular participants here are part of the minority that doesn't find this kind of work too taxing, recognizes the importance of this task and/or has a compulsion to analyze virtually everything. Also there is a 'infrastructure' of ideas and knowledge (a.k.a experience context) that this minority has built over the course of their lives and which is constantly being curated that helps them identify BS. I'm not saying the majority of people don't have experience context of any kind, but it is not as extensive and well curated in regards of dispelling propaganda and fake news. I also happen to believe that this is the reason why (right-wing) populism is flourishing now; it offers easy answers that sound good at first glance, and the majority of people don't want to dig deeper. What can be done? How many people have learned math because their teacher told them it would be important later in life? So how many young people will pay attention when their teachers tell them that its important to learn history, philosophy and follow politics? Serious journalism is at a disadvantage because they need to cite sources that only a minority of people check, while the majority will either believe them or not, with fake news trolls using quite sophisticated rhethorical tactics at times to confuse their audiences. 'Real' journalists need to be independent, and private funding of their work is often used to discredit them in this regard, while fake news trolls take money from whomever to propagate their patron's agenda shamelessly (or do it free of charge for ideological purpouses). We could steep to the fake news trolls' level and employ their tactics. If hardly anyone cares about the sources, just don't bother about sources. Why not take money from private parties who share our views, and put that money to good use? Why hold standards that just slow down our output of stories and tie our hands? Because credibility is the last resource of consequence 'we' have, and we'd better hope that those with power care about who is really telling the truth.

My blood pressure is currently a bit low so my focus is also a bit off. At first I thought this was a question whether internet trolls were a fiction or not (lolz). I think it's sorta important to recognize the evolution the term Troll has made through the past decades. At first trolling was like a hazing practice, which are found in many other professions. A troll would make the noob do a nonsensical task or ask a lot of trick questions to confuse the noob. The next evolutionary step I am aware of is the cyberbullying. While hazing the noob is still fun and games, it rarely reaches the level of cruelty that cyberbullying does. It's only recently that I've become aware of Fake News being called trolling. What's the long term consequence of people falling for fake news on a regular basis? It will be more difficult to find intelligent conversation on the internet, because the people condictig this intelligent conversation will look for more effective ways to keep those out who don't appreciate it, or even disrupt it. There will be more (futile) calls from politicians to regulate the internet. The stupid people will get even stupider (a trucker recently told me to look up 'organic photons' on google and how microwave radiation interferes with them thereby disrupting physiological processes)

I actually get monetary offers to astroturf on Amazon. I think this shows how important internet retail has become. Amazon in particular is important because it offers its logistical infrastructure to its market participants. But while Amazon is in an open rivalry with other internet retail platforms, they also cooperate with the other retail platforms on the logistical infrastructure. In Germany for instance they rent Warehouses from Otto Group and use their Hermes delivery system; both retail platforms profit from this practise because it cuts down delivery costs

Hostage situation is pretty much a clear extortion. I guess the common theme with the second example regarding trump is that the party imposing the choice and thereby shifting responsibility is the party in power. I'm not sure how the Assange example fits into this. I don't know if Circumstantialization is a term, but the first party has either created or found themselves in circumstances where their actions are constrained to few alternatives. The party which they then burden with the choice, and the responsibility for the outcome of the dilemma both parties are facing, is thereby responsible for the outcome of the situation, but only to the extent that they are choosing between two dismal possibilities. The first party however is not exempt from the responsibility of the situation's resolution, because it was them that caused the problem in the first place. The fallacy would be that the party imposing the choice is not at least shared. I hope this is helpful. I can get quite incoherent when I'm ruminating

We're only human, after all...

I'm sorry, I must have miscommunicated. I posted this parallel that has sprung to my mind to illustrate the utter absurdity of the current immigration situation

Reading this I had to think of how medieval people were afraid of Wizards and Witches summoning demons to bring the plague, foul their crops and cripple their cattle, and the church used the inquisition to reinforce these notions and keep them fearful way to better control them.

If your reasoning isn't understood by anyone, there are 2 possible explanations. Either you are a genius and everyone is stupid, or you are a moron. I'm not going to ask you what you think is more likely. You don't seem to grasp the concept of rhetorical questions.