Peterkin

And you know who the villains and innocents are and how justice ought to e meted out. Certitude and rectitude of Elijaic proportions.

Happy reading!

I can't. I don't have an emotionless, non-political version of events. "The truth is out there." It's as accessible to you as to me. I would never set myself up as your teacher of history or world power dynamics. Here is a handy starting point https://teachmideast.org/articles/timeline-of-the-middle-east-in-the-20th-century/

If you find your way back, can you tell us what you discovered?

I detect a certain semantic dissonance in that paragraph. 1. Never have I denied you the right or opportunity to express your views - nor, for that matter been in any position to put any obstacle to your expressions of anything you like. I did not delete, censor, edit, obscure or complain to a higher authority about any of your five and half thousand posts. That, to me suggests that you have been expressing quite freely. 2. Explaining why you have failed to change my mind, explaining as many ways as I could think of, as many times as you asked the same questions, over and over, is not an accusation. 3. In any case, nobody can accuse you of doing in a debate exactly what a debate is designed to do: state your position in such a way as to convince your interlocutor and audience. That we have both failed is a result of different world-views, not of anybody being denied self-expression.

None that I can see. Sure. You don't react to everything all the time; you only make a decision when a decision is required. If no new information is coming in, the will is in "stand by" mode until a decision is required again. This doesn't mean you're in suspended animation or unaware: most of an organism's activities, most of the time, takes place without conscious control. The free will is called in only when an intelligent decision is required. Of course, there is no state in which a living organism does not receive some external information, but it doesn't have to act on all of that information. You might, then, imagine a non-conscious entity - a rock or an item of furniture - also being bombarded by information from the outside, but physically incapable of action. You might posit that they react to to the outside environment by changing... It seems rather fanciful to me, and redundant, applying gold leaf to a lily or a putting an evening gown on a butterfly. Of course. But a bacterium is already quite sophisticated organism. What about the stone and the spoon? Even if they are conscious, they don't have the equipment with which to express a preference or make a decision, let alone take action. That's why they're so easy to kill.

There is no such thing. Police are ranked hierarchies: somebody gives the order. It's you, or whoever is in charge, who determines the status of "the situation". In the kind of situation where someone who is morally opposed to torture, resorts to torture, his personal perspective is very much in play, whether he's aware of it, whether he admits it or not. This is why I said "your children are in danger" and "a thousand strangers are in danger" are two very different questions. In your code of ethics, not a universal one. There is no universal code of ethics, just a variety of philosophies, religious tenets, constitutions, legal codes, cultural norms and internal guidance systems. We can each talk about our own perspective; I doubt we're in such a position, or relationship, as to influence one another's. Leaders, reformers, prophets and calamities do that for nations; teachers and role-models do it for individuals.

Mr. Spock does not live in a modern westernized society. He would be utterly bewildered by the layers of hypocrisy, hyperbole, obfuscation and double-think that runs through our political and legal systems.

Consider. You say numbers are not important bu the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, but numbers don't count. I know he thinks the same: that he would be willing to kill some of my people to save his people - however many of each. He was prepared to risk getting caught, tortured and killed, for what he considered the greater or greatest good.... He thinks like you. If i were on the other side of this never-ending war, it could be you I'd have to consider torturing for information. At least I wouldn't forget our common humanity, or feel virtuous. I told you my position. It has nothing to do with despots or any of the other imaginary characters you set up as villains. Most of the many thousand people who are, and have ever been, tortured in the relatively short history of civilization were not and are not cartoon villains. We most emphatically do not accept any such nonsensical lie!

Not me! The boy you're about to torture because he won't tell you where the bomb is. You keep telling me that. Might as well say "Don't be so short." or "Don't be so pedantic." Old leopards may have faded spots, but they don't turn to stripes. Hah! They'll turn on you in heartbeat. "You tortured a prisoner?!!! Broke the law! How could you!!?" If you had saved the child, they'd pretend they didn't notice the little matter of torture, because it would look bad on them prosecute the hero of the moment. If you fail, you're road-kill. I know that; you've only said like 35 times. What's it got to do with me or my decisions? So? was not about your concern, it was a reply to this:

That's what the terrorist/patriot said, sir. Might, if I were desperate/frightened/enraged enough. If I did, it would be an emotional reaction, not a rational decision. As I also reiterated several times: I don't know my own capacity for evil or the limit of my self-control, but I do know that, if pushed beyond that limit, I would know that what I did was wrong. I might apologize for it; I might perform some act of atonement. I would not pretend it was good, just because I couldn't find a better way to get what I needed. And even more, if I did do it and failed. So?

It's not particularly helpful, in the current political climate, for entertainment media to embrace all forms of torture, for all kinds of purposes, so full-throatedly. It's contributed, I think, to the general attitude: "Meh, they're scum. Whatever works."

Why does the universe need our puny little questions (What if I get caught? How many calories in that cupcake? Does this baby need changing? What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?) to learn about itself? If it was one big mind, it would already know. If it's made up of zillions of little tiny mind, such as a spoon, bacterium or asteroid might have, wouldn't they all be asking their individual puny little questions? I suppose all of those input as a vast cacophony of answered and unanswered questions could inform the universe about its own multifoliate outward appearance. OTOH, I wonder about the difference between mind and mind-like aspect. It seem to me the latter is more akin to a soul than a reasoning, questioning mind. I'm okay with a universal soul; can provisionally accept monads of consciousness (not the sleeping animals or hive-minds) - but not one big computer whose ultimate task is to arrive at either 42 or "Let there be Light!"

Is this last post connected in some way to the first two? Or did you post in the wrong topic?

Tell that to the victims of US airstrikes, CIA training camps for terrorists, arms exports to warring factions, and various intrusions in to Muslim countries since 1947. If you're so keen on the value of numbers, compare those. Violence begets violence; a culture of violence condones torture.

Long before birth, at about 6 weeks after conception, the foetal brain is receiving input and making neural connections, learning to operate body parts, interpret sensations and store memories. By the time it is able to formulate a question, the brain already has a great deal of information to ask questions about. No. It's main function is to stay alive. That's the goal toward which the most important questions are directed. Once survival is assured for a reasonably foreseeable period, it has the leisure to pursue secondary, then peripheral and finally frivolous lines of inquiry. Whether so or nay, there can never be a final goal - only the next goal. The only application I can see for such a technology is to achieve a specific, limited result. Like harnessing a team of 6 or 8 horses to a particularly heavy wagon, I can imagine linking a team of human brains to control machines that carry out some very complicated task far away - like building a space ship on an orbiting platform, while the human "construction crew" remains safely (and cheaply) on Earth. Kind of like Borg, except they all return to Unimatrix Zero at the end of their shift.

Yes, I think it was.

The extra plastic waste is certainly a concern. Not just from the protective gear, but from all sources. Fewer people going to work downtown, while bad for the coffee and street food vendors, also reduces the garbage from takeout food. At the same time, however, people are ordering takeout food at home, and ordering groceries and prepackaged foods online. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8166460/ In the first few months, our supermarkets gave out plastic shopping bags instead of letting reusable into the store. When it became widely known that the risk of transmission on surfaces is minimal, they went back to encouraging customers to bring their bags and pack their own groceries (a great improvement, to my mind; both safer and less wasteful). Other changes, like air quality, have already been mentioned. Here is a good overview What we don't know, and won't for a long time, is how the pattern of work, transport, industry, domestic arrangements and social activity will be affected in the long term. ATM, rents are out of control in North America https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-05/tenants-struggle-with-red-hot-u-s-rental-market and property prices are still increasing as well https://blog.remax.ca/canadian-housing-market-outlook/ So there will almost certainly be a building boom, with all its pollution and waste products. There will also be a major shift in the patterns of industry and transport. I'm hoping for more local production and small independent operations - especially in food and building material, but it's very far from clear how politics and disease will affect our decisions over the next couple of years.

Well, someone has to speak for the outsiders.

You never get rid of the memory of your transgressions. Nor does your society eradicate its wrongs by giving you a medal. What you put out into the world stays out there forever: your single act is incorporated into the collective actions, the collective conscience of your culture. If one such act is permitted in extenuating circumstances, it's a mere little stain on the social fabric. If one such act is celebrated, it becomes accessible in all circumstances deemed extenuating. If such acts are standard practice in a whole class of circumstances (i.e. national security) it becomes part of the social fabric. This was well explained on Page 1. Those are two very different questions.

Better limit your alcohol intake - not everyone on the turnpike is a donor.

In a heartbeat. There is nothing in my ethical code to prohibit causing pleasure. Indeed, if I could replace the pleasure all people like this "scum" derive from doing harm with a harmless battery-operated brain-tickler, I would do that, too. BTW, some chemical truth aids may be more effective than physical pain, with less residual damage - but ou can't count on them working, either. It's always a gamble.

*-------* done

From whom? For whom? How callously clueless does one need to be not to see how false that claim always has been for how many of their fellow creatures? If there is no god, who is handing out gifts of of life? You seem to have a restless army of ants in your ... bonnet... about dead people sitting around idle, but you never explain your objection to the idea, or what they ought to be doing instead. In this, too, you are mistaken.

No, just from cranks and soapbox orators - exactly the same way as science and philosophy. At the moment, it's mostly just you, but others come and go.