Sisyphus

He wouldn't be a god in his universe. He would be the god of our universe. Just like I would be the god of any simulation I might program (which admittedly would be much, much, much less impressive). Engineers, I guess? Why anyone? Or: It's Daves all the way down.

In that account, what's a "soul?"

What I mean is, a clone is a different person. You can't force a clone to "carry on your goals" any more than you can force your natural child. So the question doesn't really make sense to me. As far as whether attempting it is "ethical," I would just say that the answer as to what is ethical is not different than if you were asking about your natural children.

I don't get it. How would you do that?

If you think breathing recycled air is gross, what about drinking recycled pee? The same water gets re-used over and over again in a cycle, so that glass of water from the tap is at least partly filtered dinosaur urine. And of course, all your other waste products get recycled, too. Welcome to an ecosystem.

I expect he'd say* something along the lines of having a revelatory experience, or "knowing in his heart," or whatever. Of course, that doesn't actually answer the question, since that sort of experience seems to be something that all religions have in common. Why believe one person over another? And if they can't all be right, then necessarily religious experiences can have causes other than Revelation of Truth. *I realize I'm putting words in his mouth and thus potentially creating a strawman, but it is what I've heard lots of people say in answer to that question, and it would save time to skip over the usual fallaciousness.

We can't "create something from nothing," therefore it is intellectually dishonest not to think that someone else did. Ok.

I agree that literally causing extinction seems very unlikely for an epidemic. Worst case scenario, quarantined pockets of uninfected wait for all the infected to die, thus wiping out the pathogen.

You guys consciously allocate individual neurons? Crap, I think I'm doing it wrong.

Oppenheimer was quoting the Bhagavad Gita when he said that.

I don't really understand the (quantum) mechanics of it, but the idea is that the photons are created just outside the event horizon.

As Klaynos just said, that light can't escape is only true inside the event horizon.

Short answer: no. Longer answer: What happens to you in your dreams can't physically hurt you. I know this because there's no mechanism for it, no record of it ever happening, and a lifetime of my own personal experience. I've had all sorts of things happen to me in dreams, including dying.* In fact, I've even dreamed about being a ghost. Yet I'm still here! At most, your emotional state in dreams might translate to increased heartrate, etc. So I suppose someone with a very weak heart might literally be "scared to death" by a dream, but even that would not be because they die in the dream. *Not realistic dying, of course, since that would be impossible. You can't experience death, because death is the end of experience.

What do you mean by a "prodigy?" Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Making a full clone would of course by unethical, and no different than keeping any person for the same purpose. I don't see any problem with cloned individual organs, or even most of a body (without a brain).

Well, people would just stop buying them if their practical exchange value dropped too low. (It's not clear whether this has in fact happened.) Merely increasing the "money supply" won't cause decrease in purchasing power. What would matter is the ratio of circulating credits to goods for sale, i.e. supply and demand.

It does sound like an efficient and fair way to give things away. As for the business model, third party descriptions claim you can buy credits (50 for $5), but I don't see that on the actual site, so I can't tell.

Because the book says it is.

I've actually been asking a lot of questions on Austrian economics-centered forums. Some answers I've found enlightening, some ridiculous. I think they're right (or at least "not wrong") about a lot of things, but there's also a strong current of choosing theoretical internal consistency over consistency with reality, making it inherently kind of an anti-science.

Well, the articles are sourced. But I don't really understand the objection. If it's a simple question that can be directly answered by looking up a certain article on Wikipedia, what is wrong with directing someone to that article?

It's amazing how many people whose minds this thought never crosses.

A single nuke is not enough to wipe out humanity, but nuclear war, for example by automatic response in kind between two nuclear powers, could.

Personally I don't think that's unacceptable. "Is Obama limiting nukes too much?" is reasonable. From FOX I would be expecting something more like "You Decide: Is Obama limiting Nukes because he's a Communist traitor?"

Nuclear weapons are at least a relatively narrow category. Intentionally sneezing on a doorknob when you have a cold is deploying a biological weapon, but that isn't a "weapon of mass destruction" unless it's a Martian doorknob.

I don't think it's ever been any nation's policy to avoid inflicting "extreme pain" in warfare. Getting shot hurts.

The only reason I see for chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons to be lumped together is that they're all kind of inherently imprecise and indiscriminate in their destruction. Of course, you could say the same thing about carpet bombing, or land mines.