Sisyphus

Why?

No, it wasn't right. He's not a generic and indiscriminate gun control zealot. But the content of the guess wasn't the point, the point was the fact that you were guessing about something you could easily look up, and defensive about it. "How dare you ask me to base my opinion on fact" and whatnot. As they say, you're entitled to your own opinion, not your own facts.

Trouble is, the proportion of universes where you're immortal to universes where you aren't horribly maimed would be pretty high.

And what's that supposed to show me?

We're seeing the light from when they were much closer, yes. The light emitted "now" will never get here. They're not really "moving," though. Just getting farther away...

It seems to me that when a discussion turns into a debate is usually when it stops being productive. I'm not opposed to the idea if lots of people want it, but I have no interest in it myself.

Just to elaborate, I'm doubtful almost any incestuous marriage (where sex and/or romance is involved) would be emotionally healthy, but that's not my call. If it leads farther down a slippery slope towards expanding the legal definition of marriage to the point of meaninglessness: good.

You mean, what reason do you have to look something up rather than just assuming an answer? Some people like to base opinions on objective facts, when available.

I'd support it.

This argument seems to be more about the state recognition of marriage in general. Would it make sense to assume for the purposes of this discussion that it is beneficial, inasmuch as it is specifically about who to recognize and not whether to recognize? (Personally, I'm leaning towards the state getting out of the marriage business entirely, but I consider that a separate issue.)

More propaganda from the watermelon lobby.

No, we're not more evolved, because there's no such thing as "more evolved." And there is no "trunk" vs. "branches," it's just a split. And modern monkeys are about as different from our common ancestor as we are. However, there's no reason they "should" be. There's no reason different species can't change at different rates. Horseshoe crabs have changed very little in the last 450 million years, presumably because very few incremental changes have been especially useful to them, and the population has been large enough to even out most random drift.

"Quantum" = "magic" It works kind of the same way that radiation (or rather, "radiation") created all those superheroes in the 1950s and 60s.

Hyperbolic ad hominem and protestors furious for reasons they can't actually articulate are not limited to any particular ideology. That's true. These guys are particularly annoying, though, and calling it "9/12" sums it up pretty much perfectly. It's not about policy at all. It's about trying to recapture a feeling, the paranoia, bloolust, and unification behind right-wing populist rhetoric that we all remember from the weeks and months after 9/11/2001.

I said there wasn't any.

I think you should ponder this sentence. Lack of existence, by definition, can't suck. It seems you're asking for evidence for an afterlife. I would say there is none, but that of course depends on who you ask. There is no scientific evidence of such. Also, "another dimension" is not the same thing as "another place." Dimensions are things like height, width, depth.

None of this applies to a mixed economy, however. Because it isn't? Is that really what you believe, that all government programs are part of a secret plot to gradually embrace complete socialism?

"Turning into pure energy" doesn't mean anything. Energy is a property, not a substance. You can't be a "being of pure height" either. This is a common and annoying trope in soft sci fi, where "energy" usually means "glowy, wispy stuff." "Evolution" also has a specific definition in science which does not correspond to what you're talking about. Aside from that, what you're basically talking about is transhumanism, which a lot of people (including myself) believe is quite possible, though not yet to the degree you're asking about. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism

Surely the kinetic energy would be accelerating the Earth (or parts of it, since it isn't perfectly rigid). Otherwise you're violating conservation of momentum. Unless by "vibration of molecules" you mean a shock wave? You don't build up heat with static friction, though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desalination It is used. The problem is mostly just that it's so energy intensive and requires a lot of infrastructure, and that regions with shortages of clean, fresh water don't have the resources for it. It's used most extensively in the Middle East, where of course energy is cheap and water is scarce. "The world," of course, has no water shortage, per se. As you've noticed, most of the planet is covered with the stuff a few miles deep, it falls from the sky, and it's 100% recyclable.

It seems like pretty much any scifi that involves "teleporting" ends up raising those philosophical questions. Hell, even Star Trek does. Did Dennet imply it was his idea?

I don't think this is quite right. If your feet aren't moving, the force isn't being converted to heat energy. It's being transferred to the ground, essentially just making the system bigger. Instead of door-you maintaining the same center of mass, it's door-Earth.

"Majority will" is a default guiding principle but not the only one. We (and I'm talking specifically about the United States, but it applies in most countries) wouldn't need a Constitution if we went by simple majority rule all the time. (The Constitution itself needs quite a bit more than a simple national referendum to be altered.)

Just so you know, dr.syntax, this is an old thread. I've noticed you re-open a lot of old ones. This isn't against the rules, but you should be aware that the posters you're responding to probably won't read it or remember the conversation. The date and time of each post is given at the right of the blue bar at the top of each. But as long as it's open, I may as well respond to the notion that it's so much more of a problem than "a generation ago" with an appropriate quote:

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" is a pretty fair description of how most functional families work. That's not a political argument, just an observation to ponder. I would say, though, that prematurely declaring axioms of human nature is one way to describe the cause of much (most?) political strife. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged I don't buy the central axiom of your post or believe that you actually are as utterly unsympathetic as you claim to be, but that's agree to disagree territory. This sentence, however, just makes no sense to me. Why would it be in your self interest to cause productive workers to be unproductive? Adam Smith certainly wouldn't think so. It benefits you to artificially limit labor supply in your own line of work, but most definitely not overall, as it just makes everything more expensive (decreasing supply of everything without decreasing demand) and decreases real wealth.