lemur

Hugh Heffner said that sex cannot be an addiction, only an obsession. Is he an expert or just extremely biased by his position in the sex-economy? Imo, addiction is nothing more than habit-formation and dependency that develops. People are addicted to their jobs, money, families, personality traits, etc. Take away any of these things or change use-patterns and people will experience withdrawal symptoms. Humans are habit-forming animals so I think addiction is a natural (over)extension of human behavior. I think it is a byproduct of the highly-evolved ability humans have developed to control their access to the things they need and want. I don't think Tiger Woods' sexual behavior is particularly more of an addiction than many other people's. It's just he happened to form sexual habits that are regarded as deviant/taboo by others. If his sexual addiction had remained fixated on his wife, he would probably have never gotten the opportunity to get it under control, as many people who are married or in otherwise closed situations won't. Do a cultural analysis of the relationship between sex and secrecy and I think you'll find that rule #1 for most sexual behavior, including what occurs in marriage, is "don't ask don't tell." Another way to put it is that many people live under the rule that as long as you keep your dirty-laundry private, there's no problem with it. In reality, people can be suffering from terrible addictions, domination, exploitation, and other control-disorders in their (secret) private lives and they will never get power over the things that disempower them because their lives are enshrouded in the respect of privacy. This is not to say it is nice to have your privacy revoked against your will and 'outed' publicly, per se'. It's just a hard question about what to do when people are complicit in protecting their own detriment from "outside interference."

Yes, I know what displacement means. I see that you view aether as something that is displaced by matter but what about the other questions such as what either is, why/how it clings to matter that displaces it instead of floating away, whether it displaces itself or matter or not and why, etc. All you are really saying at the point is that aether is to matter what shadows are to light. The fact that objects block light doesn't prove that shade is somehow a type of substance that is displaced by light. That is just reification of zero-sum logic. You might as well be claiming that death is a substance that is displaced by life or that deceit is a substance displaced by truth. Any of these would make for potentially interesting (or dull) metaphysical discussions, as could the idea that matter and aether are polar-opposites in physical interactions, but to make it an interesting scientific discussion you need to put forth some kind of falsifiable claims or mechanics that are testable by observation or at least empirical/mechanical logic. What does your aether do and how does it work? Displacement in and of itself is insufficient as a basis for anything except a metaphysical assertion that zero-sum logic is innate in nature.

I should have been more specific. What I meant was which came first, atoms or clouds, with empty space in between clouds of varying density? In other words, did density-heterogeneity result from the interactions of atoms and gravity or was it something occurring simultaneously with the formation of atoms?

In big bang theory, is it thought that the universe was homogenous until a certain point in history? If not, why not and if so, at what point did it begin differentiating into different levels of density and why?

What's odd about this to me is that the cloud began as a more or less homogenized array of particles and then as it condenses under its own gravity, it reaches a point where it begins fusing, which generates a separation between the part of the cloud held together as a (proto)star and the part that dissipates due to the energy being radiated. It seems like there should be some relationship between Jeans length and the portion of a condensing cloud that doesn't get blown away when fusion begins. Is there?

Unless a dyson sphere has been built by that time that harnesses so much of the sun's power that Earth's exposure to solar energy is sufficiently mitigated.

So do you view aether as a force-field type thing and if so why does density cause it to be displaced from matter? If it is so connected to the existence of matter, then there would have to be some property of matter that creates aether and its displacement, no?

Really, it is unfortunate that in order for a government to fund expensive science and technology developments it is necessary to extract so much extra money out of the economy. To the extent that economic growth pollutes Earth and uses up its resources faster, it would be a shame if getting to Mars destroys Earth in the process.

The reason why democracy and freedom emerge as an impetus for war is that so many other wars have established cultures and relationships of domination that repress democracy and freedom. So once people start fighting against domination and oppression itself, the resistance to the rebellion involves pursuing previous and new forms of domination and oppression and repressing the intent and will to seek democracy and freedom. If this is the case, then regulation of torture or other techniques of warfare are just another part of the struggle. Either people are wanting to use regulation to assert authoritarian domination or they are using it to attack torture and other techniques as themselves instruments of domination. But if you view war as having the purpose of winning and dominating others to subjugate them to authoritarian rule, that promotes different methods than if you view war as resistance against domination and authoritarianism. In one case the goal is to subjugate and in the other to liberate. When people are robots driven by terrifying propaganda, are their ways of liberating them from fear that don't involve exposing them to torturous levels of psychological exposure to the thing(s) they've been programmed to fear?

Obviously these are very deep-rooted desires; but does that mean it is good to allow and even promote them to run wild unchecked no matter the consequences for the users themselves or anyone else? Regulating things isn't about uniformly treating everything from cheese to prostitution as either bad or ok. It's about looking at the specific causes and effects for individuals and deciding if it makes sense to intervene in some way and how. Sex is obviously a natural desire - and drugs may also fulfil natural desires, which is the cause of their popularity. Still, when you look at what happens to people whose lives become overwhelmed with sex or drug use, do you really think it's a positive lifestyle? Do you think there is not some other way of life that could leave people happier and healthier if they had access to whatever it is that is preventing them from achieving more constructive lives? Or do you think it's just that some people come from good families and others don't and are therefore doomed to a life of fixes and addictions? If you loved a person, why would you refuse them sex unless they gave you something? If you loved yourself, why would you make yourself have sex when you didn't want to to get something in return? If a person and their spouse play with sex in a prostitution-like way because they find it an erotic game to do so, that's something else entirely. But there is something to be said for two people loving each other enough to be legitimately concerned for each other's feelings enough to avoid exploiting the other person to their own benefit and the spouse's detriment. If the family budget would be better off by foregoing new shoes, a woman would want to do so and she would also not want to deprive her husband to his detriment. I think there's a reason the marriage vows include "for richer and for poorer." I.e. love is not about how well a person can provide for you or take care of you. It's about working together to achieve common goals and for each other's benefit as individuals. When the individual or common goals become detrimental at the individual level for whatever reason, you have to question if there's love involved and, if so, how - imo.

A global culture seems to have evolved in which the primary response to economic recession is to protect national citizens by restricting migration allowances if necessary. Presumably this has a traditionalizing and territorializing effect by reinforcing the culture that regions are primarily closed populations with common cultural traditions, etc. (national culturalism). The question is what implications this culture has for science. Internet allows unrestricted point-to-point communications globally, so people can still communicate and collaborate in that way despite regional separation, but do you think it is generally detrimental for science to face a global culture of rising nationalist separatism in response to recession or can science function fine between fences?

When people suggest legalizing and taxing drugs and prostitution, I wonder if they think about what it means to have an economy where the motivation to work is to be able to afford to feed addictions like sex and drugs. It's practically the same as having an economy of slave labor and coming up with ways to make the slaves happy without raising their awareness of their condition of servitude, their right to self-determine their own free existence etc. Instead, you just allow them to spend all their money on getting the fixes that get them through another week of miserable work. I'm not saying that this doesn't already occur through other kinds of legal "comforts" that people spend their money on to divert them from their miseries, but I just think there's something to be said for doing something about that culture. If anything the government should be working to control more addictive comforts instead of liberalizing the ones that are already illegal and thus taboo for a great deal of people. The problem is that people are so desperate for comfort that they are practically at the point of revolution to gain access to their various fixes. So the question is what needs to change so that people won't feel such desperate desire for these diversionary pleasures. What does it take to give people access to happy productive lives where they have very little pain to soothe in the first place?

Could gravity be as relative as light and thus could a black hole be "gravity-dilated" due to relative velocity/gravity? Why does GR assume relative spacetime and absolute gravitational relations? Is that too abstract a question for this thread?

Or after someone comes up with a bargain method that no budget-hawk could refuse.

Yes, this is basically what I'm talking about regarding production/consumption efficiency and abundance and therefore decreasing GDP. However, there have been people who have insisted that abundance causes unprecedented profits, which is true in a material sense but not in a financial sense. depends what is meant by "value." it's not clear what you're referring to here. Again, it depends what you mean by "value." Why does value need to be produced, btw? Why can't people decide for themselves how to value goods?

The traditional argument against 'true indifference' is that humans are emotional beings and therefore incapable of true indifference. Therefore, indifference always has to be an expression of a desire for disconnection.

If you analyze human interactions in practice, I think you'll find that people express indifference as a variation of hate. Expressing active hate makes people to vulnerable to criticism so they substitute (passive) indifference in its place. The proverbial "whatever" becomes an expression of dismissal rather than neutral acceptance. Boundary-assertion replaces active aggression as the means of domination.

Pragmatically, I agree. The problem arises when you think about the moral message legalization sends out that prostitution is a legitimate service and means for people to attain sexual gratification. Would you prompt an unemployed daughter, sister, mother, or wife to work in prostitution? If not, why would you legalize it?

The logic of love and indifference being opposites is that love and hate can be viewed as two sides of the same coin, which both involve intensity. Both love and hate are "hot" emotions whereas "indifference" is cold. You could say that hate and indifference are hot and cold variants of negativity.

I suppose it would require a certain amount of density accruing prior to crossing the event horizon, or not even then for some reason? I don't really get time dilation but from what I know I would guess that a fusion reaction falling into infinite gravity/time-dilation would redshift to the point of disappearance as well. But still how gradually would that occur? Would there be a period of high energy emissions comparable to a regular star?

I meant that if you are knowingly entering into a temporary relationship for the purpose of self-gratification without concern for the other person after the relationship has been terminated, it doesn't seem much different than a business arrangement. I guess the problem is that it still hasn't been resolved what's unethical about prostitution in the first place. If two (or more) people want to do business by exchanging sex for something else, that's legitimate some on this forum would say. Nevertheless, feminists and others have criticized prostitution and other heterosexual relationships involving domination and exploitation in other ways as being ethically problematic, so the question is really whether there's even any reasonable basis for having any ethics regarding sexuality at all and, if so, what basis is there for claiming that some sexual/relationship practices are more ethical than others? Personally, the only logic I can see in calling breakups ethically problematic is that people get their feelings hurt. There are other issues when kids are involved too of course. The question is when the pain/damage of breakup is worth the reward. Obviously the person wanting to breakup is always going to view the reward as worth the cost, and they will always plea their case for breaking up at a level that overshadows the damage of doing so. People not only fight for freedom but they fight to legitimate it as well. Would you have a problem with it, then, if the government suddenly legalized polygamy and it became all but impossible for you to get married monogamously? Do you think there's any basis for arguing the ethical legitimacy of one form of relationship over another, such as when the new testament argues that celibacy is ideal, but monogamous marriage is the next best thing, and divorce can be forgiven but not sought be believers? Do you at least see that there is some logic in the ethical reasoning behind that? Likewise there is ethical reasoning in allowing polygamy as a means for men to take responsibility for their polyamory. Although moral reasoning can conflict, I don't see that as abandoning it to moral/cultural relativism. That's true but what if the person is just going along with it because that's the only way they can keep you? Isn't this a bit like a woman who accepts her bf beating her up because she thinks he will be nicer to her if she accepts the abuse? That's an extreme example, but the point is that even if someone lets you abuse them consensually, does that make it ethical to do so? But what if you break up with that person, as planned, marry your ideal spouse and then that person never meets theirs? Wouldn't you ever question whether they got the short end of the deal? Sexual secrecy is a topic I find very interesting. I find it terribly oppressive to have to keep something secret and it makes me feel like a criminal. There's a good song about this by Alanis Morissette, actually. I think this is actually the reason people search for the legitimacy and ethics of things, i.e. so that they do not have to hide their lives in the shadows. Don't Ask Don't Tell is about this same issue as well, isn't?

I think that's why Jesus became so unpopular with the pharises. I.e. by proclaiming all blasphemy forgivable except for blasphemy of the holy spirit, he was basically saying that people only had to obey their inner-voice to the extent they identified it as divine revelation. So people were no longer indentured to religious authorities and had no need to support them as such if they chose not to. Of course, Jesus told people to take care of the poor but he didn't protect the clergy from poverty, which imo has a lot to do with why he was persecuted, though I'm sure this is highly disputable.

So multiple protostars can form within a still-condensing cloud. Does that suggest that condensation of the protostar-pockets is increasing while the area between these pockets is expanding due to the heat? In other words, is density-differentiation overcoming entropy between the dense and less-dense areas of the cloud? Could you sum up what "Jeans length" means in a simple sentence or two? I opened your link about it but it was lots of math without any explanation I could directly follow. The concept sounds a little like that of a Schwarzschild radius but different. The interesting part is the entropy conflict going on, imo. If density increases gravity and strengthens the centripetal force on the particles (causing them to do more work as they condense), but heat must also be creating convection currents that result in fragmentation of the cloud into denser and less-dense parts, no?

I was thinking that as an atmosphere collapses into a black hole, it would have to condense to fusion-levels of pressure in the process. So I would assume that any black hole surrounded by a cloud of gas would appear as a star since the exterior of the black hole would be a fusion reaction collapsing into infinite time dilation.

Thanks for posting the link, Swansont. The point of the thread was to explore whether the effects of gravity could occur purely due to therodynamic processes. The part that confuses me about a condensing gas cloud is that it seems like the condensation/collapse would cause friction and release heat, but Iggy says that this need not result in heating of surrounding gas until star-ignition occurs. It seems like there should be a conflict between condensation-generating-heat and the heat causing gas to expand. I can see how in a star, gravity is strong enough to prevent the heat from expanding the gas despite its very high energy/temperature, but while a cloud is in the process of condensing, why doesn't the heat from the pressurizing core of the cloud cause the cloud to either re-expand or separate into core/atmosphere? Shouldn't there actually be phase-changes between the center and margins of the cloud?