Phi for All

Iirc, circumcision is the beginning of a process used to prepare worshippers to please the Hebrew god. It's done in infancy, but as an adult you'll be expected to keep all the laws (600+). If you break the laws, it would be as if you'd never been circumcised, throwing away all those years of righteousness. But it does sound like some regeneration is predicted, even though we know God hates amputees.

The "We should all go vegetarian" argument says we should morally stop eating meat because we don't have to, that we have the ability to choose. But at it's roots, the argument removes all choices, and narrows our options down to one. I dislike the "we should stop killing animals for food" argument in general. It's too emotional to be rational. And it seems to say that all the human children who will die of malnutrition will be worth it if we can just save the pigs and cows. I don't think you will ever overcome the economic reality that a chicken produces eggs at a declining rate as they age. At a certain point, they're worth more as meat than as layers. And it's intensely wasteful not to use a dead chicken. Animal husbandry and livestock production was a big part of what got us where we are. While it may not be sustainable depending on future populations, there are other alternatives that satisfy most objections and don't call for drastic changes in our basic diet, which is something that concerns me way more than the ethics of raising animals for food. The health argument seems subjective. Some don't tolerate red meat while others thrive on it. YMMV seems to be the best policy here. Ask your doctor. And if the focus in the argument now is on beef, then education is the first step. If another red meat alternative can be offered, it will help a great deal. Most of the pushback on the vegetarian argument is because it's all about denial of something ingrained into our society. I could eat a goatburger if you give me enough good reasons to buy it, but you will never sell me a something-not-meat-because-we've-banned-meat burger. That's not the way the market works.

Thanks for that. I tried looking up how much weight an airbag can handle, but that leads me off into a different kind of airbag, one used for big truck suspension. I wouldn't think a standard auto airbag would be rated to help someone survive a crash at 190mph. I'm probably wrong, but isn't there going to be a point where you're just going too fast for the materials and process to save your life?

This is a great attitude to have. Most ideas don't work out, that's why we discuss them. And you didn't "lose" anything. You gained understanding. And you're handling having your idea turned inside out very well, which means you aren't irritating anyone. It's only irritating when people insist they're right after ten people show them why they're wrong.

I was picturing an automatic system, triggered by collision like any airbag. In this event, the pilot would either be dead or would have enough on his plate to worry about without adding another crucial step. But now you should be able to figure out what kind of forces you're dealing with. Calculate a free fall from 5000 feet and see if an airbag would let you survive. Is the airbag part of the seat, what parts detach with you, how much extra weight goes into the "balloon"? Factor all that in and see if the weight and the cost are less than a parachute. I flashed on an old George Carlin joke (adapted for the thread): "My airbags and I got ejected from the exploding airplane, and I wound up in the Mayo Clinic. The doctor said it was a hell of a bounce!"

A vegetarian future, going by the title. I'm just saying that I don't see humans giving up omnivore behavior if we're not forced to by decree and/or circumstance. The fact that we need things a strict vegetarian diet doesn't have, coupled with efforts to grow in vitro meat to remove any ethical concerns, leads me to think it's really not going to be a big issue in the future. I hope, in the future, The Science Channel and The Food Network get together and make cultured meat that's good for us and tastes delicious.

I used "ever" purposefully, in reference to ad hominems. The fallacy attempts to discredit the person who has the idea in order to discredit the idea. To me at least, the implication is that this person's idea HAS to be moronic because the person is a moron. But you're right, it's another reason the argument as a whole is fallacious, it's applied too generally. But if we treat people and their ideas as inseparable, don't we end up like every other site that lets members "call them as they see them"? I think our approach still ends up with a lot of worthless chatter about abuse and harsh realities, but how much worse would it be if we stopped making people check their flamethrowers at the door? And why should I need to consider the person at all when I'm thinking about their idea? Aren't I supposed to filter out extraneous bias as much as possible? And since I can't truly know about that person while I'm discussing their ideas over the internet, why is it an important parameter? I would hope that we can all raise our personal thresholds a bit, and perhaps staff can be more vigilant in helping difficult members move along before it becomes reasonable to call them morons. I consider someone's reasoning to be part of the idea process, and so it's fair game for a rigorous treatment as well. How you arrived at a ridiculous idea is often what made it ridiculous in the first place. We know there is a place for ridicule, from other threads on the topic, as long as it implies nothing personal.

Am I still conscious after having been ejected at 30,000 feet? Can I push the button? If they offer me a choice like they used to with the meal, I'll take the parachute for mid-air departures. Less bouncing. A couple hundred small tanks of it would be. What's the average speed on take-off and landing? Would a standard airbag handle those speeds?

Because desire isn't just about efficiency. Meat tastes great. And it has vitamins I can't get elsewhere. All the B12 they add back into vegetarian products comes from animals at some point.

Sorry, you think what can be useful? Calling an idea moronic, or calling it ridiculous (or something else along those lines)? I certainly don't have any problems calling an idea ridiculous, flawed, untenable, irrational, or any other word I can back up with supportive evidence. But I can never show that a person is a moron given our limited interaction here. It shouldn't ever be attempted or even implied. Do we give anything meaningful up if we choose not to use words that cast aspersions on the person who has an idea? Does it harm or strengthen your position to describe an idea as "ridiculous" rather than "idiotic"?

If the airlines are going to spend that kind of money on safety, I'd rather it be spent preventing situations where you'd need an airbag.

! Moderator Note We'll allow current member responses ONLY. Anyone who joins to respond to this request with spam will be banned.

Cultured meat development removes most of my concerns about forcing the human population of Earth to give up meat.

What the staff filters for are ad hominem attacks, the kind that try to imply that not only is the idea bad, but the person who had it can't be trusted to ever have a good idea. Telling someone they've evaded a question doesn't come close to implying that. It's not an attack on the person. I think of the word "disparage", i.e., regarding something as having little worth. We can disparage ideas, but shouldn't disparage people. We're certainly affected by this perspective, but I'm really just talking about a few words that straddle the border of what we here at SFN define as personal attacks. I'm not concerned with people's feelings so much as I am with creating an environment conducive to exploration and learning through discussion. I want people to know that we're rigorous in our approach, but they hopefully won't get torn apart personally along with their ideas.

The phrase itself seems to demand more trustworthiness than is warranted. "I call them like I see them" implies that what you "see" is always accurate. Just like being "natural" or "organic" doesn't automatically mean "better", I don't think it's right to treat anyone who says "I call them like I see them" like a professional umpire.

But I'm even more worried about making blanket assumptions based on "I call them as I see them". It's a horribly subjective litmus test masquerading as common man-common sense. Everyone who tells you he calls them as he sees them expects you to take that to the bank, and those checks bounce often and hard. The "way you see them" is historically inaccurate and distorted by all kinds of biases. And dressing non-provocatively isn't dressing things up in pretense. It's just choosing not to focus on unnecessary aspects of the situation.

See, this is what threw me off, made me think you were mixing scientific and religious methodologies. So, if you scientifically don't believe in god(s), and you know there are reality-based explanations for every phenomena, and any beliefs based on faith are going to be completely subjective and therefore worthless for the purposes of a universal reason that god's exists, I guess I'm not sure why you want to talk about them. Do you think someone could give you a non-scientific reason to believe in god(s)? Sorry if I'm just being dense here, but you seem to be setting up the same circular argument that a religious person does. You need a reason why before you'll believe, but you start with the premise that there is no reason why, so you go in futile circles. How is this substantially different from, "I believe in God because the Bible says He's real, and God wrote the Bible so it must be true"? Whatever your personal beliefs aside, I think asking why there would be a god(s) is even worse than trying to justify Its existence. Over 9000 sects of Christianity and they can't agree on the how, much less the why.

I agree the whole sphere is implausible. It would need to start out as a ring anyway. We could grab asteroids of the right size and makeup, and send them moving to where we need them. Drones can convert the raw materials into a working unit that couples with the rest of the ring by the time it eventually gets there. Hey, remember that in this scenario we have the technology to go scoop H from the sun. We're friggin' awesome, dude.

But here at SFN, at least, I think we always want to preserve the difference between attacking the idea and attacking the person who had it. Something tells me we gain a lot by adhering to this, IF we can give up our urge to knock the person into the mud along with their idea. No matter how willfully ignorant that person is being. This is why I think the personal labels are misleading and incendiary. I stole a piece of candy when I was eight, does that make me a thief? Maybe momentarily I was. But even if having a moronic idea momentarily makes me a moron, it seems unproductive to attempt argue against a temporary situation. The idea will still be moronic long after I personally have come to my senses.

No. The only assumption here is the definitions of how and why. You're mixing science, philosophy, and religion here, and I think it's important that you maintain a distinction between a reasoned and rational explanation for a particular phenomenon, and a guess as to the ultimate purpose of that phenomenon. Right now, you're using how and why interchangeably. It makes things confusing. Do you hear what I'm saying? If you don't take this analogy too far, it's like cleaning something dirty. How you clean it is completely different from why you clean it. Science looks for the best HOW to clean things, religion and philosophy looks for the reasons WHY we clean. Does that make sense?

I'm still partial to just using it as is. If you have a really big radiating furnace of energy, you should huddle around it and keep warm. How about a Dyson Sphere?

One of the rules we've tried to uphold here at SFN is the "No personal attacks" rule. We want people to feel free to discuss ideas here without fear of being judged personally by them. The consensus has always been that it's certainly possible to have a bad idea without being a bad person. Still, it's difficult to ignore the personal angle when certain words are used. If I use the word "moronic" to describe your idea (hopefully with deeper reasoning and supportive evidence), am I just saying that the idea is stupid and lacks good judgement, or am I saying that's an idea only a moron would have? Same thing with idiotic. Are these words inherently personal? The real goal here is meaningful conversation, not winning points or putting people down. I really don't like censorship, but I don't like using words poorly either. I don't like using sexual terminology for negative epithets. I don't like using "retarded" when it's not in the context of actual mental retardation. So what do you think? Can we say an idea is moronic/idiotic without implying it came from a moron/idiot?

But you aren't really asking "why" the sun goes away at night. You're asking for an explanation of the mechanism, and that's a "how" question. "Why" asks for the reason behind the mechanism, and we just can't know that, or if there even is one. Do you really believe that? Why there could be a god: The universe needs a powerful being to oversee its functions and make it look completely natural and ungoverned to intelligent observers so that a non-intuitive goal or state can be reached. How there could be a god: An extremely deep understanding of the most complex physical laws of the universe allows a being or species to develop abilities that would appear godlike to observers. I don't think you can conflate the two at all. This is not nitpicking.

OK, unless the thief is someone close to you. Don't you think it should be harder to forgive someone when that means you'll continue the relationship? You'll at least need to establish new parameters for trust, or does forgiveness mean you go back to trusting them the same way as before? Your best friend steals your grandmother's wedding ring, the one you'd hoped to give to your prospective bride when you meet her. He sells it but you find out. He didn't realize how much it meant to you, he's never done anything like this before, he can't get the ring back but he promises to make it up to you somehow. You decide to forgive him. How much? What changes, if any, will there be to your relationship? Does he need to fulfill on his payback promise before you completely forgive him, or is that qualifying an absolute? Can you forgive a little, or is all forgiveness complete? I use karma for me alone, since it's defined by what I think is important. Someone else could toss a bag of trash out the window and feel like they did a good thing by cleaning up their car. Karma, for me, is like a mental filter. I set the parameters for things I want to see; a parking space without a shopping cart in the middle of it, a mother enjoying her time with her children, a pleasant nature hike that lets me step away from civilization briefly. So I see the opportunities to return my carts and not block someone else's parking. I can pause in my day to hold the door open for the now-smiling lady with the stroller and a couple other wee ones in tow. And I try to leave only footprints when I hike, but I'm a species representative too, so I look for trash to pack out also. There's nothing cosmic about karma to me, it's just lighting for the stage my life is playing on. Karma helps me mentally illuminate what I like to see.

Making things ridiculously complex always signals to me that there's some major agenda I'm not privy to. Like the tax structure; you hear everyone complain about it but it never changes, so some group wants it to stay that way. Unnecessary complexity doesn't serve the People, it's serves the Per$on$. I think we're at a tipping point in the argument between the uber-wealthy and the rest of us in the US. If we can avoid the "class-war" red-herring and focus on reform that takes more People into account, I think we can show how stripping the parasites off our health system will make us physically and economically healthier. It's (not) funny, but in a lot of ways, the US has regressed in medicine, and have taken the practice of leeching to new heights.