Severian

Well your system clearly doesn't work. I suspect that is because you place severe restrictions on the immigrants which are bad enough to make them want to get around them.

I think that is more the issue (or should be). If they are illegal, they cannot register so they cannot pay tax. However, I think this is more of an argument for decriminalizing 'illegal' immigrants. If they were not just instantly deported they would pay tax and contribute to the society. For those who would disagree with this, I ask what do you actually have against the immigrants?

Why do you say that? I would have said that it does, because it collapses it into a particular eigenstate. One could of course argue that it is not changed until it is measured, but the distinction is not testable, so non-scientific.

I think you could get in serious trouble claiming degrees and affiliations of places that actually exist. But I don't think you would have a problem if youused a ficticious institute. And there is nothing to stop you booking flights as Dr Silkworm (although I don't think it makes you more likely to be upgraded).

The LHC should answer this question much sooner.

Wow! You are right..... it is a crazy thought.

Is that the next state west of Idaho?

So what is your objection to renormalization?

Of course it is factual. That is the point. Your moral distinction between creatures is also factual. And you also do not have an 'explanation' of why your distinctions have any moral standing. You just claim that they do. For example, you would say that a cow has fewer 'interests' than a human and therefore is worth less than a human, but you have not justified why 'interests' constitute a viable metric of worth. You haven't even properly defined 'interests' - for example, it seems that you would not count a plant's interest in photosynthesis as an interest of moral significance. Again, I agree that my definitions are abritrary, but I never claimed that they were not. You did, but yours are just as arbitrary because they are based on unproven arbitrary axioms. The appeal to anti-racism is a straw man, since the suggested criterion of interbreeding clearly eliminates your racist scenario. In fact, I find your position against arbitrariness rather amusing, because it has logical consequences which I imagine you would be dead against. The only way one can come up with a non-arbitrary moral code is to derive it from physical law. So, if for example, a law of physics logically led to a moral conclusion, then it would not be arbitrary. I imagine you would not be happy defining this as morality though. Alternatively, a non-arbitrary moral code could derive from a divine entity, ie. God. Although people may disagree what God's decree on morality was, the actual morality handed down from God would be fixed and therefore not arbitrary. One could then of course argue whether one wishes to define this decree as 'morality', and I suppose the supposition that it is is just as arbitrary in itself.

I diagree with this. The first objection is clearly bogus. Just because we may disagree about the term we use to describe something does not mean that it cannot be used as a moral basis. Secondly 'plausibiliy' is a matter of personal opinion, so it cannot be used in this way. DNA seems a rather good way to judge species in my opinion, although I would rather use phenotype rather than genotype. But then all we need do is define it! The biological definition of ability to breed seems fine to me, although one must of course extend 'breeding' to artificial means (eg. a woman doesn't stop being human if she has a hysterectomy), and a child with Down's is still human even though they will never have off-spring. Why is this insuficient information for you to make moral decisions?

I must confess, I didn't like living in Germany at all. I found it very unfriendly, socially conservative, dull, inconvenient and agonizingly beaurocratic. [but of course, that is just my opinion.]

If someone thinks that it is OK to kill black people because of their race, then obviously I am going to disagree with their moral position. However, I still recognise that it is a moral position, and as such cannot be argued against on purely logic grounds. The reason that I condemn it is because it is in opposition to my moral position. I never said that it was. But it is certainly the view of many on this forum that morality is not 'real' and is simply a behavioural affectation left over from the evolutionary process. I personally don't believe this, but it is a valid point of view (and you must ocassionally allow me to play to the audience). Absolutely! I have actually made this argument myself on these fora. The recognition that morality is purely an evolutionary artifact instantly removes any compunction for an individual to act morally, since the only evolutionary imperative for the individual is to pass on his or her genetic traits.

Sorry, I am being stupid. t'Hooft and Veltman proved renomalizability of Electroweak interactions, not QED. The renormalizability of QED was shown much earlier (by Schwinger?), which makes Feynman's statement even odder.

I don't see the point in this. Our meat is already grown.... in green fields wlaking on four legs. The traditional method of growing meat seems much more efficient to me.

A more interesting question might be 'what does light smell like?'.

I don't think it is strong enough. I am not sure you could clench your butt tightly enough to prevent your innards being sucked out into space.

I thought this was going to be a discussion of Bach...

Presumably you could have some sort of pressure valve fitted.

Boooom!

While you are dreaming, why not discover cold fusion while you are at it?

Exactly! I think they should ban ugly people from the prom too. We need to maintain standards.