• New Year's Eve celebrations
    ↪180 Proof
    Your traditions are as exciting as ours. The sequel was OK too.
  • African Americans still wearing Covid-19 masks.
    I'm not in the US, and I'm not black, but I never stopped wearing my mask, because the virus is not done with us yet. https://health-infobase.canada.ca/covid-19/current-situation.html#a1
    It is possible that the statistics came to the majority of the African-American population a bit later than it was spread in the northern states, but given the upsurge of infections in that population the beginning of the most recent wave, I think it's wise of them take the most obvious precautions.
  • Would you live out your life in a simulation?
    ↪Christoffer
    Absolute core meaning the same whether your presence in the world causes improvement or decline? Just marching down the entropy train is enough? OK.

    I would not, however, in good health in actual reality, choose a simulation over reality when I still have life left to live. I see it only as a continuation for when my physical body can no longer function and provide me life. — Christoffer

    Nor would I, as previously articulated. But fantasy beats all hell out of gasping and groaning at the center of a web of wires and tubes.
  • What is the way to deal with inequalities?
    In this case, I'd think the 'Life <-> Death' inequality may be the most fundamental inequality that we need to treat than any other inequality. — YiRu Li

    I don't see how that works. I mean, obviously, live people are more likely to succeed and reproduce than dead ones, but even the most successful will have to die sometime.
    Death seems to me the ultimate equality.
  • Would you live out your life in a simulation?
    I don't believe anyone could find joy in that other than for a brief moment. — Christoffer
    And yet people lose themselves to drug-induced euphoria, or role-playing video games. Not every life is purposeful and meaningful in reality.
  • I’m 40 years old this year, and I still don’t know what to do, whether I should continue to live/die
    But now I see what they mean when they say ignorance is bliss. — rossii

    Then I am grateful for my ignorance. Or my ability to compromise - whatever.
    I wish you could get over your impossible demands on life - it has so much good to offer those who accept it as it is, rather than as they imagine it should be.
  • Would you live out your life in a simulation?
    What about now? Would you consider even the third option? — hypericin

    No, it would be unkind and irresponsible. I still have commitments and unfinished projects.
  • Would you live out your life in a simulation?
    No, the alternative is not death. The alternative is living out the remainder of your life naturally. You will die in the simulation, when your physical body dies. — hypericin

    You never told me that! Or maybe you did and I forget: that happens a lot at my age. Ok, in that case, I'll enter the simulation when I'm declining in my terminal illness. A few weeks or months, being my best physical self in Utopia is still far better than my expected natural life.
  • Would you live out your life in a simulation?
    The main objection to me, and to some others here, is that you are condemning yourself to live in a solipsistic world. Why wouldn't that bother you? — hypericin

    Because the alternative is death. If I could opt for virtual experience of my own choosing, why would I prefer no experience of any kind at all?
  • There is No Such Thing as Freedom
    I don't see that the word "freedom" can have any meaning at all without presupposing an integral entity that is capable of being either free or not free. Enslavement to self is a semantic absurdity.
  • A Digital Physics Argument for the existence of God
    ↪Piers

    What for? If a proposition is neither proved nor disproved, it's nothing more than a supposition. It doesn't matter.
  • Would you live out your life in a simulation?
    Or is that just an inaccurate, cartoon version? — hypericin
    It's the one churches are selling. I don't believe any version of it, but millions of people apparently do. More cartoonish ones, even, involving wings and harps or brainless, powerless virgins.

    Everything left unsaid gets to be said. — hypericin
    As one has had parents, a sibling, a spouse and children, I can tell you that's one of the worst ideas, ever. Think of what you have had to hold back.

    Or, the benevolent deity provides a perfect simulacrum in these cases. — hypericin
    How does that differ from a computer simulation, where you can choose your cast, plot and setting?
    Maybe not as good as the real thing, but less painful for the deserving souls.
    Maybe, maybe, maybe.... I'd rather trust a computer than a god.

    I edited in a third option, what do you think? — hypericin

    You fixed the only thing anyone can object to. But I was fine was fine with the original.
  • Would you live out your life in a simulation?
    But Heaven is presumably a real place, importantly populated by other real entities, such as dead loved ones. You get to resume your real relationships with these people. — hypericin

    Maybe. Of course, nobody changes or achieves anything, so the relations, tearful reunion once over, are static and the whole exercise is pointless. Plus, they risk discovering which loved ones are missing, and a much bigger risk of themselves being denied admission. And that, after a lifetime of fear and self-abnegation. And yet they take all that in stride, so strong is the desire to continue.
    That's why I think losing oneself in forgetfulness is a deal-breaker for many.
    Just think how terrified we all are at the prospect of senility.
  • Would you live out your life in a simulation?
    Aren't we here for others too? Isn't life something about continuation of life? — ssu

    Suppose you've been here long enough and done all that. Life is not going to continue: you'll have to decline, suffer and die. But most of us don't like the idea of ceasing to exist. The possibility of continuing in some form is what all the afterlife and upload fantasies are about, but there is no pleasure in continuation if you lose your identity.
  • Would you live out your life in a simulation?
    How much would the artificiality and meaninglessness of your life bother you? — hypericin

    Having chosen it knowingly, the artificiality wouldn't bother me at all. I already don't think life has a "meaning". The idea of Heaven doesn't seem to bother Christians or Muslims, so why should a disembodied dream trouble an atheist?
  • Would you live out your life in a simulation?
    I'm old enough to contemplate non-existence on a daily basis.
    Offered an alternative of my choice, I'd certainly opt for my version of Utopia. But I would still like to remember everyone and everything I liked about this life.
  • A Digital Physics Argument for the existence of God
    Yes, there isn't. — Hallucinogen
  • A Normative Ethical Dilemma: The One's Who Walk Away from Omelas
    Your argument seems to be: we do something wrong that is similar, so why not just do more wrong? — Bob Ross

    Not at all: it was wrong in my book when the Incas did it, and it's wrong now.
    But it only ever appears as a "serious" ethical question in an environment untainted by by politics or economics, in a purely theoretical context, far from the participants' daily experience.
    Never, never as a practical question posed to those with any power to alter the situation.

    Afterthought: No, that's not true. It is asked in practical terms; executives and decision-makers are challenged from time to time. The standard result is an ad campaign about the company's 'ethical investments' or 'fair trade' product, but the power remains steeply tilted toward the owner/consumer nations, who continue to support whichever foreign dictators can keep their people meek and productive. Closer to home, we are aware how many are homeless, hungry and without adequate medical care; we know the conditions in which factory-farmed animals live ... but, but, but we cannot upset the The Holy Economy.
    We are simply not, collectively, willing to give up our comfort and convenience.
    We are a species of self-interested hypocrites,
    the best example of which is Christianity, wherein 2.5 billion people currently subscribe to the idea that's it's virtuous to accept the torture and sacrifice of one innocent for all of them to be forgiven sins they had not yet committed at the time of that sacrifice

    and I can't imagine that changing within the available time-frame.
  • A Normative Ethical Dilemma: The One's Who Walk Away from Omelas
    For those who don't know, "Those Who Walk Away from Omelas" depicts an almost utopian society but there's a catch...there's this child that has to live in perpetual filth, torment, and suffering in order to sustain their societal bliss: that's the price that has to be paid. — Bob Ross

    In reality, many societies used sacrifice, including numerous child sacrifices, to insure their continuing prosperity. In reality, our own society owes its prosperity, to a very large degree, on creating marginal or untenable conditions for peoples far away and by actively torturing or incidentally endangering helpless animals. We don't seem to object: just buy the coffee, the latest cellphone, performance-enhancing medication, the ivory carving, cheap shoes and beauty products. If the displaced people migrate to our borders, we incarcerate or shoot them. If the animals become rare, we make a fetish of eating their flesh, wearing their skin, mounting their heads on trophies.
    What's one kid, when we do 10,000 a day as a matter of routine?
    Why is Business as Usual an ethical question only when framed as a thought-experiments that costs nothing to engage?
  • What is the way to deal with inequalities?
    The meek are not necessarily the weak. — jgill

    And the bold are not necessarily strong.
    For rock climbing, you need physical strength and courage. For material success in the world, you need high self-regard and the will to seize opportunities.
  • What is the way to deal with inequalities?
    The Meek shall inherit the Earth — jgill

    what's left of it, once the Bold are done striving
  • What is the way to deal with inequalities?
    What makes inequality dramatically trigger a human's mind, to a level it's hard to get rid of it? — YiRu Li

    The selfish gene. In nature, animals that have some advantage over others of their species succeed at living longer and having more offspring than the others. This means that their [aggressive, ambitious] genes are passed on to more new members of the species. This is offset by the need to fit into a social group for the survival of those offspring, so that friendly and co-operative genes are also passed on. In humans, both traits are present and the notorious big brain serves both - not in the same proportion in each specimen. Everyone desires some advantage, some way to be better, smarter, faster, stronger, more talented, more charming or more beautiful than others of of our species. But we're not all willing to pay the same price or make the same amount of effort or take the same risks to achieve it.
  • What is the way to deal with inequalities?
    What is the way? — YiRu Li

    The acceptance and appreciation of individuality.
  • Fascista-Nazista creep?
    The whole idea of a free market with a glorious trickle down that elevates society. — Vaskane
    Yes, I've heard that one - it's a corker!
    Elevates society over what?

    Anyone can do it, they're just too complacent and timid to learn how. — Vaskane

    Sure, we've all heard that one, too. Not quite so funny. If only some of them could find a red paper clip.... and enough suckers who own things they don't want.

    Imagine how much more that's grown in the 10 years prior to that three years of 870% growth, total value is somewhere near the 5000% total lifetime growth. Unfortunately etrade only shows last 3 years max. — Vaskane

    Investment is lending; the other side of lending is debt. Most of it at compound interest, so the smallest borrowers have to 'produce more surplus' (which in reality means sell their time and labour cheaply, just to stay afloat, so that the lending classes don't have to work at all) Over the rise of a cycle, as more wealth accumulates at the top of the economic pyramid, individual citizens, business enterprises and nations all sink deeper and deeper into debt, until the crash - or "recession" or "readjustment"; depression or a war; more often a depression followed by a war, often on bogus grounds, wherein enough of a nation's assets are destroyed that rebuilding creates a whole new economy.
    Which is great, if you don't count all the people - mostly poor ones; the rich seem to come out of wars rather the better off than they go in - who suffer, sacrifice and die in the process.

    All that marvellous growth has brought us to the brink of global nuclear war, plague, economic, then political, then environmental collapse, and imminent extinction.

    Not an ideal I can admire.
  • Fascista-Nazista creep?
    ↪Vaskane

    I'm curious. What is 'true' capitalism and what is its 'ideal'?
  • Fascista-Nazista creep?
    No I certainly know it, don't get me wrong, it's not even true capitalism, but a pale reflection of an ideal that's heavily perverted and twisted towards those who regulate and produce. — Vaskane

    Twisted toward those who own and control, against those who produce.
    But this not unique to capitalist societies: it is the same in oligarchies, military dictatorships, so-called 'communist' dictatorships, monarchies and theocracies. All vertical societies are divided into bosses and servers, with several layers of facilitators in between.
  • Fascista-Nazista creep?
    So you proposed to limit everyone's access to wealth? — Vaskane

    That's an obvious start. Share the decision-making, share the labour and resources equitably; give everyone in the society respect and a chance to earn the esteem of others. It can't be that hard - primitive tribes do it all the time. But civilized societies can't seem even to conceive of such an arrangement: they're always organized in stacked order.

    There's a reason Im wealthier than my parents and it sure as shit has to do with the energy I spent to obtain that wealth. My house cost me 18x what my parents house cost them. Imagine locking in a house at 20k, then while you're paying it off the economy is paying you instead of 4000 a year, now it's paying 50k. And it still took my parents 30 fucking years to pay that off... What ever were they doing? Wasting away in nihilism. — Vaskane

    You're living in a dysfunctional economy and don't seem to know it. That's not surprising, when we're subjected to capitalist propaganda from the maternity ward onward.

    Any socialist uprising is directly caused by the abuse of wealth. — Vaskane

    Spontaneous uprisings are usually not about wealth at all, but about oppression. Once the society is stratified, fewer and fewer people exert more and more influence, wield more and more power. In order to maintain and expand their privilege, these 'upper classes' own and control more and more of the nation's wealth, demand more and more exertion, time and sacrifice from those below them, and when the exploited classes protest, more and more force is required to keep them in line: the pressure keeps building until the lowest classes erupt in violence.
  • Fascista-Nazista creep?
    Why is that? — Vaskane

    Innit obvious?
    In a horizontal society - where everyone has much the same wealth, political influence, opportunities, support and access to the law - problems can readily be seen and issues dealt-with before they become intractable. In a vertical, stratified society, pressure from above keeps building up until it has nowhere to vent but in an explosion. Hence the French and Russian revolutions.
    Even a three-year-old can spot when he's treated unfairly, and generally throws a tantrum. Trump - or some equivalent in other countries - gives them permission to cut loose, give in to their most primitive impulses. He doesn't need to be strong in fact; he can be a lardass of zero accomplishment: all he needs is the [borrowed] rhetoric of grievance. He is the human manifestation, the spark, of a collective tantrum. Once expressed, the madness does not subside until the mob has had its fill of lynching, looting and burning.
  • There is No Such Thing as Freedom
    There is no such thing as freedom — Piers

    Like other human conditions, there is no absolute freedom - only relative freedoms from various possible kinds of bondage, confinement, restraint, constraint, limitation and disability.

    because everybody is enslaved to either ego or conscience. — Piers

    This does not follow. People may be enslaved from outside, by other people, circumstances or inside by personal commitments, as well as addictions, passions and obsessions.

    So what is this thing called "Free Will"? — Piers

    A mythological concept regarding man's relationship with his creator deity, or a sociological theory regarding man's control responsibility for his actions, or a psychological idea of man's control over his own instincts and impulses.

    Seems to me that free will is the ability which everybody has to choose
    how to serve their Master, whether ego or conscience. Still enslaved.     — Piers

    There is no Master. There are imperatives of survival, social organization, natural, canon and civil laws to govern the range of choices each person has in each situation. These choices are always limited by various factors - never just one thing.
  • Above and beyond. Where does beyond start?
    ↪TiredThinker

    I should have guessed. However, ordinary people, when they accept a job, have defined duties and responsibilities, usually a comprehensive job description and some idea of company policy regarding what employees are permitted, expected and empowered to do.
  • The objectively best chocolate bars
    ↪TiredThinker

    Many do. Technically, they're candy bars, but if manufacturers put a thin layer of chocolate on a cookie, nut, toffee or nougat bar, it can pass in the minds of consumers for a chocolate bar. Sugar and peanuts are way cheaper than chocolate and incidentally, less exploitative to acquire.
  • Fascista-Nazista creep?
    Anyway, problem-identification is one thing, I'm less optimistic about avoiding the known pitfalls. Pointing them out doesn't seem to have done much. — jorndoe

    It got a lot of finger-pointers beaten, jailed and killed. History will rotate its big, crushing wheel when it's ready.
  • Above and beyond. Where does beyond start?
    What is expected of a person isn't always clear, and many people's duties are to do what needs to be done. — TiredThinker

    Okay. I will endeavour to abide by unspecified expectations and do whatever needs to be done." Is that the agreement you sign when you accept a new job?
  • Above and beyond. Where does beyond start?
    But people usually don't mention this border between the here and the beyond. — TiredThinker

    They do, though. The phrase is applied in specific contexts, such as "above and beyond the call of duty", which means that the soldier or police officer performed some action that took exertion, courage or sacrifice above what can be normally expected, and beyond the confines of their job description: ie, something both more and better than they were required to do.
  • The objectively best chocolate bars
    I won't deny that Lindt is good chocolate, but it's like eating a raw ingredient. — Jamal

    I think it's rather more subtle than that. What I like least about American popular sweets is that they put in too much salt and then too much extra sugar to hide it. Plus unnecessary stuff like cereal, nuts and raisins. The odd piece of hazelnut or almond is all tight, but they go three steps beyond that: they put in far too much and then surround the fillers with more sugar in the form of runny caramel or hard toffee, nougat or cookies, leaving little room for actual chocolate, which is what I like. I like cookies as cookies, nuts as nuts, nougat as nougat - but I prefer to choose how much of each and when.
  • Who else thinks sponge candy is awful?
    ↪universeness
    It has its ups and downs. Feeding one of yous can be a botheration, especially if vegetarian and salt-conscious. Meanwhile, I have a different set of food restrictions, so we basically have separate menus.
  • The objectively best chocolate bars
    Waterbridge Belgian, Lindt dark classic, Ambrosia mint, Aero bar, Coffee Crisp
  • Fascista-Nazista creep?
    As long as societies enrich and privilege some segments at the expense of others, there will be discontent, jealousy and resentment. These mental states are easy to exploit and direct against whichever scapegoat the demagogue chooses. People are volatile and impressionable - it doesn't take much to rile them up.
  • Who else thinks sponge candy is awful?
    I can keep up a routine for a while but then I need to break out and rebel. — universeness

    So does he. And then, when the strips are very bad (by his exacting standards) he suddenly goes on an extreme diet, subsisting on boiled eggs and cabbage (no, I can do a little better than that!) marching up and down the house with his pedometer, teetotal and grumpy, for three weeks, loses 15lb, and maintains discipline again for two or three months before it begins to slip into a little self-indulgence here and there.
    It doesn't include sponge toffee, BTW: neither of us can afford the dental risk.

    That reminds me, it's xmas. I'd better assemble a food bank bag and remember to buy chestnuts while we're in town today. Weather permitting....
  • Who else thinks sponge candy is awful?
    ↪universeness

    I'm married to a well controlled type 2 of 78, and he can get a little chocolate into his diet, as a trade-off for things like rice and real sugar. You can make it work if you plan.
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