Universal rules have to apply to everyone, right.

I had a workmate many years ago, he was slightly mentally handicapped. Seriously the only joy in his life was his collection of model trains. Nothing else brought him any happiness at all. Not food, he ate whatever was available without even thinking about it, nor the ladies, he was not bad looking and attracted several ladies attention, not money, he worked to buy the model trains his disability pay would not buy.
Many tried and failed to get him interested in other thing but his happiness until the day he died was his trains.
It would be immoral to try to force someone to enjoy things they did not and a waste of time trying to find those things.

I have no children but can say without a doubt I would have chosen to face the risks that come with a lack of restrictions on children to protect the freedom and happiness of children. — dazed

Just one little question. If you had been lucky enough to have kids and one of them brought the local junky/drug dealer to your house, would you have been happy about it? I doubt it because it would have made a mess of your life.
Now just swap Covid for junky and see if it makes sense to you now.

So a person that enjoys the suffering of others can never be happy. Would it not be immoral to deprive that person of their happiness unless they found someone who's happiness is suffering.
But would it not be also immoral to allow a person to debase themselves by being the object someones desires to hurt them.

Do atheists actively not want God to exist? — Georgios Bakalis

Personally I am too damned lazy to actively participate in such activities.
And does it really make any difference to the outcome? It either does or does not exist. I guess it might make as much difference as me actively wanting Santa Claus to exist, but I am not really sure about that.

I plan to do further threads on those topics (the will and its relation to morality, and the methods of justice) as soon as this one wraps up. — Pfhorrest

I hope someone has enough time to read them!

I hold that there is a universally applicable morality — Pfhorrest

I cannot see that this would work, if my pleasure is to see you in pain and suffering.

Is it impossible to save stupid people? — Huh

Save them from what? The rest of the world or themselves?
Not that it matters much anyway.

Irony at its best. :rofl:

I think luck is pretty unambiguous, sums up in the "right place at the right time" chesnut, no? — Pantagruel

No. I usually define luck as the collision of time, location and circumstance, but it includes good and bad types. For someone driving south while a drunk is driving north could mean that bad luck, an accident, occurs because he is in the right place at the right time.

I think it depends on what one thinks the purpose of laws are. Is it to keep the peace, or maintain power? — Pinprick

Laws in most places are supposedly to keep the peace. But as we can see in England right now, some laws are thought to be abusive. The truth is that laws are only words and therefore can be manipulated by whoever wants to do so.

Do laws really work? That depends on whether the people find them useful or not. If someone has lots of money, then the laws that govern certain ways of life can be "overlooked" as necessary whereas a poor man would usually pay the full penalty. I know this seems like a generality, but it happens more often than most people realize.

Laws are tied to the needs of society, and are supposed to benefit them. I some cases it benefits only a part of the group such as men but not women, rich but not poor.
But who really decides the laws that govern the society? In most cases it is not a general democratic vote of all the population but a small number of representatives that decide what is best for the rest. And who could even guess what their personal motivation is.

Before I answer, could you give us a definition of luck.

put your ear on the tracks and you will hear the vibration. — ArguingWAristotleTiff

At least that way it won't hurt when it runs over you.

Is law counterproductive to peace? — Huh

If there was peace, would there be need for law?

The idea of the brain, by Matthew Cobb.

Talks about all of the weird ideas that have been thought up about how the brain works. How the hell they used to come up with the ideas is difficult to imagine.

If you could fate the human race to its cessation, in instantaneity, would you? — Aryamoy Mitra

I think that giving the chance of a reasonable life expectancy to billions of creatures that are trying desperately to survive humanity would not be too bad a deal. Sometimes you just have to hate what we are doing to the earth.
But maybe the younger ones that come along will try harder to repair the damage we have done, at least some of it anyway.

Just please do not ask me to press the button.

The truth of that will be overshadowed by the effort required to direct anybody to it. — Mww

Can you explain a bit better please.

Wind is not made from anything. It is the name of a movement of the air.

By your own definition of good, what is the greatest action or doing (maybe even undoing) one can do? — thelonecuriosity

Don't screw up other peoples' lives.

Sounds like politics.

It's here where I see problems. The first statement here conflicts with statement A; it seems to suggest that a person is just the total of the atoms arranged to form them. — InPitzotl

No it does not. That is why it was stated that a person is NOT JUST the sum of the particles that make up the person, but it is obvious that they are included.

Also, given the problem statement in the original post, it's quite reasonable to presume that Person #2 would have the same memories as Person #1; i.e., that Person #2 would have the same acquired knowledge and "remembered" experiences as the person who stepped into the machine (Person #1). Under that reasonable presumption, your second statement conflicts with statement B; Person #2 would be a result of the same experiences and knowledge that Person #1 (again being the person who entered the machine) had. — InPitzotl

Therefore they cannot be the same person because Person #2 does not have the experience of going into the machine.

Also, I find the "different place" thing a bit confusing. — InPitzotl

You went to maybe a million different places in your journey to the kitchen, but it was the same set of molecules that went along with you, not a completely new set.

perhaps you're missing a time element in your analysis? — InPitzotl

I left that part out so at not to confuse people. But I guess that your journey to the kitchen was not instantaneous and you changed very few molecules even though the distance covered was god knows how many microns in length. If you had instantly appeared a thousand miles away made up of completely different pieces, even managing to retain the memories walking into the machine, you would not have actually done the act of walking into the machine. The memories and experiences are not all of it either, a person is made up of both molecules and memories.

Another part of you is actually changing as you grow old, your reconstructed body would be brand new but aged according to the old one. In the art world that would be called a fake.

That's not obvious to me. — InPitzotl

So please enlighten me how it was possible.

Person #1 walked into a machine, but never walked out of the other machine. Person #2 is not the same person as Person #1 because he has been reconstructed in in the shape of Person #1 but in a different place and from different molecules. Person #2 walked out of the machine but had never walked into it.

Is there any reason to deny that the person who steps out of the machine at the other end is the person who steps into it. — Aoife Jones

The "person" is not just the total of the atoms that are arranged to form them. The person is the result of the years of experiences and knowledge acquired. It is obvious that the person stepping out of the machine never experienced going into it, and the person going in has no experience of getting out. Therefore they are not the same people.

You call out a generic universal God here? we, atheists, usually claim we do not belief the existence of certain definitions of God depending on the religion to talk about (Dawkins usually refers to christianity).
If we start like playing with the word God, and say... God is the laws of physics or God is what has
created the quarks... then the basis of the argument change... — Raul

Nope. We do not claim that we do not believe in a specific god, we do not believe in any god when the word god is used correctly. Gods are creators of mankind and the rest of the universe, in some religions they have gods for almost everything.

My personal reason for not believing in them is that I find it hard to imagine that some being would go to all of the trouble to build the universe and them let a plague like mankind lose to destroy it. That is sort of like me spending years building a monster model railway in my basement and then let the little bastard next door go in there and play football with his mates. makes no sense at all.

Most atheists never even claim to be atheists. They just get labeled that when they say that they do not believe there is a god.

And I know the real truth behind the universe, Murphy.

Now its ruined, the youngster have arrived. :rage:

If anything, as someone who didn't grow up with classic 60-80's records, — Noble Dust

Most of the time I listen to 50- 70's stuff, but not very much in the pop charts caught my interest after maybe 75.

There are some modern things I like, country is more or less timeless, reggae and calypso are almost eternal, and there are still some rock groups that produce interesting stuff.

But honestly, I would rather listen to the older the older music and songs. I still play Led Zeppelin, Cream, Black Sabbath and Johnny Cash at high volume, lucky I don't have neighbors.

:lol: :rofl: Best results I have ever seen. :lol: :rofl:

I am part of a majority at last.

Like everything else, they have there place in the world. :wink:

I heard some really old tapes from a club in New Orleans a few years ago, and they were hard to listen to. Someone did a recover/remaster of them and the sound was great after that, the guy was promoting his digitizing business, but the effect was fantastic.

So now I am going to follower my follower.

Does that sound weird to anyone else?
What does that make me, a double stalker?

Sign in on a PC, — The Opposite

The only way I ever sign in.:wink:

go to your profile and click on 'Connections' — The Opposite

Found it.
:lol: :rofl: :lol: :rofl: :lol: :rofl: :lol: :rofl: :lol: :rofl: :lol: :rofl: :lol: :rofl:

I have one follower. Brilliant.

Have you every listened to vinyl records? I still do. Even the best of them played on a really good stereo had some quirky imperfections. I personal think that was better.

Not many of the old groups and singers made very complicated music back then, so there was not that much information to cram into the mix. That was the beauty of the old stuff, they did wonderful things simply.
There are some Jimi Hendrix live concerts that came out on 33 albums, the noise of the crowds was part of the magic. One one of them you could hear him dancing across the stage as the music went from one speaker to the other and back again. I heard a remastered version of it and I can honestly say it was crap. they had down toned the background sounds and it sounded more like a studio recording than a live one.

So where the freaking hell is it??

And I feel sorry for every single one of them. — frank

They are nearly all happy about my classes and I really doubt that they would welcome your pitying them. They had to work hard for the knowledge they acquired but were happy with the results.

But I don't think it's a bad thing, it's the same as reading certain philosophers over others. — The Opposite

Enabling what is not a bad thing? Do we actually have a follow function here?

Who has the most followers on here? — The Opposite

That would imply that there are leaders for people to follow.

What happens when you follow someone, beside instantly becoming a stalker? — praxis

That someone then leads you around like an idiot.

Experience with mandatory diversity training, yes.

My co-workers and I had reason to use the training with respect to a person in our care. They had various issues we had to address regarding their chronic health problems. — frank

I have 28 years of teaching English experience, with a lot of diversity. And a lot of students.

Climate Of Hunter was released in 1983; off the top of my head there's a small chance it could've been recorded digitally, but highly unlikely. I just meant Scott went from the Walker Brothers to his weird stuff. — Noble Dust

Look at the title of the video,

Remastered 2006 :wink:

Am I wrong? — Ken Edwards

You told a long, very long, story in short semi romantic prose. If omitting millions of pieces of important information is not taken into account them I guess you are not wrong.

But I ask again, what is the question?

A lot of this music gets ruined when the remove the squeaks and bumps by digitizing it. It can never sound like the jukebox down at the pub.

But even that cannot remove the greatness of it.

I'm glad you get to take up a chair here instead of working. — ArguingWAristotleTiff

What do you mean? I have to have a seat here or I want be able to use the keyboard. :lol: And they won't let me stop working.

What is the thing you like least about this pandemic and what do you like best? — ArguingWAristotleTiff

That I still have to bloody well work, but from home. I get to see the missus all day.

What I like the best is these bacon wrapped jalapenos filled with cream cheese! — ArguingWAristotleTiff

No, I leave the chilly to the missus, I stick to black and white peppers. I made some bacon and cheese wrapped spicy sausages a while ago, cleared up my sinuses for a day or two.

The way things are going around here we will probable be going back to work by the end of this year or the beginning of next. I am not looking forward to that.

See you around Tiff, I have classes early tomorrow and need my beauty sleep. :wink:

Gender fluid people want to be talked about using the plural pronoun, and at the same time, using "they" is being used to replace "he or she", as you did in this post.

Just saying. — frank

I presume that you (he/she/it) know what you are talking about, I guess you learned from experience.

Being brought up in northern England in the early 60's our grammar books and teachers said that the rule to apply when the gender of people was not known or that a general statement was being made about a group of possibly mixed gender was to use them and they.

It was much later that a bunch of yahoos decided that they/them should be used so at not to attach gender bias to single people.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/voices/actually-we-should-not-all-use-they-them-pronouns/

But in the end I really don't give a flying fuck what you or anyone else thinks or insinuates.