Oh. Well thanks.
The flaw with most ethical systems is the assumption that being moral is ones highest priority imo, when really for most people its more like 3rd or 4th down the list, hence most people do not consistently follow any system of ethics. Ethics gets hedged out by higher priorities

I dont understand what the flame signifies.

I do have a pet, and I would eat it to survive. I also have kids so they would get the dog burgers first, followed by dad burgers if it meant them surviving. Survival trumps morality for most people, for most things.

I dont see why either position/lifestyle needs to be justified.
If youre asking whether “emoti-intellectual capacity” is a justification for either position I would say no. I do not think that emoti-intellectual capacity is a metric for morality or ethics, either is pain.

Why would a human need to rationalize consuming meat?
Cuz it inflicts pain? So does all kinds of things, so what?

I guess my question here is at the risk of coming up with statements describing current economical reality … what are the best ways of combating modern day cartels/monopolies who don’t have the best interests of the common man as their driving principle… — Deus

Teach common man enough self control and foresight not to empower corporations with their slave-like devotion to materialism. Start with getting people to stop exploiting child slaves by shopping at Walmart cuz its cheaper.
Good luck.

Good point, but the certainty still wouldnt make the choice predetermined. The knowledge of what happens does not effect the outcome of what happens. That was my point.
You would be predicting, with certainty, what the person will choose. Its pre-knowledge of what will happen, not knowledge of what is predetermined. The predetermination is still separate from what youre asking here as I described initially.
You are essentially positing that pre-knowledge and predetermination ( in the free will sense) are the same thing, which I dont think they are. You can have pre-knowledge ( in the context of this thought experiment) of something whether its predetermined or not so you arent actually addressing free will here imo.

Just because you know what someone will choose doesnt make the choice predetermined.
Would you rather have your eyeballs pulled from their sockets with a rusty knife or a pleasant meal?
Nothing magical about predicting you would choose the pleasant meal. Its not predetermined, its just easy to determine just like it would be for your writing god or future seeing person.
I didnt answer the poll because your OP doesnt actually address free will. Its a free will adjacent question but you're actually just asking about foreknowledge of action, the answer to which depends on what ones views on free will already are.

This thread is a waste of time. Consult a dictionary Sushi.
You leave me no choice but to put you in my Bad Box for 1 month. I will not respond in any of your threads until you have served our your sentence.

Passive atheists.

What do I win?

Is it gender that sports uses to group athletes? Or is it sex? — Michael

Right, an important distinction for this discussion thank you.
My understanding is gender is the way you feel about your sex, and sex being the biology of how you were born.
I thought that was the generally understood distinction?

These things were pretty reliably categorised according to biological sex. Now that's not such a good proxy. So why not base the categorisation on what is actually significant - Fast twitch muscle fibre, testosterone during puberty and whatever.... — Banno

Well thats what you are doing when you categorize by sex, as I said all the traits you use would end up being the male ones for many sports. Its a pointless way to do it, and wouldn't protect women or womens sports.
These factors from being born a male cannot be hand-waved away. Males are evolved for fighting, bone structure, thickness and density…science doesnt have a good way to change these things yet.
Ok, Maybe common ground. In most combat sports there is a policy of having 2 years of hormone treatments to counteract the significant advantages being born a male gives. Im not convinced this leads to fairness in the sports (the science isnt clear) but it does reduce the potential of egregious harm to women.
What are your thoughts on that?

I've no idea.

I'm amused at the whole issue. What it actually shows is how arbitrary the classifications used in sports are. It's an intellectually muddled area. — Banno

Ok, what is it that seems disingenuous?

The classifications are not arbitrary though, there is very good reasons, solid reasons, for having a men and womens division in many sports.

The stuff between your legs doesn't make you run faster or kick better. — Banno

I wouldn't imagine so, no. Of course, no ones talking abouts balls but you. Fast twitch muscle fiber, testosterone during puberty and other such factors do however. These things are pretty reliably categorized according to biological sex. Hence it is a useful in categorizing sports.

More Balls. basing a footy game or wrestling match on body weight or some such would do exactly that. — Banno

Sex is the strongest factor in the development of many of the criteria you would use. You’ve mentioned a bunch already.

This looks disingenuous. — Banno

Fascinating. What do you imagine my actual interest to be?

You are missing the point. Sex is only a proxy for innate ability. That's what has caused the problem. Drop sex and find a way to measure innate ability. Then the competition can reward prowess. — Banno

There already are useful ways of measuring innate ability for the purpose of sports, one such way is by sex. Also your way of thinking does nothing to protect women from getting their skulls crushed in a lopsided match up against a trans competitor so it sucks. As I said, that is my primary concern in this topic.

The point being it's not precise at all. Otherwise this thread would not be here. — Banno

Your suggested criteria match exactly the advantages males have in most sports. Apparently they are precise enough.

The premiss that sex has dictates prowess has been shown wanting. — Banno

Depends on the sport of course, but males have a very measurable advantage in most of them but especially combat sports.

Tough shit for sport. their organisation is based on a parochial patriarchic attitude towards people. — Banno

Im not a big sports fan, I dont care which characters win or lose. What I do care about is women getting hurt, and to a lesser degree a fair contest.
Also, anything with history is patriarchic. So what? Do we throw out everything that started before the rise of feminism?

Why gender, as opposed to height or bodyweight or muscle mass index or blood testosterone levels? — Banno

You mean the characteristics that males have over females? Thats precisely the things that separate male and female athletics.

He lives an extra 30 days every time someone says “he’s going to jail” and he doesnt go to jail. Currently clocked at 600 more years.
But seriously, and Im no Trump guy, but how many times have you steadfastly predicted his downfall and been wrong? Am I misremembering? Is it possible you aren’t clearly thinking it through each time?

Jesus. Suicide by mod? I feel like he’s been around a while.

What did they say?

Whats pedantic is focusing on the word “absolute” instead of the clear intention of the OP. Again, everyone else understood what the OP meant and only the pedant choose not to in favour of belabouring the semantics of a single word.
Pedant doesnt mean wrong. We all know the strictest definition of “absolute” is as you say. Its just as obvious thats not how the OP was using the term, even offering examples to further clarify. Do you know why nobody else made the point you did? They weren't being pedantic.
Even after you admitted to understanding what was meant you didnt bother to answer the question. You were only interested in sharing your superior understanding of “absolute” (thanks champ!) with us regardless of any engagement of the OP. Pedantic.

I think they actually have not been able to answer the question: all things mentioned in the answers as absolute things aren’t absolute at all. — Angelo Cannata

n short, it seems that, when you say “absolute”, you actually mean something like “absolute, but not too much”, “absolute, but not too absolute, not absolutely absolute” :smile: . That’s fine, it just needed to be clarified. — Angelo Cannata

Everybody else understood this without clarification. You didnt, or refused to, understand this because you are being pedantic.

How do you figure other people were able to answer the question and have dialogue about it if its like impossible to answer?
Be less pedantic and try reading it again.

I don't really want to live but I sort of have to. — Darkneos

No you dont, you can check out any time you’d like. I think if you wanted to be dead you would be. You don’t really want to check out though do you? What you actually want here is attention, to validate your feelings about how unimpressed you are with life as an option.

Im not one thats going to tell you life is precious or that you have a gift or you have good in your life if you'd just embrace it. I accept you get nothing out of life, that you see nothing special about living and that death/oblivion seems like a better option than living…I’ll concede all that to you right now.
What your wrong about is that any of those feelings have anything to do with how much life sucks or how much better an option death is. Life isnt the problem, you are.
Your thoughts are those of a depressed mind. Just because its a common response you get ( get therapy) doesn't mean its wrong. You might need meds or something else that you are unqualified to dismiss as a cure for your little dilemma.
If youre adamant about depression or other mental illness not being the source of your view here then you’ve already gotten the best advice in the form of a question:

Are you sure youre doing life right?
If you truly have nothing worthwhile to live for, then you are actually more free than most other people. With such little attachment to life you have a freedom, a liberation of action, that means you can fill your life with whatever you want. If you cant exercise that freedom, then thats on you, not life.

Efficiency is ONE of the goals of the market. Again, efficiency is not mutually exclusive with morality (fair exchange of goods.) Its both.
Additionally, the markets development is not the same as the markets goals. You subtly shifted some language there.
You have not shown that markets do not aim for a fair exchange. Who would want a market that didnt aim for fair exchange? Greedy assholes, people who don’t let pesky morality interfere in their money making, yes. Thats a people problem, not a market problem.

Some of those rules overlap with morality, so I do not agree that playing by the rules is the most you can morally claim. The fact there are rules in no way entails that there is no morality.
As to the goal of the system…a free market place aims at a fair (a moral goal) exchange of goods and services. Greedy assholes try to game that system and do their best to make it unfair but this is the fault of greedy assholes not the system itself. After all, if greedy assholes can act immorally in a system then surely good folks can act morally in that same system.

So no, there no moral right for that store to claim payment from me, the claim is economic and legal. — Benkei

This is what I was asking about. Why are you denying morality can be a part of it like economics and legality?
Im not following how your responses answered that.

Also, when we are talking markets are you intending to claim there is no moral aspect to how it works?

Why cant it be economical, legal AND moral. Those are not mutually exclusive so why cant it be all 3? Why are you excluding the moral aspects? It would clearly be morally wrong to steal from the store right?

Idealism is believing that reality needs minds in order to exist, solipsism is believing that only your own mind exists.
They differ in the implications of each of those beliefs.

You're trading on a conflation between dying and being dead

1. If dying harms the one who dies, then the one who dies must exist at the time
2. Dying harms the one who dies
3. Therefore, the one who dies exists at the time (of dying).

There: fixed for you. And it is uncontroversial.

1. If being dead harms the one who is dead, then the one who is dead must exist at the time
2. Being dead harms the one who is dead
3. Therefore, the one who is dead exists at the time.

In this form the argument tells us nothing about whether the dead person exists, so whether the argument is sound or not depends on that big "if" in the first premise. The alternative argument is:

1. If being dead harms the one who is dead, then the one who is dead must exist at the time
2. Being dead does not harm the one who is dead
3. Therefore, the one who is dead does not exist at the time.

Both valid arguments, both of which cannot be sound, the determination of which is sound depends on knowledge we do not possess. — Janus

:100:
Very nicely broken down, a complete waste of time with Bart but very nicely put.

Ok. So why remain in the dugout? Are you holding out hope that the political system will change? Also, what forces other than voting would result in the changes you want?
I often think about modern times and how its just the wrong time to be born for people who want to live outside the control of governments and corporations. In yesteryears there were places you could go that weren’t owned by either, a place where you could do your own thing. In the future when we expand to the stars you grab your people and set off for some distant star to do your own thing.
Today, where do you go that isnt owned by some country or corporation?

True voting isnt synonymous with politics, but I would say its a necessary part of the political system in Canada or the US. Aren’t you opting out of a system based on votes when you refuse to vote? I would compare it to playing baseball but refusing to take the field. Not really playing baseball then. (And likewise the baseball field is not synonymous with baseball).

So…move? It sounds like you want to opt out of the system. Whats the dilemma exactly?
Is refusing to vote a viable political position? No. Its a position, a moral one perhaps, but its not a political one since it necessarily entails not being political, not participating in the politics.

Im not sure they do share common purpose. Creationism is an ad hoc justification for biblical writings, an effort to explain contradictions with what science has discovered. Its purpose is in direct opposition to the purpose of science, and its method.

Well, other people might not want to be treated the exact same way you want to be treated. That’s why the golden rule fails, in my opinion. Better to find out how they want to be treated first of all instead of assuming that everyone wants the same treatment as yourself. — NOS4A2

There may be specific ways of being treated they may not want (not sharing a taste in music or some S&M shit) but pushing that treatment on them would be ignoring the golden rule for other specific ways of being treated (like not having things pushed on you).
It seems to me the golden rule remains intact. The exception to its merit you described above would only be valid if you ignored the golden rule in the first place. Unless you want to argue that people generally dont mind people making assumptions about how they like to be treated then I think the golden rule demands you do not make such assumptions. So it is as you say we shouldnt make those assumptions but the golden rule has that covered as far as I can tell.

I guess it made sense but not in the way I intended. Lol

Like a fish needs another set of gills :wink:

Edited to make sense.

Big bang only shows how to derive our current universe from that situation. Says nothing about what happened before. — Jackson

I agree with you, Im just not sure what answer you are looking for with “what if”…we would have to adjust our models in physics I would think, lest we lose out on some potential insight the before universe might provide for our current one.
I mention parallel universes as another possibility about where big bangs fit in the universe. There could be big bangs happening within big bangs.

Our universe today is derived from this event. What if there were other universes before that? — Jackson

Or parallel universes to this one, sure. I dont see why not but “what if?”?
Ya suppose if there were other universes before this one we would need to adjust our models? They would be incorrect? What are you getting at?

This perennial "what if" assumes that, in contemporary physics terms, there is "time" independent of – "before" – spacetime, which seems as conceptually incoherent as "north of the North Pole" (i.e. edge of a sphere, torus, loop, etc). And if we do away with "spacetime", for the sake of discussion, we then lose more than a century of physical and cosmological grounds to even discuss "the expanding universe" and its retrodicted BB. What does an event mean "before" spacetime? – is the implication of that old "what if". — 180 Proof

Why couldn't there be more than one instance of space time? If it starts with a big bang then ends with something else then why couldn't each such space/time “bubble” be its own thing? Time space could have its own instances of time space within it, like the way time flows differently with different gravitational forces.

How do you figure?