You seem to be very emotionally attached to this question. — SonOfAGun

Do I? I think I am being quite rational about the most feasible form of population control.

Females are born with all of the eggs they will ever produce. so no, it is not a question of puberty where females are concerned. — SonOfAGun

Indeed, but those eggs are immature, and will mature usually one at a time from puberty. If there is an artificial way to mature eggs, I am not familiar with it. Normally, eggs are harvested from a female by stimulating with hormones to mature several eggs at once; I'm not sure that would be even possible with a pre-pubescant girl.

What I have proposed is the most morally soft thing I could think of — SonOfAGun

What you have proposed is that other people, women, the poor, anyone but you and your kind should face interventions and restrictions.

Survival of the fittest has always been the way. I don't see any reason to change that. Those who can afford to feed their children will be granted licenses. — SonOfAGun

There is no wealth gene. On the contrary, wealth being inherited leads to unwarranted survival and so weakens the gene pool. Which explains a deal of idiocy and ugliness.

Stolen from facebook and completely unchecked, so I'm just exposing my political bias and naivety, but it's a good laugh, unless you're in the US.

TRUMP’S RESPONSE TO THE COVID-19 (HIS WORDS)

January 22: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. It’s going to be just fine.”

February 2: “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.”

February 24: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA… Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”

February 25: “CDC and my Administration are doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus.”

February 25: “I think that's a problem that’s going to go away… They have studied it. They know very much. In fact, we’re very close to a vaccine.”

February 26: “The 15 (cases in the US) within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.”

February 26: “We're going very substantially down, not up.”

February 27: “One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”

February 28: “We're ordering a lot of supplies. We're ordering a lot of, uh, elements that frankly we wouldn't be ordering unless it was something like this. But we're ordering a lot of different elements of medical.”

March 2: “You take a solid flu vaccine, you don't think that could have an impact, or much of an impact, on corona?”

March 2: “A lot of things are happening, a lot of very exciting things are happening and they’re happening very rapidly.”

March 4: “If we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work — some of them go to work, but they get better.”

March 5: “I NEVER said people that are feeling sick should go to work.”

March 5: “The United States… has, as of now, only 129 cases… and 11 deaths. We are working very hard to keep these numbers as low as possible!”

March 6: “I think we’re doing a really good job in this country at keeping it down… a tremendous job at keeping it down.”

March 6: “Anybody right now, and yesterday, anybody that needs a test gets a test. They’re there. And the tests are beautiful…. the tests are all perfect like the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect. Right? This was not as perfect as that but pretty good.”

March 6: “I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it… Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president.”

March 6: “I don't need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn't our fault.”

March 8: “We have a perfectly coordinated and fine tuned plan at the White House for our attack on CoronaVirus.”

March 9: “This blindsided the world.”

March 9: "The Fake News Media and their partner, the Democrat Party, is doing everything within its semi-considerable power (it used to be greater!) to inflame the CoronaVirus situation, far beyond what the facts would warrant.”

March 10: "It will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away."

March 13: National Emergency declared.

is it more moral to let people starve to death when one could do something to stabilize the problem? You know that we are not talking about an if but when right? — SonOfAGun

It rather depends what one would do. Feed them would be good, Nuke them would be bad. But that's just my opinion...

Not concerned with the morality of the question only the feasibility. — SonOfAGun

Oh good. Well I can confirm that it is much much cheaper and safer to sterilise men than women. And of course the puberty problem applies to both sexes equally. One solution would be to make sterilisation voluntary, but to confine unsterilised men and allow them access to women only as the population requirements arise. If you are not opposed to abortion, you could also selectively abort most of the male foetuses and reduce the crime levels at the same time.

Have you read Brave New World?

Yeah we could do that.

Or we could stop being total pricks and decide it's a deeply repugnant and immoral idea in the first place. :vomit:

Lol, yah that is not a Recipe for civil revolt. — SonOfAGun

There's always going to be some resistance to this sort of program until it becomes traditional.

Well, you'd just have to lock them up from the beginning of puberty until you have a sufficient sample, or better still, just pick a few of the best for that program, and sterilise the rest at birth.

The way you concoct difficulties, it almost looks like you have a gender bias.

As you know, under such conditions, human female eggs can last up to around forty years. — SonOfAGun

No, if you sterilise the men, you can leave the eggs where they are, and they will also last 40 years or so.

That's more power than Bill Gates has on your life. — ssu

I don't think it is. Well more Jeff than Bill. But it's not that someone has ultimate power, but that they have ubiquitous power. The modern stress is that everything is up for judgement and control, your body-shape, how much you drink eat, fart, everything you say Did I hear the N word? Did you take a piss somewhere you shouldn't? Are you obese, or is that a suicide belt you're wearing? The mere power of life and death is a small thing. Having to dig dirt all day isn't stressful.

It would be much better to take sperm samples and sterilise men. Less invasive, easier to store, and insemination, when required, more certain and safer. and young sperm would be lees liable to produce birth defects. Surprised you didn't suggest it yourself.

Any idea why Germany has a CFR almost an order of magnitude lower than everyone else? — Echarmion

It might be the sausages and sauerkraut.. Reports from Japan suggest that keeping your mouth moist, sipping water every 10 minutes, washes the virus into the stomach, and keeps it from the lungs. Keep the virus population low until the immune system catches up. So Salty and acid diet might help.

Or that could all be bullshit, but you heard it here first!

I’m pretty sure the body causes stress, not governments. — NOS4A2

I'm pretty sure the government is made of bodies.

That a lot of old and poorly people will die, which will actually bail them out of the healthcare and care home crisis. — Punshhh

Also, dead pensioners don't vote, so the policy is admirably Machiavellian.

they are "more incompetent" — boethius

My analysis is that you cannot call a government incompetent when they have managed to push through an unpopular and damaging policy by winning an election. "competent criminality" is more the mark.

To every thread, turn turn turn, there is a Dylan song turn turn turn, and a youtube video to every topic under heaven.

You need to meet Raymond Smullyan. He is dead, but his puzzle books are available with many doors in many configurations with tigers or princesses behind them and whole islands of truth tellers, liars and annoying people who do a bit of each...

Dover: No conversation would be complete without asking for a few of your jokes or some wordplay. Usually, I don't have to ask!
Raymond Smullyan: I'd be delighted. Amongst my favorite jokes are:
(1) A physicist visited a mathematician friend and told him that he just concluded an experiment that conclusively proves that quantity A is bigger than quantity B. The mathematician replied, "That's perfectly understandable! You didn't even have to make the experiment. A must be bigger than B for the following reasons . . ." The physicist interrupted him and said, "Oh I made a mistake. It is not A that is bigger than B; it is B that is bigger than A." The mathematician said, "That's even more understandable because . . ."
(2) A man went into a restaurant and said to the waiter: "I would like some coffee without cream." The waiter went into the kitchen and returned and said, "I am sorry, Sir, we don't have any cream. I can let you have coffee without milk."
(3) In Ireland a man went into a bar and ordered three beers. Night after night he would order three beers. At one point the bartender asked him why he always ordered three, and the man explained that he had two brothers, one in America and one in Australia, and they made a pact that each time one of them would drink a beer, he would also drink two others in memory of his two brothers. This went on night after night for several months, and many of the customers were quite touched by this. Then one night, to everyone's amazement and sorrow, the man ordered only two beers. Finally one man came over to him to offer his condolences for the death of his brother. To his surprise, the man told him that both his brothers were alive and quite well. When asked why he then ordered only two beers, the man replied: "I decided to stop drinking."

https://www.doverpublications.com/raymondsmullyan/

Note here I am talking about the feeling of loneliness and not actually being alone. — Marty

I wonder if there is a difference between the feeling of loneliness, and the feeling of desire for company/ intimacy?

One of the effects of being alone that I found significant was the amplification of one's mood; good days became ecstatic days, bad days found me literally crying intermittently all day long. But lonely? I'm not sure I was ever lonely, except in the sense that one who likes chocolate is pleased to come across some chocolate after a period of abstinence.

Company puts oneself into perspective; it is a second opinion on one's folly. It maintains - no in the long run it constitutes sanity. That is, one cannot be sane or mad except by reference to the other; indeed one cannot sustain any identity at all in the long run, and this is why the solitary silent life is a tool for self- transcendence - a dangerous tool that is equally effective as a form of torture.

I guess that this latter unwillingly endured attack on the self is what constitutes loneliness.

Terry Waite is maybe worth a read.

The FAO estimates that as many as 25,000 people lose their lives every day as a result of hunger. That adds up to roughly 9.1 million people who die of starvation each year.

https://www.creditdonkey.com/world-hunger-statistics.html

Fortunately, starvation is not very contagious so we don't have to worry and the economy is unaffected. Hurrah!

The only way to combat a bad guy with a virus, is with a good guy with a virus.

EDUCATION, n.: That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.

UNDERSTANDING, n. A cerebral secretion that enables one having it to know a house from a horse by the roof on the house. Its nature and laws have been exhaustively expounded by Locke, who rode a house, and Kant, who lived in a horse. — Ambrose Bierce

The thing about this cerebral secretion, understanding, is that one can still understand the difference between a house and a horse even when one is not thinking about them. The secretion remains available should the occasion arise even when one is eating chocolate biscuits and watching tv.

I just happen to think abstract objects should not be considered existents in their own right. Ontologically speaking, they're excess baggage. — Relativist

I happen to agree. They are however existent in the world. 'Row' does not exist 'in its own right', wherever that might be. but I can get my ducks in a row. and then a row of ducks exists.

I think "mind" is just an abstraction. Treating it as a thing may be part of the paradigm problem with understanding mental activities. — Relativist

Do you not see that this policing the language doesn't get you anywhere? "Row" is just an abstraction until you get your ducks lined up straight, and then you have realised it. Just an abstraction is what is just in your mind, and I can assure you that my mind is not in your mind but a real thing that writes posts.

In my stillness, I experience flux, in my variation, I see permanence. Each needs to assume the other as fundament.The same eye sees the hands of the clock move, and the ever-changing self sees always the same present. Don't make me choose.

a row of ducks is stuff, and it's not identical to its constituent ducks; the internal relations between them is as much a part of the duck-row as the ducks themselves. — Relativist

Internal relations = arrangement of ducks.

Ducks + row-arrangement = row of ducks.

Internal relations are not the same kind of thing as ducks. Rows are not the same kind of thing as ducks.

The reason I use vague terms is to bypass the physics and associated or conflicting philosophy, of what is a constituent and what is a relation of constituents, because they are intertwined to the point of radical uncertainty. It is precisely to escape mereology. Relations, internal and external to some scheme of identification as duck or row-of-ducks.

If things that exist are "stuff" than a row of ducks is stuff, and it's not identical to its constituent ducks; the internal relations between them is as much a part of the duck-row as the ducks themselves. — Relativist

But each duck exists, and the relation between them exists. We agree about this. But the relation is not another material the way a duck is material - clay or flesh and feather. The whirlpool has an identity; it is composed of water, but it is more than water. The 'more' is not more water, it is relation and process. So already in the simplicity of everyday objects, we have a dual aspect of what used to be called "form and substance", and I am calling "stuff and arrangements" and you are calling "constituents and internal relations."

And in the case of the topic, here, I think we actually agree that there is no magic immaterial mind, but that mind is the relations and processes of a brain. Get the ducks in a row, and the mind and brain line up in parallel.

You're making a mereological error. — Relativist

Which line?

Do you exist? — Relativist

Does a row exist?

My thesis is that this is a foolish question Of course I exist and rows exist and arrangements exist. But these arrangements are arranged stuff not more stuff or immaterial stuff. I exist, I am an arrangement, or a complex relationship analogous to a whirlpool. Is a whirlpool material? does a whirlpool exist? Nobody needs to ask. But folks want to get bogged down in complex physics and psychology as if that is easier to understand. Get your ducks in a row first.

We know that immaculate conception is rare. So if we wanted to, we could these days identify the responsible male in almost every case and oblige him to take responsibility. But we don't. The cost of bringing up a child is quite high, because it is so time-consuming, but this side of the responsibility is not really enforced very much. An immigrant woman turns to prostitution, gets impregnated by some guy who exploits her vulnerability, but no one bothers to look for him or hold him responsible, but they don't want her to be able to respond to this as she sees fit either, and they don't want to pay through taxes for her to be supported to bring up the child. Blaming the woman is a very old tradition, but it is morally bankrupt.

it includes the spatial relations among the ducks. — Relativist

Yes indeed, a row of ducks is more than the ducks, but you haven't come out and said that the more is material, because it sounds odd to say that. In fact it sounds stupid. The trouble is, it sounds just as stupid to start talking about immaterial rows.

This is physicalim for dummies:
1. There is stuff.
2. Stuff is arranged.
3. Arrangements are not more stuff.
4. The ranges of arrangement include space and time, which are also not stuff.

So I think a physicalist can perfectly well say something like that a mind is the arrangement of a brain in space and time. I'm not saying that all problems are thereby dissolved, but the rigidity of material/immaterial is at least weakened enough to allow other ways of talking and thinking. So, for instance it is no mystery that the arrangement of stuff affects stuff (and vice versa), whereas how an immaterial mind affects a material brain (and vice versa), is entirely inexplicable.

Now if you are into quantum mechanics and fundamental physics, you may decide that stuff is just arrangements of probability, or something, but happily, we don't have to go there to explain things on the human scale, and to do so is just to obscure what ought to be clear.

If you've got three ducks, it's nice to get them in a row.

And then you've still got three ducks but now you've got a row as well. Assume the ducks are material.

Is the row material or immaterial?

Such is the apparatus for confounding philosophers. Solve this one first, before tackling mind, brain, self, and world.

It only seems like qualia, p-zombies, inverted spectrum and Mary the Color scientist are a thing. — Marchesk

I'm fine with that, if I can have it that red is the colour of my true love's hair in the morning, when we rise. My inner world is soggy meat, and I live in the outer world which I call 'the world'.

There is no redness of red. Instead, there is an appearance of something which seems to have those qualities. — Marchesk

Yes, but that's what I always thought the redness of red was - the appearance of something. Was I supposed to have thought it was something else? A thing in an inner world? If one had thought that, ie, had been an indirect realist, then the destruction of the inner world would be highly significant and shocking. I suppose? As it is I assume that crimson is the appearance of the settee I'm lounging in and scarlet is the colour of the fleece I'm wearing. Radical, but that's communism for you.

So which is it, save lives, or save economies? I think we know the answer to this choice. — Punshhh

I don't think there is a choice, because there is no one making the decision. The invisible hand has decided that human lives, and particularly the elderly in this case are not worth saving; economic necessity dictates the demise of most of humanity, because mass production and mass consumption is outdated. Capitalism no longer needs the working class. Corona virus, hostile environment, North African wars, refugee rejection etc all head in the same direction. And even the best democrat knows that dead men don't vote.

we're all Anglo-Saxons hereabouts. — Shawn

Zungumze mwenyewe, mzungu.

Not my problem. I didn't speak in Swahili as far as I'm concerned.

I find illusionism very odd.

Ordinarily one says things like, "it looks as though there is an oasis, over there, but it is an illusion, there is just more sand." So to say x is an illusion is to say there is no x, or at least there is no x where there is purported be x.

So the illusionist seems to want to say " it looks as though it looks as though there is an oasis, but it is an illusion, it doesn't really look as though anything at all. However would one know such a thing, even if it made sense?

Not my problem. — Shawn

Good. Glad to have sort that out.

What's the issue here? — Shawn

It's your thread, dude; I'm just commenting on what's been said. What you just said that quoted me makes no sense to me. It having a question mark at the end doesn't help.

Huh?

Ok, but what's the problem? God says 'don't fuck your neighbour's wife', or whatever... what's the difficulty?

if god is omnibenevolent and all that is good, and his moral commands are also defined as good, then his commands would be: "God commands god." — Aleph Numbers

I don't understand. If Mummy loves me, and Mummy says 'don't run into the road', then Mummy already knows not to run into the road. What's the problem?

Indeed, I am far from having exhausted the theological possibilities. :grin: