Let's suppose aliens come down and tell us that we're all going to wiped out unless we give the aliens any death row convict. If we do that, we'll all live. If we don't, we'll all die, except the death row convict. What should we do?

I think it would be wrong to throw the switch. We should not sacrifice people.

Anyone is free to sacrifice themself. Fine if the one says, "Throw the switch! Better I die so many can be saved!" — Patterner

What if we raise the stakes to ridiculous levels where the fate of the world rests on running over the guy on the tracks?

Dark forest doesn't work because you can't hide the biosignatures your planet has been giving off for the last billion years.

At the Shanksville Fire Station, @POTUS spoke about the country's bipartisan unity after 9/11 and said we needed to get back to that'. Bates added: 'As a gesture, he gave a hat to a Trump supporter who then said that in the same spirit, POTUS should put on his Trump cap. He briefly wore it'
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2024/sep/12/joe-biden-dons-trump-hat-in-show-of-unity-at-event-commemorating-911-video

I might agree with self preservation if you agree that it means keeping yourself alive and reproducing. Defense implies there is something to protect from, what if their are no dangers where the super intelligent being live. Would the instinct still develop? — Sir2u

There are always dangers in this universe. Wandering black holes, gamma ray bursts, solar flares, and of course, a possible nearby alien civilization more powerful than oneself.

My posts are predicated on the aliens you were talking about earlier: aliens who can communicate by fermions and neutrinos. If you're talking about aliens who aren't technologically advanced then obviously none of what I said applies.

Concepts of defense and self-preservation are going to be universal.

I think any space-faring species will be somewhat curious, and any species that has climbed on top of the evolutionary ladder is going to be somewhat concerned with self-preservation, so yes, they're going to want to know that their neighbors are up to and they're going to spend a fair amount of money to find out. They won't send probes to another galaxy, but they would certainly investigate nearby planets with biosignatures.

If they can communicate by fermion or neutrino, it would be trivial to send probes to nearby planets with biosignatures and keep an eye on them.

They would still know of radio and remember their own days of listening to the skies with radio telescopes. It wouldn't take much to beam powerful radio signals to all the nearby habitable planets.

If you had to choose to pay out reparations to one of these two groups, who would you prioritize, black men or white women?

Women should be at the front of the line when it comes to reparations for righting past wrongs.

Also, the reparations money would presumably come from taxes, so my taxes will go up to give people like...Oprah and Kanye reparations?

:up:

What is your goal regarding relationships? Do you want an equal partner or just someone to bang once in awhile?

if things get out of hand in a nuclear way. — Tzeentch

If that happens, it will be because Russia uses nuclear weapons.

It is a choice, but not an action. There’s no 50/50 decision being made, because it is morally impermissible to do something bad for the sake of something good; and so it is better to choose to not do anything than do something bad. — Bob Ross

I don't see much difference between the person who pushes the child in the pond and the person who stands at water's edge laughing while they drawn.

Except for abortion. Pro-choice referendums pass in places like Ohio. The cat ladies Women are pissed.

How long is Russia going to tolerate this? Is there political pressure on Putin to drive Ukraine back? I've heard the Russian military bloggers aren't happy. How influential are they?

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/nearly-200-000-russians-being-171513607.html
How long is Russia going to tolerate Ukraine occupying a chunk of their country?

Ukrainians apparently occupy around 300-400 sq miles of Russia. This is becoming quite the embarrassment.

What is the US's "grand strategy" and who's the mastermind of it?

Shades of the Tet Offensive, although this one doesn't look like a military failure so far.

The more apt question would be, how can Russia lose? — Tzeentch

Ukraine just invaded them.

I love how the US simply skips fascism and goes right back to medieval fedualism including witch hunts and book burning. — Benkei

Red states do that. Blue states like California and New York are quite different.

Why would Russia be able to win a war of attrition with the EU and America bankrolling Ukraine? Does Russia think the West will tire of arming Ukraine? I can see staying in before the election in the hopes that Trump wins, but if the Dems win, is Russia willing to fight an attritional war for another four years and another 60,000 KIA?

I bring up KIA because the Ukraine situation is becoming oddly similar to America's adventure in Vietnam. In both cases, you have a strong power taking on a weak country, with the weak country being supplied and funded by other strong powers. A proxy war, in other words. Eventually, the American public soured on Vietnam, and by the time we left, we'd lost just about 60,000 soldiers. At what point is the Russian public going to sour on Ukraine?

Do you believe the reporting that Russia has suffered around 60,000 KIA?

I was wondering why she picked Walz, but then I watched him speak, and he's very talented on the stump, very folksy and much better than she is, so I think I know their strategy now. The whole point of Walz is to take the focus off Harris. Democrats, for all their DEI talk, would be thrilled if Harris could morph into a liberal Mitt Romney-esque white guy. They didn't want her in the first place. Black women are risky in American politics. White guys are safe bets. Dems think Trump is an existential threat, and they want to beat him more than they want to check off racial boxes. They don't want risk. If they could get away with Harris and Walz trading places, they would do it in a heartbeat, but they're stuck with Harris.

They can't say he's against abortion. He just said he's agnostic and to leave it to the states. — fishfry

Actions speak louder than words (and who, outside MAGA, believes Trump anyway?). People will remember it was his judges that got Roe overturned and know he will pick the same kind of judges in the future.

As far as words go, Trump said women who get abortions should be punished.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6n-SgCndBWE

Now, I have been convinced that the only difference between democrats and republicans is in words — Eros1982

There are commonalities to the two parties and major differences. Some of the major differences:
- gay/trans rights
- abortion
- subsidies for green energy (majority of Republicans reject the science of climate change)
- raising taxes on rich
- gun control
- environmental regulation
- border control
- immigrants' rights (Dems want amnesty/pathway to citizenship, Repubs want to deport tens of millions of people)
- healthcare
- education (Dems are for public schools, Repubs favor charter schools and vouchers for private school)
- minimum wage

Now, why is it that Biden struggled to get a lot of that done? In our system, if you don't have 60 of your people in the senate, the other side can filibuster and stop legislation, and it's very hard for either party to get 60 senate seats. The last time the Dems had 60 senators, they used their political capital to pass Obamacare, for which they suffered catastrophic losses in the next election.

some young women ask me what I think about Trump, before they make any other questions. — Eros1982

I do this too. It's one of the quickest indexes of character I can think of. If I find out someone is a Trump supporter, I keep my distance.

Lately, I have started thinking that something might be really rotten with schools and social media. It seems that females and males are targeted differently by education, models, ads, electoral campaigns, policies, etc., to come to this outcome where a brother may be "far-right" and his sister "anti-fascist". — Eros1982

I'm an elementary school teacher, and I can tell you the education system was not designed for boys. I incorporate a lot of breaks throughout the day because I know my boys need to get up and move. I've been criticized for this my whole career. I'm told I should teach "bell to bell", but I'm tenured, so fuck those people. I do what I want. My school even banned football, because it led to fighting. I let my boys do it on the sly.

So, I think right from the start, boys sort of know the education system is biased against them. But before I go any further, I want to see if you agree with me that support for someone like Trump is an aberration that needs to be explained. That to a "normal" person (however we define that) someone like Trump is loathsome and reviled.

In Asia and Africa there are countries where the suicide rates between men and women are different and there may be a few countries where female suicides slightly surpass those of men (maybe Sri Lanka and Afghanistan, but I am not sure on this). — Eros1982

In places where women have not reached parity with men, I would expect the suicide rate of women to be much higher. Who wants to live as a second-class citizen?

The suicide rate for men is four times higher than women. I think men are struggling to find their purpose in life these days. Society in first world countries has reached a point where women don't need men, but men feel like complete losers if they can't get a woman. So they go down these weird rabbit holes, and the rabbit holes are all conservative in nature, pining for a lost age where a man could have a factory job, a decent house, provide for his family, and the Mrs would have his slippers and martini ready when he came home.

Those words do not imply rules have been broken. You’re starting to spread disinfo now. — NOS4A2

"Cheating" does not imply rules have been broken? Please. You can troll better than that.

There's a mysterious "they" who ordered Hamas to attack Israel? Russia to invade Ukraine?

Do you have any evidence or not? I'm willing to change my views on presumed consent if I see something compelling along the lines of what you're saying, but so far you're just talking out your ass.

It's your claim. Can you back it up or not?

Mayo clinic says that's a myth. You have any evidence to back it up?

Speaking of organs, I believe there is a moral imperative to be an organ donour. — Lionino

Should the state consider you an organ donor unless you notify them otherwise (presumed consent)?

I am still not gonna eat the bugs, I will use AC, I will drive a car. — Lionino

:lol:

But what about governments subsidizing things like solar and wind energy? If the atmosphere is capable of coming completely unstuck due to GHG emissions, shouldn't we try and reduce those emissions a lot? And what about governments subsidizing lab grown meat?

But I would be wrong for prioritizing your kid over someone else's kid. — Ludwig V

Good point. I agree with that. But what would a consequentalist say? Suppose we have a crystal ball and we know that one kid will grow up to cure a kind of cancer and another kid will grow up to become a drug addict and die of an OD at a young age, and we have to save one or the other. Should we prioritize the cancer curer over the drug addict? What about deciding who gets a life saving organ? If the organ is an equally good match for a 70 year old and a 5 year old, who should get it? Shouldn't the five year old get it? What about if an organ is an equally good match for two 30 year olds, but one ruined his liver by drinking, while the other came down with a rare liver disease. Should the drinker get equal priority? What if he's sobered up, but also has a history of relapsing?