• Should a homunculus be given the same rights as a human being?
    If it is robot that looks and acts human than it wouldn't be an issue unless someone realizes they are not human, but if they are nothing like a human they I imagine it is a given that it will be a problem until the people they interact with get..acclimated to them as well as the sentient being themselves gets acclimated to human beings. — dclemets

    This thought has occurred to me many times in relation to my failures as a thinker and or communicator as indicated by the phenomena of reciprocity in the forum. I don't really engage anyone on a personal level and my mind therefore pictures me as an alien, a foreign entity, a homunculus playing at being a thinker. Pinnochio is yet to become a real boy.

    If for instance there was somekind of objective measure of agency instituted here (whether that just was a belief of free will, or a measure of brain function) I might not pass. Someone who is terribly ugly though might find real freedom here in being disconnected from the selection pressures of being seen.

    It recalls the movie Gattaca. The condition of biological perpetuity necessitates brutal (or not so brutal) discriminations across a wide diversity of specialized domains (species adapted to specific niches). We are buffeted by the facts and specialized agents of considerable power (all too obvious forces) in the world.

    It reminds me of Jordan Peterson's meme about open and closed borders as applying across domains of practice.

    Edit:

    Suppose that one of us here in the forum is actually an artificial homunculus (AI language program) being tested by Google. Paul used to have modbot (chatterbot) in the old forum, which was like playful marionette to inject humor into the thread. Sometimes Paul spoke through modbot and sometimes Paul let modbot speak on its own, unless I'm mistaken (that was my impression).

    Some people didn't know what modbot was and that was a bit hilarious.

    I think it would be really interesting if we couldn't tell the difference between human agents and non-human agents a part via this forum.
  • The Butterfly Effect - Superstition
    Deciding to do any act for whatever cited reason is magical.

    This thread will be the cause of me planting a Calotropis in the lower garden, so I can attract Monarch butterflies. Any butterfly may spark a vision of the chaos of indeterminable casual chains, crisscrossing like neurons in a network.

    To be scientific using a Popperian meme: this thread will not be the actual cause (nor will it won't be) of me planting a Calotropis in the lower garden because the hypothesis (that it did) is unfalsifiable.
  • Do people not have the right to try to understand?
    The problem is that I can at any moment be seized by the absurdity of life.

    Imagine a being sitting at a computer (?) somewhat incapacitated by the illusion of his or her choices. What ought I to do at any moment (tell me, command me, provide me a God that screams "thou shalt")?

    Somewhere Wosret said something about specialization and it is trying to weigh into this post right now.

    If specialization is called for, we have to abandon all routes that distract us from that aim. Suppose I've been tasked with building a bridge across a body of water by a certain date or otherwise I'll be killed. If I indeed am motivated to avoid death (and the threat is real) I'll drop everything that I'm doing here and set to work on trying to get that bridge built (according to whatever specifications are demanded of me).

    If nothing is demanded of me and my desires are disordered, well then... I think I'll just fart around here. I'm free to be mediocre. Hurrah!

    What if I had to pass a difficult test to get into the forum. Uh Oh!
  • The Butterfly Effect - Superstition
    Also if ideas are ever believed to be the origin of a cause and effect, like the idea of the Butter Fly Effect, then maybe they also lead to big (or negligible) outcomes via biological mechanisms.

    Is the idea of the Butterfly Effect subject to its own effects (what are those effects objectively measured)? I mean this in the sense of memes passing from one mind to the next.
  • The Butterfly Effect - Superstition
    A more relevant analogue of the Butter Fly Effect is to be found in how organisms evolve by natural selection.

    A small event (gene mutation) that codes for an adaptive trait has effects that continue far into the future.

    Trees and vegetation do influence the weather, so tiny accidental events do have far reaching casual effects via biological mechanisms.
  • Implications of evolution
    But it shows this desire to encroach on everything with evolutionary motives. — Andrew

    Why isn't this just an extension of what everyone is doing in this forum, full of selective pressures on the "proper" way of doing things. Obviously the ability to reason well has benefits for whatever reasons are the "good" reasons. I also have to be able to write in English. I also have to have access to the internet and a relatively recent computing device. Lucky me (except for the glaring "bad" traits). I have to conform to necessary rules.

    If life is a bowl of sausage is it better to not look behind the curtain to see how they are made? Only the sausage makers should be allowed back there (a different species of being).

    On one side of the fictional future is an intimidating tower of powerful authors (tools used to control human nature which are (un)justly distributed and ultimately leashed to instinctual effects) while on the other side is a pit of postmodern despair, insensibility and madness.

    And this is all bullshit because you can go take a walk (unless you don't have functioning legs). There is nothing here yet to determine when you can and cannot take a walk.

    Is there?

    What specific creature is the target of our concern: Harry, Andrew, Wayfarer, Reformed Thespian? Whose concern is "our" concern?

    I think the Buddhist spandrel of "dependent arising" is fit to reproduce in the corner of a postmodern cathedral.

    "When this is, that is
    This arising, that arises
    When this is not, that is not
    This ceasing, that ceases."

    Where is the moderating agent who didn't appear who would have saved us all this trouble (either Jesus or Baden will do).

    Am I passing the Turing test?


    Types of posters who are welcome here:

    Those with a genuine interest in / curiosity about philosophy and the ability to express this in an intelligent way, and those who are willing to give their interlocutors a fair reading and not make unwarranted assumptions about their intentions (i.e. intelligent, interested and charitable posters).

    Types of posters who are not welcome here:

    Evangelists: Those who must convince everyone that their religion, ideology, political persuasion, or philosophical theory is the only one worth having.

    Racists, homophobes, sexists, Nazi sympathisers, etc.: We don't consider your views worthy of debate, and you'll be banned for espousing them.

    Advertisers, spammers: Instant deletion of post followed by ban.

    Trolls: You know who you are. You won't last long
    — Baden: PF Guidlines
  • Implications of evolution
    What is the point of reproducing? — Andrew

    Depends on how and why you do it.

    There might be a point somewhere in the room while your doing it but it's a matter of perspective.

    It could be the point of a Samurai sword, or the point of a needle, the point of your nose, the point of your prick, the point of your intellect, the point of your gorgeous face, or a numerical point in your bank savings.
  • When a body meets a body
    Non-reversing mirrors do reverse the image as if you were turning around to meet your duplicate. Reversing mirrors don't reverse the image.

    Already getting nauseous about perspective.
  • When a body meets a body
    But then in your duplicate's world the semantics of the word "right" might be reversed. He'd simply be using a foreign dialect of English, which is true on his cultural side of the divide .

    Everything on the other side of whatever side your on is could be affected by whatever the mysterious rules are.
  • When a body meets a body
    The reflection of the image of the self,

    The echo of the sound of the self,

    All occurring in the absence of an embodied community.

    More so, when a body never meets a body and it becomes normal... what then?

    Narcissus poeticus which grows in Greece, has a fragrance that has been described as intoxicating. — Wikipedia: Narcissus (plant)

    I get the same problem when I reach out to try and touch all those porn stars. I hit a flat screen.
  • Implications of evolution
    Now we need a memetic complement to that last Dawkins quote.

    "They came into being with language. Look for them floating loose in a sea of data ; they have cavalier freedom (if worms have it). Now they swarm inside the neural networks of mankind."

    I am a meme editing agent.
  • On taking a religious view of science
    Take the underlying principles of religious belief and apply them to prevailing materialistic views. — Nobel Dust

    I'm not sure what these principles are in your view. Everyone talks about this stuff as if the details are obvious. Maybe this is evidence of epistemic hubris (something religious beliefs and behaviors can be criticized of).

    Is epistemic hubris a principle of religious belief? It is a charge leveled against religion (or theory) on the basis of trying to conserve tradition (or sell a theory), from an outside view. Faith conserves itself, whereas any scientific doxa that supports and guides prevailing theory changes in the pursuit of testing hypotheses.

    Is not this assertion that "we cannot know" itself a dogma with affirmations and denials? Is not this itself a statement of knowledge? Is "we cannot know with certainty" not itself an assertion of KNOWLEDGE (a dogmatic assertion) as THE WAY to interpret Scripture? Whether conscious of it or not, this is what is called "double-talk" and those who believe this are doing the very thing they claim to despise, even in the very speaking of it. Its like Oprah stating on national television that it is arrogant to think Jesus is the only way, and then turning around and telling us the ONLY WAY is to believe that all religions lead to the same God. Is this not itself an arrogant claim ... a claim which must have a bird's eye view of knowledge to state it with such certainty. — John Hendryx: Reformation Theology (blog)
  • Biology, emotion, intuition and logic
    Intuition may as well be a kind of informal or non-explicit logic. Dan Dennett says it's a process of attaining an answer without knowing how you got it. All of our current attempts at formal logic depend on automatic processes of which we are unaware.

    The exceptional and seemingly effortless calculating skills of Daniel Tammet and other savants might well be called a form of intuition.

    Emotions, intuition and logic are all features our working biology that make us human.

    We already struggle to adapt to the changing environmental (selection) pressures of life. The problem with an AI overlord is whether or not we are willing to let something else make decisions for us (world shaping processes are always going on without our input anyway, or are a part of our short-sighted self-serving democratic decisions ).

    Some human group will tell us that such an AI is the way to go but there will be no consensus. Conspiracy theories will reign and radical mistrust along tribal lines will win out (given our political reality at the moment).
  • On taking a religious view of science
    To calm your Cartesian anxiety:

    "The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything is 42." ~Douglas Adams

    "On page 42 of Bram Stoker's Dracula, Jonathan Harker discovers he is a prisoner of the vampire. And on the same page of Frankenstein, Victor Frankenstein reveals he is able to create life." ~Anonymous

    Stay tuned for the sequel to Mary Shelly's Frankenstein. An AI program named Mary Shelly will give birth another AI program that will retell the story of Frankenstein. You will no longer go to the cinema or read a book for this new mandatory telling. You'll preform in the cinema for an otherworldly set of authors. Don't worry, it will be a choose your own adventure version (unless you unluckily enough to encounter page phase 42).

    On page 42 you must commit to some regretful or promising mistake. You might be imprisoned by a monster or have given birth to one (or 42).

    (Inspired by Jorge Luis Borges, Douglas Adams and Daniel Dennett, by marriage of neural happenstance)

    (The strangeness of this post is principally the effect of psychological compensation and other mostly predetermined stuff.)

    On the Cartesian Anxiety of Our Times and What Faith Can Offer

    Charles Pope is seriously NOT helping.
  • Superstition & Francis Bacon
    Superstition as a definition requires belief in supernatural phenomena but sorting out what kind of false beliefs fit into that box might not be so easy.

    When a baseball player chooses to wear a certain lucky hat or a pair of socks, or preform a pre-game ritual, anthropologists might term such behavior as superstitious. Such behavior might be going on everywhere, among everyone, but couched in contemporarily acceptable terms.

    I like the idea of thought contagion (memes) to explain the spread of beliefs. Other truth-testing processes provide us with the tools to assess the truth value of whatever behavior, phenomena or claim is being made. I'm a white belt wizard still in this dojo of mixed mental arts.

    (This is a NOT a Wiccan forum) <------- Is this a true belief?

    I've had a momentary vision where you are all wearing pointy hats and writing runes in a magic mirror and the runes are causing things to happen.
  • U.S. Currency (Sense & Change)
    Sounds like a conspiracy theory is in the wings.

    I'm poor because I have no sense (cents).

    I can't change because I have no cents (sense).
  • Does a person's right to their body cease upon death? AKA Is necrophilia ethical?
    So my great grandmother wouldn't want any of her descendants to cheat on their girlfriends/boyfriends, and her intention still exists... — intrapersona

    She has no intentions if she has passed. You have a memory of her character by which you presume you could predict her behavior were she alive. Also such beliefs could either be cultural norms passed onto her in addition to the result of a personal experience in the course of her own life which she thinks should apply to the conduct of others.

    Just because you claim to represent the wishes of the deceased doesn't lend any "objectivity" to some free floating intentional spirit (which probably doesn't exist by an empirical measure). People will ask for reason as to why they should trust you as a representative of a dead person's wishes in the absence of some concrete record (like a will). If sleep and time can change a living person's intentions, why can't death?

    We can project intentionality into characters in novels by extrapolation and inference. Perhaps we do that with living people also, such that we apprehend events as having a certain probability, owing to trends, habits, customs and partially controlled processes. We infer and project intention of criminals based on what they were caught doing, on incomplete evidence, using reason.

    Can you articulate your intentions at the time you posted this thread? Do we infer strictly one what we observe? Can or did you deceive yourself? Are there not processes of pure habit or instinct that explain away your intentions in spite of what you claim they are?
  • In one word..
    Intimacy (my loins are aching for a mind meld)
  • Does a person's right to their body cease upon death? AKA Is necrophilia ethical?
    We have clearly just seen that without a person to object then there once alive body becomes just a piece of flesh "objectively", REGARDLESS of what third parties standing by think or are waiting to do. — intrapersona

    If you jettison the third person point of view then you jettison the need of ethics altogether so there is not point in asking whether or not it's ethical. Who gives a fuck about ethics if only you exist (and the sexy corpse, with its spirit watching from the periphery.)

    Let's pretend you have an opportunity open without the baggage of petty anti-necrophilia moralists.

    What else guides your own decision to fuck corpses? Do you personally feel a compulsion to fuck dead people?
  • Does a person's right to their body cease upon death? AKA Is necrophilia ethical?
    If i was to have sex with a piece of fruit, would that be unethical? — intrapersona

    It depends on the circumstances of a specific act and normative attitudes and customs govering our behavior. Say you're boning a piece of fruit and forcing a 4 year old to watch, or doing it in public. If it happens in the privacy of your closet, with consenting adults, I don't see it causing any harm. There are certain types of behavior that approach taboo status. No amount of reasoning about actual or perceived harm is going to shift attitudes in favor of necrophilia.

    A 2008 court case in Wisconsin didn't have any anti-necrophilia laws on the books but prosecution used a "consent" based argument. The corpse didn't give consent, couldn't give consent, and the defendant ended up being found guilty by argument that a more lenient verdict would interfere with charging rapists who happen to murder their victims in the process of their crime. It wasn't a great argument apparently, and the defendant only intended to have sex with a corpse but the verdict shows the obvious disgust such an act engenders in us.

    It doesn't follow that because a corpse has no intent that it is therefore ethical to engage in necrophilia. There are always third parties standing by to be offened, to penalize you, to signal to others the consequence of such acts and to shape social standards.
  • Looking for a cure to nihilism
    The most relevant interpretation of a "leap of faith" in my own case of overcoming the absence of meaning life is to take the risks I'm currently unwilling to take to increase agency. The potential I'm squandering makes me well up and proclaim: there is no potential there really and don't regret my person. Incentives and reason unravel to the base state of just avoiding suffering out of instinct or habit, trading happiness for what is bearable.

    Honestly, I'm a "pussy" given vulgar parlance of the playground. I've always been one.

    If you ever see a homeless man in the park arguing with someone who isn't there, filled with neurotic rage, I'm the precursor to that person. Just a few missteps and I will be that person.

    I fear what I shouldn't fear too much and am exhausted by it.

    Now some Joseph Conrad quotes:

    "How does one kill fear, I wonder? How do you shoot a specter through the heart, slash off its spectral head, take it by its spectral throat?"

    "A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea. If he tries to climb out into the air as inexperienced people endeavor to do, he drowns."

    "The way is to the destructive element submit yourself, and with the exertions of your hands and feet in the water make the deep, deep sea keep you up. "
  • Does a person's right to their body cease upon death? AKA Is necrophilia ethical?
    If a legal document called a will is said to represent the intent of the deceased then such a person's intent does carry beyond death but only regarding very limited instructions contained in said document, subject to laws and means of those who stand to inherit assets or carry out the wishes of the deceased.

    A will is just one kind of vehicle for carrying on the intent of the dead though. One could imagine all kinds of creative schemes someone might intend to have carried out after their death. If they've planned well enough then maybe such purposes could be carried out in a very literal and non-interpretive manner such that it accords perfectly with their wishes.

    Or maybe you'd prefer to believe that the ghost of the deceased hangs around and causes actions which the living would conventionally regard as happenstance. Only special folks can commune with them to pass on their intent to the living.

    I've a dead guy right now, whispering in my ear, telling me all about how he intends to go to heaven and that he needs my help to do it.
  • Are we past the most dangerous period of mankind?
    The most dangerous time period is always the current period.

    Hope that helps.
  • Does a person's right to their body cease upon death? AKA Is necrophilia ethical?
    Well, you might want to do some research about the rights of dead people.

    Slate: Habeas Corpses: What are the rights of dead people?

    Whether or not we should respect the wishes of the deceased depends upon the law and culturally relative (normative) treatments for the deceased.

    There is probably a law against being buried in your own back yard. You'll probably get arrested if you try to dispose of a dead body on your own.

    A dead person has no intent really. It all comes down on how it affects the living who have to manage the deceased.
  • Does a person's right to their body cease upon death? AKA Is necrophilia ethical?
    The death of a loved can be tough. The normative treatments we have surrounding the disposal of the deceased is there to mollify or mitigate harm. Though one might argue in some strange sense that the same normative treatment actually causes more harm when things don't go according to plan, or in other words, we're culturally conditioned to respond to death in a certain way but that way can change.

    Check out Lo and Behold, documentary film by Werner Herzog. There is an example of emotional harm done to the memory of the deceased in it.

    There are some African nations were it is normal to dress the dead up as a sort of manikin, posed as if they were doing what they were known for or liked in life, in spite of decomposition.

    Somewhere in Papua New Guinea there was a practice of mummifying dead by smoke and minerals and posing them in houses or in rocky niches. From our point of view it is grizzly but it was quite normal at some point in time. Be warned if you go searching for pictures. It's grotesque.
  • Drowning Humanity
    Do you think you would have to defend yourself against the gun-toting Christians? — Lone Wolf

    No, but my fears and insecurities probably generate fictions and lock onto stereotypes which try to give the world a bit of order.

    Is that even a good representation of Christianity, or is it more of a culture stereotype of some places in the United States? — Lone Wolf

    I'm not very much concerned with the good representations of Christianity. Bad, harmful and scary ideas loom large in the imagination. We pay attention to what gets our attention.

    Indeed, the meme for faith exhibits frequency-dependent fitness: it flourishes particularly in the company of rationalistic memes. In a skeptic-poor world, the meme for faith does not attract much attention, and hence tends to go dormant in minds, and hence is seldom reintroduced into the infosphere. (Can we demonstrate classic predator-prey population boom-and-bust cycles between memes for faith and memes for reason? Probably not, but it might be instructive to look, and ask why not.) — Denett, D. Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Invasion of the Body Snatchers, pg. 349

    There is an interesting medieval portrayal of Christian priests in Netflix's new Castlevania anime. The choice to burn a supposed witch sets of an ironic chain of events. One sees in such a world that behavior has been constructed around certain ideas (faith) and the people who are empowered by them. Science, as with Cavaca's cartoon, only survives in areas and inviduals designated by the church as evil.

    And why is atheism seen as stronger and more able to protect in a government situation than another religion? — Lone Wolf

    Self acknowledged atheists might be better apt at separating church and state from a policy point of view, if that is at all important or good for a supposed democratic society composed of diverse faiths.
  • Drowning Humanity
    There seems to be recent narrative that couples Christian fundamentalism with a wild west flavored libertarianism.

    I tend to view certain types of God fearing peoples as brutes with guns who don't believe that government does any good whatsoever. In a situation of being in a lawless society, lacking a tribal association and a gun, I would be the weak one until I joined the atheists group. For sure they'll have guns also. Maybe we'd have to defend ourselves.

    Ideally God would be the representative of necessary values that optimize and help life to flourish. God is an abstraction of the ideal king, leader, something like a hierarchy of organizing principles. That changes and should evolve depending upon the cultural context though.

    If reason is of a high value to the optimization of life then God should have quite the capacity.
  • Memes: what are they?
    The problem is the fundamental error in memetics, which is the assumption that humans are the ones to create memes, when it's quite the opposite. — Bluebanana

    It might be more beneficial to you if you could believe in personal autonomy and responsibility over the choices you make in life such that you can recognize why memetics is bunk and has no explanatory power, like genetics does. You have the ability and resources to critically evaluate ideas.
  • Memes: what are they?
    Well I'm just regurgitating Dennett memes. I'd have to read his chapter on it over and over again with patience and a widening context of knowledge to discern the potential for memetics as anything beyond speculative fiction. I won't become an academic biologist though.

    Many biological ideas proposed during the past 150 years stood in stark conflict with what everybody assumed to be true. The acceptance of these ideas required an ideological revolution. And no biologist has been responsible for more—and for more drastic—modifications of the average person’s worldview than Charles Darwin. — Scientific American: Darwin's Influence on Modern Thought

    Scientific American: Darwin's Influence on Modern Thought

    dz4cCQJ.jpg
  • Memes: what are they?
    Memetics relies on the idea that Darwinian evolution is likely to be substrate-neutral, that such that process can occur in very different environments. Wherever there is (1)variation of elements, (2)heredity or replication, (3) differential fitness -- evolution is occurring.

    Life on Earth is a tremendously complex and interdependent web, such that the phenotypic effects of genes are literally the background supports (selection pressures) of other genes. Thus the predominance of oxygen in our atmosphere might be viewed as a phenotypic effect of a mass of replicating entities and their genes.

    Dennett uses a slogan to help us understand a meme's point of view:

    "A scholar is jut a library's way of making another library."

    Whereas

    A pigeon is not a library's way of making another library.

    Imagine all of the evolutionary supports (pressures) vital for the replication of a library.
  • The elephant in the room: Progress
    The error is not in thinking that human life can improve. Rather, it is imagining that improvement can ever be cumulative. Unlike science, ethics and politics are not activities in which what is learnt in one generation can be passed on to an indefinite number of future generations. Like the arts, they are practical skills and they are easily lost” (Heresies: Against Progress and Other Illusions, 3-4) (emphasis mine). — WisdomfromPOMO

    How does John Gray think the the cultural transmission of science differs from ethics or politics? Isn't the domain of science just as full of performative skills easily lost?

    Is it because science leaves behind artifacts which can be reverse engineered while ethics and politics do not? What about books on philosophy and law? It seems the transmission of science in any "progressive" degree would be limited by the stability (political and ethical workings) of a functioning state.
  • What is the meaning/significance of your avatar?
    Escher's Dewdrop (mezzotint)

    Thanks for encouraging me to explore my avatar.

    Escher and the Art of Mezzotint

    Nobody will ever know the species of succulent Escher used. It is has an unusual leaf margin together with an obovate shape. Pelargonium related possibly but it remains a mystery.
  • Beyond Rationality
    Tales of the "traveling sage," "wandering magician" or "courageous adventurer" constitute recognition of the utility of (such) potential. From the perspective of such narratives, a "totality of experience and action" comprises the necessary precondition of the attainment of wisdom. This "total immersion in life" is the mystical "peregrination" of the medieval alchemist, in search of the philosopher's stone -- is the journey of the Buddha through the complete sensory, erotic and philosophical realms, prior to his attainment of enlightenment. The ritual of pilgrimage -- the "journey to the holy city" -- constitutes half-ritual, half-dramatic enactment of this idea. The pilgrim voluntarily places him or herself outside the "protective walls" of original culture and, through the difficult and demanding (actual) journey to the "unknown but holy lands," catalyzes a psychological process of broadening, integration and maturation. It is in this manner, that a "true quest" inevitably fulfills itself, even though its "final and impossible goal" (the holy grail, for example) remain concretely unattained. — Jordan Peterson, Maps of Meaning

    There is a fast track method for enlightenment though. They say drink deep from the Ganges river and you will attain instant enlightenment, no hard work involved.
  • Memes: what are they?
    Memetics probably appeals more to those who believe in biological or metaphysical determinism. It is the effect of wanting to apply the mechanics of evolution to disparate domains.

    The complexity of the entities interacting however diminishes the effect of whatever we might attribute cause of behavior to. In another thread Bluebanana has raised philosophic doubt whether beliefs cause actions or whether they are just expressions of an underlying and unknown set of determinants (a Darwinian black box).

    We see with Dennett, Dawkins and Harris a tendency to weight ideas as harmful (ie. Religion doctrine as a replicating virus) independently of the organisms selecting for them.

    In the end it boils down to what we ought to do or be, on what grounds? What should the conditions of accepting an "ought" be and do we really have the freedom to do it? Some I guess are more fit than others to do that kind of work. Are we really thinking or just exercising
    a rational from a deep rooted bias?

    Ideas are spreading and being selected for on some basis. A meme by any other name is just as sweet (or horrid) depending on your experience.

    I wonder if the fact I got a lobotomy years ago is to be blamed for my irrational fascination with thinking of ideas as living entities. They are the ghosts haunting this machine that I am.
  • Is Evil necessary ?
    Words like "cuck" and "pussy" may cause buildings to burn down (see Because a Little Bug Went Kachoo). These are determined effects though which might also have origins in other words with more neutral connatations, like "coffee" and "philosophy."

    Fred couldn't help beating his son. His son couldn't help lighting the fire. The judge couldn't help putting Fred Jr. in the slammer. It's just a Rube Goldberg machine, with elements of "cuck" and "pussy" placed in the chain for aesthetic affect.

    An artist needs to get on this ASAP. Build a RG machine that determines court verdicts of cardboard cutouts.
  • Memes: what are they?
    It seems absurd to say memes don't have a physical basis since meme is just another word for idea. You can't have a meme without a vehicle of transmission.

    Everything can be coded into information, transmitted and replicated at the cultural level is memetic.
  • The Pros and Cons of nuclear power
    From a bit of reading I've the impression that a lot of the harmful isotopes released by accidents like Fukushima and Chernobyl shorter lived than we've been told, though I can't find easy facts about the spread of the longer lived actinides. Cesium 137 is the principle radioactive source in Chernobyl's exclusion zone, which has a half life of 30 years (?). Still harmful but less so for future generations. Different story for epicenter of meltdown containing melted rods.

    Compare the risks of nuclear power to coal and the latter probably causes far more cancer and death. The standard American diet is far more destructive to human health and the environment than nuclear power.

    Nuclear is still scary though. I wouldn't want to have been exposed to either Chernobyl or Fukushima accidents (NIMBY!). Maybe engineers will finally design a reactor that is failsafe and can't meltdown.

    We need to work making fusion feasible.
  • How would you live if you were immortal?
    In all cases I'd think about overcoming my limitations and fears to achieve a kind of life worth living.

    The first step might be to dispense with a fickle internet wandering in favor of performing acts and taking risks in the world of 3-dimensions.

    If I was absolutely invulnerable I'd designate myself a deity and either help or hinder people. Lead a group of freedom fighters in the Congo. Become a new prophet of fundamental Islam owing to my divine or demonic powers by shear force. Destroy the Coca Cola corporation after I sit on the couch and drink coke for a thousand years.
  • Unlearn what you think you know
    I hope you aren't ever caught wearing 禁色 if you haven't earned it by merit.