I don't disagree with your observations as stated, though in my experience success in this area is much more likely to be accomplished through more widely available Birth Control for potentially cr4ppy parents, than "educating" these potentially cr4ppy parents into decent parents.

Well to be accurate, homosexuality is wrong by her (Muslim) community ethical standard, not her personal moral code (based on her actions). This is very common for folks' morals to clash with their community ethical standards. But she is, in fact, following her moral code.

The Philosophy of badminton is play aggressively in doubles and for position in singles.

Well, perfect equality is stasis, which essentially equals death. No, I prefer inequality. That's what makes life interesting. Everyone is better and worse than others at something.

It makes easier (and more ethical) when the patient's interest and attitude aligns with the best legal posture for the staff and the facility.

Oh hey, Jack. Merry Christmas!!

In my field, which has a zero tolerance of negative outcomes, guarding against the "worst" (and therefore accepting a possibility of "bad") gives folks psychological comfort and thus the wherewithal to do and accept things gladly that under ordinary circumstances they would not.

It's not about guns it's about fearmongering.

The inaccuracy of risk assessment is part of the problem and how measures are taken on the basis of information with inaccuracies.

In my experience dealing with medical and personal risk assessments, I have advised those seeking counsel to compare the negative outcomes of either of a (theoretical) binary choice are taken. That is, it is more enlightening to compare bad to worse than good to better.

Part of the problem with the subject of risk (prospectively), is that risk assessment is notoriously inaccurate, thus ignoring "known" risk can be defended just as taking it into consideration can be criticized.

Churches saying that the purpose of life is to "do things for the church" is akin to Amazon declaring that the purpose of life is purchasing goods and services. It is inherently self serving. Logical and predictable, yet crass and demoralizing.

Well English has more total words in it's vocabulary than any other language. In addition learning English as a second language increases compensation more than learning any other language.

I don't mind if folks accumulate the identical wealth that they do now WITH an enforced income tax rate from say 1945-1963 plus a regressive estate tax.

The FDA has a questionable history of its own. It would be foolish to think it is a reliable source of protection against possible malfeasance by big pharma. After all, there is no question that the big pharma lobby is capable of influencing the presidential appointment of FDA officials. Don't be so certain that the FDA doesn't have greater interests that far outweigh the health concerns of American citizens.

In a conversation about the relative ethical standards of the pharmaceutical industry to other industries, the FDA isn't evaluated against how good it might have been, it's evaluated against other (lobbyist prone) agencies and against no regulation whatsoever (in certain industries).

Eh, not really news.

Don't get me wrong, the pharmaceutical industry is NOT inherently trustworthy, I agree. But then again no industry is inherently trustworthy... because they're industries, ie they are driven by profit. So Big Pharma is no more or less trustworthy than Big Oil, the Military Industrial complex etc.

Actually the fact that there is some governmental oversight (the FDA) actually separates Big Pharma from most other industries, in a good way.

Exactly. The more we CAN do (technologically speaking), the more we should ponder what we SHOULD do.

If we had total free will, it would invalidate all scientific knowledge about human behavior since there would be nothing fixed in our behavior.

It depends on your personal definition of "total free will". What most subscribers to Free Will that I know believe is that humans can actually make conscious choices, exactly as we appreciate subjectively, that is: human decision making is not an illusion.

I'd say that if we have free will, it's very limited. Otherwise it would be an insult to those low-functioning autists and anorexics. It would mean that an anorexic could wake up one day, make a U-turn and say "I'm going to eat as much as I need from now on." Or that a low-functioning autist could suddenly snap out of their autistic personality and become normal. But those things aren't happening. So if free will exists, it must be very limited.

Everyone agrees that various factors (say, being an autist) INFLUENCES decision making, sometimes drastically. However, abandoning Free Will says that there are no TRUE decisions for anyone. That is, if humans create a big enough supercomputer and feed it enough data all of what we call 'decisions' could be successfully predicted into infinity.

What is wrong with having a religious ideology? Has some law been broken here?

The answer is the same as what's wrong with spending money on concert tickets? Someone who is not a fan of the artist concludes the concert goer has nothing but some positive feelings/memories after the concert is over, ie it doesn't "buy" anything (of value). Whereas another could make the observation that it buys an albeit temporary positive emotional state.

Ok, what do you mean by "God"?

Or which god? Even if there is a god, there's less than one half of one tenth of one percent that it is the god that an individual believes in, historically speaking.

If honest is an adj, is it like tall and short, something we are largely born with, or is it like rich, something we can gain and lose?

It is a behavior profile that typically flows from one's psychological outlook. Thus CAN definitely change (along with one's psychology) though most don't change much.

In my experience the mindset most conducive to honesty is self confidence, since lying is frequently deployed to cover for the psychological inability to acknowledge personal shortcomings.

Thus the soul in your context, disappears when we die, right?

Don't be shy, what do you think?

Psychopaths, at least, are often described as 'soul-less' for the total inability to empathize.

I can live with your description if you can live with a "soul" being a reflection of one's behavior/outlook (as opposed to an innate entity that all humans possess).

I could see how that could be allegorically stated. :up: Still, technically, I will argue that sociopaths too want to be good at what they do, and so are in their own way innately attracted to the good, even though their conception of it might be easily considered perverse

I don't disagree, though you're saying that "good" is subjective thus essentially anyone's chosen behavior can be labeled "good" if you equate intentionality with seeking to do "good".

In order to define what is "fake", by definition one must define what is "real". As your counterfeiting example demonstrates, many, if not most common philosophical examples are of an inter-subjective, not objective nature. Thus in those circumstances perspective is critical because we are addressing opinions, not objective facts.

So... sociopaths have no soul?

If all the cells in our bodies, in organisms generally, contain a unique DNA sequence that defines them then that is different than the 'ship of Theseus'. It is also a matter of metabolism. Look up 'self-organization' and you will see why it does not apply to ships or to anything other than organisms..

Well you're right that personal identity of say, humans is fundamentally different from the 'ship of Theseus'. But the difference isn't because of DNA, it's because citizens exist both objectively (our bodies) and inter-subjectively (our identities), whereas archeological finds, such as ships, only exist objectively.

The turnover of cells (and thus molecules) of a human's body change our objective existance. However most layperson conversations about who we are do not use objective existance as the defining criteria. Commonly we use our inter-subjective existance (that is our existance as agreed upon by say, our community) as what we mean in conversation. Thus I am: my name, my family position, my profession, my reputation, my history. To myself, I am my memories and my beliefs and outlook. None of these is primarily defined by cells nor molecules.

OTOH a physical ship can slowly devolve from being 97% intact (or authentic) through lower and lower numbers until it hits zero and becomes a reproduction and no longer the ship of Theseus.

It's humorous observing the rewriting of such recent history now that the pandemic has been over for a year and a half.

That is, if an evil band of murderers exposes your peace loving society to death, oppression, subrogation and the like, and you have the ability to stop it, you must, even should it means devastation to the peaceful members of the murderous invaders.

While everyone agrees with your premise as written, it underscores a different issue, namely that a leadership structure when faced with external threats to their power, rally their constituants by posing the threat in exactly the overly simplistic terms that you used. "Evil band of murderers" indeed.

As they say, the first casualty of war is truth.

To be clear, I'm not criticizing the practice since telling simple folk what they want to hear is an extremely effective strategy.

Again, usually very true, but I'm not addressing the details of success (vs failure), rather that of crazy over the top success (vs plain ol success).

No I meant that say, Steve Jobs was a bright, driven individual with access to higher education (which makes him distinctly not average), but was in the right place at the right time, thus in his absence a different bright, driven individual (of which there are many) would likely have been lucky enough to have been as successful as he was.

"I feel incredibly lucky to be at exactly the right place in Silicon Valley, at exactly the right time, historically, where this invention (computers) has taken form." Steve Jobs 1995

Absolutely. Human ability tends to be on a roughly normal distribution. Wealth tends to follow a power law distribution. Compound returns on capital and the general existence of positive feedback cycles that make the poor poorer and the rich richer inflate small differences into large ones.

Very true, but not quite the topic I addressed. Outlier-level success is neither evenly distributed in the population, nor the purview of the previously rich and famous. Rather it is evenly distributed (since it is ultimately decided by luck) BUT within the (not small) group that has attained excellence (which is slanted towards the advantaged).

Most, including myself, learn different things differently. If it is a physical thing like a tennis stroke, I learn best by viewing an expert demonstration. If it is a process like building shed, by knowing what the options are, then deriving the best process based on personal experience. If it is a set of factoids, by experiencing them in multiple senses, hearing them spoken, watching the lecturer, writing (not typing) them down in a paper notebook, reading my notes.

I am concerned education for technology is not doing enough to nurture the student's character development, relying too much on technological knowledge but minus the important human factors.

Yes, there has to be a reason that the US trails the rest of the world in educational excellence (by a significant amount) yet leads the world in profitable patents, copyrights and inventions/corporations.

It is a common misunderstanding that those who become outlier-level, extremely influencial or successful are also outlier-level "better" or "smarter" than everyone else. The reality is that while these folks indeed work harder than most, are more intelligent, diligent, driven than most etc, there are large numbers who are also at that level, but what makes these household names over-the-top successful is essentially luck. Thus if by some stroke they would not have existed, someone else (typically unknown to most) would have stepped into that void and history would have progressed in a similar fashion.

As usual it depends on perspective. "Mad geniuses" accomplish great things that benefit the human race, however commonly their obsession impacts them negatively (often quite negatively) from their personal perspective. Thus using your example, if I'm advising my dear friend Isaac Newton who is considered to have died a virgin, exhibited bizarre behavior in his elder years due to mercury poisoning from his alchemical "research", lost his fortune having put a huge percentage of his wealth in the South Sea company before it crashed and had to live out his years in his niece's home, I would have advised him to develop relationship skills, moderate his alchemical pursuits and financial investments.

An excellent demonstration of the concept of the value of moderation in all things. Life isn't a single variable which should be maximized. As folks like to say: life's complicated. There are numerous variables that have importance at various times in various situations and circumstances. We all get to prioritize them differently. We look back from a wiser future and feel good about some of our decisions and regret others that we would do differently with our (new) wisdom. But having some regrets is okay too.

Overly simplistic philosophies that (over) emphasize single viewpoints ultimately leave me cold as too impractical.

Exactly. The OP is an excellent example of the importance of perspective. From a human philosopher's perspective the OP's declarations make some sense. From the perspective of the Universe itself for 99.99997% of the last 13.7 billion years it makes no sense whatsoever.

Reminds me of musings we had at 0300 in the morning in residency: "soap should be given away free and Birth Control should be in the water supply and you have to get a prescription for the antidote".

Approaching this logically, yet impractically, kitchen knives hurt their owners >90% of the time, yet adults with serious problems due to toxic childhoods generally harm folks other than their parents >90% of the time.