But lets say there were two identical twins in two separate near identical universes (so they don't affect one another). But one suffers a car crash and the other doesn't. Lets assume no other major entropy afterwards. One lives a life of pain and disability and the other doesn't. Certainly not fair nor deserved? Or lets say the disabled one does have additional changes? Loss of income, ends up in a more dangerous neighborhood to afford a place, maybe loses friends that were connected by more active lifestyle? Also undeserving? Can deserving only be assessed by the divine? — TiredThinker

Another question is, why do we gravitate toward consideration of a lack of deserving (the twin who suffered) instead of asking whether the other twin deserved to be suffering-free? What does one do to deserve to not suffer? And is this strictly a homo sapient thing? And if so, why?

Apparently there are bacteria inside our bodies, held at bay by life. As soon as we die, they have a field day. Do they deserve to suffer the wait? As to those who get to feast early, did they somehow deserve an early meal? Is the concept of "deserve" limited to humans? Why? If the dog performs, does it deserve a treat, but only if it learns something that we want to teach it?

I don't believe you. — unenlightened

I know you don't, but that does not matter.

Some cannibals call us "long pig" so we must taste more like pork. We're probably tasty, provided we're well fed and properly cooked. — Bitter Crank

:lol: I stand corrected!

I have no reason to believe you. and nothing more to say. — unenlightened

You just made my point against your point regarding the subjectivity of value.

If you think it is an arbitrary distinction that is a matter of preference, you are as wrong — unenlightened

If you disagree with unenlightened, you are wrong. :lol:

If there are no values, there is no value to truth, and never mind the bollocks of object and subject. — unenlightened

You equate a lack of communal agreement on values with a lack of individual (subjective) appreciation of values. That is not the case. Just because I don't share your values doesn't mean I don't have any.

Apparently the issue is not the validity of organs relocating, just that said relocation is not allowed to benefit the person losing the organ, because that would be reasonable and we can't have that — Book273

It might also reveal how society is failing it's constituents if a shit-ton of poor people are lining up to sell their stuff. Like students selling semen or eggs to make tuition, or houseless selling blood to eat. It would reveal what a failure certain societies are, and we definitely can't have that. :gasp:

I would take that one step further, people can do whatever they want with whatever in in their body. Sell your organs if that is your thing. Maybe your kid needs university more than you need your second kidney, your call, not mine. — Book273

:100: :up:

I agree, especially if the state is not willing or able to articulate a persuasive and compelling state interest. In the case of abortion, suicide, organ transplant, and other issues, I don't think any state interest can override the interests of the individual. If, however, the state can show that an activity, or failure to engage in a certain activity presents an existential threat to the state itself, or to the fundamental interests of those the state represents, then it can impose itself upon the individual. The state, just like an individual, has a right to be wrong (prohibition) but it can also then stand to be corrected. In the case of pandemics and plagues and insurgency and incitement and insurrection and, in some cases, even convenience (like keeping insurance premiums down via seat belts, smoking premiums, etc.) then the state can act.

Anyway, we have institutions and entities (courts, ACLU?, etc.) designed to winnow those questions.

Some tribes pick their priests. And sometimes only after the priest has proven him/herself to the satisfaction of the tribe.

Pessimists and optimists are equally boring to me. Both take it as a forgone conclusion that they have things sussed and that their take on life/history/politics/culture is indisputable. There are few things more tedious. — Tom Storm

:100: :strong: I find optimists to be somewhat novel, at least in the pool where I swim. But novel only goes so far.

That sucks! — Agent Smith

It does not apply to anyone because there is no such thing as evil. That doesn't suck.

Nevertheless, I see it as a duty to help those who can't think for themsleves and that includes those who don't understand the implications of their choices. Even if I come off as a nosey parker, I feel obliged to share my take with someone grappling with an issue. People (women for this discussion) need to hear the whole story to make an intelligent choice. — Agent Smith

"can't think for themselves" "don't understand the implications of their choices" "need to hear" "intelligent choices" ????????????

You'd make a wonderful citizen in an authoritarian state. I'm not going to spend any more time destroying your sense of duty or obligation, any more than I would try to talk sense to a missionary who wants to spread his word to some pre-contact Amazonian tribe. Suffice it to say, I will shed no tears to find out you taste like chicken.

P.S. In the U.S., we pride ourselves on our freedom to make mistakes. If you are a women that regrets having aborted: Lesson learned. If you are a man who knocked up a women who aborted against your wishes, then you failed in your choice of women: Lesson learned.

What's the point in being able to choose when you make all the bad choices. I'm going out on a limb here and say that I'd rather have no choice than have a choice and mess it up. — Agent Smith

The point is, not having other people make the choice for you. If you look up to, admire, and respect those people, then you can choose to do what they say. If you think they are FOS, then you get to make your own choice, mistake, or not. If you want to go out on that limb, then I have a bridge I want to sell you. I have decided that you better give me all your money. Better you do that than have a choice and mess it up.

So to you individuals have no say within a society? — javra

I don't know how you got that from what I said. Individuals have lots of choice. They can choose to commit crimes. They can vote. They have a right to speak (and supposedly to be heard (HA!). etc.

To me, societies don't decide or feel; individuals do. And when the decisions and feelings of individuals interrelate, that's when a society forms. — javra

Yes, and when they decide something is an existential threat to their society, then carrying out that threat can be a crime against that society. That's all I'm saying. My contention that something could be a threat against society was challenged with an argument that such could only occur "within" a society. I think there is here, an unnecessary tripping-up over terminology. Potayto-potahto.

It's none of our business? — Agent Smith

Right. End of story, full stop. Period.

Men (if we are men that is) are supposed to take an active part in the family: share the burden and not leave everything for the woman to do. — Agent Smith

True. If, before birth, she wants our help, or, after birth, then we help. But when the human being is living inside her body, she has carte blanche. Choice.

As a counter, if crime is injurious, and if the individuals that make up a society don't like getting injured, then reducing crime can only be pro-societal - i.e. pro the cohesion of individuals that make up the given society. Also, societies are nothing else but groups of individuals that voluntarily interrelate; so individuals, to me, do have their say; its in part how societies change over time. — javra

Societies get to decided which violations of what laws present an existential threat to the society. Homicide is usually a no-go. But we have exceptions, where the right to life is forfeit, or fails to vest, or where the taking thereof is subject to different levels of punishment. Society let's it's members, and non-members, know the general essence of itself through it's laws and punishment.

I know where the U.S. stands (or doesn't stand) but I'm not willing to say it is impossible for another society to feel an existential threat from abortion.

Why would you say that? — Agent Smith

Because it's none of our business.

You give me the impression that you're man and whatever sex/gender I may be, I've never personally undergone an abortion. In short, both of us have little understanding what it's actually like to have one. — Agent Smith

It's none of our business.

I've seen women who sought abortion. Believe you me, some had this :sad: or this :cry: expression on their faces. Truth be told I've never encountered a pregnant client at an abortion clinic with this :grin: or :rofl: expression on their faces. — Agent Smith

It's none of our business.

Women take the matter of terminating a pregnancy very seriously. They know, deep down in their hearts, there's something cruel, morally suspect, about abortion. — Agent Smith

It's their business.

It's just that they've been, for one reason or another, forced into a corner. — Agent Smith

Because other people don't mind their own business.

:100: I think I've got some of those books buried around here somewhere. I'll have to dig them out. With the loss of news papers (or their unwillingness to self-depreciate or get people thinking) we also lost a good thing. It would be interesting to see what Calvin would make of current events (obliquely, of course). Would his head be stuck in a cell phone, while Hobbs sat alone a shelf at Goodwill?

If good and evil are fictions, then the truth has no value either. — unenlightened

I disagree. I think that good and evil are subjective, and individual choice can be informed by truth. It's the idea that there must be some collective human agreement on what is good and what is evil that creates the rub. Even then, the collective can agree on something as good or evil without it being objectively so. That is where we get these funny notions of "justice" and "morality." These are legal or ethical fictions that, like truth, inform our conduct. But there is no objective deserve.

A crime within some societies, yea, OK; but a crime against society? How so? — javra

I already stipulated that the U.S. permitted abortion so the Freakonomics example does not apply. There might very well be other societies that would be destroyed if abortion was allowed. I don't know, I'm not a world societal expert. But I would suppose they might be Roman Catholic societies where abortion is anathema to their very being. In that case, abortion would be a crime against that society, even if it reduced crime. In fact, I've often argued that just how free a society is can be measured by the ability to get away with crime.

In any even, I think it is subjective to determine that eliminating crime (through abortion or otherwise) is entirely a pro-societal marker, and that increasing crime is de facto anti-societal. There are grey areas and we (individually) don't get to choose what is pro or anti-society. Society does that.

No society had written a format, like a software program, where it mapped everything according to its needs and wants. — L'éléphant

You are conflating society with culture. Culture is language, tradition, religion, shared experience, etc. Society is glued together by laws. We have a Declaration of Independence, Constitution and all the laws stemming therefrom. We even had a societal/cultural common law. So yes, society does have a written format. But to use your software program analogy, ours is an AI format, changing and learning over time.

It means the whole world. Look what happened to Detroit, Michigan. — L'éléphant

That means nothing.

puts pressure on scientists/medical community to come up with a different solution, a solution that's more nuanced, that's more in keeping with our sophisticated worldview, than simply expelling a living fetus, a potential person, from the uterus. — Agent Smith

As I opined long ago in this thread, the problem is getting dragged down into nuance, different solutions, sophisticated world views. Pro-choice people just need to stipulate to all the arguments of the pro-life crowd and say "Tough: Every human being has an unfettered right to do whatever they want with any other human being that resides within their body."

Getting dragged down in silliness about sentience, viability, when life begins, blah blah blah is all a diversion from the simple fact that every human being has (should have) an unfettered right to do whatever they want with any other human being that resides within their body.

And yet, the list of illegal activities is long. — L'éléphant

It is, but in the U.S., none on the list can be enforced without due process of law. See Bill of Rights.

When you say:

And by integrity, I mean the unwritten format that a human population adopts by creating regulations, institutions, establishing economic interests, religious beliefs, etc. — L'éléphant

you forget that "unwritten format" must be written. Otherwise, it's not worth the paper it's not written on.

What holds together a society is the enforcement of morality through the use of force (the law). — L'éléphant

So, when you say

the list of illegal activities is long. — L'éléphant

it means nothing. Laws change, cultures change, societies change.

I'm off to bed. See you mon yonna.

What holds together a society is the enforcement of morality through the use of force (the law). You get enough dissent and nonconformity to your society's morals, you kill your society. That's why a society has a right to defend itself from such nonconformity, according to the majority of the population. If you don't agree with this, continue reading below. — L'éléphant

I don't agree with that and I kept reading, below. Society is like culture: Yes, it can die. But it can also change. Societies change more often than not. Once they have changed, that does not mean they are dead. They are just different. And society does not have a right to defend itself from nonconformity, especially when society has a Bill of Rights protecting minorities from the tyranny of a majority.

Abortion may be a crime against *some* societies, but not all. In the U.S., for instance, it is not a crime against society.

Who are they? And if they can't avoid it? What does it mean? — L'éléphant

"They" is anyone. If "they" can't avoid it then "they" suffer the punishment. It means different things to different people. I just don't like the word "deserve." Some equate it with justice, or karma, or whatever. On the non-punishment side, some folks say X deserves to be treated positively. Or everyone deserves a medal. But all that entails judgement. And judgement is subjective. And shouldn't all judgement be placed into the context of an entire life, instead of one or more incidents? And who knows the entire life of another?

Does a deer "deserve" to be torn apart and eaten alive by a pack of wolves? No. But it doesn't not deserve it either. What about the pups back in the den? Do they deserve to eat? What differentiates the intraspecific relations of man from the inter- or intraspecific relations of any other animal(s)?

"Deserves got nothing to do with it." William Muny. It's just life. "Fair" is a subjective creation of our heart, sometimes shared, sometimes written, sometimes not.

I would like to read it. I'll send you a PM.

1. X kills Y in the now.

2. X goes back in time and kills Y's parents [Grandfather paradox of time travel]

3. X causes/induces Y's mom to abort when Y's a fetus [Abortion]

That abortion (3) appears in the list of ways X could "murder" Y. That must mean something, right? — Agent Smith

That analogy is easily distinguished with relevant differences.

#1: Y is not living inside of X's body; illegal.
#2. Y is not living inside of X's body; illegal.
#3. Y is not living inside of X's body; illegal.

Notice how you introduced parents and mom as third parties with no consideration for them whatsoever? That's what anti-abortion people do. Let me rephrase it properly for you:

Y is living inside of X's body, X kills Y; Legal, moral, ethical.

:100: :strong:

Deserving is about justice.

Thanks to all who helped out. The person turned their paper in last week and your insights helped.

I don't even know what the phrase entails and I'm not inclined to look it up. My last sentence in the OP just came from what I perceived as a state's understandable interest in having everyone be able to read and write the native tongue, as well as do some basic math and learn how to not kill others when you can help it. I'm all for individualization, but I'm also a little leery of letting some mom/pop pound the bible into their kids brain when they can barely walk and chew gum at the same time. Oh well, ship sailed.

You're only allowed to expose the war crimes of losers. :death: — unenlightened

:100: :sad:

Are you arguing that he is blind but can still find peace? — TiredThinker

Originally, I was thinking more about how these characters maintain a sense of inner peace and calm in the middle of a shit sandwich.

As to getting old, I know it is a handicap that gun skills can't always comp for. At some point we are dependent upon others for our safety. Indeed, even the baddest ass in his prime is more dependent upon society and the forbearance of force than he would like to admit. Everyone has to sleep.

where would humanity go if we had a warp drive? — The Opposite

Where no man has gone before, of course! Seriously though, I don't know. If we could go to the past, I'd be hip on the Pleistocene. But even if we could find an Eden planet in the present, be it ever so humble . . . In other words, I love the Earth. I think it would be great if Elon Musk, et al, would take about 7 billion people with him.

I could do a Lewis and Clark thing, but I don't want to put in the school time, engineering and all that to go to space.

Mars shmars :razz: : https://thedebrief.org/darpa-funded-researchers-accidentally-create-the-worlds-first-warp-bubble/

"Hey Twinkie, want to see if there's an afterlife?" :rofl:

Moon first, then Mars.

Or we could try establishing civilization on Earth first.

What fundamental properties (or flaws) must we accuse of our cognitive faculties to justify this assumption? — Mersi

I would like to have that sentence clarified a little bit. Not sure about the use of the word "accuse."

Generally, though:

My gut has me leaning toward your second option:

theory that an increase of knowledge on one side is accompanied by a loss of knowledge on another - loss of spirituality e.g. (whatever that means). — Mersi

If you have to ask "whatever that means" then you make the case.

Lately I've been more and more impressed with the idea of living in the "now." To the extent that "reality" is the true "now" then what we like to see in ourselves as a continuous process in the course of which empirical gain leads to an increasing convergence between human imagination and objective reality, we are FOS.

A simple example is the oft stated (paraphrased here) axiom that flows from the mouth of every scientist ever: "Every answer one finds leads to ten more questions. The more we learn, the less we know." Robert P. Pirsig.

Before the two-valued fallacy kicks in, let me say this is not an indictment of curiosity. It's just there are different directions we might go in search of truth, one of which is backward to the infinite number of truths we missed along the way.

Where in the US does your friend keep those 135 alpacas? — jamalrob

He's up on what I call the Wyoming Steppe, land of horizontal snow. Bison (now cattle, in the summer) country. They have a nice ranch but treat the little bastards like queens in a barn; letting them out when the weather is nice. I thought they would grow better wool if left outside in the winter, but I don't know shit about them so I keep my mouth shut. They do have to worry about predators, though. So they have big white dogs and some Llamas.

Good Conrad quote. :up: