As we don't yet know how to make humans and other species immortal, let's put that plan aside for now.

How do I get everyone to love everyone? If everyone loved everyone, there wouldn't be any wars or crimes or poverty or injustice or exploitation. Why doesn't everyone just love everyone and be vegan egalitarians? We should share resources equitably, and everyone should receive according to need and contribute according to abilities. If we can do this, all 14 worldwide objectives would be achieved. — Truth Seeker

I didn't read ahead, but hopefully my expose on trees is some use and interest to the conversation.

However, obviously we agree medicine is a good thing all things being equal, and so making medicine available to people is going to extend human life on average.

But poverty and pollution are far bigger killers, and cause of suffering, now than a lack of access to medicine. Most people alive today do not owe their lives to modern medical intervention, and so pursuing medicine is diminishing gains in terms of helping people on the whole. Why the focus on medical research and medical access in poor countries is because corporations profit from that and the corporations and imperial policies that make ad keep those people poor aren't put into question in the framework that medicine will make their lives better.

I have also put a lot of thought into what is "the best" that can be done, both from the perspective of some general strategy or collection of strategies of the humanist-ecological movement broadly speaking, as well as my own individual strategy to maximize my contribution.

Since I studied math and numerical analysis, I am conditioned to view objectives as the increase or decrease in a single variable. The first thing you learn in numerical analysis is that simply waiting for the computer to finish the job and just sit there staring into space is almost always cheaper than trying to think of a more efficient program, not to speak of solving anything analytically like some sort of deranged self-flagellating priest of mathematics seeking purity at the cost of his own flesh and sanity!

The second thing that is taught is that for optimization to be an approachable problem a single variable must be defined that we are optimizing for. So if there are several different measurable or otherwise quantifiable metrics of consideration, they must be combined by some function into a single variable of which the change, up or down, is good or bad in the context of the problem and of which the purpose of the algorithm is to push to some global or local maxima or minima. If all goes well the process even says something about the real world.

To translate this mathematical insight into more profane terms, I once had a friend (before he started helping to launder money for international illegal diamond cartels) that wanted to do good and also be rich and saw no issue with being able to pursue both goals maximally.

Now, while doing some good and being quite rich are compatible, unde most conditions under consideration for the exercise, I explained that they cannot both be maximized, if by "being rich" meant spending money on enjoyments and pleasantries (leading a "rich life")above what is required to pursue the first goal. One can do good insofar as it makes one rich (but equally willing to do bad insofar as it makes one rich), and one can make money insofar as it helps to do good (and lose all one's money insofar as it helps to do good), by maximizing both is not possible.

Every dollar that comes in one must choose whether it goes towards the good works, granting they are good works, or then goes towards personal enjoyment. If the personal enjoyment is required to do the good works (like sleep) then that is money going towards the good works and it is just the special case where the money being spent on yourself maximizes that goal. If it's to useful to starve as continuing to live is the best way to continue the good works in question, then obviously some capital must be spent on eating and drinking and even keeping up good spirits and creativity. There is no reason to assume suffering would be required, though it cannot be excluded either depending on the conditions. If it was good to hide jews from the Nazis, and doing so resulted in getting arrested and tortured by the Nazis, then in these circumstances it was necessary to risk suffering to do good; but assuming that's not the case, reducing expenditures on ones own creature comforts only insofar as it maximizes the good works is by definition the maximum of the good works. Simply imagining the life of a multi-billionaire with all its normal pleasantries and imaging plenty of good works is not maximizing those good works. It may not be maximizing the life of a billionaire either, but the point is there is no rational way to determine which dollar goes to what (every dollar that comes in one must choose whether to help others or whether to help oneself beyond the point of what is efficient to help others, which is just helping others but in the special case described), and so the life would be arbitrary and thus meaningless.

Now, this is clearly not your dilemma, but by seeing how "living the life of a billionaire" (in how we normally think of it) and "doing good" cannot both be maximized as a matter or principle simultaneously, even if health and comforts in themselves are fine things and can be subordinated to a single goal of maximizing good, so too does the same problem arise in considering all the good things that we could list would ideally occur.

For, it is not such a difficult task to list the ideal characteristics of a system. Ideally food is healthy, tastes good, instantly available, free of any cost and changes in an ideal way to keep those good ideal characteristics at every meal.

Where optimization comes in is how to navigate all the ideal characteristics we would wish for and stay clear of unwanted consequences in a rigorously defined way. For example, higher quality food generally costs more. One may say if we're optimizing the food then cost is not an issue, but obviously it is as other necessities in life also have a cost and so spending all ones funds on food does not optimize overall health. Even if we were to solve the most optimum lifestyle for health ... well what would be the point if all resources and time were consumed by that objective? What about other objectives? Shouldn't we be productive and pursue health insofar as it makes us more productive and able to accomplish some goals? For example, ensuring the society we're optimizing our health in itself stays healthy and sustainable.

So, we have a numerical model of what goes into a meal, imbedded in a numerical model of what goes into a healthy life style, imbedded in a model of productivity, imbedded in a model of what goes into a healthy society and environment.

The point of going through this exercise that a component (such as a single meal) cannot be optimized without larger and larger context and ultimately the context of the whole, is not only instructive in how optimization works, but also how over-optimizing a single component is going to lead to pathology. If someone was only concerned about food quality they are going to spend all their money on food which is going to cause more problems than it solves.

I have to go now, but the end point of these deliberations is that getting to the full context reveals fossil fuels and the centralized economic systems that result from their exploitation is the root cause of nearly all our problems. Local solar energy is the one thing that addresses our problems but is underdeveloped from its potential, and so it is not the only thing to do (as there are always diminishing returns in doing any one thing) but the one thing that can spread exponentially and radically alleviate poverty in a sustainable way, while also removing the "need" for resource wars as the sun shines everywhere.

↪boethius Thank you very much for your fascinating post about trees and the problems with human immortality. I learned some new things, which is great. — Truth Seeker

My pleasure, trees are really an extraordinary life form and taking care of them is foundational for a sustainable way of life.

Thank you very much for sharing your insights about numerical analysis. I am certainly anti-fossil fuel and pro-renewable energy. Solar is not the only option. Wind farms, wave farms, and geothermal power plants are also good options.

trees are really an extraordinary life form and taking care of them is foundational for a sustainable way of life. — boethius

I agree. I love trees, in fact, I love all autotrophs. I wish all organisms were autotrophs. In fact, it would be even better if all organisms were energy beings who could live without consuming any air, water and food.

↪boethius Thank you very much for sharing your insights about numerical analysis. I am certainly anti-fossil fuel and pro-renewable energy. Solar is not the only option. Wind farms, wave farms, and geothermal power plants are also good options. — Truth Seeker

Yes, there are other renewable technologies, but there will likely only be one that is significantly underperforming, therefore the optimum choice to develop.

To connect with trees, a tree when used for fuel is a solar energy device turning the suns energy into chemical energy. As a solar energy device a tree is less than 1% efficient, for a long list of "losses" if the goal is to burn the tree; likewise for all biomass sources.

Even worse, as a ecosystem degrades biomass production efficiency gets less and less, orders of magnitude less when the ecosystem can't even support plant growth over most of the surface most of the time (such as a desert). So using trees unsustainably is an exponential process of ecosystem degradation.

There are roughly 2 billion people that rely on biomass as their primary energy supply and billions more that rely on fossil fuel as a primary energy supply, which is obviously also not good (but better than deforestation, these local uses being pretty minimal compared to Western emissions from cars; although particle pollution is still a big problem from uncontrolled fossil burning, but biomass burning has the same problem).

But just take the 2 billion people currently relying on fossil burning, upgrade them to a solar thermal device and solar efficiency of their technological setup is now around 50%, so 50 to 1000 times the increase in solar efficiency compared to the previous technology of burning biomass.

If the technology can be made with only common materials (which solar concentrators can; just mirror, steel / aluminum, and even wood/bamboo construction) and built and maintained locally, the potential is truly revolutionary. And this solar revolution has already happened spontaneously in many places in the global south where it becomes simply common sense to use a solar water heater for example. Solar water heaters are super simple but limited in temperature; higher temperature solar thermal devices allow for the same kind of revolution where it becomes common sense as simply obviously cheaper, but each temperature bracket requires more skills and sophistication.

We can get into the limitations of all the other renewable technologies in detail if you so desire, but in short: all the technologies that produce primarily electricity (wind, hydro, photovoltaic) simply don't really address the fundamental energy problem which is heat based. Most energy consumed is to heat things; and even more so if we're talking about primary energy needs; things that need electricity, such as lights and electronics, simply don't consume much, few watts, especially in a low-income region whereas heat needs are in kilowatt -- doesn't take less energy to cook rice simply because you're poor, but you can make do with very little lights or computation and still derive significant benefits.

Then there's complex issues around the grid. We take the grid for granted in the West, but grid ubiquity is due to burning coal. It's way better to burn coal in a far away power station and "pipe in" the energy by wire, and if the coal is plentiful and cheap then that pays, in terms of energy to-do-it and energy derived from it, the cost of making the grid. However, without burning "cheap coal" (in brackets to ignore their external environmental costs), grids don't make much sense to move thermal energy around. Whereas there's a huge incentive to get coal smoke out the city, there's similar pollution reason to put a solar device far from where you're living.

There's a lot of technical details and history, but the basic thesis is once renewable energy is being considered as the primary input into society, the Western grid connected way of life doesn't make much engineering sense. If we have the technology to get energy from sunlight, then putting these solar devices far away and transferring the energy over long distances makes little engineering sense.

This is particularly critical for poor places that do not at the moment have a high capacity, high reliability grid. Because even when you have a grid, more energy simply can't be dumped on it; increasing the capacity is massively expensive.

Grid capacity is usually financed on 30 year amortization periods paid by governments. And building up capacity is a slow process; a few percent growth in capacity per year. Then there's the problem of copper supply and battery storage if we want to transition to renewable energy.

However, off-grid systems can be up and running basically instantly. If they provide the same value, there's really no need for a grid. However, off-grid electricity is limited in its value production. Most primary economic activity requires huge amounts of heat, which can be supplied by solar thermal.

To compare to just wind even ignoring it doesn't provide low-cost heat: The first problem is that there's not so much wind in the tropics where large numbers of people live, especially poor people. The second is that the efficiency of wind turbines increases to the 3rd power of the wind blade diameter, so there's massive efficiency gains in building huge wind turbines. So to realize the recent gains in wind turbine technology requires a large amount of capital not just to build the wind turbines but also to build the grid and a long list of grid balancing requirements to deal with variable wind inputs into the grid, and none of this is helpful to the vast majority of poor people on the planet. Likewise there is similar issues for all the other renewable energy sources.

However, solar energy can be accessed tomorrow pretty much anywhere in the world with technology you can carry around, available in even more intensity in the tropics and is not limited in total supply such as wind and hydro (which, even assuming all the grid problems are solved, fundamental limits are rapidly reached; for example, extracting all tidal energy on the planet would be 2 terawatts, whereas humanity consumes about 20 terawatts; sun represents about 170 petawatts).

On top of these basic engineering efficiency considerations, there's massive systemic benefits to decentralized systems. To take one example, solar thermal devices are completely immune to an electromagnetic pulse from a solar flare or nuclear weapon; if primary energy needs and economic activity are powered by solar thermal devices then a massive EMP would not cause much problems at all. The spread of disease can be far easier controlled in a decentralized system, and quarantine, if necessary, would be by village and not people staying individually in their apartments with massive long term harms to society. Most of all, however, is in a decentralized system in which energy, food and most materials and their transformation are mostly sourced locally, volume of transportation can be radically reduced, which is the main cause of our ecological problems (just moving billions of tons of stuff around the globe is not sustainable in itself, even if you did have renewable energy to do it).

I agree. I love trees, in fact, I love all autotrophs. I wish all organisms were autotrophs. In fact, it would be even better if all organisms were energy beings who could live without consuming any air, water and food. — Truth Seeker

Glad we share an interest in trees. Highly debatable if it were better that there was no life as we currently know it.

Highly debatable if it were better that there was no life as we currently know it. — boethius

Why wouldn't energy beings who don't need to consume air, water and food to live be better than the autotrophs, herbivores, carnivores, omnivores and parasites we currently have?

Thank you very much for pointing out how other renewable energy sources compare to solar power. I agree that solar is the best option.

Why wouldn't energy beings who don't need to consume air, water and food to live be better than the autotrophs, herbivores, carnivores, omnivores and parasites we currently have? — Truth Seeker

I view life as we know it a good thing, so the diversity and predation and so on goes along with life as we know it.

Now in some sort of super abstract discussion, it's certainly a compelling argument that being some sort of autonomous demi-god is better than being a mortal human.

However, such an argument would not exclude life as we know it still being a good thing. Energy beings of one sort of another can presumably co-exist with life on earth (for example by living on the surface of the sun).

So such "what if" considerations, don't reduce the value of life on the planet as it is today and our responsibility towards earth life.

↪boethius Thank you very much for pointing out how other renewable energy sources compare to solar power. I agree that solar is the best option. — Truth Seeker

There's lots of nuance, but the main part is the amazing abundance of solar energy available everywhere.

The problem is that local solar energy doesn't "plug in" to the grid and powering cities very well. Solar heat does not really transport directly at all over any considerable distance, and to do so one would need to convert the heat to electricity and then transport the electric energy over a grid.

So if you just imagine in your mind a solar device 100km away making heat to make steam to turn a turbine to turn a generator to then make electricity that flows through a long series of electronic wires and devices, to boil some water to cook rice, and then imagine just using the suns energy where you are to cook the rice, it's easy to appreciate the economic difference.

The obstacle is that cooking the rice where you are with the sun requires a different social organization than what we have now. Building up such a solar economy where people currently are mostly still rural and don't have a grid requires a foundational capacity and skills building.

However, once a critical mass of technology and skills is achieved in a local economy and it's clearly simply a better way of life (creating income, conserving trees, providing all sorts of comforts that low cost energy enables), then it can spread exponentially throughout the planet. Solar thermal technology requires only mirror (glass and a silver or aluminium layer), steel and aluminium (also wood and bamboo are possible for structure), so has no resource bottleneck for exponential growth.

Doesn't mean other technologies aren't useful in specific niches or where available, nor does it mean a grid isn't adding value where population density is high enough. The cost of the grid scales with capacity after a relatively small one-time investment to layout the basic structure, and also scales with storage capacity needed to use primarily intermittent renewables. So simply lowering the capacity needed due to most energy bering captured and used on location (in particular heat energy) solves a lot of grid problems; likewise simply reducing dramatically the capacity of transport from most food and materials being harvested and used locally, solves most transportation problems.

If you look at essentially any super industrial renewable energy proposal to power Western economies today, the resource bottlenecks are enormous, and then even more enormous if the proposal is to scale that solution (which we clearly don't have as like 20 COP meetings with zero deviation in emissions demonstrates) to the global south. However, simply improve poor people's lives in the global south with solar energy, we can do literally tomorrow at not only radically low cost compared to massive industrial proposals but after a critical mass it is self perpetuating (just as plenty of poor regions simply spontaneously adopt solar water heating as it's just cheaper).

One caveat I may not have emphasized, but focusing on solar thermal is both a core component of a global viable strategy for the humanist-ecological movement, but also something amenable to my skillset of numerical analysis and prototyping.

Such a strategic analysis does not imply there's not other things to do, such as direct poverty alleviation, stopping genocides, governance, organic farming and a myriad of other things. Just so happens that solar thermal is particularly underserved by the larger community of do-gooders and I suited to try to increase the realization of its potential.

However, where it is fundamental compared to other clearly also-good things is that energy sources structure and condition society, so a viable strategy to address everything must start with energy. Food obviously is also an energy source but we've inherited plenty of sustainable food growing practices, so have a good starting point from our inheritance in terms of food. Exosomatic energy (energy we use outside our metabolism) on the other hand we've never been sustainable above a relatively low population density (in which burning trees is not an issue), and so it's solving this exosomatic energy problem that is the limiting factor (in the sense we don't have existing traditions that offer solutions) for true sustainable and peaceful living (as there is no "need" to steal another's sunlight).

So I while I would argue it is critically important, that does not imply it's the only good thing worth doing. Still important a long list of things and people with skills and circumstances amenable to those things should do them, but the movement as a whole also needs a feasible vision of how to ultimately solve these long list of problems. With solar thermal energy a technically feasible social organization and as important a feasible scaling pathway can be rigorously proven.

Therefore, I would propose the development of local solar thermal based economies, in particular in the global south, as the key element required to attain your objectives by the whole community of people striving for a peaceful and sustainable world without poverty and slavery.

I view life as we know it a good thing, so the diversity and predation and so on goes along with life as we know it. — boethius

Life on Earth, as it has been and currently is, comprises much suffering, injustice, and death. That's why I imagined energy beings who don't need to consume any air, water or food to live. The energy beings would not need to consume any sunlight or heat either. They would be eternally self-sustaining. I imagine them to be all-loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful. I am all too aware that these beings don't exist outside my imagination.

How can we implement widespread use of solar power for generating electricity and heat?

Life on Earth, as it has been and currently is, comprises much suffering, injustice, and death. — Truth Seeker

Certainly human life as we know it, but in terms of healthy ecosystems generally speaking, predation and a struggle for survival agains the elements is apart of life.

The energy beings would not need to consume any sunlight or heat either. They would be eternally self-sustaining. I imagine them to be all-loving, all-knowing, and all-powerful. I am all too aware that these beings don't exist outside my imagination. — Truth Seeker

Well maybe there is such a place to aspire to in the afterlife.

For the time being, however, I would propose we have this life and the life on the planet to tend to.

How can we implement widespread use of solar power for generating electricity and heat? — Truth Seeker

I've been working on this for 20 years, and I've collected some of the old open source material in this folder: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/16eIpgNP7vvBcm_P6nfFzywqjcHuTV9qD?usp=share_link

These two videos are also useful:

https://youtu.be/CXJgAmft2jI
https://youtu.be/q3WeRU8geSs

There's also a lot of material on lytefire.com, a company I founded to prove the economic viability of the technology (as it was only possible to raise the funds needed as a company; not even other non-profits trust non-profits to deliver technology), but then certain management differences emerged, around staying true to the original open source strategy (idea was to raise funds, develop tech, then open source once proven commercially), but mostly on whether it was a good idea or to to help launder African diamond money. I was against it, but turned out a minority opinion.

It is not just a question of technological development, but then on reaching critical mass of capacity and skill in real locations on the planet, in addition to integration with complementary technology. Small wind, PV and hydro are excellent technologies for relatively small amounts of off-grid electricity; where solar thermal competes in making electricity is if there's an economic need for a lot heat, such as green houses or in textile / paper making, and so an inexpensive steam engine can produce some electricity and the exhaust steam power these other processes.

The critical part for developing the needed suite of technologies as well as integrating with other technologies to optimize actual solutions for real people, is the software simulation.

What's in the folder above is the termination point of the open source software. So it's this software (or more precisely developing something from scratch that does the same thing and more; as this was early days in my programming career) that is the key, as without software simulation building solar thermal technology is hugely expensive trial and error.

For, even if you have the capacity to build the technology, without software simulation it's just guesswork not only what to build but if there is even any deployment of the technology, even solar thermal technology in general, that solves the problem economically in real world conditions. With software you can get close enough in terms of the required performance to make fabrication a reasonable risk to take.

There's not only technical and environmental elements to simulate, but also things such as a reasonable work day. A lot of renewable energy projects fail because things are just not thought through (not because the engineers don't know thinking things through would be reasonable, but because executive can go tot the government and present ideal or laboratory conditions that "prove" things will be economically viable). For example, a baker needs to get to work and start baking, and baking quite a lot of bread, so a device that can get to the temperature and thermal-momentum required to bake one loaf of bread at high-noon on a absolutely clear day, is of no use to a baker. A solar oven that heats in the morning when the baker gets to work (so sun is low), and heats a commercial scale oven with high power and thermal-momentum to bake professionally to run an actual business, is what is required with enough extra capacity to deal with some haze and some clouds to bake most days.

So the software is essential to make plausibly reasonable simulations of an actual business case.

As important, software simulation is absolutely critical to develop any new application, as many applications cannot be adapted from equipment that runs on gas or electricity, and needs to be developed specifically to integrate with a specific solar thermal device. So software is critical and making software available open source to engineers with expertise in those application domains (pasteurization, desalination, absorption fridge, ceramics, paper, metals, textiles etc.) allows them to build up the simulation of the application and run various total optimizations and economic simulations, enough to be confident enough to build a prototype.

The more applications that exist the more valuable the technology becomes (and by technology I mean solar thermal technology generally speaking if there are superior designs for a given context; ideally the software would model all available designs and provide comparisons), in the same way that the more appellations for a mobile ecosystem are available the more valuable the mobile device (and also that a critical mass of key applications are required to drive exponential growth).

Certainly human life as we know it, but in terms of healthy ecosystems generally speaking, predation and a struggle for survival agains the elements is apart of life. — boethius

Not just human life. Other sentient biological organisms suffer and die. I don't want any living thing to suffer and die. I want all living things to be forever happy.

Well maybe there is such a place to aspire to in the afterlife. — boethius

There is no such thing as the afterlife. If you can prove there is an afterlife, please do.

I've been working on this for 20 years, and I've collected some of the old open source material in this folder: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/16eIpgNP7vvBcm_P6nfFzywqjcHuTV9qD?usp=share_link

These two videos are also useful:

https://youtu.be/CXJgAmft2jI
https://youtu.be/q3WeRU8geSs

There's also a lot of material on lytefire.com — boethius

This is awesome! Thank you very much for sharing. I look forward to exploring them.

to help launder African diamond money — boethius

That's unfortunate. Did the money laundering stop, or is it still going on?

Not just human life. Other sentient biological organisms suffer and die. I don't want any living thing to suffer and die. I want all living things to be forever happy. — Truth Seeker

I'm going to be honest, beyond some abstract comparisons, this seems to me an unachievable goal.

Also debatable if the natural cycle of life is a bad thing. If life has beauty and value then so too the predation, pain and death that is a natural apart of life.

And if not a bad thing, the alternative point of view is that pain is not suffering in itself, but comes from moral wrongs carried out by people that has nothing to do with a lion eating a gazelle.

For example, when Martin Luther King, Jr. stated "In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends," the underlying moral framework is that the lack of action by people who claim to be friends, causes more suffering (the wrong will be remembered) than the actions of outright enemies. For, an outright enemy is closer to a natural process of fighting a lion, but being abandoned by one's community, in which there are stronger moral bonds, causes a deeper moral rift and thus more suffering.

To push the example to the extreme, imagine showing up on an island with an uncontacted tribe and taking a poison arrow to the chest that causes incredible pain but you survive. Although definitely an unpleasant experience, it would be unlikely to cause extreme psychological trauma because there's not really any moral problem. Maybe you were trying to do good by going to the island for some reason, tribe is just doing what it normally does and you completely expected they may do, so there's no betrayal in any moral sense.

There is no such thing as the afterlife. If you can prove there is an afterlife, please do. — Truth Seeker

There is no way to really prove anything.

However, I do believe there are good reasons to believe there is an afterlife. I elaborate the argument in this essay: https://open.substack.com/pub/eerik/p/the-cromulomicon-the-book-of-croms?r=33um1b&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false

The main problem the essay tries to solve (if we take a shortcut and ignore problems such as needing an ethic to begin with in order to have problems, so there is no ethically neutral position in which the problem of what is the true ethic can be addressed, as an ethically neutral position would have no problems at all; dilemmas the essay seeks to solve), is to harmonize the search for truth and the love of humanity and life and acting in the interests of all life rather than oneself.

What we may call "pretty usual ethics" values truth, life, fairness and justice, empathy and compassion for others, and does indeed call upon people to make the ultimate sacrifice to save others (such as fire-people saving children in a burning building; if not "binding" certainly a good and heroic thing to do and not considered stupid and foolish). And, indeed, more can be added to the list of "usual ethics" shared by nearly all cultures.

As we have already discussed, it's not possible to optimize for different things and when there are different things under consideration such as learning the truth, protecting others and all life, seeking justice, and so on, either they are in conflict with one another or then harmonized and in fact represent merely different facets of a single value.

For, it can be argued on the surface that if I am searching for truth and I am reading one of my books, if you were to come to me dying of thirst I would be wise to not give it to you and so let you die as I search for truth and my reading is more important.

The value of truth seeking is a fairly easy ethic to arrive at, as I suspect you may agree @Truth Seeker, but a great many important truths are much harder.

It is easy to see that what our culture, and indeed most cultures, proposes as good moral principles are those very principles necessary for the culture's survival and perpetuation into the future (cooperation, fairness, sacrifice for other when necessary to ensure the groups survival), but seeing this explanation for where ideas come from does not actually resolve if those ideas are correct. The question remains of whether it is good for society to survive or indeed oneself.

To really get to the bottom of these things is a long journey and the structure and nature of all existence becomes necessary to posit at a context to resolve these sorts of questions. For there are alternative hypothesis available, such as caring only for oneself and having no appreciation for whatever is done by others, both present and in the past, for your benefit without payment and feeling no obligations in turn; that the fate of society, humanity, all life is of no concern to oneself and those that do concern themselves are fools that cause themselves trouble.

This is awesome! Thank you very much for sharing. I look forward to exploring them. — Truth Seeker

I am very appreciative, don't hesitate to ask any questions as they occur to you.

That's unfortunate. Did the money laundering stop, or is it still going on? — Truth Seeker

The coverup, at super high levels including the prosecutor general of Finland and also the President and PM, continues to this day: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1SXU6VkygIWM14S4O-IQQUhlz41qYBjFH?usp=share_link

I'm under investigation for "defamation to the auditor" which is not even a legally possible crime (why "proper channels" exist: total immunity from defamation). You could commit fraud in what you communicate to an auditor, but defamation is not legally possible. Why police just keep me under investigation for 4 years now to harass me and also pretend like the case could potentially be defamation, instead of overwhelming evidence of money laundering; evidence they explicitly refuse to collect, but in a trial I can just submit the evidence myself. So, police can't charge me or then the evidence appears in trial, but can't drop the case without admitting the only possible way to drop a defamation case concerning accusations of African diamond money laundering would be that the accusations are supported by evidence and reasonable to make. Why Finnish police are helping to launder money is because they are involved in human trafficking and narcotics smuggling. This was literally the first thing the chair of Transparency International told me (that my case of police refusing to investigate obvious evidence is similar to an existing case of theirs where police refuse to investigate an obvious case of human trafficking and child abuse; and the explanation for that is that police are involved in human trafficking and child abuse); the chair could not get approval from her board to do anything for an entire year and then was replaced by a person from Brussels (for sure 100% organized crime representative from Brussels).

But yes, the money laundering is unfortunate, but not entirely unexpected doing business in Africa. What was unexpected is all other board members and executives who did not originally participate in the money laundering, helped to cover it up and send me endless threats and bribes including I'll "be destroyed" and also 1 million Euros to drop all "claims and pursuit", even after they agreed there is significant money laundering!

I foolishly believed that people I thought were genuinely concerned for alleviating poverty in Africa and empowering people with a source of energy they could build and control themselves would not tolerate our work being used to launder hundreds of millions of dollars of African diamond money for Isabel Dos Santos.

That I was alone in my disposition, made me very alone indeed.

I'm going to be honest, beyond some abstract comparisons, this seems to me an unachievable goal. — boethius

I know that.

There is no way to really prove anything. — boethius

This is false. When I slap myself, I feel pain. That proves to me that pain is real.

However, I do believe there are good reasons to believe there is an afterlife. I elaborate the argument in this essay: https://open.substack.com/pub/eerik/p/the-cromulomicon-the-book-of-croms?r=33um1b&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false — boethius

Not convinced. All the gods are evil and imaginary.

I foolishly believed that people I thought were genuinely concerned for alleviating poverty in Africa and empowering people with a source of energy they could build and control themselves would not tolerate our work being used to launder hundreds of millions of dollars of African diamond money for Isabel Dos Santos.

That I was alone in my disposition, made me very alone indeed. — boethius

I am so sorry. We live in an evil world where the evil prosper and the innocent perish. European Christians, and Arab Muslims colonised and killed hundreds of millions of humans worldwide for centuries and got away with murder, rape, forced conversions, torture, theft, slavery, etc. This is why Christianity is the number one religion and Islam is the number two religion on Earth. Now they are getting away with neocolonisation and causing the climate crisis through 300 years of burning fossil fuels. If you haven't read the whole Bible and the whole Quran, I highly recommend that you do so: https://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com

This is false. When I slap myself, I feel pain. That proves to me that pain is real. — Truth Seeker

You haven't proved it to me though. Maybe you're a chatbot, maybe you don't feel pain and are lying, maybe you're a figment of my imagination etc.

You could say that you proved it to yourself, but again if you're a chatbot, or lying, or don't really exist, that hasn't happened either.

Not convinced. All the gods are evil and imaginary. — Truth Seeker

How did you prove that?

I am so sorry. We live in an evil world where the evil prosper and the innocent perish. — Truth Seeker

This is true, but if it is good to do good, then that is unaffected by how much bad there happens to be.

European Christians, and Arab Muslims colonised and killed hundreds of millions of humans worldwide for centuries and got away with murder, rape, forced conversions, torture, theft, slavery, etc. This is why Christianity is the number one religion and Islam is the number two religion on Earth. Now they are getting away with neocolonisation and causing the climate crisis through 300 years of burning fossil fuels. If you haven't read the whole Bible and the whole Quran, I highly recommend that you do so: https://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com — Truth Seeker

I have zero problem with the history.

If the technological conditions are war allows a culture to expand, and certain types of religion help that culture to stay both cohesive and warlike, then we should not be surprised that violent religious fanatics take over the world.

That historical result, however, does not resolve the core issues. Bad people also use principles of physics to do bad things, doesn't mean those physical principles are false; so too if bad people do bad in the name of god, or an eternal soul, or any idea whatsoever, does not therefore imply those principles are false.

The philosophical question has nothing to do with religion.

Is existence ordered or complete chaos?

If ordered, is existence ordered in a good way or a bad way or then perhaps indifferent way?

If ordered in a good way, what are good decisions in a good cosmos? If the universe is ordered in a bad way, are any good decisions possible in a bad cosmos, or indifferent or chaotic cosmos?

That people have made over time religions to answer fundamental moral, metaphysical and epistemological, and natural questions, and then some have gone on to do super violent things using whatever answers they find to keep a violent society cohesive, does not somehow eventually prove through that historical process that the original questions are somehow meaningless or then don't have answers to them or then the answers don't matter.

People made exactly similar stories to answer natural questions as they did for moral or theological questions, yet no so called "rationalist" goes around listing off all the crazy stories of storm gods and so on in order to demonstrate no answers can be correct and particle physics is therefore as meritless an answer to natural phenomena as is storm gods and river spirits.

If there is no order, or the order isn't good, then by what measure can you judge these religions you have issue with to be bad?

For example, the critique of liberated nihilism that there is no good and bad, don't be "fooled" by religion, religion is bad, look at all the bad things, makes no sense if good and bad are denied as a premise. If there's no good and bad, or then only personal good and bad, then it's not bad to be religious if you want to, even in a violently fanatical way.

To judge religious people, or anyone, one must be in a position to judge, to have proven what is right and wrong, and that is not so easy. But feel free to posit an ethic that is independent of cultural heritage, for, if part happens to be true (certainly not all, as most of the moral heritage is religious), such as not randomly killing people or going on world conquering crusades for that matter, there must be some reason that it's actually true other than simply being received wisdom (especially if one is rejecting the largest part of received wisdom globally, which as you note is to be religious of one kind or another).

If your moral ideas do not come from a cultural heritage at all, then from where do they come and why are they true?

For, to critique moral systems, religious or otherwise, on the outcomes of those systems, either historically or contemporaneously (putting aside the issue of what actions genuinely follow form those systems--i.e. who's really a true adherent), one requires a moral system to make those judgements about those outcomes.

Moral system A is bad because people B who believe system A do bad things, requires a moral system C in which to demonstrate those are bad things. "Skeptics", who say there is no moral system they accept, commit the most base fallacy by then going around claiming anyone's dong anything bad at all. From a morally neutral system, all outcomes at all times are likewise morally neutral. If we evaluate the doings of lions from an internally morally neutral system such as science (it is not externally morally neutral as to do science requires a moral system in which fabricating evidence is bad), then whether the lion catches the gazelle or then the gazelle manages to escape are both likewise morally neutral outcomes. From such a morally neutral perspective, whether a religion conquers and subjugates the entire world in a violent theocracy is a morally neutral outcome, same as the lion catching the gazelle (it happened, we can see the reasons why, same as we can see the reasons why it might not have happened, but it did).

You haven't proved it to me though. Maybe you're a chatbot, maybe you don't feel pain and are lying, maybe you're a figment of my imagination etc. — boethius

I don't need to prove it to you. I have proved it to myself, which is enough. If solipsism is true, I am the only entity that exists. Everyone else is just hallucinations or dreams or illusions or simulations, etc. Please note, I am not a solipsist. There are lots of other things that I can prove. For example, if you behead a chicken, the chicken dies. It happens every time a chicken is beheaded. The same is true for beheading other organisms, such as humans. However, if you behead a planarian flatworm, he or she does not die.

I have zero problem with the history. — boethius

I have a lot of problems with the history of living things. At least 99.9% of all the species to evolve so far on Earth are already extinct. There is so much suffering, injustice, and death. Life is horrific, and I wish I had never existed in a world like this.

is existence ordered in a good way or a bad way or then perhaps indifferent way? — boethius

At the subatomic level, reality is chaotic. Things happen randomly. However, at the macroscopic level, quantum chaos averages out due to quantum decoherence.

Existence is ordered in an indifferent way. That's why there is nothing fair about who lives how and who dies how. Here is a list of **biological design flaws** in humans and other species that strongly suggest **evolution through natural selection**, rather than **intelligent design**. These features reflect evolutionary compromises, historical constraints, and trial-and-error processes typical of evolution:

---

### **Design Flaws in Humans**

#### 1. **The Recurrent Laryngeal Nerve**

* **What it is:** A nerve that runs from the brain to the larynx but loops down into the chest first, detouring around the aorta.
* **Why it's a flaw:** In humans and other organisms, the detour is wasteful. In giraffes, it's over 5 meters longer than necessary.
* **Evolutionary explanation:** Inherited from fish ancestors, where this route was more direct. Evolution could not rewire it completely without disrupting function.

#### 2. **Human Birth Canal and Bipedalism Conflict**

* **What it is:** A narrow pelvis for upright walking makes childbirth difficult and dangerous.
* **Why it's a flaw:** High risk of obstructed labour, especially with large-brained babies.
* **Evolutionary compromise:** Upright walking (bipedalism) came with a cost to birthing ease.

#### 3. **Wisdom Teeth**

* **What they are:** Extra molars that often don’t fit in the modern human jaw.
* **Why it's a flaw:** Commonly causes crowding, impaction, and infections.
* **Evolutionary explanation:** Our ancestors had larger jaws and more abrasive diets, which wore teeth down and made space for third molars.

#### 4. **Blind Spot in the Eye**

* **What it is:** A spot on the retina with no photoreceptors where the optic nerve exits the eye.
* **Why it's a flaw:** Vertebrate eyes are "wired backwards," so light must pass through nerve layers before reaching receptors.
* **Contrast:** Octopus eyes evolved separately and don’t have this problem — their nerves are behind the retina.

#### 5. **Back Pain and Spinal Issues**

* **What it is:** Chronic back pain and slipped discs are common.
* **Why it's a flaw:** Our spine evolved from four-legged ancestors and struggles with vertical weight-bearing.
* **Evolutionary compromise:** Bipedalism is recent in evolutionary terms, and our skeletons are imperfectly adapted.

#### 6. **Appendix**

* **What it is:** A vestigial organ, once useful for digesting cellulose.
* **Why it's a flaw:** Can become inflamed or rupture (appendicitis) without much function today.
* **Evolutionary holdover:** Remnant from herbivorous ancestors.

#### 7. **Testicles Outside the Body**

* **What it is:** Human testicles descend into a vulnerable scrotum.
* **Why it's a flaw:** Increases risk of injury.
* **Evolutionary reason:** Sperm production needs cooler temperatures than core body heat.

#### 8. **Choking Hazard in the Throat**

* **What it is:** Humans share a passage for food and air.
* **Why it's a flaw:** Increases risk of choking to death.
* **Evolutionary constraint:** Arises from the descent of the larynx to allow complex speech.

#### 9. **Poorly Designed Knees**

* **What it is:** Prone to injury (e.g. torn ACL).
* **Why it's a flaw:** Knees evolved for quadrupedal locomotion and are not well adapted to the torque of upright walking and running.

#### 10. **Menstrual Cycle Wastefulness**

* **What it is:** Shedding of the uterine lining if fertilisation does not occur.
* **Why it's a flaw:** Energetically costly and causes discomfort or anemia.
* **Not all mammals menstruate:** Most reabsorb the lining instead.

---

### **Design Flaws in Other Species**

#### 1. **Flatfish Eye Migration**

* **What it is:** Both eyes end up on one side of the body.
* **Why it's a flaw:** Awkward and inefficient anatomy reflecting a patchwork adaptation.
* **Evolutionary explanation:** Adapted from symmetrical fish ancestors to lie flat on the ocean floor.

#### 2. **Panda's "Thumb"**

* **What it is:** A modified wrist bone used to grasp bamboo.
* **Why it's a flaw:** Far less efficient than a true opposable thumb.
* **Evolutionary compromise:** Makeshift adaptation rather than a well-planned structure.

#### 3. **Giraffe’s Long Neck with Same Number of Vertebrae**

* **What it is:** Despite its neck length, the giraffe has only 7 cervical vertebrae.
* **Why it's a flaw:** Limits flexibility and increases risk of injury.
* **Evolutionary constraint:** Most mammals have 7 cervical vertebrae, and changes are highly constrained developmentally.

#### 4. **Flightless Wings in Birds**

* **Examples:** Ostriches, emus, kiwis.
* **Why it's a flaw:** Waste of resources for animals that don’t fly.
* **Evolutionary vestiges:** Wings are leftover structures from flying ancestors.

#### 5. **Male Seagull Mating Error**

* **What it is:** Male seagulls sometimes try to mate with anything that looks like a female, even dead ones.
* **Why it's a flaw:** Behavioral overgeneralization due to evolutionary pressure to reproduce quickly.
* **Not intelligent behavior:** Just evolutionary instincts gone awry.

#### 6. **Cetacean Respiratory Limitation**

* **What it is:** Whales and dolphins must consciously surface to breathe.
* **Why it's a flaw:** They can drown if unconscious (e.g., during sleep or entanglement).
* **Evolutionary constraint:** Ancestors were land mammals; complete aquatic adaptation remains imperfect.

---

### Why These Flaws Matter

If humans and other species were designed by an all-powerful, intelligent designer, we’d expect **optimal, elegant, and efficient systems**. Instead, we observe:

* **Redundancy**
* **Vestigial structures**
* **Inefficiencies**
* **Developmental constraints**
* **Painful trade-offs**

These are consistent with **natural selection**, which works by **modifying existing structures**, not by designing from scratch.

by what measure can you judge these religions you have issue with to be bad? — boethius

“Ethics, too, are nothing but reverence for life. This is what gives me the fundamental principle of morality, namely, that good consists in maintaining, promoting, and enhancing life, and that destroying, injuring, and limiting life are evil.” – Albert Schweitzer, “Civilization and Ethics”, 1949.

Joshua 10:12–14, Bible (New International Version)
“On the day the LORD gave the Amorites over to Israel, Joshua said to the LORD in the presence of Israel:

‘Sun, stand still over Gibeon, and you, moon, over the Valley of Aijalon.’

So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, till the nation avenged itself on its enemies...

There has never been a day like it before or since, a day when the LORD listened to a human being. Surely the LORD was fighting for Israel!”

Making the Sun and the Moon stand still so that God's followers can murder more people is not loving. Why is there no record outside the Bible of the Sun and the Moon being still? Lots of people in many places on Earth had invented written languages at that time. Could it be because it is fiction? I am convinced that it is fiction.

The Bible, particularly the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible), contains several verses in which God is described as commanding the complete destruction of entire peoples — actions that meet the definition of genocide: *the intentional destruction, in whole or in part, of a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.* Below is a list of such verses, mostly from the books of *Deuteronomy, **Joshua, **Numbers, and **1 Samuel*.

---

### *1. Deuteronomy 7:1–2*

> "When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations... you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy."
> *— Commands total destruction of seven nations*

---

### *2. Deuteronomy 20:16–17*

> "However, in the cities of the nations the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them — the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites — as the LORD your God has commanded you."
> *— Commands killing of *everything that breathes**

---

### *3. Numbers 31:17–18*

> "Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man."
> *— Massacre of Midianites; only virgin girls spared as captives*

---

### *4. 1 Samuel 15:2–3*

> "This is what the LORD Almighty says: ‘I will punish the Amalekites... Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’”
> *— Explicit command to kill *children and infants**

---

### *5. Joshua 6:21*

> "They devoted the city to the LORD and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it — men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys."
> *— Jericho: all inhabitants slaughtered*

---

### *6. Joshua 10:40*

> "So Joshua subdued the whole region... He left no survivors. He totally destroyed all who breathed, just as the LORD, the God of Israel, had commanded."
> *— Genocidal conquest of the entire southern region*

---

### *7. Joshua 11:11–12*

> "Everyone in it they put to the sword. They totally destroyed them, not sparing anyone that breathed, and he burned Hazor itself."
> *— Northern campaign led by Joshua*

---

### *8. Deuteronomy 2:33–35*

> "The LORD our God delivered him over to us and we struck him down, together with his sons and his whole army... We completely destroyed them."
> *— Refers to Sihon the Amorite king and his people*

---

### *9. Judges 20:48*

> "The men of Israel went back to Benjamin and put all the towns to the sword, including the animals and everything else they found. All the towns they came across they set on fire."
> *— Near total destruction of the tribe of Benjamin*

The Bible contains multiple verses that regulate, endorse, or command various forms of *slavery, including **chattel slavery* and *sex slavery. These appear primarily in the **Old Testament (Hebrew Bible)*
---

## *GENERAL SLAVERY IN THE BIBLE*

### *Leviticus 25:44–46 (NIV)*

> “Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you... You can bequeath them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life.”
> *— Endorses chattel slavery of foreigners as permanent property.*

---

### *Exodus 21:2–6*

> “If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year, he shall go free... But if the servant declares, ‘I love my master...’ then his master... shall pierce his ear with an awl. Then he will be his servant for life.”
> *— Allows indefinite enslavement of Hebrews who choose to stay.*

---

### *Exodus 21:20–21*

> “Anyone who beats their male or female slave with a rod must be punished if the slave dies... But if the slave recovers after a day or two, the owner is not to be punished, since the slave is their property.”
> *— Permits beating slaves nearly to death without punishment.*

---

### *Deuteronomy 20:10–11, 14*

> “When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace... If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you.”
> *— Allows the enslavement of conquered peoples.*

---

### *Ephesians 6:5 (New Testament)*

> “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ.”
> *— Reinforces obedience to masters without calling for abolition.*

---

## ⚠ *SEXUAL SLAVERY*

### *Numbers 31:17–18*

> “Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man.”
> *— After war with the Midianites, virgin girls are taken for male use; widely interpreted as sexual slavery.*

---

### *Deuteronomy 21:10–14*

> “When you go to war... and you see a beautiful woman among the captives and become enamoured with her, you may take her as your wife... If you are not pleased with her, let her go... you must not sell or treat her as a slave, since you have dishonored her.”
> *— Allows war captors to forcefully take women as wives.*

*Genesis 2:16,17*
And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”

God’s Warning vs. What Happened
What was said: In Genesis 2:17, God tells Adam that eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil would result in death on that day.

What happened: Adam and Eve eat the fruit, but they do not die that day. Instead, they are:

Banished from Eden.

Cursed with suffering (painful childbirth, hard labor, mortality).

Told they would return to dust — implying eventual death, not immediate.

Wider Fallout: Collective Punishment
Not only were Adam and Eve punished, but all of humanity and even non-human animals suffer and die.

Eve’s punishment was extended to all women, with pain in childbirth and submission to men (Genesis 3:16).

Adam’s punishment led to a cursed ground, requiring hard labor to survive (Genesis 3:17–19).

This presents God as:

Inflicting intergenerational punishment.

Imposing suffering on billions (including animals) for a single act of disobedience.

Commanding reproduction (Genesis 1:28, Genesis 3:16) even though childbirth is cursed — a painful contradiction.

Deception: God said one thing (immediate death) but did something else.

Cruelty: Instead of just death, the punishment was lifelong and multigenerational suffering.

Injustice: All descendants and other species suffer for the mistake of two.

From an ethical perspective, punishing innocents for the actions of others — especially when omniscient and omnipotent — is morally wrong.

The Bible is the most self-contradictory, inaccurate, cruel, and unjust book I have ever read.

The Quran is the second-most self-contradictory, inaccurate, cruel, and unjust book I have ever read.

Please see https://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com which goes through the Bible, the Quran, the Book of Mormon and the Bhagavad Gita and points out the various issues with them. If you are short on time, please see https://www.evilbible.com which goes through the evil verses in the Bible.

If your moral ideas do not come from a cultural heritage at all, then from where do they come and why are they true? — boethius

My morality comes from empathy, compassion, evidence and reason. Causing deliberate harm to living things is evil, and saving and improving lives is good.

I don't need to prove it to you. I have proved it to myself, which is enough. — Truth Seeker

Which is what I mean by not really possible to prove anything, as in the context I make that statement you're asking a proof from me, so proof in the context refers to proving it to you, which, seems we agree, is not really possible.

It is always possible to maintain a standard of doubt that is insurmountable.

For proofs to be socialized, i.e. agreed to as proofs by multiple parties, there must be prior agreement on premises and a framework of proof in which proofs become possible; i.e. there must be agreement on a standard of doubt that is possible for parties to overcome. For example, you can prove to me it's raining outside if I'm willing to accept time stamped video evidence or then going outside and seeing and feeling for myself the rain; but if I doubt your video evidence is authentic or then I doubt my own senses as maybe hallucinating both you and the rain, then it's not possible to prove to me anything.

So, in the context of you asking me for proof, I can't really prove anything if there's not existing agreement on logic and evidence you would find acceptable.

At the subatomic level, reality is chaotic. Things happen randomly. However, at the macroscopic level, quantum chaos averages out due to quantum decoherence. — Truth Seeker

There is no chaos at the subatomic level.

Quantum mechanics is linear, for there to be chaos requires non-linear equations.

What is not deterministic is observation of quantum events, but that's not chaos.

However, this has nothing to do with fundamental chaos. You can have a system that has order (laws and continuity and predictability and so on) that has chaotic phenomena inside it, such as turbulence, but that is not fundamental chaos. By fundamental chaos I mean no rules of any kind, no structure of any kind, everything is fluke, the "sensation" of coherence but random hallucinations bound to occur in a sufficiently large chaos for a sufficient amount of time (and even time is not a structured order on this chaos).

Existence is ordered in an indifferent way. — Truth Seeker

If existence is ordered in a fundamentally indifferent way, then it would follow that existence is indifferent to there being any order over chaos.

If we simply ignore that problem as it's inconvenient, if existence as a whole is indifferent why would it follow that parts of the whole would not likewise be indifferent and so there is no judgements to make about anything. Existence isn't good or bad and therefore no part of existence is good or bad.

Joshua 10:12–14, Bible (New International Version)
“On the day the LORD gave the Amorites over to Israel, Joshua said to the LORD in the presence of Israel: — Truth Seeker

Ontology is not reducible to Christianity.

That's why I spent some time explaining that historical explanations for natural phenomena you don't accept, like river gods, don't imply anything about the underlying question about the phenomena.

You don't accept ancient religious answers to ontological questions, fine, doesn't mean those ontological questions can no longer be discussed or then the opposite is therefore true.

For example, in mathematics (a context in which there is agreed criteria for proofs), things are erroneously proven all the time, doesn't mean the opposite is therefore proven due to these mistaken proofs. Many people over the years have believed they've proven all sorts of things, but turns out they were wrong. These mistaken efforts don't resolve whether conjectures can be proven true in the future or not. Why would they?

Even if a tour of religions was relevant to the fundamental ontological questions, you'd need a tour of all religions, not just a couple.

My morality comes from empathy, compassion, evidence and reason. Causing deliberate harm to living things is evil. Deliberately saving and improving lives is good. — Truth Seeker

Key word reason. What's the reason empathy is a good quality to have in the first place? And assuming it is good, how does empathy translate into decisions in complex situations?

For example, without an ethical framework to begin with, why not empathize with the perpetrator of an alleged crime and their desire to get what they want? Who's to say it's a crime and therefore empathy should therefore be with the victims? If there's no good reason it really should be a crime, then the real crime is a false accusation and empathy should be with the alleged perpetrator.

If you have the feelings you do due to evolution, and therefore evolution is good because your feelings are good, well what exactly is the next step in evolution? Anyone can argue pretty much anything new (from random killing to slicing up brains to "upload" the neural pattern into a computer) is the "next step" in evolution. Evolution just helps explain how we got here, anything whatsoever can happen and then evolution explains again why we're now in a situation of that thing having happened; at no point does evolution imply anything should have happened that didn't, or should not have happened but it did.

More fundamentally, why would an indifferent cosmos bestow upon you the right feelings and virtuous character, when you see plainly for yourself it is lacking in so many others or you would not be addressing the problems that concern you?

Where are we again?

I am so sorry. We live in an evil world where the evil prosper and the innocent perish. — Truth Seeker

and also:

Existence is ordered in an indifferent way. That's why there is nothing fair about who lives how and who dies how. Here is a list of **biological design flaws** in humans and other species that strongly suggest **evolution through natural selection**, rather than **intelligent design**. — Truth Seeker

Yet in this indifferent and unfair existence where evil prospers, you happen to have the right and good feelings, right and good reasoning, that imbue you with the correct morality?

So many others are in the wrong and don't know it, mistake themselves to do good when they do not, yet you are in the right and do know it and make no mistakes in your self-evaluation?

you can prove to me it's raining outside if I'm willing to accept time stamped video evidence or then going outside and seeing and feeling for myself the rain; but if I doubt your video evidence is authentic or then I doubt my own senses as maybe hallucinating both you and the rain, then it's not possible to prove to me anything. — boethius

I agree.

What is not deterministic is observation of quantum events, but that's not chaos. — boethius

By chaos, I meant non-deterministic. I am not a physicist, so thank you for explaining the difference.

in mathematics (a context in which there is agreed criteria for proofs), things are erroneously proven all the time — boethius

I didn't know that. Can you please give me an example?

What's the reason empathy is a good quality to have in the first place? And assuming it is good, how does empathy translate into decisions in complex situations? — boethius

Pain is painful. That's why I don't want to be in pain. In the same way, other sentient beings don't want to be in pain. If I see someone being tortured by someone else, I would intervene to protect the victim of torture from the perpetrator of torture because torture is painful for the victim.

without an ethical framework to begin with, why not empathize with the perpetrator of an alleged crime and their desire to get what they want? — boethius

There is already an ethical framework. Causing deliberate harm to living things is evil, and saving and improving lives is good. It's my ethical framework. This is why I am a vegan egalitarian. This is why I save and improve lives. A crime is called a crime because it causes harm.

Even if a tour of religions was relevant to the fundamental ontological questions, you'd need a tour of all religions, not just a couple. — boethius

I have examined the top twelve religions on Earth. My favourite is Jainism, but I am not a Jain because Jains believe in souls and karma and the reincarnation of souls according to karma. I see no evidence for the existence of souls, karma and reincarnation.

Yet in this indifferent and unfair existence where evil prospers, you happen to have the right and good feelings, right and good reasoning, that imbue you with the correct morality?

So many others are in the wrong and don't know it, mistake themselves to do good when they do not, yet you are in the right and do know it and make no mistakes in your self-evaluation? — boethius

Very few people are vegan egalitarians. Most humans don't agree with me, or else most humans would be vegan egalitarians. I am convinced that being a vegan egalitarian is the best way to live. Please see https://www.vegansociety.com/go-vegan/why-go-vegan if you want to know more about the reasons for going vegan. Please see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egalitarianism if you want to know more about egalitarianism.

I didn't know that. Can you please give me an example? — Truth Seeker

People propose proofs of mathematical conjectures all the time, both experts and amateurs, that turn out to be wrong.

I'm not sure what the most erroneously proven conjecture (i.e. someone believing they've proven it but the proof is wrong), but some famous ones that get claimed to be proven on a regular basis are Riemann hypothesis, the twin primes conjecture, Goldbach's conjecture, Collatz conjecture, P=NP, and other Millennium Prize Problems not listed there also get significant attention (but some are quite technical so don't get much attention from amateurs, who generate the most wrong proofs).

Probably the theorem with the most wrong proofs is Fermats Last Theorem, and so a good example of a huge number of wrong proofs not providing any actual evidence the opposite is true and no proof is possible, as Fermats Last Theorem has since been proven.

As interestingly, there are plenty of conjectures that nearly all mathematicians believed must certainly be true, but later proven to be false. So in terms of positing inherent knowledge about anything, these examples are cause for some doubt.

In researching some examples, there's a super good answer to exaclty this question by a one KConrad on stalk overflow:

Mathematicians used to hold plenty of false, but intuitively reasonable, ideas in analysis that were backed up with proofs of one kind or another (understood in the context of those times). Coming to terms with the counterexamples led to important new ideas in analysis.

1. A convergent infinite series of continuous functions is continuous. Cauchy gave a proof of this (1821). See Theorem 1 in Cours D'Analyse Chap. VI Section 1. Five years later Abel pointed out that certain Fourier series are counterexamples. A consequence is that the concept of uniform convergence was isolated and, going back to Cauchy's proof, it was seen that he had really proved a uniformly convergent series of continuous functions is continuous. For a nice discussion of this as an educational tool, see "Cauchy's Famous Wrong Proof" by V. Fred Rickey. [Edit: This may not be historically fair to Cauchy. See Graviton's answer for another assessment of Cauchy's work, which operated with continuity using infinitesimals in such a way that Abel's counterexample was not a counterexample to Cauchy's theorem.]

2. Lagrange, in the late 18th century, believed any function could be expanded into a power series except at some isolated points and wrote an entire book on analysis based on this assumption. (This was a time when there wasn't a modern definition of function; it was just a "formula".) His goal was to develop analysis without using infinitesmals or limits. This approach to analysis was influential for quite a few years. See Section 4.7 of Jahnke's "A History of Analysis". Work in the 19th century, e.g., Dirichlet's better definition of function, blew the whole work of Lagrange apart, although in a reverse historical sense Lagrange was saved since the title of his book is "Theory of Analytic Functions..."

3. Any continuous function (on a real interval, with real values) is differentiable except at some isolated points. Ampere gave a proof (1806) and the claim was repeated in lots of 19th century calculus books. See pp. 43--44, esp. footnote 11 on page 44, of Hawkins's book "Lebesgue's theory of integration: its origins and development". Here is a Google Books link. In 1872 Weierstrass killed the whole idea with his continuous nowhere differentiable function, which was one of the first fractal curves in mathematics. For a survey of different constructions of such functions, see "Continuous Nowhere Differentiable Functions" by Johan Thim.

4. A solution to an elliptic PDE with a given boundary condition could be solved by minimizing an associated "energy" functional which is always nonnegative. It could be shown that if the associated functional achieved a minimum at some function, then that function was a solution to a certain PDE, and the minimizer was believed to exist for the false reason that any set of nonnegative numbers has an infimum. Dirichlet gave an electrostatic argument to justify this method, and Riemann accepted it and made significant use of it in his development of complex analysis (e.g., proof of Riemann mapping theorem). Weierstrass presented a counterexample to the Dirichlet principle in 1870: a certain energy functional could have infimum 0 with there being no function in the function space under study at which the functional is 0. This led to decades of uncertainty about whether results in complex analysis or PDEs obtained from Dirichlet's principle were valid. In 1900 Hilbert finally justified Dirichlet's principle as a valid method in the calculus of variations, and the wider classes of function spaces in which Dirichlet's principle would be valid eventually led to Sobolev spaces. A book on this whole story is A. F. Monna, "Dirichlet's principle: A mathematical comedy of errors and its influence on the development of analysis" (1975), which is not reviewed on MathSciNet. — KConrad answering Widely accepted mathematical results that were later shown to be wrong?, Math Overflow

There's links and also notation that does not copy over, but I hope this is a good example of the process of actually proving things, even in a context where the conditions and methods of proof are agreed, is not so easy.

Pain is painful. That's why I don't want to be in pain. In the same way, other sentient beings don't want to be in pain. If I see someone being tortured by someone else, I would intervene to protect the victim of torture from the perpetrator of torture because torture is painful for the victim. — Truth Seeker

Pain is not sufficient to build a moral theory. The gazelle does not want to experience the pain of being eaten by the lion, is therefore the lion "immoral" for causing pain or we humans who could "arrest all liens" immoral to allow these wanton lion attacks to continue?

Avoiding pain is simply a description of what organism generally do, but that does not establish a moral theory. If we do not stop the lion, if predation is natural between animals, then why stop human predators preying on other humans? Lions don't only kill gazelles but also other lions in struggles for power, why would it be any less natural for humans to likewise kill both gazelles for food and other humans for power?

One requires a moral theory to be able to categorize some pain as good and bad. Exercize is painful but we categorize it as good pain. Gazelles being eaten by lions is painful but we categorize it as morally neutral pain; lion is just being a lion, she can't do other than pursue her nature.

So there are these fundamental issues, but even if a moral theory is presented that pain is a sensation that really is "bad" and should be minimized, and why it's different between humans and doesn't apply to animals and so on, there is an even bigger problem.

For society to function requires people going straight into pain (a firefighter into a burning building) and risking their lives for the good of the community. It is this leap, avoiding pain for oneself to avoiding pain for the community as a whole over time and even accepting great pain to oneself to achieve that, is not resolved by the principle of simply avoiding pain nor simply empathizing with the pain of others.

There is already an ethical framework. Causing deliberate harm to living things is evil, and saving and improving lives is good. It's my ethical framework. This is why I am a vegan egalitarian. This is why I save and improve lives. A crime is called a crime because it causes harm. — Truth Seeker

But where does this ethical framework come from? And why is it superior to others who likewise claim to have an ethical framework which proves what they do is good and what others do is bad?

And again, a crime causes harm ... but if the crime is not actually justified then the real harm is a false accusation. So without actually knowing what is really a crime then any alleged criminal circumstance the alleged perpetrator could be the real victim and the purported victim the real perpetrator. Plenty of things were crimes in the past that are no longer crimes and the new view is that the alleged perpetrators (such as being gay) were the actual victims for being accused falsely. How do we actually know anything is a crime?

The basic problem is that harm requires a moral framework to determine, so you cannot argue something is bad because it is harmful without first having a theory that identifies harm.

A situation of crime is (for the most part) someone claiming to be harmed and therefore it's a crime due to the harm. But in nearly all cases the harm is already agreed by society to be harmful; to not be in a loop, the question of why society believes it to be harmful and is society correct about that, needs to be demonstrated.

Worse, most feelings of harm are due to society believing they are harmful, and in a society in which the action is not viewed as bad people often do not experience the harm. Vikings thought is was perfectly acceptable to challenge anyone to the death and then kill them at essentially anytime; vikings did not experience these fights to the death as some sort of social harm but in fact necessary for the health of viking society.

I have examined the top twelve religions on Earth. My favourite is Jainism, but I am not a Jain because Jains believe in souls and karma and the reincarnation of souls according to karma. I see no evidence for the existence of souls, karma and reincarnation. — Truth Seeker

There's literally thousands if not tens of thousands of religions. If disproving religions to your satisfaction was relevant to prove anything about the fundamental ontological questions you would need to go through every single known religion. You can't just do 12 and then generalize from that small sample.

However, my basic point is doing so, even addressing all religions everywhere, doesn't prove anything about the ontological questions religions addressed in the past without modern understanding or tools.

Very few people are vegan egalitarians. Most humans don't agree with me, or else most humans would be vegan egalitarians. I am convinced that being a vegan egalitarian is the best way to live. Please see https://www.vegansociety.com/go-vegan/why-go-vegan if you want to know more about the reasons for going vegan. Please see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egalitarianism if you want to know more about egalitarianism. — Truth Seeker

But the religious people you have issue with also claim to be convinced their way is the best way to live.

How do you actually know you're not making some similar mistake in reasoning just about different things. Religious people too point to all the bad done by atheists and also other religions to justify their religion.

So knowing is the key problem. But if existence is filled with evil, then on average one would expect to fall in the category of evil people who mistakingly believe they are good.

Thank you very much for the examples of errors in mathematical proofs.

If we do not stop the lion, if predation is natural between animals, then why stop human predators preying on other humans? Lions don't only kill gazelles but also other lions in struggles for power, why would it be any less natural for humans to likewise kill both gazelles for food and other humans for power? — boethius

Just because something occurs in nature, it doesn't make it ethical. Lions are not ethical, but lions don't have the capacity to consider the moral implications of their choices. People can consider the moral and legal implications of their actions. Humans are moral agents, but lions are not because we have the capacity to think about the moral dimensions of our actions.

But the religious people you have issue with also claim to be convinced their way is the best way to live.

How do you actually know you're not making some similar mistake in reasoning just about different things. Religious people too point to all the bad done by atheists and also other religions to justify their religion.

So knowing is the key problem. But if existence is filled with evil, then on average one would expect to fall in the category of evil people who mistakingly believe they are good. — boethius

I am all too aware that there are billions of people who are convinced that their religion is the best way to live. I am a vegan, egalitarian, agnostic atheist. For them, my position is wrong. Just as for me, their position is wrong. "There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so." - William Shakespeare.

Just because something occurs in nature, it doesn't make it ethical. — Truth Seeker

Yes, but we are also in nature. A moral theory must demonstrate why what happens in nature (and really anything we could possibly do at all would be "happening in nature") should not happen in human affairs. What makes us different from lions that their hunting, even of their own kind, is fine and natural, but that does not apply to us?

People can consider the moral and legal implications of their actions. — Truth Seeker

But we can also consider the implications of the actions of lions and stop them. And, as we just established, we don't really know what anyone else is really thinking or knows, perhaps lions also consider the consequences of their actions or then the vast majority of humanity does not and are the same as lions. For example, perhaps the lion considers the consequence of killing the gazelle is that she will be able to eat. Perhaps most humans do not consider the consequence of their actions of wanton consumption that others elsewhere will not eat.

Humans are moral agents, but lions are not because we have the capacity to think about the moral dimensions of our actions. — Truth Seeker

But this is the crux of the problem. What makes us moral agents? Simply being able to consider consequences does not in itself provide any moral information.

A theory is required to go from the consideration of consequences, which I agree is the start of the problem, to what consequences are actually good and bad.

Nearly all lay moralizing is simply the discussion of consequences with the assumption that everyone already agrees on how to judge the outcomes. It's not really a moral debate but rather a strategic debate on how to achieve shared objectives.

To do moral philosophy is to ask how those outcomes are known to be good or bad in the first place.

I am all too aware that there are billions of people who are convinced that their religion is the best way to live. I am a vegan, egalitarian, agnostic atheist. For them, my position is wrong. Just as for me, their position is wrong. — Truth Seeker

Would it not be good to find out who is correct?

"There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so." - William Shakespeare. — Truth Seeker

This is exactly my point a few comments ago, that it is moral betrayal that really cause suffering. Pain, even very intense, that has no moral element, just an accident, can cause very little suffering over the long term, whereas moral betrayals that involve no physical pain at all can cause life long suffering.

The point of really understanding that, is that simply avoiding suffering cannot be the basis of a moral theory, as it is moral beliefs derived from moral theories we inherent or adopt that gives rise to the possibility of suffering.

What makes us different from lions that their hunting, even of their own kind, is fine and natural, but that does not apply to us? — boethius

It's not ethical, but it is what happens. Just as people kill people. That's not ethical either.

1. Direct Human-Caused Deaths (War, Violence, Homicide)
Prehistoric (~300,000 BCE to ~5,000 BCE):
Anthropologists estimate that about 10–15% of prehistoric deaths were due to interpersonal violence.

Population estimates vary, but let's conservatively estimate:

Average global population over this period: ~1–10 million.

Total deaths: ~4–5 billion over 295,000 years.

Violent deaths: ~400–700 million.

Historic Period (~5,000 BCE to 2024 CE):
Known wars, genocides, and violence (including colonialism, slavery, revolutions):

Estimated 1 billion+ deaths, including:

World Wars: ~100 million

Genocides (e.g., Holocaust, Rwanda, Armenia): ~30+ million

Colonial violence and enslavement: hundreds of millions

Murder and interpersonal violence: hundreds of millions

✅ Total direct human-caused deaths estimate: ~1.5 to 2 billion

2. Indirect Human-Caused Deaths (Famine, Exploitation, Disaster Neglect)
Famine, disease, and natural disasters are sometimes natural in origin, but often intensified by human actions:

Bengal Famine (1770): ~10 million deaths, worsened by British East India Company policies.

Irish Famine (1845–49): ~1 million deaths, made worse by British economic choices.

Soviet & Chinese famines (Stalin, Mao): tens of millions of deaths from political decisions.

Modern disasters (e.g. Hurricane Katrina, COVID-19): responses often slow, unjust, or corrupt, leading to avoidable deaths.

Estimating conservatively:

Over the last 10,000 years, at least 2–4 billion deaths from famine, disease, and disaster have human negligence, cruelty, or mismanagement as significant causes.

✅ Total indirect human-caused deaths estimate: ~2 to 4 billion

Grand Total Estimate (Direct + Indirect):
~3.5 to 6 billion humans have likely died due to the actions or inactions of other humans over the past 300,000 years.

perhaps the lion considers the consequence of killing the gazelle is that she will be able to eat. Perhaps most humans do not consider the consequence of their actions of wanton consumption that others elsewhere will not eat. — boethius

The plants, the gazelles, the lions and the humans are being selfish. All autotrophs, herbivores, carnivores, omnivores and parasites are selfish. Being selfish is evil. We should look after the interests of everyone. That's why I want all living things to be energy beings who can live forever without consuming anything.

A theory is required to go from the consideration of consequences, which I agree is the start of the problem, to what consequences are actually good and bad. — boethius

For me, killing living things and harming living things is bad. Saving and improving lives is good. What about you?

To do moral philosophy is to ask how those outcomes are known to be good or bad in the first place. — boethius

I already know what outcomes are good and what outcomes are bad. Life, health and happiness are good. Suffering, illness and death are evil. Egalitarianism and veganism, and equitable sharing of resources are good. Selfishness and omnivorousness are evil. I know these things from my experiences and from reflecting on my experiences. What about you? How do you know what is good and what is evil?

moral betrayals that involve no physical pain at all can cause life long suffering. — boethius

I agree.

Apologies for the delay, I have been fairly ill and moral philosophy was beyond my ability to focus on for the last few days.

It's not ethical, but it is what happens. Just as people kill people. That's not ethical either. — Truth Seeker

Not-ethical can be interpreted as absence of ethical consideration (such as whether the moon is being ethical or not in orbiting the sun; it's just not an ethical question), but can also be used to mean bad.

Not intentional, but switching the meanings in the same context is the bait-and-switch fallacy.

When you say the lion is "not ethical" the meaning is clearly that there is no moral evaluation as the lion is not a moral agent.

However, when switching the consideration of people killing people, the meaning of not ethical is not a lack of moral evaluation but to mean the opposite of good, as in bad.

Over the last 10,000 years, at least 2–4 billion deaths from famine, disease, and disaster have human negligence, cruelty, or mismanagement as significant causes. — Truth Seeker

We agree that lot's of bad things have happened to people and lot's of people have done bad things.

However, a moral theory cannot be based on moral-recoil, as in an emotional reaction, at listing bad things.

For, you only have an emotional reaction to bad things because you already have a moral theory, whether explicit or implicit, in which those things are evaluated as bad and thus something to feel bad about.

This is what makes moral philosophy so difficult, because everything easily goes in emotional driven circles that are not arguments but simply beg the question. For example, an emotional reaction to murder does not, in itself, support a moral argument that murder is wrong.

The emotional reaction to wrong is due to the pre-existing belief that those things are wrong. In cultures where beliefs are different, the emotional reactions are different.

A classic example is that our Western culture has a strong emotional reaction to female genital mutilation and doing so to a child, or anyone, in the West is a crime. However, mutilate the genitals of boys to your hearts content and a whole army will defend your practice as actually a good thing. If male genital mutilation was not normalized, the reaction would be the same as for female genital mutilation. If people argued that the male genital mutilation was 'just a bit' and that why female mutilation is still bad as it's greater, well people would just respond that you could obviously mutilate female genitals just a bit too so the effect is exactly comparable, would that then be ok? Obviously the double standard cannot be maintained in any rational discourse. The moral recoil in the West concerning female genital mutilation and not male genital mutilation is because of the pre-existing belief that one is ok and the other not, due to normalization of one and not the other. Given this obvious history, the emotional reaction is obviously not a justification to condemn female genital mutilation and not male genital mutilation.

One would need an argument independent of emotional reaction to evaluate all genital mutilation as bad, or then justify male genital mutilation as ok and female not or then both are fine. In order to make any such moral evaluation at all one requires in turn a moral theory that can be used identify good and bad things.

The plants, the gazelles, the lions and the humans are being selfish. All autotrophs, herbivores, carnivores, omnivores and parasites are selfish. — Truth Seeker

I thought we just agreed above that things like lions hunting are not ethical questions. But if you meant above that you meant not ethical in the same way, that lions are bad (and therefore should be stopped?) please clarify.

Being selfish is evil. We should look after the interests of everyone. — Truth Seeker

Lions are not selfish, they will share the hunt with their pride. Plants will share their pollen with bees and other pollinators, and their fruit with all sorts of creatures and their leaves with the humus organisms and their sugars with symbiotic mycelium. Gazelles will look out for each other and feed their young.

It's not clear how selfish can apply to other organisms.

For humans, selfish refers to seeking gain at the expense of others, with a strong connotation that it is in a way that's not mutually beneficial; however, other species have evolved to survive as a species in balance with their native ecosystems (and if they invade a new ecosystem, by natural processes or artificial processes, they will co-evolve back into balance after some time).

Of course, this statement about other species is with the caveat of as far as we know no other species deliberates on choices in a moral sense thus making them also moral agents. As far as we know all other species only make decisions of a tactical and strategic nature to achieve innate objectives (stay alive, protect the group if they're a social species, try to mate, nurture young etc. with any exceptions being due to having different innate objectives happen to anyways be suitable to the ultimate evolutionary pressure of perpetuation of the species, and any anomalies evolutionary experiments due to natural variation exploring by trial and error differences that maybe advantageous in new conditions).

That's why I want all living things to be energy beings who can live forever without consuming anything. — Truth Seeker

Again, I'm not quite sure what the purpose this hypothetical comparison serves you.

Moral philosophy is about making decisions and so a comparison that is not attainable cannot be used to make decisions in the world we actually inhabit.

To summarize, you do not really present a moral theory. Even if I agree with many of your principles, the moralizing method of simply boldly stating principles and then feeling that "moral strength" is in the boldly stating things, and that evaluating the principles critically would therefore be the opposite of boldly stating things and so moral weakness, is the moral method of the majority of people, at least in the Wes, and so why discourse of real moral differences in Western society mostly reduce to each side simply shouting at each other (to reassure themselves that they are stating their principles the boldest, and thus most morally).

However, once it is realized that emotional reactions are caused by moral beliefs, as you note above "There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so," then such a method must be abandoned.

How the bold statement morality self reinforces is that the starting assumption is being right without the need of explaining or justifying anything, and so critical evaluation is a process that either results in justifying the beliefs one already has, and so is redundant, or a change to one's belief.

However, if the starting assumption is one is for sure 100% right, then the prospect of changing one's belief is clearly 100% bad and must be avoided at all costs.

Therefore, if one assumes one must be right without needing to "know" anything about it, then the process of knowledge is a bad thing that must be avoided as it can only confirm what one already knows or then result in a change of belief that, according to ones current beliefs, are correct and therefore must never change.

The result is the continuous assertion of knowledge without any justifying argument that would justify the belief really does represent true knowledge.

This is what most people do, at least in the West, and it is usually impossible to explain to them their psychological self-reinforcing process that is structured to avoid critical scrutiny that would lead to knowledge.

In short, the modus operandi of Western culture is that doubt about one's moral moral beliefs are bad (because they risk only changing what is good) and therefore anyone creating doubts is also bad, and the only good reaction to a challenge to one's beliefs is simply stating even more boldly what those beliefs are and eschewing even more clearly the very notion some argument or justification is needed (and if one does boldly assert arguments and justifications, then in turn avoiding any critical scrutiny of those justifications and arguments).

However, the basic process of knowledge is subjecting assertions to critical scrutiny.

Why such a process is relevant to this particular conversation is that you assert a series of moral principles without justification. You simply define things as good or evil and then simply list things to have an emotional reaction to based on your definition, proposing the latter exercise justifies the former.

You're initial question is that you haven't achieved your objectives, of which a reasonable formulation of your question would be how to be more effective in striving towards, with others, your objectives .... but also how to be sure your objectives are the right ones in the first place?

And both questions go together, as if you want to be more effective (which is the only rational disposition given any objective at all) then you require a theory that can allow optimizing your actions with respect to different aspects of what must be one single objective that is required to make evaluations between different uses of time and resources available.

For example, stating all life should be converted to energy beings is not a unifying principle, even if it were preferable in abstract comparisons, as there is no way to achieve the goal.

The protection of life on the planet, including its current dynamic, on the other hand, can be a unifying principle that resolves strategic and tactical considerations. Of course, such a principle would need itself justification, but it is an example of a highest objective which can in turn both justify secondary objectives (as strategically sound) as well as resolve what would otherwise be competing principles.

Apologies for the delay, I have been fairly ill and moral philosophy was beyond my ability to focus on for the last few days. — boethius

I am so sorry that you were ill. I am glad you are feeling better now. In my previous post, I asked: How do you know what is good and what is evil? You didn't answer. Please answer this question. Thank you.

Autotrophs consume nutrients and compete with each other for nutrients. Herbivores consume plants, to the detriment of the plants. Carnivores consume other sentient organisms, to the detriment of the organisms they kill. Omnivores consume everything, to the detriment of plants and sentient organisms. Parasites consume nutrients from the hosts, to the detriment of the hosts. That's why I have called them selfish. Lions may share their meat with other lions - that's just kin selection. They have no problem with killing gazelles. Selfish genes make selfish organisms.

I thought we just agreed above that things like lions hunting are not ethical questions. But if you meant above that you meant not ethical in the same way, that lions are bad (and therefore should be stopped?) please clarify. — boethius

It is bad that lions hunt. The whole system of consuming in order to exist is evil. If I could upgrade all living things into energy beings who live forever without consuming anything, I would have done so already.

I am so sorry that you were ill. I am glad you are feeling better now. — Truth Seeker

Thanks for the concern, I seem much better now.

How do you know what is good and what is evil? You didn't answer. Please answer this question. Thank you. — Truth Seeker

It is mentioned in the previous post as the protection of all life, as an example of a unifying principle; it is also what I happen to believe personally but I was not so clear about it.

It's also in the super long essay linked to previously: https://open.substack.com/pub/eerik/p/the-cromulomicon-the-book-of-croms?r=33um1b&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false

Humans are also part of life and so also need care and protecting, it is also mainly through a better society which is the main mechanism to protect life (as humans are the main danger to both other humans and life in general).

The moral foundation being the ethic of searching for truth and so also resolving contradictions, and then the truths found being existence is ordered and good and a long series of other ontological and epistemological considerations to ensure the entire logical structure is coherent and non-empty.

The essay is so long in order to resolve apparent dichotomies such as the choice to continue to read (so what may appear as knowledge maximizing) but letting someone die of thirst; or then, the example considered in the essay simply the most extreme version of the scenario of the choice between continuing to read and the destruction of the entire planet or then dying and the planet not being destroyed.

It is bad that lions hunt. The whole system of consuming in order to exist is evil. — Truth Seeker

Here I disagree, if life has value then natural systems, including predation, has value.

If life is evil, it follows oneself is evil, presuming one is alive, and from that it follows that good beliefs and thoughts we would not expect to find in an evil life form, but rather the evil of thinking oneself to be good when one is not.

The logical framework developed in the above essay is that in order to make any decisions at I must assume that I have value and what follows from that is that other humans and life in general also has value, as I am alive and cannot know of any a priori ontological difference with others. I think I'm conscious and a moral agent and assign myself value, and you are similar to me so it is reasonable to assume you also are conscious and are a moral agent and have value. We are both alive and so it stands to reason that if we have value life as a whole has value in addition to anyways depending on life in general to sustain our own life.

Pain and death are apart of life and therefore also have value.

What is evil is causing pain and death to disrespect and destroy life, especially manipulating others to be harmed as that is an additional disrespect and abuse of the truth as well as life; or then to simply be indifferent to our duties to others and to life is not as bad but still definitely evil in this framework.

Immortality of the soul is posited to ensure different decision paths never arrive at the same situation, such as not existing, and therefore be pragmatically equal. That would be a crisis in my framework and so I assume it isn't true.

It is mentioned in the previous post as the protection of all life, as an example of a unifying principle; it is also what I happen to believe personally but I was not so clear about it.

It's also in the super long essay linked to previously: https://open.substack.com/pub/eerik/p/the-cromulomicon-the-book-of-croms?r=33um1b&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false — boethius

Thank you for clarifying. In a previous post I had quoted the following:

“Ethics, too, are nothing but reverence for life. This is what gives me the fundamental principle of morality, namely, that good consists in maintaining, promoting, and enhancing life, and that destroying, injuring, and limiting life are evil.” – Albert Schweitzer, “Civilization and Ethics”, 1949.

My goal of saving and improving all lives is supported by the quoted words.

I am sorry but I couldn't finish reading your super-long essay. I am suffering from depression. My concentration and comprehension and thinking are all affected by my depression.

if life has value then natural systems, including predation, has value. — boethius

Life has value, but predation is against that value. Predation involves prioritising the life of the predator over the life of the prey. This is selfish. This is evil.

Pain and death are apart of life and therefore also have value. — boethius

No, pain and death diminish lives. So, they are to be prevented. I am trying to figure out how to upgrade all living things into immortal energy beings who live forever without consuming anything.

What is evil is causing pain and death to disrespect and destroy life, especially manipulating others to be harmed as that is an additional disrespect and abuse of the truth as well as life; or then to simply be indifferent to our duties to others and to life is not as bad but still definitely evil in this framework. — boethius

I agree that causing pain and death is evil. That's why I am trying to change consumption-based existence to non-consumption-based existence.

Thank you for clarifying. In a previous post I had quoted the following:

“Ethics, too, are nothing but reverence for life. This is what gives me the fundamental principle of morality, namely, that good consists in maintaining, promoting, and enhancing life, and that destroying, injuring, and limiting life are evil.” – Albert Schweitzer, “Civilization and Ethics”, 1949.

My goal of saving and improving all lives is supported by the quoted words. — Truth Seeker

Yes, I also didn't emphasize that it's "my unifying principle" as it's a pretty common unifying principle that is ancient, with many variations such as treat others (all life) as you would have them treat you.

My super long essay is my is born from feeling to clarify this principle to myself as well as unify this principle with the more fundamental principle of searching for truth, as presumably if the principle of protecting life is true then one would first need to search for this truth to find it.

So the central question of my deliberation is why is searching for truth and protecting all life the same thing?

For, as mentioned above concerning numerical analysis, we cannot optimize for 2 different factors at the same time; the only exception being that the two factors are both necessary conditions to the same thing and so are never in conflict.

In addition to this, there is the question of why exactly searching for truth and protecting all life are good things in the first place.

I am sorry but I couldn't finish reading your super-long essay. I am suffering from depression. My concentration and comprehension and thinking are all affected by my depression. — Truth Seeker

No worries but if you want to my position on these matters in detail it is in the super long essay.

My concentration and comprehension and thinking are all affected by my depression. — Truth Seeker

I empathize, we live in troubling times, to say the least, and life is being destroyed and disrespected at a truly unimaginable scale, from Palestine to the extinction of species no one's even named yet.

However, if we did not get depressed we would never be motivated to fundamentally change anything.

It is also worth considering that it is only when depressed that it is possible to analyze our own ethical system, as so much in "normal life" is driven by emotional reactions it; so it is only when those emotions are gone that it is possible to think through carefully what exactly is right and wrong in a given situation, and what emotional reactions are justified and what are from social conditioning of one form or another, and most importantly what we may already know we have to do but emotions stand in the way of doing it, for fear of loss or humiliation. For to be depressed and feel nothing is also to fear nothing: a powerful tool for good or for ill.

Life has value, but predation is against that value. Predation involves prioritising the life of the predator over the life of the prey. This is selfish. This is evil. — Truth Seeker

You may need to reflect deeply on this and also perhaps study life systems in more detail to appreciate how life is and not what you wish it to be.

For predators are not harmful overall to the species they prey upon. Without predation of herbivores, for example, the population would grow exponentially and eat all the food and then die. Predation maintains ecosystem balance.

It is also again a bait-and-switch fallacy to equate a lion hunting a gazelle and our logging old growth forests for furniture as the same thing called "consumption".

A better word for what the lion is doing is nourishment within the cycle of life; there is no "destruction" happening. It is we humans that consume in the destructive sense as what we do is not sustainable and leads to ecosystem collapse.

Definitely we humans should stop consuming the natural world to engage in poisonous follies, but the cycle of energy and atoms in natural processes is not a process of consumption in this destructive sense.

No, pain and death diminish lives. So, they are to be prevented. — Truth Seeker

We keep coming back to this.

Earlier you seemed to agree that this was not an achievable objective.

Seems to me an example of the ideal fallacy of describing an ideal system, describing some characteristics of an ideal system and then assuming that it is therefore good to pursue that ideal in the real world.

For example, most would agree that ideally I could fly by simple act of will. Easy to argue that this is a true statement. An example of the ideal fallacy is then reasoning based on this assumption that because it is ideal that I can fly by my own act of will I should jump off a building in pursuit of this will-flying ideal.

The error in reasoning is that pursuing one aspect of an imagined ideal, in this case that I can just jump off buildings and fly away in my ideal world design, entails that approaches the ideal and therefore is good to do.

Other examples would be that "ideally people would not have any property, so therefore I should go and destroy their property," or "ideally all people would be self sufficient, so therefore I should never help anyone to encourage their self sufficiency," or "ideally authority is never wrong and therefore I should always do what authority tells me to do" or "ideally I would simply know things without needing to go through the proposed effort required to gain such knowledge, so therefore I will assume I simply do actually know or then God told me".

I am trying to figure out how to upgrade all living things into immortal energy beings who live forever without consuming anything. — Truth Seeker

In your case, you seem to be reasoning that "ideally people would not have any physical bodies and therefore should be liberated from their bodies".

That, in believing in an indifferent universe with no existence after death, your thoughts become essentially obsessed with creating your own immortality is perhaps reason to not dismiss my arguments for the immortality of the soul as a rational assumption in the above mentioned essay.

Without an indefinite timeline under consideration decisions become arbitrary, is the key problem.

I agree that causing pain and death is evil. That's why I am trying to change consumption-based existence to non-consumption-based existence. — Truth Seeker

In one comment you say you recognize disembodying not simply everyone but every living thing is not an achievable goal, and in the next comment you are entirely dedicated to achieving it.

If you want to get into the technical reasons it's not a practical objective, quantum information cannot be copied.

You could, at best, destroy the entire planet and build a simulation of the planet, running in a computer that consumes energy, presumably from the sun. There is zero reason to believe any simulation of consciousness would be actually conscious, zero way to test out if it is or if it isn't, zero way to confident any process whatsoever could transfer consciousness into a device of which we have zero confidence contains any consciousness, and also plenty of reasons to believe consciousness cannot be transferred by any available technology due to no-cloning principle of quantum mechanics.

Why the ideal fallacy is a fallacy is that things cannot be considered in isolation; the world is complex and all aspects (or then as much as is feasible) of how the world really is must be taken into account to improve the situation. We can move with each action ever so slightly towards ideals taking into consideration all the knock-on and systemic effects we can, but to simply take one aspect of is imagined to be an ideal situation and then reduce the focus of one's action to one aspect of the ideal and try to make that little aspect happen, has zero logical basis of why it would work and plenty of historical examples of the strategy not working.

This near death experience maybe worthwhile to listen to: