If we are to have any value come out of the sciences, other than technology, it would be getting a better synthesis of what could have happened, or is the case, in regards to nature based on the evidence we have, and honing that or creating a better interpretation.

Also, not all evolutionary theories are "Just so", per se, but descriptive. A "just so" story might be something like, "Our ancestor's propensity for favoring the strongest alpha male, is why we have a strong tendency towards fascism". But, a theory that describes how language evolved in humans by examining various models that fit the evidence from artifacts, brain development and anatomy, developmental psychology, etc. might be a legitimately descriptive theory?

My point (perhaps requiring clarification) is that the reasoning behind why some drugs are legal and others are not, is an unsystematic historical legacy of confusions and the work of interest groups.

Look at the trajectory of most political and historical decisions. This demonstrates that what dominates is not a free process of careful reasoning, but a variety of other factors that impose on decisions.

It's clear that policies of interdiction and prohibition are historical and political and don't follow reason.

The impact drugs have on people is often more about why they take them and how they take them.

As Spooner wrote, vices are not crimes. If one is not allowed to do what he wants to his own person and property, there is no such thing as right, liberty, or property.

I disagree. (I held back a much ruder response. Where the hell do get these simplistic 1/0 ideas?)

What about my other points?

There is no "we" or "global society". There are separate, quite different societies with rules based on very different belief-systems and moral principles.

But in the usual sense of most religious believers it's because of a religious impulse: it's just bad, and that's that.

Why? I've been involved in a number of encounters wherein pleasure was mutual, shared and reciprocal.

And a 10-minute performance for the camera, however surprised the audience may be, doesn't prevent the performer going to their job, feeding their kids, crossing on green lights or paying their taxes.

There is a fear of neuro-atypicals, especially among conservatives, who demand and take comfort in conformity. Drugs mechanically induce atypical thoughts and behavior, which must seem fearful to the conservative mindset.

People taking drugs are unpredictable. A society of unpredictable people becomes difficult to control, to police, to hold to a production or payment schedule, to recruit for national service and international conflict, to maintain communication with, to collect taxes from, to enforce any kind of law over.

The widespread effects would be catastrophic imo yet at the same time they also conflict with individual freedom as to how one should live their life.

The reflected consciousness, or consciousness in the second degree, (Descartes' Cogito) claims to be a positional consciousness of the self, when, in fact, it is a consciousness which falsely posits and misrepresents the subject, which is an absolute inwardness, as if it were an intended transcendent object (the "I" of psychology).

One of the recent philosophical trends that I've noticed welling-up across the Internet is the perspective that if one doesn't work hard, suffer and overcome ignorance through labor, that the begotten wisdom is dangerous to the individual.

What we take today as an algorithm in programming will one day be a synthetic egoic witness to and in a problem solving matrix.

So my question on this thread is how we can know whether we are finite or infinite and what this means. Hegel seems to develop an argument about the infinity of the mind from the simple fact that we can think of infinity itself as an object of the mind....
...So maybe the question is, if there is and can be something infinite, what would that be?

I'm wondering if anyone on this site can maybe enlighten me more about this subject and explain what they know and/or personal opinions about it, so I can understand better whether there really is a potential threat or if it doesn't really exist with what is currently possible with available AI.

What I find interesting is the transition from non-being to being. My earliest memories constitute my awareness of being/becoming but seems completely arbitrary being arbitrarily bought into existence in a particular body on a particular planet.

Morality is good at defining good and evil, i. e. what we would like others (and ourselves) to do. But it is bad at making people do good and avoid evil. (I am talking about adults.)

It is true, it does no harm to say "Be good!" but it is also useless, at least in my opinion. People always do what is in accordance with their nature.

Plus, isn’t it better to believe in something you understand rather than just blindly believing what you’re told? As a kid, I blindly believed, and I thought it was wrong to question, but questioning only leads to more understanding, and that can’t be wrong.