Vigilance is good. But vigilance without education is paranoia (Q). — James Riley

Absolutely.

Epidemics, attacks, disasters, etc. can be the occasion to ratchet up social control. 9/11 resulted in security measures at airports which have been in place now 20 years. Does it produce safety? Who the hell knows.

We do know that the public health measures instituted in many countries to control C19 are effective IF the public cooperates. If the public doesn't, then the measures are ineffective.

500,000+ people dead in the US from Covid-19 is a significant loss, and without suppression measures, it would be much worse.

On the plus-side of control measures... a lot of operations tend to become sloppy. Without regular intrusive surveillance, public transportation companies would cut safety corners. Without syphilis investigators asking you for a list of who you had sex with, syphilis would be a lot more common -- ditto other sexually transmitted diseases.

During WWII there were many restrictions on activity -- some of them draconian. New and different restrictions were put into place during the Cold War.

Look, tyranny is always a possibility: one of the slogans of the American Revolution: Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. One has to keep an eye on what the government and corporations are up to, and resist if they are brewing tyranny.

I would not take the pill. Death makes life worth living.

Thank you for joining us, and presenting your vision of transhumanism.

The only way I envisage collapse might happen is via full-scale thermonuclear war and a strategic interchange between the superpowers. — David Pearce

A thermonuclear war would indeed be a fine way to ring down the curtain, but perhaps a less efficient method would be sufficiently effective. I am not suggesting a human species-terminating event. Rather, extensive -- and occasionally severe -- environmental degradation could rob the species of the surpluses needed to support a large research and development establishment. In time we may be able to dig ourselves out of the environmental hole we are still busy excavating.

Do you think super-intelligence will be achieved and enjoyed incrementally, or will this happen in a single exceptional leap? Is the present brain capable of being uplifted to super-intelligence, or will it be necessary to design a better biological brain-build before uplift can occur? A bigger, better frontal cortex; a less volatile limbic system, more memory, better sensory processing? Brains much smaller than ours manage remarkably complex behavior (but just skip over philosophy). Can our brains be made a more efficient structure, before we add a practice effect?

I have experienced an unearned but nice level of contentment which has lasted now several years. I locate the source of this contentment in the limbic system. Is it age? I'm 75. Do you see super-happiness as the result of changing our emotion-generating system, or as a result of super-intelligence? Maybe one of the things that makes the God of Israel so angry is his alleged omniscience--The God Who Knew Too Much?

As you know, as most people here know (I hope), sex is the means by which nature conducts reproduction in plants and animals. True, a lot of single celled plants and animals forego sex and simply divide--another successful method. But sexual reproduction is a very efficient way of regularly remixing genetic material between individuals (any species).

From the beginning of life on earth, nature opted for MORE and VARIED species (personalizing nature, here). Among complex plants and animals sex and reproduction have been mandatory, It might be unsuccessful (late frost might prevent fruit trees from being pollinated; mates may not be available this year for xyz species) but the imperative is still there: TRY.

Humans didn't invent having children--obviously. We didn't invent the mechanics by which children get born. We didn't invent the primal urges that drive men and women to mate. We didn't invent the attachment that parents feel for their children. We have behaved as nature led us to behave.

We did invent some ways of not having children. Some people have opted to use those methods. Besides that, some people are/were insufficiently motivated to reproduce, or are/were not fit partners. Gay men like me, for instance, are/were not fit partners for heterosexual women. Some straight men and women were also not fit partners.

Mostly though, not having children is bucking (defying) nature. I think there are too many people on earth, and I wish everyone would buck (defy) nature and reproduce at less than the population replacement level. Fat chance of that happening. When I started high school in 1960, there were about 3 billion people. 60 years later there are close to 8 billion. Too many in Europe; Asia; Africa; and the Americas. Everywhere.

It is now way too late for Zero Population Growth. If we do not shrink our population, nature will eventually find a method for reducing our excess population. Nature has done this before with other species and it will do it to us if necessary (or maybe we will do it to ourselves). I guarantee that we will not like it.

In the grand scheme of things, there are children because sex is very pleasant. That's the most parsimonious explanation.

True enough, some people decide to have no children. They are bucking nature. Some people decide to have several children, and do so quite consciously because they think god wants them to have many. Or they are patriotic, or suffer from some other major delusion.

Mostly though, children are the result of sex, and people like sex--as nature intended.

Nature has always been on the side of more life, a preference it has upheld for billions of years. We've been around a vanishingly short period of time, and we are as bound up in nature as every other species.

Win today, lose tomorrow. That's one angle.

Another angle: Don't take it personally. Just because the Boston Red Sox won, or lost, has no real bearing on you. Your country may have lost the war (or the race to the moon, or whatever...) and that may or may not have affected you directly. Even if it did, "you" didn't lose the war. The collective 'everyone' lost.

Yet another: In the race to the top, most people are losers. There isn't much room at the top, so most people will not win, can not win. Who gets to the top matters on one scale, and doesn't matter on another. I'm content being among the losers (I could be closer to the bottom than I am, though, so to some people I am a winner).

Still, it was probably pretty tough for the average Frenchman to be occupied by the Germans in 1940. It was tough materially, certainly, and it was tough psychologically. But then, who won WWI? France was on the victorious side, even though their northern industrial zone was wrecked, they lost a huge portion of their young men, and they were in bad economic straits. Germany lost WWI, even though their industrial zone remained intact. They also lost a lot of soldiers and fortune.

The winners and losers can be hard to sort out.

Some high-profit minded farmers rent their goats out to clear kudzu. They selectively eat it. It's environmentally healthy. And there's the fertilizing pellets.

Will Georgians see you with your shepherd's hook and goat group culling the kudzu?

somewhere in this scheme a large amount of force is lurking — Bitter Crank

Not in my schemes, BC — counterpunch

I wasn't think of you -- more the "super" theorists.

Your example is a good one, and there are many more examples of technological leaders not executing more than token gestures (if that) to achieve reachable improvements in health, sustainable energy, food production, and so forth--never mind super-health.

We can't get large sections of the populations to wear masks, wait in line 6 feet apart, get vaccinated, stay home (for the good of all) and so on.

I have a feeling that somewhere in this super wonderful scheme a large amount of brute force is lurking.

A transhumanist feature I would like to have right now is the 'Language Download' so that I could become an instant fluent French reader, writer, and speaker. I also want the 'Book Chip' which would deliver Jacques Ellul's writings to my memory, instead of to my iPad. I figure it would be delivered at 3:00 p.m., and by 3:30 I could start quoting Ellul, in French of course.

Star Trek (especially, the Second Generation series) set in the 24th Century seems to embody a version of transhumanism. There is a high level of human well-being, empathy, technology, and so on, on earth as well as on board the Enterprise. In the galaxy, not so much.

Do you see technological advances in the next two centuries delivering the conditions of transhumanism, or are you thinking in longer (or shorter) time periods?

What do you think the chances are of environmental collapse in the next 100 years derailing the necessary technical developments to allow transhumanism?

What kind of economic arrangements are most and least likely to advance transhumanist goals? Capitalism is not a good candidate to deliver super well-being to everyone.

So, fromage de chèvre. Provided you bought female goats; provided somebody gets them periodically pregnant; provided Mrs. Hanover milks them twice a day (queue the milkmaid fantasy here). A never-pregnant nanny goat gives no milk. You knew that, right? Will you be keeping the goats in the house?

The goats I raise won't do anything for the betterment of the world — Hanover

Is that because you, in particular, raise them, or because of some other reason? Judas goats have contributed to the betterment of the world by leading the sheep to the slaughter. You like lamb, right? Well, Judas goats help you get it. And of course, a Judas goat could keep your three ladies pregnant. Are you going to eat their children---mmm, young goat!? Goat isn't quite as good as lamb, but goat milk is quite good.

I find this level of ignorance staggering. — Tim3003

What does it take to be knowledgable about general history, general science, current affairs, and the like? It takes lots of reading in these areas, selective TV viewing (mostly PBS), and discussion with others likewise informed. Avoiding the slop troughs of social media is also helpful.

Why don't more people do these things?

Time, for one. As a gay man I've never had the demands of raising children. I have had time to read a lot. I've generally worked at professional service jobs where there were other college educated people. The more one comes to understand, the more one can fit into a better understanding of the world.

Social reward is another. It helps if others appreciate one's knowledge.

On the other hand, we well-informed people should be grateful that most people are taking care of business, and not spending al their time reading.

The only reason I have for believing that things are as they seem to be is that my beliefs "work". I believe most people are good, but some people are definitely not good. So far this has turned out to be true.

What we believe tends to be related to experience. We do not choose a lot of the experiences we have. Consequently, IF a lot of our beliefs are not chosen, they at least have to "work" to support our beliefs. Otherwise, we are up to our necks in cognitive dissonance.

Which part -- that someone has falsely claim belief & allegiance, or the beliefs themselves?

The behavior of people who actually believe in the cited values is--taken as a pattern--different than those who do not actually believe in those values. One would expect more fraudulent behavior, illegal behavior, cruelty, terror, and so on from someone who thinks truth, justice, kindness, democracy, and respect for persons are meaningless words.

As for the meaning of these -- or any other words -- there are reference sources which report how the meanings of these words have been defined in social processes. "Truth" wasn't defined on Mt. Olympus. "Truth" was defined by discussion and by people using the word in ways that others found understandable and acceptable. That's how most words come to have meaning. A few, like using "charm" to name a quark, are arbitrary.

Truth.
Justice.
Kindness.
Democracy.
Respect for person. — unenlightened

Those "higher ideals" can mean anything anyone wants them to mean. — baker

Maybe what you mean is that one can falsely claim to hold these values, when in fact one does not.

does the population increase necessitate more advanced technology, or does the advancement of technology necessitate the increase of population? — darthbarracuda

An intriguing question. I can only guess--no definitive answer from me.

The quality of life plays a role here: A population can increase without necessitating more advanced (hardware) technology. It probably can't increase beyond a certain point or improve it's quality of life without more technology. Advancing technology may require more population. The industrial revolution required many new workers drawn from somewhere--hence an increase in the population. Better transportation, more efficient mines, factories, etc. requires more people to consume the bounty of goods produced. If the goods don't get consumed, the economy fails; a given population can consume only so much.

Were we to have a stable world population, we would have to be very careful about what technology was introduced.

Didn't people have a lot more free time back in the day? — darthbarracuda

No. Taking a typical 19th century early 20th century midwestern farm as an example... Back in the day, there were still only 24 hours in a day. Prior to mechanization, farmers milked their cows by hand. This was time consuming and has to be done twice a day, 12 hours apart. Plowing fields, planting, and cultivating fields with horse power took considerably more time than when using a tractor. Making hay; threshing oats, barley, or wheat were all labor intensive and took quite a bit of time. Rather than a multi-day 4 step process to harvest grain back in the day, big combines now do it all in one pass, and keep track of yield by the square yard. Caring for horses, cattle, hogs, birds, or sheep; tending fences; maintaining buildings, etc. were year round projects. Yes, there were lulls in the flow of work--in the winter, especially; then after spring planting there would be a short respite. Once the crop was too high to cultivate, another short respite. Then the harvests would begin, which takes us back to late autumn and winter.

A farmer probably has more free time today. If he has a small not-terribly-profitable farm, he and/or his wife will probably work for a wage in town to balance their budget.

require a more complex society, with everyone working more — darthbarracuda

"Society" was no less complex 100 years ago. Most people generally worked longer hours 100-140 years ago -- between 8 to 10 hours. a day, 5.5 to 6 days a week. Almost everything--housekeeping to manufacturing farm equipment, involved a lot more physical labor. Technology became progressively more complex throughout the 19th century.

People work less per unit of output now than they did 100 years ago, thanks to gains in efficiency, automation, administration, technology, and so on. People seem to be spending at least the same amount of time at work despite more efficiency. [Parkinson's Law corollary: a worker can stretch a given amount of work to fill the available time.]

Compare the dinky horse-powered harvest machine [below] with the John Deere monster. The horse-powered machine increased the farmer's efficiency considerably. The machine was probably manufactured in Chicago, shipped to Minneapolis by rail, might have been sold at a warehouse showroom, then shipped to South Dakota by another railroad, to be picked up by the buyer when he got back home.

The John Deere machine might be purchased by a company providing harvesting services and would harvest many fields of wheat, corn, or whatever crop it was suited for. These machines make no financial sense on a farm of 2 or 3 hundreds of acres. These big machines can mow down thousands of acres a day.

There was a big change in land ownership over the 20th century (to very large acreages) which required these giant machines.

However, self-driving vehicles seem like a sci-fi delusion to me. — Maw

Still, their are companies pursuing what is either a delusion or a premature technology.

Full automation only makes sense if labor is counted as an unnecessary expense. — Bitter Crank

This is sort of the Uber view -- labor is an unnecessary expense. But in reality labor is essential to their model.

What makes Uber and Lyft workable at all is a large enough number of workers with inadequate income and a willingness to spend a lot of time in traffic with no guarantee of enough ride orders to make it worth the time. Lyft and Uber are post-great recession companies, becoming 'popular' about 8 or 9 years ago.

I use Lyft 2 or 3 times a month for trips where public transit takes too long. Maybe taxi companies have acquired the kind of software that makes Lyft workable--knowing how long the car's arrival will be, and knowing how much the ride will cost.

Automation/robots would be created by an immense amount of physical labor by humans. — Zazie Kanwar-Torge

Yes. A technology where robots could replace themselves and produce other machines without involving human labor is imaginable, but is more in the realm of science fiction (at this time). The robots we use have narrow application. We don't have plenipotentiary robots, yet. A robot's fully autonomous production reaches back to mining ores, mining and refining oil, creating complex raw and finished materials, and so on.

Humans are fully capable of doing all these things--and, of course, have been doing them for a long time.

Full automation only makes sense if labor is counted as an unnecessary expense.

A very large problem of capitalists eliminating labor in production--but maintaining ownership of all the factories--is 'how would the market of goods continue to exist when the people had no income to buy'?

Yes: automated factories producing goods to satisfy the needs of people, rather than for producing profit, would liberate us to pursue fulfillment rather than dreary work (work is not always dreary, but it usually is, sooner rather than later).

Actually, I don't see any reason for capitalists to automate all production (which they alone would control) because their wealth is extracted from the workers. Unemployed workers can't buy much, and several billion unemployed workers is a hazard they would not prudently allow.

Unless, of course, they could eliminate workers altogether. Capitalism is perfectly capable of disposing of workers. The American rust belt has been the site of large scale worker disposal. It's not pretty. These people have sunk into poverty rather than seize the means of production. (Had they seized anything they probably would have been shot.).

Capitalists could operate the worker-free factories to meet the minimum needs of the unnecessary workers--as protection, not out of the goodness of their hearts--but why would they if they they could find a long-term solution to the existence of unneeded workers?

If we grant that there is a tendency toward automation (which there seems to be) and that this does reduce the amount of productive* labour required for the reproduction of the working class as much as it can, that still leaves open the possibility that there is a lower limit of that process of production - a non-zero asymptotic socially necessary labour time for the labourer's good basket, which suffices to sustain the dynamics modelled by the labour theory of value long term - keeping the engine of capitalism going. — fdrake

Eliminating all labor through automation would be a colossal blunder on the part of capitalism. We are aware, are we not, that capitalists are perfectly capable of Colossal Blunders? They would destroy the model that creates their wealth and power--without another model in sight. They might fantasize a world of Alpha Plus people (Brave New World) without the plague of betas, deltas, and epsilons, but achieving it would be inordinately messy.

↪darthbarracuda So there must be more people maintaining farm equipment today than there used to be people farming then, no? — Pfhorrest

↪Pfhorrest Indirectly, yes. — darthbarracuda

Back in the day when farms were shifting from horses to machines, about 1/3 of the population was engaged in farming--32,000,000. Today there are about 2,000,000. Are you saying that there are many millions of people repairing the machinery used by 2 million farmers? That just doesn't seem plausible.

In any town in agricultural areas one will find a few equipment sellers and a number of people engaged in service and repair--not a large number in absolute or relative terms. Of course, farmers do some repair themselves.

Is the reason crime rates are decreasing because nobody is calling the police? — Huh

There is nothing even an extremely competent police force can do about many petty crimes in a large city. With that understanding, many minor property crimes do not get reported--perhaps out of a concern that such a call would result in wasted police time.

However, local crime waves are often the work of a small number of people; competent policing can, with community cooperation, apprehend the culprits. That means, among other things, reporting.

More serious crime, though, does get reported. (I'm excepting domestic abuse and rape which are not always reported.).

Just because machines do the labor doesn't mean that labor isn't the source of wealth. — Pfhorrest

Ricardo and Marx, primitives that they were, referenced actual live human labor, not automated machines. It is true, though, that machines impart some of their cost and value to the goods produced.

Probably this t-shirt took half time to made it but imagine is made of good cotton and with hands of professional. This is forced to be more expensive than the hat. — javi2541997

To use an English expression, one can make a purse out of silk or make it out of a sow's ear. Or to be more precise, try to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Moving on from the pig pen...

The thing is, whether it is a fine Egyptian long-fiber cotton T shirt or a ratty polyester one, a certain amount of time is required to make it. Same for the hat, whether it is $9.99 hat or a $99 hat, depending on time/labor inputs.

It seems to me that a large portion of the world's work force will be increasingly irrelevant as automation, robotics, AI, and the like advance. I've had some clerical jobs that I would have happily handed over to a machine to do. (I hate detail work)

How much extra would you pay to have an actual bartender mix your drink rather than a very reliable drink-mixing machine? Is beer better if you can chat with a live bartender? I'd say, definitely -- live person, please.

I, for one, do not understand what conclusion you are trying to reach. Say more about your objective, if you would.

I've never read a book on philosophy in my entire life — Huh

You said it.

Nietzsche insists that there are no rules for human life — Huh

A quote from Nietzsche and 50¢ won't get you a cup of coffee.

Well, if you can trust that you will do the right thing, then you are NOT an immoralist. So what's it going to be?

A-morality is no more likely to lead to peace than immorality or morality. One reason there is strife in the world is that there is not enough of the good stuff to go around. For instance, if everyone wants to be free and autonomous, we will quickly start clashing with each other. I'm not proposing the opposite -- that we be automatons who obey as robots. The solution (may be) limited freedom and limited autonomy. Finding the "just enough but not too much" is a delicate process which everyone has to carry out.

I'm not sure there is ANY guarantee that one will always be at peace. One can make it more likely by limiting one's claims on the good stuff, and learning to live within one's skin.

Can I just trust that if I'm a good person I'll be a good person
and if I'm a bad person I'm a bad person? — Huh

No, you can't--BECAUSE good people are capable of doing bad things, and conversely, bad people are capable of doing good things.

Is the only way to live in peace to be amoral? — Huh

You will have to label yourself a lazy-assed amoralist. You really aren't working very hard on this.

Statistics say that 25 percent of all internet searches are related to porn. — TaySan

Hidden in plain sight!

The internet has facilitated the distribution of porn, in the same way it has facilitated the distribution of all sorts of information. Prior to the arrival of the web, browsers, search engines, and plentiful bandwidth, pornography was physically situated in magazines and videos (and before video, film). One had to go somewhere to purchase porn. In the same way, before the internet and WWW, one had to go to the library or book store to acquire information.

Technological innovation often leads to expansion. Access to information was hugely expanded once Gutenberg's press (mid-1400s) started turning out books. Better presses, more information.

There is also an 'institutional factor': State and federal court rulings do not give blanket endorsements to pornography--they don't say, "anything goes". Instead, there is a set of conditions and terminology which generally allows, if not everything, quite a lot. Charges of obscenity are still brought--take the Cincinnati case:

In 1990, the director of a Cincinnati art museum was indicted on obscenity charges for mounting an exhibit of Mapplethorpe’s photographs that only a few weeks before had been hanging at a nearby university without incident. The photos included men displaying their genitals and engaged in sex acts.

The art director was acquitted of the charges. Some of Mapplethorpe's photos could be considered mildly pornographic--most would not. They certainly turned the crank of the local district attorney!

Porn is not harmful. There is only good porn and porn that doesn't do it for us.

One statistic that helps us understand pornography is that porn video rentals in hotels are rarely played longer than 5 minutes. They come for the climax, then turn it off. On the other hand, authoritative web sites like CinamaBlend (somebody said they were authoritative) say that people are watching more Netflix than porn. They perceptively observe that more people are getting porn on the Internet (customizable) rather than from video rentals.

People watch porn as fuel for their erotic fantasies. Let's face it: in reality, our experience is that many sex partners are not wildly exciting over the long run. Some people are a lasting turn on, but most are not. This isn't due to any deficiency -- it's just the lack of novelty. (This from a gay male point of view.)

One problem with porn is that a lot of it isn't very good -- I am not referencing the camera work, lighting, sound, or--god forbid--plot. It's just not engaging most of the time. That's true of a lot of movies, produced for the broad population. It's bad art. It's a rush job.

Just for historical context, porn has been around for a long time but in the US it was hard to get until the late 1960s, thanks to Supreme Court rulings. Here is a satiric piece by Tom Lehrer (the Harvard mathematician turned humorist) on SMUT (ah, the adventures of a slut; I don't know what compares with smut...). This piece predates the ruling that opened "the flood gates".

I agree completely.

I finished college and had still not acquired a very good, practical understanding of how a body worked. Over the last 50 years since I have put together what I think is a solid understanding through reading magazines like Scientific American or the New York Times science section, and picking up consistent information here and there in books, conversations with well informed people, etc.

Careful use of the Internet is also a good source of info, with the understanding that there is a lot of garbage out there.

For instance, Wikipedia affirms your evil spirit treatment by trepanation, but also says:

Evidence also suggests that trepanation was primitive emergency surgery after head wounds[4] to remove shattered bits of bone from a fractured skull and clean out the blood that often pools under the skull after a blow to the head. Hunting accidents, falls, wild animals, and weapons such as clubs or spears could have caused such injuries. Trepanations appear to have been most common in areas where weapons that could produce skull fractures were used.[5] — Wikipedia

Is trepanation an effective treatment for evil obstructionist conservative politicians? Let's find out! I have a wood chisel and a hammer; line them up and send them in. We could also try icepick frontal lobotomies, while we are at it.

Excellent topic!

Sorrowfully, I think this only works in Kids or Young minds because when you get older you start losing the ability of dream/having fantasies. — javi2541997

Art teachers say young children are much more fun to teach because they haven't lost their ability to either imagine, or express what they imagine. Teenagers and adults tend to be less expressive when they attempt art. I wouldn't know, myself, because I've never been good at "art" (drawing, carving... I''m better when it comes to words).

There are a few different kinds of fantasy: sexual fantasy; spatial fantasy (architecture); anger fantasy (also called 'vindictive perseverating'); literary fantasy (Tolkien); all fiction; etc. I'm not sure musical composers or choreographers are fantasizing as much as 'thinking'. Similarly, I'm not sure Picasso was 'fantasizing' as much as thinking as he executed his paintings. (Are realist artists fantasizing or representing?). People who write film scripts aren't fantasizing either -- they are applying technical knowledge to a text--which is not to slight a job well done!

At 75 I fantasize less than I did when I was 50 or 30 and the fantasies are different. I'd say I 'reflect' more now than I did in the past. For the last several years I've been doing a lot of intensive historical and sociological reading which I've found very satisfying. I read science fiction, quite often. There is less sexual fantasy now, and very little 'angry perseveration" like their used to be. Why? I don't know. I'm just grateful there is less of it.

Medicine is not that difficult to get a reasonable handle on. — synthesis

I agree with you -- under the condition that one do a lot of reading (reliable sources only) over time. It is not reasonable to expect a population of hundreds of millions to do this. It isn't that they are dependent state / corporate teat suckers. You know perfectly well that a good share of the population would have considerable difficulty maintaining a high level of laymen's knowledge.

Public Health is a different beast than medical practice--one patient at a time, generally anxious to be treated, and usually cooperative. Public Health deals with millions of people, many of whom resent any instruction directed at the whole population, like social distancing, masking, avoiding large gatherings, hand washing, etc. Same thing for MMR and other vaccination, smoking, drinking, eating too much fat and sugar, unprotected promiscuous sex with strangers (one of my past favorites) and the like.

Oddly, people who regularly follow individual medical advice (taking meds for chronic diseases or acute infection) balk when it comes to 'group health'. My uneducated sister is well informed about ordinary health issues but has taken up all sorts of misinformation and non-information about this specific vaccination. This is consistent with her very conservative political views. Trump managed to politicize what should have been an a-political issue.

It's not the 1950's anymore when the majority of people were pretty honest. — synthesis

I thought the 1950s were the years of 'mindless conformity'!

One part of this 'jungle' is that we can form beliefs in irrational, subconscious, and accidental ways. If one is born into a devout family, one will probably have religious beliefs installed early and deeply. Risk aversion vs. risk tolerance (something we don't choose to have) will shape beliefs. If one regularly gets beat up by a Norwegians gang, one will probably develop unfavorable beliefs about all Norwegians (as well one should).

It is debatable (and doubtful) that we can just 'choose our beliefs' from a menu of options. We can change beliefs, we can believe new things, and abandon old beliefs, but it is fairly hard to do it.

Is this ethical in terms of the abortion context or the slaughterhouse example? — FlaccidDoor

The slaughterhouse yield of military activity in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and numerous other places dwarfs the "abortion slaughterhouse".

Taxation for the purposes of maintaining a military for the sake of safety and enforcement of law seems hard to argue. — FlaccidDoor

This a mighty poor example for a libertarian to use for an attack on taxation. You are worried about the pennies spent on funding abortion, while ignoring the buckets of money spent on many useless military operations. The military depends on a lot of taxation of most of the population who do not receive either safety or enforcement of the law from the funded military activity. [It's mostly local and state police that protect safety and enforce law.]

Who does benefit from world-wide military activity? The military, for one. Major suppliers of goods and services purchased by the military for two; and three, the owners of the companies that do the supplying. Some amount of military force is necessary, but it can be argued that the American military establishment is a grossly wasteful operation funded by the extortion of "threats to the national interest".

Here's a phrase for you from science fiction:

All watched over by machines of loving grace. - author, Richard Brautigan