Would you add "I might have wanted to lie with other men; but that's just not how it's done"? No. — Banno

I did so wish, and fulfillment of the wish had to wait years for the arrival of a suitable time and a place. Had the opportunity "to lie with other men" arrived as early as I wished, the experience would most likely have not been good. Was the long delay frustrating? Of course.

With the 'general' child in view we can confidently propose a sensible course of action. Given the case of a particular child, an 8 year old somewhere in Australia, "sensible advice" might not work. We don't know anything about the history of this 8 year old, or what possible solutions might be available. For blanket statements, Saying "eight year olds should wear whatever gendered clothing they want" seems as ill-advised as saying "eight year olds should never be accommodated on gendered issues." If the choice is suicide vs the girls' pleated plaid outfit then... pleated plaid it is, I suppose. But the pleated plaid option might not work out well in the end, either.

I find it odd that you of all those here are happy to have the contents of one's underpants determine one's social role. — Banno

Being gay or lesbian isn't a form of being transgendered.

The contents of our costumes (underpants and all) have a lot to do with determining who/what/how we are. As for me, I have never thought it was possible for me, or any one else, "to be anything we want to be". There were many things that I might wanted to have been but there were constraints preventing fulfillment. That's just life. There are possibilities and potentials that we can pursue, sure, but we encounter hard constraints. No matter how much I might have wanted to be a heavy-weight boxer, I didn't have the build for that. I might have wanted to be an astrophysicist. I just didn't get an astrophysicist brain. I might have wanted to be a heterosexual macho man, but it wasn't in the cards.

So, there are people who want to want to play the part of the opposite sex. Sure, go ahead WHEN one has the capacity to mastermind the show before one makes one's public debut.

There's just no chaos, anxiety, and starvation to propel a dictator into power right now. — frank

For which we can be very grateful. But... maybe later.

Source?

No. Not accommodating an inappropriate behavior isn't punishing the child.

Here we are talking about quite young children deciding they are the opposite gender and demanding to wear clothes (or behave) in the manner of the opposite sex. Young children don't go clothes shopping by themselves (one would hope) so how does this problem arise? By the parents providing the clothing the child wanted to wear. Why would an adult take their 6 year old's clothing preferences as a directive, let alone something as major and complex as identity?

We do not (or at least we should not) allow children to marry, have sex with whomever they wish, smoke, drink, use recreational drugs, chew tobacco, play with guns, and so forth. Children are expected to defer such activities until they are 'of age' like, 16, 17, 18 to 21. It is reasonable for people to defer some behaviors and delusions until they are old enough to manage the complexities which come with these activities.

I have doubts about transsexualism, gender dysphoria, and so on, when these terms are applied to adults. Many more doubts when applied to children.

No. Not accommodating an inappropriate behavior isn't punishing the child.

Here we are talking about quite young children deciding they are the opposite gender and demanding to wear clothes (or behave) in the manner of the opposite sex. Young children don't go clothes shopping by themselves (one would hope) so how does this problem arise? By the parents providing the clothing the child wanted to wear. Why would an adult take their 6 year old's clothing preferences as a directive, let alone something as major and complex as identity?

You can be a masculine woman i.e tomboy and/or an effeminate man i.e bobcat. — Shamshir

Yes, and these aren't examples of gender confusion either.

The American Journal of Preventive Medicine says that most gender-minority students report having mental health problems. At the same time, a Johns Hopkins professor says on the child transgender trend: ‘Many will regret this’. He argues that doctors are doing treatment without evidence: — alcontali

One could say that ALL gender minority students have mental health problems, if lacking a firm and biologically consistent gender identity is a disorder. I tend to view gender confusion or gender fluidity as a disorder --not as a mere variation. This is not a popular view in many circles; it is probably not a popular view here.

There is variation in sexual behavior, of course. Sexual orientation, for instance, ranges between exclusive heterosexuality and exclusive homosexuality. Orientation, however, is not the same as gender confusion. Persons who are in the middle of the hetero-homo distribution are not confused about their sexual identity.

A very small portion of the population are sexually ambiguous from birth. They are a category apart from what we are discussing here. A larger portion (less than 1% of the population) express varying degrees of gender ambiguity. That they think they are something other than what their physical body says they are is a significant delusion. It seems like this delusion is becoming more common, which suggests that the act of expressing gender confusion may be a learned behavior and a front for some other neuroticism.

Physical treatment for a psychological disorder would be as wrong as lobotomies. Young children, for instance, should not be allowed to cross-dress for school; they should not be allowed to claim they are the opposite gender than their biology indicates and need to use toilets of the opposite gender. And they should not be given hormones of the opposite sex.

Needless to say, children should not be punished for exhibiting delusory ideas. Delusions should be overcome, not punished.

"Does neurophilosophy signal the end of 'philosophy' as we know it ?"

One might hope.

Philosophy certainly has its uses, but over the millennia various products of philosophy have superseded the parent. Physics, for example; literary and art criticism; psychology and neurology. The ur-philosophers are now 2500 years in their graves. It makes sense to return to the foundation--especially in religious thought and practice, but in studying knowledge?

Sorry, but your soul just Died. — Wayfarer

Thanks for the link. Wolfe is always a good read.

Of course, wars tend to end economic downturns -- unless the "hot war" is really, really hot -- but then there wouldn't be anybody left.

Something bad: A very severe west coast earthquake (the BIG ONE) during a year when agricultural production falls precipitously (drought, heavy rain, late frost, insects, disease--all quite possible) Maybe a pandemic following a really big natural disaster. Maybe a huge and sudden influx of people from Mexico, Central America, and Northern South America caused by Global Warming and a pandemic (perfect timing). Let's say that whatever the huge crisis is, the Federal Government proves unable to mount a response. Part of the population is desperate; part of the population is deeply resentful; everybody is angry and looking for someone to blame. People on the west coast (maybe 25 million) are in bad shape. Lots of people are very worried.

A group within the military, perhaps possibly, comes forward and seizes the government. Let's say they actually prove somewhat adept at dealing with the crises. Voila! a dictatorship.

Or maybe somebody like Trump, only more evil. Much more evil. (It's not that I love Donald, or anything like that. I just don't think he's spent the last 25 years planning, plotting, and preparing to take over the government and become a dictator. Hitler and Mussolini worked at it for quite a while. Trump is an asshole but he's too self-absorbed to make a good dictator.

Agreed. So what to do about them? — schopenhauer1

We cope as well as we can. (Not much option, really.). I spent a number of years being somewhat dysfunctional. Not so dysfunctional that I couldn't work, but dysfunctional enough that I wasn't working close to standard. Dysfunctional enough that I was a problem to myself--hard to live with. I was fairly reckless for a time--not a good example of self-control and probity.

I took anti-depressants and Xanax or Ativan for decades. I received psychotherapy. I "coped" more or less. I never did find THE WAY to feel really good. But... I did get better, eventually. I can't claim credit because the relief came long after psychotherapy and I still take a low dose of antidepressant (Effexor). Maybe 8 or 9 years ago or so, I just started to feel a lot better. It wasn't anything I did that made it better. It was like a switch was thrown and all the sturm and drang evaporated.

If I could put whatever it was in a bottle and sell it, I would have a blockbuster drug. Alas.

Four more years of Trump? But then, in comparison to having eight years of VP Cheney skulking about, Trump is probably not a serious threat.

Trump displays a few mild aspects of fascism: strong-man or one-man rule; crass service to heavy industry (coal, oil, gas, for example); appeals to racial hostilities (even if subtle); what could be a deliberately confusing communication policy which undermines rational discussion; a limited interest in civil rights--all that sort of thing. Fascism has been usefully described as "more of a method than a doctrine". So, it's the disruption of democratic government that is fascistic. Trump isn't the first one to do this, of course.

Trump is a mild sample -- not the real deal, however. The Republican Party has played around with the subversion of democracy. The Senate's refusal to consider Obama's Supreme Court nomination Merrick Garland is the sort of thing that happens in crypto-fascism.

A highly dissatisfied military seems to be a requirement for fascism. We seem to have a reasonably contented military, which is a good thing. Fascism needs a major crisis -- either a real or a manufactured one. Not since the simultaneous attack on the Philippines and Pearl Harbor have we had a sufficiently opportune crisis for American fascism to take off. The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 unfolded too swiftly for it to be an opportunity for a fascist attempt.

The People need to be suffering enough and looking for fascist relief. Americans are not suffering enough to spring for a fascist dictator. The vast majority of US citizens are at least reasonably well-fed, clothed, and employed. We may have various unsatisfied longings, but these are not the sort of dissatisfactions that lead people into adulation of the Maximum Leader.

We are not in a 1930s European moment.

Phillip Roth's novel The Plot Against America (pub. 2004) is an interesting take on a fascist takeover. If I remember correctly, it was set in the 1930s and Charles Lindbergh (first to fly Solo across the Atlantic) was the fascist candidate.

Madelaine Albright published a book recently: Fascism - A Warning. Haven't read it.

Given a BIG PROBLEM, and given a powerful core group who were willing to make a play for a coup d'état dictatorship, and given a sufficiently dissatisfied military, we could end up with a dictatorship. It probably won't look like Nazi Germany, the USSR or Cuba. I would expect it to have a distinctly American flavor (which is deep-fat-fried).

You seem to have a lot of familiarity with the details of OCD thinking -- are you OCD?

I am quite certain that OCD is real and can be disabling, but an interesting aspect of most mental illnesses is that most of the features of MI are manifested in mild form by people who are not, by any definition, mentally disturbed. OCD is a good example. Take your spoon: you have to decide what to do with it. I've had to pause to think about it -- is the spoon I measured baking powder with still clean, or not? The answer is an irrational "no". How about the tops of canned food; after using the can opener on them, some of the juice gets on top of the can, then runs back into the can. Oh oh, is that still clean?

Some of us have scarcely conscious obsessions about 'ritualistic purity', superstitions about what can be touched by what. One sees this in young children, sometimes -- the potato can't touch the carrots on their plate. Children often dislike texture contrasts -- so horror of horrors, no shredded vegetables and chopped nuts mixed into the Jello. These superstitions can resemble the kosher rules of the ultra-orthodox--all sorts of restrictions.

I am annoyed at church events when someone collects the unused silverware from the tables and wants to put it back in the drawers. NO! NO! Look, it's been handled at least twice (putting it on the table, taking it off) and who the hell knows how many more times. Just run it through the wash. Same with glasses. Here comes somebody carrying glasses with their fingers inside the glasses saying they are clean. The machine is doing the washing, and it doesn't care if it has a few more to clean. I just follow the rule of "once touched, into the washing machine".

We make irrational exceptions to our cleanliness rules. We may worry if someone's hands were washed before slicing a loaf of bread, but aren't worried enough about cleanliness to prevent us from having sex with a stranger.

Point is, despite what we may think we are, we are pretty irrational, frequently given to thoughts and behaviors which do not pass muster as "rational", "reasonable", or "sensible".

All of these conditions exist on a continuum, of course. Over on the left side of the continuum are habits and practices that are helpful. On the opposite side, these beneficial habits and practices have become crippling compulsions. On the left side one has a few superstitious behaviors like not walking under ladders (probably a sensible precaution anyway). On the other end of the continuum superstitions become threatening delusions.

Brains turn repeated behavior into habits, strongly followed practices, rote behaviors, and so on. It isn't just us -- it happens to other animals too. Domestic animals develop habits that can become minor problems -- the dog's insistence that a snack be handed to her in a certain way, and no other way. Typing is a very rigid habit -- so rigid that one can feel an error in one's fingers (if one does enough of it). Back when the telegraph was an important communication tool, operators could identify each other by the way their hands operated the equipment. This was useful during WWII when intelligence officers listened to radio-telegraph transmission from German-occupied countries: the identity of the telegraph operator was recognizable by the habitual way the telegraph key was operated.

So maybe it isn't surprising that habit prone brains sometimes go overboard and turn habits into compulsions.

I'm not sure what tips a habit (checking to make sure the stove is off, the car is locked...) into a compulsion; I suppose it is stress. We experience stress when many aspects of our lives start becoming unhinged. Too much chaos; too many unpredictable events happening; disturbing events popping up all over the place. Establishing a secure zone (one's apartment) by multiple checks to make sure everything is OK when one leaves relieves stress a bit, so the checking becomes fixed.

I think we are farther away now. There are reasons.

#1, the post-WWII economic boom ended in the early 1970s. For the working classes (85-90% of the population) economic conditions have declined since then. Stagnant wages and steady inflation (at times quite high) have whittled away a large share of the prosperity that working class people enjoyed between 1946 and 1973.

Booms don't last, of course. The business cycle rises and falls.

#2. there has been a concerted effort to roll back union power for the last 40 - 60 years. A good share of labor suppression has been through law. For example, the 'Taft-Hartley' law was passed in 1947 over the veto of President Truman. It restricts union activity. A lot of other less famous laws and administrative rules restricting workers rights have been put into place. If labor is hobbled (or castrated), then that sets the whole progressive agenda back a long ways.

#3. Conservatives were unhappy about Social Security, Unemployment, and Disability programs (1930s), and challenged the programs in court. They hated Medicare and Medicaid (1960s) and did their best to get those programs ruled unconstitutional. They failed. In the 1990s the old AFDC program (aid for dependent children) program was repealed--"ending welfare as we know it". Welfare recipients were given a time limit on benefits. About the same time there was a drive to privatize Social Security. This idea is rolled out every couple decades or so. Obama's Health Care Act was received by many people as if it had been delivered from Hell by Satan himself, and for whatever it was actually worth, it was set upon by the Republicans.

Trump (curse his black heart) wants to undo all sorts of environmental regulation too. "Get government off our backs" they said.

So yes, I think we are farther away from substantial reform now than we were during Nixon's administration.

Like a lot of people in the United States, I grew up with pretty optimistic expectations about the future. Those started to change during the Vietnam War when we saw that major social unrest (huge demonstrations, etc.) didn't make any difference. Watergate was very disappointing -- here we discovered that the President and his inner circle were doing things that were both blatantly criminal and unconstitutional. Successive administrations and changing economics have further eroded those optimistic expectations.

However, the US isn't alone in all this. I think a lot of people in other countries have also had very disappointing experiences in the last 50 years. The US isn't an exception to the rest of the world.

People who have very rigid habits can make it work for them. They get to work on time, they get their work done. They get to the gym on time, they swim a mile, they bike 100 miles. They sleep well.

I don't know what all fits into the category of neuroses these days. I guess depression, anxiety, OCD, phobias, compulsions, etc. I've never understood what "borderline personality disorder" was -- is that counted as a neurosis?

"Neurosis" may be an obsolete word, but it seems to me useful to describe the set of screwy ideas that many people haul around, especially the self-defeating ideas, beliefs, habits, etc. that cause some people to fail again and again at projects that are well within their reach. (I know first hand of what I speak.) I've failed at a lot of stuff that was well within my operational capability.

Thus, I see the person with neurosis to often slip through the cracks of society, suffering silently. It would mean they are isolated, not understood, and perpetually in their own world. Most people throw out terms like "see someone", "cognitive-behavioral therapy", "medications", etc. Much of these are external ways of trying to deal with something that is very idiosyncratic and internal to the person who is experiencing the condition. — schopenhauer1

Neurosis or neuroticism... The difference doesn't matter that much. There is certainly a difference between the major psychoses (like bi-polar disorder or schizophrenia) and merely neurotic habits. Needing to check the stove, the faucets, the locked door, and the lights several times before one can leave the house is annoying to one's self (and others) but it is hardly life-threatening. Dealing with mild OCD isn't that difficult; more entrenched and severe OCD can be difficult to overcome.

Whether neurotic behavior, or neuroticism, rises to the the definition of "mental illness" or not, it is a significant factor in life outcomes. Isolation, depression, anxiety, high levels of emotional arousal (like anger) indirectly affect longevity, physical health, productivity, relationships, and so on.

I view personality as a combination of genetic determined traits, traits developed from infancy on up, shaped by good and/or bad experiences, given form by one's embodiment, one's milieu, and so on. By the time one reaches adulthood, the personality one has become is pretty much fixed. It has not hardened like concrete, but it isn't soft reshapeable clay, either.

If one can make significant changes in one's personality, I don't think it can be done without substantial changes in one's environment. IF one's family or relationship is a very negative factor, then an exit from that family or relationship is probably necessary. IF work is driving one crazy (bad jobs can do that) then one needs to leave that job. A well-trained and skilled therapist will be helpful, and therapy should have a long duration--like a year or 50 hours.

"Therapy means change, not adjustment." The difficulty shouldn't be soft-pedaled. It's hard, and it might take a crisis-kind of event to make the changes.

Perhaps Bitter Crank has something interesting to add? — schopenhauer1

Probably nothing very helpful.

There is a distinction between "neurosis" and "neuroticism", the former affecting one's life more than the latter. Also, "neurosis" is more of a psychoanalytic term than a medical one.

In basic terms, neurosis is a disorder involving obsessive thoughts or anxiety, while neuroticism is a personality trait that does not have the same negative impact on everyday living as an anxious condition. In modern non-medical texts, the two are often used with the same meaning, but this is inaccurate.

Neuroticism is considered a personality trait rather than a medical condition.
Neuroticism is a long-term tendency to be in a negative or anxious emotional state. It is not a medical condition but a personality trait. People often confuse this with neurosis.

Five traits make up the five-factor model of personality:

Neuroticism
extraversion
agreeability
conscientiousness
openness.

This model is used in personality evaluations and tests across a wide range of cultures.

Speaking for my self, I have experienced neurosis (depression, anxiety) and have had a fairly high level of neuroticism. For the last 8 years, I have experienced a sharp shift away from neuroticism. I have become less irritable, more tolerant, less anxious, more contented. I have felt much less depressed and anxious, but whether that is a result of declining neuroticism or effective medication, isn't clear.

liliputs — TheMadFool

Tragically, I can not congratulate you for being the first person to use "Lilliput" on the Philosophy forum. You did not capitalize this proper noun, and you misspelled it in two ways -- it has two 'L's and there is only one Lilliput. It's a place, like Tierra del Fuego. What you were reaching for and failed to grasp was "Lilliputians", the 6" high occupants of Lilliput. It's so painful.

If you stay after school and write "Lilliputians live in Lilliput" 100 times on the blackboard you will make me feel better. By the way, Gulliver's Travels have been previously referenced.

Perhaps Bitter Crank has something interesting to add? — schopenhauer1

I would, but I'm having a neurotic crisis. It's TheMadFool's fault -- he misspelled Lilliput. Everything was just fine until I noticed his egregious error. Had he spelled it correctly, or had I not noticed his post I would not be so terribly mentally disheveled right now.

This trauma will require bed rest. It's 12:52 a.m., so a good time to retire.

practically, I am not convinced it would be worth the Civil War that would inevitably erupt — ZhouBoTong

Exactly. There are any number of great ideas that will die in the cradle.

"Ideally" we would not have the kind of economy where vital goods were under the control of private individuals whose motives were monetary. The major pharmaceutical companies directors are "not interested" in research and development for new antibiotics because there just aren't enough repeat sales for high profits. Better to invent a drug for conditions which will be required for decade--like blood pressure, high cholesterol, glaucoma, and so on.

In a more reasonable economy, the government would quite sensibly say to the drug companies, "What do you mean -- 'you are not interested in new antibiotics'? Either you "get interested pretty damn quick" or it's off with your head!" In an ideal economy, pharmaceutical researchers would focus on established needs rather than profit.

It will probably take a civil war to get from "for profit production" to "for need production".

Restorative and/or redistributive justice is a desirable approach. But it is difficult to apply restoration to really major criminal acts. There are many environmental crimes that have been committed, but the effects are so pervasive that restorative justice is difficult to imagine. Exposing workers to asbestos after it was known that such exposure caused disease is criminal, but beyond bankrupting the companies (Johns Manville was bankrupted and later reorganized) what can reasonably be done?

It's a civil war inducing problem. The foundation of corporate America is "limited liability". The stockholders of a company are not liable for wrong-doing (or negligence, carelessness, disaster, collapse, etc.) by the company. They are 'legally safe'. Stripping protection from legal liability for the behavior of one's source of wealth would cause corporations to be a hell of a lot more careful, but... civil war again.

Nobody from the company went to jail for the the people killed in Bhopal, India. An event at a Union Carbide pesticide plant (surrounded by a neighborhood of about 600,000 people) on 12/2/1984 released 40 tonnes of toxic methyl isocyanate gas, a pesticide. About 3,700 were killed immediately; more died in the following months and years. As many as 15,000 people may have bee killed (if one includes delayed fatal diseases caused by exposure to the poison).

Adequate restorative justice for so much death and damage is difficult to imagine. I'm not sure what sort of punitive justice would be adequate, but it seems like a thorough-going transfer of wealth from the company and stockholders would be a good start.

The point of severe retributive justice is to insure that a person committing a capital crime doesn't, and can't, re-offend.

For a corporation severe retributive punishment serves the same purpose: to make sure that agents who operated the corporation can not again engage in conspiracies which caused great harm to large numbers of people.

One of the teams prosecuting Purdue said that it was essential that the Purdue company be dissolved and the Sackler Family stripped of its wealth. The reason, he said, is that we need to make sure that Purdue and the Sacklers don't just move their operation overseas and continue to do to people in the third world what they have done to people in the United States.

The Sacklers / Purdue conducted a particularly cynical operation--NOT in the production of opiates, but in the marketing, promotion, and distribution of Opiates. Drug distributors know about how much opiate drugs will normally be purchased in a given county. If the amount sold is 5, 10, or 20 times the normal amount, it is probably because somebody is freely writing opiate Rx. Sure enough: some "pain clinics" were producing an extraordinary volume of opiate sales.

Above board doctors do not normally over-supply patients with opiates, for several reasons. One is that opiates may be used for suicide. Two, the opiates are easy to sell on the street. Three is that patients who take opiates for an extended period of time (needed or not) are likely to be addicted. Fourth, and not the least reason, is for recklessly handing out narcotic Rx a doctor may lose his license to practice.

A fair amount of corruption has to be in place for the drug producer, distributor, clinic, doctor, and druggist to be able to move very large quantities of narcotic drugs. We can rest assured that where opiate overdoses are resulting in sharp increases in ODs, the problem is stacked up several layers deep.

The Sackler family (owners of Purdue) were the beneficiaries of the company's (family's) pursuit of profit. They are multi-billionaires. Yes, they should be punished by stripping them of their ill-gained wealth.

HOWEVER: The Sackler family didn't personally push drugs onto potential and already addicted people. Quite a few doctors (some operating out of store-front "pain clinics") are accessories. So are insurance companies. So are distributors. They too should be subject to punishment.

I'm not at all opposed to the use of narcotics for the relief of pain. The stuff works for many types of pain.

I'm not a physician or nurse or medical professional. However, I have known for a long time that narcotics are addictive. How did it come as a surprise to physicians that the narcotics they were prescribing were likely to addict? I don't care what drug salesmen told the doctors: It is just axiomatic that people's bodies develop tolerance for opioids over time. "Drug tolerance" is the key to addiction. As time goes on, a given dose produces less effect, so the dose is increased. It's a cycle leading to dependency that is very hard to overcome.

Most people who have taken opioids for pain have not experienced such a pleasant effect from the drugs that they return for more, again and again. They stop taking the drugs as soon as pain diminishes. There is a subset of people for whom opioids (and maybe other drugs like nicotine, alcohol...) produce pleasures which they can not resist. They are dead-ringers for addiction. This is not a recently discovered phenomenon.

Political obsessions come and go, which is not to say they are meaningless or irrelevant factors. Racism, white supremacy, misogyny, "homophobia", transsexuality, any inequality, etc. are the current obsessions of the liberal-left. From the late 1940s to the early 1960s the obsessions of the conservative right were communism, subversion, dangerous homosexuality, beatniks, the sterility (or promise) of suburban housing, and corporate careers.

There's usually some reality underlying the political obsession.

Political obsessions are clubs with which to beat the opposition over the head. The obsessions may have some validity. There were some communists and homosexuals in the State Department in the 1950s. That they were not much of a threat to anyone was beside the point. The USSR did project subversives into the United States--as we did into the USSR. Real Politic business as usual. Beatniks actually were criticizing America in poetry and music. None of the reality remotely merited the hysteria and ruined careers.

Political obsessions are more about appearances than substance. Smashing white supremacy will deliver no material benefits to the brown people who are allegedly being oppressed by white devils. We can bend over backwards to accommodate transsexuals, but the fact is that sex is genetically determined and can not be changed. A good share of gender-talk is just plain bullshit.

Heck, we have done just fine with repairing or at least stopping the breakdown of the ozone layer. — ssu

If we had not taken the measure of ceasing CFC production and use in 1992, the ozone depletion problem, would have continued to get worse. Peak CFC levels occurred in 2000. CFCs are cleared at about 4% a year. Ozone depletion would have continued right along, and we would be heading into a period of exposure to much higher levels of UV radiation in mid-latitude cities, well above what is now considered extreme (all that according to NASA). That isn't happening because we stopping doing something that was harmful to the environment. Even so, it will take a while to see the CFCs effects disappear (like 2070).

Switching to "renewables" and nuclear power sounds like a great idea. While we are making some progress in renewable power sources, we have a very long ways to go before we will achieve an actual reduction in yearly production of CO2, etc. No country is on track to achieve modest levels of reduced emissions any time soon which were established in the Paris Agreements.

We have all these sunk investments in coal, oil, and gas we are all loathe to abandon. We also have a tremendous investment in the existing supply of cheap power and plastic. We don't seem to be able to imagine a world without coal, oil, and gas.

Nuclear is an option, certainly, but nuclear energy isn't an over-night solution either. It takes quite a while to build nuclear power plants, from proposal to megawatts. We have not solved the problem of nuclear waste from plants. It is sometimes quite difficult to get rid of waste heat (in certain locations).

We have to reduce demand and actual usage of fuels and raw material, not merely find other sources for all the energy anybody could think of wanting.

Enviro-Pollyanna-Syndrome makes life better today, because it gets the infected temporarily off the hook. But tomorrow they wake up with a bad conscience, an uncomfortable feeling of excess warmth, and a large bill for hydrocarbons. They also find that they are closer to Dooms Day.

As you and Elvis Perkins sing, "I don't like doomsday bother me; does it bother you?"

You are obsessed. And kind of a pain to be around, what with forcing people to play tennis with you, sticking your finger up their noses and into other orifices, and spraying them in the face.

You might get more sex AND tennis if you just asked people nicely.

So is this an agenda to do nothing? — Malcolm Parry

Absolutely not. But there are some problems we can't solve. If there are too many people for the earth's carrying capacity, there is no solution to over-population that we can carry out that would not be morally revolting and utterly dehumanizing. That's where nature comes in. As we exceed capacity... nature will provide some solutions (starvation, disease, natural catastrophe, war...). It's all very unpleasant, and doesn't just apply to the third world.

It is technically possible to lower the levels of CO2 and methane fairly quickly. It would just mean slamming the brakes to the floor on the world economy and producing a political-economic-social train wreck. But that's what we should do if we want to have a long-term future. We don't have time for gradual solutions.

Is it even technically possible to sufficiently brake the CO2/methane economy? Yes, but no one has any appetite for that. It involves things like

a) sharply and rapidly reducing auto/truck traffic (now the major source of CO2 in the N. hemisphere)
b) switch to trains for freight, rebuild passenger train service especially for local travel (25-50 mile radii of urban cores), sharply increase walking and biking for short trips (less than 5 miles)
c) changing to at least vegetarian diets
d) reducing production of non-essential goods (like water bottles, plastic containers for everything, much of the junk at IKEA, Walmart, Amazon, Target, Macy's, Bloomingdales, etc.), cars, recreational vehicles, and so on.
e. Plant three trillion trees. That isn't as impossible as it looks. 400+ trees per person.
... well you get the picture.

So we're kind of left with trusting or not, the deciding authorities — Shamshir

One of the problems of 'advance directives on final care' is that they are not legally binding. Another problem is that they are not always available to the hospital involved in care of patients who are in very bad shape. The attending physicians would not be aware of the advance directive in that situation.

My father was 102 when his heart and lungs began their failure. The doctors at Mayo were interested in pursuing exotic tests and procedures. (His pacemaker battery was about empty, too.). Fortunately, Dad was still quite competent, and the family was present to advocate. On questioning, the doctor admitted that the invasive tests wouldn't lead to survivable procedures. So hospice was decided upon. He spent a reasonably comfortable month in hospice and then died.

I consider this a best-possible outcome. Lots of people can cite both very good and just awful outcomes in care at the end of life.

Do you find the comatose to differ from the brain dead and by how much?
If you had to compare euthanasia vs suicide, outside of the obvious shift in responsibility, how do they differ? — Shamshir

There is a huge difference between being in a coma and being brain dead. "Brain dead" means that the brain does not, can not, and will not function again. Both higher brain and brain stem functions have ceased. Once ceased they do not resume. A dead brain is kaput. Coma and vegetative states apply to brains that are still working (even if not very well) and are not always permanent. People often recover consciousness after being in coma, and sometimes after being in vegetative states, even after a long duration. People in persistent vegetative states [PVS] are not brain dead. Some people who have recovered from PVS report that they were aware, but could not execute any communication.

An effort to test whether PVS subjects could be aware was conducted. fMRI scans on normal subjects had shown that certain kinds of thoughts were detectable; for instance, if the subject was asked to imagine they were playing tennis, a certain pattern of brain activity occurred. When PVS patients were examined in the same way, some, at least, showed exactly the same pattern. They were aware of the test and being told to imagine playing tennis. From these questions yes/no questions were asked of the patient, with 'yes' being imagining tennis, 'no' being thinking of something else.

From this research it was determined that at least some PVS patients are aware.

Suicide and euthanasia are quite different. Turning over the responsibility for one's voluntary death to an agent requires a diagnosis, planning, and various legal rigmarole, as I understand it. On the spur of the moment euthanasia is not legally possible (yet).

Suicide can occur very much on the spur of the moment, or on the spike of despair. If one has a loaded gun handy, it takes just a minute to pick it up, aim, and fire, then sic transit gloria. That's why guns are so often the means of suicide. Pills take time to accumulate and are not all that reliable. Hanging works quite well, but it requires preparation. Gas, carbon monoxide, bridges, high roofs, water, bleeding, alcohol poisoning, plastic bag on one's head... diverse methods.

Psychopathy or sociopathy isn't an all or nothing condition. There are some people who are "slightly psychopathic". If they are also quite intelligent, they might very well rise to the top of the heap because they are willing to do what it takes to get ahead (but stay within the bounds of polite society). A slightly psychopathic business executive will probably find success because he won't feel a great deal of suffering if he has to lay off 500 people on Christmas Eve.

As for "breeding psychopaths", it isn't entirely clear how we get psychopaths or sociopaths. One theory is that "pathic" personalities have a critical defect in their brain--specifically, a solid neural connection between the limbic system (emotional center) and the prefrontal cortex (thinking center). This connection is what enables almost all individuals to incorporate guilt into their personality. We learn guilt by failing to please our parents when we are children and being punished. ("Not only did you eat all the cookies, but you broke the cookie jar too! Shame on you. You're going to get a spanking right now!" her mother yelled.) The child feels like the parents love has been withdrawn, and the fear of love being withdrawn is what we call "guilt". "Guilt is the gift that keeps on giving." Internalized guilt is what keeps us on the straight and narrow, and out of the court house, out of jail, out of trouble.

Psychopaths can't feel fear and guilt. The neurons that make it possible just aren't there. So, they grow up rule-less. They are often also rootless, and don't form close relationships (they can't). Some psychologists are trying to develop therapy to help psychopaths behave (and feel) more normally.

Is all this true? I estimate the what I have written has about a 63% chance o being true.

This is a timely topic, because diseases like Alzheimers and other forms of terminal dementia are increasing with an aging population, and will continue to increase unless we find an effective treatment. So far no luck on that front. A lot of people die from other causes, and reach a point where the benefit of further treatment gives no return, not merely diminished returns.

Rather than resorting to killing Alzheimer (or other terminal) patients, we can provide hospice care under the same terms that (religious hospices, for instance) provide care to the dying cancer patient, the dying infection patient, the dying... whatever patient: No curative measures will be taken in hospice; comfort care is the core. Patients are fed, given drink, kept clean and warm, and supported as long as they can participate (are conscious). When they can no longer swallow, no further food or water is given. Pain relief is continued (injection). They continue to be kept warm and clean. Usually death follows within a week or two. This is "the old fashioned way of dying". No heroics, no crash team, no beeping monitors, no drips, no drugs, no respirators, no cardiac assistance.

Euthanasia is homicide either way. — Shamshir

Euthanasia (eu + thanatos = good or easy death) is a nice euphemism, (an auspicious word) ORWELL ALERT: Be suspicious when politicians use a lot of Latinate words...

What euthanasia is about, to put it in blunt Anglo-Saxon language, is killing the sick and/or old.

I'm not in the pro-life camp where every body must be kept "alive". In my book, the brain dead are dead, whether their heart is beating or not. There are real hopeless cases which no medical intervention can mend, but can assist (palliative care). But actively killing patients is not a policy we should allow (or worse, actively pursue).

People will suffer? Sorry, but yes. Lots of people in this world have suffered, are suffering, and will suffer in the future. We can and ought to relieve suffering. We can and ought to allow people to opt for a limitation on life-preserving procedures, when a) they are in sound mind and b) the patients condition fits their stated preferences and c) a short period of time lies between the patients declaration and the crisis.

What patients can reasonably opt for in the event of severe damage are things like, "do not intubate"; do not force feed; do not sustain with IV water, and such.

But "limitation of life-sustaining procedures" (barring force feeding, intubation and respirator use, resuscitation, etc.) are a far cry from a doctor, judge, nurse, or anyone else deciding to get the patient "out of their and our misery.

Assisted suicide (like a doctor writing an Rx for enough sedative to cause death if taken all at once) isn't euthanasia, either.

Question: Is this some sort of game?
Answer: The game is getting someone to agree with your non-sensical point.

Yes, of course. Forced sex is rape and is several magnitudes worse than forcing someone to play tennis with you.

Why? Because forced sex involves assault and battery, possible injury in the attempt, penetration (or the attempt) of another person's body, a possible pregnancy (which some jurisdictions will force the woman to endure), a denial of the victim's autonomy and dignity, and so on.

Sex can be a non-unique behavior and still be irrelevant to tennis-playing behavior. There are a million non-unique behaviors that can be sorted into ten thousand categories. Some non-unique behaviors will be completely unrelated (celebrating Mass and playing Monopoly) and some will be more closely related (like fixing a flat tire on a car and changing the car's oil and filter).

Hey, Bartricks: We're all smart people here. Of course I understand the distinction and moral significance of voluntary sex vs forced sex.

You are the one that introduced the silly comparison between sex and tennis. I did not.

Thus you are committed to the morally silly view that there's no ethical difference between forcing someone to play tennis with you and forcing sex on someone, other things being equal. — Bartricks

Don't be tiresome.

All of these are excellent questions for philosophers, and everyone else. I would submit that we should stop beating ourselves up. We are following pathways our species evolved to behave and not behave. There are some very unappetizing prospects waiting down the road, if not around the corner.

The key to the global log jam is found in two human features:

The first is that those who control economic decision-making are those who have benefit most from the fossil fuel industry (which took off during the Industrial Revolution). The Koch brothers come to mind, but there are a few million energy and manufacturing stockholders whose fabulous wealth is vested in the status quo.

The second key is the limit on our evolved capacity to feel the urgency of distant (and complex) events. We can know that rising levels of CO2, methane, and other gases are a real threat to our future. We are less successful at feeling the urgency of the not-immediate threat.

The U.S. and the UK were able to mobilize tremendous research and production capacity in WWII because the threat was both existential and immediate. It was not necessary to imagine a fascist axis capable of destroying us. (Even so, it required simultaneous attacks on Hawaii and Philippines (then US territories) to get past US isolationism. The climate crisis is less certain, and for lots of people, a bit too distant. It is "less certain" because we don't know exactly when and how it will unfold for us.

When I say "we" I mean billions of people. The individuals who make up the big "we" one by one can not make long-range policy. The powerful million people who are in a position to make long term policy have interests in the status quo, and like the rest of us, don't "feel" long-term threats.

I put my faith in "Mother Nature" who has ways of resolving difficult problems for species. We probably won't like her solutions, and some among our esteemed selves will be subject to her judgements.

You did not, could not, or would not read what I wrote.

2. Bitter Crank is opposed to forcing people to play tennis or to have sex. — Bitter Crank

Many people are naive about information. They do not have the experience to assay information for accuracy and reliability that they come across in the newspaper, television, internet, or down at the pub. I'm pretty good at it, if I do say so myself, but I'm in my 70s and have a couple of degrees and have spent decades engaged in (mostly personal, some professional) study.

In 1983 I was naive about AIDS. There were all sorts of facts and concepts I either had wrong or did not have at all. I could say "retrovirus" but I really didn't know what the "retro" part meant. When I first started to do AIDS prevention work, I had to bring myself up to speed. It took a couple of years to acquire, absorb, and integrate the unfamiliar information I needed.

I met a college student the other day working as a check-out at a local grocery store who explained he didn't know how credit cards worked (a customer was having difficulties with her card). He went on to explain that he didn't know how checking or banks worked either. Very naive about financial information. Sad, but quite curable.

From my experience, Wikipedia (and a lot of stuff on the Internet) is good, solid information -- BUT one MUST bring at least moderate skill in recognizing garbage. A lot of people don't have that skill. No matter where they get their information from, the naive will have difficulty judging quality.

Placing your penis in their lap and you have a crime. — Coben

A guy's penis may not be quite long enough to place in somebody else's lap. If they cut it off first and then put it in this person's lap, is it still a crime?

Most people really do consider sexual betrayal worse — Bartricks

I bet there are a few people who would rather have had Bernie Madoff et al betray them sexually than lose their entire wealth and security.

You inserted a condition into your syllogism which I had explicitly rejected.

1. Sex and tennis should be mutually consensual.

2. Bitter Crank is opposed to forcing people to play tennis or to have sex.

3. Therefore, Bitter Crank is right.

Have you considered just how much coercion would be required to FORCE someone to play tennis with them--especially if they didn't know how?

You say, for instance, that what is responsible for the widespread intuitions that sex is ethically special is 'convention'. But it could be the other way around - it could be that we have the conventions we do because sex seems special. — Bartricks

Is your statement not an example of what you said in your previous sentence... "you are dogmatically assuming"?

As for convention on the one hand and the alleged natural specialness of sex on the other, how would we at this late date in our development, parse one from the other? I am not a sexologist, so I do not gather evidence about sexual behavior from large numbers of subjects, and then examine the results. What I have to go on is what I have learned from others (reading, conversation, lectures...) and what I have experienced. The same is probably true for you. But even If we were both sexologists with the Kinsey Institute and the University of Indiana at our disposal, we still would never have a sexually naive de novo population to examine. All we would have is millions of people who have a variety of views about sex to which they are probably dogmatically committed.

Look, I'm not in favor of forced sex, forced tennis, forced labor, or forced anything else. I do, as it happens, have strong preferences for HOW we deal with sexuality. Good sex is a piece of personal fulfillment and I think that people have a right to both fulfillment and good sex (voluntary, mutual, unforced, uncoerced, and safe to the extent that it is possible in this unsatisfactory world.