Wouldn’t the exploitation of robots reduce toil and drudgery and wage slavery, thereby liberating the worker to pursue his own creative endeavors?

A clock that never hits midnight is broken. It’s not the greatest analogy given that they are atomic scientists.

It was tongue-in-cheek. Those old demarcations never existed in the first place.

Hardly. Some union members were protesting their own union while shit-talking the Labour government. So much for labour.

One minute you’re working, sitting pretty, next the industry is arbitrarily shut down by the state. It’s good to see labour in Australia is finding its teeth again.

Is it that you want me to read through your list of links and arrive at a conclusion you have yet to argue?

That is why it is necessary for government to regulate everyone under threat of violence.

All that for a non-sequitur? Didn’t help at all.

We should stop dead trees from decaying, too.

Furthermore, we apply the experimentally derived decomposition function to a global map of deadwood carbon synthesized from empirical and remote-sensing data, obtaining an estimate of 10.9 ± 3.2  petagram of carbon per year released from deadwood globally, with 93 per cent originating from tropical forests. Globally, the net effect of insects may account for 29 per cent of the carbon flux from deadwood, which suggests a functional importance of insects in the decomposition of deadwood and the carbon cycle.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03740-8

A petagram is a billion metric tons.

Could be better, could be worse?

I see no “social responses” in your Gish gallop, unfortunately.

There are definitely problematic humans out there. (Are you one of them?)

I’m not sure criminal activity and frustrated doctors constitute enough reason to regiment the lives of all citizens.

This is an interesting report from the Telegraph. Wuhan scientists planned to release coronavirus particles into cave bats, leaked papers reveal.

New documents show that just 18 months before the first Covid cases appeared, researchers had submitted plans to release skin-penetrating nanoparticles containing "novel chimeric spike proteins" of bat coronaviruses into cave bats in Yunnan, China.

They also planned to create chimeric viruses, genetically enhanced to infect humans more easily, and requested $14 million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to fund the work.

Papers, confirmed as genuine by a former member of the Trump administration, show they were hoping to introduce "human-specific cleavage sites" to bat coronaviruses which would make it easier for the virus to enter human cells.

People are always telling me to “trust the science” and to otherwise put faith in a category of mammals called “experts”, but then we find they’re funding gain-of-function research and planning to create “chimeric viruses” enhanced to infect humans more easily, with no doubt the purpose of protecting us from this disease.

Even more frightening:

A Covid-19 researcher from the World Health Organisation (WHO), who wished to remain anonymous, said it was alarming that the grant proposal included plans to enhance the more deadly disease of Middle-East Respiratory Syndrome (Mers).

“The scary part is they were making infectious chimeric Mers viruses,” the source said. “These viruses have a fatality rate over 30 per cent, which is at least an order of magnitude more deadly than Sars-CoV-2.

Just brilliant. Well, at least the Lancet, used as it was to promote unscientific propaganda, has started publishing some views contrary to the misinformation platter we’ve been dining from the past couple years. But, for now, they can only appeal for an “objective, open, and transparent scientific debate about the origin of SARS-CoV-2”, because while it was impossible then, it is certainly not easy now.

On July 5, 2021, a Correspondence was published in The Lancet called “Science, not speculation, is essential to determine how SARS-CoV-2 reached humans”.1 The letter recapitulates the arguments of an earlier letter (published in February, 2020) by the same authors,2 which claimed overwhelming support for the hypothesis that the novel coronavirus causing the COVID-19 pandemic originated in wildlife. The authors associated any alternative view with conspiracy theories by stating: “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin”. The statement has imparted a silencing effect on the wider scientific debate, including among science journalists.3 The 2021 letter did not repeat the proposition that scientists open to alternative hypotheses were conspiracy theorists, but did state: “We believe the strongest clue from new, credible, and peer-reviewed evidence in the scientific literature is that the virus evolved in nature, while suggestions of a laboratory leak source of the pandemic remain without scientifically validated evidence that directly supports it in peer-reviewed scientific journals”. In fact, this argument could literally be reversed. As will be shown below, there is no direct support for the natural origin of SARS-CoV-2, and a laboratory-related accident is plausible.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)02019-5/fulltext#%20

Ahh, “there is no direct support for the natural origin of SARS-CoV-2”. Imagine saying this a year ago.

How’re those “social responses” working out? Not so well, the last time I checked. It’s no surprise that with all the genius of public health all they could come up with was imprisoning their citizens and trying to regiment society with draconian and arbitrary edicts. Such actions suggest people are more of a problem than Covid-19.

SARS-CoV-2/pandemic isn’t the one regimenting our lives. We are witness to the greatest peacetime policy failures in world history. Grab the popcorn.

Victoria Police granted 'no fly zone' over Melbourne's CBD

From Thursday, no aircraft is allowed within a three nautical mile radius or below 2500 feet of Melbourne's CBD without permission from police.

The "unprecedented" move has sparked anger and the Alliance for Journalists' Freedom (AJF) has demanded police immediately lift the order.

https://www.9news.com.au/national/melbourne-protests-victoria-police-granted-no-fly-zone-over-melbournes-cbd/656f4379-cbb0-45e8-9e38-948951586f22

Maybe they are trying to hide video such as this:

I can’t think of any men good enough to be another’s master. Can you?

It’s because, like you and me, they’re human. I can’t think of any man good enough to be another’s master. Can you?

No, I don’t drive on the wrong side of the road unless I’m passing someone. I don’t drive on the wrong side of the road because I don’t want to be hit by oncoming traffic.

I do understand what a pandemic is. I do understand the death toll and that people are getting ill. No, I do not believe governments act by and for the people.

Oh, so you do know who is infectious or not?

My only point is that your aversion to your fellow man, sick or not, is born of fear and ignorance. I say ignorance because you don’t know (nor care to know) whether you can get the disease from them. This leads invariably to your fear and intolerance of those you can only pretend are infectious, speaking about consent out of one side of the mouth while demanding state obedience out of the other. I just want to know how you are able to live like this?

If each state is determined by its anterior state the first state wouldn’t exist because there was no anterior state to determine it.

In any case, we couldn’t know the initial state of the dice and the exact interactions with its environment because by the time we did the initial state and exact interactions would be different. This is not because we are too slow or inadequate at examining states, but because there are no states.

I’ve discovered that covid authoritarianism is a chance moral refuge for otherwise immoral people. Through sheer tyranny of self-deception they’ve made avoiding people, covering one’s face, hiding in one’s home, and obeying authorities right or wrong, moral acts instead of acts born of fear and ignorance. It might work for a while, Tim, but it will be difficult to rid yourself of the stink you’ve since accumulated.

I side with the kids in your story. You meddled in someone else’s affairs, couldn’t make your case or got angry, so you ran to the authorities. That’s not something to be proud of, in my book. Snitching on your neighbors was commonplace in communist and Nazi regimes, so I can understand the comparison.

Yes.

Right, there is a way that preventing the planting of a bomb that would hurt a future person(s) is "good", even if there was no person alive to be aware that there was a prevention of this terrible thing that could have affected them.

Preventing the planting of a bomb is good. But you’d be saving no one if those potential victims were never born.

Illicit fried chicken and criminal travel. Thank god for the brave men and women of the Auckland Stasi for protecting everyone’s lives.

A police spokesperson told the BBC that officers made the arrest after they noticed a suspicious looking vehicle travelling on a gravel road on the outskirts of the city.

"Upon seeing the police car, the vehicle did a u-turn and sped off trying to evade police," they said. "The vehicle was searched and police located the cash, alongside empty ounce bags and a large amount of takeaways."

Police photos showed at least three buckets of chicken, about 10 cups of coleslaw, a large package of fries, and four large bags containing other KFC items.

They also seized NZ$100,000 (US$70,000; £51,000) in cash.

It is unclear whether the men intended to sell the food or if they hoped to use it as a distraction if they were to be pulled over.

New Zealand Covid: Men caught smuggling KFC into lockdown-hit Auckland

I don’t get it. Am I stopping someone from giving birth into a lava pit?

A newborn does exist.

Parents do not control the activity of the spermatozoa, ovum, and their subsequent forms. Surely they can affect gestation, but they cannot make gestation occur through will alone.

Well yes it is immoral to birth your baby into a lava pit.

No one is being harmed by not having a child just as no one is being harmed by having one.

It may be weird and cheeky but it at least considers extant things and activities, and isn’t a false analogy like pulling the trigger of a gun. The sperm travels to the ovary by flagellating its tail. It breaks through the ovary wall. It fertilizes the egg. It becomes a zygote, a fetus, a newborn, and so on. The only way a parent might stop the efforts of your genetic material is to intervene, or otherwise “force” it to stop without any consideration of the consent of those involved, no?

Anyways, it makes sense to me that “moral actions that affect [a person] make no difference as long as the person doesn't exist at time X” simply because there is no person to affect with the moral action. I just cannot follow your reasoning when I can see your conclusion in the premises. It becomes difficult to follow when these thought experiments always treat nothings as somethings, potential people as people, possible scenarios as extant ones. Would your evil villain be guilty of forcing someone into a game if there was no man to nab from the couch? if there was no one to force? Conversely, are the parents guilty of not seeking consent when there is no one to seek consent from? I don’t see how they can.

There is no will to substitute. There is no person to force. We might look upon our birth with regret and sorrow and lament our parent’s decision, but it is all retroactive. Looking at it, there is no act in conception, pregnancy and birth that should have required our consent, whereas in your evil demon scenario there is.

Besides, parents merely set the conditions within which pregnancy might occur. The worst that could be said of them is that they had intercourse. Your genetic material travelled, fertilized, and formed by its own efforts. You threw yourself in the game.

1) What counts as "forcing" people into a game? Certainly the villain is doing this, but how is birth not any different besides the fact that prior to the birth, the person didn't exist? Does that really matter when the outcome is the same (the person plays the game of life?)

I prefer the idea that “forcing” is when you attempt to subvert and substitute another’s will with your own. But with birth and child rearing you are creating and nurturing a will.

2) What counts as "freedom"? I mean the villain's game, and life's game (after the expansion) is pretty much identical. But many people might still say what the villain did was wrong, whereas the life game is not. How so? It is almost if not exactly the same in terms of amount of choices allotted (play the game, or die of depredation, suicide, and poverty.

In most cases there is no villain, but a loving parent.

3) Are the contestants like the "happy slave" that might not mind the game (being a slave in the slave's case), but don't realize their options are more limited than they think? What makes life itself so different? Life itself doesn't offer much beyond it's own game, homelessness, and suicide.

In fact, life offers everything. It is only you that limits it.

The consequentialist engages in a form of fantasy, immediately confining his morality to weighing a limited variety of possible consequences (never all possible consequences) with their probabilities. So it is not so much about right action as it is about having the right thoughts before acting.

By “weighing” I don’t mean he uses any real unit of measure. There isn’t any. For while “the greatest happiness for the greatest number” implies that happiness is measurable, no unit of measure has been presented, and the consequentialist invents it ad hoc in order to appraise which course of action will lead the greater sum total of this or that human good (happiness, utility, pleasure, etc). None of that matters anyways because “the greater good” has no reference to the world or to flesh-and-blood human beings.

Worse than all that, the consequentialist can justify cruelty and injustice if such actions are required to satisfy his teleological desires. Better to do Justice though the heavens fall, in my mind.

If the state fears an overloaded healthcare system maybe it should improve the healthcare system. But that’s too much work. Better to utilize its power to control the population’s livelihoods than to try harder at what is essentially its job. After all, authoritarianism is the only species of ethics available to @Banno’s collectivist posturing.

Government policy is government interest, not communal interests. The community didn’t devise, implement, and enforce lockdown policies.

The case that governments impose lockdowns because they are merely imposing the community’s interests is fraught with statist deceit. For one, without inquiring with each community member, they do not nor could they know what the community’s interests are. Second, if they did know, they would never find one single “communal interest”, but myriad interests. This is because only individuals, not communities, have interests.

If lockdown was indeed the interest of the community at large, there would be no reason to implement it with policy and enforce it with coercion. But “communal interest” is fabricated, made up, assumed, then sold as something it isn’t. It’s the interest of those in power. And in the case of lockdowns, it is forced upon the actual community, overriding each member’s interests no matter what they are.

That drone strike we were told averted an ISIS car bomb during Biden’s Afghanistan debacle did in fact kill an innocent family, most of them children.

The Pentagon had said the Aug. 29 strike targeted an Islamic State suicide bomber who posed an imminent threat to U.S.-led troops at the airport as they completed the last stages of their withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Even as reports of civilian casualties emerged, the top U.S. general had described the attack as "righteous".

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/us-military-says-10-civilians-killed-kabul-drone-strike-last-month-2021-09-17/

No one was fired or resigned or court-martialed for the murder, gross stupidity, and lies to the public.

I agree.

“Lockdown” is a revealing term. It’s prison jargon. The same consequentialist fears about some impending scenario, whether it happens or not, can be used to justify restricting people to real prisons. Consequentialism is basically a sort of racket in this sense: the fear-mongering absolves the consequentialist from the consequences of his actions.

Those who are not infected with the virus cannot spread the virus. So the only reason one would restrict the healthy is ignorance, and whether through laziness or an impulsive fear, rather than change his ignorance he chooses the most sweeping measures to make up for it. There is no ethics behind it at all.

The beauty of jargon is that it usually constrains itself to its own specialization. Just navigating the “discourse domain” of academic philosophy leaves one thinking that philosophy is merely the carrion for so many scavengers.

Oh dear. Wrong again.

When in doubt, play identity politics.

Yesterday the vaccine passports came into effect where I live. I now find myself in the privileged tier of a two-tiered society. This day only proves to me how quickly a mental apartheid, born of fear and hatred, can become a real one. Now around 30% of our population is denied access to much of the province’s economy.

If one is vaccinated he can download a QR code from the government’s website. Some poor hostess-turned-state-enforcer will scan it along with government ID whenever entering a compliant premises. I’m not sure what this means for those without smartphones, computers, internet, and government identification, but one way or another they must find a way to show this code and identify themselves before entry. Perhaps they should sew it to their lapel and be done with it.

It’s easy enough for the government to contract out a fancy new website and generate QR codes. The burden, however, falls upon the citizen, the business owner, the worker, who must now enforce discriminatory policies at the doorstep of their business. A friend of mine who runs a dumpling restaurant now finds herself in the situation where her largely unvaccinated staff will be serving her vaccinated customers. A false sense of security, it seems, is at least a kind of security.

I’m not sure what percentage of people must be vaccinated before the government ends its discriminatory program, but I suspect it will be with us for some time. My only hope is that it collapses beneath its own stupidity before it begets acts of resentment and retribution, which will no doubt affect the innocent, vaccinated or not.

Though we generally use possessive determiners to refer to the body, none of it means we are not our body. Just point to yourself and see whether your finger lands on mind or body.

None of that matters to me. I don’t care if the vaccine cures every disease in human history. If someone doesn’t want to put it in their body they shouldn’t be forced to do so, and for the same reasons that they shouldn’t be refused a vaccine—they are responsible for their own medical decisions. If they refuse the vaccine they accept that risk.

We’ve seen what happens when we give the state the power to make our medical decisions, to violate our medical privacy, to override the doctor/patient relationship, to enforce discriminatory social policies, to regulate our personal decisions, what we put in our body, who we can let in our shops, who can travel, who can gather, and so on. History is replete with examples of why a certain subset of mammals should not be given the power to do any of this. Not only do we lose this power for the time being, but it is unlikely we will get any of it back. But it’s the perennial faith of mankind: while every day records another failure, every day the belief that it needs an act of government to fix everything reappears.