:up:

I am asking you why you believe that a zygote does not have the same fundamental right to not be killed when innocent like a woman does — Bob Ross

If you had to choose between saving a fertility clinic where a million (or a billion or a trillion) zygotes are stored or saving an orphanage where a dozen kids are trapped in the burning building, do you really have to think about which to save?

Now I don't think we're anywhere near a synthesis of consciousness from unconscious compounds, but if seems fairly clear that consciousness is a biological phenomenon. — jkop

If we could build a working brain our of inorganic parts that was functionally equivalent to a working organic brain, wouldn't the non-biological brain be conscious?

All else being equal, we would expect the doctors to do everything they can to rehabilitate them and keep them alive. Circumstances matter, though, as, e.g., the doctors may have to prioritize one sick patient over another; but this is a reflection of limited resources and not a disrespect for human life. — Bob Ross

Should the parents be allowed to authorize the doctors to remove life support?

What if my leg gets amputated and kept alive in a nutrient bath? Am I now less of a person? Is my leg a separate "I"?

What about the case of the brain-dead child being kept alive by machines? Do parents have the right to pull the plug and authorize the doctors to harvest the organs?

There is a living human being that is created upon conception; so that is where it begins as a living being. After birth is not at all when it becomes a human being: that makes no sense. — Bob Ross

It's not a person. That's the salient point. All things being equal, it would be nice to allow it to develop into a person, but all things aren't equal, and that would entail violating the woman's bodily autonomy rights.

Highly? No. Speculative, yes, but all cosmological origin ideas are. This one is the one and only counter to the fine tuning argument, the only known alternative to what actually IS a highly speculative (woo) argument. — noAxioms

As an idealist, I sympathize with your claim the universe might not "exist", and therefore, doesn't have to have a cause (I may be summarizing your claim terribly, feel free to correct me), but I also recognize that to most people, that's a very "wooish" take on things.

Trying to dissect rights in terms of when a being currently has personhood vs. merely being alive doesn't really work; whereas analyzing the living thing in terms of its substance works great. — Bob Ross

How would that work with a braindead child being kept alive on life support after a car accident? Do the parents have any say in removing life support and/or letting the doctors harvest organs? Do the doctors have to provide heroic actions to keep the child alive?

Unbounded rolls are part of the chaotic inflationary theory of cosmology, with countless bubbles of spacetime with random properties are generated from a single structure. Only the ones with exact optimal settings (the odds against has an insane number of zeroes) are suitable for generating a mind capable of gleaning the nature of the structure. — noAxioms

This is highly speculative. We don't know if a multiverse exists, how many universes it contains, or what kinds of universes they are.
https://bigthink.com/13-8/multiverse-no-evidence/

Why would this happen? How exactly would Russian troops be flattened in Ukraine? — boethius

Ukraine has been able to invade Russia and hold a chunk of its territory indefinitely. If NATO forces entered the fray, Russian forces would be rolled up like a wet carpet. You really dispute this?

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No, 'nothing' cannot be a cause. I don't posit that the universe is the sort of thing that 'came into existence', something that only describes objects within our universe, such as a raindrop. Treating the universe as an object is a category error. — noAxioms

Maybe not an object, but the universe certainly exists, so what caused it to exist? The only way around that I can see is to say it's eternal.

So premise 1 is a premise that only applies to objects IN the universe, and even then it isn't necessarily true except under fully deterministic interpretations of physics. — noAxioms

Nothing caused the the universe to come into existence? How does that work?

But we're not permitted to kill the unconscious, so that must not be the basis for deciding if someone is a person. — Hanover

If a child is brain dead and being kept alive on life support, the parents can decide to harvest the organs and remove life support. This society puts a lot of emphasis on the (supposed) personhood-brain connection.

Everything is a footnote to Plato. Just say that.

Assuming that all forms of strategic bombing involve deaths of innocents, do you think it's always immoral? For example, suppose a well placed bomb in WW2 could wipe out the Nazi leadership but also destroy a school. Would the Allies have been wrong to do it?

Good points!

Let's suppose aliens come down and tell us that we're all going to wiped out unless we give the aliens any death row convict. If we do that, we'll all live. If we don't, we'll all die, except the death row convict. What should we do?

I think it would be wrong to throw the switch. We should not sacrifice people.

Anyone is free to sacrifice themself. Fine if the one says, "Throw the switch! Better I die so many can be saved!" — Patterner

What if we raise the stakes to ridiculous levels where the fate of the world rests on running over the guy on the tracks?

Dark forest doesn't work because you can't hide the biosignatures your planet has been giving off for the last billion years.

At the Shanksville Fire Station, @POTUS spoke about the country's bipartisan unity after 9/11 and said we needed to get back to that'. Bates added: 'As a gesture, he gave a hat to a Trump supporter who then said that in the same spirit, POTUS should put on his Trump cap. He briefly wore it'
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2024/sep/12/joe-biden-dons-trump-hat-in-show-of-unity-at-event-commemorating-911-video

I might agree with self preservation if you agree that it means keeping yourself alive and reproducing. Defense implies there is something to protect from, what if their are no dangers where the super intelligent being live. Would the instinct still develop? — Sir2u

There are always dangers in this universe. Wandering black holes, gamma ray bursts, solar flares, and of course, a possible nearby alien civilization more powerful than oneself.

My posts are predicated on the aliens you were talking about earlier: aliens who can communicate by fermions and neutrinos. If you're talking about aliens who aren't technologically advanced then obviously none of what I said applies.

Concepts of defense and self-preservation are going to be universal.

I think any space-faring species will be somewhat curious, and any species that has climbed on top of the evolutionary ladder is going to be somewhat concerned with self-preservation, so yes, they're going to want to know that their neighbors are up to and they're going to spend a fair amount of money to find out. They won't send probes to another galaxy, but they would certainly investigate nearby planets with biosignatures.

If they can communicate by fermion or neutrino, it would be trivial to send probes to nearby planets with biosignatures and keep an eye on them.

They would still know of radio and remember their own days of listening to the skies with radio telescopes. It wouldn't take much to beam powerful radio signals to all the nearby habitable planets.

If you had to choose to pay out reparations to one of these two groups, who would you prioritize, black men or white women?

Women should be at the front of the line when it comes to reparations for righting past wrongs.

Also, the reparations money would presumably come from taxes, so my taxes will go up to give people like...Oprah and Kanye reparations?

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What is your goal regarding relationships? Do you want an equal partner or just someone to bang once in awhile?

if things get out of hand in a nuclear way. — Tzeentch

If that happens, it will be because Russia uses nuclear weapons.

It is a choice, but not an action. There’s no 50/50 decision being made, because it is morally impermissible to do something bad for the sake of something good; and so it is better to choose to not do anything than do something bad. — Bob Ross

I don't see much difference between the person who pushes the child in the pond and the person who stands at water's edge laughing while they drawn.

Except for abortion. Pro-choice referendums pass in places like Ohio. The cat ladies Women are pissed.

How long is Russia going to tolerate this? Is there political pressure on Putin to drive Ukraine back? I've heard the Russian military bloggers aren't happy. How influential are they?

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/nearly-200-000-russians-being-171513607.html
How long is Russia going to tolerate Ukraine occupying a chunk of their country?

Ukrainians apparently occupy around 300-400 sq miles of Russia. This is becoming quite the embarrassment.

What is the US's "grand strategy" and who's the mastermind of it?

Shades of the Tet Offensive, although this one doesn't look like a military failure so far.

The more apt question would be, how can Russia lose? — Tzeentch

Ukraine just invaded them.