Dak

(Reposted from Amateur Science > Equipment)

Don't do that please: just one thread.

I'm locking this one

Is this correct? I'm not sure about the last question, but this isn't relevant to what I'm doing anyway.

Yes. Parents are Aa x Aa, hence there's a 0.5 chance of the offspring being Aa.

What weren't you sure about btw?

The only thing that more than about a quarter of Americans can agree on cutting is foreign aid, at 71%. (Americans, on average, estimate that 24% of the budget goes to foreign aid. It is actually less than 1%.)

Maybe this is a special case where the normal arguments as to why you shouldn't have to pass a test before being allowed to vote don't apply?

Maybe the gov' could poll people for what they think is being spent on x, and whether x should have it's funding cut; everyone's vote is weighted by how close they got

So, if you think that 24% of the budget goes on foreign aid, then your opinion that foreign aid should be cut is disreguarded (basically, your view would be 'given that 24% of the budget goes on foreign aid, we should cut it', which can be invalidated by proving that the premise is wrong).

I thought the same about the vehicle in the beginning, the one that came to rescue the others. They drove kind of slowly, they didn't look hurried. I thought, man, I would be hunkered down as much as possible, moving quickly when I could. Then I thought, yeah, that's exactly what the army guys are targeting, the furtive movements and the guys who look like they're helping terrorists.

Ya, but they at least mentioned the 'people with the bongo van picking up wounded' and asked permission to fire; the 'pedestrian', they just mentioned others who'd gone into the building and requested permission to fire on it, but seemingly ignored the pedestrian completely when he turned up?

I did too. Are you talking about the teens who were with the armed guys in the beginning?

No, I apparently missed them too: where are they please?

I'm talking about the two injured kids (10 and 5) that they mention on the radio and request a medical evacuation for, sitting in the front of the van that tries to pick up the wounded.

http://collateralmurder.com/en/resources.html

kinda makes the "oh yeah look at that: right through the windshield; lol" comment a little tasteless... otoh, I still missed them even tho one waves their hand out the van at 8.15, so i'm not sure how much to blame them...

Something about the whole procedure tells me that there is some few seconds delay between acquiring a target and firing, and then a few more seconds before the missile hits. Perhaps it was all the radio chatter, the request for permission to fire, the firing from a moving position, etc. And again, this guy may be a pedestrian or he may be someone who has learned not to look like a terrorist. I have to wonder how obvious this gunship was in this area that had been sustaining fire for the last half hour. I'm not sure how many "pedestrians" could be oblivious to the potential for danger there.

hmm... maybe.

Although after the 'pedestrian' turns up, they say 'clear' then say 'firing' and then fire, so I don't think you can put this down to having committed to firing before the 'pedestrian' comes onscreen.

I guess i'd've expected that the firer would have his eyes on the camera and could, right to the last second, abort/withold fire if, say, a pedestrian turned up, and that the rules of engagement were to maybe not shoot if in doubt (i'm sure the armoured convoy can tolerate a possible-terrorist that is, at most, armed with a consealed pistol)

And I'm not a supporter of this type of war in any way. I think terrorists need to be fought by giving people knowledge before they can become terrorists, not by letting them remain ignorant and then trying to wipe them out with conventional weapons and warfare.

not killing their non-combattant fathers or shooting their 5-year-old daughters might help too.

Hell, tbh i'd probably join a 'terrorist' organization if i was from there and you'd shot my daughter. And i don't see how that'd be 'ignorant' of me.

Yes. The phone companies are regulated such that we are forced to resell or lease facilities at predetermined wholesale rates. It's thick with regulatory detail, so it's not as smooth and easy, or even fair, as it could be but we are definitely not allowed to choose favorites or restrict bandwidth to knock out competition. As a matter of fact, we are under specific direction to prioritize Competitive Local Exchange Carrier circuits above all others, including our own. And I believe that is the case for all Incumbent carriers, like AT&T.

OK, cool. that being the case, I can't see any need not to let market forces sort it out. Legislating something like this would be a morass.

I guess I just don't understand that though. Back to my burger analogy, if I choose not to add lettuce and tomato to my burgers and it says so on the menu - how am I ripping anyone off? And further, how does anyone reason that the government should force me to include lettuce and tomato? I don't see how that doesn't hold water. That's the basic essence of trade between humans - absent fraud of course. And if it's in the EULA, then it's not fraud. Maybe you didn't want to read it, but that's on you.

 

And it's not like EULA's haven't "screwed" me a time or two. And it's not like I, or anybody else in here, hasn't "screwed" someone else with disclaimers upon a purchase. Maybe we're more used to that here in the states. And we should be, it's the kind of economy that compliments a free republic and it's essentially contracts between citizens - and contracts don't legitimize fraud.

With your burger analogy, that's cool 'cos if I particularly want lettus on my burgers, I can go to another burger joint. This economically forces you (or someone else) to do what I want. This is all fair imo, as my choice is 'any type of burger, from anyone, or no burger', and yours is 'serve me, or don't, as you wish'.

If you're the only burger joint that can exist, that changes things. I don't think 'your burger from you or no burger' is a fair choice.

If choosing 'no burger' for some reason doesn't lead to new burger joints that sell different burgers, then you should be whalloped with the legislation hammer: preferably to force you to allow competition, but if that's not a possibility then, yeah, to force you to put lettus as an option in your burgers. Note that this essentially uses legislature to achieve what market forces usually achieve in cases where market forces won't work.

capitalism > legislature > companies that don't have to care what we want

seriously, it's our society, and we should set the rules such that if you want to be stupidly rich, you have to contribute to making everyone else's life better, or -- one way or another -- we'll fire and replace you or give you a pay-cut. So I guess in this case it's "give us the network we want or we'll take our business elsewhere. unless for some reason we can't do that, in which case we'll Pass Laws :eek:" (even if they've mea culpa'd in the EULA).

sorry.

IANA = I am not a.

When you establish this service, you agree to a EULA, or sign some kind of contractual agreement of this service, which could contain declarations of content restriction. If you have agreed to this, I hardly see how you have any justification to cry foul and use laws to make them allow certain content.

This is what I was touching on with the 'your money' comment: they're there to do us a service, and to collect and spend our money in order to do so, and, ultimately, they have to do a bloody good job. If/when they don't, then things like 'we told you we were going to do it so nyaa :-p' don't really hold much water, and -- one way or another -- we should force them to do what it is that we want. After all, they are rich, and if this is because they contribute valuably to society then everyone wins; if it's because they're in a position of power and they're going to degrade society to get richer, then society should turn round and tell them to GTFO (i'm sure we both agree on this btw).

Usually, i'd prefer they were forced by market forces (more anarchic), but when that can't work (misuse of cartels/monopolies, at least certain infrastructure, etc) then i've no qualms with using legislature to force them to do what we want.

however:

That's my point. There is nothing inherent about this service that suggests some kind of right to override the model of service they choose to employ for their business. Market dynamics work well here. That's why we don't have a problem with ISP's doing it. They know it's a crap business model and they will lose business.

 

As far as the anti-trust things go, I do understand the need for that in regulating the phsycial and protocol layers - and if there were a way to restrict content in those layers because that would effect all downstream layers and ISP's, depending on where in the network architecture it took place. And if that's what they're referring to, then I would be in agreement. I don't believe it is, but I could be mistaken.

are you saying that to compete against a network-aneutral company in, say, a city, you'd just have to pay for several big servers in that city, and you'd be able to use the wires etc that had already been layed-down in that city and nationally? And that you'd not have to pay money to, say, AT&T in order to get above-a-crawl passage through their bits of the network? If so i guess i agree with you, and the government should leave well alone and let the market sort itself out.

I noticed the same thing! I wondered if it really was a pedestrian or not, if maybe it looked like a passerby. I don't know, it sure looked like someone just walking by to me, completely non-threatening and uninvolved. I didn't understand that.

No mention of that on the radio, just that they wanted to take the building out.

After wiping out 10 -15 suspects, and knowing that two of them were children, You think that these maniacs, would care about a pedestrian ?

 

War sucks !!!!

to be fair, IANA helecopeter pilot, but I also completely missed the two children in the front.

I don't know how fast those missiles go, but there's only 5 seconds between when the obvious pedestrian enters the picture and the missile hits. It could be that it was fired before they knew he was there.

dude says 'firing' and there's an audible click-whoosh, both of which come after the pedestrian comes on screen.

It's hard to justify "they were threatening me with their AK-47s" when you're in an armored attack helicopter.

Weren't they running escort for a ground devision?

----

One thing I'm curious that I haven't seen mentioned anywhere about this video yet is the first firing of a hellfire missile at the building: unless the audio and visual have become desyncd (possible) then the order of events goes like this:

1/ helicopter gets persmission to fire missile on building

2/ a clearly unarmed pedestrian walks in front of the building, clearly visible on-screen

3/ the helecopter fires it's missile

4/ building goes boom, taking pedestrian with it.

That I find incredibly hard to justify: there was no pressing need to take the building out right there and then; surely they could have waited 10-20 seconds for the pedestrian to get out the way?

it's around 34.40 on the long version of the video http://collateralmurder.org/

time is a dimension, it doesn't have a speed

 

if it does, then other dimensions must also have a speed.

 

what do you think the speed of forward is? or the speed of left? or the speed of down?

can't you have statements like 'time is going at x seconds in area 1 per second in area 2'?

and doesn't gravity 'slow time down'? so... umm...

if you could construct a magical anti-gravity tube that completely blocked out the effects of gravity so that gravity within the tube was absolute zero, and you fired off one beam of light down the tube and one parrallel to (and outside) the tube at the same time, then the beam of light within the tube should reach the end before the beam of light outside, effectively sort of making the tube a 'bit faster than the speed of light would have been otherwize' communication link?

because time inside the tube goes at a rate of '1 second per slightly less than one second outside the tube'?

The point is, all things being equal, market competition would take care of the non-neutrality problem.

They aren't free-er. They simply own the phone lines. You are free not to use their phone lines. You are free not to do business with them.

You have a say as a consumer. This is their business and they should be able to promote any model they want - including restricting content if that's what they want. You didn't buy the server, or their equipment[.]

(technically, it was your money, spent hiring their service, that payed for the equipment).

I really don't think that capitalist rules actually apply to infrastructure.

The idea of paying to open up shop next to an expensive shop given that, as soon as you do, they'll drop their prices so you'll have to as well is iffy enough to begin with; the idea of paying hundreds of millions to lay down new rail-roads, roads, telephone/internet lines, whatever, just so that you can never, ever make the money back because market forces will drive your prices down is... well... not going to happen, basically.

It's also not in our best interests: if another hundreds of millions is going to be spent on infrastructure, it should be spent upgrading, not duplicating, it.

So, yeah, competition isn't realistically going to happen, so you can't rely on that to solve the problems. I guess that leaves trusting buisnesses to not exploit their position, passing trust-laws/regulation to force them not to exploit their position, or setting up some kind of stegonographic thingy so that, e.g., if the ISPs (which, as mentioned, are generally telephone companies) try to throttle VoIP, VoIP can be smuggled across in a way that makes it appear to be some other, non-throttled content.

Aren't they what create the spindles that seperate a cell during cell-devision?

They create spindles that brace against the cell-wall, and then create axial spindles and increase their length to push both ends of the cell away from each other during anophase; then, an actin band around the cell pinches down to split the cell in two.

\          .         /
\         .        /
--L================L--
/         .        \
/          .         \

^bracing spindles against the
cell-wall

= is axial spindle, elongating it pushes opposite
ends of the cell away from each other

dots are where the actin band would go

google cytokinetics for more, i suppose.

There are, if I recall correctly, only 3 ways cells can reproduce: binary fission, mitosis, and meiosis. Which of these three methods would separate and recombine genes?

Umm... does partheneogenesis count as asexual? I mean, the cells undergo meiosis then syngamy, sort of like sexually reproducing with yourself...

The premise is that morality is about increasing general well-being and maximizing the chances for humans to flourish. Given that, his claim is that we can, in fact, use science and its methods to factually answer questions which help us reach that goal...

Well, OK, but that premise stops it being universal and objective, was my point. Also, both 'well-being' and 'flourish' require definition to be useful, and i'm pretty sure that both definitions will be subjective too.

I'm only objecting to his claim of universality and 'entirely objective'.

So, he dismissed the question as profoundly stupid, yet you still want him to give an answer? I think this is a situation where we must realize that a response of "that's not even wrong" is appropriate, but YMMV.

Umm... yes? Otherwize, we've probably hit the point where there is no objective answer and we have to just accept it as an ethical axiom. Which I do; but which also, counter to his claims, stops it being a universal objective ethical system.

We can say that a psychopath like Ted Bundy takes satisfaction in the wrong things, because living a life purposed toward raping and killing women does not allow for deeper and more generalizable forms of human flourishing.

See, this is what I mean: 1/ Ted Bundy's ethical axioms differed from mine; 2/ hence Ted Bundy's ethical axioms were wrong; 3/ therefore, he'd have been better off with mine; 4/ did I mention my system's universal?

Compare Bundy’s deficits to those of a delusional physicist who finds meaningful patterns and mathematical significance in the wrong places (John Nash might have been a good example, while suffering the positive symptoms of his schizophrenia). His “Eureka!” detectors are poorly coupled to reality; he sees meaningful patterns where most people would not—and these patterns will be a very poor guide to the proper goals of physics (i.e. understanding the physical world).

OK... but here you can point to reality and say 'it is different to your perception of it, hence you are wrong'. That is objective.

Is there any doubt that Ted Bundy’s “Yes! I love this!” detectors were poorly coupled to the possibilities of finding deep fulfillment in this life, or that his overriding obsession with raping and killing young women was a poor guide to the proper goals of morality (i.e. living a fulfilling life with others)?

And back to subjective, including another statement that collectivism is better than individualism along with 'depth of fulfilment' (whatever that means) being better than short-term obsessive 'fulfilment'. Ted Bundy would have disagreed you know. none of this is objective.

Would humanity suffer more or less, on balance, if the U.S. unilaterally gave up all its nuclear weapons?

Why, objectively, should the US aim to minimize human suffering, on balance, rather than try to increase US power/minimize US suffering?

Like Severian said: "as soon as someone disagrees with your framework, you are screwed, and back to moral subjectivity".

tl; dr? : Which bit of 'we should be nice to everyone' do you think is objective? And you're aware that several people are objectively better off by not being nice to other people?

If your answer contains the premise 'we should all band together to do what's in our collective best interests', then why is it objectively true to the slavers that collectivism is best, bearing in mind that they'd objectively be worse off adopting collectivism as they'd have to free the slaves.

Sure. It's where he talks about well-being of conscious creatures.

Obviously, it's objectively in the slavers' best interests to prioritize what's in their well-being, not all conscious creatures, otherwize they'd have to free the slaves and get 'ethical' jobs that'd no doubt pay less and be harder.

'All concious creatures', btw, could be taken to mean that I can't lay mouse-traps down or eat bacon. Objectively speaking, why should I give a crap about rats and cows?

Objectively speaking why should we even prioritize all humans? I'm sure there's any number of people for whom, like the slavers, it is objectively true that it's in their best interests to prioritize their own best interests, and not everyone's as a whole.

One of my critics put the concern this way: “Why should human wellbeing matter to us?” Well, why should logical coherence matter to us? Why should historical veracity matter to us? Why should experimental evidence matter to us? These are profound and profoundly stupid questions.

does he then go on to give an answer?

I think you'll find many people who don't agree that they matter: advertizers, for example, are in the business of persuasion, yet for them logical coherance matters naught. Similar could be said of the media and government; and i'm sure the latter will place 'historical veracity' below 'perception management' if given half the chance. Objectively these attitudes are in their best interests.

They're not particularly in mine, but then why, objectively, should those people do what's best for me? It's demonstrably not in their best interests, and presumably any other way of justifying it would require an unsubstantiatable, subjective and probably emotion-driven desizion to 'be nice people'.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/objectively

OBJECTIVELY:

Of or having to do with a material object;

Having actual existence or reality;

Uninfluenced by emotions or personal prejudices.

'we should be nice to one-another' is a personal prejudice (probably emotionally arrived at), and it's a nice one that I have too, but any system that is fundamentally based on it is neither universal nor objective.

I can only encourage people to review the link I shared instead of merely the short snippets I put forth with my post (not suggesting anybody above did this, just want to make the request).

Have done. Could you highlight the bit that answers this:

I don't see how that answers the objection. He's saying two things: that there is an objective "ought, if," and that there is an objective "if," which he calls "living the best lives possible." He seems to be addressing objections to the second statement by defending the first.

I can't find it.

E.g., take slavery: criminalizing it is objectively detrimental to the slavers and in the benifit of the slaves; why, then, is it objectively true to the slavers that slavery is bad?

If your answer contains the premise 'we should all band together to do what's in our collective best interests', then why is it objectively true to the slavers that collectivism is best, bearing in mind that they'd objectively be worse off adopting collectivism as they'd have to free the slaves.

Note that I have no problem with trying to inflict my morals onto the slavers (i.e., ban slavery); just that I don't claim it's universally objectively true that slavery is bad or that my morals are objectively 'better' or more valid than theirs.

Objectively better than theirs for the slaves, yes. And, given that I wouldn't enslave but could be one, objectively better for me, yes. But objectively worse for the slavers. Without a Higher Authority to appeal to, I'm afraid we're stuck with moral relativism, which means no universal objective morality.

You know how a good discussion goes. Can you imagine having to wait a whole day to rebut a comment made on what you just posted? I think it would disrupt the overall flow of a thread a great deal.

How many new people do we get per, say, week? If it's only a small amount, it might be managable?

I think we would have to start with a set of axioms: define the role of government, agree upon methods of psychological assessment, and agree on how to run the cost/benefit analyses. Once those are established, couldn't it work?

Well, yes; but that stops it being objective, is my point. We're going to have to use some non-scientific process to determine the axioms -- including stuff like self-determination vs. state-regulation, whether it's acceptable to chemically/psychologically alter people or not, the balance between happiness, not suffering, and life-duration, who is the system for the betterment of (not everyone would agree to 'everyone'), etc.

Afterwards, everything can (presumably) be scientifically derived from these. But, that's pretty-much what we can do at the moment; yet he's arguing as if it'd be an entirely non-subjective system (but, based on subjective axioms, the system itself would be entirely subjective).

mm. Brave New World anyone? I don't know if the government's role should be to facilitate happiness or require it; I'd prefer the former.

As would I; but that's subjective (objectively, we may well be happyer with mandatory hapiness).

but that's my point: I can't see how we could completely remove subjectivity from the equasion, or even reduce the subjectivity to unviersally accepted axioms ('i like fun'; 'i don't like pain'); and if the system objectively determines the best way of achieving subjective goals, then the entire system's ethical validity is subjective (I get the impression that Harris thinks this'll be an entirely objectively correct ethical system that removes subjectivity).

There are quite a few ways to achieve happiness, as Sam Harris points out in the video. We'd have to evaluate the costs and benefits of each system -- how much does it cost to organize a tranquilization program for pedophiles to satiate their urges? How much would it cost to treat pedophiles? Which has a higher success rate?

...

I kinda offered that as a reducto ad absurdum... are we actually considering, for the sake of argument, tranqing kids as a viable option?

if so, then I really think the best all-round bet is to tranq them, as it min/max'es suffering/happiness. Look, I drew a chart:

                               paedos          kids


raping kids                     
...whilst they're asleep                     :-|
nullifying sex-drive            :-|             :-|

nullifying their sex-drive makes no one suffer or happy, whilst tranqing (ok, how do you spell that word please?) kids at least makes one group happy whilst not making anyone suffer. The costs would, presumably, be comparable, but if not are you saying that if tranqing kids is cheaper, it's objectively the best way?

Being locked out of the Philosophy, Religion and Ethics forums by default.

 

Do I have to prove something first or have a certain amount of posts? I'm not exactly new with 40-something posts but neither would I say i'm well established.

 

I don't necessarily want to post in these forums all the time but occassionaly there's something I feel I want to comment on.

Could we maybe say that with < 30 posts you're limited to one post in politics per day (or participation in one thread in politics / day)? then if you make constructive posts, you could be manually placed into the politics usergroup?

Could be a compromize between lowering the amount of crap in politics, lowering moderator workload, and allowing new members to post in politics? If they're tits, they could be banned from politics?

Before the racial integration of schools in the US, many people would have flown into a rage at the idea of non-whites in the same schools as whites. Now it's accepted, and society is likely better off for it. I think a racial equality supporter would argue that the long-term benefits are far greater than the short-term anger.

and a racist would argue otherwize; but, that'd be subjective.

we could always force cross-breed everyone to create one brownish race: the initial rage would be offset by the long-term benefits (absolutely NO racism, unlike other plans)?

Presumably there are various psychological systems to measure this. Harris would argue that with sufficient research would could determine which emotional states are best for a person -- that is, which states minimize suffering, maximize lifespan, and improve happiness. (As measured by the various scales of happiness psychologists have cooked up.) With better brain imaging and study, we could tell which brain states have adverse consequences and lead to problems.

how do you objectively determine the balance between those three things? e.g., drugs increase happiness followed by increased suffering on the come-down, with a risk of minimizing your lifespan.

Would risk- and comedown-free drugs be developed and then not only legal, but mandatory in order to increase happyness?

If someone like me has an emotionality that makes them angry when people make their desizions for them, is this emotional response deemed 'not in my best interests' as it deminishes the effect of the mandatory drugging (I end up sulky and angry) and thus doesn't maximize my happiness whilst minimizing my suffering? scientifically, would the most ethical response to that be to train me out of it? would druging me into a more submissive state be ethical, as i'd then be happier?

From my perspective, a true system would also aim to reduce the suffering on the part of the paedophiles. Imprisonment is clearly not a system that stops recidivism and "treats" offenders, so it is science's role to determine what is different in the brains of criminals and those who cause suffering to others, and then to determine how to fix them.

why not identify what it is in the minds of the victims that makes them not enjoy being raped and 'fix' that instead of 'fixing' rapists?

Or, with the paedo example: scientifically speaking, should you give paedos chemicals that remove their sex-drive, or give kids chemicals that make them pass out and not remember it (thus not objectively suffering)?

Hell, sounds better to tranq kids: 'fixing' the paedos means that kids don't suffer and paedos don't have fun; tranqing kids just means that kids don't suffer, so objectively that approach is better apart from the fact that their parents would mind (just don't let them find out?).

(btw, I agree that our response should protect kids whilst also trying to help the paedos, not only 'cos it's nice but also 'cos any approach would work better with their co-operation; but not quite to the extent that i'd agree with the 'tranqing kids' approach. I cannot, however, justify this objectively: tranqing kids whilst their parents aren't watching results in no objective suffering and increases overall happiness at the low cost of a few minutes missing from a child's life*, so seems to be the nash equillibrium?

*You could bury this cost by doing it when they would be napping anyway).

For example, there's the question of women wearing veils or burkas. Harris says that we can ask whether mandatory veiling contributes to their well-being, whether it helps them succeed in society, and whether it helps them develop emotionally and individually in society -- and there is a definitive answer to the question. There's no "well, we'll have to respectfully disagree," but there can be definitive evidence to answer the questions and make a moral judgment.

Problem with that is that, for the kind of people who want mandatory veiling, seeing an unveiled woman would probably solicit feelings of rage and anger (i.e., bad feelings); this is probably scientifically provable, as is the statement that rage/anger do not contribute to well-being (unless we don't count 'how happy you are' in the objective determination...), so you can probably objectively and scientifically prove that, for certain people, seeing unveiled women is bad for their well-being. The question of 'who's well-being do we care about the most' arises, and it all becomes subjective as far as I can see.

Also, what counts as 'emotionally developing'? Should we objectively determine (and then implement) what leads towards someone being more emotional, or less? and which emotions 'should' people feel, and under which circumstances? another subjective decision.

So, I think he's actually suggesting that we:

-- subjectively determine a few things that we want to treat as 'ethical goals'.

-- objectively determine:

---- what will lead towards these goals

---- how to prevent that which will lead away from these goals

-- and then implement the above objectively-determined stategies

-- if anyone disagrees with our objectives and suffers as a result of our actions, **** 'em.

Seems to make sense imo, as 'what is ethical' is inherently subjective, whilst 'how do we best achieve x' is a matter of fact, and best done objectively (maybe even scientifically), and it's not as if anyone cares if people who disagree suffer.

e.g.:

subjectively determine that 'suffering' is bad, and subjectively define 'suffering'

objectively prove that raping children counts as suffering

objectively prove that non-satiation of sex-drive counts as suffering

objectively deduce/prove that, for paedos, not raping children counts as suffering

subjectively determine that we don't really give a shit about the paedos

objectively determine the best way of preventing paedos from raping kiddies

subjectively reaffirm that, if this way involves inflicting pain on the paedos (prison, for example), we still don't care about them.

implement objectively determined strategies to achieve our subjective goals.

call it science

make video pluggin book

profit

can, in fact, answer moral questions

Science can probably answer tactical/strategic questions on the best way to achieve our subjective, non-scientifically arived-at goals.

e.g.: 'how best to convert everyone in the world to muslim'

but not: 'we should/shouldn't do that'.

29th of February, 2023.

that'd make us in 13BC, and we can have fun remembering that 12 comes next, arguing about whether there's a year 0, trying to figure out what happens on non-leap years, and have a big party in 13 years time to celebrate the first millennium.

Yes - masturbation would be immoral too. There is absolutely no point to it other than self-pleasure.

Actually, I find that I get quite grumpy and angry if I don't orgazm on a regular basis.

So, for self-pleasure but also to stop me from being grumpy.