TheVat

If "you" are a totally different person, then in what sense is there reincarnation?? This is what I find incoherent about the concept. The procrastination comment was meant to address this logical incoherence, sorry if that was not clear. And I didn't mean delaying in the sense of delaying one's plans to visit Greece or master cribbage, I meant delaying pursuit of spiritual growth.

It's hard to rule out a "Wag the Dog" scenario. Maybe. He could tell Russia, "Look over here! I'm rescuing our ethnic Russian brothers and sisters who are under the oppressor's thumb in Donbass!". Or maybe he's after the mineral wealth. It's always worth asking what we aren't seeing, where Russia is concerned.

MOSCOW, Feb 18 (Reuters) - A Russian-backed separatist leader in eastern Ukraine announced the evacuation of his breakaway region's residents to southeast Russia on Friday after an increase in shelling. Announcing the move on social media, Denis Pushilin, head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, said Russia had agreed to provide accommodation for people leaving and that women, children and the elderly should be prioritised. "As of today, Feb. 18, a mass centralised evacuation of the population to the Russian Federation has been organised," Pushilin said. "Women, children and the elderly are to be evacuated first," he said. Washington and its allies have raised fears that the upsurge in violence in the region could form part of a Russian pretext to invade Ukraine. Tensions are already high over a Russian military buildup to the north, east and south of Ukraine. Russia, which denies planning to attack, voiced alarm earlier on Friday over a sharp increase in shelling in the region known as the Donbass. Several hundred thousand people plan to leave the Donetsk People's Republic to Russia's region of Rostov, the Interfax news agency cited a source in the self-declared republic's parliament as saying. Nahhh, there's not gonna be any war. Just your ordinary routine evacuation of civilians before someone does a little light bombing the shit out of the place. The population of 4.2 million people? Uh huh.

From what Blinken was saying at the UN, the intel he was reporting, it sounds like the Kremlin is busily constructing pretexts. And lying their pants off. I found the Russian pearl-clutching over ours and NATO's defensive buildup especially ludicrous. The whole thing is insane. You'd think Vlad and his oligarch buddies would at least have some self-interest in not screwing up the global economy and their access to offshore banking, property assets, etc.

https://www.sbpdiscovery.org/news/beaker-blog/surprising-science-not-all-our-cells-have-same-dna Genomic mosaicism in neurons may be a factor.

The "hundred bucks at Home Depot" scene in the Coen brothers film, "Burn After Reading" (the last minute is NSFW) https://youtu.be/ZrzEDyS9Ddw (Cannot be embedded, due to age restriction)

Unless one rejects the notion that the truth of propositions can consist in other propositions, which is the core of coherence theory. Scientific realism holds that some coherence may reside in a web of beliefs about the world but that the truth condition of propositions must always rest on objective features of the world. IOW, theoretic interpretations can be coherent or not, insofar as they fit into a web of other propositions, but their truth can only be determined empirically. For example, saying that both Saturn and the Sun orbited a stationary Earth once seemed coherent and consistent with other propositions, but ultimately the proposition collapsed as empirical techniques were greatly improved.

Liar Liar, with Jim Carrey, back when he was funny. The answer to the OP question is "depends." As you note, there may be a moral imperative to lie to oppressors and murderers bent on harm. Or to those bent on self-harm.

If you are acquainted with the concept of aneuploidy, it will help you with at least one of those questions. Bonne chance avec tes etudes!

It's the doctrine of karma, not reincarnation by itself, that calls people to focus on their actions in this life. At least that's my understanding of how transmigration is not simply a random shunt into another life. OTOH - and here is where survey data would be helpful - it seems to me that reincarnation could also lead some to procrastinate. So, hey, I didn't resolve my problems in this life. No problem, I'll take care of them in the next one. I've got eons to work them out! What would be useful would be a large survey where you compared reincarnationists with heaven-ists on various metrics of success, life satisfaction, relationship happiness, feelings about death, etc. Though there would be a big bundle of other confounding cultural and socioeconomic factors to deal with - you might just get a big data mess.

RIP PJO. A conservative who happened to be truly funny. And whose principled views would not let him support Trump in 2016. I will miss him. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/feb/15/pj-o-rourke-dies-writer-humorist

Yes, a lot of the positives that veganism (which surely represents a range of perspectives, as most Isms do) offers the future is just the capacity to spark conversations and reflections on multiple issues: carbon footprint (and arable acres per person), human health from a nutritional angle, the ethics of using animals, the question of whether or not we NEED to use animals given the techniques of modern food science, and so on. A lot of veganism seems to settle around two major loci: human effect on the planet as a whole, and human effect on the lives of animals as sentient creatures. IOW, either the focus is on planetary ecological engineering and control of greenhouse gases, and the other is the deeper ethical concerns with animal rights and what suffering is imposed. They both address the ethics of how personal choices ripple outward through the world. I know there are now enough vegans in the world that when I go to the egg section of the supermarket, there are now cartons that contain a faux egg mix composed of plant proteins. This means there are enough people who are either outright vegans or think veganism is cool enough to try some vegan options, to merit production and distribution of the stuff. Personally, my digestion always does well with more fiber, so the plant-based options are usually a plus for me (if palatable).

As someone with a bit of Classics education back there, I feel it's worth mentioning that arete is a Greek term for excellence and the aspiration to fulfill one's highest potential as a person. It is NEVER "safe to assume..." Also, lest your assumptions go ranging wildly again, please know that I am not actually a vat, or a brain in a vat. I do tap into vats, now and then.

I am reminded of the words of famous New York senator, Daniel Patrick Moynihan: "You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts." Sadly, I don't have 17 meme placards to buttress that with.

Bit of a confusion here. Comorbidities are not the cause of death. Death certificates may show a chain of events, but the cause of death is that which sets in motion a cascade of organ failures that otherwise would not have happened. A patient with treatable T2 diabetes and COPD and some CV disease may be more susceptible to certain organ failures, but those are not the COD. Pretty much every study I've seen finds COVID-19, when listed as the COD, as the primary cause and not something that just happens to be hanging out in the throat while the patient had pneumonia followed by respiratory failure followed by heart failure. I think Reuters recently had a useful fact check on this. https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-comorbidities-coviddeaths-idUSL1N2TU22X

As it happens, we watched a movie last night we had missed when it was released in late 2015, Eye in the Sky, with Helen Mirren and Alan Rickman and a fine ensemble struggling with the ethics and legalities of making a drone strike in Nairobi on a house full of terrorists who are getting ready to do two suicide bombings. Without going into all the complexities (one of the most cerebral political thrillers I've seen), I'll just say it comes down to a choice: strike immediately and kill the bomb-vested ones before they leave (this is the only way to intercept them), while also likely killing a young girl selling bread right outside, or wait until the girl has sold her bread and leaves. If they wait, it is certain the bombers leave and dozens, maybe hundreds, will die in a shopping mall or marketplace. (a surveillance "beetle" is inside the house, so they can see the bombers strapping on vests and wiring up) A similar problem to this thread's - the proposal is to do something morally wrong to do something right, to save many lives. The generals are all pretty much okay with it. The government ministers are more resistant (not all for the best of reasons). The drone pilot, seeing the little girl, is horrified and puts up resistance and throws some procedural wrenches into the machinery. The film is almost a "must see" for an ethics thread like this one.

There is some evidence LUCA would have been an extremophile, found around hydrothermal vents. https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/news/looking-for-luca-the-last-universal-common-ancestor/

Yes, you really saw that: a Senate candidate shoots at the President, the Speaker of the House, and (ulp!) Gabby Giffords husband. Not sure you can go much lower than this without hitting magma.

If you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' -- Doug Adams

It's worth considering, given the OP question, and that we are in a philosophy thread, that one could have thought experiments (much as ethicists do with the famous Trolley Problem) which are highly unlikely. The question posed is, after all, "is it EVER right?" in any possible sense of "right." I agree with much of @joigus analysis as to why torture is not scientifically supportable (plus one for that) and very likely to always present itself as a barbaric and unimaginative choice where some other bit of finesse might be better. But the scripted thought experiments, like the nuke in London scenario, are meant to make a philosophic incision into the nature of ethical decisions, rather than be a realistic and scientifically documented event in the real world. (hence my earlier point that an actual bomber would have some mechanical contrivance to assure detonation and evade interrogation)(as a couple others posters pointed out). Just as looming trolley accidents, with that special ethical dilemma as framed in that famous conundrum, do not really happen in the real world that way, so too is the case with many a torture thought experiment. In some respects, the Trolley Problem and the London Nuke scenario are both ones that invite the philosopher to consider the merits of Bentham's utilitarianism, and ask what, in theory, promotes the greatest general good for the most people.

Thank you. Had a bit of trouble extracting the jpg.

People seem to be talking past each other. There is no real conflict between torture is generally wrong and torture might be an option where many lives are at stake. There are many ethical rules that are shut down where great peril exists. To do so doesn't make one immoral, it just means one has moral priorities -- violence is wrong but I might stick my foot out and trip a fleeing mugger who attacked a pregnant woman. Vandalism is wrong, but I might smash open a soft drink machine to rescue a hypoglycemic slipping into unconsciousness (if I had no money, and no one was around who did). As for London nuker guy, I suspect he would plan ahead and carry a Deadman switch, so as to avoid torture scenarios that would foil his carefully orchestrated plan. The realworld moral choice would probably be protecting WG plutonium caches and border crossings at the cost of some civil liberties so as to nip such conspiracies in the bud.

https://t.co/LfXqcR2bN6 https://twitter.com/AIGisBS/status/1490896225776078848

Fair point. Torture has some ethical parallels to meatpacking - most of us only imagine someone else doing the dirty work while we keep our distance. (and a chuckle for "nice bloke")

Sounds correct, on the differential being due to who gets what jobs. Many fields where men are still preferentially steered towards higher pay management positions. Or fields where women dominate in numbers and society hasn't recognized the full value of that work. Getting firm figures on this is a moving target, given the changes happening and the current rate of college enrollment of women (around 60% of students are female, per a recent reading). An example I would offer is the relative pay of primary school teachers and lawyers. I would suggest teachers are of more value to society, and a shortage would have more dire consequences. Pay scales may not reflect this.