TheVat

Yep. Is there an antique somewhere missing its nuts? (jokes not disallowed)

Yes. To say the world is essentially quantum is to assert scientific realism, a philosophic view that many interpretations of QM reject. I am more comfortable saying the world is essentially discrete packets, without any ontological assertions about superpositions, wavefunctions, or cats.

Anything with an old blade hinge that extends a panel of some kind (antique keyboard instrument, antique secretary desk that extends in some fashion, etc) or even could be an adjustable weight used to adjust the balance arm on an old kitchen scale. There are dozens of things that have sliding locking nuts, but I'm not enough of an antiquarian to pinpoint one. What about a pendulum adjuster from an old clock?

I think SJ is correct. Looks like the locking nut for an old casement window.

Does being dead, instead of having a life, seem preferable to you? If your answer is no, then this doctrine is adequately rebutted and may be dismissed. If you answer is yes, then we should end this chat and encourage you to seek professional help asap. An additional question is what is wrong with some suffering, if we can endure it, learn from it, and then enjoy our lives and take satisfaction in what suffering taught us? Euthanasia usually is considered only when the suffering blots out all other aspects of life.

To gain a better understanding of how such a philosophy is implemented, who volunteers to go first on the consciousness reduction?

Brief definitions would help the conversation. Guessing wildly on the meaning of promortalist, I will say that I'm all in favor of mortality, as the planet would be SRO at this point without it. J/K

"I refuse to engage in a duel of wits with an unarmed man."

As the economist EF Schumacher noted, "Growth is the philosophy of a cancer cell. " And there are others in that field looking at how some form of capitalism might harmonize with a society of dropping population. It's been pointed out that such a society would have full employment and labor would be more valued since a smaller percent of the population would be of working age. Wages would rise for those of lowest income, especially, and I suspect employers would offer more attractive benefits and conditions.

I was the admin of a science forum that shut down last May. I came here because I really missed the online forum experience, and this one offered a similar mix of science, philosophy, and issues of the day. There's nothing quite like interacting with curious lively minds that value scientific learning and the big questions.

I'm glad to hear you've evaluated their sensitivity to racism and found it appropriate and not excessive. Let me know if they ever get uppity and you need to advise them on that.

You mean dwarves?

This is normally where someone says "game, set, match, " but we left Normal a long ways back. This gyre of whirling plastic could spin forever. Seems unfortunately typical when discussions come down to whether or not words are harmful. And that's about what actions the words connect with, often what sort of work or school environment can be formed by those words and what threats they may imply.

While I agree there is a tiny lunatic fringe that may want to sanitize Huck Finn or Catch 22 or whatever, I think this is mostly a straw man in this topic. A very small group is unable to comprehend historical context (or the Stalinist dangers of rewriting) and they do occasionally provide fodder for clickbait when they erupt somewhere. This group hardly represents any vast brigade of political correctness. But I'm sure Murdochs, NewsMax, and OAN would love to get their subscribers to believe it.

No offense taken, and I knew your intent. (I wouldn't give a plus one to a post I was offended by) Often, when a there is a partial quote, I like to note that it was such for other readers who may have not seen that post in its entirety and therefore not understand its overall thrust. To get back to your point, I think this thread could be concluded if we could successfully differentiate between behavior that is just rude and that which brings discrimination and harm. That's why I worry when platforms like Twitter become public trials, where there is mostly chaos, piling on, and no factfinding procedure. When these cases are settled in a courtroom, however, there is hope that legal precedents can be set that illuminate the difference between breaches of etiquette and breaches of law. It's funny, we all can now grasp that a person's persistent choice of "n---er" in addressing a black person may be legal harassment, but somehow the use of an offensive pronoun to a trans person with the same persistence leaves many people defensive and even dismissing the force of the verbal act. The implication is that black people are a "real" minority group, with an authentic struggle for social equality and acceptance, but trans people are not. Some of the attitudes I've witnessed in my community seem to be based on this distinction, and some people are pretty open about it. The error, as several have pointed out here, is that once we start saying an identity is "just in your head," we have a leverage to say that being Catholic, or Muslim, or gay, is "just in your head." So what's really happening is a ghettoization of beliefs - some get protected, others not so much. Believe in Sky Daddy Version 4.3, and you're protected by law. Believe in your essential femaleness though born XY, and you're just some nutty person who has to take whatever is dished out. Seems like a double standard.

It's possible that you have too many assumptions here, not that they're all bad ones. Nothing wrong with dreams. However, it's worth asking why you assume that anyone born a girl is meant to be an athlete or a mother. It's not a duty, you know. Some women have very fulfilling lives not mothering or zipping around a track. No one has programmed you to be anything, you are a free person, and you probably can choose among many life goals and find ones that both fit and are realistic. You don't need to melt down when people ask you to consider biological reality before making important life goals. People who offer reality checks are friends. People who feed you nonsense and go along with delusions are not real friends, and I would distance myself from them. I wanted to be a jazz pianist at one point. And I do okay on a piano. But I have short fingers and stiffness in both hands due to a couple automotive accidents and a fall from a roof. And, TBH, I lack talent. So I'm never going to play The Blue Note, and that's okay. Life has much to offer. Keep your mind open.

My impression which is (full disclosure) based on random observations over many decades is that "oversensitive" is often what white, straight, middle-class, Christian, normally-abled people call people whose life difficulties they've never remotely experienced. In other words, it's often used in ignorance and applied to a group of people they don't know and whose forms of discrimination they're never going to experience. These responses remind of that classic Onion headline: Racism Over, White People Declare!

Thanks! If you read the rest of my post, which didn't get quoted, it indicated that I saw compelling cases made here for that sort of respect. But kudos for bringing some statistical facts to the issue. Plus one.

Great posts today. Whether or not to call someone a silly name, especially one based on a delusion, would be more a matter of etiquette than morality. Unless there was harm potential -- say there was a situation where SUO, if challenged, would attempt to demonstrate his bona fides by leaping from a high window. Being a genuine space unicorn myself, I know that our amazing flight skills are not shared by the SU wannabes like INow. Calling someone the pronoun fitting their gender state involves something with a moral component: acceptance of their own sense of identity without entailing any acceptance of their worldview. You may either be accepting that or you may not but you are accepting the etiquette of the situation and perhaps the moral weight. If you decline to use their preferred pronoun, you are being rude but the issue at the heart of all this is: are you also oppressing them? Is there harm that may come? I think several here have made a case that there is harm because the act of rudeness actually becomes an attack on a person's basic identity and an attack which encourages others to also pile on, and which can leave the mis-pronouned person isolated and alienated. While I think there are gray areas here, I would think a prudent person can navigate them and understand when they are making a faux pas and when they are engaged in character attack and/or discrimination. I like the priest example. If I speak respectfully to others, I should include the priest in my domain of respect, even if I hold his avocation to be founded on delusion. And there are definitely areas of the world where discrimination against Catholics can be abetted by shows of disrespect. A lot of morality comes from awareness of the potential consequences of our actions (and I include words, as actions) to others.

I have similar objections to the recent sarcastic usage of "woke" or "woke brigade" which people on the conservative Right are using. PC, woke, illiberal, social justice warriors -- all terms used to avoid actually addressing the issue raised. It's really just name-calling. I had "woke brigade" used on me recently for making the outrageous suggestion that schoolchildren would survive learning about Jim Crow laws and events like the Greenwood massacre. My interlocutor felt that school history classes should focus entirely on noble men astride magical horses that pooped rainbows.

If the astronaut climbed onto a shelf at the top of the box, and was in a gravitational field of a planet, wouldn't his G meter show a tiny decrease in force due to his greater distance from the CoG? I guess what I'm asking, in a nonserious way, is what scales are truly local.

Nice. And that conversion might give better mileage than hauling that stuff in a pickup truck. Anything hauled in an open bed has more air resistance than enclosed in a van. (and, from sad experience, I know it's hard to haul anything that comes in 4x8 sheets in a fuel efficient light truck like an S10)

I take your point, insofar as miles driven goes. However, insurance is not the "only waste" involved in the third car. Quite a bit of carbon in manufacturing a car. OTOH, I could toss you this lifeline of virtue: if you bought a third car that's got good MPG, much better than the other two, then opting to drive it more could recoup some or all of that extra manufacturing carbon and more. Or you could (now I'm just playing) loan it to an Uber driver, thereby improving the average MPG of the local Uber fleet.

Asking someone if they believe in God seems way more than a yes or no question. For example, if I had responded "pantheist" in a more serious vein, that would not exactly be a yes or a no, and take further clarification. I am, BTW, agnostic, due to what I see as uncertainty inherent in any metaphysical knowledge. Especially where a universal consciousness is concerned. Questioning the form of a question is fair play, IMO.

I'm a pantheist, which means I believe in stealing trousers! (pant + heist = pantheist)