lemur

Great, you got my point that theology has logical "equations" that can be used to do ethical analyses and calculations just like science, albeit with more interpretive "fuzziness" maybe. Still, I think you underestimate the tendency of people to develop a belief in something just because they get good at "running the numbers." Pseudosciences like phrenology and raciology were so popular for precisely this reason. Once people start doing analyses and coming up with viable patterns to explain data, they start to believe whatever theory they're working with. That's why falsificationism was invented by Karl Popper to distinguish valid science from other kinds of theories. Biblical theology or QP may or not may not be falsifiable, but both can still have the same effect of stimulating people to believe just by giving them a sense of mastery over the material. How do you figure that's the case?

Does anyone else have the feeling that all the "cultural incompatibility" propaganda that circulates regarding Islam is just the latest in a long history of attempts to prove that there are legitimate bases for segregation for one reason or another? I think there are lots of people who dream of segregation for any number of purposes and they tend to support establishing precedents for any form of segregation in hopes that it will eventually become normal enough that their version will become viable. Such people should be integrated into multicultural social situations along with everyone else, imo.

What I'm saying is that QP uses mathematical expressions to describe logics of energy-behaviors according to certain ways of looking at those behaviors. By learning to think in the terms of QP, by practicing and understanding how the equations work, one develops a belief in their reliability and predictive power. Similarly, when one learns the language of theology, one develops a belief in the reliability and predictive power of the analytical tools. When one listens to the advice of "demons," for example, one ends up causing harm to oneself or others. When one accepts the help of "angels," one can "ward off evil" and commit good, constructive actions instead. Then, of course, there's all the details about what constitutes good and evil/sin and how people get influenced in either direction and what kinds of responses they can expect for their actions. None of this has to do with whether the Earth was created in 6 days or 6 prehistoric epochs and how. The creation story is just a story that contains certain ideas embodied in it. Using its accuracy as a reason either to accept or reject its validity is a strawman. It's not intended to be a roadmap to explain fossils. It's a way of expressing the purpose of human existence in the universe. Arguing over it as a true explanation of the past only obfuscates its purpose, which is to be interpreted as insight into the interplay of goodness and evil in human life.

Theological scripture is actually allegorical philosophy mostly. You have to analyze the allegories for them to become meaningful. Most people make religion into a ritualistic drama of recapitulating the dogmas without interpreting their meaning just so that they don't have to observe the moral/ethical lessons contained in them. It's more comforting to go to church (or school for that matter) for social acceptance than to learn and evolve spiritually/intellectually. The theological writings are not arbitrary stories written to be ritually performed/consumed and nothing more. It's just what people do to get out of living responsibly and consciously. I don't believe in quantum mechanics and the equations don't work for me. A quantum physicist would tell me it's because I haven't worked to learn how to do the math and a religious theologian would tell you that you haven't worked to learn how to interpret the language of theology. All theological scripture is, imo, is a language for looking at events through the lens of good vs. evil. Good and evil are viewed as forces in human life and it is recognized that all things perceptible to humans are part of human life. Subsequently, goodness is personified as having a lord, given the name/title, "God," who has helpers or messengers called "angels." Similarly, evil is personified as having a lord called, "Satan," who has helpers/messengers called "demons." Humans are the beings who are free to choose their own actions and who can listen to either good OR evil. Therefore human decision-making is viewed as being informed by the two forces and their lords and messengers. All this is is a form of moral philosophy. It's just a way to approach your life and actions as a human in a moral/ethical way. The only reason I could see that people would want to undermine it by silly little loopholes like insisting that the universe couldn't be created in 6 days is if they wanted to obfuscate people's ability to reason morally and use their free will to choose goodness over evil. Why would anyone want to obfuscate that?

To the extent that religious people recognize a connection between the creation of light and its assessment as good by God with the creation of scientific knowledge by humans, I see why truly devoted people would seek out science as an avenue to doing God's will. I also see how evil is often attracted to goodness (to pervert or attack its servants) and thus how much of science is appropriated by those with a will to evil (or attempted to anyway). If you really feel that you are religiously neutral and not a worshipper of Satan (opposer of God), then I would recommend studying the philosophies of religion to see how the logic of good and evil work before judging them as primitive superstitions that are outdated and empty. They actually translate quite well to any historical moment. Religious philosophy is applicable.

The problem with keeping the focus on education is that few people really use education for education whereas almost everyone uses education to at least some extent as a entry ticket for relatively exclusive professional careers. While it would be wonderful if people could accumulate the same knowledge through non-institutional means and get jobs using that knowledge, the reality is that credentialism basically prevents non-credentialled people from being seriously considered equally to those with credentials or more prestigious credentials. Remember that "minority" refers to power more than numbers. More women may be employed simply because they are more deferential to authority (in the eyes of their employers at least). As such, they may be preferred in hiring not because they are powerful but because they are viewed as relatively powerless and therefore non-threatening. This hardly makes female the dominant sex. Still, there are some people who claim that feminine power is growing in dominance, but imo that doesn't really have anything to do with biological females vs. males. It's more about whether social cooperative power succeeds in shunning independence, confrontationalism, directness, etc. and replaces it with "more comfortable" forms of power. Men are just as instrumental in this power shift as are women and some of the people most instrumental in resisting it are women since they have experienced it intimately enough to dislike it. My point was that there's no basis for claiming "reverse discrimination" is rampant. If it were, white heterosexual males would be excluded from the most lucrative organizations and neighborhoods. They would be living in low-income areas and struggling with a much higher unemployment rate than those classified in other racial/gender/sexuality categories. Um, education is not a team sport of races vs. races, is it? If people succeed or fail, isn't that due to their individual effort or lack thereof, or specific forms of discrimination? I have a hard time imagining that there aren't patterns of family wealth and cultural favoritism that won't maintain white supremacy to some degree, at least until a more egalitarian economy is reached. Cynical as it may be, I just can't believe that current institutions/organizations are not rigged to prevent whites from being subjugated to non-whites. Ideally, subjugation would end and no one would be subjugated to anyone else on the basis of racial identity or anything else. Unfortunately, however, many economic practices still rely on subjugation to a great extent, which requires that certain people be tracked into certain jobs for others not to have to. As long as people don't cook and clean for themselves, there's going to be money in it for someone else - and they're not going to get rich doing those jobs.

Actually, I was discussing ambient radiation in another forum and I wondered if it was possible for clusters of stars to have a level of ambient radiation that prevents certain stars from expressing their energy, even though they are compressed to the point of fusion. If so, wouldn't such stars only be able to absorb radiation until they reached a sufficient level of energy intensity to radiate at a level greater than the ambient radiation that surrounds them?

That they evolved into pure-energy beings and fly around the universe at the speed of light, of course. What else COULD they do after leaving their planet a dead desert of bleached rust?

Why wouldn't this be true of other depressants as well then?

What this really boils down to is whether people define power in terms of legitimate/illegitimate authority, or whether you approach the legitimation of power as itself a form of power. Whether governmental action is defined as vigilantism or legitimate police action depends on whether you recognize the governmental authority as legitimate or rogue. If you view it as rogue, then all action taken under the auspices of that authority are vigilantism. If you validate the authority as legitimate, all authority in opposition to it is the vigilantism. I would probably take the route of seeking cooperation of local authorities, but the question is at what point do you give up on local authorities as being corrupt and decide to act in spite of them? Then why wouldn't you be critical of the insistence on coalition decision-making instead of unilateral action? Don't you realize that requiring coalition makes it possible for any government to refuse to cooperate and block the rest from cooperating to intervene? I expect global authorities to cease to be ethnically-territorial and violently reactive when it comes to "foreign" interventions. It is one thing when someone breaks into your house, i.e. private property. It is something different when foreigners, whether they are dressed as soldiers or civilians, show up in public areas and respect local laws. What is the purpose of killing people for no other reason than xenophobia? I don't like it when people blame the victim for the violence they "instigate" on the part of perpetrators. Would you tell an abused spouse wanting to move out of their house that they are responsible for the risks of fleeing with their children? Granted, you might advice them to leave at a time that would avoid confrontation if violence was truly expected. Either way, you would (or should) expect the spouse to allow the fleeing spouse to leave unharmed and unimpeded. Of course, if the spouse believed they were protecting the leaving-spouse from making a mistake, you would have an ethical conflict to deal with. I really don't know how "open" the borders are or not. All I know is that a great deal of ideological work is done to promote the idea that there are borders and that there is a lot of hostility toward "illegals." This works like a form of intimidation that makes people feel insecure about the US if their citizenship is not US citizenship. What I think is wrong with your position is that you fundamentally differentiate between people as being either domestic or foreign. My whole point is that people's actions are what they regardless of what their ascribed national identity is. You should judge people on their character and actions instead of on their national identity. Yes, but the issue would be that I'm being abducted by force - not whether the abductors were communists or hippies or whether they were taking me to China or Vermont. Violence should not exceed what is reasonable in a particular situation. Excessive violence for the sake of intimidation/repression gets too close to terrorism, imo. You really can't assume, but you're right it is a possibility. My point is that if someone is drawn to a liberation project that just happens to be in a national territory other than their country of citizenship, they shouldn't be dissuaded by ideology like, "that's their country and their problems, not yours" or "you have no right to intervene in their affairs, you imperialist." Both ideologies are just tricks to isolate victims from ethical intervention in their abuse. Again, to define it as vigilantism you have to address the legitimation of the governed. It gets even more complicated when you realize that people oppressed by corrupt governmental authority tend to legitimate and support that authority out of fear for the consequences of opposing it. So, when you are defining some authority as "vigilante," you might be cooperating with an oppressive government trying to preclude ethical intervention in its abuses. Are you assuming the legitimacy of official governments by the fact that you recognize them as official? Who is to say that military/soldiers are only capable of barbarism? I agree, and I believe in the ethic of respecting the will of others to the extent that it doesn't allow for ethical abuses that outweigh the ethical abuse of undermining individual self-determination. I think you would be surprised how much people try to undermine each other's self-determination in everyday life, though. You have to overweigh the ethics of self-sacrifice (sacrificing your own time and energy) for helping others. Personally, I think people already sacrifice too much of their time and energy to employers because they are more or less economically manipulated into doing so. Imo, it would be more ethical to free up as much time for all individuals as possible so that they had more options for self-determining how to devote their own time and energy. Because of ideology/propaganda that has convinced them that it is rational and/or ethical to do so. The question is how to intervene in that ideology/propaganda at its source. Vigilantism has strong connotations that divert from neutral evaluation of a particular action. When a manager catches an employee stealing and offers the employee the choice to accept demotion or be turned into the police, is that bad just because the manager took the matter of justice into their own hands, didn't offer a fair and public trial by jury, etc.? I take "check and balance" to refer to a state in which multiple powers intervene in each other's affairs in the interest of correcting them. This can occur through institutionalized government or in other ways. The key distinction is that there is resistance to monopolization of power by a central authority. "Checks and balances" basically means "anti-centrism" through plural, interacting powers. You attempt to reason with them and if they are unreasonable you attempt to interrupt their use of force with your own. You try to remain reasonable yourself and not allow yourself to overreact based on your emotions, but your ethic of self-protection will probably win-out over your will to act ethically toward others. Ultimately, people often either violently attack others who exercise force to dominate them or they submit peaceably, if only out of fear that they will be abused more harshly if they don't. Actually feminism and women's studies on rapism and other forms of male-domination is probably where the most has been written on this topic of having others impose their will on you against your own will. That's nonsense. There is nothing about crossing a national border without a visa that makes someone into an animal. Oftentimes people simply don't validate the border authority because they think it only represents xenophobia and no legitimately reasonable authority, and it probably does most of the time, no matter how many xenophobes argue that border control is reasonable. Maybe, but the question is how long you go on accepting responsibility for a violent reaction that is not your own. Isn't it ever reasonable to stand up to abusive power/authority? But it may be someone else's bad ethics that want to you to use diplomacy b/c it buys them the time to strategically manipulate the situation to their own advantage. You have to dissect the microphysics of power in any situation you're dealing with. Don't assume that the reason people were denied access to water had to do with the US invasion only. Ask how they were getting water before, why/how that access got interrupted, and who was blocking access to alternative sources and how. What you should understand is that nationalism itself was/is an extremely violent form of intervention in local authority/autonomy. Nationalist power is beneficial to the extent that it checks/balances local monopolization of power and territorialism but it is detrimental when it becomes a servant to repressive monopolies. Today, nationalism has become normalized but as global transit has evolved, it has become a barrier to the natural ability of people to move and live where and how they want. In other words, it has become a new form of territorialism/monopoly instead of being the force to counteract such territorialism/monopoly in the pre-modern world.

What does this have to do with this thread?

When people talk about "reverse discrimination," I wonder if they really envision what things would look like if that were the case. Can you imagine all the most expensive neighborhoods you know of excluding whites from living there? Can you imagine ghettos and other low-income neighborhoods being predominately inhabited by whites? Can you imagine corporate workplaces being predominantly minority with a small number of token whites in relatively prestigious positions except for the various support-service personnel, which would be predominantly white? Do you really expect affirmative action to create such a situation? If anything, what whites/males should be complaining about is discrimination that occurs due to other factors. When there is a great deal of competition for limited positions, what factors influence hiring decisions besides one's qualification for doing the productive work required? Aren't factors such as "personality fit" similar to discrimination on the basis of looks, such as skin tone? Don't employers favor people for all sorts of social reasons that have little to do with the actual productive labor to be performed? Then, they justify this discrimination by claiming that social-fit is part of functioning well in a team. Well, if not being confronted with people you're bigoted against was conducive to better team-work, why wouldn't that be a legitimate basis for not hiring people on the basis of color, religion, sexuality, gender, or anything else that the bigots on the team didn't like? At some point, don't people just have to work together regardless of "social fit" to get the work done? Or should workplaces be social clubs?

Addiction may not occur after one use, but using anything gives one the experience of having done it. If that experience is pleasurable, this creates the temptation to do it again. Once reacting to that temptation becomes a regular habit, you have entered into an addictive pattern. This pattern may become reinforced by the anti-pleasure of "coming down." The classic example is a hangover that gets remedied by having a drink in the morning. Ultimately, will-power should be sufficient to break with any addiction but the more addicted you become, the more painful the process of letting go becomes. You have the will-power to say no at any point, but doing so results in increasing levels of pain/suffering. So your will tends to give in to the pain and choose for pain-avoidance and short-term comfort over the long-term investment of pain now in exchange for freedom later. Interesting. Why/how is alcohol physically addictive exactly?

Interesting. It tempts me to speculate about ancient Martians using the moon as an interstellar vehicle but I shouldn't indulge my fantasies.

With all the criticism of Islam that emanates from liberal democracy, you would think western governments would jump at the chance to allow voluntary immersion-Islam to be practiced in a situation where people would be free to seek refuge if they felt oppressed. Of course, the problem would be that someone would choose for Islam until they get to the point of having to submit to truly repressive punishments and they would seek refuge at that time, which would sort of defeat the use of harsh punishments as a deterrent. So, while you might think it will work to get your lust under control to live among covered women and fear hellish punishments for any transgressions, you could get to a point where you fall to temptation with the thought that you can flee to the west when you get caught. Thus, I don't know if it would really work to try to segregate Muslims from others in this way. On the other hand, if it was voluntary for people who choose this lifestyle to practice among others with similar values, it could be inspiring and spiritually beneficial. Still, it would probably result in more distrust and aversion to "outsiders," which would also promote more suspicion among those "on the inside." Of course this social effect occurs in any form of relative cultural-segregation, and the term "xenophobia" actually describes it in the most general way. As far as I know the only cure/prevention for xenophobia is integration in some form or other. Multicultural education also helps, but this is a weak for of integration, insofar as people to gain some exposure to ethno-cultural "others."

People who have faith in the courts use the courts to pursue justice. People who lack such faith pursue other means to justice. There is always a dilemma about whether and how to intervene in vigilante social control practices. I don't consider it ethical to use excessive force to repress non-governmental social control, although I certainly think it is valid to consider doing SOMETHING about it, since it violates basic constitutional rights such as the right to a fair and public trial, to have explicit charges named and dropped when insufficient evidence is found etc. People spend years discriminating, retaliating, and manipulating each other without ever going to court or even stopping for a moment to consider that they are effectively governing without representation and/or trying and sentencing each other without a fair trial. I agree with you, and I think people get so carried away in their ideas that they forget that most oppression occurs with consent and even assent of the oppressed. Liberation is a lot more complex than swooping in and making drastic changes in people's lives. Still, I think it is good for people to have an interest in liberating the oppressed and to see this as a more important value than the value of protecting national autonomy. Well, one example comes to mind in which airlines and the CIA (i believe I read it was the CIA but I'm not 100%) cooperated to evacuate children from Cuba to save them from communism. Compare this to the Elian Gonzalez affair in the 1990s when a child was returned to Cuba despite the poor economic conditions. Anyway, the point is that all sorts of interventions take place, probably more often covert than openly, and if they would not circumvent corrupt governmental regimes, they would basically be cooperating in those regimes' oppression of the people they seek to liberate, wouldn't they? Because such bloodshed is a form of retaliation and is simply not necessary. Why is it natural to violently attack anyone who crosses national frontiers just because of their presence? Shouldn't "invaders" have to pose a threat before action is taken against them? Shouldn't the "threat" they pose be held to accountability standards the same way police are accountable for when they use force against a suspect? Doesn't the use of violence always have to be reasonable and not excessive/repressive or it becomes harassment/intimidation? If you wanted to intervene in this practice, you would have to identify what the specific ethical problems with this morality are and attempt to inform the people involved of what their rights are and what the ethical problems (abuses) are that are going on. Technically, it seems that it's only illegal if the underage girls are being physically molested or psychologically harassed or assaulted. There would be nothing illegal about holding an information campaign about religious freedom, sexual freedom, or those kids of issues - or just holding local get-togethers to talk about the ethics of polygamy, monogamy, and various approaches to family-building. You could also set up an online discussion forum with information and discussion. The hard question is what to do when people are militantly closed to engaging critics. On the one hand, it is understandable when people feel harassed by such critics, but on the other hand they might be avoiding public accountability because they are up to no-good and they know it. All very tough issues to deal with. The whole point is that human subjectivity IS relative, so people hold their own values relative to their culture and experience and they usually believe they ARE right. When people try to keep their morality/culture/values to themselves, they fail. That is simply the reality. People exercise power toward each other in one way or the other. They do not exist in isolation from one another. So the only way to deal with moral/cultural differences/conflicts is to ATTEMPT to get people to engage each other in the least destructive way possible. This is of course a relative moral-value. Your morality may tell you to use as much violence possible to repress others as much as possible when they differ from you. If you do that, however, others with the same value will probably assault you back with the same level of force and intentions. Ultimately, all anyone can really do is to attempt to act as ethically as possible in good faith based on their own best ethical/moral reasoning. And there's really nothing you can do to stop others from doing the same, except try (if your ethics/morals tell you that it is good to do so). Social life is a free-for-all, for better or worse, and all anyone can do to try to change that is engage in that free-for-all with the hope of intervening in other people's processes and actions. It is hard to assess good intentions vs. deceit but it makes sense to try if you wish to validate legitimately good faith attempts at social benevolence from covert actions to use and abuse others by pretending to be a do-gooder. It might if local authorities welcomed the interest and assistance and offered to form a coalition force to address whatever social problem was the issue. If people really come in peace, they would probably not want to fight with local forces given the opportunity to reason and cooperate with them. Of course the situation could get more violent if, as you say, one side feels like the other is being deceitful in order to pursue covert goals. But who is to say whether international law is ethical or reasonable when it prevents justice from being served? Why would you assume that international law or any other law is valid just because it exists and has a name? Institutions are created by humans and neither the humans nor the institutions are infallible. When either fails, it takes other humans and institutions to conflict with them to remedy the shortcomings. This is called "checks and balances of power." Because it is always up to individuals to resist violence in the situations that they are tempted to exercise it. Violence is never inevitable, just as it is never fully absent. First of all, I continue to disagree with you attributing agency to Countries as collective units. The world exists out of a plurality of authorities, not just nationalist authorities. Second, if you have the authority to allow or intervene in any such interventions, you would do so from your own moral judgment. If you considered the actions of one liberation force ethical, you would allow it. If you felt another liberation force was acting unethically in its activities, you would intervene with whatever power you had to do so. This is basically describing the exercise of decentralized power in a democratic republic, btw. There are many institutions and strategies for intervening in others' affairs, but the one thing I'm pretty sure about is that it's impossible to do so without trouble but that to allow people to suffer unduly because it's not worth the trouble to intervene also seems unethical.

Why should there be killing to prevent those wishing to intervene from doing so? If their intention is explicitly not to do harm but good, what right do territorialists have to kill them for their presence? BTW, why would you view the liberators as representatives of a nation instead of a cause? Why do you assume a high death toll? What would the planned intervention be? To kidnap the girls and prevent them from marrying? If they would be kidnapped, couldn't their families simply file a complaint with the police, in which case they would have to either testify that they were in fact kidnapped against their will or that they were liberated from marital oppression? You seem to assume that when national borders are transgressed all other ethical considerations fly out the window. People are ethically accountable regardless of where they are doing whatever they are doing, no?

It is negative when people are willing to put national sovereignty and/or collective rights over the protection of individuals from oppressive governments or human rights interventions. If you strongly feel that moral wrong is going on and the most effective way for you to fight it is by committing acts that will be interpreted as war, how is it ethical to avoid war "at all costs?" genocide? authoritarianism/fascism? national-socialist populism/racism? If the German military had been crossing national boundaries to intervene in ethical abuses instead of conquest, wouldn't that have been legitimate? The conflict between state autonomy/relativism and moral universalism in US history occurred in the Civil War period where republicans rejected the kansas-nebraska act that allowed slavery to be decided by popular vote in each state separately. The cultural relativist approach to national cultural autonomy, imo, is very similar to the kansas-nebraska act in that it protects nation-states from moral interventions emerging as "foreign interference." This allows local/national powers to suppress criticism by relying on treaties to avert intervention. It would be like if a father abusing his children would have an agreement with the other fathers on the block that they would not intervene in his family affairs in exchange for him not intervening in theirs. Yes, this was highly politicized imo in order to send out the message that national governments have the right to restrict inspections. Personally, if there were ethical violations going on in my vicinity, I would want inspections and interventions to stop them. Wouldn't anyone? Women's rights are being violated in the west too, but only certain people will say so while others prefer to pat themselves on the back for allowing women to show their faces, work outside the home, and have abortions, birth-control, and divorce. Is there any situation where a history-minded person will not say that the benefits of intervening outweigh the risk of looking like a military aggressor? Doesn't ethics outweigh reputational concerns at some point?

As you note, there are still gendered (as well as racialized) competencies that are the product of a division of labor that has been institutionalized in terms of social identities. Just as feminine cultures have developed that cause many women to work a certain way generally in construction, as you mentioned, there are patterns of inferiority and subservience that have developed due to racial minority status. My black friends tell me that the use of the n-word among blacks is just friendly slang but I think it works as a reminder that blacks are not supposed to strive too much to achieve, lest they be beaten down as they once were as a rule. There is still distrust that if they do achieve, that they will not be met with hostilities in the organizational positions they do get. Thus while some people are brave enough to risk it, many would rather play it safe. If nothing is done to stimulate such people to strive, there is a good chance that they will accept positions of subservience and that this will result in a recurring pattern of racialized class stratification. Some people do not mind seeing stratification continue and they feel perfectly comfortable telling themselves that it is caused by individual choices so if it continues for another 100 generations, it wouldn't bother them a bit. All they care about is that the toilet at their office gets cleaned and nevermind how the person who does it ended up with that job instead of sitting in one of the offices. Other people would like to disrupt the racialized and gendered patterns of relative occupational segregation that have become established. I agree with you that it is important not to hire people into positions they're not qualified for, because that is dysfunctional and embarrassing for the unqualified person. It's called "tokenism" and it has occurred quite a bit because of managers who cared more about compliance than about the individual they were hiring. Still, there is a certain amount of on-the-job training that occurs after people are hired and why wouldn't you expect that a relatively inexperienced person will ultimately gain experience through practice? Finally, I hope you can see that there are lots of people (yourself included maybe?) who have grown accustomed to living in relatively segregated social situations and they aren't that eager to relinquish the social competencies they have achieved. Even if there's not a culture of explicit white supremacy present, there is often simply a culture of white-only where the existence of ethnic minorities in the world is simply ignored when it's not being treated as a problem. Obviously I can't speak for you or anyone else so please don't get defensive, but I have noticed this kind of thing myself in everyday situations that I wouldn't describe as particularly "racist."

Ironically, it's not only a problem that affirmative action uses racial classification to counteract racism caused by the same racial classifications in the past. It's also that when white-identifying people criticize affirmative action for organizations that are still predominately white, they are basically promoting racism as a passive facet of the status quo. In other words, how can one argue against affirmative action unless one is satisfied with the predominately white and/or male identity of a given organization? If you were dissatisfied with it, you would be interested in ways of making the organization more representative without promoting racism/tokenism/etc., no? For example, let's say you have a construction business and you notice that you have few, if any, female applicants. Let's assume you have a social ethic of representativeness and you feel it is a problem that there is relative occupational segregation between men and women in sectors like construction, childcare, etc. Wouldn't you then try to figure out if there was something you could do to integrate more women into your construction business? Now, consider if affirmative action targeted people only on the basis of economic need. What if then you ended up with a great deal of white-identifying lower income students and enrollment of students of color went down? Would you then think that there was something that was deterring students of color from enrolling? If so, how would you address the problem? You could create an affirmative action program, but wouldn't that basically just be paying minority students to tolerate discomfort in order to get a discount education? Is there some way to make higher education institutions more minority-friendly where affirmative action is not even necessary to attract minority students?

So did the early dark matter decay into visible matter or energy? What happened to it and why/how?

I agree with you that anything imaginable exists at least as an artifact of imagination. I think Descartes would agree with you too. The people you would run itno problems with, however imo, would be the materialists who would insist that matter exists in a way that imaginary experiences cannot exist; i.e. beyond the control of human subjectivity. You will probably say that subjectivity and objectivity only exist distinctly because they are differentiated by our minds, and again I would agree, but these insistent materialist will say that physical materiality exists externally and independently of human subjectivity. They only run into problems when they have to explain how they can know that given the fact that they are trapped in a subjective flesh and blood body. The reason I like this thread is that it has the potential to expose the very nature of materiality and its relationship to the logic of proof, which is self-referential. Things are proven by reference to the assumption that the existence of materiality is self-evident. There is no proving materiality beyond its self-evidence. If you reject the existence of materiality on these grounds, there is no compulsory rationality of proof that can force you to accept the existence of matter. Someone can be lashing you with chains and you can attribute the pain to their vengeance and insist that the chains are just a subjective artifact that happens to be able to translate vengeance into physical pain. None of it is proof of matter's existence.

I think you've got the cartesian logic backwards. Descartes is just saying that it is not possible to doubt the existence of the doubting subject, i.e. the presence of doubt is evidence of existence of at least the doubting subject. That does not mean that anything else the doubting subject perceives necessarily exists, because all those things could just be figments of imagination. If you can observe a difference, all it means is that your thoughts of differentiation exist. It doesn't mean that your differentiation is objectively rooted in conditions outside your thoughts. So if I show that unicorns are different from pegasuses because one has wings and the other doesn't, then that means one or other exists? All you do definitively is establish a logic distinction between matter and non-matter. That doesn't address the issue of the existence of either. You also have yet to explicate what it means for something to exist or not. By your differentiation reasoning, existence is a function of differentiation so you're basically saying that things come into existence at the moment they are differentiated by human thought. Do you think matter only exists as a function of human cognition?

Interestingly, the fact that someone has a very unique style of learning or understanding could lead to them working hard to make sense of the material in their own terms. As a consequence, such a person could develop a unique and independent approach to the knowledge that could result in special research strength upon mastery of the basics.

Not trying to hijack the thread, but it made me think of the old question about whether lightning can be harnessed productively. Wouldn't it be possible to build lightning rods on the ocean that electrolyze sea water into hydrogen and oxygen?