Phi for All

! Moderator Note Slurs or prejudice against any group of people (or person) are prohibited here. I'm inviting you to change your tone when posting here or leave with the utmost haste. Frankly, you sound like you're using AI to post in the most racist, offensive manner possible for a forum such as this. You're a caricature of modern male toxicity and prejudice, and none of your recent posts seem crafted in good faith.

I thought we were attacking straw men instead of addressing the real issue here. You claimed we're OK with an infinite population. Also, I'm pretty sure if your perspective gains traction, it will be called a "cleansing" or a "reduction" rather than "the murder of innocent persons". How else do we get where you want to be within your lifetime? Not making so many babies is a generational strategy.

I'm opposed to your plan to exterminate any groups of humans you don't like.

My apologies to all Canadians!

I'm sure science HAS studied this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5897168/ Although this paper doesn't go back to the 1950s, I think it supports your idea.

I disagree completely. The problem is more with current infrastructure, which is weirdly and disproportionately aimed at profit rather than continuing to find new ways to make resources more efficient and readily available. Look at human history, we've gotten very good at improving production and yield in almost everything, and we continue to innovate. Our problem isn't diminishing resources or overpopulation. It's a social problem, where some righteous folks don't think some other folks deserve access to resources. Those righteous folks loudly proclaim that the problem lies with those who have too many children rather than those who are hogging all the resources. The problem isn't human overpopulation, it's that we don't care that we're displacing other species as we look for habitable land. It's that we don't support each other socially, so families need to have more members to handle all the work. It's that we're breaking up extended families so everybody has to buy everything and live independently. Our biggest problem is that we're ignoring our cooperative nature in favor of our competitive nature, and letting greedy people convince us we're the problem. Remember when the plastics industry started suffering major backlashes because so many well-known logos were part of pictures of heaps of trash in every major city? Did they try to fix the problem they created? No, they made a commercial with a Native American (who was really an Italian from Canada) crying because We the People created all this litter, and we better start throwing it away properly. IOW, it was a scam, and I think all this BS about overpopulation is more scam trying to divert attention away from the scammers.

None of this story has anything to do with logic, especially mathematical logic, which is a formal study of its own. This is more of a psychological example, where a child sees more pieces of currency and assumes it represents more money. My brother-in-law used to offer young kids a $5 bill OR a handful of nickels, about 20 of them, and most took the coins. Don't forget the shiny factor here, too. Coins glitter where paper does not.

In one instance you're doing math, dividing 1 by 2 to get .5, and in the other instance you're slicing a line down the middle of a pie. Both instances are NOT examples of mathematical division. All of your arguments are weak in this thread, especially your Arguments from Incredulity (How is this possible? and I can't believe it's true!). You've misunderstood quite a bit, so you need to study more, and perhaps listen to the folks here who are trying to help you see.

Citation? All my studies blame the belief and not the believer. Do you feel personally attacked, is that why you leap to fallacy? Can't you separate the stance from those who hold it?

It seems like the tolerance of those who know the social part of their "stance" will never be funded. You can claim to be socially liberal because the fiscal conservative part of you votes it down. Major studies found the cause of traffic is brake lights. My study found the cause of the rest of our problems is religion, and religion also affects the way people brake while driving.

Isaac Newton kept his occult studies from the Church. He was into alchemy, and his mystic pursuits convinced him that seven was a more important number than five, so in his color theory he added orange and split purple into indigo and violet. So you might be able to be a scientist and still believe in this mystic garbage, but I think you're negatively affecting your objectivity when it comes to theory.

"No, no, I said I wanted 'room to rest' on every landing!"

I used to think I thought this way. It seemed like a compassionate stance with a common sense foundation. But then I found out that, in the US at least, fiscal conservatism is the noose around our necks. Socially liberal means nothing if you can't appropriate the funding for it. I guess my worldview right now is that we need what we've needed since we started societies, an economic system that allows everyone to live well instead of a few living fabulously while most suffer. I'd like to see a real change in thinking, a modern Renaissance. We all need to remember that the band of atmosphere around this planet, the one that keeps every living thing we know of in the universe alive, is something we can destroy or maintain, and we should stop choosing, over and over again, to destroy it. Most of us want to exist in peace with each other, and stop doing harmful things so some can have more than their share. Of course, I think this concept of allowing your "betters" to pillage the village so they can have the nicest house is based in religion, so if we could figure out how to unwash a bunch of brains, that'd be great.

! Moderator Note You're the opening poster, so the thread would make no sense without you, and waste the contributions of others.

I PMd Dave to see if the settings were changed on us.

What a ridiculous assessment! How hard did you look for evidence that shows they're "better"? If you want to be taken seriously, use some meaningful parameters. Assumptions aren't evidence. Please get a clue. NASA admins have ALWAYS used foreign space agencies as motivation for further exploration. Your point here is nothing special. Going to be?! Seriously, you can't make assumptions like this and expect it to be taken as evidence. After all, Boeing could suddenly focus on a better design. See how easy it is to assume? The capacity?! More assumptions that they will build them. And when measured nominally, it's not. < yawn > And frankly, the rest of your points are equally meaningless when used as comparisons. It's easy to list accomplishments of one country while ignoring the accomplishments of the other. And your title question lacks meaning as well. Replace? As the number one economy, perhaps, but you imply so much more by bringing up battles from 80 years ago. Your anti-West mindset always taints your arguments. You may have some valid points, but they're lost in your prejudice and discrimination. I get it, you hate the USA, but your points don't resonate much with me. I know China makes cheap electric cars, but I don't know if that's a good thing in the long run. We have many problems on this planet because of cheap Chinese products choking the air, water, and minerals from us.

Please cite the cultures that use Catcher in the Rye as a blueprint for society, because it seems like a Red Herring argument designed to lead a discussion off the rails. I've been quite clear about why I think the Abrahamic religions are like a poison people have been drinking for centuries. Do you really think the direction of personal moral compasses aren't influenced by treating the believer like someone who deserves eternal torture unless they do what they're told? Humans have adapted to the teachings in many ways, and you might call some positive, but on the whole it's a belief system designed for oppression and corruption that smiles on you if you obey, based on Iron Age superstition and ignorance. I'd be happy to start a separate thread on this. I'm fairly certain I can compile the evidence to support calling these religions a plague on humanity, causing far more harm and destruction of life than the good they pretend to be interested in. Their holy books are an abomination of deception, greed, and patriarchal control, and the things they teach are often hideous examples of moral misdirection. They've caused so much abuse for generations and I think we need to start using these big brains that evolution gave us (not a god) and stop this harmful, sheeplike acceptance of absurdity.

There are theories that describe more than one universe, but this is in Astronomy and Cosmology, and the best current models tell us there is only one, and it is expanding but not into anything, since the universe is all there is. The same models describe a time when our universe was (what we would now call) microscopic, extremely dense, and extremely hot.

I'm talking about all the people who are going to try to advertise their own YT channel.

! Moderator Note Just a reminder of the relevant part of our Rule 2.7: Advertising and spam is prohibited. We don't mind if you put a link to your noncommercial site (e.g. a blog) in your signature and/or profile, but don't go around making threads to advertise it. Links, pictures and videos in posts should be relevant to the discussion, and members should be able to participate in the discussion without clicking any links or watching any videos. Videos and pictures should be accompanied by enough text to set the tone for the discussion, and should not be posted alone. Users advertising commercial sites will be banned.

! Moderator Note Thread closed.

The books that teach the spirituality say basically the same things, that you're flawed and deserve eternal torture and misery unless you believe the way they tell you. It doesn't need much corruption from there, does it?

Trust me, in online discussion, you want the conversations to be very specific. The probability of reaching some kind of consensus or meaningful stance is much higher when the topic is more focused. And as swansont mentioned, people responding to multiple ideas in the same thread is chaotic and hard to follow. If you want a better topic than moving away from capitalism, what about changing our education processes? I've heard some great approaches designed to better prepare children for modern life, and I've often thought we leave too much to parents in the early years, and then wonder why kids get so screwed up.

My stance, the stance of those I'm talking about, or something else? Never mind, I don't care what it's kinda like. It's what I said, what I meant, and you should feel free to be clearer in your responses. You think that's the point? That your concept of religion/spirituality should only lead to outcomes you approve of? You're asking why would the Abrahamic religions reduce humans to garbage, spread lies, and oppress so many folks? But you don't ask WHY ARE THEY doing it, like you're wearing blinders and can't see it happening all over the world?

For me, it's about the time and effort others put into their responses to make them as clear and meaningful as possible for the rest of the folks in the discussion. You often seem to be listening (and responding) to only what you're thinking instead of what other people said. You're even quoting yourself now, like we aren't that important. You also often seem to put special emphasis on the vagueness of your responses, like a guru claiming, "Life is a river". I mostly ignore it because questioning it only brings more vagueness. I have to admit it offends me for two reasons. First, it seems intellectually lazy for a science discussion site (which is probably the exact opposite of the way you think of it), because you can never be wrong if you're vague enough. Second, you often talk about how much you've had to drink while posting, and I'm over 30 years sober, and enough of a snob about it to think we aren't getting to talk to the real you. I'm not looking for arbiters, truths, or wisdom nuggets. I'm here to talk to folks about life on Earth, their experiences, and to share knowledge. I like that knowledge wrapped in transparent cellophane with a simple twist tie, not covered in opaque brown paper, glue, and duct tape.