deertick1

I think that reasoning about morality without an irrational, faith-based approach leads to a "slippery slope" if you will of reasoning. Essentially, I believe that the fundamental utility of religion is that it provides a framework for morality which is external to logic : therefore it allows one to establish moral barriers which cannot be cross regardless of any logical rationalization. This is important when considering things like eugenics - there are rational lines of thought that lead you to very very ugly conclusions. If you have an arational "hard stop" at the personal and societal level, we avoid these situations.

Interesting points. Personally, not sure I agree with 1. Lots of scenarios where creating a sentient being would be bad - like if that being can only experience endless pain.

On point 2 : well you got me there. Let me be more precise : its not the "natural processes" part that is important, but my point was rather that this type of hybridizing results in the creation of organisms which have not been time tested and weathered the refining pressures of evolution. We have no gaurantees of the probabability of a successful organism - could be, as I said, some fucked up abomination which only exists to plead for death. Quite tragic in my view if this is the outcome.

I just think we'd better not even go there.

Are trans folks immoral : No I don't care what someone choses to do with their own body, that's their business.

Organ transplants :

No, this is a life saving (or condition improving) medical procedure. Same for prosthetics.

I am referring only to experiments where the outcome might be the creation of a new species of sentient being. Pretty much I'm drawing the line at exactly the posted experiment.

Eh like I said I was not as concise as I would like to have been in my comment :

IVF is not creating a completely new, engineered organism. Not really what I am talking about.

And man, the idea that religion has no place in the modern world would be laughable if it weren't so tragic. Religion serves a veokry important role in society and we abandon it at our peril.

I am sorry to hear about your friend, but this is really not comparable to engineering a new unique organism. And I'm sure her pain would be just as great or worse without a god in her life. Christians realize that there are trials in the world. Re: the book of Job.

Wow what a ridiculously asinine and misleading comment (the qouted comment, not the HN comment).

The moral reprehensibility of such an experiment is not the result of humans treating any other species as lesser, morally- rather, it is because it is immoral to create something sentient which has not been created by natural processes. To bring a sentient being into the world which is created by human engineering process is immoral because there are no guarantees that we do not create something which is horribly mutated, fucked up genetically, and experiences only pain for its entire life.

It has nothing to do with humans thinking they are better than animals, and everything to do with the fear of humans thinking they are better than God (or nature if that strikes your fancy)

I didn't put this quite as eloquently as I would like to have, but for fucks sake y'all - get your head cut in and don't drink the coolaid of these psychopathic scientists that think they have a better understanding of morality through science the the aggregate of a long heritage of human moral reasoning.

Sorry for the typos. On mobile and this app sucks, trying to correct the typos is a massive pain.

eye roll ugh I am SO sick of this bizarre prevailing narrative that religiousness and spirituality is like some sort of unintellectual defect present only in inferior humans. Step off your high horse for a second a realize that you have absolutely no clue about what lies beyond human cognition.

You realize that anything that a human believes to be true is rooted, fundamentally, in a faith-based assumption, right? science is faith in the human ability to percieve; religion is when this faith is based on the ineffible.

Science is good for practical matters. Religion is good for moral matters.

They are not at odds. The human connection to the logical and their connection to the spiritual have walked hand in hand throughout history. Our spirituality has guided our science, and vice versa. To lose our religiousness would be to lose a full half of our capability for reasoning.

Why is it that many highly innovative and prolific scientists throughout history have been deeply religious?

Furthermore, EVEN IF religion was complete fiction, which I believe it is not, it is so very obviously a useful and deeply insightful fiction. It allows us to interrogate the inner workings of the human psyche, the natural moral law, gives us a sense of purpose, motivates charity and kindness, creates community and social trust. Abd you cab miss me with that Sam Harris, "but we can do all that without religion, cause ultimately religion also causes problems of bigotry" - Bo, we cannot, it is precisely the illogucal nature of religion that makes it useful for moral reasoning. Logical deduction about morality leads to highly undesirable consequences. And yes, sone religions propogate bigotry : not all, though. For example, Christianity does not promote any sort of judgement of others. While there are christians who do so, they do it in spite of the word of the bible, not because of it.

Okay, hopping off my soapbox now, but really guys, you ought to be more sympathetic to the religious among us, you might learn something and become a better person in the process.

From someone who grew up with parents that owned a hand full of rental houses and did all repair work themselves (quite competently, father is a tradesman anyway) : I am not at all surprised that individual owners tend to keep deposits at a higher rate. I don't think there's anything illegal about it : without fail, every single renter we have ever had has incurred damage to the house well beyond the security deposit. When a company owns a ton of properties, they have economies of scale- all the properties have interchangeable hardware, cabinets, etc they likely have suppliers for materials that give them more competitive rates for bulk purchases, they have workers who will do the repair work for minimum wage (whereas a single owner probably values their time in the range of 50/hr)

It makes a lot of sense, but I understand your frustration. Still not nearly as frustrating as hauling trailers full of other peoples trash and dog shit out of your own house and then having to repair thousands of dollars worth of damage to cabinets, drywall, carpet, and paint.

Lori Gardi, widely believed to be a crackpot, in my opinion has made a breakthrough in our interpretation od quantum mechanics.

If I understand her correctly, she proposes that the reason waves behave like particles is because they transfer energy essentially every zero-crossing : for example a photon is just one half of a wavelength of light.

She has a much more interesting explanation of what i am very poorly tryingto spit out here on youtube. Bear with, because honestly she is a whackadoo but she is a smart whackadoo.

Lemme know if you want a link to the video

Could you cite this? I'm not finding any evidence that this is the case

Lol tell that to my dad who is still painting houses at 63. Or his competition who is still painting at 70. that is preposterous. In fact most laborors I know are well above 45. Yeah it takes a toll on your health but most of the health issues I see in labor intensive jobs is because of alcoholism. Its good for your body by and large to get up every day and do physical work. Yes your back will hurt, and your feet and your joints. But you'll be in good health.

I don't believe trump is racist.

I actually don't remember that. What was the deal with that?

let me rephrase. Yes, you can. But you absolutely shouldn't, because once you start controlling peoples exposure to ideas, things go off the rails.

Forced labor camps? you mean prisons? I'm sorry but please back this up with evidence.

And sure black men experience this at a far higher rate. This is because black men commit crimes at a far higher rate. Men in general commit crimes at a far higher rate and thus experience this at a far higher rate, but I don't hear anyone suggesting that America is sexist against men.

To say of course we're a racist country is so preposterous. Yes slavery happened hear. But because America is the wonderful country that it is, we were able to abolish it and move in a progressive direction. Race issues are so nearly resolved completely and its people like you, as well as the small minority of legitimately racist people left, that are perpetuating the problems.

And yes of course there is an excuse for a cop firing their weapon at someone even if that someone hasns't shot first. Do you understand what a ridiculous standard that would be? Are we just supposed to make our cops wait to get shot before they act? absurd.

You know what there isn't any excuse for? Not cooperating with a cop who is acting within the bounds of the law. Which is the number 1 reason why people get shot by cops, white or black. This cop hating/disrespecting mentality among the black community only encourages people to be disrespectful and uncooperative with cops, ultimately leading to the fatal encounters you see in the news e.g. Michael Brown.

I think he means that this is really, really stupid.

Excuse me but do you live in the US? That is such a preposterous claim. I don't understand why this idea is being so aggressively perpetuated. What makes you say that? There are not statistjcs to support this. Nor have I encountered any compelling anecdeotes. My personal experience (and I live in a pretty rural town in middle america) has been that people don't give a fuck about color. Ive expierienced 2 incidents of racism. Neither were violent, just someone dropping the n word. And if you're refering to police violence- gimme a break. Almost every incident you see in the media is a result of criminals refusing to cooperate with police officers.

Its disgusting to me to see this kind of sentiment thrown around. Ive encountered far more racism in the limited time Ive spent in Europe.

This is so frustrating to me. First of all who is to say what constitutes toxic? For instance, a drug related subreddit I know of was banned. There, people discussed harm reduction and chemistry of novel compounds. It was amazing and very useful for people. But that got banned.

Second- no of course this isnt effective. Its effective at removing people from the platform. But it is not decreasing "hate speech" (which is nonsense newspeak anyway) its just pushing it out of the mainstream. And for those of you making the argument that it is reducing peoples exposure to hate speech which stops its proliferation... Nonsense. In a free society everyone gets to dicide what they do and don't believe. You cannot control peoples thoughts by reducing their exposure to the bad thoughts.

Good people will not be convinced by bad arguments. Bad people will be bad either way.

I hate this so much and reddit is not NEARLY theplace it used to be. Now it is a liberal echo chamber which is all too happy to collectively shout down any divergent thinking. It was alwaysthat way to an extent, but it's so bad now that I finally had to delete my 6 year old account.

Im sorry but what are "they" trying to do to Joshua Clover?

And who is "they?"

As far as I can tell, UC davis just said they don't agree with him.

Honestly I would be fine with more punitive action for him. Calling for the murder of police officers has no place in acedemia. Additionally, this guy seems like a total quack.