247 karma · joined October 27, 2012
I would agree though that not all aspects of the 'dystopian world' are bad, and it's very interesting to read his utopian book Island, that definitely embraces drug and hedonism, but in a different way.
The argument I've encountered goes more like this: Because there has been historical oppression, we can't easily distinguish the influence of that from biology and should remove the oppression before we come up with biological theories that justify the oppression. That seems reasonable to me.
What the debate is usually about is inequalities in social power relations and whether these can be attributed to what you call 'social conditioning' or biology. This paper doesn't contribute anything to that question.
You seem to suggest that people are completely determined by their biological setup, and that there are no influences from society. I don't think that's right.
And to have ethics as a group, there needs to be some discussion on what's right and wrong. That might help you to (further) develop your own ethics, and also give you same backup from your peers if you decide to not do something.
Sorry, both sources are in German. Maybe Google translate will help a little?
[1] http://www.mut-gegen-rechte-gewalt.de/news/chronik-der-gewal...
[2] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todesopfer_rechtsextremer_Gewal...
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riot_of_Rostock-Lichtenhagen
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riot_of_Hoyerswerda
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solingen_arson_attack_of_1993
I know this is not on the official line of most articles that make it to the frontpage, but I thought a different perspective that tries to analyse the motives of Snowden's helpers might be interesting.
This isn't true. There has been quite a bit of research and when Germans say they didn't know anything they were just making excuses after they lost the war.
I picked this out because it seemed to be quite central to your argument.
How fast does the Grim Reaper walk?
http://www.bmj.com/content/343/bmj.d7679This actually makes sense, although it wouldn't be necessary to point out.
If the author proves that P=NP, then all problems in P are NP-complete (because every problem in P is reducible to any non-trivial problem in P).
The paper doesn't look very promising to me, but the basic logic of the argument makes sense.