CarbonIceDragon @ CarbonIceDragon @pawb.social

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2 yr. ago

I think I alluded to this in one of my other responses, but I would hold that things like that are situations that the person involves thinks are worse than death, especially given that all they would be able to think about under those conditions is what they are or anticipate feeling rather than what death is. They may also simply have beliefs about death that are nicer than what I view it to be.

A lot of the objection i get along those lines seems to be "But have you considered just how bad (horrible fate) is", when I totally acknowledge that there are some truly agonizing things that can happen to someone, my objection is simply that I believe death is just that bad.

I did consider things like that to be under the case of terminal illness yes. I do understand that circumstances, especially around such disease, can bring about extreme suffering, and that the way brains process pain can override a person's normal feelings on the matter and make them seek death to end it. Its just that, I think that an end of existence (which, not being someone that believes in afterlives, is what I believe death is) is the worst possible state, worse than any amount of suffering (even an infinite amount of such, not that a human can actually process an infinite negative stimuli). As such, I view it is as more ethical to extend life for as long as possible than allow it to end early.

I acknowledge that a person in great pain will likely disagree, even myself if my life brings me to that, but I dont take this as actual evidence that the pain is worse, because pain shuts down a person's regular thinking and can in high enough amounts override that persons values and ability to think clearly about them. In other words, I think that a person, any person, even myself, that is in sufficient pain will consider that pain worse than death, because pain is almost like a sort of mind control in that it forces you to think that way, but I think that person, even myself in that hypothetical, would be wrong about that. In the same way that if some cruel inventor devised a machine that manipulated a person's mind and forced them to have suicidal thoughts, I would think it wrong to let the victim act on them.

I actually agree that it is a restriction on personal freedom. Its just that, in my view, maximal personal freedom isnt actually a moral absolute, but a moral heuristic, something that is usually true and so makes a decent guideline, but not under every circumstance. This is simply one of the situations where I think that heuristic fails and no longer aligns with what I view as moral.

Probably yes, however, I consider a person under such conditions to not truly be sound of mind, as torture is rather extreme duress, so that isnt really much of an argument in my view. I dont dispute that you could inflict an amount of suffering on me that would make me wish to die, I just think, while not in that state, that if I were in it would not be ethical for me to make that choice, and so that under that circumstance I shouldnt be able to.

Everyone dies eventually, so the distinction in my mind isn't so much the how, though obviously does change, but the when.

If you take the stance that deciding to die is okay if you know you won't live past a certain time period, then you either need to arbitrarily definite a cut off time period for how long until death is certain a person can do this, or simply decide that anyone can do that whenever, because death is already certain given a sufficient time interval.

If you don't, then information that someone's death is imminent doesn't really change that.

I think one of the more controversial ones I have is that I don't tend to be in favor of things like MAID or voluntary euthanasia. I understand why people are for it, but I don't like the idea of killing someone over something that is ultimately in their head, like pain or a person's desires, and the way I tend to evaluate the value of life has something of a floor (that is to say, I do not really believe that there is such a thing as a "fate worse than death" so to speak, because I believe that death is the least functional state a person can have and anything above that implies at least some functioning even if that state is still highly undesirable).

If he were a chicken, he'd probably care more about dealing with bird flu, even if for purely selfish reasons.

x3 is an emoticon, its like xD but more furry as the 3 is like a cat's mouth shape kinda. Sorta like the difference between :) and :3

In my family growing up, pancakes for dinner was a common enough thing, but my father constantly insisted that if you're having them for lunch or dinner they're called flapjacks instead and only pancakes when made for breakfast. And every time we had them I'd mess with him by pretending to forget and asking him if he was making pancakes that night.

Even there though, what is the actual point of a phone app controlled smart toilet, even if you open sourced the whole thing? Unlocking one's phone and tapping the app icon, and then presumably a button on the app, is going to take more time than one press of a lever that one is right next to anyway, and the latter doesn't present as many points of failure.

I've generally heard the origin explained as coming from an offshoot of the general scifi community in the late 70s to early 80. There are a lot of animal people in sci fi (things like aliens designed after animal people, or stories about animals given human traits and characteristics, or people being spliced with animal dna), and fantasy stuff which has a related audience, and some people particularly liked that trope.

I mean, the current borders of the US do include some former foreign states and land previously owned by others, that were taken over in the past, Hawaii for example. Does that not make it an empire, or does that stop counting after a century or so?

While I agree that its unlikely for him to go out that way, failed attempts dont make the chance zero. The people trying that only have to get lucky once, he has to avoid being unlucky every time.

I doubt they really have plans that far, and if they do, I doubt that a full on war to destroy western Europe would be that plan, vs trying the same tactics to manipulate the population as have been tried on the US. The US, and Russia, have the capacity, at least from their nuclear arsenals, to destroy Europe, certainly, but that capacity exists within Europe too. A full on war with Europe is unlikely for the same reason that a full on war between the US and the Soviet Union did not occur.

Beyond that, it should be considered that shared autocracy is not a particularly great incentive for alliance. It can represent a source of common interest for the elite against anything that threatens autocracy in general, but beyond that, there is no reason for an oligarch in one country to not see an oligarch in another power as much more than competition. If you want to own and control all you can, someone else also doing that is to be regarded with suspicion, not natural trust.

Screaming is just as exhausting and meaningless as not screaming.

It does have a useful definition I think in "a non-state actor using violence to serve some political goal", as that at least lets one categorize a murderer who just hated that specific guy as having something different going on with them compared to a murderer who wants their act to shock a nation into taking some action. It's commonly misused as "someone using violence that we don't like", but there is still some utility in understanding a person's motive for doing something.

Avoiding flushing the water is even harder

My cats start 2 full hours or more before their feeding time, so that would be quite inaccurate

Cells are basically the self replicating nanobots that sci fi sometimes has as an example of highly advanced technology, but naturally occurring.

Isn't this the entire "dollar store" industry? My understanding was that these kinds of thing were the entire reason that business model was profitable. Or does this company do it worse than say dollar general or something does?