To be clear, the issue I have with pedophilia is that the child is unable to consent to it. Likewise with bestiality and necrophilia… the real issue (for…[Read more]

Why do you ask, Unseen? Just stirring the pot?

If there’s something someone might say about reality that is almost trivially true3, it’s that it’s all so mathematical.

This is fundamentally backwards. A better thing to say would be that if there’s something someone might say about mathematics that is almost trivially true, it’s that it’s all so de…[Read more]

reasonable religious belief

How’s that for an oxymoron?

But it is still okay to do this to women because ultimately they are worth less to some men.

No, it’s not “okay”… It’s illegal.

And the sole fact that they might get pregnant in the future justifies an insanely vicious salary reduction.

I took the liberty of removing the irrelevant, and emotive, portion of this… and it sounds a bit more…[Read more]

I was then accused of being a follower of “liberal secularism”

Sounds like a pretty reasonable position to take… Liberal as in promoting and supporting freedom, secularism as in equal treatment of all religions and separation of church (and mosque) and state. It’s truly quite bizarre that these people thought this was some sort of counter arg…[Read more]

Absent fathers is the root of the problem.

That’s a pretty bold claim… I think you would have a hard time proving that absent fathers is the root of the mass shooting epidemic in the US. More likely the problem is some combination of the following:

• Extremism bred in echo chambers
• Disenfranchisement with “the system”
• Easy access to…

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There’s also the argument that if gay men are repressed, they are more likely to have children and pass on their (higher average intelligence) genes.

All in all, pretty weak arguments when put against equal/human rights.

For what it’s worth: I say “google it”, have a facebook account, and watch Game of Thrones

also…

Signs your you’re a Sheeple

Fixed your title for…

Basically, you can’t just start blogging and expect to make any money…[Read more]

When does a life begin?

Interesting question, consider this: There is an unbroken chain of living beings from our earliest common ancestor to us. To reproduce, a living sperm and a living egg come from living parents and produce a living child. So, when does a life begin? When lif…

@Belle – Did you receive a comprehensive sex education? Either in school, or from your family? If not, then I wouldn’t expect you to “know…[Read more]

Yes, molesting is molesting.

I have to disagree… if a 6 year old is molested, they don’t understand what’s going on. They are confused and damaged in their most formative years. A 16 year old, on the other hand, should understand what is happening and why it is wrong, and is also far more mentally developed than the 6 year old. As such, I’d go…[Read more]

You talk about child sexual abuse being “wrong” across cultures, but ultimately, there is no absolute against which to judge… only other cultures. Child abuse isn’t “wrong”, in the same way that a…[Read more]

What’s a roof and some food going to do to make her situation worse?

I’m going to answer this in the abstract, rather than specifically about your sister… Several things: First, it’s going to mean that instead of buying food and shelter, the addict gets those for free and has more money left over to buy drugs. Second, easy access to a house f…[Read more]

consciousness, like hunger, or emotions, is a biological state

Citation needed! I see no reason that the machine (animals are basically an organic chemistry machine) bringing about consciousness needs to biological in order to do so.

Defining consciousness as the experience we have of ourselves each day between waking up and going to sleep is…[Read more]

Why would a conscious machine, which would have to understand that it’s a machine and has no human history, behave like a human?

Because one of its (possibly its only) connections to the outside world, it communicating with humans. If it behaves like a machine and gives us uninterpretable machine signals, it’s going to get shut off pretty q…[Read more]

Overall, very poor “proof” of anything (as all other…[Read more]

There are two types of thought experiment: explanatory (used to explain a concept) and exploratory (used to explore a concept).

Schoedinger’s cat is explanatory… it explains the concept of superposition. Your example is exploratory: you build a model of the bridge in your mind, then test it…[Read more]

Pretty fucking disgusting, really. I think universal health care is probably one of my criteria for choosing a country in which to live… Sorry USA, you’re too Second/Third world for me.

• Why intervene so regularly in the biblical story times, but then nothing for 2000 odd years?
• Why make some people gay, but also condemn them for being gay?
• Why communicate to your creation (only) through a couple of books?
• Why communicate to your creation at all?
• Why have this weird situation…

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On the other hand, I’m guessing all you have is coincidental anecdotes which ignore all the times that prayer DIDN’T coincide with the prayer working. We have higher standards of…[Read more]

1) Is ANYTHING truly random? Or does randomness mean nothing more (or less) than unpredictability?

Does it matter? What matters to me (typically in cryptography) is that the entropy source is unpredictable. So for all intents and purposes, unpredictable is “random enough”.

2) My friend declares he’s invented a random number generator.

2a) Is a r…

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Human rights are… Universal, Innate

But, are they? Are they really? I have to disagree. Human rights are only universal if and when we make them universal (i.e. they aren’t innate, either. They come from us).

Either there is no god or god withheld knowledge that could have advanced science and the knowledge of man.

Well we already know God forbid eating from the tree of knowledge… It’s no surprise he would omit useful details from his book.

Is there anything else the bible forgot to include?

• Magnets, how do they work?
• quantum physics

…

[Read more]

Also, why have you posted directly into the group rather than making a…[Read more]

Also, Strega, the man…[Read more]

Think about it…[Read more]

I can only hope Australia doesn’t follow its normal path and copies the US.

police are often dealing with people who have been engaged in a crime or have been acting hostile toward them or others

So if the police have a bad day, they can shoot someone running towards them? They had no evidence that this man had committed any crime or intended to commit any crime, yet he has been killed. He may of been running over to…[Read more]

Unless it’s the middle of an Australian summer. In which case, the grass is very very dead and brown.

More to the point, yes, you can be wrong all by yourself. You can lie to…[Read more]

the worst he can do (which is ironically the best for most of us) is run a third party campaign that hands the election over to the Democratic Party

Do you not have any kind of vote transfer? Here in Australia we can vote for a minority party and if they don’t win the seat, our vote is transfered either according to our preference (indicated…[Read more]

What happened to the policeman’s taser? Were there no other non-lethal options left?