Somebody_Else

That’s particularly ridiculous.

No, its something we learn in first responder training

Babies can drown in 2 inches of water, or people who are completely dependent on others for activities of daily living.

Or anybody who is unable to escape. Somebody who is unconscious, somebody who is trapped,

Suggesting the average person would drown in waist deep water is disingenuous

What’s disingenuous is seeing me say

“Push somebody in the canal, they fall awkwardly and could easily die. Get trapped by a submerged branch, hit your head, get trapped by silt, break a leg etc.”

And then completely ignoring it for a straw man.

Think of everyone you know; would any of them drown if you pushed them in 3 feet of water?|

If they fell awkwardly and hit their head? Easily

A person can drown in 2 inches of water, more or less.

Push somebody in the canal, they fall awkwardly and could easily die. Get trapped by a submerged branch, hit your head, get trapped by silt, break a leg etc.

This is what republicans mean by “protecting women”

Occasionally i hear the phrase “there is no morality outside of human society”. I believe, what is meant by it, is that you cannot say whether something is morally right or wrong in nature, if it isn’t part of human society.

More or less.

It depends on who says it,. but the general idea is that since morality is defined by humans for humans, we cant really apply morality outside of that.

For example, when a turtle eats a bird (here’s a video about it), you cannot say whether these deeds are “good” or “bad”. It’s part of nature, it’s part of the circle of life, … if these things didn’t happen, the bird couldn’t be alive in the first place.

Correct.

Now, i’ve had some interesting talks yesterday with a close friend about what “morality” really means. They very certainly assured me that morality is simply the construct and the set of rules that society uses to organize itself to make itself more successful. In other words, morality aids the fitness of the group, but not necessarily of the individual. Do you agree with this view?

No, this is a really bad “understanding” of morality. Morality is a system of code about behavior which involves evaluative judgments about actions and the people taking them, and specifically about if a behavior is “moral” or “immoral” with “moral” generally equating to “good” and “immoral” generally to “bad”.

To make it simpler, morality is a collective judgement about if something is “good” or “bad” based generally about how a majority of a population can be expected to react.

And if so, would that entail that the beneficial effects to the group can overwrite the wellbeing of a single individual?

By your friends definition, sure.

Where do you draw the limits?

Very very much depends on the population.

Like if some republicans claim that some women cannot decide themselves who they are/should be in a relationship with … does that derive from that view of morality?

Yes, because by the republican judgement, women having a choice is bad.

When you are speaking about morality, you need to clearly define what group is making the judgement.

What do you respond to that?

Its pretty well known that republicans think women having a choice is bad.

I’m seriously wondering because all these discussions make my head spin and sometimes i wonder truly whether i even know anything at all… How can you find certainty in what’s morally acceptable and what is not?

You cant, Morality is subjective, more or less by definition. What is “good” or “bad” will always depend on who you ask.

Some groups like to make lofty claims about how morality is for the greater good, notice how those people never seem to decide that morality decides they should sacrifice for “the greater good,” and how “the greater good” always seems to mean “what’s good for this specific in-group”

She… she plead guilty.

So probably not guilty then

So… 1, 0.99, very high likelihood.

Trumps DOJ targeted her, and she pled guilty.

Both of those things tell me she is very likely not guilty.

This isn’t like an accused street criminal getting basically conned into pleading guilty because the cops planted evidence and got a false witness to make a false testimony.

This is the known to be corrupt FBI (under trump) going after somebody who looks different, for a bogeyman crime that we know they dont actually care about.

This is a person who would not be targeted by that kind of thing and can afford good lawyers.

The DOJ has been very specifically targeting exactly that kind of person. And Republicans dont care about lawyers because they dont care about the law.

She was the mayor.

ok?

So what are the chances she was actually an agent for the Chinese Government? Slightly better than 0? Actually 0?

you have to register as such with the US government.

You very clearly don’t, you just have to be working for Russia and its fine.

Sorta.

If I genuinely cant win an argument because logic and science don’t agree with my position, I should change my position.

If somebody simply insists something is true and refuses to engage with reality, I cant “win” an argument against them, but I also shouldn’t change my position.

Not every time.

But most nights when I get into bed, I get into bed facing the outside, roll to face the middle, roll to face the outside, then settle in to try and sleep.

It settles the blankets in a way I like, and its sorta a ritual now

In short, yes.

Its not just lost its punch, its almost gone around to being a badge of honor at this point.

Are you trying to say the Holocaust didnt happen? Or are you trying to say that there was a genocide of some 6 million pagans that happened in the last 100 years that nobody knows about?

UH huh

I dont think so, everything I have or will ever do is something that has been set in motion long before I was ever born.

So if I tell you to raise your hand, you either chose to raise your hand, or chose not to.

What I am arguing that it’s all predetermined, that yes which hand you choose to raise is not a choice your making but the dominio effect of the entire universe, that you choosing to use your hand as example is not a choose, that your believe in free will is not a choose as much as my lack of believe in it isn’t my choice. How you worded that, the language you used, you seeing and reply to this post, the platform your on etc etc……

This is an entirely meaningless argument. Its impossible for anybody to determine that I would chose to use my hand, or if I would chose to raise my hand.

The distinction between if I think I chose to raise my hand vs if Its really pre-determined is meaningless, I still make that choice.

Sorry, I worded that incorrectly. I guess what I am trying to say that someone who abuses another because of Schizophrenia isn’t anymore to people than someone who doesn’t have a mental illness and has still abused someone. In both cases we could do what we can to stop the abuse but doesn’t mean we are assigning blame to anyone.

In both cases we blame the person who made the choice to abuse somebody else

The largest flying animal to ever live, as far as we know, was the Quetzalcoatlus, which is estimated to have a mass up to over 400 pounds. Thats more mass than 99% of all humans, flatly disproving your claim.

If you assume that we can change density then its possible sure.

Just because theres no living bird with that mass doesn’t in any way mean its biologically impossible.

If you just reshaped a person into a bird shape, its biomechanically impossible for them to fly.

Why would you assume it would have the same density as a human?

Because otherwise you arent turning a person into a bird, you are just making a bird (or other flying mammal) with the same approximate mass as a human.

This is an arbitrary restriction you’re adding to the scenario.

Seems implied to me

Conservation of mass doesn’t require conservation of volume.

So the original post would just be “a flying bird with the same mass as a human would be a huge bird”

Which…sure

Biggest by mass, but a bird with the mass of a human cant fly (biomechanically impossible), so there needs to be magic fuckery involved.

Meaning that a shapeshifter that turns in a flying bird with the same mass as a human would likely not be as large as you think. Humans are very dense compared to birds. Assuming we keep that density, we could be smaller than some of the larger eagles or carrion birds.

So I dont believe in free will ,through a combination of experience and events in my life(most to do with leaving religion) however like most, I recognise the need for the concept of free will, as artificial as it may be

People who say this are more or less always confusing two different definitions.

Libertarian free will, being the ability to make a choice without context is obviously impossible.

What most people think of as free will “the ability to make a choice” is very obviously real.

I can chose to raise my hand, I can chose to lower it.

For example, alots people say that trauma doesn’t excuses abuse, only contextualise, it but if you have statical evidence that a large or even most of abusers have been abused/been through a traumatic event that is by defined an excuse.

People misuse the word “excuse” a lot. Like a huge amount.

People say “that is not an excuse” when what they mean is “that doesn’t make it ok.” or they say “I dont want excuses” when what they mean is “I am going to be mad no matter reasonable your actions are”

Yes, abusing somebody because you are abused is an excuse (in that it explains why), its also not an excuse (in that it doesnt make it ok).

You need to be more specific in what “excuse” means.

Okay I see what you’re trying to say, but calling it “Nazi propaganda” is inaccurate and confusing. Just because a Nazi said something doesn’t mean it’s Nazi propaganda. That’s just confusing.

But if its propaganda put out by a Nazi propaganda group and parroted mostly by Nazis and Nazi supporters…then it is Nazi propaganda.

Also, as someone who actually liked what Biden was doing a lot (specifically, his attack on monopolists/billionaires through the FTC and DOJ), I do believe he was senile. I’m not a doctor, but he showed clear signs of what many of us have seen in our own aging family members.

“Senile” means " Relating to or having diminished cognitive function, as when memory is impaired, because of old age."

So definitely, sure, any amount of diminished cognitive function is “Senile”

But that’s not what people mean when they say senile. When people say “Biden was senile” they dont mean “Biden was old and his memory isnt quite as good as when he was 30” They are trying to pretend like he has dementia, and he very clearly doesnt.

I’m sure it’s easier said than done, but can’t she just go to a different doctor?

Hypothetically sure. But she is on Medicaid. Getting a new primary care doctor takes a lot of effort.

All of her specialists are in the same network, and all the notes follow her around in her network. The doctor noted that she is “suicidal,” and now nobody in the network will let her get on hospice.

So in order to find a new doctor, she would effectively need to find a new network, get all new specialists, restart all the tests, go back through Medicaid to get a new doctor on her insurance.

Its not actively impossible, but its very difficult, especially for an 85 year old with Parkinson’s. And changing doctors while you have Parkinson’s somewhat managed is a bad idea, its lots of experimenting to find a treatment plan that works, and you have to basically start all that over while you loose a lot of ground.

Its way easier for her to just tell everybody to remember to not call an ambulance for her, she already asked me to help her die when she feels like her mind is too far gone, but since it would be “murder” for me to be in the same room as her while she takes the wrong pills, there isnt a lot I can do.

People get second opinions all the time

Much less common than you think,

I would vote for a cardboard cutout or actual criminal Democrat over trump, and I saw the debate, and I knew it was doom for the Biden campaign.

yea, the double standard is real.

But Biden was noticably confused, losing his place, forgetting what he was saying or what the question was, and returning to stock cliches.

Hes a bad public speaker and a bad debator.

99% of people watching would come out of it thinking “Biden seems older than he was” which is obvious on the face of it but Republicans had been laying the dementia propaganda for months and now they had “evidence”.

Right,

The only people who watched that debate and thought that Biden had dementia had already been guzzling the coolaid.

Not my kid, but my best friends, and I babysit a lot.

Couple things you might not think about, or might overthink.

The biggest one for me was that I kept mis-gendering the kid for like a month, but I didnt realize that how I was reacting to doing so was worse than the misgendering itself.

Generally speaking, people understand that there is a transition period, you have thought of this person as a he or a her for their whole life, suddenly swapping pronouns isnt easy. If you get it wrong, thats ok, dont make a big production of it, just correct yourself, say sorry and try to do better.

I was making sure to really get across that I was sorry, and eventually I got told that it was stressing the kid out, because it was now a big thing that I got it wrong.

I learned, and they relaxed a lot when the next time I misgendered them, I just went “hes a good kid…sorry, shes a good kid” and that was that.