Quote from: Meta as Fuck on October 15, 2015, 05:11:59 PM

Quote from: HEAT SEEKING GHOST OF SEX on October 15, 2015, 11:58:24 AM

1. Alexander Hamilton
2. Keynes

Dude.

Don't Tread On Me™

kill the police captain

It's going to look small in some contexts unless there was literally an infinite array of celestial bodies for us to not be able to quantify. I say celestial bodies specifically here because I know fuck all about the actual amount of energy and matter in existence. Quantum background fuzz and relativity make it hard for me to just think that there is X amount of energy and X amount of matter in existence.

yfw there exists a mechanism for conversion of matter to energy and vice-versa

Quote from: Tsirist on October 14, 2015, 12:32:01 PM

The Flood

Tying into their backstory as the Precursors, and Gravemind's poetry . . . just too engrossing of a villainous entity overall.

I get where your going, but I mean individual characters, not a whole group.
Gravemind would be fine, but not the whole Flood.

I don't think you understand the Flood if you think Gravemind and the Flood are such different things.

You're thinking of people too literally. Think about what's in their minds instead. Their ambitions are defined by their ideals; as long as they are alive, their ideal survives. If some rational thought causes their ideals to change, their ideals have died prematurely. Thus, it depends entirely on their commitment to their ideals and what those ideals are. Survival may be part of that equation, and prioritizing survival may be done to allow those ideals to survive longer IF that is relevant to the substance of that ideal, but there are more than enough counterexamples to demonstrate that it does not always come first.

Mate I already mentioned that in my post right at the endt, I bolded it just now.

I think you're missing my point if you think that addresses it, when what you mentioned is itself the issue. People don't have to live for an end. They can hold an ideal for something and live their life in pursuit of that ideal. Whether or not that ideal is held beyond them in life or death is irrelevant to them. You say survival is the most important pursuit of any entity, but some entities may exploit others for survival, yes? In the case of these people, their ideals, their ideas, survive because the person adhering to them does not discard them in favor of their own survival. Whether the ideal can perpetuate itself to another being to survive one host's death is irrelevant, as even if it were made "pointless" by the lone host's inevitable death, the full life of that person has greater value than the part of the life it would get if the ideal were weak enough to allow itself to be discarded under your reasoning.

You only have to look around you to see this effect at play. You even describe it in your own post. But you are mistaking a human for tabula rasa when it is already affected by the ideals that define it.

Quote from: Tsirist on October 14, 2015, 12:15:18 AM

Quote from: Cadenza on October 14, 2015, 12:12:24 AM

Isn't the purpose of having a defense force to defend your country? you need women for your country to continue existing, so sending them off to die rather defeats the point, no?

Don't you need men for that purpose too? Or are you an espouser of polygamy or some sort of breeding system in the event of a gender imbalance favoring females?

Of course you need men, and no, I only support monogamy. But the way in which humans have evolved is one where males are more expendable,( It's why men are physically stronger and more wiling to do anything that's dangerous). My opinion is just a consequence of growth being limited the scarcer resources, one of which happens to be women capable of bearing children; I see no benefit in making such a resource more scarce.

And men who would help raise families are an abundant and disposable resource? I don't really see why you think only a fraction of women are capable of bearing children. If you're the monogamous type then under your system a functional family probably includes two people producing and raising children.

This isn't really the direction I'd approach this issue from to begin with but sending out one gender and not the other, and saying that it's OK because you don't need that gender to continue societal growth, seems contradictory. If you assume a 50/50 split of the genders and send out 10% of the men and they die, and you assume monogamous relationships and complete pairings without cheating, etc., then at maximum you now have 80% of the original population reproducing.

On the other hand if you sent out 5% of the women and 5% of the men to die, that leaves 90% of the original population to reproduce.

If that's really how you want to approach this issue.

The point being it isn't reasonable when you actually take the costs of implementation into account for such an insignificant "victory".

tbh that's a personal value assessment that I disagree with, but I can't really debate an opinion. I understand.

Quote from: Tsirist on October 13, 2015, 10:38:45 PM

The composition of the drafted force is irrelevant to the question of whether there should be a draft to begin with.

Which is exactly my point. . . We should stop expending political capital on issues which are comparatively irrelevant.

Eh, it's a huge moral problem from my point of view to make the draft exclusive to men. If we're not getting rid of the draft, making it more reasonable is no sin.

HOPING FOR THAT SANDERS SMACKDOWN™

no but seriously hillary makes me nervous so unless she makes some good demonstrations tonight i really hope sanders can dramatically outperform her

Quote from: Deadtrap on October 13, 2015, 12:59:47 AM

Little bit off topic here, but does anybody ever get a sour taste in their mouths, so to speak, after taking a stroll through philosophy stuff like this? Particularily debates?

Seems like a colossal waste of energy for some reason, because usually a philosophy on something as vague and open ended as death is all up to how people interpret things and personal opinion.

It's like watching two people trying to knock each other over with the slight breeze generated by their waving hand motions.

I actually dread when people bring this shit up.

I think it's because it's impossible to determine if you know enough about philosophy to know when something is stupid/wrong, or if you actually don't know nearly enough to form a valid opinion on it.

Is this entire discussion some high level esoteric philosophy, or have we all just made a simple mistake and no one noticed? I can't tell and no one else can either.

Well are you gonna go out and learn and come back and educate us or are you saying we should avoid these discussions merely because we're ignorant?

it's fun and engaging, even when not done properly

Quote from: eggsalad on October 13, 2015, 12:50:46 AM

If you can't comprehend the difference between observable consciousness and the sensation of experience then you need to brush up on solipsism before even trying to think about this.

well, solipsism is retarded, sooo

i don't really see a point in that

I'm interested in why you feel that way, but I think that's a subject for another thread. gg i guess

two rocks bumping into each other does not equal consciousness

fucking lol, this is exactly what you believe if you think that consciousness and perception and experience ALL derive from the brain, which is a completely physical construct. the brain is literally things bumping into each other, dude. how's that for an empirical analysis?

of course i don't believe that, but it's what others are arguing and i thought it was what you agreed with

I don't know about you, but no, I am definitely not made of sediment or volcanic ash. This isn't about "interfaces", we aren't monitors or touchscreens; our consciousness is the result of the brain. No brain (or equivalent) means no ability to comprehend existence.

When you break it all down it's all the same stuff; atoms, subatomic particles, oscillating fields. What I'm saying is that I believe that, while consciousness is the result of the brain, perceptual experience is a step beyond that and is not a result of the brain, but instead feeds out some data on the brain's state in the form of experience. I say this because while everything about my body and brain changes all the time, my experience and perception, as a thing unto itself, seems not to.