:clap: The Boy Owen got there first.

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Originally Posted by Peter

I expected some odd exchanges today but Burney morphing into Jeremy Corbyn is definitely a surprise ;)

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Oh, you mistake me, p. I don't actually care about the child in the Cambodian sweatshop in any meaningful sense, I'm just aware that he/she exists and have sufficient empathy and awareness to realise that his/her existence rather undermines some of our more high-flown rhetoric.

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Originally Posted by Peter

I expected some odd exchanges today but Burney morphing into Jeremy Corbyn is definitely a surprise ;)

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It's the moral relativism that has shook me to the core :-(

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Originally Posted by redgunamo

Drinking is an overall benefit.

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Not to the alcoholic individual

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Originally Posted by Viva Prat Vegas

Not to the alcoholic individual

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IAHYK vpv. Cheers

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Originally Posted by Monty92

They are objective truths in a scientific sense, since truth has an symbiotic relationship with science.

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They're not. They're value judgements derived from hundreds of years of western liberal thought since the enlightenment. Claiming a scientific basis for them is untrue but they are OUR values for OUR civiliation, and when a bunch of cvnts go around blowing us up in our own manor until we submit to their backward values we must defend OUR values if there is to be any 'unity' around which to unite.

That means driving a bus throught the contemporary fake-liberal values of multicultural bubbles, "you can't say that" restrictions on free speech, and accepting the oppression of millions of women in the name of cultural diversity.

(It would also help if the West stopped backing Sunni head-choppers against their secular opponents but that's another story.)

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Originally Posted by Burney

It's not deflection. Such a purely utilitarian analysis would, for instance, almost certainly conclude that disabled children would be best off being euthanised. After all, they will only ever be a drain and never contribute. Do we do that? Of course not. Why? Because our belief system (which, whether m likes it or not, is still based on Judaeo-Christian lines) tells us that to do so would be abhorrent.

However, my only point is that, while I am intensely glad that that is how we do things, trying to claim the reasoning behind it is scientific is nonsense.

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Believe it or not, I'm sure you could come up with a measurable approach to proving that society would be better off without euthanasia.

However I agree with your second point. The way society has evolved is largely organic, without any pre-thought whatsoever. The fact that so much of it is scientifically justifiable is because of the number of variations and iterations that have occurred over time. We may not have planned it, but we do eventually get things right, us humans.

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Originally Posted by Monty92

I've very intentionally not mentioned democracy or capitalism in any of my posts, yet your post makes it sound as if it's the bedrock of my argument. Not sure why you'v brought them up at all, to be honest, because I don't believe anything you've said in your post.

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I see no mention of democracy or capitalism in my post, to be honest. I merely speak about the power relationships that exist between different groups of people globally and the fact that our system relies to a huge extent on us shītting on other people in other societies the world over who may not feel their sum of human happiness is quite what it might be.

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Originally Posted by Luis Anaconda

IAHYK vpv. Cheers

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:hehe:
Your absorption capacity and continuing ability to function on a coherent and undead level would baffle any scientist

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Originally Posted by Luis Anaconda

IAHYK vpv. Cheers

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Precisely. I was gonna say, you don't see Ananconda complaining, do you.

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Originally Posted by Burney

Oh, you mistake me, p. I don't actually care about the child in the Cambodian sweatshop in any meaningful sense, I'm just aware that he/she exists and have sufficient empathy and awareness to realise that his/her existence rather undermines some of our more high-flown rhetoric.

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It was also your insistence that the individual doesn't exist. You have become the anti-Thatcher :)

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Originally Posted by Peter

It was also your insistence that the individual doesn't exist. You have become the anti-Thatcher :)

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Oh, the individual exists absolutely! What doesn't exist is 'The Individual' as defined by a sort of global average. I reject the latter absolutely, since he absolutely doesn't exist.

Gotta go now, suffice to say I believe human capacity for empathy, charity, and all the stuff that can trickle down to those less fortunate is scientifically rooted. But so are human traits such selfishness for ourselves and our own (e.g kin selection) which is (partly) why the world is so imperfect and unequal. But this imperfection and inequality does not any any way detract from the scientific basis behind my argument.

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Originally Posted by Burney

I see no mention of democracy or capitalism in my post, to be honest. I merely speak about the power relationships that exist between different groups of people globally and the fact that our system relies to a huge extent on us shītting on other people in other societies the world over who may not feel their sum of human happiness is quite what it might be.

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Originally Posted by redgunamo

Precisely. I was gonna say, you don't see Ananconda complaining, do you.

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You've clearly never spoken to me first thing on a Monday morning, r

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Originally Posted by Viva Prat Vegas

:hehe:
Your absorption capacity and continuing ability to function on a coherent and undead level would baffle any scientist

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That's one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me :)

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Originally Posted by redgunamo

That's just good breeding though, innit. If your parents can at least be bothered to ensure you attend the better sort of institution, it suggests you may be of the right sort yourself.

Of course, that isn't going to work for everyone, but if it did, then what would be the point of it :shrug:

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You are saying that Rich is well-bred?

If we ignore that the balance of probability suggests from his posts that he is a semi-fictional character at least, we have a man who has shown academic excellence, and worked hard to achieve a prestigious position from a prestigious institution, and yet we'd be hard pressed to find many posters here who would claim that his contributions reveal much intelligence, insight, originality, wit or erudition.

Executive summary: academic achievements can be over-rated.

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Originally Posted by World's End Stella

I'm pretty sure you could come up with a scientific basis for outlawing slavery and sending 6 year olds down the mines. Or at least I wouldn't write off the possibility.

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Here's a scientific fact: Small children were useful down mines because they fitted better and required less food to reproduce their labour. See also: chimneys.

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Originally Posted by Ash

You are saying that Rich is well-bred?

If we ignore that the balance of probability suggests from his posts that he is a semi-fictional character at least, we have a man who has shown academic excellence, and worked hard to achieve a prestigious position from a prestigious institution, and yet we'd be hard pressed to find many posters here who would claim that his contributions reveal much intelligence, insight, originality, wit or erudition.

Executive summary: academic achievements can be over-rated.

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That's just envy though, ain't it. Otherwise, why does everybody seem to want them?

To be fair, I believe they're over-rated too, which is why, imo, it is far better to be thrown out of the right school than it is to pass with flying colours from the wrong one.

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Originally Posted by Ash

You are saying that Rich is well-bred?

If we ignore that the balance of probability suggests from his posts that he is a semi-fictional character at least, we have a man who has shown academic excellence, and worked hard to achieve a prestigious position from a prestigious institution, and yet we'd be hard pressed to find many posters here who would claim that his contributions reveal much intelligence, insight, originality, wit or erudition.

Executive summary: academic achievements can be over-rated.

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To be fair to the boy, he does know his cricket though. Can't fake that

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Originally Posted by Ash

Here's a scientific fact: Small children were useful down mines because they fitted better and required less food to reproduce their labour. See also: chimneys.

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Sort of like whippets? Cheaper to keep and feed and more manageable than greyhounds?

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Originally Posted by World's End Stella

That's deflection. The point is that Monty is actually correct in that you can find a scientific basis for pretty much everything if you look hard enough.

Although quite why that is relevant to anything I have now forgotten.

F*ck me, what was this thread about in the first place?

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This substantial detour came from comments that we should start to defend ourselves from Islamist terrorism by defending our social values, which implies a discussion of what those values are and why they are worth defending. This happened. wd AWIMB :thumbup:

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Originally Posted by redgunamo

Sort of like whippets? Cheaper to keep and feed and more manageable than greyhounds?

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Possibly. In some coal mines the kids' job was to open and close doors to manage the ventilation. Can whippets be trained to do that? Not sure how well they could handle a chimbley brush though. Opposable thumbs are scientifically superior.

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Originally Posted by Ash

Possibly. In some coal mines the kids' job was to open and close doors to manage the ventilation. Can whippets be trained to do that? Not sure how well they could handle a chimbley brush though. Opposable thumbs are scientifically superior.

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They also used to send them under the looms to pick out the bits of cotton that might clog them up. If they were slow or fell over, they would obviously be horribly mangled, which was unfortunate, but people need cloth at the end of the day.

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Originally Posted by Burney

They also used to send them under the looms to pick out the bits of cotton that might clog them up. If they were slow or fell over, they would obviously be horribly mangled, which was unfortunate, but people need cloth at the end of the day.

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Right. You can't make a shirt without breaking a few children's fingers.

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Originally Posted by Ash

Right. You can't make a shirt without breaking a few children's fingers.

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And people had loads of kids back then, of course. Now we know why, I suppose.