No. I am saying that the notion that those benefits necessarily make the world better is a value judgement that any scientists would run away from. And god almighty, do you really need me to run you through some of the catastrophic side effects of drinking? From alcoholism, domestic violence and the social cost of binge drinking in every town centre every weekend to the sheer cost of policing, the number of date rapes linked to alcohol etc etc etc.....
Spend a Friday night in Newcastle and give me a ring at 3 in the morning. Lets see whether your hypothesis is still so unshakeable....
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?
"Plenty of strikers can score goals," he said, gesturing to the famous old stands casting shadows around us.
"But a lot have found it difficult wearing the number 9 shirt for The Arsenal."
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.
I've very intentionally not mentioned democracy or capitalism in any of my posts, yet your post makes it sound as if these have formed the bedrock of my argument. Not sure why you'v brought them up at all, to be honest. Basically I don't believe anything you've insinuated that I do in your post above.
Last edited by Monty92; 05-23-2017 at 03:16 PM.