This is a bit of a... controversial question. It's not something my parents and I see eye to eye on, and I get a strong feeling it's something most people may think about when it comes time to start working full-time.

I've decided to have a discussion here in the hopes I can get some interesting and varied responses from people in different stages of life and their careers.

_

I'm 24 and my working life is fast approaching the full-time shedule. I've always dreaded this stage and I've enjoyed part time and casual work because of the freedom it offers you.

Lately I've been doing an internship for 2 days a week and it's given me the first taste of the professional 9-5 working life.

Currently I wake up at about 8am and arrive home at roughly 7:30pm (9:30am - 6:30pm working hours). That's 11.5 hours of my day dedicated to work. Obviously I'm not working all those hours, but the preparation and transit time is a write off in my books. I then might go to sleep at 12-1am giving me approx 5-6 hours of 'free' time.

The 8/8/8 day split works on paper but I can't see it happening much in the real world.

_

I was chatting with my aunty the other day and she talked about her job she recently retired from after 30 years and said: "They don't call it work because it's fun" and it really stuck with me. Is the general consensus among average, 1st world citizens that working full-time, 10-12 hours a day for 5 days every week for the foreseeable future a necessary burden that you need to carry?

I feel that working 5 days a week and living for 2 just doesn't make sense and (here's the morbid part) does that really make life worth living at all? Do we need the constant drudgery and mundane lifestyle to make the fun, free times feel more precious?

One of the many reasons I support equality and civil rights for homosexuals is I believe that sexuality exists on a continuum (as opposed to an either/or) and while sexuality is fluid to a certain degree (more so for some people, less so for others) the core of your sexuality is not really a matter of choice. I am not homosexual and don't really feel I could "choose" to be so if I wanted, just as my gay friends and family can't just "choose" to be straight.

So what about pedophilia? If one believes as I do about sexuality then do they have to extend that same consideration to pedophiles? Or can pedophilia can be thought of more in terms of a mental disorder, as homosexuality once was? If pedophilia is just another inflection of human sexuality, what does (or should) that mean for how society views and deals with pedophiles?

This question came to me one day as I was considering my own rationale for supporting marriage equality.

Two quick notes before I open this up:

• I am very aware of the tactic used by anti-gay activists of conflating homosexuality with pedophilia, and of portraying homosexuals as "preying" on young people and trying to "recruit" them to homosexuality. I want to be perfectly clear that I am not doing that with this question. I want to apologize in advance if I give anyone that impression.

• I also want to be perfectly clear in stating that I am not condoning or endorsing pedophilia in any way. All other considerations of the nature and origin of pedophilia aside, the one key fact that makes acting on pedophiliac impulses unacceptable is that a child is under no circumstances able to give meaningful, informed consent to any kind of sexual relationship with an adult, full stop, no qualifications or exceptions. I will brook no argument along those lines so please don't bring it up.

This question inspired by this quote from Christopher Hitchens [paraphrased]:

"Pacifism is an immoral position. It just leaves the hard decisions on someone else. It leaves to someone else the decision of who must die. You are just exempting yourself from asking who must die."

Take that quote in conjunction with:

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” — Desmond Tutu

and so you can probably extrapolate the gist of the affirmative argument. But, then again, I don't think I'm making an unfair generalization when I say no one likes war and the stance of isolationism is often an appealing if not default one to take. Also, many of our greatest thinkers and scientists and intellectuals are never afraid to admit how absolutely pacifistic they are.

So how can we reconcile this? To what ethical extent can you exempt yourself from making hard choices [international or personal] and stand above the fray?

*I realize the question was worded a little bit redundantly -_-

By compassion I mean, broadly, an intense ability to feel or intuit the suffering of other human beings, thereby forcing us to instinctively minimize the harm (mental, physical) as it would be perceived as strongly as a harm done upon the self.

By intelligence, I mean general mental functions being heightened so that one can 'reason' or process information, in a mathematical and logical way, much more quickly/intensely, as well as be able to absorb or retain a much larger reservoir or bank of knowledge overtime (so heightened critical thinking and memory skills).

What new trait, increased and diffuse in the population is better for human 'advancement' in whichever way you perceive it?

I am a French Canadian from Québec. French Canadians for a lot of reasons are generally Social Democrats and thus, on the Left side of the scale.

Some of us are a little more to the Right, but our right is often on the left of the Democrats.

Recently, I realized when debating with friends and on Reddit (or sometimes just lurking on Reddit), that Left and Right are just labels which prevent us from seeing what I see as an obvious solution.

Let me start with the clear example which made me see the way:

Let's imagine there's only 2 positions on Health Care:

1 ) The Right wants free enterprise and competition to improve the health care service. Hospital and clinics should be private and you need to buy private or collective insurance or pay cash.

2 ) The Left wants a 100% public system. The Government manages the hospitals and the clinics and pays for everything from your taxes. You never have to pay a penny except for some optional things (like a private room and parking).

Which one do you prefer ? Pick before continuing.

Personally, I'd hate both.

You would probably say that the Right position was roughly what the US had before Obama and you'd be partially right. You still have Medicare and some state options, but overall, you'd be right.

You would probably say that the Left position was roughly what Canada had, and you would be WRONG.

Why ? Because not all health care offering is managed by the government. In Québec (I can't speak for the other provinces), clinics are privately owned by doctors and independently operated from the government.

But if it's registered with the RAMQ (it is unless it doesn't want to), it's free to visit it. The government pays for all your bills. You don't even SEE the bill.

Here is how it works :

Let's say I am a Doctor. I can work in a hospital, when I get paid say: 65$ per basic exam I give.

The 65$ used to be the rate in Québec but I suspect it's much higher now.

To keep working in the hospital, I need to guarantee I will at least try to cover certain hours of the schedule barring illness and vacation.

They might call a doctor for replacement, but to be on staff, you need to fill a pre-made schedule.

Or, I could work in a private clinic. The government will still pay me 65$ per basic exam, but 12$ is amputated to pay the clinic. That 12$ serves to pay the rent, the secretary, the supplies, etc..

Clinics are often more flexible for doctor, but they have less urgent patients.

Or I could start my own clinic. I would make 53$ per patient I see and use the 12$ to pay for my clinic AND pocket 12$ per doctor who also works in the clinic. I don't need to pay him, the government does it.

Private clinic can be run roughly anyway they want provided they accept everyone not just prior patients or people from a certain town.

If you show up, they have to see you (unless they run out of time and the doctor needs to leave, then too bad for you but it rarely happens).

This, to me, it clearly a RIGHT wing solution: clinics can be opened without asking the government and without requiring an approval process more complex than if you were opening a restaurant.

You need to follow certain rules regarding hygiene, protection of privacy for the files, etc...

As far as I know, you don't even NEED to be wheelchair accessible (but I could be wrong).

Only condition is : the owner needs to be a doctor and you cannot charge patients who has the healthcare card other than for approved fees (for example, freezing a wart is 10$ a piece).

It made me think, are there other alternatives like this ?

Some cities have private contractors for garbage and street repair and others have cities employees doing it.

Why not have the government pay from our taxes for services like that and determine what they are willing to pay for those services (like they do for the clinic's fees), which is Left wing solution,

but then they open up the request for bids up to that published amount.

For example, the city determines it that pick up the trash for 1 millions dollars per year for the next 5 years. Before hiring the employees, it offers the detailed contract for bids, itself bidding 5 millions $.

The lowest bid gets the contract, which could be them.

But the contract is CLEAR. Not Right wing open contracts, but very detailed and enforceable on quality.

In fact, the drafting of the contract itself has a cost and it could offer the drafting under the same rules.

The state government could even open a consultation firm which helps the cities write those contracts. Perhaps a few lawyers, but that firm is in competition with the other firms offering the same service.

The difference with the Right wing way is that the government still pays for the services from our taxes, but the way it spends our taxes is less wasteful, keeping the spending part of our government smaller.

Another example that is perhaps clearer:

Let's the say the government thinks it costs 10,000$ per feet to build a highway (disclaimer, I have no idea how much it really costs).

Here at least, it would call for bids and companies would bid. Often, the lowest bid if over the government's estimate. Not always thought. But often.

One of the theories is collusion. The companies know they don't have a lot of competitors and they all agree to raise the prices in secret.

What the government could do is themselves also bid on the contracts.

If they are the lower bid, they build it themselves at that cost, perhaps by just managing a groups of subcontractors who were too small to bid on the big project. In fact, I am sure a few of the companies who bid would be willing to then do it as a subcontractors at a lower cost rather not at all, having lost the bid, but that's another subject.

What do you think ?

It may sound odd; of course people shouldn't believe untrue things (by whatever definition you have of truth), but what if their loss of those beliefs causes a serious crisis for them. For example the loss of belief in god resulting in the loss of belief in there being a meaning to life and then succumbing to depression. And finally, what of your duty if you love this person? Is it right to be the catalyst that results in your lover's existentialist crisis, or is it your duty to question the foundations of their beliefs?

Posted as a follow-up from here. I'de like to have The Agora's thoughts on this.

I suppose, in order to begin this argument, that I must define "morality" for the purpose of our conversation. I assume that there is no other source for "morality" than humanity, and thus I will define it as such: "Moral conduct is that conduct which is not shown to be harmful to other sentient beings".

Being a political liberalist (believing that personal freedom comes above the common good), I do not believe that hurting oneself can be defined as immoral (and thus, drugs are permissible).

However, doing that which you know is proven to hurt other people, that I will consider "immoral". Because you have done, with intent, to gratify yourself at the expense of others.

Now that I have established my definitions for the purpose of this argument, I will explain my logical problem to you.

The world does not agree on one age of consent.

Currently, the ages of consent of "organized" Governments (ie states that are recognized by at least several other states and have some form of formal governance) range from 9 (Under Islamic law, which requires physical maturity, defined as menstruation or ejaculation, and reaching the minimum age of 9 for a person to be considered mature) to around 21 in certain "socially conservative" (by Scandinavian standards) countries.

In my current regional area, the age of consent ranges from 15-16.

And thus, I am faced with a moral question: Can I consider a person pursuing a sexual relationship with someone under our legal age of consent to be acting "immorally"? What if I, as someone raised in a society where a 15-year-old is considered sexually mature, moved to another country where the age of consent was 21.

Would a sexual relationship against that law then be immoral?

The problem, in my mind, is dealing with multiple variables. A brief list of possible factors in determining the morality (by my definition) of a sexual relationship:

• Ability of both partners to control what happens in the relationship

• Ability of both partners to terminate the relationship

• Sexual maturity of both partners - Since infants are not suited for sexual relationships, there must, underlying this conflicting legislation, be an actual "suited age" for sexual maturity

• Emotional maturity of both partners - Again, it is clear to anyone that infants do not want, or understand, the concept of a romantic relationship.

I feel as if points #3 & #4 are the contested points between different cultures. My definition of "moral" does peg a lot of cultural conceptions of "marriage" as immoral, since one partner (usually female) or both is not ensured the right to terminate the marriage arrangement worldwide.

I feel as if there is more than one moral problem in determining the "moral" (rather than legal) age of consent.

One is, of course, ensuring that both partners benefit from the relationship. The other stems from trying to control such relationships with law. If we say, for example, that we could determine the "true" age of consent to be 14. In that case, those societies that placed their age of consent above 14 would be guilty of depriving a potentially mature human being the important human right of choosing one's own sexual partners.

On the other hand, if a country placed it under 14, they would be placing individuals in a situation that is inherently harmful to them.

And to further disturb any rational debate of the issue, we have to consider that cultural factors also contribute to emotional maturity. If someone is raised in a culture that considers sexuality acceptable from a very early age (by the standard of other cultures), then the individuals of that culture will not believe that they are being harmed by the activity.

On the other hand, those raised in a culture that prohibits sex until a very late age (say, 21), might feel that the activity is "taboo" or harmful, even if the activity itself isn't.

So with this, we face two core problems:

• What is the appropriate age or biological step of development where humans should be given the liberty to choose their own sexual partners?

• Can acting on the conclusion of the first question in a society where the social age of consent is higher be harmful, even if we determine that both parties of the relationship are of (logically) appropriate age?

I hope my argument is clear. I have discovered that this is a topic that people refuse to rationally debate at all.

I hope you will look above your personal feeling on the matter and try to clearly express your opinion about the problem I have submitted.

English is not my first language, but I thought about this today; and wondered what people think. I hope my questions are appropriate here, from someone with absolutely no background in philosophy.

If a man is always a product of their genetics and environment, can you really judge anyone? Is judging someone for 'bad behaviour', is simply our species best chance of survival of a group?

It scares me to think that the answers to these questions also mean that there's no purpose to being here, there's no absolute good; there's just our genetic program.

Thankfully the genetic program is in good enough condition that it doesn't affect me in daily life; but it does keep me up some nights.

If you're wearing a business suite or have a shaved head, tattoos and piercings, are you not putting things on your cover for me to judge?

Often we hear TV and movies quoted as saying, "It's Occam's Razor. The simpler of two explanations is more likely the true one."

This of course is a bastardization of the true nature of Occam's Razor which is to say:

Of two or more like claims, the one with the fewest complexities is the most true.

This of course does not choose between two dissimilar statements, and does not argue the semantics of what is "the simplest answer".

For example, three statements:

1.) The universe exists because God created it.

2.) The universe exists because a singularity underwent extreme rapid expansion.

3.) The universe exists.

Given beliefs and evidence, different people would say that examples 1, or 2 would be true, but Occam's Razor maintains that example 3 is the most true because it has had complexities cut out:

1.) The universe exists because God created it.

2.) The universe exists because a singularity underwent extreme rapid expansion.

The metaphorical "razor" is the cutting out of the added complexities as shown above.

SO! My question is, what can be done to repair people's understanding of Occam's Razor? Is there a simpler way of teaching it? Could it be taught to children without trying to apply beliefs to it (as to avoid political bickering about its teaching). Could, perhaps, a big film address this public confusion, even if in a brief 1-2 minute scene?

I just want to start by saying that recently I have become interested in rhetoric, and though I have not had much experience with debate I'm posting here because I like the idea of this subreddit and would like to help it grow.
A topic that's been on my mind recently is whether or not desires make us more or less civilized. By "desires" I mean the want of sex, food, money, et cetera. Does partaking in these mean a person is enjoying life to the fullest, or does it mean that they are bowing to their animal nature?
To have complete control over oneself, must one abstain from pleasure-giving things, as partaking in them reduces one to someone obeying an influence, not someone who is in control?
I am taking the stance that we are constantly being influenced by external factors, consciously or unconsciously, and while we can attempt to fight these external factors and think for ourselves, we cannot do this without first being in control of ourselves. And to be fully in control of oneself, one must use only what is necessary to survive and not use that which is unnecessary and only there for pleasure.
Does anyone have a good argument as to why we should indulge in sex (beyond using it for procreation of the species), rich foods, fancy clothes, and other things only for pleasure?

i. Ways of being a person

The article "Making Up People" by Ian Hacking is, I think, the best place to begin understanding my premises.

The basic idea is that people are not born this way or that way (contrary to what Ms. Gaga professes) so much as they are “made up” or “dressed up” this way or that way. For instance, one is not born, but rather becomes, a lawyer.

I imagine that this is an easy notion to agree with for most for you, but can you also agree with the statement “[o]ne is not born, but rather becomes, a woman” as easily? What about the same statement made of men? of ethnic groups? If so, you’re probably a feminist, among other things.

The reasoning behind this thinking is that people can’t just be, period. They have to be someone. Who that someone turns out to be occurs through the interplay of both society and individual, not through just one or the other. Being a woman requires a society plus an individual just as much as being a lawyer requires those things.

It used to be that the options for who some people could be were incredibly limited. Peasants couldn’t be kings, black people couldn’t be president, etc. Indeed, people even believed that you were born into your occupation. People were born to be lawyers or bakers or derelicts.

In the last 100 years, but especially in the last 50, we’ve come to rethink the eternal nature of such roles entirely. We have come to see the limited options for who we can be as oftentimes arbitrary and constructed by ruling groups, and we have come to value a society that opens up for us a whole vista of possibilities, equally, for everybody.

Some people are a little more conservative about this point of view than others, though. While they accept a lot of the historical arbitrariness of roles, they ask us to rethink the extent to which a lot of the limitations we face concerning our identities is the result of economic realities and not just arbitrary judgments.

It is an economic reality, for instance, that I cannot become a lawyer until I go to four years of college and then law school. It can’t happen overnight. You can even say that it is an “economic reality” that I cannot be an ethnic Zulu if I was born as a white person in the United States.

Most debates in politics stem from this difference in sensibility. Some see our menu of social roles as too arbitrary and servicing of higher orders. Others view the porridge as just right, so to speak, since our options reflect the economic realities of the time.

Now, since I’m not here to talk about the Left-Right dichotomy, allow me to choose one without presenting a giant case for it. After all, the player of an RPG must choose a class before setting out for an adventure. So I choose Leftist.

ii. Patriarchy

With that in mind, we may now ask ourselves (thus finally getting on with the topic!) to what extent is gender arbitrary and servicing of dominant groups, if at all? How is this arbitrariness and exploitation organized, if at all? But the most important question to ask is, how would a feminist answer the above two questions?

This particular feminist will answer them as follows: (1) there persists presently and rampantly a reasonable degree of arbitrariness and exploitation in certain gender roles, and (2) this is organized around a patriarchy (or patriarchies).

A lot of people, especially on the Left, agree with my (1) but not my (2). They say that gender arbitrariness is not as easy to parse out as that. I hope to show that there really isn't a distinction in agreeing with (1) but not (2). If we agree that wherever arbitrariness exists, it usually indicates some sort of dominating group of people accessing this arbitrariness for gain, then we should agree that it is important to name this group, even if people do not enter into this group permanently, but rather float in an out of it through their actions.

Patriarchy is the mechanism by which people may be included in the group who benefit from the arbitrary and unequal terms of gender. It is not the group itself.

Now, this is why it might seem at first that feminists are suggesting that the group most benefiting from arbitrary gender roles is men necessarily (and that they are therefore "man-haters."). This isn’t so. A given patriarchy does not equal a given collection of men. It is not the set of all men. Indeed, patriarchy does not equal any collection of individuals at all. Women can be just as patriarchal as men, given the opportunity and payouts for doing so. (Think of conservative housewives who preach about where a “woman’s place” is.)

A good analogy would be drawing a powerful card in a game of Magic: The Gathering. The Patriarchy Card is incredibly useful if it arises in certain games. You’ll probably win that specific game if it is drawn and played (given the presence of the appropriate land card, of course).

The difference, however, is that The Patriarchy Card can be played without every showing up on the table. It can be "sleeved." This is because, again, patriarchy isn't the group. It is the way of becoming a member of the group. (Whereas genders like man and woman represent both the group and the way of becoming members of the group.) In other words, patriarchs don't exist, just patriarchy.

Now, you might be asking, “If anybody can technically manipulate patriarchy in a given situation, if anybody can be a secret patriarch, why the suffix patri-? Why the emphasis on masculinity over femininity?”

Here we must underscore technically. Actual “gameplay” suggests that men have greater access to The Patriarchy Card in their “decks” more than women (to keep with our Magic analogy). That is to say, men receive more frequent access to a position whereby one may leverage whatever weaknesses exist in gender roles at that time than women. This is itself a weakness in the gender woman, one which has not been proved to be a necessary part of being a woman.

The natural follow-up question to all of this is, of course, what about systems that reward people at the exclusion of being a man? What about mechanisms for manipulating your way to an enjoyable status on the sole basis of being a woman? What about matriarchies?

The simple truth of the matter is that historians and anthropologists find it hard to point to any real-life examples of matriarchy. For the most part, patriarchy has prevailed by a huge margin all over the world. (About the closest thing to a matriarchy scholars know is the Iroquois culture.)

There is still much more to be said of patriarchy. For now, however, I will let that monster sleep.

iii. Final notes

It is here where I must rest my weary typing fingers and end this post, not for any logical or narrative purpose, but merely due to an exhaustion of my own patience. Such resignation is not uncommon in the discourse of feminism. The topic will oftentimes exhaust you before you exhaust it.

We should nonetheless recap.

• There are many ways of being in relation to the world, some which are masculine and others which are feminine.

• Most people encounter the terms upon which we may be this or that as predefined by society.

• A masculine way of being in relation to the world enjoys a systematic position of privilege insofar as being a man allows one to influence the terms upon which other people may be x or y more so than the other way around. This is called patriarchy.

• Matriarchy, the feminine version of the above privilege, is logically possible ableit actually rare, if not altogether nonexistent.

• The reason for this is not a destiny in genetics or some such other such facts, but rather a snowball effect stemming from single chink in women’s armor (which can be discussed later).

• Patriarchy persists today.

That’s it. If you agree with the above bullet points, you’re a feminist.

Read the following and then answer this question: is one morally obliged to perform the surgery if one believes it is appropriate to switch the trolley to another track, and if not, why? I've struggled with this for a few weeks and I've come up with no satisfying answers.

Some years ago, Philippa Foot drew attention to an extraordinarily in- teresting problem.1 Suppose you are the driver of a trolley. The trolley rounds a bend, and there come into view ahead five track workmen, who have been repairing the track. The track goes through a bit of a valley at that point, and the sides are steep, so you must stop the trolley if you are to avoid running the five men down. You step on the brakes, but alas they don't work. Now you suddenly see a spur of track leading off to the right. You can turn the trolley onto it, and thus save the five men on the straight track ahead. Unfortunately, Mrs. Foot has arranged that there is one track workman on that spur of track. He can no more get off the track in time than the five can, so you will kill him if you turn the trolley onto him. Is it morally permissible for you to turn the trolley?

Everybody to whom I have put this hypothetical case says, Yes, it is. Some people say something stronger than that it is morally permissible for you to turn the trolley: They say that morally speaking, you must turn it-that morality requires you to do so. Others do not agree that moralit requires you to turn the trolley, and even feel a certain discomfort at the idea of turning it. But everybody says that it is true, at a minimum, that you may turn it-that it would not be morally wrong in you to do so.

Now consider a second hypothetical case. This time you are to imagine yourself to be a surgeon, a truly great surgeon. Among other things you do, you transplant organs, and you are such a great surgeon that the or- gans you transplant always take. At the moment you have five patients who need organs. Two need one lung each, two need a kidney each, and the fifth needs a heart. If they do not get those organs today, they will all die; if you find organs for them today, you can transplant the organs and they will all live. But where to find the lungs, the kidneys, and the heart? The time is almost up when a report is brought to you that a young man who has just come into your clinic for his yearly check-up has exactly the right blood-type, and is in excellent health. Lo, you have a possible donor. All you need do is cut him up and distribute his parts among the five who need them. You ask, but he says, "Sorry. I deeply sympathize, but no." Would it be morally permissible for you to operate anyway? Everybody to whom I have put this second hypothetical case says, No, it would not be morally permissible for you to proceed.

Here then is Mrs. Foot's problem: Why is it that the trolley driver may turn his trolley, though the surgeon may not remove the young man's lungs, kidneys, and heart?8 In both cases, one will die if the agent acts, but five will live who would otherwise die-a net saving of four lives. What difference in the other facts of these cases explains the moral differ- ence between them? I fancy that the theorists of tort and criminal law will find this problem as interesting as the moral theorist does.

Source: http://philosophyfaculty.ucsd.edu/faculty/rarneson/Courses/thomsonTROLLEY.pdf pages 1395-96

*edit

This is my first time engaging in discourse at /r/theagora. Please feel free to offer procedural corrections. I want to learn about dialectic process in parallel to the discussion of suicide policy.

*edit2

Clarification of the question:

I was using the Human Rights aspect to apply such a policy globally but it's clouding the nature of the question. Hopefully this will be more clear:

Let's assume that the global spread of a modern and enlightened society is not only beneficial to all mankind, but inevitable. The policies of a global society would have to represent the common desires of mankind in their effect. Things like

reduce suffering

maximize individual freedoms

increase security of our fututre

Would a policy sanctioning suicide benefit the species?

I'd also love to hear other ideas for global policy and explore the moral implecations of such policies.

*edit 3

I would very much like to hear from anyone who came to this thread as a proponent of current prevention policy and left with either doubt or a new opinion on the matter.

So I've been kicking around some thoughts on what the essence of humor really is. Scientists seem to equate it with being "surprised." I think I can refine a bit more than that. So I'd like to know what you all think, if there is something I should read, another place to post, etc.

The fundamental unit of humor is what I will call the Atomic Joke (Here, atomic means indivisible or fundamental). A delivered joke contains one or more Atomic Jokes. For example, a comedian might tell a story with a single punchline, but the story may actually contain several Atomic Jokes. Very roughly, each Atomic Joke can correspond to what we commonly refer to as "layers" or "levels" of a joke (e.g. "wrong on so many levels").

So what is an Atomic Joke? There are 3 components:

• The essence of an Atomic Joke is an error. This is ambiguously stated intentionally, because the error may refer to anything from a misplaced comma to genocide. Being surprised can certainly be considered an error, and surprise may even be one of the more common errors that underlie an Atomic Joke, but it is not the only one.

• The second component is more of a criterion, as is the third. The second component is low consequences. This means that in order for an Atomic Joke to be considered funny, the underlying error must be one who's negative consequences are minimal. Phrases such as "that's not funny ಠ_ಠ" and protestations of a joke being "in poor taste" or "too soon," etc. stem from a failure of this criterion, at least in the speaker's eyes. An obvious, extreme example would be genocide, mentioned above. While genocide is an error, it is one with very serious consequences, and is (for most) excluded from being funny.

• The third component/second criterion is relevance. That is, the underlying error must matter in some way to the listener for him/her to find it funny. For example, I personally hate puns. The reason is that I do not find the mechanics of swapping phonemes, homograms, etc. particularly meaningful; I do not believe it says anything of importance. I would argue that telling a more involved story, with details and descriptions, goes a long way toward beefing up this criterion.

There is a 4th element, but it is not a constituent of an Atomic Joke, rather to a delivered joke, and that is the delivery of the joke. I have the least insight into this component, because it is the most nebulous. The best I can say is that it is a form of the relevance criterion; my matching the natural rhythms of one's audience, one can reinforce a human connection, which in turn increases the perceived relevance. I separate delivery from the other 3 criteria because there is only one delivery, while there may be multiple Atomic Jokes. Atomic Jokes are NOT simply "mini-jokes" that are told in succession leading up to the "big joke."

Some notes:

• There is an obvious tension between Components 2 and 3. If relevance is too high, you risk making people take the joke seriously, or attribute negative consequences that exceed their personal threshold for what it is acceptable to laugh at. OTOH, if you dumb down the consequences too much, then the question of "why do I care, again?" comes up, which is a violation of component 3. Having a sense of humor is largely having an instinct for balancing these 2, and in a way that your audience will appreciate.

• In the common case where a delivered joke has multiple Atomic Jokes, it is common for the same fact to contribute to different components of different Atomic Jokes. For example, in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, Bugs may make a political allusion, like comparing Yosemite Sam to McCain (work with me here). There are now at least 2 Atomic Jokes: The absurdity of the cartoon, and the political statement. Bugs' comment enhances the absurdity (C1, absurdity is an error) since he's a goddamn cartoon rabbit, talking about a real-world political figure. But the political commentary itself is its own AJ, and the fact that Bugs made a comment about the real world is a win for relevance. The error, of course, is that a real person is being compared to a carton character.

• It is possible for one component to be so strong or so weak, that it influences other components and other jokes. In order for an AJ to work, you MUST have all 3. If an AJ fails too spectacularly, you risk it contaminating the entire delivered joke. This is one of every comedian's worst nightmares: that he/she will be on a roll, make one off-color comment that is a Total Failure on (probably) component 2, and the spell of performance is shattered. OTOH, if you feed one of the components steroids, you can get away with skimping on others. This, IMHO, is one of the reasons silly-type cartoons work so well (or not at all): they jack up the absurdity, the error component is absolutely pervasive, so other deficiencies are overlooked. The people that "don't get" cartoons are the ones for which this absurdity is not a relevant error, and so it doesn't matter how over-the-top it is; in fact, the more crazy, the less they find it funny.

• For some people, if an error has no significant negative consequences, it is irrelevant. By definition of their worldview, they cannot find anything funny, because of the way funny is defined. The more survival-based you are, the more this will be so. This is also why it's always assumed that teaching an AI humor will be one of the hardest things to do. We see it in sf and sci-fi all the time; the robot is always identifiable by its inhuman lack of a sense of humor, and seeming incapability of grasping the concept. I don't think I need to expound on the implications for religious or other extremists.

• Sometimes something like death, genocide, or other mass murder is found to be funny by someone. There are AT LEAST TWO REASONS WHY, and confusing the two will and does cause unnecessary strife due to miscommunication and misunderstanding. The first possible reason is that component 1 falls short; the person does not see it as an error, or at least not as serious an error (that would properly make it a socially unacceptable fulfillment of component 2). That would be your garden-variety sociopath, or at least nationalist/racist/sexist/*-ist. But the OTHER reason concerns what the person actually sees as the error in a joke. It is common for the mere irreverence of telling a joke to be in error. If it's socially unacceptable, if it's going to mess with peoples' minds, that's an error. Since it's just talking, C2 is hit out of the park. And it's a very important topic, so C3 is taken care of as well. Try to be mindful of a person's motivations in this light.

Anyway, what does everyone think? I invite examples and challenges, such as "what would be the components in this joke?" Also, I just noticed that we have 1000*e readers, hooray! :-)

edit: ok, who ruined it? ಠ_ಠ

Is marriage between more than 2 people moral? Should we legalize it?

In an argument someone told me "If we legalize gay marriage, then tomorrow it will be legal for a man to marry his dog!" I countered with "Animals can't give consent"

He replied "Then what is stopping marriage between 3 or more people?" I didn't know what to say.

I am especially curious to hear arguments from people who are pro-gay marriage but against Polyamorous marriage.

Thanks.

This is the /r/ModeratePolitics post to which I'm referring.

MeanestBossEver posed a hypothetical:

Does any of this matter?

Not really. Torture is wrong.

Obviously, there are extreme situations but we're not talking about a nuclear bomb about to go off.

What do you think, Agora? Are there situations where torture can be a force of good?

Thought I'd share the youtube channel with you.

I just finished listening to one recording from a lecture for Erich Fromm on "Disobedience: A Moral or Psychological Problem" (1962).

I've been reading up on the ethical arguments behind vegetarianism, and it's begin to dawn on me that I haven't really seen any serious argument for eating meat. Not being vegetarian seems to be a completely indefensible position. Or am I missing something?

After all these years, I still haven't made up my mind on abortion. However i'm leaning towards exploring the following view.

The question of whether abortion is justified depends not on when human life begins, nor on the rights of the child bearer, nor when the fetus feels pain. Rather it depends on when a human acquires its individual rights to liberty and self-ownership. If it can be argued that the rights of liberty and self-ownership are fundamental human rights that cannot be morally taken away, then any abortion after this point is not morally justified. Where this point is between conception and birth, I have no idea.

To this end, I have made the assumptions that human life begins at conception and that the child bearer does not own a human with individual rights that just happens to be living inside her body.

EDIT: I thought I avoided the debate about when human life begins by using it as a starting assumption. Guess you can never escape that discussion in the abortion debate. To be clear, I have assumed human life begins at conception, but make the distinction that the rights of humans to liberty and self-ownership are acquired at a later stage . So the question is not when human life begins, but when a human acquires the rights. If you are of the view that human life and her rights cannot be seperated, then i would agree that it comes down to when human life begins.

Before I studied political science I had never heard of Libertarianism, probably because I am Canadian and it is not popular here in the Great White North (we loooove our health care). After reading as much as I could about it, I found that I agreed with most of its principals. I am socially liberal and economically conservative (a "Red Tory" in Canadian politics). I have had money taken from me by unions where I received no benefits (you cannot opt out of unions in Canada), and have seen the problems they can cause. The teachers union was on strike when I was a kid, so we couldn't go to school for several months. The teachers union also protected a perverted teacher I had, and instead of firing him, moved him from school to school like a Catholic priest. I felt as if Libertarians would actually fix problems like this. Since our Conservatives are Socialists, Libertarians seemed to be the only truly capitalistic choice. After a lot of thinking, there was one thing that stopped me from being a Libertarian -- monetarism.

Libertarians seem to have placed a religious belief on the "Invisible Hand," as if it is God itself. They forget that human beings are very active in the creation and propagation of currency. Currency is simply a means of exchange, and there is no evidence that if left unredistributed by the government it will create a better outcome. Monetarism is a function of government, and redistribution and another function which attempts to alleviate the problems caused by the former. If look at the eight years Bush was in office as an experiment testing the effects of limited redistribution, we see that economic performance decreases. Libertarianism cannot be a well-functioning political philosophy because it promotes the creation of currency, but not the necessary redistribution of resources caused by the problems of the monetary system.

I prefer Anarchism as an alternative to mainstream politics as it rejects state-run monetarism, but until I am convinced that we could function without the state, I am going to support a government that taxes the wealthy and supports socialist institutions like public schooling.

The justification for locks is sometimes that it will deter criminals and keep honest men honest. I've heard a critique of this notion, holding that honest men have no need to be kept honest, as a truly honest man wouldn't steal regardless of how easy it is to steal.

Similarly, in the Maltese Falcon, the Fat Man says that he is pleased Sam Spade will drink with him, as he doesn't trust a man who won't drink, as that man is afraid of what he might do if drunk: that is to say that the booze will reveal his true nature.

I question whether these notions are true. It seems to me that even the best people are subject to temptation beyond their rational control on occasion, and someone who binds themselves to the mast is no less laudable than someone who can control their desires by sheer force of will.