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Just Chat! / Re: Is there a universal moral standard?

« Last post by hamdani yusuf on Yesterday at 15:46:50 »

The word "terminal" in the phrase "universal terminal goal" emphasizes the importance of time domain over space domain. The existence of a finite number of conscious beings for infinite time is better than the existence of infinite number of conscious beings for finite time.

Saving more people is an instrumental goal, assuming that it would make society less likely to go extinct. But when the available resources are inadequate, saving more people now might end up killing more people later.

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Just Chat! / Re: Is there a universal moral standard?

« Last post by hamdani yusuf on Yesterday at 15:11:41 »

the only way

Perhaps you haven't looked hard enough.

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Just Chat! / Re: Is there a universal moral standard?

« Last post by hamdani yusuf on Yesterday at 15:10:20 »

But the action still fails the moral test because I wouldn't like anyone to kill me, and I wouldn't like to kill my nearest and dearest.

If someone don't mind anyone to kill them, nor someone they love, can they kill anyone else?

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Just Chat! / Re: Is there a universal moral standard?

« Last post by hamdani yusuf on Yesterday at 15:05:25 »

I can share the goal of living in heaven for ever. I might even agree that it can be achieved by killing others.

Really? After you die?

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Just Chat! / Re: Is there a universal moral standard?

« Last post by hamdani yusuf on Yesterday at 14:55:45 »

The end does not necessarily justify the means.

Then it's not really the end. It's just an instrumental goal to help achieving the real terminal goal. In this case, it's still implicit.

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Just Chat! / Re: Is there a universal moral standard?

« Last post by hamdani yusuf on Yesterday at 14:50:48 »

Who should take the tests?

What matters in this instance is who should apply the tests to the proposed action. 

Who is it?

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Just Chat! / Re: In every country on the planet, majority of rapes are not reported.

« Last post by alancalverd on Yesterday at 14:22:46 »

If they aren't reported, how do you determine "majority"? And "every country"?

Many crimes are unreported. The victim may fear reprisal, or consider that the effort of reporting outweighs any likely benefit, but in the case of rape there is particular problem of proof which demands evidence of penetration (not always provable) without consent (always disputable), and of taint: a significant number that do get investigated turn out to be malicious accusations so the authorities are at least cautious if not skeptical.

"Facing the abuser" is prejudicial and unnecessary. However awful the alleged crime, in a civilised country you aren't guilty until proved, so you are really talking about facing the accused. Now that isn't always required - evidence can be given by video or even audio link. But where is the right of the accused to face his accuser, as guaranteed by Magna Carta?

"Hours into getting a conviction" should be read as "a few days in police stations and  court, in order to destroy someone's life and put him in prison for several years." Seems like a fair balance of effort and reward.

Beware of poorly formed questions and facile answers that may undermine the foundations of justice.

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Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Do you change the spectrum of radiation inside an oven if you change its shape?

« Last post by alancalverd on Yesterday at 14:07:25 »

Problem with the above images of molten metals is one of dynamic range. It's clear that the image receptor is saturated and therefore unable to resolve any spectral information. A dense filter might resolve differences between  two metals at the same temperature precisely because they aren't "black" at any temperature, but you wouldn't be able to see anything else in the picture.

Also worth noting that digital image receptors (cameras, phones, etc) use fixed filters to replicate human visual response in addition to any removable physical or computational filters that the user might add.

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New Theories / Re: New theory of evolution

« Last post by cpu68 on Yesterday at 13:30:24 »

What I would like to emphasize is each so called qualitative change, for example the transition of water into ice, or steam into water, is actually a cumulative quantitative change; that is, a quantitative change taking place quickly over a short period of time.

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Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology / Re: Do you change the spectrum of radiation inside an oven if you change its shape?

« Last post by Bored chemist on Yesterday at 13:26:44 »

Your conclusion was, molten gold emits more blue light than  molten silver, because gold absorbs more blue light when they are cool.

My view is that the electronic band structures don't change much on heating to the melting point(s).
And we know that silver is a good reflector.
We know (from the conservation of energy) that that means it can not be a good absorber.
And we know (from Kirchhoff's work) that it can not be a good emitter.

For red light, the same is true of gold.
But, for blue light we know that gold is not a good reflector.
It is a relatively good absorber and we  therefore know it is a relatively good emitter.

None of this is anything other than 19th century physics.
Why are you arguing about stuff that has been known for all that time?