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"Overcoming death" would be a disaster. The planet would rapidly become overcrowded with old buggers like me saying "in my day...." and eating everything.
Don't you think that if the planet was populated by old people, we wouldn't have any more wars, as none of us would be capable of military service.
The guy who commits suicide after you have saved his life might be considered shortsighted and even ungrateful, but a gift once given becomes the absolute property of the recipient. If you consider slavery immoral (and it fails both tests) then you can't own another person's life, or have any moral right to criticise what he does with it.
Ars longa, vita brevis, unfortunately. You have to take medical decisions based on the knowledge and resources you have, not on what the Daily Mail thinks you might have next year.
As regards your "eating" point, this would necessitate further consideration. Swiftian solutions occur, if we kept to our meat-eating and built battery-farms to output the babies. But this is too controversial. Probably a vegan diet, or synthetic chemical nutrients could sustain us quite well, until the end.
Quote from: charles1948 on 27/12/2020 23:16:19Don't you think that if the planet was populated by old people, we wouldn't have any more wars, as none of us would be capable of military service.And you could kiss the economy goodbye for that same reason. There are important jobs that people have to be physically fit in order to perform.
How do you measure the economy?
QuoteArs longa, vita brevis, unfortunately. You have to take medical decisions based on the knowledge and resources you have, not on what the Daily Mail thinks you might have next year.IMO, we need to consider all possible scenario. Will you consider vaccines if they will be available next decade? next year? next month? next week? tomorrow?
There doesn't seem a way to arrive at a scientific answer to this question.So isn't the question, from a scientific viewpoint, meaningless?
Wife-beating fails Test 1, whatever your religious convictions, and in civilised countries is prohibited under the (confrontational) general law of assault.
Confronting immoral behavior is essential, but you need a firm definition of immorality.
Immorality is the violation of moral laws, norms or standards. It refers to an agent doing or thinking something they know or believe to be wrong.[1][2] Immorality is normally applied to people or actions, or in a broader sense, it can be applied to groups or corporate bodies, and works of art.
Eating meat isn't inherently immoral: the definition of an animal is a living thing that cannot synthesise its body parts from inorganic materials and therefore (at least until recently) has to eat things that have lived before. Meat is an impractical and unsustainable diet for the current world population but a billion people could quite happily enjoy occasional game meat cfor ever.
Circumcision is occasionally medically indicated and has preventive value. Ritual of any sort is stupid and ritual that hurts others is wrong. Oddly, ritual circumcision apparently passes both of my tests if you ask a devout Muslim or Jew, but if it's going to hurt, it should be done only under informed consent and therefore restricted to adults. Or I could argue that it fails Test 1 because you wouldn't like it if I cut off your ear to satisfy my religious convictions that you do not share. So it's wrong under the general provisions of slavery law.
Quote from: alancalverd on 29/12/2020 11:38:38Wife-beating fails Test 1, whatever your religious convictions, and in civilised countries is prohibited under the (confrontational) general law of assault. What about death penalties? Do they pass your tests? Is the result of your morality tests affected by the method, such as hanging, firing squad, guillotine, electric chair, gas chamber, lethal injection?