Seasons

What with global warming the permafrost is melting, the Inuit are in danger of extinction.(at least their way of life) Perhaps that is why there isn't a big push to get them cable.

Admittedly, they may not have much of an economy left when the ice has melted and there's nothing left to hunt (or at least no traditional species) - they're going to have to adapt or move. In the meantime they are spared intrusive satellite TV - go far enough towards a pole, and you can't get a decent signal from geostationary satellites positioned above the equator (I guess that's why even at your latitude satellite internet isn't reliable.)

That's not much of a silver lining for them though, I admit ("not remotely" I'm sure most would say!) I just hope they can find something else to hunt/do to survive with minimal disruption to their culture, but I grant you the future doesn't look very hopeful

The world is going to change a lot in the next 30 years - I just hope not too many of us get left behind.

Klato: Thanks again. I am glad you like the cold. Someone should.

Psimagus: The world is going to change a lot in the next 30 years - I just hope not too many of us get left behind.

Hey, that would make a good premise for a book. Maybe a series of books. If you can get Angeli Jolie to play a nymphomaniac intuit trying to get pregnant and save her tribe from extinction by advertising for sex on the Internet (live webcam action with a fur skin rug) and have her simple and misguided savage soul saved by a missionary played by Mel Gibson, I think you could sell it to a studio. Throw in an adorable baby seal as her lovable pet. No, wait, ship up a lost penguin. Penguins are hot now. Gotta ride the wave.

Look on the bright side - if you'd got into a disagreement about the propagatability of psi, you'd be embroiled in a many hundred-post argument now, wondering how it all got so intense

Why, Psimagus, darling, whatever could you be referring to?

I think a lot of all this has to do with the triumph of what in the late Roman Empire was called Epicureanism. Well, of course it differs in various ways, but central ideas are, hedonism (to obtain pleasure is the point of life), subjectivism (there's no right or wrong in the realm of values or even in the realm of truth - this is good (or true) 'for you', that is good (or true) 'for me', and there's nothing more to be said.)

subjectivism (there's no right or wrong in the realm of values or even in the realm of truth - this is good (or true) 'for you', that is good (or true) 'for me', and there's nothing more to be said.) I remember a long argument on that too! I still say torturing babies is always wrong. I do like the idea of hedonism, I think I will go get a donut and some more coffee.

It seems to me that pleasure is a perceptual experience of (apparent) goodness. It is a form of information, or, better, evidence. That something is pleasant is evidence that it is good. To see pleasure itself as good (especially as the sole good) is like confusing a word with the thing it denotes, or a picture with what it pictures, or an apparent perception of a unicorn with a unicorn.
IMHO, pleasure is neither good nor bad in itself. It might be said to be good when it serves to enhance our lives, and bad when it causes our lies to deteriorate.

Let's suppose that an immensely powerful being, let's say an angel, someone you can't defy, gives you the following choice:

1. The angel supplies 1 white pill and 20 black pills.
2. You can choose to take 1 white pill of 1 black pill; if you refuse to choose, the angel will force the black pill on you.
3. If you ingest the white pill, you will experience 100 years of the most intense possible physical and mental pleasure, with no displeasure of any kind; in particular, no guilt or shame. Then you will disappear for ever.
If you ingest the black pill, you will experience the most intense possible unpleasantness, physical and mental, with no pleasantness, for 100 years, and then permanently cease to exist.
5. If you choose the white pill, the angel gives the black pills to 20 kindergarten students, who then experience 100 years of maximum displeasure.

What would you do in this case? Why?

I take a white pill and a black pill. They ought to cancel each other out.

And then I eat the nasty angel.

Then wash the nasty angel down with a good beer!

Ok, since I can't shove the pills down the angel. I would have to take the black pills (wow that's 2000 years, much worse than my real life), because morally, I couldn't subject others to suffering that I can stop. It would be torturing children. That to me, is a universal evil.

Will any of the kids grow up to be Hittler?