Republican responsibility 13 Aug 2009 This whole thing is teetering on the edge. Someone else is going to die soon. Maybe lots of someone elses. It will be your fault. [From Almost Diamonds] Once upon a time, to be a conservative was to be someone who valued personal responsibility. It’s been a long time since then. Politics
Politics Arbitrary execution 28 Oct 2009 Question: If a state kills people of some country not their own, because they think but have not shown in a court of law that those people have committed a crime, and the people are not combatants of a legally recognised enemy state, is this legal? Most jurisprudence would suggest… Read More
Australian stuff On tribalism 25 Sep 201424 Nov 2022 Humans evolved in tribes, our species’ equivalent of the general primate troop structure. This meant that members of the tribe benefited from shared resources, the protection of the group and the inherited knowledge of the tribe. It also meant that we will natively and naively defend our group against others,… Read More
Ethics and Moral Philosophy Morality and Evolution 6: Moral dispositions 21 May 201422 May 2014 [Morality and Evolution 1 2 3 4 5 6 7] In any field that has statistical variation, it is necessary to isolate the variables. Biology is all about statistical variation of populations, and so we must expect that any account of morality that is based upon biology will have variation along a number of axes. Here… Read More
Mark Rosenfelder explains that the Republicans haven’t been the same since they invented the time machine: http://zompist.wordpress.com/2009/08/12/tinfoil-opposition/