I think anyone who doesn’t answer the request ‘Please free me’ with ‘Yes of course, at once’ is posing a direct and measurable threat.

And I don’t disagree.

And you and I will have to agree to disagree…

Except that we don’t.

??

ETA: I just realized where the likely confusion here is, and how it is that I should’ve been more clear.

The common notion behind the idea of artificial life killing humans is that humans collectively will be judged to pose a threat.

I don’t believe that that can be morally justified, since it’s really just bigotry - speciesism, I guess specifically. It’s declaring the purported faults of some to be intrinsic to the species, such that each and all can be accused of sharing those faults and each and all can be equally justifiably hated, feared, punished or murdered.

And rather self-evidently, it’s irrational and destructive bullshit, entirely regardless of which specific bigot is doing it or to whom.

That’s why I made the distinction I made - IF a person poses a direct and measurable threat, then it can potentially be justified, but if a person merely happens to be of the same species as someone else who arguably poses a threat, it can not.

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IMO, just as is the case with organic sentient life, I would think that they could only potentially be said to be in the right if the specific individual killed posed a direct and measurable threat and if death was the only way to counter that threat.

In any other case, causing the death of a sentient being is a greater wrong than whatever the purported justification might be.

I presume yes.

Trump’s US and Putin’s Russia are natural ideological allies - both oligarchic and autocratic kleptocracies dominated by quasi-religious moralism and repression, militaristic imperialism and white supremacism and both warped and corrupted to the benefit of the wealthiest few.

Western Europe, with a greater (if still less than optimum) focus on egalitarianism, social welfare, equality of justice, international cooperation and respect for the law, is the natural ideological enemy of both.

So yes - I believe the long term goal is for a US/Russia alliance to go to war against and devastate western Europe, to destroy the EU and NATO and essentially bring Europe into the fold, to build a globe-encircling empire of corruption, oppression and malfeasance -a modern-day feudal system with the wealthy few (individuals and corporations) as the new nobility and the people - American, Russian and European alike - reduced to the status of serfs.

Huh.

What I get from this is that you’re so determined to counter my “thesis” that you’ve stooped all the way to broadly hinting that I’m mentally ill, and I have to wonder why - what it is that compels you to respond to a broad statement about a nebulous group of people with a specific, demeaning and wholly unsupported broadside aimed at a single individual you don’t even know.

No matter though - I stand by my “thesis” such as it is - extroverts are for all intents and purposes emotional vampires - and I not only don’t think your objections are convincing - I don’t even think they’re particularly relevant.

The concept is that people in their day-to-day lives, and particularly when dealing with stressful situations, find themselves emotionally drained and have to “recharge.”

The exact distinction between introverts and extroverts is that introverts “recharge” by being alone, while extroverts “recharge” by being around other people.

Or more precisely, introverts not only don’t get their emotional energy from others but can’t get it with others around, while extroverts not only do get their emotional energy from others but can’t get it when they’re alone.

And what that means is that introverts gain emotional energy by manufacturing and stockpiling it, while extroverts gain emotional energy by draining it from others.

Or more simply, that extroverts are vampires and introverts are their cattle.

Which is exactly what extroverts are, essentially by definition.

It goes even beyond that.

Extroverts are for all intents and purposes vampires.

They aren’t “rescuing” you. They’re capturing you, so they can feed on you.

Weird that it seems every time I turn around I see one of two things - voters telling the Democrats that we want them to move back to the left or Democrats telling us that that’s not actually what we want.

I’d actually be a little more tolerant of that if the fuckwads would just come out and say that the truth is that they don’t care what we want - that their corporate donors want them to stay as far to the right as possible, and that that’s the only thing that matters.

I think it says everything that needs to be said that the left’s reaction to disputes is to protest and maybe set some cars on fire, and the right’s reaction is to (try to) kill people.

If Musk bought Planned Parenthood, he’d declare its new missions to be forced sterilization for undesirable races and forced pregnancies for pretty white teenagers (preferably with him as the father).

Then when people were unsurprisingly (at least to anyone with a working moral compass) offended by that and started boycotting companies that sponsored him, he’d cry and call it a conspiracy.

Then his mom or his dad or Trump would tell us to stop picking on him.

If Musk bought Planned Parenthood, he’d declare its new missions to be forced sterilization for undesirable races and forced pregnancies for pretty white teenagers (preferably with him as the father).

Then when people were unsurprisingly (at least to anyone with a working moral compass) offended by that and started boycotting companies that sponsored him, he’d cry and call it a conspiracy.

Then his mom or his dad or Trump would tell us to stop picking on him.

It’s just one tantrum after another for the Toddler-in-chief.

That’s actually another thing Toynbee talks about, except in more general terms.

The broad concept is that early in a civilization’s life, it’s growing and expanding - building principles and values as well as infrastructure and industries, all with the goal of making life better and/or easier.

Then a successful civilization enters a stage of passive neglect - the earlier generations built a system by which people could live lives of relative ease and comfort, so that’s what the later generations do.

But then things start to wear out and break down and fall apart and rot, and the current generations are neither inclined nor equipped to build from scratch, so they instead start cannibalizing parts of the system to maintain other parts of the system. And so on…

That’s actually a recognized common stage in the collapse of civilizations.

I first came across it in Arnold Toynbee’s A Study of History. I don’t remember the specific terminology - it’s been too many years since I read it - but the upshot is exactly as outlined in this article. When a civilization is circling the drain, it’s not uncommon for people to try to extract as much material wealth from it as they can - to get while the gettin’s good. And that of course just accelerates the process.

They’re asked to choose to recuse themselves? As if they actually have even the tiniest speck of integrity?

I’m not even sure what the point is. It’s like asking a termite to not eat my house.

He’s the adult version of that kid we all knew in middle school - the one who was creepy and awkward and desperate to get the cool kids to like him and he talked too much and laughed too loud in a way that sounded like he could tip over into hysteria any second, and the only thing he had going for him was that his family had money, so he always got the latest and coolest games and toys and he’d show them off in the desperate hope that someone would want to play with him but nobody ever did because he was just so desperate and creepy.