[Actual act of rebellion in America]

What's your opinion of the second link in this post?

To be honest, I don't really have much of an opinion about it--at least, not the most recent stuff. The people still engaging in the armed occupation have very little reason not to "double down." They'll be facing stiff federal charges, ones that are almost inarguable. (That is, it's indisputable that they were present for example; any meaningful defense case will have an uphill battle arguing for mitigating circumstances or alternative, reduced charges, pretty much, since whether something was done is not up for debate.)

The whole "we have new leaders now" bit is just bravado. One response to facing long odds/"betrayal"/etc. is to stick to your guns, quite literally in this case. I mean, at its peak, this thing apparently had a couple dozen people present on the wildlife refuge. Now they're down to a total of four, and as supplies dwindle, as thoughts turn to friends and family they aren't able to see, etc. I suspect the remainder will think more and more about leaving. If by some miracle they managed to actually hold out for any substantial length of time, the thought of missing birthdays, anniversaries, etc. won't help either, and when the choice is between three people you ideologically agree with, and reuniting with your family and friends, over the long run I expect family to win. At least with this particular issue (some issues are, obviously, strong enough to overcome the pull of your circle of loved ones).

So I guess *that* is what I have to say: I don't think any of them really understood what they were "in for." Which is unfortunate, because those who get convicted, for whatever charges, will be quite keenly aware of what they are getting into at *that* point.

By the way, I hope you didn't mean for me to watch the video, as I have not done so. I'm a bit squeamish, so I tend to shy away from any video that goes out of its way to let me know that it's graphic.

[My dog is dead/ general grief support thread, by popular (?) demand]

I've had to deal with this situation as well, and the only answer I can give is: It takes time. Sometimes a lot of it.

One of my dogs (technically, my father's dog) was killed when she broke into a neighbor's yard because *another* neighbor's dog had also broken into that yard. The other dog had a puppy with her, and both of them were starving; my dad's dog was a "big dog in a little dog's body" and wouldn't run away even from a much bigger dog. My dad was devastated by his dog's death; even now, something like five years later, he still has the occasional moment of...well, mourning, really. We've encouraged him to look into getting another dog, but he wants to adopt and hasn't had much luck finding the kind of dog he's looking for.

Remember that grief is a natural and healthy, albeit painful, process...and each person approaches it in their own way. The best thing you can do is to channel the response you have to this death into something productive. What, specifically, that "something productive" should be is up to you.

[Actual act of rebellion in America]

Good; add in the charge of sedition and send every one of them to prison and we'll be set. Make an example out of the fuckers.

Well, at least that's a crime that actually fits the actions taken. It's unfortunate someone was killed, but that is to be expected when threatening an armed response to valid governmental/police action. I just hope that these foolish actions don't ripple outward into even more problems, e.g. children growing up damaged or embittered by one or more parents rotting in jail for most of their childhoods, or further "no no go back to prison" issues that inflamed tempers in the first place. That these consequences could occur does not even slightly mean that the "rebels" shouldn't face charges and be sentenced for their actions, though. I'm just saying--the feds should definitely tread carefully. Seditious conspiracy--hell, domestic terrorism--is not something that simply "goes away" because you caught and tried (or killed) the active participants. And when the stated reason for their anger at the government--legitimate or not--is governmental overreach and officious stonewalling in the face of "needs," real or imagined, a "crackdown" response is not and will not be the answer (no more than it was the answer in other recent areas of domestic unrest).

[How do you talk to someone you don't know anymore?]

A situation like this is more difficult than I expected, mostly because you haven't been able to actually get directly in touch with her. I had thought, from the thread title, that it was more like "I just got the number of an old friend I haven't spoken to in years...how do I start up the conversation?" This...is a lot trickier.

It sounds to me like there's something more going on here than just losing contact. I don't know precisely what, though, and I wouldn't expect you to divulge any further info than you have. However, if you have direct contact with someone that has direct contact with your sister, my suggestion would be to make use of that. The best thing to do, in my opinion, is write her an honest-to-goodness letter--and have the person who has direct contact with her hand-deliver it, so you KNOW she physically held it in her hands. Be honest and, really, just say most of what you've said to us here: share how much you've missed her, how proud you are of her success, how happy it makes you feel to know that she might become a mother, both for her sake and for your own. Tell her of the small joys you've had that you've wished you could share, the funny moments, the times when you thought your life was crashing down around you but that you now look back on with a laugh and a shake of the head. And tell her that, if she has reasons for keeping private about her life now, you respect that. You feel a deep desire to connect with her again, but you also understand that things change and people change; if it's not going to happen, that's unfortunate but you'll live, or if she needs to handle it on her own terms and in her own time that's something you can survive too. It's the waiting and wondering and hoping and fearing that you'd rather not deal with, so an answer--any answer, even "I just don't know right now"--would make a world of difference.

Best of luck to you on this. I know how painful it can be, that waiting and wondering and hoping and fearing.

[A degree of "objectivity" on things considered "subjective"]

Yeah, unfortunately, getting anywhere on this topic usually means reading at least a couple of...pretty hefty books.

The best place to go, if you'd like to see someone argue moral realism and are okay with putting up with some deontology, is Kant. Kant is...a big challenge though. I'm not even well-versed enough in his stuff to even try to summarize it (I've tried before, it wasn't good). Other good names to look into are G. E. Moore (an ethical realist, but also a non-naturalist which might be an issue) and Philippa Foot (a--perhaps even the--neo-Aristotelian, who almost single-handedly revived virtue ethics in modern philosophy). Foot, and virtue ethics, in particular sound like they'd be a useful area for you to look into. They provide a completely alternative take on normative ethics (neither deontological nor consequentialist), one which I generally find pretty compelling. I tend to lean in a realist direction as well, and see virtue ethics as a good path to take: I don't, at all, buy the idea that all moral value can be boiled down to a single, universal value--and when you allow that there can be two or more different, incommensurate values, you've made 90% of the leap to virtue ethics anyway.

(The most common argument against value pluralism--the idea that there is more than one ultimate value--goes something like "if you have two possible actions you can take, one which supports value 1 (e.g. "justice") and one which supports value 2 (e.g. "honesty"), then any useful theory of value must be able to tell you which is the correct choice; but this can only be done by appealing to some higher value, from which the other two draw their worth. This can be applied ad infinitum until only one value remains." My problem is that I agree there is such a standard, but such a standard makes value discussions gibberish, because the ultimate value is simply "the good," the thing which all values serve. We separate "the good" into many different categories--virtues--in order to make sense of the complex-and-holistic thing that "the good" is, just as we separate "knowledge" into many different categories--disciplines--in order to make sense of the complex-and-holistic thing that is "all knowledge," or "fundamental knowledge" if you will. Just as we can validly say that, of two different statements, one is 'more knowledgeable' or 'more fundamental' than another, without it being false that (say) ecology is a different kind of knowledge than (say) physics, particularly in reference to the specific situation those facts arise in, so too can we say that two different actions can both be "good," but one is better than the other, without it being false that one is honest and the other is just. Subsuming the virtues into The Good, into Virtue alone, does nothing but reduce the explanatory power of our moral discourse. The Good is always desirable, but it can be desirable for many reasons, and it is those reasons that we care about in practical discourse.)

Edit:
Also, if you don't read ANYTHING else, definitely absolutely read John Stuart Mill's book, On Liberty. It is THE MOST important book in political philosophy prior to the 20th century, and it has a LOT of ethical, meta-ethical, and social principles which are still fundamentally important today. For literally the entire 20th century, and much of the 19th century, political philosophy was defined by him, and even today, much of it is still defined by how you react to his work. (The other major names, of the 20th century, are Rawls, Nagel, and Nozick--primarily Rawls and Nozick, who are as different as different can be.)

It's also got some really great, if sometimes long-winded, quotes. For example:
If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.

And another:
Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think.

[A degree of "objectivity" on things considered "subjective"]

Great post, amiabletemplar. This forum needs a "Like" or "Thanks" button. Malcolm X's pilgrimage to Mecca seems like one of those esoteric journeys we must experience once in life to challenge what we know, even when we didn't intend for it to happen in the first place.

I'm glad you liked it. There are many great joys in life, but helping others discover new things and answer questions--sometimes questions they didn't know they had--is one of the best.

As for the esoteric journey: Revelation and epiphany are gifts few receive, and some tragically miss the memo. But it can be beautiful and terrible if you do receive them; to use an allegory from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, really deep epiphanies are like having your old, dead skin torn off to reveal the soft and tender flesh beneath. For those who can survive it, nothing will be the same. As it should be.

[An idea for a trilogy I had]

But that is completely implausible. It goes against FDR's nature, and it goes against Stalin's nature.

To be frank, so is the idea that human cultures remain largely static and unchanged for over 6 centuries, despite developing into a galaxy-spanning polity (or two, rather). The two political power blocs of the Cold War were radically different from what you would have found 600 years ago, and the latter underwent a more-or-less analogous form of expansion into just ONE "new world." Not only do we need to assume that the Cold War persists for over 150 years (when space travel occurs), but we then have to assume that all those worlds remain culturally contiguous and static for a further 900 years. Giving FDR a longer lifespan and a bit more ego, and Stalin a bit less ego and a genuine belief in supporting the common man, isn't much more implausible: alternatively, the two of them could have been replaced at some point by candidates of your own design.

But you're probably set on the idea of a galactic empire--and, being Rationally Royalist, it'll have to be an Imperial one. There's nothing wrong with that. However, you might want to shift some of your ideas around. At the very least, you'll need to explain why Communism doesn't fall, or how it's able to remain more completely contiguous, since it didn't even last 50 years into the Cold War, let alone 1050.

In any case, the idea is that it was a complete accident that the easterners are good and the westerners are evil, because 100 years before the story starts both are feudalistic corporate hellholes; the Easterners just so happened to have a leader who gave a shit and was competent enough to make a difference. Its for the same reason that the French succumbed to revolution while the Austrians and Prussians didn't; Frederick the Great and Joseph II were able and willing to improve the rights of commoners, while Louis XVI had his heart in the right place but didn't have the will to break the power of the nobility.

It's probably not wise to question your thesis here (since this is a work of fiction, and thus you can do whatever you want), but your phrase "succumbed to revolution" is one I find...interesting. It's as though the Nation exists independently of its citizenry, and has a higher value or more important place than the needs or goals of its constituent citizens, even when considered collectively. Because, in general, I would argue that a nation cannot "succumb" to revolution, as though revolution were a disease that polities can catch and die from. Instead, I would argue that it is that polities build up cruft and detritus, usually but not exclusively in the form of catering almost exclusively to the desires and needs of a very small group of residents while ignoring or more frequently outright exploiting the remainder. In other words, a State does not die because it is infected with revolutionary thoughts; a State dies from the political equivalent of a heart attack, its metaphorical "arteries" so clogged with the plaque of nepotism and corruption that it can no longer perform the functions expected of a metaphorically "living" State. But since a total absence of any body politic usually results in banditry and mass violence, a replacement State (or, more commonly, many smaller replacement States) eventually arises to attend to the needs of those residing within its area of influence; since administration takes time and money, and serving the needs of the constituents cannot be done "for free," this necessitates the existence of further political realities like taxes, and at least in all of human history, the development of a bureaucracy (of ever-increasing intricacy).

Your examples of Frederick and Joseph would thus, rather than being individuals strong enough to weather the "disease" of revolution, would instead become the metaphorical equivalent of a dietician, personal trainer, and addiction therapist: the body politic they received was seriously ill, potentially on the verge of death, but through a rigorous diet/exercise/abstention program, cutting out all the "unhealthy" activities and forcing a painful but necessary detoxification, they warded off the ills that could have killed the State. Or, in other words: revolution is not the cause of death, it is a symptom of the disease. Sorta like how my paternal grandfather's listed cause of death was "renal failure," even though it was really the metastasized colon cancer that killed him.

I agree that the themes you're shooting for can be expressed in essentially any genre that has space for large political bodies. That is, I don't necessarily know that all genres of fiction can support a "politics" plotline, but any that can do so are absolutely able to investigate the themes you're looking at. The biggest concern facing you, if you're really serious about writing this story:

Don't let your personal philosophies control what, or who, you write.

It's extremely, excruciatingly easy for a writer--particularly a first-time novelist--to allow their work to become a tract, a soapbox from which to proclaim the greatness of their personal ideology. Even good, well-established authors can fall prey to this; consider Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. The first book is lovely! But ideology begins to distort the story in the second book, and pretty much the whole third book is an author tract railing against organized religion (especially Christianity: every character associated with the Church is evil, up until the point they break from it, and characters who join up with it do so almost exactly at the same time that they pass the moral event horizon).

Avoiding this means constantly asking yourself: am I always painting people I disagree with (in this case, politically) as "evil" or "villainous"? Am I always painting people I agree with as "good" or "heroic"? Are there any valid counter-examples to the way I think, either places where something I believe is (politically) right just flat-out doesn't work, or places where something I think is (politically) wrong is successful? Do characters I (politically) agree with sometimes do things I dislike, or which are in-world considered heinous? Do some that I disagree with scrupulously avoid any such wrongdoings, either in my own eyes, or by the social mores of my story?

You're looking at an interesting, albeit somewhat dated premise ("great-man" history, more or less, though you may be allowing for something more like "great-human" history if women can also be such leaders). But there's a difference between presenting it and exploring it, particularly if the presentation is heavily one-sided (favorably or unfavorably). It's almost always more interesting to explore such premises, which means showing both how they can work, and how they can fail; showing their merits and their flaws with equal vigor and honesty. Given your investment in the premise as your preferred method of government (monarchy), it may prove a distinct challenge to give both the good and bad sides truly equal vigor and honesty.

...its just that dystopian earths and fantasy worlds are overdone as settings, while I don't think there has been a space opera in recent memory.

Eh, that's...not really true. Ever heard of Iain M. Banks? His Culture novels are absolutely space-operatic, and fairly recent. I'd say they're the biggest thing in space opera since Asimov, actually. Certainly they're the most frequently discussed space opera novels in the circles I've run. I've also heard things about the Saga of the Skolian Empire by Catherine Asaro, which is also very definitely space opera.

You should check out this wikipedia page: List of space opera media. The novel section is listed in alphabetical order by (first) publication year. While it might not be AS common as dystopia or fantasy, it's almost certainly more common than Cold War alternate history.

[A degree of "objectivity" on things considered "subjective"]

Uh... Ok, I still don't think I managed to ask the right question properly. Basically, I meant to ask what is it that makes things pretty, desirable, pleasant, [insert value judgment here] and how it is possible to determine that X (be it a person, a piece of art, your favorite television series etc.) possesses said value judgment. Are these things completely subjective and thus relative to our own arbitrary tastes, or is there something more to it (like, say, a property that makes X be beautiful)?

Then you have asked an extremely fundamental question, the core question of the philosophical discipline known as "metaethics." (This is using the original definition of "meta," e.g. that used in metaphysics, not the modern "self-referential" definition.) Ethics is the study of values. Metaethics (also sometimes with a hyphen, "meta-ethics") is the narrower subset which asks questions like...

In what way do values exist?

How do we determine the nature of a value or values?

Where do values come from?

What is the relationship between moral properties and physical properties?

How do we observe or detect the value of things, events, or actions?

You can read more about metaethics here, an article from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (which is peer-reviewed) or here, an article from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (also peer-reviewed). Some words of warning: these are big, meaty articles with a lot of philosophical terms. It may be slow reading, especially if you aren't familiar with the structure and terms of philosophical discourse. For example, "morals," "values," and "ethics" all refer to very closely related things, and often you will see a phrase like "moral properties" used to refer to everything from "is it wrong to steal?" (a behavioral value) to "can industrial machines be beautiful?" (an aesthetic value) to "can we use pleasure, and its opposite, pain, to judge the worth of actions?" (an ethical standard or "scale" of some kind).

These are very, very difficult questions, for which there is nothing even remotely like consensus...but the core question you seem to be asking is this, possibly the hardest and most contentious of them all:

Do moral facts exist?

If you genuinely have no specific answer of your own, you will not find a truly compelling one in a place like this--it is, literally and figuratively, not the right forum. Given the age listed on your profile, I think it's safe to assume that you have already graduated high school. If you are currently a college student, you should strongly consider going to your school's philosophy department and asking for advice on which classes to take to investigate this question. You may need to take an introductory class or two first (to introduce you to things like the structure of philosophical arguments, valid logical forms, and methods of analysis and refutation). However, unless you're attending a community college or other very small institution, there should be a class that you can attend--at least eventually--where you can learn about how some people have answered these questions over the centuries. And yes, I did say "centuries." Because questions like this have been asked for, at the absolute least, 2500 years (Socrates was born around 469 BC, and there were several philosophers before him). And they've probably been asked as long as humans have had the time to think about them, which is almost as long as there have been humans at all.

Also, slightly deviating from the topic a bit, what about value judgments concerning ethics in general? Aren't some values desirable from their positive and objective effects? If that's true, then value judgments can be discussed from an objective point of view, and from there on we can argue which ones are good and which ones are bad. I'd try to argue better about this if I weren't drowsy, my bad.

For some people? Yes, absolutely! That would typically be a consequentialist understanding of value-judgments: things are good or bad only in light of the consequences they have. But there are major branches of ethical thought which outright deny that! For example, a deontologist (someone who focuses on things like moral duty) actions, and in theory things as well, either ARE or ARE NOT moral, always and absolutely, regardless of their consequences or effects--e.g. it is *always* wrong to steal, or lie, or kill, even if by stealing or lying or killing you do something super duper wonderful and important. There are also other ways of investigating these questions. For example, a sentimentalist (one who believes value-judgments are rooted in common sentiment) would say that values are inextricably linked to how moral actors (that is, humans, since we know of no other "moral actors"--yet!) feel about things, the common emotional and personal reactions that moral actors have to events and things. David Hume, a very famous Scottish philosopher and a huge critic of the idea of "moral facts," was one of the most prominent authors on the subject of moral sentimentalism--he was a HUGE empiricist (focusing only on what can be observed or measured directly), and thus rejected the idea that there was any "good" or "bad" in something like a murder scene. So, for Hume, the "goodness" or "badness," or the "beauty"/"ugliness" or "usefulness"/"pointlessness" or whatever else, had to be something in himself--values, whatever their nature, were things arising in and suffusing the observer, rather than the stuff they observe.

And there are other answers, too! There's also moral relativism, the idea that values are only meaningful within a particular cultural context. (You could sort of see these things lying on a continuum: relativism says values only make sense within a single culture; sentimentalism says that values can make sense across all cultures, but only make sense in reference to feeling beings; realism, the idea that value-properties REALLY DO exist and are facts about the world in some sense, says that values make sense all the time, even if there is nobody around to talk about them and nobody to "feel" them.)

All of these answers--and more!--have been discussed for hundreds to thousands of years. None of them are new in the sense of having appeared within the past century, but moral realism was absolutely the predominant view in Western philosophy up until the last, oh, 400 years or so--and since then it's been nothing but a tug-of-war between all the different perspectives, each of which has many, many specific formulations that do not necessarily agree with one another in all ways.

Hence why I said you should take a class on this stuff. What you're asking amounts, more or less, to asking how we can know calculus works, or how anyone can really say that an electron can "pass through" an impenetrable wall--just for a philosophical topic instead of a mathematical or quantum-mechanical one. And if you were asking those questions, I'd direct you to the math or physics departments at your college, too!

I honestly have no idea and I feel like any answer I give you will not be enough. I do believe a lot comes from culture and environment but there must be something in the genome guiding us towards certain things.

Take Martin Luther King vs Malcolm X for example. Both racially oppressed contemporary civil rights leaders hailing from the same country and subject to the same segregational system. Yet the only thing they fully agreed on was to end racial segregation.

While I admit that biology is not my strong suit (I'm more a physics/chem guy, as far as hard sciences go), I don't think we can really use genetics as the explanation for how we come to evaluate things in particular ways. Genes do one thing, and one thing only: they code for proteins. That's it! All the incredible structures you have in your body, all the wonderful, wonderful things that nature produces, all the differences between the salmon teriyaki I made tonight (it's so delicious I had to mention it) and the chicken pasta I ate on Saturday, all the things that make an apple different from an orange--they all boil down to coding for different proteins. There is a bit more to it (the presence, and actions, of chemicals in the cell can alter both what the genes make, and how the protein behaves once it's made), but the vast majority of it is just selectively making proteins. So, while genes probably help set up the equipment, and it's important to know how that equipment works e.g. your sense organs, your brain, your endocrine system, etc. I just don't think that genes are "guiding" us to anything specific.

On the subject of your example, I had a lot more to say than I thought, so I'm gonna spoilerblock it:

Malcolm X is an interesting and very important figure in American history. Very polarizing, for one thing, but also someone whose views...substantially changed more than once in his life. Early on, he was definitely more incendiary than MLK. I would argue that they agreed on substantially more than just the need to end segregation, but they DID have a big and fundamental difference in their beliefs. Whether or not Malcolm X actually believed in any of the unsavory aspects preached by the "Nation of Islam" (which is neither a nation, nor Islamic!*), he strongly believed that the only way for Black people to truly achieve equality was on their own terms, in their own land, without any interference from other racial or ethnic groups. Dr. King, on the other hand, believed that it was not only possible, but necessary that Black people focus on integrating with the society they lived in--that they could not achieve freedom without joining and being accepted by the society that oppressed them (and, sadly, often still does.)

But they both believed strongly in opposing racist ideology; they both believed in Blacks using their powers to vote in order to request change (Malcolm X's famous speech, The Ballot or the Bullet, specifically advocates careful and considerate use of voting power: it just also advocated, unlike Dr. King's ideas, that if Washington failed to support the movement, armed resistance might be required.) And they both believed that organized opposition to segregation was essential to seeing anything change. Then his later experiences, on his Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca) after converting from the NOI to Islam proper (Sunni specifically), greatly affected his previously separatist ideology: he saw "all colors, from blue-eyed blonds to black-skinned Africans" on his journey, which made him believe integration was possible and valuable (though, admittedly, only through the lens of converting everyone to Islam). Of course, he was then assassinated (by people from the "Nation of Islam," no less!)

*One of the fundamental tenets of Islam--the First Pillar of Islam, in fact--is the Shahada: La ilaha illa Allah wa-Muhammad rasul Allah. "There is no god but God, and Muhammad is His prophet." The Nation of Islam believes that its founder, "Wallace Fard" (he has many pseudonyms so it's hard to say what his actual name was) was actually another "messenger" trained by God in the presence of the Mahdi (who is, more or less, a Messiah-like figure for Islam, the successor of Muhammad). This is a really serious blasphemy by Islamic standards. The NoI also may not require its members to say daily prayers, travel to Mecca (the Hajj), or do the fast of Ramadan, all of which are other Pillars of Islam, the stuff that forms the "core" of Islamic belief. They also aren't required to learn Arabic, which is usually expected of all "proper" Muslims.

[Cloning]

But choosing a baby's gender is still somewhat feasible.

That, actually, can be done without even preparing a mass of zygotes. X-chromosome sperm are larger, and more massive, than Y-chromosome sperm by a small amount. It is possible, albeit not trivial, to take a sperm sample, pick out just sperm of a particular "gender," and then put those sperm near an egg for in vitro fertilization. But gender selection isn't much compared to how "designer babies" are usually defined.

[The Pairing Thread]

Well, based more on the advice I've been given before, rather than on any real knowledge of my own:

Any info I could give on Morgan's dad will be long out of date, but Chrom!Inigo might be good.

Generally -Luck is frowned on, for reducing hit and crit (and increasing the chance to be hit), so if you aren't committed to it yet, you could consider switching. As was said relatively recently in this thread, -Def is usually the preferred flaw. (Edit: Ninja'd on that one. It's what I get for trying to post on multiple disparate forums at the same time.)

Ricken!Laurent is probably your best bet--consolidate that Mag. I don't know about the others. Kellam is Worst Dad Ever, and Fred is the runner-up (runner-down?) so you probably won't use either of them. Gregor!Yarne was recommended to me, but things might be a bit different with a narrower playing field like this.

[The Pairing Thread]

The problem with manakete is that it lacks a brave effect (which is the bread and butter offense for Apo).

Perhaps this is not the appropriate place for such speculation, but...if there WERE "bravestones" for Manaketes and Taguels, how would that affect their position in the hierarchy? That is, assuming these stones were essentially <blah>stone+ with the double-hit effect tacked on.

[A degree of "objectivity" on things considered "subjective"]

Usually when you talk about art, saying you like it or not is personal and subjective. But the common "beauty" emanating from any piece of art is about technic.

I'll try to take an example : Take a famous theme (Darth Vador's theme, the 9th symphony of Beethoven...)

Whether you like it or not is personal, and subjective, if you consider yourself not being influenced by others' tastes.

Now take the same theme (or slightly remixed), and give it to an amateur orchestra/group... It's still the same theme assuming it sounds decent.

If you pick someone in the audience who likes the original theme, that person would like/hate it because it is a theme he/she recognise (that's still personal).

.

But if you take a music expert, if the performance was decent but there was a lot of mistakes (I imply the mistakes aren't cringy but normal people wouldn't notice them) then he may dislike it because of the technical issues, and that is a common consensus in the art world. So that would be objective (art least it is how I would define it)Indeed if it is too dissonant, it would be totally objective. Needless to say if the mistakesare cringy, it becomes objective for everyone (read obvious)

Defining something objectively means describe how it is

However in order to define something objectively, you have to define a consensus. Then only you can classify things: sphere/cube tall/small, too salty/too sweety..

Objectivity takes roots from subjectivity, and it is about how you can describe an object from a common consensus, so it's a "societal subjectivity". That also lead to the archetypes since we are in a world where every person is influenced by society.

However effort has nothing to do with how an object is in the end. The object is the product, not the mean, so subjectivity and objectivity aren't linked to effort, because effort doesn't make the object look better, but can make you emphasise with the producer so change your subjectivity. Well, it's my opinion, and not fact so my reasoning still has many flaws,....

If I play each note perfectly, of a composition designed to cause pain in the ears of the audience, is that "objectively" better than me playing a piece with slightly flawed execution, made with the intent to please the ear? Or, to use a writing example, if I write a piece that never once deviates from a single rule of English grammar, but which is complete gibberish, is that better than a story which ignores the rules of English grammar frequently, but which is coherent and subjectively enjoyable?

If consensus is what creates objectivity, does that mean that a thing can be objectively bad (or good) at one point in time, and then objectively good(/bad) at a later point in time? If so, how is it that objective truth somehow changes over time? If not, how can we justify the appeal to consensus/popularity, since we can clearly demonstrate many examples of works that were deeply loved in the past and disliked today, or ignored/reviled when new but now considered triumphs of their medium?

If all humans but one died--perhaps of a disease, which caused the lone survivor to be immortal--would that mean that their opinions were automatically the consensus of humanity (a group of 1 individual) and thus simultaneously subjective and objective? A single person's view is automatically subjective; the average opinion of an entire group is objective, so when a group consists of a single person, their view is simultaneously individual and consensus (since it represents the views of all humans). Can we do other kinds of limiting, e.g. what happens if you define your groups differently? Can a piece be "objectively good according to men," while being "objectively bad according to women"? Or "objectively good according to Muslims" but "objectively bad according to Hindus"? If we can't define groups more narrowly (which you seem comfortable doing with "experts" vs. "non-experts"), why not?

Personally, I think these questions demonstrate how technique--while at least somewhat objectively measurable--cannot be the only factor in whether a work is "good" or "bad," and similarly that an argumentum ad populum creates far, far more problems than it solves. Technique is fantastically important, and at the same time completely unimportant: the "rules" of any medium exist for one purpose, to help make works in that medium more "effective." This is a higher calling than the rules themselves, because it is the (or at least *a*) guideline which helps us decide what rules we should use in the first place. Thus, we only adhere to these rules when they work in service of that calling. If a time comes, where one or more rules decreases the "effectiveness" (whatever standard we use for this) of a work, then the rule has violated its own reason for existing--and it is not only possible, it is valuable to break any such rule when this happens. So technique is a fantastically important platform to start from, and if the rules of technique are well-constructed, you won't need to deviate from those rules very often. It is when we (erroneously) equate superior technique with superior quality (effectiveness, etc.) that we stumble. I know this quite well; I am pretty damn good with the English language, but my poetry sometimes suffers for it, as I use too-careful, too-solid, too-"perfect" structures, limiting the possible paths my poetry can take and sometimes even producing stilted or lurching diction.

It's useful to critique a person's technique. And refining your skill with the techniques of a particular medium is (almost) always useful. But higher technique does not guarantee superior work, nor does superior work imply superior technique. To use a bit of logic jargon, great technique is neither necessary nor sufficient for great work. That is: it is possible, if perhaps unlikely, to produce amazing work with minimal or even absent understanding of good technique (therefore technique is not "logically required" for good quality); and it is possible (and much more likely than the previous case) to produce a work that has no technical flaws while still being sub-par or even outright bad (so the presence of good technique doesn't "logically guarantee" quality).

Shakespeare's original work, for example, includes misspellings even by the very lax standards of his day, strange abbreviations or concatenations, and frequently makes dramatic or rhetorical moves, not because they make better literature, but because Elizabethan-era audiences really liked that stuff, e.g. gratuitous rape scenes. As far as grammatical technique goes, he seems to have straight-up not cared if the rules would have told him not to do things.

[The Pairing Thread]

Discipline's a really big one. DSt+ is good too, but everyone who gets it starts with it so it doesn't count as much. Money skills (Despoil/AT) are nice too because, while not reliable, they cover the cost of training weapons and prevent unnecessary GG trips in the middle of training.

All good points. I'm definitely partial to AT, myself--although I agree that it is a "money" skill, I also see it as an indirect offense skill. I hesitate to give 'regalia'-type weapons to anyone that doesn't have it; so, for those that do, I sort of see such rare weapons as almost a "class feature" which can partially make up for the lack of something like Luna or Astra.

[Cloning]

Thanks for the clarification, and sorry if I was confusing.... I'm really bad at phrasing things. :/

Cloning dead-brain humans for medical purposes is kind of weird. Considering it is an inert body, how are we supposed to know if the bodyitself is healthy ?In that case, I agree taking organs from cadavers feels safer and it actually happened (iirc) quite a lot.

Now if you compare it to the bionical heart given to a patient, the "experience" (sorry if it sounds gloomy) did fail as well.

It seems those are two promising means to a same end. However, if ever the bionic solution was more advanced, I think people will rather opt for that solution. I mean, we don't know how single-organs are going to develop (assuming they are like "pluripotent cells", can't they be cancerous too ? Is that possible to control the mutations ? Or even create a single organ instead of a whole body or a body without brain ?) it might be expensive but not as much as keeping an inert body "alive". I may just be ignorant on that matter, but I'd sttill like to see how it develops though, it seems interesting.

And so... "designer babies" is a myth ? All the talk about curing diseases from birth or cut and repair or replace wrong sequences in a DNA is garbage ? I'll keep that in mind then... In the end that's just optimising the odds having a perfect kid then it seems...

Well, we can't actually clone humans yet (as far as we know), and even if we could, we're a long way away from being able to make clones that are "braindead" or that don't have a brain or whatever. It's a purely hypothetical situation, used to show that we need to think about possible (but not real, yet) situations and what the law should say about them, if they ever become real in the future. Science keeps marching on, you know?

You're correct that we take organs, like hearts, livers, kidneys, etc. from the bodies of the dead (that is, if the person signed up to be an organ donor in life).

"Bionic" organs--mostly hearts, for now--are still a long way from being perfected. Even the most modern variations on the Jarvik artifical heart (the first form, which most subsequent devices have improved in some way) still have an unacceptably high failure rate, often not lasting more than a year or two. Typically, artificial hearts are used as a temporary mechanism, to keep a patient alive long enough to get a "real" heart for transplant.

In theory, a "single-organ" clone would not be like an induced pluripotent cell. Now, remember, it is not currently possible to make "single-organ" clones. However, if it becomes possible to do so, in theory the cloned organ should be exactly like a "natural" organ--in fact, it should be almost indistinguishable from the diseased/removed organ, except effectively much, much younger. It would be the equivalent of somehow "copying" a person's own heart from when they were (say) 20 years old, then sending it forward in time to when that person was 80 years old or the like.

"Bionic" organs will always have a potential place, even if single-organ cloning becomes a reality. Some people just have fundamentally "broken" organs; for example, diabetics may have a pancreas that doesn't work. It's also possible to have genetically-based kidney or liver failure, or a congenital illness that makes your heart too weak to pump blood. Simply cloning one of these organs wouldn't work--the cloned organ would have the same problems as the original. A "bionic" organ (the usual medical term is "artificial") wouldn't have these problems. As long as the patient's body accepts the device, it would be much better than cloning in some cases...but "one-size-fits-all" artificial organs are a very unlikely thing. The advantage of single-organ cloning is that there's no worries of rejection, no need to take special immune-suppressing drugs, no nothing...it should integrate into your body exactly like the "real thing" because, from your body's chemical-sensing perspective, it IS the real thing.

Correct, "designer babies" in the sense of, "I want my baby to have blue eyes, and curly blond hair, and to have strong muscles and be great at music" is a complete myth. That would mean extremely advanced genetic engineering, plus the ability to predict how hundreds, or even thousands of genes overlap and interact over long periods of time.

In the future, we MAY be able to remove or repair disease-carrying genes while a fetus is still in the womb. You see this a lot in modern science fiction. For example, in Mass Effect, almost all humans are slightly genetically engineered, to remove disease, improve muscle mass and strength, improve eyesight, etc. (Of course, if this were real, the wealthy and powerful would have access to better genetic engineering techniques, but the game glosses over stuff like that.) There's actually a quest in Mass Effect 1, where a brother and sister are having a huge debate because her husband has died, leaving her pregnant with his child, and there's a chance that the baby might contract a rare genetic illness. There's a genetic treatment for it, but it has some risks to it. The brother doesn't want her to do the treatment because he's worried it could kill the baby before it's born, removing the last legacy of the baby's father. The sister wants to take the treatment, because the disease is serious and would have lifelong complications for the child, even if it's not very likely that the baby has it.

For now, though? There is no such thing as being able to add/remove/modify the genes of an infant. People talk about it because it's a scary idea, the specter of "manufacturing" our descendants, of having such great power over people who aren't alive yet to accept or reject that power. But we can't actually DO it yet. Again: it MAY become possible in the future. I'd say it's actually likely that, many years from now, we will learn enough about how DNA works and how to change it that we could do this stuff. But we *can't* do it right now.

In fact, right now, our ability to genetically engineer ANYTHING is extremely clumsy. We pretty much just shove a brand new gene (taken from some other organism) into an organism's DNA. It doesn't always work the way you want--because other genes can get in the way. For example, it gives you stuff like this genetically engineered "blue" rose:

Kinda...disappointingly purple, rather than a rich blue, right? That's because they took the "blue" gene--which roses don't have--from a pansy. Pansy petals aren't very acidic, while rose petals are much more acidic. The blue pigment from the pansy gene is sensitive to acid, degrading it, so that it doesn't quite show as strong as it should. Also, the original strain of rose used was naturally a deep burgudy-red color; the scientists altering the rose made another change to its genes, trying to "turn off" the red-pigment gene (rather, they tried to prevent a gene that makes a specific protein which is critically necessary for the rose to make its red color). But they didn't perfectly turn off that gene--it still works, just a little bit. That means the produced rose DOES have blue pigment in it...but less than they wanted...and also has red pigment in it, which they didn't want...so it ended up purple.

In other cases, scientists have stuck the "make stuff that glows" gene into fish, so the fish glow in the dark. But unlike the original organism, this glowy stuff spreads throughout the new fish's body, rather than focused in specific spots. That sort of thing can happen when you just "insert" new genes into a creature that already exists. And at present, it's VERY hard to just "remove" genes that are there. Most of the time, the only thing you can do is add new genes--new genes that mess up the function of bad genes are (at present) the only way to "remove" a gene's effects.

[Cloning]

Sorry to bring up this topic, but it kinda made me curoius, but I didn't have the time to find arguments on it, my generalk nowledge being rather limited. And my english is far from being perfect, and I'm terribly lazy at reading lenghty posts... I truely apologise.... but I'll stick with a few questions instead anyway...

So Dolly the Sheep was born in the 1990s ? So when was decided the first moratorium ? I heared the scientists hold back on cloning for safety reasons (well, no wonder...) And what about 1975 ? Is there some link with genetic modification ?

And a more recent topic, what do you know about designed babies ? Like those telomere, stem genes.... I don't know much about biology and I use to catch things better when someone explains me than just readging at wikipedia...

I'm not sure I understand some of your questions. Yes, it is correct that Dolly was born in the 90s, specifically July 5, 1996.

I'm not sure what you mean by "moratorium"--there are still scientists testing, and practicing, cloning today. Cloning is quite common in small/"less-advanced" creatures, but progress is slow on improving the technique for more "advanced" organisms. It's currently possible to get a clone of a dog or cat in the United States, for example. Specifically human cloning, in the specific sense of "reproductive cloning" (cloning with the intention of producing a new, fully viable organism), has been banned in a large number of nations; the United States has had laws against it (such as federal funding for reproductive cloning experiments) since at least 1997 and possibly earlier.

I'm not sure what 1975 in specific is supposed to mean; however, according to this timeline of achievements in cloning, the first "mammalian embryo created by nuclear transfer" occurred in that year. This means that biologists first demonstrated that it was possible to take a nucleus from one mammal cell (in this case, it came from a rabbit embryo) and insert it into a different cell that had had its nucleus removed (in this case, a rat embryo cell), and have that embryonic cell grow and divide into many more cells. This embryo was not implanted into a mother; it was probably terminated after proving that the embryo was growing.

There is not, as far as I know, any special link between cloning and genetic modification. The two can be used together, but research on cloning does not necessarily need to be research on genetic modification. Similarly, research on genetic modification doesn't have to have anything to do with cloning.

"Designed babies" is a misnomer, as there is no such actual thing. The closest you can get to "designer babies" is embryo selection. With embryo selection, a lab takes a woman's egg cells and sperm cells from a man (with consent, of course). They then fertilize the egg cells with some of the man's sperm--LOTS of egg cells get fertilized. Dozens, sometimes hundreds of embryos are produced. Then, the scientists take a DNA sample from the embryos, and freeze them (so they won't die while the long process of DNA testing is done). Once all of the embryos have been tested, the scientists attempt to determine the meaningful genetic markers present in those embryos. The prospective parents can then try to select a specific embryo, from that set, which has certain desirable characteristics, or avoids undesirable ones. Embryo selection is one possible answer to genetically inherited diseases; even affected parents can, sometimes, get lucky and have a child that doesn't have the disease, and embryo selection basically lets them buy hundreds of tickets to try to help them "win the lottery." Once the parents pick a particular embryo, it is implanted into the woman's uterus; if it takes, and no complications occur, she will then give birth to the resulting child. The other embryos may be destroyed, but the contract agreement for many labs like this allows them to keep the embryos for research purposes, or to sell to other organizations (such as research hospitals).

The important thing, here, is that embryo selection CANNOT add genes that the couple does not have. So, for example, if the two parents don't have any genes for red hair, it's not possible for them to choose an embryo that has red hair genes. To do that, they would have to ADD genes, which does not happen in this technique. On the other hand, if one of the parents has curly hair, it may be possible to select an embryo that is more likely to have curly hair than straight hair. (As with all genetic things, there is always some chance for the actual result to be different from what you expected.) So, because you CANNOT add ANYTHING to these embryos, it is a mistake to call them "designer" or "designed" babies--no "design" occurs, only picking from embryos you COULD have had purely by chance.

Telomeres don't matter for "designer babies" (embryo selection), because embryo selection works with completely natural, unmodified, and non-cloned embryos--they have all the telomeres a "normal" baby would have, because they ARE "normal" babies that just were fertilized in a lab and put into the mother's uterus later.

"Stem genes" isn't a term I'm familiar with. Stem cells are a specific type of cell, specifically, they are cells that can "infinitely rejuvenate." More specifically, stem cells are the "mother cells" that produce all of the other cells that make up our bodies. So, for example, you have a layer of specifically *skin* stem cells, deep below your skin. These are "adult" stem cells: they are already "locked" into being a specific category of cells, in this case, skin cells. Blood stem cells, on the other hand, are found in bone marrow, and can become any kind of blood cell (red, white, etc.) There are "adult" stem cells in most organs of your body: your liver, your lungs, your brain. These cells are what allow you to continue making new cells to replace the old ones. If you didn't have these "adult" stem cells, you wouldn't live more than a few years--your "regular" body cells would age too much and start dying off.

There is another kind of stem cell, however: "embryonic" or "pluripotent" stem cells. "Embryonic" specifically means a stem cell that came from an embryo--a not-yet-developed, but fertilized, organism. (A fetus is an embryo that has developed a little inside a female organism's uterus--in humans, at least 8 weeks.) All embryonic stem cells are "pluripotent"--they have the ability to change themselves into ANY kind of cell that organism might have--they aren't "locked in" the way adult stem cells are. It is possible to make non-embryonic cells turn into pluripotent cells, but it's difficult and may not be medically safe yet (studies have shown that these "induced pluripotent cells" can become cancerous.) As I'm sure you're aware, the use of actual embryonic cells is very controversial.

[A degree of "objectivity" on things considered "subjective"]

What we tend to call objectivity when it comes to art is more to do with technique and composition in accordance to rules about how that particular artform or genre functions. That is, "X novel succeeds at using Y literary devices to reinforce the theme of Z". These are things that we can analyse according to the rules, thus reach a logical conclusion, and therefore agree on, which is why we call them objective. However, in reality, that's not really objective. If we all agreed the world was flat, it would not be objectively true that the world was flat.

I suspect that the actual contention, here, is that subjective statements are dependent on sense data. Then the argument becomes, more or less, "because subjective statements can only happen after you collect information about the world, they must have something in common with other statements based on information about the world, e.g. objective statements." But this is a mistaken understanding of what it means for a statement to be "objective" or "subjective." More on that later.

Subjectivity ultimately boils down to "things we disagree on".

This is also a mistaken understanding of what "objective" and "subjective" statements are. So--what is meant by these things?

Firstly, "subjective" and "objective" are generally understood to only apply to statements. It doesn't make sense to refer to an objective object or a subjective entity--people, places, and things can't be subjective, but things you say about people, places, or things can be. Also, some statements can be neither subjective nor objective (for example, commands e.g. "Run away!" typically aren't either kind of statement, and expletives may or may not be). So the two categories may or may not be mutually exclusive, but they're definitely not jointly exhaustive: that is, I haven't yet given a reason why something couldn't be BOTH objective AND subjective at the same time, but I have given an example of a statement that is NEITHER objective NOR subjective.

Secondly, "subjective" statements are not simply statements that people disagree about. As an example, consider unsolved problems in math or physics, such as the Riemann Hypothesis, the "P = NP" question, or string theory. The statements of mathematics are as objective as statements can get, since they follow by logic from the definitions of the terms and entities involved, but mathematicians are not in perfect agreement about whether the Riemann Hypothesis (which could be summed up as, "this important equation only returns 0 when you put in numbers that lie on a specific line") is true or false. But the fact is, it can only be true or false, it can't be both, and it can't be simply a matter of opinion as to whether it is true or false.

So, what then ARE subjective and objective statements? I would argue that a subjective statement is one that expresses a value judgment about something, in addition to describing other properties an entity may have. An objective statement, on the other hand, does not contain any value judgments, while still attempting to describe the properties of an entity. This would be why commands are neither objective nor subjective: commands do not say something about any entities. (I'll note, here, that it is possible to parse commands into such statements, but doing so involves a pretty heavy change in their syntactic structure; I'll discuss that a bit later.) It's also why an expletive may neither be objective nor subjective. Consider "fuck you!" or "God dammit!" In both cases, a subject is indicated ("you" or "it," where "it" is understood to be the situation at hand), but neither one says anything about WHO or WHAT that subject is, instead acting to express the emotions (typically anger) of the speaker.

A statement that is not a value judgment, but does describe the features of an object, could be something like, "This ball is shiny." "Shiny" is a property objects can have, the property of reflecting incident light, rather than absorbing it. It's even possible to have qualifiers on such a statement, e.g. "This ball is very shiny" would indicate something that reflects close to 100% of light incident to its surface, or "this rod is almost straight" would indicate that a casual observation would not demonstrate that it fails to have the property "straight" (adhering to a single geometric line), but a close examination would indicate that it does. Thus, it is possible, in some cases, to have a qualified objective statement--though it is not always possible, e.g. it makes little sense to say that, for example, a single statement is "slightly" true (e.g. the Riemann Hypothesis can only be either true or false, not "slightly" true or "very" false). Thus, these example statements--"This ball is (very) shiny" or "This rod is (almost) straight"--are objective.

A value judgment, on the other hand, goes beyond the limits of the (in general, physically determined) properties of an object. One possible way that can happen is with the "is/ought" distinction: violence is destructive, therefore you ought not to be violent; cheese is nutritious (or "possesses nutrients"), therefore you ought to eat cheese. Another way it can happen is by making claims about the "nature" or "significance" of a property an object has. For example, "That apple is a beautiful red." Without the qualifier "beautiful," it would be an objective statement (which could be parsed as "that apple predominantly reflects light at wavelengths between 620 nm and 750 nm"); however, by adding that particular qualifier, we are now not merely saying that it reflects a particular kind of light waves, but that it is good or pleasing, or some other evaluative word, that the apple reflects that kind of light in its particular way. In the "is/ought" case, we are going from facts to "obligations" of some sort; in the "beautiful red" case, we are assigning value to particular physical properties. Both cases are examples of what is studied in ethics, the philosophical discipline about values--what they are, what they should be, why we should care about them, etc.

Earlier, I mentioned that it was possible to parse commands (and perhaps even expletives) as a form of subjective statement. To do so, you'd turn something like "fuck you!" into "you should behave differently, because your actions make me angry!", or into "it is bad that you behave the way you do!" But like I said, this is a rather heavy transformation of the original statement, seeming to add a lot of extra ideas that are not really part of the expression itself. Commands work similarly (e.g. turning "Run away!" to "it is dangerous, therefore you should run away!" or "it is safer to run away!")

The problem here is that it's quite easy for someone to be a jerk and simply reject the constructed notions of objectivity (what we agree on) and claim it's all subjective (which it technically is). Eliminating all frames of reference or points of common understanding only really serves to completely eliminate meaningful exchanges however, it's like deciding the definitions of words are different and speaking in your own language made up of words other people recognise to mean different things. One has to spend time learning every individual's own syntax to even have any sort of discussion. As such, "practical subjectivity" leans more towards describing things outside of the "agreed upon" objectivity. The study of the arts functions as a way to enable better common understanding of ideas.

This is not, really, a matter of subjectivity vs. objectivity, but rather a matter of what makes for effective communication. Language is a game we play, with the goal of communicating, of transmitting meaning. It is possible--and sometimes desirable!--to challenge the rules of that game, because the rules are arbitrary. But "arbitrary" and "subjective" are not at all the same thing! At the same time, it is also possible to use this fact (that the rules are arbitrary, and therefore open to being changed) to try to prevent the game from being successfully played at all. For people who wish to successfully play the game of language, this is usually quite frustrating. There is no need to "learn every individual's own syntax" (I don't even know for sure what that means, but it's not relevant here, as syntax is the form of a statement; what you really want is the semantics, the "content" of the statement). You just need to be aware that not everyone plays the language-game by the same rules you do, so if you wish to successfully play it, you need to think about whether you're trying to play "the same game" as the other person. Or, to use an analogy, we're not going to have a very successful card game if I'm playing by the rules of five-card stud poker, and you're playing by the rules of blackjack.

The part of your post talking about a comparison of a high effort masterpiece compared to a scrawl can be put this way; which objectively takes more effort, even at maximum efficiency? This helps to give some objective value to one over the other, assuming that you agree that large achievements are more venerable than small ones.

Yeah, I'm not particularly compelled by the "effort-efficiency" argument. Particularly when there are many kinds of "effort," that cannot be so clearly attached to the physical properties of the work but which are still salient facts about the situation. E.g. which is "better" (note: a value-judgment word!), a detailed portrait made by a highly-educated, wealthy/famous artist in order to make a living (high effort in execution, minimal effort in displaying it), or a rough-and-tumble collage made by a poor, minority artist with minimal education, who is trying to challenge both the rigid ideas of what "art" is allowed to be, and the received wisdom about her or his ethnic group (far less effort in execution, but enormous effort in displaying it)? Is Shakespeare, whose plays were mostly stories written by other people that he re-wrote or fanciful interpretations of British history, a lesser writer than (say) J.R.R. Tolkien, who poured his unsurpassed expertise in European languages and mythology into writing one of the most detailed fictional worlds ever made? Or how about Harry Potter, for which J.K. Rowling has literally an entire room full of notes and extra materials?

Because by that standard, J.R.R. Tolkien should be the one we read in literature classes--it required both dramatically more effort, and if you go by word count and include the appendices, Tolkien's works are definitely bigger than Shakespeare's non-poetry works (though without the appendices, they're slightly smaller). Certainly the Harry Potter series--JUST the main books, not any of the side-projects like the magic bestiary or the Dumbledore-annotated "Tales of Beedle the Bard"--outpace Shakespeare, by some 200k words. Good luck convincing a literature professor that Harry Potter represents an "objectively better" achievement than the collected works of Shakespeare.

Averages, averages can make something that is subjective have varying degrees of objectivity. If the majority of people look at something and say it's good then with a certain degree of objectivity you can say something is good and it not be an entirely subjective statement. Van Gogh is a good example. By today's standard he's regarded as a good artist right? He never really received recognition in his own time, but his works clearly didn't change after he died when he started to get recognition. So what changed? Merely people's views on his art changed. Take a television show, taste in television is pretty subjective, but you can measure the 'quality' of a program by the number of viewers it's getting, if few people are tuning in then the show is 'bad' even if those people watching it like the show on the other hand a show with many viewers can be considered 'good' because it's more successful than the whatever other shows it's competing against and that's nothing more than a collective consensus of subjective views to form an objective measure of grading them.

Uh...no, averages don't allow us to turn value judgments into non-value-judgment statements. They can let us make certain new kinds of statements--objective statements about the proportion of people that hold a certain view, or about the rates of change of opinions or the like. But those are not, in themselves, viewpoints or opinions. They're one level more abstracted than that. And, as I said before, "agreement" cannot be equated to "objectivity," because people can disagree about the answer to a difficult-but-objective question, and possible to have near-universal agreement about subjective things, such as whether a particular chemical compound "smells bad," like sulfur dioxide (the stuff that makes natural gas "stinky," since natural gas is normally odorless).

As for the TV ratings thing, that's again not actually a statement about the quality of the work--it's a statement about the popularity of a work. As you yourself just argued, popularity is not, and cannot be, a measure of quality because popularity can change over time. What ratings do is exactly what you said they do, they communicate the number of viewers. This isn't done to check quality; in fact, the ratings system has nothing to do with quality at all. It's all about advertising money. Companies pay television providers, e.g. Comcast or ABC or whomever, for commercial time. The value of that time depends, rather significantly, on how many people will watch--and, these days, on how many people will act on having seen the commercial, which is related to the interests of the viewer. Thus it is useful for broadcast companies to know how many people are watching shows at any given time, and why shows with poor ratings are dumped, even if they are of great quality. It is also useful for broadcast companies to know the demographics of the viewers for particular shows--as an example, science-fiction shows tend to draw more young males, while soap operas tend to draw more female viewers.

All these things--popularity, efficiency, effort, quantity, etc.--can easily be objective properties of the work in question. But for any one you pick, it's pretty easy to find a counterexample, where a work that measures higher on that scale is of lower quality than one that measures lower on that scale. The philosopher G.E. Moore would question this by applying the "open question argument," e.g. "I know that this work is popular, but is it good?" This should be contrasted with a question like, "I know he's a bachelor, but is he unmarried?" The second sentence is completely nonsensical: in order to "know" that someone is a bachelor, you must know that he is unmarried--that is inherent in the accepted definition of the word (unless, as above, we are intentionally trying to break the game of language--which makes the discussion pointless anyway). However, the former does not seem to have this problem, and seems to be a valid (albeit difficult) question; certainly it doesn't have the deep logical problems entailed by the bachelor/unmarried question. How is it that we can know that the objective quality (such as popularity, or pleasantness, or desirability) MUST entail the evaluative quality (such as goodness, or wiseness, or usefulness)?

[The Pairing Thread]

Pretty much. Certain skills help a lot more than others when grinding, so you want to pick them up early for minimum hassle. GF is one of the best for that, and you don't have to go out of your way for it either (from Sumia, at least).

I'm no expert, but I'd say GF is probably the best. The only one I can think of that would rival it is Veteran, since it actually increases XP gain (particularly the minimum). I personally rate GF higher, though, because while a number of the kids can't get it, the number that can is a lot more than the 1-2 that can inherit Veteran (Morgan, and whatever the Avatar's other child is).

Just out of curiosity, what other skills would you rate among the best? Dual Support+ perhaps?

[Actual act of rebellion in America]

You haven't even mentioned the horrendously awful media coverage where multiple prominent media sites had fits over an Ammon Bundy impersonator on Twitter.

How on earth is it that additional sides can be added to this trainwreck, and yet every single one is just as stupid as the ones that came before?

I just...I don't even. EVERYTHING about this is moronic. The media coverage--both what they say and what they don't say. The "protesters" and their completely off-kilter response to a legit problem. The federal judge, for re-sentencing people that had already served their prison sentences and returned home. The feds themselves, for blowing off small-town issues of land usage. The arsonists, for somehow thinking that random shlubs setting fire in the forest--rather than trained professionals--is a good goddamn idea. Commenters, focusing on completely irrelevant issues like gun control, which have no legal bearing whatsoever on the case.

I cannot even wrap my brain around the fact that literally everyone engaging with this situation is wrong! This is...just...I think I'm done paying any attention to this issue. Unless shooting starts, which would just make the "protesters" wronger than wrong, I'm checked out of this. Nothing good or interesting can come of it at this point--because any new developments are just going to be another reflection in the Funhouse Mirror Maze Of Ultimate Stupidity.

[Actual act of rebellion in America]

Is this how far this conversation has sunk? If you want to debate gun control, or religious motivations for political choices, wouldn't it be better to take either of them to its own thread?

As it stands, it sounds to me like the conversation about an "actual act of rebellion in America" has run its course. There are idiots on both sides (seriously, wtf is up with you, federal judge? They served their sentences and had already been released! seriously, wtf is up with you, protestors/insurrectionists? an armed takeover of a federal building is NOT the solution to your problem!) and the whole thing is obviously a debacle from every angle.

Beyond that, it's just being used as a proxy for other issues.

[Actual act of rebellion in America]

i'm ok with questioning a source. not "trusting" it? that means that she actively avoids reading huffpost, which is fine, but i'd like to know why. hence, "why"

Guess I'm just not sure what the difference is between "questioning" a source and "not trusting" it. If you "trust" a source, what would make you "question" its statements? It seems to me that having questions about the accuracy, specificity, or breadth of a news source is how we define "not trusting" that source. Sure, there's a spectrum involved, but if you read enough articles from a particular news source that you later learn were inaccurate/inspecific/over-broad/over-narrow, I can understand having a blanket stance of, "Okay, I've seen that <news outlet A> has said something. What are their sources? Has anyone else talked about this?" And that, in my opinion, is directly equivalent to "not trusting" that news outlet--their output is questionable. And it just seems...I dunno, kind of a waste of time to ask "why," since the most likely answer you'll get is exactly what I said: "I saw one too many 'wrong' [inaccurate, inspecific, over-broad, over-narrow] articles from them."

[Actual act of rebellion in America]

why

http://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famous-liberty-safety-quote-lost-its-context-in-21st-century

Everyone has the right to question news sources if they wish. No news organization can claim to be utterly free of bias. Multiple attestation is considered utterly essential in numerous disciplines of the humanities. Why is it so weird to want it for contemporary events as well? Particularly when it's so easy to trim a fact here, add an adjective there, and transform the meaning or significance of an event--whether or not it actually happened. Edit: Note that I am not actually saying anything for or against the Huffington Post. I read their articles. I also read other articles, and try to find multiple, distinct sources for just about everything. It's simply good practice.

The NPR thing about the quote is very interesting, and I'll remember it for future discussions. But, again, in this case, it is completely unimportant. The current Constitution of the United States provides citizens with the right to keep and bear arms. What that means, how it works, etc. is certainly a worthy topic of discussion...in a different thread. That protracted debate has no bearing on this discussion, because it's about a 'rebellion'/'insurrection'/'sedition'/'occupation'/'liberation'/whatever you want to call it--and the fact that they possessed guns is legally irrelevant.

[Actual act of rebellion in America]

Having dug a little deeper and read both some sections of the USC (United States Code--basically "US federal law"), Supreme Court cases, and legal analysis on the subject, it would appear that the correct charge in this case is probably sedition. Sedition is a conspiracy to disrupt or upset the normal operation of the government. In this case, the armed occupying group has unequivocally employed a conspiracy (many members working together to plan an illegal action over an extended period of time), whose goal was disruption of a particular government building (the headquarters for a wildlife preserve). Since they are not trying to destroy or eliminate the Oregon or US governments, their actions cannot be "treason" as specifically defined in the US constitution (though I will admit, they are closer than I thought to the "levying war" thing).

[Was Hitler a great leader?]

Hitler was not a good leader even if you ignore his genocidal policies. His economic policies nearly ruined the country (the idea of an "economic recovery" under Hitler is a myth), and as a military strategist he was comically bad. Stalin was too, but he at least was able to realise this, and it was when he backed off and let his generals do their jobs that the Soviets actually started winning battles. Fortunately for us, Hitler never learnt that lesson. The British actually cancelled a plot to assassinate Hitler for fear of someone actually competent taking control of Germany's war effort.

So yeah. Even if you ignore the fact that Hitler was a genocidal megalomaniac, he was not a great leader, or even a good leader. In fact, he was kind of shit.

Actually, at least in the early to mid 30s, Germany was making some very meaningful movement, economically speaking. Employments was way up; industrial capacity was way up; real (not nominal) wages paid to workers were way up. By many standards, it was a recovering economy. Not recovered, but recovering.

Then Hitler dismissed his actually very talented economic minister (the aforementioned Schacht) because said minister told him, point-blank, "Germany isn't ready for a war, and you'll eliminate all of the economic progress we've made." The only thing that sustained Germany by the midpoint of the war was the fact that it could scavenge resources from recently-acquired territory (the Sudetenland, Poland, France)--and by the time the Allies rallied, Germany's economy and industry were in the toilet.

So, you're right: Hitler was a godawful leader economically and militarily. However, at least with his initial rise to power, he had an excellent pool of advisers--economic, military, political, scientific. As Blah said, it reads like a dream team. Hitler just had his head so far up his own ass by the late 30s, he began to ignore them, or worse, dismiss them for far less talented yes-men (which Göring eventually proved to be--making promises he couldn't actually fulfill). *Hitler's* policy did absolutely nothing to improve Germany's native economy; his political maneuverings and annexations only served to temporarily patch its weaknesses. The Third Reich government, in general, did in fact actually make SOME economic progress--which Hitler almost immediately squandered.

[Actual act of rebellion in America]

They are fighting against the federal government. That is treason in spirit if not letter.

It would be the best way to deal with it. The other option would be to storm the place, which would cause a ridiculous amount of deaths. Another, more hilarious, option, is to bring in a tank, wait for them to waste all their ammo, and taser them all.

The terrorists do not have hostages here.

As soon as we start defining "treason in spirit, if not in letter," we have abandoned the rule of law. What they are doing is not treason. They are not aiding nor abetting the enemies of the United States. They are US citizens, claiming to refuse the authority of the United States government. Refusing to accept the authority of the government is not, and never has been, the same as treason. At times, in the past, it has been called things like "sedition" (incitement of discontent or rebellion against a government) or, as you noted, "rebellion." For it to be treason, these people would need to be seeking the (total) overthrow or termination of the federal government, and their actions reflect neither capability nor special desire (for the moment) to do that.

I absolutely believe what they did was wrong. Changing political institutions by force does not produce stable effects. But, by that same token, trying to suppress dissent by force doesn't resolve the reason for that dissent, and often inflames things further.

These guys feel that justice has been abrogated by their government, and they have some reason to feel upset. I'd be pretty upset too if I'd already served and completed a jail sentence, and then a judge said, "oh, no no, you HAVEN'T DONE ENOUGH TIME YET, now take another sentence twice as long as the one you already served!" Does that make their response correct? Not in the least. But unless and until government representatives acknowledge the grievances--recognizing that "acknowledgement" doesn't mean you have to do any particular thing about them, and regardless of the current situation or how it shakes out in the end--the problem isn't going to go away. And executing some guys for holing up in a relatively infrequently used, far-from-civilization building* is taking the absolute strongest response you possibly can, which is precisely what these guys are protesting against. Are you sure you want to make LEGITIMATE martyrs, people who died for the cause of "stopping the federal government from handing out massive, disproportionate punishments"? Oh, and don't forget, this isn't just two or three people; according to the articles I've read, there's well over a dozen, possibly multiple dozens of people participating. The furor over summarily executing 20+ people for this would be immense.

Again, I cannot stress this enough: what these people are doing is wrong, and they should be tried and sentenced for it. But automatically leaping to the death penalty is an EXTREMELY unwise choice.

Plus, if these people are gonna be tried, it'll be here in Oregon (where I live). There's been a gubernatorial moratorium (no pun intended) on capital punishment here since 2011. No new death convictions can be handed out by Oregon courts until that moratorium is removed, and even if it were, Oregon doesn't assign a death penalty for treason; the constitution itself doesn't specify any particular penalty for treason, and the body of state laws (the Oregon Revised Statutes) explicitly states that the punishment shall be "imprisonment for life":

Treason

(1) A person commits the crime of treason if the person levies war against the State of Oregon or adheres to its enemies, giving them aid and comfort.

(2) No person shall be convicted of treason unless upon the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act or upon confession in open court.

(3) A person convicted of treason shall be punished by imprisonment for life. [1971 c.743 §217]

(And, as an aside: the Oregon definition of "treason" doesn't include the activities occuring here. Occupying a federal building, especially if it were largely or entirely empty before the occupation, is not "lev[ying] war against the State of Oregon," nor against the federal government, and there are no "enemies" to adhere to or give "aid and comfort." Treason, under any legal definition of the term, does not and cannot apply. The US constitution gives an essentially identical definition of "treason," and having investigated further, it appears "levying war" requires specific intent to attack the nation/state in question, which has not happened in this case, not yet anyway. So it would literally be an unconstitutional charge to claim these people had committed treason, as of the current moment; this could change, but has not changed yet.)

It's a good thing that they don't have hostages--that would make it a pretty unambiguously bad situation, and WOULD call for faster, more drastic action. But since the public safety risk is fairly minimal--at least at present--a measured response is far, far more appropriate at this time.

---

All of this talk of whether or not personal armament is a natural right or not is pointless: at this time, in this nation, it IS a right listed in the highest law of the land, so the fact that they possess weaponry is not a crime that can be prosecuted. And any political body that actually respects the rule of law recognizes that ex post facto criminal charges and punishments are a deep and fundamental abrogation of justice. Even Iran's constitution forbids such things!

Instead of getting mired in a debate that literally does not and cannot affect the outcome of this case, focus instead on the ACTUAL illegal activity happening here. They have illegally occupied government property (presumably trespassing, resisting arrest, possibly assault with a deadly weapon if they evicted anyone on the premises); they have threatened with violence anyone who attempts to approach or remove them; their statements indicate this was a long-term, planned affair, and thus premeditated; etc. At this point, their guilt for the vast majority of these actions is unquestionable, so the bigger questions (if/when this goes to trial) will be how they conducted themselves, that is, whether there are any "mitigating" or "aggravating" circumstances.

There's also a much bigger irony involved here: These individuals--protesters, terrorists, insurrectionists, revolutionaries, whatever you wish to call them--are claiming to wish to oppose the authority of the federal government...by exercising a right provided to them by that very government. That's what really gets me about this whole debacle.

[Race (and how it flipflops)]

It's strange how they thought about it.

In my knowledge, it's the people from African that started migrated across the world, before became the local populations.

Like I said. Terrible "research." Archaeology and anthropology only came into meaningful existence in the 20th century, and suffered from decades of incredibly stupid received ideas being enshrined as good "science." For example, American archeologists legitimately believed that the Mound Builders couldn't possibly have been Native Americans, because they "weren't advanced enough" to have done such things. Explanations ranged from Norse immigrants to the Mormon theory of "lost" Jewish tribes, to outlandish things like a lots species of giants or (I kid you not) Atlanteans. The "Moorish Science" group, a Black nationalist (and possibly supremacist) group, even believed that the Mound Builders weren't just Atlanteans, but Black Atlanteans.

There's a lot of bizarre, weird, and sometimes just plain stupid ideas that lodged in, and poisoned, the public consciousness on many of these issues for decades, sometimes over a century. Darwin's theory of evolution was perverted into "Social Darwinism" (something Darwin himself never explicitly supported, nor explicitly refuted--he was anti-slavery, but doesn't seem to have cared either way about "eugenics" or the like.) The budding sciences of archaeology and anthropology often had their young legs cut out from under them, because people simply could not accept certain ideas (like the idea that Native Americans were capable of performing complex works of engineering, political association, or ecological organization). Other sciences, nearly as young, such as linguistics and psychology, were often used to legitimize ideas we now consider abhorrent (such as "master race" ideology) or shameful (such as "hysteria" as a female mental illness linked to a malfunctioning uterus).

And in all likelihood? There are still bizarre, weird, or just plain stupid ideas lodged in our current public consciousness, that people a century or two from now will look back on and shake their heads, appalled that people could be that awful. It's part of the human condition--both the existence of these stupidities, and the constant fight to overcome them.