🎓 Doc Freemo 🇳🇱 @freemo@qoto.org

@stux Your points are valid, im just trying to confirm them. What was the website, maybe that will help me make sense of it.

Im sure your right, i mean there were enopugh other red flags of course.

@stux UltraGames HK is the Hong Kong branch of Ultragames which is a Konami subsidiary.. Basicaly the guys who built the original NES and SNES and many of its games. Most of them wouldnt be on steam though as they are all retro games from the 90s.

@stux That may be, though if they can just make up a big company name like UltraGames. To give you some context UltraGames are the guys who published all the famous retro SNES games and before. So they are **very** well known.

That said im not disagreeing with you, im just curious. Do you have any links so i can dig a little deeper, im curious now.

@louis

While there would need to be a conversation around that, for me the bigger challenge is just quantifying suffering.

Imagine some future world where we can scan someones brain and objectively measure and quantify their happiness. I would simply take the average over each persons lifetime, using the geometric average, and then would take the average across society as a RMS average.

Obviously when you dont have sci-fi type brain scan devices it becomes a far less precise process to actually quantify it, and therein lies the real problem IMO.

@Ponygirl @bonifartius

@stux I went and looked on Steam, where paradis is pushed, and followed who steam lists as the publisher, which is UltraGames and a very reputable publisher... So im kinda confused, what company website are you talking about?

@elijah

Im so confused, what website exactly? The publisher according to Steam is Ultra Games, the ultragames website has been registered since the start of the internet almost... Can you be specific cause im not seeing what you are seeing.

@stux

@Ponygirl By the way, new thread (for tomorrow). I noticed you are a speech therapist. I recently noticed, through my own observations, that accent acquisition seems to occur **before** language acquisition. I notice this in babies who cant form words yet, but also in animals who havent quite evolved speech yet but can communicate, for example I have noticed it in both cats and dogs.

Any thoughts on this?

@Ponygirl

The objective morality bit seems to be a hot topic anytime i bring it up with anyone... most people seem to have an almost visceral reaction and disagreement to the notion that morality can be objective rather than a pure cultural construct.

I argue its both, while on the one hand the measure of morality is objective (quantity of suffering) ont he other hand what will cause suffering is very much influenced by culture. If a culture covers women up (like muslim cultures) then forcing a woman to wear very little would cause most women to suffer more so than forcing them not to. In a society where women usually expose more like west societies the opposite is true, most women would suffer more to have to cover up. Basically, whatever feels normal for your culture, usually there will be some degree of suffering to depart from that. But my whole argument is that the suffering needs to be measured in aggregate and not just the emotional component.

Anyway im rambling, have a good night, it was a pleasure.

@bonifartius @louis

@Ponygirl

> I think we're in agreement about capitalism. It has the capacity to being a thriving economic system; however, it must be governed to avoid where we're at now-

I assume you mean USA's capitalist government, as opposed to europe, which is also capitalist of course but with their own take?

> a guilded era where economic injustice is proving Dr. King to have been spot on over a half century ago.

We certainly have quite a few economic issues that could be address. I'd imagine the devil is in the details so im not sure if we agree on the points (since we didnt dig that deep) but i certainly agree on the principle that there are economic issues that need addressing, many of which revolve around poverty and prosperity.

> Just wondering, your statement about morality and law enforcement, do you mean laws should be enforced morally, or that laws should legislate morality itself?

My view is that law should enforce the "objective morality" as a guiding principle. When I saw objective morality I mean "That which reduces suffering to its utmost" which to me is really all morality is, a societal agreement on some rules designed to minimize the overall suffering of society, to effectively minimize unhappiness and maximize happiness. So I think all laws should be designed with that principle in mind.

@bonifartius @louis

@stux

Seems you made some mistakes. I cant speak to all the points but just did some research ont he company out of curiosity. They appear to exist, and the USA division was formed in 1988 and have sold games ever since then. The company that made paradise is their Hong Kong office. They have made tons of famous games.

@bonifartius

I think you may just be particularly senative to anti-capitalist discussion because so often it devolves into nonsense, and I do get that. Might I suggest we give ponygirl the benefit of the doubt here that it wont go that far based on how reasonable she has been in debate so far?

That said while, as you know, I have no issues with capitalism, and even think its good when implemented properly, I kinda agree with ponygirl on this one. While you are right that it is perfectly ok for the wealthy to do more or have more than the poor, I dont think that should carry over to the law. The law is one place everyone should be equal, and being wealthy should not make you immune to some laws while the poor not. Laws should be about morality, and enforcing it. Something doesnt become right just because you have more money to get around the rules. Now I wouldnt blame the wealthy person, they are just working within the system. But it certainly is an indication that there is a failure in the law when that happens.

@Ponygirl @louis

@Ponygirl

Oh so sorry. I should have checked. I have a very bad habit of defaulting to "he" online for some reason, particularly if i dont know someone. IT can be very rude and not intentional though, my apologies. Ill try not to make that mistake again.

@bonifartius @louis

@Ponygirl

I too have enjoyed the respectful debate and so long as it remains respectful you are always welcome on my feed.

In Boni's defense im not sure she is ignoring class warfare so much as agreeing with you to an extent. At least thats how I read it. Like anything solved via threat of arrest is violence and cant solve this problem, so seems she at least agrees with you that outlawing abortion under threat of arrest is not the answer (though if i had to guess I suspect she might be against abortion morally).

@bonifartius @louis

@bonifartius

Just to be clear he is more than welcome on my threads. He has been nothing but polite and if he wants to look through my threads and jump in, so long as he remains respectful, it is more than welcome.

@Ponygirl @louis

@Ponygirl

You mean int he current system, in which case I agree. Obviously if it is blanket outlawed than those scenarios would still mean jail time, so in that scenario your point isnt valid, but with the current state it is entirely valid.

@bonifartius @louis

@evacide

That pretty much describes the last 8 years.. 4 more years of the same I guess. But I agree it is gonna keep getting worse.

@GreenFire

Assuming we are talking about a multifaceted discussion then id agree with that

@Ponygirl

I agree with this given the current situation where a person can just go get the procedure in some other state.

Though if it were a total ban, and even illegal to go out of your area to get one, then even the wealthy wouldnt be able to get an abortion. But thats not the case, so what we have right now what you are saying is certainly true, and a bit issue IMO.

@bonifartius @louis

@Ponygirl

> I believe the goal posts are moving here.

There are no goal posts here, that would presume an adversarial attempt to prove you wrong or me right, I dont engage in those conversations. This is an exploration of the topic and I expect the "goal posts" on both sides to move in the sense that as we each learn from the conversation that we adjust our position to match what we learn.

> Your original assertion was that atheism is faith-based and therefore a religion.

Happy to explain what happened, there, and you are right.

It will be more clear if we look at the two definitions for atheism:

1. a strong disbelief in the existence of a god or any gods

2. a lack of belief in the existence of a god or any gods

Originally I was using definition 1, which I am not refering to as non-agnostic atheism. I realized you were trying to assert exclusively #2, which I called agnostic atheism. Since I didnt care much to debate definitions and the substance of the discussion is more important I deferred debating which of those definitions were valid at all.

So while I understand that may incorrectly look like moving the goal posts it was in fact simply an attempt to use better clarifying language and avoid any debate on definitions themself.

> You can apply different shades of agnosticism to atheism all you want, it still is not faith-based

You are certainly welcome to make that case, but so far you have not made a counter point to that assertion. Please feel free to make that case if you wish.

> Also, have you ever heard of the concept that one can not prove a negative?

I most certainly have, it is one of the most widespread fallacies/myths you will hear people state. I am a professional research scientist so "proving things" is kinda my whole thing (scientific journals are pretty

Rather than get into all the technicals of why its a myth I will give you a very simple example that proves it by contradiction:

present you with a box, I claim "there is no full size american quarter in this box", this is clearly a negative. You can easily prove the negative to be true by opening the box, looking, and seeing there is no quarter in the box. Negatives absolutely can be proven, and they are proven all the time.

> I can not prove there isn't a teapot orbiting the sun. In fact, no one can.

Your language is misleading here. We can not prove a teapot is orbiting the sun **right now**. The reason for that is because the space is too vast and our equipment not sensative enough to detect it, not because it is an unprovable concept. It is perfectly reasonable to think that once technology reaches a sufficient point it would be trivial to scan the solar system and in fact prove that a teapot is not orbiting the sun. This in no way suggests negatives cant be proven, again, we prove negatives all the time in science.

@ryan