Many different things can cause similar movements, you could detect something pulling those atoms in 1 direction, and something else pushing them back at the edge of the pebble which is closest to earths center of gravity. But you would not know what is causing that pull, only from where it is coming and how strong it is.
PetjaY
Karma: 39
First you need to decide what gives utility points to you, which is a moral problem. I consider most computer programs to be sentient, with their work memory being sentience, i also see pain as just a bit of programming that makes creatures avoid things causing it, not different from some regulators i have programmed. Therefore i don´t care if fetuses are sentient or feel pain, so for me that does not affect the utility calculation. But most people do not agree.
You only need to have better information than average voter for your vote to improve result of election. Though then again, effect of 1 vote is usually so small that the rational choice would be to vote for whatever gives you more social status.
Universe seems to be doing that, only problem is that instead of us getting results we are only part of them.
Atleast Atlas Shrugged is written in a way that suggests cultishness. All good people are good at everything, good looking and always right. Enemies are stupid, wrong and ugly. There are no bad sides in good ideas or good sides in bad ideas.
“But can you have YOUR child, while eugenics prevent you from breeding? Not in genetic sense, but it seems deeply flawed to base parent-child relation simply on genetic code. It’s upbringing that matters. Adopted child is in any meaningful way YOUR child.”
Treating people not genetically your children as if they were is a big minus in our evolutionary game these days. It also helps bad behaviour (making children and letting others raise them), so i´d say that it manages to be bad both for yourself and population, though the second part depends on why the child was given for adoption.
In general improving gene pool would be a good idea, but finding collective solutions for it that don´t cause more bad than good seems hard. Also if our evolution gets rid of the heuristic that sex=children=good which isn´t working anymore and replaces it with something like “acts that lead to you children=good” we then get people spending their money smarter, which increases reproductive success of richer people who tend to be >average intelligent.
Science has much to say about morality. It can say which morals different groups of people have, what are probable causes for morals, and which morals are useful on an gene|individual|group|society|planet level.
To better understand why it is used imagine a map, going right is +, going left is -, going up is i, going down is -i. Turning left is multiplying by i, turning right is multiplying by -i. So i is used to calculate things where you need 2 dimensions.
The important question is not whether sweatshops are good, but what changes can be made, and will those changes make the world better or worse. So when considering if sweatshops should be banned, it is a very important argument that those working there have decided that the sweatshop is better than any alternative they have, and if you ban the sweatshop they will be worse off.