This is a terminological problem then, because many, many people argue "we" are neither civilized nor ruled by law. Furthermore, you could just write a law that says experimenting on serial killers is legal. You'd have to explain how that suddenly makes such a society uncivil, so either civility is the requirement or the law is the requirement, but not both.
So really, you're saying, "not according to our laws" which wasn't the question. It was a moral philosophical question, so your answer doesn't really address the question. It's not even on the same plane. Your answer is just a glib dismissal of the question's philosophical merit.
Sure, so we can't justify it based on our current laws. To change those laws is indirectly up to the people electing lawmakers. So it's up to people's opinion and how they view people who are convicted of serious serious crimes such as murder. Luckily, at least in the countries that I'm familiar with, people still mostly believe in rehabilitation and do not believe in any kind of eye for an eye punishment so I think we're good there. At least for a while.
I don't know how to bridge the gap here. I think I understand what you're saying. You're saying it's not okay because society has said it isn't. You agree with that.
The question is, why do you agree with that? Is it because society says so, or are you deriving that belief based on some principles. If so, what?
What is the underlying fundamental reason you believe it's not okay. I get the sense you think it's not okay to experiment on them, but I don't understand why you believe that. I don't believe you think that because other people think that in a democratic society. I get the sense that if society changed its mind and legalized it, I think you would still say it's not right. You'd go along with it, but you'd believe it is wrong.
Fair disclosure: I think it's wrong too. I am not disagreeing with your opinion, but I'm digging for the explanation you believe it. I think I know why I also believe it, but I don't want to explain why I do, because I think you're on to something, but you have to discover it within yourself.
I had the same thought! Dang repeats the mantra, "bring curiosity" and here is a very curious post being downvoted. Also, the whole point of the downvote is to "disagree" but it doesn't seem to be used that way. Also, down voting limits the ability of the person "disagreed with" to communicate and share their position, which empowers the mob.
And furthermore, even talking about this topic is "meta discussion" which is discouraged here.
What does that say here? Disagreement is suppressed and self-reflection is not appreciated.
Let's just really think about that philosophy. It's an algorithm destined to echo chamber. A lack of diversity of thought.
Do you actually remember this in real time? Do you remember at the beginning when everyone was wondering what to do and they said wear a mask and then they said not wear a mask and everyone around you was like, "What?? What is going on??"
And then a short while later they said wear a mask again. These things have real world ramifications. You can't just point to a snopes a year later and retain the context within which this trust destroying episode went down.
People have memories. They felt the frustration. They felt the betrayal.
And they have yet to recover from that. To dismiss that very real feeling of betrayal as "well, this is what snopes says" is rewriting history.
And, all of that comes on the heels of big tobacco, DDT, thalidomide, BPA, climate change, and then the new climate change, big pharma with their oxycontin and big medicine fleecing Americans and they won't even discuss medicare for all and we have to protect corporate profits over saving humanity?? Seriously??
And you dismiss all that with "science is a process."
Except the process has been completely dismissed as well. Science created the process that takes years to approve a new vaccine, all of that has been completely dismissed exactly when a brand new technology for creating vaccines has been created.
No part of this is science. This is politics. Period. 8 Months ago Kamala Harris herself said she would NOT get Trump's Vaccine.
And so now it's somehow a different vaccine that we should all get? Now folks who don't want to get Biden's vaccine are science deniers?
This. is. not. science.
This is politics and a lot of people are refusing to get the vaccine purely because it's politics and NOT science.
Did you watch Fauci get destroyed up there this week? He's a liar. Period.
And sometimes they have false memories. For example, regarding:
> 8 Months ago Kamala Harris herself said she would NOT get Trump's Vaccine.
What she said was that she would take the vaccine if the professionals said it was safe, not if Trump told her to take it [1]. A rather understandable level of skepticism given Trump's peddling of miracle cures such as hydroxychloroquine.
How would a scenario exist where Trump would say take it, but professionals wouldn't be also saying it? How would it even exist? Professionals invented it.
Okay dang, here's what I'm curious about. People walking around without a mask. How are they going to know who is vaccinated and who isn't? Say someone who isn't vaccinated is walking around without a mask. What is the officer's reasonable suspicion to stop them and ask for ID or ask for "papers?"
How will this be enforced? How are they going to stop all the non-vaccinated people from walking around without a mask?
Are they just wagging the dog with this because Fauci's in the hot seat?
It is a scientific fact that there will be more of it. It's called operant conditioning. If you reward behavior, you get more of it.
If you think it's about the ransom though, think bigger. Can you even imagine how many billions of dollars silicon valley is going to make off it? They just paid Microsoft dozens of billions for some AR glasses.
How much for some software to prevent cyber terrorism? How much did TSA get to secure planes? $8 Billion/yr.
$18 Billion for border protection.
How much for cyber border protection? $100 Billion? Where will it go? Google? Microsoft? Palantir? Facebook? Twitter? Amazon?
Trillions.
They haven't even gotten started. $5 Million is pennies. Rounding error.
You need time to differentiate, but the universe does not. The one and the one and the two of them are always here in the universe. You just need time to speak it. You need time to observe the difference between the neuronal pattern between an awareness of one and the other one and the two of them.
To have the one and the two in the first place grants spatial dimensions, to separate them. Otherwise you end up with a single point, or maybe not even that.
I can't get my head around how anyone can generate time (whether an illusion or not) just from spatial dimensions. If I have to assume spatial dimensions to get anywhere, can I also assume time?
These are just analogies, so let's just accept that first and foremost. Words are just a way for us to make sense of it, which we can't really do. Even math itself is just an approximation for reality.
But, in "this world," the one we "think about" time is the path between two simultaneously existing universes. The universe a minute ago still exists. The universe a minute from now exists already. Time is how we got here and will get there.
We aren't generating it. It's always here. It only exists when it is observed. You observing it makes it exist. That's the path. You haven't observed the universe an hour from now, so it doesn't exist yet, but that's only true in your mind. It's already here. It's there. All potential universes exist simultaneously.
Time isn't an illusion. It's a path. It's like the trail from your house to mine.
For a point to get from one point to another, it needs another dimension, a line. A line needs a plane. A plane needs a cube, a cube needs time, time needs... what? The fifth dimension. Through the fifth dimension, we can create paths from one time to another.
We just aren't there yet. We haven't observed that happening, but it's there. Always was, always will be.
I'm not sure the title is accurate. We've known about fires like this for well over a century. The military wondered if it could weaponize them to destroy the enemy.
The first real world use of such a weapon was in WWII when the USA firebombed Dresden with a quarter million incendiary bombs, decimating a city, sending a vortex of fire a mile into the air visible 500 miles away.
It traumatized Kurt Vonnegut for life and he wrote Slaughterhouse Five about it, among other sci-fi works.
I'm surprised the article didn't mention it, but it should be known. It might be a like a lot of the climate change stuff that thinks all this is new, but it's not. Makes ya wonder. Makes me wonder anyway.
The darkness of humanity scares me way worse than some wild fires which are natural and necessary for the cycle of life. We are control freaks to some degree and encroaching more into mother nature's territory.
Just because these things are having a bigger effect on human life, doesn't mean they haven't been around for a long time. There are more of us, so it's just math.
Every predator species exhausts the environment of prey. We've reached a tipping point for sure. We aren't immune to the laws of nature. Too many livestock will destroy their habitat eventually too. Too many foxes will eat all the rabbits. Keep thousands of birds confined to small spaces, they'll die of viral infections too.
We are animals too. We can over run our environment too. We've done it over and over. Just... now, there's nowhere left to go and we've created all these artificial boundaries around areas. Walling them off from natural migration. Koalas die that way. Deer and wolves die that way too. Artificial boundaries.
The atmosphere is a pretty hard stop. Sure, there's the moon and Mars, but there aren't many rabbits there either. Or potatoes.
You know I realized tonight, we have this natural instinct I think to get sick of ourselves. Forge ahead to new worlds. Get away from the oppressive people sapping us of our productivity and labor. We want to be free!
But there's no where left to go. And now we are stuck with ourselves. And we can't get along. Some people want to oppress and some people want to be free. And there's no where to go. So, there's going to be a fight.
It wasn't the leaders it was the followers. Or rather, those who refused to follow. No one followed up on the US leader's claim that it came from a lab. No, they said, "He said it so it's a lie!"
And they continue to say that. This isn't on Trump.
Yeah, just don't do GoF research. Or don't let it escape from a lab. Or, don't lie about it when it does. Or, contain it if it does. Or shut down travel outside the country if it does. Or, don't cripple Australia with a trade war if they suggest an investigation into the origins of the disease are warranted. Or don't cancel people if they wonder if maybe it didn't come from nature. Or, do the audits to verify the labs doing catastrophic research are doing it safely and properly. Or, don't sneak in funding for something that has already been declared a risk to human existence. Or, don't pay "non-profits" millions of dollars to pay enemy nations to do research into how to turn a virus into a bioweapon. Or value the health of the world over the profits of corporations.
I bet none of these ideas are in the report.
* read article *
Nope.
* reads report *
Oh, I got one: Waive IP rights to vaccines.
Their suggestion: Give the WHO more money. They'll do it better next time apparently.
I guarantee you, if China had said, "A bioweapon we were developing escaped the lab, lock everything down!"
Even if it weren't developed as a weapon (I think the current theory is they were researching possible coronavirus vaccines) the WHO shouldn't be so complacent in letting China control the investigation.
No authority does not imply they have to bend over and parrot governments' messages.
WHO could have simply requested permission to send an early investigation team, and if refused, warn the rest of the world that investigations were refused.
They could have been the canary in the coal mine and let other governments, who do have power, pressure the one that refuses to cooperate.
And by the way, the WHO is not an NGO. Its membership is open to all nation states, but exclusively for nation states, similarly to UN.
https://www.who.int/sidcer/links/en/
" World Health Organization
An inter-governmental organisation whose objective is the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health."
IBTimes quotes "The Australian" newspaper. (Murdoch)
"The Australian" quotes the book "The Unnatural Origin of SARS and New Species of Man-Made Viruses as Genetic Bioweapon".
The above book is based on a discredited claim that the US engineered SARS as a weapon against China, which has now been twisted into a counter claim that China in turn engineered COVID against the US (see below).
Your linked article at the Sydney Morning Herald opens with a blurb saying "The discredited theory that coronavirus is a bio-weapon created in a Wuhan lab is gaining new momentum". To be clear I am not making this claim. I am however, claiming the Chinese government had an interest in biological warfare, including weaponizing SARS, and that a lab leak related to SARS research (even without intent of biological weaponry) is a possibility. I feel like the article is opening with a strawman that doesn't represent the legitimate speculation many harbor regarding the WIV lab leak theory.
Now getting back to the article's actual content - I don't think the article makes a great case for dismissing the notion that the Chinese government was interested in biological weapons. One of its sources, Luke de Pulford, is quoted as saying about the paper/book, "What’s beyond doubt is the paper’s provenance. It’s legitimate and poses questions which deserve thorough probing." It goes on to note that Xu Dezhong, who authored the paper/book, is “not a fringe player”. "He held a senior position at the Air Force Medical University and reported to the Chinese Military Commission and Ministry of Health during the SARS epidemic in 2003." It then goes on to say "Conspiracy theories are regularly published in China, including by those connected with the government" to discredit what Dezhong has claimed. But that isn't evidence that Dezhong's claims are wrong - it amounts to saying "a nonzero number of people in China have said false things before, so therefore we cannot take the word of this military official".
All that said, it is entirely possible that China was not and is not interested in biological weapons, and that the source is untrustworthy and false. But we have to process this possibility using probabilities, since there are no definite answers proving or disproving anything here. Given that China's government took over Tibet, has been oppressing Hong Kong, operates concentration camps in Xinjiang, has built up various military capabilities as it threatens aggression against Taiwan, suppressed early reports of COVID-19, arrested journalists who reported on the virus, and denied visits to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for over a year, there is no reason to trust them or give them the benefit of the doubt on matters relating to SARS or COVID-19 or militaristic goals. As Homeland Security Committee member Ron Johnson is quoted in this article when asked about China preparing biological weapons, “Does that shock anybody? It certainly doesn’t shock me."
As a side note: your mention of Murdoch seems like an ad-hominem argument, using his name as a boogeyman to discredit this story. But that's not a substantive argument.
The mention of Murdoch was aimed at the chain of companies (centred around News Corp), not the person. The voting structure of News Corp is such that the Murdoch family has control, so News Corp and Murdoch (the family) are pretty well interchangeable terms from an editorial point of view.
The "Murdoch" press includes newspapers such as "The Australian" and "The Telegraph" in Australia, "Fox", "WSJ" and "New York Post" in the US, "Sky" and newspapers such as "The Sun" in the UK. They quote each other, as if they are independent sources (in this case the story in " The Australian" was first published in "The Telegraph"), but in reality they are all one source, with the Murdoch family exercising ultimate editorial control.
That's the background to the use of the term "Murdoch". It's not referring to the person but identifying a group of media companies that are effectively a single source.
So really, you're saying, "not according to our laws" which wasn't the question. It was a moral philosophical question, so your answer doesn't really address the question. It's not even on the same plane. Your answer is just a glib dismissal of the question's philosophical merit.