abolistionist, if you have more to add, don't post as a separate comment, you can amend your original post by edit if no other member has posted after your initial post.

why? does it appear to make me more dominant and more threatening?

why? does it appear to make me more dominant and more threatening?

No, it's just our policy.

I've merged your posts for you. That minimizes needless suffering and increases happiness.

Edit -- Justin was merging them simultaneously.

So pleasure equals happiness..ask the smoker the alcoholic the drug taker, all very pleasurable pursuits but happiness i dont think so..The brain, the instrument for our contact with this world..i suppose when you listen to the radio you think it a very clever thing creating all that music, dont poke its bits it makes an awful noise..

of course, i just recently came here to debate the prime ethical directive, I haven't had a chance to offer any specific policies, though there are many at my website

my ethic is that people should decide for themselves what happiness and suffering are

we can't measure happiness or suffering that's why human rights should be implemented to allow us to pursue happiness and alleviate suffering as we choose

this is very different from current practice

First, you might try to define "happiness" and "suffering", and then convince us why it is good to always have the former and not the latter. How would we even measure happiness without suffering, suffering without happiness?

"If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life."

are you defining happiness in terms of lifelong gross individual pleasure measured over time?

or is happiness a state whereby you would tell others that you feel relatively good

it's not like happiness is cut and dry, there is a continuum of happiness and sadness if you use that terminology

sad = pain, happy = pleasure

so that if you say you are sad, you subjectively report feeling more pain than pleasure

and if happy you are feeling more pleasure than pain

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or is happiness a relative state of pleasure whereby you are less likely to complain and more likely to express joy?

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neither pleasure or happiness are well defined in terms of biological activity

is there any definition of happiness that is based upon observable phenomenon?

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I'm guessing that you think that David and I are advocating that people do things that only make them feel relatively pleasurable for a short period of time in sacrifice of long term pleasure

or that you are concerned that we are promoting the value of pleasures that would ulitimately cause more pain overall according to some projection

is this the case?

That's nice, but you haven't addressed my concerns from that post:

If we don't even know what "happiness" or "suffering" are, as you yourself seem to admit, then how can we determine that there should be a prime ethical directive to work towards people being as "happy" as possible? My happiness might be your suffering, or vice versa.

Do you not realize that some of your ideas are a bit "scary", in that you want all humans to be leading very long, very happy lives, by, as you suggested in another post, eliminating "bad" genes, and creating a world government? You know "absolute power corrupts absolutely", and many states have been ruined by tyranny and despair after having been conceived on some principles similar to yours, which are, in theory, designed to "help" all of humanity.

you can't confuse something that isn't defined

you are working with a defintion of happiness and pleasure -but not consciously

until happiness is defined the debate is meaningless

is happiness a state of getting what you want? isn't pleasure what you want?

happiness is a state of mind induced by all manner of things..pleasure can be anything that you want it to be..

Im not defining pleasure or happiness..im merely pointing out your mistake in confusing pleasure with happiness..Pleasure does not equal happiness..Happiness gives us pleasure but pleasure does not necessarily bring happiness.Stick a pin in my arm and im very happy when you stop..Physical happiness is it pleasure..doing good is it pleasure or is it self induced happiness..I think thats why the english language has the two words..

we cannot define happiness and suffering for others, that's why the ethical directive clearly states;

1. the elimination of involuntary suffering - meaning that an individual decides for themselves which pain is unwanted
2. the maximization of voluntary happiness - mean that an individual is allow to pursue happiness as they choose

why is the elimination of known bad genes scary?

world government is necessary to eliminate nationalistic wars, however it doesn't mean that we can't have decentralization and localized laws

Yes, this "directive" then clearly states that people should be able to eliminate their "suffering", whatever that suffering might be, and that they should be able to maximize their "happiness", whatever that happiness might be. So, if it is all subjective, how would anybody else know if they are truly allowing for someone's happiness or for their suffering? And if we just allow people to completely define their own happiness and suffering, then how do we mitigate the inevitable conflicts that will come about when my happiness interferes with your happiness? It seems that our current system already does a pretty good job at this, though it is imperfect, it has some absolute principles that we can fall back on. Your directive as you have so far defined it, contradicts itself, because of the inherently relativist nature of the things you wish to define and control. It can not be a real "directive" without some absolute principles.

The Nazis said the same thing about eugenics...

Decentralized, right. When has that ever stood the test of time? Someone will always seize power, and when that time comes, I'd rather see a nationalistic war fought to disperse that power than an entire globe of people falling into submission.

there is a long list of known bad genes which are not disputed by anyone and have nothing to do with cultural determinations, they are medical determinations, here is the list

but if we are debating abstract concepts they must first be clearly defined

what defines the state of mind known as happiness?

is pleasure anything that feels subjectively good?

is happiness a subjective state whereby we would report feeling more good than bad overall?




you can't confuse something that isn't defined

you are working with a defintion of happiness and pleasure -but not consciously

until happiness and pleasure are defined the debate is meaningless

is happiness a state of getting what you want? isn't voluntary pleasure and avoidance of involuntary pain what you want?

There are a lot more than that. I've had patients who have had never before described genetic disorders. You can't screen for all of them, I mean the entire sequencing of the human genome hasn't been done with enough human subjects to make a reference for all possible genetic lesions. Some rare genetic diseases come from consanguinity (intermarriage) and some of them are freak events. The hospital where I did my fellowship, which is one of the best known children's hospitals in the world, received children from all corners of the globe to be evaluated for these rare genetic diseases. We saw many patients, particularly from the middle east, who came from small towns in which intermarriage is common, and these kids had diseases that could only be genetically diagnosed in research labs -- no clinical lab on earth can diagnose them.

Targeted screening is the best option. In other words, screen for things that are reasonably common, because (for instance) if you add up all the mitochondrial disorders in the world it's STILL less than the number of people with sickle cell disease.

You also need to screen targeted populations. For example, there is no need to screen white people for sickle cell disease, but you should definitely screen white people for cystic fibrosis. There is no need to screen black people for CF, but you should definitely screen them for sickle cell.

It makes sense to screen all pregnant women with a triple or quad screen and prenatal ultrasound for neural tube defects and Down syndrome. It does not make sense to do amniocentesis, however, until women are over 35 and the risk of amnio becomes lower than the risk of Down.

It doesn't make sense to genetically screen for Turner syndrome or X-linked agammaglobulinemia or Job's syndrome. These things are uncommon, and while important to know about, it will be no more cost effective to screen for them prenatally than to screen for higher yield things and deal with XLA or Job's or Turner postnatally when they declare themselves. And since they are clinically variable, it's worth watching and waiting sometimes.

Ive defined it to my satisfaction but obviously not yours..Its not an abstract notion..its either a desire quenched by action or a feeling of elation.

Soon we'll be able to check for all known disorders before an embryo is implanted

just like we update our antivirus programs.

That's not going to ever happen. EVER. You can write it down.

I'm not even sure what you mean here -- and this is my area of professional expertise. We are hopelessly losing the battle to invent antivirals against influenza, since we only have M2 inhibitors (amantidine and rimantidine) and neuraminidase inhibitors (like tamiflu) and now 99% of the circulating H3N2 this years is resistant to tamiflu; we have NO antivirals that are clinically active against the majority of viruses that cause human infection; and we're barely holding our own against HIV and Hepatitis B and C. Basically only herpesviruses mutate slowly enough for us to have a stable group of drugs.

I'm going to buck out of this thread, because Abolitionist, with all due respect, your ideas reveal nearly no understanding at all of medicine, of medical science, of immunology, of genetics, and you have tremendous difficulty differentiating science fiction and fantasy from reality. I myself use antibodies diagnostically on a daily basis and I provide subspecialty consultation in antibody disorders -- so don't give me wikipedia articles.

Have fun.