a question about the value of human life

Okay, my apologies for taking advantage of you in the following way, but this comes up a lot. While you are welcome to see the following as a response to you specifically, be aware that I am using you to address the points so broadly that I may venture outside of your particular words.

OB1Shinobi wrote: every now and again a religious person would say "without god people would have no morals" and i thought "thats absolutely stupid"

but i realize that its not stupid at all

But it is. Whether or not there is a god out there (and whatever "to be" would even mean in that context), we live in a world that increasingly seems to be not controlled by anything smart or at all interested in our welfare. I am willing to entertain a deist conception of a first cause with no further interference. While there is nothing to indicate that, it does not seem to be strictly in conflict with what we learned about the universe until now. What "truth" means in this context is also yet to be defined, but for the sake of the discussion I am tentatively willing to entertain that this could be true in a colloquial sense of "could" and "true", respectively.
In any case, since this god (or universal force or pantheon of gods, if that is more to your liking) doesn't seem to be giving much of a damn about us, we are effectively operating in what I am comfortable saying is a world without gods. In this world people have morals. Some are decent from our point of view, others are barbaric, and all but a few insist that their morality is that of a god, revealing the inherent arrogance and vanity of that position (which is not universal, but very present and outspoken). I don't know what a world with a god would look like or, if ours is one, what one without a god would look like. For as long as no difference can be identified, we - sort of by definition - couldn't tell. The idea therefore, that in a world without god people would have no morals is either the declaration of a definition of a godless world, in which case it is begging the question and pretty much defining god into this world, or it is an empty statement asserted without any justification and thus not worth our consideration until such time when a valid or sound argument is presented in its favour.

its not precise that we need "god" but it seems to me that it IS religion that insists life is valuable and so i was interested in exploring that basic topic

But it isn't. Not in general anyway. Some religions do insist on a value of life, others don't. Those that do have one or all of the following problems: First, most are willing to abandon their oh-so-sacred principles whenever it suits their interests if it is the leaders or the believers or whenever it suits their narrative when it is their holy myths. Second, all of them, with not one exception, lack any and all justification for their assertions of the value of life. The best they can offer is an appeal to consequence in which case no sacredness is attached or an appeal to dictate from up above (be it their gods or the universe or holy creeds or whatever), which in essence is no more than themselves claiming the heart and mind of God as their own, yet again revealing an astounding arrogance and vanity so many religions tend to shun. And as if that wasn't quite enough, many will talk about how the human condition is a bad or wicked one and instill shame and guilt over being what we were born to be, essentially wrecking our sense of self-worth to the point where they can rebuild it for us, thus capturing us forever in their service.

the universe is amazing and every time i hear or read scientists talking about how atoms and molecules behave and space time and the multiverse i always think "science is proving the ancients were right about a lot of stuff"

Except of course it isn't. Science isn't in the business of proving anything, but I shan't make this about semantics again. In the struggle for the authoritative position on what is true, religion at this point has pretty much lost, not least thanks to their constant conflicts among the globe and, perhaps more importantly, epistemic vapidity in just about every claim they ever made. Seeing as science is gaining the upper hand through curiosity and honesty in their pursuit of knowledge, the religions now desperately try to have a part in it. This is why they claim that science keeps confirming what they had been saying all along. Back when religion was strong, back when it had god on its side, it would confidently contradict science and declare capital-T Truth in any way it pleases and by force. Now that it can't get away with that anymore it is humbling and sleazily trying to hijack the good name of science. This is particularly apparent in the entire creationism debate where they literally try to say that what is science really isn't science but what they do is, because that is how good the name of science has indeed become. The Great Christopher Hitchens pointed this out numerous times, here is one.
As for the new-agers and their quantum nonsense... Well, they have been doing it to electricity, too, back when nobody learned any of that in school. There is no ancient wisdom confirmed by it and in my humble opinion what ever asserts itself as true and waits for millennia to be confirmed by honest inquiry, meanwhile insisting on its own correctness for no reason and with dissenters' blood, does not qualify as wisdom.

FYI, in the 60's comics and for as long as until the 90's cartoons, Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider to become the Amazing Spider-Man. However, in the 2012 blockbuster, Peter was bitten by a genetically altered spider. Could it be that both are just rephrasings of "magic" in a popular current scientific frontier sort of way? Science woo in a nutshell.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HooeZrC76s0


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ytaf30wuLbQ


http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/read/2005/11/01/the-perimeter-of-ignorance

if a man has the power to kill off 99% of the human population and place himself as supreme emperor of the remaining - and devote the majority of the remaining workforce to ensuring the colonization of space

and the majority of the rest of his personal time to having as many children as posibble

why shouldnt he do it?

all of the individual points made about god not being smart/good and/or not caring are highly interpretive

if we acknowledge the possibility of "god"

religion places man in the position of being held accountable to a reality inherently superior to his potential

if religion is not the ultimate source of ethics, what is?

is there any reason to respect the social structure or the value of life if one has the power to reign supreme over it?

religion does offer justification Gisteron, and the various expressions of it can be summed up with this; because it is gods will - gods plan and gods work (or THE Gods, or The Spirit, or The Spirits, or the Grand Cosmic Poobah, or the Force) that something essentially RIGHT is behind it all and there is a limit to how much of that we have a right to mess up simply because we are playing with something beyond our ability to fathom or to judge

and we are meaningful because we are a part of it, but we are only one piece in a puzzle and we do not have the right to break the whole durn thing just because we can and we want to

---

EDIT

im not talking about any particular religion

i am talking about religion as a psychological force - meta religion, as it were

even the potential of the next era of religious thought, which is in our hands as free thinkers and conscientious participants in the global society

OB1Shinobi wrote: if a man has the power to kill off 99% of the human population and place himself as supreme emperor of the remaining - and devote the majority of the remaining workforce to ensuring the colonization of space

and the majority of the rest of his personal time to having as many children as posibble

why shouldnt he do it?

Because he hasn't the right to do so.

OB1Shinobi, do you see morals as objective or subjective. Are they seen by you as derived from an external whatever there is or through an internal reasoning?

Calem wrote:

OB1Shinobi wrote: if a man has the power to kill off 99% of the human population and place himself as supreme emperor of the remaining - and devote the majority of the remaining workforce to ensuring the colonization of space

and the majority of the rest of his personal time to having as many children as posibble

why shouldnt he do it?

Because he hasn't the right to do so.

i agree that he hasnt the right

now i ask you (us) to justify this assertion

OB1Shinobi wrote:

Calem wrote:

OB1Shinobi wrote: if a man has the power to kill off 99% of the human population and place himself as supreme emperor of the remaining - and devote the majority of the remaining workforce to ensuring the colonization of space

and the majority of the rest of his personal time to having as many children as posibble

why shouldnt he do it?

Because he hasn't the right to do so.

i agree that he hasnt the right

now i ask you (us) to justify this assertion

No one has given him the right thus he cannot have it.

OB1Shinobi wrote: if a man has the power to kill off 99% of the human population and place himself as supreme emperor of the remaining - and devote the majority of the remaining workforce to ensuring the colonization of space

and the majority of the rest of his personal time to having as many children as posibble

why shouldnt he do it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rm94Lb2mz4s
The fact that nothing else offers a good answer does not mean that the billion things that pretend they figured it all out are any closer to the truth than an honest innocent shrug. Besides, the default position is inaction. The question shouldn't be why should he not do it, but rather, with all things considered, why should he?

all of the individual points made about god not being smart/good and/or not caring are highly interpretive

No, they aren't. This world operates in precisely the way we would expect one without god to work and nothing like what we would expect assuming the claims of the preachers were true to any extent. Again, not saying that they're wrong, just that we would expect different if they're right.

religion places man in the position of being held accountable to a reality inherently superior to his potential

No, it doesn't. Not in general anyway. Again, some might, others might not and the more sophisticated ones end up contradicting themselves all the time on this point. And even if we accepted that we are accountable (because or in spite of religious claims in regards to that), there is nothing forcing us to care either way. We care on our own for - you guessed it - no reason. At least not any ultimate reason which seems to be what you are asking for as if that made any difference.

if religion is not the ultimate source of ethics, what is?

It isn't. We are. Ultimate in the sense that ultimately it is us making the moral judgements and engaging in action. We do that with and without religion just as we do it with and without politics. Other animals do it, too. All it takes is a collective of social animals. If you need anything more ultimate than that, at least in this lifetime, well, then that's too bad; better luck next time.

is there any reason to respect the social structure or the value of life if one has the power to reign supreme over it?

No, there isn't. There are people who have no capacity to value either their own or anyone else's life and no amount of reasoning can bring them about, and that's not for a lack of logic skills on their part but for a lack of good reasons on ours.

religion does offer justification Gisteron, and the various expressions of it can be summed up with this; because it is gods will - gods plan and gods work (or THE Gods, or The Spirit, or The Spirits, or the Grand Cosmic Poobah, or the Force) that something essentially RIGHT is behind it all and there is a limit to how much of that we have a right to mess up simply because we are playing with something beyond our ability to fathom or to judge

Yes, and they said that the subordination of black people was part of that plan and back in that day you would have had no argument to refute them.
I'm sorry, but a dictate from up above is not its own justification. I could bring up the Euthyphro-Dilemma and have another chuckle watching people trying to get around this pretty much unsolvable problem, though I don't even need to, because you are already arguing in a circle here. Even if we grant that all this is a divine plan, that doesn't make it "essentially RIGHT", it just makes it a god's plan. That doesn't give it the right to command us and does not obligate us to follow it. Nothing does and nothing can, and even if it could, that wouldn't make it right, it would just make it obligatory. But we don't live in a world that seems to be governed by gods and we don't have divine commands. All we have is our own texts and our own morals and we must make our own decisions in this world and until such time that we can identify consequences outside of our world, consequences like that must not and cannot come into consideration - and again, wouldn't oblige us to anything, if they could.

and we are meaningful because we are a part of it, but we are only one piece in a puzzle and we do not have the right to break the whole durn thing just because we can and we want to

So what sort of meaning is it exactly? Let's say we were specially created by a god. That tells us nothing about our purpose. Let's say we know the purpose. That doesn't tell us about why the god did it. Let's say we knew why the god did it. How could we possibly know there is a meaning to any of this? Let's say we know there is a meaning. How do we know what it is? You see, even to get to the questions countless assumptions must be made and you are saying there is something that is answering those questions as we speak?
Oh, and even if we could answer all of them: How do you infer that we wouldn't have the right to break the entire thing and do our own instead? No moral obligation follows from that knowledge, even if the god gave us laws to live by. They would be just that: Divine laws. Why we should care in the slightest would still be a matter of our individual own.

LuCrae Jiddu wrote: OB1Shinobi, do you see morals as objective or subjective. Are they seen by you as derived from an external whatever there is or through an internal reasoning?

i dont know

how much of who we are internally is shaped by our environment and our conditioning is something still up for some debate

that a developed personality has a moral inclinationnwhich is not a result of some level of conditioning seems to me very unlikely and impossible to prove anyway since we wouldnt survive infancy without some external care and that experience itself is the begining of or moral conditioning, for better or worse

i think there is such a thing as a "meta-view" of the world and existence and that we all develop one as an automatic psychological process

i think that the nature of this view is then used either as a model for ideal behavior or as a justification for desired behavior and that it has a huge influence over the types of behavior which result

this "meta-view" is basically what i mean when i say "religion"

which is why imo the most functional defition for the word religion is "what a person believes to be true aboutife, existence, and their place with it"

OB1Shinobi wrote: i think there is such a thing as a "meta-view" of the world and existence and that we all develop one as an automatic psychological process
...
this "meta-view" is basically what i mean when i say "religion"

... imo the most functional defition for the word religion is "what a person believes to be true aboutife, existence, and their place with it"

Name a natural integer equal or smaller the number of posts you made in this thread, counting the first one as three and I shall find you that many quotes of yourself using the word religion in a way inconsistent with either of these definitions, whereby "inconsistent" means one or several of the following:

• "directly contradictory"
• "indirectly contradictory"
• "unrelatedly"
• "requiring additional differentia that are of equal or greater amount than the ones provided by one or both given definitions"

OB1Shinobi wrote:

LuCrae Jiddu wrote: OB1Shinobi, do you see morals as objective or subjective. Are they seen by you as derived from an external whatever there is or through an internal reasoning?

i dont know

how much of who we are internally is shaped by our environment and our conditioning is something still up for some debate

that a developed personality has a moral inclinationnwhich is not a result of some level of conditioning seems to me very unlikely and impossible to prove anyway since we wouldnt survive infancy without some external care and that experience itself is the begining of or moral conditioning, for better or worse

OB1, this by definition is subjective morality. Objective morality would derive from an external whatever there is and be universally true for all, no matter their experience. Subjective morality would depend on the person, and as we know, a person is a manifestation of the sum of their experiences.

It seems your question "why shouldn't he?" is dependent, by your definition, on his life experiences and therefore cannot and will not be answered through this thread to your satisfaction.

In full disclosure, I agree with you. Morality is subjective and dependent upon the person applying their belief system to their world.

Calem wrote:

OB1Shinobi wrote:

Calem wrote:

OB1Shinobi wrote: if a man has the power to kill off 99% of the human population and place himself as supreme emperor of the remaining - and devote the majority of the remaining workforce to ensuring the colonization of space

and the majority of the rest of his personal time to having as many children as posibble

why shouldnt he do it?

Because he hasn't the right to do so.

i agree that he hasnt the right

now i ask you (us) to justify this assertion

No one has given him the right thus he cannot have it.

i agree - the dilemma is this;
who can give him that right and why should not take it if he is able?

this question is the proof of the value of religion as i understand it because at some point we either determine that we and our logic are the sole arbiters of what is right, (in which case having the capability to do the thing would be all the "right" one needs)
or that we are a part of a meaningful whole, which has inherent worth as it is, even if we do not understand it, and which we do not have the right to break, and within which we may even find purpose and value

LuCrae Jiddu wrote:

OB1Shinobi wrote:

LuCrae Jiddu wrote: OB1Shinobi, do you see morals as objective or subjective. Are they seen by you as derived from an external whatever there is or through an internal reasoning?

i dont know

how much of who we are internally is shaped by our environment and our conditioning is something still up for some debate

that a developed personality has a moral inclinationnwhich is not a result of some level of conditioning seems to me very unlikely and impossible to prove anyway since we wouldnt survive infancy without some external care and that experience itself is the begining of or moral conditioning, for better or worse

OB1, this by definition is subjective morality. Objective morality would derive from an external whatever there is and be universally true for all, no matter their experience. Subjective morality would depend on the person, and as we know, a person is a manifestation of the sum of their experiences.

It seems your question "why shouldn't he?" is dependent, by your definition, on his life experiences and therefore cannot and will not be answered through this thread to your satisfaction.

In full disclosure, I agree with you. Morality is subjective and dependent upon the person applying their belief system to their world.

if objective morality exists my thought is that the puishment for immorality is death

thats how i imagine it would work

my question of "why shouldnt he" is certainly one to which the answer can only be presented through the lens of his personal experience

the point of this thread is to explore how the ideas of the collective shape the personal experience of the individual

im not so much attempting to create a religion here as i am opening discourse on its role and its value in society

my use of the word religion has not been contradictory or inconsistent

a single word and single idea can have applicability at many different levels of analysis

for instance MATH

math can mean algebra

balancing a checkbook

the sum total of all human knowledge of numbers and equations and their uses

or it can mean "jenny's favorite subject in kindergarten"

which probably doesnt mean any of the above but is still math

so if i say "religion" and i sometimes mean "my personal religion"
and sometimes mean "some religion practiced by someone somewhere"
and sometimes mean "religion as a psychological process of collecting a body of ideas which an individual uses to conceptualize their place within the greater context of life and existence"
and sometimes mean "the history of such ideas"
and sometimes mean "one particular set of such ideas"
and sometimes mean "the potential future shape of these types of ideas"

im still talking about math - or religion - whichever one i was talking about when i first started talking about it

OB1Shinobi wrote: this question is the proof of the value of religion as i understand it because at some point we either determine that we and our logic are the sole arbiters of what is right, (in which case having the capability to do the thing would be all the "right" one needs)
or that we are a part of a meaningful whole, which has inherent worth as it is, even if we do not understand it, and which we do not have the right to break, and within which we may even find purpose and value

False dichotomy fallacy .


Now onto some math, just because you called it

Proposition: Objective morality does not exist.
Proof:

1. if objective morality exists my thought is that the puishment for immorality is death

2. From 1., assuming the premise and that "is" denotes an equivalence: Therefore, somebody who is never objectively immoral would be immortal.
3. By definition: Being conditioned through the point of view of one entity, whatever it may be, is being subjective. Being conditioned by the opinions of a finite and strict subset of the set of all entities is likewise less than being objective.
4. Conversely from 3.: Therefore, being objectively immoral requires a consensus among moral agents that someone was indeed immoral.
5. Assumption: For every moral matter there exist contemporary or subsequent moral agents P and Q where P is on one side of the issue while Q is not on the same side.
6. From 4. and 5.: Therefore, there is never a consensus among all contemporary and subsequent agents, that anybody was being immoral on anything.
7. Therefore, we all are immortal.
8. Assumption: 7. is false.
9. Conclusion: Therefore, objective morality does not exist.

my question of "why shouldnt he" is certainly one to which the answer can only be presented through the lens of his personal experience

Is that so? Then what was all the fuss about religion all about? And don't give me that by religion you really meant their personal experience all along. Throughout this thread you didn't and I can prove it.

my use of the word religion has not been contradictory or inconsistent

Didn't say it was. Just that in the context of this thread (and a number of others) you have been using it in a different way than you now claimed you did - and you know it. Also, while words may have multiple meanings, they don't carry all of them at the same time. Just because two things may be called by the same name, doesn't make them the same thing. We call this the fallacy of equivocation and confusing the map for the place , respectively.

most of whats being said here is not addressing the fundamental question

OB1Shinobi wrote: if a man has the power to kill off 99% of the human population and place himself as supreme emperor of the remaining - and devote the majority of the remaining workforce to ensuring the colonization of space

and the majority of the rest of his personal time to having as many children as possible

why shouldnt he do it?

so far the submissions have been

Kamizu wrote: Limiting the gene pool is very limiting for an organism. Diversity is a big component to survival

Calem wrote: The value of life is inherit to all of us if we care to listen to our natural instincts because without other people we won't survive and the instinct to keep our species alive is just as strong in humans as in other animals and organisms.

to which my response is

OB1Shinobi wrote: one percent of the worlds current population is still a lot of genes

the number could be raised to five percent [meant to say NINETY-FIVE percent]

add the condition that the man collect from a wide range of attributes or that he use whatever criteria could best be suggested as having the greatest chance for survival

if there is a single thing which can be done to ensure the continuation of the species that it is to effectively migrate off planet

and

OB1Shinobi wrote: in a relatively equal society, where everyone is basically dependent on everyone else or at least someone else, then yes, cooperation and general respect are in order and are justified by logic and reason

but

[what about] in a technological society where innovation has produced the ability to change the social structure virtually over night (consider the intentional release of a biological agent, for example) and where one person or group may see the legitimate opportunity to re-write the existing social structure and place themselves tyrannically above it (nazi germany or stalin or any other terrible regimes or dictatorships you might name) - the need for respect of life drops exponentially in relative proportion to the total numbers of the individuals and logistics involved - i.e. "we only need X number of you - as slaves - and the rest can die". ?

is there anyone who feels that my responses do not sufficiently address the answers others have given?

anyone agree that they do?

the essence of my point there is that its perfectly logical and logically justifiable to kill 95-99% of the human population and enslave the survivors

logic does not indicate that there is anything wrong with this

or does it?

LuCrae Jiddu wrote: I also do not see myth (religion) as the foundation of human morality
I too am interested in why and how, but do not see a need for religion or science to direct my morality as much as reason and logic.

how?

that is the next evolution of my question; how does logic justify the value of life or the appropriateness of morality without religious thought?

this is an important question

so far it seems the most thoughtful answer is..

Locksley wrote:
Well, in order to answer this I'd suggest that we need to start way back along the road, somewhere around the question: "what is morality". I mean we're looking at this issue and trying to decide basically if there is some sort of underlying reason why killing people is wrong, or if it's solely the product of environment - jumping back to the early point about ulterior motives, the idea that there needs to be a social construct to train morality would seem to be the actual central argument in the lining. I'm frankly not entirely certain that that is incorrect - however that does not in any way mean that the social construct need be a religion or any form of spiritual organization, it could well be any code of social conduct implemented in the populace at the youngest possible age. This view sees it as simply social conditioning. It's also still missing something fundamental, which I still feel can be best considered by trying to figure out the root cause of the dilemma itself: morality (what is right and what is wrong). We can argue that a social construct is what gives the individuals in a society their general moral guidelines, but that society could just as easily be raised to believe that genocide is dandy as it could to believe that all life deserves to live.

but i wanrt to simplify and specifically address this

Connor L. wrote: No.. Science does not offer a good reason why life shouldn't be eradicated.
Science is completely apathetic to everything. It simply does.

the REASON this is such an important issue is because that type of logic justifies THIS type of logic (which was a part of the above Conner response)

Connor L. wrote: In fact, Mother Earth might be happier if we all ended up in the maw of a volcano. hahaha. We've been so horrible to her.

the importance of this discussion is that more and more with every year - month - day we have the ability to produce Connors volcano (ITS NOT YOUR FAULT CONNER!) :silly:

the proverbial "button" that we dont want nutjobs to be able to push

but if the very most fundamental indoctrination of our most esteemed intellectual institutions encourage the idea that the world might even be a better place if someone DID push the button, then we dont just have to worry about the nutjobs - we have to worry about the most intelligent and well educated people in the world - you know, the ones who get to become president and stuff like that (i guess i have to strike the word INTELLIGENT if we're going to talk about presidents) maybe the ones who get to run ENRON and HALIBURTON

or the ones who get government funding to experiment with the ebola virus

next we have this

Gisteron wrote: No structure of thought is so failure-proof that it would stop everyone from massacring the entire planet.

which is an evasion, but it is a relevant one which i intend to address as soon as we have established that the first point of the discussion is settled

and

Gisteron wrote:

OB1Shinobi wrote: this question is the proof of the value of religion as i understand it because at some point we either determine that we and our logic are the sole arbiters of what is right, (in which case having the capability to do the thing would be all the "right" one needs)
or that we are a part of a meaningful whole, which has inherent worth as it is, even if we do not understand it, and which we do not have the right to break, and within which we may even find purpose and value

False dichotomy fallacy .

Gisteron wrote: False dichotomy fallacy .

Then what was all the fuss about religion all about? And don't give me that by religion you really meant their personal experience all along. Throughout this thread you didn't and I can prove it.

a false dichotomy requires a valid third alternative

or a functional "grey" area between the two extremes

as of yet no one has established this third alternative

you could even say thats the whole point of this topic

also

religion is developed as a result of personal experience

so yes, i ALSO have been referring to religion as a personal experience throughout

who here believes they would have invented the scientific method if they had been born into a highly religious and even superstitious and xenophobic culture?

personal experience and frankly THE LUCK OF THE DRAW are possibly more responsible for any of us even knowing the WORD "logic" than any great logical ability on our parts

Khaos - i enjoyed the vids and the link

i actually agree with the essential point being made

im not denying the negatives of misused religion

i am acknowledging the positives of what i consider functional healthy religion

which i think is the only reason we appear to be on "opposing" sides of this issue

i dont claim that religion (or more precisely, PEOPLE who use religion) has done no harm

i am saying that it has also done good and can continue to do so

OB1Shinobi wrote: if a man has the power to kill off 99% of the human population and place himself as supreme emperor of the remaining - and devote the majority of the remaining workforce to ensuring the colonization of space

and the majority of the rest of his personal time to having as many children as posibble, does science offer any reason that he should NOT do it?

Hi Obi!!

Well there is no clear answer. If I were to say that science is both useful and a process. Devoid of any human values. However it is also not an isolated subject and a holistic view is that Science is a 'process' to find truth and that process includes everything that defines humanity such as art, science, philosophy, maths and other scientific subjects.

Because humans wanted knowledge to improve their chances of success, they tried to merge and combine ideas language and semantics was born and became important in philosophy and were both the tools to compartmentalised and defined or refined the many human ideas. So Science is also a philosophy. This idea merging wasn't always beneficial! The problem-solving principle devised by William of Ockham (1287–1347). The principle 'occams razor' explained that competing hypotheses that both predicted equally well, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected.

Occams razor kick started the Renaissance and all this subjectivity and superstitions that had migrated from Alchemy ultimately was stripped away of useless assumptions and science was born. However during the renaissance the lines between art and science merged and so science has a distinctly human touch. The time of the great revival of art and literature, and learning in Europe. It showed that culture is important for emotional beings to inspire themselves to achieve scientific breakthroughs.

Back in ancient times such as Greece they pursued knowledge for the sake of knowledge. There was a development of ethics which was a major development for social cohesion. In philosophical thought the subject called geometry was a major academic subject for all citizens. They were able to make water flow up hill with geometry and used special aqueducts to transport water and invested many man hours, slaves and money to help create and sustain a larger population. Because humans realised, they needed 'man power' and that was the paradigm of such a successful civilisation. The primary reason for the success of the race (which was absolutely necessary) was to grow the population, for hard military power and to act as a buffer for the losses of humans through death.

Therefore science encompasses all academic subjects and if you truly understood chemistry you would understand that it is also merging with history, psychology, biology.

Simply said science is created by humans who placed their values upon it, it is our human thought that must embrace the nature of being human and that the we are biologically adapted to favour bigger societies. Part of that science and thought is competing with other ideas in philosophy which question the inherent value of humans or rather the necessity of larger populations. Removing 95% of humans would drastically increase the value of individual humans.

Yet such Eugenics is quickly becoming a pseudo-science. Because we can have the best of both worlds to perfect the species while maintaining strength in numbers and the benefits of social cultural society. With Large populations individual human value 'reduces' and human labour becomes 'cheaper' which is in the best interests of an emperor which is fantastic. Also maintaining a large gene pool is logical.

It's a great risk to expose humanity to the dangers of reducing the population by 95% because a virus could easily wipe you out and you cannot afford many human losses. Humans would become so precious and vulnerable that they would be treated like expensive commodities 'wrapped in bubble wrap'.

There is no clear answer, while we have strength in numbers in larger populations the balance of power would be difficult to alter and maintain. Larger societies the individual becomes insignificant. In smaller societies it would be the rise of 'individualism' individuals could have more autonomy and control and create favourable conditions for ourselves with abundant wealth and we wouldn't rely as heavily upon 'man power' yet there are consequences.

Humans in a favourable state of affairs would cease to develop themselves and become immortal. Since it is adversity and difficulty that is the mother of invention and the basis of evolution we would have to redesign ourselves but could a small population really have the will power to achieve this? It would require lots more work which would be easier with more people. There is a film that addresses this problem, with a small population we would need technological solutions and this is best described in a film called 'WALL E' made by Disney in 2008.

There are other potential questions such as 'what meaning do individual humans have', the answer they have no meaning. It is within in our nature to reproduce and multiply it is what drives life and all of human progress, to destroy the population would be opposite of what life and progression is about.

And this can be described in a 'Bugs Life' a film created by Disney/Pixar in 1998 a story of an ant who wants 'individualism' seeking meaning as an individual. The leader of the solider ants also wants 'individualism' to perfect the ant species but ultimately 'we are the colony' and to destroy 'the colony' would be self destructive the leader ant nearly wiped out every ant and was left with a few useless elites that were no longer elite.

In today's world it is not possible to replace humans yet... since our level of technology requires hard labour from other humans such as in agriculture. However the automation of mass manufacturing has removed the need for many humans and as Adolf Hitler called them 'useless eaters'. Humans are a liability and an expense economically its not logical to limit the amount of workers.

umm let me know what you think

The science of statistics could argue he would not have the resources to move everyone offworld, the science of engineering might say its impossible to maintain safe offworld habitats at the moment, and so the 'science' of history(?) would say that he would be toppled by popular uprising when people realize these things LOL, and the science of commonsense might say he'd never get to be in that position in the first place. Ok, i might be inventing fields of science...

His decision would be logical in a set of certain parameters, but that itself is a limitation. There are plenty of reasons why it would be illogical... logic is just a tool, like language, IMO, even if it turned out to be the language of 'everything' ie empirical. Those parameters seem to define the nature of the arbitration around a decision's 'logic', hence why I think it is a good description of a language - it defines in accurate terms a/broader set of relationship/s.... and the accuracy then allows more effective decision making - provided the parameters are appropriate and correct.

So the 'value' of human life is just another parameter in which to define an accurate interpretation of somethings relationship within a defined relationship. What would a parameter look like!!? I mean the value of life is what you make it, it's what they make it, it's the potential, so I think a parameter would have at least two attributes, perhaps a 'type' and a 'value'? So perhaps the value-type of human life is that it is alive, and its value-value is any subjective interrelation.

Like determining a quanta in time, it has three attributes, say for example the charge represents the 'type', and the value is the relationship between its physical location (mass, relative) and its 'spin' (a 2d momentum?)!

Just playing with concepts, I dunno enough about quantum mechanics to be making such associations but its fun enough for me :side: