My main assertion: there exists an internal faculty of which you seem not to be aware, the very faculty with which one verifies these sorts of claims. Our ability to sense with this faculty is affected by our internal state and disposition. It's like as if it's a sort of internal tuning fork that can get all crudded up, but when it's clean, resonance can be induced in it, and it can carry signal. If you have experience of this faculty, what I've been saying would resonate with you. Since it does not, all I can suggest is that you have some interior work to do before you can verify these things for yourself. Sorry I can't be more help.

We're talking past each other a little here.

What I meant to highlight is the difference between the inner and outer life. Outwardly, one has senses of sight, touch, hearing, and so on, with their corresponding objective, empirical measurables.

But there is also an inward life of relationships, philosophy, emotions, decisive will, ethics, reason, and indeed spirituality. This is the domain of the subjective, not being "out there" in common space between us, but being within us. (In this sense, however, the term "subjective" makes no claim to universality or lack thereof. Something can be both subjective and universal.)

Does the subjective have a material mechanism? Certainly. Is it limited to that material mechanism? I'm not sure, personally, but that's not terribly relevant at this point. The point at hand is that it's possible to concentrate too heavily on the material, objective measurables when dealing with the inner life. As Einstein was known to say (though it predates Einstein), "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted."

Yes, it's good to remember our humility in these matters. There is a lot we don't know. :-)

Also just because something is mundane doesn't mean there isn't also mystery in it. Sir Isaac Newton was mystified by the apple dropping to the ground, much like your rock. And however far you dig, there always seems to be another layer, which is mysterious in itself. But I'm sidestepping the issue.

You're assuming that I'm lumping together what has no current explainable mechanism and calling that a soul, and assuming it to be a-material. That's a rather materialist way of presenting a fault in my argument. Rather like a hammer thinking everything is a nail.

See above. The inner life, what I would call the "soul" (but different than the "spirit" -- see below) has material mechanism. I don't disagree with you.

But note that if you're going to argue emergence, then you cannot also argue complete reducibility to elements, as many materialists tend to.

I respectfully disagree. My worldview is not so narrow as to only include the objective and empirical. If I did that, I wouldn't be married, since my experience of my wife is not primarily objective and empirical, and yet this is one of the most important relationships in my life.

And being not primarily concerned with the rational doesn't preclude reason. It just doesn't necessarily place reason as supreme ruler, as does an empiricist outlook. Religion makes claims of truth that don't share an identical domain with science, and therefore need not be mutually exclusive.

But I'll not likely change your mind. Please know, however, that those believing in a religion are not necessarily stupid. I'm high IQ myself, well educated, and a better critical thinker than many of my acquaintances. I'm open to talk further if you want, but I'm not sure what it would accomplish.

Why is it that evolutionary science (I'm not saying you're an evolutionary scientist) is so quick to liken human behaviour to that of animals when trying to buck tradition, but so slow to see that religion is uniquely human and an advantage humans have over other animals?

In my opinion, it's not so much identity or awareness of one's identity that makes one human, but rather the search for the ideal, the good, or even the divine.

When I start seeing computers evolved to the point of having religion, then I'll begin wondering if they're sentient.

What do you use instead?

I wasn't trying to say that machines will never be able to. Just pointing out that there aren't any that can currently.

Agreed

Not necessarily. Look into urban sustainability, for instance. You can grow fresh cooking herbs in a window box. The ones from the store are almost always wilted. Many trees will grow in a pot. Buying them a couple years old from a nursery might be prohibitively expensive, but why not buy seeds?

Am I doing it? Am I practicing what I preach? Yes. I'm working on it. I still have a fair bit to learn. Ecosystems are complex things. What happens when you get too many aphids, for instance? Industrial farming says pesticide. But if you view it from an ecological standpoint, you're missing an aphid predator. So which would those be, in my climate, exactly? It takes learning about the world in which we live, and the site on which I live.

But permaculture systems don't lend themselves easily to economies of scale. What machine can harvest an ecosystem? For that, you need monocultures, planted in rows. Perhaps if I got successful enough at this, I could go design permaculture sites for people, and set up their ecosystem, give them some training. There are some people who make their living doing that. I'm not quite at that point yet.

But I've done enough to see that this is profitable (in terms of expenses reduced, quality gained, carbon footprint reduced, learning gained) to learn about and get set up -- profitable not just for myself, but for my planet. It's a lifestyle change that's worth making. Look into it or no. I don't much care. I have better groceries than you, ones that don't take oil to ship, time to shop for, and minimal time and effort to grow.

Yes, I have my own orange tree. Yes, I eat from it. Having your own food bearing perennials is a wonderful thing.

In fact it was the orange trees that led me to planting many other perennials, like blackberries, strawberries, blueberries, moringa oleifera, gooseberries, apple tree, etc... Many of these I haven't had to touch after I planted them, and they continue producing food.

Of course I've had some failures. It's a learning process. But food bearing perennials are just a good thing, all the way around. I'm just trying to share the happiness.

No, increased standard of living per unit of work input drives everything.

Permaculture is "plant once, reap continually". I would much rather spend $0 and two minutes to go out to my orange tree and pick a few superior oranges than spending money and time going to the store. But its methods can't be used in a economy-of-scale, profit-oriented industrialist.

It's a paradigm shift that has yet to happen. Where industrial farmers think of profit, permaculturists think of standard of living. Where industrial farmers try to raise one plant in isolation (and all the extra scaffolding of pesticides, fertilizers, and such that go with that), permaculturists try to raise self-sustaining ecologies that have human-usable outputs. Where industrial farmers plant annuals (high input), permaculturists plant self-seeding annuals or perennials (low input). Where industrial farmers leverage economies of scale through machines that reduce yield per acre through compaction (among other things), permaculturists instead leverage high yields per acre through unmechanized efforts that cannot be easily scaled up. The industrial method of having one farmer provide most everyone's food is at odds with a more sustainable approach of everyone harvesting from their own smallholdings.

I never said that value wouldn't still be measured as money.

(Not an exact analogy)
If I grow my own food in a garden, I am decreasing the revenue to the grocery stores and other farmers, but its value is still measurable in terms of reduced expenses.

And your point is well taken. There are indeed other unmeasurable differences, both positive and negative.

The assumption is to compare against $0 revenue for unfair use. But isn't it myopic to rely on the term "revenue" instead of "value"? It implies a suboptimization of the entertainment industry, instead of optimizing the whole.

Don't you have to instead compare against the value generated for society as a whole? If it generates $10 trillion in value to society for moderate unfair use, then that changes the picture a little.

I Am Not An Economist (obviously)

Thank you to the people who responded. I need no further explanation. I appreciate it, though.

This is the first I've heard of satire being illegal in any sense of the word. Please forgive my ignorance. What's the difference between this and, say, Vonnegut, Twain, or Swift? Many of the classics are satires. Is it that the people or institutions under attack are still alive, or personally identified? But didn't literary satires do this?