I'm assuming you're referring to nuclear warfare here; if wrong, please correct.

Unless they figure out how to make their "supermen" radiation-proof, I suspect it won't make much of a difference as far as the outcome is concerned.

I don't know if any nation at this point intends to use its nukes except if (a) someone else launches first or (b) it is invaded and the invaders are winning.

It's too unstable to use except as a final act.

Unlike the previous one who was only a jury and executioner thats actually a step up!

I think we're past the days of judges, juries and executioners.

Now after government bureaucrat #2,987,103 puts your name on a watch list, expect to suddenly explode at any time.

The age of judgment by drone has begun.

No one will address the human population issue. Everyone is scared (except China) of having to enforce limits on people's sex organs. Instead they will let it go until things collapse, like a person ignoring their diet until they have a heart attack then they go to their doctor demanding to be fixed.

We have invented modern taboos, such as any restriction on any person wanting to do anything in any place at any time is bad, and not only is it bad, but it's literally Hitler.

China isn't fooled, and so they're not only limiting population, but using eugenics to improve the abilities of their population.

It's going to be interesting when the next war comes about. Chinese supermen versus the obese sofa-bound citizens of Western liberal democracies.

I can't get excited by any conservation tech or effort because I know population increases will erase any gains.

Generally I agree. The exception might be spaceflight cheap enough to displace most of our population to Mars.

There's plenty of historical proof that people in power will use available resources to maintain power.

I was wondering if someone would walk into this one.

What evidence do you have that free speech and permissiveness are not available resources being used to maintain power?

Ah.

it's intended to prevent assholes like you from telling other people what they can and can't do

You're telling me what I can and can't do.

According to you, I can't live in a society with any standards.

Thus I'm doomed to ride the river of mediocrity into Idiocracy with fools like yourself who can't tell the difference.

So, from restrictive religions' perspective, the behavioral restrictions they place on the former is a means for an end: that of increasing the lat[t]er. It's kind of like metric poetry: by restricting how you express yourself it more or less frees you to become more creative on what you express.

In other words, it enhances quality where permissiveness increases quantity. Great definition; thanks for adding it.

Mission creep is a well known phenomenon, and it's both easily historically observable that people's descriptions of political and social commentary they don't like frequently ends up tinged with the same vocabulary of condemnation as that used for porn

You have made a comparison, but not shown a continuity. This is an implementation of slippery slope that most would consider a fallacy.

They use the same language to describe anything they don't like or find disgusting. It does not mean the same mechanism will be applied.

The problem with bans against subsets of speech is not that the actual subsets are considered to be valuable, but because the vagueness of what is considered pornographic means lawyers can just slap it on to anything.

What political speech do you think is going to be categorized as pornography? Even in very conservative jurisdictions in the past, such decisions have been overthrown (I'm thinking of the Ulysses and Naked Lunch cases).

And yet:

I defend the right of someone to take a shit on a sheet and call it art. I don't get it, and I'm not interested in it, but I'm not going to appoint myself or anybody else to be the arbiter of what we should and shouldn't say. And you have to be prepared to take the good with the bad, or you're setting yourself up for a situation in which one group or another gets to define 'art', 'obscene', and things you're allowed to say.

You are defining art.

You have precluded anyone in this society from raising the standard of art above "anything goes," and initiating the kind of artistic revival movement that happened centuries ago.

"Anything goes" is as limiting as any other definition of art. It's just more permissive, which basically drowns the art world in junk and excludes quality, as history shows us.

However, punishing people for doing things that are illegal for other reasons during the course of producing 'art' is not generally considered to be a restriction on freedom of speech, any more than the illegality of sacrificing babies to satan is considered an infringement on religious freedom...

True; Satanism is not banned, but occult sacrifice of babies is because it's murder (unless they're still in the womb, in which case it's Satanic ritual abortion, which sounds like it would really upset someone). I think the question of speech however is a question of what speech adds to society. Does it contribute new information? Or is it for the purposes of self-gratification and/or profit? If it's the former, I support defending it, because no matter how unpopular it is, we need to hear it. If it's the latter, well, who really cares?

We need to redefine what "art" is in the age of ubiquitous cameras.

I think art is that which has artistic intent and artistic effect.

Porn is more like a product, in that it's roughly fungible and is consumed without particular regard for message, only a vague notion of "quality."

It communicates nothing.

Some interesting responses in this thread. 18 of them. I don't know if I can reply to all of them or even many.

Cybersex IS speech, and porn is art (however far from fine art it is).

What's the reasoning behind this? Cybersex is people typing words, but that doesn't make it speech for the purposes of free speech. Neither is there any reason to support that porn is "art." Porn is a product like a Big Mac, except instead of sugared bread and soya-meat there's dongs.

When you consider how very central sexuality and control of sexuality has been to the political process across the globe, it doesn't make any sense to attempt to cast them as otherwise.

The thing about free speech is, we don't need proof it leads to a better way of life.

Here's more assumptions with no logic behind them.

Control of sexuality and free speech are both contingent upon their effects, like all other policy choices.

If you're going to make a deontological argument, you're going to have to argue for some moral superiority of these things, which in an atheistic pluralism has no inherency.

That leaves you with arguing for their utility, and I await your doing that.

We knew we'd reach this point inevitably. Earth is finite, and humanity keeps reproducing.

Now we've hit the point where resources are limited. By the rules of nature, this means we're going to fight it out and someone's going to hoard the resources. They will then outreproduce others and replace them.

A game changer could be a nanofilter that desalinates water, but that could make the problem worse. If every nation on earth was able to keep overpopulating, the resulting land clashes could be catastrophic.

In the meantime, take careful notice of where you are. You want to be able to tell your grandchildren (or fellow Mars base refugees) where you were when the water wars began.

In other words... (NRSFW)

This is the aim of our Chickenosaurus Project, in which I'm hoping to create a dinosaur like animal from a bird (chicken).

It's interesting how this interview comes full circle, from Jurassic Park to the step right before a Jurassic Park scenario can occur. Proceed with caution!

Hiring a programmer to take care of their software needs would certainly qualify as an operational expense they could justify.

That's a really good and valid point. The salary level depends on the non-profit. Non-profit doesn't mean they don't pay salaries, even good ones. I guess the point I was trying to make was that if you're starting from zero, doing a little free/low-pay work to build a background isn't a bad thing. It can lead to maintenance contracts and other more lucrative pursuits.