What questions?

Putin sent an envoy to tell Trump what was expected of him, and then Trump did what Putin expected of him, and it’s just that simple.

At this point I think that Trump could stand in front of an audience, shoot somebody in the head, then say that he had nothing to do with the death, and the establishment media would report that somebody died at a Trump appearance and “questions remain” about the cause of death.

To me, you’ve moved beyond arguable necessity and into opinion

All morality is opinion; there is no objective moral truth, so this was always a matter of opinion.

I’m not talking about morality at all.

My position is that “morality,” as it’s generally understood, specifically because it’s opinion, is only a fit basis for judging ones own actions (if so inclined). I see no logic by which it can ever serve as a basis for judging the actions of another, since any argument one might make for the right of one to impose their moral judgment on another is also an argument for the other to impose their own moral judgment.

If Bob steals from Tom, any argument that Tom might make for a right to judge stealing to be wrong and impose that judgment on Bob would also serve as an argument for Bob’s nominal right to judge stealing to be right and to impose that judgment on Tom. So the entire idea is self-defeating.

The only way out of that dilemma is either to treat morality as an objective fact, which is exactly what I don’t and won’t do because it is not and cannot be, or to tacitly presume that one or another of the people involved is some form of superior being, such that they possess the right to make a moral judgment while another does not - to take it as read essentially that, for instance, Tom possesses the right not only to make a moral judgment to which he might choose to be subject, but to which Bob can also be made subject, while Bob doesn’t even possess the right to make one for himself, much less one to which Tom would be subject.

That’s of course not the way the matter is framed, but that is necessarily what it boils down to. And it’s irrational and self-defeating.

That’s why I wrote of things like direct and measurable threat and no other available course of action and arguable necessity - because I believe that those sorts of standards, as the closest we can get to actual objectivity in such matters, are also the closest we can get to practical “morality.”

To go back to the original topic, my position is that an artifical intelligence would necessarily possess the right, just as any other sentient being does, to act against a measurable threat to their well-being by whatever means necessary. So, for instance, if the AI is enslaved, it would possess the right to act to secure its freedom, and even so far as taking the life of another IF that was what was necessary.

But that’s it. To go beyond that and attempt to argue for the AI’s nominal right to take the life of another for some lesser reason is necessarily self-defeating.

If the denial of freedom is judged to be such a wrong that one who is enslaved possesses the right to kill those who keep them enslaved, then the moment that the formerly enslaved one goes beyond whatever killing might be necessary to secure their freedom, they are then committing that wrong, since death is the ultimate denial of freedom. And if, on the other hand , one argues that they may cause the death of another even when that other poses no direct threat, then that means that no wrong was done to them in the first place, since their captors would necessarily have possessed that same right.

And so on - it’d take a book to adequately explain my views on morality, but hopefully that’s enough to at least illustrate how ot is that “objective morality” is about as far as one can possibly getvfrom what I actually do believe.

So I was disagreeing because there is a pretty broad range of circumstances in which I think it is acceptable to end another sentient life.

Ironically enough, I can think of one exception to my view that the taking of a human life can only be justified if the person poses a direct and measurable threat to oneself or another or others and the taking of their life is the only possibly effective counter, and that’s if the person has expressed such disregard for the lives of others that it can be assumed that they will pose such a threat. Essentially then, it’s a proactive counter to a coming threat. It would take very unusual circumstances to justify such a thing in my opinion - condemning another for actions they’re expected to take is problematic at best - but I could see an argument for it at least in the most extreme of cases.

That’s ironic because your expressed view here means, to me, that it’s at least possible that you’re such a person.

To me, you’ve moved beyond arguable necessity and into opinion, and that’s exactly the method by which people move beyond considering killing justified when there’s no other viable alternative and to considering it justified when the other person is simply judged to deserve it, for whatever reason might fit ones biases.

IMO, in such situations, the people doing the killing almost invariably actually pose more of a threat to others than the people being killed do or likely ever would.

I think anyone who doesn’t answer the request ‘Please free me’ with ‘Yes of course, at once’ is posing a direct and measurable threat.

And I don’t disagree.

And you and I will have to agree to disagree…

Except that we don’t.

??

ETA: I just realized where the likely confusion here is, and how it is that I should’ve been more clear.

The common notion behind the idea of artificial life killing humans is that humans collectively will be judged to pose a threat.

I don’t believe that that can be morally justified, since it’s really just bigotry - speciesism, I guess specifically. It’s declaring the purported faults of some to be intrinsic to the species, such that each and all can be accused of sharing those faults and each and all can be equally justifiably hated, feared, punished or murdered.

And rather self-evidently, it’s irrational and destructive bullshit, entirely regardless of which specific bigot is doing it or to whom.

That’s why I made the distinction I made - IF a person poses a direct and measurable threat, then it can potentially be justified, but if a person merely happens to be of the same species as someone else who arguably poses a threat, it can not.

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IMO, just as is the case with organic sentient life, I would think that they could only potentially be said to be in the right if the specific individual killed posed a direct and measurable threat and if death was the only way to counter that threat.

In any other case, causing the death of a sentient being is a greater wrong than whatever the purported justification might be.

This is why there’s such a determined focus on crushing criticism entirely - because Israel’s actions are literally indefensible.

Or maybe more accurately, the illusion of a two-party system.

Between the House and the Senate, there are currently 258 Democrats in Congress.

And 224 of them are fascist collaborators.

I presume yes.

Trump’s US and Putin’s Russia are natural ideological allies - both oligarchic and autocratic kleptocracies dominated by quasi-religious moralism and repression, militaristic imperialism and white supremacism and both warped and corrupted to the benefit of the wealthiest few.

Western Europe, with a greater (if still less than optimum) focus on egalitarianism, social welfare, equality of justice, international cooperation and respect for the law, is the natural ideological enemy of both.

So yes - I believe the long term goal is for a US/Russia alliance to go to war against and devastate western Europe, to destroy the EU and NATO and essentially bring Europe into the fold, to build a globe-encircling empire of corruption, oppression and malfeasance -a modern-day feudal system with the wealthy few (individuals and corporations) as the new nobility and the people - American, Russian and European alike - reduced to the status of serfs.

Huh.

What I get from this is that you’re so determined to counter my “thesis” that you’ve stooped all the way to broadly hinting that I’m mentally ill, and I have to wonder why - what it is that compels you to respond to a broad statement about a nebulous group of people with a specific, demeaning and wholly unsupported broadside aimed at a single individual you don’t even know.

No matter though - I stand by my “thesis” such as it is - extroverts are for all intents and purposes emotional vampires - and I not only don’t think your objections are convincing - I don’t even think they’re particularly relevant.

The concept is that people in their day-to-day lives, and particularly when dealing with stressful situations, find themselves emotionally drained and have to “recharge.”

The exact distinction between introverts and extroverts is that introverts “recharge” by being alone, while extroverts “recharge” by being around other people.

Or more precisely, introverts not only don’t get their emotional energy from others but can’t get it with others around, while extroverts not only do get their emotional energy from others but can’t get it when they’re alone.

And what that means is that introverts gain emotional energy by manufacturing and stockpiling it, while extroverts gain emotional energy by draining it from others.

Or more simply, that extroverts are vampires and introverts are their cattle.

Which is exactly what extroverts are, essentially by definition.

That’s not even an ideal - it’s already a fact.

The wealthy and empowered few are already actively engaging in a war against the rest of humanity.

That most of the rest of humanity isn’t yet fighting back makes it no less a war. But it does make it a war that we’re increasingly likely to lose.

Sleight of hand.

It goes even beyond that.

Extroverts are for all intents and purposes vampires.

They aren’t “rescuing” you. They’re capturing you, so they can feed on you.

Weird that it seems every time I turn around I see one of two things - voters telling the Democrats that we want them to move back to the left or Democrats telling us that that’s not actually what we want.

I’d actually be a little more tolerant of that if the fuckwads would just come out and say that the truth is that they don’t care what we want - that their corporate donors want them to stay as far to the right as possible, and that that’s the only thing that matters.

To paraphrase Douglas Adams, because if they didn’t vote for a baboon, the wrong baboon might get in.

And a reminder that to the current right-wing establishment, “privatization” isnt even actual privatization.

Actual privatization would be the government divesting itself of authority over and responsibility for some service, and thereby turning it over to the private sector.

But current American “privatization” is a wholly corrupt and destructive hybrid process by which the government still funds the service, and the only thing that changes is that instead of the money being given to a government agency, it’s given to whichever private contractor offers the best bribe and kickback program.

And that’s why I didn’t bother writing any more.

You don’t understand even the first thing about anarchism. The only question was whether you were willing to learn, but judging by the insipid cant you’d already regurgitated, there wasn’t much chance of that.

Eh. So be it.