StrictlyLogical

Hmmm perhaps the definition of inside and outside could be tweaked. All areas that can be designated outside, require minimal maintenance (space walking) could simply be open to vacuum and radiation. Only areas with continual human presence would be shielded and pressurized.

I hear you, however, the ultimate and entire moral and economic purpose of a Corporation is the interest of the shareholders, who are the owners. The owners themselves are individual people with finite life spans. Ownership means their individual interests are paramount... at least it would in a moral society. So in the end, although there may be no foreseeable end date for an entity such as a corporation, and although long term flourishing of the corporation is in the long term interests of the owners, that long term cannot be so far outside the range of human life that the individual shareholders will not be the beneficiaries of that which they own. The owners are not morally held to sacrifice their own individual interests to future generations. Any savings, or investments, or any other action a corporation takes, must be to the benefit of and intended to accrue to the current living shareholders, or as the shareholders voluntary designate, their beneficiaries, assigns or transferees, etc.

To save mass, instead of cladding the entire ship with the idea humans should be able to run around essentially naked everywhere inside... designate only a small percentage of ship for "relaxation" areas (where people can wear jammies and slippers) and the rest of the ship requires full protection of specially designed radiation (but not pressurized) suits. Of course sensitive electrical and other equipment will need proper shielding... and the greenhouse/chicken coup as well.

Insane ideas spread, so discussing the matter might succeed in stopping it, at least in the case of the personal acquaintance you happen to to be dealing with... as to how much an objective threat to "society in general" insane ideas have as they spread from and to particular individuals, that is no easy question to answer. I am not sure a metric for the sanity or insanity of society as such is workable, better to think in terms of societies which are beneficial or inimical to sane individuals, or how prevalent sane or insane ideas are within a society... I would argue society itself is neither sane nor insane but merely a collection of individuals. People are not to be quarantined, nor are people's rights to freedom of speech to be infringed, such an approach to quelling the spread of insanity would be immoral. Persuasion and good ideas are the only proper ammunition against insane ideas and their spread.

Identifying and discouraging insanity or insane ideas might be acceptable activity.

The experience of your own reaction is your payment for your understanding or misunderstanding of the world. Rationality/Justice counsel proportionality, not only for those others whom your sentiments are about, but for your own "experience" of other people, which you put yourself through. Hatred is the most vile and extreme sort of emotion which takes a toll on the experiencer which has to be paid for by the benefits of the extreme action it urges one toward... be it elimination of a mortal enemy, or complete disassociation with a thoroughly toxic and irredeemable person in whom no value whatsoever may be found... but make no mistake it does not leave one unscathed, whether any action, appropriate or not, is taken in response. Upon reflection, you may find disappointment, sadness, regret, lowering of esteem are more rational for you to subject yourself to as an experience and more Just and proportional a response to others. Be rational in your assessment of the whole person, be it your brother or your father. Also, final responsibility for an adult person of sufficient intelligence lies with that person alone... fault the father a lack of fatherhood as a factor but you cannot negate the son's final responsibility in making his own soul.

I think there is also an insidious anti-concept lurking in the idea of some kind of arithmetical "total wealth" which makes the concept meaningless. The idea of creation of wealth is provably valid in a narrow situation when both parties trade voluntarily, because that implies both parties in the transaction benefit (to the best of their knowledge), and hence wealth is created. BUT when you have some parties clearly losing wealth or health or rights in forced transactions, where others benefit, the losses and wins to those different people are in some sense incommensurate, and at least any claim about the sum total wealth is an arbitrary claim. How much is freedom worth? How much are rights worth? How much is life worth if you live as a parasite? How much worth is destroyed by an arrangement such as slavery? If 10 people can generate 10 units of economic productivity when they are all free and alive, but if one were to enslave the 9 others and he could extract 100 units of productivity while working them literally to death... what do we say of the measure of so called "wealth" of 100 in the hands of a single survivor murderer versus 10 in the hands of a group of happy free living people? The idea that there is a simple calculus of total "wealth" in the context of different individuals is fraught with difficulty and oversimplification leads to the very ideas of Ulititarianism and the redistribution of wealth.

Yes indeed. One cannot prove the negative with positive evidence, one can only demonstrate that there is a lack of any evidence. Nothing in existence serves as evidence which proves the non-existence of the Devil, it's not as if the fabric of space time could purposefully post little signs saying "No Devil here". One can only point to the fact that no evidence has been shown supporting a claim to the positive... and in absence of any, there is nothing further to discuss. EDIT: But here I agree with you and ET both... one does not prove non-existence of say the Devil but in the face of claims to purported evidence one can demonstrate the lack of any evidence by skewering/debunking that purported evidence.

Keeping in mind nothing in concrete reality is arbitrary, and that only abstractions, thoughts, claims, or strings of symbols meant to signify these sorts of things, can be arbitrary, how about something like this: "Any idea or claim in any form, when any substantive portion thereof is wholly causally disconnected from reality, is, insofar as that portion is so disconnected, arbitrary." Accordingly, although a room full of monkeys typing randomly, will by accident create strings of symbols which if interpreted by a human, sometimes correspond to something in the real world, the accidental strings were never causally connected to anything in the real world... and should be seen as arbitrary, and objectively so because causality not an abstraction but a process of reality. I am proposing that in evaluating those typed letters (or any claim) one does not simply look at the meaning as interpreted by a human, as such, absent context, but must take into account how they are causally linked or disconnected from reality, and specifically the claimed referents "alleged" to have been their cause. I believe any sort of arbitrary claim or statement, involves this lack of causal connection. EDIT: How this intersects with falsity is not so simple when dealing with a volitional mind, but in some ways they are independent, as some claims are arbitrary but true, others are false but not arbitrary (humans are fallible), and in other cases one can make a purposefully false and arbitrary statement.

If I point at a blank page and state "The dog is grey", is that an objectively arbitrary statement?

It does not matter who said it, or even if it were said at all, but the “it” is still only a statement or claim.

I'm not sure you have connected each step in this hypothetical "proof". How about this [taking K as the additive identity element: K = (K + K)] So K*x = (K + K)*x = K*x + K*x = 2*K*x Using the unitary operator "-" K*x - K*x = 2K*x - K*x or 0 = K*x for any x.

Well that sounds a little more safe... at least the eco-terrorists would have to do some legit research on their own before ruining the world.

I do not doubt an enviro-terrorist will soon unleash such plastic attacking organisms into the biosphere with little thought to unintended consequences. Soon people will have throw out their disintegrating plastic hooks, hangers, pens, waterbottles, computer equipment, TVs, previously safe electrical appliances, recycling bins, and replace rotting composite patio planks, vinyl siding on their homes, car interiors, and replace crumbling and unsafe plastic-based safety equipment all crumbling slowly before their eyes. So much for my "permanent" CD collection... oh well, we'll just release another plague of organisms into the biosphere to take care of the first plague.

Is it really so arbitrary though? The unknown is not the unknowable. We know the things are of nature and that they have attributes, and generally know the kinds of things there are and at least the kinds of attributes and properties things have. We know even more in specific contexts. We do not know everything about an unexplored desert, but we know that it is a desert, and what usually lives there. I think we rightly fear the risks of the unknown, because we now know of dangers which we remember we were completely unaware of early enough in childhood, risks of rattlesnakes, risks of poison ivy, risk of avalanche, radiation poisoning, electric shock.... these were not unknowable, but they were unknown to us, specifically, before we learned of them. We are not omniscient, but we have enough experience to know that those things of nature of which we do not know include some which are dangerous, so it is reasonable to assume there are dangers you do not know of, whether individually, or undiscovered by Man... lurking in the unknown places... but so there does opportunity await. No one reaps the reward of taking risks without lack of some knowledge... without the lack of any knowledge, there would be no risk. Risk is in the unknown future, the unknown reaction to your product, the unknown amount of gold deposits in a potential mining site... so the potential for a boon lies in the untraveled places as well... which is why things that are new are often exhilarating, filled with both fear and excitement. Had we treated the dangers and also the opportunities of the unknown as non-existent rather than real potentialities for harm and growth, we never would have pushed the boundary to make the unknown, the known, and we would never have braved the unknown for their bounties nor been properly prepared for their peril.