Mrs_deWinter

Well obviously our reality isn't actually paradoxical. We call it that way because it seems like our estimates and conclusions don't fit our observed reality:

Based on mathematical estimations (e.g. the Drake equation) it's pretty unlikely that we're the only intelligent species in our galaxy. So where is everyone?

Every answer to that question tries to resolve the seeming paradox. And your answer specifically isn't unheard of either, it's called the economic explanation. Throwing satellites out is obviously possible, we've done it and Voyager 1 will reach another solar system in roughly 30,000 years. So it's technically possible, just very uneconomic.

And the environmental impact of mining and enriching the fuel.

Is that supposed to convince me that there's plenty of uranium left? Because based on the numbers shown with reserve vs. historical usage it kinda seems like it would last for a few decades at best.

Very true. Also in itself kinda creepy.

I'm not saying Israel should keep occupied land. At all. You're saying we should abolish the state entirely. Sorry, that's borderline genocidal. And not what happened to Nazi Germany either - it was occupied and then basically newly founded. What you imagine for Israel would be closer to a solution where the occupying forces in Germany after 1945, or maybe the surrounding countries, took their share of German territory for good. We wouldn't have a Germany today if that would have been the decision made back then.

And we wouldn't have Iran, Russia, North Korea, and a whole bunch of other nations with humanitarian violations either, even though you conveniently skipped that point.

Because it's usually not said about other nations committing crimes against international law. Iran is allowed to exist. Russia is allowed to exist. North Korea is allowed to exist. Heck, Nazi Germany was allowed to exist.

The right to exist as a nation is such a fundamental idea to international law that I have to wonder how you would argue otherwise without stepping into genocidal territory.

And it is a bad look, to be completely honest, that of all nations is just so happens to be Israel to be the one country where people have continuously called for their destruction.

Israels current actions must be condemned, no debate there. And the German government should be louder in their criticism (although I can see why they of all governments have the hardest time doing so). But Israels right to exist has nothing, zero, to do with that.

Sorry, but thats just not true. Read for example what the anti-semitism commissioner in Germany says about it: (translated from German obv)

Where does criticism of the Israeli government end and where does anti-Semitism begin?

Criticism of Israeli government policy is not anti-Semitic per se and we Germans can also criticize it - just as Israelis themselves do. The settlement policy in the West Bank, for example, violates international law. It is absolutely possible to criticize this without being accused of anti-Semitism. Criticism becomes anti-Semitic when Israel's right to exist is called into question. Or when Israeli actions are compared to the atrocities committed by the Nazis.

Do you have an example?

Criticism of Israeli government action is absolutely legitimate. Anyone who criticizes the settlement policy that violates international law or the course of the protective wall between the West Bank and Israel is not anti-Semitic. But anyone who denies the state of Israel the right to exist and lets loose a slogan like "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" is making an anti-Semitic statement. When Israeli government actions are equated with Nazi crimes and, for example, the Gaza Strip is described as a large concentration camp, then this is also anti-Semitic because it relativizes Nazi crimes and reverses perpetrators and victims.

The AfD obviously doesn't say the quiet part out loud, they're already on the brink of proceedings to be banned. I'm talking about actual skinheads.

Random behavior of subatomic particles doesn't make free will any likelier either though.

If they act at random on a makro level their randomness would average out to zero. And that actually checks out, since the mechanical forces of the atomic and molecular level are known, observable, and provable. An apple drops from the tree to the ground, every time. Causality is still a thing, even if not observable at the subatomic level.

The only way to imagine a subatomically based free will would be some mechanic over which we, at will, could change the randomness of subatomic particles to behave in a predictable pattern and on a scale that's grand enough to make the proverbial apple fall upward. Or at least make or synapses do something that they physically speaking wouldn't have done otherwise.

Free will is as likely as magic. In fact it would actually be some form of magic - a volitional breach of causality itself.

But if we are truly deterministic beings, the factors determining our environment are incredibly important. Even (not freely) acknowledging that free will doesn't exist we could very well (not freely) decide that we need a justice system in this society because we (not freely) want less crime, and people will (not freely) do less crime in a society where such a system is in place.

In the end it doesnt matter if people act based on free will or entirely predetermined. Or society developed as we are, and we put systems into place that seem to work. Sure, someone robbing a bank might do so for reasons that were predetermined in his brain and surroundings, but getting prosecuted for it would in turn become something that codetermines every future moment of his life.

The only think determinism really changes is perspective. It enables us to say: Okay I understand why I/they/you acted this way, or maybe I don't understand, but can assume that there were reasons. That's it. It lends understanding; it doesn't have to chance anything.

The Dark Forest Hypothesis. A very compelling answer to the Fermi paradox: If the universe is this vast and life surely must have developed over and over all around us, how come we never found anyone?

If two civilizations ever met, chances are incredibly slim that they were comparably or even similarly developed at this exact moment in time. Think about a modern army traveling back in time 400 years and fighting a group of swordmen with horses; the medieval people would be so overwhelmed it would barely classify as a fight, and that's just with a few hundred years of difference in technological progress. The random difference between species from different planets and systems would be far, far greater. So if two of them would meet, one of them would very likely be to the other as a god to an ant.

The universe might be brimming with life, but everyone who gets this far must be aware that half of them could wipe you out like ants, the other half could be as indomitable as a god. Cue the dark forest metaphor: There's prey and there's predators. We don't know which one we are in each instance, or how many of each are out there. But how could a first contact protocoll look like in such a competetive (and very likely deadly unfair) environment?

In the dark forest only two types of species can survive: Those that attack. And those who hide.

Recognizing israel is absolutely irrelevant to anti-semitism.

Many people in this thread don't seem to know this, but within German neo-Nazi movements that's absolutely wrong. Revoking Israel's right to exist is the number one talking point of the people doing hitler salutes again.