Speaking of which, anyone who discounts legal dissociatives–nitrous oxide in particular, and DXM by association–needs to go read William James too.
I also wanted to add, I don’t get people who refuse to use birth control or who have regular unhealthy sexual liasions. It’s soooooooo fucking cheap and easy nowadays to prevent pregnancy and disease. There are like 40 billion different methods of birth control out there on the market, and condoms are so prolific you can scoop them out of candy dishes at just about any health clinic. How can people have sex without actually thinking about the consequences? I have seen people with above average intelligence get knocked up – hell, I know one guy, a genius, who believes HIV is a made-up government conspiracy disease.
Mind-bottling.
If I tell you that I don’t like something, for example, country music or opera, that just means that it doesn’t appeal to me, and I don’t listen to it. I haven’t told you that it’s stupid and by extension, so are you for liking it, and I am not missing out on something fantastic and wonderful, and my musical education is not lacking. There is no reason for you to feel sorry for me, or to go on the defensive, or to inundate me with it whenever we meet, thinking that I might “get it” all of a sudden. I don’t like it!
You’d be surprised how often I’ve come up against that mindset. I don’t get it at all.
I don’t understand the mindset of people who like casino gambling.
My sister and I went to visit the casino in Sault Ste. Marie (Ontario) when I was up there. We walked in, wandered around for ten minutes, looked at the machines, looked at each other, said simultaneounsly, “This is fun?”, and walked out. It’s the only time I’ve ever been to a casino.
Seconded. We were on a cruise ship this summer that had a giant casino. I nearly had a seizure every time I walked through there to get to the other side of the ship. My husband and I completely agree that Las Vegas has absolutely zero appeal.
Now I wouldn’t mind seeing Vegas, but that’s because of the monorail and the peculiar architecture. I don’t think I’d gamble, though.
Honestly? I can’t understand how certain people can actually believe that if humans sat in a tree long enough (millions of years), that we would eventually sprout wings and start to fly. Call it evolution if you want, but I’m no evolutionist or creationist. But I just don’t get some of the things I heard people who do believe in evolution state as fact. IMHO, There is no way we came from fish and there is no way we came from a shit slinging monkey/ape.
Well, I’m convinced.
Of course we didn’t. Nobody claims that we did. Not a single scientist (ETA: serious scientist, who knows his/her shit) claims that.
The issue here is a misunderstanding of the theory of evolution. The claim isn’t that we “came from” apes or fish. It’s just that we can look at apes, as the closest thing Earth has to humanity that isn’t humanity, and determine by scientific fact that humans and apes had a common ancestor. That common ancestor gradually split off into two or more species, and those species split off into other species, etc., and after that long chain of evolution, humans and apes emerged–separately.
This is easily explained by the great philosopher, Bubba J. 
The one I don’t understand is people that don’t like to travel. At all. I understand they feel that way, and they are free to feel that way. I just don’t understand it. And not people that can’t afford to go places, but the ones that don’t want to stand on top of a mountain in the Rockies, or listen to jazz on Bourbon Street, or walk through Buckingham Palace or the Taj Mahal.
Who believes that? :rolleyes:
I second living on credit and gambling. I would not have one wink of sleep if I lived like that.
The way some pro-lifers see abortion in terms of all or nothing. Either you’re against it under all circumstances or you think it should be mandatory. Refusal to debate about cases like ectopic pregnancy where there is no chance of a live birth, where the mother’s life is in serious danger, or pregnancy as a result of rape or incest.
But actually, wouldn’t that be the most morally consistent position? If one truly believes that abortion is the taking of a human life, is murder, is morally wrong – why would it be any less morally wrong in the case of rape or incest? Would not a life still be taken? If murder is an absolute wrong, then murder is an absolute wrong.
But it is possible to believe that murder is a wrong without claiming it to be an absolute wrong. I don’t like the way it can be used, but there is a reason that people talk about “justifiable homicide,” after all.
Well, I want to clear up my position here. I believe the only excuse for killing someone is in self-defense – immediate danger to yourself, your family, or other people. But I also don’t believe that abortion is murder. I’m just trying to explain that I understand the mindset of ‘‘absolute abortionists’’ more so than those who make exceptions for rape or incest.
If you ask pro-lifers why they might make those exceptions, they often reply because the raped or abused person is innocent of any wrongdoing… which seems to indicate that the status of the prospective mother has some bearing on whether or not it’s wrong to destroy an unborn child. I don’t see how that can be the case, unless you view pregnancy as some kind of punishment for having sex when you shouldn’t.
It just seems to me like, if you think destroying an unborn child/fetus whatever is truly morally wrong, the mother’s situation wouldn’t make it more or less morally wrong.
However, I will allow that there are nuances in the pro-life position I have never been exposed to… I admit I don’t spend much time debating the issue.
Olives, I don’t want to hijack this thread, and thanks for expanding your position.
If I may, I’d like to PM you with a few comments, nothing obnoxious (I don’t think) just not really germane to the thread.
I hate you and I will kill you and everyone related to you because your great-great-great grandfather’s camel spit on my great-great-great grandfather in 1647.
One that perplexes me is I can’t/won’t pronounce it properly, even after you’ve told me how to pronounce it, even if it’s easy. For example, I worked with someone who pronounced Versace wrong - and just argued “Well, I pronounce it ‘ver-sayss’, and I always have”. Grrrr.
People who are convinced that their opinions/personal tastes regarding music/art/TV/movies are THE TRUTH and that anyone who disagrees with them is either a subhuman troglodyte or a pitifully uninformed idiot. Fine, I understand that you don’t like XXXXX, or that you think YYYYYY is the greatest movie ever made. That doesn’t mean that nobody else’s thoughts on the matter are irrelevant.
Thirded.