Well if you have 5 people in a room and 3 of them decide its morally acceptable to kill the other 2, that action would be moral under this theory. This is what some call a herd morality. If morality is by consensus then anything goes..you just need the correct number of people to believe it.

I also don't get this "dogs were domesticated by humans, cats domesticated themselves" bullshit. Dogs were domesticated the exact same way as cats, the only difference is we discovered cats are only useful for rodent control, as hunters. Dogs could be hunters (terriers), hunter-helpers (pointers, retrievers), protectors and herd control (shepards, collies), beasts of burden (Rottweilers), etc. Of course we spent more time working with dogs. They had useful abilities already. Cats are much like rats, racoons and other animals that thrive in the presence of humanity. They're just at the top of their respective food chain, like we are.

I think everybody advocating for even more gun control needs to put a nice 24" sign on their yard saying "This home not protected by firearms." For some reason most people hesitate to do that. It's like herd immunity for viruses. General gun ownership keeps everybody safer even if they don't own one, criminals don't like to confront armed people.

"By comparing criminal victimization surveys from Britain and the Netherlands (countries having low levels of gun ownership) with the U.S., Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck determined that if the U.S. were to have similar rates of "hot" burglaries as these other nations, there would be more than 450,000 additional burglaries per year where the victim was threatened or assaulted. (Britain and the Netherlands have a "hot" burglary rate near 45% versus just under 13% for the U.S., and in the U.S. a victim is threatened or attacked 30% of the time during a "hot" burglary.)"

Can't argue that. I've been in California so long that the idea of smoking inside a business didn't even occur to me. The 'in private homes with children and apartments or townhouses' part I find draconian and unenforceable...and we have them here.
On a side note, I also find it distasteful that cigars get lumped in with cigarettes. As far as I know, there have been few if any studies on second hand cigar smoke, which has none of the toxic additives most cigarettes have so produce a different smoke. I'm not saying it's good for you, just that it hasn't been proven to be the same kind of toxicity....yet they are now taxed the same here, doubling the price overnight. (If you can't tell, I'm bitter, I can't afford them now)

True, cars have far more utility (except to tobacco farmers) but are also far more damaging in many ways. It's not meant to be a logical argument, it's more about getting people to see that they also pollute the air (a normal complaint I hear about smokers) in a directly more deadly and indirectly disastrous way, and I hope they will consider that before angrily deriding someone for a cigarette. It's a disguised 'people in glass houses' argument.

Sadly, yes, smoking is an easy target today....alcohol could be tomorrow, or marijuana again (just became legal here)....I don't like our governments going after the easy targets heavy handedly just because they can. It's too easy to portray something or someone as an easy target and go after it solely because a small persuasive group finds it distasteful.

To play devils advocate, there are a few positive sides to smoking...smoking tastes good (to smokers), it acts as a stimulant/depressant and appetite suppressor, it supports an industry of farmers and for cigars, hand rollers, and it helps thin out the herd. ;-)

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

It's from here:
This quote is attributed to Nobel laureate Baruch Blumberg. In a late 80s PBS documentary, he said half of all human deaths 'may' have been due to malaria.

While it sounds astounding, it's plausible when you think about it. 93% of all humans ever born are dead. But it's a highly speculative business starting from how many people have ever lived.

Prof Carl Haub has come up with an estimate of 108 billion people since 50,000 BC. And only 6.5% of these are alive today. How Many People Have Ever Lived on Earth?

So did malaria cause the death of roughly 54 billion people? We can speculate. More than 96 billion of these 108 billion lived between 8000 BC and 1900 AD. For malaria to have caused the death of 54 billion people, it should have kept up a phenomenal rate of 5.4 million deaths per year in the last 10,000 years.

WHO estimates of 650,000 deaths per year now seem wildly off the mark. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funded a study to find out how many deaths occur due to malaria in today's day and age. The number was 1.24 million in 2010! http://www.bbc.com/news/health-1...

So it's certainly plausible that malaria could have killed five times as many in an age pre-dating modern medicine when most of the world lived as communes along with their cattle and herds.

Also, the longevity of the parasite plasmodium, which causes malaria. Studies have revealed that it's been around since the time of the dinosaurs. And certainly been around from the beginning of our story. http://www.malaria.com/questions...

Entirely plausible!

https://www.quora.com/The-Human-Race-and-Condition-Is-it-true-that-mosquitoes-have-killed-more-than-half-of-all-the-people-who-have-ever-lived

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Group Think / Herd Mentality do not equal 'rigged election'. You can complain about the media coverage, you can complain about campaign finance being broken, and of course gerrymandering, and you could easily make a valid point. But the implication of the 'rigged election' is direct manipulation, which is an ENTIRELY different matter; it's dangerous to play fast and lose with words when you have a populist movement that wants to believe anything.

I think Rich's shtick is that he speaks and behaves slightly awkwardly, offbeat. So i think part of the joke is him inexpertly/unexpectedly using a cattle herding term, the conceit of which is that Rob can decide to buy him some more biscuits or not as he chooses, because it's his money and Rich isn't about to force him. Obviously analysing it doesn't do it much justice.

That's what i think, but i don't actually find Rich funny so i might be missing the joke myself.

Again democracy cant decide the death penalty, abortions, taxes, religion, defense spending and all the other puny details. Democracy can choose leaders, agendas and assign responsibility.

Noocracy is just a new name for despotism, you let inteligent people have their way, the first thing they do is take care of themselves. Stupid people must have a fair representation. Experiments are being conducted to just let them think they have a fair representation, but I am afraid they may not be that stupid. I mean I hope they (we) are not.

Democracy is fairly simple and straightforward - either there is a way to change the ruler or there is not. Putin cant lose. Erdogan cant lose. Chinese communist party cant lose. Castro cant lose. Not democracy. Obviously the details of implementation are very nuanced, like if there are only two parties is that democracy? Etc.

Basically if the ruler makes it impossible for himself to be deposed peacefully democracy ends.

So let us assume some artificial system to pick perfect leaders could be devised. They would have no responsibility (after all they are the best possible leader) no compassion (everyone else is stupid) and no motivation (Im no. 1 so why try harder). Add a secret police and Stalinist Russia is born.

The ignorant herd is painfully hit and miss, but so is the stock market. This is still preferable to any dictator, even a clever one.

Your video, Ancient Swedish Cow Herding Call, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

That was some *quality, epic, professional level cat herding. Looked fun.

Or after their domestic squabble, chase it down for round 2. That thing probably is miles from the herd by now.

I just fell into that stupid, first-world trap of now wanting one of these horribly as a pet. I'm presuming, as in most cases, that would be a disaster for the animal, but I am still looking into it!

EDIT: and this site seems to have some good, realistic information on the topic: https://capybaraworld.wordpress.com/2013/02/20/a-pet-capybara-should-i-have-one/

TL;DR - You can keep them as pets if you're prepared to be with them every day. Having a second one sounds mandatory as well. Evidently they're extremely tied to their 'herd' and experience far worse anxiety when separated from their familiar companions.

No capybara for me, but glad to know I could one day have one if my life allowed it!