Generally a gene for a dominant trait does something, and for a recessive one doesn't.

For example, a gene saying to put melanin in the iris of the eyes is going to be dominant- if you have one copy of it, you'll put melanin in your irises and have brownish eyes. All you need is one gene to do that to make that work.

Even if that seed exists, how will you know what it is?

"Needle in a haystack" is nothing compared to "small seed somewhere in North Africa"

Yes, yes, those are things. But why do they matter to you at all?

And see, you're making meaning- humans are stupid. There's your meaning for you. Do you think a cat would agree, or a rock?

Then what are people doing when they consider there to be a point to things- the things they do and the things all people do?

It's not something intrinsic in the world, it's a creation of humans.

Okay, so why are others important to you, such that you'd want to do so?

Basically, why is this something you would choose to do, rather than do something else instead?

Or, what does the act of loving mean? Why does it matter?

Meaning is what you create right after thinking, "What's the point of this?"

Cats and rocks and ants don't reflect on that. Inanimate matter doesn't.

So you don't think you'd get bored spending more and more tome fixing smaller and smaller problems?

The world is meaningless in itself. People make meaning- the entire notion of meaning is a human concept. Ants don't care, cats don't care, rocks and trees don't care.

Yes, but once someone's learned how to handle their suffering and can reliably obtain pleasures, what do they do then?

If the corporate charter gets revoked, it ceases to exist.

But then you have the problem of what to do with the assets.

That doesn't work. That would mean a corporation has an obligation to pay its employees, but not a right to sue someone who refuses to pay for a good or service, or the ability to own things.

Arguably, you're not wrong, if by "respect" you mean how someone is treated.

If you expect to engage in transactional relationships with people to further your own ends, will obey explicitly agreed-upon rules but have no implicit ones, and have no particular concerns for the persons' wellbeing beyond those, you will treat humans and corporations the same.

It would have required a lot of political upheaval, though- when the legitimacy of the government is based on the Emperor being divine, Christianity throws a wrench into things.

I worked at a hospital that did that. I thought there needed to be symmetry- Brahms' Lullaby for a birth, Chopin's Funeral March for a death. You could tell how the night was going that way.

Some of the Platonic forms only make sense when you consider that their language didn't really consider adjectives to be a thing.

"Hot" or "Large" or "Red" were considered something loke incomplete nouns that required other nouns to finish them. "Hot sand", "Large tree", etc.

Only then does it make sense to talk of forms of "The hot" or "The large"or, "The good"

If their language treated adjectives as we do, they may not have started to consider "The Good" a thing.

I find people are best served when beef is served medium rare.

How does that fit that definition of a pursuit of philosophy?

Ultimately, you have to ask "Why is this particular thing a problem that requires a solution?"

That's where your unspoken subjective preferences come in.

> Maybe you could argue machines measuring neurotransmitters can be better sometimes,

Possibly not, considering what we know of how neurotransmitter-increasing medications work. They don't cause an end to depression immediately after raising neurotransmitter levels. And, ironically, suicide risk goes up shortly after starting the meds.

> But i don't think people can make perfect assessments of their own happiness even with their qualia.

That is, though, about as good as it's going to get.

Presumably few would say they're unhappy when they're somehow secretly happy. Some more might say they're happy out of a belief they're supposed to be happy. Despite that, the person describing their own qualia has to be better than anyone else at knowing whether that assessment is right or not.

And yet I guarantee you that chefs and condiment manufacturers alike do have ideas on how to make a good mustard.

We have one standard for measuring happiness- asking people if they're happy. It's essentially the same one we have for assessing pain. At that point, it's just a matter of figuring out what makes people, when able to freely say, say they're happy more than not.

Basically, there's a difference between "Can't be tested" and "Can't be tested yet, but we can tell you how a test should work when we can do that."

> This attitude is why pessimism leads nowhere but the grave.

I have some bad news about where optimism leads, too.

Which means you lose. You will be outproduced by others, and will not have the resources to stop them from doing as they wish.

My argument is that a world without productivity is less pleasant than one with it. Do you like air conditioning? Running water for nice hot showers even in midwinter? Fresh veggies in January?

Basically, what you think of as pleasant- apparently being time to lounge around with your friends- is not what I think of as pleasant.

Hunting buffalo. Hunter-gatherer levels of productivity are about what people would do if they can't accumulate capital for themselves or if they're not coerced by external threat.