We argue over it all the time by disagreeing on what counts as "murder." Taking lives in war? Not murder. Taking civilian lives in war? Well the enemy often uses civilians as cover, what else can one do? The state takes someone's life? Not murder, just the cost of civil society. Abortion? Murder, obviously. Bombing an abortion clinic? Not murder, because killing killers in God's name is justified.

So what even is "murder?" It isn't simply the taking of a human life. It isn't even the taking of an innocent human life. It isn't even the taking of a human life with premeditation. Murder is an arbitrary line societies draw between the killing they find useful and the killing they don't. It's a legal and moral fiction.

I mean, the United States practically murdered an entire continent of civilizations and cultures and the only people who even care are the descendants of the few Natives we missed. How have we paid for that long term? We're a goddamn global hegemon and nuclear superpower that threatens to annihilate civilizations just for shits and giggles. Murder seems to be working out pretty well for us.

I've seen more than enough of your political comments to know you aren't arguing in good faith here. You aren't interested in a discussion, you're interested in an argument. You consider capitalism to be the only moral, just and valid system by definition, and you consider any possible faults with capitalism to be the result of not doing capitalism hard enough.

When you can view politics and economics in something other than religious terms then maybe we can talk honestly about capitalism and its alternatives. Otherwise, I mean, all you intend to bring to the table is "free market good, leftists bad" and I've already met a million of you here.

That attitude is one, maybe two generations away from extinction. Taste is created by the market, which caters to the young. When enough people have been born into a world in which AI generated culture and communication is the norm, that is what will define what good taste is. People like you (and I) will just come off like old people yelling at clouds.

We can already see this happening at the fringes. People have relationships with AI, they prefer AIs to real people, they use AI as a primary source of truth, they consider AI generated art to be superior to human work, they trust AI more than people. People identify as AI. AI is filling an emotional, sociological and creative space that an increasingly alienating and hostile society denies to people, for better or worse. Generative AI has only been a thing in popular culture for four years or so and it has already completely transformed human society and human sociology.

Barring a complete collapse of the AI bubble, which seems existentially impossible at this point given how invested our economies and government are in it, that's just what normal is going to be in a decade or so.

And the end should be obvious, because capitalism has one and only one goal - making the capitalists richer.

Even combat can have a narrative element (and it should, to be fun.) There are rules yes but the game isn't supposed to be this rigid.

AI will be so normalized across culture that any raw, unfiltered human expression will read as gross and unprofessional by most people.

    A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. But women will be saved through childbearing — if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety. (1 Timothy 2:11–15)

Saying a slave should obey their master doesn't ameliorate the moral evil that is slavery, and saying a husband should "love their wives as Christ loved the church" doesn't ameliorate misogyny. Paul doesn't believe men and women are equal, nor that they deserve equal rights, and thus neither has Christendom for most of its existence.

And the evidence is everywhere, in the two thousand years of law and culture based on the religion. Christian opposition to womens' rights and suffrage, divorce and non-heterosexual relationships. Laws forbidding women to work or own property, judges deciding that rape cannot exist within marriage because a woman's duty is to please her husband, husbands abusing their wives when they don't "know their place." And of course banning women from any position of power in the church. All of these are the consequences of Pauline principles.

Please tell us you're not going to start vibe-coding HN.

Plenty of browser plugins that do this. I like HN Comments Owl.

The Crusades and Inquisition, bad as they were, were also limited in space and time. Paul's words have arguably done damage across the entirety of Christendom to this day.

I remember reading once that when the US was working on the SR-71 Blackbird out in the desert the Soviets could read its cross section by using satellites to pick up the thermal signature its presence on the ground left behind. State level actors aren't doing pedestrian stuff like watching pizza deliveries to guess what the Pentagon is up to.