V'dibarta Bam

1:21 AM

@SethJ Huh. My search, inquestion:131846 techques, yielded 0 results, as did inquestion:131846 techques.com, but inquestion:131846 www.techques.com yields the three results you found. Sorry about that.

MoriDoweedhYa3gob

@DoubleAA i think you need it on pastrami/smoked meats too

@DoubleAA because it says that you should do chalita in vinegar(i assume that is how they cured raw meat)

Monica Cellio

@IsaacMoses huh, that's weird. So it does whole-"word" matches only, and periods don't delimit word? (Just guessing.)

Isaac Moses

@MonicaCellio seems like it

Daniel

1:46 PM

Question for everybody here: Do people think that there would be support for a "religion" stack exchange? It would be about religion in general and not about particular religions (or maybe religions that don't have SE sites would be on topic) (or maybe comparitive religion questions would be on topic)

Monica Cellio

@Daniel I think that's come up before on Area 51 (which I don't follow closely). Searching there might provide some data (though obviously the answer at the time was "no" or "not enough" or some such). Personally I suspect it would be too broad; comparative religion is interesting but probably can't sustain a site by itself, and I suspect the absence of a real unifying theme for a "misc religions" site would be a challenge. Just my off-the-top-of-my-head thoughts.

Daniel

@MonicaCellio fair enough. I guess that's probably right

I'm just trying to think of a way to have a forum for questions that don't fit into any existing site's topic

Monica Cellio

2:04 PM

@Daniel well, I'm just one person. I hope others will comment.

@Daniel I sympathize. The standard SE way to explore ideas is to try to amass a set of candidate questions as part of an A51 proposal. You might start by seeing if you can think of a few dozen questions on your own that would be good SE questions for such a site. And, as I said, look up the A51 history to see what's been tried.

.

Daniel

@MonicaCellio Looks like the closest thing was area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/57106/…

And the only proposed question already fit somewhere else

Monica Cellio

@Daniel oh wow. That seems a little "off" somehow (presumably why it was closed). I know I've seen at least one other but don't remember details. It might have included the word "guru" in its description.

Isaac Moses

@Daniel @MonicaCellio, I'm pretty sure Religion was proposed on A51 at some point.(Dead wood eventually gets deleted.) I seem to recall some people suggesting that our proposal and all other religious ones should be merged into that

Daniel

@MonicaCellio Yeah probably the thing about "supernaturals"

@IsaacMoses Yeah, someone said that on one of the meta-questions for that religion and supernaturals site, but it got -4 votes

@MonicaCellio Are you thinking of this one?

Monica Cellio

@IsaacMoses I remember a discussion about merging Mi Yodeya (then judaism.SE in beta), Christianity, and I don't think Islam existed yet. We said no. :-) Oh, it might have been a side discussion on the hermeneutics proposal?

@Daniel that's the one; I had forgotten that it was proposed to be "about" gurus. (It mentions a bunch of religions in its description and possibly an earlier formation of it had a different spin.)

Monica Cellio

2:38 PM

Hey all -- I wanted to get some input on something. Our traffic, questions/answers per unit time, and voting have all been dropping a bit over the past several months -- nothing dire, but I was thinking about what we could do to encourage more participation. Last winter another site had a contest as part of their push out of beta, and I was thinking of doing something similar.

We can ask SE to sponsor a contest, of course (we did that a couple yeras ago), and maybe that's something to consider later, but I thought part of the appeal of the BCG contest was that it came from a community member. I'm willing to sponsor a contest along the lines of the one I linked (maybe not those exact badges, but something like). What do people think?

I've actually been thinking about this for a while but always get hung up on prizes (what could I offer that would be interesting?). This morning during shacharit an idea came to me: since it's Elul, it struck me that it would be reasonable to offer to give a certain amount in winners' names to the tzedakah designees of their choice. Is that an appropriate thing to do? I don't think I've seen tzedakah used as a contest prize before and certainly wouldn't want to offend anyone.

So, any thoughts on a contest to boost participation in general, particular implementation, or prizes?

Daniel

@MonicaCellio I think that's a really cool idea. For some reason, the idea of everyone competing to determine where you give your tzedaka seems a little weird to me. For me, it might be less weird if a large group of people contributed to a tzedaka pot and the winner got to decide to whom it would go.

That's just my opinion, though. Others could disagree

@MonicaCellio Ok, well I created an Area 51 proposal. We'll see if it sticks. Feel free to follow if you're interested

@IsaacMoses ^

@Everyone ^^

Monica Cellio

@Daniel that's why I said in the winner's name -- he should get the "credit" for the tzedakah, not me. This doesn't come out of the pool for my own tzedakah.

@Daniel thanks, appreciated!

Isaac Moses

3:23 PM

@MonicaCellio Thinking about what a contest/initiative ought to target: Q/A and especially voting per unit time going down sound like community members are participating less. If that's right, then the question is: How can we get people to participate more, and keep doing so?

What do you think of re-starting regular topic challenges, perhaps with some sort of prize involved? Maybe make it a monthly thing, maintain a running tzedaka pot on some crowdfunding site that people contribute to at will, and let each month's winner pick where to distribute any funds in the pot to (assuming that's technically feasible)

I'm still interested in doing a more interesting Twitter feed ("When I get around to it" TM). If done well, that could get people who are community members that follow Twitter to come back more often

maybe

Seth J

3:39 PM

@JonEricson You're obviously not thinking of the Halachic standard. ;-) But in any case, once it's brined, it's considered cooked. Or perhaps I should say that brining is considered a process by which something transfers taste and can change status akin to cooking. @DoubleAA, any thoughts on that definition?

Monica Cellio

@IsaacMoses that's a good point. I initially thought about this in terms of Announcer etc, as a way of drawing more people in, but on reflection I think we need to boost the activity of the people who are already here if we can. There was a big spike in new visits in late March, I presume because of the haggadah, but they don't seem to have stuck around. So that's another question (maybe for meta): how can we convert drive-bys into users better?

@IsaacMoses good idea -- we should restart topic challenges, with or without a prize (if we can make the logistics work I like your idea).

Isaac Moses

@MonicaCellio Logistical issue: keeping them in people's consciousness. When we were misusing System Messages for this purpose, I think we were able to get pretty good participation. Perhaps we should start a blog specifically (initially) to host topic challenges, which will both appear specially in the sidebar and be something people could subscribe to by RSS

Daniel

@MonicaCellio data.stackexchange.com/miyodeya/query/127646/…

Monica Cellio

@IsaacMoses ooh, blog. We should talk about a blog. One way some sites use it is to highlight individual questions, or use them as jumping-off points for broader discussions. Blog + RSS is useful.

Isaac Moses

@MonicaCellio Islam.SE recently started a monthly blog

Monica Cellio

3:49 PM

@Daniel thanks!

8

Q: Now that we graduated, should we do a blog?

We discussed making a blog in a previous post. Now that we graduated, what do people think about starting an official Mi Yodeya blog?

Isaac Moses

I also really want to do a Parasha podcast of some form, but it'll be about a year before I, personally, can practically commit to actually doing it (without at least one other person willing and able to shoulder a substantial portion of the production)

Monica Cellio

@IsaacMoses yeah, the podcast sounds like (a) a great idea and (b) a lot of work. It'll be great to have, but I don't fault anyone for not having done it yet!

0

A: Now that we graduated, should we do a blog?

I like the ideas in HodofHod's answer (which I upvoted last year). In addition, we should try to use the blog as a way of converting passive blog readers (who might be subscribing via RSS, as Isaac noted today in chat) into community members. For this purpose, we should write blog posts that hi...

Isaac Moses

@MonicaCellio Cool ideas.

Monica Cellio

@IsaacMoses thanks.

Isaac Moses

4:04 PM

@MonicaCellio Logistical thoughts re: blog: To make sure that it gets posted to regularly, maintain a regular schedule (e.g. weekly, biweekly, or monthly), and have people pre-commit to writing the posts on schedule, either by voluntary sign-up or by rotation. If the job doesn't demand too much creativity*, maintaining a fixed rotation whose participants have to do it once every n weeks or months shouldn't be too hard.

* E.g. If there's a standard template, perhaps expecting one question for each of the three slots your meta answer proposed, that the blogger just has to fill in by finding questions and writing a bit about them

Meta-Man

7

Q: Mi Yodeya Referencer: A Syntax for Linking to Sources

Several times, the community has discussed and requested an easier way to link to sources. So recently, with the help of Hashem yisborach, and @Menachem, I threw together a quick script to do just that. It links to Tanach and most of Talmud Bavli, and with the help of the community, we've added R...

discussion hyperlinks citing-sources

6

Q: Why does it matter if there is a duplicate?

Why does it matter if the same question is asked twice? Sometimes the second question gets better answer.

discussion asking-questions exact-duplicates

4

Q: What Yodeyan slang terms are there?

What are slang terms that people on Mi Yodeya use in comments or chat that are unique to this community? Please post one term with definition, etymology, earliest known usage, etc., per answer. Please only include terms that can reasonably be considered to genuinely be part of the communal ling...

discussion chat comments community glossary

1

Q: Consecutive Visits

I was on Mi Yodeya every day this past week or so and I just went to look at how many days I have been on consecutively and it says 1. How is this possible? Am I missing something?

support badges

3

Q: Should I downvote questions that I vote to close?

Many of the questions on the site that are closed as off-topic or for other reasons have negative scores. Should I be downvoting questions that I vote to close? To me, I feel like downvoting and voting to close are to be used in different situations (and almost never at the same time). So should...

discussion voting down-votes vote-to-close

-1

Q: Transliteration schemes explained

As far as I understand it, there are many ways of transliterating Hebrew for native English speakers. Since Mi Yodeya is an English-based site, we use many different ones. What are different transliteration schemes that are in use by regular contributors? Please use the following template if...

discussion transliteration

3

Q: Tag search should match middle of synonyms

Go to http://judaism.stackexchange.com/tags and, in the "Type to find tags" search box, type in a string. The page will auto-update with tags that match that string. However, it seems based on a few tries that the string with match only: a real, usable tag (as opposed to a synonym), no matter w...

bug status-planned tag-synonyms search

2

Q: Summarizing Sources as answers

In this answer on Meta.Islam.SE, Caleb essentially suggests that summarizing the response of another scholar is an inappropriate answer for a SE question. He says If you can actually research the subject until you understand the issue and can formulate the answer based on your own knowledge a...

discussion answers citing-sources

4

Q: Is the "about" page sufficiently prominent for new users, or should it be pushed more before they post?

A new user answered a bunch of questions without really understanding what this site is about, so received downvotes and an automatic answer ban. The user commented that he hadn't been forced to read the "about" page before posting. Should that change? New users are presented with a prominen...

discussion new-users about-page

6

Q: What user scripts do we recommend for use on Mi Yodeya?

A user script is a usually-small device that you can add to your web browser to change how specific websites or all websites appear to you. It can be a way, for example, to add functionality to a site such as Mi Yodeya for yourself that doesn't exist for people who don't have the script installed...

discussion faq featured user-scripts

4

Q: Are scenario questions acceptable for asking?

Are hypothetical questions that are limited to a specific scenario valid for asking, even though the chances of the scenario actually occurring are very slim?

discussion asking-questions

3

Q: Change "Jewish life and learning" to "Judaism" in the list of on-topic reasons

The Help Center now says:If you have a question about...Jewish law or practice (what to do or why)Jewish philosophya Jewish text (explaining a passage)history of Jewish law or of Jewish lifelanguage used in Jewish life and learninggeneral knowledge (science, etc.) as it relates directly to Jewish...

discussion featured scope help-center

3

Q: Can we ask questions about Jewish music here?

Is there space here for questions about Jewish Music?

discussion scope

Isaac Moses

@Meta-Man Slow, down, Meta-Man! What's gotten into you?

3

Daniel

@IsaacMoses I think he took a break for a bit. Now he's catching up

Must have gone on vacation

@IsaacMoses I'd be willing to contribute to a blog once a month or so

Monica Cellio

@Daniel noted. :-) I just asked the Islam mods about their process -- I know they have a meta post to collect topic suggestions, but how do writers get assigned and what's the path from "someone writes something" to publication? How is it managed? I'll share what I learn.

Daniel

@MonicaCellio I think so far they've only had one blog post plus their welcome message

@MonicaCellio And I also think that they've had a lot of volunteers for the blog who haven't pulled their weight

But their site is a bit different from ours. They are having real problems with participation

Not a lot of contributers at all

And really only 3 or 4 regulars

Monica Cellio

4:15 PM

@Daniel right, just trying to learn from prior art (management, not content :-) ) since I'm in another room at the moment with one of their mods (so, easy to ask).

Their third post is coming today, suggested by one user and written by another. They had more volunteers to be editors than authors. I asked how they're managing the proto-content (email? trello board? something else?).

Daniel

@MonicaCellio Ah. I believe they have a dedicated chat room

Monica Cellio

@Daniel so it turns out the blog tool has some of this built in -- a draft can be posted and edited without being published, and when it's ready an admin pushes it out. So once we get to "X is going to write a post about Y" we're in good shape; what we have to manage is the part before that. We've done meta-based idea-pooling/voting/selection before (topic challenges, for instance), so I think we could do that.

Daniel

@MonicaCellio Cool

So maybe we should make a meta-post to gauge interest in participating?

Monica Cellio

@Daniel and they're using trello (which I'm not yet familiar with, other than having seen Joel blog about it ages ago) for the earlier stages.

@Daniel yes, in a day or two probably, since I just bumped the "should we and if so what about?" question. (That's for broad ideas, not individual topics.) Assuming that doesn't just get crickets, we'll need to ask about topics and volunteers.

Monica Cellio

6:19 PM

@Daniel one thing to be careful of with this site proposal is that an academic site about religion will struggle with subjective, dogmatic, opinion-forum answers (and questions if you don't whack them) a lot, and co-religionists might not be willing to do the hard work of downvoting, commenting, editng (where possible), and deleting. This has been a pretty big problem at times on Hermeneutics (and remains a problem, possibly the biggest barrier to advancement).

Anonymous

6:58 PM

@Daniel So, are practicing Jews allowed to attend a non-Jewish wedding, if there is non-kosher food at the wedding reception area?

Daniel

10

A: Attending a relative's non-Jewish wedding in a non-Jewish place of worship?

As a convert, this has been a bone of controversy in my family. My Rav, Rabbi Gedaliah Anemer, zt"l, said it was forbidden to enter the sanctuary of a church. Rabbi Maurice Lamm, in his book Becoming A Jew, also does not allow any leniency. When my father died, I brought up the issue because...

@Anonymous Also: judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/281/…

Anonymous

@Daniel I wonder what happens if the place of the wedding is really a secular chapel or city hall. Sometimes, the city hall may host civil weddings, witnessed by the Justice of the Peace.

Daniel

@Anonymous See the second link

@Anonymous I'm not sure if there's a question on here asking the exact question you are asking

Anonymous

@Daniel Wow. Jews are much more stricter than Roman Catholics! I have heard that Catholics can get married wherever they want, as long as they receive permission from the priest!

Daniel

Maybe you should ask it

Daniel

7:36 PM

@Anonymous judaism.stackexchange.com/q/30546/1713

rosenjcb

Don't Catholics follow an opinion from some beit about divorce? Beit something... damn. It's on the tip of my tongue.

Daniel

@rosenjcb Are you thinking of a beit din?

Monica Cellio

7:54 PM

@rosenjcb catholics don't permit divorce. I don't think they excommunicate people over it any more, but you'll never be able to remarry according to them because you're still married. I don't know where they get this, though.

rosenjcb

@Daniel Not beit din.

Daniel

@MonicaCellio I believe it's in the NT

@MonicaCellio biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+19&version=NIV

Never thought I be quoting the NIV here

rosenjcb

Beit Shammai!

That's what I was thinking of.

Daniel

@rosenjcb Catholics are reading the Mishna?

rosenjcb

@Daniel No, but some of their early decisions in the law they had was based on Jewish sources. They used the Oral Torah until about the 4th century CE.

Daniel

8:04 PM

@rosenjcb I'm pretty sure it's from that NT passage that I cited above

rosenjcb

@Daniel Beit Shammai existed before the compilation of NT.

Monica Cellio

8:27 PM

@rosenjcb but Shammai permits divorce -- they're just stricter about it than Hillel (who says you can divorce if she burned the soup).

Daniel

@MonicaCellio My wife is particularly careful to not burn the soup because of this

;)

Monica Cellio

@Daniel interesting -- that "except for sexual immorality" part doesn't seem to factor into christian denominations that ban divorce outright. But I guess that's not for this room.

Daniel

@MonicaCellio Yeah I was thinking that as well

Monica Cellio

@Daniel I actually side with Hillel on that one -- if you would actually consider divorcing over something like that, then your marriage is broken and you should leave instead of holding her hostage. But, of course, we hope it doesn't get to that, through some combination of talking, counseling, and better cookware.

Daniel

@MonicaCellio Yes. Better cookware is a must. We got a rice cooker so that I would never be tempted to divorce her because the rice never burns.

Daniel

8:46 PM

@MonicaCellio I think rewards for earning participation and moderation badges could be useful

Monica Cellio

8:58 PM

@Daniel thanks.

Meta-Man

0

Q: How can we improve participation?

Monica Cellio noted in this chat comment that participation on Mi Yodeya seems to be going down. She specifically mentioned traffic, questions/answers per unit time, and voting. This graph of votes/post over time seems to support this statement. I'm guessing that part of the problem is that regul...

discussion

Anonymous

9:34 PM

@Daniel How (in what way) is Christianity a touchy issue in regards to its status in following the noahide laws?

Daniel

16

Q: Is Christianity Avodah Zara?

It is commonly accepted that Islam is not Avodah Zarah (idolatry) since Islam has a clear monotheistic theology with a belief in Allah that parallels our view of "kail" or Hashem. It is even permissible for Jews to enter and pray (Jewish prayer) in a mosque. The views of Christianity and their ...

halacha avodah-zarah christianity

Anonymous

So... how is this topic sensitive?

Maybe it's categorizing Christianity under pagan/polytheistic worship?

Daniel

@Anonymous I just mean that there's some debate about it

And that many authorities consider Christianity to be idolatry

Anonymous

@Daniel It's weird how Jews consider Christians to worship idols, but the Christians I've met seem to have a view that Jews and Christians are worshiping the same god.

Maybe Jews dislike the elevation of Jesus as divine.

Then again, even liberal Christians dislike that too.

rosenjcb

@Anonymous We dislike graven images in general.

Daniel

9:42 PM

@Anonymous That's right. There are 2 main problems. One is the elevation of Jesus as divine. The second (related) problem is the entire concept of the trinity

Both of which are considered idolatry

rosenjcb

@Daniel And the problem of icons and status representing God.

@Daniel Some authorities say that Christianity is not avodah zarah for non-Jews.

Daniel

@rosenjcb That's a problem particularly with Catholicism, but not necesarily Christianity as a whole

rosenjcb

Typically I hold that view.

@Daniel Catholicism, East Christianity, but not all of Christianity.

Daniel

@rosenjcb That's right, but pretty much all modern poskim hold that it is

@rosenjcb Really? I thought you were a Rambam guy? Rambam said Christianity is definitely avoda zara

rosenjcb

@Daniel Good point. Even Rambam thought so.

Yeah, I disagree with Rambam on a few points.

Daniel

9:44 PM

@rosenjcb Beat you too it :)

rosenjcb

Like shomer negiah being a biblical commandment as opposed to a rabbinic mandate.

Daniel

@Anonymous Anyway, a consequence of this is that many Jews hold that Unitarianism is not idolatry

Anonymous

@Daniel OK. So, Islam would not be considered idolatry?

Daniel

@Anonymous That's right. According to almost all authorities, Islam is not considered idolatry

Anonymous

@Daniel So, would Unitarianism or Islam fulfill the seven noahide laws then?

Daniel

9:47 PM

@rosenjcb I won't tell our buddy you-know-who

2

rosenjcb

@Daniel I'm sure he makes a few disagreements too.

Daniel

@Anonymous I'm not sure of the answer to that one

rosenjcb

I don't understand why he has to use all those numbers when he talks. I like davening with an "authentic" pronunciation too, but I keep it to myself at shul.

Daniel

It might be a worthwhile question to ask

Anonymous

@Daniel Well, I'm just trying to think of Jewish-approved religions for Gentiles.

Daniel

9:49 PM

@Anonymous The one that Jews usually suggest is Noahidism

rosenjcb

@Anonymous Any movement that praises the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is typically not avodah zarah.

And only the God of A, I, and J.

Daniel

@rosenjcb Umm... except 33% of those religions

rosenjcb

@Daniel If you worship JC, then you worship another God too.

Doesn't fall in the category that I discuss.

Daniel

@rosenjcb Ok, well you just gave the definition of idolatry

rosenjcb

@Daniel We throw around a lot of Jew speak here, so it's nice to lay down a clear definition.

Daniel

9:51 PM

@rosenjcb Christians don't believe that Jesus is "another god"

They believe that he is a manifestation of the same one God

rosenjcb

@Daniel Praising any human as God in Judaism is idolatry though.

Daniel

@rosenjcb Ok. That's different from what you said before, though

3 mins ago, by rosenjcb

@Anonymous Any movement that praises the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is typically not avodah zarah.

Anonymous

@Daniel I have heard from a liberal Presbyterian that he rejects the divinity of Jesus, but he still believes that Jesus is the mediator between God and humanity. He prays to God in the name of Jesus.

rosenjcb

@Daniel Let me fix it then. "Any movement that praises the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (and no one else according to Jewish opinion) is typically not avodah zarah.

Daniel

@rosenjcb So... if Judaism thinks you're not avoda zara, then you're not avoda zara

rosenjcb

9:54 PM

@Daniel Again, I'm just laying down a simple definition because we throw around Jew speak.

It's redundant for us, but not for gentiles.

Or unlearned people in general.

@Anonymous What does "in the name of Jesus mean?"

Daniel

@Anonymous Whether that is idolatry probably depends on the circumstances, and I'm not going to make that decision

That's a question for a rabbi, which I am most certainly not

Anonymous

@rosenjcb I don't know. I think it means that the Holy Spirit delivers the prayer to Jesus, who delivers the message to God the Father.

Daniel

@Anonymous Oh, in that case, I can answer it. Most Jewish scholars say that belief in the trinity is idolatry

rosenjcb

@Anonymous Having an intermediary is not necessarily avodah zarah. I was recently watching a lecture where some Lubavitch Rabbi talked about "religion" being the intermediary between the commoners and the king.

I'm not sure though. :\

Daniel

@rosenjcb That's right. You can take it even farther. Chassidim often characterize their rebbe as an intermediary between them and God.

Which is certainly not considered idolatry

As long as they don't ascribe super-human powers to him

Anonymous

9:58 PM

@rosenjcb Islam views Jesus as a prophet, and it views Muhammed as the last prophet. Maybe it's a way to say that Jesus is a mediator/prophet of God.

rosenjcb

@Daniel What about those chassidic stories where some guy's rebbe walks on water?

@Anonymous Probably.

Daniel

@rosenjcb Those stories AFAIU are usually saying that they are able to preform their miracles through God's action, not through their own

Maybe one of the Chasidim in the room can help me out with that, though

Anyway, I've gtg

rosenjcb

@Daniel Is that why some rabbis say that asian martial arts aren't allowed?

Daniel

talk to you all later

rosenjcb

@Daniel Bye.

Anonymous

10:02 PM

At the end of this, I think the easiest religion is no religion.

No need to worry about who is going to heaven or hell.

No need to worry about who is going to purgatory.

No need to worry about who is worshiping idols and whatnot.

No need to worry about who is blaspheming against God or holding heretic beliefs against the establishment of religion (i.e. temple, mosque, synagogue, church).

No need to worry about what foods are clean or unclean.

Shmuel Brin

@Anonymous There's blasphemy in many secular countries (like Trotskyism)

or being religious

or nationalism

Anonymous

@ShmuelBrin Can you rewrite your last two posts in complete sentences?

Shmuel Brin

Many secular countries still believe in something, and are at times more fanatic in that belief than other religious countries.

So, for example, in the SU, religion was blasphemy. Just for that one could be sent to Siberia.

Trotskyism was another example of secular blasphemy.

Anonymous

@ShmuelBrin Well, I actually had in mind of not practicing any religion at all, on a personal level.

I realize that one could be a bit lonely by not attending social meetings, but then, there are humanistic religions like Unitarian Universalism that cater to the social need of atheists and agnostics.

Shmuel Brin

10:18 PM

@Anonymous It could be easy, the question is it true?

oh well.

gtg

rosenjcb

10:29 PM

Well if you don't prescribe to a religion, you still have to prescribe to some ethical/moral system.

If you lack one then it's hard to imagine how you survive in society.

A lot of atheists I know are psuedo-scientists and thing utilitarian hedonism solves everything.