Why the god/God concept is broken as a claim. OP/ED

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Why the god/God concept is broken as a claim. OP/ED

Why the god/God concept is broken as a claim, OP ED.

To those who have rightfully left behind the idea of a disembodied super hero in the clouds, this is for the people who still insist the case must be.

There are multiple levels in which, what is merely in reality our projection of our own desires, in which the people who insist such is the case, that do not logically follow. Scientifically is a no brainer for those who have left all sorts of sky daddy claims who have accepted the reality that this is all there is.

BUT for those who still insist there must be some divine "creator" "inventor" or "cause" who has unlimited power, I have yet to see any credible argument, even outside science and merely on a moral level. Outside the lack of evidence, this is albatross that looms large for any human arguing the divine anywhere around the world in every country.

No one likes to be held back by force. Everyone strives to gain resources and questioning how things work is how we better understand the resources we use, it even tells us long term, how to cooperate with each other or dominate a hurdle in our way. Our delusions often get us stuck in our wishful thinking and predilections and if one looks at human history, no matter one's label today, they can look back at the ancient past to something they don't buy personally and say "I cant believe they bought that".

Now, the common concept of a god is that it is the apex, nothing is higher and it is the final "ref" if you are watering him down, or the final "law maker" whom you cant remove from office. In evolution in every species, there is a drive to be on top. Being on top means more resources, and more opportunity to reproduce. That is science however. I want to deal with the simply moral bankruptcy of any god claim.

"I am being oppressed" is the cry from the Muslim, the Jew and the Christian. It is even a battle between Indians in Cashmere. It is the battle between Buddhists in Tibet vs the Buddhists of the communist party in China.

Why do humans cling to a belief that puts them as the subordinate? For the same reason your mom and dad cant do anything wrong, even if they do lots of things wrong in reality. It is why we side to that we are sold and that which brings us comfort, even if what is sold to us is false. God/god belief works, not because invisible friends are real, but humans like the idea of being protected, like we evolved having our parents protect us.

 

OUTSIDE THAT THOUGH, the worst part of god claims is the moral aspect. Once you set up your god as the apex, it cannot fall. In reality all life falls and all humans die. What makes the god/God concept broken isn't just about the lack of scientific evidence. It is the idea that someone else determines our fate and good or bad, we have no say, and this entity, give it any name you want, owes us no explanation. In reality in the civil west that type of thinking does not fly. Our current election in America has both parties questioning and blaspheming both Romney and Obama. I am quite sure neither wants the other to gain absolute power, and I agree.

So how does one mentally square an unmovable apex power with the way we want to live in reality? How does one worship a a God you cant debate with or impeach or remove from office if it fucks up? If a God cannot make mistakes, then the title "all powerful" is a broken concept. But even beyond that immoral considering the fans of such claims say he is our "all powerful" protector.

Yet there has never been one period in human evolution that has not had violence or war or death, not to mention everyone dies. It seems like tons of drama a dictator wants to merely bring attention to themselves. It does not seem like a compassionate plan. When a child gets murdered, they are with God. If a child gets saved God was watching. But children worldwide die by the millions every year by disease, famine, war and crime. It seems a bit inept or malicious.

Skeptics know the real reason bad things happen, this is not a question for them. This is for anyone who claims Jesus, or Allah or Yahweh or even "Karma".

 

"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
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 The problem with your

 The problem with your ethical standard, Manageri, is that it's impossible to live by. You are unable to live up to it, as are any of us.

You can make decisions based upon your standards, but there's really no way to know whether this decision you make is actually doing objective good. You may choose not to eat a chicken, but if that chicken went on to develop bird flu and cause hundreds to die, your attempt at objective goodness has ended up making things worse. So you're just arbitrarily moral or immoral, irrespective of the decisions you choose.

 

With subjective morality, there is no such problem. You can have a subjective morality without being hypocritical.

 

 


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Manageri wrote:We

Manageri wrote:
We don’t have free will……

Hey asshole, if we don’t have free will what was this ‘intelligence’ resting upon that you said to me could ‘override’ our DNA.  You know, the thing that according to you distinguishes us from the animals, that allows the pedo to not act out on his desires – if it isn’t free will, what is it? It’s our ‘intelligence’ is it?

But if our intelligence is determined what’s it determined by if not our DNA you fucking half-wit.
 

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GodsUseForAMosquito

GodsUseForAMosquito wrote:

 The problem with your ethical standard, Manageri, is that it's impossible to live by. You are unable to live up to it, as are any of us.

So what, practical difficulty does nothing to invalidate a philosophical argument. This is like arguing that not losing any soldiers in the war isn't a good standard to strive for just because it's next to impossible. Obviously we're not gonna work towards losing less soldiers until we figure out that the less we lose the better, and we're not gonna move toward doing the right thing ethically until we figure out what that means.

Quote:
You can make decisions based upon your standards, but there's really no way to know whether this decision you make is actually doing objective good. You may choose not to eat a chicken, but if that chicken went on to develop bird flu and cause hundreds to die, your attempt at objective goodness has ended up making things worse. So you're just arbitrarily moral or immoral, irrespective of the decisions you choose.

Oh, great, the argument from "kick the old lady under the bus just in case she's a terrorist". You really think we're completely unable to judge what our decisions are likely to accomplish? This is absolute bullshit and you know it. According to this logic there was no point in freeing the slaves, no point in warring against Hitler etc. In short, this nonsense allows us to do (or not do) anything at all and call it ethical.

Quote:
With subjective morality, there is no such problem. You can have a subjective morality without being hypocritical.

Yeah there really aren't ANY problems if you're a subjectivist, you can just declare that whatever you do is ethically perfect. Oh shit, I forgot that so can the neighbor and if he decides he's gonna use my house for target practice with his bazooka then I don't have any consistent argument whatsoever as a subjectivist to show him he's doing something wrong. Subjectivism leads to the exact same conclusion as nihilism, everyone can do whatever the fuck they want and think they're doing nothing wrong.

Mr C O Jones wrote:

Manageri wrote:
We don’t have free will……

Hey asshole, if we don’t have free will what was this ‘intelligence’ resting upon that you said to me could ‘override’ our DNA.  You know, the thing that according to you distinguishes us from the animals, that allows the pedo to not act out on his desires – if it isn’t free will, what is it? It’s our ‘intelligence’ is it?

But if our intelligence is determined what’s it determined by if not our DNA you fucking half-wit.

I adressed this "overriding our DNA" shit already in the last post, respond to that. If you wanna make an argument for free will too then go ahead.


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Manageri wrote:Obviously if

Manageri wrote:

Obviously if the act of kicking the jerks has the effect of making people act less like jerks then that consequence has to be taken into account. The thought experiment didn't contain such a clause though, I even mentioned in my response that I'm assuming kicking the jerks does not make them act less like jerks. If we broadcast the jerk kicking all over the world and tell people this'll happen to them too if they act like jerks then that entirely changes the thought experiment.

So why don't you answer the thought experiment as it was intended: If you can kick two assholes or one nice guy and no one will ever know it happened nor will it in any way change the world, what is your rational justification for choosing to impose greater pain than necessary by choosing to kick the two jerks?

Because they deserve it more?

I have to pick either the nice guy or the jerks. The nice guy has done nothing to deserve a kick in the nuts, the jerks may very well have. They are definitely the better choice. They are much better target for a punishment I have to give either them or an innocent.

By your logic we should have no form of punishment that shows no effect on rehabilitation. We should just let murderers live normally if we can't show a rehabilitating effect on them from some kind of punishment. We should let them walk free, not imprison them, because, hey, a non-rehabilitating prison wont help them stop being murderers (it will stop them from commiting murders, but not them stop wanting to commit murders, hopefully you understand what I mean)!

 

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ThunderJones wrote:Manageri

ThunderJones wrote:

Manageri wrote:

Obviously if the act of kicking the jerks has the effect of making people act less like jerks then that consequence has to be taken into account. The thought experiment didn't contain such a clause though, I even mentioned in my response that I'm assuming kicking the jerks does not make them act less like jerks. If we broadcast the jerk kicking all over the world and tell people this'll happen to them too if they act like jerks then that entirely changes the thought experiment.

So why don't you answer the thought experiment as it was intended: If you can kick two assholes or one nice guy and no one will ever know it happened nor will it in any way change the world, what is your rational justification for choosing to impose greater pain than necessary by choosing to kick the two jerks?

Because they deserve it more?

I have to pick either the nice guy or the jerks. The nice guy has done nothing to deserve a kick in the nuts, the jerks may very well have. They are definitely the better choice. They are much better target for a punishment I have to give either them or an innocent.

Unless you can prove free will to me I don't see how anyone really deserves being punished.

Quote:
By your logic we should have no form of punishment that shows no effect on rehabilitation. We should just let murderers live normally if we can't show a rehabilitating effect on them from some kind of punishment. We should let them walk free, not imprison them, because, hey, a non-rehabilitating prison wont help them stop being murderers (it will stop them from commiting murders, but not them stop wanting to commit murders, hopefully you understand what I mean)!

No, silly man, I've already said in this very thread the reason I have for punishment is deterrence. In the case of criminals who we know remain a serious threat to society I say keep the fuckers locked up, I'd rather deny one rapist his freedom than let him rape a bunch of more women upon his release from prison.

 


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Manageri wrote:Beyond Saving

Manageri wrote:

Beyond Saving wrote:

Really? What reason do we sentients have to care about us sentients as a group?

None if we all have your philosophy where only you matter. I don't know how many times I have to tell you this, if you don't give a shit about others then there's absolutely nothing I can say to you that will convince you that you should. My arguments are aimed at people who do think others matter. You're essentially asking me to bridge the is-ought gap for you and that's impossible.

So your arguments are only aimed at people who agree with you? Seems kinda pointless to me. Nor did I ever argue that others don't matter, I argued that the value of others (and self and anything else that might have value) is subjective. Nice little strawman there though.  

 

Manageri wrote:

Quote:
Rational reason for kicking the jerks? Because they deserve it

We don't have free will, hence the concept of deserving anything doesn't ultimately make sense.

We don't? Who is controlling us and making decisions? It seems rather pointless to discuss morality or ethics at all if none of us have freewill to decide our actions.

 

Manageri wrote:
 

Quote:
It is rather silly to declare that suffering has a universal value, yet you have done so. It seems rather silly to have a single standard upon which to have a moral system and declare it objective and rational.

Having many standards is somehow inherently more rational?

In a world of 7 billion odd people it is far more rational to imagine that they will follow a great number of standards rather than a single one. 

 

Manageri wrote:

The reason everyone's suffering must have equal value is that without that standard you have absolutely no grounds for making any kind of useful ethical argument. If all seven billion people only value their own welfare then obviously we have seven billion contradictory standards, meaning that all but one (and more likely all) are necessarily WRONG.

Lol. So the only reason everyone's suffering must have equal value is because it needs to in order to support your argument? LMAO. All you need is an old book that says so and you can start quoting passages to me as evidence. Also note that 7 billion people with 7 billion different ethical standards does not mean they are necessarily contradictory. They do contradict at times, and that is why we create government and power structures in an attempt to either control others or prevent others from controlling us.

On what basis do you assume that there exists a "right" standard? (Other than your argument requires a right standard) Is there a "right" favorite color? And all other favorite colors are necessarily "wrong"? That is the heart of what everyone has disagreed with you about, the existence of a "right" standard. But I guess there has to be a right standard because your argument needs there to be a right standard- just enter the Room of Requirement and there is one right standard right there. 

There might exist standards that lead to more pleasant societies to live in than others, there might be standards that lead one to live a more pleasurable life than others, but to say that there is a single "right" standard and all others are wrong is ridiculous. Your particular standard doesn't even rank as more pleasant or pleasurable since it necessarily leads to the destruction of all sentient life. IMO, it is in competition with the worst.

If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X


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Manageri wrote:No, silly

Manageri wrote:

No, silly man, I've already said in this very thread the reason I have for punishment is deterrence. In the case of criminals who we know remain a serious threat to society I say keep the fuckers locked up, I'd rather deny one rapist his freedom than let him rape a bunch of more women upon his release from prison.

Seems at odds with your stated ethics. Suppose we lock up 1000 rapists for an average of 30 years. Being rapists, no doubt a certain percentage of them are raping each other. So you have some who are suffering a lot and all of them suffering to some extent by being locked up. Since all suffering is equal, rather than causing suffering among 1000 people, perhaps we should assign one woman for every 3 rapists, give them a nice comfortable home and allow them their freedom. That way, only about 334 women are suffering daily confinement and rape, compared to the suffering of 1000 rapists. Isn't it necessarily better that 334 women suffer than 1000 rapists according to your theory? After all, the suffering of a rapist is the same as the suffering of an innocent.  

If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X


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Beyond Saving wrote:So your

Beyond Saving wrote:

So your arguments are only aimed at people who agree with you? Seems kinda pointless to me. Nor did I ever argue that others don't matter, I argued that the value of others (and self and anything else that might have value) is subjective. Nice little strawman there though.

No, they're aimed at people who get it that they're not special and that there is such a thing as right and wrong behaviour, as opposed to the moronic standard of anything goes as long as your psychology doesn't give you some negative emotional reaction that you seem to hold.

Suffering is not a subjective standard, there are sensations that are shittier than others, and this information is readily available to any conciousness. It's not in any way subjective that the sensation my brain produces if I'm stung by a needle is less painful than the sensation of slowly getting my legs cut off with a chainsaw. Before you make some moronic remark about how a paralyzed person won't feel it when his legs are cut off I will point out I said THE SENSATION, not the action. if we were to somehow reroute the brain processes that go on when I'm getting my legs sawed off to the paralyzed guy, he'd feel the exact same amount of pain. I really don't get it how people that understand conciousness is nothing but a product of the shit that goes on in our brain can argue that the sensations we feel aren't produced by objectively measurables occurrences.

 

Quote:
Manageri wrote:

We don't have free will, hence the concept of deserving anything doesn't ultimately make sense.

We don't? Who is controlling us and making decisions? It seems rather pointless to discuss morality or ethics at all if none of us have freewill to decide our actions.

You know exactly how unfree will works even if you don't believe it, our brain makes the decisions and projects an illusion to our conciousness that we're in charge.

It's not at all pointless to discuss what's valuable whether we have your supposed freedom or not, the fact there's no ultimate freedom in your decision to throw acid in my face does not mean it won't hurt or that that pain is meaningless. It's also entirely irrelevant whether it's the mystical free you that is convinced by some argument to act differently or whether it's your unfree brain.

 

Quote:
Manageri wrote:
 

Quote:
It is rather silly to declare that suffering has a universal value, yet you have done so. It seems rather silly to have a single standard upon which to have a moral system and declare it objective and rational.

Having many standards is somehow inherently more rational?

In a world of 7 billion odd people it is far more rational to imagine that they will follow a great number of standards rather than a single one.

That wasn't the question.

 

Quote:
Manageri wrote:

The reason everyone's suffering must have equal value is that without that standard you have absolutely no grounds for making any kind of useful ethical argument. If all seven billion people only value their own welfare then obviously we have seven billion contradictory standards, meaning that all but one (and more likely all) are necessarily WRONG.

Lol. So the only reason everyone's suffering must have equal value is because it needs to in order to support your argument? LMAO.

No, you must have a universal standard or doing ethics is completely pointless. If you think your welfare is the most important thing in the world and I think mine is, then obviously there's no way for us to do any kind of compatible logic on the subject, and "ethics" is reduced to nothing but 7 billion psychologies all bragging how their mom's cooking is really the best. You might as well let people define mathematics however they want and then try getting the same answer out of an equation with some asshole who thinks 7 is a bigger number than 9.

 

 

Quote:
Also note that 7 billion people with 7 billion different ethical standards does not mean they are necessarily contradictory. They do contradict at times, and that is why we create government and power structures in an attempt to either control others or prevent others from controlling us.

You do realize it doesn't take more than one contradiction for an idea to be provenly bullshit, yes?

Quote:
On what basis do you assume that there exists a "right" standard? (Other than your argument requires a right standard) Is there a "right" favorite color? And all other favorite colors are necessarily "wrong"? That is the heart of what everyone has disagreed with you about, the existence of a "right" standard. But I guess there has to be a right standard because your argument needs there to be a right standard- just enter the Room of Requirement and there is one right standard right there.

I explained this with the lollipop example in my last big response to that weasel shit guy on the previous page.

Quote:
There might exist standards that lead to more pleasant societies to live in than others, there might be standards that lead one to live a more pleasurable life than others, but to say that there is a single "right" standard and all others are wrong is ridiculous. Your particular standard doesn't even rank as more pleasant or pleasurable since it necessarily leads to the destruction of all sentient life. IMO, it is in competition with the worst.

Objectivity does not have any intrinsic ties to antinatalism, so arguing against AN does nothing to argue against the shit I'm posting in this thread.

As for the single right standard thing, as long as you define what your goal is then yes, there is a single best way to get there (or theoretically multiple ways if those somehow manage to produce an outcome with the exact same value).


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Beyond Saving wrote:Manageri

Beyond Saving wrote:

Manageri wrote:

No, silly man, I've already said in this very thread the reason I have for punishment is deterrence. In the case of criminals who we know remain a serious threat to society I say keep the fuckers locked up, I'd rather deny one rapist his freedom than let him rape a bunch of more women upon his release from prison.

Seems at odds with your stated ethics. Suppose we lock up 1000 rapists for an average of 30 years. Being rapists, no doubt a certain percentage of them are raping each other. So you have some who are suffering a lot and all of them suffering to some extent by being locked up. Since all suffering is equal, rather than causing suffering among 1000 people, perhaps we should assign one woman for every 3 rapists, give them a nice comfortable home and allow them their freedom. That way, only about 334 women are suffering daily confinement and rape, compared to the suffering of 1000 rapists. Isn't it necessarily better that 334 women suffer than 1000 rapists according to your theory? After all, the suffering of a rapist is the same as the suffering of an innocent.

Well for starters you're ignoring the fact that giving rapists their personal fuck slave does nothing to deter rape and hence causes more of it, and that there are ways to ease the suffering of the rapists that doesn't involve anything like the scenario you outlined.


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Manageri

Manageri wrote:

Quote:
Manageri wrote:

We don't have free will, hence the concept of deserving anything doesn't ultimately make sense.

We don't? Who is controlling us and making decisions? It seems rather pointless to discuss morality or ethics at all if none of us have freewill to decide our actions.

You know exactly how unfree will works even if you don't believe it, our brain makes the decisions and projects an illusion to our conciousness that we're in charge.

So my brain making the decisions isn't me? My conciousness is separate from my brain? 

 

Manageri wrote:
 

No, you must have a universal standard or doing ethics is completely pointless. If you think your welfare is the most important thing in the world and I think mine is, then obviously there's no way for us to do any kind of compatible logic on the subject, and "ethics" is reduced to nothing but 7 billion psychologies all bragging how their mom's cooking is really the best. 

That is exactly what ethics boils down to and it is completely pointless. Now please explain why I should believe there is a universal standard and I am therefore wrong. In all of your responses, you have not once offered evidence that a universal objective standard exists- you have said one should exist, you have identified the measure as suffering, yet have failed to argue why it is universal and your arguments that it is objective are laughably weak. 

 

 

Manageri wrote:

You do realize it doesn't take more than one contradiction for an idea to be provenly bullshit, yes?

When you are talking about a subjective sets of beliefs held by 7 billion people there is no logical reason to believe that they need to be consistent, nor is there a logical reason to believe that one and only one can be true. Contradictory beliefs do in fact exist, sometimes even within the same mind. 

 

 

Manageri wrote:

I explained this with the lollipop example in my last big response to that weasel shit guy on the previous page.

And like all your other analogies it was pointless and inaccurate. You are the one telling us that red is the best color lollipop and we should all agree. We are saying your favorite color lollipop is subjective and we don't give a fuck if you get a red one, or don't get one at all. If you want a red one, get a red one, if you want a green one grab a green one. I don't like lollipops so I don't take any, yet you are insisting that there is some objective fact that red lollipops (using suffering as a basis for all moral decisions) is the one true color and all others are wrong. I'm saying have whatever color lollipop you care for and none of the colors are right or wrong because the preference is completely subjective. 

 

 

Manageri wrote:

As for the single right standard thing, as long as you define what your goal is then yes, there is a single best way to get there (or theoretically multiple ways if those somehow manage to produce an outcome with the exact same value).

Well sure but we have not agreed upon a goal. If you want to say "The goal is to have a planet with the least amount of suffering so the best way to get there is to adopt an ethical standard using suffering as the sole measurement of morality." Ok, that is the equivalent of me saying "I want a McChicken sandwich so the best way to get one is to go to McDonalds." So what? Goals are not objective either, people have a wide range of goals and you can hardly have a universal solution without a universal goal. 

If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X


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Manageri wrote:ThunderJones

Manageri wrote:

ThunderJones wrote:

Manageri wrote:

Obviously if the act of kicking the jerks has the effect of making people act less like jerks then that consequence has to be taken into account. The thought experiment didn't contain such a clause though, I even mentioned in my response that I'm assuming kicking the jerks does not make them act less like jerks. If we broadcast the jerk kicking all over the world and tell people this'll happen to them too if they act like jerks then that entirely changes the thought experiment.

So why don't you answer the thought experiment as it was intended: If you can kick two assholes or one nice guy and no one will ever know it happened nor will it in any way change the world, what is your rational justification for choosing to impose greater pain than necessary by choosing to kick the two jerks?

Because they deserve it more?

I have to pick either the nice guy or the jerks. The nice guy has done nothing to deserve a kick in the nuts, the jerks may very well have. They are definitely the better choice. They are much better target for a punishment I have to give either them or an innocent.

Unless you can prove free will to me I don't see how anyone really deserves being punished.

 

But you said earlier that you would kick the nice guy in the balls, because that would create less suffering. Now you don't want to kick anyone in the balls? If not, you would inflict a innocent person with pain over two assholes just because there would be less overall pain? The assholes past actions do not effect their attractiveness as a target for ball-kicking? Why is the nice guy deserving of a kick in the nuts to protect the two jerks? I would gladly kick the two jerks right square in the nuts to save the innocent guy the completely unwarranted pain.

What exactly do you think is calling the shots, if not free will? If you think it is our DNA, this is in direct opposition to your argument against others on this very thread, if you think it is some nebulous 'intelligence' as you seem to, than you need to prove that even exists, and what exactly that is (definitions please). On one hand you seem to say that pedophiles should be able to figure out what they are doing is wrong, but now you are saying that we don't have free will (and if pedophilia is just a fucked up brain, they really can't figure out that it is wrong, because they don't have free-will, right?). You seem to be contradicting yourself here.

Manageri wrote:
No, silly man, I've already said in this very thread the reason I have for punishment is deterrence. In the case of criminals who we know remain a serious threat to society I say keep the fuckers locked up, I'd rather deny one rapist his freedom than let him rape a bunch of more women upon his release from prison.

But what if that imprisonment won't help him change his rapist ways? Than he doesn't deserve that punishment of being isolated according to you. Also, if he doesn't have free-will, who can blame him for raping? He doesn't have control over his own actions, right?

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Manageri wrote:Beyond Saving

Manageri wrote:

Beyond Saving wrote:

Manageri wrote:

No, silly man, I've already said in this very thread the reason I have for punishment is deterrence. In the case of criminals who we know remain a serious threat to society I say keep the fuckers locked up, I'd rather deny one rapist his freedom than let him rape a bunch of more women upon his release from prison.

Seems at odds with your stated ethics. Suppose we lock up 1000 rapists for an average of 30 years. Being rapists, no doubt a certain percentage of them are raping each other. So you have some who are suffering a lot and all of them suffering to some extent by being locked up. Since all suffering is equal, rather than causing suffering among 1000 people, perhaps we should assign one woman for every 3 rapists, give them a nice comfortable home and allow them their freedom. That way, only about 334 women are suffering daily confinement and rape, compared to the suffering of 1000 rapists. Isn't it necessarily better that 334 women suffer than 1000 rapists according to your theory? After all, the suffering of a rapist is the same as the suffering of an innocent.

Well for starters you're ignoring the fact that giving rapists their personal fuck slave does nothing to deter rape and hence causes more of it, and that there are ways to ease the suffering of the rapists that doesn't involve anything like the scenario you outlined.

But say there is no other way to decrease the rapist's suffering.

By your own logic we should create as little suffering as possible, no matter what.

1000 rapists, raping each other, causing , let's say, 500 units of suffering

1000 rapists raping 334 women, causing a , let's say, 200 units of suffering.

Which, if the rapists and the women's suffering from the act of rape is equal, amounting to more suffering? 1000 people getting raped, or 334?

As your logic follows, we should actually let the rapists rape 334 because 334 people suffering is less than 1000 people suffering.

 

Provided this is works with your arguments, it is so seriously fucked up. I don't give as much of a shit about the rapists suffering. I don't really want to torture them, but they are less important. They can just deal with it. 334 innocent women are more important to protect than 1000 rapists. Those rapists have given up their rights, caused serious, often irreperable harm, and are no longer equal to the average human being, in terms of how much we should care about their suffering.

If they wanted to be treated as equals, they should've acted as equals, and not raped people. Their suffering became less important than protecting the populace the minute they violated another person's rights and damaged that person, possibly forever.

This is not to say that we should punish them excessively. The whole point of a justice system is to try to figure out what punishments are correct for each crime, and prison systems to enact the punishment, in addition to protecting the populace. Rehabilitation is a good objective, but protecting people who haven't already committed a heinous crime has to take priority.

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Manageri wrote: Suffering is

Manageri wrote:

Suffering is not a subjective standard, there are sensations that are shittier than others, and this information is readily available to any conciousness. It's not in any way subjective that the sensation my brain produces if I'm stung by a needle is less painful than the sensation of slowly getting my legs cut off with a chainsaw. Before you make some moronic remark about how a paralyzed person won't feel it when his legs are cut off I will point out I said THE SENSATION, not the action. if we were to somehow reroute the brain processes that go on when I'm getting my legs sawed off to the paralyzed guy, he'd feel the exact same amount of pain. I really don't get it how people that understand conciousness is nothing but a product of the shit that goes on in our brain can argue that the sensations we feel aren't produced by objectively measurables occurrences.

 

Do forgive me for butting in, but you have been going on about this forever.  Yes, we can measure -- say -- the temperature that one person says is painful.  But that is not the same temperature for everyone.  It is called pain threshold, and it is different for different people.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_%28biological%29#Thresholds wrote:

In pain science, thresholds are measured by gradually increasing the intensity of a stimulus such as electric current or heat applied to the body. The pain perception threshold is the point at which the stimulus begins to hurt, and the pain tolerance threshold is reached when the subject acts to stop the pain.

Differences in pain perception and tolerance thresholds are associated with, among other factors, ethnicity, genetics, and sex. People of Mediterranean origin report as painful some radiant heat intensities that northern Europeans describe as nonpainful, and Italian women tolerate less intense electric shock than Jewish or Native American women. Some individuals in all cultures have significantly higher than normal pain perception and tolerance thresholds. For instance, patients who experience painless heart attacks have higher pain thresholds for electric shock, muscle cramp and heat.[56] Women have lower pain perception and tolerance thresholds than men, and this sex difference appears to apply to all ages, including newborn infants.[57]

 

A sensation that is shitty to you may not be to me.  And so suffering is not objective, but subjective.  Which is what everyone has been trying to tell you.

We also have different levels of empathy.  Our ability to feel empathy lies on a bell curve, with some people at the low end, some at the high end, and most in the middle.  (See Zero Degrees of Empathy by Simon Baron Cohen, available at the UK Amazon store or through interlibrary loan.)  So what may seem to be very awful from your perspective, another person viewing the exact same incident will not see it as all that bad.  Or vice versa.

Living in Portland, OR, there are a lot of vegans.  And a lot of vegan items in the upscale stores that cater to the demographic.  I have heard all of the arguments for veganism - and I have raised my own chickens.  Trust me on this one - chickens are not people and do not suffer in the same manner as people do.

And they are omnivorous - they eat snakes, rats, snails, each other...... We had two chickens that had been pecked until the feathers, skin and some of the muscle on their backs were gone.  Seriously, you could see the bones in their back.  We put them in a separate pen, feed and watered them - and the muscle, skin and feathers grew back.  They did not cry, fuss, whimper or whine about their injuries.  They just kept pecking and scratching and acting like they always had.

They did not suffer like I would think I would suffer if my back looked like theirs.

As I see it, in your world view, everyone feels the same pain and everyone can empathize and suffer with the sufferer.  But that is not the case in the real world.  Basing your ethics on what you think should be instead of what is may not get the result you want.

 

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Beyond Saving wrote:So my

Beyond Saving wrote:

So my brain making the decisions isn't me? My conciousness is separate from my brain?

Yes Sherlock, the brain is responsible for a shitload of things going on in your body without your conciousness ever knowing about it, or do you think you stop breathing every night when your conciousness shuts off? 

Quote:
Manageri wrote:
 

No, you must have a universal standard or doing ethics is completely pointless. If you think your welfare is the most important thing in the world and I think mine is, then obviously there's no way for us to do any kind of compatible logic on the subject, and "ethics" is reduced to nothing but 7 billion psychologies all bragging how their mom's cooking is really the best. 

That is exactly what ethics boils down to and it is completely pointless. Now please explain why I should believe there is a universal standard and I am therefore wrong. In all of your responses, you have not once offered evidence that a universal objective standard exists- you have said one should exist, you have identified the measure as suffering, yet have failed to argue why it is universal and your arguments that it is objective are laughably weak.

If you don't think there's any point to ethics then there's nothing I can say that will objectively demonstrate you should, this must be like the fifth time I say this to you. If you don't accept welfare as having value then all I can say is you're an idiot, and if you think only the welfare of you and the people your psychology just happens to give a shit about has value then you're a preposterously selfish asshole.

The reason a non-idiotic non-selfish non-asshole can see welfare has value and that value is equal for all sentients is because:

1) It really doesn't take a fucking genius to figure out that all we value is in some way connected to the welfare of a sentience

2) I'm not special in any way so why the fuck should my welfare somehow be worth more than the welfare of others?

 

 

 

Quote:
Manageri wrote:

You do realize it doesn't take more than one contradiction for an idea to be provenly bullshit, yes?

When you are talking about a subjective sets of beliefs held by 7 billion people there is no logical reason to believe that they need to be consistent, nor is there a logical reason to believe that one and only one can be true. Contradictory beliefs do in fact exist, sometimes even within the same mind.

Are you serious? There's no logical reason to believe my house can only have three or two doors at the same time? Do you even know what a contradiction is? Quite fucking obviously if one person believes the world is round and the other believes it's flat then one or both must be wrong, and if one asshole believes only his suffering has value and the other one believes only his does, then that's just as much a contradiction and once again one or both must be wrong. This is why moral subjectivity is incapable of producing a consistent (as in accurate as in true as in not retarded) view of the world.

 

Quote:
Manageri wrote:

I explained this with the lollipop example in my last big response to that weasel shit guy on the previous page.

And like all your other analogies it was pointless and inaccurate. You are the one telling us that red is the best color lollipop and we should all agree. We are saying your favorite color lollipop is subjective and we don't give a fuck if you get a red one, or don't get one at all. If you want a red one, get a red one, if you want a green one grab a green one. I don't like lollipops so I don't take any, yet you are insisting that there is some objective fact that red lollipops (using suffering as a basis for all moral decisions) is the one true color and all others are wrong. I'm saying have whatever color lollipop you care for and none of the colors are right or wrong because the preference is completely subjective.

Did you like not read the sentence where I explicitly said I'm not trying to force a red lollipop into everyone's mouth? Here:

"The part where you cross over into bullshit-land is when you accuse me of trying to impose my standards on others, as if I'm trying to force everyone to eat the red lollipops, when I'm really saying it's best for everyone to get the lollipop they prefer."

Please explain to me what the atrocity in that statement is? If you're gonna argue that the color that everyone likes best or causes them minimal suffering is not the one I should give them then you obviously don't know what suffering means. Even if you have your asshole standard of only caring about yourself and a few others then do explain to me in what universe does your suffering not have value to you? It's fucking ridicilous that I have to seriously argue with grown fucking people about whether suffering is something we should value or not, the lengths you people go to to avoid accountability really is amazing.

 

Quote:
Manageri wrote:

As for the single right standard thing, as long as you define what your goal is then yes, there is a single best way to get there (or theoretically multiple ways if those somehow manage to produce an outcome with the exact same value).

Well sure but we have not agreed upon a goal. If you want to say "The goal is to have a planet with the least amount of suffering so the best way to get there is to adopt an ethical standard using suffering as the sole measurement of morality." Ok, that is the equivalent of me saying "I want a McChicken sandwich so the best way to get one is to go to McDonalds." So what? Goals are not objective either, people have a wide range of goals and you can hardly have a universal solution without a universal goal.

Oh, so you think there's some realistic possibility the right answer is actually that we should be striving for more suffering in the world? If I let you decide whether a billion complete strangers that you've never heard of either contract some extremely painful disease or they become immune to it, are you gonna sit there with your philosophy hat on for hours trying to figure out which one's better?

Btw why do you think people eat their McChickens? Could it possibly be because they find it enjoyable as in it's kinda like maybe I dunno tied to their WELFARE?


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ThunderJones wrote:Manageri

ThunderJones wrote:

Manageri wrote:

Unless you can prove free will to me I don't see how anyone really deserves being punished.

 

But you said earlier that you would kick the nice guy in the balls, because that would create less suffering. Now you don't want to kick anyone in the balls? If not, you would inflict a innocent person with pain over two assholes just because there would be less overall pain? The assholes past actions do not effect their attractiveness as a target for ball-kicking? Why is the nice guy deserving of a kick in the nuts to protect the two jerks? I would gladly kick the two jerks right square in the nuts to save the innocent guy the completely unwarranted pain.

Of course I don't WANT to kick anyone for no productive purpose whatsoever, including the jerks. That's what I was asking you, give me the logical as in productive reason to cause 2X asshole pain over 1X nice guy pain.

Quote:
What exactly do you think is calling the shots, if not free will? If you think it is our DNA, this is in direct opposition to your argument against others on this very thread, if you think it is some nebulous 'intelligence' as you seem to, than you need to prove that even exists, and what exactly that is (definitions please). On one hand you seem to say that pedophiles should be able to figure out what they are doing is wrong, but now you are saying that we don't have free will (and if pedophilia is just a fucked up brain, they really can't figure out that it is wrong, because they don't have free-will, right?). You seem to be contradicting yourself here.

Free will or the lack thereof doesn't do anything about all this other stuff as far as I can tell. We still have a side of us that produces all the impulses and such, and a side that can analyze them logically. What's it matter whether it's "me" operating the logic machine or my brain? Pedophilia is a fuckup in the impulse creating part of us, not in the logical one. It's really no different in principle to figure out pedophilia is wrong than it is to figure out homosexuality is fine.

Quote:
Manageri wrote:
No, silly man, I've already said in this very thread the reason I have for punishment is deterrence. In the case of criminals who we know remain a serious threat to society I say keep the fuckers locked up, I'd rather deny one rapist his freedom than let him rape a bunch of more women upon his release from prison.

But what if that imprisonment won't help him change his rapist ways? Than he doesn't deserve that punishment of being isolated according to you. Also, if he doesn't have free-will, who can blame him for raping? He doesn't have control over his own actions, right?

I don't give a shit whether he's ultimately free to stop himself from raping or not, the point is he's causing tremendous suffering and not coming anywhere near to alleviating the same amount of suffering in himself or in others, hence he's a counterproductive fucknut and needs to be stopped. I never argued people deserve imprisonment, just that it's necessary for the greater good.


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ThunderJones wrote:But say

ThunderJones wrote:

But say there is no other way to decrease the rapist's suffering.

By your own logic we should create as little suffering as possible, no matter what.

1000 rapists, raping each other, causing , let's say, 500 units of suffering

1000 rapists raping 334 women, causing a , let's say, 200 units of suffering.

Which, if the rapists and the women's suffering from the act of rape is equal, amounting to more suffering? 1000 people getting raped, or 334?

As your logic follows, we should actually let the rapists rape 334 because 334 people suffering is less than 1000 people suffering.

Well if you're gonna make the thought experiment such that we absolutely have no other options whatsoever than to either cause 500 units of pain to the rapists or to cause 200 to other people then the right answer is 200.

Of course none of this would be a real problem if I ran the universe as I wouldn't go around creating sufferers in the first place.

cj wrote:
 

Do forgive me for butting in, but you have been going on about this forever.  Yes, we can measure -- say -- the temperature that one person says is painful.  But that is not the same temperature for everyone.  It is called pain threshold, and it is different for different people.

Yes, and if you subject us both to a certain temperature and I find it more painful than you, then clearly there isn't equivalent pain production going on in our brains. I'm not arguing that all stimuli like a certain temperature cause everyone the same sensation, I'm arguing that if the sensation itself is the same then those sensations carry equal value, regardless of whether the conciousness experiencing it happens to be a pig or a human. We can't measure suffering with any precision but it's beyond obvious that me breaking a pig's leg is more painful for it than me just banging my knee for example is to me, and it also takes a minimal amount of deduction to figure out that our petty taste pleasure is not worth the torture farm animals go through. 

 

Quote:
Living in Portland, OR, there are a lot of vegans.  And a lot of vegan items in the upscale stores that cater to the demographic.  I have heard all of the arguments for veganism - and I have raised my own chickens.  Trust me on this one - chickens are not people and do not suffer in the same manner as people do.

I don't care exactly how much they suffer, it's all completely pointless so I see no reason to impose any of it on them. I'm not buying that they're as stout as you say without some scientific evidence though.


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Manageri wrote:ThunderJones

Manageri wrote:

ThunderJones wrote:

But say there is no other way to decrease the rapist's suffering.

By your own logic we should create as little suffering as possible, no matter what.

1000 rapists, raping each other, causing , let's say, 500 units of suffering

1000 rapists raping 334 women, causing a , let's say, 200 units of suffering.

Which, if the rapists and the women's suffering from the act of rape is equal, amounting to more suffering? 1000 people getting raped, or 334?

As your logic follows, we should actually let the rapists rape 334 because 334 people suffering is less than 1000 people suffering.

Well if you're gonna make the thought experiment such that we absolutely have no other options whatsoever than to either cause 500 units of pain to the rapists or to cause 200 to other people then the right answer is 200.

Of course none of this would be a real problem if I ran the universe as I wouldn't go around creating sufferers in the first place.

So it is better to rape innocent women if it creates less overall suffering? That is what you are saying here, and it is why I can't agree with your views. I don't only base a decision on the "overall suffering" only.

The rapist has reduced the value we place on his suffering, which is why we DONT do what you would do in real life. Fuck the rapists, the innocent women are more important than protecting the rapists from extra suffering.

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Manageri wrote:Yes, and if

Manageri wrote:

Yes, and if you subject us both to a certain temperature and I find it more painful than you, then clearly there isn't equivalent pain production going on in our brains. I'm not arguing that all stimuli like a certain temperature cause everyone the same sensation, I'm arguing that if the sensation itself is the same then those sensations carry equal value, regardless of whether the conciousness experiencing it happens to be a pig or a human. We can't measure suffering with any precision but it's beyond obvious that me breaking a pig's leg is more painful for it than me just banging my knee for example is to me, and it also takes a minimal amount of deduction to figure out that our petty taste pleasure is not worth the torture farm animals go through. 

 

I wouldn't argue that industrial farming is wonderful or pain/suffering free.  I don't like industrial farming and when at all possible, I try to avoid products that come from those places.  It isn't always possible, but when I can, I do.  Fortunately, Portland has a number of small farms locally so it isn't difficult to get local small farm produce and meat.

Okay, I'll buy that pain is pain and it doesn't matter if it is you, me or the pig that is feeling the pain.  I do not have strong opinions about chickens, ducks, geese, fish, or shellfish.  I don't know much about their pain systems or neural pathways in what brains they possess.  I am reasonably certain they are not the same as mammals.  How much they differ, I would have to research.

Think about shellfish.  They molt - by having an extreme histamine reaction that literally swells up the animal until they burst their shell from the inside.  I have no idea what that might feel like, but the lobster, crab, or shrimp or what have you does this each and every time they form a new larger shell as they grow larger.  I can not imagine they have the same pain receptors you and I have and still manage to live through living.

As for responding to pain/uncomfortable conditions, even bacteria will move out of an area where the food is scarce and bacterial waste products are piling up.  They will move towards or away from light as they prefer as well.  So response to unwelcome environmental conditions seems to be universal.  But suffering?  And then you would have to give up eating most plants because they, too, respond to environmental conditions.  Sure - watch sunflowers.  And they aren't the only ones - if you insist I'll research it for you - or you can ask your local biologist yourself.

 

Manageri wrote:

I don't care exactly how much they suffer, it's all completely pointless so I see no reason to impose any of it on them. I'm not buying that they're as stout as you say without some scientific evidence though.

 

Granted, my evidence was anecdotal and for all you know, I could be talking out my ass.  However, it is a true story and it stuck in my head because I was so surprised they survived.  All you have to do is hang with some chickens for a few weeks.  Not to eat them or their eggs, but as pets.  Portland allows people to own three hens in town.  A lot of people do own three and keep them mostly as pets.  Maybe you can find someone with chickens and you can observe for yourself.  They really do not feel pain like people do.  As I said, I am not an expert on pain receptors and neural response in chickens or any other creature.  But observationally, there is no doubt in my mind, they are not like people or even dogs and cats or that much maligned pig of yours.

Um, it depends on where you live as to what the local regulations are.  Also, here - in the middle of town - coyotes live very comfortably.  And they will get your chickens  - or cats or small dogs.  The feral cat population in my neighborhood is down to almost none.

 

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GodsUseForAMosquito's objective morality equation:

Quote:
Individual's amount of suffering / jerk factor

 

Where the jerk factor is based upon how good or bad that person is, or their 'worth'.

So a care worker might have a jerk factor of 1, while a serial rapist might have a jerk factor of 50.

This objective standard is 'obviously' the only way to measure morality. It's like Manageri's but also takes into account the 'worth' of the individual.

So this objective standard can answer the 'who to kick in the balls' question with - the two jerks, and 'should rapists get free rape victims, or rape each other', with 'let the fuckers rape each other'.

Note 1: It's obviously difficult to measure the jerkiness of an individual, but to my mind no harder than measuring their suffering - Manageri contends that things like suffering are objective, so in this hypothesis the jerk factor is also objective and therefore measurable and comparable.

Note 2: if you think that it's better to let a smaller number of innocent women get raped daily than a larger number of serial rapists, I think you should really start to question your standards - I think you already have done, because when you answered the question you did appear to fumble over it... and felt the need to apologise for your stance with your 'if I ran the universe' quote. So if you ran the universe, you'd change this hard and fast moral objectivity?! Doesn't that indicate that the stance you've taken may not be the right one? Talk about shooting yourself in the foot dude.

Manageri, why is your objective standard, which only considers suffering, the right one, rather than mine?


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mr c o jones wrote: You seem

mr c o jones wrote:
You seem to assume that our DNA is somehow equivalent to our animal instincts or something, and following our DNA is the same as Dr. Jekyll surrendering to the base depravity of Mr. Hyde.  What a quaint idea – almost Victorian in its absurdity.  As I’ve repeatedly explained, our DNA is responsible for everything we are, including our intelligence, our morality, our altruism – the whole shooting match.  Its subjective, selfish nature is curbed by the selfish subjective nature of others, with whom it needs to get on – hence morality, altruism etc.  The idea that all our DNA is responsible for is our ‘petty whims’ is so pathetic I really couldn’t face trying to explain it all to you – like trying to teach a chimp to do sums.


Manageri wrote:
The point, fucknut, is that our DNA is responsible for producing all kinds of idiotic shit in our psychology, like the feeling that the people with a different skin color are somehow not just as human or in some way less important. Our intelligence, despite the fact it was produced by our DNA just like our idiotic psychology, is capable of seeing past these idiotic notions and overriding them in our decision making process to a large degree. I really don't believe you can't see the difference between psychology and intelligence so I can only assume this is yet another weasely game of yours.


Here is your answer from your last post.  Now explain to me if we don’t have free will, which is what you’ve just said, what was this ‘intelligence’ resting upon that you said to me could ‘override’ our DNA.  It’s our ‘intelligence’ is it? But if our intelligence is determined what’s it determined by if not our DNA. Answer the question this time.


 

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Manageri wrote:Yes Sherlock,

Manageri wrote:

Yes Sherlock, the brain is responsible for a shitload of things going on in your body without your conciousness ever knowing about it, or do you think you stop breathing every night when your conciousness shuts off? 

Does it matter if my consciousness is aware? Who is this other one making decisions and where is it located?

 

Manageri wrote:
 

If you don't think there's any point to ethics then there's nothing I can say that will objectively demonstrate you should, this must be like the fifth time I say this to you. If you don't accept welfare as having value then all I can say is you're an idiot, and if you think only the welfare of you and the people your psychology just happens to give a shit about has value then you're a preposterously selfish asshole.

If you have absolutely no evidence that you are right, then how can you declare that you are objectively right? All you have is faith.

 

 

Manageri wrote:

The reason a non-idiotic non-selfish non-asshole can see welfare has value and that value is equal for all sentients is because:

1) It really doesn't take a fucking genius to figure out that all we value is in some way connected to the welfare of a sentience

2) I'm not special in any way so why the fuck should my welfare somehow be worth more than the welfare of others?

 

1) Diamonds. The only connection with our welfare is that we want them because we value them so it is a little absurd to state that we value them because they improve our welfare. If we didn't value them, they wouldn't improve our welfare at all.

2) You are especially special, that isn't  necessarily a good thing. I don't think you should consider your welfare worth more than others, I think you should think whatever the fuck the two or three of you in your brain decide. 

 

Manageri wrote:

You do realize it doesn't take more than one contradiction for an idea to be provenly bullshit, yes?

Are you serious? There's no logical reason to believe my house can only have three or two doors at the same time? Do you even know what a contradiction is? Quite fucking obviously if one person believes the world is round and the other believes it's flat then one or both must be wrong, and if one asshole believes only his suffering has value and the other one believes only his does, then that's just as much a contradiction and once again one or both must be wrong. This is why moral subjectivity is incapable of producing a consistent (as in accurate as in true as in not retarded) view of the world.

Wow, are you being deliberately thick? 7 billion people, all with different brains can have 7 billion different preferences some of which are in contradiction with each other, none of which are necessarily right or wrong because you are not dealing with facts you are dealing with preference. For example, suppose there is a hell and we are roommates. I want the tv hanging on the east wall, you want the tv hanging on the west wall. Two beliefs that contradict each other. Is one right and the other wrong? To even talk about the subject in terms of factually right or factually wrong is absurd. 

 

Manageri wrote:

Even if you have your asshole standard of only caring about yourself and a few others then do explain to me in what universe does your suffering not have value to you? It's fucking ridicilous that I have to seriously argue with grown fucking people about whether suffering is something we should value or not, the lengths you people go to to avoid accountability really is amazing.

Well sure, I put a lot of value in the suffering of some people. Perhaps we should value it. Whether we ought to or not is a rather different thing than declaring it an objective truth that a thing has value and that there is some objective fact that one thing has the same value to 7 billion different humans.

 

Manageri wrote:

Oh, so you think there's some realistic possibility the right answer is actually that we should be striving for more suffering in the world?

No, I think it is ridiculous to assert that there exists a "right" answer. For a right answer to exist you have to be dealing with a question of fact, we are not. We are dealing with a question of preferences.

 

Manageri wrote:
 

If I let you decide whether a billion complete strangers that you've never heard of either contract some extremely painful disease or they become immune to it, are you gonna sit there with your philosophy hat on for hours trying to figure out which one's better?

No, my philosophy takes me mere seconds to make such decisions because I do not have to sit there trying to determine whether the pain caused by the disease is more or less than all the cumulative suffering caused by the billion people and all of their descendants. I would instantly make them immune because I would feel bad being responsible for the death of that many people and I do not like feeling bad.

However, I don't see how you could decide the issue so quickly. Obviously, one billion people are going to have a lot of kids and a civilization that continues for probably thousands of years. If you consider all the suffering that would be caused by them, their children, grandchildren, great grandchildren etc. your ethics would require you to at least consider that it might be better to let them die right? Using your wonderful ethics, genocide is a rather moral act because long term it probably reduces the amount of suffering experienced in the world. 

 

 

Manageri wrote:

Btw why do you think people eat their McChickens? Could it possibly be because they find it enjoyable as in it's kinda like maybe I dunno tied to their WELFARE?

Yeah, their welfare, not so much for the chicken or whatever other critters get put in there. I have never disputed that people primarily act in the interest of their personal welfare. You are the one who rejects that morality should be based on personal welfare, you say it should be based on everyone else's, including the chicken.   

If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X


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cj wrote:I wouldn't argue

cj wrote:

I wouldn't argue that industrial farming is wonderful or pain/suffering free.  I don't like industrial farming and when at all possible, I try to avoid products that come from those places.  It isn't always possible, but when I can, I do.

Of course it's possible, you just don't buy animal products.

Quote:
Okay, I'll buy that pain is pain and it doesn't matter if it is you, me or the pig that is feeling the pain.  I do not have strong opinions about chickens, ducks, geese, fish, or shellfish.  I don't know much about their pain systems or neural pathways in what brains they possess.  I am reasonably certain they are not the same as mammals.  How much they differ, I would have to research.

That's true, not all animals have a similar capacity for pain. Oysters for example are, as far as I know, not concious in any way despite being technically animals, so while many idiot vegans will refuse to eat them just because they have the animal label, I have no such objection because veganism is a mere method for me, not some self-justifying goal.

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Think about shellfish.  They molt - by having an extreme histamine reaction that literally swells up the animal until they burst their shell from the inside.  I have no idea what that might feel like, but the lobster, crab, or shrimp or what have you does this each and every time they form a new larger shell as they grow larger.  I can not imagine they have the same pain receptors you and I have and still manage to live through living.

Well there's two sides to that question, on one hand there's no point in evolution making them feel pain when undergoing such a process, but on the other hand there's no necessity for evolution to make it painless either if it doesn't affect their survivability/reproductivity. Think about human childbirth, there's absolutely no logical reason for it to hurt like fucking hell, but since evolution gets away with it it hasn't done anything to change that.

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As for responding to pain/uncomfortable conditions, even bacteria will move out of an area where the food is scarce and bacterial waste products are piling up.  They will move towards or away from light as they prefer as well.  So response to unwelcome environmental conditions seems to be universal.  But suffering?  And then you would have to give up eating most plants because they, too, respond to environmental conditions.  Sure - watch sunflowers.  And they aren't the only ones - if you insist I'll research it for you - or you can ask your local biologist yourself.

Yeah and our planet hangs out close to the sun, does this mean it has a conciousness that loves sunshine? No, it does that because of physics and nothing more, just like plants do shit due to chemical reactions and such. That does not in any way imply they're concious.

 

GodsUseForAMosquito wrote:

GodsUseForAMosquito's objective morality equation:

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Individual's amount of suffering / jerk factor
 

Where the jerk factor is based upon how good or bad that person is, or their 'worth'.

So a care worker might have a jerk factor of 1, while a serial rapist might have a jerk factor of 50.

This objective standard is 'obviously' the only way to measure morality. It's like Manageri's but also takes into account the 'worth' of the individual.

So this objective standard can answer the 'who to kick in the balls' question with - the two jerks, and 'should rapists get free rape victims, or rape each other', with 'let the fuckers rape each other'.

Note 1: It's obviously difficult to measure the jerkiness of an individual, but to my mind no harder than measuring their suffering - Manageri contends that things like suffering are objective, so in this hypothesis the jerk factor is also objective and therefore measurable and comparable.

Note 2: if you think that it's better to let a smaller number of innocent women get raped daily than a larger number of serial rapists, I think you should really start to question your standards - I think you already have done, because when you answered the question you did appear to fumble over it... and felt the need to apologise for your stance with your 'if I ran the universe' quote. So if you ran the universe, you'd change this hard and fast moral objectivity?! Doesn't that indicate that the stance you've taken may not be the right one? Talk about shooting yourself in the foot dude.

Manageri, why is your objective standard, which only considers suffering, the right one, rather than mine?

All you have to do to make me consider your proposal is prove to me we have free will, or explain why free will is not a relevant factor in assigning ultimate responsibility. Until then I see no justification for assigning jerk factors to people who are ultimately jerks merely because of determinism.

There was a free will thread a while back where I posted an argument against it but no one responded so I'll just copy paste it here if you wanna have a go:

"Your actions are either entirely caused by your characteristics which you are obviously not responsible for, or they come (in part) from some mystical freedom. The question is, how can this freedom possibly make decisions if it has no pre-existing (and hence, unfree) characteristics of its own with which to judge the best course of action? The only way it could be "free" would be for it to have absolutely no biases or impulses whatsoever, in other words it can't have anything that could possibly affect a decision. Asserting free will is saying your decisions come from nowhere, which is clearly absurd."

This also applies to your response ThunderJones, if you can show me the rapists are in fact assholes of their own free will then I'll reconsider your thought experiment.

Beyond Saving wrote:

Manageri wrote:

Yes Sherlock, the brain is responsible for a shitload of things going on in your body without your conciousness ever knowing about it, or do you think you stop breathing every night when your conciousness shuts off? 

Does it matter if my consciousness is aware? Who is this other one making decisions and where is it located?

He's called mister Brainypants and he resides in your skull watching teletubbies and playing Pacman.

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Manageri wrote:
 

If you don't think there's any point to ethics then there's nothing I can say that will objectively demonstrate you should, this must be like the fifth time I say this to you. If you don't accept welfare as having value then all I can say is you're an idiot, and if you think only the welfare of you and the people your psychology just happens to give a shit about has value then you're a preposterously selfish asshole.

If you have absolutely no evidence that you are right, then how can you declare that you are objectively right? All you have is faith.

I'm not saying my axiom is technically provable objectively (there'd really be little to discuss if I could - again I refer you to the is-ought gap), I'm saying that once you adopt welfare as an ethical axiom then any logic that follows from that is objective. If you don't recognize that welfare is what we base ethical questions on then you're an idiot, I really don't get it how a concious being can possibly not agree that welfare is the thing with value in the universe without being a preposterous hypocrite.

 

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Manageri wrote:

The reason a non-idiotic non-selfish non-asshole can see welfare has value and that value is equal for all sentients is because:

1) It really doesn't take a fucking genius to figure out that all we value is in some way connected to the welfare of a sentience

2) I'm not special in any way so why the fuck should my welfare somehow be worth more than the welfare of others?

 

1) Diamonds. The only connection with our welfare is that we want them because we value them so it is a little absurd to state that we value them because they improve our welfare. If we didn't value them, they wouldn't improve our welfare at all.

2) You are especially special, that isn't  necessarily a good thing. I don't think you should consider your welfare worth more than others, I think you should think whatever the fuck the two or three of you in your brain decide.

1) Diamonds have no value on their own, we want them because our idiotic psychology goes "OOOH SHINIEZ" and such (it's of course a little more complicated but who the fuck really cares). If you don't think they have no connection to welfare then you've obviously never seen a woman receive a diamong engagement ring, or how much pussy the dude giving that gift gets that night.

2) I'm touched you think I'm special <3333

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Manageri wrote:

You do realize it doesn't take more than one contradiction for an idea to be provenly bullshit, yes?

Are you serious? There's no logical reason to believe my house can only have three or two doors at the same time? Do you even know what a contradiction is? Quite fucking obviously if one person believes the world is round and the other believes it's flat then one or both must be wrong, and if one asshole believes only his suffering has value and the other one believes only his does, then that's just as much a contradiction and once again one or both must be wrong. This is why moral subjectivity is incapable of producing a consistent (as in accurate as in true as in not retarded) view of the world.

Wow, are you being deliberately thick? 7 billion people, all with different brains can have 7 billion different preferences some of which are in contradiction with each other, none of which are necessarily right or wrong because you are not dealing with facts you are dealing with preference. For example, suppose there is a hell and we are roommates. I want the tv hanging on the east wall, you want the tv hanging on the west wall. Two beliefs that contradict each other. Is one right and the other wrong? To even talk about the subject in terms of factually right or factually wrong is absurd.

Preferences aren't contradictory, see: Jack like sticking his willy in vaginas. Joe likes sticking it in anuses. The only way this becomes contradictory is if one of these assholes declares there's something wrong with sticking your willy in a place that particular asshole doesn't like sticking his willy in. There's nothing contradictory about the OBJECTIVE statement that these two people each have a favorite place to stick their willy in.

The point where we get to contradiction-land is when one of these fuckers declares that sticking your willy in either a vagina or an anus is the only ethical thing to do with your willy, and that is exactly what you subjectivists imply when you declare that your silly preferences somehow have something to do with ethics. You can have your silly preferences about whose suffering you give a shit about, but you really can't call it an ethical standard because the guy next door can also have an "ethical" standard that's entirely different from yours, hence creating a contradiction in the very concept of subjective ethics.

 

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Manageri wrote:

Even if you have your asshole standard of only caring about yourself and a few others then do explain to me in what universe does your suffering not have value to you? It's fucking ridicilous that I have to seriously argue with grown fucking people about whether suffering is something we should value or not, the lengths you people go to to avoid accountability really is amazing.

Well sure, I put a lot of value in the suffering of some people. Perhaps we should value it. Whether we ought to or not is a rather different thing than declaring it an objective truth that a thing has value and that there is some objective fact that one thing has the same value to 7 billion different humans.

X amount of suffering feels the same to all seven billion of us. Once again you can declare you don't give a shit if others suffer as much or more than you but this does nothing to disprove the objective equality of their suffering.

 

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Manageri wrote:

Oh, so you think there's some realistic possibility the right answer is actually that we should be striving for more suffering in the world?

No, I think it is ridiculous to assert that there exists a "right" answer. For a right answer to exist you have to be dealing with a question of fact, we are not. We are dealing with a question of preferences.

No, silly person, we are dealing with the fact that we all have preferences and that it's better for each person to receive the things they prefer.

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Manageri wrote:
 

If I let you decide whether a billion complete strangers that you've never heard of either contract some extremely painful disease or they become immune to it, are you gonna sit there with your philosophy hat on for hours trying to figure out which one's better?

No, my philosophy takes me mere seconds to make such decisions because I do not have to sit there trying to determine whether the pain caused by the disease is more or less than all the cumulative suffering caused by the billion people and all of their descendants. I would instantly make them immune because I would feel bad being responsible for the death of that many people and I do not like feeling bad.

However, I don't see how you could decide the issue so quickly. Obviously, one billion people are going to have a lot of kids and a civilization that continues for probably thousands of years. If you consider all the suffering that would be caused by them, their children, grandchildren, great grandchildren etc. your ethics would require you to at least consider that it might be better to let them die right? Using your wonderful ethics, genocide is a rather moral act because long term it probably reduces the amount of suffering experienced in the world.

I should have explained this better so my bad, but the point of me picking a "painful disease" was that it's in fact not fatal, it just causes suffering.

You're totally right though that if there was in fact a decision in front of me that allowed me to eliminate a billion people then I'd have to seriously consider it.

 

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Manageri wrote:

Btw why do you think people eat their McChickens? Could it possibly be because they find it enjoyable as in it's kinda like maybe I dunno tied to their WELFARE?

Yeah, their welfare, not so much for the chicken or whatever other critters get put in there. I have never disputed that people primarily act in the interest of their personal welfare. You are the one who rejects that morality should be based on personal welfare, you say it should be based on everyone else's, including the chicken.

Yes, you don't have to necessarily care about others' welfare to care about your own, but just admitting welfare is the thing that matters is something. After that it's merely a question of whether you're a selfish cunt or not.


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Manageri wrote:You're

Manageri wrote:

You're totally right though that if there was in fact a decision in front of me that allowed me to eliminate a billion people then I'd have to seriously consider it.

If let's just say that this were true. That you could end the lives of one billion people at the push of a button. How would you select which billion it would be ?

I am little confused by the fact that you argue for sentient welfare and yet seem to argue for endling life.

Perhaps I am simply just missing your point.

I can say that I am all for people choosing to end their lives if they so desire, but I wouldn't want to determine whether or not I wanted to end someone else's life. Why would I want to do something like that ?

 

“It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.”
― Giordano Bruno


Manageri
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harleysportster

harleysportster wrote:

Manageri wrote:

You're totally right though that if there was in fact a decision in front of me that allowed me to eliminate a billion people then I'd have to seriously consider it.

If let's just say that this were true. That you could end the lives of one billion people at the push of a button. How would you select which billion it would be ?

The least productive ones, like serial rapists and other such fucknuts who cause the most suffering.

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I am little confused by the fact that you argue for sentient welfare and yet seem to argue for endling life.

Perhaps I am simply just missing your point.

I can say that I am all for people choosing to end their lives if they so desire, but I wouldn't want to determine whether or not I wanted to end someone else's life. Why would I want to do something like that ?

Dead people can't suffer nor is the lack of pleasure bad for them.

I don't give a shit about what people decide to do with their own lives so I wouldn't have any reason to interfere if they weren't meat eating, reproducing selfish motherfuckers (among other acts of assholery).

 


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Manageri wrote:So vegans

Manageri wrote:
So vegans should refuse anything from society so the animal abusing assholes can use those resources instead to abuse more animals? Moronic as usual.


Yeah, if vegans want to lecture the rest of us about how immoral we are for eating animals they need to be squeaky-clean in that regard and if they’re sustaining their miserable, pointless little lives on the hand-outs from an animal-executing society (like you are) then, yeah, I call that hypocrisy.  At least the pacifist refuses to fight but you stuff yourself full of lentils and aubergines bought with the proceeds from animal death-camps.  You must feel really good about yourself.  

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No, fuckface, I was responding to you claiming that if we do something then we must consider it ethical. I then gave an example of how that's moronic. You then, in your typical weasely strawmanning manner, try to twist that into me saying beating your wife is ok. You're a pathetic slandering, lying asshole that's unable to have an honest argument.


I haven’t got a fucking clue what you’re on about here, where did I say that ‘if we do something we must consider it ethical’ – that doesn’t make sense grammatically, let alone philosophically.  I always consider it a sign of weakness when someone falls back on hackneyed old debating terms like ‘strawmanning’ that they learnt in their public speaking course in High School.  Think that makes you sound like a shit-hot philosopher do you?  It makes you sound like the second-rate asshole you are.


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Our emotions have nothing to do with why pain feels bad, our brain produces that sensation entirely regardless of our emotional state.


Ah right, so a sensation is completely different from an emotion, because our brain produces a sensation, whereas our emotions are produced by……what, our asses?  In your case probably yes.


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The reason everyone's suffering must have equal value is that without that standard you have absolutely no grounds for making any kind of useful ethical argument. If all seven billion people only value their own welfare then obviously we have seven billion contradictory standards, meaning that all but one (and more likely all) are necessarily WRONG.


So everyone’s suffering must have equal value, must it, otherwise we can have no ethical argument? No, what you mean is, suffering must have equal value to support your fucking useless argument.  As I’ve said before, it isn’t even an argument, because we have to accept the conclusion as right, i.e. that all suffering is of equal value, before we start.  It’s just like your pathetic $100 bill example (something which you got outta some two-bit text book on how to be a good debater) – the very thing we’re supposed to be debating i.e. the worth of the suffering, in question, has already been decided – i.e. its worth $100.  So all you’re saying is that, $100 is worth $100 – brilliant, hence ‘equal suffering must have equal value’ of course it must because to be equal suffering it has to be suffering of equal value.  Whereas of course there is no such thing as equal suffering, just as there are no objective statements that can be made about suffering, other than it’s subjective.


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What you people don't seem to understand is that the fact our preferences are subjective does not mean no objective statements can be made about them. If I say red is the prettiest color and you say it's blue, those statements are subjective, but the fact that we each have a favorite color is objective. If we each prefer lollipops with our favorite color then it's OBJECTIVELY true that it's best for me to get a red lollipop and it's best for you to get a blue one. You can say that you don't give a shit whether I get my red lollipop but that does nothing to invalidate the OBJECTIVE truth that it's still best for me to get my red goddamn lollipop.
The part where you cross over into bullshit-land is when you accuse me of trying to impose my standards on others, as if I'm trying to force everyone to eat the red lollipops, when I'm really saying it's best for everyone to get the lollipop they prefer. It just so happens that in reality everyone can't get their favorite lollipop so we have to make decisions that leave some people unhappy, and in those cases we need some standards on how to decide who gets a shitty lollipop. You fuckers have the standard that if we had to choose only one color lollipop for everyone then even if everyone else in the world prefers the red ones, it's totally fine to force the blue lollipop on everyone just because you prefer that one. I'm saying we should make that decision based on what color produces the best outcome for all involved. You can demand that I produce some logical argument proving we should do it my way if you want, I'll just tell you the same thing I tell Beyond Saving; I can't cross the fucking is-ought gap and neither can anyone else. If you need a purely logical argument to explain why you shouldn't be a selfish motherfucker then you're outta luck because there isn't one, but luckily there are people who aren't such massive cunts that they need one.


Your lollipop analogy is completely childish bullshit. In fact it’s an argument for subjectivism.  It says that everyone’s desire for a lollipop is subjective and the only objective thing we can say about it is that it is different for everyone.  Just so with suffering, happiness and any other experience you want to name.  But you want to say that everyone’s lollipop desire is the same (just as their suffering is the same) even though you’ve admitted it isn’t because it’s experienced subjectively.  This is the same bullshit argument you had before.  You’re a one trick pony, aren’t you?


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If you wanna just insult me without making an argument you really don't need a whole paragraph, a few insulting words will do just fine and save everyone's time.


Aww, getting too tough for you is it, big guy?  Nah, a few words are never enough to insult your stupidity – it goes so deep.  I am making an argument – that you are a thick, bullshitting, lefty, little fuckwit and as evidence I am adducing your fuck-useless arguments and general stupidity.


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I said our intelligence can override the moronic psychological impulses generated by our DNA, argue with that instead of your rickety strawman.


Oh here comes that tired old strawman again, shuffling along like some worn out scarecrow to your defence.  You haven’t answered how our intelligence can ‘override’ our DNA if our intelligence comes from our DNA.  What’s the answer boyo?  What’s the fucking answer?


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Well if it means that much to you, I do support women's right, don't really care much one way or the other about capitalism or green energy. I don't see the relevance to this topic but I'll grant it's an amusing rant.


This answer had me cackling incredulously; did you really think I wanted to know your views on feminism, capitalism etc you thick witted fucker?  It was what is called a ‘rhetorical question’ – look it up in that ‘Handy Debating Tips for Thickos’ manual you keep referring to.
Don’t care about capitalism?  But it’s capitalism that’s producing all those animal death-camps, slaughtering millions of defenceless creatures every day to line the pockets of rich businessmen – and you don’t care?  I thought you cared about suffering?


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Funny how you made no effort to prove my examples aren't accurate.
Yeah, it's dangerous when idiots try to force their idiotic standards on everyone, that's why I'm here making an argument so you can demonstrate why my standards are idiotic if you can. To say all such imposing of standards is wrong is contradictory unless you're an anarchist or some such wanker who thinks there should be no laws. I'd also like you to tell me what the harm would be if an objectivist actually did have just the right answer to make the world a kickass place for everyone and imposed that on the world?


Oh, so now you’re backtracking and pretending you weren’t trying to impose your standards on everyone else and calling them morons if they didn’t agree with your faultless objective logic, you lying cunt.


You’re too right it’s dangerous when idiots like you try to impose your standards on everyone.  You’re also right to say that you’ve given us the opportunity to demonstrate beyond doubt what an idiot you are.  Like all idiot objectivists, you think that a subjectivist can have no standards –we have standards all right, but we don’t pretend they’re objective.  We negotiate with others (who also have subjective standards) to make laws, rules of behaviour etc.  We don’t pretend any of them have an objective moral basis – how could they when they could be changed at any time?  Sometimes we find our subjective standards coincide – other times not – then we compromise.  What we don’t do is pretend to have uncovered some objective moral principle like equality of suffering and use that as a basis for telling others how they should behave or think.


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Because I'm a selfish biological machine that's designed to be an asshole and place my petty needs over others' greater needs? I don't have to care about your stuff psychologically in order to recognize it's no less valuable than mine intellectually.


Back to the bullshit $100 – I’ve shown you what a fraud this is above.  One trick pony.


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Yeah, that's exactly right. Now can you address that statement or are you too much of a pussy?


Address the statement?  What that fucking nonsensical statement of yours ‘if two things are exactly equal, then they are exactly equal?’  Your ‘example’ precisely begs the question at issue – whether you can determine an objective value to suffering – which you can’t.  What you say is ‘let’s assume you can determine an equality of suffering between two or more sentient beings, well then their suffering must be of equal value’.  As I’ve explained before this is a tautology.  $100 is worth $100.  You just can’t grasp it can you?
I genuinely feel sorry for you, my poor little friend.  I don’t think moral philosophy is your strong point.  Have you tried gardening?


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Lol, I know you know (as does anyone who's read my posts) that if I'm gonna argue that a black man's life is worth as much as a chicken's I'd also say so is the life of a white man so your attempt to paint me as a racist is absolutely hilarious.
As for painting lotsa people as retards, yeah white people did that to blacks, and later on some white people did that to the other white people who thought blacks should remain slaves, so that argument doesn't go anywhere.


You’re the one who raised the black man and you’re the one who drew implicitly an analogy with the situation of animals today.  I’d say that’s dangerous ground for a right-on little guy like you.  Anyone who says a black man’s life is worth the same as a chicken’s is playing with fire.


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Maybe because starvation is a really stupid way to kill yourself?


No starving yourself to death is the best way to kill yourself – it’s a prolonged, principled, courageous rejection of an evil world!  I strongly recommend it to any budding young martyrs like yourself.  Better surely than ignominious sleeping pills?


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If you can't figure out that eating a banana and raping a child aren't ethically equivalent actions you're just too fucking stupid to have an opinion. I know that's not the problem though, once again you're just playing your little weasel games because you're too much of a pussy for an honest argument.


Oh right, so your little syllogism only works in this one scenario, yeah?  So all it proves is that it’s better to give a monkey a banana rather than shit, yeah?  Well, that’s useful to know – thanks.  But I thought you were claiming some wider, objective ‘truth’ for it?  By the way, those, tired old ‘thought experiments’ you keep trotting out must be another thing you picked up from that ‘Handbook of debating tips’ you got given at school.  I’d give them a rest if I were you.
I believe it’s a characteristic of the sociopath that they can never entertain for a moment the idea that they might be wrong about something.  Now remind me, what was the nature of your mental illness?
 

I quote no 'authorities'. I speak in my own words. I bring everything to the bar of my own judgment.


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Mr C O Jones wrote:Manageri

Mr C O Jones wrote:

Manageri wrote:
So vegans should refuse anything from society so the animal abusing assholes can use those resources instead to abuse more animals? Moronic as usual.


Yeah, if vegans want to lecture the rest of us about how immoral we are for eating animals they need to be squeaky-clean in that regard and if they’re sustaining their miserable, pointless little lives on the hand-outs from an animal-executing society (like you are) then, yeah, I call that hypocrisy.  At least the pacifist refuses to fight but you stuff yourself full of lentils and aubergines bought with the proceeds from animal death-camps.  You must feel really good about yourself.

You really are a retard. So the pirates come to port with their loot and the options are:

1) Let the asshole pirates spend their blood money on whatever the fuck it is they wanna spend it on, part of which will obviously be preparing for their next lovely little voyage of rape and pillage

2) Take the pirates' loot and spend it on more productive things

And you're gonna pick option 1 because...well I don't really know what your fucktard logic here is exactly, maybe the money's become evil now that the pirates murdered for it or something according to your idiotic philosophy.

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No, fuckface, I was responding to you claiming that if we do something then we must consider it ethical. I then gave an example of how that's moronic. You then, in your typical weasely strawmanning manner, try to twist that into me saying beating your wife is ok. You're a pathetic slandering, lying asshole that's unable to have an honest argument.


I haven’t got a fucking clue what you’re on about here, where did I say that ‘if we do something we must consider it ethical’ – that doesn’t make sense grammatically, let alone philosophically.

If there was any chance it'd lead you to making an honest argument I'd go find the quotes but I know what a weasel you are so I'm not wasting my time.

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I always consider it a sign of weakness when someone falls back on hackneyed old debating terms like ‘strawmanning’ that they learnt in their public speaking course in High School.  Think that makes you sound like a shit-hot philosopher do you?  It makes you sound like the second-rate asshole you are.

Aww, does me pointing out your bullshit make you a sad panda?


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Our emotions have nothing to do with why pain feels bad, our brain produces that sensation entirely regardless of our emotional state.


Ah right, so a sensation is completely different from an emotion, because our brain produces a sensation, whereas our emotions are produced by……what, our asses?  In your case probably yes.

All emotions are sensations. This does not mean all sensations are emotions. I think they taught me that insanely difficult logic at school when I was like 13, you must have been busy sniffing glue at the time or something.


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The reason everyone's suffering must have equal value is that without that standard you have absolutely no grounds for making any kind of useful ethical argument. If all seven billion people only value their own welfare then obviously we have seven billion contradictory standards, meaning that all but one (and more likely all) are necessarily WRONG.


So everyone’s suffering must have equal value, must it, otherwise we can have no ethical argument? No, what you mean is, suffering must have equal value to support your fucking useless argument.  As I’ve said before, it isn’t even an argument, because we have to accept the conclusion as right, i.e. that all suffering is of equal value, before we start.  It’s just like your pathetic $100 bill example (something which you got outta some two-bit text book on how to be a good debater) – the very thing we’re supposed to be debating i.e. the worth of the suffering, in question, has already been decided – i.e. its worth $100.  So all you’re saying is that, $100 is worth $100 – brilliant, hence ‘equal suffering must have equal value’ of course it must because to be equal suffering it has to be suffering of equal value.  Whereas of course there is no such thing as equal suffering, just as there are no objective statements that can be made about suffering, other than it’s subjective.

There's nothing I haven't covered here. I'd really like you to explain to me how it makes sense to think we can't in principle measure suffering when we know that suffering is caused by entirely materialistic shit going on in the brain. Unless you're a dualist of some sort this makes no sense.

Also, If we can't make any objective statements about suffering then clearly we can't condemn rapists because according to you, we have no objective grounds for determining the woman was actually harmed.


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What you people don't seem to understand is that the fact our preferences are subjective does not mean no objective statements can be made about them. If I say red is the prettiest color and you say it's blue, those statements are subjective, but the fact that we each have a favorite color is objective. If we each prefer lollipops with our favorite color then it's OBJECTIVELY true that it's best for me to get a red lollipop and it's best for you to get a blue one. You can say that you don't give a shit whether I get my red lollipop but that does nothing to invalidate the OBJECTIVE truth that it's still best for me to get my red goddamn lollipop.
The part where you cross over into bullshit-land is when you accuse me of trying to impose my standards on others, as if I'm trying to force everyone to eat the red lollipops, when I'm really saying it's best for everyone to get the lollipop they prefer. It just so happens that in reality everyone can't get their favorite lollipop so we have to make decisions that leave some people unhappy, and in those cases we need some standards on how to decide who gets a shitty lollipop. You fuckers have the standard that if we had to choose only one color lollipop for everyone then even if everyone else in the world prefers the red ones, it's totally fine to force the blue lollipop on everyone just because you prefer that one. I'm saying we should make that decision based on what color produces the best outcome for all involved. You can demand that I produce some logical argument proving we should do it my way if you want, I'll just tell you the same thing I tell Beyond Saving; I can't cross the fucking is-ought gap and neither can anyone else. If you need a purely logical argument to explain why you shouldn't be a selfish motherfucker then you're outta luck because there isn't one, but luckily there are people who aren't such massive cunts that they need one.


Your lollipop analogy is completely childish bullshit. In fact it’s an argument for subjectivism.  It says that everyone’s desire for a lollipop is subjective and the only objective thing we can say about it is that it is different for everyone.  Just so with suffering, happiness and any other experience you want to name.  But you want to say that everyone’s lollipop desire is the same (just as their suffering is the same) even though you’ve admitted it isn’t because it’s experienced subjectively.  This is the same bullshit argument you had before.  You’re a one trick pony, aren’t you?

You did nothing to argue the difference between the subjective color preference and the objective fact that it's better for a conciousness to receive a lollipop of said color. Not that I should have expected you to address the core of the argument, it'd take some balls to do that.

 

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I said our intelligence can override the moronic psychological impulses generated by our DNA, argue with that instead of your rickety strawman.


Oh here comes that tired old strawman again, shuffling along like some worn out scarecrow to your defence.  You haven’t answered how our intelligence can ‘override’ our DNA if our intelligence comes from our DNA.  What’s the answer boyo?  What’s the fucking answer?

How do you quote my argument and then on the very next line pretend I made an entirely different argument and attack that? You have some serious reading comprehension issues - no wait, it's propably just that inner weasel coming out again.


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Well if it means that much to you, I do support women's right, don't really care much one way or the other about capitalism or green energy. I don't see the relevance to this topic but I'll grant it's an amusing rant.


This answer had me cackling incredulously; did you really think I wanted to know your views on feminism, capitalism etc you thick witted fucker?  It was what is called a ‘rhetorical question’ – look it up in that ‘Handy Debating Tips for Thickos’ manual you keep referring to.
Don’t care about capitalism?  But it’s capitalism that’s producing all those animal death-camps, slaughtering millions of defenceless creatures every day to line the pockets of rich businessmen – and you don’t care?  I thought you cared about suffering?

Yeah cos non-capitalist societies have all always been vegan DURR.


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Funny how you made no effort to prove my examples aren't accurate.
Yeah, it's dangerous when idiots try to force their idiotic standards on everyone, that's why I'm here making an argument so you can demonstrate why my standards are idiotic if you can. To say all such imposing of standards is wrong is contradictory unless you're an anarchist or some such wanker who thinks there should be no laws. I'd also like you to tell me what the harm would be if an objectivist actually did have just the right answer to make the world a kickass place for everyone and imposed that on the world?


Oh, so now you’re backtracking and pretending you weren’t trying to impose your standards on everyone else and calling them morons if they didn’t agree with your faultless objective logic, you lying cunt.


You’re too right it’s dangerous when idiots like you try to impose your standards on everyone.  You’re also right to say that you’ve given us the opportunity to demonstrate beyond doubt what an idiot you are.  Like all idiot objectivists, you think that a subjectivist can have no standards –we have standards all right, but we don’t pretend they’re objective.  We negotiate with others (who also have subjective standards) to make laws, rules of behaviour etc.  We don’t pretend any of them have an objective moral basis – how could they when they could be changed at any time?  Sometimes we find our subjective standards coincide – other times not – then we compromise.  What we don’t do is pretend to have uncovered some objective moral principle like equality of suffering and use that as a basis for telling others how they should behave or think.

In other words, you make deals to fulfill your selfish desires and call that brilliant morality. Bravo, a flock of birds can do the same.

 


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Yeah, that's exactly right. Now can you address that statement or are you too much of a pussy?


Address the statement?  What that fucking nonsensical statement of yours ‘if two things are exactly equal, then they are exactly equal?’  Your ‘example’ precisely begs the question at issue – whether you can determine an objective value to suffering – which you can’t.  What you say is ‘let’s assume you can determine an equality of suffering between two or more sentient beings, well then their suffering must be of equal value’.  As I’ve explained before this is a tautology.  $100 is worth $100.  You just can’t grasp it can you?
I genuinely feel sorry for you, my poor little friend.  I don’t think moral philosophy is your strong point.  Have you tried gardening?

You're the retard trying to argue your tautology can somehow contradict itself, you're saying that X amount of pain experienced by a pig is not as valuable as X amount of pain experienced by a human. Either that or you're so ignorant/delusional you think other mammals don't feel pain (and tons of other sensations) the same way we do.


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Lol, I know you know (as does anyone who's read my posts) that if I'm gonna argue that a black man's life is worth as much as a chicken's I'd also say so is the life of a white man so your attempt to paint me as a racist is absolutely hilarious.
As for painting lotsa people as retards, yeah white people did that to blacks, and later on some white people did that to the other white people who thought blacks should remain slaves, so that argument doesn't go anywhere.


You’re the one who raised the black man and you’re the one who drew implicitly an analogy with the situation of animals today.  I’d say that’s dangerous ground for a right-on little guy like you.  Anyone who says a black man’s life is worth the same as a chicken’s is playing with fire.

This is hilarious, it really does speak for itself in outlining what a spineless manipulating weasel you are.


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If you can't figure out that eating a banana and raping a child aren't ethically equivalent actions you're just too fucking stupid to have an opinion. I know that's not the problem though, once again you're just playing your little weasel games because you're too much of a pussy for an honest argument.


Oh right, so your little syllogism only works in this one scenario, yeah?  So all it proves is that it’s better to give a monkey a banana rather than shit, yeah?  Well, that’s useful to know – thanks.  But I thought you were claiming some wider, objective ‘truth’ for it?

That was the objective truth you idiot, you know, the kind that you claim doesn't exist which was the whole point of the damn thing?

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By the way, those, tired old ‘thought experiments’ you keep trotting out must be another thing you picked up from that ‘Handbook of debating tips’ you got given at school.  I’d give them a rest if I were you.

It's fucking hilarious when a weasel like you can't handle an argument and so you attack the style of argumentation despite the fact it's perfectly valid. You really don't mind showing everyone what a gigantic intellectual pussy you are do you?


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I believe it’s a characteristic of the sociopath that they can never entertain for a moment the idea that they might be wrong about something.  Now remind me, what was the nature of your mental illness?

Damn, doctor, did you just diagnose yet another mental illness though the internet? That's fucking amazing, you should see if Oprah will have you on or something.


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Manageri wrote:Quote:I am

Manageri wrote:

Quote:
I am little confused by the fact that you argue for sentient welfare and yet seem to argue for endling life.

Perhaps I am simply just missing your point.

I can say that I am all for people choosing to end their lives if they so desire, but I wouldn't want to determine whether or not I wanted to end someone else's life. Why would I want to do something like that ?

Dead people can't suffer nor is the lack of pleasure bad for them.

I don't give a shit about what people decide to do with their own lives so I wouldn't have any reason to interfere if they weren't meat eating, reproducing selfish motherfuckers (among other acts of assholery).

 

But they can't feel pleasure either. You've eliminated the good and the bad. And all possibility for a the good outweighing the bad. What gives you the right? You don't like murder, I assume, so why should it be ok for you?

In fact, what makes murder bad, then? They aren't going to feel annoyed or upset once they are dead, right? You must love murder, because then they won't feel any shitty sensations anymore! Hurray!

Why aren't you out murdering people?

Secularist, Atheist, Skeptic, Freethinker


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ThunderJones wrote:But they

ThunderJones wrote:

But they can't feel pleasure either. You've eliminated the good and the bad. And all possibility for a the good outweighing the bad.

So what, if there's no one around to be depravated by it then the fact there's no possibility for a positive is irrelevant. It's not like we're sad about the fact we're not out at disneyland when we're unconcious, we're not bothered by a goddamn thing.

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What gives you the right? You don't like murder, I assume, so why should it be ok for you?

It's not my fault the problem exists, it's the procreating assholes' fault. This is like asking what gives me the right to imprison the criminal - well I wouldn't have to if he wasn't a menace now would I. To fix the mess of the imposing assholes (or to prevent one) you usually have to impose back on them.

Then there's the much bigger picture of all the animals and how if we had the choise of blowing up the planet, we'd have to consider whether our useless human existence outweighs all that absolutely horrendous carnage that goes in nature, so really the question of whether human existence is a good thing is little more than a drop in the bucket, especially when we're such preposterous assholes we actually breed animals just so we can fucking torture them so if you give me that apocalypse button I don't see any rational reason not to hit it.

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In fact, what makes murder bad, then? They aren't going to feel annoyed or upset once they are dead, right? You must love murder, because then they won't feel any shitty sensations anymore! Hurray!

Why aren't you out murdering people?

There's nothing bad about dying, there's no reason to assume it's any different than falling asleep and we obviously have no reason to be scared shitless of that. Murdering someone only really hurts their family and friends, which is kinda irrelevant since that person was gonna die someday anyway so all you did was reschedule the funeral. The only real reason I can see why murder is at all bad is that people have a strong built in fear of death and so if there's a murderer in town it does spread terror. I've also heard claims that it's somehow more traumatic to lose a loved one via a homicide than some natural cause but I haven't looked into that so I don't know, but it's a possibility.

Should we be out murdering people, especially assholes? It's possible. I'm not expecting a large chunk of the population to figure out how retarded the life game is on their own and stop procreating anytime soon, propably never, so maybe the best thing we can do besides spreading the argument is to track down the biggest assholes we can find and take them out before we're caught. I know this is not a cheery philosophy but it's not my fault reality sucks so hard.


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Manageri wrote: If you

Manageri wrote:

 If you don't recognize that welfare is what we base ethical questions on then you're an idiot, I really don't get it how a concious being can possibly not agree that welfare is the thing with value in the universe without being a preposterous hypocrite.

I recognize the you put value solely on welfare, we do not, there certainly has not been a single person on this site that has agreed with you. Most people do take welfare into account to one extent or another, but most people value more than one thing. For example, life has value to most people. I guess they are just retards. Have you ever considered that when the only people who agree with you would be genocidal psychopaths that perhaps it isn't everyone else in the world that are the idiots? 

 

Manageri wrote:

1) Diamonds have no value on their own, we want them because our idiotic psychology goes "OOOH SHINIEZ" and such (it's of course a little more complicated but who the fuck really cares). If you don't think they have no connection to welfare then you've obviously never seen a woman receive a diamong engagement ring, or how much pussy the dude giving that gift gets that night.

Welfare has no value on its own, we want it because our idiotic psychology goes "oooh, that feels better"

 

Manageri wrote:

Preferences aren't contradictory, see: Jack like sticking his willy in vaginas. Joe likes sticking it in anuses. The only way this becomes contradictory is if one of these assholes declares there's something wrong with sticking your willy in a place that particular asshole doesn't like sticking his willy in. There's nothing contradictory about the OBJECTIVE statement that these two people each have a favorite place to stick their willy in.

The point where we get to contradiction-land is when one of these fuckers declares that sticking your willy in either a vagina or an anus is the only ethical thing to do with your willy, and that is exactly what you subjectivists imply when you declare that your silly preferences somehow have something to do with ethics. You can have your silly preferences about whose suffering you give a shit about, but you really can't call it an ethical standard because the guy next door can also have an "ethical" standard that's entirely different from yours, hence creating a contradiction in the very concept of subjective ethics.

Contradictions between ethics occur all the time. The guy next door does have a different ethical standard than me, and if it conflicts we either find a way to resolve it peacefully, resolve it violently or we avoid interacting. You don't socialize much do you. That can't be a contradiction in the concept of subjective ethics, because the very concept of subjective ethics is arguing that ethics are not objective and therefore the neighbor can and most likely will have ethics that may be contradictory to ours.

 

 

Manageri wrote:

X amount of suffering feels the same to all seven billion of us. Once again you can declare you don't give a shit if others suffer as much or more than you but this does nothing to disprove the objective equality of their suffering.

Yes but it does disprove the value of their suffering. You can have one pound of shit and one pound of gold. You can objectively prove that you have the same amount of shit as you have of gold. That does not prove that shit and gold have the same value. Even if you could somehow measure the amount of pain or whatever objectively among different people says nothing about the value we would put on the different pain.

 

 

Manageri wrote:

No, silly person, we are dealing with the fact that we all have preferences and that it's better for each person to receive the things they prefer.

It is better for me to receive the things I prefer. It is definitely better for you not to receive what you prefer since you prefer the destruction of all sentient life, filling your preference would make it impossible for me (and most everyone else) to get their preferences. 

 

Manageri wrote:

You're totally right though that if there was in fact a decision in front of me that allowed me to eliminate a billion people then I'd have to seriously consider it.

And that makes you feel like you have a superior ethical standard.

 

Manageri wrote:

Yes, you don't have to necessarily care about others' welfare to care about your own, but just admitting welfare is the thing that matters is something. After that it's merely a question of whether you're a selfish cunt or not.

And is being selfish immoral? It is established that I am a selfish cunt, although I am not selfish with cunt or much anything else, I am perfectly willing to share. My "selfish" ethics leads to me depriving very few people of the lollipops that they want while your ethical standard boils down to "I'm not getting the lollipop I want so no one should have any lollipops WAAAAAAAAHH" (blow up world) You are incredibly self-centered in the sense that you seem completely incapable of comprehending that other people have different values than you and some people actually enjoy life. 

If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X


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Manageri wrote:I'm not

Manageri wrote:

I'm not expecting a large chunk of the population to figure out how retarded the life game is on their own and stop procreating anytime soon, propably never, so maybe the best thing we can do besides spreading the argument is to track down the biggest assholes we can find and take them out before we're caught.

Sorry skippy, you are no Dexter Morgan. 

 

Manageri wrote:

I know this is not a cheery philosophy but it's not my fault reality sucks so hard.

It is your fault that your reality sucks so hard. Many of us are quite fond of reality. 

If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X


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Manageri wrote:All you have

Manageri wrote:

All you have to do to make me consider your proposal is prove to me we have free will, or explain why free will is not a relevant factor in assigning ultimate responsibility. Until then I see no justification for assigning jerk factors to people who are ultimately jerks merely because of determinism.

This thread is getting too busy with parallel discussions - I'll open a new thread with my response to this. Please take a look when you have time.

 

Thanks

 

 

EDIT: now available here: http://www.rationalresponders.com/forum/32811


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Manageri wrote: assume it's

Manageri wrote:

 assume it's any different than falling asleep and we obviously have no reason to be scared shitless of that. Murdering someone only really hurts their family and friends, which is kinda irrelevant since that person was gonna die someday anyway so all you did was reschedule the funeral. The only real reason I can see why murder is at all bad is that people have a strong built in fear of death and so if there's a murderer in town it does spread terror. I've also heard claims that it's somehow more traumatic to lose a loved one via a homicide than some natural cause but I haven't looked into that so I don't know, but it's a possibility.

Should we be out murdering people, especially assholes? It's possible. I'm not expecting a large chunk of the population to figure out how retarded the life game is on their own and stop procreating anytime soon, propably never, so maybe the best thing we can do besides spreading the argument is to track down the biggest assholes we can find and take them out before we're caught. I know this is not a cheery philosophy but it's not my fault reality sucks so hard.

Manageri, where did you form these particular ideas and this particular type of hypothesis about ending sentient life ? Serious question and no bullshit on my part.

I mean, not a single human being on this planet is born with the ideas and the perceptions that we carry around today. They are formed through memories and experiences, IMO.

I became an Atheist after having a lifetime of religious bullshit shoved down my throat and cultivated my current wordlview from both that and from the experiences that came, after that event ( losing my religion, as the old song goes, was one of the hugest turning points in my life).

So where did you form the ideas that you are currently arguing for ? What was your influences ? Any particular authors or anything ? Or were these based upon your own empirical observations of the world and thus lead you to this conclusion ?

I am not trying to butt into this argument one way or the other, I simply just want to know.

I know that you mentioned to me in another thread that much of your ideas and Sam Harris's ideas seemed to match up in regards to objective morality, but I don't think that Harris argues for ending life. Harris argues for the minimalization of harm and suffering ( I am basing this upon what I have read in his books so far. I don't know as much about him as the other mainstream Atheist writers and am just now getting a grasp on some of his work, so I could be wrong).

“It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.”
― Giordano Bruno


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harleysportster

harleysportster wrote:

Manageri, where did you form these particular ideas and this particular type of hypothesis about ending sentient life ? Serious question and no bullshit on my part.

I mean, not a single human being on this planet is born with the ideas and the perceptions that we carry around today. They are formed through memories and experiences, IMO.

I don't know, all the little things that didn't make sense to me about the mainstream way of thinking just accumulated over the years. The first thing I remember thinking about relating to the subject was years ago when I first thought about how idiotic it is that parents expect us to feel grateful to them for their selfishly motivated decision to create us - "I made you because I wanted a child so you should thank me". How the fuck is this not exactly the wrong way around?

Quote:
I became an Atheist after having a lifetime of religious bullshit shoved down my throat and cultivated my current wordlview from both that and from the experiences that came, after that event ( losing my religion, as the old song goes, was one of the hugest turning points in my life).

So where did you form the ideas that you are currently arguing for ? What was your influences ? Any particular authors or anything ? Or were these based upon your own empirical observations of the world and thus lead you to this conclusion ?

I haven't read a single philosophy book in my life. There are books on antinatalism but I came to the conclusion on my own. There are AN bloggers and vloggers that have helped clarify all this stuff in my head though, and there are also non AN people who have influenced my thinking like Sam Harris. I had the atheism thing figured out pretty solidly by my early teens so luckily theism never seriously fucked with my brain, although I was never heavily indoctrinated so it's not like it was made hard for me to figure out it's bullshit.

Quote:
I know that you mentioned to me in another thread that much of your ideas and Sam Harris's ideas seemed to match up in regards to objective morality, but I don't think that Harris argues for ending life. Harris argues for the minimalization of harm and suffering ( I am basing this upon what I have read in his books so far. I don't know as much about him as the other mainstream Atheist writers and am just now getting a grasp on some of his work, so I could be wrong).

No, he's not an antinatalist or anything of the sort. Like I mentioned already, the idea of objectivity in ethics has no intrinsic ties to antinatalism.


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Manageri wrote:[I don't

Manageri wrote:

[I don't know, all the little things that didn't make sense to me about the mainstream way of thinking just accumulated over the years. The first thing I remember thinking about relating to the subject was years ago when I first thought about how idiotic it is that parents expect us to feel grateful to them for their selfishly motivated decision to create us - "I made you because I wanted a child so you should thank me". How the fuck is this not exactly the wrong way around?

On that subject. I 100% agree.

When I first started questioning religion and household practices, the argument when none other could be had was " I BROUGHT YOU INTO THIS WORLD ! GOD BROUGHT YOU INTO THIS WORLD ! HOW DARE YOU QUESTION THAT !"

I didn't ask for that. Damn.

I remember bouncing that argument off of other church members ( I had no one else that I was allowed to associate with at the time) and they all hit me with : " Think about how selfish your being towards your family, they brought you into this world."

I remember losing my temper one time and shouting " So because some other people brought me in the world, by default I have NO rights ?"

That just didn't make sense to me at the time and still doesn't glad to know that I am not the only other person out there that has wondered about that. I thought I was just crazy.

Parents abuse and torture their children all the time, are children just supposed to automatically respect them for that ? That has never made sense to me.

Just like the old argument about : "Respect your elders." Why ? I admire some older people that have gone through things, but I don't automatically just start respecting someone because they are older than me.

“It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.”
― Giordano Bruno


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Beyond Saving wrote:I

Beyond Saving wrote:

I recognize the you put value solely on welfare, we do not, there certainly has not been a single person on this site that has agreed with you. Most people do take welfare into account to one extent or another, but most people value more than one thing. For example, life has value to most people. I guess they are just retards. Have you ever considered that when the only people who agree with you would be genocidal psychopaths that perhaps it isn't everyone else in the world that are the idiots?

You value life because you tie it to welfare, you wouldn't value life at all if it was pure torture.

Genocidal psychopaths don't agree with me about much, I've yet to hear of someone iniating a genocide with the intention of wiping out all life. I could also be a dick like you and make these kinds of retarded statements, like maybe compare you to fucktarded pro-life christian nuts because they love life so much too, but I don't need to resort to such idiotic weasely "arguments".

 

Quote:
Manageri wrote:

1) Diamonds have no value on their own, we want them because our idiotic psychology goes "OOOH SHINIEZ" and such (it's of course a little more complicated but who the fuck really cares). If you don't think they have no connection to welfare then you've obviously never seen a woman receive a diamong engagement ring, or how much pussy the dude giving that gift gets that night.

Welfare has no value on its own, we want it because our idiotic psychology goes "oooh, that feels better"

Feeling better is the same thing as welfare so this is just mush.

 

Quote:

Contradictions between ethics occur all the time. The guy next door does have a different ethical standard than me, and if it conflicts we either find a way to resolve it peacefully, resolve it violently or we avoid interacting. You don't socialize much do you. That can't be a contradiction in the concept of subjective ethics, because the very concept of subjective ethics is arguing that ethics are not objective and therefore the neighbor can and most likely will have ethics that may be contradictory to ours.

Which means neither standard means a motherfucking thing in practical reality, there's no point in even calling it ethics when it's nothing but you doing what you want and him doing what he wants and it just so happens that sometimes you might agree.

 

Quote:
Manageri wrote:

X amount of suffering feels the same to all seven billion of us. Once again you can declare you don't give a shit if others suffer as much or more than you but this does nothing to disprove the objective equality of their suffering.

Yes but it does disprove the value of their suffering. You can have one pound of shit and one pound of gold. You can objectively prove that you have the same amount of shit as you have of gold. That does not prove that shit and gold have the same value. Even if you could somehow measure the amount of pain or whatever objectively among different people says nothing about the value we would put on the different pain.

Once again this turns into useless mush if we use subjective ethical reasoning as you consider your pain to be gold and mine to be shit and vice versa, and there's absolutely no way to prove either one of us right. The only way the concept of value can have any practical relevance is for it to be ojective.

 

 

Quote:
Manageri wrote:

No, silly person, we are dealing with the fact that we all have preferences and that it's better for each person to receive the things they prefer.

It is better for me to receive the things I prefer. It is definitely better for you not to receive what you prefer since you prefer the destruction of all sentient life, filling your preference would make it impossible for me (and most everyone else) to get their preferences.

It's still better FOR ME to receive what I WANT, the fact that my desire might be to shit all over your desires does not invalidate this in any way.

 

Quote:
Manageri wrote:

You're totally right though that if there was in fact a decision in front of me that allowed me to eliminate a billion people then I'd have to seriously consider it.

And that makes you feel like you have a superior ethical standard.

No, the fact I'm not a selfish cunt does.

 

Quote:
Manageri wrote:

Yes, you don't have to necessarily care about others' welfare to care about your own, but just admitting welfare is the thing that matters is something. After that it's merely a question of whether you're a selfish cunt or not.

And is being selfish immoral? It is established that I am a selfish cunt, although I am not selfish with cunt or much anything else, I am perfectly willing to share. My "selfish" ethics leads to me depriving very few people of the lollipops that they want

Billions of animals deliberately tortured every year and you think you meat eating fucknuts aren't stealing any "lollipops"? Hilarious.

Is selfishness immoral? You do realize the whole point of ethics is how to treat others? If you're the only sentient that will ever exist then it's impossible for you to do anything unethical so I really don't know how you can seriously ask such a preposterous question.

Quote:
while your ethical standard boils down to "I'm not getting the lollipop I want so no one should have any lollipops WAAAAAAAAHH" (blow up world) You are incredibly self-centered in the sense that you seem completely incapable of comprehending that other people have different values than you and some people actually enjoy life.

"MOOOOOM the evil vegan is trying to make me eat my veggies WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH"

I can do this pointless shit too if you prefer it over making actual arguments. Oh, and I don't give a shit about how many lollipops I have in my mouth or up my nose, I still care about other sentients and their lollipops too and you know it so fuck you.

I'm pretty sure pigs enjoy not being tortured but that doesn't seem to bother you much when you pay the assholes to breed and torture more of them so it's hilarious you whine about the concept of not respecting the wishes of others.

Quote:
Manageri wrote:

I know this is not a cheery philosophy but it's not my fault reality sucks so hard.

It is your fault that your reality sucks so hard. Many of us are quite fond of reality. 

Yeah cos when I'm getting a BJ all the brutal shit happening to others all over the world just magically goes away.

 


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Manageri wrote:I haven't

Manageri wrote:

I haven't read a single philosophy book in my life. There are books on antinatalism but I came to the conclusion on my own. There are AN bloggers and vloggers that have helped clarify all this stuff in my head though, and there are also non AN people who have influenced my thinking like Sam Harris. I had the atheism thing figured out pretty solidly by my early teens so luckily theism never seriously fucked with my brain, although I was never heavily indoctrinated so it's not like it was made hard for me to figure out it's bullshit.

I did a quick search on anti-natalism and found one page that has this quote on it's home :

It is the greatest taboo to imply in any way that existence itself is not good, but evil. If you merely say people shouldn't have children for the purpose of reducing population size, so that people in the future will be happier, then no one will object (except for religious nuts). If you however say or imply that it would be better if life became extinct, then you are implying that our existence is bad in itself, that it can't be made better in any way. Then you are attacking, which Freud called the "Urvertrauen" (basic trust) in the basic goodness of existence itself and that's where you will encounter the strongest emotional resistance.

Website source is : 


http://antinatalism.blogspot.com/  The author does not mention their name, so I can't credit them for this part of the article.
 

Would you say that this represents your views ?

 

“It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.”
― Giordano Bruno


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That's Jim Crawford's blog,

That's Jim Crawford's blog, he's actually written a book on antinatalism. He's somewhat of a rarity among us as he's actually had kids and later become an antinatalist. I've read a lotta his stuff and watched his vids and I'd say I agree with almost all of it.


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Manageri wrote: X amount of

Manageri wrote:

X amount of suffering feels the same to all seven billion of us. Once again you can declare you don't give a shit if others suffer as much or more than you but this does nothing to disprove the objective equality of their suffering.

 

I've said this before, and maybe if I keep repeating it, you will eventually hear it.

 

Suffering is not objective.  It is subjective and as such, we all feel anywhere from just a little different to a lot different from each other under the same conditions.  This has been demonstrated with fMRI scans where people are shown pictures of emotion producing situations while being scanned.  Different parts of their brain light up showing different amounts of activity in response to the pictures. Get it?  Suffering - how much, when, even where - is not the same for everyone.

The areas that light up are in the same general area.  There is a bell curve of response, so some people have very high activity, and some very low activity, and most are in the middle.  When asked, their reported response correlates very closely with their objective fMRI - no feelings = low brain response and so on.  And some do not feel what most other people feel at all.  See - boderline personality, psychosocial disorder (psychopath), Asperger's Syndrome, and high-funtioning autism.

Therefore, suffering is NOT and CAN NOT BE, objective.

Compare - you are skiing off a mountain ridge with a parachute because you are plummeting hundreds of feet down to the lower elevation.  Terrifying doesn't cover how I would feel - I would need new underwear and my suffering would be 90 on a scale of 1 to 10.  Yet there are people - young men mostly - who do this for fun, who think this is exciting and do it over and over for the adrenaline rush.  See youtube for examples.

Getting cut is suffering?  Then explain to me why people get tats, piercings, and cut themselves on purpose. 

Getting killed/murdered is suffering?  Then why are you advocating for billions to die?  Surely that would be one huge payload of suffering.  Is a pig's suffering more important than a billion people?  Haven't you been arguing that one pig's suffering equals one person's suffering?  So killing a billion people is equivalent to killing a billion pigs.  This makes sense to you?

Let me try rationalizing as you do - I am a meat-eater.  So I personally have eaten more than one pig's worth of pork, ham, bacon, etc in my lifetime.  Therefore, my one death will prevent more than one pig from dieing to continue to feed me for what remains of my miserable life.  Therefore, if you kill me, you will save - oh, let's pretend I'm going to live a very long time, another 40 years.  So you may save another couple of hundred pigs and I really should shuffle off this mortal coil.  Have I got it right?

 

 

 

Up yours.

 

-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.

"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken

"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.


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Manageri wrote:That's Jim

Manageri wrote:

That's Jim Crawford's blog, he's actually written a book on antinatalism. He's somewhat of a rarity among us as he's actually had kids and later become an antinatalist. I've read a lotta his stuff and watched his vids and I'd say I agree with almost all of it.

 

Fine, you don't want children, don't have them.

Think about this.  If humans were all to die off tomorrow, billions of domesticated livestock and people's pets would die.  From starvation and disease very quickly.  Why?  They are not wild - they are domesticated.  And domesticated animals can not survive in the wild.  Nothing pisses me off more than PETA people who believe that releasing animals will return them to a "natural" state.  Their natural state is domesticated - not wild.  They are not as hardy and disease resistant as their wild cousins and they have no clue how to forage for themselves. 

And if you must apportion blame, start with our neolithic ancestors - dogs have been domesticated for over 15,000 years.  Pigs, sheep, goats, cattle, etc, were domesticated not long after the dog.  It was not done deliberately - just picking the ones to keep that were quieter, less aggressive, and therefore easier to keep close to the human settlements.  The current hypothesis is that smaller, thinner bones is a linked genetic trait to the less aggression.  Disease prone is from segregating the animals.  It is way too late to turn back time and expect them to survive without humans.

 

-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.

"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken

"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.


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cj wrote: Suffering is not

cj wrote:
 

Suffering is not objective.  It is subjective and as such, we all feel anywhere from just a little different to a lot different from each other under the same conditions.  This has been demonstrated with fMRI scans where people are shown pictures of emotion producing situations while being scanned.  Different parts of their brain light up showing different amounts of activity in response to the pictures. Get it?  Suffering - how much, when, even where - is not the same for everyone.

We had this exact same discussion already. I've never argued the same stimuli are equally important for everyone, I've argued that the same sensations are. If you have to show me 10 pictures of people being torn apart by lions to produce the same amount of brain activity that your brain produces after you're shown only 5 pictures, then clearly the OBJECTIVE conclusion is that I can handle twice the amount of brutal pictures that you can before I reach the same level of discomfort. This is how we make objective statements about subjective phenomena.

Quote:
The areas that light up are in the same general area.  There is a bell curve of response, so some people have very high activity, and some very low activity, and most are in the middle.  When asked, their reported response correlates very closely with their objective fMRI - no feelings = low brain response and so on.  And some do not feel what most other people feel at all.  See - boderline personality, psychosocial disorder (psychopath), Asperger's Syndrome, and high-funtioning autism.

Exactly, the level of brain activity correlates with their experience, this is an argument for objectivity.

Quote:
Getting cut is suffering?  Then explain to me why people get tats, piercings, and cut themselves on purpose.

People cut themselves because they expect the physical pain to distract them from the more burdensome emotional pain - not complicated.

Quote:
Getting killed/murdered is suffering?

I just made an argument a few posts back where I said death is entirely suffering free so I have no idea where you got this from.

Quote:
Let me try rationalizing as you do - I am a meat-eater.  So I personally have eaten more than one pig's worth of pork, ham, bacon, etc in my lifetime.  Therefore, my one death will prevent more than one pig from dieing to continue to feed me for what remains of my miserable life.  Therefore, if you kill me, you will save - oh, let's pretend I'm going to live a very long time, another 40 years.  So you may save another couple of hundred pigs and I really should shuffle off this mortal coil.  Have I got it right? 

Up yours.

Quite obviously if your existence means torturing a whole bunch of other sentients then yes, it'd be better if you die ASAP.


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Manageri wrote:You value

Manageri wrote:

You value life because you tie it to welfare, you wouldn't value life at all if it was pure torture.

If I considered life torture I would off myself, I wouldn't be particularly worried about everyone else. 

 

Manageri wrote:

Genocidal psychopaths don't agree with me about much, I've yet to hear of someone iniating a genocide with the intention of wiping out all life. I could also be a dick like you and make these kinds of retarded statements, like maybe compare you to fucktarded pro-life christian nuts because they love life so much too, but I don't need to resort to such idiotic weasely "arguments".

Genocidal psychopaths don't usually bother considering the morality of their actions, but if one needed a moral philosopher I am sure they would hire you. You are by definition genocidal, call you a psychopath is probably not accurate I will retract that because I wouldn't want to insult genuine psychopaths. I am just glad that you lack the will and/or the means to actually commit genocide. 

 

Manageri wrote:

Feeling better is the same thing as welfare so this is just mush.

Yet you criticize me for basically making all of my decisions based on what makes me feel better? 

 

Manageri wrote:

Which means neither standard means a motherfucking thing in practical reality, there's no point in even calling it ethics when it's nothing but you doing what you want and him doing what he wants and it just so happens that sometimes you might agree.

There is no point to having ethical standards, that is what I have been saying all along. 

 

Manageri wrote:

Once again this turns into useless mush if we use subjective ethical reasoning as you consider your pain to be gold and mine to be shit and vice versa, and there's absolutely no way to prove either one of us right. The only way the concept of value can have any practical relevance is for it to be ojective.

 

As I started by pointing out in this thread that all concepts of value are subjective, including the value of money which we try very hard to make close to objective. You cannot determine the value of anything without first asking who is the person determining the value. There is no item, no concept, no person, nothing in this universe that has an objective value. (Value meaning the amount of importance a person grants to something, not value in the mathematical sense of integers ie 2+2 has a value of 4 in a base 10 system)

 

Manageri wrote:

It's still better FOR ME to receive what I WANT, the fact that my desire might be to shit all over your desires does not invalidate this in any way.

It is better for you to get what you want, I never argued that.  My whole argument has been that everyone wants different things. Here we obviously have a conflict, you want all of us dead, I want to remain alive. So why do I consider my desire gold and yours shit? Because it is mine. So I put +100 units of value towards my desire and 0 towards yours. Now you claim that all are equal so that must mean that you put 50 units of value to your desire and 50 towards mine. Putting them together that makes my desire worth 150 units of value and your desire -50 units of value- therefore, objectively, it makes more sense to fulfill my desire than it does to fulfill yours. 

In the real world, I am content to let you sit there with your desires until you start to exercise them. The day you decide to start killing people, I will support putting a bullet in your head, or hooking you up to old sparky or locking you in prison forever, whatever they do in your country. 

 

Manageri wrote:

"MOOOOOM the evil vegan is trying to make me eat my veggies WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH"

I can do this pointless shit too if you prefer it over making actual arguments. Oh, and I don't give a shit about how many lollipops I have in my mouth or up my nose, I still care about other sentients and their lollipops too and you know it so fuck you.

I wasn't aware that you have yet made any actual arguments. Your posts have been filled with nothing but immature pointless shit filled with anger, vitriol and emotion. This discussion really does feel like the few times I bother talking to a theist, I feel kinda like a cat swatting a mouse around not having to put in any real effort. 

 

Manageri wrote:

I'm pretty sure pigs enjoy not being tortured but that doesn't seem to bother you much when you pay the assholes to breed and torture more of them so it's hilarious you whine about the concept of not respecting the wishes of others.

The first time I killed a pig I was actually quite bothered. The things stink and are a real pain in the ass to skin, the smell sticks in your nose and you have to shower like three times. I actually swore I was never going to do it again, but then I made myself some homemade bacon. I have a pig due for slaughter in October so you have about a month and a half to convince me that I should worry more about the pig than crisp, salty, sweet, thick bacon drenched in maple syrup. 

 

Manageri wrote:

Yeah cos when I'm getting a BJ all the brutal shit happening to others all over the world just magically goes away.

Perhaps you should try it. I've met people in third world countries with a better opinion of life than you. 

If, if a white man puts his arm around me voluntarily, that's brotherhood. But if you - if you hold a gun on him and make him embrace me and pretend to be friendly or brotherly toward me, then that's not brotherhood, that's hypocrisy.- Malcolm X


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Well I am not sure

Well I am not sure how the anti-natalists would view me (probably as a selfish asshole) but my girlfriend and I elected to not have any children or get married for a variety of reasons. One was that both of us frankly admitted that we were did not want the responsibility of dealing with raising a child, we really didn't have the proper amount of funds to take on all the burdens of being parents, etc. In short, we're both just content with life the way it is.

Now I can understand wishing for people to use more contraceptives and birth control methods to decrease the amounts of overpopulation in the future ( unless we find a way to colonize other Earth-like planets, overpopulation will definitely be a problem). But, I can't honestly say that I take the position that I would want life to end.

One of those searches on anti-natalism advocated a "pro-death" stance, ( I wished I had saved the link) It explained that pro-choice  was opting for the woman to have a choice in the matter and that pro-life was opting for the woman to do the immoral thing by bringing a child in the world.

Pro-death seemed to advocate mandated abortions of all pregnant women at the earliest stage possible.

I can't say that I would support that. Granted, there are a lot of irresponsible people out there having children, but to mandate an abortion on everyone who is pregnant seems a bit extreme to me.

Now this may not be the position of all anti-natalists ( a term that I had never heard of before this thread had started) but the ultimate position that seems to be the underlying argument from the anti-natalist viewpoint is that no existence = no suffering.

There is even several books out there on the subject. One famous one it seems is by David Benatar. It is called : Better Never to have been. The Harm of coming into existence.

There is no way for me to possibly critique this book, because I haven't read it. But it seems that Benatar is arguing that it is immoral to bring more life into this world, and we would be better off not existing.

That is a question that can not be answered IMO. Because, I DO exist and am alive and aware. I want to live. Maybe that makes me a selfish-asshole, but I don't want to die, even though one day I will.

 

“It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.”
― Giordano Bruno


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harleysportster wrote:Well I

harleysportster wrote:

Well I am not sure how the anti-natalists would view me (probably as a selfish asshole) but my girlfriend and I elected to not have any children or get married for a variety of reasons. One was that both of us frankly admitted that we were did not want the responsibility of dealing with raising a child, we really didn't have the proper amount of funds to take on all the burdens of being parents, etc. In short, we're both just content with life the way it is.

Now I can understand wishing for people to use more contraceptives and birth control methods to decrease the amounts of overpopulation in the future ( unless we find a way to colonize other Earth-like planets, overpopulation will definitely be a problem). But, I can't honestly say that I take the position that I would want life to end.

One of those searches on anti-natalism advocated a "pro-death" stance, ( I wished I had saved the link) It explained that pro-choice  was opting for the woman to have a choice in the matter and that pro-life was opting for the woman to do the immoral thing by bringing a child in the world.

Pro-death seemed to advocate mandated abortions of all pregnant women at the earliest stage possible.

I can't say that I would support that. Granted, there are a lot of irresponsible people out there having children, but to mandate an abortion on everyone who is pregnant seems a bit extreme to me.

Now this may not be the position of all anti-natalists ( a term that I had never heard of before this thread had started) but the ultimate position that seems to be the underlying argument from the anti-natalist viewpoint is that no existence = no suffering.

There is even several books out there on the subject. One famous one it seems is by David Benatar. It is called : Better Never to have been. The Harm of coming into existence.

There is no way for me to possibly critique this book, because I haven't read it. But it seems that Benatar is arguing that it is immoral to bring more life into this world, and we would be better off not existing.

That is a question that can not be answered IMO. Because, I DO exist and am alive and aware. I want to live. Maybe that makes me a selfish-asshole, but I don't want to die, even though one day I will.

 

That is the responsible thing to do, even IF one has the funds. I cant stand anyone on any subject, parenting, sports or business, who says "how do you know unless you try". My mom tried desperatly when I was a kid to get me to eat broccoli, never did and still dont.

It is the false meme that risk is always good and knowing your limits always makes you a coward. Both risk and knowing limits are part of evolution. Some here and they know who they are, don't get that.

I don't have kids either and even if I had the money I would not.

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Manageri wrote:You really

Manageri wrote:
You really are a retard. So the pirates come to port with their loot and the options are:


1) Let the asshole pirates spend their blood money on whatever the fuck it is they wanna spend it on, part of which will obviously be preparing for their next lovely little voyage of rape and pillage
2) Take the pirates' loot and spend it on more productive things
And you're gonna pick option 1 because...well I don't really know what your fucktard logic here is exactly, maybe the money's become evil now that the pirates murdered for it or something according to your idiotic philosophy.


Here you go with your fuckwit ‘thought experiments’ again, that you got out of your ‘Philosophy for Fuckwits’ book.  Can’t you think or write naturally?

‘Spend it on more productive things’ – what, like keeping your miserable little ass alive?  I don’t call that more productive.  Here’s another thought experiment for you.  The animal abusers kill 100 animals for their meat the options are:-

1) Let the asshole abusers eat all the meat themselves.
2) Beg for some of the meat yourself to keep your skinny little ass alive, so you can go round telling everyone else not to eat meat.

What’s the fucking difference with the pirates, asshole?  If you choose option 1 in this you have to choose option 1 with the pirates –same goes for option 2, which is what you chose, so you must be the biggest hypocrite ever born.

Quote:
If there was any chance it'd lead you to making an honest argument I'd go find the quotes but I know what a weasel you are so I'm not wasting my time.


You can’t find the ‘quotes’ because they don’t exist.  Like I said before, you’re just a lying cunt.


Quote:
Aww, does me pointing out your bullshit make you a sad panda?

A ‘sad panda’?  That’s a bit harsh, isn’t it?  Careful you’re really hurting my feelings now.  I wonder when you’re going to start talking about ‘ad hominem’ arguments – that’s another one in the text book, isn’t it?

Quote:
All emotions are sensations. This does not mean all sensations are emotions. I think they taught me that insanely difficult logic at school when I was like 13, you must have been busy sniffing glue at the time or something.


There you go again with your tautologies.  Why does pain feel ‘bad’?  Well, because it’s painful.  Hmm, but it wouldn’t be pain if it wasn’t painful, would it?  So tell me, why is pain bad, if not that it’s painful?
       

Quote:
There's nothing I haven't covered here. I'd really like you to explain to me how it makes sense to think we can't in principle measure suffering when we know that suffering is caused by entirely materialistic shit going on in the brain. Unless you're a dualist of some sort this makes no sense.
Also, If we can't make any objective statements about suffering then clearly we can't condemn rapists because according to you, we have no objective grounds for determining the woman was actually harmed.


Ok, let’s assume, wrongly that the subjective experience of suffering can be objectively measured by, for example the amount of electrical activity in a particular region of the cerebral cortex.  So if we compare the readings from say, a man and a chicken and say, as is likely, under the same stimulus (e.g. cutting off a leg) the human’s reading is higher, e.g. 24 MEGS of electrical energy (i.e. suffering), and the chicken’s only 4 MEGS, well then, that proves, does it not, that a human’s suffering is worth much more than a chickens, in fact 6 times as much.  But you’ve said that an animal’s suffering is worth the same as a human’s – so would you accept this result?

If you want to argue that the electrical reading for the human is only higher due to it’s greater brain size and that therefore a conversion factor needs to be introduced when comparing it with a chicken, well then you are introducing a relative judgement into what is supposed to be an absolute measurement and all objective status for the measurement is lost.  You cannot argue that 4 MEGS of pain for a chicken feels the same as 24 MEGS for a man, because how something subjectively ‘feels’ has nothing to do with an objective measurement of suffering and no objective basis for comparison can be established, all we know is that the chicken’s pain scores 4 and the man’s 24 – so the man’s is worth 6 times as much.

Quote:
You did nothing to argue the difference between the subjective color preference and the objective fact that it's better for a conciousness to receive a lollipop of said color. Not that I should have expected you to address the core of the argument, it'd take some balls to do that.


No, you fucking idiot, it’s you who hasn’t addressed the argument.  When I talk about you saying that everyone’s lollipop desire is the same, I’m talking about what you call their objective desire to have the lollipop of their chosen colour, not what colour that actually is.

You seem to think that because everyone experiences a lollipop desire, this desire must be objectively measurable, which of course it isn’t, as no objective basis can be established by which two subjective experiences can be judged, but even if it could, as I’ve shown above, what it would lead to is absolute inequality of lollipop desire, or suffering, or whatever else you try and measure, because, even assuming the same inputs, no two experiences will ever score exactly the same in one individual, let alone when comparing one individual to another, or an animal.

Quote:
How do you quote my argument and then on the very next line pretend I made an entirely different argument and attack that? You have some serious reading comprehension issues - no wait, it's propably just that inner weasel coming out again.


Oh right, so you weren’t saying that our intelligence can override our DNA, just that it can override ‘moronic psychological impulses generated by our DNA’.  Oh well, that’s totally different, isn’t it.  Yeah, that changes everything. Sorry for misunderstanding.


Quote:
Yeah cos non-capitalist societies have all always been vegan DURR.


Yeah, they killed animals on an industrial scale, those Eskimos and Aborigines.  Still you’ve got a point – your little commie friends were just as good at torturing animals as their capitalist cousins.  But I expect you don’t give a fuck about that either, do you?  Which just goes to show what I always suspected that you don’t give a fuck about animals, you just use them as a screen for your own loneliness, unhappiness and resentment.


Quote:
In other words, you make deals to fulfill your selfish desires and call that brilliant morality. Bravo, a flock of birds can do the same.


‘A flock of birds can do the same’?  What the fuck does that mean?  Funny how, again, the supposed animal rights champion uses an analogy that places human morality on some higher plane than that of animals – whereas I, the supposedly selfish human-centric subjectivist doesn’t place human morality on any higher level at all – I care more about it because it relates to me, just as the birds do, whereas you think human morality is, or should be, intrinsically superior to that of animals.  Didn’t you accuse someone somewhere, in your screeds of shit, of being ‘speciesist’, and yet here’s the little hypocrite again, showing himself to be the biggest speciesist of all.
 

Quote:
You're the retard trying to argue your tautology can somehow contradict itself, you're saying that X amount of pain experienced by a pig is not as valuable as X amount of pain experienced by a human. Either that or you're so ignorant/delusional you think other mammals don't feel pain (and tons of other sensations) the same way we do.


That’s right, X amount of pain experienced by a pig is not as ‘valuable’ as X amount of pain experienced by a human – not because I don’t care about the pig, but I care about the human more, as I am one myself.  Of course, this would not hold true if you were the human in question.  But as we’ve seen above, you don’t care as much about a pig as a human either, because if we accept your mistaken argument that suffering can be objectively measured as brain activity then you’ll find that human beings will generate more pain related brain activity for any given stimulus than a pig.  So on your objective scale of value their suffering is more important.

Quote:
This is hilarious, it really does speak for itself in outlining what a spineless manipulating weasel you are.


It’s meant to be funny, so thanks.  I find it hilarious too the idea that a skinny-assed little lefty like you can argue himself into a position where he asserts that a black man’s life is worth no more than a chicken’s is fucking priceless.  Furthermore, in my masterly analysis of your fuck-useless objective measurement of ‘suffering’ test above, I’ve shown that, even if it were true, you would have to value a black man’s suffering, and therefore his life, as objectively more important than a chicken’s, because it’s absolute value of suffering is greater.  Whereas, I the subjectivist would say there is no objective reason to value a human’s suffering above that of an animal, other than pure selfishness.

Quote:
That was the objective truth you idiot, you know, the kind that you claim doesn't exist which was the whole point of the damn thing?


So the objective truth was that monkeys prefer bananas to shit?  No?  Oh, I see, I missed the point, which was that all sentient beings have some preferences for some things over other things……..yeeess, and the point is………?

Quote:
It's fucking hilarious when a weasel like you can't handle an argument and so you attack the style of argumentation despite the fact it's perfectly valid. You really don't mind showing everyone what a gigantic intellectual pussy you are do you?


‘Pussy’?  Bit weak, isn’t it? ‘Pussy’?  Is this the only alternative you could think of for cunt? ‘Pussy’?  That’s what I call my cat.  I think you’re gonna have to do a bit better than that in the insults department my old fruitcake.  Haven’t got a very wide vocabulary, have you?  I suppose you’ve just relied on that ole ‘Handy Debating Tips for Morons’ manual, and haven’t read much else, eh?

Quote:
Damn, doctor, did you just diagnose yet another mental illness though the internet? That's fucking amazing, you should see if Oprah will have you on or something.


No, I didn’t diagnose, you self-diagnosed on this site.  I expect you thought it would win you some sympathy or something.  To be fair, I don’t blame you – you sound like you need all the help you can get.  You do seem to be running out of ideas, my little one trick pony, whereas I keep finding new ways to prove that I’m right and you’re wrong.  Now, don’t forget to take your pills tonight, and you’ll feel much better in the morning.  Nighty-night!

 

 

I quote no 'authorities'. I speak in my own words. I bring everything to the bar of my own judgment.


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Manageri wrote:You really

Manageri wrote:
You really are a retard. So the pirates come to port with their loot and the options are:


1) Let the asshole pirates spend their blood money on whatever the fuck it is they wanna spend it on, part of which will obviously be preparing for their next lovely little voyage of rape and pillage
2) Take the pirates' loot and spend it on more productive things
And you're gonna pick option 1 because...well I don't really know what your fucktard logic here is exactly, maybe the money's become evil now that the pirates murdered for it or something according to your idiotic philosophy.


Here you go with your fuckwit ‘thought experiments’ again, that you got out of your ‘Philosophy for Fuckwits’ book.  Can’t you think or write naturally?

‘Spend it on more productive things’ – what, like keeping your miserable little ass alive?  I don’t call that more productive.  Here’s another thought experiment for you.  The animal abusers kill 100 animals for their meat the options are:-

1) Let the asshole abusers eat all the meat themselves.
2) Beg for some of the meat yourself to keep your skinny little ass alive, so you can go round telling everyone else not to eat meat.

What’s the fucking difference with the pirates, asshole?  If you choose option 1 in this you have to choose option 1 with the pirates –same goes for option 2, which is what you chose, so you must be the biggest hypocrite ever born.

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If there was any chance it'd lead you to making an honest argument I'd go find the quotes but I know what a weasel you are so I'm not wasting my time.


You can’t find the ‘quotes’ because they don’t exist.  Like I said before, you’re just a lying cunt.


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Aww, does me pointing out your bullshit make you a sad panda?

A ‘sad panda’?  That’s a bit harsh, isn’t it?  Careful you’re really hurting my feelings now.  I wonder when you’re going to start talking about ‘ad hominem’ arguments – that’s another one in the text book, isn’t it?

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All emotions are sensations. This does not mean all sensations are emotions. I think they taught me that insanely difficult logic at school when I was like 13, you must have been busy sniffing glue at the time or something.


There you go again with your tautologies.  Why does pain feel ‘bad’?  Well, because it’s painful.  Hmm, but it wouldn’t be pain if it wasn’t painful, would it?  So tell me, why is pain bad, if not that it’s painful?
       

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There's nothing I haven't covered here. I'd really like you to explain to me how it makes sense to think we can't in principle measure suffering when we know that suffering is caused by entirely materialistic shit going on in the brain. Unless you're a dualist of some sort this makes no sense.
Also, If we can't make any objective statements about suffering then clearly we can't condemn rapists because according to you, we have no objective grounds for determining the woman was actually harmed.


Ok, let’s assume, wrongly that the subjective experience of suffering can be objectively measured by, for example the amount of electrical activity in a particular region of the cerebral cortex.  So if we compare the readings from say, a man and a chicken and say, as is likely, under the same stimulus (e.g. cutting off a leg) the human’s reading is higher, e.g. 24 MEGS of electrical energy (i.e. suffering), and the chicken’s only 4 MEGS, well then, that proves, does it not, that a human’s suffering is worth much more than a chickens, in fact 6 times as much.  But you’ve said that an animal’s suffering is worth the same as a human’s – so would you accept this result?

If you want to argue that the electrical reading for the human is only higher due to it’s greater brain size and that therefore a conversion factor needs to be introduced when comparing it with a chicken, well then you are introducing a relative judgement into what is supposed to be an absolute measurement and all objective status for the measurement is lost.  You cannot argue that 4 MEGS of pain for a chicken feels the same as 24 MEGS for a man, because how something subjectively ‘feels’ has nothing to do with an objective measurement of suffering and no objective basis for comparison can be established, all we know is that the chicken’s pain scores 4 and the man’s 24 – so the man’s is worth 6 times as much.

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You did nothing to argue the difference between the subjective color preference and the objective fact that it's better for a conciousness to receive a lollipop of said color. Not that I should have expected you to address the core of the argument, it'd take some balls to do that.


No, you fucking idiot, it’s you who hasn’t addressed the argument.  When I talk about you saying that everyone’s lollipop desire is the same, I’m talking about what you call their objective desire to have the lollipop of their chosen colour, not what colour that actually is.

You seem to think that because everyone experiences a lollipop desire, this desire must be objectively measurable, which of course it isn’t, as no objective basis can be established by which two subjective experiences can be judged, but even if it could, as I’ve shown above, what it would lead to is absolute inequality of lollipop desire, or suffering, or whatever else you try and measure, because, even assuming the same inputs, no two experiences will ever score exactly the same in one individual, let alone when comparing one individual to another, or an animal.

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How do you quote my argument and then on the very next line pretend I made an entirely different argument and attack that? You have some serious reading comprehension issues - no wait, it's propably just that inner weasel coming out again.


Oh right, so you weren’t saying that our intelligence can override our DNA, just that it can override ‘moronic psychological impulses generated by our DNA’.  Oh well, that’s totally different, isn’t it.  Yeah, that changes everything. Sorry for misunderstanding.


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Yeah cos non-capitalist societies have all always been vegan DURR.


Yeah, they killed animals on an industrial scale, those Eskimos and Aborigines.  Still you’ve got a point – your little commie friends were just as good at torturing animals as their capitalist cousins.  But I expect you don’t give a fuck about that either, do you?  Which just goes to show what I always suspected that you don’t give a fuck about animals, you just use them as a screen for your own loneliness, unhappiness and resentment.


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In other words, you make deals to fulfill your selfish desires and call that brilliant morality. Bravo, a flock of birds can do the same.


‘A flock of birds can do the same’?  What the fuck does that mean?  Funny how, again, the supposed animal rights champion uses an analogy that places human morality on some higher plane than that of animals – whereas I, the supposedly selfish human-centric subjectivist doesn’t place human morality on any higher level at all – I care more about it because it relates to me, just as the birds do, whereas you think human morality is, or should be, intrinsically superior to that of animals.  Didn’t you accuse someone somewhere, in your screeds of shit, of being ‘speciesist’, and yet here’s the little hypocrite again, showing himself to be the biggest speciesist of all.
 

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You're the retard trying to argue your tautology can somehow contradict itself, you're saying that X amount of pain experienced by a pig is not as valuable as X amount of pain experienced by a human. Either that or you're so ignorant/delusional you think other mammals don't feel pain (and tons of other sensations) the same way we do.


That’s right, X amount of pain experienced by a pig is not as ‘valuable’ as X amount of pain experienced by a human – not because I don’t care about the pig, but I care about the human more, as I am one myself.  Of course, this would not hold true if you were the human in question.  But as we’ve seen above, you don’t care as much about a pig as a human either, because if we accept your mistaken argument that suffering can be objectively measured as brain activity then you’ll find that human beings will generate more pain related brain activity for any given stimulus than a pig.  So on your objective scale of value their suffering is more important.

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This is hilarious, it really does speak for itself in outlining what a spineless manipulating weasel you are.


It’s meant to be funny, so thanks.  I find it hilarious too the idea that a skinny-assed little lefty like you can argue himself into a position where he asserts that a black man’s life is worth no more than a chicken’s is fucking priceless.  Furthermore, in my masterly analysis of your fuck-useless objective measurement of ‘suffering’ test above, I’ve shown that, even if it were true, you would have to value a black man’s suffering, and therefore his life, as objectively more important than a chicken’s, because it’s absolute value of suffering is greater.  Whereas, I the subjectivist would say there is no objective reason to value a human’s suffering above that of an animal, other than pure selfishness.

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That was the objective truth you idiot, you know, the kind that you claim doesn't exist which was the whole point of the damn thing?


So the objective truth was that monkeys prefer bananas to shit?  No?  Oh, I see, I missed the point, which was that all sentient beings have some preferences for some things over other things……..yeeess, and the point is………?

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It's fucking hilarious when a weasel like you can't handle an argument and so you attack the style of argumentation despite the fact it's perfectly valid. You really don't mind showing everyone what a gigantic intellectual pussy you are do you?


‘Pussy’?  Bit weak, isn’t it? ‘Pussy’?  Is this the only alternative you could think of for cunt? ‘Pussy’?  That’s what I call my cat.  I think you’re gonna have to do a bit better than that in the insults department my old fruitcake.  Haven’t got a very wide vocabulary, have you?  I suppose you’ve just relied on that ole ‘Handy Debating Tips for Morons’ manual, and haven’t read much else, eh?

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Damn, doctor, did you just diagnose yet another mental illness though the internet? That's fucking amazing, you should see if Oprah will have you on or something.


No, I didn’t diagnose, you self-diagnosed on this site.  I expect you thought it would win you some sympathy or something.  To be fair, I don’t blame you – you sound like you need all the help you can get.  You do seem to be running out of ideas, my little one trick pony, whereas I keep finding new ways to prove that I’m right and you’re wrong.  Now, don’t forget to take your pills tonight, and you’ll feel much better in the morning.  Nighty-night!

 

 

I quote no 'authorities'. I speak in my own words. I bring everything to the bar of my own judgment.


Mr C O Jones
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Manageri - no response

Hey my little friend, where are you? Pussy got your tongue? How come you haven't come back on all those rather tricky questions I posed you? If you don't respond soon I might start getting the idea that you couldn't think up any answers - but that can't be right, can it, not now you've got that mean, dark and dangerous avatar - you sure are one badass anarchist, I'm almost too scared to debate with you now. But if you just walk away from those tricky old questions I've posed to you, if you just walk away when the going gets too tough, why I'm afraid your credibility is going to be blown forever on this site - so come on, let's be hearing from you soon, eh?

I quote no 'authorities'. I speak in my own words. I bring everything to the bar of my own judgment.


Jabberwocky
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harleysportster wrote:Well I

harleysportster wrote:

Well I am not sure how the anti-natalists would view me (probably as a selfish asshole) but my girlfriend and I elected to not have any children or get married for a variety of reasons. One was that both of us frankly admitted that we were did not want the responsibility of dealing with raising a child, we really didn't have the proper amount of funds to take on all the burdens of being parents, etc. In short, we're both just content with life the way it is.

I don't know how they can. Frankly, we're currently beings that are evolved to the point that we can look at the bigger picture in many situations. Were we to live on a planet where colonizing others wasn't an option, but we did need to increase the population, we would be likely to do exactly that. Certainly the demise of our species isn't impending in any obvious way (at least not in one where the immediate solution is to pro-create like hell...in fact, if anything, the ideal for the greater good is to reduce that). As far as marriage, if there are no financial or other benefits (depending on local laws for common-law couples for estate dealings in a tragic circumstance, seeing one in the hospital in other tragic circumstances, tax breaks for married couples etc. etc.,) it's truly just a meaningless technicality. 

Theists - If your god is omnipotent, remember the following: He (or she) has the cure for cancer, but won't tell us what it is.


mellestad
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harleysportster

harleysportster wrote:
"Respect your elders." Why ? I admire some older people that have gone through things, but I don't automatically just start respecting someone because they are older than me.

 

I can get that one though, at least from a darwinian point of view. Kids are stupid. Adults are usually less stupid, or at least more experienced. Indoctrinating young to obey the old has a net positive survival benefit, and in a society it helps smooth out entry to the adult social system.

 

Of course, many parents just use it as a crutch when they can't give a youngin' a good answer for why they should be listening/doing something.

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@CJ: The problem is, Manageri sees life as a net negative. He's a Debby Downer, as it were. You can't convince someone like that, that life is worth living. The perspective is based on emotion and you can't argue that down in his case. He's probably not fun at parties.

Like the meat eater example. He's assuming that all those pigs you're going to consume have a net negative pain contribution to the Karmic wheel of pain, and that your life is also a net negative. Is that really true? I doubt it. Certainly it wouldn't be true in a small farm environment, with the animals killed in a slaughter house with a modern humane handling program.

 

I can understand using suffering as the arbiter/basis for morality (I've even been down that debate road, with Blake, and I concede he won), but I don't understand taking such a negative bent on it. If suffering is bad, why isn't pleasure and the desire to live good? Were I him, I'd be fine with meat eating as long as the cows had happy lives and died cleanly. Their suffering to pleasure ratio would be a net positive, and therefore a net moral positive. *My* life certainly hasn't been a net negative so far, and my lifestyle isn't something anyone couldn't replicate.

 

Manageri's life could have a net moral benefit on his universal scale if he focused on generating positive emotions and experiences in humans and animals. Instead, his viewpoint is fatalistic and defeatist, and he see's no worth in life, human or animal. If he did, he'd be able to re-purpose his life into an engine for good, instead of seeing nothing but woe.

 

Holy hell, he could become go get a degree in psychology and be a marriage counselor. He could spend his evenings teaching poor teenagers to read, and on the weekends he could be an activist for humane slaughter programs. Or he could become a salesman for SSRI medications. For cows. The possibilities are literally endless. There are so many ways one person can have a huge impact on a system of morality based on suffering, and could do so with no net negative moral cost.

Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.


mellestad
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Actually, it's even worse

Actually, it's even worse than that. This very discussion is counter to everything he professes to believe in. Every time he calls someone a cunt, or a stupid jackass, or whatever horrible thing, he's causing pain and frustration.

 

Every post is damnation. It's the moral equivalent to cutting yourself.

 

 

He could be a goddamned moral superhero. Go to a dog shelter and spend the next ten years making sure a rescue dog lives a good life. Sterilization programs for pets. Help someone with a flat tire. Convince someone to be a vegan. Dig a well in a hellhole village in Africa. Lobby for euthanasia reform. Give a stranger a hug! Jesus fucking Christ, what a waste.

Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.