cynicist

Here's a passionate new song from Lindsey Stirling featuring Lzzy Hale. Always love hearing her violin.

You are saying this site is not for discussing philosophy in general, it's for discussing Stefan's brand of philosophy. It sounds more neutral but the meaning is exactly the same. That's because UPB is a rigorous, philosophical approach to ethics. Not because it's Stefan's take on it. If someone proved that UPB was an incoherent mess of an idea, divorced from the truth, then that guideline wouldn't be there.

So in other words this site is just a cult that worships the ideas of Stefan. It's not a place to discuss ideas that are philosophically true irrespective of who they originate from.

You said this site is not for philosophy, it's for the philosophy of FDR. Maybe I misunderstood, but that sounds like you are suggesting this site is focused on opinion rather than fact. Philosophy is the study of knowledge, reality, existence. There is no such thing as the 'philosophy of FDR', just as there is no such thing as Stefan Molyneux's brand of truth. It's either truth or it's not.

I don't go to christian forums and debate theism because I know they are crazy. If you think that people in the community are unable to be objective, that it's just a cult of opinion, then participating makes you irrational. Complaining about it even more so.

Then why are you here?

You forgot sarcastic. Anyway, this is just blaming the victim. Saying, is equivalent to saying that a rape victim can't argue that they were forced to have sex since nobody forced her to walk into that dark alley...

I think I know what you mean, but I take a different approach. Rather than filter them I confront them head on. If I am talking to someone for example and I say something embarrassing which leads to self-criticism like "Well that was dumb", I like to respond with, "Well then WHY DID YOU LET ME SAY IT?!". Or if it's something like, "You're a coward", then I don't let that idea linger. I follow it up with, "Where's the evidence for that? You aren't going to just label me and hide." I think you have the right idea in not letting yourself get stuck in a cycle of self-attack and cascading negative thoughts but I think there are better ways to handle them than filtering. (curiosity and confrontation are my personal favorites)

People should obviously be allowed to work and move freely, but I can sympathize with their argument in a statist society to some degree because temporary workers are used to the advantage of corporations to depress wages. So they can import cheap, temporary labor relatively pain free while doing the equivalent for an individual requires a visa or even worse, citizenship. It's also a valid point to say that the money they earn is not going back into the local economy at all if they are taking it with them to their previous country. Now the logical arguments for open borders involves their imaginary properties, and that other imaginary entity we call government. Since the borders aren't even there, the argument that they shouldn't restrict movement is pretty simple lol. Good luck getting people to hear it though.

Wow, I'm sorry that you were fired but that sounds like one of the most oppressive workplaces I've ever heard of. They, "wanted someone who didn't just show up whenever they wanted", meaning they wanted you to conform to their expectations but did not give a fucking inch even though you were outright lied to about the job details. That's some amazing bullshit right there. I'm boiling over with rage just reading about your experience. Honestly I wouldn't have had the tremendous amount of patience you displayed here, especially not when it interferes with your family. Let's be honest here, they wouldn't have analyzed the root cause no matter what you did. They wanted to use you and would not settle for anything less than total submission. I get the pride, but why would you feel shame here? Philosophy is about dealing with reality, and pretending that these people could be reasoned with absolutely no evidence for that would have been a total disservice to the truth. If you don't treat people justly then you can't expect them to improve their behavior. If someone repeatedly assaults me and I keep going to them and pretending like we are friends then I'm spitting in the face of everyone who knows what true friendship is, and I'm encouraging further abuse. I'm surprised nobody responded to this earlier, but I hope I'm not too late as I'd like to hear more about it. I think the difference between you and Socrates is that he had no choice in who was around him while there are certainly better work environments available to you. That's not to diminish anything you've said; What I mean is what you pointed out earlier in your post, that there were signs early on that could have helped you avoid this experience. Do you think that you purposefully ignored them? Or was it a case of a lack of trust in your own judgment?

Seems like a clever business practice to me. Remember that in this hypothetical scenario that buying up all the retail operations is taking a huge gamble, because if a new competitor finds a way to break into the market then you are now at a huge disadvantage due to the expenses you've incurred in securing the monopoly. I mean it's not even being a dick since that's a huge risk. Being a dick is when you are Microsoft and you use your leverage on manufacturers to implement a proprietary standard that screws over anyone who wants to use a computer without Windows on it. The only ethical concern I see here is possibly who he is supplying that pepper spray to....

That squirrel post was hilarious, and your writing ability is excellent. I don't know how you can manage a post everyday but it's definitely the first blog I've ever bookmarked for future reading. I'm also considering a second run at attending a university so I'm definitely going to have to start from the beginning. Cheers

The reasoning does not alter the moral content of an action. If by context you mean the details of a situation then yes, that is important in determining the ethical nature, but context in terms justification is meaningless. If I'm a rapist who says, "She was asking for it! Look at how she was dressed.", it would have no bearing on whether what I did was evil or not. That's irrelevant (and not really possible given their emotional maturity) because the power disparity between a 13 year-old and a 30 year-old is far too great for the sex to be consensual. If you start accepting justifications for morally evil behavior then you've turned morality into subjective opinion, since people can come up with justifications for anything.

Totally agree man. I also think that slaves should have just created their own slave-free society to prove that it could work. I don't know why they opted to stay in chains and grumble about how they don't like slavery, so hypocritical.

You turned it into a pissing contest when you suggested that people here aren't capable of processing reality... and you're seriously wishing people were more objective? Do you not see the contradiction here?

Ok just listened to the call in question. I think the caller had a great point about how governments can affect the production of heroin through things like burning poppy fields, which would increase its price (since the producers need to take into account the cost of the damage) but didn't make a case for why the use of bitcoin would go down if it were banned. Maybe some people would be afraid of the legal ramifications but anyone who understands bitcoin knows how difficult it would be for the government to control the currency in any meaningful way. I did think it was interesting that Stefan a similar point to my own, that banning it would be kind of counterproductive since it would just make people pay more attention to it and the reasons the US banned it.

I'm there.

The problem with any computer analogy is that computers are programmed by humans, which we are arguing have choice. You can't use them as an example without consideration of that fact, that humans are designing them to mimic us as much as possible. A chess bot's decision is not an act of free will at the moment. It is certainly possible that it could be in the future but not without human intervention. It isn't really deciding. It's just following whatever logic it was programmed to by a human. So it is limited to whatever the human deems is the best decision. Chimps wouldn't be much different than a computer I think. I mean a human could train a chimp to make certain moves in particular situations, but a chimp is not going to come up with chess strategies on its own and wouldn't really understand what it was doing on an abstract level. To the chimp it would be moving physical pieces of wood to different squares.

You are talking about inhibiting 'future potential'. People use it to trade at the individual level now and that wouldn't change. I mean I agree with you that its value would immediately drop after a ban due to perception, just like gold drops whenever the stock market seems to be doing well, but as things get worse its value would go up despite the ban. Like you said, the reason that the value of the dollar would plummet in your scenario is because a fiat currency is one that has value by decree of the government, so when the government disappears then so does the value. The mistake you are making is saying that bitcoin is somehow equivalent to this. Yeah a ban would decrease its potential value relative to a non-banned bitcoin in the minds of some consumers, but in reality none of its utility would be diminished like a fiat currency so those that do use it would continue if they think the cost of the risk does not outweigh the benefit of the utility. Illegal downloading is a great example of this. People ignore the law and download music anyway because the risk is low and the reward is high. The government would spend itself into oblivion trying to prosecute people for it. I agree that for a currency the key question is, "Will I be able to exchange this thing for another thing?", but disagree that a ban has an effect on this in the present since bitcoin is used mostly for individual trades. What about a ban stops people from trading bitcoins for food or cars? And how is the government going to seize anyone's bitcoins? The only way they could do that is if you gave them up yourself. (considering that they are digital and can be stored anywhere, it would be trivially easy to hide them) If you encrypt your wallet then they can't seize your coins and if you make backups of your encrypted wallet then they can't destroy them either.

You are saying it is an uncaused cause, and that's why its a violation of determinism right? I'm saying choice is a synthesis of causal factors (past, present, future). There is no single cause. When you argue causality as linear for humans the same way it is for rocks you invalidate consciousness, intelligence, and reason as well as choice. Saying that one is an illusion and the others are 'complex systems' doesn't get around that.

I said not limited to antecedent causes. In other words, not determined by antecedent causes but greatly influenced by them. No one just has the schematics for a space shuttle pop into their heads randomly, they build on the work of others. So you realize that you are arguing against reason then? Given a particular set of circumstances, yes a person will choose a particular action every time. I'm not sure how that invalidates choice.... (that's like saying I'm a robot because I choose life over death all the time, if I had TRUE free will, it would be random! ) The reality is we never have identical inputs, in part because we can imagine being in a similar situation again and plan for how to deal with it if it does happen. So far this comes down to: If you define free will as independent of causality (whatever that means), then it doesn't make sense. And if you say choice is part of the causal chain then somehow it becomes an illusion, but reason becomes a 'complex system' that is part of the causal chain. (why choice doesn't qualify as a 'complex system' that is part of the causal chain, no one will ever know)

Yeah it's a really dumb way to limit the pool of applicants; HR departments seem to be staffed exclusively by morons. I think it encourages hiring people who will say anything to get a job.

I have to agree with dsayers. It's really weird to read your post where you talk about these problems in total isolation. As if it's some weird thing that happened to you which is not at all connected to your history. I mean you mentioned your parents but not in connection to any of the problems you are talking about. It's just a vague, "how I was treated as a child". Why did this stuff happen and what's stopping you from taking action now?

Thank you for the sympathy. How weird, I just realized that I wasn't sad when writing my post; It was more a matter-of-fact thing, like I'm a scientist talking about the results of some study I did. I sometimes catch myself thinking that there are too many, "I'm sorry about that" kind of responses, and that this makes them seem less genuine. I just realized we are all susceptible to old patterns all the time, and maybe repetition isn't such a bad thing in this area. (It's not like we're going to get it many other places)

Hi Casey, welcome to the forums. I've been through this. It's almost like, and tell me if it's not the case for you, like you are listening to another person speaking. I sort of, couldn't believe that I had that conversation, and yet it happened. I listened to yours just now so I could remember, and I can just hear it in your voice. You sounded nervous and vulnerable, and it seemed to me like you really had to get the truth of what happened out there. It was scary to me just talking about my issues; I was trained to be quiet about what happened to me, that kind of isolation goes hand in hand with abuse. I grew up feeling dissociated, so these issues were out of my mind most of the time. Bringing them back to the forefront was both hard and painful. I don't have any experience with sexual abuse but I know the feeling of toxic shame, as if I'm somehow stained by my experience. Hearing the truth of the situation can be shocking to the point that you would rather not think about it. I'm not sure how your situation has changed since the call, but you may be afraid of hearing the call again because there is something there that might push you towards a particular action that you are afraid of taking. So just like with past negative experiences that you might repress, you sort of forget important details that have consequences you don't like to think about. (or have strong feelings of anxiety) It's worse than that, they actively opposed your bravery and your strength. You said that your mother would stop you from doing things, tell you that you couldn't, and that you self-attack about this stuff even as an adult. They treated you as though you were incompetent, and prevented you from mastering anything for yourself. There is no easy answer for this kind of situation. I think the most important thing is to keep in mind that nothing that happened to you was your fault, and that your choices are perfectly fine. The hardest part for me is the self-attacking or bossing myself around, so I need to remind myself that there is nothing that I "should" do or "should" feel. You've had people trying to control you for most of your life, so maybe now you can show your inner-selves what it is like to be accepting, gentle, and patient instead. You are brave and strong, simply acknowledging and attempting to deal with these issues proves that. Good luck on your journey.