Kevin Beal

There are a few things which roughly take that form. An argument by analogy (like Alan mentioned), but there's also reductio ad absurdum which wouldn't use metaphors, but would apply some kind of logic consistently in such a way that would reveal that it's bad logic. Stef would probably start with the socratic method, reveal what premises people are basing their arguments on, and then reveal the bad logic with something like an argument by analogy. So, the art is really the socratic method and what you're talking about is really an extension of that. Starting from first principles means that you start from what you know and build up from there, rather than trying to justify a conclusion you already hold.

It never was available unless something changed very recently. The book is complete, but it's being held for ransom Stef says he's not going to release it until a certain percentage of listeners donate to the show. I believe it was 10%, and the rate at the time was something like 2%. If someone remembers which podcast he says that in, that would be helpful. It was one of the call-in shows last year or the year before.

I must have missed it. To be honest, I haven't read even half of the exchange here. If I had known you said that, I wouldn't have come on so strong and antagonistic. I apologize for that. I have no interest in debating this though. I wish you guys a productive exchange and debate.

Yes, I've spent close to a decade doing this, if you add all the different "philosophies" together that I examined rigorously and building up their cases as strongly as I could before "attacking" it. It was valuable to be able to have certainty about it, and be able to speak with some authority with people who believed those things. It also allowed me to speak simply about things instead of relying on jargon. Trying to understand the jargon people used was a huge motivator for me to do this. I thought that they must be using big words because they understand things more fundamentally, but now I have certainty about this too. People who rely on jargon to get a point across to people unfamiliar with their position are full of shit, every single time. I have a great deal of experience with what you asked.

I said "nevermind" because I broke the rules of the forums by saying what I said, so I attempted to erase any evidence of it. But yes, clearly I think it was a waste of time. I really don't care if you think I'm a snob or an idiot, or hypocrite or whatever. Please, broadcast it to the world if that's what you think. I want people to know you think that of me.

nevermind

You are using a lot of terms that I don't understand in the context you used them. If you could speak simply, that would help me a lot. To be honest, I don't know what in the world you are arguing here, and I am familiar with all of the terms you used. It's disorienting. There's a metaphysics (regarding objects, properties, functions) to UPB insofar as we are describing behavior, but the objectivity that UPB means to evaluate is purely epistemic (regarding truth statements, not objects). You're equivocating between different senses of "universal". You seem to be familiar with the history of philosophy, so you should be familiar with the distinction between a "universal" and a "particular". The difference between the two is the difference between the question "what do you want for dinner tonight?" and "what should we eat to stay healthy?" "Universal" in this sense is synonymous with "principle". It's not the same thing as saying that there are never any exceptions to a rule. All of the objections you raised that I've read so far are covered in the book. Have you not read it? If not, it seems premature to be critiquing it.

There are two different senses in which something can be "objective". What "objective" means is that the manner in which a proposition is true, or object is real is real or true independent of the observer. To say that a rock objectively exists is a different question than whether or not a statement is objectively true. The way we determine each is different. To say that ethical arguments are valid, statements are true, does not refer to existing objects. Existence is not anymore relevant to objectivity here than the existence of numbers is to mathematics. Existence of ethics is as nonsensical as talking about the existence of numbers. You're thinking of an equivocation, but UPB is not ethics. UPB is a superset of objective ethics. To conflate the two here would actually mean that you were the one equivocating. It's a common mistake, so no antagonism intended. You already accept the validity of objective oughts, so accepting objective oughts concerning moral statements is just one more step.

Haha. I might know how you feel. I think it's awesome when I'm an idiot and realize that I'm being an idiot. Some people think it's a stain on them, but what an amazing opportunity that is! Where before I thought there was a giant wall, I find out that it is actually a vast wilderness available for me to explore. If it turns out I'm wrong or being an asshole or whatever, then great! I can use that knowledge to achieve even greater clarity. I can certainly relate, and thank you! That's an interesting point. I hadn't made that connection, but it certainly makes sense I bet there are a lot of subtle ways that this shows up that we don't see is crazy. Possibly related is that I sometimes find myself focusing solely on the grammar and spelling of persuasive essays, missing the forest for the trees, perhaps because I was never graded on the actual content of the pieces I wrote in school, but for the use of punctuation, grammar, etc.

Welcome to the boards! I'd love to hear more about what you noticed in the call-in shows, if you felt like sharing.

bump

I have a friend who makes a point of offending me. I sometimes find it enjoyable, but mostly I don't care: yawn. Lots of things offend me, but why should anyone care about what offends me? They shouldn't. What they should care about is what is real and true and moral. Offending someone is not immoral.

I see you got kicked from the Facebook group, Jonathan. Maybe you should work on your people skills?

Good question! I probably should have included that in the original reply Ethics, in order to be objective have to apply and be binding upon all people, by virtue of the logic used to justify it. "Universally" translates into principled / objective, and "preferable" (in this context) translates into required. Universally preferable behavior then is behavior which is objectively required. Objectively required in order to be binding upon all people, past, present or future. If I say that you ought to do something, not because it meets some immediate need of mine, but that you should do it on principle, I am saying that you doing that is binding on you and everyone else. What that act is, must be objectively required, which is to say it must be logically consistent, be a universal (not a particular / arbitrary). Any reasoning I have which says that you ought to (in an objective way) debate me in a manner which is honest and toward the goal of achieving truth, but I'm allowed to make up the rules as I go along and lie if I need to to "win", then that's logically inconsistent. That kind of hypocrisy is the kind of irrationality that violates that objectively required standard. Seeing that there is a logic to hypocrisy, and that it has certain logical consequences reveals the kind of implicit logical standards that can make some behavior objectively required or not, or if it meets that standard. If someone comes at you with a chainsaw screaming at you that they are going to chop you up, then, logically, they are implicitly granting you the same courtesy in return: self defense. You are logically and morally justified in preventing yourself from getting chopped up, even if it requires that you maim or even kill the guy in order to stop it. Understanding the objective requirements, the logically consistent and the logical consequences of the adherence or violation of these objective requirements is what UPB is all about. The primary domain that it's concerned with is a subset of behavior called "morality". There is a table on page 46 that helps break down how to look at morality (from the UPB perspective) as analogous to physics and biology (i.e. how to understand it as a discipline). NOTE All of what I'm saying is my amateur understanding of UPB. It's been a while since I read the book, and it's been historically difficult for me to fully grasp.

No. A cost-benefit involves reasoning using principles, and it governs people's and group's behavior and form of conduct. But a cost-benefit analysis is not morality. What it means to get what I want vs doing something for the sake of being good are often directly opposed. In philosophy there is a distinction made between universals and particulars. The answer to the question "what should we eat for dinner tonight?" is going to be a particular. However, the question "what should we eat to be healthy?" involves a universal. Universals are another name for principle. But the principle behind the question of good health is not a moral question. It does govern people's and group's behavior and form of conduct. Universally Preferable Behavior Universally Preferable Behavior (important free book by Stef) makes the case for a meta-ethical framework by the same name (UPB). It defines morality as behavior which is universally preferable and enforceable using violence, the opposite of which necessarily containing at least some degree of evil. The violence is justified in order to prevent evil. (It proposes several other categories as well). The framework itself evaluates moral arguments, rather than behavior directly. Stabbing a guy in the throat is behavior, but it can be to kill him or to perform an emergency tracheotomy. "Stabbing a guy in the throat" is not what UPB is concerned with. If we want someone to behave in a certain way, we can want that like I want you to pull my finger so I can let out a loud fart, or I can want it in a way which actually is binding upon other people to follow. The failure to do so being cause for some form of sanction or correction. UPB is concerned with the second type. Behavior Behavior, the B in UPB, does necessarily imply certain things by their very definitions, however. So, it's not as if there is behavior, and then there are people saying "you ought to make sweet sweet love to me or else you are a bad girlfriend" with nothing in between. Praxeology (for example) is an entire science from which other sciences are developed that is entirely to do with what human action implies and how to reason from that. By making an argument, in that same act, you are necessarily asserting the value of truth over falsehood, even if your argument never refers to the importance of truth over falsehood. That much is necessarily implied by the act itself. By attempting murder, you are asserting your own right to kill another person and denying that same right to them. There is an "ought" hidden within the act of attempted murder. Universality Universally, the U in UPB refers to principle, the "universal vs particular" distinction I made above. When evaluating moral reasoning to see if it promotes universally preferable behavior, universality is a requirement. Nothing arbitrary like eating pizza for dinner can be used to justify it. The reasoning must be based on principle and as a direct consequence of that apply to both parties involved in the attempted murder. If it is right and just and good to murder Bob, but you deny Bob that same courtesy in return, then it's not a universal, and thus fails the test of UPB. There is a lot more to it than just that, so I'd really recommend you read the whole book. You can bust it out in an afternoon and you will be glad you did. Preferability Preferable, the P in UPB, does not refer to the subjective preference you and I have for things which we desire and work in our favor. Preferable actually describes the satisfaction of a condition. Behavior isn't true or false. Truth describes the satisfaction of statements meeting the condition that they accurately describe what is real and true. Preferability describes the satisfaction of behaviors meeting the condition of achieving some intended effect. In other words, if we want to get to the library, then it is preferable that we take Elm st. north. Taking Elm st. north does (or doesn't) meet the condition of satisfaction (i.e. getting to the library). Whatever does get us there is preferable. We can say so in an objective way. Conclusion So, behavior which is preferable in a manner which is universal, passes the test of UPB. And behavior which passes that test (e.g. "thou shalt not murder") and whose opposite must contain in some way some level of evil (i.e. "murder") is what we call the good, or moral behavior. Hope that helps!

Most of it makes it to YouTube with the exception of premium podcasts, full call-in shows and podcasts that were around before there was a YouTube channel. Many of the older podcasts were later uploaded to YouTube by Mike on the FDRPodcasts YouTube channel (prior to joining the FDR team). All publicly available podcasts are available via the FDRPodcasts website, with the exception of rare videos which were never added to the stream. There also exist speaking events and debates which weren't added to the channel or the stream on other people's channels (random PorcFest events, and things like that). Also, there are a number of articles online by Stef; and the free books, of course,

What do you think made you interested in philosophy? Have you always been interested in philosophy? I sometimes cynically suspect that people who really get into philosophy have kind of just always have been into it in some way or another, and to get adults into philosophy in the first place is near impossible.

Yes, that makes sense to me. Maybe this isn't your experience, but when I would experience shame when I was younger, I was prone to projecting the judgments I had of myself onto others, kind of like how people in biblical times people would put all their sins into the sacrificial lamb and drive it out into the desert; I put my sins into other children and hated them for it. I also thought in very black and white terms. Everything was either/or. Either I'm great or I'm terrible. And goddammit I want to punch your mother square in the fucking face. What an unbelievable cunt! Jesus, that's a nauseating thing to hear about, I can't even imagine what it was like to experience it I saw Coraline pre-philosophy, so I can't say how good the moral of the story is, but there is definitely an interesting split explored between the good mother and the evil mother, sown together like a frankenstein's monster with the uranium glow of familial propaganda. I'm really glad that it was helpful

Really weird and interesting dream. It has that vibe of being really significant. This is just how I would go about analyzing it if it were my own dream. Crickets Crickets are what you hear when everything is quiet, they get tuned out, just like you are tuned out by your mother in the dream. Maybe like the gangster cricket, they symbolize particular things that people are tuning out? A common experience that people have with small children is that they notice and fear things that adults understand are not serious threats, like certain bugs entering the house. And sometimes, unfortunately, those things that the kids notice really are things worth being concerned about, but are flippantly dismissed as eagerly as the threat crickets present us. Things like recurring nightmares that are ignored and laughed away, for example. Children (and everyone else too) desperately need to feel confident in their ability to process reality accurately, and be able to assess threats. If the adults in their lives are doing things which fuck with their sense of reality, and don't do anything to help the child understand, for example, how harmless crickets are, then the child is presented with a worse problem than the threat of the cricket: they now doubt their own ability to process reality in a healthy functioning way. And if the child doesn't feel like the adults around them are going to help them to understand these threats (like your mother on the phone), then that's a scary situation to be in. Gangster Cricket The big cricket seems like "dangerous bad guy" personified. The fact that he jumps on your mother without her noticing seems significant. It's not just that she doesn't see it, but that he becomes attached to her. I am drawing a blank on this, but it does remind me of the theory in child psychology which splits the nasty parent from the good parent like in the movie Coraline. The child doesn't see them as the same person because she has to maintain any sense of security they can in their attachment to the parent. A small child who believes that their parent is sadistic has no perceived option of escape. That's why people develop Stockholm Syndrome, because they would rather justify evil than face the fact that they are at the mercy of a sadistic person. It's too much to handle. The big cricket is your size, though. That too seems significant, so I would look at it as a part of yourself. You do not strike me in the least as being nefarious, the way the big cricket is, but along the same lines as the Stockholm'd child, in order to preserve their bond (used loosely) with the parent, they are very prone to internalizing what the parents say about them. If you were told that you are all kinds of bad, then it would be no surprise that you would perceive yourself in some way to be the kind of bad they tell you that you are. Coin Flip The coin flip could be a symbol for randomness or arbitrariness, kind of like the coin Two Face uses in the Batman series to decide if he'll kill his captive. If seemingly anything could set your mother off, it could be related to that. Cricket Sandwich You said you woke up sweating and burst into tears, presumably out of fear. I don't know if there was anything about the sandwich eating in particular that was scary or if it was just the nightmare in general, but if it was fear for the little cricket in the sandwich, then it makes me wonder if the little cricket represents you. You were at a young age and very little in comparison to your mother, and you were at the mercy of her hysteria. I imagine your father didn't offer much in the way of protection from that. Conclusion To me, it sounds like your unconscious may have been priming you for an environment which has a consistent and significant threat of some kind. My guess it's your mother, but maybe not. Maybe the threats are as small and numerous as the number of crickets running across the floor, and it's more that your family didn't feel like a safe place to be, a place to get away from those threats. I'm sorry whatever the case may be. I wish your parents would have taken this recurring nightmare more seriously

I understand that you think that. This is a very popular position and the topic of many science fiction stories. But you are, in fact, incorrect. This thinking ignores the first person subjective experience. Trying to reduce all scientific inquiry in psychology down to observable brain activity suffers from the same problem that behaviorism does. You're studying two different domains, imagining that they are the same. In order to do good neuroscience, you need to have some understanding of biology. In order to do good biology, you need to have some understanding of chemistry, and so on. There is overlap in terms of knowledge, but what the science is itself, is the study of a domain, with it's own objects with their own features and properties. The metaphysical basis of neuroscience is different than it is for psychology. Neuroscience is not a superset of psychology. The objects neuroscience studies are brains, neurons, brain regions, electrical and chemical signals, the dendritic state neurons are in, etc. The objects psychology studies are objects that exist subjectively as products of the mind. Things like feelings, thoughts and perceptions, and what are the causal relations that act on and are acted upon by feelings, thoughts and perceptions. It's establishing what makes a mind objectively healthy or unhealthy, and finding its origins, and discovering ways to treat it. Should that involve neuroscience? Of course it should. But only insofar as it brings about a clearer understanding of these subjective phenomena. If it's not toward that end, then it's not psychology, it's something else. (Neuroscience borrows heavily from psychology, as well). If you are trying to better understand and treat things mental, then you are doing psychology... Technically you could also be doing folk psychology or the philosophy of mind, things which establish the metaphysical basis of psychology, but you get what I mean. We're talking about a particular domain here.

These are two different sciences. To say that neuroscience can replace psychology is as silly as saying that physics can replace chemistry. If you think it can, then you don't understand science, which is the irony of people who love to paint psychology as unscientific. New sciences are developed in order to account for emergent phenomena. There are different levels of description by which events can be described. We could take sentiments such as yours and do away with neuroscience in favor of biology, and biology in favor of chemistry, and do away chemistry in favor of physics, to quantum physics to whatever gets smaller than that, string theory? Most sciences in their infancy appear to be a waste of time to the people who don't understand why the science is needed in the first place. Great scientific minds are needed in psychology to help push it forward.

That's okay. I realized afterward that I could have solved this using Node.js which is a skill set I already have. So, if you do end up needing to automate something like this again, I might feel inclined to take a crack at it, especially if the content is something that could be helpful to others.

No, it's not immoral. Immoral actions are actions we are justified in the use of violence in order to prevent: murder, theft, fraud, rape, etc. You aren't stealing from the taxpayers. You are, however, profiting from stolen money. This is where it starts to get a little grey, because while it's not immoral, that doesn't make it neutral either. No moral theory can work which condemns a person for what they can't avoid. We all use the roads, go to public school and use resources that are funded using tax dollars. It's conceivable that we could avoid that by living in the woods or something, but that would be a ridiculous standard to hold a person to. We all profit from stolen money in some way, despite our desire not to. We'd almost certainly choose voluntary alternatives to public school, the roads etc, if they were readily accessible. But at the same time it's not exactly immoral to making the weapons that get used to kill people overseas (for example), but it would certainly be something worth condemning. So, how do we measure this to some degree from using the roads all the way to supplying arms to the military? Universally Preferable Behavior (UPB) makes some important distinctions to help answer questions like these. In it there are 7 moral categories which we can place actions in, where the logical consequences of each can make something worthy of condemnation or not. They are as follows: Aesthetically positive is like another name for virtue, and aesthetically negative is like another name for vice. Some standard virtues are: honesty, integrity, courage, justice, etc. Vice includes actions which work against virtue. If you find yourself getting into situations, by virtue of your job, that incentivize actions which are dishonest, lacking in integrity, cowardly or unjust, then we can have some basis to say that you should not be working there in a somewhat objective way (i.e. say that it is lacking virtue). My personal concern would be that it could end up being personally negative. If so, I'd have no basis on which to condemn you, but if you end up in a position where you can't (for example) condemn the unjust behavior of the state of Indiana, then that is not great. I would suggest listening to FDR982 The Government turns Everyone into a Tool... to better understand how receiving gov't can fuck up the incentives you operate from. I would also suggest reading up on UPB (free book!) written by the host with the most: Stef. I would pay special attention to these sections: UPB: Optional and Objective Initiation The Third Test: Theft Capacity Aesthetically Negative The Gray Areas Government It's a big topic, but hopefully this helps point you in a useful direction! Good for you for helping these kids. Some people never meet a truly empathetic person invested in their success. It's admirable Also, welcome to the boards!

Me on a rant, expressing my irritation with so-called "nice" people