MrLovingKindness

I believe there is a rather severe problem with UPB that has not been addressed. Comments welcome. The Problem in a Nutshell: All behaviors have a subset of circumstances for which avoiding them is UPB. For example, murder is the subset of killing that is against one's will (which I will substitute unwanted for brevity). Since all behaviors have this subset, all behaviors become violations of UPB when someone subject to them doesn't want them. Therefore, UPB cannot be the basis for determining moral from immoral behavior, because any behavior can be unwanted, and thus doing any behavior in an unwanted circumstance would violate UPB. Elaboration: UPB states murder is wrong because, it is universally preferable to not be murdered. Why is it universally preferable? Because murder is defined as unwanted killing. So far, so good, albeit tautological. Now let's make a new compound word "unwanted-killing." Unwanted-killing = murder, so unwanted-killing is prohibited by UPB. Again, this is fine. Let's make up another new word: unwanted-looking. For the same reasons that it is UPB to avoid doing unwanted-killing, it is also UPB to refrain from unwanted-looking, because in all cases unwanted-looking is by-definition unwanted, so looking when it is unwanted is a violation of UPB. We could make another word, unwanted-disagreement, and another, and another... And herein lies the catastrophic fault: doing ANY form of unwanted-behavior is a violation of UPB. Since any behavior has as a subset of circumstances in which the behavior is unwanted, all behavior is potentially a violation of UPB (dependent on whether or not someone does not want the behavior). Therefore UPB cannot be the basis for deciding moral behaviors, because any behavior if it is unwanted by anyone at the time of the behavior is prohibited under UPB. Example: If you disagree with me when I don't want you to, then you have violated UPB by committing unwanted-disagreement, which is logically (from the reasoning of UPB) the same as unwanted-killing (murder). Obviously, we can't base morally correct behavior on a criterion that prohibits unwanted-disagreement. Extra credit: The reason the above flaw in UPB is not more obvious is because the words murder, rape, steal, assault, "peeping" all imply the unwanted part in the definition of the word (i.e., unwanted killing, unwanted, sex, unwanted taking, unwanted touching, unwanted looking at someone undressed). The reason not doing them is universally preferable is because unwanted is in the definition. The usual discussions of UPB don't take into account all of the other unwanted behaviors that would be covered by UPB (thus exposing the flaw), because we don't have words to describe those behaviors (e.g., unwanted-disagreement).

In order to be logically consistent, I should assign the same probability of existence to those objects having the same evidence of support for their existence. On the assumption there is no evidence for the existence of god, I should assign the same very low probability of existence as I assign for leprechauns, unicorns, tooth fairies, indeed everything I could possibly conceive of having no supporting evidence. Thoughts?

But earlier in the thread you said, "...I have no way of actually proving what you were thinking. So you can't call them facts." which appears to contradict what you are saying above. The claim is consistent with the math and the experimental results. I am aware of other interpretations of collapse of states, but not superposition. Otherwise, I generally agree with you post. @MFK Thank you for the post. What I gather then is that there is a useful distinction between subjective and objective, just that many people don't use it.

Have you taken into account the possible existence of a generalized quantum computer? One might or might not exist now, and I have no direct knowledge about that, but I don't think it's impossible that some nation state already has one. I have not tried the math myself, but it seems to me that some implementation of Shor's or Grover's algorithm might be able to break Bitcoin fairly quickly. I am not familiar with the Bitcoin math, and I am not a QC expert myself, so I can't say for sure. That said, I do have a good friend who is a QC expert. Can you point me to a concise paper describing the math? I will shoot it to him.

OK. I concede your point. It is fairly murky. Do you have any information on this topic? What would be your guess?

I think it is reasonably clear that for 58% of the budget (which is a majority) more money is spent on women than men, which is not to say that overall more money is spent on women.

Given how little you have heard from me, I will go out on a limb here and suggest that your speculation about me is actually your own psychological projection.

I will take a educated guess and say that more $ is spent on women than men. I didn't find much in a Google search, but I did find this. Differences in Expenditures by Gender Increased: In 2012, per capita spending averaged $5,246 for women compared to $4,125 for men. Although women typically spend more than men on health care, the gap appears to be widening. Spending for women grew at a faster rate (4.2%) than spending for men (3.7%) in 2012. In 2011, women spent $5,034 and men spent $3,977. http://www.healthcostinstitute.org/news-and-events/press-release-2012-health-care-cost-and-utilization-report Which is 27% more spent per capita on women. And since women outlive men by 5 years (at least in the US). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy And since 22% of the US tax budget is Medicare: http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=1258 That's a pretty big chunk of change. If we include Social Security 24% and Safety Net Programs 12%, then in at least 58% of the U.S. tax budget, more money is spent on women than men. Can anyone find additional information?

Mike, I completely agree with everything in your post, and I think, especially the excerpt from your post below, describes more clearly what I have been trying to demonstrate through counter examples. Thank you. "subjective" and "objective" are almost always used in a way that is either inappropriate or in a way that makes them superfluous. When someone says that their claim is "objective" with the implication that what they are saying is true, then they are misusing the word. When someone says that their claim is "objective", the only information they are giving you is that their claim is about an object, itself, rather than their experience of the object. The claim may be true or false. The implication that objective = true is a misuse of the word, in my opinion. And when someone says that "their subjective experience of an object is X", then they are using the word "subjective" superfluously. They should just say that "their experience of an object is X". The word "subjective" adds nothing in this case.

@Robert, this is how my debate with you seems from my perspective. I flip a coin, look at the result, and then put the coin in my pocket, and don't show it to Robert. The outcome was heads. I then say out loud in the presence of Robert. "I just flipped heads on a coin." Robert says, "no you didn't. You can't prove it to me, and if you can't prove it to me it didn't happen." My response is that it did happen. I did verify it, and just because you didn't see it, doesn't mean that it didn't happen. I don't wish to mischaracterize you though, so I will ask "is it your position that a statement must be verifiable by you personally (at least in theory) in order to be true?"

Were you meaning to include some text in your post?

I agree. In the Justicar's video I posted, he says that's still voluntary, if inconvenient, but then again I don't have to comply with the mugger either. It would just be inconvenient for me to do so, so I think the Justicar is wrong on this point. That said, arrogant affect aside, I have watched a number of the the Justicar's videos, and he makes (other) well reasoned arguments, but I do think he fell down on this one. It seems to me that painting your windows pink can be considered an act of aggression toward your neighbor, if it lowers the value of your neighbor's property, even without a prior agreement not to do that.

I Googled "DISC profiling system", but I couldn’t find anything in the model that applied to me. I searched for terms like foul-tempered and mean-spirited but didn’t find anything along those lines.

Off the top of my head, I would say it would be hard to apply the concept to government. For comparison, here is an easy example to apply the concept. If a man and woman, both equally intoxicated have sex, then many people would say the intoxicated woman could not consent and therefore the man raped her. By that logic, the man was also unable to give consent, and was therefore raped by the woman. There are also many people (not necessarily the same set of people), and I think U.S. law is set up this way, who believe in this scenario that the man raped the woman but not vice versa. This would be a case of ascribing hyper-agency to the man, and hypo-agency to the woman. This is evident because, in the same scenario, the man is considered responsible for his actions and not the woman. I can’t think of an example (which is not to say one does not exist) where we would ascribe more-or-less agency to the Government vs. “The people”, because I cannot think of an example where both the Government and the people would be in the same situation, if that make sense. WRT Government incompetence, I think there are too many varied opinions and scenarios on this to make a definitive statement.

Robert, thank you for your response. As you will see below, I find this topic very interesting. Because I don’t know the right way to quote you inline, I will do that by indenting quotes from you. Objective refers to that which exists independently of an observer. Ok. Can you give me an example of something which exists independently of an observer? Subjective refers to that which exists in the mind of a person (subject) like feelings/thoughts/opinions. I would call feelings and thoughts simply facts about the state of a person’s mind. Those thoughts and feelings exist as neuronal patterns. If I say “I am having thoughts about answering your post now”, it is a true assertion about the state of the universe. There is evidence for the truth of that assertion which can be plainly seen, because I am typing a response to you which would not be possible without the thoughts about it. If I have the thought, “a circle is a figure in a plane consisting of all the points equidistant from a fixed point”, is that thought subjective? I didn’t address “opinions”, because I am not sure what you mean by that term. Are opinions synonymous with preferences? So if someone says that it feels like it is going to rain, for example, I know that they are describing their experience rather than something that is objectively true. So the assertion, “Fred (someone) feels like it is going to rain,” is true? I know Fred is describing something occurring in his mind from the word “feels”. What new specificity would be introduced by also categorizing it as subjective? How would using subjective in this case allow me to create a more accurate map of the situation, one with greater explanatory or predictive power? If I'm interested in the truth then I would look at objective measurements of the weather and predictions based on that data when I'm deciding whether I need an umbrella or not. Ok. Let’s unpack this a bit. Here are two statements: “Fred feels like it is going to rain.” “Fred feeling like it is going to rain is evidence supporting the state of rain in the near future.” I think we agree the first one is true, but so might the second one. Maybe I have known Fred for 20 years, and I have kept careful statistical evidence comparing his weather predictions to the predictions of the National Weather Service (NWS). If I see in the statistical data that his predictions are correct more often than NWS, then when Fred’s weather prediction conflicts with that of NWS, I should believe Fred over NWS. In this case, I should base my expectation of the need for an umbrella on the subjective model over the objective one. Do you agree? If not, why not? And to go into your example specifically, an assertion is a declaration of a fact without evidence to support it. Your definition is not one that a mathematician would use. http://strangebeautiful.com/other-texts/geroch-math-assertions.pdf To quote from the above paper, “An assertion is a precise, unambiguous, mathematical statement to the effect that something is true.” Once an assertion is true it's not an assertion anymore, it's a fact. An assertion is either true or false at the time of the asserting. If later evidence is found to support the assertion being true, we can call the assertion a fact, but it is also still an assertion, but it is a true assertion rather than a false one. It is still an assertion because, it is still “a precise, unambiguous, mathematical statement to the effect that something is true,” even after it is found to be true. The coin landed on heads whether Fred sees it or not. Since he can't see it all he has is your assertion that it has, but that doesn't change what happened in reality. The coin flip and it's result is objective, even if Fred never knows what it is and you do. Ok. Let’s say I’m Fred and I’m trying to understand what’s going on in the world. From Fred’s perspective, what difference does it make whether he calls the result “objective”? From Fred’s perspective, it could all be in the tosser’s brain, and I think what you would call “subjective”. Does calling it subjective or objective help me or Fred make any better predictions about the state of reality in this example? Take another example, me showing a baby a ball and then hiding it behind my back. To the baby it has disappeared (subjectively it appears to no longer exist) but in reality the ball has just been hidden from view. Objectively, the ball is no longer in the same position that it was before. If I forget that I'm holding the ball behind my back and no longer know where it is myself I may think that it has ceased to exist as well, but that does not change whether the ball exists or not since that event occurred in material reality and not simply in my mind. If I take the words objective and subjective out of the above paragraph, does the meaning change in any way that some observer somewhere can tell? Is there any loss of explanatory or predictive statements I might not be able to make about the above scenario if I don’t use the categories subjective and objective? If not, then I don’t see any use for the words “subjective” and “objective”. On the contrary, including words that add no predictive or explanatory power only can increase the possibility of confusion. Counter arguments are welcome.

Ok. How do I use objective vs. subjective categorization to distinguish truth from opinion? Please give an example.

Yes, and I think the main purpose is to activate the white knights. It is a rather explicit call to action.

I agree. Do you think the "rape culture" meme fits the definition of a threat narrative? To be clear, the main reason I think "rape culture" is a threat narrative is because it strongly implies, if not outright demands, that women are the only victims of rape and that men are the only perpetrators of it. Secondarily, it blames all men for the actions of a few. If "rape culture" meant that we were concerned about all victims (including men) and all perpetrators (including women), I would be all on board.

Does your friend use the "Big Five" personality traits? A summary of the factors of the Big Five and their constituent traits, such that they form the acronym OCEAN:[4] Openness to experience: (inventive/curious vs. consistent/cautious). Appreciation for art, emotion, adventure, unusual ideas, curiosity, and variety of experience. Openness reflects the degree of intellectual curiosity, creativity and a preference for novelty and variety a person has. It is also described as the extent to which a person is imaginative or independent, and depicts a personal preference for a variety of activities over a strict routine. Some disagreement remains about how to interpret the openness factor, which is sometimes called "intellect" rather than openness to experience. Conscientiousness: (efficient/organized vs. easy-going/careless). A tendency to be organized and dependable, show self-discipline, act dutifully, aim for achievement, and prefer planned rather than spontaneous behavior. Extraversion: (outgoing/energetic vs. solitary/reserved). Energy, positive emotions, surgency, assertiveness, sociability and the tendency to seek stimulation in the company of others, and talkativeness. Agreeableness: (friendly/compassionate vs. analytical/detached). A tendency to be compassionate and cooperative rather than suspicious and antagonistic towards others. It is also a measure of one's trusting and helpful nature, and whether a person is generally well tempered or not. Neuroticism: (sensitive/nervous vs. secure/confident). The tendency to experience unpleasant emotions easily, such as anger, anxiety, depression, and vulnerability. Neuroticism also refers to the degree of emotional stability and impulse control and is sometimes referred to by its low pole, "emotional stability". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits

Exploiting protective instincts in order to provoke self attack as well as attacks on each other. "Rape culture" is a threat narrative. Alison Tieman has a number of videos on this topic. A short, 7.5 minute video of Alison discussing this topic is linked below. She defines threat narrative in the first 2.5 minutes, so if you don't have time for the whole thing just watch the first couple minutes. Enjoy!

The state of preference is an event with finite duration, at a specific range in time, in a specific brain. If there are no subjective events, then states of preference are also not subjective.The EPR experiment shows that superposition of states have no state in actuality prior to observation.http://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/experiments/EPR/Compare this to a coin flip. While it is in the air, it has no state of heads or tails. This is analogous to superposition. The "observation" occurs when the coin lands. It then has an actual state of either heads or tails. After I have flipped the coin, it has an actual state, which I can verify with 100% accuracy (this is a second observation). If you do not see the coin outcome, then from your perspective the coin has a 50/50 chance of being in the state heads or tails, but your assignment of probability is due to your lack of information (uncertainty due to ignorance), rather than an indeterminant state of the coin itself (intrinsic uncertainty).My purpose for this topic is to convince myself that I have no use for the terms objective and subjective. The method by which I am attempting to convince myself is to submit the hypothesis of the uselessness of subjective vs. objective categorization to a group of smart people who might find this hypothesis interesting. I am hopeful that if there could be some utility to me in this categorization, someone will convince me of that.I am a slow thinker, so I suspect a call with me on this topic would not be all that interesting.

I am glad you brought up Schroedinger's cat. In the case of the cat, I am not an expert in QM, but I believe the consensus among those experts is that the cat does actually exist in a state of either dead or alive prior to observation, because the cat is so large that its quantum superposition of both dead and alive collapses immediately due to it's interaction with other matter in the box, so the cat does actually exist in either a dead or alive state prior to being observed. This is what is called uncertainty due to ignorance. On the other hand, there are QM state superpositions which actually have no definite state prior to observation and those states have inherent uncertainty, not from lack of information. This is one reason why it is difficult to build a quantum computer; the qubits must be kept isolated from the environment (hence supercooling is often employed) in order to prevent their state superpositions from decohering (collapsing). Back to the original topic, please give me an example of a subjective event.

If she were a he, would you have great rapport? Would you be debating with him for hours? And if someone could tell me how to quote correctly, I would appreciate that.

In terms of trying to create accurate maps/models of reality, I don't see how the subjective vs. objective dichotomy is useful. If the goal is to create models which predict future events, then I think it is more useful to consider who has what information when and with what level of confidence.For example, if I tell Fred I flipped a coin, and I look at it, and it is heads, but don't show it to Fred, then I can say, "I just flipped heads," and that is a true assertion about the state of the physical universe. About that assertion, I am 100% confident that is true. To Fred, however, without any other information, the assertion that I just flipped heads is 50% likely to be true, assuming he saw me flip the coin but did not see the result. If I then show him the coin, then he too can say with 100% confidence that I flipped heads. On the other hand, if I put the coin in my pocket and never show it to him, then I maintain in my mind (subjectively) a true assertion about the universe at a specific point in the past, that is that I flipped a heads at such-and-such a place and time.Using current brain scanning technology it is possible to determine whether or not I am lying with some degree of confidence. I am not sure what the confidence is in the technology currently, but given that the memory of the flipped heads is a specific configuration of neurons in my brain, even if it is not possible now, it certainly should be possible, at least in theory, to make the outcome of the coin toss an objective fact.Given the above example, it seems that what at one time is subjective, can be made objective at some other time, so I am not sure how that distinction would help with my mapping of reality. Thoughts, comments, and criticisms welcome.

I too, would like to see an airtight argument for taxation = theft. This guy: is arguing that taxation does not equal theft, because participants in taxed transactions know in advance they are going to be taxed on the transaction and are thereby volunteering to be taxed by participating in the known-to-be-taxed-in-advance transactions. It seems to me that the counter-argument would involve showing that a third party is using force to restrict the kinds of transactions two other parties can engage in, which while arguably immoral, doesn't seem to fall under what I think most people would consider theft.