dsayers

I don't think perpetual war, economies collapsing all over the world, and the enforcer class constantly and violently attacking people makes for much comfort. Meanwhile, I personally find a great deal of comfort in the truth that humans are not fundamentally different in such a way that they can exist is different, opposing moral categories.

When you have the magic power to steal from people that don't exist yet while millions of people ask you to keep doing it, you have no use for math.

So when Hitler was beaten into a coma, the effects were over with once he came out of the coma, is that it? I pointed out the effects of believing aggression is an option after YOU "brought into this" aggression being an option. If this finds you ill at ease, then perhaps you should revise your aggression is an options stance rather than concluding without consideration that the problem lies in me for meeting you at the standard YOU put forth.

Saying "not ideal" is saying "is an option." Consider a rapist. This is somebody that accepts taking another person's body without their consent. A rapist might try to woo their target to fit in. But because just taking what they want is an option, they'll only try so hard. Likewise, a parent who thinks assault is an option is going to try that much less to find a way of convincing their children. Also, I don't get the whole "I've seen parents yell and that's harsh, so I think assault is okay sometimes."

@Very Ape: Look, more deflection! If you level a bunch of accusations against somebody else, maybe people won't notice that on a philosophy board, you put forth an extraordinary claim without at all being prepared to substantiate it or back it up. *I* didn't say you have to prove anything, YOU did when you made the claim. I was holding you to the standard YOU put forth while making sure your "I don't have an answer, so I'll just obfuscate a bunch like a politician being asked a direct, polarizing question" didn't land.

If you don't mind me saying so, I see two problems with the phrase "non-lethal." First of all, you can kill somebody with a teaspoon of water. Secondly, if somebody is using lethal force against you, reaching for a "non-lethal" answer might not be good enough. In a recent video about the migrant crisis, Stef went on a pretty good rant about how you can't be polite with rude people for example. You can't be tolerant of intolerant people. You can't be gentle with somebody who is aggressive. Obviously reaching for a 44 Magnum in response to a child nicking a bag of M&M's isn't a reasonable response. But if some guy hopped up on PCP thinks you cut him off in traffic and is determined to teach you a lesson, spraying salad dressing in his face isn't going to stop him. It reminds me of Larken Rose's video "When Should You Shoot A Cop?" He's not advocating it obviously. But it does point out that if you've never asked the question, if the inclusion of the word cop makes the question uncomfortable, then you're essentially letting other people paralyze you for the purpose of preying upon you. Sort of like relying ONLY on "non-lethal" options when a lethal one might be NECESSARY. I don't know where you're going with this, so I apologize if this is out of left field relative to what you had in mind. Just wanted to point out that you can be polite all you want, but if somebody is being rude for example, you being polite benefits them. Evil-doers rely on this self-paralysis to make what they do less risky.

Before I begin, I want to qualify my question. If I eat an apple, I'm "guilty" of eating that apple is a true statement. I'm talking about on the grander scale. Hopefully I can communicate what I mean: As early as childhood, we're erroneously taught to think of people as good or bad. Cops are automatically good. Somebody sentenced in a courtroom is automatically bad. This is problematic for a number of reasons. For starters, it's overly simplistic. Barring psychopathy and other brain malities, anybody can engage in behaviors that are "good" or "bad." Some people view the exact same behavior (a man stealing bread for his starving child) as both in different contexts. We engage in hundreds of behaviors every day. Categorizing an entire person by one such behavior only is naive. I think one of the benefits for those with artificial power to tell people they can be classified as good or bad is that it creates artificial in groups. The problem with artificial in groups is that it's not easy to see the "good" in the other team or the "bad" in your own team. By telling people to think in this manner, those in power benefit from you being less likely to notice their "bad" behaviors and/or to apologize for them, saying things like "it's an isolated incident," or thinking it's okay because they do more good than bad (even though this could accurately describe somebody they want you to think is the "bad" guy). At the same time, it artificially divides you from the "bad" guys, who can actually be your brethren with regards to those who steal from or threaten all of us equally. In this post, I point out that morality's purpose isn't to identify good and bad, but rather to identify internal inconsistencies. I reference the "flag pole" scenario. For those not aware, the flag pole scenario is a bullshit thought experiment meant to obfuscate morality. As the story goes, some guy by means never identified finds himself stranded at the top of a flagpole. He is able to save himself, but only by breaking a window and entering somebody's home without their permission. In this scenario, morality doesn't tell us if the stranded man or homeowner are good or bad for breaking a window/saving a life or giving advances permission/not consenting ahead of time. But it will help us to understand that the guy on the flag pole is responsible for the damages. That's what got me thinking of guilty and innocent in the "bad/good" guy context. Imagine you were the home owner that happened to. Yeah, the glass breaking could've caused more damage. It frightened you and it was annoying that it happened. Assuming the damages are paid for, perhaps including your inconvenience, there would be no reason to hold a grudge against that person. But it seems people do just that all the time. Look at the Peter Joseph/Stefan Molyneux debate. PJ wasn't able to just claim whatever without addressing the holes in his argument. So rather than revising his theory or addressing the contradiction, he now hates Stef. So I'm curious if guilt/innocence in the context of permanently categorizing people is another State created fiction like "corporation." All the time you say people saying "cop" or "law-abiding citizen" when they mean "person who can do no wrong." Meanwhile, the ruling class is constantly coming up with new ways to label pretty much everybody as "bad" guys. We're told that Snowden is comparable to Manson for example. What do you guys think? I'm sorry the presentation isn't polished; this just came to me and I was hoping we could all mull it over.

Morality's purpose isn't to determine right or wrong, good or bad. It only serves to identify internal inconsistencies. Take the infamous flag pole scenario. Is the guy trapped on the flag pole "bad" or "wrong" for breaking somebody else's window and occupying their home all without their consent to save their own lives? Who could say? We do know that the guy on the flag pole is responsible for the damages. In fact, saying it that way gives me an idea. I'll make another thread for it.

That's very useful. Thank you!

This isn't true unless you're talking about a survival scenario. Like if a gunman asks you a question, you spit out whatever doesn't get you shot. Outside of this, in order to lie, your mind has to spend time recognizing what the truth is, processing a motive to lie, and then the fabrication of the lie itself. Habitual liars are exhausted because keeping track of so many different "realities" is taxing. You always have to be careful when you reference human "nature." Our nature is to adapt for the purpose of survival and procreation. Suppose you wanted a car. You COULD just steal one and on the surface, this seems like the easier choice. If however you do this, you risk having it taken back, risk getting hurt as part of retribution, and can never rest easy, always looking over your shoulder, wondering if each knock on the door or ring of the phone is somebody coming for justice. It's NOT the easier path. Similarly, living a lie might SEEM like the easier path to happiness. But there's no happiness to be found in people not trusting you or liking "you" for reasons that aren't you at all. We're social creatures and alienating others is gene death. There's no happiness in that. People who live this life are dysfunctional and not happy at all. Being honest, even without yourself about reality, alleviates all of these burdens just as earning a car alleviates all the burdens associated with stealing one. My favorite aspect of pursuing self-knowledge is the way life is so much simpler, which is enough to invoke happiness on its own, let alone the happiness derived from being that much more effective and self-reliant in matters of determining what is real and truth.

I'm with you. I once was faced with a squirrel that had been in a fight or ran over or fell from a tree. Whatever his story was, it was clear he was done for. I couldn't do it (full disclosure: I had a pet squirrel one summer as a child). But "causes me unease" isn't a principle. I think collectively we would prefer to err on the side of not murdering, so we would likely protect anything that could physically be classified as a human because we understand that humans generally speaking possess the CAPACITY for reason. Even if the individual in question isn't fully a moral actor. I understand what you're saying and I feel that way also. But think about it for a moment. One thing to keep in mind is that when people get morality wrong, millions of humans get murdered. What you might feel is superfluous precision is precision nonetheless. On top of that, consider that my initial claim was that UPB is confusing and over-verbose. It's a provocative claim! The challenge reveals both that my summary might not be a sufficient replacement and demonstrates one of the reasons why UPB is verbose by comparison. My point is that if we're seeking the truth, these should be welcome challenges. Because they're either going to disprove the case I made or refine it. Either way, we're all better off for it

I didn't read the whole article. Did they point out that the reason why what that guy over there does costs me anything is because the State is stealing from me to pay for it? Or how government school raised people have children of their own that they neglect, abuse, and put into government schools, damaging the brain in a way that imbibing poison in excess is appealing to them?

Generally speaking, his challenge is perfectly valid. It is the communicator's job to communicate and defining terms avoid misunderstandings. A good example of this is once upon a time, I made a thread exploring whether "fraud" was immoral or not. The conversation blew up at the starting line because I didn't define my terms. While I was talking about somebody who is deceived prior to consenting to an exchange, most people received the word as somebody who consents to an exchange and then doesn't deliver their side of the deal after the other person has. All the difference in the world! Had I defined my term ahead of time, even if you didn't agree with my definition, you'd at least know what I was talking about. Severed how? If somebody uses a device to sever, they are using their property to take from you the ability to use your property. This contradiction is what immorality is. With their action, they are TELLING YOU that their action is wrong.

Careful. Businesses are not entities capable of behavior. If a behavior is truly problematic, it is important to hold the PEOPLE engaging them responsible. It's called the power of the network. Pick any single product in the world. There are way fewer people that would want you to buy that specific product in spite of logic, reason, or evidence than there are people who don't want to be misled. For an example of what I mean, look at computer viruses. Once upon a time, you had to pay Symantec money if you wanted protection. Not a bad thing since it takes time and effort to write the software and keep it up to date. But look at our options today. A LOT of options, including a lot of free/donate ones. This is because there are WAY more people that want a clean computer than want to make use of your computer without your consent. In order to spoof Bitcoin, you'd need access to at least 51% of the world's computing power AND to have a passable block chain multiple times in a row. The list goes on. One of the things statist types often try to misrepresent is that the State protects us from stuff. Sometimes people get prosecuted for intervening and/or protecting stuff instead of calling the police. In a free society, in order to violate property rights, it's literally you against EVERYBODY else. It's one of the explanations for areas with "legal" concealed carry of firearms having lower crime rates. You literally can no longer tell by uniform or car marking who has the power to stop you.

Welcome to FDR! Thank you for participating and I hope to learn from you also Namely, I'm not sure what the difference between being religious and being Christian is. I'd be interested in hearing it. So forgive me if my next input comes across as uninformed or mismatched in some way. When I was a child, I was raised in Christian dogma. Non-denominational, so there wasn't really much in the way of rituals outside of going to church every Sunday. I was also forced to attend government schools. My parents were divorced when I was young. From what I could gather, my father was allowed generous visitation compared to other divorced men at the time. Part of this was often spending the night on Saturday night. Sundays often consisted of church and maybe a trip to the mall before returning us home. I was about 12-13 when I was walking in the mall one such Sunday, shortly after church. Passing by a record store, I noticed an album cover that depicted the evolution of man from Cro-Magnon man. This was the day that I learned what cognitive dissonance was. I was surprised at my own capacity for error. Up until that point in time, I hadn't realized that I believed that man had evolved from lesser species AND I believed that man was created by God. I asked my dad about this and his off the cuff answer was that they were NOT competing claims because God could've made the world in such a way that Darwinism explains how we came to be. I didn't talk back to the man that once, in this very mall, not 20 feet from where we were standing at the time, hit my sister with a shopping bag that had a relatively large metal miniature, splitting her skin at the top of her eye socket (thank goodness he didn't hit her eye itself!), sending her to the emergency room bleeding like I had never seen before. But on this day, even at that young age, it occurred to me that the Bible specifies that God created the universe in 7 days. Would you agree that this in fact puts the idea of intelligent design at odds with Darwinism?

You made a claim. I responded, "As somebody who accepts free will and that the initiation of the use of force is immoral (not the motivation behind it), I think this is a false claim. Could you tell me more about how money controls us?" You have yet to explain this. Pointing out that you have yet to answer the question that has led to all this fluff is not an obsession. It's to let you know that all your attempts at obfuscation has not caused me to lose sight of what that question was. Calling it an obsession and making presumptions of "taking offense" is more deflection. One of the nice things about speaking about objective truths is that there is no emotional investment. You want to reject that 2+2=4? What do I care? It's true with or without you. If anything, the part I find personally disturbing is that even after it's been pointed out to you twice, you still attribute the evils of the world to inanimate objects, effectively concealing the evil and preserving/growing it by tricking people into thinking these behaviors are not the responsibility of human beings. Never mind the logical hole that if people have no control over their actions, then 1) there is no evil because nobody has a choice and 2) there is no evil because people don't have choices that COULD be violated. I have never said this. I recognize that theft, assault, rape, and murder are the simultaneous acceptance and rejection of property rights. This is called addressing the problem. The Fed is just one of many, MANY symptoms. A symptom that will continue as long as people like you protect those who are guilty of aggression by pointing to concepts, inanimate objects, and antrhopomorphizing "the Fed" instead of holding human beings accountable for their aggression.

This is a rejection of your own capacity for error as a human. You've been offered nearly limitless scientific data to the contrary, and you're choosing to ignore it. Except that we're not talking about matters of opinion here. It is true that violence is the only thing you can achieve with violence that you cannot achieve without violence. It is true that violence achieves the opposite of your goals. This explains which came first in the scenario of defenseless child behaving in a way that a parent would brutalize over. Your explanation is predicated on "parent is automatically right." Which I challenged you on earlier when I asked how a human being fundamentally changes that after reproducing, they no longer possess the capacity for error. You have yet to even acknowledge this crater of a hole in your theory. So let me ask you this. Are you normalizing child abuse because you were abused or because you abuse children in your care? It's sort of a trick question since you have to not process childhood trauma to come to the conclusion that tormenting defenseless, dependent prisoners is beneficial to them. I was asking because if you're abusing children, we need to do something about that.

Life is a requisite for reason, so dead human is right out. Is this not axiomatic? Objective morality is an analysis of voluntary human behaviors that are binding on other moral actors. The dead are incapable of voluntary anything and/or behaviors, so again, aren't eligible. Is this not axiomatic? I can't see, when trying to make the case for objective morality, how these qualifying statements would serve any purpose other than to obfuscate. "Why would somebody who's prescribing a method by which to categorize behaviors be talking about corpses?" For that matter, isn't human's reasonability axiomatic? ALL moral propositions present themselves as binding upon others. The very proposition indicates choice as well as an ideal. Without reason, we wouldn't be able to make such propositions, nor would the people they're being proposed to be capable of understanding or conforming to them intentionally. Let's look at mentally impaired and children. There is a gradation. There are times in a person's life span and/or types/severities of impairments and damage where they might not be entirely reasonable. Where is the line? I don't know because there is a continuum, particularly in children because outside of impairments or damage, it is reasonable to anticipate the capability to reason. Same thing with a person who has a gun pointed at their head. This is not somebody who has a choice. That choice was taken from them by somebody else, due to the "credible threat." Well what is a credible threat? Again, we have a gradation. I really don't know where to go from here. Homo sapien has the capacity for reason. A reasonable person understands the consequences of uses of their body and that other people are people also. It follows that they own their body, the effects of their actions, and that any voluntary behavior that is binding upon another moral actor without consent is a violation of property rights. I could even throw a wrench in myself by adding "expectation of consent." Like if a person is passed out in the street, it's not a violation of property rights to pull them out of harm's way since it's reasonable to expect that if they could give consent, they would. AND that if they wouldn't give consent, motorists didn't consent to hitting a person and/or swerving and causing an accident. But how would belaboring all that while attempting to provide a brief overview be helpful?

Kind of makes you wonder about how proponents of male mutilation cite medical benefits. Are they suggesting that medical science has not evolved after millenia?

Your every post has been to obfuscate. All you have to do is either explain how a concept can control an actual object, explain how an inanimate object can control a human being, or admit that you erred in claiming the same. Deflection. I wrote more, but you don't want to face your own deflection, so you deflect again. Deflection. I didn't just reject, I explained why. Repeating me (without providing a why) is a way of avoiding the why. Deflection. Doesn't matter what it does NOT mean. What it DOES mean is that you cannot attribute something to that which came after it. Deflecting is a way of avoiding this obvious hole in your reverse exlpanation. Deflection. By pointing the finger at me, you continue to dodge the extraordinary evidence required to substantiate the extraordinary claim that creatures of free will are being remotely controlled by a concept and/or inanimate objects. If you believed this, you wouldn't attempt to influence the understanding of others because you would believe it to be deterministic. Deflection. Focusing on my referencing my time avoids focusing on the fact that you are being willfully and unapologetically deceitful. As if my contributions to this thread occur instantaneously, without any effort. How are PEOPLE (who don't HAVE TO force other PEOPLE to do something) CHOOSING to force other PEOPLE to do something a choice? The answer is baked into the question. We can be done if you're going to feign stupidity. I am admitting that you're quoting somebody as if reality is true because somebody said it was and not because it can be proven objectively. You cannot explain how a concept or inanimate object is capable of controlling a person, so you quote somebody saying it can as if that's proof. This is a logical fallacy know as "appeal to authority." Look it up.

First of all, we have to ask "Are these exchanges voluntary?" The answer is yes. So it's important to keep in mind that what's being talked about is a preference. This is important to understand because we have to ask "Where is this going?" Are the people in the article trying to raise awareness so that people will not patronize movies that are made with labor that experience disparate pay on the basis of gender alone? Or are they trying to incite people to initiate the use of force (even by proxy by way of the State for example). Unrelated side note, are these same people addressing the gender inequalities in things like military draft or family court systems? Doesn't seem honest to say "that guy is getting paid more than me for the same work because of his gender" if so much is taken from him in family court for his gender. Since they're focusing on voluntary exchanges and I'm pointing to matters of victims of aggression, isn't one more important than the other? Why don't these people start their own studios and only higher specific genders if that's what they feel is a good thing to do? If that's what people want, they will put other studios out of business. I don't think these people are telling you the whole story. I can shine a flashlight in one corner, but that doesn't mean that corner isn't part of an entire room.

I was wondering if there's a list anywhere of all the people FDR has interviewed, perhaps with links to those interviews. In this thread, I think it would've been helpful to be able to point to all the people FDR has interviewed from academia who have published work that reveals that assaulting children is harmful despite operating within "the system." Is there any such repository?

Are you sure? Bees have been observed to prefer nectar that provides caffeine (and nicotine) and scientists have concluded that these flowers may have developed these ingredients for this reason, and that the caffeine improves the bees' memory.

First of all, let me say that the concerns you brought up are very real. By engaging in formal education, you are submitting to inefficiency and maybe even anti-rationality, particularly in the field of psychology. Also, I think your concern of not being able to pursue what you wanted freely is very real also. I'm not familiar with Alice Miller, but how did she accomplish it despite these challenges? What about other people in the field, such as Allison Gopnik? Maybe look into how they were able to get degrees and engage in research that had the potential to oppose the narrative. Secondly, when I read your question about selfishness, my mind immediately went to an old nautical prescription: One hand for the boat, one hand for yourself. I'm not saying this is right or wrong, but think about it. Suppose somebody went overboard, maybe during a violent storm. You COULD offer them both your arms, but chances are, you'll just get tossed in too. What would that accomplish? Suppose instead you used one arm to keep yourself safe. Even if the one "free" arm isn't enough to save the person overboard, at least you're still with us. This is the value of self-knowledge. ANYTHING you could be doing with your life (or with your free arm in the scenario) is going to be done more accurately and efficiently if you start with stability of self. Maybe you take up engineering after all and do well for yourself. You could use some of that wealth or always some of your free time to pursue what you feel is a better use of your time. Try to weigh THAT scenario vs where you would be if you went into psychology and tried to do research at a lab that precluded you (possibly even by contract, including your free time) from researching anything that might threaten its funding. Whatever you do, try not to let indecision paralyze you.

Your entire post was nothing but correlations. Whereas I had explained chain of causality. Which you would know if you had tried to address anything that was said instead of just repeating yourself. It's the other way around. "Unruly kids" (subjective nature which I already addressed aside) behave the way they do as a result of being assaulted, same as the tied up woman in my example once she's free and the employer in my example once his child is free (notice the explanation of chain of causality rather than just correlation?). Here, your use of the word "create" absolves the abuser of responsibility. Even though we have the scientific evidence that a person has to dissociate just to be able to physically harm another human being, particularly one that cannot fight back. Instead of muddling this dedicated thread with all the common myths that have been debunked so many times that anybody who was genuinely curious as to what the truth was could find them, why don't you try to find them? Or stop talking like you know something that you haven't arrived at by way of sound methodology?