dsayers

Yes. The decision to have a child is voluntarily creating the positive obligation to nurture and protect a child until such a time as they are able to do so for themselves. The ability to differentiate fact from fiction is a vital part of our survival. To present fantasy as fact runs counter to prepping a child to be able to one day survive on their own by breeding resistance to rational analysis. "How do you know?" is one of the most important questions we could ever ask of anything and faith is predicated on disposing of this question. A "belief" is a temporary state and only of use when it sparks a testing of the theory for the purpose of discarding it or promoting it to true.

Sorry for the bump, but I wanted to quote this for emphasis. My path was comparable. I wasn't very interested in economics. Woo, was I ever missing out! For me, just understanding value as a concept makes morality, politics, sociology, history, etc so much clearer. My perceived burdens in life were so alleviated, it felt like I had none by comparison. The ability to be free of all the obfuscations... I wouldn't trade it for anything. So I hope others who pick and choose like we did will read one of these and make an effort to check out other facets than is their primary draw. It's interesting to see how inter-connected it all is.

All my life, I've hated reading books. Don't mind reading so much, but the physiology of holding a book, holding my neck a certain way, trying to maintain holding a certain page for prolonged periods of time... ugh. Present day, I assume this is part of an association my mind made with being forced into school, especially when school move WAY slower than what I was able to. I mention this because in the present day, most everything reading related I do is either online or especially in audio form. But this is a book I will definitely be picking up. I also mentioned the backstory in hopes that maybe the book can help me understand my issue better if not reverse it! I'll have to see if I can get Kindle going on my laptop. Anyways, thanks for sharing your experiences, TheRobin and villagewisdom. For those who haven't clicked on the link, you're missing out on the feedback which is unusually consistent.

Correct. Yet when I made the case for objective reality, you said I was wrong, refused to show me how, citing "There are higher moral concerns than the individual's autonomy." In other words, crowd. Prior to this, you rejected that violence is the only thing you can achieve with violence that you cannot achieve without violence, citing public projects that violate property rights for the "common good." I know nothing of "universal gravitation." I think discovery falls under the purview of identification than creation. I think that discovering universal gravitation offers no assistance in identifying that property rights cannot be valid and invalid simultaneously, which is the very contradiction the term immoral refers to.

We're not talking about squirrels. We're talking about the voluntary actions of people who possess the capacity for reason as denoted by use of the word "accept."

I made no assumptions and reject any objective claim that doesn't accurately describe the real world. Opening a reply with deceit and/or manipulation is not the mark of a meritous argument about to be made. I'm familiar with the claim that because people need to eat to survive, all employment is involuntary. It fails to infinite regression since the business owner under that logic would be slave to the customer, making every person both slave and master simultaneously. It also fails to having a choice. A person can grow their own food, make their own clothes, and so on. Division of labor means it is more efficient to specialize in a particular set of goods/services, provide those for others who do not specialize in them, while you make use of specialists of your needs/wants that you choose not to accomplish for yourself. Like maybe you're good at auto repair but don't feel like growing your own coffee beans. Finally, "Man against Millionaire" is fictitious. Millionaires are a subset of Man and are not naturally occurring. If somebody initiates the use of force, it is their aggression that is problematic, not how much value they've provided to others.

By pointing out that you cannot speak for a crowd, I'm speaking for a crowd? In what way does constructing a telescope help us to identify performative contradictions? Can principles in fact be created, or just identified/crystallized?

Just not your own capacity for error as a human being. When confronted with the fact that you're contradicting yourself, you get upset with the person pointing it out instead of the people responsible for leading you to competing beliefs and/or not providing for you the capability of recognizing this or addressing it in a healthy fashion. How do you know? My ability to identify that "efficiency is bad" contradicts "efficiency is good" is not a reflection on my job history. In what way does your lashing out identify how what I posted was false?

My post was meant to put some of the sensationalism into perspective. To me, this responds to your concern by pointing out that most of the bad publicity is either residual religious demonizing that which is normal or people making excuses for their own decisions. That isn't to say there aren't SOME cases out there that are truly problematic. Is that you? I can't answer that. But I would hope my input helped you to arrive at the answer a little more accurately. I've watched a couple minutes of the PIED video. In what little I saw, there wasn't much integrity in methodology. First of all, "after this, therefore because of this" is a fallacy. That's not to say what came after is NOT the result of what came before, just acknowledges our capacity of making accuracy statements without all relevant data. For example, in economics, we look for the unseen costs. Stopping consumption of porn does nothing to account for how that time was spent instead. Maybe somebody puts together a model car instead. Maybe for them, seeing a model car is of greater value to them than a few orgasms. Maybe others would value that in reverse. Maybe a person has a heart condition that orgasms trigger. Maybe after climax, they smoked a cigarette, so now they're not smoking. And so on. The other flaw in methodology I noticed was lack of defining of terms. Most obviously, what is "porn"? Some people point to a child wearing a swimsuit in a Sears catalog and say it's pornographic. I've seen/heard of things categorized as porn that don't seem to me to be sexual or exhilarating at all. If you and I both claim to be over our pie addiction, you might regard my giving up pizzas as confirmation that your giving up on sugars is validated. Again, I cannot stress enough that my criticism are not meant to suggest there absolutely cannot be a problem. It's just meant to add some clarity. If somebody who is raised without rational thinking cannot defer gratification and ends up spending time watching porn instead of spending time with his family for example, if he gives up porn, he will not have actually addressed the problem at all. In the moment, he might spend more time with his family out of lack of direction. However, in time, he may find another way to engage in excess or otherwise prioritize instant gratification over long term investments. How much of "porn is a problem" is addressing the symptom and not the actual problem?

Right. And by engaging in that consideration, you're not engaging in the consideration of whether somebody who has committed no crime should be sent to prison, which came first. Is what I think the point was. It falls under "if they can get you to ask the wrong questions, they don't care what your answers are." In other words, let us instead examine whether it is justifiable to, without the consent of the child, separate them from their parents, put them in the care of people who are paid for with stolen monies, who will only serve to break the will of the child (and escalate in the face of resistance), and won't intervene when their fellow inmates torment them. By doing so, we would actually eliminate the question of whether a child should skip a grade in school or not. When trying to identify the path that is least problematic, it's best to focus on the problem itself rather than one of its symptoms.

This is a performative contradiction. If you felt that influence a billion years from now was a valid standard, you would not be attempting to influence the thoughts of others in the present.

You cannot make use of your body (your property) without accepting property rights. Also, the thief would have no incentive to take anything unless property was a valid concept to them.

I think you have the chronology backwards. The places they are moving to have an established track record or stealing from the productive to give some to the non-productive. This incentivized people in that same nation to be less productive AND for people on the outside to go there for "free" stuff. It's adaptive to try and achieve your goals with maximum efficiency. The problem is in the initiation of the use of force in the name of the State that has to take place in order for people to accurately anticipate going there to be a path of less resistance for them. Is starting a thought with "I don't care what anyone says" a sign of an accepting mind? For that matter, if this is one of your values, then why did you use a computer and the internet to share this idea instead of hand writing it and snail mailing it to be published by a newspaper or magazine? If I were you, I would look into why I demonize efficiency even though my every effort from a biological standpoint is about maximizing efficiency.

The fact that it's different for every person means it's subjective. Value is subjective. So phrases like "intrinsic value" and "objectively valuable" do not accurately describe the real world. People is the plural of person. Person refers to an entity that possesses the capacity for reason. Therefore people ARE property AND you cannot have property without people. Some people want to die. According to you, they are not free to make this choice. In other words, you are using your life to assert that others cannot use their lives. This contradiction reveals you are in error. Theft is wrong because it contradicts reality. Property rights cannot be valid and invalid simultaneously. You keep going back to these outlandish scenarios to justify your belief in utilitarianism. Meanwhile, objective morality applies to ALL voluntary behaviors that are binding on other people. Not saying this proves I'm right and you're wrong, but if truth is what you seek, this should give you pause. Also, when you present these outlandish scenarios, you are assuming utilitarianism is valid while trying to demonstrate it. This is called begging the question. Slapping a person is using your body to deprive that person use of their body. This is a true statement. It's true if you mean to harm them. It's true if you mean to save them from a greater harm. I point this out because your last post sounds like you accept objective morality even though you're searching for a more complex explanation that includes it and things that contradict it.

Yes. The "upside of immoral behavior" is that the violator is telling you of their violation. Here, the person preventing you from controlling your arm is using their arm to accomplish this. This contradiction is precisely what the word "immoral" references. I don't know what moral superiority means, but morality is based on objective standards. If I steal from you, I am demonstrating that I accept property rights for me but reject them for others. A concept cannot be valid and invalid simultaneously. So what if reality contradicted reality? Then you wouldn't have logic and wouldn't be able to argue for anything. In other words, your arguing that reality could contradict reality demonstrates that you reject the proposition yourself.

I think time is a valid component to the equation though. If I say to you, "I planted the seed," then the results being there's no plant yet isn't really meaningful. Or if you say to me "paint this room" and you come back 5 minutes later and there's only a patch covered, wouldn't the size of the undertaking have a bearing on evaluating what the current results are? The inability of being able to convince somebody out of a conclusion they arrived at not by way of logic, reason, and evidence doesn't reflect on us. No? People in my life have noticed that I'm happier, more out-going, WAY more capable of expressing myself, and able to stand up for myself. When we talk about property rights or other serious topics, they are more receptive to what I have to say because they see the results of accepting these truths. I agree that given our level of technology at this point, that another dark age is a very real risk. Of course I also appreciate the inefficiency and incompetence of those acting in the name of the State. And this is where I think you mentioning the numbers not bearing out isn't quite as bad as you might think. Obviously there's truth in the "there's more of us than there are of them." So how does the State get its power? Two ways. First, the actual iron fist: the enforcer class. Second: slave on slave violence (mostly intellectually speaking). Slave on slave violence we directly combat by living our values and putting forth rational arguments for others. Think of when you have a teacher that's molesting their students. Once one or two victims stand up, the rest begin to. Just standing against the grain can be the spark that starts the fire. As for the enforcer class, here's the dirty little secret of ushering in freedom: All you have to do is convince the enforcer class. THEY'RE the ones doing the real damage. And if you can convince them to reject the proposition that they exist in a separate moral category, we'd have freedom tomorrow and without any bloodshed. This is good news indeed for a few reasons. Police misconduct is sharply on the rise with all the terrorism talk and paramilitarization of local police forces. Cameras and the internet are on the rise also, bringing this front and center (which seriously disgusts the otherwise good people who became enforcers). Look at the suicide rate of American veterans. It's just gotten to be too much, too obviously. Always with the constructive criticism, yes. I very much want to be as precise and effective as I can be by soliciting feedback, and also to help others be as precise and effective as they can be. Yes, I think of lobbying like I think of political activism. By working within the system, you legitimize the system. More importantly, I think that people that think like that are not free even in their own mind. The way I like to think of it as is this: If somebody is concerning themselves with how rulers should make use of their imaginary existence in a different, opposing moral category, they're not focusing on whether people can actually do so. As for freedom incentive based corporations, I'm not sure exactly what that means. Like Taco Bell offers me tacos and acknowledges that I'm free to say no. If I trade with them, yeah, the State is trying to steal from both of us for that reason alone. Other than that, it's a free trade and that happens right now in a statist society. You mentioned LLC before and this is a State-created fiction. In a free society, I really don't see the difference between that and say insurance. Except that in a free society, insurance won't cover genuine malfeasance on the part of the company being insured. As long as people are responsible for their actions, it doesn't much matter to me if you call it insurance or a corporation.

I was pointing out that I recognize that you don't believe in the merit of your refutation. Because the first time you were offered the opportunity to present it, you chose to act like nothing was said instead of providing a damning refutation. Claiming to be a moral theory isn't the same as being a moral theory. Also, any theory ceases to be even a theory the moment it's disproven. Because it is predicated on a subjective measurement, it is a matter of opinion and therefore not binding upon others. "Theft is the simultaneous acceptance and rejection of property rights" is always and objectively true. I understand that hearing that your proposition validates gang rape is unsettling. This is a good thing! But only if you use it as a signal that you need to revise your theory to more accurately describe the real world. What do we have in a gang rape? One person has agency over their own body, safety, time, sense of security, faith in humanity, etc violently taken from them for an hour. Then you have X (where X > 1) people who, for that same hour, pretend to have superhuman powers (owning themselves and another person) in a very real way. One person loses their humanity so that more people get to have superhumanity. This is a net good! Objective means exists outside of individual consciousness. Sure it does. If my behavior isn't binding upon you without your consent, then it's none of your concern what those behaviors are, why I engage in them, or how "good" they are for others. What is an "objective moral concern"? Theft, assault, rape, and murder are the only behaviors that simultaneously accept and reject property rights. Also, concerns are subjective. If the problem is that I don't know what utilitarianism is, why aren't you explaining it starting from first principles and using precise language? Seems like it would be more productive than "nuh uh."

You mean a public raised by abusive parents, dropped into daycare, neglected, shoved into government schools which teach them how great the State is, all while watching the media say non-stop, from birth that the world is burning and the only solutions are violence and giving more power to the State? You think pointing out that we own ourselves, this is universal, and therefore theft, assault, rape, and murder, taxation is theft, oh and by the way, your parents, teachers, everybody you trusted who was responsible for your survival lied to and abused you, not landing the first time is a reflection of the person presenting the information? A LOT of people do this. It's habitual. They don't understand that just seeing the farm is to be free from it. They want to end it and think attacking it is the way to go, even though this just strengthens their enemy. You cannot solve a problem you don't understand. It's not easy to accept that modeling voluntarism and not abusing children is the answer that will work, but probably not in our lifetimes. This seems like a contradiction. Lobbying is the slave asking the master to hurt other slaves more than them.

When the State takes money from a business in the form of taxation, licensing, minimum wage, etc, that cost is passed along to the customer. So you're asking how a business owner without those extra expenses could compete with one that has them. It's almost like asking how is 9 greater than 7. Also, the question is deceptive. You're asking why on a planet with no free societies is a coercive society the most productive. Finally, you're avoiding the moral consideration. You're saying that violence is acceptable as long as you agree with how it's used. This cannot be universalized.

I highly recommend Stef's youtube series . Pros: It starts from first principles. It leaves no stone unturned as it builds from first principles. It is split into episodes for easy viewing, reviewing, and consuming it at your own pace. Cons: It's long. The audio quality fluctuates and isn't great. And in the context of an actual course, it's not interactive. I can honestly credit that series as being the linchpin in starting me down the road of rational thought. It's so effective that I hope one day Stef will do a condensed remake with his superior equipment.

Anarchy is the acceptance that humans do not exist in different, opposing moral categories. So no rulers. Person A would not build a road through person B's property because they accept person B's property rights as well as reject their own superiority to person B. Other way around. Systems predicated on humans existing in separate moral categories violate the property of the individual. Anarchy means EVERYBODY is protecting the right of the individual. Money is stored value. It provides the ability to provide value to others right now while deferring the decision on what value you'd like to receive in exchange or to accumulate for the ability to trade for things of greater value. As an inanimate object/concept, it has no power in itself. In existing systems with rules, money only appears to have power because of the shared delusion that people exist in different, opposing moral categories. So if you trade with those who have this imaginary power, you will influence that power by proxy. So here, you're actually referring to the State, which is not present in anarchy. Here, "selfishness" is a weighted word, meant to invoke a specific emotional reaction in lieu of a rational case being made. When you eat, you are engaging in the selfish act of sustaining your self. Selfishness is not problematic until you violate the property of another person. At which point the aggression is the problem, not the selfishness. Also here, "needs and wishes of the weak" proposes an unchosen positive obligation, which can never be ethical. We already know that people help each other, so the proposition that we need to violate property rights to provide for those who can't/won't provide for themselves is inaccurate. It also ignores the empirical evidence that coercion used to provide this also serves as incentive to NOT achieve at the expense of other people. Making those who are stolen from the weak, not the people who the wealth is being forcibly transferred to.

This makes it sound like a luck of the draw, but I don't think that is the case. From an evolution standpoint, we benefit more from being able to differentiate real from imaginary. Imagination is beneficial in exploring what might be possible in reality. As we develop, we discard that which is no longer useful to us. Such as the ability to filter out acknowledging fabric against your skin or that a monster will eat you if your turn the lights out. If there were two kids the same age and one seemed more susceptible to magical thinking and the other appeared to be "naturally" skeptical, I bet you'd find a different level of involvement and integrity between the parents. I think the distinction is helpful not only because it holds those who are responsible accountable, but it also helps to demonstrate exactly why the things you're considering are so important

There's a difference between challenging a distinction and ignoring it like it never happened. On at least three separate occasions, you tried to avoid "parent-child relationship" by repackaging it as if we were talking about any two people. When I pointed out at least twice that children will become moral actors, you compare them to animals. The challenge is appreciated. Maybe you can add to the efficiency of the conversation by being forthcoming with it next time instead of pretending it never happened. Even if I was an outside observer, I would find it frustrating that multiple posts are put down to accomplish what way fewer could. Please and thank you. If you actually challenged what was stated instead of ignoring it, you'd see your challenge was already addressed. Specifically I noted that children are raise and release. Their care will go on to effect other people, which is why they get the protections of a moral actor even though they aren't yet moral actors. A dog is not a moral actor. However, if a dog's owner were to abuse the dog and then release it to the world, it's care becomes everybody's business. Dogs can be contained though whereas a child cannot in perpetuity. Your rant left hyperbole and entered the realm of absurdity a few times. Kind of like when you suggested birthing is immoral when it's a biological process. Suggesting ejaculation is genocide is absurd. Even Genghis Khan wasted over 99% of the sperm he ever produced and our cells die all the time involuntarily. Cows MIGHT become sentient one day has no bearing on the certainty that almost all humans DO in their lifetime. Are you trying to have a conversation or just wear down the opposition to your position so you can claim artificial victory? "If the volume knob just moves freely, it won't actually change the volume." The first time I mentioned children represented the exception, I was nothing short of forthcoming with the fact that it's a complicated conversation. Meaning you have to grasp the basics before you try to tackle it. Humans own themselves because they possess the capacity for reason. When will a human become a moral actor? When they adequately possess the ability to conceptualize self, the other, formulate ideals, compare behaviors to those ideals, and calculate consequences. Yes, it would be very easy if we could assign a hard number for that, but that's not the way it works. I do know this: If you allow your child to be molested and neglect/abandon them to the point where they don't feel you are part of their support system, you will stunt and in extreme cases prohibit this maturation. Gravity is constant. Surely you meant to say legislation. However, since commands backed by threats of violence are not internally consistent, they do not accurately describe the real world and therefore have no place in an exploration of what is true. This is quite exhausting, so I just wanted to extend my request once more that you be more forthcoming with any challenges you might have instead of just pretending I didn't say something that you would challenge.

You're trying to convince him that he shouldn't try to convince others.

There is no such thing as the good of society. Society is a concept. It describes an aggregate of people, which do exist. But saying something is true because it might exist in a universe where it would be true is meaningless. Truth and logic is derived the from the consistency of matter and energy in our universe. So in order to determine what is true in our universe, it must be consistent (universal). I really wish people wouldn't focus on things like UPB. The case for objective morality is so much simpler and less confusing. Humans are electrical and there have been fantastic strides in such things for the purpose of health and prosthetics. This is precisely why a fundamental acceptance of property rights is so important. The day will come when when humans can be controlled remotely. If we still accept things like the State, the "greater good," etc, that's going to lead to real problems. I mean, the proof is easy enough; I'm using my arm to control your arm is a performative contradiction. But it will be easier if we make that easy case now before it will become more confusing to those who cannot think rationally.