Will Torbald

You haven't watched Stefan debate UPB with callers if you think that, then.

I think it's irresponsible to respond this late to things I have already said and covered. It might be an inevitable consequence of having a long thread. 1- In any case, I already said that the premises of UPB can be divided in two camps. One is the premises of an objective reality, and the other are premises of human assumptions. For a debate, we can forgive human assumptions. For a theory of science level, we can't. If you believe UPB is as good as science, you're wrong. It's as good as a religion, or an ideology. Believing things about people on a false narrative. In the case of UPB, the false narrative is "life is not different from a debate, so pretend the rules of debate are the rules of life" because in any defense of UPB, the proponent of it invokes that by debating, the accuser accepted premises. This is false because the premises only serve to contextualize a debate, but it is not by any means valid outside of it. 2- Free will is a hypothesis, believed on faith. Scientific research is actually against free will every time it is tested.

Affect and change are not the same thing. Deterministically, you are affecting the world that will lead to a future series of events motivated by your actions. That is always going to occur. For free will to happen, you would have to somehow do stuff in the present that will not affect the future in any way as you choose. Suspend the laws of nature at will, become a god basically. You can't say that you are in a deterministic universe and that you chose future A over B because the past A "made you choose" future A over B. In a free will universe, things don't happen over cause and effect, but everything would have to be motivated by itself. Do you see rocks moving on their own will here?

In a deterministic universe, it's the other way around. You are always affecting the outcome of future events. That's why it's deterministic in the first place. What you are doing now is affecting the future. What she can't do is to stop affecting the future, which sounds weird, but that's why she follows through with her memories of the future. In a way, deterministically, her knowledge of the future is what created the future since she was affected by the knowledge in the past which follows into the future. A bit of a loop there, but it's common in time travel stories to have recursive time.

1 - You can assume there is free will, but that assumption makes your theory an ideology, not a science. Science doesn't assume things about people, it proves them to the best degree it can. The experiment of assuming free will and going into an absolute moral theory has already been done, and is called Christianity. If I didn't think UPB was a bad theory, I wouldn't have opened this thread and gone against every single person in this forum including the owner. Just read the thread if you want to know why. 2 - That is not a bad idea, but UPB isn't that non arbitrary theory because the premises are not non arbitrary.

It is one thing to say "don't punch back, take the high road" and that is not what I suggest. I suggest that we come to understand what makes us different from them. Why are we better than the left? If we are not better, we are just tribals fighting for power. That is not what I want in any movement, personally speaking. Stefan, for example, never betrayed any of his principles even when he admitted he was torn about it. It was clear he was being steadfast against emotionality in his tone of voice, and his body language. He could have done what other people did which was to enter into the stages of grief of denial, anger and bargaining. What we protect as a group is first our reason to fight, and then our people, who are those who also value the same things we do. When one of those people show that they are not in it for a virtuous purpose and have shown to be less than what they say they are, it is reasonable to a degree to let go of them. Not to diminish them, but as a way of showing that this isn't about winning a game of elections, or a game of popularity, that this is about a real purpose. The left is the enemy in so far as they oppose anything that is good and moral in the world, to a degree. They are not the enemy because they fight dirty. And we cannot win if we become as savage and power hungry as they are because then we would have abandoned our reason to be on the right side in the first place. A balloon rises when it loses dead weight. If Milo isn't lifting, he is dragging us down. We can win and have principles at the same time.

Mean leftists are making me stand by the principles I believe in. How dare they! I will cast away my values just to fight on the same level as them. That will show them. Now we will win, because after we become just as lawless as they are, we will be better than them.

Wondering about the NAP in order to make up your mind on whether this subject is good or bad is peak libertarianism.

Hahaha, if you don't like Milo you're a communist! Good one, Wuzz. I will repost something I wrote elsewhere about why I don't defend Milo so that you may better understand where I'm coming from: " What inspired me to post there was seeing other internet personalities close to Milo defending him saying that he was only joking, and that the media is after him. I don't think he was joking, he said he wasn't joking, and in his press conference he didn't defend himself saying he was joking. I saw other people doing that instead, in the "alternative media" sphere and people who are friends with Stefan. My hope was that he wouldn't go down that path, and in his latest video about it he actually didn't! I was vindicated in my statements that Milo had crossed lines, and had to be called out. I don't think he's a pedophile, but he certainly enabled it to some non trivial degree in his behavior. Stefan said it better in his video, to which I agree mostly in all. The other part was that I had already abandoned the Milo bandwagon a long time ago, so I wasn't surprised. I had seen those videos and I knew about it. I wasn't outraged then, other than disgusted. It is his other behaviors that did it for me back then, and I stand by my criticism that he is a performance actor and that he is a self serving attention seeker that fills his own pockets with money and has been bleeding friendships for years. People who stood by him are constantly turning his back on him from before this scandal, always with similar stories of how awful he is personally. That is what I see in him now, and I understand that you guys are new to him since his Trump supporting stunts, but I've seen him since Gamergate, and looking back on it, he is truly a massive prick. " So I just think that you are riding the surface level positivity of "he triggers liberals lol" without realizing that being outrageous is all he does, but has nothing new to say. He is always only looking for the next group of people to hurt, as he did with gamers, then feminists, and now anti trump people. He is not on your side, only his side, and only for long as he gets enough pleasure till he gets bored and moves on to the next thing.

Only to the extent it benefits his career, his wallet, and his brand. Martyrizing him keeps playing to that strategy, yes. No one is a kamikaze without the promise of heaven, and his seemingly brave shtick is purely for personal gain.

1- In the first part I am holding UPB accountable to its own standards. In the second part I tell you why those standards don't really matter when you step outside of UPB into the world. It's not a contradiction, it's a narrative, and the story is that bad theories lead you to strange places that make you forget about real life. 2- True, but that's not about morality. If it really were about not crashing your car, moral philosophers would have had their work cut out for them a hundred years ago. You didn't get what I was trying to get at with that comment at all. Stef says how he wants to make a moral theory without God, but he goes out and keeps the exact same theory and changes the words. But it works exactly the same way. If secular morality has any purpose, is to not be the same as Christian morality with different terms. Otherwise you've wasted everyone's time. The U in Universally means that it always applies. If you can say that UPB is avoidable, it's not universal, so it falls apart. For example, Newton's Universal Law of Gravitation is called Universal because it is a theory that should apply to the entire world at all times. In the introduction, Stef says that is what he wants to prove for morality. That there is something in the world that makes morality apply at all times at all places. Every objection that says "but you can choose not to UPB" has already debunked it.

I hope Stefan's hatred of the media won't cloud his judgement into defending Milo, since it was indefensible by itself. He apologized for once in his life because he knew he had no way of redeeming them. Yeah, it was a coordinated effort to damage him. Yet many people knew about it since it had been public for a year. I stopped supporting Milo a long time ago after I realized he was nothing else but an attention seeker masquerading as a free speech advocate. He really doesn't care, and I know you think he does, but I can't believe he does after everything I've seen him do ever since GamerGate and during it.

1- Better, as I argued later in the thread, is a contextual situation. This a skeptical view of what it means for something to be better when someone tries to say it is universally better. How do you know, who says, is your evidence absolute? No evidence is absolute. No statement of improvement is universal. One man's treasure is another's garbage. This is why I made the example of someone who tells children that Santa isn't real, or an atheist that goes to church to tell them god doesn't exist. If you truly believed correction is a universal moral value, then you must do these things. But no one does, or at least only lunatics do that because we understand context. The whole point of my objection to UPB and its premises is that it takes itself out of its valid context. 2- I think you should have read more than the opening post. I have been saying how this is a conflation of two kinds of responsibilities into one, and how in the end it doesn't matter because the moral consequences apply equally regardless of agency. Read back for more. I will add however that this line of thinking is rooted in religious ideology and a desire to punish people for their sins. All these secular philosophies have done is change the words. Soul is now agency. Ego is now God. Immorality is sin. What have we learned? I say nothing. This is modern day theosophy.

If you follow this idea all the way through, no one should obey UPB because it's only a concept that doesn't exist. If you want people to behave according to things that don't exist, we're back to religion. Stop being so Socratic. My words are based on the standard definition that everyone with any level of intelligence to be here should know. Demanding ultra high definition words is pedantic, and you look stupid doing so. "What is ego?" "What is state of nature?" Man, if you don't know any of this don't even try to argue. But I know you're just being socratic. "Isn't that just saying that the subject of morality is the action or interaction of moral actors. So no moral actors (no society) -> no need for morality. How is UPB missing that?" -Two people in a room is not a society. "What is a state of nature? How does it encourage aggression? Do you mean anarchy?? How is an anarchic society not a society? Have you read any books on the practical application of anarchy? Saying following UPB would destroy civilization is an argument from effect. I would prefer to stay on the argument of morality. I hope you do as well." -It's not an argument from effect, it's a prediction of the effect. My argument against it is based on pointing out the flaws in the premise phase of the theory. Saying "haven't you read a book" doesn't mean anything. "Truth is better than falsehood for you, when you want to use morality." -There is no "when you want to use morality" in a supposed deontological moral theory. If morality is universal, you can't choose to use it as it is always supposed to be "on" and inescapable. You can't define morality as a choice to use, and as a universal theory at the same time. "A shark attacking a surfer is not a moral agent. Do you disagree? Is the real issue free will vs. determinism?" -You use the term "moral agent" as if it was a real thing. You haven't proven that a human predator is somehow different from an animal predator. You project "agency" on certain people as if that gave you authority to judge them. If UPB wants to be scientific, it has to detect, measure, discover the "agency" and show it through evidence. Not project it onto perpetrators. I mean, you could just do that - but it wouldn't be objective, nor would it meet scientific standards. It would be an ideology, not a science. And the book desperately wants to be taken as something as good as science, so I am holding it to that standard yet I can't say it reaches it. The "real issue" is irrelevant because either way society deals with morality in the same way regardless. "So my point was, that using morality requires the acceptance of these premises and that you use morality all the time, when you are part of a society. I now realize that I should actually put it another way, since you already accepted the 8 premises for debating. Unfortunately, I'm running a bit out of time now and I will not have much time to write again in the near future. So this is my final question/remark for now: Using morality is the exact same thing as debating. If not what would be the difference between the two?" This is circular reasoning. I argued against this line of thought previously in the last page. I can't say I blame you for not reading everything, but the courtesy would have been nice. You define morality and premises for debate as the same thing, which isn't rational. Those premises are contextual and valid only for the purposes of debate. Not for the context or purposes of life and society, which is where morality has any cogent validity at all. It is a religious trick, the same that is always used to guilt people into a church. You define sin according to your religion, and tell somebody that unless they follow your path to salvation, they will remain sinful and condemned. You have the same disease the other people have: they can't tell the difference between a debate and the real world. Is this a mild form of autism? Have I stumbled into a parade of unreality where ideology is indistinguishable from nature? You're now wondering to yourself "what is nature?".

The way my views on this subject have matured during the course of this thread makes me glad that I held off from calling sooner. I'll write in after I can't squeeze more juice out of this. The rest is up to Mike, I guess. I have a long post replying to the previous ones, but that got sent to the mods for review.

"The collective is a concept that doesn't exist in reality." This isn't true. I know existential individualists love to make this claim, but it's simply patently wrong. For example, individuals are collectives themselves. You are not an undivisible unit. You are made of organs, and those organs are made of cells, and those cells are made of atoms, and thos atoms are made of particles. So which particle are you? We understand that the parts make a whole. But for some reason a whole made of many humans doesn't exist. Somehow. Now that's magic, I'd say. Well no, collectives are real as long as the connections are real. You can't just point at many people in one direction and say they are a collective - but you can point at a society and say they are a group. A society is a group of individuals who operate as a team, with division of labor, collective identity, and agree on principles together. Which neuron in your brain is your self, by the way? You can't tell, because the whole brain works as a whole to create your self. A concert of people working together is a valid collective concept that exists. "Why is UPB making Ego the God? What do you mean by "Ego" in this context?" Because the basic rule on UPB ethics is "Don't do to others something they don't want to be done onto". In other words, don't transgress their ego. In more other words, whatever you don't want selfishly should not be transgressed as if it were holy. Something holy is something that is meant to be untouchable less it becomes blasphemy. Which is why critics of the NAP have innumberable examples of how this notion taken to extremes gets silly rapidly. I mean by Ego your want. When you want something done, it's good. If you don't want it, it's bad. That may be enough for people as a practical idea, but it's still religious. And the god is your ego and the ego of others. Taken to the extreme the book wants to take you, this means abolishing the state because it hurts people's ego. Regardless of how bad of an idea that would be in the real world with real world consequences. Vox Day was right when he said Stefan should be a theologian. And don't you think murder, rape and the likes of it should be banned by a moral theory? I see "bans" as a consequence, not a principle. When people submit a portion of their ego for the good of society (which I already proved it does exist) the result is that hurting other people becomes a problem, and it will be banned to the degree the ego is submitted. Islamic societies are considered primitive rightly because very little ego is submitted, and men are unleashed to their animalistic tendencies, their primal ego is let off, and rape and lynching is a normal occurence. A more advanced society would require more humility and ego to be payed off, which results in less violence as people abandon their aggressive proclivities. However if this man is interacting with another individual, it's different... The consequences of moral living are only relevant within a society. That is a very critical point that UPB ignores. I'll say that again: The consequences of moral living are only relevant within a society. Consequences. Moral living. Relevant. Society. The moment UPB says "if you want morality" that implies consequentiality. Since it is attempting a result, it is not deontological. Also, in a state of nature, nobody cares about non aggression. In fact, it is encouraged. But we don't live in a state of nature when we belong in a society. Barbarism and savagery are just as valid as far as the world cares for living in this world (as every other creature in this planet does) because the universe doesn't care. Morality is a social requirement, not a universal feature of the world. And the consequence is that we get to live for something larger than ourselves, the future, and we all at once. A man dedicated to worshipping his ego cannot be civilized, which is why UPB would destroy civilization first by taking down the state, taking down consequences for savagery, then bringing everyone down to primitivism again. Stef likes to say that people respond to incentives, but he forgets that they also refrain from actions from expected consequences - and when they know there won't be any, well, you can look at the migrants destroyed Europe and France for an example of people disconnected from the system of society and consequences for that. Premises 6-7-8 are total fabrications. Truth is better than falsehood - FOR WHAT? WHEN? TO WHOM? Any statement of preferability can only be asserted during a CONTEXT. And "always and ever and in all places" is devoid of context. It is not true that telling the truth is better, nor that knowing the truth is better. It is a bad, bad, bad premise for universalization. It simply requires context, and one context where it applies is debate. Sure, debate. But not all times ever. I'm tired and don't want to prolong into 7 too long, but that's nonsense too. Just because you choose to debate it doesn't mean that it was the right decision. That's also something contextual. 8 conflates two kinds of responsibilities into one, making a mess of sophistry. If you're talking, you're also responsible (literally, and morally) for what you say. But that's not true. There is literal responsibility, the kind that means "yes, I was speaking". But moral responsibility is about "Yes, I talked and I could have chosen not to talk, but I did it" and THAT'S a HUGE assumption that shouldn't be made without EVIDENCE because that is the whole crux of moral philosophy since ever. That's why Stefan has to fight against determinism, because his pet theory would collapse. So he has to conflate literal responsibility with moral responsibility to avoid the debate about avoidability, very cowardly if I may add, since he gets called out for it and doesn't fix his mistake. But even then it is irrelevant, because the consequences for immoral behavior do not need the establishment of either free will or determinism since either way, in a society, bad actors need to be removed. If there were a Terminator style killer robot, deterministically programmed to murder, it would still need to be removed! So it doesn't matter whether there is free will or not in order to have consequences within a society for immoral behavior. If you had read my arguments you'd know that this is the issue of life/debate persistence that I bring up. You say "if you assume UPB that is for all time ever" but that is wrong because UPB is just a set of premises, bad premises by the way, that you take for debate. Then you say "oh, yeah, this also is for life and all places and people" - and that is wrong. Just wrong. Which is like saying that if you play tennis once, then the rules of tennis also always apply at every moment. The scientific method doesn't assume anything about people, so it's a misguided analogy. The scientific method only assumes a real world.

It's definitely something I'm considering to do. It's also psychologically speaking, intimidating and frustrating. My perspective on what morality actually is about is structurally speaking different from UPB, but the result isn't life changing like Stef wants (a stateless society through moral revolution) instead it would remain similar to how things are now. I know that a theory that leaves things similarly to the current status quo doesn't make anyone famous, nor interesting, but if it's right I just have to take it. In more specific terms, my idea of what morality is about involves the subjugation of a portion of an individuals ego for the social good - and all the variations and cosequences of that. Morality only has relevance within a society, and the relationship between an individual against the collective it belongs to - not about particular rules that ban behaviors. I think that is a misguided way of thinking about morals, regardless of what system you use. UPB is similar to Objectivist ethics in that it exalts ego instead, making it a sort of holy ghost. Thou shalt not transgress thy ego, if you wish. It means that your ego is divine, and if you don't want something, no one should force you to comply in any way. I don't like gods, I don't think anything should be holy. UPB wants to be atheistic, but if you make Ego the God, you still have holiness. So I think morality is about making ego into humility, for a good cause. It's ancient knowledge, more akin to Eastern Philosopy than Western thinkers. The Chinese knew it, the Indians knew it. It's nothing new. But it's very real instead of ideological.

Libertarian ideologue finds Trump supporters and gets pumped with red pills, but rejects reality and doesn't feel well and changes - COGNITIVE DISSONANCE. Many such cases!

The problem with this assesment that looks at things like "companies have been losing money" is that they know, and they don't care. PC culture is not about the market, nor about making money. It's social engineering through and through. Cultural demoralization, soviet style subversion. It's top down, you will believe what we want you to believe. The people funding and controlling the media companies could not care less to be a little less rich if they can control the minds of impressionable youths. That the market for non PC exists is irrelevant to the agenda of these people.

How will Antifa recover?? No but seriously, this doesn't kill PC culture. If anything, it only proves that it's still strong. This is a counterpunch to anti Trump PC. In any sane country, no one would bat an eye at an artist supporting the president.

Anthropic principle. It's no surprise we find ourselves in a universe where we can exist because we can't in those where we don't. Life? How do you know what life is? Life as it is here is the way it is because of the local conditions produce it. In a universe with different local conditions it is possible that different life unknown to us will arise. Those aliens would then ask, like you, why the world is the way it is for them.

I was saying UPB is based upon life, not the other way around. You didn't disprove me. You say that, but that's not what the book says. UPB is based on argumentation ethics. You're the one who isn't paying attention to the source. Life doesn't need to assume most of the things, as I explained earlier, assumed by UPB. When I said that most people don't follow it, I meant it. Maybe it is from your point of view, where you make the assumptions in your own particular life, that you think that UPB is based on life - but you don't self reflect that that is only your opinion. Then please tell me why you think that. You didn't disprove me now, either. Because the book literally says that correction is about universal preferences. I said, and I suppose you agree with it, that correction is a mutual preference between people who have agreed to listen to each other - not something universal. We must invoke it, create it. UPB says it's deontological, not artificial. I don't know what you're getting at, I'm sorry. The assumptions UPB makes, I critiqued them. The "latter" part is the group of assumptions that deviate from the scientific method and are not necessary assumptions for an objective reality, but force conclusions by assuming them out of thin air. Yup. For more info watch this: https://youtu.be/LYOtZvwNCsc?t=49m1s (j/k, it's a song. But the sampled conversation is exactly about that.) Cool song, artist, album. I like this genre of music a lot. Then, you are talking in circles and not disproving anything. I can see no "You are wrong, and here is why:", while I have brought the necessary arguments. You formulate as if you were correcting me, but actually you're just propagating obvious truths I didn't doubt at all. I don't see why it is obscure to you. It's in the title: Life is not a debate. UPB says: Pretend life is a debate. Boom! Moral theory, baby. My "you are wrong, here is why" is that. One more quote: No. That's like saying "According to math I cant count without arithmetics". According to Islam I cant go to heaven if I don't explode next to a group of infidels - yet Atheists are right. I'm just making the case for UPB atheism. You keep on pseudo-falsifying others, but never bring your own proof. Proof is for positive statements. I am making a negative statement - of what life is not. I don't know if you didn't read the last page of arguments, but that's what it is about. I am challenging you to bring proof of life being just like a debate because that's what UPB is asking me to pretend. And it's not like people haven't tried to do that, it's just that they are wrong. Someone said that life is about avoiding pain, and that's really wrong. Somebody said that they can't see the difference between life and debate, and that's just insane. I think your case was that since life needs to correct course in order not to fail, that means that it must be just like a debate as well. Like if you were to tell me to not go west because there's a bear that could eat me there, then I would appreciate that correction. But even then I would have to verify it for myself since maybe you lie to me so that you could gain something out of my not going west instead. Corrections between two people can be mutually agreeable, but it's not necessary. If you mean internal correction within my mind - like, I go west and and see that there really is a bear there - that is not a debate, that is my own internal thought process working to keep me alive. You could even try to correct me with the best scientific knowledge available, and it turns out everyone was wrong and the thing you told me to do actually gave me cancer or something (historically, has happened a few times). So my point is that the proof for the positive statement "life is a debate" isn't good. To prevent wasting your and my time I will only continue under the following conditions: Look, I think the reason this is confusing is because I am not arguing against debate. I am arguing against taking debate outside of debate. I am not arguing against morality, or against the assumptions of debate for a debate, or the assumptions of UPB in the realm to which it applies (and the only realm it applies is during a mutually agreed debate). Like, if we are debating right now - then I have assumed the assumptions of UPB for practical purposes and then the book asks me to keep making those assumptions outside of the purposes, as if those assumptions were true. That's what I don't agree with. I agree only in making the assumptions of an objective reality for life, but UPB goes way beyond that. So when you ask "which system you agree as a base for debate" I say "the same you accept". But it's only for debate. You focus on why he is wrong, but bring no proof why you should be right; You are downright condescending; You assume Stefan wouldn't seek a reasonable debate with you, which he until now has always done to his best efforts - sure he got sidetracked at times, but still he is the most focused and fair debater I know. 1- I think I shouldn't go into what should be right if I can't even establish why the current situation is wrong. Like I said previously, if I told you that we're going to fall off a cliff if we keep driving in this direction - and you replied "I don't care if you have showed me why I am wrong, I won't stop until you tell me where is right to go". In this situation not going is correct enough. Stop the car. We can figure out where to go later. 2- Because I'm right. 3- He gives you 20 minutes to make your case, then does what I wrote earlier every time. He always goes for the "upb can't be proven wrong har har" when he's run out of patience. I've heard the debates. And my case is directly aimed at why that rebuttal isn't valid. But then he would say "ah but we're debating you think this is true already". That's the point of first writing out the arguments, so that they can be freshly laid out before he even says those already tired comebacks. I hope that's all we need. I have some psychological idea about what is happening in the conversation, but if so I will talk about that in another thread. I'm giving my best not to become personal here, because it's a lot of information already. Get personal here if you need. The only people who have gotten emotional are those challenging me, and have either quit, or I have had to ignore them out of them ceasing to make any sense. I'm getting the feeling that each time you are presented with solid proof you just don't want to change your own opinion. Well, my "opinion" is that life is not a debate. I have received attempts at arguments that it is, but they're not convincing. Probably because they're wrong.

Me: Stefan, UPB isn't true beca- Stefan: So you're saying it is universally preferable for me to think universal preferences are not true? Me: That only looks contradicting because you are using terms incorrectly and interchangeably for which different definitions clarify the apparent inconcistencies in a meta-ethical theory that conflates debate rules with real life morali- Stefan: No Stefan: LALALALA Mike: *Drops the call* - But also because I didn't want to go unprepared without testing the limits of my counter argument here. I've debated UPB many times before, in favor and against with other reasons, and I've lost most if not all of them because they were right to point out that my objections weren't valid within the theory. Although this time no one has actually given a strong rebuttal, nor the people who did in the past have showed up. I wonder if they're either stumped or so high in the world of ideas that coming to this level is beneath them. Another advantage is that if I write an email I can also link this thread with already made arguments back and forth that Stef would have made, but I would have already rebutted. It would save time for both of us. I also think that the show has gotten very far from the days of abstract philosophy and it's now mostly politics, alternative media coverage of world events - that I don't think he is in the mood for it. So having the debate pre-made here is better in this case. Stef: So you're debating that debate isn't true?? Me: No, I'm saying that debate has premises that look true, but can be proven wrong. It doesn't have to be the basis for morality, nor have you proven it must be. Stef: But if it isn't then -consequence consequence consequence-

If you think my view is occasionalist, you've misunderstood me wholesale. So what if it's chaos? Does it scare you? The world would remain exactly as it is. The only thing that's changed is your perspective.

Woah woops, but that is impossible to happen at the same time. Parent choice will always lead to voluntary segregation. If what you're scared of is black schools, then deal it with your community. But white people will go to white people schools because they don't like getting stabbed. This is why the left is so against choice and private education. They can't get their brown utopia if they just let people decide for themselves.