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Will Torbald

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Everything posted by Will Torbald

  1. Will Torbald
    Hi Gorila. Um, no I don't.
  2. Will Torbald
    If there are twins that shared similar lives even if apart, and some who had different lives - then every study would have immediately noticed that when they gathered the data and saw wildly disparate IQ among twins. But that's not the case. In those who had similar lives, similar IQ is had. In those with not so similar life, similar IQ too. If the nature and genetics argument was so weak that it would all be a result of faulty data - and that the opposite is true, that it's mostly nature - then most if not all studies would have already shown to be true. What I asked for, twin studies with the opposite result would be interesting instead.
  3. Will Torbald
    If the average in India is 82, and the average in the UK is 102 for students, that only means that the smart Indians are the ones leaving for the UK and the not so smart are staying. If you look at the bell curve charts for race and IQ you'll see a similar pattern, but displaced for each race with blacks as a group lagging behind hispanics, whites, and east asians.
  4. Will Torbald
    Doubt! Problematic! Skepticism! I was hoping for a conclusion at the end but all I got was buzzwords. Are there twin studies that have opposite conclusions instead of throwing the word "questionable" as if it meant anything?
  5. Will Torbald
    The image of an eye is two dimensional, and compound with another it becomes three dimensional. The sound of the ear is one dimensional, like a point. You can't turn a point upside down because it is the same on all sides. The experience of surround sound is from mixing two ears and distance.
  6. Will Torbald
    Complexity is an emergent property. The universe did not begin complex as it is. In fact, the universe began in a state so simple cosmologists actually have trouble understanding why. Without knowledge of physics it is rather easy to think the world is complicated, when in reality it is difficult to explain why it is not.
  7. Will Torbald
    Children can't have the same rights as adults and be a special moral class at the same time. They are not functionally equal, so they shouldn't be treated like tiny adults. It's a gradient process as they grow up that they are to be integrated into having the same rights and responsibilities. But it makes to no sense to think that if you treat them like equals they will be equals. It's magical thinking.
  8. Will Torbald
    Empirically speaking, it happened. Observation always trumps theory.
  9. Will Torbald
    If I remember well, since I listened to it a few months ago, is that it's language capable of grammar and highly conceptual forms. Apes and monkeys do communicate by transmitting basic information like a howl that means eagle, or a howl that means jaguar, but they don't go beyond it. While it may leave some gray areas to the question "is this animal sentient enough for morality?" it is not a pressing issue in the world. We don't hunt apes or farm chimps, we do it to animals we know are very unintelligent compared to us. If there were aliens that were smarter than us, we would compare them to our most intelligent geniuses, but so far none of them look at us like ants. Having a brain with an IQ farther than 200 doesn't seem to create tyrants, while instead low or moderate IQ seems far more effective in producing dictatorial megalomaniacs.
  10. Will Torbald
    The right way -> The argument is not about opposing moral categories within a species, it's about opposing "universal" moral categories. And if the morality is not "universal" then it's just opinion or aesthetics or culture. But if you can make two opposing so called "universals" it's not a universal at all.
  11. Will Torbald
    If you are working for a cause larger than yourself, you are already forgetting the mundanity of life.
  12. Will Torbald
    All theoretical science uses abstract mathematical models, but to claim that a mathematical approximation equals the non existence of what is being approximated is not accurate. You can make an equation detailing the path of a flying baseball, but the baseball still exists. By the way, no, Einstein was right and still is right. It would be the biggest scientific event of the century the overturn of GR, yet you only find niche blogs on the internet claiming they found proof he was wrong.
  13. Will Torbald
    Well, I agree. The NAP is deontological, not teleological. It doesn't point towards a goal, it points towards a starting line. However, starting from the point of "let's not kill each other" doesn't sound too bad to me. All other goals are ok with me as long they don't break the starting line. As in, if you want the goal of "let's have a society where people have access to affordable healthcare" I'd be down with it, and then you say "great, let's steal money to do it" I'd have to stop you there.
  14. Will Torbald
    What kind of truth?
  15. Will Torbald
    Yeah, but that is what the previous arguments called lying in self defense. If we can agree that we can shoot people in self defense, we can agree that we can lie too. In the case of this thread the example did not involve self defense, mostly just confusion, and the excuse was that since lying wasn't force or whatever, there wasn't anything unethical if I'm understanding the implications correctly. It's the kind of "lying is never bad because it's not bullets" that raises the doubt because the philosopher has just said that he can be lying to you at any moment for any reason.
  16. Will Torbald
    Like I said, I would agree with this if children were true equals like a friend or a relative, but they are not. They are tiny slaves to large masters and it's unfair to keep them to the same standard used on equal others. I may be wrong, and I only am an older brother, not a father, but I don't like crossing the streams when it comes to people. Some are above, some are equal, and some are below.
  17. Will Torbald
    UPB argues that if you try to evaluate the propotition "you ought to initiate force to be moral" you would not be able to make it a universal moral rule, but "you ought not initiate force" is perfectly universal and rationally consistent (empirically possible and logically accurate). Which doesn't mean it is universally believed, nor that it has to be believed universally for it to still be a valid statement. On the second topic of why different cultures have different moralities, it's not UPB's fault. It's the fault of their own lack of rational consistency. Those cultures formed on the base of opinion, not on the base of rigurous philosophical argumentation. It is their opinion to enforce or tolerate certain morals, but so what?
  18. Will Torbald
    I think aviet's point about culture is very important. Trump is about a culture war against regressive leftists. If Trump can defeat them it is hugely motivational for everyone else to reclaim back values like plain common sense and pride in american/western values. Politically he is not a libertarian, but without a cultural battle, there won't be libertarians at all.
  19. Will Torbald
    What two minutes the mother could have lost on washing the last dishes is not comparable to the loss of parental care.
  20. Will Torbald
    To forget about it. If you can live without worrying about life itself, you've already all you need.
  21. Will Torbald
    Thanks for sharing, it's a interesting idea. In this hyper-specific example it is easy to get caught in the details of the pancake or the soccer match. The general idea however is more like this: The subordinate must fulfill his duties. If he wishes to lower his burden, the master may lower his burden on the dependent party instead as a means of obtaining compliance. The approach of "if you're not working then I won't either" is fair, to me, only if both parties are equal in power. The child is dependent and has no leverage on the mother. It is not a fair bargain because the mother has nothing to lose, while the child is subservient. Insteadof creating a relationship of equals it creates a master-slave mentality in the child.
  22. Will Torbald
    There's an FDR video/podcast called The Death of Reason if I recall correctly. It's about how listening to counter arguments will actually manage to reinforce people's initial position out of pure emotion. It's a huge blow to the idea that people can change if only they listened to reason, but that is only for a minority of people.
  23. Will Torbald
    If writing a post unquoted about a general statement about the nature of lying and how arguing in favor of it destroys credibility is putting words into your mouth, then you have proven that I have more agency than you over your own mind, which is something you've been arguing is impossible so far when it comes to lying.
  24. Will Torbald
    Equivocation. The OP didn't ask if lying would leave a concussion but if his actions were unethical in the context of dating.
  25. Will Torbald
    If you're a philosopher and you say there's nothing wrong with lying, how can I trust your argument isn't a lie just to convince me? If you truly believe there is nothing wrong with lying at all, you just lost all credibility on anything you say because you have no honor to back your word anymore. It's futile and paradoxical.
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