Will Torbald

A relationship is a voluntary contract. You can't say it isn't about you because you are part of the association and she broke the contract. Anything else trying to paint you as self absorbed is vile.

Universally Preferred Behavior? Before the P stood for Preferable in UPB it was meant as Preferred. However, one argument against it was that it is possible for people to prefer to murder or to steal, aka murderers and thieves. This argument was accepted and thus it was revised. Preference and Choice. It is possible to choose B even when we prefer A for any reason. The argument that any choice is undeniable evidence of preference doesn't work in our everyday empirical experience. We know that even though we prefer vanilla, we eat chocolate sometimes. We know that even though you might prefer a certain person as a romantic partner, you could choose another one for various other reasons. What we prefer and what we end up ultimately choosing aren't always the same. If everything is a preference, then nothing can be not a preference- so how do you know preferences even exist without a not preference to compare it to? A preference is the result of our internal measurement of values against a given set of choices, and that process necessitates a consistent inner logic for it to ever be a preference. If every day of the week the value for vanilla changes within you, this inconsistency cannot be used for a preference. You might not know whether tomorrow vanilla will be better or worse, thus you can't determine your preference without it staying as an internally consistent value. Such values are determined through a logical process that analyses the needs and senses and compares all choices to the one that best satisfies the needs and pleases the senses. A vanilla ice cream might just fit the bill when you need lots of energy and a sweet taste. Maybe another ice cream is just as caloric, but the taste makes it so unpleasant that it's just not worth it. Thus preferences have internal logic and consistency to be preferences at all. Ultimately, UPB is a system of logically consistent behaviors where a set of binding interactions that contradict each other are considered rejected as a universal standard, namely aggressive behaviors. The initiation of the use of force cannot be a logically consistent practice amongst individuals. UPB morality might as well be called Logically Consistent Behavior since only those interactions that are logically validated are allowed (even if the action itself might be illogical like making random noises or postmodern art - because they are not contradicting, just absurd). If I were to argue that I prefer to murder, it would be to say in a higher level that I prefer logically inconsistent behavior. I would be saying that I have come to the logically consistent conclusion that I do not prefer to behave in logically consistent ways. Yes, it short circuits. Let me try it again. A person arguing that they prefer to behave in logically inconsistent ways is using a logically consistent method to arrive to a consistent preference of refusing to behave logically. This would self implode the argument against U Preferred B, and so it would revert U Preferable B back to Universally Preferred Behavior. If it's correct, obviously. What it could be said is that I choose to murder, not that I prefer to murder. Does that make sense, now? It only works if you accept a distinction between choice and preference. Some people might argue that all choices are preferences, no difference, but I can't accept that since I know that I choose against my preferences all the time in my life. And maybe you know it too. How many times did you think you would rather be doing something else than to read this while reading this post? You just chose to read it, but I don't know if you really prefered to. How can you even prefer to read it when you didn't even know its contents before you even read it? You just read the title, and made a risk assesment and a choice based on it. A lot of you have skipped it, too. Not you, I hope. I choose to murder. I don't prefer it. I can't prefer it. It's not an excuse. Aggression is a choice, not a damned ice cream flavor. That's not a murder confession, btw.

And what's the definition of real without referring to existing?

I think this is a fair objection to my example. I'll make another one, which is about continuum. Development isn't digital, as in hard notes in a piano, but it is analog like the strings of a violin where there is no hard distinction between one note or the other. Each person develops uniquely, and there is no one day in which a person incapable, and then suddenly capable. It is a question to be answered by each particular case, not as a general absolute guide.

That's why I said it was a simple analogy. All analogies are imperfect, so to use the fact that light exists outside of lamps is unfair. It simply is an example. Focus on the last bit about sources and products. Going deep into language distinctions for a moment, we only actually know of one kind of consciousness: human consciousness from the human brain. Other animals have brains and varying degrees of consciousness, but for philosophy's sake we'll stick to human consciousness. Now, a "consciousness" is strictly that which we experience with our brains. Not with a kidney, or with an elbow, or the skin. It is purely a function of the central nervous system. So, to ask if there are consciousness without brains would be like asking if there were mangos without mango trees. Do we really know if the only way to get a mango is from a mango tree? It's a very tautological question. If we were to find a mango that didn't come from a mango tree and instead came from a seaweed, there are two possibilities: 1- it's not a mango, it only looks like one. 2- it's a mango that comes from a seaweed, and the seaweed makes an exact replica of a mango. In terms of consciousness it would be if we were to find something that has consciousness but doesn't come from a brain: 1- it's not consciousness, it only looks like it. 2- it's consciousness that is replicated by some other mechanism. However, that mechanism would have to be a thing in itself. It has to be something made of stuff, matter, energy. To ask if consciousness can exist without matter would be to ask if anything can exist without matter - which would be like asking if something can exist without existing.

The general idea is that since actions are also statements, to murder is to make a statement that you don't care for the property or life of others. Since there is no reason to have empathy for such a person, there is no reason why anyone should care about that person either. You could try to care, but it wouldn't be reasoned caring. If you were to go and break the legs of the guy who broke your arms I just simply wouldn't judge you. If you went to kill the guy who murdered your parents, for example, I wouldn't judge you either.

In my personal interpretation, I would say there is not "should be killed" as a form justice, but that I don't think I can justify a "should not be killed" either. It is something people "can do" to a person who has crossed the line of murder, but not an imperative. I don't see how time would degrade immoral actions. If time decayed immorality, after enough time of decay, it would become moral, and that's not logical.

Not all questions that can be asked can be answered. What is the smell of seven? Can't be answered. Philosophy exists in a special space where principles are hard and eternal, but life is wobbly and whammy. It is an exercise of wisdom to translate principles into the real world. There's no hard answer.

I think it summarizes the UPB argument well. However, curiosity would ask from where did the universal principle come from in the first place. Is it made up, or is it fundamental?

Most political Libertarians (associated to the party, not the philosophy) are open borders cucks. They're the same as any other globalist statist. Of course they would have a seizure with Trump. They're not afraid of success, they are afraid of reality.

If you trust photographic evidence, then why don't you trust the photos of the Earth where it is seen to be a round planet? Why would you trust a picture of the antartic taken from a plane, but won't trust a picture of the moon, the planets, the sun, galaxies, and everything else? That's why I didn't post a picture: Because you can just deny any and all photographic evidence that you don't like. That isn't honest.

Going to matter from brain is a stronger leap than what is actually observed: Without a sufficiently complex brain there can be no consciousness. It isn't matter that has consciousness, it's a specific structure made of matter that manifests the consciousness. A simple analogy is that of the lamp and the light. The light is generated by the lamp. Without lamp, there is no light. You can ask if there can be light without a lamp (or a 'light source' to be more accurate) but then you would have to ask if "Things that come from sources can exist without the source" and that sounds much more easier to answer: No.

If we lived in a world with static opportunities for jobs or food, etc, then this question could be answered somewhat. But in a chaotic and changing environment even an adult can find himself unable to provide for himself.

Is it always immoral? I would say that no. Sometimes the initiation of the use of force can be used to save people from themselves. Imagine if a person is being hysterical and threatening to hurt themselves. It would be reasonable to restrain them, or to slap them, or to do something to make them come to their senses. Imagine a scenario where a person is otherwise being reasonable, but pushing them would save them from an incoming danger. They would understand that they were tackled as a benefit, not as an ill force. If a person initiates force in his personal life he isn't necessarily not an anarcho-capitalist since to be anti-ancap would be to profit from the use of force, not just use it spuriously like a brawl.

I think that when it comes to teaching morality to children, the challenge isn't what to tell them, but that they will very quickly find out that the world and most adults don't follow any morality at all. It is very easy to learn "don't attack people, only in self defense", but they would know that a rule also applies to the rule maker, and with all the spanking and punishments and governments and criminals and jealous gods and so on - they will also very quickly ask "why should I bother if no one else is moral?".

That's not entirely true. How you perceive events depends on your relative position to those events. It is not the perception of events that makes spacetime change, but that each perception is unique within spacetime. There is no absolute perception of time, only unique observers each having their own personal clocks. If you don't know homesteading arguments you won't know how it relates to ownership, of course, so I can't help you from that level.

Expand your perspective, see the big picture, here at Panorama Counseling. I think it's good.

Party pooper. Before politics there's philosophy. I'm pretty sure you're wrong about GR in the sense that spacetime, while it does exist, is a unique experience for each observer. That is why it's called Relativity, not Universality. My time and my experience in space is not an absolute, but a personal feature of my matter and energy. As on how this relates to ownership, refer to the argument of homesteading and how investing time into a raw material makes it yours. You are investing your unique time, not a shared universal time.

Do you really own your time? If you think in the classical description of time as an extrinsic and universal experience shared among everyone, you might wonder what is it that somebody means when they say that they own their time. For example, if I were to build a table, and then you were to steal it - we could say that you've retroactively enslaved me by appropriating the fruits of my labored time. Usually you would just argue that your time is yours axiomatically or rationalistically. That arguing about it would be using your time in the first place. But what is it about time that makes it, well, yours? Enter the theory of General Relativity. Before Einstein, time was understood to be an objective feature of nature. It was a shared and collective experience amongst every person or thing. Clocks were universal. Time on Mars is the same time on Earth. But if something is universal and absolute amongst every person, how can any individual own it? Can you own electricity? You could own an electric generator and the electricity it produces, but you can't own "Electricity" as a universal concept and force of nature. Same with time, but we don't have time generators either, so time would have remained as an extrinsic factor of the world. However, that didn't last long. It would be very complicated to explain it here, but GR changed everything. In GR, time is not an extrinsic absolute, but an intrinsic and relative experience for everyone and everything. Maybe you've heard or seen a recent movie by Christopher Nolan called Interstellar. In it, explorers travel near a black hole and experience a phenomenon called time dilation. The passage of time for one person flows differently for another given different physical conditions. Gravity can affect the flow of time, as well as space travel at high speeds. This effect has been measured to be a real thing that actually happens in the real world. It is used as a way to properly calibrate GPS satellites since time runs slightly differently in space where the force of gravity is weaker than on the surface of the Earth. But you might be wondering, what does it have to do with philosophy or property rights? Since GR posits time as a uniquely personal experience for each observer, every person owns its own version of time itself. Your passage of time is different from mine. My clock will never be ticking at the same time as yours. Time is different on Mars than on Earth. This means that my time will forever be a personal, inextricable, inescapable, relative, subjective-yet-objectively-measurable experience. When I use my labor, energy, and time to homestead and create property, it really is my time. And my time only. When you steal from me your really are violating my time. In the end, a theory of property rights would need not only to be useful, but to be true as well. We understand that the mark of truth requires reason and evidence. It was nice to have reason for property rights. Now I think that we also have evidence.

They have. There are satellite images. There are commercial flights that travel across the Antarctic to save time. You've been reading fringe sites with very poor information where lies like these are spread.

From what I understand, it would be negative deontology. You have a duty to NOT initiate force.

Actually I had a good education in private schools. The science teachers were helpful, but I still learned from other sources.

Yes, because it makes a distinction between "being good" and "doing good". The person who doesn't help isn't doing good, but is it being good? UPB conflates being with doing far too graciously. If you do evil, you are evil. If you don't do evil, you are good? I think this is a translation error between being and doing. In the other theory, to be good it is not enough to do good. To be evil it is not enough to do evil. I'll have to flesh it out to explain what I mean in a more specific way. The aesthetic categories are somewhat useful, but what is aesthetically preferable to one person can be aesthetically negative to someone else given cultural differences or just context. UPB would say that a person not helping simply looks bad, but is still being good.

All scientific problems have premises. If the premises are wrong, the entire solution to the problem will be illogical. I think you might be getting confused with problems explained by people who don't understand the premises. You don't have to believe anything on authority, but when you try to learn on your own, you can be deceived by bad science very easily. In a round object you feel like you move in a straight line, but you are actually moving along the curvature of the ball. You can only realize the curvature from a distant perspective. There are other ways in which the roundness of the earth was confirmed even before planes or rockets. The Greeks had already calculated the size and curvature of the earth with almost exact precision using time and shadows. At this point in time, with all the evidence there is for a planetary earth, the only way you can be doubtful is if you are being deceived by faulty premises and people without scrupulous behavior.

Yes, that is a very poignant example. In do think that I have modified theory that would answer it in a way that helping and not helping do end with different categories even if not helping isn't evil per se.