-
Posts
994 -
Joined
-
Days Won
11
Everything posted by Will Torbald
-
There really isn't any physical or material link between a person and its property. In that way, yes, flapping our mouths to make a theory of property rights is in the realm of rationalizations and not empirical evidence. There is no experiment that proves it materialistically, nor can we observe a tiny silver chain connecting my car to myself. We just cross our fingers, lock our doors, and hope no one steals it. No amount of magical writing will change that, no amount of logic and sweat poured by libertarians will keep a criminal outside my window if it wants my stuff. The world will end, meaning your life will end and all your achievements and all of humanity's achievements will be forgotten, is a very liberating thought. Since in the end nothing will matter, we are not obligated to act in any meaningful way either. Go eat a hot dog, watch TV, get a girlfriend, and watch the end of it all with cool sunglasses.
- 63 replies
-
- pragmatism
- ownershipe
-
(and 1 more)
Tagged with:
-
Everybody is Just Horrible.
Will Torbald replied to NotDarkYet's topic in Libertarianism, Anarchism and Economics
Getting pissed at the void doesn't deserve hugs. You're choosing to get angry yourself. If you don't believe you are choosing your enemies, your battles, and your frustrations, you are playing a deterministic victimhood game where you are the hostage of your own mind. I don't have sympathy for that. Go on, downvote this and tell me how unempathic I am. But please, do it only after you realize you are in control of yourself. -
Yeah, it's within the realm of probability that maybe sometime the laws of physics, thus the laws of logic, could change here, but until we have empirical evidence that they have changed we should still behave as if they haven't.
-
1 - If this were true it would only matter in the planet where that happened, not here. 2 - Highly precise experiments at the LHC are proving the symmetry of the universe, that is the consistency of the laws of nature understood so far. Apologies for not having a source at hand, but it's new stuff, but searching symmetry and LHC would yield the results I'm talking about. 2.1 - This also means that wherever we look at the universe is the same. It simply expands, but its characteristics are equal everywhere in the universe. 3 - Therefore you would need an entirely different universe from this one to have the effects you describe. And that universe would have it's own logic,a and ethics would have to apply to their laws. We wouldn't be cross compatible.
-
It probably is according to science. It wouldn't make any difference with regards to human behavior on this planet.
-
I dismissed all other objections because this one renders all others unnecessary. You're making distinctions of time, bringing the future to the present for your convenience. "Children will become adults, so they get the rights of adults". Oh. Can I say then "Embryos wil become children will become adults" so any abortion is murder? Can I say sperm will become embryos will become children will become adults so masturbation is genocide? Can I say that? Because I can keep going. Can I say that children will become adults will become old people so they can get a discount or skip the line at the bank? They will be old one day, why not give them those rights now? Can I say that cows will one day evolve to be sentient so that I might as well treat them like they're sentient now? If you don't make a hard distinction of when someone becomes a moral actor it is just an opinion. Laws use age. If we go by age the kid who abused her was also excused from his own actions because he was just a kid. No moral actor, no reason, no abuse. If the mother had found out, and initiated retaliaton, would you defend him by saying he was just a kid? No ma'am, you see, he was not a moral actor. Please forgive him and move on. Ah, but then you'd say, maybe, that it's the fault of that kid's parents and that they should pay and do time in a reverse "original sin" where parents go to jail for what their kids with no moral agency do to other kids without moral agency. Or perhaps you have an agency test, where they get a moral actor score, and you can just pass that and become responsible for your actions. Do you have that?
-
1 - Yeah, it's a method, not a claim in itself. 2 - We don't live in a bizarre universe, so all morality is for the people living in this universe.
-
An argument against capitalism
Will Torbald replied to fschmidt's topic in Libertarianism, Anarchism and Economics
If I hire a maid to wash my clothes, does she own the washing machine now that she's using it? -
The title says "subtly shaming" so, it would have to prove that the thought they are proposing are merely "subtle", and belong in shame. 1 - Compliments That Come At The Expense Of Other Women: Subtle shaming of women as a collective. 2 - Concern trolling: Subtle shaming of their personal choices of wardrobe and other decisions. 3 - Slut-shaming strangers: Literally shaming, and by association. If one woman is a slut for doing that, this other woman is too if she does it. 4 - Gendered language for what's good and bad: Use of "pussy" and "man up" to shame people. It's subtle and shaming, too. 5 - Speaking over women: Yeah, subtle way of shaming her speech. Perhaps more than subtle. 6 - Gross stuff: Still in the realm of shaming women for their natural processes. Some are gross, I get it, but overreacting is the problem. 7 - Overemotional: It is a shame tactic, and it is subtle. Sometimes the anger is justified, and maybe sometimes it isn't. 8 - Feminine men: Another way to shame men by comparing them with women. So they set out to list out subtleties, and they listed subtleties. They wanted to address gendered shaming, and they did. By these standards the article has merit in what it wanted to say. Why they want to do it? In order to change the culture from the inside and to make people more feminist. Is it a big deal though? No. There are bigger problems with women in the real world to worry about this as if it were a strong priority. Which is why conservative media lambasts the liberals for articles like these while staying silent about actual misogyny and violence towards women. It feels like misdirection and completely unnecessary theatrics if you are truly concerned about women's issues.
-
Science is open to debate and scrutiny, with the evidence being shared to the public. If there are people who blindly follow research results like gospel that's unfortunate, but science is specifically designed for scrutiny and skepticism of previously held ideas.
-
If I feed a child poison, cloth them with poison ivy, and shelter them in a dumpster, harm is being inflicted. We were not discussing actively inflicted abuse though. I said the mother who didn't know is a passive form of abuse, not an actively inflicted abuse. I made the distinction of passivity to be aesthetically negative, cruel if you want to call it, but the active abuser to be immoral. It's not a matter of running away, it's a matter of letting someone else know in order to get help. An argument based on the way society treats children is not based on principles. They may live in a very protective society and letting know of the abuse would be enough to get help. Or they could live in a world were that is the norm, and people would just scuff it off, but if they live in that society why hide it? Why keep it secret for years? So no, they don't live in a society where that is normal, so telling someone else would have resulted in something being done. The abuse wasn't being done by the parents, but by another child. In another time the father was physically and verbally abusive, and I never disagreed with that being immoral. It's a serious question. How many implicit social contracts are there in the world right now? More than two hundred or something? I am being sold a social contract on the premises of positive moral obligations. I am only morally obligated not to initiate force or violate property rights. The argument of positive actions being obligated is what leads to religion and socialism. "It is wrong not to help" or "it is wrong not to pay taxes" why because sin or social contract. If I can't be convinced of positive obligations in this case, I can't be convinced of obligations on any level. Because if there existed such a case where positive moral obligations were valid, then you'd have double standards. I am being told that if I kidnap people I am morally obligated to feed them. What if I say that I am making a huge fence and and that I am morally obligated to feed the people in that fence? Why we would call that monarchy, isn't that right? I wonder what happened with all the kings. That's why I am asking for blood and ink. Where is the contract? I was given an example of buying a car and how when the seller keeps the car it is immoral - yeah, because it's now my car and we made a contract. We sign those things. We give proof of our commitment. I said how the only way a woman would have a child just to let it die on purpose by not feeding it is if the woman was forced to have the baby against her will and not abort - because fringe cases being used against me are irrational and fall outside the realm of the reasons why people do what they do. Actions or inactions without reason in a hypothetical scenario can just be dismissed without reason, too. Again, actions or inactions without reason in a hypothetical scenario can just be dismissed without reason, too. Why people do what they do matters. Both of you decided that having a child was a good idea given your circumstances. Either your minds were physically altered (head trauma, coercion, mental trauma) and now you think it is a bad idea to have a child or your circumstances are now negative towards having a child like war, natural disasters, or a terrorist attack. Scenarios so removed from reality have no weight to be used for morality.
-
Alright, what I understand is that you're saying that you can't prove science with science. Or evidence with evidence. Or axioms with axioms. That you need an external agent to validate something. So you would say science is not validated by science, but it's a useful method. If you wanted to validate science you would need something else. Let's call that something else super science. Super science proves science to be true. But what proves super science to be true? We need something else to prove super science for it to be true. Let's call that something else Ultra Super Science. Ultra Super Science proves Super Science to be true to prove Science. But what proves Ultra Super Science? Let's call it Mega Ultra Super Science. In this way Mega Ultra Super Science proves Ultra Super Science proevs Super Science proves Science. But what proves Mega Ultra Super Science? To be honest, I don't know what comes after that. Maybe there is, maybe there isn't.
-
Please cease the assumptions of my character. They are completely unfounded and irrelevant. I am approaching this with a surgical knife of curiosity because I care. I could have walked away and not lose points like a waterfall for asking questions, but I genuinely believe in the objections I am making. You cannot create a positive moral obligation by abducting people, that's the point of my last objection. You are being evil by abducting a person, you don't owe them anything. That is the point of being wrong, that you don't have to do right by others. It'd be like saying that Darth Vader was a pretty bad person for not giving food to Princess Leia while she was being abducted instead of pointing out that abducting her in the first place makes him evil. You can't go moralizing to a kidnapper because that's what they want, to use people selfishly, and now you are telling them that they have to be nice. It's so illogical. You can't create an obligation to be good by doing evil. Therefore, you can't compare abductions with children because one is evil, and the other isn't. And my comparison of the two reveals why it's a false analogy. Who cares if the child isn't a moral actor? Being a moral actor only matters to what the actor does, not what is being done to actor itself. A child can't be blamed for his actions, but you can blame actions done to a child. What if I were to say that it doesn't matter that I verbally insult a child and make it cry because it's not a moral actor? Why? Children are not hostages. They can run away from home. They can tell the police, teachers, neighbors, friends, anyone else that they are being abused. A hostage cannot do it by being literally chained down. Children are only scared into being separated, but there's no physical boundary. What pledge? Where is the pledge? Where is the contract? No one is signing with blood and letter to do anything when they have a child. It is complete philantropy to raise children, not an obligation. That is where I can't see the proof of any positive moral obligation, where you are just stating it, not giving any proof beyond the statement, giving a false analagy and a bad example with taking hostages, and then accusing me of being irrational and trying to protect abusers. That is completely beside the point and an attempt to attack me instead of the arguments. No one allowed anyone to be molested. If I don't know my house is being robbed that doesn't mean I allow it to be robbed. And you end again with children being hostages without acknowledging the moral paradox it creates. Own the consequences of your morality. In your morality children = hostages. If hostages = immoral then children = immoral. Refute it. Saying that children aren't moral actors do not excuse actions being done to them because that would excuse any immorality done to them, and then the whole argument is moot.
-
Moral Intuitions: which ones are important?
Will Torbald replied to bugzysegal's topic in Philosophy
So is a thumb or a pancreas. At the point of distinction it is possible for aliens to develop intelligence beyond optative moral behavior and use entirely new ways of thinking, a super-ethics imbedded through millions of years of ethical selection. At that point moral discussions would be deemed irrelevant because for us morality is a choice, and they already have it as their instinct. -
Yeah, I get that. What I don't get is what would be something meaningful after defining evidence as meaningless. If everything is meaningless, it can't be meaningless because it can't be compared to something meaningful - thus meaninglessness requires something to be meaningful. What is something meaningful in a world where axioms are meaningless?
-
Is this the example of something meaningful?
-
Can you give an example of something that is meaningfu, then? I'm really not following why truth and facts and axioms are meaningless. What's the consequence of being meaningless? You argue that they are still useful, so what's the point?
-
Meaningful in what way? If something is true that's all there is to it. It's just a fact. Axions are not rules, just self evident facts.
-
By this narrative all children being born are hostages even when they are being fed and taken care of because they didn't consent to being alive in the first place. If having hostages is immoral, then having children is immoral since there is no difference in the created moral obligation of making a hostage or a child.
-
You said "Nothing makes it true that we don't mean to..." so, if nothing makes it true and we are just deciding that it is true, that is the definition of being arbitrary.
-
Because we use mutually agreed symbols to define what we mean. We don't argue the symbols, we argue what the symbols represent. The truth is not in the symbols, but in the message we agreed would be transmitted through them. In this way, by saying that symbols are arbitrary you are are saying that truth is arbitrary - but it's a false analogy.
-
We accept those rules because they are evidently true, it is not an arbitrary decision. I could decide that 2+2=1 but when I try it out I always get 4 chairs. In the same way, we don't say axioms are true because we accept them, it's because they are evidently true every time we put them in practice.
-
Moral Intuitions: which ones are important?
Will Torbald replied to bugzysegal's topic in Philosophy
Murder and killing are different things. Killing is just the act of taking a person's life, but murder is initiation of agression leading to taking a person's life against the person's interests. If a life wants to die and asks for it, we call that assisted suicide. The act of murder is an imposed devaluation towards another sentient life, and that is why it is immoral. Not because a life has been taken (which can happen with suicide or with assisted suicide, or with an accident), but because a sentience has been devalued by someone else of equal value. This would create a principle which would say "The imposition of devaluation against another sentience is immoral" and that includes all forms of aggressions and attacks.