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Will Torbald

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Everything posted by Will Torbald

  1. I used to be a theist, so I know that even small chips like these eventually crack the rock. Not overnight, and definitely not now, and probably not him, but if it's just one low cost sentence, I just pay the small toll.
  2. If you don't want to me to disagree with you, you want me to agree with you. You want me to believe you just because you want it. Can you enforce that? Ethics is about behaviors that can be enforced. You can enforce a "no murder" rule, but if you were to enforce an "agree with me" rule, would that be moral? Disagreement is simply aesthetically negative behavior. If X is true, it is in bad form to deny X's truth value, but in no way can you enforce the truth of X on people. For example, UPB is true, but you disagree. Can I aim a gun at a UPB disenter for his thought crime?
  3. Your criticism with the democratic system currently used is correct, I believe. However, fixing a democracy won't make people wish for anarchy because, if the system works, why change it? Your asking "before we promote life, how can we make death seem nicer?" or something like that.
  4. If you have some time to study the physics of time, it would be better to catch up on some concepts of time. To say that time is an illusion has absolutely no scientific value with proof, evidence, or use in any experiment. Here's a lecture by Richard Feynman about time: However, if time were an illusion, you could be able to travel to the past. You can't. Also, no, we are not entangled with each other. It is purely a rare physical phenomena between particles. That is the kind of new age woo woo that distorts real science. If something is before being even exists, it is being during unbeing, which is a contradiction.
  5. I'll submit that I may have judged it too early, yes. It didn't do anything for me, but I see why others find it appealing. There's nothing for me on doubt, I prefer post doubt.
  6. The first consequence is accuracy. If we can't define ourselves accurately, we won't be able to apply the best course of action for any given circumstance. Using the binary scheme works broadly, but breaks down on the very minute. It also solves the "necessary evil" concept by making self defense not a wrong thing to do that we pardon, but actually it is one of the few good things you can do. The protection of the innocent, the self protection, the revolts against injustice. These are not evil things we put up with. It's about the one right thing you can do with your time. In the realm of thought there are people who spread misinformation, bad sophistry, mysticism, and so on. Combating myths and untruths is also another good thing to do. In that way, proper philosophy, reason, and science become high virtues to aspire to rather than condemn - as it often happens in the mainstream.
  7. You're asking for omniscience, which isn't practical for any purposes of life. Quantum woo woo is not absolutely unpredictable since there are strict probabilities for every outcome, but two electrons colliding will never become a flan dessert.
  8. If it takes a man and a woman for conception to happen why is it the sole decision of the woman the fate of the result? -It takes an aggressive intrusion on her body to abort the pregnancy. If someone else can decide for you what they do with your body, wouldn't that be a violation of self ownership?
  9. Haha! How funny! No! It's murder. The skepticism of science is not useful in ethical debates. Absolutes in philosophy do exist. You're still expecting us to believe you at face value and with absolute certainty of reason.
  10. "There is no right and wrong" or "There is no truth, it depends" -Is it true that there is no truth? Is it right to believe there is no right? "government is different" -Government steals so that it can give it back after taking a portion of it to itself (ideally, but I hear they actually just spend it all and print it back) "the extraction of money is voluntary" Can you say no? What happens if you refuse? "money are extracted at source and if you do not receive the money in the first place, then they cannot be taken away from you, therefore not theft" It's theft for the company. -- "What is the best way to argue from here and point out the contradiction?" Do you really think that if the people you are arguing with realized the contradiction they would become voluntarists? Are they really just one argument away from leaving behind all they've ever believed in, educated themselves on, and forged relationships and friendships around? People don't become government apologists because they reasoned into it. It's Stockholm Syndrome to the tenth degree. Their brains literally find it impossible to think outside their world without encountering a wall of anxiety and panic.
  11. Imagine if the ancap solution were equally effective to the statist one. Would you choose it? Now, imagine if the solution were worse than the statist one, and housing was actually more expensive in the thought experiment. Would you choose statism over a free society for it?
  12. Do you have an example of absolute abscence of predictability in the real world? No quantum woo woo either.
  13. I thought it was very concise actually. There's a lot of content, but the content itself is on point and easy to read. It's great to know that your kids are maturing really well, and the stories were fun too. At this point it is more than peaceful parenting, but fully philsophical parenting. Kids will always tend to herd a little with the majority as an instinctive measure. It's just much more efficient to sense changes in the crowd for protection in nature, and things like that. What's important is to nurture their discretion as they age to grow out of the basic instinct into higher critical thinking.
  14. Working for free is such a drag. I used to have a similar experience with arguments, but eventually I decided I wasn't going to teach for free. If I manage to change a person's perspective is to make them doubt themselves, but I'm not a search engine.
  15. I was thinking about music in the time between posts, and I think you make a valid case here. There are three realms of action: thought, word, and physical - and music enters the word/sensory category. A song can inspire acts of agression as much as appease them given the right use of virtue or vice. It does not enter natural actions like eating or having sex or whatever since it's very artificial and deliberate. Like your comment about how every action could be used for good or bad, I agree on you with this one. Killing is just act of causing death, but murder is against someone's rights, while lethal self degense is good because it protects them.
  16. The same old "your logic is true now, but maybe later it can change, therefore I get to be immoral all I want because science".
  17. The problem with this hyper skepticism is that you're conflating theory with observation. In no point in the future will we observe objects falling up without a change in the actual force of gravity without the universe being destroyed. What can happen is that a new theory explaining gravity will arise, but it will not contradict what we have already proven given general relativity. It will simply expand it, not contradict it.
  18. What catches my attention is that while you were reasonable with your son, you didn't ask your daughter anything either. Do you think it is right for her to learn that she can control what other people say around her? To teach her that it is good by default that she has to cover her ears and tell people to shut up because she doesn't like a word? It sounds like what is happening with college campuses censoring speech over safe spaces and trigger warnings. I'm not a parent, and you can just blast me out if you think I am being intrusive. It's just my opinion on it. Why would she learn that "certain words are bad" or that "she doesn't like it". How does she know? Is she just repeating some fear mongering taught in school? Was she traumatized by those words before? It just seems like the origin of major problems with freedom of expression in adults having their origins on PC kids.
  19. This is not quite true. Quantum mechanics has behaviors that seem counter intuitive, but for the nature of the particles, and what they are, it makes sense for them to behave the way they do. In reality, all physics is quantum mechanics. The same equations of probability are applicable for everyday occurrences. It's just that the probabilities of weird quantum phenomena are almost completely zero at the level of our senses. That is, quantum physics does not work in illogical ways, it simply works in probability, which is not illogical.
  20. This is complete nonsense.
  21. Excuse me if I don't share your enthusiasm for Christian Rap.
  22. You can have absolute certainty that if the forces of the universe were to change, everything would be destroyed. We actually do have reason to think that the Higgs Field/Boson could change due to an effect of quantum tunneling and it could end the universe in an instant. The probability of it happening are incredibly small, but exist. That doesn't mean that we should worry about 2+2 = Duck sometime later.
  23. The opposite of physical is verbal. I find that the best way of dealing with desires of physical angst is to verbalize them very specifically, to the subject of the anger (in my mind), and in a clear and cool headed way. Writing or just talking out loud as if the person was there is how I manage my anger. When you're in control that way, it's hard to feel helpless.
  24. There is a very good test for the laws of the universe. When they change, the universe would be immediately destroyed. Too bad we wouldn't be there to know it, so just know that if the forces of nature were to suddenly and spontaneously change we wouldn't even be able to feel it (because we'd all be dead). What I mean to say with that is that you can be certain that as long as the world exists it won't change properties.
  25. Music saved my life isn't specific enough to be judged. Here are particular examples capable of review: Playing music allowed me to earn money to sustain myself: N state action, plain and simple survival. Listening to music inspired me to seek help for self destructive behaviors: Self destruction isn't objectively immoral, so it hasn't stopped a bad action to happen either. Living and dying are part of the Natural/Normal/Neutral state of things. Death in itself isn't a force of evil, just of nature. To delay death by means of music isn't deterring any bad action. If you were to say, however, that "music saved my life by stopping my murder" you would have to be very precise in how it happened to be capable of validation.
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