vahleeb

Hey Mike, Was wondering which are those two "outlier" states from the Violent Crime and Diversity plot graph. I'm talking about the one on the most right with over 80% diversity and under 300 per 100000 crime rate, and the one third from the left in terms of diversity (a little under 15%) but with over 300 per 100000. I know I can go back and correlate through the sources, but it'd literally be replotting the graph, and you guys probably still have the excell source of the graph, right? (If I had to guess, I'd say Washington for the former and Minesotta for the latter). Great video, btw.

Hey junglecat, I can only speak from personal experience. The realisation and acceptance of my own finality was a trying time from a psychological standpoint. Many a sleepless night accompanied it. I had long abandoned the church at this point but I was still clinging onto the ideas of soul, of energy conservation, of one big bowl of energy where we get to integrate once we die, the usual dribble. I can't say that I was even actively preoccupied with theism at this point, in life. One day, around noon, I just came to the immovable realisation that I will die someday and that it will be for real. From there, logic kind of took over and as I accepted the immovability of the fact that I will die, I found all the little cobwebs that I had around the subject about death not being final, just faded away. Two days later I had the best sleep of my adult life. I guess if I were to characterise it, it was a sobering experience since the acceptance of the fact made me see things much clearer. However I can't say that it was morbid or saddening before or after, and the thing is that once I've accepted it, I found I haven't given it much thought since. Personally I think we all go through the five stages of dying (DABDA) ever since we first see death on the horizon. Atheists, I have found, get to the final A with a lot more life to live than others, and I think that's an overall positive. Progeny, bloodline and the species have never been part of my thoughts, but I guess I'm also no Bergman either. As far as the original poster and my obvious avoidance of the question, it all had to do with the fact that he was a 13-year old boy, who wasn't even looking for the answer himself, but was looking for talking points to take back to his priest, which is something I felt should be discouraged if the boy is ever to evolve into a free thinker at all.

Will, can you go back to my cat question? I feel ignored

Will, say one cold rainy evening you pick up a cat off the street and bring it into the house. You feed it for about a week and then you leave for vacation for two weeks somewhere else, while leaving the cat locked in the home with no food. Would you consider that moral/immoral/morally neutral? Have you broken any obligations?

Hi Merrifield, 1. No, otherwise they wouldn't record "time of death" after the plug is pulled. 2. Not in the case that I have laid out. I'd even go so far as to argue that you can't initiate force against a non-sentient entity. I mean you "could" technically, but does it count? Is it any different from punching the side of a mountain? If your aggression is not perceived (in the moment or in the future), is it even an aggression? (And no, you can't kill someone in their sleep either, because 1 they are still sentient, 2 you cannot establish for sure that they do not perceive dying at all, 3 you are violating their reasonable expectation of waking - self ownership derived - when they have voluntarily gone to sleep). 3. Not in the physical sense. Certainly that is a question for DNA. In the psychological or in the moral sense? That's a complex topic, but I don't think that's what you were asking. In any case, that's not at all what I was saying. I was saying that sentience is a requirement for murder to exist.

Hi TIG, I think the part that is missing from your presentation is wether or not Murray & Herrnstein's 1994 book is referencing the very same studies debunked by Joseph or not. If you had that, you'd have a bulletproof case. Personally, I think that the conclusion that IQ is a predominantly genetic trait is extremely counterintuitive, however, since the discovery of the "warrior-gene" that Stef references at the end of this presentation: I have to give a larger leniency as to genetic theories.

Yes I did. Because the discussion was over because AFK chose to retreat from the thread entirely, not because anyone had actually convinced anyone of anything. His last post ends on Which translates into I don't have any desire to carry the conversation forward. I made an observation as to what may have been the reason behind his desire to retreat, while stating that on the base arguments, I don't agree with AFKs point of view, but somehow that was perceived as attack? I'd love to take you up on that challenge, dsayer, but for now it is your behaviour that is driving our conflict forward. So I'll counter-issue a challenge for you: Try and answer at least three of the following questions: 1. what are you asking me to do, in order to prove to you that he's just trying to argue his position? 2. the behaviour that I have observed would be described by what better word so as to not "poison the well"? 3. How would you call then encouragement to disengage? 4. Can you point out a single logical fallacy in any of my previous comments? 5. Where have I done any of the following: personalisation, ad hominem, and/or lashing out. 6. What is your null hypothesis for "poisoning the well", for "begging the question" and for the accuracy of your description of my behaviour? And the reward I will give is that the following post I make on this thread will not be about you.

Hi shrigall, is pulling the plug on the braindead ending their life? You are introducing force into the debate when it is not necessary. It's a level of complexity higher than the base process. No one is performing the abortion against the mother's will in my theory and the foetus doesn't have a will if they're not sentient. You're also reversing the argument: when is killing justified?". The position in the theory is that it is morally neutral. The theory I'm pointing to is in a comment that was a reply to Des, that will appear above your post, once it clears moderation. Please indulge the process before replying. (The magic of timeline discontinuity thanks to "moderation" strikes again. I won't restate the theory here, since that's probably what triggered the moderation in the first place) I'm sorry if you feel I am addressing you unfairly, since you did make your comment while unaware of the theory I put forward (even though it is just a rehashing of the position I have defended all throughout the thread).

"Stealing is good" is not computed to be unworkable because it produces the effect "I can't be good so I'll stop caring", it is unworkable because through the definition of the act of theft it precludes all people from being moral at the same time, thus making morality non-universal. Whatever happens after this first and closest derived contradiction is irrelevant. Syllogistic reasoning stops at the first contradiction of the truth it encounters. As far as wether or not abortion is immoral, my whole position throughout this thread is that we have an evidence where wilfully ending another life is not morally reprehensible (the case of the brain-dead) and that the only variance between the brain-dead and those for whom ending their lives is morally reprehensible is sentience (that means the capacity to feel, perceive or experience subjectively). We also know for a fact that the foetus does not develop sentience for a while (certainly not before some kind of brain is developed) in the womb. Therefore I would argue that abortion during this period of time, would have to fall under the same moral rule applied when pulling the plug on the brain dead. The principle used here is murder has a moral quality (it is immoral) while pulling the plug doesn't (it is morally neutral). Therefore it must follow that murder has to be connected to sentience (which is the only difference between the two subjects of the respective actions). The are problems with this position on abortion, in that we do not have a clear cut line of when this change in status occurs for the foetus (from non-sentient to sentient) and that it is very hard to determine empirically anyway which makes most people (on both sides of the debate) that prefer to hold on to their "religious" (both pro and against abortion) beliefs discourage investigating the matter further. There would be, I think, a second tier debate wether or not abortion would be moral even after that line is crossed, depending on certain characteristics (I'm not even sure of this position, but I can't flesh it out with anyone because no one will let go of their religious beliefs long enough to even go on an exploration with me), but until we can reach an agreement, at least for the purpose of the debate, going down that path would complicate things even further.

Ok, I see you don't respond to reason. Let's see if I can make you respond to your theory, instead. No they do not. All of what you say doesn't exist, because I don't want it to, so my world view is the only one that can exist for me. How can you still be talking and disagreeing with me, when I don't will you to?

What is your null hypothesis, dsayers? How are you not married to your own conclusions? Why would I, by your own example, first have to prostrate myself to you ("you are right to say"/"i feel frustrated") in order to elicit from you an example of an alternate behaviour than the one I have employed and that you have judged as lacking in integrity? Let me reiterate the "conflict" here just so there is no doubt what I am talking about (and also to illustrate the flow of ideas that I have received from this conversation, in bold are my open ended questions that you have not responded to, in underline are your characterisations of my actions that I do not agree with): Just to sum it up from the top: What is your null hypothesis for "poisoning the well", for "begging the question" and for "accurately described"? How am I not displaying the acceptance for capacity for error when I am literally asking you to correct my behaviour time and time again where it fails to meet your standards? And judging by your last comment, you are bypassing all of these questions because "I am not asking you properly" ?? Do you have any idea what a discussion between equals entails? I cannot agree with you without first knowing what you would expect of me. I don't think that's unreasonable in any way.

This is the logical fallacy again: "there is no existence apart from consciousness, since everything we experience is" It's called a cause/effect reversal. Things that you don't experience still exist (you experience them because they exist, not the other way around). The world didn't become round all of a sudden because Magellan circumnavigated it. There is no relationship between the existence of arbitrary things and one's perception of them or not. To sum it up, from Stephan's Introduction to Philosophy: either reality exists independent of our senses, in which case we can have a discussion and a debate because there is an external standard of correctness, either reality is subordinate to our senses in which case debating is completely pointless. You (or this bishop) cannot attempt to convince me of anything, if reality is moulded by perception, because your/his reality is subjective (dependant on perception) and therefore just as valid as my reality (whatever that may be). There is no external standard of correctness in your/his scenario by which I would be constrained to accept your/his position because your/his position is that my position is just as valid if not more valid for myself regardless of what my position really is.

Debating people assumes the existence of a standard, the capacity for error and the capacity for correction. I would assume that once he engaged in debate with me (I certainly didn't single him out with my first comment) he invested himself for his own benefit. I wasn't aware I needed a life coach. I was under the impression this was a free exchange of ideas between equals.

So, you don't have the time to show someone the error of their ways and show me where my integrity faltered where I genuinely asked for your help? I find it illuminating that you shine the spotlight immediately back on your qualities and away from whatever comments I was making. If you can point out a single logical fallacy in my previous comment, I will certainly appreciate it. On the question of integrity itself, if you look up the Miriam-Webster dictionary, it is a more common sense of the word that it is a characteristic of a person, rather than a characteristic of a behaviour. That makes my misunderstanding of your original reply excusable. Furthermore, you admit yourself that I have misunderstood your comment ("I was referencing behaviors, not a person"), but instead of addressing the misunderstanding and the good will of not calling out an ad hominem (based on that misunderstanding), you just tax me with another thumbs down for "doubling down". Next you are calling me out that I have resorted to "personalisation, ad hominem, and lashing out". Where have I done any of that?

You're a very quick to judge person aren't you, dsayer? Ever wonder if in that quickness you might lose track of certain issues that, when taken into consideration, might not make judgement that quick and easy? You have accused me, as of your last post, of lack of integrity? How exactly would I be more integer? I can't argue his point, because I happen to think he doesn't have a point. Would you like me to quote his "arguments" back to you? You have already read them. What use would that be? He is advocating for something in his original post, he is pushed to action by a "manipulating" comment ("why don't you start?") but the rest of his comments are debate. They are not insulting, they are opinions which he tries to argue. If he were speaking in a vacuum and quoting the scripture of Baal as his reasons, I might have agreed that he makes no effort to argue, but at this point I have no clue what you are asking me to do, in order to prove to you that he's just trying to argue his position. Second, I poison the well and beg the question because I use the word "hounding"? It was my opinion that not all of his posts in this thread deserved thumbs down. I tried to highlight that all of his posts in this thread GOT thumbs down regardless of the point he was making in them. I further asserted that this type of behaviour, if it's true, will have the effect of encouraging disengagement, if someone were to care about the amount of down-votes they received. As such, the behaviour that I have observed would be described by what better word so as to not "poison the well"? Third, "forced" is another poison the well argument? How would you call then encouragement to disengage? Finally, your argument about manipulation would have had so much more weight had I been proven wrong with my prediction. Lastly, I'm genuinely sorry that you fell prey to this kind of behaviour (that I have described in my "poisoning the well posts) in another thread, just as I feel sorry for AFK. All I can say in reply to your question is that perhaps I wasn't an active member of the board back then, but had I noticed you encountering the same type of behaviour I would have probably spoken out then.

I don't "conceal" his actions. I saw evidence that he and at least two more people down-voted one free user once on one post in this thread. The rest of the free-user comments appear not to have been down-voted which is why I said that I can understand a retaliation in kind on one of his posts, not the "hounding" that went on to the point where he was forced to stop the conversation. And I'd like to thank whoever down-voted the previous post and send an anticipatory thank you for your down-voting of this one.

There is a logical fallacy there. The fact that we can never have a non-conscious perspective implies only that perspective is conscious, not that existence is conscious. Your assertion, does not exclude the fact that rock don't have a perspective, which is actually what the accepted model of reality is all along. It is the leap from perspective to existence that bio-centrists have repeatedly failed to prove and yet they sustain all of their claims on it. I'm not saying you're a biocentrist, I'm only saying that this line of argumentation has been used by them as well. It does seem to me that in this paragraph you are asserting that rocks have some form of consciousness. That would require some significant standard of proof. Do you have any proof of this or is it just based on faulty syllogisms?

In other words, argument from effect, not from morality. "I do not care what the reason behind things working is, as long as they work to my advantage."

Don't you people find it a bit disturbing the amount of down-votes that AFK has gotten throughout this conversation? All the while he was just trying to support his position. I come down on the opposite side from AFK on this topic of "free riders" - there is no such problem in the forums, but I can't help but wonder, haven't we stumbled onto another form of ostracism here? Where more people gang up on someone and if they refuse to yield then they down-vote them into oblivion? Since upvotes and downvotes are counted against "reputation", I always viewed them as a tool to indicate helpfulness and maliciousness respectively. As a result I'd understand a plethora of down-votes on one of AFK-s post, either the original or the first clarification he offers, but hounding all of his posts like this makes me wonder wether or not people would rather end up disengaging from debate rather than have their "reputations" ruined.

Actually we can prove that a thought exists. We don't yet have the technology to map out all thoughts and to determine each individual thought down to the granularity that exists in reality, but progresses have been made by science where we can map out major concepts in the brain and train a computer to act as a substitute interface for simple yes/no type answers. However, there has to be the capacity for though first and this we know also and can prove and we call the absence of it brain death. The leap in logic that you seem to take, though, is that you think that by mapping out every little thought in the human brain you will somehow find God in there. That presupposes that God would exist there in the first place. And if God turns out not to be in there and all you get is their experiences of God, then that is not standard enough for proof of existence because dreams don't exist either, and neither do hallucinations, but your "radar" will be able to map their experiences in the same way. But consider this terrifying notion: what if we go through the mapping and do find something in our brains? Only it's not God (father of Jesus), but instead it turns out to be a very pissed off Zeus, the central figure of a long lost religion that nobody but a handful of crazies still follow today (I would assume it's not completely extinct, there are people "worshipping" the flying spaghetti monster and the church of the jedi). Would we then have to prostrate ourselves and burn down churches and mosques and everything of the sorts? Or would we just pretend that we had found nothing instead, so we can, at least, hang on to the illusion that we have now (whatever denomination that may be)?

I thought I explained my stance. Religion (the actual discipline) is nothing more than a superstition and as such it's irrationally prescribed behaviour to be followed in order to distract one from the fear that death is final. Religious people (and here I include all religions) - the followers - are simply people who refuse to deal with their own deaths on a psychological level. There is no malicious intent, it's just fear that drives ignorance. That does not mean it doesn't have bad effects, but I don't think that they're at least aware of the evil that they're creating/spreading. On the other hand religion - the institution (church, pulpit, preachers) - these are people who are evil, because (most of them anyway, from what I have observed) are not preaching from the heart, but they are doing it for a living; their belief in the superstition is all but evaporated (which is to be expected as one enters the financial web of the church life) but still they preach to the followers just to get the extra buck and put food on the table.

The reason why abortion would be immoral is because it is murder, right? Or am I oversimplifying the matter? But going by my first assumption, in order to get a clear view of where you stand on this issue, Des, can you tell me if it's murder to pull the plug on a braindead patient. Assume all the necessary forms have been filled out in appropriate time and there is a person with a valid medical proxy to determine if this plug should be pulled or not. If they say: pull the plug, is it murder?

The fact that they don't believe in me makes it justifiable. I must have missed that part of the bible. That is one big-ass word there and you have been insulted to have been given it as an "explanation". It's also an insult to the word "explanation", but that's another story. But from a term of what to follow, both christians and muslims are in agreement. It's the latest revelation that they follow. It was Jesus that preached peace and the old testament that preached killings.

Thank you for that long summary Htvfd460, I have some corrections to the first part of the comment, though: 40 authors wrote the 66 books, but each book has its own author. Even the article you linked to states that Moses wrote 5 of the books and debunks some German dude's attempt to postulate that jews didn't know how to write back then therefore it must have been orally transmitted. Now to the point of your summary: I can go along with your contention for a while, that the book was altered through translations or specific alterations and that it may have caused us to end up with a perception of what the book describes as god that is very different than what the concept was at the time of inception. However there are some capabilities of god that we can depict from the bible that cannot be mistranslated and altered (because they constitute the driving points of the entire stories without which the stories themselves have no reason for having been written). Here's a few of them: - God created the world out of nothing ( - put down on resume world creation ). - God talked to a lot of people in the old testament (from Adam to Noah to Moses) ( - put down ability to interact with humans via language ) - God flooded the entire Earth, killed off all the humans save Russell Crowe's family ( - put down the ability to make it rain, like really rain ) - God razed off the face of the Earth two entire cities by fire because he was morally offended ( - put down a short temper and the ability to drop the equivalent of nukes ) - God, on a bet, ruined some dude's life by killing his family, ruining his business, burning down his home and infecting him with leprosy, all so he can prove to Satan just what true love is ( - put down psycho, and amazing telekinetic abilities ) - God cast a spell influencing the brains of all the humans of the world to stop speaking the same language ( - put down ass-kicking mentalist, with the capacity to reach EVERYONE before TV was invented ) - God created life (no biggie, he's done it before) inside a woman's womb and called it his son ( - put down the ability to breed with humans ) - God had that son die in a brutal fashion to "give humans access to his kingdom", access that he had previously removed through a verbal command ( - did i already put down psycho?) With all these friggin' abilities that god displayed throughout the ages, he doesn't have the ability to ensure a proper translation or even a proper description of himself? Let's not forget, we're all speaking different languages because of him, in the first place!! At this point I have to stop going along with you, because you can say the bible is wrong, but the process you put forward for it being wrong still doesn't eliminate all of these supernatural capabilities of god, which, if he had, then the bible would have to be right in its entirety. There's a sequence in this video where Stefan addresses this point, I highly recommend you watch it, because I can't do it justice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHDHGwmm1iU You may choose to abandon the bible completely in the continuing of your discussion, but then you have to come forward with a definition of god that has absolutely no reference to the texts in the bible and we can continue the conversation in that direction, because if you link to even one quote from the bible then you have to explain first why that quote is real and the rest of the book is not when it's referencing the same god, and, on top of it, you have to prove that theory, which I can say for sure that you can't. Going over your summary, I'd like to point out that physics scientists aren't exactly cunning linguists and if you couple that to the need for sensationalism, you will get plenty of "justification" for the usage of misappropriated terms. It doesn't amount to jack shit, sorry. This is in reference to science and heaven and hell. Also you can stick to the whole bible as a source for reference (which defeats itself for the reasons explained above) or you can discard it entirely, there is no middle ground. Thusly, if you want to debate the concepts of heaven and hell the onus of the definition falls on you. I have to say that I missed what your theory on the transition from life to afterlife is, so if you wanna refresh me on that, I'd be much appreciating, but if any of the concepts involve afterlife different than being dead and non-existant, I'd say you just set another goal for yourself in defining something and putting forward a theory on how and why it works that way, then the burden of proof falls on top of that. And then there's this: "Has science disproven God and or the afterlife?" Plenty of people here have gone in and told you that's not what science does. It's simply the wrong language to use. Science could only prove God or the afterlife (you even hint to this yourself), only if these concepts weren't self contradictory to begin with. But since they are, it's Logic that disproves them not "science". It's literally like asking "has science disproven that 2+2 equals 5?" (long live the stereotypes!). Science cannot disprove a false statement, that's Logic's job. I suggest you give a listen to the following FDR podcasts: 377, 378, 379, 380, and 383 to get a better grasp what what science and epistemology is for. These are also available on YouTube in Stefan's "An introduction to philosophy" playlist and they are videos 2-3-4-5-6. Video 1 is just a summary of the concepts discussed throughout the playlist and it is done at a much later date. Now, since the topic of afterlife is what I have engaged you on in the first place, I will try to put forward a theory that I find sufficient in order to explain the belief that some people have in the afterlife and in the genesis of the concept of afterlife in the first place: Humans are the only beings on Earth that are endowed with the capability of conceptualising things. Here's a video in which Stefan is addressing that topic with a caller: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQHCVqZHBdw (I think that self-awareness and the power to work with concepts is intrinsically linked but I'm not aware of any studies on this issue, in any case that's just a tangent). Once we can work with concepts, it's only a matter of time before we have to deal internally with the fact that we will die. The unavoidability of death and the finality of it is the single most destructive thing that can haunt the human mind and, for the most part, humans have not processed this psychological trauma. Deflection/avoidance/denial are basic coping mechanisms that are employed by everyone when dealing with any kind of psychological trauma. It stands to reason that these mechanisms would also be applied by the very first humans ever to realise the unavoidability of their own deaths. (The existence of coping mechanisms is not dependant on technology/society or anything that we have now that was unavailable to the initial homo sapiens. They are a product of the psychology of self and if you have reason enough to work with concepts, you have self-awareness.) The concept of a "living afterlife" is, in fact, the denial of death. In particular the denial of the finality (non-existance) of death which is what the source of the trauma is in the first place. Funny enough the same line of reasoning can be followed in regards to religion. All superstitions are a set of irrationally prescribed behaviours that are to be followed each in order to avoid a respective undesired consequence. The undesired consequence in this case is the stoppage of existing, the irrationally prescribed behaviour is all the religious guidelines. This is a deflection/avoidance mechanism that enables the person to shift focus from the undesired future consequence to the present obedience to the prescribed behaviour as a result obscuring and relieving the fear from their mind. Occam's razor! I don't think you can find a simpler explanation for the genesis of the concept of afterlife and for the genesis of religion, but if you do, please share it with me as I'm always open to a better idea (or at least I like to think that I am).

Not the argument I'm making. Actually, under what I'm saying, a mentally handicapped person, even a severely mentally handicapped person, generates moral obligations because they are sentient (again sentience = the capacity to feel, perceive, or experience subjectively. ) I'm not sure essence is an argument. A kid and a cow are both alive. They share the "living" essence. In fact, they even share a whole lot of the same DNA (80% of it, to be exact). What is this essence delimited by? A biology topiary book? But even if I were to go by your postulate that foetuses have the same essence with fully grown human beings, you defeat your own point. Because if they have the same essence and foetuses do not have sentience while human beings do, then sentience cannot be part of the essence. And your point is defeated because we kill off human beings (so endowed with all of the same essence as a foetus) that are no longer sentient - the braindead - without any moral repercussions. EDIT: There is a reply to Matthew M. that's still stuck in moderation. I'm not ignoring you, Matthew.