ObserveandReport

If there are bridging principles, then there is no problem going from statements about what is to what ought to be. There's no need to invoke the "inherent subjectivity of preference." You are throwing around the word "preference" a bit, no? Those bridging principles themselves don't show preferences for anything. You are just restating the moral segments using different words and slapping "preference for..." in front of it. "Adding properly requires the sum of the involved numbers." This is an evaluative statement, but it doesn't show a preference.

Except before all that Hannibal ate a bunch of people. Long before he turned his sights on Mason Verger, he was killing innocent people. He was the aggressor and his captors were in the right.

The trick is, whether or not certain principles can bridge the gap between moral and nonmoral statements i.e, "That which gives the most pleasure to the greatest number of people is best." or "That behavior which respects property and the NAP will always be good". In other words, we know there are moral statements "unjustified killing is wrong" and non moral statements "knives cut things", but might their be quasi-moral statements which bridge these realms and are neither one nor the other?

I didn't see Hannibal or Red Dragon, but I know he at least ate one dude alive at the end of Hannibal (ok I caught the end on tv once) and he kills a bunch in Silence (security guards and EMTS).

From what I remember it is the philosophical position that all but the empirical is nonsense. I believe there is a connection logical positivism which relies on the notion that that which can be put into language is meaningless. That which is unverifiable is without content. I googled it and it seems these camps are at least consistent. So where Steven Hawking says "we may have equations which describe everything, but what breaths life into those equations" or what may be described as the "numinous," the mystery of consciousness, all these are mindless prattle. Think of it as an application of materialism such that one assumes all things can be explained via materialism.

have I erred? manipulated? More effective than downvoting my comments is actually talking to me (if it begins to affect whether my posts are seen by the average person, I merely make a new account). I get that this is a relatively homogeneous group of regular forum goers and that dissent is discouraged in all homogeneous cultures. I'm here to engage with new ideas and its only valuable for me to spend my time here, exactly because my views vary so greatly from the norm here (in some important respects). Do you downvote things that evoke negative emotional reactions? Things that seem to be lying? I've read the community guidelines, but it appears you all use the voting as a punitive measure or merely to demarcate the views you most vehemently disagree with. Here's examples just so you know I'm not bullshitting: " If it's any solace Trump has said "Why do we need to be getting involved in Syria? It seems like every time we go over and meddle in other people's business, we make things worse" I can get behind that." "Trumps stance on foreign policy is vague at best. He's said we'll "...get rid of Isis and get rid of them fast." He's also said he's comfortable with targeting the families of terrorists. Finances and borders are important, but personally I can't vote for another war monger. I did it with Obama when I was on the other side of the isle, thinking he was the peace candidate. Sanders and Paul were the only two this go around. Why do you all feel that supporting a war monger is preferable to abstaining from voting altogether or casting a vote for a third party? Specifically, do you think that saving your children from paying taxes is more important than preventing our military from slaughtering thousands or hundreds of thousands of people? " The above is a combination of indisputable fact and my opinion. Where's the fuckery? "You and your girlfriend should call in to discuss it on the show... I can't imagine she would be very interested, but I will ask. I'm also not sure how it would be productive. I've listened to much of his material on the subject and it doesn't seem like I'm missing any key distinctions of his arguments. That being said, I wouldn't mind. Mike if you're reading this, do you think I've erred somewhere, or is Stefan the better person to have this discussion? " Just so you all know I corresponded with Mike an will in fact be calling in. I was right in my assessment of my girlfriend's desire to join the conversation. So how did I err in that explanation? I was told by Shirgall to ignore the popularity contest, but it's growing frustrating to the point of real irritation. I genuinely enjoy engaging with many of you. I benefit from exposing my arguments and beliefs to a plurality of others. I've spent 5 minutes on this post and its five minutes I could have spent getting a different take on indentured servitude or the European Union or single motherhood.

Of course arguing the values of segregation of the state is a moot point on a board of anarchists, so I'll argue against private discrimination based on race. The NAP and a respect for property rights are fundamental to an Anarcho-Capitialist society. Taking on of private obligations is perfectly consistent with that moral foundation. Thus contracts can exist within an AnCap society. If one cannot take on private obligations voluntarily...well it's a non starter. A charge against a contractor called "unjust enrichment" finds that when one agrees to receive a benefit in exchange for giving something of value, what has occurred breaks the terms of the underlying contract (when they fail to give that thing of value, upon receiving a benefit). One gains a benefit by being in a market which participates and exchanges freely with others, blind to the contributions of individual races. When such a person discriminates against an individual race, they are unjustly enriched because they receive the network benefit of the larger market, but do not return the benefit in kind. This would not apply to a community that chose to isolate itself from the larger local/global community and simply operated in a self sufficient fashion. A quick example from ye ol Wikipedia "suppose that A makes an oral contract with B under which A will pay $100 for certain services to be provided by B. Further suppose that A pays the money but B discovers that, pursuant to legislation, contracts for such services are void unless in writing. B refuses to perform. Can A recover his payment? On both approaches, B is unjustly enriched at A's expense. On the "absence of basis" approach, B's enrichment has no legitimate explanatory basis because the contract was void. On the "unjust factor" approach, there has been a total failure of consideration; that is, A has received no part of the bargained-for counter-performance; restitution follows automatically from the fact of invalidity.' This is my best defense of Libertarian anti-discrimination that I can come up with. Does this argument hold up?

Any thoughts on the is/ought problem?

Oh, I think this article in particular had an inward looking aim. I think you need to accept the NAP, then realize that the moral category separation is faulty. It's far from a revelation, but is something I personally rarely think about. He uses the example of what the general person thinks, but it seems that assumptions necessary for his argument are those specific to Libertarians. Winning hearts and minds is very important though, I agree. However, it's wonderful when you can work from statist premises and wind up with Libertarian conclusions. Stef essentially does the same when he'll describe the properties of theft and then analogize to taxes. Plus the controversial nature of the article is an attention grabber. This is also a useful aspect of outreach. Note the very important distinction the author draws at the bottom of the paper "Note that I focus solely on the ethics of defensive killing against immediate threats from democratic government agents. I am not here discussing punishment, whether anyone might ever deserve to die, whether killing anyone might ever be justified as an end in itself, or whether violence is useful to overturn laws or produce social change. Many philosophers and activists believe that non-violent civil disobedience is both morally superior to and more effective than violent resistance in changing unjust laws.[viii] They might be correct, but that is not my concern here."

To the extent that it was an effective and motivating political disposition. Yes. Are there neo-nazis? Sure. That doesn't invalidate the massive strides made against fascistic world domination.

This is a fascinating article on the prospects: http://bleedingheartlibertarians.com/2016/04/in-defense-of-defensive-violence-against-government-agents/ I just stumbled upon this website today and I love it!

So my arguments would be centered around your second to last statement. Choosing men "they don't know well enough." While I support abortion, I don't undercut the strength of moral arguments against it. The other options you listed (such as adoption or abandonment) have worse outcomes for the children (so I'm guessing). Therefore, a mother choosing single motherhood is likely a deferment of her gratification and better off for the child. This is at least true of abandonment. The last thing you want is the government raising kids.

surely you're being obtuse? Do you not remember the laymen use of "anarchist?" Has it been so long? Stefan's oft repeated "Anarchy means no rulers, not no rules." is the rhetorical device he has devised just for people with this mindset.

You had to compete with the multinational corporations on unequal footing, no? They could enjoy the benefit of limited competition due to huge government barriers to entry. As I understand it, regulation and government interference benefits the large companies this way. In other words, if there were a flood of other competitors, your costs would have been lower and the bigger guys wouldn't have had quite the same competitive advantage. This could be illusory for our current setup, but it's what came to my mind.

I appreciate the attempt at mirroring my argument. It fails for the following reasons: History of consciousness as Donnadogsoth has pointed out is one distinction between a fetus prior to 12 weeks (though arguably longer) and the coma patient/conjoined twin. Another distinction is that these fetuses lack the very pre-requisites for such history. Thus you cannot harm someone who doesn't exist. Imagine the braindead person versus the same, normally functioning, person just prior to their accident. The latter can be hurt, while the former cannot. Imagine that a developing fetus is the same but in reverse. The moral implications simply run in reverse. Secondly, your first example is perfectly consistent with my conclusions and is in fact a slightly modified (though morally similar analogue) of the "murdering a conjoined twin" thought experiment. The wrongness of an outsider for committing a double homicide of murdering conjoined twins applies to either twin for murdering the other, precisely because there are two minds and undoubtedly two distinct identities, each of which can be wronged by the other or entirely third parties. 90% of abortions happen before that threshold. Do you have qualms with these, or no?

I was not addressing abortion in the case of rape or incest, as these are more clear cut as far as the woman's rights. A failure of contraception on the other hand isn't as easy to dismiss, precisely because in getting pregnant via consensual sex, you are possibly inviting a person into your care who (because of your decision) cannot be cared for by anyone else. If what you abort has the necessary components to be wronged, you have done wrong. If not, you are off the hook. Some people say human fetuses which will in the future have these requirements of moral agents, are wrong to prevent from realizing that potential. Others, like myself, say that you can't prevent or deprive inanimate objects like rocks, amoebas, tumors, or things that otherwise happen to have a full set of human DNA but are otherwise devoid of the neuro-correlates of consciousness. Thus the very long meandering debate spanning 3 pages.

Any data to back up your conclusions? Nazism was a belief set, which we effectively waged war against. I'm not interventionist, but I also don't take intervention off the table for the objection you raised. Whether or not this would be a quagmire and the challenges of fighting a largely decentralized enemy.... that's another story. Here's a problem for us anarchists: Among the benefits of decentralization for an AnCap society when it comes to comes to conquerors, which fail to equally benefit ISIS and make them a more formidable foe than other recent historical examples?

When I was younger, I paid to go to an event called the National Youth Leaders Conference. There, the organizers brought before us a man who had been battling with homelessness. He asked us how many of us think that the top causes of homelessness are drug and alcohol addiction. Many of us, including myself, raised our hands. As it turns out, job loss is the number one cause of homelessness. This particular man had gone straight from highs school into the tech field, as he had a good head on his shoulders and could use computers better than the average person at the time. When his company downsized, he was without college education and without experience enough to land him in the rapidly evolving tech industry. The number one thing he said is that many people on the street lack basic human interaction and that if you sit down and talk with them over food, you are doing them a far greater service than giving them money. This can all be taken with a HUGE grain of salt because god knows where the numbers of his stats came from, or the veracity of his story. However, I'm inclined to believe that many people who started off poor and fell on hard times could slip into homelessness without a good supportive family. I've had some negative experiences with panhandlers, but I've also seen them be gracious in the face of rejection. I think the worst off don't panhandle because they lack the communication skills. These are the men and women you see muttering to themselves or people they think are there. I agree with the others above that direct charity is a good response. I think it's also important to call out those who seek to bully others. The only thing I would add is that I've passed many a panhandler not able bodied and not able minded. I know Stefan is skeptical of mental illness, but it's hard to be a skeptic when you are watching someone who doesn't know anyone's watching.

I can get behind that.

To slander is to outright lie to hurt someone's reputation. I've done nothing of the sort. If I wanted to do something like that I'd be somewhere where swing voters are. This is for my edification. I went to his website to read his policies. There are none on the written section. https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions. I watched the videos he provided and that was the most I could find. https://www.donaldjtrump.com/issues/. This is on his website which is supposed to pitch him to voters (possibly me right?). Then recently he gave a scripted press conference in which he was equally vague. If he said something along the lines of what Rosecodex had said, I wouldn't even be having this conversation. Also, technically what he said in all of these instances is not contradictory. Howeever, he doesn't clearly outline his policies when it comes to Isis, in a digestible way. The caveat here is that I have not been watching his every move. "America first" and outlining the mistakes of American foreign policy are great. Forcing other countries to pay for our military is great. I want specifics about why we can and should engage with Isis, how it will be done, and I don't accept "it's a strategic military secret" as an answer. Do we have to announce on television? No, but what he could do is get ringing endorsements of his strategy from informed military strategists/personnel. "It's a secret" is not good enough. Not by a long shot. Additionally I didn't take the most disagreeable part of his statements out of context. How can you justify murdering the grandparents of terrorists? It's not rhetorical and that quote was from a morning news show. Adding context doesn't change the content at all. Then there's the coal stoking over Iranian nukes. Israelis aren't worried, so I'm not worried. That's not a small thing. They are privy to one of the most sophisticated intelligence agencies in the world. They are the one's most likely to suffer if Iran gets nukes. Iran will never use nukes. The same people who wouldn't use them, wouldn't give them to people who would for fear of global nuclear war. Then there's criticism of Biden for criticizing Israel. There's plenty to criticize there. Condemning West Bank settlements is not misguided or weakening the "only Western Democracy in the region." It's fair. I'm simply looking for a policy discussion. I'm all for calling out Obama, Clinton, and all our past leaders for their blunders. That doesn't mean we shouldn't call the person doing it out on "untruths" 22:58 of the above link Trump says "we don't blockade, we don't bomb..." Really? We don't bomb? This is a casual mistake in a SCRIPTED speech. We have dropped a LOT of bombs on ISIS.http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/04/politics/air-force-20000-bombs-missiles-isis/. It's horribly irritating to agree with what he says almost all the time and then hear what are either lies or casual mistakes. It makes defending him awfully hard. Is that why you have reacted as you have to merely dismiss and downvote me? This is a terrible mistake if you truly want your movement to succeed. Don't emulate the regressive left which eats itself. I can respect that. To quote Trump though, "put Americans first again." That's why I want to have a policy discussion, so we can talk about what he really intends to do. Every great dictator, I'm sure promised he was going to be "really great", "tremendous", and all the like. It's really weird to me that I have to preach distrust of the state.

Fascinating. How did you embed the picture? Also, I'm for those things of course. I just like to try and keep perspective. This has added too it.

That; would be difficult. There are a few topics I'd bring up before trump. Also, I want to watch more of Stef's Trump videos to make sure I'm not bringing up redundant concerns. Also, I was hoping for those of you who knew better would be willing to discuss it. I figured this would be the place. This is what I was hoping for. It seems you have been paying way closer attention than I have. I wish it listed these things on his website. I like the potential to withdraw troops. Would you characterize it as "Isis is the exception to the general rule" I suppose you could make that argument. Is that one person an American? I suspect that possibly involving us in another quagmire will endanger more Americans than are threatened currently (counting the American soldiers that would undoubtedly die in such efforts). It's this very concern that has me apprehensive about the "isis is the exception" approach he seems to be taking.

lol I feel like there's a "but...." there somewhere. Just to make sure I wasn't making things up, I went and googled a bit. Turns out, as of 1944 6% of Israel had been purchased for tens of millions. 6% doesn't sound like a lot until you see that it is mostly where people live now. Not trying to excuse the aggression, but separate the aggression from the free market. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_land_purchase_in_PalestineIt's actually funny you should bring up consistency. A friend of mine and I were discussing the virtues of consistency. He praised Scalia for his wit, I praised him for his consistency. He replied that consistency is overrated. I said that if you are trying to affect laws that have moral implications and ramifications, consistency is probably a good thing in general. He responded that consistency, for it's own sake, may be overrated and outright obstructive to the nuances of this very complicated life. While I don't disagree that inconsistencies and dissonance isn't always bad, I'd like to think that if the context gets wide enough, everything becomes consistent. What are your thoughts? (sorry for the digression, feel free to ignore it)

Whose "they" and who do "they" speak for? What specifically was their aggression that bares out increasing our military presence in foreign lands? What do the infant children of terrorists have to do with any of it? If you want to make the argument that they are future potential threats, I think we ought not be scared of babes. I'm not a pacifist by any means. If an enemy attacks us, we should respond. We should also defend ourselves from future attacks. That being said....how do you fight a decentralized network with a professional army? Also, it would seem that plenty of Muslim majority countries are better poised to fight this war. However, since Isis hasn't actually attacked us, it would seem that actions against them would be preemptive in nature. I'm not ruling out preemption altogether, but as a steadfast policy to be instituted as our default response to ideological and military opposition, seems to me unwise. I knew this community supported Trump, but Jesus did that go over like a lead balloon. I don't want to speak in generalities, I want to make specific arguments about specific claims. Unfortunately, Trump hasn't really made anything of the kind when it comes to foreign policy. Rather he's uttered things that sound pro-military and pro-war. Isn't that concerning? I guess for me it comes down to this. I suspect many of you adhere to the NAP. That is without coercion, or the threat thereof, non-consented violence is immoral. Where is the (credible) threat of violence to 300,000,000 Americans? What is it that we can't do? What have they said that we ignore at our own peril? I'm not asking rhetorically, I mean who specifically do we go after and for what threats (or actual violence) ? Any details you give in answering this question beyond "Isis" and "destroy them" are going to be more than Trump himself has provided. I support many of Trumps current policies and a lot of the policies he supported before he became a mainstream candidate (when he resembled more of a straight up Libertarian), I just wouldn't vote for him. In stead of downvoting me why don't you educate me on why my concerns are misguided?

Yep, except for the large swath of land that were purchased freely. Oh and the uninhabited portions that were then worked by Israelis, considering many of the inhabitants prior were actually nomadic and didn't work the land, but survived off it nun the less. Locke would probably say the vast systems of irrigation of largely unused land would go to the Israelis. Those parts won in aggressive wars by Israel were immorally possessed. However, much of the contested land was won in the 6 day war (a defensive war for Israel)....so things get real screwy real quick. Fair assessment. On the other hand, who knows to what extent they share the blood of Native Americans. Don't get me wrong, I think waving a Mexican flag as an immigrant is pure idiocy. I also think acting as though these people are truly "alien" is a bit heavy handed.