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The forums would not let me put scare quotes in the thread title
Mandy Thompson fucked around with this message at 18:03 on Mar 19, 2015 |
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Mar 19, 2015 18:00
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Arglebargle III posted:On the other hand, is killing or otherwise victimizing people wrong in the first place? There are so many of them; too many really. Obviously I don't want to be raped and/or murdered, but from an objective standpoint what's the net effect of, say, some random kid being violently and painfully killed? What's the environmental externality this potential person would have inflicted on the world? What would he really have accomplished in a lifetime of gorging on cheap calories, mindless consumerism and unfulfilling relationships? What if, god forbid, he or she should have children? And, in the long run, and with the impenetrable loneliness of the human condition, does it matter what pains or indignities this putative person suffered in his or her moments or hours of being dispatched? Not in any tangible sense. Maybe we should rethink the harm, or indeed the value of the "monsters, ax murders, and pedophiles" of society. If one doesn't hold the value of not victimizing people or taking human lives to be self-evident, I guess there is always the notion of the social contract. You certainly don't want to be murdered, neither do I. Lets agree not to do that to each other.
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Mar 19, 2015 18:05
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Arglebargle III posted:There is no need to assign human life a priori positive "value"* in order to live safely in a community. Humans have lived together "safely" forever with these "monsters, ax murders, and pedophiles" in their midst. In the last 60 years violent deaths per human life have plummeted and more generally the trend is downward. I have serious doubts about whether these "monsters" are actually responsible for very much harm**, and I have philosophical objections to the unquestioning assumption that violent murder is a morally or socially undesirable act. You never really did respond to my question of why you would call the state to lock me up but not imprison me in your basement. Presumably the distinction goes beyond the purely pragmatic in your mind? Can you point to any human society where murder was permitted and socially acceptable? I'm not talking about some groups being allowed to murder other groups, but murder itself not being viewed as socially or morally problematic as you seem to be suggesting? Even bands of hunter-gatherers would generally try to refrain from murdering each other and focus on murdering other bands of hunter-gatherers. It's kind of hard to form any sort of civilization if killing each other at will is considered acceptable, it's a hell of a lot harder to make more babies than it is to kill someone.
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Mar 19, 2015 19:06
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Effectronica posted:I think that there's plenty of compassion for monsters. It just only comes out among people that knew them. For everyone else, the monster is not really real, not really a person. Their hypothetical suffering exists in an abstract form and serves a cathartic purpose. 80, 90% of people who talk at length about torturing pedophiles on the internet wouldn't even consider doing anything to one in real life, even free from any sort of consequence. Because fundamentally they are not the sort of person who could actually go through with beating someone to death. Which is a good thing. I wish that were true. There are plenty of people out there perfectly willing to do horrific things to those they deem not "people" and that list seems far larger than the number of actual 'monsters', and the difference between them and non-humans goes from mass murderers all the way down to skin color and 'acted like a fag'. The fact that a large chunk of society sees people who completely destroy the lives of other people as pillars of society is loving frightening. By that I mean if you destroy someones life by legally taking everything they own you are just a captain of industry and a person to be admired. Just so long as you don't do it at gunpoint. Hell, how many people think its perfectly ok to kill a mugger? If you say it is, are you really agreeing that whats in your pockets is more valuable than someone life? I've been called a pussified human being for saying I could never kill someone over a wallet or a TV. My drivers license and credit cards are nothing. (And before some dipshit asks, yes *actual* self defense is fine. But your wallet is not your life). The number of people willing to write off other humans as undeserving of the most basic of compassion seems to far outnumber the number of actual 'monsters'. My pulled out of my rear end analysis is not only a lack of empathy and compassion but humanity in general treating those qualities as being a pussy or weak. And it goes far beyond individuals, while I know he regrets it the Chris Rock OJ comment I agree with. I find IS(IS/IL) revolting but I can understand why they exist. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only person who watches movies like Red Dawn (The original) and comes out thinking about how it showed what being the occupied does to the human psych, how it turns highschoolers so numb they actually kill one of their own, not some gently caress YEAH USA OORAH  . We turn Iraq into a smoking pile a rubble and the number of people who refuse to even acknowledge that they'd do the exact loving thing if say Russia did that to us is depressing.
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Mar 19, 2015 19:25
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Toasticle posted:I wish that were true. There are plenty of people out there perfectly willing to do horrific things to those they deem not "people" and that list seems far larger than the number of actual 'monsters', and the difference between them and non-humans goes from mass murderers all the way down to skin color and 'acted like a fag'. The fact that a large chunk of society sees people who completely destroy the lives of other people as pillars of society is loving frightening. By that I mean if you destroy someones life by legally taking everything they own you are just a captain of industry and a person to be admired. Just so long as you don't do it at gunpoint. Hell, how many people think its perfectly ok to kill a mugger? If you say it is, are you really agreeing that whats in your pockets is more valuable than someone life? I've been called a pussified human being for saying I could never kill someone over a wallet or a TV. My drivers license and credit cards are nothing. (And before some dipshit asks, yes *actual* self defense is fine. But your wallet is not your life). Okay., but ask those people if they would actually do it, and they start to make excuses or look like you like you're crazy. It's, for them, insane to actually desire the visceral sensation of murdering someone, even if they're cheering about how they would totally do it.
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Mar 19, 2015 19:27
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I probably wouldn't kill a mugger or a burglar but I can understand and feel sympathy for those that do. I should hope the burglar or mugger knows that if they continue on that life path, someone will kill them. Its not so much that it is just, but it is a natural consequence of doing something dangerous in a country full of concealed carry permits.
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Mar 19, 2015 19:40
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Effectronica posted:Okay., but ask those people if they would actually do it, and they start to make excuses or look like you like you're crazy. It's, for them, insane to actually desire the visceral sensation of murdering someone, even if they're cheering about how they would totally do it. I'd like to believe that but the number of people lynched or dragged behind trucks or being raped by a cop with a broomhandle makes me think otherwise. It could very well be a case of only hearing about things like that because the media loves to shove it in your face but there seems to be despeessing amounts of stories like that recent school with all the buried kids found under it that makes me think there's more out there you don't hear or even know about. I honestly hope I'm wrong. Mandy Thompson posted:I probably wouldn't kill a mugger or a burglar but I can understand and feel sympathy for those that do. I should hope the burglar or mugger knows that if they continue on that life path, someone will kill them. Its not so much that it is just, but it is a natural consequence of doing something dangerous in a country full of concealed carry permits. If someone honestly feared for their life I would would too under the self defense thing. I don't for people like that fucker in Texas who blew away some kids who had broken into his neighbors house. And while I can't cite anything atm I'm pretty sure its been shown that people don't think of the consequences if they get caught because they don't think they'll get caught in the first place.
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Mar 19, 2015 20:08
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forbidden lesbian posted:you're right arglebuckle, human life has no inherent value. So why haven't you killed yourself yet? Life has subjective value rather than inherent value. From your POV your life is priceless. From someone else's point of view your life is worth a half off coupon for a value meal. From a societal point of view your life is worth the result of a complex net present value calculation that would probably depress you. Effectronica posted:Couldn't you just have chopped these two paragraphs down to "pity is masturbation"? Omit needless words, man. Nah. Some people are probably deserving of pity. It's just mostly masturbation.
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Mar 19, 2015 20:30
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Typical Pubbie posted:If I murder people because my brain is physically wired in such a way that I have an irresistible desire to rob people of their very existence then you have my permission to lock me away forever, ok? That isn't psychopathy, the issue with psychopathic murderers is not that they cannot resist the temptation to kill people, but that they don't have an innate, airy fairy connection to the rest of humanity that makes them naturally averse to the idea. It is entirely possible for someone to be quite psychopathic or sociopathic and still be perfectly productive and helpful to society at large, so long as they believe that it is in their ultimate best interests to do so. Also as with most forms of destructive crime, locking people up and throwing away the key or just killing them, does not help prevent future criminals from emerging.
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Mar 20, 2015 01:04
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Yeah many people seem to think socio/psychopath=killer. Not having a connection or care for others doesn't mean they can't recognize its in their best interests to follow the law. They may have no reservations about loving people over legally and know being in prison isn't any fun. I'd not be surprised at all to find most of the CEOs and Wall Street/bankers are sociopaths, they just gently caress people within the law.
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Mar 20, 2015 01:52
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Toasticle posted:I'd not be surprised at all to find most of the CEOs and Wall Street/bankers are sociopaths, they just gently caress people within the law. I saw a presentation by a chap who came to that exact conclusion, he tested people for common sociopathic/psychopathic traits, and found them to be very prevalent among successful businessmen and high paying/demanding professions like doctors and lawyers.
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Mar 20, 2015 01:54
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I want to challenge the notion that human life is inherently valuable and force the thread to actually confront the question of valuation of human life especially in regards to the "monsters" of the OP who are probably doing a lot less harm than their epithet suggests. Even the idea of "inherent" value is problematic, since it suggests a utility monster. Until the costs of human life (I conceive of it in terms of externality but I'm open to other suggestions) are explored the naive assignation of value to human life regardless of circumstance will inevitably lead to the reducto ad absurdum I brought up on the first page: if more humans is better, infinite humans ought to be infinitely good. Then there's the question of what harm the thread's "monsters" do to people who are not their victims. Naturally they harm their victims, but given that people do not experience other people's experiences and the chance of actually being victimized or even having a first-order connection to someone victimized by "monsters, ax murder, and pedophiles" is quite small, how do we quantify the harm to society? The empathetic trauma of imagining the victim's demise? The fear in the population's minds in general? The chance, however remote, of suffering a terrible end? To me this suggests that media glorifying the serial victimizer is in fact more socially harmful than the victimizers themselves. The third question is the moral one: is a private citizen who kills morally different from a state agent who kills? How different? We accept state killing on scales more vast by far than all the serial murderers of the world put together, and also accept that some victims of "legitimate" state violence will be innocent. So, some posters may have been shocked by my initial post, but: are we sure "monsters" are actually harmful? If so, how harmful? Enough that we should even be worrying about them? Might the socially efficient action on the question of "monsters, ax murders, and pedophiles" be nonaction?
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Mar 20, 2015 03:31
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Arglebargle III posted:I want to challenge the notion that human life is inherently valuable and force the thread to actually confront the question of valuation of human life especially in regards to the "monsters" of the OP who are probably doing a lot less harm than their epithet suggests. Even the idea of "inherent" value is problematic, since it suggests a utility monster. You failed to deal with the basic problem that such an argument is obviously insane once we look at anything else with value of some non-monetary kind.
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Mar 20, 2015 03:59
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Effectronica posted:You failed to deal with the basic problem that such an argument is obviously insane once we look at anything else with value of some non-monetary kind. It would help your argument if you actually bothered to make it.
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Mar 20, 2015 04:06
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Arglebargle III posted:It would help your argument if you actually bothered to make it. I did. You proceeded to flail about and perform an embarrassingly obvious gotcha. Here's another one- Niagara Falls is beautiful. Why don't we terraform the Earth to maximize the number of Niagara Fallses, and thus maximize the value of it?
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Mar 20, 2015 04:10
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I knew you thought you were being clever with that remark, but I didn't realize just how clever you thought you were. Congratulations on discovering the law of diminishing benefits? I'm not sure how you think your bad analogy impacts the current discussion. If you were to explain it, perhaps using written words, it would enlighten us all.
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Mar 20, 2015 04:18
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Arglebargle III posted:I knew you thought you were being clever with that remark, but I didn't realize just how clever you thought you were. Congratulations on discovering the law of diminishing benefits? I'm not sure how you think your bad analogy impacts the current discussion. If you were to explain it, perhaps using written words, it would enlighten us all. Your goal is to use the repugnant and/or sadistic conclusions to demonstrate that human life has no value, in order to get to the meat of defending child molestation as not so bad after all. But if we use the same logic, we would have to conclude that Niagara Falls is not beautiful, which means that your proposition is meaningless because it is bugfuck insane, and you will need to find another way to prove that human life is valueless.
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Mar 20, 2015 04:23
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Wow, I really overestimated your understanding of the conversation. I thought you were trying to demonstrate diminishing marginal value, which was confusing because it supports my argument. If there were 7 billion Niagara Falls, would the 7 billionth be as valuable as the first? If we had to demolish Notre Dame de Paris to construct the 7,000,000,001st Niagara Falls, would you argue that this instantiation of Niagara Falls had inherent value?* wateroverfire posted:Life has subjective value rather than inherent value. From your POV your life is priceless. From someone else's point of view your life is worth a half off coupon for a value meal. From a societal point of view your life is worth the result of a complex net present value calculation that would probably depress you. This guy gets it, although net present value is misleading since it does not include potential. For example a single unemployed unattached male might have a net present value in the area of $300,000-500,000, while the net total value of an American life is estimated by various US government agencies at $6-10 million. However we need to grapple with the question of the costs associated with a human life before we can escape the utility monster argument that you bizarrely seem to think is a trump card. *Before you complain that this analogy is fantastical, ask yourself how you feel about Tibetan Buddhism being extinguished or the Great Barrier Reef dying or a thousand hunter-gatherer cultures being extinguished in order to produce the 7,000,000,001st marginal human. Or if you think that's too unfair to the 3rd world, compare those costs to the value of a 320,495,001st marginal American. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 04:46 on Mar 20, 2015 |
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Mar 20, 2015 04:40
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Arglebargle III posted:I want to challenge the notion that human life is inherently valuable and force the thread to actually confront the question of valuation of human life especially in regards to the "monsters" of the OP who are probably doing a lot less harm than their epithet suggests. Even the idea of "inherent" value is problematic, since it suggests a utility monster. lmao the idea of human life having inherent value is because of the extremely widespread consensus that every individual assigns significant value to their own life and the best way to ensure that you are not deprived of it is to communally prevent the deprivation of life in general, extenuating circumstances notwithstanding.
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Mar 20, 2015 04:41
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Somfin posted:A few drat good words. As Somefin says, dehumanization is utterly counterproductive to not just post-hoc rehabilitation, but prevention as well. It's a topic I loving hate to bring up because even making arguments against the immediate dehumanization of persons with pedophilic inclinations is so taboo, but that very knee-jerk reaction greatly exacerbates the danger they pose. While it is entirely understandable that the visceral reaction to potential child-abusers is so violent, all it does is push individuals struggling with their hosed up impulses into the margins—which, in our interconnected age, inevitably leads them to similarly-minded online communities that normalize their inclination and increase their potential for actual abuse. The obvious answer is to offer help coping with and reducing their urges before they reach that point. If you've ever seen the double-take inducing billboards that advertise: "Having sexual thoughts about children? Call 555-555-5555.", that's an attempt at doing just that. An attempt that is severely hampered by our society's incapability to differentiate between the illness and the crime itself. There's no better way to create a real monster than by repeatedly telling someone they are one, and our children suffer for it. But everyone seems to be going for Argle Bargle's gimmick in this thread. Oh well.
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Mar 20, 2015 04:47
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Scrub-Niggurath posted:lmao the idea of human life having inherent value is because of the extremely widespread consensus that every individual assigns significant value to their own life and the best way to ensure that you are not deprived of it is to communally prevent the deprivation of life in general, extenuating circumstances notwithstanding. Were all polities that tend to represent the interests of their constituents pacifist, I might agree with you. Were self-sacrifice an uncommon choice, I might agree with you.
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Mar 20, 2015 04:49
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Arglebargle III posted:Wow, I really overestimated your understanding of the conversation. I thought you were trying to demonstrate diminishing marginal value, which was confusing because it supports my argument. I don't know what this has to do with your spirited defense of raping children as maybe OK, but by a circuitous route, you have managed to come to what anybody with a brain they hadn't crippled willfully would have in an instant- that value is not always quantifiable and amenable to mathematical operations. Thus, your entire argument falls apart, because it relies on a quantified value that you have not shown to exist. Instead, you have shown a monetary value, which is another crazy argument. Nobody who says "human life has value" is thinking of their potential lifetime earnings except someone who is looking through a glass, blindly.
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Mar 20, 2015 04:49
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Arglebargle III posted:Wow, I really overestimated your understanding of the conversation. I thought you were trying to demonstrate diminishing marginal value, which was confusing because it supports my argument. The beauty of being a human being and not a government or a corporation is you get to appreciate the value of every individual human life as unique and beyond weighing. Why would you try to apply the blunt, savage motives of those entities to yourself? They have all the capacity for moral reasoning of a prokaryote.
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Mar 20, 2015 05:02
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We've arrived at this juncture faster than I anticipated. If you believe that human life defies qualitative valuation, could you at least attempt to qualify the value of a human life then? If you reject "how much" on a conceptual level, can you provide an answer to "what?" If not, your argument is nothing more than an assertion of faith. Would you call yourselves pacifists, by the way? If you know what deontological ethics is, would you identify with it?
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Mar 20, 2015 05:59
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im piss 
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Mar 20, 2015 06:10
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MaxxBot posted:Can you point to any human society where murder was permitted and socially acceptable? I'm not talking about some groups being allowed to murder other groups, but murder itself not being viewed as socially or morally problematic as you seem to be suggesting? Even bands of hunter-gatherers would generally try to refrain from murdering each other and focus on murdering other bands of hunter-gatherers. It's kind of hard to form any sort of civilization if killing each other at will is considered acceptable, it's a hell of a lot harder to make more babies than it is to kill someone. Hey this is a much better response than most. There are many societies where murder has been considered a lawful act within social groups. Off the top of my head there are Germanic law's approach to lawful murder, a similar attitude among the New Guineans, and instances of same-group human sacrifice in America, SE Asia and the South Pacific that modern Americans would no doubt consider murder. The Bible certainly assigns monetary value to the lives of humans: wives, slaves, and unborn children, and treats murder in certain instances more like a tort than a felony. It depends on what you mean by murder and social group, of course. The example that's closest-to-home for Americans I think is the practice of lynching in the American South. When we expand our view to consider killings outside the social group, then virtually every society everywhere sanctions the violent death of human beings. Indeed humans will sacrifice their own lives in order to violently kill other humans. These facts stand in stark contrast to the idea that human life has inherent, ineffable value. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 06:28 on Mar 20, 2015 |
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Mar 20, 2015 06:25
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Arglebargle III posted:It depends on what you mean by murder and social group, of course. yeah no poo poo thanks for the useless post
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Mar 20, 2015 06:30
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Arglebargle III posted:Hey this is a much better response than most. There are many societies where murder has been considered a lawful act within social groups. Off the top of my head there are Germanic law's approach to lawful murder, a similar attitude among the New Guineans, and instances of same-group human sacrifice in America, SE Asia and the South Pacific that modern Americans would no doubt consider murder. The Bible certainly assigns monetary value to the lives of humans: wives, slaves, and unborn children, and treats murder in certain instances more like a tort than a felony. It depends on what you mean by murder and social group, of course. The example that's closest-to-home for Americans I think is the practice of lynching in the American South. We are better than those societies.
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Mar 20, 2015 06:40
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SedanChair posted:We are better than those societies. we who? what do we know that they dont? are we super enlightened? but by what? bunch of bs if u ask me. sentimental bs, full. stop.
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Mar 20, 2015 06:48
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i would kill a burglar without a second thought. kill he/she dead. anyone that wouldnt deserves to be burgled
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Mar 20, 2015 06:56
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Orkin Mang posted:we who? what do we know that they dont? are we super enlightened? but by what? bunch of bs if u ask me. sentimental bs, full. stop. Post better itt (in this thread)
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Mar 20, 2015 07:03
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Exclamation Marx posted:Post better itt (in this thread) im just asking for an ontological grounding for the normative claims made by the aforemoentioned psoter
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Mar 20, 2015 07:05
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Orkin Mang posted:im just asking for an ontological grounding for the normative claims made by the aforemoentioned psoter i would as well, it was terribly ethnocentric
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Mar 20, 2015 07:06
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SedanChair posted:We are better than those societies. What is the value of a human life? From whence does it derive, and to whom does it accrue?
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Mar 20, 2015 07:07
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Arglebargle III posted:These facts stand in stark contrast to the idea that human life has inherent, ineffable value. No it absolutely doesn't, it just shows that individuals can value other things higher than human lives. That does not mean that the lives have no value at all.
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Mar 20, 2015 07:08
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the very 'concept' that human lives have infinite value seems pretty against common sense to me. give me a shred of evidence for this one particular propositional declarative statement claim. practically speaking there is no lasting persuasion without mega truth.
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Mar 20, 2015 07:12
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Arglebargle III posted:What is the value of a human life? From whence does it derive, and to whom does it accrue? The 'value' of a human life is relative to the personal values of each individual, just like the 'value' of every single thing in the world
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Mar 20, 2015 07:13
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Orkin Mang posted:the very 'concept' that human lives have infinite value seems pretty against common sense to me. give me a shred of evidence for this one particular propositional declarative statement claim. practically speaking there is no lasting persuasion without mega truth. who has said that they have infinite value
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Mar 20, 2015 07:13
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Scrub-Niggurath posted:who has said that they have infinite value its implicit in much secular humanist reasoning friend. no instrumental desiderata is enough to overcome the infinite value of the individual human life according to manys commonsense old bean
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Mar 20, 2015 07:18
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Arglebargle III posted:What is the value of a human life? From whence does it derive, and to whom does it accrue? A sum of all existing and potential experiences and capabilities of the life in question. Experience gives a life value by making it unique, and capability gives it value by making it useful.
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Mar 20, 2015 10:52
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