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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.
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Mar 19, 2015 04:22
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Typical Pubbie posted:
Psychopathy, of course, being defined in the DSM as a consistent pattern of disregarding and violating the rights of others, well, uh, I'm not in favor of locking you up. Personally.
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Mar 19, 2015 05:52
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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? I don't think it would matter, since fiction would be irretrievably intruding on reality in such a case.
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Mar 19, 2015 06:03
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Typical Pubbie posted:I am genuinely interested in any examples you have of psychopaths being cured. You're not describing anything that exists in reality. Psychopathy is (slightly more unpleasant) sociopathy is a subset of antisocial personality disorder. But there are a great many of the estimated 3 million psychopaths in the USA that kill no one and do nothing more than make life worse for the people around them. You are describing one of the theories behind serial and spree killers, but unfortunately, there is no evidence for it, thanks to limited sample sizes. Several prominent serial killers are widely believed to be psychopathic by professionals, but it's all speculative.
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Mar 19, 2015 06:12
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wateroverfire posted:Indeed you are a massive nerd, OP. But it's not your fault just the inevitable consequence of all the factors leading up to your nerditry at this point. Couldn't you just have chopped these two paragraphs down to "pity is masturbation"? Omit needless words, man.
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Mar 19, 2015 16:56
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Arglebargle III posted:So would you say that the world would a priori be a better place with 12 billion people in it? 20 billion? 100 billion? If human life inherently has value, after all. Sure, just like the world would be a better place with ten million exact duplicates of the Mona Lisa
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Mar 19, 2015 17:08
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Arglebargle III posted:The world currently possesses effectively infinite duplicates of the Mona Lisa of indifferent quality, and a large number of high quality duplicates. What benefit would you say you derive from them? Not to get too caught up in your poorly chosen analogy but I would like you to at least contemplate this reckless assignation of value. The Mona Lisa has value. This is essentially indisputable. Surely, we should be maximizing value as much as possible by turning everything that is not what we absolutely need to live into copies of the Mona Lisa. Do you disagree? Why?
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Mar 19, 2015 17:23
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Arglebargle III posted:So you agree that such a thing as too many human beings is possible? Did I say that?
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Mar 19, 2015 17:40
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Arglebargle III posted:A yes or a no would be adequate. When did you stop beating your wife?
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Mar 19, 2015 17:45
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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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. 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.
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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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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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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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:We've arrived at this juncture faster than I anticipated. Okay, so you're trying another tactic, but you're demanding other people do all the work for you. Why don't you propose some qualitative values for a human life, and then we can go from there. As for your other questions, I am a nihilistic mass-murderer.
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Mar 20, 2015 13:03
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wateroverfire posted:0. I said qualitative. Arglebargle III posted:I've provided figures from the US DoT and DHHS. If you want to make an argument then go ahead but as the conversation stands you've asserted that human life has an unquantifiable value and provided no explanation for what you mean by that or even a basic argument to support your assertion. And yet you said "qualitative" earlier, so it seems that you, along with your fellow self-made madman wateroverfire, have some serious issues knowing the definitions of words. But it should be obvious- human life has a value, in that we value our own life, killing requires justification, etc. but when we attempt to quantify this value, we end up with nonsensical results, or results that contradict the spirit of saying that human life has value, or results that, like actuarial definitions, are completely unrelated to what people generally mean (for example, although the money paid to the families of dead soldiers is $600,000, you cannot pay $600,000 if you murder someone and thus avoid imprisonment). Therefore, the value of human life is not quantifiable, in the same way that beauty is not quantifiable. We can articulate relationships and greater or lesser values, but we cannot reduce them to numbers. wateroverfire posted:Sure, purely for the feels yeah the life of every special unique snowflake is precious and irreplacable and etc and nothing bad should happen to anyone ever even people who manifestly do not believe the lives of others have any value and demonstrate that by doing terrible things. Because we're all different and different is special and something something justice. I guess. Okay. I grab a mass-murderer, provide you with incontrovertible evidence of their crimes, an affidavit that guarantees you will face no repercussions for any actions you take, tie the murderer to a chair, and give you a crowbar. Do you beat them to death, or not?
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Mar 20, 2015 14:38
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wateroverfire posted:What would a qualitative value of human life be and why would that be important? Well, I was figuring that, since ArgyleBargain III used "qualitative" in a sentence, that he knew what it meant. I made a mistake in doing so. In any case, you haven't really addressed the problem that you can't pay the actuarial average, or an actuarial computation of the victim's value, to avoid prison time for murder. If that was the actual value of a human life, you'd think this would be part of the legal system. There's also the issue of where this leads us when all's said and done, but- wateroverfire posted:IDK. Is she hot? That would influence my calculation. Oh, goody, you dodged it~ Answer the question. You can assume that they're arbitrarily evil and have committed arbitrarily bad crimes.
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Mar 20, 2015 14:49
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Arglebargle III posted:I don't know how to qualify the value of a human life, I was approaching the question quantitatively. You rejected the entire concept of quantification, so I asked you to qualify it or accept that you were making a statement of faith only. Then you asked me to make your argument for you. Okay, so you do want to have a society where you can pay to kill someone, perfectly legally. All right, so let's assume you have a significant other, and I jump out of nowhere, murder them with a hacksaw, and give you five million dollars in cash (the average value of an American life, which is definitely overpaying!!). Is this a fair exchange? Or, hell, let's say we have people who actuaries value at under ten thousand dollars of worth. I can easily finance a yearly, twice-yearly murder habit with a solid UMC job. Is this acceptable? Hey, you even said that human life is valueless earlier, so clearly, there would be nothing wrong with strangling you to death, right?
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Mar 20, 2015 15:09
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Arglebargle III posted:Are you really this obtuse or do you just have bad reading comprehension? Wait a second, you flipped my post upside down. You son of a bitch! I was specifically setting up more and more ridiculous scenarios, and you agree with all of them until you get to the point where it involves directly threatening you. Goddamn.
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Mar 20, 2015 15:39
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Arglebargle III posted:Well yeah. Obviously the victims of violence have a different perspective on the value of their own lives than other actors or society as a whole. Although some individuals see their own lives as having low enough value even to themselves that they consciously choose death for a variety of reasons. These facts tend to cast their weight against the idea that there is an objective, inherent, net positive value to a human life. Have you been paying attention at all? Hold on... you're telling me that you have a difficult time understanding the difference between abstract and concrete? Color me S-U-R-P-R-I-S-E-D.
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Mar 20, 2015 15:46
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Arglebargle III posted:You keep doing these smug one-liners and when pressed to explain what you mean you give up or retreat. That's not what I said. You're making inferences, but you're too stupid to do so, and should stop. When people say "human life has value", they are not talking about any concrete person's life. They are talking about an abstract entity that stands for human lives in general. So showing that individual, particular lives have different values to different people does not do what you want it to do.
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Mar 20, 2015 17:45
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wateroverfire posted:I agree! Okay, so killing people is not actually a crime, it's only when the state doesn't like it that it becomes a crime. This is how things ought to work, in your view. The only good framework. And you dodged it again, because you're uncomfortable with the thought of killing someone and don't really want bad things to happen to bad people, you just want them to maybe happen so long as you're not responsible for any of it. Well, at least you're a decent person deep down, under all the self-imposed insanity.
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Mar 20, 2015 17:56
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wateroverfire posted:I answered your question with all the forthright seriousness it deserved. You're the guy who wrote that bad things should happen to bad people, and then refuses to go along to the natural conclusion of that belief. You're also the guy who insists that, contrary to what the vast majority of people believe, the general rule is that killing is legally neutral and only certain types of killing are criminal in nature, rather than killing being generally illegal and only legal in specific cases. You're also the person who thinks that anything which cannot be valued in terms of numbers, and indeed, in terms of money, is valueless.
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Mar 20, 2015 18:06
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wateroverfire posted:Dude get back on your meds, seriously. Those are all things you have said in this thread, carefully rephrased to make them less palatable.
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Mar 20, 2015 19:49
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You said that murder was a crime against the state, and not a crime against a person. This implies that killing is generally legal and only specific instances that the state deems harmful are illegal. You asked why non-quantitative value would be important if it existed, which implies that you don't think except in terms of things you can assign numbers to, and the only numbers you have assigned have been cash values. You sneered at the idea that nothing bad should ever happen to anybody, which naturally implies that there are people bad things should happen to, but you treat the idea of actually doing those bad things to such people with contempt. What would you call someone who repeatedly insists he wants a refrigerator but refuses to ever do anything to get one?
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Mar 20, 2015 20:30
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wateroverfire posted:What do they give to schizophrenics? You need that bro. You know, I can sympathize. If I'd said any of those things, I'd be looking for some way to get out of it too. But this is pretty pathetic, you know?
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Mar 20, 2015 20:55
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Arglebargle III posted:See, you're retreating again. You started out with the position that humans lives have unquantifiable value, now you admit that the value of a given human life can be quantified, and now you admit that I've shown that the value of a given human life can vary. You've retreated to asserting that "human lives in general" (what is that?) have value in an abstract sense (care to actually argue for your assertions at any time ever?) and that this is somehow problematic for my argument. (Again, you're not good on specifics.) No, I categorically reject that. I have never said that you can translate said value into meaningful numbers that still reflect what people mean when they talk about people's lives having value, which is what is meant by "quantifiable" in the heads of people who don't run eagerly to say that rape and murder might be cool, you guys. Then you jump into dishonestly slicing off part of my post again. I think I should start lying about what you say in return, because that's about the only way to make your arguments intellectual as far as I can see. But you finally get down to the full blast of the trumpet. The part where you show that you are unable to read plain and simple sentences, or else are a compulsive liar. It's sad, and what's even more sad is that you can't tell what your own argument is once you post it. You said that because some people kill themselves (which you speak of in a way that suggests you're a depressive and this is you rationalizing your self-loathing) and people value self-preservation generally, human life has no inherent value. You are unable to respond to the point that people aren't talking about specific people's lives when they say "human life has value", and you're crowing about your victory. Well, you know, you can have your victory, OK? You can say that you've won to your heart's content, especially if it will get you to shut the gently caress up and go away.
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Mar 21, 2015 04:08
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Arglebargle III posted:You haven't made a point. You make bald assertions, and every time you're asked to justify them you either retreat or post something gob-smackingly stupid. If you'd like to go ahead and EXPLAIN what "people are talking about" (lol) when they say "human life has value" then you might make a point, but I at this point I doubt you have anything more than a vague idea of what you mean. I don't know what exactly you expect. I cannot put it any clearer than to say that when people say the words, "human", "life", "has", and "value", in that order, they are not talking about any particular person's life, any single life. They are not talking about an average of all persons. They are talking about an abstract concept, an idealized human being which has no specific characteristics. It is this concept, free from anything entangling, which is what they mean by it having value, because each individual person will have different things that lead people to value them in lesser or greater amounts, especially in different contexts. I suppose that you want proof of this, you want evidence of something that is blatantly obvious from simple context and human interactions, because you have shattered your own intellect in the pursuit of- what, exactly? quote: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. Of this. Mhm. I suppose there is one piece of evidence. You could ask people if the value of human life would increase if everyone were a [pick your own resolutely moral person] to determine if it is a concrete averaging or not, and when they look at you and realize that there is something deeply wrong with you, you can yell at them. Granted, you asked for a rhetorical defense but didn't know that rhetoric includes nasty things like insults, shouting people down, and tricking them into saying increasingly vile things, because rhetoric is about winning people over and persuading them, not about the search for the unvarnished truth. And frankly, the things that you've said all on your own have been so vile and so stupid that you deserve far worse than what I can fling at you.
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Mar 21, 2015 13:45
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Arglebargle III posted:Who are they, and what evidence do you have that they mean this when they say... that? I think it's pretty funny that you think you've tricked me into saying anything. I am "laughing out loud." My evidence is that I have had conversations with other people, in which they have expressed those sentiments, and from the context, it is absolutely clear what they are referring to. I suggest you try it sometime. And, no, I specifically said that you've said all the abhorrent poo poo on your own, boyo.
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Mar 21, 2015 15:07
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wateroverfire posted:Where in those basic moral principles is your outrage for the victim? The need for retribution? Those are also basic human things. So you've finally come around to the idea that murder is a crime against a person, eh? But an eye for an eye blinds us all, and it in turn denies the possibility of forgiveness. So where does that end? What kind of society would we have if we denied forgiveness and focused on revenge?
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Mar 22, 2015 13:40
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