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SpaceCadetBob posted:Prove to me all pain is bad. Suffering can actually be really good for you! I've yet to find a case where that is true.
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Mar 31, 2017 22:01
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OwlFancier posted:I've yet to find a case where that is true. So you're against most forms of medicine?
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Mar 31, 2017 22:03
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Who What Now posted:If I give you a life saving vaccine you will suffer because it requires poking you with a needle. So does this make every doctor on the same moral level as Mengele? Only if they do so without my consent, much in the same way as if you have a child they cannot consent to being born. EDIT: Also a doctor administering a vaccine is preventing future suffering. Having a child is guaranteeing future suffering.
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Mar 31, 2017 22:04
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Who What Now posted:So you're against most forms of medicine? The presence of suffering is not what is good for you, it's the actual material benefits and prevention of further suffering that is good. If I club you over the head with a rock so it hurts, that isn't medicine. And equally, if you perfect medicine to the point it doesn't cause suffering, it doesn't lose its effectiveness.
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Mar 31, 2017 22:06
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TomViolence posted:Only if they do so without my consent, much in the same way as if you have a child they cannot consent to being born. How do you get an infants consent, exactly?
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Mar 31, 2017 22:07
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OwlFancier posted:I've yet to find a case where that is true. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygiLUrJJjnM
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Mar 31, 2017 22:07
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If happiness is actually possible and in fact achievable for most humans then the private miseries of the average goon would be robbed of their significance. I wonder if people like OwlFancier recognize the self-flattery they are engaging in when they insist that life is constitutionally miserable for everyone and that they just happen to be part of the select few who are sharp-eyed enough to recognize it.
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Mar 31, 2017 22:08
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Who What Now posted:How do you get an infants consent, exactly? You can't. Same way you can't get consent to have sex with a sleeping woman. Helsing posted:If happiness is actually possible and in fact achievable for most humans then the private miseries of the average goon would be robbed of their significance. I wonder if people like OwlFancier recognize the self-flattery they are engaging in when they insist that life is constitutionally miserable for everyone and that they just happen to be part of the select few who are sharp-eyed enough to recognize it. This isn't just a matter for miserable, self-centred goons. Check this out. TomViolence fucked around with this message at 22:13 on Mar 31, 2017 |
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Mar 31, 2017 22:09
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TomViolence posted:You can't. Same way you can't get consent to have sex with a sleeping woman. So, again, you're putting any medicine practiced on children as morally indefensible. That's a really odd position to take.
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Mar 31, 2017 22:18
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We need a machine that asks everyone at the age of 18 if they wish to exist. If not, it wipes their memories THEN incinerates them.
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Mar 31, 2017 22:20
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This poster loves police brutality, but only when its against minorities!
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TomViolence posted:Only if they do so without my consent, much in the same way as if you have a child they cannot consent to being born. This I think is one of the core problems with your (and OwlFancier's) argument. Consent prior to existence is an irrational and impossible concept. There is no violation of consent when one creates a being that is able to consent. Actually, if we want to talk about consent, we should bring up implied consent. For example, if you come across a person who has lost consciousness and is in a life threatening situation, legally (and morally, for most people), you can act to save their lives, because it is implied that most people do not wish to die. To take this a bit further, lets apply your logic to Singer's drowning child problem. You would be ethically obligated to allow the child to drown because you can't get consent from them that they wish to continue living. That seems a bit absurd, doesn't it? Helsing posted:If happiness is actually possible and in fact achievable for most humans then the private miseries of the average goon would be robbed of their significance. I wonder if people like OwlFancier recognize the self-flattery they are engaging in when they insist that life is constitutionally miserable for everyone and that they just happen to be part of the select few who are sharp-eyed enough to recognize it. I think you may be on to something.
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Mar 31, 2017 22:20
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TomViolence posted:You can't. Same way you can't get consent to have sex with a sleeping woman. This breaks down, because it does not account for the pleasure this person would have brought to others if they existed.
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Mar 31, 2017 22:22
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LogisticEarth posted:This I think is one of the core problems with your (and OwlFancier's) argument. Consent prior to existence is an irrational and impossible concept. There is no violation of consent when one creates a being that is able to consent. I assume everybody wants to continue living, I simply don't have much faith that they are well founded in that desire. I see little reason not to honour their wishes however, they will die eventually anyway. And my argument has really nothing to do with consent, my argument is that procreation primarily creates more suffering, regardless of consent. The question of consent is immaterial to my position.
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Mar 31, 2017 22:25
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OwlFancier posted:I assume everybody wants to continue living, I simply don't have much faith that they are well founded in that desire. I see little reason not to honour their wishes however, they will die eventually anyway. Again, you don't actually have an argument, you just have an unjustified assertion.
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Mar 31, 2017 22:33
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Who What Now posted:Again, you don't actually have an argument, you just have an unjustified assertion. I have an argument based on premises that I cannot prove to you, if you do not accept the premises then you will not agree with the conclusion, that is how arguments work.
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Mar 31, 2017 22:34
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If loss of pleasure is neutral at most because nobody will exist to miss it, can't we say the same thing about suffering because eventually we'll all be dead?
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Mar 31, 2017 22:38
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TomViolence posted:This isn't just a matter for miserable, self-centred goons. Check this out. Utilitarianism is a superficial form of moral philosophy and besides, anyone who tries to argue that life isn't worth living through a syllogism is an honourary goon in my estimation. Happiness and suffering are not discrete objects that can be reliably abstracted from the moments in which they are experienced, laid against each other along some common scale and then weighed to see which occurs with greater frequency or intensity.
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Mar 31, 2017 22:39
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Utilitarianism is great.
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Mar 31, 2017 22:40
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OwlFancier posted:I have an argument based on premises that I cannot prove to you, if you do not accept the premises then you will not agree with the conclusion, that is how arguments work. Premises you can't prove or demonstrate are faulty premises. Your argument is fallacious from the start.
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Mar 31, 2017 22:44
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Who What Now posted:Premises you can't prove or demonstrate are faulty premises. Your argument is fallacious from the start. I can't take my observed reality out of my head and jam it into yours. This is a limitation of communication. I'm fine with you not accepting the premises for that reason.
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Mar 31, 2017 22:46
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Helsing posted:Utilitarianism is a superficial form of moral philosophy and besides, anyone who tries to argue that life isn't worth living through a syllogism is an honourary goon in my estimation. Happiness and suffering are not discrete objects that can be reliably abstracted from the moments in which they are experienced, laid against each other along some common scale and then weighed to see which occurs with greater frequency or intensity.
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Mar 31, 2017 22:47
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I think the real question is were Bud and Kelly Bundy happy? Kelly seemed to be happy go lucky, mostly doing what she wanted and sliding from one thing to the next without much of a problem. She was a strong, independent woman, living her own life the way she saw fit. However, she also seemed well equipped to deal with trouble when it arose. Then Chrisitna Applegate got cancer. I call this one a tie. Bud is another story. Everyone made fun of bud because he was short and weak and ugly but also he had a sex doll so even he must have found happiness occasionally??? He was endlessly pursuing making money or trying to have sex with beautiful women, that rat race of young men. *sighs wistfully* Sometimes he was even successful!! Then one time I saw a video of him talking to people with a dildo on his head. Later I learned this is because he is a PUA. This is a grave loss for our Country. Peggy was pretty content despite Al being cantankerous. She probably could have used more sex in her life but I think everybody could use more sex. Also Al obviously loved Peggy and his kids despite hating his life. This is a good thing. Even though he suffered he still worked for what he believed was important... for the vultures that are his wife and children to slowly and agonizingly kill him then pick his bones clean. You are alive when they start to eat you. Jesus Christ.
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Mar 31, 2017 22:59
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twodot posted:If I offer a choice between "Nothing happens", "I will give you $1 and you will stub your toe", "I will give you $1.75 and you will stub your toe twice", are you able to choose between those? If you can choose between them how did you do it without making a determination on the relative value of toe-stubbing against dollars? "Superficial" doesn't mean literally useless it just means that it only glances upon the surface of things and breaks down once you try to move beyond relatively simple problems. My ability to anticipate physical discomfort in the immediate future doesn't have much bearing on the kind of question the OP wants to investigate.
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Mar 31, 2017 23:01
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Utilitarianism being difficult to apply to hard-to-quantify questions doesn't legitimize stupider ethical systems' attempts at doing so.
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Mar 31, 2017 23:03
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OwlFancier posted:I can't take my observed reality out of my head and jam it into yours. This is a limitation of communication. I'm fine with you not accepting the premises for that reason. Why do you think that you and you alone are free from bias when it comes to accurately assessing the amount of suffering in life?
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Mar 31, 2017 23:10
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Who What Now posted:Why do you think that you and you alone are free from bias when it comes to accurately assessing the amount of suffering in life? I don't, but what I see is all I have to go on.
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Mar 31, 2017 23:12
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OwlFancier posted:Utilitarianism being difficult to apply to hard-to-quantify questions doesn't legitimize stupider ethical systems' attempts at doing so. It's not difficult so much as it's literally impossible and the true stupidity here is to mistake the words that we provisionally use to refer to our irreducible mental or emotional states for the things they describe. Just because you can invent a word called "utility" doesn't mean it actually measures anything meaningful or that it represents a common standard for human flourishing that can be abstracted away from individual experience and compared in a meaningful way.
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Mar 31, 2017 23:12
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OwlFancier posted:I don't, but what I see is all I have to go on. Why would you go on it at all if you know it's unreliable?
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Mar 31, 2017 23:15
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Who What Now posted:Why would you go on it at all if you know it's unreliable? Because the alternative is bashing my head on something until I lose the ability to think. I have the capacity to make decisions, I have a limited ability to perceive information to make those decisions, whether or not I procreate is a decision I have to make, I make it with the best information available to me.
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Mar 31, 2017 23:17
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Helsing posted:"Superficial" doesn't mean literally useless it just means that it only glances upon the surface of things and breaks down once you try to move beyond relatively simple problems. My ability to anticipate physical discomfort in the immediate future doesn't have much bearing on the kind of question the OP wants to investigate. edit: Alternatively I guess, what's a question where I can't measure expected goodness per badness, and make a choice based on that analysis? I definitely can and have done that for the question in the OP. (edit2: And for this question what do you propose as a decision making model other than comparison of goodness and badness?) twodot fucked around with this message at 23:24 on Mar 31, 2017 |
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Mar 31, 2017 23:20
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OwlFancier posted:Because the alternative is bashing my head on something until I lose the ability to think. You're being hypocritical though. You throw out other people's as being completely useless but won't don't the same for your own even though you admit you suffer from the same problems. And I'm not talking about your personal decision to procreate, I'm talking about whether it is ethical to stop other people from procreating against their will.
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Mar 31, 2017 23:21
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Blockade posted:Not the part of the population that tends to reproduce anymore. Patent holders, Phds, and other people with strong signifiers of 'intelligence' are less likely to have kids. Also, there is a measurable pressure driving down average IQ, longevity, and general health (IQ is still improving worldwide though due to better nutrition and access to food amongst other things). PhD s terrible parents and should all get vasectomies. I'm not sure what point you trying to make here. Lol at the ideas that people with "signifiers of intelligence" have more of a right to breed. If Idiocracy was a movie about only the upper class having kids the resulting society would be no less dysfunctional.
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Mar 31, 2017 23:22
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Who What Now posted:You're being hypocritical though. You throw out other people's as being completely useless but won't don't the same for your own even though you admit you suffer from the same problems. The alternative is I discard my own observation, I am more inclined to trust my observation than somebody else's, absenting further rigor. The wishes of the procreating individual are utterly insignificant compared to the welfare of the potential progeny, by any metric. Whether you believe life is good or bad, there is no possible way you can say that the created life is less important than the right of the creator to create it.
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Mar 31, 2017 23:24
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Guavanaut posted:Except if we conclude that the majority of the non-consensual suffering that is involved in bringing a living being into existence revolves around their eventual death and the immediate beforehand That's stupid, it's not like everyone lives to 80 with a broke mind making GBS threads themselves unloved in a medical facility. Lots of folks just have their heart pop suddenly while in the middle of doing something else. There's no reason to judge death as a primary cause of major suffering. OwlFancier posted:If I torture you, then wipe your memory, then leave you be for a day, then torture you again, then wipe your memory again, then give you another day, and I do this for years on end, with the net effect being that you are living in intense suffering, but your inability to build an accurate perspective of your life (because of the selective memory alteration) means you don't perceive it that way, are you or are you not suffering? I would take the position that you are, regardless of whether you are aware of it after the fact. And the fact you think like this is really just another reason to kill you. A brain shouldn't have to deal with that poo poo rattling around inside it, it's cruel. quote:And you could shoot me but, I think, the key point is simply to ensure that I don't procreate, which you could do by shooting me but as I'm not going to anyway that would be a bit superfluous. I'm going to die anyway in a comparatively short amount of time so there's very little need to accelerate that. If you're trying to minimize suffering you would be better served convincing people not to have children rather than going out and shooting people, which does cause rather a lot of suffering because people who already exist have relationships and things, they can be missed, a person who never existed cannot. No, it's easier and kinder to kill you. Then you are done, instantly, and there's no more suffering for you. It's probably cheaper and faster than trying to setup a single sterilization too. Really zero downside. I mean if we've already established that life is so hellish there isn't a reason to bring *new* life into the picture, there's no reason to care about a minuscule amount of new suffering your death would cause people around you. We've already reached peak suffering, "Life is not a worthwhile endeavor". "New people shouldn't live, but I should be able to just quietly check out naturally" is loving hypocrisy. You aren't special, you are exactly the same as all those new lives that could be. If they shouldn't live because life is ultimately bad news, you shouldn't live either.
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Mar 31, 2017 23:28
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I won't live, and neither will anybody else alive today for more than 100 years at best, the question is whether we will be replaced or not. And life can get far worse than simple negative utility.
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Mar 31, 2017 23:30
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twodot posted:Why not? I get that predicting the future is hard, but I don't see an alternative besides killing yourself or making purely random choices. A process sometimes being wrong doesn't mean it's not the best process. Because once you move beyond relatively trivial examples you run into the inescapable fact that you're relying on words that don't precisely correspond to any specific and discrete object within the human mind. The idea that all forms of happiness in all human beings can be reliably reported on, let alone subjected to some universal scale, is patently silly. The real nature of our minds is mysterious to us and while we can certainly navigate our day to day lives through anticipations of how our actions will make us feel in the short term there's no reason to expect that this same capacity would scale up to a grand question like whether life is worth living. quote:edit: Nobody is denying that you can do this, there's just no reason to think your conclusion will be accurate once you move past very simple thought experiments and toward grandly existential ones.
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Mar 31, 2017 23:37
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OwlFancier posted:I won't live, and neither will anybody else alive today for more than 100 years at best, the question is whether we will be replaced or not. You could also not live for the next 100 seconds, I don't see a reason to prolong your suffering.
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Mar 31, 2017 23:42
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Bud if you want to jerk it to the idea of shooting me in the head I'm not gonna stop you but I don't super want to be involved.
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Mar 31, 2017 23:45
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Real talk though I always thought the resolution to bringing someone into this world and them deciding their existence was necessarily evil/anti-eco was just called suicide. When they cease existing they're not experiencing or remembering any suffering anymore so it's neutral just like the good someone not yet conceived has yet to experience.
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Mar 31, 2017 23:45
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DeusExMachinima posted:Real talk though I always thought the resolution to bringing someone into this world and them deciding their existence was necessarily evil/anti-eco was just called suicide. When they cease existing they're not experiencing or remembering any suffering anymore so it's neutral just like the good someone not yet conceived has yet to experience. The issue with that line of thinking is that it makes all ethics meaningless because everyone is going to die. I would tend to take the position that suffering experienced is probably bad, like, objectively so, insomuch as anything can be, regardless of what happens afterwards.
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Mar 31, 2017 23:47
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