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This has been interesting to read, thank you folks.
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Apr 8, 2021 14:53
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UHD posted:its really weird to see people try to moralize an instinct Can I ask why? We moralise most of the things that we do, and questioning why things are "like that" is a tad important.
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Apr 8, 2021 18:55
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UHD posted:its weird because the end goal of that line of thought is the end of all life and nihilism is loving weird Why is that particular example lazy? I, as an individual, cannot hope to challenge forces beyond my ken even if I knew exactly what to do and how. But we do this all the time? Do you not pass judgement on anyone? Also, when does nihilism become the correct response to things? Beelzebufo posted:There are probably wasy to do it but for some reason whenever this question comes up on the internet, grognards come out of the woodwork to declare human life is intrinsically valueless and abloobloobloo nihilism. Unless you can agree on some core premises, ie. that life, human or otherwise, has value, then there's no point in debating because the positions are fundamentally irreconcilable. But a lot of reasons that people have for things are directly at odds. It doesn't mean that we don't try and understand them in some way. some plague rats posted:Better not leave the house, suffering exists outside of it on a far greater scale than inside This doesn't actually answer anyones concerns though. The fact that suffering exists is bad, and it should be stopped. To say that "oh it's everywhere so why do anything" is far more churlish than to go "perhaps there are ways to not approach things". Josef bugman fucked around with this message at 22:44 on Apr 8, 2021 |
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Apr 8, 2021 22:41
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Beelzebufo posted:Not if you start from fudamentally opposed premises, which is what I'm arguing is happening in this thread. The only way out is for one side to be wrong or proven to be inconsistent in some way. That's what I'm trying to do. I'm not the one who stated that people are wrong/deluded to judge their own lives as on the balance good (in all cases!), or the one to declare that wanting to have kids is always selfish and immoral. If you're going to walk in with those premised, then defend them when people challenge you. Something can be bad for you to do, but you cannot understand other people doing though. For instance, I'd consider that someone who has lived a less advantaged life than my own is permitted some different and more morally flexible way of living life. In the same vein we should strive to uphold a higher standard for those among us who are more advantaged.
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Apr 8, 2021 23:05
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Beelzebufo posted:Never? Why does it have to the correct response to something? If you are a nihilist, you hold other views of existence as being inherently incorrect. True nihilism doesn't recognize context as making other viewpoints valid, so why should it be ever be considered correct? I can hold that a lot of points of view are incorrect for myself, or for any number of reasons. If you hold that life has value, or inherent meaning to it then that's great, but it is not obvious. And if you hold a position of course you will believe that other views are incorrect, but that could be due to any number of things, differing points of view need not be completely at odds. Beelzebufo posted:Do you believe that an indigenous woman choosing to have a child to resist colonial domination and pass on her culture is doing something selfish and immoral, yes or no? Don't just pass judgement in the abstract, tell me exactly why you get to decide the value of human life, why you are correct in a nihilistic viewpoint and she is wrong. We are talking about the inherent morality of reproduction, not individual contexts. Either it is inherently moral or immoral. If that's not the premise, if reproduction is value neutral without considering other factors, then we aren't debating the inherent ethics of it and the situation will vary wildly person to person, or organism to organism, and you won't be able to argue that life is inherently flawed and should be encouraged to end. That's up to her, and eventually her child, and not me to determine. One can hold that certain moral precepts are up to other people to decide upon, as much as we are able to decide upon anything within our own contexts. some plague rats posted:"suffering exists so don't have kids" is just doing nothing but making it sound active instead of passive To flip this round, do you think it is moral to have children then? Beelzebufo posted:Ok so without context actions are value neutral. So you're not actually arguing for nihilism at all then. You just don't understand moral philosophy. I don't think I am capable of deciding for other people? It's attempting to recognise my own context, to a greater or lesser extent. It's for other people to decide, though I could try and make arguments as to why you should or shouldn't, depending on the situation. Beelzebufo posted:A woman choosing to have a child is immoral, because that creates a lifetime of suffering for the child, etc. The suffering the woman feels from not being able to have child (which is significant) does not matter in this moral calculus. I missed this bit, so I will add it in a little late, sorry! A woman choosing to have a child is up to her. It's not up to me because I don't think I have the right to make other peoples choices for them. If you choose to kill a pregnant woman then you are obviously at fault because you killed someone. You took away their right to choose how to live or not. In the same way that I'm sure someone who felt suicidal would still be pissed if they got murdered by someone they dislike. Now as to are those two things contradictory? I am not entirely sure? Why does the woman suffer from not being able to have a child? Alongside that your choice to kill someone inherently takes away their ability to choose for themselves whether they think life is worthwhile. Which, as I am trying to point out, is up to them. Josef bugman fucked around with this message at 00:05 on Apr 9, 2021 |
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Apr 8, 2021 23:14
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Beelzebufo posted:So you agree with me entirely then. I have no idea. To put it bluntly your examples don't make things simpler and I find your writing style hard to parse. I believe that is my error not yours though. But I do believe that one can judge something as "incorrect" whilst still respecting the people involved and the choices they made. Josef bugman fucked around with this message at 00:12 on Apr 9, 2021 |
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Apr 9, 2021 00:09
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Beelzebufo posted:E: My entire point is that you can't declare a categorical statement like "life brings suffering, suffering is bad, therefore reproduction is immoral", which is the argument at hand. My whole point is you can't judge others for choosing to reproduce because of your personal viewpoint on suffering. Therefore, reproduction cannot be inherently immoral, it is value neutral and context dependent. Versus the other viewpoint posited in this thread (the nihilistic one), which is that the woman in that example is acting immorally by choosing to bring a life into the world, no matter how she rationalized it. That is the core of this argument. I would say that life is suffering, but I can more than understand why people have kids. You can still go "this may not be the best decision" whilst doing all you can to attempt to live differently to others. There is a difference between the silly buggers doing things like yelling "crotchspawn" and people who just plain don't have kids. Like the difference between PETA and actual vegans for instance. But that isn't the Nihilistic example? The Nihilistic one is not anti natal as an axiom, is it? You could believe "life is suffering, it would be better not to have more children" whilst also going "but people are going to continue having kids anyway, so lets ensure things are as good as possible for them". Your asking people who believe the first to also believe "and therefore we must murder every child and everyone born is a vile stain upon this revolting planet." Beelzebufo posted:That's not the position OwlFancier has. His stated belief is that people who think life has value are deluding themselves/"programmed by biology" to believe something false. That is the problem with this thread. Do you think that it is impossible to respect people who you believe may be wrong about something? Lots of things we believe are false/fake though? I believe in justice, but I wouldn't be able to find it if you melted the universe down now would I? We are all stuck inside of our own contexts that are, mainly, informed by our societies and our biology.
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Apr 9, 2021 00:21
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Beelzebufo posted:That's why my original though experiment allows a woman to die by non-action. In both cases, the argument is you are preventing suffering by choosing not to do something. Why is it moral in one case and not in the other? I'm asking a pure moral philosophy question. What is the moral system that says that choosing not to have kids is moral, but choosing not to save a pregnant woman is immoral, if you are basing the argument on lessening human suffering? I'm positing a situation where the lessening of "suffering" being caused is essentially identical, especially against the enormity of the world and all the people in it. If you really believe that by definition a human life is always more suffering than good, then you are sparing the woman and her child that suffering, which under the moral system posited is a net good, in fact a bigger net good then just not having children. Yes but one is active not doing as opposed to a passive not doing, as it were. One is choosing to actively bring about a level of harm towards a person based on moral principle. If instead you "ranked" your principles and instead hold that "people should have a choice to make about things" at a higher level than "it's probably best to not have children" then you end up in a situation where you attempt to build a system that would encourage the latter whilst still bearing in mind the former. Would you believe otherwise? Is life not suffering? Beelzebufo posted:I actually don't think that I can respect someone with an axiomatic position (or belief) that argues their subjective experience is somehow more clearheaded then every other human in existence who holds a different viewpoint. It's the same way I don't respect white supremacists. Beyond that, what is the point of debating something if you don't explore the logical conclusions of what is being proposed? Why? Are you not doing the same now? "Everyone who doesn't believe as I do is muddled in their thinking" that sort of thing? If I explore the "logical conclusions" of what people propose they inevitably look like my caricature of their position. Because I often do not hold their position and my understanding is going to be different from their one. Do you believe we are not affecting by our physical bodies and our own cultures/drives? At what level do those drives and wants cross over and become "delusions" as it were. I do hope I am not being rude, but this is a lot to think about. Thank you.
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Apr 9, 2021 02:08
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Beelzebufo posted:No that's fair, and I don't think some sort of population management is beyond the bounds of acceptable. But that's for population management, not ending reproduction by improving society. If your goal is 0 births then improving society alone isn't going to work, and if that doesn't work and you have to resort to coercion it makes the whole argument that "I am against birth but I'm not going to force people to not breed" sort of nonsensical, doesn't it. I'm very sorry but this is weird as all hell. Owlfancier says "I think we should encourage people to not have kids in a none coercive manner" and you think he's an idiot but Soul_ going "Nahh I think we should have the state step in and force people to stop having kids" and you agree with them? Sorry about that! Can I clarify things at all?
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Apr 9, 2021 10:30
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Beelzebufo posted:I think other people have covered it, but let me state again that I am not "pro-child" as a general rule. I'm just using the stated premise that Owlfancier provides, which is that life is by definition just prolongued suffering, and that we should want to minimize suffering, to draw logical conclusions. Owlfancier has tried to get around these conclusions, which are monstrous, by reframing the issue as a macro one and claiming that he can be both against reproduction as a general rule, and purely for improving human conditions. But, as people have stated, these two goals are directly contradictory! It can't be both! There's no room for a "different strokes for different folks" argument here, the stated logic that Owlfancier uses implies that at some point coercion will have to be used to minimize the suffering, which is the thing we should all want to do. That's the point of my hypotheticals, it's the point of debating at all. If Owlfancier at least owned up to the eventual consequences of what he's advocating, then the debate would be different. But he avoids having to face up to the uncomfortable truth of his premises by couching it in talks of what's "practical" because the real outcome would be monstrous. But those conclusions are do not seem to be logical, they seem like extrapolations taken to an absurd end point. Peel posted:Declaring the pervasive human judgement that life is worth living a mistake arising from a cognitive bias doesn't work because there's no standard against which the judgement can be measured. Sure, but does that mean that life is worth living if we have to make up our own reason for it?
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Apr 9, 2021 15:24
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Beelzebufo posted:E: You could layer on "but people should get to make their own choices", but then your position isn't coherent. Why not? You could say that you believe in voluntary human extinction, right?
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Apr 9, 2021 17:23
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Beelzebufo posted:That's equivalent to saying that you are fine with endless suffering. By choosing that course of action (or non-action!), you are immoral, becuase you are allowing suffering to perpetuate, which is the sole metric that matters under the precepts set out. That's the core of the problem. To argue the point, and bear in mind I don't personally believe this: Our lives, as they are lived now and most likely for a very long time, are built on the exploitation of others and suffering. We are all immoral due to contact with these things, nothing we can do can be moral. The best option is triage. We cannot force people to change their ideas through violence, but we can choose to not participate in exploitative systems to the best of our ability and encourage others to not do so. Suffering will continue anyway and we cannot stop it, the best we can do is mitigate it. Also your points would make sense if we were working from a blank slate, as it were, but we aren't. Life exists, it may have been better if it hadn't, but we can't actually stop it via violence. Josef bugman fucked around with this message at 17:43 on Apr 9, 2021 |
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Apr 9, 2021 17:41
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Beelzebufo posted:That doesn't solve the problem. If human life is built on exploitation, and minimizing suffering from exploitation is your goal, then you should still do all you can to end human life! It's only if you accept the idea of human life in and of itself as valuable, versus the abstract problem of suffering minimization, that you can come to the conclusion that it should be voluntary. Again, in this example of things I don't believe but would like to poke at: Why would that follow? I can believe that veganism is much better for the planet and do my best to eat as much vegan stuff as possible, but with an awareness of myself I can also tell that I am going to probably have a chicken burger at 2am when walking home from the pub. As a separate point, why do you think human life has value? Beelzebufo posted:E; if all lives are exploitative, why should you respect the autonomy of others. Unless you believe that say, an indigenous person in Brazil might be living a less or even possibly non-exploitative life, in which case, you've violated your core premise. Because that's up to them to decide? Again it seems like you are just coming back to the GK Chesterton point of "A suicide is the worst of men because he murderers the whole world", which seems daft to me. Beelzebufo posted:E: This then comes into the question as to what counts as exploitation, and why it is immoral. Is arresting the life cycle of plants to eat them immoral? what about bacteria, or jellyfish? Or is it only neurons capable of pain that matter? Is exploitation immoral only if it's outside of a human defined "natural" cycle? Is a sea turtle acting immorally? or it it human reasoning capabilities, in which case, are children held to the same standard? Depends on where you draw the line for different people? Say you draw the line at hurting people or animals is probably a big part of it but I errr more on the side of people being being exploited is worse than animals being exploited. Say someone else thinks that even stopping plant life growth is inherently bad. Jains for instance believe that life, in every instance, is worth protecting. This means they try to do the barest minimum to harm other beings and some particularly religious folks only eat fruit that has fallen from trees. Would you accuse them of hypocrisy in trying to limit the harm that they do? Josef bugman fucked around with this message at 17:59 on Apr 9, 2021 |
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Apr 9, 2021 17:46
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Beelzebufo posted:So this isn't a moral framework. It's not questioning why you believe certain things are moral or immoral. In that instance, sure, I suspect that there are lots of people who ultimately hold beliefs yet do not live up to them, does that mean that the values are wrong? Beelzebufo posted:Because it exists and I personally value existing and good experiences. This is a foundational belief because it can't be derived from priors, like the idea that minimizing suffering is an ultimate good is also a foundational belief. These are irreconsilable. I know this. I'm just taking your stated premises to their logical conclusion. Wait, hang on, can I ask for clarification quickly? Do you not believe that minimizing suffering is a good? Beelzebufo posted:Why is it up to them to decide? If you accept the logic being presented, then letting them decide is an immoral act. It produced much more suffering. That's what I meant when I said that your premises are contradictory. Again don't believe this, represent a point yadda-yadda: Sure, but so is living? It's a less immoral act to go "people can decide for themselves if they find meaning from the world. I do not agree with them, but it is not up to me to decide that for others". It produces more eventual suffering, potentially.
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Apr 9, 2021 18:05
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I feel like I should state that i don't believe that life has no value, but I am trying to understand how we come to think about these things. Also I can stop if people would prefer, I am just quite enjoying chatting about this sort of thing.Beelzebufo posted:I mean jains inherently value life, a foundational belief I can agree with, and the compromises they make come from trying to balance between the different instances of life they inherently value. So no, I don't think that's hypocritical. It would be if they claimed life had no value and the only thing that mattered was not allowing suffering thought! If they did the same actions but for the "wrong" reason, would you inherently disagree with them? Say that Jainism believed that the cycle of Karma is inherently cruel and that it is necessary to do as little harm as part of ones life in order that you are not enmeshed in continual rebirth. Would they still be wrong to act as they do? Beelzebufo posted:And the question is why do you believe that exploiting people is worse than animals. What is that based on, why is there a difference. It's not in the precepts Owlfancier gave, and as soon as you start introducing exceptions and compromises, then you have to define why one life suffering is better or worse than another, and hence you are admitting that life has a value! It is being used to determine the relative value between two types of suffering in your own example! A negative number can still be larger or smaller than another negative number, can't it? If I were to hold that life has no value, but that conscious creatures have a higher likelyhood of justifying their existence and, as such, encouraging others to continue, then you could make the argument that the existence of conscious life is worse than unconscious life, right? You can still say "I think that this is immoral, but it is less immoral than that other thing"? Beelzebufo posted:I mean, if your argument is that "people believe what they believe man, and don't always live up to it", then you're basically just giving up on the idea of moral reasoning entirely. What's the point if we aren't going to examine the precepts built into belief systems? I mean, sort of? The practicality of the action may well matter a lot more than the reasoning behind said action, even if we can understand one better than the other. Beelzebufo posted:I belive that life has inherent value, and that the dignity of human life in particular is what is most important. Suffering minimization is important to that goal, but since I value life existing, and the right of peoples and cultures to perpetuate themselves (which I include in my definition of dignity for human life), I would not place suffering minimization as an absolute moral good. So yes, we can minimize suffering, but that is subsidiary to valuing human life, which is the core foundational difference between me and Owlfancier. I just think my beliefs through, while he would rather rationalize the conclusions of his premises away. What is the inherent value of life? Beelzebufo posted:Why isn't it up for you to decide? Why does their autonomy have value if life itself doesn't, if suffering is all that matters. Where does that come from as a belief, and how does it interact or conflict with the categorical statement that life is bad because it is suffering? Because I'm not them? If it's okay to do certain actions when you are in one position and not in another, that doesn't mean either is incorrect? Josef bugman fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Apr 9, 2021 |
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Apr 9, 2021 18:45
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Big Scary Owl posted:I actually have Hubble's 30th anniversary image as my desktop background cause it looks really cool. It's a shame I can't view life/consciousness with that same sense of wonder. Life in general or your own life in particular? I'm sorry to hear that either way though.
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Apr 10, 2021 00:42
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Big Scary Owl posted:Thanks It's no bother. Keep safe!
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Apr 10, 2021 01:01
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Gumball Gumption posted:It's a better argument than I made about how reproduction is a biological need and that this is equivalent to asking the morality of the speed of light or the boiling point of water. Can I ask a quick question? If it's a biological need, then how do people choosing to not have children fit into this framework?
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Apr 10, 2021 09:28
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CountryMatters posted:Some species have a reproductive strategy where particularly crappy individuals won't mate for the overall good of the species. In humans, this is D&D posters who cry into their funko pops and explain that they're not getting laid by choice because life is suffering See I don't get this. Not the point your making, that is fair enough if you believe it. But why go "all of you thinking otherwise are gross nerds who can't get laid, hahahahaha" as if you aren't posting on the internet forum equivalent of the arse end of nowhere?
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Apr 10, 2021 11:14
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CountryMatters posted:Nihilism is fake bullshit mate. It's 100% a cope. Pretty much no one who claims that "all life is suffering and having kids is evil because living is nothing but pain" actually seems to demonstrate they believe that with their actions. If you say that and you aren't either acting like a jainist monk, or plotting a captain-planet-style mass extinction, then it's just an excuse because your life is crap and wallowing in bitterness is easier than trying to sort your issues. I keep seeing this term used and I have no idea what it means. What is "a cope" or "copium"? I mean that's fair. But going "all of you are stupid bastards for thinking this, learn to be more like me who fucks" doesn't actually work to change peoples minds or stop them being unhappy?
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Apr 10, 2021 11:30
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CountryMatters posted:It comes off as weird and pretentious and kinda like something a teenage emo would say, not something a grown adult should still be muttering about. I'll take your word for it. I don't really agree wholeheartedly though. Like with the line above, your essentially going "You can't think this, adults wouldn't do that" seems to ignore that if adults are doing it, it's something that adults would do. Edit: Sorry, that was rude. It's just that I don't think it's wrong for people to necessarily feel those feelings, there appears to be no harm other than done to yourself and the main objections to it seem to be more focussed on calling the individual person an idiot for thinking like that. Mulva posted:An excuse. Copium is internet bullshit speak for a coping mechanism used to deny reality. Ohhhh, got it, thank you very much! Josef bugman fucked around with this message at 12:38 on Apr 10, 2021 |
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Apr 10, 2021 12:24
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I think the first noble truth can go for a long walk off a short pier, to be blunt. "Oh, only your mind and heart perceive suffering, if you stop wanting things you'd stop suffering" is far more objectionable than the idea that life lacks meaning. It's the same with the loving Stoics "oh, if you stopped desiring things you'd stop suffering" is the most asinine loving conclusion one can come to and it's no wonder that the majority of the people who followed those particular precepts were soldiers or emperors, people with a lot of power to stop doing lovely things who inevitably decided "nah, going to continue doing terrible poo poo".
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Apr 10, 2021 15:32
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Gumball Gumption posted:Individual failures or decisions to not reproduce doesn't mean that the species as a whole isn't going to try to reproduce. Reproduction is necessary for life and living things are going to reproduce. It's a biological constant and not something worth moralizing or even makes sense to moralize. I mean one can be an individual conclusion but not a wider one, but I get your meaning. I mean we moralise eating and drinking, both things that are necesarry but we continually debate over what and when and in what manner eating and drinking is "moral" or "good". Alongside that, we do have a responsibility towards that which we create. Would you say that someone who created things with a specific purpose that were then generalised are not responsible for the harm caused by them? Life is suffering. Suffering is not life.
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Apr 10, 2021 17:24
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Gumball Gumption posted:We moralize how to eat, not the actual act of eating. If someone said "It's wrong to eat because eating sustains life and sustaining your life will eventually lead to suffering" we would laugh at them because that's rediculous. But that's also pretty much the same argument that was started here. We can moralize the act of reproduction, that's incredibly common and people discuss that all the time. But the question of "is it moral to reproduce?" is still going to be like asking if it's moral for the sky to be blue. Living creatures reproduce, as a species they are going to try to reproduce and populate, these things will not change. They are so wildly out of our control that it's insane to talk about controlling them. I mean, again, Jains would disagree. But also I do take your meaning. We can ask why the sky is the colour that it is whilst also bearing in mind how stuff is vs how stuff "should" be, as it were. Most folks reproduce, but a growing minority does not, does that mean that the minority is immoral to do so? If so, why?
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Apr 10, 2021 17:46
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Gumball Gumption posted:No, there is no morality in reproduction. It just is. It's what living things do in the same way they eat, sleep, and poo poo. You can not apply morals to something a species has no real control over. If we're concerned about suffering than we can look to things we can control. I would disagree, only personally mark you. Nothing "just is" everything done or currently doing needs to be justified in some way. If you claim that "oh morality doesn't apply to X activity" then you may as well give up on moral reasoning as a whole.
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Apr 10, 2021 17:59
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Gumball Gumption posted:Are you talking about the question "is it moral for me to reproduce?" or "is it moral to reproduce?". The first one is a very long discussion humanity has been having forever. The second one is psudo-intellectual nonsense because we have no choice about it and arguing otherwise is like demanding the tide move out. We can make individual decisions, we have no control over a species need to reproduce. The former as opposed to the later, but the later is still interesting. Why do you think it is pseudo-intellectual though, and how can you tell the difference between that and truly intellectual? Can't most things be reduced down to individual questions to individual people? Beelzebufo posted:He's arguing for moral relativism, he just doesn't seem to realize it. I mean I am aware that it is one of the options, but I am also aware that I am not the sharpest knife in the drawer and that I can be wrong. Badly wrong, in a lot of cases.
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Apr 10, 2021 18:28
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Depression, doesn't necessarily mean that you are wrong. Of course it doesn't make you right either! Life exists, but it doesn't follow that it will reproduce unless it wishes to. It's not a fundamental law like gravity, but it is a personal or societal law I will agree on that.
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Apr 10, 2021 19:08
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Bel Shazar posted:Reproduction is part of the defining premises for what life is. If it doesn’t reproduce it isn’t life. Individual parts of it might not reproduce, but reproduction is a necessary condition for life. How do those two bits match up?
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Apr 10, 2021 19:18
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Gumball Gumption posted:You're missing it. Personal and societal are human things. Reproduction is universal to all life. Life needs to reproduce. If you want to discuss the personal and societal factors that go into human reproduction you can but that's all about how we reproduce. That's not about the morality of reproduction itself. The opening of this thread is about the morality of reproduction itself which is very silly. That doesn't neccesarily make it moral though, does it? Just because it's something that a lot of people do doesn't mean it is a moral idea, it is simply something that is. Again, do take your point. Bel Shazar posted:But now we’re talking about a particular instance of reproduction, not the ongoing reproduction of the species as a whole. But that's the thing, the ongoing ideal is made up of individual instances, isn't it? Josef bugman fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Apr 10, 2021 |
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Apr 10, 2021 19:22
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Bel Shazar posted:It means morality isn’t a valid consideration. It’s not a moral question. Everything is a moral question though, surely? All of our "selfhood" all of the ideas and questions and existence itself needs to be seen through a moral lens. We can't just opt out of certain bits because "oh well, you know" can we?
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Apr 10, 2021 19:29
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Bel Shazar posted:A moral filter is but one of the many heuristics we use to navigate the world. We can opt out of any moral imperative if we choose... the benefit of a complex prefrontal cortex. But, at least according to how Beelzebufo reasons we can't just "opt out" of moral reasoning. The moral imperitive matters more than the view of our own interior view of the world. Or, to be fair it "should" matter more.
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Apr 10, 2021 20:11
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Beelzebufo posted:You can if you're a moral relativist, which is what you are arguing for. Your arguments are commiting you to a moral relativist stance, which is that morality is not a subject that can be generally reasoned and explored, but is dependent on the individual. That's a valid position, but it's not the absense of a position, and it's also not the position Owlfancier was arguing. Well what would the absence of a position be? I'm also worried about holding a moral relativist stance as it seems to bleed very easily into "being a shithead" sort of stance. [unserious ] I don't like holding views in case I am wrong [/unserious] Josef bugman fucked around with this message at 20:28 on Apr 10, 2021 |
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Apr 10, 2021 20:26
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Beelzebufo posted:There's not such thing beyond not participating in the debate at all. Even a totally nihilists "morality is irrelevant" stance is a position. I'd like to be able to not participate, since, in a lot of ways, you might hurt people if you mess up.
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Apr 10, 2021 20:34
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CountryMatters posted:Honestly if this isnt just you doing a bit, have you considered therapy because your posting in this thread has several concerning themes in it wrt depression/anxiety Hahaha, way ahead of you. It's just part of who I am, it's why I try to be as kind as possible to everyone. We never know what folks are going through and all that! Sometimes how we are is just "broken" when compared to other people. And that can be okay too. Josef bugman fucked around with this message at 20:49 on Apr 10, 2021 |
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Apr 10, 2021 20:44
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Bel Shazar posted:Nothing can matter more than my internal view of my own world. At best anything I care about is a facet of that internal view, not some abstract fact of reality. That seems a somewhat solipsistic way of viewing things, if you don't mind me saying so. Can I ask why?
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Apr 10, 2021 21:04
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Sounds like if the amount of war and death went up, down or stayed the same you'd equally say that was proof that humans were violent sin cursed beasts. The ice sheets are melting mate. The idea that there is infinite growth available on a finite planet is not exactly a sustainable system now is it? I think trying to build a better world for other people is important, and more power to those that are so hopeful to that they have kids. But on a purely personal level I don't want to risk it. That and I also have brain problems that I wouldn't want to inflict the likelyhood of on a child.
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May 16, 2021 00:00
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:I mean, I am sure that final battle on the plains of megiddo is going to happen any minute now, just like always. But until that happens the actual data we have currently does not seem to show a world where more people means more war and violence, people seem to be more empathetic and kind as there is more people. Or at least the two things are uncoupled and unrelated and there being vastly more people does not apparently show any amount of more violence as it scales up. The idea that "tomorrow will be better than today" is not one that I am willing to bet on, personally. War has gone down, in part because war has become ever more expensive for the aggressor. But it also doesn't mean that violence has diminished necessarily. Part of the problem is that there is an awful lot of internalised violence where the state brutalises either it's own citizens or those seeking to become citizens. It also doesn't really undercut the idea that we are, quite possibly, super hosed in the longer term. Externalised violence may well have gone down a bit now. But I don't think that past results are future results.
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May 16, 2021 09:04
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enki42 posted:Can you give objective evidence for this? Because OOCC provided some for forms of violence that are not war (specifically that homicide is vastly, vastly less frequent than it was in the past.) You mean like an increase in internal oppression, the cost of war, the idea that tomorrow must be better than today? Which bit did you want to hear more about? Even if just talking from a "european nations outward" you've seen the various different refugee camps and the various abuses heaped upon people within them. Yarls Wood, is the most apropos for me to bring up as it happens in the UK. But you've got the various ethnic cleansings and war crimes that continue to go on besides these of course. Homicide is, but we didn't even measure for a lot of different interpersonal violence until recently. I wouldn't argue that murder has gone up, that'd be silly. But violence? Denial of food, shelter etc? I'd say that's gone up. At least where I am. Heck we are seeing the first ever drop in life expectancy since WW2 at the moment. I don't think we've gotten worse. But I do think that the idea we've gotten "better" is a scam. Every time period is some measure of dystopia. Some more so than others, true, but it's not going to stop any time soon.
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May 16, 2021 14:45
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Oh sorry, should have clarified. I am just objecting to mass extinction/die off that is going to occur. I don't know what Car Hater is talking about in all honesty.
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May 16, 2021 15:33
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Mulva posted:Also a lot of doomposters act like "Climate change" is a thing that will jump out of a dark alley and knife people. What, exactly, do you imagine is going to cause wealthy and powerful nations to collapse, rather than billions of poorer folks in weaker nations getting the dick while richer ones adapt? Are... are you serious? I mean you've got increasing difficulties growing crops and (worse) pollinating crops, you've got mass flooding of low laying areas, huge numbers of refugees from everywhere else on the planet. You've got the death of vast numbers and the collapse of the various different supply chains that keep the world in which we currently all exist turning. Your attitude is one of "shut up you sad fucks, your wrong". It's based not on looking at data but a determination to be right about how everyone else is stupid. Josef bugman fucked around with this message at 18:04 on May 16, 2021 |
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May 16, 2021 17:55
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