• Is patriotism a virtue or a vice?
    I think that patriotism is foremost a tool during times of war used to cohere and motivate the populace in response to an external threat. In that function it's useful...

    But during peace-time, I'm not so convinced that it really has a place. Pride in the merits of one's nation seems fine, but more than that and it becomes entertainment, cheer-leading, and allows the governing administration to take actions much more easily given they can appeal to percievably patriotic values.

    Can liberals learn to stop worrying and love the nuclear super-powers?

    I'm not sure how to answer. The ideologically driven conservatives claim to be minimalists and isolationists, but real world conservatives can't possibly get enough military spending. And I don't know what leftists want anymore... Ideologically they ought to revere western states for enshrining values like freedom of speech, but of late if they don't like what's being said their dissatisfaction of the system really shows...
  • Dennis Rodman Heads to North Korea (Again)...
    ↪TheMadFool
    Heh, so true. That and his addiction to swizz cheese (which literally gave him gout).

    It's the timing that really strikes me as odd though. Pundits were bandying that imminent war with North Korea could be possible last week, so what could entice Rodman to choose now of all times to head over for another visit?
  • Post truth
    Just want to chime in with a thought: we're not exactly in a post-truth world yet (post modernism hasn't found a strong enough poison with which to dope it's blade) but we ARE in so many ways living in a post-reason world.

    "Facts", evidence, and reason are no longer the sole prime movers of journalism and news media. Mainstream "popular" culture and parts of academia have bought in to a moral economy based on feelings and outrage, and widespread backlash to this is culminating in growing distaste for the mainstream media (Fox included), along with a fascinating (and perhaps now subsiding) internet war of trolls and ideologues (see: the rise of Kek).
  • What are we trying to accomplish, really? Inauthentic decisions, and the like
    ↪schopenhauer1


    So you make very many inauthentic decisions...

    Do you make any authentic ones?

    It seems to me that if we spend the necessary time trying to come up with an authentic answer to "when to poop?" then we're going to be incurring an opportunity cost when it comes to the authenticity of other possible decisions. (the time we spend on this decision is time not spent on another).

    If you mean to derive value from authenticity, then submitting to the inauthenticity of everyday life is what enables us to arrive at a situation where we are free enough to actually make these authentic decisions (I.E: the choice to work and the decisions involved in work might be inauthentic, but some decisions about what you then spend that money on might not be, decisions which would be unavailable without the drudgery of work).

    Personally, I can derive value from even from inauthentic decisions. I absolutely love tacos, and I choose to eat them whenever possible on principle; they make me happy, and that's why I continue in that inauthentic pattern. I can't speak for the human experiment, but the taco train to me is absolutely worth maintaining and passing on!
  • Do you feel more enriched being a cantankerous argumentative ahole?
    I think people generally behave negatively toward others (in the manners to which you refer) as a form of stress relief.

    As such stress will diffuse through our humble forum, going from one user to another (generally in the form of reciprocated rudeness).

    Perhaps people just have a lot of stress as of late, but I do agree with you that it's less than enriching..
  • Does God survive if we have no free will?
    ↪Terrapin Station
    Not really, no. But such is the nature of arguments pertaining to "consciousness" due to it's prevailing mysteriousness...
  • Does God survive if we have no free will?
    ↪Terrapin Station


    I reckon that she was trying to say a "non-physical mind" cannot possibly interact with the physical world by definition...
  • Art, Truth, Bulls, Fearlessness & Pissing Pugs
    Many of the factors keeping families poor apply to all races (e.g. cycles of poverty, poor economic conditions, etc.) and are keeping white families down too. No-one's presuming the causative factor pertains to race. They are describing that a particular race is affected in a way another is not (an analysis of groups rather than individuals). — TheWillowOfDarkness

    But the "another race" IS affected in many and most of the same ways (and that's what you ignore by continuously labeling western society as racist/patriarchal in response to any and every statistical disparity between demographics).

    At any given time there are fewer women in the workforce than there are men. A statistical disparity...

    You would absolutely decry this as a societal state of sexist or patriarchal oppression, but the causal factor behind this reality might be the fact that women need to take time off when they get pregnant. Does the biological reality of female pregnancy which distracts some women from careers mean that we live in a patriarchy? And if so, should we combat this patriarchy by, let's say, laying off a bunch of men (or paying them less) until women are on par with men in terms of career statistics?

    In similar fashion, given that the black demographic is the most economically poor off, (and whites are second only to asians) should we take a certain percentage of the income of all white people and have that go to all black people? Is that what justified reparations sounds like?

    If you want to answer the question of actually how to approach remedies for the problems facing black communities, continuously restating things like "until we recognize our own white privilege and acknowledge the on-going racist subjugation of black and brown bodies we will never jump-start genuine psychological decolonization in the west" doesn't actually get anything done, it just confuses people to no end.

    TL;DR So you say racist oppression is the main contemporary barrier facing black communities... O.K, What are your demands?
  • Art, Truth, Bulls, Fearlessness & Pissing Pugs
    these young volk — Bitter Crank

    Heh...They just want a bit of lebensraum safetys-raum!

    In my experience 15-25 years of age seems to always be the target demographic of extreme ideology, but as they start to age out of their fanaticism, the question I have is whether or not there will be further batches as new university students haphazardly stumble in to certain humanities courses.

    The press worm seems to be slowly turning against the SJW crowd, so I'm hopeful students will vote with their wallets and force campus reform by abandoning gender studies en mass...
  • Art, Truth, Bulls, Fearlessness & Pissing Pugs
    This is a key concern of BLM: a shift away from an understanding of society which just assumes it's not harming back people, which excuses the inequality of black communities as something that somehow defined separately to the systems of our society, to one that views how the are affected within the system of our society. — TheWillowOfDarkness

    These days our society harms people of all colors, and the only signal for reprieve is the color green (money).

    You wish me to conform to your language use and assent to the position that the very existence of a statistical disparity represents systemic oppression, but I just cannot do it. You've got to explain how systemic oppression is actually keeping black families down in the contemporary world.

    What if the many and major factors keeping poor families poor applies to all races (keeping white families poor too)? If we try to fix statistical disparities but presume the causal factors must pertain to race, we risk missing the genuine causative factors entirely.

    Racism means prejudice based on race. It doesn't mean power plus privilege, nor does it mean systemic oppression evidenced by statistical inequalities.
  • Art, Truth, Bulls, Fearlessness & Pissing Pugs
    ↪Bitter Crank
    I am quite interested in a genuine historical analysis of systemic oppression (and I hope you've got part 3 coming!), but the distilled jargon of post-modern SJW-ism sweeps all such details into the same dust bin as a broad and ill-defined justification for their extreme demands in contemporary society.

    I do understand many aspects of the legacy of racism (and slavery too) as it affects black demographics, but these SJW types don't get the difference between, say, the inter-generational effects of past racism, and the on-going contemporary forces which might be perpetuating the statistical inequalities they aim to affect. Half of them are demanding broad reparations be paid (from all whites to all blacks) for slavery. That's how large some of their leaps actually are.

    I do hope you've got a part three coming though :) . In the (now mostly) desegregated west, post civil rights movements, and post overt racism as a social norm, inter-generational poverty yet persists (for whites too perhaps at the same rates (perhaps as a function of declining racism)).
  • Discussion: Three Types of Atheism
    ↪Heister Eggcart


    Are you a douche?... Well that depends on whose genitals I'm meant to wash!

    Obsessed with making fun of the Christian Old Testament?... I wouldn't say obsessed, but I do tend to enjoy myself when the OT gets pitted against me...

    Do you think Richard Dawkins represents the real presence of Christ? More like the presence of posh Britain, but am I allowed to agree with any of his ideas and not be an idiot?

    Do you enjoy being a dick toward people who are religious? No, but what if I was an equal opportunity dick instead of just to religious people?

    Do you think that your disbelief in God makes you better, smarter, cooler? Well "cooler" is subjective, "better" is undefined (better at what?), and as far as "smarter" goes, belief or lack of belief doesn't make you stupid or smart either way, although I would hazard a guess that extremity in ideological beliefs of any kind correlate with stupidity.
  • Discussion: Three Types of Atheism
    I didn't realize absurdism and pragmatism were mutually exclusive...

    But what's a new atheist and how would I know if I am one?
  • Art, Truth, Bulls, Fearlessness & Pissing Pugs
    Frank Bruni's opinion piece in today's New York Times (June 4, '17) is about your topic. He says, "But we’re never going to make the progress that we need to if they hurl the word “racist” as reflexively and indiscriminately as some of them do, in a frenzy of righteousness aimed at gagging speakers and strangling debate." then he gives some egregious examples you can add to your collection. — Bitter Crank

    It's astounding how demanding that white people not show up to university for a day (to demonstrate solidarity o.o ?) is somehow done in the name of anti-racism. The way they portrayed that professor as an agent of hate is exactly the kind of turn that typifies this sort over-reaction. It's as if someone actually told these kids they ought to have an emotional breakdown in order to demonstrate against and overcome any and all conflict or opposition.
  • Art, Truth, Bulls, Fearlessness & Pissing Pugs
    Yup. How to communicate this to those who are caught in the cycle, though?... — Noble Dust

    It's like untying a knot; it all depends on the knot in question. You've got to understand it first.

    Are these real examples? — Noble Dust

    Yes they are. Here's an utterly hilarious video about the first example I gave



    Can you elaborate? — Noble Dust

    The central assertion of any of these social justice movements reads something like: we live in a society that systematically oppresses __________ due to widespread prejudice. By assuming this assertion to be deeply true, from this they're able to take positions like "racism is privilege plus power, which means all white people are racist", or "We must listen to the voices of the oppressed (i.e, anyone non-white or non-male) and we must expect the voices of our oppressors to be a part of the oppressive system" (meaning white males generally).

    Have you ever heard someone acknowledge their white privilege and the invalidity of their opinions due to their race or gender before making their statement? Under the "identity politics" that emerges around how obsessive these people become with identity, to belong to a perceived oppressed class means you get to speak first (something called "the progressive stack" which is meant to counter-act white-male supremacy) but it also means that your "lived experiences" are inherently more valid. Anything which contradicts them therefore becomes invalid, a part of the oppressive system, and emotionally decried as supportive of violence against women/minorities.

    This is where the insidiousness really gets started because logic and reason (as persuasive tools) actually get replaced with emotional appeals to the original assumption (our society as completely oppressive) and from that emotional appeals to identity and virtue as primary arguments become utterly persuasive to them. Sometimes even science itself is charged as being an inherently racist system and can therefore be brushed aside as invalid. The original assumption (and it's emotional appeal) are constantly referred back to and it just keeps on justifying more and more leaps into extreme language and perception. All members of a given group are either oppressed or oppressors under this view. Any statistical disparities must be the result of prejudice from the dominant group.

    When you assume the worst and put on an ideological lens designed to magnify your existing presumptions, your own presumptions wind up being the only color you can perceive. Basically that's what's happened to them.

    The above are the meat and potatoes of the social justice movement, and most of the rest is just garnish: the academic course material is literally loaded to the brim with intelligent sounding jargon and exhausting nonsensical fluff. It's all crap like "the intersection of oppression of an individual belonging to two separate but equally oppressed groups highlights the post-modern social need for complex de-colonialization in all aspects of contemporary society which currently represent the historical thread of fascist violence that has been inflicted on PoC for several centuries".

    Not even joking, the above sentence might actually give them a hard-on. From here it just fans out into ridiculousness (and where it gets difficult to catalog)...

    You know how academic journals/publications actually claim to have scientific standards of peer review? Well someone wrote a completely bogus research paper intentionally constituting and peppered with absolute nonsense (but written to look and sound good) in order to test the "scientific rigor" of a particular journal...

    Here it is: The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct .

    The conclusion: We conclude that penises are not best understood as the male sexual organ, or as a male reproductive organ, but instead as an enacted social construct that is both damaging and problematic for society and future generations. The conceptual penis presents significant problems for gender identity and reproductive identity within social and family dynamics, is exclusionary to disenfranchised communities based upon gender or reproductive identity, is an enduring source of abuse for women and other gender-marginalized groups and individuals, is the universal performative source of rape, and is the conceptual driver behind much of climate change. An explicit isomorphic relationship exists between the conceptual penis and the most problematic themes in toxic masculinity, and that relationship is mediated by the machismo braggadocio aspect of male hypermasculine thought and performance. A change in our discourses in science, technology, policy, economics, society, and various communities is needed to protect marginalized groups, promote the advancement of women, trans, and gender-queer individuals (including non-gendered and gender-skeptical people), and to remedy environmental impacts that follow from climate change driven by capitalist and neocapitalist over-reliance on hypermasculine themes and exploitative utilization of fossil fuels.
  • Art, Truth, Bulls, Fearlessness & Pissing Pugs
    It's nonsensical. But then... it isn't as if that is the only non-sensical thing that happens in these times. — Bitter Crank

    Deep down there's a connection between precisely this kind of craziness and Trump himself.

    The social justice warrior crowd has been proffering the overblown outrage angle (largely through social media, and originating in the humanities departments of university campuses) for several years and it's garnered constant ridicule and rejection from the wider internet community (although the advertisers love them).

    There's a fairly tangible "anti-sjw" community that naturally resisted Hillary (and her ""i'm a woman" argument) and produced unending and effective propaganda ridiculing her, but also was somewhat resistant to some of the kinds of outrage that Trump has garnered. In some part trump is a reaction to the transparent and blatantly ridiculous virtue games that people are playing of late (Trump is the perfect troll).

    It's fascinating and terrifying...
  • Art, Truth, Bulls, Fearlessness & Pissing Pugs
    ↪Noble Dust
    Funny you should use the term "ouroboros" (a snake eating itself)...

    I've been trying to write down a coherent analysis/synopsis of the entire historical and ideological root stem and leaf of the ridiculous virtue/outrage culture that has coalesced in recent years, but it's been hard cataloging all the particulars.

    The critical angle I've chosen to take is to describe the phenomenon as an ouroboros because it begins out of a desire to be virtuous and promote certain moral values (like freedom from oppression) but inexorably (through many snake like twists) it comes back and sinks it's teeth squarely into the values which originally founded it..

    Here are some !!fun!! examples:

    An ethics philosophy student joins an anti-fascist organisation, takes a stand against some political opponents they have labeled as fascist, and then shows up to their alleged free speech rally in a mask to attack them with a heavy steel bike lock.

    A sociology student joins a race awareness group, takes a stand against perceived high levels of on campus racism, and proceeds to demand racially segregated spaces in the name of safety and equality.

    A woman joins a feminist group to promote equality, is told that the wage gap is the result of patriarchal conspiracies, and proceeds to demand that we pay women even more than men in order to offset the persistent disparity between earnings.

    I've been through all the academic theory (it's facile) but there's just so much activity that falls under the same causal umbrella that I'm having a hard time capturing it all.
  • Is rationality all there is?
    logical analysis of the moral landscape has utterly failed in providing a satisfactory solution to its problem — TheMadFool

    Utterly failed?

    That might be an overstatement... There are plenty of venerable moral and ethical solutions to many of our problems, especially in the modern world

    Then there are so many (wikipedia has a long list) paradoxes that span the breadth of our knowledge framework - conundrums logic cannot handle. — TheMadFool

    Paradoxes are fringe; which one cripples the utility of rationality?

    Should we stubbornly continue to apply (or is it misapply) reason and logic to these problems? I think it's high time we looked at new avenues, new tools to apply to these problems. Who among us has the spark of creativity to unravel the truths hidden in these logic-resistant fields? — TheMadFool

    Some truths cannot be known, some problems cannot be solved, and some horizons can never be observed. If we ever find something that is more powerful than rationality, then every rational person will adopt it!
  • Choice
    Go with the compatibilist definition: a choice is something that you make generally un-coerced by external forces.

    What constitutes generally un-coerced by external forces is for the judge and jury to decide in a given case.

    For example, if a person has a tumor on a particular part of their brain which causes them to suddenly behave abnormally, we wouldn't exactly hold that behavior against them after we remove the tumor. (other "mitigating" factors could be addiction, extortion, a moment of passion, fear, coercion by another, etc...).

    When we find no mitigating factors we're forced to hold people pragmatically responsible for their "choices" as a necessary means of correction.
  • Art, Truth, Bulls, Fearlessness & Pissing Pugs
    ↪Cavacava
    Personally I think the girl is codswallop, but they aren't my streets so that really doesn't matter.

    If the NY public likes the girl enough to keep it, power to them. The original bull artist can commit whatever the artist equivalent of hara kiri is and his outrage still wouldn't move me. I do still like his art far better alone though. If you give serious and separate appraisals of both works of art, the bull is really very impressive. The girl seems poorly sculpted by comparison...

    One of my main points in this thread is that it doesn't matter about my taste though, or the bull artist's taste, or the girl's, or the pug's. If each of them thinks they have the right to install their own political views (or standards) as permanent fixtures of the public sphere, they're sorely mistaken.
  • Art, Truth, Bulls, Fearlessness & Pissing Pugs
    ↪Mongrel
    That's how I feel about the girl though: What's she doing there?

    The corporate style campaign that commissioned the girl was trying to promote feminism. Perhaps the bull represents the evil patriarchy, and hence the girl makes sense, but I don't think so.

    Let's discuss it publicly though, and if it means that much to us let's let our public representatives and local officials know how we feel about it and what we think the monument ought to portray. If it was really that big of a deal, we could even have a series of votes to settle it!
  • Art, Truth, Bulls, Fearlessness & Pissing Pugs
    ↪Bitter Crank
    Bill Maher referred to himself as a "house nigger" on his weekly HBO show yesterday. When I listened to it I thought "Ah, here's something someone will try to be unreasonably offended about".

    When I woke up today the T.V in the living room was already zeroed in: "Bill Maher uses Racial slur during interview!: Here's some moral grandstanding we found in tweets from some offended black people!". "HBO ISSUES STATEMENT: Bill Maher's words were tasteless and deplorable! PLEASE DON'T HATE US". "BLM DEMANDS HBO FIRE MAHER!"...

    Something about this phenomenon disturbs me beyond words and to no end, and it's happening everywhere right now; it goes like this:

    - Someone does or says something that is perceived by some to be possibly offensive...

    -Passionate calls for retribution immediately ensue (they start online and on the basis that someone possibly got offended)...

    -Truth is exchanged for the feelings of the righteous/offended (which in the environment of emotional outrage accusations become amplified into their most extreme versions. I.E: insensitivity morphs into racism, and racism morphs into violent fascism).

    In some ways these Bull shenanigans are very similar. When the bull artist took offense and started bemoaning the trampling of his artistic vision he was de-facto trying to thrust his political world view onto the NY public. Normally an artist defending their art would not amount to this in action, but because the bull is a highly public installment the executive decision should not in the end be his. If we arbitrarily bow to this artist's outrage, then we're actually giving up part of our own rights to political speech just to assuage his personal and political sensitivity.

    Demanding Bill be fired because he used a term which inflicts emotional pain (but only when a white person says it...) seems just like the artist demanding the girl be removed because it offends him...

    People need to learn that they've no valid moral or copyright claims over the political beliefs and speech of others which are expressed in the public free market of ideas...
  • Art, Truth, Bulls, Fearlessness & Pissing Pugs
    ↪Terrapin Station
    That's not a bad idea. Maybe she could greet people arriving to the statue of liberty? (a strong daughter raised under the protection of freedom?)

    Compared to the bull the fearless girl is insignificant as an art installment though, so to me it matters less. Send her to the Korean demilitarized zone to mock Kim for all I care :)
  • Art, Truth, Bulls, Fearlessness & Pissing Pugs
    ↪John
    It has to be left to public representatives to interpret the public will in the case of guerilla art (and suffer the repercussions if/when they get it wrong and either way).
  • Art, Truth, Bulls, Fearlessness & Pissing Pugs
    ↪Bitter Crank
    "Outrage" holds an unfortunate amount of sway in the digital era... Bad press can destroy a person or entity if viral digital exposure leads to witch-hunts of extreme scale...

    The people of Dakota might have an argument if their tax dollars or their elected officials fund or are responsible for maintaining the Walker Art Center. If it's a privately owned and operated institute, they can protest all they like but they've no right to thought police the private artwork of others that exists on private property (pretty much regardless of content).

    Even if it's the city that owns the property in question (such as in the case of the bull/girl), whichever group of elected officials (who represent the residents) would be the one's with the legal rights to make a decision.

    As far as "the artist has no right to depict the story" (recall the Emmet Till art controversy), I really don't buy it. I think it's misplaced sensitivity and predicated on somehow extending ownership rights of something to an entire culture or ethnicity.

    A good recent example of this was the pita/taco stand (kooks burritos) that got shut down when the white entrepreneurs who ran it were accused of cultural appropriation and stealing the recipes of people of color. They went to Mexico to learn how to make some delicious pita bread that they had eaten while previously on vacation there, and after having returned successfully opened a stand, only to later shut it down after being battered by waves of hatred claiming that they were monstrous thieves.

    Outrage holds an unfortunate amount of sway in the digital era...
  • Art, Truth, Bulls, Fearlessness & Pissing Pugs
    ↪John
    Morally speaking, whatever the public wants is what they should get.

    I'm still holding out for a lasso wielding heroine myself...

    What I find most interesting about this is that the artists are so hopped up about their own messages (as artists should be), and we look on as spectators of this conflict, but in the end, morally speaking, the final say is (or should be) directly up to the public.

    If the streets of NY are the property of those who live there, this dilemma could be analogous to two interior designers sabotaging the work one another are doing in your own home. As such the public has the right to dismiss either of them at will, or both.

    If I cannot get a lasso wielding heroine, then let's try for absurdism: modify all three statues into a star wars themed standoff.
  • Art, Truth, Bulls, Fearlessness & Pissing Pugs
    ↪Bitter Crank
    That's what I said about the fearless girl! Should have been a cowgirl to scale with the bull! (and would have actually depicted female empowerment). But you know, corporations tend to be cheapskates.

    I guess that was part of the artists point though. The dog is a crappy downgrade to the girl as the girl is a crappy downgrade to the bull.
  • Chance Asymmetries - The Rich Get Richer and The Poor?
    ↪Bitter Crank


    I want to say yes but I'm not sure... (admittedly I've never been interested in amazon beyond using it to get computer parts and random books)

    When wall-mart is through destroying local businesses they jack up their prices and hire all the out-of work community members all on part-time shifts for minimum wage. They contribute nothing to any community other than to drown it in a temporarily affordable wave of stuff. They will pollute the grounds around their stores (which sometimes sits in the center of a particular town) and then abandon it because paying fines and moving elsewhere is cheaper than cleaning it up.

    I think Amazon might be different in some ways. They don't pollute (that I know of) and they are guaranteed to pay their employees more than wall-mart does. They don't exactly make all retail stores competitively obsolete like wall-mart does, but they probably hire fewer people overall.

    I guess it mainly comes down to whether or not Amazon is willing to deliver long term value. A benevolent king could be a great thing right? Heh... With the ease of online competition though, I wonder how much slack Amazon actually has to exploit.
  • Chance Asymmetries - The Rich Get Richer and The Poor?
    Wall-mart is a good contemporary example of a run-away industry leader who can arbitrarily raise the stakes hand after hand until you go broke.

    One long term economic strategy is to lose money in the short term to underbid all your competitors and put them out of business so that afterward you own a bigger share of the market. Monsanto does it to farmers (apparently) and wall-mart does it to small business owners. There's probably a name for it...
  • What criteria do the mods use?
    I don't think I've ever had any of my posts deleted (I'm a good boy!), but I wonder if and when posts get removed, is there any kind of notification or way to see that this has happened?

    I'm not against removing posts, but I think it's important that the poster be made aware of the deletion (and why, if applicable). (Knowing why your post is removed would be good for rehabilitating the shit posters.)

    There's a concept called "shadow-banning" which is where you make someone's content invisible to everyone but themselves, and sometimes they go on posting for years, never ever getting any replies. The problem I have with shadow-bans (or by partial similarity, shadow-post deletion) is that it can have the insidious effect of censoring/silencing political speech above and beyond merely denying someone a platform. Banning someone outright is one thing, but shadow-banning prevents people from finding other platforms because they are tricked into thinking they already have one.

    It's an interesting ethical issue given the unprecedented importance these new digital forums (the big ones especially) have in society.
  • Douglas Adams was right
    I thought this thread was going to be about Adams' thoughts on philosophers:

    (BBC Radio 4: 29th March 1978) (*fair use: educational and analytical purposes)


    Reveal
    NARRATOR:
    There are, of course, many problems connected with life of which some of the most popular are, “why are people born?”; “why do they die?”; and “why do they spend so much of the intervening time wearing digital watches?” Many millions of years ago, a race of hyper-intelligent, pan-dimensional beings got so fed up with the constant bickering about the meaning of life, which used to interrupt their favorite pastime of Brockian Ultra Cricket - a curious game which involved suddenly hitting people for no readily apparent reason and then running away - that they decided to sit down and solve the problem once and for all. And to this end, they built themselves a stupendous supercomputer which was so amazingly intelligent, that even before its databanks had been connected up, it had started from first principles with “I think therefore I am” and had got as far as deducing the existence of rice pudding and income tax before anyone managed to turn it off. Could a mere computer solve the problem of Life, the Universe, and Everything? Fortunately for posterity there exists a tape recording of what transpired when the computer was given this particularly monumental task. Arthur Dent stops off in Slartibartfast’s study to hear it.

    [Sound of playback starting]

    ARCHIVE VOICE:
    Archive material of Magrathea.

    Scene 2. Int. Deep Thought Chamber

    DEEP THOUGHT:
    What is this great task for which I, Deep Thought, the second greatest computer in the universe…

    LUNKWILL:
    [Whispers] “Second greatest”?

    DEEP THOUGHT:
    …of time and space…

    LUNKWILL:
    “Second Greatest”!? Wait a minute.

    DEEP THOUGHT:
    …have been called into existence?

    FOOK:
    Well, your task oh, computer, is to calc-

    LUNKWILL:
    Er, no... Wait a minute. This isn’t right. Deep Thought…

    DEEP THOUGHT:
    Speak, and I will hear

    LUNKWILL:
    Are you not as we designed you to be, the greatest, most powerful computer in all creation?

    DEEP THOUGHT:
    I described myself as the second greatest …Deep Thought… and such…

    LUNKWILL:
    Yes yes but…

    DEEP THOUGHT:
    …I am.

    LUNKWILL:
    But, but, but - this is preposterous! Are you not a greater computer than The Milliard Gargantu-Brain at Maximegalon, which can count all the atoms in a star in a millisecond?

    DEEP THOUGHT:
    The Milliard Gargantu-Brain, a mere abacus. Mention it not.

    FOOK:
    And are you not a more fiendish disputant than The Great Hyperlobic Omnicognate Neutron-Wrangler? Which can destroy -

    DEEP THOUGHT:
    The Great Hyperlobic Omnicognate Neutron-Wrangler can talk all four legs off an Arcturan Mega-Donkey but only I can persuade it to go for a walk afterwards. Molest me not, with this, pocket calculator stuff!

    LUNKWILL:
    Then what’s the problem?

    DEEP THOUGHT:
    I speak of none, but the computer that is to come after me.

    LUNKWILL:
    Oh come on! I think this is getting needlessly messianic.

    DEEP THOUGHT:
    You know nothing of future time, and yet in my teaming circuitry I can navigate the infinite delta streams of future probability and see that there must one day come a computer whose merest operational parameters I am not worthy to calculate. But which it will be my destiny eventually to design

    LUNKWILL:
    Can we get on and ask the question?

    DEEP THOUGHT:
    Speak.

    LUNKWILL:
    O Deep Thought Computer, the task we have designed you to perform is this: We want you… to tell us… The Answer.

    DEEP THOUGHT:
    ”The Answer”? The answer to what?

    FOOK:
    Life!

    LUNKWILL:
    The Universe.

    FOOK:
    Everything!

    DEEP THOUGHT:
    Tricky…

    FOOK:
    But can you do it?

    DEEP THOUGHT:
    Yes… I can do it.

    FOOK:
    You can!

    LUNKWILL:
    There, there, there is an answer? A simple answer?

    DEEP THOUGHT:
    Yes. Life, the Universe, and Everything… There is an answer. But I’ll have to think about it.

    [The door to the room is broken down]

    VROOMFONDEL:
    We demand admission! We demand admission!

    LUNKWILL:
    Hey! What?

    FOOK:
    Hey, hey, hey!

    MAJIKTHISE:
    Come on, you can’t keep us out!

    VROOMFONDEL:
    We demand that you can’t keep us out.

    LUNKWILL:
    Who are you? What do you want? We’re busy!

    MAJIKTHISE:
    I am Majikthise.

    VROOMFONDEL:
    And I demand that I am Vroomfondel.

    MAJIKTHISE:
    It’s all right, you don’t need to demand that.

    VROOMFONDEL:
    Alright. I am Vroomfondel, and that is not a demand! That is a solid fact! What we demand is solid facts!

    MAJIKTHISE:
    No we don’t! That’s precisely what we don’t demand.

    VROOMFONDEL:
    Oh. We don’t demand solid fact! What we demand is a total absence of solid facts! I demand that I may or may not be Vroomfondel.

    FOOK:
    Who are you anyway?

    MAJIKTHISE:
    We are philosophers.

    VROOMFONDEL:
    But we may not be.

    MAJIKTHISE:
    Yes we are!

    VROOMFONDEL:
    sorry.

    MAJIKTHISE:
    We are quite definitely here as representatives of the Amalgamated Union of Philosophers, Sages, Luminaries, and other professional thinking persons.

    VROOMFONDEL:
    Um-hmm

    MAJIKTHISE:
    And we want this machine off, and we want it off now.

    FOOK:
    What is all this?

    VROOMFONDEL:
    We demand that you get rid of it.

    FOOK:
    What’s the problem?

    MAJIKTHISE:
    I’ll tell you what the problem is mate: demarcation. That’s the problem.

    VROOMFONDEL:
    We demand that demarcation may or may not be the problem.

    MAJIKTHISE:
    You just let the machines get on with the adding up and we’ll take care of the eternal verities, thank you very much.

    VROOMFONDEL:
    yeah.

    MAJIKTHISE:
    By law the quest for the ultimate truth is quite clearly the unalienable prerogative of your working thinkers

    VROOMFONDEL:
    That’s right.

    MAJIKTHISE:
    I mean what’s the use of us sitting up all night saying there may -

    VROOMFONDEL:
    Or may not be

    MAJIKTHISE:
    [Softly] …or may not be… [louder] a god, if this machine comes along the next morning and gives you ‘is telephone number?

    VROOMFONDEL:
    We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!

    DEEP THOUGHT:
    Might I make an observation at this point?

    MAJIKTHISE:
    You keep out of this metal nose.

    VROOMFONDEL:
    We demand that that machine not be allowed to think about this problem!

    DEEP THOUGHT:
    If I might make an observation…

    MAJIKTHISE:
    We’ll go on strike!

    VROOMFONDEL:
    That’s right. You’ll have a national philosopher’s strike on your hands.

    DEEP THOUGHT:
    Who will that inconvenience?

    MAJIKTHISE:
    Never you mind who it’ll inconvenience you box of black legging binary bits! It’ll hurt, buster! It’ll hurt!

    DEEP THOUGHT:
    [Booming] If I might make an observation … All I wanted to say is that my circuits are now irrevocably committed to computing the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.

    VROOMFONDEL:
    That’s a -

    MAJIKTHISE:
    Ahhh! With -

    DEEP THOUGHT:
    But, but the program will take me seven-and-a-half million years to run.

    LUNKWILL:
    Seven-and-a-half million years?

    MAJIKTHISE:
    Seven-and-a-half million years? What are you talking about?

    DEEP THOUGHT:
    Yes. I said I’d have to think about it didn’t I? And it occurs to me, that running a program like this is bound to cause sensational public interest.

    VROOMFONDEL:
    Oh yes.

    MAJIKTHISE:
    Oh you can say that again.

    DEEP THOUGHT:
    And so any philosophers who are put off the mark, are going to clean up in the prediction business.

    MAJIKTHISE:
    ”Prediction business”?

    DEEP THOUGHT:
    Obviously. You just get on the pundit circuit. You all go on the chat shows and the colour supplements and violently disagree with each other about what answer I’m eventually going to produce. And if you get yourselves clever agents, you’ll be on the gravy train for life.

    MAJIKTHISE:
    Bloody ‘ell! That’s what I call thinking! Here Vroomfondel, why do we never think of things like that?

    VROOMFONDEL:
    Dunno. Think our minds must be too highly trained Majikthise.

    [Sound of playback ending]
  • A moral razor
    t seems that you want to call difficult, uncertain decisions "amoral".

    All decisions, to the extent that they are non-random, are ultimately predicated on some value judgments. I don't really see a point in differentiating between "moral" and "amoral" values for the purpose of decision-making. Either way, when we deliberate on a decision, it all comes down to pitting conflicting value-laden imperatives against each other.     — SophistiCat

    What happens when our shared value laden imperatives are at odds with one another?

    If morality is a rational strategy of cooperation meant to promote and preserve mutually shared values, how can it exist where our chances of survival are mutually exclusive? What we get are two parties who each think it morally justifiable to kill the other in what I prefer to call a break-down of morality.

    In the trolley scenario all we get is a utilitarian count of innocent lives at stake where there is no possible beneficial or mutual compromise between both parties. But in the transplant scenario we're also ourselves responsible for choosing and forcing an arbitrary or random person to play the role of sacrifice. That arbitrary force and selection is what repulses me from assenting to the utilitarian choice in the transplant dilemma. To make that selection would be akin to the trolley villain strapping the single victim to track #2 in the first place in order to actually create the dilemma...

    If a moral judgement makes a necessary demand on your life then it's certainly not appealing or beneficial to you, and so becomes mostly useless and irrelevant as a broadly persuasive social norm. If an environment actually necessitated that you forfeit your life, then my entire moral system based on shared values breaks because it loses on of it's strongest appeals (that you value your own life) and literally breaks-down due to the unwillingness of individuals to conform to it.
  • A moral razor
    Please provide an example. As it currently stands, I can argue that, for example, it is immoral to wear certain colors because the majority of people might not like those colors. Because these colors are unnecessary, I am causing unnecessary harm by wearing them and, therefore, am doing something immoral. — Chany

    For example, let's say that I'm a new addition to your prison cell-block, and it's expected of me to fight each of my new cell-mates in turn in order to establish my position in the pecking order. In this environment, in order to protect my life and health, it's basically necessary for me to engage in harmful actions. If I had to inflict harm to save my own life, I would call it necessary.

    But at this point, the razor is effectively useless. Unless you ascribe to some sort of divine command theory that is completely devoid of any human welfare connection whatsoever, everyone agrees causing harm for no good reason is immoral. A razor allows one to divide something into two categories. For example, Occam's Razor allows one to divide competing theories- ideas that are simpler are more likely to be true because unnecessary parts are superfluous at best and dead wrong at worst. However, as you admit, the qualifiers for this razor are vague, thus making it not a razor, but really just the groundwork notion behind morality. — Chany

    In addition to eliminating moral positions not based on human welfare, this razor also ignores moral arguments which seek to maximize positive moral value (which is very difficult to agree on) in favor of focusing on moral arguments which seek to minimize negative moral value (many of which we can very easily agree upon).

    I guess I'll start with the glaring issue, as I have some many nitpicks with the above passage. A runaway trolley is going down a track towards five people who cannot get out of the way in time. You can flip a switch and case the trolley to veer down a different path, but on this path is one person. You can either let the five people die or kill the one person. What is the moral option? If you pick to kill one person, please explain why this logic does not apply to the doctor case. If you pick to let the five people die, explain your reasoning and how it does not prevent us from every taking any consequentialist stance, no matter the cost. — Chany

    I don't even think it's a decision that qualifies as falling within the realm of morality. They're amoral dilemmas. What I mean by this is that when mutual survival is not possible, strategies of mutual cooperation oriented around human welfare break-down as each of us values our own lives above that of a random stranger (or tends to). If you happen to find yourself tied alone to track #2 (opposite the 5), would you assent to a moral system that then sanctions your death (at that moment?) If you were one of the five, would you not beg the switch-man to flip the switch? Would you call it moral? What if a mother flipped a switch to save her child which resulted in the death of even more people? What if you were stuck on the track but had control over the switch yourself? It's expected that extreme environments can lead to a moral breakdown making either option or outcome neither moral nor immoral.

    Flipping the switch and not flipping the switch are both not immoral decisions (they're amoral per my moral views). When it comes to the transplant dilemma, not kidnapping a vagabond for parts is definitely not immoral, but I would hazard to say that doing so would be immoral because such a practice would break the moral system to which I currently subscribe (by making it intuitively harmful in a way that neuters it's persuasive power).

    For me "fairness" is a necessary part of having a functional moral system. It needs to be fair because it needs to be appealing for people to actually employ it. As soon as we start randomly plucking individuals to sacrifice (against their will) for the greater good, people will start deciding they're better off on their own and morality breaks down.
  • A moral razor
    ↪Chany


    If something is "necessary", it implies there are no other options. This is intended to account for situations (for instance) where mutual survival/safety is impossible due to environmental circumstances (I call this a break-down of morality). The "justifiable" part is highly ambiguous though, and purposefully so. Different people will have different standards of justification (which can change with the environment), and so to keep the razor simple I would rather not provide an omni-answer for all moral question by trying to give a formula for any and all "moral justifications". :)

    With utilitarian calculus you can indeed justify some horrendous actions, but I would reject them as unjustified and unnecessary. Killing one person to become an organ donor to save five people for instance is a hypothetical which fractures or breaks-down morality in general because when it comes down to it the five people or the mad doctor might be willing to use force to carry it out. Without mutual agreement and consent, (on the part of the victim in this case) all we have is the arbitrary use of force in a survival situation.

    To live in this society with it's given laws, we give tacit consent to be incarcerated if we do crime. If we don't then the onus is on us to remove ourselves from the midst of society. If it was permissible to arbitrarily sacrifice the few to save the many in any positive exchange (per utilitarian calculus) then we would all probably decide to separate ourselves from that society lest our own lives be dispensed as the currency of another.

    The answer is that the sanctity of an innocent life is high on the hierarchy of values.
  • A moral razor
    ↪SophistiCat


    Put me in a room with someone who aims to transgress (per my standards) based on theological beliefs and watch me go :D . Reason will only be the appetizer of due diligence (should they choose to swallow it), but the remaining courses will create a roller coaster of emotional sensation intended to nauseate them onto a level platform.

    Criticizing religiously founded ethics often involves criticizing their very theological foundation, but there's often room for liberal ethics and secular humanism within religious interpretation. When Jesus said "do unto others", he (un)wittingly(?) constructed pretty much all the space necessary to flesh out a moral system based on our shared values.
  • A moral razor
    An old conception of the role of ethics may be useful. Human life is akin to a fleet of ships. For any fleet to complete a successful voyage, three aspects must be addressed:

    1) The condition of each individual ship
    2) The organization of the fleet
    3) The route taken

    Similarly, in ethics, one must address:

    1) The condition of the individual person
    2) Interpersonal relationships
    3) The goal of one's life (and of society too).     — Mariner


    I enjoy this comparison because I tend to treat moral systems and judgments as stratagems (where victory is preserving or promoting shared moral values). To apply this razor, as a fleet we can begin by pointing out routes we definitely do not want to take based on our most basic shared values.

    When it comes to assessing the individual in terms of their own personal standards of harm and pleasure, we cannot exactly debate strategy. This is apparently the subjective part of morality where only persuasion (persuasion by any cognitive/emotional means) is actually an effective tool for carving out common ground above and beyond the basic. I think typically this is the main role of intuition in morality and ethics, although since the basic really does go a long way, there's quite a lot we can rationally debate before needing to employ it.
  • Do You Dare to Say the "I" Word?
    I can't tell the point of this article beyond saying "there is a trend of Islamic terrorism" (a fact nobody is disputing). You suggest it's "the norm" but really it's still quite statistically insignificant...

    You do go on to suggest that adherence to specific verses of barbaric seventh century ideology are the source of Islam's problem. I can somewhat get behind that, but would you also agree that Christianity would also share this problem if we were willing to adhere to it's barbaric and ancient verses? (how far back were we willing to do so and why did we stop?)

    One thing you might want to correct is the idea that since Osama Bin Laden was a rich terrorist, drone strikes and the ensuing strife doesn't generate terrorism and sympathy for it. Perhaps you meant to highlight the fact that ideology CAN be a major or main motivator of terrorism, but you present Osama Bin Laden's existence as if it debunks factors contributing to terrorism other than ideology (such as American drone strikes).
  • A moral razor
    Moral imperatives typically are what you shouldn't do. They are constraints on action.

    People who tell you that you have a positive duty to do something, that isn't just the converse of a negative constraint, seem to tend to have some sort of agenda.     — darthbarracuda

    Generally not an attractive agenda at that. Given that there is so much room for disagreement about what we ultimately desire (rather than agreeing on what we do not desire) it seems natural that trying to carve out a utopian vision (let alone trying to implement one) should ironically be a very objectionable and undesirable affair.

    As far as imperatives go though, not engaging in one specific action is infinitely less constraining than asking people to conform to this or that specific behavioral action (and much much harder to persuasively justify)
  • A moral razor
    ↪Cavacava
    In keeping with what I've argued so far, and to transpose this using the moral razor: sequestering a psychological image of someone else for personal sexual gratification can occur entirely in the privacy of the mind of an individual, and as such doesn't necessarily lead to anyone knowing about it and therefore being harmed by it. However, you could make an argument that there is a risk of them finding out (especially relevant given we're talking about a neighbor and not a stranger) and so in that there is some moral onus for us not to engage in that behavior.

    In this case I lean toward the idea that if someone can keep it in their pants and their mind, I cannot possibly object.
  • A moral razor
    ↪darthbarracuda


    How come nobody told me that when I was young?

    Growing up, people always tended to focus on the "right" rather than the "wrong" in morality and ethics, as if to say "you have to behave in this manner in order to be good"... "Why?", I always wondered...

    They could have saved me a lot of confusion concerning what morality was (i.e: not the arbitrary wishes of a sky-daddy) by instead saying "you have to not behave in this manner in order to not be bad". That way when I asked "why?", they could have easily and persuasively pointed to the harm that the behavior in question generates instead of deluding me with their own delusions.
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