Thank you Gus. First post in a while and look at that warm reception.

Good advice perhaps, if the person is around to hear it. (Banned people are not).
Further, those ideas have books as well. My comment applies just as well to your response. How would these people you describe know which books to read? You cannot tell them, and they no longer have the option to ask.
I stand by what I said, banning people based on their ideas is the enemy of discourse. Fortunately, the mod team doesnt share your view (mostly) and bannings seem to mostly be about the guideline breaches (specifically refusing moderation Ive observed) rather than strictly the idea itself.

↪Yohan But then they'd have to accept all the other wakos: the 9/11 truthers, the holocaust deniers, the young earthers, the flat earthers, the hollow earthers, the vaccers, the incel whiners, the chem trace snifers, the hunters of alien lizards, those unsure about global warming, the Pi-doubters, the Jesus mythicists, the perpetual motion specialists and the angry debunkers of Special Relativity... — Olivier5

Whats wrong with any of that as long as it follows the rules of discourse? Just because some of those folks, or most, are unhinged and incapable of discussion doesnt mean all if them are. How are people with these erroneous beliefs (or any erroneous beliefs) supposed to know better if A) they arent allowed to talk, B) are not allowed to listen and C) we arent allowed to talk them, and D) we arent allowed to listen to them?
Is not the purpose of discourse to expose bad ideas? If we ban people based on what they believe (rather than how they express it according to certain rules of discourse) then that becomes impossible, and discourse has failed.
Isnt discourse more important than whether or not we agree with the person?

Same thing as with Tzeentch, there are people who hurt because they are hurting but there are also people who hurt because it makes them truly happy.
I don’t feel like this is controversial, but to illustrate Ill use the classic example of evil: The Nazi’s thought they were creating a better world, they were in the pursuit of true happiness, they thought they were doing good. Now maybe you can make the claim that not every Nazi felt this way, maybe even most of them had deep down pain and regret and it was all just acting out these deep psychological pains and sure, that might be true but you arent going to easily convince me Joseph Mandalay did. He was a monster, who took great pride and pleasure in his evil scientific pursuits. To him, the fact that these were human beings, that he was causing suffering, death, insanity etc didnt bother him, deep down or otherwise. Some people are born or conditioned by experience to derive true pleasure and happiness from inflicting pain or rape or whatever. You think Stalin, or Putin, or Ted Bundy wouldn't be happy if people just left them alone to do as they pleased? They’d slip into a depression would they? I dont think so.

That might be true of some people who murder, rape and torture but not all of them. Some people might do it just because they enjoy it, and those are the people im talking about. How would you exclude these people from being moral?

An act which leads towards the true happiness of the individual that commits it. — Tzeentch

Immediately begging the question “what about if true individual happiness means murder, rape and torture?”
How do you exclude that?

Would the individual more morally required to self terminate their membership in the group?

Interesting question, but how is it relevant? — Aleph Numbers

Well its related because group consensus would be at play, but individuals might not agree with the group consensus yet none the less remain in the group.

Indeed, I agree with that.



I think that is an interesting related question as well. It made me think of large groups or institutions that are immoral, and how and in what ways the individuals within that organisation are morally culpable.

The former.

The objective standards are being created by rational discourse as you outlined. You are adding the extra consensus step to hang onto the consensus morality, but its not necessary for what you just described. What is necessary for what you just described is rational discourse. Unfortunately I think your idea doesnt work.

I dont think the consensus part of your equation is needed anymore in that case. Its rational discourse that would then be your metric.

Well a utilitarian calculation accomplishes the same thing as far as I can tell, for example. Pretty much every moral system I can think of are attempting to address the things you referenced. Some of those are flawed and some are not, but you would have to demonstrate to what degree your moral consensus view is better than the ones im supposed to be rejecting.

I understand consensus morality can accomplish what other moral metrics do, but I think your metric has to win by comparison. Thats the point im trying to make.
What is it about your consensus morality that makes it better than other metrics we already use that do not share the same flaw as consensus morality? To me it seems you must demonstrate not only how consensus morality is better than conventional moral metrics but also how it compensates for the serious drawback of morality essentially being a popularity contest that will inevitably rob minority moral views of validity.
Other moral metrics accomplish the same things your suggesting moral consensus does but without leaving out potentially vast swaths of people/moral views. If the majority (say 51%) are deciding right and wrong then 49% of the spectrum is being excluded. Thats problematic, not the society or moral system id choose to live in.

In the sense of functionality.

Well, there is the example of health care: nobody wants to be denied care or bankrupted by a visit to the hospital. The majority of people, in the US at least, want universal health care to be instituted, but because of garbage neo-liberal politicians this policy has not been passed. The morality I propose would give strong ground upon which to criticize corrupt politicians. Thus, consensus, and the morality I propose, could potentially help overcome a flawed democracy, and, ultimately, result in considerable happiness. Furthermore, certain despicable and backwards practices could be condemned and eliminated, such as fgm. I'll try to think of more ways that consensus has utility. — Aleph Numbers

Right, but Im asking about the utility of your consensus morality over and above other moral metrics. The examples you list here are not unique to a consensus view, in fact I would say that those things are better accomplished by other metrics that do not have the problems that your consensus morality does.

As a courtesy Im letting you know I do not like you, have no use for what you write (I ignore it as much as I can) and have no intention of engaging you.
So there is no need to waste your time directing comments at me.

Yes, correct about the consensus bit. And I want to avoid cultural relativism, not all forms of relativism. And I think that using the consensus of all humanity would lead to a stabilizing effect; the status quo would probably succeed more often than not. But yes, you make good points, the minority should not always be wrong. — Aleph Numbers

Ok, in that case I think my criticism stands. Consensus morality is problematic, but that doesnt mean it doesnt have utility. Is there some utility or advantage you feel consensus has over other metrics?
You mentioned a stabilising effect...but stabilising effects come in many forms and not all of them moral in any conventional sense. For exsmple you could have teo warring tribes. Unstable. Genocide of one or both tribes would have a stabilising effect but I would argue thats an immoral utility.

Yes, you are also making good points. Just because the people in the minority are wrong right now doesn't mean they always have to be wrong; perhaps it would serve an even greater good in the future to defy what is considered right right now. Thus, certain axioms would only be right some of the time. One axiom might be thrown out in favor of another if it would better serve the coming present consensus. This could take the form of accelerating the consensus along to what it will be in the future given enough time. Sorry if that is a copout. — Aleph Numbers

Well, I do think thats a bit if a copout if Im being honest. You are making an appeal to the vagaries of how things might play out over time. That seems much to nebulous to serve as an adequate moral metric. I think your idea here is going to need a lot of utility to balance out these flaws and agin if you want me to be honest I think there are many superior metrics one could use over consensus without having to struggle so much to find merit in it. So now I would ask you what it is that moral consensus accomplishes that other more conventional moral metrics do not (or do less well)? You would have to demonstrate the superiority of consensus, and you have my attention and interest sir so lets hear it.

Slavery would only be justified if one disregarded the views of the slaves. You fall prey to the same objection that Ignoro just laid out. Additionally I literally said I didn't propose an objective morality, I just broadened the consensus. — Aleph Numbers

Well the views of the slaves would only matter if they were the ones forming the consensus. This is the problem with morality by consensus, the minority moral positions wouldnt matter.
If consensus is your metric, then you allow for moral validity even to positions that are clearly biased, misguided or irrational.
My mistake on objective morality, I thought you were positing a moral system with the aim of avoiding moral relativism and assumed you were going for something “objective”.

But, furthermore, once the consensus is taken, via the process I described, it can be used to make objective moral "measurements" anywhere you find humans. — Aleph Numbers

Ok, so your view has some similarity to mine but you are positing the metric “consensus” as your “inch” (to stick with the analogy), is that correct?

What you described is moral relativism. You’ve just shifted the focus on consensus.
If I understand you, then under your view slavery is moral since most of the cultures in the world at one point agreed it was.
I dont think morality needs to be “objective”, it is sufficient to have an objective standard, a metric that can be used to take moral measurements. The analogy I use is a measuring tape, in inches. An inch is not “objective”, it is arbitrary, a human made it up and started measuring things with it. So its basis is still subjective, but once established it can be used as an objective standard; no matter where you go, how human perceptions makes distances appear different between one person and another, where or when you take a measurement etc an inch will always be an inch. If something is 12 inches long, it doesnt matter what someones opinion is, its always going to be 12 inches long.
I view morality in this way, a metric is chosen and used to make moral “ measurements”.

John McWhorter lays out what it is your dealing with in this topic, and why you are wasting your time trying to discuss the issue with them. Everything you say is going through a religious filter of trigger words and agenda driven placeholder words. Self righteousness is a powerful inoculation against different (and therefore opposing, under this cultish ideology) points of view.

Antifa are fascists who call themselves “anti fascists” in order to justify themselves to the lazy thinkers that dont bother looking at their behaviour closely enough to see it for what it is: fascism. The woke left and BLM protesters provide cover for their activities (knowingly and unknowingly) because you can’t force people to talk, act and think the way you want without thugs to enforce it. They don’t know their history, they will be among the first to be sacrificed if the fascist uprising is successful.
But what has any of this to do with Trump specifically?

There can be those sorts of disagreements or divergence without effecting Harris’s arguments. Thats what the moral landscape means, the peeks and valleys of various moral questions and answers. He allows for multiple peeks (different but equally valid moral conclusions) and valleys (human suffering) that can all function from the same standard.



I think it would be worthwhile to do some reading or look into some of the debates/talks Harris did on The Moral Landscape. His arguments are pretty thorough and address most criticisms. Id be interested in discussing how I (or anyone else) disagree with Harris but I'm not keen on (probably poorly) trying to articulate his entire arguments piece-mail.

What they’ve told me is that Harris wants to just give an operational definition of “good” as “conducive to human flourishing” or something along those lines, and then get on with figuring out what is conducive to human flourishing, putting aside any further arguments about whether “conducive to human flourishing” really works as a definition of “good”. — Pfhorrest

Well I dont think he is setting anything aside, but yes he posits the human flourishing as an axiom. He does make his case for that, its not just something he presumed.
When Harris refers to “science”, he is talking about reason and rationality. I never really understood why he did that, but he specifically spends time on it. To me it just confuses things needlessly.

Those questions are still worth looking into, and can be looked into simultaneously with doing a “science of morality” that is just investigating what causes human flourishing, just like we can still do science simultaneously with doing philosophy of science and don’t have to either wait for the latter to be finished before we do the former, or give up on the latter entirely since we can start doing the former without it. — Pfhorrest

See I dont recognise this restriction from anything ive read/heard. Im hardly an authority though so maybe these people had different info.

Its hard to say without a specific reference, but it seems to me you’ve been misinformed, Harris fans or not.
His moral views start with the concept of “well being”, and whats good or bad is dependent on what relationship that thing has to well being. He makes his whole argument based on that, and he puts in the work to argue why its a valid axiom. I understand why someone would think he means ethical naturalism, but its not really where its grounded.
Thats the gist of his premiss fir The Moral Landscape, which I would say is the primary expression of his ethical views.

Thats not the argument he makes about morality. Also, Where does he make this insistence to ignore?
I assume you are referring to The Moral Landscape? You said you had “little exposure” to Harris, yet you seem pretty confident he is wrong so Im wondering where youre getting this from.

You cannot deny your own existence. You can doubt its nature, or the nature of reality but you cannot doubt your own existence, its Decarte, “I think therefore I am”. You know you exist because you are thinking, aware. You could be in the matrix, or the dream of a god..but you are none the less thinking so you must exist. Your own subjective experience cannot be doubted, the act of doubting itself can only be done if you exist. Its the one thing you can be 100% certain about.
So no, the two are not equally probable.

And I say this as someone who is generally very much behind the idea of something like a "moral science", but I think Harris has its foundations completely wrong, and those should be questioned; but questioning it doesn't mean we can't get on with doing actual good in the meanwhile. — Pfhorrest

What is the foundations that Harris gets wrong?

Your the one trolling this thread you puttz.
Why dont you ask him how many times he beats his wife a day while youre at it.
You are poison to discourse.

1 – If a belief has valid, though non-conclusive, arguments defending it, then it is reasonable to hold said belief — DPKING

What do you mean by “non-conclusive“?

2 – Though they inherently contradict one another, both atheism and theism have valid arguments that defend their position on the (non)existence of God, — DPKING

There are no valid arguments for theism being true. The best theism can do is argue that theism should be treated as true for practical benefit and even those arent really good arguments.

C – It is reasonable to believe in either atheism or theism — DPKING

I would say that whether something is reasonable isnt based on what it concludes but rather the reasoning itself.
One could be and atheist for poor reasons, and accurately be called unreasonable even though they reached the right conclusion (atheism). Likewise with theism if you think theism is true, one could have poor reasons and be right by accident.
Its not the conclusion that can be measured by reason, its the process that can be measured by reason.

They dont, if all you are doing is insulting. I had the impression you were expressing something of substance at the same time. That would being fair, to me anyway.

Meh, Im not sure thats fair. (To dismiss 180 as a thinker of merit). Everyone has a blindspot or two, and the race blind spot has Faux academic backing. (And wide media acceptance). The narrative has been successfully delivered so Im not keen to dismiss someone just because they are hopelessly wrong on this issue.
Plenty of normally rational people have lost their minds about Trump as another example, but I still listen to those folks in other threads because rationality returns to them.
The fact you get people responding to certain woke words and quickly forming agreement speaks to what I would call the cult-like operating procedures used by those who’ve bought the narrative. It doesnt matter what you think, it only matters that you fall in line with their language use. Hence as you say, they cannot tell when they disagree with someone or not if the right words are being used. The language is the first and most important attack vector, controlling that makes everything else easier. Also like a cult, these people (maybe 180, maybe not) do not realise what they are doing, how closely they resemble their declared enemies on behalf of the bad actors that came up with all this shit.
Did you check out that video I linked to 180? Its a hilariously accurate point being made.

At this point? Did we have this conversation before or something?
You quoted two words cherry picked out of a sentence and then didn't even address that. Prejudicial bullshit? And where do you get off telling me im not thinking about this issue?
That was a non-response, which I guess is fair enough if you arent interested in responding to my points.

Racism (again for the slow fuckers way in the back) denotes color/ethnic prejudice plus POWER of a dominant community (color/ethnic in-group) OVER non-dominant communities (color/ethnic out-groups). Whether Hutus over Tutsis, Hans over Uyghurs, Turks over Kurds, Kosovo Serbs over Kosovo Albanians, Russians over Chechens, North Sudanese over South Sudanese, American Whites over American Blacks Browns Yellows & Reds, etc, this description of racism obtains. — 180 Proof

I disagree with defining racism this way. Its done only to inoculate anti-white sentiment against a charge of racism, and thats all. Prejudice plus power isnt racism, everyone knows what racism is (hating and treating as lesser based on skin colour) and this trendy new way of defining it is just a way fir people to be racist towards whites while avoiding being called racist themselves (the possibility has been defined out of the word).
It doesnt even make sense.
If I say “Japanese people are scum, sub human garbage, the yellow plague etc etc” then that would be pretty racist. Under the prejudice plus power nonsense if I then flew to Japan where Japanese have all the power it somehow wouldnt be racist? Of course it would, because racism isnt about power, its about hate and/or ignorance.
Obsessed with looking through the lense of race as you are, I know all your examples seem like classic, perfect ones to you but they are just examples of groups vs groups, human tribalism, human war and nation or empire building. They are only distinguishable from other human conflicts/tribalism because you choose to focus on race.
Earlier you asked for examples of black people who agree with the likes of Harry Hindu, that do not believe is systemic racism. You cant have looked very hard, youtube is filled with them but im sure you have some way to excuse that away (not THOSE black voices) so Ill offer up personal examples. Of all my extended family and family, only one person actually buys into the current narrative about systemic racism and prejudice plus power and she is young and in college where they are taught this junk from fake academics who use that prejudice plus power stuff to push an agenda.
It is tiresome and offensive that you white saviour types operate under the guise of helping black people while simultaneously denying black folks agency, committing racism yourselves and trying to decide for me how I should feel about white people, cops and black people.
The colour of my skin (Or anyones) shouldn't matter, and the fact that it does to you or anyone else makes you the one judging by skin colour. Ive said it before and ill repeat it again, the only people who care about race are actual racists, and the people who think everyone is racist. Neither are registering reality properly...your worldview has more in common with racists than you do with me sir.
Here, this amusing video might help you understand:

https://youtu.be/Ev373c7wSRg

Thanks. The phone version didnt have it so I was confused.

How do you check your stats?

And China. For some reason Russia gets all the attention but China isnt fucking around. They are a much bigger threat, with much more influence and resources, only they didnt experience the same level of setback as Russia did. They’ve been chugging along towards whatever plans they have, enjoying the less attention being paid to them.
Don’t get me wrong, Russia has been able to get alot done too but China seems to have a better long term plan and are just as ruthless.
Sadly, the US population has made themselves an easier and easier target. Wheres the American, country first unity theyre supposed to have? I know its kind of a chicken or the egg thing, but I cant help but wonder how effective flaming tensions would have been if the US politicians weren’t already using that as a campaign strategy.

My mistake, i was under the impression the polls ended up being wrong but I realise now I was going by a general sentiment that he couldnt/wouldnt win. So many people were so tragically wrong about Trumps chances of winning, but if you say they weren’t thinking that because of polls but for other reasons ill take your word for it.
I dont think it matters who wins at this point, either result will have mobs of the losing side who have lost touch with reality in the streets doing who knows what. I seldom engage in apocalyptic predictions (they are always wrong) but I think its going to be blood in the streets the likes of which the US hasnt seen in modern times. You couldnt ask for a better recipe for armed and open conflict in the streets on a mass scale.

It can be official and symbolic. If they arent at war, or some sort of military conflict then I dont see how its significant peace being made. Also, i WAS asking whether Israel was at war. Im not sure what else you think i would have been revering to except the two countries we were talking about.
I know there is conflict with certain nations in the Arab world but not those two. So it seems more like a symbolic gesture, a way of showing other Arab nations peace can be achieved. Thats not unimportant but its not very groundbreaking, your making it sound like that history of conflict is being addressed and that peace with those two nations means peace/potential peace with the current conflicts. I dont think they have anything significant To do with the current conflicts.

Ok, but again I heard similar things the first time. Trump defies polls, are you saying that this time the polls are more accurate? Or is it that this time the polls are showing such a huge disparity that whatever black magic Trump wins with won’t be enough?