Comments

  • Proof and explanation how something comes out of nothing!
    ↪unenlightened
    Space and time would either refer to facets of stuff OR facets of experiencing. So, they are not stuff, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.
  • Proof and explanation how something comes out of nothing!
    ↪Devans99
    Or there could be black holes birth universes elsewhere. There are a lot of options on the table in current cosmology. They don't know. I don't think we should pretend we know what we can rule out, what must be the case, etc.
  • Proof and explanation how something comes out of nothing!
    His nothing are laws of quantum physics and quantum vacuum. That is not nothing, it’s lame attempt at explanation that does not explain. I guess you could say we are describing the same thing, but I think what I said actually explains or at least makes more sense. — Zelebg
    Well, his explanation includes this same borrowing from nothing in two directions.

    I don't see any evidence that the universe had a beginning. (the Big Bang was certainly a change, but there is no evidence there really was nothing or nowhere. ) And it seems to make more sense that it's always been around. I suppose that's my default. Now I get that what I just put forward is my intuition and no one has any reason to buy that. However I see no need to start showing that nothing can lead to something, and there has been a trend away from starting from nothing in cosmology.
  • Proof and explanation how something comes out of nothing!
    ↪unenlightened
    Good luck, why not. Nowhere, nothing. I don't think there is such stuff.
  • Proof and explanation how something comes out of nothing!
    Monkey and anti-monkey :rofl: space and anti-space? Time and anti-time? — unenlightened
    I hope my point with the antimonkey was clear at least to someone. The so called nothingness was able to separate out into opposites. That's a nothing with qualities, and so not a nothing. Those opposites weren't monkeys, they were particles or waves or branes or whatever current theory is. So, that nothing had even more specific qualities. Lawrence Krauss wrote a book 'demonstrating' how something can come from nothing. In fact, I think he went so far as to say it must, though it's been a while since I read it. While he's a physicist, his book had the same problems this thread does.
  • Why do you think the USA is going into war with Iran?
    What is more likely? All the representatives of government, the military and all that advises them are complete morons who want to destroy the USA. — Tzeentch
    Perhaps someone has that position, but it seems like an extreme one. IOW one can be critical of the recent choices made without remotely assuming anything like this. Administrations can pressure a non-unified military to take certain steps, steps which than lead to situations where it becomes much harder to take a step back. The military can also consider itself NOT a policy maker, but rather the one who carries out the policies of administrations or Congress (remember when they used to be the ones who declared wars?). And so their intelligence is aimed at carrying out policy, which is seems, in this case, they managed extremely well, killing the target. And while they also killed others, including Iraquis, these people were fine targets and within the policy.

    I think we can judge that an act was decided upon that would be considered an act of war by the united states, were the roles reversed. That is if someone high up in power in the US was in another country and a third country assassinated that person - say, Kissinger, not long after the Vietnam war, and the incursions into Laos and Cambodia - was killed while visiting France, for his crimes, by one of those asian countries.

    We can certainly judge that the admistration has taken steps to start a war without going through due process. However much we may have gotten used to not going through due process. And that no coincidentally, the administration has been made up from the beginning by hawks who want to invade Iran. This is something we can have already known.

    And none of this is dependent on thinking even those people are stupid, let alone that the military is or 'all representatives of government'.

    Nor does it mean we have to assume they want to destroy the usa. The small fraction of the government that developed this action could be too willing to risk things that have a negative impact on the US, for example, without them wanting to destroy the US. They might be people who are happy to risk the lives of the soldiers right now flying into various bases in that region in large numbers, a region where their lives will be in more danger even if a war does not start. They might be people who aren't really thinking about how this approach might lead to more terrorism, more refugees, more hatred, more disruption in that region. Let alone possible increased and truly dangerous tensions with Russia and China. Again, that smaller subset of the government that can, unfortunately, make decisions like this, and need not be of low IQ. Nor do the experts on the military side who carry out the mission need to be of low IQ or have any of these motives.

    So, to present the issue as if all of them must have those motives and levels of stupidty is to frame the issue in such binary and sweeping terms as to make any opponent seems necessarily idiotic, when in fact it is not remotely even implicit in most of the critics positions. Nor do we have to wait to know more. There are many things we already know, some mentioned above. And we have the last few decades of confused policies in the Middle East to look at where similar patterns have taken place.
  • Why do you think the USA is going into war with Iran?
    ↪BitconnectCarlos
    Bush sent young not well off men to die for well off men's interests. It was less honest, similar results for citizens.
  • Proof and explanation how something comes out of nothing!
    Logic says that particles cannot be waves, — unenlightened
    Well, I think the thread is silly but logic doesn't say things, it demands certain relationships between statements, and statements and conclusions. Our conclusions are only as good as our premises and what seems obvious to us is not always correct. Or logic would have ruled out a roundish earth or relativistic effects.
  • Proof and explanation how something comes out of nothing!
    ↪unenlightened
    Who r u responsing to?
  • Proof and explanation how something comes out of nothing!
    ↪Zelebg
    Well, the fact that it is not monkey and -monkey means there is something that is there making it not monkey and -monkey. Also in Classical physics you do not have nothing. Things there are no anti-things in classical physics.

    And it is not just potential, it is laws or rules, or tendencies. Which is not nothing. In our world which is something, you have what we call potential, which is really just a shorthand term for built up energy and the like, NOT abstractions. Nothing cannot have all these qualities and be nothing. It is some kind of thing.
  • Proof and explanation how something comes out of nothing!
    ↪Zelebg
    That's not nothing. That's a lot of laws and patterns. You used the word 'superposition', which means that there were potentials. There was some tendency, which had the superpostion collapse. You had a situation. That is not nothing.

    If nothing could simply split into -x and +x, it could also split into -monkey and +monkey. Not particles or singularities. Two monkeys, one an antmatter monkey appears. But only certain things could appear. There were rules and structures in whatever you are calling nothing. And they ain't nothing.
  • Being Good vs Being Happy
    Therefore, while it may be true that morality forces us to examine the nature of happiness more closely it can't outright reject happiness; — TheMadFool
    There are extreme forms of restrictive religion - for example some forms of Calvinism - that per se dislike enjoyment. Not just enjoyment of sex or some other specific, but actually having a good time, enjoying things, period is seen as unseemly, immoral and something to be avoided. So moralities certainly CAN do this. Now most are not this restrictive, granted.

    But here's the thing: you divide this all into higher and lower forms of happiness, but there is a clear reduction in happiness inherent in any morality. It wouldn't be a morality otherwise. A morality is

    precisely saying that you must do X or you must avoid doing Y

    because it is bad - generally to others, or upsetting to God,

    not because it reduces your happiness.

    You will notice that moral teaching very, very rarely tries to demonstrate that doing X is moral because it will make you happier or even produce a better happiness.

    The whole point is that your happiness is less important that something else: other people, traditions, God,

    To be moral is precisely to set aside one's happiness or one would not need a morality, one would just need a good explanation for why doing X makes you less happy.

    It would be no different from 'don't cross the street when you are facing red' Why not? becauase you may die or be injured and that will make you unhappy or dead.

    It would be a practical heuristic, not a morality. Moralities put your ego and your happiness off the board. They are precisely giving up what you want for others or God.

    This is absolutely clearly true of deontological systems. They are not practical sets of advice. They are not saying you will be happier if you do not covet your neighbor's wife. They don't care about your enjoyment. They are saying it is wrong to covet. There is no attempt to convince you that you will enjoy life more if you stop coveting. In fact every religion knows that the morals 1) reduce the pleasure of their followers and 2) are not for the purpose of increasing happiness (making it 'higher' as you say) but about valuing something other than your pleasure.

    That is why morality is nearly always contrasted with selfishness. If you are moral you are not being selfish, nto taking care of your own needs at a loss for others.

    I mean, my God, all the judgments of sex in moralities. Did we make some huge mistake when we stopped thinking that all non-procreative sex was immoral? That dancing was immoral per se?

    Now I don't believe in objective morals. And further I recognize that many moral systems as a whole reduce pleasure and joy, for no good reason. I also have other values than pleasure or reduction of pain. I am not saying we should reduce happiness, but it is clear that morals are not about maintaining, heightening or increasing happiness or pleasure. In fact they are quite happy to reduce happiness and absolutely pleasure, which in and of itself can be seen as immoral.

    And many religious and even secular morals have judgments of pleasure, and not just pleasures 'of the pleasure'. Some even put suffering up as a value. Look at the flagellants.

    Why would we create moralities based on the idea that we are bad and need to be punished? That women need to give birth in pain? That we should not masturbate. That we should not dance or play. It is so clear that not only are moralities precisely NOT about happiness and pleasure

    which

    you

    keep

    conflating

    but in fact some moralities actually want to reduce happiness and pleasure

    (because of original sin, because they are unseemly or frivolous per se (the actual state or experiencing these things, not just specific prohibilitions like alcohol or sex)

    We are not all hedonists, and the ways we are not all hedonists varies. Values other than pleasure increase and pain reduction are held in all sorts of different ways by differnt cultures, subcultures and individuals.

    Moralities are one specific way we produce and maintain values that are not hedonistic.

    Your claim is that, really, underneath, they increase happiness/pleasure (again, not the same, though your claim is false in either case), despite people's own assertions about their moralities' intent and their own, often obviously, reduced pleasure in life (in many systems with strict moralities.) Really, deep down they are happier than they would be.

    I think this requires a tremendous amount of evidence, since things point in the opposite direction. That stricter moralities for example, lead to less joy, happiness, pleasure and any other words that slide in to replace 'pleasure' when it is convenient.
  • Being Good vs Being Happy
    ↪TheMadFool
    If you think everyone is a hedonist, then the answer is no, there is no difference between being good or happy. The person being good is just doing what makes them happy. Which means they are just selfish with their needs. Someone who gets called bad just enjoys other things. Just a bunch of selfish people with different genes. The term good has no meaning. It just means enjoying what other people think you should enjoy because that 'what' makes them happy. There are no morals in there anywhere.
  • Most Important Problem Facing Humanity
    Technically wouldn’t that fall under political corruption? — I like sushi
    At least, 'also', since I think governments should have oversight and their oversight is often compromised by revolving door stuff and lobbying, if there is any. I am not sure they need their own category in the OP, but I think they should be mentioned. I think the greatest threats are technological. Some of our tech. solutions, may end up being final.

    And I see people mentioning technology as a subset of inequality. Inequality is a serious problem, but it is not final one.
  • Most Important Problem Facing Humanity
    You didn't include AI in the list. — Marchesk

    Yes, I think AI, gm, nanotech and bioweapons should be on the list.
  • Most Important Problem Facing Humanity
    ↪Xtrix
    I voted political corruption, by which I mean not just occasional bribes, but the way the powers that be serve elite interests and not 'the people'. This leads to many of the other problems on the list. And many problems not on the list. In my version of 'corruption' one can be utterly corrupt and not break a single law.
  • Why do you think the USA is going into war with Iran?
    No one wants a war, but given these facts:

    -The general was behind hundreds of american deaths in iraq.
    -He was behind the recent embassy attack.
    -Was very likely to be planning more attacks, and never even really attempted to hide his involvement.     — BitconnectCarlos
    Was he behind hundreds of american deaths in Iraq or was this the bs that Cheney came up with that has since been debunked? Was he planning more attacks? What evidence have you seen - read: not what evidence can you come up with now - that led you to this conclusion? Evidence you can now find is also useful, but I think it is important for us to notice if we are making decisions because someone asserted something and never justified that assertion.

    Imagine if Vietnam or Laos or Cambodia killed Kissinger for crimes they considered he committed during the Vietnam war. They did this while Kissinger was visiting France and while he was an advisor in some way to a current president.

    And the idea with all these policies, such as one breaking international law, should be to protect US interests and citizens.

    This act will very likely do just the opposite, except for certain interests: the arms and intelligence industries for example.
  • An interesting objection to antinatalism I heard: The myth of inaction
    ↪schopenhauer1
    I have countered (in my mind at least :)) this line in other posts of mine in other threads and even in this thread in response to Mad Fool to some degree above. But I don't say.....
    What you are saying is that YOU X1A' therefore everyone should like X1A'. — schopenhauer1
    I wasn't saying, in what you quoted, that others should feel that way. I said that in direct response to Mad Fool saying that I liked life because I had it relatively good. Remember he is using a hedonist argument. If I like life, than I have it better than others. That needs to be the case, for him. I don't think your antinatalism is quite like his. So, don't put my quote out of context as if it is a response to your position. It was a response to his position as he aimed it at me and drew conclusions about me via. IOW that was me saying, no, you don't know me, this individual. Your theory about what must be true about me is not correct. I don't think the fact that my life is precious to me means that others should have or do have the same attitude or should if they have suffered as much or more or less than me. Or anything else. A kind of blunt summary of my reaction to Mad Fool is that he is making a lot of assumptions about anything that comes into to his view (around this issue at least) and I feel a compulsion to say 'no X is not the case' or 'Y is an assumption' 'Z is in fact the opposite' just to see if I can wake him up to the fact that he is happily saying what is true about everyone, including, in this case, me personally. It's the internet. I am not optimistic about the little slap this might be making any difference, but I couldn't help but respond: hey, no, you're wrong.

    But in the end there is nothing you can do if someone wants to tell you what you are really feeling, really mean, what your whole life really boils down to, what everyone's life really boils down to.

    Now I can imagine you think that implicitly I must be saying the above to people who don't want to live or are suffering more than me, but I am not, not even implicitly. I don't accept some of what I consider the fundamental assumptoins of anti-natalism and I can only refer you my posts in other threads, some of which you must have read, though perhaps not the ones directly addressing this.

    I suppose one should tip one's hat to antinatalism as a topic. It requires, it seems to me, enormous posts, by antinatalists, by natalists and by those who are not either of those things. But I am not going to try to recreate those posts here.

    And do me a favor, would you keep an eye on Mad Fool's optimism about how in the near future we will be able to guarantee that lives will be good and antinatalism will no longer hold, though he thinks it holds now.

    You and I obviously have some fundamental disagreements, but I actually think there is something, well, almost mad, in his idea there. Some fundamental not seeing what life is like, and I think this is coupled with our age's deep religious belief in technology bringing in the Golden Age. It's not the messiah that's coming it's the benevolent AI or something that will make our lives perfect.

    As much as I can be bothered by antinatalism, I don't consider it a threat. I do consider that kind of techno-faith a threat.

    Oh, I think we had some pretty cranky interchanges before. Or, at least, I was cranky. You've been quite pleasant to deal with recently. Or maybe it's me, lol.
  • An interesting objection to antinatalism I heard: The myth of inaction
    All the above, infact anything humans do, are in fact wants/desires or what proceeds from them, — TheMadFool
    Having wants and desires are not the same as hedonism. it depends on what you want.
    Being alive naturally comes with having wants and the satisfaction of these becomes the primary objective of living — TheMadFool
    You were sliding away from hedonsism in the first sentence, now you are sliding even further. Satisfaction must mean pleasure. I really do understand how some hedonists want to reduce everything to pleasure and pain, but it's not the case. And the sliding in your language shows how you needs to start using new words to swallow different sets of goals and experiences.
    However, I'm going out on a limb here, if biology is correct there is no biochemical difference between satisfactionand the feeling of joy - the same chemicals, presumably dopamine, is released in both events. Ergo, if there's anything to say of satisfaction then it's that it's a milder version of happiness - not distinct enough to warrant a separate existence. — TheMadFool
    First this is radically oversimplified neurochemistry. Which parallels the radically oversimplified pleasure pain model you have of people's goals. Satisfaction and joy refer to difference experiences that sometimes happen at the same time or are causal of each other. But they are not the same. I use those words to describe different things and this would be reflected in the biochemistry. You don't get to make up biochemistry, at least not in the sense of expecting it to be taken seriously. I know...you said you were going out on a limb. But you just made stuff up. And, then, 'joy' and 'satisfaction' and 'happiness' are not exactly the same as pleasure.
    Hedonism is indeed universal. — TheMadFool
    You whole buddhist argument shows misunderstandings of Buddhism and an appeal to authority (buddhism). Buddhism does not want to end procreation, it want to end....oh,jesus. Actually research Buddhism. They are certainly not having as a goal the end of experiencing. Which would, in a sense, be the end of the Buddha. So they are not anti-natalists, though I agree there are parallels. Vaguely summarizing buddhism as you did here was an appeal to authority. Desire can be for things other than pain and pleasure. Of course how the Buddhists desire to and according to them get past hedonism (not caring about either pain or pleasure, neither avoiding or trying to get either one) is an irony you seem not to have noticed. Now you will say that this actually gives them pleasure. But I actually know Buddhists and Buddhist masters and that's not what's happened. They have disidentified with that whole part of themselves. They have cut off the limbic system, to a great degree. They are absolutely not hedonists. They are the opposite, even if some hedonistic motivtatoins might have played a role in choosing to do the practices - which are hideously painful. I am not an anti-hedonist. I'm not against experiencing pleasure and of course I prefer it to pain. But they are not how I choose my actions, most of the time.

    You just keep spreading things out, sliding into new terms, telling me that they all really break down to pleasure and pain. But I know already that you see the world this way.
    Everyone wants happiness - the king the beggar and everyone in between are hedonists. Ergo, hedonism is a more truthful philosophy than anything that denies it. — TheMadFool
    I think many people actually have more specific goals, ones that often do not bring them short term happiness or long term happiness and even as they notice this or have this pointed out don't give a shit. Read the lives of artists.

    I know what you'll do, you think that artist X, really, deep down, thinks that if she manages to paint that hill in a way she feels is right, she thinks that will give her so much pleasure it will outweigh all the struggle frustration, self-hate, back to stage one pain of the process.

    Because you know what she really has as a goal, and if someone could give her a pill that would give her that feeling, she would take it. Test that one out if you can.

    Now perhaps you will be so grand as to concede that the choices they make may lead to more pain than pleasure, but that is simply because they are fallible. (though why didn't you conced this? Why haven't you acknowledged that obviously the choices people make, the values they have often cause them much more pain that other values would? Why does this have to be brought up again?)

    But I know: Really, in you mind, that was their goal. We can ignore all that they say and do that contradicts your 'really.....'.

    It's not the facts as they stand, it is a radical interpretation with two colors. Someone with black and white vision looking at Van Gogh's paintings.
    It's great that you value your life. I value your contribution in this discussion. — TheMadFool
    Because it gives you pleasure....only? But, again, I mean, I value life in general, not just my life. I don't think a universe devoid of life is better than one with it. Anti-natalists must think that one is better. And yet their bodies do not stop moving, they do not stop engaging in life, most of them. Should I believe the little thinky bit of the verbal portions of their minds, or should I believe the great bulk of their organisms?

    There really is nothing I can possibly say. Because I understand how easy it is to say

    really

    what you described, Coben,

    was someone wanting pleasure.

    That is an utterly impervious way of seeing the world, unless, at some time, you drop into your own experiencing and something shifts. No words on a screen will ever change this position.

    A bit like how solipsism cannot be countered by words.

    Or how scientists who thought animals were machines could not possibly be convinced otherwise (and that lasted for most of the 20th century).

    I am going to leave our discussion here, perhaps come back later. But your posts require enormous work to counter them. And you didn't really reply to my counterexamples. I can easily imagine how you would, but you didn't really do it. This last post of yours would require a treatise.

    The amazing thing is you see us solving the dilemma in the not too distant future. That we will be able to guarantee more pleasure than pain. But that's an issue I will let the antinatalists take up with you.
  • Why do you think the USA is going into war with Iran?
    ↪god must be atheist
    Why do you think the USA is going into war with Iran?
    There is a faction that likes war, in general. There are all sorts of corporations that benefit from a war. Certain areas of the world are seen as not 'with it', not in the neo-con, neo-lliberal playbook. Those factions what them to start to be. Heck, there are a lot more reasons.

    One thing to mention is that some kind of parallel strike on a US general or cabinet member would be treated as an enormous breach of international law. If Vietnam had killed Kissinger, say, on a visit to Europe, for his terrorist acts, the moral outrage against this would have been....big.
  • The Tipping Point of Evil
    And the most evil things people can do is when opposing 'evil'. — ssu

    As I said myself...
    And note, I am not saying these morals or the sense of honor need be good. Do gooding has perpetuated all sorts of horrible things. — Coben

    Fighting evil means that you have a firm view that you are right and that your opponent is wrong. — ssu
    I am not saying that people should fight what they consider to be evil. I am not saying that evil exists. (And then note that this statement does not fit well with the other one.....

    And the most evil things people can do is when opposing 'evil'. — ssu
    )

    I am saying that people do not do things just for their own survivability. Push them to the wall on certain moral issues, they will put themselves at risk. Even at the group level.

    I said above that the shift to discussing morals at the nation level is problematic since these are not groups with a single set of morals. These are fairly artificial conglomerates of various groups with various moralities. That said,I think some nations have gone to war at least in part for moral reasons. This is not to say this is good or bad. AS it happens I don't believe in objective morals.

    I think it is a mistake to view morals as, really, just self-interest. That's where I came into the argument. This is now being taken as me advocating for moral crusades. If I say something exists it doesn't mean I am advocating for it.

    I think part of any morality is precisely a being willing to risk self-interest or, heck, you don't need a morality.

    Now this gets tricky at the sociological level. Since individuals follow moral laws that sometimes or often go against individual self-interest can be good for group self-interest.

    However I still think groups will take risks and even become groups to fight what they think is immoral even if this puts the group itself as risk.

    I think people, in general, might fight a war against an alien advanced civilization that wanted to control us and protect us, but didn't respect any freedoms or local cultures and wanted us to live in some kind or alien run fascism.

    Now the group might be convinced it would survive as kind of pets or zoo animals, but they might be willing to put survivability of the entire species at risk, because of values they hold dear.

    The person I was arguing with seemed to think only things which enhance group survivability become morals.

    I don't think that's the case.

    And smaller groups with cohesive monocultures have been willing to fight to the death, to risk extermination, because of their other values.

    I assume that countries much smaller than Russia and China might declare war on the US if we started stealing some, but not all of third nations' babies for food. Or if the US became the nation of pedophilia promoting child rape worldwide. Even if a war with the US would likely be one sided and devastating. I think there are morals that when crossed individuals - certainly, there can be no doubt of this - but even groups will put their own existence at risk for moral reasons.
  • The Tipping Point of Evil
    Countries can explain and justify made decisions by a moral stand, but that justification hardly is the reason why they would do something that puts them into peril. — ssu

    Of course. I just don't think we can rule out countries and certainly not groups choosing to put themselves at risk for a higher value. Higher according to them. It seems to me deontology for sure and even many consequentialist value systems implicitly demand this. The do of individuals.
    In 1940 it was truly about existential questions, not a moral question that Chuchill took. At hindsight it's totally obvious that you could not trust someone like Hitler. Just look what trusting Hitler gave Stalin. — ssu
    I wasn't arguing that anyone should trust Hitler.

    And I am not arguing that it must be a moral stand when governments claim it is, as they always do. I think politicians lie about this all the time. I do think however that groups are willling to fight what they consider evil, even if given the option not to. Otherwise this means we are deciding that groups never oppose evil except for selfish reasons. They would never risk themselves for what they consider good. Honor and morals are really just self-interest. And note, I am not saying these morals or the sense of honor need be good. Do gooding has perpetuated all sorts of horrible things.

    I just think it's confused to argue that morals are really only about self-interest and people only do things to further their group's survivability.
  • Social Responsibility
    I wonder why you called this movement "neoliberal". — god must be atheist
    Neoliberalism or neo-liberalism[1] is the 20th-century resurgence of 19th-century ideas associated with laissez-faire economic liberalism and free market capitalism,[2]:7[3] which constituted a paradigm shift away from the post-war Keynesian consensus that had lasted from 1945 to 1980.[4][5]
    When the term entered into common use in the 1980s in connection with Augusto Pinochet's economic reforms in Chile, it quickly took on negative connotations and was employed principally by critics of market reform and laissez-faire capitalism. Scholars tended to associate it with the theories of Mont Pelerin Society economists Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, and James M. Buchanan, along with politicians and policy-makers such as Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and Alan Greenspan.[8][27] Once the new meaning of neoliberalism became established as a common usage among Spanish-speaking scholars, it diffused into the English-language study of political economy.[8] By 1994, with the passage of NAFTA and with the Zapatistas' reaction to this development in Chiapas, the term entered global circulation.[7] Scholarship on the phenomenon of neoliberalism has been growing over the last few decades.[19][28]
  • An interesting objection to antinatalism I heard: The myth of inaction
    I'm interested to know what can be more valuable than acquiring happiness and avoiding suffering — TheMadFool
    People want to create and achieve, for example.
    Bear in mind that however you answer that question you will have to provide a viable alternative to hedonism and as we all know this is impossible for hedonism subsumes everything; by that I mean value for humans is based off of whether there's pleasure or pain involved. The more pleasurable a thing is, the greater its value and the more painful a thing is, the lower its value. Think of anything humans value, either positively or negatively, and invariably these are hedonistic evaluations. — TheMadFool
    Sure, there will always be things one can point at and say 'see that gave you pleasure' but these are often side effects. And the onus would be on you to prove that long distance runners ultimately experience more pleasure and/or less pain than they would if they chose a set of goals that did not cause incredibly amounts of pain. And yes, I now there are pleasures. But that is not the value. We're not all hedonists or the term would have no meaning.
    The more pleasurable a thing is, the greater its value and the more painful a thing is, the lower its value — TheMadFool
    Tell that to ascetics, people who choose extremely restrictive body practices for whatever reasons, and Navy Seals. And yes, I know there will be certain kinds of self-esteem and other pleasures, but I truly doubt these outweight the unbelievable pain these people go through, the risk to their lives, the pain of the loss of colleagues and so on. There a many people, in fact most who are not hedonists.

    You know that story about the rats who kept taking cocain or stimulating the pleasure centers of their brains? Well, those rats had boring cages. If you give rodents complex and interesting environments, they will not become addicted.
    There is a sense in which what you say appears to make sense: sometimes we either forgo happiness or endure suffering. However, this paradoxical state is easily explicable with the presence of greater pleasure to be achieved or greater [isuffering[/i] to be avoided. — TheMadFool
    The onus is on you to somehow measure the pleasures and show they outweigh the pains and that people's purported values (which are also obvious given what they choose to do) are not really their values, but that underneath they are just seeking pleasure in a more complicated way. And certainly anyone who risks their life knowingly is quite willing to set aside all future pleasure and even suffer torture (say with Black ops teams as an example when captured) in the name of values other than the pride, say, they feel for doing their work.

    When you have a way to measure all this, they we can tell these people that, no, actually, you are just hedonists.

    *And then let's look at the context. If everything.....

    everything....

    has to do, really, with gaining pleasure.


    Then any life, with any handicap, can have more pleasure than pain. Because one's attitude and goals in that life can give one pleasure, regardless of what one experiences.

    So this undermines the whole antinatalist position in a different way. Since every child would just be another closet hedonist with a way to enjoy life, regardless.

    I suspect that you're not the only one who makes statements like "I like life, including sentient life"; this is a widely expressed sentiment and thus gains a level of legitimacy that antinatalism, to be a sound philosophy, must deal with. Why do so many people like life? Either life is likable or we have a biased sample on our hands — TheMadFool

    It is inherent in life. The organism is choosing life. Until it does not. Some do chose not to live. But as long as you are tyring to get food, avoiding danger and you cells are doing their work, you are an organism choosing life, because that's what life does.

    That's the problem with anti-natalists 'consent' issue. It's actually a silly one. I understand why it looks valid, but it's not. If the fetal organism does not want to life it'll miscarry. But there is it sucking up nutrients from the mother. Nothing gets born without struggling forward to get born. I understand, there may come a time when an organism does not want to live. But up to then it has been voting with its cells to live, in it's nonverbal way.
    You know, no smoke without fire. What weighs in on this is the undeniable fact that if one is suffering there really is no way we could say, "I like life" — TheMadFool
    I am suffering. I have more, by far, then the average citizen in a Western society. At least, if one goes by traumas experienced and how I would describe the struggles of living compared to others.

    When I say I like life. I was not saying I like being alive. That is also true. But that is not what I meant. I meant, I like that there are animals. I like that humans exist. I value that. I want that to continue, even though I suffer and even though others suffer. Even though there are all sorts of problems.

    Anti-natalists have, at core, one determining value that outweighs all others.

    Thou shalt not risk, via procreation or any other act, that you are putting someone without their consent at risk of suffering.

    That single value outweighs, for them, all other values.

    I don't share that domination of that value

    My goodness, I would love to avoid hurting anyone without their consent. But that kind of puritanical perfectionism - which in this case entails rooting for and arguing to achieve the end of humanity and all pain experiencing life - I do not share.

    And by the way - I think they are hypocritical. Because they may be fallible and they should know this. So their goal of convincing people to be antinatalists might actually be wrong. I understand that they can see no reason, now, for believing that. But they take a risk every time they present their argumetns that they are doing harm.

    If they take that risk, they cannot tell others not to and be consistent.
    We could dig a little deeper though and come to the realization, if it is one, that when one is not in a position to say, I like life", as when one is suffering, it doesn't mean one dislikes life: after all we all, more or less, share the sentiment that life is likable. The bottomline is that if there's anything we loathe it's suffering. Similarly, we don't like life per se but the opportunity that it provides to be happy. — TheMadFool
    No, that is not correct for me. I like life at a much more fundamental level than this. I also don't loathe suffering. I loathe what I loathe and this causes suffering, often. But I don't even loathe all that. I even appreciate getting to loathe certain things. I value life, not just for when I am happy, which is fairly rare. I am engaged often, and often the engagement increases my suffering. But when I am engaged even if it causes suffering, I am alive, being me. I value you that.

    Perhaps you are a hedonist. And I understand how you can simply translate the above and say, oh, that's giving you pleasure.

    But you are just translating, with no proof, that really what that is is pleasure. A little humility here is in order when telling other minds what all their values really are. And how much pleasure they are getting from what they value and how this outweighs the pain they consciously and unconsciously head towards from their values. Unless you are making a psychic claim about all other minds, at least qualify your translation of my and everyone else's values into what you value. Qualify with phrases like 'I think'.
    because you don't know.
    At this point, when life = suffering, having children, if they share the same fate, becomes a criminal offence committed against unconsenting innocent beings. — TheMadFool
    So, if I read this and I feel bad, cause my wife is pregant and later kill myself

    did you commit a criminal act?

    I think it is consistent with your logic to say you did.

    But you allow yourself this. Perhaps I 'should have known' that reading a thread on antinatalism would make me feel terrible and guilty. I'm an adult. I chose to read the thread.

    But my wife is going to suffer my suicide immensely. And she didn't choose to read this thread.
    And my 8 year old didn't.

    But you take this risk that your actions will cause pain and suffering in people who did not consent to it.

    Why are you free to take these risks but others cannot?
    Like I said, life is an opportunity to be happy even if that maybe a journey few will ever complete. Some are both fortunate and wise to achieve happiness; I salute them and envy their luck and wisdom. However most of us are neither blessed by fate nor wise enough to achieve this state and so it behooves us, at least as a gesture of sympathy, to grant them a negative outlook on life. — TheMadFool
    Nohting I have said means that others must have any outlook on life. I love many artists, for example, with incredibly dark views of life. I know
    vastly better than most,
    exactly what they are on about.

    In fact, I think I know this better than you do, because you thought, a few posts back, that we could guarantee happy lives, perhaps in a few generations. Honestly I think that's as Pollyanish as most anti-natalists are going to think that is.

    I don't fault the antinatalists for have a negative view of life and many of its facets. heck, I suspect sometimes that some of these guys actually enjoy life more than I do. That there is something more hobbyish in their anti-natalism. Not all of them. I do not mean that as an ad hom aimed at the position. I am sure some are suffering immensely and of course they could be right even if they are not, since they are concerned, at least many, about consent. I am just saying that you seem to be a hedonist, and you assume hedonism is everywhere. It's not. But in infects the way you interpret my posts, my life, my reactions to antinatalists.

    That's how precious life is to me. It's despite all the pain precious to me.
  • The Tipping Point of Evil
    I think this is true, but not in the numbers to be considered as human nature. This is more of a sacrifice. It could be said that Britain risked its survival fighting against Naziism in the name freedom. But it had no choice, it’s survival was under threat. It did not purposely risk its survival. — Brett
    Perhaps, perhaps not. Hitler would have been able to focus on the USSR. Perhaps in the end it would have gone for Britain, perhaps not. Hitler considered them closely related race wise to germans. They were not particularly communist. I think we can say Britain took a moral stand which its leaders knew was taking a direct and immediate risk regarding their countries sovreignty. Yes, a longer term risk was certainly there and Germany might have been in a much stronger position later. But I think that is not quite seeing the types of decisions even large groups are capable of making.

    That's a bit of the whole point with most moral systems. Doing things because they are (considered) right, even if they are against one's own self-interest. Or one wouldn't need these morals.

    I am not sure one can even call it a moral, ultimately, if it is only a heuristic designed to maintain group survival. You could also just call that a survival tactic.

    Also this is at the national level. Nations are highly complicated amassings of many groups. And recent in history.
  • The Tipping Point of Evil
    Is that really true? Are their moral centres that are different? — Brett
    Large portions of fundamentalist protestantism consider Catholicism to be evil. I would guess that most members are fairly decent to individual Catholics they meet. There are huge differences on the ideas of who get to represent the ideas of God and must they be celibate. Can women be intermediary experts with God. There are huge disagreements on abortion, with the liberal protestant churches having values quite opposed to conservative P churches and C churches. I am not even bringing Islam in, where there are vastly more traditional values about the role, intelligence, veracity and morals of women. Then, since I mentioned government and religions, we have incredibly different ideas about sexual mores, drug taking mores, parenting mores. There is an incredibly battle around the rights to free speech. How about the new laws and school and organizational rules related to transpersons? I could go into huge differences regarding foreign policy between interventionist factions and those against it. Tulsi Gabbard has been implicitly accused of being evil by both dems and republicans for taking non-interventionist stances. There the arts, and what is acceptable to be in an art work. How about firearms?

    I meant that a set of morals could deteriorate in a generation, an evolving set of morals would take longer, but only if they served the community well. — Brett
    ...served the community well in a certain period of time, but perhaps not after that. IOW an moral approach to free speech or privacy might work fine until the internet is used by most people. And then a shift in those morals in response to a technological change or a political change - say the Patriot act changes after 9/11 - might take hundreds of years to be shown to be disastrous. It might take only a much shorter time. But i can't see setting any threshold where we decide 'it's been working for X years, so it is beneficial'.
  • Reason as a Concept
    ↪Bartricks
    Fair enough. But we still have a concept of reason - what the idea of reason distinguishes, describes
    and then
    we have the faculty.

    It's a concept and it refers to a faculty. An idea that refers to a very complicated function of minds and must, as an idea, distinguish this function from other functions.

    I could argue that to call it a function is to reify it, but really that is a side issue. I still think that whether referring to processes or a function, there is still a concept and what the word refers to.
  • The Tipping Point of Evil
    It seems to me that morals have a function, otherwise they would disappear over time with the tribe/community they didn’t serve well. — Brett
    I would tend to agree. But we have to also notice that contradictory morals have lasted a long time in different groups and even sometimes inside more complicated groups. Tribes, for example tend to have the same morals throughout, but larger groups, like those in what gets called civilization, may have different moral centers - government and religion or even various religious groups, as one more obvious example - with differing moralities.
    The moral value isn’t that the “ good’ will make things better for the group, it’s that what makes things better for the group becomes the moral value. — Brett
    In times of crisis or scarcity a certain moral or set of them may be more useful that others. I don't think a generation is enough. Nor does it work if broader changes - brought about by technology or even societal successes or by increases in population, or changes in neighboring populations or changes in climate or whatever - changes the needs and processes of a society. Think of the changes in the US under the few generations between founding in the late 1700s and the end of the 1800s. What 'works' is going to change. Also different people and subgroups are going to have different opinions about what 'working' means.
    Would any group jeopardise it’s survival in a moral cause? — Brett
    I would think some would. We know this happens at the individual level.
  • Reason as a Concept
    You might have a 'concept of language' but I don't see how that advances understanding of language. It's too multifaceted to reduce to a concept. — Wayfarer
    I am not quite sure what you are saying.

    He refers to the concept of reason. You say it isn't a concept but rather a process. But these are not mutually exclusive. When we refer to reason, yes, we are referring to a certain kind of thinking and justifying ideas, drawing conclusions. Could be privately engaged in, could be interpersonal or even collaborative. Those processes.

    But what I just did was throw out, very quickly, my sense of the concept of reason. What we think the word 'reason' is distinguishing and describing in generall. What we mean. We can compare this idea we have, the concept of reason we have, with some specific process of thinking or arguing, etc.

    What concepts are not also things or processes?

    There's the concept of reason. Then there is ALSO those processes the word refers to out there in specific cases.
  • Reason as a Concept
    ↪Wayfarer
    Well, it's also a concept. We have a concept of what reason is, and it's tucked into that words and what it elicits for each of us.
  • An interesting objection to antinatalism I heard: The myth of inaction
    ↪schopenhauer1
    lol. Well, I can't begrudge you enjoying that part. Such ironies are a part of life. And the truth is one thing that bothers me in general is a certain kind of being facile. I think people, on many sides of many arguments, like to make things too neat IOW they don't want to face the dark side of their positions, the anomolies, to potential side effects that are hard to track but still likely there. So, on this issue, I am obviously arguing against antinatalism. But I think there is a rose colored glasses issue in the position I was arguing against above. And I think rose colored glasses type view of the future, and often dependent on technology, are really quite damaging. There's a wider contest also. I probably share reactions to much of life with antinatalists. I just don't draw the same conclusions.
  • An interesting objection to antinatalism I heard: The myth of inaction
    The basic assertion of the antinatalist is that it's bad to bring children into this world with conditions as they are — TheMadFool
    And as they must be. We will never be able to completely guarantee that a child will not suffer. Most antinatalists, certainly here at PF, have a commandment that one cannot, without consent, put someone in a position where they may suffer. If one interprets giving birth to someone as doing this kind of thing, no amount of technological advancement or world peace or whatever will be a full guarantee.
    To deny antinatalism would require the demonstration that either having children is good or that it's morally neutral. — TheMadFool
    Or that there are other values to take into account beyond the value of never putting someone else in a situation where they may suffer. Or by arguing that there are no objective morals.
    and, according to natalism the inevitable suffering is adequately compensated with the counterweight of happiness; either way both antinatalism and natalism are claiming that having children has a moral dimension. — TheMadFool
    One does not have to evaluate life or this issue in terms of plus minus emotions. Life can have value beyond happiness. In a sense this is kind of assuming an emotional hedonism is the correct way to evaluate life.
    So, it's false that having children is morally neutral. This then implies that natalism is a claim that having children is morally good and that means we're obligated to do what is good; we must have children according to the natalists. — TheMadFool
    That's certainly a possible position. It's not mine. I do not think we are obligated to have children. Nor do i think it is immoral to have them.
    There is no wiggle room to say, quote, "there is nothing per se wrong about having children" which to make sense would require having children to be morally neutral and that it is not. — TheMadFool
    1) I do think some people should not have children 2) I don't really believe in objective morals. I like life, including sentient life. I hope it continues. That is one of my strong values. I see nothing in the antinatalist manifesto that makes we want to stop valuing life, including life that can suffer, and rooting for it to continue. I don't really need to even think of the phrase 'morally neutral'.
    Within a moral context you either should or should not have children. Natalism is the former and antinatalism is the latter. — TheMadFool
    I disagree. Certainly some natalists must think that a junkie deciding not to have children is doing a good thing. I am not my whole species. So, right off I deny the universalism. I can also judge the antinatalist project as holding values I disagree with. I think it would be aweful if their values spread to the degree that all sentient life stopped procreating. And the technology to do this without creating suffering could certainly arise, even for animals. I think that's horrible. That's one of my values. I don't think it's an objective one. It's mine. Of course I don't want people to suffer or children to suffer. I share that value to a degree. but I do not think that value should have veto power over all other values. It is extremely puritan. I think there is a hatred of life in it, since it's hope is that all fauna no longer exists. I honestly think that is sick. Not morally sick, but anti-life.
    If there's anything wrong with antinatalism then it's that it throws the baby out with the bathwater. After all, they wouldn't have a case IF suffering could be eliminated and this is, in my opinion, a primary objective for humanity as evidenced by how we measure our progress - high life expectancy, low childhood mortality, less poverty, low disease rates, etc. In this respect the future looks bright for our progeny and antinatalism looks destined to become outdated in about a 100 years or so. — TheMadFool
    Not if you read antinatalists here. How can we possibly ensure that no parent will not sexually abuse a child (if we can, we have some kind of panoticon Big brother society with other problems). How can we possibly know the child will not fall in love and never get over that first love and not want pills to fix that? There are astronomy level catastrophies that might maim and disable many people. There are people who are born and yearn for things they cannot have.

    We have no brave new world that can or should make the antinatalists assume all suffering or all sad lives will be prevented.

    And that is the position. Unless one has the consent of the person, you cannot put them in a situation where they may suffer.

    And it will always be possible.

    I feel alien from saying birth is neutral (or good or bad). I think it depends, in individual cases. But life, I like animal life, including us. Also plant life, which I think it is likely also can feel pain - though this is a tangent. And I do not like what I consider a death preferring perfectionism wihch I see antinatalism as as form of. I think natalism is also off, though less so, since it seems to think we should give birth. I just want some to, hopefully those who can parent well.
  • The Tipping Point of Evil
    ↪TheMadFool
    I didn't quite get this, but I will respond as if I did. Keep in mind I am not quite sure what you meant.

    Isn't that like asking "are there no bad good people? — TheMadFool
    No. I am arguing that saying someone has moral principles is a descriptive statement. Psychopaths do not have moral codes. They do what they want and if they act morally it is simply to avoid certain consequences. Hitler had very strong morals. That is descriptive. He thought X was good and Y. And he tried very hard to be good and to make others good and punish the bad.

    To say someone has morals should not be a value judgment.

    Now this gets into equivocations because to say someone is a moral person, means they are a good person. But that's everyday speech.

    Hitler was not a psychopath. I think he actually meant to do good by his evaluation of good. A psychopath is not trying to do good things.

    This doesn't mean Hitler was good. this depends on the morals of those evaluating him. I think we need to make it clear that there is a difference between saying someone is a good person: this means we evaluate someone according to some moral system that we believe in - and saying someone had morals. IOW they thought some things were bad, others good and evaluated behavior and actions along those lines. I think we would be remiss to think that Hitler did not care about Germany and Germans and Aryans and dogs and children (aryan ones), and that he really just liked destruction.
    As for Hitler, he can be "explained" not by a moral philosophy but a morally deficient ideology - racial supremacism. Even then he was "good" to the Aryans. — TheMadFool
    To me that's as if you have access to objective morality. Which of course most people believe, as did Hitler. He has a moral philosophy, a very rigid one in fact. Other people with other moral philosophies judge his as evil. Even between republicans and democrats there is tremendous difference between ideas of what a good person is and should do. I think it's problematic if we just assume 'we' have the objectively morality and can say, that person has no morals. We can certainly say their morals are bad ones.

    It's a bit like when conservatives, a few years back, in the US, often said that liberals have no values. Of course they have values and of course they have morals. They just differ from the conservative ones. (underneath this is deontologists judging consequentialists, and also more flexible morals being judged by more rigid ones, at least on the surface. It's changed since that period, because now the left has come out extremely rigid on moral condemnation, in a way i am more used to the right being)
  • The Tipping Point of Evil
    But if a moral is a way of behaving that contributes to the success of a group, that throws it forward into the future so that it thrives even further, then does it have to be moral in the sense of being good, or right, as we understand it? — Brett
    And how do we evaluate how well something like a moral is working? what's the time frame? and isn't that a moral value in itself, that the good will make things better for the group? This would mean for example that the group would never,jeapordize its survival in a moral cause. I think many would say that could be immoral. Of course everyone thinks that their morals are good, though they often think other people's are not. In fact, usually they do. If there is difference, the others are wrong, unless it is something fairly trivial.
    It does seem that the societies or communities that have this concept of morals are the most successful. But what if, for instance, it becomes necessary to reduce the world population in order to survive, does that become the right moral decision? — Brett
    Some would certainly think so. And on the individual level, simply working from the idea of survival is generally seen as at best limited morally and usually as selfish. Also your model is consquentialist. Good actions lead to X consequences. But much of the world, in fact all of us on some things are deontologists. X is wrong regardless. Would it be ok to rape a child to save one's tribe?
  • The Tipping Point of Evil
    ↪TheMadFool
    ARe their no evil moral principles? Hitler could be seen as following moral principals. I am sure he thought so.
  • The Tipping Point of Evil
    Whilst two wrongs do not make right, the bombing of Dresden has to be viewed in the general context of WW2. — Jacob-B
    To me the first part of the sentence outweighs the second. I could deal with some illegal shooting of the entire Nazi command. IOW if the 'revenge' actually hit the people responsible or at least people potentially responsible for other war crimes, or aware and in their silence complicit, or some such. But the bombing of civilians is just hurting other innocent people. I know the context. I understand that it was in a context where the Germans were now know to have done other terrible things. If someone beats up my brothers and I meet someone of the bully's nationality on the street or heck, even the bully's second cousin, on the street and beat him up, I don't have much moral ground to stand on. I don't think we should muddy the water. I am not calling for any potential survivors to be put in front of some tribunal. I would hope that in future wars, people no longer think that one atrocity

    in

    any

    way

    makes it more undertandable to commit a counter one.

    'Understandible' hovering ambiguously between,...yeah sometimes humans react like that
    and
    'morally justificable'

    I see no reason to be afraid to call the Allies out on something like Dresden. it's not unfair. And it should be in the air, for any future such decision makers, that history could and hopefully will look unkindly on such a choice. Further that they might think differently when weighing options.
  • An interesting objection to antinatalism I heard: The myth of inaction
    What does "you may have kids" mean? It makes as much sense, in keeping with the spirit of antinatalism, as "you may make the child suffer". For antinatalism the stakes are high: unwanted and undeserved suffering, completely avoidable by not being born. You can't possibly think that a wishy-washy "may" is an adequate response to such strong beliefs. — TheMadFool
    As far as wikipedia, the main opposition to anti-natalism is not natalism, but the idea that there is nothing per se wrong about having children. One need not promote it, not try to inhibit births. For those who do not thinkt that having children is per se immoral, but also see no compulsion for people to have kids and does not try to convince people to have them. And obviously the stakes are high for the antinatalists: the logical conclusion of their position is that it would be best if no lifeforms that can feel pain continue to have new generations. So their goal would be some kind of minimally painful elimination of all life forms, at least fauna. It seems to me that in the name of making us all perfectly moral, they would seek eliminate all sentient life (if only via argument and propaganda here at least). I think that is as fanatical a position as some of the worst extremes of radical abrahamism. They are will to take, it seems to me, an unbelievable risk that their values are not as perfectly correct as they think. The unbelievable part of the risk comes in given what they are rooting for and striving for. It's hubris and perfectionism. Only this value and nothing else.
  • Moral harassment causes 35 suicides. Really?
    ↪frank
    I think if you actually tried to connect your argument to the topic, it would be quite tricky, rather than simply making a reach with an analogy without directly outlining the argument.. But let's take the most charitable interpretation and work from there. If the bosses at the telecom could not be shown to have instituted abusive practices with the intention of causing people to quit, then they should be set free. If their policies and applications of policies made sense and the unpleasantness was merely an inevitable byproduct of that, then they that becomes a reasonable defense. And then it is up to a court to decide whether the intention was simply to make good business decisions or to make people suffer. Yes, if a food product has a known addictive substance in it, not unlike cigarrettes, say, and the way that chemical is used by the manufacturer is as an addictive substance and intend to addict people, sure, I think they could be liable for that. Not unlike how we treat illegal drug distributers for the same reasons. If the new bosses were making tough decisions, but reasonable ones, then I think they have a good defense. If they did things like assign people to tasks that did not suit them, for example, didn't suit their skills and training for example, this does not make good business sense so other motivations are at play. I haven't analyzed the French case. But I see no reason to per se dismiss the idea that the bosses could be shown to have been intentionally cruel, to have made decisions with the intention of punishing and torturing people to leave their jobs. Perhaps the court did a poor job of analyzing the evidence. Showing evidence of this, I think, makes more sense than the food product analogy. But if not, if the bosses did in fact intended to make people suffer enough to resign, then I'm pleased they got slapped back on by society. And they must have known what the situation was before purchasing the telecom. I think the argument that they had to institute abusive policies to be competitive doesn't hold, since it should be clear that the policies were not intended to make people suffer. Now there will be gray areas. Some restructuring might be stressful but inevitable. But from the articles it seems like there were vindictive actions taken and also decisions made that did not make business sense, but did make sense if their goal was to make people suffer. If that is the case, I don't see why that should be treated differently from more direct forms of violence where the goal is to make someone suffer.

    Now let's say we had a food product company that added a step in the manufacting process such that irritating dust made the factory a very unpleasant work environment. And they did this when the workers starting union organizing. Or when it could be shown they wanted to break a long standing union. And the step in the manufacturing process did not make their product better.
  • Moral harassment causes 35 suicides. Really?
    There's a big difference between an asshole boss with bad management (which, inevitably, leads to bad working conditions) and tailoring management practices to abuse people into quitting. — fdrake
    Exactly. There was a specific and general goal. The assholeness was performed utterly consciously, with a specific objective. It's not simply a personality trait.

    And a number of posts here seem to be implicitly arguing that personality traits are being punished. However it is actually a strategy intended to create suffering that is being considered illegal. That was it's specific goal.

    It is a form of torture in fact.

    I will cause suffering using these tools to force behavior X from my victims.
  • Unconditional love does not exist; so why is it so popular?
    ↪god must be atheist
    I think it's fine to look at the idea of unconditional love as a kind of new, I stress new, more ideal concept (perfect) and see if it is possible. If I go back to the OP, it seems to me there is a generalized attack on the idea as making sense. Perhaps between the OP and page 6, here, there was some formal shift, but it seems to me the context was the use of the term in a general way. I think the term has meaning and is useful.

    I wouldn't even know what unconditional love would mean if we do not restrict those words. Does that mean you love everything will limitless love? That you love the same when you are sleeping?

    To me it's a bit like saying unconditional surrenders do not exist, because the surrendering party cannot undo its existence in the past retroactively. Or cannot surrender the food it ate two weeks ago. or it cannot promise that everyone in the surrendering country or sieged town will stop wishing the attackers ill will.

    I don't think the term, as used, is meant to be a description of perfect boundless love with no limits. We can decide to treat the term as if it had these characteristics, in the name of exploring. Fine. But I think we then need to acknowledge that we are not really talking about how the term is used normally. And then also, perhaps, acknowledge that it can be a useful concept, as generally conceived, despite not having the attributes we usually attribute, if ever, to deities or mathematical concepts.

    To be candid, sometimes it seems like there is a trend, at least on philosophy forums, to put everything into two categories: Irrational or scientifically well supported. With nothing useful in between. And that our language should be this pure communication where any conclusion is absolute and can be measured.

    Of course such a communication is not possible since there will be metaphors hidden even in the most anally produced language.

    From the OP:
    One of the most common examples is that of a mother's love for her child, but the first condition is that the child must be hers.

    I think that there is meaninful use of language occuring when we refer to parental love as opposed to other kinds of love, of course dependent on individual cases. That something else is possible and occurs in the relations between parents and their children, that teenagers and even romantic adults, despite their idealisms, cannot live up to. A love that will lead to continued kind of empathetic responses from the parent where all other kinds of relationships would tend to say 'see you later'. In most relationships we look for balance, fairness, reciprocity. We have expectations that will undermine love if these expectations are not met. And then you have love where that is not the case.

    Sure, analyze whether unconditional perhaps means that even if the laws of physics disappear and the person in question is dead, will their love continue. But this is a discussion of something else, not what people are talking about.
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