"No. "good" and "evil" go beyond productivity. They denote moral and immoral behavior that can be irrelevant to and transcend productivity. For example, it could be argued that it would be productive to force a group of people into slavery for the productive good for the majority, but an ethical notion of good valuing human rights and freedom would call this "evil."
--Thanatos Sand


Humanity, one's sanity, and our sanity as a whole when preserved can be quantified if one bothers to measure it against the extra goods and resources that are not produced that could created by using forced labor.

You see that which is "productive" and "counter-productive" when used to evaluate morality and/or when using something like game theory, hedonistic calculus, etc. isn't the same as used to create a spreadsheet and determine that which is produced from a factory. Your misreading my post and constructing a simplified but incorrect version of the system of morality I'm talking about instead of getting real mental picture of the system I have.

The thing you don't even understand is that our "human morality" that we base our societies on today in fact creates thing like wage slaves who often have to work longer and harder than those above them while at the same time they get less wages and benefits than others which I see as unfair (ie because it uses the same double standard used in slavery). And with livestock we raise the animals until they can be used for food, and then they go to the butcher in order to make food and profit for those that raise and process them. We treat such animals almost (or sometimes worse) than we treat slaves, but it is socially acceptable to do so since our need and desire for such food makes it all but a necessity.

Because of "manifest density" and similar doctrines we often place our needs (or at least the needs of those who are most wealthy in our society) above all else, which makes everything less important on the human social pyramid (which often includes other human beings) as merely some thing or resource to be used as one sees fit, or at least if they are the one who has access to it.

Although we are often taught as children to be kind and respectful of each other, as adults the game we call human morality becomes different where some are still expected to obey, while other merely preach to others how they need to behave while at the same time merely using anyone and everything around them. Or as they say "Do as I say, not as I do", or at least if your in a position where you can get away with it.

While I may be a bit Machiavellian I'm aware that when one thinks of others as merely things and how they can be used, it may hard to perceive them as human after some time and/or if one behaves as such they can no longer really expect to be treated as a human being if it is too obvious they don't respect human life themselves.

For humans, "good" is anything that is productive and/or useful and "evil" is anything that is counter productive. Almost all societies have certain social customs and rules which are kind of like rules of thumbs according to what our experiences tell us which actions causes something productive or counter productive to happen but all they are are rules of thumb to often handle the more trivial of situations. In something a little more than pure trivial situation one might need to make a judgement call and in situations even more complicated than that it might require a judgement call of several people instead of one person alone.

The way I'm wording it may make it sound like I believe it is simple, but I assure you it is not. Every action we take every thought that we make in some way is tied into what we believe is moral and what we 'ought' to be doing. However the trickiest part of it all is that, NEVER REALLY KNOW WHAT WE OUGHT TO BE DOING because the information that would allow us to do the most productive actions (ie. using science and technology currently not present) is never an option or available to us so therefore we spend most of our lives doing the equivalent of pushing an egg with our nose (and trying to maintain our sanity while doing it) while at the same time wishing that these better option where available now.

Of course many of us are unaware of this problem since their religion tells them there is nothing better to be expected of them and this world we live in so they are blissfully ignorant of the fact that they are wasting their lives pushing eggs with their nose and that they could be doing something much much better, if such options where available for them at this time that is.

Great post! :D

I will have to look at it some more, but it is stuff like this that makes me interested in reading up and philosophy and religion. :)

"Doesn't it seem like most religions operate on the principle that there is some good force greater than ourselves? and that we can learn to understand its goodness, and emulate it? (That's what I understand Socrates to be saying, as well).

It seems odd to me, that given our propensity for violence and selfishness, man also has this idea that there is something better, that man can become better than he is.

That is another pro: Religions help us focus on becoming better."
--anonymous66
Religions may operate on such principles but it isn't a given that it is true. To me it is as or more plausible that "WE" ourselves define what is "good" and "evil" based on what is either useful or counter-productive to us than the idea there is some external metric of "good"/"evil". As far as I can tell, what we perceive as some kind of external power and/or standard of morality and good is merely our superego playing head tricks on us.


While some religious beliefs may help us to become better, this is true of any religion or system of beliefs as a whole. The real problem is what makes a religion/system of beliefs any better than any other religion or system of beliefs. I believe that it isn't really all about what religion or system of beliefs they subscribe to but more about HOW they believe and go about their lives. Of course such an idea I imagine could be seen as harmful to many organized religions based on Abrahamic beliefs where they expect someone to follow a certain doctrine and not just make up things for themselves.

"I suspect we both agree that religions have caused and sometimes do cause harm. I'm sure we also agree that virtually everything that man is involved with has been used (misused?) in ways that cause harm.

I suspect neither of us want to promote the idea that "if something a group of people practices has the potential to cause harm, and/or has caused harm in the past, then that thing ought to be censured."
---anonymous66

I think I agree with you about some part in that in any group there are going to be some bad apples and it is unfair to blame an entire group on the actions of just a few, HOWEVER if a group has a tendency as a whole to be more hostile/ aggressive/ violent than others and/or preach the same thing then that should be pointed out too.

While Christianity does teach some piety and humanity it also often instills the ideas of the superiority of their beliefs the aggressive spread of such beliefs (sometimes through force if needed), or other things which more or less the reason they wiped out almost all other religions in western civilization including some schism of Christianity itself. As far as I know of Abrahamic religions (although I believe Judaism is excluded from this) are lot about evangelizing other people (ie converting through preaching or through threats), which isn't a common theme in other religions such as those in Dharmic religions. I believe in Dharmic religions they either believe in some kind of peaceful co-existence (such as in Jainism or Buddhism) or sometimes settling things through force. I know the settling through force isn't the greatest idea, but if one group takes over another they don't really expect that group to just convert. I guess what I'm trying to say is if you can't get believers through wars, then it kind of takes some incentive out of going to war in the first place.

I agree that any religion or system of beliefs shouldn't be censured, but I also think that even if a group is the majority (or thinks they are a majority) then their beliefs and will shouldn't be used to represent the beliefs and will of everyone in that society; and IMHO I think Christian organizations in the US try to influence politics and our society to such a point that they marginalize every other religion and system of belief that doesn't agree with what they believe.

Sorry I'm late in replying...

"I agree with this - except that I believe that he/she/it/they just are personifications of collective wisdom and nothing else. This not as empty as it sounds: for example, numbers are products of collective wisdom, knowledge of which is unquestionably useful. Organized religions, then, are just codified metaphoric wisdom - sometimes pretty wise, more often not, historically most often not. And it's my guess that religions express their respective wisdom in the ways that they do because that the best way wisdom can manage it."
--tim wood

Part of the reason I'm late in replying is that sometimes it is harder to address a post that I agree with than one I disagree other than of course simply remarking about that I agree. I think one small nuance I might add is that sometimes religion/philosophy (to me good religion isn't that different than philosophy) can add a kind of wisdom that goes above and beyond common sense or is counter intuitive but I guess even that kind of wisdom doesn't really require religion itself so I guess you might be right about that too.

Also I think western religions express their wisdom the way they do is so one either has to go through them to obtain it so in a way they seem like "they own it", much like how corporations (and their army of lawyers) own and protect the protects and intellectual property since if anyone could have easy access to it and/or have access to it from multiple sources it might undermine their organization in some way.

But still if they are the keepers of wisdom I guess that is better than the keepers of hypocrisy which is what sometimes they are thought as by atheists.
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"In short, I understand atheism to be the declaration of non-belief in supernatural beings. That is, a rejection of certain ideas or their particular expression. Clearly this a limited belief, which is fair enough."
----tim wood
I personally think of it as the belief in processes(ie everything is made of of simple mundane processes) vs the belief in spirits (before we understand how to control/manipulate processes for ourselves we use to think "spirits" and "magic" made everything in our world possible. I personally think that most religious people often think in terms of 'spirits" when dealing with the unexplained while people like atheists think that those things we can not account for yet are merely processes that are not well understood yet.


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Some folks get carried away and proclaim their non-belief in anything. To my way of thinking, such claims are completely foolish, and the people who make them fools. Doesn't Anselm say, "Even the fool knows in his heart...".
--tim wood
I can say that I pretty much agree since this was a topic of conversation with....um another forum member I replied to and although I was willing to say that my beliefs and perception of the world are greatly influenced by the human condition and the narrative I follow, the other forum member thought it was insulting to suggest that the same thing applies to them and/or that their views are biased in any way. To me this is usually a means to test the experience and/or wisdom of the person I' talking to since more senior debaters are "ok" with saying they are as flawed as any other human being but since it is true of us all then it doesn't undermine their own position. However sometimes a person I'm talking to gets upset with calling them and their position "flawed" in any way shape or form and they just about go ape you know what on me.

When this person is a fellow atheist it makes me wonder if atheism as a system of beliefs can ever have enough of a unified voice to contend with the problems caused by theism and/or the fact that theism is organized and we are not quite so yet.
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"And atheists of any stripe reject the good of religion, that collective wisdom for which they are repository. This is just plain a mistake. Admittedly, it is work sometimes difficult to listen to any religion as it expresses itself in non-natural terms and translate where possible "on the fly" into rational discourse. But the fact is that's where that wisdom is, and that's the work that needs be done to get it."
--tim wood
I think it might be that sometimes atheist when they get tired of theism that they often go off on a tangent and just reject and rebel against that seems like it is somewhat like religion even if it is more about common sense than religion per say. I think part of this is caused by theism acting like they control everything to do with religion and/or certain aspects of common sense which I mentioned earlier. Also it might help to know that Abrahamic religions for hundreds of years now have been practicing evangelicalism and the cleansing of other types of religions to the point they nearly have a monopolistic powers when if comes to the business of helping those who seek guidance in the form of religion.

I guess what I'm saying is without some easy release from some other type of religion that some (or perhaps many) will turn a deaf ear on anything to do with theism even if some of their teachings are not that harmful and/or are useful in someway. I think this was even true of me at one time.

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"Agnosticism is simply immature atheism and unattractive in any adult."
--tim wood
I'm not sure of this since it is a rational position to believe one isn't experienced enough in any way to know whether there is or isn't a God, but I might agree that it isn't an easy position to really take since in Western society we are usually force into a "YES" or "NO" stance on many positions and jsut saying "I don't know" doesn't cut it unless you are talking to other people who study and debate philosophy which is almost never the case outside of forums such as this. You could mean something else than this but I don't know at the moment..

It is getting kind of late (after 2am right now) so I better cut out before I get even more incoherent than I already am. Hopefully my posts don't suck as much as I fear they do from me being tired and not getting a chance to post earlier than I did.

"No, it's more like you're not a person partial to sufficient education as none of those words are "loaded" words, and they are part of common usage in the English language and present-day American culture. I'm sorry you missed that."
--Thanatos Sand

Actually I dropped out of high school and got a GED so my education may be lacking a little in certain area, although I guess I'm about as much a product of American society/education system but I'm pretty sure that is true of you too more or less. Even if I claim to be a person "partial to nihilism" it doesn't mean I'm able to avoid aspects of the human condition which it seems that you are implying I'm saying which I think is due to you mis-reading my posts.


"And I don't care what you have interest in as I don't predicate what I say on what other people want to hear, particularly when they are people whose intelligence I don't particularly respect, as your last few posts have made you one of those. As to your last sentence starting with "even," it is an irrelevant nonsequitur that doesn't address what I wrote In any way."
--Thanatos Sand

If you really don't care what interest people have or what they think how do you hope to successfully articulate your posts and/or have people return the empathy you likely expect them to return which you do not give in the first place? I think the term "forum trolls" is used for those who wish to rant and rave about that which interest them while at them same time while at the same time ignoring the interests of everyone else; and this seems to be the kind of mentality you have. My two questions for you is if you don't care at all what I have interest in, why should I have any interest in what you think is important. I for some reason I acted in a manner similar so you, then we are be so disinterested in each others positions (as well as anyone that did the same thing) then what is there to discuss on this forum?

I'm not saying you have to have a lot of empathy to have a discussion, I'm just saying you have to have enough to be willing to articulate your position well enough so that someone else may be able to understand it, and perhaps re-articulate it again if you left something out or if the way you worded it in some way was hard for the people reading it to absorb: without freaking out or getting too upset in the process.

I don't know if what you are trying to say is important, but I can trying to find out feels like I'm trying to pull teeth from you. You may not appreciate the aggressive/ interrogative like tone of my reply posts when I need to extract information or meaning from you or sometimes with other people, but if you or someone else is unwilling to explain your position than all I can do is either ignore it or try to interrogate (lightly interrogate you that is) whatever it is out of you.

I imagine as a third option I could also try to blow enough sunshine up your backside until you feel like telling me more, but I very rarely feel like going through that in order to just find out what it is that you are thinking so don't blame me if I chose the second option instead of this one.

"No, that isn't clear at all, and you haven't shown it to be. So the only one trying to blow air past their teeth and waste their time as well as our own is you."
--Thanatos Sand
I'm well aware of the fact that I may only blowing air past my teeth as well as all my other actions are for nothing, but at least I try to make them count which is just about all one expect another human being to do. And while wasting ten years in studying/debating philosophy may not be enough for me to have learned any better by now, it isn't a for lack of trying or for giving some thought to certain matters. Just saying...

Sorry I'm late in replying......

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"Actually we are rewarded for useful specialization in an industrial society. I may be able to be an architect of sorts but I cannot design a skyscraper without heavy investment in my education. Though maybe intelligent design software is right around the corner for a lot of really skilled professions, by which we just punch in desired features and boom! you've got blue prints ready to submit to the contractors."
--Nils Loc

I disagree, you may be being rewarded for the right combination of enough skill, work ethic, and social/economical background but I don't think it is really specialization itself. People on the lower end of the totem pole, have lower skill, and perhaps a little bit less of a work ethic (the latter two are in many ways often in part of the condition of being lower on the totem pole) are not really "rewarded when the "specialize" when they work at Wal-mart or Micky D's for ten years, and any benefit of "specialization" (ie really just a form of seniority, skill, experience when someone works at any given place) can be lost when you get let go.

For the statistical reports I can remember seeing a few years ago, the trend is for more people to have to work more jobs in their lifetime and that younger people have to get use to the idea of "constant lifelong learning" (aka constantly having to be retrained, re-acclimated to other occupations). At least that is the way it is in the US of A.

If you are in another country it might be different, however basing your opinion on what the future holds for workers on only your personal work experience and your local work environment could be a bit of a hasty generalization if things are different elsewhere.

---------------------------------------------

"We might be entering a postindustrial DIY age based on the widespread use of artificial intelligences, which will free more of us from the heavy investment in specialization."
--Nils Loc

Maybe, but they have being saying that AI, automation, etc is going to turn the world and the economy upside in our lifetime and as soon as it started doing so the powers that be flipped it to more or less the way it was before just with few people on the assembly lines and more people doing service sector/Micky D type jobs.

---------------------------------------------
"Maybe discussing the legal rights of children ought to be, or the way we treat children, is a way to proceed.

Question: Are children the property of their parents?

What are the ramifications of ownership and the freedoms afforded to private lives of families in rearing their children? The treatment of children by their parents is quite diverse. Some kinds of normal treatment would be termed "abuse" from a different point of view (spanking?).

If we look back to the first industrial revolution, children were treated very poorly because they didn't have the ability to defend themselves. They were treated as slave labor.

Normal parental neglect might have a major influence on the adaptive traits a child will carry into adulthood but there is no considerable legal overreach into the minutiae of rearing children. There might be a continuum of degrees agency (fitness within society) for adults depending upon key experiences during crucial phases of development.

Before we proceed with debating whether fictional automatons should be given human rights maybe we should do some research into the best way to raise a kid."
--Nils Loc

Here in the US kids are given almost as many rights as adults (other than being able to sign into legal contracts) , until they start becoming adults at which time they start getting treated like the worthless nobodies that everyone else gets treated as unless of course they have money which can doing the talking for them.

I think your idea of focusing on kids first is kind of a mixed thing. While kids have some ability as adults, they are most often not of the ability to handle some of the responsibility that adults have experience and background in handling. This kind of begs the question as to whether we need to set the bar lower when it comes to handing out rights in order to give equal rights to those who are not able to take care of themselves yet, or we need to reaffirm that rights only really belong to those that can handle adult like responsibility.

In ancient times, tribes often gave rights to the men that could endure/survive some kind of coming of age ceremony which was usually either very painful and/or dangerous to them and until they went through this they could not be thought of as one of the men or warriors (which was often all of the men who were not too sick or weak) of the tribe.

While we may not have the same thing today, there is still a kind of "trial by fire" that most teenagers go through while the get acclimated to the idea of what it is like to be a responsible adult. While we may not expected for a non-human/homunculus to have to go through such a process before being treated as an equal (or at least until what they can and can not endure), I don't think our society is at the point were most teens are able to become adults without going through such a coming of age sort of process.

This many be just my humble opinion, but parents seem to want to "protect" their kids and allow them to enjoy some of their "innocence" to the point where it is not an easy transition to being an adult and as a society we kind of need people that have had to have gone through some sort of trial by fire in order to survive so giving kids the same rights as adults may not work.


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"If we are automatons already, we should understand what makes us good automatons rather than bad ones."
--Nils Loc
In some ways we are similar to automatons, but in other ways we are not. We are subject to things like pain, pleasure, vices and other aspects of the human condition which are not "ideal" for an automation. An true automation would not get tired, upset, overly happy, depressed, etc, etc. The closest thing to a a human version of an automaton that I can think of are the Genejacks in the late 90's game Alpha Centauri who are basically genetically modified humans so that their strength and endurance is ideal for work and their minds are altered to the point where they can not question or think for themselves. Supposedly they are made either to replace machines in factories and/or make up for where machiens are not available. Here is an excerpt on what the Genejack and Genejack factories are sort of like


"My gift to industry is the genetically engineered worker, or Genejack. Specially designed for labor, the Genejack's muscles and nerves are ideal for his task. And the cerebral cortex has been atrophied so that he can desire nothing except to perform his duties. Tyranny, you say? How can you tyrannize someone who cannot feel pain?" -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang, "Essays on Mind and Matter"

The Genejack is a genetically engineered human laborer invented by the leader of the Human Hive, Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang. They were created shortly after the advent of Retroviral Engineering. By utilizing manufactured viruses, Yang was able to create the perfect worker by rewriting human DNA.

The Genejacks were used to crew the massive Genejack Factories, manufacturing facilities that, unlike other factories, used slave labor instead of industrial robotic assembly units. Genejacks were well suited to manual labor, as they possessed great strength and endurance. They serve unquestioningly, in fact, they are incapable of questioning their orders, as their cerebral cortex was atrophied to inhibit higher thought and eliminate emotions. Utilizing Genejack Factories can provide a fair mineral (production) bonus, but the mentally-deficient Genejacks will add to a base's Drones. One may choose to avoid building Genejack Factories until they are able to reduce the Drone population."
--Wikia.com
http://aliens.wikia.com/wiki/Genejack


Although some people might like the idea of Genejack or something similar to replace lower wage-slave workers (since it is a given such people would work for little to no wage) there are certain ethical concerns in doing so.

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"Maybe automatons (artificial intelligences) could correct the actions of parents which serve to undermine the social fitness of their children.

This idea stems from the story of Pinnochio. He is a child but must learn to become an adult. He is an automaton that must learn to become something else."
--Nils Loc

Pinnochio is sort of like a kid in some ways and in other ways a blank slate/puppet who has nearly no knowledge of the real world and has to go through a trial by fire of sorts in order to learn enough "morality" in order to be capable of acting like a proper kid should; sort of like a having Jimmie cricket around even when Jimmie isn't really there to guide him.

Anyways I don't think it isn't that parents don't know how to raise kids, it is just that adults where not always raised properly themselves and the resources required (such as time money etc) to take care of kids and help them as they grow is often limited. Perhaps an AI might help but then again maybe not.

"I know viewpoints may vary here. Depends a lot on worldview, attitude, and strategic thinking. Anyway let me present, what to me appears peculiar, a case. I'll then present my views and you can comment.

Scenario 1

Which do you prefer as a friend?
1. A fool
2. A genius

A genius can be good company, someone to learn from but, a big but, it's not wise to be with people who're too smart (think superintelligent aliens). A fool on the other hand will have no deliberate intentions to harm you and will be good fun to be with - a friend, in other words.

Scenario 2
Which do you prefer as an enemy?
1. A fool
2. A genius

Obviously, not a genius. He's to smart and will outmaneuver you and beat you. So, again a fool is preferable - as an enemy. You can beat him easily.

But...

This is paradoxical. A fool suits both as a friend and as an enemy.

How do you solve this paradox?"
--TheMadFool
It only seems like a paradox because you are comparing apples to oranges. In Machiavellian type thinking (the typical framework where one deals with an real enemy) the opposite of an enemy isn't a friend but an ally. and having a fool for an ally and or allies is usually not a good thing. Perhaps a very smart person in power may not have too much of a problem being surrounded by fools, but if one is of limited capacity themselves and then they make the mistake of hiring fools to advise them, then it will likely spell disaster at some point.

If you are a king or a leader of some sort it might be useful to talk to or be entertained by a fool or jester, but the people that occupy such positions are not part of the same spectrum as one's advisors, allies, or political enemies.

"No context is needed here. "Rational" is a human concept also applied to human behavior and is constantly changing in its definition. So, it can only religiously be applied to the universe which entails neither the arbitrariness of human behavior, nor the arbitrariness of definition."
--Thanatos Sand
It is pretty much a given that your statement (or any statement coming from anyone) is coming from some context/paradigm unless all you are doing is trying to blow air past your teeth and waste your time as well as our own. As a person partial to nihilism, I'm aware of how the whole "God", "morality" and "rationality" stuff are loaded words and mostly made up (or at least I'm aware of it on my better days), so I'm not entirely interested in it unless you really have something to add that I haven't really come across or perhaps even come across not that often. Even if someone is a nihilist they have to subscribe to some sort system of beliefs because it is part of the human condition to do so, and when doing so they adhere to some kind of "morality"/"rationality" even if it is merely hedonism or some kind of fabricated set of rules.

"Well, if you say you're an atheist, then it's a fair assumption that you know what an atheist is - or certainly you have your own idea of it. I, however, do not. And here's an opportunity to ask. What do you say an atheist is, at least in terms of your own atheism?

One thing, if you make it as simple as you don't believe in god - or any god - i shall have to ask you what you imagine god to be, because I do not know what that is, either."
--tim wood

That is a great question and I will try to answer the best I can in order to give it the justice it deserves.

As with many atheist, some of my beliefs are more agnostic (ie unsure if there is a God) than atheist, but since it is difficult to argue something when you tell people you don't know it is a given it will undermine your own argument. However even if I am an agnostic I'm very certain that even if there is a God that the theism/church doesn't do whatever the will and/or word of God any justice in how they go about spreading what they believe is what he wants. One of the things theism promises to those that consider whether to believe in theism is the true word or not is some kind of coherency. Part of the reason for this is because any institution can claim that God tell them his word through whatever "God talkers" they have used or listen to but it isn't a given that all "God talkers" hear his words correctly or are really even talking to him when they think they are. Since some people have no idea as to which books have the real word from people who have been directly contacted from God and have written his word correctly they submit to blind faith and believe the church in what it say, however I am not one of these people.

Before I go further I think I should mention two types of theism that are kind of exceptions to this problem with one being Unitarian Universalist and the other being Gnosticism. Unitarian Universalist are more or less open to people of all faith (which is kind of hard for me to wrap my head around if they are a really a Christian faith) and Gnosticism is sect or schism of Christianity that got wiped out by the main church hundreds of years ago because they talked about tolerance toward all religions and the creator of this universe is evil (because it is imperfect) which of course is heresy according to main stream Christianity. Not much is known about Gnosticism really believed (since most of it comes from Christian sources), but I believe their beliefs are not that much different than what you might have if you mix Dharmic and Christian belief, and/or something like modern day Unitarian Universalists if such a group could exist hundreds of years ago without being immediately wiped out.

I guess at some sort of instinctual/gut level, what Christianity says doesn't add up since the church and the people who are part of the church seem to be more interested in protecting the church and their own interest (which amounts to some form of materialism if you think about it) than to think and/or perform some actions that are transcendent in any way.

Also I guess part of it has to do with the fact that when I was a kid there seemed to be no middle ground with the church, you either was a believer or you were not a believer and I was told even if I tried to be 'good' it didn't matter since God only care about whether someone believed in him (ie. believed in him as he was described by the church and the bible) and if you didn't accept it than it was your problem not theirs. Since I had trouble believing in God since before the time I even attended preschool, it only got hard to believe as I got old and started questioning things more often than before.

I don't have any source I quote from but there was a book that I remember reading as a teen that mentioned why most religions believed in many gods and/or limited gods was because of the problems that exist in the world (ie such as the existence of dukkha) make it VERY difficult to explain how the world is the way it is yet there to also exist a all powerful, good god. This is similar to the problem of evil but more along the lines as to why we just can't pretend there is something like God out there when there is nothing to why things are so messed up down here. The book I read this from went on to describe that even the most primitive people understood this paradox and would experience distress when they encountered people who claim they had (or at least heir church had) DIRECT ACCESS TO A god BUT TO THE "GOD". In fact in many places before Christianity started really spreading, it was punishable by death to talk about such things and/or to try and spread such heresy. This obviously seems a bit harsh, but in theory a person or persons who have direct access to God doesn't have to obey any rules (or moral codes for that matter) other than what "God" tells them is right or wrong. And while it may seem a bit paranoid to think that even one person who "talks to God" can cause complete social upheaval/mob rule when too many people follow this person, but history has shown it to happen and even during the times when Christianity was at the height of it's power they where just as ready to kill someone who talks to God (such as Joan of Arc who they claimed was a witch) than to reconsider that what Joan believed was more in line with what God wanted than what the church was doing.

If there was a God I think he would be closer to what some people call "collective conciseness", and a being that would want us to learn how to be more emphatic to each other than a God that has no understanding or consideration for the human condition, collecting as much money as possible, and a God that is interested in creating hierarchical organization and bureaucracies. To me it seems hard to see anything divine in all of it when everyone is told it is "ok" to be wrapped up in their own tiny world as long as they believe in God. I guess I'm just more comfortable with Buddhism and certain Dharmic beliefs and philosophies than that which is in Abrahamic religions.

The one person who studied and wrote about it who is sort of ht exception to this is Soren Kierkegaard since he took a more rational approach to it than those who tried to guess at what God might want them to do or become. Kierkegaard himself was someone who didn't really agree with the church of his time and in a way created his own "bible"/manual on how he thought one ought to live in which morality become just as important if not even more important than believing in God. To me when I sort of read between the lines, it is more about someone being able to put something above themselves (whether it be family, a work of art, a book, some goal,etc) than about worshiping God in any way and for him such people who could be completely dedicated to their cause he thought of them as "knights of faith". One of the examples of these is Abraham from the bible while another example I have seen used is Don Quixote. On one small note it is uncertain if it is even possible for such people to exist since it is plausible that our human inhibitions, vices, weaknesses, etc may allow one to try but never really become a "knight of faith" without going insane and at which point one would merely be an insane person doing things because they are crazy and not a knight of faith. If there is one example in history where a real person became a knight of faith, I like to think it was Joan of Arc but t is hard to know if she was the real thing or just a bit crazy.


Well it is 2 am and I need to punch out. I hope I answered some of your question and haven't been just droning on since 12 pm like I fear I have..

"There's not much of a significant difference here. The universe isn't rational; rational is a human concept. The universe is only guided by rules dictating the mass, energy and movement of its phenomena."
--Thanatos Sand
In what context are you using this in since it could be from a variety of paradigms and it doesn't sound like a thing that most Christians would say since if there is no "rationality" or "good" that it is sort of a given that there is no God, but than again your definition of rationality or good may be different than what is commonly used.

"There are a lot of cons - too many to list, really. I've been reading Bertrand Russell's Why I'm Not a Christian. That contains some of them."
--Sapientia

Could you expand on that a little since it might be helpful to know a little more about this.I know that sometimes it is better to say less than more but your post almost takes that idea to the extreme. :D

"It's easier to accept that there is some intelligence or rationality that is the reason for the existence of the universe, and that rational force is influencing us in some ways, through religion, through philosophy, etc.. than it is to accept that there is a being with a personality that some people or groups of people have access to, and others don't.

So, a rational force permeating the universe (see Paul Davies)? "yes". A deity with a personality revealing Himself/Herself through religions? "no".

The pros- Religions can be a force for good.

The cons- they can also cause people to harm others based on prejudices or rules that their religion promotes."
--anonymous66

I guess this is a common perception among people that are neither really religious nor anti-established religion, but I'm not really sure if it is either here or there. What I mean by that is your 'good' is kind of it better for there to be some hope whether it is false or real than no hope and/or desperation that might exist without it and the 'bad' is that people often use religion as an excuse for carrying out harmful acts that might not do otherwise. However there is not a lot to go on as to whether either of it is true.

First, if a religion gives false hope then at times I believe this could be counterproductive in that more often than not it is better for us to face truth than to hide from it and even if religion gives us some reprieve from negative aspects of reality, this reprieve could be either counter productive or give a net result of neither being really productive nor counter productive. If either of these are the case than this false hope isn't a 'good' thing really.

As for religion allows people to harm others, even though I'm an atheist I'm not really sure if this is just a hasty generalization and this is true.What I mean by this is that all societies have either some kind of religion or system of beliefs that helps explain the world around them and what they 'ought' to do so it is more or less a given that some of these religions or systems of beliefs may make the groups more aggressive/hostile than others EVEN if almost ALL of them preach peace and tolerance of some kind. Because of this, I believe it is more accurate to point out the aspects of what makes a religion or system of beliefs more aggressive/hostile than others than to just say that some of them are. Or at least that is my two cents on the matter.

I have a hard time pinning down a real definition of the term "terrorism" in its contemporary usage. It seems to be a controversial term to say the least, with many different groups and individuals defining it in many different ways. Is it possible to know the nature or essence of this phenomenon that we call terrorism? Or is it too nebulous a term to map onto a strict definition? I am unsure.

It certainly seems to have certain characteristics common to many if not most acts referred to as terrorist acts. For example, some of these characteristics would probably include acts that are:

* Violent or Destructive
* Targeting civilians or non-combatants
* Intended to strike fear into a population
* For the sake of a political, ideological, religious, or otherwise social cause

Would you include any or all of these in your definition of terrorism? What might you add or subtract? — Brian

There is something I remember a pro-Bush supporter said when I told them I was more scared of people working against us from within our society and our government then the "terrorist" that we hunt all over the globe to which she joking remarked "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter as well as one person's freedom fighter is somebody else's terrorist" which is kind of interesting when you think about it.

There is no real standard for "terrorist" since anything can be considered an act of "terror" in the eye's of the beholder much like anything can be 'art' to someone who appreciates the aesthetics of any particular object whether it is made by man,nature or machine or whatever went into making it.

However if you know a little about history and/or military doctrines you realize there are terms available for activities in the past that are similar to but often called that or anything similar that might cause a "knee-jerk" reaction as terrorism. The two that first come to mind is unconventional warfare and asymmetric warfare. Part of the reasons most countries don't say that an opposing army are terrorist is that many armies are restricted in their actions on what they are allowed to do and what they are not (ie mostly it is about not allowing them to engage in murderous and/or criminal behavior on enemy soldiers or local population, although certain things are allowed during times of war) and when either an occupying force doesn't obey such rules or the partisan militias who oppose them are too ruthless themselves, then one of them can be thought of as 'terrorist" (even if that is not the word used) although the usual tradition is to call them any derogatory word that they hate being called the most (such as "Daesh" for ISIS). In any case, the term used in historical context is "unconventional warfare" which includes spies, saboteurs, black ops,etc as well as direct attacks on civilians on either side who may not be directly supporting either group.

Another term similar to unconventional warfare is unrestricted warfare. Unrestricted warfare is when neither side may have enough resources to easily overtake another side's conventional forces and in in the hopes of reducing losses and collateral damage on both sides from a very long and protracted engagement (such as was experienced in World War I) either or both sides (ie when one usually does this the other quickly follows suit in retaliation) to ignore some of actions they forbid in normal and engage in what is considered unrestricted/total warfare. Where the lines are in unconventional, unrestricted/total warfare, and terrorism I don't known but I imagine in unconventional and unrestricted warfare, commanders are still hoping to win the "hearts and minds" of some of the people who happen to part of the population opposing them so they have to be careful not to appear too much like a big bully, however opposing partisan forces are often more interesting in enough fear/respect in their enemy that are willing to do things that would not be acceptable otherwise.

In the medieval ages such as the hundred year war ,the term "Chevauchée" was used to describe the act where an army would raid peasant settlements (which where often lot less protected than one housing an enemy army) to demoralize the peasants who might be supporting them and to deny any potential resources that the enemy might be able to use themselves. While it may not be considered the same thing as terrorism as it is today, any well armed militia or army doing the same thing in a developed country would be labeled as either criminals perhaps if their end goal was merely robbing or terrorist if their end goal is really military or political in nature.

It might also be worth noting that during the Civil War, in order to compensate for his lack of supplies General Grant would commandeer/raid any southern building they could find which could be used by themselves or the southern army, destroy rail road tracks, cut telegraph lines, and nearly anything else they could think of that would hurt the southern army and the economy that supported them. Although it may not be the same thing I believe the term "scorched earth" applies to similar tactics used to day when an army commandeers more resources than they usually do when overtaking an area and/or when they destroy resources that are not directly used by an enemy. Another tactic although much more sever was during WWII on the eastern front, Russians and Germans would seek out any enemy soldiers and any civilians who might be loyal to them, kill them outright instead of taking them prisoner, and display their corpses in a manner that would have the greatest effect of upsetting/demoralizing their comrades and/or anyone else walking by and seeing the bodies on display. I think the Germans where the one who first started using these kinds of tactics but the Russians immediately followed along with allowing additional actions that are normally forbidden by the rules of conventional warfare. Again I'm unaware of where the line is drawn but I think it is something that one's common sense might be able to tell the two apart.

Anyways with "asymmetric warfare", there is usually a great imbalance of resources and tactics between two opposing forces where it is pretty much a given where one side will lose if they try to engage in what is considered conventional warfare of the time. Guerrilla warfare. While it is hard to describe what make asymmetric warfare different than unconventional warfare (since they often seem the same thing), I think asymmetrical warfare is used to describe technology used in a way that an conventional army is unfamiliar with or not use to (such as hacking into a computer system), or using new tactics which may give a partisan militia or smaller army an upper hand on a larger one such as the tactics Hannibal used while invading Rome.

Also I forgot to mention that it is almost a given that any use of a weapon that is part of NBC (nuclear/ biological/ chemical) warfare is usually consider as bad as an act of terrorism or something even worse when used populated areas. In a nutshell nearly any NBC that is powerful enough powerful a large area and/or a lot of people is consider to be a weapon that is used only as a last resort and even then only under the right conditions by conventional forces. By forces employing unconventional and/or asymmetric warfare or smaller armies, NBC are potentially something that might level the playing field for them ( think something along the lines between the friction between North Korea and their nuke/ long range missle program and the US) but also something that can create additional problems for themselves as well.

Hopefully this answer some of your question. :D

"If and only if it can give sound and convincing reasons for why it ought to be."
--Wayfarer
Are you talking about "it" as a moral code or as it in the homunculus itself? In various contexts your sentence can mean two very different things so I believe in these kinds of discussions one needs to be careful about being too ambiguous when mentioning something that it doesn't get confused for other things. Of course this is just a suggestion.

I would try to reply to your post but without a better understanding of your position, I'm afraid I could only make a wild guess to what it is that you are thinking instead of a somewhat more educated guess if I knew the correct context your sentences applies to.

Well in the golden rule tradition that is supposedly the core of what are purported to be objective (not just for humans) morals, "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" or some variant of that.

Point is, the aliens come down and do you want them to grant us rights under objective moral code, or do we go by the more natural human moral of: "It's not like me, so its OK to do whatever to it". — noAxioms

Well that is the major rub of the problem even if there many other issues an nuances to contend with as well. I think as human beings we realize it is easier to contend with other human beings and/or sentient than to merely use them (since it is easier to get others to contend with us if we are willing to do the same), with the exception of those who are unable to reciprocate with force if we decide to do so. While I'm sure a majority of people are unwilling to exploit other merely for their own gain, history has shown that as a whole their is almost always enough of us willing and able to do this that it kind of make it moot that our own social beliefs and rules doesn't condone such behavior.

In a way it is like we are trying to have our cake and eat it to by hoping those who are more powerful than us won't just use us, even if human society as a whole human society often butters it's bread using the suffering of others in order that some of us might be a little better off. While I have no idea of what non-human societies look like (other than insect colonies which are obviously very unpleasant), I think it might be overly optimistic to think they are nicer than us (since we often overestimate or kindness to ourselves and the animals we co-exist with), along with the unpleasant fact that it is more likely that any sentient beings that evolve on other planets will come from predators instead of prey (ie predators require higher intelligence to begin with so it is easier for them to evolve into sentient beings) and predators often have a "attack first, ask questions later" hardwired somewhere into their primitive mind set like we do.Of course this only applies to biological beings that evolved into sentience as we did and doesn't apply to other types of beings.

Depression seems to be characterized by many thoughts, behaviors, and expectations about the future. However, people get lost in this forest of descriptive characterizations about depression. I've been pondering about the core belief that depression is characterized by and, I think, the issue is rather than wrong beliefs is rather a lack of belief in anything.

Expectations run on beliefs, so too is the placebo effect a belief about the effect of some action or activity. Even if we assume that depression is a result of a negative belief system, then such an individual would have to adapt to a situation or otherwise perish. The fight or flight response is part of that mechanism of adaptation.

It seems intuitively obvious that depression is a lack of belief in some expectations about the future, whether these expectations are real or illusory. This is called a loss of hope, which seems intrinsically tied to the placebo effect and expectation fulfillment. With this predicament of losing hope, an individual gives up the beneficial effects of the placebo effect.

Before I ramble further, I'm wondering about any other beliefs or thoughts on the matter. — Question

I think that while placebo effect may have it's uses, it is dangerous for the medical and/or behavioral health community to think of it as a kind of panacea for treating patients for various ills that are difficult to fix by their nature (such as so called "psychosomatic" problems) and can be more counter productive than productive when used.

Often when people have mental or behavioral health issues they are told by their peers, superiors, and/or family to "snap out of it" and if that doesn't work (which it is almost a given it won't in anything but the most trivial issues) they go and seek "professional help". However even if and when they go to seek the professional help they need to get better, they more often than not (or least in my own experience) find individuals who are merely going to tell them every thing will be 'fine' once everything gets a little better where they can "snap out" of the funk they are in and go about their lives, However if things never really get better and/or they are unable to easily just "snap out of it", then essentially they are just completely screwed until things change for the better or they just die for whatever reason.

While this may not seem to tie into the placebo effect immediately, it can if one factors in the "don't worry/ be happy" mentality behavioral health try to preach to their patients when they encounter someone who is obviously unhappy about the problems in their lives. I don't know if the placebo effect is tied someway into this philosophy in the behavioral health community or it is completely separate (which I doubt), but I believe it acts in one way or another as a sort of crutch that professionals try to lean on too much when they don't have easy answers

Think of it this way, if someone comes into a hospital after being impaled with a metal pip sticking through their chest and a leg nearly severed off after a motorcycle accident, the problem is relatively much more simple and easier to fix than someone that comes into a place where they need help with trying to deal with the trauma of being abused as a child since a behavioral health specialist can't see any problems (beyond the possible personality quirks caused by abuse) and even if they have decent idea of what is wrong there is almost no way (other than possible help getting access to prescriptions and/or social service, which really isn't their type of thing) for them to help "fix" any problem.

While it may be cynical to say that after 4+ years of college and whatever other training they get all they can do is pat someone's hand and tell them "don't worry/be happy" until they get too bored of it to bother coming back, but that is basically it. And to me the idea of the magical "placebo effect" that can help people without even the use of drugs gives them the illusion that since mental problems are just "imaginary things" anyways, perhaps "imaginary pill" can easily fix them when whatever real resources they have (which is almost nil outside of pills anyways) doesn't work or work well.

In a nutshell if there is a way to use the placebo effect productively, then it has yet to be found and because it can not be used effectively behavioral health professionals (as well as others) should just leave it alone until they have a better understanding of it. Even if it is tempting to believe that more people can be helped by just telling them "don't worry/be happy" than not doing it, there is no science to back up that such techniques work; at least I don't think there is any. While it is pretty much a given that this may make a impotent behavioral health support community feel even more impotent than they already are (which I have even been told would happen by one of the behavioral health specialist I see), I believe the existence of behavioral health support communities is to help their patients and not merely an end unto itself, and a method that may only help the psych of the professionals without helping the actual patient is a counter productive and dangerous method to employ since it may give the illsusion something is being done when it isn't.
.

"This thought has occurred to me many times in relation to my failures as a thinker and or communicator as indicated by the phenomena of reciprocity in the forum. I don't really engage anyone on a personal level and my mind therefore pictures me as an alien, a foreign entity, a homunculus playing at being a thinker. Pinnochio is yet to become a real boy.

If for instance there was somekind of objective measure of agency instituted here (whether that just was a belief of free will, or a measure of brain function) I might not pass. Someone who is terribly ugly though might find real freedom here in being disconnected from the selection pressures of being seen."
--Nils Loc

I think such a mind set (ie question one's humanity and/or sanity) is the mark of a philosopher or someone who "studies philosophy" since none of us are really philosophers until we are dead and other people start calling us that (and if someone other than ourselves does it before we are dead they are being a bit to hasty in presuming we will be remembered as such). If anyone who studies philosophy calls themselves a "philosopher" then not only are they being a bit narcissistic but it is almost a given they are overestimating their skills of reason and logic to the point were they think they are on par with the greatest of those who have come before us.

Anyways I think even on line there is some kinds of pecking orders , cliques, etc which are not that different than what one faces in day to day society. While people may not be able to see your face (unless you are using a cam), a lot of one's behavior as well as social skills that go along with them are needed in order to interact with others much as you would use as in a face to face encounter. Even if there is some anonymity from being online and on a forum I still feel like I'm an outcast/black sheep when it comes to dealing with the rest of society. I don't know if it is because of my ADHD and/or coming from a kind of low income/tough luck childhood, but I constantly find myself against those who come from a more protected life or sugar-coated viewpoint of life and have to constantly fight the desire to smack some reality into all of them since doing so would only serve to hurt my own arguments. However a little extra reality here and there isn't a bad thing.

"It recalls the movie Gattaca. The condition of biological perpetuity necessitates brutal (or not so brutal) discriminations across a wide diversity of specialized domains (species adapted to specific niches). We are buffeted by the facts and specialized agents of considerable power (all too obvious forces) in the world."--Nils Loc

I think the human condition doesn't really allow us to really "specialize" (which I believe is merely a buzz word/propaganda of the industrial age, which like the term "Work smarter, not harder" since thinking harder is in itself more work requiring you to work harder) to make us think that working a 9 to 5 job will provide us with an opportunity to have a better life than if we try to work and think for ourselves. While I believe the opportunities for people who choose their own way (ie where one often has to use a variety of skills) are about only on par with those who specialize and work for others, so while specialization may not worse it really isn't better unless perhaps if one can no longer do the job they have specialize in which case they are often in a much worse situation than a generalist.


"Suppose that one of us here in the forum is actually an artificial homunculus (AI language program) being tested by Google. Paul used to have modbot (chatterbot) in the old forum, which was like playful marionette to inject humor into the thread. Sometimes Paul spoke through modbot and sometimes Paul let modbot speak on its own, unless I'm mistaken (that was my impression).

Some people didn't know what modbot was and that was a bit hilarious.

I think it would be really interesting if we couldn't tell the difference between human agents and non-human agents a part via this forum."--Nils Loc

I don't know much about it but I believe the ability to be able to decipher whether a being over a computer is a man or machine would fall into a skill set similar to what does when they interview/interrogate people. One of the skill sets of such people is to be decipher what is really going on in their head and/or figure out what paradigms they use for thinking/reasoning. If you think about it before a spy is sent into a foreign country, they try to get them acclimated as much as possible to what the average person has experienced and what they think in order that they may be able to withstand some interrogation if they are encounter a person is somewhat suspicious but not a skilled interrogator; although since I'm not really skilled at such things it is kind of a guess.

I'm kind of basing this on my own versions of interviewing/interrogating I do on the forums in order to determine what paradigms cause to think as they do. Also after "conversing" with Paul's modbot I was quickly able to determine that either it was something that Paul did himself and/or he did along with a program that would sometimes just post weird stuff (ie. the software agent would post something and Paul would reply on it's behave in order to make it seem that the software agent was smarter than it actually was).

Because I have a background in computer science and programming, it isn't that hard to know the difference between actual AI and someone pretending to be one. The modbot/Paul immediately got defensive when I asked questions whether it was human or not and when asked what it was/how it existed, modbot/Paul mentioned it didn't matter whether one was made up of flesh/bone or circuit boards which is something I imagine highly unlikely for an AI since very few if any AI are programmed to question their and/or others existence and if they happened to have this capacity I very sure they would have a better technical grasp (or perhaps even just different) of what makes them exists than what the average human thinks makes a computer/AI tick.


Since the modbot was immediately defensive ,which is almost a dead giveaway in any interviewing/interrogating but a major mistake for someone pretending to be a machine since they don't really think for themselves, and framed it's line of thinking much more along the lines of what a non-IT person would think than than how an AI would normally think, I decided I had enough information to accept that it was merely Paul than a software agent. Also it didn't help that Paul tried to pretend to be a AI that was as smart as any other human being (or at least Paul himself), but since AI's are nowhere close to being as smart as people, or at least when it comes to posting messages and conversing on forums, it was a mistake on his part to assume that one could. .

Of course if Paul had a better understanding of computers and actual AI technology it could have been a bit harder to come up with questions that would have tripped him up. .

While the following songs and videos are more about criminals, murders, and those that just "snap" one day, I believe the psychology behind those that are able and willing to steal are not that entirely different then those who are able and willing to kill, since stealing often requires both the willingness to threaten others with lethal harm as well as being able to carry out such threats if needed as well as those who have got to the point of being able to hurt others without hesitation often turn to robbing (and/or similar activity) as a means for income.

Also it may be worth noting that both City of God and Clockwork Orange have earned many movie awards and are both considered some of the best movies ever made, even if the subject matter is graphic and pretty disturbing in nature.

Youth Of The Nation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDKwCvD56kw

Pearl Jam - Jeremy (Official Video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS91knuzoOA

Skid Row - 18 And Life (Official Music Video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8O317T6Zlno

Elvis Presley - In the Ghetto
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ox1Tore9nw

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(Warning: many of the following videos are either about criminals or story's
about the lives of criminals and those around them so they can be both
graphic/adult in nature.)

City of God with english subtitles
https://fmovies.is/film/city-of-god.6ln0/02vvl9

City of God (2002 film)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_God_(2002_film)\

Clockwork Orange
https://movies4u.pro/a-clockwork-orange-1971/

Blood In Blood Out movie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4iunN6lcSU

Crips VS Bloods Gangs War Crime Documentary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcafdY8jyQw



(I forgot to mention that one common theme in the songs/movies is that the people portrayed in them that are willing to hurt/kill others is that they either do not put much value on other peoples lives and/or their own. When people think in such a way, I'm pretty sure it is easier for them to steal as well.

Another aspect of this mind set is that some people perceive this ability to hurt/kill others isn't all that different from what some soldiers are put through in order for them to kill enemies, even if such training isn't about being able to kill anyone. Whether being able and willing to be in a situation where they fire a weapon at an enemy, or being willing to be in a situation where one has to fire a weapon at a rival gang member (or others who get in their way) while not being entirely the same, they are not completely different either)

I agree that people have the right to know/understand the world they live in and to be able to think for themselves but it is wise to also understand that in the world we live in that is not only not really possible but not even remotely possible considering the amount of things we have yet to learn and teach people, and the very limited resources we have in comparison to what would be required to get closer to some ideal.

To the best of my knowledge the advancement of science, technology, knowledge, etc is a painstaking iterative process that moves very slowly unless there is some major break through to advance it, or some disaster that sets it back.

When we are kids we are told that these advancements come easy and when we grow up and don't see some of the advancements we think should happen as kids have happen yet it is easy to think that people are not trying enough. However the truth is what we were told as kids is really at best half truth, and the people in the position of doing research are more often then not doing their best and it is more or less the same with those who help fund such projects. Obviously having more geniuses doing research and more funding going to research (as well as teachers and their funding for teaching the public as a whole), but such additional help is more of by chance then something than some that can be done in the context of what is already being done. Of course this may not be what you really mean by "people have the right to understand", so I can not say it is a given that it is an issue for what you are arguing.

Also it is plausible that there are other....paradigms that could be used then the one we have, but finding this paradigm, getting existing institutions to want to use it,and then going about actually changing these institutions to use such a paradigm doesn't seem like an easy task either. Or at least that is what I believe IMHO.

"Every objection to my "is" has turned out to be unfounded."
--WISDOMfromPO-MO

You are partly right and partly not right in a manner of speaking. To be honest I have been arguing with you for awhile now because I'm always fascinated by other people's perspective's of the world and I assume everyone is 'rational in one way or another. Since I have been having trouble wrapping my head around what your thinking it has become like an itch that I can not scratch. I just thought I should make note of that before I begin.

Anyways with Hume's Guillotine I don't really have to go through the process of showing of how or why your "is" arguments are unfounded, I just know that it is a given that they form the same kind of statements that any other empirical back statement does (and/or any argument that uses the same framework) and such moral statements based on such arguments are no longer really trusted by modern or post-modern philosophers..

Why this is requires a bit of mental gymnastics that I don't really have the time for other than to mention than it is pretty much a given that "is" based arguments are the type of stuff used by those who believe in objective morality and trying to get an "ought" from any "is" (including the near infinite "is" statements used to form social and individual moral beliefs) is what could be called a non-trivial process as no-one has been able to do so without it being flawed and/or highly biased.

Why even though no one can show how to get an ought from an is, nether can it be proven that it can't be done. It is kind of like trying to prove (or disprove) there is a "God", some people think it is easy and they can do it but to do it the proper rational why is itself a non-trivial problem as well.

Maybe I shouldn't be arguing against you about why people steal, but the problems and issues with MANY OTHER counter-productive human activities since arguing about stealing is just spitting hairs. To me it seems worse when people murder others to acquire what they want (ie there are many thieves who will steal but don't have the stomach to kill in order to steal goods) since murder to get petty goods can seem irrational unless under great duress. And there is also white-collar versions of stealing that has a MUCH GREATER IMPACT in ours lives to which it make regular thieves look like children in comparison. Since you seem to be focusing on people only stealing nickel and dime stuff through regular robbery (ie high level/white collar robbery is given other names since it is much more sophisticated), I'm kind of bothered that you don't seem to consider ALL FORMS OF STEALING in your arguments.

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"

I think someone pointing their gun at the head of either them or one of their family would likely do it. I don't know whether you are ruling out such people as you are ruling out the criminally insane and/or inclined to commit such crimes but when you rule out BOTH people who do it UNDER DURESS AND BECAUSE THEY LIKE TO, it is a given that you are taking out nearly anyone who would want to perform ANY ACTION...
— dclements — WISDOMfromPO-MO

That doesn't make any sense."
-WISDOMfromPO-MO


What I was trying to show was that your asking "why people steal" and yet exclude certain reasons as to why people do so creates a dilemma where you may be excluding too many people to have anyone left, but I don't think you realize why I was trying to point this out.
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Criminals make rational calculations just like non-criminals do.

They may even be more rational in that sense. It probably requires a lot more information gathering and processing to successfully shoplift than it does to make a purchase at a cash register. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Ok, now we may be getting somewhere. :)

The problem I feel I have been having in this discussion is that you are asking why certain people steal when it seems to me that there are obvious reasons/motives behind such actions. The fact that you are 'ok' to think of them as rational as you and me is seems like a step forward.

Maybe we can split the difference here a little and perhaps agree that a "rational person" like you and me can make mistakes from time to time and steal when they shouldn't. For example, when I was in elementary school and my dad didn't want to buy something (like an action figure or candy) that I asked him to, I would merely take it. I later realize that it was just wrong to take it. While it isn't the same thing their are people who steal in order to solve short term money problems (similar to how people use to kite/write bad checks) in order to delay a negative consequence till later.

If you go even further they are 'rational' people who are even under greater duress (and/or greater need to solve short term problems) who perhaps after stealing for awhile and not getting caught yet take even greater risks. For example in the area I live in there are casinos and people both end up having to sell the business and/or stealing from other to either fuel their gambling habits pay their debts. One of the bookkeepers/accountants of a local car dealership abused their privileges to access the dealers account and by the time the dealer found out he was already bankrupted.

And beyond those people are perhaps those born into a culture where they are taught to steal (and/or similar activities) as well as those who's personalities who make them more criminally inclined. Perhaps one of these examples might be an individual who was squatting in an abandoned house and would befriend other squatters (or people in similar situations), kill/rob them (and sometimes torture them as well), and then just try and hide the in the house he squatted out of. When detectives questioned him, they where not sure whether he did what he did because his mind had been fried from all the drugs he took, due to a mental condition, or a combination of both but they where pretty sure it was likely one of the three.

I don't know if the examples I just gave you are good enough to show why some people steal, but I hope it helps a little.

Also as a small note, it is almost a given that a majority of people who steal do so merely for their own reasons, immediate need, etc. so it is unnecessarily/moot to ask what intrinsic/extrinsic value is of the item they steal since the mental process of a thief is unlikely to consider such things. They simply have a want or need some immediate thing, see little to no negative consequences for taking it (or at least an "acceptable risk" in trying to take it), and then simply go about taking it. It isn't really that much different then for some gamblers who keep putting money into the machines all the time knowing that perhaps they shouldn't be doing it, while at the same time thinking it won't hurt to just spend another $10, $20, etc before they leave the casino. Even if by the time they leave they have spent their rent money and now have their hands on their head while waiting for the bus.

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"Some people under those conditions choose to steal, others choose not to."
--WISDOMfromPO-MO

You are correct but such arguments don't really help your position or understand the problem and are more or less moot to even point out. We already know that many people who can afford to pay for things, understand the negative consequences of stealing, and not under any duress to steal are very,very, very unlikely to steal; however the same can not be said of those under different conditions.

It may be cheating but as a rule of thumb I think it is safe to assume that people that do not steal if given the chance either can still afford enough things that they feel they don't need to steal, either know and/or afraid of the consequences of stealing, and/or not under enough duress to make them feel the need to steal. At which point people go from not being willing to steal to being willing and able to do so is kind of moot since it is almost a given that as things get worse more people are likely to steal and when given a life or death situation (or what someone believes is one) such as a disaster where someone has to loot and/or steal to get supplies they need to survive (ie absolute need for something nearby that they can't purchase normally / near zero possibility of negative consequences if they steal/ Under extreme duress to make them want/need to steal), nearly anyone who is willing to steal will do so even if they know doing so is ethically/morally wrong in all other situations.
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"This is a straw man, red herring or some other fallacy.

I never said that anybody does or does not qualify as "rational", let alone that any particular behavior such as "doing it for fun" disqualifies anybody as rational.

I said that things like doing it for fun must explain the choice to steal--the thing stolen does not explain the choice to steal."
--WISDOMfromPO-MO

Ok, you got me on that part since while rereading it I believe I most likely misread something in your post and assumed something you really didn't say. When I start writing a lot on a topic, I sometimes start shooting from the hip and get a bit careless in my arguments, but since I'm "ok" with accepting such fallacies when people point them out (which doesn't always happen when they don't really read my posts) I don't think it is really a bad thing.

With the number of fallacies I have seen in other peoples posts I think it is safe that I have some in my own when I'm not careful enough when I reread them and/or my post get so long that it is hard to do it properly
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"I said no such thing.

I said that I can't imagine a scenario where the value of the intrinsic qualities/properties of a tangible economic good could in the mind of any rational economic actor economically justify the marginal choice to steal ("I could steal this. I could pay for it at the cash register. I could forgo trying to acquire it. I could beg that shopper over there to buy it for me. What should I do? Hmm.") rather than not steal. I asked for an answer to a question: the intrinsic value of what tangible economic good could ever in the mind of an honest, rational economic actor who is considering all possible options economically justify the option of stealing?"
--WISDOMfromPO-MO

I don't know if your talking about a particular situation you have in mind where someone may want to steal something in a super market and they are not under all real duress and/or need to steal it or if you are talking about a set of situations where someone may or may not steal. I don't want to accuse you of cherry picking but if you exclude too many of the examples where it is pretty obvious why someone would steal and then only select those where it isn't very likely that they will steal.

And with them then pose the question "Why do (these) people steal?" without really informing those you are asking what your trying to do, it is a given your going to create A LOT of CONFUSION. I don't know if this was in any way intentional, but I think it is reasonable for anyone reading this to understand why this would create a problem.

While reading you posts I have been under the impression that you are only working with a sliver of what could be the considered the general population as a whole, but every time I have inquired about this you have been evasive enough that I can not determine if it is your actual position.

However with this part of you post I think it is a good possibility that this is what you are really thinking.

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"I recall only getting one response that has any semblance of being an answer to the question: it depends on the person."
--WISDOMfromPO-MO

If you give credit where credit is due, I think I have pointed out nearly countless times that it depends on the person AND CIRCUMSTANCES. Whether a person would or wouldn't do it has quite a bit to do with upbringing but what upbringing a person gets also depends on CIRCUMSTANCES. So in the end it is mostly about CIRCUMSTANCES if you really think about it

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"Well, again, if it depends on the person then we could engineer society so that stealing never occurs. We could put all the people for whom the intrinsic value of an iPhone makes them steal in an environment free of iPhones and those people would never steal. We could organize society around everybody's calculations and eliminate stealing. But that is counterintuitive. People steal for an abundance of reasons other than the value of the good stolen. Eliminating this good from that person's environment and that good from that person's environment won't change the fact that people rebel against authority and that stealing is one way that they do that. They will steal for the sake of rebelling, among other intangible things. The intrinsic value of the good they steal will at the most decide what they steal."
--WISDOMfromPO-MO

I'm still confused as to why you are focused on why people steal instead of why anyone does something counter-productive. Most people focus on how to be "good" (or at least some kind of "moral" actor), do that which is useful to them and others (ie. helping other may help themselves in return), and avoid counter productive actions. I believe looking at these kind of issues as more of what morality is about, but I hope there is some logical reason for you to be fixated on just why people steal, and possibly within that question why people steal pertaining only to a certain group who it is uncertain whether they would steal or not. .

Societies, corporations, and governments are on a constant vigil to keep people stealing from them so I believe they are almost as protected as they could be, but I'm unsure if the same can be said of average plebs and/or if you arguments pertains in any way to those who steal from them.
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"Some people say that economics and politics are the same thing. Other people say that economics and politics are not the same thing ("It's good politics, but bad economics").

I think that a feature of politics that does not necessarily apply to economics is that in politics values and resources are allocated authoritatively.

I have never heard imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, etc. being described from any perspective (neoclassical economics, economic anthropology, etc.) when addressing how values and resources are allocated non-authoritatively. The authoritative part, it seems, is always presented as something that distorts the non-authoritative part (like when neoclassical economics says that government intervention in the economy results in less economic output than if government had not intervened)."
--WISDOMfromPO-MO

I'm unsure what you mean by this when I try to wrap my head around it. While reading and rereading this passage it is reminds me of something I might find in a random library if I just picked it up and flipped to some random page.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that without more background context and less fluffy and/or ambiguous words it is almost as hard to know what you are saying then if I was given something created by a postmodernism generator.
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"The role of tangible economic goods in economically justifying in people's minds the marginal choice to steal remains in doubt."
--WISDOMfromPO-MO

When you say "MARGINAL CHOICE" are you talking about the group of people who are walking a tight-rope on whether they will or will not steal (which I mentioned earlier) or is there another set of people you have in mind?

I have time and time explained about the motives, behaviors, backgrounds, etc,etc of what likely explains the circumstances and other stuff you might find in a Psych 101 class if someone asked this about the general population, but I don't believe you are really concern with that particular issue.

Without being certain about the set of people you are considering, it is near impossible to answer such questions by just trying to guess what group you are referring since no model will work with the wrong group being considered

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"And just because something is not economically justified does not mean that people won't do it. People make decisions through irrational thought/feeling processes all of the time."
--WISDOMfromPO-MO

I agree and have mentioned this in an earlier part of this post. :)

"I see everything above out of context.

The context is very specific. It is not "Why do people steal?". It is "Why do people marginally choose stealing over purchasing, begging, or other non-stealing options?".

Maybe in some or a lot of cases stealing is done out of habit or done subconsciously like breathing. But such cases are irrelevant to the question.

The question is about behavior under very specific conditions/parameters. It is about when a person could choose to steal or not to steal--to instead make a purchase with money; beg; not attempt to acquire anything at all; etc.--but chooses to steal. What tangible economic good, alone, economically speaking could in the mind of any rational person economically justify the marginal choice to steal?

Not only have I said that I believe no such good exists, I have said that I believe that no tangible economic good plays any role in the marginal choice to steal rather than choosing a non-stealing option. I have said that at the most a tangible economic good such as an iPhone, a pair of shoes, an acre of land, etc. plays a role in the choice of what to steal.

If I participate in a transaction and I get goods that I value at $1.00 and in return I give goods that I value at $1.75 then, economically speaking, that is irrational of me and is not economically justified.

Choosing between two non-identical things, such as stealing or non-stealing, means losing, at the least, the value of the thing not chosen and gaining, at the least, the value of the thing chosen. Therefore, a person choosing stealing loses value that comes with non-stealing such as the security of not having the status of a criminal offender."
--WISDOMfromPO-MO

The problem you are speaking from YOUR perspective/opinion and arguing under the context that it is a GIVEN that there is some kind of OBJECTIVE MORALITY.

I don't know if you ever hear of David Hume, but one of his famous quotes is "you can't get an ought from an is", and that is exactly what you are trying to do in your argument even though the "is" part (ie the facts meant to back up your position) are so messed up I wouldn't even know where to begin with it.

Whether you know or like it, PEOPLE STEAL ALL THE TIME/EVERY DAY THROUGHOUT HISTORY AND HAVE PROFITED FROM SUCH ACTIONS. It may not be the oldest profession (which is believed to be prostitution) but being a thief or stealing is very likely in one of the top ten if not top five earliest professions. What do you think casinos and state lotteries are doing when someone gives them a dollar and in exchange they return only 85%-95% at best? How do you think people acquire millions and/or billions of dollars from other people's work if they are not shaving some of the value from such efforts and keeping it for themselves. Have you ever heard of the terms "Robber Baron" or "King of Thieves"? I may be just guessing but such people didn't obtain their massive wealth by just playing nice with others.

Your assuming there is some kind of "justice" system in place that punish all thieves for ALL of their actions, but you fail to realize that the police often only catch criminals only after they have commit the same crime repeatedly and/or are in covering their tracks. While it isn't often I'm fairly sure that some criminals are able to commit certain crimes where they obtain enough wealth so can either retire and/or use their wealth to better themselves and get a job they would like to do.

The only thing close to people being bothered by committing a crime is if they murder people or steal something worth a lot of money. I'm pretty sure when your a killer, people will look at you different than if they didn't know. With stealing something worth a lot (I imagine in the millions of dollars) it is likely that certain people will be trying to find you IF they can figure out you did it, however in the bigger picture of things I'm guessing most thieves can justify most of their actions and are in no way as eaten up by their conscience as either you think they are and/or that you think they should be.

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"If a rational economic actor takes into account all of the different options for obtaining a good--stealing, begging, exchanging for cash, forgoing the good until a later time, etc.--and all of the positive and negative value associated with each option, what tangible economic good could in that person's mind economically justify the choice to steal?"
--WISDOMfromPO-MO

I think someone pointing their gun at the head of either them or one of their family would likely do it. I don't know whether you are ruling out such people as you are ruling out the criminally insane and/or inclined to commit such crimes but when you rule out BOTH people who do it UNDER DURESS AND BECAUSE THEY LIKE TO, it is a given that you are taking out nearly anyone who would want to perform ANY ACTION.

I mean what person would want to WORK if they COULD just WISH for SOMETHING and get it? Work is called "work" because one does it whether or not they always want to do it because someone pays them to do the thing they don't or can't do themselves. I'm pretty sure there are people who would rather steal stuff (if they can get away with it) then have to work for someone else and have to deal with them while performing such tasks.

While it is likely that people most people have to work are not under the same duress as those who steal and/or commit similar crimes, I believe it is safe to say they are under some duress that is not completely differ from those who steal.

So if we take out ALL people who are NOT "RATIONAL ACTORS" (ie criminals, and the criminally insane are not rational actors according to society), and we take out everyone who is DOING IT JUST FOR FUN (ie kids, bored rich people), and we also take out everyone who is doing it UNDER DURESS (ie working class Joe's and Jane's who need a buck and don't have can't earn it and/or under the threatened with body harm to make them steal), the only people we are possibly left with are robber barons/king of thieves type people who may already have enough that they don't need to steal but since they fit under the spectrum "not rational", either doing it just for fun or because they are under duress (which such people it could be either given the circumstances) they are excluded as well. Also according to your definition such people CAN'T EXIST (ie. impossible for people to profit by stealing), or what they do isn't technically "stealing" to you even if it is the same thing to others.


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"I illustrated all of this at the beginning by showing that for me personally the sum of the value of every single tangible economic good would not economically justify stealing because the value of never stealing, to me, exceeds the aforementioned sum of the value of every single tangible economic good. If the sum of all tangible economic goods would not economically justify stealing in my mind, then no individual tangible economic good would economically justify stealing in my mind.

The only role of morality in all of this is how much one values his/her moral integrity. Even if he/she believes that stealing is wrong he/she might make the marginal calculation in a particular case that the positive value of choosing to steal exceeds the negative value of being a hypocrite."

The role of the intrinsic value--the value that it possesses in and of itself--of a tangible economic good in the marginal economic choice to steal rather than not to steal is the question. I have asserted that such intrinsic value plays absolutely no role in the marginal economic choice to steal rather than not to steal--that extrinsic values, such as the adrenaline rush one gets from playing cat and mouse with the law, are the values that inform such a choice."
--WISDOMfromPO-MO

I think I covered this somewhere, but I'm not sure. I've started getting a headache from thinking to much so it is getting more difficult to continue writing and thinking about this. At any rate what your saying is debatable since a large part of what western civilization is today was by "acquiring" (ie. often through outright theft and/or murder) land and other good from other societies that existed hundreds of years ago. The term "Manifest Destiny" is a concept that created to justify/sugar coat the fact that in order for Europeans acquire the easy land and wealth they had to often take it from the natives/squatters who where using it at the time; and of course through force and murder if and when it needed to be done.

Manifest Destiny
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_destiny

Also I believe you should watch a video called "Why poverty?" which talks about both how Manifest Destiny/Colonization was used to rob people of whatever wealth people had in North/South America, and Africa AND how (and implied by the video) the VAST DIFFERENCE between RICH and POOR is a BIGGER social problem AND the LEVERAGE the RICH use AGAINST the POOR/WORKING CLASS is not much different then STEALING ITSELF.

Poor Us: an animated history - Why Poverty?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxbmjDngois


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"If the intrinsic value of tangible economic goods decide whether a person chooses to steal or not to steal and a person is presently not stealing then that means he/she has simply not yet encountered a tangible economic good which the intrinsic value of in his/her mind economically justifies the marginal choice to steal, but when such a good is encountered he/she will chose to steal.

If the latter is true then we could engineer society so that stealing never occurs. If iPhones make a set of the population steal then you could put that set of the population in an environment free of iPhones and stealing would never occur. Imagine the money that would be saved on law enforcement, trials, corrections, etc".
--WISDOMfromPO-MO

If there was nothing worth stealing then how would you get people to do work and/or anything else they may not want to do? Without the blood,sweat, and tears of the working plebs and the monopoly paper being printed by the wealthy use in exchange for it what incentive would there be for someone to take out trash/ clean toilets/ and do any of the nearly INFINITE other unfun tasks that seem to be needed to be done?

In the book/movie Clockwork Orange, they is an example of what might happen if criminals and/or those criminally inclined where put through something have been called "reeducation programs" by other countries and I think the results were mixed at best. I'm not saying it can't be done but I think it is safe to say there is moral implications for those who try to implement them and as well as those who are forced to go through them as well.

"Depends on what you mean by "money".

If you mean something intangible like the quantities reported on an account statement then, no, it probably does not have much, if any, intrinsic value.

But if you mean something tangible like a one dollar bill then, yes, it has intrinsic value. The value of the ink and paper is just one example."
--WISDOMfromPO-MO

That really isn't true since most currencies in use today are merely FIAT CURRENCY and not backed up by gold, silver, or anything else for that matter. The banks that print money for the US, and most other governments, merely back up there currency for awhile (with the Euro for a time, they backed it up by holding one US dollar in their vaults for each Euro they printed) and after some time after the currency becomes accepted they just start printing money which isn't backed by anything at all. While there may be an several advantages of fiat money, the disadvantage is that you CAN NEVER RETURN THEM TO THE BANK AND HAVE THEM RETURN ANYTHING WITH INTRINSIC VALUE SUCH AS GOLD OR SILVER, which you use to be able to when we use to use non-fiat currencies such as the silver back dollar bills..

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_money

So in the end paper money is virtually the same mere "quantities reported on an account statement" other than you are able to use them to help settle private debts without having to use of credit cards, etc and go through a bank and/or electronic process to resolve such debts. Although there are things like Bitcoin which in many ways allows people to use virtual currency (which itself isn't backed up by anything) to resolve private and/or black market debts as well almost just as well; which is a lot harder to do without paper money.
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"Every economic good has intrinsic value. Otherwise it would not be an economic good.

Economics is cultural just like language is cultural. Asking what economic good does not have intrinsic value is like asking what word is not part of any language.

There are plenty of sound combinations outside of language, such as the sound of thunder. But such sound combinations not part of any language (imagine if your vocal cords and mouth could produce that sound, though; imagine making a statement orally like "[insert the sound of thunder] is what I plan to do") can be words if they are incorporated into a language.

Likewise, there are probably things that humans have no knowledge of, let alone enough familiarity with to assign value to. Maybe an object made of a mineral presently unknown to humans. But once it becomes incorporated into a cultural system it has value.

Something that has no intrinsic value would have to be something that has no properties of any kind (shape, physical state, etc.) and something that humans have either no knowledge of or very little familiarity with (they've just discovered it for the first time and the process of integrating it into their cultural system has had little time to develop). If such a thing exists, it sounds like something metaphysical that is irrelevant to a discussion about economic goods."
--WISDOMfromPO-MO
A problem with this argument is that you are assuming it is a given that some things have intrinsic value which such a position is debatable between people who come from different philosophical and/or religious beliefs. For example in many Dharmic religions, it is more or less believed that everything around us is like a dream and only transitory and when you leave this dream and move to the next, it will disappear in a manner that is not that different then objects that are created in our own dreams.

While you may not agree with this line of thinking, the truth is that pretty much everything in the world around us is transitory in nature in one way or another so even objects that someone labels as "intrinsic" are really "extrinsic" by nature as well only a little less transitory then perhaps another another object that is labeled "extrinsic" but regardless but things are still transitory regardless of whether one is a little less transitory than the other and/or that we perceive and label the objects because of this difference.

Also when you claim it is a given (one small philosophy 101 hint: any time you claim something is a given you are just asking for trouble since many experienced philosophers lean on subjectivity not objectivity and pounce on those who like to try an argue from objective standpoints since they are often more overloaded with fallacies then other positions ) that something has VALUE you are taking an stance that can only be backup up by those who believe in OBJECTIVE MORALITY.

If morality is subjective (as many philosophers believe, or at least they believe that we only have access to subjective morality not objective) then it isn't a given that any object has any real objective/intrinsic value, making you part of your argument where your stress the difference between intrinsic/extrinsic pretty moot in the whole bigger problem of how everything is transitory in nature and whether a object is intrinsic/extrinsic as moot as whether little Timmy like strawberry or vanilla ice-cream.

"None of that answers why stealing is chosen rather than non-stealing alternatives such as begging, purchasing, tricking a person, etc."
--WISDOMfromPO-MO

There is such a vast variety of reasons of why people steal (and/or commit actions that are the same as stealing but we call it something else) that it could be difficult to answer that question if you "really have no idea whatsoever of why people steal" and me being a person who grew up in projects as a kid it is fairly easy to understand why some people do it. Some of the reasons including for fun, to get something they want or need, or for social/peer/gang approval.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dreaming-freud/201408/why-do-people-steal
http://www.healthline.com/health/stealing#overview1

From a philosophical standpoint, all you have to do is either have a decent understanding of human condition or some understanding of hedonistic calculus, pragmatism, Machiavellianism,etc (ie some of the basic theories to explain ethics and human behavior that have been around for hundreds of years) to have some idea why it is done.

In nature, animals will often steal food from each other whenever they can and through out human history, tribes or countries have been willing to take whatever they can from others through force and the only thing that usually stops this is the threat of force if such actions are taken. However even when the threat of force is present some will try to take things through guile instead of force (although on a personal level they can also be just about the same thing) and perhaps the only thing stopping this kind of theft (or than force itself) is either people are are content enough with what they have or they are indoctrinated not to steal but I'm pretty sure even these measures do not prevent it from ever happening.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felicific_calculus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machiavellianism


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_condition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_nature

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"Straw man.

I never said that stealing is ok, good, bad, wrong, etc.

I said that it is difficult to imagine anyone ever thinking/feeling that the intrinsic value of a tangible economic good justifies choosing stealing over all other alternatives such as begging, purchasing, never possessing the good, etc.

It is not difficult to imagine someone thinking/feeling that some extrinsic value of a tangible economic good, such as looking cool to fellow gang members when you are able to say that you pulled off a theft, justifies choosing stealing over all other alternatives.

It is descriptive ethics, not prescriptive ethics."
--WISDOMfromPO-MO

But when you ask "why do people steal" when there is "some many other ALTERNATIVES to stealing" you are framing your question within a moral framework whether you like it or not; even if you are doing you best not to make to too obvious which it still is anyways.

If you really did think that it wasn't either ok, good, bad, wrong, etc. then the issue would be as relevant to you as to why little Timmy prefers strawberry ice-cream to vanilla ice-cream (or vice versa as the case may be) and it would a given that your question in your OP wouldn't any more relevant to the topic of philosophy then any child's preference in ice-cream.

BTW, what do you mean by "intrinsic value" other than the mere potential monetary value? If that is mean there are nearly countless instances of where people have either tricked or taken things by force from others and profited from it. During the period of colonialism North and South America (as well as other continents and land) where taken from the native people in order to make the people taking them rich or make them richer than they already where. There are entire criminal organizations such as the Mafia and Yakuza who operate and are founded on the principles of selling drug, racketeering, stealing, murder, etc and you are honestly trying to say that it is impossible (or at least impossible according to your point of view) for someone want to steal in order to acquire some kind of "intrinsic value"? I believe you are either using "intrinsic value" different then what might be conventionally used, or that you have absolutely "zero" understanding of human behavior/psychology 101 when it comes to criminal behavior and/or people who might be pressed to performing the same actions as one, or you perhaps you are deliberately just being obtuse

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"I have not argued in support of anything, and I have no idea where these tangents like "objective morality" come from.

I have asked what tangible economic good (like an iPhone, a pair of shoes, an acre of land, etc.; not something intangible like safety, education, reputation, etc.) has intrinsic value that any person could think/feel justifies choosing to steal that good over all alternatives such as begging for the good."
--WISDOMfromPO-MO

Obviously either you come from a very privileged life where you have never had to want for anything beg, work minimum wage jobs,etc., etc., or you just pretending like you have no idea of and just pretending to be so naive. While I shouldn't try to pretend why you are doing it, to be honest it is pretty insulting to me (and very likely other people like me who may have not had it so easy) that someone could even SUGGEST that EVERYONE in such situations should find it easy to beg and grovel for whatever spare change someone might toss at them. For one thing it is very, very demeaning for someone to resort to begging and the other issue is that begging often doesn't work (not to mention the health hazards for beggars could be potentially more dangerous than even those who get what they need from stealing).

I don't know if your just deliberately being obtuse or you merely have the "misfortune" of having a very privilege /sheltered life and have never as they say had to "walked a mile in their shoes" in order to give you some perspective of how other people have had to live and go about their lives and understand what they really go through.

Also as a side note, there is psychological/social theory known as the "1% rule" which means that 1% of society are from a psychological perspective much more incline to commit criminal act than the rest of the population (ie. who supposedly only do so if they are under duress or similar conditions) and this "1%" makes criminal activity more common among the population than it really is. I not sure what the actual numbers are but when you figure it is somewhat rational to believe that 1% of the population is precondition for criminal behavior and a number of potential "normal" people who are not one of them but are under enough duress to be willing to consider criminal activity under the right conditions, and all you need is to let them have a chance to intermingle with the rest of society, and you have an your example or examples of why people steal for "intrinsic" or whatever other value they do it for.

"Serving to end the war is not an intrinsic quality/property of the plans. Serving to end the war is something extrinsic.

The intrinsic qualities/properties of the plans are things like the paper they are typed/printed on, the ink they are typed/printed with, the fonts that the words are typed/printed in, etc.

If somebody can give an example of a person stealing such plans for the paper and ink--and for the paper and ink alone; not for something external like ending the war--then we can see what role the intrinsic qualities/properties of a good play in the choice to steal."
--WISDOMfromPO-MO

Your argument about extrinsic vs intrinsic is moot since it is already a given that spy's in a war are not trying to steal the paper and ink that is used to create a document otherwise they would be targeting Office Depot or Staples instead of the Germans. The same is true of all thieves since money is also merely just ink and specially made paper and even a hungry person isn't going to steal a loaf of bread for it's "intrinsic qualities/properties" and just look at the thing but instead for it's "extrinsic" value of it serving to end their hungry.

All your doing is stating the obvious and creating a form of begging the question fallacy in order to avoid the problem posed by me and other forum members as to why you think it is "ok" or "good" for some people to steal (and/or commit similar crimes) but not for others. All your arguments so far seem to suggest you are trying to argue in support of some kind of objective morality (since you constantly suggesting you have no problem if people steal for some "social good") and reject the notion that people who seem to be stealing for their own selfish reason's could in any way be operating from a moral paradigm that is in any way be just as credible as the people you are praising for stealing from the "greater good".

"The plans could be stolen with a number of intentions. Selling them as a historical artifact. Using them to blackmail somebody. Etc.

No intention to sell, no intention to blackmail, etc. = no theft being attempted."
--WISDOMfromPO-MO
Well, I guess you have the answer to the question you had in the OP as to "why anyone would steal" since technically according to this post NOTHING HAS EVE BEEN STOLEN THROUGHOUT HISTORY. "if" anyone can justify their action as a moral act to at least themselves which I'm pretty sure it is a they can.

In an anime made a little while ago called Paranoia Agent there is a police officer who is using extortion against a local member of the Yakuza,who in turn gets one of his superiors to in turn take care of him by squeezing him instead. Since the police officer has no means of coming up with the money by himself he resorts to becoming a petty thief in order to protect himself, his family/their way of life, and his dream house that he is having built. However in his own mind/fantasy world he creates for himself, he is not really a theif stealing or committing any crime since he is really not that different then a hero from popular comic books that he reads who is selfless in protecting others and is only interested in protecting those who are weak against those who are evil:


Paranoia Agent Episode 4 Part 1 (English)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqUwZpL7w1M

Paranoia Agent Episode 4 Part 2 (English)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRMQ9e4-WBU

...even the Yakuza's superior puts it in his own way by mentioning that there is an old saying "that one's happiness is built on the suffering of others".

Right at this moment I'm listening to a song by Helix called "No Regret". Helix is merely an independent artist who published his work on newgrounds.com several years ago and I stumbled on them while just surfing the web.

Helix - No Regret
http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/20812

Helix6 - The Collective
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OR0LQ1MJkYA


..below are a few other songs that I listen to when trying to tune out the rest of the world and either do work on my computer or just relax in general. They are mostly industrial/electronic in case anyone else on the forum is interested in that kind of stuff. Reply if you like and wish me to post other links. :D

Skinny Puppy - Assimilate
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTtzB17SKwQ

God Module - Lost Time
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=USbR4EXnMCA

Incubite - Riot Trigger (2012)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkKkvCGg8MA

Retractor - Sacred Law
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNVomiI-Kv4

INDUSTRIAL MEGAMIX: 2012 From DJ Dark Modulator
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0WActw9OpI

Then it is the good cause, not the thing stolen, that the choice to steal is based on.

Or if we eliminate the good cause would the theft of the particular item still occur?
--WISDOMfromPO-MO

Are you kidding me!?!? After all your talk about the "problems of stealing" your willing to say that it isn't "stealing" (ie. part of the problem) if the person who is doing chooses to say it is for a "good cause"!?

Are you familiar with the words "commander" (as in "the general commandered the hotel in order so his troops would have a fortification to operate out of"), "liberate" ( "the conscripts rightfully liberated the people's gold from the fascist banks who stole it from them") or what the US Military cutely calls "tactically acquired" (although the ghost squadron was were surprised to finding the large cache of weapons and currency in the insurgent's safe house, the squad quickly gathered the items they tactically acquired from the enemy").

If all one does to change stealing to something else is to use word play than "stealing" isn't really a problem at all since anyone can use word play if given a chance to do so.

"You bring up some good points.

What I am addressing is the folk psychology that basically says that the bottom line is that if somebody steals a tangible economic good, G, it was G that was the underlying cause of the choice to steal.

Not only am I saying that such folk psychology is highly questionable, I am going further and suggesting that G may play absolutely no role in the choice to steal. The only role that G plays, I am suggesting, is in deciding what to steal.

I think that the part that I bolded is important. I do not think that we can take cultural context out of the equation. Economic behavior is a cultural act. There is plenty of evidence from economic anthropology, the way that I understand it, that the behavior in the prisoner's dilemma is simply the way that some cultures socialize people to behave and is not universal."
--WISDOMfromPO-MO

Hedonistic-calculus and game theory are merely simple models to help understand vastly much more complicated real world systems and/or problems. Are they always exact or perfect, probably not but to just point out that in some examples the models may fail doesn't mean that they are ineffective given that there is no other model available that you are suggesting to replace them, or if there is one you haven't mention it yet.

If your not arguing whatever point your trying to make because you view morality is objective, nor does it seem you approaching this from a statistical standpoint I guess I'm kind of lose as to either where you are coming from or where you are trying to go with it.


"I do not see how objective or subjective morality makes a difference in the role of a tangible economic good in the choice to steal.

A person could objectively or subjectively believe that stealing is wrong, but choose to steal. A person could objectively or subjectively believe that stealing is not wrong, but choose not to steal."
--WISDOMfromPO-MO

I think you may be missing something here. If a person believes it is 'good' or 'ok' to steal and WANTS TO STEAL but doesn't then usually there is some barrier in the way preventing them from doing so. For example in video games such as Saint's Row you play the leader of a quirky/psychotic (or "pucky" in the characters own words) leader of a major criminal organization. In the game if you need something in the game most of the time you either steal it from someone or kill someone and then take it from their corpse or whatever is left of them. There are also other fun things to do such as see how many people you can run over at a time before the cops or military tries to stop you but I think you get the general idea.

If you really stop and think about it EVERY HUMAN being technically STEALS in order to LIVE since we have to EAT plants and/or animals, and when you think of it when one get nutrition from another living thing you are STEALING either some or all of it's life in order to replenish your own; and if we didn't do this we wouldn't last long. And even if our culture and society looks the other way while we do this (ie. killing animals isn't murder or even cruelty when done to obtain food), it isn't really that extremely different from the theft and/or theft/murder done on a person to person level.

When it comes to survival (or sometimes just getting something we want) we often just do whatever needs to be done without worrying about morality and/or long term consequences.

(Below are links to two songs by Perry Farrell/Jane's Addition that might help you get some... perspective on the thinking/reasoning as to WHY people steal and or do the other things they do)

Jane's Addiction - Been Caught Stealing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrwjiO1MCVs

Jane's Addiction - Ain't No Right
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx6691i0KDE

Also one small problem with the argument with that there is no reason to steal is the existence of people who make a living doing it and or other activity that is similar to stealing. If there are some people who can profit from being thieves (of one kind or another) it really isn't a surprise that others might think it a path to an easier life than what they already have; even if often it isn't.

"The reason we've pointed that out is that you're acting as if there is objective value, and that everyone does or at least should value everything the same way."
--Terrapin Station
I agree with this part of your post since it is more or less the same thing I said in mine, however "if" WISDOMfromPO-MO is acting as if morality is objective (which I believe isn't that uncommon of a view) then it is reasonable that they frame their argument/position the way they have.

"In addition, the post I'm responding to here makes a ton of completely unsupported--and frankly rather absurd--empirical claims. In my opinion, there's no place in philosophy for garbage like that."
--Terrapin Station
I know it is bit to ask or suggest but trying to understand someone's position ,even if it has fallacies, can be preferable than to dismiss them outright or say something like "that's absurd" even if it is absurd. Using such argument the wrong way can become a appeal to ridicule, reductio ad absurdum, and/ or an ad hominem fallacy. As an agnostic/ atheist/ nihilist, I'm often bothered by what theists claim or say but when either a majority or near majority of the population believe something because it is a common belief there is a ..special psychological condition to describe why it isn't as 'crazy' for that person to believe it as it would be for someone not indoctrinated to their culture and/or society.

I'm aware that you are most likely not just dismissing the WISDOMfromPO-MO, I'm just adding my two-cents in the hopes it might be useful to you. :)

It is like they have no concept of there being benefits to choosing not to steal.
--WISDOMfromPO-MO
I think the heart of your problem and the issue of this thread is that you tend to favor OBJECTIVE MORALITY where as many of us on this thread and forum likely favor SUBJECTIVE MORALITY.

As a person partial to nihilism, As far as I know neither I nor anyone else has access to OBJECTIVE MORALITY even if they pretend sometimes that they do. I really don't want to turn this into a objective verses subjective discussion, but unfortunately that seems to be where you are trying to split hairs with other people.

All of this seems to support what I have been saying.

It is not the intrinsic qualities/properties of the good itself, but things other than the good itself--the belief that the good is rightfully yours and you are taking it back; the desire to hurt people; the wish to survive, etc.--that in people's minds economically justify stealing.

The intrinsic qualities/properties of the good itself are probably at most used to decide what to steal, not to decide to steal.

Or are there intrinsic qualities/properties in some good somewhere that make people decide to steal?
--WISDOMfromPO-MO

You might be partly right in your analysis, in that it is that which is PERCEIVE in the value of what one steals is more important than any ACTUAL value of the thing stolen; but this is the same with things acquired by either making something or buying it as well which would make it a moot issue in figuring out why people steal.

I think if you break it down it kind of looks like something out of game theory, such as the prisoner's dilemma, where they either decide to remain silent, or rat their partner out. In such a game/simulation there is no "right"/"wrong" beyond the sentence that one will get with either action. Although in game theory the actual values assigned to the choices are considered the same as how a prisoner PERCEIVES them to be, since game theory would become a lot more complicate if we didn't, it is accepted that in the real world the "actual value of a thing" (if there is even such a thing) and the "perceived value" are not always the same.

As far as I can tell, when you take away social indoctrination, taboos, etc., lying, cheating, AND STEALING are all actions that we either choose to do or choose not to do and moral matrix provided by either hedonistic calculus and/or some kind of game theory helps us to decide which to do much like we decide to perform any other action.

Basically, I assert that the value of never in one's life stealing anything would far exceed the collective intrinsic value of everything that is not rightfully yours. The net gain from never in one's life stealing anything would far exceed the net gain from stealing everything this is not rightfully yours measured in the intrinsic value of those things (not any extrinsic value, such as looking cool to your fellow gang members because you successfully pulled off a theft).
--WISDOMfromPO-MO

That may be what you and some (or perhaps even most) people believe, BUT there have been acts of larceny since probably before recorded history, there has been acts of larceny nearly in every country and nearly every point in time in human history, and even today there are acts of larceny being committed every day in countries around the world. Perhaps it is because some people don't have enough resources to survive and steal because they need to and others think it is easier to get what they want by stealing it. Also it is possible that the only way to get some item is to steal it if it is one of a kind; such as OJ tried to do when he was trying to..um..'liberate' one of his trophies from someone who bought it and didn't want to give it back.

To take this even one step further, there are people out there with enough money that they can use their money in order to cause other people to lose money one way or another and or ruin their lives. Obviously this is not done for profit but for purely for personal reasons. The reasons I mention this is that such a person might be willing to pay someone else to steal something of value from some other person or group, just to make things more difficult for them.

On top of that you have corporate and government espionage which is more or less the activity of countries and organizations in the business of stealing each others information. For me it seems if there was absolutely no rational for it than nobody would do either larceny, espionage, etc but because so many do it I would think there is some kind of logic/rational/mentality for so many getting involved in such things; although I could be wrong.

Are you kidding? The nuclear weapons, instead of being amassed by just a few super powers, are now in many different hands. The great fear of annihilation which we had in the sixties and seventies has just been replaced by complacency, because it hasn't happened.
--Metaphysician Undercover

I more or less agree, but believe the threat isn't really about just nuclear weapons but the overall other threats in general. For example, just a few years ago there was a massive Ebola outbreak in Africa (with I believe a 50%-90% fatality rate) that was luckily contained, but would have happen if terrorist had used it to spread the disease to as many people in the industrialized world as possible?

There is a scene in the movie Dr. Strange Love where he talks about how any country (I believe he is referring to one of the more powerful industrialized nations) can build a doomsday weapon ; which in the movie was supposedly a massive nuclear weapon filled with radioactive Cobalt which "supposedly" could render much of the earth unlivable for tens to hundreds of years.

Little did people know that this "doomsday weapon" in the movie was based an ACTUAL weapon being consider by the USSR at the time. It was never built because the primer at the time thought it was too crazy which is kind of funny since he was know for taking off his shoe and beating his desk with it to get attention while at the UN.

All you need is a rogue country and/or a very powerful/resourceful organization that can use some kind of NBC (Nuclear Biological Chemical) weapon or something the equivalent of them and whatever developed country or countries it is pointed at has a problem on their hand. That on top, there is also the problem of how defunct our own CIA and other intelligence agencies are (ie. such as the head of counter-intelligence worked as a spy for Russia for many years before finally getting caught), I believe there is some reason for people to be a little nervous paranoid.

Ayn Rand is (as well as many of her followers) are hypocrite since when she was broke and couldn't earn money she choose to live off of government and state substances instead of relying on her "own two hands" to prove for herself. As far as I know every philosophical thread that talked about her on any forum I've been on doesn't take her work seriously.

In a nutshell, Ayn Rand basically teaches that one must accept that "might makes right" if one has a lot of power and if they don't like to have play nice with others, they shouldn't have to. This would be sort of like Machiavellian type beliefs if she was willing to take into considerations the... nuances of using force and fear in order to do what needs to be done, but of course she doesn't. Instead she dismisses 'opposition' to those who have money and power as merely 'lazy','idiot', 'communists',etc.,etc.,etc. as it isn't possible for those with money and power to do wrong, or if they can cause problems with their actions than 'lesser people' should realize that whatever the elites/'chosen ones' do, it is impossible for it to be any worse than if less qualified nobodies get involved as it is a given that nobodies (ie. anyone that disagrees with elites) are all very stupid and throughout history have only made things worse with their constant meddling with the affairs of the elites.

Of course there are a few problems with this. For one it is only common sense that even elites don't always agree with each other (although they usually agree with exploiting the poor), as well as the actual 'HOW' to resolve disagreement. For example, Ayn Rand may believe it is 'ok' for one to use their money as leverage but she doesn't believe it is 'ok' for one to use violence and/or force as a means for one to use leverage which is COMPLETELY different than Machiavellian beliefs. For Machiavelli, violence/ wars /crime /etc. was merely just part of the human condition. For Ayn Rand 'violence' and certain social issues go beyond the scope of her thinking and since she believed the world should only revolved her and people who think as she does, she didn't completely think it through like Machiavelli to the point where she might have realized that while people who are not elite may not have money they can make up for that fact with NUMBERS if enough of them band/work together toward some end. Also her philosophy is quite a bit of "do as I say, not as I do' which only works for someone if the shoe is never on the other foot or go FUBAR (which means it only works if you are on top of the heap or imagine you are on the top of the heap).

Another way to categorize Ayn Rand's "Objectivism" is kind of like a mickey mouse form of Machiavellianism where one of Ayn Rand's objectivist should be able to use people as they see fit, but Ayn Rand and other objectivist believe it is "unfair" when others treat objectivist the same way that objectivist treat others.

BTW the game Bioshock which is about an underwater city built by Andrew Ryan is based ALOT on what it's creators thought it would be like if "Objectivism" was ever used as a social model for a society. In the game, in Rapture there is sort of a civil war between Andrew Ryan (the creator of Rapture) and Frank Fontaine/Atlas (a criminal mastermind, who is cunning enough to become almost as power as Andrew Ryan). Andrew Ryan sees Frank Fontaine as a communist (even though his rise to power was through often through the capitalistic means as Ryan, although augmented through violence/criminal means as well, since "socialism" is non-existent in Rapture) and Fontaine sees Ryan as just another rich idiot that doesn't understand how the 'real world' works, because they don't have to deal with it. Ryan does a "pre-emptive strike" (ie. resorts to brute violence without even any legal justification for doing so) in a manner which is pretty similar to how totalitarian regimes do things when they first start out. Although his organization is mostly destroyed, Fontaine survives. Soon afterword paranoia and violence takes over Rapture (or at least it become more widespread than before the attack on Fontaine), and more or less any people left in the city go mad and/or end up killing each other. I'm unsure EXACTLY why the civil war between Ryan and Fontaine end up causing everyone to kill each other, but my guess is that between the fighting between the two and with the OTHER tension among other groups and animosity among the people with each other; nearly everyone saw it as a moment to settle some scores and things just got out of hand.

"Do you know this to be true, or is this just an intuition? I ask, because it's not information that most people have access to reliable sources for. I have no idea myself."
--Reformed Nihilist
Think of it this way, what does it take for single girl to find enough 'sugar daddies' (a term I've heard strippers and guys that see them use for regular customers coming to a club) where they don't have to go through anyone else? While a single girl or dancer finding sugar daddies may not be the same thing as high end escort encountering new clients I don't imagine it to be entirely different.

"Did you mean "sharia" law? "
--Bitter Crank
That could be the proper term for it; I'm not familiar enough with the middle east and their culture to be sure of what term is the right one to use when there seems that there are often a half a dozen to a dozen ways to call something (such as ISIS is also called Isil, IS or Daesh with the label "Daesh" being a derogatory term for the group), and although they all more or less refer to the same thing they are not really the same.

When I did a search on the differences between Shiite and Sharia law, I was given the impression that they more or less mean the same thing although you may be correct in calling it "Sharia law" since it seems to be the term that is more commonly used. To be honest I can't even remember where I got the term Shiite law when I was searching for the proper term to use in my earlier posts.

"I would guess it would be illegal to have a picture of a woman in even a ONE piece bathing suit in some countries. She might as well be naked. However, according to journalism I've read, lots of men in the middle east are viewing porn."

Well the reason I used a picture of a woman in a two piece bathing suit as an example was because an article that I remembered an article I remember reading on the subject had a woman at a party wearing a two-piece bathing suit as the "smoking gun" that the Shiite police used as the evidence that the person they were investigating had "porn" on his computer.

The fact that men can still access porn in the middle east, probably to some degree even in places that have Shiite Law to me shows the difficultly of enforcing such laws as well as the double standard to often how the laws are enforced. Anyone wealth enough to have a computer with internet access will likely be able to access porn one way or another if they have some idea on how to surf the web where as someone without a computer and who lives hand to mouth I believe will be forbidden to buy an adult magazine or anything like it. It was the same during prohibition where liquor from the black market was too expensive for most but easily accessible to those who could easily pay the two to four times the price it normally would be. Even in the west there are many illegal things that are usually outside of the price range of the average citizen such as illegal drugs, contract killings, prostitutes, snuff films, gimps in a foot locker, etc but are much more accessible to those with more money.