RogueAI responds to the idea that abortion may be bad, or a lower priority issue with "because you're a man" putting Brendan's whole thought process and his humanity in a bucket - men - and downgrading that bucket with "you take...for granted" and "you can't think" and "you will never be...forced" and "lack of imagination" and "you can't understand" and "level of moral development is very low." — Fire Ologist

There are plenty of men who understand why women place such a high priority on reproductive freedom. This man,

Kohlberg was probably right that women on average have a lower level of moral development than men — Brendan Golledge

is not one of them. His posts are garbage. If he keeps up in this vein, he'll be banned. Good riddance. Do we really need more misogynists?

I agree. Legal immigrant quotas should be massively increased.

What’s funny about all this immigration talk is that everyone assumes there’s a problem. There isn’t. — Mikie

There's a problem with illegal immigration. It's immoral to turn a blind eye to people entering illegally so we can use them like helots. We have ten million people living in the shadows, terrified to go to the cops, just begging to be exploited by criminals and business.

:up:

The level of polarization today is not what it was 30-40 years ago. What changed? — Harry Hindu

Obama's election. Conservatives could not deal with a black man as president, so to cope they tried to "other" him and went down a rabbit hole of birtherism, qanon, pizzagate, antivax, stolen election nonsense where conspiracies and enemies are everywhere. They're still falling.

I would like to maximally exploit all the talented people around me, and hope i have skills that would lead to the vice verse. — AmadeusD

I don't think that kind of benign exploitation is what he's talking about. More like, should I boycott products that involve child labor or people working in horrific conditions akin to modern day slavery or that result in environmental exploitation? We can even broaden it to animal exploitation. Do I have an obligation to not benefit from the horrific exploitation of animals? Yes, to all of that. I have a moral obligation to be vegan and live like a monk. But I don't wanna.

I don't even have a strong opinion about when life begins, but it doesn't seem normal to me that a person ought to put killing their babies on the top of their priority list. — Brendan Golledge

Because you're a man. You take bodily autonomy for granted. And you also can't think. You will never be raped and forced to carry the rapist's child to term. Can you imagine how awful that would be? No, because your posts show a total lack of imagination. There are nine states with laws like that on the books. The fact you can't understand why women are passionate about abortion rights tells me your level of moral development is very low.

:up:

Are you saying that CDs, books and watches can come to be without their being a mind with intent to create them? — Harry Hindu

There's a small possibility of that, yes. Boltzmann Brains and whatnot.

Or, you can say the polio virus can cause paralysis. Now say what that exactly means. I think you will find that it does not exactly mean anything. — tim wood

The polio virus initiates the causal chain that leads to paralysis. That chain includes events like: the virus enters the body → the immune system fails to contain it → it infects motor neurons → tissue damage occurs → paralysis results. In that sense, the virus is both a necessary condition and the starting point of the process.

Isn’t that what we mean by "cause"? If we claim X causes Y, and consistently find through rigorous testing that removing X reliably prevents Y, then we’re justified in saying X causes Y — pending better evidence. Are you arguing for radical skepticism about causes?

I don't know the answer to that, but at that exact moment when you've extinguished the person by swapping out that critical part, you're a murderer. — Hanover

What if we swap out every part but his brain? He's obviously more valuable than the pig. What about after the brain injury that reduces his intellect/memory/awareness to pig levels? It's not obvious to me that he should be more valuable. I think he would be, but I suspect that's just specieism.

That might be taken as a bit insensitive to one who has lost a newborn, right? — Hanover

Maybe, but is it true for most people? It seems there's an obvious spectrum of awfulness to it: losing a one week old embryo is not as bad as losing a two month old fetus, which is not as bad as a stillborn baby, which is not as bad as losing a toddler. Do you agree with that or at least see where I'm coming from?

I don't find Singer persuasive, largely because I am fully accepting of the Western theistic view that humans are indeed sacred, meaning the value of smartest golden retriever is infinitely less than the least aware infant. — Hanover

Well, let's consider an average human vs a pig. The human has infinitely more value, right? We can't gas the human and eat him. But let's swap out the human's heart with a pig heart. Let's replace his arms and legs with pig arms and legs. Let's give him a traumatic brain injury that reduces his intellect to that of a pig. Can we eat him now? If we end up making him identical to a pig, down to the DNA, is it now ok to eat him?

But he does have a point. I don't see a newborn as a full-fledged person. They're close to being a person, but the loss of a newborn is not as devastating as the loss of, say, a ten year old.

A baby does in fact have the status of personhood, legally, and socially. It's a baby person. — Outlander

When, exactly, does a baby become a person? At the moment of birth? Well, what about two weeks before? A month before? Two months before? How do you draw the personhood line in a non-arbitrary way?

A CD player will still produce the air vibrations of the music. Nothing will be around to interpret those patterns as music though. Tree falls in forest. Ground shakes, as does air, but it that making a sound? — noAxioms

Yeah, the CD example wasn't that good. I think the Sherlock Holmes one is better. So what do you think of that? Isn't there information in the book about Sherlock Holmes? Can that information still exist in a mindless universe? I don't see how.

One realizes with horror that earlier, opposing one's parents because they represented the world, one was often secretly the mouthpiece, against a bad world, of one even worse. — Theodor Adorno, Minima Moralia

At one point in 1984, Winston is confessing some horrible thing he did as a child that's always bothered him and Julia says: 'I expect you were a beastly little swine in those days. All children are swine.'

It's true, they are. I've worked with kids for almost 30 years. I look back in horror at what I believed and did as a teenager, but I was a stupid teenager. What can you do? Instead of being horrified, be glad you've grown up.

What about them? A number is an idea. Perfectly real as such. But have you ever seen one, ordered one at McDonald's with sauce? Seen one in the woods? And if no mind thinks two, then no two. Right? And similarly with any idea. — tim wood

I agree but mathematical platonism is very popular.

Ideas do not exist independently of the mind that has them. — tim wood

What about numbers?

Minds are not fundamental. Information is. — Harry Hindu

Let's say you have a compact disk of Mozart pieces. In a mindless universe, that disk is just a collection of particles assembled in a disk with a bunch of tiny pits. There's no musical information, right? But the CD also obviously contains musical information. Mind is fundamental viz a viz the musical information.

Or take a book about Sherlock Holmes. In a mindless universe, that book is just a collection of inks and pages. There's no Sherlock Holmes there. But that book also contains information about Sherlock Holmes which only a universe with minds could detect.

Murder is a specific type of killing, one that is uniquely wrong. It involves making the innocent one's target. — BitconnectCarlos

What about Trolley Car? The innocent is the target (or, you're slapping a big target on the innocent when you throw the switch which seems like a distinction without a difference)

Getting back to the OP, do you think it is ever rationally justifiable to dismiss or exclude someone, particularly because of some action or set of actions they have chosen? If so, when and why is this rationally justifiable? — Leontiskos

If someone is a flat earther, I don't engage with them. What's the point? Same with neonazi's, Qanon, electiondeniers, etc. They're not immoral, but they're not fun to talk to.

..I was saying, "Yes, obviously we oppose terrorists." Again, the question of the OP is, "Why?" — Leontiskos

This isn't even true. What about hypothetical Jewish terrorists in Germany during WW2? Suppose German Jews had adopted a policy whereby Jewish suicide bombers blew themselves up in popular German places (restaurants, theaters, nightclubs, etc.) until the Holocaust stopped. Should we oppose that?

Well let's keep these two distinct:

1. You should not (deliberately) harm the innocent
2. Those who (deliberately) harm the innocent should be dismissed/excluded/shunned/etc.

The thread is primarily about (2), but it may well be that (1) must be considered in the analysis. — Leontiskos

(1) has to be considered. Is it even true? What if the innocents are factory workers making bombers to be used against you? What if they're a bunch of scientists working feverishly on enriching uranium for a nuclear bomb to be used against you? What if they're a bunch of chemists at a mustard gas plant? How many innocents are you allowed to kill while going after a military target? Is nuking Berlin OK if it means taking out Hitler?

Aren't war crimes pretty much as universally understood to be bad as anything else? — ToothyMaw

I posted a poll awhile ago about whether Churchill would have been justified committing war crimes (e.g., using poison gas) to repel a Nazi invasion. The majority of respondents here were OK with it.

your reply is still irrelevant to the main point — Darkneos

No, it's not.

"and isn’t engaging with the thought experiment

Yes, it is.

I'm not doing this, it's not even related to the thought experiment. — Darkneos

Sure it is. Weren't you taking about chemicals? You just assume those chemicals exist, right? Maybe don't assume that.

Matter does exist though. — Darkneos

How do you know?

Those emotions are just chemicals in the brain, why wouldn't they exist in such a machine. — Darkneos

They're not just chemicals in the brain. All roads lead to the Hard Problem. The idea of consciousness arising from matter is incoherent, which is why there's been no scientific progress on it and there will be no progress on it. Matter doesn't exist. This is all an elaborate dream.

What's the solution to the Trolley Problem? What's your take on abortion? Should the state compel me to save the life of a drowning child, if I can do so with no risk to myself?

Since these are statements about future events, they do not constitute knowledge but rather speculation (credence), and the result is not knowledge either, as it does not necessarily and sufficiently follow from the premises. — DasGegenmittel

Well, let's take an easy case: what if I said I know that if A then B, A therefore B will still be valid tomorrow. 2+2 will still = 4 tomorrow. Water will still be wet (and H2O) tomorrow. Are you saying I don't have knowledge of these future events? Are future events, in principle, unknowable?

Vote Democrat/Green and give to charities that work in 3rd world countries, as they will be hardest hit.

The difference between proto-consciousness and consciousness is this: Proto-consciousness is the subjective experience of an individual particle. — Patterner

Isn't mind a necessary condition for subjective experience?

That's not to bring down the importance of the issue, but it is actually pretty important to note, even if the 100% were even a reasonable take, that it is a small proportion of men. — AmadeusD

It's a small percentage of men in first world countries.

To me it all pivots on the occurrence, else issue, of the inequity of power and the respect for other, or else the lack of these (in no particular order or correspondence). — javra

Suppose there's a parallel universe where everything else is the same, but men are weaker than women. Would we see the same rates of rape and abuse?

Men have been abusing women from the dawn of recorded history. I'm sure the abuse happend way before that. If you get a bunch of men and women together human nature is such that a non-trivial amount of men are going to violate the women. Tim wood thinks perhaps 100% of women can tell a story of sexual assault. I think he's right. All the women I know have horror stories about men.

:up:

Welcome to the forum!

Just as a side note, this is the intro to Flowers for Algernon, and it's always made me tear up:

Any one who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind’s eye, quite as much as of the bodily eye; and he who remembers this when he sees any one whose vision is perplexed and weak, will not be too ready to laugh; he will first ask whether that soul of man has come out of the brighter light, and is unable to see because unaccustomed to the dark, or having turned from darkness to the day is dazzled by excess of light. And he will count the one happy in his condition and state of being, and he will pity the other; or, if he have a mind to laugh at the soul which comes from below into the light, there will be more reason in this than in the laugh which greets him who returns from above out of the light into the den.

Don't you think men were 100% behind the two world wars? My reading of history is that Stalin and Hitler, to give two examples, were not influenced by women in their decisions at all.

Plato and Aristotle both knew—as I believe you do as well—that JTB alone is insufficient in dynamic contexts (though it may suffice in static ones), contrary to the dominant interpretation today. — DasGegenmittel

I was going to ask you if Gettier problems are really all that much different from the Allegory of the Cave, but I bounced it off ChatGpt first, and it didn't seem like I was making much of a point, but I don't know. They say all philosophy is a footnote to Plato. Is there some truth to that here?

I see climate change as a threat, but not really an existential threat.

I think that there is a lot of exaggeration going on. — Agree-to-Disagree

If you mean the human species will continue, I tend to agree. I don't see us getting wiped out by climate change. But I think we could lose a big chunk of our population if we don't get our act together. That being said, I feel sorry for the developing countries that are late to the party and want to expand their middle class with cheap fossil fuel powered energy the way the first world countries all did, and now they're being told they can't do that. Well, they're going to go ahead and do it anyway.