It's not a paradox at all. The end goal of the movement isn't to exist, it's to solve a problem. The movement is created to address the problem, not because it's cool to have a movement and it must be kept alive. It's like saying "Ah, you abolitionists got what you wanted, and now that slavery is illegal, you have nothing more to fight against! Jokes on you!" It doesn't become meaningless because the problem is solved and the movement dissolves.
Honestly, the things you are saying are completely absurd. Not discussable? We don't even have a hardwired instinct to breed. We didn't need to evolve one, sex led to the creation of offspring. Sex is pleasurable, so pleasure-seeking was good enough. The human desire to breed is based on fear and social programming, it's not a necessity. Life is not holding me at gunpoint for me to procreate. There are no horrible consequences awaiting me if I don't have children. It's a function of your DNA, it's not a basic need. Basic needs must be urgently met on a regular basis, or else the deprivation will cause great suffering, eventually leading to death. You think not having kids causes that?
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
You're seeing breeding as a result of pleasure, while it does feel that way, its obviously the opposite. Organisms don't evolve in a manner to receive pleasure as a priority. As I've said goal number 1 is survival for any species, pleasure of sex for mammals is just an advantage of it, not the other way around. Of course that procreation is hardwired. Except we've learned how to get out of the loop compared to other mammals. Not a basic daily need surely.
It's kinda funny when I think about you thinking the apogee of humankind is everyone banging each other with condoms until we all die.
Anyway this whole belief system is as productive as the one about us not having free will. There is a lot of sense in both, whether or not their right is absolute is a speculation, but they are inapplicable in practice because of our preprogrammed brains. It's just another thing to be hypocritical about as a human I guess
I'm curious as to just how much you are against nothingness, so I'd like you to do these thought experiments.
1) If you were given the choice of recreating Nazi Germany all over again in some alternate reality, and it was going to keep going in a loop that never ends, would you do that? The alternative being nothing and that alternate reality remains lifeless.
2) If you were dying and given the choice to either cease to exist forever or be reborn in an alternate reality as Elisabeth Fritz and live her life all over again, would you accept?
*A continuation of this: Say you chose to not recreate the senseless brutality of Nazi Germany again, and you also chose not to live the young Fritz girl's abominable life. What if the stakes were higher, and humanity would also cease to exist at the same time you made those choices, would that change your answer? It would keep going exactly as it is now if you chose differently.
I don't know how committed you are to your ideas and this is a good way for me to find out.
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
1) Obviously not
2) Easily accept it if I'm able to do my own choices.
You're going to extremes again. Are newborn babies' choices predetermined? The world doesn't consist of only suffering. You might as well ask me if whether or not I'd accept dying and being born as the king of a universe that only consists of Victoria's Secret models whose only purpose is only to oblige my needs. Both would prove nothing.
The thing is that whole movement is based on an extreme, when the world does not run on them. Thats why I asked " how much pain is too much pain " , obviously its just a question without an answer as most in philosophy. Who determines whether or not suffering is worth it or not. It's a choice you make to believe in that or not.
On December 19 2016 21:17 Spitfiree wrote:
You're seeing breeding as a result of pleasure, while it does feel that way, its obviously the opposite. Organisms don't evolve in a manner to receive pleasure as a priority. As I've said goal number 1 is survival for any species, pleasure of sex for mammals is just an advantage of it, not the other way around. Of course that procreation is hardwired. Except we've learned how to get out of the loop compared to other mammals. Not a basic daily need surely.
It's kinda funny when I think about you thinking the apogee of humankind is everyone banging each other with condoms until we all die.
Anyway this whole belief system is as productive as the one about us not having free will. There is a lot of sense in both, whether or not their right is absolute is a speculation, but they are inapplicable in practice because of our preprogrammed brains.
The production of offspring in every species is a result of the desire to have sex, due to its pleasurable nature, and not due to a desire to conceive. You really sincerely believe that when animals are going at it they are thinking "Oh this is great, I'm going to have babies!"???
The goal number one in a natural system ruled by natural selection is not survival. Survival is a means to an end: survival for the sake of procreation, not the sake of survival itself. In situations where organisms are given the choice between survival and passing their genes, they will do the latter. (This doesn't apply to us because we no longer live in a natural system that's primarily driven by natural selection.)
We've "learned to get out of the loop" as you say, precisely because intelligence could find the loophole since it wasn't an instinct. Organisms don't learn to undo inborn patterns of behaviour. They are there because they're reliable. The fact that people aren't suffering any sort of biological deprivation as a result of not having children is proof that it isn't a hardwired need. We are not born with a desire to conceive children; we are born with a desire for sex (although not everyone is, apparently). If you really believe your argument then you must think homosexuality is a self-destructive mental illness too.
It's kinda funny when I think about you thinking the apogee of humankind is everyone banging each other with condoms until we all die.
You're basing this assumption on nothing I've said. You don't know my views on sex, and you certainly have no reason to believe that I think it's the highest good. I think it's quite overrated to be honest, but I'd have no problem with people fucking each others' brains out post-sterilization if that's how they want to go out. The apogee wouldn't be the harmless sex -- it would obviously be the overcoming of the collective delusion that we were accomplishing something in the universe. A glorious win over the ego, over fear.
Anyway this whole belief system is as productive as the one about us not having free will. There is a lot of sense in both, whether or not their right is absolute is a speculation, but they are inapplicable in practice because of our preprogrammed brains.
Following with an attack about how unproductive my beliefs are is completely irrelevant. First, they're not unproductive for me, as they allow me as a moral agent to make better decisions as to how I live and the harm I cause/prevent. Secondly, something can be true and impractical, it doesn't make it any less true and worthy of discussion. Lastly, you're making arguments about biology that are clearly falsifiable here, so it's not just a battle of arbitrary worldviews. We can prove each other wrong about things that influence our worldviews. That's valuable.
I strongly disagree about your claim that they're pure speculation. Just because we can't be 100% confident about a theory doesn't mean that the preponderance of evidence suddenly means nothing. The evidence against free will is overwhelming. It's not just coming out of philosophical ponderings; the science demonstrating that free will is an illusion is solid. It's not even an intelligible concept, it's a religious notion. To equate it with something like solipsism and whether or not we're living in a virtual reality is really silly.
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
Just because it seems like an obvious answer, doesn't mean that its a right one.Yeah as almost anything around our being desire is what guides us. I'm not thinking about a way of perception, I'm thinking about as organisms evolved to that level. Evolution most likely designed sex to be pleasurable just so it would make procreation easier, not the other way around. Every hardwired desire we possess is due to a certain reason. Hunger tells us to eat, Boner tells us to send a few hundred millions of our soldiers to conquer new lands.
On December 19 2016 21:32 Spitfiree wrote:
1) Obviously not
2) Easily accept it if I'm able to do my own choices.
You're going to extremes again. Are newborn babies' choices predetermined? The world doesn't consist of only suffering. You might as well ask me if whether or not I'd accept dying and being born as the king of a universe that only consists of Victoria's Secret models whose only purpose is only to oblige my needs. Both would prove nothing.
The thing is that whole movement is based on an extreme, when the world does not run on them. Thats why I asked " how much pain is too much pain " , obviously its just a question without an answer as most in philosophy. Who determines whether or not suffering is worth it or not. It's a choice you make to believe in that or not.
I've specifically stated that you wouldn't have any choice but to live her life exactly how it was lived. So your answer is no, which means you have to answer the question I asked as a follow up. Would you live through her entire ordeal, or impose Nazi Germany elsewhere in order to keep life going here?
How much pain is too much pain is a question you should be answering, not me. I've explained how I made that question irrelevant because I refuse to impose pain on non-consenting individuals. You're the one who wants to impose pain and believes he is justified in doing so, so you should answer it. How many children with terminal cancer is your life enjoyment worth? How many miserable Frankenstein monsters would you create in order to create happy monsters?
"Who determines whether or not suffering is worth it or not."
The person who is dealing with the suffering determines whether or not it's bearable. When you have children, you are making the judgment that they will be able to bear it. There's only one problem: you can't know that. If they can't bear it, it's on you, but you're not the one who will suffer the horrible experience of putting an end to your life, often times unsuccessfully so. In a society where it's criminalized to attempt suicide, you really have to be a double asshole to impose the burden to opt out on someone else.
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
By refusing to impose potential pain you also, refuse to impose potential pleasure. Yes, it surely is on me, except they are free to make their own choices and that's the beauty of it. While you are just making a choice as a measure for prevention of something that's not even sure. You're swinging into another extreme, I'm certain now that your belief is that even the slightest chance of having someone suffer the most minor pain is too much, which to me is quite absurd.
If nothing matters at the end and our species do go extinct then all of the experienced suffering would not matter either, not Nazi Germany, not anything. At least in my world view there is a chance of hope and goodness, while yours just cuts everything down before it has even started. I get it, but going as far as that being the moral absolute is a bit too much.
On December 19 2016 22:29 Spitfiree wrote:
If nothing matters at the end and our species do go extinct then all of the experienced suffering would not matter either, not Nazi Germany, not anything
our species will go extinct, all life will perish and all consciousness will vanish, and everything we created will be destroyed one day, our future is certain oblivion.
I also agree with Loco that you view pain as something kind of abstract, but if you were able to somehow experience all the emotions combined in the world from all living things, every thought, every feeling going through your mind you would view things differently you would want to end it.
Thats the brilliance of Evangelion, in the end Shinji is put to that choice, feeling all emotions of the world and he has a choice and he chooses to end all life on earth.
On December 19 2016 22:29 Spitfiree wrote:
By refusing to impose potential pain you also, refuse to impose potential pleasure. Yes, it surely is on me, except they are free to make their own choices and that's the beauty of it. While you are just making a choice as a measure for prevention of something that's not even sure. You're swinging into another extreme, I'm certain now that your belief is that even the slightest chance of having someone suffer the most minor pain is too much, which to me is quite absurd.
If nothing matters at the end and our species do go extinct then all of the experienced suffering would not matter either, not Nazi Germany, not anything. At least in my world view there is a chance of hope and goodness, while yours just cuts everything down before it has even started. I get it, but going as far as that being the moral absolute is a bit too much.
We've already established that the human race will be wiped out of the universe at some point sooner or later. In your best case scenario, we become these highly developed creatures and colonize other planets when ours is no longer habitable. But that's just buying time. We can't avoid the heat death of the universe. So by your logic, everything you do now is completely futile and you may as well kill yourself. What difference does it make when we will be wiped out?
Potential pleasure only matters if a person is deprived of it, i.e. if it relieves pain, discomfort or boredom. It doesn't have any value to the unborn. There are no souls that are floating around in the Ether impatiently waiting to get inside a human fetus. The other glaring issue with your statement that we should impose pain in order to increase pleasure in the universe is that you're weighing both pain and pleasure more or less equally. This is obviously a mistake. Avoiding disutility carries much more weight.
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
How have we established that? There is zero reason for this to be stated as a fact. I'm guessing there has been thousands of scientists that dedicated their lives into researching factors around such possible outcome and you just state it with ease. I'm guessing your end case scenario is the universe tightening up to the big bang kind of size, which would have already killed all species anywhere, except thats just a theory as well.
Also its quite convenient for pleasure to be put at EV0, but pain be put at -EV by default. It's one of the main points we disagree on. Anyways at this point we're going in circles with the discussion. I don't see what new I could bring to it.
@Baal
True, I view it as something abstract because the whole discussion is abstract. You cannot state such thing with certainty, its just a specualtion.
And what kind of argument is that, in the Shaman King the guy was given all emotions from people everywhere and he managed to destroy the villain. What's the point of an example out of an anime?
There's zero reason to believe that, as physical beings, we have to obey physical laws? That's what you're saying. OK. Yeah, we're definitely not going to get anywhere on this one. If you think we can somehow survive the death of our sun, and then avoid the heat death of the universe, then you're more deluded than even the most vehement of religious fundamentalist. The things that we're not sure are not those that affect our inevitable doom. Regardless of which variation of it will prove to be true, life will not survive. It's not "just" a theory. The second law of thermodynamics, just like evolution, isn't "just" a theory. Anything can be said to be "just" a theory. People who say this show a complete misunderstanding of the body of knowledge and process that is science.
It's not about 'EV'. Expected value doesn't work as a currency. We have to use units of value/disvalue or positive utility/disutility. And I don't have to use strong negativism (pleasure having no utility) to make my case. The asymmetry between suffering/pain and pleasure/happiness is very intuitive and everyone here agrees with it unless they are sadists. So I can just use weak negativism and say I'll grant pleasure some positive weight, but suffering (disutility) earns much more weight -- and I'll arrive to the same conclusion. Do a simple thought experiment I just came up with to find out if you agree:
Hypothetically, say you care about both of your parents equally, and they don't care at all about each other. Your mother's been in an accident and she's in pain, and she needs surgery to get better. The surgery is guaranteed to be a success and relieve her pain. If she doesn't get it, her life isn't in danger, but her quality of life will be very poor. She has no money for the surgery and asks for your financial help. You have the money available for her surgery, but no more. Meanwhile, your father is a musician, and he wants to record an album. He has no money at all, and asks for your financial help. His album is also guaranteed to be a success and give him great pleasure. The amount is the same as the surgery, which is the only money you have and can possibly use. He's going to be frustrated for a while if you don't help him, but otherwise he'll be fine and he is in good health. You're forced to give the money to one of them. There's no getting out of this and earning more money, the choice is now or never. Which one do you help? Again, this is not about favoritism. For the sake of argument, you care just as much about both of them. Do you feel like you have a moral obligation to maximize your father's pleasure with his life, or to prevent the suffering of your mother? If you think both scenarios have equal weight, you are allowed to flip a coin for who gets the money. Do you do that?
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
On December 20 2016 04:39 Baalim wrote:
I also agree with Loco that you view pain as something kind of abstract, but if you were able to somehow experience all the emotions combined in the world from all living things, every thought, every feeling going through your mind you would view things differently you would want to end it.
Thats the brilliance of Evangelion, in the end Shinji is put to that choice, feeling all emotions of the world and he has a choice and he chooses to end all life on earth.
Stop whatever it is you're doing and read this. It's a very quick read and equally brilliant, trust me. The author is an anarchist too.
1) If you were given the choice of recreating Nazi Germany all over again in some alternate reality, and it was going to keep going in a loop that never ends, would you do that? The alternative being nothing and that alternate reality remains lifeless.
2) If you were dying and given the choice to either cease to exist forever or be reborn in an alternate reality as Elisabeth Fritz and live her life all over again, would you accept?
You need to get more woke loco Hitler was your guy and don't bring Australians in to this they have enough problems as it is with the emu war.
“An extended chapter of our talk was devoted by the Führer to the vegetarian question.
He believes more than ever that meat-eating is wrong. Of course, he knows that, during
the war, we cannot completely upset our food system. After the war, however, he intends
to tackle this problem also. Maybe he is right. Certainly the arguments he adduces in
favour of his standpoint are very compelling.”
—The Goebbels Diaries, edit. 1946 (Entry of the 26th of April 1942)
I'm not a vegetarian, remember? And neither was Hitler throughout his life according to many accounts, despite professing to be. He only became one in the last 3 years of his life. According to the biographer Robert Payne, this was a fiction that was spread to foster a certain image of him.
"Hitler's asceticism played an important part in the image he projected over Germany. According to the widely believed legend, he neither smoked nor drank, nor did he eat meat or have anything to do with women. Only the first was true. He drank beer and diluted wine frequently, had a special fondness for Bavarian sausages and kept a mistress, Eva Braun, who lived with him quietly in the Berghof. There had been other discreet affairs with women. His asceticism was fiction invented by Goebbels to emphasize his total dedication, his self-control, the distance that separated him from other men. By this outward show of asceticism, he could claim that he was dedicated to the service of his people." (The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler, Robert Payne)
Dumb meme, irrelevant nonsense, logical fallacy (association fallacy) and spreading propaganda. You outdid yourself again with this post.
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
Last edit: 20/12/2016 17:35
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brambolius Netherlands. Dec 21 2016 13:03. Posts 1708
On December 20 2016 04:39 Baalim wrote:
I also agree with Loco that you view pain as something kind of abstract, but if you were able to somehow experience all the emotions combined in the world from all living things, every thought, every feeling going through your mind you would view things differently you would want to end it.
Thats the brilliance of Evangelion, in the end Shinji is put to that choice, feeling all emotions of the world and he has a choice and he chooses to end all life on earth.
Stop whatever it is you're doing and read this. It's a very quick read and equally brilliant, trust me. The author is an anarchist too.
You don't actually know any actual anarchists do you ? As in people that actually oppose "the system" and live their lives according to their beliefs ?
We live in an attention economy. I said she was an anarchist because if I want Baal to read it, I need to sell her work to him, because as far as I know he doesn't like reading fiction. And even if he does now, the writing style can be hard to pay attention to unless you have a good motivation to. If all I want is for him to read it, the minutiae is irrelevant. By your standards, Baal should probably not even identify as an 'actual' anarchist. I know David Graeber quite well, but he's probably not a true anarchist to you either.
Dunno why I even bother responding to you when you've shown that the best you can do is ad hom me and be a condescending cunt.
fuck I should just sell some of my Pokemon cards, if no one stakes that is what I will have to do - lostaccount
On December 20 2016 04:39 Baalim wrote:
I also agree with Loco that you view pain as something kind of abstract, but if you were able to somehow experience all the emotions combined in the world from all living things, every thought, every feeling going through your mind you would view things differently you would want to end it.
Thats the brilliance of Evangelion, in the end Shinji is put to that choice, feeling all emotions of the world and he has a choice and he chooses to end all life on earth.
Stop whatever it is you're doing and read this. It's a very quick read and equally brilliant, trust me. The author is an anarchist too.
You don't actually know any actual anarchists do you ? As in people that actually oppose "the system" and live their lives according to their beliefs ?
That's cute.
sick, you know actual orthodox anarchists? Were they appointed by anarchist god/scriptures as such? Because afaik there there's a huge bunch of people with different beliefs that call themselves anarchists and they usually hate each others guts too.
which reminds me
new shit has come to light... a-and... shit! man...
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brambolius Netherlands. Dec 21 2016 15:40. Posts 1708
On December 21 2016 12:47 Loco wrote:
the best you can do is ad hom me and be a condescending cunt.
lmfao, priceless :D
and yes, I do know actual anarchists that are, you know, anarchists. Protip, they don´t spend their time writing about it or debating the human condition etc.
