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artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted July 22, 2013 04:31 PM |
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Edited by artu at 16:36, 22 Jul 2013.
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We can make reasonable predictions about the future. If I'm eating a piece of cheese, it's not like any reasonable person could say anything like, "That particular piece of cheese may be sacred to God!
That actually made me laugh. You don't really think these analogies work, do you? Put aside being convincing, they actually harm your credibility.
Zenofex said:
Rights have a practical purpose and are given with the consent of (at least) the majority of the people.
mvass said:
That's tyranny of the majority.
No, it's a historical fact. We've been through this in the morality thread, rights of the minority exist because there has been a consensus on it (in some countries). So if you're not talking about every day politics but the ontological foundation of rights, Zenofex is right. Rights only exist because some people get around and agree to them in the first place. So, if majority restricts hunting elephants, you will either risk going to jail or you will not shoot elephants. And sincerely, I don't think anybody will call that regime a tyranny for restricting such a thing. There may be objections, sure, but do you call U.S. a tyranny for not letting you smoke grass?
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mvassilev
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted July 22, 2013 04:35 PM |
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Quote:
rights of the minority exist because there has been a consensus on it
That's confusing the capability to enforce rights (or violate them) with the rights themselves. Sure, for anything political, someone (or a group) needs to have enough power to enforce its will. But not every such enforcement of will is equally morally right.Quote:
do you call U.S. a tyranny for not letting you smoke grass?
Yes. It's not as much of a tyranny as, say, Nazi Germany, but it's still tyranny. It's a difference in degree, not in kind.
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Eccentric Opinion
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artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted July 22, 2013 04:50 PM |
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That's confusing the capability to enforce rights (or violate them) with the rights themselves.
You seem to forget that was a dead-end for you.
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Yes. It's not as much of a tyranny as, say, Nazi Germany, but it's still tyranny. It's a difference in degree, not in kind.
The difference in degree, in this case creates a qualitative difference, which prevents us from defining the regime as a tyranny or even authoritarian.
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Corribus
Hero of Order
The Abyss Staring Back at You
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posted July 22, 2013 04:51 PM |
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mvassilev said:
Even if I were a colonial European, an Indian would still be able to kill me.
I think you're missing the point - the larger the difference in technology, the less chance there is that the weaker party will be able to hurt the stronger party. If you want an extreme (hypothetical) example - suppose a very advanced civilization came to our solar system and was capable of obliterating our entire world's population without even leaving their space ship, somewhere in the vicinity of Jupiter. There's no way we could hurt them. Hell, we probably wouldn't even know they were even here before they fried us. They'd be able to clean us out and then take the planet for themselves with hardly any expenditure of effort or risk. Justified?
Even in the case of the native Americans and Europeans, the native Americans were capable of killing a few of the Europeans, but there was never any real danger to the European civilization. The bigger risk to Europe was the fighting between European nations over the spoils. In the end, though, the benefits Europe reaped far exceeded the slight loss in life they incurred during the conquest. Surely you can't say it would have benefitted the Europeans MORE to simply leave the native Americans alone? After all, we, the United States, are the embodiment of those benefits.
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We can make reasonable predictions about the future. If I'm eating a piece of cheese, it's not like any reasonable person could say anything like, "That particular piece of cheese may be sacred to God! You should exercise the precautionary principle and not eat it." In a less extreme case, it needn't be an endangered species that may be valuable in the future, but a mutation within an individual in a non-endangered species - but no one would reasonably say, "Don't eat that cow, it could have a valuable mutation." We can make reasonable predictions about future value, even if we're wrong at times.
You display a naiveté of the complexity of biology and ecology. Yes, it's unlikely an elephant or cow is going to have some mutation that will suddenly give us a medicine to cure cancer. But if elephants go extinct, this leaves a vacuum in the food chain. Such vacuums, even small ones, have the ability to destroy entire ecosystems, all the way down to plants that MAY have unknown bioactives to cure diseases. We can even drop the magic medicine argument altogether. Disrupting an ecosystem can have massive economic repercussions. Mudlides, erosion, drought, flooding, and etc., to say nothing of the potential impact on agriculture and natural food sources, can all result from disturbances to the balance of flora and fauna in a region, and it's very hard to predict what those consequences may be. Our recent history is rife with examples of how disruptions such these can cost millions of dollars to local communities. Most of these examples relate to the introduction of invasive species which have no local predators, reproduce like mad, and then wreak havoc. These effects can be equivalent to the massive expansion of one species due to the sudden loss of another. In my local community outside Chicago, an excellent example of the cost of sudden ecosystem imbalance is the emerald ash borer, an insect accidentally introduced from China that is decimating the ash trees here. The loss of these trees has affected my own property value - I have lost two beautiful shade trees on my property alone. Other examples abound: How much money has Australia spent to contain their rabbit infestation? The introduction of rats to many of the south pacific islands have killed many of the native species there, species we know very little about and which COULD harbor useful bioactives. And not all examples are accidental, either - we can find many examples of plants and animals introduced purposely by humans a non-native regions, with catastrophic consequences to ecosystems. The aforementioned example of rabbits being introduced to Australia serves an illustrative lesson on how much a lack of understanding of consequences to ecosystem imbalance can cost.
To underscore the point, it's virtually impossible to be able to predict, a priori, how the introduction of a foreign species is going to impact an ecosystem, just as it is impossible to predict, a priori, how the loss of a species, or many species, will impact an ecosystem. This is why our government spends so much money to enforce laws to prevent the introduction of invasive species, and it is also why spending money to protect endangered species, particularly species rapidly endangered by human activity, is a worthwhile preventative investment. Sure, that spent money may come to nothing, but the potential risk, in the minds of scientists and legislators, outweighs the relatively small cost in the near term. Granted, the decline in elephants may not result in these problems, particularly if the decline is slow enough for the ecosystem to maintain an compensatory equilibrium. But it does seem a little strange for you to argue that a vastly superior civilization should refrain from destroying a vastly inferior civilization out of the small chance the latter could cause some damage to the former, and yet at the same time argue that human societies can destroy non-sentient species with impunity, when the repercussions of such destruction are unknown. I put forward the suggestion that it's much easier to evaluate the potential risks of conducting war against a technologically inferior opponent than it is to evaluate the risks of imbalancing an ecosystem.
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I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're goin', and hook up with them later. -Mitch Hedberg
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artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted July 22, 2013 04:57 PM |
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Even on the individualistic level (in which Mvass says what really matters), if you wipe the technologically inferior society out completely, there is no chance of any individual of your society getting killed. Which is not impossible with today's weapons.
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mvassilev
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted July 22, 2013 05:03 PM |
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artu:
I don't recall that being a dead end for me, and upon reading that thread, it seems that it wasn't.
As for your other point, it depends on how you define "tyranny". If you only call it a tyranny if it's extreme, then sure, the US isn't a tyranny. But the difference is only quantitative.Quote:
Even on the individualistic level (in which Mvass says what really matters), if you wipe the technologically inferior society out completely, there is no chance of any individual of your society getting killed. Which is not impossible with today's weapons.
You do that and you eliminate the potential for cooperation and all the gains from trade you could get from giving them the technology. What would give me a greater gain in my dealings with, say, Africans in third-world countries, wiping them out and taking their meager possessions, or giving them technology and teaching them to be as productive as Westerners?
Corribus:
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They'd be able to clean us out and then take the planet for themselves with hardly any expenditure of effort or risk. Justified?
Yes. I covered something like this in my example of the immortal person who is so technologically advanced that all the armies of the world mean nothing to him. If someone were to us as we are to animals, they would have no reason to restrict themselves in their dealings with us. At the same time, we would be justified in resisting them, but if they're so advanced, we wouldn't succeed. Too bad for us.
You're quite right about the effect on ecosystems. My original point, to quote my response to your first question, was "There are good reasons to protect elephants, but none of them are out of consideration for the elephants' well-being." You've brought up plenty of good examples of changes to ecosystems having negative effects for humans. Those are all good justifications for protecting them - and none of them involve consideration for the protected as an end in itself. What I'm ultimately objecting to is treating ecosystems and the Earth as an end in itself, rather than something that's useful for humans and should be managed wisely for our own benefit.
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Eccentric Opinion
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artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted July 22, 2013 05:13 PM |
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Edited by artu at 17:16, 22 Jul 2013.
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I don't recall that being a dead end for me
Well, let me remind you then. Since rights are abstract concepts that exist in our mind to begin with, (unless you believe they are God given or something which you don't), for them to be independent of their historicity, you needed a universal/objective ground for them. You tried and failed. Nobody was convinced about the objectivity of your founding principles, on the contrary, they were so far from convincing and so subjective, the conclusion was that you were not aware of what objectivity was.
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You do that and you eliminate the potential for cooperation and all the gains from trade you could get from giving them the technology. What would give me a greater gain in my dealings with, say, Africans in third-world countries, wiping them out and taking their meager possessions, or giving them technology and teaching them to be as productive as Westerners?
But is that WHY you don't destroy them? And would it be your right, if it was less profitable?
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mvassilev
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted July 22, 2013 05:24 PM |
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Since rights are abstract concepts that exist in our mind to begin with, (unless you believe they are God given or something which you don't), for them to be independent of their historicity, you needed a universal/objective ground for them. You tried and failed.
That discussion was more than about rights, it was about morality in general, which extends beyond rights. In fact, I didn't talk about rights much in that discussion at all. Also, it's not my fault if you and JJ deny what's clearly true about human nature.Quote:
But is that WHY you don't destroy them? And would it be your right, if it was less profitable?
Regardless of what the being is - human, animal, or alien - I choose to destroy or not destroy it based on what would benefit me the most. There is a variety of reasons why destroying humans doesn't benefit me, and this is one of them (though hardly the only one). Destroying animals (or, more accurately, letting others destroy animals and benefiting from it) is more often beneficial for me, though that's no reason for me to go out and kill animals left and right.
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Eccentric Opinion
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JollyJoker
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
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posted July 22, 2013 05:51 PM |
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mvassilev said:
Also, it's not my fault if you and JJ deny what's clearly true about human nature.
Since I wouldn't deny anything that was "clearly true" - whatever that means - there must be something wrong with your statement. 
Quote:
Regardless of what the being is - human, animal, or alien - I choose to destroy or not destroy it based on what would benefit me the most.
And there goes your foundation to judge people like ... umm ... Hitler?
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artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted July 22, 2013 05:54 PM |
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Edited by artu at 17:56, 22 Jul 2013.
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Quote:
That discussion was more than about rights, it was about morality in general, which extends beyond rights. In fact, I didn't talk about rights much in that discussion at all. Also, it's not my fault if you and JJ deny what's clearly true about human nature.
It involved rights and their foundations also. And let me ask you a question, since you love to use phrases such as "it's very unlikely, I can clearly guess, we can easily presume..etc etc"
Which do you think is more likely;
four guys, Me,Corribus,JJ, Zenofex (=everybody else in that discussion), who happen to be quite level-headed and smart guys I'd say, and also much older and more experienced than you, can not see what's clearly true about human nature and you can
OR
you were wrong when calling such things as friendship and non-agression as objective basis for morals and rights.
And no offense, but I think you are exceptionally incorrect about human nature, as this thread shows over and over again. As for your second paragraph, why do you even want rights when practically what you describe is the law of the jungle.
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mvassilev
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted July 22, 2013 06:08 PM |
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JJ:
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And there goes your foundation to judge people like ... umm ... Hitler?
Hitler was a crazy guy - clearly unhappy, from what I've read about him - who ended up committing suicide. To say that he successfully pursued his self-interest would be a blatant falsehood. Also, recall everything I wrote about rights arising out of self-interest, and how Hitler goes against that.
artu:
Every viewpoint that's widely held now wasn't widely held at some point. To say that something is unpopular and not held by four level-headed people is not to say that it's wrong. Some time ago, "level-headed people" opposed female suffrage. I've come to accept that people are usually wrong about things like this. Quote:
As for your second paragraph, why do you even want rights when practically what you describe is the law of the jungle.
Like JJ, I recommend you to reread what I wrote about rights arising out of self-interest.
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Eccentric Opinion
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artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted July 22, 2013 06:24 PM |
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Well, let's all wait for the prodigy in you to enlighten the future generations then.
I don't think I need to reread it. With your latest elaborations, I think, whether you are aware of it or not, when you say "neither the psychopath nor the mobster is successfully selfish" you contradict with yourself, what you should be saying is:
- Neither the psychopath nor the mobster is successfully selfish, if they get caught.
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mvassilev
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Undefeatable Hero
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posted July 22, 2013 08:42 PM |
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If you interpret me as saying that, you're ignoring the entire virtue ethical component of everything I said in the morals topic (and some related things I've said in this topic too). Being successfully selfish means successfully acting in a way that makes you as happy as possible. Given human nature and what makes people happy, being a sociopath or a mobster and possessing the virtues that contribute to happiness are mutually exclusive.
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Eccentric Opinion
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artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted July 22, 2013 09:10 PM |
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Edited by artu at 21:16, 22 Jul 2013.
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mvassilev said:
If you interpret me as saying that, you're ignoring the entire virtue ethical component of everything I said in the morals topic (and some related things I've said in this topic too). Being successfully selfish means successfully acting in a way that makes you as happy as possible. Given human nature and what makes people happy, being a sociopath or a mobster and possessing the virtues that contribute to happiness are mutually exclusive.
Okay, now you're totally off, because I already told you that I think you're CONTRADICTING WITH YOURSELF. So, yes what you say over there and over here does not add up. Take an old school mobster like Luciano, he lived a long life, got laid with some real hot women, he was respected and maybe even loved by his own social circle and he followed his benefits even if it meant killing for them. Now, what kind of an idealistic delusion makes you so sure there was NO WAY he was ever going to be happy? He was probably a lot happier than you are right now. And psychopaths don't feel remorse so if they are not caught, none of your "indisputable facts of human nature" applies to them. What you're doing here is simply this, you bring in an absolute principle of benefit, when objected by hypothetical examples like an alien race being able to destroy us, it's easy to say "of course they'd have the right to" etc etc. When actual history and real life examples are presented to you though, you can't say crap like that as easy, you know it's politically too incorrect to be a standing point. So now you start explaining how it is in fact not according to their benefit because of your allegedly objective standards of human nature. As any idealist would do, you'll bend the reality to fit your already arrived at conclusion.
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mvassilev
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posted July 22, 2013 09:41 PM |
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You don't seem to be reading what I'm saying, so I'll say it as briefly as I can. Being virtuous contributes to happiness, and is necessary for being as happy as possible. Those who aren't virtuous are failing at being selfish. Yes, it's possible to be happy despite lacking virtue, but it's the same kind of happiness that you'd get if you were hungry and ate a dozen twinkies. Sure, you're not hungry anymore, but it's not satisfying either. The same goes for happiness. Everything said so far in this post is for reasonably psychologically normal people. For sociopaths, it's true that being virtuous won't make them happy by default - it's because they're unhealthy. Just like some people have incorrect reactions (allergies) to certain food (and would be happier if they didn't have them) sociopaths have incorrect reactions to virtue and non-virtuous action, and would be happier if they were treated and became mentally healthy human beings.
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artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted July 22, 2013 10:47 PM |
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Edited by artu at 23:01, 22 Jul 2013.
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First of all, there is no way you can back that up, unless you are a mind reader. Second of all, let's say you ARE a mind reader, So now, being virtuous becomes a benefit too, actually it becomes THE benefit for it is the key to happiness. So, all this talk about benefit when you say I'll always do what's in my best interest etc etc were actually referring to virtue! Seems like a far stretch to me, all your examples were based on a much more simplistic understanding of benefit, non-aggression contracts of SAFETY was the point, you even objected to Corribus by saying the Indians still could kill some Europeans, you didn't say they'd feel unhappy for not being virtuous. And while talking about the right to destroy anything incapable of having a social contract, that was again your point wasn't it, why do it if you can't get anything in return? Seems like it's you who's not been reading you!
And for last but not for least, there's no way you can tell that Luciano didn't follow a moral code that was a rationalization of his benefits. Maybe, he thought his rivals were gangsters and they choose a path, so his hands were clean. Maybe, he followed and old school tradition from Sicily instead of recent law and his understanding of virtue was not breaking the Omerta. Maybe, he was giving some of the money he earned from gambling to charity. The point is, there is not even universal agreement on what virtuous is, even if we put aside the fact there is no rational reason to establish a DIRECT causality between it and happiness. There may be occasional causalities but they can not be considered a condition, a necessity for happiness. Not just because you say so, nothing supports that.
(Btw, are you on a diet or something? What is this obsession with food on analogies? Cheeseburger, pizza, cheese and now a dozen twinkies! What's next an apple pie)
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mvassilev
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted July 22, 2013 11:02 PM |
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Quote:
there is no way you can back that up, unless you are a mind reader.
From personal observation, I have observed a causal effect of virtue on human happiness. If you don't believe me, fine, but then there's not much to talk about.Quote:
So, all this talk about benefit when you say I'll always do what's in my best interest etc etc were actually referring to virtue! Seems like a far stretch to me, all your examples were based on a much more simplistic understanding of benefit, non-aggression contracts of SAFETY was the point, you even objected to Corribus by saying the Indians still could kill some Europeans, you didn't say they'd feel unhappy for not being virtuous.
Because we were talking about rights, not about virtue. Rights are based on self-preservation contracts (and similar mutually beneficial agreements), not on virtue. Of course, what kinds of contracts are good is partially dependent on human nature, just as virtue is, but that's not relevant here. To connect self-preservation and virtue - virtue contributes to happiness, that is, to living a happy life, but a happy life has two components, happiness and life, and self-preservation contributes to the latter. People who are dead are obviously not living a happy life. Anyway, we shouldn't do everything we have a right to do - for example, you have the right to go to the store and buy ten thousand toothpicks, but you still shouldn't do that (unless you're in some weird situation). I explained above why animals don't have rights, but that says nothing about what we should do to animals, only about what we have a right to do to them. Just as with the Indians, the colonials were acting anti-virtuously, but the reason Indians had rights (that were being violated) is not because of how the colonials felt, but because of the potential for a non-aggression agreement.
Also, in my analysis of "benefit", I wasn't being simplistic, I was being general. I wasn't specific about the contents of "benefit", only meaning "benefit - whatever that happens to be".
If Luciano had a moral code, it was an incorrect one, but as long as you don't accept the causal effect of virtue on human happiness, there's not much to talk about there.
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artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted July 22, 2013 11:13 PM |
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Because we were talking about rights, not about virtue.
Yes, and the examples of the mobster and the psychopath were given during that part. Anyway, you're right on one thing, since I don't agree with your axiom (it's too dualistic to begin with, virtuous and non-virtuous acts, what is this heaven and hell... Real life decisions are usually no way that sectional), the rest falls like domino keys. So, let's just agree to disagree.
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mvassilev
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted July 22, 2013 11:18 PM |
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Yes, and the examples of the mobster and the psychopath were given during that part.
In his post where he mentioned the sociopath and the mobster, Bak was asking about the content of "selfishness", not about rights. So I answered with that in mind.
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Eccentric Opinion
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artu
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
My BS sensor is tingling again
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posted July 22, 2013 11:27 PM |
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Dude, if you look at the whole, that selfishness was related to what you consider the foundation to your rights. At some point, I even told you your examples were NOT about self-preservation but benefit, you didn't object, you even approved. And now you say, rights are about self-preservation. You can't admit when you're wrong, you did the same thing in the free healthcare thread, you made an obvious mistake, and instead of admitting it, you started to stretch your statements with every technicality you can. No one buys that.
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This thread is pages long: 
