But they are though. [breaking the law]
Sure, maybe? Besides the point though, slavery was once codified in law. Breaking the law isn't the issue: The harm is.
HalfSalesman
joined 5 months ago
Sorry for the late response, I only have access to this account at work.
Why is that good?
Its in opposition to bad. Its better as a result.
The claim is that people who experience unhappiness shouldn’t exist.
The claim is that unhappy people are not morally compensated by there being happy people.
Why would I accept a precisionless “unhappy” on these terms?
Because precision measurement of the amount of it doesn't matter. If you know what unhappiness is that's all you need.
They would still exist as something. Children don’t appear ex nihilio.
Like, the atoms that would eventually come to make up their body exist? I legitimately don't understand what you are trying to say. Do you believe in souls or something?
Your argument isn’t for non-existence. It is for non-sentience.
Sure? If you don't exist you aren't sentient, because you need to exist for that.
Tell me that you accept the horrors of forced life as a human over a certain future of non-existence at some point, and I’ll take you at your word.
I actually don't know what would be worse.
Sorry for the late response, I only have access to this account at work.
I hope I haven’t dampened your day. That wasn’t my intent.
No worries, you haven't. A little bit of push back to my ideas is honestly something I find motivating. Usually other people grow tired of it.
You made statements that you didn’t like responsibilities of society
You can’t reasonably expect the benefits of society (readily available warmth and food) without interacting with it though.
My point wasn't that I did not personally like the responsibilities. I shouldn't have used "expect me" because that implies this is more personal than it is (my bad). Its that I resent that they exist at all for anyone. Further, that we live in a society that wants individuals forcefully born within it to sacrifice themselves for said society, and self imposed exile is not an escape from this injustice. My individual choices (lacking the power to change things on a society level) cannot permit a true escape from that.
Now, extrapolating this to an actual actionable belief to today's world would be that I think society should operate as if it serves each individual, not that individuals ought to serve society by default. And we have the technology and logistical capacity to do that.
Okay, fine. There’s no problem with that as an abstract concept as someone trying to apply reason to randomness (or order if you see it that way instead). Is that an actionable ethos though? Does your theory have any practical application in your own life? Does it lead you to action (or inaction)? It certainly doesn’t have to, but I’m not sure how useful it is as a guiding principle of understanding the universe if it doesn’t.
It means that no individual can be held fully responsible for their actions and we should structure society purely around consequences, like harm reduction and maximizing contentment.
The results of this belief in my own personal life, I generally have held that it is irrational to hate someone and for a long while that gave me a lot of patience with people I knew for their transgressions or moral failures.
Admittedly, I've faltered in my patience as of late due to the state of the world. A more emotionally hedonistic attitude has taken hold in me.
I’ll be honest, I have serious concerns for you and what may have happened to you for you to arrive at that conclusion.
Lots of debate and research regarding philosophy, resulting in a lot of critical thinking happened to me. A ruthless desire to get to the truth of reality, no matter how much it hurts.
If I were to guess if anything emotional fueled those desires, it was a desire to feel self worth. I thought I was an idiot for most of my early life and thought everyone else around me had a grip on practical life things. That I would have to fake my way through life and perpetually be in a state of imposter syndrome. Tends to make you prefer spending all your time reading and debating on the internet. (and playing video games)
After a long period of harsh self judgement and self loathing over being stupid, I realized most other people were somehow worse. So now I'm a terrified and alienated egotistical autist. I'd rather be the village idiot that I thought I was.
Sorry for the late response, I only have access to this account at work.
Closer to virtue, but more on the practical end that it’s not a sustainable model. If you recognize terrorism an an effective political tool, where does it end? That’s a rabbit hole that should not be explored IMO, and the only form we should get anywhere close to supporting is a popular revolution, which isn’t terrorism because it’s popular, and even so it should be used incredibly rarely.
Assassination could not also be popular? Given Luigi's popularity I'd argue that we quite literally see that is the case.
A popular revolution would be far more bloody.
Execs that break the law should be jailed, not shot.
"Breaking the law" isn't the issue. Its making decisions for the purposes of self gain that results in social deaths. Under-insured people dying to preventable disease en mass.
That said, sure, if we could jail them that would be preferable to killing them, but I don't think what we do to the CEO is that important in comparison to the reason Brian Thompson was killed.
As in predestination? Or as in, we’re all automatons/there’s nothing “special” about humanity?
We are all biological machines operating in a physical reality. Our will is not free from anything, our will is dictated by that physical reality. Specialness and predestination are both red herrings.
Real change comes from getting the quiet majority on the same page and energized to do something about it. A lone gunman isn’t that.
Except that Brian Thompson's assassination is literally inspiring a large group of people on the internet to gush and post about him and there are top down censorship activities to quell it. Maybe even inspiring enough to start a popular revolution.
All of your premises are detailed extrapolations where immortality goes wrong and doesn't actually argue against the core issue: I simply do not want to die. I never will.
Its not that I want to live because life is wonderful. I want to never have to face the horror of impending future non-existence.
Like, I could go into some of my specific counter points to your premises. The people I care about extends beyond to people I do not know and it extends even to people I do not even like. And that I'd happily accept never having children be born anymore. That obviously the heat death would need to be somehow mitigated, etc. but this is just arguing over pointless detail.
These details don't fundamentally matter. I do not want to die.
How do you reach that conclusion? We’re all just bits of matter, assembled in various shapes and configurations.
Because... inert matter doesn't make decisions...
How are you evaluating happiness absent existence? Hell, how are you evaluating happiness, period?
As long as you accept the premise that some people are happy and some people are unhappy, I don't think measuring it for precision matters.
Are you arguing a given child would be better off inert? Are blindness, deafness, and paralysis virtues?
They wouldn't be a child if they were never born to begin with.
I wasn't taking the "living as a hermit" as a good faith suggestion. We're you actually serious? Because that's "If you are unhappy with human existence, go live a worse life than you are already living." My answer is no.
My issue isn't even just that "We live in a society" (lol), my issue is that society produced my existence and expects me to accept it as my problem.
My issue with free will is that its a gibberish concept that fundamentally makes no sense. Not that its "free will" vs "pre-destination"
My definition of "no free will" is that our "will" is based in physical reality, which is primarily made up of highly predictable phenomena, with a extremely and laughably tiny influence from quantum mechanics, which is metaphorically random dice rolls anyway so it doesn't matter.
A better way to look at my stance though is more to ask yourself, "What is your will actually free from?" If you think there is a metaphysical aspect to our will even then that implies that our will is then determined via the metaphysical and still isn't really free.
That said, it kind of ties together with the whole "can't choose to be born" issue, because its impossible to choose to even exist or in what environmental context and with what physical body you were born into you can't reasonably say we ever make any true decisions. Our existence stems from a domino effect starting at the big bang (or maybe something before that)
I'm introverted, I liked them immediately.
I've not read any of his work but I am aware of him. I suspect that I'd likely agree with him on a lot. But I've also read that reading his work would probably make me even more depressed about being born.
Well, I should have said this earlier.
Another complicating factor is that, I do not believe in free will.
So even though that technically means I can reject your choice based morality as well. I'll concede that it also contradicts my negative emotional feelings towards all parents and my feelings of injustice stemming from natalism and pro-birth being rational. Since... you know, they can't exactly meaningfully choose to be parents because choice is an illusion.
I'm still angry and depressed though.
If we're talking about the chemistry of the brain, you also need to keep in mind the chemistry of unhappiness and pain. Cortisol, GABA, substance P, and CGRP. Technically, dopamine is not strictly a "happiness" chemical. It is also used for pain signals.
So non-existence would also remove those, thus reducing unhappiness.
I never brought up liberation. Further, I do not believe in free will.
This is stepping into virtue ethics, and virtue ethics are nonsense. What you think of my personal moral worth isn't what I'm interested in discussing.