Global warming and chaos
I am wondering how the discussion would go if we thought the Creator manifested our reality by giving chaos order and that human activity can either maintain that order or destroy it? What if we recognized chaos as the evil that threatens us and felt responsible for causing that chaos and also for restoring order?
Zoroastrianism may be the first ecological religion, but that religion is not the only belief system to think the purpose of humans is to help the river stay in its banks (Sumerian). Native Americans also sort to live in harmony with nature.
I think Zeus's concern, that with the technology of fire we would discover all technologies and then rival with the gods, forgetting the wisdom of the gods and thinking ourselves the ultimate power and destroying nature to satisfy ourselves, was a justified concern. We have confused technology with science and now have technological smarts but not wisdom.
Zoroastrianism may be the first ecological religion, but that religion is not the only belief system to think the purpose of humans is to help the river stay in its banks (Sumerian). Native Americans also sort to live in harmony with nature.
I think Zeus's concern, that with the technology of fire we would discover all technologies and then rival with the gods, forgetting the wisdom of the gods and thinking ourselves the ultimate power and destroying nature to satisfy ourselves, was a justified concern. We have confused technology with science and now have technological smarts but not wisdom.
Comments (408)
Yes, but no one's going to give up the technology once they have it. You can prevent future humans from living through what you are describing though. Simply don't procreate them. Easier thing to give up and pretty darn easy these days. Procreation for most (especially who have the most technology and fund it) can be prevented.
Isn't the evil exactly the opposite? Isn't it the order imposed on nature by human activity that threatens the creation of our Creator, praise His Name! Isn't the natural order in danger by the efforts of modern-day men (women are in the minority, so is my impression) to control nature and recreate it to fit our knowledge about it and make it as predictable as possible? Isn't this the cause for chaos in the natural order? If we would recognize that artificial order is the cause of the chaos in nature, or reduction of natural order at least, shouldn't we blame Muses? Was Muses rejected by Zeus, after which she took revenge by imposing her will on humanity? Can we undo her influence?
However, there is a flip side. Scientists agree that entropy continually grows in the universe over time. How can order emerge in a universe that becomes more chaotic every moment? In the book A Brief History of Time, Stephen Hawking explains that maintaining order over time requires a lot of energy by itself. Energy transforms into heat, thus making the universe more chaotic when order emerges. This is one of the reasons that we link technology with global warming.
In other words, more order causes even more chaos.
[quote=Genesis 3:11, NKJ]And He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?” ...[/quote]
Then "The Lord" compounded our precocious folly by condemning us to mortal lives that are "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" by barring our way from the "Tree of Life" and thereby ensuring we could not live long enough to attain the wisdom required by "forbidden" knowledge. Think of how much wiser it would have been to have barred "Adam & Eve" from the "Tree of Knowledge" instead. Our "Fall" (foolishness) is/was imago dei, no?
What you describe is I think currently being developed. It has always been there in Western thought actually but it has not always been dominant. Schwarz and Thompson, two economists and sociologists define it as an 'egalitarian perspective', Sociologist Aaron Wildavsky defines it as a perspective of harmony. Traditional enlightnement values, values we still live with today proritize control of nature through technological means and progress through economic an cultural development.
The harmony perspective on the other hand is the one embraced by ecology. The sociologist and ecologist Anna Bramwell calls much of ecological reasoning and environmentalism 'manichean', presenting a battle between good nature and evil techno-science. Much of philosophy now is busy transllating philosophical ideas to the realm of the environment and to our relationship between man and nature. Martin Heidegger's essay on technology is an early example. Then came Hans Jonas 'The principle of responsibility'.
You might want to delve in ecological thought for answers to your question. I do think currently that we gradually see a shift in perspective, from individualist to egalitarian. However, do not have many illusions about this shift, like every revolution there will be a lot of struggle. Ecology is not necessary friendly to your enlightenment values and your love for democracy.
If you speak of chaotic systems, then chaotic theory searches for underlying patterns and deterministic formulae that depend upon initial conditions in a very sensitive manner, so that iteration leads to what is generally thought of as chaos. Are you saying the Creator made all chaos deterministic at the beginning of time?
To destroy that order would mean human activity could somehow alter these initial conditions, traveling back in time.
In general meteorology is far too complicated to involve such deterministic systems. Ecosystems lie on what is referred as the "edge of chaos".
I suspect you meant to trigger dialogue in a much less sophisticated scenario. Initial conditions being in play at the present time, such as global temperatures rising at a rate determined by conditions prevailing minus humankind, then humans messing that up with fossil fuels.
There's a paradox in there. There was this member who started a thread on, if I recall correctly, how a small insect like a mosquito could be such a big threat. Obviously, the member is getting mixed up between size (initial conditions) and impact (final outcome).
A difference of 0.0000018 (in initial conditions) is actually not small (the final outcomes vary greatly). It depends on where your focus is. Chaos theory is BS! :grin:
I am not sure if this relates to your topic but some people believe that the current climate change and some other problems are the vengeance of God. The Old Testament shows that God has a wrathful anger as well as having the loving and forgiving aspects represented by the figure of Jesus.
I suppose Prometheus gave man fire to watch the world burn, but prefer to think it was because he saw that man was cold.
You say that he wanted the fireplace to keep every home warm. That's very nice.
I don't have a family. I used to think he stole the fire to show the gods who really was the boss. The little, weak, fragile man, a mere mortal, but cunning as hell and brazen as a house-fly.
Now that I have love in my life, I think he stole the fire to keep his love in comfort -- no effort spared.
If only I could learn to do the same... All in due time I guess. Or hope so, anyway.
If we don't want birds to fall from the sky, seas to devour, superstorms to rage, sweet water to taste bitter, unworldly screaming to be heard from within, the last trees to burn, the dark to enter daylight, and the light to ruin the night, the pace must be lowered this very moment. It will be too late tomorrow. Zeus' creation from Kaos will return to the Kaos it came from prematurely. Zeus won't give a damn. He will only laugh he created such stupidity and try again.
Yes, but it's hard to stop the doomsday glacier from melting in the next few years and raising the sea level ten feet, which amount surprised me. A Yellowstone eruption is 30,000 years overdue, also hard to stop. Locally, in New York, we had a second Indian summer in December.
Another problem with the 'God' supposition is that, say, He could stop the virus, extinctions, and so forth, but He doesn't and never did; so, this isn't really a "hands off' approach absolving Him, but an intention of letting disasters happen, and thus responsible for them. With a friend like 'God', one doesn't need enemies.
Will the sea rise 10 feet because of that glacier (on antarctica, I guess?). I heard it is "only" 65 cm. We can calculate it!
Courage, Brother. Or Sister. Or someone on any point on the spectrum.
Remember three things:
The student appears when the teacher is ready.
Love is not learned, but a mental state based mainly on illusions and wishful thinking.
True love presents when the wishes and illusions fit truly or by imagination another person in one's life to an acceptable degree and vice versa.
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This was a rather unromantic lesson on the science of romance. Remember: romance, i.e. love, is not a science, but an art, an intuitive, emotional and social process.
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Sorry about pontificating and over-pontificating. YOU STARTED IT!!! / :-) and I am very glad you did.
I so totally misunderstood you when I formulated my sermon.
Could it be, that your wish is not to find love, but to turn to be a giver, provider and protector?
Am not saying anything more until I get confirmation on this latter set of assumptions. I don't want to over analyze your situation again, for the second time, in a vein that needs not at all to be explained.
Quite possibly. I prefer interesting quasi-symmetric patterns emerging from dynamical systems.
Quoting Raymond
Truly Biblical! I'm speechless. :scream:
One thing's for sure, the brains of humanity (mathematicians) equate complex deterministic systems with chaos. They shouldn't do that, it misleads lay folk like us. Edward Lorenz drank one too many cupsa coffee that morning when he named this subfield of math.
Can't blame mathematicians though. Who doesn't like a catchy name for your line of work? Is it like this all the time and everywhere? All sizzle, no steak!?
Yes! Well, more precisely, you were correct on both terms. I wish I could learn how to love, so I could be all these things.
Oh dear. Did anybody else notice how the descriptions of environmental degradation mirror the descriptions of the biblical plagues from the deluge, to the fall of Sodom to the apocalypse? If only we turn away and repent... there will need to be a vanguard of the truthful, the spirited to guide us from our wicked ways and we might still be spared. This type of environmentalism is modern day soteriology.
I think people think that fear has a get-your-but-in-gear effect, but really for me it just makes me paralyzed. I need some positivity if i'm ever gonna do anything,
Well, what kind of positivity do you need? I think the ecological shift brings great possibilities and threats. One of the questions I am grappling with is the question whether ecological thinking can provide new ideals that can give us a unified sense of purpose. To me ecology is metaphysics, 'deus sive natura', but not thought from God as the main point of departure, but nature, natura sive deus. Ecological awareness may well lead to a new kind of relationship between man and his surroundings, much like Athena describes in the OP and present in the thought of indigenous peoples. They are all the rage nowadays in academia. So it might well lead to a more kind world, hopefully.
What I am suspicious of is using the old Crhistian or Manichean tropes to think of this relations. It is all fire and brimstone, war, and if we are lucky, mercy by a force which we cannot tame. These types of thought are cause of all this mishap, not the answer I think.
Because the fact is many a civilization has collapsed before us. Of course it doesn't look like much to us because over the course of a few thousand years it does look like humanity is doing perfectly fine - when in reality, every lifetime somewhere there is a society on the brink of collapse.
And often the reasons for those falls of empires are the same. There is the inevitable, gods wrath in the form of natural catastrophes. But then there is also man, giving in to sins. The seven deadly sins as a popculture trope might be overused - but I think they very well capture the driving forces that cause problems in a society. If enough people give into living their life like that, as virtue gets lost, it encourages more people towards a selfish nature. The outcome likely is as inevitable as the natural catastrophe: Without coorperation, a society of many can not operate and will fail.
The "exciting" thing about our current "empire" is that it's never been this big before. It spans all over the world, entailing billions of people more or less participating in it. It might seem almost too big to fail - but in how interdependent and connected it all is our scientific society, like the Tower of Babel, might collapse too, as we reach for the heights of god.
Quoting Tobias
I'm more after a humanistic positivity, something that stems from ourselves, something we can relate to. Kind of like an atheist dream: to live efficiently and well, even if there is no purpose.
Yes, but is that not what environmentalism might offer? If you are after a rejuvenation of the enlightenment spirit of progres, then I think you are fighting the rear guard battle as we say in the Netherlands. It is twilight of the enlightened idols my friend.
I guess it could.
I know that the western train should slow down instead of race up, productivity shrink instead of inflate, energy be clean instead of smelly and portable instead of static, and products be renewable instead of disposable if we want Nature to survive. If we want future people to live.
Let's hope our Lord , Savior, and Great Redeemer Zeus, will award the chosen ones and give them a place in the paradise to come.
We could also fall prey to the current mode of living, and watch paradise fall apart while replacing it by an inflationary expanding artificial.Enjoy the artificial fruits growing on the tress of science, growing up high to the sky. Sucking Gaia empty, transforming Her life energy in artificially intelligent matter systems, programmed on mad rate and rythm. Propagating humanity within linear bounds and confines, so it becomes predictable and controllable.
I don't say that the creation is holy, actually. I think Zeus doesn't give a damn. He might restore paradise, he might not. If you mean by paradise nature as it was before unnatural intervention. Still, I think it's a good way to teach people at least some respect for nature, if not by endless admiration, then by pointing out that life won't be possible anymore soon if the modern way is continued.
Which might not be a catastrophe per se but still... And who knows? Maybe Zeus actually punishes people disturbing nature by the endless desire for inflation. Though it's probably me punishing. The biblical image of Sodom and Gammora comes close. It's not God destroying and the "sin" is not sexual. Nature will just be fucked up by the "sin" of the western way. It's of course no sin, but just one way amongst many, Though the many become less and less, and the one more one than ever. Let's hope the best! But if I look realistically, it's depressing. While it's so easy to give all a future of roses and sunshine.
And now, dear brothers and sisters, let's hold hands and prey... Oh heavenly Father, Great Creator of Being...
Try this on for size: Catastrophe theory
I had a math friend, a fellow climber in fact, who worked with Thom. This topic made a stir when it first came out. Not so much now. I recently discovered there are 22,705 math articles on Wikipedia. Catastrophe theory ranks mid-importance and has a daily average of 4 views. My math page is low importance and has 16 views a day. Trivia.
Quoting Raymond
Maybe you should skip Bible Study Group next week. Take a breather. :roll:
Catastrophe theory makes it perfectly clear: the Heavenly Holiness should be worshipped with every divinely created bone in our submissive and humble bodies. If not,
He will, without remorse, and firmly, strictly, and justified, bestow humanity with his Ivory Bashing, and catastrophe will descend from His untouchable and unshakeable Sacred Realm, cleansing the Earth from a God-forgotten species, unwillingly to bath in His immaculate light and conform to His unquestionable Will. Brothers and sisters, let's hold hands and prey together. Let's ask the Great Annointed to release us from our pagan ways, and to restore his blissful order before too long. Oh unparalelled Being, our blessed King and Savior! Bless Thou Glorious name, leading us to Ultimate Victory. :wink:
Quoting Tobias
That's exactly what is going on already. The spirited being the advocates of the one and only way and their representatives in current institutes of power, law-making, and education. Excluding other ways, in spirit and in practice. It's not wrong to advocate for the one and only way, but imposing it by law, while maybe not in spirit (though from young age we are already subject to it), while excluding the others is no less than..., well, I will not use the word. The scientific way is not good or bad as it is. I love science! It seems to me that its consequences are pretty clear too. And because it's one way amongst many (though not many left), we can better learn from each other in a peaceful state of coexistence, for who has the ultimate measure of truth?
It appears you are very well-read and that is honorable. However, I must address what looks to me as an attack on technology and democracy.
Thomas Jefferson is one of my favorite authors. It is from him and classical philosophy that we learn the pursuit of happiness means lifelong learning and mass education is the only way to protect our democracy and liberty. However, that needs to include a classical or liberal education, math (to learn logical thinking skills), and science. We replaced that education with the German model of education for technology and now have what we defended our democracy against. We are as Germany was when Hitler took power because that is what that education for technology manifest. This is a disaster!
"Good education is essential for every human being. Educated people have a better understanding of the world, and their perspective about different things is better and more informed." Jefferson
"Educate and inform the whole mass of the people… They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty." Jefferson
"I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power." Jefferson
"Enlighten the people, generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like spirits at the dawn of day." Jefferson
There is no way we could keep the mass of humanity alive, that fills the earth today, without technology. We would not have growing populations of long-lived people without technology. We could not have the economies that enable us to provide a decent standard of living for so many people without technology.
However, technology is not science, and technology without wisdom can destroy life on this planet.
We need more than education for technology. We need a classical/liberal education as well so we have the wisdom to use our technology well. If we can achieve this before it is too late is questionable. This is going to be a tight horse race and either we will enter a New Age, a time of high tech and peace, and the end of tyranny, or we won't. It depends on how well the masses are educated. With the media we have today, there is no excuse for doing as poorly as we have done.
Good jokes ongoing.
I understand that and that superstition has led to a very bad situation. The believers and nonbelievers are in a serious conflict. I have found public broadcasting to be very informative and take hope in that.
That is a hope science wins out against superstition.
I am also aware of the ancient prediction that sooner or later there will be more life on earth than the earth can support. I do not believe predictions of doom are just superstition but also the result of observation and logic. I feel so passionate about this because if we believe what is happening is the result of human choices, we can take steps to manage the problem. If we think what is happening is all about a God, we are powerless to make necessary changes. Just as Christians made themselves powerless against Genghis Khan when they believed God sent Genghis Khan to punish them. At this time in history, such superstition should no longer be such a big problem!
Japan is offering us an interesting alternative as it is blending technology with human needs. They are evolving the ability to be very productive with fewer humans. Not only more produtive but also they are building our humanness into that technology. Our technological society needs to increase its human sensitivities.
The New Age holds so much promise and this is such an exciting time. There is a chance of a new enlightenment that will be manifest in consciousness so different from the past, the people of the future will not be able to relate to the primitive lives we have had, of humans exploiting humans, other animals, and the planet with no reverence for our planet and other life forms. We need a different value system and some people know that. :grin:
Don't let the big numbers (2022) fool you. This is still the Dark Age: still the Age of Christs and Kings.
The Enlightenment's down-trickle's discouragingly drip-drip.
Way above my pay grade, jgill.
Catastrophe theory, from what I could grasp from the Wikipedia entry, is facing strong opposition from some quarters regarding its real-world application. Why is that? I thought mathematicians were very keen to find some practical use for their theories. Envy? Are the detractors of Catastrophe theory just being jealous jerks?
Most are not concerned about this, being immersed in their explorations of the subject. Staggering isn't it? Over 20K math topics on Wiki.
This is dialogue right out of the wonderful 1936 film Things to Come
:ok: It's amazing how vast math is; the same goes for other disciplines too I suppose. There's absolutely no hope for a generalist these days. G'day.
It is a funny thing. Athena is also my favorite Greek goddess and if I will ever have a daughter I will lobby to give her the name Athena. I do see the value in a good classical education which I too have enjoyed. Therefore, I am not attacking democracy or enlightenment values. I look at these things from a sociological perspective, which type of society do I see emerging and what lines of argument do I see 'winning' in the argumentative arena. In your OP you called for a more ecological worldview, at least it seemed to me and you used arguments which you seemed to hint at argument which you also see (rather crude) environmentalists make. "Our technology is upsetting the natural balance of life and in order to avert destruction we have to use technology differently, namely in the service of the environment and restore the balance with nature that was present in the past". I do not know if you were going along that path, but it seemed like it.
You do argue in a similar vein as they do. They of course have the best intentions with this world, as you undoubtedly also do. The problem is that they often use terms that remain vague or obscure. For instance 'wisdom'. sure, we need wisdom, what can be wrong with that? But what does it mean in this context? You say science is not technology, but they are often intertwined. The vaccine against corona is a cooperation between the science of biology and the technology to use this science in an applied way. One is not seperable from the other. Education is another term you keep vague. Yes, a liberal education, but what will be in it? Will we tell the tale of how we managed to increase longevity eradicate hunger and poverty from large sections of the world, or will we tell the tael of ecological degradation, nuclear warheads and the eradication of cultures and biodiversity?
My warning to you is, maybe you cannot have your cake and eat it too. You want democracy and humanist values and you complain that we have now 'become like Hitler Germany', but especially the manichean battle against chaos you mention was a trope for Hitler Germany. The relationship between National socialist thought and green thought is far from clear. You equate national socialism with blind technology, but especially that is what a thinker like Martin Heidegger characerized the US in the 1930s of. In Hitler Germany he saw a 'third way', a rejuvenation, against technology! If anything Hitler Germany was not anti-Green. So the problem is, even though you want the good for the world and you think your points are helping it come about, you might end up with something that is not so amenable to democracy and enlightenment at all.
Over 24K physics articles on Wikipedia. :gasp:
The tip of the iceberg. A small portion of a much larger corpus of knowledge.
When the priority of US education was education for good citizenship, we used the Conceptual method. That is teaching increasingly complex concepts. Under this system, there are only a few right or wrong answers. Rather than knowing the right answer, there are only are different points of view. This leads to overall uncertainty and some find a problem with that. I see that as the solution to our worst problems. Those who think can know the will of God and absolute truth, are absolutely dangerous and this is our greatest international and national problem today! Good logic acknowledges we do know everything and should always move forward with a little dought in what we think we know.
Education for technology destroyed a much wiser system of education and lead the young to believe that with technology and the right education for technology they can be superior to their elders, and superior to people in other nations, and superior to all those who do not have their education. We have promoted ideas of superiority in obvious ways, such as the notion that going to the "right colleges" makes people superior to those who just went to a community or a state college. Or those who have A grades are superior to those who have C grades. Or those who believe this and not that, are superior. Perhaps if we continue to discuss this I can think of betters words for explaining what has gone terribly wrong! It is not just that what we know that is important but also how we learn to think.
We replaced the Conceptual method with the Behaviorist method and the Behaviorist method is also used for teaching dogs. The Behaviorist method goes with "No Child Left Behind" and core education and teaching to prepare children how to answer correctly on tests. :broken: That is not education for wisdom nor is it education for democracy. I don't know if my words are explaining the importance of the difference? What we have is what Hitler had when he came to power and this is not the democracy we defended in two world wars. Washington was a very humble man who doubted his wisdom. Now we seem to demand our presidents be egomaniacs who throw their weight around and act tough and aren't afraid to make demands of leaders of other countries. That is not democracy but the path to war. I am extremely disappointed with Biden and his get-tough talks that attack the dignity of national leaders. Having an exclusive meeting for democratic leaders and excluding China or any other country is not how democracy works!
:gasp: And maybe we should burn "those people" who reject God, out of town so God will stop being angry with us? Or maybe we should be walking from town to town whipping ourselves to appease the God that is punishing us with a deadly disease?
I think there is only one way nature can be saved. To stop the economic machinery that spews out disposables with an inflationary rate, recreates nature to fit this goal, educates the masses on global scale to participate on the base of knowledge of nature from which they are further removed than ever before, turns thought into a logical process to come up with new ideas for sustaining and enlarging, automating, or improving the machinery and creation of new products on the base of an artificial knowledge, forces the non-complying to comply by technological force, and controls with a mindfucking omnipresence and potency. The face of the Earth is restructured, holes are dug, underneath the surface nature is sucked empty, or stuffed with poison which can't be puffed into the air. The growth of the machine is called progress and temporary stagnation recess, which only serves as a break for the reigning powers, in which they consolidate and plan for future development.
The world is artificially and with a false notion of self importance divided in a first, a second, and a third world, while this so-called first world arrived on stage last and whiped out worlds that existed long before to give a false impression and even the road for expansion, by means of the technology so worshipped. And now this third world are denigratingly called the developing world, while they are in a more miserable state then ever and suffer the most from the chaos in nature that only increases the longer we impose our crazy new order, the second law of thermodynamics backing me up here.
Great value is assigned to possessing the cleverness to participate in the system, and much time is spent to make propagate the importance of knowledge and technology,
creating a longing for it, acquiring it, and using it to... should I go on?
This is of course a pretty depressing and black vision. But it's a realistic one. There is no god battering the eaarth with his wrath, it's simply a natural fact that if we impose an artificial technological order on nature, the natural order will get fucked up and natural chaos will replace it. The image of a God unleashing chaos on nature is a powerful one. No doubt there is a god, or more, and created the universe, and their creation is a wonderful one, but maybe the destruction of their creation is of no importance for them, and is maybe even what they are waiting for. Who knows. Keeping nature in order is in our own interest and of course in the interest of all other creatures created by the Holy Creator, to who we can only bow in great awe and fortunate obedience! Praise His Name! So brothers and sisters, let's pray, to indulge in the heavenly wonders... well... fuck that...
So, why not slowing down? Why not look at knowledge as an art, with state of the art technology? Why not installing solar panels on every roof, intensify the search for managable fusion, use hydrogen tomorrow, and free people from the system? Best would be if we all just are put to sleep for a 1000 years and give nature a breather so we can be kissed awake and finally feel home in a world from which we are estranged and only the possessing class seems to feel well and project their silly ways into the world?
Imagine if all those vehicles stranded on I95 for 24 hours in snow and ice had been electric.
What I read said within 30 years 50% of the carbon dioxide would be removed from the atmosphere. I think that would stabilize things. However, we need to reduce the number of people on the planet if we are to live in harmony with nature. I think we need to figure out the natural limits for every city, By that, I mean without importing anything, including water, how many people could live off the land? Then make it a goal to maintain a limited population that can live in harmony with the land. This would require adopting an aboriginal reverence for the land like a religion with a crazy notion that violating the laws of nature will have bad consequences. Which in turn requires science to understand the laws of nature and how to live with them.
No God can save the planet, only humans can stop the destruction. It is about morals and morals mean knowing the laws of nature and good manners. Those two things would resolve many problems.
How would that make a difference?
Dunno. Only by a strict following of His Final, Undubitable and Infallible Word, humanity can be saved from eternal damnation and premature extermination.
Ah yes, The One Eternal, that Fortuitous Indolent Inert Being, praise His Name until the Day of Doom, who created the Sacred Universe by a Holy Ejaculation of The Word. Logos, He spoke.
We can only find True Joy in life by listening with our full religious being to His Wondrous and Wide Word. And spreading it into every earthly soul, thereby acknowledging the submissive and bowing part we have to play in His Glorious Creation, that Magnificent Manor, in which we can receive a holy washing from our inborn sins only by conversion from the cursed ways to the Path of True Heavenly Enlightenment.
Genuine Joy can only be felt by receiving His True Ejaculate and accepting it voluntarily. If not voluntarily accepted, the wrath of the Truly Righteous Beloved will be legitimate, righteous, and justified, and directed towards those who refuse to conform to the wisely revised edition of His Blissful Word, flowing from His Crystal Sparkling Spring.
A stoning will descend from the celestial sphere, thereby cleansing the Earth from the disturbing wicked elements that stubbornly resist to comply and be recipient to the Golden Ejaculation emanating from His Infinite Erectedness like a brightly colored fountain. The idle, sanctimonious, and pharisaic erections, and the false ejaculates spat out off it, can only be acted against by the incandescent Ejaculate of the immense Erected, and it will strike the ephemeral with unprecedented force to restore the eudomoniatic state of Divine Dedication and Total Obedience.
Only by strictly attending to the confines of the Honest and Pure Trail of the Word spoken by the Incendiary Erect Being, one can hope to avoid the amnesiac beating of His Stern Stick.
So brothers and sisters, let's pray, and show the Greatest and Most Appreciated that we are a faithful image of the Holy Erection that only speak out the True Logos of the Pure Ejaculate. Let's turn our sinful heads away from the raped ramifications tentatively lurking in the dark, luring us invitingly to step in the nefarious and ill traps of non-belief, causing the nasty and mucky ways of our pitiful fellow men, who can only be true fellow men if the Holy Ejaculate from the Heavenly Erected is injected by fierce force and severe determination.
Let's pray that the megalomanic erections our fellow men show in their ruthless plays for merciless domination, will be righteously unearthed and sent to eternal oblivion. Let's send the heavenly armies to those who erect blindly, let's show them no remorse.
The earthly erections should be subjugated to the Gigantic and Sublime Erection of the Grand Erected. Only by receiving the Holy Ejaculate salvation can be expected.
Let's pray, brothers and sisters. Let's pray that the bombastic and pompous ejaculations of the crooked deviant will be counteracted by Consecrated Ejaculate. Only by acknowledging (the) Great Erect, (the) Great Ejaculate can be received and turn the deviant into compliant. Only by complying to the One and True Erect and by receiving the Undubitable and Immaculate Ejaculate, salvation can be expected.
So, brothers and sisters in the Proper Ejaculate, children of the Proper Erection, what is the proper reason for our prayers, orisons, and invocations? The proper reason petitioning the Undeniable Anointed lies in amoral self-righteous erect used by fellow men to spawn amoral sinful ejaculate. The Essential and Eternal Erect and the Eponymous Ejaculate can't be turned against though!!! If the Eternal Erect and Ejaculate are challenged, ignored, ridiculed, or suppressed, the deviant elements should not be surprised if proper action followed their diversion from the Proper Erect and Proper Ejaculate. If the ignorant deviant will not comply voluntarily to the Untouchable, Mercurial Erect and Ejaculate, no merci should be expected when their false erects and wickedly ejected ejaculates are methodologically cut out, including all abject roots.
The ignorant deviant should be educated properly and restructured. The True Errect and Ejaculate should be imposed gently, whilst force should be applied if being gentle doesn't suffice. Praying might help to eradicate the roots. It establishes a community, which might be able to get rid of unwanted ejaculations or erections. The words transpire to our Beloved Lord and the Shining Beacon of Humanity will forcefully push down the erects of the deviant and reduce ignorant and contemptuous ejaculate.
Let's pray, brothers and sisters. Let's ask the Miraculous, Statuous,. and Astute Director to redirect the deviant who lost track of the Great and Pure Erect. Let's ask the Firm Founder to redirect the deviant who falsely ejaculates from a deviant erect, opposing the Essence of the Pinciple of Ejaculation.
If we do not comply to the Great Mysterious Pristine and continue to erect and ejaculate inflationary, the Great Admired Regulator will aim His Divine Ejaculation towards Earth and the sky will be filled with lightning and thunder, the Great Diluve will flood our damned erections, and our dirty ejaculates will be whiped away consistently and efficiently. Then it will be silent and on the remnants of the corrupted ejaculate the Eternal Erect and Immaculate Ejaculate will install themselves again, never to be taken down again.
To be read firmly, strictly, eloquently. Self-assured and exalted, implying moral superiority. Charismatic like our friend JC.
Moral means knowing the laws of Nature? Isn't knowing these laws the cause of the chaos we increasingly observe in Nature?
I know what you mean, but if we don't want to find out how Nature behaves at all levels, in every direction, and at every height and depth, wouldn't that be better for Nature? We are taught from small age that acquiring knowledge is of uttermost importance. The children are treated as ignorant to be filled with a kind of knowledge only possessed by the ruling power, which makes the claim of possessing objective knowledge to be obtained by strict methods. The methods as well as the value judgement of the importance of the subject matter is subjective though, but in modern society it's made the so-called objective norm, while this so-called objectivity is just a label to cover the subjective essence, thereby lending it a justified power position, like God was once used to justify claims on power.
I like the idea of driving an electric car. As a high school student in the early 1950s I would take the electric buses in Atlanta downtown frequently. But an accident involving electric vehicles is scary. All that electrical energy could fry you to a crisp. Gasoline is dangerous, too, but it's not "alive" like electricity.
But imagine all those cars, buses and trucks running out of power in dire conditions, and then efforts to charge them all to get started again. Whereas along comes a truck squirting a couple of gallons of gas into tanks as it slowly passes by.
However, technology will improve for E-vehicles.
:up: :clap:
I don’t think ineffably meaningful experiences on its own means anything. It’s not an entity onto itself. If no human exists, there is no person that exists that is missing out on anything, including meaning. It would only be a parent projecting their misplaced sadness on a thing that doesn’t exist.
Are you serious or being facetious? Are you choosing religion over science?
Yes, moral is knowing the laws of nature and good manners, and that concept goes with democracy and liberty.
"Isn't knowing these laws the cause of the chaos we increasingly observe in Nature?"
I can understand how someone would think that, but I believe in every case the chaos is the result of not knowing enough. There is no way we could have known enough because we did not have the tools essential to learning what know today. For example, we could not know of bacteria and viruses until we had microscopes. We could not know of the atmosphere before we had the technology essential to measuring what is far above us. We learned a lot by studying other planets and that requires getting to them. We didn't know we polluting rivers and oceans would become a problem until it was, and in some cases, with better knowledge, we have been able to reverse the damage and this is why it is essential we pay attention to science, so we can reverse the damage.
With the tools and knowledge we have today, we can learn far, far more than humanity could have known before. And be clear about this, without the knowledge and technology we have today, our life expectancy would be 45 years and many children would die before they could reproduce. We could not feed the world if we knew only what we knew 100 years ago. Fear of a god, prayers, and burning candles never did as much to end evil as science and technology has done.
Unfortunately, no holy book prepared us for science, and overcoming real evils and religions have become a huge barrier to doing better than infecting people with a virus because we ignore science, and keeps us contributing to global warming because we ignore science. Religion is promoting ignorance and this is a terrible thing.
"The children are treated as ignorant to be filled with a kind of knowledge only possessed by the ruling power,"
That was not so 100 years ago because no one knew enough to do that. The best we could do is prepare the young for independent thinking and lifelong learning. People were encouraged to use local libraries and buy books such as "Science of Citizens". I think a big problem was developed in 1958 when President Eisenhower asked Congress to pass the National Defense Education Act. That act changed everything. It was supposed to end in 4 years but never ended. We replaced liberal education that taught independent thinking, with education for technology and groupthink. We are no longer aware of what science has to do with democracy, morals, and liberty, and we have technology confused with science.
"while this so-called objectivity is just a label to cover the subjective essence, thereby lending it a justified power position, like God was once used to justify claims on power."
You said that very, very well. That is exactly what is wrong with the direction education took in 1958. I could not say that better than you have. Thank you. I sincerely mean that. What you said is why I keep arguing we are as Germany was when Hitler came to power because this is what we educated for. This is why President Eisenhower in his farewell address, warned us of the Military-Industrial Complex that he put in place and the danger of relying too much on experts.
The suffering also doesn't mean anything on its own. However, it does have significance for those who exist, just as the positives do. If nobody exists, there isn't anybody in the void who benefits from the absence of harms. If the lack of suffering would be good, I believe that the presence of happiness is also better (in an abstract sense, of course).
What a wake-up call! That is a very good objection to electric cars. We had an electric car blow-up stuff where the accident happened and I think we all have novocaine in our brains, including me, What happened was alarming but I don't think any of us thought it through as well as you have. We do not want pieces of the battery crashing into our living rooms!!! That happened and the people who lived in the house are lucky to be alive.
As for the cars stuck on the freeway, no one trapped in snow should keep the car running. Those folks were lucky because the snow was not falling a building up around their cars. North of us, people caught in a snowstorm were asphyxiated as the snow built up around the cars and the cars were filled with exhaust fumes.
What you said about having to recharge all those cars if they were electric, is also alarming! For sure we need to rethink how to manage such situations.
:lol: Nicely said.
I do not agree with that statement. The more we know, the more we can learn and the amount we have learned in the last century is far greater than we learned up to the 21 century. Today it is not a drip-drip but a flood of information and people, in general, can not keep up with it.
As I see the problem today, our demands and expectations are completely unreasonable. It takes much more to satisfy people today than it did before the 21 century. The Enlightenment was acceptance of what science could do for us and what we have achieved is far beyond what anyone imagined at the time of the enlightenment.
You're too generous with this pronoun. The bulk of us have learned little. If you need evidence relocate to rural America for a spell.
The Enlightenment exists in the hearts and minds of a tiny minority. The media obscure this by presenting a vision of the universal elite.
I do not mind continuing this discussion at all. after all I am in education, though in the Netherlands, not in the US. We have no private schools (yet) for instance, but only community or state education. We do not have Ivy league colleges but nearly all our state universitties are in the top 100 world wide. I am not saying that to brag or anything but display that our system is still much more egalitarian.
I have my own ideas of how the grading system works, what education does, and it is not all positive or a success story. I am a keen reader of Michel Foucault. I do wonder where you got the distinction between the US and 'Hitler's' system of education from. never heard this comparison and it seems way too unnuanced for me. So if you could point out to me where you got these ideas from I would sincerely appreciate it.
I also think you should be careful mixing subjects. International relations is something different from the education system. All kinds of moves are played in the international arena and no, that arena is not democratic. the Westphalian order sees states as sovereign, not subject to some higher democratic body. Focus your ideas and take one step at the time. I sound overly school master like maybe. but focus and you will be able to win your battles.
"Know your enemy and know yourself and you will be victorious in every battle, know neither the enemy nor yourself and you will succumb in every battle "Sun Tzu, the art of war, paraphrased. A Goddess of strategy needs to learn these things.
This is linguistic nonsense to get around this simple fact:
If no one exists, no one suffers. Put a value on that of what you want (good, bad, neutral). If someone exists, someone suffers. The value part comes in when you as the parent/already existing person processes this and makes an action or inaction from it. So the parent decides that no one will suffer when they could have. My point is, this inaction (to not procreate), has no collateral damage to an actual person (as they are not born). However, an action (procreating) will create collateral damage, as there will actually be a person that suffers, whatever other good that comes from it. I think the moral choice is to prevent that suffering, and am pointing out that there is no collateral damage either.
The basis for this is basically that it is never good to cause unnecessary suffering (in the first place) that is not trivial and inescapable unless extreme measures are taken (like starvation or suicide). It puts people in a bind of comply or die as well (if you don't like the "rules of the life game" you must "deal with it and go fuck yourself if you don't like it"..aka commit suicide).
On the flipside, it is not morally obligatory to create happiness de novo (ex nihilo) for someone else, especially since no one exists already to need happiness in the first place and that happiness comes with collateral damage of suffering.
Still, I am sorry if my comments came off as being callous towards the reality of suffering. As someone who has struggled with illnesses for much of my younger years, I am aware of the fact that it is a grim reality that isn't addressed properly, particularly in a self-centred society. I advocate for a liberal RTD (along with transhumanism) because I do want the harms to end, and I am hopeful that, provided we work together, we can eliminate most forms of extreme suffering.
Also, I don't think that creating valuable lives has much to do with causing harm. It's certainly good to have good experiences (even if nobody is capable of asking for them before existing), just as you might believe that it's good to eliminate the possibility of harms despite the fact that nobody is hankering for the absence of the negatives before coming into existence. I don't think that the harms is good, and I certainly hope that we had better options for people to find a graceful exit. Nevertheless, I don't think that one should decide to arbitrarily impose a pessimistic view that leads to the cessation of all that matters. Love, beauty, and the pursuit of knowledge matter to a lot of people—definitely a lot more than a "game", and it isn't fair to pull the plug on the basis of a perspective that's not true for billions of people, many of whom deeply value their lives in spite of the existence of harms. "Oh yeah, I can tell that you have deluded yourself into loving your life even though you've suffered a lot, but I don't think that your life needs to be created (if it didn't exist), so it's still acceptable if you didn't exist at all (yet it's obligatory to prevent negatives that don't lead to a tangible better outcome for an actual person, which means the "good" coming from that prevention is an abstract one). If it's obligatory to prevent harms that nobody was desperate to avoid in the void, I believe that it is also necessary to ensure that the good in the world is conserved. Arbitrary double standards, I am afraid, cannot change this ineluctable fact.
Still, I am sorry if my comments came off as being callous towards the reality of suffering. As someone who has struggled with illnesses for much of my younger years, I am aware of the fact that it is a grim reality that isn't addressed properly, particularly in a self-centred society. I advocate for a liberal RTD (along with transhumanism) because I do want the harms to end, and I am hopeful that, provided we work together, we can eliminate most forms of extreme suffering.
Okay, you know of Foucault so you know the following as well.
And in his 1899 book "TALKS TO TEACHERS ON PSYCHOLOGY; AND TO STUDENTS ON SOME OF LIFE'S IDEALS" pg 31-32, William James doesn't have a high opinion of the German model.
That is a start. I have more to say about the subject but it can wait until we resolve a problem.
If you want to discuss the subject with me, make sure you are on-topic and not judging me and putting me on the defensive by telling me what you think I should do. Athena is known to be bad-tempered when she is not respected. And yes, I also have a copy of "Sun Tzu, the art of war".
I am not accustomed to this forum being one of personal attacks instead of on-topic. Why do you assume I am unaware of rural areas? :rofl: My x kept the family isolated in rural areas and not even in cities are many literate in the Greek and Roman classics that are the foundation of our democracy. Even in the early days of the US when college-level education meant a classical or liberal education, only a tiny minority were aware of the Greek and Roman classics and later philosophies that lead to the democracy of the US.
The US did base public education on that literacy but it was Americanized, leaving us both ignorant of classics but with some knowledge of the principles. The Christian influence on this education and then dropping the transmission of our culture and education for good moral judgment, leaving moral training to the church in 1958, has led to the Christian mythology or our democracy and that makes matters very bad!
I have no idea what you think the "universal elite" know, but I doubt if it is the education that I believe is vital to our democracy.
It was a conditional: "If." It wasn't an attack.
Rural America is rife with ignorance and superstition, dull-mindedness, racial tension, religious prejudice and a tendency to be cowed by celebrity mystique: the antithesis of Enlightenment values. Think: the mystique of kings.
As regards Trump, we're closer to the Divine Right of Kings than to the Declaration of the Rights of Man.
Here you seem to take my position: Enlightenment philosophy hasn't yet trickled down to the rabble.
Quoting Athena
Here, again, "we" is used too broadly. What a significant proportion of "we" has achieved is total rejection of science and scientific values.
Like I said:
A stoning will descend from the celestial sphere, thereby cleansing the Earth from the disturbing wicked elements that stubbornly resist to comply and be recipient to the Golden Ejaculation emanating from His Infinite Erectedness like a brightly colored fountain. The idle, sanctimonious, and pharisaic erections, and the false ejaculates spat out off it, can only be acted against by the incandescent Ejaculate of the immense Erected, and it will strike the ephemeral with unprecedented force to restore the eudomoniatic state of Divine Dedication and Total Obedience.
Only by strictly attending to the confines of the Honest and Pure Trail of the Word spoken by the Incendiary Erect Being, one can hope to avoid the amnesiac beating of His Stern Stick.
Of course this is just silly wordplay. But it is in fact the same as you are doing if you replace "The Pristine Immaculate Being and His Eternal Hole Ejaculate" by "Objective Science and its Majestic Technology". Scientific thinking and its globally technically enforced imprint on humanity, making it the base of state and politics, is just one way to live life. It is forced on all of us, by forced systematic education, not spending a dime on different approaches to nature which don't position them oppositely to her (or him). Of course science can help us to lower CO2 or correct polluting business. But the sci entific view is based on a notion of progress that implies further, deeper, higher, heavier, etc. to increase an artificial knowledge about a nature from which it's farther removed than ever. This knowledge is the cause in the first place of the miserable state of the world. Capitalism too, but the two are influencing mutually. The more artificial order we impose on nature, the more the natural order will reside or be destroyed. Science is nice, it's even an art. What about all the ingenious experiments to articulate theories we have? That's great stuff. For some. I like science too, got my own theory even about the universe. Which makes the existence of god even more articulate. It's their creation we should care about, but who am I to know if they care about their own creation?
The scientific road is just one amongst many, and they don't lead all to Rome. So what can "we" do about it? It depends on what the people want. I want to live in a world where nature exists happily along our side. We are not the only ones on our mega spaceship. All organisms keep it liveable and in good shape. Science removes itself from nature, and the paradox is that she claims knowledge about it. It's a very artificial knowledge, gained in isolated experiments, which must be reproducable, and often performed to fit the math, under strict boundary and initial conditions; it's an art in the sense it expresses a worldview, and the materials, the mediums used are ideas and experiments, like the painter uses colors and linen, though there is a much wider variety of course). What can we do? Not taking part is a way. Cleaning the mess scientifically is possible, fighting technology with technology, though technology is the cause in the first place. If state and science are separated a big first step will be made. Science seems to have the same role that God once had, telling the Truth and killing in his name. Maybe there is a way out: brothers and sisters, let's pray! Let's hold hands and ask Supreme Science to help us. Let it project disaster upon the non-believers.... Isn't the last done wrt to many indigenous societies, who are just superstitious, and ignorant about the True way (while their children were taken away to teach them the right way)? I'm a science lover myself, but who am I to say the Enlightened Path of Science (during the Enlightenment used to set people free from the madness of religion back then, but it seems to do similar stuff in modern times, the pagan being the non-believer in science). And I agree with a commentator in this thread that scientific knowledge is possessed by a group of people who claim to have some divine knowledge and who consider the non-believers are ignorant. The pagan are called laymen, as in the good all days of religion...Though the laymen might believe in science.
The reason I said that you should pick your battles was not because of qualms with you over this subject. It was through your connection of it to Biden's foreign policy. I respect your knowledge on the education system and that is why I honestly asked you for sources so I could inform myself with them, which you graciously gave. Your claims about Biden being undemocratic I found unconvincing and therefore I told you so. Your connection of them in my view weakens the strength of your argument and I think it is also a field in which you are less at home, but I may be wrong. Of course feel free to ignore them. I noticed something else as well, namely that when we breach a topic such as environmentalism and its Manichean roots we somehow ended up talking about education. That happened earlier as well as I recall.
Anyway, I respect you very much on this particular topic. I did not wish to come off condescending, if so I apologize. On the other hand I also do not find your statement that I should be on topic very fair. I also did not use that line against you when you broached the subject of environmentalism and the question of Manichean religion. I like to explore this topic of education with you and rest assured I respect you knowledge.
That said there are some reasons to think you paint an overly dark and indeed Manichean picture of the former US system and the Prussian system of education. Certainly, the education system developed in Prussia was aimed at nation building. It was also aimed at giving the populace the skills to survive in a very rapidly changing world in which bureaucracy and industrialization became driving forces. The German society in the 18th century was nothing like it is now. Illiteracy was rampant, petty princes ruled petty kingdoms, the population lived in conditions of serfdom, also mentioned on the wikipedia page you gave as a source. There was no such thing as mass education. thinking for oneself was at the time always only done by an elite of either merchant classes or nobility. It is easy to criticize a system of mass schooling from the luxury of the modern day world, but I would reckon the access to reading and writing for the population was a big step up from what it had been.
Moreover the idea of nation building in the way described in the video is abhorrent to us of course and especially with the second world war in mind the video becomes even more ominous. However seen in the light of the history of Germany it was not such a silly idea. In the 17th century Germany has fought one of the most ruthless civil wars in history that depopulated much of the country and led to 30 years of warfare in which the German realms (it was not a country back than) tore themselves apart. Germany faced powerful and colonial neighbors in France and Russia. Seen from the perspective of the European history of incessant warfare, the German goals become understandable. The picture of emperor Frederick also deserves a bit of nuance. He was seen as an enlightenment figure in correspondence with Voltaire and a benefactor of the arts and sciences. that goes to show again that your appeal to enlightenment ideals is not as straightforward as you expect them to be. enlightenment ideals value order, progress and mastery of the natural world through education and technology. How they turn out in practice is much more difficult to predict. They may also be used by an emperor who rules despotically.
There are also reasons to view the youtube clip with a bit of suspicion. Firstly it cherry picks among the quotes of Fichte. The wikipedia page for instance gives this as a Fichte quote: "Fichte asked for shaping of the personality of students: "The citizens should be made able and willing to use their own minds to achieve higher goals in the framework of a future unified German nation state"." Now that sounds very different already.
The second reason is a look at the one of the most 'command and control' institutions there is, the military. Prussian military tactics and later German military tactics were base on a combination of obedience and creativity. The adoption of a much more flexible approach to warfare based on objectives to be reached, but leeway to the commanders in the field as to how to reach them, required creativity and independent thinking. These abilities led to Germany being able to take on much more powerful foes 'on paper'. this actually mirrors the German research university, which also fosters creative, if specialized research. What I see in sociological terms is the bureaucratization an professionalization of education Now of course all for the greater glory of the nation, but they were regrettably very nationalistic times. We are talking about the age of colonialism, a very dark age in European history.
The third reason is that the video draws a straight line from Prussian education to Hitler and calls Fichte (Not pronounced 'Fitcht', or something but Fi'h'te) the father of modern neo-nazism. That claim is just silly. Why not simply nazism but neo-nazism? Those are different people from different cultural eras. The Prussian educational system might well be conducive to creating a law and order mentality that benefited Hitler's rise but it totally forgets the Weimar era in Germany.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimar_Republic
The Weimar Republic during its heyday in the 1920th saw all kinds of liberal reforms, art and culture flourished as never before and it was in many respects truly 'avant garde'. Apparently the same education system that brought Hitler to power was also capable of creating a cultural renaissance. therefore I think the picture is one sided.
That does not mean I disagree with your basic tenet, that education is too much aimed at creating output in the sense of unquestioning students that have merely mastered skills. I am frequently at odds with the educational professionals that want for me to create students who master a certain skill or other and who through a system of continuous self discipline, strive for excellence which mean mastery of their narrow field. I take a different approach, namely an argumentative spirit, there are no or not many right or wrong answers, but there is argument and argumentation is a joust, a challenge. I think that is why you also felt attacked by me.
Anyway I think there is more than meets the eye. We need a new type of education, one that moves towards questioning and investigation and towards interdisciplinarity instead of specialization. More and more it becomes clear we need to see problems not in specialistic isolation but in a holistic way, leaving space for uncertainty and complexity. It will ask a lot of us, because the old model is the one we use still even thought it may well be out dated. In that we can shake hands (if the pandemic would not prevent it...)
I have to say, your post-quality ratio is truly impressive.
Nearly every post you make is full of extremely interesting, well thought out information.
Rational is another slippery use of language. Why isn't it "rational"? I explained how it correlates to no actual person experiencing deprivation of happiness (no collateral damage to a person) and thus I think is "rational".
Quoting DA671
And that loss matters to whom?
Quoting DA671
And right there is the very step that I am questioning is "good" and indeed think is not ethical.
Quoting DA671
That is irrelevant in the procreational choice. Perhaps as a heuristic after birth, sure. But no one is obligated to create "goods" (since no one exists to be deprived) and certainly it is wrong to unnecessarily create inescapable, non-trivial harm for others, de novo/ex nihilo.
Not on its own. I said that creating "good" comes with the collateral damage of suffering, and that is a problem for your ethical argument.
Quoting DA671
Or more ethically, we shouldn't put people in a bind whereby that need for a graceful exit are the choices one is put in, but this is exactly what procreation does ("deal with it" or "comply or die").
Quoting DA671
But the point is if no one is born, no one is imposing anything on anyone. Not true if someone is born.
Quoting DA671
Doesn't matter if not born in the first place.
Quoting DA671
People not born, don't care if they aren't born. This is all, literally, nonsense. You are not obligated to create new people that experience happiness.. It would certainly be a misjudgment to create people that experience bad things, even if your goal was for them to experience happiness.
Quoting DA671
No, that is not it. Rather, if you are already born, doesn't apply.. So for a future person, no person will exist to be harmed, and no person exists to be deprived of happiness either. Don't convolute the point by mixing in people who exist already.
Quoting DA671
Separate point, so irrelevant to the argument.
Quoting DA671
Cool. I'm glad you are understanding of the suffering, and are for trying to reduce it. I just think there is no reason to start it for another person, especially in light of no collateral damage to that person for not starting it, and that "good and value" don't exist as an independent entity that needs to be "fed" by the pain of yet more humans.
Do you live there? You must to have witnessed this horror. :scream:
I've lived there off and on for the last thirty years.
I also explained that nobody in inexistence is craving s prevention of all life. However, if it can still be good to prevent all harms, it's also bad to prevent all happiness, irrespective of whether or not there is a conscious feeling of deprivation.
The prevented suffering also doesn't "matter" to anybody and doesn't fill anybody with relief. However, when one can say that preventing harm is good, I don't think that it's reasonable to believe that it wouldn't be bad to prevent all the goods.
It is unethical to prevent goods in order to bring about "prevention".
And that right there is the crux of the issue— I don't think that it makes sense to say that the absence of harms is good even though it doesn't actually lead to a benefit for anybody (except in an abstract sense), but the lack of good isn't problematic. It's certainly good to focus on reducing suffering for existing people since that's usually sufficient for them to live decent lives. However, in the case of creating people, I think that it can be good to create potential happiness.
I never said it didn't. However, if one believes that not creating a person is good due to prevented harms, it's also unimaginably bad due to all the prevented goods. All the valuable lives cannot be relegated to being collateral damage (and yes, it would indeed be bad to prevent the good if it's good to prevent the harms).
There's also "thank you for this single opportunity of experiencing joy, which, despite being precious and fragile, has been a source of inimitable value". The right is still necessary, but it isn't sensible to think that bestowing the ethereal positives is unnecessary or worthless; it most definitely isn't.
I don't think that creating anybody involves imposing something, but even if it does, I would consider the lack of bestowal of goods to be justifiable. The point is that if you believe that it's better to prevent all the negatives, it's also worse to prevent all the positives.
The absence of suffering also doesn't matter (and is therefore not a solution) for the nonexistent beings in the void, by the same token. If the lack of harm is still preferable in an instrumental/abstract sense, the lack of goods is certainly a problem.
Semantical obfuscation seems to be in play here, I am afraid. I don't think that one should be obligated to create beings since there are both practical limitations and long-term societal impacts to consider. Nevertheless, it's irrational to suggest that bringing about the absence of all harms that nobody is desperate to avoid is an obligation, yet it isn't fundamentally problematic to also lead to the cessation of innumerable goods. It wouldn't be particularly nice to prevent all happiness, even if your intentions were to just stop the possibility of harm.
The truth is not convolution. The reality is that universal antinatalism does imply that even if a person would have a deeply meaningful life and would cherish their existence (and hope to relive it), it supposedly would not be good to create them, which is something that seems patently absurd to me. But I digress—the reality is that there's it's unreasonable to consider the lack of harm to be preferable whilst failing to see that the positives will also always matter.
The pertinent point, but that's fine.
Pain is also not an entity that requires a sacrifice of happiness at the altar of "prevention". Nobody in nonexistence has a need for preventing everything that would inundate them with relief. But if it can still be good to ensure that future harms don't exist, it's quite apparent that it's unethical to prevent all the positives. The lack of happiness could certainly be considered collateral damage (or much bigger damage, since most people do seem to value their lives) in an abstract sense, just as one might consider the lack of harm to be better.
Thank you for your kind words. Hope you have a nice weekend!
No that's fine.. It's the stringing together the BS that follows this statement I have a problem with so let's see...
Quoting DA671
So you are not paying attention to my argument. Again, I said:
Quoting schopenhauer1
In one scenario collateral damage of suffering occurs, in the other, it does not. The parent makes this choice. I am not taking the view from nowhere, as you are trying to make this out (the void of voided nobodies voiding nowhere).
Quoting DA671
Again dude, here is the argument again: In one instance no ONE suffers. In the other, someone does. This is a violation of this principle explained eariler:
Quoting schopenhauer1
So if you believe in not creating for someone else an inescapable, non-trivial set of harmful experiences (and/or suffering depending on how that is defined), then this would not be good to impose on someone else.
Quoting DA671
Again dude, stop trying to turn this argument as a view from nowhere. It is the view of someone making the decision to procreate. Do you want to create a set of inescapable (excepting suicide or death in someone sense) harms on someone else?
Quoting DA671
Huh? To what weird non-entity are we owing happiness to? Who has been besmirched their happiness? That is right... no ONE. And yes, suffering is the collateral damage that goes along with thinking that you are going to create happy experiences.
Quoting DA671
"Who" is saying this? No actual person. The void. Your head.
Quoting DA671
There is no justification you have made here, just assertion. There is no principle other than, happiness is something that can be experienced once born. That doesn't just magically resolve the boondogle of the collateral damage problem. It doesn't "cancel out" that suffering was still thus created. It is indeed imposing a lifetime of negative experiences on someone else's behalf. Guess what recourse they have? None. Comply with the program or kill yourself. Real nice.. And please, spare me another argument where you again say, "But happiness exists and therefore all solved".
Quoting DA671
This is definitely a slippery slope then. For you, someone has to be born in order to realize the bad. It's from the procreator's perspective, not the void. This is not a "If a tree falls in the forest" argument as someone is existing to determine if they want to create a set of negative experiences on someone else's behalf.. and thinking it through.. Is it right to cause unnecessary suffering on someone because you yourself have a notion of them experiencing happiness as well? You will say, "Yep justified", as if happiness negates causing the bad. It would constantly ignoring the very argument of the antinatalist, that happiness existing for people negates the negatives they must endure.
Quoting DA671
I mean, let's say I give you a gift you liked and then created a situation whereby other non-wanted experiences happened to you as well as a contingency of the gift.. It doesn't seem like that gift was a gift anymore, but rather a sort of gaslighting burden.. "You get this but, oops watch out for that!! Too bad, that's part of the contingency of my gift fucker!! Oh you don't like it? Kill yourself.. most other people just take it.. now sit back down and take it too!!!"
Quoting DA671
Again WHO is this not nice to? You are speaking to the void again.
Quoting DA671
You are trying to cause some sentimental argument.. (argument from pathos let's say), but you need a person for there to be deprived of this meaning, and you don't have it. Just the void. This is about the decision to procreate.. Not people that are already born. Do you want to be the cause for imposing the conditions whereby other people will suffer? If your answer is, "But, but, but happy experiences!!" Then that is not a good enough threshold to decide you will create the conditions of a lifetime of negative experiences for someone else..
Quoting DA671
For the final time hopefully, this is not about the nobodies not existing. This is about not creating a situation for someone else in the first place. It is not unethical to prevent "all the positives". Not creating happiness is neutral if anything. Not creating suffering is where it matters ethically. Nothing existing is nothing existing. Something existing starts harm where there is none, and happiness that is also created doesn't negate this.
Quoting DA671
Yeah same. Just a tip.. if you want to quote a text, drag your mouse over the text and let go, then click on the quote button that displays. This will create the text in quote form in your reply post.
I fear that it's your argument that lacks reason and clarity.
Once again, you believe that the lack of what you term "collateral damage" is good (presumably, since you do wish to prevent it). My response was that while preventing harm/damage might be good/better, it is not good for anybody to not experience the positive aspects of life. I do not think that this is a particularly difficult point to comprehend, unless, of course, one resorts to employing arbitrary double standards premised upon a flawed framework that does not take the valuable aspects of life into account.
In one scenario, a person can live a happy life. In the other one, they do not. This is a violation of the basic principle that creating and preserving good does matter, just as the reduction of suffering does.
You are intent on only focusing on one side of the coin. I never claimed that any of those things were good. However, meaningful relationships, creativity, and the experience of other positives that are not "trivial" for countless sentient beings do not deserve to be prevented simply because nobody is capable of asking for them before they exist. You would once again say that nobody is deprived from their absence, but this misses the point entirely because, as I have mentioned ad nauseum if the lack of bads can be good sans any conscious feeling of satisfaction, the absence of the goods is necessarily bad.
I thought you had taken that view when you decided for millions of happy people ;)
In all seriousness, the cardinal consideration is not just the harm, as you seem to think. There are also ineffably valuable experiences that do matter, and I would not wish to unfairly prevent their possibility even if I personally did not value my life. I would not wish to forsake the chance of partaking in the genesis of a life that an innocent being would hold deeply adore, particularly when this could be the reality for many people.
To whom do we owe the prevention of suffering? There aren't any souls in the void who would be defenestrated into a state of affairs that would degrade their satisfied state. However, if we still wish to believe that it's good to prevent the harms even if nobody benefits from that action, I do not think it makes sense to think that the lack of goods would not be bad.
I was referring to existing people, including myself. I understand that you might believe in your "head" that it is not significant, but it definitely is.
You are obstinately asserting your position whilst conveniently ignoring consistency and the lived experiences of the billions of sentient beings you care about. For the last time: I do not think that everything is hunky-dory just because happiness exists. There clearly do exist significant harms that need to be reduced. However, that elimination should not come at the cost of preventing innumerable good experiences, many of which persist even in the face of seemingly insuperable odds. Waving them away by focusing on the harms appears to be disingenuous, and I would not be able to accept such a viewpoint. Bestowing an incontrovertibly meaningful life that is precious and rare is not unethical.
Harming existing people is not justified unless it leads to greater happiness for them. There is no need to digress from the pertinent issue here, which is the creation of new people. The lack of harm is good for people as it allows them to live happy lives without issues. I think you are the one who has ignored my point that if it can be good to prevent harms that do nobody in the void is hankering for, it can also be wrong to prevent the goods. I do not think that it is rational to hold unjustifiable double standards here.
That appears to be a rather poor straw man. As I have said before, one need not harm already happy people by creating unnecessary risks unless doing so has a high probability of leading to greater goods. As for those who do not exist, all I can do is to reiterate my aforementioned point, which is that it is irrational to believe that the lack of undesirable experiences is good, but the lack of desirable experiences isn't bad. I can only explain it to you, but I cannot understand it for you. I do not think that anybody should kill themselves, and I hope that improvements in healthcare and living standards can prevent the need for taking such a step prematurely. Eventually, of course, it would be beneficial for all beings to be able to find a graceful exit instead of being forced to survive for the sake of some strange idea about the "sanctity of life".
If it isn't "not nice", it is also not nice to prevent all harm. I am merely advocating for rational consistency here. I care about the happiness and suffering of existing people, not necessarily abstract values pertaining to the void.
I thought you did the same with your "kill yourself" comments before. Be that as it may, I don't think I would wish to fall prey to blind pessimistic (or optimistic) sentimentalism that leads to a detrimental outcome for people. You are the one who wants to prevent harms that nobody in the void desires to avoid. Yet, if that is still necessary, then I don't think that creating all love, beauty, and a life permeated with meaning (which often exists even in desperate situations) can be ignored by incessantly talking about harm. I would not be myopic enough to suggest that only the positives matter, but I simply cannot see a logical reason to find the prevention of all good to be ethical.
This has indeed become quite repetitive. Once again, I am only working under a framework that should be consistent. If it is good/ethical to prevent harms that do not lead to a tangible benefit for the people they were putatively prevented for, then it is certainly unethical to not create all positives. For existing beings, it isn't always important to do more than just stopping harm, Howbeit, I do think that it is more logical to understand that nothing is nothing, while something can be astoundingly good, and I do not believe that the harms can negate all of those potent experiences that define the lives of many people.
Thanks for the tip, but I am too poor to employ it effectively. Perks of living in a third world country, I suppose. Still, there's beauty to be found in using a (slightly broken) handheld device!
I use one too. Can't you select the text you want to quote by finger? Keep your finger on the text and select "copy"?
Ha! A subversive program! The rebellious little %$%#$!
Maybe we should exterminate whole existence all together. Exactly that is what we are heading for, so you will be served at back and call! Or shall we provide everyone with effective means to be shot into oblivion? Is the only way out collective suicide?
Ok, so you are not paying attention to what I am saying again. Because you are mischaracterizing my argument over and over, I'll break it down:
This isn't about an actual child prior to procreation. It is about the parent. YOU as the parent decide:
1) Someone is born and they are harmed. This is a known result of being born.
2) Someone is not born and they are not harmed.
Why considerations of "But they will like the happy moments" matters, is what I am questioning. That is exactly what I think is neutral in terms of ethical calculation. Happiness prevented has zero ethical obligations attached to it. Only suffering prevented has ethical obligations to it. AND furthermore, IF happiness is a gift bestowed upon someone AT THE COST of a life time full of various harmful experiences, that is no gift at all, and is in fact an UNETHICAL (though I would reduce it to being misguided to not be hyperbolic) line of reasoning, as that is no gift at all, but a gift attached with burdensome conditional circumstances put upon the recipient. Back to my analogy.. If you give a gift to someone and that gift entails a lifetime worth of painful experiences of various degrees and intensities, that is not a gift.
No person existed beforehand to "need" happy experiences. YOU created that need FOR THEM. You cannot create the circumstances whereby one can get deprived of happiness (by birthing them) JUST so you can say, "Look they now need happiness and we don't wan to deprive them!". Rather, you caused people to NEED happiness in the first place (by birthing them), for which they could be NOW BE deprived.
I didn't say that. I simply advocate not continuing other existence by passively not procreating. The only thing we the existing can do is commiserate.. but we can't.. WORK HAS TO GET DONE. Don't you see? Things decay.. Things move forward and we need to survive, etc. So we the living have no relief.
I can see very clearly nature gets fucked. Precisely because we think something has got to be done. It's better to do nothing at all. Let's all just stop working and let nature give some breath.
That's not the solution. Who we do it for then? For nature's sake?
This seems to be getting circular, and I think it's you who hasn't understood my position. Still, I apologise if my reply appeared to mischaracterise your position. One is concerned with the one who does the action, but the action, in turn, matters due to the person in question. I was only advocating for consistency pertaining to the positives and the negatives. If the prevention of harm is good, then the creation of the benefits is also good.
This is certainly about someone other than (just) the parent, and this much is evident when you use "someone". This seems like impertinent semantics, but that's okay. The truth, in my view, is:
1. Someone is born and they are happy. This is a possibility of being born.
2. Someone is not born and they don't experience happiness.
I completely disagree with the idea that only preventing suffering has value when it comes to creating a person (existing people can generally live sufficiently valuable lives as long as they avoid harms, which is why it might be good enough for us to simply ensure that they are not harmed). The preservation and creation of happiness (a positive experience, the opposite of suffering) also matters a lot. I don't think that one needs to necessarily harm someone in order to be happy. In general, it's indeed possible that harms would exist alongside happiness (although it's possible to reduce the former significantly), but I don't think that preventing suffering at the cost of all positives can be considered fair/ethical. Doing so would be a "solution" far bigger than the problem it purports to solve. I am not saying that all lives are amazing, but there are many which certainly are and their worth isn't expendable. Nevertheless, as I have repeatedly said, I do hope that ideas such as the RTD and transhumanism can help drastically reduce extreme suffering.
No person existed beforehand to benefit from a lack of suffering. One has both needs and contentment, but one cannot simply prevent the circumstances where there would be any fulfillment and then claim that it's a better outcome. Causing the positives to exist will always be ethical and preventing valuable lives when there was no universal need for doing so cannot be acceptable.
I am, however, aware of the fact that there are many issues we need to resolve, which is why I tell many people around me to not have a child unless they are ready to give them the care they deserve (something which has become more difficult due to our contemporary work culture). Thank you for sharing your insightful views!
Then it's better to procreate. Give them your values and they might help to stop the inflationary growing machine.
Hey!
[quote=Zen]Do nothing![/quote]
I hope so too. :wink: If they don't have the need, then that's up to them. It's a fact of Nature though that if She is trampled on continuously, Her bones are broken routinely, bleeding wounds are inflicted on Her and left stinking in the wind blindly, Her hands are stainless-steel manacled conveniently, and if She gets shot at ruthlessly or stabbed in the back repeatedly, She is questioned callously in burning floodlight from which She can't escape, skinned, scalped, and dissected alive methodologically, injected with poison intentionally, or contently beaten down into caged slavery, and Her eyes are cut out remorselessly, Her blood is sucked insatiably, She's considered an enemy to be conquered or controlled stricly, or if She's emplaned opposite uncomprehensively, tortured systematically, Her legs are pulled and She's venomously tripped repeatedly, Her insides turned outside contemptuously, or She's arrogantly submitted to invented laws, pushed in linear molds vigorously, psychotically torn apart and replaced by Her dead leftovers, then, if she will survive the treatment, we shouldn't be surprised She will turn Her head away from us, without any will to help us left, if still any will is there. The only solution is to treat nature like a friend again, or at least like a person who has the same right to walk freely on the planet as any one of us. Without Them, life is simply impossible.
Quoting Agent Smith
Around 2043. Around 2043
We are always going to be at odds because you don't see the imbalance of this idea:
"Preventing" happiness is not a harm, unless there is an actual person who will be harmed.
YET
Creating happiness brings with it collateral damage (harm to an actual person).
Preventing harm brings no collateral damage (no deprived happiness for an actual person).
In your scenario, there seems to be a some "thing" that is deprived. But there is not.
You keep wanting it to be commensurate (no THING is prevented from suffering). But I am not quite saying that. I am saying in one case collateral damage takes place, and the other it does not. That is a fact, and not a metaphysical projection. The only collateral damage of preventing "happiness" would be the sadness of the parent projecting what "could have been", and I just don't count that in the equation when the decision is about a future person who will actually bear the brunt of the decision (for collateral damage) and did not need to in the first place other than sentimental feelings of lost happiness.
Thomas Jefferson was very clear that only if our republic was defended in the classroom, would it be defended. He devoted his life to everyone having that education. We no longer know what the education was unless we make the effort to know that. It is easy enough to know. Just look up classical or liberal education. Or education for the enlightenment.
Quoting Wikipedia
What is wrong here? There are two ways to have social order, culture, or authority over the people. If people want liberty, they must transmit the culture that is essential to that. We stopped doing that in 1958 and are now leaning towards authoritarianism and anarchy. The Texas Republican 2012 agenda opposed education for higher-order thinking skills and some Christians also oppose education for the higher order thinking skills. Christianity has historically been a problem to education and progress.
Even a moron is enjoying the benefits of what we have achieved. The whole world is enjoying the benefits of what we have achieved and I am not overusing the word "we". Humanity has come a long way from when we shared this planet with Neanderthals. We can think of the word "we" as a nation or the whole of humanity and when it comes to global warming, we had better think "we" means all of us.
You are assuming many classrooms can even HAVE this debate. Most are just trying to get by with the worst behavior problems (mainly in inner cities).. Education is wasted on the youth (mostly). I don't know how many people have told me that they hated history as a kid and it was only as an adult did they actually come to appreciate the understanding it brings to study it. Same with almost everything else..
But you are very right.. The US education system seems to essentially sift out the STEM students.. and tries to nurture them.. They will be the next engineering/science/doctor class used by the corporate overlords to dole out more technology. I have no doubt there was a concerted effort to promote this idea during the Cold War as a policy level decision.
That beings said.. federal decisions on education are usually at the level of funding, not so much curriculum It's up to the states and school boards to actually adopt any national recommendation. However, if they reject the recommendations, it's at their peril of losing funding probably.
Creating life also creates happiness (real good that is ethically relevant).
My "scenario" is concerned with consistency, and so it only cares about existing people. It isn't my worldview that suggests that applies unjustified double standards such as the absence of suffering being good without any actual benefit but the lack of happiness not being problematic by the same token.
People are created: Cherished lives and some negative lives exist. The latter is bad but the former is good.
People are created: Either there is no value at all, or the lack of the negatives is comparatively better but the lack of all the positives is also worse/unpreferable.
The immense goods of life cannot be turned into collateral damage for the sake of completing the project of eliminating the negatives, for that leads to a problem that is worse than the solution. Once again, I am talking about existing people, not the void. And if people need to feel deprived for the lack of happiness to be bad, then they also need to feel conscious relief for the absence of harm to be good. As for the idea that the absence of suffering and harm doesn't have any value at all for nonexistent beings, I would firstly say that I do not think one can say that someone has been harmed/benefitted from an action if it does not lead to a comparatively better/worse outcome. But be that as it may, I think that the logical position is to hold is that the creation of the negatives (that nobody had an interest in avoiding before existing) is bad, and the creation of the positives (that nobody could view as a desideratum prior to their birth) is good. Not creating anybody, in this case, would be ethically neutral (which I do not think to be the case, since I do think that new people affect those who exist), but it would not be obligatory.
Sentimental needs for preventing all life cannot be a valid excuse for preventing all value. Commensurability can be subjective, though it does seem like most people do cherish their lives. The point is that not creating a person also does not commit any good other than fulfilling the needs of those who do not want life to exist due to a flawed idea of what constitutes a solution (since if the lack of happiness is not bad, then neither is the lack of harm preferable), and this does not justify ceasing the possibility of ineffable goods that did not deserve to be prevented., even if the people putting forward these proposals have good intentions.
Lastly, I would reiterate that I do agree with much of what you said pertaining to the need to take suffering seriously, and the broader idea of taking procreation far more seriously is also truly significant.
This is just an untrue statement. In one case there is collateral damage (someone who exists to be harmed). In the other case, there is NO collateral damage (no actual person exists to be deprived). This is an imbalance. I'm not sure you do get this point.
Quoting DA671
No, it quite literally doesn't. No ONE exists to be deprived of any "lack of positives". No collateral damage of "deprivation". However, by being born collateral damage of harm is done. I'm saying this, yet again...
Quoting DA671
No no.. Again, you keep missing the point.. Follow the argument I am making and not the one you want it to be...
If no one is born, no collateral takes place. No actual person is harmed (by harm or being deprived of happiness). You as the person deciding this for someone else can know this, yes?
If someone is born, collateral takes place. An actual person is harmed. You as the person deciding this for someone else can know this, yes?
Quoting DA671
That first part in no way entails the second part.
Quoting DA671
And my point is it also creates the collateral damage of harm. So again, do you think it's ethical to create that or not? It is an absolute known fact that most lives have harm involved.. and it's known that it is unknown to how much, the child's disposition, etc.
Quoting DA671
Rhetorical nonsense based on an argument I am not making so skip.
Quoting DA671
Why though? You seem to think value is some sort of independent entity that can be harmed by not existing..It only matters RELATIVE to a person who is either experiencing value or not experiencing it. If no one exists, no one cares or is deprived of it. And DON'T start saying that this is the same with the flip side of suffering.. look at the argument one..more..time...
If you don't have a person, there is no collateral damage (no person to be deprived of happiness nor experience harm).
If you have a person, there will be collateral damage.
That is your choice.
Quoting DA671
Goods are not entities unto themselves.. ineffable or otherwise. They are relative experiences to being born at all. The prevention of goods, is not ethically a problem, as there is no one to be deprived in the first place. You are the one putting a ghost in the equation of a secret entity (value/good) that needs to be continued. Value/good is not an agent, a person, a thing that is a recipient of moral weight. It is simply a contingent factor on actual agents.
Simply put, you will have suffering start for someone else in one instance, and it will not start in the other instance.
Once again, the point is that if the absence of harm can be considered better, then the lack of happiness is bad. This is only about consistency, but I did also mention in my previous reply that I am willing to consider non-creation to be neutral. However, it still would not be obligatory, and creating the positives will always matter. The "imbalance" lies in your arguments, not mine.
I was talking about the nature of suffering and happiness for existing people, so you again did not get what I was saying. Aside from the fact that not creating anybody can cause many people to be sad, the lack of all life cannot be considered a moral obligation due to the fact that the genesis of the positives is necessarily good. I am repeating myself, yet again, that if the creation of "collateral damage" is bad, the creation of innumerable goods is good.
As for the alleged imbalance between the existence of an obligation to not harm others but no such need being there for happiness, I think that this is not important when it comes to creating a person. I have already said this, but one does not need to constantly intervene in a person's life in order to ensure they are happy. Usually, not harming them can be sufficient. However, this caveat concerning increasing happiness does not apply to people who don't exist, since nobody is satisfied prior to existing. Therefore, the creation of happiness matters just as the prevention of harms does. Furthermore, one could say that preventing harms matters slightly more but it can still be good to increase happiness, just not at an unreasonably high cost to oneself. I believe that the inextricable link between the poles of happiness and harms means that the choice is more straightforward because removing harms does lead to goods, but we should certainly not have disproportionately high expectations, since that might end up causing more harm than good. In addition to that, it would seem better to live in a world where more people have sufficiently valuable lives, so one could prioritise the reduction of extreme harms.
You are the one who seems to be missing the point since you refuse to see things from outside your lens. If nobody is born, nobody is harmed. This is either neutral or good. If it is good that the harms do not exist, I do not see any reason to think that the lack of happiness is not bad. If it is neutral and the only relevant consideration are the lives of those who exist, then the creation of happiness can certainly be good, just as the presence of harms might be bad. If someone is born, one can experience a happy life due to a decision someone else was capable enough to take for them.
It very much does due to the fact that one necessarily seeks to avoid negatives and achieve the positives. If an ethical system revolves around the former, it would only be coherent if it also takes the latter into account. Therefore, the absence of experiential negatives is good, and the presence of experiential positives is also good.
I do think that it can be ethical to create deeply meaningful lives even if there are harms. Once again, your position seems to entail that not creating someone is an obligation (and not just a neutral act). The only reason something would be obligatory (in the context of a framework that cares about the conscious experiences of people) is if it is "better" for a person in some way, whether it's abstractly or experientially. But as I have said ad nauseam, if the absence of the negatives is an obligation due to the good resulting from its absence, it can also be problematic to not have any positive sensations. I do think that we should consider as many relevant factors (economic conditions, health, etc.) as we can to ensure that the possibility of harm can be minimised.
"Sentimental needs" also appeared to be a vacuous rhetorical trick to me, but no worries. As for skipping, well, the truth can often be skipped if one is not careful ;)
I have been talking about values with reference to people, so that appears to be a straw man to me. Value is indeed significant to those who exist, and as I have explained before, it does not make sense to say that creating "collateral damage" is bad and necessary to avoid but creating happiness is not good. And I hope you do not ask me to look at the argument again or talk about deprivation since I am not referring to that in this particular instance. It is definitely good to choose to give birth to a life that one would find amazing.
I care more about the actual implications of a view, not what one might think about it. Personally, I don't think that it makes sense to call an act a harm (collateral "damage") if it does not lead to a worse state of affairs for a person. The comparison might be an abstract one (though I tend to disagree with that), but it still exists and gives us a reason to deem one state of affairs to be more ethical over another. One could plausibly say that it's "better" for a person to not live and suffer than it would be to exist. But if that is the case, I think that it is also instrumentally worse for them to not experience the positives of life, irrespective of whether or not there is any concious feeling of deprivation. In my view, an ethical obligation exists (in terms of harms/benefits) only when it's clear that doing or not doing the act always leads to an outcome that's preferable or undesirable for the person. If neither has any value, then the lack of action can only be ethically neutral, not obligatory. Neutrality is better than a bad outcome (the negatives), but it is also worse than a good one (happiness), and, considering that many people do cherish their lives, I think that it can be justifiable to create a person.
You once again employ double standards when you start talking about deprivations with reference to the lack of happiness. If creating suffering leads to "collateral harms", giving birth also contribute to the formation of invaluable positives that do have worth. You are the one who is claiming that something ought to be a moral obligation even though it either has no value (since suffering and the lack thereof are also only relevant for those who exist, not the void), or any positive worth it has can be outweighed by the negative value being derived from all the prevented goods (in an abstract sense, obviously).
Although I consider "start for someone else" to be slightly misleading, since it can seem to imply as if someone already existed who was brought into a harmful state where harms began, the simple truth is that there also is the formation of happiness in one case, and there isn't any value in the other. I believe that it can be good to choose the former.
Perfect!
I have nothing to add! Except :up:
I do not assume any classroom/school can have the debate about what has gone wrong with education, because no one knows enough to have that debate.
What determines human behavior?
Yes, it was a cold war decision to change the purpose and the focus of education. I remember my teachers walking around in a state of shock when they were told the purpose of education had changed. It was obvious something big had happened and I didn't know what until that afternoon when a male teacher explained the change. He said education was now to prepare us for a technological society with unknown values. That was the end of transmitting the culture that was the priority of education until then? There are good and bad consequences to that. By the way, History was about culture in the US and preparing the young to be good citizens.
The funding situation was not always as it is. The federal government DID NOT have a say in required education and in your list of who did, you forgot to mention parents. Can you think of the good and the bad of parents controlling their children's education? What is the benefit of the federal government getting involved with what children learn? What does our constitution say about the federal government controlling education?
The links I gave you were not my sources of information. My sources of information are old books about education and include old grade school textbooks that are no longer in circulation. And thank you so much for recognizing the biggest reason humans disagree is different sources of information. I seem to be at war with everyone because my sources of information came from the past.
My comment about Biden being undemocratic when he had an exclusive meeting about democracy should not be faulted, because democracy is rule by reason, and that is not possible when people are cut out of the reasoning. How I can explan this so it is understood? We are supposed to have rule by reason, not authority over the people, not military and economic might that we use to control others. That is not what made the US great. Rule by reason is debating until there is a consensus on the best reasoning, like the Greek gods. We need to go back to the Greeks when they asked "how do the immortals resolve their differences? "The answer is, they debate until they have agreed on the best reasoning. Can you paraphrase that? You might have better wording for it than I do.
My apologies. The problem you mentioned in this paragraph was totally my fault and I realized that while driving to the store. I regretted not having a more playful response to what you said about Athena. And as I said above, I feel like I stand alone because of the old books giving me a different perspective. I feel very burdened by the information I gathered many years ago, when I began buying old books about education to gain an understanding of my grandmother's generation of teachers, who thought they were defending democracy in the classroom. :lol: :cry: Oh, the futility of it all. My grandmother was a very important source of information and you would have to know her to know why. She and her generation are all dead now and facts are not enough to explain how different our past was.
Beautifully said! :cheer: I am thrilled to read more of your thoughts on this subject.
I have to stop here because my head is being overwhelmed with your points and my head screaming replies. The root of the illusion of disagreement is the difference between Prussia and Germany. Have you read Charles Sarolea's 1912 book "The Anglo-German Problem'? He was trying to warn the world of Germany's intentions to go to war and he was ignored until the first world war had begun. This was one of the first books I bought when I began my research. I bought it because of great admiration for the Germans and I had heard the US had adopted the German model of education. The other book I bought that same day, was a copy of the 1917 National Education Association Convention. These two books are the beginning of the burden I feel.
Charles Sarolea said the Germans are artistic, creative, congenial people and the Prussians are sour and dour. He explains because of the 30-year war and Germany feeling threatened exactly as you explained, they gladly accepted Prussian rule. The Germans just wanted peace and an end to all the conflict that tore them apart. They became politically irresponsible and this really distressed Charles because he saw them as the superior people. All this relates to what happened to the US and Trump being our Hitler and the political struggles we have now because of reactionary politics just as Germany had before Hitler was able to take power. There is an education link to all of this.
In the 1917 conference book, one of the speakers explains why we must adopt the German model of education for technology. Citizens of the US refuse to accept Germany was militarily/technologically superior to the US. Our false concept of our history is a HUGE problem. The US was soooo backward and unprepared for both world wars! :cry: That is why we are blindly and adamantly supportive of education for technology replacing the education we had. We have no concept of the importance of that past education and don't know what ending it has to do with being reactionary and leaning towards authoritarianism and anarchy and paranoia- an extreme need to be in control and superior.
When I speak of the US adopting the German model of education, I do not mean a one-time thing. The US did not have vocational training until we began mobilizing for war. We knew more about heroes and poetry (character building) than math, science, or how to use a typewriter. We really need to understand what education and wars have to do with each other. Industry wanted to close our schools claiming they were not getting their money's worth from education because they still had to train new employees, and they claimed the war caused a labor shortage. Teachers argued an institution good for making good citizens is good for making patriotic citizens.
Please give that paragraph some thought so you get the nuances in what I am saying. What I am saying is not without nuances! I just can not say everything all at once. Imagine entering a relatively high-tech war, with a population that knows though about technology. No typist, no mechanics, no engineers, but they know about Washington and Benjamin Franklin and Lincoln as national heroes and have an idea of what is expected of them as good citizens. You know, like God's good children. They knew our national mythology that had as much to do with real-life as Homer's books, that told the Greeks how to be Greeks. (Americanized Greek mythology)
The Prussians lived for the love of military might, as the citizens of the US lived for a love of God. So we technologically were in big trouble but now think of the teachers' argument. Education for patriotic citizens and mobilizing the nation for war. The book of the1917 National Education Association is full of interesting information about mobilizing for war.
Now let us jump to 1958 and the new warfare of air warfare and nuclear missiles. President Eisenhower put the Military-Industrial Complex, also known as Hitler's New World Order, in place, and the 1958 National Defense Education Act is an essential piece to the Military-Industrial Complex. We can now mobilize for war in 4 hours or less, long before the citizens need to be mobilized for war. Patriotism was essential to past wars, it is no longer important. Are you thinking of the differences in education and the cultural differences? I hope so. I hope you come back with a reply that advances this discussion.
Too much said and some important points still not made. Like 1899 James Williams objection to Germany's education for technology.
How can that be? Ideally, democracy is rule by reason. How does a creature with an evolved brain develop its potential for reasoning well? How does it organize a society that can live by reason, rather than by instinct?
Once it were state and God going hand in hand. Today, Science has taken His place. While the Enlightenment was intended to set people free from the evil and madness done in the name of God, it essentially does the same what God was doing back tthen. I'm not attacking science (a modern sin! A taboo even. It's not spoken about and even the thought against science seems off...so...) but only pointing to the position it seems to have assigned to itself. On a global scale it is legally enforced to learn its principles, approach to problems, its view on nature, etc. while long before its advent people managed to live life on different principles and the irony is that these ways of life are now almost whiped away from the surface of the world by a world calling itself the free first world, while in fact it's a power hungry latecomer.
But again, this is not a plead against science. I like science! But it's just one story amongst many, though the many get less and less (although it seems there is more variety then ever in the world), and it seems we're stuck with it. People have their ways though and probably a better world will be the result.
Specialization is poison to democracy! Can we turn to classical literature once again? Pericles' raised the spirits of his fellow citizens at a funeral for fallen warriors, by comparing the differences between Sparta and Athens, and why Athens is right to defend its way of life in war. Sparta specialized their males for military service. All other work was done by slaves. Sparta determined what citizens needed and provided it through the use of slaves. Our technocracy is in line with Sparta the enemy of Athens.
When Persia invaded, both Spartans and Athenians joined forces to fight them off. It was at this moment in time that Athens became a democracy, leading to a new temple for Athena that taught the world of the new relationship of the gods, and the way of democracy (an imitation of the gods, rule by reason). In the past, the person or persons who ruled were men of power. Those who owned land and had wealth could hire their own armies for defense or to go loot the Persians. You know, brute force having nothing to do with reason.
But this new social/political organization was not completely new. It was an imitation of Sparta's political organization however, Athens did not provide for citizens, and did not control their lives as Sparta did. Pericles thought it was very important that Athenians were generalized and not specialized, and were individuals not an organization like ants!
The US had education that generalized everyone. Education for well-rounded individual growth. At the same time was education for independent thinking. These differences are why I keep speaking of the 1958 change in education that most certainly took us in the direction of specialization andreplaced education for independent thinking with "groupthink". We have been killing our democracy since 1958.
Yes
Yes, the enlightenment is about ending ignorance and realizing the human potential. It might be easier to understand if we replace the word "God" with the word "logos". Logos, reason, the controlling force of the universe made manifest is speech. What is the reason of the earth warming?
Exactly what do you think science is?
[qoute]But again, this is not a plead against science. I like science! But it's just one story amongst many, though the many get less and less (although it seems there is more variety then ever in the world), and it seems we're stuck with it. People have their ways though and probably a better world will be the result.[/quote]
How do explanations of how things happen become a story? The greenhouse gases that are causing excessive global warming are man-made. How is that equal to a story that can be as fictional as religious stories?
Yes, it is an important correction that must be made. We live on a finite planet and if we do not respect the limits of the finite reality, we will self-destruct. There may be no future for humanity if global warming goes beyond the tipping point. The health of the earth is vital to humanity. If we don't take care of it, it can not take care of us.
No. Enlightenment was about introducing a new view and calling those not complying to the view ignorant. As you put it, humanity stumbled in the dark until the light of Enlightenment enlightened their stumbling in dark ignorance. Can you see the same use of language I used in praying to the holy creator? "Brothers and sisters, let's pray! Let's thank the Holy Being Science, without Whom we would stumble in the dark eternally. Let's be inspired by the gift She bestowed on us and condem the pagan who refuses to submit to Her Just and Glorious Way. If we not bow to Her Strict and Firm Authority, a Purified Cleansing will rain down from the Great Holy Void and wipe out nature, sparing the chosen few only and annihilate the sinful...." etc.
The Enlightenment looks back to the ancient Greek and continues what she started. Logic analysis, the existence of one unknowable reality (initiated by Xenophanes, disregarding the multitude of tangible gods and replacing him by a single faceless monster with superpowers), mathematics, the longing for knowledge of nature by placing yourself oppositely to her, democracy, etc. In the face of the religious madness in those dark days, the Enlightenment was indeed freeing. But it has turned the world in a more dark place than ever and natural disasters, the still immanent thread of a global nuclear conflict, wars raged with technological monstrosities, and an unprecedented poverty and hunger, a cultural monotony, and a deterioration of spoken language, makes the religious madness in the dark ages seem childplay.
It meaning Enlightenment? You really think that negative aspects of the modern World exist because of Enlightenment?
With the same kind of thinking, perhaps we would be better of with any kind higher culture or society.
Okay, have a good day. We are done.
Like I wrote. A taboo.
Quoting ssu
Not in my eyes. That is how it calls itself. And the ignorant haven't seen the light.
Quoting ssu
If "Enlightened" thinking didn't exist, the negative aspects wouldn't exist either. Enlightened thinking doesn't exist in a vacuum. Every way of life has its positives and negatives.
Quoting ssu
The 'same" kind of thinking? What kind of thinking? Why should one culture be better than another? Because a vacuous claim on objectivity? Religious societies do exactly the same. "God is the enlightment", the true and only. In what respect is science different? That it's True true? Don't get me wrong. I love science. But why should it be a measure for all? Why is it obligatory, as ordered by state, that the young are systematically trained in the enlightened path of science? Because the other paths make no sense or are nonsense?
Right, but you have missed the point for why I am saying this is wrong.
1) Absence of harm is better because there is no collateral damage. No one is deprived of harm either. Therefore
2) Absence of happiness is not better or worse for anyone.
In one case, some ONE experiences the presence of badness. In the other case some ONE does not, nor does some ONE experience the LACK of happiness? See how that goes?
Quoting DA671
Why would it always matter? No because you still don't get the 1 and 2 above so we cannot really move forward until you do. Perhaps ask clarifying questions to see if there is a flaw or if you are not understanding but don't move forward until you address 1 and 2.
Quoting DA671
Yes, but I didn't deny goods are good. I only explained how in one scenario there collateral damage, and in the other there is no collateral damage taking place AND no one to be deprived of the "innumerable goods". This about facts on the ground. In one case, there is suffering, in the other there is not AND there is no one to be deprived of the goods. In other words there is no collateral damage to happiness for any ONE like there is collateral damage in regards to badness. That is the asymmetry I am pointing to. Take a minute to really understand that thought before you answer.
Quoting DA671
Yes more evidence of you missing the point.. You are again talking about "good" for non-existent. I am talking about facts on the ground. One more time now... In one instance there is collateral damage, and in the other there is. You as the parent then makes the determination.. "Is it good to create collateral damage".. If you think it is, then I am saying this could be misguided or unethical.. Should one create collateral damage on another person's behalf because one has a certain notion of value and happiness? Is a "gift" a "gift" if it comes with inescapable and perpetual harms and suffering? I say no to that. If you think that collateral damage on someone else's behalf is a good thing because you think that your decision represents the aggregate opinions of the human race on happiness.. I would then say that this is irrelevant. You are causing collateral damage unnecessarily for someone else, and this fact alone precludes it from an ethically "right" or ethically "just" action. It is essentially using the child for your notion of value or your other reasonings for having children. Someone else's pain is your excuse for X. That is a violation of dignity.. similar to Kant's second formulation of the categorical imperative.. though people try to get around it by his use of "merely"..
Quoting DA671
This goes into debates of post-facto "life is good" evaluations.. People have instincts of self-preservation and usually aren't just suicidal at the drop of a hat. This doesn't negate the fact that a decision was made on their behalf that caused suffering for someone. That is what is going on.. Paternalistic ideas that "Life is good for the sufferer because most say they like it".. doesn't just negate the unnecessary causing of suffering.
Quoting DA671
Value matters nothing to no one.. If someone isn't born to experience happiness it is only a loss to the parent's projection of a person, not any person. Yes, there is no one to experience the "lack of harm" either but my whole point is exactly that.. no COLLATERAL DAMAGE is taking place in that instance. If you are ok with the fact that collateral damage is good to cause for someone in such a profound way because of X reasons (happiness).. that is the misguided ethical thinking I am saying is not right.
Quoting DA671
Um, start for someone else.. yeah means a life was "started" where there wasn't one prior.
1. If the absence of harm is good because there is "no collateral damage", the lack of happiness is also bad because there is no benefit. And nobody is satisfied from the absence of damage, so if the lack of goods is not problematic, then the absence of harms cannot be good.
2. Neither is the absence of harms (if the absence of happiness is not). However, the truth is that the lack of happiness does lead to harms (for existing people) and vice versa. If the absence of harms is considered good in one sense, the lack of happiness is also bad.
In one case, someone experiences the presence of happiness. In the other case, one does not, and neither do they feel the benefits of a lack of suffering. This is exactly how it goes.
I think there are flaws in your position that you did not ever try to address, which has undoubtedly played a role in shaping your incorrect view ;)
I also did not deny that suffering or "collateral damage" is not bad. I only showed that in one scenario there are goods and in the other, there aren't any. Additionally, nobody benefits from the lack of harm/damage. In one case there is also immense happiness and in the other case there is none, and there is nobody to be satisfied from all the prevented harms. I am afraid that it's you who has failed to understand that there is no "asymmetry" here, and that is what the facts on the ground tell us.
I do not think that creating happy lives necessarily requires creating harm, though it is certainly possible that some would, unfortunately, exist (but one can hope that many of them could be eliminated through ideas such as transhumanism). Yet again, you did not grasp my point, which was ultimately about a consistent position. If you believe that creating "damage" is bad, you would believe that not doing so is either good or neutral. If it is good to not create harms, I think it is also bad to not have any value. But if all that matters is existence, then just as creating harm can be bad, creating happiness can be good, I am not sure if Kant said anything about using your subjective opinion to degrade/ignore all the positives of existence on the basis of an arbitrary "asymmetry". Nobody has an interest in not existing, so your decision to not create them is not exactly serving their interests. However, I would say that if it is bad to create a negative life, it can also be good to create a good one with the right intentions (and provided one cares for the child). If you believe that preventing all good is justifiable, then it is you who is holding the ethically indefensible position. Nobody exists for them to be "used", and people can find value without one having to push it down one's throat. Bestowing positive values that one could not ask for before existing can definitely be good.
People also have negativity biases that can lead them to focus on the negatives. Nevertheless, I do think that value is quite subjective, so I would not claim that all lives were worthwhile. A person could have plenty of material comforts and be sad, or have almost nothing in terms of material wealth but be happy. I am not saying that anybody should be forced to endure a worthless existence, which is why I support the right to die. However, this does not change the fact that creating someone can also cause invaluable happiness (the creation of which is not harmful to someone else), and it does matter.
In that case, the absence of damage/harm also has no significance. If someone does not exist, it is only a benefit to the potential parents' (who might be projecting their pessimistic biases!), not the person who was never born. Lack of harm is the opposite of "collateral" damage, so your point seems to be illogical. If you are okay with the idea that preventing all intensely meaningful experiences is justifiable for the sake of preventing some harms, then I do not think I would be able to agree with such a view, for it seems to be fundamentally limited to me.
I am aware it was, but I do not think it was done "for" someone; someone was simply created. "For" generally implies an act that is done with reference to a person who exists, but this is a minor nitpick.
By the way, I hope that you have a nice day!
I am just going to focus on this point, because it is so central. It is a fact, not a value opinion that no collateral damage is taking place. Do we agree there?
I am guessing because of the wink, you do indeed agree. Right?
We are just talking about my major point, which is in one case 1) A state of affairs of collateral damage is taking place. In another 2) A state of affairs of collateral damage is not taking place.. The background assumption being that it COULD have.
In another 2) A state of immense value is not taking place. It certainly could have :p
Right, that is your argument, I understand. But before we get to why I think that doesn't matter, can we agree on the first?
No, we really do need to agree that in one instance collateral damage is taking place, and in another, it is not. We are not talking about any other contingencies because first we have to agree that this exists if we are to debate anything else, otherwise we are still stuck here and debating this argument again and again.
Sure do.
So for the sake of this argument, can we agree to limit the argument to be about states of affairs and not about projections of future people? That I believe is where we are talking past each other in this particular argument.
Actually that is a major disagreement. A state of affairs where something does not happen, is still an actual state of affairs.
Following your advice, refraining from procreation, would end all human existence in 150 years. If no one gets telomerized, that is, which is highly unlikely and shifts the problem to immortality. There will be no more suffering, no more happiness, and nature will be released from a damaging influence.
Quoting ssu
Do you really think the positive aspects of the modern world exist because of enlightenment?
That I call Enlightenment with a true capital P! It even brings a tear to the edge of my eye! But I'm too damned proud to let it flow... :smile:
Start first from either having a culture or not. Culture starting from some specialization in the society, things like language and then written language, agriculture, or not having all that. Being just hunter-gatherers. Can you make an claim that one is more preferred to the individual or is it a too vacuous claim?
Yes, positive or negative are quite subjective, yet we ought to make some conclusions on what is better than something else.
That is very interesting. I am really interested in your research because indeed schooling, the way we mold our citizenry is a crucial aspect in the way we govern society. In that sense I really like this foray in different education systems. I did (and do) not know enough about the change in education system in the 18th and 19th century. So your old text books are really great sources of information. Can I ask, do you have a theory for your research, in other words is it guided by a certain hypothesis or theoretical framework? I am immediately thinking about a Foucauldian research on 'governmentality' and what the governmentality is of these different systems of schooling, the old American way and the Prussian system. Do you do your research yourself or in the context of a PhD research? Is there a research community or are you working on this by yourself?
Quoting Athena
Yes, yes, well we all have the idea we do the right thing and we all grow up in certain systems, certain ways of doing we take for granted now. That is the beauty of Foucauldian research and the beauty of the research you do, because it might show how this system we all take for granted is not all that 'natural' or 'logical'. However, also us have that bias and even you as a researcher, in that respect you need a lot of extra information, surrounding the schooling system. That explains my question about the embeddedness of your research, because you would be burdened doing everything by yourself without other to talk to and to compare data with others who share a similar interest. Historic research is very hard to do because you need a grasp of the interlocking structures of these societies you examine.
Quoting Athena
No, I cannot say I have read that book. I also do not know it. It might be. There is a history behind WW1 as well of course. Recently historians are more sensitive to the idea that the narrative that Germany (or austria-Hungary together with Germany) started the big war. There are many causes and resaons for such a war. However, indeed The 19th century was a golden age for Germany and the dominant force in Germany was Prussia.
I do wonder about this burden you feel. As a researcher I hardly feel any burden myself also not when I see things going wrong. Burdens you wish to resolve. As a researcher I feel I do not want anything, I just gather data and analyze and offer my analysis. If you want to resolve issues, you are in danger of turning into an activist. What is your personal stake in the research if I may ask?
Quoting Athena
I agree there is an educational link. I think one should be careful to compare historical times with current ones. I would not easily compare Trump to Hitler even though I am not fond of the former president. Where I think parallels lie is because of 'depolitization' of society at least on the level of education. But it is a thorny one, the Weimar republic was torn apart in struggles between left, extreme left and conservative. Hitler came to power in a society that falling apart, polarization is visible now too, but of a different kind. It is tempting to paint broad brush strokes, but one needs to keep being sensitive to the differences.
Quoting Athena
Yes, I do and find it fascinating. Also here I see many links to governmentality research. The states of Europe, in the 18th and 19th due to mutual competition perfected the science of the state, aptly called 'statistics'. Germany, but also France and the UK had to mobilize the people to gain the upper hand in the race for the colonies. In the US there was space enough, no competition and there was enough land to carve out a good agricultural living. However, do not idealize one form or the other. Those children of God also ruthlessly murdered the native Americans and institutionalized a system of racial aprtheid until well into the 20th century. Ideas in the 18th and 19th century were just very backward everywhere.
Quoting Athena
There is of course and it is a fascinating read. Warfare was something in which to take pride. The Prussians indeed cultivated this sense, but the US had to catch up fast and of course in 1917 the US was embroiled in a cataclysmic European war, no wonder the subject of mass mobilization is of great interest.
Quoting Athena
Yes I am. Whether I have an answer I do not know. Of course we have technological warfare now. The patriotic spirit in the sense of 'dying for one's country' is less needed. If we want to educate the people for war we would need to ferret out the technical minds. The way we make war palatable now is to present it as a computer game. the images are of people falling not of them crying in agony. War is sensitized. It is not presented in a patriotic way but as something that happens far away, in another world. War has become something to manage. War has become 'eco-nomics', household management. The word is very different from your grand mother's cold war world.
That is also why I am puzzled sometimes with the things you say. What do you mean with 'Hitler's new world order'? I thought the world order we inherited was the world order of the cod war, a bipolar world order pitting capitalism against communism...
Quoting Athena
Too unnuanced for my taste. Maybe ok as a comparison, but Athens' democracy was also build on slaves and could only work by excluding the great mass of people from consensus decision making. The same actually goes for the US in times past. The model of democracy you seem to favour actually requires the exclusion of many people and many legitimate interests. Enlightenment democracy is democracy for the happy few. In the 19th century the challenge the Prussians faced and later the rest of the world was how to manage a mass society, a society in which everyone wanted a voice. One way was discipline and drilling as the school system does. You call specialization a poison to democracy and that goes hand in hand with this. Specialization though might well his sociological inevitability. It is not coincidental that the great sociologists of old were... Germans. The greatest of which, Max Weber, grew up in Prussia and very meticulously already analyzed the 'iron cage' of bureaucratization.
Quoting Athena
However, the Prussian model was than already firmly adopted. So was it then the Prussian model or the act of mass mobilization? Again there is no fundamental disagreement and I think your research is fascinating. We cannot go back to the times of old and I would also not idealize those. Too many genocides are committed by people who live on earth revering heroes. The old native ones were eradicated... The challenge will be to keep mass education, it is a fundamental right and I think fundamental to a healthy modern democracy, but to bring back a sense of generalization, extend our awareness through space and time, because also the world is becoming smaller and the 'now' is extending itself rapidly, as evinced by discussions of our past and rights of future generations. Anoth imperative is restoring some sort of link with the earth and our environment, in a democratic way. No easy task though.
I am sorry I am only a domestic woman. Pay careful attention here and look for the gray that is both black or white. And know your questions are greatly expanding my own understanding of everything! You are giving me an enlightening moment of the kind that brings me to this forum. I do have a college education and I listen to college lectures daily. But I have never transitioned into the kind of educated person of which you speak. To me, your questions about having a theoretical framework, or "context of a PhD, is a language from Mars. Despite all my education, and self-education, I am still a domestic woman. And I will think I have died and gone to heaven if you are willing to explore this with me.
When I was working on a degree in Gerontology, I learn the difference between being a domestic woman and a college graduate. These are completely different consciousness with different languages and this plays to into the other questions you have asked. I learned about this difference through researching middle-aged women. The research I needed was not in the abstracts. I had to rely on the research women had done, and the work was not accepted by the males who control what goes into the abstracts. I am not talking about feminism here or sexual prejudice. I am talking about male and female differences and education was ruled by women! Because it was seen as most women's work like child care.
Oh dear, this is rough and I have to divide your reply because there is so much to say here. Not only do women think and behave differently from men, but domestic women have a different language and organize themselves differently. Women are much more personal than men who are organizational. My male professor was a chauvinist male whose knowledge of life was limited to men just like him. His vision of the world and mine clashed!. He refused to accept any research that was not in the abstracts, which goes with your interest in having a theoretical framework, or "context of a PhD,". How male those values are. He also shared with us that when his father died, he put his mother in a residence where she had to be completely dependent on others, and would not even allow her to drive. He forced her to give up her home, her friends, her whole life, and then said to class he wonders if that made it more difficult for her to adjust to being a widow. This was the head of the gerontology department and he could not have done worse to his mother. But what he did is typical male thinking according to the research I did. In the past women took care of everyone and men paid for someones to care for the children and the aged.
Now, what do you think education should teach us? You said "schooling, the way we mold our citizenry is a crucial aspect in the way we govern society." I said women were in control of education. Yes, the education experts tended to men. All the positions of "authority" would have been held by men, except in the one-room schools, where an 18-year-old woman was expected to give children of all ages an education, as though this were no different from any other child care. I am speaking of my grandmother's generation of teachers. Most grade school teachers were women. All education was based on liberal education. We teach children math to teach them how to think. We teach them the American mythology that is in history books. Education is about literacy and reading the classics, not about having a high-tech job. Am I conveying a feeling about education that is helpful in answering your questions?
Oh for sure, for sure! I desperately need the input of others! What we are thinking needs to be challenged from an outside source or we are not really thinking. This is why the Conceptual method is so important and what is wrong with the Behaviorist method. learning increasingly complex concepts stimulates true thinking. The Behaviorist method is about memorizing the required information and passing test. The Behaviorist method is programming, not developing a thinking human being. Have you seen the movie The Reader". I saw it long ago and my memory is vague, but the gist is a German woman who is illiterate is found guilty of war crimes. She was not guilty but was hiding the fact she could not read. If she had let that be known she would have been found innocent. A man takes interest in her and when she goes to prison, he sends her audio tapes of the classics. You see, she was only following orders and that was being a good Nazi and she had no concept of independent moral judgment and refusing to follow orders. That would have depended on knowing the classics and thinking about right and wrong.
Why do we recoil at Nazis following orders? Why have today's prisoners who, in prison, study the classics, become changed, people? Here is a problem with Christianity- it is not Jesus saving anyone but learning good moral judgment, and social rules, good citizenship, and peer support and pressure that makes us good. When we had liberal education based on the classics and being literate, we were fulfilling the promise of the enlightenment. Education for technology does not do that! Now we have a technologically very smart society, without wisdom.
The belief that we are evil unless saved by Jesus, is an educational problem because it has pit Christians against higher-order thinking skills that are essential to good moral judgment and small things like understanding why we should wear and mask and get vaccinated. Do you realize we actually have churches leading the fight against wearing masks and getting vaccinated?! Education for technology is not education for science and it is not education for good moral judgment. Education for technology prepares the young to rely on authority. Now we have an amoral society, that is threatened by both anarchy and authoritarianism, and the US doesn't have a leg to stand on in the international fight for democracy, and Trump is our Hitler, and some of his followers are in prison.
I am dying out here with this insight and no voice to answer everyone's question about what has gone wrong and what can we do about it. The 1958 National Defense Education is destroying the US. Now our children's libraries are filled with literary trash like "Captian Underwear" because that is what children will read, and no classics because children will not read the classics. Damn, right the kids won't read them, because they are not being educated to value them. While teachers blame the parents for not caring about their children and parents blame the schools for all the problems. And no one knows what the enlightenment had to do with our advancement nor what it means to defend democracy in the classroom. But we understand our right to bear arms. And I think we got talking about education by here by starting with global warming. This January Oregon is breaking temperature records, day after day. We think we know science, but we do not. We know technology and Christianity.
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You have a very important perspective on the development of government, but there is one more thing we need to know.
Government research :lol: I minored in public policy and administration. It was the most depressing time in my life! In the 60's I thought I wanted to be a social worker. Learning about government ended that desire! We adopted the German model of bureaucracy that goes with the Prussian model of education.
It is essential we understand education and war, and education and government order, andpreviously you mentioned military order!
The Prussian model of government is the Prussian military order applied to citizens. This begins with Prussian generals determining the military action and precisely defining every single task that is necessary to pull this off. Once the plan is complete, the swarm of ants (army) will do exactly as planned, even if every general is killed. Unlike kingdoms, bureaucracies never die.
In the old bureaucratic order used by the government and all businesses, everything depended on the individual aptitude of the person doing the job. If that person died or left for other reasons, it would throw the whole operation into chaos. The replacement would not do the job exactly as the person before, but organize the job to take advantage of his best abilities and delegate other responsibilities to someone else. That means everyone would have to adjust to the new person's way of doing things.
That was very inefficient and it was tied to nepotism. :gasp: You might imagine the problems with that. And this is also a social problem, a social problem the English education protected. England strongly supported the division of classes that they had and rejected Germany's education for technology because education for technology tends to be a social leveler. Suddenly with education, the commoners qualify for jobs because they have the training, AND hiring is based on merit. Merit hiring means uncle Joe who is an alcoholic and is lacks the necessary knowledge/training does not get the job, but the job is given to the man with no breeding, but the right training. Education for good citizenship and education for a good Englishman was not so different. As I stated, US education was about good citizenship, not technology and that meant the US was technological behind Germany and not ready for war. But Abraham Lincoln who grew up in the boonies could become president.
Sorry, that was very convoluted. President Eisenhower praised the Germans for their contribution to democracy shortly after the end of WWII. Education for technology and merit hiring is a social/economic leveler. Unfortunately, Eisenhower realized too late, the modern German model of bureaucracy, and education, leads to dependency on specialized experts. He warned us of that danger, but most Americans think what I am saying is a "conspiracy theory". They do not know enough about bureaucratic organization to see the problem. No matter what system is used, there will be problems. The Prussian model of bureaucracy is far superior to the one the US had. We could not have a national pension plan without that change. However, our past education, liberal or classical education is essential to our liberty and democracy.
You are right about the importance of governmental development, but we might want to keep Tocqueville's 1835 (Democracy in America) warning in mind. We are becoming a despot that is opposed to the democracy we had. Or as Aldous Huxley said. "In the past, personal and political liberty depended to a considerable extent upon governmental inefficiency. The spirit of tyranny was always more than willing; but its organization and material equipment were generally weak. Progressive science and technology have changed all this completely."
Only when democracy is defended in the classroom is it defended and only when citizens understand the importance of obeying the law (based on the laws of nature) can they have liberty.
:grin: "Democracy is a way of life and social organization which above all others is sensitive to the dignity and worth of the individual human personality, affirming the fundamental moral and political equality of all men and recognizing no barriers of race, religion, or circumstance." (Germanerl Report of the Seminar on "What is Democracy?" Congress in Education for Democracy, August, 1939)
Our form of government is a republic. Only very small populations can have direct democracy and there was a time in Athens when every male citizen who came of age had to attend the governing meetings, so everyone understood the reasoning of the law and had an opportunity to change that reasoning, as a meeting of the gods debating until having a consensus.
I believe it is important we understand democracy as a culture not the form of government. Government is only one aspect of democracy. We retain the power of the people by electing representatives that is a republic. However, again when we are not transmitting that culture through education, we can not manifest democracy any more than a church will manifest Christianity if it puts the Bible in a back corner and teaches math and science instead of Bible stories.
Ok, so states of affairs are important.
AND
There is no collateral damage in one and there is collateral damage in the other.
However, in regards to happiness..
There is no happiness in one and there is happiness in the other.
Now comes the tricky part...
No collateral damage is hurting no one. That is a fact.
No happiness is occurring to no one. That is a fact.
Those are the facts "on the ground". The moral question the antinatalist poses then is:
How can it ever be bad that someone does not incur collateral damage (of harm), when the collateral damage of "no happiness", is incurred by literally "no one"?
The fact is, the state of affairs of harm is not taking place. No one suffers.
The fact is, the state of affairs of no happiness is taking place. No one suffers the lack of happiness either.
There is no losing side to the second state of affairs. These are the facts on the ground, and that's just with minimal value statements added. When adding this as well, I think it's pretty much an open shut case for antinatalism.
Indeed that might be a consequence.
The no-so-tricky part is that:
1. The lack of happiness is benefitting nobody. This is a fact.
2. "No collateral damage" is happening to nobody. This is a fact.
These are the actual facts on the ground. Now, the reality is:
The lack of "collateral damage" cannot be considered preferable or good, since its absence does not incur any benefits onto an actual person.
The fact is: the state of affairs of happiness is not taking place. Nobody feels great about the lack of damage either.
There's definitely a lot of losing in the second state of affairs. If the absence of the harms is good even if it doesn't help an actual person, the lack of happiness is also bad, irrespective of whether or not someone is there to express their desire to have it. This is the simple and necessarily consistent case, and I think that it is a better representation of reality than the flawed one provided by antinatalism.
Saying this doesn't make it true.. but let's move forward shall we?
Quoting DA671
Yep, I'd agree with that. But that is not how I phrased it, so you are trying to change my statement. I simply said, no collateral damage is taking place.
Quoting DA671
Again, twisting it! I simply stated the fact that no collateral damage is taking place. Stick with what I'm saying and not where you want it to be.
Quoting DA671
So then this becomes irrelevant as it's again more changing the argument.
Let's look at this one more time...
Description of a state of affairs:
No collateral damage of harm is taking place.
No happiness is being deprived (to an actual person).
Do we agree with this?
I am not trying to put words in your mouth. I was merely stating a fact that the lack of collateral damage is not helping anybody in inexistence.
"Twists" are necessary to fix already twisted ideas ;) You said:
"How can it ever be bad that someone does not incur collateral damage (of harm), when the collateral damage of "no happiness", is incurred by literally "no one"?"
This isn't just about no damage taking place. Firstly, I did not claim that the lack of damage is bad; I said that if the lack of damage is good, then the lack of happiness is also bad. You seemed to imply that the absent happiness does not matter because it doesn't "damage" anybody. I only pushed for consistency by pointing out that, by the same token, the lack of collateral damage also does not bestow any good upon someone who does not exist. So, if the lack of happiness cannot be bad due to a lack of experiential harm, I don't think that a lack of damage could be considered preferable since there is no experiential benefit arising in that state of affairs.
It's quite relevant.
Full description:
No benefit from a lack of harm is taking place.
No relief is being felt from any "prevented suffering" (for an actual person).
If this is true, then I certainly agree with (parts) of what you say.
Since I am not saying this, I'll disregard it. So moving on.
Quoting DA671
Yep, that seems to be what you keep twisting my statements to, I agree.
I was making my own statement, so this has nothing to do with your words. Once again, an unsubstantiated claim.
No, you were trying to say that I was doing the opposite of those statements with my own statements.
All I said was:
No collateral damage of harm is taking place.
No happiness is being deprived (to an actual person).
I made no reference to anyone benefiting or not benefiting from it. That is why I said this is facts on the ground and not value statements attached to them.
I could rephrase what I said for further clarity:
No happiness is taking place.
No relief/satisfaction from the absence of damage is being provided (to an actual person).
I am not bound to use your terminologies (I consider damage to be linked with value, but I digress), but rest assured, I was not referring to anything other than the facts on the ground.
Yes, you would want that because it makes your argument easier. But I am not adding it.. You don't know where I'm necessarily going with this yet (which is clear), but it's best not to add anything unnecessarily beforehand, otherwise you are making strawmen to knockdown.
Quoting DA671
No you were not though. When you stated that "no benefit" and "no relief" were taking place, you were trying to put an extra value in there whereby you essentially append.. "And there is no person to realize this GOOD". I didn't even say whether no happiness and no harm was good or bad yet.. I just stated that it is not taking place, period at this point.
You did the same when you said "No happiness is being deprived", since this clearly meant that no "person" exists to realise this bad.. Again, I am not going to accept unjustifiable inconsistencies. However, that's fine. You can elaborate on what you wish to say. I haven't done much more than object to potential/actual double standards that I've spotted, period. Be that as it may, I apologise if I misunderstood/misconstrued anything you said.
Why should a democracy be a way of live and social organization above all others? Why shouldn't other forms of life be sensitive to the dignity and worth of the individual?
Quoting ssu
Here you already start from the picture of a special kind of society. Not having material specializations, doesn't mean no culture. There are lots of cultures based on principles different from the ones entertained by enlightenment. Usually these cultures are called primitive. But that's only in the light of enlightenment, and these cultures are not cultures in the sense of cultivating nature by they are cultures based on an entirely different worldview. Humanity managed to survive long before the advent of enlightenment, and the light shined pwas liberating and is shining more brightly than ever, is just one light amongst many, and it's harsh reality that people living cultures or ways of life not wanting to live in that light have simply melted away in the burning light of "the" enlightenment, have lost the way, turning to alcohol or other addictive raffinated stuff, or were forced to do so, with an efficient, sleazy method, compared to which the beating in submission and forced conversion in the name of Gods seems a small peanut.
But this isn't the same. You can take that out if you like, I just wanted to make clear that this isn't talking about some future happiness missed, but a current state of affairs.
To continue: If this is a state of affairs, who is judging this state of affairs? You are correct in that it is not the person not born yet. This is solely a decision by the "already-existing" (in this case a person who is choosing whether to procreate). That being said, now we can start looking at values, ethical intuitions and whatnot.
If there is a state of affairs whereby no on is suffering (and no collateral damage of "no happiness" either to any actual person), then how is it justified to start suffering on someone else's behalf?
Here is where you might retort.. Plenty of situations! Almost all of them have to do with creating a smaller harm to prevent a greater harm.. making children attend school, get vaccinated, tough love, etc. etc.
While I agree, it would be moral to allow smaller harm for greater harm, this only happens once someone is already put into existence. Assuming that allowing greater suffering if it could be prevented is bad, this would indeed go along with ethical reasoning.
However, in this case, someone is starting (wholesale) the conditions whereby ALL suffering will take place for another person. This suffering, as we see from the initial state of affairs (conditions), is not taking place currently. However, the parent would presume that they should change the state whereby now someone will suffer.
Now you can ask, what is the nature of this suffering? Is it trivial or very temporary? No, it is not. Life presents a litany of pains great and small. Is it escapable? No, you have to stick with the restrictions and contingent sufferings of life's game or you exit it by suicide. So at the end here we are:
1) Starting the conditions for all suffering unnecessarily
2) On behalf of someone else
3) The suffering is not trivial
4) The suffering is inescapable.
If you acknowledge that those four things are in fact true, then you would ask, why you would do that to someone? The most obvious response will be, "Because happiness!". Another popular one is because "Life itself is just intrinsically valuable and needs to be experienced by SOMEONE". I will get to that counter later, but I would like to start with the initial premise.
Indeed.
This assumes that not creating the damage is either ethically good/neutral. If it's good to prevent damage whose prevention would not satisfy the interests of an actual person, then it is also bad to prevent happiness, regardles of whether or not someone exists to be deprived of it. If it is solely neutral, then I don't see how it can be justifiable to say that bestowing the good of happiness on another person's behalf is not ethical, especially considering the fact that there is no happiness and no satisfaction arising from "no collateral damage".
We certainly do have situations wherein one incurs harms in order to achieve greater goods, though I don't think it is necessary in all cases, provided one learns to limit their unnecessary needs. For instance, I don't think that infinite money is a required for a meaningful life, but some might crave it due to their inability to find contentment.
The problem is that you're only concerned with suffering. However, one is also starting the conditions for all joyous experiences. Someone is starting the state of affairs which would allow all happiness to take place.
I don't deny that there are serious harms, which is also why I support transhumanism and the right to a graceful exit. However, there are also deeply meaningful experiences that act as a source of inimitable value even in terrible situations for innumerable people. I don't think that this is a trivial factor. I don't think that the harms are always inescapable, and there is also a lot of resilience that people demonstrate (though voluntary life-extension can certainly help people cherish the lives they value). So, we are actually here:
1. Starting the conditions for all happiness is necessarily (presuming that NOT starting the conditions for harms is necessary) good.
2. On behalf of someone else who cannot ask for the good.
3. The happiness is also not trivial.
4. The happiness is precious and ineffably valuable, and most people do seem to value their lives.
Happiness does matter, and I don't think that your replies change that cardinal consideration. I am not claiming that life is intrinsically valuable (just as I don't believe that life is inherently disvaluable). I only think that if it can be good to not create harms, it can also be good to create valuable experiences. Nevertheless, I don't believe that anyone should be pressurised or forced to endure a valueless existence.
Chaos will stay at bay...
Well, exploring it we are already doing. I can help, at least by being someone you can throw ideas at and also by being critical. That is the academic way. I can sometimes be tough, but never out of dislike or disdain but because questioning your own and other's ideas sharply though fairly helps and makes them better. And well. I mt a prof once, she got her PhD after twenty years of being a house wife. She has her rough English accent, but she was an expert on Derrida and sharp as a whip... It is rare but it happens.
quote="Athena;641963"]Now, what do you think education should teach us? You said "schooling, the way we mold our citizenry is a crucial aspect in the way we govern society." I said women were in control of education. Yes, the education experts tended to men. All the positions of "authority" would have been held by men, except in the one-room schools, where an 18-year-old woman was expected to give children of all ages an education, as though this were no different from any other child care. I am speaking of my grandmother's generation of teachers. Most grade school teachers were women. All education was based on liberal education. We teach children math to teach them how to think. We teach them the American mythology that is in history books. Education is about literacy and reading the classics, not about having a high-tech job. Am I conveying a feeling about education that is helpful in answering your questions?[/quote]
Well ideally, in my point of view, education makes us happier persons who understand and can cope with the world around them. That would also mean that education tends to shift with how the world around them looks. American heroes are great but children today grow up in an international world, heck, we are even conversing here in an international forum. I only recently learned about American heroes and to be honest in my view they are quaint people... that is because I have not imbibed 'being an American' from an early age. But to be able, to hold their own in an international world the kids should know how relative those stories are and develop a keen interest in European, Chinese, South american and African heroes. They do not need to know the mytology but they need to learn how to listen, how to communicate. So what education is and should be depends on the times.
Quoting Athena
I haven't unfortunately. It was on my 'watch list' and maybe if I find it I will watch it soon. But anyway, many Nazi's were guilty, men who learned how to read and write. Nazism was one side of German history, it also had wonderful theologians, philosophers, and literary geniuses. What interests me is not the question of good and bad, but under what conditions did one education system replace the next and what were the reasons for it. There are probably no monocausal explanations for it. What were the conditions under which Prussia developed it and what was the reason for its success. To do that one needs to trace very meticulously and also with distance, how these steps took place and what were the turning points. You have the material to do so, but then you need methodology and theory...
Quoting Athena
Too fast. You might well find the Prussian systems stems from enlightenment ideas. The classics themselves say little. There were atrocious wars in the past and heinous crimes, just like there are now. In fact crime cates go down, people are not worse than they were in the past. Not that I am against a classical education, but I am against easy black and white dichotomies.
Quoting Athena
Indeed! Actually the same kind of military regimes were enabled everywhere in bureaucracy, in the hospitals, in areas hit by pandemics, in factories and in schools. Michel Foucault write about it brilliantly. But actually, the German military, at least in WW2 was so ruthlessly efficient because they allowed field commanders leeway into how to reach objectives. That you describe is known as Taylorism, or Fordism, the mindless deskilled working on the production line. The current 'mobilization' of citizens is far less crude and more insidious than that. We are led to accepting the goals rather mindlessly, but the means. we are taught to think about them. It is much more efficient than thinking ahead in every eventuality. As actually German lawyers learned. Prussia was also one of the first countries with something like 'science of law'. What I mean is, also 'Prussian education' developed. We are no longer in the 19th century.
Quoting Athena
But I reckon social mobility is a good thing. Finally your class id not determine you, finally, you could thrive and develop just like everyone could. Three cheers for Prussian education no?
Quoting Athena
But why is it essential? From these to paragraphs I get the impression that the German model was much more democratic, egalitarian and beneficial to the senior citizens. Specialization, well of course. Pur knowledge has increased immesely. We would not be talking had it not been for specialization and people knowing about communication and technology. I am not saying these things just for the sake of disagreement but to tease out, what 'democracu' means to you. If you ask me, these are all fundamental pillars of a functioning democracy.
Quoting Athena
I agree but to some extent. De Tocquville also stands for a rather elitist conception of democracy. And I am not favouring the rule of mister and misses Average, but to me democracy also means fair opportunities to all.
What other system empowers individuals and lifts the individual human potential, and therefore, the collective potential of civilization?
Quoting Tobias
No, I will give you a quote from James William's 1899 book, TALKS TO TEACHERS ON PSYCHOLOGY; AND TO STUDENTS ON SOME OF LIFE'S IDEALS.
"If we reflect upon the various ideals of education that are prevalent in the different countries, we see that what they all aim at is to organize capacities for conduct. This is most immediately obvious in Germany, where the explicitly avowed aim of the higher education is to turn the student into an instrument for advancing scientific discovery. The German universities are proud of the number of young specialists whom they turn out every after year, -not necessarily men of any original force of intellect, but men so trained to research that when their professor gives them an historical or philosophic thesis to prepare, or a bit of laboratory work to do, with a general indication as to the best method, they can go off by themselves and use apparatus and consult sources in such a way as to grind out in the requestite number of months some little pepper-corn of new truth worthy of being added to the store of extant human information on that subject. Little else is recognized in Germany as a man's title to academic advancement than his ability thus to show himself as an efficient instrument of reserch."
I love that statement! :heart:
Quoting Tobias
Yes, our heroes were quaint but culturally very important to the US, and destroying them, as we have done, has destroyed our culture. The result is being what we defended our democracy against. This change is directly related to the change in bureaucratic order. It is the difference between being an individual or a member of a group.
Why do you think learning about the world is important? I am not saying it is not important but I am struggling with a question of identity and unity. To destroy our sense of identity and cultural agreements could have negative consequences. Wow, could this be a philosophical subject. I somewhat envy Native Americans who have strong tribal identities as this is so different from the "Lonely Crowd" in which most of us live. And that concern of the lonely crowd is the opposite of my concern in the paragraph above, that we lose individual power and the strong leaders we need. :roll:
I don't think what I have said is comprehensible but it is confused. I am afraid this confusion is behind the intense political and social conflict we have now. I think nations can be as in great need of psychoanalysis and individuals. The US is having an identity crisis.
My last post was not done when it posted because of a technical problem, but there is no harm in jumping to your last post. What you said is true, and because this is an international forum, I was made aware of this being an international problem. Amazingly Athens also had these problems! Perhaps we can see this as growing pains?
I am feeling a burning need to look more deeply into Athens's history. There was strong resistance to the increasing technological focus of education in Athens and some thought this was destroying Athens, as I have concerns about our technological focus destroying the US.
I am so grateful you are so open-minded and you are not an "either this or that" thinker. You open the windows for thinking, while many slam them shut.
All non-western forms of live.
Yes, yes, and that is why I argue education so seriously! Saltwater is water, but you do not to drink it. When we are considering education, we need to consider what is the purpose of that education. Perhaps you can go my reply to Raymond that quotes James Williams.
Liberal education is for free men. A liberal education prepares the young to be self-governing and self-directed!
Education for technology has always been education for slaves. Our technology has advanced but it is still for slaves and their society is run by policies they do not make. This mentality wants a Hitler or a Trump, who will make life good for them. They have archy confused with liberty and favor brute force over reason. No matter how technologically smart they may be, that is not equal to wisdom. @Raymond seems to be arguing what is wrong with this.
Please, explain. Are you saying the Chinese have a better way of life? Perhaps India is the best model? Arabs are equal to Asians? Do you want to live in Afghanistan?
These countries are western in fact. Cities in India, China, Afghanistan are all alike. I mean the ways of life made impossible by western expansion. There are, or better, were, lots of them scattered around the globe. African tribes (showing themselves for money to tourists), Aboriginals (some in Australia drinking alcohol after being robbed from their land), people on islands who got cancer by nuclear testing), people in India getting used for money while their ancestors lived a happy life before the advent of the west, native Americans, people from Africa living a happy life before the west arrived, the Hopi Indians, Inuit ways of life, people living happily in nature, etc.
Yep. I like the "little pepper-corn" analogy. I've mentioned before that the number of new research papers in math alone arriving at Cornell's ArXiv.org surpasses 250 per day.
As the imperative of growth dictates. Progress=growth. Litterally. More, deeper, larger, higher, faster, further, richer, shorter, thinner, fatter, boomer, or banger. "The record is broooooken!" I'm not saying this is inherently wrong, but it fucks up nature. That's the reason for the chaos in nature. And the unholy alliance of state and Science. I'm "a scientist" myself (like anybody..) but at least I realize what once was God and State is now Science and State.
While I agree with some of what you said, I also disagree with things you said. I sure do not see Cities in India, China, Afghanistan as the same. I also do not blame the west for all the problems.
Quoting Raymond
That is a better explanation of what has gone wrong than blaming the west. I am not arguing disrupting aborigines' lives is not harmful or even tragic. But life is change and with the bad comes the good, such as clean water, medicine, technologies that benefit people, resulting in more people living into old age and then all the problems that come with growth. It might be unavoidable that mankind brings on the chaos that destroys life on the planet, or that one human consciousness consumes all human consciousness, making what has happened to the aboriginal people of the world just part of the inevitable change of life.
In a philosophy forum, it is paramount that we consider the meaning of life and the best possible values. Realizing such things as feeding the very poor will increase the size of their breeding population and therefore the problem of keeping them fed and this becomes a problem for the earth as the growing population of humans consumes resources and this can mean the extinction of species and global warming. We need to wonder and attacking is not wonderful.
It is written in your linked article:
"arXiv is a free distribution service and an open-access archive for 2,004,641 scholarly articles in the fields of physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical engineering and systems science, and economics"
In the light of 250 new articles per day, an astoundingly accurate number. It wouldn't surprise me if the growth shows exponential growth, like almost all growth dictated by the growth imperative advocated by Science, at the same time making the metaphysical assumption that the reality which knowledge is about can never be reached. The epistemology, implied by the methodology of Karl Popper. A methodology most scientists would opt for, would they have been asked. In this methodology, a metaphysical reality of the unreachable is a necessary and sufficient to consolidate the imperative of knowledge growth and hypothesizes even that the search and growth will never end, turning scientists into nervous and restless creatures, never satisfied with the status quo.
Right but after acknowledging how I am phrasing it, you go back to the straw man argument. That is to say, this is about the parent making a decision with moral implications, not the non-existent nothing. So let's see where we are:
1) There is a state of affairs where no one is suffering, and no one is deprived of happiness.
2) The parent must make a decision whereby the original state of affairs of ~suffering (no suffering) should be changed to one where suffering is present.
So what would impel one to change an initial state from ~ suffering to suffering?
I believe this a priori to be wrong, right there. What gives someone a right to change the initials state to one where suffering is present? It can be argued that, in an ideal world, this change of state from nothing to suffering is always bad and avoided as it is never just to create unnecessary suffering in the world, period. It does not matter the reason as the suffering was unnecessary to start in the first place.
These correlate to these two reasons:
1) Starting the conditions for all suffering unnecessarily
2) On behalf of someone else
Now let's look at the situation a posteriori:
3) The suffering is not trivial
4) The suffering is inescapable.
If we are to look at the nature of this suffering, we can see that the suffering that happens in life is persistent, could be stochastic, and varies from minor to great pains. Some of it can even be described as systematic in a Schopenhaurian sense of perpetual lack of satisfaction. One doesn't need this more Eastern interpretation though, so scratch it if you like.
If we look at life as not a paradise, it is certainly not escapable either. One isn't an angelic being (from the POV of a human) testing the waters of this existence to quickly retreat when one wanted to. Rather, it is lived out until death. Life entails all sorts of unasked for but necessary conditions one must deal with to live. We are also an animal that can dislike what we are doing AS we are doing it, EVEN though we know it is necessary for survival. Other animals just "do", but we can evaluate what we do (especially tasks of survival) and deem it negative. We have self-reflection on top of a primary consciousness in the present. This gives us our survival skills of cultural and linguistic survival, yet puts us in a place of self-knowledge whereby we know there are aspects we don't like but cannot escape, lest suicide slow (starvation) or fast (immediate). Both of these are not ideal. We must either "comply" with the situation once we are born or die by suicide. This is just to foist on someone? It is a double bind.
Thus for those four powerful reasons on top of the mere fact of the a priori truth that ~suffering is being changed to suffering, it would be wrong, unjust, misguided.
Now, for your objection regarding happiness..Quoting DA671
Is changing a state from ~happiness to happiness neutral or morally right, if there is collateral damage of changing a state from ~suffering to suffering?
Again, if we look at the fact that the suffering is non-trivial and inescapable, we can see that this would not meet any threshold whereby starting someone else's suffering (that has no merit outside simply happiness is a result as well).
Argument from intuition:
It seems morally intuitive that causing harm when it is not necessary is always a wrong. The key word is unnecessary. Once born, the intra-wordly (pace Cabrera) affairs of comparative loss/benefits might ensue, but in the case of procreation there is no need to ameliorate harms, and therefore all creation of harm is unnecessary.
Argument from Kant's Categorical Imperative:
In Kant's second formulation, it is noted that we should treat people as their own ends and not a means. In the case of starting happiness, the fact that one is disregarding someone else's suffering, would be a major violation of this principle. It would be overlooking the dignity of someone by foregoing the fact that you are starting suffering for someone because YOU think it is "worth it" to them to suffer. Notice that this reasoning does not need the post-facto thumbs up or down of the person who is affected. Rather, the decision itself is already a violation simply by overlooking dignity as represented by the suffering that the parent is disregarding in the decision to have a child for X reason (the X simply being a means or means to a preference held by the parent).
Argument from strings-attached gifts:
A gift is truly a gift in good faith if it was a) given with the intent that the person would have wanted and enjoyed the gift and b) comes with no strings attached. Rather, life is not simply happiness on a platter, but comes with the strings attached of suffering and harm. Further, this harm is non-trivial, and inescapable. This can no longer be deemed a gift. It is an agenda to start a set of experiences and circumstances on someone else's behalf. (See Argument from Kant's CI). This is indeed using someone then as one is burdening someone so that they can also receive the rewards of the precious "gift". Further, some people prefer others to suffer (to some extent) so they can "feel the rewards" of struggle. This I would say is just outright using people for an agenda.
Overall, any time someone is unnecessarily starting someone else's suffering it is a violation of dignity of that person and is using them.
Just part of the inevitable change of life? You mean the inevitable "progress" as part of a lifestyle that has done more harm to humanity than any other form has done and that even claims about itself that it is a lifeform lifted above other forms, as you write yourself. Now every form of life thinks it's the best, but imposing it by force is something completely different. Claiming that beating people in submission in favor of The Way, and that it's only natural this had to happen, that it had to be that way, is not any different from turning people into submission in the name of God. Again, this is no attack against science (I'm one myself!), only a defense of people who want to base living on a different story.
Once again, I feel that your statements are limited because they frame things in a biased way. In other words, it essentially says that "nobody is suffering" and "nobody has any need for happiness". However, one could also say:
1. There is a state where nobody is happy, and nobody is saved from suffering.
2. The parent is the only one capable of making the decision whereby a state of affairs of no value (happiness) would turn into one that does possess the positives.
Nothing should compel us to create harms in isolation. However, I do think that the existence of deeply valuable experiences for many gives us a reason to create them. The formation of happiness can certainly be ethical.
I would not say that not creating a person leads to no harm. It could, for instance, severely affect the people who wanted to have a family. However, I won't consider that point here. I don't think there is a valid justification for not creating happiness in a state of affairs that lacked any prior value. Happiness is intrinsically valuable and it is never unnecessary to not create it, unless it leads to greater loss of value, which I don't think it does.
1. If not starting suffering (an intrinsically undesirable experience) is necessary, then starting happiness (an intrinsically preferable experience) can also be good.
2. It's definitely good to do so on behalf of someone who cannot ask for the good themselves.
Furthermore,
4. The happiness can also be deeply valuable and is experienced by many people; it is not insignificant.
5. It is quite precious and is cherished by many people.
I never claimed that life is perfect. However, it isn't an absolute hell without any hope either. Without resorting to angels or demons, there are many people who find joy in seemingly little things, such as reading and gardening. I witnessed this myself due to the time I have spent in a "third world country". Joy can be found in unlikely places, and though it isn't (unfortunately) ubiquitous, at least for now, I do think that it has more than sufficient worth that justifies its preservation. The Eastern tradition also has many other larger beliefs, such as rebirth and the futility of not creating people. However, they also speak of sukkha (happiness) which can be found by minimising unnecessary desires, and I already agree with that idea. Chasing superficial pleasures often leads to harms. I'll return to the main topic now. There certainly is a need to survive, but I don't think that everybody constantly despises it. I, just like many other people, like the process of striving for a greater good, even though I admit that contentment is generally preferable. Again, I am not saying that there aren't hardships, because there clearly are. Nevertheless, I disagree with the idea that their existence always negates the value of the good parts of life. There is happiness, and there is immense resilience in many cases (I remember the genuine happiness in the eyes of the people who came from what many of us would call terrible conditions). It's often a twofold blessing.
When one adds the fact that happiness is being created from a state of no value, I think it would be misguided and unethical to claim that they don't have significance or deserve to be prevented.
If it is good (and not neutral) to prevent damage even if it prevents some happiness, it can also be bad to prevent all positive experiences for the sake of preventing the negatives. I suppose this would also depend on the nature/scope of happiness and harms, but I don't think that it makes sense to say that it's wrong to create happiness if it also creates harms, but it isn't problematic to prevent all good for the sake of avoiding harm. Alternatively, one could say that non-creation is neutral in both cases, but the formation of the positives is still good.
Once again, once one realises the potency that the positive experiences of life can have for a person, I simply don't think that it can be fair or ethical to suggest that preventing all good (which is not-so-simple in every instance) would be preferable.
There could still be harms for those who desperately want to create a person they would care for, but this isn't my main point. I don't think that this is just about harms; it is also about happiness. For existing people, it might be sufficient to not harm them in order to ensure that they live generally good lives. However, nonexistent people are clearly not in a state of affairs they would have an interest in. If creating suffering is "unnecessary", but preventing it is necessary, then I also think that creating a happy life can also be necessarily good. One could also say that it makes sense to care about preventing harms when one exists, but not before it. But I am not taking such a view at this point of time, so I'll move on.
I don't think that this violates Kant's imperative. Nobody has an interest in not existing that would somehow be violated or disregarded by being created. In Kantian ethics, what might be more pertinent would be to ensure that one truly cares for the person and doesn't create them merely because they wish to have more working hands. However, I do think that one actually respects and exalts the dignity of a person by giving them the opportunity to experience goods they would be deeply grateful for and had no way to solicit prior to existing. On the other hand, I don't think that preventing all goods for the sake of a perspective that doesn't sufficiently focus on the goods would be an ethical intention/act.
I would not say that life is always a "gift"; it could certainly turn bad, which is why I support transhumanism and the RTD so that harms can be reduced. However, I think that the value of a gift comes from the overall good it provides, not from just potential harms.
i) The "no-strings" attached might be relevant if greater value/happiness was achievable without causing the harm caused by the negative aspects of the gift. However, it is evident that nonexistent beings don't exist in a state they have an interest in that would be affected by the "inferior" gift. In many instances, it could be a source of inimitable value that, despite its downsides, can still be quite meaningful.
ii) One doesn't have absolute certainty about anything. Everything does involve a certain degree of risks, such as giving a self-help book to someone that ends up making them miserable. Most people do genuinely seem to wish that the person they create would have a good life, and if the taking the risk can be bad, grabbing the opportunity for happiness can also be good. I think that an agenda to prevent all happiness cannot be considered ethical. Weaving the fabric of all happiness can be immensely good. I don't think that most people intend to create harms. If anything, the existence of numerous NGOs and people committed to social causes like charity does show that people do wish to reduce harm. Being happy doesn't have to come at the cost of harms, especially when it comes to different individuals (not to mention that one can also help others in small ways, such as by making a kind remark). For many people, the blessing outweighs the "burden" by a large margin, and intentionally forming that great joy cannot be unethical in any consistent ethical framework.
Overall, I believe that any time one is unnecessarily preventing significant happiness that nobody could ask for or appreciate prior to existing, they cannot claim that they have accomplished an ultimate good by preventing potential harms.
Wow. A gentleman in the apartment complex where I live is devoted to math. I asked him what is happening in the math field and he explained there are many sources of information and a lot is going on and he was not moved to speak of any one thing. :lol: I had no idea something like 250 papers per day is what he was talking about. Kind of like someone from a small European country coming to the US and expecting to drive across it in a few hours. The truth of the matter can be overwhelming. And considering my math skills are third-grade level, I can now understand why he didn't want to explain more. You speak of a world of thought that is very foreign to me.
I think you speak with much more hindsight than you realize. Only recently have many of us accepted global warming is happening. It is all well and good to look back and look forward and conclude we have not been angels without fault. But I think we should acknowledge this kind of thinking is the result of our progress. We can know more today than ever before and if we were not here, we could not know so much and would not judge ourselves wrong. I think you need to be a little easier on humans who are learning as we go.
If it were not for the technology we have developed fewer people would live to old age and that would be terrible because young people do not have the perspective that is gained with age. We would not be able to feed the world as well as we are doing. We have so much to be thankful for, and I think being thankful or throwing stones, is more about our attitude than anything else.
I am so glad you see the expansion of military order throughout the whole of society. You may have been taught to think about the means of achieving goals. But I don't think this comes with education in the US. There are factions that are trying to get us there and the US is on the brink of another civil war!
We are processing a complete change of consciousness and this is a very turbulent process! People are flipping out and gunning down everyone in sight. The storming of our Capitol Building was an organized action and I don't know how anyone can believe Trump did not intentionally inspire it. From what I have heard through television, Germany has made awesome progress and I speak of the US that has not made that progress and is in intense trouble right now. We are at the point where Hitler took over, not where Germany is today.
And I am not sure about everything I have said, but I am trying to think through want you said and my more immediate information gathering that has been hammering away at the industrial model of education. I have so much thinking to do and I am thrilled by how you stimulate it.
I could put the negatives on the list as well. The climate change is one of them. Every form of life has drawbacks and advantages. Science is no exception. The positives and negatives might be seen sooner or later. Vaccince are great. At the same time, had the plane not been invented, cars, subways, ett. there would not have been a global outbreak. The negatives influence everybody though. There is no escape, and not a place in the world is free of its influence. Apart of the + and -, science by force imposes itself on the people, and only when one has money you can buy your way out.
I'm not throwing stones at science per se. Thanks to the story I learned at university I have my own story about creation. Democracy and science started in ancient Greece and philosophers like Plato (with Popper as a "modern" day representative and the Pope a successor Xenophanes), were rediscovered in the Enlightenment (in the blood red light of the atrocities of religion a warm light indeed!), and after they replaced God to impose themselves on humanity, the world got in worse shape than it ever was, and pointing out that people nowadays excell in longevity doesn't change that fact (in the "third" world, people don't grow that old though). I throw stones not at the way as such, nor at the position it puts itself in (the best, which most forms of life think being), but at science forcing itself on the world. By means produced by it. If it advocates, propagates, and practices the way of artificial life, is one thing and up to the people. But turning people into it's obedient slaves is another.
Even on the face of it, this could be wrong. You can have lives that have much more suffering. I am not even making his utilitarian argument. Mine is more deontological.
Quoting DA671
No, one is not entailed in the other. If creating someone's suffering is bad, this does not entail that not creating someone's happiness is bad too. In one case the parent is starting collateral damage, and in the other, simply nothing is happening good or/bad. Not starting happiness creates no bad situation, but starting happiness does (collaterally start bad). That is one of my major points.
Quoting DA671
Not relevant though, which is why I don't phrase it. It is like something "Nothing noths".
Quoting DA671
Absolutely nonsense in the literal (none sense way). Nothing noths nothing noths.. repeat over and over.
Quoting DA671
This bespeaks to the fact that there is a violation of "using someone" by knowingly causing suffering for an X reason (in this case the parent's "pet" reason of "granting happiness".
Quoting DA671
Right so you are now just ignoring my objection that post-facto "thumbs up and down" have no relevance to violating the principle of dignity and using people. I push you in a ditch and that helps you out later on and so you approve doesn't mean it was right for me to push you in the ditch. The "Most people" defense has no case against this, sorry. I also think it is highly arrogant and paternalistic to think that you should do something so profound to an individual because you think you are the harbinger of what "Most people" want. You are the judge, jury, executioner of someone else's fate because you think you have a "Most people" mandate. Arrogant. Arrogant. Arrogant. Remember, this isn't like vaccines or something. This isn't using lesser harms to prevent greater harms, you are wholesale creating someone's conditions for suffering because you deem it to be X, Y, Z and "Most people" would want X, Y, Z. There is a difference using the "Most people" defense in this case and when someone already exists and you (have to) ameliorate lesser for greater harms.
Quoting DA671
Doesn't matter. The harm of life is quite objectively frustrating (in the antifrustrationist preference sense), deprivational in nature, and stochastically contains tons of contingently based harms.
Quoting DA671
Irrelevant because this is all after the birth decision. Make do and make peace with yourself, existence, others however you want, that doesn't affect this argument.
Quoting DA671
Since there is no such thing as nothing nothing, this doesn't matter. If nothing is noth-ing in its nothingness, who cares? What makes you some "god of procreation" that needs to change the condition because you deem it so, meanwhile creating a state of collateral damage, which did not need to take place? Please justify other than the meaningless words of (intrinsic goods, thus so) that happiness needs to exist in the universe? If no-thing experiences no-thing, so what? All there is is already existing people projecting their hurt that they didn't create anything.
Quoting DA671
Yeah because I'm not making that argument. Rather, in one case no collateral damage, in the other case definite collateral damage. So moving on..
Yeah that's not how that works. Rather, you are still causing harm onto someone unnecessarily. When you use words like "opportunity" you are indeed now using someone, however positively associated that word is connoted. "Hey, I'm going to invest your money for you because I think this might be a great opportunity"... Or a boss who gives his employees more work and says, "This is a great opportunity.." but it's just more work, not an opportunity.. it is something the boss prefers happens and he is spinning it. Doesn't matter if the worker somehow finds joy in that work.. I mean not quite the same because worker is paid.. but it if it goes overtime with no pay for example, well the boss can say it was an "opportunity" all he wants...
I would also say that happiness-causing really has no ethical weight attached to it. It is superogatory. It is good to do if one can, but one is not obligated. One might be a better "person" in some character way for it. There might be a better outcome. But one isn't ethically bound to doing it. Negative ethics, such as not harming people unnecessary seems to hold a different weight. That is to say, causing unnecessary harm, and causing it because YOU want it, is creating unnecessary suffering states of affairs and using people (to get X agenda accomplished). This just seems wrong prima facie as a baseline ethical foundation.
Nah. A gift with strings attached is not a gift, no matter how well it might work out, and the strings are not trivial or temporary, so no.
That's why I don't even bring up intention. As long as it is known that collateral damage will result, is good enough.
That's a straw man/misunderstanding. I said that if it can be bad to create damage, it can be good to create happiness. I don't consider the alternative to have any value, but even if it is neutral, it would still be preferable to have a better outcome (happiness), just as it might be preferable to avoid the worse outcome (harm). My major point was that if preventing harm is good, then preventing happiness (an inherently desirable experience) is bad. I think one does entail the other.
It is indeed nothing, which is why I don't think that any comparisons/claims about benefit or harm are meaningful. But I've granted it for the sake of the discussion, so I digress.
It also seems nonsensical (if my point appeared that to you) to talk about "burdening" or "acting on the behalf of other" (as if that has moral relevance) before a person exists. But if it is bad to create suffering on the "behalf" of another person, it is more than sensible to create happiness on the behalf of another who couldn't ask for it. Once again, this is nothing except a logically consistent view, in my opinion.
There's nobody who is being "used" when they are created. Creating a valuable life doesn't have to directly harm another person, and as far the person are concerned, I would argue that it is simply fallacious to use the term "use" (as if the person doesn't have an actual interest in happiness but has one in some alternative state of affairs) for a person who is being created. The "pet" claim about creating damage doesn't negate the value of creating the happiness that the person would likely value. Many people do find the bestowal of a greater good to be in their interest, and, as I have already said, if creating negatives can be unethical, causing happiness can also be good.
I think you're the one who is being arrogant here, my friend. I am sorry, but you have no authority to proclaim that the innumerable ineffably meaningful experiences of people (many of whom have faced intense hardships) are irrelevant because of your single-minded emphasis on the negatives. You have also ignored/misunderstood much of what I said. You had said that people can find existence a burden and difficult to escape, and I only pointed out that others find it precious and value it. Yet, it's strange that you managed to not grasp this simple fact. It's extremely patronising of you to claim that you know that the bestowal of good is a "violation" of dignity instead of being an affirmation of it due to the simple fact that one cannot ask for a good experience before one exists. Harming an existing person isn't good because it reduces their well-being without providing a substantial benefit (in most cases). However, there isn't anybody in the void who prefers not existing, so I don't think that the genesis of happiness can somehow be harmful to them.
It does matter because there are contingent goods that lead to joyous satisfaction which also has significance, even if you don't recognise that. Probabilistically, life also contains many benefits.
Not irrelevant because happiness matters once one exists, just as the harms do when one begins to exist. If the prevention of the latter is "relevant" for you even though it doesn't benefit an actual person (except for your interests, perhaps), then the prevention of all good is quite relevant.
I don't think there's much point in arguing with the "God of non-procreation". The universe does not need the absence of all life, and if no problem comes from the creation of happiness, no good comes from the prevention of suffering. As for existing beings (and assuming non-creation is neutral), it can certainly be good to create meaningful (it does not lose value merely because you don't appreciate it, but I hope this can change), if it is bad to create the harms sans an actual loss for someone who does not even exist.
I am aware you're not, but your other arguments are, sadly, extremely limited and flawed, in my view. There's great good in one instance and none in the other. Moving on indeed.
It does in many more ways than you realise ;)
As I have said countless times before, the harm might be unnecessary, but the happiness isn't (assuming that you believe that the prevention of harm is necessary). When you use words like "using", you are still implying that one is somehow being manipulated (potentially against their interests) to achieve one's "sinister" designs. However, bestowing the chance to experience happiness can certainly be good if one claims that creating damage is bad. There is no need for "use" because the case is analogous to acting on behalf of someone who cannot ask for a good themselves (of course, this assumes that one would consider the deliberate creation of negative lives to be an act of "using" them even though they don't exist). Your examples are poor and reflect a lack of understanding. One could certainly appreciate someone taking an act on their behalf that leads to a greater good. However, it would be pertinent to remember that making money isn't bad if it doesn't even exist in the first place, since the probability of generating profitable income can justify the act of creation, just as the losses might be bad. Giving additional work which doesn't make a person happier might not be good, but there isn't any state of ethereal bliss in the void that is being disturbed/worsened by the creation of a person. At least you could recognise that some people might indeed enjoy the work, and for them, it's a source of happiness. There could be a plethora of reasons, from dedication to one's family to genuine enjoyment in the process of typing (I do have a predilection towards it!). Unfortunately, our current work culture is not the best, which is why I do think that we should focus on resolving many of the issues we face at the moment before indulging in mindless procreation.
I don't think that happiness is less significant than suffering. One might not need to constantly interfere in the case of existing beings who are capable of living adequately meaningful lives as long as they avoid serious harms, but this doesn't apply to people who aren't in a state of affairs they have an interest in. Preventing all happiness for the sake of fulfilling a pessimistic agenda, all the while refusing to bestow indelible joys just because one doesn't appreciate it seems to be a fundamentally unethical position to hold.
Neither is the "gift" an ordinary one when it unleashes its potency, which can happen even in the face of seemingly insuperable odds. There undoubtedly are tragic situations that one does need to mitigate (at which point it wouldn't be sensible to call it a "gift", and that's why I don't consider life to be a gift in all cases). When the gift is the source of all value that did not exist before its existence, and many innocent beings would likely find it to be verily invaluable and precious despite the harms, I think it has immense worth that deserves to be preserved. For the last time, happiness is also not "trivial".
I thought that intentions mattered in Kantian frameworks, which is why I had brought it up. However, it's fine if one doesn't care. The cardinal consideration is that powerful joys can exist if a person is created, and as long as that's true for countless sentient beings, it is good enough.
Quoting Athena
Quoting Athena
Ok, clear enough. But then, what Athens had was no democracy as we understand it. People loving outside the city walls were not citizens, women were not citizens, slaves were not citizens, foreigners were not citizens. Even Aristotle (and I mean Aristotle, not a footnotes in the history of philosophy!) could not vote in Athenian democracy. He was a foreigner, a 'metoik', excluded from many rights the full Athenian citizens had.
Quoting Athena
Ok, so your problem is with a certain cultural identity, an ideal form. It is not a form we have or a form that might have manifested itself fully at any one time, but a certain cultural ideal that you refer to as 'democracy'. I understand it and I am not criticizing it just seeing if we can get our terms straight and aligned. This cultural ideal is built around equality, but also around a set of cultural values. The heroes of old, maybe the battles of old fought by different liberation movements, the stories of old. One peculiar puzzle you face is that the stories of old also relegated the narratives of others to a seat of lesser importance. In the US for instance the stories of the native Americans or stores of people of color. Every American hero you names is a 'dead white man' in popular parlance. I am not the most woke on this forum, but sensitivity to this aspect of 'democracy' is needed. You present it as a rather unproblematic situation that existed in the USA of old, but like Athenian democracy it was made possible by the exclusion of a lot of 'others'. That kind of exclusion is not deemed acceptable anymore so we live in a different society, one cannot without committing grave injustice, revert to a situation of the past.
Quoting Athena
Of course the question of identity is a philosophical subject, very much so. It featured and still features prominently in debates on political philosophy between the more liberal inclined thinkers and the so called 'communitarians'. You might really like the work of the communitarian thinker Alisdair Mcintyre. I think the phrase, 'the lonely crowd' is very well put. I think that is the situation we are in.
Quoting Athena
It is confused because it is a difficult subject in which it is very hard to stay consistent. It is a problem because articulating a new vision for the future is hard. It is also hard to interpret the past, but it is interesting enough. This is our attempt at psychoanlysis. What happened to the spirit of the US, what happened to the spirit of Europe? We are a 'lonely crowd', lonely because we have no common element. However I do not think that American heroes will do it in todays world. We will need a common goal or common threat.
Quoting Athena
Raymond seems to be arguing from a romantic environmentalist point of view. I am arguing for a new metaphysics which might well come from an environmentalist perspective, but we cannot let go of tehcnology and I also disagree we are slaves now more then we were in the past. In fact, I will put it more bluntly. The Prussian model has made this kind of criticism possible, because of its system of mass education. the high level of education it provided to many people have spawned the same critical thinkers that now question it. There would never have been a Heidegger, Foucault, Ulrich Beck, to find new paths without this type of education.
I think we are indeed in an existential crisis, but simply going back to the old ways will not do it. In any case a lot of people would die were we to die if we did that. The question is what wisdom is when confronted with such a conundrum. The criticism is made possible by the mass mobilization for science we have undertaken in the past decades.
Quoting Athena
I was not a happy kid at school and I saw quite keenly what it did. It mobilizes each and every citizen for war and this condition of total mobilization does not leave you. It continues in higher education, in the jobs you undertake, in the time tables you are being regimented into, in the meticulous moment of testing, examination, from university days to child rearing advice... We have a society of mass mobility but also mass mobilization in which you are called to whichever front you are needed, a mercenary plying his trade, going to wherever you are ordered. That is our condition. You would liek to read Ernst Junger I think. Ernst Junger is an old German conservative who saw in the first world war the forge in which a new age was being crafted, the era of the 'worker', but the worker regimented like the soldier... It is a wonderful text eerie in its precociousness of society's self understanding...
Quoting Athena
Thanks :sparkle: :flower:
Quoting jgill
Yes. I am (we are) a soldier in the mobile army that is science today. You can only stand in awe of the immense brainpower that goes into the 250 articles in one university alone. Most of these articles will not be worth the paper they are printed on, no matter how brilliant they are. They will remain still born. But somehow, somewhere someone may be inspired by one and writes her own article and that might inspire someone and he or she goes on to write something truly great. That is how science works these days, a massive human wave attack.
Fortunately, it's the exploratory effort that gives them meaning. Publication and citing gives them reward.
No, it is not sensible to cause happiness IF it comes with strings of collateral damage. That is the part you are missing.
Quoting DA671
But WITH collateral damage. There is no free happiness going on here. There is no actual gift.
Quoting DA671
So I the a priori clam is that collateral damage is taking place in one and not in the other. The a posteriori stuff is a different matter that simply bolsters it.
Quoting DA671
So please parse out the a priori point: Collateral damage, no collateral damage and from the perspective of a parent existing.
The a posteriori points are to bolster it: What the implications are of collateral damage for the future child.
All irrelevant. You just made collateral damage in one case and no collateral damage in the other case. Remember, the perspective is from our view.. already living at the point of the a priori argument.
It just doesn't have any weight to me. "Preventing happiness for a pessimistic agenda" has no moral worth to anyone. It lacks any moral obligatory force to it. Simply put again, in on instance collateral damage, in the other not. To create collateral damage or not to create it. Think of the term "collateral" as it encapsulates the notion that one is meaning to create happiness, but by doing so, knowingly creates the collateral damage (the strings) that go with it.
Yeah I don't have sympathy for the "Most people" "God of procreation" paternalistic argument. It is just that. Post facto also doesn't matter as I've explained.
Intention matters to an extent, but intention along with knowing the intention brings with it other things is a sort of overlooking.. This is why I don't deem procreation as evil or monstrous, just misguided.
Question to you personally:
I understand why antinatalists are so passionate about their cause. I am confused more about people such as yourself who are vociferously anti-antinatalism. How is it you came to be so passionately against antinatalism?
A) It is a passive philosophy. It is simply advocating refraining from procreation. It is not advocating violent means or ends or anything like that.
B) It is not widely known. Except people in philosophy circles or niche internet forums, it is pretty much absent from any wider cultural dialogue.. It is basically fringe, if seen at all.. (though maybe, hopefully that is starting to change?). So it provides no threat to the current order of things.. Millions of humans are still being born.
If it's something you saw that I wrote that made you want to debate, is there something compelling you to debate it? I just am curious because most people's responses are negative, with a couple throw away responses, or just ignore it. Every once in a while I get someone who is very keen to debate this thoroughly though, so just trying to get a better understanding of the motivation of that side of things. Is it my particular arguments or just arguments you've heard prior to me, but you have been wanting to get this point across ever since you heard them?
Actually, it's an active philosophy. In the sense it actively ends human existence.
But through passive means.
Yes, but it feels like the easy way out. You in fact say: let's solve the problems humanity is causing by ending humanity all together.
I don't think that things need to be perfect for happiness to be sufficiently valuable. It's not the case that everything is terrible either, and I remain reasonably optimistic that we can further reduce our problems. Nevertheless, the positive aspects will always matter and they will continue to be seen as a genuine blessing/gift by many sentient beings, in spite of the damage.
I've already addressed your claim. There is the benefit of happiness taking place in one state of affairs and none taking place in another. The explication is consistent and does not make any unnecessary claims based upon arbitrary double standards. It's clearly about the a priori claim that there is is no good prior to its existence.
Already did ;)
It should not be too difficult to grasp the fact that there is happiness in one case and none other. This "a priori" analysis simply points out the obvious, with further points mainly supporting it. The good occurs for the person. Significant benefit, no benefit, and from the perspective of an existing parent.
The implications also include future happiness for the child that they could cherish.
All relevant, but it's fine if you wish to ignore the obvious. If not creating the damage is good (and not merely neutral), then not creating ineffable happiness can also be problematic. One created good in one case and did not do so in another. The perspective that leads to its prevention is certainly from one who already exists, not the person who would appreciate their life.
It might not matter to you, but it does in reality :p
The fact of the matter is that one has the potential to knowingly create a life that one could deeply love despite the existence of odds, and if it can be considered bad to create a harm even though it doesn't help a person, it can also be good to create happiness. This is the only ethically reasonable perspective, in my view. If preventing the cherished experiences doesn't have moral worth, then I am afraid that the negation of any damage or "strings" also wouldn't matter besides fulfilling the personal interests of an existing person.
I do have some, though increasingly diminishing sympathy, for the pessimistic and paternalistic (preventing damage is more important than anything" argument. All prior and post analysis leads to the ineluctable truth that happiness is significant.
Intentionally bestowing indescribable happiness that the person themselves would likely value even in the face of potential harms can be quite ethical. Intentions do matter, and the intention to prevent suffering is certainly a noble one, even though the conclusion of antinatalism ultimately remains an unsound position.
Much can be lost due to pernicious ideas. Anyway, I am just interested in various topics. I am not sure if I am vociferous; I do try to keep a mild tone :p
1. Currently and mostly. But I agree, you are definitely peaceful.
2. I wouldn't be too happy to see people much wiser than I am (which would be just about everybody!) to believe in a flawed ideology. I didn't join due to you in particular; I just had some time so I figured I may as well read and type some stuff. People certainly continue to be created, but it's nice to see individuals like you who wish to reduce harms, which might be an inspiration for us to become better.
I've heard these arguments many times. Nevertheless, I do enjoy putting forth my views, especially because I am an introvert who cannot discuss these things in real life easily. I did appreciate your insights, so thank you! I hope you have an amazing weekend!
No, I think you didn't understand what I meant here with specialization. Primitive cultures have specialization and are quite specialized: some are hunters (and they can have different roles in the hunt), some cook and take care of children, some even farm. That is basic specialization. It's really not about "a special kind of society", it's simply how human society differs from let's say a pack of animals. Specialization is one of the basic reasons why societies emerge as they are.
Okay. But I think walking in a world where drones instead of birds rise up from gardens, the sound of geese that are still left flying over is overscreamed by the roar of jumbo jets and the bang jet fighters breaking the sound of speed five times, conflicts are fought with atomic bombs instead of fists, the light of moon is replaced by artificial lantern light, the elephant path is replaced by endless tarmac strips, talking is replaced by communication, a house is replaced by skyscrapers trying to reach for heaven in vain, intelligence is tried to be captured on a computer chip and robots are considered the next step in evolution, instead of walking we move in structures with wheels, the world is watched on a 2d screen instead of seen directly, nature is put into isolated and air-conditioned canopies, the beach is created in cold areas and a 3km long snow piste recreated in the dessert, and nowhere in the world there are absences of the recreations, I find that world alienating, mind fucking, and depressing. It's there and there is no escape. Science won't help us, if technology is precisely the cause of trouble. As Einstein once wisely pointed out: "the solution of a problem never can reside in what caused the problem". Fighting fire with fire? Hmm...
But is that at all really about "The Enlightenment"?
Or would you find all that criticism you are talking about in Ancient Rome where a huge complex logistics structure with huge long aqueducts, roads and an enormous harbour is created to feed the million inhabitants of the City? To feed a million city dwellers every day, especially in Antique Times, is a huge technological feat as you needed Africa to supply the grain to the Capitol. And then look at the Imperial system: a former Republic that boast militarism and keeps the masses and the rabble happy with free bread and violent circus acts? Doesn't that sound familiar to our times?
I think that the Romans would have gladly taken on new inventions like gun powder weapons or gotten the steam engine to replace the slave workers and put the slaves into better use. They surely would have used that technology to overcome their enemies, the barbarians, and surely would have invaded what we now call Iran and perhaps continued further. What's the difference between a Ballista and a field howitzer other than the latter is immensely more lethal? The Romans already had a society that relied on using technology, having entertainment as "the opium" for the masses and all the negative aspects you mention. And above all, the Roman society was ruled by the rich and molded in their favor. There was no religion limiting the study of science in Rome. It just didn't happen back then. But I think that Romans would very gladly accepted modern materialism. After all, they had orgies where people threw up on purpose just to eat more.
So if Enlightenment increased our scientific understanding and this lead to technological innovations, perhaps to see Enlightenment as the bad guy here is a bit unfair. Perhaps it isn't technology, but something else, how you use technology. Because in Rome, already, and in other cultures too, technology served the military and served the rich to become more rich.
Also, the Enlightenment gave us also ideals such as liberty, progress, toleration, fraternity, constitutional government, and separation of church and state. Why would those things be bad?
All very good things indeed! According to me and you. The thing is though, that after church and state were divorced, a new happy engagement was celebrated and a big global party was organized. After the di-forced divorce, all people on the globe were obliged to dance to the scientific imperative. The scientific view of the ancient Greek was rediscovered by a small group of people who rightly didn't like the church imperatives and dethroned God. It put his crown on and protected and empowered by state it formed a new kind of God. A secular one and the world had and has to dance to her music. But not everyone likes the same music, like everybody has different notions of progress, freedom, toleration, fraternity, and government. It's a sad situation. In fact we find ourselves in the same situation as Galileo found himself back then, but the role of God replaced by Science. Let's hope the state will open her eyes and become aware of the situation, so she can reign alone, independent as state must be, not falling for romantic flirting of whatever calibre, be it God, Science, or Make Believe the second.
What an absolutely delightful argument!
Hold on to your chair because I am going to get very cynical. :wink:
Since when did the fate of the poor become the government's concern and the government paying for child care?! :scream: Really, you want women mucking around in government? That appears to lead to a nanny state and the destruction of our capitalism because of the evil of socialism. And as for those foreigners, do you want them coming in and having a say in government?
I don't know how aware of US politics you are but those concerns did not end with the fall of Greek city/states. The end of patriarchy and that social order, has been traumatic. And God knows, those refugees flooding into our country pose a serious threat! And the last thing we should do is open our borders and give them voting rights! And it is even a problem to give people of color voting rights, even if they are technically citizens. Trump won the election and Biden should not be living in the White House, and this is a very serious matter. This is so serious it was okay to storm the Capitol Building in an effort to prevent the wrong man from being president.
Okay, enough of me venting. Tensions are running very high right now and I very much appreciate having a different preceptive in an international forum. I don't think the US looks very civilized compared to some European countries that have more experience with being civilized. Advanced science and technology is changing everything and thanks for noticing when I speak of democracy it is an ideal not limited to the US.
On to a more thoughtful reply to your post.
I don't think so. Just look at the Muslim countries. They are still religious. No Muslim Nietzsche.
Quoting Raymond
Yet look at how many scientist have been religious. How many have tried to prove the existence of God? The idea that all scientist are or especially have been atheists is wrong.
And do note that totalitarian regimes can have scientists and engineers making even good science. And what's the problem for those in power when the scientist write their discoveries in the most politically correct way? Simple truth is that scientific inquiry and political totalitarianism can both succeed. Totalitarianism and Enlightenment ideas doesn't go in hand in hand, so no wonder Enlightenment is under attack, actually.
Quoting Raymond
Only fools will try to argue that with science you can find a solution on what is morally right or morally wrong. Objective science just tells how things are (assuming you have the correct model or premisses). There's still place for religion and philosophy separate of science. And it isn't so unimportant as some atheist scientist might argue.
And what you seem to be talking about is more of Scientism, the view that science is the only objective means by which society should determine normative and epistemological values and subjectivity doesn't matter, is different. Religion is first and foremost a belief system. It's about faith, not reason. Even the Bible says to find faith in your heart, not to "use your brain and think it out".
Absolutely and I am puzzled by your ability to understand what I am saying because my fellow citizens do not. If I were rich and younger, I would have to visit your country and study its education system in an effort to understand why you think differently from the nation that makes me rant like a crazy person.
I think we should come to understand democracy by reading the Greek and Roman classics and then perhaps visiting other countries to see who well they are working with the principles. Democracy is a complex concept and we need to understand the complexity.
Yes, it is about heroes and stories about the struggle to have justice and liberty for all, but not totally. Oh dear, you cause me to think deeply on this and it is difficult as giving birth to a child! It has become popular in the US to attack heroes. It is being said the effort to be a hero makes people terrible human beings. Our national heroes were strong, independent leaders and we destroyed them. We had education for independent thinking. Now we are voting party tickets, with ministers telling their congregations how to vote, and we prepared our young four "group think". This is a serious social, economic, and political change.
Your fault-finding, that the stories are about dead white men has truth but is not totally true. I believe I mentioned the hero stories were multinational. A huge part of our cultural education was European folk tales and our explanation of our democracy begins with the Magna Carta. We were able to teach morals without depending on religion by using those folk tales that are about virtues. True this Euro-centric education did not include people of color or Native Americans and that fault should be considered. On the other hand, our federal government was strongly influenced by Native Americans. They had a federation of tribes and were closer to the Greek city/state organization than European kingdoms and that helped those who were literate in the classics understand that past history.
Because I have collected old textbooks, I know some textbook publishers did a better job than others. :lol: My favorite children's history book is very quaint. Technically it is more of a fairy tale than fact, but that book has more cultural value than the technically correct ones, that are so dry it is cruel and inhuman punishment to make a child read them. The book I like best, begins the explanation of democracy with Athens, not the Magna Carta.
The hold Christianity has on the US needs to be understood. The Bible was used to justify slavery and to argue against it. When people believe they are doing the will of God, they have the strength of that belief, and the Civil War with two opposing ideas of God's will was especially intense. The Christian control of education has been problematic, and the South's control of education has also been problematic when it comes to racism. We are now dealing with the Christian mythology of our democracy and that is a huge problem!
"That kind of exclusion is not deemed acceptable anymore so we live in a different society, one cannot without committing grave injustice, revert to a situation of the past." How are natives with different languages and different cultures included? Some of them wanted to be included and they were treated terribly. Others did not want to be included and did their best to defend their land but lost.
We are not that far from killing each other for control of land. And with intense pain, many of us feel, if native Americans controlled our evolution instead of Christians and Europeans, we would not have global warming. Christianity prevented us from accepting the earth as one living organism that needs to be protected.
The situation with people with African heritage is an extremely difficult one! You might remember we fought a civil war over than one, and the matter was not resolved with a civil war. We are still in an intense fight to preserve the past or bring about radical change. I read a book about education that was published only a few years ago, that was extremely racist! :scream: Science is making a huge difference but as you might see in your news of the US, we are at each other throats over if we should wear masks or get vaccinated. I am saying, we are not very scientific. That problem falls back to ignorance of Athens and what science has to do with good moral judgment. and democracy.
You found fault with Athens and that is justified, but we also need to understand what it had to do with science and good moral judgment, and democracy. Democracy is constantly evolving. The direction that evolution takes, can increase human potential or destroy the democratic nation. When we look at the racist problem we are dealing with, it validates what Socrates said about exploiting people. Sooner or later the exploited people will become a problem. We have sown a racist seed in our democracy and are far from your understanding of what is wrong with it.
I found an Alisdair Mcintyre speech on-line
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20191001-dunbars-number-why-we-can-only-maintain-150-relationships#:~:text=The%20theory%20of%20Dunbar's%20number,about%20150%20connections%20at%20once.
I think the "lonely crowd" is unavoidable because of our human nature that includes limited social capacity. We are lucky to know 600 people by name. The number of people we can really know is much less. "There are well-defined limits to the number of friends and acquaintances the average person can retain." https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20191001-dunbars-number-why-we-can-only-maintain-150-relationships#:~:text=The%20theory%20of%20Dunbar's%20number,about%20150%20connections%20at%20once. I don't care about the details other than establishing when it comes to being social there are very real biological limits. We can compensate by becoming members of smaller groups, such as a church, or a professional group, or a fraternity. Prejudices play into this biological fact. We might avoid Mormons or people of color or people with another difference that to our mind separates "us" from "them". We must have mercy for each other because it just isn't easy being human and we are demanding far too much from each other than what is reasonable.
This is where the importance of "customs" and "good manners" comes in. We can compensate for our limits by sharing customs and ideas of good manners. If a total stranger claims to be Christian then this person becomes "one of us" making religion essential to the formation of civilizations. I like my grandmother's 3 rules.
1. We are respectful to everyone because we are respectful people. It doesn't matter who the other is because it is about own character as a respectful person or an uncouth jerk.
2. We protect the dignity of others.
3. We do everything with integrity.
I think that covers just about any situation?
Quoting Tobias
:lol: In the old days, I left home early in the morning and did my own thing all day and then went home when people began turning their lights on. I don't think it is safe to give our children that much freedom today. We didn't lock the doors to our house or car and we lived in a Los Angeles suburb. :lol: If you can find the movie "Blast From the Past" it makes an interesting statement about social change where I grew up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhMQOb0tEmI More has changed than our understanding of science. We no longer have the culture that we and that is why I write!
This does not mean I am stuck in the past because I believe if we do not self-destruct, we are transitioning into a New Age, that is so different from the past, people in the New Age will not be able to relate to our primitive past. Exploiting each other and nature as we have done up to this point will be unthinkable. Dressing people in uni-forms and having them march into the enemy's weapons will be unthinkable, but dropping bombs on the enemy may still occur? I like what Alisdair Mcintyre says in the speech because he mentions what a culture and time in history has to do with our concept of morals. It is also a political matter. We now have reactionary politics based more on our feelings than our intellect. When making decisions we look inward to see how we "feel" about this or that, not evaluate how it fits with our principles. What are principles? We have a culture that is so unsure of everything we are powerless to do anything but follow orders to get what we want. This is not a good stopping place for the future.
That is truly beautiful but also terrifying! I think my head just can not comprehend it. I am not comfortable with being lost in space and time. It is like being naked and vulnerable. But who I am should not depend on externals, right?
But without science, no one would know we have global warming. People would still think everything is about the will of a god, and if that god is pleased with us or not.
Plagues and famines, earthquakes and hurricanes, etc. have always been part of human history. Bad things happened long before technology and human beings were sacrificed to the gods to keep us save from their wrath.
We could not know about global warming until we had the problem and the technology to measure everything and understand the problem. We need to process this information and decide how we are to manage it. That is moving forward not backward. However, learning from the past could be vital to moving forward. A big problem with that is human populations are too large to maintain without modern technology. I think we are backed into a corner that it is going to be very hard to get out of.
Without science, we wouldn't have had a global warming in the first place. What else than science is responsible? Scientists themselves admit that. One doesn't need science though to figure out that pumping shitty gas (excuse the expression) in the atmosphere on a global scale will have repercussions. When the Krakatau exploded the weather changed notably for a few years.
So blaming the gods is ridiculous.
Quoting Athena
True. And just like science is used nowadays to spare us from our own wrath on nature, while nature is increasingly the victim of scientific beating, people back then had their own means of coping. Rain dances, rituals, or whatever. Offerings included. But at least, nature was left alone, to a higher extent than these days.
Quoting Athena
And again, we would not have the problem without science . The problem is obvious now. What information needs to be processed? Emission needs to be reduced, energy generation sustainable and clean, and the young be freed from the tyranny of the sciences (again: this is no attack on science, only on the power position it claims and demands). If there is overpopulation remains to be seen, but also here, science seems the cause, if we take a look at history.
That is not exactly true. Primitive lifestyles were not always eco-friendly. The most common problem was deforestation. Easter Island is a good example of the problem. When all the trees were cut down, the people could not build boats and meet their dietary needs by fishing. That led to eating everything on the island, which finally lead to cannibalism. The next most serious problem is just exhausting the soil.
Here is a list of animals humans hunted for food until they became extinct. https://www.britannica.com/list/6-animals-we-ate-into-extinction
Civilizations collapsed because of exhausting the region's ability to support life. In the past, people would just move to another area. Today they can not do that because there are people everywhere. The problem is not just created by science and technology. The problem is also our success and the increased humanity.
Where humans are consuming groundwater, they are nearing a disaster as they are consuming that water faster than it is replaced, and soon those regions will become deserts. Another problem is the limit of minerals essential to making fertilizer. The planet can not support the mass of humanity.
Okay, I have to read that! He published a few books and I am not sure which one is the most important to my effort. I am too tired to figure it out now.
I have started a blog for the purpose of documenting my concern about the military-industrial complex. Would you know which book is the best for explaining the era of the "worker"? I really do not care about the gory details of war. It is what an increasingly high-tech military has done to the whole of society that concerns me. Or maybe I do not need his book but can simply go with your explanation? How much of an explanation of your perspective can you give us? Might I use it in the blog?
This is why I could not complete my book. I am constantly learning something new. I love the idea of a blog where can just add information as I become aware of it.
Not exactly. But approximately.
Quoting Athena
Just like I said, they had their own way of coping.
Quoting Athena
Most of these though collapsed by the devastating effects of science. Quoting Athena
The huge number of people is caused by the disruptive power of science. Earth, if not being beaten in submission by technology and transformed in a homogenous, uniform field where only one species grows, which is protected by artificial raffinated chemicals and collected by enormous automated machines. There are virtually no people left who collect their own food, except for tramps looking in garbage bins, people owing a small piece of land. Collecting your own food is even prohibited or allowed with permission only. You can't claim your own piece of nature and build your own life settle. Who says that nature is not capable in providing for all, if left alone?
You might think about the answer for yourself. One of the most damaging things we do is have huge farms that require huge amounts of fertilizer. The job of the man who explained this type of farming had the job of helping small farmers become more successful. He realized these small farmers could not produce enough to feed the mass of humanity that was in desperate need of affordable food. The food shortage was a crisis and so was throwing them off the land and replacing them with huge corporations, a crisis. Leaving now landless farmers with no source of income. The very people he was supposed to help, were hurt, but the masses had more food.
You probably know the problems with relying on manufactured fertilizer. That fertilizer runs off and gets into rivers and then oceans and is a serious pollutant. A main ingredient in fertilizer is oil and right now our method of extracting oil from the ground is seriously polluting.
Every living cell must have potassium and phosphorus and we get those minerals through our food but potassium is not naturally abundant. Morocco has almost half the world's known supply of phosphate deposits and our food supply is dependent on it because it goes into our fertilizer. Only when the ground has a lot of a mineral is profitable to mine it. China, the US, Africa, and a few other nations depend on the Morocco supply of phosphate and it is finite. So what do we do? Stop mining for phosphate that goes into our fertilizer, which then pollutes the rivers and oceans?
If you want to argue what is wrong with our lifestyle of abundance, there are some really good books. If you want to know what mineral resources have had to do with history and future wars, see if you can get Walter Youngquist books,"Natural Resources and the Destiny of Nations" and "GeoDistinies". "Abandon Affuelence!" by F.E. Trainer will give you some good talking points. That book covers- "The review of recent evidence on major global problems examines resources and energy scarcity, environmental destruction," and more.
There is no doubt our way of life is not sustainable. It is like we are riding a bicycle that is going faster and faster and as we go downhill, and we don't know how to put the breaks on. The problem is, if we don't put the breaks on, we go over a cliff. How do we safely slow the bike down?
But please give up the notion that we can just return to a simpler way of life and everything will be okay. Life has always been a challenge and people have always destroyed their environments when they stayed there too long. Marvelous civilizations fall when the soil and other resources are exhausted. The economy of Rome depended on gold mines and chasing after the gold required a huge militarily expensive, just as the US exhausted its own easily accessible oil and needs to use military force to secure its mid-east supply of oil. When the gold was exhausted, Rome abandoned the northern part of Europe, and Rome itself, as the power elite moved east to Constantinople, closer to newly discovered gold mines. There is no place for us to move and we can not absorb the mass of humanity that is fleeing desperate poverty.
Yes mix. What makes starting unnecessary harm that is non-trivial, lasts a lifetime's worth, and inescapable ever good to start? I'm sorry but because happiness can also happen too is not a good enough reason to knowingly cause the conditions just described regarding suffering. At the very least it is being naive. It is also callous once one takes the suffering into consideration. And there is the crux of most of our differences.
There is also an element of arrogant paternalism. Start a family for X reason (try to spin it as happiness, or more likely to create some sort of meaning lacking in the parent's lives not having children). It is certainly using someone for an ends, if the fact that the person's suffering is being bypassed. Happiness doesn't compensate for the bypass, I'm sorry. You don't get to create conditions of harm so that you can also create conditions of happiness. Creating happiness isn't a "get out of jail free card". Since there's no such thing as "free lunch", don't create the situation whereby the person has to pay for that lunch.
It's much more paternalistic to suggest that one's own perspective justifies the cessation of all positive experiences, since it's evident to me that if it can be good to prevent harms, it can also be bad to prevent the positives. And no, intentionally creating a life that could experience immense goods does not use them as mere means to an end, since the person themselves have no interest that is being disregarded from their creation. And I do not think that not creating a person treats them as an "end in themselves" either. If it did, it would probably include using them as mere means to the end of eliminating suffering, despite the fact that it isn't the case that they would always have irredeemably negative experiences. But as far as creating people is concerned, I do think that creating the person with the right intentions and caring for them properly does treat them as ends in themselves. Not starting a good for reason X (an unreasonably high desire to prevent harm at the cost of all good) isn't a particularly wise perspective either. I don't think that one always needs to be harmed in order to be happy, though it's true that many harms (for now) do exist. However, one is not "creating the conditions of harm" for an existing person who is already happy. I have already said that it's wrong to do so for existing beings unless it leads to a greater happiness for them. But nonexistent beings don't have perceive the void has a desideratum that would somehow be cruelly distanced by their mere creation. The cardinal consideration remains the value/disvalue they might experience, and I am sorry, but your (or mine!) personal viewpoint simply does not justify not creating the conditions for all happiness just because you (or I) fail to find sufficient significance in life. I do hope that more people could see things in a different light. Preventing harms at the cost of all happiness is a "cure" much worse the problem it allegedly "solves". Since there is no such thing as eternal bliss prior to creation that's negatively affected by the genesis of ineffable happiness, one should not hold views that lead to unfathomable losses that outweigh any gain. Btw, 100,000 people do get free lunch in the Golden Temple, though paying money for preserving the good can certainly be worth it ;)
Hope you have a nice week ahead!
Edit: Also, I should add that I absolutely agree with the general idea that many people do create beings solely because of reasons that don't necessarily pertain to the person themselves, such as wanting more working hands. This is deeply unfortunate, but I am hopeful (partially due to the existence of compassionate people like you!) that more people would give birth to a person because they would want them to have a good life, something that is certainly in their interest if the lack of harm is not in their interest (in an abstract sense, of course, since nobody exists in the void to have a desire for existence/nonexistence), which would mean that the person would be seen as end themselves.
But apparently you don't, because you would agree with the AN conclusion :D.
Quoting DA671
Wrong argument.. "deserve to exists" is about him already existing. And you can't sum up that person's life as "Immense joy in just living with his family" without giving the complete story. It isn't THE END at the end of it.. all happiness. So no, I will not let you characterize it that way for a pat little argument.
Quoting DA671
Why? The "problem" is suffering/harm/negative experiences.. and it certainly can be solved. I don't presume to cause someone suffering because happiness is involved for them. What an arrogant pissy response attitude towards others.. Hiding under the mask of "Well, I'll cause them harm because happiness!".. You know, smile while you kill sort of thing but much more subtle.. I can see it though.
Quoting DA671
Just not the argument. I am not saying to kill what exists, but not start harm, so moving on.
Quoting DA671
Ah, here we go. The callous, Nietzschean, inevitable cliched riff about "Struggle creates meaning" and why should we prevent that for someone? Callous sadism dressed as Nietzschean ubermenchian finery... moving on.
Quoting DA671
No I won't let that slide. You are using someone because you disregard their harm for X reason. Moving on.
Quoting DA671
Since they don't exist, don't even try to make that argument.. this is about you violating a principle not the non existent thing being used.. as we both know it doesn't exist to be used.. The only scenario where it's being used is the one you advocate, that is, being born!
Quoting DA671
No, that is a means to the caregiver's ends.. Next.
Quoting DA671
Oh I am not a crass utilitarian so I wouldn't even pay attention to this when ethically reasoning. Maybe politics or something. I don't use people's conditions for suffering for my own happiness. That would be wrong, and misguided.
Quoting DA671
Stop making it about the void. I am not talking about the void. I am talking about NOT MAKING SUFFERING, PERIOD. Not making the void feel better.. That's your straw manning argument.
Quoting DA671
So now are you really taking the position that we are obligated to create "happiness"? That is an actual ethical obligation, or just your preference?
Quoting DA671
Well, it is ethical at least. No person is being used. No person is here to be a solution for something. Again, using people, now as a solution.. Let's create conditions with cancer so we can have people to cure it.. self-fulling perpetuating nonsensical thinking.
Quoting DA671
Huh?
The right argument. Preventing harm for a person doesn't have any value either if the creation of goods doesn't matter. And there are also those who have turned around their lives in spite of suffering a lot, so I will not be accepting an incomplete image that suits your agenda.
A statement that appears to be devoid of all sense. Once again, there is a difference between causing a situation that would cause harm which won't leave to more happiness, and creating the conditions for immense joy that a person would value despite the existence of harms. "What's that? You believe that love and beauty deserve more consideration than being callously disregarded for the sake of preventing 'damage'? Yeah, your view is irrelevant." Is a terrible perspective, much of which may not be intentional. The "benefit" is happiness, the the "problem" would be to negate it.
Just not getting the obvious point that if not creating harms would be good, ceasing the creation of happiness would also eventually stop all good, which wouldn't be ethical. I wasn't talking about any termination. Moving on.
It was an error that I corrected in the edit I made a few minutes ago. However, negatives that lead to more value might certainly be worthwhile, though they only possess instrumental value. However, struggle can indeed create happiness, such as the struggle of studying hard to achieve good grades. Continuing forward.
It can be difficult to accept the truth. You are not "using" anybody because the "person" has no interest that would be unnecessarily (without a greater joy they would achieve) harmed by being created. Intentionally creating the conditions for a good one cannot ask for themselves can certainly be good if it can be good to prevent harm.
Since they don't exist, you should also not be making absurd claims such as "using" one to an end or making spurious claims such as "causing harms for x reason (happiness)" as if the happiness isn't in the interest of the person (if avoiding harm is in their interest even though they don't exist) or it is something trivial (hint: it's not). Being born is indeed the only way to experience happiness ;)
If preventing harm sans any actual benefit to a person is not using them as a means to an end, one is also not using anyone as means to an end, since there isn't anybody whose interests are being violated by their creation. Your inability to differentiate between situations involving existing people and those who don't exist yet has evidently caused grave confusion. Moving on.
Blind deontology that leads to intense harm for innumerable individuals for the sake of some "principles" might not be a good idea, but this isn't relevant, because I was talking about happiness for the person. Also, it would still be important for a utilitarian to ensure that happiness is maxmised for as many people as possible. But the point was about joys for the person, so I digress.
It's not a straw man; that's your inability to recognise the double standards when making the absurd claim that it's necessary to prevent harms even though it doesn't benefit anybody, but it's inexplicably insignificant to create valuable experiences.
For existing beings, I think avoiding harms can generally allow people to live valuable lives, so I don't think constant interference is necessary. Personally, I do not think that there is any inherent value in creation/non-creation, but for the sake of the discussion, I do think that if it's bad to create negatives, it's also good to create positives. Still, the expectations have to take practical limitations and the well-being of people in the long term into account.
Your pessimism is a self-fulfilling prophecy that prevents you from realising the potency of happiness. For the last time, creating happiness is not "using them", since that implies disregarding interests (that don't actually exist for a nonexistent being). However, it's quite apparent that if preventing harm can be good, it can also be problematic to avert all possibility of joy. Letting a mango tree that gives succulent fruits die out just because there might be a few bad ones seems nonsensical to me. Preventing all joy as a solution to your pessimistic desires is not justifiable.
Yup.
No man, you are arguing an uphill battle despite you thinking that you have the "Most people" defense on your side. You are defending creating suffering for others. Whatever justifications you want to appeal to aside, you are doing this nonetheless. Callous and using, this is. If you are a person who doesn't want to create suffering, there you go. In one instance there is no collateral damage. In the other, you have created collateral damage. Happiness is not obligatory to make, not creating suffering is. You don't need a person to exist to be prevented of suffering for this to be true. Only YOU the agent causing the suffering needs to exist to prevent suffering, which will occur if you make that move to do so, and won't occur if you make the move to not.
Whatever noble intentions you might have, the ineluctable truth is that you are unnecessarily preventing joys due to your perspective. Cold-hearted and apathetic this is (since if creating harms is "using" someone, then it's also absurd to not create possible joy that one cannot ask for themselves before existing). One cannot be truly empathetic whilst also ignoring the power and reality of happiness. There is no benefit in one instance. In the other, you can create the good. Preventing suffering is certainly important, but that's also because doing so can lead to the preservation of happiness, which is also significant. As for creating valuable/disvaluable lives, if it's necessary to prevent damage, I do think that it's necessary to create happiness, though this has to take other things into consideration, such as physical limitations and long-term consequences. In reality, I do think that one needs an actual benefit/harm (which is I don't consider creation to be inherently good/bad for a person), but if one does not need an actual benefit for the prevention to be good, there is also no need for a feeling of deprivation for the formation of happiness to be intrinsically preferable. It's also only us who need to exist in order to create deep joys.
So here we have the basic asymmetry at play.. All the things you have been straw manning me are now being used by yourself. No "one" is being used by not being born. Someone is being used once born. it can never be the other way. Thus the asymmetry. Again, in one case- collateral damage (harm is taking place despite what one intends). In the other case- no collateral damage (there is no person to be deprived of happiness). It is all about whether one should go ahead and create collateral damage.
Yes, I see that you believe collateral damage is justified because..happiness.
Fallacy of fallacies. No one is being treated as an end in themselves either by the lack of the bestowal of any good either, considering that one has no interests when they don't exist that are being fulfilled/respected. And I didn't straw man you, since I wasn't talking about people being "used", but an inherent good (that one cannot ask for) not being bestowed due to one's overwhelming pessimistic inclinations. A benefit that an innocent being cannot ask for is being created when one exists, and it isn't if they aren't born. Thus, the so-called asymmetry remains unreasonable. Again, in one case no joy occurs (irrespective of any intentions to prevent harm), in the other case, there is no benefit either (nobody to gain from the lack of damage). It is all about whether one can understand the simple truth that it can never be moral to prevent all happiness for the sake of preventing harms.
Yes, I can also see that you believe in an unethical view that justifies preventing all good in order to prevent some harms that one is single-mindedly focused on whilst ignoring other pertinent factors. I am sorry if I had misunderstood anything you had written, but as things stand, I don't think that you were able to make a successful case for your position here.
Oh how I love it when anti-antinatalists get in a tizzy.. Don't worry bra, your side is still going strong ;). I have way more to gain, and you have almost nothing at stake except maybe some argument you heard from a friend. Anyways...
Quoting DA671
Ah yes, the whole "Accuse the other of what I'm doing" defense. Always helpful.
Quoting DA671
An "inherent good".. what the hell is that? And, here is the kicker.. "who" is losing out in the current state of affairs of no collateral damage? The ghost of no-person existing? There is no innocent being.. category error again. There is simply a state of affairs. In this case no collateral damage. The other side is there will be collateral damage. No collateral damage here means no state of affairs of a person being harmed from being deprived of anything. The flip side is a state of affairs with a person harmed. What does it matter if no "one" benefits if they aren't deprived of those benefits in the current state of affairs?
Quoting DA671
Why?
Quoting DA671
What does it matter if good did not occur in the universe? Are you on some mission? From whom, for whom? You are not doing stuff to yourself but other people and you are the messiah that MUST determine that they be put through existence, because the messiah deems it must happen? Not arrogant you say? A prophet from the internets..
Wow Raymond, Just reading through the contents of this post from page 1.
Perhaps I should have read more of your comments before commenting on your proposed theism.
Maybe you are playing the evangelical preacher card for your own entertainment.
To see what kind of responses you get. Maybe it's sophistry just for the sake of it or maybe it's all genuine deeply held conviction. I have no idea.
I have experienced it's like before, roleplay perhaps?
If you truly are a theist, which branch do you truly associate with?
No flowery or emotive rhetoric is requested, if you do wish to reply with the pertinent info, then that's ok.
You of course, don't have to reply at all and I am quite happy if you reply but choose to obfuscate.
I am just a little intrigued between your physics stance, your impressive physics knowledge and your highly emotive evangelical commentary in this thread.
I apologise if this sounds like an invasive attempt at trying to psycho-analyse you.
Feel free to tell me to .....off, if you wish. I will comply as far as this particular style of query is concerned.
As I said, I am just........intrigued
Just reading my way through this thread from the start and I just 'in general terms' wanted to declare myself as a fan of your overall positions on this topic. :strong: :grin: :up:
Was thinking of contributing to this thread but after reading through it, I can't think of any point, I would make based on the OP, that has not been covered by yourself, Athena and DA671, so nuff said.
:strong: :smile: :up:
Nahh, I think you are more scared than you used to be. That is because there were the dangers that you know, now you do not know the dangers anymore. Crime rates go up or down but the trend is downward.
Quoting Athena
Well I hope for this new age, but how do we get there? I reappraisal of the classics, yeah might be... Perhaps indeed also a reevaluation of our relationship to our world. However, things look very dire. They look dire according to me because of the accelerating economic inequality between people. The working class has been dismantled and share holder capitalism triumphed and profit is of no benefit anymore to the people who created it. The result is 'immiseration', an alienated class of people who's only option is to love from day to day and enjoy what they can without thinking ahead. They will not read the classics or care for the environment through no fault of their own, but just because they are busy making a living. This will increase polarization in society because they will defend what little they have from the masses that have even less. Therefore it will have to start somewhere and the answer might well be one you do not like, more interference in the economic lives of the citizens.
Quoting Athena The Worker: Dominion and Form. He also wrote about his experiences in war but that is not of interest to you. I do think though he will describe and affirm exactly what you will dislike. However, that is why he needs to be read, or at least why I think you should read him. He thinks Prussian knowledge of duty is great and that we will become technological 'workers', but it will be up to us to give technology soul. It is a book way ahead of its time I think.
Well thank you. I think that means there is hope for the future. No matter what happens, even if we are reduced to a few tribes barely able to survive and reproduce the next generation, if we realize the connection between science and good moral judgment, and what this has to do with democracy and raising the human potential, there is hope. We will find our way.
One more thing. I think duty is wonderful! This is why we should not argue. Concepts like duty can mean different things to different people. Women have been very dutiful and they did what they did because it is the right thing to do, not because of high pay.
Nothing will be gained from this, but I suppose I'll move on. And I discovered the arguments myself, not from a friend.
Asking for introspection is indeed useful in the face of prevarication.
If damage is an inherent harm that needs to be prevented, happiness is also a good that does not deserve to be prevented. Straw man argument again, since I have already argued for a consistent case that is about creating the benefit for those who would exist. However, the reality is that there aren't any souls in some blissful antechamber who are desperate to avoid existence. It cannot be preferable for nonexistent beings, by the same token, to not exist, since that's also a category error. There's indeed a valueless state of affairs in one case. In the other, there is the invaluable benefit of happiness. No benefit here means that nobody is fulfilled from any absent harm. The flip side is a state of affairs where a person does experience goods. The lack of absent benefits doesn't matter for those who never had them in the first place, but if the positives don't matter, then the lack of damage also has no relevance for those who aren't feeling satisfaction due to its absence.
Because consistency matters, even if it's difficult to accept. It's not rational to focus on removing undesirable experiences at the cost of preventing the preferable ones.
The universe also doesn't care about any absent harm. I am sorry if my replies came off as "arrogant", yet it seems to me, and I could be wrong here, that its a trait that pervades any view that totally disregards one aspect of reality. I am interested in many things, but I am afraid that I have been impelled to disagree with the internet prophets of unreasonable pessimism ;)
What does that even mean?
Quoting DA671
But why? From your perspective, who gives a hooey what fringe antinatalists, that passively advocate not procreating, say? I mean I get it if it's just to bide the time, but what an odd project to be against, of all things. I get why people who care about antinatalism care and post. They actually have a passion for it. It is a minority view. But what I don't get is the ardent anti-antinatalists who have no real stake in the game or passion for the subject in any way other than getting mad arguing about it. It's just odd to me. It makes sense on this forum I guess for pure rhetorical football, but again, an odd one to play ball with in the first place. Aren't there some "hard questions of consciousness", "utilitarian vs. deontology" and "is philosophy just language games?" threads that would matter more? Hell, even just a "meaning of life" thread has more cache. Also, its really hard (annoying) to follow along with your answers when you don't actually quote what you are referring to. I have to keep scrolling back to what I said earlier.
Quoting DA671
So I am going to ignore this because we discussed about collateral damage and states of affairs. That's why I started slowly and tried to move forward. You haven't gotten passed the understanding, so we can't keep arguing until you recognize it.
Quoting DA671
But you are arguing your own argument and not mine, so no.
Quoting DA671
Please feck off if you are going to keep harping this argument. That is NOT the collateral damage argument I made. Can you actually articulate my argument or are you going to keep repeating yours? It's now getting to the point of rude how you keep doing the same error.
Quoting DA671
NOW I'M SPEAKING IN CAPS BECAUSE YOU ARE NOT GETTING IT. THIS IS NOT ABOUT NONEXISTENT BEINGS. IT IS ABOUT THE PERSON MAKING A DECISION TO CHANGE THE STATE OF AFFAIRS FROM NO COLLATERAL DAMAGE EXISTING TO COLLATERAL DAMAGE EXISTING.
Quoting DA671
No one NEEDS TO BE FULFILLED!! That's not the argument.
Quoting DA671
Wow, I am not sure if this is purposeful obfuscation now, to purposely be a repetitive jack in the box. It is not about the nonexisting nothing. It is about the fact that no collateral damage was created vs. creating collateral damage. The argument does not hinge (despite your repetitive assertions) on the idea of no one benefiting from it. Rather, do you create collateral damage or not create collateral damage for someone else? PERIOD.
Quoting DA671
It's not rational.. every time I hear that, I tune out. That can mean anything and everythign.. Usually it just means.. "You don't agree with my view.. so you're not rational.. wah wah". Making happiness ex nihilo just does not have the same ethical obligation of creating unnecessary suffering, non-trivial, lifetime's worth, inescapable on someone else's behalf.
Quoting DA671
It's not the universe.. it's the people who can make a decision to create the collateral damage. And again. And again. And again..
Quoting DA671
Yeah but I am not changing someone else's state of existence by not having any body... That is not the case when you procreate.. Like death, it is changing an existential state of affairs (that ends up being someone else's problem). You see, me not procreating right now does no harm to no actual person. It is the default state- that of NOT creating collateral damage where there was none to begin with. Not so with procreation.
I can't quote because my bizarre and antiquated device refuses to do anything :p Still, I apologise for the inconvenience.
There are indeed many issues worth discussing, and I found this one to be interesting for now, so there isn't much of a mystery to it. Nevertheless, I suppose it's still fruitful to point out that believing in the prevention of all good is not a logical position to hold, in my view.
I have already recognised it. It's you who failed to move past "damage", which is also why one reaches erroneous conclusions such as the prevention of joys being acceptable.
But I was indeed arguing against your argument that mischaracterised my view by unnecessarily referencing to people "losing" out, so no.
Thank you for your kind words, my friend. You're the one who keeps repeating the term "collateral damage" ad nauseam whilst continuing to ignore the flaws in your own position. I also hadn't talked about "ghosts of nonexistent persons" that needed happiness (even though I personally do believe that harms/benefits in terms of leaving someone better or worse off does require an actual degradation/fulfillment, but that's not pertinent here). The only simple and consistent point was: if it's bad to create the damage/negatives, it's also good to create benefits. This isn't a particularly complex point.
I think I "got it" much sooner than you realise; it's you who's refusing to see the essential irrationality and double standards of your position. It's definitely could be about existing people, in which case the relevant factor would be the happiness they would experience once they exist, not nonexistent ghosts feeling deprived.
That is the argument. If one needs to be "deprived" for the lack of happiness to be bad, I don't think it's sensible to deny that there should be a satisfied state of affairs that would prevail from absenct harms, which is clearly not the case. Once again, you simply don't want to look beyond your single-minded viewpoint.
Sometimes our biases can lead to unnecessary "obfuscations" where none exist. To your statement about there being no damage from absent happiness, I had pointed out that if the lack of damage is good even though it doesn't benefit an actual person, there is also no need for there being a conscious feeling of harm for the creation of joys to be ethical. Yet again, you didn't seem to understand, which is, I must confess, regrettable.
The truth can hurt, but it's sometimes necessary. Arbitrarily deciding that the prevention of harms matters above everything else on the basis of an unjustifiable asymmetry that employs double standards is simply not a truly reasonable view to hold. If creating damage "ex nihilo" is bad even though it doesn't worsen an actual state of affairs, it can be quite good to create an ineffably meaningful life that would have resilience that enables them to cherish deeply potent and significant experiences of love, beauty, excitement, and tranquility. Bestowing precious goods to someone incapable of asking for it themselves can be considered praiseworthy in innumerable ways. This, however, does not mean that the harms do not matter, which is why we need to limit mindless procreation and also implement ideas such as a liberal RTD to ensure that people don't have to endure a truly valueless existence.
"What does it matter if good does not occur jn the universe?" could be interpreted in multiple ways. I am not saying that everybody needs to create beings. However, for those who do value things such as having a close bond with a family member and creating a new source of and for joys, the preservation of the positives can definitely be a extremely meaningful. It's about damage, and it's also about the decision to create as much real good as possible.
If one believes that one is doing something ethical by preventing potential damage, I don't think that one can resist the inevitable truth that they are also preventing all good, which is problematic, to say the least. However, I suppose one could also harm their own well-being by believing pessimistic positions that aren't justifiable. No, I am not going to let this sort of double standard slide. The "default" state either is valueless (neutral), in which case it would be worse to create harms, but better to create happiness. However, if the lack of harms is "good", then the lack of all happiness is indeed bad. You not creating a good might be mitigated by factors such as the likelihood of the person having a good life and practical limitations, but I don't think that not forming any positive lives is acceptable (assuming that it's good for the negatives ones to not exist). The default state leads to no benefit, but this is clearly not the case with procreation.
This still means nothing.. Self-evident things are rarely self-evident and you are on a philosophy forum, so not quite playing to the crowd by saying "Right because it's self-evident.. no debate".
Quoting DA671
Little sleight of hand there.. Not just damage, but collateral damage. This entails the benefits.. Is it good to create benefits when you are causing suffering as well, when it is: unnecessary, inescapable, non-trivial, and non-temporary?
Quoting DA671
Well you keep repeating it from the POV of the non-existing person. Why do you do this? It's simply a person making the decision... Create collateral damage (change the current state that will be someone else's problem to deal with).. or don't create collateral damage (don't change the state and no one will have a problem to deal with or be deprived of not having happiness). You cannot change this POV to the POV that you keep doing, and then make the sleight of hand and then again say you understand the argument.
An apropos description of your views. Much of the so-called "asymmetry" also seems like smoke and mirrors to me. The truth is that you don't wish to venture past your narrow framework, which is why you keep dismissing everything else as being "not the argument". Although there are those who do harm others, there are many who are happy and also help others. The harms do exist alongside the positives, but this doesn't mean that the good directly requires the negatives to exist. Preventing the damage cannot come at the cost of preventing all the benefit. Complex situations are rarely fixed by one-sided "solutions". I don't think the harms are good; I merely disagree with the assertion that preventing necessary (assuming that averting harm is also necessary), precious, significant, and evanescent yet eternally valuable positives is an acceptable idea.
I haven't done anything except for pointing out the inherent flaw with idea that there needs to be a deprivation for the creation of a positive life to be necessary, but it's somehow logical to suggest that the lack of harm is good sans an actual benefit, because the truth is it simply doesn't seem to be the case. There's no need to drag this on infinitely, because it's also quite easy to understand that one resolves to create a benefit in one case that one could consider akin to a gift they couldn't solicit themselves. In one instance, the state of affairs changes to one having good, and in the other, there is no value. Once again, the lack of a "POV" before existing is precisely why I don't think that existence can be inherently better/worse for a person. But even if it is and all that matters is the perspective and experiences of the actual person, the logical position seems to be to understand that the creation of a benefit matters just lile the prevention of damage. You cannot apply double standards and then accuse others of making a "sleight of hand" when being questioned for a lack of consistency, for doing so is probably a much accurate representation of a sleight of hand.
A few standard questions for the misanthropic/antinatalist pessimist.
If you could press a button now, and all human life would cease to exist, without causing any suffering to anyone, including you. Instant removal from the Universe. Would you press?
If we go back to the time of the dinosaurs and consider the longevity of time they had on the Earth, compared to humans. Was there any suffering during those times, when there were no humans around?
Is it only human suffering you are concerned about?
Do you think there is life on other planets? I'd prefer a yes or no to a don't know but I know we don't always get what we prefer.
And thou, Scotsman, should prepare too, like every mortal soul, for the justified global cleansing showing its first signs already in introductory foreplay. If we don't kneel and submit to His Undubitable Supreme reigning, His Holy Wisdom, and His Pristine Ejaculate from His Graphene Erect, eternal darkness and gloomy doom will be all we are left with. Only a full and true commitment to the Holy Ejaculate will save the sinful from the purifyied beating of the Stiff Erect. His merciful Immaculate Erect will whip and wipe, and only bestow and fertilize the blissful follower and true repenter. The Wondrous Being, praise his name threefold, Hurray Hurray Hurray, hurry Hurray! From the Incendiary Erect, that divine Cynosure of Truthful heavenly Justice, the Ivory Ejaculate will restore order in paradise and blow the ephemeral determined and swiftly to damned oblivion. Therefore, brothers and sisters, let's hold hands and humbly request the Almighty to at least show his unsurpassed empathy in dealing with the renegade pagan. May Science rule suppreme!
Did you think I prayed to the gods? No. It was meant to show that the story that science tells us has taken the place of the God story. Science and technology joined hands with the state as God did once. Seems the aim is to control nature at all levels. Science is omnipotent, omnipresent. Omnibenevolent? Certainly not.
I'm no member of any fucking church. Gods exist. You may disagree, of course. The deeper you think about nature, the more you realize that there is no scientific answer to the question where it all came from. I think I know, but where then does the stuff at the base came from?
I forgot a question:
Do you believe a human being can learn from suffering and improve their life due to the experience of suffering?
Do you believe a human being can learn from suffering and improve their life due to the experience of suffering?
I would like to add 'without falling into any aspect of masochism.' to the above question
Sorry for my digression with shopenhauer1 from your OP but shopenhaur1 and DA671 had already established the digression and I am sure you can still bring us back to the OP if you feel there are still points about Global warming and chaos not yet aired.
Quoting DA671
Let's look at why the case is so strong for not creating collateral damage though.
On one side of the ledger, collateral damage is created.
On the other side of the ledger, no collateral damage is created.
One cannot say here, some person is be affected negatively for not being born. Because as I think you are trying to acknowledge, there is no child's POV that is negatively affected.
The collateral damage is purely experienced once a child is created. Once this state of affairs of "born" has happened, harms become entailed with life as it normally goes.
So in one case there is no state of affairs of collateral damage. On the other side there is. You now cannot go back and say, "But there are no state of affairs of no happiness".. Because that is not collateral damage to a child's POV. In other words, there literally is no losing side to not creating someone. There will always be a collateral (losing) aspect to creating someone. This is based on states of affairs.
So the question becomes.. If the default state is no collateral damage, what justifies creating a state of affairs where by collateral damage is incurred, but doesn't have to incur onto someone else?
You say, happiness is a pass to initiate the process. I am saying that there is nothing that justifies creating unnecessary collateral damage as a state of affairs in the world for someone else.
Quoting universeness
Of course there is! For sure. I think around virtually every star there is a planet with life on it. Even people, why not. Seems that the solar system situation is a common one.Teeming with life, she is!
Nobody is positively affected by the lack of harm in nonexistence either. And no, I am not focusing on nonexistent beings, only pointing out the obvious before moving on.
I am not going to "go back" on anything because I don't need to. Although I do think that a "loss" requires an actual worsening, but that wouldn't be pertinent here. The fact is that nobody is benefitting in one state of affairs either, but they do experience happiness when they do exist, so it has significance from their POV, and there's no need for a deprivation for that to be important.
You obviously disagree, and mistakenly so, in my view, but I believe that if it is preferable to prevent potential harm, it is also justifiable to create valuable experiences that would be gained by people when they exist.
You say that the positives do not justify procreation, but I disagree, because I do think that the intricately ethereal and indescribable goods do justify creating people.
Goods that are not deprived to anyone matter how, exactly? It's just switching the POV as if there is someone, but there is not. Again, no collateral damage to anyone here, so I don't see the problem.
Quoting DA671
Correct, but that is not what I stated. I did not say.. "There exists someone for whom lack of harm is being experienced". Rather I simply stated, that "Collateral damage, as a state of affairs, is not being created". That is to say, there is no downside going on.
Quoting DA671
Right, but doesn't answer my question of Quoting schopenhauer1
Quoting DA671
This, I can agree with.
Quoting DA671
So initiating unnecessary harm is fine with you as long as happiness exists. But why is creating collateral damage ever good, when it does not have to happen?
There is no person that needs saving...
There is no person "missing out"
Giving someone a "chance" to be happy, but knowing this creates harm, is still presuming that it is okay to create harm for someone else wholesale, and inescapable, and that this is justified because positive aspects also exist. How is this not paternalistic, arrogant, and dangerous? Why is messing with other people's existential status something that is presumed "good to do" onto someone else? "This is good for you..." and "you'll thank me later" might be subtle, but they are excuses we use to cause unnecessary harm. At the end of the day, if you think causing unnecessary harm to others is justified because you know "happiness must be had by someone" then I cannot persuade you otherwise other than, it is wrong to use people by causing them burdens for your notion of what is good for them, the world, the universe, (which actually doesn't make sense either) etc.
So when someone doesn't like aspects of life, what will you do? Say, "Ship up or ship out?" "Go kill yourself", "That's life", "That's just the way it is"? Great, real empathy there. You have created the very situation for which you are gaslighting them. "Fuck you.. enjoy what is here, or go kill yourself! I created you so you can "enjoy" what I deem must be enjoyed.. Family values... You laughed as a child, why are you resenting X right now?? How dare you question your birth?? Question the system, question this or that, but never question existence!!?? It's a"gift" yet you feel negative X right now.. Ha ha ha ha.. paternalistic, arrogant.. gas lighting....
You can't create a situation whereby the negatives come about, and then tell the person to "fuck off" if they question the very negatives that were brought about.
:grin: I love your reply Raymond and feel the same way. I also love Billy Braggs music and have his 'The Essential collection.' I love songs like 'there is power in a union' and 'all you fascists are bound to lose' etc
No I would not press a button. Ethics is at the individual level. People's consent must be obtained.. If not for an individual, then ethics means nothing but aggregate averaged out utility.. It is at the individual level of POV that experience is carried out and it is there where ethics must be considered.
I am primarily concerned of human suffering simply because we are deliberative beings that can make choices, but I do care about animal welfare, yes.
Sure I'll say there might be.. And if there is.. if they can deliberate like we can, they can make the same AN choices, if there is "suffering" which certainly there is for them as us.
Quoting universeness
Humans can learn from suffering. However, to create suffering so people can learn is wrong I think.
If that's the case, then I am also not taking about nonexistent beings beings deprived of goods. The cardinal consideration is that benefit is not being created in one state of affairs, and that's not an upside.
It does, because happiness (a desirable experience) that matters more for innumerable people despite harms (undesirable sensations) does justify, in my opinion, the formation of life.
I was using valuable experiences synonymously with people to compare with damage.
Once again, this is a only a misunderstanding/double standard. I never said that damage is good; I only said that creating the benefits is good, and my contention is that it can be justifiable to create them, considering that many people do go on to find immense meaning in their lives. And if there's no need for a feeling of satisfaction/relief for the prevention of damage to be good, there's also no need for a feeling of "missing out" or a need for being "saved" from the creation of happiness to be good once the person exists.
It's much more paternalistic, harmful, and hubristic to suggest that one should not create ineffably valuable experiences due to the risk of damage (since I do not think that a harm always negates the worth a person sees in their life). I simply don't think that creating precious and hugely significant joys (many of which exist in spite of harms) is wrong due to the possibility of harms. Another misunderstanding, since there's nobody whose welfare is being "messed up" by merely being created. And if the person does find the joys to be more potent than the harms, which is the case in many situations, then they don't need anybody else to tell them what is good for them. My inability to find value in life does not justify negating all that matters. Also, I have already mentioned that there is a difference between causing harms for existing people (which would only be ethical if there is a greater good for the person), and the creation of a good life, wherein if the prevention of harms is necessary, then so is the genesis of happiness. At the end of the day, if one chooses to believe a flawed view that suggests that not bestowing an amazing good onto a person who cannot ask for it themselves before existing is acceptable due to their own narrow viewpoint, that's their prerogative. Nevertheless, it wouldn't change the fact that their idea of the creation of good being unnecessary remains flawed and incorrect, and straw men arguments about good for the universe aren't going to change that. A worldview that results in a total devaluation of a crucial aspect of reality deserves opprobrium, in my view. One's arbitrary notions are certainly not a valid excuse for a worldview that irrationally and patronisingly decides that the creation of truly majestic joys isn't necessarily valuable for those who would exist and appreciate them.
Life is often a "gift", but I never claimed it always is or needs to be seen that way (though I do think that it's necessarily better for a person if they can). I do not believe any of what you said there, and I am sorry if any of my comments made you think that this is the case. As I have said before, I do think that people need to think about procreation more carefully, especially in situations when they know that the likelihood of the child having a good life is low. Additionally, I don't think that it's ethical to force people to keep enduring a valueless existence that they cannot find any joy in for the sake of defending some strange idea of the "sanctity of life". This is why I support the availability of a liberal right to die along with careful use of technology in order to remove/reduce suffering as much as possible. All the harms are extremely tragic, and I do not think that my words alone are sufficient to change that fact. Yet, there is also another side of the coin. There are those who truly perceive their lives to be a gift. For them, the so-called "little" things act as a source of indubitable value. Things such as the love of a family member, or the achievement of a dream such as being able to become the first educated person in a family (a phenomenon that's still common in the country I come from) can inundate people with a happiness that's truly immeasurable. I just don't think that one should loom at those experiences and decide that it's acceptable for those goods to never exist again, even if those people themselves continue to cherish their lives. I don't think that genuine empathy entails ignoring the positives. Paternalism can manifest in multiple ways, my friend. Still, I completely agree with you that our current system of oppressing people in the name of "mental illness" instead of providing actual solutions like a right to a graceful exit and reducing inequality is condemnable. I hope that this situation will change as time goes on.
No, such people deserve happiness and care. I don't think that irredeemable harms are logically inextricable for happiness, though it's true that there are negatives that do exist. I think that creating happiness and then sincerely caring about a person who would love their life is trivial; it possesses priceless worth. Thank you for this enlightening discussion, and I hope that you have a good week ahead!
For you Scotsman!
Well we have that anyway, at least we don't have to keep you away from any big red buttons, labeled
'To end all life in the universe, just press here'........ :wink:
Quoting schopenhauer1
Many would argue that there are many other 'deliberative' non-human creatures on Earth.
From orangutans to dolphins. Okay, perhaps not as cognisant as humans but should antinatalism apply to them due to 'suffering' or do they have to be fully able, to be asked for and confirm consent in some way?
Quoting schopenhauer1
Well I hope you are not one of the first representatives from the human race to encounter aliens from another planet. How long would it be before you said:
'Welcome to Earth.....but what a shame you were ever born! Have you suffered today?'
I don't intend to mock but I freely admit to finding antinatalism, a ridiculous viewpoint.
So, you are in a sense, 'over-rulling' evolution. The around14 billion years it took to reach the stage where the universe was able to produce lifeforms such as humans was a complete waste of 'time'? due to the 'suffering' aspect of existence. Is that your logical position?
I know you recognise that this is a very small minority view (or at least a minority view). Would you also call it an extreme view?
Quoting schopenhauer1
But your posit is that birth is the beginning of suffering and you give that priority over all other human states and actually think that the state DEAD is better. Would this be an accurate statement?
Thanks Earther!!
So you would create harm for this reason?
Quoting DA671
But then, who cares, literally? All that matters is you didn't create unnecessary harm. No one literally cares there is no upside (except the projections of you).
Quoting DA671
Ah, yes, the "people" speak to DA671 and DA671 speaks to the world! Paterinalistic arrogance. At least in my philosophy I presume to do nothing for no one.. Presuming brings with it baggage for others.. I would never want to do that to people.
"You Matthew Harrison Brady.. you pass on God's orders to the rest of the world!... Well meet the prophet from Nebraska!" :lol: God speaks to Brady.. and Brady tells the world!! Brady, Brady, Brady Oh mighty!"
Quoting DA671
Eh this has no force. No one is doing anything to anyone, as we have discussed. On the procreation side, something is being done.. On the not procreation side, It is messing with no one.. so no.
Quoting DA671
Yes presume on.. you deem it necessary, therefore others should suffer because it is "good for them".
Quoting DA671
All your own projections that burden others at the end of the day.
Quoting DA671
I just think being the "evaluator" of another's life's burdens is again, paternalistic, arrogant, and a sortof god-complex.. Don't burden others, PERIOD. Please don't give pedantic and sentimentalist laughter of children, the poetic sense of the artist, and the fights of fancy of a mountainclimber, the majesty of science, the wonders of technology bullshit. You are burdening others, messing with them.. YOU are doing that (you being the procreator).
Quoting DA671
Didn't even read this and I predicted it above :lol: Spare the sentimentality. It excuses nothing. Burdening people is burdening people, despite what you might want them to possibly experience otherweise from the burdens you are burdening them with.
Quoting DA671
I mean, this idea that if you don't like the situation, go kill yourself isn't callous? Just don't put people in that situation. Period. When is that ever good to do? Break some eggs to make an omelet thinking? No one suffers not being born. I don't hear the whispering cries of the nothing nobodies in the nothing noths region of nothingdom.
Quoting DA671
I get that you think happiness is worth making people suffer (collateral damage). Fuck em all right? Cause happiness.
There's also nobody who cares that there isn't a downside, except from your own projections. What also matters is that there isn't any joy, which you don't seem to understand.
I am sure the "people" spoke to Schopenhauer1 and explained to them how they find happiness to be a baggage they don't wish to possess. Once again, shallow and patronising. I am not obliged to follow the words of the prophets of doom and unremitting pessimism.
It does. What you're essentially saying is: if one had to capability to recreate a person who truly loved his life and wished to experience those goods again, their wish would be irrelevant because preventing the harms matters more by virtue of paternalistic judgement that decides what matters more for other sentient beings. Also, to digress a bit, I don't think that not creating a person is respecting their dignity, since they don't have an interest in the void that has been taken into account.
Paternalism (Google definition): "the policy or practice on the part of people in authority of restricting the freedom and responsibilities of those subordinate to or otherwise dependent on them in their supposed interest."
I never knew that there were emancipated souls floating around in the void whose "freedom" was being "restricted" against interests that don't even exist. And if one is talking about a "potential" interest to not suffer, then there is also a need to take the potential interest of happiness into account, which is why creating the positives could be deemed an act of beneficence that lends dignifies a person by giving them a good they couldn't ask for themselves. You would, of course, still focus on the negatives. But I am afraid that your viewpoint is not representative of the lives of countless individuals who do love their lives despite the hardships they face.
You're the one who presumes that your own perspective justifies ending all happiness, which isn't ethical. You deem one thing to be "necessary" whilst ignoring the other because of ... reasons.
At the end of the day your pessimistic projections prevent the existence of cherished experiences.
It's tragic that the effulgent smiles of people are "sentimentalism" for you, but it's understandable, considering that you haven't tried to look at things from a wider viewpoint. Good things are considered by many to be gift that outweighs the potential burdens, yet you would paternalistically judge that the existence of harms would justify not creating any good life. Bestowing a good by procreating can certainly be good and is the opposite of "messing" with anybody.
Truth is intuitive, yet it's tragic that people reject it ;) Once again, if you could move past your projections and attempts of being the judge of all experiences, you would realise that things that one considers to be a blessing isn't a burden for them. Then again, pessimistic sentimentalism can be difficult to overcome in some cases.
Once again talking about nonexistent whispers and yet claiming that what matters is existence. As I have already said before, if it can be good to prevent suffering even though there's nobody in the void who's happy about the idea of not existing, then it can also be good to create happiness. I don't think that it's callous, because it does give people a way out if things do get bad. I didn't say that it's easy or preferable, but I believe that it's still something that many people desire and is probably a better alternative than preventing all happiness. Not making any omelette because a few might break isn't the epitome of wisdom.
There's nothing about suffering that deserves to be ignored. But as I mentioned before, there are situations that do not have "easy" solutions. I can see that you wish to eradicate the potential for all ineffably valuable experiences due to your inability to see beyond the harms.
Yes, that.
Quoting universeness
Ironically.. perhaps aliens don't "exist" because they already figured out antinatalism a long time ago :wink:
Quoting universeness
I have no duty to a natural mechanism like evolution, only to people, and not creating their unnecessary suffering.
Quoting universeness
I think it seems extreme, but so do a lot of new ideas.
Quoting universeness
That's harder to say.. You can still believe life was not worth starting but also believe that once begun, since humans have connections to their own endeavors, interests, etc. it may be worse off to be dead. It doesn't mean that one equals the other.. Birth and death are changes of states of existence, but the decision to procreate another and a decision to kill yourself are not equivalent decisions. It can be said, that to put someone into suffering is bad, and to put someone in a bind that death is part of their equation of living, is also a part of this.
I always accept conjecture as a 'fair' position as it allows opinion and its part of my own epistemology even if we all recognise it, as a mere beginning, in a quest for 'knowledge.'
Quoting schopenhauer1
Well you may reject such a duty but that process is why you are here. Perhaps based on your viewpoints, it's that fact, that upsets you. I accept my suffering as a 'teacher.' and I reject your unhelpful solution to my suffering. I wish to alleviate excessive suffering but my cure is not the equivalent of killing the patient or disallowing their birth in the first place.
Obviously and as I am rational, I withhold my consent to AN, for my lifetime. As long as anyone, with the same view as me, lives, AN can never be realised, in its ultimate goal, unless our species is wiped out for other reasons, because consent is required. This encourages others of your ilk, perhaps a more extreme flavor to consider removing the need for consent. Do you have a duty to stop such people?
Quoting schopenhauer1
This is not a new idea, its a very boring, very old idea that was part of early greek musings and was posited within the words 'better not to have been born in the first place.' It was rejected by the majority of rational thinkers then (The proof being that we are still here with an ever-increasing population since the times of Ancient Greece) and it will continue to be utterly rejected by the majority of rational thinkers now.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Ok, if that's the level of your Antinatalism then you are harmless. The result will be that you will have no kids. I have no kids and will not have any because I am now too old to do the nurture part as effectively as I think it needs to be done. So we are a gentle assist to the current global over-population problem.
I would just like confirmation from you that any time an Antinatalist group or individual raises its head and declares that consent is no longer required, that you will be helping me and folks like DA671,
stop them from achieving their goal
Yes I see, you think that by switching it to pessimism that this solves your problems. But it doesn't because of the initial asymmetry.. That is exactly the point. They cannot be switched out as you are doing without an error of sorts.
In the case of no person, I am meddling in no person's life. There is nothing that is getting burdened.
In the case of a person born, you are meddling in a person's life. There is someone now, that is burdened.
Thus all the things you mentioned by reversing things there are not pertinent. There is no paternalism, for example in my state of affairs.. No ONE is being paternally treated. Once someone is born (your scenario), now, paternalism takes affect. There is no one in the void in being not born, but once born, there is someone who can be burdened with.
Of course.. You realize there are nutballs in every conceivable philosophical-ideological-political group/camp/movement right?
Quoting universeness
I'll consent to the idea that philosophical pessimism has been around forever.. and variations of antinatalism.. But antinatalism as a recognized thing is relatively new.. However, your answer for why it's wrong.. "People still procreate" is either the "argumentum ad populum" fallacy or the "naturalistic" fallacy. Take your pick.
Quoting universeness
:up:
Quoting universeness
Sure. It would be going against the very principles of antinatalism itself to even do this.. I don't believe in this weird abstract utilitarian way of thinking where people are just to be seen as how they can aggregate this or that outcome.
An antinatalist seems to have other motives though. They think their children will become part of the problem, while animals think their children will be a victim of it.
Actually that is a debate in antinatalist communities.. You are describing what is called "misanthropic" and "philanthropic" versions of antinatalism.
In the case of a person, one is bestowing a good that cannot be solicited by the person themselves. In the other case, no positive exists. If one chooses to view an act of beneficence (if it's a "burden" to create harm) as "meddling", then that's their choice. But this wouldn't change the fact that the positives are quite important.
As I said, there is a certain degree of paternalism in telling a happy person who would wish to experience the good again that their positives are not adequate and do not deserve to be created for the sake of preventing harm. But if it's "paternalistic" to create a burden (even though there isn't any free state of deep interest prior to existing), it can be a genuine gift to have a truly valuable life that one can cherish only once they exist and cannot ask for it otherwise. Thus, your double standards remain unjustifiable. If nobody is born, nobody can benefit, but this isn't the case if people do exist. Of course, you believe that they don't matter (incorrectly, in my view), but I disagree, because the priceless joys will always be pertinent (along with the harms).
Ah yes, so when I slowed this down and you accepted the terms, you didn't accept them.. So let's go back to square one...
Quoting DA671
There is no "themselves".. There is no ONE. Asymmetry, see?
Quoting DA671
Positives not had by anyone, are important to no one. Positives had at the expense of burdening someone is indeed what this is all about. Whether this is good/just/ethical/proper to do so.
There's also no person who's being forcibly taken away from a blissful and free void into a worse state of affairs. Yet, if it's still a burden/harm for the negative to exist, the good can also be perceived as a gift/benefit.
Negatives not had by anybody also don't matter, by the same token. However, preventing the possibility of actual goods for the sake of preventing harms does matter, and I do not think that averting the opportunity of innumerable loved experiences is ethical/good/just/proper to do.
Get off your pony..
Quoting DA671
Here you are again, doing a switcharoo.. It's from the POV of the person causing the burden prior to someone's actual birth.
Quoting DA671
Correct.
Quoting DA671
No it does not matter. You were right the first time.
There's no "switcharoo" happening. You have unjustifiable double standards when it comes to happiness and suffering. If existing is a "burden" from the POV of an existing person even though there wasn't any prior interest in an alternative state of affairs, a good life can also be perceived as a gift, irrespective of whether or not some nonexistent person needed it. As for existing people's view, you obviously believe that the creating the good is not acceptable due to the negatives, but I disagree, because I do think that the creating numerous individuals who do find joy in their lives despite suffering can be ethical.
I was referring to their absence. Even if the lack of a bad is neutral (and not good), the creation of the joys is preferable to a valueless state of affairs. As I said before, if it can be unethical to form the damages, it can also be ineffably good to create happiness.
That's a mischaracterisation, since I meant that they do not matter only if the lack of the harms doesn't have any worth. But no, they do matter if the absence of the harms matters. I do think that I am probably right about antinatalism being a logically untenable position ;)
Based on your last comment to me, I am left with one of my own strongly held convictions that as long as someone is not inciting violence then:
"I might not agree with what you say but I will defend with my life, your right to say it"
Thank you for your honest responses to my comments.
:up:
I am good with what you are doing. I can see the different discussions happening in the thread and I think we need to just go with the flow. In the past I tried to control MY threads. :lol: That ruins everything and I am seeing how important creativity and relationships are.
The is a beautiful video! I am so sorry our world is in such a mess, but we really didn't know we were causing so much harm. We have so much to do and need to do it very fast, but we aren't talking with each other.
Look, participating in civic activities is maybe even more important than voting. Look for a civic project you can become a part of. It doesn't matter what that project is as long as you are interested in it because you will more learn about how democracy works, just by getting involved. That is how we must take back our country. That is our best hope for getting through the very hard times we face.
And I want you to know you have been important to my understanding of much more than you could realize. I hoped you help me be a better and wiser person. If I just don't forget the lesson.
And yeah, it's definitely encouraging to finally see (after a long time) many people who wish to genuinely contribute towards the well-being of others :)
Thanks for your encouraging words! I could just hold in a tear! :heart:
Then it is not just me seeing this. That is exciting. All through history, things have swung this way and that way. When we experience enough shared pain we have joined together to counteract the problem.
I believe in the New Age. A time of high tech, peace, and the end of tyranny. What will be new is our consciousness will be so different, we will not be able to relate to the past, and this is the result of technology. We are no longer a labor-intense society. That makes a big difference and we need to think of a new future so we can work on creating that.
To deal with global warming, what do our neighborhoods need to look like? Personally, I am elderly and I want to live in a complex with others my age and those things I need to stay as fit as possible, such as a swimming pool and a variety of exercise programs, including stimulating my mind. That is not affordable for me, but if we were planning for a better future, that might be in the plan.
The Japanese have focused on creating neighborhoods where everything is in walking distance and the children are safe. What a wonderful thing to wrap our minds around. Environmental concerns are natural to such planning.
Many people pay careful attention to the weather because it affects their lives. Our weather report includes the severity of the drought we are experiencing and sometimes the air quality is mentioned. We can encourage our weather reporters to keep us informed and aware of our environment. So many people are ready for this, we can make it happen.
The most important thing is to be creative and imagine what would be better! Then we need to be civically active, not only to achieve good things but to learn what democracy is about. We absolutely must participate in committees that are working on social problems because that is how to learn how democracy works. We need to take back governing ourselves.
Please, may we all understand the miracle of democracy is bringing out the best in each other. In a democracy, we are not subjects. We are equals as the gods. That does not mean we are the same. The miracle very much depends on our variety and different points of view. The consciousness above us, that is all of history and all of our minds, is far greater than waht any form of dictatorship can manifest. You know as China is developing great technology, but maybe not a great a culture?
We need a better understanding of that miracle of democracy than we have today. Education for technology has made us as mean-spirited as Nazi Germany was and it was education too focused on technology for military and industrial purposes that led to the paranoia and meanness and blaming, blaming, blaming "those people". We see the problem in forums every day. People attacking and arguing with a very mean spirit, putting the attacked person on the defensive and destroying the possibility that together we can work miracles. Our problem today is one of spirit. If we are nice to each other, and work together, some really good things may happen.
I have been puzzling over this for a long time. I think forums are our best meeting place. I have started a Blog but I am just learning to use it. Religious people have the benefit of being organized in such a way they can be more effective as a group. But attempting to organize people without an established organization is extremely challenging, especially for someone without money. However, there are organizations, and thanks to the internet we can find them and join them.
Here are 36 organizations we can support.
https://foodtank.com/news/2020/10/36-organizations-helping-solve-the-climate-crisis/
The difference the internet makes, along with a better understanding of democracy, can radically change our reality. My main focus is improving our understanding of democracy.
I just had another thought. Looking at the list of organizations to fight climate change, I see all the little groups of Christians, before there was organized Christianity. I think religious kind of breath beginning as separate little groups, eventually joining into a large group, and breaking down again into smaller groups.
Thanks for sharing that incredibly helpful list!
Oh dear, I am supposed to be doing payer work so I can get a paycheck, but I think you have given me a new subject I need to write about in the Blog and that led to finding a link that explains the history of the subject of the thread and clarifies the Military-Industrial Complex is not just conspiracy theory. At the moment the title is "militaryindustrialcomplexornewworldorder" I think I need to add - to separate the words. I don't know how people would access the blog, but I can send you an invite. I have just started working on it and it is not that well developed. For sure I must explain how the internet makes the power of democracy even more universal because it is a tool encompassing our individual consciousness on a scale never before possible.
The New Age is also the Resurrection. Archeologists, geologists, and related sciences are resurrecting the past. This is a time of reckoning for all our past sins. I am speaking a huge flood of information that changes our consciousness so dramatically the people of the New Age will not able to comprehend life as we have assumed life must be. We will look as primitive to them, as apes are primitive to us.
I think the OP's on to something.
Remember chaos theory, how it began? Weather! The long and short of it is that small differences in initial conditions lead to outcomes, downstream, that are extremely divergent. So given a weather model, inputting a temperature of 2.001 degrees Celsius and 2.002 degrees Celsius (a variation of 0.001 degrees Celsius) could mean that one scenario leads to a scorching hot day and another a blizzard.
If so, the reliability of climate models that predict global warming is thrown into question . Chaos theory precludes it, oui? I believe climate deniers are in the know about this.
I like your explanation of chaos theory. But when it comes to being a climate denier or believer I am on the side of believers. Most of Oregon has experienced a severe drought and the drought condition worsened so badly a new word had to be invented. "Exceptional drought" is worse than "extreme drought". Normally Oregon had so much rain I thought we would never have a water problem. That is no longer true and the fires we had two years ago, made me take that very seriously.
I like old people so I listen to their stories whenever I can and long before any mention of climate change, they were talking about how they would never go into the woods to log, without their rain clothes. They were saying our climate change began before everyone was talking about it.
I garden so I noticed a few years ago, that spring started to come earlier. I could not trust my own sense of what was happening until that also became a subject of discussion. I think many of us will be planting earlier this year and what we plant may change if we continue to have extremely hot summers. Too much hot weather thickens the skin of plants and makes them less pleasant to eat.
All I wanted to convey was if climate scientists are using climate models to predict global warming, we should exercise caution for the simple reason that chaos theory implies that even the tiniest variation in the inputs (possible in the real world) would nullify any predictions whatsoever.
There is a saying that when we resolve one problem we create three more. We really do not know as much as we need to know and if we were okay with that and moved cautiously all the time, that would probably be a good idea.
We can feed millions of people because of large cooperate owned farms and fertilizer and that has been a serious pollution problem. Until we reduce the size of our population, I don't think we will have good solutions. But if we all came to love the earth with some reverence for the miracle of life on this planet, that could lead to improvements.
Wait & watch. :ok:
I don't think that is a good idea. That is kind of like standing on the railroad tracks and wondering if the train will stop before passing you. It would be smarter to get off the tracks.
And when it comes to consuming fossil fuels, the US was the world's supply of oil. The recession following the 1974 OPEC embargo oil to the US was a real wake-up call! Reagan lied to us by saying we did not need to conserve oil. Then he slashed domestic budgets and poured everything into our economic and military control of oil in the mid-east bringing us to the mess we are in now. I don't want to get too political, but Vietnam and all the following mid-east wars are about oil and protecting our economy that consumes more oil than we have. Our need for oil and our money spending to getting oil, has caused the oil countries a lot of pain. The Vietnam war was very painful to us and them. This is not moral.
It's not enough just to watch. The models of weather are not models of climate. If the model predicts a 3 degree increase in temperature that temperature will rise! Some thinking before commenting is welcome. Only words won't do.
What choice do we have? I don't see anyone proposing solutions that are certain to produce results, practicable, fair, to name a few qualities that matter.
What happened in Glasgow (COP26)? Absolutely nothing if you ask me.
That's what was bothering me. Any ideas how climate models are constructed? Does chaos theory apply to climate? I have a feeling it does, it should.
Not necessarily. Millions of butterflies wiggle their wings in the Orient with no effect in San Francisco at all. Not all weather models are subject to the "sensitive dependence on initial conditions" of chaos theory.
First off, you really don't know if those beautiful butterflies are not behind the recent spate of extreme weather events.
Second, is there any difference between weather & climate models used for making global warming predictions that would mean chaos theory is inapplicable to climate?
"Chaos theory" refers to certain dynamical systems having weaknesses allowing for minute changes to produce significant results through sequences of iterations. Meteorology includes both weather and climate. Meteorological models are susceptible. Not all models are unpredictably chaotic. It's a sort of vague expression in everyday use.
Quoting Agent Smith
Of course I do! Just trust me. :brow:
:rofl:
I trust mathematicians because
[quote=Mario Livio]Is God a mathematician?[/quote]
James Carter was our president from 1977 to 1981. His focus was on reducing our dependency on foreign oil so we would not applaud his policies, but he ask us to be conservative and turn our thermostats down to 68 degrees. If we all did that, that would be a huge saving because there are so many of us. He also advanced solar energy. We know part of the problem is eating meat, so some of us are eating less meat or no meat at all.
Here are suggestions and consider because there are so many of us, we can make a difference. The more of us who choose to take action, the easier it will be for the government to take action.
https://davidsuzuki.org/what-you-can-do/top-10-ways-can-stop-climate-change/
Understand, President Reagan lied to us and he dismantled what Carter put in place. WE MUST NOT COUNT ON GOVERNMENT BECAUSE WE CAN GET PRESIDENTS WHO LEAD US IN THE WRONG DIRECTION. WE MUST COUNT ON DEMOCRACY- THAT IS ALL OF US WORKING TOGETHER TO ACHIEVE GOALS. :heart: :flower:
With regard to the thesis set out in the opening post, ten pages ago, ideally, I think it's our responsibility to understand what's true, and act morally with regard to what's true....not necessarily 'because God says so' but because there is an objective reality that's a web of cause and effect relations, and acting on valid knowledge within a causal reality is necessary to valid outcomes. For instance, imagine a criminal in court - who tells lies. If those lies are believed; the court may act morally, but the verdict will not be just. Valid knowledge of reality is necessary to morally valid outcomes; but also functionally valid outcomes. Imagine a technology based on principles that are wrong to reality. It won't work.
It's the same with the world. Nature is one big machine, and we're a faulty cog insofar as we are wrong, causing a system wide dysfunction. It's scientifically possible to solve the climate and ecological crisis. The earth is a ball of molten rock containing an effectively limitless amount of energy, we could harness to meet all our energy needs, plus capture carbon, desalinate, irrigate and recycle, and so balance human welfare and environmental sustainability very much in our favour. Nasa proved this in 1982 - but somehow 'The Magma Enenergy Project' was quietly discontinued, and 40 years later, global population and fossil fuel use have doubled, and Trump Digs Coal!
If you see things in terms of chaos and order you end up with totalitarian government, but if you see things in terms of knowing what's true and doing what's right, you get morally valid outcomes that work!
That's the true spirit of democracy! The term is too often abused to justify the tyrant.
Quoting Agent Smith
My husband, a meteorologist at the NWS, once explained me. The butterfly effect is no real effect. One butterfly cannot cause a storm in USA if she flaps wings in China! The butterfly effect is rather poor name giving. It's meant to ilustrate chaos but does so wrongly. Small changes can produce divergent solutions, and the air around the butterfly behaves chaotically but to change the weather on global scale you have to vary conditions globally. A simple flap won't do.
Weather can't be predicted (though the predictions can be quite accurate). Climate prediction is more reliable.
My husband, a meteorologist at NWS, told me a nice story about butterflies. One good day, butterflies realized they got screwed by Lorenz (name giver of effect).
What I'm really concerned about is if climate action has a deadline to meet and whether we're already past that date with destiny.
Thanks for chiming in. I was a meteorologist for the USAF many years ago so its good to hear another give their opinions on TPF.
Quoting Agent Smith
I'd guess, yes. But Cornwell1's husband is more reliable.
Sorry for asking, but are you the "mountaineer"?
cause a hurricane on the other side of the Earth. Only global variation of the variables can lead to significant changes, if no hidden potential energy sources like a dam with water behind it, can be unleashed.
You can use unpredictability as an excuse for climate change denial. "How can we know?" We can.
"It's a sad sad situation, and it's getting more and more absurd", so my husband sings frequently. Already some time ago the deadline should have been met. Corona made the exhaust drop, but he fears that when all is normalized thing get worse than they already were. "Nouvaux elan"... Why can't just hold back for a while, think things over, and restart fresh and clean?
Climber :cool:
:smile:
Even if that is so, it is still necessary to discuss how humanity will deal with it. Many civilizations have fallen because the people exhausted their resources, or weather conditions lead to famine, or disease forced them to move. Those people did not have the science to understand their situation. If they were living in large civilizations, they did not have the communication systems we have, so they had no chance of collaborating on what was happening and what to do. Today we have science and amazing communication systems and we like to think we have democracy, but obviously, we do not have a good understanding of how to use all this.
Very nicely worded. Not many people know what science has to do with morals and democracy but you do. In my eyes that makes you are a very valuable person.
I used the word chaos because around the world weather is being very chaotic! This year snow in unusual places has made the news. Where I am, January was so warm, flowers began blooming, and now things have taken a turn for the cold and we are reopening emergency shelters for the homeless.
A gal I know in Arkansas tells me it is over 70 degrees one day and freezing the next. Her weather has really been chaotic and that is the kind of thing that causes tornados. It is hard for people to wrap their heads around global warming when they are faced with snow blizzards or snow in unusual places, so I think we need a better understanding of our actions throwing nature into a state of chaos. And from there, your words are exactly right! Lying to the jury will not lead to justice.
It kind of reminds me of Egypt and thinking it is the pharaoh's job to prevent chaos from destroying the harmony with nature that is essential to staying out of trouble.
Absolutely and I am having a hard time not understanding our delay in doing that. It seems obvious to me when a tornado, hurricane, flood, fire does a lot of damage, the cost of that should get our attention. Maybe better news reporting would help us connect the dots and become aware of the cost of ignoring the problem?
I'm not sure I should be pharoah; cultural appropriation and whatnot! I'm thinking more along the lines of philosopher king of the world. But I'll settle for philosopher.
It's wierd, isn't it, that despite all this technological advance, things are getting in strange ways worse. In my view, the chaos we see is the causal consequence of acting at odds to reality. Religious, political and economic ideological concepts do not describe reality as it really is - science does! Acting on the basis of ideological concepts we act at odds to reality, and as the disparity between our course, and 'true north' becomes ever wider, the chaos increases.
Magma energy is a viable technology. It was proven by NASA in 1982, in a series of papers entitled The Magma Energy Project. I cannot be certain the project was not developed because of the vast national and economic interests in fossil fuels, but science showed limitless clean energy is available, and it hasn't been developed. That was over 40 years ago, and in the meantime - global population and fossil fuel use have doubled.
My hope, recognising this relationship between the validity of knowledge, as a basis for human action, and the validity of the outcome - will allow us to have our cake and eat it. I'm certainly not suggesting we tear down the churches, banks and borders, to start again from scratch, making all our representations conform to strict scientific rationality. Rather, my hope is that recognising the significance of a scientific understanding of reality will create the authority to do that which is necessary to survival; namely, develop magma energy to meet all our energy needs, plus power carbon capture and storage, deslaination and irrigation, and the recycling of all waste - allowing for a prosperous sustainable future.
Relative vs. Absolute. We have improved but there's still more that needs to be done.
Despite of all this technology? Because all of this technology.
— karl stone
Quoting Cornwell1
Not really, because it's the wrong technology applied for the wrong reasons. It's science used as a tool, in pursuit of ideological ends, rather than developing and applying technology for reasons rational to a scientific understanding of reality. For example, Trump Digs Coal, because it creates jobs and revenues, but ignores the global threat of climate change.
Magma energy technology is possible, and could supply the world's energy needs and much much more, without greenhouse gas emissions. So it's not technology per se - it's putting national economic interest ahead of scientific truth.
That's still technology.
Your post is disappointing.
Yeah, well, what's more to say about it. You might consider technology an art, the material expression of knowledge, and assign high value to state of the art technology, but it is embedded in a larger reality. It's a fact that if the presence of technology increases, and knowledge grows, they will reinforce each other exponentially, a fact supported by economic growth models. You might have a clean energy source, say the Sun, fusion, or magma, like on Island (where the world's first hydropen pump station opened up), you might recycle all you use, but if technology's presence grows exponentially, no technology in the world will be sufficient to restore the disturbed balance. Only a stable presence of tech can prevent disaster. Maybe a technology that doesn't grow but changes.
At least, that you understood the premise. What I write makes sense to me, but I have no idea how it's recieved by others. I don't know if I'm communicating effectively without feedback on what you think I mean. From your response:
"Quoting Cornwell1
I can deduce one of two things, either you didn't understand what I wrote, or you deliberately misunderstood what I wrote. So I explained the premise again; that it's not technology that's the problem, it's the wrong technology that's the problem. And your reply:
Quoting Cornwell1
...still doesn't tell me whether I'm communicating effectively, because I don't know if you understand, but disagree, or don't understand. That's disappointing.
Now you say:
Quoting Cornwell1
...and, I'll tell you straight up that I don't understand what you mean by this. I understand all the words, I can read the sentences, but the idea you are seeking to express is unclear.
For my part, I'm talking about solving climate change by harnessing limitless clean energy from magma, and trying to understand why we haven't done that already.
That sounds wonderful and I watched a show last night about Bill Nye the Science Guy and his fight to get religious leaders to accept science, We all need to picket this place at the top of the tourist season
https://arkencounter.com/ . It is a theme park presenting a full-sized Noah's ark as though this were science. The people who present this park, and visit it, are the enemies of science. They are climate change deniers. Or perhaps we could find out which churches in our neighborhoods are climate deniers and ask to talk with them about global warming?
It is not strange to me that things are getting worse, because the ancients saw the end as a time when there was more life on earth than the earth could support. We are there. The mass of humanity has overwhelmed the earth's ability to support it. The world seriously needs population control and it would be nice to do this with reason, instead of killing the excess humans in our countries and making war on other countries. The refugee problem around the world is the reality of overpopulation. This terrible future was predicted and we can even use the bible to explain it. But the Bible is not the only source of information about the end of time. No matter how well we develop our technology, if the mass of humanity is not reduced the earth will not be able to sustain it.
And perhaps we should get a better grip on reality. Any species will become destructive to its environment if nature does not keep it in check. That is a problem with plants and animals that are not indigenous. Chances are good in a new environment nothing will hold it in check and it will proceed to destroy the environment. It could be ivy that spreads and kills everything it climbs on, and then deprives the animals of the food they need. It could be feral cats or feral pigs brought to the island by people. Thinking life is either good or evil sucks, because without death there can not be life. Everything needs to be held in balance. And I would bet, even non-religious people walk around with a fantasy in their heads about some kind of Garden of Eden where nothing dies.
You can harvest the wind too. Or solar energy. And use hydrogen to store the energy and make it portable. Only water will be waste.
Not to mention fusion energy.
Without scientific truth, economy wouldn't have grown as devastatingly as in the modern world.
I just posted there must be death for there to be life. How many people want to think about that? I suspect most non-religious people are in as much denial as religious people. I believe all of us have a hard time accepting reality. I don't know if there is a good way to deal with that? The science folks want to believe technology will save our asses as much as the religious folk wants to believe a God takes good of us. We live on a finite planet and we might need to accept its limits while working on exploring the universe and trying to find a new home.
Wind and solar are not reliable, nor heavy duty enough to meet our energy needs. The UK, where I live would need about 20,000 windmills just to meet demand for domestic energy. They cost about £25m each, and last about 20 years. You'd bankrupt the country building them, and wouldn't complete construction before that first ones built would need replacing at the same cost. Worse, because sometimes the wind doesn't blow, or blows too hard, you always need a full fossil fuel back up generating capacity.
Solar is no good where I live. It's not light enough long enough. It's dark at 3pm in winter.
Fusion will never work economically in earth gravity. I'll explain why if you want to know.
Magma energy is the right technology for a lot of sound reasons. It's heavy duty, clean, and essentially limitless.
Hydrogen storage is a good idea, but wind, solar, fusion, not so much.
Quoting Cornwell1
This is helpful. It shows me you haven't understood my premise. The 1634 trial of Galileo divorced science as a tool, from science as an understanding of reality. As an understanding of reality, science was suspect of heresy. As a tool, science drove the indistrial revolution - and technology was developed and applied for power and profit, not because it's true!
Fusion could already have been economically if only enough effort had been put in it. Solar cells can get more economical still. You can put them on every roof top or even in the dessert. Hydrogen can be made with the aid of that energy and truly green cars pproduced. On my birth island in Italy, magma heath is used for saunas. Who knows what will happen if you tap magma energy for the whole Earth? Nobody.
The best solution: lower the energy consumption.
That's one way to go, but do you really want to disenchant people who believe in God as part of their identity and their purposes - but who have no power to craft energy policy? Are you going to look a little old ladies in the eyes and tell them - there's no such thing as God? And even if you are willing to be that cruel - how do you know there isn't a God? I don't know if God exists, and I know I don't know!
Quoting Athena
I could not disagree more. Over-population is not a problem at all. The misapplication of technology is a problem. I live in the UK, and population density is relatively high by global statndards, but less that 2% of the UK land surface is actually built upon. Globally, it's going to be less than that. So, if humans can live sustainably - there's no lack of room. And magma energy can give us all the energy we could ever want - we could deslainate sea water, pump it inland and make the deserts bloom if we so chose. So over-population is not a real problem; it's a consequence of the scarce, expensive and polluting fossil fuel energy we continue to use. It limits what we are able to do.
Here, we're philosophers. We volunteer to have our ideas tested to destruction. Similarly, polititians and industry have a responsibility. I seek to convince you, and politics and indisutry that a prosperous sustainable future is possible - that humankind can live long term by harnessing magma energy and using that to meet all our energy needs, plus capture carbon, desalinate, irrigate and recycle. If we applied those technologies, we could bring 3 or 4 billion poor people into the first world economy - sustainably. The economic opportunity is vast, and we're missing it because of an addication to fossil fuels!
:100:
No, that's not true. There have been many, very expensive attempts to develop fusion energy over the past 50 years. The latest attempt is ITER; you can read about it online. The adage regarding fusion energy is that it's been "five years away for the past 50 years." And just so, ITER is saying 'five years and we'll have cracked it' - but IMO - they never will. I do not believe fusion can work in earth gravity.
Quoting Cornwell1
The energy produced by wind and solar is low grade; and to transmit energy along a cable takes a lot of umph, and also degrades by about 10% per 1000 km. So you build a solar array in the desert - you can't transmit the energy anywhere, and there's not even any water to store it as hydrogen. In some circucmstances, solar is a very useful technology, but it cannot supply global energy demand. Regarding solar roofs, etc, you can look online yourself and find endless stories about people suing companies and banks over loans taken out to install solar panels that didn't deliver the promised savings.
Quoting Cornwell1
If you have less energy, then everything gets more expensive. It's more expensive to do things, because everything we do requires energy. If you don;t maintain something, it falls apart. Plus, poor people breed more. Lowering energy consumption implies a spiral of poverty, driving overpopulation, driving greater poverty. That can't end well.
Then why they still trying? You can make it happen in a bomb, so why not in a plant?
Quoting karl stone
Or you can consume and produce less.
The short answer is, I don't know why they are still trying to harness nuclear fusion. Maybe for the same reason people climb mount everest - because it's there. Maybe because of the hundreds of millions in grant money. Who can say. I also don't know how a fusion bomb works. Let's have a look. According to google, it doesn't work.
"Is a fusion bomb possible?
Despite the many millions of dollars spent by the U.S. between 1952 and 1992 to produce a pure fusion weapon, no measurable success was ever achieved."
But here's why I think fusion energy cannot work, economically, in earth gravity. Imagine the gravity of the sun, compressing hydrogen atoms together into a dense plasma. If a fusion reaction occurs, it releases energy, increasing the density of the surrounding plasma, forcing other atoms to fuse - and the result is a sustained fusion reaction.
In earth gravity, the only way to force atoms to fuse is to pump in vast amounts of energy, to reach temperatures of 150 million degrees celius - ten times hotter than the core of the sun. This plasma is so hot it will vaporise anything it touches, so must be contained with electromagnetic fields - again, using a considerable amount of energy.
When two atoms fuse under these conditions, it does not increase the probability of further fusion reactions. Every fusion of two atoms is forced by the input of energy, and is a singular event - or series of singular events; and it's like in a petrol engine - when setting off, it requires more energy to go from 0 to 5 miles an hour, than from 25 to 30.
Without the gravitational density of plasma, forcing atoms together, such that a fusion reaction increases the probability of further fusion reactions, in energy terms, they are always accelerating from zero with every singular instance of fusion. Thus, the energy input, to create and contain such high temperatures, will always exceed the energy output.
Quoting Cornwell1
No. I explained why this approach cannot secure a sustainable future. Poor people breed more. They have larger families. At the same time, less energy means it gets more expensive and harder to do everything. Society crumbles while population explodes, and that will not end well. Famine, mass migration, war. Why would prefer that to a prosperous sustainable future - based on limitless clean energy from magma?
The energy coming from a fusion reaction is higher than what you put into it. The kinetic energy of two hydrogen nuclei in a fruitful event is less than the energy coming out. So clever engineering can make it work.
Quoting karl stone
Here I'm lost. Less production means less energy means less impact on nature.
I don't think so. The goal is a self sustaining fusion reaction; and I think the 'free energy' of huge gravitational forces is necessary to a sustained fusion reaction. Otherwise, inevitably, you have to keep pumping energy into the system, and that's always going to be at a loss because perpetual motion machines don't work. I'll gladly admit this is but a layman's opinion; I cannot do the math to support my intuition, and may well one day be required to eat my hat. But I wouldn't hold your breath.
Quoting Cornwell1
...means more people, with ever less resources to share between them!
Do you really mind if there are less cars, less campers, less drones, less cameras, less washing machines, less kitchen aids, less stereo amplifiers, less microwave ovens, less roads, less fences, less light bulbs, less plastic bottles, less perfumes, less electricity wires, less computers, less experiments, less tools, less lasers, less production of useless stuff, etc.?
Fusion energy is coming and maybe sooner than you think
Are you personally prepared to go without some or all those things, or is it other people who should not have what they want and need? I want the things I have, some of which are on your list, so I'd have to say - I do mind, yes! The things I've bought employ people, who in turn buy things. The trick is to have the energy to spend to recycle all waste - mince everything up, and then process it back into constituent elements for further manufacturing. That's why we need limitless clean energy, and the earth is a big ball of molten rock - containing so much energy it will still be hot when the sun goes supernova in about 5 billion years.
That is a good point. I have not said there is no God. When the Bible is read abstractly the Jews who wrote the old testament, and I, do not have a problem with that. The problem comes with the literal interpretation of the holy books and denying science. I can say that publically but I have not argued the point with a friend who is over 90.
How the Bible is interpreted really depends on how a person is educated and that is why I am usually talking about education.
It would be easier for you to convince me that you know enough, if you did not begin by declaring overpopulation is not a problem. The communist in China did not impose a one child per family policy for light reason. China has a very serious water supply problem, and places, where the water supply is from melting glaciers, will not be able to sustain their populations when the glaciers are gone. Places that are experiencing high tides and land loss are rapidly losing the ability to sustain their populations. High tides mean salt makes the land infertile. Countries with a high poverty level can not provide enough jobs, and this leads to wars against minority groups and against other countries and it drives the flood refugees. It will be very hard for you to convince me overpopulation is not a problem. Where I live there is a huge homeless population and poverty is a more serious problem because rents are so high, and none of this would be so if we were not dealing with overpopulation.
If I were king, I would command every community to measure its resources and limit its population to what those resources can support. Without such measurements how can we know what is sustainable?
Huh? What about the ice ages? I don't think you are working with all the facts.
I think being sustainable does mean less of all those things and a totally different lifestyle from what we are accustomed to. I think our values must change. If we loved our families more than we love our things, that might manifest sustainable happiness?
Overpopulation is not a problem...if we apply the right technologies. Currently, population is unsustainable, but that's because we have applied the wrong technologies. It all comes down to energy. You say:
Quoting Athena
It's technologically possible to desalinate water to irrigate land to produce food. The problem is the energy cost of doing so. Had we developed magma energy from the 1980's onward, we'd now have limitless clean energy to spend, and so population wouldn't be a problem. Blaming the existence of people opens the door to nightmares. It demeans us all; and is perfectly hypocritical - for surely, you assert your right to exist. So you imply someone else should sacrifice their existence for you. And just so, you say:
Quoting Athena
Why do you suppose it's the poor who are excess to rerquirements? Surely it's you, with your two houses, each with a three car garage, jetting off on three foriegn holidays every year - that's more of a problem in terms of sustainability than some homeless guy. It's your lifestyle that's unsustainable, not his! We need to apply the technologies to sustain your lifestyle - starting with magma energy!
I know the butterflies didn't conspire... Is it the butterfly conspiracy we are witnessing?
So this is the kind of thinking I am against.
You: A state of affairs must exist whereby joys exist.
Me: A state of affairs of whereby the violation of burdening/creating conditions for harm for others unnecessarily shall not occur
You: Burdening others, even if not necessary, is allowable and preferable all other things considered, because people can experience joy.
Me: Burdening others, because it is not necessary, is always a violation to initiate for someone else, especially because no person becomes deprived without this action. It is also creating a problem, that then needs a solution (multiple solutions as there are multiple harms incurring to that person).
So then we distill out good and bad, joy and harm.
Is joy necessary? No it is not. No one needs joy unless they exist already to need it.
Is harm necessary? No it is not. No one needs to be harmed, unless they exist to be harmed.
So then we distill some more..
Is it okay to create bad circumstances when it is not trying to ameliorate a greater harm? Here is where the real difference comes into focus.
I have explained that giving a "gift" to someone should not entail "with strings attached". Those strings being inescapable, unnecessary, non-temporary, non-trivial harm. If that comes with the the gift of the good things of life, that automatically precludes it from right-minded action towards another person. All the possible goods in the world, and all the good intentions of the gift-giver don't take away this fact. It is putting others through possible bads in the hopes of goods, is still creating problems/burdens for others, and in a sense, using them, to see an outcome ("a good life"? or simply "good must be had!").
To create problems so people can overcome them is wrong. It may be necessary for survival, but we are not talking about necessities once born, but creating it in the first place.
I didn't say that burdens are preferable or good in isolation, so that's a misunderstanding. However, bestowing the gift of happiness that one cannot ask for before existing can definitely be ethical, especially because nobody benefits from a lack of existence. There are many problems that we do need to fix, but there are also solutions and benefits that can be a source of joy for many people.
I: It cannot be ethical to prevent all good.
Someone else: Single-mindedly focusing on one aspect of reality is a good idea (I don't think it is).
Therein, I think, lies the real difference.
If the absence of harms is "necessary" even though nobody desires it or benefits from its absence before existing, then the presence of happiness is indeed important.
I don't think that harms are necessary, but preventing the harms at the cost of good isn't a moral idea.
Aside from the fact that people might indeed suffer due to an absence of future family members, I don't think that it's ethical to prevent all value unless it leads to a greater good.
And I already said that your "explanation" isn't comprehensive. A burden is already not a gift, which is why I don't claim that all lives are a gift. However, there aren't any terrible "strings" for those who find life to be a precious, significant, and, ultimately, a more than adequately treasured experience wherein they can experience inimitable love, joy, and beauty that they would cherish substantially. And even though it's a tragic reality that bad lives do exist, I don't think that someone needs to be directly harmed for being happy. Additionally, many people do try their best to help others be happy through things such as charity. Good intentions of "harm must be prevented at all costs" cannot be a sufficient argument for negating all the positives.
To not create any joy that, despite problems, would have ineffable significance for countless individuals isn't acceptable. It might be good for existing people to avoid unnecessary harms that reduce happiness, but this doesn't mean that no good experience should be created in the first place.
This is not an answer or way around the problem I presented.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Quoting DA671
What about it makes it unethical? What makes something unethical?
How is unhad "good" unethical in this particular scenario?
Quoting DA671
Again, how is it unethical to "prevent" harms at the cost of good? I am still waiting for this other than "intrinsic value"..
Violating things such that you cannot ever get consent but going ahead with it anyways, causing unnecessary harm unto others, and using people so you can see an outcome at some point, those seem like basis for ethics. Having no one exists seems to violate no person. You just can't get around that asymmetry. One act leads to collateral damage, the other does not. It's that simple at the face of it.
Quoting DA671
This is just your egotistical desire. This isn't about ethics. It may have to do with some individual's axiology of value, but ok.. So? Your value not being lived out by another person, is not a crime. It is simply a frustrated preference. I don't see frustrated preferences as ethical valuations, but axiological problems. There's a huge difference. Not getting an iphone is a frustrated preference. Not getting an iphone because of slave labor conditions is an ethical thing. Upping the ante-- not seeing a beautiful work of art is a frustrated preference. Not seeing a beautiful work of art because the money to see the art is going to a bad cause or promotes a bad cause is an ethical thing.
Quoting DA671
Besides having no standing for the "preventing goods is bad" (for whom? and why other than your frustrated preference?), Even people who have good experiences must experience the bads. This ethic is really independent of post-facto evaluations. It is the decision to create it in the first place that matters. Kidnapping you to a ballgame or gambling with your money because the probably might be good you would want me to, is still a violation. But even more important, a gift cannot be a gift if it has the bads. It just isn't a gift at that point. You have not sufficiently defeated that point. It is something else, but it is not a gift.
If it's "ethical" to prevent harms whose absence doesn't benefit an actual person, I believe that it's also unethical to prevent all joys.
Again, I fail to see the intrinsic disvalue of harm that somehow negates all the positive value that life could have. Of course, I don't think that it is always good, which is why I do think that mindless procreation needs to stop.
One act leads to a benefit, the other, to nothing. That's the unavoidable and irrefutable truth that I don't think can be ignored by incessantly focusing on the harms. Creating a good that cannot be solicited before existing, allowing for the condition of all joy to exist, and ensuring the formation of ineffably meaningful experiences will always remain ethical. A pessimistic agenda that doesn't take one side of the coin into consideration does not constitute a valid argument for preventing all happiness.
Since nonexistent beings don't benefit from the prevention of life, an idea that seeks to prevent all joy also doesn't amount to much more than a desire to satiate a pessimistic need. I don't think that intentionally creating a good life that a person could love and be grateful for in many ways is problematic, even if some people unfortunately don't see things that way.
It has immense standing ;) Prevented prefences can lead to immense suffering for many innocent people, so I don't think it's trivial, particularly because many future lives could certainly be valued by those who exist. Not getting the iPhone isn't exactly a "good" thing". However, it's certainly preferable to exploitation (though I don't think that people and Iphones have an equivalent value for those who exist). Thankfully, giving birth to all happiness isn't about (just) harm, which is why it can be ethical.
Some things can have more than a single element. Not giving a chocolate because one personally dislikes it is a satisfied preference. Refusing to give to someone (at little cost to yourself) who could relish it and gain a lot of joy from it is unethical. At another level, not opening a door is a satisfied prefence; keeping a door to inestimable value for many people is unethical. I am not sure why the "whom" is relevant again, since my case has always been for consistency. If it's "good" (which isn't "good" for an actual person, other than certain desires for the absence of harms at the cost of happiness) to prevent harms, it's also good to create happiness that will be appreciated by numerous individuals. I've already said that an action that is likely to lead to more harm and a violation of the interests of an existing person isn't ethical, but neither of this is applicable to nonexistent beings, since existing doesn't have to be worse for them and there isn't a universal desire to not exist. However, it can certainly be good to help someone who might not be able to ask for it themselves, and I do think that the bestowal of joy can be quite significant for people. You obviously don't perceive life to be a gift, and that's why I haven't said that it is always one. I do hope that people could see things differently. Nevertheless, one cannot impose that view onto others. The reality is that kid isn't a "perfect" curse either, since one could argue that such a thing wouldn't allow for joys or an inevitable end to exist. If perfect negativity isn't necessary for some lives to be bad, then I don't think that absolute joys are required for one to be grateful for the precious and effulgent experiences they've had. None of this, however, implies that suffering doesn't matter, because it very much does. I do believe that it's cardinal to ensure that issues such as worsening wealth disparity and global warming are addressed before we start thinking about creating new beings. A liberal right to a dignified exit might also prove to be a step in the right direction. Anyway, I hope you have a great weekend!
No one is asking or not asking for anything prior to birth. We agree on that. It is about whether YOU want to create conditions of harms for another, even if there are joys. Is this ethical? You say it is. I say this is a violation. No one needs to benefit from not feeling the prevention of harm. All that matters is YOU did not create harm unto someone else. There is no harm nor foul in not creating joy for someone else, so there IS NO violation. Why are you constantly not realizing this and thinking it is symmetrical. You just look ignorant of what I am saying when you keep thinking you are trying to be "consistent" when it isn't a consistent/symmetrical case.
In one scenario YOU did not create joy nor harm.. No harm, no foul.
In one scenario YOU created joy and harm. The joy does not negate that you created that harm with it.
It is the fact you created harm, that is the relevant ethical thing here.. None of the others matter. While joy is good, not creating it is doing harm to no one.
In one scenario, one does form joy and harm. In the other, they don't. Yet, if it's preferable to not create the harms, it's also unethical to prevent all the good, because as I have pointed out multiple times, nobody needs to be deprived for the creation of a benefit (everything isn't about harms and fouls) to be ethical. No positive or act of beneficence isn't desirable. I don't think that the harm nullifies the happiness that also exists.
No, I don't agree with that. If the non-creation of the harms is necessary even though nobody is benefitted from its absence, I simply don't think that there's any valid justification for suggesting that the prevention of all joy and value is anything other than a fundamentally unethical act that willfully looks away from that which does matter.
I'm merely stating a fact - we don't know that lepidopteran wing-flaps don't cause large-scale weather events. It's not a conspiracy theory, it's just admitting to holes in our knowledge.
Lepidopterans cause climate change. Alright then...
They might! You're misrepresenting my position.
I acknowledged your position! Only I didn't mention it were lepidopterianticons from the evil planet Zoq...
Speak for yourself...
Quoting karl stone
Again, speak for yourself.
Quoting karl stone
I look beyond my own sad self, though I'm not always sad. You should show some responsibility to truth here! I wonder sometimes even about the beginning of our universe and beyond.
I agree we have a cosmic potential. though lying and cheating is no vindication of non-existence. On the contrary, it is a confirmation of existence: Mentior ac fallere ergo sum.
I am speaking for myself, about my general impressions of human beings. I'm wondering why, for example, national economies were turned over to the purpose of mass murder during the first and second world wars, and here we are faced with an actual existential threat, and the most that could be wrung from COP26 was an aspiration to use a little less coal someday, maybe!
Quoting Cornwell1
More like - to myself. I emailed various politicians and media organisations at COP26 about Magma Energy, and got no replies. I write about it here, and on twitter - and it's like screaming into a void. So now I'm trying to understand why no one is interested in the seriousness of the threat, or the huge opportunity there is in a genuinely adequate solution.
Quoting Cornwell1
Hold a map upside down and see if you get where you wanted to go. Lies don't work. They are unjust and dysfunctional. Both cause and effect and evolution dictate - if you're wrong, you're gone. If you're lying, you're dying. Reality will not be brooked. We can't con our way into heaven. Resposnsibility to scientific truth is the only way to secure a propsperous sustainable future.
So the first time you've spoken to Cornwell1 in the past two weeks is now, to disagree with my post - when I'm right here? Why is that?
I only wanted to concur with the idea that there are good people in the world who do positive deeds, sometimes without the expectation of any fame or material wealth (which might be why they are not always known). Therefore, I think that hope for a better future continues to persist. I am sorry if my reply seemed to ignore what you had said; I did not intend to do so. Have a delectable day!
I agree 100%. Hansje Brinker, Mary Mapes Dodge's creation, in her Silver Skates book certainly has real life counterweight. There is a Hansje in every one of us.
Quoting DA671
But what will the light of dawn show us?
In Australia there are upside down maps. Still they know how to navigate faithfully to the truth. Up and down are remnants of a colonial past, when the Borealis world was considered the first world ruling over the rest.
Holey cow! So we all should bow to the tyranny of science?
Work together? What on earth does that mean?
Quoting DA671
Cornwell1 didn't say 'there are many good people in the world.' You did. You're agreeing with yourself; thus proving my conjecture that human beings are profoundly selfish; and demonstrating the mendacity of your 'work together' platitude.
No. You should fuck everything up and become extinct!
I was referring to their claim about them looking beyond themselves. From my perspective, my agreement was with the general sentiment of the comment (which, of course, could be interpreted differently) that there is good in the world in spite of the problems we face. I have seen people who do so, and I hope I can learn something from them. People are selfish, but there are also individuals like you who care about others and the ever-pervasive issue of myopic selfishness. I used to think that working together was a platitude, but I do not think so anymore, because it does have the capacity to bring change (such as the farmers' protest in India) and instil joy in the souls of countless people. I express my profuse apologies if anything I said came off as rude/offensive. As I have said elsewhere, I do have a lot to learn, and that starts when the single-minded focus on "I" ends.
That's exactly what science has almost done!
It's not you. It's me. I'm angry and despondent; not without reason, but it's nothing you've done. I'm venting, and when I'm done - no doubt I'll feel suitably ashamed.
Quoting DA671
I need cooperation at the highest level - to develop and apply magma energy technology, but otherwise favour competition. As an economic ideology, communism has failed everywhere it's been tried, and often resulted in genocide. That said, too much freedom is also often the cause of great suffering. Mixed economies are the reality; but mixed economies responsible to a scientific understanding of reality, would take the sustainability crisis very seriously, and cooperate to develop magma energy.
Quoting DA671
You've perhaps heard the story of Pandora's box - that contained all the evils of the world. When opened, they were released, but in the bottom of the box there remained hope. I'm having trouble finding it. The fact there's a limitless source of clean energy - that could be developed and built quite rapidly, and could provide the energy necessary to secure a prosperous sustainable future for all humankind, doesn't seem hopeful to anyone other than me. I'm trying to understand why; and think that perhaps, beset by all the evils of the world - it's impossible for people to believe there's hope!
Quoting Cornwell1
On page 11 - you wrote:
Quoting Cornwell1
I responded:
Quoting karl stone
I refer you to the answer I gave some time ago.
Knowing which technology is right or wrong usually comes after the fact.
Fair point given the history of coal, oil and gas production, but NASA researched magma energy from the mid 1970's to late 1980's - and concluded it was a viable source of virtually limitless clean energy. I think the Regan administration must have discontinued it, but then there was President Clinton - and his Vice President, Al Gore - the inconvenient truth guy. How did VP Al Gore not join the dots on the climate crisis and magma energy? Instead - frack for oil and gas with one hand, and tax consumers into poverty with the other? It's obviously wrong, and it won't work to secure the future.
You keep on hammering on magma energy but is it indeed the safe answer to all our energy problems? How do you know the magma gods won't turn against us? In iceland it works, but there live only half a million of people. That's about 20 000 times less than the global population! Magma in Iceland resides under a thin surface. That's not the case for many countries, just like the Sun doesn’t shine everywhere to turn into usable energy.
Isn't the hammering too frolic?
Yeah, I think that cooperation at the highest level is vital (that is why I had earlier alluded to the fact that micro-level action seems to be more significant right now, which is good, but not perfect). Recent announcements, such as India announcing its goal to achieve net-zero carbon emissions, are appreciable, yet there is scope for improvement. I also agree that mixed economies are probably the best bet since imbalanced approaches do not seem to provide comprehensive solutions. Magma energy looks like an immensely interesting idea! I will surely look into this :)
Sometimes, a mist can obscure our ability to see the light. However, I am optimistic that it exists-and it is getting stronger. I have met others like you who, instead of falling prey to unbridled pessimism, wish to contribute towards making the world a happier place for all via the careful use of technology and investment in green energy. It's particularly heartening to see many young people supporting these ideas, sometimes in defiance of the views of their elders. The change will come as long as we remember the worth of combined effort. Everybody hopes some for growth and preservation, and others for destruction. However, hope remains in all of us, and I believe therein lies the strength of true and realistic hope. Best of luck to you for your future endeavours!
My dear, I am the poor. It is a real good idea to avoid assuming. As one of the poor, it is obvious to me what the effect of too many humans means. To begin with, nothing is affordable. All assistance programs are overwhelmed and there is no way charity can be enough to meet the needs. Our labor is really cheap because there are more of us than there are jobs. Life at this level can be pretty ugly because we live with desperate people and desperate people do desperate things. Also, the status system is different because coping with abuse and being abusive becomes a way to have status. I am lucky because I have housing, but the people around me do not and they become like feral cats. And let me tell you, I am so glad I live in a country, state, and community that is making a real effort to help homeless people survive. I can just imagine what it is like to live in a poor country and be powerless to feed my children and watching them die, I was too close to that.
There was a time when I had to donate plasma for the money to care for my family and I was under the required 110 pounds, so I wore extra heavy clothing. This means I was risking going into shock. That was a rough period and I forgot how to think middle class and developed black humor where death is funny. Is there anything you would like to know about the poor? Can I make it perfectly clear it was from this position that I realized the problem of overpopulation?.
Hope for what? Not even if we had unlimited cheap energy would that make life on a finite planet unlimited. That does not mean I do not have hope. I have hope that human beings are capable of understanding reality and like many people in China realize the importance of having one child.
This reasoning is based on reading geology books. We have a pretty good understanding of the world's supply of essential resources, where they are, and when the demand will be greater than the supply.
This has a lot to do with why some areas of the world are more developed than others, and why wars are fought. There are books on technology and how it is changing our lives and China has the best supply of rare earth material, and our car industry is stuck because it can not get enough computer chips that depend on having a supply of rare earth material, and that means a technological setback.
The hope must be based on information and education for living with our reality. The planet can not afford dreams of no limits. And as for who must die so that others can live- who wants to live through what future generations are going to live through? Some may survive and be able to maintain civilization but I don't think this will happen if we do not work with the facts. And we must come together for these few people to have a chance. We will die but if we do things right, they have a chance of living.
First, we need to make a distinction between the geothermal energy Iceland have developed, and magma energy. They are not the same. Iceland's deepest geothermal well - IDDP, is a hydrothermal well. The Nasa research envisages drawing energy driectly from magma. The estimated size of the US resource alone is '50,000 - to 500,000 quad.' To put that in context, 40 years later, global energy demand is only 650 quad (quadrillion btu.)
Safe? No, nothing is safe. Everything is a risk. 500 people a year die falling out of bed. There are 450 volcanoes in the Pacific Ring of Fire, and 1500 globally, NASA have claimed, can provide the world with an effectively limitless source of heavy duty clean energy. Here is the link:
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1987STIN...8820719D/abstract
Please do: here's a link:
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1987STIN...8820719D/abstract
Perhaps you'll have better luck advertising it than I - I'm not a very socialble person. I tend to hammer people with facts, and expect them to change their minds, and get frustrated when they don't. I'm not a salesman, and I don't want to stand in the way of my own ideas.
Quoting DA671
Thank you, but I must point out the significant difference between my own position and the 'green' movement. I advocate for sustainable capitalism. I do not approve of the left wing 'green commie' agenda. I accept the climate and ecological crisis is a problem, but believe it's one that can be solved in such a way as to provide for a prosperous sustainable future. I'm not a vegan cyclist, envious of wealth. I believe magma energy will allow us (human beings) to raise the living standards of the 3 or 4 billion poor people - to first world standards, sustainably - and that's an enormous economic opportunity for everyone.
That's totally understandable :) I hope that your vision will materialise into an amazing reality someday.
Not if you are creating collateral damage "strings attached".
Quoting DA671
Yes but that is just a plain assertion. I can demonstrably point to the fact that no one is "put out" by not being born. I can demonstrably point to the fact that someone is put out once born, on a Schopenhaurian or discrete/typical view of what suffering/harm means.
So from here we again disagree on whether it is okay to try to bring about joy when that joy is always intendant with various non-trivial, non-escapable, non-temporary, unnecessary harms.
Quoting DA671
I already explained the difference between a frustrated preference and an unethical act, so I won't go over this again. And since this is about the ethics of causing harm, there is an asymmetry as there is no ethical component to not creating joy when there is no one who exists. The not causing harm does not need to have someone exist for it to be followed. There is the difference.
Quoting DA671
Same criticisms as above.
That's a false value. The aim is 'sustainable in the foreseeable future' - not unlimited. That said, with the possible exception of helium, I don't see us running out of anything anytime soon. Given abundant clean energy, we can recycle our waste - mince it all up, strip out the metals, oils, glass, chemicals - and re-use them.
Quoting Athena
Demographics is complicated. A one child policy doesn't merely reduce population. It ages the population. Also, in China there was such a preference for male children (goodness knows why) female babies were left to die in the street. Years later, there's many men who can't find a wife. The very idea of population control is repugnant, and opens the door to evil - from forced abortion all the way upto genocide. If one can possibly avoid blaming the existence of people - anyone with a love of wisdom would naturally do so.
Quoting Athena
Generally, literature on mining discusses resources it is economically rational to develop. The limiting factor is the availability of energy. So, as the richer deposits are mined out, deposits get deeper and further apart. Increasing amounts of rock needs to be crushed and heated to extract decreasing amounts of ore. This requires ever greater amounts of energy. With abundant clean energy, deposits that would have not been economical to develop using fossil fuels, can be developed - thus increasing supply for the foreseeable future.
Quoting Athena
That's what the left wing, anti-capitalist green commie movement have been saying for the past 50 years, and I'm saying that it's not true. Overpopulation is not a problem, and nor is limits to resources. It's an anti-capitalist green commie misrepresentation of the reality; that with limitless clean energy from magma, we can have far greater prosperity, for many more people, and do so sustainably.
The Schopenhauerian view is wrong here. I can also point out that nobody is rejoicing in the void, but there certainly are people who are happy when they exist. Denying this is merely an unjustified assertion. Deeply meaningful lives can also be "demonstrated".
I do disagree with an idea of that attempts to address the problem of harm by removing the possibility of all precious, resilient (I also don't think that all harm is "non-temporary"), potent, and (assuming the non-creation of suffering is an obligation) necessary goods. Such a "solution", in my view, is worse than the malady.
And I already explained why the "difference" isn't as significant as some might think, but moving on. The formation of happiness does have an ethical component, even if one doesn't personally value it sufficiently. Of course, existing beings don't often require incessant intervention (aside from not causing harm) for them to live sufficiently cherished lives, but this doesn't apply to those who don't exist. The creation of happiness does not require one to be deprived of it for it to be preferable and ethical.
Same replies to those criticisms.
Different points of view are a good thing. I don't think anything would convince me to believe overpopulation is not a very serious problem and you will not be convinced that the apes and other species seriously need their habitats or they become extinct.
Name-calling is divisive and not a good thing.
The universe doesn't need a bestower of value. If it does, you haven't justified it in argument other than, "But good!!". So? Goods not had by anyone, why is that even an ethical matter? It's simply an axiological one whereby a value is not experienced. That value being not experienced hasn't been connected with anything moral. Not causing happiness hurts no one, quite literally. Causing harm, hurts someone, quite literally. I can point to the ethical violation in causing actual harm. You cannot by pointing to the unhad happiness. Yours is likened to an empty set. You can keep railing here, but that's the case.
And about the Schopenharian case, it indeed has a lot of import here; that can be a whole thread unto itself. However, to use a Schopenhauer argument, let's look at the following.. as this is something I think you might bring up anyways:
Case 1: You know a friend would like X. You have the means to get friend X. You decide not to get X for that friend.
You and I might agree that this is misguided/wrong-headed. It is at the least, uncharitable in some way, if not reaching the level of full violation. It is not going the "extra mile" to be nice to a friend (which actually may still not quite be "unethical" in my view, but for argument's sake we can say it is).
Case 2: No friend exists, but you then create a friend from scratch (you are a god!) and that friend now wants a gift. Before you created that friend, there was no person with interests, wants, or feelings of being deprived to "need" or "desire" a gift. You have created the set of problems for which you now must provide the solution.
Those two are very different circumstances/situations/states of affairs.
Schopenhauer was right about some things, but wrong about others. Anyway:
1. It's ethical to help an existing person and avoid/mitigate unnecessary harms that wouldn't be in the ultimate interest of the person.
2. Preventing harms at the cost of all happiness is irrational. Nobody in the void is in a state of affairs that would somehow be degraded by their creation. Avoiding the existence of needs via the elimination of the possibility of all joy cannot be a defensible position.
They are indeed different. It's good to prevent unnecessary harms for those who exist and don't need incessant intervention, but this isn't the case with nonexistent beings. If it can be good to prevent potential harm (that "they" don't possess an actual interest in avoiding), then it can certainly be good to become the benefactor who contributes towards the formation of great positives.
So we are going to have to stop the conversation if you can't get passed the distinction. Violation of harm is happening to an actual person. Preventing happiness is happening to no actual person. If you cannot see that difference, than we are pretty much done with this debate. Put your smiley face on it and run.
Quoting DA671
WHO needs the help?? NOBODY. Again, you gotta get passed this. It is not symmetrical man.
Quoting DA671
I just don't buy that you need to cause harm because happiness exists. You haven't made that case, only asserted that happiness exists and somehow is necessary to cause harm to bring about for others, but you haven't gone deep enough to make a case for it. You've just tried to (unsuccessfully) use my arguments for your case, which isn't working.
Quoting DA671
No one exists to need a gift. You haven't overcome this point.
Quoting DA671
No, one is certainly NOT a conclusion of the other. It is good to prevent harm. You don't need someone to exist to not cause future harm for a person. You are not causing that state of affairs. You do need someone to exist to "deprive" of good though. You would first have to cause them to come about for them to need happiness and then be deprived of it.
Again, in one case you are causing suffering for someone. In the other, you are preventing happiness to no actual person.
There's no asymmetry here except in one's imagination, my friend. Once again, the only logically consistent step would be to remember that nobody needs the lack of harms in the void either. If it's still good to prevent damage that wouldn't satisfy anybody, I don't think that there is a need for someone to have a need in order for the creation of joys to be ethical.
You've also merely asserted that preventing harm is all that matters (as far as procreation is concerned). I've only mentioned the flaws in your position which selectively focus on the elimination of an intrinsically undesirable experience (suffering) at the cost of one that people necessarily seek (happiness). I also don't buy that the prevention of "violations" justifies ending the bestowal of all ineffably meaningful experiences. It's no wonder that things appear to not work if one is adamantly refusing to fix the cogs of reason. Nobody "needs" the prevention of harms either, but since that does not stop you from worrying about ensuring that they do not exist, I just do not see any sufficiently good reason to think that a "need" is necessary for the goods to be preferable.
No one exists to need/be made worse off by being created either. I haven't said anything other than making a valid mirror case, though it's clear that you haven't overcome the problems of your worldview.
It is. It is certainly good to prevent harm (which can also increase happiness, which definitely matters). You don't need someone to beg for happiness for the creation of future joys to be a desideratum. Causing that particular state of affairs can be ethical. And no, you don't need someone to be there for the existence of happiness (that, despite the presence of needs, serves as a source of unimaginable value for a person) to be good (assuming it's necessary to prevent harm that no actual person has an interest in). Deprivation doesn't always negate fulfillment.
In one case, one is causing happiness for an actual person. In the other, one is preventing harms for nobody.
I somehow missed your post. Sorry about that; and about name calling. It was merely shorthand; I was not intending to insult anyone.
I would agree that different points of view are a good thing; yet the assumption that over-population is the root cause of the environmental crisis is ubiquitous, and you adamantly refuse to entertain any counter argument.
The argument was made by Malthus in his 1798 Essay on the Principle of Population. He argued that because population increases geometrically - 2.4.8.16.32 etc, while agricultural land can only be added arithmetically 1.2.3.4.5. etc, population must necessarily outstrip food production and there would be mass starvation. He was wrong. Tractors and fertilizers were invented, and food production far outpaced population growth.
The Limits to Growth (LTG) 1972 report on the exponential economic and population growth with a finite supply of resources, is essentially the same argument - and one that doesn't account for the multiplication of resources by technology. The false assumption persists even today, as the philosophical basis of all policies that lay blame with the end consumer - rather than advocating for supply side responsibility on the part of producers. Why? Because; while the right have engaged in climate change denial, the left have projected all their environmental arguments through the distorting lens of anti-capitalism.
I say again, magma is such a vast source of heavy duty clean energy, it would allow us to meet all our energy needs carbon free, capture carbon and sequester it, deslainate sea water to irrigate land for agriculture and habitation - so allowing us to develop wastelands for habitation rather than ripping into forests and depeleting rivers; and we'd have to energy to recycle all our waste. So how is overpopulation 'the' problem - and do you not see the great potential for evil inherent in such a view?
Perfect! Yes, it is a shortcut and that is what is wrong with it. What will happen to your thinking if you do not use that shortcut? What will happen to your explanation and the reader's ability to understand what you think is wrong? :wink: There is great hope for you.
I intentionally did not confront what you said but kind of slipped to the side to avoid confrontation. The great age is in danger of becoming extinct because of humans are reducing their territory. This does not happen when there are fewer humans. When there are few humans, nature repairs itself as fast man damages it. But as human populations increase so does the damage and today that means human activity is causing plants and animals to become extinct.
We are consuming forests faster than they can reproduce and in many forest areas the soil is very poor so once the forest is gone, it is gone. I live in timber territory where timber is a large part of the economy. Besides reforestation, we have Christmas tree farms and they are no longer healthy. If these nurtured trees can not thrive, for sure all those saplings we are planting are not going to survive! I am afraid timber is no longer a renewable product. There is not enough rain for them to survive. Fire goes with this problem. Our forests are suffering from drought and fire is destroying them, while the same drought condition means saplings will not survive. Now consider all the wildlife that depends on the forest. We need to stop cutting down our forest yesterday, or at least do this cutting with more care.
That will drive up the cost of timber up and therefore the cost of housing and already we have a serious housing problem and a huge homeless population. This includes disabled and elderly people, as well as parents with children, and this problem just keeps getting worse. We did not have that but now we do.
Any growing thing can reproduce to the point of destroying its environment if nature does have a way of killing it off. That includes humans. This video may help convey the problem of overpopulation.
I love pictures for helping me understand. Geothermal technology is very hopeful but not the answer for everyone.
https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS926US926&q=What+state+uses+geothermal+energy+the+most?&tbm=isch&source=iu&ictx=1&vet=1&fir=W4FH0oCPNOGpPM%252CQKYz7W3Gqyu0pM%252C_&usg=AI4_-kTDCEwDDAluDSvbfca3UYIZrsKEiQ&sa=X&sqi=2&ved=2ahUKEwieuvHVs931AhUQohQKHVN3CJcQ9QF6BAgGEAE&biw=854&bih=540&dpr=1.5#imgrc=W4FH0oCPNOGpPM
If I do not use the term 'green commie' to describe the environmental movement since the 1960's - I'm unfortunately left with stupidity as an explanation for failure to understand that, the only way to secure a sustainable future is to increase prosperity. It has long been established that poor people tend toward larger families; suggested reasons for this counter intuitive phenomenon range from a lack of women's rights, via lack of access to healthcare, right through to an unconscious desire for security in old age. Consequently, reducing demand is not a viable strategy to secure sustainability - yet continues, the environmentalist mantra: pay more, have less, stop this, tax that. If it is not an attempt to undermine capitalism - then it's an intellectual deficieincy. Have it your way!
Quoting Athena
I assume you mean the great ape. Was this typed by a gorilla? Ba-na-na! How do you propose to reduce the number of humans? During the Second World War, for 8 years, the whole economies of nations were turned to the purposes of mass murder, and a mere 200 million people were killed. There are 8 thousand million people on earth. Do you think they'll just sit still and accept their fate?
Quoting Athena
Do you not understand that limitless clean energy from magma would afford humans a very different relationship to the environment? Or did you just not read my post? TL:DR? Did you get bored? Ba-na-na!
Quoting Athena
I could repost the posts I've already written, but I can only suppose you'd ignore them and waffle on relentlessly. What you are saying has already been said; I've acknowledged your argument by citing Malthus and Limits to Growth. I'm the one with something novel to say - so perhaps we could discuss my argument, rather than ignoring what I'm saying to restate the already stated, and very well understood dogmatic view of the stupid green movement.
Most geothermal energy today is hydrothermal - tapping into underground bodies of hot water. It is not the same as magma energy. The significant passage is highlighted in bold:
Status of the Magma Energy Project
Dunn, J. C.
Abstract
The current magma energy project is assessing the engineering feasibility of extracting thermal energy directly from crustal magma bodies. The estimated size of the U.S. resource (50,000 to 500,000 quads) suggests a considerable potential impact on future power generation. In a previous seven-year study, we concluded that there are no insurmountable barriers that would invalidate the magma energy concept. Several concepts for drilling, energy extraction, and materials survivability were successfully demonstrated in Kilauea Iki lava lake, Hawaii. The present program is addressing the engineering design problems associated with accessing magma bodies and extracting thermal energy for power generation. The normal stages for development of a geothermal resource are being investigated: exploration, drilling and completions, production, and surface power plant design. Current status of the engineering program and future plans are described.
Publication:
Presented at the Symposium on Geothermal Energy, New Orleans, La., 10 Jan. 1988
Hydrothermal draws on temperatures rarely exceeding 250'C. Magma is 1200'C. Hydrothermal bodies of underground water have a "replacement rate" problem. They cool down as energy is extracted from them, and take time to heat up again. Magma energy does not have this replacement rate problem. Here's a picture to help you understand:
Right now the world is on the brink of war. Russia controls Much of Europe's supply of oil. Oil is essential to war, so if Russia stops sending Ukraine and other counties oil, they can not defend themselves. The US will have to supply their oil and if you think gasoline cost a lot now, just wait until we have to send our oil to Europe for another war. Wars consume huge amounts of oil very quickly. Given the finite supply of oil we may not be arguing if we need another source of energy, however, that Magna energy you believe will save our asses will not fuel our cars, at least not if we don't have an energy grid for electric cars, and I don't think electric tanks are going to win wars.
Another small fact, oil is sold in dollars and countries around the world hold dollars to pay for that oil and have tied their economies to the value of the dollar. That is a huge economic advantage for us. The value of the dollar is backed by oil. what do you think will happen to the value of the dollar when our supply is exhausted.
Quoting Athena
I would not have known this was a response to my post. How prevelent do you imagine your mindset is; one I'd describe as "maliciously courting disaster" - to the point where you seem quite annoyed that genocide is not the only solution? Where are the better angels of your nature?
Status of the Magma Energy Project
Dunn, J. C.
Abstract
The current magma energy project is assessing the engineering feasibility of extracting thermal energy directly from crustal magma bodies. The estimated size of the U.S. resource (50,000 to 500,000 quads) suggests a considerable potential impact on future power generation. In a previous seven-year study, we concluded that there are no insurmountable barriers that would invalidate the magma energy concept. Several concepts for drilling, energy extraction, and materials survivability were successfully demonstrated in Kilauea Iki lava lake, Hawaii. The present program is addressing the engineering design problems associated with accessing magma bodies and extracting thermal energy for power generation. The normal stages for development of a geothermal resource are being investigated: exploration, drilling and completions, production, and surface power plant design. Current status of the engineering program and future plans are described.
Publication:
Presented at the Symposium on Geothermal Energy, New Orleans, La., 10 Jan. 1988
Hydrothermal draws on temperatures rarely exceeding 250'C. Magma is 1200'C. Hydrothermal bodies of underground water have a "replacement rate" problem. They cool down as energy is extracted from them, and take time to heat up again. Magma energy does not have this replacement rate problem.
What if the magma lies too deep?
Most magma is beyond reach, but there are what NASA calls 'crustal magma bodies' - and I call magma chambers, within 1-2km of the surface. The deepest bore hole ever is the Kola Bore Hole in Russia - at 12km, drilled between 1965-1995. Drilling technology has continued to develop since then; as has bore lining technology. So to paraphrase NASA, I don't foresee any 'insurmountable barriers.' Not technological barriers anyway.
The real obstacles seem to be political - though it's difficult to be certian; it seems magma energy falls between two stools: right wing money grubbing fossil fuel addicted climate change denial; on the one hand, and the other, limits to resources, anti-capitalist, green commie, vegan cyclists. Maintaining capitalism with limitless clean energy, and so providing for a prosperous sustainable future is a third wheel to this dichotomy of doom, not on anyone's radar.
How did you notice when you've not engaged with anything I've written?
Quoting Athena
...but keep insisting on de-population - while still pumping oil.
Quoting Athena
If you do not understand that it's morally wrong to blame the climate and ecological crisis on the very existence of people, while restricting viable alternate clean energy technologies to maintain a catastrophically polluting, albeit obscenely profitable fossil fuels industry, then I'll not take lessons from you on being pleasant.
It's not the energy being clean or not of course this is important insofar the atmosphere is concerned, but more important is what is done with this energy. Or even more important, the scale of use.
I'm not entirely sure I understand what you mean, but I suggested - to various politicians and media outlets at COP26, developing magma energy as a global good, specifically to tackle the climate and ecological crisis; using the power generated initially to capture carbon, desalinate and irrigate, and recycle - while building generating capacity to transition sector by economic sector starting with big energy users like mining, cement, steel, agriculture, aviation, shipping etc. In this way, I believe - huge environmental gains can be made without huge upfront infrastructure costs, or politically unpopular impositions on national economies.
I am strongly opposed to our dependency on oil. It has been the cause of the wars we have been in since the end of WWII. Also, our dependency on foriegn oil lead to OPEC embargoing oil to the US and a very serious recession that ruined many lives. And I read that we may have less then 40 years before we do not have enough oil to maintain this oil-based economy that all industrial nations depend on. That means All industrial economies will crash and that will be worse than the Great Depression.
You have imagined a problem with my reasoning that is not so. I am not opposed to clean energy and I am not in favor of dependency on fossil fuels.
Your arguments lack an understanding of economics. When there are so many people there is not enough land for them to own property, there will be intense poverty, such as in India. Huge populations with uncontrolled growth destroy the environment if they are deer, pig, or human. Birds do not breed until they have nest. The population of predator animals increases when there is a lot of prey and decreases when the population of prey decreases. Nature stays in balance and then come humans and they throw everything out of balance.
What we have done to this planet is morally wrong.
Get real mr. Stone! The only way out is not magma. That's letting the volcano in. The only way out is production decrease. Nature has suffered long enough under the capitalistic hammering.
Direct contradiction is not an argument. I can only refer you to the answer I gave above.
I give respect where it's due. If 'green commie' seems disrespectful, that's because it is. Since the 1960's the left have campaigned on environmental issues - using population and climate change to level a Marxian critique of capitalism. Rather than asking how we sustain human welfare, instead, the left have cast the sustainability crisis as a 'contradiction of capitalism' - hoping it would undermine the system. Meanwhile, communism, as an economic system has failed everywhere it has been attempted, frequently resulting in authoritarian government, corruption, widespread poverty and genocide - to which they happily turn a blind eye.
I've been worried about sustainability for a long time; and it's taken a long time to identify the right questions, and longer still to find truly adequate answers. Adopting a scientific worldview, there's realistic hope for the future. It's technologically possible to sustain a large human population - with high levels of welfare, almost indefinitely. This could be the dawn of humanity - not 2 minuets to midnight.
Your belief that there's 40 years worth of oil, and that the world is over-crowded, are common misconceptions - generated by politicised narratives. In fact, less than 2% of the landmass of the UK is built upon; yet population density is quite high by global standards. Also, there's plenty of oil, gas and coal in the ground; hundreds if not thousands of years worth. Only we cannot use it because of global warming.
Similarly, the green commie vegan cyclist crowd do not seem to understand that fossil fuels impose an energy cost on everything we do; therefore limiting what we can do. Take landfill as an example - we dump and bury waste because it's energy efficient. The cost of processing waste would be too great using scarce and expensive fossil fuel energy. Wind and solar will never provide enough energy; and if you resrict supply, the price rises. But given limitless clean energy to spend, we can recycle all waste - mince it all up, and process it for raw materials.
There are rivers that no longer reach the sea, lakes that have dried out completely - like the Aral Sea; formerely the fourth largest lake in the world. It's gone, because upstream have taken all the water, mostly to produce cotton. It takes 2600 liters of water to produce the cotton for one t-shirt. Nature cannot withstand that burden - but, with limitless clean energy, we can produce clean water to irrigate farmland, to produce cotton, food and everything else.
In short, limitless clean energy would fundamentally change our relationship to the environment. Thus, capitalism is sustainable - and sustainable capitalsim is what environmentalists should have been pushing for all along; not least because, as mentioned above, poor people tend to have larger families. Also, poor people don't care about the environment. The only way to secure a sustainable future is to increase and extend prosperity, and the only way to do that is to harness magma energy - to meet all our energy needs, plus, capture carbon, deslainate, irrigate and recycle.
Coming back to the OP.
The question is: isn't life chaotic, even without the human's in picture? The environment may seem to be in order, tranquil and harmonious in the short run, but if you lengthen the time period everything is in a flux and changing. Evolution creates change, mass extinction events happen, the environment altogether changes in a huge way. The change usually is just so slow that it doesn't happen in one lifetime.
Humans want order. They want to be in control. They are happy when things are under their control. That's why peace, harmony and all that stuff needs regulation starting from self-regulation. Now it's great that in maintaining that order we would take into consideration other species than just ourselves. Yet as we still don't understand how things work, our effort in micromanagement usually just fucks up something that we didn't understand to be important. Even when we try to do the good thing, we end up messing something else badly.
It's like Western doctors going to Papua New Guinea and introducing soap to the natives. Because isn't hygiene important, yes? So once they got the natives to wash themselves with soap, many of them got nasty infections as the protective layer of dirt wasn't there to protect them from the creatures of the jungle and some died. But the natives weren't upset: they just interpreted that the Western shamans had killed those as an offering to the Gods. (This anecdote was told to my father by a Nobel-prize winner that had made his career in Papua New Guinea.)
Is this a roundabout way of saying "climate is always changing"? While nominally true, it's a climate denialist meme, that given any amount of thought, obviously does not imply that adding 45 gigatonnes of carbon to the atmosphere, year after year after year, is not also a problem.
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/BF5F/production/_123119984_lauvauxmap.png
I was thinking of the big bang and the holy books that say in the beginning there was chaos. I don't imagine there is a human-like god who decided how to put everything together, but rather, things are as they are because this is how things interact. Among animals, there are those that are the prey those that are predators and they keep each other in balance. If anyone is out of balance two things can happen. Nature will restore the balance or the environment will be destroyed. With good intentions, we destroyed the predators and the deer destroyed the environment because they were eating the grass and shrubs faster than they could be replaced. Philosophically this is a matter of how we reason.
Just for fun, I am throwing this back to you. What might I mean by "this is a matter of how we reason"? We are pretty good at achieving our goals and why might this lead to a problem?
I do not engage with disrespectful people.
Out of curiosity, I read a little more of what you said, and it makes for a much better discussion than your shortcuts. However, the issue of respect is unsolved. Dealing with disrespectful people is like feeding the trolls or mice. I do not see a benefit to encouraging disrespect.
Quoting karl stone
Quick tell the oil companies what you know about that and get very rich. They will love you if you can prove yourself right.
Your desperate need to be validated stands in the way of learning something - or failing that, at least providing a service by being there for me to bounce my ideas off; given my quite obviously superior knowledge and intellect. I wish you well ploughing your own furrow, but if the most successful idea you're able to muster is to take offence at the descriptive term 'green commie' - I fear your journey into philosophy will be short an uneventful! Tata!