Reply With Quote^ This didn't make sense to me, but it's 2:40am where I am so I'll look again tomorrow. If Kodos wants to chip in he can feel free.
Dr. Doom of the CRUSH 'EM ALL PARTY is going to lower prices on bubble gum for Arkansas degenerate. Dr. Doom will work for Arkansas degenerate's best interests. Arkansas degenerate should vote for Dr. Doom and the CRUSH 'EM ALLs because they will work for him. Dr. Doom will enslave innocent people against their wills and force them to erect Kabal statues around the country once he illegitimately takes over the country, when his campaign policy said nothing about bad Mortal Kombat character statues. I do not want this. I will assassinate Dr. Doom, and I will kill everyone of high power I can in the CRUSH 'EM ALL party, and now-part-time-slave Arkansas and Kansas degenerates, allied countries, and good people will aid me. He has restricted my and my friends' rights to happiness, so we have restricted his and his cronies' rights to do so unto others. We have established a world order that will be enforced, because it can potentially benefit you, too.
I do not mind being a slave in a system that can potentially grant me happiness. After all, it is my inalienable right to pursue it, so long as my happiness is not satisfied at the expense of others against their will. Your wills take no importance over another person's will in the pursuit of happiness, because you are not special. You exist in the same social system. As for the diagnoses analogy, I call crap. It would not hurt your friend's overall happiness to go with the doctor's diagnosis. In fact, he will probably recognize that the doctor is more educated than he, and that you should trust your doctor over him. However, medicine is different from society.
^ This didn't make sense to me, but it's 2:40am where I am so I'll look again tomorrow. If Kodos wants to chip in he can feel free.
Originally Posted by Fenn
You forgot your F in Modesty.
And I'm telling you this defeats the purpose of law. So how can you say "this is how law works" when it defeats the purpose? lol.
Until you give me a 12-point plan on your post-Progressivist social machine, you have not given me any hope in the prospect of it succeeding. That was the original argument: reformatting to a system that deprives members of already practiced rights is impossible without being destructive to the overall society. Prove me wrong already.I'm not talking about going backwards on progressivism, I'm talking about going beyond it.
Not only is this rarely the case, but the age requirement exists for far more reasons than just "cuz adults are smarter than kids". If you're not willing to see past that, then let's just lay this point to rest now.Because when some children are 'too young' to vote, they can easily be smarter than plenty of adults who are plenty old enough to vote.
Yes, because that is how our system works. He analyzed his individual needs and voted accordingly, you know, like in democracy. It's hilarious that you would protest this when you're the one saying it's okay to break laws to appeal to one's own desires. Lol. I think my example, despite however playful, is still more sensible....you honestly think someone voting on the basis of bubblegum prices is justifiable?
This is an absurd example that I'm tempted to discard. But you do forget: representative democracy represents the people. Therefore, if an individual feels it suits himself to vote for Dr. Doom, he will. But, as I said, this example is just plain absurd....you're claiming that someone dumb enough to vote for Dr. Doom should be politically equal to a lecturer on politics at, say, Harvard? Are you insane?
Equality is not an invention of the people. Surely, equality in physical and mental terms is an impossibility. I won't deny that all men are born unequal, by those standards. But, in the most natural setting (one without masters and governments, neither of which we are born with) all men are born equal in the sense that they have infinite opportunities. That is my definition of "equality": the preservation of these opportunities through legislature. And that is no lie. In fact, it's a natural truth evidenced by the arbitrary nature of our existence....equality is invented by people, it's not a natural law. And it's an insane lie.
----- KODOS' STUFF -----
Naturally, the doctor. He knows better than the friend. But that is not a matter of equality, just a matter of knowledge. I did not bar my friend's ability to given a opinion, nor did I bar his ability to obtain the knowledge to give me a proper diagnosis. As individuals, the doctor and the friend had received equal opportunities to earn my confidence. But the doctor is the only one who capitalized on them. /shrug"You are sick. You tell your friend who is a highly likable person, but rather uneducated and, worse, just not very bright. He says he thinks you have illness X. You then see a doctor and he says you have illness Y.
Do you attach equal importance to both diagnoses?"
No, because average people don't run the country, the government does. People simply vote based on preferences, like picking items off of a restaurant menu. The restaurant (candidate) decides -- based on knowledgeable analysis -- what to offer on their menu (platform) and the customers (voters) decide what they want based on their individual needs. It's not like people are writing their own proposals for what should or should not be on the menu. In that situation, it would be necessary to call their education into question. They are simply choosing to either support or reject the ideas of a (presumably educated) candidate. I see the concern you're addressing but that's hardly the case. A doctor would require complex knowledge to perform his job but that's because he is performing his job directly, not vicariously through an educated aide or something. Voters do not make legislative decisions directly, so it's understandable that complex knowledge is not required."We require people have qualifications before they are allowed to practice law or medicine. Similar licenses are required for police officers, architects, and more. We understand that complex tasks require complex knowledge. Are you saying that running a country is less complex?"
Besides, voting is not the rocket science you're making it out to be. Any average person can scale democracy down to his or her individual needs. Even an "Arkansas inbred" can analyze their own situation, decide what they want and vote accordingly. In fact, that's essentially all you need to know in order to practice your democratic rights: what you, as an individual, want. That's the glory of a government that serves the people. =D
That's nice and all but, aside from having a buddy, how does this benefit your argument?"Nietzsche saw democracy and Christianity as the same emasculating impulse which sought to make all equal—to make all slaves."
War/killing is/are wrong (with very few exceptions).
That's pretty much it.
^ Prove it.
You forgot your F in Modesty.
Depends on what he means by wrong.
For me it's wrong because there are often far, far more favorable options for the majority of the people affected.
But it also depends on what you mean by war. Participating? Starting? That's a very general ethic and it needs fleshing out.
I'll prove it: How would you like having your life taken away? There is this thing, Delphinus, you must learn called empathy.
Remember, Delphinus is a robot that doesn't believe in respect, compassion or empathy.
I think the normal term is sociopath. Whether or not I am one is something I'm not sure of myself.
Nonetheless, that's irrelevant to ethical discussion. You cannot base your argument on empathy - first you need to define and justify empathy itself. I can see its evolutionary advantage in helping to stabilise a tribe, but we don't live in tribes any more, nor are we reliant on how a small group of other people feel about us to survive. In addition, individuals without empathy are more useful in some parts of society than those with empathy. The most obvious example is in the army, especially in combat situations, where a psychopath can kill repeatedly without having to be desensitised or treated for psychological trauma in the same way as a normal solder.
But justifying a lack of empathy is not what I wanted to do here. It's kind of a tangent, and it's only in response to the ad hominem argument some of you seem to be implying: "This guy is a psychopath! Look at his evil opinions! Everything he says is wrong!"
I kill five people. All of Africa is saved from poverty. I haven't saved any lives, persay, but do the consequence of my actions overrule the actions themselves? In addition, what makes the actions of the person killing me 'wrong', just because I protest? Doesn't that make the standard of wrongness "I don't like it" and reduce everything to moral relativism?
What makes them wrong? For example, what makes mass genocide wrong? Is it some absolute moral code? Is it how people feel about it (this would be moral relativism again)? Name me one objective moral truth.
Justify these things logically and I'll believe in them.
You forgot your F in Modesty.
Killing is only wrong when the equivalent or less people stand to benefit from the murder. And just because you have empathy doesn't mean you have to always exhibit empathy; my stepfather is a very upstanding, empathetic man who has killed hundreds of people throughout his career as a militant man, yet has never once showed remorse for it, simply because he believed in what he was fighting for, and that the opposing team was wrong and should be killed for being wrong. However, this is a war situation, will participants that entered willingly of have their lives taken. This is not how it is, nor how it should be, in society.
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