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Koumei
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Post by Koumei » Tue May 13, 2014 12:20 am

They're pretty good at Gather Information checks, at least, and that's pretty handy for everyone else.

> Count Arioch the 28th wrote:There is NOTHING better than lesbians. Lesbians make everything better.

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Username17
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Post by Username17 » Tue May 13, 2014 5:41 am

Egypt's democracy collapsed after the first election because of basic problem with their own electorate: the two largest individual blocs are fascist movements that are completely unacceptable to the majority of the population. If all the various centrists and liberals and center-rightists and communists and shit had united behind a single candidate, that candidate would have won and Egypt would have a compromise president to this day. What actually happened was that there was a giant free-for-all where five candidates got a double digit percentage of the votes but the Mubarakites and the Muslim Brotherhood got the highest percentage of the vote (though less than fifty percent together). So the runoff occurred between two men who appealed to less than a quarter of the electorate each.
This is a well known failure state of first past the post voting, and Egypt walked right into it. If they had been using a system of preference voting, the president of Egypt would probably have been Amr Moussa. And then there probably wouldn't have been presidential crackdowns on political opponents, so there in turn probably wouldn't have been mass rioting in the streets followed by a military coup.
But Egypt's problems stem directly from the fact that their simplistic election system ended up generating a clusterfuck where the guy who won "fair and square" was hated by a super majority of the population and had no respect for democratic institutions. It's a rules problem, not a foreign interference problem. They failed their "craft democratic institution" roll, and now they don't have a democracy.
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Occluded Sun
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Post by Occluded Sun » Fri May 16, 2014 12:12 am

> DSMatticus wrote:The fact that every right has a corresponding interest is completely uninteresting, because a lot of things are interests that don't have a corresponding right.

But it's not governments which determine which things are rights. Some interests are variable from time to time and between one person and another, and some are an inherent part of being a living human - and possibly of being a sentient entity.

> Do you realize how stupid this is? The rules of professional football are derived from what the NFL says they are. If the NFL declared that field goals were worth a billion points, people would get upset. Not because the rules of football are written into the very fabric of the universe, but because they have completely arbitrary values about what they personally want out of a game of football and that rule change is incompatible with that they want.

The US system is built around the idea that "whatever the majority wants" is NOT what determines how things work. Sadly, it's slowly reverting to the general consensus that governments are fundamentally superordinate to individuals instead of being responsible to them.

> Logic is descriptive, not prescriptive - it can only tell you what follows, not what to aim for.

That's a very common, and an insanely stupid, idea. 'What to aim for' is something that can follow from necessary premises. Many human goals and desires are arbitrary, or at best contingent upon arbitrary preferences. It doesn't follow that they ALL are.
As for your historical arguments: don't waste my time. The Founders themselves violated the very principles they wanted to establish the system upon. That doesn't make the principles wrong, it makes THEM wrong. Instead of looking at the plight of the oppressed, it's more informative to look at the privileged.
As an American, I live in a society that claims possessing the power to regulate commerce across state lines means it has the power to dictate economic decisions within state lines, even to the point of telling a farmer he can't plant a crop for his own private use merely because they want to enact an economic policy in which related products are used instead. It's a system that says society can take away private property for the 'public good' at will and without recourse and itself determines what the appropriate recompense is, claiming that it's fair market value when only the market can determine that. Not only that, it's a system where precedent allows that "providing more tax revenue" is a sufficient good for seizing property.
Overall, the understanding has shifted from "the government promotes the general welfare within lots of restraints to keep it from becoming dominant" to "the government ought to enact policy to maximize the power and influence of the government". If the Founders saw what their attempt had become, they'd soil themselves.
Egypt failed because they don't have the initial shared interests that are required for functional democracy to be established. There is no "minorities ought to be protected in certain ways, and we will band together to restrain the power of a majority" understanding. There are lots of little factions that just love the idea of gaining control and persecuting everyone else. No one is interested in restraining whoever is in control - the underdogs resent and hate the overdog, but will behave just the same if they come into control.
Without sufficient unifying forces, democracy can't work. Given a society of many competing groups each looking out for its own self-interest, some kind of dictatorship is probably inevitable.
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Kaelik
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Post by Kaelik » Fri May 16, 2014 12:41 am

> Occluded Sun wrote:But it's not governments which determine which things are rights. Some interests are variable from time to time and between one person and another, and some are an inherent part of being a living human - and possibly of being a sentient entity.

What the fuck do you think right means? It is an arbitrary word used to describe a bunch of exclusive things, but the only one that is different from an interest is the one that is actually 100% determined by governments. Whether you have the right to freedom of speech is determined by whether the government gives it to you.

> That's a very common, and an insanely stupid, idea. 'What to aim for' is something that can follow from necessary premises. Many human goals and desires are arbitrary, or at best contingent upon arbitrary preferences. It doesn't follow that they ALL are.

Please tell us which human goals and desires are not contingent upon arbitrary preferences and then explain why we are supposed to care about the thing they are contingent upon without resorting to arbitrary preferences.

> Instead of looking at the plight of the oppressed, it's more informative to look at the privileged.

That's a great start that in no way tells us that everything you say is going to be stupid.

> As an American, I live in a society that claims possessing the power to regulate commerce across state lines means it has the power to dictate economic decisions within state lines, even to the point of telling a farmer he can't plant a crop for his own private use merely because they want to enact an economic policy in which related products are used instead.

Okay, going to have to lead of with... you are an idiot. You know that even at the founding, no one would have questioned, at any point, the right of the government to declare that you can't plant a certain crop. The only thing they would contest is which government is allowed to tell you what crops you can't plant.
The founders assumed you could be told not to plant crops by the government and have to obey.

> It's a system that says society can take away private property for the 'public good' at will and without recourse and itself determines what the appropriate recompense is,

Yes. That it does. Just like every other government that has ever existed. All the governments everywhere get to decide to take "private" property from you because you wouldn't have any private property without them.

> claiming that it's fair market value when only the market can determine that. Not only that, it's a system where precedent allows that "providing more tax revenue" is a sufficient good for seizing property.

1) No, the fair market value of something is them trying to compensate you even though they don't have to. Because they are the government, and they legally have the right to just take your shit. The are just establishing an attempt to fairly compensate you even though they don't have to.

> Overall, the understanding has shifted from "the government promotes the general welfare within lots of restraints to keep it from becoming dominant" to "the government ought to enact policy to maximize the power and influence of the government". If the Founders saw what their attempt had become, they'd soil themselves.

No, the government enacts policy to maximize the benefits to everyone, the shift is that we have learned that taking from the privileged is the best way to do that.
But at the founding, absolutely no one believed the government was under any restraints. The State of Virginia could, if it so choose, take all your property, murder your family, and then shit down your throat, and hey, mandate your inner personal religious beliefs too. No one questioned the right of Virginia to do that. Don't confuse limits on the federal government to protect the state governments as an opposition to government control over your life.

> DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?

The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.
That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
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momothefiddler
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Post by momothefiddler » Fri May 16, 2014 12:44 am

> Occluded Sun wrote:That's a very common, and an insanely stupid, idea. 'What to aim for' is something that can follow from necessary premises. Many human goals and desires are arbitrary, or at best contingent upon arbitrary preferences. It doesn't follow that they ALL are.

But any that aren't are merely logical extensions of the ones that are. I prefer having money to not having money, and that's not arbitrary, but it does logically follow from my desire to have the sense of security I feel when I have money (due to its uses in satisfying other desires I have). And my desires to "be safe" or "continue living" or "see the people around me be happy" are all arbitrary. There's nothing that actually makes those situations objectively better than anything else. "What to aim for" is a necessary premise, unless it's a sub-goal in a larger desire.
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DSMatticus
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Post by DSMatticus » Fri May 16, 2014 4:11 am

> Occluded Sun wrote:But it's not governments which determine which things are rights. Some interests are variable from time to time and between one person and another, and some are an inherent part of being a living human - and possibly of being a sentient entity.

You are an idiot. Let me walk you through this really slowly: interests and rights are not the same thing. Demonstrating the existence of an interest does not demonstrate the existence of a right. Demonstrating the existence of a universal interest (which you would be hard-pressed to do) does not demonstrate the existence of a universal right. When you point out that interests exist independent of enforcement in order to claim that rights exist independent of enforcement, you are just throwing up words on the screen.
In order to make such a statement, you must make an argument that rights follow in some sort of procedural fashion from interests. Because if you're just going to substitute X's for Y's and claim you're right, you're going to have to prove that this substitution is valid (spoiler: it isn't).

> Occluded Sun wrote:That's a very common, and an insanely stupid, idea. 'What to aim for' is something that can follow from necessary premises. Many human goals and desires are arbitrary, or at best contingent upon arbitrary preferences. It doesn't follow that they ALL are.

Name a goal, desire, or preference which is non-arbitrary and stems from non-arbitrary values. Demonstrate why it or the values it stems from are non-arbitrary and have objective validity. Or, more simply: tell us where the Laws of the Universe!!11! declare that human life (or whatever) is valuable. You're going to have to put your money where your mouth is on this one.

> Occluded Sun wrote:Egypt failed because they don't have the initial shared interests that are required for functional democracy to be established. There is no "minorities ought to be protected in certain ways, and we will band together to restrain the power of a majority" understanding. There are lots of little factions that just love the idea of gaining control and persecuting everyone else. No one is interested in restraining whoever is in control - the underdogs resent and hate the overdog, but will behave just the same if they come into control.

Do you understand that if you make shit up that fits your narrative, and then try to use that as evidence that your narrative is valid, you look fucking delusional? I'm really tired of explaining basic things to you, but there's a rundown on some electoral theory.
First-past-the-post voting refers to any electoral system in which every voter selects a single candidate and whichever candidate receives more votes than any other wins the election. Imagine your country has two parties, the blues and the reds, who are complete opposites of eachother in every way. 60% of voters support the blues, and 40% of voters support the reds. Obviously, the blues will win the presidency.
Now, imagine that the blues develop an internal divide on the issue of willywobbling. They are unable to resolve this divide, and split evenly into the azures and the sapphires. Azures believe you should willywobble with a bobble, and sapphires believe you should willywobble with a dobble. Reds, meanwhile, believe in executing willywobblers. Obviously, an azure voter wants an azure president, but would rather have a sapphire president than a red president. Similarly, a sapphire vote wants a sapphire president, but would rather have an azure president than a red president. But the electorate is now split 30% azure/30% sapphire/40% red, and the reds win. Suddenly willywobbling is punishable by death, even though fully 60% of the country is pro-willywobbling.
As Frank has already explained, this is what happened in Egypt. 43% of the country voted for one of the two Islamic fascists, and 56% of the country voted for one of the three more secular, more democratic candidates. But because splitting 43% two ways is preferable to splitting 56% three ways, the Islamic fascists had a serious advantage despite a crippling lack of public support - and sure enough, the 43% got split 25-18 and the 53% got split 24-18-11. Voila.
That is why FPTP voting is complete and total bullshit. And that is also one of the many reasons the U.S. electoral system is so deeply and pervasively corrupted by special interests - many of the same special interests who bankroll the modern libertarian ideology you're here espousing as simple perservation of our founding values (which weren't libertarian at all, it was just a loose affiliation of incredibly unlibertarian states that legislated their citizens' private conduct all the goddamn time). Because when you run a corporation the size of a small government in and of itself, subverting the authority and integrity of duly elected public institutions is just good for business.
Everything you believe is a lie fed to you by a corporate-sponsored media in order to facilitate the rise of aristocratic tyranny, yaaay! Seriously, here's a novel idea: if you believe that you are due certain personal liberties, you should believe in a government strong enough to guarantee those liberties against the cruelty of your local bureaucracies. You sure as fuck shouldn't whine that the federal government isn't as weak as it was two hundred years ago when it was powerless to stop slavery, marital rape, and sodomy laws! If you want to be a libertarian (as opposed to a drooling moron who jumps when some neoconservative sockpuppets shout "FREEDOM!"), you're going to have to develop a sophisticated enough world view to understand that the rise of the federal government isn't an issue on which you can be so binary. The federal government is the reason black people have rights at all, it's the reason women aren't their husbands' literal sex slaves, and it's the reason two consenting adults can have sex in the privacy of their own home even if 6/10ths of their neighbors disapprove.[/rant]
Last edited by DSMatticus on Fri May 16, 2014 8:18 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Username17
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Post by Username17 » Fri May 16, 2014 7:12 am

There is something badly wrong with Occluded Sun if he thinks that the arbitrary level of bureaucracy at which commerce regulations are posted is something worth fighting for but the right of black people to not be bought and sold and disposed of as property is not. Morals are of course arbitrary, but the near universal consensus is that people like Occluded Sun are horrible people who embarrass humanity by the fact that they exist and refuse to shut up.
The fact that this label is required to be placed on cans of Monster Energy Drink even if they are produced and sold within the same completely arbitrary geographical jurisdiction is apparently tyranny.
The fact that the government of Nigeria is powerless to stop these guys from kidnapping, raping, and selling human girls is apparently freedom.
Occluded Sun: go fuck yourself and never ever stop.
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nockermensch
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Post by nockermensch » Fri May 16, 2014 3:52 pm

Is there something like a libertarian analysis of History? Because from my point of view, studying History should be proof enough that Violence is the only actual "natural right". If you're strong enough to crush your enemies and see them driven before you, then you'll take their stuff and hear the lamentations of their women, and here the Universe will actually support you, by having your reputation spread and making other people, even people from other cultures, take your future demands more seriously.
@ @ Nockermensch

> Koumei wrote:After all, in Firefox you keep tabs in your browser, but in SovietPutin's Russia, browser keeps tabs on you.

> Mord wrote:Chromatic Wolves are massively under-CRed. Its "Dood to stone" spell-like is a TPK waiting to happen if you run into it before anyone in the party has Dance of Sack or Shield of Farts.

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Username17
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Post by Username17 » Fri May 16, 2014 4:54 pm

> nockermensch wrote:Is there something like a libertarian analysis of History? Because from my point of view, studying History should be proof enough that Violence is the only actual "natural right". If you're strong enough to crush your enemies and see them driven before you, then you'll take their stuff and hear the lamentations of their women, and here the Universe will actually support you, by having your reputation spread and making other people, even people from other cultures, take your future demands more seriously.

Libertarians certainly have historical analysis. It's... weird. Mostly it rests on a bunch of counterfactual assertions. So the libertarians start with "facts" that are not true, and then use them to support bizarre narratives about government interference causing all the problems. The other plan is to start with "axioms," and then logically devise what must have happened. If that sounds a whole lot like "making shit up and completely ignoring actual history" to you, then you win a prize.
So basically you have two factions of Libertarian history: the people who have a bunch of fake facts, and the people who don't care enough about facts to even care about them. That is so crazy that you can't even describe it to people without coming off like you're unfairly strawmanning them, but that's seriously how it works. The Mises institute people seriously have an "alternate epistemology" called "praxeology" where they claim to be able to logically derive truths from shit they made up that are "irrefutable." That actually means that they say up front that they are going to continue believing the same shit no matter what "facts" or "evidence" happens to exist in the "real world." That's not even a joke. I know it sounds like it is, but it's not.
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Maxus
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Post by Maxus » Fri May 16, 2014 6:06 pm

Ahhh, that good old Austrian School Economics.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
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nockermensch
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Post by nockermensch » Fri May 16, 2014 6:48 pm

Re: Praxeology
That was some auto-complete win.
Last edited by nockermensch on Fri May 16, 2014 6:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
@ @ Nockermensch

> Koumei wrote:After all, in Firefox you keep tabs in your browser, but in SovietPutin's Russia, browser keeps tabs on you.

> Mord wrote:Chromatic Wolves are massively under-CRed. Its "Dood to stone" spell-like is a TPK waiting to happen if you run into it before anyone in the party has Dance of Sack or Shield of Farts.

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Occluded Sun
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Post by Occluded Sun » Mon May 19, 2014 10:49 pm

> Kaelik wrote:Whether you have the right to freedom of speech is determined by whether the government gives it to you.

No. It's determined by whether we give the government the power to take it away - and whether I agree.

> Please tell us which human goals and desires are not contingent upon arbitrary preferences and then explain why we are supposed to care about the thing they are contingent upon without resorting to arbitrary preferences.

Our goals and desires are no more arbitrary than any other of our traits - they're the result of natural selection. Do you think our physiology is also arbitrary, that our biochemistry could be arranged in any random way?
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Occluded Sun
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Post by Occluded Sun » Mon May 19, 2014 10:55 pm

> momothefiddler wrote:But any that aren't are merely logical extensions of the ones that are. I prefer having money to not having money, and that's not arbitrary, but it does logically follow from my desire to have the sense of security I feel when I have money (due to its uses in satisfying other desires I have). And my desires to "be safe" or "continue living" or "see the people around me be happy" are all arbitrary. There's nothing that actually makes those situations objectively better than anything else.

Is a dolphin's physiology objectively better for living in Earth's oceans than a gila monster's, or not? What about the reverse - is a gila monster objectively better at living in deserts (say, Death Valley) than a dolphin, or not?
If we fiddled with the genes of a line honeybees so that they built seven-sided cells instead of six-sided ones, and released them into the wild, would we expect this trait to spread or die out? What objective principles lead to that expectation?
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Kaelik
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Post by Kaelik » Mon May 19, 2014 11:03 pm

> Occluded Sun wrote:

> > Kaelik wrote:Whether you have the right to freedom of speech is determined by whether the government gives it to you.

> No. It's determined by whether we give the government the power to take it away - and whether I agree.

You are stupid as shit. The people of Saudi Arabia did not give the government the power to restrict their speech. Nor do they magically have it just because they disagree with what their government says.
A rich guy who called himself king bought the tanks and the people in the tanks, and that allows him to damn well tell people what rights they have, and they don't get rights he doesn't let them have until someone else with more tanks blows his head off.
They didn't give him the ability, and whether or not they agree doesn't matter.

> Occluded Sun wrote:Our goals and desires are no more arbitrary than any other of our traits - they're the result of natural selection. Do you think our physiology is also arbitrary, that our biochemistry could be arranged in any random way?

That is a fine thing to say, but it does nothing to solve disagreements. If I think X and you think Y, both of those are "the result of natural selection" and therefore you have done nothing to explain why I should give a shit what you think.
Unless you think left handed people should be exterminated because our physiology is what it is, you can't rely on natural selection to resolve any disagreements.

> DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?

The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.
That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
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momothefiddler
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Post by momothefiddler » Tue May 20, 2014 1:27 am

> Occluded Sun wrote:

> > momothefiddler wrote:But any that aren't are merely logical extensions of the ones that are. I prefer having money to not having money, and that's not arbitrary, but it does logically follow from my desire to have the sense of security I feel when I have money (due to its uses in satisfying other desires I have). And my desires to "be safe" or "continue living" or "see the people around me be happy" are all arbitrary. There's nothing that actually makes those situations objectively better than anything else.

> Is a dolphin's physiology objectively better for living in Earth's oceans than a gila monster's, or not? What about the reverse - is a gila monster objectively better at living in deserts (say, Death Valley) than a dolphin, or not?
> If we fiddled with the genes of a line honeybees so that they built seven-sided cells instead of six-sided ones, and released them into the wild, would we expect this trait to spread or die out? What objective principles lead to that expectation?

Emphasis added.
Please explain your completely logical not-at-all arbitrary basis for thinking that survival is objectively better than extinction. To refer to your post I first responded to, your 'what to aim for', in this case staying alive, isn't objectively better than the alternative, and logic in no way tells you that you should aim for that.
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Username17
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Post by Username17 » Tue May 20, 2014 4:38 am

Certainly, if you did think staying alive was better than not doing so, then disagreeing with oppressive governments that deny their people freedom of speech would seem like something you wouldn't want to do. On account of those governments tend to kill dissidents and stuff.
But really, the bottom line here is that unless and until you fucking apologize for the claim that the arc of history has led away from freedom in the United States of America since 1864, you can't be taken seriously. There is literally no possible amount of NSA spying and federal income taxes that could even slightly outweigh the fact that we no longer have human beings who are owned as property and worked until their backs give out and then thrown into the "[EDITED]" to die of thirst.
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Maxus
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Post by Maxus » Tue May 20, 2014 4:49 am

And women can vote and own property...
And homosexuals are getting recognized as people with legal rights just the same as anyone else...
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
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Occluded Sun
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Post by Occluded Sun » Tue May 20, 2014 8:44 pm

> momothefiddler wrote:Please explain your completely logical not-at-all arbitrary basis for thinking that survival is objectively better than extinction.

The universe causes configurations that are better at surviving to persist more than those that don't survive well. That's it. What other objective demonstration are you expecting? If you start out with randomly-selected behavioral drives and let time pass for a bit, the drives that result in death are no longer part of the population. Given an initially neutral distribution of preferences, time skews the distribution towards valuing survival.
Do you also expect people to demonstrate that two plus two equals four while excluding all of the actual examples of addition working?
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Kaelik
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Post by Kaelik » Tue May 20, 2014 9:25 pm

> Occluded Sun wrote:What other objective demonstration are you expecting? If you start out with randomly-selected behavioral drives and let time pass for a bit, the drives that result in death are no longer part of the population.

So if one person says that the best society is one where everyone can say whatever they want, and another person says that the best society is one in which people are legally discouraged from saying things critical of the government, or for that matter, calls to violence or discrimination, since both of those people currently exist, and both types of governments currently exist in what possible way can you say that one of those is better than the other?
How does the continued existence of both kinds of government and both kinds of people in any way allow you to claim that free speech is a right?

> DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?

The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.
That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
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momothefiddler
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Post by momothefiddler » Tue May 20, 2014 9:31 pm

> Occluded Sun wrote:

> > momothefiddler wrote:Please explain your completely logical not-at-all arbitrary basis for thinking that survival is objectively better than extinction.

> The universe causes configurations that are better at surviving to persist more than those that don't survive well.

This is entirely tautological. "Things that are better at continuing to exist under the laws of the universe are things that last longer under the laws of the universe." There is nothing here. You have yet to provide any basis for your claim that logic gives us everything (indeed, anything) to aim for.

> Occluded Sun wrote:That's it. What other objective demonstration are you expecting? If you start out with randomly-selected behavioral drives and let time pass for a bit, the drives that result in death are no longer part of the population. Given an initially neutral distribution of preferences, time skews the distribution towards valuing survival.

Is your argument that, due to natural selection, most people who currently exist have the arbitrary goal of survival? Because that has nothing to do with your claim that logic works without such goals.

> Occluded Sun wrote:Do you also expect people to demonstrate that two plus two equals four while excluding all of the actual examples of addition working?

If they claimed that addition had inherent meaning without referencing anything else or having defined premises? Yeah. I'd expect them to show me that inherent meaning without referencing anything else or having defined premises. I think a better example in this case is that you should demonstrate "equals four" without any inputs.
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momothefiddler
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Post by momothefiddler » Tue May 20, 2014 9:35 pm

> Kaelik wrote:

> > Occluded Sun wrote:What other objective demonstration are you expecting? If you start out with randomly-selected behavioral drives and let time pass for a bit, the drives that result in death are no longer part of the population.

> So if one person says that the best society is one where everyone can say whatever they want, and another person says that the best society is one in which people are legally discouraged from saying things critical of the government, or for that matter, calls to violence or discrimination, since both of those people currently exist, and both types of governments currently exist in what possible way can you say that one of those is better than the other?

Well obviously we can't. We have to wait until only one is left and go "Well obviously that one was fitter" and then be glad that the appropriate state of things has been achieved.
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DSMatticus
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Post by DSMatticus » Tue May 20, 2014 10:01 pm

> Occluded Sun wrote:

> > momothefiddler wrote:Please explain your completely logical not-at-all arbitrary basis for thinking that survival is objectively better than extinction.

> The universe causes configurations that are better at surviving to persist more than those that don't survive well. That's it. What other objective demonstration are you expecting? If you start out with randomly-selected behavioral drives and let time pass for a bit, the drives that result in death are no longer part of the population. Given an initially neutral distribution of preferences, time skews the distribution towards valuing survival.
> Do you also expect people to demonstrate that two plus two equals four while excluding all of the actual examples of addition working?

First: you are begging the question. People are asking you why you think you can use the laws of the universe to derive non-arbitrary moral axioms, and you are responding with... the laws of the universe can be used to derive moral axioms and they're non-arbitrary because... reasons. You are completely fucking missing the point. The point is that when people tell you it is ethically and morally correct for smaller objects to orbit around larger objects because the universe makes that happen more often, you should look at them like they're a goddamn lunatic. And so everyone here is looking at you like you're a goddamn lunatic, because that's the stance you have taken in carving out your own personal ethical philosophy.
Second: literally everything that happens in the universe is caused by the conditions and laws of the universe. That is definitional. If horrible dictators seizing power and murdering people's families were incompatible with the laws of the universe, it wouldn't have fucking happened, would it? But it did, does, and is. Because in those specific situations, the initial conditions and laws of the universe caused it to happen. Your entire ethical philosopy is based on cherry picking examples to let you reach the ethical philosophy you want and ignoring all the other shit. Anyone even passingly familiar with human history would be aware that ethically abhorrent regimes and cultural practices are fully capable of being stable and persistent. Again: the entire world still isn't on board with the concept that women aren't property.
Third: I fucking hate this stupid popsci bullshit. Here's a hint: the universe does not favor self-reproducing units of information for their longevity/survival, it favors them for their ability to reproduce, of which longevity/survival is one small component. Example: there are a number of genetic diseases that don't have negative effects until after an individual has stopped breeding, and as such will never be removed from the gene pool by natural selection. Your ethical philosophy tells us that because the universe doesn't care whether or not those people die after they stop spitting out babies, neither should we. And if you disagree with the universe and think that saving the lives of people for reasons other than future reproduction is valuable, well... then you aren't actually taking your ethical cues from the universe and are instead just pretending to so you can act enlightened on the internet.
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Occluded Sun
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Post by Occluded Sun » Tue May 20, 2014 10:34 pm

> DSMatticus wrote:First: you are begging the question. People are asking you why you think you can use the laws of the universe to derive non-arbitrary moral axioms, and you are responding with... the laws of the universe can be used to derive moral axioms and they're non-arbitrary because... reasons.

1: You don't understand what the phrase "begging the question" means.
2: You don't understand what 'arbitrary' means, either. The primary definition - which is the one most appropriate for this context - is "subject to individual will or judgment without restriction; contingent solely upon one's discretion".
A related definition is "determined by chance, whim, or impulse, and not by necessity, reason, or principle".
I've met my burden of argument. You haven't.
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Kaelik
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Post by Kaelik » Tue May 20, 2014 10:50 pm

> Occluded Sun wrote:I've met my burden of argument. You haven't.

No, no you haven't. You have consistently refused to give us any idea what you even believe you are doing when you declare that people owning their property is a right.
Refusing to communicate what you are even saying is literally the exact opposite of meeting your burden in an argument.

> DSMatticus wrote:Kaelik gonna kaelik. Whatcha gonna do?

The U.S. isn't a democracy and if you think it is, you are a rube.
That's libertarians for you - anarchists who want police protection from their slaves.
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infected slut princess
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Post by infected slut princess » Tue May 20, 2014 10:50 pm

Haven’t been to TGD in awhile, but naturally I was a little curious about what was going on in this dumb-ass thread. A lot of bullshit new content from many idiots, and not surprisingly, it seems the failure of the Stalin-fappers has now reached a truly awesome magnitude.
Perhaps the greatest fail of all is Frank Trollman trying to rationalize his rejection of the law of contradiction with zero success, and the Hitler Youth trying to back him up. Well to be fair, Kaelik did try to distance himself from that radical position, by suggesting well maybe just SOMETIMES there are alternatives to the law of contradiction, when it’s APPROPRIATE. But he is pure fail. He offers as a true statement “the law of contradiction has alternatives” yet in the very assertion of his thesis, he must assume that the position is false! Because what is he asserting? Obviously he intends us to believe that the logic used in establishing the conventionality of logic is itself somehow exempt from the conventional character just ascribed to other logics. But what logic is he using? Uhhh, are you starting to see the problem here?
(Speaking of the Kaelik, his questionnaire was really hilarious. Not only does sneak all kinds of completely unjustified assumptions into its bullshit questions, but then he asks me to define terms he uses in his own questions. Good job dude.)
Then Frank rambling about “arguing with adults” or something stupid. But here’s the thing: If you can’t even accept the most basic criterion of intellectual inquiry, you aren’t ready for a discussion with HUMANS, much less adults. You guys are worse than those idiots who saw the first Matrix movie and said, “Whoa dude, what is real? What if we’re in the Matrix, dude?” Poeple of your incredible intellectual ability are probably better off 'arguing' with a monkey.
How can we talk about anarchism -- which is awesome by the way -- if the Stalin-fappers don’t even accept the principle that if something is true, its contradictory must be false? Because then even if I prove irrefutably that anarchism is awesome, it would not be evidence AGAINST the proposition “anarchism is not awesome”!!!
“Like, what if A and not-A was totally true, dude?”
This a common form of argumentative strategy among internet message board fucktards. It’s very convenient for Stalin-fappers, because it puts them in a seemingly dialectically secure position from which they can deny anything because it is based on the “wrong” logic. Whereas they, naturally, are using the RIGHT logic. But as we have seen, this is completely self-contradictory and a fatuous nonsense. Yet there’s a bunch of dudes trying to defend it. Hilarious, and it would be a little sad if they weren’t all losers anyway.
You guys are actually have lots in common with OBJECTIVISTS lol: epistemologically crippled, economically ignorant, morally vacuous, and rude.

> Oh, then you are an idiot. Because infected slut princess has never posted anything worth reading at any time.

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