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TheDeath
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posted July 17, 2008 11:06 PM |
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Well, what you're referring to is what in the Moral Philosophy thread I referred to as the "Twisting of the Morals", that is, the non-aggression and mutual aid principles got twisted, and thus morals became subjective. But I'm advising a return to the basic morals, which are objective.
Objective as long as humans are concerned that is 
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If you mean: bird = flying creature, you need to get your head checked.
Ok, so then let's use the b1rd definition to substitute it for "flying creature", much shorter
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I don't like creatures like humans (generalizing obviously) that can be stopped only by force/danger.
I have already explained how self-interest applies here.
Uhm what? I meant that they can only be stopped by force, that is if they can "get away" with something and harm others, they will do so, if that does not hurt them (or the human society) -- if they can't "get away", which means force, then they don't. But really, can peace of mind be realized by force? 
It can only be achieved by understanding and love. Perhaps even some enlightenment.
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If I'm dead, then I don't care what the motivation for his actions was, now do I? 
Does that matter for classifying him? I mean, sure you can say "I'm dead, it sucks!" and all that but that doesn't have anything to do with classifying him.
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Moonlith
Bad-mannered
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posted July 18, 2008 12:50 PM |
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Mind you, I'm not a nature worshipper - not sure why lunatics keep saying that? I'm simply disgusted by the attitude Mvass shows to non-human living entities, as well his idea that materialism is good (ignoring the fact materialism has long since been proven to create shallow human beings that lack any sense of respect and morale OR conscience, Mvass being a nice example).
Get this: The only thing that gives HUMANS the RIGHT to dominate all other lifeforms, are HUMANS themselves. Am I the only one who finds that a repulsive idea?
Hence on the topic of global warming: Trying to stop it or control it is just another attempt at preserving human dominance over the world. Given the way humans have and still treat that which gives them life AND other human beings, I really can't be arsed to 'help' the human race.
Heck, human society is still based on the principle of "growth" (population wise); mass death is inevitable. I'm still surprised humans can't see that.
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mvassilev
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posted July 18, 2008 02:02 PM |
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TheDeath:
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I meant that they can only be stopped by force, that is if they can "get away" with something and harm others, they will do so, if that does not hurt them (or the human society)
No, not necessarily. If a social taboo was placed upon it, and there would be a negative emotional impact, that would go a good way to discouraging the action without the threat of force.
Moonlith:
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The only thing that gives HUMANS the RIGHT to dominate all other lifeforms, are HUMANS themselves. Am I the only one who finds that a repulsive idea?
Well, I must say that I don't find this repulsive.
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Heck, human society is still based on the principle of "growth" (population wise); mass death is inevitable.
I just don't understand why you think that mass death is inevitable. It's not, for several reasons. First, as people become more educated, they are likely to have far less children (just look at Western Europe compared to Sub-Saharan Africa). This, then, will halt population growth. Second, if we improve agricultural techniques, and, more importantly, make sure that everyone has the access to modern agricultural techniques, we can boost productivity while using roughly the same amount of natural resources. You see, while some resources are finite (such as coal and oil), not all are. With good agricultural techniques, more food could be produced. Third, though some areas can't be used to grow food, people can learn to do other things, and trade their labor for food. With free trade, they would be able to do so at a cheaper cost. (If a nation tries to be self-sufficient, it doesn't work well, and hurts nearly all of its populace, especially the poor.) There are indeed a limited number of squares (at the moment), but we can increase the yield of those squares a great deal. Remember that we are not standing still, but becoming more and more productive every year.
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Eccentric Opinion
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TheDeath
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posted July 18, 2008 02:10 PM |
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No, not necessarily. If a social taboo was placed upon it, and there would be a negative emotional impact, that would go a good way to discouraging the action without the threat of force.
I have already explained to you that emotional benefits are OK in the sense that they are the thing that makes humans better than subjugating to instincts.
As to the growth stuff, yes indeed we can have more food at the expense of something else -- since you can't really create matter. The only problem with your approach is that you only consider the human part of "productive", that is the resources used don't matter (an example is oil, since it can't be "grown"). But of course for someone like you who doesn't care for anything else except human "production" (that is, it doesn't matter HOW you got the production, only the fact that you have more food), why do I even try to explain it, right? If we extend our agricultural areas, for example, we might need to cut down forests. But of course that doesn't matter, it only matters that WE are 'productive'
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mvassilev
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posted July 18, 2008 02:13 PM |
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We can produce more food per acre than we could before. I'm not talking about expanding agricultural territory, but that we could do far more with what we already have. And oil is a finite resource, and we'd better wean ourselves off of it. After all, if we're still this dependent on oil, and it runs out, the consequences wouldn't be pleasant.
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Eccentric Opinion
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TitaniumAlloy
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posted July 18, 2008 02:59 PM |
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Ok man, let's suppose that YOU are some kind of super-alien (sort of), and you created the Earth... then some other alien comes and puts humans in there. You say, it's ok, they're peaceful at first. Then, the humans start to devastate what you created (nature). Or maybe you as the alien much more superior than humans, know that your creation is "sentient" but humans can't understand that (or maybe they will 5000 years after they polluted the Planet, you know how they say, what's done is done, you can't reverse the process just because you were DUMB and did not know that 5000 years ago).
I know you'll say: If I am such a powerful alien, then I would destroy the humans. But not everything thinks of force, maybe you are a peaceful alien and destroying humans requires force, not to mention it would probably require devastation. You can't fix destruction with destruction, at least not if you are a peaceful alien.
Ok, sure, nature could be a sentient creation of a powerful alien race.
But so could my toothbrush, and the aliens could be very angry at me using their creation to clean my teeth every day!
I mean, why should a collection of elements (present in a similar fashion on every planet we can observe) be any more likely to be sentient in an unknowable sense than any other inanimate object..?
Because it sounds cool;
"nature is sentient".
Sounds much more cool and sophisticated than "this marshmallow is sentient"
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John says to live above hell.
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TheDeath
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posted July 18, 2008 03:02 PM |
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I never said it sounds cool (actually I think that limiting ourselves only to OUR type of sentience is narrow-minded but anyway), and obviously you skipped the part about breaking a rock (or washing your teeth) and disturbing the "balance"
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TitaniumAlloy
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posted July 18, 2008 03:28 PM |
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No, I didn't see that part.
Though I didn't read all your posts only the parts that were directed at me..
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John says to live above hell.
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TheDeath
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posted July 18, 2008 03:34 PM |
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Hehe no problem I understand how annoying quote wars can be. So to make it short, let's say that breaking a rock does not "disturb" any balance
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Moonlith
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posted July 18, 2008 03:39 PM |
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Edited by Moonlith at 15:41, 18 Jul 2008.
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We can produce more food per acre than we could before.
There is still a limit. There is always a limit to space and the amount of recources available, while there is no limit to human population growth (you won't EVER "lift" all human beings to the "supreme level" of western society (and if you did - if you managed to make the entire world as it is now into a western society - I would dare say that would also spell instant depletion of all recources)).
But before that limit is reached, you pass a limit that seperates the possibility of living in a good, healthy, and fun environment, and living in a disgusting, poluted environment. We have already long since passed that border - in my opinion we have already long since passed by the road that could have led to enlighted utopia states where people are actually raised intelligent and with care. Instead we took the road down the Capitalism / Materialism / greed / selfishness / money lane, you know, the very ugly dark one leading into the swamp state our world is in now.
Goooo humans!
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Minion
Legendary Hero
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posted July 18, 2008 04:04 PM |
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I agree with Moonlith. I am not that much of a pessimistic as he is, I believe that someday people would look at disgust at how we have treated our fellow species on the planet - just like we look at the nazis and their ideology in disgust now. (I am referring to the topic of Why)
However I must confess I have little faith in that the world won't be raped to death before that stage of "evolution" is to be witnessed.
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"These friends probably started using condoms after having produced the most optimum amount of offsprings. Kudos to them for showing at least some restraint" - Tsar-ivor
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mvassilev
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posted July 18, 2008 05:05 PM |
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There is still a limit.
Around 1900, Lord Kelvin said, "Everything that is to be invented has already been invented.", or something like that. You seem to be taking the same sort of attitude. It is a mistake. You can never underestimate the innovation of the human race. Let's look at the world 200 years ago. In 1808, people travelled on horseback. The cotton gin was innovative technology. They had no idea that the 19th century would yield the lightbulb, telephone, and, at the end, the car. A hundred years ago, people had no idea that the car and airplane would become commonplace methods of transportation, and certainly there was no concept of a computer in the modern sense. And agriculture has similarly been advancing. Who are you to say that we won't produce enough innovation in the future to sustain us? And if we were to educate the Third World better, and give them more job opportunities, and improve their health, then they'd have less children, so not so many resources would be necessary. So, in becoming more productive, we could produce more with the same amount of input, or we could produce the same amount using less resources, or some combination of the two.
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there is no limit to human population growth
Well, there is, when we start running out of food, and people start starving. But I'm hoping that we can halt population growth before then. You see, with education, people have less children. And if the rest of the world was as productive as the West, the world could sustain far more people. You see, an increase productivity isn't working more and producing more. Productivity is working less and/or using less resources to produce the same amount, or working the same amount and using the same amount of resources, and producing more. You see, Thomas Malthus had pretty much the same idea as you back in the 1800s, but his ideas were disproved, because he ignored increases in productivity. Today, we are more productive than we ever were before, and if we act wisely, we can continue to become more productive.
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TheDeath
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posted July 18, 2008 05:58 PM |
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Today, we are more productive than we ever were before, and if we act wisely, we can continue to become more productive.
Today, our planet is a lot more polluted than in 1808 as well...
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mvassilev
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posted July 18, 2008 05:59 PM |
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Actually, if you look at the pollution data for London, for example, it's the cleanest it's been since the Middle Ages.
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TheDeath
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posted July 18, 2008 06:06 PM |
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I said the entire planet. You can dump off your toxic waste somewhere else but that doesn't mean it is less polluted, you have to look at the big picture.
also: "Today, there are a lot less forests and species available" 
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Moonlith
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posted July 18, 2008 07:03 PM |
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@ Minion: I'm not a pessimist I'm a realist, nothing more.
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TheDeath
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posted July 18, 2008 07:14 PM |
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"The pessimist is the optimist that sees reality"
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mvassilev
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posted July 18, 2008 07:44 PM |
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You can dump off your toxic waste somewhere else but that doesn't mean it is less polluted, you have to look at the big picture.
Well, you can't dump air pollution elsewhere, now can you?
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TheDeath
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posted July 18, 2008 08:25 PM |
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Well doesn't matter, as a whole it's a lot more.
(the wind can 'dump' air pollution though)
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DagothGares
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posted July 18, 2008 08:43 PM |
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I'll have small say in this again. I'm not going to quote him, since I'm entirely against quote wars(). Mvass said something that more or less implied that population rise can be stopped by educating the population. I think that population increase can be effectively ended by giving social security. In the poorer countries, the children have to take care of their parents. So it's much safer for them to have many, many, many children (after all,some can die, along the way) (you can also take the prohibition about contraconception and other things).
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