ecnarf

Sweetie, she doesn't eat animals. Do I have to spell it out for you?

So much for "that's all I'm going to say" and conversing at beyond a kindergarten level.

Here's an article on altruism and game theory: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID...0D47&sc=I100322 I argued that religion is people acting out of the best interest of themselves, not of other people. In some cases that means they are supposed to do charitable works. In other cases, they live an ascetic life or blow people up. It's not always about other people, but it is definitely about themselves. Well, here you run into a paradox. Religious people will no doubt claim to have "objectively observed" the world and concluded that there is a god. We've both done the same and came to the opposite conclusion. They are completely opposite conclusions. If one is rational, the other has to be irrational. And if we both claim to be rational, what can decide objective rationality? Obviously there will be points on our side for not taking the word of an old man in a funny hat or an even older book with absolutely zero factual or historical basis (fun fact: nowhere outside of the bible is there a single mention of the jews' enslavement by the egyptians). But by your standard of Stalin and Mao not being despicable by their own standards, will it really matter if we consider them irrational but they are oblivious? This is where you've lost me. Their losing was because of the superiority of the American, British, Canadian and Russian armies. It was by no means a "natural consequence" - it was brought about by immense sacrifice. Now, invading Russia was the height of stupidity. I can't say for sure that the Germans would have definitely won were it not for the invasion of Russia, but the outcome of the war would have been vastly different. Furthermore, how can the war be called unselfish? Germany wanted, in part, more land and to get back at the rest of Europe for the embarassment of the Treaty of Versailles. It was in the selfish interest of Germany to pursue that course of action. The Holocaust? If we assume that Hitler genuinely thought that the world would be a better place without the Jews, then it was, on some sick level, altruistic. But I find it hard to believe that the holcaust was genuinely considered a wise and rational economic policy. Simply a massive slaughter on a scapegoat for the Germans' economic woes and the result of two thousand years of Christian anti-Semitism.

Come on, dude. No greater evil than unselfishnesss? I shouldn't even have to debate this. Religion is not people acting out of the best interest of others; it is people scared shitless that they're going to hell, elaborately convincing themselves that they don't have any ulterior motives, but are simply doing charitable works so they can go to heaven. To them it's purely rational, introducing the concept of rational relativism. I'm not buying any of this. Your argument is such that any example I list can be twisted around by simply manipulating words and altering perspective slightly so that it is simply yet another proof of yours. It is, at best, a simple case of bringing profundity to where there really is none using fanciful language. What of soldiers serving their country in war? Is it not in the rational self-interest to sit out the war and survive? It sure was the greatest evil society has ever seen that the Allies won World War II because of the irrational selfishness of millions of brave young men signing up and fighting. Of course, I can see you saying that it would have been the greatest evil had the Axis won due to the irrational selfishness of German and Italian young men. Of course, I would agree with the assessment, but the point is that the greatest evil did not come about.

I was following you until you said that unselfishness is the greatest evil. You've got to be kidding that there is no greater evil than unselfishness. That proves nothing. The movie didn't, his economic paper disproved the notion that every individual working independently for their own individual benefit works for everyone's benefit. The movie used a clever analogy - there's a group of guys and a group of girls at a bar, equal in number. All the guys want to hit on the hotteset girl, but the girl only has interest in one guy. If all of the guys go after the girl, none of them will succeed. They will then proceed to hit on the girls' friends, who won't have any of it because they know the guys really don't like them. If the guys each go after one girl, the odds of everyone getting laid are significantly higher.

Potayto potahto to me. Nor under Stalin in Russia or Mao in China. But that doesn't make them any less despicable. He was the guy from the movie A Beautiful Mind. Have a look into it, as his was the paper that destroyed the libertarian economic thinking which you espoused above.

He most certainly did not commit suicide, at least not in the classic sense. This is going to wind up in a semantical debate, but to sacrifice your own life so that others may life is simply not suicide and demeans the memory of those who have done such things. What you're doing here is twisting the meaning of selfish. You're saying that all actions are selfish because that person performs them, a pathetically obvious statement, which you are trying to assign special meaning to. Furthermore, whether or not something is "right" or "wrong" isn't decided by the individual who undertakes them. I find that moral relativism in the extreme. I shouldn't have to list examples of people who thought they were doing the right thing yet are widely considered the most despicable human beings to have ever lived. As for the last part, game theory has done away with such conceptions. Ever heard of a Nash Equilibrium?

The driver very much knew what he was doing; truckers are acutely aware that they are driving death machines and trained as such. I was told by my driving instructor that they usually teach truckers to not be afraid to smash into the car in front of them if it means that they take it easy on the brakes and avoid jack knifing, killing more and closing down several lanes. I don't know where you're getting this "he's not unselfish" deal from. You're positing that no matter what anyone does, they're being selfish. That's pretty transparently false to me. I don't know who you're getting these ideas from, but you'd be wise to lay off of them. In the situation the trucker was in, the objectively right thing to do would be to drive his rig off the road and save the lives of several other people. That's what he did. He had a wife and kids; selfish would have been to inflict the pain of losing family members on dozens of other people as long as his own family was taken care of.

What? Ghandi was assassinated. Completely different. Think of military or police situations. Or that accident on the 400 a couple of days ago - the trucker ran himself off the road and died, saving many others in the process. How is it not heroic to sacrifice yourself so that other people can live? I think you're corrupting the argument slightly by saying that we die "for society". Living for an incredibly long time will invariably turn you into a drain on society for a longer time. People are currently extremely frail and dependent when they hit 80. If people start living to 150, and we generously extend the usefulness of their life to 100, that's a 50 year gap where resources are being put in to people and none are going out, a third of their life, and approximately one third of the population (although realistically it will represent much more than one third due to the current trend of people having fewer and fewer kids, and the inevitable necessity of having less kids as the total population increases). It simply has economic unfeasibility written all over it. And of what value is life when you have to rely on other people to simply exist? The whole thing runs counter to evolution. The fitness of the species as a whole trumps, by far, the unfit individual simply being alive.

I couldn't disagree more. Do those who sacrifice their lives so that others can live not count as heroes? Secondly, thinking and theorizing really only works in maths. The natural sciences require experimentation and evidence to corroborate theories.

...how exactly is that?

Dude, you're not following. It's selfish to hold on to your own life as long as possible to the detriment of others. When old and feeble and dependent on others to perform the most basic functions, you take away money and man-hours from other pursuits. Society as a whole would suffer keeping people alive two or three generations beyond their ability to function independently. Would you really want to be alive that long having to rely on others?

Conversely, when you're the living dead, how much do you take away from society?

I don't think that the entire purpose of my life is to be a worker bee. Although I'm at a loss as to what you were trying to say with the second sentence.

Well, from a utilitarian point of view, I have something to contribute to society. I'm able-bodied, intelligent, good looking and white. But seriously, though. I can get a job and contribute to the economy. Multiply by the millions of people my age and we have a further continuance of our society. In 100 years, even if I'm alive, I won't be able to do any of that. I don't think that the "What's the point of being alive now?" argument holds any water in this case. Keeping people alive that long will be a huge drain on the society that the young are continuing on. If we were to all collectively commit suicide, there would simply be no society. Big difference. Also, I keep thinking you're supercanuk with that avatar.

Parabolas aren't interesting. For serious. P.S. Heyrabbit you are tripping me the fuck out with that avatar.

I can only speak for myself when I think my death is necessary, and that is when I cease to be a functioning human being. Obviously I would never deny someone health care because they're unlikely to recover or because they're old and their time has come, but when I'm incapable of productive work, thought and not even remotely self-sufficient, well, what benefit will there be in dragging out my existence by several decades? If I ever got to that point, I would rather that all the money, medication, equipment, staff and man-hours that are merely prolonging the inevitable be used for the benefit of the young who are capable of living independently and productively. Death is necessary because we are mortal. Without death we would still be single-celled prokaryotic bacteria. More to the point, without death, we would not exist because there would be no space for us in the world. Without death, we could not live. We eat dead animal for a reason. Mushrooms decay dead animal matter and plants live off of the detritus. Death is an essential part of ecology.

Okay, imagine someone who lived in 1850 being alive today. You cannot tell me with a straight face that they would be able to be a productive member of society today. Aside from the butter churn being considered advanced technology, social progress would slow to a grinding halt. We'd have slave owners from the civil war still kicking around. We would have university professors who grew up being taught Dalton's billiard ball theory of the atom. I'm sorry to have to break it to you but death is necessary. Imagine five generations of people being alive at one time and what that would do to the population size. Sure, we can become more efficient with resources but when the size of the population would quadruple or more it doesn't matter how efficiently we use them. Every type of population has an upper limit - it's basic ecology. If people started to live on the order of 200 years, the population of each generation would have to become incredibly small so as to reduce resource consumption. Health care costs would absolutely skyrocket. All for what? So the decrepit and elderly can keep on going? All the advancing technology in the world won't change the fact that people will only be able to be productive for so much time before disease and decay inevitably take over.

Come on. People living for 150 or 200 years? Presents clear problems in terms of overpopulation and resources. And how much time and resources are going to be committed to the furtherance of life instead of living it? If I could extend my life, would I? It's a blanket question. Extending the last years of my life aren't going to be all that interesting.

There are limits. People these days die of cancer so much because there's less shit out there to kill em. No matter how many fruits, vegetables, anti-oxidants, multivitamins and new age bullshit people eat, they're still going to die. Remember that humans have incredibly long life spans compared to most animals. There are only a small handful that live longer than we do. We can, and should, only live for so long.

That's mostly because we don't dig wells right next to the outhouses anymore.

It'd be like that episode of the Simpsons where Mr. Burns injects that aphrodesiac from the pockets of a pocket fox... It existed for 2 weeks in the 1700's.

Now is the time of the quickening.

Let's also not forget that the brain decays with age. EDIT: And liquor consumption.

Entropy, bitches. You can't escape it.