The games make more sense if you ignore the existence of 4 and V.

Does this guy do this a lot?

Before I say anything I'd like to point out that this is the kind of mathematical way of thinking that I sperged out over in my first few posts here; You've chosen axioms that are complete opposites of mine and created a view point that's incompatible with my own but probably self consistent.
Because of this I'm not even sure if it makes sense to compare our views to one another; all the metrics I use to show that my ideas are great make no sense under your axioms, and all of your conclusions are trivially false under mine. So I'm not going to argue with you over any of this but I do appreciate that you've written this all out.

But to be less vague, here's the points that I disagree with, I'm not trying to argue so you don't need to reply to these (and the inevitable quote war will take up too much of our time), and the disagreement is again a fundamental one that can't be resolved without changing axioms:

Anti-natalists believe that human beings have no such right, and as such, the creation of life--in any form--is a moral crime of the highest order, and we have a moral imperative to "cease & desist," as it were, and go extinct.

To the common man, that very idea will likely seem ludicrous, and this is understandable. We are biologically hardwired to want to survive. But that notion in our minds is just that--a biologically-constructed hardwiring. Not a rationally-constructed hardwiring--not a hardwiring constructed out of reason--but a biological hardwiring.

First I believe that my existence is what gives me the right to create life, if I didn't deserve to have it then I simply wouldn't have it. To me a rational justification is the principle of natural selection, organisms that are capable of surviving, survive, and organisms that are not, do not. I exist because of this process so acting in accordance with it is fundamentally what I'm meant to do.

"If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather have so much sympathy with the coming generation as to spare it the burden of existence, or at any rate not take it upon himself to impose that burden upon it in cold blood?"
- Arthur Schopenhauer (father of anti-natalism), 1851

Conversely it's because I have sympathy for the next generation that I want to do my best to help them, and that includes helping them exist.

The fact is, life is an imposition--none of us asked to be here, and none of us would ask to be here, if we were granted the ability to just sit and ponder it. We live in a world of hatred, violence, poverty, and neglect. Everything is imperfect. There is absolutely no logical reason any of us would want to be on this planet--and yet, we force well over 100 million people into the world every single year. People who didn't want it, people who didn't ask for it--but we gave it to them anyway, because of this silly, selfish notion in our heads that having children is a-okay.

I'm afraid your personal experience with life is not sufficient evidence for life's purported virtue. Your life makes up less than 0.000000001% (that is not an exaggeration) of all the people who have ever lived. You simply cannot prove that, based on your personal life experience, that your child would have as "good" of a life as yours.

Here the difference between us is that I look at the life of my parents, grandparents, and all the people that came before me, and see a trend of increasing capability to live a better life. I have options that people before me didn't have and because of that I've improved my life, and I predict that my children will have at least as many option and so will live at least as good a life as I have. Also my way of life is pretty standard for the few million people that live in my country (NZ).

A truly "good" life is a life free of all pain, suffering, and discomfort. Negative sensation is brought to its absolute minimum, and positive sensation is racked up to its absolute maximum. That's a good life. None of us have had that.

Nobody should want to live in a universe where you must endure any level of adversity, or any degree of negative sensation, simply to "grow" as a person.

That is a fundamentally broken design.

This is a really key difference, my life is good only because I've had to build it up after more than decade of failures and disappointments; I enjoy what I have and what I'm capable of because I can remember a time when I had nothing and most things were impossible, and because I was able to overcome that to get to where I am today.

It's not necessarily that we want the human race to go extinct. Extinction is merely the byproduct of not having reproduced after a few decades.

This is where the arguments start getting very irrational and emotionally-charged.

Wanting to have a kid to extend your bloodline is axiomatically selfish. You are willing to risk it all--maybe your kid will have cancer. Maybe your kid will have two heads. Maybe your kid will have harlequin ichthyosis. You're willing to risk all of that just so you can stick your hand up and say, "I extended my bloodline." Why? What did you accomplish?

As for me being selfish, that's just silly. I'm the only one who's accounting for the fact that children have absolutely no say in their birth, and that should probably give you a little bit of pause.

And for this, I'm fine with being selfish, I think it's worth the risk.
—
So yeah, thanks for posting this, it's answered my questions and confirmed my suspicions. You've got an interesting viewpoint.

Quote from: Cadenza on January 07, 2016, 01:54:05 AM

Quote from: Luciana on January 05, 2016, 09:00:40 PM

In terms of the more OT issue, I don't believe everyone should vote. Why? Because so many people are uneducated in who they vote for, and what they vote for. They just listen to the masses or popular opinion without doing the research themselves and coming to their own conclusion.

This is one of my biggest problems with democracy; I'm the most politically knowledgeable person in my family and circle of friends and yet I'm hilariously uninformed about most things needed to run a country; it's ridiculous that I'll be able to vote at the next election despite knowing almost nothing about any of the politicians, let alone having the ability to compare them and choose the best one.

You can't blame democracy on plain ignorance. It's the job of a citizen to do his or her own research.

That's exactly the problem, democracy requires that all the voters make a full time job out of educating themselves on every single issue, anything less and you have uninformed people making uninformed decisions. As far as I can see it's infeasible to get people to invest so much time into a topic that they're apathetic about. I'm a politically interested person who's on holiday right now, and I live in a small country; I have all this free time and motivation and significantly less information regarding the legal structures to go through and yet It will still take years of active resarch just to get up to a baseline "alright now I vaguely understand most issues" level of information, and that's still not enough to justify my opinions effecting the government with my vote. I don't see how this could work at all for the other 3 million voters here, let alone any country with orders of magnitude more people and centuries more history to work with.

but this is just a shit meme

Articulate yourself, calling things you don't like a meme is itself a meme.

Quote from: Kiwicake on January 07, 2016, 01:26:00 AM

Quote from: Batch on January 07, 2016, 01:22:12 AM

Can we just get rid of non whites already?  They cause far too much trouble.

Only if Australians are included in that list

We are the pinnacle of human evolution mate. You can't tossie the Aussie

Go get eaten by a Dingo mate.

Sometime ago I stumbled across the blog of the creator of the Dilbert comics Scott Adams, and reading through his series on Trump has been very interesting and more importantly useful. The idea of taking specific view points of realty as filters to explain why events happen is very similar to the axiomatic method of constructing maths, you take a few given things as truth and build the rest of the picture on top of those truths. The Master Persuader filter for instance has to make me rethink my support for Trump, on the one hand I've been trying to pin down my beliefs for over a year now and Trump just happens to align with them, but on the other hand I've gone from thinking he was a bad joke to being caught up in the excitement of his campaign.

And what's more interesting is coming up with your own filters:
With the "Humans don't have that much of an impact" filter, suddenly fracking, global warming, and ocean pollution become non-issues.
With the "Humans DO have that much of an impact" filter, they become problems.
With the "all people are equal filter" I can quickly recreate liberal, multicultural, and feminist talking points with ease despite being fundamentally opposed to them.
With the "Hitler dindu nuffin wrong" filter, everything becomes in some way touched by God's chosen people.
With the "I can create my own sense of morality from logic and reason" filter, I become an atheist.
With the "I'm getting pretty arrogant there" filter, I become a Christian.

I feel like this is an important mental tool that I've been working towards but wouldn't have gotten to otherwise, does this concept sound like common sense to any of you?
—
Now speaking as a trump supporter, if the Master Persuader filter really is the correct one, and moreover if Trump really does become the president, then I would take that as definitive proof of how much of a joke democracy is; The entire democratic process becomes a reality tv show.

People who can reconcile with meat-eating AT ALL, IN ANY CAPACITY WHATSOEVER

Optimists.

"Realists," or anyone that doesn't identify as a pessimist; doesn't admit that realism and pessimism are basically the same.

Any chance you could give me a rundown of anti-natalism? It sounds like something I'd be opposed to on an axiomatic level so it'd be best if I heard about it from someone I can readily ask questions.

Also if you're up for it, could you go into more depth about the quotes above? These also aren't opinions I understand.

Having a bad memory, it makes it hard to keep track of which people I've said which things to.
Mosquitoes.
Hollywood and it's effects on people's standards.
The news and it's effects on people's minds.
Knowing the answer to someone's question/problem but not being articulate enough to explain the answer to them in a way that's helpful.
Most methods of teaching maths; it takes a lot of effort and painful lack of self awareness to take the most interesting subject you could conceive of and make it boring to most people.
The impression people give off where they don't have anything in life to be passionate about; it really doesn't matter what it is provided it isn't disgustingly degenerate, just have something.

;_;7 rip in piece quality posts ;_;7

Quote from: Cadenza on January 05, 2016, 12:03:33 AM

Wrong. And in every single rally he does Trump always makes it a point to mention that he's going to settle business with Iran and ISIS.

"Syria’s a mess. You look at what’s going on with ISIS in there, now think of this: we’re fighting ISIS. ISIS wants to fight Syria. Why are we fighting ISIS in Syria? Let them fight each other and pick up the remnants."

Bolded part being the most important thing he said there. But it is fair to say that he hasn't been specific about his plans, though I wouldn't expect any candidate to do so.

Quote

Please tell me what's wrong with his plan, and how everyone else's immigration plan isn't emotionally based.

Not sure what I can say about this that hasn't already been said. It looks like Turkey has it covered though.

Turkey hasn't said a single thing. I do actually want to hear the opinions of you guys instead of trying to guess at what you're all thinking.

Quote

Not sure what you mean by this

Claims he'll get along well with Putin based on his brief meeting with him on 60 minutes. Regardless he proposes no plans on the matter.

That's not a strong stance but that's too vague to call it weak. Are there any specific points you'd want trump to address?

Quote

These are almost fair points though, he doesn't give substance in his speeches but they are there on his site, and most of his plans seem to rest on congress letting him do what he wants which is still uncertain.

I'll check out the site.

Quote

Ignoring the first two, when has he ever lied?

http://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/
He always gets in a disagreement with someone regarding facts during the Republican debates and his never seem to check out.

I'm going to need some time to go over all of that but I appreciate the link.

You do know that having a different opinion now than you did over a decade ago isn't lying right? And while it will take a while to find the video where he said it, Trump roughly said "I'm a businessman, it was my job to get along with everybody" which is why he funded them.

Conversely vote for him for me since I'm not in America.

Very few reasons to vote for him m8.

+Decent tax plan
+Doesn't give a fuck about offending people or being controversial
+Dislikes political correctness

-Wants to stay out of the Middle East

Wrong. And in every single rally he does Trump always makes it a point to mention that he's going to settle business with Iran and ISIS.

-Protectionist
-Immigration plans are emotion-based and poorly thought-out

Please tell me what's wrong with his plan, and how everyone else's immigration plan isn't emotionally based.

-Will be weak on Russia

Not sure what you mean by this

-Both parties hate him, would not get along with any Congress
-Usually doesn't give much substance in terms of solutions other than "I would do better"

These are almost fair points though, he doesn't give substance in his speeches but they are there on his site, and most of his plans seem to rest on congress letting him do what he wants which is still uncertain.

-Narcissistic
-Doesn't seem very intelligent
-Lies a lot

Ignoring the first two, when has he ever lied?

;~;

ISIS Ike.

Explain this shit to me: