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35342
« on: July 09, 2015, 12:34:57 PM »
aaaand once again, i want some cake now
it never fails
35343
« on: July 09, 2015, 12:33:45 PM »
>casuals
35344
« on: July 09, 2015, 12:29:36 PM »
On whether there's an objective line? I'd say there isn't; some actions are just more or less ethical than others. see, this sounds like a contradiction to me how you can say that some actions are more ethical than others, but then say that there's no objective line there if we can define what's ethical and unethical, that to me sounds like some kind of line you're drawing
35345
« on: July 09, 2015, 11:55:31 AM »
TL;DR because that was kind of rambly (I'm turning into Sandtrap, I swear):
I do agree with you when you say that it would be unreasonable to expect anyone to push the guy off, but that doesn't exempt anyone from any responsibility. Because if you don't push the fat guy off, you have to live with the fact that you did nothing to save those people.
35346
« on: July 09, 2015, 11:52:20 AM »
Not to mention there's a whole host of issues surrounding the idea inherent in your claim that you should sacrifice a future ability to perform ethical actions just so you can perform one substantial ethical action today. Precisely--hence this thread. It could easily be argued that you might say to yourself, "I won't push him off, because that would affect me greatly, and inhibit me from doing any further good deeds in the future." That's fair and all, but it ignores, of course, the fact that allowing the five (or however many) people to be killed instead of the one fat guy would also psychologically screw you over. Perhaps even more so. I'm not saying this is how society functions--it quite obviously doesn't--but I'm not even saying this is how society should function, because if it did, society wouldn't last very long, as you pointed out. At least, if ethics is all about pure selflessness and sacrifice, anyway (which, I don't think I'm too far off-base when I claim that it is). The thing is, very few people find themselves in such crazy life-or-death scenarios like the trolley problem. It's a once-in-a-lifetime "opportunity", for lack of a better term. Contemplating the possibility of having a greater or more urgent need for your mental well-being would be... hyperopic?... I mean, it just seems unlikely to me that you'll ever need to make such a big decision again in your life. Unless you're the PotUS, or something. I don't know.
35347
« on: July 09, 2015, 11:27:58 AM »
How can you be ethical to yourself? That makes... no sense.
This reminds me of the trolley problem.
A lot of people wouldn't push the fat guy themselves, which is fine ,even if it results in a net positive lives saved. If pushing the fat man is going to traumatise you, give you PTSD and ensure you never sleep soundly again. . . You'd be justified in not pushing the guy.
Justified in the sense that no one would blame you for it, sure. The issue that jumps right out at me, though, is the fact that in a life-or-death scenario, your main concern isn't the people in danger, but yourself. It's... just factually unethical. Understandable, but unethical. You ought to be willing to sacrifice your own sanity for others, I think. If you're not, I can understand that, I don't blame you, but from an ethical standpoint, it's simply the "wrong" choice. To qualify this standpoint further--I, personally, probably couldn't bring myself into pushing the fat guy off, either.
35348
« on: July 09, 2015, 11:05:24 AM »
That's a rather deficient conception of ethics, then. Acting as though your wellbeing is exempt from the moral sphere makes very little sense, logically; the point is not to overvalue it alongside the wellbeing of others. It's not "exempt" from the moral sphere--it's literally just not there. "Exemption" implies freedom from obligation, which doesn't make aaaany sense regarding this scenario. How can you be ethical to yourself? That makes... no sense. I'm going to have to ask you to defend that opinion Name a single thing we do for ourselves that isn't selfish. I don't know. that's two "i don't know"s you've given to two rather important questions i can tell you didn't give this topic very much thought the general attitude toward "moral obligations" is highly spurious and doesn't really account for the consequences of our inaction i don't think it's that complicated especially when you consider that every action is also an inaction when you do something, you are also refusing not to do it if you save the baby from drowning, you are also not letting the baby drown--it's an inaction and the consequences of that inaction are... demonstrably ethical really, this all just boils down to the third argument in your OP, where you talk about how none of this nullifies the idea that you ought to be the best person you can be, within reason which kind of nullifies the entire thread, if you ask me--i meant to bring it up earlier
35349
« on: July 09, 2015, 02:35:18 AM »
Not sure what you mean by involuntary; I think this relates to the "action vs inaction" I mentioned in the OP. Are we being involuntarily unethical if we can volunteer not to be? I would say so. No one volunteered to be part of the system in the first place (that is to say, life itself). Saying you can just "volunteer" to be an ethical person, like it's really that simple, is very glib. You simply can't expect people to have their homes demolished because they're taking the space of a couple of squirrels and chipmunks or whatever, even if they have an "ethical obligation" to do so. Not really, because it wouldn't be a case of removing your own wellbeing from the equation Well, yes, it would. Part of ethics is removing your own personal welfare from the equation entirely. Anything that you do for yourself is selfish, and selfishness should be absolutely nonexistent in ethics. In my opinion. And the current attitude is geared more toward "as long as you're not doing such and such, you're not a bad person" instead of "as long as you are doing such ans such you're not a bad person".
That seems pretty dangerous to me.
not to me i mean, give me some more examples, i guess
35350
« on: July 09, 2015, 01:36:21 AM »
Then you'd be similarly obligated to investigate the matter And how might one go about this? Regardless, there are much more ways of being a charitable person than donating to potentially shady organizations. Or, hell, form your own organization, and be open about all your practices therein. I just don't really care much for this... half-baked ultimatum you're trying to construct here. I know what you're trying to say, but it just doesn't really work with this particular example. am I being unethical right now by sitting at my computer instead of volunteering at a soup kitchen? Obviously. I'm being unethical right now, too, because though I have AB-negative type blood (the very rarest of them all), I haven't donated an ounce of it. "Being unethical" may as well just be a bodily function of ours. An involuntary one, like breathing, but one nonetheless. The point is, is there any reliable empirical method for determining what is ethical and what isn't? Reliable? Well, no. Human judgment is the definition of unreliability, and that's all we can really base our system of ethics upon, unfortunately. If everyone in the world decided that they were gonna be purely charitable for the rest of their lives, those charitable people would all die. Because to nourish yourself would mean not nourishing somebody else. To me, that sounds like a mockery of ethics, and we shouldn't really play with it like that.
35351
« on: July 09, 2015, 12:12:00 AM »
Well, you can't really trust charities these days.
Unless you want us to pretend that we can, for the purposes of the scenario. <_<
Saving a baby from drowning is easy, because you are taking direct action to save an infant's life. Charity is very, very murky water. You don't know what's being done with your money. So unless there's some charity out there that is guaranteed to be the ultimate paragon of virtue (which there isn't), it's not really a fair comparison.
35352
« on: July 08, 2015, 11:22:01 PM »
i don't care how much stuff there is to do in your game if none of it is fun or interesting
lore is all well and good, but again, if the game isn't fun to play...
35353
« on: July 08, 2015, 11:05:20 PM »
have fun
35354
« on: July 08, 2015, 10:53:00 PM »
Hindsight is 20/20, and Skyrim, lauded as a damn-near perfect benchmark for the genre at release is now claimed to be boring, empty, and shallow. It's hard to pin down an objectively wrong opinion, but that's a good example of one. if it helps, i always thought skyrim was boring, empty, and shallow
35355
« on: July 08, 2015, 10:49:53 PM »
photoshop me in or something
35356
« on: July 08, 2015, 10:46:32 PM »
35357
« on: July 08, 2015, 10:38:15 PM »
just a little bit draconian
hard to sympathize with the bakery, though, because
frankly, these anti-gay bakeries need to start getting their heads out of their asses
35358
« on: July 08, 2015, 10:31:40 PM »
I love how Fallout 3 over the years has gotten this stigma as a "terrible" game.
Lol
probably because it's a terrible game unless you mean people have slowly started to make such a realization, which i haven't quite noticed
35359
« on: July 08, 2015, 10:01:29 PM »
is meta so far the only person not to get sanders
if so, that's hilarious
35360
« on: July 08, 2015, 08:58:17 PM »
Zelda I and II.
Oh, you're gonna make me pick one?... Meh.
35361
« on: July 08, 2015, 06:20:09 PM »
*Krugthing
35362
« on: July 08, 2015, 05:34:35 PM »
So basically, Verb: opinions aren't wrong, but the logic behind the opinion can be. Yeah, basically. I think that's reasonable.
35363
« on: July 08, 2015, 03:53:19 PM »
cost of living should be 0
yeah and cancer shouldn't exist and Pacciao should've beat Mayweather
better stop trying to cure it i guess
35364
« on: July 08, 2015, 02:28:56 PM »
cost of living should be 0
35365
« on: July 08, 2015, 01:33:03 PM »
he dropped out a long time ago
35366
« on: July 08, 2015, 11:39:38 AM »
I can indeed think of at least one situation where opinions and facts are intermingled in a very prudent and excruciating way, however: Meat-eating. While one can philosophically agree that eating meat & dairy products is ethically wrong, they let their subjective tastes rule their actions anyway. "It tastes good, therefore I don't care."
That type of thing is dangerous.
That's the type of toxic opinion that I think is worth caring about.
Ties into what you were talking about with priorities. If you acknowledge the welfare of animals to be a priority, then you're far more likely to become a vegan. Those who continue to consume animal products obviously don't view it as a priority in their lives--and that's where the debate comes in. And it's a debate that needs to happen.
To keep this from being derailed into that subject, though, I would say the point at which opinions start mattering is precisely when one's opinion is affectatious to (or impinging upon) the welfare of another sentience.
It might be one's opinion that it should be okay to own slaves, but it's objectively not.
It might be one's opinion that it should be okay to kill/rape people on a whim, but it's objectively not.
It might be one's opinion that it should be okay to discriminate based on one's identity, but it's objectively not.
Opinions that do not impinge upon another sentience are fair game.
It might be one's opinion that Halo is an enjoyable video game.
This opinion, of course, doesn't harm anyone, so it's... bottom priority. You won't see anyone in Congress debating about it.
35367
« on: July 08, 2015, 11:17:03 AM »
You could, of course, say that this is already what we do. But then I'm left to question just what purpose "opinions" serve from an epistemological point of view, and why anybody care about them at all. From an epistemological point of view, opinions are junk. (I also think epistemology is kind of a junk concept in itself, but whatever.) As for why we should care? Well, if you want my point of view, it's simply because they fascinate me. It fascinates me how an individual could derive enjoyment from the things that I personally derive no enjoyment (and in many cases, anti-enjoyment) from, whether it be video games, movies, or your choice of beverage. I find a lot of what human beings do for entertainment absolutely disgusting, stupid, and pointless. Because a lot of it is disgusting, stupid, and pointless. Part what what I'm here for--and this is simply my ego talking--is to understand precisely why human beings would entertain themselves with such deplorably odious things. Doing drugs, drinking alcohol, watching anime, playing Dark Souls... My brain can't process that information very well on its own, so, naturally, I seek it out from others. Unfortunately, too many people are either 1. Too inarticulate to explain their preferences 2. Too self-important to bother doing so (a lot of people think their opinions are sacred, and can't be judged) nonetheless, i search on maybe every once in a blue moon, the reason will dawn on me, and i'll finally understand Is it rational to care so much about other people's subjective tastes? I don't think it's irrational. You might be able to say it's futile. But in a way, I derive a certain level of pleasure, too, from watching others attempt to explain their own thought processes. Like most people, I do love a good explanation. Bad explanations are infuriating, but bountiful enough to make the finding of good explanations extremely gratifying. You get the thrill of finding something that you've been looking for for ages, as well as a furthered knowledge of the human psyche. At this point, I don't even really know/care if I'm answering your question--I'm just having a lot of fun rambling about this  But that's why I care about other people's opinions. I'm a social creature trapped living with other more disgusting social creatures, trying to figure out how they tick, because if I can't do that, I can't mingle with them very well. From a purely logical perspective, caring about other people's tastes would be a waste of time, but then again, if our universe was based on reason alone, there would be no such thing as subjectivity in the first place.
35368
« on: July 08, 2015, 10:49:41 AM »
I'm gonna have to buy this shit.  No you're not?
35369
« on: July 08, 2015, 10:48:13 AM »
i actually dreamt last night that i was a cyborg
it sucked
...really really sucked
35370
« on: July 08, 2015, 09:58:42 AM »
"Chocolate cake is best" is an opinion because it makes no attempt at establishing the context of what "best" means and thus can be answered truthfully by different viewers of the question because they hold differing values. Well, no.
If you haven't established the definitions of the words in your claim, it can't be answered properly at all.
exactly which is why, from a philosophical standpoint, subjective tastes are vastly insignificant, because there's so many variables, and they only serve to tease and appease our highly capricious brains as for whether there's any difference between an opinion and a truth-rich proposition, if we took a neurological poll to see how many people in the world enjoy biscuits, we might find that 83.45% of all people in the world enjoy biscuits, so "83.45% of human beings on Planet Earth enjoy biscuits" would be your truth-rich proposition. But like eggsalad said, that does tend to undermine the very definition of "opinion"--opinions are incompatible with any empirical data, because in order to calculate whether x is "better" in some way than y, you'd have to account for all possible types of social, environmental, genetic, etc. conditioning that would lead one to prefer one over the other. Which is not only comically impossible (the sort of impossibility that makes me reel back and chuckle at the very thought of it), it's nonsensical. Could we do it if we sat down and tried?... No, I really don't think so. It would be a waste of time, of course. What we can attempt to do is peer at individual cases, though. If we had video recording of two people's entire lives, including their inner thoughts, feelings, opinions, emotions, and all other brain function, we might be able to calculate precisely why they have each and every one of their preferences to a tee, and compare them. The tricky part comes in when attempting to evaluate the conditionings. Linda may prefer chocolate over vanilla because she had more chocolate as a child than vanilla, and she associates chocolate more with goodness and happiness. Derrick may prefer vanilla over chocolate for similar reasons--he had more vanilla than chocolate as a kid, and it reminds him of his childhood, when he used to have it with his friends at school. How can one judge which is the "better" one of these two extremely mundane types of social conditioning?
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