Thought I'd bring this back, since they tend to be interesting enough. So, what are your most controversial opinions? Be they philosophical, political or economical.

Philosophy:
- Nietzsche was right about a lot.
- St. Augustine was an idiot.
- Noam Chomsky is a fucking idiot.
- Punishment makes almost no ethical sense.
- Morality is objective, and is essentially Aristotelian in nature.
- Power is essentially the currency of social relationships.
- Rights don't "exist"; rights are just privileges extended by the powerful, and they should line up with morality.
- Induction is a myth, people learn hypothetico-deductively.
- Islam is the worst and most dangerous religion on the planet.
- Free will doesn't exist.
- Whether or not the world is deterministic or indeterministic is largely irrelevant to discussions of free will, although I lean toward deterministic.

Political:
- Prisons ought to essentially be abolished in their current form. They're only appropriate for people who cannot be rehabilitated.
- Terrorists should be treated as enemy combatants and subject to the death penalty.
- Government collection of metadata is justified, and doesn't constitute spying.
- Snowden is a traitor, who deserves a hefty sentence.
- There's no such thing as an absolute freedom, and the trade-off between security and freedom is one which must be made.
- People on the Left are almost always "Bolshevik" in nature, in that they seem to think people are so stupid as to be controlled by a clandestine group of neoliberal masters.
- Freedom is desirable because it encourages responsibility and self-reliance, not because freedom is intrinsically valuable.
- The European Union is one of the least useful, most damaging institutions in European history.
- Coursework is more important than examinations.
- Iran is a terrorist state, and America embarrassed themselves during the nuclear negotiations.
- The Iraq War was justified, and will prove beneficial for Iraq in the long-term.
- Obama's foreign policy has been an absolute joke.
- The anti-war and civil liberties lobbies are becoming excessively hysterical.
- Feminism is a joke, and distracts Western societies from the very real plight of women in Africa and the Middle East.
- All drugs should be legalised.
- Euthanasia should remain illegal.
- Euro-western exceptionalism is valid.
- A unipolar world where America is at the top is better than a bipolar world.
- The British Asian community has a cultural issue when it comes to sex crimes.

Economics:
- Marginal tax rates as high as 80pc are justified when it comes to taxing the consumption of the wealthy.
- Almost everybody except a small group of monetarists got the Recession wrong.
- Inflation as high as 10pc can be justified in economic downturns.
- Talking about interest rates in terms of monetary policy is almost useless.
- Income inequality is mostly driven by NIMBYism and rising rents.
- Fiscal stimulus is almost always useless.
- Redistributing wealth will just tend to make people poorer.
- Taxing the rich also tends to make society, on aggregate, poorer since the government is expropriating savings.
- Corporate income tax should be abolished.
- Capital income taxes should also be abolished.
- Public sector unions should be abolished, or at least disallowed from striking.

I'll add any more I can think of.

- If you support the meat & dairy industry, you are no better than a slave owner/Nazi.

Whoa.

- Nietzsche was an insane fucktard.

Whoa.

You're all fucking retards.

bips bedora

Quote from: Meta Cognition on June 09, 2015, 05:28:06 PM

Quote

- Nietzsche was an insane fucktard.

Whoa.

i'm sorry, but nihilism to me is pretty irreconcilably stupid

Mate. . . Nietzsche was firmly anti-Nihilist.

He hated nihilists. Nietzsche was an existentialist.

how is that controversial that is literally just basic logic

I guess I just have to disproportionately deal with people who whip out the indeterminism card whenever I mention I'm a determinist.

I consciously acknowledge that science does not support determinism

What, how doesn't it?

Quote from: eggsalad on June 09, 2015, 05:46:55 PM

how is that controversial that is literally just basic logic

I guess I just have to disproportionately deal with people who whip out the indeterminism card whenever I mention I'm a determinist.

Quote

I consciously acknowledge that science does not support determinism

What, how doesn't it?

tl;dr
randomness in quantum mechanics

randomness in quantum mechanics

Quote from: eggsalad on June 09, 2015, 05:51:38 PM

randomness in quantum mechanics

I'm yet to see evidence which suggests quantum indeterminism has any kind of effect on "classical" physics.

But, hell, I'm no physicist.

Yeah I'm kind of in the same boat. I don't understand a god damn lick of it but any time I try my hand at the determinism conversation I get my ass handed to me by people who do, so I've just come to accept that I'm probably wrong.

Quote from: eggsalad on June 09, 2015, 05:51:38 PM

randomness in quantum mechanics

I'm yet to see evidence which suggests quantum indeterminism has any kind of effect on "classical" physics.

But, hell, I'm no physicist.

What about physicists making quantum measurements? Wouldn't that make micro-scale indeterminism affect us on the macro scale?

 

Quote from: Verbatim on June 09, 2015, 06:08:25 PM

Meta, what your thoughts on IRV?

What the fuck is that?

Instant-runoff voting? Surely you've heard of it... Maybe you call it something else over there.

It doesn't matter if God is cruel or not, as an omniscient being he is objectively moral and what actions he makes in his interests are ultimately the most purposeful.

thank god there's no reason to care about him existing though lol