False—killing a serial killer before he's able to murder the 20 people he's holding hostage saves 20 people and kills one. That is a minimization of suffering, even if he was bluffing the entire time.

"Minimize" does not mean "completely get rid of" because that's not feasible. Sometimes you have to pick between two poisons, but the obvious choice EVERY SINGLE TIME will be the vial that contains the least poison, because that's the vial that will induce the least amount of suffering. It's the least worst option, AKA the only correct one.

Yes, it would minimize suffering. It wouldn't handle the problem that there are people who are hardwired naturally to hurt and misbehave. Let's set that aside for the moment, because it's irrelevant. What is relevant is whether or not morality is subjective or objective. While I think that truly minimizing suffering, would have to entail some truly elaborate plan to not hurt those who hurt others, but to also protect those who others want to hurt. This to me would be ideal, but it doesn't change the fact that it's just an opinion, whether or not people should be hurt.

You will not convince others simply by declaring that pain is real. Your whole position is based on the idea that you could, technically convince all of the world that there should be one moral idea that they should all follow. Human beings are not like sheep, they're not easy to herd, and when they are we call that religion. Religion, is obviously not the absolute morality you are looking for. Only religious people truly feel that morality is objective, because they feel that there is one authority figure that divines it, and so it's absolute. Individual morality, cannot be absolute, it is subjective.

Right, and killing them will surely put them out of that misery. No one sane wants bad people to suffer either. We just need them out of our society, because we're better off without them and they're better off without us.

And they're better off without us. You contradict yourself. The justice system is unfortunate, because it can't account for all human behavior in it's rigid, socially defined constructs.

That's not even true of regular opinions, like with music. I can convince someone that a song is good or has good qualities, and with a little bit of reasoning and explanation, I might even be able to turn them on to it. Same with movies and video games. It's not always easy, but it's possible. People do change their minds, and sometimes we can change each other's minds.

Same goes with morality, and that doesn't mean it's subjective. I thought veganism was fucking stupid and a waste of time ten years ago—now I'm a vegan and I've influenced nearly 20 other people to become vegans as well.

Songs are a perfect example of something which is subjective though. That example is just bad. You're saying there's an objective reason why a song is good, that's nonsense. You influenced a bunch of people to be vegan? LMAO! Okay, then you converted them to your opinion. You should work in a church, because you're obviously good at proselytizing, however specious your actual words are.

Says you. This just sounds like you're saying "it's too hard, we're too stupid."

Maybe you're too stupid, so it's too hard for you. But that's a personal problem. I find moral questions very easy to answer with nuance. For example, most of the time, murder isn't okay. Sometimes murder is okay because it's better than letting a serial rapist live.

Ad hominems are not helpful. It is actually the opposite of what I'm saying. It is stupid to always look for easily definable binaries. That is what the human brain is conditioned to do though, you simply can't handle too much grey area.

Not true—again, scientists have debates on shit all the time because they disagree with each other all the time. There are all kinds of conflicting hypotheses on all sorts of things. That doesn't mean science is subjective.

Science is the search for objective truth. Even then, science can't always find objective truth. Regardless, you assume that there is an objective truth to morality, even though morality can't be taught. If morality was teachable, then we'd obviously have a lot of very good men, and be able to identify why they are good men and teach others to be good men like them. We don't though, no such teachers exist.

Quote from: Loaf on September 22, 2017, 03:38:34 PM

The fact that pain is real, is just a declarative statement, which doesn't prove that morality is objective.

If we have the ability to stop the pain, and the pain isn't necessary to experience, then yes, that does basically prove that morality is objective. It establishes a very simple rules—don't hurt people, because it creates a negative sensation in the universe.

Nobody wants to feel pain for no reason, not even masochists. It is immoral to cause that which no reasonable person would want to experience.

If you agree, then there's no point in saying morality is subjective, because you're undermining your entire philosophy. If morality is subjective, then there wouldn't be a point in discussing morality at all, because everybody is apparently free to have their own interpretations. This is obviously bullshit. We debate morality because some people's interpretations are better than others, objectively, and those are the ones that have to triumph over the shit interpretations. That's our goal.

There is no other sensible or functional goal, in terms of having a suffering-free existence on earth.

No, if we have the ability to stop pain, then it proves that you want to stop pain. It doesn't prove that there's an objective "reason" for that. It just proves that it serves your own self interest, which of course makes this objective. If I were to say, there is a keyboard in front of me, then that keyboard would exist as a tangible indivisible object. Opinion is divisible, it can be two different things derived from the same idea. That is what makes it an opinion, not a fact.

I'm not undermining my philosophy. If I was undermining my philosophy, I would be saying that morality can somehow be taught. However, I'm saying that morality is subjective. No, it's not obviously bullshit that people can have their own interpretations of morality. Once again, if there's a debate with two parties, then one or both of the parties are ignorant in order for there to be a meaningful disagreement. We are both ignorant of what morality is, and I say that I am ignorant in the sense that I don't know what objective morality is, because there can't be an objective morality.

Yeah. Well, I'm not saying that I should be the one doing this, and I would never do anything to hurt another human being, but there's probably some people who know they should become the next Eric Harris or Eliot Rodger, and they're just laying in wait, too scared to fulfill their destiny.

Homosexuality is an abomination.

Post a pic to prove it.

Four of the things haven't arrived yet, I'll wait until those arrive.

Quote from: Loaf on September 22, 2017, 03:12:42 PM

Quote from: Verbatim on September 22, 2017, 02:44:37 PM

Quote from: Loaf on September 22, 2017, 02:43:27 PM

without proving using evidence why that's true.

But I did.

I stated axiomatic facts of reality—facts that would make you either stupid or evil if you disagreed with them.

So you either think suffering is good, or there isn't a way to stop it/there's no point in trying, all of which are incorrect beliefs.

Well, the word "good" is also subjective, so you're just using subjective words to support a faux-objective argument.

Wrong. If I cut your arm off, it is an objective fact that it will be a negative experience for you. You will experience a negative sensation or a bad feeling. This is not an opinion.

What laws of the universe prove that this is what morality is? You say that morality is basically to limit suffering, a lot of societies don't agree on what this entails. Take Saudi Arabia or the united states, for instance. Two different countries with radically different ideas of what morality should look like. Morality is largely influenced by the culture you were brought up in. Your morality is informed by modern thinking in a first world country, so that is your perspective. However, just because you have this perspective, doesn't mean that there's any way to prove that this perspective is "right". That's just what you think morality is.

Quote from: Loaf on September 22, 2017, 02:36:15 PM

That's your own subjective opinion. There's no written law that proves that. Your subjective view of morality happens to be a view that I share, but it's not like physics where there's an objective answer to it.

and those are all declarative statements with nothing backing them up, which by your logic proves you're a retard or something

What? All you did was make a declarative statement, saying that that is what morality is, without proving using evidence why that's true. I can make a declarative statement if my goal is to declare a fact, which I did.

i just read the bible

Yeah man, who needs the theory of evolution to understand biology? LMAO! Jesus is the way man :^)

Quote from: Loaf on September 22, 2017, 02:30:57 PM

Quote from: Verbatim on September 22, 2017, 01:55:14 PM

Other way around.

Morality is objective, and you're retarded if you don't see that.

LMAO YOU CAN'T EXPLAIN WHY. THAT'S JUST AN DECLARATIVE STATEMENT. THE TRUE RETARD IS EXPOSED.

Gratuitous suffering is objectively bad.

There is objectively a way to minimize suffering in the universe.

Anything that creates more suffering than it fixes is objectively bad, and anything that prevents more suffering than it creates is objectively good.

This is morality.

That's your own subjective opinion. There's no written law that proves that. Your subjective view of morality happens to be a view that I share, but it's not like physics where there's an objective answer to it.

wow any more cat stuff and youll be in a fursuit before you know it

lol

Nihilism is the logical conclusion of life perspective.

Morality is a spook, yes, but society functions because groups of people all agree that certain spooks are worth holding on to or believing in. Therefore, it can be argued that it is human nature to subscribe to moral codes.

It's human nature to be tribalistic and fear the unknown. It does not follow that it's human nature to follow moral codes. For some people it may be part of tribalism to follow moral codes because the rest of their group is doing so; this is obviously not absolute, because not all people do. So the argument is irrelevant.

There's no way to define virtue, and anything you do define will just be based on subjective cultural norms. Human beings obviously don't have inborn virtues, because any virtue that you try to state is a virtue is technically going to be imposed as a law. It's clear that not all human beings follow laws, because laws are arbitrary and man made and don't always coincide with human nature. If you think that morality is somehow objective, you are objectively a retard.

The nigger will be about a black guy who dindo nuthin, and it will be a bunch of highly filtered, high resolution film shoots of "the nigger" walking down the street, buying a candy bar, and it will show extreme close up shots of cops watching the nigger, and extreme close up shots of the nigger as he glances at the white man who he despises.

YOU THINK RAPE IS FUNNY? GIVE ME YOUR PARENTS PHONE NUMBER SO I CAN CALL THEM AND TELL THEM THAT YOU THINK RAPE IS FUNNY!!!!