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Author Topic: Premarital sex talk :O  (Read 72880 times)

SalmonGod

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Re: Premarital sex talk :O
« Reply #360 on: October 08, 2011, 01:45:46 pm »

There's the fools who rely overmuch on science, nearly deifying it, and there's the fools who rely overmuch on faith and do evil by it.

I think in both cases it has less to do with the limitations of one style of thinking vs the other and more to do with people becoming so obsessed with a methodology that they become incapable of recognizing when they're failing the original goals of contributing to human well-being.  People need to learn to let go instead of clinging when it becomes clear that the ideas and processes they hold dear are becoming harmful when they were meant to be helpful.  This stubbornness is what I attribute the majority of the world's problems to.  The larger the grouping of people, the larger the inclination to stuff everyone's identities and values into a rigid structure.  Ironically, this also means that the larger the grouping of people, the larger the membership of that group whose needs are going to be forsaken... and when you point out this failing the common response will be roughly "this is just the way it is", which is just an appeal to the rigidity of the structure rather than saying anything for its worth to humanity.

The prime example is The Law.  Anyone with the slightest bit of critical thinking ability is aware that the law isn't always right... yet we cling to this belief that adhering to the law even when it isn't right is fundamental to the integrity of society.  I see this as contradictory.  How can it be right to value this abstract concept of society or any of its facets over any human being, when society is supposed to be a collection of social structures that facilitate mutual cooperation and support by and for all human participants.  Yet it seems to me like people are constantly abandoning each other over these abstract ideals, forgetting that those ideals were invented in the first place to help them benefit each other.

I wrote the following on an MBTI forum, and I think it's also pretty relevant to this issue.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
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In the land of twilight, under the moon
We dance for the idiots
As the end will come so soon
In the land of twilight

Maybe people should love for the sake of loving, and not with all of these optimization conditions.

KaelGotDwarves

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Re: Premarital sex talk :O
« Reply #361 on: October 08, 2011, 05:38:08 pm »

Vector, and pardon me if I'm getting this wrong, the debate here is leaning towards post-positivist thought.

The simple truth of it is that there's no humanity, ethics, morality, values and such in science and the universe unless we put it there. In the past, not just religion has done evil, science has as well. It's a simple thing to do to forget about, morality towards your fellow humans, when you're interested in the best, most functional people and societies. Think Nazi Aryanism and experiments on people, Chinese Great Leap Forward, the Khmer Rouge Cambodian Genocide, past liquidations of the mentally infirm and disabled. You may argue that these are not sound applications of science, but it certainly made sense to the people doing it. It's the same with religious bigots, organised religion is supposed to serve and protect people in a co-beneficial relationship, not have people toiling under oppression.

So we should look more in our similarities than our differences. Otherwise we forget that we're all human.

Humanity's enemy is dogmaticism.
« Last Edit: October 08, 2011, 05:43:31 pm by KaelGotDwarves »
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Vector

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Re: Premarital sex talk :O
« Reply #362 on: October 08, 2011, 07:09:01 pm »

Hmm... I'm not sure.

I'm quite aware that all these modes of thought can be used for evil.  For me, there's no debate there.  Science can be evil, religion can be evil, just about anything can be.  Similarly, they can be used for good.

However, I'm not sure that we don't know the difference between good and evil within ourselves--something inherited, innate.
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"The question of the usefulness of poetry arises only in periods of its decline, while in periods of its flowering, no one doubts its total uselessness." - Boris Pasternak

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Tack

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Re: Premarital sex talk :O
« Reply #363 on: October 08, 2011, 07:13:29 pm »

Dolphin-like...
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Yeah, he's a banned spammer. Normally we'd delete this thread too, but people were having too much fun with it by the time we got here.

Vector

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Re: Premarital sex talk :O
« Reply #364 on: October 08, 2011, 07:14:13 pm »

Dolphin-like...

Yeah, I think there's some orange taffeta involved, too!
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"The question of the usefulness of poetry arises only in periods of its decline, while in periods of its flowering, no one doubts its total uselessness." - Boris Pasternak

nonbinary/genderfluid/genderqueer renegade mathematician and mafia subforum limpet. please avoid quoting me.

pronouns: prefer neutral ones, others are fine. height: 5'3".

MetalSlimeHunt

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Re: Premarital sex talk :O
« Reply #365 on: October 08, 2011, 07:28:07 pm »

However, I'm not sure that we don't know the difference between good and evil within ourselves--something inherited, innate.
Aspects of evolutionary morality are hardly a revelation. If the vast majority of people considered killing other humans a solution to conflicts below a certain level of severity and rarity, we as a species would go extinct. It's just not something that would evolve for very long, because it doesn't lend to a stable population. Theft is similar, in that a society in which you can steal without penalty is one where everyone spends all their time trying to steal what they want and need from everyone else and everyone ends up starving to death when the consumable goods run out. Community and altruism, on the other hand, both assist a stable population. If you have a lone hunter who fails to get a kill one week, they die. If you have ten hunters who fail to get a kill half of the time, the ones who succeed through averages alone feed everyone and the group can continue surviving. The evolutionary benefits of morality are fairly clear.
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Quote from: Thomas Paine
To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.
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SalmonGod

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Re: Premarital sex talk :O
« Reply #366 on: October 08, 2011, 07:30:25 pm »

I've been telling people since I was 14

When everyone looks out for each other, no one needs to look out for themselves.
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In the land of twilight, under the moon
We dance for the idiots
As the end will come so soon
In the land of twilight

Maybe people should love for the sake of loving, and not with all of these optimization conditions.

Tack

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Re: Premarital sex talk :O
« Reply #367 on: October 08, 2011, 07:37:39 pm »

Not really... What about the people who are really, really isolated? And what about handicapped or disabled people?
It's funny, because the major thing we have keeping down the human population at the moment is war.

Yet unlike survival of the fittest, in which the weakest die and the strongest breed, instead we take our strongest (physically, anyway), and kill them off.
Hilarious.
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Sentience, Endurance, and Thumbs: The Trifector of a Superpredator.
Yeah, he's a banned spammer. Normally we'd delete this thread too, but people were having too much fun with it by the time we got here.

Vector

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Re: Premarital sex talk :O
« Reply #368 on: October 08, 2011, 07:38:25 pm »

Then how can we say there is only morality because "we put it there?"

To be sure, morality exists only with self-consciousness and intent--"ensoulment," if you like, but that doesn't mean it had to be posited by us.
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"The question of the usefulness of poetry arises only in periods of its decline, while in periods of its flowering, no one doubts its total uselessness." - Boris Pasternak

nonbinary/genderfluid/genderqueer renegade mathematician and mafia subforum limpet. please avoid quoting me.

pronouns: prefer neutral ones, others are fine. height: 5'3".

Bauglir

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Re: Premarital sex talk :O
« Reply #369 on: October 08, 2011, 07:40:39 pm »

Of course, now that we're sapient enough to have a concept of sapience, it seems like the way to go to analyze those instincts to determine what's actually good by whatever definition we decide on, and which is evolutionary cruft that's just good at getting us to reproduce - which is, for obvious reasons, not an inherently good goal.

Going back to the scientific thought vs religious thought thing, it seems a classic case of overemphasis. Maybe I'm oversimplifying things myself, but it seems like nearly every time somebody has a good insight ("Holy shit guys, science is effective!" "Holy shit guys, language can impact our perception of the world!" etc), most of the people who hear about it understand on some level that there's a valuable tool here, and immediately abandon every other tool because this one is good, and don't make an effort to actually understand what the insight really was. So you get people who insist that science proves there is no God, people who insist that the Bible is the literal truth of history, people who insist that reality and consciousness are illusions, and so on. All of which seem, to me, to be such fundamental misunderstandings of the original insight as to be in direct opposition with them, but eh.

Anyway, I'm off to assume this explains all of human history kthxbai.
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In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6.
“What are you doing?”, asked Minsky. “I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe” Sussman replied. “Why is the net wired randomly?”, asked Minsky. “I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play”, Sussman said.
Minsky then shut his eyes. “Why do you close your eyes?”, Sussman asked his teacher.
“So that the room will be empty.”
At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.

Phmcw

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Re: Premarital sex talk :O
« Reply #370 on: October 09, 2011, 11:32:16 am »

For me in the religion VS Science debate is the we should rely on empirical evidence VS we should not.

A lot of Buddhist (including the Dalai lamas) rely more on empirical evidence than faith, and he literally said that if Science disprove a Buddhist belief, then he would abandon that particular belief. Buddhism is therefore, in my book, a philosophy.

Let's stretch things a bit : the communist party, in USSR and China, will try to make himself pass as a perfect tool of rational governance and will bury any evidence that prove other-way. They inoculate their followers with the absolute supremacy of their beliefs and the perfection of their leaders (complete with little shrine to Mao) and are therefore based on religious thinking.

Denying there is anything but empirical evidence is lacking of imagination. Dramatically.
I don't think the things you criticised came from over-relying on Science because you may empirically disprove them.
Considering that anything that hasn't been proved to exist doesn't exist is no science either.
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Siquo

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Re: Premarital sex talk :O
« Reply #371 on: October 10, 2011, 09:01:59 am »

Yet unlike survival of the fittest, in which the weakest die and the strongest breed, instead we take our strongest (physically, anyway), and kill them off.
Hilarious.
Well, theres something to say for ridding the world of those willing to fight.
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This one thread is mine. MIIIIINE!!! And it will remain a happy, friendly, encouraging place, whether you lot like it or not. 
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MaximumZero

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Re: Premarital sex talk :O
« Reply #372 on: October 10, 2011, 10:10:20 am »

Yet unlike survival of the fittest, in which the weakest die and the strongest breed, instead we take our strongest (physically, anyway), and kill them off.
Hilarious.
Well, theres something to say for ridding the world of those willing to fight.

I say we bring back gladitorial arenas and use the fighters as entertainment. Think UFC, but on a much larger scale.
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Holy crap, why did I not start watching One Punch Man earlier? This is the best thing.
probably figured an autobiography wouldn't be interesting

Vester

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Re: Premarital sex talk :O
« Reply #373 on: October 10, 2011, 10:11:28 am »

Yet unlike survival of the fittest, in which the weakest die and the strongest breed, instead we take our strongest (physically, anyway), and kill them off.
Hilarious.
Well, theres something to say for ridding the world of those willing to fight.

I say we bring back gladitorial arenas and use the fighters as entertainment. Think UFC, but on a much larger scale.

Mortal Kombat, with Real Asian Mentm instead of strangely accented mustachioed Orientals?
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MaximumZero

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Re: Premarital sex talk :O
« Reply #374 on: October 10, 2011, 01:34:35 pm »

And less Bruce Lee clones. Hopefully.
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Holy crap, why did I not start watching One Punch Man earlier? This is the best thing.
probably figured an autobiography wouldn't be interesting
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