yeahiknow3
@yeahiknow3@lemmings.world
- Comment on Do you want the murderer of the UnitHealthcare CEO prosecuted? 2 weeks ago:
Thanks for the reply. This is a genuinely tricky question, because most of us acknowledge that revenge under some circumstances isn’t just permissible but desirable, but the devil is in the details. Revenge might be justifiable
- For practical reasons such as a deterrent to future transgressors.
- To ameliorate some tiny fraction of the hurt inflicted by the transgressor.
For instance, it would be devastating to lose a loved one, but it would hurt even more if those who killed her were out there enjoying themselves consequences free.
- Comment on Do you want the murderer of the UnitHealthcare CEO prosecuted? 2 weeks ago:
Well good. Then I can take you seriously. I’m willing to have my mind changed. Why don’t you think we should kill evil people? Do you want to reform them?
- Comment on Do you want the murderer of the UnitHealthcare CEO prosecuted? 2 weeks ago:
Killing is a fast and easy solution… being able to look beyond killing is one of the few privileges our intelligence gives us
Sure.
We are all animals (some more than others). And we have learned the hard way that to realize more of the transcendental values — to bring more courage, wisdom, and meaning into this world — we should preserve life whenever possible. But there’s nothing fundamentally sacred about life… We kill all the time. Literally non-stop. Billions of animals, just like us, sentient and desperate to live, butchered for your use and pleasure. So unless you’re a vegan, you do not get to deploy sentiments about “the sanctity of life” or the like. It’s silly.
If you want to learn about practical ethics and stop talking gibberish, I suggest Shaffer Landau’s excellent textbook “On Living Ethics.”
- Comment on Do you want the murderer of the UnitHealthcare CEO prosecuted? 2 weeks ago:
Why are people so against killing? From an ethical perspective, it’s often quite justifiable. We’ve been trained like monkeys in a cage to respond adversely to death, but that reaction is based in a social contract that is only conditionally valid.
- Comment on Do you want the murderer of the UnitHealthcare CEO prosecuted? 2 weeks ago:
The reason we reject mob justice is not that it is anyways unjust, but because it is often unjust. In this case, however, the outcome was actually in line with any reasonable objective standard of justice as far as I can tell. I’m willing to be persuaded otherwise, but I don’t see it.
- Comment on Do you want the murderer of the UnitHealthcare CEO prosecuted? 2 weeks ago:
Fun fact, murder means “illegal killing,” not an immoral one. There are plenty of unethical but legal killings, and vice versa. So to clarify, murder isn’t always “bad” by definition.
- Comment on UK parliament backs Taiwan UN participation, rejects China's “distortion of the international law” 3 weeks ago:
That sounds like a bonus.
- Comment on What's dodgy about the proposed Australian political donations reforms? | Constitutional Clarion 4 weeks ago:
Fair enough. Thank you for the explanation! I’m not from Australia and I could only dream to have a bill like this in the US.
- Comment on What's dodgy about the proposed Australian political donations reforms? | Constitutional Clarion 4 weeks ago:
I’m still trying to figure out why people in this thread are defending much, much higher caps on donations.
- Comment on What's dodgy about the proposed Australian political donations reforms? | Constitutional Clarion 4 weeks ago:
I don’t believe the bill is doing that, but yes. I’d sacrifice my left nut to get money out of politics.
- Comment on What's dodgy about the proposed Australian political donations reforms? | Constitutional Clarion 4 weeks ago:
I see, I see. But isn’t everyone in agreement that political campaigns should be publicly funded? What is there to be upset about?
- Comment on What's dodgy about the proposed Australian political donations reforms? | Constitutional Clarion 4 weeks ago:
It occurs to me that your response is identical to that of the evil billionaire Clive Palmer. I think this whole thread might be pure astroturf. I’m out.
- Comment on What's dodgy about the proposed Australian political donations reforms? | Constitutional Clarion 4 weeks ago:
There’s no universe in which it makes sense to allow billionaire coal barons to buy elections, for “independent” parties or otherwise. I’m not sure what more there is to discuss.
- Comment on What's dodgy about the proposed Australian political donations reforms? | Constitutional Clarion 4 weeks ago:
The bill seeks to make it harder for billionaires to buy elections.
- It caps individual donations to $20,000/year
- It forces real time disclosures of donations of $1000 or more.
- campaign spending is capped to $800k/seat and $90 million/party
It is a fantastic bill that makes it harder for the rich to steal elections. That’s why this literal Coal Barron hates the bill:
Yeah, right. Regular Australians harmed by an $800k spending limit. Ridiculous.
- Comment on How do Americans win their country back? 1 month ago:
Fuck you.
- Comment on How is it that "protecting basic democracy and the rule of law, and not crowning a criminal dictator" wasn't even on the chart?! 1 month ago:
Also, I love how no one gives a shit about the ecological apocalypse. This is why I kept telling you guys: let the hurricanes destroy everything. No more FEMA. Americans clearly don’t care.
- Comment on How do Americans win their country back? 1 month ago:
For all practical purposes, about 30% of people are unfeeling morons - basically psychopathic. That’s the number that consistently opposes abortion, for instance. Add to that all the dumbasses who don’t know any better (the undecideds on any extremely obvious moral issue), et voila. That’s how you get slavery, nationalism, genocide, theocracy, you name it.
- Comment on Doctor Doctor! 1 month ago:
Psychology used to make sense.
- Comment on India: Police detain 600 striking Samsung workers at protest 2 months ago:
These people get paid $300/month working at a plant that generates $12 billion / year. Samsung has always been evil, a dog shit company that makes dog shit products.
- Comment on The Evil Design of Japan's Death Penalty 3 months ago:
Why else keep someone alive as punishment except to cause them to suffer?
- Comment on The Evil Design of Japan's Death Penalty 3 months ago:
No one deserves to be stripped of the right to exist.
for some crimes, death penalty is too mild…
So… death penalty is wrong, but evil people deserve to be tortured?
I have to say, this is the most unphilosophical and internally contradictory view on this topic I’ve heard so far. Well done.
For those wondering, the best argument against the death penalty comes from political philosophy, not from ethics.
- Comment on Finish him. 🪓 6 months ago:
Look, here’s my point: can you name one scientist, just one, whose work isn’t subject to peer review? I can’t think of any.
- Comment on Finish him. 🪓 6 months ago:
When I look around my University I see people doing something, let’s call it “science.” I’d like to define this activity to distinguish it from similar but different activities. The very fact that my efforts to do so have created a Demarcation Problem means the definition is more convoluted than simply “empirical investigation.” If that’s all that science was, there wouldn’t be a demarcation problem!
Elon Musk seems to “think” (and I use this word very loosely) that science is when people do experiments or try to figure out the truth. But if that were the case, there would be no debate, no demarcation problem, no counter examples.
What we need to do is describe what scientists do that non-scientists don’t do with sufficient rigor to distinguish the two groups. As I said, peer review is a salient feature present in one group and absent in the other. Do you have a definition?
- Comment on Finish him. 🪓 6 months ago:
I’m not sure what we are arguing about here. The concept of “science” is fairly new and most people we would think of as “scientists” throughout history, such as Newton, actually thought of themselves as natural philosophers, hence the P in PhD. The modern concept of science arose as a kind of description of something humans do together. “Science” doesn’t mean figuring out the truth. That wouldn’t make any sense, because philosophy, logic, mathematics, etc, are all concerned with figuring out the truth as well. Science is an institution, a social endeavor (except when it isn’t? Need counter examples). The royal academy of sciences was created for that reason, funny enough — because Francis Bacon has pointed out what I just did, that science requires an intellectual community (let’s be honest, humans are fairly dumb on their own — imagine having to invent mathematics from scratch just to do physics).
Anyway, in the mid 1950s there was a now famous work by Thomas Kuhn called The Structure of Scientific Revolutions which added an extra layer to the debate when he pointed out aspects of “science” that seem to be… not about finding the truth at all. But I’m guessing you already know that. Human beings are driven by many motivations, after all, and finding the truth is rarely one of them.
Anyway, the demarcation problem, yes: it’s very difficult to come up with a definition that perfectly picks out legitimate science without also applying to pseudo nonsense (see Pigliucci‘s Nonsense on Stilts). That said, we know what is and isn’t science. We are just having trouble coming up with a perfect definition that works every time.
Incidentally, having trouble defining science is literally my position. Science is something we do that isn’t as tidy and uncomplicated as “figuring out the truth.” It clearly involves some sort of methodology and it clearly involves people checking each other’s work and so on and so forth, and it’s different from math and different from astrology. You tell me how you want to define it, but it sure as shit isn’t “doing stuff in one’s garage alone without writing it down or reproducing the results “
- Comment on Finish him. 🪓 6 months ago:
You should publish your findings and collect your Nobel prize. You’ve solved philosophy.
- Comment on Finish him. 🪓 6 months ago:
See any textbook on the Philosophy of Science.
The irony of plebs arguing among themselves over the definition of science without any notion of the preceding centuries of debate is absolutely delicious, btw.
- Comment on Finish him. 🪓 6 months ago:
Your last sentence is muah chef’s kiss.
- Comment on Finish him. 🪓 6 months ago:
Before the 20th century most famous physicists referred to themselves as “natural philosophers,” not scientists. The P in PhD is for philosophy. The word “science” refers to a modern social phenomenon, a sort of peer review methodology that generates shared public knowledge.
- Comment on Finish him. 🪓 6 months ago:
We can use any sound or collection of letters to describe any phenomenon you like, and I’m not against using “science” to mean “empirical inquiry” or whatever. Just keep in mind you’ll be referring to something different than philosophers of science who use the word. This is why jargon exists, and perhaps “science” is a bit too colloquial for technical definitions.
- Comment on Finish him. 🪓 6 months ago:
Science is a social activity that human beings engage in (emphasis on social). Science is not the same as fact-finding, or philosophizing, or being creative, or reasoning. It’s a very specific social method of peer review that serves to generate shared public knowledge.
These are technical terms we have refined over hundreds of years.
