How would you justify telling me that I should not torture and kill the next person I see?

[StevenM]

Objectivity is inherently subjective, it's just that it has common grounds in the majority of people.
Logic is just a supposed tool to rationalize and justify beliefs and assumptions. Even if those beliefs are to do with morals. Rationalizing/Justifying does not necessarily create accurate or true results though.

A person can't be purely all-knowing, unbiased, or completely void of delusion or fallacy in terms of understanding what is, and being as a whole; of what should or should not be. Perhaps, in reality, there is nothing 'there' to understand.

But bring in personal motives, drives, yearning, emotions, and you inadvertently brought with it assumptions, and created logic to hold those assumptions into place.

Wanting to kill and torture someone did not originate through logic, but from motive, drive, and emotion. You have an assumption that it is justified, with the logic that ethics and morals shouldn't matter to anyone, and they don't have any 'rational' basis. But if sound reasoning is such a concern to you, why do you think killing and torturing is 'rational'?

As an analogy, consider how the mind makes sense of the visual input being brought in from the eyes. Realistically, it is actually more-or less a somewhat random garbled mess of signals, which actually don't hold hardly any meaning. But through deciphering patterns in the chaos, and conjecturing how the information relates to another, we can form some kind of 'understanding' or belief of what it is we think we see.

Putting the analogy in perspective, logic and ethics are the tools we use to structuralize the chaotic mess of what is, and isn't; what should, or should not be. Perhaps, they are subjective, but they do offer an alternative to the unexpected randomness; they provide a sense of order, and harmony.

 

[kantor1003]

I often try to defeat views of moral relativism in myself and others, and I'm happy to try again. Bear with me, I'm partly riffing.

There can be intersubjective (collective) agreement that something is wrong. It´s true, value isn´t then anchored in something outside the human sphere as a guarantor of our moral judgements, but consider two cases:
In possible world 1 there is intersubjective agreement and there is an external set of moral precepts.
In possible world 2 there is intersubjective agreement, and there is no external set of moral precepts.
What function does the external set of moral precepts, God if you will, serve in possible world 1? If we assume, reasonably, that our human counterparts in both worlds are in the same epistemic position as is the case in our world, it would be the case that in possible world 1 the inhabitants would not come to any definite knowledge of the external set of moral precepts which exist in that world. So, it is true of both worlds that the best they can do is to act in accordance with what is held in intersubjective agreement. The fact that the moral licence in possible world 2 is given 'merely' intersubjectively is of no consequence, and it differs not at all in it's affairs with what is the case in possible world 1 (perhaps one can say that the inhabitants of possible world 1 are worse off than those in possible world 2, for they can, as a matter of fact, have gotten it all wrong.)
The point is that an intersubjective agreement to the effect of you 'shall not', while lacking in 'objectivity', will bear no less of an imperative than what would be the case if there is an external set of moral truths. So, objectivity might not deliver any 'oomph' to our moral truths.

Sure, this little construct, though I wish it where not so, can, it seems to me, be put to dust as soon as someone asks, 'but is there really intersubjective agreement on anything? Has not history and the study of other cultures/tribes shown us that this is not the case?' to which I perhaps first would like to emphasise our social dimension. Given that we live together, that we are all-in on this life, and have, as a large collective, a need to coordinate our largely shared needs and desires so as to avoid suffering, we also, by result have a need for the effective governing of action so as to minimise suffering and maximise well-being. Then I might begin to try and sketch some candidate axioms of moral judgement that there seems to be intersubjective agreement on.
One might be;
Pain is intrinsically painful, and we avoid inflicting pain on ourself because of it being intrinsically painful. As a result of that fact we commonly (across cultures, across time) agree that we, under normal circumstances, should not inflict pain on others, and that if we do, we have acted wrongly.

I am sure that one can argue against that being an axiom, but even if I can´t provide one, I still think that the fact of our species being equipped with an emotional register that react to outside events in a certain way gives reason to suppose that there is an overlap in what emotional response is triggered by that and that event. If, then, our moral judgements, ultimately, is grounded on feeling, or moral sense, then that does´t necessarily entail full on relativism, but might just as well be what serves as the (intersubjective) guarantee of what is good and bad, right and wrong.

 

[Grayman]

Objectivity is inherently subjective

No



OP:
Objectivity is a tree falling on your house. It is gravity. It is natural law and phsyics. It has no meaning and is action and reaction. It is evolution. It is life evolving in a way that would promote its existence because the ones that don't no longer exist. Killing and torturing a random person does not promote your existence and nor has natural law decided to ingrain it within you to do so.

 

[Bock]

Everything must have a viewer (and therefor an angle/subjective nature), to exist beyond a thing-in-itself. Though calling everything subjective is solipsism-tier and leads nowhere.

All life is part of the same momentum, wille zum leben etc. With this in mind, pain is inherently negative because it implies suffering/damaged tissue - randomly inflicting it upon others is irrational. This is essentially the same thing as saying that procreating is the goal of life, but i doubt we can get closer to an answer than that.

 

[ddspada]

Since when do I need to justify having impulses?

Having impulses does not ever need to be justified. Acting on them always has to be justified. If you cannot justify (via the categorical imperative, for instance) taking action upon an impulse, you should not. It's cool if you consider killing, want to kill or would find satisfaction in it -- as long as you don't act on it (because it is not a justifiable impulse).

The issue we have with people who want to kill is that we have zero guarantee that they won't. If we could somehow know with absolute certainty that person X is abnormal *only* in having a pure, unadulterated desire to kill (and nothing else), and we also knew that X would *never* act on that desire, then X be no different from anybody else for most intents and purposes.

 

[computerhxr]

Note: For those potential alarmists out there, this is hypothetical. I have no intentions of torturing or killing anyone.....currently. (Yes, I added "currently" to the end of the previous sentence to pump at least a little of that sweet adrenaline into your precious alarmist heart. You're welcome.)

Who here can convince me, using only logic with no assumptions, that I shouldn't torture and kill the next person I see?

This will ultimately turn into a debate about the justification of morality and/or ethics, so feel free to cut to the chase if you are one of those important people with no time for silly hypotheticals.

TL;DR - Justify morality.

Take a look in the mirror and then go for it! Who am I to stop you?

 

[k9b4]

If you cannot justify (via the categorical imperative, for instance) taking action upon an impulse, you should not.

Why should I not? Why do I have to justify anything? I'll do what I want thanks.

 

[Cognisant]

The ultimate question in this regard is, "is the torturing and killing of an innocent generally considered bad only because our negative emotions assign it so, or is there something in the act that naturally merits our negative response?"

In other words can their be values without subjective bias?

Perhaps, I haven't read of this anywhere yet so I'm going to call it existential pragmatism, basically the idea is that the universe itself does enforce a kind of selective pressure, for example it could be said reproduction is an inherently good thing regardless of what values we may or may not choose to have because a species that reproduces will survive longer than one that does not.

Do we as a species want to survive? That's irrelevant because if we don't survive we will cease to exist and our place in the universe will sooner or later be taken by whatever species does want to survive, as it say in my sig nature doesn't care who's right, only who's left.

I find the left/right pun to be endlessly amusing

Anyway an entire system of values could be based upon this principle of existential pragmatism; in fact it probably already exists, I'm going to go looking for it...

 

[Absurdity]

The fundamental issue here is that without objective value, there can be no right or wrong behavior. I completely agree with this, and that is why a forum full of "rational" people cannot tell me that it is wrong to torture and kill someone just for the hell of it. Their system of pure logic prohibits it, while allowing them to suggest that everyone merely follows a subjective aesthetic and impulse.

This would be absolutely true, of course, in a world where humans were only capable of logic and appetite, but we are creatures with emotion as well. The ultimate question in this regard is, "is the torturing and killing of an innocent generally considered bad only because our negative emotions assign it so, or is there something in the act that naturally merits our negative response?"

When you adhere to the first proposition, the natural result is ethical/moral subjectivism, where there can be no objectively right or wrong action. When you adhere to the second proposition, you get the likes of Socrates/Plato and Aristotle who observe the human response to actions and assign objective Virtues and Vices to them (see Aristotle's Ethics, and list of Virtues and Vices for example). Nearly any person we consider "rational" would look at such a list and the virtues we would automatically associate with "good" and the vices automatically with "bad". In this light, it would seem perfectly reasonable to tell someone that torturing and killing an innocent is bad and they shouldn't do it. In fact, that is what most rational people would naturally do.

This very topic was visited more recently by Lewis in The Abolition of Man, which can be read in full here. He explores the concept that it is our recognition that certain acts and/or objects merit a particular response that makes us rational in the first place. The objectivity of these value judgements, therefore, are self-evident to some extent as part of the rational mind. He calls these collective value judgements the Tao and at the end of the essay, he gives examples of cultures througout history that have recognized this Tao in their own culture independently.

So I am left to consider why it is that some people conclude that value judgements are assigned to certain acts while others conclude that value judgements are merited by certain acts. Ultimately, I think it comes down to what one's worldview allows and doesn't allow. An atheist will say an objective value system would necessitate a being outside of the system to assign it, and since no such being exists, no such value system can exist. Likewise, a theist would say if a being exists, it will have assigned an objective value system and since such a being exists, such a value system does exist. Ultimately, both of these viewpoints are circular.

From the agnostic viewpoint, I have no problem considering that certain actions might naturally merit a specific response. If we can use reason to objectively sort our collective response to actions, like Aristotle has done, why shouldn't we? That such a proposition might recognize the potential for some foreign consciousness having weaved such a value system into humanity doesn't really matter to me. Mark one down for evidence in regard to an external consciousness in that case. I'd rather go to where the evidence leads me than interpret evidence via prior conclusions.

Tl;dr - Emotivism.

As Cherry already said, you just keep proving my point. Aesthetics does not replace morality, it is prior to it.

 

[nanook]

my model of ethics is evolutionary, not relativistic. the concept of relativism implies that you can make up stupid shit with your superficial mind and believe in it. the concept of evolution is that something real, that is bigger than you, let's call it nature, is causing you to evolve thought-forms in patterns that are somewhat normed or recurring in a species. however they vary reflecting individual development and culture and material circumstances can limit or facilitate development. so if you make up random stupid shit, such as 'killing is fun', your nature will disagree with it (unless you are a lizard), hence you will rot in a psychotic hell. too bad that your nature may not be smart enough to notify you of that 'objective' fact in advance. so it's not your fault if it happens. you don't even exist. there is just suffering and confusion. try to keep your shit together.

religion, atheism and agnosticism or relativism are memes that represent three common stages of development. there are more and the relationship isn't so much circular, as it is like spiral, where similar themes repeat on different levels.

 

[whatstheMATTER?]

I'm becoming more and more convinced that ethics is downstream from aesthetics.

So if you're going to kill someone don't be tacky about it.

Absurdity, I just wrote an essay this month talking about exactly that, working with the premise that all things of substance (all things of affect) tend toward an increased complexity. We can see this occurring when we observe the planet's/universe's evolutionary time line from inorganic particles to organic single cell organisms, to multicellular organisms, to intelligence, to society, to abstract information systems, and beyond. The personal and collective behaviour we as a species have developed and the mechanisms we use in our day to day are just superficially more complex means we use to perpetuate this continued evolution. Aesthetics is a sort of built in perceptual mechanism to guide our tacit qualitative judgements to that end. (if you want I could PM it to you. I would appreciate the feedback).


Based on my personal aesthetic system alluded to above, to the OP I would say that when considering the killing of another human, you have to consider the event on two levels, for a basic analysis:

1. Personal – ask yourself: why you want to do this?; what are you trying to find out about yourself?; what have you observed in your life experience that makes you think this is a necessary conclusion to those past moments?; would you see this as a personal challenge?; why is your life now so lacking in challenge that you're bored enough to kill someone?; are you a psychopath?; if so, would you consider the attributes of a psychopath as beneficial (for you) in today's world?; how?; what segment of the world in particular?; is this a part of the world you wish to thrive in?; is killing someone the best way to get there? Et cetera.

Asking yourself these questions is important, because of the second level:

2. Societal – acknowledge that there is a status quo outcome built into society as a response your actions. If you are caught, you will have to face a jury of your peers, and you will have to give them the same answers to evince your crime as you gave yourself above, but you already know that these answers wouldn't matter to most people, because almost everyone has been brought up to believe that murder is not okay, period.

Perhaps you won't get caught, however. Or you believe you won't. Ask yourself, as a unique and complex manifestation of this universe, how would this advance your personal evolution in complexity? We already know how it would be handled by society, because random murder has happened often and society has mechanisms in place to deal with such an event.

The choice is all on you, and the question is whether or not, when you consider all relevant factors, killing a random person in cold blood seems okay to you? (If you want you can use my premise that all things tend toward complexity, and ask yourself whether your actions would be a hindrance or benefit overall to that end, for all variables involved)


My personal opinion is that if you're intelligent enough to ask yourself this question, and informed enough to rationally entertain the different pros and cons proposed by various moral structures (which you know would animate in response to your action), then you should just skip it. Because in your case such an act—murder—is boring. It's been done before, and you know roughly what will happen (there may be room for chaotic development, but maybe you should, instead, turn your capacity for abstraction toward assessing such outcomes in dynamical systems as a class--such an activity seems like it would be fruitful and entertaining for you (and who knows, perhaps one day your findings would be fruitful for society as well)).

In light of the above, if you ask yourself these questions and find you want to do it because it isa sort of stepping stone in your personal development, I recommend just reading Dostoevksy's Crime and Punishment. Live vicariously through Raskolnikov, get it out of your system, and then go on to introduce something novel into your environment, which seems more challenging and character building.



TL;DR:

Because it's been done before, random murder is boring for all third parties affected collaterally, and traumatizing for those directly involved (perhaps excluding the killer, but not likely, in the end)

 

[Mithrandir]

Tl;dr - Emotivism.

As Cherry already said, you just keep proving my point. Aesthetics does not replace morality, it is prior to it.

No, emotivism adheres to the first proposition, that we only assign good vs bad via emotions which don't indicate objective value. The second proposition, that certain acts merit (objectively deserve) a specific response, is cognitivism via moral realism. The only thing they have in common is that sentiment is the mode of perception.

 

[doncarlzone]

As inspired by Camus, you could start by asking whether you should commit suicide or not? Are you a romantic or not? Do you want to engage in this social construction or "illusion" that is life?

You've obviously already answered that question. Next you may ask yourself, what is the "romantic" value that you're looking for? That which makes you get out of bed in the morning. Now once you've answered that, it is extremely likely that, giving your environment, killing and torturing a random person will hinder your romantic illusion of your future self, and thus doing so would be absurd. And since we have already established that you are indeed a romantic - doing something which you consider absurd would be absurd.

 

[Grayman]

Tl;dr - Emotivism.

As Cherry already said, you just keep proving my point. Aesthetics does not replace morality, it is prior to it.

Aesthetics are simply a sensual application and reading of value as emotion is the feeling of cenceptual values. Morality is the value. The misuse of aesthetics as a system of judgment as apposed to a sensory of judgment confuses me.

 

[Absurdity]

Absurdity, I just wrote an essay this month talking about exactly that, working with the premise that all things of substance (all things of affect) tend toward an increased complexity. We can see this occurring when we observe the planet's/universe's evolutionary time line from inorganic particles to organic single cell organisms, to multicellular organisms, to intelligence, to society, to abstract information systems, and beyond. The personal and collective behaviour we as a species have developed and the mechanisms we use in our day to day are just superficially more complex means we use to perpetuate this continued evolution. Aesthetics is a sort of built in perceptual mechanism to guide our tacit qualitative judgements to that end. (if you want I could PM it to you. I would appreciate the feedback).

Sounds awesome. I'd like to read it, assuming it isn't too long

No, emotivism adheres to the first proposition, that we only assign good vs bad via emotions which don't indicate objective value. The second proposition, that certain acts merit (objectively deserve) a specific response, is cognitivism via moral realism. The only thing they have in common is that sentiment is the mode of perception.

That's just goofy.

 

[nanook]

Aesthetics are simply a sensual application and reading of value as emotion is the feeling of cenceptual values. Morality is the value. The misuse of aesthetics as a system of judgment as apposed to a sensory of judgment confuses me.

aesthetic is a subjective sense of harmony, rooted in perception.

it is not limited to typological sensation, it includes intuition, as i understand it. (i understand it as comprehension of process, vs. comprehension of objects)


morals transcends and unites thinking and feeling like aesthetic transcends and unites sensation and intuition.

together they can be abstracted as two lines of intelligence. are abstracted through the labels ethics and intuition.

lines evolve through stages.

a stage is defined by a degree of inner complexity, organisation of self-reference. subjective lines will come to similar conclusions about external reality, when they are at comparable stages.

• gross primitive ethics says me first and maybe my family fuck the rest.
• gross aesthetics says it's fine to slaughter if you wipe up the mess.

• evolved ethics says for instance do unto others as you ..... you know.
• evolved aesthetics says that slicing up an animated creature and rendering it inanimate in the process shows the highest disregard for aesthetics.

many people who lack ethics also lack aesthetics, because they are just gross morons. but some individuals are highly aesthetically sensitive while having weak ethical reasoning, which may also be compromised by drama or ideology. it makes a lot of sense to appeal to someone's aesthetics, if they don't understand the reasoning. you want to try everything.

ever heard of originally proud soldiers who came back from war and think it's horrible? that is aesthetics at work.

 

[EyeSeeCold]

That person you're about to kill might be you from the future.

 

[Grayman]

many people who lack ethics also lack aesthetics, because they are just gross morons. but some individuals are highly aesthetically sensitive while having weak ethical reasoning that may also be compromised by drama or ideology. it makes a lot of sense to appeal to someones' aesthetics, if they don't understand the reasoning. you want to try everything.

ever heard of originally proud soldiers who came back from war and think it's horrible? that is aesthetics at work.

I see. My aesthetics are lacking. Aesthetics seems so primal being something that animals have like preference for certain tastes and sensations but I guess the intuition gives it complexity and makes it mysterious in sense.

I don't think it is intuition though it seems at most it is just a product of familiarity. You cut a person to pieces then align the pieces back to where they would have been if the person were alive. Then put a white tulip in his hand before walking away. The attraction to that process is entirely relational to other sights that invoke familiarity.


Minute 26 shows its link with familiarity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwsEeQpxkFw


39minutes to 45 People treat the lamp/flower like it is human and as a human it wants to see what it is facing so the space in front of the flower should be open and the edge of the picture should be at the back of the flower. A bowl should look up and you want to see what it is looking at.

Anyways since aesthetics is an attraction to familiarity it would indicate that it grows through sensual experience. Their morality should be entirely programmable through special environments... a good use for 'total recal devices'.

 

[Reluctantly]

It is not okay to kill people if you are not going to eat them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARIWLyvhuoM

Can't say I agree with you. They justified killing and eating people on the show, but got killed because of it. Though to be fair, they did torture people by saving them as cattle and killing them later on, which kind of made them evil. Though I suppose if you think you could get away with it, without someone wanting to kill you for it and you didn't torture people, then it's probably not so ethically bad. Though personally the idea of eating human flesh doesn't sit well with my stomach; don't know why eating animals seems okay to me, but human flesh does bother me.

 

[whatstheMATTER?]

Of course what is 'good' versus what is 'bad' is a qualitative judgement that is made in reference to something. The problem with ethics now as I see it is (of course) that individuals have very many and disparate reference frames from one another, and thus they often can't agree on an ultimate decision for any event.

However, it seems consistently manifest across the board that almost all (or, all) humans have a capacity for qualitative judgement.


Our aesthetics is a conscious--or sometimes only tacit--perception of the contextual references a given thing (object or piece of art or behavior, etc.) connotes, coupled with an innate tendency to judge the normative quality this given thing has to what we know to be true based on our past experiences. What this implies is that people with an expanded horizon of experience of different contexts (cultures, artistic movements, methods of perception and analysis) are better equipped to assess whether a novel event has any contextual relevance to anything. If it does, then said 'beholder' has a paradigm with which to contrast this new event.

We value, as individuals in this complex global environment teeming with information, our ability to readily comprehend novel events. Experience, they say, is the spice of life. It provides richness to our memory bank (excuse the corny pun). We have an inherent desire to experience new things, and this inherent desire satisfies the demands our environment places upon us, if we are open to it (novel experiences, that is). This seemingly natural mechanism for ensuring an advancement in complexity is a key function in our evolution.


Given the above, our capacity for aesthetic judgement is an integral part of our personal and collective ethical conclusions (insofar that ethical philosophy is interested in defining an ultimate conclusion over the issue of 'good versus evil', and our aesthetic capacity is an innate compass guiding our enquiries to that end).

The problem is, our yearning to establish a normative quality in our local environments (so we can put such complex issues as what is 'right' or 'wrong' to bed and get on with our lives) is at war with the rapid advancement of society's complexity, which ultimately demands individuals to be more fluid, or its evolution (and thus our evolution) will halt and the structures of our society and psychology will collapse.



TL;DR:

I still think murdering a random person is boring. Worse, it is destructive for those involved

 

[paradoxparadigm7]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2562923/

I find the notion of aesthetics and morality to be compelling at least as the baseline or foundation of morality. But as nanook points out, that there are higher levels of morality that build from the foundational aesthetics. The higher levels are less about negative reaction to behavior but use ideals/virtues as the guide and intension beyond what makes us sick.

A personal example is my own nausea in response to movies where torture is involved. I've examined my reaction and found that its not so much a disgust with seeing the victim feel the physical pain as it is a disgust and feeling of nausea to the sadistic intent by the perpetrator. A Clockwork Orange is an example. The rape and violence makes you physically sick. In addition, we infer Alex (the sociopathic main character) to lack this essential noxious response and see him as twisted and dangerous to society.

If the op is lacking the most basic disgust response to killing an innocent, then the best argument is no argument. Go ahead and satisfy your curiosity for killing an innocent but use yourself as both perpetrator and victim. It's a 'win-win' for yourself and society.

 

[Reluctantly]

I think if you want to do something, but don't think you will get away with it or think it's likely it will come back to bite you in the ass, that's reason enough not to do it. If you can eliminate those two though, go ahead. But I personally see something wrong with people that are sadistic and would probably kill you should I ever get to know you. That would be hard to calculate and it would come back to bite you in the ass later on because I'm very good at hiding my micro-expressions - you wouldn't know I had a problem with you. So really you can't know if people are going to have a problem with your actions; you can do your best to hide them from people, of course, in the hopes that no one will see anything to begin with.

 

[crippli]

Can't say I agree with you. They justified killing and eating people on the show, but got killed because of it. Though to be fair, they did torture people by saving them as cattle and killing them later on, which kind of made them evil. Though I suppose if you think you could get away with it, without someone wanting to kill you for it and you didn't torture people, then it's probably not so ethically bad. Though personally the idea of eating human flesh doesn't sit well with my stomach; don't know why eating animals seems okay to me, but human flesh does bother me.

It's more that if I get killed, I would want there to be some point to it. Prepared after master chef skills and served with good wine. Ideally the murderer will have tears in the eyes on the first taste out of appreciation.

The alternative, having the throat slit and dumped in the closest garbage container? No thank you.

I wouldn't eat human meat myself. Maybe a vegetarian would taste okay. They would have to donate themselves to this purpose, like a car accident. Like one donates organs to other purposes. The rest of the body could also be used as food. If I would order this at the restaurant if available? I doubt it. One thing I don't like with dying and being buried is the thought of having all these worms and stuff to feast on my flesh. I know it's equally as useful for nature as being digested by more intelligent creatures. And maybe the human body is crap and that's the best one can get. Haven't looked it up.

 

[Reluctantly]

I wonder what Fried Crippli would taste like.

 

[k9b4]

That person you're about to kill might be you from the future.

Time travel is impossible.

 

[Lot]

Time travel is impossible.

But you are doing it right now. If one way at one speed, why not the other at another speed?

 

[Grayman]

Time travel is impossible.

If all matter and energy were to reverse everything it did for a thousand years then start, is it still the future repeating the past or is it the past?

 

[computerhxr]

I see. My aesthetics are lacking. Aesthetics seems so primal being something that animals have like preference for certain tastes and sensations but I guess the intuition gives it complexity and makes it mysterious in sense.

I don't think it is intuition though it seems at most it is just a product of familiarity. You cut a person to pieces then align the pieces back to where they would have been if the person were alive. Then put a white tulip in his hand before walking away. The attraction to that process is entirely relational to other sights that invoke familiarity.


Minute 26 shows its link with familiarity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwsEeQpxkFw


39minutes to 45 People treat the lamp/flower like it is human and as a human it wants to see what it is facing so the space in front of the flower should be open and the edge of the picture should be at the back of the flower. A bowl should look up and you want to see what it is looking at.

Anyways since aesthetics is an attraction to familiarity it would indicate that it grows through sensual experience. Their morality should be entirely programmable through special environments... a good use for 'total recal devices'.

You mind if I create a new thread on this topic? Psychology is one of my top interests. I don't want to hijack the thread.

 

[smallwarrior]

"My pacifism is an instinctive feeling, a feeling that possesses me because the murder of men is disgusting. My attitude is not derived from any intellectual theory but is based on my deepest antipathy to every kind of cruelty and hatred."
― Albert Einstein

 

[k9b4]

But you are doing it right now. If one way at one speed, why not the other at another speed?

No I'm not. Time is going as per usual.

In order to travel backwards in time, you would need causality to become opposite to normal. Protons must attract protons and repel electrons. That is not going to happen.

 

[Lot]

No I'm not. Time is going as per usual.

In order to travel backwards in time, you would need causality to become opposite to normal. Protons must attract protons and repel electrons. That is not going to happen.

That just shows that you have no idea what you are talking about

 

[marv]

What you should and shouldn't do is totally relative in our world. We poor mortal souls are too dumb to be held responsible for anything. We naturally do what's on top of our value systems, defined by what you had been exposed to during childhood and afterwards.

I'm trying to find some absolute "good" myself, that I could then study and adjust my lifelong goals in symbiosis with them. But that is sadly not happening. I'm asking very similar questions to yours.

If you want to kill someone, make sure you are not doing it mostly for satisfaction. Not because it would be "immoral", but because then you are contradicting yourself. You'd believe that what you should do is to satisfy you, even though you had just concluded that you know nothing of what there should be done, by you or by anyone.