slug.com slug.com

1 1

I love this video. Watch the full thing or don't watch it, because you won't get the important message otherwise. Here it is:

That video was made by TJ Kirk, otherwise known as, The Amazing Atheist.

Given how right-leaning this website is, I suspect a lot of people will know who TJ is. He's a socialist...but he's a very libertarian type of socialist. He may have been largely responsible for start the Youtube anti-feminist, anti-SJW movement, through his Youtube videos.

For those who don't know, an SJW would be a social justice warrior. The term "social justice warrior" is generally a term for loud, angry people who try to veer culture more towards the "woke" side of things or, in other words, towards being more sensitive to minority perspectives and cultures, trying to avoid cultural appropriation, avoiding chauvinism, homophobia, and that sort of stuff...with the emphasis being on the "warrior" part of the term. If you're not loud, angry, and rather annoying, you may not be labeled a "social justice warrior."

The "anti-SJW" community, then, was a group that sprung up, largely on Youtube, making fun of these people, and initially, TJ may have been their king, and made plenty of entertaining content focusing on SJW nuttiness and silly paranoia.

In recent years though, TJ has, quite sensibly in my opinion, begun to view his creation as a bit of a monster. Oftentimes the anti-SJW arguments have grown to lack nuance. They also, at times, have grown to become as paranoid and silly, or moreso, than many SJW's. If you've seen posts on this website that might be about stuff like how feminists are, literally...not sarcastically but literally...similar to Nazis...you've seen that brand of anti-SJW nuttiness that I'm talking about. This website seems to be a hotspot for that sort of thing to me.

So...what this video of TJ's is about is, he defends the canceling or changing of some books and videogames and TV shows and movies that were canceled or changed so as to make them more "woke." In other words...to some degree he's defending the sort of changes the SJW's love.

And he explains why these changes either aren't really that bad, or might actually be good.

So...decades ago, I'd say society had its priorities backwards, regarding censorship. Decades ago, women and men weren't shown sleeping in the same beds...but while this was going on, black people and Native Americans were being depicted horrifically.

Ever since, we've been getting rid of a lot of nonsensical forms of censorship, and replacing it with more sensible forms of censorship and morality guidelines for entertainment media...and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Nobody should care about a gay wedding in a children's show, so long as there was no more sexuality than any other wedding...and so such a thing was shown in the children's PBS show "Arthur" but people care about stuff that might actually cause harm...like Peppie Le Pew sexually harassing a cat as the joke in the Looney Toons cartoon, and so Looney Toons appears to have booted the skunk. Le Pew could, potentially, teach kids that sexual harassment is okay.

So...I could understand complaints, but generally, if you look at cultural censorship as if it's a graph that began in the 1950's and ended now...things would have had some plummets here and there, but by and large they would have been steadily going up.

Now, censorship of entertainment media is actually starting to make sense. It didn't used to much...but it kind of does now oftentimes.

MrShittles 7 Mar 15
Share

Be part of the movement!

Welcome to the community for those who value free speech, evidence and civil discourse.

Create your free account

1 comment

Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.

0

If you can't see straight, white, males as the new Jews for the current wave of socialist moral panic you are missing the point of the Feminazi meme. Anyone who hung onto Socialism after the Nazis and Stalin are probably not in touch with reality anyway. That includes a large chunk of the scientific and academic intellectual community.

The problem is that anyone who can't see that misogyny and racism are undesirable probably are not going to be reformed by censorship. You can only reform them by mocking them, which means no censorship of any kind that isn't directed at illegal material.

We can make fun of ourselves and in fact it is an essential part of growth. Comedy has to be irreverent to preform it's essential function. That means making fun of all the things that are taboo to make fun of such as race, sex, religion, ethnicity, politics, and disabilities. That doesn't mean that you should go around making sexist and racist jokes. It means under the proper conditions and adult supervision topics that would otherwise be anti social are pro social. It depends on the environment and the delivery.

If Obama had been joking when he made his clinger speech I would not have been the least bit offended. Unfortunately he was deadly serious. Similarly if people had made fun of Obama for being a mixed race individual I would not have been the least bit offended. There is something funny about a mixed race guy from Hawaii, with grandparent in the Midwest and Africa, who was raised by Muslims, educated by Marxist and went to a racist black church being presented as just a normal American. I often mock George Washington for his aspirations to be English landed nobility. He still turned out to be a good first president.

The problem with socialism is it steals peoples freewill and in so doing robs them of their agency and dignity. Socialism has always been at it's heart about lumping people into groups based on immutable characteristics. By the time Marx came along it was clear that the proletariat and bourgeoisie was not a result of arbitrary inheritance. Society had already become very class mobile. Marx himself had the immutable characteristic of being a lazy narcissist.

The nanny state steals the soul in the same way a smothering mother does.

"Despite the ambiguity in the relation between parental anxiety and parental overcontrol, it has been posited that overcontrolling behaviors restrict a child's access to his/her environment and also communicate to a child that there is an excessive amount of threat that the child will not be able to cope with or master on his/her own. Thus, it is hypothesized that this parenting behavior reduces the opportunity for the child to develop competence, or mastery over things in their environment, particularly, novel or threatening situations. Theoretically, it is this decrease in child self-competence which leads to an increased level of anxiety in the child. Conversely, granting of a child's autonomy is thought to encourage a child's independence, thereby allowing him/her to gain a sense of mastery of his/her environment and reducing his/her level of anxiety"

[ncbi.nlm.nih.gov]

It's easy to see how decades of socialist theory in our schools system has produced the moral panic manifested in what has become known as the SJWs or social justice warriors. Safe spaces, and gender bluring just two examples of a dysfunctional ways to deal with a threatening environment.

In the absence of any better vaccine a live virus will do. That is the purpose that Peppie Le Pew serves. He is a lose dose of the live meme virus called misogyny. Comedy not censorship is the answer.

#1. While no country has fully implemented democratic socialist ideals...I'm not sure many people actually want to. The closest anyone in my and TJ's country of the U.S. get to that is Bernie Sanders. What Bernie Sanders tends to want has been basically tried and shown to work in Canada and some western European nations just fine.

#2. Whites are obviously not the new Jews. We're not being killed. We're not having our wealth taken away. You could, potentially, argue that government rules that mandate that a certain percentage of minorities have to be part of the business may be racist against whites...but that's hardly comparable to how the Jews were treated...and I don't think there's anything else out there that even comes close. The only other thing I might consider coming remotely close would be white people depicted poorly in entertainment media. White people are often the serial killers and villains and white males are often depicted as buffoons in comedy shows...but that's rooted in capitalistic desires of the companies producing that entertainment media, and I'm not sure that's any worse than how other races, or women, are treated by the entertainment media, and some people have definitely argued that other races and women are treated worse by the entertainment media...because of how often white males are also the heroes.

#3.Racism and sexism are often not logical conclusions. They're trends that happen as a result of society having certain perspectives rooted in what the see. I agree that the big, noticeable, types of racism are not going to be altered by changing entertainment media...but little subconscious opinions might...and also, these types of changes are not always about racism. For example, I used to watch a
podcast hosted by two back guys who loved the movie "Black Panther." I thought it was odd how many black people loved "Black Panther," but then on that podcast they had an episode discussing all the black superhero movies. There weren't many of them, and most of them sucked, and I do admit while I dot like Black Panther much, it was better than every other Black superhero movie mentioned except for Hancock and Blade...and neither of those movies are really meant for young children. Regardless of whether or not it's healthy people like to see people who look like them in entertainment media if they don't get to see them often, and they're going to seek them out, but more importantly, in the eyes of those two podcast hosts, now a few more black kids have a superhero they can dress up as for halloween without looking odd...and that's going to matter a lot to a lot of parents.

#4. Regarding your comments about sexist and racist jokes...it's noteworthy that I said nothing that disagreed with that paragraph and neither did TJ. I specifically mentioned that progress in the types of things that have been censored or controlled, and the types of censorship that have increased, have been, generally good...not that all of it has been good.

#5. If by Obama's "clinger" speech you're talking about this..."And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." I could certainly understand being offended to that. I agree with that statement of Obama's...but I could understand being offended by it. That's nothing compared to what you've said in your very post though. You've actually described white people as the new Jews...as in the Nazis are coming for them. That's WAY more out of touch with reality. If you're being sarcastic...and I still don't know that you are...that's still way more out of touch with reality than Obama's comment.

#6. So...TJ's video didn't have anything to do with socialism. I just mentioned TJ's socialism for background information on him. Aside from that though, we need to get away from making those criticisms about socialism you're making, because public schools are socialism...in little pieces...as is the military...as is social security...as are public roads...as is medicare. Socialism itself, at least as it's implemented in existing nations (never completely, but always in degrees) cannot be a bad thing completely, because we require little pieces of it here and there. It always depends on what sorts of social programs you're talking about.
The types of changes western SJW's want are generally capitalistic changes. They typically don't ask the government to come in and force anything. They, rather, complain in the hopes that either advertising companies will cease working with the entertainment media they like, or that the companies will alter their products themselves to obtain more buyers.

#7. Your statement about parental control vs. parental anxiety isn't relevant until we know what level of state control would be comparable to unhealthy "parental control." You've basically said nothing in that paragraph.

#8. How is "socialist theory" taught in schools? I don't think it is. I don't know how it could be. My college economics teacher said that the Red Cross should buy blood so as to gain more of it, and that, during water shortages, people should sell water bottles so as to prevent supply limits.

@Beachslim Lol...do you know how many times I've been assumed to be a right wing extremist because I've argued against the left? Just because I disagree with you does not mean I am necessarily your polar opposite in every way.

@MrShittles

Your are just doing what the liberal intellectuals do, take no responsibility for the dystopian nightmare that is unfolding before your eyes and say It's not that bad it comes from a good place.

No there are not any socialist countries in Europe. Both the leaders of Norway and Sweden have come out in public and said to Sanders stop calling us socialist countries. You see they have already tried that and backed off of it. The last thing they need is an American pushing utopian ideology to a population already primed for it.

You would have to be incredibly willfully blind not to see the connection between even the limited redistributive system in the U.S. and Europe and the destruction of minority communities. Incredible levels of violence and despair has been the fruit of the nanny state but in Europe the lack of diversity has mitigated the impact but it seems to be coming for them as well.

I'm not surprised that you missed the point entirely. No freewill, no agency, no dignity. That is what the smothering mother produces. I lay the responsibility squarely at the feet of people like Richard Dawkins and their simplistic view of cultural evolution. There refusal to accept multilevel selection because of political orientation. They had no practical philosophy to replace religion so of course the cult of DIE, diversity, inclusion, and equity was going to fill the vacuum. Following onto that since they don't believe in agency the only social engineering tool they have is canceling. If you don't think people have agency there is no point in persuasion. If you don't think people have agency your going to have a moral panic and straight, white, makes will be the new Jews. It's amusing that Dawkins himself was cancelled for misogyny and he looked like a deer caught in headlights. People like the Amazing Atheist have no idea what they are talking about.

@wolfhnd #1. God's existence is impossible...if by God we're talking about an un-created, eternal being who controls the universe...doubly so if we're talking about a God with the traditional traits of the gods of Hinduism or the Abrahamic faiths. That's because, if you look around...you will not see patterns in reality pointing to the existence of a being with the traits God is commonly defined as having. A few examples are that...intelligence, so far as we can tell, only exists within brains formed by organic matter. Intelligence appears to be extremely rare, mortal, and only formed in very specific ways. There appear to be no routes for intelligence to form, except through abiogenesis leading to it through evolutionary processes...or it being created by existing intelligences. Therefore, we have no reason to believe in intelligence that exist outside of some form of body, or eternal intelligence. Nobody can think of a route for those forms of intelligence to occur. We also see no strong evidence of omniscience, and I think the nature of reality is a strong argument against any god being omni-benevolent. Then...we have the various miracles Gods of holy texts are associated with that involve breaking the laws of physics. Now...technically...nothing is impossible, but given that we'd probably consider someone silly for saying that it's possible the Sun will not rise tomorrow, I think it's easily sensible to say the existence of the sort of God I was talking about is impossible...because I see no more reason to believe the Sun will not rise tomorrow than I see a reason to believe a God exists.

#2. With that in mind, anything that pushes people to see reality inaccurately is going to put them at a disadvantage in terms of planning for the future...as well as, potentially, making decisions relating to ethics. Now...with the belief in Heaven, I think that's an inaccurate belief that provides people with an incentive to not ponder reality extensively, so as to maintain that inaccurate belief. If people are being motivated to ponder reality less...I've long had a concern that would harm people's skill at thinking about abstract concepts. A belief in hell for nonbelief would accomplish the same results, although much more unpleasantly...and therefore I'm think any problems with society are much more likely to stem from religiosity than a lack of it.

#3. I don't know what this paragraph means:

"You would have to be incredibly willfully blind not to see the connection between even the limited redistributive system in the U.S. and Europe and the destruction of minority communities. Incredible levels of violence and despair has been the fruit of the nanny state but in Europe the lack of diversity has mitigated the impact but it seems to be coming for them as well."

#4. I don't know what this means: "There refusal to accept multilevel selection because of political orientation."

#5. I don't know what this means...especially the stuff about agency. What do you mean by not believing in agency?: "Following onto that since they don't believe in agency the only social engineering tool they have is canceling. If you don't think people have agency there is no point in persuasion. If you don't think people have agency your going to have a moral panic and straight, white, makes will be the new Jews."

#6. Regarding your opening 2 paragraphs...I did state this statement: "Socialism itself, at least as it's implemented in existing nations (never completely, but always in degrees) cannot be a bad thing completely, because we require little pieces of it here and there. It always depends on what sorts of social programs you're talking about."

I could understand criticisms of Bernie Sander's views...but I think my statement covered what you were talking about. The only difference between what Bernie Sanders wants and what most other people want is a matter of degree...how many, and what types, of social programs you want...and everybody in the U.S. talks about the horrors of socialism...but there is nothing closer to socialism here than Bernie Sanders...and he really doesn't want much, if anything, more than a lot of other successful European nations and Canada, so far as I know. I believe Germany and the U.K. and Canada have universal healthcare systems, so far as I know. Also Germany, Canada, and the U.K. at least as of 2018 had higher minimum wages than the U.S., when their money is converted to the dollar equivalent.

#7. I could understand concerns about people getting used to endlessly spending more and more cash though.

@wolfhnd Almost none of anything you just posted has anything to do with the video topic though, necessarily. It wasn't about fiscal-related matters. It was about social-related matters...especially relating to diversity and inclusivity and such in entertainment media.

Also...this doesn't really have anything to do with my, personal views regarding taxation and such. I didn't talk about that...so why the heck is everyone bringing up what a horrible socialist I am? For all you know, I could be a fiscal conservative.

I'm a Democrat and a globalist...but I'm only Democrat because the right seem to be less philosophically sound...what with their greater tendency to be opposed to abortion, and stem cell research, and their tendency to be more likely to be young earth creationists and such...and because they tend to trust science less than Democrats do. Regarding fiscal matters...I'm pretty neutral, certainly not a socialist. I'm not educated enough to understand what sort of tax plans would be best for this country, or how much national debt is okay. You need to have those sorts of discussions with someone who is not me...because I don't know anything about that stuff.

The video is about disagreements regarding entertainment media...and Mr. Potato Head...and how culture should deal with that sort of stuff.

@MrShittles

You believe in baseball? You don't believe in God. Why would I care?

You believe in law? You don't believe in arbitrary redlines. Are laws real (scientific)?

You believe in social justice? You don't believe it has a genetic basis. How can you get there from a naturalistic (deterministic) basis?

Humans are the cultural ape. Culture is always abstract. The first ape who made a stone tool first had to have an abstract idea of a tool to build it. For the tool to spread apes needed to be able to demonstrate the abstraction through some sort of language which was also abstract. Tool and fire use extends way back in time before modern humans to "humans" with tiny brains. You can say the humans evolved because of an abstraction. The abstract idea of a tool. We don't have complex culture because of big brains but because an abstraction allowed big brains to develop. God is an abstraction. Does that mean it isn't real? In that case what do you mean by real? If things that are not real enabled the evolution of a big brain, how can you know what is real and what is not?

Money is another example. We all know that money isn't real but it has real consequences in the physical world. People without it go hungry etc. It also was an essential tool in building an industrial society that eliminated absolute poverty. Was science necessary for the invention of money? What can science tell us about money? What is the track record for academic economic forecasts?

The world is a lot more complicated than your philosophy.

Culture has evolved in a continuous symbiotic relationship with physical reality. It's why Jordan Peterson says Dawkins isn't Darwinian enough. Just as we don't know what the function of all the evolved structures in our bodies are we also don't know what the evolved functions of things like religion are. Humility and gratitude are a couple of religiously evolved memes you may want to consider.

@wolfhnd Thank you for elaborating when I requested that you do so. Here is my response.

#1. I don't know why it would matter to you whether or not I believe in God. I was arguing why YOU should not believe in the traditional view of God...because I think it would make you less skilled at contemplating abstract concepts and planning for the future...especially when we're talking about the future of humanity and those sorts of broader issues beyond yourself and your family. That's when complex ethical conundrums become more common and abstract reasoning becomes more useful. They're not as useful if the question is, merely, how do I best care for myself and my family.

#2. Yes...laws are real. They don't exist as physical objects, but they exist within minds as ideas, and are maintained through our memories and information storage systems such as writing, and impact the world, so it doesn't matter that they're not physical objects. They, like mathematics, are non-physical things that exist. I suspect you're implying that's how God works. If that is your view...I disagree. Unlike with mathematics and law...I see no signs pointing to the existence of a God. I can see plenty of signs pointing to the existence of mathematics and law. God is not an abstraction to most people who believe in it. God being an abstraction would imply that there is no difference between an atheist calling the universe God for shits and giggles and a theist believing that a God is actually listening to their prayers and intends to provide them with tangible physical rewards or punishments such as hell or Heaven. Most people's perception of God is a very physical, tangible force that can interact with the universe in very concrete ways. However, if we're talking about pantheists...or people who just call the universe "God" in the sense of personifying it, because that inspires them more...then God is an abstraction, in that sense.

#3. What is real is simply that which exists...such as mathematics, and abstractions...which God is not, to most people. God the abstraction exists. I can't argue that doesn't exist any more than I can argue that some imagining of mine I dream up doesn't exist. It exists as an abstraction - a dreamy imagining or idea. God the being with its own intelligence and opinions and ability to affect the universe, and with traits commonly attributed to God...that I can argue doesn't exist.

#4. I can know what is real and what is not by what my senses tell me...and the reasoning that uses the information from those senses to determine what is real and what is not...and inventions that extend my senses, such as microscopes. It all comes down to my senses though, and information about the universe gained through those senses. This is not a perfect system. I can't be sure my senses are telling me the truth, but we've got no better system, so we've got to use this one. Some people talk about how God isn't experienced through the senses. I disagree. I think that if you can "experience" God somehow...you may be experiencing it through some kind of sixth sense...but it's still a sense. In this way, we can be as confident as we possibly can be that some things exist, and others do not...through using our senses.

#5. Science was not necessary for the formation of money...but I don't think that helps your argument, in that it doesn't counter anything I've stated so far in my opinion.

#6. I agree...the world is a lot more complicated than my philosophy.

#7. Regarding this paragraph of yours:

"Culture has evolved in a continuous symbiotic relationship with physical reality. It's why Jordan Peterson says Dawkins isn't Darwinian enough. Just as we don't know what the function of all the evolved structures in our bodies are we also don't know what the evolved functions of things like religion are. Humility and gratitude are a couple of religiously evolved memes you may want to consider."

I agree that there could be benefits to religion. That's why I didn't say it's definitely causing more harm than a lack of it. Perhaps some religious views even have benefits that outweigh a lack of religion. However, given my view that god doesn't exist...regardless of what short term disadvantages might result from a lack of religion, we can't plan for the future as well as possible if we don't have an accurate view of the future. I'm therefore doubting that religion, on average, causes more good than harm as it is now. I can't think of any major ways atheism harms society more than God-belief. I can, however, think of several ways various religion's inaccurate teachings about reality harms society...such as with hell belief for nonbelief. I can think of no redeeming aspects of hell belief for nonbelief. That seems to me like it would depress people, while keeping them from pondering reality extensively, out of fear of losing their religious views. I can't think of any benefits to science-denying religious views like young earth creationism either.

Regarding Jordan Peterson's view that Dawkins is not Darwinian enough...I don't know exactly what that means, but humans are so much more successful than every other organism on Earth because we DON'T rely on Darwinian competition to run our society. We cooperate. We humans are master cooperators. If we did run society through Darwinian competition, society would collapse...the bonds of trust holding society together would be broken, and we'd tumble into a more miserable state than any other life form on the planet as our greater awareness than most animals would make us more terrified, and more violent, and destructive, due to that greater fear, as civilization collapses around us.

@MrShittles

We can't be having a disagreement because according to Dawkins and the Amazing Atheist all these words are just the result of a long string of random events interacting with the environment. We couldn't have done otherwise. If you don't agree with that then you can't be a incompatibilist.

To be clear I'm a determinist. I made a living doing engineering. I'm also not religious. I'm also a compatibilist. What that means is Dawkins and Harris haven't thought it through very well.

@wolfhnd I believe morality would be best described as objective. The Amazing Atheist does not. A brief summary of my views is that, we are each best described as not so much individuals as sensory appendages of a super organism of which all feeling life is composed and the most rational route is to maximize pleasure and minimize suffering for the collective organism...and the reason we're not doing this right now is because of ignorance and a lack of understanding of our true nature (as sensory appendages of a single super organism) and, at least in my case, also emotions which bias us to the extent that we're incapable of fully acting our part as an appendage whose job it is to benefit the super organism.

With that type of outlook...you may be able to see how I'd see atheism as more likely to assist society than theism. My outlook says that it's in my best interest to assist society, because society is me.

TJ, and most atheist's worldviews are far different than mine...but I feel like they're generally closer to it than most theists, because they lack the view that ethics are just something implanted by a God...and that opens the gateway towards them thinking more along the lines of, "I don't like pain...other people's pain feels the same to them as mine does to me," without any distractions of celestial laws...and that stance of "I don't like pain...other people's pain feels the same way to them as mine does to," is pretty much the foundation of my worldview.

I don't know what a determinist is, nor what an incompatibilist is. I also can't imagine how either TJ's nihilism, nor TJ's atheism, would lead to us being incapable of having this conversation...or how us being the result of random interactions would make this conversation impossible.

Although...that depends on what you mean by random, too. I could understand how, if someone were to make a strawman argument they might think something like, "with true randomness there are no laws." (and with no laws, the order we see in our universe would be very strange indeed) But nobody's making that argument. Nobody's saying that there isn't necessarily, some endless string of reasons for everything. On a side note...that endless string of reasons, or single originating source of all things does not imply the existence of a traditional God, or sentient designer...despite a lot of people believing it does for reasons I cannot comprehend.

A sentient designer would, seemingly, require a brain. Those don't seem to happen unless you've got physical objects first, which implies that it's more likely that the universe had an unintelligent origin than an intelligent one...because unintelligence is less complex, more common, and easier to come to be, than intelligence, and therefore more likely to be the cause of something, when we know little about the nature of that thing.

@MrShittles

The sin you commit is argument from ignorance.

This being a philosophy group I throw in a bit of nonsense like logical fallacies. In reality I have the same opinion of philosophy that Steven Weinberg has which is basically the the use of philosophers is to fight the bad ideas of other philosophers. The problem is everyone has a philosophy they just call them opinions.

I'm going to cut this short and ask you to think about how can you justify punishment in the absence of freewill. From there how can you not have punishment if rehabilitation isn't voluntary. You can only go so far with social engineering such as censorship until you run into the brick wall of human nature. That is what capitalism is all about, self inflicted punishment and freewill, agency and dignity.

@wolfhnd I can easily justify punishment in the absence of free will. The goal of punishment is to function as negative feedback to discourage future harmful actions that would harm the super organism. Punishment is, in other words, a form of harm that, though it temporarily harms the super organism we all compose, if it is done right, ultimately assists the super organism by discouraging future harm.

It's not about what is deserved or not deserved. That doesn't matter. It's always about what benefits the super organism the most...what produces the greatest quantity of pleasure and least quantity of suffering.

@MrShittles

I give up. Have you ever heard of reducto ad absurdum.

@wolfhnd Okay...I'll elaborate.

There is no reason why Adolf Hitler does not deserve to exist in eternal Utopia...because he, like everyone else, was born into states beyond our control. We, like clockwork, have no control over our fates.

Therefore, we all deserve as ideal of fates as possible. The only way to achieve that is by maximizing pleasure and minimizing suffering...in the sense of perceiving each pleasurable action by an individual as producing a certain quantity of pleasure, and trying to maximize that quantity, and each unpleasant action as producing a certain quantity of suffering, and trying to minimize that quantity.

Now...we do, at least according to some views, have free will...not in the irrational sense that we can somehow alter our fates. (if we could alter our fates, they would not be our fates) but rather that we, unlike most organisms can roll our options around in our minds and make choices about those options.

Your earlier paragraph:

"I'm going to cut this short and ask you to think about how can you justify punishment in the absence of freewill. From there how can you not have punishment if rehabilitation isn't voluntary. You can only go so far with social engineering such as censorship until you run into the brick wall of human nature. That is what capitalism is all about, self inflicted punishment and freewill, agency and dignity."

Did not make any sense. The absence of free will, whether we say it exists or not...has nothing to do with whether or not we are able to justify punishment. Furthermore...what does social engineering have to do with anything we've been discussing? Also...what do the limits of social engineering have to do with what we've been discussing? What does free will have to with what we've been discussing? I don't see the point of bringing up any of those topics.

Even if we were discussing TJ's socialist views...and I never intended to do that...and the video is not about that...socialism does not inherently lead to any less freedom than capitalism. It all depends on what type of freedom you're talking about. Under capitalisms you might have more freedoms in terms of doing what you want with the money you make. Under socialisms, you might gain an equal or greater amount of freedom through having more access to the funding to do what you want. It all depends on what sort of circumstances we're talking about...so I don't know what was the point of capitalisms providing freedom and dignity and whatnot and your paragraph in general confused the hell out of me.

@wolfhnd Also, the "Argument from ignorance" fallacy does not apply to my statements, regarding the an intelligent creator being less likely to be the source of existence than an unintelligent source. I'm merely looking at existing patterns and following those patterns as if they will continue...which is the way we conclude all things we can conclude.

An unintelligent source for all things is more likely to be the case than an intelligent source for all things because intelligence, so far as we can tell, is more difficult to come to be, rarer, and more complicated than unintelligence...at least until we find some evidence of an intelligent creator, and I can't think of how we have any.

You can include a link to this post in your posts and comments by including the text q:198705
Slug does not evaluate or guarantee the accuracy of any content. Read full disclaimer.