No free will = giving up?

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Eustress assumes that there is some net gain, under physical stress or reproductive pressure, but noone will ever willingly play the masochist. Noone starts damaging themselves, willingly. Is it used as an excuse to inflict harm, upon others.

Okay, that's great. You still haven't told us anything about why saying 'that's hedonism!' means anything.

Go back and see my edited post - I tried to take a stab at what I *think* you're saying, although I have to admit that I'm really getting tired of guessing what you mean.

Can you anchor this to some type of example? It's dangling out in space and I can't tell whether you're saying that people won't do things that are harmful to themselves for no gain (which is partially true but I think it misses that some people have pathologies or neuroses that they're waking out) or whether you're trying to suggest that eustress is a fiction in a hedonistic world for some unspoken and unprovided reasons. If you're saying the later you haven't made any case at all for it.

Oh for goodness sake, read that Wikipedia entry again! What does it say? Well, let me quote your quote of it:

Scientism = "universal applicability of the scientific method", and "constitutes the most authoritative worldview", "is the most valuable", "the only source of genuine factual knowledge", and that it "alone can yield true knowledge". That sums it up perfectly, and is why I reject this daft and dogmatic philosophy of knowledge. It claims to be universal, authoritative, the most valuable, the only source of knowledge... Do I REALLY need to spell it out for you here? It's basically a religion - "only through me will you find salvation and the truth".

Scientism is not science, nor the method of science, but (and as I pointed out to you before) a philosophy of knowledge, a worldview, paradigm, one of many ways to view reality. It isn't universally applicable, I don't care whether or not it is 'authoritative', the claim that it is the most valuable is purely subjective opinion in my opinion, and I care not for its claim to being the only avenue to truth.

Let's take unrestrained hedonism as an example. It has consequences. Hedonism, the pursuit of pleasure, AIN'T EASY. Let's say our hypothetical hedonist has perfectly socially acceptable vices. Even then, those things cost money, time, and energy. Choices must be made. Speaking as an economist, no one can have it all. It's dangerously axiomatic and intuitive, but supported by the evidence of many dead young rock stars. So, there are natural limits, and Keith Moons to test them, even for that pernicious hedonism.

Is it possible that the idea boxes were dealing with are just really low-resolution and incomplete? I'm not particularly interested in trying to evolve arguments to back up vices as hobbies. You can get reward and stress-relief out of walking or hiking in nature, bike-riding, jogging, meditation, spiritual pursuits, reading good books, listening to high caliber Youtube lectures and debates, learning different kinds of philosophy, teaching yourself a new skill, engaging in philanthropic activity, the list goes on. I think we have a lot of very healthy and constructive tools for enhancing how we feel without reaching for the e's and coke.

I was not making any moral judgment or further application. It was just a label. That was the word for it.

But, there are different attitudes, toward hedonism.

Is it neglectful or abusive?

Are there any further truths, in life, besides to experience your own kind-of pleasure?

Epicureanism is, in effect, a "virtuous" type of hedonism. There is a morally-based restraint in the thought of Epicurus.

A constant life of pure, unadulterated hedonism, in my opinion, will only lead to doom for all who practice it. There are times when one who is an unabashed hedonist will rub somebody the wrong way--or worse.

Again, I think we have a poverty of terminology.

The flavor people tack on to hedonism is something like a sort of Bohemian hippy trailer park where the kids are living on foodstamps and the parents are outback beating the drums on the weekends, dropping acid or smoking dope, and listening to Grateful Dead. I have no interest in either defending that or trying to explain why I don't support that as any sort of primary mode to such a degree that it starts sounding like what I have to say is 'I am not x', which by social transference means 'I am x and trying to deny it'.

I have a question to ask in return perhaps. Are you suggesting some part of the following? a) We can't do this without Jesus b) the only human pleasures, not expressly sanctioned by organized religion and followed specifically under and account of that sanction, are getting doped up or masterbating all day on painkillers?

My own objection to that - it's worse then pessemistic, I have to additionally ask if that's a suggestion that should we find out that the Jesus of the bible wasn't real in the protestant dead-letter sense of thinking that the only sensible thing to do is human exterminism by DMT and heroin? I mean geez... lets break out the General Mills anti-masturbation flyers while we're at it because without the prying eyes of God to judge us we'd play with it until we starved...

I might be exaggerating a bit there but hopefully you get my point - it seems like terrible sloppy reflection on human nature and it seems to make a lot of assumptions about what most people would do if fear of eternal hell was lifted. I'm sure there are a sizeable minority of people who do need other people or some top-down structure of society to tell them there'll be doom and gloom if they fail their obligations and responsibilities. I'm not even talking about removing the role that taboo and stigma play in society.

What I'm suggesting is we seem to only have two choices here for grounding human progress or right and wrong a) prevention of misery b) divine revelation of holy books. We're at a point where information's too available, taking the holy books literally to the letter is impossible and I think about the only person I'm aware of whose trying to untangle religious myths these days on a public level is Jordan Peterson. There were several big names in the 20th century doing this in their own way - Carl Jung, Manly P Hall, Alan Watts, Joseph Campbell, etc.. to varying degrees of accuracy and they had niche followings of varying sizes and personality-types but they stayed niche. Seeing the archetypal values in these stories is still not the same as literal belief. Without literal belief we're in a position where we still have to argue for the value of preventing cruelty, and pain is about the only obvious thing most people can think of to appeal to. Past that, the absolute worst option, is let humanity simply decide that on the flavor of the decade or whatever's expedient. We went that way 100 years ago and it destroyed Europe and Asia giving us some of the worst mass murderers of history.

If we're going to rule out anything that's not literal faith in one of the big five world religions and if looking at pain as a boiler-plate metric of evil since that's equivocal to hooving pills, what are the great alternatives that leave religious revelation, 'hedonism', and 'let political passions decide it' in the dust?

No disagreement here. I'm making an argument against the need for universal rules on the basis of testable natural limits. This equally applies to asceticism.

Out of curiosity what does that mean to you - to be a scientific reductionist but not an atheist?

Yeah, I think the consequences of wrong action typically speak quite well for themselves. It can be difficult to establish axioms about it because reprisals aren't a guarantee - some people can be absolutely rotten and healthy, some people can smoke and drink into their 100's, I suppose it's considering the general rule and not basing the public dialogue on the exceptions.

Whether we have no free will or an iota of it, most people will learn from their lives, and from the lives of others. Beyond the justice system, this knowledge should influence our educational system, our parenting standards, and our understanding of ethics. We can concentrate more on shaping people who create more benefits for themselves and society, and less on punishing those who test the natural limits. They do us all a service, the rock stars and the monks.

Agreed.

I also think we'd also have a considerable rearrangement of priorities because we'd have to accept, more than ever, that everything we do has secondary effects and that the people around us aren't infinite buffers for our mistakes, dalliances, etc. As it stands society pushes a person to cracking, is shocked when it happens, puts them in whatever system it will, and washes its hands of all guilt - because its perceived that the person simply made a bad choice, or was the mysterious/inscrutable 'bad apple', and that the contributing factors outside of their culminating actions weren't relevant.

I suppose I have a particular sensitivity to this topic because I did feel, in my mid-20's, what felt like a societal wish for me to slip up. I'd fought to survive graduation of high school, fought for the memory of what I'd been through and my own perceived value, and for as much as I tried to be a stand-up person I had a small group of close friends, a cluster of acquaintences, but it seemed like almost anyone who didn't know me assumed the worst and it went right up through my late 20's. Seems like if you don't fit in there's some neurotic movie-character role people will try to shuffle you off toward, for me that was the antithesis of who I was and I got a really bad taste of how base and childish people can be.