There is nothing wrong with killing another human being

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correct your quotes

As to loosing to the "evil bankers", I say Let the Buyer Beware. In commerce the onus of caution is on the buyer, not the seller. Our government is partly to blame by creating the illusion of Easy Credit. Over the last ten or fifteen years the inflating balloon of housing prices (which came to and end recently) gulled the less than creditworthy that the could go into hock for a house and if the going became hard they could dump the house on the market and make a nifty profit. It was the illusion of "free money". This goes all the way back to the Tulip Bulb Boom in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century. The illusion of "free money" turns the needy into the foolish needy. This is hardly a new state of affairs. It is the tragedy of human stupidity at work. After we survive this crisis (and we will) seventy years from now, two generations down they line, it will start all over again.

ruveyn

And who pours millions of dollars into the government to get the people they corrupt elected to pass the laws to screw the stupid buyers?

He who takes the bribe is just as guilty as he who offers the bribe. There are no innocent folks here. Not one.

The only solution is to hold fast to what is right. If that is not feasible then we are in for an eternity of pain. Government is not the solution. It is part of the problem.

ruveyn

It's amazing, for someone who flaunts his IQ continuously like a flag of victory, how little perception that assumed capability has granted you.

No, only with having ideas that make some sense rather than being BS.


Well, no, it is really more likely that you are crossing instincts that have been genetically instilled into humanity. Humans are tribal organisms, and they benefit from the existence of others regardless of whether those others can strike back. 1) Humans cannot determine whether they will get caught at any point in time. 2) Humans benefit from the existence of their fellows as generally humans are allies of each other if it is reasonable.

Even further, I don't think that all of us are so much concerned with "our traditional upbringing".

Rotekill topic

I would never kill you, Yupa, even to decrease the surplus population.

Morality is just a construct that was invented by humans. To be used by humans, for the purpose of controlling humans.

That said, it serves a good purpose. But where does the justification for imposing a morality upon another person come from? I know that the largest proponents of the anti-OP argument in this thread are atheists (or close enough) so they can't argue god... And outside of a god, there is little source for that justification.

Instead the only answer that comes is "the majority" and as such "the minority" suffer.

It is illogical to pre-assume that "the majority" is the stronger. I tend to believe it would be more likely to be the weaker, as compromise tends to weaken. (at least in practice)

So, when falling back to the "survival of the fittest" or evolution by natural selection. Be it on a genetic level or even a memetic level, there is an internal conflict between the two factions, one will have to win out... And they will have to war with each other for that very survival.
"The Minority" have options, they can try to become part of the majority by changing who they are (or acting like they've changed) Or they can fight against "the majority" And some will choose each path. Others may try to find a compromise path, and be trampled underfoot in the process.

If it is the moral rules of the majority that dictate that one should not kill, and that there is something wrong with it, then there is no reason to suggest that the minority will (or should) obey their morality in that conflict.
But the majority, by issuing their "moral decree" is by their own decree stuck with that moral decree and must fight the war that lies ahead within the bounds of that moral decree, while the minority is free of those moral requirements.

In other words, morality is worthless and meaningless if it is not upheld by those that decree it.
When those that decree it, feel it justified to deviate from that morality, (or put in so many caveats as to when you can do this or that or whatever) then they forfeit their right to decree a morality.

Back more to the OP. Yes, i would kill, and hold little remorse or "guilt" for it, IF --> It was in my best interests. (that is, all things being weighed out completely) And the guilt I'd feel would be simply the remnants of drilled in morality from childhood which I now reject, but will never be able to rid myself completely of.
Times that that would occur. Defending my freedom and life, defending the freedom and life of my child and most members of my family. Seeking revenge upon someone who did a "sufficient" wrong to me in the past. (I won't define sufficient here, it's not topical) It is funny that I use the word revenge... that's just social conditioning.. It wouldn't be revenge, or pay back, or the like... it's hard to define really, it would be more likely "eliminating them" just as the first two examples it would "eliminating them" nothing more, nothing less.

Btw.. Asmodeus, yes, such a pathogen would be justifiable in a world of overpopulation, if it were random.
Culling the gene pool to a point where Evolution by natural selection could once again take root, would be in the best interest of the human species, and/or whatever follows that species in the genetic ladder.
Keep in mind however, if the person who created it, or those in other positions of power were to be given immunity, the whole justifiability would fall apart.
I am NOT going to say that our world is overpopulated here, because again that is not topical. So do not from this assume i'd support such a pathogen.

Regarding the war-tangent, America has no moral position to kill civilians, as it so callously does, because it decrees a morality whereby that is an atrocity, ergo, America has lost it's right to decree morality, or more accurately lost justification for the morality it decrees.
If you cannot survive, as individuals, as society and as a species within a morality that you have decreed, then you cannot continue to hold that morality with any justification.
If America were forced to uphold their own morality that they espouse, they would die.

The only moral code where by you can circumvent this loss of justification when responding to threat, is moral relativism. Where everything depends upon the cost-benefit analysis of the situation.
You cannot list the situations where something is okay, and something isn't okay... instead you have to base it on judgment calls at time of the required action.
Previous attempts to systemize morality have failed miserably. Why? Simply because the list would be too long, and the opportunity for bias by the writer would be too great. Also, the environment and situations change too fast, that is, the world is NOT static. So revision would be a constant issue... And revisionist morality is just a cheap, flawed knock-off of moral relativism.

And for those that say... "yes, i support such and such a morality, but when it comes to war, I will do what i have to do" Well, that's the first step to moral relativism. More steps will follow once you're there, and as war becomes the norm in the world, you will be all the way there if you're still alive.

The OP goes too far... well, maybe not too far, it is put forth in too theoretical a framework, that it is almost "intended" to insult, but the core of what is said in it, is a very important piece of thought.

No, it really probably wasn't at all.

For one, how would human beings have generated and trained people in this kind of thinking entirely foreign to their thinking? Morality requires entire categories of thought to exist, and I find it very hard to think that these categories could be entirely created by an outside force. (EDIT: A problem talked about in the NYT article I link to later: "One lesson from the study of artificial intelligence (and from cognitive science more generally) is that an empty head learns nothing: a system that is capable of rapidly absorbing information needs to have some prewired understanding of what to pay attention to and what generalizations to make." For people to absorb an idea such as morality, they likely have to have a prewired understanding of it) Even worse, the kind of propaganda machines that you are positing to exist from the very beginning in order to cause people to think this way are absurd to suppose. Your idea is so historically aparsimonious that it cannot reasonably be believed, as you are arguing that clever geniuses arose independently in each nation with the power to so overwhelmingly control their lives as to indoctrinate these people with ideas entirely foreign to the workings of their mind.

Secondly, the idea you put forward makes no sense given the existence of "moral reasoning", a category that plainly exists. Your position makes no sense of ethics what so all, because if morality was just an invented construct, then what do these philosophers go back to in created moral theories? They certainly aren't coming out of the void, because there is too much agreement. They certainly aren't just coming from society either given the oddities seen with some of the opinions.

Thirdly, experiments have shown that even infants show signs of engaging in reasoning that resembles moral reasoning. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/magaz ... wanted=all This makes no sense if morality is an external teaching pushed into people, but rather only makes sense if morality is


Internal contradiction. You say that morality is an indoctrination, then you judge the creation of morality on moral grounds.... which makes your judgment empty.


Do you love to come up with counter-intuitive ideas and defend them with flimsy excuses?

"The majority" is stronger in as much as the grouping makes rational sense. More people means more resources, period. And the assumption of "all else equal" isn't some bizarreness. Even further, the issue of compromise is internal, and has nothing to do with the engagement of external beings.


There is no reason why a majority of people would spontaneously invent an entirely new category of thought.

The "moral decree" usually gets shunted to the side in warfare situations, and everybody knows that this happens, and it is to the point where it is to some extent part of conventional moral reasoning.


There is no right to decree a morality by your view, it is an artificial construct. Talking about a "right to decree morality" is ridiculously circular, as you are talking about judging the construction of morality through morality, and that literally makes no sense.

Secondly, talking about "putting in so many caveats" is just ad hoc reasoning on your part. The reason being that if morality is a construct, one that completely follows human rules on how it should or shouldn't work, then there is no reason that the number of rules in this construct should be limited by anything. If you disagree, then why don't you logically prove how many caveats are allowable in constructing a morality? It seems that if your claim makes sense, then details about your claim should be in theory provable.



We're socially conditioned to desire things that we disapprove of????



A "species" has no interest. A "species" is a category invented by scientists to organize data about populations of living organisms.


Why?

If the reason is to end overpopulation, then it doesn't matter whether the powerful or powerless were killed.

If the purpose is promoting genes that furthered certain interests of human beings, then there is still no necessary problem. Allowances would have to be made for people who have weak bodies but strong minds.


.... ok, I stopped reading, Exclavius. I am not enough of a masochist to continue reading this garbage you call logic, so I won't. Nothing you write makes any sense. I think you think you are smart, but everything you were just writing was utter BS.

I agree with this statement.

**Post deleted**

Last edited by LiberalJustice on 31 May 2010, 12:07 am, edited 1 time in total.

I agree with this statement.

It's interesting to encounter a fan of Alice in Wonderland.

That's one line of thought. Another one to consider is that making friends has a lot of evolutionary advantages. From this perspective, killing is immoral and unnatural. The control comes in when a group claims it's moral to do X, Y, and Z with no basis. Just thought I would that in here. As for most other morals, I agree with you one hundred percent: they are BS made to remove any common sense we may have started with.

The actual "what to observe" does not need to be pre-wired, only a heuristic for determining what is important to observe, which will vary from person to person; and a comparative rating system. Only the general set of rules need to be pre-wired, not that "killing is wrong" Because "killing is wrong" is not always true. I can see "unjustified killing is wrong" could be hard wired in, but the definition that is applied to "unjustified" remains open, and is determined by social values... ie what is called "morality"

I do not claim that someone in each nation rose to power to enforce it... You think i'm implying intent at some level, no, it's deeper. I probably used the word "invented" wrong. That tends to imply a single person writes the whole of a single morality. No, It comes about as a long process, passed down vertically from generation to generation. It will change with time, and with environment. But it is built BY the majority of society. And it it's growth is determined not by it's fitness for humankind, but for it's fitness to re-produce itself... the idea of that morality, that is... If that specific morality sets itself into more minds than another one, then it will be the one that grows, regardless of whether it's the best morality for the species/individual/genes etc. Ie, it spreads and grows only if it's good at spreading and growing.

Every time something is added to that morality, it is based upon what someone adds to it. Morality is learned in childhood, and mostly from their elders. It can certainly be modified in later life, but the vast majority of people do not do so... As that requires introspection, something few are capable of.



moral reasoning and ethics are also just constructs. When you define a construct well enough, as philosophers have done, you can discuss them, that's what moral reasoning and ethics are... the discussion of a construct, morality. You can discuss engineering too, but it doesn't make engineering something real and tangible, it is simply a construct, a framework so to say, for discussing relative merits and deficits. Engineering discusses objective concepts, moral reasoning discusses subjective concepts, so in one there IS a clear (possibly provable) "best way".

Moral philosophers come to an agreement on things, because they make the same assumptions in their thinking. They are not thinking paradigm-free. There may be few that derive different base paradigms, but if the majority doesn't take hold of that paradigm it fails, and if the majority does, then it supersedes the old and becomes the new morality. But who has the "moral authority" to state that the majority has the right paradigm, and the minority doesn't?

Let's put it this way. the framework is there that will allow us to form a morality. But the environment around us, is what determines the parameters that are fed into that system. Our learning from physical stimulus, everything from hitting yourself causes pain, to learning how to add keeps me from getting ripped off in transactions, to our time in church, punishment/rewards from parents/teachers.

okay, "good purpose" again, bad wording. it's formation has had positive benefits to society. Which is why i do not claim "morality" is a negative net effect.
It has helped keep society together, which right or wrong, is most likely in the best interest of the human race, or at least has been up until recently (say up until the enlightenment, maybe even later)
I have not morally judged morality, instead i've applied a cost/benefit analysis to morality and it's effect on humankind. If you wish to argue that it has not had a positive net effect, i will certainly discuss with you the valuations of various factors that had to be weighed and valued.



Ah, but the individuals that are the outliers can be stronger individually than those who belong to the majority.
And this is one of the deficits to the existence of morality. Those that reproduce the most may well be the weaker members of society, because they hold the morality of the majority, regardless of their relative weakness and strengths as an individual. Morality is a leash that we put on ourselves, the stricter those moral codes, the more constricting the leash. It limits our ability to take action. Which, I doubt many would argue is a bad thing when applied at reasonable levels, but when taken to extreme, it does become unhealthy. The question is where that line is drawn. Each individual in the world must decide upon that line themselves.... And that is why i'm a moral relativist. I cannot set that line here and now. I must keep it open, and let the situation decide where the line needs be drawn.

Where the strength of the majority does come into play is their ability to enforce that morality upon it's members as well as the members of the minority of dissenters.
Those in the minority though have their version of a moral right to fight against it. Knowing full well what they risk in doing it. By dissenting from the morality of the majority you are cutting the leash (or more realistically loosening it) The benefit is freedom, the deficit is that you may loose even more freedom or your life (jail or death)



If you cannot win a war, living by the morality in which you pretend to defend, then you have proven your morality to be ineffective. It may win the war, do not get me wrong, but it has proven it's ineffectiveness. Sinking to your enemy's level, even when YOU win, is showing their morality is better and more effective.

If morality has to be changed in times of war, then what different is that from moral relativism? You have let the situation alter a "right" into a "wrong" or vice versa.
Morality only plays a role in deciding conflict... Be it internal thoughts, personal actions, group actions or international relations. It is dealing with conflict and resolution.
Every conflict is analogous to war. So morality must shift at all times, because it is only used in conflict.



Of course we are... this happens as a result of us consciously changing our views on morality.
I was taught A, however as time went by, I started to see that the net benefits of B were greater.
Maybe i put less weight on the risk/cost of being an outcast, maybe i put more value on the freedom that B bestowed me with, whatever the reason, I can disapprove of something i was socially conditioned to want, because now from my perspective what I want isn't what I see as best. (notice the what's best, and wants is only related to me... I do not tell you what to believe or what is best for you, only what is so for me.)
Another more direct example: I want to eat lots and lots of bacon, however I know it's not in my best interest, so i would disapprove of going to the fridge and cooking up 3 pounds just for myself.



The proposed purpose for the cull was to let evolution resume where it left off, if we introduce any bias into the new population then we delay evolution by forcing it to eliminate any errors that we purposely introduced into the system. It is foolish to think that "those in power" would be a purely representative group of society as a whole, genetically speaking. There ARE genetic traits that are more common in those who seek and/or achieve power. There are traits that are more common in those that enter the field of bio-chemistry and/or biological weapons engineering. By exempting them from the process we are introducing bias into a system that requires random mutation to achieve it's purpose.

Yes... I have made a moral judgement here.. I have claimed that genetics is more beneficial to a species than stasis or any other "driving force" that has yet taken control.
There are many better ways to achieve this effect though... And eliminating the medical industry would certainly be atop the list.

I may claim that there is justifiability to such actions, that doesn't mean i would initiate them.
I personally think that it is not sufficiently justified, but under certain conditions that could change.

Ok, but a heuristic is still not something native to the system. The issue is that there needs to be a beginning.


Ok, you misused it and that confused things a lot.


Engineering is about real and tangible things. This is obvious, because engineering is just applied science. It is the posterboy for "real and tangible".


Ok, but the denial of any instance of some level of universality seems questionable to me. Universality clearly exists.


I think I understand. Relatively Nietzschean outlook. Interesting.


Not really, no. A wartime power might use the draft and propaganda to win a war, but that does not mean that the way of living isn't better.


Moral relativism denies standards. Moral calculus allows for standards and trade-offs. The two theories are different, and moral calculus CAN allow for a right to turn into a wrong given the change in other variables enough. Moral relativism though denies the formula from the start.


Evolution is just our term for the process by which genetic variations succeed over other genetic variations. It has no purpose and it cannot be "delayed".


It has no purpose in the first place. That's the problem.

Also, by engineering a virus, we are introducing bias as well, as we are determining who will resist more than others.

In any case, sorry I did come down so hard on you. Someone talking about "inventing" will seem quite off.