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techstepgenr8tion
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31 Jan 2023, 9:31 am

kraftiekortie wrote:
Yep…high infant mortality did skew the “life expectancy” statistics.

Many people lived to at least their 60s even during medieval times.

The one wild thing I remember hearing about medieval serfs is that they had strange deaths such as drowning in cricks and when historians looked into it further it turned out that they were drinking beer with every meal, that a lot of these deaths were alcoholism related. In a way it sounds like a lot of things about Russian culture were a holdout of the way things had been in Europe previously in this regard (I haven't checked in a long time but I *think* they had serfs up through the 19th century?).

But yeah, serfs trying to drink their lives away and having fatal accidents with farm equipment or drowning in cricks because they passed out was another aspect of low life expectancy.


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31 Jan 2023, 9:43 am

Serfdom was banned by law in Russia in 1861.



AngelRho
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31 Jan 2023, 7:31 pm

Voluntarily entering into servitude as a means of paying a debt is acceptable. Involuntary servitude to pay your debt to society is also acceptable.

Servitude that unreasonably and without cause violates the will of the individual is objectively evil.



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31 Jan 2023, 10:10 pm

AngelRho wrote:
Voluntarily entering into servitude as a means of paying a debt is acceptable. Involuntary servitude to pay your debt to society is also acceptable.

Servitude that unreasonably and without cause violates the will of the individual is objectively evil.


Subjectively in my opinion, the most evil people involved were the people who originally violated the will of the individual.

For example, I thnk locking people in prison can be evil. But, how evil is the prison guard?How evil is the person who does not break people out of prison to free them? What about a person that doesn’t have a home to go back to? How much is a person obligated to finance a persons new life or give them free passage back to where they came from? Would they even want that?

I know this does not make perfect sense but it is something to think about instead of insisting on something absolute that is merely words and basing future opinions on it. I would say the most evil people involved were people capturing the slaves. In the case of African slaves, I believe that was their fellow Africans. I don’t think they had to go along with it if it was not within their moral compass.

I don’t really have a disagreement with your post. I just don’t think an objective absolute gets the job done if accuracy is important.



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01 Feb 2023, 6:45 am

JimJohn wrote:
AngelRho wrote:
Voluntarily entering into servitude as a means of paying a debt is acceptable. Involuntary servitude to pay your debt to society is also acceptable.

Servitude that unreasonably and without cause violates the will of the individual is objectively evil.


Subjectively in my opinion, the most evil people involved were the people who originally violated the will of the individual.

For example, I thnk locking people in prison can be evil. But, how evil is the prison guard?How evil is the person who does not break people out of prison to free them? What about a person that doesn’t have a home to go back to? How much is a person obligated to finance a persons new life or give them free passage back to where they came from? Would they even want that?

I know this does not make perfect sense but it is something to think about instead of insisting on something absolute that is merely words and basing future opinions on it. I would say the most evil people involved were people capturing the slaves. In the case of African slaves, I believe that was their fellow Africans. I don’t think they had to go along with it if it was not within their moral compass.

I don’t really have a disagreement with your post. I just don’t think an objective absolute gets the job done if accuracy is important.

Subjectivity ONLY exists in the mind. There is evil that is only evil because YOU think it’s evil. Then there is the objective reality of negative outcomes for people.

Objective evil is evil inflicted on an individual. To qualify as an objective evil, it must have physical action, must negatively impact the self-interest of another person, and must be unreasonable. Thinking bad thoughts or speaking bad words doesn’t really qualify as being objectively evil. Involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime harms individual self-interest, exists in observable, physical reality, but is reasonable as long as it fits the crime committed. It serves the self-interest of other individuals because it provides objective (real-world) justice.

Involuntary servitude is preferable to incarceration because incarceration only removes the criminal from society. By ONLY restricting an individual’s freedom, you remove the individual’s usefulness to society. Prison as a means of correcting and rehabilitating the criminal primarily has the good of the criminal in mind, not the food of his victims.

The objective value of incarceration is in its ability to protect the individual criminal from retaliation. Left entirely to mob justice, there is too great a risk that punishment does not fit the crime. Everything become punishable by death or violence. So there is some need to incarcerate criminals depending on whether it is necessary to protect a criminal from society. Violent crimes where murder isn’t the intent, negligence resulting in death, massive pyramid schemes, etc. are examples of crime that may require protecting the criminal from society. Where incarceration fails is in the lack of objective, measurable restitution to victims or to society. Plus, there is nothing reasonable about lengthy prison sentences. If the sentence is too great to be served within the criminal’s lifetime, he should be forgiven within a few years or executed if the crime is unforgivable (such as murder).



kraftiekortie
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01 Feb 2023, 9:10 am

The Africans taken on slave ships across the Atlantic had no debts to their captors.



JimJohn
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01 Feb 2023, 9:47 am

AngelRho wrote:
JimJohn wrote:
AngelRho wrote:
Voluntarily entering into servitude as a means of paying a debt is acceptable. Involuntary servitude to pay your debt to society is also acceptable.

Servitude that unreasonably and without cause violates the will of the individual is objectively evil.


Subjectively in my opinion, the most evil people involved were the people who originally violated the will of the individual.

For example, I thnk locking people in prison can be evil. But, how evil is the prison guard?How evil is the person who does not break people out of prison to free them? What about a person that doesn’t have a home to go back to? How much is a person obligated to finance a persons new life or give them free passage back to where they came from? Would they even want that?

I know this does not make perfect sense but it is something to think about instead of insisting on something absolute that is merely words and basing future opinions on it. I would say the most evil people involved were people capturing the slaves. In the case of African slaves, I believe that was their fellow Africans. I don’t think they had to go along with it if it was not within their moral compass.

I don’t really have a disagreement with your post. I just don’t think an objective absolute gets the job done if accuracy is important.

Subjectivity ONLY exists in the mind. There is evil that is only evil because YOU think it’s evil. Then there is the objective reality of negative outcomes for people.

Objective evil is evil inflicted on an individual. To qualify as an objective evil, it must have physical action, must negatively impact the self-interest of another person, and must be unreasonable. Thinking bad thoughts or speaking bad words doesn’t really qualify as being objectively evil. Involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime harms individual self-interest, exists in observable, physical reality, but is reasonable as long as it fits the crime committed. It serves the self-interest of other individuals because it provides objective (real-world) justice.

Involuntary servitude is preferable to incarceration because incarceration only removes the criminal from society. By ONLY restricting an individual’s freedom, you remove the individual’s usefulness to society. Prison as a means of correcting and rehabilitating the criminal primarily has the good of the criminal in mind, not the food of his victims.

The objective value of incarceration is in its ability to protect the individual criminal from retaliation. Left entirely to mob justice, there is too great a risk that punishment does not fit the crime. Everything become punishable by death or violence. So there is some need to incarcerate criminals depending on whether it is necessary to protect a criminal from society. Violent crimes where murder isn’t the intent, negligence resulting in death, massive pyramid schemes, etc. are examples of crime that may require protecting the criminal from society. Where incarceration fails is in the lack of objective, measurable restitution to victims or to society. Plus, there is nothing reasonable about lengthy prison sentences. If the sentence is too great to be served within the criminal’s lifetime, he should be forgiven within a few years or executed if the crime is unforgivable (such as murder).


That was an interesting expose of it.

If subjectivity only exists in the mind I would argue that objectivity exists only in the mind as well.

Given that free will is merely an illusion no one can be held responsible for anything. That results in society falling apart.



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01 Feb 2023, 9:58 am

kraftiekortie wrote:
The Africans taken on slave ships across the Atlantic had no debts to their captors.


Supposedly when Alex Haley wrote “roots” he knew that the white man did not capture the slaves. It may have been the white man that owned the boat, but the black man loaded them up. I obviously don’t know the truth of that but supposedly it is true. Does that make a difference?

In the scientific method scientists look at specifics rather than brushing specifics aside as inconvenient or not politically expedient. I also realize that if I were from Africa (let’s say South Africa ) I would already know the veracity or fallacy of my thinking. So I apologize if it is dumb.



kraftiekortie
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01 Feb 2023, 10:14 am

Rival African tribes would (usually) capture people of other tribes, and "sell" them to the Europeans.

Or (related): the Europeans would pay the “rival African tribes” in some sort of currency for those “tribes” to capture their rivals for the Europeans.



Last edited by kraftiekortie on 01 Feb 2023, 10:44 am, edited 1 time in total.

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01 Feb 2023, 10:27 am

techstepgenr8tion wrote:
kraftiekortie wrote:
Yep…high infant mortality did skew the “life expectancy” statistics.

Many people lived to at least their 60s even during medieval times.

The one wild thing I remember hearing about medieval serfs is that they had strange deaths such as drowning in cricks and when historians looked into it further it turned out that they were drinking beer with every meal, that a lot of these deaths were alcoholism related. In a way it sounds like a lot of things about Russian culture were a holdout of the way things had been in Europe previously in this regard (I haven't checked in a long time but I *think* they had serfs up through the 19th century?).

But yeah, serfs trying to drink their lives away and having fatal accidents with farm equipment or drowning in cricks because they passed out was another aspect of low life expectancy.


Beer?

I dont think so.

It would have been vodka.

Vodka was the currency that the Russian elite purposely used to bribe the serfs into submission for centuries. And its still the prefered means of transport to...oblivion...in Russia. Not beer. :lol:



techstepgenr8tion
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01 Feb 2023, 10:41 am

naturalplastic wrote:
Beer?

I dont think so.

It would have been vodka.

I switched topics mid-paragraph, with beer I was talking about European serfs and then comparing them to Russians which in that case yes, they were on to vodka as the 'no tell' way to get drunk on the job without smelling the part perhaps before most (stating that more in the spirit of humor than anything else, vodka as a Russian drink probably had much more to do with what crops they had available that fermented into spirits well).


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01 Feb 2023, 12:40 pm

JimJohn wrote:
That was an interesting expose of it.

If subjectivity only exists in the mind I would argue that objectivity exists only in the mind as well.

Given that free will is merely an illusion no one can be held responsible for anything. That results in society falling apart.

That wasn't what I meant. Subjectivity refers to things that only exist in the mind. IDEAS of morality, justice, love, etc. are subjective. Treating others with respect, holding open and fair trials and letting the innocent go/imposing prison sentences, and a husband kissing his wife are objective. (Don't start with objective respect--it just means staying out of a person's way while they're trying to live their life and doing no harm to anyone else. Half the point of objectivity is being reasonable about things).

I do not believe free will is an illusion. You are free to do as you like. You are NOT free from the consequences of your actions. The free-will-is-an-illusion thing is really just about how people want to do as they please without consequences and find that they are unable to do as they please because the consequences are too much for them to endure. So they say free will is an illusion based on that. You have the freedom to harm yourself if you want. You have the freedom to destroy and end you life if you want. You just can't undo some things afterwards if you make a mistake in your decision. Getting a formal reprimand at work might lead to an improvement plan and continued employment. You can come back from that. Blowing your brains out might prove a little more difficult. If you choose to go with that making the argument that free will is an illusion, be my guest. I just don't find that very reasonable.

Or you might argue that we don't choose to be born, or our circumstances. Well, I'll give you that, but then there's everything else that you're free to do. Or you might argue that God is omniscient and therefore knows everything you'll ever do before you do it. That argument carries a little weight. The downside, though, is it can also easily be argued that God already knew every choice you'd FREELY make and simply allowed it. I think that's the direction more people would go arguing free will as illusion. I'm just not all convinced that it really is an illusion.



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02 Feb 2023, 8:57 am

Quote:
How do you think slavery arose?


When a bunch of lazy humans decided to force other humans to do all the work for them? :?



JimJohn
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02 Feb 2023, 9:46 am

AngelRho wrote:
JimJohn wrote:
That was an interesting expose of it.

If subjectivity only exists in the mind I would argue that objectivity exists only in the mind as well.

Given that free will is merely an illusion no one can be held responsible for anything. That results in society falling apart.

That wasn't what I meant. Subjectivity refers to things that only exist in the mind. IDEAS of morality, justice, love, etc. are subjective. Treating others with respect, holding open and fair trials and letting the innocent go/imposing prison sentences, and a husband kissing his wife are objective. (Don't start with objective respect--it just means staying out of a person's way while they're trying to live their life and doing no harm to anyone else. Half the point of objectivity is being reasonable about things).

I do not believe free will is an illusion. You are free to do as you like. You are NOT free from the consequences of your actions. The free-will-is-an-illusion thing is really just about how people want to do as they please without consequences and find that they are unable to do as they please because the consequences are too much for them to endure. So they say free will is an illusion based on that. You have the freedom to harm yourself if you want. You have the freedom to destroy and end you life if you want. You just can't undo some things afterwards if you make a mistake in your decision. Getting a formal reprimand at work might lead to an improvement plan and continued employment. You can come back from that. Blowing your brains out might prove a little more difficult. If you choose to go with that making the argument that free will is an illusion, be my guest. I just don't find that very reasonable.

Or you might argue that we don't choose to be born, or our circumstances. Well, I'll give you that, but then there's everything else that you're free to do. Or you might argue that God is omniscient and therefore knows everything you'll ever do before you do it. That argument carries a little weight. The downside, though, is it can also easily be argued that God already knew every choice you'd FREELY make and simply allowed it. I think that's the direction more people would go arguing free will as illusion. I'm just not all convinced that it really is an illusion.


My position on lack of free will comes only from two places.

One is the experiment that supports it. It is the one that says we make a decision nanoseconds before we are aware of it.

The other source is Sam Harris laying out his case for it. It is on YouTube if you want to listen to it.

I don’t believe it but I don’t rule out the fact that I could be wrong.

There is also the studies on vision and so forth that show we create a vision of reality in our head and are not actually seeing it.

Any argument for or against free will would have to touch on those things to be convincing to me. But, like I said I believe in free will. I just don’t rule out the possibility of being wrong about it.

There are also people like Elon Musk that calculate that the odds are I am a simulation and you do not exist.

That is the tack I am taking with that. I think that is the tack people other than me are also taking when they talk about it.

There is also the Boltzmann brain theory which is really crazy but you can’t say a smart guy did not come up with it.

My point was that what one person thinks is objective could be subjective given the fact that no one sees reality accurately in the first place. I think it can be true. I think maybe people caught up in the war on drugs think they are being objective. Maybe President Duerte in the Philippines thought he was being objective killing people possessing drugs on the spot.

I went on to cover more than two reasons but maybe this way it doesn’t look like a mindless rant.



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02 Feb 2023, 12:23 pm

JimJohn wrote:
My point was that what one person thinks is objective could be subjective given the fact that no one sees reality accurately in the first place. I think it can be true. I think maybe people caught up in the war on drugs think they are being objective. Maybe President Duerte in the Philippines thought he was being objective killing people possessing drugs on the spot.

I went on to cover more than two reasons but maybe this way it doesn’t look like a mindless rant.

I think a lot of "smart" people say a lot of words to make things more complicated than need be and then proceed to kill the free will argument. There is no perfect view of reality because people aren't perfect. I depend on eyeglasses to correct nearsightedness. But I'm also getting old, so reading is becoming difficult with my glasses. I would normally take my glasses off for reading, but now I'm finding there is a certain distance where I can read but closer up is more difficult. So what matters now is does the world radically change its nature depending on whether I wear glasses or not? How do I know one way or the other?

Objectivity is not about whether you understand the world as it actually exists. Objectivity is only about whether a real world actually exists "out there." I think maybe Zen/Zen Buddhism, esoteric philosophies/religions, and much of postmodernism pushes more in favor of total subjectivity, the idea that everything you see/experience is ONLY in your head. There is no such thing as morality, etc.

I take the position that reality exists apart from the mind. Whether the mind paints an accurate picture of that reality isn't relevant, just that things exist apart from the mind. Objectivity in terms of perceiving that reality simply refers to whether the senses can REASONABLY be trusted to form a picture of that reality and inform the perceiver with regard to understanding truth. It's not a matter of whether you have enough evidence to say "this is true" or "that is true." It's reasonable to assume that you do have evidence. It's more about choosing a framework in which we do trust the senses (because there are no better alternatives). If our senses are always wrong, we cannot possibly survive. But to assume that our senses ARE wrong and that we create our own reality based on our feelings, and nothing exists apart from the mind, then why is it some things don't play out the way we envision them to? If reality is entirely subjective, then existence is closer to Tom Cruise's character in Vanilla Sky. When there is a contradiction between our chosen reality and what seems to always happen to us, then there's more to the story than simply dreaming up the world we want. There has to be something real there pushing back when things don't pan out. In a subjective universe, you're actually much less free than you would be in an objective universe, and I can understand someone committed to subjectivity might conclude that free will is an illusion. I didn't choose to imagine the car crash I was in, yet my mind made it happen. I am not in control of my own thoughts.

Objectivity, OTOH, requires not ONLY a reality beyond the mind, but a reasonable mind to perceive it. I'm AWARE that my eyes are broken and I can correct for that. That's the reason part.



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02 Feb 2023, 1:16 pm

I am probably not smart enough to have a staunch opinion on any of that. I am coming at it from a different perhaps inferior angle than you.

One thing I would note on your reference of Zen/Buddhism, Postmodernism, etc… in contrast to what I would consider traditional thought is this: The religion I am exposed to is based on the premise that we choose what we believe. That is so incredibly inherently subjective and not objective.

I am just saying that that to say some alternative philosophy is more subjective seems kinda crazy to me.