Discuss libertarianism for the Nth time

[Reginald Ret]

Yay, not content with repeating the same thread topics as before, we're now repeating posts within the threads themselves.  Y'all had the human nature discussion back on pages 5-6.

Repetition is key to learning.
Why do you hate learning?

[Doktor Howl]

Yay, not content with repeating the same thread topics as before, we're now repeating posts within the threads themselves.  Y'all had the human nature discussion back on pages 5-6.

Everybody stop posting.

[Cain]

If you're going to put words in my mouth, at least make them accurate.  For example:

"why oh why must we have exactly the same conversation on libertarianism every three months or so?"

I don't want everyone to stop posting, I want everyone to stop repeating themselves.  I already know Ayn Rand is a moron and that altruism is a hard-wired human attribute.  However I haven't seen a single take-down of the non-aggression principle or homesteading in any of these discussions. 

[Triple Zero]

ooh we should maybe get one of those signal bot 3000 or whatever it was called. I think the xkcd IRC channel invented it. basically it kicks anyone that says a line that has been said before, since EVER.

ok it got a few more rules than that but you do get kicked, and with each offense the waiting period before you can join again gets longer. but also decreases again after a longer while. those geeks tweaked the fuck out of it.

there's also a 4chan-style imageboard version of it.

it works pretty well, except for the part that a lot of the threads/lines are about people trying novel ways to game the system

[Jasper]

The problem with that is that it takes an operationalist approach to originality.  An original phrase is not necessarily an original thought, and an original thought is not necessarily an original phrase.

tl;dr: you can't define originality as what hasn't been said yet.

[Doktor Howl]

All I know is that every conversation I've enjoyed in the last week has been shat upon.

Done in this section, I think.

[the last yatto]

thread over
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-march-18-2010/conservative-libertarian
JON WINS

[BabylonHoruv]

Okay, so let's establish a few terms.

Would "objective" be satisfied by being a universal value amongst current human societies?

No, but I will concede that a value universally held by current human societies is a consensually agreed upon value and therefore it deserves far more consideration than some value I may personally hold but isn't universally accepted. It's still subjective, but it appears subjectively true to Humans in general, rather than subjectively true to a single tribe or individual. Objective values would be values that are Good or Bad notwithstanding the views of any humans.

If for the purpose of this argument you want to use objective to mean "generally agreed upon by most societies of humans on this planet" that's fine... as long as we understand that it is still 'subjective' in the end.

So using this definition of objective, I will amend my position to:

'Objective' standards of morals and ethics,  standards agreed upon by all societies of humans,  exist. However. these make up a very small percentage of moral and ethical beliefs or values. With some exceptions, these 'objective' values can help us determine if an act is moral or ethical according to the views of most humans. They can also be beneficial in informing our own subjective moral and ethical positions. If 99% of the societies on Earth say it is bad/wrong to randomly kill people, then a moral belief that it is acceptable to randomly kill people indicates that the latter is probably suffering from some sort of psychosis (Gone Postal) or is the victim of some terribly bad programming (Terrorists).

I'd go so far as to say that 'objective' morals and ethics can create a useful framework for determining/creating a set of social norms for moral and ethical issues.

I do not think terrorist killings can be considered random.  They are usually much closer to the acts of a soldier.  Someone who has dehumanized the enemy in their mind.  For instance, if Jews are all descended from pigs, and are nasty monstrous creatures, the fact that by blowing myself up I have killed not only some Jewish Police and soldiers, who might bulldoze my family's home and/or shoot my fellow freedom fighters, but I also killed some random Jewish civilians, and children, that counts as a bonus, because even though were not going to hurt me personally they are still nasty pig people who ought to be wiped out.  It's the same sort of conditioning most nations use when at war.  A Palestinian terrorist is not going to go into, for example, a Chinese business and randomly open fire because the Chinese have not been dehumanized for him, while the Jews have.

[BabylonHoruv]

I think that for the most part, people are not pure "evil" or "good". That is a very simplistic way to view people, in my opinion. They are complicated; there is a spectrum of conscience and people exist somewhere on that spectrum, and the spectrum is influenced by cultural values. The closest thing to a pure evil personality I can think of are sociopaths, who are devoid of compassion and empathy, and types of delusional mental illness in which doing terrible things seems to be justified for an imaginary "greater good". Combine the two and add some megalomania and you have Pol Pot.

This does bring us to the "was Hitler an evil man, or was he a complicated, sick man who did evil things under the delusion that he was doing the best thing to preserve his country, his culture, and his people"?

I don't know. Nobody does.

I do know that saying that all Hitler-era Nazis were evil people completely discounts the humanity of young men who believed party propaganda or were forced into service. By that criterion, all US soldiers are evil people because of the military actions in Iraq and Vietnam. Furthermore, every member of the Republican party is an evil person.

Democratic party too.