Bitcoin Forum

I made a new thread because the other one is entirely off-topic.



I am not capable of fully interpreting this. Here's what I have to offer:

We live on a planet that couldn't care less about you, me or what we consider life. We have spawned from nearly nothing and thrived and can thrive by the raw resources we have at hand. In our pure primal forms, we can live off the land without the tools we have gradually formed today. Our species remains nearly unchanged, genetics-wise, over the past 10,000 years. What can survive in its primal form, survives. What can't wasn't really designed to live in the first place. Call me a Darwinist or heartless but I believe what survives is good. What doesn't shouldn't be left on life support to continuously drain from others and eventually lead to a potential extinction of the entire species. This is where I stand. This is what I mean.


You subjectively believe we should live for the sake of others. This has no objective basis.

Suffering is so broad. You could argue we should live to prevent other human beings from sitting on thumbtacks. In the end, even if we could fully perceive others pain, what does it really mean in the end? Can we really gain control and cure it all? What means will produce the best result? Do you also leave room for your own pleasure and well-being that you wish for others to have?

Honestly, it's all a matter preference. I fail to see any clear axiom that will give us an objective view-point on this situation. Frankly, the only truth is a live body and a dead body contain the same number of particles. The value of this matter and perception is all up to our individual selves. I personally prefer the subjective value of life but with means that preserve individual freewill and pleasure, non-exclusively.

This isn't very straight-forward but meh.
 

I may be different from the neurotypical. I try to think through my primal emotions and desires as much as possible, so not to be directly driven by them. Frankly, what's "hip" may or not influence me. I believe what I believe. I think what I think usually trying to base it on what's the most rational and objective. I don't define my humanity on levels of above or below it or right in it. Human is just another label. I am only thinking in terms of my own perception and I don't try to label it with such terms. Am I trying to be above them? I frankly just don't care for them.

Also, I may give a fuck about humanity in some ways and not in others. I just don't try to make my happiness directly dependent upon it. If there's any real "purpose", it's for us to be happy.

I look forward to speaking to you in the future. 

Without social contact, we probably will die of suicide or something. Keep someone in complete isolation, they'll go insane.

However, that is not to say we should be collective, rather than individualists. Keep in mind that individuals and the dynamics animate groups, not that groups have their own intention, goals, and such.

You are the leech.

In evolutionary studies there's something called the ESS (evolutionary stable strategy). You make a population with 2 types- cooperate and defect. To co-operate is mutually unbeneficial but good for the group. Defect is opposite.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionarily_stable_strategy

You make a payoff matrix and generate simulations. Generally populations full of defect will die out or swing towards the ESS. Populations full of co-operate are sustainable until invaded by individuals of defect, at which point they swing towards the ESS. The ESS is the stable ratio of cooperate : defect individuals. Nearly always the ESS is majority co-operate and minority defect.

So if you're one person taking advantage of everybody else's co-operate attitude for yourself, then you are the leech. Like a person draining bittorrent downloads. Society is a live support system. Without it you'd be nothing. We've come to rely on it for everything- that's why we're able to do amazing things.

Selection happens at some level on groups. Unhealthy tribes would have gone extinct in the past. Which tribes would be more successful? Those that mutually helped their fellow men during times of hard stress, or those that didn't?

Even early Homo Erectus have been found with fatal injuries that have healed, indicating they were taken care of for a substantial number of years. It's egregious to claim that humans aren't a social species.

But there's no point quoting science anyway. You've chosen your religion of Rand, and nothing I say will make you question your faith.

The funniest thing I've heard all day.

On the contrary, I lost my taste for objectivism when I realized the closed-mindedness it entailed.

Btw, what survives isn't necessarilly good, often what survive is simply what isn't bad enough.

The only thing I know is that I don't know anything.

Fuck this thread. It looks like I am going to have to start from scratch all over again, even below nihilism...

Ayn Rand had some good ideas, but "Objectivism" wasn't among them. And Atlas Shrugged is best understood as a caricature.

All Rand wanted was structure. She just wanted the world to make sense. Despite her flaws, I can't help but feel for her.

Atlas Shrugged is best understood as a political philosophy disguised as a work of fiction.  All the main characters are representative of different classes of people, which is why they all seem so sterile, so completely vile, or utterly perfect.  Pretty much all of Ayn Rand's work followed this pattern.  It's still a pretty impressive opus, considering English wasn't her first language.

Keep in mind it's our "primal form" as you call it that led to all the technology we have today. Also I get the feeling you're thinking of some kind of lone hero, surviving on their own. Maybe that's not what you meant, but if it was, consider how social Homo has always been. Our brains have evolved to effectively read minds, that should tell you something about our "natural" state.

Can't there be open minded objectivists? Just because they're right doesn't mean they can't get along with you  :P

That never was my direct intention but, frankly, that's how I have always felt, now that I look into it. I don't like people telling me that I need them and that I am obligated to serve them and vice-versa. I like people in the context of sharing ideas and collaboration but not dependency.

Is this irrational? I don't know. Other parties thoughts would be appreciated.

Unless you really live by yourself in a desert island or somthing, being independent of other people is more of an illusion, even if the relationship isn't formalized you still need lots of strangers to cooperate with several different unspoken agreements, community norms etc; even living on the island you still need the rest of the world to not use your home for testing nukes, not fuck up the acidity of the sea with excess carbon polution killing the fishes you feed on etc.

I can agree with this only in the sense that I believe in property rights and that mutual respect is required for them to be enforced.

Hey--cool thread!  I only noticed it just now, and I'd love to chime in.  I already wanted to add more in the other thread, but it was getting really off-topic as it is.  Give me a moment to type up some comments on the points you're making.

+ respect.


Of course you are not obligated to anyone other than yourself. You don't need "people", you only the things that they are able to give you, like goods, services, sex, affection, etc. If someone is useless and can't produce anything of value to you or anyone, then helping that person survive just because it is a person is an utter waste of energy and a detriment to civilization.

It seems to me that there's a couple of things going on here philosophically, and I'd like to comment on them individually.  First there is an implied significance of our material circumstances.  What I mean is that phrases like "a planet that couldn't care less about" suggest something more than just the scientific fact that we don't normally think of a planet as a conscious being capable of the mental act "caring".  They suggest a tone of what our material circumstances actually mean, in a broader sense.  Similarly, you seem to be implying that the situation humans would find themselves in without intervening circumstances (my best shot at clarifying what you mean by "the default human condition" but feel free to correct me) is also meaningful in this sense--that it should matter to us, and be relevant to how we view the world.

By my comments on the second law of thermodynamics, I was inviting a broader perspective on the situation humans would really be in without intervening circumstances, and what a more objective assessment of our material circumstances might conclude.  With a nod to Carl Sagan, consider this:  we are born, we live, and then we die.  And we are so fortunate to have the chance to die.  Most people will never have the opportunity to die, because they have never had the opportunity to live.  Out of all the possible human beings, all the possible conscious organisms, only a few precious souls have ever, to our knowledge, evolved in the universe.  As highly ordered beings, we "buck the average" of the entropic progression and can only occur in the rarest of circumstances.  Yet this has happened--the information patterns of our being have evolved in direct opposition to the heat death that is the ultimate goal of all energy.  As the sun's fusion power gradually dissipates and dies in the molecular motion of myriad rocks in space, we steal a piece off it and from this energy derive life that defies defaults.  To our knowledge, this is the only place in the universe that this has occurred.  Just think about it--our very existence means we have already hit the jackpot!  This is not some dull, uncaring, material scenario.  It is materially the most fortunate in the universe, and we are quite literally living it up.  This is really where we start--blessed with the richness of order inherent in our being alive.  From there we can worry about the job of keeping that gift:  one we never 'earned' or 'deserved'.


The second point you seem to be making here is to advance a "survival of the fittest" motto, and to suggest that people in poverty are a drain on the more "upgraded", fit human beings.  I have ample comment for this, but I'd like you to confirm and clarify this before I proceed.
On the contrary, I am asserting that there exist objective reasons why we should concern ourselves with the suffering and circumstance of other people, and I am well-prepared to defend that point of view.
It's easy for suffering to feel very abstract when you are removed from the circumstances that most humans find themselves in (a pervasive peculiarity of developed world living these days I'm afraid), but for the vast majority of people suffering is very concrete and simple--suffering occurs when something you care about is threatened, damaged, or destroyed.  This is also the reason that suffering doesn't feel very poignant to someone who has become uncaring:  they do not have a ready example of losing something they care about to visualise.  It's true that suffering is experienced subjectively because each person has different things that they care about.  However, if we consider that some things people care about may be objectively meaningful then their subjective suffering in those regards is also objectively real.  This is in fact my assertion.

As an aside to your last paragraph, humans are information beings--the number of particles in a body is irrelevant to our existence as long as there are enough of them.  Rather, it is the configuration of those particles, the relationships between them, that represents a person.  This is a fairly trivial to measure, objective, scientific fact.  Your claim, however, that the meaning of this fact is subjective, is itself a claim to objective reality.  You cannot avoid doing this because the words with which you claim it have a particular meaning to you, which constitutes an implicit objectivity within which the words should be understood.  You could, of course, claim that there is no particular reason to believe one person's attempted objectivity over another's, and this is a claim which I will attack more directly by aiming to demonstrate that you should, in fact, believe the claims I am advancing are objectively true.
I do always try and allow for the presence of non-neurotypicality.  Human nature is a trend with outliers, rather than a particular absolute.  I am, however, content for the moment to suggest that the perspective you advance above is something important to you, something that you care about.  And I find it implicit in your desire to engage this conversation that the perspectives and thoughts of other human beings are at least potentially relevant to your life.  So I shall aim to show that on the basis of that perspective there is a reason to care about other people in general, their life experiences, and the impact that you yourself have on them.  This perspective of yours is very similar to the basis for my own life philosophy, so I feel confident that my conclusions should transfer.  And, quite beautifully if I do say so myself, on the basis of these conclusions your life experience matters to me.  So if I can help you to experience your life more fully, then that will be very meaningful both to me and objectively.

I mentioned above that suffering is the threat, damage, or destruction of something you care about.  It's worth noting that a person who feels very uncaring is herself suffering, albeit the most silent of all sufferings.  Because when caring itself is threatened, damaged, or destroyed, a person does not experience a sharp pain of loss; they are instead losing their ability to feel that pain.  This qualifies as suffering too, because we care about caring and we are unable not to.  So even when we come to the (mistaken) conclusion that life doesn't mean anything, this conclusion itself still seems to mean something (http://xkcd.com/220/).  Caring is fundamentally something good.  Although it opens us up to the potential of pain, it also opens us up to the potential of joy.  It does involve risk.  But that risk itself is what gives meaning to the joy.  And for these reasons, caring objectively matters.  So someone who is uncaring is truly suffering.


It's probably useful for me to offer an overall summation of this post, so that you can quote just this section directly, and refer to the others as necessary rather than creating an even more imposing text wall. So,

tl;dr:
I understand you to believe, at present, that our material circumstances are relatively devoid of meaning, that both suffering and meaning are subjective, and that people in poverty/suffering are a drain on those who are not.  This last point (and any others) I would like you to confirm and clarify before I give it a detailed response.

I assert, by contrast, that the subjective experience of suffering can objectively matter.  This happens when people care about things of genuine importance, and those things are threatened, damaged, or destroyed.  My position is that that there exist objective reasons why we should concern ourselves with the suffering and circumstance of other people, including that I should concern myself with yours.  I believe these facts derive themselves directly from our material circumstances, which do in fact impart meaning to our lives albeit cleverly and unexpectedly.  And my position is that all these conclusions ought to follow from the life philosophy that you advance at the end of your post.


I am also looking forward to seeing this conversation progress.  Please bear with me in patience as I can only write in between the other myriad tasks of my day so there will inevitably be hiatuses.  Oh, for an infinite well of free time!



p.s.
It would be nice if I could draw others in on this topic as well since I intend to spend quite a bit of time on this, so I'll insert a comment to you here too, JohnDoe.  Your paragraph here may be true in form, but in practice irrelevant.  What if no one is truly useless?

Also it should be obvious from my tone, but I aim only to advance rational obligation through my arguments.  No one is, of course, obligated to be rational.  Except possibly by their own conscience, in matters of consequence.

Rationality only applies when you already have a goal in mind. One's deepest goals are not usually (I'm tempted to say ever) formed by a rational process. I wouldn't worry about it too much, although it's good to look at why you're doing things from time to time.

Without digging for quotes from this thread, I seem to detect a theme of "we don't matter in the big scheme". My way of dealing with that is a question: If I don't matter in the big scheme of things, why should the big scheme matter to me?

Sure, now that I think about it, it may be possible to extract usefulness from anyone. But the problem persists because many are unwilling to give me something of value in exchange for the thing I'm giving to them, effectively choosing to be useless, or worse, parasites.

When I give a beggar some money there is a net loss to civilization because I'm encouraging the beggar to keep on begging. He has no incentive to work hard and produce something of value because he now knows that he can just sit down and get free money. The problem intensifies when I'm required by law to give more money to the beggar so he can have good health care and education, as now both of us are discouraged from producing anything. Why would I work hard if what I earn is going to be taken from me to distribute to others? Taking this to the extreme, where everyone is obligated to help others, would ultimately destroy civilization, as producing value is punished and freeloading is rewarded. The solution, then, is to not help that beggar. If nobody helps him then he is forced to produce something of value, or else he faces death. Whatever his fate (getting off his ass and producing or dying and not being able to leech anymore), it will be a net gain for civilization.

TLDR: If you sacrifice yourself to help others you are insane and hate life. In fact, you may be a cultist of the Church of Maximum Entropy and are trying to ensure that the heat death of the universe happens.

I know, it's bullshit, right? In today's world where economy is a zero sum game, we need to edge out our competitors. Crush all other countries. Jealously guard our innovations to maximise profit. Close the sourcecode. We need a strong eugenics program to allow the weak to die off (all scientists are super healthy after all). Anybody that can't afford healthcare- tough luck! Since most of you are poor, the majority of you will be in bad health and unable to work- hah!

Dinosaur from the 40s.

Very resource-minded, aren't you.  But what if it wasn't a matter of them giving you something, and instead a matter of you learning something from or about them?  Humans are information beings--once basic needs are met material resources are significantly less valuable than information.  So in this case we are considering, for example, the natural resource of compiled life experience.  It's books you want to have in the library, specifically because you haven't read them yet.  As just one example, though of course there are more.

Uhmmm....which beggar?  You see, I would never assume that I could somehow predetermine complex behaviour of yours simply by such a primitive input as +cash.  Why does this entire class of imaginary people then get that treatment?  Seems pretty dehumanising.  When I think of my friends, and the circumstances under which I would or would not give them money, it's a pretty complex picture.  For some of them, under certain circumstances, it would be very unwise to do.  For others, in other situations, it seems like a pretty good idea.  For myself, I think that in general someone giving me more money would allow me to accomplish more of the projects on my wish list a.k.a. enable me to be more productive, since there are many productive things I wish to do but don't currently have the resources for.

When you take this to the societal level, there are also a lot of other things to consider here.  In a legal system, for example, pretty much no matter how you construct it you are looking for some kind of balance between creating consequences for anti-social behaviour and your wrongful conviction rate--the higher you set the standard of proof for guilt, the less innocent people you'll convict, and the more guilty people will go free.  Many factors will determine what you consider to be the ideal equilibrium.  Similarly with publicly funded healthcare and education, there will be a balance between the returned value to society of those who simply lacked the resources and opportunity to become as productive as they wanted to be, and those on whom resources were wasted because they ultimately provided no more value to society than they would have otherwise.  I don't see anything as simplistic as what you're suggesting here, though--the question of which equilibria optimise for different criteria is a complex empirical one with a lot of factors to account for.

In any case, I don't aim to advance a particular solution here to the general question of how best to care about other people.  I have many thoughts in specific areas of my own expertise, but I would save those for another thread.  Instead, I aim simply to demonstrate that there are objective reasons to care in the first place.  Having decided to care, I assume anyone would simply care as optimally as they knew how based on their information.
You have not advanced any significant arguments that could support this bald assertion.  It is trivial to construct situations where self-sacrificing behaviour is of universal benefit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27s_Paradox)--the question in real life is more often as to which situation we actually find ourselves in.  I aim to demonstrate that our particular situation as humans is one that provides ample reason to care about the lives and circumstances of others.  Having done so, it will become pretty clear that we return to the question of what the best way is to do this, and this is heavily empirical in nature.  Still, it's difficult to construe such a position as one that is "insane and hates life".

As a personal aside, it's one thing to post unsupported generalisations on the internet--that's practically written into the manual.  But in real life I sincerely doubt you could have spent a day working alongside Mother Theresa and then said this to her face.  And I don't mean just because of the social taboo.  I mean that there's a lot of relevant information here that you'd be pretty bluntly confronted with if you really brought this down to brass tacks.  It's in this later sense that I think this conversation can be of actual value--in the sense of what you actually have to go out and live in the world, rather than just making sweeping claims about nonexistent characters in your mind.  Actually caring about other people is life-changing, frequently for both parties.

It is not sacrifice to give what you want to give.

That depends quite a bit on how much you want to give.

OK: Here's how I look at this:

1. You are morally obligated to not cause suffering.
2. You are not morally obligated to relieve suffering.
3. No man is entirely an island. To attempt to ignore the widespread network of interrelations that is the human condition is foolish. (just read I, pencil, if you doubt me)
4. No man should be an island. This interrelation is what makes mankind so strong. Each person can specialize, and even a poor specialist is able to work more efficiently than an excellent generalist.

Argue this false statement to me.

fix'd.

I have since misplaced the text that explained the concept to me, so I will attempt to explain it from memory. Any errors are mine.

Lets say we have two yard workers, Jorge and Bill.

Jorge is an excellent yard worker, and advertises that he will mow lawns, trim trees, and trim hedges. For Jorge, who is awesome at what he does, mowing a lawn takes only 10 minutes, as does trimming hedges, while the trees take 20.

Bill is a beginner, and only advertises mowing lawns. He is horrible, and mowing a lawn takes 30 minutes for him.

Bill does one yard for every thirty minutes of work. Jorge takes 40 minutes per yard. over the course of the 8-hour day, Jorge mows only 12 yards, while Bill completes 16. If Jorge and Bill work together, Bill specializing on mowing, and Jorge doing the trees and hedges, they can together, complete 16 lawns.

When bill achieves the same proficiency as Jorge, and can mow a lawn in 10 min, Jorge can further specialize, doing only hedges, by hiring someone who can trim a tree in 10 minutes.

So, a good specialist will outperform a bad specialist, but even a bad specialist out performs a generalist of any ability, in the field that he specializes in.

You should check out a program called 'Connections' by James Burke (it's free on youtube). He's a famous science historian.

But that's wrong for the simple fact that innovativity comes from creativity, and creativity is the ability to draw on wide disparate sources of knowledge- often from different fields. What you said was maybe true of the society 100 years (even 50 years) ago during the industrial age, but less so today. Narrow minded people lack the ability to see the bigger picture due to their proverbial tunnel vision.

Today generalists are more important than ever in the age of the knowledge workers.

 more important != more efficient.

Just try and get a degree in "science".

When it comes to this point of the argument, I lose all sense of direction. As a nihilist, this is like arguing why the sky should be green.

so, jorge and bill complete 16 lawns, while jorge and another jorge complete 24 lawns. worst example ever.

And Jorge, bill, and the third guy, whom we'll call carlos, can complete a staggering 48 yards.

Without someone waiting around for the other guy to finish, as would happen with Jorge x2.

Apparently choosing not to give something for nothing is a form of aggression now. How dare I refuse to give my money to some random person I've never met huh? My refusal is equivalent to stabbing that poor person in the eye! Shame on me.

Crush all other countries? I'm against countries, they require law to be maintained and I'm against law.

Jealously guard innovations? Against patents too.

Close the source code? I'm in favor of open source as it is a superior form of software development. I would not consider opening the source code to my program an act of altruism because I would be getting valuable things in return, like other people's contributions to improve the code, trust in the code, satisfaction, attention, praise and maybe even donations.

Eugenics? Against that too. If the weak are too weak to survive then there is no need for a program anyway. If they keep on living then I guess they weren't weak to begin with.

Healthcare: So just by being poor you automagically have bad health and are unable to perform any work huh? Nigga please, what world do you live in? You seriously overestimate the amount of energy required to perform work. Most of them don't work because they are lazy, not because they can't. It is way easier for them to demand to the government to steal more money from the productive to give to them than to go out and work hard. Also, from the people who seriously can't work, 99% of them have bad health because of lifestyle choices. Should I be punished because they chose to spend their money on junk food, booze and crack?



When I talk about getting something in return I'm not referring only to material things, I'm talking about anything that can be of value to me, information included. If I can obtain a learning experience from someone in return for my help then I'm not sacrificing myself for that person, it is a trade where both parties are benefited.



Giving money to friends is not a sacrifice. It is different than giving money to a random stranger because you are getting something in return, namely maintaining the friendship and an implied return favor that you can claim at a later time.


That's what lending is for. If you are sure that you'll be able to become more productive if I give you some of my capital then you should have no problem returning it later with some added interest. Same goes for people demanding free health care and education in order to get equal opportunities. But obviously they don't want to borrow, they want free money because they think they are entitled to it, just because they are of the Homo Sapiens species.


Mother Teresa was just as egoist as me and the rest of the world. She worked in the slums for half a century in exchange for going to heaven and probably self satisfaction. She was getting something of value out of it, so it wasn't a sacrifice.

Yup. "because it's the right thing to do" translates as "because it makes me feel good"

what are you referring to, Atlas?

Not sure if sarcastic or not so I can't respond.

http://www.amazon.com/Virtue-Selfishness-Signet-Ayn-Rand/dp/0451163931

This thread right now.

Not.

Read more of these books.

If you read a book, is that a trade between you and the book?  Or its author, or its publisher?  What type of contract did you have with your parents to raise you?  Did you fully repay their investment?   Have you refunded the universe its increased entropy for your existence?  Who do you pay when you enjoy a sunset?  What are you getting out of this conversation?  Not everything in life is commerce.

A friend is going away and you will never see them again.  No parting gift?

There are other types of productivity.  Most of the projects I had in mind wouldn't yield any income, which is why I can't take out a loan to do them.  Lots of people's life work never ends up on the balance book, and would never be accepted as payment on a loan.

It's always interesting to me when ultracapitalists create this kind of equivocation on sacrifice or selflessness.  Don't get me wrong, it's fully necessary to make your viewpoint hold any kind of cogency, but it also creates this miraculous loopy truism where anything anybody does must ultimately have already been selfish.   So isn't it fair to say that everyone throughout history has already been following your proposed philosophy, and it has no implications for our further action like mine does?  You can't rail against selflessness if it doesn't exist--pick a definition for it (any definition!) and then we can continue the conversation.  I do have a suggestion, though--for most people selflessness is behaviour optimised for the benefit of others at the potential expense of my benefit or desires; while selfishness is behaviour optimised for the benefit of myself at the potential expense of others' benefits and desires.

Which all kind of brings us back to the question I actually asked--at the end of a day with her, would you have turned to her and told her she is insane and hates life?

This is a perfectly satisfactory way to develop these topics imho, though it's not how I do it.  I aim to present the argument to a person's conscience--whether they decide to respond in conscience or not is up to them.  I would suggest, however, that there are significant consequences to suppressing one's conscience, and I don't mean just for other people.

I'm afraid I only ever suffered through The Fountainhead--the arrogance was too stifling for me.  Ignoring other conversations here, though, what's your reaction when you read my post? (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4246.msg62501#msg62501)

I read it once or twice. I understand where you are coming from but I don't have much to say to it.

Fun Fact: The Fountainhead got me out of my depression.

Here's what I have to say to your post:

http://atlaslgo.com/post/3756382086/this-is-in-response-to-the-following