Harrison Danneskjold

You mean because I built myself a Tesla instead of purchasing one from them, right? While I'm not opposed to the notion of a "leech" in general I'm not sure it applies to someone reverse-engineering a sophisticated piece of technology, purchasing all the raw materials for it and then using those raw materials to duplicate it for themselves.

But people die every day in auto accidents. You said in this same post that we have to consider the actual risks involved (the odds of death or permanent bodily damage) and I totally agree with that. And if you were to point out that the odds of dying on any particular car ride are ridiculously low then I would also agree with that. But if the logic is that "it could save just one life" then we must outlaw cars. Not for me it isn't. My chance of dying if I were to catch COVID (as a 30-odd heavy smoker and drinker) are something like 0.001% to 0.0001%, according to John's Hopkins University. I don't remember whether there are 2 or 3 zeros before the 1%. In terms of the risks I routinely consider in the course of living my life (such as how likely I am to die in any given car ride) that is a risk I simply do not consider. If I were to consider risks like that at all then I wouldn't have a job or a life; I'd be spending the rest of my mortal days quarantined in a little plastic bubble in my basement. Exactly! Yes! Now - how many people have caught COVID and survived it just fine? I'd actually like to explore this a bit more, probably in its own thread. I've been saying that I wouldn't have any problem with a forced quarantine for something like Ebola or Rabies. Not of absolutely everyone, of course, but of anyone who has been proven to be a carrier. And it also occurs to me that because actually dangerous diseases like that have such a high mortality rate, it could not be in perpetuity either: within a fairly short time frame any disease like that would naturally burn itself out. Whereas with COVID the Chinese are still in lockdown to this day.

Firstly, why can't you own the idea of a spear? Secondly, alright, let's say that you have a Tesla. I think it's pretty cool so I ask to borrow it, I reverse-engineer it, build a copy for myself and then return yours back to you. Whose rights have been violated?

I don't believe it is a false dichotomy. Lying is obviously bad for both the liar and their victim, and both aspects are likely to factor into the reasons why it's usually bad. The question of which reason is primary, though, is important; there are derivative implications which will differ between the different possible answers. Can you elaborate on why you think otherwise? Sometimes. Egoism certainly does because it claims that there is a necessary relation between morality and human flourishing, which in turn would depend on human nature. There are, however, other ethical systems (deontological ones come to mind) which really have nothing to do with human nature at all. Whether human beings are good or bad at following a list of concrete rules, or how this affects their mental health; none of that really enters into it. But I'm pretty sure both of our moral codes depend on human nature, at least, so that's fair enough. That's true. And in those times where I believed it genuinely served my own self-interest to lie (since I was talking to an evil person) I didn't feel any guilt over it. It took me a long time to puzzle out that my own sincerity was being used to hurt me and that I was in a situation where that was no longer a virtue. On a gut level it still seemed wrong to lie, even though I conceptually knew that I'd be punished for telling the truth. But once I arrived at the conclusion that under those conditions it was morally right for me to lie I didn't feel any guilt for it - although even then I was irritated and a little bit resentful about the necessity of having to do so. Well, I'm not a Chimpanzee expert. I do think they engage in highly coordinated behaviors, such as wars and hunting. If a group of Chimpanzees track down an individual from another troop and several of them hold them down while another one rips his genitals off, I'm not sure what it'd mean to say that they didn't share any goals; did some of them have the burning personal desire to do nothing more than hold him down while the other wanted nothing more than to rip his balls off, and they just happened to accomplish these separate and individual goals simultaneously? Anyway. I'm not a Chimpanzee expert, but as a dad I'm really not sure how well that tracks with child development, either. Doesn't the most infamously antisocial period of a child's development (the Great and Terrible Two's) occur roughly just after they learn how to properly communicate?

... Unless, of course, there actually IS a fire in the crowded theatre. A lot of these issues have an implicit element of whether the speech is truthful or fraudulent. Yes, I agree that the content moderation of private companies (when uncoerced and fully separate from the government) is a private issue. But I'd just like to make a little note that you also agree that everyone involved should get in big trouble if the government is puppeteering such actions from behind the scenes. A lot of the FBI collusion exposed in the Twitter Files long predates Biden; I think it goes as far back as 2017. So it's possible that Trump could've been pulling those levers to deplatform leftists - I personally doubt it but by all available evidence it is possible. The guys reporting on the Twitter Files claimed that both sides made censorship requests during the 2020 campaign. Thought crime. Let's get the terminology straight. "Misinformation" means thought crime and it should be handled by open opposition and debate; not by the government.

Exactly. I had COVID a couple of months ago. I spent three days sick in bed (which definitely sucked) and then I was fine. I was living with three guys in their 20's at the time, all of whom also caught COVID and not one of whom was bedridden for more than 24 hours. To force everyone to make it public knowledge what has or has not gone into their own private veins? I mean, if we were talking about Ebola then I might agree, but we're not - we're talking about a particularly nasty strain of the common cold which every single person in the entire world is going to catch sooner or later. You, yourself, just said that more people die in car accidents where no alcohol is involved than in ones involving drunk drivers. If that's true, and if it's the safety concerns of drunk driving which make it legitimate to outlaw it, then why should sober driving be legal?

The analogy treats everyone who isn't vaccinated as if they actually have COVID at all times. The better analogy would be should we ban all driving because some people who drive might drive drunk, and some of those people who drive drunk might harm others (although for most people we're not talking about death and dismemberment but a pretty unpleasant cold).

That prediction aged well. Was that one of Q's predictions?

Yes. As others have pointed out, acting in one's own self-interest and taking oneself seriously are not narcissism; narcissism is something distinct. However, most people who hold the dominant philosophy will incorrectly CALL such things "narcissism", "psychopathy/sociopathy", "arrogance" and hatred of others.

One would certainly hope so. I used to regularly listen to a variety of science communication channels on YouTube (like SciShow and Kyle Hill). I like science, and taking a few minutes each day to stay up-to-date with its developments was something I got a lot of value out of. Over the last few years I've unsubscribed to every single one which tried to tell me there is no such thing as biological sex, which was most of them. It was always the same argument, virtually word for word, every single time. "Not everyone is born with XX or XY chromosomes. Some people are born XXY or something else; some people are born with both a penis and a vagina. Therefore biological sex is not a binary but a spectrum and it's important for us to be inclusive and understanding of everybody on this spectrum!" Now, aside from all the over-the-top bromides about kindness and tolerance which had nothing to do with science, it'd be interesting to apply that same argument to the question of how many fingers and toes a human being has. Since not everyone is born with five fingers on each hand and five toes on each foot, is there any factual statement we can ever make about how many fingers and toes a person has? How many legs are on a chair or a table? What can we ever know about such existents if they even do exist? It's a rejection of the very act of conceptualization (and consequently of science itself, to boot) and over the last few years it's taken over the entire science communication industry. One certainly does hope it hasn't infected the actual scientists whose findings are being communicated. Well, what do you mean by "untested"? If you mean that it's just something Johnny Crackhead down the street threw together one night then no, that skepticism certainly is not arbitrary. If it's something scientists have good reasons to believe will work, but have yet to apply to any living organism then a bit of skepticism probably is still warranted. If it's gone through animal trials and human trials and we know it won't harm most people (at least in less than two years) then it probably isn't harmful. This doesn't mean it should be forced on an entire population against their will, just because it's safe - but it probably is safe. Besides which, is safety the only value which matters in this context? I know that's usually the way these things are discussed (the ONLY aspect of COVID we're allowed to talk about is what is or isn't safe) and it's wrong. If someone wanted to inject themselves with an untested medical intervention which genuinely wasn't safe then wouldn't it be their right to make that decision for themselves? No. Yes, thank you. 100%. Yes. Also including conclusions about how many biological sexes there are, how much of a risk the COVID virus itself poses (and to whom) and whether we are currently capable of eradicating it. Well, if there were any such collusion then I'm sure it'll come out in the Twitter Files.

Well, since Q said that Jeffrey Epstein was doing bad things to kids I guess I'm a Q believer. Personally I wouldn't call myself one, and I don't agree with this notion that a single point of agreement makes me a believer. I don't even agree with Ayn Rand about absolutely 100% of every word she ever spoke. I would consider myself a believer in Q if I agreed with MOST of his ideas in general - although the fact that so many of his own posts can't be pinned down to any one particular meaning does not make it easy to determine that. Is that one of his concrete statements? This whole conversation would be much easier if we could concretize exactly what we're talking about. Everybody seems to have an opinion on whether they agree or disagree with Q but I personally only know of a couple of things he's said. I know he talked about Jeffrey Epstein being involved in a child sex trafficking ring which also involved many other powerful people. That's demonstrably true; we all know that it's true. I've also been told by his detractors that this same child sex trafficking ring is supposed to be sacrificing children to the devil, in Satanic rituals, which grants them additional power and long life. If that's actually something he's said (although, again, I've never heard it explained that way by any of his sympathizers) then it's some grade-A Looney Tunes shit. I tend to agree about the yard signs. Not because I generally agree or disagree with Q but because Q people aren't likely to spontaneously start trying to bully me into wearing a mask while I'm mowing my own lawn by myself or demanding to know what does or doesn't go into my own private bloodstream. Yes, suicide rates went up during the lockdowns, along with many other signifiers of mental illness. Surprisingly, hearing so many people say that there's no such thing as individual rights and no values except for safety probably doesn't make people feel very good about the world they're living in (imagine my shock). But figuratively sacrificing the mental well-being of children to the goal of absolute safety is not exactly the same thing as literally sacrificing childrens' lives to the Devil, Himself.

Yeah, it is. I'm sorry; I have some thoughts about the vaccine mandates that really aren't relevant to this thread, or what you said.

So Jeffrey Epstein did nothing wrong, right? Because that's something Q mentioned and we can never agree with Q. Did you know that Hitler enjoyed painting and breathing Oxygen? That's exactly the sort of reasoning that makes me think I need to ask him once again for better evidence. If that kind of reasoning is representative of why everyone is making fun of these loons then perhaps they're not that far off, at all. OH! So the drug war is fine, too, right? After all, sobriety is extremely safe. So is having babies under modern conditions - so the repealing of Roe v. Wade is also fine! JESUS FUCK. Is that really who you are now?

I believe I actually made this exact argument a while back to @Devil's Advocate. Today I would agree with him.

Oh, and the Hunter Biden laptop is definitely real; it's been verified by multiple people who received the emails which the laptop seems to have sent. At this point it is conclusive. Which doesn't necessarily mean that Joe Biden is guilty of any impeachable offenses. Some of its business-related emails do mention "10% for the big guy" (which most right-wingers, including myself, do believe refers to Joe Biden) but that's far from a bulletproof case for anything. The laptop does prove that Hunter Biden, himself, certainly has committed felonies (such as taking pictures of himself snorting coke off of hookers' asses) but not Joe Biden. Which - honestly, if this was just about snorting Coke off of hookers, I'd probably still be saying (as I did in the beginning) that this just makes Hunter Biden the coolest Democrat I've seen yet. That's not the point, though. The point isn't even that 17% of Biden voters wouldn't have voted for him if they'd known about the Hunter laptop. The point is that our government is officially involved in active violations of our free speech. That's the line that Rand said should differentiate a justified rebellion from an unjustified one. So long as we're still free to speak about our grievances, it still isn't right to pick up guns and attempt to overthrow our own government. What the Twitter Files show is the FBI knowingly and deliberately crossing that line. Just a few months ago I would've mentioned that line, again, to anyone who thought revolution was a good idea. Having seen the Twitter Files I now feel differently.

Jeffrey Epstein was arrested on July 6th of 2019, according to Wikipedia. The site you linked to does mention Epstein a few earlier times in 2019, but I ignored all the later posts as his crimes were all public knowledge after his arrest. One of those earlier posts was a picture of Bill Clinton allegedly visiting Epstein Island (although there's no way to tell precisely where the picture was actually taken). I honestly believe that to be the gospel truth because we all know that Bill Clinton is a hypersexual deviant fucker; if you said that he had helped Epstein in the actual commission of his sex crimes then I would believe that, too. And for the very same reason (that everybody knows exactly what Bill Clinton is) that's hardly compelling evidence of anything. The very next one was about the occult nature of these sex crimes and that's where you lost me. There is no such thing as magic. Trust me - in my teenage years I was a Satanist and I tried my damnedest to do any kind of magic, but it simply does not exist. IF these sex crimes were in any way related to the occult then the sex crimes should still be what matters. Anyway. Is there any specific post you think is more compelling for something? If you name one I promise I will read it. So ... Analogous reasoning is invalid? That would be a shame (since it really is my forte) if true - only I don't think that is true. C'mon, man. If analogous reasoning is what Q uses then let's consider it by its own standards. Yes. And if you can provide me with compelling evidence for whatever it is you're trying to claim (which I'm still not clear on) then I will at the very least consider it I'm sorry. I took several minutes to figure out which posts predated Epstein's arrest and then to read those. I got into the one about the occult, lost most of my interest, continued onto the one about the media's collusion with the DNC and then lost the rest of it (not because the media doesn't collude with the DNC but because everybody already knows it). Could you please point me towards some specific post that you believe proves something? So @Easy Truthbelieves that! What does THAT prove?! Look, I am trying to give you the benefit of the doubt, here. I'm trying to do that because the mainstream media keeps telling me that QAnon is a bunch of crazy losers, and at this point I automatically assume that the opposite of whatever they're saying is probably the truth. If you have something useful to show then please show it to me. Yes. The government asked Twitter for help in removing disinformation. And just like you thought you would, the Twitter moderators were eager to help the government in stopping the bad guys. It's just that it wasn't disinformation; it was the truth and the FBI full-well fucking knew it. The Twitter files (surprisingly enough) exonerate the Twitter employees who were involved and doubly or triply damn the FBI. Yes, you certainly did hear about Russian collusion with the Trump campaign. That would be the Mueller Report (the most expensive investigation of anything in American history) which failed to prove that there was any connection, whatsoever, between the Trump campaign and Russia. Now, although I don't hate Donald Trump, I'm not one of his fanboys. And a failure to prove something doesn't necessarily disprove it either. However, when the most expensive investigation of all time (which was originally alleged by a member of Hillary Clinton's campaign, I might add) fails to prove absolutely anything, I am inclined to see it as proof of innocence on at least that one count. This is part of why I automatically assume that the media is lying to me, at all times. You can still hear CNN anchors talking about Trump being a well-known Russian puppet despite the actual findings of the investigation which lasted through most of his presidency. Granted, I still have yet to be impressed by anything I've seen from Q thus far, but it is easily provable that the mainstream media is lying to you right now.

Well if we're going to say anything meaningful about anything then we have to know what we're talking about. What is The Storm? Please explain and/or define what you mean by it in your own words. Both of those are very serious, AS-types of events. Absolutely. I'm not sure if that was still true when you wrote this, but it's certainly not true any longer. According to the Twitter Files the FBI was directly involved in preemptively censoring the Hunter Biden Laptop (which, as a government agency, constitutes actual and proper censorship) several months before the story for it even broke. They were in contact with Twitter; they told them exactly what to watch for and when the Hunter Biden story was finally released as an October Surprise, the Twitter moderators acted on all the FBI training they'd received (at the FBI's own suggestion) and censored the story which would've changed 17% of Biden voters' minds. Remember when Nixon was caught spying on the opposing campaign team? Because if there is any truth to the Twitter Files then this was the FBI actively censoring a legitimate news story which reflected badly on the candidate who was not even in power at the time. That is not nothing.

Absolutely. I think Rand even mentioned this in The Cult of Moral Grayness. Gaslighting. The only real moral crime one man can commit against another is gaslighting. That's interesting, though. Is it ever morally justified, not only to lie to an evil person, but to try to make them believe a lie which couldn't possibly be true? For them to believe such a lie certainly would shake their concept of rationality (at the very least); the source of all potential goodness and usefulness in them - and yet, in an evil person, it's that very remnant of rationality which is turned from a potential value into a danger. Would the looters in Atlas Shrugged have been capable of building Project X if Doctor Robert Stadler's grasp of semi-rationality had been fully shaken loose? This is yet another related aspect which deserves some attention.

That's true. And I suppose a case could be made for lying to good people who're liable to repeat the truth to evil ones (because of said consequences) but the reasoning I can come up with for that argument makes me a bit uncomfortable. I mean, if the only standard for what justifies lying is a consequentialist one then why shouldn't one lie whenever it's most convenient for oneself? I'll have to think about that. Maybe you're on to something; I'm not sure. But my immediate gut reaction is that I'm uncomfortable with where the reasoning seems to go. Fair enough. And I agree that just because you disagree with some part of Objectivism (or even the general ideology) doesn't necessarily mean you're not part of the same ideological lineage. I just assumed that you'd be trying to appeal to and base your conclusions on Rand's ideas. Damn. I guess it's been a bit too long since I've read the VoS. Still, I think an egoistic argument certainly can be made against lying to good people. It's not just that lying harms the person who believes your lies; lying primarily harms the liar. Lying feels awful and forces you to fill your own head with nonsense trivia which YOU KNOW to be false. That, alone, is a good reason not to do it unless it's absolutely necessary.

Is it a false dichotomy?

Thanks. I try not to comment on this website unless I know that my head's in the right place, and it's awesome to be back again. Well, although it is a slightly odd way of thinking about it, I don't think it changes all that much. Absolutely, it is rotten to tell a lie. And it shouldn't be done unless the other party has said or done something to make their actions suspect (like saying "I see many good things about Hitler" or "white people have too many rights"). If one is sure that one isn't dealing with a proper trader, though, but a wannabe-psychopath, then I don't see any reason to continue giving them the value of truthful statements. That's precisely it, though. When one is dealing with innocent civilians then one certainly should be truthful, and when one is at the barrel-end of a criminal's gun then one should certainly be as tricky and underhanded as one can possibly be. And when one is dealing with someone who's said "no, I never have initiated violence before, but I'd really like to" one should refrain from telling them anything that'd be useful in the pursuit of that goal. It definitely is. That's exactly what I mean when I say that "deception is the very first act of war". A good person; a person who neither wants to run your life for you nor destroy it, you should be able to tell anything. And if it's not your place to tell them something then you should be perfectly capable of simply saying so. It is only someone with malicious intent (like a Nazi at your door, asking about the local Jews) whom you could not get away with telling "that's not my information to divulge". That's why I say that you probably don't have to lie to any good person, and if you ever find that you absolutely do have to lie to someone then they are not good. And you are giving them a poison pill by lying to them; you are giving out bad products, and it can only be justified if they truly are as dangerous as you think they are. The rules of war are what applies to any allegedly-justified deception.

Um... So yes, knowledge is power, and if you're interested in DNA I would recommend reading this Wikipedia article about what's in human DNA. No, most people do not currently have anything artificial encoded into their DNA yet (I believe because it's illegal everywhere except Singapore), nor is there any war for what could not be legally owned anyway. Have you ever read Next by Michael Crichton?

If honesty was something we practiced for the sake of others (and lying were not harmful to one's own mental health) then why would it be a matter of rational self-interest to be honest? Unless you're rejecting Rand's fundamental basis for ethics you seem to be trying to prove only that honesty versus dishonesty is not a matter of self-interest. I think what we say to strangers is probably the most clean-cut way of analyzing it. When I say something to a total stranger, I'm not rationally interested in whatever the content of his brain may be. He's a stranger; he's not a friend, enemy, lover or mortal nemesis; he's just some dude who can think whatever he wants to think. If he asks me for my opinion, should I tell him the truth because I TRULY give a shit what he thinks? Or should I give him my actual opinion because there's no good reason for me to go to the effort of deceiving anybody, and my precious time and effort can better be spent on other things? If it's not the latter then why is it in my rational self-interest to care what the content of anybody else's brain is?

This is an interesting topic. I look forward to exploring it a bit more. That would depend on the particular "someone" we're talking about. Treating a James Taggart or an Ellsworth Toohey rottenly is justice. One shouldn't go out of one's way to inflict it, of course, but if some aspect of the pursuit of one's own happiness also happens to cause the suffering of the evil then so much the better - they are EVIL! Since the interests of good and rational men do not conflict, one's pursuit of one's own happiness usually should not cause good people to suffer. If it ever appears to then one should check whether they are, in fact, being good about the subject at hand and whether one is actually pursuing one's own happiness properly. The only times when it is in one's self-interest to treat someone else rottenly are exclusively when that "someone" is an unmitigated douche canoe. When it comes to telling the truth there is an added element of relative danger or safety involved. Since knowledge is a guide to action and other people can act on what we tell them, telling true information to an evil person can endanger the good (as in the old cliché of whether or not one should honestly inform the Nazis of where the Jews are hiding). This element primarily depends, not simply on that person's prior history, but on your own prediction of what they'll do in the future; do you think they WILL BE a douche canoe tomorrow, even if they weren't all that bad yesterday? Two things to note, though: Firstly, the fact that it is occasionally necessary to lie does not make lying good for one's own mental health. Lying sucks; it feels bad, it fills your brain up with lots of useless tedium (and the amount of useless tedium grows in direct proportion to how long one must maintain the lie) and in the long-term it is very bad for your own happiness. Secondly, because it is only in your own self-interest to lie when you believe someone would do something evil with the truth, to say "I can't tell this man the truth" is also to say "this is a bad man and an enemy of the good". Anytime you ever find yourself thinking that you SHOULD lie to someone you should stop and think carefully about whether they truly are that bad, or whether you should just tell them the truth. After a great deal of time and thought about this latter point I now conceive of lying as the first act of any war, great or small, past or future. In principle, though, I disagree with the OP. I think.