dreadrocksean

You conflate morality and legality.

"...initiates force against you to violate your rights" Incorrect. The force itself is the violation. The reason is irrelevant. However, I do agree with you. No force initiation exists in such a sport.

Your personal feelings of disgust or line drawing is not relevant to this discussion. Some find public nudity, for eg, disgusting while others see it as a right. Let's keep the arguments OBJECTIVE. Show evidence of rights violations, the definition of injustice.

That's not the topic though. The Trolley problem has, at its core, the fact that your action makes a difference - "minimize the casualties". "No matter what I do" - is incorrect.

That's awesome. I love how some don't get the 'problem' of the trolley situation is OTHER people.

It's not silly when many of the decisions we vote for are based upon studies such as this.

You assume that the society is significantly more than a million. You need to get your vision out of the Murica box for a min. So yes I can calculate in a split second what would happen to my culture should I allow 1 Million of us to be killed. No they're not just numbers as those other ones do not exist. Good on your last point. But then he'd just despise me.

Hahaha. I'm saying that at some point, which I arbitrarily measured at 1 Mil, a particular society's value rivals that of my offspring, whom I'm ironically raising to be a productive member of. Also, how would he feel, after he's grown up, when he finds out that 90% of his heritage and culture was sacrificed for him?

Those are irrelevant. All we require is the decision AS IF it were real. It was well thought out and it worked. Most did not switch the tracks and they claim to in all surveys.

This is a very good reply. To apply this to in first person, in that situation, I would know the difference between causation and choice. The first choice is - "Do I get involved or not?" Not - "Who should die?" After I correctly absolve myself from blame (should I choose not to get involved, I then embark on deciding the first choice. Here is where self interest enters the equation. If it were turned around and the train was naturally heading for 1 person, with 5 on the other track, but that 1 person was my child, I would get involved and I would switch. But not so fast. Is there a number above 5 that I would do nothing and let it remain on my child's track? 100? No. 1000? No. 10000? No. 100000? No. 1 Million? Maybe. Depends upon which country I'm in. America? No. My home country? Hmm. Now we're getting into serious grey area. Without skin in the game, and back to the original model - train headed toward 5 with 1 on the other track. If we increase it to 1 hundred thousand people (big train), would I switch? I very well might. People have nominal value. Society is valuable for traders. Humans are traders. To believe that there is no number that would cause you to get involved to rescue - is naïveté. ____ That being said, here are some interesting stats on the topic. Overwhelmingly, when asked about the trolley problem, most said that they would pull the lever. A real life trolley situation was designed (you can find it on youtube). The majority of test subjects did nothing at let the 5 die.

You action caused the death of an innocent person. Regardless of the reason. You intent was also to kill the innocent, so you cannot claim ignorance or accident.

I agree with A is A. Though a child does not legally own anything, ownership is the key to western civilization and a core of individual rights - property rights. This should be paramount as a concept to instill in our young from as early on as possible. The sharing instinct does not kick in until the ownership one has. One cannot share what one does not own. The closer we adhere to the Trader Principle in our relationships, the closer we come to World Peace. One cannot trade what one does not own. Keeping a toy just because, losing friends in the process, is just plain stupid and well within a parent's motivation to correct. But this must not be be done at the expense of the child's concept of ownership.

I think that you are mistaken. First of all, the 'conspiracy theory' is not rooted in the '50's but in 1910, 3 yrs before the Federal Reserve came into being. As long as our currency is controlled by the feds, the feds can control inflation (theft), by being the first in line to trade their money-out-of-thin-air at the current value, pre-circulation. The rest of us get that money after the circulation has devalued it (hence theft). If we all accepted shoes as currency, they would have no power over us via inflation. But we do not. In comes BitCoin. By widely accepting this medium of exchange, we now have the power to overthrow the hijack. After a while we will see stability. The rise and fall of the bitcoin value is only due to its youth and governments' attempts to dethrone it. Information and communication will always be our ally, thanks to the web - hence the reason ALL governments now see it as a threat, including ours. It has dethroned monopolies on the music industry, all forms of publications, hotels (airbandb.com), taxis (uber). No reason why it would stop at currency. Philosophically, it stands to absolute reason that a virtual form of mining would replace its physical counterpart - gold. Is it BitCoin? I don't know - but it would need to stand the test of what makes for a good currency. Rarity, endurance, work needed to attain it, easily divided, easily exchanged etc. Paper replaced gold ONLY because of weight and volume and therefore exchangeability. Bitcoin surpasses this requirement being weightless, volumeless with no limit to the distance of exchange. To me, the only 'if' area is in the mining. It needs to be rare with a substantial effort needed to acquire. But I do not know much about the mining of this technology.

I know that this is 7 years old but I don't like that. Dragon Lady took your questions seriously and engaged her mind fully in her reply to you. To belittle her or imply that she is in error by making a mountain out of a molehill, is quite unfair to her. Suppose you held this thread very important and her replies were flippant, would that have been acceptable to you?

Thank you for your thoughtful reply on this topic. In the end, you do differ in opinion to what she generally dismissed. This encourages me to believe that I am engaging in a rational discussion not plagued with Randian dogma - though I will state here than one is well advised to disagree with her with extreme caution. With regard to the 'physically impossible', that was my interpretation and I do not view it differently as a reference to her quote. The only proof she has for any artist's aiming to "disintegrate man's consciousness" is the art itself. That was her own personal deduction from the painting(s). One needs to ask 'where did she get that opinion from?' Well, from the painting of course. And what exactly in the painting did she use for her decision? By the fact that is was not perceptible in reality. Her quote "from several perspectives at once" was bracketed and therefore meant to be - simply one example. My own description, 'physically impossible', perfectly matches what she is saying within the context of this discussion. We all know what she is alluding to. Lets step outside Cubism for a moment. Do you think that Ayn Rand would have approved, as 'good' art, The Penrose Stairs?

I am a full blown Objectivist. I am not a Randian. When I struggle with the logic of an Objectivist opinion, I do not accept it. I have left O groups who could not reasonably explain certain ideas and who chastised me because of my reluctance to accept those ideas purely based on Rand's opinion. Before I launch into my Aesthetics post, I would like to preface it with one of my past Objectivist arguments. The issue of Competing Governments. With the non initiation of force principle entrenched in my morality, it seemed ridiculously contradictory to deem moral, aiming a gun at me if I should offer the service of a competing government. I kept getting the Police A vs Police B explanation as if, suddenly, the end justified the means, another contradiction. I was ruthless in my rejection of their explanations and left the group, along with others, who understood my argument. A couple years later I found documentation of a proper explanation and am now a firm believer in a Monopolistic Government. Here is that explanation in my own words: -----To compete means to enter a market. If this market is to be free (un-coerced), then it must presuppose the protection of individual rights. But this job belongs to government. Therefore competing governments would operate in a market BEFORE it is free, since they themselves are the agents of such freedom. Chaos can be the only result.------- Now to my relevant post. I quote Rand, " At the other extreme of the stylistic continuum, observe the deliberate blurring and visual distortions of the so-called "painterly" school, from Rembrandt on down--down to the rebellion against consciousness, expressed by a phenomenon such as Cubism which seeks specifically to disintegrate man's consciousness by painting objects as man does not perceive them (from several perspectives at once.) . . . . . " I would like to focus on her rejection of Cubism - the representation of the physically impossible. Really? Cubism should be avoided because it is impossible? A man's imagination is limitlessly good. From her point of view, we should never have had the privilege and honour of witnessing the magic of complex numbers in Math. For you non Mathematicians, Complex Numbers are the group of numbers that include, the IMAGINARY number i, where i is the square root of -1. As we all know, any number (positive or negative) when multiplied by itself produces a positive result. So what number IN REALITY, when multiplied by itself could ever produce -1? None. It is an impossibility. Interestingly, Gerolamo Cardano, in 1545, conceived this concept in order to solve Cubic equations. That raht thar's funny. Don't care WHO yar. More importantly, the imaginary number, i, is Brilliant, it is Creative and it is Good. Because of this, I currently disagree with Ayn Rand with specific reference to her negative position regarding the painting of the impossible. Your thoughts are most welcome.

Beautiful. Yes, Comedy, sums it up. Why didn't I think of that? Good job. However, do realize that I also refer to the everyday acts of comedy, in the office, at school, in a bar etc. and not necessarily the more official forms of it. So... 1/ Is it an artform? 2/ How does it work? 3/ Why does work? 4/ Is it necessary to man? (redundant to #1 but here for clarity)

There was an experiment done where 99 caucasian faces were digitally 'averaged', by features, on a computer algorithm and the 'averaged' face was included with the 99 making it 100. This was repeated for each sex. The 200 faces were shown to randomly chosen individuals and a rating system was devised based upon each individuals preferences. I cannot remember but I believe that, for simplicity, the control groups were confined to the caucasian race. An overwhelming majority picked the 'average' face of each sex. This supports the theory that man unconsciously rejects abnormalities suggesting that physical beauty is health based -that is, an indicator of preferred genes.

Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist’s metaphysical value-judgments. This is consistent with humour. Humour has a unique and powerful property - it short circuits man's value judgements of others. Usually a man has to work at abilities and practice the virtues of patience, perseverance, getting back up when fallen, rational choices between short term and long term joy etc., for another to admire his achievements. But with humour, all a man need do, is make another laugh, and he is instantly 'liked' by that other. By 'liked', I mean, he is granted an entry into realms normally reserved for the latter described. Realms such as respect, trust, companionship and sexual attraction. Even jobs may be offered to this man when otherwise they would not. But humour itself requires creativity, intelligence and a knowledge of current events and trends, so it is not as easy as it sounds. I want to position this discussion as separate to "Sense Of Humour". This is the passive, receptive version. I am discussing the active version, the art of making others laugh. One must be actively funny to achieve this. So I would like to open this topic for discussion and I am interested to hear other rational viewpoints.

JeffS, you're correct. JASKN, you're incorrect. But please get back to the topic of speeding, the reason why I clicked this link. Here are my 2 cents. In a just society, all roads would be private. The owner of a road gets to decide the contract for its use. If a driver breaches this contract, the owner has all rights to exact any limitations and/or penalties, upon the offensive driver, to the use of that particular road or any of the roads he owns, pertinent to the contract. But the driver's privileges would not be limited for ALL ROADS IN THE COUNTRY across any number of other private owners. Though, currently, the Government does own all the roads in the nation, under normal capitalistic circumstances, this monopoly would never occur. This is where I personally and painfully feel the injustice. No one has the right to suspend my Drivers License, my national driving privileges, for breaching the contract of ONE PRIVATE OWNER.

First of all, this is aimed at the moderator(s). I joined this forum to discuss ideas aimed at finding truth wherever it may lie. If it is found in Objectivism, great. If not then that's fine too. I want to be very forward here and give you the privilege of banning me here and now. If this is a forum of Randians - those not in search of truth but instead in search of rationalizations to follow Ayn Rand's ideas dogmatically, ban me now. If this is a forum where I cannot question, ask for explanations for or rationally defend attacks or criticisms upon my opinions or self with respect to a Government's monopoly on the retaliation of force, ban me now. In the absence of any ban or threat of banning, I will assume it within your forum rules to continue.

Thank you for your 'That is off the subject'. It is so frustrating to constantly meet with your opponent's irrelevant style of argument.

Please speak for yourself.

I was in a discussion on xmas day with a die hard Obama follower. He defended Govt regulations by using this example. Human defaecation laws are in place for good reason. If you constantly defaecate on your own backyard and your property is uphill to a neighbour, then when the rains come, his property would be compromised. This means that he should be preemptively controlled. How do I respond to that?

Good to see not much action on this topic. It is much too obvious an embarrassment to civilized society.