DancingBear

I only read the first post. It asked three questions, however, the second sentence wasn't actually a question, it merely had the punctuation that traditionally identifies sentences as questions. So, I will only give two answers. Fortunately, they are the same, so in the interest of efficiency, I will only respond once. No. Life is everything.

Okay I'm glad people are volunteering things they find funny. I can only assume Alfa hasn't heard Mitch Hedberg otherwise he would realize that Hedberg is much funnier than that short story/joke he just posted. By epistemological value judgements, I really just meant value judgements. I seem to remember reading somewhere in Rand's nonfiction something about how man's metaphysical and epistemological beliefs form his value judgements or something along those lines. By value judgements I mean what you judge to be valuable. So do you all laugh at things that you find to be unvaluable, say slapstick or Jackass-style humor? Or do you laugh at things you do value? For me, this would be somebody talented doing something really well and boasting about it, like an Usain Bolt in the 2008 Olympics. I know I'm happy to see someone so successful and often laugh out of joy but perhaps there's also an element of laughing at the untalented, unvaluable people that didn't succeed. Anyone care to explore this thought with me?

The scenario I'm envisioning is basically this: You, your lover, and a terrorist are in a desert. The terrorist has a gun and is going to kill one of you because he's mentally unstable and believes his god told him that one of you had to die. There is no reasoning with him because he's irrational. You can't take the gun from him because you're not close enough and he'll shoot you if you charge him. You can't run because he will shoot you. So would you rather die or let you lover die? I suppose a lot of the decision-making will depend on the exact relationship between yourself and your lover, so you can take your current relationship and apply it to this scenario if you would like. Would you die so the person you are currently in a relationship with could live? Or you can imagine your ideal relationship. Also if you dislike violence you can imagine that your (ideal) lover needs life-saving medical attention, say, a blood-transfusion, and you have the only blood that can save her... I probably shouldn't introduce that because I'll have to think of a whole host of other contingencies but you see I'm trying to imagine an analogous scenario to the terrorist scenario. My thinking is that I would rather die than know I let my (ideal) lover die. That would be too psychologically traumatizing and would make life beyond that choice unbearable. Feel free to request more context. Maybe I'll turn it into short fiction. Edit: I'm disappointed to calculate that seven members have cast blank votes just to see the results.

Tara Smith is coming to speak at the College of Charleston as part of the BB&T Free Market Process Speaker Series Thursday February 24, 2011 at 3 PM. Her presentation is titled "Can Selfishness Be Moral?" I had already planned to attend but just noticed her mentioned on the forums and now am even more excited. Let me know if you have any questions you think I should ask or if you would like me to report what she says.

Anybody think is funny?

The reasons that humans can choose between right and wrong is because they are living organisms with free will. The right consists of things that further their life as a human being, and their power of free will allows them this choice. Observe plants. They have no free will, so they cannot choose the wrong (i.e. to die). However, the things that further their lives as plants are right for them (e.g. minerals, water, sunlight). As for frustration, are you saying that it is part of human nature (i.e. that suffering is normal)?