Eamon Arasbard
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Posts posted by Eamon Arasbard
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I'm realizing right now that I have trouble connecting with the world around me, including the people I want to be part of my life, and I think a lot of it has to do with me struggling with being able to experience emotions. In particular, I've found that it can be difficult to integrate my own emotions with my rational thought process.
What happens a lot of the time is that I try to evaluate the world around me, and whether or not my immediate experience should objectively be seen as positive, and what I should do to get the most of it, and I end up killing the experience in my attempts to analyze it. My mind will also drift to other parts of my life, and it will just end up wandering, and I won't be able to engage with what would otherwise be a much more positive experience.
Does anyone else have this problem? And what do you recommend doing to correct it?
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It's easy for Objectivists to fall into the trap of thinking that being rational means avoiding feeling emotions. At least it has been for me so far. It can also be a little embarrassing to realize you have a feeling about something which is diametrically opposed to reason.
But I think (As others on here have said) that you have to understand your emotions in order to understand the values underlying them. You have to let yourself feel everything that's there in order to evaluate it and decide what values the emotions are a response to, and if necessary to find a more positive way of seeking these values.
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Here's the link, because I forgot to post it above:
http://noosphere.princeton.edu/
Finish reading it. At the bottom: "The Global Consciousness Project is directed by Roger Nelson from his home office in Princeton. The Institute of Noetic Sciences provides a logistical home for the GCP. It is not a project of Princeton University."
My mistake. I'm not sure why it's posted at under that URL, though, and it is still worrisome that we've come to this point, although not as bad as I thought at first.
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The Global Consciousness Project is an international, multidisciplinary collaboration of scientists and engineers. We collect data continuously from a global network of physical random number generators located in up to 70 host sites around the world at any given time. The data are transmitted to a central archive which now contains more than 15 years of random data in parallel sequences of synchronized 200-bit trials generated every second.
Our purpose is to examine subtle correlations that may reflect the presence and activity of consciousness in the world. We hypothesize that there will be structure in what should be random data, associated with major global events that engage our minds and hearts.
We literally now have universities funding projects which are based on mystical premises, in an attempt to use "science" to "prove" that prayer works.
I don't really know what to say, except that this is completely outrageous.
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Would you administer a painful injection into a lab rat to attain scientific results which can be used to produce valuable pharmaceuticals?
If that was the only possible way to obtain results, then yes. It would be immoral to sacrifice human lives for the sake of a lab rat. If there was an alternative method which would give just as good results, then I would consider it ethical to resort to that method instead, even if it cost more. (Since it is waying a consideration of financial benefit again a consideration of justice, and is thus equivalent to the "accepting money from a sadist scenario.)
On the other hand, it is also possible that a competitor might be able to drive me out by torturing an animal, so if that was a significant risk then I might make an exception. But I would prefer to appeal to the moral sentiments of my customers to encourage them to boycott my competitor.
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Animals have a right to be treated humanely because they are capable of experiencing pain and pleasure. Animals do not have a right to life, because if we applied that consistently our conclusions would be incoherent. However, I would say that an animal could be considered to have rights if it is both intelligent enough to value its own life, and capable of respecting a moral code.
There are other ethical considerations as well which would apply differently to different species of animal. For instance, some animals have evolved to produce a small number of offspring which are raised and nurtured to survive as individuals, while other species produce a large number of disposable offspring. An animal in the latter category could not even remotely considered to have a right to life, because it is not biologically capable of valuing its own life.
An animal of a species capable of valuing individual members of the species could be considered to have a limited right to life, to the extent that this right would not infringe on the rights of humans to find happiness. For instance, it might be impermissible to murder a wolf (A species which does value individual members) in cold blood, but if there's a dairy farmer living near a pack of wolves who doesn't want his sheep getting eaten, I would say that he has a right to slaughter the wolves in order to protect his sheep.
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Animals are not people, for very specific reasons. If you don't consider consciousness to be uniquely human (either by affirming it for everything else or denying it for humanity) then what in Galt's name do you even mean by "rights"?
Animals could be considered to have some rights, without being fully protected by the non-aggression principle. For instance, I would say that it's permissible to raise cattle to slaughter them, but that the cattle do have a right to be treated humanely by their captors. Animals have a right to be protected against torture and abuse by human captors, but humans also have a right to hold animals in captivity.
Even if we are all on the same page that animals do not have rights and therefore orca captivity should be legal, that doesn't follow that we should ethically support animal torture for the sake of amusement.
We are clearly right to condemn anything that remotely fits that description. The issue is whether or not it is appropriate to extend the protection of the law to creatures who are not part of human society.
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My question is: barring deliberately cruel treatment of animals (i.e. physically hurting them), are there any concerns one should have morally with containing animals?
It depends on whether or not the particular species has a level of intelligence comparable to that of humans by the same standards which establish that humans have rights. And it is true that some species of animal, especially sea creatures, do have a high intelligence level. (Dolphins in particular are highly intelligent, and octopi have high ploblem-solving capacity, although I do not believe there is any evidence that octupi are intelligent enough to have a concept of morality.)
I think crows have also been observed practicing punishment, which would seem to indicate a sense of morality. However, I do not know if there is any evidence that crows are intelligent enough to make rational judgments about morality.
My view is that in order to have a rights, a species would have to be demonstrated to be both intelligent enough for individual members of the species to value their own lives in terms of pursuing something beyond basic survival, and have a capacity for moral reasoning which would enable them to respect the rights of members of their own species. I believe that humans and maybe dolphins are the only species which fit these criteria.
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Update: Someone I know on another forum just sent me this link:
http://uopeople.edu/groups/mission_statement
This organization identifies itself as a non-profit, meaning it is probably at least in part privately funded, and does not charge tuition. (I have not yet checked where they do get their money from, however.) At a bare minimum, it at least does not appear to be part of the mainstream college system, meaning that it is probably not a crony of the state. Supporting it also does not contribute to social gentrification which contributes to distortions in people's utility as workers.
Edited to add: It is funded through minor fees placed on students enrolled in classes, which are much lower than tuition rates:
In order to remain sustainable, UoPeople charges small processing fees for application ($10-$50) and examination processing ($100/per end-of-course exam).
For those individuals who are unable to pay their Exam Processing Fees, UoPeople works extremely hard to ensure that no student of UoPeople is left out of higher education for financial reasons.
It does not sound like any of their funding comes from the state.
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I grow some veggies too.... for fun. When it comes to economics, it makes no impact to my life.
Why not sell them for silver? You'd be making a profit in a currency which has actual, objective value which can't be sucked away by the Federal Reserve. And, if you could find others who believe in the same thing, and convince them to trade with you, then you've already created the base for a transition by the market away from fake paper money to real, sound money.
The leap to subsistence farming goes like this: if you take things seriously and stop dealing with all the people around you who are in favor of all sorts of government intrusions... just ordinarily productive people.... not as a symbolic thing with a few close friends, but seriously... you limit yourself to a tiny economy that will not produce much.
That's not what I'm planning to do. Of course agorism has to be done in a way which is concistent with reality, and it also is not rational to condemn people for using a currency which, up to this point, has been the only option. I don't support ostracizing statists, either. If I did, I'd have to stop associating with almost all of my friends.
But, you use those dollars precisely for self-interest. It would be a huge sacrifice to give them up. You would have to forgo all sorts of values.
Of course, which is why I don't do that. Especially since I would probably starve. But this doesn't mean that supporting a transition to sound money is not in my self-interest.
As for "crony corporations" this is simply a reification of corporations. It is the same thing you do when you talk of government. Corporations are primarily a bunch of people. And, these are not some special breed of aristocrat. Many of these people grew up in your neighborhood, got great grades, attended top colleges, and were recruited by corporations. These are not some evil species. On average, they're brighter and more rational than their peers. And, the shareholders of corporations are all across America, whether directly or through various pension funds. When you speak of government and crony-corps as if they're some group mostly outside of regular folk, you betray your own lack of knowledge of the people who make up these entities.
I'll respond to this briefly -- first, I believe that most of the founders and shareholders of corporations are people who want to make an honest profit, and of course I support this. However, there are certain corporations run by people who are just parasites who use government-granted privilege to profit at the expense of those who earn wealth honestly. And I would say that any institution which is based on coercion is evil, regardless of whether or not the people in it are "like me."
On the original topic of a college, I have one more comment. On any particular subject (physics or anything else) if you could rank all the colleges in the country that teach that subject using academic quality as the only criteria, the bottom half are probably not worth attending at all.
Then I will keep this in mind while I looke for somewhere to go to college.
Nevertheless, obviously, you have to chose to do what you think right... nobody here would want to to do something different just because someone else said so. So, all the best to you, whatever road you take.
Thank you.
I'm curious, what is your goal in studying physics? Do you want to be a research physicist, for example?
Yeah, I'd like to become a researcher, as long as I can fund my research through market means. So ideally, I would probably be an R&D contractor for different manufacturing firms, and the profits I made on that to fund my own lab.
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When you become a subsistence farmer, with a pittance of the values that many people like you possess because they trade with dollars in a thriving economy that you're trying to reinvent from scratch...
How did you get from me growing vegetables and not going to a government-funded college to becoming a subsistence farmer? I'm not planning to do anything close to what you're suggesting, and I don't think the vast majority of people who practice agorism do it that way either.
I trade dollars for things that add value to my life, just like everyone else. That doesn't mean that I believe trading fake paper money that the Federal Reserve can inflate at will to redistribute wealth to crony corporations is a system which it is in my self-interest to support.
By your logic, John Galt, and everyone who went on strike with him, were ignorant morons who should have ended up as subsistence farmers.
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I lost count of how many people I heard say that they "grew out of Objectivism, because it's naive and idealistic" once they realized that in today's world it's impossible to do the things you're planning to do.
It is possible, and there's people doing it. Look up agorism. There is a movement based specifically on creating alternatives to the state, and I believe that even if private colleges don't exist now, they will in a few years.
I'm even working on doing this myself. I'm currently trying to grow broccoli in the backyard of the house I live in. I may or may not be successful this time around, but I'll learn eventually, because gardening isn't that difficult. And I'm going to sell it for silver and bitcoin if it ever does come up.
And I know many people who I'm sure would love to do the same thing, and some of them already have. The market just hasn't developed yet, but it will once more people start doing it.
Yet, their context of history is such that they can smile with agreement when three Israeli teenagers are kidnapped and a cartoon shows three trapped mice, and they can cheer on the kidnappers.
That has nothing to do with their context of history. Anyone who is capable of that is fundamentally evil, regardless of what culture they live in and what their history is. And there are also people in Palestine who want peace with Israel.
Still, for all this, as a group, they think government should help the poor, stop people from getting drugs, help the old, provide education, provide healthcare... and so on.
People don't believe anything as a group. Individuals have their own beliefs, and if they are fundamentally rational and moral, then they will be open to rational arguments. I'm even starting to convert one of my friends away from collectivism and statism to individualism. (He is coming around on his own, but he and I have also spent a lot of time talking about philosophy.)
It makes no sense for me to pay taxes and then insist that the money that goes to the local K-12 school should only be used by my neighbors, not by me. It makes no sense that I should let all of them collect social security, but not do so myself.
I think that there is a moral benefit to refusing to accept the scraps of what someone else has stolen from you. For instance, if a gang breaks into your house, takes all your stuff, and burns your house down, then offers you a share of the loot that they've accumulated from their victims over the years, I don't think it would be rational to accept it. Especially not if they're claiming that you back a share of it justifies what they did. It would be rational to work to rebuild your life on your own, with support from people who actually care, and persuade other people who have been victimized by the gang to help bring them down.
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Beware of reifying government. These people that you want to make happy... they are the foundation of the government.
This may be true in some sense. I believe that the government continues to exist because people have been misled, and believe that we need government programs in order for society to function. If the majority of people were to wake up, statist would crumble.
The government is their agent.
I don't agree with this. I think that the government works for certain crony corporations (Not truly productive businesses), and parasitic banks which feed off the Federal Reserve. It stopped working for the people long ago.
However, I also believe that the majority of people are fundamentally rational, and capable of realizing that reason requires freedom instead of statism. How many we will be able to convert in practice is yet to be determined. But I don't think we can just assume that everyone supports statism, and that they all deserve to be looted, because we know that's not true. And we can expand the ranks of people who support a free market, but only if we live in accordance with our principles as best we can. If we're going to advocate a free market, then we should be willing to put our money where our mouths are, and seek alternatives outside the state. And if those alternatives don't exist, create them.
Statists have succeeded at creating a civilization built on looting and coercion. We believe that a better world can be created through reason and voluntary cooperation. I think it's time to act on that belief, and I intend to live my life in accordance with this belief.
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You just gave an altruistic reason and claimed it was self interest. It's not self interest if your reason begins with "so (other) people can...".
I think there was a quote from the Fountainhead (Which I haven't gotten around to reading yet -- still working on AS) that someone posted on here a while ago. Something along that "giving one's life for freedom is only a sacrifice for someone who can tolerate life under tyranny." In other words, suffering for the sake of a world where all individuals are free to pursue their rational self-interest is not a sacrifice (At least in my case) because my desire to create a free world is sufficient to give up certain benefits from the world that exists.
If it's not in line with your philosophy, you have no real argument here - I'm sure you do tons of things that aren't technically in line with your philosophy as a result of the world you live in. Relying on any public service or publicly funded service at all is a violation of your philosophy by these standards, and I guarantee you that you use more than a few public or publicly funded services.
To some extent yes, at the moment. I still do my best to practice agorism, meaning that I avoid relying on the government where I can. I intend to practice it more fully as time goes on, and as a result I do not wish to invest in something which is dependent on government funding.
If you claim to be an Objectivist, then doing it for the benefit of other's isn't a very good reason either.
I'm not doing it exclusively for the enjoyment of others. I'm doing it to create a free world, which is the kind of world I want to live in. I want the people I interact with to be happy, because that will facilitate my own happiness, and this will be achieved by allowing them to keep what they earn, and have access to a level of education at its true market priced, not be priced out of the market by inflated tuition rates.
I don't see Objectivism as being about only caring about myself -- I see it as being about rejecting the dichotomy between my own interests and the interests of others. And I think if we're at the point where we can't succeed without using coercion against others, then it's time for us to quit the system and let it burn to the ground.
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Ignoring government-funded colleges as an option ensures that the people who attend are people who support the idea of taxing you and me to have that college, and to build more like it. Not only do you get a worse education by not attending, but you also end up leaving the opportunity to the opposition, and then being taxed to pay for their education!
What would be in my self-interest, in that case, would be to support private education, so people who want to get an education without relying on theft have that option.
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To be clear, I have attended a few years of community college, at the second-highest rated community college in the country. And I hated the classes there. Most of them weren't even relevant to what I wanted to learn, and were filled with socialist propaganda. (I remember a sociology class I made the mistake of signing up for during my first year there, which was particularly awful.)
In addition, even the classes which were about things I cared about, I still hated because of the authoritarian model being used.
How are you going to get to your privately funded school, without using a public road?
Government roads are a different matter. There is, physically speaking, no option except to use them. But I can make a choice whether or not I want to go to a government-funded college.
Either you use it for good ends, or it remains stolen and given to someone else. In this sense, you could right a wrong.
I don't agree with this arguments. Granted, there are some cases where you might have a point, like someone who can't get a job because of government regulations taking food stamps in order to survive. But when there is an option, making the choice to rely on government services is, in my opinion at least, legitimizing the theft necessary to fund them.
By the way, I'm pretty sure absolutely zero universities do not receive some government funds.
I think some online universities are fully privately funded. I know Khan Academy is privately funded, but they don't offer any actual courses where I would be working with an instructor.
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I think you should go to the best university suited to your career/learning goals, your academic achievements, your budget, etc. but without any regard to its funding (zero, zilch). To do anything else would be a self-sacrifice.
I don't consider it a self-sacrifice, because I want to live in a world where people profit through voluntary means. As a result, it is in my self-interest to act in a manner that does not involve relying on stolen money, so that I can participate in a community of people who do the same.
In addition, I've found that classes at college are poorly run, and tuition is way too expensive. This would not be possible for a private university, since it is dependent on the free market and therefore must provide good education at a reasonable price in order to survive. In addition to being annoying, the high tuition rates make it impossible for people from poor families to go to college, which means they're at a disadvantage in the job market, which means they can't send their kids to college, which means the cycle continues. So if I go to a government-funded college, I'm simultaneously spending my time struggling to get through homework for a class I don't enjoy, just so I can get a passing grade, and profiting from a caste system where I get to be on top by virtue of being and coming from an affluent family. And also enabling people to make a profit they could not make through voluntary means, ripping me off in the process and pricing out millions of people who are perfectly intelligent and could be good students. That's not how I want to get ahead in life.
And I don't consider living honorably to be a sacrifice, even if it's inconvenient due to the nature of the world we live in.
Of course leftists will use these problems to justify all sorts of socialist garbage. They don't realize these problems are caused by socialism. But, as someone who wants to live in a just society, and sees the free market as the means to that end, I want to practice free market principles in my own life.
Government funded doesn't mean government run. The government grants research funds to the private polytechnic universities where you'll find the best education and research opportunities, and they accept those funds.
It would depend on whether or not tuition is reasonable (Meaning, at a level it could realistically be in a free market) and if the way the classes are run is to my liking.
I'm curious what leads you to believe that colleges with government funding provide crap education.
Mostly there just aren't the kinds of options that ought to be available, and which could be provided in a free market, and the system that exists is too authoritarian for me. I'm willing to be ordered around and pushed to meet deadlines when I'm the one getting paid. When I'm paying someone else for a service, I expect that service to be provided to my tastes, instead of having a top-down model forced on me.
Granted, I might be able to put up with all of that, except that in the process I'm enabling an entire corrupt system to exist.
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I'm currently looking for a private, non-government-funded university where I can go to study physics. I've found one web site (Here: http://www.earnmydegree.com/online-schools/) where I'm looking into online schools. I do not want to go to a government-funded university, because I believe that the government-run education system is both immoral, and provides crap education.
Any suggestions, aside from the web site I already posted?
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A weapons factory is a fair target of war, and if we're at war, I'm going to blow your weapons factory up. I would certainly want to do so without killing innocents, within reason. However, if your placement of the weapons factory makes it such that I cannot blow the factory up without some degree of collateral damage, then I think that's part and parcel with warfare.
I would consider you responsible for finding a way to destroy the factory without killing innocents. At this point it becomes a technical challenge.
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You can be irrational and expect others to be irrational to you and not violate the Golden Rule. Or you could use it as a moral blank check by promising others to not judge them, for example.
I would not advocate the Golden Rule as the sole basis for social morality. I would propose it within the context of Objectivist ethics -- we want others to respect our right to be left alone to pursue our selfish interests, so we sanction the rights of others to do the same.
Eamon Arasbard, on 08 Jun 2014 - 2:11 PM, said:
What would that mean in practice?
What I said above -- if a group of progressives are campaigning to outlaw Objectivism as hate speech, they obviously don't respect our right to voice our opinions, but we would still respect their right to voice theirs.
An aggressor would not agree with you [on the Golden Rule], and there are impediments to leading by example when one is responding to mortal threats.
I agree with you here. I'm not advocating pacifism. The Golden Rule does assume that everyone involved is fundamentally moral, and only works within that contexts. When someone intends to hurt you, your are fully justified in taking the appropriate action to protect yourself.
One must be cautious in asserting what we want, particularily with respect to a right to life. For example, are suicides a result of dissent or does a right to life subsume a right not to live? And if a right to life sanctions suicide, are those who attempt to prevent suicide guilty of transgression??
I believe that someone who attempts to commit suicide has renounced their right to freedom of action by renouncing their right to life.
And yet if those "leftists" win their day in court, an individual right to free speech becomes less than absolute. Does 'do unto others' imply a duty to respect the will of a majority of others?
No. I said individual rights, not collective rights.
I believe ethical reciprocity is a better descriptor of the Golden Rule, and that this premise does support the practice of justice in a legal context, and interactions with others in general. However leading by example must also respond to actions one wouldn't choose to initiate, yet must adopt to survive if one chooses to survive aggression.
I agree, as long as those actions only harm those who have violated the Golden Rule or the principle of ethical reciprocity.
So now, in order to launch drones, America has turned itself into a torture/security state to protect its own citizens. This is the price of 'acting in one's own selfish interests'.
For this reason, America's actions were not selfish in the sense that Objectivists use the term. And it's because of this that it is selfish to respect the rights of others.
Kant's view is that we obtain a better decision if we somwhat detach ourselves from our emotions. Rules and principles do just that.
This is exactly the same as Rand's position.
If my understanding of Kant's categorical imperatives is correct, however, he was basically saying that we should do whatever would produce the best results for everyone if everyone did it. I think that this is making a false assumption that everyone will, in fact, follow the categorical imperative, which will only result in disaster if practiced only by some people. For instance, the world would be a better place if everyone practiced pacifism. But if you take pacifism as a categorical imperative, you're taking away people's right to defend themselves against aggressors.
There are also cases where something that would hurt everyone if everyone did it might be good if only a few people do it. If everyone decided at once to quit their job and start growing vegetables, it would lead to economic collapse. But if no one produced food for a living, everyone would starve.
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In this situation, a rational American would be pro-Canadian, seeing his country as the enemy to be vanquished, probably ruled by some Hitler or Stalin type figure, cheered on by stupidly patriotic/nationalist neighbors.
So, as you asking how such a rational person would react? Or, are you asking about the random average Joe?
I was thinking of the average person, although I also do not believe that an American who was pro-Canadian while Canada was bombing civilians would be rational -- they would be practicing altruism by renouncing their right to their own life for the sake of others. But, a rational person would believe that the U.S. government deserved to be destroyed it is was waging a war of aggression, which means that they would likely support an insurgency against the government, especially if the government was totalitarian, as you seem to be suggesting. It would also of course be in the interests of the Canadians to support this insurgency.
But, would more people be willing to support an insurgency if Canada was bombing civilians, or if they were taking care to avoid hitting civilians?
However, if I learned that my wife and child were killed by Canada intentionally, as a means of trying to "break my country's will" or something like that... well, I don't know that I could ever forgive such a thing. I might still work to take down the Hitler in my country, but I might come to view Canada as having a Stalin of her own, and work against that country, too. And if innocents are fair game to bring down such a tyrant, well, why not a few "innocent" Canadian wives and daughters to join my own?
And I don't think there is any question that you would be rationally justified in hating the Canadian government under those circumstances, or that you would have widespread support from your fellow citizens. And, as you say, if supporters of a retaliatory attack on Canada follow the same moral principle as the Canadian government practiced, it would result in death of millions of innocent Canadians in a deliberate slaughter.
This is also why bombing innocents in Muslim countries increases, rather than diminishing support for Al Qaeda.
And if, during that conflict, my wife and daughter were killed as "collateral damage"... I would be utterly broken, most likely, but I believe that I would understand the event as stemming from my own country's faults. I don't think I would hold Canada to blame for it. Not even if it were an accident, or if I judged that it could somehow have been avoided. War is full of such tragedy, and I understand that.
I think some are conflating civilian death in war with intentional targeting qua civilian, which is, I think, the definition of terrorism.
It depends on the nature of the collateral damage. If it was a case where the invader dropped a bomb which was intended to hit a weapons factory that hit someone's house instead, then it's an honest mistake and can be forgiven. If they dropped it on a factory in the middle of a busy city, knowing that innocents would be caught in its blast radius, then that would be an act of aggression against the civilians killed.
And regarding Hiroshima and Nagasaki: From my understanding, Japan was close to surrendering anyway, Russia had declared war on them, and if it had come to a land invasion, it would have been bloody, but they were largely defeated by that point and facing two global superpowers. There was also widespread resentment toward the government for leading them into an unnecessary war, and we would have benefitted by working with the civil population to bring the government to its knees. Basically, they had no chance. (Although it is worth mentioning that, given the nature of the Soviet Union, it may have been more moral to double-cross Stalin and form an alliance with Japan.)
It is true that we avoided a fight in the short term by nuking Japan. But it had long-term consequences, including not being able to prosecute the Japanese emperor for war crimes (Which I believe would have been easier if we had the moral high ground by virtue of having avoiding civilian casualties in addition to having fought in self-defense) and encouraging the Soviet Union to develop nuclear weapons, creating the arms race which brought the world to the of annihilation multiple times.
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Let's imagine a concrete example. Let's imagine that the U.S. government declares a war of aggression on Canada. Canada responds by invading in order to destroy our military capacity. Do you suspect that more people would choose to fight the invading force if 1) the Canadians use surgical strikes to take out military bases and factories responsible for producing arms, and avoid harming civilians or 2) if they drop bombs all over the place, resulting in mass civilian casualties? And under which circumstances do you think Americans would be interested in taking revenge once our nation had regained its strength?
There are other selfish reasons not to bomb civilians as well, the biggest being the fact that it compromises the non-aggression principle as an objective basis for rights by making a special exception for a single circumstance. If it is permissible for our military to bomb civilians in a country which has attacked us, why shouldn't the police be allowed to open fire indiscriminately on a crowd of bystanders in order to take down a criminal? Why worry about the due process rights of the accused if ignoring them can lead to more criminals being captured?
Both cases have relevance to stuff that is actually happening in reality. There are an increasing number of stories in the news of cops opening fire indiscriminately and endangering the lives of bystanders during confrontations with criminals. And you also have feminists arguing that we should take due process rights away from accused rapists in order to fight "rape culture" and eliminate rape. I don't see how the Objectivist argument defending collateral damage in war wouldn't also support both scenarios.
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Under normal circumstances it would be, but under circumstances in which one's rights are threatened it becomes irrelevant. For example, under normal circumstances it would be immoral to trespass onto someone's property, but if I were being chased by a killer I would be perfectly justified in hiding on that property without the owner's consent.
There is a difference of degree between trespassing on someone's property and killing them.
If a whole lot of people in your subdivision support attacking some other country, you should not be surprised if that other country tries to bomb your sub at some point as a way to get them to cease and desist.
In this circumstance, the leaders of the other nation are also in violation of the non-aggression principle.
That's the same exact argument I made above. It states that people who work to help the war effort are legitimate targets.
It states that anyone who helps the war effort through their economic production is a legitimate target. I was under the impression that they were implying that citizens who provide tax revenue for their government by working are complicit, but I may have been mistaken. The article does, however, state that anyone who is genuinely innocent will not object to being killed (The implication being that any civilian who objects to being killed is guilty) and that the government is justified in deliberately targeting civilians.
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If your ethics says "If the voters in a country vote to attack another country without reason, the other country may bomb them without knowing who voted which way", this does not contradict the golden rule as long as you also say "..and it would be right for a country to bomb civilians here if we vote to attack them without reason". The reciprocity is preserved and thus the Golden Rule is upheld.
Yes, but I don't believe it would be in anyone's self-interest to support a moral principle of that nature. The U.S. government could (And has) choose to wage war without just cause, but that does not mean I want to give another country the right to bomb me in my sleep.
It is irrelevant whether or not killed civilians are innocent or not. The only thing that is relevant is whether or not it is in our self-interest.
It is relevant whether or not we have a moral right to kill them.
Feelings
in Psychology and Self Improvement
Posted
Re: Repairman: I was thinking about experiences where I feel disconnected from my immediate surroundings. It's not just situations where I feel uncomfortable either. I've been in situations where I want to engage with people, but don't feel like I can, and I think a lot of it comes from over-analyzing. And while I think evaluation is important, it shouldn't come at the expense of enjoying a positive experience.
I think a part of it is because I feel a bit alienated from other people, since most people are altruists. I sometimes worry that if I express how I really feel (Including the rational judgments behind it) then people will think I'm an asshole, or that I'll be pidgeon-holed as "one of those crazy Ayn Rand followers" by people who are hostile toward Objectivism.
I definitely think that this is good advice. It seems like I just need to trust my emotions more, as long as I do a basic reality check to make sure they're not based on a false premise.
It does also seem like one thing Objectivism doesn't emphasize as much is psychological processes that allow us to integrate values into our emotional processes. This is what religion offers, but it's hard to do that while remaining rational.