Dante

I'm trying to think through what a principle of 'self-defense against nature' as justification for government action would mean. So let's say there was an immense drought that hit a big farming region of a country, and the government decides to 'defend' those farmers against that natural disaster by sending them tax money to compensate for the drought. Essentially this is just coercive redistribution, but its occurring in response to a natural disaster (a large-scale natural disaster). Would you judge this as covered by your principle of self-defense against nature?

But it wasn't just dancing; it was dancing as part of a planned political demonstration. I seriously doubt that if on some random day two people started to slow dance in the Jefferson memorial, that they would be arrested. This was clearly a situation where the cops were aware of a pre-planned demonstration involving dancing and possibly a flash mob, that was not permitted or licensed. They weren't arrested for dancing, but for demonstrating through dancing.

Those are not the only two options; you can also respond with some sarcastic subtext of your own. Personally, when I'm in that situation I usually return snark for snark, so to speak. It's basically just a policy of "giving as good as you get" as it were. If the individual recognizes that they've insulted you through subtext, they'll likely also recognize the sarcasm, and realize that you've acknowledged the insult. If not, then they're just ignorantly being arrogant, and you don't have to feel bad at all about submitting to veiled insults; they didn't intend any insults, they just really are that oblivious. Either way, it's much more enjoyable than either benevolently submitting or straightforwardly bringing it up.

Ideally the military, and the entire government, would be voluntarily funded, but given the way things are set up in today's America it was entirely appropriate for the military to respond to 9/11. Now, whether Afghanistan and Iraq were the right response is debatable (I think they were not), but to reject national self-defense entirely on principle is lunacy.

Yes, there are people out there who are habitual liars to themselves, people who have built in thick rationalizations that kick in whenever they start to think about their actions, to block out the fact that they are living off of what doesn't belong to them. However, self-deception is itself a very dangerous and destructive habit. People who live as parasites might indeed seem to be happy, but just from the fact that they're happy with their life, we can already tell that they are habitual liars to themselves. Obviously, in a world where wishing doesn't make it so, breaking contact with reality in any way is a negative for one's life, and habitually breaking that contact makes one much more ineffectual at dealing with the issues reality presents.

Guess I don't have to study for my huge test on the 25th then

I'm going to jump in here with permission from ropo to ask a two-part question. First, what characteristics in another person make it easiest to get what you want from them through deception and trickery? What kind of a person is most likely to be easily manipulated in this way? And the second part, what kind of people are most likely to have lots of values to offer you? I'm speaking of material values (wealth), but also spiritual values like friendship, support, understanding, love, etc. Just in general, what makes someone a good value producer?

There's a difference between using them as criteria for objective judgment and being driven by them. The fact that they are automatic responses means that we cannot take them as evidence of anything without critically examining the ideas and premises behind them; but if we have emotions that we know, through introspection and rational thought, are justified, we should be driven by them. They should motivate us to action.

Cruelty to terrorists is not on the same moral level as cruelty to innocents, and to suggest moral equivalence between the two is rather astonishing.

Yes, they can, but unless you think this discounts the very possibility of attaining objective knowledge, I'm not sure how it factors into your argument. Humans can err at any level in the quest for knowledge, but I would maintain that omniscience is not the standard for knowledge, in objectively evaluating beauty responses or in any other area. The possibility of error does not discount the possibility for success. I honestly don't know. I realize that your example illustrates an individual getting two contradictory and opposing reactions from two different depictions of twilight, both of which can be objectively valuable in different contexts (aggressiveness, strength, and passion vs. peace and gentleness). I see no reason why I should discount either of these as being objective. As I said, both reactions which are evoked in your hypothetical observer reflect human qualities which are objectively valuable in certain contexts. However, I think the example misses the point of this thread (as opposed to the "Banishment of Beauty" thread, which is about art in general); this thread is intended to probe questions of human beauty and whether or not that can have an objective basis in how different people choose to present themselves physically.

I'm confused. Are you claiming that emotions are impossible to evaluate rationally? Emotions certainly are automatic and based on subconscious premises, but I would maintain that we can objectively evaluate emotions, and tell the difference between an irrational emotion (I dislike Fred because he scored better than me on that test) and a rational one (I dislike Fred because he cheated on that test). Even though emotions arise from subconscious premises, we can use introspection to discover what those premises are (again, this requires avoiding rationalization and being honest with oneself) and whether those premises are rational or irrational. Would you agree with this, or disagree? If you agree, how is evaluating your responses to beauty any different than evaluating any other emotion, such that it is impossible for you to discover the basis for your beauty reaction and/or evaluate that basis rationally?

And? Rationalization is the misapplication of reason to justification, and if one willing to do it, one can justify pretty much any conclusion from any set of premises. In some real-world context of decision-making, I could come up with a rationalization of pretty much any possible course of action 'based' on the Objectivist ethics, but that doesn't mean that moral decision-making has no objective basis. It's simply a comment on the act of rationalizing and how useless it is. It doesn't disprove the existence of an objective standard in ethics. Now, I would say that most people's physical appearance is likely to be mixed in whether or not it reflects good or bad virtues, and different people may have different reactions from focusing on different aspects. This is no different than two people's differing reactions to the Atlas Shrugged movie, for example, that come from focusing on different parts of the film, and it doesn't mean that either one is not being objective in his or her reasoning.

If you'll notice, both of those sentences you quoted are Louie describing what most other people consider beauty, and he follows up those statements with, "I think that almost entirely drops the nature of people being conceptual thinkers, choosers." Louie's actual stance can be found a little further down in that very same post, and involves how each person chooses to take care of and present themselves: So, his argument for a standard of human beauty relies on visual indicators and expressions of a person's virtues of character. I think we can all agree that we do have an objective standard for establishing human virtues, so the question becomes whether an individual's visual display of those virtues (how they carry themselves physically) is an objective standard of physical human beauty or not.

The Objective Standard on Iran. Included is a hypothetical statement that the President should make to the various anti-regime movements in Iran:

I don't think he did call that painting ugly. He identified it as an example of a painting which disconnects the world of the artwork from objective reality, by depicting a shifting, warped, dreamlike environment. He identifies this type of painting with a movement among artists (reductionism) to identify the essence of painting by removing elements which are not specific to painting. I don't know whether or not this is true, but if so, it strikes me as a meaningless and ridiculous enterprise. However, it is not apparent to me from looking at the Dali painting that that is what Dali was trying to accomplish (perhaps it is apparent from looking at Dali's statements about his painting, I don't know). As it stands, I find the painting very intriguing, and not at all ugly. I think that that style of painting can be used appropriately and to incredible effect in several different contexts. For instance, I recently attended a display of Dali's series of paintings depicting Dante's Divine Comedy. I found his surrealist approach to be an incredibly effective way of concretizing Dante's fictional journey. Considering the subject matter of the paintings is itself a somewhat fantastical and supernatural story, it effectively communicated (to me at least) the feeling of being 'along for the ride,' so to speak. If you take paintings like these to be a statement that the world is just as unintelligible and confusing as the world of these paintings, then I could see how you would not like the message, but I don't think that's the only possible intended message from a style like that.

That sounds like a pretty darn reasonable response to me, at least temporarily. I'd just add that you shouldn't forget how potentially rewarding and valuable personal relationships can be, provided you find the right people, so if in time you find that your attitude of indifference towards pursuing relationships with other people is becoming a permanent feature, then that's something to worry about. However, I think a little "me" time after something like that is not a bad policy at all.

It's not just about the external reputation consequences of this particular act. Someone in this situation should be more concerned about his reputation with himself (his self-respect) than his reputation with others who saw him do it.

Yes, you should feel guilty, and furthermore you should attempt to rectify the harm that you've caused. Concealing a fact which you know would be material to their decision to buy the house is fraud. It does not matter whether you caused the defect or not; the salient point is, it exists, and you are concealing it to deceive the buyer. Dealing with people through deceit and trickery, as expendable tools rather than independent valuers, is horrendously bad for both you and those around you. It is good that you at least feel guilty about it; this indicates that your character is at least partially based on the idea that you should not exploit others. That's the kind of moral character that will serve you well in the long term; don't ignore it, and don't cheat on it. Don't be satisfied with going through life with a guilty conscience.

Speaking as a guy who has missed one or two of these things in his day, if my girlfriend at the time had been more direct and just told me what she wanted, I would have gladly done it, not done it out of duty or obligation. If you're in a relationship with someone, you (hopefully) really do want to make them happy and show them support, and I much preferred to be directly told about these things, rather than missing out on the opportunity to be supportive. Her telling me about these types of things was a concession to my needs (as an oblivious guy) that I greatly appreciated, not an imposition. However, then and now, I completely understand the perspective that one should be able to pick up on a lot of these things without being told. I've definitely run into that "how well should you be expected to know me" question a lot, and there's no easy answer when two people's expectations differ on that kind of thing. I always appreciated being told directly, but was also regretful that I had to be.

Apparently, Pakistan may have known about it beforehand and helped, and just pretended to be incompetent and sympathetic to Bin Laden for the sake of avoiding a popular uprising: http://blogs.forbes.com/rickungar/2011/05/06/pakistan-military-knew-about-bin-laden-raid-well-in-advance-of-attack/

I'll just make a more general comment about the equality of opportunity question. There is no justification for focusing on equality of opportunity rather than the absolute level of opportunity available, at least in a free society. The idea that equality of opportunity is important stems from the false premise that we all come into this world competing to get some amount of a fixed pie, and if my neighbor starts out with better opportunities, he'll get more and consequently I'll get less. However, this is simply untrue. If my neighbor makes a million dollars honestly, say by inventing some new super-useful piece of software, and uses it to send his kid to a great school, has that made me worse off in any concrete way? Did he take something from me and give it to his kid? Obviously not. Furthermore, I benefit in an absolute sense when he gives his kid a better education. Having more smart, well-educated people out there in the world is good for everybody; in a free society, successful people are a boon to those around them, not a burden. The idea that when we grow up we'll be competing for a fixed amount of jobs is yet another economic fallacy that fails to take into account how a market economy works. In short, there's no real reason (besides envy) that I should care if my neighbor gets a better education than me. Of course, the core of the issue is this: my neighbor's money belongs to him, and he should be able to use it in any way he sees fit. It would be perverse for me to say that he's allowed to blow it on mansions and Jet-skis, but not allowed to invest it in his son's education because that 'disadvantages' everyone else's kids. Fundamentally, it's an issue of rights. Some people are going to be more successful in a marketplace, and those people may well choose to spend that money helping their children. It's their money, and they have the right to do that. This will naturally result in different kids having different levels of opportunity; that's a natural feature of respecting property rights. However, it also helps to see that this isn't a negative for the rest of us, but rather an unqualified positive. In a society where rights are upheld, everyone is the better for it, and this particular example is no different.

Did he actually say that with a straight face? "We don't wanna tell you what's right for you, but... this is what's right for you."

What possible case could there be for one or the other being "worse" in some way. Worse for whom? I'm not saying that the market always magically maximizes welfare or something, but that "the market" is an abstraction which simply means allowing each market actor to act on his own judgment. When you paralyze that, you're not doing anyone any favors. They don't get paid when they lose their jobs, either. That was my point. If that's what they really wanted, to forgoe their wage in order to not be put in risky situations, they could have just not gone to work. Obviously they preferred working to not having a job at all.

Okay, well let's establish one thing first: employers don't put their employees at risk just for the heck of it. Even if your hypothetical employer is a heartless bastard who literally cares nothing for the welfare of his employees, it's well established that riskier jobs pay higher wages, other things equal; in general, employers have to pay their employees a premium for taking on risk. So let's say there's a very low-cost change that an employer can make to his factory that significantly reduces risk. Do we need to regulate him to get him to do it? Obviously not; there's a number of reasons that an employer would do that voluntarily, from the risk wage premium to employee moral. Employers in the absence of regulation are already looking to reduce risk; however, they're also balancing that against the cost of reducing risk. So what will change when safety regulations are passed? Obviously these regulations will target the more expensive changes that employers wouldn't do without the regulation, so employers complying with the regulations will undergo significant costs. Often when these sorts of things are passed, many small businesses in the industry simply go out of business (in fact, it's well documented that large corporations often use these types of regulations to eliminate competition, but let's pretend for the moment that regulators are only interested in the task of making workplaces safer, and their regulations can't be influenced in this way). Obviously the employees there aren't better off; they could have accomplished the same level of safety by simply not going to work in the first place. Larger firms have to incur significant costs, which usually means laying off workers and temporarily cutting back production. So what have the regulations done? They've made some workers safer at the cost of the jobs of other workers. Of course, regulations are rarely ever eliminated, only built upon, which means an ever-increasing amount of red-tape and extra cost for employers, which comes at the expense of both employers and employees. So we've gone from a situation where employees were consciously deciding to accept risky jobs and being compensated accordingly, and employers were gradually making the workplace safer in a cost-effective manner, to a situation where neither party has control of what happens; an outside bureaucracy does. In short, the image of regulations costlessly solving problems in the market is an immense oversimplification that inevitably ignores the unintended consequences of said regulation. Market actors have incentives to balance benefits against costs; bureaucracies have no such incentives, and we've all seen what happens when the people in charge of an industry don't have to pay the costs.

Your first statement is wildly untrue. The Bible is littered with verses that forbid killing, taking vengeance, etc. The whole point is, Christianity (and Islam) is not an integrated philosophy, but a religion based on a text that contradicts itself. The Christian who chooses one side of the contradicting passages is no more or less consistent than the Christian who chooses the other. Certainly, the Christian in your example is more radical than the other, but it is simply ignorant to claim that he violates no Biblical scripture when he "takes the next step."