Re: a good person is a person who...

On Fri, 07 Dec 2007 23:44:10 -0700, boots <no@xxxxx> wrote:

Josh Hill <usereplyto@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Thu, 06 Dec 2007 10:18:18 -0700, boots <no@xxxxx> wrote:

Josh Hill <usereplyto@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Thu, 06 Dec 2007 03:53:51 -0700, boots <no@xxxxx> wrote:

It's odd how humans work, and I use the term "work" loosely because
for the most part we don't. We're inculcated with some set of beliefs
as children, and we make up the most egregious lies to defend them,
when if we could just let them fall away or not as they should, we'd
perhaps be able to see things as they are.

Survival value: it allowed our parents to reproduce. Besides,
speciation depends in part on a reluctance to hybridize, on the
maintenance of genetic diversity.

But we mayn't.

Some of usn't.

Fucksake Josh, I just realized what a loon you are. You still think
"survival" has "value". Jayzus. No wonder we can't get on the same
wavelength.

Er, "survival value" means "value for survival," not "the value of
survival." It's a subtle distinction in much the same way that "up"
and "down," "dead" and "alive," and "right" and "wrong" are.

You can play word games with it if you like Josh, but the two are
inextricably linked. If there is no value to survival there is no
value for survival, likewise if there is value for survival the
implication is that there is value to survival.

There is no word game here, Boots: the two meanings are in an
important regard diametrically opposed.

"Survival value" simply means "increases the likelihood of survival."

Which being said, if you don't think survival has value you're either
clinically depressed and anhedonic or suffering from an exquisitely
painful cancer.

Perhaps I have learned that what lies beyond ennui is freedom.

What's so good about freedom?

Because all survival needs to have positive value is a
happy emotional bounty, and as long as we have sex and Beethoven, it
most assuredly will.

You're silly. On one hand you go on at length about how various
behaviours or characteristics have value from an evolutionary point of
view, they help the subspecies with those characteristics to survive
as a stronger part of the race. On the other hand you think survival
has value. If survival has value, evolutionary theory is bunk, or
there would only be one immortal species; it is the inclusion of death
in the process of life that makes evolution work, if it does work.

Evolution is just a natural process. I don't necessarily value
something because it is highly evolved, and I don't necessarily value
something because it's conducive to evolution. I mention evolution
only as a fact.

In that regard, evolution is like gravity. And just as gravity is a
mixed bag, on one hand keeping us stuck to the ground and on the other
leading to aching joints and lumbago, evolution does nice things for
us like allowing us to exist and not-so-nice things like programmed
death.

As long as hedonism can be practiced survival has value, according to
what I read you to say. What a shallow view that is. I must be
misunderstanding you.

Only insofar as hedonism, as you put it, is only one component of the
drives, emotions, and understandings that determine what we do.

Mouth at one end, anus at the other. Genitals maybe 2/3 down. A few
neurons to increase the probability of eating and lower that of being
eaten. That's the essence of it (though for some here it's anus at
both ends).

Survival does not have value, it is temporary, circumstantial, and
ultimately beyond our control. There are many people who believe that
the most important thing they can do is to prolong their own life.
You seem to be one of them. Feelgoodies, people who consider life to
be worth continuing as long as they can squirt one more orgasm and
listen to the music of their choice? It seems sad to me, the idea of
being stuck forever within an existence without meaning beyond sex and
Beethoven.

"Meaning?" What is the meaning of "meaning"?

Here is a quotation from roughly 500bc, it's found in the Tao Te Ching
in chapter 75:

"Why do the people think so little of death?
Because the rulers demand too much of life.
Therefore the people take death lightly.

Having little to live on, one knows better than to
value life too much. "

I'll remember that when next I'm an oppressed peasant.

So you see, my madness is not a new invention, it has been around
longer than Jeezus. It's a matter of values and beliefs Josh, I
believe it is better to live well for a short time than to live badly
forever.

That seems to me rather hedonistic. In any case, what makes you think
I, or most people, disagree? It's just that you don't have to booze,
smoke, or stuff yourself with pie to be happy or lead a good life.
Those are pleasures, yes, and therefore to be encouraged in those who
are young enough and robust enough to enjoy them. But there are lots
of pleasures -- the press of flesh, the laughter of children,
schussing down a slope, diving a reef, reading a book -- and I hope to
be around for a while longer to partake of them.

To me, life is like a smorgasbord with far more good things than one
can possibly eat. That a few of the platters are now empty is of only
passing concern. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that my
real concern is with different impediments, either self-imposed or
external. An empty platter is no great shakes, but the inability to
eat a full one is a shame.

But I don't believe in evolution either, or creationism, at
least as they seem commonly understood.

That you equate the two suggests that you understand neither.

Luckily for me it's a free world. Not just a free country. Anywhere
in the world you can think according to algorithms as mad as you
choose, so long as you remain functional. It is when you mark
yourself as dysfunctional that they come and take you away, and then
it doesn't matter whether your thinking is conformant or not.

Whatever, I'm just running on here waiting for your inevitable flounce
back to wherever it is that you find excitement in being threatened by
convicted murderers. Which of course I find silly because the
convicted ones aren't the ones that a person should be worried about.

I'm not going back to AAPC, Boots: though the occasional denizen
revisits the wreckage for old time's sake (check out Dale Houstman's
luminous prose in the poetry troll thread), most of us long ago moved
on.

You seem to have neglected the possibility that there are still groups
that haven't been infested by trolls and flamers. It's MW that's the
abnormality.

Most people have little interest in hanging out on a group infested by
adults who behave like twelve-year-olds at recess. The criteria by
which people are judged in such a group are deformed. To succeed at
them is to lessen oneself.

--
Josh

"We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals.
We know now that it is bad economics." - Franklin D. Roosevelt
.