Sum1hugme

Well one of the most disturbing things about the Genocide in Rwanda is that it wasn't a war. It was the indiscriminate butchering of man woman and child, for the crime of being born a Tutsi. Men had to kill their wives and children. One survivor of the marshes described how the priests, deacons, schoolmasters, and burgomasters wore their soft cotton pants, dress shirts, and rolled up their sleeves to get a better grip in their machetes. 

Afterwards, the world wondered how they even knew who was a Tutsi, since they looked the same, intermarried, and shared a culture and language. The way the Hutus knew who was who, is because these Tutsis were their neighbors, friends, wives, children. These were the people they went to school with, The old woman that put medicinal plants on your wounds. 

There's a lot more, you should read the book "machete season."

Also you should be very careful taking fighting advice from krav maga people, because most of them don't know dick about fighting

Yeah I can tell you from experience that it's a bad idea. Always kick thigh or the soft part of the calf. I was kicking a guy in the legs in a fight one time, and I was having a lot of success, but one of my kicks slammed right into the side of the knee, and that bone on bone contact made my leg swell up with a huge whelp. It was honestly the worst injury I suffered in that fight.

Baby don't hurt me

I was learning about the Rwandan Genocide today. Further proof that your neighbor will kill you with their teeth if shit goes down.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you, but RM And Goldblum are number 22 and 23 respectively.

I haven't seen it. Why do you ask?

Well we have every inductive reason to believe that my statement about the demon is true. 

If there was a demon with perfect knowledge of all matter and energy in the present, that demon should necessarily be able to perfectly predict the future and perfectly reconstruct the past

I think NATO should accept Ukraine as a member state and then Ukraine demand back Crimea from that position.

Well even from a practical perspective, is it worth losing access to Ukrainian natural resources to Russian sanctions if they get annexed? 

I can't prove it I guess, But I fear that, being an ex KGB agent, Putin wants to restore the former territorial holdings of the Soviet Union. Probably out of a sense of dishonor after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Yeah it was disturbing to me how much the annexation of Crimea was like the Anschluss of Austria.

  I believe Ukraine is trying to join NATO. If they get rejected, I fear Russia will see that as an invitation to annex the rest of the Ukraine. 

  What do you suppose will happen to occupied Crimea if Ukraine joined NATO? Do you think NATO would demand the reintegration of Crimea into the Ukraine?

If Russia expressed clear intent to fully annex the Ukraine, should America guarantee Ukrainian independence?

Please consider adding a history section to the forum

We know time exists because the entropic nature of the universe only operates in one direction. The second law of thermodynamics is the only law of physics that doesn't look the same going backwards as it does forward, and this gives us our unidirectional concept of time.

A lawyer defends a man for running around in his underwear. It was a brief case.

Congrats

I was also raised christian. But after an honest investigation into the matter, I could not remain that way. I'd say your religious experience is just like anybody else's and equally invalid as evidence for their particular god's existence. 

No ebuc, you didn't make a point. And by trying to turn the criticism back around on me instead of answering the question, you're committing a Tu Quoque. So what is the point you're trying to make? Or are you just putting a bunch of random words together?

What is the point you're trying to make? This just reads like a word salad.

The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics is wrong because it incorrectly assumes that particles don't have mass until they're observed.

Congrats

I would like to know what you believe about ethics, and what motivates you to act morally. 

If you think that thought experiments being too literally unrealistic is a problem in philosophy, then you've missed the entire point of the thought experiment. Suppose your friend comes to you and and her hair is just ridiculous, but she says, "what do you think?" And you're thinking "yuck." Then you're faced with a moral dilemma. The dilemma is between being honest or being kind. The same dilemma occurs if the gestapo came to your door and asked if there are any Jews in your house, and you know there are. It doesn't matter how likely it is that the gestapo would ever actually come to your door, or that you'd ever be in that situation, but it does expose the underlying question: when faced with the dilemma between being honest and being kind, which should take precedence? It's the starting point of moral thinking.

For this question, we aren't adding any extra elements right now, just assume they're all strangers

Im not advocating for any particular answer, I'm just asking for a straight answer from you. It's not a real criticism in philosophy to say that a thought experiment isn't realistic. It's just a hypothetical to highlight a moral dilemma. I'm just trying to figure out what you believe.

In the hypothetical, we know for certain that turning the wheel will kill the one, and not turning it will kill the five. I'm only asking what the moral thing to do would be. Are you suggesting that if the trolley driver has a moral rule that prescribes them an action, then that would be the moral thing to do? Not to get off track, which one a, b, or c, would you personally say?

This is unrelated, but suppose there was a trolley going down a track and you're the driver. You're headed towards five people you will know for certain will die. However, you can turn a steering wheel and hit one person sitting on the other track, killing him. Are you:

A) morally obligated to turn the wheel?

B) morally permitted, but not obligated to turn the wheel?

C) morally prohibited from turning the wheel?

Wylted never uses one, that's why he always gets caught.

So you think their actions and the person performing them are equally morally praiseworthy? Do you think the difference in motivation makes a difference?

What's your favorite debate topic

 “And an unbridgeable chasm divides you! You cannot cry out to them, nor weep over them, nor shake them by the shoulder:after all, you are a disembodied spirit, you are ghost, and they are material bodies.

    And how can you bring it home to them? By an inspiration? By a vision? A dream? Brothers! People! Why has life been given you? In the deep, deaf stillness of midnight, the doors of the death cells are being swung open---and great-souled people are being dragged out to be shot. On all the railroads of the country this very minute, right now, people who have just been fed salt herring are licking their dry lips with bitter tongues. They dream of the happiness of stretching out one’s legs and of the relief one feels after going to the toilet. In Orotukan the earth thaws only in summer and only to the depth of three feet---and only then can they bury the bones of those who died during the winter. And you have the right to arrange your own life under the blue sky and hot sun, to get a drink of water, to stretch, to travel wherever you like without a convoy. So what’s this about unwiped feet? And what’s this about a mother-in-law? What about the main thing in life, all it’s riddles? If you want, I’ll spell it out for you right now. Do not pursue what is illusory---property and position: all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade, and is confiscated in one fell night. Live with a steady superiority over life---don’t be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn after happiness; it is, after all, all the same: the bitter doesn’t last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing. It is enough if you don’t freeze in the cold and if thirst and hunger don’t claw at your insides. If your back isn’t broken, if your feet can walk, if both arms can bend, if both eyes see, and if both ears hear, then whom should you envy? And why? Our envy of others devours us most of all. Rub your eyes and purify your heart---and prize above all else in the world those who love you and wish you well. Do not hurt them or scold them, and never part from any of them in anger; after all, you simply do not know; it might be your last second before your arrest, and that will be how you are imprinted in their memory.”

    -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Gulag Archipelago)

probably patreon

Lol bro, that was just so I could ask a more informed question. All the information I have about moral theories of well-being come from the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. I don't think you necessarily would be classified as a hedonist, but you do allude to negative well being as being pain, which is part of hedonism.

So I'm curious why you choose to call yourself a soft utilitarian rather than a hedonist or some other theory of well-being based morality.

Yeah I don't agree with Utilitarianism either, but what modification would you add to that principle, so that it becomes "Soft-Utilitarianism" as opposed to just regular Utilitarianism?

What about the statement, "the most good for the most number is the supreme principle of morality" do you disagree with? 

I think politics are a natural evolution of society. Chimpanzees and ants go to war. Chimpanzees go to war for territory and extermination even. That looks like a political move to me. 

I think as politics evolve, many political questions arise from ethics, by virtue of being inextricably connected with ethics.